Month: July 2022

Turning Off the Zoom Mirror

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It has been almost two and a half years since the start of the pandemic and the permanent shift to a more virtual world. The shift to meetings over Zoom and Microsoft Teams has increased efficiency and allowed much needed flexibility. However, there is still room for improvement when it comes to potential distractions during virtual meetings.

In my weekly check-in with Dawan Stanford, Director of Innovation and Design in the Office of Academic Affairs, he referenced a Harvard Business Review article stating that looking at yourself on Zoom was cognitively taxing. He shared that he had found success removing his own image from the video feed to focus on the other meeting participants.

He informed me that it is extremely easy to hide yourself in both Zoom and Teams. The ellipses (…) on you picture in both applications allows you to turn off the mirror, so that others see you while you do not see yourself. I immediately decided to turn off the Zoom/Team mirror as an experiment to see whether it made a difference in how tired I felt at the end of the day and how engaged I was during meetings.

It was a resounding success for me. I know that I am at my best when I am focusing on others rather than myself. What I discovered was that having the video of myself on during meetings shifted my focus to myself. I was constantly checking in to see how I looked and was worried about how others perceived me. Turning off that virtual mirror more closely simulated being in person, where you can’t see yourself.

I looked up the HBR article on How to Combat Zoom Fatique and there were several other suggestions like having agreements about when to turn off your camera during meetings and going for walk-and-talks without video.

I would encourage you to see if turning off the Zoom mirror helps you, and would love to hear about other things that help you focus on others and manage your energy.

Prioritizing Important Work

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My days can be highjacked by urgent requests, especially as an IT professional. Important work that is less time-sensitive gets pushed aside for more pressing needs. I have adopted the following routine to prevent important projects from falling to the wayside.

  1. Most Important Work First – Each Monday morning, I create a list of the most important things that I need to accomplish for the week. I usually have several categories that I have adjusted over time. Right now, the categories that I use are Personal, Management, Relationships and Culture.
  2. Keep it Organized – As I make commitments during the week, I add them to the appropriate list.
  3. Focus Time is Key – I schedule focus work time in my calendar to first prioritize the tasks on my lists and then work on the most important items first.
  4. Check In Often – The lists I make each week are the anchor to my often-hectic schedule. I make sure to check in each day to see how I am progressing, and to reprioritize tasks if necessary.

I don’t always get everything done on each list by Friday, so the unfinished items can get transferred to the next week. While I may not have gotten to everything on my lists, this habit ensures that nothing gets lost in the chaos of more urgent requests.

What do you do to help you focus on the most important things?

Discomfort Helps Us Grow

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Woman gardening

Examining the stories we tell ourselves has been one of the themes that I have found in many of the most effective leadership tools. As humans, we instinctively create explanations (stories) that reconcile what we are seeing (facts) to what we are feeling (emotions).  This happens so instantaneously, that it is unclear whether the stories create our emotions or if our emotions create our stories.

For many years, I avoided talking about emotions, thinking that they just needed to be managed or ignored. I am coming to see emotions as clues that can help me know when I need to examine my stories, assumptions and core beliefs. This is especially important when I am uncomfortable and feel ungrounded in some way.

When I am uncomfortable, I often find myself looking for someone to blame for my feelings of discomfort, and often I blame myself. My experience is that this is untrue, unhelpful, ineffective, and completely normal and human.

What I know is that my feelings of discomfort are about me, not about the situation that I am facing; I create my own suffering. Recognizing that gives me back my power and points me to doing my own work to understand myself. This is the deep work that each of us must do ourselves if we want to transform and grow.

For me, discomfort can mean many things. It might mean that I am avoiding a conversation that I need to have with someone on my team. It may mean that I am hangry and need to get some healthy food. It may mean that I am tired and need better sleep. It may mean that I am feeling self-doubt and fear of my own failure and need to focus on serving others.

Instead of viewing discomfort as something bad that I need to end as soon as possible, I know that it is temporary and a clue to helping me figure out the best path forward. How do you deal with discomfort?