Microsoft Outlook Now Lets You End All Meetings Early To Give Your Brain a Rest

Microsoft is updating Outlook to give companies the option to automatically start or end all meetings early to ensure employees have a break between back-to-backs. New settings in Outlook are rolling out to help reduce the digital overload of working remotely. From a report: Companies can set their own scheduling defaults, and they're fully customizable. That means you could have five minutes blocked off before or after a 30-minute meeting, or 10-15 minutes after hourlong meetings. Individuals can also set their own scheduling defaults, but the company-wide option is the significant change here. The inclusion of the new change comes after Microsoft's own research confirmed that back-to-back virtual meetings are stressful. CNBC adds: For the research, 14 individuals took part in video meetings while wearing electroencephalogram (EEG) equipment to measure brain activity, one day attending stretches of four half-hour meetings back-to-back, while on another day four half-hour meetings interspersed with 10-minute breaks. Lack of breaks resulted in spikes in the beta waves associated with stress building up near the transition periods between meetings, while breaks allowed brains to reset and better engage. Pictures of what the human brain actually looks like 'on meeting' are in the full report.

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