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It is no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic has radically impacted our daily lives. Even as certain public safety restrictions begin to be lifted, it is clear that our psychological relationship to work, socializing, space, and so much more has fundamentally shifted through the trauma we have shared. With ongoing social distancing measures in place, our ‘normal’ ways of socializing and working have changed considerably, most notably replacing in-person interaction with virtual interaction.
As the initial shock of being forced to work from home and telecommute on a daily basis has waned to a passive acceptance of our new common reality our assumptions about what it means to produce, communicate, and connect has been transformed in ways we still don’t quite understand the long term ramifications of.
The Problem
At the heart of these shifts and ramifications is a question of how we as a society and as individuals relate to the virtual technology that is now determining our social interactions. Many of us are spending more time on our computers than we have ever had before. We make jokes about how we spend so much more time we spend answering email than speaking to friends and colleagues in person and we make off-handed comments on Zoom calls about how time is more meaningless than ever.
In these jokes there lies a much deeper and more profound set of fears and insecurities: will things ever be the same as they were before? How do we reclaim agency over these changes that seem so outside our control? What does it mean to connect and work and communicate in a world in which we are required to be separated by pixels and screens?
A primary element of the underlying psychology of the pandemic, especially as it relates to technology, is that it has forcibly invited us to ask fundamental questions about the nature of work, our relationship with technology, and our greater definitions of meaning and purpose in our lives. Some of these questions can feel incredibly unsettling. They can make us feel out of control, disoriented, and isolated. However, there are steps we can each take to flourish in our new normal without losing our agency or integrity.
Below are three guiding philosophical questions you can ask yourself or someone in your life who may be struggling with feeling a loss of agency during this societal shift towards greater workplace dependence on technology.
Guiding Questions
1. What is the nature of my work and why does it matter?
For many of us, the question of what the nature of our work is and why it matters does not cross our mind on any sort of regular basis. The pandemic has changed that. It is inviting us to think about the necessity of our job and the benefit our job provides not just for ourselves but for the world around us. Even if these are uncomfortable questions that may leave us not wanting to face the answers, these are questions that are vital to ask ourselves if we are feeling a loss of agency or purpose in the context of our greater dependency on technology.
Be honest with yourself—maybe even write the answer on a sticky note and post it on your desk; what do you believe is the value in your work? What is it that you produce? Why does it matter?
2. What do I believe about healthy connection with others? What do I need to build healthy connection with others in my life right now?
Many of us learn our attachment and communication styles from our family systems before we even learn to talk. These styles of connection play out throughout our life, growing and changing in different ways depending on our contexts, traumas, and experiences. But unless we are in regular therapy or specifically seeking out spaces to analyze these connection styles often times we act them out without intention. This pandemic has directly disrupted our normal social patterns. Technology has allowed us to foster connections with friends, colleagues, and family from states and countries away from one another but it has also created anxiety and barriers.
Because of the limitations placed on our capacity for in-person connection, even in the workplace, the pandemic has created an unprecedented space to ask ourselves about what we truly believe about what healthy connection with others in our lives looks like and feels like. Societal events like the pandemic that interrupt the patterns that we have become accustomed to in terms of social connection can be incredibly difficult precisely because they ask us to examine some of the most hidden and deeply entrenched assumptions we make about our lives.
However, in a world that has disrupted our work and social connections with a dependency on technology to be the portal which most of our connection occurs through, one important way to reclaim agency over feeling a loss of connection is to use the disruption as an opportunity to engage with your core assumptions about what healthy connection with others can look like in your life now and into the future.
3. How is creativity showing up in my work and daily routine?
Creativity is often pointed to in psychological literature as a key component of one’s self-concept when it comes to individuals leading a fulfilled life. The mass shutdown of public artistic spaces and the increased isolation caused by the pandemic has meant that for many of us our creative outlets have been displaced or transformed in some meaningful way. Similarly, since our workplaces have become collapsed into our home spaces, many of us find ourselves unable to disconnect from work in ways we used to, and this includes finding inspiration and solace in separate creative spaces.
Technology has produced many wonderful solutions to this problem during the pandemic from an increase in live-streamed concerts and new platforms emerging throughout the internet where users can more seamlessly share their creative work. However, technology has not been able to overcome the gap between virtual creativity and in-person creating and sharing of the creative process. This has led to feelings of disconnect from habits of creativity that we have become used to sustaining us in our work and life.
One way to alleviate feelings of a loss of agency during the pandemic is to intentionally reclaim creative habits and to take a deep dive into the question of how creativity is showing up in your work and life and if there are ways you might be able to integrate greater creativity into those patterns and spaces.
What Next?
These questions are intended to begin a conversation. The most effective way to combat a feeling of a loss of agency is to name it and to engage with what is at the core of the fear and discomfort. Our dependence during the pandemic on technology such as video conferencing has created a new landscape for our social life and work life. Even months into this new normal, the landscape can feel alien, disempowering, and emotionally difficult to navigate.
What is important is that even in the midst of this continued change we remain intentional about claiming agency in our lives. If you are finding yourself struggling (and believe me, you are not alone!) these three questions can help reframe a sense of loss and disorientation to begin to help you reclaim a fulfilled and purposeful life.
