how do you deal with Zoom fatigue?
This is a reflection from October 2020, when video calls had taken over a large part of my working day. It follows my earlier account of remote working and marketing in the first weeks of the pandemic. The cat, naturally, had her own view.
Anyone I Zoom with on a regular basis knows one of my cats really loves the camera.
I’ll start a call and hear her run upstairs just before she sits at the door and cries her heart out – and I mean she CRIES HER HEART OUT – until I open the door.
It may only be a 10-20 second wait for her but you’d think she was dying from the sound she makes.
When in the office, she sits on my lap and watches intently at the people on my screen. She’s not in view, so it’s not her seeing another cat. She really loves seeing people’s faces on my screen.
We’ve recently and seamlessly adopted video calling into our personal and professional lives, my cat included. Not to say we weren’t using such technology beforehand, but there is now much more of a dependency on it given the Covid-19 pandemic. From the quizzes and bingo nights had with friends and family to Board calls and 1:1s, our lives are full of the Zoom.
I’ll call you
I recently received an enquiry – a small business needing ongoing hands-on marketing support a few days a month. In my reply I suggested we have a call to talk through exactly what they’re looking for.
If I were to say “let’s have a call” would you think I meant via the phone, FaceTime, Zoom, Hangout? My potential new client suggested a date and time via a Zoom invitation. Straight in. Zoom.
It made me wonder how often we choose a video call simply because it has become the default. What does this particular conversation need? Sometimes seeing someone or sharing a screen helps. Sometimes we just need to talk.
Yakety Yak
I previously worked for an organisation who made regular use of YAC – a telephone conferencing facility – as it was easy and cheapish to use. Skype and Adobe Connect were available at the time but YAC was the go-to for most meetings where attendees were remote.
There are also times when a written update or a short recorded message would do the job. If nobody needs to discuss or decide anything together, do we need everyone in a live meeting?
No Zoomin’ here.
Eye to eye
Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed how tired my eyes are. Not only am I staring at a screen for most of the day given my day job, but I don’t have any face-to-face meetings. Before March I enjoyed working from a café, travelling into Brighton, meeting with clients and colleagues; I’m now fully working from home. So, my days are filled with screen time.
During a call last week (Zoom, not telephone) I chatted with a colleague who coincidentally had a killer headache like me that day. We both said we needed a break from the screen, and she said she hadn’t had much time away from her laptop – she was either working on it or attending Zoom calls.
(We dosed up on paracetamol.)
Virtual attendance
With the events industry still suffering, Zoom and other dedicated online platforms are changing the way we attend conferences. Most of the events I’m working on and/or want to attend are now virtual.
There are so many benefits to this – no travelling, more time to learn and network, ease of incorporating the time into our working day. But I miss going to events. I miss the dedicated time away from my laptop, in a room with lots of people.
There’s equally negatives to virtual attendance – it can be harder to dedicate the time to an hour’s webinar let alone a day’s virtual event. There’s also only so many Zoom/Adobe recordings you can watch and learning to be had if you’re playing catch-up.
Not an easy one.
Zoomageddon?
I’ve recently seen a few LinkedIn posts and tweets where people have said their last Zoom call could have been a Slack message, or better than that a quick telephone call. Are we using Zoom too much? Unnecessarily so? Can you relate to a time when you’d have preferred a phone call or a text/message?
Is there a need for employers to reflect on how their teams are communicating, internally and externally? Or should we all take individual responsibility for how we communicate and decide on what channel is appropriate for the message we want to deliver? Perhaps pushing back on a Zoom invitation?
Choose the conversation before the channel
Before sending the next invitation, decide what the conversation is for. A simple update might work in writing. A one-to-one catch-up may suit a phone call. Working through a design together could benefit from a shared screen.
If a meeting is useful, explain the purpose, invite the people needed and give it enough time without filling the diary by default. Check what works for the people taking part too; preferences and accessibility needs differ.
The point is to make the communication useful. The technology should help with that decision, rather than make it for us.
Maybe I need to practice what I preach and start scheduling 1:1 telephone calls rather than Zoom. Would I miss seeing people’s faces? Yes. My cat would too.
To end on an ironic note, today is my first day away from Zoom this week; no meetings/calls. Paid work aside, I've checked-in with people I haven’t spoken to in a while (email not telephone) and written this blogpost – about Zoom.