005 - 3 Tips to Help You Work LESS & LIVE More

Summary

On today's podcast, my goal is to help you work less and live more with 3 very tangible tips to set better boundaries and step away from work!

For show notes, head to coachellyn.com/podcast OR follow me on Instagram @coachellyn!

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-achievers 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.

RESOURCES IN THIS EPISODE:

• My BRAND NEW “Take Back Your Life Membership” - here

Transcript for this episode…

(00:09)

Hey there, my friend, and welcome to the burnout to bad-ass podcast. My name is Ellyn Schinke (@coachellyn on Instagram). And this is my monthly podcast where I am committed to giving you short, no BS episodes to help you, the busy burnout, professional and entrepreneur, find your balance and take back your life from burnout. Let's do this.

Hey there, my friend, and welcome back to burnout to bad-ass. This is going to be the last of these kinds of prerecorded episodes that are coming out right as we are launching. I want to make sure I gave you plenty of content, some tangible tips and things that you can implement from the get-go with this podcast. And this is going to be the last one of those episodes. I have actually been having so much fun recording that who knows when I do release episodes on a monthly basis, they might be batched like this.

(01:03)

I might be giving you multiple episodes each time I launched, but TBD on that. I've just been an idea machine lately when it's come to podcasts and I've been really enjoying recording these little bit of a re-invigorated love for podcasts, but today what we're going to be talking about is three tips to help you work less and live more. That is kind of always my goal, but the big focus that we're going to be having today in these tips is it's going to be very, very much about boundaries taking breaks, stuff like that. Those are going to be a lot of our tips on our focus today. So if those are some things that you struggle with, no matter, you know, whether you are a busy corporate professional or an entrepreneur, if you're finding that you just kind of, don't have a lot of separation between your work day and the rest of your life, these tips are going to be for you. Um, I know our last episode about lessons from Kashmir was a little bit longer than I typically go to this one should be a lot shorter and a lot punch here today. So

(02:01)

Let's get into it. Tip number one, tip number one is to have a cutoff time where you've stopped working at the end of your day. So before we get into this tip, first and foremost, I definitely want to tell you that though, these are ideas and tips that I have found work. Any of the stuff that I'm going to be kind of talking you through, just know that I I'm in this with you. I am somebody who is highly susceptible to burnout. I still struggle with a lot of these things. And a lot of the times when I am giving you these tips, it's kind of a note to self as well as a, this is something that you should consider doing. These are some best practices that in the moments where I have been very, very good at managing my burnout, I've had great boundaries.

(02:45)

These are the things that I have done, but that's definitely not to say that I'm perfect at it. So this is one of those things is to have a cutoff time where you stop working at the end of your day and really the insight here. And the thing that I've realized is really no reason for any of us to be working 10 to 12 hour days. And I don't really care what's on our plates when we are experiencing this. There's, there's no reason for that. I've worked with people in fortune 500 and fortune 100 companies, you know, places like Amazon and visa and JP Morgan, and often want to hear them say is that there's no way to shorten their days. And I know from personal experience that sometimes you can feel like that you can feel like, you know, work is just expanding and there's no way to work less, but we know that's not true. We know that it's not true. There's always ways that we can be more effective with what we're doing. There's always ways that we can delegate more like, do we really need to go to every single meeting? Or can we have somebody we trust who's already going to be attending, take notes for us? You know, there are always things that we can do to take some things off of our plates.

(04:01)

And that's why I start with this one is because we have got to know that our days should not be lasting that long. And there are things that we can do, you know, even for those of us with side hustles or businesses that we're building, you know, I'm, I'm working in a day job. And then I do all of this other stuff on the side. I literally have the first meeting of the day for me in 45 minutes as I record this podcast. So for those of you that are working the side hustle, this is the best practice that I found is I still try to treat my Workday as me working from about nine to six. So don't make exceptions for your side hustle or the business that you're building the same cutoff needs to apply for both types of work. So whether your work hours are from 10 to six or nine to six or whatever, they might be, all of your work should roll into that, your side hustle as well as your day job.

(04:54)

And the last thing I will say here is to make sure you have a plan for how you're going to reinforce that cutoff time, because this is something that when I don't abide this, this is what I really really suck at. And this is what I'm not doing is I don't have some sort of a way that I'm going to reinforce that cutoff time. So what are you going to do that is going to help you with that kind of switch off? Um, some things that I found to be very, very helpful in the past have been things like, um, things like meditating right at the end of my day, going for a walk. So instead of doing a walk in the morning, I will go for a walk at the end of my day, or maybe just doing a workout or meeting up with someone or some, something like that.

(05:34)

That kind of is a way in which you can reinforce the end to your day, that cutoff time that you are instituting for yourself. So that's tip number one is to have a cutoff time where you stop working at the end of the day, a bonus thing to this and something that I've actually found really, really helpful for setting expectations around checking. My email is I've actually added to my email signature for both my day job and my business, the approximate hours during which people can expect me to be checking my email. So for example, if they send an email out real, real late, they probably shouldn't expect me to be responding to that until the following day. And I have that in my email signature to just kind of set that expectation and that has been really helping with this whole cutoff time. So that's tip number one.

(06:23)

Let's go ahead and take a look at tip number two, tip number two is to take a day off each week and I'm just going to tell you right now, guys, I used to suck at this. It wasn't until my girl, Nicole, who was my business coach. She's a very good friend of mine. She's a former client of mine really kind of called on me and called on you're really going to be a burnout coach and you're going to work every day of the week. So we've got to make sure we're taking a day off. And when I say that, I mean a complete day off you are not even checking your email. Okay. And this was something that was really hard for me to Institute, especially because I have a day job in a business, you know, for those of you that are doing something very similar, it's hard.

(07:07)

Like we've got a lot of things we're trying to juggle and fit in. You know, how do we have shortened work workdays and we're not working every day of the week, but this is so freaking important for your sanity, for your burnout, for you, rejuvenating for you recharging. And there's so many reasons for this. You know, I target a lot of my content and the people that I'm speaking to around high achievers, you know, you are probably a high achiever and you know that as high achievers we can make work, fill all of our time. We can always find something else to do. You know, that's kind of the curse that we're faced with as high achievers and as people doing the kind of work that we're doing is there's always more to do, right? So we need to set boundaries to avoid that like a full day off where there is no work allowed.

(08:00)

This is really, really important to make sure you figure out. And it's also really important to make sure you figure out what other things you like to do. A big reason why so many of us who are busy and burned out and kind of workaholics is we work because we enjoy it on some level we enjoy. We get from them of fulfillment from it. We feel productive. We feel worthy. We feel enough. We like the achievement. And so we always default back to that. Well, I'll just work more well, I'll just work more. And we may not be able to say exactly what is it we like to do when we're not working. I had a client or have a client who this is something she still struggles with is knowing what she actually enjoys outside of work.

(08:50)

You know, other than the glass of wine at the end of the day, you know, what are her hobbies? What are the things she loves to do? And right now, I think, you know, she actually might have some hobbies, but she kind of judges her hobbies because they feel like numbing. They feel like that thing that she does to hit the reset button after a really long, exhausting day. So it's really important that we take this time off though, and kind of force ourselves to do that. Especially if you fall into that, that camp of just really not knowing what your hobbies are, it's really, really important to make sure we figure these things out so that we know what we like outside of work, who we are outside of work. Like 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 such an important boundary to set because it forces you to find those other things to do with your time. You know, when I've started forcing this for myself, you know, I already knew I liked hiking, but I kind of had a renewed passion for it. You know, I found that I really, really love painting. I find it very, very relaxing and kind of a little creative outlet. And a lot of those things I wouldn't have found if I didn't start instituting this rule for myself. And I started doing it actually about a year ago.

(10:02)

Almost exactly a year ago. Now September, 2020 is when I really started doing this and that my, my former coach really encouraged me to do this. So tip number one was to have a cutoff time where you stop working at the end of the day. And we talked about some ways in which you can implement that effectively. And tip number two is to take a day off each week, even if you're a side hustler, even if you're building a business on the side, just step away for a full day. If you work in corporate and that's what your demands are step away for at least a full day. I want you to take your full weekend, frankly, but I'll just keep my very minimal at this point in time. And just encourage you to don't check email for at least one day a week. Don't do any work-related tasks for at least one day a week. All right, last but not least tip number three is to schedule some time off each quarter. Yes. Each quarter,

(11:01)

Especially if you are somebody who is in the thick of burnout, you've got to give yourself some space each quarter. If you're recovering from burnout, if you're susceptible to burn out, scheduling that time off each quarter is good to really, really help you make sure you're hitting that reset button, hitting that pause, prioritizing that time away so that you can renew yourself and rejuvenate yourself. That's what extended vacations do. It's why I posted on Instagram that, you know, burnout doesn't fix itself after a weekend away. It just doesn't work like that. We need those longer reprieves to really help us recover from burnout. So when I say schedule some time off each quarter, what do, I mean, I do mean a vacation of some kind.

(11:53)

And it does not have to be a full blown trip to Hawaii. Like it can be by all means, you know, take a trip to somewhere tropical with beautiful beaches, especially if you live in a place like I do where it rains nine months after a year. Um, but take a vacation of some kind or take a staycation. Like it does not have to be a flight away for it to be beneficial to you. It can be driving two hours. I live in Washington, um, Washington state, and it could be driving two hours to the coast or driving two hours up north to stay at one of the islands and the Puget sound. It can be something small like that. It can be a stay cation. It can be time to rejuvenate at home. If you do not have the money to stay somewhere else, take a week off and just be home, sleep more, give yourself permission to be lazy and have a movie marathon. Um, I'm recording this actually on labor day weekend. And I had the laziest most, oh my God. You're an old person now labor day, weekend and labor day. And I'm laughing at myself for it because literally the highlight of my labor day was I went to McClendon's and got new hanging baskets. Cause mine were super dead and never recovered from our Seattle heat wave. Like it can be time to rejuvenate at home. It does not have to be anything crazy or anything fancy, but it does need to be time away because it's going to rejuvenate you.

(13:16)

If you do not take time away. If you do not use your PTO and take vacation, it means burnout plain and simple. It means burnout. So, to keep it short, to keep it simple today, those are my three tips for you to ultimately work less and live more. Let's recap them really quickly before we wrap things up. Tip number one, just to have a cutoff time where you stop working at the end of your day. I know how hard this is, particularly if you're in corporate and you're serving time zones that are different than yours, particularly if you are somebody who's building a business or you have a side hustle, I get it. But it's still important to have that cutoff time. So you can rejuvenate and bounce back. Tip number two is to take a day off each week. Yeah. I want you to have a full weekend, but at a minimum, take a day off where you're not even checking your email during that time.

(14:14)

And tip number three, schedule some full blown vacation time away, staycation on Kerrwood. It is, but schedule some time off each quarter, give yourself that pause button, give yourself that reset that rejuvenation, because if you don't, that's ultimately what it is that is going to lead you to burn out, not using that BT PTO, almost a BTO, a, um, not using that is going to be the death of you. And it's going to burn you out.

(14:45)

The last thing that I want to say, and this is actually a direct quote from what I talked about. Something like this previously on my old podcast is 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. One of my favorite quotes is you are a human being, not a human doing. You are a human, not a robot and you cannot be expected and you cannot expect yourself to just churn out task after task project, after project, without there being some potential potential consequences. So think about these three tips. Think about how you're going to incorporate them and let me know what you think of that. This jump on over to Instagram, shoot me a DM, shoot me a comment, whatever, but let's connect on Instagram again. I'm @coachellyn, that's E L L Y N.

If you really liked this, if you have some friends that, you know, need to hear one of these things, maybe even just that last little tidbit that we just covered, cause you are more than your job. If you're thinking of somebody right now, send them this podcast, you know, introduce them to burn out to bad-ass.

Let's build this community and really, really grow this so that we can make burnout a choice and not the default, make it something that people have tools and strategies for better dealing with. So go ahead and share the podcast or if you're really vibing with it, head on over to apple or Spotify and give us the five star reviews so we can build this sucker up.

Thank you again so much for being here and have a great rest of your day. Bye.