Reclaim time for deep work
Talented teams often spend more time talking about work than making it. Calvin Ross Carl on why too many meetings is really an optimization problem.
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl agrees with a familiar complaint: many of us have spent huge parts of our days in meetings talking about the work instead of doing it. He calls it an optimization problem. Making things for weeks on end feels scary to organizations, because its effect is immeasurable until the breakthrough arrives. Meanwhile, people are too bogged down in meetings to make any big change.
Highlights
- Many teams spend more time in meetings than making work.
- Calvin calls it an optimization problem.
- Deep work looks immeasurable until the breakthrough.
Key insights
Making things is hard to measure
Weeks of focused work don’t show progress on a dashboard, which makes them feel risky to an organization.
Meetings crowd out change
Time spent reporting on work leaves little room for the work that could change anything.
Detailed analysis
Calvin ties a workplace frustration back to the episode’s larger theme. Meetings feel productive because they’re visible, while deep creative work stays invisible until it pays off. An organization tuned for visible progress ends up starving the immeasurable work that innovation depends on.
Conclusion
Breakthroughs need uninterrupted time. Protect it.
We’ve probably all been in jobs where you spend a huge part of your day in meetings talking about the work you’re supposed to be doing, and yeah, it’s rough. I’ve definitely been there. And it is absolutely an optimization problem, because for a lot of people it’s scary if you just need to go work on and make things for weeks on end, where the effect you’re getting out of it is immeasurable until you get that one breakthrough. But you’re too bogged down in meetings to really make any big change.