Work to live not live to work.
Anonymous
Stress, pain, anxiety, and fear are the outcomes of COVID. Fear of infection. Fear of death if you’re 60. Fear of getting it a second time. Pain of losing a loved one. Anxiety of being alone when you die.
We work really long hours in these startups. Stress kills. We get it. It sounds like a platitude. Talking about tension, I live it daily. It’s heard so often that it seems meaningless. You say: ‘OK. I got it, but that’s the state of work and state of life these days’. I pay a lot of attention these days to work and job stressors. I think you should too in the COVID new normal work world..
Let’s look at a few stressors. How to keep my job. How to pay my mortgage or rent. How to put food on the table. Then, there are cell phone and electronic distractions. We have a very hard time concentrating. Attention spans are shrinking.
Execution and stick-to-itiveness are workplace challenges. VUCANs often can’t concentrate because of fear, anxiety, and distractions. Jobs take much longer. Workers are evaluated in terms of effort and scale, but also back-to-basics criteria such as assessing a person’s diligence, goal completion, dealing with failure, and being resilient.[i]
Tech, specifically robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are quickly surpassing our ability to adjust. We’ve seen that if the tech takes X amount of time to architect, design, and deploy, the people transformation takes five times longer for VUCANs to embrace and use new tech. Change is really very painful to the organization.
Work Lesson Earned: Full-time work or side-hustles can be a mirage. Finding the balance between work and down time can be really hard. Remember, stress kills. Period. Recognize it. Discuss the issues with your physician, partner, or counselor. Something is going on and it’s critical that you find the right balance. Do it now!
[i] ‘The Four-Letter Word That Everybody’s Talking About’, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 5, 2012.