Hi, I’m Jess. Founder of skincare brand frank body and creative agency Willow & Blake. I’ve spent the last 15 years building $1billion worth of brands. Now I am getting back to my roots as a writer. MUSE MUSE is a place for me to document my thoughts on work, productivity, redefining success, abundance and building a life you love, with your values & purposes at the core of it.
Do you feel like you’re always on?
Email. Slack. Social. Phone. Meetings. Deadlines.
We - being the millennial generation - are constantly available because we have been trained to be constantly available and it’s exhausting.
When deciding to overhaul my life last year, I also decided to overhaul how much people could access me.
I’d already deleted slack from my phone 2 years prior. There was literally no need to be constantly checking it. I am not a brain surgeon, it is not my pager buzzing from the ER.
But beyond that, I didn’t have good boundaries when it came to work. I’d go so far as to call them horrible and detrimental.
I’d developed many bad habits and consequently, many feelings of guilt surrounding how and when I got back to people. Everything felt urgent, often because other people tend to think whatever they are working on is the most important thing in the world, therefore making their urgency my problem, but also because I created a sense of urgency and thrived off it for a long time. I was a busy gal and wore it like a badge of honour.
Some people like being “on” 24 hours a day. I used to. Now I don’t. I have come to realise how quickly life is passing by and that if I don’t stop and actually live it - instead of letting it slip through my hands like sand in an hourglass - I’ll wake up in 30 years very regretful. Once I had my kids the feeling that time was passing by at the speed of light was really cemented in me. I could finally acknowledge the hard truth that the time we have is precious and finite. I had to ask myself: Do I want to spend it on zoom calls and replying to emails that don’t really matter, or do I want to spend it splashing in puddles with my kids, or drawing pictures with them, or snuggling them in bed while we all watch a movie? The latter, thanks.
This realisation made me very aware and somewhat overly critical of how I was spending my time, especially my time at work.
I started to give less engird and time to the people of things that didn’t respect it: the people who talk to you with their phone in hand, thumbing emails as their eyes dart between you and their screen only absorbing every 5th word. Or the people who attend meetings with their computer open, a little silver wall between you and them.
Digging into what I felt was a good use of time - my time - means I have a radically different timetable to that of previous years and much more fulfilment at work. This thinking and lessons apply to everyone, from the most junior employee fresh out of school to those of us who have been running our businesses for double digit years.
Here are the top lessons I have for getting your life back whilst simultaneously doing the best work of your life:
I had to learn how to be respectful of other people’s time. Because I would spend so much of my time in meetings, I would have to catch up on work at night which meant I was sending late night slacks and emails. Despite my best efforts to dissuade them, my staff still kept slack on their phones with notifications on. Psychopaths. This meant if I was working at 10pm, the alert arrived at 10pm. Even though I had absolutely no expectation for them to reply until the next day, it was out there in the world waiting for them, taking up brain space. I had to train myself to schedule things to arrive at 9am the next morning. It’s a two way street after all.
I put my phone and computer in different rooms during important family time and meals. Putting a physical boundary between myself and the ways other people can contact me is crucial. Last night we went out for dinner at the pub and I noticed how many Dads were still taking work calls at 6:30pm while the Mum wrangled the kids and had no adult help or conversation. It made me sad for them, but happy that we had established good practices here. Yes of course things occasionally come up, but maybe your chit chat about meeting on the gold course tomorrow can wait? Being accessible always not only impacts us, but impacts even more so our partners and kids.
I do not reply to emails instantly, because I do not work out of my inbox. It usually takes me days to get back to people. Nothing has gone wrong so far and if something is genuinely urgent, it shouldn't be taking place by email.
I let people know if they are crossing boundaries. Jess of yesteryear would have curled up under a table and died at the thought of expressing my needs. Jess of today doesn’t apologise for “delays” in getting back to people unless there is a legitimate delay of over a week. Jess of today generally doesn’t reply to work calls and messages that come in after hours unless I absolutely need to or feel excited to. It’s not an effort to be difficult, it’s because I know that once you crack the door open just a touch, in no time it is wide open. You’ll find that most reasonable people are fairly accepting, if not welcoming, of boundaries and I often see it creates positive change for them too whereby they start initiating their own boundaries.
Almost every deadline is arbitrary. A potential new client that absolutely has to speak with me today, usually doesn’t. A call that absolutely must take place this week, can usually wait until next week. Our own fomo is what usually means we cancel, shuffle and overbook trying to meet deadlines that never really existed in the first place. But we are all terrified of missing out on opportunities, work or money. So we say yes to everything and pay for it later. If someone wants to work with you, they will be okay with waiting a few days.
The quality of my work is significantly higher now because I am focused on doing it well. To me, delivering the absolute best work for my co-founders, clients and partners is the most respectful thing I can do rather than deliver sub par work because I was constantly interrupted by every slack, phone call, email or meeting that people sent my way.
Consider your answer carefully before you give it. If someone asks something of you, don’t commit before you know you can deliver. A good example is recently I asked someone to meet for a casual but professional conversation and they said yes. Then they cancelled and rescheduled a few days ahead of our meeting. The next time, they cancelled the day before. The third time, they cancelled as I was walking out the door to meet them. Granted this person was kindly giving me an hour of their time, but I would have preferred they told me they didn’t have capacity instead of cancel on me three times. They didn’t need to be accessible to me and could learn how to set boundaries better at the start of an engagement for their own sake, and that of the people they work with. The same goes for when we tell people we’ll get back to them as a means of delaying. I was so guilty of this. Just say no and move on.
Grab a notepad and journal: I want you to write down what your weak points are when it comes to finding some harmony between work and life and decide on one thing you will change. Do you stay too late at the office? Do you reply to emails out of hours? Do you chronically check social media? Do you ask for updates when not enough time has passed for there to be a meaningful update? Do you create meetings for other people that don’t really need to exist? Sometimes our burnout is of our own making and that is fantastic, because it means we can control it and change it. Own your vice and then eliminate it.
I thought long and hard about what was actually making me feel stressed about work. It wasn’t the work itself, but rather the admin surrounding work. So that’s what I eliminated. This lesson is the most liberating because it means you don’t need to quit jobs, change industries and blow up your entire life. It means that there is great fulfilment in passion to be found in what you do if you can find a way to stop being chronically “on”.
Now close whatever device you’re reading this on and go live your life.
With love, J x
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