…Zoom whiplash, an extension of a March 21 post on Zoom Fatigue.,
Over the last year or so much of our workday consisted of moving from high cognitive audio/video conversations to ‘on our own in our space’ time then back to high cognitive video calls and then back again on our own.
A sort of Zoom whiplash so it may not just be the number of video calls we have but also how we arrange them.
This idea was spawned by an article I read, which may not be true from a scientific point of view, but is something to consider as we incorporate video calls into our workday.
In an office environment, in-person meetings provide a natural transition period whereas video meetings take place immediately and blend in with the rest of our on-screen work. Meetings (video calls) then become task and/or context switching situations that reduce our productivity by demanding unnecessary mental flexing.
When most of us run errands we try and combine them as much as possible into one outing which is called ‘task clustering’ in the cognitive science world.
This could be something to look at in more intentionally managing our video conferencing needs; cluster calls together as much as possible to reduce context, task, and/or social to alone switching.
Task clustering could be applied to all our work by breaking it into video call time, email time, deep work time etc., if we have some control over our workflow. In doing so we might be able to not only avoid some Zoom whiplash and fatigue but also end up getting better work done with some extra energy left at the end of our day.
Written while listening to Vangelis – Blade Runner Soundtrack
William Kerr And associates 