Quit multi-tasking during virtual meetings

Do some meeting detective work to avoid wasting time

I’m guessing we’ve all done it. You’re scheduled to attend a virtual meeting, but you’re not really engaged in the discussion. So you start triaging your inbox, attempting to be productive.

It makes sense, but in the long run, multi-tasking during meetings is not a great strategy. It’s better to be either fully invested in a meeting…or to excuse yourself from it. If you wouldn’t sit in a conference room with six other people and stare at your phone the whole time, it’s best not to do it virtually either, even if it’s much easier to get away with.

Tough talk? Perhaps. But here’s the problem. It is basically impossible to do two similar things at once. You can listen to a meeting while walking on a treadmill. You can listen to a meeting while stirring your risotto for dinner (in which case, can I come over?). But you can’t really pay attention to a meeting while checking email.

That means that if you are checking email, you will likely miss something. Maybe it is something important, or something that would be embarrassing to miss. It only takes one jarring realization that someone is saying your name to learn this the hard way.

Doing two things badly

And if you aren’t worried about missing something? If you don’t need to participate, or even truly listen, that means that the meeting was basically a waste of your time. Checking email during the meeting doesn’t change that, because you’re likely processing email less effectively than you would if you weren’t half-listening. It would have been better to decline and use that time for something else.

Now I know that life isn’t that simple, but by generally having a rule for yourself against Zoom/conference call multi-tasking, you can nudge yourself to do a few things.

First, if you do have trouble paying full attention to a perhaps less-than-scintillating meeting, you could choose a “body task” to absorb that extra little bit of energy. A slow walk is great for this — as long as you’re not walking somewhere challenging to navigate (this is why I like the treadmill while working from home). This can be a great way to get some extra steps in.

Manage your attendance

And if you find yourself in a lot of meetings where you aren’t participating, having a rule against multi-tasking might nudge you to be more pro-active about managing your attendance. You might ask for agendas ahead of time and then distribute your thoughts by email if you’re only going to be needed for 2 minutes. You might set up another call for 15 minutes into a meeting if you know you are only needed at the beginning — and be straightforward about this. You will need to duck out after you’ve done your part. If you and a colleague work closely together and find yourself both in meetings that are more informational, you can trade off attendance, and give each other the highlights.

But I think what often happens is that people don’t look at their calendars much ahead of time, or spend much time thinking about the purpose and format of each meeting. People just tromp from thing to thing — or sign on to meeting after meeting — as if they were middle schoolers changing classes. It might not be clear until a meeting starts that it isn’t critical. Multi-tasking feels like a way to get this time back. But it might be better to do a little meeting detective work ahead of time, and hopefully get enough hours back that multi-tasking feels less required.