Walking Conference Calls: Optimal Performance Hack

147.11 Miles While on Conf Calls (Vivofit)

Get Paid to Walk & Talk on Conference Calls

Why sit at your desk for every hour of daily conference calls? Why not walk while you talk? Nobody said you had to sit and stare at your monitor.I walked 147.11 miles last month while on work conference calls. I guess you could call this a Life Hack.  After I told a few friends about this newly discovered Stick It to The Man technique their response was

“You have to write a blog about that”.

Before I divulge my secrets to getting paid to walk and talk on conference calls, let me offer you some comedic relief.  If you spend hours each day on conference calls then you need to read this article but first you need to watch this video from Tripp & Tyler.

Motivated to move

Now that you are motivated to find a better way to participate or even lead conference calls, let me help you.  Back in January while sitting in a meeting in frigid New Jersey, I caught a glimpse of a guy outside walking the parking lot.  I asked my co-workers if they knew what he was doing.

Over the course of the last year they watched him faithfully get outside and walk up and down every row of the parking lot.  As a result he lost over 100 lbs.  While they sat back and ate their fried chicken and stuffed risotto pasta, he walked and walked and walked himself to better health.

Removing the perceived obstacles

Walking a parking lot might sound awful to you.  You wish you could walk on a nice sunny trail in the woods.  Maybe you are a treadmill person who would rather walk and watch TV on the monitor?

I get it.

The idea of going out and walking a parking lot at lunchtime means you have to:

  • Have a pair of running shoes to change into
  • Put on deodorant after and before
  • Bundle up because the weather isn’t ideal today
  • (Insert other excuses here)

You could look at it this way or you could simply stand up from your desk, walk outside in your work clothes, with your work shoes, with your work dress coat and get your butt walking.  If you must have those items above, then leave them at your office with a spare set in your car.

If you know what your excuses will be, then you can eliminate them in advance of the resistance.

Unspoken rules are a myth

We often live under a set of rules that no one actually ever spoke or wrote down.  We sit during every conference call because we work in an office. We sit in the conference room or our office because that is what the social norm is.

Everyone else is sitting.
I guess I am supposed to be sitting.

Employee handbook

Try and find the section in your employee handbook titled Conference Call Requirements.  What you can’t find that section?  It’s because there isn’t one.

For the first eighteen years of my working career, I was convinced that my employee handbook mandated the following:

  1. You must be sitting while on a conference call.  You must sit at your desk, in the conference room, at the airport, or in your car.
  2. If you are not sitting, then you must be distracted and not providing value to the discussion.
  3. Every employee will take notes while attending the conference call and therefore each employee needs to be sitting.

Conclusion: There is not a rule that says you have to sit

Professionalism remains important

If you are going to attempt to break the rules of the herd, then there is a way to do this well.  There are also a few ways to really screw this up.

1) Is it ok with you if I walk while we talk?

Start with asking this question and ask for the other people’s support before you begin walking during the call. By gaining their agreement, then you are honoring the importance of the conference call and their time.  You do not want your co-workers to feel that you are not paying attention or are out goofing off picking up your dry cleaning while talking with them.

Key phrases: If you don’t mind or is it ok with you

2) You may hear some background noise while we are talking

It is critical that you communicate to the other people on the call that they may hear background noise and inform them exactly what they may hear during the call.  I live in a neighborhood that is constantly building new homes.  In the background there are dogs barking, dump trucks passing by and other sounds that can be distracting at times.

I have found that if you communicate what these sounds are in advance, people are much more comfortable knowing than guessing.

I’ve found this to be helpful when in an airport as well.

“Sam I am in an airport, you may hear some background noise as I am boarding a flight to xxx.
I hope this won’t be too distracting for you? “

3) Use an earpiece or wired earbuds

It is much more difficult to talk while holding your phone against your ear.  Secondly the outdoor environment reduces the noise quality significantly.  I have found that if I plug in my earbuds or an earpiece then I can maximize my listening and talking volume and therefore not reduce my level of participation.

My new friend Matthew Kruchko recommends the ERA by Jawbone.  He too is a home office, business traveling family guy who is on the move a lot and swears by this Bluetooth earpiece.

4) Use the Mute button

You must learn to use the mute button.  Most people would improve the conference call experience for others if they would learn to use the mute function.  Even if you are sitting at your desk or in a conference room you should be using the mute feature a lot anyway.

I have been on hundred’s of conference calls (like the video portrays) where people’s dogs are barking, kids are asking for a snack and they hammer on their keyboard.

5) Not every call is a Walk & Talk candidate

Here is a list of call types that I do not apply this Life Hack to:

  • My boss for our weekly call
  • Prospective clients
  • First time interviews
  • All company meetings
  • Any call that I am leading that requires me to share my screen or present information

Consequences of doing this wrong

If you use your best professional judgment then you can make this work for you every single week for the rest of your career.  Misjudge the time, place and approach to this and immediately people will think you are not paying attention, not working hard, not professional, disinterested and not committed to your work.

Do this well and you can Stick-It to the Man with every mile.

Garmin Vivofit

I measured every mile and steps walked with my new fitness band from Garmin-Vivofit.  As they say, you can only improve what you measure.

The Vivofit measures every step you take each day, monitors your sleep, and scolds you with a flashing red bar when you’ve sat too long.  I would highly recommend investigating a few of these fitness bands to both help motivate as well as measure your miles.

Still not convinced?

Here are a few more resources to help convince you that sitting is killing us one conference call at a time.

Nilofer Merchant’s TedTalk 2013 –Got a meeting? Take a walk

Podcast interview with Nilofer Merchant-Sitting is killing us

Harvard Business Review: Sitting is the Smoking of Our Generation

How Sitting All Day is Damaging Your Body-LifeHacker

How to stick it to The Man today

Joy Bucket-Key Ingredient in Regularly Sticking the Man

Two quick requests before I divulge my secrets on how to Stick It to the Man.

  1. I’m usually pretty upbeat in my writing. If this one seems a bit grim in the intro, hang on to the end for the sunshine to break through.
  2. Please don’t take this article to Human Resources and blow the whistle on us non-conformists.  I’m not going to give you advice on how to cheat on your expense report, pretend you are working when you are at the baseball game, or the like. This is a more covert approach.

Working for The Man

For a lot of years, I worked too much and played too little. My kids were little, my marriage was fragile, my career was young, my financial resources were limited, and my vacation time amounted to less than ten days a year.

If you’ve been working in your career for more than five-to-eight years, this idea of The Man will make sense to you.

If you’re married, have kids, a mortgage, and some general desire to “be successful,” this story will not need a lot of translation.

You’re already feeling the angst of The Man.

Get ready to revolt.

Who is The Man?

The phrase “stick it to the Man” encourages resistance to authority and essentially means “fight back” or “resist,” either openly or via sabotage. (Wikipedia)

The Man isn’t our boss, our company, or our customers; the Man is bigger than all of them. The Man is more intrusive than the government. He is more controlling and persuasive than any one person, organization, or individual in power.

The Man is

  • Mortgage payments
  • Deadlines
  • Obligations galore
  • The pressure to have green grass
  • The sticker on our windshield reminding us to not exceed 3,000 miles before the next oil change
  • The owners manual recommendations on everything we own
  • The house we live in
  • The Jones’s who live next door
  • The pressure to give our kids a better life than we had
  • The cars we drive
  • The PTA
  • The pressure to live an epic life
  • The word “should”

About eight years ago, the weight and pressure of working for The Man started making my knees buckle. With every additional grain of sand added, every increase in PSI (pounds per square inch) on my chest seemed to be foreplay for an inevitable implosion.

Kind of grim, huh?

Come on, haven’t you felt this same stuff yourself? If you had the pen, you could tell us plenty about your woes with The Man.

Remember, hang on to the end.

Transition the balance of power

The Man wasn’t standing over me every day imposing his dogmatic regime. I was allowing my obligatory beliefs and my allegiance to him to control my actions, decisions, and priorities.

How do I stop living under the weight of what I’m supposed to do and start living what I want to do?

How do you stick it to The Man?

You have to start with a quick list.  Title it “What I would do today if I was going to revolt to the system of The Man?”

Let me help you get started.  Think of all the stuff you say you are going to do if you were independently wealthy and didn’t have to go to work every day.  What about that list of adventures you keep saying you are going to take?  How about those Life List items you have vowed to complete. Write them all down.

If The Man didn’t have me, I’d…..

  • Watch the sunrise every day
  • Fly fishing in Montana where Brad Pitt caught that monster trout in A River Runs Through It.
  • Travel to Italy and spend a month taste-testing the countryside
  • Live in a shack on the beach of Hawaii
  • See Game 7 of the World Series

You probably don’t need a lot of help with the list. You can see my list here.

Here is the bottom line:

We are going to close the gap between the lives we wish we had and the ones we are living today. We blame it on The Man, but we are about to remove him from the picture.

Start Small

When the Man had me down, I blamed my lack of adventures on him. Not enough time, not enough money, not enough everything. I had this MSR Pocket Rocket stove stored in my basement that I had never used. I resented the fact that I hadn’t used it on some big multi-day trip where I brewed up Starbucks Via packets in my tent vestibule.

I decided I’d pluck it out of the basement storage and put it in the back of my car.  Maybe I’d find some way to use it.

MSR Pocket Rocket

If it weren’t for my friend Morgan and his Joy-to-use ratio idea, this stove would have stayed dormant in the basement.

His shitty grin said,

Why do you care if you only use that stove on the back of your truck instead of on a bike trip in France?
The Joy-to-use ratio is all that matters.

Translated:

How much Joy you derive from using it each time matters more than how many times you use it or where you use it.

I started using the little joy bomb stove after a bike ride or a run.  During lunchtime at work, I started going out to my car  just to fire it up and brew up some coffee. I started Sticking The Man anytime I could find an excuse to light a match and boil some water.

I was winning. With every BTU I was getting revenge.  I was standing over Him for a change.

My Joy meter went up and my oppression meter was going down.

Take that!

Insert Joy Bucket

I had this white 10-gallon Home Depot bucket that I bought to use for Triathlons. I would stuff my towel, helmet, goggles, etc. into the bucket and use it in the transition area when switching between race legs. I also had this file of stickers that I was saving for the future when I could figure out what to do with them.

Bland bucket plus cool stickers = Joy Bucket

I plastered the stickers in a mosaic across its white canvas and it transformed into certifiable coolness. I took all the little pieces of gear that I had accumulated for the hopeful adventures that weren’t taking place and dumped them into the bucket:

  • MSR Pocket Rocket stove
  • Cook set
  • Petzl headlamp
  • Shackleton tea brew
  • Spare running socks
  • Stainless steel wine glass
  • Ramen Noodles
  • Starbucks Via
  • Sunscreen
  • Wool gloves from the Dollar store
  • Bike inner tubes, tire tools, flashers,
  • Spice kit
  • Pocket knife
  • 1/2 lb. of white minute rice
  • French Press & coffee grounds
  • Toothbrush, deodorant, tooth paste
The Man can’t keep me down

Here is what the Joy Bucket has become:

  • Portable anticipation
  • Serendipitous-expectant-possibility  
  • My favorite things assembled and waiting, short, small bursts of use

You see The Man doesn’t stand a chance anymore when his lopsided influence over my life has been diminished.   Now fifteen minutes on the back of my trunk can yield stories that last years. Ask some of my buddies about the time’s I brewed up a cup of Ramen or a French Press cup of Joe.

The Oppressed became Kings.

Summary

The Man only has as much power and influence as we permit. He is far less of a tyrant than we believe him to be. Find small ways to stick-it-to-him every day. I’ve gone fishing at 6 am and to my desk by 8:30 am but refused to wash my fishy hands just so I could smile each time I got a whiff of their odor.

He can only have what you allow him.

What would you put in your Joy-Bucket?

When are we going to fire up a brew together?