To the question “How are you?” ”, some people respond “Well, I’m busy!” “. In addition to valuing having a busy schedule, this phrase actually speaks to the cognitive overload of workers and the desire to want to set limits.
“It’s probably the phrase I’ve said most often in the last year: “I’m busy!” », says Anne Deleau, account manager in a banking institution in Montreal.
To her partner, her friends and her colleagues, the forty-year-old repeated these three words, tirelessly, without dwelling on the meaning behind – or the message sent.
“Quite honestly, I think I wanted to show that I had a lot of tasks and responsibilities and maybe that I was important,” she admits candidly. I have always valued myself a lot through my work, and almost exclusively through it in fact. »
Having been off work for six weeks, the Laval resident thinks a lot about the place of work in her life, but also in society in general.
Hyperconnected
It is true that since the pandemic, Quebecers have never worked so much: a study by the Center of Expertise in Occupational Health and Safety Management at Laval University reveals that since the pandemic, the work week lengthened by an average of 3.3 hours.
The blurring between professional and personal life, accentuated by teleworking, pushes many workers to be permanently connected. Dropping out is more difficult than ever, underlines Julie Ménard, professor and researcher in the psychology department at UQAM.
It’s a vicious circle: the more information we have access to, the more we jump from one piece of information to another. Our attention span is plummeting.
Julie Menard
According to a recent study by the University of California, our attention span on a screen has dropped from two and a half minutes in 2004 to 47 seconds in 2023. This same study showed that it takes approximately 25 minutes to return to the main task at hand, such as writing a document or reading a file.
“Our brain is busy and constantly stimulated,” adds M.me Menard. It’s almost as if our brain is never in default mode, to do nothing. Now, this mode is important: for a system to recover, whatever it is, it must be turned off, we must stop using it. »
Mismanagement
Anne Deleau has taken very few breaks since the start of the pandemic and she feels like she is paying the price. “There, I’m completely off work,” she slips, “but I would have preferred to work fewer hours and be in full possession of my means rather than working crazy weeks with, let’s say, limited capabilities. Plus, I would have been more productive! »
This is exactly the theory of Julie Carignan, organizational psychologist and certified human resources advisor at Humance: squeezing employees’ lemons, asking them for more and overloading them is a bad management strategy, bad leadership.
“We are harming ourselves by doing this,” she exclaims. This harms team performance and it harms business performance. The phenomenon of glorification of always doing more is not new; what is, is to say that we are busy in an attempt to protect ourselves, to set limits. »
Although awkward, the phrase “I’m busy” can hide a defense mechanism, believes Mme Carignan. “In fact, what the person may mean is: ‘I don’t want you to abuse my time, my energy, my space.’ It’s a way of putting in place safeguards. »
Mental load
Between being available all the time and not being available at all, the line is not always easy to draw. Julie Carignan recommends asserting ourselves with kindness and showing openness, while managing the expectations of others and our priorities.
“There’s an adage that says if you need a service, you should ask the busiest person… It’s an unhealthy culture that values being always busy,” she says. .
Another important point: the heavy mental load, linked for example to balancing work and family, can cause confusion in the perception of our occupation. “We have to look at what really concerns us,” explains M.me Carignan. How many hours do we work compared to the number of hours we are preoccupied? »
The “Niksen” approach
For Julie Ménard, one of the solutions to rest is to create conditions to do so since with the omnipresence of technology, “they will never happen by themselves”.
In the Netherlands, the concept of Niksen (niks means “nothing” in Dutch) is the art of doing nothing. This is a path worth exploring, according to her.
“Niksen means making the conscious choice to invest your time and energy in doing nothing. We avoid distractions to create boredom, to get bored. Doing nothing can seem difficult, even anxiety-provoking, especially at first. But you have to try it and persevere. »
Dutch citizens are Niksen enthusiasts… and it works, according to the researcher, since the country is one of the most innovative and productive societies on the planet.
reference: www.lapresse.ca