Hi, my name is Wood Burridge and I was gonna kick us off right now with a little bit of an overview on energy choice and power, which is really a model for how to set work boundaries.And I see a few more people kind of joining in this session. So I'll just give about another 30 seconds or so before we dive right in. Ok. So thanks for your patience as we wait for just a couple more participants to join us. All right. So a little bit about me and my background. So I come from the world of tech. I've been in tech for about 20 plus years and how I kind of got into this work was I was working some really, really crazy hours when I was in my twenties and I was looking for some sort of way to take care of myself and tend to my own needs in the workplace. And I had a real challenge with that because the work demands were really, really high and the stress levels were very, very high. And a lot of the tools that I kept on finding were usually outside of the workplace. So it was very, very hard for me to find ways to integrate a lot of the self care practices and work boundary practices that I needed within my workplace because I kept on seeking those in external environment.

So we'll talk a little bit about that today, how to do that effectively in really fast-paced environments. So how I always love to start every single presentation is I always start with a very, very short breathing exercise just a couple of minutes long. And the reason why I do that is really two purposes. One has to do with the benefits that we find with breathing exercises. And the second one has to do with some of the mindfulness, neuroscience coming up with mindfulness and meditation. Um And that's a couple of reasons why I start with a breathing exercise. Now, a couple of questions for you, I'm really curious. Where is everyone from? Can you type in the chat bar where you're from? Just so I can see that I'm based out of Anchorage, Alaska of all places. So that's me. Um But I'd love to see where you're from and uh and that would, that would kind of give me some connection for everyone here in the audience today. Excellent. Um And if you feel comfortable a little bit more comfortable just sharing that with me direct, that's fine too. OK. Excellent. OK. Well, let's go ahead and dive in. Shall we? We'll go ahead and do a very short breathing exercise. So I invite you to find your feet flat on the floor and these have distance apart. And if you'd like, you can choose to close your eyes or if you happen to be in a cubicle land or anything along those lines, I invite you.

If you wish, you can also keep your eyes open for a very short period of time. We're just gonna do a short breathing exercise just to kind of connect in with ourselves and then we'll dive into the content. All right. OK. So once we're there, I invite you to kind of come off the back of your chair just a little bit so you can find a little bit of room between yourself and the chair. Um And when you're there, you can choose to close your eyes for a moment or you can keep them open and just focus your eyes on a little spot at the desk, perhaps right in front of you or your eyes just below where your knees are meeting. And while we're here, we're just gonna connect in with our breath for just a moment. Kind of see what our breath is doing for this moment and see how it's hanging out in our body and enjoy a nice, full inhale and enjoy a nice full exhale. Sometimes when we're busy with work, we rarely get these moments of pause and learning how to connect with those regularly for short amounts of time can be really, really supportive for us in a busy fast-paced work environment. You can take a moment just to feel your feet on the floor. Grounding supported zones in the chair, waited, supported breath. Always with us.

Sometimes our mind will have the tendency to move from 11 thought to the next and doing a very short breathing exercise like this can just connect it with the body for a moment. Really enjoy that full inhale and full exhale. Release any busines the day is offered, we can release that just for this moment. When you're ready, you can choose to wiggle your fingers and open your eyes if they were closed and welcome yourself back. Hello. Hello. Well, let's dive, shall we? So what are we gonna talk about today? We're gonna talk about work boundaries and we're gonna talk about the modern work life and the dilemma that we find ourselves in. We're gonna talk about the solution to that. We're gonna talk about how boundaries are really, really at the core of supporting ourselves deeply in our workplaces and what that looks like in a fast paced high demand work environment. We're gonna break down the model a little bit and we'll also talk about mindset reframes, some sample tools and techniques and some practice and play with awareness builders. All right. OK. All right. So this is kind of the situation we find ourselves in our modern work worlds right now, right?

We can see a lot of research coming out on burnout, a lot of research coming out on stress, high levels of stress, not just in, you know, the United States, for example, where I'm calling out of Anchorage, Alaska and, and Alaska and the United States, but really throughout the globe.

And it doesn't matter if I'm talking to people in Japan or if I'm talking to people in India or China or if I'm talking to individuals in Australia or the UK, this is kind of a global issue that we're dealing with right now, overwhelm and overstress and overwork if you will.

Can anyone relate to this? Is anyone familiar with some of the research associated with overwhelm and stress? If you could just type yes or no in the chat bar, that would be really helpful for me if you can relate to some of this, if you can type yes or no in the chat bar, that's helpful. Um Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, absolutely. So, this is one of the big challenges we're finding and again, this is kind of across the board, right? It's not just in one particular location. So if you find this in the work world that you're finding yourself and you're not alone, I think that's really the big piece is that you're not alone in that and finding solutions that are really going to support ourselves, it's multifaceted, right? It's not just an individual thing, it's a collective response that we need to have. And one of the things that I find a lot of times individuals that I work with. So there's this concept of the law of diminishing returns. And if you're familiar with the concept of the law of diminishing returns, the concept is this right, the very beginning, we're most productive in this section right here, right? For each unit of input, we have, we have valuable games as an output of that.

And then we reach this point of diminishing returns right here. And we start having just lesser returns, right? So we can still put in, we can still put in our hours of work, but we have a little bit less output from that, right? We're starting to get into diminishing returns in this section. What I find with a lot of the teams and the organizations and the leaders that I work with specifically in the space of boundaries is a lot of us are kind of right here at this tipping point, this maximum output point, right, where we actually start getting negative returns, which is not good at all.

It's not good for our health and our personal well-being, but it's also not good for our health and our, our well-being of our organizations. And you can look at this, for example, the International Labor Organization talks about excessively long work hours and the International Labor Organization defines excessively long work hours as 48 hours or more per week, 48 hours or more per week. And I don't know if it's you, but I definitely found in my work world, especially in the tech work world. Right. Our work hours oftentimes exceed 48 hours a week or more. It's very common for me to work with individuals who are working 55 60 hour weeks. That's not uncommon at all. Anybody familiar with those kind of work hours. Just curious. Um because what we start to see in the International Labor Organization talks about this is we start to see not only reduced personal health outcomes but reduced product outcomes on the on the back end from a from a work perspective. So there's that piece. So why are we really dealing with this? What do we have? What are we, what are we facing when we kind of work in this busyness and this, this go go go mentality.

Well, one of the biggest challenges that we have in this and Bridget Schulte who is a really renowned author and she writes a best seller called overworked. Um She's fantastic author. She talks a lot about this notion of tunneling and busines and tunneling and busines are kind of like a feedback loop. So when I am busy, I go heads down and the work that I do and in that process, because I'm so busy, I'm just focused on the thing in front of me. And so I kind of narrow my vision if you will just towards that one item in front of me. And so I tunnel and when I tunnel, what happens is I miss the big picture and I miss the strategy and the opportunity to shift the situation that I find myself in. And instead I just go heads down and I'm busy and that busines in that tunnel and kind of negatively impact one another.

So the busier I get the more I tunnel, which means that I don't have the ability to kind of pull back and see other choices that I might actually have because I'm so focused on just getting one task done and after another, after another, after another. So that's one issue that we have in these fast paced modern work environments that we work in. Another issue that we come across is this this challenge of being multitasking, constantly multitasking. If we have notifications from our phone, if we're on slack or if we have teams that's popping up with extra little messages on the side, all of these things add to kind of the frenzied and frantic work work roles where we're constantly doing multiple things. And the reality is that multitasking is actually not possible. Our brains are not actually able to do that. They don't process information that way they process information by going back and forth and doing something that researchers call task switching. So therefore, if at the end of the day, I'm constantly going back and forth from the notifications on my phone or the notifications on my device. Um I can actually be fracturing my thought process which can add to fatigue at the end of the day. So while technology is fantastic, it also has its negative aspects too, which can lead us to feeling more fatigue at the end of our work days and feeling a little more drained.

So that's another dilemma we face and yet another dilemma we face is we really lack role models. And what I mean by that is it is very, very rare. I have found in work worlds to find individuals who are very adept at setting work boundaries and a very professionally successful way. So we lack role models who are in leadership positions who are living very boundary, well, healthy, healthy work life balanced individuals to model after we miss that. And that makes it more challenging for us because if we don't have people around us who are doing this, how would we ever know that there is a different way to work? We really wouldn't, right. So that's a challenge that we have. And then finally, a lot of the common strategies that we have to address burnout in organizations really don't get to the root of the issue, which is we're doing too much, right? All the time management in the world isn't gonna help me if I'm doing too, too many things. And if I have to address it from that perspective is everyone connecting to this information. Do you get what I'm talking about here?

Just checking in, wanted to make sure you guys were connecting to that. On top of that, we also have this concept of massive change and massive unknown that COVID has thrown us. Right. I've been dealing and doing this work for over a decade, but COVID has just kind of taken us over the top and we've kind of kind of gone over um a precipice if you will. And which is why burnout is coming to such a, it's becoming such a big leadership conversation as well. So let's take a look at technology too in tech and the specific challenges that we have in the tech industry in relation to burnout and work boundaries and the importance of it. So, one of the things that we find in tech and I'm not gonna read all of these, um you'll have access to this. My understanding is this is being recorded. So you'll also have access to this later. But a couple of the things that we face in technology um in the technology industry more than other industries, for example, is this constant change and constant speed of change with which things are shifting in our technology, technology industry, right?

The other thing that we deal with is we have very specific subject matter experts who really have role based embedded knowledge and sometimes what happens on programs especially if we have a go live or if we have a really big program deadline. Um those role matter experts or those subject matter experts are pulled upon. And oftentimes, the only individual are just a handful of individuals who can fix a particular thing, which adds to that sense of urgency and the overall um challenge with manageable workloads for some individuals within teams and in the technology industry. So those are a couple couple extra issues that we have. In addition to all the other issues that I mentioned, I say that just so we have a frame of reference for where we're going because it's important to understand where we are if we're going to shift things moving forward. So one of the things that, that I've learned over the years that we really need over and above wellness programs over and above time management strategies over and above flexible working schedules is we need to start supporting and collectively working on health boundaries in the workplace and what this looks like and how we integrate it and how we implement it because we are doing too many things and we need to stop the tunneling and the busyness and we need to start focusing and setting strong boundaries to help and support ourselves at a deeply foundational level.

So the model that we utilize to set boundaries that we've utilized for years is energy plus choice equals power. Another way I like to look at this model is self-care plus awareness equals boundaries. So when we look and we break down this model, there's three components to it.

And the first one is self-care. And the reason why self-care is so necessary is because it's really what provides us the energy to do the hard work that's really necessary to uncover and look at all the awareness of all of the situational structural issues that we have at play in order to shift those. One of the things I find right now with self-care in particular and we'll get into this in just a couple of minutes. But self-care has gotten a little bit of a bad rap lately. And I think it's just because we don't quite understand what it's pointing us to. So we'll get into that in just a couple minutes. So when we look at energy and choice and power, we look at the interplay between these things. And one of the reasons why I always start with this energy piece first has to do what I found early on in my career. And it was this right. What I found for myself was, I was like a ping pong. I would get a little bit of relief. Maybe I'd get some energy, maybe I'd go on a walk, I'd have a lunch break or who knows? Maybe I went to a class or a yoga class or something like that and I got some stretching for my body.

But then I'd run right back into the Rat race and I'd go right back to the crazy work hours that I was working 60 to 65 hour weeks. And I just felt like I was going energetically like a ping pong back and forth and back, back and forth and I would get a little bit of relief from energy or self care, but then I'd go right back into the rat race and so it felt very depleting. I would, I would kind of have a moment of relief and then I'd be depleted and then I'd have a moment of relief and then I'd have be depleted. And what we want to really learn how to do is we want to learn to take this energy that we have from self-care and we need to learn to apply it towards awareness builders and towards some brainstorming and strategic thinking about how we're going to shift our work worlds. That's what we need to learn how to do is shift ourselves from that ping pong approach into a more work structure approach and how we're gonna shift our work structures because the reality is this work is very hard. Boundary work is not easy. Um We're dealing with root issues of survival and kind of some root issues associated with fear when we get into boundary work. So it requires energy and some strong energy of that, right?

So, um so let's take a look at self care and as I was mentioning before selfcare. So one of the things that self-care ultimately does, even though self-care, I think sometimes has a bad wrap. And I think part of that is because lately I've been hearing a lot of people say, oh, self care is not a good solution to burnout. And my actual experience with self care is self care is really all it's doing is it's providing the energy, right? Yes, there are structures out there that are causing the self care in the first place. But if I just get rid of my self care, what I'm losing in that process is I'm losing my self agency and I'm losing my personal power if I choose to just get rid of self-care. So, self care is a really vital piece because it directly impacts what my energy levels are for the day. My definition for self-care, my personal favorite one is, it's just the gentle tending to our needs, the gentle tending to our needs. The other thing that's important to recognize about self-care is it is not, it is not an action, it's not a bubble bath at the end of the week. Although that's great, right? It's not, it's not a Friday night, unlike it's actually a mindset.

So it's how am I supporting myself on a regular basis? What does that look like for me and for every individual, it's a little different. So that's the other piece too. And then when I'm practicing self-care. I'm really practicing and modeling self-respect and self-worth every single time.

So it's really that foundation for personal power and self agency. So be aware of self-care for any reason has a negative association for you just adapt it, adapt it as you need. So let's break down the model a little bit more. So that's a self-care piece. Let's take a look at the choice piece or energy, right? So or the self or self care piece moves to awareness or choice piece. So this is all about seeing our reality. So the modern challenges that we have as we were talking about before the tunneling and the multitasking and the lack time, all of that what that really means for us when we need to counter that. And the anecdote to those are learning how to really create space claim, strategic time for ourselves, build and buffer on our roles for our different projects, for our different programs and building support around ourselves for this. Yeah. Really big components. When we look at boundaries, the boundaries, component of the model. One of my favorite personal references for boundaries is what is my authentic? Yes and my authentic. No. And why do I use the word authentic? Sometimes we need a very clear crystal clear what I call bound binary boundary which is Yes, no, I need those in situations where I'm in a toxic work environment. I need a very clear yes or no in any kind of situation where I find myself in abuse.

And I always like to emphasize this right is we find ourselves in a toxic work environment or an abusive work relationship situation. We need to get professional help, whether that's through an hr representative and or through professional help such as a therapist or a counselor or someone who can actually help us work through that. If we're having a hard time vocalizing this for ourselves. What I mean when I say authentic, yes and authentic, no is for more of those nuanced boundaries where as some of my clients will say to me, would I want a promotion? I want a promotion. So how do I set a boundary when I want a promotion? Right. Um So for me, those are kind of the nuanced nose where things get a little bit murky and kind of not always clear. And sometimes there's a process in that what I've learned with boundaries over the years is there can be a process us to setting our boundaries, which includes validating ourselves and validating our needs first. So, validating and vocalizing is really the piece that I see with boundaries.

And part of this has to do with the fact that many of us, years and years and years ago, all the way down from when we were kids, right? We've learned to kind of ignore our innate, yes and our innate nose. So we need to kind of refine our voices sometimes, um again, this is not in a situation of abuse. If we are in a situation of toxic or abuse of any kind of sort, we need to get professional help. This is for more of those murky situations, the vast majority of the situations we find ourselves in realize that there is that piece. Um The other thing too is that the mind can override and justify things very quickly. And I'll give a good example of this personally, right?

So it can be a Friday night and my family is sitting back at the dinner table and they're waiting for family Friday night game night, right? They're excited to have some family fun time. But I'm heads down and I'm going at my work and I'm going at my work maybe on my third, maybe fourth cup of coffee, right? And I'm like, oh, I got this, I got this, I got this. Meanwhile, the last four Fridays in a row row, I've always been late to that family game night, but in my mind, I'm justifying my work, right? And if I checked in with a body, if I actually checked in with my body, I would sense a little bit of anxiety or I would sense that effort. That's just kind of pushing me over the edge. So my mind can justify and override my body unless I'm really checking in with it regularly. Which is again, why I get to, what is my authentic Yes and my authentic. No, not my mind. That's overriding it. What's really going on behind the scenes. So for me, when I think about that authentic, yes and no, it kind of serves as a pause and kind of a reminder for myself just to go a little deeper with my inquiry, just make sure that I'm really validating and vocalizing what I need is this connecting with you guys.

Do you guys understand what I'm where I'm going with this? Do you have any questions? If you do have any questions, by all means, pop them in the chat bar and I'll try to interweave the answer is as we go. All right. Thanks for your time. OK. So let's, let's dive a little bit more into this notion of a mindset and a mindset reframe. One of the things that I've learned over the years. Um I have a story for you a long time ago when I was in my twenties. I was have. Oh, so good. I'm so glad it's helpful. Thank you. Um So when I was in my twenties, I remember going to breakfast with my dad. He those breakfast were gold. He used to have breakfast with me all the time and I'd always order an omelet. I'd always order the veggie Swiss omelet and my dad would always order the mushroom Swiss omelet. And so one of the things that we do when we were having those breakfast together is we would sit down and I would share with him the challenges that I had with my work world. And I remember that one, this one time I was sitting there and I was telling him, hey, you know, dad, I just need to get through this next month, man. As soon as I get through this next project, it's all gonna be fine.

I'll be able to breathe, it'll be good. And he looked at me and he said, you know, Keto, that's not real, right? I said what he said. Yeah. Yeah, it's not real. He said, that's all an illusion. All of that concept of somewhere someday in the future, it'll get better. It's all an illusion. The reality is what I've learned over the years is that work is unending, right? There's always something else to do. There's always some other action to take. And if we can start to realize that that notion that someday in the future, it's gonna get better. What we're really finding for ourselves is that we're realizing that this is really a river of work and that river of work just keeps going. So the question shifts from when can I get to the end? And it becomes more of a question of how do I support myself deeply in this moment? How do I support myself deeply in this moment so that I can enjoy the river when I sit on the bank and watch it go? Or how can I enjoy, enjoy that process of going down the river because it's always gonna be there. It's never gonna end. And so I think really reframing that concept and really shifting our thoughts around that, right? That things will get better soon as this project ends this month ends and shifting it to what do I need now, right? What conversations are needed?

What actions do I need to take to give myself some relief in this moment. That's the conversation we need to start having. And that's the one that should really center ourselves as we, as we go through our rivers of work. And if you want some research associated with and by the way, thank you guys so much for the chat chat bar. I really love seeing those. It's lovely to be engaged on that. So, thank you. Um You know, so one of the couple of the research pieces that I really love and I just wanted to make sure you had these for the future is the International Labor Organization Research Studies, which I pointed to at the beginning. But also two of my favorite book references on this. And I love of these books because they really offer a lot of really thick content in the back of them. Um Bridget Schulte with the book Overwhelmed, really has a fantastic overview and some really, really solid statistics at the end as well as Dying For a paycheck, which was written by Doctor Jeffrey Pfeffer out of Stanford University again, really, really well sourced, really well cited information on those two books.

All right. These are just some ideas and some questions, reflection questions that sometimes I'll lead coaching groups through when I work with teams or organizations in this space. Um You'll have access to these. My understanding is all of these will be recorded. So you'll have access to these, these questions. But these are some really deep dive questions that I think can really be supportive and then we're kind of coming up close to the end here. But what I wanted to offer is I just wanted a little bit of a partner exercise. We'll use the chat bar since we don't have specific group breakouts. But what I wanted to do is what I wanted to really just explore for you in this moment. What are some of the biggest challenges that you find for yourself in setting boundaries and claiming power for yourself at work? What are those if you can type those in the chat bar or what are some of the biggest opportunities for yourself and your organization in this space?

Do you see any love to see those in the chat bar? Um It can be really supportive for others also so that we see some of the ideas and then also as part two is what, what's arising for you in this moment? Is there a new thought or belief about maybe what you want to hold in relation to your ship to your work, right? How might that impact your decisions and your choices, your actions, different things like that. So I'll just give everyone just about 1 to 2 minutes to kind of reflect on this in this moment and share anything that you can in the chat bar. Be lovely to see what you guys have and what you come up with. It's always nice to get collective thought in the chats. Yeah. Isn't that the truth though? The biggest challenge is that work is sometimes easier to focus on right than the rest of life. There's truth to that, you know, I was just talking to a client who um dealt with the death in their family. Unfortunately, and we were both reflecting on sometimes work can be a real gift in that because it can help us kind of uh keep going when we need to.

So sometimes it's valuable and sometimes work can be that thing that helps us avoid the more difficult and challenging things. So it's always finding that that balance, right? And that line being aware of it. If we have awareness of it and we have a choice towards it, it's OK. Right. Yeah. Good stuff. What else? What else is there are other people thinking of anything else that's coming up for you? Well, I wanna also make myself available. If anyone has any questions, we're kind of coming to that end. I know we end right at, at, uh, two o'clock my time, which I have no idea what time in the world it is for you guys. But, um, but by all means, if you have any questions or have any other things that you wanna ask, we've got a couple of minutes here and I wanna make sure that I'm available for you all. Oh, it challenges feeling like I need to be constantly my computer during work hours, right? Sometimes having guilt around breaks. So true. Right? And one of the things that I find that's really helpful to bridge that gap is look to the research because the research shows us consistently that taking a break is not only healthy for us but actually produces better work outcomes from our organization.

So that's a really big plus on that side of the house is making sure that we recognize and are aware of all the data that backs up. Why we want to take those breaks. Really great point. Thanks for bringing that up Jennifer. Yeah, realizing that the work will always be there. Absolutely. Yeah. Good stuff, Katherine. Thank you. Thank you all. Uh Thank you all so much by all means, would love to connect with you on linkedin or anything else. Um And thank you for being here. If there's any other questions, I'll try to answer those. Otherwise we'll be dropping off. This 30 minutes goes so fast, doesn't it? Thanks for being here. Really appreciate it.