Vacations, Self-Care and Avoiding Burnout and Disengagement

As I’m sure you noticed *insert self-deprecating eye roll* there was no article last week and that’s because I was on a rare no-device vacation. Was it the restorative break I was hoping for? Perhaps not, I seem to have suffered from the same affliction I hear is widespread these days - the insufficiency of the break as compared to the intensity of the work over the past few years since the world went topsy turvy, somehow becomes even more evident as soon as I stopped at all which made the vacation feel woefully short. But, with truly flexible working being the norm at PeopleNotTech, it is really up to me -and my responsibility- that I ensure my batteries are recharged. I’m not sure if that will involve a few half days when needed, another vacation or simply re-auditing and then refocusing on my meditation routine (and other self-care mechanisms I’m relying on), but whatever it will take, I know it’s not the type of work I can avoid if I want to ensure I’m sustainability competitive.?

Put plainly - my vacation only made a minute dent in my need to decompress and mentally restart so it is now up to me to nurture and repair my own mental state and ensure I’m well in whatever capacity I need to. This incidentally comes complete with a serving of gratitude as I can’t help but feel super fortunate to work in a place where 1. my mental state matters and 2. I get to do something about it due to flexible working, and neither of these points is the case for the vast majority of the work population.

So for me, being honest that I haven’t had enough rest, being mindful of it and in-building alternatives that will alleviate some of the pressure that builds, is a rather basic de-risking strategy because the last thing we need is one of our leaders succumbing to burnout. And while only a paragraph ago I admitted my position is super privileged, I will also clearly say that this same level of care towards our own wellbeing should definitely exist as sheer personal responsibility at every executive level where, let’s be honest, flexibility is inbuilt.?

In other words, the more senior that someone is, the stronger a duty they ought to have to take care of themselves.?

What is it that makes the difference between their ability to stay in charge of their own wellbeing and that of their direct reports? It really all boils down to one thing only - the lack of fear and limitation that accompanies command and control. The execs get to be adult enough to notice “Wow, my reserves of resilience are down, my level of engagement is dropping, I’m less and less connected to the purpose and passionate about our people and our work, I’m impatient, tired, easily annoyed, I’m not at my best and I may be approaching the danger zone of pure burnout” and their reaction to be “I absolutely need to do something about it right away” and then execute on what that is, be it a stronger self-care routine or bigger breaks or more interesting challenges and exciting growth scenarios. Their less fortunate direct reports may well be coming to the same self-realisation about their capacity and current capability, but feel like any of the possible remedies are utterly outside of their reach as they require a degree of autonomy they simply do not believe they have.?

The unjust nature of the workplace hierarchy simply lends itself to this extreme inequality where the privilege of self-care seemingly rests only with the “management” but the truth is that this is a moment in time for all workers to find a way to create and enforce personal boundaries and that squandering this opportunity would indeed be dramatic. In other words, we must firmly land the right and obligation for self-care as one of the firm new wins of the pandemic alongside remote work and the greater depth of the discussion on human topics.?

And if movements like UK’s current “Don’t pay” (there are over 700,000 people that have pledged they will stop their payments to energy suppliers in October unless the current extreme increase in tariffs is revised) can make a difference, there’s no reason to believe that in the workplace we can not move the needle by simply demanding that we are allowed to be self-respecting and in charge of our own wellbeing. Above all please remember that this isn’t a favour the enterprise does us that we should get the time and tools to pay attention to ourselves and keep ourselves most competitive, quite the opposite, it is a favour we extend to the enterprise that we are willing to do this work.?

We freely admit that we are hyper-focused on teams. (In fact, I am considering it as a tagline -“PeopleNotTech - Team Obsessed”). What this relentless focus on the team allows us, is to always think in terms of the unit and design the interventions and actions that will have the closest direct impact on the group. This is not to mean we ever thought team or group work is the only type of work that is worthwhile human work because that’s not the case.?Any time spent on individual human work is undoubtedly valuable (which is why from time to time there will be an article like this one doubling down on its importance) but not something we can do more than just preach about. Any time spent thinking of the organisation as a bigger unit is, perhaps less fruitful as less change ever happens at that level, but equally necessary as it’s the whole enterprise that should spend time evaluating their HumanDebt?. Neither are as directly efficient and sustainable of efforts as the work that needs to happen at the team level but both are unavoidable other types of effort.

So to those of you in an already flexible work environment - are you well-rested and at your best? If not then that’s up to you to fix. For those of you that are the fortunate execs - count your blessings, use your privilege to recharge and then bring everyone else up on the journey. And to everyone else, see if there are minor ways to carve out some self-care - perhaps block more thinking time in the calendar, shake some of the command and control perceptions by speaking to management directly about the need to focus on yourself at times or something as fundamental as starting on a self-care daily routine, but whatever you do, don’t let any employer disrespect you by not enabling the self-care side of the human work.

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At?PeopleNotTech ?we make?software ?that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams, come see a DEMO.

“Nothing other than sustained, habitual, EQed people work at the team level aka “the human work” done BY THE TEAM will improve any organisation’s level of Psychological Safety and therefore drop their levels of HumanDebt?.”

To order the "People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age" book go to this Amazon?link