🔒101: Zoom fatigue

Being Zoomed out is a state most can relate to these days, with COVID-19 still having many of us working remotely. Video calls can get draining and nonproductive if we aren’t careful. Here are some changes you can implement today.

Hide yourself. Seeing live video of yourself via Zoom isn’t only unnatural, it’s distracting, writes Ashira Prossack at Forbes. “You’re more likely to pay attention to your facial expressions, what you’re wearing, or your general appearance rather than just focusing on the conversation,” Prossack writes. For more effective meetings, utilize the “Hide myself” feature to only allow other participants to see your video.

Redefine one-hour calls to 50 minutes, says Steve Hickman at Mindful.org, especially for those in occupations where back-to-back calls are the norm. This allows for a 10-minute break in between calls to use the restroom, grab some water and otherwise decompress. Otherwise, there are no clear boundaries between sessions – a lesson Hickman learned the hard way. “Quite often, my Zoom meetings run back to back … sometimes my Zoom room becomes a kind of random encounter anteroom, where people from various aspects of my personal and professional life bump into each other for a few moments on their way in and out of a meeting with me,” he said.

Don’t let Zoom become a default, says Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy of Harvard Business Review. Switch to phone calls or email if possible, they advise – most likely, the person you are connecting with will be relieved, especially if it’s at the end of a day of back-to-back video calls. “A video call is fairly intimate and can even feel invasive in some situations,” they write. “For example, if you’re asked to do a career advice call and you don’t know the person you’re talking to, sticking to phone is often a safer choice.”