Why it feels so good when a meeting gets canceled, according to science

You know the feeling: You’re replying to emails, navigating open tabs, responding to direct messages, when suddenly, it happens—your standing weekly 2 p.m. gets canceled abruptly. “Giving everyone 30 minutes back today,” the organizer says. A rush courses through your nervous system: You’re free.

Nothing about this recurring meeting is particularly onerous or necessarily stressful. And yet, at this moment, you feel like a burden has been lifted. Maybe you even audibly sigh in relief.

That sudden sense that all is right in the world has a psychological cause, Dr. Wilsa Charles Malveaux, a psychiatrist in Los Angeles, explains to Fast Company.

A neutralized threat in the brain

“Our body is responding to the release of stress,” Charles Malveaux says. 

Between jobs, families, social obligations, and more, many of us feel overextended. At work, in particular, it can feel as though there’s no option to say no to something, like having to attend a meeting. So when a meeting gets canceled, “It takes the responsibility of having—or wanting—to say no away,” which leads to that sense of relief, Charles Malveaux says, noting that biologically, “We’re getting a sense of ‘I can breathe again.’”

We’re programmed to anticipate threats, primarily through the amygdala, the structure in our brain that senses and responds to fear. Once it activates your fight-or-flight system, the brain releases cortisol, which often “lingers after a threat so that we remember how to recognize it and respond for the future,” Charles Malveaux says. 

So, weekly catch-ups, as harmless and banal as they may be, could actually activate “an elevated sense of threat” tied to anxieties around “being on time, or having to show up and present a certain way in a meeting,” she adds. “When you no longer have that, you feel that release.”

But the reason why a particular meeting may trigger someone’s internal threat system depends on the individual.

An invitation for introspection

Beyond the joy of suddenly having extra free time to plow through piled-up tasks or ditch work early, there may be additional insights you can glean about yourself when certain meetings get canceled.

“It’s probably not all of our meetings” getting canceled that makes us experience an absolutely electric sense of newfound freedom,” Charles Malveaux says. “It’s probably just some of them.” If we’re really paying attention to what adds stress to our day-to-day work life, and what does not, it could lead to some helpful introspection. 

Maybe certain meetings make us feel pressure to perform, or maybe there’s a colleague in that weekly meeting who triggers us. We can use that kind of personal examination to gather information and potentially move more mindfully throughout our workday. 

Understanding what types of meetings push us into an emotionally heightened state can help us approach them with a better attitude. Or, in the right environment, we may be able to approach our employers with those concerns and insights—something that could shift the company’s culture across the board. 

It’s a two-way street: Employers need to be receptive to the idea that all-hands-on-deck-style meetings, for example, may not be the healthiest option for everyone.

Long-standing gripes

Meetings in general remain a contentious aspect of professional life. 

Data shows that many of them truly do waste time and drain workers to be less productive. As the workplace at large has been reexamined and reimagined in the post-pandemic era, redesigning meetings has become more of a topic of discourse. Sometimes a meeting can just be an email—and if removing it from workers’ calendars can lower stress levels, why not do it?

Building a work culture that understands the difference between necessary and unnecessary meetings is a “top-down issue,” Charles Malveaux says. After all, there’s only so much most workers in an organization can do to control the problem.

Employers and upper-level management should “really look at what is actually necessary for optimal function and performance of your organization, versus control, which is a way a lot of people erroneously use meetings,” she says. 

A reframe

That may be easier said than done, and the fact of the matter is that a lot of us will still be sitting through meetings we’d rather avoid as part of being in the workforce. Dealing with the resulting stress is all about energy management, Charles Malveaux suggests. Energy management is a fairly individualized journey, and includes “keeping track of the things that drain us, versus those that fill us back up, and making sure we book time” for the latter, she says.

If you’re consistently finding yourself immensely relieved every time a meeting gets canceled, it might be worth zooming out and making sure your energy is being refilled elsewhere in your life—and not just being depleted constantly at work.

“Doing an hour or so of something we hate or don’t want to participate in is going to feel a lot different from an hour of something that invigorates us,” Charles Malveaux says, noting, “Making sure that we tune into those things that make us feel good and then schedule time for [them]” is key, and it takes intentionality on the individual’s part. Making space for breaks can help keep burnout at bay, whether it’s just five minutes of silence in your car or a walk in a nearby park.

Sounds like the perfect way to spend the time gained from that canceled meeting.

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