How to protect your productivity in the age of video conferencing

In the morning, you wake up with the motivation to finish the tasks on your to-do list after a few appointments. Gradually, questions and meetings start to appear and fill your calendar. Before you know it, it is evening and you have not been able to make progress on the work plan you had set for yourself, accumulating more and more urgent matters.

Because work is now done remotely, for many people this frustrating cycle seems "never-ending".

It's easy to blame your video conferencing application and its frequent use. However, with calendars getting fuller and fuller and our workdays stretching almost to no end, it's time to question the real cause of our struggle with productivity.

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Is clarity really waiting for you on the other side of the line?

Our calendars have always been adorned with meetings, some with well-defined schedules and others more sporadic. But as many companies are adapting to working with a remote team, feeling like you're falling behind on your tasks is becoming more common than ever.

Unfortunately, this professional " fear of missing out" ( FOMO ) often materialises in the form of more and more follow-up video conference calls, one after another.

Before scheduling another call, ask yourself what you really hope to get out of it. For many⋅as, the answer lies in one of the following questions:

Align

Having lost the rhythm you had in the office, it's normal to get anxious about the status of a project you're leading or a client you fear may have slipped through the cracks.

In an attempt to simulate the "I'll pop in to ask you a quick question", harmless 15-minute follow-up calls just to line up are becoming commonplace.

Filling gaps

We no longer have the comfort of a shared workspace where we can consolidate all decisions made, knowledge accumulated and progress made.

If the common digital workspace does not have a centralised source of information, you and your team are often "on the hunt for information". This is because our tools, whether CRM, ERP or other, are not interconnected with each other and with the team members.

So you tend to do more video conferencing in the hope that you can fill in the information gaps.

By spending the first 10 minutes of a call determining the same starting point, sharing data and filling gaps, meetings are less about meaningful progress and more about repetitive updates.

Reconnect

It would be unfair to ignore the fact that most people miss their colleagues. We like to chat, to share what we are working on, especially in an age when the opportunity to engage in a mid-aisle chat with someone other than our⋅a roommate⋅a roommate has been lost. So it's normal to schedule calls just to reconnect.

Calls are for people, tools are for information.

For great planning or brainstorming, nothing beats a good strategy meeting.

But if you're meeting to share data, weigh in on a specific topic, or just to "ask a quick question", you have a tool or platform problem, not a video conferencing problem.

When you spend a lot of your time on Zoom for the reasons we mentioned above (alignment, reconnection or gap filling), you are abusing one tool and ignoring all the others.

Spending your day relaying basic information through calls is exhausting for you and your team. A call should add substantial value to more interesting processes such as brainstorming or project planning.

Define when to make a video call: transparency is on both sides.

As we get used to the rules of remote working and realise that things are still getting done, projects are still moving forward, and the sky has not yet fallen, a new daily rhythm is being created.

Transparent calendars. Protecting your most valuable asset (your team) from video call fatigue should be a priority, even if it can be really difficult in these times of "perpetual connectivity". By having realistic expectations and accepting the need for "time off", you give your team the opportunity to return to work recharged.

At monday.com, we encourage people to plan "family time" into their calendars and we respect those boundaries. Anticipating these spaces in advance has helped us avoid productivity problems due to video conferencing.

Why we need to make video calls: the same principles still apply

Some video conferencing simply has to happen. In some cases, nothing replaces the creativity and energy that meetings bring. But given our new telework-based reality, we've pushed the boundaries.

So before you schedule another Zoom meeting, consider the following:

DO call: for overall project tracking, weekly progress meetings, meetings where group progress is required, and team projects that require a type of collaboration that other tools don't offer.

Do NOT call: for data sharing, syncing and status updates, document or design editing, "quick question" or meetings during blocked calendar hours.

Let your tools give you a hand

By employing video conferencing to answer every question that comes up, mental energy is being used to clarify and align bases, rather than to add real collaborative and creative value.

By identifying functions that can be solved by tools rather than people, processes across the organisation become more fluid and you can stop moving from one call to another.

If you feel that your organisation does not currently have tools that can perform these functions, you may have a tool problem, rather than a call problem. When it comes to critically analysing the tools your organisation uses, there are certain aspects to consider:

• Flexibility- can this tool serve a variety of workflows and processes and multiple teams?
• Integrations. If this is where everyone is looking at information, you need good integration with the other tools your team uses.
• Transparency. Allowing everyone in the organisation to access basic information gives them the autonomy they need to do what they need to do, without having to resort to a 30-minute call.

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Looking ahead

The habits and structures that are being built during this time have the potential to define the company's culture and processes for years to come. By drawing clear boundaries and relying on the right tools, you can use this time to create the ideal workflow for your organisation.