How To Avoid Burnout For The HSP While Working At Home During COVID-19
Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash
Being at home is tricky, it’s as if you’re always available and there no sense of structure. No allotted lunch time, breaks or when to stop working. Interruptions of phone calls, emails, and texts are more stressful than ever because it’s not that one dialog goes back and forth, completes and you start another one. It’s simultaneous and your focus has to switch constantly. One text conversation or email thread can last a whole day when it could have been handled in 5 minutes, but communication is hardly done face to face or even by phone.
When I get pulled in several directions, my focus goes out the door and the frustration shoots up. It’s partly because as a highly sensitive person, I’m more aware of these distractions, but it’s also that we’ve changed into a culture of expecting instant responses. Instagram. Twitter. How many times can your phone or computer notifications snap your attention away from what you were doing in one day?
“Constant interruptions are the destruction of the imagination.”
And the caffeine. Today, I started off with coffee to try and offset the 4-hour sleep I got the night before. Because I was off and groggy, I started to mindlessly do laundry, dishes, answer emails, texts, Facebook, look at 3 drawing projects, and fix some masks. I would start on a task, go halfway and see something else to be done and started that instead. I was over-wired and bouncing back and forth on things and not getting much done.
I know better, but today, I got carried away with caffeine and I didn't start off with an intention of just 1 or 2 main things I wanted to get done. I ended up getting distracted by the endless amount of “small” things to do like find small staples, rinse broccoli sprouts, start laundry, and I just wanted to get them done and over with.
The problem is I was doing 2-minute tasks along with what David Allen, the productivity expert, calls the “big frogs”. Big frogs are the big "to dos" of the day, they are the tasks of projects that need to get done but can be overwhelming or just take a lot of effort or time to finish and usually gives in long-term benefits or goals. But I was working A.D.D. style., I was multi-tasking. And according to the NIH, National Institutes of Health, “…there are certain domains––like creative problem solving ––that may benefit from task switching by reducing fixation on a problem” , but only 2% of people can successfully multi-task.
When I am intentional about my day, I can get a lot done. Especially during this Safer At Home COVID-19 order, I've been practicing better time management and avoiding burnout. It’s not automatic or effortless yet. With anything worthwhile, it’ll take time to get these new habits on autopilot. But more and more, I’m using my time better.
With texts, there is this sense of urgency to respond because that is the unspoken expectation. If you don’t get or give a response, within a certain amount of time, the sender wonders why, Are they mad at me? Did they get my message? The problem is that text messages are for immediate delivery, immediate receiving, immediate processing and it demands your attention right away, when much of the time, an email makes more sense.
One thing I just started using is DND mode - Do Not Disturb. It silences calls and notifications. I love DND mode and I can't go back to not using it anymore. You can set your wake time and bedtime and it automatically turns DND on for you, although you do have to turn off the waking alarm, which you can set on a mellow chime that repeats, so it’s not an annoying sound you are in a rush to turn off. It’s actually pleasant enough to leave on for a while. The sweet, sweet sound of the bedtime chime goes off once which lets me know that DND has been activated. When I hear it, I instantly feel happier.
Do Not Disturb mode is similar to Airplane mode in that they both stop notifications from coming through. But with Do Not Disturb, you can set it so that specific caller can get through, or if a caller makes a second call within 3 minutes, it won’t be silenced. You can also set a scheduled time, say 3pm-4pm which activates each day. During this time, it automatically turns DND mode on so you are uninterrupted during meditation or rest time. This is better than Airplane mode because you don’t have to remember to switch it off, it’s already on autopilot.
It’s also been key for me to have a watch with a timer. Setting a timer for just 20 or 30 minutes using the Pomodoro method has been so helpful, I even start it again when I take my break. This way, I don’t get carried away with tidying the entire kitchen or the bathroom inventory, again. With the Pomodoro method, you work for 25 minutes, then take a 5-minute break. After 4 Pomodoros, take a 15-20-minute break. I do the Pomodoro method a little but different since the timer on my watch doesn’t have a 25-minute setting.
On a good day, I work 20- or 30-minute chunks with several breaks in-between including a long lunch break between 12pm-2pm. For those 2 hours, it gives me cushion to start my lunch late if I happen to, prepare it, eat, clean up and if I have energy, I do some tidying or spend the remainder of the time resting. If I'm not tired, I am to lie down anyway. But I am still working on that.
This is one pitfall so far, I have to take my break when my work time is up. Stopping to rest is harder for me than it sounds (as I edit this, I am supposed to stop 5 minutes ago, so here I take my break!). If I work for too long of a chunk without stopping and resting, I am burnt to a crisp around 4pm. And I’m sure other HSPs can relate—that means that after I stop working, my body feels a heavy draining feeling mostly in my chest and I have to lay there and hopefully sleep. If I'm too wired, I get to lay there with my eyes closed. And if I'm still too wound up, I end up fiddling with my phone and drifting into the abyss of tapping on the phone, instant gratification and marking emails to do later instead of looking at notifications when I can actually get them done and I have to stay in bed until I actually get the rest I needed.
Creating boundaries is an important one especially at home. It's hard when you now have to work at home because it’s similar to when you get a text message, you're considered accessible all of the time. While working at home, the lines can be blurred between working on the computer and surfing the internet. If you usually shop online or watch cooking videos in the evenings and now that time is for work hours, you need to communicate that to your housemates and family members. And you can’t holler at them while you are on work time or in your work room, if you don’t want them doing that to you. It’s confusing and breaks down the boundary you need to keep in place.
You can set up something visual that is obvious you are in work mode, like closing the door, putting up a sign or a sock on the door handle. Even just saying so works. When my partner comes home and I am still in the middle of something I need full concentration on, (when otherwise I’m usually done for the day), I say, “Hi, I’m working on something so I need about 20 minutes before I’m done. Do you need anything from me right now?” It gives him the option to squeeze in something urgent or quick like “Hey, I’m on fire, would you throw some water on me?” and it lets him know I need to get back to work either way.
Just because a person is physically present doesn’t mean they are available to interact or respond. Since our home is loft-style with open rooms, sometimes we holler at each other from upstairs to downstairs or from room-to-room. One person might seem to be free but is actually reading the news or paying bills and this lack of a boundary can be frustrating. So, a request was made to just come and talk face-to-face, unless the other person was asked to grab something where they are at, before they leave the room.
If I really need my focus, I put in earplugs, which is a must for an HSP – Highly Sensitive Person (which relates to going through cancer and chronic fatigue; I’ll post on later). I have some earplugs on the nightstand, in my purse and in my office. I make my announcement, pop the earplugs in, shut the door, set DND mode and have my head down until I’m done. I even put my phone face down as a reminder to myself not to habitually pick it up.
There are some days when things come up one after another that throw me off, and I just can’t get back on track. Some days it’s not getting enough sleep. Then I say, “F*** It. It’s a F*** it day.” And that means I don’t try to get anything done, I don’t work on my improving my productivity. Maybe today (Tuesday) ends up to be a day set aside for the trifles of life and follow suit with Meatless Monday; maybe I let it be Tuesday Trifles. Maybe Tiny Tuesdays. Micro Mondays. Whatever.
It’s been working so far and that’s one silver lining to one big looming coronavirus cloud. Lately, coronavirus restrictions are being loosened, California’s Safer at Home order is getting lifted in stages, but coronavirus is expected to come back with the seasons. I’m going to continue practicing these habits to make daily life correspondence a little less maddening and hopefully a little more fun, especially while COVID-19’s Safer At Home order is still in effect.
Photo by Lacie Slezak on Unsplash