Zoom fatigue is true — Here’s why video calls are so exhausting

At this time, working from home made our life vice versa of good and bad, we often complain about the traffic jam we face on our way to office, that used to make us bored and that boredom affected on our next day office, but now a days this totally shifted and moved from that phase to online phase, here we are being bored at online appearing and various technical discomfortness, which leading our productivity on risk and the work we are doing is not being properly done for these interruptions while working from home on this pandemic.

We need to see now why this is being tiring for all of us while sitting up for a zoom call

While talking face to face in the office, human beings always look for any specific emotions with any expressions, this is the way humans get a message and they are used to it. Now on zoom this is slightly tough to attract some else message constantly in the same way.

Talking and meeting face to face is not only exchanging expressions, it also shares the values of each other and in every office culture we often see few rituals in the office. These also play an important role in this.

Now if we see how zoom meeting is different from individual meeting, we will be able to find out the vacuum here within this situation,

1. Looking at our own face is boring and stressing

We often check our own mirror in terms of checking our outfit, whether that's ok or not, but if we talk about our facial expressions on a video camera and seeing each other is really stressing. If we look at our own face for a day long it will create boredom at work. If we look at our own negative disgusted expression often on a mirror like video call can also lead to more intense emotions.

2. No warm up catch up

While talking with someone we often start talking with catching up any specific topic about appearance and other elements too, but while being on zoom it's a bit tough to get something and it's also weird to start with anything like this without appearing physical.

When we meet somebody in office for anything, we start the conversation picking up anything interesting and also the atmosphere becomes very friendly with this sort of meeting to talk about anything too. Not only the atmosphere, also increases creativity and generates ideas, but while being on zoom this is barely possible.

3. Are you really caring what is actually happening on the other side of the zoom call ?

In real life, the word sincerity reflects a lot of things, it reflects your working attitude, your passion for working, your good vibe to work and also a lot more things which we all know for our daily office life. These are few common values which entitle us as a good person at our workplace and also it reflects our seriousness towards the workplace and other essential elements, but here from a single video window nowadays this created a lot more vacuum space from above mentioned essentiality toward work.

On the other hand you have a lot of task in house to do, you have to clean the room, you have to catch the right time for taking care for your kid also the family, there are a lot more like this roam around on your head while being on home and on that time you are attending a zoom meeting, this gives you to lose your attention for that specific meeting and you eventually keep thinking about your house chores things and others. So at this time this is very much tough for those who are sitting up at home and also working at the same time as attending a zoom meeting.

4. Will my kid run in ?

We started to feel weird when we found out this new pandemic made our home morley for office and when it comes about the zoom meeting you are being conscious about the background of yours. If your kid is running in you will also feel awkward in front of your colleague and also in front of your clients.

This creates distractions and also a lot more anxiety for working calmly, you can not define this situation for any exact ratio that your kid will not jump in front of the camera but you can limit this awkwardness by using measures. Otherwise you will be terrified by sudden any inappropriate situation which will make your day bad.

5. The great non verbal communications

We all love the way we connect to each other by using non verbal signs to understand a lot of things within a few seconds, we can pass a huge message using just a few non verbal signs and this works out so smoothly. Nowadays we all are missing this, I often miss this while working from home.

This non verbal communication is not only signs, it contains our expression, our norms, it contains the value we provide for individual work. The posture and gesture we use while these situations are also a great thing which was a great thing to carry on.

While being from home on a zoom meeting this sort of valuable attribute is barely seen, we talk to the screens and sometimes our voice cuts off and also the video, this creates more stress and in terms of any important meeting we often don’t want to miss our valuable slides to fade away from the screen also. These non verbal things are so much attached with our corporate life which you can not replace with anything else from home.

Now lets see how can you actually get rid from these and enjoy working from home and the meetings from zoom,

1. Establish ‘No Meeting’ Time Blocks

Work with your calendar, just fix up dates and be prepared and make your surroundings prepared for that time block of meetings. Often when we do meetings without a plan we put ourselves in a huge vacuum. This will create the office hour more on boredom and unpleasant comfort.

If you want you can also use apps for scheduling or you can also fix time up by using google calendar, which i do use and find it very handy and easy, and also i achieve my goals of the week by following that. So if you can fix up time for meetings, it will be easier and flexible for you to shift other work by this time.

2. Set meeting free day in every week if possible

If you want to make your schedule more flexible along with your day free of chaos, you can set a day which will be entitled as free zone day for you, and on that day you will avoid all of your meetings and keep your week more productive except from that.

You can do this only for you also you can bring more people on this to make this more feasible for your working place.

Also you can flip your days from this, you can fix a day for whole meetings on that day and nothing else. This will make you be more free and you will be able to work more productively without being fatigued.

3. Reduce the number of video call

It is wiseable if you can reduce your number of phone calls during your office hour and instead of that you can fix an hour to call back to the missed call and mails you have. Otherwise this will create your working hour to be more in chaos and you will not enjoy your day and it will make your day unproductive and fatigued too.

Often people enjoy fixed hours for these and they find this wiseable and feasible to run any specific day for any specific time.

4. Use more textual communication with your comfort

Instead of using any voice call you can text the message to your co worker, if you can use Slack for text based communication, I often find it very useful as it is very easy and handy to use and we find it very comfortable when it comes to access.

SMS technology reduces lengthy unproductive conversation and it becomes easier for communication within your co-workers and when it comes about avoiding zoom and just giving a small text, it is very much comfortable for all kinds of work related conversation and it saves time too.

5. Turn off your camera entirely

As we were talking about zoom fatigue, it is widely related to cameras and also it is more importantly related to people being bored seeing their own face and negative expressions everyday.

Instead of having it open for all the time you can turn it off if that is not necessary totally. We often see on general video calls we need to be very conscious about our background and other surroundings, but if that is not necessary to have it open, you can turn it off for your own comfort, when needed you can use it and turn it on.

Schedule screen free time

Usually i find myself more than 4-6 hours on screen, stil i try to reduce because it causes more risk for the rest of my weeks. Because when you will use more screen time and this will burn you out for the rest of the week and even for some cases it increases up to the years also, why is this happening ? because people don't acknowledge the burn out and thereby they put themselves in an uncertain vacuum.

So for reducing this fatigue for your zoom and other video calls fatigue, you can simply schedule and limit your screen time and rest of the time you have it for your own well being, which will be adding value to your next working day.