Mental Health and the Hamster Wheel of the Modern Workplace

As well as the day job at Casedo, I’m also Secretary Trustee of The Pixel Fund, a grant-giving mental health charity granting to charities catering to those under 26. As such, I’m very aware of the rise in mental health issues in this age range (probable mental health disorders in the U20 age group are now nudging 18%*) and how these can set issues in train for life.

• Still Taboo in the Workplace?

Mental health issues are on the rise at all ages, and in some quarters the argument rages about whether this is simply a matter of greater reporting of mental health challenges amongst the population, or whether that has been an actual increase in the problem. I think this argument is moot - if we know there is an issue, we need to know how to deal with it, and act accordingly, whatever perceived changes to the statistics.

In work as in personal life, many mental health challenges come from being overwhelmed. If it’s not the great challenges of the day (the Climate Emergency, the cost of living crisis) then it’s keeping on top of your family responsibilities or the inundation of the modern workplace.

• Too Much of the Wrong Communication

Much of this can be attributed to the way we communicate. As a case in point, email was meant to be the great leveller, the instant efficiency tool that gave us more time. It has turned out to be the opposite, the lowest common denominator when it comes to good workflow. Email leads to over communication.

Not only does it encourage over-communication, email enables cognitive exhaustion through having to switch mental tack with each email that’s opened, each pertaining to a different subject and/ or task. Many of us are familiar with this, and sadly this is but one example of similar tools that feel like a digital hamster wheel: the faster you get through your work, the faster it replenishes.

And the problem with email (and chat tools more generally) is that it’s often placed at the hub of what we do. Tasks are picked up through email and when we move onto the next task we have to dip into our ever expanding inbox to find that next task. Instead of communicating on the fly, choose when to communicate, things don’t always have to be done yesterday.

• Don’t Confuse Productivity with Efficiency

Plenty has been written about how inefficient this all is, and has in itself spawned the productivity industry, but productivity itself is the hamster wheel incarnate.

Productivity means doing more ‘stuff’ in a given unit of time, whereas efficiency, though similar, means doing that ‘stuff’ in a more streamlined way. Productivity doesn’t give you more time, you just have to do more in the same amount of time. Efficiency gives you more time.

• Focus on Doing Less, Better

Strategies to deal with ‘modern overwhelm’ should all point to doing less, better. What the productivity industry often fails to mention is that we have a finite capacity for doing stuff, and that doing less better means that you’ll ultimately achieve at least as much, often more.

There are many ways to do this, but the founding ambitions should be

1. Not doing what you shouldn’t be doing, and

2. Doing what you need to do, better.

• Don’t do what you shouldn’t be doing

This might sound trite, but you shouldn’t be doing repetitive tasks or stuff that’s below your pay grade. Repetitive tasks are what computers do best, find or create a solution that will do the tasks for you. It could be as simple as finding the right piece of software. The same goes for jobs that you are too qualified to be doing, there might be a cost, but your sanity will thank you.

• Do what you need to do, better

You are a professional, getting paid for a professional service, don’t scrape by with tools that aren’t fit for purpose. Find tools that not only make your working life more absorbing and focused, but ones that will give you a competitive advantage, that will show you are on top of your game.

As you might have noticed, both of the above could simply mean finding the right piece of software to do the job for you. However, if the solution doesn’t exist, create a workflow that solves your issues, or create a full blown solution yourself. That’s what my co-founder at Casedo Ross Birkbeck did when he couldn’t find a tool to bring a variety documents into a single space so he could understand and annotate them as if they were a single document, though still flexible enough to reorganise through drag and drop. If you want to take a look go to casedo.com.

Jim Hitch co-founded Casedo in 2017 with Casedo creator and barrister Ross Birkbeck. He’s been the Secretary Trustee of the grant-giving mental health charity The Pixel Fund since 2016 and previous to that spent nine years on the board of Southern Housing Group. Most importantly, he spends as much time in the outdoors as possible with partner and three daughters, preferably in their now beat-up motorhome. He is banned from going on about his family at work.

* www.researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/ documents/SN06988/SN06988.pdf