Microsoft Outlook now lets you finish all meetings quickly to give your brain a rest

Microsoft is updating Outlook to give employees the option to quickly start or end all meetings to give them a break between back-to-back. New settings are running in Outlook to help reduce digital overload of working remotely.

Companies can set their own scheduling defaults, and they are fully customizable. This means that you can block before or after a 30-minute meeting, or 10–15 minutes after hourly meetings. Individuals can also set their own scheduling defaults, but the company-wide option is the key change here.

Calendar software such as Outlook has defaulted to on-the-go meetings for decades, often inadvertently promoting the idea of ​​back-to-back meetings with default settings that do not consider the need for breaks in between. If you create a new meeting in Outlook today it will default to the length of the hour and 30 minutes. Even the drop-down menu does not make it easy to select a custom time without manually entering it.

Picture: Microsoft

Microsoft is making these changes after completing Own research In response to the millions of people working from home during the epidemic, over digital overload. Video meetings have become a popular way to communicate with activists, but this change in our way of working has its drawbacks. “More remote tasks are challenging our well-being,” says Jared Spattro, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365. Digital overload is real, and something needs to be changed. “

Microsoft believes that this small change for Outlook may be a new way for many people to think about meetings and promote wellbeing. Whether corporations enable it broadly or even if it has an impact is another matter. Meetings often start or end late because people are busy unmuting themselves or joining it late as another meeting runs at its scheduled time slot. New Outlook settings won’t immediately improve that aspect of meetings, but it can plant a seed of change for employers and employees to think about the impact of meetings and the need to give everyone’s brain a much-needed rest.