{"id":15501,"date":"2021-06-25T12:03:35","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T10:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bimandco.com\/bim\/?p=15501"},"modified":"2025-03-27T15:05:00","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T14:05:00","slug":"non-meeting-wednesdays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bimandco.com\/bim\/non-meeting-wednesdays\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-meeting wednesdays"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A whole day without a meeting or without having a colleague on the phone can seem crazy nowadays. But it might be something we need since we mainly work from home. Remote working increases the number of meetings and interactions per day. Productivity and mental health suffer when we are constantly interrupted. Frustration appears when we feel we haven\u2019t fully completed any task at the end of the day or that we have little time to move forward on projects.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remote work was exhausting for BIMers<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

On average, a person who is in the middle of a creative or technical  activity takes 23 minutes to get back to the same level of concentration as befo<\/strong>re the interruption, explains Paul Graham<\/a>, co-founder of Y Combinator<\/a>. The delay accumulated during the day due to the increase of interruptions had an impact on the extension of working hours, and also stress linked to the feeling of being swamped. Everyone wanted to make up for the time spent in meetings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second source of fatigue that teams shared with us was the feeling of being constantly observed.<\/strong> In an office meeting environment, you rarely look at the attendees during the entire meeting. Usually, you take notes, look at the person next to you, stare at the plant in the back of the room.  When someone’s face is very close to ours in real life, our brain interprets it as an intense situation that will lead us to mate or conflict. \u00ab\u00a0What happens when you use Zoom for many hours is that you’re in this hyper-excited state all the time<\/em>‘<\/strong>‘, according to Jeremy Bailenson<\/a>, professor of communication and founding director of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Grueling schedule!<\/h4>\n\n\n

9:00 am, some coffee, laptop opened, headphones on, ready for the back-to-back meeting marathon. To compensate for the fact that we no longer bump into each other during coffee breaks, or that we could hear about a changing plan on our team over our desk, we started booking more and more meetings and calls to be updated.<\/strong> Not only did we spend a lot of time repeating the same information to different people, but some of the information shared was incomplete.<\/span><\/p>\n

Three points of friction emerged, which we had to resolve quickly and which we are still working on:<\/span><\/p>\n