Ok, time for another rambling post about mental health.
Over August I took a week away from work, and I came back feeling so much better. I was away from Bath for a few days, and the change of pace and change of environment was incredibly refreshing. I felt ready to face some of the challenges that only a week before were making me want to hide, and for the first time in ages I didn't feel a sense of gnawing dread at having to face work again.
This is all great, and we all know about the healing power of a break from work - and why it is so important that the break is a proper, clean separation and not just answering emails in a less convenient way. A break always make me feel better, helping me recharge my batteries and replenishing energy to face the next days. However, this time, the change was dramatic enough to remark on it, which doesn't seem right. We talk a lot about sustainable working being an important part of a caring workplace culture but a properly sustainable working life should not really require holidays to recharge. Holidays should be a positive extra, enabling new experiences and life learning, not just a break between work-marathons to collapse and pull oneself together.
I've had seen this fatigue growing in me over the preceding months, and I can see it trying to grow again now I'm back. I am paid to work a certain number of hours a day, and (accepting that my role will require some flex in this) I should be able to enjoy the other hours in the day. However, if I am getting to the end of the day knackered and just looking to crawl onto a sofa and close my eyes that is not giving me any sense of life outside of work (and if it gets worse, it can knock on to bad behaviours like takeaway food replacing cooking, etc). This, for me, is where "sustainable" really kicks in.
Of course work is going to be stressful at times - that is pretty much a given. Also, I am certainly not currently in a strong mental state. I am very definitely still recovering from burnout and this has made me more vulnerable to mental exhaustion and less able to shrug off personal slights that wouldn't have phased me in better days. However, these things are amplifying existing problems, not creating new ones. Things that have been draining me for the last few months would also have done so previously, just less so.
So what can be done? While I believe in trying to create a sustainable work environment, I also believe that many places of work are more about talk than delivery, and are unwilling to get under the hood of the problems. Often this is because it is the leaders who are talking about better working conditions, while creating the unsustainable environment. Where I am now, the leaders do indeed talk about sustainable working and energy ladders aaaand I'm one of the more senior leaders in my department. Damn. Better do something of that "modelling behaviour" thing.
There are infinite variations on a sustainable working environment, but they must address two core points. First, the number of hours worked. People working long days and weekends are not working sustainably and the obvious question is why is this needed? Are they under pressure from the organisation? I know I do not deliberately push anyone to working antisocial patterns (quite the opposite, actually) but do I create an environment where they have to?
This is a more difficult question. I know I work long hours at times (with no good consequences - see all the above) which sets a bad precedent. I know I need to model the behaviours I want to see from those for whom I have responsibility. I also know they have far too much to do, as do I - I don't work long hours for fun. So the problem is volume of work against capacity? At least partly - and for this we need to aggressively take an axe to the department "to do" list. We've already pledged to do this, and the hardest part will be gathering the information required to enable the conversation properly. This is, of course, more work...
The second point is the activity during those working hours. My current boss likes to talk about energy ladders and energy drains (disappointingly, not energy snakes). To put it another way - things that make us interested / excited / give us an energy boost vs things that sap our will to live. There will always be things to do on both sides, but the balance is very important. For me, I'm realising that my balance has been horribly off for quite some time. I'm also finding that things I've previously found ok are more draining at the moment.
So I need to cut back on the things that make me miserable, whilst maximising the happy. Fortunately, my job is supposed to be all about strategy and future horizon scanning. I enjoy this. Unfortunately, we've been mired in tactical decisions and putting in the foundations to enable The Future. I usually don't mind this, but at the moment a typical working day is emails, then unbroken meetings for 6 hours, then more emails asking why I haven't answered the first emails. No matter how interesting the meetings (and some are great ... some) I find remote meetings exhausting and full days of the things are lethal. I can feel this affecting me. So I've decided to make some changes. I've blocked out a lot of my diary to get things done. Now people are complaining they can't get hold of me, but it's better than complaining I haven't done something.
So will this help? Can I make my own working life sustainable, let alone help anyone else? That remains to be seen, but I am sure that pushing away from "survivable" is the right thing to do.
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