Remote Work & Zombies!

The pandemic has notably accelerated the remote work r-Evolution. Over the past days, some of the tech-giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Square, have announced most of their staff will be allowed to work remotely (from home basically) for an indefinite period of time. These companies are not alone and certainly not the first to try this. In fact, the remote work revolution began in the early 2000’s but failed massively in 2013 when Yahoo!’s CEO at the time said working from home was “highly inefficient”, which triggered other companies to go back to the old (and obsolete) ways of working.

The world has rapidly changed since 2013 and, in my opinion, we now have a better chance for remote work to stick and evolve into a healthier model most commonly known as “distributed work”. However, the transition must be properly managed from an individual and organisational perspective. I here share some thoughts and analogies around why a poorly managed transition towards remote working could backfire again.

We must focus on human behaviour

At some point, Oil & Gas as well as other natural resource companies, had to shift their business models to promote less user consumption. Naturally, more user demand was beneficial to the bottom-line (profitability) but detrimental to the planet. These type of companies had to adjust and cut-back on shareholder value creation to reduce their impact on society. How did they do it? They adapted to a mix of regulatory, political and pricing changes that had the objective of transforming end-user behaviour.

Today, we face an analogue challenge.

Today’s social media giants, also profit from a limited resource: human attention. They fight to capture a piece of our attention 24/7. Very much like Oil & Gas companies, which never stop drilling and pumping. Fortunately, unlike oil and gas, our cognitive capacity is a renewable resource. The problem is, we are not recharging it effectively.

The result? We became addicts. We became zombies.

Years of social media have turned us into highly distracted beings. Millions of us live in a state of mind-numbness, stress, anxiety and overwhelm. We are living in autopilot mode, sleep-walking the earth like zombies. Our ability to concentrate, focus & manage ourselves properly, has become increasingly rare and these are skills essential to thrive in today’s and tomorrow’s society.

Our mental and physical health is being affected to the point in which the vast majority of us are underperforming in key areas of life. Either our health, finances, career, relationships, parenting, spirituality or self-development are taking the hit. Our dreams, goals and overall happiness are left unattended. No wonder global tension and frustration are rising at alarming rates.

We are heading towards the abyss with no breaks.

There are no current widespread regulations, policies or pricing schemes in place that encourage us to change our behaviour when it comes to consuming the digital overload. It is as we were living in a world with high-speed cars and highways, but where the seat belt has yet to be invented.

Has the pandemic given us a new chance?

Working from home during the pandemic has showcased some of these issues. We have been forced to work from home, be productive and take care of our health amid uncertainty and increased distractions. With a weak economy and signs of recession everywhere, taking care of our mental and physical health will likely be put at the bottom of that list.

Employees have protected their jobs at all costs and have been “productive” during the pandemic. But in fact, this is a poor measurement of productivity and people are just overworking (three more hours per day on average) at the expense of their wellbeing. Paradoxically, it is prioritising our wellbeing what will boost economic recovery sustainably in the medium to long-term.

What’s the way forward?

I believe we have a unique opportunity to evolve the way we work. We’ve got a solid chance to end the rat race by redefining productivity and motivation at the workplace. For that, we must place employee wellbeing and self-growth first and this will require organisational and individual efforts. In this article, Cal Newport, author of Deep Work, explores a few ways.

At LiveBeyond, we focus on helping people and companies make the transition towards remote and distributed work by transforming human behaviour. Improving our work and life habits helps us refuel our psychological tank, gives us more mental clarity and enhances our cognitive capabilities. The remote work r-evolution will stay if we become super remote workers.

Working harder or longer to be “productive” is a thing of the past. Before the pandemic, the obsolete workplace model was already driving a productivity crisis, a work-derived stress epidemic and other issues.

Without external policies or regulations that force us to change our behaviour, we must step up and take responsibility and do what we need to thrive. In a world where we will likely live for longer, we might as well start changing today and prevent a future sleepwalker, zombie apocalypse.