Not All Remote Work is Created Equally: Certain Restrictions Apply

As hundreds of remote work experts get on the wires to recommend tactics that worked in the B.C. (Before Covid-19) era, we should pause and reflect on the fact that there are substantial differences between what we knew as remote work then versus working as isolates among isolates now unable to make physical contact with others outside our work environment as we would have just a handful of weeks ago. Remote work seen in this way is only one way to describe our newly shaped isolated work and home lives in this transitory state.

Why does this matter?

Because B.C., when the 15% or so of the entire global workforce would shut down their remote work office, close computers and put down phones, we were not all in some state of shock and trauma, fight-or-flight mode, unconsciously operating in System 1 thinking (Fast Thinking as Daniel Kahneman would say) or continuously living – day and night - with some level of cognitive dissonance: the difference between the overwhelming reality of what’s going on “out there” versus what we’re expected to do “in-here” - in our home offices, which is continually reshaping our emotional, psychological, physical, cognitive and even spiritual human selves to meet the challenge to cross this vast chasm. 

For example, I remember right after 9/11 I drove across the Tappan Zee Bridge, just North of New York City, to get to my Westchester office because we had obviously had to close down all NY based offices. As I drove across the colossal water-crossing, I was on my car phone coordinating mental health professionals to be on-site and available via phone for employees and their families. 

Waiting in traffic on the middle of the massive bridge that connects the east and west shores of the Hudson River, I looked South and could see the smoke still smoldering above the tip of Manhattan. 

Over the radio I heard then Mayor Giuliani encouraging New Yorkers to make reservations for dinner, Broadway shows and plans for shopping sprees despite what had happened. 

And I remember thinking this was really crazy – it must be a dream. I thought, "I’m on this bridge – trying to get help to traumatized workers and their families – getting call after call from family of friends having suddenly perished and then I'm turning my attention back to the voice of the guy on the radio telling me to go shopping so as not to let “them” take my freedoms." It just made no sense at that moment – yet there I was living in multiple versions of my reality all at the same time. This is the classic definition of cognitive dissonance.

The current pandemic crisis is not the same as 9/11 in most ways. But for now what seems hauntingly familiar is that the requirement to “produce” something while everything about the world had changed was an exhausting balancing act. 

And that seems to be a common thread that can be pulled forward in today’s crisis only this is not just one event on one day in one place on earth. It is a global situation that will last for a while – and everyone is exhausted and will have to live this way for a much longer period of time. But no one can venture too far, linger long enough to run into anyone for a short chat, or stop to talk to a passing stranger in the next lane over on the high-school track without risk of contracting a potentially deadly disease.

B.C. some worked remotely, but most didn’t. When those of us who did shut down for the day, we went to the store, shook hands with our neighbors, went to the gym, picked up kids flying into the car panting after having just run off the after school soccer field jubilant about their latest scored goal – or on the other hand – slithering into the car feeling quite out of place among peers. 

Either way – our children – including our college kids – had had some kind of fuller human experience and there was a reality we could all count on for outside validation that our world was still the same as it was a second before, minutes before, days before – a socially buzzing world where pheromones still flied freely amongst many others even if our heads were bent toward our devices.

Today, Isolation + Cognitive Dissonance + Physical Distance creates Virtual Distance in its most extreme form imaginable. So while it’s important to use the Virtual Distance results and solutions I posted a couple of days ago and others I’ll soon reveal that we lay out in the book and upcoming webinars - which can then dependably open us up into a hopeful feeling of a future unfolding where some kind of remote work that has echoes of B.C. remote work and be balanced by a non-isolated life, I would be remiss to leave anyone with the impression that we don’t have to consider something much deeper in this never-before-seen situational context: There is an acute arising of Virtual Distance between a suddenly vast expanse between a starkly juxtaposed past and present lived experience.

For the enormous task of trying to also reduce this extended form of Virtual Distance, something else we discovered can be used to buoy our insights and help us act with specificity in deliberate ways to make our way through to a calmer and less stressful integrated way to live life in this current void.

We called this The Virtual Distance Ratio. 

The Virtual Distance Ratio is a mathematical relationship we discovered between the three main pieces of Virtual Distance (Physical, Operational and Affinity), in the aggregated dataset we amassed from across the world over 15 years. And I realize now that it's particularly useful as a way to understand how to focus our day-to-day tactics and behaviors in this crisis even more directly.

The Virtual Distance Ratio is represented as:

1:2:4

. . . in terms of the impact on outcomes of Physical Distance, Operational Distance and Affinity Distance respectively.

Translated more practically it says that Physical Distance was only ? as important as Operational Distance (the things that get in the way of meaningful and fluid day-to-day communications).

But Operational Distance was only ? as important as Affinity Distance (those human relationship fundamentals anchored in a shared understanding of each others' values and a personally felt sense of our interdependencies that switch our brain patterns and physical being into a calmer and closer state that we can truly inhabit, that then creates a sense of deep emotional intimacy with one another – no matter where we were located!).

In other words, regardless of whether we were physically close or far, the key was to lower Operational Distance mainly through the vivid expression of more shared context and use of simple technologies to cut through digital complexities while also focusing intently on lowering Affinity Distance.

And because it’s a mathematically valid ratio – from this equation, we revealed that we could calculate any aspect of Virtual Distance using any other. And from there we could predict with exacting precision – what was happening to outcomes and how to predictively make them better. This was truly a social science breakthrough.

But with the Covid-19 outbreak, the contextual tables have turned. During this crisis, we went from 15% of the global workforce working remotely (mainly on a voluntary basis) to 100% (other than healthcare first responders and those who work in essential services) working not only remotely but also in isolation via a "forced" route to protect ours and other's lives. 

Seen another way, we don’t have any B.C. equivalent “substitutes” for filling the voids of close contact even when working remotely. We can’t go to the store and bump into friends, go to the gym and smell the sweat of ourselves and others or pick up our kids from lively after-school programs.

This upside-down state of the world and the resulting changes to the state of our worldview, makes the Physical Distance piece of Virtual Distance so intense that we have to offset the math to bring us back to baseline by going into hyper-drive to reduce Operational and Affinity Distance.

And we have to do this all while graciously understanding that even though people are incredibly brave and resilient, our cognitive and emotional systems are handicapped in every moment even though there are respites and some are more “symptomatic” than others. 

So what can we do to reduce extreme Virtual Distance and offset some of this complicated shared stress?

First – we need tangible and regularly available outlets for discussions "out loud" dedicated to sharing our lived experiential context with others under these circumstances. We recommend doing this via the simplest technologies that heighten a sense of our human vitality and aliveness. 

The phone or audio – on its own - gives us the purest experience in terms of communication mode when we’re separated. Meaning that while it’s great to be on video sometimes, video actually can take a severe toll on our human senses and emotional make-up and can force us unconsciously to have to work even harder mentally and psychically to reach optimal cognitive coherence while battling back the parallel dissonance. 

Our voice on the other hand – is purer in the sense that it functions the same way no matter the transmission device and there is a consistency of signaling in our tone and tenor that is unshakably decodable no matter what our visual system is doing. Our voice can be gently used as a foundational sense no matter where or how we are listening to it – no matter what position we’re standing or sitting in. 

It doesn’t get that distorted through phone lines. In this way voice alone is unlike video/sound combinations which can be highly distorting to our unconscious selves because of things we don’t normally pay attention to like the varying size of screens that sometimes make us squint to see, quality of cameras, visual backdrop (real or staged), camera angle, distance from camera, etc. which all create more fuzziness for our senses to make sense of as we speak - which can make us feel even more worn-out.

I am not suggesting we don’t enjoy our video connections but when we really need to focus on what someone’s saying – especially when we become emotionally and physically drained from our isolation, and we understand and accept through some practice of self-compassion that indeed we need some restful times because we are cognitively weary from our shared situation, it’s actually better to use our hearing to listen for sounds of joyful and/or distressful context than to try and also swim through the visual noise as well. 

It’s great to wave to each other virtually, throw virtual hugs to our loved ones, share a laugh with funny outfits donned for fancy Fridays etc. But to reduce fatigue and Virtual Distance in the height of these more traumatic moments we can sometimes turn off video for a while and just listen to a voice in the dark.

Another simple technique is to more deeply feel our aliveness with some breathing exercises – in a shared or more private setting. 

When we close our eyes, and focus on our breadth – as is common in meditative and contemplative practice that many of us already count on for energy to continue at high levels of whatever performance means in any given context – we can also hear our aliveness through the sound of our breathing and this is very soothing.

If we combine slow and measured breaths (even if for just a breath or two or three) with images of vital things like budding leaves on trees or the rush of snow on our chilled faces that makes us feel so alive while sliding down slopes on skis or imagining the birth of a child or a vine crawling up a trellis, we exponentially increase our enlivened experience.

And liveliness helps our immune systems grow stronger and our minds to slow down and reflect. Vital imagery married with some simple breathing not only can bring us to the present in a more peaceful way but help bolster the interactions we have using our digital devices.

And then, in that more grounded space, if we focus on asking questions about how people feel and how that impacts what they value or joins with their felt sense of interdependence with others across the street or across the ocean, we get that geometric rise in closer Affinity. And with that we can feel that closeness seep into our bones a bit deeper and use that as extra fuel to get through these confusing days.

And for those that believe that somehow this approach detracts from economic goals – they're mistaken. 

The Virtual Distance research data are very clear on this point. 

These critical human connections found walking along these intimate social and emotional bridges are what fuels the success factors we are all counting on every day to eventually accumulate into some kind of economic recovery. 

For those of us who are not suffering the disease itself, we are still suffering from a PTSD-like state of mind whether we acknowledge and process it or not. So, it follows that our human mental health recovery, out of the ashes of our many stresses, is the only potentially realistic predictor of the revival of a healthy economic and peaceful global recovery that begins to form into a shape that looks something akin to our lived experience B.C.

Bottom-line: Remote work is not equivalent to a button labeled “join meeting” on a glowing screen. It is now code for a universal experience of isolated work brought on by forced separation so we can maintain our collective health as best we can and bridge the next levels of Virtual Distance between the life we led B.C, the life we lead today and the one we create for ourselves and our kids, A.D. (After Disease).