Career Conversations | S2 EP5: Managing your Work/Life Environment (part 1)

Show Notes

Managing Your Work/Life Environment
with Rosemary Simmons

Feeling overwhelmed and dissatisfied with your work may be a symptom of an imbalance between your work and your self. Psychologist Rosemary E. Simmons shares helpful tips of taking care of your priorities, being true to your values, and juggling competing demands.

Rosemary E. Simmons, Ph.D. (she/her) is a first-generation, Pell recipient college student who had the privilege of being employed as a licensed psychologist in higher education for over 30 years. She specializes in providing mentoring, training and psychotherapy for young adults and early career professionals. She is honored that she was hired as the inaugural counseling center director for UW Bothell. During her tenure at UW Bothell, she worked closely with the students to assist in the development and opening of the Student Diversity Center, Violence Prevention & Advocacy Program, Health and Wellness Resource Center, and United Way Benefits Hub focused on one-stop services for low-income college students. She worked at UW Bothell for more than seven years before transitioning to semi-retirement at the end of 2021. Rosemary is currently a resident of Kitsap County and provides psychotherapy at Front Street Clinic in Silverdale and consultation and training to university staff, faculty and administrators across the country. She spends her time hiking Kitsap and Olympic Peninsulas, kayaking, reading, cooking, baking and laughing with friends and family, a laugh that startles babies. After all, toddlers should not be the only ones who have belly laughs!

Music by Lesfm from Pixabay

Creators and Guests

Host

Michaela Gormley

Michaela Gormley (she/her) is a proud alum of the University of Washington, graduating in 2009 from the Foster School of Business with a degree in Business Administration – Marketing and a minor in Spanish. She recently started a new role in tech sales after 10+ years in marketing. She served as a member of the UWAA GOLD (Graduates of the Last Decade) Council for two years, including one year leading the diversity, equity and inclusion subcommittee. As a proud member of the UW Alumni community and as a first-generation college student herself, Michaela is passionate about increasing the inclusivity and accessibility of higher education. She is excited to be back for the second round of UWAA Career Conversations and is grateful to be part of a resource that helps others achieve their personal and professional goals. In her free time, Michaela is an avid fan of Husky Athletics and has been a football season ticket holder since graduation. She loves spending time in the sunshine of Eastern Washington with her family and friends and prides herself on being a cool aunt to all of her nieces and nephews.

Guest

Rosemary Simmons

Rosemary E. Simmons, Ph.D. (she/her) is a first-generation, Pell recipient college student who had the privilege of being employed as a licensed psychologist in higher education for over 30 years. She specializes in providing mentoring, training and psychotherapy for young adults and early career professionals. She is honored that she was hired as the inaugural counseling center director for UW Bothell. During her tenure at UW Bothell, she worked closely with the students to assist in the development and opening of the Student Diversity Center, Violence Prevention & Advocacy Program, Health and Wellness Resource Center, and United Way Benefits Hub focused on one-stop services for low-income college students. She worked at UW Bothell for more than seven years before transitioning to semi-retirement at the end of 2021. Rosemary is currently a resident of Kitsap County and provides psychotherapy at Front Street Clinic in Silverdale and consultation and training to university staff, faculty and administrators across the country. She spends her time hiking Kitsap and Olympic Peninsulas, kayaking, reading, cooking, baking and laughing with friends and family, a laugh that startles babies. After all, toddlers should not be the only ones who have belly laughs!

What is Career Conversations ?

Frank conversations to help you take control of your career.

Going beyond resumes, interviews, and cover letters, each conversation brings a unique perspective on relevant topics for you and your professional development.

Presented by Pepsi, Career Conversations is produced by the University of Washington Alumni Association.

Learn more: https://www.washington.edu/alumni/career-conversations/

Thank you for tuning in to career conversations, an audio series created for the University of Washington alumni community, where we focus on deeper topics to help you create and sustain a fulfilling career I'm your host, Michela Gormley. I'm a proud University of Washington alum who graduated in 2009 from the Foster School of Business. I'm an active member of the YouTube alumni community. A former member of the Alumni Association's Gold Council. And I'm so excited to be back as your host for this series. I'm thrilled to be joined today by Rosemary Simmons for a discussion about work life balance. Rosemary Simmons is a first generation Pell recipient college student who felt privileged to be employed as a licensed psychologist in higher education for over 30 years. She specializes in providing mentoring, training and psychotherapy for young adults and early career professionals, and she was honored to be hired as the inaugural counseling center director for the University of Washington Bothell. During her tenure at UTA Bothell, she worked closely with students to assist in the development and opening of the Student Diversity center, violence prevention and advocacy program, health and wellness Resource Center and United Way benefits hub focused on one stop services for low income college students. She works at UTA Bothell for more than seven years before transitioning to semi-retirement at the end of 2021. Rosemary is currently a resident of Kitsap County and provides psychotherapy at Front Street Clinic in Silverdale in consultation and training to University staff, faculty and administrators across the country. She spends her free time hiking the Kitsap an Olympic peninsula's kayaking, reading, cooking, baking and laughing with friends and family. She has a laugh that can startle babies, and she embraces it because she thinks that toddlers shouldn't be the only ones who have belly laughs. I love that. How are you?

Oh, hello, Michaela. So nice to be here. You do have an excellent laugh, so I'm excited. I hope we get to hear it a little bit today in our conversation. Thanks and hopefully will be no babies listening and I won't startle them out of their sleep. You keep good listener discretion advice. Exactly I love that. I love that. Rosemary, I'm especially excited to talk to you today because I think you're the first person I've interviewed for these conversations that worked or spent a significant amount of time at UVA Bothell. I spent most of my time at the Seattle campus. But can you tell me something you really enjoyed about being at the Bothell campus? Maybe it's something about the people or the campus itself. Just anything that you enjoyed.

Yeah, the two things that stand out for me are the people. I mean, the student staff and faculty are such a collaborative group where they're really focused on student success and really, you know, making sure that, you know, all students feel a sense of community and being on a smaller campus that feels really manageable to do. And so that was just so just refreshing, fun and invigorating. And then this time of year really makes me miss the crows because, Oh my gosh, yes, there are 16,000 crows that roost on that campus. And since, you know, dusk happens at 4:00, we're still on campus, on work. And it is the most awesome and eerie kind of Hitchcockian movie you could ever be a part of. So if you haven't experienced that, you have to go to campus.

It is a phenomenon that I didn't know about, and then I moved to Bothell a number of years ago. I lived there for a handful of years, and one day I was just like, this can't. What is going on like? And I Googled it. And of course, there was an article from UW Bothell that was explaining what was going on. And I was like, this is so fascinating. I started noticing every single day in the mornings they leave. It's like they go to work and then they come back at night.

That's that's exactly right.

Like all the rest of us doing so that we used to. I don't commute as much anymore, but. OK are you are you ready to jump in? I am, yes, definitely. Oh, that's awesome. So I know today we're going to talk about work life balance, but I really think that starts with talking about work life imbalance a little bit, talking about what that is. And I know it's something that I've experienced personally. I think most people have probably experienced that at some point in their life. How have you seen it show up in your own life or the lives of students and people that you've worked with? What does that looks like?

Sure I mean, you're correct. It is such a struggle for most people in my own life. How it. Showed up. It's when I look at my own personality like I'm a people pleaser. I am achievement oriented. I am conflict avoidant. I had to, like, really work on that. So now I'm actually comfortable with managing conflict. But in the beginning of my career, I wasn't. So that made it really hard, because I wanted to say Yes to everything and make everyone happy. And I didn't want to say no because I thought I was being mean or that people would be mad at me. And so that really set me up to take on way too much. And then just giving way too much of myself at work and didn't have that balance at all. So now I see that come up with others is, you know, other people also have a hard time saying just...

You know, we're a we're a audio conversation. But I'm raising my hand and nodding along because I'm in that category.

Yes so so many of us have that balanced problem of saying Yes too often and no, not frequently enough. The other thing is that work just can slowly start creeping in on people without them kind of knowing it. And all of a sudden, you know, especially with messaging platforms and texting and emails, so many of us are like, it's all on our phone. So we're checking it throughout the evening and weekends, and all of a sudden that can start, you know, really kind of wearing us down emotionally. The other thing that I think we're all kind of get into is sometimes that 150 to 200% approach where we feel like we have to give more, you know, and more and more. And that can really lead to burnout and just feeling overwhelmed. And the other thing I've noticed is that when work starts creeping in to more of our personal life. And that imbalance starts, the first thing most of us give up is self-care. So we're not sleeping as much. We're eating fast food or just like not eating at all or grabbing snacks. We're not doing any physical activity where you have less time for the things that rejuvenate us and that are playful and with our friends. And, you know, so that's what we always, you know, first, we're the ones who suffer first. And that's something I really want us to like, take a look at about how we don't have to suffer and still really enjoy our job and be valued.

Right I know it feels almost like a foreign concept sometimes, but you're so right. Once people have identified that they're in balance, things are sort of out of whack, I think a lot of us know. But we get busy and then all of a sudden we're like. Really far, far out of where we want to be. What would you recommend as sort of a first step toward moving back to getting into a better balance?

Yeah, I think the first step really is one, you have to notice the imbalance is there. And oftentimes we notice that ourselves or our friends or family comment on it. But once that comes into our attention, then I think what we really need to do is really set some time aside for true self reflection. And so really being mindful and conscious about why did I take this job? What do I love about this job? What don't I like about this job more? What am I missing in my life? You know, what have I given up? Am know, how am I not taking care of myself or the people I love? And really just having this introspection of answering those key parts so that we then can kind of have a path forward and how we can change it. So we don't feel stuck and powerless and feel like our only option is I just have to quit and find another job.

Right right. Yeah I love the idea of being mindful of that, doing some reflection. It feels more intentional than just sort of life happens to us and all we can do is react. It's a little more proactive, really thinking through what you want that to look like. Once we've done a little bit of self-reflection that then what? What's what's next on what would you recommend we do next?

Yeah, I think I think one of the stumbling blocks is that time is limited. There are only so many hours in the day and the week. And so we had this long list and we want to just do it all. And we try to figure out how to get it all done right. Yeah and so I think that's where we really have to, again, you know, use our values to help us start. You know, once we do that self-reflection, use our values to start prioritizing really what's most important because, you know, we probably can't do everything on our list. And so how do I prioritize what's the most important or how can I? Sometimes there's ways I can combine several things where we meet several objectives at once, but giving yourself that time to think through it and kind of some it broad categories when you're doing that, you know, value oriented process is like some of the big categories in our life. One is like we're social beings. Like if you look at us as an animal species, we're Herd like we love packs, right? You know, and yeah, even, you know, the huskies, we are like pack animals and so and so we need affiliation, we need connection. And so, you know, that's one thing is like, OK, how much time do I need with other people? Who are the people I want to be with? Another area to think about is play. And I love that word play because it brings and I love the sense of joy and excitement, carefree. And so what activities bring us that kind of feeling? And then we also, as humans need a sense of agency. And for agency what I mean that it's when I feel when you feel like you're having an impact on your own life. And so sometimes the way to think of that is like, how do I contribute? What's my purpose? You know, what's my passion? How do I create something? I mean, so again, how do I have an influence in my life? And then the fourth big category is self-care. And just because I have at last, that doesn't mean it's the least, but it really is the foundation, because if we have a good self-care foundation, we actually have more energy to do the rest of the things.

Yeah Yeah. I think a self-care, self-care kind of going back to what you had said earlier, sometimes gets this idea of it's about having a spa day and like do all these, like all these sort of. Not over the top, but like really maybe an elaborate self-care routine. When I think really what you're referring to is more just like physically taking care of your self in, like getting your sleep, eating. However you need to sit, moving your body, those types of things. Taking time to relax. Is that is that what, I'm assuming what's what you mean? Yeah, but you can correct me if I'm wrong.

You were right on target, Kayla, and that is so crucial. And the reason I phrase it is self-care, because we usually don't think of it that way, and I think that's why we can so easily give it up.

Right yeah, I know. I think I mean, I do love a face mask as much as the next person, but I also need to, you know, buy groceries. And that's helpful self-care for me as well. And it just fitting all of that in can be challenging. Yeah What about? Can you give me some examples of how you see that play out for different people that you've worked with?

Yeah I mean, one thought I had and just my own life in my early career professionally, I was a single mom and so my priority was like my son, I have to be available to him. I'm his only parent that he has the most contact with. And then the other thing was my work was really important, too. And so how did I negotiate those two things? And certainly there were some things like when he was younger, it's just like these are the hours of child care. These are the hours of his school and after school program. I can work during those hours, but I absolutely can't work if he is not involved in some of those activities. So that was just a really hard line I had to set with my supervisor. But then there were other things that I learned to be a bit more flexible about. Like at first I was trying to be all achievement oriented and super mother and super worker and all of that. And what I realized is that I had to shift my frame about and it wasn't necessarily how many hours like if I spent how many waking hours with him versus work hours. It was really the quality of the time I spent with him so that if I had fewer hours but I wasn't on my phone and we weren't just in the same room doing different activities, but we were actually engaged with each other that felt like that really brought us really close together. And really, he and I were really like, you know, I could be interested in knowing what was going on in his life. And so even though it was fewer hours in the week, it felt like it really brought us really close. So I'm glad that I was able to kind of shift that focus and not be so rigid thinking. It was just the amount of time I had with him.

Right oh, I love that idea of just shifting the mindset a little bit there and saying. It's a maybe. Don't have as many hours as I would like to, but how can I make the most out of that lesser time that I do have.

Yeah Yeah. And sometimes we need that shift, and other times it does need to be that hard line. Like no child care closes at 5:30. I have to leave here by 5 in order to get here.

Right right. Yeah I can't just. Leave him Without care, of course. Yeah and what about do you have any examples from maybe people you've worked with, other young professionals or people who are in college or transitioning into the career world?

Yeah one of the things I worked with a student right after graduation and he was, you know, really trying to decide, you know, he was really being very proactive and reflecting on what type of life he wanted. And I think he felt like he had very much like workaholic parents and he didn't want to be a workaholic like they were. Oh and so he was trying to figure out how to do that, because he also had all these career ambitions, too. And sure, one of the things that we started doing is looking at his priorities and what his values were, what he enjoyed doing in life. And it ended up he was really a very social and also extroverted person. So he absolutely loved having lots of time with people. He had this really adventurous spirit. He traveled internationally. He, you know, was really active into sports and athletics and being active. And he liked things that like. I love it when, like, everything's different every day and that, like, actually gave him energy rather than stressed him out.

Sure Yeah.

So after we even started looking at who he is and what makes him tick and what makes him happy, he came up with some great ideas, like all of his physical activities, ended up being sports, team sports. So he joined volleyball and ultimate, ultimate Frisbee. And when he went biking or hiking, it was always with other people, you know, when he was with someone else, you know, either inviting them to the house or going out to dinner. So he was able to find ways to, like connect multiple things into activities. One activity would meet multiple needs. And then he also negotiated with his coworkers because other people were like, oh, I don't like to go into and unknown situations or I don't like meeting new people or those hours after work, you know, to do this, you know, I just can't. And so he given that he really enjoyed networking with people, he was like, oh, I'll be glad to do that evening thing where I get to meet new people. And then he negotiated with his supervisor about when I do those kind of outside of normal business hours activities. Can we keep track of those and use that kind of as a bank of Comp time, which his supervisor then let him build up so he could take like a four day, five day weekend or add that with vacation time and all of a sudden he had a week to go travel someplace that he couldn't do on the weekend. It was really creative and really smart. I was impressed with the plan he created.

Yeah, that is very impressive. I'm and I love that idea of I want to be social, but I also want to exercise or whatever those priorities are for someone combining those two. So you're like, OK, I'm getting my physical exercise that makes me feel good and healthy and all of those things. But I'm also getting my a social aspect of it. And that makes me feel fulfilled in another way as well. When I was a kid, my mom used to joke that I only played sports because my friends were there. She was like, she's like, you do fine. It wasn't even. But she's like, I don't know if you really like playing sports. You just like to go because everyone's there and you can be social in and see everyone. And I was like, you know what? You're not wrong.

Oh, Yeah. Yeah and it's so funny. Like, sometimes as kids, like, we find the answer and then we lose it as an adult, so.

I mean, it's funny when you said that, I'm like, oh, that's really smart. And I'm like, oh, I did that when I was six. I had that idea. But now it's, it's, it's harder for me to find. Yeah, I think what I really like is the idea of. Figuring out in that example. What you're saying is figuring out what the priorities are for your time and for your life and - then making your schedule so that you can hit those priorities because ultimately you just can't do everything right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah. So we've kind of established do some self-reflection, set your priorities, and given us some good examples of that. Once we've done that and we made sure that our priorities are sort of aligned with values, how do you put those into action?

This has been part one of career conversations, a discussion about work life balance. Be sure to listen to part two for the rest of the conversation.