You Don't Need To Spend A Grand, Unlike Adele

The snippet above links to a bookshop 'mole', confiding Adele's approach to curating her zoomscape.

In short, she wants a certain style of backdrop for videoing from home. Decides she needs books behind her. Nips down to a fancy bookstore. Spends a speedy thousand pounds. Stacks them behind her when she zooms.

The journalist uses the term, 'erudite'. I looked it up;

"having or showing great knowledge or learning".

It's a bit much, isn't it?

When I read the piece, there were 604 comments. You'd struggle to label any of them as endorsing.

For many, almost all, we're two years in now.

I glanced through backgrounds on my most recent help session given for the composition of your on-screen self.

A wall of sporting memorabilia. A window. A sofa-bed. A black bookcase, shelving everything but a book. And naturally, the hostage video styling.

All, incidentally, viewed straight on, flush.

Pretty much not a single spine to be spied.

People can get a bit hung up on what's behind them. Yes, in our arena it must be neat and tidy. Portray the professional person you are. Yet it must be authentic.

As someone that often sits in front of a whiteboard - a prop which crucially, I use a lot - I tend to consider as much if not more, how engagement, enthusiasm and expression come across.

Adele's handlers likely drummed home that her set-up would be forensically scrutinised. I've blogged on her's before.

But not only does hers fail to reveal any facet of her personality that you'd find appealing or revealing, I also feel the darkness of the items either side of eye-level detract too.

If you're going to place random items in-view, at least make them relevant in some way to how you think. Thinking which can be shown to benefit where the person you're talking to wants to go.

And to do so successfully, you absolutely do not need to fork out £1,000.