Canceling a meeting is a legal drug. It’s one of the best feelings in the world.

When a meeting disappears from the middle of your day, surrounded by blocks of deep work or creative focus, it feels like you just got your life back. That rush of freedom is real. It’s not about being lazy. It’s about being free to stay in the zone where you do your best work.

Most of us meet far too often. Many of those meetings could become an email, a text, or even a biweekly check-in instead of a weekly one. The joke about “legalized drugs” is an exaggeration, but not by much. Canceling meetings that don’t serve you is a real productivity boost.

For me, that change made a massive difference. Much of my work is writing, creating content, and running brainstorming sessions. When I have to stop for a process meeting or a back-and-forth Q&A, it derails me. My brain runs on two tracks: creative and tactical. Switching back and forth between them costs me 20 or 30 minutes of processing time every time I change gears. Cancelling a meeting that pulls me out of creative flow can save me stress, energy, and real hours.

When I teach this idea, people are often skeptical. They think time with clients or partners always builds relationships, but that isn’t always true. Sometimes the best way to serve someone is to make the problem go away, not to schedule another meeting about it. Your client might love the idea of replacing a weekly check-in with an email summary or a text thread. You respect their time as well as your own.

Here’s a simple way to decide what stays and what goes. Every meeting should have an agenda. If it’s just yes-or-no decisions, confirming dates, or calling balls and strikes, that can be done asynchronously. Save real meetings for real discussion, collaboration, or creation.

Action Step: Audit your calendar. Add up the hours you spend in meetings each month. For most people, it’s a full workweek. Now ask: which ones could become emails? Cancel enough to win back at least eight hours this month. That’s one full Friday you could take off.

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Behind the Scenes…When I worked in corporate we always operated with “zero based budgeting.” Instead of starting our next budget year with last year’s budget and adding what we needed, we would start at zero and have to justify each expense. That mindset has bled over to my small business and right now I’m going through the expense reaping portion…where did I spend money in 2025 and where can I cut back in 2026? I’m already cancelling a handful of AI tools and some other services that I spent (blew) money on in ‘25. Now is the time to go through your list - could you cut out $250 or more per month in expenses?

Now, GO SELL SOMETHING!

Pat