What I’ve noticed
My team used to hang out online all day.
We’d peek in around 6 or 7. Do some research with the away message up. Have coffee.
Be around for market hours and all the pings. So many pings.
Then at 5 we’d decompress and chat.
Or go have a beer and come back online and talk about headlines. Not formally, just oh I saw this and you don’t have to reply till tomorrow. OH WELL I am online let’s chat now.
Now, I punk out from all the meetings around 3 or 4. They sign off exactly at five.
I come back online out of guilt and I am there by myself. Which is fine. I don’t expect anyone to be online.
But … I was telling someone, I am the resident extrovert. Most meetings, I do a lot of talking or at least a lot of coaxing and encouraging participation.
The introverts are exhausted from the meetings. But the extrovert feels BEAT.
I had tried so hard to minimize the meetings. Now I have to get better at shortening the myriad meetings.
The staff and I were saying (offline — we ain’t online for this shit) that we miss our evenings when we did brainstorming together.
Now not a soul wants to talk to another soul AGAIN until the first meeting of the day. And not even then.
I remember cautioning the deciders that this might happen. That the team that chats on Saturdays and sends out surprise issues on Sundays may just delete Teams every night and stay offline.
Good for them, really. And me too.
But man, it sure feels different now.