Find your attention wandering during teleconferences?

Posted on October 8th, 2009 by Sacha Chua

Find your attention wandering during teleconferences? The temptation to check your mail or surf the Web is hard to resist when no one can see you.

Instead of giving in, try taking minutes for the meeting. You’ll force yourself to pay more attention, avoiding the embarrassing need to say “I’m sorry, what was the question again?”. You’ll also find it easier to remember action items and details afterwards. If you share your notes with your team members, you’ll create more value, too.

More posts about: productivity // 4 Comments »

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/6634

http://zgp.org/~dmarti/ Don Marti

Do you ever use etherpad.com or a aimilar service during a call?
http://sachachua.com Sacha Chua

Almost all of my calls are internal, so I prefer to use intranet or desktop apps. I’ve occasionally used a real-time collaborative editing environment within IBM to share my notes, document edits, and minutes as I write them. I’ve also shared my screen through Sametime Unyte. I’ve used group chats too, although people find those more distracting because they pop up with each new message under most people’s configuration settings.

It’s great when I can share notes along the way, because then people can spell names and fill in missing information, and I don’t have to worry too much about missing something important.

Having a shared text channel also helps participation. People can add more detail or ask questions without interrupting. Definitely recommend.
Pingback: Shared Items – October 9, 2009 | disruptive by nature
Paul

Taking the minutes tends to wrap me into capturing everything and not thinking about the content. If I need to concentrate on a call or find I’m wandering I just lean back and close my eyes. That really focuses your thoughts on the call.

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