Why can't we stop working?

​She never used to do that.

In all the years I’ve known Lindsey, she was a master at creating separation between work and home. I deeply admire it. Me, on the other hand, I’m a Type-A workaholic. No matter how hard I try I can never seem to truly turn off my “work brain.”

And it’s not healthy.

In the last ten years I’ve only taken two real vacations, and one was our honeymoon. Meanwhile Lindsey would take a vacation every weekend, just sitting at home reading a book on the couch. As a therapist, she needed time away from the emotionally taxing work to recharge. Taking her work home, literally or figuratively, was a surefire way to burnout, so she didn’t.

Meanwhile I became convinced that I’m just hardwired differently, and resigned myself to working ‘round the clock. When I’m not working I’m thinking about working. And when I’m not thinking about working, I’m wishing I could be thinking about working. There’s just so much work to do.

But then, one day, I noticed a change.

Lindsey started sneaking away to get a little bit of extra work done on nights and weekends. I’d leave my home office and find her at a desk writing notes, instead of on the couch reading a book.

The downside of remote work

I’ve written and spoken about the upside of remote work passionately since COVID hit in March of 2020. But of course, it’s not perfect.

On one hand, we seem to have more patience and understanding with each other, having gone through this global shared experience. We are more forgiving when someone is late to a meeting, or doesn’t quite get that assignment finished by the deadline. We can wear comfy pajamas all day, and many people gained back 5-10 hours per week of their life simply by eliminating the soul-crushing commute.

On the other hand, working from home makes it almost impossible to separate work and life. Which is precisely what happened to Lindsey. She’s exhausted from being “at work” all the time. So am I. But being self-employed, I chose this path. For Lindsey, like millions of traditional employees, it’s not a world she ever signed up for.

A home office makes working frictionless. Is the baby napping for 30 minutes? Get some paperwork done. Got a little extra time before the Friday-evening WandaVision viewing? Time to schedule a few of those Zoom meetings for next week.

Watching Lindsey, someone who I believed had mastered the art of separating work and life, succumb to the hustle machine simply because her environment changed, has been eye-opening at best, and devastating at worst.

What’s the purpose of the office?

Communication theorist Marshall McLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message.” Perhaps what the Pivot of 2020 helped us realize is, the venue is the work.

And if that’s the case, it’s really worth wondering if we need to be in an office. And if so, what for?

In a recent PWC survey, employers believe the main purpose of an office is to increase productivity. But employees believe the main purpose of an office is collaboration with others (“US Remote Work Survey”). Here we see the core dilemma: Many executives still believe in the machine of work, that the goal is to wring every possible ounce of productivity out of each human being. But employees are “waking up.”

While organizations and industries the world over are desperately trying to push humanity out of the equation, smart leaders are listening to their people, listening to the public, paying attention to the zeitgeist, and doing the opposite: doubling down on the humanity of it all.

That means both giving employees the tools to collaborate virtually, and giving them the freedom and dignity to disconnect from work when they need a break.

Reboot the Human Experience

This week I had the pleasure of speaking with Hana Jung, the founder of Re:Boot Experiences, a series of programs that help leaders reclaim their humanity in an increasingly machine-driven world.

Hana told me her burnout story, through the lens of being a 1st generation child of immigrant Asian parents in America. She described the pressure on her, both familial and cultural, to “succeed.” She got the fancy job in New York City, with household-name clients, to satisfy her parents’ expectations. But it literally made her sick.

Fearing for her health after witnessing death after death of relatives who had, like her, literally stressed themselves into illness, Hana bought a one-way ticket to…

Fort Lauderdale.

From there she set sail (for real, on a boat), in search of a new way of living, in harmony with both herself and the modern world of work.

When COVID hit she called upon the same inner strength she teaches in her Re:Boot programs to find a new path forward. In particular, the way she framed viewing life as a video game completely changed my perspective on every single decision I make.

For Hana’s video game analogy and more, listen or watch our full conversation on this week’s episode of Year of the Pivot here: https://beyondnetworkingpodcast.com/hana-jung/