At Clearview, we have bodies. You probably have one too. Hooray for bodies.
The thing is: information-age work tries its damndest to ignore the fact that we're showing up in these soggy meat vessels. And, to complicate the situation, bodies insist on being heard to let the brain inside them do good work.
It's a problem.
Luckily, it's a soluble one.
Let's start with the simple fact of the circadian rhythm. You're undoubtedly aware that there are certain periods in the day when people simply are or are not productive in any meaningful way. Everybody has a certain rhythm. So many studies corroborate this that it's almost a truism. So why do so many workspaces, physical and virtual, pretend that it's not?
Reasons for failures at work
One of the big reasons for failures at work — both small missteps and compounded-over-time faceplants — that is the person involved is (wo)manning a nervous system that's really wanting something else, and simply ignoring the fact that that's happening.
They really want to do good work, but there's some other biological need that keeps popping up and getting decked like a hopeful, dogged little whack-a-mole.
It might be a need to work earlier, or later, or more hours for fewer days, or super early and super late with a huge midday gap. It might be the need to catch up on an ugly sleep debt, or spend snuggle time with a new baby, or find meaningful social connection, or spend committed time to get properly moved into a new house, or adjust to the daily rhythm of a new situation. Whatever it is, when that need shows up, it's undeniable.
More often than it's comfortable to think about — especially if it shows up in a person whose body doesn't work on the world's invented 9–6 schedule — that biologically honest need gets diagnosed as ADD.
The person on the receiving end of it thinks they're broken. They might go to the doctor and pop some medication to try to zone them in, the dosage ramping up and up as they go all-in on the Sisyphean struggle; they might, if they're in an office, spend hours pretending not to be scrolling; they might tuck into yet another marathon procrastination session, getting more and more stressed about the things their body just won't give them the focus to do.
Such a waste, for a talented human in a body that just needs to burn some ATP.
And here's another thing about the way that our brains are lashed to our bodies:
We don't get a free pass to escape our various traumas just because we've clocked in to code.
And those traumas are real.
A lot of what's going on right now — and this is going to be a little less evergreen, but it has been a topic of conversation around our various personal and professional networks and across the greater Clearview diaspora — is that a lot of people are having a lot of uncomfortable feelings come up around the current COVID-19 circus. Largely, and very unfortunately, they're not in the kind of position where they feel safe to, well, to feel them. Or even recognize what they are.
Over the long term of showing up to work (for many, their personal lives, too) and playing that old, familiar brain-in-a-jar charade, they've gotten used to pushing them down.
And what that feeling is, for most people, is grief.
Dangerous stuff, grief.
Everybody is feeling some kind of grief, on some level, even if you haven't lost anybody yet. There's grief for what you lost in your lifestyle; in your expectations for this year and beyond; the loss of thinking you know what's going to happen; the loss of a shared collective narrative of more-or-less certainty; the loss of our sense-making capacity; the loss of the belief that you were going to be able to do the things that you wake up in the morning for; the loss of all those nice economic numbers that are currently going straight down the toilet.
We're not saying that everybody needs to rush into video-conference therapy, but this is a great moment to give yourself the space — in whatever form that takes — to let those feelings come up for air. If you give them your attention and a valve and a voice, they'll be much less likely to invade your personal and professional life in the way only feelings can. (If you have half an hour, check out this 10% Happier podcast with Oren Jay Sofer. Worth it.)
So: How do we steal our brains back from the jars and put them back in these bodies where they belong?
The specifics are yours to own and action, but we'll just say this: pay focused attention.
When it knows you're listening, your body will speak up, and it'll be your best teammate.
Guaranteed.