2020, knowledge workers, and wellness

I had a dream two weeks ago.

In my dream, the Angel of Death came for me. Naturally, it was Andrew from the TV show "Touched By An Angel." He extended his hand, and told me that it was time to go.

I told him to hold on for a second, I needed to grab my iPad, and my MacBook, and my iPhone, oh, and the charging cables.

Andrew laughed at me. "Carem, you won't need those. There is no internet in heaven."

I got upset with the guy. "What do you mean no internet in heaven? What am I supposed to do all day? How am I supposed to work, then?"

When I woke up, I was having an involved conversation with the Angel about how to modify a submarine cable network to reach north. Far, far, north. "Dude, have they even heard about virtualized edge in heaven?"

I took that dream as a sign that I needed a day off.

So, I re-arranged my schedule so that I could take this past Friday off.

I got up at 6AM, and was logged in by 6:45 to run a PMP study group (it's a volunteer thing I do Friday mornings before work). After an hour of discussing the merits of budget management, I spent another hour studying for the PMI-ACP exam, taking practice tests. After two hours of project management work, I remembered I had some content to transfer over to instructional designers, so I logged in to repositories and OneDrive, and moved some files. Then I had to notify the writers that the content was ready for the content freeze milestone. So, by 11AM, I was ready for my "day off."

If you read my LinkedIn profile references, you will see that my past managers always use the same word to describe me: "Driven." While "hard work is the secret to success," and my drive has indeed brought me many career rewards, that driven personality also tends to result in some not so great side effects that rarely get discussed, and never publicly confessed to. Drive makes me prone to stress-induced physical problems, never being satisfied with my performance ("imposter syndrome"), and even tripped me early in my career when I would be done first, but will have made mistakes. Now that I am in the middle of my career, I seldom make those "working too fast" mistakes because I am wiser and more experienced than I was at 20 working in technical support. But the imposter syndrome, and the never satisfied, and the physical tolls remain.

Let's be honest, here. There are many professions that need to be working nights, weekends, and holidays. I worked in technical support early in my career, and when a customer was in a down situation, I needed to be on that phone and on that keyboard until they were up and running again, no matter how long it took to do the right thing for them.

As a Technical Curriculum Manager, that is no longer the case. There is no such thing as a curriculum emergency that can't wait until Monday to resolve.

In 2020, it is harder than ever not to work on what were traditionally "off hours." I feel guilty for helping my kids with their homework during the work day, so I put in extra time at my job and justify it as "flex time." I am 11 months into my new position, and I still have this chip on my shoulder that I need to "prove myself."

When you decide to work on a weekend unnecessarily, it has a ripple effect. There are people on the other end of your email messages, Teams messages, and shared spreadsheets who get notified. Then they feel like they have to work on a weekend, too. It's not all about me. When I work on weekends, I am encouraging others to do the same, and that is not okay. If I cannot control myself, and just have to work on a Saturday, then the least I can do is to be considerate of my fellow knowledge workers and schedule my messages to send on Monday morning.

Sometimes, you just have to know when to take a break. If my dreams aren't screaming it loudly enough, then my managers certainly are. It is a good sign when your management cares about your wellbeing. They want me healthy, well, and focused. I will not bring my best to my career when I am driven to the point of illness - mentally, emotionally, physically, or spiritually.

So, I got drastic today, and I walked away. Literally, walked away. It took me six miles, two dogs, and my iTunes playlist on totally random shuffle, but I finally did it. I started thinking more about clouds than about how to teach GNSS. I started thinking about baking pies instead of FlexE. I started thinking about who I am as a human being in the world, instead of how I was going to prove myself in my company. I started to think that being me, just as I am, was okay, and even good.