Holding on to working less

I recently moved from working in central government to a design agency for the first time. I worried that I’d struggle, spoiled by years of being out of the office by 5.30pm, and hoped I could adjust quickly to agency hours.

Now that I’m a few months in, I’ve realised I should hold onto my civil service approach to work-life balance as best as I can.

I’m nervous about saying this. In many organisations where people are passionate about the work they’re doing, putting in long hours is a way to show commitment to the cause. It’s a common feature of most design agencies, because designers tend to really care. In reality, that can work against what we’re trying to achieve.

Aside from the personal toll of overworking, it affects our work. It’s ironic that burnout causes a loss of empathy — exactly what you don’t want when doing work that is supposed to make the world a better place.

The pressure to put in the hours

This isn’t something that we approach rationally. An extreme example is overworked Junior Doctors in the States. In 2003, in recognition of the danger to patient safety, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education brought in duty-hour restrictions that capped the average hours per week at 80 (!).

However, surveys found that up to 83% of interns are ‘unable or unwilling’ to comply with the rules. The cultural expectations and lack of change in workload meant that not much changed, despite the obvious benefits to both patients and doctors.

As the hospital example shows, this isn’t something that can just be solved from the top down. Snook is an organisation that cares deeply about its staff. Throughout COVID-19 our leadership team have let us know it’s okay not to be as productive, to take breaks from sitting at our screens, and to have off days. As a team we’re open about the drop in productivity we’re feeling. Despite this though, we recognised that we haven’t really changed how we’re planning our projects.

Peaks and troughs

In a work environment where the intensity of work rises and falls, it’s inevitable that sometimes deadlines will coincide. I’m able, at this age and stage of life, to put in the occasional late night. Not everyone can do this though — parents should never have to feel apologetic that they need to be with their kids. There are many other less visible responsibilities and situations that mean people can’t throw themselves at their work. I’ve been there too and I hope my team didn’t judge me for it.

The inverse of this is that we need to be okay with the quiet times and use them to think and restore. We need to use our taking time back policies. Take our holidays. Have slow days.

And if we do need to work extra hours, we should be reflecting on what we can change. Did we underestimate how long it would take? Let’s use that information to adjust our predictions the next time. Did a team member go off sick? Where was the buffer in our project plan?

I’m aware that somewhere in here is the reality being a business bidding for work competitively. We have to deliver as much value as possible in the time and budget available. But escalation is a unsustainable systems trend, where actors ratchet up the pressure against each other to the point of collapse. When we plan and pitch overstretched projects, we’re not only setting ourselves up for stress. We’re making the context we’re operating in harder to survive in long term.

Slack in the system

It’s ok not to be ok was a sentiment I loved in the culture at the Government Digital Service. Most of the time it was true, and for it to be that way, there had to be slack in the system. Resilient systems have redundancy built in, whether that’s an extra person on the team, or an extra species of pollinator that a flower accepts. Humans (especially Western humans) don’t recognise the importance of these buffers. Instead of seeing them as vital protectors of system health, we see them as potential efficiency gains or untapped resources.

Of course things will happen that are outside our control — but this is why slack in the system is so important. If normal is working 45 hours a week, that might seem manageable for a long time. But when an unforeseen demand (a global pandemic for example) adds stress to that system, and our workload increases or productivity declines, we have no buffers (in this case hours in the day) to absorb that stress.

Many people have experienced the paralysis that comes when your mind and/or body override your will to keep working — I’ve been there too. It doesn’t matter how much you want to keep going, you’re not getting out of bed in the morning. In fact, desperately wanting to be fine adds to the anxiety of not being okay. To draw from another concept from systems thinking — this is non linear causality. The reinforcing loop of stress feeding stress means that once you’ve burnt out, you can’t ease off and go back to being fine, it takes time to rebuild.

Our responsibility to each other

The time available and the amount of work expected to be done within it is an inclusion issue. I know so many people who regularly get taken out of action by both mental and physical health issues. Their work is valuable and they are better practitioners, leaders and team members because of, not despite of, the challenges they face. We have to create environments where people’s workloads aren’t contributing to these issues, and where it’s fine to take time out.

A sense of urgency is also characteristic of white supremacy culture. The idea that work is the most important thing in life is a capitalist, individualist worldview, and many people rightly want no part of it.

I know that this is something Snook’s thinking about, and want to get right. This post isn’t to berate our leadership team. It’s to say to everyone I work with, and especially those of us with some capital to spend — let’s talk about what normal should be. To me it’s working a 7.5 hour day. It’s being able to take a sick day without worrying you won’t be able to catch up, or that you’re overloading your team. It’s decompression days, where you have time to read the links you open up in your browser and stop for chats.

But normal isn’t something I, or anyone else, says it is. Normal comes from the way we all behave. Every time we tell ourselves we can do another hour, squeeze in an extra workshop, take on another project — we’re dragging the bar up for everyone. This means setting boundaries isn’t just about looking after ourselves. It’s also key to creating an inclusive, healthy space for others, and that’s for all of us to do.