Arianna Huffington* says the pandemic has revealed the dangers of virtual fatigue — but new research is beginning to provide some solutions.
The concept of virtual fatigue is familiar to anybody who’s ever spent hours — and even entire days — in back-to-back virtual meetings.
For many of us, this variety of burnout has been a built-in feature of the pandemic, enough so that a new Yiddish word, ‘Oysgezoomt’, meaning “fatigued or bored by Zoom”, has been coined.
As new research from Microsoft’s Human Factors Lab shows, virtual fatigue is definitely real, but we can also counteract it by taking breaks.
The research is further testament to how much we can achieve without wear and tear when we learn to pause, rest and reset.
Last year, Human Factors Lab monitored participants’ brain activity and found that virtual fatigue begins to set in roughly 30 minutes into a meeting.
For the latest study it used EEG devices to monitor changes in brain activity. This time they were looking specifically at the impact of taking breaks.
The results were broken down into three main conclusions.
First, taking breaks between meetings stops cumulative stress from building up, giving our brains a chance to ‘reset’.
In back-to-back meetings for two hours, subjects’ brains showed a steady increase of beta waves, which are connected to stress.
When participants took a break between meetings, the beta activity decreased.
Even more fascinating, the beta waves remained low even when followed by four additional consecutive virtual meetings.
Second, researchers found that back-to-back virtual meetings weaken our focus and engagement.
Again, when participants took breaks to reset, engagement held steady.
As the authors of the study write: “Breathers don’t just alleviate stress, they help our performance.”
Third, the study showed that transitions between virtual meetings, when done with no breaks, can cause significant stress.
When participants took even short breaks in between, beta waves dropped and didn’t spike as much at the beginning of the next meeting.
As the report sums it up: “The antidote to meeting fatigue is simple — taking short breaks.”
It’s the latest scientific validation of Reset, one of the most popular features in our Thrive App, which allows us to course-correct and lower our stress in just 60 seconds.
The new findings are very much in line with the neuroscience behind Reset, which shows we can reduce stress in 60 to 90 seconds.
Stress is inevitable, but cumulative stress is avoidable. Our app comes preloaded with 60-second breathing, stretching and gratitude Resets.
You can also create your own personal Reset with images that bring you calm and joy — your children, pets, landscapes — as well as quotes that inspire you and music you love.
At Thrive, we’ve even brought Reset into our meetings, beginning with a different member of our team sharing their Reset with the rest of the company.
Instead of launching straight into updates and announcements, we get an intimate glimpse of our colleagues by being brought into their world.
It’s amazing how much we can learn about each other in 60 seconds.
For its part, Microsoft is acting on its findings by unveiling new Outlook settings that automatically reduce meetings by five to 15 minutes.
This can be done individually or collectively for a team or an entire organisation.
This way, allowing time for breaks becomes part of the way we structure our time.
Instead of a string of 30-minute meetings that leave us burned out and never coming up for air, a 30-minute meeting is shortened to, say, 25 minutes, allowing us to recharge, reset and show up at our next meeting recharged and more productive.
Virtual meeting software has been a lifeline during the pandemic, and even in our post-pandemic world, virtual meetings are going to be a bigger part of our reality.
So will virtual fatigue, unless we recognise and act on the science of resetting and taking breaks.
Early in the pandemic, Founding Director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Jeremy Bailenson wrote an op-ed about why virtual meetings were exhausting.
One reason: Staring at close-ups of faces can trigger fight-or-flight responses.
The reaction to his piece was so intense that Professor Bailenson and two other researchers created a virtual meeting fatigue scale, breaking it down into five subcategories of fatigue.
These were: General, social, emotional, visual and motivational.
“We somehow tolerate it all online because it’s become the default way. It’s just utterly bonkers,” he said.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The science is clear; it’s only bonkers if we choose not to act on it.
When we take breaks to reset and recharge, we are able to connect more authentically, work more productively and perform at our best — in both the real and virtual worlds.
*Arianna Huffington is the founder and Chief Executive of Thrive Global; the founder of The Huffington Post, and the author of 15 books, including, most recently, Thrive and The Sleep Revolution.
This article first appeared on the Thrive Global website.
