Discussing tips for work/life balance!

Hi Facebook, happy Monday. So today, are we on? Yeah, okay, there we go. So tonight we are chatting about tips for having a good work-life balance. I am not an expert at this. I will never be an expert at this. This will always be something that I work towards. My mantra this year has been progress, not perfection. We don't have to be perfect at work-life balance. We just wanna be moving in that direction. So I did an Insta Story poll earlier today and I had a ton of good ideas. So I have a long list of strategies and tips that you guys shared, which were amazing. But wanted to give a little context to why I wanted to chat about this tonight and share some of my struggles with work-life balance. I've had different seasons of life where I've been better and worse at balancing work with the rest of my life. And I've been having these, you know, on your Facebook memories that like, you know, 9 years ago, 8 years ago, whatever. So I keep screenshotting these posts that come up from, you know, a while back, like 8, 9 years ago. A lot of them are from when I was in grad school, which was a particularly hard time because I went to school. Sometimes my caseload or my credit, like my credit course load was full-time. And then I still taught. And during this time I had some really challenging students. I was still a younger teacher and then going to grad school and like doing my thesis and all this crazy stuff. And there are some hilarious Facebook posts from this time. And that's like when you used to post on Facebook, like not with pictures, like, cause it was before Instagram. And oh my God, you guys, I did crazy, crazy stuff. Like once I, or I left 3 pairs of gym shoes throughout like a 6-month period at the gym, just like forgot them there because I'd work out in the morning and just like leave my gym shoes. I once broke— I was like so stressed and rushing, broke my key in my door and locked myself out of my house. At a different season of life, I don't actually think it was during this period, but it was when I was starting to do consulting and traveling while still teaching, I left my car running, not even like my keys in my car, my car running outside on a busy street for like over an hour. Like, I couldn't find my keys. I was leaving this meeting like, where are my keys? Where are my keys? Oh, they were in my car because my car was running. I, oh my gosh, I just did like all kinds of crazy stuff. Like, my body was literally screaming at me. Like, my brain was like shutting down. Like, you are doing too much. You need time to yourself. You are burning out. And it was not a good look. Like, I was just kind of losing it. And I've shared this story also during a different season of a hard work-life balance time. And it wasn't because of grad school. It wasn't because of other outside things. I had a really, really hard caseload and that just wears on you. I had one student in particular that was extremely, extremely hard and I had hives every day, all night, at night, my whole legs, hives, scratching, scratching, scratching. Went to all these dermatologists, was like, "Oh my God, I have a dairy allergy. It's some kind of thing I'm allergic to." Different dermatologists told me the same thing. That it's stress. And I couldn't figure out how to like leave work at home and separate. And I talked about work all the time. And I could see, I talked about especially like the struggles I was having at work all the time. And I could see people checking out of conversations they were having with me. And I like didn't care. I just like had to talk about it all the time. I was like obsessed. Oh my God, Hannah left her car running. And that makes me feel better, Hannah. Not that like I want people to leave their car running in a parking lot, but at least I'm not alone. So that was really hard. Like, you know, your body, your body takes on stress too. So when you don't have a good work-life balance, your body tells you, and usually like in a big way, like you mentally start to lose it, you physically start to lose it, like stuff is not going well. So I feel like I'm in a better season of life on having work-life balance. It comes and goes, you know, you need to have some, you need to have some strategies in place. You have to, this is something you have to work towards. If this is not something that comes naturally to you, and I don't think it's necessarily something that comes naturally to a lot of people, especially when you care deeply about your job and you're passionate about your job. You want to do all the things and you just can't. So I think a lot of us fall into that category. We love our job, so we think more is better. I have to do everything, but that's not necessarily true. So that's where utilizing strategies and having like a little mini behavior plan for yourself important. So I'm going to kind of talk about some of the things I do. I'm going to share from this list because there's a ton of cool suggestions. I'd love you to drop in your suggestions of things that you have worked for you. Actually, before we do that, why don't you drop in your struggles or embarrassing moment? Hannah admitted that she's also left her car running. But you know, who's had— whose body has had a physical reaction to stress? Things like, you know, migraines or hives, or I sometimes run a low-grade fever when I'm really stressed. And I know my balance is off. Tina said, yeah, you get that. Your body tells me with like that summer cold at the end of the year, like I need to rest. So, or you start to just like forget things too. You know, sometimes it's not physical in your body. It's like a mental thing that you kind of start to lose it. So, you know, what, what kind of struggles or warning signs, maybe red flags, have you had? Heather said she made a cup of coffee with her Keurig and forgot to put the coffee cup in. I actually, I had this Facebook post came up recently too. I went to make coffee and didn't put water in the pot. So just like, you know, no coffee came out. So yeah, you start to like kind of lose it a little when your work-life balance is off. And that should be like the cue to you, like, okay, I've got to like figure out what's going on here. So a lot of these suggestions— actually, I'm just gonna jump into people's suggestions because I kind of wrote them in little sections and I'll kind of pop in with which things work for me. So a lot of your suggestions kind of fell in a few different categories. 1, scheduling. 2, boundaries. 3, self-care. And 4, organization. And these are a lot of things that I, that I do as well. So I thought these were awesome suggestions. So a lot of people shared ideas about scheduling and scheduling in like two components, like one, scheduling your self-care, like your time for you, scheduling your workouts, scheduling your nights to yourself. Like maybe you have to like go crazy with it and be like, I'm scheduling my night for Bravo TV and no one can interrupt me. And I'm not doing IPs and I'm not laminating, even though laminating while watching Bravo is very enjoyable. But what, you know, going through, you know, what do you need for yourself? And putting that in your schedule, because if you don't put it in your schedule, it might not happen. So you have to schedule that time for yourself, you know, first, and let everything else fill in. And that stuff should be non-negotiable. It's not like, "Oh, okay, I'll move it around." Like, "Nope, I've scheduled a date with my bed," or, "I've scheduled a date with my friends, my husband, my kids. That's what I'm doing." The other way you can look at scheduling is scheduling your work. So, you know, someone's had a great suggestion, pick one night a week that you're gonna stay late at work. If you're like a stay after school kind of person, pick one night a week that like Tuesdays is the day I stay, I get all my stuff done, I don't do it other days. So kind of scheduling when you're doing your IPs, when you're doing your lesson planning, when you're doing your prep work, so then you're not trying to fit it in in all these weird times, you have a plan. On a Sunday night, you're not like, oh crap, I should be doing stuff, you're like, Nope, I know I'm doing that Monday after school. I don't have to worry about it. The other big category that a lot of suggestions fall in, and this is where I really try to fit in as much like work-life balance strategies as I can, is our boundaries. And that's something that helped me a lot, especially times in my life like grad school or when I was, you know, blogging and traveling and consulting while teaching full-time, is setting really clear boundaries. Because for a while I had like no boundaries. Like I would come home from teaching all day, I would sit on my laptop till 10 PM, I would sit on my laptop all weekend, and I would do consulting calls and I would just say yes to everything. Instead, I started having to be like, there's things I have to say no to. And I need to set rules for myself. Like I'm a very rule-governed person. So I respond well to rules. So I have a lot of rules for myself now, like what days I can open my computer, what days I respond to emails, like If you follow me on Instagram, you probably notice on the weekends, I don't really Insta Story ever, because that's time where I really try to make it like with my family on those days. And I try to not respond to emails and not respond to DMs and not respond to messages because I want to, because I want to chat with all you guys. But I wait until Monday for all of that. So that's like a pretty strict rule I have for myself. So some people, some suggestions people had. Having a firm stop time on when you're done working, disconnecting your work email from your phone, which I think is such an awesome idea. Like, you know, you're not an ER doctor. You don't need to be responding to emails at 10 o'clock at night on a Tuesday. You just don't. Like, the email will be there tomorrow morning. The email will be there tomorrow in your prep. It's all good. And if you start responding at 10 PM, people are expecting you to respond at 10 PM and like I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm asleep at 10 PM. So disconnecting your work email from your phone, not bringing your work computer home, maybe. Gina had this great suggestion, which I did this as well, setting really clear expectations with your parents of your students on how to communicate with you and how you will be responding. So I know sometimes, you know, people have opinions on whether you give your personal cell phone number out or not. I know schools have rules on that. So whatever you are most comfortable with. But if you do give your personal cell phone number out, I definitely, definitely— I recommend, like, you should do this. You should give clear boundaries with your parents on when they can call and text. And then you've got to follow your own rules. If you say, I'm, you know, no calls or texts after 5:00 PM, if it's, you know, unless it's an emergency, if they text you a question about homework at 7:00 PM, don't respond. Don't respond. That's your time. You've set that expectation. Tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM, go ahead and text them and say, "Yeah, sorry I missed this, but at 7:00 PM, I don't respond." So that can feel hard, especially like, "Oh my God, a parent's reaching out to me about homework. That's so nice." And you might feel okay about it that Tuesday at 7:00. You're like, "I'm available. I'll do it. I'm right here." But what if it's like a Friday at 7:00? And what if it becomes every week? And what if you're in the middle of dinner with your family? And suddenly it snowballs. So you want to be really, you know, clear with your parents on when you're going to respond to calls, when you're going to respond to texts, and then follow your own rules. Because I see people setting the expectations a lot, but then not following through. So people are like, oh, well, they do respond to me, why not? Like, I'll just text them. So I think that's a great suggestion. And then a few of you said this too, is really utilizing your planning periods. And Holly did a really great post, and I will link it here later. I think it was even a year ago, maybe, where she makes a schedule and a little calendar for her planning periods, like before school, her prep period, and after school. And she writes in all the things she's doing. So like if she has an IEP, she'll like plug how long it'll take her to do those IEPs. If she has monthly planning, lesson planning, staff training, because so often, you know, if we're lucky enough to get that prep period, or we get to school early and we have time, you know, we kind of mess around. We're like, oh, let me check my email, let me check this, let me do this, like let me reorganize over here. And suddenly you're not doing the important stuff. So then it kind of, you know, you lose that time because you want to utilize every minute you have. I'm gonna go through and read some of these comments. Katie said delegating, and that is one of the most difficult things. It so is. And delegating makes work-life balance— oh my god, that's huge. That's why your team is there. Susan asked what we're talking about. So we're talking about tips for having good work-life balance. So strategies to kind of keep work at work, keep home at home, and not lead to The crazy bird act. Tina said, Friday evenings are off limits for me for work. My brain's fried. Fridays are reserved for my family. I don't cook. I don't want to think about anything. It's the one night I want my family to decide and do everything for me. That is such a great point, Tina, because it's like decision fatigue, right? Like you've made decisions all week about behavior plans and lesson plans and prompting and what to do and this and that and that. Like I get tired and drained. I am just making decisions, like even like you said, like a decision of like what to eat for dinner. It is like, you guys decide. I can't make any more decisions. So sometimes we do hit that wall of just like decision fatigue. We are like, I can't make any more decisions. Does anyone else feel that? I feel that a lot. Like, and then, you know, we flip out or get stressed over something as silly as like dinner or where to go get coffee. And you are like, I just can't, you know, make one more decision or I am going to lose it. So I think all these kind of suggestions under this category of boundaries are so helpful. And you know, what works for one person might not work for you. But think about, you know, work-life balance is something you struggle with, with where can you set boundaries for, you know, when, when is your time and when is family time and when is work done? Because that is really important. And how are you going to, you know, really be accountable? That was something else Yeah, that was in here. The last thing in here was having an accountability partner, like giving someone permission— your coworker, your colleague, your husband, your wife, your, you know, significant other, your roommate, your parent— giving someone permission to call you out. Like if you've decided, I'm not doing any work after 5 PM, or I'm not doing any schoolwork on Saturdays, or any, you know, thinking about work on on Friday nights. If that's what you've decided, tell someone that so they can call you out and say, like, when you pull out your laptop on a Friday night, like, what are you doing? Put that away. Like, you said no work on Friday nights. And I, you know, when I had to get really kind of serious about work-life balance the first time because I was like losing it, but the first one big moment that I really realized I had to cut back on what I was doing was when I was pregnant with my first daughter because it was no longer just about me. Like, I couldn't work till I made myself sick because I had a baby to grow. So my husband really likes calling me out on stuff. So he was very, very happy to be my accountability partner and, you know, literally close the laptop or like push the work away and be like, we're done. So, you know, a lot of our, our habits to kind of continue on once we get into one. So you might have to just reestablish those habits and those routines. Hannah needs to make dinner tonight. So if someone wants to make that decision for her, give her some ideas. The other category that a lot of your suggestions fell under was self-care. So with this idea of work-life balance, you know, the life part, like, what does the life part look like? And what's going to be a stress reliever? What's going to help you chill out? What's going to help you focus back on work? Like, what can you do for you? Like, And what self-care looks like for one person is gonna be totally different for another. You know, that could be meditating, could be working out, that could be having a hobby. It's just like totally unrelated to work, like you crochet or you play cards or whatever hobby you have, you decorate, you— whatever is enjoyable to you, you scrapbook. Having time for that and kind of going back to the scheduling, like scheduling that out, like I'm gonna do my fun hobby, I'm gonna go take a dance class, this time, these days and putting it in your calendar. Someone had a great suggestion of scheduling date nights, like solo date nights with their kids, which I love that idea, like having a date night just with one of your kids where you like go and get ice cream with them or go to the library on a weekday night and do something one-on-one with each of your children. Because when you have kids, the work-life balance thing becomes really hard because it's You know, it's work and your personal self-care, but also like your responsibilities as a parent too, and as a spouse. So scheduling in time for your kids, for your spouse, for, you know, important people in your life. And I think another big one that a lot of people brought up is finding support. So having people that you can go to, and like the right kind of people, like we all know there's friends for different like reasons, like you have the friend, like if you just want to bitch, like you just want to complain, there's like certain friends that are the perfect one for that. And then there's other friends that are like the problem-solving friend, and sometimes we're not ready to solve a problem, like we just want to complain about it. So kind of knowing which friends are going to be supportive in the right way. And I've talked about this on my podcast before, but you don't necessarily want— you maybe don't want this category of your support people. There's certain coworkers that you don't want in this category. So I've talked about this on the podcast before, but the idea here is if you're gonna sorry to use my bad words— bitch. If you're gonna complain, you want to bitch up. So you want to bitch to people above you, your admin, your AP, your special ed director. And you're not like bitching, you're— but you're complaining, you're venting, you're talking about how hard things are. You want to do that to the people above you, to your colleagues, to your team members, to people that you're managing. You don't want the culture of your team to just be like, we complain. That's what we do. You are the leader. So you want to make sure that when you engage in that venting behavior, it's not to your teammates. Like if you go to happy hour the last Friday of every month with your paraprofessionals and you spend the whole time complaining about how hard work is, you better believe on Monday when everyone shows up, no one is happy to be there. So you want to really think about your kind of support people and I just asked, are you watching my live right now, Emily? Emily asked, my friend asked what kind of friend she is. You fall in a lot of categories, Emily. So you want to, you know, think about if you're just complaining, who you're complaining to, and make sure you have like the right type of people to complain to. Because when you're the leader of a team, you can't be just like complaining to your team the whole time. And the last category that a lot of people suggest and spell in is organization. And this is something that because I'm so Type A helps me feel so less stressed and so more in, much more in control of my work-life balance is being organized. Someone had a really good suggestion on Insta Stories of at the end of every school day, they write their to-do list for the next day and leave it on their desk before they go. Because we feel off balance when we feel like we're not getting everything done. So if you can be organized of like, hey, these are the 4 things I need to accomplish today. And then you accomplish them, you feel productive. So often we feel unproductive because we have this like mysterious idea of like what we want to accomplish. Like, I feel like I didn't do enough. But you did do enough. You just didn't like track what you wanted to do. So, you know, having that to-do list, checking off, being really organized, establishing routines. Like, what are things you do every morning when you get to work? What are things you do at the end of every day? Like, that's why I love that to-do list idea. It's a routine. At the end of every day, I think about what I'm doing the next day and I leave and it's on my desk. So it's like a signal and a cue to your body and your brain that the workday is done. Like, we're done. I'm checking out. Like, let's go to the next day. So what routines can you have for being organized at work? But also what routines can you have for self-care? Like, I go work out every morning, or I wake up and I meditate, or at the end of the day after I put my kids to bed, I Watch Bravo. Like, what routines help you wind down and chill out? Tina said, on a serious note, I sought out a wiser older mentor to help me get through some tough times, and it really helps to calm myself down listening to their advice and expert opinion. I think that's awesome. So that's such a great suggestion, having, you know, a mentor that's been in the field longer that you're like, oh my gosh, they did it. I get it, like, you know, they, they've been through it too. So I think that's a really, really good suggestion on having kind of that older mentor that's been in the field longer and finding those people at work. And, you know, with kind of that going back to the idea of support, the person that, you know, you get support from at your school, maybe it's nice if they're not even in the special ed world. Like, maybe it's like the 4th grade teacher down the hallway or the gym teacher that you're friends with. So like someone that's just like a positive source, someone that's going to be kind of uplifting and funny or whatever you need that makes you feel better. Like, sometimes it's nice if they're not part of the special ed world and they don't get all the things, because then it becomes that one-upping and that complaining idea. Yes, someone else said they make a to-do list on their computer desktop. That's actually what I do. I make it on my computer desktop, things I want to do every day. I have like little, that Notes on the Mac, and I leave it on my desktop, things I want to do for the week and things I want to do for the day. And so then it's right there when you see it. It's like that reminder is really nice. So yeah, those were all of kind of in general. I summarized a lot of your suggestions because I had a lot, a lot of good tips. Some really, really good suggestions. But yeah, start, you know, drop in things that work for you. Drop in suggestions on what helps, you know, what you struggle with work-life balance because I think it's always really helpful Not that you want other people to be struggling, but it's helpful to know that other people are struggling with the same thing as you. Like when Hannah said she left her car running, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm not a crazy person. So, you know, drop in here later if you're watching this, you know, after it's done recording. Comment, you know, what things you struggled with or what the red flags for your work-life balance being off have been. And then also what things help you kind of overcome that. Like what, what strategies, what boundaries do you set, what self-care do you do? Because what works for you might work for someone else, and someone reading through this might be like, "Oh my gosh, that's amazing." So, you know, this is a community of people that wanna help, so let's help our colleagues and share some great ideas. Hope you all get some self-care tonight, have a little work-life balance. I'm sure something great is on. I've mentioned Bravo like a weird amount of times during this live, sorry. I just, that's like my self-care is trashy TV. But hopefully you find something relaxing to do tonight. I have, I'm gonna do some more of those little kind of impromptu Facebook Lives on, our 10 Quick Wins. If you haven't seen any of those, I've been going through my new free download of 10 Quick Wins for Behavior Change. I've been doing these like 2 or 3 minute little lives going through each step and I think we are on step number 5, I think. Yeah, I think we're on step number 5 or 6. So if you want all 10 of them, you can go to theautismhelper.com/1010wins and I'll be popping on here tomorrow to do a live on the 5th one, which is a fun one. Um, and so let me know what you're thinking of that. I'll talk to you guys later.