How to beat Zoom fatigue

The reason video calls are more tiring and top tips to make virtual meetings less draining:

Published in

BGL Tech

5 min readApr 1, 2021

If you’re finding you’re more exhausted at the end of your workday than you used to be, you’re not alone. The term, ‘Zoom fatigue’ has been the focus of many studies since working from home became the norm.

For many, virtual meetings now make up a large part of the working week - depending on your business area and workload. After working from home for a year, here are a few reasons video calls are so draining, and some tips for overcoming video call fatigue.

Are video calls more tiring than face-to-face?

Video calls force us to focus more intently to absorb information. If we were all in a meeting room, you can rely on whispered side exchanges to catch you up if you get distracted or answer quick, clarifying questions. During a video call, however, it’s impossible to do this unless you use the private chat feature or awkwardly try to find a moment to unmute and ask a colleague to repeat themselves.

On a video call the only way to show we’re paying attention is to look at the camera. But, in real life, how often do you stand within three feet of a colleague and stare at their face? Probably never. This constant gaze can make us uncomfortable — and tired.

In person, we can use our peripheral vision to glance out the window or look at others in the room. On a video call, because we are all sitting in different homes, if we turn to look out the window, we worry it might seem like we’re not paying attention.

Worse still, is the additional stimuli of seeing one’s self on the video. At best it’s an unecessary distraction, but more likely — whether you realise this or not — there is an additional effort that goes into monitoring and adapting that on screen ‘reflection’.

Adding fuel to the fire is many of our work-from-home situations. Many of us don’t always have a private space to work and so have to juggle demanding workloads with a house full of people demanding attention or wi-fi bandwidth.

Check out these tips that can help make video calls a little less exhausting.

1. Avoid multitasking

It’s easy to think that you can use the opportunity to do more in less time, but research shows that trying to do multiple things at once cuts into performance. Because you turn certain parts of your brain off and on for different types of work, switching between tasks can cost you as much as 40 per cent of your productive time.

Next time you’re on a video chat, close any tabs that might distract you, put your phone away, and stay present. We know it’s tempting but try to remind yourself that the email you just got can wait 15 minutes, and you’ll be able to craft a better response when you’re paying attention!

2. Build in breaks

This is not an invitation to start doing something else, but to let your eyes rest for a moment. Take mini breaks from video during longer calls by minimizing the window, moving it to behind your open applications, or just looking away from your computer completely for a few seconds now and then. For days when you can’t avoid back-to-back calls, consider making meetings 25 or 50 minutes to give yourself enough time in between to get up and move around for a bit.

3. Make virtual social events opt-in

After a long day of back-to-back video calls, it’s normal to feel drained, particularly if you’re an introvert. That’s why virtual social sessions should be kept opt-in, meaning whoever owns the event makes it explicit that people are welcome, but not obligated, to join.

You might also consider appointing a facilitator if you’re expecting a large group. It’s easy to get overwhelmed if we don’t know what’s expected of us, or if we’re constantly trying to figure out when we should or should not chime in.

4. Turn your camera off

Clearly, there are some calls where you need and want to be visible but consider whether there are any meetings where you are able to turn your camera off. Does it require that you’re able to see each other or can you do the work you need to do and give other people that performance break?

5. Switch to phone calls or email

Similar to the above. Check your calendar for the next few days to see if there are any conversations you could have in a different way, perhaps on email, chat, or phone call. If you’ve been on Teams all day but have an upcoming one-on-one, ask the person to switch to a phone call or suggest picking up the conversation later so you can both recharge. Try something like: “I’d love a break from video calls. Do you mind if we do this over the phone?”. Most likely the other person will be relieved by the switch, too.

Many people now feel a tendency to treat video as the default for all communication. In situations where you’re communicating with people outside of your organisation, conversations for which you used to rely on phone calls, you may feel obligated to send out a video link instead. Video calls are fairly intimate and can even feel invasive in some situations, so stick to a phone call if it makes you feel more comfortable.

Some of these tips might be hard to follow at first but taking these steps can help you prevent feeling so exhausted at the thought of another video chat. It’s tiring enough trying to adapt to this new normal. Make video calls a little easier for yourself.