Читать книгу Digital Etiquette For Dummies - Eric Butow - Страница 86

When you’re at home with kids and you don’t have your own, private cave, it’s frustrating to work and hold meetings when you hear a bunch of noise in the next room. Or you may hear a barking dog outside. And even if you try to get out of the house, your favorite coffee shop may have music blaring and people talking loudly.

Popular meeting apps — including Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom — have risen to the challenge by adding noise cancellation features. But those may not be enough, so consider these additional strategies for cutting down on noise:

 Buy a good pair of headphones and a microphone. Then you can block out more outside noise.

 Use an internal room, if you can find one. If you’re close to a window, you’re close to your neighbor’s kid who likes to play basketball for hours on end. But don’t have a meeting close to a popular location where people walk. (If you guessed the bathroom, pass Go and collect your $200 in play money.)

 Ask your spouse for help. If your spouse is at home with you, have them do you a solid and take the kids and the pets for a walk. (We suspect that you’ll have to return the favor in some way.)

 Ask your kids for help. Talk to them ahead of time about what you’ll be doing. Bribes may be necessary.

 Keep your pets happy. Put the pets outside with some of their favorite treats and play toys to keep them occupied.

 If all else fails, consider renting a business suite in your area so that you can get out of the house. Review the suite so that you’re satisfied you’ll be able to get out of the house with your laptop and “attend” a meeting in a quiet environment.

You can easily enough search for headphones and microphones for online meetings in a web search, but you can also quite easy become overwhelmed. We found a What Hi-Fi article with a list of the best microphones and headphones for 2022, which is the year this book was published, and we think it’s a good place to start. You can find the site at www.whathifi.com/us/best-buys/best-headphones-with-a-mic-for-voice-and-video-calls, as shown in Figure 3-1.