You’re not alone when life events affect work

Cross-posted from Otherwise

Part of my job is being available as a “contact person” at conferences and other events. The main purpose is to address problems promptly if something happened at the event, but often I end up hearing from people who are stressed about something unrelated. Sometimes they need someone to listen to what’s front-of-mind for them, which has included:

• They lost a pregnancy and they’re dreading people asking them about it
• Their marriage has fallen apart
• They just lost a family member to suicide
• They’re having a fight with their mother about whether to make an expensive flight to a family funeral
• Their baby is sick, their partner is handling it alone, and they need to decide whether to fly back early
• Somehow everything just feels wrong and embarrassing and they feel like crying

And sometimes I’ve been that person. I remember sitting down with a colleague at a work event who asked how I was, in a way that made me feel it was ok to give the real answer. My real answer was “Two weeks ago I was on a beach vacation with my family, my uncle drowned in the ocean, and I’m, um, thinking about that a lot.”

Sometimes I’ve talked to two people in a row who feel they’re the only one dealing with something like this and that it would be really embarrassing for other people to know.

If you arrive at an event or at your job and think “No one will get it, no one else is dealing with something like this” . . . that’s unlikely. Every setting above a small size probably has people who are dealing with some significant life stuff. If they’re not dealing with it now, they probably have or will.

This doesn’t mean it will be the right call to tell your work contacts about your kidney problem, your partner’s drug rehab, or whatever. How do you tell someone in a professional setting that a personal situation will mean changes to your work? My suggestion is a vague summary:

• I have a health / family / personal situation that’s going to need more of my attention.
• I’m going to be out of office for X time / I’m going to need to reduce my hours to Y level / I’m not going to be able to travel on weekends as easily as before / etc.

This might mean pay changes, if you’re available for fewer hours. If your expenses are going up because of changed circumstances, and you were already working below market rate, you might ask for a raise. Standard advice is to tie the ask to the value you add, not to your personal needs. I think this might be somewhat different if you already deliberately took a lower-than-usual rate for ethical reasons, and then your circumstances changed.

In effective altruism work settings, we’re (fortunately) not all in our twenties anymore. Part of having a field where people can do good work over the years is adapting as needed to the ebbs and flows of people’s availability.