There’s no way around it: you can only work so much until you burn out. Perhaps due to the business mantra of “infinite growth,” organizations often expect that employees will work at their maximum capacity. Forever. However, high performance is not a static state—it’s cyclical, requiring alternating seasons of rest.

If in-person conversations and email combined, they would create the communication icon that is Slack. The messaging app describes itself with confidence: “It's faster, better organized, and more secure than email.” It’s no surprise that over 750,000 companies use it.

Regardless of your new normal—or however long it’s been since you even thought of the word “normal”—every engineering team has experienced significant change this year.

We’re not going back to normal, but we’re still going back to school. This academic year will be unlike any other, with many parents working at home while introducing their kindergarteners to Zoom.