Why is Autonomy So Important When You WFH?
Autonomy is the capacity of the individual to make independent, un-coerced and rational decisions. To act with autonomy, one must first think with autonomy. This sounds like an easy task but in a world bent on controlling your thoughts, influencing your purchasing power and presenting your nightly newscasts based on ratings, it is not as easy as it sounds. Autonomy suggests the ability to listen to an inner voice and be guided by morals and values that are beyond the basic standard. It is a self-governing principle that can lead you to beneficence and, ultimately, to your own happiness, success and fulfillment.
To act with autonomy, an individual has to act – and not react – to circumstances, events and individuals. It is a self-reliant ability that permits you to act with security on your own perceptions and to trust your own impressions of right and wrong. Self-reliance requires trusting and believing in your own ideas and abilities. It is no longer enough to be proactive or to feel empowered. In the virtual environment, you need to act in order to make things happen. You need to take control and keep control of your thoughts, actions and emotions. You need to recognize your special gifts, your talents and your shortcomings, accept yourself where you are, for what you are, and be OK with all of it. Because in the pajama workplace, you are almost always connected virtually when you are actually alone.
The distractions and protections of the cubicle are gone, so the excuses and alibis that once worked no longer matter. You need to be brave and put your heart into what you want to achieve. But before you can be brave, you have to be consciously aware of what it is you are thinking and doing. It is just too easy to mute the sound or walk away from the computer to do something else. There is so much to react to in the virtual environment: your family, your friends, your parents, the technologies, the lack of concentration, the vulnerability of too many moving parts. There are intrinsic and extrinsic distractions to react to and many things that can overwhelm you and pull you off course.
In The Pajama Effect, you are all alone much of the time. Autonomy requires you to be rational and aware. You want to focus on your heart and your motives, as well as the motives of all those around you. You need to see clearly, keeping your desires and intentions at the forefront. Be flexible, yet focused. You must believe and know that you are in charge of yourself. So you walk the walk and make the effort, with no excuses and no regrets. You are true to yourself. You need to give up life as a victim and take charge of what you create. Acting with autonomy requires you to take charge of your destiny.
If you live with guilt, resentment and fear, it is very difficult to act with autonomy. If others control you, by circumstances or by your environment, it is very difficult to act with autonomy. When you act with autonomy, you cannot go around judging everything everyone else does. In the virtual world, there are too many cues missing to do that and it is too easy to misinterpret things. There are emoticons and now videos but you still do not have the three dimensions. Autonomy is inner direction and inner knowing. You need to keep the focus on you.
You know when you are telling the truth and when you are not. You know when the computer really malfunctioned and when it didn’t. You also know when you were really too busy because of work, or kids or parents and when that was just a convenient excuse. You know when what you are saying is, “I don’t really want to do this now.” In the virtual environment, you feel invisible and you are sure no one will know. But you will know. Acting with independence is not reacting with avoidance, excuses or alibis. #VirtualWork #RemoteWork #PJEffect WFH #NSFW #ThePajamaEffect
