The last 18 months have been undeniably difficult for many people, but families have encountered some of the more exhausting side effects of the pandemic – from isolation affecting small children to an inability to rest effectively. HBR’s Daisy Dowling has some tips to help anyone, but especially working family members, start to find some value in themselves again after being wiped out for so long.
Dowling’s first technique involves making a list of all of the positive things you have done for your job or your family. It’s an expansive list, to be sure – she mentions things like cooking for your family each day and keeping your cool in Zoom meetings in which coworkers are being annoying. Keeping a tally of your accomplishments in the last year and a half may give you a much-needed confidence boost.
It’s also a good way to check in on things like special skills and job experience for your resume, though Dowling warns against using your more official hiring documents as a lens for this activity.
Another step is more of a spiritual one: It involves labeling each distinct phase of the pandemic – Dowling encourages the reader to be “serious or flippant, basic or unique” at their discretion – and separating them with lines, saving your current phase for last. This is a less-active, arguably less-productive task than the last one, but it can help you close a lot of mental doors (or tabs, if you prefer) and allow you to move on to the next “phase” of this collective experience.
Finding your “point of control” is another notion posited by Dowling, and it centers around figuring out what you can actually control in your life. For most of us, there isn’t much that fits this description; Dowling assures that this is fine, and that finding any point (no matter how small) where you feel entirely in control is sufficient.
Possible contenders include anything from your wake-up routine to the shape in which you keep your house.
You don’t need to focus on work or your family for this exercise, either. As important as those two arenas are, finding your point of control should involve your desires and nothing else. In this case, it’s all about you – and, if your familial pandemic experience has been anything like everyone else’s, you could probably use some you time.
On the complete opposite side of the spectrum, Dowling recommends taking some time to focus on your career – and nothing else.
Even if it’s just a tiny chunk of time per week (she mentions that 15 minutes or so is fine), part of reintegrating into the workforce involves conscious planning and thought about your job. It’s hard to wear the parent hat, the employee hat, and the at-home-personality hat all at once; this is your chance to take off all but one of them for a while.
Finally, using your experience to mentor or tutor a colleague or prospective employee can do wonders for your self-esteem, especially because it can help remind you about your true skill set and how much you actually know about your job. Nothing makes your expertise more apparent than working with someone who needs things broken down into basic components, and you’re doing your field a service along the way.
Dowling concludes by acknowledging that not all of these techniques will work for everyone, but the key is trying for now. “Whatever the case, you’ve just taken a critical, proactive step forward,” she says of anyone who has attempted something on this list. “You’re finding new ways to be a committed professional, a loving parent, and yourself at the same time.”
Even if you aren’t a parent, take a shot at some of these techniques – you may find yourself coming out of a pit you didn’t even know you were occupying.
