The Traveling Introvert

Hello and welcome to the Not So Travelling Introvert today I want to continue a conversation I started having actually at an event I was part of talking about work productivity, but more like how to relax and refresh and recharge at work and why so nearly 80% of work as a reporter to feel that they feel stressed at work and roughly half of them need help managing it and the other half just think that's the way it is and it doesn't have to be. Stressful. Environments do not breed positive productivity.

It hinders and store success and creativity, and your mind just doesn't work too well and de stress for long periods of time. So when you can't take a break or relax at work, you generally can't make the right decisions to perform.

At Ur best, you will always be underperforming, making it harder to focus on what matters and ultimately affecting your professional goals or tasks that you need to do. So one of the things I really recommend is recognise your triggers. Actively take notice of the things that are causing you stress, so it be obvious others not so much to have a notebook or a post it note. You can write a list so you can create a more personalised way to combat them when you're uncomfortable or you start to feel stressed.

Write it down.

You don't have to do anything then, but examine it later and it will help you better identify what is causing problems. This way you can make sure that you're doing the right actions to counteract those issues and those triggers and to make work that much better for you, speak up and establish your boundaries. You must speak up if things or people are taking advantage of your space and time. If the hours are too long or too many meetings back to back and the causing you to experience problems, speak to somebody about it to a manager.

Appear.

Find a solution. Honesty and establishing healthy work boundaries are essential for any positive relationship. Ensure you have an optimised workspace and I feel this one set up your environment and dash for success for you. You don't add items that get in your way or distract you. Add things that help you reach your work goals and be more efficient but also inspire you.

Do you like being at the beach? If so, can you get a tiny part of the sea and stick it in the wall in front of you? Do you want to remember how to get stuff done? So you have a little poster that says stuff and what to do? Yes.

No in the next step. So you just kind of look at it. Whatever it is that can optimise your workspace for you to work more efficiently or happier. Anything to make you happy. It could be a little stuffed toy, it could be a plant, it could be dual monitors, whatever it is.

See if you can get that set up for you and take short, quick breaks. Often take small five to ten minute breaks in between us and focus on your breathing and relaxing your muscles. Go for a short work around the office or your house or your building wherever it might be, go outside on a break or turn on some calming music or even just meditate for five minutes. Do something that completely distracts you from the noise or the chaos or the overwhelm and stress at work and reduces the tension.

However, don't rent to others.

This time should only be used to focus on you, your body and your mind because when you invite other people, you're not giving yourself a real break. And the other thing which is so much harder to do these days is keep work at work. You don't need to take your work stress home or do your home environment. When you're at home, you can do nothing about work issues until you get back to work. So why use that time to focus on negativity play music to separate the time when you're at work, to the time when you're at home.

I know someone who even though they work and you live in the same environment, they will make sure they get up and go walk around the block as their commute. Do something that that's your mind has a chance to separate. Oh, I'm going home now. I'm going to work now. Once the work is done, it's done and must stop thinking about it.

Don't have notifications on your phone, don't have pings on your computer, have a different computer or whatever it is. Using these tips to help you relax and disconnect a little bit at work more often and stop stress in its tracks will be great because it will help you long term before plagues plague you and stops you doing other things and it's something we kind of forget. Our brain is not made. We are not made to work for 8 hours straight. So why we forcing ourselves to do so?

You will find you will be more productive and creative if you just give yourself time to breathe and have a break. Thank you for listening. This is Janice at The Career Introvert com helping you build your brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.

This week's topics: Making extra time and having a research mindset

Are you not scheduling time to review and do tasks after meetings? 

Sometimes meetings require you to block out additional time after the meeting to review the slide deck or task for that meeting. 

Are you going about your work with a research mindset?

Doing so will eliminate the possibility of letting your assumptions guide how your work. Instead, when going about your work, confirm or research your assumptions. Sometimes you will find that what you believe to be true is not the case. 

Hello and welcome to the not so travelling introvert. Today, I want to talk about making extra time. So I was in a meeting the other day and it was the usual PowerPoint presentation with lots of hyperlinks embedded within the presentation and the presentation hadn't been hadn't been shared in advance. You didn't know what was going on and then the person is like, so doesn't have any questions. And I said, Well, you know me.

I'll look at the presentation later and then I'll get back to you. Only then did I realise that I've said this multiple times and not actually done that thing. I always mean to go back and look at whatever was presented, but I don't actually schedule time to do it because other things. Ok. The reason isn't because other things getting the way.

But I just go about my day and continue doing other things. I very rarely go back and do and look over the things that I said I was going to do. This leads me to realise that not only do I have to schedule in time for these meetings, but depending on the type of meeting, if I can't convince them to share their screen or the slide deck earlier is to set aside time. What I'm in that meeting to review said slide deck, and I can't believe I've been working all this time and haven't done this.

It's amazing when you think of random things.

That is one way to make sure that I go ahead and move you the information and get what I need from it and come back. So decide time only for the meeting, but we view the meeting afterwards. Another thing that I've realised is some people go about their work with a research mindset and I think this comes across with this, you know, going ahead and reviewing that information, everything that they do or see or try is a data point to be put aside and come back to later or built upon having a research mindset like the growth mindset thing but sort of approaching projects, tasks, assumptions with.

Okay, I'm going to try this to see if it works or what I need to tweak or what I need to reiterate or iterate having that research and curious mindset stop you from making assumptions and moving forward with those assumptions, speaking to a client the other day about pay rates for their staff and they're very much like all they get paid this and then I get paid that and then as far as I know, they get this and I'm sure they get the paid X, Y and Z after this point and we have the conversation where was like, well, actually, I've spoken to your staff and they get paid this and then this which isn't the number that you gave me.

And that doesn't happen at the time.

You told me she's like, Wait, what? But I assumed it seeshe's like, oh, well, I'm going to have to research into this. So after making the assumption, she's now going back and researching what she thought was true in her assumptions, which could have been avoided. If, instead of making this options, you go from a research mindset. Hey, I want to double cheque that this is true.

I want to make sure I got this right. Just because this book sets, though, doesn't make it right. I highly recommend thinking about your work and your assumptions and projects, and that sort of thing with a research mindset. Just think about it from a curiosity standpoint. Oh, what happens if this what happens?

If that I think this happens? Does that actually happen? Let me cheque. Let me ask someone. Let me test.

You will be amazed at what you will find if you come to something with that time of a mindset. And if you feel you struggle with that crowd source, I had a problem recently. Not a problem. I had a thing come recently that I really had no clue about. I asked three or four different people who all gave me three or four different pieces of advice, but all together made this wonderful thing hopefully happened.

And it all came from different angles. Different viewpoints, different expectations, different things that they had seen and heard. But that helped me learn so much. And so when I was creating this thing that I needed to help with, that nothing about. I came at it from a research point of view.

I'm getting data points to help with that. So just my thoughts today. Talk about research. Thank you for listening.

Have a great rest of your day.

It’s easy to feel guilty, want to avoid conflict, or simply make other people feel good. However, you can’t consume your whole life on how other people react, nor should you stress about other people’s happiness. Your happiness is more important. In fact, saying no more often is crucial to accomplishing your goals and aspirations.

“No” Is Not Always Negative

Behind every no, there is also a yes. To explain further, when you say no, you are also saying yes to another opportunity that can better serve your life. Just because you are saying no doesn’t mean it is the end of the world. Saying no means that you are committed to your values and goals in life. If you always say yes without considering everyone, the sad truth is, you will always be living someone else’s life.

Stick to And Establish Your Boundaries

The only person you are responsible for is yourself, and you can’t expect others to know what you need if you don’t speak up. Practice assertive communication, always speak up about your boundaries, and not be afraid to let others know. If they can’t respect your boundaries, you don’t need them in your life. They will only hold you back.

Find the Right Words

You don’t have just to say “no.” There are other ways to let others know you can’t do it. Suggest an alternative or provide an apparent reason why you can’t do it. Let them know it doesn’t work with your schedule or objectives: the more communication you can provide, the better.

Take the Person Out of It

In other words, you are not saying no to the person asking; you are simply saying no to the activities you want to do. Often people don’t want to say no because they are afraid to offend the person; however, not being fully honest with yourself isn’t fair to them either. Instead, realize that it isn’t about the person but rather what they asked for. More likely than not, they will understand why you are respectively declining their request.

Strive to Be More Authentic

If you are always saying yes to people or activities that you don’t enjoy, you will never live the life you want. Even if you're going to avoid conflict, you can easily create more by being dishonest with yourself and the people around you. A vague yes versus a firm no can be seen as more harmful as your lack of commitment and poor attitude are noticeable.

In the end, saying no allows you to control your life and accomplish more goals. It is not about making others feel unwanted or being rude. It’s about ensuring you are using your time more wisely and following the path you want. Once you find the balance that works for you, you’ll never regret taking control of your life.

Controlling your emotions or possessing proper emotional intelligence is vital for a successful life. Feelings, along with rational thoughts, ensure you get what you need out of life financially, physically, and mentally. This is essential to understand your emotions and improve or possess emotional intelligence. The following five tips, when implemented, will improve your emotional intelligence:

Recognize Your Good and Bad Emotions

When you feel a particular emotion, recognize and label it right away. Don't push it away or ignore it. Allow the feelings to happen, good or bad. Let them rush over you. Then take a moment to recognize how it makes you feel and what reactions you took or want to take. To understand your emotions better, you need to experience them first, not avoid them.

Identify Your Triggers

A trigger is something that starts or causes you to react and experience an emotion or feeling. Before you feel something, there is likely a cause or culprit. Take note of the cause, how it makes you feel, and what actions you take now. This is important so you can learn to control your emotions before they happen. If you know that you will be around a particular trigger, you can bring resources to cope or avoid it altogether.

Understand the Difference Between Responding and Reacting

Often people tend to react to conflict instead of responding to it. This situation can lead to further consequences. These reactions don't benefit the situation. Learn to take the time to listen and then respond instead of reacting.

Receiving criticism from a peer or manager is often an excellent example of this type of situation. Imagine the last time you received constructive criticism. Did you take the time to listen to what they had to say genuinely, or did you feel attacked and react?

Utilize Active Listening Skills

This includes your own thoughts before you express them to others. If you have difficulty processing, your emotions pause for a moment instead. Reflect on your behavior and truly analyze what is being said by others and yourself. "Think before you speak" is an all-too-common phrase that is just as easy to avoid as it sounds. It takes determination and will power to control this behavior.

Be Mindful of Your Actions

Last but certainly not least, you must practice self-awareness and mindfulness. You need to understand your actions or lack thereof can have a negative or positive consequence at any moment. With this in mind, you won't allow your emotions to overcome or control the situations. Instead, you will likely choose a rational solution or make a good decision.

Keep track of each of these tips by investing and writing in a journal or diary. By keeping track, you allow yourself to look back on your progress, and seeing that proof can help you find the motivation to keep growing and improving. You have more control of your emotions than you think, if you keep trying and doing the work necessary to understand yourself truly.

I want to talk about self assessment or that can other both be sort as self view or a retrospective. This is something that this came  up recently with the clients that I work with, but also just myself. I'm very good at planning. I say that I'm fairly good at planning most of the time, but very, rarely do I take the time to review and look back and see what you know, what has happened and how it's happened and maybe reasoning why.

So I've all these data points, but I'm not really using them to the to you know, how I could improve things for myself on my business. And so some of my clients and now started doing retrospectives from products that they've done. But here's the thing about doing sort of self assessments or your views. It helps you to be honest and open and ask yourself challenging questions and the reason why you want to do this so you can learn. It's not just for you to do a workplace on annual sort of review to get a promotion or anything like that.

It's a great strategy to use on yourself yearly, monthly, weekly, whatever sort of time period feels right for you to ensure you are on the right path for your idea of success. Just think about it for if you never got the opportunity to reflect new abilities and mistakes and what you want in life, you know, how does that really affect when you're going? How would you know if you're making the right decision to ensure the future is the way that you want it to be see you at some time.

And one of the things you should do, especially if you do this weekly, is what is one thing is a question I should say, what is one thing that I struggled with this week? And the more often you ask yourself that question, the easier it will become, because sometimes you don't want to admit that you've struggled with anything like that.

Everything this week was fine. But the more that you ask yourself and you're like, okay, well, today I struggled or this week I struggled with getting spending time in myself or setting boundaries or whatever it might be. Then the next question from that is sort of OK, well, how can I make sure that doesn't happen again, or what can I do to improve my chances of it not happening again? And so that gives you the actionable steps to take that will help make your life better in the long run.

Another question could be what negative is emotions?

Have I experienced this week day, month, whatever it is and why this will help you figure out maybe certain aspects of certain situations that start these emotions and set them off? Another question you could ask yourself is, what change can I make right now to get me closer to my goals. You might have three or four different types of goals, but it could be what can I change right now that will get me closer to my self care goals or what can I change right now? That will make me do X, Y and Z.

And when you think about what that change is, then go ahead and put it in your calendar, but it can note of it to make that change and go ahead and do it right then and then document and keep track, keeping track of your progress and achievements.

Failures in most challenges and rewards. These are all essential for you to look back and be like, oh, I felt this at this time. I didn't realise that it's probably because of this, this and this. Oh, all right. So I should avoid it in the future because of this.

This or this helped me grow. Or this helped me change this or this is why I ended up doing this particular thing and not the other. Take the time to be proud of yourself. Brag on yourself. A little self evaluation or reflection isn't just about the bad stuff.

You should also the good stuff, too. And it's not about comparing. It's not about a competition. It's just making sure that you're aligned in what you want to do and making yourself better, incrementally, bit by bit. It's a great thing.

Also learn forgiveness and be more mindful be forgiving to yourself realise that you are human. And yes, you will make mistakes, and that's okay. But dwelling on them instead of forgiving yourself and taking action is really where you will fail and stay sort of trapped and not move forward and to make sure that you do take the time to put like, yes, this happened. Yes, it wasn't quite what I wanted. This is what I've learned from it.

This is what I'll do. Moving forward to this happen again. Now move on forgiving yourself and realising your human is key and also part of that is that the thinking about it because making a mistake might be lead to negative thinking. Failure isn't a negative. There's a positive, positive side to it, but yes, go ahead and ask yourself those questions today and then maybe do it once a week whenever you listen to this podcast.

Thank you for listening. This is Janice at the Cure. Introvert. Com. Helping you build your brand and get hired.

Have a great rest of your week.

I realize that this is possibly a topic I haven't gone over whenever I am working with new contractors to taking on new staff. One of my go to questions always is, what does introversion mean to you? Because as we know, there's a lot of misinformation out there and I wanted to just talk about some of the things that people say when I ask them what introversion means to them, bearing in mind what I do and where they find me, where they hear my name.

So one person said to me, Introversion means being more comfortable, either alone or in smaller crowds, are not expressing ideas and thoughts outside of an inner circle. So I found this really interesting, that the thought process there wasn't necessarily about being aloof, it was just setting boundaries and knowing that very comfortable with a smaller group of people, people you trust and telling them about stuff which was interesting. And someone else said it's being shy and possibly not being able to or wanting to express oneself, always wanting to be alone and indoors.

And I think they're not being able or wanting to express oneself could come from, yes, quite happy to express oneself, but get shot down by extra first or by other people or in general, what needing the right time or to think about something before expressing oneself which can come across as hesitancy. Then someone said, introversion for me means a lack of confidence.

Okay, I wanted to delve a little bit deeper into that and asked, Why does introversion mean a lack of confidence? And they're very much like, well, if you're not outgoing and bubbly, it means that you are not confident in your abilities or what you want to do. So there's that juxtaposition there. You have to be seen as outgoing and bubbly to be sure of yourself. And that's not necessarily true.

A lot of people who are sure of themselves, whether they are introverts or extroverts, might not be out there or the time they're just cracking on and doing their thing. This next statement was really interesting. It was an internet is a person who is shy and not able to convey their ideas to the world in a convincing manner. So it's not what you say, but how you say it according to this person makes an introvert an introvert, which is really fascinating. And someone mentioned introversion to them was focusing about how they handle emotions with their mind.

So when I delve a little bit deeper to them, being an introvert or an extrovert was all a mind game kind of a thing like you could get out of your comfort zone if you really wanted to, sort of a thing, which was fascinating. Now I'm going to move on to introverts that I've spoken to and what they feel introverts or introversion is. So someone said, as an introvert to me, it means only being able to handle groups of people for so long. I require time to recharge alone.

I prefer to be more alone than with others, which makes it hard for us to start businesses and brand.

Pitching to others about what we can do is draining someone else mentioned as an inert myself. I like to describe it as having my own bubble. It means knowing oneself, having a safe space to be alone with my own thoughts and feelings, and having the power to decide if and when I want to participate in what's going on on the other side. I love that she's happy with what they've got and she feels empowered, which is wonderful. Someone mentioned that I'm an introvert all the way, and to me it means that I want to recharge, and I do this by spending time alone with self care and meditation or just downtime helped with that.

I process things internally first and think about them before answering, and I love this statement. For me, introversion means having a calf and exciting world inside one's own thoughts. It is found that really, really fun, and there's nothing negative there that introverts said about themselves, which is really interested that it all comes from people who might see themselves as being more extroverted. So dear Listener, I'd love for you to email me and let me know. What does introversion mean to you?

Email me at Janice at the current overt com helping you build your brand and get hired, and I guess I should finish with to me for me, for me and my introversion, it means where I get my energy from how I recharge. I am occasionally shy, but generally it's me figuring out for like you are not an on going from there, but yeah, how I get managing how I recharge, and it's an ongoing learning journey and process. All right. Thank you for listening. Has a great rest of your week.

Today I want to talk about the difference between energy management versus time management. What I've found that working with my clients is so many so often they're trying to manage their time, which is great. All the projects and all the things that you have to do and figuring out what goes and what bucket and using line of house matrix or, you know, using get stuff done, flow whatever it needs to do. And that time management.

And they kind of forget that as an introvert, energy management is just as important. You've likely heard the old adage that life is a marathon, not a sprint. So if you're trying to manage your time effectively, but you are not paying attention to your energy management, you might end up with like sprints and sprints and sprints rather than like a long, sustained marathon, and that it could be fine if that works for you. But more than likely, it's better for you to do something in a sustainable manner than it is to sprint, get stuff done, burn out, have to stop for however long, and then sprint burn out and then stop for however long.

So experts are always saying about productivity and productivity can mean very different things to different people, and productivity and success have more to do with how you manage your energy than it does with time management.

And so many people try to do everything to give us more time, because time is like one thing that we only have a certain amount of, but thinking about staying healthy, eating healthy, spending time, doing things and connecting and all of those sort of things. This a time we don't necessarily schedule in time for energy management. Right? And so we normally scheduling all the things that we have to do. But whether we have the energy to do all of those things, it's a problem that is often overlooked.

Trying to adhere to a certain time to manage everything can leave us feeling exhausted, so we're not even able to relax and enjoy ourselves when we've scheduled at the time for it. So an alternative to managing your time or can be used in conjunction with managing your time is to manage your energy effectively, and it works by taking time for recovering from those sprints so you can make it to the end of the moth and so to speak. So here are some things that I found with my clients work work well for managing your energy, and these are some of the things I've talked about previously, like learning how to recharge what you need to do to recharge yourself.

Make a list of what makes you feel refreshed, more creative, lift your mood, feels rejuvenated all of those things. Write them down and will help to remind you about the benefits of these particularly uplifting activities.

For example, watching a great series or show that you follow on TV, sipping a cup of tea and listening to music can be very rejuvenating to your energy levels, and they can go on and do something else. Doubling the time you usually take for breaks. Don't get to a timetable when it comes through vibing your energy level. Take that hour instead of a half an hour and have fun with whatever you're doing. You might have a schedule that, you know, I'm going to have the study minute break, and I'm going to go do something else.

But if you get to the end of the study minute break and you still don't feel quite Rejuven idea enough, take that extra time. And as the time with so concerned about having time to do stuff that we never scheduled enough time to not do stuff and then reward yourself for every goal reached. If you have lots of projects and it seems like you'll never finish them to be able to relax and enjoy yourself, break those projects down into parts and reward yourself. After that, you complete each one.

And rather than waiting to the entire huge project is finished, make sure you sit frequent recovery stops with those so that while you're doing that sprint, you may stop, take a break, rejuvenate, and then start again.

Do it. You'll feel so much more like completing everything when you and you'll be happier at the end. Managing your energy is a much more effective way to get through life rather than putting time limits on making schedules for everything. Your energy thermos that doesn't pay attention to the timetable you've created. Instead, make your energy the most important factor while you are going through life.

Thank you. This is janice from the career introvert helping you build your brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.

today I'm going to talk about not doing something, I find that not doing something is the hardest thing of all to not do, to do. Not sure which way I'm not supposed to go. There's times where you might have a lot going on. You keep busy. Things are coming at you left, right and centre. You just want to go, go, go, go, go all the time and you might lose focus of what your overall goals and mission is because you're just kind of stuck in the weeds taking five minutes to just not do anything and look at a piece of paper.

Maybe that's on the wall or on your your board that says whatever it is you're famous for the year or the week or month or whatever it is, and be like, OK, well, the things my doing today or in this next hour that are working towards that goal or are in line with that mission is everything that I'm doing towards that yes or no. Also not doing something is really helpful when setting boundaries. For example, I have been known to not be good at setting boundaries with clients and if something is urgent or I know that other people are depending on me or I know that it's urgent for somebody else, I will probably go out of my way to work hours that are not paid for or do work in times that I would not normally work.

And so it's really hard to not just automatically default into that, but you need to remember that it works both ways. And if they are not willing to do the same, then you really shouldn't be. And it's not setting healthy boundaries for yourself. So not doing something. For example, this weekend I saw two emails come in to my business email address, and my first thought was to, oh, I know this is really urgent and this needs doing, but at the same time me stopping and thinking and being like, what kind of expectations am I sitting if I now go and respond to these emails on a Saturday night, on a Sunday mid afternoon?

And is that how I want to be moving forward? Is that the impression I want them to have and I setting myself up for failure because they're just going to keep doing that. And to be fair, I have lost clients because of this. I know previous clients have gone on and hired other people who would be more flexible, but that's not what works for me. I can't remember for the longest time when I have had a two day weekend and I'm still working towards that.

So and with that, it's doing nothing because I could have a two day weekend, but what else would I fill it with? And that's normally my first thought is OK, well, so now I have this time what can I fill it with? But if I just take a second and do nothing, then my brain gets time to process, my body gets time to relax and repair itself and life goes on. Other times when it's good to do nothing is when you get an email and and it invokes a reaction and emotional reaction.

You might want to fire off an email straight away, be it happy or sad or angry. But I can almost guarantee you that it is better to do nothing for at least five minutes. You could write that email, you could journal about that thing, but do not send a response email in that time. Just do nothing, sit with it, think about it, think about it from that other person's point of view. Think about how you were communicating.

What you are communicating in the right way was the information that you are missing. Maybe you won't play it, but just stop and do nothing. And it is the hardest thing because in this day and age we are primed to be always doing something. Even if we're sitting still on board, we're scrolling through our phones on Facebook or Instagram or Reddit or whatever it is doing. Nothing is almost harder than doing all the things and all the hustle. So if you can at least once a day just sit and do nothing.

Thanks for listening. This is Janice from The Career Introvert, helping you build your brand, get hard and do nothing. That doesn't quite sound right, does it? All right. It's been great speaking to you, looking forward to the rest of the week. If you have any questions for me, please email me at Jannis at The Career Introvert dot com. Have a great rest of your week.

today I want to talk about something that happens a lot with some of my clients. They confuse a plan with a to do list. And so I want to talk about how these things are completely different. A to do list is basically a list of tasks that you want to do during the day, the week, the month, the year, etc.. Plan is what's the plan? OK, so this is what a plan could look like.

10 a.m. wake up 10 a.m. to 10, 30, some sort of loose morning routine, 10, 30 till one deep work, one o'clock. There's going to be breakfast probably in there somewhere, but it might be part of your morning routine, one o'clock till to go to the gym or sort of meditate or do something that is a self development wise, two to five more deep work. All right. So what I'm trying to show that is that a plan doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the tasks that you'll do during the day.

And I have a rough idea, but not necessarily. So you set the intention during the time frame, your work on your business or your career or your job or whatever it might be. The point is to include in your plan or the kind of activities that you want to do throughout the day, but not necessarily exact specific things. Because here's the thing. As an introvert, your time is precious. As a human, your time is precious for making sure that you have enough time to do the things that you want to do and get recharged in the way that works for you is really important.

So you must guard your time wisely. And a plan, of course, can include non-work activities, i.e. recharge time. That's why it's called a plan. Doing something for yourself, doing something for yourself, like I said, meditating or anything of that nature. That is OK, because it's something that you need to do for yourself. And it shouldn't cause guilt. It should be intentional and not just sort of like, oh, fit that in somewhere.

Right. If you don't have a plan and you will let yourself become sort of susceptible to wasting time and being distracted and procrastinating or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you need to set out like a carved out time. Some people call this time blocking. Some people call this planning whatever wording you want to use, but your time must be guarded and protected. The way you use your time should be aligned with your values. So some of the things to consider are sort of what are your values?

Who do you want to be? What do you want to do, where you want to get to? And it's really interesting that you just need to take ten minutes per day, probably before you go to sleep or at the end of your workday to map out a plan for the next day. But it is not a list of to do items. You can block out time. That's deep work. And then you go and look in your list of things that I need to work on and then work on those things.

During your deep work time, the plan is to do deep work. The to do list is to do deep work on marketing and then deep work on client work. I'm in deep work on something else. You see the difference between the plan and the to do list. The plan is all about you and protecting what you need to do and making sure that your life and day works for you. The to do list is more along the lines of stuff you do for others or the individual tasks that you do to complete your overall plan.

So don't be confused with the two. So many people are like, yeah, I have a plan, I have this like to do list of stuff to do. No, you have a to do list, which is great. It's great to have to do it, but it is not a plan. So that's something for you to think about. And again, God, your time, how you God, your time is really important moving forward, because a lot of the time we let other influences and outside influences push us into doing different things with our time.

But as an introvert, we need our time to recharge. We need our time to regroup, to help us be better humans. And so, God, your time wisely by creating plans with time blocks, with what you're going to do moving forward and then go from there, take some time to make a plan, a plan in order to do list. Thanks for listening. This is [email protected] helping you build your brand and get hired. If you have any questions or topics that you want me to cover during the podcast, please email me at [email protected].

The Confort speaking to you next week and have a great rest of your day.

still today I want to talk about days off. This came about because I was talking with a friend and we assume when people take time off work that it is full recharge and fun reasons. And let's be honest, it's not always the case. And when you come back to work, people like, oh, he must be now well rested after that time off. You took time off work.

Yes, that may be the case. But if you look at the last year, a lot of people have taken time off for funerals. A lot of people have taken time off for mental health. A lot of people have taken time off to deal with whatever it is they're dealing with. It might be you need to put down an animal. It might be you need to look after grandma. It might be the plumber's coming and you have to take the time off work.

So we were talking about how it would be great if there was a different way. There's two things. There's one is a different way of calling time off when you're doing something that isn't fun or recharging. And the other flipside of that is how to deal with people, how to change people's assumptions. That time off is always a vacation or holiday or recharging and or fun without because you might not want to tell people why you're taking time off. If you're going to put your cat down, for example, you might not want people bring it up.

You might not want people going, oh, I'm so sorry about all of this other stuff. You might just want to get back to work and work. But at the same time, when they're like, oh, what did you do on your day off? You don't want to say so how do you deal with that and how do we get around calling? Time off. Time off? Yes, it might be time off from work, but that doesn't mean that you might not be not thinking about work.

Maybe you are seeing the emails pile up and it is stressful. Maybe you get a phone call from work and it is stressful or WhatsApp message or whatever method of communication it is. How do you let people know that there are boundaries with the time off? Yes, you are taking time off from this thing, but it doesn't mean that you are coming back refreshed all the time. I know there is no well, I mean, there might be a right answer.

I do not know it. So if you have any ideas, please feel free to email me. But it's a very interesting thing to think about how we use time off, what the expectations are for time off and people's assumptions with time off. I know that there is definitely the idea that people shouldn't be asking you why you're taking time off. You just taking time off and that's that. Managers, CEOs, supervisors should not be asking you why you're taking time off and in all honesty, should not be making comments about, oh, this is the second Friday you've had off in two months or whatever it might be.

You might be taking an exam, you might be applying for another job, whatever it is, the reason you are taking time from not doing work should not be up for discussion in general. And then the other part of this conversation was the work that's left behind when you know in advance that you're going to take time off, even if it's one day, sometimes you might find yourself working weekends or working extra time that week to make up for the time off that you have not been at work.

And so does that make your time off enjoyable or not? Because the rest of the time is spent stressing around that one day off or two days off that you will not be around at work. How do you balance the workload? How do you make sure everything gets done and people know what's going on and you don't come back to a train wreck yet? Enjoy that time. Because what tends to happen is if you have like, you know that you're going to take one day, you're not going to be at work.

You tend to front stack all your other work on the other days. You're not going to be there. And so you end up working more anyway. And so then is that day off? Was it because then you just playing catch up and all recovery and not necessarily enjoying it is something that you need to enjoy while having the headspace to deal with that time off when you are not at work. I know. I just find this very fascinating and I would love to hear people's thoughts about this because it's all about mental health, physical health and how the work life balance is that even a thing anymore is lines are blurred.

Anyway, thanks for listening. We'd love to hear from you. Please email me at [email protected]. This is Janice from The Career Introvert. How can you build your brand and get hired? Looking forward to speaking to you next week. Have a great rest of your week.