The other day I was talking to a friend who said it took him 31 total minutes to coordinate a meeting with three people. Granted, they were from different organizations, but more than half an hour? For one meeting?

Most people never think about, much less calculate, how much time it actually takes to schedule a meeting. You just accept the mindless back-and-forth over a few hours or days as a necessary evil.

But here's the truth — this small overhead silently kills your productivity in ways that extend far beyond the time spent typing out an email.

The reality check

Here's what a typical scheduling exchange looks like:

1. Initial request: "Hey, can we meet next week to discuss the proposal?"

2. First response: "Sure, I'm free Tuesday afternoon or Thursday morning."

3. Second message: "Thursday morning works. How about 10am?"

4. Third message: "I have another meeting at 10. Could we do 11?"

5. Fourth message: "Perfect, 11am Thursday it is. I'll send a calendar invite."

Add in time spent checking for those email updates, multiply that by 10-15 meetings per week, throw in a few reschedules, and now you're facing a serious time sink.

However, the actual time spent typing scheduling emails is just the beginning of the problem.

The true cost of scheduling

What makes scheduling truly expensive isn’t just the time spent on scheduling — it’s the hidden costs.

1. Context switching

Every time you pop into your inbox to respond to a scheduling email, you're breaking your flow.

UC Irvine researchers found it takes 23 minutes to fully refocus after a distraction.

So that "quick 30-second reply" may just cost you 5% of your workday.

What should you do instead?

Batch process your scheduling work and emails.

Set aside dedicated blocks — maybe 11am and 4pm — to handle everything in one go.

2. Decision fatigue

As trivial as it sounds, scheduling requires a lot of decision-making. And those decisions require us to tap our finite supply of daily energy for decision-making. Just think about it…

When to meet, what to move around, how long is appropriate — it all adds up. And it's burning the same mental fuel you need for the decisions in your life that actually matter.

Instead, you should create default rules that eliminate decisions. For example:

• External meetings only on Tuesdays and Thursdays

• No meetings before 10AM

The less you have to think about these details, the more brainpower you'll have for what counts.

3. Opportunity cost

The most expensive currency in business isn't money.

It's time.

When you're caught in scheduling limbo, you're spending that currency on low-value admin work.

If you’ve never done it before, I’d recommend doing a time audit to understand how much time you’re spending on scheduling, what it costs, and what you could be doing with that time instead:

• Track how much time you're spending on scheduling per week — call it 5 hours

• Multiply that time by your hourly rate — if you make $200/hour, that’s $1,000 / week (or $52,000 per year)

Is scheduling worth $52,000 per year? Probably not.

The good news is that once you see the costs of scheduling meetings, it makes it easier to prioritize finding a better solution — whether that be with better processes, delegation to a team member, or using an AI teammate like Workmate.

Bottom Line

We've normalized spending ridiculous amounts of time on scheduling as if it were just the cost of doing business.

It's not.

It's a massive tax on your productivity and output that you can reduce with the right people, systems, and technology.

Until next time,

David

P.S. Forward this to someone who schedules meetings like the example above.

P.P.S. Ready to delegate your scheduling to AI? Workmate is an AI-powered Executive Assistant that schedules your meetings, manages your calendar, and prioritizes based on your preferences. Join the waitlist today.