TECH IN THE TIME OF CORONA. Are we already tired of Zoom meetings?

Eleven thirty in the morning. Just 15 minutes to go. I jump up to dress, give my unruly hair a brushing that makes little difference, and slip on a nice V-necked dress — because I’m told those suit me most. I hurry to make myself a cup of tea, grab my iPad Pro and settle down with my dark teal curtain in the backdrop. And wait. You guessed it. Zoom meeting...

At this time of social distancing, Zoom has cropped up out of nowhere to give us back a semblance of our pre-pandemic lives. Budget meetings, work reviews, school classes, yoga sessions, prayer ceremonies, weddings, concerts, drinking with friends, fighting with the cousins — all of it has found a home on Zoom. Or other video calling alternatives, if one is worried about the Chinese eavesdropping.

But a month down the line and everyone has just about had too much of a good thing. The phrase ‘Zoom fatigue’ has begun to make the rounds online. Ironically, we now have video chat with the therapist to get over a surfeit of video chat.

These days, when I chat balcony-to-balcony with my neighbour, he invariably ends up rushing off for a ‘review meeting’ that he claims can last the better part of three hours. By the end of the day he’s so dog tired of video calls, he takes a bottle out of his diminishing stock of beers, plugs his ears up with some pounding indie house and goes to sleep.

Others too complain of back-to-back meetings on Zoom. Obviously, businesses have embraced video chat a little too lovingly. Anxious to get their money’s worth from employees, they exert an unspoken pressure for them to be always accessible and meeting-ready. Those now forced to work from home on their part, feel the need to prove they can contribute to the company even far away from the workplace. Where people once worried about work-life balance, they now have to figure out Zoom-life balance, a much more difficult thing to do when there’s no longer a 9-to-5 format to the day.

Necessary connection

Some find the benefits far outweigh the annoyances. Suma EP, who runs a digital marketing services firm, Niswey, in New Delhi, says, “Face time is even more important now. We are a team of 20 people. And now have 17 interns who have joined from various IIMs and an IIT. So not only did we have to go full remote, we also had to take on virtual internships. So it is Zoom to the rescue. It is not only about work. It is about morale, connection and engagement. I don't have fatigue because of video calls. I have fatigue from worrying about good connectivity throughout the calls. Dropoffs, lags, speech slowdowns and sudden pickups...that can get exhausting.”

Unlike physically sitting in a meeting room, which is tiring enough in itself, attending in a Zoom room is turning out to be even more so because of the fact that you have to sit bolt upright and still and pay complete attention. There’s no nodding off for a moment or letting your gaze go astray because you’re on TV, so to speak, and any from the bunch of people attending could slide their eyes over to spot you and note that you seem less than extremely interested in the proceedings.

It just isn’t a natural way of communicating, specially since one sees just the face, hyper-focusing on micro-expressions and the slightest twitch when the rest of the body language is out of sight. Tempers begin to fray when misinterpretations of expression and missing body language cues combine, with another layer of annoyances coming from less-than-ideal camera positioning. People feel self conscious quite as if they were really on TV throughout.

Worlds collide

“In India, we have so much noise and distractions in our home environments, that worrying about minimising that on a video call is a big cause of worry and it’s very tiring,” says Raghav Pandit, sales head at Armezo Solutions, based in Delhi. “You have to take the trouble to make sure interruptions are cut out at your end but the others too should have the same courtesy and stop looking at their phones or taking calls in the middle of video meetings.”

Cameras trained on one’s home unfortunately exposes more of one’s personal life than one may be ready for, and that is another source of self conscious discomfort. I may be a friendly enough creature but imagining my colleagues judging me for my choice of upholstery may make me bristle somewhat.

Pilates instructor Meghna Thaker who took classes in Mumbai until the lockdown came along, finds the seven odd sessions she takes on video totally exhausting. Not physically but mentally. “I have to pay so much more close attention when my classes are on video. I need to concentrate and watch carefully to see that exercises are being executed safely and correctly and with the proper form,” she says, “It’s a blessing not to have go commute all over the place to take classes but at least then, when I was out, I knew what I had to deal with. At home, I have to rush from the kitchen to the computer and from the computer to do the washing — the two worlds are mixed up.”

It’s the youngest amongst us who aren’t tired of video chats. Away from school, they rather enjoy a new way of connecting, fresh activities and teaching styles, and something to relieve the boredom. They don’t need to worry over the noise in the house, proving something to the boss, or dressing up to look presentable on video.

“She doesn’t always enjoy video classes, specially if she has to just sit and listen,” says Nupur Chaturvedi, a marketing communications professional in lockdown with her 4-year-old daughter, Bela, “but if teachers take the trouble to use interesting activities, which they work hard at doing she has a great time.”

Until the world normalises it’s stuck with video calls, though balance, appropriate off-time and a set-up that minimises stress is something everyone has to figure out. Meanwhile, an Italian management professor, Gianpiero Petriglieri, put it rather nicely in a tweet when he said, “It’s easier being in each other’s presence, or in each other’s absence, than in the constant presence of each other’s absence.”

COMMENT NOW