Episode 37: How to maintain a work life balance
September 20, 2021
With the blurring of lines between life and work, exacerbated by working from home, today’s episode draws attention to the challenges of maintaining a work life balance, and what you can do about it. From setting your own expectations, and communicating with your customer base, work life balance is up to you to take control and cultivate for your own benefit. Balance is the operative word in our title and we look at many different ways you can use your time well to have the balance needed to lead a happy and healthy life.
Podcast Transcript Available Here
Duration: 29:26
Trudi Cowan: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Financial FoFu I'm Trudy Cowan. Sarah Eifermann: I'm Sarah Eifermann. Trudi Cowan: And today we want to have a chat about your work-life balance. Yes. COVID has thrown everybody's schedules, out of whack, really, and forced a lot of us into different working conditions to what we're used to. And a lot of us work from home, when we're not used to it, which changes things from our work-life balance perspective. And I find it makes it a lot harder to switch off between what's worked on and what's not. Sarah Eifermann: I think it was a problem before COVID Right, like people leaving work and bringing work home, but it's definitely become an issue with lockdown especially with people not having anything else to do so I'll just work all the time, Trudi Cowan: All the time so we thought we'd have a chat today about some of the things you can do to try and get that balance back. Try to and to keep that balance, going into the future Sarah Eifermann: Moving forward. Alright, so, Trudi Cowan: Balance was my word of the year this year so it's an appropriate topic so it will be interesting to say how many of these things I actually do. Yes, I might get some tips for me. Yeah. But one of the things that I see often in some of the Facebook groups is people commenting about having customers and clients contacting them outside of their hours. So I think it's actually really important to Sarah Eifermann: Consciously communicate, which is my word of the year. Trudi Cowan: Think before you communicate, decide yourself what are your hours. Yeah, and what those hours are going to be that you're going to work. And for you, it may not be nine to five, Monday to Friday. It might be that you're an early morning person, so you're going to work six till two, and an actual workday. Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with that. But it's important to have it set that that is what your workday is and communicate that with your customers and clients so they know when they can expect to have communications with you. Sarah Eifermann: Yeah, it's really not fair for you to get upset at your consumers, if you haven't told them what your working hours are, yeah. Trudi Cowan: And if you're, say, in a commerce business. I'm sure this is probably a big problem for you, people shop at all hours of the day and people you know expect immediate responses. Sarah Eifermann: I think that's the biggest problem though, isn't it? These are all now used to having instantaneous responses or replies, send a message, get a message that's like that all the time. Trudi Cowan: So I think that, as you said communication so have some email responders set up or automatic message responders on your Instagram or Facebook or your Shopify accounts or whatever it is that you're using so that if a customer does contact you out of hours at least they're getting a message back that says you're contacting us outside of hours but we'll reply to you as soon as we're open again which is at nine o'clock tomorrow or whatever the case may be clients, customers are gonna get a little bit annoyed if I know that message has been received and someone will come back to me at the appropriate time. Sarah Eifermann: Yeah, absolutely. I think that is the biggest one that I see on the Facebook groups as well. Yeah, they just keep contacting me and solve the problem now direct pay upfront, be polite. Trudi Cowan: Yep. And if they're contacting you via methods that select your preferred method, then make that clear to them as well. Yes, I had a customer or client recently trying to set up a WhatsApp group saying you can just send messages through here and I went straight back and said, well actually, I'd prefer that you just email me because that's the channel I communicate with my clients with, If I'm suddenly having to check Whatsapp and Facebook messages and all sorts of other things in time to check to see whether I'm receiving messages through these other platforms and it makes it more difficult for me to service my clients, it's all through email, and there's an email here that I've got a query that I made to deal with. So it is important to communicate that if they are contacting you through less preferred options again maybe it's an autoresponder, we don't check this inbox, please contact us via one of these other methods. Sarah Eifermann: Absolutely. So this one was a game-changer for me, I did it in 2019 So pre COVID. It was a huge thing, but when you work for yourself, it's often really hard to switch off especially when clients aren't demanding, and after hours, and so I started to train myself to switch off by putting a Do Not Disturb on my phone. Yeah. So I started with the hours of 9:30. It was quite late. Till 7 am To start with, and then I started incrementally bringing back that 9:30 to 9 to 8:30 to 8. It now goes on at 7:30 every night, so if I choose to check my phone. That's my choice. Yeah, but I'm not being inundated with contact from clients after hours. Trudi Cowan: With rings and dings of the phone. Sarah Eifermann: Yes, exactly. So, one of the questions was Do Not Disturb is what if, what if my parents need to call me. What if it's an emergency, that's fine just pop them into your favorites, they can still call through. Trudi Cowan: Yeah, definitely. I've got that on my Apple phone. Yeah, I think I might I've got it set so that I don't get any alerts from Facebook or messages or anything like that but if somebody rings me yeah the phone will still ring. Yes, yeah. And my theory is if someone's ringing me it probably actually is urgent. Because people don't really ring much these days yeah unless it's really important, Sarah Eifermann: That is true, depending on generation. So that one for me is like I said game changer. It allowed me to take time out to be mentally present for what I needed to do and not be continually on the rat race self-employed rat race of checking my notifications answering clients, etc, etc, Trudi Cowan: And you know and this is all about your business out so once you've set those hours stick to them. Yes, don't go, it's 7 o'clock at night but I've got nothing else to do, and the kids are all in bed. I'll just do an hour's work. Sarah Eifermann: That's the problem though right so we are responsible for our work-life balance. Yeah, and if we are not cultivating a work-life balance, we will not have a work-life balance. So, yeah, absolutely. Trudi Cowan: It's a conscious decision of these are my hours and this is what I'm going to stick to. Sarah Eifermann: And it’s so tempting just to smash out that extra hour to make your next day beneficial, but long term, it leads to burnout. Trudi Cowan: Yeah, it does. And even things like working before bed, you're probably not sleeping as well. Yeah. Staring both staring at the screen and having worked on your brain doesn't help you sleep so having that one downtime is actually really important. Sarah Eifermann: Really, really valuable. Okay so, acknowledge that we've kind of talked about this so acknowledge that clients can contact you out of hours, but that you don't always need to respond straight away so this one is common I often have people still glad someone contacted me yesterday. And in that instance, I chose to reply, but I didn't have to reply. I could have easily contacted him this morning and said, I pretty much contacted him yesterday to say, Yep, I'll talk to you tomorrow. Trudi Cowan: I often have clients email me over the weekend, but I think that's because they have time. Yes, especially if the individual clients they're working away, and don't want to look at their text on the weekend. So yes, I do, ignore those emails until I come in on Monday, and if I am being naughty and working on the weekend what I sometimes also do is I'll reply but you can put a delayed delivery on the email, actually being sent yes you can. So the client doesn't actually receive the email until Monday morning. Yeah, so you replied and cleared it from the inbox, but you're not going to get any further response until Monday. Sarah Eifermann: You cleared it from your brain space. Trudi Cowan: Yes. So I will often make use of that as well. Sarah Eifermann: Yeah, absolutely. Trudi Cowan: So look, we've set our work hours. The other thing that we really should do to keep some balance in our day is actually blocking out some time for exercise, hanging out with kids, fun, yeah, date night, whatever it may be for you and your family, that helps you to achieve balance. Yeah, in your life. There's absolutely nothing wrong and it's actually a great thing to say that, you know, seven o'clock in the morning, that's the time that I go to the gym, or in the case of lockdown time I go for my run. And blocking those things can help make sure that you actually do those things that are of benefit to you in your life and your balance. Sarah Eifermann: Yeah, Absolutely. I think there's a reason that primary school and even kinder are set up the way they are with the hours with a recess or a little play at lunchtime and then after the breaks. Kids need breaks. Adults need breaks. You cannot stare at a screen, which is mainly what we ended up doing. For the periods of time that we do it's not good for your body for a start, you need to be active and moving. Yeah, maintain good functional body movement, but it's not good for the brain. Trudi Cowan: When I was working in the city I knew lots of people that would use their lunch break to go to the gym. Yeah, and that was the blocked-out time that they would get in some exercise, I knew other people that they would block in their regular massage or their lunch breaks. That's right. Again, it's just the good old days. It's just making use of that time to allow yourself to have that balance in your life of meeting all of these different things. Sarah Eifermann: What's one thing that you block out of your day Trudi? Trudi Cowan: Dinner. Oh, mine is lunch, actually. Blocking out is one of the things I'm not. No, not at my workday, and then everything else just kind of fits in around that. Yeah. Every now and then I might get to Friday night and block out my weekend, these are the things I want to get done. Yeah. Over the weekend, blocking in my playtime is one of the things that I am not as good at. Sarah Eifermann: Well, I don't get a choice in my morning books. I must take my dog for a walk, or she will be psycho crazy all day. Trudi Cowan: I have to get a dog again. Sarah Eifermann: Yeah, so that actually does for me. You know it's good for a lot of reasons one makes me get out of bed, especially if we're lacking motivation for anything. She doesn't fail on that, So you have to get out of bed, take her for a walk, every morning. That happens regardless so that's not even blocked out of my calendar, it's just a mandatory requirement. Trudi Cowan: I think it's blocked out in the sense that you know that that's a commitment. Yeah and if someone was to say, Sarah, do you want to do something else on that day, you would have to work it around that commitment. Sarah Eifermann: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. Trudi Cowan: And the next one is one that I have days that I'm very good at and days that I'm terrible at, and that is focusing on one task at a time. We all know that nobody is really all that good at multitasking, Sarah Eifermann: I used to be amazing at multitasking. Trudi Cowan: Sure. We think that we are but Sarah Eifermann: I'm not anymore I can tell you right now I'm terrible at it right now, Trudi Cowan: But you achieve a lot more. If you can spend time on a single task absolutely, whether that be writing a report, whether that be playing with the kids, whether that be, just being at the gym, like, you're going to do a better job of whatever the task at hand. Sarah Eifermann: Yeah, it doesn't have to be work-related. Trudi Cowan: If you can fully focus on it, and I know at the moment with homeschooling. It's really tempting to be doing your work, while also trying to supervise the kids doing homeschooling and you're probably only really doing a half job of both things. Yeah, because you're not giving the work enough attention to get it done. It might just be that you're not getting it done in the time that you should or you might miss something because you're not giving it the focus. Sarah Eifermann: The quality isn't there because the focus isn't there. Trudi Cowan: Same with the kids. Yeah, if you're not giving them the full attention that they need and that's obviously gonna vary depending on the age of the kids but I've got a grade one, so it needs a bit of attention. If you're not giving that full focus to the activity, then maybe they don't really know what they're doing, because you're not focusing or maybe they're Sarah Eifermann: Maybe you don't know what you're doing, Trudi Cowan: I don't know what I'm doing because I wasn't paying attention to what the task was. Sarah Eifermann: You didn't choose teaching as a career path, so you probably do need to pay good attention to what's actually happening and being asked of you. Trudi Cowan: Exactly right you know and if you go to the gym and you're also having a social occasion while you're at the gym, we don't really get to get a proper workout, do you? Sarah Eifermann: There's another thing that could happen which is something that I actually did if you're not paying attention, you can drop plates on your feet and break bones. I don't recommend not paying attention at the gym, because it hurts a lot. Trudi Cowan: But focus on that one task, and when it comes to working. Yeah. Turn off your notifications. Sarah Eifermann: Yeah, it's an easy one. Trudi Cowan: Especially those little email pop-ups that say you've received a new email and bing, bing, bing, Turn it off, leave your email for another point in time and focus on the task at hand, and then check your emails as another task. Yeah but you separately focus on looking at those emails, and I know a lot of people with emails can just get out of hand, and a lot of efficiency experts would say that you block out time for your emails. Sarah Eifermann: Exactly, my emails are always checked first thing in the morning, and also the last thing I do for the day because that's how I clean my plate. Yep, and wipe the slate for the new day. I also write a to-do list, the night before, yep, as something that gets done every day, that gets done. But I don't bust my butt over emails every time they come in unless I'm looking for something urgent. Remember, some of the work I do is time-sensitive. So if I know that there's something urgent due I will periodically check my emails to see whether that has come in. Trudi Cowan: But first, for example, if you're an E-commerce business and you're checking emails every single time they come in, that's not going to be as efficient as checking them once an hour. That's what I'm saying, okay I've had all these orders come in, I will now go and deal with these orders, try to ignore your email and come back at the end of the next hour. I've had the next set of emails coming. I'll deal with these orders now if you're constantly going back and checking your email, you're not focusing on getting the orders done, as well as you should be and you're probably not doing it as quickly as efficiently. Sarah Eifermann: And if your emails are coming in with new orders at the speed that you are only able to pack your older orders, you need to hire somebody. Trudi Cowan: Yes, which is actually one of our other points, don't try and do everything yourself. No, you can't be all things to everybody. And sometimes you gotta get the experts in to help with things. And when it comes to work-life balance, that doesn't just have to be for work. I love my cleaner. I'm quite happy to tell everybody that I have a cleaner. Sarah Eifermann: I would love Trudi's cleaner, would be free to clean my place. Trudi Cowan Sarah Eifermann: Yeah, exactly. Oh, you may actually enjoy it. Yeah, I think bookkeeping is another one. Yeah, that often people think oh you know I can't justify the expense. I'm the one that knows what the money's been spent on with the invoices so I'm the right person to code all of this. But honestly, I rarely see that being done well, and time it's usually left to the last job that gets done. Trudi Cowan: Just before BAS time and three months' worth of money. Sarah Eifermann: Exactly. And so that is a perfect example of where sometimes it may be better off if it was prioritized and outsourced to someone that actually enjoyed doing it, and did it quickly because that's how you would run a successful business is always knowing where your books are at and keeping them up to date. Trudi Cowan: It certainly is but you know, to achieve that balance in your life, you can't do everything, especially, and look, and this is not just for business owners even just for, you know, working people professional people absolutely, if there are only so many hours that you have in a day. Sarah Eifermann: It's becoming obvious how many hours in a day with homeschooling. Right? Trudi Cowan: Yes, exactly right. So it is important to think about what things can you put in place or what systems can you put in place to make your life a bit easier. Sarah Eifermann: Absolutely. So what's the next one? Trudi Cowan: Give yourself a weekend, everybody needs a little bit of time to switch off fully from your work or your business and have a couple of days to put your feet up, And not everyone is going to have a set day Sunday weekend that might not work or make sense for your business. And, but take two days in a row consecutively regularly. Yeah. As your weekend, it might be a Tuesday or Tuesday Wednesday for what might be what makes sense. But make sure you take that time and you do switch off for new, don't check your emails and you take a break from the work so that you can focus on the life portion of the balance. Sarah Eifermann: Yeah, a lot of people don't actually switch off on those times, they just don't do it. Trudi Cowan: I know it's very tempting to check my emails as they come in on the weekends. And I'll admit that I do it quite often, but sometimes that's also just a 10-second check these people sent me was like whatever. Sarah Eifermann: Here's a question for you. Is it a habit that you've created, when you first started your business that you thought you needed to be so responsive to keep those clients that are now fallen into like it's become so habitual that you don't stop doing it or do you feel that it's important that you do it for mental sanity or business service? Trudi Cowan: You know what it is, you know when the phone gives you that little number. I like it when there's no number and it's zero. So when there's a number there, I can’t help myself but look. Sarah Eifermann: Move the email application to the second page of your phone. So you can't see them. Trudi Cowan: That might actually work for me. But I know exactly what it is and that's what I'm saying I don't necessarily even go into the email. I just kind of look and go, I would say not important I don't need to. Sarah Eifermann: Jesus it's a little red number that gets her. Trudi Cowan: I'm not one of those people that can have 1000 unread emails in my inbox that would just make my head explode. Sarah Eifermann: You know I used to be the same. And then I got over it. I got over it. Trudi Cowan: So for me, that's the thing on the phone. Yeah. But as I say, it might only be taken. It's a minute out of my weekend, you know, I'd have, and it's not something that I'm focusing on or spending a lot of energy on. Sarah Eifermann: Here's the concern or it still takes you from whatever you were doing baking a cake with the girls to work. Yeah, and that leads to burnout. Ultimately, Trudi Cowan: You know, because you are not taking that full weekend. Sarah Eifermann: That's right, break so move the email app to the second page of your phone, see if it happens, that's a test for you. So I suppose that leads to prioritizing your time as well. Trudi Cowan: Yeah, and there's a lot of experts that will tell you that there are four categories that we should put every task into. Yes. So Sarah, tell us what they are. Sarah Eifermann: Urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and neither urgent nor important. Trudi Cowan: And I wonder if it is neither urgent nor important is it actually something you need to be doing. Sarah Eifermann: Exactly. Seriously. Trudi Cowan: But look, those four categories can actually be really helpful, especially if you've got a lot of things on your radar or your task list. You help focus your day. And when I was really busy a couple of weeks ago, I actually went through a process of what has to be done today, what are the four things that I must do today. So for me, they felt urgent and important, and it didn't matter if nothing else got done. Those are the things that needed to be done. And I did that for about a week and a half, and really then felt on top of my list because I was prioritizing the work that was important and that was urgent. Yeah, and let the stuff that was less important or less urgent just sort of fall by the wayside so that I could get back on top of my workload. Sarah Eifermann: Yeah and it got you through your workload faster, which Yeah, the whole point of it. Trudi Cowan: It did because I was able to focus and I wasn't spending that time saying and going. What should I do next? Sarah Eifermann: No, to-do list.Yeah, urgent and important. Yeah, problems solved. Trudi Cowan: Exactly right. So prioritize your time and look, you can do this for your personal side of the work-life balance as well as Sarah Eifermann: Some people who aren't accountants may find that too erroneous. Just quietly. Trudi Cowan: Okay, we'll put it this way, you know for me it's urgent and important that I spend time with my girls correctly, it's not urgent and important to me that I wash the floors every week. Sarah Eifermann: Yeah, right, relevant, Trudi Cowan: So maybe you don't have to spend a lot of time focusing on it, but it can still help you put into perspective, should I be taking the girls to the park, or should I be washing the floor. I watched the floor last week. It can wait, I'll take the girls to the park. Sarah Eifermann: That's right, they're not eating off it. Trudi Cowan: No they're not. We have plates. The plates on the floor, that's a good one. Sarah Eifermann: Okay, so we're, we're back here, surprise, have a long term plan so you can schedule out your tasks so that kind of goes in with a to-do list for me that's on a short term timeframe, but some of those things that Trudi Cowan: It really does link in with the urgent and important, as well, you know, some of those things, for example, are going to be important, but they're not urgent. So in terms of your long-term plan. I need to do this task, but I can do it in three weeks' time. And that's still going to be totally fine. So I have a long-term plan for that task. Yes, it's on my to-do list but I'm going to schedule it in three weeks’ time when I should have some more free capacity. Yeah, and when it may actually have moved from important but not urgent to important and urgent, Yeah, yeah, right, so it shoots up at list in terms of the priority of what we're doing, if you don't do that long term planning of your tasks and of your day, you can end up doing things that don't need to be done this week, and forgetting to do the things that actually did have to happen. Sarah Eifermann: Yes, I have fallen foul of that in the past. When I don't do my to-do list, or even just pack too much into that day. Yeah, when you didn't actually hate to do that much that day to work as hard as you did. Trudi Cowan: Yeah, and you could have finished work a little bit earlier, you could have spent a bit more time with your loved ones or the couch. Yeah, and had a bit more downtime. Yeah. So definitely, you know, we love talking about planning. Sarah Eifermann: You know, it worked it out. Well, I suppose I mean, that mental quiet time, I think is something that is the hardest thing for our generations now coming through to understand because we are so addicted to being switched on. Trudi Cowan: Go watch TV and surf Facebook at the same time. Sarah Eifermann: Facebook, text your friend, you've got a device in one hand, whilst you have a device on the wall and some people have another device on their lap doing something else, like, it's just crazy, and the impact that it has on the body and the stress. So, one of our other things to consider today with work-life balance would be really trying to spend 45 minutes to an hour a day. In some mental quiet time. Now that may be taking a walk, but it may be meditating, or it may be reading a book, whatever works for you try and be consistent in actually taking some time to give your brain and therefore your body a chance to recover if your brain is really active, your body doesn't get any downtime to actually invest in what it needs to invest in to recuperate. Trudi Cowan: If you're going to read a book, as part of your downtime, not a business book or something that's about improving your business, because you'll inevitably end up thinking about work. Sarah Eifermann: Personally Yeah I 100% agree with you some other productivity experts would say that was amazing, but I completely agree with you, Trudi Cowan: I love writing the business books but when I'm doing I'm sitting there going, I could do this in my being, that I should change is actually really helpful Sarah Eifermann: It should be quiet time defeats the whole purpose. Trudi Cowan: So get out your old fantasy book or your crime or whatever it is that you, you'd like to read. Sarah Eifermann: I read whacked-out sci-fi. Trudi Cowan: I read pretty much everything but. Sarah Eifermann: It's so whacked out that it's not really that I can never relate it to my own life, so I take all these boxes, Trudi Cowan: Now we got to finish on one of my favorite ones. Yes. Learn to say no. Sarah Eifermann: Have you learned that yet? Trudi Cowan: I have actually. Yeah, well I had someone read me out of the blue, on Friday, needing help with something that had to be done that day, and Friday is my day that I'm not supposed to be working okay. So I said, No, I don't have time to do it for you today so unfortunately, I can't help you. I said no. Fantastic, probably even a month ago I would have said yes and just squeeze it into my day. Sarah Eifermann: And yet tried to do the right thing. Yeah, the right thing you realize is about you and saying no. Trudi Cowan: And exactly right. And so I just say no. And I went, No, it's actually more important for me to get away from his computer today, and spend some time with the family. Sarah Eifermann: Yeah, absolutely. How did you feel having said that? Trudi Cowan: It felt good. Sarah Eifermann: Interesting, empowered, Yeah, saying no is hard, it's hard to learn especially if it's ingrained in your family life that you just say yes, especially if you're female. Yep, the expectation is that you'll just say yes, and be good with it. Yeah, but always work for you so saying no, politely and maybe providing another solution we can assist but not on their timeline on your timeline, and be really powerful. Trudi Cowan: And even the other way, some friends of mine had a Zoom. And I had just been on Zoom too much that week. Yeah. Yeah, and I just said, Sorry but not today. Sarah Eifermann: Yeah, I'm not one for lockdown Zooms with friends, I take calls internationally, because that's normal, no but locked in with you around the corner, just doesn't work for me. Trudi Cowan: I guess it's part of setting what your boundaries are, and stick to them and say no if something falls outside your boundaries you don't have to take on every client, you don't have to take on every potential customer. You don't have to go to every social outing. Sarah Eifermann: No. Virtual social outing. Trudi Cowan: Some parts of the country are allowed to do things just not in Melbourne. Sarah Eifermann: Or Sydney. That’s a different conversation. We would really love to hear if you've got any suggestions for things we might have missed. Trudi Cowan: We would, because balance is my word of the year and I want more balance. And I still want more balance. So give me tips. Send us through a message, hit us up, Sarah Eifermann: Social media, yeah. Or, on your website www.financialfofu.com.au Trudi Cowan: We'd love to hear from you. Sarah Eifermann: That would be amazing. Well, until next week, Trudi Cowan: We hope you have some more balance in your day. Sarah Eifermann: Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks for listening to financial FoFu. Bye Trudi Cowan: Bye
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