Last Tuesday I had seven back-to-back video calls scheduled. Seven. By the time I got to the final one at 4 PM, I caught a glimpse of myself in that little self-view window and honestly thought I was looking at a hostage video. My face had this dead, thousand-yard stare that would’ve made a mannequin seem lively by comparison.
You know what’s funny? I’ve been doing accounting for thirty years, sat through countless meetings, but nothing – and I mean nothing – prepared me for the soul-crushing exhaustion of staring at a screen full of little boxes with people’s faces in them all day long. Used to be, meetings happened in conference rooms. You could doodle on a notepad, look out the window, maybe sneak a glance at your watch without everyone seeing. Now? There’s nowhere to hide.
Stanford University did some research on this – they actually have a name for it now: Zoom fatigue. Apparently video calls drain your mental energy way more than in-person meetings. Great. Nice to know there’s scientific backing for why I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck after spending my day talking to a computer screen.
The eye contact thing is what really gets to me. In a real meeting, people look around, check their phones under the table, stare off into space while pretending to listen to Bob from HR drone on about new expense reporting procedures. But on video calls, everyone’s staring straight ahead, which means they’re all staring at you. It’s like being interrogated by a panel of floating heads.
I actually moved my second monitor to the side of my desk last week so I could position the camera where I can’t see myself constantly. You want to know what I do during particularly boring calls now? I watch YouTube videos of people restoring old tools. There’s something soothing about watching a guy clean rust off a vintage wrench while Karen from payroll explains our new digital filing system for the fourth time this month.
The self-view thing is torture. Who thought it was a good idea to force people to stare at themselves while trying to have a conversation? It’s like trying to have a serious discussion while standing in front of a funhouse mirror. I spend half my mental energy monitoring my own facial expressions instead of listening to what people are saying. “Do I always look confused when people talk? Is that my normal face? Why does my forehead look so big?”
These aren’t productive thoughts to be having during a client meeting, by the way. But there I was last month, sitting in on a presentation about quarterly projections, spending most of my brain power wondering if I looked as bored as I felt. Spoiler alert: I probably did.
The worst part is trying to read people through a screen. When someone says “that sounds great” in person, you can see their whole body language. Maybe they’re crossing their arms, or rolling their eyes, or checking their phone. You get the full picture. On video calls, you get a pixelated face in a tiny box, and half the time they’re clearly multitasking anyway. Kevin from our Chicago office always has his camera positioned so you can only see the top of his head – pretty sure he’s playing games on his phone the entire time.
I had what I now call “The Thursday Incident” three weeks ago. I’m in this endless analytics meeting – you know the type, where everyone goes around sharing numbers that could’ve been sent in an email – and I really need to use the bathroom. But the meeting’s running long, and I don’t want to be the guy who gets up in the middle of someone’s presentation.
Then my grandson decides that exact moment is perfect for bursting into my home office, pants around his ankles, announcing he has a “potty emergency.” In my panic to deal with him, I somehow hit the unmute button instead of mute. So now all fifteen people on this call got to hear me negotiate bathroom logistics with a six-year-old.
The laughter was… not kind. And there went what little professional dignity I had left in 2023.
Here’s the thing though – I’ve figured out some survival strategies, even if I don’t always follow them myself. First: take actual breaks between meetings. I know, revolutionary concept. But instead of scheduling calls back-to-back-to-back like some kind of digital masochist, I started blocking fifteen-minute buffers. Doesn’t always work – someone inevitably asks “got five minutes?” and we all know that’s never actually five minutes.
Second: turn off self-view the moment the meeting starts. Took me embarrassingly long to figure out you could do this, but it’s a game-changer. Once I stopped watching myself talk, I could actually focus on what other people were saying. Revolutionary.
Third: stand up during calls sometimes. I bought one of those standing desk converters last year with the best intentions. Right now it’s buried under coffee cups and unopened mail, functioning primarily as very expensive storage space. Standing during after-lunch meetings is harder than it sounds, especially when you’re trying to look engaged while someone explains the new project management system we’re switching to. Which is the fourth different system in five years, by the way.
I tried implementing “No Meeting Wednesdays” on my calendar. Lasted about two weeks before someone scheduled an “urgent” call about expense reports. Apparently nature abhors a vacuum, and corporate culture abhors empty calendar slots even more.
One time I decided to try an audio-only call instead of video. Figured it would be less draining, right? Wrong. Spent ten minutes with everyone saying “sorry, you cut out there” and “can you repeat that?” Apparently when you can’t see someone’s mouth moving, it’s impossible to tell if they’re actually talking or if the connection is bad.
The really crazy part is how video calls have made our already broken meeting culture even worse. At least in-person meetings, you might bump into someone in the hallway afterward and have an actual useful conversation. Or grab coffee and solve a problem in five minutes that would’ve taken three follow-up meetings to address properly.
But video meetings? They capture all the worst parts of office life – the endless talking about talking, the people who love to hear themselves speak, the death by PowerPoint presentations – with none of the good stuff. No spontaneous problem-solving. No side conversations that actually move things forward. No free donuts.
I’ve spent my career learning to read rooms, pick up on subtle cues, understand when someone’s really on board versus just saying they agree. That’s all gone now. Everyone’s a floating head in a box, and half the time they’re on mute anyway.
The technical problems don’t help either. “Can you see my screen?” “You’re frozen on our end.” “Let me try sharing again.” I’ve become an unwilling IT support specialist, spending the first ten minutes of every meeting troubleshooting audio issues with people who somehow managed to mute themselves in three different ways simultaneously.
Yesterday when my last call finally ended at 5 PM, I closed my laptop with more force than was probably necessary. Stepped outside, took a deep breath of actual air, felt the sun on my face for the first time all day. Felt like I was reconnecting with reality after hours in some weird digital purgatory.
Maybe the exhaustion is our brains telling us something important. Humans spent millions of years learning to communicate face-to-face, reading body language, picking up on subtle social cues. Now we’re trying to cram all that into a pixelated window on a computer screen and wondering why it feels wrong.
For now, this is what we’ve got. But I’ll tell you what – the minute I can go back to real meetings in real rooms with real people, I’m never looking at another self-view window again.
Speaking of which, I’ve got another call starting in five minutes. Time to put on real pants and pretend I’m engaged for another hour. One meeting at a time, right?
Paul’s a Chicago accountant learning to survive in the cloud-software era. He writes candidly (and funnily) about being tech-competent but perpetually one update behind. His motto: technology is great—once someone explains where they’ve hidden the settings.
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