Too Many Meetings? Here's How I Actually Get Work Done Now
I'm staring at my calendar and it's a nightmare. Eight meetings today. Back-to-back from 9 AM to 5 PM with maybe a 15-minute bathroom break if I'm lucky. Sound familiar?
This is the modern knowledge worker's hell: meeting overload. You spend your entire day in video calls, but somehow nothing actually gets done. You're always behind on follow-ups, you miss action items, and the real work happens in those mythical "focus blocks" that never seem to materialize.
I used to think I was just bad at this. Turns out, the system is broken.
The Meeting Overload Problem Is Real
Here's what happens when you have too many meetings:
Your brain gets fried. There's actual cognitive science behind this. When you're in back-to-back meetings, you're constantly context-switching. Sales call to product planning to team standup to budget review. Each meeting requires you to boot up entirely different mental models.
You lose the details. You're so busy trying to keep up with the conversation that you can't properly capture what's being decided. You scribble half-legible notes that make no sense later. Important decisions get lost in your notebook.
Follow-up becomes impossible. By the time you get out of your last meeting, you can barely remember what happened in the first one. Those action items you were supposed to send? Good luck figuring out what they were.
Try Granola FreeThe Traditional Solutions Don't Work
Everyone has advice for meeting overload:
"Just decline meetings." Right, tell that to your boss when they schedule an "urgent" all-hands.
"Take better notes." I've tried every note-taking system. Notion, Obsidian, good old pen and paper. Doesn't matter when you're trying to actively participate in the conversation.
"Block focus time." In theory, great. In practice, that blocked time gets eaten by "quick syncs" and "brief check-ins."
The real problem isn't time management. It's attention fragmentation. When you're simultaneously trying to listen, think, respond, and capture everything important, your brain shorts out.
What Actually Works: Offload the Capture
I discovered something game-changing about six months ago. Instead of trying to fix my note-taking or decline more meetings, I outsourced the entire capture process.
Now I show up to meetings with one job: be present. Not taking notes, not trying to remember everything, just fully engaged in the conversation. An AI handles all the detail work.
Here's how it works:
Before the meeting: I hit record and forget about it. The AI is now my backup brain, capturing every word, every decision, every throwaway comment that might be important later.
During the meeting: I'm 100% focused on the conversation. I can actually think about what people are saying instead of frantically scribbling notes. I can ask better questions, make better connections, contribute more value.
After the meeting: I get a clean summary with action items, decisions, and key quotes. Everything's organized and searchable. Follow-ups take minutes instead of hours.
Try Granola FreeThe ADHD/Autism Angle
This approach is especially powerful if you're neurodivergent like me. With ADHD and autism, meetings hit different:
Executive function overload. Trying to listen, process, remember, and respond simultaneously maxes out my cognitive capacity. When I remove the note-taking burden, suddenly I have bandwidth for actual thinking.
Masking exhaustion. Meetings are performative. You're managing your presentation, reading social cues, staying engaged. That's exhausting enough without also trying to be a human transcript service.
Detail orientation. My brain wants to capture everything because it might be important. But that perfectionist impulse sabotages my ability to participate. When I trust the AI to get the details, I can focus on the big picture.
The Practical Implementation
Here's my current meeting workflow:
Setup: Takes literally 30 seconds. Join the meeting, start recording, done. The AI handles transcription, speaker identification, everything.
Participation: I actually participate now. I ask follow-up questions. I challenge assumptions. I contribute ideas instead of just documenting other people's ideas.
Follow-up: Within minutes of the meeting ending, I have a structured summary. Action items are clearly identified. Key decisions are highlighted. Direct quotes are preserved for context.
Searchability: This is huge. When someone asks "what did we decide about the Q2 budget?" I can search across all my meeting transcripts instead of digging through messy handwritten notes.
Try Granola FreeThe Results Are Dramatic
Since implementing this system:
I actually follow through on action items. When everything's clearly captured and organized, follow-up becomes mechanical instead of archaeological.
I contribute more value in meetings. When my brain isn't busy being a stenographer, I can actually think strategically about what's being discussed.
Meeting fatigue is way down. The cognitive load of trying to capture everything was burning me out. Now meetings feel like conversations instead of endurance tests.
My reputation improved. When you consistently follow through and remember details, people notice. I've become the person who "stays on top of everything."
Why This Matters More Now
Meeting overload isn't going away. If anything, it's getting worse. Remote work means more scheduled check-ins. Async collaboration means more status meetings. AI tools mean more cross-functional planning sessions.
The traditional approach—trying to be a perfect human recording device—doesn't scale. Your brain has better things to do than transcribe conversations.
The solution isn't better note-taking. It's eliminating note-taking entirely and letting AI handle the capture while you handle the thinking.
If you're drowning in meetings and can't figure out how to stay on top of everything, the problem isn't your organizational skills. The problem is that you're doing two jobs at once: participating in the conversation and documenting it.
Pick one. Let AI handle the other.
Your future self will thank you when you're not spending Sunday afternoons trying to decipher your meeting notes from three weeks ago.