I know what your thinking – “No! Not another online meeting.”

We get this reaction most of the time. Many people are frustrated with meetings. they believe they are time consuming and can take up a lot of your energy. Couldn’t agree more.

Since we cannot meet with the clients/management in person, online meetings are unavoidable. But make sure to set a time limit. Remember meetings will result in more tasks, so spread the meetings over the week.

At Socialprise, meetings are a must. We have found that simple changes can make them easier. Here are some notes to keep in mind –

• Meetings should not exceed 30 minutes.
• Prepare notes before we start the meeting. Make sure you don’t spend more than 5 minutes discussing each point.
• Make a room for recap at the end of the video.
• Schedule the decided tasks after the meeting is done. At Socialprise, we use task management tool for this.
• Spread your meetings to several short ones during the week instead of one long meeting during one day.
• Have a daily communication with your team, so that your tasks won’t pile up and you will need less time to have meetings online. You can do that over WhatsApp or very brief emails or any other tool that suits you, what is important is to keep track so processes keep flowing.

Avoid video calls! They are not as productive as you expect. You need to get ready, look good, have the right setup, a good connection, as we noticed, it adds more pressure than you know. If you think that a video call will allow you to monitor who is more focused than others, you are wrong, there are many ways for people to work on other tasks or get distracted and look like they are taking notes. Don’t forget the wifi connections which can be frustrating, Lebanon is not ready for all people to be on video calls at the same time, the whole world isn’t ready for that.

This is where you realize you have a lot of tasks and your tasks are related to others tasks and deadlines. Things get messy at this point. Many people working at home face a communication challenge and due to the fact that not all team members are available at the same time, keeping track of the tasks progress is hard.

Divide your tasks and schedule them on a tasks management software. Make sure you don’t exceed 5 major tasks a day, of course depending on the time required to finish each task. Especially if this is the first time you work from home, tasks will take longer until you have all the needed info and tools at hand. If you are a manager, you need a tool that will allow you to see everything at large and monitor the progress. Make sure your team has enough time to work on the tasks. Keep in mind, those who are not used to working from home will need more time to finish a task at first. After getting used to it, things will flow. Now things are more difficult, especially that not all are equipped to work from home and the parents are home as well and frustrated with the COVID-19 situation.

You need to dedicate some time to take care of yourself. This can be different depending on each person. Try to get engaged in a physical activity on a daily basis. Trust me, it’s a mood changer. You can workout, go out for a walk near the house, do some gardening, crafts, anything that involves physical activity. Sitting in front of the laptop for long hours will harm your physical health. If you have kids, let them engage in the physical activity with you, they will get busy. Even if you have elderly with you, in your home, engage them as well, even while sitting.

Having said, you should also engage in other activities that you like. You can pamper yourself with some skincare masks, a beauty time, hot bathes, playing with the kids, reading books, listening to music, or playing music, watching a series, anything that will help you boost your moral.