How Making Friends Instead of Attending Virtual Meetings Can Create A Better Working Environment and Work-Life Balance

The digital world has well and truly been thriving over the past decade, and its importance in our lives truly came apparent in 2020 when the pandemic hit and we were locked inside our own homes.

Not only did our personal rendezvous move over to weekly zoom calls with family and friends, but we also saw this reflected at work with an influx of online meeting notifications filtering into our inboxes. In fact, Microsoft data shows that since the start of the pandemic, meetings on their platforms rose by 50%.

This new wave has certainly been a big change and undeniably so, an overwhelming one at that, and even as restrictions were eased (and returned several times…), virtual meetings remain at the forefront on many daily to-do lists.

Now, it’s safe to say that our ever-evolving technology makes it harder to switch off as it is, but when we spend a majority of our lives working, the ability to be reached constantly via virtual meetings has made it increasingly difficult to reach our inner zen, zone in on our productivity and create a beneficial work-life balance.

With more and more of us having schedules that could give personal assistants a run for their money, psychologists suggest that in actual fact, highly scheduled ways of working are actually more likely to reduce your daily productivity.

The reasoning behind this is that we, as individuals, need time out to be disconnected and alone to not only recharge our social batteries, but to also give our minds some quiet time to recover from a constant go-go environment and allow them to focus on important tasks without disturbance. The longer you go without having undisturbed work time, the more likely you are to lose concentration and focus.

Now, while it is, of course, all fine and well saying that you need to cut down your schedule, and you may already be trying to implement a change and are striving towards more undisturbed work time, this work-by-meetings ethos is more ingrained into work culture and our minds than you may think.

From a business perspective, it may be easy to understand what drives our work performance (income, sales targets, promotions), but in our own lives it can be quite hard to predict what activities and methods will help to motivate us, and it’s becoming increasingly harder to do so with the constant answering of virtual calls under the guise that it will be a valuable activity.

However, with that being said, as things are predominantly returning back to normal and our in-office chairs remain less vacant, why does our teams meeting schedule remain just as packed?

Maybe it’s because it has become the new “normal”, but in doing so, it’s causing us to lose the opportunity to engage in in-person interactions that could introduce and improve an essential long-term skill in our lives – building and sustaining friendships with others; an action that helps to strengthen our resilience at work and has been proven to make the time that we’re at work more pleasurable (which in turn leads to higher productivity).

It is more important than ever now to break out of this cycle, especially as we transition out of the pandemic world, so that you can re-energize yourself, create boundaries and establish a more healthy work routine for not only your work productivity but most importantly, for you.

Here are three ways you can begin to do this:

1. Remind yourself of the importance of communicating with people in person and building real relationships – it can be daunting to jump back into the swing of things after a long time of communicating solely online!

2. Reach out and rekindle past friendships, or open the door to someone new. Maybe you lost contact with someone that you used to be close with, or someone new has joined the office and looks like they could need a friend.

3. Create shared experiences – This is important, especially when it comes to working as it can strengthen your bond with people. For example, work on projects with other people or volunteer to help others – you’ll then have someone to share your rants with, or someone to celebrate your wins with!

As we return back from the digital realm, it is now more important than ever to prioritise our relationships with other people in order to establish a healthier work-life balance. So, start to swipe away those unnecessary meetings which hinder your productivity, rather than increase it (within reason, of course), and get to making friends!

For experienced financial advice, contact our Coffey Brooks Financial Services Clacton Office here or by calling 01255 688400.

Coffey Brooks are a team of Independent Financial and Mortgage Advisers based in Clacton-On-Sea, Essex and are directly authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.