Silver lining: I switch away from the gallery view to focus only on the person speaking. Or they’re distracted like me, shooing cats from keyboards or eating their own lemon Luna bars. They are keeping up with email on the side or studying other meeting attendees in the gallery view. How many times is she going to say “um?” Why does she grimace every time someone asks her a question? In reality, my team is not waiting for me to mess up. Still, I imagine what their thoughts could be. I joined one of the most supportive and kind teams with which I’ve ever worked. Are they waiting for me to fail as I stumble through my words? Of course not. Cue my rejection sensitive dysphoria - that sour sidecar of ADHD. Everyone is staring at me.Īs I update my team members on a project, my brain is on edge as 10 faces stare blankly at me. Now I can wiggle around and strengthen my core at the same time. Silver lining: I splurged on a balance ball chair. But what if people can hear me chewing my lemon Luna bar? I develop Zoomuteaphobia, a self-classified condition marked by paranoia that the mute button will fail. I switch my video off and dash downstairs to the pantry and then back upstairs with my headphones still in my ears. It’s usually about 10 minutes into a Zoom call when I start craving the distraction of a snack. Recording in-person meetings would be too difficult (and creepy) to do in real life. And with the host’s permission, I can record meetings for later reference. Silver lining: Noticing personal touches is a way to connect with my team in an authentic way. Unless a presentation is shared on screen, my mind wanders. For the most part, people with ADHD don’t do well with auditory learning or cues. It’s like an Easter egg hunt - except everyone else is listening to the meeting and I am hunting for eggs. But it’s impossible not to sleuth out other backgrounds. What did the guy from marketing just say? I almost lost it when a cat walked across the desk of a coworker with an outer space background. We laugh as pets and children wiggle onto laps during Zoom calls. Studying our co-workers in their native environments is captivating. Many adults with ADHD - including me - function like social anthropologists and hyperfocus on new stimuli. But here are the four main challenges I face… and the silver lining of each. I don’t think Zoom is as awkward for most people as it is for me. I was able to virtually interview for my job during the April 2020 surge and bond with my new team. But for those with ADHD, the Brady Bunch-esque grids of meeting attendees continue to pulverize us with visual over-stimulation. Paying attention in a virtual meeting ignoring all of life’s noise became a challenge for everyone. Office meetings - once held in bare rooms with limited distractions - were now multimedia affairs with kids and pets as a backdrop. Parents scrambled to connect kids with their teachers on the web conferencing platform. It only took a few weeks for Zoom to become a household verb. As the pandemic emptied schools and offices last March, a country founded on freedom was reduced to two action items.
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