1. COVID-19 and the related lockdowns have been hard on all of us. We want you to know: it’s OK to not be OK.
2. If you need to work through your lunch hour, that’s OK. In these unprecedented times, your energy levels can really fluctuate, and sometimes you’re just more productive if you work straight through lunch and don’t take any breaks. Just remember that it’s OK.
3. It’s OK not to schedule any vacation. It can be hard to imagine yourself going on vacation right now with all the travel restrictions, and we don’t want you to feel pressured. If you would feel more comfortable staying in town and working, that’s OK.
4. If you want to spend your former commuting time working instead of sleeping, that’s OK. Work from home has been an adjustment for everyone, and everyone uses this time differently. If you want to use that time to do extra work to give yourself some time back to better organize your work, that’s OK!
5. It’s OK to have trouble sleeping. We’re currently experiencing a great deal of anxiety as a culture, so if you’re finding you’re having trouble sleeping, that’s OK. Also, if your phone dinging with notifications until 1 a.m. is keeping you up, try going to bed later, it’s OK.
6. If you’d rather knock out a meeting instead of eating dinner, that’s OK. The new flexibility afforded by working from home lets us structure our workday however we like, and if you’d rather conduct a meeting than eat dinner, that’s OK.
7. If you ever need to skip therapy because of a client emergency, it’s OK. Sometimes, it’s better to just take a step back and let your mind focus on something else, like correcting a logo size on a banner, and that’s OK.
8. If you feel like not going to the gym on the weekend and just taking it easy on a conference call on your couch on Sunday afternoon instead, that’s OK. Working from home offers that flexibility, and if you want to use that flexibility to take it easy and sit on a three-hour call instead of going to a workout class you had to book six days in advance because everything is at fifty percent capacity, that’s OK!
9. It’s OK to do nothing. The state of the world right now can be overwhelming, and if you just feel like lying around and doing nothing after you’ve completed all your work and the work of all your former co-workers that resigned, that’s one thousand percent OK.
10. It’s OK to feel too exhausted to think about the future. Things like planning social events with friends, looking for other employment, etc., can be a huge mental drain that, quite frankly, you don’t need right now. If you feel too exhausted to do anything other than just work, we just want you to know that is totally OK.