Our lives have changed a lot since the beginning of 2020. Living in the present time has characteristics of living with a chronic condition and that by itself has a major impact. We are forced to behave differently than under normal circumstances. But also different than during a crisis. Seeing this time for what it is, chronically abnormal, provides concrete tools for how you can best deal with it yourself and as a manager. This article describes the prolonged non-normal nature of the present time, its impact on ourselves and our work lives, and concludes with concrete tips. And perhaps surprisingly, something good can also come out of this time.
AN ABNORMAL TIME...
With the arrival of the corona virus, our lives have changed radically. In an attempt to contain the virus, governments have taken various measures. These have not so much created a new normal as a chronic abnormal. An observation that is independent of the possible correctness and proportionality of the measures. That heated discussion is beyond the scope of this article. This article is about what the current time does to people on a social and emotional level and within the context of work. How desirable all that is, is not taken into consideration here. So much for the obligatory disclaimer.
'Normal' is not only what we have become accustomed to,
but also what is healthy and natural for us.
That is why it has grown over time and has become 'normal' for us.
Many activities that are healthy and natural for us, that we consider normal, are no longer possible. Think of touching, cuddling, seeing each other's face, meeting people, going out at night, group activities, sports, relaxation, art and culture. We circle around each other and the space for spontaneity and chance, that which makes life feel alive, is minimized. All of this is not normal. We can no longer freely re-source ourselves, as the Belgians so beautifully put it, and we get exhausted as a result.
Many managers today put on a positive mask because they want to keep motivating their employees. They want to continue to radiate confidence. Because, so is their understandable thought: "When I show how I really feel, then things collapse." But in the meantime, they feel empty and violate themselves by pretending to be different from what they feel. In doing so, they traumatize themselves and also affect truthful mutual contact, something that is already under tension.
A barrier has been placed between every human contact. A mouth mask, a plexiglass plate, a mandatory questionnaire or a screen.
We have become isolated from the other. Something that is at odds with our social esssence.
It is also unnatural that healthy people are now seen as potentially ill or pathogenic. It changes how we look at each other. Cautiousness, sometimes even suspicion, creeps into families, friendships, organizations and generations. As an immaterial barrier between people that affects our feeling of interconnectedness. An abnormal situation that has features of a chronic disease.
WITH A CHRONIC CHARACTER...
The Center for Disease Control provides the following definition for a chronic condition:
Chronic diseases are defined broadly as conditions that last 1 year or more and require ongoing medical attention or limit activities of daily living or both.
We have now passed the 1-year period, see our daily activities severely limited and are in the middle of a testing society. But the parallels don't stop there. The effects that the current period has on the human psyche has many similarities with the impact of a chronic disease.
““Adjusting to a life with a chronic condition requires adjustments in one or more areas of daily life, for example in the areas of sexuality, work, social interaction, self-reliance and mobility.
(...)
Chronic illness is not an isolated problem; it is part of the life story (...) and it often leads to a change in the social position of the patient.”
It is not difficult to see the parallels with the present time. The national governments provide lifestyle advice in many areas, but the psychological consequence of the fact that you suddenly have to adhere to all new rules, that you are no longer free to do what you would like to do, is not really recognized.
A consequence of all this, also noticeable at work, is that you can no longer follow your routine. You have to consciously take restricted circumstances into account and that consumes energy. A lot of energy. We humans rely on our habits and routines. That keeps our brains free for more important things like strategic thinking, creativity, prioritizing and making decisions, and that has now become a lot more difficult. We are getting mentally tired and focused on just getting along instead of truly living *.
AND PERIODIC CHECK-UPS.
Another parallel with having a chronic condition is the associated periodic check-ups with a doctor. For patients, these are always charged conversations, which cause a lot of stress in advance because so much depends on it. The ‘physician' in our collective chronic affliction is the national government.
Bron: www.nos.nl
The press conferences of our government leaders are like the periodic check-ups with a doctor. You will be told how things are going on the basis of measurements and models. Which rules of life and behavior you now have to adhere to and what to expect.
Especially when you have hope that the measures will be lightened and are told that they actually will be strengthened and extended, the disappointment is all the greater. This can be devastating. Certainly for entrepreneurs who see the survival of their business being threatened. Chronic patients know this principle all too well. For example, when a new drug or alternative treatment is used in an attempt to reverse a deterioration and isn’t working. Nowadays many, especially entrepreneurs and the self-employed, are tossed back and forth between hope and fear, and have been disappointed all to often.
MOVING THE GOALPOST
Mentally exhausting in this respect is also the moving the goalpost phenomenon that can be recognized in the measures. This principle comes into play when it is first promised that if we adhere to certain rules such as social distancing, we will regain our freedom. After which the rules are changed, for example by introducing the obligatory testing. Once again we stick to the goal and once again the rules are changed, for example by introducing a curfew and presenting mutations of the virus as a new threat and a vaccine as the savior.
It is now clear that a massive vaccination will not lead to a complete return to the old normal, but social distancing and the face masks will remain with us for a while. And so the finish line keeps moving each time we feel we get close to it. That process is debilitating to our resilience. Just like seeing representatives of the government themselves, who are not so careful with the same rules as we have to adhere to. Again, for the sake of clarity, this is not intended as a judgment on the (sequence of) measures taken, but is about the psychological consequences thereof.
IMPACT AT WORK
Most striking, of course, is the impact on the so-called essential workers. Education has had to completely change their activities several times, always on the short term. Because this has not happened before, there were no plans for how to deal with this. Online teaching faced significant technical challenges and teachers were forced to step outside their comfort zone. Naturally, the healthcare sector was also hit hard and forced to push the limits of its adaptability. And still does that every day. Many shopkeepers, service providers and freelancers were forced to close their businesses, with all the consequences that entailed. Eye-catching issues about which much has been written.
Less obvious, but also with a great impact, is that for many people, work has largely shifted to working from home from behind a screen. That is not without consequences. Working completely digitally takes up a lot of your brain’s working memory and that reduces the space for intuition, feeling, creativity and your connection to the other. It strongly activates your prefrontal cortex, a part of your brain that is energy intensive. However, the energy present there is limited and you will want to use the power of your prefrontal cortex for the things that provide the greatest added value, such as the prioritizing and strategic thinking *. Result: You lose an overview of your activities more quickly than usual and that does not feel good.
There is a great temptation to then remedy a nagging feeling with social media or surfing the internet. You are already behind your laptop and then a trip for your dopamine fix is easily made. The problem is that a short trip can easily become a detour of an hour or more. After which you will only feel worse and you will not get anything meaningful done. It is not for nothing that for deep thinking it is recommended to be unreachable and offline. Just try and get that done these days.
Leadership is also under pressure. When you, as a manager, normally walk around the workplace, it only takes a few minutes, sometimes even seconds, to know what is going on. You can see how things are going in the blink of an eye and you can make small adjustments that ensure immediate improvements. Working from home this is different. You have to wait until you realize that adjustments are needed and then you often miss the details and context that you get in real life. All your perception now is feeded through your mental filter and that makes online meetings more tiring than you might think at first glance. And they also yield less in terms of interaction and innovative ideas.
Looking at a digital mosaic of talking faces does not exactly stimulate the collective creative power. People just send and partly receive. Interaction leading to higher insights simply is not possible this way. Exchanging information? Yes. Collective creation? No. And even a large mug of coffee won’t help you there.
You need both hemispheres of your brain to perform good work. And of course your heart and the rest of your body as well. That is no longer automatically possible and as a result you will get substantially less done in a day, both quantitatively and qualitatively, than what you normally get done. That makes you feel unsatisfied at the end of a working day and that is frustrating. You can even end up being fed up with yourself. Especially when you are an extroverted person and get a lot of your energy from direct social contacts. Our sense of social value is affected and that has serious consequences.
“No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community.”
WORK AND PRIVATE LIFE MERGE. OR COLLIDE
Work is important to people. In fact, for Freud, work was the main outlet of the libido **. You can put all kinds of drives and aspects of yourself into work, which you cannot just put into your private life. A complex person, and hopefully we all are, has different sides and qualities that want to be expressed. It is therefore completely normal for you to act differently at work than at home. It makes you a complete person. For example, if you have a competitive streak, you can express this better at work or in sports than in your relationship. Let alone within your household.
The corona measures have changed the work-life relationship. Offices are empty because people mostly work from home. The sides of yourself that could be expressed externally must now be suppressed or suddenly appear at home. Letting go of your private persona and activating your work mindset also is not easy when everything around you reminds you of your private life. Having an external location for your work helps you put you in the right mindset. Entering the office primes you for your job. We miss that now. Much more is required of your self-management and executive functions.
In addition, when you are in a relationship and there are also children present, you will have to make many more agreements with each other: Who is allowed to video conference at what time, who works where in the house, whose work is prioritized and who looks after the children. Those kinds of agreements. Certainly because the rules around schools have also changed several times, the agreements around children had to be revised again and again. This gives a lot of stress and requires a flexibility that you cannot always muster.
Parenting also demands more from you during this period. The structure of going to school has disappeared for a lot of children and just try to activate older children for following online lessons in the early morning, sitting at their desks with their books ready. Moreover, children can no longer lose their excess energy by sports or going out with friends. Stored energy is always looking for a release and you will also notice that at home.
Of course it is cute when children walk into the picture unexpectedly or it breaks the tension when a wife walks through the picture with a folded bath towel or seeing a man in his boxers, but as a Dauerzustand, a permanent situation, that is not ideal. All in all, many people walk around with the feeling that they fall short at work and in their private obligations, and that situation is again reminiscent of the chronic condition.
GRIEVING IS A MUST, ACCEPTING CAN be DIFFICULT
Coping well with a chronic condition requires mourning. Mourn what you have lost, whether it is control over your own life, freedom, room for spontaneity or your future plans. But also mourning missing seemingly small things such as a festival, going out, direct customer or coworker contact and the like. In our chronically abnormal, it boils down to mourning lost time and everything you could have done with it. Facing that reality and admitting all the accompanying feelings, will hurt. It is painful and you'd rather avoid that. It seems easier to ignore it altogether, but then you can be sure it will pop up later with a vengeance. Acceptance comes in bits and pieces, so take your time. And realize that complete acceptance sometimes isn’t attainable.
Unlike with a real chronic condition, the current measures also affect you if you do not notice the corona virus yourself or even in your inner circle. In that case, forcing full acceptance onto yourself is unrealistic. There will always be an emotional squeeze, even if you can fully understand the reason for the measures. That's just human. The trick then becomes to express the resistance and dissatisfaction you feel in a constructive way.
FINDING A NEW BALANCE
The key to regaining balance in the chronically abnormal is the concept of locus of control. In short, this represents the degree to which you seek the causes of what happens to you within yourself or outside of yourself.
“An internal locus of control indicates that someone believes that he/she is responsible for the success (or failure) of his/her efforts to achieve a goal.
An external locus of control indicates that a person believes that the results (or lack of results) of his/her efforts to achieve a goal are due to causes outside him/herself, such as luck, government, other people, and so on.
Whether or not you develop a chronic condition is usually beyond your control. A chronic patient thus automatically develops a larger external locus of control ***. The problem with that is that it can make people anxious, dependent, reactive and depressed. We are now also seeing this happening on a collective scale. The corona virus mainly involves external threats, measures and solutions. Almost feverishly, some people keep an eye on the news and do not exactly benefit from doing that.
Regaining balance requires increasing your internal locus of control: a more proactive, mature way of dealing with reality. This is how we see this in relation to chronic conditions:
There is a greater tendency for people with a strong internal locus of control to exhibit more information seeking behavior, and to adopt an active, problem-solving and intellectual approach to cope with their chronic situation.***
Look for what you do have influence on and focus on that. For example, start working on your immune system and consciously introduce new (work)habits in your life. You can take your work appointments outside. Walking outside together provides more oxygen to your brain, stimulates creative ideas and allows you to think and talk more freely. Even at 1.5 meters.
A big advantage of these times is that we are all in the same boat together and therefore do not get irritated as much from disruptions or technical problems as we used to. Such as a dog that starts barking during an online conversation, a connection that suddenly drops or when MS Teams plays up again. This new relaxed, forgiving attitude is something to hold on to. It reduces the external locus of control, because you no longer take things so personally and seriously.
Staying informed of the measures and developments surrounding corona does not mean that you have to be involved 24/7. As with a chronic condition, don't let it control your mind. And when you are all fed up with it again, just get if off your chest for a short time and have conversations in which you talk about completely different things.
If you bring the internal and external locus of control more into balance in this way, then you can keep yourself afloat in the rough sea of the chronically abnormal.
WHAT YOU CAN DO IN CONCRETE TERMS
Denying that there is a virus or that external measures have a restrictive influence on your well-being won’t help you. But thinking that you are above it all, won’t either. It's about the combination of grieving for loss, shrinking your external-, and increasing your internal locus of control. In concrete terms, you can do the following:
Be gentle with yourself and your team. Do not expect the same performance as before and make that clear. It takes pressure off the already pressurized situation.
Take time to mourn what you’ve lost and get used to new circumstances. You simply cannot be completely adapted to the chronically abnormal overnight. Take the time to process what you have lost.
Make clear agreements with your employees about matters such as accessibility and take great care that they do not end up in a loyalty conflict with the demands of the home front. Don't forget to make good arrangements at home as well.
Facilitate working adjustments. Minimize the impact of the restrictions by ensuring that the facilities for working from home are optimal. IT-wise of course, but also consider a standing desk, for example. Bonus tip: in The Netherlands many collective labor agreements offer possibilities for this that are not yet known to everyone.
Work on new habits and look at what is still possible. New routines free up mental space for creativity and important thinking. For example, a daily stroll at midday. If you are a manager, do you help people with this. For example, by making a list of what is currently found to be very difficult and a list of alternative options. Often more is possible than meets the eye.
Allow all emotions in, don't push them away, but don't get stuck in them either. Getting things off your chest with fellow afflicted ones helps. Invite this as a manager. Help people to open up and then help them to move on. No one gets well by keeping complaining, getting irritated or aroused.
Do not be influenced too much by how others deal with this situation, because they do not have your character, knowledge and experiences. Do it your way.
Go offline and outside regularly. As a manager, actively encourage this among your employees.
Stay in touch with each other and prevent polarization in your (work) environment. Covid19 has turned into an potentially explosive subject. Respect each other's points of view and agree to disagree. This must of course come from both sides and make it clear that you expect this from each other. Maintaining team spirit is perhaps more important than ever, but difficult when you don't see each other physically.
Don't emotionally lock yourself in in a certain position. Don't become an proselytizing believer or denier around corona. In this situation, no one has absolute wisdom. Not even the government and sciencists. We are venturing into uncharted territory, so multiple viewpoints are valid and you need to leave room to stop halfway so that you don't persevere a possible erroneous position.
Guard your limits, because only you know what is good for you.
Provide some light moments and diversion. Although it is not a structural solution, it is extremely important to take the tension off from time to time and show appreciation. For example with a nice surprise package sent to the home or an online drink or team bingo. A good example is also the entrepreneur from Twente (NL) who gave his staff a day off during heavy snowy weather, on the condition that they make a snowman and share a photo of it with the team.
Humor helps! Humor helps you to deal better with stress and setbacks. It brings relief in dark times and puts the heaviness into perspective. And if you can't manage it yourself, find someone who will cheer you up because we're all in this together.
Use this article as a conversation starter for bilateral conversations and team meetings. There’s always something that resonates. Start your conversation from there.
Share insights and life lessons. The past year has triggered a lot and certainly not all negative! All sorts of deeper issues have surfaced and perhaps that has brought you something valuable, so that you now have a different attitude towards life. Or you’ve made certain decisions for the future. Or there are things that you will not be doing from now on or that you have just started to pick up. Communicate them to your people and ask them for their insights as well. It also makes the positive results of this far from normal time visible and that provides well-needed perspective.
Finally, this: Be aware that only when life starts to become "more normal" again, the price of the past period will be fully felt. Often we go on and on and only allow the fatigue to set in when we’re safe again. These are very critical and vulnerable moments! Don't suddenly try to catch up with all that you think you’re you are lagging behind in. Recover and rebuild slowly. Step by step. And most importantly: Integrate the lessons of the past period into your life, because then this time will certainly not have been wasted, but you will come out of it as a wiser person.
Undoubtedly, there are many more tips & tricks that apply to life and work. I love to hear them!
Take care, stay safe and do not forget to live!
*) Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long - David Rock, 2009.
**) “No other technique for the conduct of life attaches the individual so firmly to reality as laying emphasis on work; for his work at least gives him a secure place in a portion of reality, in the human community. The possibility it offers of displacing a large amount of libidinal components, whether narcissistic, aggressive or even erotic, on to professional work and on to the human relations connected with it lends it a value by no means second to what it enjoys as something indispensible to the preservation and justification of existence in society. Professional activity is a source of special satisfaction if it is a freely chosen one — if, that is to say, by means of sublimation, it makes possible the use of existing inclinations, of persisting or constitutionally reinforced instinctual impulses." - From: Civilization and its Discontents - Sigmund Freud, 1930.
***) From: Locus of Control and Reaction to Illness - Boey Kam Weng, 1984.