Zoom Fatigue Is Real, According to Brain Scans
spectrum.ieee.org
spectrum.ieee.org
A wall of faces staring at your neck is not what any real in-person thing feels like. A wall of facings looking in your eyes isn’t, either, for that matter, but the constantly-averted-gazes do add even more to the weirdness. You don’t feel so constantly watched in person, unless you’re doing a presentation.
I did a little work with one of the Big 3 management consulting firms about… oh, four or five years back, well after everyone cool and most non-cool had adopted Zoom or some other video chat for work calls. They favored actual dial-in conference calls. At first I thought they were dinosaurs, but the more I considered it the more I thought they had the right idea. Nothing to download or permissions to allow. Doesn’t tie up your laptop. Don’t need a laptop out at all, in fact. Phone number and code digits are all you need, can record that on a napkin.
Mass video chat’s so weird that I’m not sure the video’s adding value anyway, if you’re not screen sharing.
Secondly, there's some etiquette rules that people eventually pick up on: Leave pauses in your speech so that people can butt in, shut up if no one's responded verbally to you in while, and understand that there is an appropriate amount of talking over each other that is acceptable.
Many, many people don’t figure these out in real life.
Oh Microsoft figured it out. They just made the quality subtly worse vs Zoom. Jumping from a Zoom meeting to a Teams one, especially with the same people, amplifies this a bit.
Maybe I just watch wayyy too much CNN, but this has never been weird to me and its fatigues me vastly less than bullshit commuting/travel
Edit: I like how any time normies start having access to rich people shit like Zooming for work, the rich do AnimalPlanet type documentary-style media campaigns about how the lower among us simply can't handle it and it needs to be gently but forecefully brought to a smooth transition until closure or the point at which they can massage through enough pointed legislation/social pressure
Personally I go in the office 1-2 days a week. If you want to talk to me, do it in person those days. If you add me to some 10 person video call. I’m just going to zone out.
A multi-call system like a Discord server represents a small step, with the ability to see that conversations are happening in other calls, and maybe get a guess of what they're doing thanks to live presence, but it's far from a complete solution.
Requiring video on probably makes people push back against being invited to useless meetings rather than seeing it as an hour to clean the house.
They genuinely believe that whatever they're crapping on about to a brick wall for 2 hours straight is the most important thing in the universe and they want your undivided attention, productivity or profit be damned. That's why they force people to turn their cameras on.
Many of the people for whom the meeting is pointless are usually in no position to push back on it.
If in person, just zone out. If on Zoom and allowed, turn off camera and vacuum the carpet.
Exactly. But most of the time you don't have a choice.
So may as well do dishes.
Wow all this time like a sucker I've been doing what my boss asked me to do.
This includes whether to attend a meeting, hours that you work, and other things that you might currently conceive of as obligations.
At the end of the day your boss only cares about looking good to their boss. If you can help them do that anything else is just a detail
So really, the options are typically 1) deal with it 2) quit.
There is no point in pushing back in this case. They just don't care about running an effective meeting.
It's a two way street. A lot of people are terrible at writing to communicate, especially in a time-sensitive context like Slack, and we remote workers are having to do a lot more written communication than when we were in the office.
US national reading comprehension test scores have been flat, more or less, since 1992. https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/highlights/reading/2022/
There seems to be a disconnect between parts of this sentence. "Can't understend written content" because they "interpret things literally."
Why wouldn't they? If you have something to say, say it - or, in this case, write it.
Why leave things open to interpretation?
Furthermore, why not just say things literally in a video call or in-person meeting as well? Surely the only possibility is for less confusion this way.
When you have a verbal communication people bring up things they don't understand in realtime and you correct as you go so that, by the end of the conversation, a mutual understanding has been reached.
In writing - especially if you're sending emails - people are often reluctant to come back for more info as they think it'll make them look dumb, plus there's the 'inertia' factor plus the factor of not knowing whether you'll get a timely reply.
It's just so hard to convince others before them having tried it. You can't tell someone what the matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.
I just hope Zuck doesn’t continue to make it look unpalatable - that’s why I’m hoping Apple will build a consumer-acceptable solution that will force Meta to get their act together.
I've done some pilots with serious VR meeting software like Arthur and Spatial (before they reinvented themselves as a "generic" metaverse tool). It's not for every call, no. But for the more proactive brainstorming / whiteboard session it's great. Especially as devices start having more sensor for body, face, eye tracking. You really feel like you're with the others. Really great option to replace a long flight you were going to make for a half-day workshop. So much more better than a zoom call. The detractors often point at the poor legless avatars but in my opinion that's something that gets forgotten quickly as you actually start communicating.
It's really hard to actually make people start using it though. And yes Zuck is burning way too much money on the wrong things. After all those billions Horizons still looks worse than VRChat, I mean really, how much did they spend? Can't be more than a few million.
I hope there will be a way to convert voice into a realistic behaving VR avatar, no equipment needed other than a mic.
For example if I say "ok John, I like that idea", my avatar automatically faces John and locks eyes.
For most of the meeting I'm not speaking anyway so my avatar could just look at whoever is speaking and look interested.
Or perhaps you mean the boring MS Teams avatars you can use to replace video, they are indeed pretty bored looking all the time and not responding to your voice activity at all but I heard at Ignite that they are getting some upgrades.
What I'm suggesting is that I wouldn't be wearing a headset at all, but everyone else in the meeting wouldn't realize this. My VR self (I'm calling that my avatar) would be on auto-pilot, driven only by my voice and reacting to others voices and virtual positions.
Most of the time it would just need to face whoever is speaking and appear to be engaged, and throw in some random movements, so I don't have to physically do that myself.
I could continue to play guitar or take my dog outside while those with VR headsets on are stuck going through the expected motions.
And they will notice anyway. A real avatar with full body tracking is quite emotive.
The idea that having cameras on will convey body language like in person conversations seems patently false, partly because of the above and partly because most people moderate their expressions to an extreme while on camera.
Its the hybrid mix that I can't stand. I remained a remote employee when everyone else was forced back into the office. Now I have no idea who is talking or who is in the room half the time. The AV setups in the conference rooms pick up any background conversations and amplify them. The cameras randomly are zooming in and out at the wrong person. Nobody is ever on time to the meetings anymore because they have to move between physical locations. There tends to be a conversation in progress when the conference room finally joins the call.
I went on to discuss how sound intensity is inverse to the square of the distance, so double the mic distance and it’s 1/4 the intensity. So the distant mic was picking up ~1/64th the volume. When there isn’t much of a difference between my voice and room echoes it becomes hard to listen to.
They started a discussion about how much it would cost to outfit everyone with external mics after that haha. For anyone wondering, even a cheap lapel or broadcast mic that’s close to your face will sound much better than a distant laptop, due to the comparative volume of your voice verses the environment.
[0] One shaka, or one “hell yeah” is a unit of measure an audio engineer shared with me once. Extend your thumb and pinky, and get your mic about that far from your mouth for good sound. One or two shaka’s is generally very good.
But I regularly have to take calls with people from other companies, and one in particular comes to mind where some dude never ever wears a proper headset, or doesn't know how to configure it or something [0]. We can always hear the people around him going about their business.
Then there's also the fact that people insist on using bluetooth headsets and wifi, so the audio goes in and out when it doesn't sound like a robot.
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[0] I've complained once to somebody about being unable to hear them. They said they were wearing a headset, but, as it turned out, Teams was using the laptop's integrated mic instead.
I use a Sennheiser/EPOS DECT headset. I'd only recommend the Sennheiser ones for DECT because they have an ultra-wideband mode that actually sounds pretty good. Otherwise you're going to sound like a cordless phone.
This was driving me crazy when I was looking for one a few months ago. Ended going with a wired Poly (the DECT models were absurdly expensive for my needs).
I do have a DECT Jabra model (with a huge base) which is nice enough for conference calls, and the mic doesn't sound noticeably worse than the newer, wired model we have at work. The headphones do have a somewhat tinnier sound, bur for conferencing they're very good as long as nobody with a deep voice breaks out some Shure mic.
The killer feature for me is the very, very low latency. I'm a non-competitive non-hardcore gamer, but I'm happy to use it in FPS games.
It also wipes the floor with bluetooth range-wise. During covid I had it at my parents' thick-walled house and it allowed me to walk around the garden during calls with no interruptions. BT can't handle me going in the next room in my small apartment.
And yea DECT is pretty nice. I also use it for gaming occasionally.
Then they wonder why everyone hates meetings.
But I also own IEMs that I use if I'm giving a presentation, so I can get the necessary direct monitoring to ensure I'm on-point with my audio.
I'm going to lose control and smash my macbook one of these days.
Blame Bluetooth blame whatever, but AirPods Pro and AirPods Max should sound incredible at their price point. And they just don’t. They sound obviously filtered and robotic.
And also the latency they add is a problem.
People lose their minds when they hear the raw recordings from the vocal booth that's directly behind my work desk. And it was just a closet before, outfitting it just wasn't that expensive.
A big thing that I like about zoom vs in-person is the knowledge that I can turn the camera and microphone off, and that as soon as I end the call I'll be instantly, blissfully alone.
Because I went full-time WFH in 2015 or so and never experienced it and have never understood what people are talking about.
I hate IRL meetings much more when you want to hide behind your laptop and yet want to act like you're paying attention and yet you're bored to death.
With zoom if someone starts pinging you something important over slack you can just mute and hide your video and respond and let yourself be distracted while keeping a bit of your attention on what is going on in the meeting. In IRL, you're stuck trying to sort out the urgency of responding to the issue in slack vs. the urgency of appearing to pay attention to the meeting you're stuck in.
And I haven't even had "zoom fatigue" when I've been the presenter in 2 hour long recorded training sessions with junior devs, even though I'm an introvert. I get a bit exhausted after doing that, but talking at people for 2 hours just exhausts the shit out of me any time.
That last bit kind of makes me wonder if extroverts experience "zoom fatigue" due to actually experiencing self-reflection in conversations for the first time or something like that.
For those I have/want to talk, I feel that most difficult part is that it's hard to get into the conversation if it's hybrid, people attenuating in a meeting can easily use facial expression and/or body languages to indicate they want to interrupt or add something in it, while for us on the big screen, some of the people couldn't read the cue, unless someone virtually "raised a hand" with a binging sound.
My best experience with the meetings are the smaller ones that everyone has the camera on, speak in turn, giving feedback by using "raise a hand" button in a row, and don't take details offline. (around 60% of hour meetings are in this way - weekly).
One upside about larger video calls is that you can read participants expression without them realizing.
What I am trying to say is that probably fatigue comes from getting disengaged. If you're participating and you find meaning in what you're doing, it doesn't really matter over what medium it's done. But sure, if you have to stare at your screen while knowing that you're being broadcast to your colleagues and the call is irrelevant to you, of course you will feel tired. In the office meeting room you can at least pretend you are doing some important stuff while scrolling at your laptop or phone.
Organizations should embrace asynchronous communication and whatever meetings need to be done, it should be ensured that only relevant parties are participating.
- Take short breaks throughout the day, like getting coffee/water, etc.
- Turn off self view!
- If you code, try to cluster your meetings together to reduce context switching. Block focus time on your calendar to avoid drive-by meetings that break up these clusters.
- Invest in good headphones and a good mic. Others might have bad sound quality but you definitely won't. Also, it will be easier to hear others even if they have bad sq
Your status goes yellow and you're fired.
>- If you code, try to cluster your meetings together to reduce context switching. Block focus time on your calendar to avoid drive-by meetings that break up these clusters.
If you code, you don't have enough authority to do this.
Turn your self video off.
https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/a-theory-of-zoom-...
I'm also curios if this will at all be relatable to how introverts find in person communication tiring. Maybe that same stress is at work there but from the start, without the need for the differences introduce by zoom. It will be interesting to see how the research on this plays out.
Until a “scrum master” was brought in and the shit show started. However that role was quickly made redundant and things got back to normal - including productivity which stuttered for a while due to the aforementioned adventure.
In terms of tech we used whatever we felt was relevant. The client was a top 100 corpo, worldwide.
I find it slightly amusing when people confidently think that the only way to produce anything of value is by endless talking and hair splitting. I find that a sign of inexperience - which is fine if it doesnt become a virtue - or worse, i think in some that’s a sign or ladder climbing bullshit.
I know for a fact that if you trust the people you hired for being trustworthy and suitable for the role you will get couple of times more value from their work. And letting them work also tends to get more work done.
Not in any sort of vain way (at least I don’t think??), but something about seeing myself makes me look.
Its one reason why I think there could actually be a usefulness to meeting in VR if that ever does become high enough quality and low enough burden for people to want to do it.
When I am in a meeting room I see all the faces, I can tell what everyone is looking at and read their emotions from their movements etc. It's all subconscious though so I am not distracted by this process. I also know when I am not being looked at, and can relax some of my own social cues.
In an online meeting, I get none of that so I am working a bit harder to piece everyones contributions to the meeting together. I also have the dissonance of context, I am in a meeting here but also on my computer and in my house. You get good at it but you are fighting off distractions regardless.
Meetings are a pain regardless but I do find them less tiring in person.
That sucks
Based on ECG and EEG. n=35.
I wonder if eye strain doesn't blend into it too. Focusing on a screen is exhausting, and a clear difference from in-person meetings across a table. If you're a computer worker, having regular in-person meetings might be good for this reason too.
Anyway, just to make sure I suppose we'd better gather some volunteers to make sure running long distances makes people tired.
B: Do you have a peer reviewed study about it?
Try working in a noisy environment concentrating while other people talk and make general noise.
I'll take Zoom fatigue any day.
it’s constantly making our brains annoyed.
When you're in person, you can just immediately start talking after whoever was talking stops. There are rarely conflicts about two people starting talking at the same time. The nonverbal cues also help everyone see who'll be responding.
In Zoom, you start as soon as your audio and video feed tells you to, but by then someone else has started talking, which leads to the infamous "sorry, go ahead" ritual. It's annoying. The more people there are, the worse it is.
It sounds like FUD