There was a time during the remote work revolution that I felt gaslit by everyone’s desire to stay home because, the truth is, I hated it. While nowadays I love that I get to hang out with my dog, don’t have to dress up every day, and that my schedule is my own, early on, working from home often felt lonely to me, a person living alone and who formerly met many of my close friends at the office.
In fact, when I think back to office life, I’m reminded how much influence it had on my day-to-day activities. In the time before, a particularly chatty day at work meant I didn’t need to make plans in the evening because I’d already reached my social capacity. And if I did make plans, it would have been drinks with coworkers or an event downtown. This rhythm worked for me.
But since the pandemic began and InHerSight became a remote company, I’ve had to shift my lifestyle significantly in order to achieve the same level of social wellbeing that I had before.
Social wellbeing is essentially the relationships and interactions we have with others and our community. Like physical and emotional health, its state can be assessed on a spectrum, with the polarities looking something like this: When our social wellbeing is poor, we feel lonely and isolated, and our meaningful connections are few and far between. Healthy social wellbeing leaves us feeling fulfilled, engaged, and content—like we belong.
The workplace used to be a huge contributor to many people’s social wellbeing, and the removal of said, we’ll say, passive socializing is what led me to reach out to Dr. Kate Sullivan about achieving positive social wellbeing in the remote and hybrid work era.
Sullivan is a work and wellbeing psychologist who teaches at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. Neither she or I are hopping on the return-to-office bandwagon—remote work is too good for too many people—so instead, I asked her to share ways she thinks we can all improve our social lives in an increasingly disconnected society.
Right from the off, she said exactly what I, the person who always wondered ‘is everyone else happily remote without me?”, needed to hear:
“Some people may be perfectly happy and thriving with online friendships, while others wither without seeing friends in person six nights out of seven. We instinctively know our own needs and boundaries—the trick is starting to honor those rather than trying to alter them based on what we think ‘society’ wants or prefers.”
You can read more about social wellbeing and Sullivan’s advice for crafting a social life that works for you in and out of work here.
