When You Have Zoom Fatigue, Try These 10 Actions with Nico Rose

What can we do to regain some of the energy we had before we had to do everything online?  Zoom fatigue is real. Nico and I together came up with 10 ways to boost energy in the pandemic world.

Dr. Nico Rose is a positive psychology colleague and a professor of organizational psychology at the International School of Management in Germany. When I first met him, he was a VP of employer branding and talent acquisition at Bertelsmann.

To watch the entire interview, click here or play the embedded video below.

Senia: What do you believe that others might not believe?

Nico: I am really curious about why people are still experiencing Zoom fatigue. At the onset of the pandemic, I thought it was just the cognitive load of managing something new. The technology was unfamiliar for many people. It has now been a year, so we should be used to it, but my students and colleagues indicate that Zoom fatigue is not going away.  That made me wonder if there were other explanations. 

My hunch is that the connections with others on Zoom give us fewer positive interactions. We have to set up formal meetings to get together at all. We have fewer water cooler conversations. Positive interactions tend to invigorate us, and we’re having fewer of them, so we’re not being refreshed in the same ways that we used to be. We are still in contact with people, but it's always a little less than what we would be getting if we were able to talk face to face.

This showed up in a recent experiment reported in the German edition of the Harvard Business Review. Job interviews were conducted in real life and in video settings. The experimenters had the person being interviewed say exactly the same things in both settings. On average, the candidates were judged far, far worse in the virtual environment than the real environment. Same people, told to say exactly the same thing, but somehow, they come across differently.

That’s happening every day in all our conversations. We're not getting the same energy out of our interactions.

Senia: What do you advise people to do about Zoom fatigue?

Nico: Here’s what I advise the people that are coming to me asking, "How can we rebuild the informal side of our organization? That tends to be where most of the magic happens.“

1. If it can possibly be done in a safe way, meet your people in person. It might be only once a month. Perhaps go outside for a walk, in a park, even around the block. There is no substitute for genuine, real life contact, at least not until we have the holodecks from the Enterprise. Stay far enough away, and wear your mask. Go meet in 3D.
2. Make ninja calls. I recently heard a Swedish CEO say, "Over here, we do a lot of ninja calls." When people asked him what he meant, he said, “A ninja call is just calling somebody without a warning, without a date, for no reason." Sometimes you have a business purpose, and sometimes you talk about the weather for five minutes. Do it informally, without preparation, without scheduling it on their calendars. We're mostly home, anyway. Sometimes we don't want to see the other person. It might be even more engaging just listening to the voice.
3. Crime shows like CSI are really popular here in Germany. Before, people engaged in crime dramas where there's somebody on stage reading a story and giving clues. The participants form teams to figure out who the bad guys are. This has moved online and shows up as online crime book dinners. 
4. (Senia) I have a friend who organizes family zoom calls like your mystery shows. There are little kids involved. She hands out roles to people, who then read their parts. 
5. There are also online escape rooms, where people team up and then go into a virtual escape room. Finding their way out is a team-building activity.
6. Within the regular work week, I've seen virtual lunches and virtual coffee hours all over the place.
7. Friends of mine have engaged in a virtual jogging group. They go running at the same time. Then they share with each other on Twitter.
8. (Senia) When I meet with my parents online with my kids, we do riddles, like a riddle of the day. That way, there's a goal. It seems that both non-agenda and very specific, goofy agenda can work.
9. (Nico) In Germany, we have soccer fantasy leagues. I’ve seen people rebuild those soccer leagues over online tools. People will give themselves challenges, like the 10,000 steps in a day, and then they take pictures to share in WhatsApp.

Senia: What’s one thought that you would like to leave with people? (Tip #10)

Nico: Right now, it's hard to stay in a good mood. I'm really fond of an idea that I drew from positive psychology: creating a positive portfolio on your smartphone. Create a virtual album of photos or videos from the happiest moments of your life. Make the collection accessible right on your start screen. Whenever you have two or three minutes to spare, pay your best moments a small visit. 

Senia: If you could snap your fingers and almost everybody in the world were to take some action, what would you want that action to be?

Nico:  Get your vaccine shot.

It's probably one of the best things we can do right now. I really want to go to a heavy metal concert this year. The big concert promoters over here in Germany are thinking about only allowing vaccinated people in. I’m probably too young to get vaccinated yet. They are only vaccinating older people and caregivers, which is fine. But I want to go to a heavy metal concert in the summer, and everybody having their shots is one way to move forward.

Senia: I love the image of healthcare workers and older people at a heavy metal concert.

Nico: They’ll be there. Heavy metal people don't move on. That's why it's a very inter-generational experience going to a heavy metal concert.

Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

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