Prior to the pandemic, I spent, give or take less than 10 minutes looking at myself in the mirror on an average day.
How much time did spend looking at yourself in the mirror? Be honest. Unless you were getting ready to go out, it probably wasn’t a large percentage of your day.
Fast forward to 2022, and COVID-19 put massive amounts of people in front of a computer with a camera. That camera offered one of the few safe real-time interactive opportunities.
And this is where many began seeing themselves speaking, listening, getting distracted, etc.
To Camera or Not to Camera?
When the pandemic started, it was common at Opal, the company I worked for, to have everyone’s cameras on during every meeting. That’s right. Every meeting.
For good or ill, that’s how things played out. 💁♂️
Gathering entire org, cameras on. ✅
Team meeting, cameras on. ✅
One-on-ones, cameras on. ✅
And, for the vast majority of org, cameras were on. Was it helpful to see other’s expressions? Heck yea it was!
But I couldn’t help but notice that despite my best efforts, my eyes kept jumping back to my panel.
Hello Me, Meet the Real Me
So there it was, every day I, and others, spent hours and hours looking at a screen with a moving image of our likeness. And the mind couldn’t stop snapping back to it when someone else or I was speaking. WTF!
I don’t want to look at myself while on a video call.
And then…
At some point during lockdown, while looking in the mirror, something felt… off.
Do I look this way on calls?
The mirror. The calls. The mirror. The calls. The mirror. The calls.
It became a self perpetuating bad habit that I couldn’t stop.
Every time I looked at myself, my eyes would jump to my hairline and wonder, “Is stress making my hairline recede?”
With little available outside the online working world, I couldn’t get away from the routine, and it began messing with my well-being. That got me thinking, what can I change to stop this from happening?
How to Change Habits and Stop Looking at Yourself
Old or new, habits affect us all day, every day. The pandemic created new habits, and it’s possible to undo those you don’t want in your life.
We spend a shocking 43 percent of our day doing things without thinking about them. That means that almost half of our actions aren’t conscious choices but the result of our non-conscious mind nudging our body to act along learned behaviors.
https://www.goodhabitsbadhabits.com
If I’ve learned anything from Good Habits, Bad Habits, is that there are simple ways to change bad habits. One method is to avoid/hide the catalyst of a habit.
When it was released by Zoom, I immediately started using the feature, Hide My Video, to hide my own video display on my screen. GLORY! and REJOICE!
With a few clicks, I hid my video and nearly immediately I found that I could focus on the conversation better. Gone was the impulsive desire to look at my video feed. It was glorious!
Suggestion/Feedback
Zoom… please make this an option to default to for all meetings
Every other developer… please add the option to Hide My Video, and make it a default option.
And that, as thee saying goes, was the ballgame for me.
In short time, I stopped noticing my hairline, and can confidently say, “No, I wasn’t going bald. It was the Zoom effect!” 🙃