Pro Tip: Wear Silly Hats in Your Coronavirus Video Meetings

Also, Zoom backgrounds are customizable. You’re welcome.

If you’re lucky enough to still have a job during the coronavirus pandemic, a lot of your work hours are probably being spent on teleconferences.

Once you have the fundamentals down (mute yourself if you’re chewing, and please, for the love of Pete, wear a shirt), it’s time to think about breaking up the general meh-ness of our videocam future with some fun. Here’s an idea to start: themed video meetings. Before you roll your eyes, let me explain.

Early last week, once news got around we were likely all going to be working remotely for the near future, my colleagues Yasmin and Drew had the idea of wearing costumes to our daily video check-ins, drawing inspiration from an article in The Outline titled, “You should dress like a lunatic if you work from home.”

I loved the idea, so I wore my cowboy hat during a check-in later that week, and my teammates joined in as each connected to our Google Hangout without being prompted. It was really nice.

The following week, Mashable’s culture team did the same.

For those who hate theme parties or holidays, don’t worry: This doesn’t have to be an extremely formal thing. If your company uses Zoom web conferencing software, an even lower lift option would be simply using its custom background feature.