Staying focused in times of personal turmoil

Often when we talk about work-life balance, we focus on ways that work impinges on personal life. Are you taking the time to take care of your physical and mental health? Are you nurturing your personal relationships? Are you giving yourself a chance to engage in hobbies and activities that add meaning to your days?

But, sometimes your personal life takes over everything. A family member’s illness or the death of a loved one can throw a wrench into the workings of your life. The dissolution of a marriage can shatter your world. A calamity like a fire can disrupt every aspect of your daily existence. When that happens, work may suddenly take a backseat as you address the clear and present concerns in your life. 

When a calamitous event happens in your life, you should not expect to be able to focus on work immediately. Indeed, you should give yourself the chance to deal with the immediate fallout from a problem as well as to feel the range of emotions that you have after a difficult life event. These emotions are often the chaotic first stages of a grief process, as grief is the generic term for the emotional and motivational reactions we have after experiencing a tear in the fabric of your life story.

After the initial shock wears off, though, you will have to get back to work. So, here are some things you can do to be as productive as possible under difficult circumstances.

Let people know

The most important thing you can do is to avoid going through this difficult time without talking to anyone at work about it. Even if you don’t want to divulge the details or have significant conversations, at a minimum, you should let your direct supervisor know what is happening.

For one thing, your company may have resources like an Employee Assistance Plan that can provide you with help you may need. For another, you are not going to be performing at your peak (no matter how good you think you are at separating your personal life and your work life). You want to have someone who can be in your corner if you make a mistake, have to take a few days off, or respond to a work event in an overly emotional way. In addition, your supervisor can pay attention to how you’re performing and may be able to adjust your workload during particularly stressful times until you get back on your feet. 

You might think that you don’t want anyone else helping you or cutting you some slack when you’re dealing with a complex personal problem. But, imagine the ways you would be helpful to a colleague who came to you with a similar situation. You would undoubtedly do whatever you could to help them. So, treat yourself at least as well as you would treat a colleague.

Give yourself some grace

Grief creates a cognitive fog. Prolonged stress hurts complex thinking ability by decreasing your working memory capacity. That is, you can hold less information in mind at a given moment when you are stressed than you can in normal times. When you are using less information to think, the excellence of your thinking normally suffers.

That means that you’re not going to work to your normal standards. You’re also going to make more mistakes than usual and you may not catch those mistakes, because grief is also likely to make it harder for you to stay on task and to be vigilant. 

Because you’re already highly stressed, you absolutely don’t want to compound that stress, as you might if you also start beating yourself up over the mistakes you have made. When you do discover one of the errors that is inevitably going to occur, give yourself some grace. Apologize if needed. Fix any problems that come up if there are any. And then, let the mistake go. While many errors you make are learning opportunities, when you’re navigating personal chaos, learning should take a back seat to survival.

Pick off small projects

Because your ability for complex and strategic thinking is going to be compromised in difficult times, your best bet is to be as productive as possible given what you are capable of in that moment. If you happen to have a great day where you’re feeling good, by all means tackle one of your more difficult projects.

In general, though, scan your to-do list for short-term, manageable projects that involve a lot of application of your existing knowledge and can be done with a minimum of creative thought. While those tasks may be the bane of your existence in normal times, they are just what the doctor ordered in times of turmoil. You can check things off your agenda while also staying focused on things that you are most likely to complete successfully.  

For those more complex projects that are still your responsibility, prepare well. Give yourself at least 50% more time than you normally need for these complicated efforts. You’re going to work more slowly, with more distraction, and with an increased likelihood of mistakes. Also, find a buddy to work with on these complex projects who can check over your work and provide additional sources of creative insight that may be beyond what you can do in the moment.