Overcoming Conference Call Fatigue
Working remotely means LOTS of Zoom, Webex, or Teams meetings. After awhile my face starts hurting from trying to look presentable on camera.
Here are just a few tips from my own experiences to overcome conference call fatigue:
🥾 Schedule 5 minute buffers between meetings. Step away from screen during this time and stretch or get some sunshine.
🗓 Cluster meetings together. Get ‘em all over with at once. This way you only have to worry about looking presentable once.
🧠 Schedule deep focus time in calendar. Protect this time by blocking it off in your schedule. Cherish this time. Honor this time. Respect it as you would your elders.
🤝 Take less meetings overall. Prioritize async communication where possible. For example brainstorming is proven to be more productive individually.
📋 Lay out a clear agenda for each meeting, in advance. This ensures a more efficient use of your time. Nothing as terrible as sitting in a pointless meeting while speakers drone on with no end in sight.
🙅♀️ Turn cameras off. Many meetings don’t require cameras. Women especially benefit from audio-only as there have been proven studies that staring at ourselves can be cognitively taxing.
🙈 If you can’t turn cameras off…hide your own image. Essentially we are staring into a mirror and removing this pressure lowers our stress levels. If you hover over your own camera on most conference call platforms and select the ellipses there should be an option to hide your image from view.
I hope these suggestions help you maintain your sanity on a long day of conference calls.
