This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I wonder if you have any tips/tricks on how to keep focused on work when there is a major event going on? I recall trying to work for several weeks after the 2020 election and January 6 and know my work was not efficient or good quality during that time. I’m so anxious about the election results that I know I will be following all day and probably many more days after since it’s unlikely we’ll get results for some time. Focusing on work during this time seems extremely difficult and pointless.

Things that help me when I need to focus during difficult times:

•  Remember that when a crisis is happening in the world, it’s natural and human to be distracted. As long as your work allows for some ebb and flow, you don’t need to perform at 100% every minute. (Don’t take this advice if you’re performing surgery tomorrow, but otherwise give yourself some grace.)

•  Remind yourself that there’s nothing you can do to change tomorrow’s outcome. Whatever you could have done to help affect the outcome, that time is now behind us. (Unless you still need to go vote, in which case do that immediately, or are going to walk off the job and drive people to polls or make GOTV calls, in which case go for it.)

•  To the extent that you control your work activities on any given day, choose them strategically. Maybe tomorrow is the day that you’ll organize all your files and do other undemanding work, or maybe it’s the day to throw yourself into something intellectually demanding as a distraction. Know yourself and plan accordingly.

•  It’s okay to take breaks to check the news but schedule them so they don’t take over; for example, you might decide you’ll check the news for five minutes every two hours, but nothing so momentous will happen in between that you need to check more than that. The feeling that constant vigilance will somehow help is an illusion to give yourself a sense of control, but it doesn’t actually change anything; all it does is keep you in a state of stress.

And this one isn’t work-specific, but during particularly stressful events it can help to put energy into doing the kind of good in the world that you want to see more of: help others, donate to charity, be extra kind to someone. Time is going to pass this week whether you spend it paralyzed by stress or not; you might as well choose to spend it putting good into the world.

No seriously, how is everyone doing today? We’re coming down to the wire on the most cuckoo bananapants presidential election campaign in recent memory. There’s so much at stake and there are so many unknowns, a potent cocktail for anxiety. If that’s where you are right now, I hope you know you’re not alone. If you’re feeling confident, that’s great and I’m happy for you. If my Instagram feed is any indication, many of you have already voted and are volunteering to knock on doors, phone bank, or to cure ballots in swing states — thanks so much for doing that! (Greg Pak’s list of last minute actions is a good place to start if you want to pitch in.)

Me? Last week was a rough one — lots of anxiety about the election and other things. I’m feeling better this morning; I got out for some exercise this weekend, spent some really nice time with my son, and generally kept social media at arm’s length. Even though it’s pretty cold here today, I’m heading out for a bike ride this afternoon to load up on some good dopamine. I started season two of The Diplomat last night and it seems to have picked up right where it left off last season — the perfect diversionary viewing for me.

But I’m also struggling to work out what to post here this week. I am very nearly done with anything political in nature (I don’t want to contribute to doomscrolling) but posting anything else at this critical juncture, when people’s actual lives and freedoms are on the line, seems frivolous. I suppose I’ll figure it out, but heads up: things might be a little lighter than usual around here — or maybe the opposite? We’ll see.

In the meantime, if you don’t mind sharing, let us know how you’re doing in the comments.

Tags: Greg Pak · politics

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This is a great piece by Jamelle Bouie: Donald Trump Is Done With Checks and Balances. The first half is a short lesson on how our present Constitution came to be, which might differ slightly from the version you learned in school:

It is important to remember that the Constitution was neither written nor ratified with democracy in mind. Just the opposite: It was written to restrain — and contain — the democratic impulses of Americans shaped in the hothouse of revolutionary fervor.

“Most of the men who assembled at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 were also convinced that the national government under the Articles of Confederation was too weak to counter the rising tide of democracy in the states,” the historian Terry Bouton writes in “Taming Democracy: ‘The People,’ the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution.”

The second part of the piece plainly and succinctly lays out the stakes of a second Trump presidency (emphasis mine):

America got lucky. It won’t get lucky again. Free of the guardrails that kept him in place the first time, affirmed by the Supreme Court and backed by allies and apparatchiks in the conservative movement, Trump will merge the office of the presidency with himself. He will shake it from its moorings in the Constitution and rebuild it as an instrument of his will, wielded for his friends and against his enemies. In doing so, he will erode the democratic assumptions that undergird our current constitutional order. And he will have the total loyalty of a Republican Party that itself is twisting and abusing the counter-majoritarian features of the American system to undermine and unravel democracy in the states it controls.

What a sentence that is.

See also The Guardrails Failed. Now It’s Down to Us., also by Bouie.

We don’t, in 2024, hear much talk of guardrails anymore. And for good reason. The guardrails failed. Every single one of them. The Republican Party failed to police its own boundaries, welcoming Trump when it should have done everything it could to expel him. The impeachment process, designed to remove a rogue president, was short-circuited, unable to work in a world of rigid partisan loyalty. The criminal legal system tried to hold Trump accountable, but this was slow-walked and sabotaged by sympathetic judges (and justices) appointed by Trump or committed to the Republican Party.

When the states tried to take matters into their own hands, citing the clear text of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, a Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court stepped in to rewrite the amendment, turning a self-executing prohibition on insurrectionists in office into a mechanism that required a congressional vote those justices knew would never come.

Tags: Donald Trump · Jamelle Bouie · politics · USA

From Kenji López-Alt, a list of potential red flags that he looks for when deciding to patronize restaurants. “I try to avoid spending my money at establishments where that money may end up in the hands of people who are abusive or exploitative.”

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Historian and scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder has a new book out called On Freedom (Bookshop.org), a companion to his 2017 bestseller On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.

Freedom is the great American commitment, but as Snyder argues, we have lost sight of what it means — and this is leading us into crisis. Too many of us look at freedom as the absence of state power: We think we’re free if we can do and say as we please, and protect ourselves from government overreach. But true freedom isn’t so much freedom from as freedom to — the freedom to thrive, to take risks for futures we choose by working together. Freedom is the value that makes all other values possible.

If you’ve been reading this site for any length of time, you’ll know that I am in favor of the type of freedom Snyder describes. This one is going on the list.

Tags: books · On Freedom · politics · Timothy Snyder

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My 17-year-old took this Street Survival driving skills course this weekend and I recommend it! They learn how to handle their own car, how it feels to stop fast, corner fast, etc. You can see the kids level up their driving throughout the day.

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