Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome back to the Evolved Radio Podcast. Today's episode features Dr. Heather Denniston, a former chiropractor turned wellness specialist who's here to share her insights into maintaining energy and focus during our workday—especially for those of us in the high-stress technology sector.
We dive into practical strategies for overcoming the infamous afternoon slump, as Heather recommends simple recharging techniques you can use. We also navigate the crucial role of setting clear boundaries to conserve energy and touch upon a client's innovative approach of using out-of-office emails to signal availability.
Heather's transition to wellness was fueled by her personal health journey, embodying the narratives that often inspire those in the health and wellness space. Together, we discuss combating decision fatigue, the pitfalls of a hyper-distracted world, and how retraining our focus through methods like the Pomodoro technique can significantly cut through the noise.
Moreover, we examine the steep rise in workplace distractions and burnout in the post-pandemic era, as indicated by reports from giants like Microsoft and Deloitte. From the importance of restorative breaks to the impact of office food culture on our well-being, we leave no stone unturned in exploring how small lifestyle tweaks can make a mammoth difference in our productivity and health.
Stay with us as we uncover the myths of multitasking, the all-too-common issue of decision fatigue, and why leaders must play a pivotal role in fostering a communication culture that respects personal time and mental wellness.
So, if you're seeking ways to build resilience, improve focus, and adopt a sustainable work-life balance, join us on this enlightening journey with Heather. Let's get Evolved.
Evolved Radio Podcast: Interviews with technology experts, industry thought leaders, business leaders and other interesting minds. Exploring the evolution of business and technology.
Heather, welcome to the Evolved Radio podcast. Oh my gosh, Todd. Thank you
so much. I'm thrilled to be here. Listen to your podcast
and you bring on the greatest people. So I'm completely
honored that, you agreed to have me on today. Yeah. I I really
did wanna have you on because when we met, I was very interested in
what you did. And and I think it's really really applicable in the
space that that I focus on in the technology space.
So it's an area of focus that I feel like I'm trying to
advocate more for in the industry. It's a very
busy industry. It's an industry that, is sort of synonymous with
people taking lunch at their desk and working wild hours
and under extreme amounts of stress. So what you do I think is
is really important and I wanna bring all of these ideas to light. So I
think it's a really great place to start. If you could tell us what
you do and why is this an area of passion for you? Mhmm.
Yeah. So I'm, I'm a chiropractor by trade, Todd. I
practiced for 25 years, in Seattle. I'm
Canadian, by birthright, but I I lived in
Seattle while I was practicing. And, I
left private practice because I had a real
leading to speak, write, and
do whatever I could to throw the net wide on wellness
strategy and how to bridge the connection between
personal well-being and professional success because I think those twos have
become people think you can't have both and we need both
in order to perform well in our positions, especially those that are high stress,
like a lot of the folks that listen to your podcast. I
do get asked, you know, how did I get into this? How did I become
so passionate about it? And when I was very young,
this is kind of a funny story, I was about 9. I
grew about 6 inches in a year which is tricky
because Wow. I was like a mastiff puppy growing and and I
I was I was a competitive gymnast at the time and competitive
gymnasts, don't grow 6 inches in a
year. And so I actually that and,
focused a little more on my other sport, which I call Olympic
caliber binge eating. So I put on a tremendous amount of
weight. And by the time I hit college, I was easily 70, £80
overweight. And it also resulted in a lot of other health issues.
I had Raynaud's and ankylosing spondylitis and a gut issue
and thyroid and just went on and on. And I found myself in
my early twenties just standing in this crappy college
apartment shower bawling my eyes out thinking, my God, is
this like the wellness peak? Like I is this the you
know, I'm in a terrible condition. I'm in my early twenties and I
think I have got to figure this out. I have no idea how to be
fit, how to feel my body, how to possess self compassion or mindfulness.
And I thought in that moment, if I'm gonna figure this out, I'll turn this
Titanic of health issues around, I'm gonna need to focus on my
well-being as a priority project. And so right
from that 1st year in college, I started studying and I became became a
chiropractor and a personal trainer and a wellness specialist, and
I practiced for a long time and I practiced in
Seattle right in the center of where Costco, Microsoft, Amazon, T
Mobile, all of those companies were
on my table on a regular basis, and I realized something very quickly. I
used to joke with different company employees coming
in and saying, I I can tell where your work where you work by how
you show up in your body. And they used to laugh
about that. And and sure enough, we wear our stress physically and mentally.
And it got to the point where I was working with people 1 on
and I couldn't do that in a brick and mortar. And so I got very
excited and handed the reins of my practice over
to 2 incredible sisters from Wisconsin. And I started to write
and I started to speak and that's what I do now. And so I don't
that's probably a real long way of telling you why I'm excited about what I
do, but, it's it's the journey.
Yeah. That's great. I I I think that's awesome background sort of
also brings the but that emotional gravity to, and it it's
interesting. Like, I often find people that are that are so passionate about
things like this, not always in sort of a a health or wellness space,
but, like, have, like, almost a calling to these types of things. Like, there's
very often a personal story that it gets involved of,
like, I had to fight my way through this situation and now I understand
sort of, like, how I can be helpful to other people in a in a
similar situation. So I I think that's sort of a commonality that I think is
really really sort of interesting in in that space. The other thing you noted is,
big some of the one of the things that we often joke about is,
you know, work life balance. And if you have to call it a balance, like,
is it really working? Right? It's it's one of those aspects. Right?
So true. So true. I love I I didn't invent this, but somebody said it's
integration. It's not balance. It's it's never going to be balanced. It's just
constant integration and just responding and reacting
when you're meeting with people and and like you said, you've seen a lot of
people in these circumstances working high stress jobs, you
know, sitting a lot, like, not necessarily mobile. They're in meetings
or, at their desk, and then, you know, getting home,
kinda having a quick bite, and then, doing some more work, and
then maybe watch an hour of Netflix, have a drink, and then crash out. And
it's, like, it's not a real great recipe for for health and
well-being. Right? So I imagine there's sort of some basic things that you
generally can suggest to people that are sort of fighting through this,
work hard, but, you know, I feel like there there should be more
to my life and then and I wanna correct a couple of things. Is there
low hanging fruit that you generally sort of try to steer people
towards in those circumstances? Yeah. You bet. And I mean, we could be
here all day talking about simple, like, easy strategies, but let's
just dive in and you just stop me when you wanna wanna stop me. I
think the first thing, Todd, that I find I've I've coached 1 to 1. I've
I've spoken to big groups, small groups, all sorts of thing. It's consistent in
that those that are are struggling often lack a
tremendous amount of self compassion. And so we start with self compassion
because there's this beating themselves up, this self
shaming. Why can't I get in shape? Why can't I stick to a food
plan, why am I so lazy, why why why. And
when we can start to build up some self compassion, that actually helps in
our wellness strategy. It can be a great motivator. And so we start
there talking about, you know, how do you feel about yourself? How do you support
yourself? How are you kind to yourself? So starting there is really
important. An equally important place is, you know, we can
talk about resilience all day long, and I speak about resilience a lot.
And if you think of resilience as a bucket, the problem is there are
holes in the bucket, and those holes represent places we are
spilling our own energy unnecessarily and unknowingly. And if
we don't shore up those holes in the bucket, however
many resilience building strategies we throw at the
wall, it's not gonna work. And so one of the second
things I do after self compassion is start talking about energy
leakage and this idea that we have energy leakage liabilities.
We have these holes in our bucket and they're different for everyone. But when we
start to really take an energy audit in our schedule, in our
time, and identify those areas where we can shore up
and pull back, then we suddenly have bandwidth and
say, oh, I have 10 minutes to go do a walk or I have
energy to do a breathing exercise or to make a
healthy meal. And I think that's a really important step.
So some examples and we can if you wanna dig into these, we
can. But things like take a take a look at how
decision fatigue. I imagine a lot of your audience has heard of
the term decision fatigue before, and it simply means
having too many decisions to make in a day. And so when
we streamline our schedule, we end up
making less decisions. I'll give you an example. Mark Zuckerberg,
if you Google him, he's in a blue t shirt and jeans almost
90% of the time. And the reason is because he made one
decision a long time ago and said, I am not gonna
redecide every single day what I wear. I'm gonna make one less
decision so I have that bandwidth to make down at Facebook where
my decisions matter more. And so when we take a decision
audit on our day and say, look at where are you redeciding
stuff? Do you put your keys in the same place? Are you redeciding
what to make for meals every week? What about if you streamline that?
There's lots of places we can shore up kind of decision
fatigue in our own life and that buys us back a lot of energy. There's
Just just quickly, my own sort of personal experience, and I I I note this
to a lot of people, like, when I'm doing behavioral,
behavioral coaching with people, this comes up, right, that
people often represent are represented differently at home than they are at work. And
my experience of this is, like, I tend to make very few decisions at home
because I'm making a lot of decisions at work all day. And I think that's,
like, primarily a function of decision fatigue where I'm just, like, exhaust
by the end of the day and get home be like, like, okay, like, take
over. I'm happy to have somebody else make some decisions the rest of the day.
Right? A 100%. And I've seen that too, Todd. And and
that's very, very true. And in some ways, I commend you if you have a
partner that supports that and you can say, you know what? I
have a 100 decisions I'm gonna make today and I'm gonna make those at work
where they matter most. And and if your partner is supportive of that
and it works well, that's great. And it does that's a that's
a self preservation tool, subconscious or conscious, that
you've sort of employed. So, I think that's great. And I
think, you know, decision fatigue is a really important starting,
point. I think another one, Todd, where we lose a lot of energy is multitasking.
And thinking that somehow somehow if we
contact Shift, we don't think there's a cost to it. And
and, unfortunately, we know a couple of things now through the data and you're
probably aware of this. You focus on one thing, it's a 100%. You
focus on 2, you think it'd be like a 5050, but you've just
lost 20% in contact shifting. So now you're only at an
80 percent focus rate. Three things, you're down to 60.
And some people are like, well, I never I don't work on 3 things at
once. That's crazy talk. And I think, oh, really?
Spreadsheet, sound of a notification on your phone,
and a meeting request. That is three things that you're working
on. And some of the more recent data tells us it takes us 23
minutes to ramp back up to the level of focus you had prior to being
interrupted. Well, none of us ever are not interrupted every
23 minutes, so it means we're at subpar focus and that's
costly. So I think that just is a big contributor to burnout is
that idea of contact shifting. Yeah. And I I 100% agree. This
drives me crazy because I hear this all the time when I was a manager
in organizations and and even now, like, when I'm I'm,
coaching teams is, the number of people that try to tell me, oh,
no. I I'm actually good at multitasking. It's like, really? Like, come
on. I think I I believe you think that that's true, but I guarantee you
it's not. Like, the actual like, there's there's industry
research on this and it's like like less than 1% or something
of Yeah. Of the general population can actually multitask. So the
fact that like the the, the probability that you're
one of those unicorn people is pretty unlikely.
And the the other just, the other point I think I wanna make on this
is that it's driving me crazy lately because in the number of times it shows
up as a problem in teams and organizations is,
notifications and Slack and and teams notifications
is absolutely crushing people because they're
constantly distracted. Right? Like, used to be I used to joke about the
Outlook toaster notification that would pop up from the the task tray from people. I'm
like, I turned that thing off. It is like, even if you don't care about
what's happening there, it's distracting you and you'd watch people, like, they're talking to you
and then you see this and they're like Yeah. Oh, hang on. And then,
like, they're it doesn't even matter what that notification was, but they're now off
track. Right? And now, like, it's gotten even amp like, infinitely
worse because the one that drives you crazy is people that send a team's
message to somebody else and as one line, like, they type type type
enter, type type type enter, type type type enter. Yes. I think it was out
of ding ding ding ding. Ding. Yeah. This this
this has to stop. The the the the the multitasking and
the distraction within sort of modern work environments,
I think, has reached just an epidemic proportions. It is a big
component of burnout. And let me just mention 2 things. One is those
that think they're good at multitasking, they actually aren't. Here's what they're good at.
Your brain can't focus on 2 things at once. What it can do is
bridge between a and b, but that bridge is costly. It actually
costs you brain glucose. So as you flip between a b AB,
AB might be pretty fast at that, but you're costing, brain
glucose just constantly. And so you're never actually
working on 2 things, just fast switching between the 2, but there's
always, always, always a cost. So I think that's important.
And then I think the second thing is is that we provide a tool and
one of the best tools that I think for, contact shifting is something
called block and tackle, which, it comes under different names, but the
idea that we pick one task, we pick how much of
that task we're gonna do, we set a time limit, and then we
clear all other notifications and distractions. And some people say to me, well, I work
in a job that that just couldn't be true. And I say I've worked with
some of the busiest people on the planet. 10 minutes is possible for
everybody. So a 10 minute task, turn off notifications,
focus from the time the timer starts until the timer goes off. And when I
say a timer, I don't mean your phone. I mean an analog timer that has
a little dinger or you can use Howler timer, which is a great app on
your, on your desktop. There's lots of different ways to do it without having
to use your phone. But that block and tackle concept, I think, is a real
practical tool we can start with and everybody can start even if it's
just 5 or 10 minutes. Yeah. I like this. Like, I I'm a huge advocate
of a Pomodoro timer for a similar, like like, block focus. Right? It's
exactly what that is. Yeah. That's great. Can you So So do you actually
have the little tomato timer? I don't have a physical one. I've thought about it,
but, like, I almost feel like I would maybe use it less. Well, and
Fair enough. The other part of this that I think you're you're keying into that
I think is really important is I think people kind of misattribute sort of where
Pomodoro and a timer can be useful because, like, to your point, like, people will
say, well, you know, for example, a lot of people that listen to this podcast
work in IT organizations. So it's like, well, great, but I've got, you know, 8
tickets that I'm responsible for. So it's not like I can just sit down and
focus for 2 hours on something. It's not practical given sort of the work modality
that I have. But the the fact that you should focus on that single
ticket that you're working on for at least 10 minutes before tasking onto something
else. Like, that's totally legitimate. Right? And I don't think people
tend to think of it as as just remaining focused on a single
activity because we have all these numerous distractions. It's like I'm working
on this ticket. I get a team's notification. I go glance and check at this,
and then I come back to that ticket. Well, your your point about there there's
a mental cost to that making that switch when it's largely unnecessary.
Like, like, could that could that notification have waited for 10 minutes or
30 minutes? Very, very likely. Because if it was an emergency, someone would come find
you. Right? 90% of the time. And I think another thing
we have to remember is we are now trained to be
like squirrel and and so distractible and it's like we're at
like a new puppy. We have to relearn how to
focus. And so those little block and tackles, those 10 minute
segments of full focus, then give yourself a second and Pomodoro, you
know, increases suggest 20 minutes and then a 10 minute break.
And that is a really powerful tool to retrain
you back into being able to focus. Nobody blames you for
being distractible. We've been trained
takes some work. And so just be patient and compassionate with yourself when
you start practicing that. Yeah. And that's that's why I like the Pomodoro
timer is is because, like, I am tempted to be distracted. Like,
you know, the this task feels hard. I'm not sure what I should write on
the next sentence. So let me just, like, grab my phone and distract myself for
a few minutes. And then, like, when I have a Pomodoro timer running, I can
be like, well, no, I need to remain focused because in 5
minutes when this timer is up then I can sit back and start doing some
some social surfing or, you know, go to, like, see what the news
is, those sorts of things. So, like, it helps my brain to contain that idea
of, like, let's go look at something else for a minute. It's like, no. No.
No. No. Just stay here for 5 more minutes. Right? It's so good. And our
brain does love to gamify and does love a challenge. So having that little timer
actually taps into part of your brain that will help you sustain that. I
think one thing to think about, is a is a resource I got recently
that I absolutely love. It's called FocusMate. Have you heard of it,
Todd? Yeah. I use, other tools like those. Yeah. RescueTime,
Produce8. It was a group that I work with that has sort of similar efforts
around this. But, yeah, it's super helpful. It is. So the one I use is
focusmate.com, and I'll just ex just super briefly. It's other
people in the world who also wanna focus in the moment, and so you sign
up for a time slot. You're paired with somebody. You get on, and you
both just say, here's what I'm working on. You mute yourselves, but you stay on
video so that the accountability, because we perform
better under the vision of other people, and so
more accurately, more effectively, more speedily. And so that that
idea of that accountability is really key. Are the ones that you mentioned same
sort of concept where you're actually with another person? No. I've heard of
that idea. So no. That that's not a not what I was thinking of, but
I've I've heard of that suggestion. So it's very cool. It gets to sort of
something that been thinking about a lot recently and this actually came
from from a a a group that we're both in, in commit
action and, Peter Shelby, the guy who runs this,
had this this suggestion that that I guess I think about, like, the word
accountability a lot because it comes up a ton in the in the work
That's probably the most common question that I get asked is how do I make
my team accountable? And, Peter kinda put it as a a
definition around accountability that I'd never really heard before and that and accountability
is inherently a social action. And that is, like like, really
cracked my head open when I heard it. I was like, of course. Like, that
makes total sense. But it it really sort of distinctly describes
why it's hard for people to be accountable because the only person you can be
accountable to is yourself. And that's why it's difficult to make someone accountable to
something unless you draw them into a social contract where, like, now
I'm accountable because there's there's some social link here. Right? So, like,
you have no accountability to that person that you get matched up with in Focusmate.
But the fact that, like, you've sat there committed to this, someone is watching you,
you're
out of that distractible, time wasting, energy leaking
behavior that happens all day long with a lot of our audiences.
So Yeah. Okay. Great. And I guess, like like, well,
maybe step back a bit here because, like, what we're sort of broadly describing is,
like, methods to protect against burnout. Right? And I I think we can continue to
go down the line if you got some other suggestions here. This is great. Yeah.
But I think, like, let's let's sort of couch this in in the idea that
that burnout is pervasive lately. Like, you
know, the stats that I've seen and somewhat validated by the clients
that I'm working with is we're generally seeing kind of a 20 to 30% reduction
in productivity post pandemic. Mhmm. And it was really fascinating to watch, like,
peep the productivity really ramped up through the the pandemic but
there's there's sort of this this slow sort of burnout that's
that's sort of simmering in in the business world that I've seen. Is this something
that you're seeing and and and sort of how do you think about sort of
that term burnout I guess? Yeah. 22 data points that come to mind is Microsoft
put out a signals, their signals kind of report
but what has happened since pandemic is notifications,
distractions, meetings way up. And these folks are having a hard
time getting things done. So that's number 1. Number 2 is Deloitte
put out a study last year saying 77% of all employees
have felt or described themselves as burned
out in the last year. And so that's
a very, very high number of people to say, yeah, I could say I
felt burnt out in the last, you know, 6 months to a year.
So I'd also say this and I think this goes unacknowledged so much
is we never as a people have come out of a pandemic before,
and we do not know the long lasting effects of lockdowns,
of the pressure, of the fear, of the worry, of all of the things
that happened during that time, we're really not that far from it.
And so there are mental, emotional effects that that I think are
occurring that we will see retrospectively, but I
I want to make sure that, you know, whenever I'm talking to somebody, I talk
about what was your experience during that time and have you had time to process
through that. And so that's I think something to be aware of
as well. So yes, burnout very very prevalent in in the
moment. Okay. So, like, we we've talked about some strategies
here, protecting yourselves against decision fatigue,
the the myth of multitasking, I guess, is the best way to describe that.
And I think wrapped in that, we talked talked about, like, the importance of taking
breaks. Right? And maybe expand a bit of on that if you want to. Like,
the idea of, like, taking those 5 minutes, those 10 minutes. You know,
I encourage people, like like, take your lunch hour. Like, you don't necessarily work
you have to work at your desk. And I I was, like, I was patient
number 1 for this for a long, long time. Like, I rarely took lunch
away from my desk because I felt like I had so much work to do.
But once I started doing it, I really recognized, like, how much it helped to
break up the day and just gave me a bit of a reset. Right? Any
any further thoughts on sort of that that, that advice around breaking and
taking breaks? Yeah. Yeah. You bet. Break science for some reason is real
passion area for me. I don't know why if it's partly because people
don't do it and a lot of the groups I speak to, it's one of
the biggest things that we talk about because they're they're given them,
they're told to take them if they want to, and they don't. And Right. And
so the first thing is, you know, our brains are
sprinters, not marathoners. So when you push your brain into marathon
mode, your productivity just plummets. Yeah. And you you have
to know that at the end of the day where you haven't had any breaks,
you didn't take a lunch, you didn't get as much done as you thought you
should have. Whereas when we take, you know,
modulated breaks like the 10 minute breaks for the Pomodoro technique and
then a half hour or 45, somewhere in the middle of your day, the
productivity stats, the energy, the joy at the end of the day versus
the just complete flatness, is notable.
So the big question is, what is a good break? Because the problem is
is when we take it in quotations break and we flip over our phone
and we start scrolling, we're actually putting ourselves further into decision fatigue
because every time you scroll like you're making
a decision and so we don't wanna push ourselves into further decision
fatigue, leave your phone on the table. Here are a series of breaks
that are brain amplifying, not brain depleting.
So number 1 is literally just stare out the window. Do
nothing. Number 2, a short nap, a stretch,
a walk out in nature. Nature super sizes
any, the data tells us that if you can get out into green space,
anything you're doing is going to be supersized as far as break taking.
And then, chatting with a trusted friend. And so I say trusted
because if you're chatting with a colleague or someone you don't know that well, you're
actually spending energy kind of, you know, putting the walls
up, being who you think they want to be, answering how you think, you know,
and so Social norms. Right? Social norms. That's right.
And for some of us introverts, that's even more costly, and so
Guilty. Yeah, guilty. And
so just staring out the window,
nature space, napping, stretching, yoga, meditation, these
are all great things to be doing. A healthy snack, getting
yourself away from the station just so you have, seen
change is actually really powerful. So Mhmm. Actually just getting
your eyes and ears looking and listening to something different and then
come back, that's a good break. And so, you know, it's
not complicated, but the problem is is that most of us just reach for our
phones or we do something that's not actually restorative. Yeah.
Path of least resistance in a lot of cases. Right? Yeah. Yes. Absolutely.
One thing you touched on here, like, that that, I know you're keen on.
I'm I'm not sure how much of this relates to to sort of the the
work that you do as well. I assume it does, but, like, sleep underlines
everything. Right? Like, that's that's like, if you had one lever to pull, sleep
is the most foundational. And I think it's a bit of a concern that, like,
a lot of people have sort of gotten into, I need coffee in the morning
and I need a nightcap at night in order to sleep. And, like, the science
says like that. Like, that that you it may help you fall asleep but you're
not sleeping. Right? So Yeah. I'll just sort of leave it at that around the
idea of like like you need sleep and I think that a lot of the
ways that people I think are trying to manage their sleep is really not
beneficial. But I think it goes into this larger category
as well around, like, sort of health and well-being. And I think food
is something that we just don't consider enough about where like, how this is
helping. And the modern office does not help us in this context.
Like, fast food, regardless of sort of how you feel about it,
like, I think everyone can kinda agree, like, it's not sort of the pinnacle of
of health and well-being. It's convenient. It's tasty, whatever.
But we also do ourselves a disservice by, like like, the sort of the
office culture of, you know, we've got snacks, but they're all sort of like
highly processed foods and, you know, there's free soda
available for people and that sort of stuff. And then, you know,
we're we're bringing in donuts and pastries for all of the meetings and it's
like, yeah, we kinda love this stuff, but good God, like this is not helpful
for us in our productivity. We're spiking blood sugar. Everyone's
crashing by 2 PM. Like your afternoon's kind of a write off.
Like, like, all the things that we think are are kind of beneficial to this
are actually kinda, like, undercutting our productivity. Right?
Yeah. One of the best Christmas gifts I gave my husband and
we were just talking about this the other day, it was many, many years ago
when he was working at Starbucks. This was the problem. And so
I got him this cool looking box and
I filled it with healthy snacks like
organic jerky and, you know, seaweed and,
all sorts of, like, little protein bars that he really liked and all sorts of
great things that he could go and grab. And I that is one of the
first things I'll tell folks. If they're if you are in an one of these
environments that it's just constant, have an a
quick alternative because, otherwise, you will grab for
something in a weak moment that you don't want to. But if you have something
else you can reach for, I highly recommend it. And it's kind of fun to
put that together and have it in your office. And so that's something
that I definitely recommend, but you're you're absolutely correct, both on the sleep
and the nutrition piece. Those are big, big buckets to fill as
far as our well-being goes. You're also I wanna affirm you
that sleep is the biggest lever to pull. And if you
as audience are feeling burned out or overwhelmed, I
recommend that's one of the first places we start is just tiny little
movements you can make to make your sleep sleep better. Start by changing a few
things in your sleep cave as we call it. Make it darker, make it
colder, get rid of the screens in there, and then think about your night
time routine. One of the simplest things you can do for a night time routine
is start to cool down the space and turn off all the lights and just
use candlelight or just use a dimmer switch and just start to
get that melatonin coming up as your body temperature drops and as
your eyes start to perceive that, oh, it's dark, we're gonna start to
get ready for bed. 2 easy easy solutions.
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's so huge. And I guess the other piece,
like, more on on food. I don't know why I'm stuck on this right now,
but I'll I'll I'm I'm I'm going to a bit of a rant. The fact
that I had bacon and deli roasted turkey for breakfast and you're like You
made me hungry. So that's why I'm thinking about it. Yeah. The but, like, the
other thing, like, I have this experience of, like, living in Canada and then I
moved to the States for a couple of years. And, you know, the
the US for anyone that has not visited there, I get the the food
culture is really strange because there's this equation that
that, between volume and value. Right? Like the amount
of food that you get when you've eat out is ridiculous. And I,
like, I I eat myself into a food coma for the first 3 weeks that
I lived there because I just could not get out of this this habit of
finishing what I had available. Yeah. And I think, like,
anyone who recognizes in their team or in themselves, like, you get the
sleepies at 1 PM, like that is, I almost guarantee
you is blood sugar related because Mhmm. Like we're we're we're fueled
on caffeine and sugar all morning and then they have this giant
meal midday and then get back to the office and anyone who's had meetings
at 1 or 2 in the afternoon and you there's that always that one person
in the corner that's sort of like desperately trying to keep their eyes open like
that. Like, a, it's maybe because they didn't get a lot of sleep, but I
think, b, it's also that the like, they're they're just spiking their blood sugar all
day. Right? Yeah. 2 things that I recommend for that sort of mid
afternoon slump. 1 is something called lion's breath, and I'll demonstrate it for
you as embarrassing as it is. The other is just a huge glass of water
because often we're dehydrated. So Right. If you feel like you want the glazed
donut, hold off for 10 minutes. Drink a full glass of water, do lion's breath,
which I'm gonna show you, and just give yourself a minute to determine do you
actually want that or can you support yourself in another
way. And lion's breath is really simple. It's one of the most energizing,
confidence building, focusing breaths that you can do and it's
just in through the nose and then you stick your tongue out and you
roar from the back of your throat. So it's just like this.
And you did that about 5 or 6 times in through the nose, out through
the mouth, just tongue out full into it, go into the bathroom if
you need to. But you can tell like it already, it made me flush. Like
it's, it is energizing. It's a great a great thing to do
midafternoon when you're feeling the slumpies for sure. Yeah.
So the this is something that I've come to in the last couple of years,
I guess, but breath work has been absolutely revelatory in my
life. So, yeah, familiar with that one more from sort of the yoga history that
I have. I was a part of that practice, but, that is something that
I I I understand more completely now of this connection
between your ability to breathe and how it regulates your heart, your
gut, your brain, like all of those things. Like, they're connected by the vagus
nerve. I've Yeah. I've done a whole talk about this before so I'm super passionate
about this. Like, but just recognizing how you breathe
and being intentional about breathing is the fastest
access point you have to to modifying your body. Because, you know, like, we
want our body to monitor monitor and manage our heart and our breath independently
so that we don't have to do it. So you can't you can't change those
things, but you can absolutely change your pattern of breath and it it is the
fastest way you can create a state change. It's really, really fascinating for
people that wanna get into that. Yeah. It is. I always say it's the
fastest, freest bridge between fight or flight and rest and relax. And
Right. And it's it you have it everywhere you go. It's
completely free and it's Yep. So, so powerful. And so I
appreciate that. That. Microsoft, just had me develop a talk called
breathability. And we what we do is we take this,
fictional executive and we take her through a super stressful day.
And then we take her through the day again applying 5 different
breathing techniques to her day to help her modulate, like you
had just said, kind of her state. And it's such
a cool concept, and so I love that you also do a talk on that.
Everybody
controlling energy, any others that you that you wanna touch on?
Yeah. You bet. I mean, boundaries is always a big energy suck. And so
when we have Yeah. Poorly set boundaries, we tend
to be, like, patching the holes all the time that people are punching through
because we didn't set it clearly, which is very costly.
Them. So I think boundaries is a big energy leaker if we're not clear
on that. And then I also think, one that, you know,
is just sort of tail end is the concept of I don't know if you've
ever seen this. It's called the circle of concern, circle of influence, and it's
3 concentric circles. Innermost circle is that which you can control,
next circle is that which you can influence, and the outer most is
that which you have concern over, but no control. And when I'm
working with someone, I'm off often say, okay, which of these circles are you
spending a fair amount of time in? And if we're out in the circle of
concern where we really don't have a lot of control over
that is energy leakage and we have to dive in deep into that
inner circle on those which we have control. And oftentimes I'll get people saying,
well, I don't feel like I have control over anything. You have control over
your words. You have control over, how kind you are to
somebody. You have control over whether you're gonna do some breathing exercise like we
just talked about. There are plenty of things we have control over that can help
us pull back in on our energy and, create that
extra bandwidth that we want and need in order to,
dedicate to our well-being. Yeah. So I'll address those, in in kind
of reverse order. Like, I I talk I joke about the, the the
serenity rare all the time. Right? Like like know what you can
control, know what you can't control, and and manage accordingly. Right?
And it's incredible. Like, any type of coaching relationship that you have,
like, you you've definitely been privy to this and I see this all the time.
It's like, why are we spending so much thing so much time talking about the
frustrations that are that are not within your control? Like, it's almost self flagellating.
Right? Like like a like, let's focus on some other things. Right? Sure. Like, that's
out of your control. I agree. It's frustrating. I'm not telling you it's not. But,
like, continuing to sort of focus on this, I see this especially, like, in
in a lot of work that I do. I'm I'm working with middle management And,
like, they're frustrated by what their leadership is telling them and their
ability to actually act and execute on that at their level and below.
And it's like, well, you know, that okay. You can debate this, but if that's
a decision of the organization, is it really worth kinda, you know, like continuing
to sort of bitch about it. Right? Like, what are we doing here? Right? Like,
there's the other there's all of these other things that are absolutely within your control
that you can start to manage. How about we focus some energy over there? And
I I think it's a really important reflection to sort of come back to
constantly of reminding yourself, like, what do I have
control over through the course of my day? Because it's not everything and that
shouldn't be the understanding that you should have in this either. Right?
Yeah. And I think that that actually goes to to boundaries really
well. Right? That, you know, what are the boundaries? What are you willing to commit
to? You know, even it's as as simple
as, you know, what hours do you work. Right? And this is the classic case
of my boss sent me an email at 9 PM. I guess I have to
respond to it. And then, like, that was never the intention. Like, they're working late.
They didn't tell you you had to. Like, if they send you a 911 email,
like, need your reply on this immediately. Like, sure. Okay. It's, like,
indicated. But, like, I think a lot of people sort of get themselves trapped in
this relationship where they're trying to service a relationship,
on someone else's schedule that's never really been determined. And
you're well within your your ability to set a boundary and re
reengage in that relationship. Right? Love it. Oh my gosh. I love it.
The stories we tell ourselves in our head where we that particular employee that
you're referring to never had a conversation, but assumed
that they had to respond at that time. And I think we spend a lot
of energy playing those stories in our head that we don't actually know are
true. I love what one of my clients did when we talked about this
very subject is she did an out of office
email during her off hour time. So from, say, 6
PM till the next morning, and it said, if you're sending me an
email now, I am offline. If this is urgent, please feel free to use my
phone number. And she's never got a call because it was never urgent. And
but that allowed her to put a a level of separation
between her and the responsibility of responding. And I just thought, well, that
was a nice sort of tangible boundary that she put in place to
let people know I'm not responding to your email. If it's
urgent, call me. And of course it's not urgent, so they're not going to
call. But I do like that and I do and you actually bring up a
good point and that is that boundary setting has as much to do with the
fences we kind of put around ourselves
to to modulate ourselves as much as the fences we put to
block out others. And so that idea of, well,
what's what this boundary is for me and only me, and it's just as
important
know, like, hey. If there's an an emergency, then I'm
happy to help you. But, otherwise, after 6 PM, I am now focused on my
family. Right? And if I have other work to do, sure. Like, you got some
time by my all means. But, you know, you're not sort of at this it
it sort of goes through again to this burnout of, like, like this this sort
of hypersensitivity or hyper attention towards things that are not really
urgent. Right? Like you're you're getting these dings on your phone because
people are chatting about something in in your in your communication
channels. Like, do you really need to look at that at 7 PM? Probably not.
Is it gonna stress you out? Maybe. But, like, just the fact that you have
to be aware of it and then it's constantly in the back of your mind
is doing a disservice. Right? Like, it's it's eating away at your mental
energy. So if you need to create that space, create that space. Right?
Like, nothing's gonna happen till tomorrow morning. Like you said, someone will call you if
if the place is on fire. Right? And there's lots of tools to help you
turn off those notifications so they're not rattling around on your phone and interrupting you.
I think also if you are as we're Tom and
idea of this idea of shutting off notifications, not answering
emails, it's worth exploring what's that, what is that
about? What's that coming from? Where is that resistance coming from? Is it
your value? Is it that you don't feel like or you're not
sure kind of, like, you know, where your place is in your
role or whatever. I think it's worth reflecting on if you're so attached to
that, how is that defining you? And so I think
it's really key to just kind of self reflect on that too if you're feeling
a lot of resistance about making those boundary changes. Yeah. And I think that's a
really important point because a lot of what we're talking about here is, like like,
yes, there's some personal autonomy in this, but, you know, can you change the
communication culture of your organization? Maybe. Right? I think there's
there's potentially more influence available there than people think. Like, if you're the leader of
the organization, I strongly encourage you to figure out with the
team, like, what are sort of the modes of engagement and communication that are expectations?
You know, like like just simply telling people like, hey, if I email you late
at night, like, I'm not expecting a reply. Like like, you know, I've seen this
in in some cases where, like, a boss like, they they have set up sort
of, like, send email later, right, to not disturb people. Like, it's better to
just have a like, a communicated policy and expectations around this. So
I love that. Yeah. Sure. Like, make that expectation. But even if you're,
just a a contributor on a team, like, it's worth advocating for these things because
in a lot of cases, these are undefined expectations that no one like,
where we create these narratives of, like, oh, this is the way we work around
here. But if you say, like, hey, this is kinda crazy. Does anyone agree? And
they're like, yeah, this is silly. Like, we should do this a different way. Like,
what do we think we should do? Right? Like the and that won't be the
case in every organization, I admit. But, like, there's I think there's a there's
a necessity for advocating for those things in whatever capacity you can.
Right? Absolutely. And you bring up a great point and that is
that I have found in all of the groups that I've worked with, if the
leaders say, okay, you know, I'm not gonna take any
vacation days. I'm not going to, I'm
not going to have any email boundaries. I might email you late at night. You
don't have to answer, and I'm gonna work at my desk through lunch and all
of that. No matter what you say to your staff saying, but you don't
do that, they will follow what you do because they will not
go, oh, yeah. I'm gonna take all my vacation days. I'm not gonna answer emails
at night, but you are. And so setting that example from the
top down, even just in subtle little things like verbalizing
that you're taking just a day off because you are gonna get your energy back
or verbalizing
being type strategy for themselves. Yeah. Leading by
example is is the ultimate power. Right? Yeah. Yep.
Amazing. Well, this is great Heather. I really appreciate the work that you're doing and
and advocating for this stuff. As I said, I think it's it's crucially needed in
especially in the technical industry. So, I
would encourage, especially any vendors that are are listening to the podcast, you
know, reach out to Heather and have her, as a speaker at some of the
conferences and things and and get this out front and center for for people to
consume. It's it it it goes directly to, your
your company's productivity. Right? Like this is essential for getting people
working, you know, smarter not harder as it were. Right? Absolutely. So we'll
link to everything, Doctor Heather Dennison in the in
the show notes. Any sort of parting words or asks, Heather?
No, man. We have covered some great ground, Todd. And I think just,
you know, we talked very first out of the gate self compassion and then we
talked about identifying where you are maybe spilling some of your energy and just
taking a step back and looking at repeat decisions, boundaries,
circle of concern, multitasking, context
shifting, those sorts of things as places to shore up so then you can start
to build back up your resilience. So that's where I'd probably leave it for
today. Awesome. Appreciate your time, Heather. Thank you, Todd. I
really appreciate you having me on.