Yup. Iâve got it. Zoom Fatigue.
But before I talk about that, thank you to everyone who emailed me about Brooks the Wonder Dog. He has a Canine Meningioma which we will treat with radiation therapy at CSU. Heâs coming home from the doctor this morning (they kept him overnight for two nights for observation) and it sounds like heâs doing ok. So, thanks for all the kind emails, thoughts, and suggestions.
Itâs been 58 days since March 11th, the day that I officially started sheltering in place. Iâve been doing around 40 hours of Zoom calls (with a few Google Meets and Webexes tossed in for good measure) between Monday and Friday each week.
A few days ago I thought I was just tired. I was super grumpy about a few things on Monday night. I felt better Tuesday morning but yesterday evening after my last call (at 5:30) I got up to go for a run but was just too tired to do it. So I went and watched a few episodes of Breaking Bad with Amy and then went to bed around 8:30.
I feel better this morning, but have little enthusiasm for the wall of Zoom calls that I have today.
On top of that, Iâm feeling annoyed by the level of opportunism in the world around the Covid crisis. There seems to be an outbreak of it in Utah, as evidenced by a Utah-based startup says it has exclusive business rights to the use of smartphones and other electronic devices for tracing people who have come into contact with a person with Covid-19 and $67 million of State of Utah contracts for technology around the Covid crisis. As someone who personally has been shipping out a lot of money and time to help, it feels like private companies could be a little more generous about how they contract with State governments right now around the crisis, especially for things (like software) that have a marginal cost of almost zero.
Back to Zoom fatigue. Iâm generally a good video conferencer. I rarely multitask, try to stay fully engaged, and have an excellent and comfortable setup. But the daily wall of video conferences has finally gotten to me. The zero latency transition (finish conference, start next conference, finish conference, start next conference, finish conference, start next conference, â¦) has eliminated any âcatch my breathâ time. Catching up on email and Slack is a huge batch process early in the day or at the end of the day (or both).
In the last week, Iâve found myself trying to scan email and Slack during video conferences when Iâm not engaged. I know Iâm not hearing much when I do that, which makes being on the video conference pointless.
I accept the reality that even though Iâm 58 days into a wall of videoconferences, Iâve got a long stretch of this in front of me. So, itâs time to build more space into the day so that when Iâm on a video conference, Iâm on, and I donât devolve into endless eight+ hour stretches of sitting on a couch wearing myself out.
Digital sabbath starts in about 12 hours. Iâm ready.