By Susan Egbert

If you would have told me a year ago that I would be conducting a majority of my life on Zoom, I would have laughed. COVID-19 has had a major impact on America, starting in February 2020 when the nation was starting to shut down to prevent further spread of this new virus. Different companies were trying to figure out how they would still be able to continue their same work-productivity amid the pandemic. 

How were students going to receive the same academic knowledge if they can not go to school on campus or meet in person? 

The emergency shift from in-person to online needed to happen quickly and left the world with almost no time to adjust. That is when Zoom suddenly stepped in. Throughout the following months of the shutdown, people's lives were slowly revolving around Zoom and all of the various things that it was being used for.  

Zoom is a free online video conference platform that allows users to host meetings, presentations, webinars, and conferences.  Want to contact collaborators that live halfway across the world? Universities began to use Zoom as a perfect opportunity to host thesis defenses for their graduate students. Across the world, students were presented with the opportunity to attend class online through Zoom instead of having to risk their lives and step foot in a classroom on campus. Zoom was suddenly a great way of not having to delay students' learning periods and allow them to graduate on time.

With the entire country seemingly relying on Zoom in their everyday lives, it has created a blessing for people in all types of work environments. However, the only caveat to relying on Zoom for everyday use is that free users only have 40 minutes sessions available to them without interruptions. After that 40 minutes, the meeting abruptly ends unless the user has paid for more time. Because of this, universities and workplaces had to start providing Zoom subscriptions to their students and employees for free to try to help eliminate the need to host multiple meetings over a certain period of time.  This has helped the transition as Zoom had over 200 million users by the end of March and by April had over 300 million users across the platform, according to Business of Apps.

Despite being able to carry out decent work-productivity rates during a pandemic, Zoom users are starting to notice a new trend taking place that became known as  “Zoom fatigue”.  So what does “Zoom fatigue” mean?  Many users noticed fatigue after various calls in which they have now termed as “Zoom fatigue.”  Users did not anticipate this happening but it’s happening whether we want to or not.  To give some insights, Harvard Business Review gave some possible reasoning as to why users are getting more exhausted during Zoom calls over in person meetings.  The biggest stressor was how we are having to pay close attention to a person’s facial expressions.  During our normal day to day conversations, people relied on more than just facial expressions to understand the mood that was going on.  

So what are some ways to avoid this fatigue?

• Do not multitask.  It seems tempting to do this while you are not on a call that is not interesting, but try to avoid it by either having the Zoom call on full screen or getting rid of other programs that can be distracting.

• Give yourself some breaks.  Although it might seem tempting to just have a bunch of Zoom calls back to back, it does not allow our brains to recharge and get ready for future meetings.

• Don’t make every Zoom call (especially social events) an obligation.  If you do not put the specific wording of people having a choice, people will feel like it is an obligation.  This will further exhaust someone at the end of the day if they feel obligated to join a social event like a happy hour

So before you plan your next day filled with Zoom calls, keep in mind about how Zoom will affect you. Keep in mind some of the tips that this article highlights so that way you won’t wear out quickly.  t doesn't seem like Zoom meetings are going to be done anytime soon, so it is best to learn our way around it.

You can follow Susan on Twitter @sbegbert94.