Lighten the online meeting load

After so many online meetings Urgh! We’re foggy, brain-fried ... like we’re in a continuous conference.

This is the human experience of cognitive overload. But it’s exacerbated and multiplied by the load that’s coming via one channel - online. Yes, its different to face to face, next to each other, same room or space.

Here are 3 COGNITIVE LOAD COPING habits:

☀️Change state and break.

Take a short break between every meeting. Yes every one. It ‘releases’ the mental load you’ve been carrying. Like emptying a truck’s load. Don’t do back-to-back. Bad. Just 30 seconds, get up, move and BREAK your state.

☀️Stop soaking information and start sensemaking.

In every meeting, WRITE some handwritten notes. Not typed. Hand written. This is ‘externalizing’ information. It actively relieves those fried feels.

☀️Write down more than a meeting’s end points, actions or decisions.

Catch a quotable quote, a smile moment, a PHRASE that sounded good. This helps retain some focus.

And it’s ok... you’re not failing.

We’re all carrying around a huge concrete slab of shock, change, worry and uncertainty. That’s already some heavy stuff.

Break your state

Write it down

Catch a phrase

Getting closer

Rather than pushing my group workshops and group training programs all online in groups ... I’m going the other way. I’m going 1:1 or a small group of 2, 3...

Sure it’s taking me longer but I’m not going anywhere, and the closer conversations, engagement and interactions have been more personalized and joyous. We find out more about each other, how we’re managing, what our world is like ... and I set about transferring my skills and knowledge directly to you on capabilities like:

🌟Facilitating

⭐️Sensemaking & Cognitive Load Coping

✨Visuals - analogue and digital

💥Developing your own ideas and thinking

☀️Adapting your positioning and brand

💫Boosting your creativity and idea generation.

We don’t need to do what everyone else is doing. It’s easy to copy, follow a herd or pack or think ‘oh that’s what I have to do too’ in times like these. It’s equally a time when trying something different could be just what’s needed.

Are you experimenting or just following what others are doing in response to change?

Experiment, adapt and respond in line with who you are and how you think and work. It’s time to be even more a part of your services than less. No need to default to ‘copy’ because it’s not the only way. 

Trying to do it right

There’s plenty of new happening as we try new arrangements, routines and techniques. It’s worth observing ourselves when we’re doing this newness, if we’re trying to do them properly and perfect.

We might be trying to do online and virtual stuff ‘perfectly’ (you know, lighting, sound, camera angles and backgrounds).

Or trying to do working from home the ‘right’ way, or schooling children and remote teaching ‘properly’ ... and other things right, properly or perfect.

It’s natural to want to do well in new environments but there is also this glorious human capacity we have, and that is ... to learn. There are so many expectations we’re placing on ourselves (and others) as we get used to these new ways of thinking, working and living.

Perfectionism can arrive to fill spaces when we are worried or uncertain, dealing with new circumstances.

We wonder:

🐤Am I doing this right?

🐤How am I going?

🐤Am I good enough at this?

Yes, we must follow and adhere to the standards that are asked of us in these times. And then we can be easier on ourselves and others by allowing more ‘good enough’ in. It brings brightness, flexibility and adaptability to the things that don’t matter so much right now. 

Summaries are super

In our overwhelm of information, meetings, emotions and the impact of change, to summarise ...is to care. We can’t possibly be listening as well as we might usually.

So don’t just finish your meeting, call or session. Make time to recap and summarise and bring it all together. Spend just a minute, or 3 or 5, summarising what happened, where we are at, what is next. 

It’s ok to repeat stuff. 

We don’t do it enough in ’normal times’, so it’s needed even more in these new normal times. As you bring things together, tying up lose ends for people, reminding and recapping, you’ll help them release some of the mental cognitive load they’ve been carrying.

You help do some of the sorting and storing work for them and their brain. It’s just a smart, leader-y thing to do. 

And it’s a caring thing to do, considering the emotional weights that can fill our mind. A synopsis, a digest ... a nutshell. 

Their brain will say ‘thank you’ even if they don’t. It’s a service most certainly worth the time and effort.

In the land of now and next

In the land of now... and next

What was relevant then may not be now. 
What is relevant now may not be next. 
And what is relevant next may not even be in our field of vision or realm of possibility right now. 

This is the pace of change. 
And we can adapt. We are adapting. 
It’s quite amazing what we humans can and are doing. 

We can find connections between what we are able to do and what the world needs next. 

So how are you remaining relevant?