8 Things to Do to Prevent Multitasking in Meetings

Multitasking is making us less efficient, reducing the quality and creativity of our work, and stressing us out. And yet, it’s the norm rather than the exception, particularly in meetings. If you’re chairing a meeting and want to keep participants’ eyes on the prize, here are steps to prevent multitasking in meetings.

Why People Multitask in Meetings

There are several reasons why people multitask in meetings. Understanding them will help you address the problem at its root.

Multitasking to Catch Up: People have too many emails, tasks, and requests to complete in the scant time between meetings. They’re just trying to keep their heads above water so they don’t leave a one-hour meeting two hours behind.Responding to Distraction: Some multitasking is triggered by distractions coming from outside the room. They’re getting sucked in by notifications and demands coming at them from many corners.Finding Relief from Anxiety: Maybe it’s what’s going on inside the room or maybe outside, but when things get a little hot, it’s tempting to dissipate that negative energy by being active rather than passive.Reduce Meeting Multitasking

When people multitask in your meeting, it creates problems. All manner of problems.

First, if they’re multitasking, they aren’t paying full attention and missing things. You probably have to repeat yourself. Multitasking makes meetings less efficient.

If they miss things, it might come back to bite you later: “I never agreed to that!” “But you were in the meeting when we discussed it?!?” Multitasking can create conflict.

Multitasking can also create animosity among team members as they judge one another for being distracted or signaling that something is more important than the conversation (and, therefore, the people) in the room.

Try these approaches to avoid, or at least minimize, the frequency and duration of multitasking.

1. Shrink the number of participants

Research at Microsoft showed that the larger the group, the more multitasking there is. That just makes sense. A diffusion of responsibility happens in groups. If you’re meeting with three people, it’s a lot more obvious when you’re not paying attention than if there are 300. When the stakes are high, and you need the focus to match, have as few people in the meeting as possible.

If you have a standing meeting, try frontloading the agenda with items requiring everyone. Pause between items and excuse people who aren’t needed for the latter topics.

2. Shorten the meeting

Meeting duration makes a huge difference in the likelihood of multitasking. In a meeting shorter than 20 minutes, multitasking is quite rare. Double the length of the meeting and double the likelihood of multitasking. And if your meeting gets to ninety minutes, the likelihood is six times that of a short meeting. It’s no surprise that the 20-minute meeting coincides with some estimates of how long we can maintain attention on a single task.

Normalize huddles where you accomplish everything you need in 20 minutes. Break longer meetings into no more than 40-minute chunks with breaks between to reset attention.

3. Move it to the afternoon

When you meet also impacts the amount of multitasking. Microsoft’s research showed that multitasking is more common in morning meetings than in the afternoon. I’m not sure if it’s because there’s still more on people’s plates in the morning or their coffee is making them fidgety, but you might consider moving an important meeting to the afternoon slot.

4. Include more novel content

You won’t be surprised to hear that recurring meetings have more multitasking than ad hoc meetings. Why? I’m guessing because an ad hoc meeting has a clear and timely purpose, whereas many standing meetings are about as useful as a vestigial tail.

Start by radically trimming the number and duration of standing meetings. Then, focus on making the content more novel, timely, and interesting so people have a reason to pay attention.

5. Cut out the irrelevant parts

Who can blame someone with 134 unread messages for doing a little inbox pruning while listening to someone talk about something irrelevant to them?? As a meeting chair, it’s your job to make the meeting content relevant. Get the right people in the room for the topics and clarify the value you need them to add.

You know what’s useless in a meeting—someone reading off a presentation as if it’s storytime. Now, if they used different voices and animated gestures like in storytime, I might be okay with it, but they don’t! If you’ve distributed a primer to convey the content efficiently (please, please use a primer to convey the content efficiently), then skip the presentation and get right to the good stuff.

6. Build in participation

That leads to the following strategy for reducing multitasking: building participation. People’s attention spans for listening to one person drone on are poor, but their focus is strong when expecting to be called on. Even if they aren’t participating, listening to various perspectives on an issue is much more scintillating than listening to one.

7. Reduce distractions

Sometimes, it’s just too tempting when a phone buzzes or a notification pops up on a screen. You can’t help but shift to that new input demanding your attention. The biggest problem in my experience is that as soon as one participant in a meeting picks up their phone, two or three follow in short order. It’s reflexive; people don’t even think before picking up their phone.

So, what are you going to do about it in your meeting? Some people do a phone stack. It will get a big groan, but it will work. You can also have a ground rule around multitasking (I like leaving room for grown-ups to decide if they need to prioritize something else, but ask that they leave the room to do so to reduce the temptation on others). I don’t think there’s a right answer, but it requires a conversation, a deliberate choice, and the courage to call it out when someone is contravening your agreement.

8. Manage the workload outside the meeting

Not all the strategies involve what you do in the room; some involve managing the torrent outside the room. The more you can do to help people prioritize the conversation and deprioritize the other demands on their time, the less likely they are to multitask. I use this exercise on Unseen Work to start a dialogue with people about what’s on their plate that I might not appreciate.

Conclusion

Multitasking reduces productivity, quality, and creativity while increasing stress and anxiety. Don’t allow your meeting to be a den of distraction. Instead, make it worth people’s attention by getting the right people in the room for the proper length of time at the right time. Make the content compelling and make contributing non-negotiable. You might find that more focused meetings get better results and require fewer follow-ups. That would be a virtuous cycle.

Additional Resources

What You Can (and Can’t) Multitask

The Easiest Way to Make Meetings Shorter

Microsoft Research on Multitasking Cao et al Large Scale Analysis of Multitasking Behavior During Remote Meetings

The post 8 Things to Do to Prevent Multitasking in Meetings appeared first on Liane Davey.