GUEST POST BY Wendy Jenkins OAM, READY RESILIENCE
Ready Resilience helps organisations thrive during times of change and challenge, using practical neuroscience-based resilience tools that have been proven to offer in-the-moment solutions and long-lasting results. Learn actionable tips you can apply right away in Ready Resilience Founder Wendy Jenkins’ articles, written exclusively for the TEMi community.
The Neuroscience of Modern Work: Meetings and Mental Fatigue
This year, Wendy Jenkins OAM, Founder of Ready Resilience, will focus her insightful TEMI monthly articles on ‘The Neuroscience of Modern Work’, offering science-based insights and tips you can apply right away.
Why do back to back meetings exhaust the brain differently than focused work?
Many professionals finish a day of meetings feeling unusually drained, even if they have spent most of it sitting down. It is tempting to assume this is simply workload. But neuroscience suggests something more specific is happening.
Focused work and meetings tax the brain in very different ways.
When we engage in deep, single task work, the prefrontal cortex, responsible for attention, decision making and reasoning, can settle into sustained focus. There is effort involved, but it is relatively linear.
One problem. One direction. One cognitive frame.
Meetings are different.
In meetings, the brain is not just thinking. It is continuously scanning.
- Who agrees?
- Is it safe to challenge that point?
- How is my comment landing?
- What decision are we actually making?
- What have I missed while listening?
This activates not only cognitive networks but also our social threat and reward systems. The brain is tracking status, belonging, certainty and fairness in real time. That social monitoring can add a substantial invisible load.
Layer onto that frequent context switching, moving from one topic, team or objective to another, and the brain repeatedly resets its mental frame. Each reset consumes energy.
There is also reduced recovery time. Back-to-back meetings remove the small cognitive pauses that help the brain consolidate information and regulate stress. The result is not simply tiredness. It is mental saturation.
Understanding this matters. It shifts the narrative from “people cannot handle meetings” to “our meeting design may be exceeding cognitive capacity.”
Small adjustments such as clearer purpose, defined decision points, shorter durations and protected breaks can reduce neurological strain without reducing collaboration.
When we design meetings with the brain in mind, productivity improves not because people try harder, but because the cognitive load becomes sustainable.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wendy Jenkins is the founder of Ready Resilience, Co-Founder of the Lungitude Foundation, certified Neuroplastician, Speaker and Lung Transplant Survivor. Ready Resilience helps organisations thrive during times of change and challenge, using practical neuroscience-based resilience tools that have been proven to offer in the-moment solutions and long-lasting results.
Having been told she had two years to live over eighteen years ago, Wendy is passionate about empowering people to transform their perspective on life’s challenges through dynamic masterclasses, workshops, and certified resilience training. To learn how Wendy can support and inspire you at your next conference, leadership event, or personal development session, please email we***@*************ce.com or visit www.readyresilience.com.
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