This is part of our Womanifest Series of blogs, in the run-up our workshop at the event in July. Womanifest is a wonderful opportunity to support and promote topics that are on the minds of women. As many of the clients of our Career Transition and Coaching support are women, we’re going to dedicate our next few blog posts to some of the questions or challenges that our female clients often come to us with.
This topic is one which we discuss a great deal with those who are struggling with feeling career-stuck, it’s all about the idea of Work ‘Me-Time‘. We look at what it is, why it’s important and how you find it.
Work can often feel like you’re doing things for other people, and as fulfilling as this can be, it can also feel like you’re not in control and your energies are never focused on your own career.
What is work ‘Me-Time’?
Having work ‘me-time’ is often not something we associate with work, we think of it in terms of down-time in our private life. It’s time to ourselves which allows us to focus on our own needs for a while, putting aside the all the demands of others.
The important part of this in our work life is the idea of focusing on our own needs. Work can often feel like you’re doing things for other people, and as fulfilling as this can be, it can also feel like you’re not in control and your energies are never focused on your own career.
This is why work ‘Me-Time’ is so important. There is a whole stream of study and evidence around enjoying your work and high performance which are linked to working in your ‘Flow’. This means finding the combination of factors that allow you to bring your best at work.
For more information about ‘Flow’ at work, read this earlier blog.
Working in your Flow means…
- Feeling sufficiently challenged but not too stretched.
- Using skills you’re strong in whilst also learning new ones.
- Feeling that you’re in control and have a voice.
Work ‘Me-Time’ helps you build all these 3 things. Prioritising this time will help you to feel like you’re back in the driving seat again and will give you some breathing space and confidence.
An example of how this could look would be:
- Time to work through your diary and priority list to make sure you are focusing on the right things and re-organising/delegating other tasks.
- Taking a moment to consider a new skill that you’d like to develop or improve and taking a step towards doing this.
- Working through a complex decision you need to make, considering all the important opinions and information and then building your own point of view.
How do you find this work ‘Me-Time’?
When I’m talking to clients, the feeling of being in control is always directly linked to how happy they are with their current situation and finding this time is the first step towards feeling more in control.
- Firstly look at the next 5 working days and find 1x 15 minute block of free time.
- Block it out and call it ‘Do Not Cancel’ – this is for yourself as much as anyone else who may have access to your calendar!
- Now put this ‘Me Meeting’ on repeat every week or fortnight so that you don’t have to remember to put it in and it becomes part of your routine.
What do I do with it?
For this first 15 minute work ‘me-time’ session, take with you 3 questions:
- What would I like my next career step to be or what’s a problem I want to solve?
- What is one skill that I would like learn or develop?
- Who is a person that I’d like to talk to or a role/dept that I’d like to know more about.
You may only get to one of these answers in those 15mins or perhaps you just spend a few minutes thinking about all three. It doesn’t matter how much you get done in your first block of time, the point is that you have just enjoyed your first work ‘Me-Time’.
You aren’t meant to solve everything in one go or even make huge strides, this is just about you taking control of some work ‘Me-Time’ in a structured way that puts you back in control of your own career.
