ZOOM STRESS
If you haven’t heard of Zoom, it is a videotelephony software program. Zoom Stress is not mentioned but I will attempt to reconstruct your feelings before, during and after a zoom meeting.
Zoom stress is the product of the pandemic. From the beginning of 2020, our lives changed drastically. WFH became an acronym indicating the lucky ones who held their jobs were Working From Home; the norm for being in the office but clad in pajamas.
Those that spend countless hours on it daily, grow along with the app’s constant revamping in order to accommodate increasing global usage. Those like myself, twice weekly user, tend to stay stagnated in this progressively challenging expansion. But like them and me, the stress level of zooming is now credited to increasing our cognitive load.
Cognitive load explained in layman’s terms : multi-tasking brain using memory; (much like driving a manual-gear vehicle, straining to hear a GPS voice, not of native tongue, directing “300, 200, 100 yards turn left at junction”, in a foreign country driving on the wrong side of the road, with your favorite music blasting max audio within 4sq meter space).
ZOOM meetings takes away the most important aspect of inter-action, non-verbal communication. Before it takes place, preparation is key. The backdrop of your wall, showing a huge library is coveted. Bathroom or Bedroom backdrop is not ideal. It could complicate matters if your butt naked secret affair navigates to the toilet bursting to unload his bladder. With lagging connections going on and off; sound disconnects missing important sentences, having to be repeated, and background intermittent unmistakable audio relief of urine splashing against the toilet bowl is too embarrassing to contemplate.
Awaiting all members of divisions to join the meeting leaves a void of awkward silence. Seeing your own face looking back with extreme anxiety; hair not combed, forgot the lipstick bringing on an expression of discontent, suppressing anxiety, and annoyance, when best foot forward was not achieved. And the conference meeting has yet to start. Anxiety level one achieved.
All eight divisions join, and the meeting is underway. You want to interject a point, each time you start to speak, nobody stops, they continue. You politely wait your turn, still nobody stops so you decide to cut in ……. realizing the problem, unguarded you say ‘f..k’ now audible to all, just as you press the button to unmute. The agenda has passed. Anxiety level two achieved.
Energy consuming as we work harder to process non-verbal clues. Attitudes and feelings among colleagues in influencing management decision-making gets lost. Constant focusing hour upon hour mounting tension, increased stress level is exhausting. Anxiety level three achieved.
Third hour into the meeting, a headache starts, you need to go to the toilet, prepared Tylenol in front of you, but everyone will see the act of pill taking, the boss has yet to have a 15 minute break and the company loser talks non-stop. Anxiety level four achieved.
Conference call ended after 4 hours of stress. WFH (echoeing WTF) means less travel time, no need for fancy clothes, still in your pajamas but the exhaustion that takes over is immense and slumped back in bed, you spend the rest of the day retrieving loss strength and desperately recalling what decisions took place and your action required.
A far cry from Pigeon Post.
Slower paced but stress free.
