One of my big theories about work, since I began working, is that work wants you to be a creature of logic — hence why we root so much of work in repeatable processes (well, that and scale). The reality is that human beings are emotional creatures, and that creates a major work dichotomy. Within that dichotomy, you get into a lot of other issues, such as “Do managers really understand, or want to manage, human emotion?” (usually that answer is “no”) and “When we talk of burnout, are we also talking of emotional exhaustion?” (usually that answer is yes). We’re all emotional people, and emotions usually have next to no place at work — people who act emotional at work tend to have stagnated careers — and that creates a lot of coping mechanisms and other issues.
This article, which is ostensibly the 17th million article written since April about how to have “tough conversations” upon “returning to the office,” makes a few good points about emotions at work. I’ll bullet point a few of them:
- Anxiety (and its fully blossomed form, fear) is a response to the perceived threat of a cherished value.
- We unwittingly perpetuate our anxiety when we refuse to accept that these risks demand we make value trade-offs. And anxiety decreases the instant we make a priority decision between the two by deciding which matters most.
- If you refuse to make these prioritizing decisions, you risk turning your anxiety into resentment.
- Entitlement is the first way we unnecessarily amplify our anxieties.
- The second is neglect, when we fail to take responsibility to plan for the risks of acting on our priorities.
- When we neglect our responsibility for our own values, our guilt manifests as blame toward others.
Therapists and others love to talk about “naming emotions,” and as far as business journalism goes, that’s probably one of the better examples of naming emotions I’ve ever seen — and I’ve been writing about this shit for about nine years now, so I’m somewhat of an expert. (Not really.) Let’s unpack some of this.
The role of anxiety at work
Anxiety is a huge component of work, especially in a standard hierarchy, whereby we’re forced to collaborate but promoted individually, so “doing better for your family” means you have to essentially compete with your “work family.” That’s gonna cause some anxiety. Plus: many of us have a fear of not being good enough, and that gets extrapolated at work, especially in a time of stagnated earnings and rising cost of goods. Are you delivering? Are you a success? These questions weigh on people. They cause anxiety, whether you’re discussing masks, vaccines, or anything else.
The real answer to anxiety at work is “better management,” but since that’s generally hard to come by, your best bet is some form of work friendship or finding avenues of gratitude at work. This article above is saying that you need to take “value trade-offs,” which is a synonym for “life.” Basically, you need to set priorities, which tends to reduce work stress. You need to be the one to do it, because no manager will save you on that — managers barely understand their own priorities, as is.
The role of entitlement at work
Huge factor too, and hugely common in the upper ranks, but running around all day virtue-signaling about how supposedly “busy” you are is a form of entitlement as well. We get anxious about the necessity of our role (peons) or how little we actually know about the business (big dogs), and we try to deal with that anxiety through pushing entitlement. That’s the intersection point where work completes a joyless hellhole, or “shockingly inhumane.” It’s just a bunch of assholes flexing. Who wants to spend 10 hours/day with that for the middle part of their life?
There is no way to escape entitlement at work. It will always exist. If more people were honest about their feelings — especially men — we could potentially reduce it more, but good luck with that. To many men, “entitlement” and “success” are synonyms. Good luck changing that.
The complicated role of neglect
I’m reading that Michael Lewis Premonition book right now (about the pandemic), and one interesting section is, he talks about this guy at the VA Department. The guy is interested in how people learn and how information sticks with people, and so he goes into different departments and tries to figure it out. No one cares. No one is interested. Everyone just wants to do their tasks and go home to their families. Bigger picture questions are completely irrelevant to them.
If you’ve worked at a few places, you know this is common. Most people are task monkeys and they try to leave around 4:47pm for the day, and that’s their “professional arc.” That’s their “career.” Now, many of those same people will constantly tell you about how they answer emails at 11pm, and good for them. (More virtue-signaling.) The reality is, they do the absolute least expected of them, because they know that’s the safest path. Who wants to talk deeply about learning? What if you try to do that, miss a deadline, and get exposed to your boss? No bueno.
I’d argue the “neglect” emotional side of work is that if you really care inside an office, you have nowhere to go and nowhere to channel it, short of repeatedly job-hopping until you find your Elon Nirvana. People who care, and who are intelligent, and who want to have bigger discussions about work and strategy and purpose and mission and how the product fits into everything? They have absolutely no place in offices. Offices are largely about neglecting the big picture for the controllable tasks. To many, that’s comforting. To still others, it’s incredibly anxiety-producing.
Blame towards others
So, so, so, so, so common at work you could write a book about it. Burnout at work is largely about the perceived incompetence of your colleagues, in fact. We love to throw ourselves on the cross about how great and essential we are — relevance, control, and status seeking — while also bashing many of our colleagues against the rocks. It’s so common, and doubly common in the more dysfunctional workplaces.
Will this one ever change? No. Not writ large. People need scapegoats and they need stuff to bitch about. We love ourselves some negative emotions.
Takes on emotions at work and different ways to manage them out?
