With the emergence of "Zoom fatigue" as a buzzword, we are finally starting to see the impact of back to back meetings. A recent study published by Microsoft is quite illuminating: our brains reflect the stress-marks of such environments.

But that's hardly an indictment of Zoom itself; rather, it’s a function of having zero time in between events! There is hardly any margin in these days of virtual meetings. Even the walk down the hall to the next conference room — a rich opportunity for serendipitous connection — has been replaced by a simple link click on the calendar. Forget forcing folks to run into each other on the way to the bathroom (as Steve Jobs did at Pixar); when is there even time to go to the bathroom? I find I’m consistently apologizing to someone, because all of my time is spoken for.

I'm not the only one. Lots of folks are encountering these challenge. And just as the saying goes, “not all movement is progress,” so we could also say, “not all meeting is productive.”

I was inspired by a senior leader whom I have grown to admire through an extended engagement over the last few months — he's the general manager of a major stream of business for a large tech company — and he told me how he thinks about showing up at work: “A lot of people go to meetings where they are present virtually, but not actually. I want to be where I am present actually, not just technically. And so I choose to attend only those meetings that are truly essential, where I can make impact.”

“But still, I found that much of my time will be spoken for unless I speak for it. I proactively block what I call recovery time between meetings. If there’s an hour meeting, I put a minimum of 15 minutes on the calendar — ideally 30 — just so that I can show up in peak form for the next meeting.”

The Microsoft study referenced above noted how even a small break in between meetings can make a big difference; but I’ve noticed how exceptionally hard it is to enforce those breaks. It’s so easy to want to cram just a little bit more productivity into a meeting - “just one more thing while we’re all here…”

Perhaps we need to acknowledge, if we are meeting all the time, we are not all here.

My leader friend shared the notion of what he calls the “corporate athlete,” and how just as an elite athlete recognizes that both times of strain, and times of recovery, are essential for growing ones physical abilities, the same space must be created for our cognitive needs, too.

Related article: Make Time for Exploration

Click here to subscribe to Paint & Pipette, the weekly digest of these daily posts.