Since the pandemic began, we’ve spent more hours than ever in online meetings, and they can be exhausting! Right? It turns out that although platforms like Zoom have enabled us to work remotely over the last few months, they actually tax our brains far more than the in-person meetings we used to have.

On video, we lack the physical cues that guide us through normal face-to-face meetings and negotiations. At the same time, they provide far more stimuli that are hard to filter out. This increases cognitive load. Our brains have to work much harder to read the room and interpret emotions from faces alone.

But there are ways to make online meetings less tiring, so you can stay focused, energetic, and productive.

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This week, I hosted a Virtual Coffeehouse Workshop with Dr. Kim Bercovitz. We reviewed the science behind why Zoom meetings leave us with a “perplexing sense of being drained while having accomplished nothing,” (as National Geographic says), and provided attendees with strategies for making their meeting less draining and more valuable.

 My top 6 tips for making your online meetings better

1.   Minimize distractions
   Put away your phone, unplug your second (or third screen), silence your notifications, and close all other tabs. Distractions are like candy for your brain. Minimize them.
2.   Adjust your display
   Adjust your screen so that it’s about 20-24 inches from your eyes, with the centre at or just below your eye level and the web-cam at your eye level. Set the brightness of your screen to approximately the same as your workspace, and reduce the colour temperature to minimize the blue light emitted by your screen.
3.   Hide self-view
   If possible, minimize or hide self-view. Looking at yourself during a meeting is very distracting. You will find yourself judging your expressions, your background, your choice of clothing…rather than concentrating on the meeting. Instead, focus on the speaker.
4.   Select Active Speaker view rather than Gallery View
   Try to minimize the number of faces your brain needs to look at during a meeting. A gallery of 12 faces may look great in theory, but you will expend a great deal of cognitive energy trying to follow everyone and interpret their reactions, moods, or levels of attention.
5.   Avoid busy backgrounds
   On video, your brain will focus on other people’s faces and their backgrounds. It’s just another whole set of distracting stimuli. When you add in the auto-generated Zoom backgrounds, it gives your brain even more to try to interpret, and you’ll be even more distracted by the disconformities in the backgrounds around the edges of people’s heads. You know what I mean, that tell-tale flicker, or the disappearing/reappearing hand as the speaker moves around.   
   
   Try to put yourself against a blank wall or a calming background and allow fellow attendees who are uncomfortable with their space (a common thing with people working from home) to just leave their cameras off.
6.   Take breaks
   Give yourself a few minutes between meetings to get physical. Download the free Tip-Sheet for a few of Dr. Kim’s exercises and links to the other videos on her website. And give your eyes a break, too. Blink often, and every 20 minutes or so, look up and away from your computer. Focus on something at least 20 feet away for about 20 seconds, to let your eyes re-focus.

And that’s it. Our downloadable Tip-Sheet has even more information you can use to make your meetings more productive, and links to Dr. Kim’s exercise keep yourself energized.

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