Used to listen to music all day while working. Needed it, the rhythm drove me forward. Sometimes fast and loud, sometimes quiet and peaceful. Over recent years I’ve listened less and less. Now it’s something special when music and work happen together. Usually jazz — it inspires me. The more concentrated the work, the less music I can handle.
I wrote about constant background noise in another post. Love the quiet. Yesterday I got thinking about silent video meetings. What if we spent thirty minutes not talking together, but working together in peace?
When the opportunity comes up, I want to try it. Meeting starts, I hold up a large sign to the camera: “Psssssst, today is a silent meeting. We don’t speak, we work together.” Then another sign with a question and further instructions. Might need ambient music in the background — otherwise it could get too eerie.
This format would work perfectly for Sprint Retrospectives. The team reflecting on how to collaborate better and more efficiently. Sometimes the best thinking happens without words.
First appeared in German on reinergaertner.de, my blog since 1997. AI-assisted translation — because life’s too short to translate 150 posts by hand, but too long to leave them in German.