Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
I got two questions from the listener of this podcast, one asking me about work-life balance. And the second question is about memory. So I’m going to address the first question today on the podcast here. For the second question, I’m going to take it up maybe tomorrow or the day after, depending upon how it goes. So the first question is, I’m back at work. And for the last two years, I had been working from home. And now I have difficulty balancing the demands of home and work. Do you have any advice for this? Yes, I do. I have done numerous podcast episodes, speaking about work-life balance, specifically, during the COVID. Time. And also, on my radio show, during the COVID times, I spoke a lot about how things are going to change and how things would be different. Most of the things that I predicted, for lack of a better word predicted, I think all came true. But if you haven’t listened to those radio shows, and you have not heard the podcasts from 2020, and 2021, you may not relate to exactly what I’m referring to. But if you are, or if you did listen, then you know exactly what I’m saying. So let’s get into the work-life balance imbalance question here.
See, there is a pattern that has evolved, and the more people I talk to, the more people I interact with, I’m seeing this. And other experts are also now saying this 200 publications that are getting numerous articles on this topic. And there is some level of trauma that all of us as humanity we developed, coming out of COVID. And trauma has two main elements to it. One is a fear of survival, which we clearly saw in this case. And we also saw social isolation. These are the two primary components. In the context of trauma, of course, there are many more. And because we went through as humanity went through for a long time, we will what nearly 24 months of fear of survival, social isolation, and everything we have now developed. And all of us, including me, of us, have developed post-COVID Stress Disorder. Okay, so it’s called PCSD. And, and PTSD is posted trauma, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I can’t even say it, that is a whole different thing altogether. But every time there is the discussion of, hey, my life has not come back to the same level that I used to have before COVID.
I’m having difficulty coping with the requirements of life. Now that I’ve gone through staying at home, during COVID. This is life, in general, was that you stay home and you go to work. And there were clear boundaries, those boundaries got compromised during COVID. So now the boundaries are removed, you really do not know whether you’re working or you’re sleeping, or you’re eating, you’re doing all of them at the same time. And you’re doing nothing at a time when one of those things was supposed to be done. So you don’t have control over your sleep, you don’t have control over your food, your diet, you don’t have control over your time. And you don’t have control over other people, because everybody can step in into your time and demand that certain things need to be done. So you now have to cater to them. And you’re not really catering to the most important one, which is your work, which is your home, your time also became a little bit questionable. So at home, you’re not responding to messages from people, which means people are thinking you’re working at home. At home, you’re not responding to the requests of people at home. That means you are busy doing some work.
Now, neither of these two is correct. So at nine o’clock in the night, if your spouse is asking you to do something and you’re saying I’m busy working, or you’re not responding at all, then they might be thinking okay, you know, you’re doing something that is not really directly impacting the home. So time, your integrity dealing with time has become a question mark also through this process. How do you deal with this? And I think this question is, even though I didn’t want to answer it this way, but you see where I’m going with this. So clearly the separation is not there. So my suggestion to you is that you separate work from home. Now, some of my friends are telling me this, that they’re not being required to go to work every day. So you show up once a week, maybe twice a week, it’s okay.
Now when that kind of situation comes up, you need to precisely mark your calendar saying that on Monday from 2 pm to 6 pm, or 9 am, to 5 pm, I’m going to be at work. And I’m going to do that on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. So whatever. Other days, I won’t be. And I will stay home, and work from home. So you make that very clear in your mind where you want to be at a given point in time, on a given day, in a given week. Very simple. Otherwise, hear people telling me, I was supposed to go to work, I got caught up at home, and now I neither can go to work nor stay home. The second thing I would try is to delegate everything, maybe you got used to taking on a lot of things on yourself, you got to start delegating, you need to keep asking and telling people listen, I can’t do this, I can’t do that. No, can you take over these things, this makes sense for you to do work on this, this makes you know me not to work on this, right you position your kids, you start asking? Now, one other thing also is you got to rediscover your confidence. This is not about managing time or managing boundaries, of course, those things have to happen. But you got to bring back your confidence about who you are, why you are in this role, whatever role you are playing, and what’s your commitment, what’s the outlook of what, as a group, as a department, or as a company that you are doing. So you need to kind of bring back your alignment into the overall context of everything that you’re doing. If that is not done very quickly, then it’s going to create more similar feelings within you the feeling with which you texted me. So this ambiguity will continue and you may not be able to break through. And you don’t want your job to become like a paycheck, and exercise for a paycheck. And the beauty of all this is you are here to explore yourself, you want to expand yourself you want to grow. And everything else should happen as a result of your pursuit of these things.
Rather, you simply pursuing a paycheck and trying to juggle a few things here and there. It’s not good in the overall context. So I want you to find your confidence back as soon as possible. And there are different ways you can do it. And, you know, this podcast and many other areas where there is a ton of information, a ton of knowledge, strategies, techniques, all that available for you if you really want to, but unless you don’t get back at confidence, it’s very difficult for you to achieve something. And I think that question is more about achievement anyway, I think you’re not achieving at a level that you were achieving before. And once you take your mind when you’re not achieving something or you start to believe that you’re not achieving, you start looking into what are the things that are different. What is different about me now that was not there back in the day, and then you’ll start comparing and contrasting and then you will somehow find some fault and then you will justify your outcomes aiming to that fault because now you can’t fix that fault. So get back to confidence. Do these changes, start drawing some lines of physically separate yourself go to work, commit to those timelines, you know, set some goals in between also, and then you’ll start seeing just a matter of few days, in this mind is an interesting thing. You know, if you keep doing something repeatedly for a few days, magically, it fills itself up. So it starts to believe it’s new found reality. So your mind will start bending and you’ll start to enjoy yourself.
Hopefully answered your question. Hopefully, this is helpful. If it is let me know. And I got a second question. I’ll come back here. Maybe tomorrow, the day after answer your second question. Okay. That’s all for now. Wherever you are, be safe, and I’ll talk to you as early as tomorrow. Bye now.