Full Remote Work (Chapter Three: Self-care & Productivity)
From previous chapters you’ve learned about tools and techniques that support collaboration within the team while working fully remotely. But in order to make our cooperation synergetic, we need to take care of the team’s cells. Each person needs to pay attention to his or her well-being, especially in this unusual condition. This post will be more embedded in the context of COVID-19 pandemic — the effect of working remotely is emphasized by the current worldwide situation.
In order to share some tips and best practices that help us feel better and stay productive, I’d like to shortly explain how the pandemic is affecting us — from a psychological point of view. A good understanding of a problem is the first step to choose a proper solution.
We don’t know for how long this situation will hold, we’re not sure how many sick people are around us or even if we’ve already had effective contact with the virus (therefore we’ve got immunity) or not. We’re not sure if we know all the possible factors of increased risk. We don’t know when we’ll get a proper cure.
The fact is that there’s a lot of uncertainty and our brains are not huge fans of that. Why? The answer is evolution. Your brain is constantly updating the surroundings and judging: am I safe or not? If your brain doesn’t know what’s around the corner, it can’t prepare for a threat and keep you away from harm. From an evolutionary point of view, it’s better to be safe than sorry, so we’re hardwired to overestimate threats and underestimate our ability to handle them.
How this uncertainty of potential threat is affecting our bodies?
Our primary, “ancient” reaction to a potential threat is the fight or flight response, which can be triggered without conscious processing. This body’s response to the fear involves flooding us with stress hormones, such as adrenaline or cortisol. The heart beats faster than normal, pushing blood to the muscles, heart, and other organs. Pulse rate and blood pressure go up. We start to breathe more rapidly. Sight, hearing, and other senses become sharper. Those reactions are designed to make us run faster or fight harder with very dangerous animals or different threats. And what’s the problem, is that our environment is much, much different than it was at the beginning of human life and our brains’ reactions haven’t changed proportionally. There is no role for this primitive biological response to such threats as COVID-19 and other popular stressors in our life. No running or fighting is necessary or helpful.
On the more conscious layer, there’s a lot of effects too. One major thing is that we’re going through a temporary loss of what we take for granted. Our life suddenly has changed. This loss of things that we take for granted, can make us feel not only anxious, but also sad, lonely, frustrated, and furious. Do you know the stages of grief? Those might actually apply right now, because as I said — we feel the loss of things we’ve taken for granted. You don’t have to go through all of the stages: it’s possible to jump between and skip some of them.
What’s more, our bodily habits have changed and we are re-learning how and when to wash our hands, we are noticing how often we do actually touch our faces and we try to stop doing that. We have to be in a continuous self-observing mode. We can be simply tired of giving our energy into those actions.
And last, but definitely not least, the major aspect is social isolation. Personal relationships are crucial in maintaining our wellbeing. It doesn’t matter if we’re introverts or extraverts — we’re all social mammals. We need to interact with each other, and as a society, we tend to organize ourselves in communities.
We might feel frustrated and more anxious those times — our previous coping strategies are not an option (or not fully) right now. Our brains that hate uncertainty can cause the neurophysiological response in our body that makes us feel stressed. And it’s a feedback loop — when our worries become excessive, we’re responding with anxiety in our body.
But the good thing is that because it’s a feedback loop, the change in one part, reflects in the other. So we can fight with our stress from both sides: taking care of our body, reframing our thoughts and focus on the best solutions in given circumstances.
How to take care of your well-being and stay productive during those times?
The basic rule is tough but very important: you need to acknowledge that a lot of anxious thoughts and emotions might show up during this time. And you need to accept that they will come, rather than trying to push them away or escape them. Avoidance of such emotions will only make them stronger and longer-lasting. What’s helpful is to notice negative emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations as they come up and then look into them with curiosity. The great message is: Your thoughts are the reaction to the events in the environment, they are not the events per se. And you’re in control of how you perceive the world around.
Find the balance between following proper health guidelines and reducing the intensity and frequency of your worry. Ask yourself if your thoughts are productive or unproductive. Worrying is a type of “thinking ahead” of our future — of the potential outcomes of some events. It pushes us to notice obstacles or problems, and gives us the opportunity to find proper solutions. There is no ‘right’ amount of worry. When worrying helps us to achieve our goals, solve problems in life — this is a “normal” kind of worry. Speaking of COVID-19 situation, the great example will be hand washing and social distancing: we’re taking those actions in order to prevent the spread of the virus. We say that worry becomes a problem when it stops us from living the life we want to live, or if it leaves us feeling frustrated and exhausted. When we worry excessively, we often think about worst-case scenarios, and by doing that we feel that we won’t cope with them. It can go further and give most of our control to the fear. It might look like that:
As Cognitive-Behavioral specialists claim: Listening to public health officials and saying, “I have done everything that is reasonably possible” is a step that illustrates that one is shifting the focus from listening to fear-related thoughts such as “I am in danger” to more realistic thoughts such as “I have followed the recommendations of the scientists who know more about the virus that I do.”
Googling “Cases of coronavirus” every few minutes will quickly become overwhelming, increase your anxiety and leave you with no energy to do anything else. Try to limit your intake of the news — e.g. to about 15 minutes a day, so you can stay informed about developments, such as school closings or injunctions to wear a mask (but please make sure your news comes from credible sources). Then focus on more productive tasks and areas that you have control of, such as finishing your work, or finding time to relax.
Give your brain a predictability that it misses so much right now. This is why you can hear about the impact of the routine. It doesn’t have to be very detailed — it’s important that you’ll stick to it. If you’ll set very high expectations from the start, you might be caught in thinking “this is too much, it’s not going to work” and give up. Take baby steps. Start with setting a time of waking up, your start of work, and bedtime. It shouldn’t be another thing that will be overwhelming in your life. Start easy not to decrease your motivation and keep in mind that any action is better than none.
Moreover, our brains are susceptible to the context of learning things — when we’re learning something, it will be recalled later more smoothly, if the environment will be the same or similar. That’s why you’ve probably heard a lot of recommendations such as “don’t work all day from a couch in your pajamas”, but to wear your usual clothes and prepare an office corner that will support your focus. It’s important to keep your good office routines at home — stick to your working hours, make coffee breaks, even meet for a small talk with your colleagues. Recreating natural conditions will help you stay as productive as you were before the lockdown.
You can’t control certain things, but you can control where you put your attention, and you can take care of yourself by exercising, eating right, and connecting with people you miss. Remember the feedback loop I mentioned earlier? You can calm down your body and mind with physical activities and all of those are connected to better well-being — physical activities relieves our tensions, well-balanced diet is a source of nutrition for our brains (you probably have heard about the gut, that our health lays there, that it’s a second brain — if not, it might be topic for another post). And sleep helps our brain to clean in order to work better in the upcoming days. Old approach and belief that sleep is for weak people it’s no longer on the spot, and it’s definitely not evidence-based.
Use this time to reflect on things you truly value. People may value being productive, building relationships, doing arts or sports — many, many different things. When you identify what you truly value, you are empowered to pursue those things. While we are all working from home, it can be helpful to balance between activities that:
- give you a sense of achievement — a work task, house cleaning, cooking a new recipe, completing an exercise routine, taking care of formalities we always couldn’t find a time for
- help you feel close and connected with others — our social contact is not the same as it was before, but we still have it. We can use social media, phone and video calls to set up shared online activities e.g. a virtual book or film club. You could also explore local groups, and see if there are ways to be involved in helping some community in your neighborhood
- activities that you can do just for pleasure — reading a good book, watching a good movie, singing to your favorite songs, eating a special food
Acting according to our values will help us feel better and improve our self-efficacy. By doing so, we give ourselves control. Control — the thing we are missing during this tough time so much — is back in our hands.
Resources:
- https://www.psychologytools.com/assets/covid-19/guide_to_living_with_worry_and_anxiety_amidst_global_uncertainty_en-us.pdf
- https://beckinstitute.org/using-cbt-to-respond-to-covid-19/
- https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/coronavirus-quarantine-mental-health
- https://medium.com/the-longest-spring-handbook-to-withstand-the/coronavirus-you-may-feel-anxiety-sadness-irritability-and-a-sense-of-deflation-3cd8880b4aca
- and special thanks to Kate Rand for hosting Remote HumanHR meet up: The psychological impact of remote working
