When COVID hit and we all switched to video calls overnight, everyone started reporting how tired they were at the end of a day of meetings. Part of that was obviously that we were in a pandemic and stress levels were high, and yet there was something in the video meetings themselves that made it so much worse.
Someone proposed that the culprit might be the video self-view, that little window showing your own face while you talk.
So I ran an experiment and turned mine off. The difference was noticeable after even just one meeting. I was much less tired when I couldn’t see myself.
When your self-view is on, you’re doing two cognitively different tasks simultaneously: monitoring and adjusting your appearance while also following the content of the meeting. That double-load is cognitively draining, across every call, all day.
Turn off the self-view and your brain gets to do just one thing: the meeting itself.
Research backs this up. The continuous self-view creates what’s been called “the mirror effect”. The psychological stress of perpetually monitoring your own image has no real-world equivalent, and it compounds exhaustion across every call1.
The fix takes about thirty seconds. Go into your video software settings and look for a self-view or mirror option. In Zoom it’s under Video settings. In Teams it’s accessible during a call. Turn it off, then check in with yourself at the end of your next meeting day.
This isn’t the only contributing factor to zoom fatigue. In my experience, though, it’s the easiest change we can make, and it makes a significant difference. Try it for yourself.
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Webb, M. (2021). Zoom Fatigue and How to Prevent It. Journal of Registry Management, 48(4), 181–182. ↩