Are you suffering from Zoom Fatigue?
With what feels like a lifetime of conducting our life through a screen, you may well be suffering from Zoom Fatigue. Or insert here any other kind of screen/tech system you are using that forces you onto video for hours a day.
It’s actually a thing (we aren’t imagining it) that means we feel more exhausted when conducting meetings on Zoom. This article by Harvard Business Review gives us some top tips. Ultimately, sitting at a screen isn’t a good replacement for the real deal of a meeting room interaction. It isn’t normal to sit there and stare at someone else, and it is very odd to constantly have a view of yourself. We don’t sit in meeting rooms with a mirror!
In a meeting room we pick up the small nuances of others, we read signals, we feel the energy in the room. That’s all lost on a Zoom call. And the level of concentration required is exhausting.
So how can we combat Zoom Fatigue?
Try and stay focused on the call. I know that may seem hard but if you get proper breathing space between calls it is much easier.
Take breaks. Back to the first point, if you can take a REAL break (not 2 mins) between calls, you can be more attentive when you get back on the call. Can you take a short walk, stretch and move? This will all help.
Make any kind of family/work social calls optional. To feel you need to get on the team drink chat at 5pm on a Friday when you are exhausted sometimes feels like just one too many calls.
Think about walking meetings and do a call instead. Walking the dog and talking is a great way to get out and do a meeting at the same time. And now we are coming out the other side of full lock down, meeting a colleague in the park is a great way to get the face to face time back.
And finally just turn off your video if you’ve been up half the night with a toddler and you just can’t face being seen. And be honest about it. I frequently say, ‘this isn’t a camera day for me!’. It may follow with a bit of piss taking from a couple of people, but hey, it lightened the mood at the start of the call!