Work Hard, Play Hard
Did you happen to catch the 10% Happier webinar last week with Dan Harris (10% Happier book author and ABC broadcaster) and Jen Fisher, Chief Well-being Officer at Deloitte?
The webcast’s headliner for me was Jen Fisher’s point about the obligation of employees at high-performance companies to take their self-care as seriously as their jobs. Such companies select employees in part for their initiative, drive, commitment and perseverance. These are the attributes beyond specific skills and talent that comprise what psychology researcher Angela Duckworth calls “grit.” Turns out, it’s equally important to be as committed to our own personal well-being if we’re to sustain high performance.
The upside of possessing such characteristics is consistently getting things done at high quality. The downside is that these qualities can also generate high personal bars and searing self-criticism when we judge ourselves to fall short of expectations — our own and others’. We are also constantly comparing ourselves — consciously and subconsciously — to high-performing peers all around us. Talk about pressure.
At IWBI, our full staff has done the Clifton Strengths Finder survey, which has found one-quarter of us to have the Achiever trait in our Top 5 Strengths. Combine Achiever with other hard-driving attributes — Competition, Maximizer, Responsibility and Discipline — and we find that fully two-thirds of our staff possess one, two and even three of these traits in just their Top 5 Strengths. Plenty of the other 29 strengths combine to produce these more intense traits which help drive superlative work, but can also deliver harsh self-criticism, make it difficult to forgive oneself for mistakes as well as end one’s workday when there’s still so much to do.
This sort of internal beratement is a natural part of human hard-wiring. In her book Emotional Agility (recommended by both Dan and Jen), Susan David writes extensively about this innate component of the human condition. But just because it’s a normal part of our make-up, doesn’t mean there aren’t effective methods for quieting those haranguing internal voices and giving ourselves a break.
Daily self-care — The second major takeaway of the 10% Happier webcast: Self-care is a daily practice, just like going to work is. We’re not meant to work, work, work until we hit a wall. To stay emotionally balanced, we need to care for ourselves daily. Not just on the weekend. Not just on vacations. Not just when we’re scraping the bottom of the self-preservation barrel (too late!). But daily.
Dan Harris encourages daily meditation practice to remind yourself of what you value –
1) What’s important to you as a human being?
2) Then ask yourself if what the voices in your head are saying is useful (a la Joseph Goldstein) towards embodying those values, performing your work, and moving towards your goals.
3) Name the disturbing thoughts ricocheting around your brain.
4) Then accept them. Just accept that they have partial home ownership in your mind.
5) Finally, proceed by acting on what you value — the positives that have gotten you where you are. Because the self-doubt hasn’t. It may propel you at times as do fear and adrenaline. But it’s not a value.
Other tools in the toolkit Dan Harris recommends for maintaining daily balance between our work and personal lives are:
- regular in-person social connection,
- nourishing oneself with a good meal,
- exercise,
- good quality sleep, and
- volunteerism.
I would add seeking beauty to that: a walk or lie-down in nature, or a museum stroll.
Self-advocacy — Finally, age and seniority at an organization play into if and how well employees self-advocate for their own well-being. It can often be more difficult for junior staff to speak up and say, “this is too much,” or “I’m running on empty.” The more they see their senior colleagues do so, the easier it is to follow suit. And the more team leads encourage staff in, say, weekly meetings to genuinely divulge how they are faring, the more comfortable employees will become sharing their true emotional state with each other. Jen Fisher encourages team leads to ask their staff to chat an emotion or two at the beginning of a Zoom call. It’s ok to feel lousy on a given day. And it just might be useful for your team to know it. (Read more ideas from Jen Fisher about how companies can open up conversations about mental health.)
At IWBI, we are extremely fortunate to work at a company that gets the importance of striking a balance between our work and personal lives. Between our commitment to IWBI and commitment to our own self-care. This is stated often by our leadership and increasingly by managers. We also know that our work flow is typically a waterfall and isn’t going to just hand us the breaks we need. That is for us as individuals to train our inner voices to demand we take those breaks, and do so without guilt.
It is part of our job to replace the niggling, finger-wagging, unhelpfully comparing and self-doubting voices with one that puts our well-being front-and-center on a daily basis. This may mean having to say “no,” or ask for help, or question how absolute a deadline is. This can feel scary and uncomfortable. It takes practice. It takes a higher level of self-awareness to even know to ask.
Meditation, a walk in nature without our tech devices, a rigorous workout, time with friends, relaxing with a book, pursuing a hobby, extra sleep, helping others in the community, and/or keeping a daily gratitude practice are all ways to give yourself the daily time and space to increase self-awareness to know how you’re feeling and what you need for balance. The more we practice self-advocacy to support our well-being, the more courage, confidence and, yes, even comfort, we will develop to do so regularly.
