Whether it’s at work or in your social circle, we’ve all encountered that person who loves to toot their own horn. Sometimes they can be just plain obnoxious. In today’s remote workplace, however, tooting your own horn to your boss and colleagues may be necessary in order to get credit and recognition.
The problem is that it can feel uncomfortable. Meredith Fineman, author of Brag Better: Master the Art of Fearless Self-Promotion, calls highly competent professionals who struggle with voicing their achievements the “qualified quiet,” and being one it could have a negative impact on your career.
“Today there are fewer hours for getting visibility and attention,” she says. “Many of us don’t have a vocabulary to talk positively about our professional accomplishments. Often, our role models aren’t good ones. We don’t want to emulate or learn from these blowhards.”
Self-promotion can be harder for women, adds Fineman. “We’re judged on different metrics and we have our voices policed,” she says. “Social conditioning tells us to shut up and look pretty. That’s scary and can lead to impostor syndrome.”
Since many of us are working remotely, we’re losing the tools we normally use for demonstrating our capabilities, like in-person meetings where we can impress others. We have no choice but to brag and brag better, says Fineman.
“Take stock in what you’re putting out there and lay a solid foundation with repetition and consistency,” she says. “Nobody will know what you’re doing unless you tell them.”
Where to brag
Her are three places where you can start promoting yourself:
Your Bio: The first step is reviewing your LinkedIn bio and using it to paint a cohesive picture and story you want to tell, says Fineman. “Your bio is a solid baseline,” she says. “Review it quarterly. This is a good bragging spot. People expect to see you brag here.”
For example, Fineman’s LinkedIn bio includes: “[Meredith Fineman’s] humor and relatability as a 13-year-long freelance writer on business and entrepreneurship make her a popular voice for a millennial audience and beyond. All of her side projects, from events to products to websites, showcase her ability to connect current trends with action.”
Your Web Presence: Next, do a sweep of your personal website and social media profiles to make sure they’re cohesive and include mentions of accomplishments. Fineman says every professional needs a strong web presence, including a personal website.
“Your company website bio only shows specific version of you,” she says. “Having your own website is the only place online where you can control conversation. This is where you can showcase who you are and share your personality and interests.”
Your Email Signature: An often overlooked place to brag is in your email sign off. Here, include a link to anything you’ve written or been interviewed for. You can also add a link to your website or portfolio. And if you’ve won any awards, don’t be afraid to include them.
How to brag
When sharing your accomplishments, Fineman recommends using three pillars: proud, loud, and strategic. ”
Being proud is most difficult for some people,” she says. “Acknowledge what you’ve done and be proud of it.”
Being loud about your accomplishments isn’t about volume. It’s about repetition and consistency.
And be strategic by sharing information where your audience will be. “If you’re looking for a raise, know who is in charge of that decision and determine how will can learn about your wins,” says Fineman. “You have to be explicit. People can’t infer things when we’re all behind screens. You have to tell them who you are and what you want.”
But don’t insult yourself
Make sure your self-promotion is net positive. Find language that works for you, but don’t verbally undercut yourself, says Fineman.
“People will add things like ‘shameless plug’ or ‘shameless self-promotion’ on their brag posts,” she says. “That is insulting yourself before someone else does.”
When people read see “shameless plug,” it can give them anxiety that they don’t know what to do with, says Fineman. “It can stop them in their tracks because they don’t know how to respond,” she says. “Instead, add, ‘I’d be grateful if you read or share this.’”
It can take time to get to a level of personal self confidence where you brag about yourself, says Fineman. “You need to get behind yourself even if you’re afraid,” she says. “If you don’t tell your story, someone else will. Fake it ’til you make it. Remove any negative qualifiers. And post it.”
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Many of us had high hopes at the beginning of quarantine. We’d read more books, tackle long-overdue home improvement projects, and make use of our now-free commuting time to get ahead at work.
But it hasn’t necessarily worked out that way. “People are realizing no, this isn’t the abundance of time and space we originally believed,” says Sarah Greenberg, a licensed psychotherapist and leadership coach. “Most of us are holding more than we’ve ever had before.”
Even small tasks, which seemed easily completed before, are feeling harder and harder to check off. Suddenly, minor, clerical tasks can feel like climbing a mountain, which, Greenberg explains, is related to a lack of “intrinsic motivation around them.”
So what hope is there for fighting procrastination as social distancing drags on? It comes down to figuring out why we procrastinate and how this common behavior fits into the current crisis environment.
1. Additional stress
Unsurprisingly, many of us are experiencing a high degree of stress right now, whether due to anxiety about the state of the world, social isolation, unemployment, additional caregiving responsibilities, and/or dealing with illness and loss.
These stressors can weigh on our minds and affect how well we balance each of these competitors to our attention. Preoccupation with what to expect next can also make you feel unsettled and distracted. “Stressors are heightened during the pandemic,” says Kaite Yang, an assistant professor of psychology at Stockton University. “[One] reason is uncertainty over employment and resulting financial hardship.”
For those fortunate enough to remain on the job or resume their once-furloughed positions, anxiety can still seep in and make productivity challenging. Oftentimes, this feeling of anxiety is a result of overestimating how many tasks we have the bandwidth to complete.
For a lot of people, anxiety feeds perfectionism. So, when it’s time to finally face a compounding pile of responsibilities, we avoid the slightest chance of messing up and delivering anything short of our best. “Procrastination can be a way to make that more concise choice, like, ‘No, I just really don’t have the energy for that right now,’” says Greenberg.
Finally, we’re dealing with many new distractions.”One reason we are procrastinating more is the number and variety of distractions in a home work environment—like homecare, childcare, other adults at home, [or using] improvised work spaces,” says Yang.
2. Absence of buffer behaviors
At the top of the workweek, many remote workers rouse themselves from a relatively banal weekend, make breakfast, and sit down at their kitchen table or home office to start work. All things considered, their commute to work is drastically cut down.
But while that may save time and hassle, a traditional commute can help with productivity, as it allows you to mentally prepare for work at the beginning of the day and then disengage from work in the evening.
Without these buffer periods, Greenberg explains, workers may struggle to find motivation and achieve work-life balance. “It’s easy to see how something as simple as a commute and location change could make a difference. In the office, we have all these things that set us up to do things properly, even if we don’t feel like it. When we’re away from the office and isolated, it can become a lot harder to ‘rev that engine.’”
In a virtual work setting, these signals, which represent bounds around a workday, are missing, and may promote sliding into procrastination or, on the other end, overworking and burning out. “The things we get in the workplace—some around habits and some around the environment—they counteract procrastination,” says Greenberg. “For the workday now, it’s really hard to have these on and off ramps.”
3. Shifting priorities
This abrupt shift to remote work did not occur in a vacuum. Amid the pandemic and national reckoning around race and police brutality, many people are reconsidering what they care about.
Anxiety is on the rise, making the demands of work feel secondary to the issues weighing on people’s minds. Workers may face decreased motivation when they consider what issues they want to prioritize now, especially in the absence of a clear path forward. “It’s difficult, come Monday morning, to have these tasks that don’t feel necessarily tied to the deeper purposes [and] themes in your life,” says Greenberg.
4. Fewer social interactions
If you’re no longer going into an office, you may be experiencing diminished social connection. Yang points out that social relationships, especially at work, can be motivating. People run ideas by each other, or get inspired to tackle a new project. “Receiving feedback on your work—whether from colleagues or the work task itself—contributes to satisfaction and motivation,” she says. “We know that workplace social relationships impact feelings of belonging, identification, and satisfaction at work.”
Virtual interactions may feel stilted and less emotionally responsive than in-person interactions once were, leading people to look elsewhere in their lives to find value.
5. Burnout
According to the American Psychology Association’s magazine, Monitor on Psychology, burnout consists of a combination of feelings, including exhaustion, cynicism, and detachment. Workers “switch to doing the bare minimum instead of doing their very best.”
Moreover, employees who feel burnt out are more likely to switch employers and more often to take sick days. “Burnout impacts both our energy—making it hard to do much of anything—and our self-regulation. Procrastination can be a sign or outcome of burnout,” says Greenberg. This means, when we’re heading into a burnout zone, our reaction may be to avoid assignments we know are important.
Procrastination crops up when humans resist confronting what they perceive are bad endings. It becomes a strategy for humans to emotionally cope with a perceived threat.
Fortunately, if you’re a manager, you can help your employees fight burn out. First, connect with them by proactively checking in. Adam Goodman, director of Northwestern University’s Center for Leadership, says burnout can be remedied through a healthy discussion about life and work. In order to prevent burnout, it comes down to showing compassion and interest in your employees, no matter how small: “An easy starting place is having informal quick ‘connects’ on a weekly basis. They’re as simple as a quick hallway conversation, email, IM, or phone call.”
