101. Kiss Burnout Goodbye

In this episode, Michel and UpSkillers discuss:

Work-Life Integration vs. Work-Life Balance: The evolving concept of integrating work into life rather than trying to balance the two as separate entities.

Managing Burnout: Identifying the signs of burnout, understanding its causes, and strategies to prevent or mitigate it.

They offer key insights about:

• The role of accountability partners 
• Mindfulness and Reflection
• The Role of Rest: Different ways to rest 
• Resources and Tools
• Setting Boundaries: both personal and professional 
• The pros and cons of having a flexible work schedule, especially with the rise of remote work.
• Identity in the Modern Work Environment: How the blending of work and personal life might be affecting individuals' sense of self.
• The need to communicate expectations and feelings, both in the workplace and at home.
• How the pandemic has reshaped the work environment and its implications for individuals.
• Stress vs. Burnout: Differentiating between the symptoms of stress and the more severe state of burnout.

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Transcript

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In tonight's episode, I'm joined by fellow Upskillers, talking about work life balance? Is there such a thing? Can it actually happen? What is it? And for whom does this make sense? Is there something else that we should be considering? And what is this thing called burnt out? Who is it affecting? How is it affecting you? And how do we stare clear of getting burnt out? All that, And more in this episode, Welcome to Upskill Talks, I'm your host, Michelle Shaw, lead Upskill at Upskill Community. Upskill Talks is a podcast for leaders, leaders who are actively seeking innovative and creative ways to interact. Lead themselves and others in every episode through real life stories and enlightening conversations, we will explore the challenges and opportunities real leaders face in today's everchanging workplace. We will present you with real strategies. For you to leverage your soft skills and produce transformative results. Thank you for joining me on this journey. Let us begin. So for myself, I set myself some boundaries. where I told myself that I need discipline to be able to get through my day. I make myself a checklist and I, um, you know, go through that checklist and tick what I prioritize as my goals for that day. So I think that's my take on that, uh, aspect of what do I do? What do I, how do I help myself? How do I help the other people around me in order to not go into another strength, which is the burning out. I think I brought this topic up because of something so relevant, something I experienced very recently, actually. Um, as I'm in my fourth year, of course, senioritis is hitting really hard and I have absolutely no motivation to do anything, so. Um, actually, two weeks ago, I was having a conversation with one of my friends, and uh, we both really enjoy poetry, so on Instagram, like, we always send each other reels and um, things like short one lines or even long stories, and then I just thought of the day, I was like, why don't I start posting stuff that I've written? So that sort of started as a small idea in my head, and I sort of pushed myself into making like a poetry account and it's not anything serious of course, but this sort of changed or like kind of dragged me out of that burnout feeling I was experiencing because I was starting to wake up and look forward to, you know, posting and creating content for that account and not just simply waking up and thinking, Oh, I have like 16 assignments to do and I have so much work to do. So I think, um, the way I've been combating burnout recently, I think is like pouring into other areas of my life, especially the more creative side. So I've not just focusing on school and work and so on. I think for me, the feeling of burnout comes from when I get overwhelmed, and I feel like the rate at which I'm getting new tasks is faster than the rate at which I can accomplish the tasks, so the work log is piling up, and I'm not getting through them fast enough. And it's really important to reinstate that for me, this is a feeling because I realize in hindsight that sometimes this is not reality, it can be just something that feels really big and overwhelming in my imagination. And once I do it, it's actually not that big of a task. But for me, being burned out is a big looming shadowy thing for me, burnout is like a big monster in my head that once I lift up the covers and I see what's there, it's not as bad. So it's a little bit about facing fears for me and maybe even communicating with my team or the people that I'm working with about how I'm feeling because oftentimes it's, it's in my imagination. So you need people around you to kind of check you. That's my experience. I want to go back to the concept of balance, and I noticed you talked about these two competing purposes, work. And the life that we have and I wonder the extent to which work life balance is even still a relevant concept was a number of organizations, a number of literature sources are now referring to work life integration. The idea that we can't actually balance work and life. We need to sort of take life as sort of the big circle and integrate work into it and therefore understanding that work doesn't end at a particular point and life begins, that work is part of life. And life is a bigger thing, and work, how do we integrate work into life in a meaningful way? And you touched on the concept of setting boundaries, Mimi, and that's certainly one of the big clues to work life balance, work life balance. Integration, effective, sustainable work life integration, setting boundaries is one. And there are different kinds of boundaries we can set. Certainly, there's physical boundary, emotional boundary, time, and other resource boundaries, right? The thing about it is. Before we begin to worry about setting boundaries, we have to go to go back to what Flora referred to, which was sort of this monster in her head, which creates this sphere of things that are not really real. The amount of work there, it's a log and the expectation is not that you complete. All of the things in the log, the log is there as a running list to say these are things and so two other skills then become important, the ability to set reasonable expectations, as you talked about, Flora, the ability to communicate. Where you're at, how you're feeling, how you're responding to the log and, and where you are at in that process and what's reasonable for you to do all of that communication, all of that collaboration is certainly part of it. There is something else too. It's almost as if. There needs to be some space in this for grace, for learning to take things one bite at a time, for learning about a system, for managing our anxieties and understanding that all doesn't get done in one day. It's integrated into life for that reason. And that we organize our work in meaningful ways. And that's why time management is critical to work life integration. Maybe your life is even more balanced than you think it is. If you really go back and take a, uh, a frank look at it and realize, I did take home this and spend two hours after the kids went to bed. But actually, I did take two hours out of my workday to attend to a couple of personal appointments. So then it is balanced. It is integrated in a way that works for you. And so I think one of the things we need to talk about now is What does work life balance look like for you? Work life integration look like for you? What does burnout look like? What would cause the burnout? Or how does burnout feel? Because Work life balance, work life integration does not show up the same way for everyone. Some people experience balance in places where others feel burnout. So we need to be exploring how is work life balance showing up for each individual and how are we processing it, how are we dealing with it, and what strategies can we put in place to help us to move one step further now. And remember trying to find work life balance, work life integration, you have to keep coming back to it. It's not something you're going to wake up today and say, right, we're going to do this and get it done. You're going to take one bite out of it, build that into your life, learn these new routines, develop these new disciplines, put these new patterns into place, discipline the people around you to respect your boundaries. That's going to take some time for you to feel the impact of that new thing. And then you try the next thing and then you go through that same process and you come back and try the next thing. For instance, if you've always had, like your house is a mess and you're going to clean it up, it's going to take you a while to organize it. You're not going to just wake up today and it's all clean. It's the same thing when we're cleaning up our bad habits, when we're cleaning up things that have slipped out of scope, things that are slipping for us. When we're doing that kind of work, it's going to take us time. It's so funny how you talk about when you're cleaning your house, it can't all happen overnight because I'm going through that right now at home. I'm doing a mass cleaning with my parents and it's overwhelming because I start in the kitchen and then I go to the living room and then I go to my room and it's all, I'm like, this system affects this one and these things need to move here. Therefore, this system needs to go to this one and this, so all of it is happening at the same time and I want to get it done all right away, which probably leads to the feeling of burnout. Because. Realistically, not everything can happen all at once. You have to do one system at a time and be able to set things aside for later. So it is about time management. Um, although we've talked about that extensively, the other thing that I like what you talked about, Michelle is. Now that work and life is much more flexible, so many more of us are working from home now. People do take two hours out of their day to go to an appointment or pick up their kids. And then sometimes they'll be making up their work outside of what are quote unquote work hours. I think that this is both good and bad. It's good because it offers us flexibility because life happens and it can help us accommodate life when it happens and help us attain more work life integration, as we're calling it. But it can also feel like if we have an expectation that we shouldn't be working at 9 p. m. or 10 p. m., it makes You feel like, oh, why am I doing this project at this time when the expectation is to be spending time with your family at 9 or 10 p. m. and watching a movie. So you have to be very careful with your trade offs. And it's just planning this properly ahead of time and knowing when, where you're making these trade offs and knowing where you're making up one thing for the other. That's a really great point, Flora, that even though it benefits you on the front end, like during the day when you're taking time from work to go and do life as it happens in a way that is meaningful to you so you're not missing something important. It could be as simple as a lunch date with a family member or, or a meeting at a school or a doctor's appointment or something, and then you bring that work home and you touched on sort of expectations when you are at home. And this is why I touched earlier on the concept of not just your. Personal expectations, but that you have a responsibility when you have this flexibility to share these expectations with the social circle so that your family would understand. Remember, I took you all out to lunch today. That was during work. This evening, I am now going to give back a couple hours to work to complete what I delayed during the day so that I can honor my obligations and my responsibility and provide the contribution that I want to provide to work or that is expected of me on that end. we don't live in a bubble. We learn about ourselves. We become aware of ourselves. We contribute relative to other people. Everything we do is relational. It all is relative to other people. So we're not going to feel this work life integration. If you did take off sometime during work day, for instance, and you come home and let's say you did it and nobody in your household knew about it, then you come home and everybody is expecting that you are home and remember, these are mental models that we have that were. For a time when we did not have this flexibility, the mental model of going to work nine to five and clocking in and clocking out, that's a mental model of when we had no flexibility and we could not consider the leave and work to go do something personal during your nine to five. And there are still a lot of people who have that restriction and that rigidity. For the people who are fortunate enough to have that flexibility, then we cannot treat the other end as rigid because the lines are not as clear. For some people it's work and then life and some people work and life are much more fluid and flow in and out of each other and it's about therefore understanding what is the expectation of, of me at work, what is the expectation of me at home and what is the expectation Of myself, because you have to show up in your own life as well. So you don't feel like you've given to work and now you come home and you give to the family. And that's probably what a lot of people are feeling, not even burnt out in terms of, but that they have not made any space in their own lives. For themselves, for that moment to be quiet for that moment to just do something that you want to do. You spend all day serving people at work. You come home and you spend all day serving the people in your house and you are not present in your life and you feel pulled on. I'm making sure this person is okay. These people, this group expects this from me, this group, and you are not showing up in your life. And that is definitely going to make you feel burnt out because it's not sustainable that you don't reboost your own energy. store to be able to serve everyone around us. And so these are some of the things that we have to consider. What, what is causing the burnout? Why is burnout showing up for you? Because there are people who work very long hours in something that they love doing and they're not feeling burnt out. And there are people who do very little work and are feeling incredibly burnt out. So I really like this topic. Yeah. So, um, I have a question, um, when it relates to how behaviors have been like remodeled. Um, and this one sort of popped up as you were talking is, Have our identities also, uh, been changed because of this, you know, uh, new way of, uh, you call it integration. So have our identities also changed? I just want to clarify and ask, what do you mean by identities? Do you mean like our sense of? Who we are. I think the way we react now, is it the same? Are we still the same? Because we had this rigidness that Michelle spoke about and people saw us in a different light because we sort of had a criteria to follow and not much of who I am really showed because I'm trying to be this best person to my co workers. But then now, uh, like you mentioned, Flora, that, um, there's multiple tasks. We, we have now changed into what, what's the word again, uh, multitaskers. Yeah, that's the word. So how are we adapting the image of the worker that goes nine to five and you come home and the worker, you can put your worker bag down and code down and then you switch into gear in being the home person, whatever that role is that you take on at home, you now take that and work ends when you enter the front door and your identity shifts. I think you're referring to what Peter Senge talked about in the fifth discipline as the superficial boundary that we've constructed between the personal and the professional spheres. I think it's coming right back here when we talk about this integrative approach where We also are measuring sometimes more heavily what happens on one side than on the other. For instance, we notice more when work creeps into our home life. We notice less when our home life creeps into work. Okay, or we should say who notices the person who is bringing home work, that family who needs more of you at home notices that you're bringing in work from work to home, but that family does not necessarily see as clearly how you are taking off time from work to address family issues during the day. So the mental model has been disrupted, but the new model, which is required to Sort of replace it has not yet evolved sufficiently, or at least it's not as clear to everyone. So that may be what I think that's where you're going with that. Mimi, just correct. Yes, yes. This mental model of the worker, the person, the professional. You went to this professional place, the sphere that's absolutely disconnected from the personal sphere. When you go out the door and close it, you're gone into that sphere and you go there and you function for those purposes. And once you return that sphere, you burst that bubble and you come into this one that no longer exists. You are now in this place where you drop whatever that role is immediately and step into the new one. If you're a mommy or daddy or auntie or husband or wife or grandparent or child, whatever that is, you're in that role now and you're expected. upon entering that space to perform this new function. And it's the lack of integration that makes us talk so much about this work life balance because you already spend six hours out there. How can you want to continue? In here. And when we think about it in a more integrative approach, then maybe we can come back to what is more reasonable and so. I am comfortable to take that back because I know the benefits of that flexibility and I value that. However, have I communicated to the members of my household that during the day I did stop and do three appointments so I didn't actually complete my tasks and bring them home and set those expectations at home that this is not just home, it's also work. I think that got disrupted and shuffled for most of us during COVID and much more socially acceptable in a lot of homes for someone to be working from home as opposed to pre COVID, but it still does strain a lot of relationships, like not again. I mentioned when we did time management, I had a colleague that was teaching in higher ed, a young parent, teaching yoga, and is a full time healthcare practitioner, and, and also, and also runs a private business. So that's about five things. And if that person adds on, let's say, go do a course, that's a half a dozen things. And that's not unusual for the average person today. So most people are not doing two things. They're doing a lot of things in addition to all the other social responsibilities that we now have. So there's a lot going on. I find this conversation quite engaging and I was trying to find a point and I guess this is as good as any to sort of jump in. If I can, um, sort of, from my perspective, post COVID, I feel there is obviously, and I think we all agree, greater integration between the role of private life and public life or professional life, um, within my organization or within my, from my personal experience, it's, it's greater integration and more efforts on those parties, whether it's your partner, your family, and also employers to respect the divide. In other words, I think it's more progressive. Um, I don't think it's a shift in our personality or shift in who we are, or identity has shifted. I think the organizations and the structures around us are moving, um, you know, I think it's yet to be seen whether it's actually for the better or for the good, um, because I work from home, uh, you know, it's sort of a hybrid setting, um, and I find that I take on. Thank you. A lot of home stuff, more stuff that probably would have, I'm not sure who was doing it before. I was working for all because I, I am caught up in, you know, after school volleyball tournaments and dropping this kid and that kid and I'm not sure what we would have done. Uh, had I been full time working, you know, and commuting to downtown Toronto Monday to Friday, but all of a sudden now I'm able to be more involved in, you know, dropping off or picking up or extracurricular activity. Um, it's interesting how that's how that's working out and it's working out. I suppose my hybrid, um, flexible work arrangement works well for my family now and everything sort of seems to fit together. And creates a better work life balance. Um, so that's that I think that the, there's greater integration and I think we're making it work. Um, and of course, it could lead to stress and burnout, but, you know, which is what we're talking about. But a point that sort of is, um, that I wanted to raise is the distinction between, um, stress. Burnout. And again, I like to sort of level the grounds when I'm talking about a particular topic, like level the plate so we can start fundamentally at the, from the bottom up. And so I think we all know what the symptoms of stress are. Um, fatigue, sort of, you know, a little bit tired, can't sleep. And so on and so forth, but I think it's important to sort of draw a line between because it's on a spectrum is what I have experienced. There's stress and then burnout is sort of where you hit a wall, which is where we don't want to go. I think it's actually a actual psychological disorder. Where you actually are sort of some people really suffer from insomnia, fatigue, addiction and serious other issues. Um, but the progression, the lead up to that is what a lot of us sort of, um, probably go through. I think all of us here probably have gone through the stresses. Um, can't sleep, can't focus, can't, you know, and that's, you don't want to get to burnout, you know, and over COVID, I felt like I was hitting close to a sense of burnout. And so just my own personal story. Um, it simply was sort of a space where I felt like I was no longer really motivated. Um, I wasn't tired or can't sleep or can't focus, but I just felt like a lack of motivation, a bit of anxiety around work. And, um, and I had to pull back. I, my policy throughout. Uh, my practice or my profession was always to say yes, and always enthusiastically taking on new work, and I decided it was no longer a policy or practice that I could sustain or I wanted to sustain, and there are a multitude of reasons behind why one gets to that point, but for me, I decided that I was at a place where I was going to practice saying no, and saying no without guilt, And saying no confidently and being satisfied with the consequences that flow from saying, no, thank you for that opportunity. I'm not able to take it on right now and sort of pull back a bit. Um, and that actually is some of the strategy that I undertook to help me get out of the. Uh, you know, falling over the edge, so to speak, or really hitting burnout, which is not where you want to be. So, I think this program is really, and this session is really instructive and informative because I think it's sort of guide guides us. Um, to look out for the symptoms of it and, you know, and the assumption I think underlying it must be that we're not quite there because if we are, I think it's a hard place to pull ourselves out of, not that it is impossible, but you don't want to be there. But I think a lot of us get there, get close to it. Um, I don't feel those sense of anxiety anymore or that sense of sort of malaise. Um, and so it does developing strategies to say, no, pull back and balance and manage and, uh, have your employer and your family sort of respect the boundaries. It's never perfect. And I don't think there's ever a complete balance. What we want to do is provide some tips and strategies that can help others. To avoid burnout, the one that I want to share, and then pass it over to you is. The importance of reevaluating our perspective that's going to play a really key role there's the social players, whether at work or at home that contribute to the expectations, the demands and the feelings that lead to us feeling like the integration. Is a problematic or the balance is not quite happening, right? There are interpersonal relationships that impact that feeling. You may be fine to do the work, but the children start pulling on you and suddenly you feel like, or at least they bring an awareness that there's this expectation that you're, you're in a new role now. And the, the demands of that role come calling. Um, I was told about a very recent situation where, um, a female had applied for a particular position that was a shift work and the senior leader who is also female told her, well, you know, It's sad that you have a young child, but look, you know, you knew the demands of the job. You knew it was going to be shift. So, you know, you shouldn't have applied for it if you don't want to do shift with a young child. So, you know, there are those leaders who do not bring any flexibility, empathy, or consideration to individual circumstances. And that's the unfortunate case. And we hope that this is like a, a very rare situation. However, most leaders are really working. As you said. Working with making the shift, shifting from the old mental models and the old structures and trying to be more agile and trying to address individual needs in this sort of more fluid hybrid way. And so I think we're making great progress here. What we need to do in order to be able to leverage this two things. I saw Althea talk about the fact that you're home now. You are shifting out of balance because you're taking on all the things that you would not ordinarily take on during a work day. So you're doing all of the things you would do at work. Plus all of the things you would do at home and new things that evolve by virtue of the fact that you are home. And that is where the challenge can come. And that's why it's really important for us to reevaluate where we're at, what our situation is, and our perspective on. Work life integration. What are we integrating? How many players are there that we have to be concerned about? How many different contributions, noteworthy contributions do we have to be mindful of who needs our time? Who do we need to contribute to really need to sit down and play that carefully so that we don't keep thinking we have two things. That are pulling on our time when that may be 10, we need to have a real honest check in on what's pulling on our time and how this integration will happen. I'm going to like pose a question and it is, how do I build mental resilience through what I'm going through? And for me, it's I have to continue to set those goals amid, you know, the confusion or the workload or the cost load. Um, I still need to set those goals on what I can achieve, um, at, you know, in certain milestones. It doesn't have to be lumped up for me to say, Oh, I have, I've done this. You know, I have completed this task when I haven't given my best. Because sometimes you go through an assignment speedily. One of my professors even said to me, No, this is not you. This time, we wrote this assignment, you speeded through it. Because I didn't give myself time to do it. So, um, I sort of knew that, oh, the deadline is tomorrow, so let me just sit today and do it, you know, and meet that deadline, but I didn't give enough thought to it, and I just submitted, you know. Something that was like incomplete. So they did see through that, that this, this was not my best. So, um, I have to set those goals and also maybe try and, um, find someone or maybe a mentor, uh, that has gone through either a work situation or a study situation as I am in and have them help me go through it. with them. Uh, so that's another way that I have figured that also helps me. And I've also asked myself that, how do I start and how do I stay motivated when I'm doing something? And it all starts with taking that step to say, I need to do this, or I have to do this, but then how do I stay on course till I complete? Uh, my studies or my, uh, web tasks. So that's another area that I, um, I also manage myself, uh, to do so that I'm also not overwhelming to others or maybe asking a lot of questions or asking for a lot of help. Along the way, so yeah, I do a lot of positive self talks Just to prep myself to say Mimi you can do this, you know You you will get there and it will take time, but you'll get there or you're almost there. So don't give up yeah, so those self talks also help me along the way and Mindfulness As well, that when a thought creeps in me, that no, Mimi, you can't do this. Um, I also tell myself that, Oh, no, yes, you can. And, um, that has also helped me, um, have that ability, you know, and capacity to chug along and, and, and keep going to, till the end. So I think, yeah, that's, that's my, oh, the other last thing that I do is, I make sure that I reward myself. So when I, um, achieve something, I make sure that I, I celebrate, you know, in ways that I am like complimenting myself that I thought in the beginning that I was not even able to, or how did I even get there? You know, who was there for me or what did I do right? So I take stock of what I did, what helped me along the way, so that when I'm going on the next task, it's either those things will work for me again, or they won't. So I think, yeah, that's just the sort of mental resilience I've adopted, um, as I go through, yeah, with life. Lots of amazing gems there, Mimi. I'll hand over to Juanita. Thank you. Thanks for sharing Mimi. So I think one piece of advice going back to the re evaluating your perspective, definitely to recenter and reset yourself is like a sort of key word I thought of when dealing with burnout. I think when burnout and stress are combined, it feels like your life is all over the place and you have no control over anything. So I feel like in my own life, especially anytime I felt Extremely overwhelmed or burnt out. I always did something that sort of reminded me what my goals are sort of made me feel like more alive. And this can be something really small, such as buying something you've been eyeing or spending the day with like a loved one. I think those kind of things can sort of reset your mood and how you approach things. So I think after taking a break from what's overwhelming, you can kind of. Sort of reconfigure your mindset and go back to like square one, I say, um, to figure out how you can best approach things. And also Mimi talked about mindfulness, which is a great point. And I also wanted to add to not go through things alone. I think expressing to your inner circle and those around you when you're going through things can really help as you discuss and navigate, um, difficult situations and burnout in life together with those around you. Self talk is important. Sometimes you're so stressed that the self talk really doesn't work. And then something like a reward, or what I use is retail therapy every so often to sort of kind of reframe, you know, you know, it depends. You have to level up from one strategy to the next, depending on where you are on that stress, that spectrum. So I really like that strategy. Something that Michelle talks about quite often at Upskill is, and I really like, and I've started to use it, experiment with it a little bit, and perhaps not so much me experimenting, but that a colleague or friend of mine sort of. I sort of brought this sort of to fruition for me. Is this like an accountability partner in terms of your career progression? And so something very simple. And, you know, I had something to do. And, um, you know, somebody is, I, you share your ideas, you share your plans, your goals and things with individual, whether it's on health or professional development, or I'd like to take this course. I'd like to do this. I'd like to achieve this and, um, you know, A reminder, having somebody to kind of have a heads up for you and say, Hey, did you see that there was, you know, this thing out now and they're looking for that? Or did you see this? Have you, you know, did you read this article on that? And then keep you, your toes sort of pointed in the right direction and remind you, um, that this is, this is due when it's done, you can treat yourself, something like that. I think that's an important sort of tip. And something that I think that I'm putting definitely putting to use in my, um, it sort of moving forward. I like what everybody said. I relate to a lot of things. Um, especially the retail therapy. From time to time, it's, it's a great way to get your mind off things, but I. Like mindfulness also really resonates with me because at the end of the day, I'm looking for tools to help me deal with this bad feeling that is rooted in my brain. It's like this feeling of stress, anxiety, nervousness, overwhelm. I know that it's these neurotransmitters or whatever signaling in my brain that's making me feel like this. And I have different tools to deal with it. So retail therapy is one tool that makes me feel better and gives me happy chemicals, but mindfulness is the best. ultimate tool if you can just sit and process it and meditate on it because you don't need anything. It's the most empowering because you realize you don't need to buy anything, you don't need to do anything. It's You just, you are capable of handling it yourself, but that's the one I'm still working on, and I do think that if you feel a lot of physical discomfort in a moment, it's better sometimes to get yourself moving or to get your mind off it some other way, and then to be mindful and reflect on it afterwards, because personally for me, if I'm really stressed, I feel it, and like, my heart is beating, then I need to go like, Do a hundred jumping jacks, and that helps me, but mindfulness is the key. And I'm trying to reach that. Um, Buddha's and level. I, well, I just have, um, I was sitting and I was listening to everyone and it, my thought jumped to, um, something that I read, a book that I read with, um, Charles Hommel and it's about tyranny of the urgent and, and as I sat and I reflected, I remembered that a part of what he says is that Um, there's always a tension between what is urgent and what is important, and most of the time, the urgent always tend to outdo. And when I reflected on burnt out, I also, I also saw where sometimes how we prioritize. I grew up and I remember my grandma would always say, too much of one thing good for nothing. If you, if you, if you find yourself doing too much of anything or constantly repeating certain things, then you'll find that eventually you will not, you either get burnt out because of, um, the decisions that you make. And sometimes you also find that, um, repeated actions tend to, to sometimes weigh on you. And so, um, it's, it's, it's so for me, I just looked at it and I said, okay, you know, um, there's always this thing that goes on that what really gets us is either how we, we make our decisions, whether we think that it's more, what is it more important and what is, what is, what is urgent and sometimes depending on how we made that decision and what, what strains it pulls on us, then that's where you find sometimes burned out can come in. That's just all I have to say. Well, thank you very much. And Habenita has just linked back this conversation beautifully to our conversation on time management and the tyranny of urgent is referring to the Heisenhower matrix, which we have discussed in a previous episode. On the balancing in that matrix between what is urgent and what is important. And we dropped some really amazing strategies. So hope you'll go back to that episode and have a look. As we wrap up tonight, I just want to summarize what I heard as we talked tonight about work life balance, and we shifted the language to work life integration and a solution, a strategy. Work life integration can be to help us to avoid burnout as we shift our perspective shift our mental models of what work and life, the relationship between work and life can look like we shifted personally. We shifted interpersonally with those around us, both at home and at work, and we shifted structurally. We shifted understanding that these structures, if we're in leadership, that these structures require us to consider individual situations. And this is one good thing that came out of COVID. It disrupted a pattern that we had taken for granted for so long and gave us other possibilities. There were so many companies who would never allow There are people to work from home. Some companies you had to get VP approval if you wanted to work from home for one single day. And many of those companies have comfortable hybrid situations now. It's those mental models that we have that we have to disrupt. So I want to have you think about work life balance along with what's Peter Senge talks about personal professional, that's super. Official boundary and think about how we may shift away from thinking about these two as two distinct categories and begin to think about the integration of work and life. Integrating your work into your life as a meaningful component of your life. So I'm summarizing them in R's. Tonight is all about the R's. We start off with Relationships, and Althea touched on the importance of certain relationships, the accountability partners that remind us, you touched on reminders, the importance of being reminded of who you are, what you're about, what you're capable of, and just to authenticate you. And we talked about Mindfulness that's coming out of our reflective strategies, reflections being important to who we are, to what we notice. John Dewey says, we do not learn by doing, we learn by reflecting on what we've done. That's the key to reflection. And there are many different reflective strategies. Mindfulness is one of the key ones. And I also heard about re evaluating and that's revisiting. Where we are right now and not living our lives in rote, just going down with doing what we've always done, but pausing. As Avanita said, revisiting what we are doing and re evaluating. Someone said rest, take a break if you need rest. And rest can happen with time off and extended time. It can, it can happen by just making sure you get a good night's sleep. It can happen by taking 15 minutes break during the day. It can happen by taking a walk. It can happen by just sitting quietly. On the train ride home. So rest for you can be anything. It can be listening to your music. You define what rest looks like, but rest has to be part of this equation. And Flora, you touched on your tools. So I'm using resources to describe the tools, all kinds of resources. And, and then I want to come back and just remind us that it begins with relationships and it ends with relationships. I think, um, Althea started off with discuss the relationships, including accountability partners. And Althea also described the relationships, including retail therapy, and I know I am not promoting retail therapy at all. I, and so, but that could also. Come back and connect with Mimi's concept of rewarding yourself and celebrating yourself and rewarding yourself could be with, with, um, Flora's exercise that could be the reward, you know? And so I'm really grateful that we had this time. One of the things that's just come up as we're heading out and Avenita touched on is the importance of time management. And when we touched on time management, what we said was you can't manage time. You can't pause it. Fast forward it, slow it down. You can't allocate any more or less. You can't give it away or take any from anyone else. So we really can't manage time. We are managing ourselves and managing ourselves is what we have to do more effectively to integrate work meaningfully and seamlessly into our lives to avoid burnout. Until next time. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this episode of Upskill Talks. We bring you new episodes every Monday. Please take a moment to subscribe. Leave a five star rating and a written review at Apple Podcast or follow us on Spotify, Google podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Don't forget to share Upskill talks with other leaders like yourself, so they too may gain the skills and insights to produce amazing results. Please go to upskill community.com to review show notes, and learn how you can join a community of leaders from across the globe. Collaborating to lead in a more meaningful and impactful way. I'm your host, Michelle Shaw, and again, thank you for joining me on this episode of Upscale Talks.