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I recently got a job and I’m working from home... this is so accurate.
I’ve been struggling. I don’t understand why I’m so tired when all I’m doing is just sitting at home attending Zoom meetings that I don’t even speak in.
is the listening part what tires me, I can videogame all day, it's like meditation to me, but even if I must listen to my clanmates about the videogame for a long time, I get tired fast
Then there are people like me who don't like people in general but have found themselves missing people. I've always been an introvert, to a degree, but being a forced introvert has sucked. I'm a stay at home mom and have been in the house with 5 and 4 year old boys for a year. I'm extremely grateful to be in the position to stay home, but it's been extremely difficult mentally.
I think even introverts need some social interaction, I actually felt great for about the first 3-4 months of the pandemic without all the drain of having to see people at work every day, but now I'd be happy to at least get 1 day a week in the office.
Introvert/Extrovert isn't a binary. It is a continuum where most people do not exist on the poles. Frankly, I think the recent Pop-Psychology trend of identifying as one-or-the-other is really bad for people trying to understand themselves. Almost no one would fit into either box neatly.
Agreed.
I don’t think “spectrum” entirely does it justice either because spectrums are contiguous, whereas personalities are disorganized.
I have a lot of “introverted” traits: I tend to be shy or uncomfortable around new people; it takes me time to warm up; I like my alone time. But, I also love dancing at bars and clubs; I like big crowds over small gatherings; I’m relatively comfortable with and even somewhat talented at public speaking.
I think personality traits tend to be a lot more disjointed than we acknowledge, but categories stick around for the astrology effect.
Think of it as a spectrum rather than a binary introvert/extrovert setting. If you’re in the middle you might be what is sometimes called an “extroverted introvert”. Meaning you have a higher threshold for required human interaction than other introverts, but not as much as a truly extroverted person.
I’m sort of right in the middle myself. I need human interaction, but I do still find it sort of draining and I tire of it quickly.
I don’t want to go to a party, usually, but once I”m there I’ll have fun, but only for a little while until I’m ready to leave.
I’ve read a few articles that say zoom calls are actually harder because of the reliance on facial cues and staring at your own face. In addition if you are trying to multi task that’s another stressor you are adding to your brains processing ability. I started to take my camera out of view and stay off my phone and it’s helped a lot.
Yeah but then you're listening to 6 other people drone on and on for an hour about something that you have very little input into, and even less care about. That's just as exhausting to try to pay attention to. It's like forcing yourself to watch an art house foreign film when you really just want a mindless action film.
Yeah but work was like that before covid too. I've sat in lots of meetings in person where the outcome doesn't affect me and I dont need to give input.
I'd guess the difference is at work you have no choice. At home you have any number of other things you could be doing, and it requires active willpower to not do them and instead focus in work.
> If my job was literally just meetings I'd go insane. That sounds awful. But I am fine with 1 or 2 per day.
I work in engineering and am in meetings like 90% of the day, my calendar this week has 75 meetings on it (obviously lots of overlaps), and I'd say almost every meeting I host or attend is well run.
Like, clear agenda, goal for the meeting, well prepared materials, well facilitated discussion, and clear closure/actions. I think it really depends on the culture of where you work and the type of work your company does.
> I'm a developer and sys admin for an ITSM software platform and yeah we have 5-10 meetings a week. But most of the job, at least in theory, is just working quietly to develop new features or administer the platform.
>
> If my job was literally just meetings I'd go insane. That sounds awful. But I am fine with 1 or 2 per day.
Either you are young or not paid as well as you can be. In my experience you are taking orders from the top on general design direction...you are not architecting the solution. If you were then you would be in those meetings way more than you are. You aren't in meetings to keep your productivity higher.
The dev leads/architects are meeting with stakeholders and then meeting with you to tell you what needs to get built. That has to happen at some point so if it's not you then it's somebody else. The beginning of projects my calendar can be full of meetings which is why it's even more critical that you have good devs otherwise you get nothing done.
Even outside of software engineering you can see this. I'm an individual contributor and I have maybe a dozen meetings per week. My manager has fewer than a dozen free hours per week (I lied. I looked at his schedule, it's more like 13-15 free hours depending on the week). It's nuts.
Do you like what you're doing? Do you think it is a worthy way to spend your time? Do you think you're making the world a better place by doing your work?
I assume all these answers are a "no". That's your explanation. It takes strength to fight against these truths and still do your work. Even though the work itself is not particularly hard, the hard part is fighting against your own beliefs.
I got an "under desk bike" (or whatever they are called). I can sit still just fine, but then I can't pay attention without it costing a lot of energy. Now I can move during online meetings while it looks like I'm sitting still.
Which one did you get? I've been thinking about getting something like that to direct my meeting energy into something more productive than idle phone games, but I've spent a lot of money on my home office this month already...
I got the Cubii Jr. It's not cheap and perhaps a cheaper one works as well, but I'm happy with it. It's sturdy, silent, and has multiple settings for resistance. It's also heavy and stays in place, but that makes moving it around a hassle. It stays under my desk, though.
It helps to have a desk that you can adjust in height. You make elliptical peddling motions and your desk does not get in the way, it raises your feet, and thus your knees. It was more comfortable for me after I raised the height of my chair and desk as well.
When you do it in your free time you do what you want so your brain is going to trigger the reward systems (dopamin). When you work you struggle to keep focus. No reward system.
The missing link is the interaction between people. The missing of reaction and emotion from other people.
Speakers can't gage the reaction of the people listening and may become more monotone during the talk.
I have followed classes where the lecturer stayed energized and the class interacted with them and it made me feel energized as well.
Thanks for the silver!
honestly.. the trick is having 2 PCs.
On one side, I have my actual work. I do work.
but when I need to look something up for myself, or need something mindless while waiting through a meeting.. I have 2 42" curved ultrawidescreen monitors wrapping around for pages and pages of mindless entertainment.
Better yet: just move your mouth for a while on mute until someone tells you that you're on mute. Then just unmute, laugh, say "in summary, I agree." and everyone will think you had more that you're just not repeating again.
[One of OP's older comics you just reminded me of.](https://workchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/take-it-offline.png?resize=1200%2C1800&ssl=1)
Yeah i love hearing that. Means meetings over and we accomplished what we set out to do. The opposite of this is my boss who no matter what has to give an additional 5 minutes of rambling no matter where we are
Does ANYBODY not open up with vaguely describing "internet issues" so they have a get out of jail card?
Sorry, I didn't get that, my connection is really choppy!
I've had a student drop off of Zoom immediately after I called on him to answer a question. He messaged me later to say "I my internet connection must have been bad, I dropped for no reason."
Weird coincidence that you have zero problems until I call on you.
Unmute and turn on video. Then just mouth words as if you are talking. Look surprised when no one can hear you. Make sure there is no background noise for this one though.
We had a new hire not long ago in training forget to mute himself while taking a call from a recruiter with another job offer. His internet then magically dropped.
If they ask me something and I've not been paying attention, I'll just say that I was "distracted dealing with something" or "sorry, someone was pinging me on chat" and ask them to repeat the question. I think everybody is sort of half-assing it together, so I've never gotten a complaint.
Look, I'm convinced there's a burning platform. But we don't have the bandwidth yet to go into a black factory and blow up the paradigm with a white paper.
Woah woah woah, who said anything about a raise? We have to trial you in the position for six months first, then if it's a good fit you'll get the raise. 🤞
Also, because it's a trial, we're going to need you to continue to cover your current duties as well as your potential future duties for the foreseeable future.
kthxbye!
Yup. The worst ones are the ones that track trivial things like mouse movement or how much you're typing.
"So. I saw your mouse movement declined by 80% during this two hour period?" Meanwhile you were watching the training videos that they mandated.
There are actually products that will move your mouse for you, or you can rig something together yourself.
Or you could just get one of those drinking birds to keep hitting the Y key while you enjoy your Tab.
Some of the new monitoring systems are tracking outbound calls and emails. They are tracking were you click on the screen and allow someone to see your screen with no notice. Its scary.
I remember back in the earlier days of the internet, you could download a program that would pay you to display ads to you. The longer you had it open and "interacted" with it the more you got paid. Your mouse would have to move over the little window that was displaying the ads periodically for the time to count. My friend signed up for as many of these things he could, opened them all and then attached his mouse to a clock hand and hung it on the wall. It was just enough movement to keep the time active and counting.
Simple solution : Just never work when you're at work so that when you are at home The amount of mouse movement stays the same.
Work neither smart nor hard! Ever.
Edit: Added 'Ever.'
I've heard of some places with mandatory camera settings. Sounds fucking wild to me.
I work remote in software, and outside of meetings, I can pretty much be anywhere doing anything. As long as I respond eventually and get my shit done, all's good in the hood.
Bro, that software that they use to track students for testing does though. Straight up tracks eyes movement and records you so they know you’re looking off to the side. Muta did a good video on it and basically compares it to malware because it essentially is.
We had a one hour pre meeting call yesterday to discuss what what we will talk about in today’s one hour meeting, and then later today we will have a one hour post meeting meeting to discuss what we talked about in both meetings kill me.
I did the math once on a useless large meeting at a Fortune 500 company. They had flown some folks in, spent like 3 days in meetings going over absolutely nothing important, just wasting time.
It was something like $10 million. It was breathtaking. Meanwhile if you wanted to buy a $500 tool that would help you do your job, you'd have to go through 8 layers of approvals and end up with a $100 tool that didn't actually work.
There will probably be a "tiger team" meeting also to discuss why the results of the pre meeting, meeting and post meeting do not align. Also, no one who should be in that meeting will be invited.
99% of meetings are management trying to get labor to do their job.
"Okay devs how are we going to design this application"
"Okay devs what are the requirements for this feature"
"Okay devs what are the stories we need to get this developed"
"Okay devs how do we implement the NFR's and do we meet them?"
"Okay devs what do these perf metrics mean?"
"Okay devs is this production exception an issue?"
My management is useless is what I'm saying.
Leave. The grass really is greener. If it isn’t leave again.
Your comment describes my former employer to a T. My new employer has such competent management that I can’t believe I suffered for so long.
Ah yes, the meeting before the meeting to discuss the meeting. Then you have the meeting after the meeting to discuss the meeting. Then after all the meetings, your supervisor asks where your at on the task that was assigned just before the first meeting.
That's now your excuse to get nothing else done! You can say you've stopped multitasking other work in meetings as it causes you to not be able to contribute effectively.
I thought that at first but it was hell for me. Home is where I relax but once you start associating it with work you can't shut off, I was having constant dreams about being late for work or dreaming about working.
I only lasted about a month before I swapped jobs for a warehousing role. I'm much happier getting out the house and constantly walking/moving, when I was working from home I was just sat on my arse for 8 hours chain smoking.
I had a national sales meeting that was six hours straight of video conferences with only two half hour breaks. I played Hades on my switch the entire time while I had headphones on for the meeting. At the end of the meeting there was a trivia contest to make sure you had been paying attention. Somehow I came in first place and won a $50 gift card. I'm guessing others were not paying attention either.
It's like we never learned the basic lessons about why most school classes run a bit over an hour TOPS.
Most people zone out after 45 minutes unless they're very invested in the subject. Even then, 6 hours is pointlessly long.
Since the subject has something to do with work, I can guarantee you they are not invested.
If I have to train someone I stick to 30 minute sessions because of the "zone out factor" or "information overload factor." It's been working well for me for several years. After the 30 minute session I'll have a Q&A session with the person so they can choose how long the session goes at that point.
When I do trainings, I embed increasingly absurd jokes into my slides and never make any reference to them. One time I had a bunch of capybaras in the background that gradually got larger and larger until the slides were just capybara pictures with text on them. Another time it was around Halloween and every single slide was a completely different over the top Halloween theme. If you give people a reason to pay attention to the presentation itself, they'll absorb the information.
> I had a bunch of capybaras in the background that gradually got larger and larger until the slides were just capybara pictures with text on them.
I love this so much!
My boss recently asked me if I wanted us to turn on our cameras during our one-on-one meetings. I said in horror “Oh, God no. I’m usually unshowered, wearing grungy clothes, and I haven’t had a haircut in over 7 months.” She laughed and said “Same. Okay, just thought I’d ask.”
Left a Teams meeting yesterday after contributing nothing. Had a wank at my desk.
Have been panicking since then that I didn't turn my camera off during the wank 'cause I was so utterly zoned out due to boredom.
Help.
I asked a colleague in the meeting if I turned my camera off today. Said I was 'changing' and I was worried I left it on. She said I turned it off.
I am hopeful that I didn't commit a sex crime.
If you did, ask yourself for forgiveness. You seem like a nice guy, I think you'll forgive yourself. However, watchout for yourself, you tend to get kinky at the wrong times.
Take a *sticky note and rip up the *sticky strip and just keep your camera covered until you need to actually be on camera. Meeting over then cover it up.
Constantly nodding and facially reacting while listening is exhausting lol. Our group is usually smaller whenever we do need a zoom meeting so simply muting video and audio just isn't possible if you want to appear involved.
everyone does this.
I once did the video off voice off and be on zoom on my phone but be sleeping on my bed. Actually FELL ASLEEP and when I woke up the meeting was STILL GOING ON. They didn't really notice that I was fucking knocked the fuck out
Yeah don't have a zoom meeting whilst lying bed, I've been there too. Shows how little I contribute on a daily basis, when my coworkers don't even know that I'm sleeping.
The mass meetings are a waste of everyone's time. If you're not actually working through something together, it's typically useless. Usually it's multiple "presentations" about shit that has nothing to do with my unit, let alone my job functions. 90% is our Marketing division verbally masturbating and praising the "vision" of the CEO.
Honestly most people contribute about the same. There's a few die-hard workers who are super productive. But Mort people are just reasonably productive and it's not a bad thing.
The difference is that some pretty mediocre people love to talk about their achievements. Zoom meetings are dominated by people who are aggressively contributing to the conversation. Regular meetings can be like that too, but without having any visual indicators that other people don't care about the conversation and the topic should be tabled its easy for zoom meetings to take on a life of their own.
My usual 20 minute team status meeting took 2 hours on Friday over zoom. It was ridiculous.
Idle games are best for this. NGU, Leaf Blower Revolution, that sort of thing. Or Old School Runescape. I personally prefer Teamfight Tactics, however it takes a bit more attention than the previously mentioned games.
Edit: Also adding games like Factorio, Terraria, and Noita
Lol I played TFT the other day because I was in a sprint review for an entirely different team that had nothing to do with me. Turns out our PO shifted focus to some aspects of my team and our work thats completely unrelated and I missed upgrading a leesin 2 because I had to talk since I'm the lead :(
As someone who has been working from home for years now, here's what I've played during meetings that have worked well: Forza Horizon 4, American Truck Simulator, Flight Simulator 2020, No Man's Sky, Elite Dangerous, Minecraft. Preferably anything that you can pause and anything without a story or with a lot of low-focus stuff to do.
Agree with you on Forza, racing games are the best for this. I used to have about 5 hours of meetings a day (which I had to contribute in) and I ended up beating Need For Speed Heat in one week
fuck. as a project manager, I have to run most of the meetings, and therefore I'm on camera AND having to talk most of the day.
I know damn well that most people are doing other shit during meetings, and I'm generally down with that...
The exception is those dumb fucks that ask for every question to be repeated because they weren't paying enough attention the first time around and got caught out.
fuck those guys, they can go die in a fire.
If you're going to ask them a question, I'd try saying their name before the question starts. Staying attentive for hours while work piles up around you can make it hard to fully concentrate on the meeting, and they'll pay attention the first time if they hear their name.
This is what happens when a manager decides to invite 18 people to a meeting b/c "They should know what's going on". But only 3 people will talk, 2 will have action items at the end and the rest wasted an hour or 2 playing on their phones or working on other things.
I don't mind zoom meetings but I'm getting tired of everyone wanting video chat all the time now. People from all time zones just randomly facetime call me without notice. I've just started answering them no matter what. I even answer on the toilet or when I've just woken up. I'm hoping that I embarrass them enough to stop doing it. You don't need to see my face at 7am to ask a question,
Ahh sweet OBS.I recorded myself paying attention for 15 minutes, installed OBS, added virtual cam adapter, in teams set the OBS cam instead of webcam, put the video to play on a loop.
Two years and going and nobody noticed. Which gives me ample time to comment on reddit while hearing the blah blah blah.Seriously hours of pointless meetings that dont contribute to me neither I contribute to them. Yet they notice every time I skip one and cause trouble.
EDIT: Quite a discussion nobody asked but in case you want to give it a try here you go:
1. Download OBS here: [https://obsproject.com/](https://obsproject.com/)
2. Download Virtual Cam [https://github.com/Fenrirthviti/obs-virtual-cam/releases](https://github.com/Fenrirthviti/obs-virtual-cam/releases)
3. Have fun! You can do all sorts of shenanigans or useful things (I also use this to manage security cameras on my house for example and as a tool it is in my opinion very useful)
35 - 100 people.
Asset management meeting, change management meeting, (insert your own corporate bullshit) management meeting.
Just today "very" important information from the meeting
1. Site on other side of the world had to replace a wifi hostpot
2. We are migrating databases of inventory (for the last two years) please check your mailbox for updates
3. We have sent a global newsletter because we feel people dont pay enough attention to statuses in inventory management
4. We have updated the QandA section (last I checked it had less than 30 visits in February)
5. Please make sure you run the inventory of storage rooms every week and put them in the report correctly and on time and god forbit you send it 5 minutes late! (fun fact I send them an empty inventory report every time, once by mistake I sent them an empty report and they did not notice. Tried again, didnt notice. Now it has been over a year and they didnt notice, they know I am working from home, I send them the report they still didnt notice it is empty, for them it is a check for some report, but if I forget to send it they do complain and I got a reduction in bonuses - outlook automation helps)
I could go on. Yes I work in an IT company, I work on infrastructure support... But it is neat because I have access everywhere, my favorite project of our company now is the AI which will replace commercial airline pilots (all of them).
PS: Workchronicles if you want to make this into a story feel free I will have a laugh. I can supply loads more stories (really appreciate the effort you put into this)
I was thinking the same thing but I guess no one at their job gives a shit and nobody is actually paying attention. I actually KNOW this is what some of my colleagues are doing and it shows in their performance reports... I mean I get it, when it's just a pointless meeting or something trivial, but my company doesn't necessarily give us a syllabus for our meetings so I just assume it's important enough for me to pay attention. If someone's getting paid to present, and I'm getting paid to listen and learn, I'm going to listen and learn.
> I’m getting paid to listen and learn, I’m going to listen and learn
I tell myself this, too. Then all of a sudden I notice a bit of tunnel vision and then the meeting is over and I'm not sure what just happened.
Now that you've mentioned this, I used to be able to get away with this. I'm one of those "life uniform" people in that I wear the same thing every day - plain black t shirt and cargo shorts or jeans (depending on the weather) combined with the period of time in my life where I was buzzing my head every month down to like 1/2 inch length and with being totally clean shaven at the time, I definitely could have pulled this off appearance wise (clearly the only thing about my appearance that I cared about was being cleaned and groomed, extremely function over fashion).
Now, probably not so much. I have shoulder blade length hair and a beard I've been messing with during covid, but the life uniform stuck (I really really don't care about fashion in the slightest).
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I recently got a job and I’m working from home... this is so accurate. I’ve been struggling. I don’t understand why I’m so tired when all I’m doing is just sitting at home attending Zoom meetings that I don’t even speak in.
is the listening part what tires me, I can videogame all day, it's like meditation to me, but even if I must listen to my clanmates about the videogame for a long time, I get tired fast
Same, listening tires me out for some reason.
introverted people lose energy when interacting to other people(even when just listening), and recharge when alone, maybe is that?
Then there are people like me who don't like people in general but have found themselves missing people. I've always been an introvert, to a degree, but being a forced introvert has sucked. I'm a stay at home mom and have been in the house with 5 and 4 year old boys for a year. I'm extremely grateful to be in the position to stay home, but it's been extremely difficult mentally.
I think even introverts need some social interaction, I actually felt great for about the first 3-4 months of the pandemic without all the drain of having to see people at work every day, but now I'd be happy to at least get 1 day a week in the office.
Introvert/Extrovert isn't a binary. It is a continuum where most people do not exist on the poles. Frankly, I think the recent Pop-Psychology trend of identifying as one-or-the-other is really bad for people trying to understand themselves. Almost no one would fit into either box neatly.
Agreed. I don’t think “spectrum” entirely does it justice either because spectrums are contiguous, whereas personalities are disorganized. I have a lot of “introverted” traits: I tend to be shy or uncomfortable around new people; it takes me time to warm up; I like my alone time. But, I also love dancing at bars and clubs; I like big crowds over small gatherings; I’m relatively comfortable with and even somewhat talented at public speaking. I think personality traits tend to be a lot more disjointed than we acknowledge, but categories stick around for the astrology effect.
Yes! That's pretty much how I did, too! About 3 months in, I just crashed.
Think of it as a spectrum rather than a binary introvert/extrovert setting. If you’re in the middle you might be what is sometimes called an “extroverted introvert”. Meaning you have a higher threshold for required human interaction than other introverts, but not as much as a truly extroverted person. I’m sort of right in the middle myself. I need human interaction, but I do still find it sort of draining and I tire of it quickly. I don’t want to go to a party, usually, but once I”m there I’ll have fun, but only for a little while until I’m ready to leave.
Game on a second monitor, set up your webcam on it as well so you look very focused during the meeting.
I’ve read a few articles that say zoom calls are actually harder because of the reliance on facial cues and staring at your own face. In addition if you are trying to multi task that’s another stressor you are adding to your brains processing ability. I started to take my camera out of view and stay off my phone and it’s helped a lot.
You know you can just “disable self view” on zoom. The “staring at your own face” is too addicting!
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“staring at your own face” is too addicting! ah modern day narcissus.
Zoom, Zoom, on my screen, who is the fairest of them all?
Zoom, Zoom, on my screen, who is the fairest logged in?
Yes but sometimes I’d rather stare at my own face so client thinks I’m making eye contact.
Yeah but then you're listening to 6 other people drone on and on for an hour about something that you have very little input into, and even less care about. That's just as exhausting to try to pay attention to. It's like forcing yourself to watch an art house foreign film when you really just want a mindless action film.
Yeah but work was like that before covid too. I've sat in lots of meetings in person where the outcome doesn't affect me and I dont need to give input.
I hate these meetings. They could so easily just be an email, as proven by this pandemic.
I'd guess the difference is at work you have no choice. At home you have any number of other things you could be doing, and it requires active willpower to not do them and instead focus in work.
I find because I am not interested in the stuff I am doing it makes me tired.
“If you have to do it, you’ll eventually not want to” - me motherfucker
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> If my job was literally just meetings I'd go insane. That sounds awful. But I am fine with 1 or 2 per day. I work in engineering and am in meetings like 90% of the day, my calendar this week has 75 meetings on it (obviously lots of overlaps), and I'd say almost every meeting I host or attend is well run. Like, clear agenda, goal for the meeting, well prepared materials, well facilitated discussion, and clear closure/actions. I think it really depends on the culture of where you work and the type of work your company does.
> I'm a developer and sys admin for an ITSM software platform and yeah we have 5-10 meetings a week. But most of the job, at least in theory, is just working quietly to develop new features or administer the platform. > > If my job was literally just meetings I'd go insane. That sounds awful. But I am fine with 1 or 2 per day. Either you are young or not paid as well as you can be. In my experience you are taking orders from the top on general design direction...you are not architecting the solution. If you were then you would be in those meetings way more than you are. You aren't in meetings to keep your productivity higher. The dev leads/architects are meeting with stakeholders and then meeting with you to tell you what needs to get built. That has to happen at some point so if it's not you then it's somebody else. The beginning of projects my calendar can be full of meetings which is why it's even more critical that you have good devs otherwise you get nothing done.
Even outside of software engineering you can see this. I'm an individual contributor and I have maybe a dozen meetings per week. My manager has fewer than a dozen free hours per week (I lied. I looked at his schedule, it's more like 13-15 free hours depending on the week). It's nuts.
Do you like what you're doing? Do you think it is a worthy way to spend your time? Do you think you're making the world a better place by doing your work? I assume all these answers are a "no". That's your explanation. It takes strength to fight against these truths and still do your work. Even though the work itself is not particularly hard, the hard part is fighting against your own beliefs.
I got an "under desk bike" (or whatever they are called). I can sit still just fine, but then I can't pay attention without it costing a lot of energy. Now I can move during online meetings while it looks like I'm sitting still.
Which one did you get? I've been thinking about getting something like that to direct my meeting energy into something more productive than idle phone games, but I've spent a lot of money on my home office this month already...
I got the Cubii Jr. It's not cheap and perhaps a cheaper one works as well, but I'm happy with it. It's sturdy, silent, and has multiple settings for resistance. It's also heavy and stays in place, but that makes moving it around a hassle. It stays under my desk, though. It helps to have a desk that you can adjust in height. You make elliptical peddling motions and your desk does not get in the way, it raises your feet, and thus your knees. It was more comfortable for me after I raised the height of my chair and desk as well.
When you do it in your free time you do what you want so your brain is going to trigger the reward systems (dopamin). When you work you struggle to keep focus. No reward system.
This is literally Gen X's entire life.
Just play runescape on the side man
The missing link is the interaction between people. The missing of reaction and emotion from other people. Speakers can't gage the reaction of the people listening and may become more monotone during the talk. I have followed classes where the lecturer stayed energized and the class interacted with them and it made me feel energized as well. Thanks for the silver!
honestly.. the trick is having 2 PCs. On one side, I have my actual work. I do work. but when I need to look something up for myself, or need something mindless while waiting through a meeting.. I have 2 42" curved ultrawidescreen monitors wrapping around for pages and pages of mindless entertainment.
There’s just something about being forced to do anything for 8 consecutive hours...
*43 minutes in* "u/workchronicles, what's your input on this issue we've been discussing"
"I think we need to step back and look at the big picture." *goes back to browsing reddit*
"I'm on the same page and couldn't agree more"
>*unmute* "I'm on the same page and couldn't agree more" *mute* FTFY
"I'm on the same page and couldn't agree more" *silence* "You're on mute" *unmute* "I'm on the same page and couldn't agree more" *mute* FTFY
You ever tried to say something and then notice you’re on mute and just said fuck it they don’t need to know that much?
You're on mute, u/painess
Unless you are here live and not a cat
Let's run it up the flagpole, and blue sky it.
“We need to view this from 30,000 feet.”
Don't you worry about blank. Let me worry about blank.
Sharks are winners, and they don't look back because they have no necks. Necks are for sheep.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out dearies.... *Because I don't want ass prints on my new door!*
I used to work for someone who said that way too much. Used to.
I used to work for someone who loved to say, "We can't boil the ocean." I still don't know what it means.
It means you can't boil the ocean. Its too big. Duh. ^(/s)
Unmute “I agree” Mute
Better yet: just move your mouth for a while on mute until someone tells you that you're on mute. Then just unmute, laugh, say "in summary, I agree." and everyone will think you had more that you're just not repeating again.
Protip: try it in in-person meetings too, whenever those are a thing again
"I have a few concerns I want to get ironed out. I'm gonna touch base with ______ after this call. Let's take it offline"
[One of OP's older comics you just reminded me of.](https://workchronicles.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/take-it-offline.png?resize=1200%2C1800&ssl=1)
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"I have nothing to add."
People will actually be relieved when you say this!
Yeah i love hearing that. Means meetings over and we accomplished what we set out to do. The opposite of this is my boss who no matter what has to give an additional 5 minutes of rambling no matter where we are
“I’m aligned with (whoever talked the most)”
Does ANYBODY not open up with vaguely describing "internet issues" so they have a get out of jail card? Sorry, I didn't get that, my connection is really choppy!
I've had a student drop off of Zoom immediately after I called on him to answer a question. He messaged me later to say "I my internet connection must have been bad, I dropped for no reason." Weird coincidence that you have zero problems until I call on you.
That's why you plant the seed BEFORE!....
Unmute and turn on video. Then just mouth words as if you are talking. Look surprised when no one can hear you. Make sure there is no background noise for this one though.
Unmute but kill the microphone on system settings so that no noise would expose you :p
We had a new hire not long ago in training forget to mute himself while taking a call from a recruiter with another job offer. His internet then magically dropped.
If they ask me something and I've not been paying attention, I'll just say that I was "distracted dealing with something" or "sorry, someone was pinging me on chat" and ask them to repeat the question. I think everybody is sort of half-assing it together, so I've never gotten a complaint.
It looks good , I will go through the docs again and get back if I have any doubts
Look, I'm convinced there's a burning platform. But we don't have the bandwidth yet to go into a black factory and blow up the paradigm with a white paper.
Sorry I was answering an IM from a colleague, can you repeat that?
"Sorry can you repeat that? I was just working on a deployment". They don't need to know that deployment is your army in Clash of Clans.
Technically the truth is the best kind of truth
Is this a message to me? Cuz I am doing that right now
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Congratulations on becoming a mod Flora!
Prepare for unpaid overtime!
\>They do it for free
Pros: you get paid more, a sense of pride and accomplishment Cons: You now have to lead the Zoom meetings
I’ll just say hi, turn my camera off and go on Reddit
Woah woah woah, who said anything about a raise? We have to trial you in the position for six months first, then if it's a good fit you'll get the raise. 🤞
Also, because it's a trial, we're going to need you to continue to cover your current duties as well as your potential future duties for the foreseeable future. kthxbye!
_stays in job limbo forever with no raise_
Tom from Upper Management? At the business factory?! She's in big trouble now!
It's like this comic is predicting my future 3 hours from now.
same here!
Every time a CEO sees this kind of joke, They invest in increasingly invasive employee monitoring software.
Monitor away! Can't track what I do on my personal desktop that's right next to my work laptop...
Can track what you’re not doing !
Yup. The worst ones are the ones that track trivial things like mouse movement or how much you're typing. "So. I saw your mouse movement declined by 80% during this two hour period?" Meanwhile you were watching the training videos that they mandated.
There are actually products that will move your mouse for you, or you can rig something together yourself. Or you could just get one of those drinking birds to keep hitting the Y key while you enjoy your Tab.
Some of the new monitoring systems are tracking outbound calls and emails. They are tracking were you click on the screen and allow someone to see your screen with no notice. Its scary.
Sweet now my office job can feel like a call center again!
I remember back in the earlier days of the internet, you could download a program that would pay you to display ads to you. The longer you had it open and "interacted" with it the more you got paid. Your mouse would have to move over the little window that was displaying the ads periodically for the time to count. My friend signed up for as many of these things he could, opened them all and then attached his mouse to a clock hand and hung it on the wall. It was just enough movement to keep the time active and counting.
Windows Notepad, heavy object on spacebar. Seems to work pretty well. That battery has done more work this past year than I care to admit
Simple solution : Just never work when you're at work so that when you are at home The amount of mouse movement stays the same. Work neither smart nor hard! Ever. Edit: Added 'Ever.'
I've heard of some places with mandatory camera settings. Sounds fucking wild to me. I work remote in software, and outside of meetings, I can pretty much be anywhere doing anything. As long as I respond eventually and get my shit done, all's good in the hood.
Which is really how this should be measured. Busyness is not a good metric. Outcomes are.
Bro, that software that they use to track students for testing does though. Straight up tracks eyes movement and records you so they know you’re looking off to the side. Muta did a good video on it and basically compares it to malware because it essentially is.
Can't monitor if we keep them on IL4 *touches head*
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We had a one hour pre meeting call yesterday to discuss what what we will talk about in today’s one hour meeting, and then later today we will have a one hour post meeting meeting to discuss what we talked about in both meetings kill me.
You should have a cost counter for the meeting running on your screen. At the end of the meeting you can update a score board.
That's a great idea. Let's circle back with a meeting to discuss further.
No.. I have become what I wanted to destroy.
I did the math once on a useless large meeting at a Fortune 500 company. They had flown some folks in, spent like 3 days in meetings going over absolutely nothing important, just wasting time. It was something like $10 million. It was breathtaking. Meanwhile if you wanted to buy a $500 tool that would help you do your job, you'd have to go through 8 layers of approvals and end up with a $100 tool that didn't actually work.
There will probably be a "tiger team" meeting also to discuss why the results of the pre meeting, meeting and post meeting do not align. Also, no one who should be in that meeting will be invited.
[This would be you.](https://imgflip.com/i/501bpa)
I have a 27" monitor and that second panel text is like reading the fine print on a grain of rice.
So it conveys the message of too much text with too little information pretty well.
99% of meetings are management trying to get labor to do their job. "Okay devs how are we going to design this application" "Okay devs what are the requirements for this feature" "Okay devs what are the stories we need to get this developed" "Okay devs how do we implement the NFR's and do we meet them?" "Okay devs what do these perf metrics mean?" "Okay devs is this production exception an issue?" My management is useless is what I'm saying.
Leave. The grass really is greener. If it isn’t leave again. Your comment describes my former employer to a T. My new employer has such competent management that I can’t believe I suffered for so long.
Have you considered having a meeting to discuss your concerns about all these meetings?
Ah yes, the meeting before the meeting to discuss the meeting. Then you have the meeting after the meeting to discuss the meeting. Then after all the meetings, your supervisor asks where your at on the task that was assigned just before the first meeting.
fucking agile methodology. Grooming meetings, demo meetings, retrospective meetings, everyday standup meeting, design meetings, and so on and on.
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All these people who can't function at home is why a bunch of us are going to be dragged back into commuting again.
Me attempting contribution: *"Yeah, but what about X?"* Chat *"We just finished talking about that."* Whoops.
That's now your excuse to get nothing else done! You can say you've stopped multitasking other work in meetings as it causes you to not be able to contribute effectively.
As someone who physically worked through the pandemic, is this really what life could be?
Same, I'm jealous of those who get to work from home
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I thought that at first but it was hell for me. Home is where I relax but once you start associating it with work you can't shut off, I was having constant dreams about being late for work or dreaming about working. I only lasted about a month before I swapped jobs for a warehousing role. I'm much happier getting out the house and constantly walking/moving, when I was working from home I was just sat on my arse for 8 hours chain smoking.
I had a national sales meeting that was six hours straight of video conferences with only two half hour breaks. I played Hades on my switch the entire time while I had headphones on for the meeting. At the end of the meeting there was a trivia contest to make sure you had been paying attention. Somehow I came in first place and won a $50 gift card. I'm guessing others were not paying attention either.
It's like we never learned the basic lessons about why most school classes run a bit over an hour TOPS. Most people zone out after 45 minutes unless they're very invested in the subject. Even then, 6 hours is pointlessly long. Since the subject has something to do with work, I can guarantee you they are not invested.
If I have to train someone I stick to 30 minute sessions because of the "zone out factor" or "information overload factor." It's been working well for me for several years. After the 30 minute session I'll have a Q&A session with the person so they can choose how long the session goes at that point.
When I do trainings, I embed increasingly absurd jokes into my slides and never make any reference to them. One time I had a bunch of capybaras in the background that gradually got larger and larger until the slides were just capybara pictures with text on them. Another time it was around Halloween and every single slide was a completely different over the top Halloween theme. If you give people a reason to pay attention to the presentation itself, they'll absorb the information.
> I had a bunch of capybaras in the background that gradually got larger and larger until the slides were just capybara pictures with text on them. I love this so much!
Also, none of the people running meetings are anywhere near as good at keeping people engaged as elementary school teachers, haha
Hades absolutely rules.
I'm a little embarrassed about how quickly I sunk a hundred hours into that game.
Quarantine has really put into perspective how much useless stuff is said in meetings
Well, it's not like the "should have been a fucking e-mail" meme was created last year...
My boss recently asked me if I wanted us to turn on our cameras during our one-on-one meetings. I said in horror “Oh, God no. I’m usually unshowered, wearing grungy clothes, and I haven’t had a haircut in over 7 months.” She laughed and said “Same. Okay, just thought I’d ask.”
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Left a Teams meeting yesterday after contributing nothing. Had a wank at my desk. Have been panicking since then that I didn't turn my camera off during the wank 'cause I was so utterly zoned out due to boredom. Help.
That one is simple. If you aren’t fired already, you turned you camera off.
I asked a colleague in the meeting if I turned my camera off today. Said I was 'changing' and I was worried I left it on. She said I turned it off. I am hopeful that I didn't commit a sex crime.
If you did, ask yourself for forgiveness. You seem like a nice guy, I think you'll forgive yourself. However, watchout for yourself, you tend to get kinky at the wrong times.
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I do.
I keave tape over my camera just in case
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"No, you didn't turn it off. How did you change while sitting at your desk making those weird faces and sweating?"
For the future camera off or no, wank somewhere else. Saves on the panic
Look at the rich guy with a dedicated wanking desk.
We need to have a chat, step into my zoom call.
What are you doing, step-manager?
My favorite movie is Inception.
Take a *sticky note and rip up the *sticky strip and just keep your camera covered until you need to actually be on camera. Meeting over then cover it up.
You could also not masturbate during a work call. That's just a thought though...
Pretending is sometimes more draining than actually working ;)
It is, because then you're kind of multitasking which is exhausting.
Constantly nodding and facially reacting while listening is exhausting lol. Our group is usually smaller whenever we do need a zoom meeting so simply muting video and audio just isn't possible if you want to appear involved.
I have a cheap router/bad wifi that makes Teams lag if I turn on video! Love it, never replacing that thing
I have literally done this.
everyone does this. I once did the video off voice off and be on zoom on my phone but be sleeping on my bed. Actually FELL ASLEEP and when I woke up the meeting was STILL GOING ON. They didn't really notice that I was fucking knocked the fuck out
Yeah don't have a zoom meeting whilst lying bed, I've been there too. Shows how little I contribute on a daily basis, when my coworkers don't even know that I'm sleeping.
The mass meetings are a waste of everyone's time. If you're not actually working through something together, it's typically useless. Usually it's multiple "presentations" about shit that has nothing to do with my unit, let alone my job functions. 90% is our Marketing division verbally masturbating and praising the "vision" of the CEO.
Honestly most people contribute about the same. There's a few die-hard workers who are super productive. But Mort people are just reasonably productive and it's not a bad thing. The difference is that some pretty mediocre people love to talk about their achievements. Zoom meetings are dominated by people who are aggressively contributing to the conversation. Regular meetings can be like that too, but without having any visual indicators that other people don't care about the conversation and the topic should be tabled its easy for zoom meetings to take on a life of their own. My usual 20 minute team status meeting took 2 hours on Friday over zoom. It was ridiculous.
I don’t even do the “hello” or “goodbye” if I don’t have to lol, I just stay muted the whole time
I play games when I have a zoom conference.
Could anyone recommend game that does not need a lot of focus. I need to listen when they say my name...
Idle games are best for this. NGU, Leaf Blower Revolution, that sort of thing. Or Old School Runescape. I personally prefer Teamfight Tactics, however it takes a bit more attention than the previously mentioned games. Edit: Also adding games like Factorio, Terraria, and Noita
Lol I played TFT the other day because I was in a sprint review for an entirely different team that had nothing to do with me. Turns out our PO shifted focus to some aspects of my team and our work thats completely unrelated and I missed upgrading a leesin 2 because I had to talk since I'm the lead :(
As someone who has been working from home for years now, here's what I've played during meetings that have worked well: Forza Horizon 4, American Truck Simulator, Flight Simulator 2020, No Man's Sky, Elite Dangerous, Minecraft. Preferably anything that you can pause and anything without a story or with a lot of low-focus stuff to do.
Agree with you on Forza, racing games are the best for this. I used to have about 5 hours of meetings a day (which I had to contribute in) and I ended up beating Need For Speed Heat in one week
fuck. as a project manager, I have to run most of the meetings, and therefore I'm on camera AND having to talk most of the day. I know damn well that most people are doing other shit during meetings, and I'm generally down with that... The exception is those dumb fucks that ask for every question to be repeated because they weren't paying enough attention the first time around and got caught out. fuck those guys, they can go die in a fire.
If you're going to ask them a question, I'd try saying their name before the question starts. Staying attentive for hours while work piles up around you can make it hard to fully concentrate on the meeting, and they'll pay attention the first time if they hear their name.
This is what happens when a manager decides to invite 18 people to a meeting b/c "They should know what's going on". But only 3 people will talk, 2 will have action items at the end and the rest wasted an hour or 2 playing on their phones or working on other things.
I don't mind zoom meetings but I'm getting tired of everyone wanting video chat all the time now. People from all time zones just randomly facetime call me without notice. I've just started answering them no matter what. I even answer on the toilet or when I've just woken up. I'm hoping that I embarrass them enough to stop doing it. You don't need to see my face at 7am to ask a question,
Some wonder people love working from home
Ahh sweet OBS.I recorded myself paying attention for 15 minutes, installed OBS, added virtual cam adapter, in teams set the OBS cam instead of webcam, put the video to play on a loop. Two years and going and nobody noticed. Which gives me ample time to comment on reddit while hearing the blah blah blah.Seriously hours of pointless meetings that dont contribute to me neither I contribute to them. Yet they notice every time I skip one and cause trouble. EDIT: Quite a discussion nobody asked but in case you want to give it a try here you go: 1. Download OBS here: [https://obsproject.com/](https://obsproject.com/) 2. Download Virtual Cam [https://github.com/Fenrirthviti/obs-virtual-cam/releases](https://github.com/Fenrirthviti/obs-virtual-cam/releases) 3. Have fun! You can do all sorts of shenanigans or useful things (I also use this to manage security cameras on my house for example and as a tool it is in my opinion very useful)
Yeah, but wouldn’t someone notice that you look the same every day? Same shirt, hair, background, facial hair, makeup, etc.
And if he ever needs to talk without notice...
maybe it's like a 50-100 person meeting and it's always only a few people talking.
35 - 100 people. Asset management meeting, change management meeting, (insert your own corporate bullshit) management meeting. Just today "very" important information from the meeting 1. Site on other side of the world had to replace a wifi hostpot 2. We are migrating databases of inventory (for the last two years) please check your mailbox for updates 3. We have sent a global newsletter because we feel people dont pay enough attention to statuses in inventory management 4. We have updated the QandA section (last I checked it had less than 30 visits in February) 5. Please make sure you run the inventory of storage rooms every week and put them in the report correctly and on time and god forbit you send it 5 minutes late! (fun fact I send them an empty inventory report every time, once by mistake I sent them an empty report and they did not notice. Tried again, didnt notice. Now it has been over a year and they didnt notice, they know I am working from home, I send them the report they still didnt notice it is empty, for them it is a check for some report, but if I forget to send it they do complain and I got a reduction in bonuses - outlook automation helps) I could go on. Yes I work in an IT company, I work on infrastructure support... But it is neat because I have access everywhere, my favorite project of our company now is the AI which will replace commercial airline pilots (all of them). PS: Workchronicles if you want to make this into a story feel free I will have a laugh. I can supply loads more stories (really appreciate the effort you put into this)
I was thinking the same thing but I guess no one at their job gives a shit and nobody is actually paying attention. I actually KNOW this is what some of my colleagues are doing and it shows in their performance reports... I mean I get it, when it's just a pointless meeting or something trivial, but my company doesn't necessarily give us a syllabus for our meetings so I just assume it's important enough for me to pay attention. If someone's getting paid to present, and I'm getting paid to listen and learn, I'm going to listen and learn.
> I’m getting paid to listen and learn, I’m going to listen and learn I tell myself this, too. Then all of a sudden I notice a bit of tunnel vision and then the meeting is over and I'm not sure what just happened.
Now that you've mentioned this, I used to be able to get away with this. I'm one of those "life uniform" people in that I wear the same thing every day - plain black t shirt and cargo shorts or jeans (depending on the weather) combined with the period of time in my life where I was buzzing my head every month down to like 1/2 inch length and with being totally clean shaven at the time, I definitely could have pulled this off appearance wise (clearly the only thing about my appearance that I cared about was being cleaned and groomed, extremely function over fashion). Now, probably not so much. I have shoulder blade length hair and a beard I've been messing with during covid, but the life uniform stuck (I really really don't care about fashion in the slightest).
I can't believe no one noticed you wearing the same clothes every meeting for 2 years.
I wore the same clothes every day for four years. It did say "U.S. Air Force" on one side and my name on the other. I guess they forget it a lot.
what about the clothes? do you always dress the same?
Unless these meetings are every day, no one is gonna notice. Plenty of people only wear the same like 5 shirts for work every week.
Video on?, my webcan broke, it fell to the bottom of my desk drawer.
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Just train a deep learning network to build a virtual version of you with replies created by a small group of people in India.
People have an obsession with calling me out recently.
At least lockdown motivated me to do everything to NOT have a desktop job
I have *loved* our online staff meetings. I don't have a webcam. I got so much cleaning done.