How to Work Through a Crisis

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-childish gambino: this is america

Here’s your friendly reminder that you can take PTO in a crisis.

Balancing work with being an aware human is hard. Functioning as if all is well in the world is a lot to ask of yourself. We’re knee deep in a prolonged crisis that seems to compound and escalate daily. We’ve talked so much as a nation about preserving our physical health during quarantine, but mental health matters too.

Preserving both is essential.

If you have paid time off and think a day off would help you, take it. Be thoughtful about what people may need in your absence, and who they can work with to get any questions answered while you are out. Try your best to anticipate what may come up while you’re not working, so that when you clock out, you can truly disconnect.

If your job is demanding and people rely on your output to do their work, taking PTO may not seem like the best option. In that case, consider resetting people’s expectations of what they can expect from you while you work through a crisis.

Depending on your relationship with your manager and how safe you feel, you may choose to be more authentic or less. What you say is up to you, and I encourage you to use discernment.

Here’s a draft of what I would say:

Hi Manager,

I hope you had a good weekend.

I’m really affected by what's going on in the nation right now and it’s impacting my ability to be productive today. I know completing the research for Project X is really important to the business, and I am prioritizing that work. You will have it by Thursday end of day.

Today I’m going to check in with my team and make sure everyone has what they need. After that, I’d like to take the day off. I plan to return to work, refreshed, tomorrow.

Please let me know if there’s anything else you need from me today and I appreciate your understanding.

Whether you take time off or not, the important thing is to have grace with yourself and to acknowledge how you’re being affected and what that means for your ability to produce high quality work. By communicating this openly to your manager, you invite them to support you at a time when you may really need it.

The alternative is to not communicate anything. The risk in doing that is that if you’re distracted and delivering subpar work, you leave room for your manager to make up stories as to why your performance may be a little less than excellent this week.

As always, the content from K!CK is written for the person who shows up and follows through. If you know you’ve been underperforming or the perception is that you’ve been underperforming and there’s a business critical deadline approaching, taking time off may not be the best signal to send. Use your best judgement.