Bitesize Moment: "It Makes My Heart Happy." — Prof Robert Kelly on Real Work-Life Balance
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How can you tell when work is disrupting your work-life balance?
For this bite-sized moment we go back to episode number 112 with Professor Robert Kelly. It is a complete and honest confession from a cardiologist about losing his own balance, followed by a practical exercise and a real fix. All the busyness in your life and everything that you're trying to do, you know what's coming. Do you do you have a good work life balance, do you think? Is your heart healthy as a result of your your lifestyle? Or could you be healthier?
How did a TED Talk, book launch, and Christmas overwhelm Professor Robert Kelly?
Well, you mentioned I did a TED talk. So I did a TED talk at the beginning of October. So you do the Ted talk, it gets scripted, edited, and it comes out. So it comes out three weeks later. So that's the just after the October uh last weekend in October it comes out. And then my book became available just at the beginning of November. So three weeks after my TED talk, and the TED Talks you have to push to get people to watch it. I have a book that gets launched. And so that takes up a certain amount of time. And like a TED Talk, when a book comes out, you have to push to get people to read it and try to encourage people to buy the book. And then Christmas comes up. So I had three months where I literally I'm chasing my tail for want of a better word.
And then over Christmas I took a week off for the Christmas holiday and I swore to myself I wouldn't do any work and I stuck to it.
What did taking a week off reveal about burnout and making time?
And I didn't do any work. And what I realized after the week is I don't know how I got through the previous three months. Because I realized that I had no time in the day and I actually found that I wasn't making decisions about where I wanted to go this year so clearly. Whereas having taken the week off, I became very self aware to the fact of saying, My gosh, I really, really did push it so so far in in the fact that there was no space left in the day. I mean, there literally was nothing. And then having the week off, I kind of realised I was much calmer. When I thought about my New Year's resolutions or the goals for 2025, they came out really, really clearly. And a few other things I wanted to sort out.
And so for managing the balance, I s I felt that the best balance was I had to make time to be able to do the other things. And I even I did a clinic today before I came here, and I could see a couple of patients weren't available to come in, and I felt great. So this is great. The few patients could go in. I had a little bit of space. But I could see myself chasing again in the clinic and and I could see how the time gets away because it gets busy again. And kind of so little insights in that for me are huge because now I know what they are to try and act on them to try and make the time. If I want to do the exercise is one of the goals I have for this year, I'll have to make the time to exercise. And I think that's the only way to make the balance right.
And I think the other thing with the balance, it's really important. And I got this from a podcast from a guy in the UK, a a medic in the UK the other day, about the different pillars of your own life. Not your lifestyle, but of your life. And I think it's really, really important and I like this that you look at the pillars like your financial health, your family, your friends, your own health, uh, your work as example.
How can the pillars-of-life exercise help you assess work-life balance?
And if you take a look at those and see, well, how good are you for twenty twenty five as the example? I mean maybe you are very healthy with what we've talked about. But maybe you don't have any friends. Or maybe you're not so good with your family despite being through Christmas. And maybe for twenty twenty five what you need to do for your own health is reach out to your friends and say, well, you know, let's go to the cinema or let's go for a walk and put that in your diary and make time to do that every week for twenty twenty five. And perhaps in doing that, that will do more for your health than necessarily your diet that you've already changed.
Can making time for friends and family improve your health?
So I found that really, really interesting because as you ask about the work balance and other people ask me over Christmas about are you happy with your life and where
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
How can you tell when work is disrupting your work-life balance?
0:02–0:31
2
How did a TED Talk, book launch, and Christmas overwhelm Professor Robert Kelly?
0:31–1:25
3
What did taking a week off reveal about burnout and making time?
1:25–3:08
4
How can the pillars-of-life exercise help you assess work-life balance?
3:08–3:45
5
Can making time for friends and family improve your health?
3:45–4:08
6
How can you stop work from crowding out your health and relationships?
4:08–5:16
7
How can one-on-one trips create lasting memories with your children?
5:16–6:38
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The Laura Dowling Experience
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ADHD, Marriage & Growth with Daniel Buckley #185