Category: This is all a test

…do we really need to feel fatigued anymore?

Not having to spend time getting to, sitting in and returning from the many necessary and, more often than not, unnecessary meetings we are required to attend should be a relief.

Winston Churchill’s comment that “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us,” could be said today as, “We shape our technology and afterwards our technology shapes us.”

In a Christoph Magnussen video, (at 2:40) he mentions that we usually take technology the way we get it and begin using it without spending time to set it up for how we want it to help us.

The pandemic threw many into the remote work/video conferencing world with little or no training or experience and therefore people used it as they got it. Stanford University conducted the first peer-reviewed study of Zoom fatigue and beyond the first common-sense revelation that “just because you can use video doesn’t mean you have to,” have uncovered four main reasons for the fatigue and ways to reduce it. In short:

1. Excessive amounts of close-up eye contact is intense.
2. Seeing yourself during video chats constantly in real time is fatiguing.
3. Video chats dramatically reduce our usual mobility.
4. The cognitive load is much higher in video chats.

Now, two years in, we can step back and reevaluate our use of video conferencing, and how best to work it, with a little more intention and add it to our regular communication tools when and where appropriate.

Shape it and use it the way we want it to help us.

So, do we spend time driving across town in post-pandemic traffic to meet someone or save time and connect with a Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, or whatever call? There is now a choice many may not have realized was available before the pandemic.

And, while we’re at it, we could thank all our friends and colleagues for putting up with all we may have put them through in our own learning of how to navigate a video conferencing world.

Written while listening to some Jimi Hendrix

…where do they most likely happen?

Yes, the boardroom, meetings and workgroups. Many more though seem to happen during coffee breaks, in green rooms, at parties, airport arrivals, cab rides or quick chats in the hallway.

They may show up in the boardroom, meetings and workgroups but I suspect a lot of them may have actually happened elsewhere.

Maybe, just maybe we could find more opportunities within our workday to create and allow those spaces and times where people can harvest ideas.

Written while listening to some BERNTH guitar shreds.

…tends to keep us focused on the problem(s) in order to analyze “what went wrong.”

A side effect of this is that with most problems blame shows up, like a shadow, in one form or another.

A constant looking back to figure out ‘why’ takes up the space where we instead could be looking forward at what we actually want and how to get there. Asking ‘why’ is a negative approach forcing one to go deeper into the problem, keeping one trapped.

If something didn’t work, that’s feedback that can be used to ask a more pertinent question, “what do I now want to happen and how can I get there.”

Looking forward to what we want will most likely unearth a solution, or maybe an entirely new initiative, that was not initially apparent.

Then what is one to do with the extra time gained usually spent trying to figure out what went wrong and laying blame? A new and different problem to be sure.

Written while listening to Apocalyptica.