I've had back-to-back meetings
Six calls deep, your brain is forty open tabs. Reset in ninety seconds, put buffers on the calendar, and take one meeting back.
Meeting after meeting with no gaps, and your brain now feels like a browser with forty tabs open and nothing loading. You've been performing presence in one call while still half inside the previous one.
What your mind is doing: paying a switching tax. Every meeting loads new people, context and stakes into working memory, and six switches in, the tax has eaten most of your attention.
What your body is doing: hours frozen in call posture - fixed eyes, shallow breath, jaw tight from talking or from waiting to talk. Probably thirsty, probably running on chai instead of water.
Why this happens: the brain has no all-day meeting mode. Back-to-back scheduling never lets working memory flush, so each conversation starts with less of you in it - that's wiring, not weak stamina.
Check-in
How fried are you right now?
Breathing exercise
Ninety seconds between this call and whatever comes next. Eyes off the screen, shoulders down - a longer out-breath than in-breath tells the body the sprint is over. Ten easy rounds.
Cycle 1 of 10
Guided exercise
What helps today
Step 1 of 4
Close the last meeting in one line
Before the next call, write one line: the decision made, or your single next action from it. An unclosed meeting keeps running in your head through the next one.
Check-in
Which of those meetings actually needed you - and which could have been a two-line message?
Longer term: once a quarter, audit the standing meetings: what decision does each one produce, and does it need you there? Protect one meeting-free block most days and guard it like a client call - it is one, with your own work.
A therapist would tell you: fatigue from hours of people-facing time is real load, not weak stamina. Recovery between demands is what sustains performance - sprinters rest between heats on purpose.
Common mistakes: spending the five-minute gap on email (that's another switch, not a break), lunch eaten on a call, wearing 'fully booked' as proof of value, and accepting every invite because declining feels rude.
When to seek more support: a heavy calendar should feel better after a lighter week. If it doesn't - exhausted even after rest, snapping at people, dreading even the easy calls - that's drifting from busy toward burnout, and talking to a professional early is the strong move, not the weak one.
