Zoom Fatigue
What's Zoom Fatigue?
I spent 7 of my 8 working hours on Microsoft Teams call today. It sucked. The work wasn't bad. Just the amount of time. It's exhausting to spend all day with your eyes glued to a screen. The popularity of the term "Zoom Fatigue" popped up during the COVID 19 pandemic. When we all started working from home, rather than in-person.
I remember these early days. My son was just over 6-months old. I was on daily calls with him in my arms feeding him. It wasn't too bad at that time. Aside from everything else.
My current role has many more meetings than I currently expected. And I spend more time than ever staring at a specific screen.
While on calls, I feel the need to be engaged, but if I'm on calls all day, how do I do my work? Well, I multi-task. But sometimes people become upset that people multi-task. It's usually the same people who schedule these meetings.
Is it bad?
Yes. I hate it. This NPR article talks about the negative impact hours of video calls can have. Scientist attempted to see if there were measurable neurological effects, and they found some.
During the virtual lessons, participants' heart rates slowed, and brain wave activity indicated exhaustion and a struggle to focus just fifteen minutes into the class. "The neurophysiological and ECG or EKG measurements clearly indicate that there is more fatigue in the videoconference condition," Müller-Putz says.
Professor Jeremy Bailenson from Standford identified Four causes for 'Zoom fatigue' and their solutions. Here's the causes.
- Excessive amounts of close-up eye contact is highly intense.
- Seeing yourself during video chats constantly in real-time is fatiguing.
- Video chats dramatically reduce our usual mobility.
- The cognitive load is much higher in video chats.
What to do?
What am I doing? I'm working on being better with the following (em dashes are mine) :
Here's more information on the Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue Scale.
Thanks for listening, I hope this helps.