Almost 12 weeks of lockdown – Why some of us need to get a life?

As part of my job, I spend most of my time on the phone talking to people, most of whom work in the corporate world. In my personal time, I consciously try to speak with people who don’t have desk jobs, to get a different perspective. While those who don’t have desk jobs but aren’t key workers are eager to go back to work, many who are “Working from Home” are at risk of burnout, like never before. The mental health challenge is real and it’s the elephant in the room.

Across industries and jobs, there are some key themes emerging with respect to how people are experiencing the lockdown:

A.     Boundaries are being blurred

Previously, days were divided into being at work, commute and family or relaxation time. And then there were business trips and holidays. Now, with “Work from Home” (WFH), boundaries are being blurred. For instance, a manager who has a young kid to look after can only get to work properly after the kid has gone to sleep. So, this person may send messages to their team at 9 pm asking questions that demand immediate answers. Problem is that most of the team have no kids or grown up kids and have spent the entire day working and are now looking to relax and unwind over a glass of wine and a game of scrabble. But they can’t as they need to respond to the manager. And this doesn’t just impact the person responding to the manager’s query. It also impacts their partner who is looking to get some quality time together.

Unfortunately, it is the rare worker who has the courage to respond to the manager’s 9 pm message or email at 9 am the next day (as they should). Another observation I have had is that staff who have previously not had access to working from home now do because of the lockdown. Trying to balance work with managing the domestic front has led to some of them adopting a “flexi-working” style. While this is great for many reasons, it does lead to more emails being sent at odd hours.  While some jobs have always required working long hours and being available 24/7, the WFH phenomenon is leading to pure admin related, non-urgent, non-important emails being sent after work, which would normally not happen.

B.     Too many “online” meetings

This comes up in conversations all the time. In the pre-covid world, where meetings took place in person, in board rooms and meeting rooms, and sometimes at pubs or fancy restaurants and cafes, often people were late to meetings or left early. Sometimes people were not available as they were travelling. Meetings over a meal or a drink involved a lot of banter and small talk before getting down to business. But in this new “lockdown” world, everyone is expected to be on time to every online Zoom or Teams meeting. And, sometimes, even though we are living through a global pandemic, people forget to ask how others are feeling. There is pressure to show everyone is working all the time and it may be my imagination, but the “meetings” have increased in terms of their frequency. Because what else are people doing at home, right? They should be available to meet online all the time! Another factor could be that while a board room could fit in maybe 30 people, a virtual meeting could have 100 people.

This is leading to some people not having time to put something healthy together to eat and having to order in unhealthy food and gobble it down while being on Zoom or on Teams. If I am in the office and I am making a cup of tea, colleagues can see I am doing that and can come chat with me. But if I am making a cup of tea at home, all colleagues can see is that I am “away” on Skype or Teams and could assume I am not working or worse, that I am slacking.

After deliberating over this issue for long, one of the suggestions a teammate mentioned (which works quite well for me personally), is to book time in the diary for lunch. So perhaps book a 45-minute slot in your diary everyday for lunch at a time that you want to prepare your meal and eat it – and then don’t accept any meeting invites at that time. That’s how we can draw boundaries.

C.     Pressure to portray oneself as indispensable

The economy is impacted, unemployment is rising and companies are under pressure to cut costs – amidst this backdrop, managers and employees are under immense pressure to showcase their value add and why their job is important. In some instances, where business has been impacted negatively, the only way to portray this may be being available all of the time and sending emails at odd times to show how hardworking one is.

One of my colleagues who often leads by example recently requested a meeting to be rescheduled as she had a meeting with her child’s teacher at the same time – by being open about her personal commitments, she showcased how one can be effective at their job without being available all of the time. Quality of work is more important than time spent being “online”.

D.     Using work as an escape mechanism

This is perhaps the most difficult one. Some have realised that their perfect lives in the pre-covid world, where the kids were at school, one of the partners was often on ‘business trips’, domestic help was available, one had an office spouse to flirt with are unravelling with the WFH reality hitting hard. Being confronted with the problems of a marriage or a relationship, it’s easy to bury oneself in work to escape having to confront a difficult situation.

Even worse, some have been told by their doctors that an existing medical condition such as liver problems, diabetes, high blood pressure may make them more vulnerable to covid and that a lifestyle change in terms of weight loss and a healthier diet may be required – but rather than confront this difficult truth, one could use work as an excuse for not having time to work out or eat healthy food. I have worked in the corporate world long enough now to literally see some people working themselves to death!

Health and family are more important than a job, but some seem to have forgotten that.

E.      Many have forgotten how to “switch off”

Speaking with friends and acquaintances reinforces that many have just forgotten how to switch off. Constantly watching the news and seeing increasing numbers of mortality (and mishandling of the pandemic in many countries) may lead to feeling a sense of loss of control and negativity. Managers need to be mindful of employees’ mental state during these difficult times.

More importantly, we need to manage ourselves carefully during this pandemic. Reading emails before even brushing your teeth isn’t going to help your blood pressure. Sending non-urgent emails at 3 am, working on weekends (and sending work related WhatsApp messages) even though there isn’t anything urgent going on shares the stress with the recipients of the emails and WhatsApp messages. The problem is compounded for those who work across time zones, as many of us now do.

F.      Information overload

We are living in an era of information overload. Newspapers, television, fake news, newsletters, emails, text messages, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube, and so on – unsubscribe, uninstall, unfollow, mute notifications and practice some serious digital detox!

Since we are no longer able to travel and many of us have colleagues, clients, friends and family spread across the world, we are tracking the pandemic and its effects not just where we live but in multiple countries that hold interest for us for various reasons.

Most phones show screen time usage and where the time is spent. Take a break from screens at least once an hour for a few minutes if possible (this is important for the health of the eyes as well).

G.     In general, women have borne the brunt of the “domestic” work

Working mothers are in the worst situation, especially if they normally relied on domestic help and day care / school. While I can quote several surveys here, we all know that in general, women are carrying more of the domestic burden of the housework – this is even worse in some developing countries where traditionally one relied on domestic help (which has been unavailable due to covid-19), and hence perhaps don’t have dishwashers and robot vacuum cleaners. Some women I know don’t get any “me time”. From the moment they wake up to the time they fall asleep, they’re answering emails, dialling into conference calls, doing housework, also doing more of the “admin work” at the office, and taking care of children (often multi-tasking) – in the pre-covid world, they would have been able to switch off even during their crowded commute or drive to work, but now there is no respite!

If you are a woman reading this, you must ask yourself if you are doing more of the housework and childcare and have an honest conversation with your partner. Get at least an hour of “me time” everyday where you can exercise or listen to music or read or do whatever your favourite activity is. If you’re a man reading this, you must support your spouse in their career and share the domestic workload equally.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We are most likely not going to go back to the “pre-covid” normal. There will be a new normal, but we need to know how to “Work from Home” better.

What can managers do?

        i.           Ask your team how they’re coping with WFH and what you can do to help – share your own thoughts and vulnerabilities to encourage others to do so

      ii.           Establish lines of communication – share your own constraints and come up with a plan that works for most

    iii.           Trust your employees to do the job you hired them for. Don’t micromanage unless someone has proven untrustworthy

    iv.           Lead by example. Take some time off, switch off after work so that your team knows that they can do the same

      v.           If, as a manager, you’re exhibiting signs of point C above, your team may pick up on that and get nervous about job security

    vi.           If someone is unwell, don’t expect them to push themselves to work – this is a health crisis after all

Senior management and Human Resources can also do a lot to set the tone and facilitate communication within the organisation.

What can employees do?

1.      Acknowledge and communicate your technological constraints, if any. For instance, living in Central London, the pandemic has made me aware of how people living in the UK countryside may not have great mobile network at home. So, one needs to let others know what the best way is to reach them

2.      Live in the present – not in the past or the future – if you’re fortunate enough to have a job that can be done from home, make the most of these surreal times – bond with your family, eat homecooked food, improve your sleep

3.      Stop getting FOMO, discover JOMO – Joy of Missing Out

4.      Don’t sleep with your phone or laptop in the bedroom – it’s ideal to have no electronic gadgets or screens in the bedroom – the only one allowed in ours is the Kindle

5.      Don’t switch on your laptop as soon as you wake up – don’t even read your emails as soon you wake up. I know this is hard to do, it was for me. Start with what you like to do – for me it’s breakfast (with some good coffee) and listening to music

6.      Resist the temptation to respond to every email right away – don’t let that red light on the blackberry (or equivalent on a smart phone) get your blood pressure to increase each time

7.      Check how many WhatsApp groups you are part of – exit all those you can and mute those you can’t exit (you can even mute some for 8 hours – do that after work hours for work related WhatsApp groups)

8.      Respect other people’s time – receiving an email outside of work hours (especially non-urgent emails) is annoying to say the least as one has to still read it to know if its urgent – use the “delay delivery” option in Outlook to have the email delivered during working hours or leave it in your draft folder

9.      Brevity – keep it short. If you speak for 20 minutes in a meeting that has 50 people logged in on Teams or on Zoom, that’s 1000 minutes of “productive time” – ask yourself if you could have shared the same message in 5 minutes, using up 250 minutes of productive time instead. If everyone followed this rule, meetings would be shorter and more efficient  

10.  Designate a room (or even a corner of a room or even a particular dining table chair) as the “workspace” – try not to use this outside of the work week and work time

11.  Don’t work in your pyjamas and definitely don’t work in your bed (unless there is no other choice)

12.  Try to get some physical exercise and in general move around all of the time – for example, fitbit reminds you do to 250 steps every hour

13.  Make a list of things that make you happy. My list is something like this:

o  Read – Two books I would mention in particular are ‘Why we sleep’ by Matthew Walker and ‘Boundaries’ by Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend

o  Listen to music

o  Bath or a long shower

o  Colour an adult colouring book

o  Practice my Chinese hanzi (writing the characters)

o  Watch a movie

o  Talk to a friend

o  Go for a run

o  Yoga

o  Boxing

o  Eat my favourite food

o  A glass of wine

o  Watching animals in the wild

14.  Find alternatives for pre-covid activities. For instance, pre-covid, I would have a sports massage every week. Since that’s not possible now, I try to find the same relaxation with a hot water bath with Epsom salts. Pre-covid, I went to the theatre at least once a month – but now I have found that National Theatre online is not a bad substitute

15.  Be Kind. Most importantly, be kind to yourself – often, people, especially women, expect more of themselves than others do. We are still in the middle of a pandemic and it’s important to remember that

16.  Lastly, I use some apps to keep myself sane:

o  Bliss – which has some helpful gratitude exercises, very important for times like these

o  ColorNote – to make checklists (I find making checklists very useful both in my personal and professional life)

o  Daylio – which can be used to capture your mood for the day for those that don’t want to write a diary

o  Headspace – great for meditating

o  Fitbit / Asana rebel – any workout app that works

o  FluentU – to practice my Chinese

o  Audible – to listen to audio books (for instance, one could listen to audio books while cleaning the flat)

Let’s not burn out people we work with. Let’s be mindful that each person is dealing with the pandemic in their own way. Let’s slow down and respect people’s boundaries.

What has been your experience of the switch to WFH in this pandemic? Any story that you like to share? What are the challenges you have faced? Are there any books you would recommend? Any apps that you found helpful, in addition to ones I mentioned?

Stay safe and stay sane.

Views expressed are strictly personal.