A year ago, my life was changed completely. I had been going into the office every day. I would get up in the morning, get ready for work, grab a cup of coffee and commute to work. I'd be in my cubicle all day near those that I worked with. At the end of the day, I'd pack up my bag and head out for the commute home. It was routine, it was simple and it was easy. Then everything changed. I was suddenly working from home everyday. At first we were going to return in a few weeks, then a month, then a few months. A few months turned into the autumn, before we were told June of 2021. There was a tremendous amount of uncertainty about when and where we'd work and how the organization would respond. At the same time I was learning to work remotely and attempting to support a new way of running a business and a major internal reorganization.
I felt a tremendous amount of stress that led to anxiety building inside of me. At first the anxiety was manageable but overtime it continued to grow until it became a problem both professionally and personally. I was irritable all the time. Small things that shouldn't frustrate me would send me into a bad mood. I found myself unreasonably upset with small tasks assigned at work or worse taking my frustrations out on my family. This wasn't working. I was doing a good job of keeping a happy face on at work, but at home I was failing. Those that I loved the most were feeling the brunt of my internal struggle. Something had to change.
I realized that the constant feeling of anxiety was ruining my life and I had to find a way to tackle it and eliminate it. A little anxiety or anticipation can be a good thing, but this was nothing of the sort. I began a quest to try different things to get the anxiety and stress out of my life. Here's what I did.
Identify the root cause
The first thing I had to do was to try to understand why I was feeling so overwhelmed. What was driving the constant state of near panic I was feeling. I started to take note of when I was feeling the most overwhelmed and I learned there were 3 key drivers of my stress.
- Uncertainty about when I would have to return to the office
- Feeling the need to be on the clock 24 hours a day
- Worrying about if my work was being appreciated by my manager
Craft a plan
Some people jump immediately into work. I find that I work better when I pause and think through how I'm going to attack a problem. This helps me to identify any potential pitfalls of my actions and to ensure that I only take the most efficient path from A to B. I did the same thing with each of the 3 issues causing my stress and identified what I thought was the most effective way to attack them.
Tackle things head on
I was worried about when I would have to return to the office. I knew that I really enjoyed working remotely and having the flexibility of working from my home office or even a family's lanai when we took a summer trip to visit family. I didn't want to give that up. I scheduled a meeting with my manager and told them how I felt. They were unable to promise that I could work remote full time, but did say that we would move to a hybrid model of in-office and remote work that would be more structured. They also said that if remote working was important to me, they would help me in any way they could identify and apply for internal opportunities that were remote eligible. They also helped me rebuild my independent development plan to focus on improving my remote skills to help me be more prepared when an opportunity arose.
Now that I had a better understanding of what work would look like, my manager knew what was important to me and was supportive and I had a plan of how to move forward a lot of the stress around returning to office work was gone. There was still a small amount of stress, because I still didn't know exactly when I would need to go back to the office, but the majority of it had melted away. Had I not had a frank conversation with my manager I would still be feeling overwhelmed by this.
Set clear boundaries
One of the most frustrating things was feeling the need to be online 24/7. Any time an email, a slack message or a text came through, I felt that I needed to reply and take action right then and there. I took a step back and looked through what I was getting in my various inboxes and realized that the majority of what I was getting didn't require an immediate response. I created a follow-up folder in my email and started flagging messages for follow-up the next business day. I did the same with Slack messages. I would set a reminder to follow-up the next business day. For texts, I'd respond, that I'd get back to them and then set an email reminder. I also adjusted my notification settings so that my email and slack messages would only alert me during my normal work hours. When off hours, I would check every couple hours to ensure there was no emergency and then close the app. This ensured I didn't miss anything that needed urgent attention without having the stress of seeing constant notification badges.
That wasn't the only reason I felt I was working 24/7. Because I didn't have my commute I found myself working earlier and earlier and later and later. I started using a virtual commute to ensure that I created a clear division between work and home life. I was used to driving as part of my commute to start and end my day. I didn't want to hop in the car, but I did want to recreate that ritual to help ease me into and out of work mode each day. I started going for an early morning bike ride or walk each day. Afterwards, I would get ready, make a cup of coffee and head downstairs to begin work. I would physically unplug my personal laptop from my dock and plug in my work laptop into my dock and start work. At the end of the day I would reverse the process. I would physically unplug my work laptop from my dock and plug in my personal laptop. Then I would grab the dog's leash and head out for 30-40 minutes to walk and unwind from the day. During this period my phone was on do not disturb, just as it would have been while driving. While this seems small the ritual of having a virtual commute helped me shift my mindset from home to work and vice versa.
Have clear communication
I was doing all of the work I needed to. In fact, I was even doing work on other projects that were not assigned to me to help out my peers with things they were working on. I wasn't taking on work that wasn't mine necessarily, but rather finding ways to add productivity and value without overcommitting myself and retaining the flexibility to jump into a big assigned project if necessary. I worried however that my manager couldn't see what I was working on and they wouldn't realize that I was actually more productive now than when I was working in the office.
The solution was to make intentional time to talk to my manager about what was going on with my work. Oftentimes we have one on one conversations with our boss's where we aren't really sure what to talk about. I had to change that. I wanted to be sure they knew everything that I was doing to add value. I started keeping a list of all of the projects I was working on and what I was doing on them to add value. When It was time to have my one on one with my boss, I would walk them through everything that I was currently working on, where we were at and when we expected to be complete. I'd also let them know everything that had just been completed. This did 2 things for me. It let my boss know that I was active and productive and it also ensured that they knew I had more than enough on my plate, so they wouldn't assign more work than I could reasonably handle. This strategy worked well and my annual review reflected that.
Work it out
The last part of my plan to reduce stress wasn't directly related to any of the key drivers of my stress, but is a tried and true method of making people feel better. I began to work out regularly. As part of my virtual commute I was getting exercise twice a day in the form of a bike ride and walk. This really helped me reduce stress directly before and after work. Exercise causes your brain to release endorphins which are powerful chemicals that make you feel great. Going into work happy and leaving it happy were a key part of making my stress melt away. Additionally I started working out with weights twice per week. I'm using this method by Tim Ferris to maximize my time at the gym and ensure I get the greatest hormonal response. Not only does it help reduce stress in the moment, but it helps me to feel better all hours of the day as well.
Identifying what was causing stress, planning to eliminate it and executing my plan was most definitely the right course of action. My work and personal life has improved. I am no longer feeling overwhelmed with stress. My family feels that I am more relaxed and more engaged. When I'm off of work, I know longer feel the need to stay glued to my phone and can spend some intentional time with those that I love.
Are you feeling stress or anxiety? What do you think about trying the steps I took to resolve it? Will they work for you? Have you ever had a different strategy that worked for reducing stress? I want to hear about it! Post below or contact me!
Comments
Post a Comment
We’re excited to hear what you have to say. Please keep it clean and respectful.