Ep.15 Work Life Balance

Ep. 15 Work Life Balance

[00:00:16] Intro

Hey guys. Welcome to Growth on the Daily, the personal development podcast for athletes. My name is Rey and I'm your host. I'm a former competitive hockey player. I am passionate about self-growth, and I'm here to support you on your journey to becoming the best version of you.

For those of you who are new to the show, thank you so for tuning in for the first time, welcome to the Growth on the Daily community. And for those of you who are back, thanks again for tuning in this week. Just a reminder to follow us on Instagram @growthonthedaily, to stay up to date with the show.

Today's episode is titled Work Life Balance. So we're picking up where we left off in episode 13, Bouncing Back from Burnout, and we're really talking about how can we achieve work life balance. So in terms of Specialties for Success, we're focused on the emotional category because when it comes to work life balance, we're really focused on the stressors of life and how we're able to minimize those.

So if you're at a point in life where the boundaries between your athletic life, your student life, and maybe your work life seem to be blurred, leaving you feeling like you have no capacity for your personal life, then this episode is for you.

[00:01:21] No Cap All Facts

Let's talk about the pandemic. The pandemic created an environment where we worked from home. We did school on Zoom. Ultimately, this created an always-on culture. An always-on culture is one where because we are so interconnected with technology with various social media services, we have developed an expectation that we're always available and we're always responsive.

It's great. We're able to connect and we're able to communicate, but having that expectation hinders productivity. And how do you really know that this is happening? How do we know that this cost of hindering productivity is outweighing the benefit of constant communication?

 If you're a student or a working professional, ask yourself this. How often are you working late? How often are you waking up early to work? How often has that enabled you to skip the gym, to forfeit nutritious meals? For athletes, are you overtraining? How's your social life? Do you feel like you have no time for yourself?

So that's why I want to talk about achieving work life balance. And with that, the importance of setting boundaries so that you have downtime.

Not only do we need downtime to boost our productivity, we actually need it to improve our judgment, our overall health, and also enable our problem-solving ability. If we are constantly always on, then we are unable to make the right decisions for our own physical, mental, and emotional health, and that of others because our brain is overused.

So downtime for athletes, that might look like a rest day, You're not necessarily training, you're giving yourself a break. We often, consider that to be physical recovery. It definitely is, but it's also mental too. There's a psychological aspect that comes into play when we're talking about downtime.

Ultimately, rest is what sustains our long-term motivation, and that's what brings us focus and intensity to athlete performance. So we actually need rest, not even just to give our muscles a break, but also, for us to maintain that high intensity and focus going forward.

Moral of the story is too much of anything whether that's work, whether that's studying, whether that's training, too much of anything, eventually has detrimental effects to our overall health. And when I'm talking about overall health, I'm not just talking about physical health, we're also focused on the mental aspect too. So how do we set the necessary boundaries between work and play?

[00:04:00] Rey's Remedy

When it comes to drawing boundaries, you have to understand that boundaries evolve, They're not static in place as in, okay, I'm going to do this until this, and then that's my line. No exceptions. We can't go beyond that. Some weeks will be more demanding than others. If you have a competition coming up, you have a deadline on a project at work. Or an exam for school.

Obviously, the week leading up to that is probably going to be very hectic, and it's probably going to require more time than you traditionally would put in so that you can set yourself up for success, and that's okay. That's simply dedication to a craft, but you shouldn't always be like that. That shouldn't be the norm.

You should have time for yourself every single day. Obviously, that amount of time looks different for everyone and what that downtime looks like will look different for everyone. My rule of thumb is work, school, sports, whatever it is, it should not be the first thing that you wake up thinking about or the last thing on your mind before bed. Give yourself that time to reflect and clear your head to start off your day and to end off your day.

Another thing that's important to consider is accepting your bandwidth. We are not robots. We are humans. So you need to get past the state of mind that drawing the line between work and play makes you a failure or that you're lazy or that you're not enough and you can't cut it.

I don't know where that negative talk comes from, and maybe it's social media and influencers, who knows? But we need to get that out of our heads because we need to understand that life is a long-term game. So to make it, your body and your mind needs to recharge.

Now we've laid the foundation. We understand when it's time to draw boundaries, that we need that rest time, and that, we have limited capacity. So with that, how do we actually set those boundaries? You need to communicate your boundaries not only to others but also to yourself.

Think about who's driving you being overworked. If it's from yourself, we'll then set those times where you'll be doing certain activities and be flexible with that. For example, in my circumstance, the first thing I do after work is workout. Now, some days that'll look like ending right at five, and I'll be able to work out after that.

Or other days I might have to work until six or seven and then I'll work out after that. It's not about actually sticking to a calendar schedule. It's about scheduling activities in order of priority. So for me, before I watch Netflix, I'm going to work out, because I know once I sit down and watch Netflix, there's probably no chance that I'm going to go lift.

So understanding what those priorities look to you goes back to what your personal goals are. And we're going to talk about goal setting in a future episode, but I'm sure you guys already have that in play. So just think about what's most important to you at the moment.

Now, another thing to think about when you're communicating to yourself what those boundaries are. You have to be conscious of your working hours or else you're just going to continue to rid yourself of personal time. So when work or student or your athlete life, when that trickles into personal time, stop, give yourself a period to yourself to do anything you'd like. And ask yourself, what must be done now and what can be pushed to the next day?

That will allow yourself to ensure that you're not overworking yourself for no reason. If you're going to work, over 40 hours a week, or you're going to train over 40 hours a week, whatever that looks like, if you're going to do that, it has to add value. If it's just going to be detrimental, then you're being overworked, and that's just counterproductive.

Now what happens if other people are putting this overworking lifestyle on you? If your coach or your boss is continuously putting this immense workload on you, the correct move is not simply smile and nod. You have to speak up. I recommend planning out some sort of schedule for certain tasks or your training schedule to be more sustainable.

So instead of this needs to be done and you're just scheduling things back to back, to get that done in the day as soon as possible. Look at when is this needed for. If this is for next week, you can spread out the deliverable over the course of the week.

Think 80:20 Pareto Principle. The Pareto principle, for those of you who are unfamiliar, it states that 80% of all outcomes are derived from 20% of the causes. So how can you apply this to everyday life? Let's think of an athlete's training schedule, right under the 80:20 Pareto Principle. You should be deriving a training schedule that maximizes performance with the lowest training volume.

So instead of, spending two hours of isolation lifting or treadmill running, leverage compound lifts or HIIT or LISS training to give yourself an hour at the end of the day to maybe catch up with friends or watch some Netflix or cook a healthy meal, whatever that looks like for you. But it's understanding how can you maximize your productivity in that time with the most benefit to you and value to others.

[00:09:02] Hold the Mic

Alright guys, let's take a pause here. I need to shoutout Nicholas Dinatolo, who has been a long-term supporter of the Growth on the Daily podcast and a great friend of mine, we were in the Rotman Commerce class together, so had a great opportunity working with him in the Rotman Commerce Students and Sports Organization, RCSS, and he remains a great friend.

He is our trivia quiz winner, we had a quiz on our Instagram story @growthonthedaily where three questions were posed relating to Episode 14 Real Talk with Asa Tam, and Nick was the first to complete the quiz correctly, so I want to shout him out.

Thank you for being an engaged listener, and follower of the Growth on the Daily community.

[00:09:47] Meaningful Mentions

Just to wrap up, I have three key takeaways for you. The first is understand that we are not built to be always on. Downtime is what fuels our performance in the long run. Second, accept your limited capacity as a human being and draw the line between work and play. And finally, it's prioritize your personal time by communicating your boundaries to yourself and to others.

[00:10:19] Quality Quote

To really hone this in for you guys this week, I want to remind you guys of a quote, " downtime is just as important as the hustle". Remember that as you embark on your journey of self-improvement and personal growth and recognize that rest is just as beneficial as the work you're putting in.

[00:10:37] Outro

Alright, guys thank you guys so much for tuning in today's episode and committing to Learn, Grow and Thrive. Follow us on Instagram @growthonthedaily to stay up to date with the show and check out growthonthedaily.com for more info. Thanks, guys and see you next week!