Calming  Virtual Fatigue

I have personally gone from meeting to meeting in the last nine months. There are days where meeting after meetings is not a "thing." However, I would say it has become the norm to have one meeting end, to only jump over to another. There is little to no time to process notes or outcomes from the previous meeting or prepare for the next. I believe this poses so many difficulties and erodes the creativity and ability of our teams. We are sacrificing a lot of quality output these days. I don't blame anyone, company, or group. It is the time in which we are encountering. 

The Virtual Meeting, aka Zoom Fatigue, is a real thing.

Regardless of joining a Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams meeting, the list can grow based on its flavor or the company hosting the meeting. The reality is we are more in a stage of a rush than we might have been before. It has always been there, hence the methods and philosophy of Creating Action with Least Movement. The sole purpose of why time is devoted to the subject.

However, we have restrictions based on the pandemic and the COVID reality. These echo loud and clear in business, personal, and family life. Imagine those who juggle these every day, homeschooling with day jobs, and not knowing what comes next, or even where the next paycheck might arrive. It is a real thing where these stressed come forward and play heavily in your day today.

For instance, I might come off with one heated discussion on a given day, not a downright fight, but firm, opinionated views. I then have to switch gears and put on the game face for the next audience. Usually, that audience is external, internal, and that matters. The main point, we need to adjust instantly to our next meeting and have little to no time to clear our minds from the past or prepare for the next.

Sometimes I look up, and it's five o'clock, and I've not had a single thing to eat all day. I've been going back to back, meeting after meeting, and not even given myself the requirement to nourish my body's basic needs.

The problem is substantial. The dilemma is evident.

Then it hits like a ton of bricks. The reality is no different than taking on a small or substantial task or accomplishment. You need to pace yourself! Yeah, you and I know this, and it is easier said than done! We often fall back into the cycle and trap. So, how can we do this today?

CALM. Creating Action with Least Movement.

"Zoom" in on that for a moment. 

What does that mean to you? 

How could you create incremental improvements and do so quickly without moving a ton?

Funny how this works, but the main principles behind Creating Action with Least Movement, Stop, Unwind, Decompress, and Move forward. Can you imagine if you deployed the philosophy in your daily meeting routines?

Find your holes in productivity and fill them.

Hold respect for yourself as well as your audience.

My calendar looks like a failed Tetris game. Meetings are stack over each other. There is no way to open time for others without causing some conflict. Hence back and forth meetings. Not eating well, not sleeping well because of the burnout and daily grind.

This level of fatigue bleeds directly into one's quality of life, affects your family and those around you.

I approach the challenge with a warrior mentality, "I'm going to get this all completed!" and with that, I fall into the trap!

Give Time Back! Book the hour, release it earlier! 

Imagine a day where you book meetings that end abruptly 15 minutes short. It would take a lot of time and practice but imagine the outcome. I reserve an hour with you, at 45 minutes complete the meeting and leave you with 15. You can choose to do whatever you want with that time. Perhaps it is barely enough to compose meeting notes, next steps, and action.

But we are getting into the practice. We deploy a small amount of time to decompress and begin for the next destination. There is nothing wrong with bringing this down a level and practicing it. As you master the practice, like anything else, it becomes muscle memory. We can deploy other strategies to help us reduce a bit of friction as we move from one item to the next.

Start your meeting with a 5 minute decompression period.

Another strategy to help combat constant task switching and to get folks ready for the meeting at hand. Allow the first 5 minutes of your appointment to serve as the decompression time. I love deploying this strategy as it gives people time to become present for the meeting. The idea being we provide the audience 5 minutes at the beginning of the meeting. I usually use a simple slide to indicate the meeting will start in five minutes. Please enjoy some music and or do whatever you need to do before we start.

The power of this strategy is it allows a small about of capacity to be used to decompress. If the audience came from a meeting that does not support any decompression methods, your audience would likely thank you. If you combined the 5 minutes with a book an hour and leave early, you will even provide more time.

Focus and decompression time needs to be valuable, or it becomes taken for granted.

Focus blocks work well, but you have to hold them a priority. No one is going to care if you block vast chunks of time on your calendar to focus. Only to release those times back to the world to schedule them up. What if that time was like a product for sale in a store. You bottle up the capacity, put it on the shelf, and list its price as "free." 

What do you think will happen?

Hold firm on those times. Make them pricey. And you can do this without being confrontational.

In Calm, we intentionally place capacity for decompression and diversifying. Meeting fatigue is no different. We honor the mindset of setting a set amount of time aside to allow ourselves the opportunity to decompress, task switch, close out the last destination, and prepare for the next.  

"I do not have the luxury to do this. How can I improve my daily mindset and approach to work/projects?"

When I'm out and teaching and helping with Calm Philosophy, I often run into this question. The simple answer is building the practice to honor the time and hold to its value. You can indeed use the methods to promote a positive outcome.

It is accurate. You might not fully deploy these methods and the philosophy to everything you do in life. I would challenge that with finding anywhere you can deploy the Philosophy & Methods, and aid in reduction of stress, fatigue, and so on. Even 1% improvement is better than none. So why not give it a try!? 

How could it look at the highest of levels?

Using the destination mapping process, one could implement some boundaries in their meeting structures. 

Give Time Back: Just as it states, book the meeting with the intention of leaving early and or start the meeting with time upfront to support decompression and becoming present.

Book focus time: Honor your focus time, hold the time at a high priority. 

Time Keepers and Guardrails: Keep things on track and honor the time and capacity carved out to decompress. 

Decompress & Diversify: Take the time to clear from the meeting, wrap up your thoughts, and preparing to move to the next destination. 

Arrival & Reflection: Always check the results. How could you improve? What opportunities are on the table? Are you honoring the commitment?

More will come!

I hope this article helps your path to decrease the fatigue from virtual meetings during this pandemic. I will post more tips and tricks to help with the topic at hand. Until then, please take a look at some of the other items and dive deeper into Calm Philosophy. I do believe this can serve to help reduce the impediments and challenges we are all facing today.