I’m an accidental “expat.” I didn’t think of myself as an expat since I’ve lived the closest to home for the last 11 years. Coronavirus “expatriated” me. I’ve worked in Global Mobility most of my professional life, lived abroad, and been on international assignments. I’m an expert in Global Mobility, but a virus made it hard to return to my passport country.
I feel your pain and your stress. We are all experiencing varying levels of emotional and mental turmoil. There is no solution to the root causes of that anxiety, but we need to maintain our mental health like we do our physical. The World Health Organization, correctly anticipating that the longer the pandemic lasts, the more it would impact mental health, has spent the last couple of years publishing support and guides for people to follow. I have been following them, and they have proven helpful in centering me and giving me better control of my mental health.
1 – Take a Security Stop
Take some slow breaths, inhaling through your nose, then slowly exhaling through your mouth. Slow breathing is one of the best ways to lower stress because it signals your brain to relax your body. You can plan a whole weekend offline or go to a retreat where you can be offline for 48 hours. See what comes up without constant input.
2 – Build a Support Group
Please keep in regular contact with people close to you and talk to them. Talking to people you think can help. Please let them know how you feel and share concerns or discuss everyday things. Especially if you live alone, create a schedule where you connect with people outside your work at least once a week. If you are new in the city, a starting point can be expat groups. Another option is to join an online group around a topic of interest.
3 – Develop a Health Routine
The emphasis here is on both health and routine. That means not using alcohol and drugs to deal with fear, anxiety, boredom, and social isolation. Instead, focus on establishing consistent sleeping patterns, maintaining personal hygiene, eating regularly, having healthy food, and improving time management, including exercise, work, and personal time. We need to get dressed in nice clothes, commute to work, and have a distance between “work” and “leisure.” Otherwise, we lose our fire and inspiration and lose touch with our inner creator. Try to get out of the home more often.
4 – Practice Self-Care
We are human and, thus, not immune to doubt and anxiety. Don’t expect too much of yourself on more challenging days. Instead, accept that you may be more productive some days than others. One way to practice self-kindness is to reduce how much you watch, read, or listen to news that makes you feel anxious or distressed, especially information from your home country. You can limit intake to fixed times in the day and listen only to trusted sources. One good way to practice self-care is to start a hobby or creative activity that you can fully immerse yourself in.
5 – Grow your Kindness Empathy
If you can help yourself and have the capacity for it, helping others can do you good. If you have that capacity, offer support to people who may need it in the expat community. We have learned to be resilient, survived previous crises, and turned our lives around in the oddest situations.
Back to School – Seven Virtues for Purpose, Performance, and Productivity
Video Interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv1ju5gxMLs
Since the beginning of this pandemic in the spring of 2020, numbers of teams have become virtual, on and off, depending on the surges of the virus and the decisions of their respective companies and governments. Virtual teams, of course, already existed before that, but they have now become a common practice. And now that this phenomenon has become routine, many have focused on this new problem: fostering psychological safety, particularly in remote teams, because it is quite challenging to do so in such a context. Discussions on diversity and inclusivity have been all the rage in recent years (and still are, of course, as we have yet to achieve a perfectly diverse and inclusive world). Still, psychological safety has become a subject of interest, fueled by the unusual circumstances of this pandemic.
But what is psychological safety, exactly? It is the belief that team members have when they are comfortable enough to ask questions or contribute ideas without fear of being judged, punished (in more extreme cases losing their job), or humiliated for not knowing something or making mistakes. Wondering what the difference is between trust and psychological safety? It’s rather subtle: trust is an essential component of psychological safety, as it is defined as “the extent to which we hold expectations of others in the face of uncertainty about their motives, and yet are willing to allow ourselves to be vulnerable’ (Geraghty, 2020). It is how you view other people and how you find them predictable, and how you think you can rely on them, whereas psychological safety is about how others view you or, instead how you think they view you.
But let’s get back to psychological safety. When you eliminate the fear of judgment, your team members can not only be themselves, but they will be their best selves, as they will be allowed to be innovative, creative, and agile, and most importantly, ask for help when needed. Diversity of thought is a great advantage for success (Page, 2008), and this is where psychological safety comes in: “Without behaviors that create and maintain a level of psychological safety in a group, people do not fully contribute — and when they don’t, the power of cognitive diversity is left unrealized” (Reynolds and Lewis, 2018).
Psychological safety doesn’t happen from one day to the next, though. It needs work, everyone’s participation, and a profound culture change. Everyone needs to go through four stages to feel safe. According to Timothy Clark, these are inclusion safety, learner safety, contributor safety, and challenger safety (Clark, 2020). Psychological safety needs work, a change of attitude, and a change of culture.
Increase mistake tolerance
Based on the belief that nobody’s perfect and we all make mistakes, even if we work hard and try our best, the idea here is to change our mindset and stop viewing failures only as such but as learning opportunities. Teams with better psychological safety will not correct others for a mistake they made to put them down, and they will tell them to help them. Amy Edmondson published a study in 1999 in which she coined the term “Psychological Safety.” In it, she reported conversations she had with employees she interviewed for her study. In one of those conversations, a lady told her that before her team decided to offer a better psychologically safe environment when someone would point out a mistake she made, she would take it as a reproach and would then be on the lookout for a mistake that person would make to be able to blame her in return. After the team made psychological safety a priority and had worked on it for a while, it totally changed her perception and in turn, that changed her behavior. She reported that she viewed it then as a learning opportunity because her colleague would do it purely to help her and help the team make better products (Edmondson, 1999, p.371). Some companies have even created special events to discuss this so that not only the employee making the mistake learns from it, but the whole team (or even a larger circle) does too.
Exercise 1: Hold an Anxiety Party.
The Google Ventures team decided to implement this because when they were created, they had a rather flat hierarchy and although they appreciated all the advantages and liberties that brought, the team found they lacked critical feedback. They came up with the idea of an Anxiety Party: they hold this type of meeting a couple of times per year, where all team members have to write a list of everything that causes them anxiety. Then, everyone shares and the other team members have to rate the level from the most to the least worrying (5 – you really need to improve in this area to 0 – I didn’t even realize this was an issue). They realized most of the time, people worried for nothing. The score generally makes people feel relieved and stop worrying about non-issues and focus on what actually needs improvement (the 5s and 4s to start with). This is a great psychological safety exercise since the issues are brought up by the people who have them and feedback is then easier to accept.
Keep your biases in check, remember Hanlon’s Razor to adopt a more positive mindset
Hanlon’s razor principle is the assumption that when something goes wrong, it is more likely accidental rather than the result of ill will, or as Hanlon wrote: “Never attribute to malice, that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Ok, well, stupidity may not be the most probable cause, since hopefully, your team is not stupid, but let’s say humans can sometimes be absent-minded, tired, distracted, overworked, etc. Simply put, when someone makes a mistake, one shouldn’t assume it was intentional. This rule of thumb will help cultivate understanding, compassion, forgiveness, and trust in your team.
Take the case of an email that gives the impression that a colleague was rude or too blunt; you can probably rightly assume that this is purely a miscommunication problem (maybe English is not their mother tongue, or the author is from a culture where things are said in a direct manner, but it isn’t meant to be offensive, or maybe you just misinterpreted things). When in doubt, clarify things in person or on a video call. The use of emojis might also help avoid tone misreadings when you are the one sending a message. Some might not be comfortable using them in a professional setting, but they really can help prevent certain types of misunderstandings. Modifying your biases and assuming good intentions in people can go a long way!
Exercise 2: Ask powerful questions.
When you doubt someone of the wrongdoing, ask these powerful questions (From Douglas W. Hubbard, 2009, cited in Vinita Bansal, no date):
- Why do I feel this way?
- What data do I have to justify that the other person acted out of bad intentions?
- Are there other instances where they acted this way?
- Have I spoken to them about it?
- What is the probability that I am incorrect?
- Could I be biased at the moment?
- What other possible reasons could make them behave this way?
Make it a Habit for Everyone to Speak Up and Participate.
First, team leaders need to prioritize psychological safety explicitly. Ground rules must be laid down and applied. Leaders, alongside their team, need to establish how failure is handled (no punishment for failure despite efforts, reasonable risks taken, and good faith). They should make failure an opportunity to learn and, above all, to share the lessons collectively learned thanks to failure (which will be not only a learning opportunity but also one to create a safe space for others to know that we can all admit our failures, contributing to this safe space). Finally, teams need to learn how to accept and adopt productive conflict. That is to say, having constructive discussions, allowing questioning, and accepting contesting can be done, by following certain ground rules, such as respect, listening, honesty, and kindness, for everyone to feel safe doing it. Even when there is no conflict, and nothing delicate to discuss, making sure every team member has to participate should become a habit. It is the leader’s responsibility to ensure everyone speaks. To do so, they might use different methods to ensure everyone gets the chance to speak. For example, one can give each a turn to speak, or when with a bigger group, use break rooms to allow everyone to speak up. Speaking up in smaller groups is also easier, and less intimidating. The team must try different methods to ensure everyone gets turns speaking up.
Exercise 3: Create a space for idea sharing.
Try creating a particular space for ideas (new, crazy, or maybe even bad ideas), whether during meetings or on a specifically dedicated Slack channel, for example. That way, people know there is at least this time or space where they are not only allowed but purposefully encouraged to brainstorm, share and contribute whatever they have on their mind, knowing this frame is meant for it and is a safe space to do so.
Exercise 4: Accept Silence to Give Time to Reflect.
For everyone to have a chance to speak, people need to learn to be more comfortable with silence. For example, during Zoom meetings, participants tend to be uncomfortable when silence arises and tend to want to fill it (or hope someone else will). Doing so can prevent others in your team from speaking up. Sometimes, people need more time to reflect before answering or formulating their ideas before communicating them, especially non-native speakers. Some are shy or new in the company or that position, and don’t have the confidence yet to speak. Sometimes, we all need that extra few seconds to muster up our courage to share that original idea or essential concern. Leaders have to remember that reflective silence is valuable and to purposely give everyone time to speak up, even if that means letting an uncomfortable silence last longer (it’s not that painful, is it… and something might come out of it!). To avoid experiencing a more detached type of silence, you can let your team members know in advance what kind of input you are expecting from them at the next meeting a bit in advance.
Exercise 5: Value diverse perspectives.
Diversity of ideas and perspectives is a major factor in creative and innovative thinking. It is one of the important factors to success (Page, 2017, 2:45). To encourage this, ask everyone to play the devil’s advocate alternately. That way, people have to think differently, and it takes away the risk (real or perceived) that the rest of the team will judge them for having different, crazy, or “negative” ideas or points of view, a point of view that could help your team solve problems and even foresee them, before they become one. This strategy using a cooperative approach instead of a competitive one, will be more effective to advance the reflection on the problem discussed (e.g. your product has a bug and you need to find a solution) and will help develop respectful debate habits simultaneously (Menzies, 2018).
Exercise 6: Promote courageous conversations.
Sometimes a product or a project is just not as good as it could be. But team members don’t always dare say so, even if they can put the finger on what the problem might be. You can pave the road to openness by having sessions, specifically for any critiques or frustrations anyone may have with a product/project, without fear of negative consequences. Everyone must listen without interrupting. After this, everyone has to offer solutions to the problem.
Exercise 7: Hold a blameless post-mortem.
Another way to promote difficult conversations is having blameless post-mortems. The goal here is not to find out who made mistakes but what could be changed in the processes to avoid those mistakes being made in the future and improve performance. This method prompts team collaboration. If you are looking for more exercises and methods to promote courageous conversations or support psychological safety in other ways, have a look at this great article from Fearless Culture.
Exercise 8: Apply the method of “liberating structures.”
This method was developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless to enable everyone’s participation in large groups. During a meeting, to ensure everyone’s input on a specific matter, first, ask everyone to reflect and take notes on the question/problem at hand for one minute. Then, everyone must regroup in pairs and discuss for two minutes, then for four minutes in groups of four (matching previously existing pairs), before finally discussing the matter with the whole group. The advantage here is that all have a chance to offer their ideas. It is less intimidating to do in small groups. Also, while still in smaller groups of 2 and 4, ideas can already be compared, and reflected upon, and the best can be chosen to be discussed at the next level before they are brought up in front of the whole group. There is admittedly a very limited time for feedback, but an idea can be discussed further if it isn’t bad enough to be eliminated at the end of a round. It nonetheless enables the improvement of the ideas before they are discussed at a higher level. This type of structure also helps avoid control or influence of the boss on the discussion, leading to a more restricted discussion and what is practical and effective, is that this structure drives the discussion to convergence.
Exercise 9: Encourage impromptu conversations to build trust.
Needless to say, in a virtual team, psychological safety is even more of a challenge to uphold. Because trust is usually established through time and interactions, virtual teams do not have many interactions outside the scheduled meetings. Those team members don’t have the opportunity to have spontaneous, “non-business” conversations. This is why it is vital for those teams to create opportunities for such social contact. These casual conversations can foster better bonding and better relationships, which in turn facilitate communication and improve psychological safety.
For example, some might want to have different types of calls or communications, namely having a “good morning” call or (a message for the whole team on a Slack channel) to start the day with a more casual conversation. Bigger organizations might want to have a dedicated video call open for anyone to drop in and chat as if they were on their coffee break.
Exercise 10: Read body language and facial expressions.
One might think that virtual teams are at a disadvantage because it is so much more challenging to establish trust with so little contact and through a screen, and it is not entirely false, but there can be some advantages too. Online social contact through video calls can be an opportunity to really try to understand the person talking on the screen and read their tone, body language, and facial expressions to feel what they might be feeling. It also might be easier for some people to intently look at their colleagues through a screen as they usually (hear in person) wouldn’t dare or be comfortable doing it so attentively. Indeed, as Altman underlined, “[i]n many cultures, it can be awkward to stare at someone for 30 seconds or certainly minutes at a time. But on Zoom, no one knows who you’re looking at, and your ability to apply your emotional intelligence can sometimes be enhanced.” Not only can it be helpful for employees who grew up in a culture where one can’t look directly in someone’s eyes for too long, but also for some neuroatypical people who are not comfortable doing it either.
Take your time!
Psychological safety is not something that is built overnight. Actually, “build” is not quite the right idea here, as psychological safety is not something you can ever 100% achieve and be done with. There will always be new people joining the team, setbacks, and phases, so it will remain a work in progress. It has to be the object of constant attention and perpetual efforts. All of this seems like a lot of work, and it is. But shifting your mindset to a more understanding and caring attitude is half the job. And since psychological safety was proven to make employees happier and perform better, it’s probably one of the most profitable changes you can bring to your work. It’s a win-win!
About the Author
Anne-Kristelle Carrier has an MA in International Politics. She has lived in Switzerland since 2010 and works as a Content Editor for Global People Transitions Ltd. in Zurich. When she is not working, bringing her kids to all their activities, or trying to cook something that they will eat (that doesn’t start with “chicken” and ends with “nuggets”), she enjoys everything Switzerland has to offer to residents and tourists alike, like ski slopes, Wanderwege, and museums.
References and further reading
Bansal, Vinita, (no date), Hanlon’s Razor: ‘How To Be Less Judgmental And Build Better Relationships,’ TechTello. Available at: https://www.techtello.com/hanlons-razor/ (accessed on 3 February 2022).
Clark, Timothy. The Four Stages of Psychological Safety, Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation, 2020, Random House, New York.
Edmondson, Amy. Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Jun., 1999), pp. 350-383. (Available online at https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Group_Performance/Edmondson%20Psychological%20safety.pdf)
Geraghty, Tom, The Difference Between Trust and Psychological Safety, 16 November 2020, https://www.psychsafety.co.uk/the-difference-between-trust-and-psychological-safety/
Hubbard, Douglas W., Failure of Risk Management, 2009, Hoboken (New Jersey).
Hirsch, Wendy. Five Questions About Psychological Safety, Answered. Science for Work, 9 October 2017, https://scienceforwork.com/blog/psychological-safety/.
Lipmanowicz, Henri and Keith McCandless, Liberating Structure 1: 1-2-4-All. https://www.liberatingstructures.com/1-1-2-4-all/, retrieved 15, January 2022.
Menzies, Felicity. How to Develop Psychological Safety and a Speak-Up Culture. https://cultureplusconsulting.com/2018/03/10/how-to-develop-psychological-safety/, retrieved 4 January 2022.
Page, Scott E.Diversity creates bonuses. It’s not just a nice thing to do.LinkedIn News Youtube channel, retrieved 10 January 2022.
Page, Scott E. (2008) The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies
Razetti, Gustavo, 9 Exercises to Promote Psychological Safety in Your Organization, How to Encourage Courageous Conversations at the Workplace. https://www.fearlessculture.design/blog-posts/exercises-to-promote-psychological-safety-in-your-organization
Reynolds, A. and Lewis, D., The Two Traits of the Best Problem Solving Teams, Harvard Business Review, 2018, https://hbr.org/2018/04/the-two-traits-of-the-best-problem-solving-teams.
https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/creating-a-high-trust-performance-culture/
Paul J. Zak is the author of Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies.
Image (missing here)
Hirsch, Wendy: Five Questions About Psychological Safety, Answered. Science for Work, 9 October 2017, https://scienceforwork.com/blog/psychological-safety/.
How many times do you open your inbox and find over a hundred unread emails? And how often do you “clean your inbox” just to find it overflowing with emails again the day after? One of the reasons why I get stressed around emails is that I spend a whole day in a workshop and I cannot check my emails because it would distract my mind too much. Then I check my emails after the workshop when I am already exhausted and know that I have a lot of tasks and queries to handle.
When I worked in the corporate world, I would often have a day full of meetings and calls and come back to my desk at 5 or 6 PM and “started to work productively”. Or, you probably know this: it’s Friday, 4.30 PM, and you are just about to start your weekend and then you see this one email and it keeps you at your desk for another hour. Your partner in the meantime is waiting for you to help with the groceries or wants you to be home early so that you can greet your friends that are coming by for dinner. There are different reasons why our body shows stress reactions and I thought it would help to break this phenomenon down to help you deal with it.
If you experience high levels of stress when you find too many unread emails in your inbox, you should know that you’re not alone. In fact, the phenomenon is so widespread that it became known as inbox anxiety
Inbox Anxiety Came with Emails
When emails were invented in the 1970s, nobody had a clue how they were going to change the way we work. In time, they have become such a ubiquitous tool that, depending on your seniority, there’s a chance that you haven’t even experienced work without emails. I personally remember the days when we did not have emails at work yet and I went through several tech upgrades since then (desktop, laptop, blackberry, smartphone). Despite more than 25 years of experience with the technology I still don’t know exactly what to do when I get certain emails. One ground rule I established early in my career was: when I am angry I don’t send a response. I wait until I feel calm again. In fact, when I then go through the same email with a fresher approach, I sometimes even notice a certain positivity that I had overlooked earlier.
You might be surprised that our generation still relies so much on email, but inbox anxiety doesn’t only refer to email now.
I have several other professional inboxes to manage as well (Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, XING, four email accounts, professional messages on FB pages, Instagram, and Twitter direct messages). Sometimes, I feel like I should change my job description to “emailer”.
With the Corona-crisis and the need to work from home, most of us probably worked even more with emails and messages than usual and despite the general reply-to-all rule in some organizations this is still not done so you are falling off a thread and then you have to follow up or update your colleagues in a different way.
In our team at GPT, we introduced Slack during the crisis. We had already failed at it in 2016 largely due to my inability to focus on too many channels so now I’m making a more concerted effort to use Slack instead of WhatsApp. I don’t really use it to replace emails but I notice it helps me write less follow up emails and also I can ask the Slack bot to remind me instead of asking our intern.
I’m trying to find out where MY own inbox anxiety stems from and I hope to share this with you so you find ways to overcome this as well.
Switching Off and FOMO
One issue that creates inbox anxiety for me is the need to switch off completely for short and extended periods of time. Last year, I took the liberty not to be available for four weeks over the summer. Some of my email accounts were not checked while I was offline. That created stress when coming back. Same happened when I was out sick for three weeks with COVID19 this year.
There is enough research to show that you should completely switch off from work for at least two consecutive weeks each year. However, in most of your jobs it is still expected that you are available during vacation and weekends, especially during launches, emergencies, crisis and personnel related decisions.
As a matter of fact, according to a YouGov survey 60% of people check their work inboxes also during holidays. We don’t do it necessarily because we want to, but because we feel some sort of obligation to do it. The same research found that 80% of the respondents would actually prefer to “switch off completely”.
Being Responsive versus Productive
Another issue is that I would like to be responsive. It’s one of my trademarks. And there are certain limitations between being responsive and being productive. However, in order to be able to do “deep work” and to focus on quality time online with my clients I sometimes have to wait for a response until my work day is over or until I get a break. This might be only an issue when you are a small company and nobody else can cover for you. Most companies now don’t expect a response on weekends and responding within 24 hours still seems to be acceptable.
Underlying Relationship and Trust Issues
The third theme I notice has to do with email anxiety when you receive emails from certain persons. I assume that there is an underlying relationship or trust issue with this person. Maybe this person has treated you unfairly in the past or they have turned around something you wrote in an unacceptable way. Maybe they belittle you in their emails with their manager in cc or they criticize you publicly. A good manager would give their feedback in more appropriate ways than emails but we know that there are a number of mediocre managers out there as well.
What is Inbox Anxiety and Where Does it Come from?
According to Ron Friedman, author and psychologist, the reason why we feel overwhelmed when we find a lot of emails in our inbox is that each message is a new demand of our time and it triggers one more decision to make. This leaves most of us with less energy for the work that matters. Another reason that could make you anxious might be the lack of clear expectations and etiquette especially in the intercultural context you live in as an expat.
Also not having anybody to delegate emails to and feeling responsible for client service even when it’s not in your direct area of control could considerably make your stress level rise. In fact, studies have shown that checking email frequently leads to higher levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress.
We feel stressed also because we don’t feel productive. As we are constantly interrupted by a “PLING” our cognitive performance is reduced resulting in an attention deficit. According to research done on the negative effects of email on productivity, it takes us an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the taks after we’ve been interrupted. Now, think of how many times they interrupt you at work and make an average calculation. It’s scary.
There is one more issue related to inbox anxiety and this is known as “email apnea.” In fact, 80% of people tend to hold their breath unnaturally when going through their emails causing a change in their normal breathing patterns. Holding your breath can contribute to stress-related diseases because it throws off the body’s balance of oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitric oxide.
Seven Tips to Help you Take Back Control
Here are seven tips that will help you take back control of your inbox, time and productivity.
1 – Clarify the Purpose of Your Conversations
Make sure you know the communication policy and etiquette of the company where you work. This will also make clearer why and how you’re using emails and not other tools.
2 – Build Better Relationships to the Senders and Receivers
If you don’t know the other person well, try to reciprocate their tone. You don’t want to come across as too friendly or too formal if the relationship is just at the beginning. When I communicate in German I struggle because the connotations between how you address a person are quite different depending on the cultural context. In English you can easily be far too informal and hurt somebody’s feelings. As a general rule, avoid emotions and emotional topics.
When you aren’t familiar with the sender, another good alternative is picking up the phone. If you are a Millenial calling someone you don’t know might not be your preference, but I still think it’s the best way to establish first contact with someone.
3 – Stop Escalations and Solve the Real Issue
I love to watch escalation bingo on email only when I’m not in the firing line and cc-ed but not cause of anger. I personally read too many emails that are escalated to the appropriate management level too late. We are then often reading a lot of blame-storms and cover-your-back when the real underlying relationship issue is not addressed. I’m pretty good at NOT responding and I’m often slow when it’s heated or emotional. The reason is that I often need a break from the emotions that are triggered.
I can leave emails drafted for days only to discard them. It’s a skill I learned. Sometimes I might come across rude or negligent…It even happens that I forget an email. However, it’s often not that important or the person can find another route to talk to me. If the person knows me, they will reach out by phone, text message or just resend.
4 – Stop Flagging, Sorting, Deleting and Trust Your Inner Priority Manager
I hear people are still flagging, filing in folders, reading and answering emails all the time although I notice that response time has become from 1 minute to 1 week to ghosting. Frankly speaking, I sometimes don’t respond to an email because I don’t feel that I have anything to say. In some cultural contexts this is a perfectly acceptable behavior, however, in some others this could come across as rude.
5 – Limit the Times You Check Inboxes and Respond
Role model the change you would like to see in this world. If you don’t want to be bothered by emails after 7 pm, either you are powerful enough not to respond anymore or you also stop sending emails after “normal office hours”.
6 – Apply a Filter, Deactivate Notifications and Practice Writing Better Headers for Receivers
Have a policy for all your media who you accept and what kind of messages you will respond to. Instead of responding to every tweet I have now connected Twitter to Slack. I can check first if I want to respond or if it is a random tag.
I get a lot of system notifications, newsletters and promotions that I just scan but usually I only need to read the header or key words to know if it’s worth going deeper.
7 – Track How Much Time You Spend Emailing, Messaging and with Whom
Try using RescueTime to track how much time you spend emailing. By doing this, you can realistically plan how you can gradually reduce the time you spend emailing. You might try to reduce by 5 to 10 percent weekly the time you spend on your inbox. One way to do this is to practice writing shorter emails.
If you notice that you are so busy because you spend an hour sending cat videos to friends and family you might want to change that. And you might not know right away what you want to change and how. I recommend you call me for a 15-minute chat. Maybe I can give you guidance on how to reduce your inbox anxiety.
Kind regards
Angie
Resources
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/in-practice/201805/3-types-email-anxiety-and-solutions
https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/heres-why-email-makes-us-so-stressed-out-2015-2
https://happiful.com/how-to-deal-with-inbox-anxiety/
https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/email-apnea-how-email-change-breathing-2012-12
https://blog.trello.com/work-life-boundaries-as-a-remote-worker
References
Mark, G., Gudit, D. and Klocke, U. (2008). The cost of interrupted work: more speed and less stress. Conference Paper, DOI: 10.1145/1357054.1357072, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221518077_The_cost_of_interrupted_work_More_speed_and_stress
Mark, G., Voida, S. & Cardello, A. (2012). A pace not dictated by electrons: An empirical study of work without email. Conference Paper, https://sites.oxy.edu/clint/physio/article/APaceNotDictatedbyElectronsAnEmpiricalStudyofWorkWithoutEmail.pdf
Waldersee, V. (2018). The majority of employees check work emails while on holiday. YouGov, https://yougov.co.uk/topics/economy/articles-reports/2018/08/15/majority-employees-check-work-emails-while-holiday
Have you returned from your Christmas holiday full of new spirit and New Year’s resolutions and do you already feel a shift in energy as days are getting a bit longer and there is more sunlight. My plants outside thought it was spring already and I did not dare to tell them yet that winter is coming back. I remember the slight optimism of last January when I was hoping for a “back to normal” and only six weeks later the world was in turmoil again.
This year I made a change and started the New Year in South India at 30 degrees Celsius and with an amazing vacation that feels like a trip to paradise. And while it’s cold and snowing now in Switzerland the warmth and happiness I took with me lightened up my heart for most of the last two weeks. I hope you understand that I also have moments of self-doubt and fear and that I’m not always the calm and relaxed coach that you might know. I can also get stressed and deal with similar issues you might experience. This year though I have not (yet) felt the “post-holiday” blues. I even feel elated as I write this, in a rather festive spirit as I complete the second work week of this new year.
My desire and ambition is to be fresh, energetic, focused and emotionally stable. I want to create and find the atmosphere for creativity whether I’m in an office or in a fancy hotel room. I want to be up for networking with prospects and clients all the time. I want to get up in the morning with a big smile and fulfill my purpose whether we have a pandemic, a war, or a snowstorm. And this is why I’m practicing how to manage my energy better constantly. And in India I was even more motivated to learn more about meditating and yoga.
The Magic of Rituals
6 January marks the last day of the holiday season in Germany and Switzerland. In some parts of Europe, it is the most important day of the holiday season. For us, it means that the next day we really need to throw out the Christmas tree and all the decorations. It’s a nice ritual and the cleaning-up exercise means that I can get back into full steam. As often rituals help me with transitions and change I thought I’d share mine to get back into my creative mode again. I also think someone needs to tell my neighbor that it is definitely high time to take down the Christmas decorations especially as we are approaching New Year this weekend (again). I asked my colleagues in Singapore if it was okay to wish them Happy New Year (ahead of time) as in the German culture wishing ahead is often considered bad luck but they loved it. So from one Happy New Year to another Happy New Year I believe we should all take vacation, work-from-anywhere and really re-energize before getting back into the hustle and bustle of our self-imposed modern lifestyles. Yesterday, I even managed to close the books for 2023 and discard old case files.
1 – Decoration Boxing
Allow yourself one last look at your Christmas cards and decorations. Then box all of them into the Christmas box where you keep them until after Thanksgiving or the first advent weekend. Say goodbye to Christmas movies too..
2 – Calendar Planning
Get an annual calendar for your wall and mark all the important dates such as holidays, vacation or downtime, birthdays, weddings, launch dates, workshop days, lectures and other important events that you already committed to. Plan one long weekend every month for either self-care, your partnership or a strategic offsite. Book all your travel ahead with enough cancellation options and dive into the feeling of pre-travel excitement way before it is happening. Did you book your summer holiday yet?
3 – Routine Prepping
Prepare everything that you usually need to have ready to get into your weekly routines such as lunches, dinners, grocery shopping, and other regular Sunday activities to start into a good week ahead. Get your hair, nails, shoes, suits back in work look. (I know those bra’s are starting to feel uncomfortable.).
4 – Workspace Enhancing
Clean your workspace at home and consider at least one enhancement such as upgrading your software, buying colorful pens, post-it notes or a new journal. Buy a few colorful physical folders for your creative ideas and pimp up your filing system. Get yourself an orchid or a beautiful flower that you can add to your “home office.”.
5 – Purpose Reminiscing
Remember why you are where you are today in your professional life and as an entrepreneur, digital nomad or expat and connect with your mission statement. Read it out to yourself. Does it still fit? Check your resume and other brand messages. Is there anything you feel needs an upgrade? Visualize your life in 2023, add photos to your vision board and pick your word for 2023 if you haven’t done so yet.
I wish you all a wonderful start in the New Year.
Angie
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Recently I went to the ballet. They showed Nutcracker and Mouseking. If you know the story of the nutcracker you might be able to relate to his feeling. He is a prince trapped in a wooden statue. Maybe you feel more like “Aschenbroedel”? A princess trapped in a gray suit who sorts out the beans or the dollars on a spreadsheet.
You are well-traveled and fascinated by traveling outside the shores of your country. You are presumed to have the same bubbly experience as an expat sent on an international assignment to another country. You thought your experience would be like the adventure that you had on your previous vacation trips. Your first day in the foreign land was laden with a lot of exuberance and effervescence. But you had barely spent one month before all your hopes disappeared into the thin air. Now, the only rhetorical question you keep asking yourself is “Can I get relief from being trapped in this figure, please?” or “Where is that prince in shiny armor that will find a shoe that only fits me? When will I be invited to dance at the ball?”.
There are many moments when you feel overwhelmed and frustrated that you can’t do it all. And you don’t want to add to the stress of your spouse who’s busy searching job boards and tweaking their resume every time.
Your days are busy. Sometimes you leave work at the end of the week feeling unfulfilled, longing for a sense of purpose.
Sometimes you lie in bed missing your parents, friends, and loved ones so much that you often wonder if this was all a big mistake. In the middle of all these, you receive your line manager’s email that the presentation you made was a wreck.
The longer this goes on you notice that feelings of resentment creep up, toward your partner, your job, your young kids, or even your host country.
This does not have to be your story or case. I want to help you gain control of your life and live with a sense of purpose again. If you are feeling frustrated, crave a sense of purpose, or wish you are doing more to make the most of your life abroad, we have the answer you have been looking for.
Our program addresses, head-on, the biggest challenges that globally mobile individuals face, it is based on methods tested for over a decade with individuals just like you.
We teach you powerful strategies to give you immediate relief to your immediate challenges and help you take over the driver’s seat of your life’s vehicle. All of this, in short, easy-to-apply lessons – right when you need it. It has everything you need to:
● Develop and keep the right mindset to cherish your experience abroad
● Identify your purpose abroad (beyond work or the family)
● Stop letting stress get between you and the ones you care for
● Feel close to loved ones, even if they are thousands of miles (or kilometers) away
Imagine a life where you feel in control and spend your time and energy on things that resonate with your higher self.
● You are taking real steps to reduce the strains of your life abroad
● You have your confidence back
● You feel competent in your intercultural interactions
● You are fueled by a sense of purpose
● You have a community of people who understood you, and whom you could rely on for support
You can start today and then rise from the physical and mental exhaustion in which circumstances have kept you. Yes, you can rise to a new life of purpose and relevance.
I am not just going to propose some hypothetical ideas, but time-tested, hands-on ideas that would immediately get you back on track. Having lived abroad and moved several times in my life, I had to deal with adapting to a different intercultural climate myself. I have been able to weather even the most complex challenges and it would be my pleasure to take you by the hand and help you navigate this new terrain.
If you want to make some important changes, anywhere from feeling less overwhelmed, finding purpose, or creating better connections with your loved ones from afar, book a meeting with me here. I want to learn more about you and the challenges you are currently facing.
Kind regards,
Angie Weinberger
