Meetings often destroy my productivity for the day.

I’ll be in the flow all morning, but once I have an hour long standup meeting (or similar scattered topic based meeting) I struggle to regain focus for the rest of the day.

I sidestep this problem by getting to work before all of those people are even awake.

110% this. I mostly work from home, but on office days, I show up at least an hour before everyone else, and often get a lot done in that time. Once people show up, start making coffee, talking about the latest sportsing, etc., I'm already 2.5 hours into my day.