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When starting a session online with groups, these days I tend to ask them to do four things – all to do with reducing distractions. It goes something like this:

Can you make yourself a little more comfortable?

‘Please do whatever you need to do make yourself even 2% more comfortable’.

As a minimum, I suggest using the chair as it’s intended – sitting right back in it, letting the back of your chair hold you, putting your bum and hips right into the angle, having it at a level so that your feet can be on the floor. Be grounded and held.

Other things too: if you need the loo, please go now. Need your tea topping up – ditto. What about moving to a more comfortable chair, or somewhere where you see daylight? Undo your trouser belt a notch, or pop off screen and take off your bra (yes, I do sometimes say that – although I will likely know the group – and have read the room…)

Put your phone on silence – and put it where you can’t see it.

‘Please turn your phone off … and now put it where you can’t see it’.

Next is phones. Of course put it on silent, that’s the minimum. Unless your mum is undergoing emergency surgery – or an equivalently big thing for you – and you’re waiting for a call.

But also put it somewhere where you can’t see it, out of your eyeline. I can generally see people not liking this, twitching a bit.
I say I know it’s hard, when we’re so umbilically attached. But I tell them about an article that found that 13% of our attention was on that phone while we could still see it or if we knew it was still nearby simply because of the possibility of receiving messages. Our capacity to be present, was reduced by 13%. The click bait for that article is that being able to see our phones makes us 13% more stupid. That usually gets a laugh. And so I ask if people would be willing experiment with that for the duration of the session, however twitchy that might make them.

(I show them a small plastic box that I got from Rymans – I put my phone in it when I’m running sessions because I absolutely – shockingly – know the compulsive pull in myself to check my phone even while I’m the one running the session!)

Turn off Notifications on Teams

‘Now turn off Notifications on Teams. For anyone who doesn’t know how to do that – could someone please shout out with instructions for them’ .

It’s not a fair competition, to try to ignore the beeps and flashes of Notifications on Teams, each providing a tiny dopamine hit, an invisible jolt of excitement and possibility. We crave the stimulation they bring, and often struggle with the long-form presence that’s needed in a learning session, the form of concentration that means we have to drop into a lower gear. But you can’t be fully present to this world here for the next few hours if you are always being tempted by the incoming from the outer world.

Don’t do other work.

‘And for the duration of the session, please don’t do any other work’

Yes, I say, I know, you can likely get in a quick reply to an email or a WhatsApp while you’re in this session. But we also know that it’s patently obvious when someone is doing emails, I say. Your eyes are tracking differently, your posture and head position is different. Sometimes we can see your hands or fingers moving.

I might say that it’s distracting at best and insulting and even hurtful at worst, to be doing something else when someone is speaking.

‘So please put all other work to one side while we’re together’.

Sometimes, I might ask: does anyone have anything that has to be replied to before they can settle in? In which case, I suggest taking 5 mins now before we start: either we’ll all take 5 mins now for mop-up work, and then come back to this room. Or the person who has an urgent thing to attend to either steps away from the session, or turns their camera off to indicate they’re elsewhere, and then rejoins.

This isn’t meant to expose, or shame. Just hold a boundary of respect for everyone else in the room for whom your full presence is a gift. Medicine for these distracted times we’re in.

And there’s compassion in there too, reflecting the fact that some people will have ricocheted into the session with not a single break for many hours beforehand. That’s not a human way to work. Yes, we might take longer to get going. But let’s get some human foundations in place for the work we’re about to do.

H x

(pic: Marina Strocchi)

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