Now that retailers large and small have been able to re-open and consumers in England are allowed limited social freedoms I for one am hoping we can ‘zoom out’ to at least some degree. The clever girls and guys at Stanford University (California) have done much research and proven the real phenomenon of ‘Zoom fatigue’. However after a year of Zoom Happy Hours, Zoom Birthdays, Zoom Quizzes and Book Clubs (never mind work!) can we really abandon something which has hugely enabled remote working and changed the way many of us will work in the future? Maybe some of us are just not very good at it (and I have some cute diversionary tactics which can be used sparingly later in this feature) and work best in the ‘real’ world? Will it be with us forever or has Zoom become so intrinsically linked along with hand sanitiser and face masks with COVID-19 era that it is part of the problem?
I guess the central question is do we really need to see each other all the time? Zoom has been replacing phone calls as the essential way to keep in touch but in the past we did not watch ‘floating’ faces for at least 40 minutes and everyone ends up looking at themselves for about the same amount of time. Not sure about you, but looking at myself for a minimum of 40 minutes is enough to bring me down for the day – grey hair, pasty complexion … I could go on – but in business it is considered rude not to have the video enabled (no matter how your day is going).
It is a bit of a paradox as these floating faces are the most watched but actually reveal the least about the participants – the body language that we instinctively use is pretty absent and sub-consciously when we meet people face-to-face physically it is the body language that we are reading. Likewise if you are anything like me at all, keeping upbeat (or at worst bland) facial expressions for 40 minutes or more is beyond soul-crushing and exhausting.
However to be balanced let’s look at the pros of the Zoom era (and of course Zoom is not the only provider but Zoom is Google if you like, not many out there using Bing). Although essentially it is a video conferencing tool and these programmes have been around for years, it was the pandemic that made nearly everyone a Zoom administrator or participant. And undeniably it is easy to use – even the uninitiated can join a Zoom meeting, you do not even have to have the software – how easy is that? It has made remote working achievable even in areas where no-one would have believed it could. And this is the crux, as it looks like remote working (at least for part of the working week) is here to stay, then Zoom won’t be going anywhere, it will remain part of our lives. Just as we had to adopt it be it for work, education, peer pressure or sheer loneliness we have not been able to modulate or moderate our usage just yet.
That said, once we exit the main crisis period our relationship with this sort of technology will evolve and we will be able to use it more sparingly and indeed more wisely so it becomes a useful aid to our other communications rather than mandatory, repetitive and inescapable. But for now and maybe the bit you have been waiting for – a few diversionary tactics which should be used tactfully and carefully.
Try a Zoom Escaper (this basically allows you to self-sabotage your audio stream…children crying, dogs, heavy construction noise…), slow internet connection, my computer is updating, unable to log in & wrong meeting details, out of memory on my device or old school, my battery is dying! Enjoy.
