I’m not busy, I’m just in a meeting
As a scientist working from home, I’ve come to classify meetings based on how disruptive they are to my sweatpants lifestyle. At the top of the list are meetings that require my complete engagement, where I not only have to turn on my webcam but also interact fully and constantly, often in front of people who will judge me. For those meetings, I close the doors to my home office (slash guest bedroom slash dumping ground for toys), button up a collared shirt, adjust the lighting, and warn family members this would be a bad time for anyone to barge in with loud claims of who poked whom first.
At the bottom of the list are meetings where I’m muted, with my camera off, and no expectation of participation. These are usually large, listen-only meetings that I attend for education and awareness, where there’s no consequence for me or anyone else if part of my brain is elsewhere.
When that happens, my computer icons begin to pulsate, begging for my attention. The speaker is just thanking their colleagues right now, the icons say. This part isn’t for you. Don’t you want to answer that email? Don’t you want to respond to those edits? Don’t you want to analyze some data?
And, inevitably, I give in to the temptation. I have work to do, the unfinished tasks are all staring at me; why the heck not? I’m not disrespecting anyone. I know what level of distraction I can handle. Why shouldn’t I work during a virtual meeting?
It felt weird at first—especially given my prior contempt for electronic multitasking, probably borne out of watching undergraduates do it badly. When I was a grad student, I worked as a teaching assistant for a large lecture course. Standing in the back of the room, ready to help with assistant-level tasks, I could see something the professor never saw from his podium: The moment the lecture started, as if by magic, all around the room appeared dozens of glowing rectangles. And this was 15 years ago, when laptops weren’t even as widely owned and used as they are now.
What was on those rectangles? It varied: Some students were typing notes—or, at least, typing something on a white screen. But others were instant messaging, playing games, or checking Facebook and Myspace (again, 15 years ago).
I didn’t begrudge any students using their laptops to productively engage with the material. But the one playing the Homestar Runner flash game while half a dozen classmates’ eyes kept wandering to his screen to watch Trogdor burninate the peasants in their thatch-roofed cottages? I found it hard to believe this was a responsible choice. If you’re coming to class just to play games, I wanted to ask the student: Why exactly are you in class?!
Now, however, I kind of get it. Sometimes you’re in a meeting, or a lecture class, or some other situation that doesn’t require (or capture) your full engagement, and you decide the best use of your time is to do something else simultaneously, whether that’s playing irrelevant games during class to stay awake or—boring but necessary—getting other work done while you listen.
This was already a thing in the pre–COVID-19 times, even outside the classroom. There was always the person who brought their laptop to the department seminar or the conference session and spent the talk toggling between watching the speaker, checking their email, looking at data, scrolling through Twitter, and sometimes even working on their own talk to present later in the day.
And now, with so many of us working from home at least part of the time, it’s even more pronounced. Bouncing from Microsoft Teams to Google Hangouts to Skype Archaic Thing to Zoom-a-palooza, not responding to work emails during meetings almost seems like the irresponsible choice. Virtual meetings also remove a very legitimate deterrent to multitasking: Working on your laptop in a live meeting can be disrespectful to the speaker and distracting to those around you. But in a virtual environment, the speaker might neither see nor hear you, and the only one you’re distracting is your cat.
I know I’m not the only one who is multitasking during virtual meetings. I’ve even seen people do it while sharing their screen. Or they’ll forget to mute, and then everyone in the meeting hears them typing furiously. It’s so standard that I doubt I’m revealing anything shocking by talking about it.
Then why do I feel so guilty multitasking? Because I’m doing double work when I’m really supposed to be doing single work? Because the sanctity of The Meeting is so inviolable that none shall tear it asunder? Because I feel like one of those game-playing undergrads, sneakily opening Outlook while the professor is talking?
Maybe it’s because we’re constantly buffeted by cautionary tales about multitasking and the human brain. If articles about productivity can be believed, anyone who tries to do two things at once is actually accomplishing neither of them, is simply wasting their days thanks to their ignorant misperceptions, and should be roundly shamed for their audacity.
But let’s be honest: For many of us, there’s simply too much work to do to take an hourlong “vacation” to attend a meeting. And if you’re attending a multiday virtual conference, can you realistically put your day-to-day work on hold the whole time?
Granted, multitasking doesn’t always go well. I’ve seen plenty of meetings where someone is addressed directly, to which they respond, “I’m sorry, what?” and then the whole meeting pauses while the person is brought up to speed on the meeting they were nominally attending.
Still, I have come to accept that using virtual meetings for concurrent auxiliary purposes can be fine. When our mental health is linked to how snowed-under we are at work, let’s forgive one another for taking steps to unbury ourselves. Yeah, yeah, giving your undivided attention to one task is optimal and all that. But the world isn’t optimal, our jobs aren’t optimal, and virtual meetings—especially those you’re expected to attend without any evident benefit—are far from optimal. If you’re in a bottom-of-the-sweatpants-list meeting, and you want to work on something else at the same time, go for it.
Just don’t use that time to check your Myspace page. You will be disappointed by how little activity it’s had lately.
