4 steps to leaving work on-time

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Even if you love your job, you still want to have a life outside of work. In order to do that, you will need to learn how to shut down you work brain with your computer at the exact time you plan. In today’s episode I walk you through the 4 steps to leaving work ON-TIME. There is only one thing that gets in the way of you leaving work at the time you planned and when you learn how to deal with it…you can begin to leave work at whatever time you choose.

Topics in this episode:

  • 4 steps to leaving work on-time

  • The only thing that gets in the way of you leaving work at the time you want

  • The fear that others will be disappointed in you

  • Creating a compelling why and its importance

  • What to do when you feel anxious about putting work off till tomorrow

Show Notes:

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Transcript

Hey, working moms How's everybody doing today? So, I want to start out by reading a quote from one of my clients. Of course, I got permission to read this from you. But every week I have my one-on-one clients send me a prep form. And it's just simply a few questions - three or four - where they're just telling me a bit about what they did that week, what they accomplished that week, and what they want to talk about in their session.

In this form, my client, Kathy told me about her Thanksgiving because this was the week after Thanksgiving that we were coaching. And here's what she had to say - and I just want to celebrate this moment with her and share it with you because I think it's so inspiring to all of us ambitious working moms that tend to prioritize doing a lot of things and trying to fill our time with a lot of stuff. For sure, Cathy has been one of those people. But she's been working on that. And just, here was her update:

"Rebecca, I loved having all of last week off. And while I got so much done around the house, I also had many chances to relax and truly connect with my family. After finding out my mom had broken her foot, and she and my dad wouldn't be coming out to us for Thanksgiving week, my first reaction was to jump on Airbnb, book a house and drive to them with the family. We had already planned to take the time off for vacation anyway. But then I thought about what I really wanted for my vacation. I wanted to slow down to enjoy everyone to not be so rushed from one place to the next. So, what I did next was a really easy choice, because it checked all of the boxes - we will have a staycation at home. And I booked three days at a camp for my son at a place that he loves. And we sent our two-year-old off to daycare which was already opened those days. We made a long list of things that we wanted to get done around the house that we just haven't really had time for. I switched off my work profile on my phone for the first time to not be tempted to check in. And we started tackling the list. And then I immediately got overwhelmed by the second day. How are we going to finish this all? And then I realized, my vacation cannot be defined by how many things I get done on my list. So, I added another item to the top: have fun! I also told myself that how I feel going back to work on Monday will not be defined by how many things I do or did not do on my list."

 Oh, Cathy, this is just amazing. There's a couple of things that I just really, really love that I want to highlight that Kathy has been able to do.

She stopped and she got in touch with - 'what do I want'?

Not what does my family want? Not what does my parents want? Not even what do my kids want? What do I want from this vacation? So, she stopped, and she asked herself that question. And the answer was - I want to have a slower vacation. And so, she made plans just to do that.

And then the next thing that I just so love is that because she was going to be home, she decided she wanted to accomplish some things around the house, which is great. But when she started to realize that that was all-consuming and that that was going against her plan to slow down, she stopped. And she said, 'no.'

The most important thing on this vacation is that I have fun.

And then she added it to her list. I just love this so much. Cathy and I have been working together for about 10 months, and we've been really, really practicing her not being so focused on getting things right and needing to accomplish one more thing on her list; and instead, just being very present, being very focused on the things that are right in front of her and the things that are most important, really naming those, and then going after those.

And this was just such a great example of how she was able to do that. I just wanted to share it with you, because I think it's so inspiring as we head into the holidays, around really formulating a plan around what is most important to you, and then prioritizing it.

Now today, I want to focus in on four steps to leaving work on time. Now, I often talk to my clients about the kind of life that they want to have in retirement. Because the choices that you make today, the habits that you create, today, have an impact, five years from now, 25 years from now, or however long until retirement is for you. And if you're unable to prioritize yourself and rest right now, it's not just going to naturally happen when you stop working.

If you're not creating for yourself a life that you want to lead today, with hobbies and friendships, it's not going to magically happen in retirement.

So, what I tell my students is that it isn't about the number of hours you work today, that creates balance in your life. It's the ability to turn on and off work and your work brain at the times you want. I'm going to say that one more time, because I really want that to sink in - It is not about the number of hours you work.

I have worked with amazing women that only work 40 hours a week or 30 hours a week. And I have worked with women that work 50 or 60 hours a week, and neither one is more balanced than the other. Because it isn't about the number of hours you work, it's your ability to turn on and off work like a light switch at the time that you want.

Now before we go on, I just want to kind of have a little sidebar here talking to the working moms that have no flexibility in their jobs, they’re teachers, or nurses or secretaries - any type of job that requires you to be in a specific location at a specific time, and you don't really have a choice about that.

You always have a choice at a minimum - to work where you work, or to do what you do.

Generally speaking, all of us work at-will jobs, meaning that you can leave any time it is at your will that you are there. So yes, of course there would be consequences. if you chose to leave your job. There'd be financial consequences, there would be things to sort out in your family and so forth; but the most helpful thing for you to remember is that you're still choosing every single day to get up and go to this job.

You're not choosing to go find another one, you're not choosing to go do something else you're choosing to be right here, which means that you are also choosing to work the hours that are expected of you in that job. And for all of us - regardless of if you have a super flexible job or not - all of us have the ability to control our work brain being on or off.

I am sure we all experience. - just because you shut down your computer at five o'clock, that doesn't mean your work brain shuts down with it. So the goal with all of my clients, both the ones that I work with one-on-one, and the ones that I work with inside The Collective, is to get you to a point where you feel in control of when you shut down both your computer and your brain at the end of a work day or at the end of a workweek.

When I first start talking with my clients about leaving work at the time that they want to leave work and really truly shutting down their brain, I ask the most obvious question, - ‘Why?’. Why do you want to leave work at five o'clock, or whatever time it is you decide for yourself? Now the usual first answers I get are, 'well, I want to spend time with my family'. To which I reply, 'why'?

You see, your brain needs a compelling reason to change.

And that's really what we're talking about here. We're talking about changing the habit of work being prioritized above everything else. And the brain's most natural response to change, even if it's the best change in the whole world is to resist it. Our brains literally do not like change - all of our brains.

Our brains are wired to keep us safe and make us feel comfortable and secure.

And for sure the most comfortable and safe response to our brain is just to keep doing what we're doing. The problem is, of course what you're doing is not getting you to the goal of being an ambitious and balanced working mom. If you're constantly working later than you want, and you constantly have your work brain on at times that you don't want, you're just an ambitious working mom, not a balanced one. So first you need to create a compelling why. Why do you want to leave work at five o'clock? What's so important about that to you? I wrote a list of some of my why's, I'm going to read it to you here.

I really want you to tune in to the level of detail I get to, as I go through my why's on why I want to leave work at the exact time that I want to leave work. First off, I'm a better human, when I am not always working. I'm more patient, I'm kinder and more compassionate. I start thinking about other people other than myself. I start reaching out to friends that I haven't talked to in a while and connecting with them - I’m just simply a better human. I get to spend time with my husband, and I value a connected relationship in our marriage - my brain rests.

And when my brain rests, I know 100% I'll be more productive the next day.

My kids don't see me distracted when I'm with them. They feel like I'm actually with them. And I want them to know that they are way more important to me than my job. I get to play Crazy Eights with my daughter, and she giggles, and she fights with me, and she tries to cheat - and we create some wonderful memories.

There is fun, and levity in my life. I tell my brain, ‘Life isn't so serious.’

There should be and is ‘I’m cultivating times for fun.’ And the last one, I get to teach my kids that work - or for them school - like achievement isn't the only thing to value in life. You work hard and you play hard. I get to teach them that value when I rest, and I actually play.

Can you hear how deep my compelling reason for why I want to end work at the time I want to and work - it's not just that I want to spend time with my family. When your brain hears, I want to spend time with your family, they go 'Oh, yeah, yeah, you will'. It doesn't feel motivating to your brain, it doesn't feel compelling. Versus – ‘I get to play Crazy Eights with my daughter, and she's going to try to cheat; and we're going to giggle and we're going to create a memory.’

Your brain connects with that image - it connects with times that you have done that in the past and it thinks ‘oh yeah, I want more of that'.

You'll know that you have reached your compelling why when you feel moved by your answers, when your answers kind of bring up emotion of motivation, or conviction or you smile when you read it. Your list should kind of want to spur you into action, because that's what we want your brain to do, is to kind of take action to make change.

So once you have your compelling ‘why’ you're going to need to figure out a different ‘why’, which is: why are you struggling to leave work at the time you want to leave work in the first place? Or why are you struggling to shut down your brain at the time that you want to shut down your brain? What's getting in the way of you doing that? And I want to walk you through two very common responses that I hear from ambitious women. I'm going to kind of sort of roleplay this for you. So, I'm going to read both the question that I would give my clients and then I'm going to give you their response.

So, this is scenario one:

What would happen if you left work at the exact time that you said? Well, some things want to get done.

Okay, what happens then? Well, it gets pushed to tomorrow.

Then what? Tomorrow, my list gets longer.

Okay, then what? That begins to feel really overwhelming.

And what happens if you don't get through everything tomorrow? It gets pushed off till the next day.

Then what? Likely I'll probably have to miss some deadlines.

And if you were somebody that could never stay on top of the work, and they were always missing deadlines, what would you think about yourself? I'd feel inadequate, I feel not good enough, sort of worthless.

Okay, I'm going to stop there for just a moment. Because this is the actual fear. It has nothing to do with the amount of work that you're going to have to do the next day or the next.

It's what you make the amount of work mean about you.

In this scenario, the working mom fears feeling inadequate, and not good enough and worthless. And now here's the thing, if that was actually true, that you're not getting all of your work done today and having to put some off till tomorrow - would actually mean that you were in fact inadequate and not good enough and worthless? If that were actually true, then it kind of makes a lot of sense why you would push past the time you want to stop working to get more done.

That trade off feels really worth it in your brain. If I have anything that carries over into tomorrow, I am going to be worthless. Oh well if that's true, for sure, you should just keep working.

You see that? Your brain believes these fears are actually possible.

And in an effort to ensure that you stay really far away from them - you stay far away from being inadequate and worthless. Your brain is in that exact moment - when you would plan to leave work - in your brain, what happens is it tells you, it bubbles up all of these potential emotions, and brings them to the surface.

And your natural response when you start to feel them is to push them away and avoid them. And you do that by just staying and finishing your work long past the time that you want to.

Here's then scenario two, same first question:

What would happen if you left work at the exact time that you said,? Well, I wouldn't deliver on some things that I told people that I would do.

Well, then what? They will be disappointed.

And then what? They're not going to feel supported. And I'm going to feel like I let them down.

Then what? I might not get asked to do another assignment, people maybe they wouldn't trust me.

Then what? I won't be valued by the company, or maybe I'd even get a bad review at my next review.

Okay, and then what? My livelihood might be on the line, if people continue to not trust me, then I may get fired.

And then what? I'd have to look for other work.

Okay, and then what happens if that employer finds that they can't trust you either? I'm worthless.

Let's stop there because I know it does sound pretty ridiculous and extreme - being fired, being worthless, not completing the task that you said to your colleague that you would complete - you’re not going to get fired for that.

These are in fact, worst case scenarios, and yet, it is the job of our brain to warn us of potential danger.

So, your brain always goes to this extreme dramatic place. So here, the real reason that you can't seem to leave work at the time you want to, isn't that you told somebody that you were going to get them some deliverable. It's that you want to ensure that you are always trustworthy. Your brain fears being untrustworthy, because if you are, in fact, untrustworthy, you may get fired; you may then be fired by another employer after that, if that were true, and then you would be worthless.

What I really want you to notice is that the roadblock to leaving work at the time that you want to every single day, to shutting down your work brain at the time you want: to not working on the weekends, to not working over your vacations and your holidays - all these ways that ambitious women tend to overwork - The roadblock is just simply an emotion.

If you were to force yourself to leave work at five o'clock today, even when you didn't get everything done, that you needed to get done; even when people still need things from you, even when you still have emails that you need to respond to, the only thing that's going to surface is a feeling.

Now, I actually think this is really good news. Because it's much harder to figure out how to always get through your to-do list, by the end of a workday.

It would be much harder to figure out how to ensure that nobody ever needs anything from you at the end of the workday.

It would be so much harder to figure out how to make sure that nobody emails you right before you are going to leave.

It’s really hard to do that.

Instead, it's a lot easier to figure out how to just handle an uncomfortable emotion that for sure is going to surface.

And guaranteed an uncomfortable emotion will come up, - you can just picture it happening. You plan to leave work at five o'clock today, and then at 4:30, and just 30 minutes before you're supposed to leave, your brain starts to panic a little bit because it sees the clock and it's like 'oh my gosh, I only have 30 minutes left. And then I got to go'. And it begins to tell you all of the things that you didn't get done today. It begins to remind you of all of the commitments that you had to people that you weren't able to get to.

And then inadequacy starts to bubble up. And untrustworthiness starts to begin to bubble up and you start to feel anxious, and you start to feel overwhelmed.

This - this moment right here, when the emotion begins to surface, this is what I call the crucial moment.

The moment where you are either going to deal with the emotion and stick to your plan of leaving at five o'clock, or you're going to avoid that emotion and just plow right through it and keep working.

So, let's talk about how you deal with an uncomfortable emotion. And really what I mean by deal as I mean feel it, you need to feel the emotion. The first thing I like to do when I am intentionally feeling that uncomfortable emotion is normalize it.

This is step one. Of course, your brain is going to offer to you that you're untrustworthy If you don't get back a document in time. Of course, your brain is going to offer to you that you are inadequate if you don't get through everything on your to do list. Of course, you are human, and you have a human brain. And remember, your brain just thinks that it's doing you a service by offering to you these thoughts. So, it is normal for your brain and your body to just sort of freak out in this moment. That's step one, normalize it.

Step two, you need to allow the emotion - it's normal. You don't have to fight it off. It's okay for me when I am allowing an uncomfortable emotion - I simply breathe into it. Literally, I take three deep breaths, as I focus in on that feeling, the anxiety, the fear, the discomfort, the inadequacy, whatever it is - now you're going to know that you're allowing it, when you begin to relax a little bit, when you start to feel your defenses go down, when you're not resisting the discomfort that's happening inside of your body.

And you don't want to move on into the next step, until you feel yourself relax.

The third step, after you've normalized the emotion, and allowed it, is to remember your compelling ‘why’. To remind your brain why this goal of leaving at five o'clock is important to you, to imagine yourself playing Crazy Eights with your daughter, and she is getting all frustrated, and you encouraging her to pick back up the cards. And to play again. You want to remind your brain of the bigger vision that's happening for you.

Essentially, in this moment, what you're trying to tell your brain is that the reason you want, you still want to leave work at five o'clock, even though you have all of these other things that you still need to get done. The reason you want to leave at five, that reason outweighs the discomfort of potentially being untrustworthy or inadequate, or whatever emotion your brain wants to offer to you.

And then the last step, this is a very, very crucial last step: to follow through with your commitment and to actually leave work at five o'clock and take action right then. If you aren't actually going to walk out the door right then - pick up your stuff and leave, then the action you need to be taking is wrapping up all of the final details for the day. Begin to think about what you're going to do tomorrow, respond to a quick email to someone and let them know that you're leaving at five o'clock.

If you don't take action right there toward the goal of leaving at five o'clock, if you don't take that action, after you've dealt with all of the uncomfortable emotion, you've let it be there and normalize it - what's simply going to happen is that emotion is going to return again, when you go to take the actual action of leaving work.

When you deal with the emotion, the immediate next step is then to take action towards the goal. And that is truly it.

Let me give you a quick little recap here. The only thing standing between you and leaving work at the exact time that you want is an uncomfortable emotion. And the way to get out on time is to feel that emotion when it starts to bubble up. And of course, that it will. And here are the four steps to really dealing with and feeling an uncomfortable emotion.

You first normalize it. I's totally okay. It's normal, you're human, your brain, of course is going to offer this to you.

Number two, you allow it, you don't resist it, you imagine your body being able to actually feel it, you focus in on that feeling you allow yourself to be in that space of discomfort until you begin to relax.

Number three, you remember your compelling why and you make sure that it's very clear and specific and motivating.

And then the last step, the fourth step is to actually take action toward leaving.

All right, working moms, that is what I have for you today. As always, I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear how your holidays are going - If you're able to stay present I would love to hear if you have any topics for the podcast that you want me to focus on in 2022. Send me a quick email at Rebecca@RebeccaOlsonCoaching com. I want to make sure that this podcast continues to stay extremely relevant for you. So, if there's anything that I can do to help you as you listen to this podcast, I would love to hear it. So, I will put my email in the show notes as well. And working moms, let's get to it.

Rebecca Olson