Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:01:13: Work-life balance
00:03:13: COVID work changes
00:05:36: Work-life walking
00:07:25: Mindset principles
00:10:58: Idea for Action 1: The idea of fixing your fit and flexing your fit
00:17:11: Idea for Action 2: Misfit flags
00:20:56: Idea for Action 3: work-life conflict
00:22:27: Coach yourself questions
00:26:20: Fit friends
00:28:32: Work-fit tactics
00:33:53: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Hi, I'm Helen Tupper.

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah Ellis.

Helen Tupper: This is the Squiggly Careers podcast where each week we come together to discuss a different topic to do with work which we hope will help you, because it definitely helps us, navigate all of the ups and downs of our jobs today and feel that little bit more confident and in control of our Squiggly Careers.  This week, we're going to be talking about work-life fit, which is our way of describing what's usually called work-life balance.  I think we both find that idea that there's this perfect balance that we could all achieve, just this aspiration that's irritatingly out of reach.  So "fit" feels just that little bit more realistic for our lives anyway.

Before we get started on the topic, if you don't already know, we create lots of things to support your learning around this podcast, so we've got our PodSheet summaries, you can download those and reflect on some of the coach-yourself questions and the ideas for action.  We've also got our PodPlus learning community, so if you want to be part of a conversation about this topic, you can join us there.  All the details for that and things like our PodNotes and PodMails, there's so much stuff.  It's all in the show notes so you can sign up and access it all there.

Sarah Ellis: Just thinking for a second about why we don't want to use work-life balance, because it is still a phrase that I think is used really commonly.  I still see it popping up all the time on articles, it's a very common interview question, though I would say particularly for women, I'm not sure that question is asked as much of men, though no reason why it shouldn't be.  I think it's one of those words and those phrases where it's really helpful if we reset our starting point.

As soon as you have balance in mind and we know that the words that we use frame how we see the world, balance does imply that you're on a balance beam.  Somehow, you're managing to make it all work all at the same time and everything's all perfect; it's almost like that starting point sets us all up to fail.  When I talk to people about this or when people ask us about it, people's expectations of themselves are just so high, I think people put themselves on this pedestal that they would never actually expect of other people, but somehow we expect ourselves to be able to achieve it. 

We feel this idea of work-life fit hopefully first applies to everyone, I don't think this is a gender related topic.  I don't think this is about some perfect fit, I think it is often about an imperfect fit and it's really thinking about what is most important right now, today, this week, this month.  Also, starting from that perspective of, rather than what you should be doing or that other people are doing it better, of like, "We are all doing our best". 

I don't want people to waste energy on this idea of work-life balance that they should be aspiring to.  I'd much rather we put our energy and efforts into this idea of, "What might fit look like for me today and this week?" so that you can feel like all the different parts of your life are fitting together as well as they can in this moment in time, that's all we can ever aim for.  I think anything more than that it just feels like it's not a good use of our time.

Helen Tupper: I was thinking about the Squiggly Career context on all of this, which is that perhaps there are more things in Squiggly Careers that we're trying to fit in than ever before.  Because Squiggly Careers create lots of opportunity, we've got flexibility and we're told about we need to protect our mental health and our physical health and our emotional health as well as our work, we're all trying to fit in exercising, meditating, learning, doing our job, staying curious, seeing our family, seeing our friends, random zooms that we might need to do, hobbies, side projects, family, (I should probably mention that as well), all of this stuff that we're trying to juggle and fit into this mixture that we've got of work and life.

When you look into the research of the implications of COVID actually, it says that the work part of that little puzzle piece has actually increased more because of COVID and on average, it's two hours more a day that people are now spending working.  So, some of those puzzle pieces might feel harder than ever to fit in to our mix.  Do you think you're working two hours more a day since COVID?

Sarah Ellis: Well, it's interesting; I was thinking about this.  I was like, "It depends on what you describe as work", so I was really trying to think about what do I do a lot less of and what do I do a lot more of?  I think I am still working probably as much as I was, but some of the content of that work has definitely changed. 

So, I used to spend a lot of time chatting, chatting to people, I realised.  That was often meeting people for a coffee, always one-to-one, very informal, lots of curiosity coffees, making new connections, building existing relationships, exploring new opportunities in a very informal agendaless way.  I just don't do that in the same way.  I'm trying to find new ways to do that remotely, because I don't want to rely on that always needing to be in person, because obviously that limits who we can talk to. 

I definitely find that I just do less of following my curiosity.  It's maybe on paper you'd be like, "It feels less productive".  Is it a productive something that I've ticked off my to do list or a task?  I'd probably get through more tasks if you were going, "Are you more productive", probably.  Equally, I think that is at the detriment sometimes to some of my relationships and connections.

I do just miss the wandering that I used to do, because Helen and I have a very different attitude to getting around from places and I will always walk everywhere.  Walking in between places actually was good exercise for me, but also meant I listened to podcasts, it was thinking time.  If I can ever walk from one meeting to another, from a meeting to a train station, I always will.  That doesn't happen anymore because I don't really go anywhere.

So I still go for walks, but I do it in a more of like a, "I am going for a walk", way rather than I am walking from here to somewhere else.  So, I feel like I probably still work as much as I did, but what that looks like is different and I think that does sometimes take a toll on me in terms of how that feels at the end of a day in terms of your energy and perhaps your exhaustion, because of what that requires of you.

Helen Tupper: I think I have two important points to note which is first, I'm not anti-walking everybody, it's just I really like high heels.

Sarah Ellis: You really are anti-walking.  I've never met anyone as anti-walking as you are when we are together!  I suggested we walked up the road the other day and you were like, "No, let's go in a taxi, that's going to twice as long".

Helen Tupper: Oh my gosh, it was a really long road everyone, it was a 20-minute-long road that was all cobbly and I was in high heels, that is why I don't like walking.

My second important point, which is more related to work-life fit, is that I think it is useful to reflect on how has COVID affected your work-life fit, because there might be some insights into that.  You might say, "Well, actually there's some things that are for the better", for example I now do more exercise than I used to do, and there might be some things that might be a puzzle piece that doesn't quite feel like it's fitting well, which is that I, for example, don't listen to podcasts quite as much as I used to, because I used to do that at certain times.

I think just reflecting on that question for yourself might give you some insights that you can put into action when we give you some ideas in a second.

Sarah Ellis: Just three mindset principles that we wanted to talk about first before we go into the ideas for action, just again so that we're framing this conversation in a useful way.  The first thing, I think, is letting go of this idea of perfect fit and moving to a much more of a work-in-progress fit; so, seeing this as something that we're continually coming back to, working on and improving. 

Rather than thinking, "I'm failing to find my work-life fit right now", to actually go, "I'm always a bit of a work in progress when it comes to fitting different things together", but it's something that stays top of mind, that you keep coming back to, you make small adjustments, you experiment with different things and so we see it as a positive that we've got an imperfect fit, essentially.  That is a really important starting point.

The second one is that this is really personal, so even as we describe some of our examples today, we both noticed just how personal they are to both of us, and it's really important I think that we don't fall into a comparison trap when you get into this area of work-life fit.  I even do it sometimes, when you listen to a CEO on a programme who says, "They read a new book a week", and you just think, "That's an impossible task but that is what I should be doing".  Or you listen to someone who says, "Yeah, I meditate before I do anything every day", and you just feel like it's a seemingly impossible task. 

That takes you back to an unhelpful place where there is some sort of secrets of success, or formula that we need to find and of course we're all nosy, I'm nosy like everyone else, you want to know how people structure their days and what works for them.  But just because it works for someone else doesn't mean that it works for you and I think be intrigued, be curious but don't compare.

The last principle, which is a bit of tough love I think, but is probably the thing that's helped me the most in terms of my mindset: improving your work-life fit doesn't mean finding more time.  I think too often, our default when we're trying to maybe do something new like, "I want to spend more time with my friends [or] I want to spend more time exercising [or] I want to spend more time on my side project" is we think it's about more time; that means, "Working weekends", that means, "Getting up earlier", that means, "Working later".  That might be okay for a very short space of time, but we also know that is exactly how you burn out. 

So, this is not about more time, I think it is about trading time, it's about making choices.  Sometimes those are difficult choices, and that means sometimes accepting some hard truths about maybe how you want to spend your time, but if you are really committed to wanting to change your work-life fit, I think knowing from the outset, "This is going to mean making some choices.  If I spend more time on one thing it does mean spending less time somewhere else", and always seeing it as a trade-off rather than add on.

I do love this quote from Jim Collins that we've included in You Coach You, our next book, so it was very top of mind for me.  He says, "There is a vital difference between managing time and managing work.  Work is infinite, time is finite.  The key question to ask yourself is not, 'What am I going to do?' but, 'How am I going to spend my time?'"  I feel that's a really good way of prompting and a good provocation for work-life fit, "How am I going to spend my time?"

Helen Tupper: Okay then.  So, moving into the practical, we have got three different ideas for actions so that you can start to manage your imperfect work-life fit.  We've also got a slightly random observation as ever when we're reflecting on, "What helps us?  What doesn't help us?"  We also came to the same conclusion, and we thought we'd share that with you, in case it supports you too, so we'll start with the practical stuff.  Shall I go first?

Sarah Ellis: Go for it.

Helen Tupper: Idea for Action 1: The idea of fixing your fit and flexing your fit at the same time.  I guess the point here is that when we get too rigid about rules that we might put around our day, like, "I will always get up at 6.00am.  I will always have my breakfast at 6.30am.  I will always do 30 minutes of exercise in the morning".  When we start to get that rigid about our rules, I think sometimes it can start to create a bit of stress and you can get really resistant and defensive about anything that derails it, so the person that tries to call you or wants a conversation or wants to move around a meeting.  I just think it's unrealistic for you to be too rigid about everything, fixing everything with your work-life fit.

It's useful to know what feels like something that you do want to fix, like it's really important.  An example of this for me would be, because I really notice when I've not done it now, for how I feel about my ability to cope with everything, to be honest.  For me, it is fixed that I exercise twice a week, that is a very fixed requirement for me, but what I do is I give myself some flex about when I do that. 

If I haven't done those two times by the end of the week, I'll probably say to Sarah, "I'm going to leave early, because I want to go and do some exercise", because I'm very aware that what's fixed for me is the amount of time that I do it.  But I create myself some flexibility in my diary about, "Maybe I will do it in the morning, or I'll leave work at 5.00pm and do it before I have to take over the childcare".  I know it's going to happen, but I have some flexibility about how it happens, and it means that it's less likely to get derailed and I get less defensive about if my plans change around.

Another example for me would be no work weekends, so that's quite a fixed thing for me.  I really don't want to work on the weekends, that's like the one time that I'm in my "me" mode is at the weekend, so I try to protect that as much as I can.  But what I am flexible on is working when I need to in the week, and I've explained that to my husband as well.  He's fine with me working when I need to in the week, because we both aligned that on the weekends, they're no work weekends and we're all in parent mode.  What about you, Sarah, have you got some fixed-flex examples?

Sarah Ellis: I think these are helpful, because I think they help you to hold two ideas in your mind at the same time, if you know what I mean.  I think they are complementary, which is why we've called it "Fix and flex", rather than "Fix or flex".  It moves you away from this binary approach to trying to improve your fit.

For me, I find that now I'm pretty fixed on starting my day with a walk, and it helps that I combine that with dropping my toddler off at nursery.  I flex how long that walk is for, depending on what I'm doing in my day.  For example, on a Thursday when we do PodPlus, that is usually my shortest walk day, because we start that at 9.00am, I like to get back and get ready and get sorted for the day.  Whereas this morning, I hadn't got my first meeting until 10.00am, and so I think I got back from my walk at about 9.20am.  I'm lucky enough that I'm in a job where I'm in control and I can choose to do that.

I'm very fixed that I read every night before I go to sleep, something that's nothing to do with work, that really helps me to go to sleep and to shut down for the day, and I really flex how long I do that for.  One of the things actually talking about I think it's good to think about where they're trying to improve, the one thing I get really frustrated about, but I still do on this fix and flex point is, I do fall into the trap of the Instagram scroll in bed.  I'm putting my phone by my bedside table, and I read on my kindle at night so that it's not too -- I don't have to have the light on for my partner, who literally goes straight to sleep within about 20 seconds.

I do do a bit of the old Instagram scroll hole and it is a complete waste of time.  What is weird is, I know that.  It's not like I'm thinking it's necessarily for work and I don't think I take loads of pleasure necessarily from it, like I love Instagram but probably not straight before you go to sleep.  I'm sure there's loads of evidence about exactly why you shouldn't do that.  I don't know what it is that means I still do it, but I'm going to try and that's why thinking about these things is really helpful.  Because I am really fixed on, I always like to read, what I now do is do the Instagram scroll and then I read and then I think sometimes that means you go to sleep later, you get less sleep; we know sleep's really important.  I think that means your fit is not as good because you are tired, you're a bit more stressed, all that kind of stuff.

So, someone suggested to me that what you should do is put your phone under your bed or in a drawer, make it harder to reach.

Helen Tupper: I've got another idea for you.

Sarah Ellis: Go on.

Helen Tupper: I was thinking about there was a Pringles experiment that I think I've mentioned before, which is when you're unconsciously consuming Pringles, you can basically eat a whole tube.

Sarah Ellis: Yes, been there, done that.

Helen Tupper: The idea was two thirds of the way down the packet, they did this experiment where they put a red Pringle in and it makes you more conscious that you're consuming and you've got to go, "Oh red Pringle, stop eating".  So, you need a red pringle in your phone.  You know the grayscale button, I wonder if you, because I've got my phone set up to grayscale, so if I click one of my buttons three times, it basically turns everything in my phone grey, black and white.  It makes your phone visually less appealing, so I wonder when you got into bed, if you put grayscale on, then every time you picked your phone up, you'd be like, "Oh".  It just doesn't look as nice, and it might be the red Pringle.  It might go, "Oh", a little jolt.

Sarah Ellis: That's good or it might be the reminder to be like, "Just put it back down again".

Helen Tupper: Yeah, exactly.

Sarah Ellis: You're like, "This is not a good use of time", and you sort of rationally know that, but obviously there's something that makes you keep going back to it.   That's one of my small ideas for improving my fix and flex to do with what I do in that hour before I go to sleep.

Helen Tupper: Our next idea for action is nothing to do with putting your phone on grayscale.  This is about your misfit flags.  This is about working out what the signals are for when it might not be working as well as you might want it to.  Perhaps when I share my examples, this will be clearer.

I think Sarah is very very good at picking up on some of my misfit flags, and that probably is actually quite useful to think about who could observe you to see whether things might be going wrong.  Because sometimes, when you are trying to do everything and you're trying to fit it in all in, you might not even realise that it's become too much for you until it's too late, until you're quite tired or you're emotional or maybe you're a bit snappy.  One of my very obvious misfit flags is when I start saying, "I'm fine", but I think I don't say it once.  In the course of a conversation I think I say, "I'm fine, yeah, I'm fine, yeah, don't worry about it, I'm fine".

Sarah Ellis: Or, "It's fine", you do that quite a lot as well you're like, "Oh, yeah, it's fine", and I'm like, "Is it?"

Helen Tupper: Sarah will be, "Helen, it's definitely not fine, let's talk about it".  Another one for me would probably be if I'm -- I'm normally pretty good at going to sleep.  My husband always thinks and you think this as well don't you, whenever we're in a room together, I just lie on the pillow.

Sarah Ellis: You're like a little mouse.  You curl up and just go to sleep and make zero sound and I'm like, "Is she okay?"

Helen Tupper: Normally, even when there's a lot going on, I can just put my head on a pillow and go to sleep and then I wake up when the alarm goes off, but when that doesn't happen is when there's so many thoughts going round my head that I'm not going to sleep, that is always a bit of a misfit flag for me, that I'm trying to do too much for my brain to process.  Sarah what are your misfit flags?  When do you know that you maybe haven't got your fit right?

Sarah Ellis: I was thinking about this, and I don't know if this sounds really weird, but I plot escape routes.  I'm less about the day-to-day, but when I'm really overwhelmed, and I always think about your fit as like you're jigsaw puzzle pieces, and are they just about fitting together in a way that works for you?  When I really feel like mine aren't, I don't think about the day-to-day, I go to a point in the future and think quite big and quite differently about really radical changes.

So, I think my solution to like misfit is like, "I'm just going to start working a four-day week".  I honestly have thought that a few times where I'm like, "It's all too much, this is not working.  I can't do all the things I want to do.  I'm not making it work in a way that works for me.  Right, I'll do a four-day week", or, "I'll take a month off.  I'll take a year off".  I get really dramatic in my ideas and it's not -- they are never the right solutions, but what they are are signals that things are not quite fitting together in the right way for me and I'm not making space for all the things that are important to me. 

So, whenever I start thinking like that, and like I say I think of them now as like escape routes, it's actually a signal to me to go, "Okay, so what do you actually need to do in a normal week?" because most of those things are really unrealistic, or even if they are changes I did want to make, they're not something that's going to happen really quickly.

I don't tell anyone; I've never even said that to you before so I'm not sure -- people can only mirror obviously if you talk to people about it, so that's the other thing that's really important, I think with your misfit flags.  If you can spot them in yourself if you can share them with someone then it just helps someone else to do that red flag for you, because I think this is really hard to see for yourself in those moments where your fit is not working, because it takes an incredible amount of self-awareness, I think, almost that ability to float up outside of your own experiences, to see what's happening to you in a very objective way.  Often, I think at this point we do need some help from someone else.

Our third idea for action is about work-life conflict that feels out of your control.  This is a tougher area, but we didn't want to ignore this, because I think this is a lot of people's experience and certainly, we've both experienced this before; which is where you feel like you're doing everything in your control to make your imperfect work-life fit feel right for you, but there are things that you can't control whether it's your organisation, whether it's something culturally, whether it's a manager relationship, whether it's location.  You go, "This is what's causing the problem with my fit, I know that.  I can identify the problem and what's creating the challenging in my fit, but I don't feel like I can do anything about it".

Now, in one sense you are right, those things like for example, I once worked somewhere where the office location changed, and there is nothing you can do about that.  That suddenly meant that my work-life fit was quite dramatically decreased, so I was going, "Well, I can't move everyone to a new office, my commute now creates quite a lot of challenges for me", so what can you do about that? 

We're going to share three coach-yourself questions that we think help you to take control of a situation that feels maybe uncontrollable.  This is really thinking about what's in your sphere of influence that helps you to feel like you can start to make some positive progress.  I think sometimes this is about buying yourself some time.

Coach-yourself question 1: what would a good, better and best outcome look like for you?  This is a bit of scenario planning.  Think about if the immovable point here is, "My office location has changed", almost accepting that as a fact, then going, "What would a good, better, best outcome look like?"  For me, I could go, "A best outcome might be that I can work fully flexibly wherever I want, whenever I want", that might be a real best outcome.  Maybe a better outcome could be, "I'm in the office two or three days of the week and I'm at home two days of the week".  Maybe a good outcome is, "I do need to be in the office every day, but I can flex my start and finish times".

Suddenly you go, "Okay well that's interesting, they are all scenarios that then I could talk to my manager about and explore whether any of those feel like realistic options for me".  That would be the first question.

Coach yourself question 2: who could I learn from who has experienced a similar situation?  I think this is probably less useful if it's a commuting office change example, but more useful if it's perhaps something like a difficult manager.  If you feel like a manager is having a really detrimental impact on your work-life fit, that's something that probably lots of us have experienced at some point where perhaps you feel like your manager means your workload is really unpredictable, you get lots of work at the last minute.  Again, your work-life feels quite out of your control.

Have you thought about talking to people elsewhere in your industry or in your organisation?  What could you learn from anybody who perhaps you work with who seems to maybe have put in some really good boundaries?  What have they done well?  Is it about what they've communicated to that manager and that seems to work really well, or is it about improving your ability to say no?  Just start to think about, "I'm finding this hard", and perhaps it might be hard to solve for yourself, but this is a good opportunity to learn from others.

Coach yourself question 3: what compromises would I be willing to make in order to move forward.  This is again trying to not necessarily think about the bigger choices that you might make, so you might decide that ultimately a manager is too difficult, or an office is too far away.  That does give you a choice in terms of then what you might choose to do, but those things take time.  In the meantime, essentially, we've focusing here on what are the compromises that might just make life that little bit easier and improve my work-life fit, right here, right now, that would help me to make a bit of positive progress?  Figure out, there might be a compromise that you think -- when I was commuting for example, "If I can pick my toddler up three days a week, that feels like an okay compromise for now".

This is the point where you're not saying this is forever, but you're saying, for now.  I think trying to be really clear about those compromises for yourself and for other people around you just gives you that clarity of going, "I feel like I have chosen this compromise for now, and also I can choose to make a different decision in the future".  Again, that just helps us to feel a bit more in control of a situation where you can start off just going, "Well, there's nothing I can do about this".

Helen Tupper: I really like that for now versus forever framing.  I think it's really useful and I was actually thinking about a time in my career where I had work-life conflict on the manager and the culture and the location all at once.  It felt really overwhelming and if I had had those questions then, I think I could have really helped myself.  I mean I navigated my way through that, but it certainly wasn't easy and that would have given me like the good, better, best and similar situation and compromises; it would have just given me that little bit more control in the moment.  I like it.

Sarah Ellis: Cool, so then we wanted to also share, one thing that we both noticed when we were preparing and chatting about this beforehand, we came up with this; it's just an observation of something that's really helped us with our work-life fit.  That was the who, so who keeps you fit?  Aka your fit friends, which has various connotations, but let's go with your work-life fit friends!  These are really the people around you who support your choices, sponsor your choices and essentially don't make you feel guilty for the things that you're deciding to do. 

We both came to the conclusion that this is incredibly important for both of us, because our work-life fit is not just about us but it's also about your partner, it's about your friends and your family, it's about your work colleagues.  You don't exist in isolation and so, if you've got a brilliantly supportive manager, I think they can be one of your fit friends.

I've definitely had managers who've played that role.  I've had managers who've done the opposite as well.  Helen and I do this for each other.  Helen was talking to me earlier today and saying, "I am going to leave early today, because I've not done any exercise because we've had a particularly busy couple of weeks".  I will message her later and think, "Oh okay, I hope the exercise goes well, see you again a bit later".  Just to prompt her to kind of go, "Go and do that thing that you've said is really important to you, because it's important to me that your work-life fit works for you, because then that means that we can do better work because you'll be feeling better".

Just think about who are those people and if you don't feel like somebody is playing that role but it's important that they could do, make sure that you have been explicit and explained to them what matters to you and why.  Because, I think sometimes we can expect people to know things about us that are in our heads, but we haven't said them out loud.  Sometimes we do need to say them out loud, we think, "Of course this person should know this is really important to me", but they don't spend that time in our heads thinking about us, as much as we do, so I think just being really clear and communicating what are those things that just really matter to you, and also how those people can help you, can actually get you much further than you think.

Then we've got two very small tactics to finish with, we've basically emptied out both of our heads on this topic and that's what you're listening to right now.  Helen, one tactic you've got that just helps you day in, day out, on your work-life fit?

Helen Tupper: This is not going to be for everybody, I don't think it's a Sarah, this is a Helen tactic, and this tactic is called double-down.  Basically, it's about looking at times in my day when I'm doing something and seeing whether I could -- I know this is really contrary to what everyone else says you should do, but basically multi-task.  I'll give you some examples.

So if we are driving, I have spent the last couple of weekends driving to Nottinghamshire to see my friends and Lincolnshire to see my family.  That's two and a half hours in the car, so that is time -- and I'm not driving by the way, I'm just sat there trying to stop my kids from annoying me too much in the back seat, give them an iPad.  So, I've got two hours that I could be doing something, so I might schedule some social media posts, I might do the online food shop, because I'm basically doubling the value of that time.  I'm getting to somewhere at the same time as I'm getting something done.

Or maybe, I like cooking in the evening.  If I'm just doing something, that's a great time for me to listen to podcasts or if I'm hanging around outside while my children are in some sports club that I'm not allowed to go into because of COVID rules, then that's actually quite a good time for me to do five-minute emails; not the really long ones that need a laptop, but the short ones that I can reply to on my phone.

I guess I look at those moments in my day where I have to spend time doing something, but it's not particularly productive time, and then I think about how could I double-down on that time and do something that might be more valuable that also needs to get done.

Sarah Ellis: Oh, it's just so Helen!

Helen Tupper: Don't patronise me!

Sarah Ellis: When I read that, when we were making our notes and you put that one in, I actually laughed out loud to myself, by myself, in my study!

Helen Tupper: What do you do?  You just sit there and waste the time?

Sarah Ellis: Relax, Helen, is different to wasting time!  It is okay to sometimes just relax, just sit in a car and relax, just enjoy, chat to your partner, listen to some music.

Helen Tupper: I mean I could do that, but the food shop needs to get done.

Sarah Ellis: It does, it does need to get done.  My tactic, which is more of a mindset one, but I do find it really helpful; I'm being honest, particularly since I've had my little boy, Max.  I don't think this was as important for me beforehand, but I label what I describe as "let-it-go moments".  I think I've had times where I've been trying to fit in maybe looking after Max, that I haven't anticipated.  I'm a real planner, if things happen that I've not anticipated, that's where I get really frustrated, so things that no one can control like him being poorly. 

For example, on Friday he wasn't very well so he couldn't go to nursery.  Suddenly you go, "Well that's just thrown all of my work-life fit out of the window in one fell swoop", and I do find that naturally, my response to that is I get quite frustrated, it doesn't appeal to my personality in any way, and I think that it doesn't help because you can't change or control any of that situation.  Yes, it has impacted your work-life fit, but you've got to let it go. 

The sooner that I tell myself, "Oh, this is a let-it-go moment", it stops me feeling frustrated and it helps me to shift to actually thinking, "Okay, so what's the alternative or what options have I got?"  Again, to follow that example through, on Friday I think previously I would have got really frustrated where I was meant to be doing a day of work and suddenly, I'm doing a day of looking after my little boy, who was sort of poorly but not that poorly.  So, I didn't feel that sorry for him, being honest, but he couldn't go to nursery, because you can't really go to nursery at the moment where you've got a bit of a cough.

I was thinking, "I've got all this work to do", but I was like, "No, just let it go.  Think about what options you've got", and I thought, "Do you know what, on Sunday morning I will be able to sit and do what I needed to do today if I just sit quietly and get on with it".  Suddenly, the rest of that day I ended up quite enjoying, I was like, "Oh we're going to do some playdough and we're going to do some stickers". 

Previously I think I would have spent all of that time just getting a bit annoyed and angry and probably everybody else around me absorbing that, that I wasn't doing what I planned to do that day.  Now, I just go, "Just let it go", and even you and I spoke at end the of Friday and you even said to me, "How're you doing?  Are you okay, because obviously it wasn't what you'd anticipated", and I think, and you can tell me if I wasn't, I think I was relatively sane about it.

Helen Tupper: Yes, you were fine.

Sarah Ellis: Was I?

Helen Tupper: Yeah, you were fine, you were just like normal Sarah actually.  Not like super worky Sarah with an agenda on Microsoft Teams, which you sometimes have.

Sarah Ellis: Yes.

Helen Tupper: But just quite reflective, thoughtful.  Yeah, you were very calm and balanced.

Sarah Ellis: I think that is the result of a lot of work.  So, I don't think that just happens, I think that is a result of me thinking differently about my work-life fit, and then being just more pragmatic about it, but also just creating that shift that helps you to see options.  I think that just really helps you to move forward and back to really where we started to know that your work-life fit will always be imperfect, rather than going, "I'd got a perfect day planned and that's gone out the window", and then all those negative emotions that are just not going to help you.

Label those let-it-go moments, it might be helpful, or do what Helen does and just double-down and do twice the amount of work in half the time.  Whatever works for you.

Helen Tupper: Thanks for that, make it sound like a robot!  We hope that that has given you some ideas for action, some more insights into Sarah and I's way, in which we manage our time.  We'll summarise all of those different things in the PodSheets, so if it is something you want to reflect on a bit further for you, I'd definitely download that one and as a reminder, the link to that will be in the show notes for you.  Or you can always just email us.  If you ever can't find anything, just email us at Helen&Sarah@squigglycareers.com. 

One other episode that you might want to listen to, if this does feel like a topic that's important to you right now, is the episode that we did on How to Manage your Boundaries, as well.  It's slightly different, we've got some very specific ideas about fit here, but I do think fit and boundaries go hand-in-hand.  That's Episode 121, if you have got a little bit more time that you want to spend thinking about this as well.

Other than that, I think we will leave it there today.  Anything else from you, Sarah?

Sarah Ellis: Thank you all so much for listening, and to everyone who rates, reviews and subscribes.  We really appreciate it, and we read every one.

Helen Tupper: We'll be back with you all very soon everybody, bye for now.

Sarah Ellis: Bye everyone.