The daily alarm set by Katie Lipp is not meant to wake her up. It reminds him to go to bed.
The labor lawyer in Fairfax, Virginia, said she has tried a number of techniques to set boundaries while working long days from home exercising her legal practice during the pandemic. Few measures work, as does the 9:45 p.m. alarm he started setting up last month, though he admits to having postponed it from time to time to fire one last email.
“You never feel like what you’re doing is good enough, so you’re stuck in an overwork trap,” said Ms. Lipp, the mother of a 5-year-old. “Sleep is the difference. If I have between eight and nine hours, I can face the world. If I sleep for six hours, it’s like they’re dead. “
A year after the Covid-19 era, many can relate. Employees say the boundaries of work and life were blurred and then disappeared, as waking up meant “always” at work. Experts warn that working 24 hours a day, while slipping meals, helping with homework and taking a few moments with a partner, is unsustainable and employers, from the banking giant Citigroup Inc. even software company Pegasystems Inc., are trying to get staff to call back.
In consultation with giant Accenture PLC, Jimmy Etheredge, the company’s CEO in North America, adopts the notion of “going back to lunch,” eating quietly off the screens, and recharging in the middle of every business day. . The company encourages employees not to schedule internal meetings related to customer business on Fridays and Etheredge has repeatedly told employees to be honest with managers, saying, “It’s okay not to be okay.”