How to Refocus After Back to Back Meetings (When You Run the Day)

By Antonio Neves

You know the day. 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock, 11, a working lunch that wasn't really lunch, then two more in the afternoon. You walk out of the last one at 3:40, sit down at your desk and just stare at the screen for a minute. So you open email, because it's there. 40 minutes later you've answered a pile of messages and you still couldn't tell anybody what you were supposed to get done today.

You run the meetings. You run the calendar. You run everybody else's priorities. So who's running you from 3:40 to 6?

When Harvard Business School professors Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria tracked 27 CEOs for about three months each, 72% of their work time went to meetings. If your calendar feels like it belongs to everybody but you, you're in good company. That company just has a lot of meetings.

In 2021, Microsoft's Human Factors Lab put EEG caps on 14 people and had them sit through four half hour meetings in a row. One week the meetings ran back to back. The other week each meeting had a 10 minute break, and people meditated during it.

With no breaks, beta wave activity, which is linked to stress, kept climbing across the two hours. With breaks it stayed about level. The biggest spikes showed up at the handoffs, at the end of one meeting and the start of the next. Michael Bohan, who oversaw the project, described that moment pretty well: "you're coming to the end of the meeting, knowing you have another one coming right up."

The second problem is what you carry out of the room. Researchers Sophie Leroy and Theresa Glomb found that when you leave a task unfinished, part of your attention stays stuck on it. They call it attention residue. A meeting that ends without a clear next step is an unfinished task, and you walk it straight into the next meeting. Six meetings later you're carrying six of them.

My trainer said something to me once before a heavy deadlift: "It might just be heavy." He was talking about the bar. I heard it about my whole year. I told him that should be the title of my book. He laughed. I wasn't joking.

A day with six meetings is heavy. Willpower doesn't make it lighter. What helps is a few small moves around the meetings so there's something left of you when they end, and something to come back to.

For me that something is one question. After my family lost our home in the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, each morning I asked, "What will make today a success?" Not the year, not the month, not the week. Just this day. On a meeting day that answer is what you go back to at 3:40, instead of whatever's sitting on top of your inbox.

If your calendar looks like this most weeks, I put together a free 1-Day Method Starter Kit. It's the question, 3 priorities, the daily acts and end of day wins, and it's short enough to fill out before your first meeting starts.

Before you open the calendar or your email, write one line: "What will make today a success?" Then write your Essential 3, the three priorities that would make it a good day.

Be honest about the calendar when you pick them. If you've got 90 free minutes all day, at least one of the three has to fit in 90 minutes. I go deeper on the morning question in questions to ask yourself every morning.

Later in the day you'll come back to this line. Skip it and the end of the meetings drops you in your inbox with no plan, and your inbox will happily hand you one.

Before you walk out, write one line: what happens next, and who owns it. "Pricing: finance sends revised numbers Thursday, I decide Friday." That's the ready to resume note from the Leroy and Glomb research, just pointed at a meeting.

If you run the meeting, end it a couple of minutes early so everybody gets that time. Google Calendar has a setting called speedy meetings that shortens your default meetings automatically, and Outlook has a similar option to end meetings early.

The breaks in the Microsoft study were 10 minutes. Bohan's advice on what to do with them: "Try not to use that five or 10 minutes to squeeze in some other kind of work."

So stand up. Walk to the window. Refill your water. Leave the phone face down on the table. In The 1-Day Method that's one of the Top 5, Tech Free, which is 10 minutes off screens, and a meeting day is a pretty good place to get it.

If there's truly no gap, take 60 seconds at the door. Breathe, read your morning line, walk in.

Sit down and read what you wrote before the first meeting. Then ask yourself if it's still what makes today a success.

Sometimes it is. Sometimes the 2 o'clock changed everything and you need a new answer. Either way, you're the one deciding.

Then look at your Essential 3 and pick the one that fits the time you have left. One. Start on it before email gets a turn.

Look at tomorrow and block one chunk of time for work only you can do. The "only me" test from how to prioritize as a founder helps here: "Would this move forward if I didn't personally touch it?" If the answer is no, that's what the block is for.

It doesn't have to be big. There's a short piece on the site about this called protect 90 minutes.

Say your morning answer is "The board update draft is done." Your Essential 3: the board update draft, a decision on the vendor contract, and a real conversation with the new operations lead. Meetings run 9 to 12:30 and 1:30 to 3:30.

After each meeting you write one line on the next step. Between the 10 and the 11 you walk to the kitchen and back without your phone. At 3:30 you sit down and read "The board update draft is done." You notice the vendor decision already got made in the 2 o'clock, so you cross it off and write it down as a win. Then you give the draft 90 minutes before you open email.

For more on building the whole day around this, start with the CEO daily routine.

Take a short break between meetings with no email, and write a one line next step before you leave each one. When the last meeting ends, read the answer you wrote that morning to "What will make today a success?" before you open your inbox. Then pick the one priority that fits the time you have left and start there.

Even 5 to 10 minutes helps. In Microsoft's 2021 brain study, 10 minute breaks between four half hour meetings kept stress related brain activity from building up. Use the break to stand up, move and get off screens, not to answer email.

Stress builds when there's no break. Microsoft's Human Factors Lab measured brain activity during four meetings in a row and found stress related beta waves climbed across the two hours, with spikes at the transitions between meetings. Unfinished tasks from one meeting also keep pulling at your attention in the next.

Write one line on the next step and who owns it, then step away from screens for a few minutes. Stand up, walk, get water. Skip squeezing in email or other work, because that keeps your brain from resetting before the next meeting.

Decide what will make the day a success before the first meeting, then block time on the calendar for work only you can do. In a Harvard Business School study of 27 CEOs, Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria found 72% of their work time went to meetings, so focus time has to be planned or it doesn't happen.

Your company runs on dashboards, quarterly plans and a meeting for everything. The 1-Day Method is the system for you: one question, 3 priorities, the Top 5, repeat. I made it after my family lost our home in the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, starting with that one question every morning.

The 1-Day Method book is short, 91 pages, and walks through the whole method: the question, the Essential 3 and the Top 5.

The 1-Day Method Planner is the paper version of the question I asked every morning after the fire. It's undated and covers 90 days, a full quarter. Each day has a line for what will make today a success, your Essential 3, up to five focused tasks and your wins, and it takes under 5 minutes to fill out. On a meeting day, that page is what you read when the last meeting ends, before the inbox. It's $29.99.

If your whole leadership team lives in back to back meetings, I also run 1-Day Method workshops for teams. You can book a call on that page.

Not ready to buy anything? Start with the free 1-Day Method Starter Kit. It has the question, 3 priorities, the daily acts and end of day wins, so you can fill it out tomorrow before the first meeting starts.

Antonio Neves is an author, keynote speaker, and former journalist for NBC, PBS, and MTV Networks. He's delivered more than 400 keynotes for companies like Google, McDonald's, and Visa. After his family lost their home in the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, he created The 1-Day Method to rebuild his life one day at a time.