
Meeting lengths are changing during coronavirus remote work - walterbell
https://www.fastcompany.com/90543500/one-thing-that-the-pandemic-could-be-changing-meeting-lengths
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stevage
I think another factor at play here is that with remote meetings, there isn't
a sunk cost in people physically travelling to the meeting room. It can feel
silly to bring 4 people to a place to meet just for 4 minutes, especially if
they're coming from other floors or other buildings. Remotely it feels fine.
Blip in, blip out.

~~~
martopix
The opposite for me. I used to be able to turn around on my chair and have a
chat with my supervisor who sat just behind me. If other people were needed,
we could just be like "Philip, can you come over a second, we have a
question". Now we have to ask people if they're busy and setup a zoom meeting.

~~~
yomly
I understand this inertia, but I have also worked in remote teams where you
can just jump on a call instantly without any friction and equally end that
conversation in under 30 seconds.

Zoom is a little clunky for that - if you have something like whereby.com you
can have a named room for yourself so you don't even have any friction to find
a virtual place to talk because it is preestablished which really makes the
talk feel serendipidous.

With push notifications on rooms, team members can pile on a team room if they
are free and watch to listen in in case it's interesting to them. Equally with
push notifications people can come to your room if they're looking for you.

But it's also a lot less intrusive than a phone ringing. If you know the room
people are in a call in, you can interrupt them (because sometimes you do need
to get hold of people right this second).

It can really feel like the low friction parts of an office with the right
mindset and buy in. Obviously there are pros and cons to having that low
activation barrier but I find them a net positive overall.

It really can be as simple as "hey can we chat" or "@team - quick call?" and
then drop all the formality of a meeting and approach the call like as if you
walked up to their desk to say hi.

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HiFaraz
Zoom also has personal named rooms.

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lnsru
Big Corp I work for has really poor office with 2 small meeting rooms. And
this was huge limiting factor for meeting organization. Managers thrive
nowadays with no limit for meetings, every nonsense gets discussed for hours.
I spend half day in some weird discussions every day. I don’t see how make
this stop.

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Cthulhu_
Reject meetings without an agenda and fixed time slot; feign unstable internet
connection if need be, or indicate you have another meeting (e.g.) half an
hour after the start of the one. Also make sure to block your calendar for
focus time, lunch and breaks.

~~~
thewhitetulip
Feign unstable network :P

I've had friends who feign unstable electrical grids altogether!

Easiest way to get out of things you don't want to attend

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Lammy
The actual study:
[https://www.nber.org/papers/w27612](https://www.nber.org/papers/w27612)

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00deadbeef
The average workday is over 10 hours?? We still work the same hours. 7.5hrs
per day five days per week. No more or less.

~~~
thewhitetulip
Our managers had set Education KTs daily for 1hr because "you aren't spending
travel time to come to office so let's use that time"

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adamjb
What are Education KTs?

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thewhitetulip
Educational Knowledge transfers as in I teach X to the team and each one
teaches something or the other

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roland35
Having started working remotely just before the pandemic hit (good timing I
suppose), I was curious how the daily schedule would be different. I am sure
that being at a remote-experienced company is better than companies starting
it for the first time in general! In general my meetings are shorter but they
also help give me a little of the face to face time I need to ask the random
question or get to know my colleagues better.

I am seeing this same situation with my kid’s and his friends remote learning
for school as well. We planned on our kid going to remote school this fall and
it seems pretty well thought out, but some of our friends had the school
switch to remote for the first few months at the last minute. It has been a
disaster for the most part! So the lesson to me is to NOT treat remote exactly
like in-person... there are advantages and disadvantages but if you try to
copy in-person to remote it will not be successful.

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MattGaiser
All sorts of little things that would be clarified through casual in our
cubicle farm now need formal meetings to make sure everyone is on the same
page.

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maurys
I've found that instant messaging works well for that.

Or maintaining a design/decisions page for the project if there are multiple
stakeholders.

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Simulacra
I work from 10a to 7p generally, but I don’t spend all that time working. The
work is sort of integrates with everything that goes in to my day.

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cblconfederate
All that precious time chitchatting, preparing the presentation, changing
seats, now gone forever ..

~~~
tluyben2
People still do that on Zoom, at least in meetings I (have to) attend.

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Cthulhu_
That kinda indicates preparing meetings and presentations IS their job. I'm
sure they'll be made redundant soon enough.

