An overwhelming sense of guilt even when getting s**t done — go figure!

Today I achieved everything I promised and set out to do.

I was a productivity machine!

I ran an online session, progressed a project, submitted 2 proposals, spent time updating someone and got to inbox zero.

I even started work an hour earlier (which is 2 hours when considering I’m a time zone ahead of my colleagues).

Well done me!

Sounds great, right?

Wrong!

Get this.

I spent most of the day feeling worried, guilty and angsty.

Why?

Because I took my son to a local skatepark and worked from there for all of 4.5 hours (again, 2 of which weren’t even in work time!).

How crazy is that?

I basically won the day. I lived the remote work dream and smashed it. I sat outside and worked in the lovely spring air on the edge of a forest. Got everything done and was present for my son. But I felt totally crappy due throughout due to not sitting in my box-room-cum-make-shift-office.

In fact, I felt so self-conscious of what people might think that when my son finally dropped in on a 6ft concrete ramp and made it — I was head down with you go son, I’m busy (so much for being present eh?).

I’m actually ashamed at confessing that I prioritised hitting send on an email over merely looking up at a pivotal moment. I prioritised my internal narrative of you should be at home, people will think you’re slacking off, this isn’t right and you’ll get found out and kept my head down.

Please note — no one asked, would have cared or challenged. No one made me feel this guilt. As a highly vocal advocate of all things remote and async work, I’m aware of the hypocrite this makes me appear. I always say we’re paid for the value we bring, not the hours we clock and it’s the work that counts, not where you sit when doing it and such other things. But yet, there it was.

So, where did this feeling come from? What’s going on here? Why the contradiction?

Digging into the deep stuff, I do have a sense that it’s partly to do with my upbringing being influenced by my parents, who held down more than two jobs each at a time to get by. Work was work and you did it till it was done, never mixing it with life. Additionally, my Dad was a fire-fighter, so he had a highly disciplined attitude to work. These elements have clearly rubbed off on me and are now in contrast with my lived experience of work.

But I don’t think I’m alone in this contradiction.

We know that in these days of actually remote working, it is possible to add value whilst maintaining a life. We benefit from technology as the enabler. But for all those new ways of working flag wavers (of which I can be one), it so difficult to shake the brainwashing of traditional working approaches that we know do not serve us or add value? These old cultures are lodged in there for many of us.

I think when this pandemic blip ends this will be the reason many run back to the office. I worry that this will cause a huge negative impact much like a see-saw effect with a complete disregard to balance.

I’m sharing this in the hope that someone might read it and think, phew, not just me then, but also in the hope that folks might share their thoughts on how to break this internal narrative that holds some of us back.

All comments are appreciated!

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.