Conversations

I don’t know about you, but turning on the Conversations feature in Outlook can get me in trouble, if not just really embarrassed.

After I updated a meeting invite today with last week’s agenda and materials (aack!), I knew I had to disable that Conversations feature.

I was glad when Conversations came about. It let me see the subject email thread all in one place. No having to search or filter by someone’s name . . . the thread showed all the messages on that subject. In one place. Loved that!

But . . . it’s easy to not pay too close attention to the date of the conversations. Like today: Someone forwarded today’s meeting invite this morning, so that notice popped up in my Outlook. Right above that, however, was a message asking if I’d attach the meeting materials to today’s calendar invite (the request was in the same thread because I enabled Conversations). Except: That message right above there wasn’t new, today. It was from Jan. 20. I didn’t pay attention to the date of that message . . . all I saw was the request to attach the meeting materials to “today’s” meeting.

Which I did. Which was the wrong thing to do. Because, today is Jan. 27 and the materials in that message were for the Jan. 20 meeting – oof!

So, after I fixed the correction, I turned off Conversations.

Let’s see how long it takes me until I go back to using the Conversations feature (because I really do like that feature overall).

If you don’t like the Conversations feature for your inbox, it’s easy to deactivate.

Open View. Uncheck Show as Conversations. Then click This folder.

Skype

Before Covid-19, we’d have in-person monthly Safety Meetings at work, with just a few people joining via conference call. This month, we offered Skype with call-in lines so team members didn’t have to show up at the office (if everyone attended, it would have been a little over 200 team members). Did it work smoothly?

Nope, not as smoothly as it could have worked, with respect to technical difficulties.

Why? Well, some of it was lack of communication on who was supposed to do what, but that’s another story that doesn’t need to be shared here. We heard that some people couldn’t hear the speaker. One of our savvy admins then logged into a laptop and used that as the speaker. Turns out the desktop we were presenting from didn’t have microphone capability. Plus, I think some of those on the receiving end didn’t have audio capability, until they also dialed in to the conference line.

I sat down with a couple of the other admins afterward and came up with a list of Lessons Learned. One of the lessons dealt with the set up and logging in to Skype (admins were responsible for dialing into the conference line, plus logging in to Skype and getting things ready on the big screen).

I don’t think the person that logged in to Skype enabled the settings beforehand. I heard a comment from someone who joined via Skype afterward that everyone was shown as a Presenter.

And at the beginning of the log-in, the admin looked at her calendar and dialed the conference line number showing there. I’m asking people on the conference line to speak up and tell me if they could hear me. No responses. No responses after a few times of asking for a sound check. Someone questioned whether the right conference line was used. I hung up and dialed the number, and bingo! People were waiting on the line for the speaker to start. We find out later that the admin who first dialed in, her calendar hadn’t been updated when the new conference line number was added to the meeting invite. What the heck, Outlook? 

Overall, our first Skype/conference call Safety Meeting wasn’t a total loss. We got through the slide deck as expected. And we’ll be sure to use the Lessons Learned before our meeting in April.

The teacher in me came out afterward: I whipped up a little Skype cheat sheet and shared it with the admins.

 

Teleworking broke a habit

So, I’ve been working from home since March 18. Before teleworking, I would come home from work and wind down. One of the things I was really good about remembering to do after I got off work was to take my allergy pill. It was basically a habit . . . come home from, get something to drink, swallow that pill.

Since teleworking – for two days! – I forgot to take my allergy pill!

Why? Because my habit was broken. I wasn’t coming home from work.

I was already at home. There was no leaving the office. Catching the bus. Getting in the car at the park-and-ride. Driving home. Walking in the front door. Changing out of my work clothes. Going to the kitchen to get a drink to swallow that pill.

That was habit (a good habit for me so my allergen-induced asthma wouldn’t rear its ugly head).

The habit was broken the day I began teleworking.

And that made me forget to take my allergy pill for two days.

My new mindset: Don’t break the good habits just because you are working from home.

Speaking of working from home, our Regional Business Manager shared with us this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/smarter-living/how-to-work-from-home-if-youve-never-done-it-before.html (thank you Regional Business Manager!).

A quick glance through, and guess what? The author suggests keeping the same schedule.

I need to do that, keep my schedule of taking my allergy pill, even though I’m no longer walking through the front door after work.