It is appreciated when an expert explains something that is out of the ordinary and gives a new vision to a topic that has been discussed from all perspectives. This is the case of blurring, a work-related concept that has been at the center of social debate for decades, but has now adopted this very descriptive name.
Blurring comes from blur, the English word that means to blur, blur or make something blurry and poorly defined. Well, this term is now applied to the line that separates work life from personal life, which is increasingly blurred and causes work to mix with free time.
First of all, it must be said that there are many jobs in which the employee can forget about his work responsibilities until the next day. The point is that, in many others, there are tasks that do not always stay on the company computer: many people take them home or are required to perform tasks outside of working hours.
What should we do when we receive work messages at inappropriate times? Do we reject the request? Do we serve it? The founder of Menta Salud Profesional and vice-dean of the Official College of Psychology of Catalonia, Dolors Liria, brings a new perspective to this situation.
“We live in a world where everything is quite blurred, not just work,” says Liria. “We can perceive this as a threat or as a paradigm shift in which there are challenges that we must face in relation to the risks it entails,” she continues.
“The key to protecting ourselves from these risks is to be aware that we must have moments of disconnection from both work and personal life: distracting elements go in both directions,” he adds. And personal life also asks us for things when we are at work, and sometimes there is no choice but to attend to them. “When distractors approach us during working hours, by affecting the quality of work, it also harms us personally, because the satisfaction of a job well done is one of the great protectors of our mental health,” he clarifies.
The specialist defends that we must allow ourselves to disconnect from work due to the risk of suffering stress, anxiety or even burnout. At the same time, she assumes that a work request outside of working hours cannot always be ignored and that, therefore, it must be assumed that at some point it will be better to accede to that request.
Liria, however, makes a clarification: “In the same way, when we are at work, we should not only dedicate ourselves to work. As we have the possibility of being connected in all areas at the same time, this helps conciliation and it is good that we can take advantage of it”, although he clarifies that we must be aware of which distractions we can attend to and which we cannot.
That is to say: in the same way that in certain cases we can agree to respond when we are called for work during non-appointed hours, we should also allow ourselves to take an important call or attend to some personal item during the work day.
According to the psychologist, the risk of suffering from mental health problems does not lie so much in the fact of having more or less capacity to carry out a job that is asked of us outside of office hours, but rather in the greater or lesser difficulty we have in setting limits. to others and to ourselves. “Now, with this blurring of borders, the challenge is much greater. You have to know how to see which distractions cannot be postponed and which can wait for their moment, both during work hours and in your personal life,” she adds.
And he continues: “Attention and concentration are very precious assets, and they are the main threats from these distractors. And at home, the family also needs our attention, and this is not only important for our environment, but it also regulates us emotionally.”
Liria, by way of conclusion, indicates that it is necessary to accept the paradigm shift and value the advantages it brings us. “The changes generate concerns and resistance in us. If we remain installed in resistance when we see the threat, it will be difficult for us to see its advantages,” he explains. The specialist assures that “they are changes that are not in our hands. We must adapt to this new blurred situation in the most intelligent way from an emotional point of view, because this is here to stay. So the best we can do is accept it, but learning to set the appropriate limits.”
“It is important – he clarifies – to establish our criteria regarding what we should attend to and what we should not attend to at all times. You cannot make a manual a priori, everyone must know what they have to do,” says the expert.
In parallel, “it is necessary to look for moments of concentration at work to guarantee good professional results, which could include moving away from technological elements.” Dolors Liria warns that if we notice that blurring affects us and conditions our lives, the best thing we can do is consult a professional.
This article was originally published on RAC1.
