Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #204| Could Your Workspace Be Causing Your Overwhelm? Here’s How to Know (& How to Fix It)
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: In this day and age where we're just working wherever we are, we don't take our workspace into consideration, which can cause some additional unnecessary stress.
- 0:14Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:22Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, Michelle Gauthier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:27Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences.
- 0:32Michelle Gauthier: And in each episode, you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease, and relaxation to your life.
- 0:41Michelle Gauthier: Hi, friend.
- 0:42Michelle Gauthier: Thanks for joining today.
- 0:44Michelle Gauthier: Oh my gosh, my office is driving me crazy right now.
- 0:47Michelle Gauthier: So this is a self-serving episode.
- 0:49Michelle Gauthier: So hopefully it's helping you and it's helping me at the same time.
- 0:53Michelle Gauthier: What we're thinking about today is if your workspace is one of the causes of your overwhelm and what to do about it.
- 1:00Michelle Gauthier: If so, when you listen today, you're going to learn why your space might be feeling your overwhelm, even if you hadn't consciously realized it.
- 1:07Michelle Gauthier: And I'm going to give you three powerful questions that will help you define your workspace.
- 1:12Michelle Gauthier: A lot of times, especially in this day and age where we're just working wherever we are, we don't take our workspace into consideration, which can cause some additional unnecessary stress.
- 1:23Michelle Gauthier: So by the end of this episode, you will have a list of a couple small shifts that you can make to help your workspace work for you instead of against you.
- 1:33Michelle Gauthier: And hopefully by the end of this episode, I will be so motivated by what I'm saying that I am going to go and get my office back into its best shape as well.
- 1:44Michelle Gauthier: If you think about the concept of the office and where you're working today versus where you would have been working like 10 or 15 years ago, it's really interesting to think about how flexible our workspaces have become, which is wonderful in so many ways, but also can be so draining that the idea that we can actually work almost anywhere is not necessarily good.
- 2:10Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes we really need some boundaries around us.
- 2:13Michelle Gauthier: And in this day and age where you might have an office with a door in a building that is not your home, that is probably less people than people who have a flexible workspace with a cubicle, or people who are working from a coffee shop, or people who work from home at their own dining room table.
- 2:34Michelle Gauthier: So the concept of what a workspace is has really changed and will continue to change.
- 2:40Michelle Gauthier: But today we're just going to look at these three questions that will help you define where you work and reduce your stress and overwhelm because you know the answers to these.
- 2:50Michelle Gauthier: So number one is what is this space actually used for?
- 2:55Michelle Gauthier: So if I think about my office in my home, I feel like I have a good setup.
- 3:00Michelle Gauthier: It is dedicated as my office, it has doors, but also I have a swing that hangs from the ceiling in here, and my kids both love it.
- 3:10Michelle Gauthier: And they come in here and they talk to me.
- 3:12Michelle Gauthier: So this is a space where I work and where I see clients.
- 3:15Michelle Gauthier: This is a space that my kids come into.
- 3:17Michelle Gauthier: If one of them has homework that they need help with, we do it in here at night.
- 3:21Michelle Gauthier: So it's not much of a family space, but it's sometimes a family space.
- 3:25Michelle Gauthier: And it is also the collector of Amazon boxes sometimes.
- 3:30Michelle Gauthier: I pay all the bills and do all of our house management stuff in here.
- 3:34Michelle Gauthier: So I have other things like that in here.
- 3:37Michelle Gauthier: If you think about your situation, your workspace might be the dining room table.
- 3:41Michelle Gauthier: So that is also for meals and homework and your Zoom calls, or you might work in an office in a cubicle with no walls, or you might work in an office where when you get to the office for the day, you just choose where you're going to sit for the day.
- 3:56Michelle Gauthier: So you don't have like a complete setup.
- 3:59Michelle Gauthier: You might be a person who works on the couch.
- 4:02Michelle Gauthier: Maybe your office is your guest room, and you also fold laundry in there.
- 4:08Michelle Gauthier: Maybe you work sitting up in your bed, but you really kind of hate that because it makes you feel a little bit unmotivated and it's your bedroom and your place of rest and then also your place of work.
- 4:19Michelle Gauthier: Once you define what the space is actually for, it's helpful for you to just be aware of that and to know, okay, this is my office, but sometimes it's also our dining room table.
- 4:31Michelle Gauthier: So, question number two is when should I be here?
- 4:34Michelle Gauthier: Ask yourself, when do I want this space to be used for work?
- 4:38Michelle Gauthier: If I think about my office, I keep very specific hours.
- 4:43Michelle Gauthier: So I really rarely work before eight or nine, and I really don't work much past four o'clock in the afternoon.
- 4:50Michelle Gauthier: But I try to do all my work in my office.
- 4:54Michelle Gauthier: I used to like take my laptop places or I'd bring it out in the kitchen or whatever, and it was not good for my brain.
- 5:00Michelle Gauthier: So I know that when I'm in here, I'm working.
- 5:04Michelle Gauthier: I do not come into my office just to hang around or if I'm gonna like sit down and read, I'm not gonna come into my office, even though I really like the room, but I definitely feel like I should be here when I'm working, and that's it.
- 5:18Michelle Gauthier: And I think if you're thinking about this and you have a multi-use room, for example, maybe you're working from your bedroom and you have a desk in your bedroom, and you can just say to yourself, from you know, eight to five, this is my work zone.
- 5:33Michelle Gauthier: And after that, this room goes back into being my bedroom.
- 5:36Michelle Gauthier: When I used to have an office in my bedroom, I would shut off my computer and like turn off all the lights in the work area.
- 5:44Michelle Gauthier: So, how can you use the hours that you're working or some kind of signal to define, okay, this was my office, but now it's going back to the dining room or the bedroom or whatever it is.
- 5:56Michelle Gauthier: I had a podcast guest a while back and I thought she had a great idea, which was she found herself kind of scrolling and getting distracted during the day in her office.
- 6:05Michelle Gauthier: So she just made a rule that if she was going to scroll or do anything that wasn't work related, that she would exit her office to do so.
- 6:12Michelle Gauthier: So she would go sit on her couch, and it was just an indicator to her body, like, okay, now we're taking a break from work because we're not sitting at our desk anymore.
- 6:21Michelle Gauthier: Then the third and final question to ask yourself about your workspace is what's in versus out of my control?
- 6:28Michelle Gauthier: Because sometimes there are things that are in our control that we don't take action on when we could.
- 6:34Michelle Gauthier: So if your workspace is at your dining room table, and because of the way that your house is and the amount of space that you have, that is your only option.
- 6:45Michelle Gauthier: What's out of your control is that it's also used for family dinners.
- 6:50Michelle Gauthier: What can be out of your control is the noise level.
- 6:53Michelle Gauthier: So if you and a partner are both working from home, you might be able to hear that person on their Zoom calls.
- 6:59Michelle Gauthier: I've always worked from home since I've had kids.
- 7:02Michelle Gauthier: And when they were little, I had a nanny, but I could still hear them sometimes yelling in the other room.
- 7:07Michelle Gauthier: So sometimes you can't control the noise level.
- 7:10Michelle Gauthier: If you're working in a corporate office, you can't control the temperature or the ugly overhead lighting or the fact that you sit next to the bathroom or whatever it is.
- 7:21Michelle Gauthier: So knowing what's out of your control can be helpful just to remind yourself, okay, that's out of my control, but what is in my control?
- 7:29Michelle Gauthier: So some of the things that are in your control are like clearing that pile of clutter from the surface in front of you or bringing in something that makes you feel good, a little plant or a candle or a playlist.
- 7:43Michelle Gauthier: If you're working in one of those places where you get to work every day and then you just choose a cubicle and you sit in it, you can't really make it too personalized.
- 7:50Michelle Gauthier: But in your laptop bag, can you carry a couple things that feel like yours?
- 7:54Michelle Gauthier: Can you bring your favorite coffee mug?
- 7:55Michelle Gauthier: You can always bring a playlist with you.
- 7:57Michelle Gauthier: You can bring your own headphones.
- 7:59Michelle Gauthier: Depending on the ages of the other people in your house, you can make boundaries or rules.
- 8:05Michelle Gauthier: Like mine is if my office doors are closed, don't come in.
- 8:09Michelle Gauthier: But if I'm just working and I'm not seeing a client or recording a podcast or anything and my kids are home, I crack the door so that they know they can come in and talk to me if they want to talk to me.
- 8:18Michelle Gauthier: That's totally in my control.
- 8:20Michelle Gauthier: I think with little kids, I really couldn't do that.
- 8:23Michelle Gauthier: It was just during the workday, I never left my office.
- 8:27Michelle Gauthier: Luckily, I had a bathroom connected, but I never left my office.
- 8:31Michelle Gauthier: I would just run to the bathroom and back, and then I would text my nanny, hey, I'm coming out for lunch, and I would go make my lunch and then go right back into my office.
- 8:38Michelle Gauthier: So just remember what's in your control and what's out of your control.
- 8:42Michelle Gauthier: And as a side note, we're talking about asking yourself, what is this space actually used for?
- 8:48Michelle Gauthier: When should I be here?
- 8:50Michelle Gauthier: And what's in versus out of my control?
- 8:52Michelle Gauthier: One of the things I mentioned that is in your control is clearing the clutter from your office, which we know can be really distracting.
- 9:01Michelle Gauthier: If you'd like to do some decluttering in your office, just a quick decluttering.
- 9:06Michelle Gauthier: I've got tons of episodes on how to declutter.
- 9:10Michelle Gauthier: If you start around episode 178, there's a whole declutter challenge.
- 9:14Michelle Gauthier: This is a great exercise to go through now because there's potential that during the holidays you might have people in your home if you work from home that you don't normally have at home during the day.
- 9:24Michelle Gauthier: So this will be great practice for you to ask yourself these three questions and reduce your stress and overwhelm when it comes to your workspace, no matter where it is.
- 9:34Michelle Gauthier: Okay, I hope your workspace is becoming more peaceful by the moment.
- 9:39Michelle Gauthier: Have a great week.
- 9:40Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 9:48Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.com.
- 9:54Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.