Team TimeBee

Meetings are essential for fostering collaboration, communication, and decision-making within teams. Nonetheless, maintaining engagement and alertness during these meetings can be a real challenge.  Overcoming a meeting slump is becoming a widely searched topic on the web. It is common for workers, regardless of expertise and seniority, to lose focus during work meetings. And who can blame them?  They can be long, tedious, and, frankly, irrelevant to every attendee. These days, the sheer volume of meetings makes it harder even to like them, let alone stay attuned.  So, how do you stay focused? 8 Tips to Stay Focused During Meetings Since we can’t eliminate meetings, we can devise ways to improve focus and optimize your presence in work meetings.  1. Catch-up on Sleep The significance of adequate sleep for your daily life cannot be emphasized enough. Drowsiness doesn’t only diminish your focus; it can negatively impact your overall performance. Improving your sleep could be the solution if you struggle to stay attentive during meetings. If you have an important meeting coming up, make sure you get 7 to 8 hours of healthy sleep the night before. With a good night’s sleep, you won’t spend most of the meeting stifling yawns and filling up on coffee. Instead, you’ll be able to concentrate to the fullest.  2. Come Prepared Preparing for an important meeting can hype you up and improve alertness. Before the meeting, thoroughly prepare by gathering as much information about it as possible. Review the agenda, gather any required materials, and establish your goals for the meeting. Running around grabbing fresh coffee or files can appear unprofessional and even distract other attendees. Make a checklist for all the materials you need during the meetings. Also, getting tasks out of the way before stepping into important meetings can improve concentration. 3. Take Notes An underrated hack is making notes the ‘old-school’ way. Use a pen and paper to note important points. You’ll be amazed how much you’ll retain by writing about it.  To avoid missing out on any important details, you’ll automatically become an active listener.  Listening attentively to the speaker, maintaining eye contact, and asking relevant questions can really make a difference in your alertness. 4. Eliminate Distractions To maintain focus during meetings, it’s crucial to minimize both external and internal distractions that could disrupt the meeting’s flow. Disable notifications, put away your phone and close any unnecessary tabs or applications.  If you’re at home, choose a quiet and comfortable meeting environment, free from background noise or clutter. Since there may be multiple screens present at home, avoiding distractions can be harder. Hold yourself accountable by steering clear of them. If you’re tempted to check your phone incessantly, better to turn it off during the meetings.  5. Keep a Positive Mindset Meetings can be boring and long, but every cloud has a silver lining. If you arrive with a positive mindset, you may actually find a meeting interesting.  Conversely, if you’re set on having a negative view of the meeting, all you’ll be able to focus on is when the meeting will be over? Rather than thinking of the best ways to contribute to the agenda.  Focus on exciting opportunities a meeting can offer, like learning new skills or forming a task force with your favorite coworkers. Keeping a positive mindset can not just improve focus during meetings but also elevate your overall performance and mood.  6. Contribute in Meetings Intending to actively participate in a meeting can improve your chances of being truly involved. Answering questions, suggesting ideas, and providing examples are great ways to prove your involvement.  Similarly, if you know the meeting’s agenda, it is clever to prepare a few questions beforehand. Offer feedback backed with statistics, clarify doubts, and appeal for support if needed. If there’s a matter that needs management’s attention, a meeting could be a great platform to raise it.  7. Track Time of the Meetings Maintaining focus becomes challenging when the duration of the meeting is uncertain. Even the sharpest minds can have limited attention spans, and this can be particularly noticeable when a meeting appears to be dragging. Timing the duration of your meetings can be beneficial. By consistently doing this, you’ll eventually determine the average length of your meetings. Consequently, you can better estimate the expected time of focus.  For example, if data indicates you’ll have to spare 20 minutes for a meeting, it will be easier to stay focused during those 20 minutes. This is because you already know how long you’ll have to give your undivided attention. Tracking meeting times can be simplified by using automated time-trackers. We suggest investing in a time-tracking app to do the job for you. Just like a stopwatch, initiate it at the start and stop at the end.  Need a Time-Tracking Tool for Meetings? Get TimeBee Today 8. Access to Reports Having access to real-time data with employee productivity reports can help you identify if meetings are robbing your time. These reports classify your day into various tasks and activities, giving you insights into productive versus unproductive tasks.  If you notice meetings and calls taking up a large chunk of your day, you can take corrective measures. Set a daily or weekly limit on the number of hours dedicated to meetings to prevent the wastage of limited work hours. Drawing timesheets can also help you identify peak productivity times for yourself and other workers. This knowledge can help you schedule meeting times and durations accordingly so that you don’t affect participants’ productivity. We gave you our honest, no-nonsense tips for sitting through work meetings. But it’s probably a good idea to work backward and find out why you find it so hard to stay focused.  Why Can’t You Stay Focused in Meetings? The average human attention span is 8 seconds as of 2023, which has fallen 25% from 2000.  With all avenues of information, communication, and entertainment at our fingertips (pun intended), we are more likely to be sprinting in life as

When you start out your professional career, you feel like you have the world in the palm of your hand.  You might work past office hours, on weekends, and skip lunch breaks to gain lead. All because you’re so pumped to prove yourself. You go on working like a machine, disregarding any advice from your seniors and family members to ‘slow down.’ Yet, as a car running out of fuel will sputter, you might start experiencing some tell-tale signs of stress.  Symptoms like insomnia, stress headaches, and anger episodes may start creeping in. Yet, most workers continue their unhealthy work routines and start to develop serious health setbacks. This stress ultimately manifests in complete de-motivation about one’s career.  This phenomenon is ‘career burnout’ and, as of 2022, affects more than 52% of workers in the USA. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines career burnout as ‘feeling depleted, exhausted, mentally distant or cynical about one’s job, with reduced competence and effectiveness at work’.  Ill-managed chronic stress can be detrimental to an employee’s physical and mental health. Moreover, it may also dampen organizational productivity and spike employee turnover if not addressed by management. What Causes Career Burnout? Management style and work environment can be the biggest determinants of burnout among employees. Let’s break them down: Constant Work Overload When your capacity aligns with your workload, completing tasks on schedule leaves room for relaxation. Conversely, being overladen with workload deprives you of establishing a work-life balance. Most employees may go on to accept more workload to impress their managers. Some may even fear punishment for not accepting increased responsibilities. A growing workload and the threat of management can be intense stressors. You may soon start feeling resentment toward your job. Limited Work Autonomy Disenfranchised employees often become dissatisfied, notes journalist and author Jennifer Moss. Indeed, when you have limited control over your work, things can quickly become frustrating. Inadequate access to resources and a lack of involvement in decision-making can cause resentment towards management.  Moreover, being treated like a simple button pusher can also be deflating, especially when you’re not given enough autonomy to handle tactical decisions. This can quickly lead to disillusionment with the end goals. Lack of Recognition Today, paying workers fairly falls short as the only motivator. Communicating that their efforts matter to the organization can make a difference. Good companies acknowledge workers’ efforts, while better companies reward them according to expectations.   If your salary and perks do not justify your efforts and dedication, chances are you’re already dissatisfied. Unnoticed contributions and insufficient rewards can diminish your job satisfaction.  Working in a Toxic Environment Unclear job requirements and dysfunctional interpersonal dynamics can make a work environment counterproductive. Unrealistic performance standards can also affect employee well-being. These are all signs of a toxic environment. Suspecting unfair treatment or favoritism by managers can demotivate you. If your supervisors are often rude and lack empathy or kindness, you might consider quitting for a better environment. Feeling constantly targeted or undervalued can swiftly lead to burnout. Poor Relationships Communication and camaraderie are essential between colleagues. But if these do not exist, you may find little motivation to show up to work every day. Working in isolation for long hours can worsen the feeling of alienation.  What’s worse? Burnouts can be contagious. Feelings of inadequate workplace bonding can permeate many teams in an organization.  Human interaction is the base of community. Workers working in an office environment depend on colleagues for support and trust. So a place where you’ll spend at least 40 hours every week must be a pleasant one. Why is Burnout on the Rise? Career burnout has triggered global interest in recent years. It has been extensively researched, urging policy-makers to improve stress quotients at work. Despite Organizational Behavior and Psychology gaining fame in the corporate world, burnout is still persistently rising.  According to famous author Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, there are several causes. Prolonged heavy workloads, toxic work cultures, and unfair expectations are major reasons. After the pandemic, the ongoing stressors of my career were exacerbated by health anxiety as well. Massive layoffs due to the global recession created a dark atmosphere of job uncertainty in the global workforce.  This compounding effect of many negative work factors made the world experience burnout stronger than ever before. How the Pandemic Accelerated Burnout Indeed has conducted an insightful study about the extent of employee burnout post-COVID-19 pandemic. 67% of workers from all age groups surveyed reported their burnout has worsened post-pandemic.  More than 53% of remote workers admitted to working way longer than their hours in the office.  This dismisses the notion that employees working from home contribute less.  31% of total employees (remote and on-site) have reported working way longer than their pre-pandemic schedules. The flexibility of remote work has made it harder for employees to unplug from work. The pandemic proved that effective results can be achieved without being present on-site. As a result, managers are increasingly expecting workers to chase deadlines and finish projects no matter where they are.  A 2022 survey by ADP Research Institute showed 8.5 hours of unpaid overtime per week. Workers are working round the clock between office and home chores, burning out faster than ever.  Economic Instability Another reason for higher work burnout can be the new norm of people having multiple careers. The tense economic climate has forced people to take on many gigs to support their families.  According to Deloitte, 37% of millennials and 46% of Generation Z are working secondary jobs. A growing segment is also running their own businesses on the side. While it may be a solid financial move, it is bound to take a toll on your health. Constant multi-tasking and increased responsibility have made career burnout a national health concern in the US, according to Dr. Ian Kronish. People have little to no personal time at their leisure to recharge or have hobbies.   Effects of Burnout on Your Health Chronic exhaustion and stress have far-reaching effects on the workers’ well-being.