#timeforwhatmatters

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Today I want to talk about work-life balance and share three tips to help you leave your work at work. For those of you who are newer to this group, you may not know that I have a day job in the IT industry. So, I’m a consultant, and then I also run my coaching business—that’s two jobs. Whether you are working 9-to-5 or working a side-hustle from home, these tips will keep work stress from creeping into your personal life.

Why am I talking about this? I find that there are so many people I know and work with who end up taking their work home with letting it run their whole night. They’re going home, and you're already in a bad mood. Then you're kind of crappy to everyone around you. You’re stressed and making bad decisions, whether you’re eating poorly, ordering crazy things online, or staying up way too late to get some of the night back for yourself.

How do we fix that? How do we minimize some of that so that it’s not happening daily?

First, quit your job. Go into business for yourself.

Just kidding.

Being an entrepreneur is a great experience. You get to pick who you work with, set your hours, and the sky is the limit on your success. But in the short term, if you're not ready for that yet, here are a couple of real life things that you can do.

 Stick to a schedule

A lot of times when we’re having a really bad day it’s due in part to staying late to put extra hours into something, whether someone expected you to or not. Try your best to stick to a schedule for when you traditionally leave work. This is even more important if you work at home because there is a tendency to stay ‘plugged in’ all the time.

If you're in your groove and you feel fantastic, or you have an important project you sincerely want to keep going on, I get that. If that’s not the case, you need to be careful with how much time you're putting in because you’ll end up feeling resentful.

Your company has a specific expectation of what you're doing and the rest, you're just gifting to them.

Wouldn't you rather be using those hours for something that lights you up inside? Something that brings you closer to your goals, or simply makes you feel good?

Create positive transitions

Next, I want you to create some positive rituals for transitioning between your job and your personal life. For example, every day when you leave work you listen to a podcast. If it’s something you enjoy it will calm you down and bring you back from the day. It’s best if it’s something that takes at least a couple of minutes so that you actually have some time to mentally transition from one place to the next—from one role to the next.

 No work on your phone

We tend to put our email on there because we want to be “on it”, like any good employee. But you end up, as my partner would say, “breaking yourself into jail”.  Similar to staying late without being told to, you've put an expectation on yourself that everybody else didn't have to begin with..  You’re not getting paid to be worried about your job at 10:00 p.m.

You can check your email when you get home if that’s what you want to do as part of a positive transition, but then turn off the computer and put it away. You're done for the night.

Admittedly there are certain jobs or positions where you can’t take your email off your phone because it’s a requirement of your job. The easiest solution, in that case, is to make sure you delay notifications or how often it checks for mail in the evenings. Another option is to schedule just a few times that you'll check it. This isn’t the best solution but if it’s a job requirement you’ll have to compromise. Just make sure it is an actual requirement stated by the workplace, and not one you have assumed.

If all of that seems like too much at once, then a small step towards moving email off your phone is keeping the app on a separate screen. For example, if you have an iPhone, you can put it on the next home screen. This means that you have to take an extra step to get there and check it.

The people with great work-life balance have boundaries. When they say they are stopping, they actually stop. They know that they’re not accomplishing anything and it’s taking away from the things that they really want in their life. It’s taking away from the time and the energy you have for their passions, the time and the energy that they have for family, that they have for whatever it is that they want to accomplish in life.  

Oh the promise of tomorrow. 

“Tomorrow I am going to catch up on laundry.”, “Tomorrow I am going to dig out the guitar and try to teach myself how to play for the 5th time.”, “Tomorrow I am going to start going for long walks with the dog.”. We all fall victim to this pattern—don’t we? 

I can tell you right now that “Tomorrow Kelsi” is freaking amazing AND she would be so impressed by “Tomorrow YOU”. We would have a fabulous time hanging out we would and feel so fulfilled. We would make the time to slow down and appreciate the small wonders in life. Every moment would be primed for Instagram and we would get SO MANY LIKES. 

That will never happen though. James Bond says, “Tomorrow Never Dies”, but the truth I that, tomorrow as we imagine it will never get here—"Tomorrow never lives”!

It never lives because we won’t let it. We don’t make space for it. We don’t plan for it and we don’t prioritize it. 

Why not? 

Placing things with tomorrow is the most comfortable move. Tomorrow is full of hope and promise. Tomorrow doesn’t feel behind schedule yet. When we triage our schedule it’s not even on the radar. “Future You” will be able to handle it. Plus “Future You” can’t talk back or say “no”.  When tomorrow finally comes on it goes. Tomorrow becomes this weekend, and then next weekend, and then next month. Success fades out in the distance. 

This will keep happening until you choose to breathe some life into “Tomorrow YOU”. 

“How?”, you might ask.

First, take 10 minutes to dump all those ambitions into one place. Make a physical list. Don’t edit yourself by what is too small, too impractical, or too silly. Write it all down. 

Now look at that list and find the one thing that excites you and/or would lower your overall stress level if accomplished. Circle that one because we are about to make it happen. 

Now let’s get that lofty goal within reach by breaking it down into achievable little actions. 

The first way to do that is using “time blocking”. I use this a lot to power through things I don’t really love doing but know will make me feel better once done. 

For example, I loathe processing mail. I usually pick out the urgent stuff the leave the rest for “Future Kelsi” to sort, recycle, or shred. (Very terrible habit. Not recommended) 

When this catches up with me, and it always does, I make a deal with myself to put it on the calendar. I will break it down into 20 minutes a day. Every day when I get home, I will sort and shred with a timer. When the bell rings I feel great because I moved the needle which gives me a little momentum to get back at it the next day. This process of time blocking is great way to chip away at the bigger projects. 

Another option for breaking down that lofty goal is to think of it in steps. What is the first tiny step you would need to complete to move the needle? If we think back to the guitar—I  need to find my guitar and all the accessories that I bought while feeling ambitious. I will put that on the calendar for Thursday night because it is an easy weeknight task. What’s next? I need to decide on using a book, course, or YouTube sensation to learn from. That will take me a little bit longer, so I might put that down for Sunday morning. Starting to see how this works? 

In both examples I am turning this lofty ambition into a bunch of smaller achievable pieces. I am pulling “Tomorrow Kelsi”, into “Today”—little by little.

Bottom line: I feel like “Tomorrow Kelsi” and “Tomorrow You” would totally hit it off, but they will never get to realize their awesome combined powers unless we prioritize and plan for their success.