…do we really need to feel fatigued anymore?
Not having to spend time getting to, sitting in and returning from the many necessary and, more often than not, unnecessary meetings we are required to attend should be a relief.
Winston Churchill’s comment that “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us,” could be said today as, “We shape our technology and afterwards our technology shapes us.”
In a Christoph Magnussen video, (at 2:40) he mentions that we usually take technology the way we get it and begin using it without spending time to set it up for how we want it to help us.
The pandemic threw many into the remote work/video conferencing world with little or no training or experience and therefore people used it as they got it. Stanford University conducted the first peer-reviewed study of Zoom fatigue and beyond the first common-sense revelation that “just because you can use video doesn’t mean you have to,” have uncovered four main reasons for the fatigue and ways to reduce it. In short:
- Excessive amounts of close-up eye contact is intense.
- Seeing yourself during video chats constantly in real time is fatiguing.
- Video chats dramatically reduce our usual mobility.
- The cognitive load is much higher in video chats.
Now, two years in, we can step back and reevaluate our use of video conferencing, and how best to work it, with a little more intention and add it to our regular communication tools when and where appropriate.
Shape it and use it the way we want it to help us.
So, do we spend time driving across town in post-pandemic traffic to meet someone or save time and connect with a Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, or whatever call? There is now a choice many may not have realized was available before the pandemic.
And, while we’re at it, we could thank all our friends and colleagues for putting up with all we may have put them through in our own learning of how to navigate a video conferencing world.
Written while listening to some Jimi Hendrix
William Kerr And associates 