“Zoom Fatigue,” the all encompassing term for staring at your screen all day to engage with people, conference, webinars, etc. is taking a toll and accelerating burn out. Jason Nickerson over at cPanel writes, Dealing with Zoom Fatigue and Burn Out in 2020: “[it] happens because of the way our brains process video conferencing information. When we are in regular face-to-face meetings, we observe each other in a single surrounding and focus our attention on the person speaking. In the virtual realm, our minds are overloaded with information coming from multiple places. Our attention becomes hyper-focused on the way we look, who is speaking, people’s expressions, our surroundings, their surroundings, and the list goes on and on. After a full day of stimuli, it’s no surprise everyone seems to end the day with little more than a blank stare.”
One thing really caught my eye, “It’s natural to want to see yourself and everyone on the call, but limiting yourself to speaker view in Zoom will allow you to focus on the person speaking. Hiding or Turning your camera off can also help to regain focus.” There are a number of good posts about why this happens.
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I didn’t realize until I read this how much I focus on myself in a video chat. Things like is my mustache on point, is the dog jumping into frame, is the lighting changing, boy I should change this shirt, and so on and so on. So I did an experiment today during the London WooCommerce Meetup. I switch Zoom into “mini-mode.” Here’s a screenshot with the Zoom min-window dead center under my camera.
I was amazed at the quick difference in distraction level. An added benefit is that others can see me being focused on them.
Movers and Shakers
Movers, and that means anyone who has a new position or is looking, let me know. Today we have Danielle Hardy who is tweeting about her job hunt. Now, let’s get shaking at some informative events happening now and coming up: WP Agency Summit and WooSesh are in progress. A great GoWP webinar is on the agenda for October 20, Increase Form Conversions and Protect your Information with Mike Demo of Web Ventures. As usual, keep your calendar up to date from the events page.