A conversation about work-non work balance
We talk A LOT about work life balance at the moment and one key of this is being intentional about separating out work time vs not work time. SO many of my 1:1 clients have very blurry lines - or no lines at all - around what work is and with hybrid flexible working, constant e-mails, multiple time zones and pressures that is no surprise. Not having mental, emotional or physical separation from work often means constant exhaustion and feelings of anxiety and/or pressure. That does not make for a productive time at work or a very nice time away from it.
I share with you some of the strategies and tools that I use with my clients. You can read the transcript below to discover
- the 6 steps I recommend if you're looking to increase your focus at work and peace and enjoyment when not working
- the permission you need to create a balance that works FOR YOU
- some tips and tricks around end of day rituals and phones
May these be useful to you and your feeling of life!
Prefer to listen? Click here A Conversation About Work-Non Work Balance
 Hi, lovelies. This is Maude, Women's Burnout and Leadership Coach. You're listening to the Work, Family, Me podcast. A series of conversations with women from different cultures and industries around the world. about the behind the scenes of earning money, parenting, being in relationship and adulting all at the same time.
Here we will discuss the challenges, ideas, and support structures that show up in co earning dual parenting situations and talk through some helpful strategies and mindsets. Why? So that you, as a busy working woman, can learn from others, implement what could make your life a little bit easier, and share these with your family, friends, and colleagues.
We are at the forefront of working, parenting, and relating in a totally different way to previous generations. And there can be so much value in validating this and learning with each other. I'm so happy that you're here. Let's dive into the conversation for today.
Today, I wanted to do a little solo recording to talk about. That separation of work and stuff outside of work. I don't want to say work and life because we're alive, even if we're at work. But what I'm finding so often with my one on one coaching clients and in the leadership group that I was currently facilitating is that bleeding of work and home and exercise and calls and emails and parenting.
Um, As a result of, you know, the situation that we all lived through in 2020, where we were at home, maybe we've got flexible working, maybe we're entrepreneurs, maybe we're managers, maybe we have different time zones that we're needing to span. But what seems to have happened over the last couple of years is that line between when am I working and when am I not working has become more and more blurred.
Some researchers are calling that polluted time. So there's no time where we're. Kind of really at rest and we're not thinking about work. So we may be ending a day, um, on our laptop, but then checking emails on our phones or catching up on industry news right before we go to bed, or, you know, checking in with messages and our team in between making dinner or, you know, going to the gym, whatever it might be.
And. That's causing, um, a lot of stress, a lot of, um, feeling of always on, right? I don't have that time where I am energizing myself or recharging myself. And sometimes the feeling where I'm not looking forward to going back to work, or I'm not looking forward to doing the thing that I used to really enjoy because I'm feel like I'm always.
So I wanted to give you some ideas about creating that kind of separation. If this is something that you are struggling with or something that you'd like to create change with in your life. So one of the first things I might invite you to do is actually think about what you'd like your evenings to look like or what you'd like your days off to look like.
So bringing some intention to. Making a decision of, well, do I want to change the way that I'm working? You don't have to, of course you can check your emails and work at any time that you wish to. You're a sovereign, autonomous queen. You can do whatever you want. Um, and so really thinking about, well. What would I choose?
What decisions do I want to make? What boundaries do I want to experiment with around? When am I working and when am I not working? What would feel good and clean and clear and useful to me going forward? And so I'm saying this because often we, um, Choose, um, structures or schedules that we think that we should have and what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for everybody.
So you may see something on Pinterest or your best friend or your colleague or your manager may be working to a structure that you think you should work to because it works for them. That's not necessarily the case. So thinking about your role, thinking about your energy levels, thinking about when you enjoy focusing, thinking about the work that you have to do and thinking about, well, what would work for me as a separation?
What would work for me as a schedule can be so, so useful. I'll give you an example. Um, I have a client who really comes alive in the evening. She loves to work when, you know, less people are online. Um, she feels energized, then she feels excited about working and she was really struggling to get through her day to day in the morning.
So instead of kind of dragging herself through the day and, and forcing her work. Hours. One of the things that we discussed and worked on is, could she have conversations with her team about flipping her work hours? So she starts later in the day, she starts slower, and then she really hits her stride in the evening.
Is that something that's possible for her that works for her? Another example is entrepreneurs. You know, when you have your own business or maybe you're the manager of a team, maybe you do want to check in, in the evening, maybe you do want to have a moment of checking emails on holiday or whatever it is, maybe that makes you feel calmer.
I've worked with so many one on one clients to design their kind of, uh, Out of office schedule that works for them. And it's not necessarily switching off 100 percent and not checking work emails at all. For some people, it is setting an hour aside a day to check in with their team, to have some one on one calls to make sure that, you know, they forwarding what needs to get forwarded.
And so. Your balance of what work time is and what not work time is can really be customized and flexible depending on you. So bringing some attention to that, thinking about it, maybe tracking it for yourself, what would be really helpful for you, for your peace of mind, for your work, and know that this can be an experiment.
You can always change your mind, right? You could set some boundaries now and find, Oh, they're not really working, or I need to be available at this hour, or actually that feels really good and let me try it. And see if I can, you know, do that a hundred times more, whatever the case is. So I'm thinking about what would a work life separation be for you in your structure, in your role, in your business?
What would that look like in a way that feels really helpful? And I think really what I am inviting you to do with having that. Look at your own life and responsibilities and creating a structure that works for you is coming away from that fantasy that we have of this one right way to do this, right?
What you're trying to do here is create something that feels better for you. So let that be the priority. The. Second thing that I would invite you to do is to think about an end of day process, an SOP, a standard operating procedure, a ritual, whatever you want to call it. So what is going to let your brain and body know we are reaching the end of the day and we are going to be shutting down now.
If you're used to kind of having those lines being blurred and stopping to work on your laptop, but then picking it up again in the evening, or you know, checking emails on your phone, it gets really, really messy and there's no point where you're saying to yourself, okay, I'm done now. So that can be a really helpful thing to implement, is thinking about what am I gonna do to signal to myself?
And potentially to my colleagues that I am closing down for the day. Some things that my clients find helpful is maybe reviewing their priorities for the next day. If there's anything left over from that day that they need to carry over, um, looking at their calendar, upcoming meetings, maybe writing a list for themselves of things that they want to remember when they start work the next day or making.
Kind of a little task list on their phone. However, that works out for you. So really taking a few moments at the end of the day, and maybe putting that in your calendar at five 30, I want to start winding down. And so maybe there's a 15 minute block there of consciously looking at emails, looking at priorities, making a list, you know, kind of shutting down and orienting towards.
I'm stopping work for the day. So again, this doesn't have to look one particular way, make it work for you, but designing something that indicates to your nervous system and to your intellect and to your cognition and to kind of all parts of you that we're coming to an end. What do we need to prepare?
What do we need to close off? What do we need to record? What do we need to track before we really shut down for the day can be super useful. The next step within this is, um, actually closing down your laptop and putting it away or closing down your computer or switching off your work phone, whatever it is, whatever the object is that you work on.
Can there be a conscious kind of shutting down, closing it, and maybe even putting it in a drawer or putting a beautiful blanket over it, whatever, letting it know and letting yourself know it's over now. This time is gone and consciously closing that. Now for a lot of my clients, they may not have the same kind of commute that they had back in, you know, 10 years ago or five years ago, their work life may be a little bit more flexible.
They may be working from home. They may be going straight into something else. Um, they may have an office, but it's on their properties. You know, other people may be coming into their houses to work. So. The separation between work and not work time and location has also become a little bit blurred. So one thing that I recommend at this stage is to create a commute for yourself, create some kind of transition.
Um, in the olden days, we used to maybe, you know, take a train or, um, drive in the car for a while and listen to the radio, whatever it is, there was that transition time between. Work being, being done and then arriving into our home space or not work space or our friend space or our community space with some time in between.
So how can you create that for yourself now? What could your commute be? What could your transition beam? Some ideas that I have from my one on one practice is, you know, standing up and shaking, you know, so actually shaking the day off you just letting your shoulders wiggle or putting on a song and dancing to that or walking around the block or, um, jumping into the shower and letting the day kind of wash over you.
Um, with that intention of, you know, letting it drain away, uh, maybe just washing your hands and face. Uh, putting on some comfy clothes or taking your earrings off, whatever it is for you. That signifies physically I'm done with work now it's over and creates that moment of transition into a different version of yourself or a home version of yourself, or a kind of, I'm done with this part of my day.
Consciously and intentionally moving into the next day. So what can you create as a, as a commute or as a transition, um, physically to let yourself know on all levels of your brain, okay, work's done and I'm moving into something different now. So the next thing to bring some attention to if you're wanting to create some more separation between your work brain and things you're thinking about and the rest of your life is how you're using your phone.
So we have blended so much onto these marvelous machines in terms of access to industry news, access to messaging, access to. Emails access to, um, you know, team information or documents, and those can be useful things to have, you know, available in our pocket at all times. So that also can mean that we are turning into work or we are reminded of it, or we're checking in at work every time we're answering a message or we're looking up an interesting piece of data, or we're getting a call.
Or even just when we're bored or in between making dinner or while we're waiting for the kettle to boil and it really creates that kind of blur where you don't have the space to think about different things or be in a different mental space. Um, and you're constantly feeling that, uh, connection to work or that thinking about work.
So bringing some attention to how you want to do that on the macro level, that might be two different phones. So do you have a work phone and a non work phone and use those at different times in different ways? It may be looking at, you know, how often you pick up your phone habitually and scroll through what happens to trigger that kind of response.
It may be looking at how can you break that habit of maybe picking up your phone and going onto LinkedIn. Every time you have a moment and how might you do that? Well, one idea would be deleting the apps that you feel like aren't necessary or that you have a habit with that you're wanting to break. So can you actually just remove them as access?
You don't have them on your phone anymore, and maybe you only check emails on your laptop between your work hours and you remove that capability from your phone. Or is it moving it around so that you have more choice points? So something that some of my clients have done is create folders that are called work and like almost put a little sign for themselves.
Like, do you need to go in here right now? Right. So having a place and moving your apps around so that they're. Instead of just having that easy click right down at the bottom of, you know, things that you go into all the time is actually a process to follow where you're needing to go maybe into your, you know, second page on your screen and then click on the folder and then open that up.
All of those pauses give you the opportunity to think about, do I really want to do this now? Is this what I want to be spending my time on? Is this where I want to be putting my focus into? So if there are. You know, apps that you use a lot in terms of work messaging or work emails or industry apps or social media channels that you're wanting to move away from, then putting those separately and having a few more barriers towards that can be a really helpful way to start breaking the habit or becoming more conscious of it.
You might also want to move your phone. So physically, you know, when you're finished work, do you put it somewhere to charge so that you have physical space away from it? Some of my clients put it, you know, downstairs instead of upstairs, or they put it in the boot of their car, or they put it in their cupboard under their clothes for a couple of hours of just having that break where they are.
Present with their families or with their friends or with their pets or with their exercise and they're distancing themselves physically from the phone because that's what they find really helps to break that habit. So is there a physical distance that you want to create? The last thing that I would invite you to think about is whether you want to pull in members of your community as accountability buddies, right?
If you're wanting to break a phone habit, often the people around you can be helpful. You could let them know, Hey, You know, I'm wanting to change the way I use my phone in the evenings, or I don't want to be scrolling on LinkedIn, or I don't want to be checking my emails every 20 minutes. Can you please help me?
If you see me pick up my phone, will you ask me what I'm doing? Or will you let me know that I'm doing that? Because often. We are so in our habit, habitual behavior and in our habits that we don't realize we just pick that up, you know, as a matter of course, because that's what we always do when we boil the kettle or whatever it is.
So, um, asking other people to help hold you accountable can be a really nice thing to start bringing intention and, um. Uh, different ways of behaving into that. Finally, it can be really useful to stop and think about what you want to be spending your time on instead in those evenings or on the weekends.
So when you are separating out work from other parts of your life. What do you want to incorporate? What do you want to turn towards? What do you want to focus on? When we've spent weeks or months or years or decades, having that all bleed together and spending our time in a certain way in the evenings or on the weekends, there's a big shift here and it can feel uncomfortable.
We can have feelings of guilt. We can have feelings of frustration. We can have feelings of panic if we're not. Having the same kind of work rituals and the evenings that we always did or for not checking our phones. If we're not checking on what the latest message threads are, it can bring up some feelings within us.
Likewise, on the flip side, sometimes I talk about the situation where. Work sometimes feels easier than not working, right? Sometimes life is complicated and messy. And, you know, there's drama going on with our parents or different friend circles, or maybe we're worried about our teenage children. And so it can feel really good actually, to go back to work and get some things done and check off things off a list or, you know, be an expert in our field.
So either way, just recognizing that there is a process here of just You changing your behavior, you changing your habit, and that may bring up some feelings and bring up some thoughts. So it can be really useful to think about, well, what do I want to spend my time doing? What activities do I want to do?
Do I want to prepare for those? Do I want to invite other people in? Do I want to schedule them? Do I want to block time? Do I want to. Buy things or arrange things. Do I want to clear a part of my lounge or my desk, or do I want to get myself a coloring in book? So what are the things that I can get ready to make it as easy for myself as possible to spend that time doing things that I want to do?
If I want to be. Spending more time cooking, do I, you know, download a couple of recipes or do I go to the library to stock up on fiction reading books? If I want to create more of a reading habit in the evening, do I want to, you know, look at my board games and pull them out? So it's a visual reminder of me to spend different kind of time in the evening with my family.
So, yeah. Taking a moment here to recognize and validate that they can be a shift here and you can have some thoughts and feelings about, you know, not working in the evenings or not working in times where you usually maybe would have had that juggle of bouncing in between. Work and non work that can bring up some stuff.
That's totally normal. You're a normal human. Huh? Take a breath. Um, the other part is how can you prepare for and make it really nice for yourself and easy for yourself to have the access to the kinds of activities or resources or situations or people that you want to have in the evening. Sometimes we actually just forget what we like, right?
Because maybe it's been so long since we've spent that kind of time. Some of my clients may. Make menus for themselves of things that they enjoy, enjoyment menus. Sometimes we might find that the things that we used to enjoy 10 years ago are not the same things that we enjoy now. So what is, you know, this year, right now it's 2024.
I'm not sure when you're listening, but what does 2024, um, you like to do? What does she want to spend her time on? What does she want to do with her weekends? Maybe that's different to, you know, the you of 10 years ago or two years ago, or even three weeks ago. So giving yourself some time to think about.
What you want to do instead of having that kind of juggle between, um, work and non work activities and making that as easy for yourself to access as possible. So we've spent some time talking about, um, looking at how you're using your time and bringing intention to. When you're working and when you're not working to give yourself the full benefit of being focused at work and allowing rest and recharge in times where you're not working.
So really trying to create more of a separation. Then we've talked about thinking about what works for you in terms of a structure or a plan and making some decisions around how you want to spend your time. Maybe thinking about an end of day process for you. So what is helpful for you to do before you wrap up the day, actually closing down your tabs, your laptop, whatever it is, whatever you work down, work on.
So closing that and having a definitive end and maybe creating a commute or transition for yourself. You can't see me, but I'm doing air quotes. And then thinking about how you're using your phone. Um, so what apps are you habitually accessing? Do you want to change that? Do you want to remove that? Do you want to physically do something different to your phone?
And then thinking about what you want to use your time and energy for instead in your times where you're not working. So, I hope that this time has been helpful for you. I'm excited for you to go out and create change in your lives or not. You can also just listen and decide you're going to do none of that.
That's up to you. You're the boss. That was such a fun conversation to have. It's something that's been on my mind and has come up for so many clients over the past couple of weeks. And so I really wanted to share it with you. If you are listening to that and thinking, I do want to create change, but I don't even know where to start.
And you want to work with me. Of course, I would love that. Um, you can find the link to my one on one coaching program below, and I also have a leadership program that I run. So if you're wanting to be part of a small group. Um, to discuss leading, managing and doing work life balance within that, then you're welcome to get on the wait list for that.
Um, I really enjoy working with people who are juggling a lot of things to find out how they can be using their time and their focus and their precious energy as efficiently as possible to also have moments of fun in their day. So thank you so much for hanging out with me. I'll put my LinkedIn profile link below as well if you want to connect with me there.
If we're not connected, please come and hang out, say hi, and I wish you all the best going forward. Thanks so much. Bye bye.
Ah, I love having these conversations so, so much. Thank you for being here, for listening to the Work Family Me podcast. If you want to connect with me in real life, I would love that. You can find me on LinkedIn and I will put the link for my profile below. So you can just click on that and connect with me.
See you out there.