{"id":1996,"date":"2021-03-05T22:07:39","date_gmt":"2021-03-06T04:07:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:10043\/suffering-from-zoom-fatigue-here-are-some-strategies-to-help-manage-it\/"},"modified":"2023-01-30T15:03:46","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T21:03:46","slug":"suffering-from-zoom-fatigue-here-are-some-strategies-to-help-manage-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atiba.com\/suffering-from-zoom-fatigue-here-are-some-strategies-to-help-manage-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Suffering from Zoom fatigue? Here are some strategies to help manage it"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Atiba Founder & CEO, JJ Rosen; This article originally appeared in\u00a0<\/em>The Tennessean<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

In normal times, staring at yourself all day would be a weird thing to do.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s what I\u2019ve been doing. Over the past couple of months, I\u2019ve literally been staring at my own face for hours a day.<\/p>\n

This new habit was not born out of vanity or some deep obsession with my middle-aged dad look \u2014 it\u2019s all because of\u00a0Zoom<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I start around 8 a.m. and wind down about nine hours later. I\u2019m on camera, looking at the boxes on the screen featuring myself along with my fellow Zoomers as we all juggle the meetings we used to do in-person or over what\u2019s now considered old-school voice-only calls.<\/p>\n

Truthfully, I am grateful for all this cool technology that has kept me working in such a strange time, and I must concede that it\u2019s not all bad. I Zoom away while enjoying the comforts of home, and find I\u2019m getting more done than ever before. Without the drive-time between meetings or even the walk-time to the conference room, the mass adoption of video conferencing has undoubtedly made us all more efficient.<\/p>\n

But still, by the end of the day, the face that I see staring back at me after a few hours of Zooming looks more tired than it used to look. For some reason, sitting in a chair in front of a camera all day wears me down. By the time 6 p.m. rolls around,\u00a0I\u2019m plumb Zoomed-out.<\/p>\n

\u201cZoom fatigue\u201d sounds like a fake mental health issue. The idea of taking meetings from your back porch in theory should make life easier. But ask anyone in the work world these days and they will tell you, \u201cZoom fatigue\u201d is very real.<\/p>\n

Why is this?<\/p>\n

The psychological reasons for Zoom fatigue are complex.<\/p>\n

Most mental experts agree that at least one cause of Zoom fatigue (or Microsoft Teams fatigue, or any other video conferencing platform) is the challenge around what is termed \u201ccontinuous partial attention.\u201d\u00a0 The idea is that the mind is exhausted by trying to decode the social cues of multiple people directly in front of you at the same time. For our brains, staring at a gallery of faces on a Zoom meeting is similar to trying to read a book and sing a song simultaneously \u2014 it\u2019s taxing, to say the least.<\/p>\n

Even during one-on-one video calls, this new way of navigating social cues can be trying. Between often-imperfect video and audio, and a view of a person just shoulders and above, our brains are forced to work harder to pick up the social cues. The slight movement someone makes when they are ready to talk, the variations in eye contact that show emotions, the twiddling of thumbs to show boredom \u2014 these take more brainpower to detect on Zoom, and over time this can wear us out.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s something else I noticed.<\/p>\n

I really am tired of seeing myself all day. Constantly taking a glance at my onscreen appearance, on the alert for any food stuck in my teeth or a large wrinkle in my shirt \u2014these are things I (perhaps negligently) never spent much brainpower on before. This just adds to the weariness.<\/p>\n

So how do you combat Zoom fatigue?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what\u2019s worked for me:<\/p>\n