Working From Home Doesn’t Make a Pandemic Any Less Terrifying

There is something so obscene, in the midst of a literal global pandemic, about focusing on productivity and pretending work matters.

Feeling that we must focus on demonstrating our value to a company in the midst of an attack on our personal lives and our societal and economic safety — in short, is very un-chill.

The message all over social media and our inboxes, throughout all this disruption and uncertainty, is clear: you can actually get a lot done while self-isolating!

Productivity obsession is in the very DNA of what it means to be American, and particularly so now in our tech-enabled lives. At times, it seems that every minute of our day must be optimized and commodified toward a KPI, whether self-improvement or the bottom line.

How do we square this away with what I find me, my coworkers, and other friends fortunate enough to have work, are feeling? Our feelings run the gamut from being emotionally overwhelmed or numb, feeling like failures and helpless, feeling like we can’t find the wherewithal to finish a spreadsheet we meant to have completed last Friday.

You can’t square it away and don’t try, I propose that now more than ever, you instead focus on your psychological safety.

Ignore all the productivity porn. Let go of all the ideas of what you should be doing right now.

You are not failing if you can’t find the energy to focus on being productive, and you won’t defeat your fears and anxiety by churning out more slides for a deck or logo variations. Certainly, working yourself to exhaustion won’t give you the sense of control you’re looking for.

Let this time slow you down, let it distract you and change how you see the world. Doing more and more, busying yourself with demonstrative displays of your worth as an employee, isn’t a sustainable way of making yourself feel better. Looking, in this way, to uncontrollable external factors for safety, is not a safe bet.

Don’t feel compelled to be in front of your computer all day. Very concretely — think about the tasks you need to complete on a given day, as opposed to feeling compelled to clock in 8 hours sitting in front of your laptop.

Don’t feel compelled to put on a show about being okay in front of your co-workers. Let this time disarm you, be authentic in your fear or hopelessness or anxiety.

This tragedy has brought us a weird sort of gift, a tearing down of our assumptions. And most importantly, a chance for us to abandon the performative and embrace being sincere.