Stop Working Too Much...And Stop Letting Your Team Do It, Too

So many of us are overworking and don’t know how, or why, to stop. In this episode, we discuss:

• Why we overwork
• How outdated work ethics impact our mindset
• The difference between a hard worker and a workaholic
• The six crucial areas to address when you’re overdoing it
• How to lead teams sustainably in today’s always-on culture

Chapters

• 0:00 Overwork Is A Symptom
• 1:02 Hybrid Schedules And Longer Days
• 3:20 Burnout Disguised As Commitment
• 5:15 Leadership: Priorities Over Busyness
• 7:16 Model Sustainable Performance
• 9:58 Employees: Own Your Edges
• 12:20 Energy, Sprints, And Focus

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey friends, I am Jill Griffin, your host of the Career Refresh, and this is the place where we talk about career strategy, leadership strategy, and things to actually create a career and life that work for you. Today, I want to talk about something that I have talked about before, but I'm seeing it pop up again. And as we're starting to round out the backhand half of the calendar year, this is really where it pops up even more because everyone feels like they have to get it done. And this is about overworking. And we have glorified overworking, and it's like exhaustion has become the norm and everyone's doing it. And I just want to remind us that overworking is not a bragging point or a badge of honor. It's a symptom. It is a symptom and a signal that the patterns, expectations, boundaries, both yours, your companies, your team, all need a recalibration. All right, so let's dig into what's going on and what we can do about it. All right, first, let's start with the details. The mix of remote work, on-premise, hybrid work has become the norm for so many employees that people are claiming that they are working almost three to four hours longer every day because of these various structures. And it's not because people are afraid necessarily that they're not getting or there's more work. It's not because there's necessarily more work. Sometimes there is, but it's really because they want to be seen as adding value or being productive or being busy and being in contribution. Here starts the problem. Well, on weekends and after hours, and a third of them do it when they're on vacation. There's a Harvard study that found that 23% of workers experience insomnia, costing US companies over$60 billion with a B of lost productivity every year, right? Because people are so exhausted, they're sleeping on the job. Not sleeping, but they're so exhausted they can't perform because they need to be almost in the sleeping on the job. So why do we do this? It's because we often think we have to or we think we need to demand this. We think it's safer to stay online late, answer one more email, just to get it done and to prove the value. We start to confuse visibility with worth, and we have to prove ourselves constantly, or so we think. And that's really where the burnout sets in, right? But it's quiet, it's sneaky, it's really disguised as commitment, but it's burnout. And this thinking goes into deep roots, right? There's the Protestant work ethic that, you know what, if it's hurting, it must be working. You know, we're gonna rise and thrive, we're gonna kill it. All of those like nonsense things that you hear people say or that you read like on the socials. We've attached a moral value to work, believing that the longer we grind, that they'll be, we'll be a better person or a better employee, then we actually are. And we think that that's what's proving our case. So all of this tends to be fueled by fear, worry, or the need to, again, prove yourself. But I'm gonna tell you, none of this is helpful. It is draining and it's not sustainable, and it actually doesn't help you do better work, going back to the$60 billion of lost productivity. Philosopher Alan Watts said that we tent our jaw lines, we furrow our brows, and we think that productivity will help us manage and get through stress. But in all that effort, none of this makes us better. It just makes us more exhausted. When I found that quote, I was like, okay, this is exactly what we're talking about today. So if you lead a team, listen closely. Overwork is really about the workload, it is about the unclear priorities. When everyone is doing important things and everything feels important, nothing is actually important. Now, look, I know that there are times in which, because of maybe a recent staffing reduction, that people are trying to cover the work of the people that aren't there anymore. And those are some of the realities, but it doesn't mean that we need to keep cracking on that. If there's an immediate deadline after a reduction, yeah, we need to get it done. It's work, not a hobby. But after that, we need to rethink these unclear priorities because burning people out and encouraging everybody to work one and a half FTEs, full-time employees, more than what they are, or two that every person is actually responsible for working to isn't going to help you get to your end goal better. And we need to start thinking about this as leaders and what we're doing to our teams and to ourselves. So I want you to start by recentering on what the team's purpose is. What's the top priority now? Are there things getting in your way? What can you do to support yourself and the team to make this happen, to get to the goal, right? And really thinking through, asking yourself questions that create alignment and also give you a pulse check on maybe there is some confusion or some outages. I also want you to coach your team for impact, not activity. This is sometimes where people confuse or they'll be like, oh, I'm so in the weeds. And this is the time where I find that people are confusing oversight with ownership. If you are a leader, you have the oversight, but it's the team who has the actual ownership of the work. So you for yourself, you need to make sure that there's that balance and that you're not driving into the weeds because I want you to define what success looks like for yourself, for your team, and then also start to drop any of those low value tasks. This is not, again, about being productive, it's about creating values. Modeling good values for yourself is something that you also need to do. If your team is seeing that green slack dot that pops up and it's midnight, your team is going to assume that they need to do that too and be there too. So take your vacation, don't leave part of your compensation on the table and sign off visibly. Make sure it says that you are off. Show your team what sustainable performance looks like. Okay, if you're the employee and you're on the other side, you're the one who's working all these extra hours and you feel like this is your part, this is what I want you to listen to. You're responsible to own your edges. This means noticing when getting ahead turns into getting depleted. So I want you to ask yourself when I am saying no to something, where can I say yes to something else? And vice versa. If I'm saying yes to something, where am I actually there for saying no to something? And if I'm overworking, am I doing it to avoid something? Am I doing it to avoid the feeling where I didn't create enough value this week or I need to be productive? Or because I feel like it'll make me visible or feel like enough, I want you to really get clear and ask yourself that. I also want you to communicate early, talking to your supervisory team or your manager before it becomes too much. When we're working with intention, you know when you're high energy and when those hours are best serving you, right? If I'm doing strategy, which I do a lot of for organizations and for teams, making sure that I'm doing that earlier in the morning when my brain is freshest is when I'm going to create the best strategy and in the most efficient way possible. I'm not going to be constantly distracted and stopping and needing to take a walk, right? Making sure that you're doing that. And where possible, are there things that you can automate? Obviously, Chatty G, our good old friend ChatGPT, our Claude, those are the tools that you can use, assuming it's within your employee guidelines and making sure that you're using them efficiently and to eliminate distractions. We also know that the human brain works best in 90-minute sprints. So do a sprint, take a 15-minute break, do another sprint, take a longer break. That's how we get the most level of strategic value or the productivity that we're doing, but productivity, not for productivity's sake, but that's actually getting a lot of the work done. So I want you to redefine what hard work means for you. And it's again, it has to be anchored in understanding the right work with a focus on clarity. Next, the mindset and strategy. So to change behavior, you have to know why. You need a why. When work is light, don't judge yourself. Asking yourself, what if enough is okay? And what does enough look like? When work is heavy, check your motives. Are you avoiding something else? Are you trying to get it done because it feels like it's aligned to your integrity and responsibility? Great, go for it. I'm not going to tell you not to have a hard day of work if you're or a long day of work, I should say. It's making sure that you're not doing it for performative reasons. Are you overworking to control a fear? Do you feel like if you're not doing it, this is where it starts to feel needy and graspy and we start being really helpful to everyone and over-servicing? And that is where I want you to create some awareness because this awareness will precede the change. I want you to re-define and reframe what success means. Also, you might work in an organization where you have to track your hours, fine, but I would encourage you to track outcomes. How did you actually land the performance? What did you contribute to something? And is it measurable, right? Those are the things that are going to impact your uh employee review and things that may impact if you're getting raises or bonuses when it comes to those times of the year. And then I want you to block out time, like I said, for thinking, for rest, for creativity, making sure there's a space. I would even say block out time for you to bet like binge Netflix. There's no nothing wrong with saying, like, okay, I'm gonna do that then. And carving out time and what is activity, what is hobbies, what is work time, what is friends and loved ones' time, making sure you're doing that. You have to practice constraint because otherwise, every day there'll be a little bit more that you do and a little bit more that you do. And the next thing you know, your entire day will be taken over and all the nooks and crannies of free time will be taken over for work. So give yourself 90 minutes, give yourself some rest. When possible, take a proper lunch. I would tell you to take it every day, take 30 minutes, step away from your computer, right? We're not doing this with one hand on the keyboard and one hand on a fork. We want to really make sure that we're taking time to step away. Uh, if you're working from home on those days, you have a pet, you have children around, what can you take a walk? Can you go outside? Where can you get fresh air? Making sure that you're leaving desk, your desk when possible. Because I want you to multitask your way through life, right? Productivity and creating value will happen in cycles. You want to make sure that you're having space to think and be rest because that creativity will thrive when you have pauses. It's one of the reasons why I have random hobbies. Like I suck at most of them, but I do it, right? I knit, I embroider, I do crafts, I do pottery, I do all of these things. It's not like I would be showing people the work isn't great. I'm doing it because I like to be creative. I like to create things and that really I paint, right? All the things that get me out of doing what I've done for my entire career as a strategist and now as an executive coach, those type of task switching, but not multitasking, really helps me find the creativity that thrives when I come back after the pause. All right. Next, I want you to really reflect because we have been conditioned for centuries to believe that long hours equals worth, that we create more worth when we work longer hours. And friends, that belief is very outdated. Productivity isn't about doing more. Creating value isn't about doing more, it's about doing what matters and what creates value towards the end goal. So the next time you think to yourself, you know what, you're gonna stay online, you're gonna just do a little bit longer, and you're just gonna do one more thing, I'd really challenge you and ask yourself, is this adding value? Am I trying to be helpful from a place of neediness or graspiness? Or am I really trying to prove my value? And I would offer, there are some times where we have to prove our value, but if you're doing it consistently and it isn't coming from a place of like it feels good and it's coming from a place of a need or an anxiousness, that's the part where I want you to really check yourself. Your inbox is never going to be empty. It will always be full and if it will always peek coming. And if you think about you have to get this done, it's just a couple more emails or a couple more things, right? You have to start drawing the lines. Burnout isn't inevitable, it is preventable, but you need to make sure that with clarity for yourself, for your team, setting those boundaries and making sure that what you're setting up serves the team. I'm gonna leave you with a quote from entrepreneur Dan Pallada, which I thought was a really, really impactful quote that kind of ties all of this up well. Worry isn't work, being stressed out isn't work. Anxiety isn't work. Hating yourself isn't work. We stopped burning witches at the stake 400 years ago. Maybe it's time we stopped doing it to ourselves. All right, friends, if this episode resonated with you, I want you to tell someone and share it with someone that is how we get this work out there and we can help more people. Thanks for listening. And as always, lead with clarity, protect your energy, redefine what effort and what work means to you, and always, always, always be kind. I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at hello at deal griffincoaching.com, and I'll see you next time. Thanks so much.