This 5-minute schedule change does wonders for stress

Amy Shearn
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1 min readFeb 4, 2021

📆 Today’s tip: Start meetings at 5 after, to give everyone a minute to breathe.

In a recent Zoom meeting here at Medium, Adrienne Samuels Gibbs, deputy editor at ZORA, casually mentioned a potentially life-changing schedule hack: start meetings at an odd time, like five minutes after the hour. In the remote-work era, it’s easy to wind up with a stacked calendar in which one meeting ends at 2:00 and the next begins at 2:00 and even though you’re just on your computer at your kitchen table, being in two meetings at the same time remains impossible. Give your colleagues a minute or five to use the bathroom, stretch their legs, look out a window, and reset.

🖥️ More Forge stories on making meetings less stressful:

How To Make Meetings Suck Less
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Ask This Question Before Calling a Meeting
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How To Run a Good 1:1 Meeting
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Amy Shearn
Amy Shearn

Written by Amy Shearn

Formerly: Editor of Creators Hub, Human Parts // Ongoingly: Novelist, Essayist, Person