Ep. 4: Compartmentalization

·         Managing stress to prevent burnout

·         Boundaries and breaks

·         Early to bed, early to rise

·         Pressure release

·         Start each interaction fresh

·         Give stress time to fade

·         End of day reflection

·         Sleep on it before taking action

·         Breathe

·         Schedule around stressors

·         Gratitude

·         Sustainable high-performance

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

All right, welcome back everyone to the Talk to Me PDD podcast. I'm your host, PDD, Pete Dempsey. My opportunity to talk to you about all things people management, leadership, productivity, and whatever's top of mind for me. So thank you for joining me. Today is episode four, and we're going to talk about compartmentalization. So last time I introduced sort of the three C's framework that I use to think about people management and some of the some of the things that we don't get necessarily taught in traditional people management training. So I introduced the concept of how we connect with the people we manage and our colleagues and why that's so important as people managers. So today I'm going to talk about uh compartmentalization. So the second C. And this is really about how we manage burnout, how we deal with some of the stress or sort of the emotional interactions that come with the role of being a people manager or being close to people, right? So that's sort of one of the paradoxes of people management is you're building this connection, you're getting close to people. Um, and that can sometimes bring with it more emotional weight that you have to carry. And we're not really prepared for that. So um, you know, thinking about how we do that, how we can um show up fresh in our interactions, how we can not burn ourselves out, we can continue to show up and and do great work, be there for our pe our people, be there to drive business success in our organization. So um within the concept of compartmentalization, I think about two things that are really helpful for me to be. So boundaries and breaks. So what are our boundaries before our workday starts or when it ends? And how do we introduce breaks throughout the day to help manage um some of that that workload and stress from building up to a level that that is um is more than we can handle. So um, you know, two natural boundaries to the workday in the morning and in the evening. Um, I think the morning is a really valuable time for us to take some time for ourselves before the workday starts. And that may mean getting up a little bit earlier um than we have to, quote unquote have to, um, so we can have a little morning routine and spend some time some time with ourselves and getting the day started, uh, feeling like we've um invested in ourselves and our in our own health um and well-being. Um so for me, what that looks like is is getting up maybe 20 minutes sooner than I have to, um, spending some time reading, um, sitting on the couch with my dog and relaxing. Um, and that really makes a difference for me in my day. And I think there's all different routines that that you can do. I would say as much as you can do to stay off your device and sort of engaging in work or other electronic communications in the morning is a good idea. Um, in the past couple months, I I adopted the policy of putting my phone to bed separately outside of the room and getting an old-fashioned alarm clock. Um, and that's been good for a variety of reasons. But um one of the things that really struck me that I wasn't expecting as much is that previously I was using my phone as my alarm clock in the morning. So just naturally looking at it. Um, and now that I don't do that, I'm less likely to engage with my my phone and digital interaction and work and things like that first thing in the morning. So I think it's helpful to have that break, have that time for ourselves. Now, if we're going to be getting up early, that means that we probably need to go to bed a little bit earlier. Um, and that can be a hard boundary to enforce for ourselves because we don't have to. Um, I really like what uh Laura Vandercam wrote about this in her book, Tranquility by Tuesday. It's like we've become adults and we don't have to put ourselves to bed. So sometimes we don't want to. It's um generally when we have time for ourselves. If we have kids, they may be in bed. So nice to have some more adult time. Um but if we want to benefit of being able to have time for ourselves in the morning to benefit from more consistent sleep, we need to be able to enforce that boundary at night as well. So the the the two the two go hand in hand. Um, so then the second B within compartmentalization is having breaks throughout the day. And these don't necessarily have to be long breaks. I know lots of us have meetings sort of consistently throughout the day, especially as people managers. Something that I found really helpful is having a five-minute buffer. So either starting minutes five minutes later or ending them five minutes sooner. Um, for me, starting later seems to be more effective, and that's sort of what I've experienced in my workplace, and I really enjoy that. And I think about it sort of like um pressure building up in an engine or a machine or something like that with the work that we have throughout the day. And being able to take those little breaks is just a quick way to release some of that pressure so it doesn't build up to a mount that um blows up or or causes something um detrimental to happen. So even in just those five minutes, you can really accomplish a lot. Um, I think if possible, stepping away from your work area um if you can, um, getting outside, um, even if you can't get outside, you know, going to, you know, if you have a cafe in your office, going there, taking a quick break, um, even though there's, I'm sure, lots of things building up that want to uh take your attention and need your attention at work, you're probably not gonna accomplish all that much quote unquote work in that five minutes. But if you can take time for yourself um and reset, that's gonna be really beneficial. Um so you know, why do we want to do this? Um it's natural to sort of bring um our previous interactions and feelings with us. And if we're building up stress throughout the day, um it's gonna be hard to show up the way that we want to for our people when we have our our one-on-ones or when we're showing up in in meetings. Um so sometimes it can be hard to adopt healthy behaviors for ourselves. Um I know a lot of people managers think of themselves as servant leaders or you know, service leadership. Um, and I think that can be a helpful way to frame some of these behaviors for ourselves is that if we want to be a good servant leader, we we want to be there and show up our best to support our people. Um, we need to make sure we're taking care of ourselves, we're letting some of that stress go throughout the day. So when we do meet with them, um, we can show up as our best selves and support them. So sometimes um, you know, we have trouble um adopting these changes that we know are good for ourselves, um, purely for ourselves. So if you frame it in a way of doing it for your people or for your colleagues, that can be helpful to um to actually help get you to adopt those behaviors. So um, you know, doing that throughout the day and you know, there's all sorts of of stress that can happen, you know, you could have um dealing with people management, all sorts of real life issues, but some of it may just be the busyness of the workday or trying to make challenging work decisions or debating with a colleague or feeling like you didn't get your point across in a particular meeting, any sort of thing um like that. And those those can build up over time. Um, and what I've generally found is that the strongest reaction is right after they happened. Um, you know, you can read an email and maybe you know you have a strong reaction to it right then. Um, but generally, if you take some time and wait, um that reaction dissipates and it's not usually as as strong of a feeling. So that's one of the benefits I think of having these little breaks throughout the day. And um that gives you an opportunity to kind of put aside whatever it was that happened previously, if it's something that was bothering you or you felt strongly about, um then you can come back to it. So that's why I call it compartmentalization. You're sort of taking this individual thing that happened, I'm gonna put it aside. And it's not that I'm not going to deal with my stress or with issues or things like that, but I'm gonna set it aside for now. Um, and then what I like to do is sort of at the end of the day go back and review the things that happened and think about is this still something that's bothering me, or is it really not that big of a deal? And I think usually what what you'll find is if you're able to put some of these stressors aside when you get to the end of the day, the majority of them aren't going to seem like as big of a deal as they were at the time they happened. So you're not going to be left with nearly as much to worry about and have to address. And then if there are things that are remaining at the end of the day that are bothering you or decisions or things you were upset about, um then what I like to do is say, okay, I've thought about it a bit now. This is still something that needs some more attention. Let me sleep on it and come back to it the next day. And if it's still something that's there the next day, I think that's when you really need to devote energy to it and address it. Um, but the vast majority of things are never going to make it that far. Um, and just by setting that stress aside temporarily and telling yourself you're gonna come back to it, um, most of those things will just disappear on their own and they're not going to weigh you, weigh you down the same way they would if you try and hold on to them throughout the day and think about them and worry about addressing them. Um so things that you can do in addition to stepping away, um, you know, breath work, I've found is really helpful. Simple things just like box breathing um can help calm the physical symptoms if you're feeling agitated or you feel like things are are being built up over the course of the day, something that only takes a few seconds to do, um, something that you can do during those little breaks if you have them. Um, if you know you're gonna have a, you know, a conversation where you may have strong feelings and you can plan around that. Sometimes it can be nice to leave space either before or after that so you can sort of prepare yourself or decompress from it. And this is an individual thing too. Uh um sometimes um, you know, for me, it may be easier just to keep myself busy going into a conversation. I might be, you know, worrying about or thinking about it that way. I don't really have time to uh to focus on the feelings of worry or anxiety about it. Um you know, I also think that um gratitude is a really helpful practice um trying to put things in perspective for for most of us in people management and knowledge work, um, our problems are relative compared to what other people have in the world. And um not trying to, you know, minimize those. I think we all experience strong feelings of you know our problems and challenges, regardless of sort of the absolute scale of those. So that's always going to be there. But I sometimes I find it's helpful if I you know practice gratitude. I think about you know the alternatives situations that I could be in. Um, and that appreciation helps minimize some of the feelings that um I may feel. And the the whole idea is that um we want to perform at a high level and we want to do that in a sustainable way. So we need to make sure that we're not letting stress build up either over a short period like a day or a longer period of time. So finding ways to set aside those little stressors and most of them will dissipate, and then finding a way to review at the end of the day and the next day things that you need to address, um, and then going to address them. So hopefully that's helpful. That's how I think about the the second C and the three C's framework, compartmentalization. Um, the final one will be courage, and that aligns well with um, you know, going and addressing some of these challenges and stressors if they haven't dissipated and you you do need to go and address them. Um, so I hope this was helpful. Um, you know, and I hope that some of these practices will help you avoid burnout and live and work in a less stressful way. So thank you.