Shorter meetings could help fight digital burnout

Megan Carnegie wrote an article for Wired UK titled The Rise of the 15-Minute Meeting.

« Shorter meetings could help fight digital burnout. »

« “Employees changed them to shorter, unconventional lengths. Thirty minute meetings were cut to 15 minutes, and the cadence was made less frequent,” says Rebecca Hinds, productivity expert at Asana. “The final part of the process was for them to calculate how much time they spent in meetings after the audit.” On average, people saved 11 hours per month, which equates to 17 days over the course of a year, or three and a half weeks, Hinds says. »

« According to Asana’s survey of over 10,000 employees, 40 percent of workers are spending more time on video calls compared to last year, and 52 percent are multitasking more during meetings. Almost half of the workforce in Britain and Australia, and over a third of Americans end their workday feeling mentally and physically exhausted.   »

« Digital fatigue— the very real exhaustion that comes from too much screen usage—is rising. More than half (52 percent) of American workers were feeling burned out in April 2021, with more than two-thirds (67 percent) feeling this has gotten worse for them over the duration of the pandemic, according to an Indeed study. Those who work virtually are more likely to say burnout has worsened (38 percent). »

« The attempt to combat digital fatigue has made the move to slash meeting times to just 15 minutes very popular among managers. »

« Although companies are only just jumping on the 15-minute meeting, organizational psychologist Steven Rogelberg points out that shorter, more focused meetings are old hat. “This notion of huddles, debriefs, after action reviews, whatever you want to call them, has been a big part of agile frameworks and organizational tactics for decades,” he explains. Rogelberg believes the reignited obsession with quick meets comes from the absence of informal interaction, which pushes leaders to adapt how they manage a remote workforce. To him, the 15-minute slot is just one tool for staying in sync and should not be applied in isolation. »

« Namrata Sandhu launched a fully remote climate-tech startup called Vaayu in 2020, and she made 15-minute meetings standard… “The goal is to find and have a chat with people when you need them,” says Sandhu. “Staff have said they find it refreshing to have more time to focus on work.” … “Meeting agenda items should be questions to be answered, not topics,” he says. “If you can’t think of any questions, it’s probably not needed, and by asking, you’re determining who has to be there.”  »

« Victor Potrel, vice president of platform partnerships at TheSoul Publishing hasn’t had a meeting or sent an email for over three years. The digital media company has over 2,500 remote workers across 70 countries, and in 2019, it chose to use only project management tools, digital publishing, instant messaging, and video to communicate asynchronously.  » Hmmm.