Sitting in a chair has never been so tiring: why video calls are so exhausting

Sitting in a chair has never been so tiring: why video calls are so exhausting

Lesson summary

Hi there, welcome back to Plain English. I’m Jeff. JR is the producer. And this is Lesson 256 of Plain English.

Coming up today: You know that sensation you get of being exhausted after spending the day on video calls? It’s not just you: there’s good scientific evidence behind why you feel that way. In the second half of the program, we’ll review the phrasal verb “come through“—and no, it’s not a duplicate. This is a different meaning than the one you heard in Lesson 195. We have a video that accompanies this lesson, as always. That is about how to talk about a surprising result. That, along with all the episode resources, is available at PlainEnglish.com/256.

Let’s get going!

Why Zoom calls are so exhausting

I’m not commuting. I’m sleeping well. I don’t have to run from place to place; no more 4:00 a.m. wake-up calls to go to the airport. My meetings are all online, which I take from the comfort of my own home. There’s plenty of good coffee to keep me going. So why am I so tired every afternoon?

It turns out that in-person meetings may be boring, and they may be a waste of time, but they’re not nearly as draining as Zoom calls are. In fact, video calls require a lot more of our mental energy than simple phone calls or in-person meetings do. These calls are draining the energy of homebound office workers the world over, in a way that in-person meetings rarely do. Why is that?

For one thing, nonverbal communication is seriously impaired on a video call. In a face-to-face meeting, we give nonverbal cues all the time. Here is just a partial list of nonverbal cues we give one another in face-to-face encounters: we make eye contact; we take a deep breath before we say something; we cross our arms; we face toward or slightly away from another person; we lean back in our chairs; we stare up into space; we blink; we gesture; we fidget with something in our hands. All these nonverbal cues contribute to the conversation in one way or another.

If I’m talking and I see that you lean forward and your eyes light up, I know I’ve engaged you and you might want to speak. If I see you turn your head slightly and raise your eyebrows, I know I haven’t convinced you of something. If I see you fidget with your hands or look away, I know I’ve lost your attention.

Some of these nonverbal cues can come through on a video call, but not all of them. What’s more, for me to pick up on those cues, I would have to focus in on each person on the screen. That’s impossible unless you’re talking to just one or two other people. When speaking to a group of people, it’s critical to read the room to gauge people’s reactions; it’s also natural. Humans evolved as social animals. Picking up on cues like this is second-nature to us.

But on a video call, none of that is possible. Instead, we have to compensate for the lack of nonverbal communication. We pay closer attention to what we can see. We look closer at everyone’s video camera, trying to decipher all the typical non-verbal communication out of a small box that shows a person only from the shoulders up. If the video quality isn’t very good, then you can’t read facial expressions very well.

You’re lucky if you’re on a call with just one or two other people. But have you ever been on a gallery view? This is when you’re looking at thumbnails of all the other people on the call—sometimes a dozen or more cameras at a time. This is challenging to your brain because it’s hard to focus on the speaker. You know you should look and concentrate on just the person speaking, but the fact that he or she is just one of a dozen equally-sized video streams confuses your brain. In a conference room, you can easily train your attention on just one person; that’s much more difficult on Zoom.

These calls are confusing our brains. It’s possible to do good work on Zoom, but we have to work harder at it—and that’s why it’s so tiring.

There are other reasons. When you’re in a meeting and you’re not speaking, you don’t feel the pressure of other people’s eyes on you. Let’s say you have an hourlong meeting with four other colleagues. You’ll speak often, but everyone’s attention will be trained on you for fifteen minutes of that meeting. When others are speaking, you can relax a little.

But on a video call, you have to assume everyone is watching you for all sixty minutes. You don’t get to relax your posture or lean back in your chair; if you do that, it’ll look like you’re not engaged. There’s also a natural pressure to train your eye on your screen or webcam during a video call, lest you appear disengaged. If you can see your own camera, that’s even worse: people are naturally self-conscious when they can see themselves on screen as they talk. None of this is good for your body—always facing the same direction, always tense, always feeling like you’re in performance mode.

There’s a fluidity to in-person meetings that we still haven’t been able to replicate on video calls. It isn’t easy to know when you can talk next, if you’re listening; or when you should cede the floor if you’re speaking. The interruptions to the flow are also draining. When there’s silence in a room, it can be a time to pause and think; when there’s silence on a video call, you wonder if someone’s on mute or if someone’s audio has cut out.

This coronavirus is terrible. But we are fortunate that video conferencing allows us to stay connected and productive in a way that would be impossible just a few years ago. But it’s not perfect—and if you feel drained by mid-afternoon, then maybe your videoconferences are the culprits.

Countdown to the new site

I take a nap. I’m not even going to try to hide the fact. The last few days, I’ve had video calls lasting three hours each and I’m exhausted. A three-hour meeting is a long meeting, but if I have that in person, it doesn’t cause me to want to pass out. But now I literally sleep for half an hour almost every afternoon. Crazy.

What day is today? May 4. Well, today, today is April 25. But this lesson is coming out on May 4. Okay. I think it’s time that I start—start—to tell you a little bit about what’s coming starting in June. But this lesson is already very long, so maybe I’ll tell you what’s not changing. If you listen to these lessons on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or Deezer or Google Podcasts or something—then there will be no changes to the audio version of the lesson.

In the coming weeks, I’m going to tell you about a lot of things that are changing on the web site, on PlainEnglish.com. And it is going to be amazing. There’s going to be a lot of new stuff. The existing archives are going to be re-organized. It will be a much better user experience. But the main audio lessons won’t change. The topics, the expressions. The occasional appearance by JR. All that’s going to be the same.

Okay, enough for now—let’s get to the expression and I’ll tell you more about the new site on Thursday. But if you want to learn more, you can visit PlainEnglish.com/new and I’ll send you some more details about the new web site, including a sneak preview. PlainEnglish.com/new.

(HINT: The site you’re reading now *is* the new site! Welcome!)