This is a disconcerting, downright scary time for just about everyone. It’s not a time for taking advantage of each other. Good bosses aren’t going to be pushing harder than they need to, and good employees aren’t going to be doing less work than they ought to simply because nobody is keeping tabs. We’re in this together.
When you’re working remotely, just like with any other kind of work, you have to do your job but not drive yourself nuts. But the definition of “being present” at work has taken on new, sometimes confounding dimensions. Illustrating this phenomenon, one recent study showed that remote workers are on average doing 3.13 hours of overtime per day. Another study found that 50% of remote working respondents are feeling burned out, with 52% of those workers having no planned days off in sight.
The concept of time off from work has evolved in its own way as more and more American companies adjust to modern sensibilities of familial, upbeat cultures and lived values in action. What may be a no-brainer at a company where nobody cares about the mission or each other becomes something almost entirely different when you do invest yourself in a job you love. You won’t be there to do your job and help your teammates do theirs, and you may miss some opportunities to shine. Seems selfish to take a day off for mental health when business doesn’t stop for you.
These complex thoughts were already out there before the fundamental nature of working shifted for so many. In March of 2020, as a precaution against COVID-19’s spread, a whole lot of American workers did something they’ve never done before: They woke up, had breakfast and coffee, then walked twenty feet and sat down to an eight-hour work shift.
For six months now, Americans have been working remotely whenever and wherever they can. The divisions in our lives between work and home, always fragile, now seem almost completely dissolved. The idea of a conventional work schedule is hard to track when one is being trusted with one’s own day, because we tend to manage ourselves in ways only we can understand. And we all face different challenges at home, some of which are private and need to remain that way.
But the work-life deal hasn’t changed, not fundamentally. We work for our livings, and jobs are not supposed to overwhelm us. Getting burned out doesn’t help you or your team. Days off – vacation days and other PTO, especially – are the aces the working person holds to use as needed, as they see fit. Not to keep them sane as much as to keep them happy. We need to be able to remind the world that, in the end, our personal lives need to come first. And days off are how we communicate that idea with the companies we work for. We don’t get a ton of them, but we get enough.
Unchanged also is each human being’s need for the occasional blast of freedom, whether from a traditional family vacation to a day hanging out by yourself in your cushiest bathrobe, watching all five seasons of some beloved sitcom in a mad sugar rush. Without at least a few of those “time off” aces in hand, a person can get to feeling a little trapped and cornered by their job. It’s just a natural part of our wiring that needs to be tended to in any holistic approach to a healthy work-life balance.
Track yourself, etc, “staycations” or our own design, can help us tune into ourselves, foster creativity, and delve back into our work with greater motivation and focus, videoconference with supervisor regular,
So, even when your office is six feet from your bed, and your whole life takes place in the confines of your apartment, you need to find an escape hatch you can rely on. Unfortunately, in this uncertain moment, many of us who feel doubly glad to have jobs will allow themselves to get overworked – perhaps just to distract themselves from larger issues, or to assure themselves and others of their value to the company. Managers can only be partially blamed for this, as each employee is now in charge of their own schedules. You used to be able to pack your things and head for your car when the workday ends, and you have to find a way to do that every day when there’s no driving involved and you’re just gonna walk a few rooms over and put your feet up. Impose routines on yourself if need be to retain at least some of the fundamental boundaries of the traditional American workday.
Track yourself and your hours to get a sense of how much you’re working. Make sure you get to videoconference with your direct manager often, for the ever-needed reality check. And if you start to feel a little burned out, but a “staycation” is the best you can do, plan one as soon as you need one. We all know what we need to do for ourselves to relax for a day, so do that, to the best of your abilities in these odd times. Even a staycation has the power to help us tune in, recharge creative batteries, and move forward with work with a renewed sense of purpose.
