Like you, I have voice and video calls scheduled on different days during the week for meetings. As if that wasn’t taxing enough, yesterday I had 7 back to back video calls lined up. I noticed something quite distressing on the last call. I looked like I was a hostage placed in front of a camera and noted that stale people licked cleaner in comparison to me.
Some people struggle with a blank stare, most often termed as “looking off into the mid distance”. People afflicted with the condition had a glance towards the unpreexcited, as if they were allowed psychedelics in meta-world, and were devoid of any semblance of feeling. Universe knows how cripplingly voids get crowded, mind you, no headspace one would normally want not occupy with ennui inducing horrible life exploits like taxpaying loopholes or the abominable annulment of weddings. Everything else going on around me was unintentionally amusing. Oh yes, I had spent the day demonetizing social media, my camera on the other hand was ready to siphon the last dregs of my energy. That’s right, Zoom fatigue is a verified phenomenon now.
An academic team from Stanford University has looked into the matter and came to the conclusion that video calls deplete the mental resources far more than in person meetings. In fact, these calls mitigate a whole new axis of resource depletion staggering already worn out heads. None of this matters when with logical reasoning as exhausting as that does materially change the scenario. Understanding the problem literally means nothing in resolving the issue.
It mentally wears me out when I remind myself yet again, before yet another succession of meetings, about everything I still have left to do. Maybe the most peculiar aspect of this meeting is the strange degree of maintaining constant eye contact, and that is by far the worst aspect of video meetings. In-person meetings involve a lot of looking away, doodling on notepads, or shamelessly people watching.
In remote meetings, video calls in particular, people seem to be staring straight at you, which can be quite stressful. My instinctive reaction was to panic, and rightfully so: there is no place for a person to hide on a video call. Just a few days ago, I moved my secondary monitor to the side of my desk in order to be able to move the camera out of my line of sight while I watch videos of people restoring vintage tools on YouTube.
Now, I can pretend to care while watching the videos! Conversations always come with self-imposed cognitive dissonance, especially when one attempts to hold a conversation with oneself: talking while staring at yourself is mostly regarded as bad form unless that person is practicing breakup speeches or accepting the Academy Awards for Best Actor. Thankfully, there are chances that let my mind take a break from mundane rigidity.
While attending a critical meeting for a client about a month ago, I distinctly remember myself as a poker player with his gaze fixed upon his cards—a focus on how I was controlling my face. “Why do I perceive that I look subtly baffled when others talk? Is that how I usually look?” I must admit, these are not the most helpful lines of reasoning to be productive at work.
Another factor why most people find video calls exhausting is the absence of nonverbal cues. When Kevin from Marketing is physically present, his verbal “that sounds interesting” is accompanied by a most telling eye roll and patting of his arms. On video, you get a disembodied head somewhere far away from the screen showing thumbs while he covertly aims his camera so that his face is disguised and is clearly playing mobile games.
I believe we are all doing our best to make up for losses, which is the reason why I came out of the meeting the other day thinking that, despite the loud verbal agreement, I was the one person in the room who was most unloved for making that suggestion. That is what I now call my personal breaking point The Thursday Incident For the record, I’m already at hour four.
There’s a weekly analytics meeting that lasts for all eternity, and I literally need to pee. My six-year-old suddenly bursts into the room, pants around his ankles, and tells me he’s got a crisis. In my panic, I accidentally hit the videoOn button and now all of my 20 colleagues can see me grappling with my kid.
I distinctly recall the cruel laughter echoing around me and my self-respect seemingly vanishing into thin air. I have some self-improvement strategies that I unfortunately don’t utilize myself. Perhaps you will find more value in them than I have:
The first one is take breaks.
I consider taking breaks even if they last just fifteen minutes. These breaks do not exist. If someone asks, “Do you have five minutes?” we all know for certain that they do not.
It is common knowledge that the time offered is not what’s been suggested. Make sure there is no food in your teeth before closing self-view. This odd facial tic left me convinced that some cruel force was subjecting me to perpetual surveillance.
Self-view baffled me so much that self-view required my undivided attention. After two and a half hours of being wiretapped, I somehow freed myself from these restrictions.
Your mind requires rest. Try and Stand up during some of the calls. Unlike other vertical desk owners, I actually invested in a standing desk converter. Now, it sits underneath a tower of espresso cups and unopened letters and functions as a decorative stand.
Standing upright during meetings requires energy and comes at a high cost post-lunch. After-every-week, allocate one day to “no-meeting day” on your calendar. Whiplash Wednesdays were previously notorious for their overflowing calendars, calling them whiplash Wednesdays.Nature logically supports not allowing empty voids anywhere, and neither do corporate executives want free slots on calendars. More micromanaged gaps create ad hoc meetings. As in pre-recorded audio, unlimited soundspace leaves room for thoughts, leaving phone talk loathsome.
The last instance where I did not pick a video call ended in disaster. One of the attendees spent the better part of ten minutes baffled thinking, “sorry, what? you cut out there.” Orbiting around the call instead of substantively engaging left her bewildered.
Probably one of the hardest yet the most effective techniques I have come across is to simply have more meetings. It is nearly impossible for one meeting to encapsulate the raging agendas of four cross-functional stakeholders clashing in real-time visuals. The reality of constant meeting creep renders one devoid of identity, absorbed into the void.
Most emails do not need to exist, and more email shall fail to exist. The stunning advances in meeting tech grant marvelous ice-breaking productivity surges captured in the drenching downpours engrained in imaginative vision. Unable to escape online frameworks which forcibly shower senior drenching productivity: binds and chains plunge metropolitans within a dyad-esque mobile dynamic eclectic stuck in sheer oblivion.
No one seemed to notice or acknowledge my distinct absence post leaving two video calls. Missing passcode blog groups where sought input is overridden: Expect accustom of haphazard ad hoc loops for forgotten subsection docked devoid identifying.
The merciful gods of digital meetings, blessed with boundless exploration through screens, forgoing my shack and showing their accomplished reign entwining sky! That was truly tranquil. I have not felt so unrepentant liberated since those opting willingly from shack shared scouting galleries crossing profiles locked away reams.
The video calls drain energy and the causes can be broken into two parts, the technical aspects, and how these programs have enhanced our already broken meeting culture. Taken uninterrupted, they capture the dullest aspects of office work – mind-numbing video calls – with none of the good, like spontaneous problem solving conversations or free donuts during breaks. I bear some responsibility for this barren landscape as I help design dashboards aimed at boosting ‘user engagement’ and increasing ‘session duration.’
We never questioned whether extending digital touchpoints and engagements for long periods of time was a good thing. All we tracked were time, features used, clicks, views, and shares. What about user experience?
As for real human life? Those are out of scope for our dashboards and analysis. When my last meeting ended yesterday at 5, I reached for my laptop and shut it, similar to how some people would slam down a heavyweight punching bag after an uppercut.
I took a breath of fresh air and savored the sunshine, which made me feel like I was attaining complete zen. Given that humans spent a few million years evolving to perform social interactions face to face, perhaps the fatigue is hinting that a crucial element of human connection is lost when it’s experienced through pixels and bandwidth. For now, that appears to be the sad reality, but one thing is for sure: I need to log off.
Looks like it’s time for me to start scrambling towards my next meeting in precisely five minutes. Quite unfortunate, but guess that means it’s time to put on some real pants. One baby step at a time.
