How to Beat Virtual Meeting Fatigue
For some of us, virtual meetings aren’t going away
‘So, how was your Zoom meeting today?’
For some of us, virtual meetings aren’t going away. It’s now become a routine part of our world.
Tech fails, embarrassing noises while you thought you’d muted your microphones, overly-creative, ‘avant-garde’ backgrounds.
Oh, yes, we’ve experienced them a lot. It was funny, indeed. But all jokes aside, it’s all too easy for those meetings to be repetitive and go totally off the rails. That is what makes ‘Zoom fatigue’ a real thing.
The anxiety we face when our screen glitches or freezes, the awkward feeling when the audio delays and echoes, the unnatural lack of non-verbal cues encourage us to make an extra effort to appear engaged, the hyper-awareness of how we appear or look.
It all can be so exhausting and draining. Especially if you have more than a virtual meeting a day, the experience is taking a toll.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to combat Zoom or virtual meeting fatigue, but hopefully, these guides below can make it any easier for you.
Keep meetings short
The average attention span for humans is much shorter in virtual settings as compared to in-person experiences. That’s the reason why you need to make virtual meetings short — keep them under 45 minutes.
If you have a bigger-scale meeting that will take more than an hour or so, consider building in breaks to avoid any burnout.
This way, not only will you maintain and increase the attendee’s engagement, but it also helps them retain the information better
Stick to one video conferencing platform
Now that virtual meetings and remote working has become a new norm for most of us, many tools are taking center stage. Zoom might be the most popular video conference tool, but there’s also Google Meeting, Skype, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeet, you name it.
Of course, everyone on your team has their own preferences, but it’s always better to rely on one platform.
No video conference tools are created the same. They have different user interfaces and features. And adapting to multiple platforms can stress you out.
Take regular breaks
Long hours of virtual meetings can drain our batteries quickly. That’s why taking a break is necessary.
You can do simple movements and stretching exercises from your chair, grab a drink, or go for a quick walk, getting your eyes away from the screens for a couple of minutes.
Simply add a five-minute break in the middle of your 90-minute meeting. It means that if you have a meeting that is longer than 90-minutes, you can include a couple of five-minute breaks.
Make sure you inform the break time at the beginning of the meeting so that it’s clear for everyone.
Consider turning off the camera
Don’t force video interaction. Just because most video conference tools provide the video feature, it doesn’t mean you always have to use it.
It can be daunting to see your own face on the screen for hours — or having those heads with eyes staring at you. With the camera on, you also always feel like you just need to emote more because you’re in a little box on a small screen.
Therefore, turning on the camera should be optional. Give permission to employees or attendees to turn off their cameras when they need only to listen. They can turn it back on when it’s their time to speak.
Use interactive tools
After hundreds (if not thousands) of online meetings, not only do we have burnout, but we also feel so bored with it.
Face-to-face meetings employ a wide range of collaborative approaches to solve a problem and make conclusions. But, in virtual meetings, we have to exaggerate body language and intonation to be more interactive.
That makes virtual meetings not only more daunting but also less interactive. And to solve this problem, you can use interactive tools.
Interactive tools add a bit of fun to meetings and allow much more interactive, productive sessions. It is also effective in increasing retention and creates shorter meetings with greater participation.
For instance, you can use polls to set up some questions or collaborative whiteboards to explain complex ideas.
Avoid multitasking
Virtual meetings require more effort from most attendees to be “actually” present and feel some obligation to feign interest. It means that doing something else at the same time can only add fuel to the fire.
During virtual meetings, there is a temptation to simultaneously work on other tasks; checking emails from clients, replying to customers’ comments on Facebook, working on Google Docs, or even following up on your next explainer videos projects. But it’s actually never a good idea.
It’s always better to minimize other tabs. Whenever possible, try to close the email, chat platform, project management tab (encourage other attendees to do so) so you’re not tempted to multitask and can only focus on the meeting.
Hide self-view
We’ve mentioned it slightly earlier; seeing our own view for almost an hour on the screen can be tiring. It gives you a self-conscious feeling about how you appear on the screen — even, in fact, your colleagues or other attendees don’t really care about it.
To combat this, you can turn off the self-view feature. So, others can still see you when you turn your camera on, but you can at least feel less conscious about yourself.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, we’re on video calls more than ever before. While working from home has long been a sought-after perk for some, a new normal of several virtual meetings in a day has created a new stressor that can cause mental and emotional exhaustion.
And that’s been some tips on how you can combat virtual meeting fatigue so that you can avoid stressing out your employees or other colleagues.
One thing to bear in mind, though, being connected doesn’t mean video conferencing all day, every single day. You can also leverage other communication forms like emails or telephone calls to communicate with others.
Thank you for reading.
If you want to read more of my writings, you may check out the following articles.
- Why You Need a YouTube Outro for Your Videos
- What You Need to Know About Marketing Funnel
- How to Use Visual Content in Your Marketing Strategy
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