My problem is I can't multitask during a zoom at all. I'm so anxious that someone will ask me a question so I'm tuned in the entire time while everyone else is pretty obviously off working on the side. I also find that I stare at myself fidgeting. It's nowhere near as bad as in person where I just want to not talk at all, though.
Also if everyone is on different timezones please don't make us turn on webcams. I'm getting a lot of 7-8am meetings lately now that my team is mostly East of me. I'm just waking up. I was in meetings from 8am this morning. I showered at 2pm when I finally got a 30 minute break.
I'm a little bit vain, a bit of a narcissist and self-conscious. I find it very distracting on Zoom to be looking at my own face on video to ensure I look like I'm properly paying attention, showing my best angle (hiding a double chin!) and not fidgeting.
Maybe I'm just too much in my own head about it, but it seems there's a bit of a performative element to zoom meetings making me a lot more award of presentation and perception than in irl meetings.
That makes total sense, most people don't make a habit of looking at themselves unless it's for the purposes of evaluating or adjusting something about their presentation. I tend to just make sure it's setup right when it starts, then use the option to hide the self-view to avoid that distraction. I don't care if I might look silly later, since constantly readjusting is a silliness of it's own. And someone will ping me if the camera messes up.
Yeah, I tend to hyperfocus so I don't miss a question too. But I figure that kinda should be the point of a meeting, so it's understandable, even if it's tiring. If everyone else is making it bad by multitasking, they need to get a handle on that. Zoom could add a bunch of features to help people run better meetings (a way to pass a ball around to select who's speaking, hand raising emoji, dynamic topic queues with votes), but it's just lousy software tbh.
>(a way to pass a ball around to select who's speaking, hand raising emoji, dynamic topic queues with votes)
I'm no Zoom apologist, but.. it has a 'raise hand' emoji/action, as well as a topic queue (in Q&A format). it also has "go faster" and "go slower" feedback attendees can display to the presenter in realtime.
I like the talking stick^W ball idea, though.
Lots of this stuff is in off-by-default preferences in Zoom, FYI.
Also if everyone is on different timezones please don't make us turn on webcams. I'm getting a lot of 7-8am meetings lately now that my team is mostly East of me. I'm just waking up. I was in meetings from 8am this morning. I showered at 2pm when I finally got a 30 minute break.