How Consecutive Meetings Affect Workplace Wellbeing

Excessive amounts of video meetings are taking a toll—not just on our ability to do concentrative work, but also on our sense of interpersonal connection and capacity for meaningful, spontaneous, in-person dialogue. From our research, conversations with podcast/webinar guests, and personal experience, here are my top three recommendations for addressing meeting overload: 1. Encourage employees to block in-office time free of meetings. I suggest that at least 50% of time spent in the office should be protected from scheduled meetings. Remember: people value calendar flexibility (93%) even more than location flexibility (81%). If you want employees to show up in person, give them more autonomy over how they spend that time. 2. Ask managers to co-create better communication norms with their teams. Encourage team discussions about when to use email, chat (Teams/Slack), text/WhatsApp, phone calls, or in-person conversations instead of defaulting to video meetings. For my team, we’ve cut standing meetings, increased in-person gatherings, and now resolve many issues with a quick call or async message. (Ten minutes on the phone often beats 30 on a video call.) 3. Reassess standing meetings—frequency, duration, and participants. Meetings often take on a life of their own. Ask, "Are we call still clear on the purpose of this meeting, and who should be included?" Simply making some attendees optional can go a long way in reducing unnecessary load. Oh, and I hope it goes without saying, the design of the office space itself should be used to not only support tech, but to counter-balance the negative effects of it by building connection and relationships (Relationship-based Work). #hybrid #distributed #videofatigue #employeewellbeing #employeewellness #meetings #employeeengagement https://lnkd.in/eDpXuEgu

At one point, my last job as an employee required me to attend 27 weekly recurring meetings. That's not a typo. Each week, I had at least 7 1:1s with direct reports, a 1:1 with the COO, ~9 internal client syncs, ~5 external client syncs, 2-3 senior leadership calls, a content department call, and an internal marketing call. And this didn't include other one-off calls that inevitably happened — client kickoffs, strategy presentations, team members needing help, townhalls... I was often in back-to-back calls for hours on end, to the point that I almost wet my pants a few times because I didn't have a break in between. Seriously. And then I'd spend nights and weekends working on client strategies and deeper work because it was the only quiet time I got to focus for a few hours. To be clear: I was not in a sales role. Or an account manager role. Or any role where meetings were supposed to be The Job. Sadly, I don't think experiences like mine are uncommon. Companies set up circumstances like this and then wonder why people are burned out, unhappy, or underperforming. I'm the extrovertiest extrovert and I still couldn't keep pace with the never-ending loop of meetings. Are endless Zoom meetings just the remote version of "butts in chairs"??? If you're a leader with a heavy meeting culture, remember that meeting time isn't execution time. Is collaboration often required to get the job done? Yes. Is there such a thing as too many meetings? Hell yes. People need time to focus and work without interruption. And an hour-long meeting isn't an hour if you've got seven people there. That's seven hours of company time. Rinse and repeat that a few times during the week and then think about all potentially productive time you're losing. Before you book yet another call and pull your team members away from their work, consider whether it could be a Loom, email, or Slack message. Consider whether you have a real reason for the call. Consider whether everyone on that invite list really needs to be there. Seriously.

I am a recovering calendar Tetris addict. It sounds ridiculous to even type that statement but it's true - and I bet it's true for many people. Worse yet, maybe you aren't in recovery and you're still on Level 1000+ of meeting Tetris with the little blocks flying in at crazy speed. I know that feeling well. I was great at it, really great at it. Ironically, there's a term in psychology known as "The Tetris Effect" and "occurs when people devote so much time and attention to an activity that it begins to pattern their thoughts, mental images, and dreams." The Tetris Effect for meeting overload is rampant and the ill effects are seen in declining business results and in employee mental health. Meeting culture has taken over and only gotten worse post-Covid. We get addicted to having a full calendar and being "busy" all the time. We are addicted to filling our professional and personal lives with "stuff" - the wrong "stuff". What does that look like? 🥴 No time between meetings, back to back all day, everyday 🥴 Feeling guilty for taking 2 minutes for a bio break or to get water 🥴 Constantly switching between topics with no time to think or recover or "do the work" 🥴 Feeling compelled to continue the insanity because it's a pervasive practice that is rewarded across the organization. 🥴 Hours of wasted company time and resources in meetings with little return. 🥴 The WORST PART - showing up for those you care about the most as an exhausted, burnt out, mentally drained, and generally miserable version of yourself. If you're ready to enter recovery, here are some ways to get started: 🥳 Take back control of your calendar - be brave and bold and decline meetings that don't add value - just do it, even if it's not popular. 🥳 Make time in your calendar for bio and brain breaks and honor the commitment to yourself - your mind and body will thank you. 🥳 Prioritize your positive energy for your family and friends and the activities that feed your soul. 🥳 Prioritize meetings with impact - have an agenda, set goals, and keep them short. 🥳 Give the people on your team space to recover, too - lead by example and make it socially acceptable to say no to back to back meetings that drain you. #leadership #selfcare #mentalhealth #customersuccess #family #timemanagement How will you recover from meeting Tetris addiction? What has worked for you? Let's help each other break out of this insanity and refocus on what truly matters in life. I can't even begin to describe how amazing it is to be present, really present with my family and friends again. Join me, you'll be so glad you did.

Here’s an irony: the less that’s on your calendar, the more successful you’re likely to be. It sounds counterintuitive, but if your schedule is back-to-back with meetings, three things happen: 👉 You don’t have time to follow up. Rushing from meeting to meeting means you might forget key action items or simply not have time to execute on them. 👉 You lose perspective. When you’re constantly in motion, you don’t have space to step back and ask, should I even be in this meeting? 👉 Your real work spills into nights and weekends. When your day is packed with meetings, the actual work still has to get done—leaving you exhausted and burned out. I know that in many corporate environments, packed schedules feel unavoidable. But we often have more control than we think. Start by asking smart questions: Why do I need to be in this meeting? How can I specifically contribute? Creating space allows us to be more intentional and ultimately, more effective. What’s your best strategy for managing meeting overload?

Atlassian surveyed 5,000 knowledge workers across four continents and identified the number one barrier to productivity 📉 Unsurprisingly, meetings are the barrier to getting work done. Their research revealed: ✏ 78% of respondents attend so many meetings that they can't get their work done ✏ 76% of people feel drained on days when they have a lot of meetings ✏ A whopping 80% would be more productive if they spent less time meetings Read more from Atlassian's Workplace Woes: Meetings Edition (linked in the comments!) Does this sound familiar? I know the feeling. The problem, though, is that we often hear we should cut back on meetings without clear steps for doing so while boosting productivity. We can't simply cancel a handful of meetings or bring a loose agenda template to our meetings and expect output to increase. Too many meetings often result from inefficient working processes that spark the need to meet. Instead, focus on your processes and ways of working together first: 💡 Too many meetings about projects and work that aren't top priority? You're missing alignment around strategic goals and focus areas. Your team members need to be able to say to one another, "I'd love to chat about this down the road, but right now, our priorities are XYZ, so I need to reserve my time for those projects." Atlassian uses its work management product, Atlas, to create organizational alignment around its OKRs (read more in the comments). 💡 Too many meetings to discuss responsibilities, evolving deliverables, and clarity around the next steps for a body of work? You weren't clear on the work's goals from the get-go. Does your team have a project brief, project managers to rely on, or another form of alignment documentation they can use to create a plan at the beginning of a project? You can use a tool like Asana for this (and they have templates). 💡 Too many meetings centered around sharing status updates and "news that could've been an email?" You need to set meeting ground rules, guidelines, and specific definitions around how your teams should use their communication channels. I've linked some ideas from Mural and Todoist below! 💡 Too many meetings interrupting dedicated work time or outside of working hours, leaving your team members feeling frustrated and annoyed with each other? You need a tool like Clockwise to empower your teams to communicate their availability and schedule meeting times at the best time for everyone The problem is that we have too many meetings, but the solution lies in evolving our ways of working together. #knowledgework #workplacevolution #productivity #collaboration