Ep 9. Cancel Noise Intentionally

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Welcome back to The Chaos of Scale, the podcast and blog dedicated to helping scaling businesses navigate the human side of growth.

In this episode, we're talking about canceling noise intentionally — notifications, banners, pings, recurring meetings, legacy processes. All of it. This stuff adds noise to an already clanging environment, and what we’re really trying to do here is create a little bit of space. Space for focus. Space for deep work. Space to breathe.

As always, the goal is to leave you with at least one thing to think differently about in how you work with others, and at least one actionable step to help you show up as a rad — or even more rad — human at work.

When Do You Do Your Best Work?

Let me guess. Not when banners are flying across your screen. Not when Slack is pinging.

Not when your calendar is sliced into 15-minute fragments between meetings.

The world is noisy. Research shows we’re processing well over 50 gigabytes of data per day. And yet we still expect ourselves to do deep, thoughtful, high-quality work in the 15-minute gaps between meetings.

You’re probably about to head into that weekly check-in — but you also need uninterrupted brain power and focus time to do the work that actually matters and to do that, you have to learn to cancel noise relentlessly.

A Potentially Hot Take

I decline recurring meetings.

My Slack, Teams, and email have no banners, no notifications, no sounds.

If a message comes in, I won’t know about it until I choose to check.

There’s solid research showing that it takes more than 20 minutes to refocus after a distraction. So if you’re deep in work and a banner pops up — there goes your focus. And that’s assuming you were actually focused to begin with.

My hypothesis is that many of us spend most of our day in a state of fractured focus — bouncing between messages, emails, pings, and half-done work.

And in a busy scale-up, that’s a problem - because the high-quality work that moves things forward - needs high-quality focus

Fractured Focus Kills Quality

The work you produce from a place of flow versus a place of fractured focus is completely different. Constant distraction doesn’t just slow you down — it drags the quality of your work down too. Low-quality work loops back. It’s never quite finished. It stays open in your mental tabs.

But when you focus deeply and get it done properly, you can move past it and give your full attention to the next thing - that's why learning to cancel noise intentionally matters.

Nothing Has Burned Down

Slack, Teams, email — they’re all customizable. Most people either don't know that they can managet their noise levels or they just don’t take the time to do it.

I have had notifications turned off for years. And guess what?Nothing has burned down yet.

My teams know this: if it’s urgent, call me. If you call me and tell me it's urgent - I will drop everything and help you. In seven years, I’ve had exactly one urgent phone call — and we handled it.

By canceling noise, I create space to think.

I own my consumption. I check messages when it works for me, rather than letting constant pings and banners interrupt me all day. Everything still gets done at a high quality and I'm working without compromising my sanity.

“But Everything Is Urgent…”

This can feel extremely renegade in a scale-up. Everyone needs something from everyone all the time. Everything feels time-sensitive.

But here’s what I like to remind myself: the people I work with are smart and capable.

If it’s truly urgent, they’ll call. If it’s not, I’ll respond when I can pause for quality and give them a thoughtful answer — not a rushed one. Fast replies aren’t always helpful replies.

When I respond from a place of focus, everyone benefits. The receiver gets higher quality information which helps move things forward faster and prevents continuous open loops caused by half-baked communication, which will inevitably land back on my plate.

Now Let’s Talk About Meeting Noise

At one point in my career, I ran an exercise to calculate how much time people in that company were spending in recurring meetings. The answer? One full week per quarter.

We were losing a week of actual work time just to meetings — many of them held simply because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

Meetings feel productive. But often, they’re just filling time with air. And calendar clutter makes deep work almost impossible. Your brain never gets the chance to go deep because it’s constantly watching the clock or trying to find deep focus in a 15-minute gap with pings and banners flying constantly.

Why I Decline Recurring Meetings

Recurring meetings create open loops. “Oh, we’ll talk about that in the next weekly.”And then another loop. And another.

Instead of resolving things now.

I tell clients and partners openly:

“I generally don’t accept recurring meetings. Let’s schedule conversations when there’s a clear agenda.”

It raises eyebrows — but it works.

I’ve never lost a client because of this. They come to me for quality work, and this is how I protect the space to deliver it... and I tell them this openly.

Meetings are discussion time — not work time. If your calendar is full of discussion, when do you actually do the work?

Your Action Items

Try two experiments.

First:

Look at your application settings. Turn off notifications for a week. Notice how it feels. Yes, the urge to check will be there — that’s normal. Try it for a second week and see what happens to your focus.

Second:

Look at your calendar. Which recurring meetings exist purely out of habit? What could you cancel or pause them? It might feel bold. Even uncomfortable.

But choosing to cancel noise intentionally is a game changer — for your focus, your output, and your sanity.

Business growth is messy.

But your focus doesn’t have to be.

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