You may be getting pressure from your organization to come back to the office, something that can cause a lot of anxiety after a year of WFH. Before ruminating, however, it’s important to identify the roots of your stress in order to identify its causes and to uncover what you’ve learned about what you truly want for your workdays and career. To do so, take a step back and answer the following four questions:
What do I want my days to look like?
What stresses me out?
Role confusion.
Right now you probably feel your roles as worker, parent, partner, and housekeeper have been unforgivably mushed together. But the truth is, if you’re working from home even some of the time, you probably will pick up more of the daily tasks required to keep a household running. Yes, you might be the one to answer the door to the UPS and manage tidying up during the day. The key is to identify what annoys you versus what’s making you anxious, and then decide whether working from home or at the office can help alleviate both.
Facetime anxiety.
In a perfect world, our boss and our colleagues would leave us alone and let us manage our time and expectations. Unfortunately, even after a year of WFH, some organizations still equate facetime with commitment. And for many of us, it’s equally stressful to always be digitally present to our colleagues.
How does my boss define success right now?