Power-saving mode

Recently, my work space has shifted, and I'm finding it's affecting me much more than I anticipated. Previously, I had been in a large team room with one other person, and we had control over the lighting in the room. As we both have issues with light sensitivity, this meant that the overhead lights were off most of the time. Additionally, the team room was in an out of the way corner, so there weren't many people who would drop by just to chat. It was a lovely space.

Now, my desk is in essentially the opposite of all of that. I'm in a cubicle surrounded by other people, many of whom are quite gregarious. I have no control over the lighting, and there are overhead lights in addition to two bit windows; as it's getting to be late spring/early summer in the Pacific Northwest, this means a fair amount of sun. It's definitely been an adjustment.

One thing that I noticed is that being in such an open space, having so many people around and near-constant interaction in person, is a lot more draining than I had expected. I've always been an introvert, so it's not completely surprising that dealing with people is draining, but it's become physically exhausting. Lately, though, I've found a way to help myself stay focused and productive - I let myself go into power-saving mode for a day, as needed.

When you look at your average smartphone, there are probably a dozen different processes running at any given time. The network is constantly checking for updates to the various social media feeds and email inboxes; different apps are in a state of readiness, waiting to reopen in an instant; and of course, it's ready and waiting for a phone call. This drains the battery, and the longer it stays in this state, the faster the battery will drain.

Putting the phone on power-saving mode helps the battery last longer until you can recharge it completely. It shuts off some of the processes that aren't completely essential - maybe you can force an update to your Twitter feed, rather than having every new tweet show up automatically. Things like that allow the phone to reserve its battery and focus its processing power on the essentials.

When I say I'm in power-saving mode, I am basically removing myself from the in-person energy drain by working from home or in one of the quiet rooms at my office. It's turning off the part of me that needs to be "on" when working face to face with people, being ready to handle any questions or random bits of chit-chat that come my way, and lets me focus on being productive with the things I need to do.

Ideally, I'll be able to adapt and not need to save energy this way every week, but in the meantime this has been helping me. I know I have a lot of introverts among my friends, so it might be worth figuring out when you can go into power-saving mode yourself, or what that would mean for you.