Microsoft Outlook now allows you to end all appointments earlier to rest your brain

Microsoft is updating Outlook to give companies the option to automatically start or end all meetings early to ensure that employees have a break between back-to-backs. New settings in Outlook are being rolled out to help reduce the digital overload of remote jobs.

Companies can set their own default programming values ​​and are completely customizable. That means you could have five minutes locked before or after a 30-minute meeting or 10-15 minutes after an hour-long meeting. People can also set their own default programming values, but the company-wide option is the significant change here.

Calendar software, such as Outlook, has been implicitly in meetings for decades, often inappropriately promoting the idea of ​​back-to-back meetings with default settings that do not take into account the need for a break between them. If you create a new meeting in Outlook today, it will default to an hour and a length of 30 minutes. Even the drop-down menu doesn’t make it easy to select a custom time without entering it manually.

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is making these changes after conducting its own research on digital overload in response to the millions of people working from home during the pandemic. Video dating has become a popular way of communicating with workers, but this change in the way we work has its drawbacks. “More distant work causes us well-being,” says Jared Spataro, vice president of Microsoft 365. “Digital overload is real and something needs to change.”

Microsoft believes that this small change in Outlook could be a new way to think about meetings for many and promote well-being. Whether corporations allow this on a large scale or whether it even has an impact is another issue. Meetings often start late or end because people are busy deactivating or joining late because another meeting has passed their scheduled time. The new Outlook settings won’t immediately improve that aspect of meetings, but it could plant a seed of change to help employers and employees think a little more about the impact of meetings and the need to give everyone’s brain the much-needed rest.