"No one designed a workday to short-circuit the human mind. Yet here we are-calendars packed edge to edge, people flicking between Zoom video screens like they're swapping oxygen tanks, and a quiet dread that settles somewhere around the fourth or fifth call of the day. Something stops working long before the laptop does. Hybrid work promised autonomy. Somewhere along the way, the schedule took it back."
"In that shift, a new unspoken rule surfaced-the Visibility Mandate. Nobody issued it. Nobody approved it. But its logic spread quickly: being seen became proof of being engaged. Cameras turned into compliance checkpoints rather than channels for connection. Presence became a thing to be proved rather than inhabited. The strain people feel doesn't originate in them. It comes from a workday built without margins-a brain running one continuous inhalation with no space to exhale."
"A product manager starts her Tuesday with standup at 9:00. Then a sprint planning call. Then a stakeholder sync. Then a design review. Lunch is twelve minutes, eaten while reading Slack. The afternoon brings three more video calls. By 4:00 p.m., she's staring at her own face in a small rectangle, watching herself nod at something she stopped processing two sentences ago."
Calendars filled with back-to-back video calls create cognitive overload that prevents deep thinking and genuine presence. People move between meetings without margins, turning cameras into proof of attendance rather than tools for connection. Gallup data show 54% of managers strongly agree they trust remote teams to be productive and 57% of employees feel trusted by managers, revealing persistent trust gaps. The Visibility Mandate pressures employees to perform visibility, rationing attention and reducing capacity for sustained thought. Hybrid work promised autonomy but schedules and visibility expectations have reclaimed control, producing mental strain, reduced engagement, and diminished workplace trust.
Read at Forbes
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