Working on Work Habits
Your phone alarm goes off at 7:23 am. Feet hit the floor at 7:27 am. While brushing your teeth you assess your bed-hair and do a mental recap of your appointments for the day. Regular weekly staff Zoom conference at 8 am, series of project team calls starting at 10 am, last meeting at 3 pm. Shower before the staff call? It’s your first decision of the day. You opt for no shower and video mute.
7:31 am. The shirt you wore yesterday is in a pile on a chair by your bed. You ask, “Will I see anyone today who saw me yesterday?” Answer: no. Decision: after a quick sniff check it’s good for another day’s wear.
7:37 am. Your dog has been on high alert for fourteen minutes and is standing at attention at the back door like a Buckingham Palace guard. She doesn’t hide her disappointment when you reach for your Yeti coffee mug instead of her leash. You rationalize that the only way this dog could get more exercise is with the treadmill from the Jetsons. But not walking your dog this morning does feel like a break in a regular routine and it’s mildly regretful to you (and her).
7:49 am. Your streak of having the same breakfast —POM juice, half a banana, whole wheat bagel with strawberry jam and Starbucks French Roast — is now at 48 straight days. Sure, a little variety would be nice but after seven weeks you don’t want to devote any mental energy to figuring out breakfast. Besides, everything is on Amazon Dash Buttons and automagically re-orders.
The weird thing about these work-from-home patterns that you’ve developed is that they involve not doing something that you could easily do. You’re not a lazy person…in fact you’re probably quite motivated in many ways. So what is making you exhibit these contrary forms of behavior?
Neuroscientists have learned a great deal over the past 30 years about how the brain makes decisions, and one of the biggest insights is the role that emotions play in one’s choices. The limbic system (located at back base of the brain) is the oldest region of the brain, and is in charge of self-preservation, bodily functions such as heartrate and breathing, and other sensory activity. The limbic system sorts out your emotions about a situation and informs the pre-frontal cortex before a thoughtful decision can be made. When faced with making a decision where there is too much competing information to make a clear objective choice, you hear people report, “I just went with my gut instinct”. Which is the non-scientific explanation for how emotions regularly supersede logic.
The coronavirus has tapped into the strongest emotion that humans have: the need for safety. The fear of being unsafe is the main reason why people around the world have quickly adopted new habits of hand washing, mask wearing, and physical distancing. After five months it may not yet be subconscious but give us another five months of quarantining and we’ll see how COVID habits become ingrained like another subconscious safety habit —putting on your seatbelt when you get in the car.
Habits are essentially a safety mechanism. Repeating the same behavior in the exact same manner creates familiarity, and familiarity leads to peace of mind. People who claim, “I need two cups of coffee in order to get going in the morning” are likely not referring to caffeine as a necessary stimulant. What they need is the ritual of making, anticipating, smelling, sipping, and savoring the coffee; it’s the comfort from the ritual that gives people the confidence to start their day.
Another role of the limbic system is that is tells the brain what to pay attention to among the thousands of sensory inputs that a person encounters every waking minute. This is the reason why you may be making decisions like wearing the same clothes or eating the same breakfast: these are simply unimportant matters in comparison to other things that require more of your mental energy such as doing well at work, maintaining remote relationships, and being on guard against the coronavirus.
Now that you know this, you may be a tad worried about how these ritual behaviors became ingrained so quickly. And if you’ll be able to break them when the pandemic is over? When you’re ready to go back to work, are you going to be ready to go back to work?
Companies are accepting the reality of work-from-home as Plan A until the widespread availability of a coronavirus vaccine. Most companies will have the benefit of a nine-month (or longer) live experiment of how broadscale work-from-home impacts productivity, culture, and financial performance. The interesting thing to watch for is when companies decide that returning to the “old” work environment is safe… how much of the workforce is going to prefer the familiarity, comfort and safety of their COVID-19 driven habits and remain working at home? Will companies need to provide incentives for people to come back to the office? Conversely, will companies go as far as mandating employees to return? Current high unemployment levels would give some employers leverage in requiring a return to the corporate office.
If your attitude about working from home started out like a kidney stone (painful, but it will pass) and has evolved into an opioid (feels strange but I could get used to this), then your personal strategy to keep working from home is to show your company how indispensable you are. This is actually a great strategy regardless of where you want to work, but being a work-from-home star means developing some distinct work habits, including (1) excellent time management and being easy to reach, (2) communicating to your colleagues and managers what you’re doing on a regular and timely basis, (3) being prepared for every Zoom/Teams call and carrying more than your share of actions and responsibilities, (4) embracing remoteness as a call for creative solutioning versus a barrier or an inconvenience.
And if you are a manager of a remote team, now is an incredibly opportune time to distinguish yourself. Think about your career strategy and the likelihood that sometime in the future you are going to be competing for a position that you really want (whether inside or outside your company). The way things are trending the most attractive candidates are going to be those who can demonstrate their value as a remote manager. You can be more than a manager; be a leader and mentor. You can manage more than your direct reports; be a project leader of a multi-functional team. You can manage and guide your team’s performance objectives while also investing in your own personal development.
Prior to the pandemic, work-life balance for U.S. workers was notoriously poor in comparison to other economically developed countries. I have not seen any recently published studies on this measure but anecdotally it feels like there has been a dramatic improvement in people’s attitudes about work…one of the few silver linings of these months of captivity. Perhaps stress about work has merely been replaced by stress about health…we’ll have to watch the trends.
In the meantime, keep working on those good work habits. You can still grow your career capital during the pandemic, and your dog can enjoy your company for a few extra walks every week.
Tim Guen is President of CareerMap and writes frequently about the challenges of career building.