Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:01:07: Contributions to overwhelm
00:05:52: Understand your own overwhelm
00:11:48: Three ideas for actions...
00:12:10: ... 1: connect activities to outcomes
00:19:41: ... 2: have specific types of conversations
00:25:53: ... 3: end on a good feeling
00:33:49: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah. 

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen. 

Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where every week we take a different topic to do with work, and share some ideas and actions to help you navigate our Squiggly Careers with that bit more confidence and control. 

Helen Tupper: And this week, we are going to be talking about how focusing on outcomes will help you to reduce overwhelm.  And if you can hear any chomping in the background, it's because I am joined today in the Squiggly studio with two special guests, neither of which are Sarah, because she's joining me virtually.  But in my studio, I have my children's rabbits, Poppy and Cookie, who are living the life of luxury after they've been to the vets.  Yeah, I keep giving Sarah rabbit updates that she doesn't really want.  But they're eating, they've come out! 

Sarah Ellis: Well, now I know how much it costs to keep these rabbits happy, I feel very invested in making sure that they're okay.

Helen Tupper: If only this was being filmed, it would probably be quite distracting.  And actually, what we're talking about today is very important, and I think overwhelm is something lots of people are experiencing.  So, hopefully we can give you some practical support and advice today. 

Sarah Ellis: So, first worth just reflecting on what contributes to overwhelm, and then also when specifically do you feel overwhelmed?  And I think at the moment, the outside world can have a really big impact on how we're feeling at work.  So, even if events outside of your orbit of work you can't directly influence or you're not part of, just that classic thing of when you read the news and a lot of that news is hard to read or hard to take, then it's inevitable that you can't separate out the rest of what you're spending time reading, watching and listening to, to then how you show up at work.  And we definitely saw that in our team last week, people mentioning things that were making them feel either sad or quite down, and it's not like you can switch that off then when you start in your first meeting of the day. 

Helen Tupper: And one of the articles I was reading in preparation for this podcast was why the news feels overwhelming and how to cope.  And it was saying things like natural disasters, like the fires, for example, in Los Angeles, it was an American article, global political context, clearly quite a lot going on there at the moment, causing quite a lot of distress.  But it was saying that when you're surrounded by all this negative, overwhelming news, it could start to create a bit of fear, like what does this mean for the world?  What does this mean for my family?  What does this mean for me?  Also anger, like why is this happening?  What's going on in the world?  Those sorts of feelings.  And that can turn into an emotional state of overwhelm, exhaustion, sadness.  So, it's not a small thing.  Sometimes I think we just think about overwhelm as what's going on at work.  But actually, there are often factors outside of work that can contribute towards these feelings that I think you shouldn't ignore when you're getting lots of these messages on your phones or on the news, or wherever it is you're absorbing them from. 

Sarah Ellis: Another thing that contributes to overwhelm, which Helen and I both recognise, and when we read this, we were both like, "Yes, that's us", is if you've got a new and now bias.  So, a new bias is a tendency to, you're attracted to new things, you like new ideas, you like creating newness, and obviously there's lots of upsides to that.  But one of the downsides is obviously, you're always creating more and more and more, so just volume, and volume obviously leads to overwhelm.  And if you're particularly present-focused, which is less relevant for me because I'm slightly more future-focused, you want everything to be done today or quite quickly, and sometimes you can even create that overwhelm for yourself by perhaps committing to, you know when we say in quite an offhand way, "Oh, yeah, I'll get that to you today", or like Helen was saying, she always says to people, "I'll get that to you by Friday", because it's just like, almost whatever it is, whatever day it is, it's just always, "I'll get that to you by Friday". 

Helen Tupper: My husband mocks me sometimes, I mean he mocks me quite a lot, but I'll say, "Oh God, I've got so much to do at the moment".  And he'll say, "Wouldn't it be amazing if you ran your own company and you could decide what you wanted to do and what you didn't want to do?"  And I'd be like, "That's an unhelpful statement"!  But I think I create lots of my feelings of overwhelm because I like doing new stuff and I want to get it all done now.  And it's that sort of, yeah, I struggle to turn that off and it definitely contributes to these feelings for me. 

Sarah Ellis: Other people can contribute to your overwhelm.

Helen Tupper: Yes, Sarah!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, we'll talk a bit more about each other later!  But we were actually reflecting, in our team meeting yesterday, Helen and I shared quite a few just different updates with the team.  And we were saying, "I wonder how that felt for everybody", because our assumption is, "Oh, this is all exciting and energising.  Look at all these experiments that are underway".  And probably, if you are feeling optimistic and you're feeling good, it will have felt like that.  But if you were already feeling a bit overwhelmed, you might have listened to Helen and I and just thought, "Wow, that is just more work maybe that's coming my way", or, "What are all the consequences of all the things that they're talking about?" 

So, I think sometimes managers, leaders, or people just generally in position of power or influence, can unintentionally create overwhelm.  They might just not know how you're arriving at a conversation and suddenly they've created all this extra overwhelm.  Or sometimes I think people can be too disconnected from your day to day.  And so, a throwaway comment like, "Oh, could you just get that presentation sorted?  Oh, if you could send it over tomorrow".  And it's perhaps not a definitive, "It must be done by then", but that's how we take it.  Those sorts of things can also create a load of overwhelm for people. 

Helen Tupper: So, understanding what contributes to your overwhelm is a really good place to start with this.  And then, a build on it, just so you can get really specific before we get into what can help, "Where's the support, now I've recognised I feel like this", so a build on what contributes is, when in your week do you start to feel overwhelmed?  And there are a couple of, I guess, moments that we talked about.  There might be more moments for you but these are the ones that we recognised.  So, perhaps at the start of a day when you are looking at your list and you're thinking, "How am I going to get all of that done?"  I think sometimes to-do lists are a very visible trigger for overwhelm when you're just adding all those actions.  Sometimes for me, so I have my to-do list in my diary, if I haven't done it, I can carry it on to the next day.  And when I'm literally carrying so many things over, I'm like, "Oh, it's just getting longer and longer", and that starts to feel horrible. 

Accumulating actions in a meeting, this is a big one for me.  If you're in the sort of role where you have quite a lot of meetings to go into, and there is not a lot of time between meetings to actually get anything done, I can start to feel progressively more overwhelmed when the actions start to accumulate.  So, I'm like, "This is a really good meeting, but I've just written five more things down that I need to do", then there's another five.  And then by the end of the day, I've got like 25 things that I now need to do, and I can't quite work out when I'm going to do them.  But it's just in the moment.  I find it very distracting in the meeting, because I'm just thinking, "I do want to do this and maybe it is my job to do this, but when on earth is this going to get done?"  And that's probably the third thing, when it doesn't have to be if you're in lots of meetings, but it's that you can see what needs to be done, but you can't see the time to do it. 

So, any of that sort of start of the day, looking at a list, lots of meetings, actions are accumulating, or just, "I can see what I need to do and I can't see when the time is it's going to get done".  Any of those 'whens' might feel relevant to you.  Which one would it be for you?  When do you start feeling overwhelmed, Sarah? 

Sarah Ellis: Pretty much always the third one.  So, because I do like to look ahead and because I think I'm naturally quite a planned person, if I know what needs to get done and then there's a gap between understanding the job to do and then not being able to spot the time to do it, I find that really stressful.  I think I feel out of control, which I don't like, and it does create this sense of overwhelm.  I had it the other week actually, and it was an interesting reflection for me where I was doing something in an evening.  So, I was seeing a friend and it meant that I had to stop work at a certain time, which you know, completely acceptable to do.  But it really meant that I was like, I needed that evening to be able to get something done.  I was running out of time, I just got more and more overwhelmed, and then I felt so relieved when that person cancelled.  And I was like, "Oh, but that's not how I want to feel".  I actually really wanted to see that person.  It's somebody I really like, I really want to spend time with, and it'd been planned for ages and, poor them, they just weren't very well. 

But I remember thinking in that moment, "I don't want to feel this way when someone cancels doing something that I want to do", because it was almost like releasing the pressure valve of like, "Oh, actually, now I don't feel as overwhelmed, I'm back in control, I've got this extra pocket of time, and now I can do what I need to do".  But that was completely coincidental and just happened in that moment.  And so, yeah, I always find that very difficult if I can't connect the dots between what needs to get done and when it's going to happen. 

Helen Tupper: I was just thinking there, probably one other situation when I feel overwhelmed, and it's very recency-biased because it was yesterday, when you're wearing a lot of different hats on the same day, if that makes sense?

Sarah Ellis: Switching.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, a lot of switching.  And sometimes, that can be location switching, you know, like, "Okay, I've got to be here, I've got to be there, I've got to go there".  Sometimes that can create overwhelm.  But sometimes it's work and life.  Like yesterday, I felt like I had like a work-and-life misfit.  You know we talk about work-and-life fit?  Like a work-and-life misfit, in that I had a breakfast for my daughter's birthday in the morning, which is a lovely moment; then I had to go take these rabbits to the vets; then I had a quite a full-on day at work; then I had to -- it's a thing though, it's not 'had' to see my children, I should 'want' to see my children, but it became a little bit like that, because I was wearing so many hats that I think I just became hat on, hat off, hat on, hat off, all day.  And that feeling of switching and identity switching, I think that can feel quite overwhelming as well, at least it did for me, and this is very relevant. 

Sarah Ellis: So, at 7.00pm last night, you were going back to the vets to collect these flipping rabbits!  And I was just thinking though, your day felt like it went on for a long time. 

Helen Tupper: I mean, the amount of medication.  They were like, "Can you feed this rabbit with a syringe six times a day with these three different things?"  I was like, "You just keep adding it, you just keep adding these things to do to my days.  Sure, sure!"

Sarah Ellis: Actually, I guess what we've not talked about here about when do you feel overwhelmed, but we talked about it before on another podcast, is you were saying about changing locations and lots of transitions can be tricky, also lots of technology.  So, I think it can feel really overwhelming if you feel like you are really trying to focus and get something done, but then you've got loads of emails waiting for you, loads of Teams messages or Slack messages waiting for you, so you don't feel like you're on top of things, or you feel like you're missing things, because perhaps you've got something you need to get done, but then the tech that's surrounding you isn't helping you to feel in control.  And I think I sometimes do feel like that if I've been like, "Right, I need to --" I'm okay at turning everything off and then really focusing, but then sometimes it's like you come back to everything, and being able to make sense of it can then create overwhelm in that moment. 

So, we've got three actions to share with you today, which we hope each of these will practically help you turn that feeling of overwhelm into how you just create a bit more clarity, control, a bit of calmness in these moments, which I think happen really frequently, so I think it's a really useful skill to learn.  And action one is connecting activities to outcomes.  So, it's useful to start by defining the difference in your week between activities and outcomes.  So, activities, it's all the stuff that you do.  It's what you'd see in your diary, on your to-do list; it's emails, meetings, presentations, proposals; recording a podcast is an activity.  Outcomes are why the work matters, like can you connect the dots between what you're working on and why it's going to make a difference? 

So, if we were thinking about podcasts, for example, we could say, "Okay, well, one activity that we do every week is we prepare for the podcast, believe it or not!"

Helen Tupper: Who knows?!

Sarah Ellis: We prepare by doing some research.  The second activity would be, we then have a conversation together to challenge and build and put our ideas together.  We then record the podcast.  That podcast then gets edited, I have to say, not by us, by people much better qualified to do it than us.  And then also, that podcast gets shared, wherever you're listening to your podcast.  We obviously create then PodNotes, PodSheets, PodMail.  So, there are loads of activities that sit around the podcast.  Even that, you probably get to a list of what, seven or eight activities around one podcast episode.  And so, you could say the outcome is a podcast episode that goes out, but that's probably not super-motivating, that's probably not zoomed out enough.  What we could say is, "Well, the outcome for us is to be a free source of Squiggly Career support".  Or you could be even more numbers-based, so you could be more data-based and go, "Well, the outcome is we hope that every month, between 50,000 and 100,000 people will listen to our podcast episodes".  So, that's how many people we are supporting or helping. 

When Helen and I were exploring this idea, we were saying there are different kinds of outcomes that might be useful to consider.  And sometimes, you might be working with something that has lots of different types of outcomes, or it might have one outcome that's really obvious.  So, you might have an impact outcome, you could have a learning outcome, or you could have a relationship outcome, and there are probably more that we've also not thought about.  So, we could say for the podcast, the impact outcome would be 50,000 to 100,000 people listening and learning with us every month, that's the impact we're having.  A learning outcome might be Helen and I saying, "Oh, we're going to experiment with different formats for the podcast to see if we can help more people in different ways". Maybe we could do some things that are going to specifically help teams to learn from the podcast in organisations, so that might be a learning outcome.  And a relationship outcome could be something like, if I think about the Career Stage series, the people that we invite onto the podcast and the conversations that we have with experts, actually we're building new relationships as a result of the podcast.  And actually, that's one of the things that I do really value.  Obviously I value my relationship with Helen, but I also value the opportunity to learn from other people.

I actually recently did an expert interview with a lady called Dr Sunita Sah on how to say no, and it was just brilliant.  You know when you have a conversation with someone and I was just like, I was learning all the time, great insights, and I was just honestly thinking, "I cannot wait to share this, because I just know people are going to find this so useful".  So actually, when I think about the podcast, sometimes for both of us the podcast can feel overwhelming.  We're like, "Argh, we've got to think of something useful to say, we've got to find the time to say it!"  We always want the quality to be as good as it possibly can be.  But when I then start to list the impact, learning and relationship outcomes, that feels really motivating and meaningful.  So, it can just be a good reminder of why you're doing what you're doing. 

Helen Tupper: I think it has a secondary benefit as well, which is if you're an activity accumulator, which I would say someone like me, I'm like, "We can do that, we can do that, we can do that", it just gets bigger every day when I've started to create things, versus someone with an outcome orientation.  I think when you have an outcome orientation, so let's say my intended outcome from the Career Stage series is to build better relationships with a broader range of people, right, let's just say that, I think it then helps you to look at your activities and prioritise them.  And sometimes, you might be like, "Well, okay, if that's the outcome that I'm aiming for, then of all these activities, these are the ones that I should work on first", or, "Actually, of all these activities, these are the ones that aren't contributing to that".  And some of it's about the meaning and motivation, the why behind the work, so you stay committed to it, even when it can feel overwhelming. 

But I think some of it is, an outcome orientation creates a filter for what to do first and what not to do.  And I think that is really helpful as well, because when you're just accumulating activities, you really haven't got that filter, like more is better.  That is very hard to work through.  But the outcome orientation, it just gives you almost just a filter to look at your work slightly differently.

Sarah Ellis: I also think it might help you to challenge yourself on, you know sometimes those activities that feel nice to do or maybe less pressing or urgent.  Like sometimes responding to emails just feels very, "Oh, I should respond because they are there".  Whereas you might think about, you know having a conversation with someone that you've not met for a while probably will never feel like the most important thing to do.  But if you were thinking about a relationship outcome, you might be like, "Oh yeah, but by having that conversation, I'm building a relationship with someone who either challenges me or helps me to think differently.  It means I can borrow a bit of brilliance because they spend time in a very different world". 

So often, when actually people set goals performance goals, or they're thinking about what they need to achieve as a team or as an individual, people talk about this idea of like OKRs, which is Objectives and Key Results.  And actually, I can start to see the link here between actually, if you've got very clear outcomes, you probably just get better at prioritising, you probably are less likely to be overwhelmed, but you're probably also more likely to achieve what matters for you and your team.  It's quite a good discipline.  I think this would also be a helpful conversation to have as a team.  Almost, you could take a week, couldn't you, and go, "Well, let's just look at the week you've just had, look at all the activities, almost draw a line to what you think the impact, learning and relationship outcomes are".  And if you can't find an outcome, there'll definitely be some things where you can't, just noticing that actually would probably help you then to think, "Well, maybe that's something I don't need to do.  Or maybe that's something that could wait". 

Helen Tupper: I would say normalising and accepting feelings of overwhelm, it doesn't mean that you're not doing a good job.  That just means there's quite a lot to do and sometimes it's hard to see through that.  I actually think these are very useful, if not at a team level, a manager and someone who works for you, like, "When is your work feeling overwhelming?  What are the outcomes you're working towards?  And then we can go on to some of the other actions we're going to talk about now". 

Action number two is the conversation, which is the point that we're saying, but specifically having a conversation with somebody who is either a challenger, so these people tend to hold a mirror up to what you might be saying or what you might be seeing or experiencing at work that you might not be saying to yourself, so challengers can hold that mirror up.  Or, somebody who can create clarity.  So, I think for me, my thoughts can get a little bit messy sometimes when I'm feeling overwhelmed.  So, having someone who just talks to me and creates clarity is useful.  Or someone with a coaching approach.  So, this is somebody who will be very good at listening, so they will let you get all the overwhelm out.  But they will ask you some questions that might make you think about how much of this overwhelm is created by you or people that you are working with; for example, would maybe make you think, "Maybe I'm driving a lot of this". 

So, these abilities, the challenger, the clarity-creator and the coach approach are really useful to have a conversation with.  And it might be, I was saying that Sarah, I think, naturally is a combination of a coaching person, because she has a really good skill of questioning and is a very good listener, but then also it can be quite challenging, like is not afraid to ask the challenging question.  Some people are very skilled and they have more than one of these traits.  But they are very useful people, when you're in a moment of overwhelm, to have a conversation with.  And that could be, I could just say to Sarah, "Oh God, this week is feeling a little bit difficult.  Can I just talk it through with you, because I'd appreciate your perspective?"  And Sarah would just listen to me and ask me some of those questions that she naturally does. 

One of the things that we did say though, is in these conversations, a bit of a watch-out, and it's something that I do, and so maybe Sarah can share her perspective on how this actually feels, is let's say if Sarah comes to me and she says, "Oh, I'm having a bit of a week, could do with a bit of a chat through".  Whilst I am good at creating clarity, my actual default trait is to solve people's problems.  And so, Sarah might come to me for one of these types of conversations, an overwhelm conversation, and I might unintentionally diminish how Sarah feels and be like, "Oh, don't worry about it, I can just sort that out, I'll only take two minutes", which is my natural default.  And that might solve some of the work problem, because it takes it away from Sarah, but what that doesn't do is in any way acknowledge or support Sarah with how she's feeling about that problem. 

Overwhelm is both a practical thing, there's some stuff that needs to get done, and also a psychological thing, like there are some feelings about the things that need to get done.  And if you just solve the work, you don't necessarily support the feeling.  So, just a bit of a watch-out.  Sarah, how is my problem-solving?

Sarah Ellis: Would you like an example?

Helen Tupper: Sure, list them for everyone, why don't you?! 

Sarah Ellis: I can think of a couple of examples!  I would say, well, we were laughing about this, it does come from a very good place, obviously, of you only ever trying to be helpful.  For example, last week I was talking about a workshop I was doing, which I knew was going to be difficult.  So, I was like, "I've got this workshop, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed generally and I'm a bit worried about it".  And Helen's first response is, "Well, I'll do it for you".  I mean, that literally is what she said to me, I could show you the WhatsApp message.  And all that really makes you feel like is that you're failing because, "Oh, Helen's had to come to my rescue because this workshop's going to be hard", and so the signal that Helen's sending is, "Well, you can't do this, so I'll just do it for you".  And actually, at its worst, I think it can feel a bit parent-child.  It's almost like, "I'm going to swoop in and sort this on your behalf", versus, "I'm going to help you to be able to do this". 

Now, that's a bit dramatic and it's fine.  I still did the workshop and I was like, "No, no, it's all right, I don't need someone to do it for me".  What you need is a bit of help through that moment to find your way through it.  And it's just thinking about, I think when you are feeling overwhelmed, almost knowing that different people can do different things for you.  And so, I see Helen create clarity for our team all the time, all the time.  We'll be talking about something, we'll have ideas and that conversation might go off in different directions.  And then, Helen is absolutely brilliant at going, "Okay, so this is what needs to happen now, next", being really clear on what can wait.  Or if anyone's ever got a bit stuck, I can see that she really helps to move people forward.  And so, some of that might just be the dynamic between Helen and I, like how long we've known each other, the work that we do, the fact that we have jobs that are actually in lots of ways very similar.  Whereas actually, when Helen's talking to our team, she's not got the same job as people in our team. 

It's sometimes really helpful that she'll do things for me, I love it, I'm like, "One less thing for me to do.  Perfect!"  But I think it is worth just thinking about in that moment, who are those people?  Because they can be friends, they might be previous colleagues.  Brilliant if you've got a great manager, or if you've got somebody who's a mentor, maybe you've got a really good friend at work.  And I think just never being afraid to have the conversation.  I heard someone on our team say this actually the other week, that you know those people where you always feel that bit better after a conversation and that conversation is always worth it.  I think if you keep overwhelm to yourself, what is most likely to happen usually is it by bottling it up, you build it up, and so it spirals.  So, that overwhelm by yourself, alone, alone overwhelm, I think only gets worse. 

So, just knowing, who's that person that you can pick the phone up to, who you can Teams message, who you can WhatsApp, and just notice if you're feeling overwhelmed, but you've not told anyone, I'm like, "Who can you tell?"  I'd really want people to get it almost out of their system, because I think once you've started saying it, then you can start doing something about it. 

Helen Tupper: And then, I want to add something, or shall I go on to the third one?  Yeah, okay.  And action number three is about how to end a day or a meeting feeling good about it.  So, I think there is a danger here, and again, yesterday was quite an overwhelming day, I think there's a danger here that you have an overwhelming day, and you end it by, "Well, I'll just go to sleep because tomorrow is another day".  And I mean, sleep does help.  I do think sleep cures a lot of things, to be honest.  So, sleep does help, particularly if emotions are getting high and you're tired, and that's all contributing to how you're feeling.  So, sleep does help.  But I don't think, so what I did yesterday, I was just trying to finish all these activities that I was doing and I didn't get them done.  And I just thought, "Time to go to bed and shut my laptop down".  And I don't think I ended the day feeling good, I just think I ended the day and went to bed. 

Actually, we do want to try to connect with a different emotion at the end of an overwhelming day or an overwhelming part of a day.  And there are some prompts that we think are useful, so that you feel better about the situation, and I think that you take that into the next day.  I think this is a lot of what contributes to resilience in moments of overwhelm.  And so, there's a couple of questions that maybe I'll ask them to you, Sarah.  Can you answer it for yesterday if I ask these questions? 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, of course. 

Helen Tupper: Okay, so we've got three questions, so retrospective resilience on Sarah's day yesterday.  So, question number one, this is about ending a day feeling good, "What's one thing you made progress on yesterday?" 

Sarah Ellis: We submitted an entry for an award.  And I think that felt like progress because whenever you do an award entry, you have to bring together lots of different stories and data points, probably in a way that you've not before.  So, they're never quite as easy as you'd imagine.  You feel like you should be able to enter something.  You're like, "Oh yeah, we've got loads of good stuff to say", but you do have to figure out how to say it.  So, I don't think they're super-easy to write.  And there's always a deadline, and last week we were like, "Oh, we're fine, we've got loads of time".  And then, there were some curve balls last week across our team with things happening.  So, it did mean that we were up against a very pressing deadline, which actually is very unlike me.  So, I am a 'submit two days ahead of deadline' type person, and we submitted it on the day of the deadline.  And I can't actually think of very many examples of where I've ever done that.  But though I did find it quite overwhelming at times, this looming like a clock ticking, essentially, we did get in, I felt good about the progress that we made on it, and it was submitted, so that's good. 

Helen Tupper: Okay, so that's one thing you made progress on, which is question number one.  Question number two, "Who is one person that you helped yesterday?"  So, somebody got in touch with us who I don't know, and this is on LinkedIn, so this is where I think LinkedIn does work brilliantly and I'm really grateful for it.  She got in touch and let us know that she's listened to the podcast for quite a few years, she has been going through a redundancy, like a restructuring or redundancy, and she'd been to our redundancy workshop and she told me how useful that had been, but also the podcast had been useful.  And then she's got to the final stage of an interview process and she's got to facilitate some learning, and was asking me for a couple of ideas.  I asked her a few questions back and I gave her some ideas, though I do feel now both responsible and I really do need to know the outcome of that!  So, you know when you're like, "Oh, it feels like quite a big responsibility", but equally I was like, obviously I want to help. 

So, I helped someone who I don't know and have never met, hopefully with just a few small ideas that might be useful.  Like, she was doing a training session on wellbeing, and I said, "What about opening with asking for examples of active rest?"  Because then she can talk a bit about active rest and there's some good resources there, it might be something that people have not heard about before.  So, that was my idea, so I hope it was a good one. 

Helen Tupper: Okay, final question, "What happened yesterday that made you feel good about your world outside of work?" 

Sarah Ellis: I went for the first run that I have been on for probably five years.  So, running is not my preferred way of exercising, but it is efficient and you can just walk out of your door and do it.  And this week in the UK, it is a lovely sunny week.  So, you know when you're out of excuses, I was like, "I'm literally out of excuses".  And, oh God, I was so slow, and I felt like I was going to have a heart attack after about three minutes.  So, it was definitely a run/walk/run-based scenario.  But it did make me feel really good just to get outside.  I did it at the end of the day.  I always go for a walk at the start of the day, but this was at the end of the day.  It made me feel good to get outside.  Mondays are quite manic in Amazing If generally.  We were talking actually about what we need to do differently so they maybe sometimes feel a bit less manic.  But I think it gave me a really good reset at the end of a Monday, I think it helped me to relax.  I'm not sure I'm loads fitter as a result, but it was worth it for all sorts of reasons outside of how rubbish I am at running.

Helen Tupper: I actually associate you with running because I think it was one of the things when, remember when we first met, this is back in 2001, everybody, we did this university course where there was a little away-stay to get to know each other.  And I remember you just went on this run and I was like, "Oh, I can't stand her!" 

Sarah Ellis: Oh God, did I?  No. 

Helen Tupper: Yeah, you did, you did, you went on some epic run!

Sarah Ellis: I mean, that is probably just to escape, because I would have felt so --

Helen Tupper: I think it probably was!

Sarah Ellis: -- I would have hated it so much. 

Helen Tupper: I think the alternative was Sambuca shots, or something like that.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, that sounds about right.

Helen Tupper: So, I think the run was your safe zone! 

Sarah Ellis: Do you know what, this is the other thing.  I think I'm trying to redefine a little bit my relationship with running, because I'd much rather do other things, like classes and various different things.  And actually, do you know what, I went for a run and came back and signed up for some online classes.  I was like, "God, there's got to be a better alternative to running than this".  But also, I tend to run when I'm unhappy.  So, if I think about the moments in my life that I found really hard, running has helped me, but I'm not really unhappy at the moment.  So, this is where I came and I was like, "Why do I feel like I have to go running?"  I did it after maternity leave and I was like, I don't remember that time very fondly, I don't remember what you just described very fondly.  So, partly I don't want to have this like weird thing of running equals unhappiness, but also, like I say, tonight I'm going to do a dance class instead. 

Helen Tupper: Well, I mean, feel free to join me in a Peloton fan club and then we could -- 

Sarah Ellis: I have looked, they're quite expensive though, Pelotons are.

Helen Tupper: I know, but I just pay for it every month.  I am obsessed everybody. 

Sarah Ellis: You are.

Helen Tupper: I'm like PR for Peloton, absolutely love it.  Broke my personal best yesterday, very proud, very proud.  Anyway, the point of these three questions: what's one thing you made progress in; who's one person you've helped; and, what do you feel good about in your outside world, is to just change your emotional state.  And I honestly think if I'd asked that, it would take me like three minutes at the end of yesterday, I probably would have recognised all the things that I had done well yesterday, rather than feeling like I'd still got more to do.  And I think recognising what you're doing well is a really important thing for your resilience.  And when you are feeling overwhelmed, we do need to connect with those feelings of resilience to get us through the moment.  I think overwhelm doesn't last forever, but there are definitely regular moments of it in lots of people's work.  And so, I think it's a very healthy practice to add those questions into the end of an overwhelming day or an overwhelming week at work. 

Sarah Ellis: And just remember, if you are listening to this and you're feeling overwhelmed, asking for help is always a sign of strength and never a weakness.  So, please do talk to people, please get the help you need.  We know work and the world outside of work can feel really hard.  So, please don't do this by yourself.  Do some of the actions hopefully that we've talked about today.  But if you're still feeling a bit stuck, make sure you start to have some conversations, talk to other people, you're definitely not alone.  There is no one I know who hasn't felt overwhelmed at some point in most weeks. 

Helen Tupper: And just for the animal lovers amongst the listeners --

Sarah Ellis: Are the rabbits still alive?

Helen Tupper: -- the rabbits are fine.  They've eaten two carrots and some lettuce, so I think they're on the mend.

Sarah Ellis: That's good news for all of us.  What a way to finish the podcast!  That's everything for this week.  Thank you so much for listening and we'll be back with you again soon.  Bye for now. 

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.