We’re almost two years in, and I still find a lot of people who do not have a headset for videoconferencing.

When you’re speaking to a muted room, it’s eerie and unnatural — you feel alone even if you can see other people’s faces. You lose all of those spontaneous reactions that keep a conversation flowing.

Once you have a headset, the next step is to clean up the space behind you, so you won’t have to use those horrible fake backgrounds.