How to Avoid Burnout During Remote Work

Remote work has been an abrupt and overwhelming change in the workplace, and many have struggled to adjust. Everything became jumbled and needed to be dealt with alone. Even if assistance was offered, learning to deal with the new conditions was tough to grasp. Burnouts become common for everyone as a result of prolonged exposure to extreme pressure. It took a long time for things to settle down, but for many employees, remote work proved to be a successful business model. As a result, remote work is here to stay, and people who work remotely may still experience burnout, even if they have been doing so for a long time. Hence, podcast host and writer, Morra Aarons-Mele explains three practical ways to avoid burnout when working remotely in this TED Talks video.

Morra begins the video by explaining how it is reasonable to think that working remotely is a highly advantageous position for employees since they are able to work from the comfort of their own homes. However, many employees have found that remote work is not as beneficial as they had hoped. When remote work was first introduced, workers faced a number of challenges, including excessive screen time, a lack of boundary between work and home, and constant video meetings, to mention a few. She starts by describing how unending and impromptu video meetings are a problem for many people since they leave them with little time to prepare and because excessive screen time is a major source of burnout. Video conferences, as beneficial as they are, are merely a pale facsimile of human interaction, and the social environment has been almost entirely disrupted as a result. She claims that protecting your energy is the key to managing remote work. According to her, the first step to prevent burnout is to establish a ritual and routine. It is critical maintaining a separation between work and home, which necessitates the need for a schedule. She recommends including breaks in the schedule and being social with your peers during those breaks as an effective way to avoid burnout. Breathing, stretching, and walking are among the exercises she recommends doing, during breaks. Second, she suggests that we manage our pace, place, and space. She advises just holding or participating in as many video meetings as are absolutely essential. She suggests that proper boundaries be enforced at work. She recommends that you make your desk feel like a workstation and commit it only to work, regardless of where it is located. Finally, she recommends managers make remote work comfortable for their staff. She advises them to create an environment in which everyone can be heard. She recommends that managers structure agendas, impose presenting standards, and limit brainstorming as critical components for avoiding burnout. Create a common forum for everyone to express their issues or ideas rather than asking people to volunteer, which puts a lot of weight on them. If at all feasible, hold audio calls over video ones. Finally, she believes that asynchronous communication allows people to communicate their perspectives more freely than they might in one-on-one interactions.

Burnout is understandable, especially during remote work, given the amount of work that needs to be completed without much assistance and a social work environment. However, the advice given by podcast presenter and writer Morra Aarons-Mele in this TED Talks video will undoubtedly assist you in avoiding one.