Many companies have decided to carry working from home, even after the end of the lockdown. And we know that this is not all good. Many of my clients are struggling with issues like people missing the social contact of the office.
It may seem a minor problem, but last week I was talking to a CEO in London, and she said that her teams are having memory problems. They are struggling to remember what happened in zoom calls.
Well, we may think that they were probably answering emails during the call, or they are stressed working from home, that´s why they are forgetting things. But I believe it´s more than that. The human brain is configured to remember things related to the environment. Memory was developed to allow us to walk back to the cave, to remember where the source of water in the jungle was, or to know that we should not eat this kind of plant. So memory exists to help us survive in a 3-Dimensional ever-changing environment.
This is why we say things like: I was driving home and I had an idea, or we talked about it last time you came to my office. Our brains are always noticing what changed around, and always connecting events to the place where they happened. This is how we survived for millions of years, and our brains still work like that.
The best memory trick to help you remember things is the Loci Method, and it works by connecting places with the things you want to remember.
Back to the working from home problem, everything was working fine in the office environment, a different kind of jungle, but still a 3D changing environment, still a physical reference to help our memory.
But what we have now is a zoom or whatever call. A small flat screen with little faces on it. No 3D environment. No change of scenario. The usual references to help our memories work as they should are not there anymore. The result? Less memory retention.
So if the home office is here to stay, what can we do to help our teams, and ourselves, to function better in this new environment?
Well, until virtual 3D scenarios are available in our calls, here are some ideas to help you and your teams improve memory retention and perhaps reduce the stress of working from home.
The key here is the visual environment. So the first thing I would recommend is to use the fake backgrounds available in most apps. I know, they may look weird, but if you use a different background every time you meet with your team, you may be helping them remember what was discussed.
If you don´t want to use fake backgrounds, you can turn your camera to show a different angle of your room, just to make it different.
Second, ask them to use the speaker view – the one where whoever is speaking will show big on the screen. This will help them notice the image details and improve memorisation.
You can also change the way you dress. If you are always showing up with the same clothes, you are not helping to create the necessary variety the brain needs to retain information.
Something else you can do – you can have more than one place for your calls. Perhaps now in the spring, you can use your back garden. Or another room in your house. This will help you as well, as your environment is changing.
You can also suggest to your people to do the same – to use a different rooms or places for calls.
So, these are my suggestions, but I am sure you have other ideas, so please share them in the comments.
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