Are you one of those people who reply to emails or messages outside your working hours?

Do you turn off notifications when you leave the office?

Or do you always keep your email open “just in case”?

The Right to Disconnect

The right to disconnect is defined as: “the right not to connect to any digital device of a professional nature, company software, corporate mobile phones, emails, or other work-related platforms”.

In Spain, there are two legislations that defend this right. One is Article 88 of the Organic Law 3/2018, which regulates the right to digital disconnection. The other, more recent, is Article 18 of the Law 10/2021, which regulates this right for teleworkers. This law was born as a result of the presence of remote work during the pandemic.

But Spain is not the only country that has legislated something similar. In fact, in France, the right to disconnect is so present that there is a law that prohibits responding to or sending emails outside working hours.

But, why is a legal framework necessary to defend the right to disconnect?

The Other Side of the Coin

Technology should not be demonized. It is a tool, like many others, and we must know how to use it. There are already several studies that talk about how we have created tools to help us, that are causing us many problems.

Paradoxical, isn’t it?

But undoubtedly, a world as vast as the internet and new technologies requires responsibility. Individual responsibility, group responsibility, company responsibility, social responsibility… And not only that, but also legislation, programs, initiatives… things that protect us and help us manage the negative consequences.

But, what are the negative consequences of not disconnecting?

Here are some of the direct effects of not disconnecting:

• Risk of addiction: like to coffee, alcohol, gambling… the internet as a whole is a very large world and technological devices undoubtedly generate an effect of “attachment”. That is, it’s hard to leave the house without a mobile phone (what is known as FOMO). We believe that if we do, we are missing out on something. On the other hand, there’s an “omnipresence” that causes carrying a mobile phone in the pocket makes us feel that we have many people “close” or “at hand”. That we are connected to them. All this combined with the characteristics of the Internet generates an effect: it’s hard to stop. It’s difficult to control its use and also… it causes dependency. If I don’t use it, I feel strange, bad.
• The constant connection to work-related devices blurs a boundary: that of the workday. Wouldn’t you work 12 hours a day if it wasn’t compensated or there wasn’t a significant reason? Then, why do you open your email? Or why do you leave notifications on “just in case something happens”? This creates an effect on the worker not only of dependency on that device but of “being burnt out”. In other words, it relates to burnout. Because it generates what is called anticipatory anxiety, doing something just in case anticipating negative consequences.
• Directly affects our cognitive abilities: it’s proven that a high level of dependency on ICTs causes alterations in our capacity for sustained attention, inhibition, and even in our memory. This means that the worker’s non-disconnection impairs their cognitive abilities and therefore, directly and negatively impacts their productivity and job satisfaction.
• Creates unspoken rules of behavior: that is, it’s not written anywhere that it’s an obligation but “it’s taken for granted” that you’re going to do it. As if suddenly you arrive at a job where many unpaid extra hours are worked. You realize that although it’s not in your contract, everyone does it and therefore it’s assumed that it’s normal.
• Negatively affects the ability to reconcile work life with family, social, or partner life. This means that it disrupts your leisure hours and also alters your routines not only for you but for the people you usually spend time with.

Disconnect, to Connect

In conclusion, the right to disconnect is necessary for several reasons. The first of them, directly related to the worker, their rights at work, and their own performance. It’s a reality that the “addiction” to the digital world in general has consequences such as lack of concentration, anxiety, sleep problems, stress, and other problems like obesity or alterations in our relationships.

The second, to connect with the real world, we have to disconnect from the virtual one. And the third, it is a matter of public health to legislate and act in favor of the right to disconnect. This is because it affects not only on an individual level but also on a group, organizational, and social level.

Have you heard of the term gaslighting?

Imagine this scene.

“Lara is a woman who works as an administrative assistant. In her company, no one supports or supervises the assistants’ work, and whenever there is an error, they are blamed. Moreover, the boss is constantly criticizing Lara’s actions. But not in a constructive way. Not even with evidence… rather, based on his personal opinion. Moreover, he seems to make an effort to make her feel excluded. They don’t notify her to go for coffee and during breaks, they are constantly whispering behind her back.”

What is the “Gaslighting” Phenomenon

The gaslighting phenomenon is a type of psychological abuse also called “gaslighting”. By definition, it involves a manipulation strategy that causes the victim to doubt their perception, judgment, or even memory.

This type of abusive relationship can occur in affective relationships as well as in other types. Among them is gaslighting at work.

In this case, it can be triggered by various agents (not necessarily a boss). From the manager, to coworkers, a competitor, or even a client. Moreover, it does not necessarily have to occur in the office context, but can also appear in online settings.

Characteristics of Gaslighting at Work

This type of abusive relationship has specific characteristics when it occurs in the workplace.

• Constant allusions, comments, and negative reactions towards the victim: whether by bosses, colleagues, or others, there is a constant negativity towards that person. This negativity can refer to their personality, performance, work, or even their credibility. It’s important to remember that no objective evidence or opinions are shown, but this negativity is based on biased opinions.
• Toxic or negative environment: filled with gossip, rumors, and gestures aimed at making the other person feel bad. These can be direct (such as public comments), or indirect (for example, being excluded from coffee breaks). Another indirect example could be blocking a promotion or favoring any other person over the said worker.
• Sarcasm and cynicism: a way to express anger and hostility disguised as another type of comments. This aims to expose the person, marginalize them, or even manipulate them.
• It may imply a status quo: for example, if you are a woman and notice the glass ceiling or are assigned tasks associated with “ordering and cleaning or caring” instead of “deciding, commanding, coordinating”. Or for example, if you are a person of color and you are not promoted, but your white-Caucasian coworkers are, even though they joined after you.
• Persistent unfair treatment: it happens if not every day, almost every day. Moreover, it’s something visible and observable by others outside of that abusive relationship.

Consequences of Gaslighting at Work

Given that it is an abusive relationship, it entails a series of negative consequences. It is important to bear in mind that the ultimate goal of gaslighting is to nullify the victim, making them doubt their own words. And not only that… but to question the things that he or she has seen or experienced, given the reaction of the gaslighter. Therefore, we endanger not only their judgment but also their self-esteem. These could be some of the consequences:

1. Constantly doubting yourself and your abilities or even your judgment
2. Difficulties in making decisions since you doubt your own judgment
3. Changes in the way you act or think to please the aggressor or for fear of their reaction
4. Changes in your way of working to avoid mistreatment
5. Decrease in productivity and attention difficulties given the negative load of the situation
6. Increase in stress and therefore, all associated consequences.
7. Feelings of insecurity, helplessness, indecision or even fear and guilt.
8. Constant apologies in almost any situation even if you are not directly to blame for the things that have happened.

What to Do If I Am Experiencing Gaslighting

Given that it is an abusive relationship, the best thing is always to seek the help of a professional who can assist us. In that sense, a psychologist will help us not only to work on the effects it has had on us but also to prevent future relationships of this kind.

In addition, it will be best to distance ourselves as much as possible from the figure of the gaslighter. That means if it’s someone from our company, we keep our distance from that person not only physically but also in terms of sharing space and time. On the other hand, it’s very important to seek realistic, objective opinions. Not those biased by those who are gaslighting us. Remember that gaslighting occurs through subjective opinions. Therefore, maintaining objectivity in self-evaluation and surrounding ourselves with people who do not emit value judgments will protect us from this phenomenon.

Have you ever found that no matter how hard you tried, memorizing a paragraph was impossible?

Or opening an email but suddenly… not knowing what you were supposed to do in it.

Or letting several misspelled words or spelling mistakes slip into a text.

Strange, isn’t it?

Stress and Its Symptoms

Often when we talk about stress we automatically think of the most physical symptoms. For example, muscle pain. Or stomach discomfort.

If we delve deeper into its symptoms, it’s likely we’ll next think of the emotional ones. “She’s overwhelmed, or irritable”. But what we probably won’t initially think of are the cognitive symptoms.

Some of the cognitive symptoms of stress are the following:

1. Difficulties in maintaining attentional focus

2. Memory failures

3. Alterations in decision-making capacity

4. Problems in prioritizing tasks

5. Feeling of “mental fog” or “brain fog”

6. Difficulties in inhibiting unwanted stimuli

7. Decrease in productivity, as a result of the above symptoms and others such as sleep problems or irritability

Cortisol and Its Excesses

Cortisol is necessary. Just like stress, fear, sadness, and so many other seemingly negative things, it serves a function. We need it to stay alert and defend ourselves from certain threats.

The problem (as almost always) appears when we talk about an excess of cortisol. From a stress reaction that doesn’t pass, leading us to be “flooded” with this hormone. When this happens, a series of cognitive functions are affected. Cognitive functions are those “higher” mental abilities we humans have. Like memory, attention, reasoning, planning… This is how stress affects these functions:

• Memory: working memory is what we use when we have to “work with” data, such as memorizing a phone number to dial it, keeping in mind the digits of where we parked to enter them in the parking machine, or retaining the 6 numbers of an internet purchase confirmation code. When we are in a situation of significant stress or have been experiencing chronic stress, working memory is affected by the hormones we secrete. Therefore, we won’t be able to memorize lists, learn new things easily, or repeat a command
• Attention: Attention is the basis of almost everything. If there is a high level of stress or chronic stress, our capacity for selective attention is damaged. That is, we cannot choose which stimuli to pay attention to, and therefore, we get distracted. Another type of attention affected is sustained attention, as under stress, the time we can pay attention continuously to something decreases. This is when we say we “have trouble concentrating”
• Executive Functions: When we have a high level of stress we secrete cortisol. The excess of cortisol interferes with executive functions especially in:
  • Cognitive flexibility: we find it hard to evaluate alternatives, we become “stubborn”
  • Planning: difficulties in planning things or establishing task lists
  • Decision making: the normal process is altered, and we tend to make more hasty or less “rational” decisions. Another possibility is that we overthink what we want to decide, getting blocked

As you can see, stress is a problem that generates many other problems. Not only physical or emotional, but also at a cognitive level, in performance, and in our productivity.

That’s why we coin it under the name “the monster of distractions”, although they are not the only thing it causes us.

Have you ever heard the term boreout?

Have you ever felt bad because what you were doing didn’t interest or stimulate you in the slightest?

From burnout to boreout

As you probably know, burnout is a syndrome characterized by physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion resulting from work.

It’s one of the 12 work-related syndromes and a cause of work leave in recent years.

But today, we’re not going to talk about burnout. Today we’re going to talk about a syndrome that might be on the other extreme: boreout.

Boreout is defined as “a syndrome encompassing a series of symptoms that result in extreme boredom, underactivation, and a feeling of being ‘switched off.’ That is, being at a level of activation below what we should be. And also, feeling emotionally ‘disconnected’ or ’empty.’ Just like burnout, this syndrome is associated with the work context, so it must be related to work and its characteristics.

Causes of Boreout

Just like in burnout, in boreout we talk about causes external to the worker. That is, causes that come from the work context, type of task, or any other trigger that is not the person themselves. Only if it is the worker who is unmotivated and passive, could it be said that it is not solely the result of something external to them.

Some of the reasons a worker may develop boreout are the following:

• Constantly monotonous tasks: such as copying data from one Excel sheet to another for several hours, every day.
• Tasks whose level of training or skills is much lower than that of the worker: imagine you are a teacher but you can only correct spelling mistakes all day, every day, for a long time.
• Lack of stimulation from the company: if there is no feedback, we don’t know where our work goes once we finish it, or we don’t receive a response from superiors, we can feel detached from the task.
• No clear distribution of tasks and roles: when we are not clear on what we have to do or feel that our specialty or knowledge doesn’t matter.

The Why of Purpose

When all these circumstances (or some of them) occur, it’s very easy for the worker to enter a phase of underdemanding. That is, they don’t feel motivated, what they have to do doesn’t seem useful, and therefore, they adopt a passive attitude. This further increases the feeling of “extreme boredom” and further detaches them from their role.

That’s why purpose is so important. When we talk about purpose, we need to consider several aspects:

Knowing why you do what you do: what’s the meaning of the tasks you perform.

Understanding the journey or path of the service or product once you’ve done your part.

Feeling that you’re part of a team, something bigger than an individual working alone.

Seeing that you have a future in the organization, not just doing what you’re doing now but that you have the option to move forward.

Seeing that you can improve and grow professionally, that you won’t stay in the same place, doing the same thing, under the same conditions for 20 years.

How to Prevent Boreout

There are certain tricks to prevent the boreout syndrome. Here are some of them:

• Offer positive reinforcements and feedback on the work done. This encourages us to see “sense” in what we do, and therefore, it has a purpose.
• Try not to overload a worker or group with the same monotonous tasks always, as it tends to be the main cause of boreout.
• Promote teamwork, as it improves cohesion and facilitates intrinsic motivation towards a task.
• Offer training to workers.

Let’s remember that offering an emotionally safe work context is necessary. And not just to keep workers more or less happy, but for a matter of mental health.

The causes of many of these syndromes are classified as psychosocial stressors, so a prevention plan in the company is necessary to mitigate them.

Going to the gym. Starting to read more books. Being less impulsive. Finishing your degree. Starting a new job. Losing weight. Gaining weight.

A Fresh Start

Every January 1st, in addition to the overindulgence that follows the end of the year, our planners and notebooks fill up with resolutions.

Resolutions about our physique, work, our way of being…

Resolutions and more resolutions that we take on eagerly at the beginning of each year.

But, what do most of these resolutions have in common?

In general, what most new year’s resolutions have in common, whether personal, physical, work-related, or otherwise, is the following… There’s a high likelihood they will end up in the drawer of unfulfilled goals.

If we think about these resolutions, we’ll see that most of them have to do with one thing: personal development.

Personal development involves changes in diet, physical appearance, our work life or context, or our relationships, whatever their nature may be.

The Three Corners of the Triangle

There are three things we need to consider to understand why new year’s resolutions often don’t work: SMART goals, the diffusion of responsibility, and the three Cs.

• SMART goals: The first issue is the way we set new year’s resolutions. Generally, we tend to set goals that are not specific and are not operationalized, meaning they cannot be measured. And surprise… if it can’t be measured, it can’t be changed. For a goal to be useful and to actually serve a purpose, it has to meet a set of criteria.
  1. It must be specific, referring to something very concrete about our behavior.
  2. It must be measurable, that is, there must be some way to check if it is being accomplished.
  3. It has to be achievable. Realistic. Otherwise, far from helping, it will generate frustration.
  4. Relevant, something that has real importance.
  5. Time-bound. We need to set dates, days, and amounts. Not just “this year”… We need to schedule them.
• The diffusion of responsibility: It’s important to realize that new year’s resolutions imply personal changes. Often, we believe that simply changing the year will close old chapters and open new ones as if turning the page of a book. In reality, the only difference is a change in the date. In fact, the majority of the responsibility for those resolutions lies with us, not the new year.

• The three Cs: Commitment, consistency, and count. Commitment, because it’s not enough to convince ourselves that we want to achieve the resolution, it has to be something we promise ourselves almost daily. Consistency, because habits take an average of 21 days to establish by doing something every day. Imagine you move into a new apartment. The first few days, since there’s nowhere to put your keys, you lose them. You need almost a month of leaving the keys in the same spot every day to automate the habit. The same goes for new year’s resolutions. Finally, the C of count, since setting too many goals is often counterproductive. It’s better to start with one or two and progressively increase them as we achieve them.

From Idea to Action

We must not forget that a resolution may simply be an idea. But we need something more than an idea to achieve what we want. We need an action plan. Therefore, the ideal way to successfully achieve new year’s goals is what we’ve already mentioned: turning an idea into an action, following the SMART goals criteria, having us at the center of responsibility, and adhering to the rule of the three Cs.

Otherwise, it will just be another piece of wet paper among our goals set while we eat grapes and toast happily.