Meeting Fatigue

topic

Meeting fatigue is the specific cognitive and emotional exhaustion produced by excessive time in organizational meetings — particularly video meetings in remote work contexts — characterized by the sustained attentional demands of following complex multi-party conversation, the social processing demands of monitoring multiple faces and managing impression presentation, the frustration of passive attendance at meetings where one's presence adds minimal value, and the lost productivity of extended meeting schedules that prevent the deep work that would reduce the meeting volume they paradoxically require.

Role

Meeting fatigue is the occupational stressor that receives the most complaint and the least organizational intervention of any common workplace stressor — with average white-collar knowledge workers spending approximately 35–55% of their workweek in meetings (the majority of which are evaluated as unnecessary by their participants), producing both the direct cognitive exhaustion of that meeting attendance and the frustration and stress of insufficient time for the actual work those meetings are nominally supporting. The organizational norm of excessive meetings is one of the most consequential workplace productivity and wellbeing problems that could be substantially addressed through simple structural interventions (meeting-free periods, asynchronous alternatives to synchronous meetings, clear meeting necessity criteria) but that receives essentially no policy attention.

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