Episode Transcript

Sean Sebring:

Welcome to SolarWinds TechPod. I’m your host, Sean Sebring, and joining me is my co-host, Chrystal Taylor. Today, we’re going to do a bit of an evergreen episode and just chat back and forth about work-life balance. One of the things that made us want to talk about this is Chrystal and I were both lucky enough to have just taken a sabbatical, and yours was before mine, so Chrystal, why don’t you take us away, talk about that and how it gave you some perspective on work-life balance.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah. First, I want to say thank you to SolarWinds for offering such a great benefit. I don’t think that that’s a benefit that you get at most companies. It’s the first company I’ve ever worked for that offers a sabbatical. And more companies should think about doing it, and I’ll tell you why, because I think that it is easily the most refreshed I’ve felt coming back from it, and also, we talked about this, didn’t want to come back from. It has nothing to do with where we work or anything, just it was so nice to be away and fully unplugged from work. I didn’t think about work at all the whole time I was gone. I was just like all of this, I have roughly a month off, I’m going to use it to visit my family and hang out with my son. It was summertime for him when I went on sabbatical, so he wasn’t in school, we were just getting to hang out, play games together, go visit people, go do things, and it was really nice to not think about work at all for almost a month.

I did have one thing happen that I had to deal with before I came back, but it was right before I came back. And I think that it’s just so nice to be able to fully unplug. I’ve written about this before, and I think it’s important to talk about, is that burnout is so real, and not just burnout from work, but burnout from being terminally online and attached to not just work, but we work in technology, so we’re always hearing about new things, you read stories on new technology, you think about how you can apply it and it bleeds over into the rest of your life. I have, I’m sure you have, been in a situation where you dream about something that’s happening at work, it has invaded your subconscious to a level, and that’s probably not the healthiest thing for you.

And being able to take the time away and just focus completely on anything else was huge, and getting to travel, take my son somewhere international for the first time, we went to a different country, just experiencing the world, which if you have kids at all, listeners, I will tell you, there is almost nothing more fun than getting to watch them experience the world. It makes me feel like I’m experiencing it again for the first time. We went to Ireland, and I hadn’t been to Ireland before either, and so it was just a lovely first time experiencing the world, getting to touch grass, as it were, for weeks, just be in the world and not worry about work and not worry about stuff that’s happening online and not worry about what’s going on in technology right now, and I fully recommend it.

Sean Sebring:

I agree so much. I’ll talk about the sabbatical in a second here too, but I just remembered something one of my mentors told me at one point, and that is, especially in leadership, is take your time off, especially in leadership, because if you don’t take time off, you’re setting the example that others probably shouldn’t take time off if you don’t. So lead by example, take the time off.

But even when we take time off, and this is where I’m going to bring in the sabbatical, even when we take time off, I’ve found that I still have work hanging there just in the back, and it’s, again, not work’s fault, it’s my fault, or maybe I’ve just been working as an adult for so long, I compartmentalize it and keep it there just in case, we’re always trying to kind of think about it. But when the sabbatical came up, I was like, what is a sabbatical? I really wanted to try and appreciate it for what it was. And so, I told myself before I took it, I was like, look, you’re really going to unplug. I don’t have work stuff on my phone even when I’m working, so I try to think that when “5:00”, quote-unquote, rolls around, I am clocked out.

But for the sabbatical, I really did tell myself, I was like, you’re not going to think about work, don’t let anything work-related happen. I won’t say I didn’t think about bills, but I tried to think about anything that was responsibility-related… Of course, my kids are still my responsibility, that’s fine too. But any of the societal things, I tried to let it all go. In the first week, it was really tough, because I would think about it for a second, and I’d be like, no, stop, stop, stop. I had to convince myself it was okay. And then, as it started to progress, I knew the date was coming up, but I told myself, still pretend there’s nothing after that date still, so that way, you’re trying to immerse and appreciate what is it like. And I’ll tell you what, it was, as you said, so refreshing.

It was so weird, because I’ve had a month off before, when my son was born, when my daughter was born, but I let work stay there in the back and I treated it as a break to spend time with the family, of course, but this was so different. And I’ll tell you what it taught me is next time I have a week or two weeks off, I’m going to do my best to treat it the same and completely unplug, because it made the time more appreciated and the perspective was just so nice.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah. You hit on a couple of things that I want to talk about. One is that you don’t have work stuff on your phone, and I also am the same way, I think it’s so important for creating those boundaries, not just during your sabbatical or your time off, but also for when you’re not clocked in.

Sean Sebring:

Yeah, just at home.

Chrystal Taylor:

Unless you work in emergency response or something, there is not… There’s a lot of roles where there’s nothing is happening. Actually, this just made me think of something else, I just sidetracked my own self. I’ve been talking to my brother a lot recently about his job, because he’s exploring going and doing something else, and so we’ve been talking a lot about work, and one of the things that he finds really interesting, and partly this is because he was in the Marine Corps for so long, is that sense of urgency and alarm and stress that people get from a desk job, and he’s like, “I just don’t have that, and I think that’s because I’ve been in a job that’s literally emergencies are happening all the time, and so the stressors for me at a desk job are like whatever, I just don’t care.” I think that that’s a fair point though, is that we, our own minds and anxieties, create these situations for us where we make things urgent and alarming, and it can be very hard to separate a true emergency from what we’re making into an emergency.

I think that it’s really important for us to try and take a step back and get perspective. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I get talked to a lot at work by my coworkers, and they say things like, “I don’t know how you do it,” because literally, I compartmentalize just very well, I think is the answer to that. But my desk that I sit at right now, and I recently did a tour of my gaming PC for Video Game Day, there’s a YouTube video out there that shows my desk. My work desk and my play desk are the same desk, I use the same peripherals, I sit at the same desk, I don’t even change chairs when I log off at the end of the day, I just move to my other computer and I start playing games, I literally just completely ignore the right side of my desk.

And that is not something, I don’t think, that a lot of people can do. People have that complaint a lot about, oh, the same four walls, there’s a lot of people that want to work in an office, for example, because it gets them out of the house, it gets them around other people, it gets different perspectives, and I don’t have that mentality. I like going to an office sometimes, but I find often that I don’t get the same things out of it. I can’t focus in an office environment anymore. I’ve been ruined by working from home, I will tell you that right now, I cannot focus properly in an office environment, there’s so many distractions. And it makes me feel like I have ADHD or something while I’m at an office, because everything is like, ooh, shiny, something’s happening, and I’ve never been diagnosed and I have no idea if I have ADHD. Every time I see memes, I’m like, maybe, but I don’t know.

Sean Sebring:

Maybe.

Chrystal Taylor:

Maybe. But I think the point that I’m trying to make here is that we create, in our own minds, in our daily working environment, senses of urgency and stressors and all of that, and partly it is external, other people also create that sense of urgency. How often have you been working on something, and someone else is now freaking out because they’re not going to hit their deadline or it’s the end of the month and so this sale has to go through or whatever, there’s some sense of urgency that’s been falsely created, and your brain has been tricked into thinking that you’re in a fight or flight situation, and so you’re like, I’ve got to get stuff done, and then you start thinking about it and stressing about it.

I’m not going to say I don’t have work stress, because I do, but I think that these breaks and taking breaks at the end of your day of, I’m not plugged into work, I don’t have work things on my phone, I don’t do work things on the weekends. We’ve got Teams chats that people are active in all weekend long. We are primarily a Monday through Friday kind of workplace, we don’t have to work on the weekends or nights, and people are in there talking about whatever, they’re talking about AI or they’re talking about things and they’re talking about work things and how they can best apply it to things that they’re doing and whatever. And I’m just like, hmm, couldn’t be me. I see it on Monday mornings and I’m like, absolutely not, don’t talk to me, don’t talk to me outside of work.

Sean Sebring:

No, it’s tricky. I’ll tell you, after I moved to Ireland, we’ve got a great culture community here, and there are a few of those. So when we say work, I mean the work stuff too. I’m not in those Teams channels. Well, I guess I am, I don’t check them on the weekend. Instead, we move stuff to WhatsApp if we’re going to do something outside of work. But it’s okay to conversate with work people, as long as it’s not about the work, so there’s a little distinction there-

Chrystal Taylor:

Encouraged, I’d say.

Sean Sebring:

… just from this perspective. Say again?

Chrystal Taylor:

It’s encouraged, I would say, to talk about not work stuff, learn things about the people you work with.

Sean Sebring:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, one of the things I’ve loved about having moved here is the office, it’s so fun going in. I sit next to some of the funniest people. I swear, sometimes I go in and my cheeks are sore by the end of the day from just laughing and smiling, so the people can definitely make it great. I also agree that I’m spoiled with remote work, I really appreciate it. And, to the point I was just making, if I’m spending the whole day laughing and chatting, I’m not getting work done sometimes, so I can be far more productive at home. One thing I’ve loved about having moved here, again, is my boss told me a phrase, he says, “Sometimes in the US, we get caught up because we live to work, and in Ireland, they just work to live.” And so, at work, half the time, it feels like sometimes we’re just hanging out. It’s funny, because even in work, you can have a work-life balance.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah, I think that’s really important. One of the things that you made me think about, which is that it is so important to have those social connections, but culturally, I think that is also really important, we live to work versus work to live. There’s a lot of culture around work created, not just in North America or whatever, but online as well, there’s hustle culture and there’s all of these things which are designed… And I’m not saying don’t go out there and make that money. Make your money however you want. I think money is important, obviously, because we need to be paying our bills, so money’s important in a way, and whatever your priorities are, that’s fine. But your priorities are your priorities, and let no one else change your priorities unless you want them to. That’s my perspective on it. I have arguments with family members all the time because they don’t understand my perspective on things. But you’re yourself, you have your own priorities. Maybe your priority is that you want to make top dollar at whatever you’re doing so you’re willing to work those extra hours.

But what you brought up that made me think about was asynchronous work and how asynchronous work has become more popular, and I think me, I was working through what we were already talking about. We’re, more or less, an 8:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday, maybe 9:00 to 6:00, whatever, standardized work environment. But if your work environment, if your work situation is that you work more asynchronously, so you’re working around kid pickups, maybe you homeschool your kid and so you have to do your work in the other hours, whatever your asynchronous situation is, still, I would say, maintain boundaries.

There is no reason, even if you work asynchronously, where you’re a couple of hours here, a of couple hours there, a couple of hours later, however you split it up, your workload, I do think that that will make it harder to separate your off-time from your work time, because it is so separated. But I also think that there’s no reason you couldn’t still have those boundaries. If your standard working hours or whatever are one thing, if it’s asynchronous, let it be asynchronous. Maybe just don’t check your email, maybe just don’t check whatever, don’t have that stuff on your phone if you don’t have to. I think it’s hard to be completely separated, especially in the US because we have such an aggressive work culture here, it is consistently frowned upon if you’re not working basically all the time, and it’s just like, well, maybe I don’t want to.

Sean Sebring:

It’s funny, you brought something up that just reminded me of a short period I had while at SolarWinds, actually. My son was born in January of ’21, and I got some time off, which was great. But I remember I talked to my boss right afterwards and I said, “Hey, I’m going to keep doing all of my work as consistently as possible, but I’m not going to be going above and beyond at the moment. I want to be able to stay with as much focus on my new one, my new baby boy, as I can, so I’m not always going to give you the extra mile.”

And I think it’s okay from time to time, and again, it’s hard in the US, because like you said, I feel like I almost was apologizing for saying, “I’m going to do acceptable work.” Acceptable is almost unacceptable. It needs to be exceptional, otherwise it’s unacceptable. But I was like, “If I’m not doing enough, come tell me. But right now, my focus is this kid crawling around. When he’s a little older and requires a little less attention, I’m going to come back and hit the ground running and try and make some moves and level up and all this stuff.” But for me, that was a form of work-life balance at work, was just saying, “Look, how much am I going to pour of my soul into this at the moment?” And I was reserving a lot more for at home, even while I still had the same number of hours at work.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah. I actually really love that you brought that up, because I think that is such a problem that we have, that the expectation is no longer that you do the work of the job that you’re in, the expectation is that you’re going to always go above and beyond, and when you’re not going above and beyond, you’re somehow lacking. But I saw a meme the other day that I was like, this right here, it was a conversation that someone had had, and the person told them, “Why are you doing all that? You only get one paycheck.” And I think that that, for this particular conversation, hits really hard, of why are you doing so much above and beyond all the time? They’re not paying you any more than for the job that you’re doing. And not to say never go above and beyond, but I think pointing out what you just said, which is balance is so important in your work life, as well as your work/life, is also really important.

It’s nice to be reliable, it’s nice that some people can count on you. If people come and ask me for something, they know it’s because I can get a job done. But I also feel free to say no if I don’t have time or bandwidth or whatever. And I know that is something that a lot of people struggle with, because you have this feeling all the time of it’s never enough unless we go above and beyond. And let me tell you, sometimes it is enough. And maybe this is a conversation you should have with your manager if you do feel like you’re being burnt out, because going above and beyond all the time leads to burnout, so if you can’t find balance inside work, never mind work and life, you’re going to have problems. That’s just how it goes.

Sean Sebring:

On the same note of the work life, not work/life, but the work life, it’s in the same vein. I’m seeing it more, having been in people management for a bit now. Again, it’s almost an uncomfortable feeling for a lot of folks, and I’ve been there myself, where it’s like if I’m not actively on a path to a next grade or promotion or a newer, higher title, then what am I even doing? And sometimes, it’s okay to just say, I like this position. There’s nothing shameful or wrong about it. Just show up to work, be good at what you’re doing.

I don’t know where that voice came from or why, or maybe it’s because careers did start to grow faster. You started off 18, or if you went to university, maybe then it was early 20s, and it was easy to step up, up, up, up, because you were gaining experience much more rapidly. But as you get into a career for a while, the experience doesn’t come as rapidly and you start to plateau a bit, and plateauing is okay. But mentally, maybe I never gave myself enough room or credit to say, it’s okay, if you’ve moved up pretty high, just stay there, or if you’re in a comfortable position, just stay there. So letting the stress go of, oh, I’m not on a path to a promotion, letting that stress go is a huge part of work-life balance for me, because it made work so much more peaceful, not thinking, well, if I don’t do more, try harder, I won’t get promoted. Instead, it’s be good at your job and people thank you for it, they still do.

Chrystal Taylor:

I think you just reminded me, this is gifted kid mentality also, where if you were in the gifted and talented program, or whatever in your country is equivalent to that, which is to say that they think that you’re smarter than the average kids, you go into specific programs that do more aggressive learning paths and stuff like that. There’s a whole culture around this in America, where you get constantly praised and told that you’re smarter, that you’re doing things well, that you’re going places, as you’re growing up, as you’re learning and growing, you’re going places, you could be president if you want to, whatever, people tell you all kinds of things when you’re a gifted kid, all kinds of things.

But by the time that you get to an adult, when you hit this area of plateau, it’s so much worse, because you’re not only thinking about work, you’re thinking about your entire life of being like, oh, I’m no longer going up, I’m not meeting expectations. And whether that comes from within or from without or some combination of the two, I think that, A, I just super identified with it immediately, because I was like, it does feel like that. Your plateau feels like you’re going down, even though you’re not. But if you’re always going up, it’s like…

Sean Sebring:

It’s exhausting, for one thing.

Chrystal Taylor:

It’s exhausting. You see people talking about businesses and stuff, numbers go up, that’s what they want, always numbers go up. But at a certain point, the numbers aren’t going to go up anymore, you don’t have anymore… For your own person, your business of yourself, at a certain point, you don’t have enough resources to go up anymore, unless you let something else go. Maybe that’s the way to think about it, thinking about yourself as a business unit and you only have so many resources to dedicate to all parts of your life, work, your family, your hobbies, your social life, whatever you include as part of that and whatever things that you have to prioritize, you have a certain amount of resources to do that with.

And maybe that is, I like to call my social battery, I have a very low social battery because I’m not a very social person, I don’t put resources there and that’s okay for me. But it does mean when I do have to go be in a social situation where there’s a lot of people around, I have a harder time with it and I have a lower tolerance for staying a long time. But somebody who has a higher social battery and spends all their time, maybe they’re a party planner, maybe they’re whatever, they enjoy doing that kind of thing, then they have a higher social battery, they thrive in those environments. I do not thrive in those environments.

But the same is true, I think, for work. If you have a certain amount of resources in your body, in your mind, that you can dedicate to work or family, spend the workloads you have at work and the workloads that you have for family with your family or whatever your outside-of-work life is. But just think about yourself as a business unit, and then you can think about where that’s going to take you, projections and all that. Numbers can’t always go up, just like with a business, there’s only so many things you can do. At a certain point, your market share has been fully realized or whatever, you can’t always continue to go up. Eventually, if you believe in that environment, that’s numbers only go up, you will eventually hit a crash, just like a stock market or anything else, you’ll eventually hit a crash, because everything can’t continue to go up, there has to be a balance.

So I like to think about balance that way, I need the balance. If I don’t have the balance, A, I’m way more stressed out, B, I get real depressed, y’all, real depressed. This is why I don’t spend a lot of time on social media, especially outside of work hours. There’s some commitment to social media I have for my role that I have to do, and outside of that, cut it off, I can’t do it. I have the same reaction, it gets real overwhelming and I have to identify that in myself. And I think that really, it’s just work-life balance is mostly about self-realization. You have to come to a realization about where you can spend your time and what things are actually harming you and how you can balance those things out, and if you don’t do that, then you will wind up either burnt out or depressed or some other combination, anxious, endlessly anxious. There’s so many things, negatives, to all of this that you’re not going to get back either.

Sean Sebring:

I’ve found treating them like seasons helps me with that too, rather than… Because you can’t always have a strict plan for work-life balance, because sometimes you’re going to want to do things a little different. So what’s worked for me is, because I like a little chaos from time to time, so if it’s too regimented, then I’m like, nah, I can’t stick to this. But anyway, it’s seasons. So I’m like, I’m in my off-season of busting butt, trying real, real hard to go up or move somewhere in the org or maybe now I’m like, alright, it’s on-season, and I plan with my wife, I’m like, “Hey, I’m going to be a little extra at work for a while because I’ve got something coming up.”

So treat it like a season, and that’s a good way for me to balance it, is sometimes I’m on harder for giving effort, attention, resources, as you said, since I’m a business unit, and sometimes it’s a little less. Of course, if my boss is listening, I’m always giving the appropriate acceptable amount of work. That’s not what I’m saying here. We are capable of giving more than we need to to meet those levels, and that’s where people get promotions, they’re exceeding expectations, and those things are good, but it’s also not always mandatory to be that exceptional, it’s okay to take care of yourself, which is really what this episode’s about anyway.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yes, yeah, that’s the most important part, take care of yourself. I think there’s an argument to be made that that doesn’t always lead to promotions or things like that, which is really a whole different episode about going above and beyond and whether or not that’s rewarded, and it really, I think, depends on your company environment. There’s a lot of factors, so I’m not going to get into that, but I don’t necessarily agree that always going above and beyond leads to promotions.

Sean Sebring:

No, no, it doesn’t always. But if I’m going to try, I’m going to try. It’s not linear.

Chrystal Taylor:

No, it’s another balance, I think.

Sean Sebring:

Nothing is guaranteed, nothing is guaranteed. There is those factors of your relationship with your leadership, is there an available position even? But level of effort was really what I was talking about for that.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah. This is making me think of a different thing I saw online, which doesn’t apply to me, because I don’t have a partner in my regular life or anything, but it was about a family unit, so two adults, and then they had multiple children, and the compromise of their relationship was that they would get home from work and they would say, “I have 10% to give today.”

Sean Sebring:

I saw that too.

Chrystal Taylor:

“Can you pick up the other 90%?” Or whatever, and it’s about balance. Sometimes, you don’t have it. As a single parent, I will tell you, I don’t get to have that. I have to always be at 100%, because there’s no one else to share that load. But if you have relationships around you that help you to split that load, whether it’s a social load, maybe it’s your best friend and you guys are going to an event and you need someone to carry the conversations, or you need someone to introduce you to people because you’re socially awkward, or whatever the case may be, find people that help to balance you out, I think, is a huge part of it, which requires a level of trust. But I think that that is also part of your balance, at work as well.

At work, if I’m doing something and it’s stressing me out, I find a person that I can either vent to, because that’s helpful for me personally, or that I can help share the load with, like I don’t have the bandwidth to take this whole thing on by myself, is there someone that I can share this with that will still get the job done in the timeframe that it’s needed? Or whatever. You don’t have to do everything yourself, and I think part of what happens in work environments is that people just assume that when they say yes, they have to do the whole thing by themselves, and that is not true in literally almost any aspect I’ve ever been involved in. If you get that mentality of, oh, you have to do it all yourself, you can’t ask for help, they’re not telling you you can’t ask for help.

Sean Sebring:

But what if I’m a glory hog?

Chrystal Taylor:

Maybe you are. But if you’re a glory hog, then you have to deal with you have to do all the work. I think that is-

Sean Sebring:

Yeah, I know, I did it to myself, for sure.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yes, yeah. I think it’s part of the balance though. If someone is working on something and they ask me for help and I can help, I will help. I think that partly, that is still true for other people as well, like, maybe this isn’t my responsibility. I know lots of people that get burnt out because they say yes to everything that’s asked of them, whether or not they know how to do it or it’s part of their job responsibilities.

I work in marketing, so maybe there’s a project that’s going on right now, and the person that should be doing this, because it is their purview, is not able to do it for whatever reason, or maybe they’re just not doing it in the timeline. So someone else will be like, “Oh, this other person will do it, they say yes to everything.” And so then, they start asking you to do things that are not your job responsibility, and before you know it, you wind up with way more on your plate than you can handle. I know someone that I had to have a conversation with multiple times because she would do this. Well, they’re not getting it done, I’m just going to do it myself. Maybe don’t. That’s not a good work-life balance, not work/life balance, that’s not good work-life balance to be taking on things. You can do it-

Sean Sebring:

Work-work.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah. I’m not saying never go outside your role and help with things, but don’t make it a habit and don’t say yes to everything if you can help it, because there is no reason for you to be taking all of that on.

Sean Sebring:

Boundaries, boundaries is the theme.

Chrystal Taylor:

So important, yeah.

Sean Sebring:

Boundaries is the theme.

Chrystal Taylor:

So important. I think people are scared to enforce their boundaries also though.

Sean Sebring:

Even just defining them, I think, is the best first step, because once they’re defined, it might be way easier to adhere to them than you think. But if you’ve never given yourself a chance to even define what kind of boundaries you want… And that’s something I think that you are good at, Chrystal, is you’ve defined the boundaries, which makes it infinitely easier to stick to them, because you say, “Well, this is the boundary, so now we know what not to cross.”

Chrystal Taylor:

Yes. Well, the important thing about that too is communication. I think people are afraid to communicate their boundaries as well. If I tell them, “No, I don’t do this,” for whatever reason, whatever my boundary is, then I’m going to get fired or I’m going to get a mark against me or whatever. There’s this whole fear around setting boundaries, and then also defending your boundaries. And I will tell you, from personal experience, that almost never happens. If you respect other people’s boundaries, they will, nine times out of 10, respect your boundaries.

I have very specific boundaries about specific things. As Sean just mentioned, I am very clear about those boundaries. I do not do specific things, and I have no problem saying no. But that is not something that everyone is easily able to do, either out of some kind of misplaced fear or maybe it’s a social anxiety thing or maybe something else. But I think that you have to be able to stand up for yourself in a way, and part of that is standing up for your own boundaries, because that supports your mental and physical health, and if you can stand up for yourself, you’ll have better results.

Sean Sebring:

Sometimes I feel like I can’t even stand up at all.

Chrystal Taylor:

Sure. Well, we all go through that. In general, you go through a period of time where you feel like you can’t stand up for yourself. I do too. I’m all talk right now, but there are definitely times where I’ll say yes to something that I probably shouldn’t be saying yes to. There are times where I help people out outside of process and outside of the things that I really love so much. There are definitely exceptions to every rule, and I’m not saying there’s not going to be. But you have to make sure that they are exceptions and they don’t become the rule, because I think that’s where it’s icy territory, is where you make an exception one time, that’s fine, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, there are situations. You mentioned earlier with your seasonal mentality around this, there are situations where you’re going to have to make exceptions for whatever reason.

Even if the exception to your work-life balance is I have to spend more time with my family, my son broke his leg or something and now I have to go deal with that, you’re shifting it that direction, and for some reason. It’s, a lot of times, become more acceptable for us to shift it more the other direction, like, oh, I have to spend more time at work right now because there’s this big thing happening. But it’s less acceptable to shift it for whatever reason… I’m not saying it has to be a health emergency or whatever, but maybe there’s another reason.

Maybe someone I know is going through a really hard time right now and I’m helping them with it, or maybe my grandparents have dementia and I need to go spend more time dealing with that. Whatever the situation is that is causing you to have to shift your balance, you have to be, I think, adaptable to that, and the one thing that we are good at in IT is being adaptable. So let yourself be adaptable, but don’t let it become the rule. If it becomes the rule, it’s no longer an exception and you’re no longer balanced. So that’s my soapbox on that, I would say.

Sean Sebring:

I was totally being super literal when I said I couldn’t stand up, I just wanted to make a joke.

Chrystal Taylor:

Which is not true.

Sean Sebring:

Yeah. Well, I actually did break my leg recently.

Chrystal Taylor:

You did, yes.

Sean Sebring:

Although, I could stand up. Anyway. I just like to be a real goofball sometimes. So I can stand up just fine, I have no issues standing up. But I will say, I suppose, on the note of standing up for yourself, I was being partially truthful when I said glory hog, I really do love the attention, and that is something that definitely hurts myself sometimes, because it does make it harder to say no and it does make it harder to share.

In fact, moving into leadership, one of the hardest things I had to work on was delegation, because if someone came to me and said, “Hey, do you think you can help get this done?” My answer should be, “Yeah, me and my team, or someone on my team,” instead of me doing it, because my job is not the same anymore. I’m now meant to work with people on my team to get these things done. So sharing that kind of stuff was a hard one for me. But the more I got comfortable with it, I was like, huh, this is a lot less stressful if I can just depend and trust on some other people to get it done.

And also, with that is letting go of the stress if you’re worried they might not have the same quality, that’s part of life and that’s part of delegation and that’s part of their growth journey. So do we always want the best product? Yes. If you’re… I won’t say conceited enough, but if you believe in your powers so much that you’re like, no one can do it as good as me, help someone else get better, help someone else level up then. And it really is so much, from a boundaries and balance perspective, it is so much less stressful if you share the load.

Chrystal Taylor:

Yeah. I would say to that point as well that you have to reconcile yourself to a state of good enough, even if you are…

Sean Sebring:

That’s a good one, good enough.

Chrystal Taylor:

My friend, Leon, used to bring this up to me all the time, because at the beginning of me working in this job, I was stressed out about a lot of things, because it was something I hadn’t ever done before and it hit a lot of my anxiety points and my fears, like public speaking and things like that, that I had a really hard time with at first. And he helped me with it a lot, where he was like… I was trying to write a blog or write something, and I was just like, “I just don’t think this is good enough to do whatever we were doing.”

And basically, it was a lot of conversations around, it doesn’t have to be perfect. You have a deadline that you have to meet, and if it isn’t going to be perfect and you have to spend X amount of time outside of business hours working on it, you have to let yourself reach a state of good enough, and the reason why you have to do that is because, A, you don’t have the resources, mentally, emotionally, don’t have the resources to commit to all of your hours being spent on this thing, and then maybe it’s still not going to be perfect and you’re going to be stressing about it for the next however long, until you’re on the next project that you have the same problem with, and that’s how you get burnt out.

So you have to reach an acceptable state of good enough. Now, what that acceptable state is, it depends on what you’re working on and what business you’re in and all kinds of things. Maybe your acceptable state is very different depending on the project. But I think that you have to understand what is the acceptable state that you’re ready to reach for good enough, it’s not going to be perfect. And to your point about maybe you have the mentality of, I can do this better than anyone else can and no one else can do it as good as me. Well, A, I’d say you should teach other people how to do it that way so that you can expand the number of people who can be perfect at this job that you have to do, which obviously increases the amount of workload that y’all can do and the efficiency you can put out and all kinds of things. If you can’t teach it, then maybe you don’t understand it as well as you thought that you did, so maybe it’s not as perfect as you think it is.

I have a different relationship with perfect, which is that I don’t believe in perfection, period. I don’t believe anything in the world is perfect or can be perfect, and I think that that is fine and actually better, because if nothing is perfect, that means that we can accept the differences and think about how they maybe improve things. So I don’t believe in perfection, so I’ll never fall into the trap of I have to work so hard on a thing until it’s perfect. There’s no such thing, I don’t believe in it. I can only improve things and make things better and make things to a state of good enough. And when it’s good enough, maybe I’m like, you know what? I had an idea about how I can make that better next time. But there should always be something else to change, maybe it needs to change for a different scenario, maybe it needs to change for whatever.

I don’t believe in perfection, I’ll tell you that right now. In real life, in appearances, in nature, I don’t believe in perfection. It’s not a thing that I believe in, I don’t believe it exists. I think it’s a false mentality that we’ve created to strive for.

Sean Sebring:

My mom’s hamburger pie is perfect, so I’ll have to disagree with you on this one.

Chrystal Taylor:

I’ve never heard of hamburger pie.

Sean Sebring:

Oh, it’s the best. Good enough, I like that little section of this episode. Good enough is something that I think people would be so much happier if they could get along with that phrase. It’s okay to be good enough, it’s okay. These episodes come easy to us, I think, Chrystal, but hopefully some of this was able to resonate with the listeners out there. Let’s try and wrap up by giving some key takeaways from what we think is the most important when it comes to work-life balance. Chrystal, do you want to give us one first?

Chrystal Taylor:

I’ll start with one, even though you’re the one that brought it up, take your time off. Take your time off, guys, do it. No one’s going to reward you for not taking your time off, take your time off.

Sean Sebring:

Yes, take your time off. I’ll say, even though this is something you’re good at and better than me for sure, is define and set your boundaries and then stick to them, stick to them. You’re doing it for yourself, your own mental health, and it’s healthier and safer if they’re there, because both sides of the parties will be better off if those are stuck with, so set those boundaries.

Chrystal Taylor:

And this is a sub part of that one, but I think it is important specifically for people who work in IT, which is that take a break, mental break, from your work, including on your time off. And I’m saying that because I know a lot of people in IT have a lovely hobby on the weekends of doing more IT. Every once in a while, take a break from it, guys, completely away from it. It’s good for you, I promise.

Sean Sebring:

And then, again, I’ll say something that you had brought up, which was one of my favorites, if not my favorite thing from the episode, which is good enough. Sometimes it’s okay if it’s just good enough, it doesn’t have to be perfect, because to Chrystal’s point, perfect isn’t real. So stop stressing yourself out and accept that it’s good enough, and then you’ll feel so much more okay, at peace, that that was good enough, it was good enough.

Chrystal Taylor:

And then, I would say establish your priorities and don’t apologize for them. Maybe your priority is making money, maybe your priority is your family, maybe your priority is something else. But don’t apologize for them, stick to your priorities, they’re your priorities, it’s your life.

Sean Sebring:

That was a good episode, Chrystal, thanks. Take care of yourselves out there. This has been another episode of SolarWinds TechPod. I’m your host, Sean Sebring, joined by my fellow host, Chrystal Taylor. If you haven’t yet, make sure to subscribe and follow for more TechPod content. Thanks for tuning in. Good enough?