Alisha Leytem: Hello everyone! Welcome back to the show. I’m your host Alisha. Today we have a special guest who is also a podcast host. I am really excited because we were just talking before we came on the recording that we had never had a fellow podcast host on our show. So she gets to be a guest today.
We are going to be diving into a lot of great content for you, so make sure you stick around. We are releasing this right before the holidays begin, so that you can take some tips and advice to really help you learn how to turn off during the holiday season. In order for you to come back afterwards or even from a vacation and finally feel refreshed. We all know that feeling and that would be really great.
I want to introduce to you our guest. Her name is Alli Murphy. She is the Director of Events & Program Development at Engage for Good, where she leads a talented team that helps corporate social impact leaders advance their campaigns, careers, and organizations through professional development and networking opportunities. She also hosts the Engage for Good podcast, the longest-running podcast in the social impact space. Now in its 13th season with over 400 episodes, she has interviewed leaders from Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, Expedia Group, Google, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Save the Children, Whirlpool, and more.
You have some big names in there which is really cool. I am really excited to talk to her today about her own story of well-being as a leader and learning some really great tips and things from her. So welcome Alli to the show!
Alli Murphy: I am super excited to be here and like you said I'm a podcast host, so it's a little bit strange to be on this side of the mic, but I'm also super excited to share with you and have a great conversation.
Alisha Leytem: We were just chatting a little bit before recording, like I mentioned. She actually lives in an area that Michael and I had considered moving to at one point, so I feel like there's a little bit of a synchronistic connection here which is super cool. Alli, tell us more about you, tell us about your background. What are you currently doing? What's your story?
Meet Alli Murphy
Alli Murphy: Little bit about me: I am a podcast host, I am a facilitator, I am a third culture kid. I was born in London, grew up in Mexico city, studied abroad in Mexico & Chilli as a kid. My husband and I spent a year and a half in Asia, so I’ve got a lot of international living experience abroad. Which is kind of how the topic of vacation came up.
I'm really passionate about well-being and making work more human. I spent the last 9 years of my career figuring out how we can build cultures where people feel like they can show their authentic selves. What does it mean to lead in a way where people could thrive personally and professionally? I'm not saying I have this all figured it out because I definitely don't, but I've been learning along the way.
Outside of work I love to travel. I'm a big reader. I just finished my 33rd book this year which is a huge milestone for me. I like to dance, I go to dance about three times a week. I love spending time with friends and family and I also love spending quality time alone. I seem like an extrovert to a lot of people but I actually need quite a bit of alone time. Right now that tends to be reading a book in front of a Christmas tree, but that's what I need to kind of thrive and be my best self.
Alisha Leytem: I love your passion for well-being and wanting to create cultures that help you to become authentic and humanizing the workforce. That’s the hot topic right now. I think the pandemic has ushered in the need for us to make these changes for real.
You guys as listeners you know I talk about this with each and every episode and that's what we do at Alisha Leytem Wellness is helping people to do that. I'm just grateful to have you on the show and giving us your expertise. I know you’re still figuring it out, but your background with that versus someone who's in the trenches.
We were talking a little bit before about what your experience was at the turn of the pandemic and what was happening for you. We all have our pandemic story, so what was yours? Specifically with work.
Alli Murphy: I actually have the journal entry. I don't journal that often, but I have a journal entry of what was going through my head the second day of lockdown. I was like I don’t know how this is going to work, this is crazy. I love my husband, but like we talked about I need my alone time.
Work wise it was also completely up in the air. At first I didn't know if I was going to have a job, not have a job, or lose a paycheck. My husband works for himself, he owns his own business so we didn’t know what was going to happen with his revenue.
Long story short my company restructured. There were a couple people that were let go. I wasn't one of them. I actually took on more responsibilities. I went from a manager to a director and I was incredibly grateful that I still had a job especially watching so many people and friends and family members not. It was this really interesting feeling of like okay I have a job, this is intimidating, there's a lot going on. We won't even go into a whole pandemic. I'm sure all of your listeners have their own experiences.
What I found happening is that I said “yes” to everything. I had this job. I was grateful, but we were also doing everything new for the first time. We run in-person conferences. It is one of the things that we do. We do two a year and bring about 600 people, usually 30-ish sponsors, and then about 65 speakers over 3 Day events. With about 20 years of experience doing that.
All of a sudden that went virtual. Everything had to be re-figured out. How do we do this in a virtual environment? How do we figure out how to do this on Zoom? How do you still make it engaging? What are the technical pieces to make this happen? How do you market it? Every little question.
I said “yes” to everything because we were all kind of in the trenches together, to use that vernacular. I was grateful to have this job. The downside of that and my husband can tell you this really well, is I didn't take a day off in 2 months. Doesn't mean I worked 8 hours on Saturday and Sunday for two months straight, but I worked some part of every day for two months.
I missed out on ski days, I missed out on dinner with family and friends and that quality time with my husband. Or alone time, outdoor adventures, whatever it is. It was rough if I'm being honest. It was really challenging, but the flip side of that is I never once really talked about this with my manager or with leadership. There wasn’t this open communication for me to say hey I'm struggling or hey here's what I'm going through or hey I need a little bit of support with this.
I didn't really do that. Which meant that I created this silo for myself where I completely burnt out and it impacted my personal life, it impacted my relationship with my husband, and it impacted my work too. Had I actually said something and been more forward and even just more open about what I was going through, that might have been a completely different case.
We made it through. We ran two, great, virtual events that we didn't even know how to do at the beginning of the pandemic. I also made a commitment to myself and said look I'm not going to do this again. I did it once, but I think we each have a ton of agency and ability to make decisions to impact our own well-being, and that was an example of me doing it terribly.
Going forward, I’ve got a lot better boundaries and there are things I will do and I won't do. I'm learning how to say “no” in different scenarios, problem solving better, and resource for a team.
Now that I’ve stepped into a bigger role and I have a team that reports to me. Focusing on my well-being isn't just important for me because then it also shows “hey team you can do this too.” Actions speak louder than words and yes, it's important for me, but I also think that as a leader it is crucial to show that you're doing this as well. And to create a space for your team to be able to do the same for themselves.
Alisha Leytem: Congrats on the promotion at the very beginning of it! I think that's exciting and nerve-wracking with everything that was happening at that time. Then you're getting great news, but it kind of came out at a little bit of a cost because you’re still trying to figure those things out. I'm so happy about what you said at the very end, which is being and taking care of yourself is leading by example.
That's the most important thing that you can do for your team and that's actually how you start to change the culture. The leaders embody and do those things that they want to have their teams follow in their footsteps. I think sharing your story with that is not only powerful, but now embodying it, doing it, and leading it is even more powerful.
Alli Murphy: Did you see the Women In Workplace that came out from Lean In?
Alisha Leytem: I was reading parts of it.
Alli Murphy: I read the entire thing top to bottom and one sitting. The amount of notes that I took, it's a little bit excessive. I got really excited. One of the things is that having a manager who cares about somebody's well-being is one of the top three factors women in particular consider when they're deciding if they want to stay at an organization or join one.
That's huge. Some people have done a good job of tying well-being metrics to bottom-line performance. Others haven't. It’s reports like this, the CIA is hiring a Chief Executive Office. The Department of Defense is hiring 2000 people to support their workforce.
This stuff isn't going away. It's only getting bigger and that was kind of a silver lining of the pandemic if we can even call it that. We have to take better care of our people and whether you're a natural leader in your title or not you can start to make a difference.
Alisha Leytem: Deloitte released this stat. They found that 61% of employees will no longer stick around if a company doesn't start to do something about helping their personal well-being in 10 years. I was actually talking about this earlier today with my husband who runs his company Catching Leadership, but it is going to take about 10 years for these changes to really bloom and blossom.
Alli Murphy: Which is so long, but there's still micro-steps that we can take along the way that will make progress.
Alisha Leytem: I also think that it can help us to feel safe enough to start making those changes. Change too quickly is too scary. “I'm in fear. I don't even want to go there,” but if I know that I can start making seeds of these changes and know that they will bloom, grow, and blossom. We will get to that place that we want to end in 10 years. Or we know before that, but at the very least 10 years. Instead of waiting 10 years to actually start those changes.
I completely agree with you there is that silver lining of at least we are doing something about this massive problem that has happened over the pandemic. Better late than never, right?
So tell me more about how you come to this realization that you could have spoken up? Why do you think you felt like you couldn’t say what you needed to say during those two months?
Ali’s Experience
Alli Murphy: One is I am a people pleaser or I should say recovering people pleaser. I want people to be happy, I want people to like me. In some cases that's great and in other cases it can be a huge weakness. I think there were a couple things that went into it. One was I was fortunate I had a job, I had a paycheck. Not everybody did.
Our team was all doing a lot. I wasn't the only one that was working a lot, everybody was. It felt like we were all doing this, so I have to do it too. I have a very high bar for personal excellence or what I expect for myself. If I had lowered that bar just a little bit, I still would have done great work, and I wouldn't have worked quite as much.
Those are kind of the components that went into it. I think what kept me from really speaking up was me and not having the conversations with myself. Of what were the limiting beliefs here and what can I get out of my way to really make progress. If I have this conversation I'm going to feel better and I will probably actually end up doing better work because I will feel better in this process and my well-being will be better taken care of.
Part of this was a conversation with my better up coach. Who I've worked with for a while now and then conversations with my husband too who is incredibly patient. Sometimes it’s little things too like I am going to put an end to the work day and I am going to stick to it.
Or I'm going to focus on one thing at a time and I'm going to use a timer. There's an app on my mac called “flow” and it takes over my whole screen, so even if I wanted to keep going which is easier with a little timer on my phone the fact that it takes over my whole screen helps a ton.
Doing these little things along the way in addition to having some bigger conversation makes a huge difference, but sometimes it's easier to start with something smaller like a timer than to a rip-off the whole band-aid at once.
Alisha Leytem: Having a tangible tool that you can use beyond the ‘okay I'm going to take care of myself in the process.’ What little step could you actually take to do that? What does that actually look like in your day to day work life?
I love the example of ending your work at a time. It's so easy to keep going especially when you’re passionate about it and you are busting out good work. Then of course coming back to the people pleaser ‘well if I do this everyone will love me even more!’
Alli Murphy: That’s when you burn out and your work starts to suffer. Those are a couple of pieces. The other one that I remember when you were talking is I started walking again. My husband and I put these times on our calendar at roughly 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. and we would walk. It didn’t matter what we were doing, we were going to stop and take a 15 minute walk around the neighborhood.
That little tiny reset has an incredible impact on the rest of your day. Not only are you stepping away from your computer, you’re getting some sort of physical movement, and you get to spend some time outside.
Those are huge during the middle of the pandemic. That has carried on. We don't always walk twice a day now, but it's at least once a day whether it's just at the mailbox or we’ve got a huge field by her house and we will spend quite a good amount of time tracing around that.
Alisha Leytem: Our listeners know that our third key in The Six G.O.L.D Keys to Well-Being is the key of movement. Taking a break to walk not only helps you to manage your stress, but it works like a reset button for your brain. Doing it outside is even better because then you're activating the key of nature. There’s a lot of benefits of going outside! You post a lot on LinkedIn about being in nature, which I know you do up in the Pacific Northwest.
Alli Murphy: The mountain just opened and I had my first ski day up on the mountain last weekend and it was beautiful. I can’t wait to get up there more.
Alisha Leytem: When did you change and finally speak up and say what you needed to? Or voice your well-being needs? When did you set better boundaries with work?
Alli Murphy: I don't remember a defining moment or like a 180 in doing everything differently. It was these micro moments of starting with doing things differently that I can control because that seemed less scary than having a conversation. Now I'll have a conversation. It’s a lot easier to start with a walk or I'm going to start my day with meditation or I'm going to end my work at a specific time. Whatever those pieces are.
I'm going to get good sleep I don't care what time it is I'm going to get my 8 hours and we're going to figure the rest of this out later. I also started having more of these conversations of like okay I know this really needs to get done it's not going to fit in.
Here’s how I'm prioritizing. This is what I started to do. I would ask Can you help me understand if I have this in the right order? That's a scary thing to ask, especially for a recovering people-pleaser.
The amount of Goosebumps and like “oh I don't want to do this” that I felt was terrible. I still get that sometimes but it's about saying “okay, here's where we're at, here’s what’s possible, and how do we figure out how to make this work. Within the constraints that we are in.
I recently read a book called Closing the Confidence Gap by Kelly Thompson. She has these different pieces of saying “no” with grace and compassion. You're basically learning to say “thanks so much for thinking of me” or “thank you for thinking that I could do this project.” It’s an expression of gratitude.
The second one is sharing your values and where it doesn't align or the bandwidth that you have and why it's not a fit for you or your team. Then your third or fourth is about saying “this won't fit, but I'd be happy to set up a time to brainstorm or I would suggest a different idea to get it done.”
So it's just a “no” for some people. Where for me it can be a whole sentence with a framework of, here's why it doesn't work and then here's what we can do and how I can help you solve it.
Alisha Leytem: I feel like that’s a really good description of boundaries and saying “no” with love. How can I do this in a kind and compassionate way? Not that saying “no” as a full sentence necessarily isn't, but you have to align the way that you say it.
If you can express that in a way that you feel good about it then you're more likely to follow through. One thing I loved that you said that I want to highlight is, you noticed that you still did just as good of work, if not better.
So tell me about that because I know a lot of clients that I work with are concerned that their work won't be as high caliber if they're not putting in all these hours. The work will suffer if they are taking care of themselves more. How did that go for you?
Alli Murphy: It’s the opposite. I have these conversations with my team to act like I have these many hours and I got to do this and this and so on. If you look at the research we're actually only productive out of our 8 hour days for 2-4 hours.
The rest of the time we think we're being productive. The amount of time we spend on email is crazy. When you take a step back and see there's tools and technologies out there to help us. Some of them get in our way, some are actually helpful. You start to figure out which ones work for you and you can be a whole lot better about creating boundaries, even just with technology.
I think a lot of it comes down to “how do you set up yourself for success”? For me I found it when I started having much stricter boundaries within work habits. I started time blocking. I would task batch of I'm going to put all of the like things together and I time blocked them on my calendar.
I would have an hour to do speaker things or an hour and a half to build out a marketing campaign and forcing myself to stay within those constraints. This means at the end of that, I can take a break.
Whether I was done or not, I made progress at a much faster rate because I was taking those breaks. Because I was intentional about the work that I was doing. It's because I made time to get outside and reflect.
Anybody that runs events knows that this event season is super busy, but there are ways that you can challenge the traditional working model. This is a way to create a better system for you and then to also help your team do the same.
Alisha Leytem: I love that you're speaking about this because I know a lot of people get uncomfortable when I say you're actually only really productive from 2-4 hours a day. Real, head-down, focused work is that amount of time.
Having more hours in your day isn't beneficial to you if you're not utilizing your day to do those well-being habits that will help you. You'll notice that as you start to create these boundaries, start to make your well-being a priority, and take those midday walks.
You're going to be so much more focused. Then when you do go and sit down you get just as much done in a smaller amount of time than it would have taken you when you had “more” time throughout the day.
So this is why you start to see people who you know and wonder how they do it all? If you have less time you sometimes are able to be more focused and get those things done. Like the Pomodoro method that you mentioned.
Before I had my daughter I was growing my business and spending way too much time growing and running a business. 12 hour days was nothing and I was completely burnt out. I was terrified that when I finally had children that that would mean I'd have to put a stop on my career and on my business.
The opposite happened. It has helped it grow way more and I think it's because I have been able to be so much more strategic and focused on the things that I am working on with the time that I have. My husband and I both have our own businesses, so we both work at home and our daughter is at home with us.
We just trade off. He works in the mornings and then I get the afternoons. It seems like we are working part time, but really if I had a full day I wouldn’t get as much done.
Alli Murphy: I think that also it comes down to when you have less hours to do things in and I think this would be the same if you own your own business, but I started to look at what is everything that we say we need to get done? What is actually contributing to our goals and what is just fluff? What is not actually serving us?
There's a lot of things that carry over that are legacy. For example “we’ve always done it that way.” That’s when you respond with “but does it still serve us?”
I'm a huge fan of doing an urgent important Matrix. So you lay out ‘where does everything fit’ and then you build plans that way. Being more strategic as you mentioned is going to get you so much further than ‘I'm going to sit in front of my computer until this project is done’.
Alisha Leytem: You’re actually just wasting time and energy. You’re draining yourself and setting yourself up for burn out. A lot of them are coming on to prevent it from happening again or recovering from it.
This is actually a good segway into another topic that I wanted to really touch on, which is when you do have time off such as a holiday season or vacation. How can you ensure that you actually take that time off, so that when you come back you're not feeling like you need another vacation from it because you’re so swamped with everything else. What can we do about this if you’re a pro?
How to Actually Enjoy your Vacation from Work
Alli Murphy: This is one area where I feel like I excel pretty darn well and I don't toot my horn enough, so I am going to toot it here. I take at least one two-week vacation, usually an international trip, a year. Then normally there's some other smaller things sprinkled out, so this year we actually took her long overdue honeymoon. We took a two-week trip to Costa Rica and also I spent 10 days in Hawaii and I've done some little things along the way.
Throughout all of that I'm unplugged. I don't check my email. I don't check in. I don't work. I carry a black notebook with me, where if a work thought pops into my head, the best way for me to get it out it's a jot it down. I'll do that, but that's kind of my background.
I do not work on vacation and that is super important for me to recharge, but it's also important again circling back to this whole leader thing. If I don't do that, that's a heck of a lot harder for me to say ‘hey team you should do this.’
I had a conversation with a colleague recently who historically used to work throughout her vacation. We had a conversation two months ago and she goes “I manage a team now Alli. I have to do what you do.”
She set a goal for herself. Normally she would check her email everyday. That's not a vacation in my mind, people have different opinions. She set these intentions and she actually managed to do 90% of it. She may have checked in at once or twice in the span of a three-week trip, which is a huge progress.
That’s kind of the background here. I think there are a lot of things that people don't do very well with vacations. One of the funniest things I have ever seen is Visit Iceland which is Iceland's travel bureau. They did a study where they found about 65% of people will work daily while they are on vacation. So they made this whole marketing campaign to incentivise people to come to Iceland and also to highlight these facts. They had Icelandic horses walking along the keyboard and the message was essentially put your vacation responder on and these horses will respond to messages while you're gone.
It was a little playful way of doing it. Americans also use very few of our vacation days. I think 82% admit to doing some level of work on vacation.
I think the first thing is, can you do this? Do you want to do this? If you think you can’t and you have to be working, question some of those limiting beliefs. Why do you think you can’t? If it’s because there is no one else to do it. Is that actually true? If so, how can you start coaching your team so that they can start coming up with these solutions and figure out how to do this in your absence. If it’s something from an employee standpoint and you’re afraid your manager is going to think poorly of me.
One thing what I found fascinating is Sean Acker as an author and the US Travel Association did a study where they looked at what actually happens. It’s called credit time off. Those who take a vacation are more likely to get promoted, which is mind-blowing.
Then 94% of vacations result in higher levels of happiness and energy if there's a couple things that you do. These are some things I like to do on a regular basis, but if we're talking about the kind of the specifics you want to dive into, your first thing is figure out a “good time” to go.
Some people are going to say just go whenever. For me that's going to be really tough during conference season. I am going to plan my vacations as best as possible outside of conference season. I'm also going to start early. If I know I am going on a vacation in 3 months I'm going to start having these conversations both internally with myself as to how am I going to make this work and also with the team.
I think it's important to set expectations around your availability. If I'm going to be completely off, which is what I do and my team now knows that. You’ve got to have those conversations up front. If you're a leader and you really want to have a fully unplug vacation, but starting makes you really nervous. Setting the expectation for your next trip. If you need me I won't check email, but you can call me. Whatever those pieces are, set some boundaries and some expectations around your availability.
Then look ahead and see what needs to be done. We use Asana as our project management tool and I can see what I have assigned to me or what are our strategic goals and plans in the date range that I'm gone. When I look at that then I can start giving things up and making a plan. There are some things that I can do ahead of time. There are some things that I can't do ahead of time. At that point it's how do I figure out how to get this done while I’m gone.
Sometimes theres somebody else at your level that knows how to do it and it can get handed off to them. Other times maybe there's an opportunity for somebody below you to come in and to take on a bigger role for something they haven't done before.
In those cases I'm going to start parsing out what do I need to do ahead of time, what can somebody else at my level do, and what can somebody else below who has an opportunity to do a little bit more learn in that experience?
You want to start early, especially for this person that might be coming in and taking on more than they've done before they need some time to figure that out. So you're going to share your training plan or your standard operating procedures. If it's something a little bit more like during speaker season for us or a season working with speakers, they may have questions that we may not anticipate.
You do a pre-mortem here's what we're thinking, here's how I would typically respond, and then you have them join some calls so they can see how to answer questions live. What is your thought process, how do you go about this, and give them a framework you would use and test this and try it before you leave.
Then once you're gone that person should always have somebody they can go to with questions if they don't know. Plan early, make your list of what you're going to do, who else can help. Make sure of your training and upscaling your team.
I also like to block my calendar when I return. If I'm coming back I'm going to the first entire day and block it off, so nobody can book me on Calandly. That's just my way of coming back and figuring out where I am. Since I’ve shut work out of my brain now I need to bring it back in and remember what's happening.
Then I also will put in some key meetings with stakeholders. So whoever you had on your vacation plan make a 15 minute check in. Maybe it's with your manager to kind of touch base on what is changed while you're gone.
My biggest thing that I think I started last year for the first time and I don't know why I didn't do this earlier, is creating a remember list. My remember list is literally a Google doc called the “remember list” and it's a list of products statuses before I left. The top 3-5 is things that I have to do upon returning. Who I need to check in with about things that have moved forward and anything else that I need to know.
That's one of the last things that I do right before I leave. It’s completely up-to-date and then when I come back it's one of the first things I look at. It gives me all I need in one concentrated place opposed to looking through 50 emails, checking Asana, and checking my calendar. It's all in one document.
The amount of stress, planning, and time that has saved me is incredible. That's a big one. I also set an out-of-office expectations. My team internally knows what my communication is going to be while I'm gone unless there’s a fire. Otherwise I'm off.
So my email has to say the same thing. I encourage other people to do this as well, so I put the Icelandic horses in one of my last out of office notes and I had two links to planning your next vacation.
Here’s why it’s good for you and good for your business. Here’s a CEO that actually paid his people to go take vacation because he knows it's good for the bottom line and for them. I also understand not everyone wants a vacation, so here's 11 staycation ideas.
I'm going to be gone until this date, I won't check my email. If you need someone here's who you can contact. So you’ve got these different pieces in play. I don't have any notifications on my phone that come from work at all. If you call me it'll ring. I can check my email,l I can check Asana, and I can check my calendar, but nothing pings me.
I don't feel the need to delete my apps because I'm good at not actually checking them, but if you're not at least turn notifications off if not delete the apps entirely. That’s kind of my pre-leaving checklist.
Alisha Leytem: One thing that I would love to highlight is basically what you're doing when you have that conversation with your team ahead of time is your teaching them how to treat you. This is a really important communication skill that people need to understand. You teach others how to treat you. That's essentially the boundary that you're creating. I think you do a really great job at doing that and setting that boundary and communicating it clearly ahead of time.
How do you maintain that boundary when you are on vacation? How are you able to truly turn it off? I know that typically it takes people a couple of days to fully unwind and fully shut it off. Trying to resist the urge to sneak, check in, and see what's going on behind the scenes.
Alli Murphy: I’m going to answer this in two ways. The first one is when we went on our honeymoon to Costa Rica this was actually pretty easy and I think part of that is because the beginning of this trip was a work conference for my husband that I also got to attend, which was super fun. I was learning all these things, I don't have time to think about work. On the flip side we went to Ireland the year before for a wedding for some friends and in the beginning it was just the two of us. It was relaxation, it was exploring.
Disconnecting from work after a really busy season was tough. There's a couple things that I do. Those notifications are off which is the first one, you can delete the apps if that helps. The second one I mentioned is the notebook. That was the first trip that I took the notebook and it fit in my little fanny pack so that I could have it on the plane. At any time I had a work idea and I actually had a ton of them. I had a whole campaign planning idea that came to me. I don't want to lose these, but I also don't want them in my head. Writing them down for me was super helpful.
Another thing that I like to do is set an intention before a trip. Setting your intention to reconnect with yourself. Is it to explore new things or new culture? Is it to relax and recharge? Whenever you have that instinct to go check your email or you need to check slack or whatever it is, come back to that intention.
Doesn't mean it's easy. You may have to do it a couple times. You can even write in your little notebook. Then you can start to see how much that starts to pile up. If you can start to shift that trigger from I need to check it and I'm going to go do it, I need to check it and actually I'm going to use this time to be on vacation. So those are a couple different pieces.
Alisha Leytem: I love your intention setting. You're basically just repeating all of my keys in my framework.The sixth key is the key of intention. That's going to carry your energy through and help you stay grounded and why you're doing what you're doing. Remembering the intention that you’re setting.
I love the examples that you gave. Like what your intention was for a vacation or even the time off that you get organically through work. What's my intention for the holidays right now? This can be as simple as I just want to be present with my family.
Alli Murphy: That’s literally what mine is. I am going to be off my phone, not only with work stuff. In the lead-up to the holidays I have spent far more time on my phone than I normally have. My intention is to be in the present and off my phone. It may be a little bit to do with work, but it's more the outside of work stuff that I want to push to the back burner as well.
Alisha Leytem: To your point, what you just mentioned about remembering that when you have the urge to check something. What is my intention here? Just setting the intention ahead of time before you're doing the thing is that seed that you planted within and you'll find yourself being more drawn to doing it without as much energy or effort. This is because it's almost unfolding within you. Remembering it is even more powerful, but taking that time to set it ahead of your vacation it’s going to be really powerful for helping to maintain those boundaries. Even have that deeper sense of fulfillment that when you come back you have accomplished that energy that you wanted to experience.
Alli Murphy: I want to add in here when we talk about taking unplugged vacations. There can be this sense of I did it, I succeeded or I checked-in and I failed. My absolute best advice is take the unplugged vacation, but if you find yourself stressed and feeling like you need to check in and you do your check with your intention. Don’t ruin your vacation over it. If you need to check in and that's far less checking in that you’ve done in the past that's still a win.
We can talk about incremental progress here. It doesn't have to be a kind of cold turkey even if that's the ultimate goal. It’s that journey along the way. There's a couple other things I mean as you were talking about some people coming back from vacation and feel like they need a vacation from their vacation. Is this an experience you’ve had?
Alisha Leytem: There have been vacations like that for sure. Sometimes when I'm on a sightseeing, exploration vacation you just want to see the things. We did a trip to Germany and Norway in January 2020. It was awesome. It was an intention that I had set years ago to take my parents and my in-laws to Germany because we all have Heritage from there. So my husband and I took them out and we had this awesome two-week trip there. I am so grateful that it had happened at that time because it was right before the pandemic.
I don't know if it would have happened if we hadn't done it at that time. An example of what I'm trying to say is we wanted to show them all the things and we just needed to unwind from it when we got back. I've noticed on those adventurous trip that I do feel that a little bit more versus my vacation where we are just chilling at home or are more relaxed.
Alli Murphy: What immediately comes to mind for me is my best friend and I took a trip to Europe. We were in Scotland and Spain and we are huge planners. This is before my husband and I had our engagement trip and I learned how to travel differently which is how I travel now. She and I are both planners. W
We've planned, kid you not, everyday of those 3 weeks. We had entrance tickets to different places to castles, museums. We had the trains booked ahead of time and it's something that was great because it saved a lot of money, we knew what we were doing, and we didn’t have to stand in really long lines.
We were exhausted at the end. Tate and I spent a year and a half in Asia, obviously outside of work. I was not taking a year-and-a-half off and then coming back after 2 weeks vacation, that doesn't work. We traveled really slowly and one of the things that I really learned throughout that experience is to plan, but not overbooked yourself. What we like to do wherever we go now on vacation is to do enough research about a place that you have some ideas of what you want to do and maybe you block in some things that are really important to you, but you leave the rest open.
The reason that we love to do that is because sometimes you're tired. What happens a lot is you end up meeting somebody that you want to do something with. Or one night when we were in Costa Rica the right we're just going to walk around town. We ended up at this craft cocktail bar and ended in a kind of cooking class experience.
This bartender is teaching us how he's made these two award-winning cocktails. That won awards across Central America. We never would have found it had we planned everything. So have enough to figure out where you want to go and then leave enough to have some of those kinds of spontaneous experiences.
Another thing that we really like to do is plan something that really sparks joy for you. For us, that's typically a cooking class. We've taken them all over the world. One of my favorites is in Vietnam where you have a flame as you're cooking that grows about 3 ft.
Doing those things that bring you joy that are outside of your normal experience are huge. Another one is an outdoor adventure. If there's a place to go canyoneering or we trust the Annapurna circuit in Nepal, which is actually where he proposed. Doing the things that bring you joy and then leaving the room to relax for spontaneity are going to help you slow down live in the moment and I have agency over your trip. You won’t feel like you're running around. Leave work behind and then come back more refreshed.
Alisha Leytem: What would you say are your best tips for ending that overwhelming feeling? I know you mentioned your remember list. What helps you to kind of end that overwhelming feeling of getting back into it?
Alli Murphy: There's some level of that feeling will exist if you're the only one that's on the vacation. A lot of organizations did a global week off and it's a lot easier to fully unplug when everyone else is. If you set expectations ahead of time of heres how I want to communicate, here how I am going to handle things when I get back. I've got my day blocked, I have my meeting with my key stakeholders, and I have my reminders list.
Those things help. Then I think it's also about being graceful with yourself. When I come back I'm probably not going to work a full 8 hours the first day back. I'm probably going to do email for an hour and a half, I'm going to do this for an hour and a half, I'm going to take a break, I'm going to ease back in.
There’s probably some people that would listen to this and like well you didn't come back and do all the work. Technically you're right. I didn't work an eight-hour day, but by not working an 8-hour day I'm actually getting more done and I'm setting myself up to ramp back for the rest of the week and the time going forward.
I take those things off my reminder list. I chunk my time. I'm going to block my email time because email, at least for me, is a black hole and we’re not going to spend all day in there. Being graceful with yourself of what you have done helps.
I like to make a wins list. Everybody has a to-do list. Not as many people have a win list or a ta-da list. Instead of just crossing things off on your to-do list sometimes whether a ta-da list. Which are the things that you did. You're writing down, I did this and here's your list of things.
Having that sounds kind of silly, but the act of writing it helps you recognize that you did something. The dopamine hit that you get from formulating hey I did this. Completely transforms how you look at your work in your day which is going to help you be more motivated, which is going to help you get more done the next day.
Alisha Leytem: That's also what we do around the holidays is that first week back. The first week in January. We all have a feeling it's like I'm still in holiday mode, but we have to get back into it. How can we treat it as slowing and easing into it? Having a lot of grace for yourself. So make sure if you can not to schedule anything super big on that week or even the week after so you can give yourself the opportunity to gracefully ease yourself back into it.
Alli Murphy: I think that's the absolute best way to do it. There’s also times where that's not going to work. On a different trip that I came back from I had a very big week upon my return. I had my reminder list and what I did is I blocked out my schedule.
I blocked out my walk time, my lunch time, here I’m going to meditate for 10 minutes. Knowing that I had a huge week and I had to be on it I knew I needed to make sure that eat right. I need to make sure that I'm getting my sleep. I have to have these breaks in the middle of the day.
I'm going to use my timer. I'm going to focus on the most important things. The rest of it I'm ignoring. I can come back to it next week and see if it fits, but right now this is my focus. So even if you have a big week keep your boundaries even with yourself.
I'm not going to scroll through social media for my break, which I've definitely done before. Meditate instead. What are the ways that I can help bring myself back and keep myself happy, focused on my well-being, and as productive as possible while still enjoying it.
Alisha Leytem: You gave some really good examples of how you can squeeze in taking care of yourself throughout the day. I think that's really refreshing to hear someone who is in it. Someone who’s a leader, you have a team, you're doing good work, and you have a lot of responsibility on your plate. You're walking the talk. You can say: I can still crush it at work and crush taking care of myself.
Actually the better I take care of myself, the better my work is. You are a living walking example of that. I think your team is really lucky to have you showing them the way.
Alli Murphy: We should just put that on a billboard. Doing these things, you’re actually going to be more successful. Not everyone agrees with that yet but there's so much research out there that says it's true.
Wrap Up
Alisha Leytem: We will get there. Most of this is unlearning the trauma that our elders taught us. The previous generations have worked for 20 to 30 years. We have to unlearn what that looks like and understand that there are better ways to do things.
Just because we've been doing something some way for years and years doesn't mean it's always going to have to be done that way. I know it can be even better than before. We will get there and I think more and more people are open to this idea. When you're open to learning about it then you're more likely to start doing them. Hearing what the real message is because now you're a little bit more open. I think this is a gift from the past few years that we all have experienced.
So you've given us so many really awesome tips that we will be putting in the show notes. Even some resources that you had mentioned like the Pomodoro app do those types of things. Where can we connect with you? Where can we find you? Give us your deets!
Alli Murphy: So I am on LinkedIn and I’m very active there. It's actually Alison Murphy and my maiden name is Claypool Conrad, which is a mouthful. You can find me on LinkedIn. I work for Engage for Good so you can find me pretty easily that way.
As Alisha mentioned, I host the Engage For Good Podcast, which is all about CSR, social impact, and corporate/nonprofit partnerships. If you're interested in that check that out wherever you listen to podcasts.
If you are interested in that then obviously EngageForGood.com. We've got an annual conference every year in May where we bring together a bunch of purpose focused people to figure out how to do more good in the world.
Alisha Leytem: Where is the conference each year?
Alli Murphy: It changes each year. This year we will be in Atlanta, Georgia. We’ve been to Chicago, New Orleans, Austin, Texas. We shift around and it’s been really challenging after COVID. So many things got shifted, so it’s hard to find spaces on your dates, for your capacity size, and for the floor arrangement that you need. We are very fortunate to have found that and I will be in Atlanta in May.
Alisha Leytem: Is that when it is each year? In May?
Alli Murphy: Yes. This year it will be May 16th-18th.
Alisha Leytem: Well we will have all the links for you guys to check out over there. Definitely be sure to follow her on LinkedIn. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us and being a really good example in the workforce that a lot of people can look up to and learn from.
Alli Murphy: Thank you for having me. If your listeners have any questions feel free to reach out.
Alisha Leytem: Thanks everyone. See you next time.
