Back to work and mental health

We hear often that we prepare to be ”back to normal”. For companies, ”back to normal” means probably a hybrid working model (Romanian employees have 4th place regarding the enthusiasm for remote working). Regarding our personal life, most often ”back to normal” will be still correlated to the vaccine, wearing masks, and travel restrictions.

Although we see the advantages of working from home (less time spent with transportation and more time with the family). But we still face the disadvantages: feeling alone while working from home and overlapping the professional duties with family duties.

What have we learned from 2020 until now? And what can we take from this to the ”new normal”?

• A work routine even if we are home. At the beginning of pandemics, a friend of mine was amused when I confirmed to her that during a day with working-from-home I follow the same routine (like eating, changing clothes, wearing cosmetics) as a normal day of working from the office. Why? Because this helps me to have the right mindset for a working day. So I would say ”no” to working in pijamas, wake up 5 minutes before the meeting, or send some professional emails between other tasks you do at home.
• A clear delimitation in activity helps the work-life balance. If you have to answer a call from a colleague, then to cook something or to do some homework with your child, and then to answer an email from a client - you won’t be able to know when you work for your job and when you work for your family. This will cause tiredness, stress, and depression.
• Zoom fatigue. Being online didn’t seem to be natural for us while being home. Working at the computer was associated with the office, not with our bedroom. Your attention fails easier when you are online; your eyes and your head hurt more. You feel disconnected when some of your colleagues don’t open the video camera. And this can be more annoying when zoom meetings are the only way to see your colleagues again.
• Take some breaks. Working from home made you work alone most of the time. Working in the office helped you to take some breaks to talk with a colleague or take a coffee. Do the same thing even if you are home.
• Follow a schedule. At the begging of the pandemic, most of us felt that they worked more than working from the office. Why? Because we didn’t have to go home at the end of the program, the distance to the kitchen is small and we almost forgot to close the laptop.
• Traveling abroad. If before the pandemic, there were a lot of people who want to go and work abroad for better salaries, the circulation restrictions we had made them think twice if they want to go back there. Even if we have airplanes all over the world, there are a lot of people who complained they could come home during the entire 2020. Also, vacations were suspended.
• We enjoy what we have. Because of the economical issues, there were a lot of employees who face salaries decreases or they lost some benefits. Of course, it is sad to hear this. But when you compare it with somebody who lost his job, it seems to be more decent.

The biggest lesson we learned during 2020 was flexibility. The events we face make us feel a certain way. But it is in our hands how we see that event.

Other articles you can read and it might help: on work-life balance or resilience.

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