The Best Zoom of My Life: What I do to Videoconference and Stay Sane

At my offices, we always used Skype or something similar for conference calls. Most of the time my calls with customers were always in the quiet privacy of a conference room. This made it easy to control environmental factors. Zoom was easy street for the last 5-6 years with minimal interruptions.

Now that COVID-19 has hit and everyone is working from home, I had to rethink my approach. Now I have to consider barking dogs, or a spouse wafting on screen. Who would have thought I would have to think about wearing pants. What a strange new world.

There are a few tricks I’ve found that make video conferencing when working from home a more sensible proposition. Getting good at this now I suspect will pay dividends down the line later when I’m FI and doing odd-job corporate consulting.

Get dressed as if you were going to the office

In the morning I walk the dog, after waking up and taking my vitamins. Usually, it’s early and the rest of the world is still sleeping so I don’t run into anybody other than other kindred pet owners. I never wear my Sunday best. Most days it’s sweats and a t-shirt that I would feel uncomfortable running errands in.

But, I know that in order to do my best work and feel most confident I need to first shower and change into actual presentable clothes.

This is all psychology. Enclothed cognition mambo jumbo.

All things equal, I know what I’m wearing doesn’t make a lick of difference to how well I perform my work. But other people perceive me differently. And there’s a little voice inside me that has expectations of how “Work Ben” vs “Leisure Ben” dresses. When I get dressed, comb my hair I just feel better. And it can be a lonely road working from home. Some days you feel like you’re peddling and going nowhere. On those days I need a win.

Mute my surrounding noisemakers

When I am doing deep work any interruption can throw me out of sync for a good 15-20 minutes until I can regain concentration again. I can feel physical discomfort and squirmy in my seat when my flow is interrupted. In an office usually, all of these environmental factors are numbed down and any interruptions are predictable.

Realistically, I know that I cannot turn off all noise for the whole workday. Eventually, the dog will get distraught and go for a walk, or the wife will want to waltz in and ask me for something.

I’ve found the best way is to chunk out time segments of 1.5 – 2 hours. On either side of this, I plan my “errands.” I’ll take the dog for a walk, I’ll grab a snack, check-in on the wife. I found this amount of time is optimal for me because it provides 15-20 minutes to “get in the zone” and about 1.5 of work, which is when my concentration starts to wane. But it may be different for you.

Another thing I like to do is pre-emotively identify things which will make me uncomfortable. I use a mental checklist:

• Make sure A/C or heat is at a comfortable temperature
• Close the window so neighborhood leaf blowers won’t be noisy
• Turn off laundry/dishwasher
• Place a “do not disturb” card on my office door. This lets others in the house know the room is off-limits with a visual cue.
• I don’t have children yet, but if I did I would make sure they are occupied in another room. You obviously can’t predict every dirty diaper but I want to try to do my best to mitigate distracts.
• Take the dog, or cat, if she’s of that persuasion on a walk so they’re physically tired out for a while. After 2 hours our dog starts to get excited and wants to play. She’s sweet but this behavior is annoying when I’m trying to work.
• Make sure coffee and water is topped off.

Make my space a place for work

I try to make sure my desk is relatively neat. I clear off any bills or personal items. I don’t want to think about those things during work tie.

I don’t like loose papers. Instead, I use a Moleskine style notebook for notes – there are some knock-offs that l I like better than the actual Moleskine brand since they lie flat. This allows me to easily move my work out of the way and keeps my mess contained.

Here are the only things I like on my desk:

• Laptop + stand
• External monitor(s)
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• Notebook
• Pen
• Cell phone
• Drink (water or coffee)

That’s it. 8 things.

The other thing I like to do is make sure the space behind me is tidy. I have a massive bookshelf in my office that has a lot of books but also becomes a depot for any nick-nacks that we can’t find a place for. We live in a 2-Bedroom apartment so there’s not a lot of space. The office floor also becomes a depot for junk. At the start of the week, I like to do a quick cleanse of the space and move things out of the way and throw junk away.

Early is on-time, on-time is late

Try to get to the conference 5-minutes early. Sometimes Zoom or Skype needs to update, or your computer decides it wants to restart for Windows updates. Doesn’t it always seem like updates happen at the most inopportune times?

I set a reminder for 15-minutes. This is easy with Outlook since it’s just a setting. I like to put all of my workday items into my outlook calendar to compartmentalize work and personal time. That’s anything that happens between 8:00 – 5:00. Anything outside of these hours goes into a Google calendar. I find this works well and doesn’t take much extra effort.

Buy an external camera and fix your lighting if you think you’re going to video conference a lot.

The integrated camera in our work laptops is far worse quality than the one in our iPhone. Also the angle isn’t flattering. You’re going to present much better if the camera angle is pointed slightly down instead of the extreme pointed up angles that are default with the laptop lid camera.

An external camera attached to your external monitor will allow you to set the perfect angle when you are at your desk. You’ll be able to look straight into the camera too. An extra plus for eye contact.

By having some soft ambient lighting around me I ensure I’m not a shadow figure in a dark corner. I find placing my desk near a window helps. In addition I use a couple of desk lamps with 75-Watt LED bulbs to help illuminate the immediate space.

What do you do to have better Zoom meetings?