Do You Feel Like You Should Do More to WFH?
Because the virtual world never stops, it is critical to remember that you must stop. You are setting priorities and acting on them. Apply personal project management: set your priorities, determine your critical path, do the best you can and let it go. Release it and move on. You have done the best you can do, that is all you can do, so feel good about it. You determine what you want to achieve, put your attention on your priority and do what you can do to get it done. Then you move on to the next priority. When you are finished, you are finished. When you feel like you must always do more, connect more, interact more, your priorities will start to slip away.
Your own insecurities make you more vulnerable in the virtual world. Insecurity makes it difficult to enact priorities. You need to trust yourself and your ability to be dependable. To enact priorities, you need to know what you are doing is good enough and proceed without personal judgment, criticism, disapproval or negative commentary. You can neither manipulate or be manipulated or it will be nearly impossible to act on your priorities. You have to trust your intentions and everybody else’s. If you have a bad feeling about something, ask yourself: “Why do I have this feeling? Is it based on fact? Does it matter to anyone? Does it matter to me?”
Virtual smiles are never very comforting or approving. If you are constantly looking for approval, you are going to have a difficult time with The Pajama Effect. By trying to be popular, conciliatory or compelled to connect, you can waste a lot of time. There are too many people, connected in far too many ways, to please them all. If you are comfortable, know what you want to accomplish and set out to get it done, you probably will. Trying to please everyone in the virtual world is a losing proposition. The digital world is always moving. Approval seeking might have worked with observation-run management or classrooms but not in the virtual workplace.
There are far too many choices to set and enact your priorities based on approval. Many virtual workers are afraid to turn off their devices for dinner because they think their clients or bosses expect them to always be available. Is that reasonable? Is it real? It is easy to read your perception of reality into virtual reality. Remember that personal perceptions are subjective anyway. So stay on the positive and confident side of life. As philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
You get to choose what you think. No one else can do it. Freedom starts from the inside. Psychiatrist Victor Frankl stated, “A human being is a deciding being.” In order to set and enact priorities, you must learn to decide for yourself.
Extremely intelligent adults will make excuses, whine, fuss and just plain refuse to set and enact priorities because they do not feel comfortable. They do not want to feel vulnerable.
