Themes discussed in this episode

• The data shows just how much young people want more flexibility
• Make your personal life a priority
• Hobbies feed your personal life
• Prioritize your health, mentally AND physically
• Go touch grass
• Stand firm in your boundaries
• You know when it’s time to go

Episode Highlights

Timestamped inflection points from the show

3:00 – The proof is in the data: According to a Gallup report, employees spending 60-80% of their time working remotely had the highest rates of engagement and productivity
6:20 – Make your personal life a priority: No one else is going to make your personal life a priority, so you have to do it for yourself. When you don’t prioritize yourself, your employer WILL take advantage of you to the point of burnout.
9:15 – Get some hobbies: Trying new hobbies and learning new skills are essential for creating a rich personal life outside of work.
10:20 – Take care of yourself: Overworking yourself often takes a massive toll on your physical health because you’re not eating healthily, sleeping well, or getting regular exercise.
12:00 – Go touch grass: Spending time outside can ground you and make a huge difference in your happiness.
14:00 – Be persistent with your boundaries: Set your boundaries at the very beginning of a new job, and don’t let anyone make you break them.
16:30 – Recognize when it’s time to go: If your employer refuses to respect your work-life boundaries and you have minimal personal time, you need to find a new job.

.

Top Quotes

2:15: “More than 80% of millennials say they seriously consider how a position will affect their work life balance in making their job change decision.”
5:45 – “Your boss is not necessarily going to look out for your work life balance or your blender. Your blender is up to you where do you want to put work, where do you want to put your personal priorities, and how do you want those to to work together.”
6:50 – “An appropriate work-life blend and prioritizing that for yourself will bring you more joy and more success because again flexibility is so important to the worker, and it does change how you perform.”
9:45 – “Any new skill you learn helps you with all your other skills, and it gives you more confidence and makes you more robust in your skillset and your intellect.”
10:10 – “You will never look back on your life and wish you had spent more time at work.”
11:35 – “If you take care of your health, you don’t have as much anxiety, as much depression, low energy, all those things. So taking care of your health will take care of your career in a way as well.”
13:00 – “You’re only going to get one life and if you don’t take care of yourself and get outside and enjoy it, you’re not going to be a happy, joyful person. And that’s an essential part of success.”
16:30 – “Set yourself up for happiness because you can’t let an employer dominate your life to the point where you have no personal time or no sensible balance in your life.”

Links

Check out our LinkedIn episode for more ways to effectively grow your network and get that next opportunity.

Connect with me on LinkedIn. Order my book!

Transcript

00:30
Hello everybody thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Work Mom Says: Don’t Be an Idiot! I’m your host Lori Jo Vest also known as Work Mom and I am here to help you learn how to play the emotional contact sport of business. That means a lot of different things. It means your attitude, it means your relationships, you’re learning and growing your skills, all kinds of different things.

So today. We’re going to talk about what’s traditionally been referred to as work life balance. Um I was on a call this morning and we were laughing that it shouldn’t really be called balance. It should be the work life blender because with us all working at home and you know not going to the office, hours are moving around and people are a lot more flexible. They want flexibility in their work. It’s more like you’re blending your personal life and your work together and so we were laughing that it could be considered we work from home and we home from work. It’s all mixed up.

And if you’re lucky, you love what you do, and that makes it a lot more manageable to be able to be flexible. If you’re not so lucky and you don’t like your job and you have to go into an office that’s toxic, the first piece of advice I would give you is to find another job.

01:25.68
But if you just have a kind of a mediocre situation and you’re not quite sure how to commit more closely to your personal time and your personal life and growth this episode is for you.

So basically what I did was I poked around and found some research to find out what it is that millennials want, millennials and the generations behind them. What do they want in work life balance?

I came across an article in Forbes and it says younger workers expect and demand more flexibility from their jobs than previous generations. Tangibly impactful benefits are at the top of the millennials desires in a job, and these benefits must support a healthy work life balance. In fact, more than 80% of millennials say they seriously consider how a position will affect their work life balance in making their job change decision.

So. It’s really important that management people, leaders and company owners understand that the younger generation really does want more flexibility. They want to do things their way. If they’re good workers and you can be flexible, do it. It will pay off.

So another gallup report and this is targeted to those leaders who think that people have to go back to the office. They don’t have to go back to the office unless you’ve got a job that has to be performed on site. Maybe it’s heavy equipment or it’s a safety issue or a restaurant and they’re serving customers.

03:00.70
Great, I understand that. That makes a lot of sense. But if your employees can work at home, why not let them? Again in that same Forbes article, there is a gallup report that said employees across various industries who spent 60 to 80% of their time working remotely had the highest rates of engagement and productivity. Companies are increasingly making this transition. The article mentioned Amazon and United Health group as 2 of the top 10 companies that have been offering remote work since before the pandemic.

So that’s really telling. It is changing. 60 to 80% of people report that they’re happier, more productive and more engaged when they work at home. So leaders think about that.

So if you’re one of those millennial young professionals, you know in that age range I know we talk a lot in these interesting segments these days about millennials and boomers and you know gen x and all these different age ranges. I’m just going to say young people and that means basically anybody under 30 that’s still growing their career and learning as they go.

It can be really hard to divide up your day in segments for work and personal. It can be incredibly challenging whether you have a doctor’s appointment or you have a child at home. You have to scramble in the morning to get everybody up and off to school. Flexibility is really important.

05:31.45
You have to give yourself some flexibility because what I’ve noticed in the last you know so many years in talking to young people and to people on my team is that your boss is not necessarily going to look out for your work life balance or your blender. Your blender is up to you where do you want to put work, where do you want to put your personal priorities, and how do you want those to to work together.

There’s a couple ideas that I came up with to help you do just that because if you don’t do it, nobody else will. The first one is to make it a priority. If you feel like you are just working way too much, you gotta start to scale back and make it a priority to also invite some personal activities into your life, some hobbies.

If you’ve always liked to read. If you always wanted to, you know, maybe you’re a movie buff and you always want to see all the latest movies that come out. Um you want to spend more time with your wife or you’ve got a baby at home or a teenager that’s getting ready to leave the nest or you just want to be healthier, mentally and physically.

An appropriate work life blend and prioritizing that for yourself will bring you more joy and more success because again flexibility is so important to the worker, and it does change how you perform.

07:00.72
When you feel like people are looking out for you and you’re looking out for yourself, you’re more balanced. You are more productive. You’re more efficient so make yourself a priority.

I’m going to share a quick story from a young woman that was on this podcast I think early on probably 10 episodes ago or so and her name was Kelly. Kelly talked about how when she was working at a small agency and putting in 60 to eighty hours a week, she was in her mid 20s maybe 25 and needed to you know felt like she needed to prove herself. She had a lot to learn and she just threw herself 100% into her job. That’s wonderful. Yay Kelly but as time went on because she was so competent, they kept giving her more and more before you know what? she’s just you know can’t be competent anymore. She’s just burned out and she quit her job. It makes sense.

That’s what happens when employees get unhappy. They quit or they move on. They become vulnerable to poaching from recruiters and all kinds of things. In Kelly’s case when she got out of that kind of hothouse agency environment., she realized that nobody was going to make Kelly’s work life blend a priority if she didn’t because the employer will take advantage. That’s just people, that’s human nature for god’s sake. It’s human nature that we will take advantage of if someone’s going to give and give and give, we’ll take. In a capitalist society like ours, employers will give you more if you’re competent. They will keep giving you more and it’s up to you to say whoa I can’t take this I need some of this work to be offloaded to someone else.

08:30.99
I need a new job description. I need a different position, or in some cases I need a new job. So you have to make yourself a priority, and that can be really hard to do early on but practice makes perfect even when it’s not comfortable doing anyway.

Okay, the next suggestion for how to create a nice unique work life blend that works for you is to get some hobbies. What did you used to do when you were maybe in high school, college, just out of college and had time for hobbies? What did you Love. Did you do art? Um, were you in a book club? Did you run?

There are so many different activities and hobbies and things that will really feed that personal side of your life. Um things that you don’t get paid for whether it’s volunteering, volunteering at a homeless shelter or gourmet cooking taking cooking classes. I mean there’s so many things you can do but get a few hobbies because that I think balances out your personality, your learning, your skills. Um, any new skill you learn, I don’t care what it is, helps you with all your other skills it and gives you more confidence, makes you more robust in your skillset and your intellect. So get a few hobbies, take a watercolor class, take horseback riding, horseback riding lessons and if you really like it, buy a horse.

10:00.89
It will take up a lot of your time but it’s personal time and doing something that you love and are passionate about instead of time spent at work. You will never look back on your life and wish you had spent more time at work. It does not happen.

So okay, the next tip is to prioritize your health. Um. 1 of the things that happens often when people don’t have a very good work life blend is they will um, put everything into their career and they get home at 8 o’clock at night and they grab some fast food on the way home. They gobble that up, play a little bit of video games or watch TV, go to sleep, get up the next morning and do it again. That is not healthy. It’s not productive and it will negatively impact your health and your productivity at the office so prioritize getting a good night’s sleep, getting regular exercise, whatever works for you, walking, biking, running. Um.

Do those things that make you a healthier, happier person and eat less sugar. I’m just gonna tell everybody to eat less sugar. Sugar is the devil. It’s bad for us. A reasonable amount is fine but most of us you know in our daily sad american diets um, eat more sugar than we should so pay attention to those things. You’ll notice you have more energy. You have more passion. You have more joy. Um, you have less stress hormones. All those things are exacerbated by not taking care of your health.

11:33.42
If you take care of your health, you don’t have as much anxiety, as much depression, low energy, all those things. So taking care of your health will take care of your career in a way as well. It also helps you with work life balance because putting your health in the personal basket is going to give that a little bit more weight. Pay attention to it. It really is important.

One of the things that I’m seeing lately that I think is so funny online is when somebody’s acting crazy on a social post somewhere, somebody will say go touch grass. I’m telling you it’s really really good advice, not just for snarky people on the internet but for everybody. Get outside and prioritize time spent outside.

One of the things that I think it does is it helps you understand that you are just a teeny tiny little speck. When you’re outside and you look up, you know, look at the woods or you look up at the sky and and see the stars or the beautiful blue clouds and you realize that that goes into infinity. You realize that you are a teeny tiny speck on a random planet and it helps things that might seem really really important feel a whole lot less important. It helps you keep your priority on being happy with your little tiny, one life that you’re ever going to get.

13:00.22
You’re only going to get one life and if you don’t take care of yourself and get outside and enjoy it, you’re not going to be a happy, joyful person. That’s the whole reason I do this podcast is to help you play the emotional context sport but also part of that success is joy and being outside getting outside taking walks skiing in the winter. Taking walks in the winter you get those snow track things that go on the bottom of your feet and you get some poles and you can head out into the the woods or maybe snowshoe. Um, there’s all kinds of different things you can do outside year-round wherever you are. It’s worth it if you go outside for 10 minutes a day it will change your life in a lot of different ways physically and mentally.

It’s a personal theory but we’re starting to see a lot more about that out in the world that getting outside frequently makes a big difference in your happiness and to me that’s part of that work life balance.

The next tip, second from the last there’s only 2 more here, is to be persistent about your boundaries. We talked earlier about um, not working in environments where you’ve got sixty to eighty hours a week going consistently and constantly and no time for yourself. Don’t do that, and matter of fact, don’t do that from the beginning of your new job.

I have worked with a woman I just absolutely adore and her name is Lisa and Lisa is very clear. She’s got 2 small children. She’s um, happily married and part of her priority as a parent is that she’s there for her kids. She can get them off to the bus and take them to school, and she’s there on the weekends. She’s spending time with her kids.

14:34.76
She’s there after work. She’s out at the games and the soccer games and the brownies and cub scouts and taking the kids on field trips. All the things that you would like to do if you’re a parent are really wonderful things that feed your personal life and your family life. And so if you are starting a new position or even in a position you’re currently in and say you have a child or you make a new commitment to taking a class or you know something that’s going to require you to leave at a certain time every day or not work weekends, hold firm to those boundaries.

Let your employer figure it out. You are allowed to have boundaries and in a you know to create your own unique work life blend, boundaries are required. You have to hold onto them and I’m not going to say it’s easy because it’s not when you are faced with somebody saying I need you to stay late. You’ve got to stay late. We’ve got to get this done. There are times when you’re going to say but I’ve got this commitment. When you have to do that, suggest alternatives. You know if you need to get to your kid’s soccer game and you can’t stay late, can you come in an hour early the next morning so that you can deal with that issue that was needing attention.

There are ways to be persistent about your boundaries and also negotiate what your employer needs. So Keep that in mind but also know that anybody that asks you to break those boundaries consistently and constantly is not looking out for you and that’s important. You are important and a lot of times in a work environment if the leaders aren’t caring people, you feel like they don’t care and you do feel like you’re not important.

16:09.00
The reality is you are, but in some situations you’re the only one that’s going to take care of you so be persistent about those boundaries. Um.

And last but not least, we already touched on this earlier, if you need to, find a new job because your current employer is just forcing you into this ridiculous situation where you’re working sixty eighty hours a week there’s no possible way you can get enough personal time in to replenish you which is what that personal time does or even to rest from work that is time to it’s time to go. It’s time to find a new gig. Um, you don’t have to let them know that you’re looking, you just kind of slowly quietly do it in the background.

Set yourself up for happiness because you can’t let an employer dominate your life to the point where you have no personal time or you know, no sensible balance in your life, so you just can’t let it happen. It can be tempting because they will put a lot of pressure on you sometimes. When you need to find a new opportunity, that’s going to bring you more happiness and more success.

So I hope this was helpful. Work life balance and the blend of professional and personal is never an easy conversation, especially if you’re a career oriented individual and you always want to serve your boss and serve your company so you get that next promotion any of these things that we’re talking about in this podcast.

17:36.74

None of those should get in the way of your success or being promoted or growing. In fact, they’ll enhance that and that’s what I’m here for is to help you enhance your career and achieve more success.

So um, signing off for now. Um I’m Lori Jo Vest. If you have any questions or guests you’d like me to have on the show, please visit workmomsays.com. I have a contact form there that you can put your name and contact information in to ask me any questions you have. I’m also an open networker on Linkedin and it’s Lori Jo Vest and you can connect with me there to ask me any questions. Um. Tell me what subjects you’d like me to cover. I’m happy to do that or if you’d like to be a guest and you have something you think is important to talk about I’m here I’m here for all of that.

The last thing I’ll do before I sign off is that my book came out in the middle of April. It’s called Work Mom Says: Don’t Be An Idiot Thirty Eight Lessons You Don’t Want To Learn The Hard Way. I took all of my crazy stories from my twenties and thirties when I really didn’t know what I was doing. I call them my train wreck 20s and my thirty s I don’t have a real great name for those. I’ve heard people say dirty 30 s but I wasn’t dirty I took showers and I was clean.

19:34.53
My thirties were tough too because I was still growing up and learning and trying to hit that next level of management and not having anybody that you know in my family that had had management experience or knew how to advise me. I was on my own, and I learned so much and I shared all those lessons or 38 of them anyway in this Book. It’s available on amazon.com and at Barnes and Noble. It will soon be available in independent bookstores. But again you can see the link to the book on workmomsays.com and read more about it there. So that’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for being here and stay well.

Who is our ideal listener?

This podcast is for young professionals, so they can learn to play the emotional context sport of business and experience less drama and more success.

The ideal listener is anyone struggling on an emotional level in the workplace. Work Mom Says it helps you learn to be strategic at work. This means you can look at the big picture without getting lost in the weeds. How can you be more logical and less emotional? Be strategic, and Work Mom Says can help you.

“I tell people to back up, put down the magnifying glass, and look at the big picture when you’re responding to something,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom. “In doing this, you will understand that what’s really upsetting you right now will be something you don’t even remember next week.”

 

What value can people get from listening to this podcast?

Listening to Work Mom Says can help you grow your mood management skills, grow your ability to reframe situations, and look at things from a strategic point of view. This makes it easier to go into a work situation and get the most positive results.

On Work Mom Says, we also offer tips and tricks for creating connected positive relationships that last over time. People will want you on the team if you can create connected positive relationships and work environments. You become an asset, and you will be more successful when you’re an asset.

“I also like to talk about developing traits like optimism, persistence, tenacity, stick-to-itiveness, sticking with things, and approaching every project with a curious mind instead of a fearful mind,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom

                                                                                                     

Why do I do this? A few more words from Work Mom

I do this because I naturally fell into the Work Mom role when I worked in the ad agency business and had so much fun with it. I also realized I had made just about every mistake there was to make. I don’t hold myself as a stellar example of truth and how you should be. I hold myself out there as someone who has been bruised, battered, and beaten up and learned some important lessons. I’d love to share these lessons with young people, so they don’t have to make those same mistakes or be the idiot I was.

I also want to help young professionals realize that many things our culture prioritizes aren’t really important. We talk a lot about what should be important and how to present your best face at the office so that you can succeed.

I’ve learned so much throughout my career, and it’s gratifying to share that with young professionals and help them avoid some of those mistakes and get to that success sooner.

Episode 26 – “The Origin of Work Mom Says (Plus a Sneak Peek at My Upcoming Book)” appeared first on Work Mom Says.