Daily Standup 16
- Managing anxiety on Sundays (the “Sunday Scaries”)
- Keeping your schedule intact after a disruption
- Resignations and revolts after Apple’s return-to-office
#sundayscaries #sleepschedule #apple #meta #returntooffice #technews #productivity #wellbeing
Resources
https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/sunday-scaries-are-real-why-ncna783186
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/02/sunday-scaries-anxiety-workweek/606289/
https://www.healthline.com/health/sunday-scaries
https://hothardware.com/news/top-apple-machine-learning-exec-resigns
Automated Transcription
Hello hello Tyler Bryden here, hope you had a great weekend. One of the first good weekends filled with sun here in Toronto area. Port Credit and had a great one. I’m a little red today, but feeling good and one of the things that emerged to me and a concept that was introduced by a friend Steven Taylor. Thank you for introducing it, but also was this idea of Sunday scaries and this is something that, until that term had been shared by Steven, I hadn’t really heard of it, but yet I had had this. Existential dread almost every Sunday. For years and years, I think since starting the first company I started in 2015 and it would just be this return to work on Monday and just this load of stress that would build up and I think sometimes that.
Because I’ve, you know, I was running company so much sort of volatility throughout the entire time and also just this open path of like you choosing what you’re going to do so. And maybe this is different if you have this experience, I’d love to hear your perspective, but it’s almost like when you you know you know exactly what you know what you’re going into work for that there’s going to be these tasks assigned to you, or you may be into a specific like function within a company. Maybe some of that Abstractness is is narrowed down a little bit and and reduces that. I don’t know. I’m never been that person, just maybe a thought around because I I sometimes go into a week and it’s like this open field and it feels like there’s so much possible that could be done and yet and with that possibility becomes sort of that stress of which ones to choose, which ones to prioritize. And then you have to work through these sort of paradigms of OK. How do I filter down all the possible?
Options that I could do every, every activity that I could do this week to work towards the most high impact ones. And so you know, this is a really fascinating topic to me. Of, you know, worked, worked and looked at, you know, mental health and well being, but also just productivity. And how can you be at your best performance during work? For a long time, and something that I’m trying to to figure out, and I think the other piece there is like we are in this culture where work is.
Works rewarded, strive for, and so I a lot of times I would actually. On Sundays I wouldn’t do work. Try to get ahead of a bunch of emails and stuff, and and then there would be this sort of freedom or relief that I had gotten that head start on the week. But then you would sometimes go into the week with you had already done some work. So do you. You had already applied some of the performance, some of the energy, some of the pressure. And so as you get later into the week, you can move towards and not full burnout, but that a stage of I’ve already worked 5 days.
I’m only on Thursday kind of thing, so I think there is a real balance and something that I’ve learned later in life is just when you have a nice weekend. When you’ve got some sun, enjoy it as much as you can because you have the ability to reset. You have the ability to come in on a Monday and do good work, and I think it’s better to. I think it’s better to have not brought that stress to yourself on a Sunday and and come in with a good mindset that you’ve enjoyed the weekend and then you can come in and and start to tackle these things. And just to add on one last note for this I think the other piece that can happen sometimes is on a weekend or whatever and like again, I’m a I have a great partner. I have a dog but I feel bad for anyone saying this to anyone who has kids like you get these disruptions to your sleep cycle and so last night just couldn’t really couldn’t just couldn’t fall asleep.
And and in the past I had had this historical. Oh no, that’s too bad. Now I’m going to let that bleed in. And now this is this sleep schedule is that is not ideal is the one that is now going to take over. So if I couldn’t fall asleep and last night I fell asleep still at 1:30 or whatever, it’s not so bad. But like if I fell asleep at two or three, the rest of the week, I’m also doing that. And that means that I’m either.
Those two things I’m reducing my sleep or I’m sleeping in in that cycle then continues and I think the realization that I’ve had here and I think it connects with this idea of sort of the Sunday scaries is that you need to make that sort of short term sacrifice and take care of yourself to then reset to reduce that anxiety, reduce that and get back into the schedule that is, is conducive to your optimal health or optimal performance. Your optimal well being. So I’m here, I’m OK. I’m in the shower at some moisturizer, but I had to do that push today. Get up early, work out cold shower, make sure that those things are taken care of, even though I couldn’t quite have the sleep because this does. I don’t want this to bleed into the rest of the week, and when you know when you’re running, a company doesn’t matter what role you’re in, you have responsibilities. You want to be at your best. And so sometimes those sort of short term sacrifices are made. So I just a couple.
Couple things just to start the week related to. I guess the time of the week and where it’s where it’s at and I’m going to do some more research into the Sunday scaries and why this is. But it is a well known sort of thing within within the culture. With the surveys and and and and and so. I mean, I don’t think Sunday scaries is the scientific term, but it’s definitely some anxiety that comes as people return to work for the week. And again I think very different on the situation that they’re having what you’re doing at work.
Excitement level everything, but it definitely does seem to be a commonality between people. So if you’re feeling that or you had that with you, I’m with you. I hope you got to enjoy your weekend and so just two other things that I wanted to touch on. I know that that was a 5 minute ramble, and I apologize for anyone who didn’t drive to create no value for it but a couple things more on the tech news side that I’d love to sort of touch on it I think are are interesting signs of the time, and one of them is this return to work for Apple and. There is now a group Apple together. Very nice of people who have then pushed back on this return to work, and so Apple said three days a week. Obviously they spent like I don’t even know how many billion on this office, and I can’t imagine how much science was packed into this building to maximize. Like again, the social cohesion the group dynamics, the you know, good work. All this wonderful stuff. And so like there is this.
Yeah, that you know this office isn’t so bad and there’s a lot of offices out there in the world that probably aren’t that great and so there is definitely people who have this sort of resentment towards people who are in the tech space. Who are, you know, complaining about working at the one of the world’s nicest office in the world. And and I think that could be reasonably looked at as yeah, that that is true. And there was this top Apple machine learning engineer who apparently was what they believe is probably the most cited. Metal expert at Apple and he said that this policy went against what he wanted, went against what his team, which he he had consulted with his team to see what was the optimal sort of work conditions and they, you know Apple did not rescind and so they they continued with their return to office policy and then and then this guy was gone. Now I don’t think that everyone has the same, maybe career opportunities that this man has, and so those are the other things that we have to think of is that there are a lot of people in the world.
You probably don’t have the skill set, but would love the opportunity to work at places like this. Go into the office and I also think of you know what I’ve read from some really interesting comments and commentary. It’s just this idea of. There are people who, even through COVID through pandemic and healthcare and all these different places that never had this opportunity to work from home. They never got a break through this pandemic. And as they look around and they see the people complaining about going back just three days, whatever it is, then that’s that’s a pretty harsh contrast to the experience that you’ve just had over these last three years. And I definitely agree with this idea. Like I personally don’t want to commute these long distances. I I find if I.
Start to have to build. You know those those opportunities for just stress or friction in the day. Then you don’t. You don’t have the same performance at work, but I also understand from an employer side why, especially when you’ve invested that much money, why it could be something that you see as valuable, or at least that you that you want to to make happen. And so I think this is going to be a very interesting sort of story to follow because there was this time where everyone thought remote work fully was here.
And was here to stay. And yet now we’ve seen a little bit more of return to this hybrid model and just had a great little event over the weekend that I went to and just says, you know, I was asking some people what they thought about this, and one of the comments that was really interesting is just that. The office becomes this sort of social place, and so if you’re in there whatever times a week, one if it’s once a week, probably, then it becomes even more like I think probably the more you’re in per week, the more social it becomes. So a lot of people that seem to be going in say a Friday, and instead of actually getting a bunch of work done, they’re actually that becomes the cooler, talks, the etcetera, etcetera. And so I think that that might be a trend that we will continue to see which is work and actually going to the office becoming more of a social time.
And I think other companies are sort of making that happen monthly. You come in once a month, you come in, it’s a social day etcetera etcetera. But if that is the case, and there’s so much talk, there’s so much communication between people sometimes that that talk that communication can then drive growth and productivity and innovation at the workplace. Other times it could just be people reconnect and having fun, which again is a valuable part of the business, but maybe not exactly what companies need to be accomplished, especially in. A difficult time, so that’s another sort of dynamic of this all. I think adjustments will be made and these are very smart companies making optimizations on the fly and sort of a paradigm that they are not used to. Then it hasn’t been here before, so continue to follow this track or any thoughts on this that would love to hear because I’m. I mean I’m trying to figure out. I personally I worked at home.
You know forever and I’ve worked on a small team and I find that. You know, I I crave this social, this social connection that has been. Missing with person, but sometimes just like a small team like it’s like when you’re a small team and you’re in person. There’s a lot of excitement and energy and then cocreation and problem solving there. When you’re a small team or a remote and you never see each other, there is this feeling a little bit more feeling of isolation? And because we don’t prioritize meetings all day, we we try to have our weekly kickoff or daily touch points. It’s not something that we’re necessarily.
We’re not, we’re not interacting with people all day, and then the nature of the platform. We’ve built. The software. We’ve built it. It doesn’t necessary. It’s not always conducive to meetings. A lot of people who are self serve users or messages through live chat, and so it’s not like I’m hopping on calls every single day, and so that means for me that I miss some of these opportunities to communicate, to have conversations, to connect with people, and so outside of my own work right now, I go, I look for events, for communities, and that’s something.
You know, I hope to share a little bit more here, as especially obviously localized to Toronto, Greater Toronto area. But as these things return to, as life has returned a little bit to normal and events start to happen again. Hoping to help anyone looking for communities looking for those conversations by doing some investigation, finding some of those myself, and have been lucky to find some of those communities already because that’s part of my desire and not necessarily fulfilled directly in my company as a small team with self. Serve SAS software, so that’s a little bit to start the week off. We had some talk about Sunday. Scaries I hope that you got through years. I hope you’re having a great start to the week. Take care of yourself and you’re ready to go. I talked about just sort of again with that, resetting the schedule, making sure that you are if if you get that disruption, whether for me sometimes it’s just can’t fall asleep at night or too early of a wake up or whatever it is that you sort of pushed through in that. In that first one. Maybe make a short term sacrifice to keep that scheduled the way that you want.
Continue to performance the productivity, the well being, and then lastly just sort of an interesting piece here on on Apple returning to the work. Some of the revolt around that a group that you know that has come together and then also sort of the the the feedback or the response from the larger world. Some who have privileges to work and have the you know the the the skill set that allows them to work from home and do that and then other people who who don’t necessarily have that and how they’re feeling about people. Having these experiences or pushing back against returning to the office, so that’s it for this first video of the week here. Appreciate you tuning in. As always, if you know if you’re on YouTube like and subscribe. Anyways, thank you very much. Tyler Braden here. Have a great week. Bye bye.
