#frames
I hear a lot about Zoom fatigue. I get it.
I hear a lot about the strain we’re under with our reaction to the COVID-19 induced crisis. I get that too, of course.
And yet, we’re perhaps missing something quite significant about the frames we put around things that then prompt us to codify or clarify things.
Here’s my take on ‘Zoom fatigue’. And as a disclaimer, I’ve conducted no studies and respect the experts in human psychology now framing this as ‘a thing’. I can get tired from a day’s worth of ‘Zooming’.
Yet Zoom — in and of itself — isn’t making me tired, the concentration, focus, talking, participating and watching/listening IS making me tired.
Any more tired than a tedious 1-hour meeting in real-life (as opposed to our now virtual life)? NO.
Sure we have to concentrate in different ways. We have technical delays sometimes making people sound like robots or in slow-motion. We have talked over people and not be heard and miss our chances.
- Just like that boardroom with 20 other people there.
- I doodle as much on Zoom as I did in real-life meetings.
- I drift as much on Zoom as I do in real-life meetings.
- I get excited by Zooms as I did in delivering keynotes and coaching sessions. Some more so.
In my view: It’s not Zoom.
It’s the thing that Zoom is allowing you to do that isn’t being done in an energising, productive and inspiring way.
Which brings me to frames. We’re framing the platform (Zoom, Slack, Outlook, MS Teams, Phone Calls) as the problem when it’s the thing that’s coming across those channels that is the real problem.
So if we persist in framing the problem on the tool or platform, we’re missing the upstream problem of the thing that’s being done through this tool that is at fault.
Here’s another, very pertinent frame to my life right now. Having lost my Mum, Rita, to a non-COVID-19 sudden, but peaceful passing on Thursday 23rd April I’ve been in ‘the grieving stage’ as many would say.
And sure, there are times when I’ve lost it, cried and recovered my composure and felt sad, and lost, and lonely and angry.
Yet in conversation with one of my most loved friends, I shared this frame for me with her.
“I’ve genuinely been braced for this since she had her first diabetic hypo about 12 years ago. So I kinda knew she was on borrowed time and I made it f*cking good borrowed time too.”
And I went on (this was SUCH a cathartic conversation by the way and I have thanked my wonderful friend for allowing me to put into words what I’d been feeling and thinking).
“I did alright. They had several cruise holidays with us, a new carpet and leather suite, lots of UK breaks together, 20+ Christmases at ours and 100s of lunches out. They had the time of their lives in the twilight of their lives and I couldn’t be happier. So my grief is manageable because I’ve not one single regret.”
And then
“I didn’t even realise it at the time. But as I wrote the eulogy out on the night of her death I had so much joy mixed with so much hurt: I was full of emotion so much so, it reminded me how amazing my life is.”
And then closed with this.
“I’m having my moments. Uncontrollable sobbing on Friday last week. I absolutely refuse to break down and I am so against burying stuff which I can do. But mostly, I’m checking myself in. Saying “screw you work” when it feels right and then at times, feel like I have the most wonderful mission through my work that my Mum enabled me to find. I don’t want to waste all her wonderful selfless dedication to me by curling up in a ball or being a dick. So that’s it. I just want to be the best version of me even if she’s not here to see it.”
I’ve framed my Mum’s death as something I was aware of, braced for, had no regrets about how we’ve been throughout our lives, spent time together and had lovely experiences with her. I’ve always lived for her legacy and pride in me (that’s been my frame to my work and life), I recognise how much she did to help me have this life I now have, and that’s how I’m coping and dealing with life now in support of my devasted, loving Dad, Terry.
As Dr King Junior said:
“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way”.
And framing things like this is SO important perhaps vital, for now.
Don’t blame Zoom. Look at what small things, done in great ways, you can do to help you overcome this ‘fatigue’. Approach people who may be experiencing things with you like this, working out it’s not just you is a great relief but barely the start of the beginning to resolve things.
Then work out individually or collectively, what small but great things you can do to go more upstream to not Zoom’s problem or people’s lack of skill in using it, but that thing Zoom is delivering. The reason for the call, connect, check-in and reframe that.
It may mean some sturdy conversations like “well, all we’re doing is replicating a tedious and ineffective thing from our previous real-world into virtual. Which is bringing sharply into focus how inefficient that was, how can we get the result we want, through the medium we now have and do things differently?”
That’s not some breakthrough economic theory ‘great thing’ it’s a small but great thing. Lots of those small but great thing conversations could lead to lots of helpful changes that overcome meeting-fatigue (and I’ll say it again, it’s only partly video-call fatigue to me and mostly crap process or interaction delivered through our virtual connections).
#TeamPTHR had one of those lovely non-work Zooms where we shared our favourite movies; and how we felt about our week. No agenda, just chat and not at all fatigue-inducing.
I had one of the most inspiring conversations with a coaching client on Friday and that was over Zoom — with her dog barking in the background, some drilling outside my study window (our great Anglian Water engineers still working hard for us) and the client’s child needing some attention at times.
I made notes, we got to the point, we were respectful of discovery, we allowed pause.
We didn’t have Zoom fatigue, that call rescued my day.
I was a bit flat that day and Zoom saved me.
See how stupid that sounds? How is Zoom fatigue any less stupid a thing then?
Zoom/Hangouts/BlueJeans/Skype/MS Teams doesn’t fatigue us as much as we’ve framed it does. Crap meetings, crap behaviours and crap processes should be our frames before we blame the product that delivers it to us.
Choose your frames wisely and life becomes very, very different and the cause of our woes, our mental models, our chosen approaches can change quite drastically.
When I Google-searched “inspiring quotes on frames” I got some awful motivational bilge but I did like this one, so I’ll leave this here from Northamptonshire-based (my county of birth) scholar and clergyman Thomas Fuller.
