The New Science Of 'Micro Self-Care': Solutions For Virtual Fatigue And Burnout Prevention

For many people, burnout from virtual fatigue has been a built-in feature of the pandemic. A new study from Superhuman found "email fatigue" to be the cause of rising dissatisfaction with remote work. More than one-third of employees said email and message overload may lead them to quit their jobs. The survey found half of remote workers (50%) spent their own money on tools to help manage their productivity, and another 17% plan to do so in the future. Plus, new Stanford research reveals how the shift from in-person meetings to virtual ones has taken its toll, particularly among women. Overall, one in seven women (13.8%) compared with one in 20 men (5.5%) reported feeling "very" to "extremely" fatigued after Zoom calls. Researchers found what contributed most to the feeling of exhaustion among women was an increase in what social psychologists describe as "self-focused attention" triggered by the self-view in video conferencing.