SWPTA Blog – “Covid has Turned me into a Gnat!!

Like you, I’m often sick about hearing the word ‘pandemic’ or ‘Covid’, and even more so as an excuse for something … i.e. ‘Covid made me do it’! However, for today’s Blog… I’m going to do just that! To set the stage; I have been working from home [WFH] for the better part of 10 years now, quite successfully by the standards of being able to stay focused, average high levels of output and not allow home distractions to derail what I may be doing at any given time. Now, I had variety in that I traveled a fair amount for work reasons [and personal, but that’s an entirely different topic more aptly along the lines of ‘Covid made me NOT do it!’], and I also have had the luxury of a local office to report in to, should I need some additional social stimulation in the form of water cooler chat, want to feel ‘cool’ by having happy hour downtown after work in some trendy restaurant, or for important collaboration style meetings.

Almost immediately in early 2020 when WFH orders were put in place across my entire work organization, we turned cameras on for every internal meeting. Yes, you heard that right…. Every internal meeting. We won’t talk about my embarrassment when I was on with a prospective client last March and had decided it was a ‘don’t do my hair, make-up OR put on proper work clothes day’ and they too wanted to turn on cameras! I learned quickly that cameras were an automatic for any type of communication and got used to it.

I didn’t realize how used to it, I had become, however, until one day months into the pandemic I got a call on my phone… not a Zoom call, a Skype call, a GoToMeeting call… but the actual phone [no it wasn’t the first in months of course, but it was the one that got me thinking something had changed]. The call was more than a few minutes long and I found my self utterly unable to focus on what the caller was saying to me. My mind was wandering, my hands were fidgeting, my eyes were roaming around my office, very unsure what to do. I have been taking phone calls for the better part of ten years as the main way to do business, and here I was completely unable to function with something so simple and commonplace only months before.

I have learned to adapt since then, realizing that when my phone rings, I need to get up and walk around… or pick up a pen and start doodling [this has been a lifelong habit, but Covid has also exacerbated this] to keep my mind focused. If I am unable to turn my camera on for a meeting for whatever reason, the amount of mental energy I must exude to stay on track is shocking. It’s worse than Zoom Fatigue for me! The once normal distractions around me at home that never impacted me whatsoever, have now turned me into a dog with a butterfly… the attention span of a Gnat!

I can’t be the only person experiencing this; I’m sure Google will put out some research findings in years as to how Covid has created a new form of ADD, and I’ll be a poster child for that. I’d love to learn some new focus tips and tricks from others, so please feel reach to reach out and share with me how you are coping in this new ‘cameras on’ environment.