#117 - 3 Tips to Help You Work LESS & LIVE More

October 13, 2020 Ellyn | Burnout Coach & Speaker

Summary

Us high-achieving? We're queens of overwork, overwhelm, and over-commitment?

We identify so much with our work, get so much validation from our productivity, and identify so much with our achievement that we can struggle to stop working. But what does that lead to...

10-12 hour workdays...
A 7-day work week...
Vacations that, well, never happen...

And what does all that lead to? Burnout and lives with no room for living, having fun, and enjoying our hobbies and passions.

In today's episode, you'll get 3 easy tips for working less and living more. These tips will help you create greater boundaries in your life, greater separation from your work, and more time to do all the things (other than your job) that make you YOU! It may not be easy...but it's necessary!

For show notes, head to coachellyn.com/podcast and, of course, if you have any questions or want to connect, head on over to @coachellyn on Instagram.

ACTION STEPS:

Tip #1 - Have a cut-off time where you STOP WORKING at the end of your day
- I don’t care what’s on your plate, there’s no reason to work 10-12 hour days
- I’ve worked with people in Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies. Often they say that there’s no way to shorten there days. That’s not true:
  - They can always be more effective
  - They can always delegate more
  - There are things that they can full take off their plate
  - For those with a side hustle or a business you’re building, dont’ make exceptions for your side hustle work. The same cut-off needs to apply for both types of work
  - Make sure you have a plan for how to reinforce that cut-off time
  - Tip #2 - Take a day off each week.
    - High-achivers can make work fill all of our time, so we need to set boundaries that avoid that - like a full day off - no work allowed!
    - This is really important to make sure you figure out what other things you like to do.
    - If you’ve ever felt like you don’t know what to do with yourself outside of work (and therefore you default to doing work), this is as important boundary to set. It forces you to find other things to do with your time
    - Tip #3 - Schedule some time off each quarter.
      - Yes, I mean vacation of some kind - stay-cations, time to rejuvenate at home, or a true vacay
      - No vacation? That means burnout. Pure and simple.
      - Quotes:
        
        “Girl, what are you doing? there is so much more to you than your job...work can wait. work can let you live. and if work can't wait, maybe we need to make some changes. cuz you're a human, not a robot.”

RESOURCES IN THIS EPISODE:

My “Calm in the Chaos” Masterclass is coming soon - head here to register for ANY freebie and you’ll be informed as soon as it’s available

Transcript:

(00:00):

Hey there, friend. And welcome back to the take back your life podcast. First and foremost, I know it's been a while since I've released a new podcast episode. This podcast is by no means going away. I am just really starting to get a bit more intentional with the content I'm creating. Kind of realizing that, you know, it's not about how much content I'm putting out, but it's really about the quality of the content I'm putting out. And I'm really trying to take that into consideration moving forward.

(01:38):

So these podcasts are going to be less frequent than they've been in the past. I'm going to be releasing a new podcast each month and really, really focusing on giving you really valuable content. When I do that, and today's podcast is no exception. We're going to be talking about three easy tips to help you work less and live more. But before we dive into that, I want to kind of give you a feel for my game plan. Moving forward. It will be monthly podcasts, but I will also be pivoting and playing with some different types of content. I used to blog all the time, especially when I was traveling in 2018, I released new blog content every single almost week, like every two weeks, something like that, because of all the places I was traveling, all the things that I was experiencing, lessons I was learning, et cetera.

(02:30):

And I really want to start playing with that again. So what you can expect moving forward is I will be releasing a new podcast every month. As I've said, you can find those at coachellyn.com/podcast. You can listen to them on apple, on, you know, Google, and all the places you can find podcasts. Those podcasts will still be there, but I will also be releasing new blog every month. And you can find those at coachellyn.com/blog. So coachellyn.com/podcast and coachellyn.com/blog tried to make very, very easy for you moving forward. But that's my game plan is I'm going to be releasing fewer podcasts, but I'm really, really hoping that those podcasts are going to be very much more geared toward exactly what you're needing right now. And today's podcast is no exception.

(03:23):

Because I don't know about you, but as a high achiever, I have a massive tendency to overwork. I have a massive tendency to maybe even borderline be a workaholic and you know, not take enough time off enough time to relax, have fun, explore some of my other interests have other interests. Sometimes it's high achievers. That is a really, really big struggle for us to just have other interests and not be fully defined by work and by the tasks that we're completing for a career. That probably sounds familiar to you. I know I've had tons of clients who struggle with that exact thing, and that is really going to be what we're talking about today. Three easy tips to help you work less and live more. I'm also going to be spoiler alert, releasing aan awesome digital masterclass for you in actually it's going to be happening on black Friday and I'm calling it the calm and the chaos master class. I'm going to show you how to find more calm in your chaos, because I know that you're probably in a really chaotic season right now, especially if you've got kids, especially if they're going back to school, all that jazz, it is going to be a chaotic season.

(04:34):

If it hasn't already been this year. Freaking COVID. Still dealing. I know it's kind of made everybody's year a little bit chaotic. And in that masterclass, I'm going to be showing you how to find the calm in the chaos that's coming out on black Friday. But now I know that so many of us, because of that chaos, we're maybe working a little more than we want to, and we maybe are having fewer boundaries than what we want to have. And today I really, really want to address some of those tendencies of high achievers to overwork themselves to not take enough time off because another tendency I know I have, and I'm sure you do as well is a tendency to budget way more time than I need. This is actually something I got called out on last week by my coach, um, of me kind of making the observation that it's hard for me to get things done in small chunks of time.

(05:24):

And she really called me out on that. And I realized that I have a tendency to a budget way more time than I need to do tasks. And I also have a tendency to only really want to work on projects when I have a few hours to get them done, which isn't always the most efficient way to do things. I don't know if you've ever heard of this, but there's this thing called Parkinson's law that basically just says work expands to fill the time available for its completion. So what that means is if you budget three hours to get something done in your calendar, it'll probably take three hours. Whereas if you budget an hour, you could probably get it done in an hour. So these are all things that we struggle with as high achievers, overworking ourselves, not taking enough time off and have a tendency to budget way more time than we actually need.

(06:07):

So in this podcast, let's get into the nitty-gritty. I'm going to give you three things to do three tips, to ultimately give yourself more rest rejuvenation and time off three tips to help you work less and live more. So let's dive in to tip number one, tip number one is to have a cutoff for when you're done working each day. Now this is something that I'm sure you've heard that you've probably tried to put into practice, but struggled with. And this is why this is important. We talked about that Parkinson's law earlier. We talked about the fact that if we schedule three hours for an activity that only takes one, we can make it take three hours. And the bottom line is the vast majority of the professionals I worked with. And I have worked with corporate women in Fortune 500 and 100 companies. I've worked with people from visa, from Amazon, all over the place. And they often struggle with the same thing saying they have too much work to fit into their day to day. I would argue though, that's probably not true.

(07:10):

There are probably things that they can delegate. There are probably things that they can be more effective at getting done. And there are probably things that they don't actually need to put on their to-do list. There are probably unnecessary tasks that show up on their to-do list. And therefore they're having work days that are 10, 12 hours long and bleed into the evening time. That should be theirs. So I'm going to call on that excuse. There are probably things that you can do, and you're not. That would allow you to have that cutoff time for earlier in your day. If you're somebody like me who has a day job and a side hustle, you may be doing what I've been doing and working on your side hustle into the wee wee hours of the evening.

(07:53):

Neither of those situations are good though, because to be a high achiever, you do need to take breaks as counterintuitive as it sounds. You need to take breaks. Otherwise you're burning yourself out and you're not going to be as effective. I'm literally speaking from personal experience. When I say this and personal experience, that is as recent as you know, not too many months ago, this is something that is a constant struggle for us as high achievers. So have a cutoff for when you're done working each day. And I don't think that cutoff should change whether you're working your corporate job or your day job, or you're working on your side hustle, I've realized that I can't separate the two. I can't say, oh, it's okay because it's side hustle work. It's my work for my business. I can't make that exception because then I'm always working.

(08:41):

So for me, I've decided my cutoff time when I'm done is eight, eight 30 at the absolute latest, but the ideal is eight every single day I'm done with work. Now, sometimes I go a little bit later than that because my day job is afternoons and evenings, but that's when I try to be done is at eight, eight 30 every single night. And one of the good and good things you're going to have to think about in doing this is how are you going to reinforce that cutoff? You know, it's all well and good to set the boundary, but how are you going to make sure you actually stick to it? There are easy and extreme ways you could go about doing this. An easy one would just be some accountability, whether it's self accountability or having a buddy who wants to do something similar, who you check in with at the end of each day, it's an easy way to enforce that or what you could do.

(09:31):

And this is a little bit more extreme is to literally cut off your wife at eight or eight 30 every night, you know, have like a timer on your modem being plugged into the wall and have that timer turn off power at eight 30 every night. Something like that. That's an extreme way to go about doing it. But that is tip. Number one is to have a cutoff for when you're done working each day. Stop making excuses for having quote unquote too much to do and find more effective ways to do your work ways to delegate what you're doing or things that just shouldn't be on your to-do list to begin with because you should not be working a job - I don't give a fuck how much they're paying you. Sorry you were going there. I'm dropping some F bombs. I don't give a fuck how much they're paying you.

(10:12):

You should not be working 10, 12 hour days. You shouldn't, you are a salaried employee. If they are giving you more work than you can get done in your day to day life, they need to take something off your plate. They need to give you somebody to delegate it to that's all I'll say for that.

(10:30):

So that's tip number one and then tip number two. And this one is a really hard thing for me that I'm really getting on myself for implementing is to make sure you're taking a day off each week. And when I say day off, I mean, no work, not a little work, not like an hour of work, a full day off where you're not doing any work each week. And again, for people out there who are side hustlers, this includes that too. Otherwise us as high achievers, as the people who have big goals and big dreams and big ambitions, and probably long, it's all held to do lists.

(11:04):

We can make excuses for filling our time, our days and our weeks with work. And I also think it's important to take a day off each week, because what that forces you to do is it forces you to find other ways to spend that time. I started dabbling in all sorts of random little hobbies. On my days off watercolor, I've started dabbling. And you know, I actually had a friend recommend to me. She's like, you just moved, you know, pick a neighborhood in your area each week to go explore, oh my God, what a great idea. I used to do that when I traveled, you know, exploring the different areas. I was been on some of my day, some of my days off, why not do that now? You know, I can do that now as well. It really forces me to get creative with how I'm spending my time and live and not just work all the time.

(11:55):

So tip number one, have a cut-off for when you're done working each day and tip number two is take a day off each week. I have shifted around all of my to-dos, all of my appointments, all of my like deadlines for myself. So that they'll end by Friday so that I can full-blown take Saturday off. And isn't that how it should be? Oh my God, shocker. We should take days off each week, but come on us as high achievers, we can fill that with work. You all know we can. All right. And then last but not least, we're going to make this a quick and punchy episode today. Schedule time off each quarter. And when I say time off, I mean like full-blown vacation. If you can schedule time off each quarter, I realized recently that I'm always available in my business. I have no scheduled time off.

(12:47):

And that's a problem because as we've talked about all of these things that we've talked about, they lead to burnout. They lead to you not showing up as your most productive, not showing up as the best version of yourself. They cause problems, not just in your career and in your work life, but in your personal life, they cause problems. So this last one important as well. If you feel the need to always be on and always be available, you're going to have a rough go of it. You're going to burn yourself out and you're going to struggle to figure out who the hell you are outside of your work. Anyway, maybe you're already there. That's why I'm realizing it's so important for all of us to take time off each quarter. I am making some changes moving forward to allow for more time off, I had been running programs that were 12 week programs, which basically meant I needed to be available to my clients group.

(13:45):

And one-on-one for the duration of three months. And I had somebody make a recommendation to me recently of maybe I should cut that down to 10 week increments so that I can take the last two weeks off each month. And oh my God, does that sound amazing? Oh my God, does it sound wonderful to give my clients that amazing experience, but to still give back to myself, to rejuvenate and refresh and rest and live without being so focused on work at the end of my quarter, like how good does that sound? So I recommend that to you too. That's tip number three is do something similar for yourself. Time off each quarter does not mean to take a full blown vacation does not mean to take a two week holiday. If that's not something you can afford, okay, you don't need to do that.

(14:35):

If that's not something you're comfortable with, okay, you don't need to do that time off each quarter can also look like a staycation. You can literally, and I've done this recently. Literally take time off and not even really leave your area, but just give yourself some self care and some, and some pampering and some rest over that. Staycation, your staycation could also look like, you know, getting an nearby Airbnb or a hotel nearby. I actually live right up the hill from this beautiful, beautiful area that when this one hotel is finished, I am staycation in there, right on the water beautiful views. That just looks so rejuvenating. It can be simple as that. Or, you know, when borders start opening back up, maybe you go on a, you know, an international adventure. Maybe that's what your time off looks like. But these are three things to help you work less and live more cut off at the end of the day, when you're done working 8:00 PM, 6:00 PM.

(15:40):

Seriously, if you're working more than 10 hours, girl, what are you doing? There's so much more to you in your job. You want freedom from your job, right? So you've got to set that cutoff point. Work can wait, work can let you live. And if work can't wait, maybe work needs to make some changes because you are a human, you're not a robot and you do need a break.

(16:06):

So tip number one is to have that cutoff when you're done working each day so that you're not working 10, 12 hour days. Tip number two is take a frigging full blown day off each week where you're not doing fricking anything related to your work. And tip number three is to take time off each quarter, whether it's a staycation, a full-blown vacation, whatever, take time off each quarter, give yourself that pause, that ability to rejuvenate. You need it. You deserve it. You've earned it. And dear, these are three easy in practice, but maybe hard for us to implement as high achievers, three easy things you can do to help you work less and live more. And damn, my friend, you know, you need them, so now make it a priority to go do them. Okay. So that's all I've got for you today. Again, we're switching to more of a monthly format. So this will be the last you hear from me for about a month. Um, but let me, you know, what you think about this? Let me know, um, which under these tips feel difficult to you. DM me. Hop on over to @coachellyn on Instagram. I'd love to hear from you and let me know what I can do to support you in this, because I know that these are three tips that can make a massive difference in your burnout and your life. But I also know that they're not necessarily easy because they go against some of our fundamental habits of high achievers. So let me know what I can do to support you, always there for you, my friends, and, uh, with that, I will talk to you next time. Bye.