An introvert turns hybrid work into energy management

protecting energy – Catherine Fadashe, a 30-year-old communications and marketing associate at a UK asset management firm, says hybrid work forced her to build routines to avoid burnout: role-playing her way into meetings, choosing quiet lunch breaks, booking meeting rooms to foc

When the lift opens and she walks into the office, Catherine Fadashe doesn’t ease into the day. She starts counting down—five, four, three, two, one—like the lights have come up.

Fadashe is a 30-year-old communications and marketing associate at an asset management firm based in the UK. She says she joined nearly three years ago, right around when companies were easing out of strictly remote work. Her previous job was her first corporate role, at a strictly remote venture capital firm.

In that shift to hybrid work—three days in the office and two days at home—she describes having to learn how to protect her energy. In her account, coping isn’t about changing who she is. It’s about managing the demands of a relationship-driven job where she feels she has to be “on.”

She approaches the day like a performance. “When I walk into the office, I pretend I’m going on stage,” she says, using the countdown as a mental cue for “lights, camera, action.” The goal, she explains, is role play—something that helps her prepare to communicate with people once she’s there.

For her, work isn’t about showing up as her fully “authentic” self. She pushes back against the idea that bringing your real self to work is always the answer. She believes that—given her introversion—being fully unfiltered would mean not really talking to anyone and simply typing at her desk. What she does instead is bring “a bit of my own personality,” while insisting that her profession requires something different.

“I’ve chosen to be in this career and I know that it requires me to interact with people,” she says. “So it’s my duty to figure out coping mechanisms that work.”

Outside the office, she says she has to recharge as well. She loves time alone and describes herself as needing “quite a lot” of it. Corporate life can push people toward shared routines—she mentions that many people in the corporate space eat lunch together—but she prefers protecting her energy over joining group moments. She still goes out with colleagues sometimes, but she says she prefers one-on-one situations rather than group settings.

Between meetings and at lunch. she often chooses a mini walk—going out to clear her head and be by herself. She also books times in meeting rooms to get a chunk of work done. One detail stands out in her routine: her office has a library that “not a lot of people use. ” and she calls it “a great place for me to recharge and decompress.”.

After work, her strategy changes again. She says it depends on the workload. but she’s “highly sensitive” and sometimes feels overstimulated after work. both after the office and when she’s working from home. To come down. she spends “a good hour in complete silence.” She doesn’t like listening to music during that time. and she tries not to go on social media on her way to work—she wants to keep her brain as silent as possible for as long as she can.

“It allows my brain to simmer down and recharge,” she says, framing the hour of quiet as a way to let her system process everything she’s absorbed during the day.

There’s also a message threaded through her choices. Being an introvert, she says, means nothing about the colleagues she works with or where she works. For her, it’s simply about who she is as a person.

She links her view to the way corporate life is often structured. “The corporate world often rewards extroverts,” she says, arguing that workplaces should make room for different personalities instead of treating one style as the default.

The sequence she describes is consistent: she prepares for the social demands of the office with role play. pulls back during the day with targeted quiet breaks and less-used spaces. and then closes the loop after work with an hour of silence so her body can calm down and process what the job has required.

hybrid work introvert energy management workplace routines communications and marketing asset management UK workplace