Success Tips for Virtual Meetings

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It was five years ago that the world had to adjust quickly from in person meetings to computer bound conversations. During the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual meetings became a necessity. Replacing the old conference call systems with tools like Zoom or WebEx allowed for face-to-face interaction between participants across the globe. However, it also led to a lot of confusion on protocols and etiquette.

Now that we have more experience with online meetings, it is easier to identify the specific components required in order to be successful. Yet, even after all this forced experience, people still commit avoidable mistakes. Follow through on these tips and your meetings will get off to a good start.

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  • Platform – Ensure the virtual platform is accessible by all participants. Meetings stall quickly if someone does not have the right software loaded on their computer or phone.
  • Test the Technology – Hold a pre-meeting to test out features of the virtual platform. For example, do sound checks to ensure mics work and practice screen sharing before the session to avoid embarrassment later. Also, if special features are being used, such as polling or pushing documents, test those as well.
  • Check Camera Angles – Participants should frame themselves in the webcam before starting the meeting. Being too close to the camera, too far from it, sitting off center or having an odd angle on the camera view distracts the other participants. Be careful about back lighting to prevent shadowy conditions. Also, take heed of the background to avoid inappropriate personal items from showing up on screen. If you use a virtual background, make sure it doesn’t interfere with your own image. For example, having a green shirt on while in front of a green background.
  • Double-Check Start Times – Virtual meetings are ideal for bringing people together from across the globe. However, this means the organizers must pay closer attention to the participant’s time zones. An 8 am start time in Boston is a 5 am start time in Seattle. Do not ask participants to take part in meetings outside of their time zone’s normal business hours. Double check invitation start times to ensure they are not accidentally set up for a different time zone.
  • Camera On or Off? – For smaller meetings, having the camera on creates a sense of engagement amongst the participants. It allows for non-verbal communication, such as facial expressions or hand gestures that we normally rely on during in person meetings. For larger meetings, especially presentations, keeping audience cameras off helps participants focus on the speaker. Keeping cameras off may be needed when bandwidth is limited to prevent the system from slowing down or crashing. Participants turn their cameras on only when speaking.

Using these tips should help get a virtual meeting off to a strong start.

IMLS Targeted to Close

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Last week it was announced that the Institute for Museum and Library Services was targeted to shut down as part of the larger reduction in the Federal Government. Closing IMLS would remove the only Federal agency that provides funding and support to libraries and museums across the United States.

Library supporters across the Country are rallying to save IMLS from the chopping block. To better understand how the Institute supports libraries, the advocacy organization called EveryLibrary has created a resource on the EveryLibrary Institute website that details the gravity of the situation.

The Trump Administration has issued an executive order directing several small federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), to review their operations and obligations under law with the intent to cut budgets and staffing.

The Executive Order dated March 14, 2025, directs agency heads to reduce “elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary … This includes the non-statutory components and functions of the following governmental entities shall be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, and such entities shall reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.

The page details the items that IMLS is required to do by law versus those that are optional. For libraires, IMLS oversees many library grants, including the Library Services and Technology Act.

The American Library Association also released a statement opposing the elimination of IMLS.

If you want to voice your support for IMLS, EveryLibrary has a list of resources and actions that can be done, including reaching out to your local member of Congress or U.S. Senator. Working together, IMLS can be saved.

Do You Measure Your Wealth in Money or Time?

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When people consider the idea of success, often they equate dollar signs as the measure. The belief is that having more money in the bank account equals greater satisfaction. However, one can have an abundance of dollars, but it is worthless when there is no time to enjoy it. Therefore, is it more accurate to say that a person should be measured by how much time freedom they have?

In a recent article on Lifehacker, writer Jeff Somers explores how control over one’s time rather than monetary wealth may be the best sign of success. He writes:

Time affluence—the feeling that you have enough time to accomplish everything you want to get done—is a crucial aspect of our happiness and sense of personal satisfaction. Time poverty is the opposite—that stressful feeling you get when there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done. Between commuting to and from our jobs, the time spent working, then the chores at home, many of us barely have time to eat some dinner and maybe stream a show before collapsing into bed—and starting the process over again the next day.

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Later in the article he offers some time hacks that can free up valuable space in the day. The first method he discusses is organizing and prioritizing.

Since your time is limited, stop treating it like an amorphous, infinite resource you always have more of. Make lists of things you need or want to do and prioritize them. Then use time blocking to break each of those priorities into a fixed amount of time needed to accomplish them or at least move them toward completion. This avoids letting tasks pile up, which increases stress and that sense of not being in control of your time, and provides a visual guide to how your day will play out. And having clear times for specific activities to end will increase your efficiency.

Learn his other techniques for building up time affluence by reading the rest of the article.

Opening Up Your Personal Constraints

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Oftentimes personal development seems like a nebulous task. Since a lot of it takes place in our heads and hearts, it would seem that attempts at self-improvement are hard to quantify. However, could there be a way to use physical world productivity systems to produce inner growth?

On his YouTube channel, Tiago Forte recently explored using the Theory of Constraints to improve personal productivity and development. For those not familiar with the theory, it was developed decades ago to better understand how large-scale systems, especially factories, could function more effectively. A key focus of the process is identifying the bottleneck. The website Lean Production defines it this way:

The core concept of the Theory of Constraints is that every process has a single constraint and that total process throughput can only be improved when the constraint is improved. A very important corollary to this is that spending time optimizing non-constraints will not provide significant benefits; only improvements to the constraint will further the goal (achieving more profit).

Thus, TOC seeks to provide precise and sustained focus on improving the current constraint until it no longer limits throughput, at which point the focus moves to the next constraint. The underlying power of TOC flows from its ability to generate a tremendously strong focus towards a single goal (profit) and to removing the principal impediment (the constraint) to achieving more of that goal. In fact, Goldratt considers focus to be the essence of TOC.

Tiago believes that this theory can be applied to personal growth. In the video, he gives an example of how he uses it to improve his deep-thinking time for writing his next book. Since there is no physical bottleneck, what he explores is how his personal energy is the obstacle to his process. He then identifies ways to overcome it, such as blocking out time in the morning, exercising, eating healthy, and minimizing distractions. All these actions are ways to expand his capacity to think deeper.

The video is only five minutes long and easy to understand. I invite you to watch it and learn how the Theory of Constraints could improve your life.

Never Start a Meeting Without One of These!

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Have you ever attended a meeting that lacked focus and direction?

No doubt you thought that was a rhetorical question. More often than not, meetings drift onto strange paths or seemingly hit a dead end. While there are many reasons why this happens, one way to prevent it is straightforward. Never start a meeting without drafting a clear, written agenda.

A vital factor to holding an effective meeting is a pre-planned agenda. In fact, 67% of
respondents in a Flowtrace survey said that having a clear agenda is important to a successful
meeting. It is the responsibility of the person calling the meeting, or the standing committee secretary, to prepare an agenda, ideally for distribution at least a day before the meeting.

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Simple agendas have at the top of the document the committee’s name or subject of the meeting, date
and time, and a bullet point list of items to be discussed. If it is a recurring meeting, the date/time/place of the next meeting should be listed at the bottom. The first item of business is for everyone in attendance to agree on the agenda, with an opportunity to add items as needed. Only after this is done should discussion commence on the items listed.

Agendas may contain specific sections, such as approval of prior minutes, depending on
the official status of the meeting. For example, Governing Boards follow local or state rules in
their operations. This means having roll calls, obeying rules of order, and publishing their
agendas in advance to the public. This ensures proper notice for anyone who wishes to attend.

Therefore, the next time you call a meeting, draft an agenda in advance. No doubt you will find the meeting more productive and quicker to complete, resulting in greater satisfaction and success.

Libraries Make Everything Better

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For those of us who are devoted library members, there is nothing more satisfying than walking into our local branch to find a book or attend an event. But have you ever wondered if everyone else entering the library feels the same way?

The New York Public Library was very interested in this question and commissioned a survey to discover the truth. And the truth was good. In an article on Literary Hub by James Folta, the results of the survey were shared.

Science has backed up what many of us have long been saying: the library rocks. A study from the New York Public Library surveyed 1,974 users on how the library makes them feel and how it affects their lives, and the results are overwhelmingly positive.

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Breaking down the survey questions, the amount of perceived benefits from the library was very impressive.

  • 92% of respondents reported feeling somewhat to very “calm / peaceful” after visiting the Library
  • 74% of respondents reported that their library use positively affects how equipped they feel to cope with the world
  • 90% of respondents reported that their Library use positively affects how much they love to learn new things
  • 88% of respondents reported that their Library use has supported their personal growth

Even more encouraging were the comments from the survey participants. Folta reports:

What I find most charming in this study are the quotes, which the researchers highlight in “Patron Voices” sections. They’re full of great little lines, like people calling the library “a touchstone” and “a place to rely on,” and that “knowing it’s there makes me feel better about my life in the city.”

What to see more results? Read the full article on the Literary Hub website.

Habits of Success – Are They Real?

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If you scroll long enough on any social media feed eventually a story will show up with a title like “The Top Ten Ways to be Successful” or “Emperor Caesar’s Habits for Success.” The gist of these articles is that copying the things successful people do will inevitably lead you to success too. But is that true?

According to Darious Foroux, copying the actions of seemingly successful people is no guarantee of success for yourself. In his article, Stop Imitating The Habits Of Successful People: It’s Killing You, he points out the main flaw with all these Internet advice pieces.

They always focus on the outcome. Not the process. Studying, learning, and stealing productive habits or tactics are all smart things to do. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I talk about people who only focus on the outcome. I.e. success.

Also, everyone pretends that the word success has nothing to do with money and status. But that’s simply not true. When we talk about success, we all talk about getting rich. Just be honest.

For Foroux, success is not simply a matter of counting your money to keep score. Success is much more varied than that. He adds:

But let’s keep it real and not pretend that “only you can determine the definition of success,” and then talk about the habits of millionaires. 

Foroux then points out the flaw in the logic of copying the actions of notable people. It is simply that mindlessly following habits alone does very little to help us achieve our goals.

For instance, take waking up early. That’s always part of the lists of habits. But waking up is not a skill that does something. When you try to imitate a rich person who wakes up early, will you become rich by waking up early?

That’s why I find it odd that people try to imitate successful people. What’s the point? Even if you know the EXACT ingredients of success, it’s no good to you.

To hear what Foroux suggests instead, please visit his website to read the rest of his article.

Don’t Send that Email … Unless You Have To!

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Being careful when sending an email is something every knowledge worker must consider on a daily basis. Below is a section from my article, Effective Email Etiquette, to highlight when it is best to put something in an email and when it is not.

Don’t Send that Email … Unless You Have To!

One of the biggest challenges in effective communication is deciding the medium for the message. For many people, email is a common way to share information. In fact, it is often preferred, as implied by the saying, “this was another meeting that should have been an email.”  Yet it does have limits. Here are times when email is appropriate:

  1. Routine communication: Emails are suitable for routine updates, sharing information, and conveying non-urgent messages. If your message is not time-sensitive and allows for a delayed response, email is a suitable choice.
  2. Documentation: When you need a written record of communication, such as project updates, agreements, or decisions.
  3. Scheduling and coordination: For arranging meetings, confirming appointments, and coordinating schedules.
  4. Formal communication: In professional settings, emails are often appropriate for formal communication, such as job applications, official announcements, and business proposals.
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However, there are situations when hitting send on that message would cause trouble:

  1. Urgent matters: In situations requiring immediate attention or response, consider using a more direct and real-time communication method, such as phone calls or instant messaging.
  2. Sensitive or confidential information: Avoid sending sensitive or confidential information via email, especially if it involves personal or financial details. Use secure methods or direct communication for such matters. If your message involves emotional or sensitive topics, consider having a face-to-face conversation or using a more personal communication method to avoid misunderstandings.
  3. Complex issues: For complex or nuanced discussions that may benefit from real-time interaction and clarification, opt for a meeting or a phone call.
  4. Negative feedback: When providing constructive criticism or negative feedback, it’s often better to deliver it in person or over the phone to ensure clarity and understanding.

What to know more about how to do better emails? Read the entire article on Effective Email Etiquette.

Organizing is Not Decluttering

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What’s the best way to declutter a space?

The first solution most people jump to is organization. They find storage boxes into which to stash their horde of items. The boxes are then placed out of the way in a closet, attic, or basement for months or years to come. Problem solved right?

According to the Minimalists, this approach is the worst way to approach decluttering. Why?

Because all you are doing is moving items from one place to another. The clutter is put out of sight but not removed entirely. In a recent video on their Instagram channel, the Minimalists argue that storage boxes are actually “clutter coffins where all your stuff goes to die.”

Worst still, many people use up valuable space in their homes or even rent space in a storage locker to keep these completely unneeded belongings in their lives.

What is the best way handle clutter?

The Minimalists believe that completely letting go of our unnecessary items is the path to declutter. Reducing our belongings clears up space, both physically and psychologically. That way we can use our physical spaces to store only the things we currently value. As well, we keep our minds clear by removing items that no longer match who we are and what we aspire to do.

Therefore, resist the urge to buy that shiny new container. Instead, as Marie Kondo would tell you, discard anything that doesn’t spark joy. Once done, enjoy the results.