Work Life Balance Hacks from an Ex-Workaholic

Hi everyone! Welcome to my channel. My name is Carla and I make videos on corporate soft skills, project management skills, really any kind of tips that can help us navigate this corporate capitalist society that we live in successfully. But I try to do it con un poquito de sabor. I try to cater to first generation immigrants who are perhaps brand new to this kind of system and are just learning how to navigate it just like how I had to learn how to navigate it eight years ago. Today's video is going to be on work-life balance and whether that's actually something that's feasible and achievable in this kind of hustle culture that we live in. So I have about six tips that I'd like to share with everyone as well as have maybe a little bit of a conversation about what does work-life balance really mean and what does it mean to someone who perhaps doesn't share a culture that is the default in the society. So grab your and let's get started. Tip number one is doing a little bit of soul searching. What kind of lifestyle do you want to live? What are your priorities? What are you going to do to make sure that your priorities are in your schedule? So for example, I am Latina and my priorities are my family. So if my mom calls me up and she tells me that she's making tacos dorados on a random Wednesday night, that's a priority for me. If my tia tells me she bought tlacoyos on Monday, I'm going to go over there and eat those tlacoyos. If my family says that they got barbacoa and everybody should come over for breakfast on a random Sunday morning where I did not have it planned, I'm going to be stuffing my face on some barbacoa. You bet I will. Clearly my life revolves around food and my family, but those are my priorities. So I make sure that my schedule has those priorities in mind and the flexibility to include those priorities. So in order to figure out that work life balance, you need to figure out the definition of that life portion that you want to balance out with your work and your career. You really need to figure out what your career goals are. So for example, for me, I really wanted to work very hard the first five years of my career. I would call myself a workaholic back then where I was working, you know, 50, 60 hours a week, um, and making sure that I didn't pass up any opportunities and making sure that I worked without as many engineers as possible within this huge network that I had. That was how I wanted to live it back then. Now I say, no, that's no longer how I want my lifestyle to be. I want my lifestyle to be where I really take on the opportunities that I want and I focus and I commit on those opportunities, but I'm only working those 40 hours a week, no more than 40 hours a week. Obviously there's exceptions, but let's pretend we live in an ideal world. So the first thing you need to figure out is what kind of lifestyle do you want to live? What are your priorities and how are you going to make sure that they are within your schedule? And step two is taking control to make sure the balance portion of work-life balance happens. I already did a video on how I plan and organize my week if you want to go watch it. Uh, and this really helps me figure out exactly how much time I have available during that week to do everything that I want to do in terms of career goals within those 40 hours. But I've already established that I only want to work 40 hours and that is the 40 hours that I see on my planner and I make sure that I organize those 40 hours as I need. So that takes me to tip number three, actually, how I use my planner to understand how much time I have in a week to do the tasks that need to be completed. I think a lot of us overestimate how much time 40 hours a week actually is. I use my planner to plot out those 40 hours, how much time I actually have in that week to do my meetings and to complete those submittals. And it really helps me understand how much I can truly take on in my career. So if I have three projects that are filling those 40 hours a week, I am not going to take a fourth project and try to stuff it into that schedule because it does not fit. And if I do, I'll end up working overtime. And that goes against kind of the philosophy of the life that I want to live. If that opportunity is something that I really can't pass up, then I need to learn how to tip number four, delegate. It is very difficult to delegate when you are a control freak like I am. But in order to successfully maintain those 40 hours, 30 hours, 80 hours, whatever amount of hours that you want to work, you need to learn how to build a team around you and delegate and not be afraid to trust others to take on tasks. This was a very difficult lesson for me. It is something very difficult to do to learn how to trust people, but it is very rewarding. You will see people thrive when you are not micromanaging them, and you will see that you grow as a team and that not only benefits them, it benefits you. Delegating is important and it is needed in order to maintain some sort of stability at work where you can continue to take on projects, but you can also continue to have that work-life balance that you want to maintain. Along with delegating, one more tip that I would say is learn how to keep people accountable. Don't just finish their work if they do not finish their work. Everyone is accountable for their work and for their schedule. I've definitely gotten myself into trouble and I've definitely gone against my philosophy of life when I finish things for people because, you know, I don't keep them accountable. I have two more tips. The first one is learning how to leave work at work. I've definitely inherited my parents' work ethic and their sense of responsibility for the work that they deliver. I watched my dad go to work at a car wash during the daytime and then go to Taco Bell at night and only sleep a couple hours in between. Watched my mom go to work at a house cleaning in the mornings and then go to work as a bus girl in the evenings while we were growing up. Now, as they all both have their own businesses, I see the work ethic and their sense of responsibility continue even right now when they're so much older and perhaps they don't need to put in as much effort as they used to because we're all out of the house. However, that work ethic and that sense of responsibility, as much as I treasure it and I find it to be one of my probably biggest qualities when it comes to my work and my career, has also come to a detriment because I had to learn how to leave work at work and it was very, very difficult for me because I had this huge sense of responsibility of my projects, making sure that things got delivered, even senses of responsibility over work that wasn't my own, over work that needed to happen, and I just needed to make sure that that person completed their work. So the way that I made sure that I left work at work was by implementing a tool where I have my handy-dandy notebook, a little reference to Steve who, by the way, gave us a little bit of closure a couple weeks ago on, well, I saw it on TikTok, but I'm sure it was on Nickelodeon or something. My millennial heart was very happy. Anyway, so I have this notebook where I make sure that I list out everything that still needs to get done, action items, emails that I need to write, meetings that need to happen, anything and everything possible is written down and it's kind of like a little piece of my brain that gets placed on my desk and when I come back the next morning, I just pick it up and keep going with it. I had to learn to leave stress and negative feelings about work at work, even positive feelings. Sometimes, you know, something very great happened at work. I got a promotion, a project was delivered, a construction was completed, whatever it was, I needed to perhaps share that with my family but then move on. Make sure that I wasn't planning and plotting out my world domination at the dinner table. So this is something that is very important and that will help you to concentrate on the lifestyle you want to live and the other priorities you have past, you know, your work, your career hours. Tip number five and my last tip is boundaries. Boundaries are very difficult to establish. However, if you say them out loud consistently through meetings and everyday interactions, I have a hard stop at five, I have a hard stop at six, I don't work past 2 p.m. on a Friday, people really start listening and they start understanding those boundaries. Obviously, there are times where you have to be a little bit flexible but you can make sure that you control when those times are appropriate to do. But again, you really have to make sure that you plan things so that you can allow for these boundaries. You can't just accept 80 hours of work and commit to them and say your boundary is at five when you've committed to 80 hours of work. So you have to make sure that you take control of how much work you accept, your schedule, how many hours you're going to work, etc. So you have to set yourself up for success and being able to establish these boundaries. In this kind of hustle culture, we have glamorized being busy. Somehow having meetings all day and needing to work till 9 p.m. is this like glamorous kind of you're so busy and you're so important, oh my goodness kind of moment, right? But it doesn't matter. You know what kind of lifestyle you want to live and so you can't allow others' perception of you to impact your decisions. So establishing your boundaries is very important and maybe doing it little by little in a continuous communication style is the way to establish those boundaries. At least that's the way that I did it. So that's it. Those are all my tips for now. I really hope that these kind of give you a little inspiration on developing this work-life balance that you want. I really want to call it just like the lifestyle that you want because I don't know if work-life balance is an achievable or feasible goal. I think it's it's such an outdated concept and it's really more about establishing the lifestyle that you want to live. So thank you so much for staying until the end of the video and I will see you on the next one. Bye everyone!