It’s not uncommon for me to only have one or two 30-minute breaks between 8:30am and 5pm. I’ve gotten to the point that if I have over 2 hours without meetings I often feel like I get nothing done, because I’ve gotten pretty good at getting a few things (emails or messages, not deep work) knocked out in the 5-10 min in between calls. I can only really focus on deeper work at night after everyone else has signed off.

Not really a sustainable way of doing work, I’m also not doing as much hands-on work these days. A lot of my meeting time is 1-on-1s with my team and making sure they have what they need to move forward, make decisions, and get work done or with other people to try to remove barriers to help the team be able to move forward. So in that sense, the meetings ARE the work.

I had a fucking three and a half hour meeting last week. I seriously considered telling the organizer to fuck off when I saw that in my calendar.

The only people I have calls that long with are people I love but can't see in person. Recovery is usually quite short then.

A 10-15 minute call will probably need some prep and recovery time though. With people I like it's because we didn't get into the flow yet. With people don't consider friends anxiety is just there.

One of our help desk reps spent 45 minutes on the phone helping someone set up their authenticator app for MFA. It's a simple install of an app and linking it to your account. If the user listens and does as instructed, it takes about 2 and a half minutes. If they don't? 45 minutes.

The rep took their break and worked on something else for a while to recover.

That's just a video conference call

During the pandemic at school I was able to mostly get out of these by reducing it to basically a presentation.

First, bandwidth limiting to prove "bad internet connection" and inability of using camera. Simplest way was using mobile data on 2G EDGE.
Second, unlistenable audio. Increase microphone gain to maximum and nobody will want to hear you.

At that point you may even be requested to not use either camera nor microphone, like I was. Problem solved, video call -> presentation.

Most likely won't work for your job though.