The etiquette of laptops in meetings

Here's an article about working on your laptop during meetings. Since my team is remote, we admittedly spend time during meetings on the old laptop. You know, when the meeting takes a turn toward something not particularly relevant to you. It's hard not to do that when the meeting takes place in-person.

During meetings where I am presenting something, I am distracted by anyone on their laptop; I admit it. It's kind of hard not to take it personally. At the same time, there are only so many hours in a day and I have always had issues with being required to attend meetings that don't have any immediate consequences for myself or my team. I generally try to opt-out of those meetings as much as possible. Sometimes I'll come to the meeting without the laptop so I am not tempted (as if anything is SO important that it needs immediate attention). I think we would all feel a little more zen about this whole thing if we weren't being forced to decide what work gets done and what work doesn't get done. But we don't live in a world where you come to a finishing point at the end of the day with a clean desk. Remember when it was like that? Yeah, me neither.

I'm trying to force myself to be more present in meetings (I swear I just heard something on TV about being "present"...sounds like a good idea). If that means building in a little unproductive meeting time, then I guess that is what it means. Besides, I can always go to my happy place in my head if it gets really bad.