One thing I struggle with is frustration. My frustration, truth be told, frustrates me. I say this lightly, but it’s also a big deal in my ongoing self-betterment (Make Jasmin Happier) journey. I’m sure that on the other side of my frustration is just some bitter blend of low-lying anxiety, low-lying workaholism, and a not-so-low-lying dramatic flair.
This is something I am aggressively working on (if you’ve been on this journey too, I’d love to know your lessons learned) and though I’m incredibly imperfect, my somewhat new daily mindfulness practice is helping me tremendously.
That said, one of my biggest pet peeves (which I got into last week when I talked to you about “the f-you in my mind”) is when my time is wasted.
I’m so overly sensitive to this, in fact, that I’m sure that the last few months of my life involved somewhat of an over-correction, the pendulum swinging so far back that I might have removed myself a bit too enthusiastically from many of my social and professional obligations. I had 800,000 emails, so I stopped replying to any at all (and after a few misfires trying other apps, I ultimately found great relief with my email problem by using the Superhuman app). I was overwhelmed by texts, so I stopped replying to those, too (don’t take it personally). I basically stopped everything that wasn’t completely necessary to my survival or my job(s).
Put most simply, I stopped doing anything that was reactive (on your timeline) and focused instead solely on things that were proactive (on my timeline).
But now that I’m coming up for air and finding a teeny-tiny bit more balance, I’m reconsidering my relationship to reactive communication (that means I might finally respond to some of you … if you haven’t written me off yet, that is). It’s clear to me that the most useful way of dealing with any type of reactive correspondences (email, texts, DMs, and even old-fashioned phone calls) is by calendaring a very short amount of time each day or few days to focus on replying.
As for the rest of the hours, I’m doing my very best to be extremely intentional (<—my wife’s least favorite word!) about how I spend my time. I time-block things like Substack writing, magazine editing, brainstorming, and calendaring (yes, I calendar calendaring. In fact, you’ll find me writing out my week’s work every Monday at a Caveday session).
All of that said, there is a demon lurking amongst us, and I’m terrified of him. His name is Zoom Meetings, he’s an evil sonofabitch.
So hear my plea: It’s time we significantly decrease the amount of time we spend with that evil, evil Zoom Meeting man. Be damned!
If I had a pancake for every time I had to hop onto a Zoom Meeting where I was barely needed, or a Zoom meeting that started with enough idle chit-chat to fill a stadium of incredibly boring people, I’d be able to open an IHOP on every corner (at least my IHOP franchise would be totally vegan, so I guess there’s that).
And since I’m still angling for that empress position, I thought I’d take some time to write out my aspirational rules around optimizing Zoom Meeting culture:
Limit the chit-chat. I get that we’re all lonely and that remote work can be isolating, but time is precious (it’s energy, y’all!), and I think there should be rules around how many times we need to hear about how your fridge is broken or your dog pooped in your bed again. One friend tells me that at her company, folks tend to hop onto calls a couple minutes early, and that’s when the chit-chat happens. When it’s the official time for the meeting to start, chit-chat-bye-bye.
Set short meetings. OMG. I want to make this a poster and get it professionally framed and send it to everyone I know (except I don’t have time to because I’m stuck on another f*cking Zoom call and it went over). There is simply no reason to have meetings that are an hour. Make meetings 20 minutes as a general rule, and if there’s a lot to cover, make them 50. But avoid the half-hour or hour-long sit-down sessions. They are a whopping eighty percent less effective than you think they are (I just made up that statistic, but I bet I’m close to right). I guarantee that most people are checking their emails or are muted because they are typing something (or perhaps texting) and not paying one iota of attention. You guys, Zoom culture is FLAWED (and I almost never write in caps, so clearly I mean it). Trust that your colleagues will get their work done, optimize the meetings by making them very short, and stop wasting everyone’s time (especially your own).
Stick to the short meetings. When it’s done, it’s done. Seriously. It’s disrespectful to keep meetings going longer than the allotted time. Also, people zone out. Think of therapy sessions: Even if you’re in the middle of a great big revelation about your parents’ narcissism and how that is why you married your high school fling when you were 20 (so young!) even though your needs aren’t being met (and forget about a good sex life!) and you are pretty sure you’re gay but you have three kids and it would be incredibly dramatic to get divorced … and then, suddenly, the time’s up for your session, and the meeting ends. That might feel abrupt, but it’s not; it’s responsible. (P.S. End it and come out of the closet. Stop engaging your narcissist parents. You’re welcome and that’ll be three-hundred bucks. You can Venmo me.)
Limit the amount of Zoom calls your workplace has per day and per week. I had a friend recently confide to me, in almost a braggy way, that she had eight back-to-back Zoom calls the other day. Not okay. How are we supposed to get any real work done? This isn’t cute.
Limit the amount of Zoom calls you accept per day or per week. I can’t make a specific recommendation for you here since this will vary from person to person, but speaking in generalities, how about no more than two a day or four a week? One tip is to mark your calendar as “busy” even when you don’t have meetings with others, so that your colleagues don’t try to overload your calendar with Zoomg meetings.
Zoom fatigue is real. Don’t discount it. (Also, make sure you have an ergonomically correct chair.) Can you imagine if your gravestone says, “Here lies Lulu.” (This would be especially weird if your name isn’t Lulu.) “She spent most of her time on Zoom.” Or maybe the obit would read, “Lulu died of Zoom fatigue but everyone just thought her screen was frozen and the meeting carried on.” You guys, Zoom fatigue is real. Can we not?
Zoom culture is basically just normalizing shallow work and is the opposite of deep work. We can’t expect to get real projects done without lots of deep work sessions built into our schedules. This great big life lesson was recently drummed into me when I listened to the audiobook version of Deep Work. For me, though it’s hard to pinpoint, I’m pretty sure that the more shallow work I do, the more my soul withers and dies. I actually think a big part of my angst and my frustration can be traced back to my lack of deep, creative work. When I bake that into my calendar and stick with it, I feel accomplished, gratified, and in my element. I don’t feel that way when I am muting myself on Zoom calls that I don’t need to be on.
Pay yourself first. Write in those deep work sessions and prioritize them. I actually love looking at this as an example of “pay yourself first.” Every time I get a paycheck, I put a certain percentage of it into savings. Why not do the same with a percentage of our work week? If you’re like me and you calendar your weeks (like I’ve told you before, I love my Ink + Volt planner), decide how much deep work you need to really succeed in your life (this is the one life you’ve got, and you are currently living it, so treat your time with respect), and calendar that shit in.
Meetings of any kind are highly overrated. This is also something I learned from listening to Deep Work. We need to transform remote work culture into something that requires deep trust of ourselves and one another. We also need some degree of autonomy in order to succeed. Can the topic for that Zoom meeting you want to make instead be dealt with in a quick email, Slack message, or perhaps saved for your next weekly check-in meeting?
I know they aren’t likely in view, but wear pants anyway. If you take one piece of advice from me, let it be that one.
Here’s to no longer wasting our precious time.
xo,
jazz
One Thing I’m Jazzed About
I was interviewed on the Plant Based News podcast, hosted by my friend Robbie Lockie. The episode was just released. Huzzah!
We discussed veganism (duh), as well as some other hard-hitting stuff like classism, antiracism, and the one thing everyone should know about how to be a fabulous vegan. Now that you’ve canceled all your Zoom meetings and have all of that time on your hands suddenly, I hope you tune in!