Notice Regarding Meeting Overlap Fatigue
Two meetings occupy the same hour. Both are described as important. The person is now in both of them.
Hearing Transcript Matter: Meeting Overlap Fatigue, August 14, 2022 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Opening Statement
The hearing concerns events occurring between 3:00 PM and 4:00 PM on August 14, 2022, during which the subject maintained active status in two simultaneous video calls.
Both calls were scheduled by other parties. Both were described as important. The subject received the second invitation nine days after accepting the first and was told at the time of the second invitation that the organizer of the second meeting had not checked the subject's calendar before sending the invite.
The subject accepted both. This is being examined.
3:02 PM
The subject has joined both calls. Call A is a design review with seven participants. Call B is a stakeholder update with four participants. The subject is a required attendee on Call A and a listed attendee on Call B.
Both calls are in progress. The subject is visible in both participant grids.
3:18 PM
Call B has asked a question. The subject has muted Call A to answer the question in Call B. During the eighteen seconds the subject spent answering the question in Call B, Call A moved on without the subject.
Muting one call to contribute to the other is technically possible and practically undignified.
3:31 PM
Call A is discussing a topic that directly concerns the subject. The subject is aware of this because they unmuted Call A and heard their name. The subject is currently providing a verbal contribution to Call B. Both of these things are true at the same time.
The person is present in both calls simultaneously, which means they are present in neither call in any meaningful sense.
3:47 PM
Call B has ended. The subject's camera has returned to full commitment to Call A. A summary of Call A's previous thirty-two minutes has been requested of the subject by a colleague. The subject does not have a complete account of the previous thirty-two minutes.
The Absurd Rule
The subject accepted both meetings because declining either one carried a visible cost. Accepting both carried a cost that was distributed across four hours of recovery time, two follow-up emails explaining gaps in participation, and the experience of forty-seven minutes described above.
The cost of accepting both is larger than the cost of declining either one. This was knowable in advance. The subject knew it. The subject accepted both anyway because the social cost of declining felt more immediate than the operational cost of attending.
Closing
Call A has ended. The action items have been distributed. The subject has been assigned two items that were discussed during the period when the subject was attending Call B.
This is the second time this month that this sequence has occurred.
The subject has not changed their meeting acceptance behavior.
Hearing concluded, 4:00 PM.