Meeting Fatigue Science: Why Back-to-Back Calls Drain Your Energy

A day of back-to-back meetings can leave you more tired than a day of hard focused work. Research since 2020 has started to explain why, especially for video calls.

Stress builds without breaks

In 2021, Microsoft's Human Factors Lab measured the brain activity of a small group of volunteers in a series of video meetings. In back-to-back meetings, activity linked to stress rose and kept climbing through the session. When people had short breaks between meetings, used for meditation in the study, the stress-linked activity dropped and didn't build up.

The study was small, but the message matches most people's experience: the gaps matter as much as the meetings.

Four causes of video call fatigue

Stanford professor Jeremy Bailenson suggested four reasons video calls are especially tiring:

• Close-up eye contact: faces fill the screen at a distance that, in person, we'd only accept from close friends, and everyone seems to be looking at you.
• Seeing yourself: constant self-view is like being followed by a mirror all day.
• Staying still: you have to stay in the camera's view, so you move less.
• Harder communication: with fewer body-language cues, you work harder to send and read signals.

Research by Bailenson and colleagues using their Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue scale found that more frequent and longer meetings, and shorter gaps between them, were linked to more fatigue, and that women reported more fatigue than men, partly linked to self-view.

Why switching is tiring

Moving from one topic to another without a pause means carrying unfinished thoughts into the next meeting. Without time to write things down, they compete for attention.

What helps

• Build in gaps: Google Calendar's Speedy meetings setting, or Outlook's option to end meetings early, adds a few minutes between calls.
• Hide self-view once you've checked your camera.
• Use audio-only when video isn't needed, and walk while you talk.
• Shrink the window so faces are smaller.
• Write a note at the end of each meeting before the next. Sticky Notes Anywhere keeps quick notes in a browser panel.
• Protect focus blocks without meetings.

Fewer meetings is the real fix

Breaks help, but the biggest change is fewer and shorter meetings. Showing what they cost helps make the case: Meeting Cost Calculator shows a live total during a meeting. See running 15-minute meetings and video call screen fatigue.