The Dangers of Back-to-Back Digital Meetings

There is no doubt that the advent of easily available digitally-facilitated meetings has brought many boons to the workplace, wherever that may be. We can now talk with anybody who has the appropriate technology, anywhere in the world, without all that time-consuming traveling. This has opened up otherwise inaccessible expertise to the most remote areas and allowed faster connections with people who live hours, if not days, away. It has made day-to-day communication in the workplace more efficient (if somewhat less healthy) by reducing time spent walking around a large organisation’s estate.

However, problems are emerging as this technology becomes more popular and as we stop thinking about how we should employ it optimally. Remember that just because we can or do use it does not mean we should use it. Research gives us three points of warning about scheduling too many digital meetings during a day: firstly, it reduces what we take in; secondly, it narrows our ability to interpret novel ideas; and thirdly, it negatively affects our vision.

Spaced learning is better than massed

It has long been known from the learning theory literature that spaced learning produces stronger and longer-term retention than massed learning¹. For example, if a rat is presented with a pairing of a light followed by food, then, when the gap between each successive light-food pairing is longer, the learning that the light signals the food will be stronger. Similarly, when humans have to learn a list of paired words, having longer gaps between the learning trials makes the retention better², and this goes for most aspects of human learning³.

This solid laboratory work may be important when looking at the effects of back-to-back digital interactions and meetings. When meetings are spaced out a little more, then the information that is presented in those meetings will be better encoded than when the meetings are held back-to-back. There may be many explanations for this finding. One explanation that has face validity for humans in digital meetings is that with gaps between the meetings, there is more time for processing the material that you have just encountered—it does not get lost or interfered with by the next meeting. From the learning laboratory, we can also suggest that the information that is encoded will more clearly be remembered as originating from that meeting, rather than from some other source, and knowing where the information came from may well be important⁴.

“That’s too much information!”

The TMI effect does not just occur when a friend or acquaintance has just over-disclosed something deeply embarrassing about themselves—it can also apply to an overload of information in any situation. Having back-to-back digital meetings can lead to cognitive overload. From the learning laboratory, we know that such overload makes learning and retention harder, as discussed above³, but also it impacts our ability to maintain attention across a wide range of issues⁵. The more information that is coming at you, in any given timeframe, the harder it will be for you to process it all simultaneously.

This over-selectivity effect⁵ that emerges under these conditions is rather like a defence mechanism, or a coping strategy⁶. The attentional system narrows to focus on the key salient points—or, at least, the key salient points as far as it is concerned. These are typically points with which you are already very familiar, or which you find very salient, and these get processed at the expense of other less-familiar or less-salient points. It may well be that the other points, of course, are the key ones for understanding those more-familiar points. The other points may contextualise the familiar issues in new ways, or allow novel nuances to be placed on their understanding. This may be one reason why ‘group think’ emerges so readily⁷—it’s not just about social conformity, it may be the sign of an overstretched system. People take too many meetings, their attention narrows, only the familiar is processed, and the new is disregarded or lost.

Consequences for vision

Recent data on the effects of screen time have produced a rather alarming suggestion that too long spent staring at a screen can have quite serious consequences for our vision (as well as our general health and well-being). Staring at a screen, and being exposed to the blue light wavebands that screens tend to emanate, seem to have negative effects on the eye. It increases the risk and occurrences of myopia (short-sightedness)⁸. This is not just the cognitive short-sightedness, discussed above, but real and actual difficulty seeing clearly further than a few feet. Research is in the early stages concerning such new horrors associated with computer screens, and it is worth following those developments.

Luckily, there are a few simple rules that you can use to help counteract such effects. One of them is not to schedule digital meeting after digital meeting. Another tip is to try the 20-20-20 rule—that is, after every 20 minutes of screen time, spend 20 seconds staring at something 20 feet away⁹. Fix a dart board, or a basketball hoop, in your workstation, or just stare out of your window, if you’re lucky enough to have one in your workplace, or even just fix a picture that you like on your wall.

All in all, back-to-back digital meetings should be avoided. By using the power and convenience of these connections, sensibly and judiciously, they can increase your productivity by cutting down your travel time (and help reduce your carbon footprint, as well). However, too many digital meetings will be counterproductive—you may not remember what has happened, you could get a distorted view of what you do remember, and you may not be able to see as well to write your report on it.