718. Mastering Work-Life Balance

[00:00:00] Music Hey family, welcome to another episode of the Co-Linx Evolution. I'm so glad you join. You know my goal is to empower you with awareness and actionable insights. Let me ask you, did you know that 65% of people recently reported that they

[00:00:24] were burned out last year despite all the things going on that we believed and perceived were positive in terms of work shifts in the environment 65% 6 out of 10 reported being burned out. Some of this could certainly be due to the lack of work

[00:00:40] life balance. I know I've experienced those moments in my life, I am still on a journey that I have more work life balance. So today that is what we're going to talk about.

[00:00:49] Buckle up, we're going to talk about the what, the why and then what we do to improve. Hey listen family, I'm going to go first. I'm going to put myself up there first. There was a time in my life where I struggled severely, what

[00:01:06] work life balance. I mean severely. I had come through a season in my life where I did not feel I was validated. Some of you heard my story before my father left me

[00:01:20] way too early and two ways. One year, disappear for a minute and then he passed away. I think I was about 19 or so and it threw me into, I believe, unconsciously chasing performance as a means of validation. And so I worked tiredlessly and I developed a lot

[00:01:40] of habits in terms of how I will work. I mean it was almost nonstop. I could get up at four at one point I worked at Chase. I get before to the train station and fully get on the

[00:01:51] five, 14 train get off in New York. Get to my office, work a full day from seven to five whatever get a train home. Be working on the train ride home, get to the crib, eat some food,

[00:02:04] work more and did that for a number of years and then even after relocated and then have to take the train in New York every day. Got until I have the same thing get up before

[00:02:12] it gets to the gym. There was a gym near me. A LA fitness. I think that opened at five, beat hit when the tours open, work out, go to work, get to my office, pridefully by

[00:02:24] 630 quarter to 7 same thing. Work all day and at the time I also had some global responsibilities. So there was the even driving to work. Maybe I'd be on the phone with some people in London or overseas and we had some operations and Indian things like that.

[00:02:39] But it got to a point where I was totally consumed by work. And honestly, I think I was totally okay with it. But it was not healthy. It was not healthy at all. And so once I was able to

[00:02:52] realize it wasn't healthy, I was able to start doing some things to peel out of it. And so it has been a journey for me and it continues to be quite not to see. I'm very intentional

[00:03:04] about trying to do things to manage my schedule in the way where I am not over balancing work and I think that's a phrase I want to make sure you use. It's balance is a big part of this.

[00:03:15] And yeah, getting to a point where I can say yes, I have the balance I want in my life. But I would say that it's a high level point of awareness. I'm not saying I've got to figure

[00:03:27] it out. Definitely better than where I was at one point. But I'm not saying I'm done. I keep it on my awareness. Look out chart if you will because I want to make sure I'm doing better at it.

[00:03:37] And again, just get grounded in some data as always according to HRDives 65% of employees reported feeling burned out over the past year. Now think about that. That's six out of 10 at a time

[00:03:50] when a lot of folks were still working from home. Right. So one of the things that happened during the pandemic is we saw and fell and perceived that people were doing so much better having more flexibility now. One of the, let's call it, upsides of the pandemic. People

[00:04:08] realizing that more could be done from home, productively, etc. Being able to be with family more, take care of child care, getting a child to and fro, getting to after school events.

[00:04:18] One of the case may be, but now being able to do it from home allowed in that flexibility. We guess what? Six out of 10 is still saying I feel burned out. And so let's talk about work life

[00:04:28] balance. Let's talk about what it is. And I think the first thing I want to say about work life balance is that it's really about ensuring that your job doesn't take over your life,

[00:04:39] but enhances it. Right? We don't live to work. We work to live. And like I told you, I was off balance for years. I mean, at least a decade off balance. And that's the whole thing

[00:04:53] about work life balance. You want to make sure you're ensuring your job doesn't take over your life, but enhances it. I think the second thing to understand about work life balance is that each person's balance might look different. I'm still a 4 a.m. get up person,

[00:05:08] but I feel like I'm in bed about it. I get up a 4 a.m. because between 4 or 5 because it feels good for me to get certain things done early in the morning and get to the office by

[00:05:18] certain time. I feel good in that place when I've tried to do a later time, it forms some feelings of discomfort for me. And I can go far as anxiety, but it's definitely

[00:05:31] uncomfortable. I feel like I'm late. I like to get early and do a lot of things before it gets quote unquote noisy, right? Before everyone else is on a road and all those different things. That's

[00:05:42] just personal preference, but I'm still able to have the balance because I'm managing my work day, et cetera. And so I just say it to say, everybody's version of work life balance is going

[00:05:53] to look slightly different because we are different people. So let me talk about some of the reasons why work life balance is important. I mean, some of it was in the what, right? That we don't

[00:06:06] live to work. We work to live and that work and jobs should not take over our life, but enhance it. Some of the why comes down to health as an example. And so it's like having a great insurance policy

[00:06:19] in terms of your health. If you, if you could safeguard your health, your happiness and productivity, that is the thing I think most of us want to do. Like if you ask the average person,

[00:06:29] would you like to safeguard your health, your happiness, and your productivity? Why sure? I mean, it's like asking a person, would you, do you want a free dollar? Who would not say, well, yes,

[00:06:39] they're looking at you. Of course, to see if there's a catch, but anytime you offer someone something like that, the obvious answer is yes. And so when it comes to work life balance, it answers that question. Do you want health, happiness and productivity? Yes,

[00:06:55] then you need some work life balance. It's undisputable that it needs to be in the mix. If you want to have those three things, would you like to have a wonderful, loving relationship with just a significant other? Yes, then you need work life balance. It's undeniable that

[00:07:11] I have a needs to be in the mix. Right, if you want those things, you have to balance out how much time you devote to those things. It is impossible to receive the return on something without the

[00:07:25] investment in it. Technomics is mathematics, just logical. I was not going to say, but if you can hit and so investment of your time matters and the things you feed will grow. And so you have to

[00:07:40] ask yourself, man, am I investing in those things I want to grow personally? Am I investing in the right things? And by the way, if you want to talk about the other side of it, it will help prevent burnout

[00:07:52] personally. Like I said, 65% six out of 10 people, six and a half out of 10 people say burned out of the past year. Despite all the things we've been seeing in terms of the perceived

[00:08:04] value of working from home, etc., people still feel burned out, which also is a good point to underscore where you are does not necessarily dictate whether you will have balance in that. I mean, where you work home office, Starbucks, corporate space, etc., we're talking about a behavioral thing,

[00:08:23] not a location thing, which is so important. It's a behavioral thing. It's easy to adopt the habit of being a workaholic who I said the word, yes, it's a workaholic. The boy,

[00:08:36] she was a workaholic. And that's the workard. Don't give me wrong, but I feel like I have better balance. Okay. The second thing then is if you subscribe to the belief and if you want those things

[00:08:49] happiness, productivity, health, great relationships with people, what are the signs then of where you are? And I want to help you unpack some signs. I had a great friend share something with me a few

[00:09:03] years ago that I keep around as soon as I start thinking about this topic, I just came right to my mind. This is a wonderful tool and it's called the wheel of life. You can go to the

[00:09:16] CoilingSolution.com for slash resources and you can download the wheel of life. And when I come back, I'm going to talk to you about it. Hopefully you'll download it really quick. And when I come back,

[00:09:28] I want to walk you through how you use the wheel of life. The wheel of life to me is a powerful tool. Hopefully you want to the CoilingSolution.com for slash resources and download it. I love it because

[00:09:43] well, maybe because I'm a visual person. But the other thing I love about it is it's substance base. It helps you get thoughts out of your head on to paper. I'm a firm belief. I said a lot

[00:09:55] of times we can do mental gymnastics until the cows come home and moving from the mental gymnastics to begin writing something on a page has power to it. Right? The Bible says, right, you're

[00:10:09] vision making a plane. This is, I would say akin to writing your vision of how you want to spend your time in your life. None of us getting the extra 24 hours a day, seven days a week,

[00:10:21] three 65 year. We all get the same allocation. We don't know how long we will have it, which is important. And so being intentional about how we use it is powerful. And so the wheel of life asks you to do

[00:10:36] things. Oh, excuse me, two, three things. It asks you to use these eight sections in the wheel. Let me tell you what the eight sections say. So imagine a wheel cutting to eight equally

[00:10:47] eight equal spaces and some of the titles are work finances, health, family and friends is one. Significant other romance partner is fifth. Personal growth, self development is sixth. A fun recreation and leisure seven spiritual outies eight. And it asks you, it says, please challenge,

[00:11:10] split or rename any categories. So that's the first thing. You can change the categories, the best suits you're wording, to best suit the areas that are most important to you. And therefore each section is says right down a few key points that describe what success

[00:11:26] feels like to you and each area of that. So what does success feel like to you in health? What does it feel like in terms of your family and friends and those relationships?

[00:11:36] What does it feel like in terms of your spirituality and your walker Christ? What does it feel like in terms of personal development, self development? And then it says next, take the

[00:11:47] taking the center of the wheel as zero and the outer edge as 10 rate your level of satisfaction with each area out of 10. By drawing a straight line or curve line to create a new outer edge.

[00:12:01] Right? So you started with the wheel that was nice and round. But now it only stays fully nice and round for example is if everything was a 10 and you and I both know, you will not rate all the items

[00:12:15] a 10 on a scale of zero to 10 in terms of satisfaction. So some items may be a seven. Some of you may say man, this is more like a four I've been totally missing my time my family and friends.

[00:12:27] My health, man, I've been good this year. I've been proactive. I've been doing those checkups. I've been working out. I've been changing some of my eating habits. I'm going to give that

[00:12:34] at eight and so on and so forth. And then when you're done and you make the changes to the outer edge based on it being 10 or less now, you'll see what your wheel looks like. And you will notice

[00:12:46] visually that it is not a smooth running wheel. It would be bumpy if you took off in the parking lot with tires like that. To me, it's an encouragement to have that vision go.

[00:13:01] Like for example, it doesn't mean everything has to be a 10 but if I have a number of things that are eight and a number that are five and four, it's much more life-sided probably than I'm comfortable with.

[00:13:13] Are the better if they were all at least sevens, right? Or at least they would equal in terms of how I use my time and invest in my time because then it could be a matter. I'm just a heart greater on

[00:13:25] myself and I just refuse to give myself a 10. But if you find again, the imbalance between the numbers and hopefully some areas where you say, wow, I am short of where I want to go.

[00:13:40] But man, I can see how to get there. Man, I can see how to invest some time differently, how to allocate time differently. That helps you now have a sign of where you want to go. We need that

[00:13:53] visual cue of where to go. And so that's one sign, another sign of an unhealthy work-life balance is obvious. Chronic stress building up on you, you can feel when chronic stress is building up

[00:14:05] one of you feel uneasy. You can't seem to relax. You go to bed thinking about the job, you wake up thinking about the job. Now, some will say and I say this sometimes too,

[00:14:14] that's a level of excitement. That could be true. When you have a vision about something you're trying to accomplish, you go to bed thinking about it, you go to bed wake up. But when you

[00:14:23] went into about what's in your end bin, when it's about you feel like you're late on the projects on a so-forfe and you can't let that go, then you have to consider the stress build up.

[00:14:34] You have to consider the inability to wind down at the end of your quote-unquote workday and transition into your personal time, your time with your family and loved ones, et cetera. You have to think

[00:14:45] about those routines. Some say for example, don't bring the screens into your bedroom area. Meaning your iPhone, your iPad, your laptop, etc., leave that away. Some say at least two hours before bedtime detach from screens. Not only not leave them there, don't hear out of

[00:15:02] living room at all. You know, nine o'clock and then think you're going to roll into the bedroom and peacefully go to sleep at 905. You have to consider that transition time. That's one thing.

[00:15:13] It's another sign. That's not number two after the will. Sign number three is feeling like you are going through the motions. Now, when I say that, what comes to mind? Some of us feel that

[00:15:24] felt that feeling before, you feel like I don't even know how I got to work today. I got up and somehow I'm here. You can't remember anything else. You are doing this thing,

[00:15:35] like you want autopilot, right? If I watch George Jackson, Jackson's when he was going to work and how he, you know, but blood blood getting the card, the briefcase turns into a car,

[00:15:43] just to work, the card turns back into a briefcase, going to so forth. And he's just, he's just going through it. It doesn't seem to be a lot of consciousness and, in terms of, you know, what he's doing himself in, having some coffee and maybe doing a

[00:15:58] devotional, maybe studying the Bible reading the 10 pages of a good book, whether the case may be, that's seem like he's immersed in the moment. Now, he's just going through the moments that the moments are taking him along, him not controlling or being in the part of the moment.

[00:16:14] And that's what I encourage you to do. Think about some of those signs used the will. And when we come back, let's talk about some ways to regain it. Now if we have sight of it,

[00:16:24] how do we regain our work life balance? So the question for us is, how do we regain our work life balance? How might you regain it? I gave you the first piece which I believe is recognition

[00:16:39] and acknowledgement awareness, right? Using the wheel of life tool as well as those other signs I highlighted in terms of understanding where you are, you know, self-assessment can be so rich in terms of understanding what problem are you trying to solve? Have you heard that expression?

[00:16:56] The, the, the, the, the, the, the getting to the solution starts by asking great questions. What problem am I trying to solve is a great place to start? And so the self-assessment piece, the

[00:17:06] will a life in those other signs I talked about start there. The second thing is plan ahead. You know, if you want to be more intentional about how you invest your time, calendar rising and prioritization can play a big role in that. When you calendar rise,

[00:17:22] what you're going to do? I don't know about you. I am a person that loves to live by my calendar. There's not on the calendar. Man, we got a challenge like, I just have a lawyer. I chase a loved

[00:17:35] when we go up to, we be working on major contracts and so on and so forth. And listen, if you're working on a deal, you know as the deal is approaching contractual state. I mean, you,

[00:17:46] you know, it's not like it pops up on you. You've been working on it. You got a verbally agreement. You've got a, a letter of intent. You're working on different things. And then you got the

[00:17:53] big contract. It's contracts were 70 pages or more. Lot of details, lot of compensation, lot of representation, all those different things. And he had a little sign on his inbox. And the sign simply said, your lack of planning does not make it my priority. Right? Your lack of planning

[00:18:14] does now not make it my priority. Don't pop up because you didn't plan and expect I'm going to push everything to decide and focus on this thing for you. Right? And obviously there are true emergencies.

[00:18:27] But as plain as don't let you like a planning become an emergency. And I'm not going to participate in it. And I love that. And I think the same can be true overall in terms of planning and scheduling

[00:18:38] things out on your counters. If you want to be more intentional and you want to direct where you'll spend your time. If you filled out the wheel of life and you said, this area, time when my

[00:18:47] family and friends is lacking schedule somethings get ahead of it and say, look Friday afternoon's, I'm out at noon. I'm leaving the office at noon to spend time with the fam and start an early weekend.

[00:19:00] And we're going to do something. I'm going to make sure when I leave at noon, we're going out to the movies, the park just take a drive and put the top down, open the sun

[00:19:10] roof, open the windows and stretch out and just convaset. Whatever that might be for you, it might not be Friday afternoon. It may be Friday evening. It may be Thursday evening. It may be Saturday.

[00:19:21] Whatever the case schedule the time. Number two, optimize your time. You know, some of the things I've talked about here on even though the past two months, such as the wooden block and being

[00:19:37] concerted in your efforts to do something for 25 minutes can help you go a long way. It's amazing what we tend to do in terms of multitasking and having so many distractions, things popping up,

[00:19:51] notifications, text here and here. What if what if? What if you could for 20 to 25 minutes be heads down deeply focused. Let all your neurons go to one place. You can do that for things at work.

[00:20:09] And you could do that for things personally. Imagine sitting across the table looking at the person you love. If a 25 minutes no phone, no text, no screens, nothing but conversation. Those are deep wells of investment. That's a deep well right there, relational investment,

[00:20:31] same thing for work though. And so giving your mind the opportunity to do that to be in that space to be totally involved, engaged, etc. makes a difference. Number four, build a support network,

[00:20:44] get people around you who you can share this with. Many of us who are Christians and following Jesus believe in community, believe in accountability, believe in co-journeying with others. Do as we would say sometimes quote unquote do life with others. Add this to that list of

[00:21:05] things that you talk about. You can say I'm the first to say that I just said it on airways right earlier. I have in the past been a work of hallic, I have gotten to a better place but I'm still

[00:21:16] highly aware that I can slip into it and drown myself and work so I'm doing things. I'm always consciously doing things to not let that happen. And so I encourage you, shed out with some friends love ones. Even co-workers, share with co-workers. Number five, set some boundaries.

[00:21:34] Set boundaries in terms of what is good and what is not good. As an example you may say no matter what happens I am eating dinner with my family at 5.30. I want to get back on later

[00:21:48] if there's like, we've got a big project we're working on and you need, you know, we all need to put our hands in a circle and we focus on the cool. I'm just telling you for me what I need to do

[00:21:58] is eat dinner with my family at 5.30. That's a boundary and it's a respectable boundary. It is not unreasonable and I think one of the things that happened sometimes in the work environment

[00:22:09] and workspaces physically or virtually is we believe we will be seen as less than if we establish boundaries, if we say no there is a way to say no. You could politely say this really doesn't work

[00:22:24] well for me. What would be better for me is this and you can do that and you should be able to do that in an environment that you work in and a culture that you work in without retribution

[00:22:37] and if not that is a different podcast you need to listen to. Actually listen to episode number one we are 100 plus episodes in now. There's never so number one which talks a little bit about the

[00:22:47] culture you're in and what you need to do if you might not be in the right culture. Last but not least manage expectations be clear to those that are in your personal life, professional life

[00:22:59] etc. About things such as boundaries about the calendar you're setting and how you're trying to be more concentrated in your efforts that you may not for example you know you may say

[00:23:10] the theme hey you know I love Slack I think it's wonderful tool. I love that it allows us to have you know conversations throughout the day however certain times of the day I'm going to be

[00:23:20] off for hour or two at a time because I want to be heads down totally focused on what I'm working on as we all know. I'm working on this set project and it requires that I spend some

[00:23:30] focused uninterrupted time on this so I can be productive and that's okay people will get over you know there's it's interesting how I human behavior shifts to the current culture. There was a time

[00:23:43] when believe it or not we did not have pagers. Excuse me somebody even don't even know what I'm talking about let me let me go back. It was a time we didn't have mobile phones before mobile phones

[00:23:56] and even when mobile phones first started we had pagers you would have a device on your head that somebody could call a number and you'd get a text across the screen that told you the phone number of

[00:24:07] that called you there was some advanced pagers that were two way communication where you got text back and forth a little bit on those but most people had what they called a sky

[00:24:16] pager and somebody could dial a number that was unique to you and put their number and tell you where to call them back at. Now believe this is not it was the time to film mobile phones right

[00:24:25] and most of us lived through that area where either it was when I got home I got home and heard a voicemail from your own my answering machine and called you back or if I had a pager I may be

[00:24:37] inclined to stop and use what a pay phone take out a quarter and put a quarter in a phone and call but you know what happened we survived and in communications happened at those times they were not

[00:24:51] within five seconds of someone calling or sending a message and it was okay and I just say all that to say sorry in a very long one the way it is still okay so you're not being available every

[00:25:04] moment of the day is okay. Two my leaders let me tell you you are in a wonderful position both personally professionally for yourself and as a leader of teams you know why because

[00:25:19] leaders get a chance to lead by demonstration so you can be the first one to demonstrate all aspects of managing work life balance literally you have the opportunity to open up conversation with your team at staff meetings leadership meetings even a town hall and talk about

[00:25:38] what work life balance is what it could look like that is different for each individual you can talk through why it's important the health benefits the happiness benefits the relational benefits the avoidance of burnout and the things associated with that you can talk about

[00:25:56] how to help people assess where they are the wheel of life the other points around chronic illness and stress etc that are associated with it that are symptoms of an imbalance work life balance

[00:26:10] and then you can talk about those points of what you can do about it right the self inventory planning ahead optimizing time building a support network setting boundaries managing expectations

[00:26:22] and then you can talk about how you are going to do it for yourself and not that you need to be a you know dimmin straiter behind a glass and you know showing this every week but you can be honest

[00:26:36] the honesty from the leader the transparency from the leader gives everyone a few things first and foremost the the honest with you family when the leader does it it gives others permission to do it

[00:26:49] oftentimes things are said in employee handbooks or nice emails or scenarios posted on the board and what used to be the break room I'm dating myself etc but nothing is quite like when the leader

[00:27:05] actually does it it signals the people I can you imagine people sitting in the audience looking about he he actually did it he said he was going to reduce his time in the office so he could

[00:27:16] focus more in his family he's he's done to have you noticed he's leaving every day at three o'clock or he's coming in a little later or he's actually taking a lunch and not just

[00:27:26] eating a sandwich at his desk but he leaves because he thinks it's healthy to get a bite and tickle you lapse of a walk around the building etc people notice what the leader does and so there's

[00:27:38] what you say and then there's what you do the second thing you could do is also acknowledge that you are the manager and guardians of the workloads of your direct reports absolutely we all want to

[00:27:54] be super productive but I think sometimes we have to probe and make sure as managers of work flow in productivity etc that we're not over burdening people and here's the good news a lot of times

[00:28:09] we hire great people and help develop great people that feel a sense of loyalty to the organization they want to see the organization succeed so for many of them doing the work feels natural

[00:28:23] they feel obligated in a good way to get things done no matter what's put on their plate but we have to be good co-journey persons with them and say we're hold on that I can tell

[00:28:38] is way too much for the hours that you should be committing to work this week how how do we help move some of that that's not I mean obviously there's things that come up hopefully you know projects

[00:28:47] every now and then that we all have to do a little more and expend a little more but not to do on a week over a week over a week over a week basis how do we redo that excuse me how do we redo

[00:28:58] that how do we redistribute some of this or the question just like office space I love it what doesn't have to be done we're doing it because it has always been done but if we stop it what

[00:29:08] what happened who would notice is it critical to delivery of our paying customers or our beneficiaries if we're non-profit etc and the third thing you can do is similar to number one what you talk about

[00:29:23] cultivating an atmosphere with everyone feels comfortable talking about it how do you make it to a the staff meeting whether it's personal professional check-ins at the start where you go around and ask people what their weekend was like what's going on with them right now personally what's

[00:29:39] happening with them professionally and you begin to share and cultivate that whether it's weekly or monthly whatever the case may be imagine creating an environment where people feel comfortable comfortable talking about what is going on in their lives without any fear of side-hies or career

[00:30:01] setbacks or retribution or being thought less of you leader have a powerful opportunity to help create that kind of culture hey family thank you so much for listening if you found this episode

[00:30:15] helpful please drop me a line also don't forget to download the wheel of life at thecoilingsolution.com for slash resources lastly if there were some tips that you picked up that were helpful or

[00:30:27] if there's some things you've been doing that I didn't mention I want to know drop me an email James Brisson at holyculture.net much appreciate until next time being for being powered be accountable