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4 Types of Post-Covid Meetings
A year under lockdown changed the calculus around how we use our time and how we interact
In the U.S. and U.K., hope is in the air. The vaccination programs are well underway, and life is starting to open up. The U.K. has been under one of the harshest lockdowns of the pandemic, with everything except pharmacies and food shops closed since December 26th. People have worked from home, not met indoors, and only quite recently were allowed to sit down with another person outside. In the parks in Central London, police were moving people on if they sat on a bench to talk.
But now, the lockdowns are being relaxed, and the weather is improving. Sitting outside a café and talking to a friend—cold but with the sun on your face—is something exciting, and something most of us haven’t done since long before Christmas. We are cautiously going back into restaurants and cafés, for the first time in nearly half a year.
Over the last week, my various conversations have focused on what meetings will look like as things open up. As one colleague said, “It will be interesting to see who actually wants to meet me once that’s possible again.” He was interpreting this as who really values him, but I took it another way.
We have changed the calculus around how we use our time and how we interact. In the past, we had lots of meetings. We traveled across our cities to sit in a room and talk about things. We went to work every day to sit with our colleagues. Now, after a year of working from home, that all seems unfamiliar, and terribly inefficient.
Why would I spend 30 to 45 minutes traveling to have a conversation with someone, and then lose another 30 to 45 minutes traveling back again? I used to have working days during which I had 2–3 meetings. Along with the traveling time, that was my whole day. Why would I do that now, when I’ve proved it can all be done on a video call? After a year of lockdowns, I’ve recently found I hate crowded public transportation and resent spending £20–30 a day on coffee and snacks in order to sit somewhere that’s not my home or office.
I can’t see many people schlepping to someone else’s office just to convey information.
