Out of Balance
Dear Trellis,
My company laid off a ton of people. How do I maintain my equilibrium when my friends are gone, everyone is freaked out, and my workload is doubled?
Out of Balance in San Francisco
The tech layoffs have been intense! I feel your pain. First, know you are not alone. Most companies are going through a belt-tightening right now. Second, while it sucks to get laid off, it also really blows to be left holding all of the work, survivor’s guilt, and worry about when the other shoe might drop. Your first reaction is likely to work extra hard. To please like you’ve never pleased before. To say yes when you might have pushed back in more relaxed times. You want to overdeliver — get work in on time or early, and ensure your current value and future potential. You don’t want to say no and risk ire or being added to the chopping block.
That desire to buckle down and wait out the extra stress and strain is certainly one way of tackling being last person standing after layoffs. It is also the antithesis of how you shine in your role and maintain your job longterm. It’s a fast way to further lose your equilibrium, cause your mental health to suffer, and become less productive and useful than you were prior.
The good news is that taking care of yourself is exactly how you do what you are attempting - ensure your value to your boss for now and into the future. They key to this answer is boundaries. Of course you want to say yes to your boss and then overdeliver, especially when they are stressed because their workload is higher now as well. But no one can manage your workload or boundaries except you. Your boss will always ask for more, because there is always more to do. It is your job to protect your energy and time, which all leads to longterm sustainability, creativity, productivity, and lets you show up with a smile.
Here are a few tips to help you set and maintain boundaries amidst the chaos:
The 80/20 rule applies. 80% of your value is built into 20% of your output. Only you and your boss know what your most valuable responsibilities / projects / tasks are. Sit down with your boss and ask them this question. Tell them you want to optimize your value and ask them what you do that is most valuable, so you can make sure to focus on these items. Your boss knows you can’t do everything. This helps them prioritize with you for maximum value. They will also appreciate your initiative.
Prioritize your work before you dive in. It’s easy to get caught up with items that are urgent but not important. Think of your role as having quadrants. These are as follows:
Important + Urgent Important + Non-Urgent
Non-Important + Urgent Non-Important + Non-Urgent
It’s easy to disregard and eliminate the bottom right quadrant (Non-Important + Non-Urgent) and focus on the top left (Important + Urgent). Where we get stuck is in the bottom left quadrant of Non-Important + Urgent tasks and projects when that time is better spent on the top right (Important + Non-Urgent). It’s hard to find time for items that aren’t urgent. It’s how we are wired. But by asking for heads-down time and putting these items on your calendar you can find that time. Your results will speak for themselves.
Put 3 things on your to do list each day. No more, no less. You may read this and think, “Are you kidding me? I have 30 critical things on my to to list. I can’t do just 3. That’s ludicris.” I hear you. Let me explain. Your brain wants to go towards pleasure and away from pain. It’s how it keeps you alive. Having a long list of to do items is painful! It’s scary to see everything you need to do, and it makes it harder to do anything at all. Your body looks at your to do list and floods with dread, with cortisol, and getting started is now way harder. Do a test. Put three crucial things on your list. See how your body feels. Mine takes a huge breath and sags in relief. It doesn’t mean all those things don’t need to happen. But it feels so much better to check off those three things and then add more items from your master list. Now you’ve overdelivered! You’ve gotten to bonus items! This makes it so much easier to begin, meaning you will get to more things overall, and you’ll feel good about yourself while doing it!
Start small. Smaller. Smallest. Getting started is almost always the hardest part of a project. Projects feel big, overwhelming, and again trigger a cortisol response that our body desperately wants us to avoid. It’s trying to keep us alive so it tries really hard to stop you from starting. The key to starting is to think of the next tiny, eensy weensy, teeny tiny step. A step so small your brain thinks it’s funny. My friend Betsy, who is obsessed with neuroscience and how we can work with our brains to achieve astonishing results, calls these tiny steps giggle steps. Steps so small it makes you giggle. It makes your brain feel safe. No cortisol. She had a client who wanted to walk her dogs at 8pm every night and dreaded doing so. She wanted to watch TV and stay in her warm house. Betsy gave her a giggle step perscription of touching her door every evening at 8pm. No need to do anything more than that. No need to turn off the TV or leave her cozy house.
Say no. If you can’t or don’t want to do something, say no. If you don’t have time or don’t feel it’s the best use of your time, say no. While saying no can be hard and sometimes feel downright impossible, especially for women who are conditioned to say yes to their own detriment, it’s proven to increase the respect of those around you, your self-value, as well as provide you with what you need—time, space, energy, or fewer responsibilities. Some tips for how and why to say no can be found here.
Talk to someone. It’s hard to see your picture objectively when it’s your life. Working with a therapist or a coach helps you get out of your own head, understand your life from a different perspective, and gain some distance from the drama of your company’s layoffs. Your mental health is one of the most important things you have, and when it’s suffering, so does your productivity, your resilience, and your equilibrium. Going through layoffs causes real anguish. Your feelings are valid and deserve to be looked at and processed. I use betterhelp.com for individual and group therapy that is affordable.
Be in community. Your work might be remote or in an office, but either way, losing team members feels both personal and heartbreaking. It’s lonely! To combat this, make sure you have people around you. This might be a remote zoom pod that’s on in the background all the time, connecting you to remote workers. It might be going to a coffee shop to work (that’s where I’m writing this), where energy around you adds to your own. It might be at a coworking space you drop into or go to every day, where friendly faces and friends help you remember that, while your company makeup has changed, you are still marvelous.
Rebecca