  Virtual meetings are critical for remote work because of the need for
synchronous collaboration in the absence of in-person interactions. In-meeting
multitasking is closely linked to people's productivity and wellbeing. However,
we currently have limited understanding of multitasking in remote meetings and
its potential impact. In this paper, we present what we believe is the most
comprehensive study of remote meeting multitasking behavior through an analysis
of a large-scale telemetry dataset collected from February to May 2020 of U.S.
Microsoft employees and a 715-person diary study. Our results demonstrate that
intrinsic meeting characteristics such as size, length, time, and type,
significantly correlate with the extent to which people multitask, and
multitasking can lead to both positive and negative outcomes. Our findings
suggest important best-practice guidelines for remote meetings (e.g., avoid
important meetings in the morning) and design implications for productivity
tools (e.g., support positive remote multitasking).
