“You can take a break now.”

Remember your first job?

Like many others, one of my first jobs was at a fast-food chain, where I worked in the kitchen prep area. It was hot and uncomfortable, and the smell clung to me like a lonely, unwanted pet when I was done for the day. 

The manager told me what shift I had to work, when to show up, what to wear and when I could go home. Every now and then (which felt like few and far between), the manager would say: “you can take a break now” so I would have lunch or a toilet break.

I hated it.

That kind of job is obviously fine for the summer in between high school or college years but I, for one, could hardly imagine myself doing it for any longer stretch of time.

What images and feelings come to mind when you think of traditional work settings like this?

The future of work & managers-of-one

The way work used to work (and still does, in many places) is conducive to people remaining children, to not really growing up. Someone else shapes our work environment and makes all the decisions for us. Like in my little story above, this someone else, higher in the hierarchy, watches, surveils and scolds us if we are out of line. We get a carrot/pat on the back/brownie point for doing well and a stick for failing to perform.

The way of working I described above doesn’t nurture healthy, empowered, sovereign individuals, adults who know themselves and can self-manage. It doesn’t prepare us to thrive in the future, do meaningful work that moves the needle, and create things that matter. It just gets us through the day and gets just enough work done to get by.

And that’s neither healthy nor productive. A perfect example of that is the burnout pandemic following the Covid-19 pandemic. Many knowledge workers were forced to allow (or simply allowed) the lines between work and life to blur. They were not able to keep up healthy habits and routines. They expected “someone” to be responsible for their well-being and tell them when to take a break. And ended up burning out.

Basecamp encourages its team members to think of themselves as a manager of one:

 “A manager of one is someone who doesn’t need heavy direction. They don’t need daily check-ins. They do what a manager would do — set the tone, assign items, determine what needs to get done, etc. — but they do it by themselves and for themselves.” 

Simply put, to thrive in the next iteration of work, we have to grow up. As team members, as individual contributors, and as leaders.

Growing up as individuals

Remote or hybrid work. 

Flexible work schedules. 

Management and leadership styles that encourage decentralized authority.

Artificial Intelligence does more of the menial tasks and humans work highly independently on high-impact work.

These trends are all here to stay. In most companies that objectively have a future in the current economy, the ability to manage yourself, organize your work, self-drive and self-motivate is important and will become essential.

But Lavinia, what if I’ve always been managed by someone else and I’m not sure how to even think about this? (This is a concern we often hear at Livit with people who just joined the team – and not only junior ones!)

My friend Christin, a kick-ass neuroscientist, Buddhist chaplain & much more, who recently transitioned from a corporate job to working for herself, used to think (and complain) that there was no autonomy in her job. She is now realizing, working on her own, that in fact she wasn’t “taking” it, owning it. In many jobs, you’re the one making yourself work late or taking on too much – and you do have a choice not to.

So my recommendation would be to take the chance to engage on a journey of self-discovery, of learning what works for you, defining personal boundaries, balance, discipline; and shape your own way of healthy adulting at work.

Sounds like a big deal, and it is.
But it can be tackled one step at a time, perhaps with the help of a peer or a coach. Set aside some quiet time, pen and paper or a blank Google doc/Evernote/Notion page, grab a nice hot drink and reflect. 

Don’t forget that you’re managing a team of one, and they’re brilliant and super valuable for the organization, so it’s extremely important to keep them happy and engaged 🙂

Reflection prompts

Here are some questions you can start with:

Work environment:

1. How and where do I like to work? Where do I do my best work?
2. Is it my office, my home office, a coworking space, a cafe, a mix of all for different days of the week/times of the day? 
3. Do I enjoy being highly collaborative, even if that makes me prone to distraction, or highly independent, even if that gets a little lonely sometimes?

Work-life harmony & scheduling:

1. Do I like to compartmentalize (work-life balance) or integrate (work-life integration) my schedule?
2. When do I prefer to/is most possible for me to do my focused/deep work?
3. Is it easy for me to prioritize (e.g. using Eisenhower’s matrix) intuitively, or should I put some time aside to do that in the morning/the evening before?
4. What are my boundaries and how do I enforce them? Does my team/company support the right to disconnect – and if not, how can I nudge things in that direction?

Motivation & engagement:

1. What gets me motivated? What helps me push through a lull of lower energy?
2. Do I get easily distracted, is my attention too fragmented, and how can I fight that?
3. Do I respond better to my own expectations, external expectations or both? (This test can help you figure that out). One secret here: all achievements depend on having (some) constraints (e.g. a deadline, a budget, etc). And bosses/micromanagers used to offer those external constraints, which now have to be “provided” internally. Many people struggle with this.
4. How do I put in place systems of support that help me achieve my goals (e.g. accountability buddies, rewarding myself, having a stricter or looser routine, etc)?
5. Do I prefer to work well ahead of deadlines, so I don’t get stressed, or do I get energized and get my best ideas close to a deadline (so I should clear everything else in advance, including perhaps some bits of personal)

The book “Workstyle” is a wonderful resource if you’d like to understand more about where 9-5 came from, why work is ripe of massive disruption, and how to define your own “workstyle”.

All this reflection will equip you to shape, whenever and wherever you can, your work environment, your schedule, your support systems, and tweak them to help yourself take charge and spend more time on meaningful things – both at work and outside of it.

I believe work is something we humans will do even when everything is automated, taken care of by algorithms, AIs, and robots, and countries pay out Universal Base Income to their citizens. Because we have an innate need for meaning, for purpose, for expressing ourselves, and often that takes the shape of what we call ‘’work’’.

But work (or the way we traditionally thought of it) is broken. And one way to fix it is to take steps towards that ourselves; to ‘adult’ – and take on both the freedom and responsibility that come with that; to author the next version of our lives and work; to make thriving in the future of work our own, instead of waiting, indefinitely, for “someone” to do it for us.

Conclusion

Remember, our brains don’t optimize for happiness and well-being. They optimize for survival, and often those are two different things. Most of the time, survival means taking the familiar path. So yes, our brains are biased to continue or do again and again whatever it’s “worked”or simply kept us alive/going so far. 

If you’ve had a pattern of saying “yes” to everything, working overtime most days because you “had to”, waiting for Fridays and complaining about Mondays for as long as you remember, chances are your brain will still want to do that by default.

The only way forward is breaking the cycle… and growing up.

It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

I can promise you you’ll get more done AND be happier.

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In a sequel to this article, I explore the topic of growing up as leaders, because there is, always, the other side of the coin, too.