, , ,

🦠174: Screen Fatigue—15+ Sanity Strategies for Organizers and Participants

, , ,

Do your eyeballs hurt?! No matter my joy and awe at humanity’s creativity in times of crisis in terms of moving everything online—everything. is. online. Even pre-pandemic, our phones were already spitting out weekly Screen Time reports to help us put down the devices . . . now we’re glued to them as the only outlet for social connection, culture, and productivity.

In a New York Times article, When a Home Becomes Headquarters—also titled “Logged on from the Laundry Room” (LOL)—even the CEO of Cisco, the company that runs meeting software WebEx, Chuck Robbins acknowledged the difficulties. He said, “I tell you…this whole teleworking thing — as much as we sell it to our customers, I’m not sure I want to do it 100 percent of the time. Nobody prepares for this,” he said. 

At the same time, people want to connect! We are hungry for it, going stir crazy, and missing our cultural outings. I wholeheartedly agree with Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, who said “It’s a miracle you can run a company this way."

So today I’m sharing 16 strategies for staying sane amidst the endless screens—particularly for work-related meetings—across three categories: for meeting leaders, participants, and during the meeting best practices.

Got a brilliant solution I’m missing? Submit follow-up questions or audio notes for a future conversation at http://pivotmethod.com/ask

Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/174

Background on the Pivoting Around a Pandemic Podcast Series

Background from our kick-off to this Pivoting Around A Pandemic series, episode 159: With so much happening daily in the world and global economy around coronavirus, we’re all dealing with massive amounts of uncertainty, pivots at work, and for many—fear and anxiety that comes with not only the health concerns, but questions around how to maintain our livelihoods moving forward.

When Momentum member and pandemic expert Dr. Michael J. Consuelos reached out to offer himself as a resource to the JBE team and the MoMo community, I jumped at the chance to record a conversation for all of you as well, which has now turned into a full-blown series:

Topics Covered

For Organizers

  1. Fewer meetings

  2. Decide criteria for video

  3. Give participants a choice

  4. A/B test or alternate / pilot 

  5. Record and post audio

  6. Meeting days and times (calendar blocking for you and entire team/org) 

For Participants

  1. Prep less, especially women (lower the double-standard) 

  2. Collaborate in docs, asana, slack - asynchronous  or live

  3. Get comfortable rather than obsessing over visuals

  4. Toggle video and mute

  5. Wireless headphones

During the Meeting

  1. Whoever calls the meeting: create an agenda and make sure people follow it

  2. Balance having organic conversations and acknowledge importance but moving them to another time

  3. Make sure invitees know whether they are required or optional

  4. Encourage quieter folks by asking for their opinion

  5. Indicate who goes next in the chat

Resources Mentioned

Check out other episodes of the Pivot Podcast here. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen, and if you enjoy the show I would be very grateful for a rating and/or review! Sign-up for my weekly(ish) #PivotList newsletter to receive curated round-ups of what I’m reading, watching, listening to, and new tools I’m geeking out on.