Between the Calls: Reclaiming the Five-Minute Gap in Back-to-Back Meetings

You finish a video call and before you can exhale, the next calendar invite is already blinking. The chat window has three new messages. Someone is asking if you can just quickly review something before the next one starts. You are still thinking about the last call, but your face is already expected in the next. This is the meeting hangover, and it is not really about the meetings. It is about the collision between them.

UK work culture has a complicated relationship with the gap between calls. A five-minute space in the diary can feel like a failure of scheduling, a small patch of unused land that someone should really build on. If you are not in a call, the logic goes, you are not really working. But that is not true. The transition between one conversation and the next is work. It is just the kind of work that does not show up as a coloured block on a calendar.

The gap is not dead time

When people say they have no time to breathe between meetings, what they usually mean is that the day has been designed as a continuous stream of input. One call ends, another begins, and the only thing connecting them is the sound of a laptop fan and someone saying sorry, you are on mute. There is no moment to close the previous conversation, adjust your posture, or remember what you are supposed to care about in the next one.

A five-minute gap is not a luxury. It is the minimum amount of time required to become a person again. You do not need a full debrief, a walk around the block, or a carefully curated mindfulness practice. You need enough space to notice that one thing has ended and another has begun. That is the reset. It is small, unglamorous, and easy to skip. It is also the difference between arriving at the next call and simply landing in it.

What the meeting hangover actually feels like

The meeting hangover is not a clinical condition. It is a familiar physical experience. Your shoulders have crept up towards your ears. Your jaw is doing something you did not authorise. You have been staring at a screen for so long that the room around it feels slightly out of focus. You might have a headache, or a vague sense of irritation, or the feeling that you have been talking for hours without saying anything.

Then the next call starts, and you carry all of that into it. You are still half in the previous conversation, still holding the tension of the last difficult question, still composing the email you meant to send. The new call gets the leftovers of your attention. No wonder back-to-back days feel like trying to read a book while someone turns the pages.

A five-minute transition routine

The routine does not need to be elaborate. In fact, the less elaborate it is, the more likely you are to do it. Think of it as three small movements: close, stand, breathe.

First, close. Not the laptop, necessarily. Close the loop on the last call in whatever way is realistic. Write one line in your notes. Send one message if it is urgent. Then close the tab or the document. You are not finishing the work; you are putting a marker in it so your brain knows it can stop holding it quite so tightly.

Second, stand. Push your chair back. Stand up. Roll your shoulders once or twice. Plant your feet on the floor. If you can, look away from the screen and focus on something further away for a few seconds. This is not exercise. It is a change of posture, a physical signal that the last call is over.

Third, breathe. One long exhale is enough. Not a complicated breathing pattern, not a count to ten, not a wellness performance. Just let the breath out for longer than usual. Then take a normal breath in. Do it two or three times. If you have water nearby, drink some. If you do not, get some. The aim is not to relax completely. The aim is to arrive at the next call slightly less compressed than you would have been.

If you only have three minutes, do three minutes. If you have one minute, do the exhale before you join. The routine is not a rule. It is a way of claiming the gap.

Why the gap feels selfish

There is a reason people feel awkward about taking five minutes between calls. In many UK workplaces, visible busyness is still treated as a virtue. A full calendar is a status symbol. A gap is something to be filled, optimised, or apologised for. If you say you need a minute between meetings, it can sound like you are not coping. If you block out five minutes in your calendar, someone might ask what it is for.

But the gap is not selfish. It is maintenance. You would not expect a car to run continuously without fuel, and you would not expect a kettle to boil without being filled. The human version of that is a pause. It is not a reward for finishing the last call, and it is not a treat for the next one. It is the basic hygiene of a working day.

Make it a boundary, not a performance

You do not need to announce that you are doing a wellbeing routine. You can simply build a five-minute buffer into your calendar and treat it as you would any other meeting. If you are organising a call, end it five minutes before the hour. If you are attending one, leave when it is supposed to finish. If you are managing a team, model it. Say that you are taking a minute before the next one. It gives everyone else permission to do the same.

The gap does not need to be productive. In fact, the most useful thing you can do with it is nothing that looks like work. Stand up. Look out of the window. Drink some water. Breathe out. Then join the next call. The meeting hangover will not disappear, but it will have less to work with.

Back-to-back calls are not going away. But the five minutes between them can be something other than dead time. They can be a small, deliberate pause. A reset. A way of arriving rather than simply landing. And in a working culture that treats every gap as an invitation to optimise, that might be the most radical thing you do all day.