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Zoom fatigue unpacked

leadership.garden

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Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#51

Post by grimjack00 »

ehnto wrote: post #9

I turn my camera off on big calls and it helps a bunch, there's a process running in the back of my mind when it's on that is constantly screening what I am doing just incase it looks stupid on camera. It feels like being in a panopticon. You never know if someone is looking. It's very tiring. I don't have the same issue in person because you know when people are looking at you in person and there's heaps of context…

I am so happy my team, and most of my company as a whole, has an unstated "camera off" custom. There are a few project/product managers and higher-ups that like to be seen, I guess, but there's never been anyone announcing "Please everyone turn on your cameras".

It's interesting when we have meetings with external partners that appear to have a "camera on" policy, and they are the only people with their cameras on.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#52

Post by neilv »

> Take notes: Taking notes can help you remember important points and reduce cognitive load.

I often do this in online meetings, but have two not-entirely-solved problems with it:

1. People might think I'm not paying attention when I am, especially in 2-person meetings. (They might hear the typing, and my gaze might shift at times. When I do need a sec to type an action item or something that takes longer than a pause in a 2-person meeting, I can say that. People also don't know that I'm only typing notes for the meeting, not, say, processing other things, until they know me well enough to know that I'd say if I had to respond to an urgent Slack message or something.)

2. People don't always want everything recorded/documented. Say, a concern about personnel, or how some dependency is going, morale, or a personal challenge affecting someone's work. In an in-person meeting, if I've been taking notes and want to signal that something is more off-the-record, I could put down my pen, take hands off the keyboard, or close notepad portfolio. In videoconf, when they can't see my typing hands, there aren't as good subtle signals, and I might have to verbalize somehow that I'm not taking notes.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#53

Post by chrismarlow9 »

codingdave wrote: post #10

Of course, the elephant in the room is that people need to stop having so many meetings. Those of us who have been working remotely for a decade or more never had this problem - we use async communications, quick one-off calls when needed, and really never spent all our time in meetings. But when everyone moved to remote work a few years ago, this culture of meetings all day came up... and it still confuses me. It is…

Agreed it is the weirdest thing ever to me that people don't email anymore. Just send an email. In an email it's written down and I can search for it. In an email I can think at my own pace and respond without worrying about trampling others. In an email people can't ramble on and on and if they do you can just not read the email. And if it's work to be done, just make a ticket.

The amount of meeting time waste baffles me. And then you try to make them productive and include information in the invite and you show up and nobody read it. So now you have to waste more time when you could have just gone directly into brainstorming.

At this point I kind of just give up. I make my suggestions to make things more efficient and try to remember that even if the work gets done sooner I won't be working any less.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#54

Post by skirmish »

codingdave wrote: post #10

Of course, the elephant in the room is that people need to stop having so many meetings. Those of us who have been working remotely for a decade or more never had this problem - we use async communications, quick one-off calls when needed, and really never spent all our time in meetings. But when everyone moved to remote work a few years ago, this culture of meetings all day came up... and it still confuses me. It is…

Funny, just read an article on WSJ complaining how people take breaks during working time and then it is hard to schedule even more meetings on short notice ("is why so many managers hate hybrid work"):

https://www.wsj.com/articles/work-office-coworkers-schedule-...

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#55

Post by lumost »

codingdave wrote: post #10

Of course, the elephant in the room is that people need to stop having so many meetings. Those of us who have been working remotely for a decade or more never had this problem - we use async communications, quick one-off calls when needed, and really never spent all our time in meetings. But when everyone moved to remote work a few years ago, this culture of meetings all day came up... and it still confuses me. It is…

Problem emerges when there is at least one influential team/individual which is allergic to written communication. I work with one such team that avoids a written paper trail in order to avoid difficult questions. Once one such team exists, people start losing the time to thoughtfully perform async communication.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#56

Post by osigurdson »

codingdave wrote: post #10

Of course, the elephant in the room is that people need to stop having so many meetings. Those of us who have been working remotely for a decade or more never had this problem - we use async communications, quick one-off calls when needed, and really never spent all our time in meetings. But when everyone moved to remote work a few years ago, this culture of meetings all day came up... and it still confuses me. It is…

I fully agree and had a snide comment to add. However, I had a bit of a brainwave. Is it possible that this is being driven more by anxious employees? “How can I show that I am doing something when no one is watching over my shoulder? I know, dial into meetings all day so I can be watched again”. It is of course even worse for managers as they aren’t expected to do a lot of concrete work. However, I can empirically state that simply being in meetings all day does not guarantee employment (not me, fortunately).

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#58

Post by j-bos »

noman-land wrote: post #16
ehnto wrote: post #9

I turn my camera off on big calls and it helps a bunch, there's a process running in the back of my mind when it's on that is constantly screening what I am doing just incase it looks stupid on camera. It feels like being in a panopticon. You never know if someone is looking. It's very tiring. I don't have the same issue in person because you know when people are looking at you in person and there's heaps of context…

I want you and everyone else to know that sometimes on large zoom calls I will "pin" one person in the call and stare at them for multiple minutes in a row on fullscreen. I do this all the time.

This is a wild play if you wear glasses.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#59

Post by symfoniq »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #46
codingdave wrote: post #10

Of course, the elephant in the room is that people need to stop having so many meetings. Those of us who have been working remotely for a decade or more never had this problem - we use async communications, quick one-off calls when needed, and really never spent all our time in meetings. But when everyone moved to remote work a few years ago, this culture of meetings all day came up... and it still confuses me. It is…

From my experience, a "culture of meetings" was ever present when working at the office. It did not go away when everything went remote by necessity. And now maybe the "original remote workers" are affected, too.

> And now maybe the "original remote workers" are affected, too.

I think there’s a lot to this. Those of us who worked remote for many years before COVID probably developed more efficient ways of working over time. Then the pandemic hit and we were suddenly vastly outnumbered by newly remote folks who didn’t actually know how to work remotely.

Re: Zoom fatigue unpacked

#60

Post by j-bos »

ehnto wrote: post #9

I turn my camera off on big calls and it helps a bunch, there's a process running in the back of my mind when it's on that is constantly screening what I am doing just incase it looks stupid on camera. It feels like being in a panopticon. You never know if someone is looking. It's very tiring. I don't have the same issue in person because you know when people are looking at you in person and there's heaps of context…

Agreed for big calls. For smaller calls, I try to turn on my camera if someone of equal or lower rank has their camera on, and for anyone who has theirs on in a one-on-one.
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