Covid is Receding But Why Am I Still So Burnt Out? ??
When Covid restrictions set in, many of us found the sudden increase in time at home allowed for creative pursuits to flourish. People took up hobbies?like never before.?
Some two years later, those hobbies are long gone. In its place, people feel?overworked,?unhappy, and unable to?take control?of how their life is going. What happened?
The TL:DR answer? Our routines were disrupted, meaning the boundaries we had historically maintained between work and life became fuzzy.?
When boundaries become fluid, the thing that’s harder to do, in this case, maintain a healthy non-work life recedes in favour of the thing that’s easier, or there’s more pressure to do. In this case, that thing was work.?
Burning to Burn Out?
A recent?survey?found that more than half (52%) of respondents are feeling burned out, compared to 43% pre-COVID. Survey respondents said they had found working from home a trap, as they were taking less time away from work to recharge adequately.?
Working from home made it difficult to differentiate between when a person is on-call and when one isn't, said respondents.
Nearly 70 percent of professionals who transitioned to remote work because of the pandemic?say they now work on the weekends, and 45 percent say they regularly work more hours during the week than they did before, according to a?survey.
The survey also found that working parents were more likely to work weekends and more than eight hours per day than those without children. Men were more likely than women to report working on weekends and putting in 40-plus hour workweeks. And more workers under the age of 40 said they usually work weekends and more than eight hours per day than those older than 40.
This phenomenon is creeping into sick days, too. A?2022 study published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior?found that even when people are sick, they feel guilty about resting and for not recuperating quickly enough.
We’re all working more hours than ever, but why has this happened, and what can we do about it??
The narrow yardstick?
When Covid hit, the resources we normally drew self-worth from temporarily disappeared. What was left was a narrow yardstick by which we could measure ourselves: how hard we worked.?
Billie Katz?assistant professor in psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, notes, "Since?self-worth?is defined as how we value ourselves, and work productivity and accomplishments hold significant weight in how we view ourselves, it makes sense that the two concepts are linked together."
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In essence, work became such a good tool to value ourselves, we threw ourselves at it, hoping it would make us feel valued.
It’s important to point out that there are other reasons this has happened too.?Trust is one of them.?For managers and companies used to having employees where they can see them, Zoom meetings replaced physical contact. Turns out that replacement was?terrible for our mental health?and helped accelerate burnout feelings. But, boundaries can be moved.?
Boundaries, Boundaries, Boundaries?
In the mental health world, boundaries are an idea professionals bang on about a lot, but are often poorly defined. Think of a boundary as a separation between one thing and another that requires constant maintenance and negotiation. Having them in place “limits your exposure to stress and the body’s production of adrenaline and cortisol,” says?Sally Baker, an accredited therapist.?
So how do you set a boundary? The first step is to understand there are two broad types of boundary: hard and soft.
Hard boundaries are rigid, and rarely, if ever are negotiated. A hard boundary might be if you get pinged on Slack after hours by your boss and you always reply. This boundary means you are always available to work.
A soft boundary is easy to set up, but never maintained. For example, it might be a promise to yourself that you’ll go to the gym today. But when put alongside a hard boundary, like work, that promise is shoved out of the way. Everyone does this, but the pandemic has magnified its effects.
Mapping out where and what type of boundaries exist in your life, while simple, helps bring awareness to where you’re putting your energy to maintain ways of working over others. Once that’s established, try swapping hard and soft boundaries. What would happen if you always went to the gym, but you let a work email slide after hours??
With time, feelings of control may appear, and the basis for a habit is starting to form - we’ll talk about habits next week.?
Covid took away all the things that helped us feel whole, now we must learn how to bring them all back.??
Ok, where can I learn more?