After more than two years of adapting to a pandemic, I have developed some poor work habits 

Behaviors are critical to growth and success, no matter what role you play in the proposal industry. For example, business development professionals must understand behaviors of their sales markets. A pursuit manager must know the habits of their clients to best position sales opportunities. Proposal managers must have knowledge of all the behaviors listed above… while also identifying behaviors of each internal team involved in a pursuit. Proposal managers think about key stakeholder issues from how directors like documents to be presented for signatures to how the printing team prefers requests to be submit.   

What happens when we don’t pay attention to our own behaviors? 

Take a minute to think about how your professional and personal lives have changed and probably changed again and again… and again since 2019.  

For me, I worked in office (in a suit and tie) every day. I then transitioned to 100% remote work where I still wore a dress shirt and tie but paired my formalwear with basketball shorts. Now I’m back working full-time in the office. I went from a professional environment with schedules, deadlines, and regular, structured behaviors. I had assignments, deadlines, and distractions that I controlled. Then, my professional and personal lives merged. I still had the assignments and deadlines, but my distractions became uncontrollable. My son suddenly became a stealthy, virtual meeting ninja. Scheduling now had to consider when everyone in my house was awake or at home. Offices became home and vice versa. 

After two and a half years, I’m back in the office 100% of the time. I’ve found that while I can still effectively identify and manage the habits of the teams I work with, I am still struggling to figure out my own habits. The lines between professional and personal life were blurred and then were sharply brought back into focus. 

Now I struggle with habits formed during the pandemic. Primarily, I became reliant on my phone while I was working remotely. My cellphone (whether through the Zoom app, Microsoft Teams app, email, or voice communication) became the most efficient way to work. From 8AM to 5PM, I was consistently on a device alongside my work computer. Now, being back in the office, this habit of always having my phone active (consistently available no matter what personal situation is going on) is not beneficial. Even though I’m in-person with my teams or have one consistent communication method, I’ve trained my brain to rely on a mobile device. 

Working remotely from home, I became attuned to everything in my environment. I would manage my projects, but I would also always have an ear trained on the other rooms in my house. Was my eight-year-old ninja sneaking through the shadows to interrupt an important meeting? Who is my wife talking to out on the porch? In a professional setting being attuned to every noise, conversation, movement, etc. is exhausting and awkward. 

Identifying the habits or behaviors you formed while working remotely is much harder than identifying the habits of those you work with. Sometimes it takes someone pointing out what you’re doing to realize how you’re behaving. When we look at the habits of our markets, clients, and collaborators, we look at key aspects like behavior triggers, environmental, and the larger context/pattern of behavior. 

As we all maneuver through our ever-changing professional and personal environments, don’t just focus on the professional behaviors that drive our success in the proposal industry. Look inward at your own behaviors as well. Identify those habits that blur the line between professional and personal and what sparks those habits. Create a support system of people and prompts that can help identify and establish balance within our ever-changing environments. 

About the Author: 

Marcus has been a proposal manager for six years. Prior to jumping head-long into a life of go/no-go conversations, Marcus taught English at several Kansas City area community colleges and wrote content for a pop-culture website. Marcus has a master’s degree in liberal arts from Baker University with an emphasis in literature and a bachelor’s degree in English and communication studies from the University of Kansas. His free time is spent sharing a love of Legos, Pokémon, and comic books with his son and traveling, reading, and creating art with his wife. You can reach him at [email protected].