Illustration by katemangostar / Freepik
We’re hearing more and more that people are wearing down. The pandemic is taking a toll.
It’s time to unplug.
This week, we want to encourage you to unplug for the holiday weekend. If you’re lucky enough to not have to report anywhere for work this weekend, then why not truly take the weekend off?
For people who have started working from home, we’re hearing that they are working more than ever.
Work, which used to drift into our off hours, is now flowing unabashedly into all hours of our days and nights. People see work sitting on their dining table and feel they should get it done, even after a long day. They’re constantly getting work emails and texts from peers and managers throughout the day and sometimes during the night.
There is no separation of work and home.
Hell, we don’t even have the “luxury” of sitting in traffic between work and home to decompress and listen to the radio or a podcast. (You know times have changed when we’re longing for those 30-minute-plus traffic jams where we sat between worlds and belted out a tune.)
In the 90’s, MTV used to produce albums entitled, Unplugged. They were albums that featured a group who performed all of their greatest hits without the use of electronic equipment. It was the artist and either a piano or guitar. It was basic, beautiful, and allowed the artists to get back to the simple raw experience of their creations.
Wouldn’t unplugging be a great thing
for all of us right now?
Get back to yourself as someone who is separate from the devices which you’re plugged into daily. Get back to the basics of being you—the acoustical version of you.
Turn off your email,
dump your watch, and just be.
And remember, when you don’t unplug you send a message that others shouldn’t unplug either. We’ve all had the experience of getting an email with a timestamp at 1am. When people wake up to an inbox full of emails, the subtle message is, “Why were you sleeping when I was working?”
With the unusual times we’re living in, we encourage you to take this holiday weekend off and to insist that your team and your staff take it off as well. Encourage them to use the weekend to regenerate, reignite, and foster their deeper self that is not plugged into work.
Your team deserves to unplug, and so do you!