Mute-by-default is why your meetings suck

February 2, 2026

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Anything involving voice communication should be unmute-by-default. Barring exceptional circumstances, everyone in the meeting should be unmuted at all times.

When you tell people to mute themselves while others speak, they will fumble over the unmute button when they finally have something to say. Or they talk into the void for 30 seconds before anyone realizes. Eventually they realize it's easier to stay quiet. The activation energy is too high. Everyone hates it—the teacher forces students to answer questions, and the manager forces employees to discuss what they did last week. It's called Zoom fatigue.

Good communication is necessary for good work, and the entire point of having a conversation is to maximize bandwidth. If you like muting because your meeting lends itself to taking turns or only listening, then maximum bandwidth isn't necessary, and your meeting doesn't need to be a meeting. Try emailing or messaging instead.

The source of our suffering

Mute-by-default exists largely because our software (think Zoom, Teams, etc.) doesn't optimize for latency. The longer the delay between when you speak and when others hear, the greater the chance someone else starts talking at the same time. To cope with this, we invented the protocol of mute-by-default, whereby you wait 5 seconds before speaking to make sure the other person is actually done.

Phones have been popular for over 100 years, and yet I've never heard of "landline fatigue."