#204| Could Your Workspace Be Causing Your Overwhelm? Here’s How to Know (& How to Fix It): Overwhelm, Productivity, Time Management & People Pleasing

Is your workspace quietly adding to your overwhelm without you even realizing it?

In a world where we work from dining tables, couches, bedrooms, or crowded offices, the lack of boundaries around where and how we work has become a major—and often overlooked—source of stress. This episode helps you understand why your environment may be working against you and how a few simple questions can dramatically reduce your overwhelm.

Listeners will discover:
 • The real reasons your physical workspace can trigger mental chaos, even if you feel “used to it.”
 • Three powerful questions that instantly reveal what’s stressing you out about where you work.
 • Small but high-impact shifts you can make today to create a calmer, more supportive workspace.

Press play now to uncover the simple workspace tweaks that can instantly reduce stress and make your workday feel lighter and more manageable.

Featured on the podcast
Michelle's Declutter Challenge

Wondering why you're overwhelmed? Take my "why am I overwhelmed" quiz to find out the source of your overwhelm, and what to do about it.

Send Me a Message - Have a question, comment, or just want to say hi? Message me here, I'd love to chat!

Work With Me - Interested in working with me 1-on-1, taking a class, or joining one of my coaching groups? Message me here to get the scoop.

Want More? - If you love the content of this podcast, you'll love our Simple Sunday newsletter too. When you sign up, you’ll receive a simple dose of inspiration, practical tips, and a little fun—designed to help you start your week with simplicity and intention. Sign up here

Life can be overwhelming, but on this podcast, you'll discover practical strategies to overcome overwhelm, imposter syndrome, and negative self-talk, manage time effectively, set boundaries, and stay productive in high-stress jobs—all while learning how to say no and prioritize self-care on the Overwhelmed Worki...

Chapters

• 1:00 Flexible Work, Hidden Stress
• 2:40 Question One: What Is This Space For
• 4:32 Question Two: When Should I Be Here
• 6:22 Question Three: What's In My Control?

Transcript

Michelle Gauthier: 0:00

In this day and age where we're just working wherever we are, we don't take our workspace into consideration, which can cause some additional unnecessary stress.

Michelle Gauthier: 0:14

You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less. I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach. On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences. And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.

Michelle Gauthier: 0:41

Hi, friend. Thanks for joining today. Oh my gosh, my office is driving me crazy right now. So this is a self-serving episode. So hopefully it's helping you and it's helping me at the same time. What we're thinking about today is if your workspace is one of the causes of your overwhelm and what to do about it. If so, when you listen today, you're going to learn why your space might be feeling your overwhelm, even if you hadn't consciously realized it. And I'm going to give you three powerful questions that will help you define your workspace. A lot of times, especially in this day and age where we're just working wherever we are, we don't take our workspace into consideration, which can cause some additional unnecessary stress. So by the end of this episode, you will have a list of a couple small shifts that you can make to help your workspace work for you instead of against you. And hopefully by the end of this episode, I will be so motivated by what I'm saying that I am going to go and get my office back into its best shape as well. If you think about the concept of the office and where you're working today versus where you would have been working like 10 or 15 years ago, it's really interesting to think about how flexible our workspaces have become, which is wonderful in so many ways, but also can be so draining that the idea that we can actually work almost anywhere is not necessarily good. Sometimes we really need some boundaries around us. And in this day and age where you might have an office with a door in a building that is not your home, that is probably less people than people who have a flexible workspace with a cubicle, or people who are working from a coffee shop, or people who work from home at their own dining room table. So the concept of what a workspace is has really changed and will continue to change. But today we're just going to look at these three questions that will help you define where you work and reduce your stress and overwhelm because you know the answers to these. So number one is what is this space actually used for? So if I think about my office in my home, I feel like I have a good setup. It is dedicated as my office, it has doors, but also I have a swing that hangs from the ceiling in here, and my kids both love it. And they come in here and they talk to me. So this is a space where I work and where I see clients. This is a space that my kids come into. If one of them has homework that they need help with, we do it in here at night. So it's not much of a family space, but it's sometimes a family space. And it is also the collector of Amazon boxes sometimes. I pay all the bills and do all of our house management stuff in here. So I have other things like that in here. If you think about your situation, your workspace might be the dining room table. So that is also for meals and homework and your Zoom calls, or you might work in an office in a cubicle with no walls, or you might work in an office where when you get to the office for the day, you just choose where you're going to sit for the day. So you don't have like a complete setup. You might be a person who works on the couch. Maybe your office is your guest room, and you also fold laundry in there. Maybe you work sitting up in your bed, but you really kind of hate that because it makes you feel a little bit unmotivated and it's your bedroom and your place of rest and then also your place of work. Once you define what the space is actually for, it's helpful for you to just be aware of that and to know, okay, this is my office, but sometimes it's also our dining room table. So, question number two is when should I be here? Ask yourself, when do I want this space to be used for work? If I think about my office, I keep very specific hours. So I really rarely work before eight or nine, and I really don't work much past four o'clock in the afternoon. But I try to do all my work in my office. I used to like take my laptop places or I'd bring it out in the kitchen or whatever, and it was not good for my brain. So I know that when I'm in here, I'm working. I do not come into my office just to hang around or if I'm gonna like sit down and read, I'm not gonna come into my office, even though I really like the room, but I definitely feel like I should be here when I'm working, and that's it. And I think if you're thinking about this and you have a multi-use room, for example, maybe you're working from your bedroom and you have a desk in your bedroom, and you can just say to yourself, from you know, eight to five, this is my work zone. And after that, this room goes back into being my bedroom. When I used to have an office in my bedroom, I would shut off my computer and like turn off all the lights in the work area. So, how can you use the hours that you're working or some kind of signal to define, okay, this was my office, but now it's going back to the dining room or the bedroom or whatever it is. I had a podcast guest a while back and I thought she had a great idea, which was she found herself kind of scrolling and getting distracted during the day in her office. So she just made a rule that if she was going to scroll or do anything that wasn't work related, that she would exit her office to do so. So she would go sit on her couch, and it was just an indicator to her body, like, okay, now we're taking a break from work because we're not sitting at our desk anymore. Then the third and final question to ask yourself about your workspace is what's in versus out of my control? Because sometimes there are things that are in our control that we don't take action on when we could. So if your workspace is at your dining room table, and because of the way that your house is and the amount of space that you have, that is your only option. What's out of your control is that it's also used for family dinners. What can be out of your control is the noise level. So if you and a partner are both working from home, you might be able to hear that person on their Zoom calls. I've always worked from home since I've had kids. And when they were little, I had a nanny, but I could still hear them sometimes yelling in the other room. So sometimes you can't control the noise level. If you're working in a corporate office, you can't control the temperature or the ugly overhead lighting or the fact that you sit next to the bathroom or whatever it is. So knowing what's out of your control can be helpful just to remind yourself, okay, that's out of my control, but what is in my control? So some of the things that are in your control are like clearing that pile of clutter from the surface in front of you or bringing in something that makes you feel good, a little plant or a candle or a playlist. If you're working in one of those places where you get to work every day and then you just choose a cubicle and you sit in it, you can't really make it too personalized. But in your laptop bag, can you carry a couple things that feel like yours? Can you bring your favorite coffee mug? You can always bring a playlist with you. You can bring your own headphones. Depending on the ages of the other people in your house, you can make boundaries or rules. Like mine is if my office doors are closed, don't come in. But if I'm just working and I'm not seeing a client or recording a podcast or anything and my kids are home, I crack the door so that they know they can come in and talk to me if they want to talk to me. That's totally in my control. I think with little kids, I really couldn't do that. It was just during the workday, I never left my office. Luckily, I had a bathroom connected, but I never left my office. I would just run to the bathroom and back, and then I would text my nanny, hey, I'm coming out for lunch, and I would go make my lunch and then go right back into my office. So just remember what's in your control and what's out of your control. And as a side note, we're talking about asking yourself, what is this space actually used for? When should I be here? And what's in versus out of my control? One of the things I mentioned that is in your control is clearing the clutter from your office, which we know can be really distracting. If you'd like to do some decluttering in your office, just a quick decluttering. I've got tons of episodes on how to declutter. If you start around episode 178, there's a whole declutter challenge. This is a great exercise to go through now because there's potential that during the holidays you might have people in your home if you work from home that you don't normally have at home during the day. So this will be great practice for you to ask yourself these three questions and reduce your stress and overwhelm when it comes to your workspace, no matter where it is. Okay, I hope your workspace is becoming more peaceful by the moment. Have a great week. Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast. If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.com. See you next week.