How can we slow down the hectic pace of our professional lives and find a certain happiness? Author and psychologist Frédéric Banville offers ideas for redefining our relationship to work and preserving our well-being.
Frédéric Banville, professor and director of the doctoral program in psychology at the University of Quebec at Rimouski, recently published How to survive your daily life at work: when Atlas meets Sisyphus (Press of the University of Quebec). In this work on our relationship to work and professional burnout, the author invites us to reflect on the frantic pace of our lives and suggests ways to rehabilitate slowness.
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Frédéric Banville, professor and director of the doctoral program in psychology at the University of Quebec at Rimouski. Photo: Jean Luc Théberge
Québec Science In the preface to your book, Sébastien Mussi, professor of philosophy at the Collège de Maisonneuve, mentions that the word “work” comes from the Latin tripalium which means “torture”. Do you think this etymology still reflects our relationship to work today?
Frédéric Banville Sébastien Mussi wonders if work remains perceived as a constraint. I would tend to say that our modern context perpetuates a twisted relationship with work. Through the book, I address the hectic pace of work and the obligations that we impose on ourselves collectively. I ask myself as a university professor: why such a pace? Do we still enjoy working?
QS You suggest ways to avoid professional burnout. Can you share some strategies to help you live your daily life at work better?
FB The most important aspect is to ask ourselves if our actions are aligned with our values. Before committing to a task, let's ask ourselves whether it is guided by our values or by obligation. This reflection on our values is fundamental to well-being. If we put what is really important to us at the center and take committed actions to move towards the thing that matters to us, we will make more informed choices. For example, if I work 50 hours a week and I experience pressure, am I doing it because working is an important value for me? If so, there is some consistency. We can also think about other areas of our life that we repress or to which we do not pay enough attention, such as leisure activities and family life.
However, a person who develops professional burnout can hardly take a step back from their situation. The work context means that, at a given moment, we have a somewhat tunnel vision of what is happening and we lose sight of certain benchmarks. In my book, I propose strategies to remedy this, both from a societal and individual point of view. This includes adopting healthy lifestyle habits and becoming aware of where I am, what I am doing and what is important to me. You have to punctuate the pace of work with moments where you refocus on yourself. It's not selfishness, but it's having the healthy capacity to take a sufficient distance so as not to let oneself be overwhelmed by obligations: I have to do this, I have to meet this person, I have to Have this meeting… These obligations overload the person mentally and psychologically.
QS You point out that the pandemic has probably exacerbated the confusion between personal and professional life, especially for those who worked at home. Can you tell us more?
FB On the one hand, some people have found remote working calming, but for others, it has amplified the workload. I will give a concrete example from my experience as a university professor and department chair at the time. At the start of confinement, we had to manage the pandemic itself, the premises, the employees, the teachers… Zoom meetings took place one after the other, from morning to evening, without any break. I also saw my female colleagues who had to juggle their children during meetings.
The pandemic has exacerbated the pace of work, obligations and reinforced this harshness that we have towards ourselves. And this was not only in academia, but also in other sectors of society.
After the pandemic, we continued to prefer Zoom instead of going to see each other because it was faster. But ultimately, I think we overworked our brains by doing that. In my opinion, this is not healthy for neurological, neuropsychological functioning or for emotional aspects.
QS Despite technological advances, our workload does not necessarily decrease. Why do you think we still persist in running like this?
FB Initially, technology was supposed to help us save time and lighten our tasks. But it has become a burden because technology forces us to increase the pace of work.
In the early days of emails, it was normal for people to wait a few days for a response, like a letter sent by mail. Today, you send an email and people expect an immediate response. We use it almost as a text message.
Technological advances overload us mentally when they should help us communicate better and be more efficient. How many hours a day do we spend managing our communications? This is a problem in the sense that there is no time to settle down and concentrate. Attention is never completely focused on what we are doing.
Is it useful to spend so much time on digital communication? When do we actually use the phone? Today, it's increasingly rare to call each other. In addition to overloading ourselves with technological advances, we dehumanize ourselves a little because we favor efficiency to the detriment of relationships and human contact.
QS You are talking about superposition of mental loads. Can you explain how this affects the cognitive ability of workers on a daily basis?
FB Take for example: at home, I have responsibilities that are part of my mental load, such as taking care of the children or managing personal conflicts, perhaps even linked to the fact that I work too much. When I get to work, I don't leave all that behind. I come with this emotional baggage. And if the work climate is tense or my boss absolutely wants me to submit a file, this overloads my abilities. Obviously, I am not 100% optimal cognitively.
My mental functions are limited and when strained by personal concerns and work demands, I cannot give my attention to several problems at the same time. My attention alternates from one problem to another. This lack of attention will cause a slowdown in my execution, cause errors or cause oversights.
QS In your book, you address professional burnout and its consequences: depression, anxiety, adjustment disorders… In your opinion, why is professional burnout still underestimated as a public health problem?
FB I think there is still a tendency to individualize the problem. However, not everything rests on the shoulders of the individual; the company also has its share of responsibility. On an individual level, we still carry the prejudice that mental health difficulties are synonymous with weakness. That experiencing fatigue or some form of exhaustion is normal and that it will pass. That these are not things that we should share with our colleagues.
There is also this difficulty in setting our limits. According to the companies, there are profitability issues which tend to dehumanize individuals. I am thinking in particular of the nurses during the pandemic: we told them “we need help!” » However, nurses are not just arms, but also heads and hearts!
Our capitalist system contributes to trivializing exhaustion. Individuals and North American society in general also see this as a weakness. Unfortunately, this generates significant social and economic costs. I think we should pay more attention to these phenomena. Individually, we have a responsibility. But employers should also, in the organization of work, modify aspects so that it is gentler for individuals.
Some companies are already sensitive to this issue. For example, in the university environment, a mental health committee and policies have been set up. There is an effort being made to protect the health of employees. The CNESST [la Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail] also requires the employer to protect the physical and mental health of its employees. But I guess if the company I work for is a tech giant like Google or Amazon, it might not be on their agenda.
QS How to rehabilitate slowness?
FB It's a question I ask myself every day, because we quickly get carried away by the hectic pace of life. Our society values speed, whether we like it or not. However, if praising slowness is important to me, perhaps I should talk about it more, set an example and talk about the benefits and positive effects on psychological health. To take less, do less and do better. Everyone would benefit from working with colleagues who are in good mental health.
QS Do you personally manage to survive your daily life at work?
FB Sometimes I think it's a bit ironic that I wrote this book when my schedule is so busy. But it is precisely in these moments that we can make choices. Otherwise, we end up finding ourselves like Sisyphus [figure de la mythologie grecque qui est punie à pousser éternellement un rocher au sommet d’une colline]to constantly repeat the same mistakes and come back to the same point.
Personally, management responsibilities prevented me from being fully fulfilled at work. When I retired from management, I got 80% of my time back, which allowed me to write this book. It also made me think about what I don't want to do again.
Today, I still have a large workload. There are sometimes stressful deadlines, but I have improved the quality of the supervision of my students, and that counts a lot. After all, the pleasure of a university professor is to teach and discover new knowledge. It is now a matter of keeping this balance and not going overboard.
QS What do you hope people take away from your book?
FB We often lack kindness towards ourselves because of the system in which we operate. But, at the end of our lives, if we look back, will we say that it was worth all this suffering? If the answer is no, then how can we live differently, despite the constraints of work?
