Hacker News Reader

Comment by sudosteph | Hacker News Reader

Any other Autism Spectrum or ADHD people who feel less fatigued by video meetings compared to IRL?

The things I like: - having the range of activity during a meeting constrained to one area in front of me so I don't have to look around the room to make sure I'm not missing something / get overstimulated by too much stuff happening. - Boxes with borders lighting up when someone is making noise / talking so I know where to look. - Names always associated with faces - text chat area for sharing links and non-disruptive ways to request clarification - No longer get lost in the hallway trying to find rooms with weird names - Don't have to kick people out of rooms when they stay too long - can foot tap and fidget hands off screen without people noticing

View on HN

I'm ADHD / Introvert.

And by introvert, I mean I can very confidently conduct meetings, conversations and socialise well, but it wears me down.

I find phone calls and video meetings somewhat more exhausting minute by minute.

So much so that I tend to have much shorter phone calls and video meetings. I cant go more than about 30 minutes before I have to stop.

Some people in my office however can seemingly go for hours! Literally 2 to 3 hours of a phone/video meetings and they seem engaged and energised. They love talking!

For me, just give me the facts and lets move on to some actual work.

My problem is I can't multitask during a zoom at all. I'm so anxious that someone will ask me a question so I'm tuned in the entire time while everyone else is pretty obviously off working on the side. I also find that I stare at myself fidgeting. It's nowhere near as bad as in person where I just want to not talk at all, though.

Also if everyone is on different timezones please don't make us turn on webcams. I'm getting a lot of 7-8am meetings lately now that my team is mostly East of me. I'm just waking up. I was in meetings from 8am this morning. I showered at 2pm when I finally got a 30 minute break.

I'm a little bit vain, a bit of a narcissist and self-conscious. I find it very distracting on Zoom to be looking at my own face on video to ensure I look like I'm properly paying attention, showing my best angle (hiding a double chin!) and not fidgeting.

Maybe I'm just too much in my own head about it, but it seems there's a bit of a performative element to zoom meetings making me a lot more award of presentation and perception than in irl meetings.

That makes total sense, most people don't make a habit of looking at themselves unless it's for the purposes of evaluating or adjusting something about their presentation. I tend to just make sure it's setup right when it starts, then use the option to hide the self-view to avoid that distraction. I don't care if I might look silly later, since constantly readjusting is a silliness of it's own. And someone will ping me if the camera messes up.

Yeah, I tend to hyperfocus so I don't miss a question too. But I figure that kinda should be the point of a meeting, so it's understandable, even if it's tiring. If everyone else is making it bad by multitasking, they need to get a handle on that. Zoom could add a bunch of features to help people run better meetings (a way to pass a ball around to select who's speaking, hand raising emoji, dynamic topic queues with votes), but it's just lousy software tbh.

>(a way to pass a ball around to select who's speaking, hand raising emoji, dynamic topic queues with votes)

I'm no Zoom apologist, but.. it has a 'raise hand' emoji/action, as well as a topic queue (in Q&A format). it also has "go faster" and "go slower" feedback attendees can display to the presenter in realtime.

I like the talking stick^W ball idea, though.

Lots of this stuff is in off-by-default preferences in Zoom, FYI.

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115001286183-Nonve...

My girlfriend has ADHD and possibly autism (she's getting assessed for it soonish), she's outright refused to switch her classes to be done over video - having to strain to hear / understand (it's a language class too), background noises, visual and auditory distractions. She explicitly went and paid extra for classroom sessions just to limit the distractions from online classes.

Not saying you're wrong (of course you're not, your experiences are not mine to judge), just providing a counter-anecdote.

Personally I don't really mind either way; with IRL meetings it varies, there's ones where I'm more an observer where I mainly tend to fall asleep, and there's the stand-ups which are fine outside of other people not in the meeting speaking up (we've had to shush them on more than one occasion). That last happened a few years ago though.

That's great it was an option for her but a lot of the uptick in zoom usage lately is for people who don't have the option to see each other face to face anymore due to Covid.

The alternative would be audio-only calls or text-based chat, or simply not communicating (not feasible for businesses but maybe for families/friends).

For me the main benefit is linearization of the conversation: people understand the limitations of the medium and interrupt each other less frequently, so it’s much easier to both follow and join the conversation without monitoring the nonverbal interactions in the room. That’s what makes teleconferencing with multiple people much less fatiguing to me than real meetings. Assuming known people and no video, of course — only screen share please.

ADHD, but no.

First, the audio processing takes a lot of my attention. This obviously depends on the call quality.

Second, RSD and feeling watched all the time. IRL, people are looking at the speaker, so I can scratch my nose in peace.

Third, after all those years of having ADHD, I've adapted to IRL meetings. Given enough time, I'll probably adapt to video calls as well.

Yeah pretty much, having names against people is fantastic.

I also don't particularly notice any increased lag, perhaps I'm normally operating at a verbal or social lag and zoom normalizes it down to my level?

Also, can hide video and pace around without bothering people.

> No longer get lost in the hallway trying to find rooms with weird names

Ha! We must work in the same office. See you at 3:00pm in Redwood - oh wait!, sorry, moved to Edgemar - tomorrow.

I hate it. At least one person on our call has a background whine that he can't hear, but is constant. Other people have kids. At least once a call there's an echo event where someone puts their speakers too close to their mic. Trying to listen and understand what anyone is saying is difficult - I've nearly given up.

Those ppl should be at the very least muting when they are not talking. I recommend using a push to talk app - I like https://mizage.com/shush/

Yup, and turning the video or microphone off for a minute- or the rest of the meeting if I feel like it- is only a click away.

Yep, me for sure, I love it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com