E048 - Deep Dive: Creating + Cultivating Professional Boundaries | Females in Fine Fettle Podcast
Channel: Michelle Rogers of the The WELLthy Woman
Date: 2018-07-21

In this episode, we’re taking a piece from our funky 5 and diving deeper. 

We talk about boundaries in relation to our work and professional life – how to manage our time, prioritize the tasks that will make the biggest impact during our day, and how to use the concept of essentialism to create sustainable working habits and avoid burnout.

Listen in to learn more!

xo
- Dr. Michelle

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:49] Michelle: Hey hey – welcome back to another episode! Today we’re taking a piece from our funky 5 and diving a bit deeper. We’re going to be talking about boundaries in relation to our work and professional life – how to manage our time, prioritize the tasks that will make the biggest impact during our day, and how to use the concept of essentialism to create sustainable working habits and avoid burnout.

[00:01:17] Denise: Yes – this topic is so important!

Consider that we spend an average of  92, 000 hours at work in our lifetime – AND for many of us we take our work stressors home with us in a way that influences the ways we spend our time outside of work, meaning our work life makes a big impact on the quality of life. So creating smart boundaries in our working life, helps us to enjoy the rest of our lives more. In the last episode, episode 47,  we mentioned the book Essentialism – a great book if you’re interested in this topic. – and in it he says “if you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will” and boy oh boy does that resonate when it comes to our working life….So — let’s jump in! Dr Michelle – how do you rock out with smart boundaries at work?

[00:02:14] Michelle:  So, one of the things I mentioned last week was how I utilize time blocks. Now, there are several strategies around this, so you’ll have to find what works best for you, but one of my favorite ways to do this is by using brain.fm – I know I’ve talked about this app in previous episodes, but I’m STILL a huge fan, and they’re making updates all the time – they actually just added a piano focus session not too long ago.

Anyway, they use auditory neuroscience to help you focus, and you can set their built in timer for 30 min, an hour or two hours – or you can just have it on continuous play, but that goes against the purpose of the time block, right?

I like setting it for 1 or 2 hours, and then when the music stops, that’s my cue to get up, stretch, walk around the room, or take some conscious breaths.

Brain.fm also has settings for relaxation, meditation and sleep, so you can play around with as well, but I’m pretty glued to their focus sessions.

This time-block approach can also be explored with the pomodoro technique, where you can do shorter stints of work – only 20 minutes, or so, and have a timer go off. At each interval, you just take a quick 2-5 min break – look away from your computer, focus on something in the distance, do some breathwork or stretching at your desk. It’s SUPER effective at increasing energy and mental focus. And there are several apps that you can download, related to this technique.

[00:04:01] Denise: I Love this time block approach. I do something similar by setting an alarm on my phone – usually for just over an hour,  putting my phone on airplane mode, and then I make a promise to myself that I will stay in ONE task until the alarm goes off. So no checking  emails, or slack messages, or social media, and no texts come in — so I’m nice and free from distractions. Sometimes it takes me a while to get into the flow with the work…but I ALWAYS ultimately do. And when the alarm goes off, I usually am in a focused enough state that I will just keep trucking and finish up a task if it isn’t already. Binding my time, and making a commitment to how I’m going to use it, work really well to keep me focused. Of course – this can be tricky if you work in an office and are subject to meetings and other people’s schedules. I like to recommend blocking out an hour each day on your own calendar to allow for focused work time for yourself.

[00:05:15] Michelle: Yes! If the majority of your day is working with someone else’s agenda – I mean, sometimes it’s unavoidable, it’s essential – word of the day, right – to create those time blocks for yourself. This helps prevent us from reaching the end of the day, or even the week, feeling like we haven’t really accomplished anything we wanted to.

[00:05:39] Denise: When I am writing, I like to use the app ommwriter. I love the aesthetic, and the software designers dedication to essentialism and focus. It essentially a word processor, paired with good brain tunes, that takes over your browser window and REALLY frees up distractions. If you’ve never tried it, check it out! We’ll link to it in the show notes.

GRAB THE FULL TRANSCRIPT: https://www.femalesinfinefettle.com/048

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