Covid Fog, Crisis Fatigue and Other Blahness

The Murray Region where I live, along with much of Australia, are still enduring the floods and their implications. This is on the back of the implications of the pandemic which hasn’t gone away, and other minor crises that seem to come along. Last December I wrote Planning with Covid Normal in which some of the issues we face were anticipated, especially the need for improved resource management. Given that in many industries the greatest resource we have is people, we have to get better at our people management.

All our staff are suffering, along with the rest of the population, the exhaustion we are all feeling from constant pivoting, adapting and generally trying to do the same thing we always did but with so many more moveable parts now are having serious implications.

I have present a couple of seminars in which I find myself going back to Stephen Covey’s Quadrant Thinking. This is quite a few decades old now and there has been a wealth of information available to us since his book '7 Habits of Highly Effective People' came out, but the principle of understanding and dealing with the urgent and important has many implications for us at this time.

We commonly approach Covey's principles on dealing with the important over the urgent from the perspective of “this is what we should do”, feeling that we are being hit over the head yet again with “do more” or “do better”. But in our present, exhausted, or languishing (see article – Are they really OK?) state, it is helpful for us to look at why we are not being as productive as we would like. Exhaustion has a lot to do with this.

So how do we manage these dilemmas, personally and in our staff? We know that mental health issues in the workplace are on the increase, and generally speaking, people just aren’t getting on with each other as well as we would like. All of us have shorter fuses because of the exhaustion.

Covey’s Quadrant Thinking differentiates between the urgent and important, with four quadrants being:

1. Urgent and Important

2. Not urgent but Important

3. Urgent but not important

4. Not Urgent and Not Important

We become exhausted when we spend too much time in Quadrant 1 – dealing with crises, constantly pivoting, and dealing with time critical issues. This is where we all find ourselves post pandemic. The pressure that was applied to us all to ‘Get back to normal’ was not necessarily helpful. After dealing with the urgent and important matters that fall in quadrant 1, we rarely have the mental or emotional energy to deal with the non-urgent but important issues of quadrant 2.But this is where the best work gets done.

Quadrant 2 is about being organised, having all your ducks lined up, your data at the ready and your infrastructure in place. This can increase productivity ten-fold. Having that well thought out email making it easier to provide you with information to enable task completion means that work is done more efficiently. Sending it out promptly to give the other party time to prepare a good response is even better. This is also where team and relationship building fits in as well, to make sure the information conduits are flowing without hindrance or barriers. Planning means the work is happening even while you are sleeping. This should always be our goal, but spending time in Quadrant 2 is so much harder when you are exhausted.

Quadrant 3 is all too familiar to most of us. Those interruptions that are rarely as important as we think, and leave us with a lack of accomplishment at the end of the day. What seems important at the time may not be as important as we think.

Quadrant 4 is the issue we are facing with our Covid Fog, Crisis Fatigue and general Blahness. We feel that we, and our staff are just not as productive as we would like. Presenteeism, the phenomenon of workers attending work while sick or exhausted but not having the capacity to perform the required tasks is a reality for all too many at present, brought about by the genuine fatigue.

Just as the distinction is not always clear in the busyness of the moment between Quadrant 1 and 3, we may not always recognise that those ‘time waster’ activities in quadrant 4 may be more important than we realise in refreshing and revitalising us. These activities can just as easily be called capacity building activities that improve worker’s performance. There is a place for taking the time to revitalise, whether it be a recreational activity or a physical activity. In the workplace an organisational or physical activity can provide the circuit breaker needed to approach a task with a fresh set of eyes.

But we know all too well that the problem is people are so exhausted from their time in Quadrant 1, that they genuinely don’t have the mental or emotional capacity to do anything other than stay in quadrant 4, digging and refilling the same proverbial hole with no improvements or benefits.

So what do we do? We find ways that will genuinely refresh ourselves and our staff. We acknowledge that we have depleted our resources through our inability to spend enough time in Quadrant 2 rebuilding our organisational infrastructure. We acknowledge that we need to get back to relationship building.

With depleted resources and fatigue, we need to take baby steps. Things will never be exactly the same as they were. It is possible however that if we take the time to listen, reflect on the lessons we have learnt and address the needs, we can make ‘the new normal’ even better.

But we must stop saying let’s hurry and get back to normal.