Meeting notification pops up, and the chain of events begins. You sit down, and congrats, you’re in the meeting, ready to roll.īut in Zoom, no no no. Once there, you say hello to a group of people who you probably already saw and said hello to or at least passed by earlier in the day. So, when in the office, a meeting reminder pops-up, you gather your notes and pen or laptop, and you walk into a conference room. This might be the stretchiest of stretches, but there could be some truth to it depending on who you are. Simply joining a meeting requires more energy I could be exaggerating, so take inventory of your situation to gauge if this is true or not. So, as mentioned above, every interaction seems to now be a Zoom meeting. And while doing so now doesn’t at all go against any recommended guideline or pose a health hazard, it just makes us feel like we aren’t adapting. One other thing we used to do in-office is talk on the phone. We’d share bowls of snacks? That’s no-no. We used to gather together in groups? Now a no-no. One theory I have with this one is that anything we did in the office pre-coronavirus now seems wrong or incorrect. Social exhaustion is in fact very real, and that’s a key contributor here. So, you do need to be “on.” Eye contact, head nods, and other non-verbal cues to communicate that yes, you are paying attention. I mean, I feel guilty taking a sip of water, sneezing, or even just looking at my notepad because it’s usually off-camera and can be mistaken for a phone glance. This leaves little window for you to break eye contact with the camera out of fear you’ll be seen and thought of to be not paying attention. But in Zoom, it’s happening, and you know it’s happening, and you’re doing it to others. Think about when you look up from your notes in an in-person meeting and someone is looking at you. So, at any given time there is a very good chance at least one of your co-workers is staring directly at you. This literally means being present with cameras turned on so everyone’s face can be seen.Īnd with that simple click of a button, we have unleashed a number of unintended consequences.Ĭameras on means everyone on the call is scanning faces for probably 99% of the meeting’s duration. Whether it’s explicitly stated or not within an organization, everyone is expected to be “on” in every single Zoom meeting. Everyone is expected to be “on” (literally) Now, everyone is online, and everyone is always looking at each other, and it's the granddaddy reason responsible for the additional fatigue reasons that follow. This in-person group would interact among themselves, and would occasionally “throw it” to those online, or, would turn their attention to those online only when those participants were speaking. Obviously, right? But my point is - and I can speak to this as a pre-coronavirus remoter - meetings were much different when a portion of attendees were remote/online and a portion were gathered in the office, and in-person. I’ve already mentioned a few reasons why this phenomenon is being talked about more and more with each meeting that passes, but here is a brief summary of could-be reasons. It’s video/online meeting fatigue, but Zoom gets the label because Zoom is the go-to meeting tool for most. Thus, it’s not really Zoom-caused fatigue. Zoom fatigue is feeling worn out with having to be “on” all the time during the many virtual meetings we endure each day. Being able to work at all is not being taken for granted here by any means.) What is Zoom fatigue? (With all of this, it’s worth saying that, in a time where many are left without work, or in poor health, or both, there are far worse things than being fatigued from work. Not to mention that office chit-chat is like fuel for some people, and trying to get a fix from taking a break and interacting with the significant other, kids, pets, or anyone else at home just isn’t the same. We might be far more productive now than ever, which means we could just be more fatigued from the longer hours and increased focus. I mean, we are all probably sitting at our desks and working a lot more than we did pre-coronavirus. What might have been a one-on-one phone call check-in in the normal days is now a Zoom video check-in.īut, does all of this add up to being the main reason we are more exhausted at day's end, or is Zoom just our scapegoat? What might have been a “walk and talk” in the normal days is now a Zoom video talk. Plus, every interaction between co-workers now seems to have to take place over Zoom. I 100% agree that attending a Zoom meeting is more taxing than going about the same interaction in-person.

Zoom it define