The science behind Zoom-fatigue and what we can do about it.
Ironic, isn’t it? The “logical” assumption points to real-life meetings being more tiring. I mean, the physical labor… makes sense, right?
I’ve never been more exhausted sitting on my chair staring at a screen. (Only in 2020–21 will you see a sentence like that.)
But why? Good question. You’re about to find out.
“Long Day of Staring at a Screen, I Have It So Hard😔”
Back-to-back video calls require more focus than a face-to-face chat. It has to do with our subconscious. We work harder to process non-verbal cues like the tone and pitch of the voice, facial expressions, and body language all through the screen.
A short story on how I walked away with $5000.
You’re probably wondering, what was I thinking?
Well, I was still a youngin in high school.
Maybe I’m hoping that excuses my seemingly stupid and irrational decision. But, in retrospect, I don’t think it was stupid at all. Crazy? Absolutely.
If I were to summarize my story in six words, do crazy things — it builds confidence.
The majority of you reading this are probably are like me.
You have zero programming experience.
To us, Python is nothing but a snake in the Amazon. To the computer nerds at my hackathon, it was a coding language of the gods.
But…
The science behind why you stink to some but arouse others
10-second bio lesson (to avoid confusion while reading):MAJOR HISTOCOMPATIBILITY COMPLEX(MHC): set of genes that make special proteins (for the surface of white blood cells) that help identify foreign substances to fight off disease. Everyone has a different MHC, some more similar than others.
One rainy evening,
49 female and 45 male students (mean age 25) were tested for their MHC.
The women were then asked if they were on the pill and the men were asked to wear a cotton T-shirt on a Sunday and Monday night.
Bear with me.
The women were then each given a bundle of…
Perhaps unfaithfulness is justifiable when you’re trapped and abused.
No, I didn’t cheat — this isn’t about me (clearing that out for my girlfriend). Rather, I’m shedding light (to encourage mindfulness) on gray areas of infidelity where it has forever been black and white, filled with shame and hate.
What do we think when we hear that someone cheated?
“What a bad person!”
“How could they do that to them? They have no soul.”
“What a scum!”
Mhm. Often, it occurs without fair reason and it’s not your fault they leave for someone else. I’m not saying that it is either.
But, every time, we tend to victimize one…
What goes through “Xx_ROUGE69_xX”’s mind when they call you stupid?
Did you know that 100 million people watched the League of Legends world finals compared to the 98.2 at the Superbowl? Search for “lol” on Google and what you won’t find is “laugh out loud”. No, no, that would be absurd. Instead, you’ll find a digital game of chess, on steroids.
A brief intro for the uninitiated
You drop into a 5v5 match to compete over resources (gold, levels, magic items) that make you stronger for the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy Nexus (headquarters).
Let’s face it, screen limits don’t work.
You’ve been stuck at home with all this extra time. Your phone is your best friend. Fair enough.
But, things are slowly going back to normal. Whether it’s online or real-life, your daily routine is climbing its way back to relevance but one problem: you acquired some bad habits. Your daily phone usage went from 2–3 to 6–8 hrs.
No? Just me? It increased — probably significantly, that's my point.
Here are three ways I’ve been decreasing my times and increasing productivity:
1. Add The Screen Time Widget To Your Home Screen
I cannot tell you in words how helpful this is. I don’t know if android users already had/have…
They screwed up, so they said “FCK”
Why did the chicken cross the road? It didn’t. Hell, it wasn’t leaving the storehouse as far as KFC was concerned.
I remember it like it was yesterday (3 years ago, yesterday). Arguably one of the worst days of my chicken-loving life. I decided to treat myself to a good ol’ bucket of KFC chicken the other day. I laughed with my buddies as the flashback hit. The company ran out of goddamn chicken. At the time, it was the end of the world. In retrospect, it’s a valuable marketing lesson and frankly, a priceless life lesson.
In 2017, KFC…
It hurts when they think you’re an idiot
It’s always nice to see advice on how to better market our product — it teaches us what to do and how to do it. We become smarter.
Sometimes, though, it’s just as important to be given examples of what not to do. Learning from other’s mistakes means that we won’t have to share their burden. Plus, we enjoy a good laugh examining them — as you’ll come to see.
Yesterday, I was scrolling through Instagram and I come across this post:
Global warming is revealing deadly viruses trapped under the ice
Things finally seem to be calming down — at least in Canada.
You’re letting someone else control your knowledge
Why, oh why do we read book reviews?
Why do we contaminate the purity of our decision with an irrelevant view?
It’s funny, really, how a couple of words can deter us from reading thousands, and in turn, deprive us of knowledge that could change our lives.
I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve been turned off by a book because of the reviews I read on them from others.
Recently, Sapiens (by Yuval Noah Harari) and Think Like A Freak (Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner) caught my attention. The first thing stupid me did was…
Tameem Rahman
Toronto copywriter, student & entrepreneur on tech, business, and self-discovery.
