Zoom Fatigue

I've noticed it for myself and when others started sharing their thoughts and feelings on the topic I sat with the why for a bit. It's what a programmer does in an attempt to reduce the problem into something slightly more chewable. This one starts with the assertion that quarantine work is not the same as remote work.

I've been remote working since dial-up and I can happily sit in front of my screen, coding away all day, sometimes not even noticing that the sun had risen nor that it had set. And days like that have their own glow of satisfaction; filled with complexities that might stretch and hurt my brain. You'd think those days would exhaust me yet while they might be demanding there was always the freedom to move outside as a counter-pose. In a time of quarantine, however, that freedom is curtailed so the organic tension relief is simply not organic anymore. I have had to adapt. Yet there is still one element that compounds the fatigue: Zoom, Teams, webinars, online meetings.

Call them what you like and use whatever platform you prefer, I'm not sure we have fully considered how it impacts fatigue because we are too busy applauding it for helping us keep the human connection alive.

In any given online meetup (excluding one-on-one meetings here) you are confronted with a screen that interacts with you and demands that you engage with some kind of social etiquette. As such, our only real reference for social etiquette (at the moment) is offline, IRL, proper face time. But in the virtual space, we lose so much subconsciously that, as a result, we end up working that much harder to fill the gaps.

In an offline environment, I can process body language, facial expressions, touch, and smell more freely and I can use my physical body to filter and interpret the data around me, just by moving my head to one side. The noise data (conversation) is coming at me from different directions at different levels. In addition to the noise, I have the opportunity to read subtle clues, like bouncing knees and quiet smiles and I have the opportunity to reach back for a fist bump or a gentle hand on the shoulder, all of which help me navigate the mood of the conversation, my role in it and what is expected of me.

I'm also not trying to hold a conversation with a group of hyperactive kids bouncing around on a trampoline. First, you're top left, then you're gone and swoosh, you're in top right again.

The noise is also coming at me on the same volume at the same time, directly into my ears and sometimes without any lips moving at all which is disconcerting at worst, confusing at best. The number of interruptions also increases, leading to a larger amount of CPU thrash.

For the non-geeks, thrash is when multitasking goes wrong. Think of any movie where the computer starts heating up and sparks start flying. The computer is starting to thrash like a fish out of water.

So I'm trying to process the data based on my real-life social references and all those clues I've come to depend upon simply aren't available to me so I have to guess. My brain spends a lot of time subconsciously guessing, which is where the exhaustion comes in. Add the general mood of your last social media interaction on economics or politics and your brain is positively lit. Now put a group of people all going through the same thing together to try and come up with the next big plan, all of them subconsciously processing each other and the noise data on top of the content, and they're all bouncing around on trampolines at the same time. It's exhausting! And that's without the distraction of watching yourself talk. Why do my eyebrows go skew when I smile?

Until we've fully adapted to life in the virtual boardroom, we're going to need strategies to deal with it. Here are some of the things I use. I would love to know how others deal with the inevitable. Share your secrets with me, please!

Pin the main speakers in your webinar so they don't jump around like Energizer bunnies. Stay clear of social media input before and after any meeting. Debrief yourself after every meeting: I like to sit outside for a few minutes and just stare at the sky. Tea is optional. Come to the meeting with a good joke; you don't have to always use it but comedy is a useful icebreaker; like when waiting for that one guy to join and it's an awkward silence with everybody is just watching everybody else. Lastly, feel free to decline some of them too. Not every meeting has to be a Zoom. Boy with hammer comes to mind...