Quick answer: Virtual meetings are harder to remember because they strip away the environmental cues — faces, places, sounds and small talk — that anchor memories of in-person conversations. To improve retention, recreate those cues: capture an opt-in screenshot of each meeting and keep group and private notes attached to the meeting invite, as Canapii does.

At a glance

• Why we forget virtual meetings so quickly

• What in-person meetings offer that virtual ones lack

• How Canapii helps you retain more from virtual meetings

You have just finished a virtual meeting that felt really positive, and later that day a colleague asks about the next steps. You would not be alone if you frequently find yourself struggling to remember a conversation from just a few hours ago — or, worse, missing important action items. If so, don’t worry: you are facing the same challenge as the rest of us, and there are practical ways to fix it.

Why do we forget virtual meetings so quickly?

Online meetings blur together because they all happen in the same place — your screen — with little to distinguish one call from the next. The more meetings you have each day in your home office, the faster you seem to forget them, and details that would never have slipped pre-lockdown start to fall through the cracks.

What do in-person meetings offer that virtual ones lack?

In-person meetings surround us with environmental cues that virtual ones cannot. We remember the chat in the elevator about our vacations, which coffee we drank, the weather, what somebody was wearing, the noise in the background and the smell of the meeting room. These cues stimulate our senses, which leads to a better connection with other people — and a better recall of what we need to do next.

At Canapii, we strongly believe that important meetings are best face-to-face, and even better when they involve eating too. It is our standard policy to take final-stage job candidates to lunch before we offer them a job, although that is not always possible anymore.