The Zoom Room Fantasy

It’s amazing how people try to see each other in Zoom.

You’ve seen it: moving closer to the screen, scrunching the eyes, trying to focus on something…

And soon, eyes complain that they are tired. It’s a sad story.

Your eyes will get tired if you try to focus on a flat-screen of pixels while imagining it to be someone’s room on the other side of the world. I mean, I know – IT LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE’S ROOM ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD, but what you are looking at are millions of little spurts of light pretending to be Patricia, Harold, Earnest, Jacinda or whoever the heck you’re talking to on Zoom.

There is no person there on the screen.

But try to tell that to your eyes. 

Well, actually – that’s precisely what you have to do…

Start talking to your eyes; explain what you are doing:

“Now, I am receiving light from millions of points – pixels - organised together on a flat surface at a fixed distance from my eyes. Adjusting my focus is unnecessary because the computer is stationary.”

…aye, there’s the rub… as Shakespeare wrote.

Nothing appears to be stationary on that live pixelated screen!

Our pixelated screen is another face of reality – a fantasy that resembles reality so well, you come to believe the person you are speaking to is there on the pixelated screen in front of us.

And so you peer in, trying to focus (when you are already focused).

Our eyes tighten at this unnatural behaviour, hour after hour, until you come to hate going to Zoom, video conferencing, facetiming or whatever you call it.

The solution is simple.

Ask all of you to move – Alexander’s Discovery – so that your eyes can behave appropriately to your pixelated screen. Explore this new eye behaviour – here’s how you can discover it:

1. Set up a dimensional image on your computer screen (i.e. an image or video with items close and far away both on-screen).

2. Stand in front (or sit in a swivel chair) of your pixelated screen and - starting from the screen - slowly turn around a full 360 degrees circle so you end up where you started.

3. As you turn, focus on different objects in your room – some close, some far.

4. As you return to the screen again, try to use the same way to focus on objects near and far on the pixelated screen. You can’t.

Do this enough times, and you can notice how the behaviour of your eyes is fundamentally different when trying to focus on the pixelated screen and trying to focus on objects around your room.

This work with your eyes is one of the “postural trainings” you gain at ATSuccess.

I do a lot of Zoom training because many people do not want to travel. Well, you don’t have to. You can learn on Zoom at ATSuccess.

At ATSuccess, I don’t focus on any one particular activity. Instead, you focus on how you do many different activities, especially when you are noticing strain and fatigue. 

There are people who longer get eye fatigue while in daily video communication.

All you need is training. You can get that at ATSuccess with Chancer.

I might put together a special training if enough people ask. 

Write back and let me know.