Very small and cluttered work rooms. Bosses who are constantly on top of you. Isolation from friends and colleagues, in short, an irritating situation.
We have all likely faced these issues while trying to adapt to telecommuting during the coronavirus crisis. But long before the pandemic, a group of people were already struggling with similar challenges, on an entirely different level.
Astronauts know about telecommuting
Think about it: no job is more remote than in outer space. Astronauts have to spend weeks, and even months, locked up with the same people. They face stress, loneliness and isolation and still do their job. Of course, they don’t have to deal with crying kids or cats interrupting during work video calls, but astronauts definitely know a thing or two about telecommuting.
So I was delighted that I had the opportunity to speak with astronaut Chris Hadfield about how we can survive and adapt to the new reality of telecommuting. Chris Hadfield, one of the most famous astronauts since Neil Armstrong, has been to space three times, including a five-month stint aboard the International Space Station, during which he recorded an unforgettable version of David Bowie’s classic “Space Oddity “, which has been viewed more than 47 million times on YouTube.
After the interview, these are the seven key ideas that astronaut Chris Hadfield gave us to prosper in the age of telecommuting:
Forget about the ‘it used to be’
First, Chris gets serious. Yes, many of us miss the “good old days”: working alongside colleagues, having a quiet office to go to, even being able to go out for a quick coffee. But we’ve always had to live and work within set limits, and now, we’ve just received new ones. Although the normal reaction is to rebel against those limits and remember how things used to be, the reality is that accepting what is coming is much more helpful.
Chris explains that he learned this while living on the International Space Station, where he spent 144 days in a row (146, if you count the round trip) with other astronauts inside a living space no larger than a modest house. In a way, he was trapped, trapped over 250 miles above Earth with nowhere to go. But on the other hand, hadn’t he been trapped on Earth his entire life, bound by gravity and isolated from the rest of the universe? Rather than focus on the new limitations, he focused his energy on looking for new opportunities (including playing guitar while floating) and made the most of the experience.
The belief that ‘everyone is an idiot’
We’ve all probably had “one of these days” lately. Meetings at Zoom are proving impossible. Companions interrupt you; customers ignore your suggestions; your boss doesn’t know how to share his screen yet. And with the family it’s even worse: the kids keep breaking in, the pets run around the house … you’re about to lose your mind and let them know how idiotic they all are.
Do not do it. Chris explains that he had many of these days on the spaceship. But he realized something: when all the other crew members were acting like idiots, the problem wasn’t them, it was him. He was the jerk. They only responded to his energy, and his mood changed when he perceived them. To regain her cool, she would take a break and spend 30 minutes composing and decompressing (figuratively, of course). It seems like an approach that could be just as useful here on Earth.
Connection matters (and now we have it all)
Chris notes that, on his initial flight in 1995, contact with Earth was limited to communicating with the Mission Control Center and the occasional ham radio broadcast lasting a couple of seconds. When it embarked on its third flight in 2012-2013, the space station had access to the Internet. He was able to communicate with people from all over the world using social media like LinkedIn and Twitter. For Chris, the psychological benefits were enormous , it eased the isolation and greatly enriched his experience.
The pandemic has caused disruptive changes in many aspects of our work and our lives, but it is worth stopping and imagining how isolated everything would be if we did not have the technology that we have at our disposal today. Social networks, although not perfect, allow us to share ideas and experiences with people around us and around the world. And, as much as we are all “apart”, the video takes those relationships to a whole new level. Chris points out that whenever there was a complex issue or problem on the space station, like a circuit failure or a nanoparticle experiment, they used video to get it right. So fire up that Zoom camera at home, even if you’re having a bad day!
The comforting power of inactivity
So yes, modern communication technology has made the telecommuting experience possible. But there is another side to the coin: for many of us, working from home now means that we are ‘always on the lookout’. The stress of work is never more than a Slack message, a Zoom call, or an old email.
Chris has a great analogy to illustrate the comforting power of taking a break and taking advantage of inactivity. As the International Space Station travels at 27,000 kilometers per hour, a network of geostationary satellites keeps it in constant communication with the Mission Control Center. But there is a small exception. For about four minutes, somewhere in the Indian Ocean, communication is interrupted. The Mission Control Center uses this interruption to go to the bathroom, have a snack, and return with charged batteries. Bottom line: We all do well with a little forced downtime of our devices. Don’t forget to do it!
The danger of the moment of ‘giving up’
This does not have much to do with outer space, but it does with the moment we are living. I know many people of different ages who are gorging themselves these days. They are tired of using Slack or trying to figure out how FaceTime works. They are burdened by new tools and new paradigms. They just want things to get back to normal.
Chris has a remedy for all of this. Ask yourself: What year did I decide to ‘drop out’? When did I walk away from adopting new ideas and trying new things? What decade or year have I decided to get stuck in? It’s a bit scary, but as we get older we tend to fixate on time and become more inflexible in our attitudes. Taking stock, taking note of our attitude, and making a deliberate effort to step back can be extraordinarily stimulating. And remember: things will never move as slowly as they do now … so buckle up for the journey ahead.
Redefine your ‘we’
This advice goes far beyond the dynamics of a remote office. When frustration overflows, in work, life, or society in general, there is a tendency to point the finger and blame others. We are right; they are wrong. We understand it; they do not. The ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality prevails, and the differences grow until they seem insurmountable.
From space, things look very different. Chris notes that whether flying over his hometown or over cities half a world away, the landscape looked very similar: river, harbor edge, train tracks, etc. Orbiting once every 92 minutes, he realized that the Earth was not that big at all. Deep down, human experience is highly homogeneous, and the differences between us are largely imaginary. His ‘we’ expanded beyond his own details and places to cover the entire planet. Now, more than ever, it seems worth remembering.
The future is more like Star Trek than Star Wars
I’ll get a little freaky … Star Wars , extraordinary as it is, offers a contradictory and even dystopian vision of the future, a fight between light and darkness full of intergalactic violence. Star Trek , however, offers a much more utopian vision: humanity (and non-humans too) coming together to explore space and advance science.
For Chris (and me too) the future that awaits us all is more like Star Trek than Star Wars . Yes, we face extraordinary challenges, from enduring the pandemic to addressing racism and inequality in the system and finding solutions to climate change. But, as a species, we are doing a great job of caring for others more now than at any time in the past, whether measured by average lifespan, infant mortality, global poverty rates, and many other measures. Times are tough, but there is real reason for rational optimism about where we are headed. Walking away, with that kind of anthropological perspective in mind, can make a difference.
Ryan Holmes, Chairman of the Board and Co-Founder of Hootsuite
