Zoom Fatigue?

May 27, 2020

5 Simple practices to curb that Zoom Fatigue

From one-on-one meetings and training to sales meetings, to social media presentations, I spend 4-6 hours a day on Zoom. Last week, I was giving a presentation to realtors running through the different uses of Zoom in today’s world; virtual coffees, lunches, happy hours, bingo, pub trivia, and more. During this presentation, a term I had not yet heard of was brought to my attention by a couple of the realtors, ‘Zoom Fatigue.’ What they meant by this, is that they have been on so many Zoom meetings that they were starting to feel fatigued by them. Although this was a new term for me, I could completely relate working from home in the last few months.

I was curious as to how many others were feeling this fatigue so I posted a few polls, one in a national webinar with 54 attendees, one in Facebook stories, and another in Instagram stories. The poll results were not shocking, to say the least as the three combined poll results were that 40% of the participants felt Zoom Fatigue. Perhaps the term was new to many of them as well, and like me, they just hadn’t realized what it was they were feeling.

As I have written in a previous article the struggle of pivoting from 75% travel to 100% working from home, I found it rather depressing, and incredibly difficult to adjust. The first couple of weeks we not too bad, but I soon found myself fatigued and had to change the way I structured my days to pull out of that depression. In hindsight, much of the depression I had been feeling was likely just fatigue, and one thing I am certain of is that the action steps I took to fight my depression squashed my Zoom Fatigue. Below are the top 5 things that I implemented to change the way that I was feeling, I hope that for the 40% of you who are feeling Zoom Fatigue, these will help you as well. It was helpful for me to schedule these in my calendar between appointment to stay mindful and keep on track:

 

-Meditate for 15 minutes (look on YouTube for an energy-geared mediation).
-Go for a walk, stretch or dust off those 5lb dumbbells.
-Pick up that book you’ve been meaning to read and set aside 30 minutes each day.
-Call a friend or loved one that is not work-related and make the conversation about them.
-Block out a zoom-free admin day.