RWL231: How to Achieve Balance and Wellness in Your Life w/ Rowena Hennigan

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
0:00

Hi, it's Alex Geller from the Remote Work Life Podcast. I hope you're well, wherever you may be in the world. I have yet another special guest today with me. I have Rowena Hennigan, and Rowena is a remote work skills expert. She's got unique experience of designing and delivering university accredited courses in that subject. She's passionate about well-being in remote work, which is what we all need, especially in organizations. It's obviously vital and she views that as vital in effective operations, and I couldn't agree more. She is the employee programs remote expert for two large insurance companies. Now Rowena works 100% remote from Spain hard'd love to be there right now and she's founded two fully remote companies herself. She's founded Row Remote and Rise, which is R-I-S-E in capital letters. So Rise, which is all about emotional intelligence, and she's, of course, a seasoned digital nomad. Rowena, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to join us today and you're very welcome thanks, alex, and thanks for the fabulous introduction.

Rowena Henningan:
1:14

It's lovely to join you today no, it's wonderful.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
1:17

It's that first conversation we had a couple of weeks ago because I met rowena. We were met via LinkedIn, I believe it was. I met via referral. Somebody recommended you to the show and I thought let me have a look. So I looked and I'd heard of you before and you're somebody who is well known in the world of remote work and very much a pioneer, I would have said, within the world of remote work. So what I really want to know is how did you come to be the remote work expert that you are today?

Rowena Henningan:
1:53

I guess it started back in 2007. I was working with a telecommunications company in Ireland, in the west of Ireland, who are now known as Avaya, but back then, alex, they were called Nel and I was part of a global team. We were allowed you know, we were enabled to work remotely in the early days of things like Microsoft Communicator and early communication tools, and I worked a lot between the UK and Ireland and I started working and set on a virtual team then and it really opened my mind to it. And around that time as well, I did some traveling and I began to realize that I could work virtually and it wasn't complete remote work as we know it now because it was in its early stages, but that was my first taster. And then fast forward on to around 2012, I was pregnant with my daughter and living in Dublin and, yeah, I started to work a little bit from home on a couple of the the contracts I had at the time and that you know, with you have children. When you have kids or when you're moving into family life, remote work is really flexible, it really supports you and it was something that I thought. This is great. I'm leaning on this skill, this way of life again. I'm really interested in it. It's part of my passion, and as I was working through those in a kind of hybrid model, as we call it now, with two contracts, I began to notice some of the skills you need to work remotely. I my background is in marketing, communications and psychology, and I was really interested in how we communicated virtually, how we made our intentions clear, how we were self-leaders, self-managers, as individual remote workers.

Rowena Henningan:
3:38

And then a big life change happened for me and it's a big part of my story my daughter, around the age of one, developed quite bad asthma chronic asthma in fact. So those first uh, couple of years of her early life were very stressful, to the point where myself and my husband moved to Spain because we were seeking a drier climate for her and and and that is where I suddenly really, really it was like the life lesson to go. Remote work has enabled me. First of all, enabled me to keep my career going with a very sick child and I can flash back to 2014 and 15 surviving on very such low levels of sleep for nearly three years in total, but managing to work a little bit flexibly with my in the two contracts I had then, and then being able to change my whole life and move to Spain with my family and enable my daughter's health because of being using, taking advantage of appreciating the remote work way of life.

Rowena Henningan:
4:43

And in my introduction you said I'm a digital nomad. Now I have a confession I'm a wannabe digital nomad. It's a bit different, difficult with it with a young child, but I still love to travel. I go to Bali. I work from there because I have family there. I've been to France because I have family there and work from there when I go back to Ireland, it's the same. So it's a way of life for me and I am really, really appreciative and grateful to remote work as a way of life and a way of thinking and a way of working, because it really kept me sane when I needed it and kept me working, and that's why I'm so passionate about it.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
5:23

And you said Ashley actually counted about two or three times which you said it's a way of life and it's um, couldn't agree more. And it's, it's. It's a way of life that and by the from the sounds of what you've just said, it's, it's enabled you. It's again, it's an enabler. It enables you to build the life that you want and that you need. It's helped you to to move out to, to spain, to help your daughter, to be able to apply your expertise wherever you may be in the world, at the same level that you would do, or probably even better than you would do, if you were in an office and you built a great career and now you're advising people on, on um, on remote work, and exactly exactly you, I mean, you mentioned traveling.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
6:06

I mean, and in fact, maybe what we should say at the top of the show as well, is that a bit of a disclaimer in the sense that we're certainly not in a kind of a normal situation as things stand at the moment? This by no means and I keep saying this because lots of people are still conflating the two but, um, this is us being forced to work from home. This is not remote work, so there are constraints, as Rowena was saying about her ability to travel and all those other sorts of things. But no, I mean, it sounds like you've been able, you are have been able to, um, build a great life for yourself. Uh, you've. You've got your clients now as well, across the world. Where are your clients distributed?

Rowena Henningan:
6:47

So I have clients in Europe. I have some international work as well with the States. I mean, I choose, I'm a solopreneur and I have the other company you mentioned, Rise Emotional Intelligence, which is looking at services for corporates in emotional intelligence, specifically for remote teams, virtual teams, and that's with co-founder Sandra Thompson out of the UK, who we've never met. We founded the company in July. We've never met. My own consultancy service and company is mostly European because I choose it that way because of time zone. So I want to make that clear as well. I do have some further off work, but that's also the joy. I mean, time zones can be a challenge and as well as being, you know, an advocate for remote work it's my own flavor of remote work. I say to myself that I don't want to be on calls generally at 11 o'clock at night and because of the nature of my work consulting and training I would need to do that if I was working a lot with the safe. So for now I'm choosing that European zone which is more time zone, friendly with the family.

Rowena Henningan:
7:53

But that's all part of the values that go with this way of life, to what you said, and then taking that way of life and that purpose that it can bring to you, because your priorities are often different. Some of my priorities when my daughter was sick were forced on me. I didn't have the choice. I had to work in the couple of hours after I'd had it, you know, in between naps or whatever Whereas now I look at life differently and I look at those values and that purpose from that experience.

Rowena Henningan:
8:24

And what's interesting and thanks for reminding, because we can never forget is we are living through such an exceptional, extraordinary time. What many people are doing and even you know I did it for five months solid it's not true remote work. If you're confined in your home, with emergency home working, it's not the same and you are restricted, you have stress, you have distractions, you have competing responsibilities, and what's interesting for me is as hard as this last year has been for everyone in different ways. It actually reminded me of those values. You reminded me of those values. It actually brought back to me the importance of choosing flexible work to prioritize your work-life balance and well-being as an individual, and and that that that's why I'm so passionate as well about individual remote workers being aware of that for themselves and knowing that they can choose that and that's another word you've used, uh, quite often initially, something that's applied to not just you but many others in your situation choice, choosing, having the ability to choose, but at the same time it doesn't detract from the.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
9:35

You know, the work and the all that kind of thing. Having choices is so important and you've been able to, to build that in, but, of course, it's been by no means easy going, I'm sure, and this kind of um way of work, as is, you know, when you're first starting out, if you don't have, even if you're quite experienced, anyway, it can be, it can have its demands, can't it? Um, what sort of challenges did you face when you were sort of starting out? And I mean, yeah, how did you overcome those challenges?

Rowena Henningan:
10:09

There is definitely a learning curve, and there can be a learning curve particularly as a sort of in that freelance solopreneur model where you're dealing with different companies all the time. So I'll give you an example At one point in june, I was using 14 different video conferencing tools for a large presentation wow, okay of different ilks and some of them I don't name names because I don't want to get in trouble I was like, if they don't really want that to happen, I would get back to the link and having to to, I mean, I obviously I'm 20 odd years in my career, so, like us joking at the start, alex, when some piece of technology doesn't work, it's all about experience. But there was a steep learning curve when I started out remote and established my company, row Remote in 2017. Learning the tool, understanding more about asynchronous communications, the levels of remote work, applying them to myself, then looking around back then and trying to learn more about GitHub, gitlab I mean Andy Treba that you had on from Crossover would be someone that I have followed and admired and I listened to the podcast great podcast episode with him and so much to learn about how he's taken, for example, and other companies and other leaders in the space about how they were doing things in remote. So I had that challenge of learning and then this year that's been accelerated completely, been accelerated completely.

Rowena Henningan:
11:47

So that challenge of keeping up to date and understanding what is out there in terms of remote work and the different maturity stages and models but then applying it to your own personal or company or team situation. Obviously that's something that's ongoing and you're always learning and it's almost like you have to almost remind yourself that it's constantly evolving. But the good news for listeners is and I'm sure you would agree that the wealth and quality of information now is astounding in these recent months and people can join in and learn so much quicker than someone, say, who was trying to get into remote work five or 10 years ago. There's a lot more easy, accessible information in the community to build up the YouTube videos, those how-to documents, all of that. So that was one of the challenges.

Rowena Henningan:
12:38

The other challenge as well and it's a known challenge within the whole area of remote work is that potential to overwork, which could lead into burnout. So I'm mostly sitting in my I'm in my co-working space today I do have my husband he's in an office near me, but I'm on my own and in a physical, in-person sense most days. So I have to be my own boss in terms of hours, in terms of routine, and that's something that can also be a challenge, and it's one of the areas I'm really interested in as a remote worker, because you can feel that you are challenged or may have some difficulties in how you see that working day and those working hours.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
13:23

You know I was as you were talking. There. I'm nodding away because I'm thinking to myself. That's something I experienced as well. That happened to me too. It's kind of it's amazing when you you start to talk to other people, especially other people like you, with your expertise and the fact you've worked remotely and you've been to, when you actually, when I was actually starting out, my learning went down. It just went down the pan back in 2009 because, like, like you say, you have to be more deliberate about um searching out for searching out the information, understanding what current and you know there's lots of information, he said, and there's sometimes quite a lot to actually trawl through on the internet but, yeah, I could, I could really, uh, understand that and the overwork as well. That's something probably I still do, um, and I think when we last spoke, I admitted to that, didn't I?

Rowena Henningan:
14:09

when I was but we're all human and I mean I do it some days as well, of course we're all human, but it's that, it's having converse, open conversations like this, because you maybe don't have that in. I mean, I've worked in in in real teams and I'm sure you did as well before, in real office spaces where someone might turn around and go oh, you haven't had your lunch, alex. Yeah, let's go for lunch. Yeah, sitting near you. We don't have that, and so how do we put in a framework or a support infrastructure around us where we build our intention or our deliberate intention to make sure we take our breaks, to make sure that we keep that balance?

Rowena Henningan:
14:53

As I said, it won't be perfect every day, so don't beat yourself up about it. But in the main. And then, what can we do? Like what you and I've been doing just have a chat, compare notes, what works for you, share openly and then reach out into the virtual world, because that's what I'm sure you'll know from the podcast as well the community is so supportive and you can reach out to people. And if there is something that's bugging you about your hours, about your maybe stress levels, whatever it may be, about feeling a little bit socially isolated. There's a lot of support out in the remote work world. In relation to that, and actually in the show notes, there's a fabulous site called meet cafecito. I'm using my spanish, um which is simply a site where you can meet other virtual workers for coffee, for example, um, and, and it's available all the time and you can. You can match up on different interests. There's other things like that, you know, people can lean into when they need to.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
15:52

They just need to know about it yeah, it's, it's so true, and I think, uh, it's been very, I mean, you've been supportive and, like you said, when you reach out to other people, when I first started to reach out, in fact, the remote work life podcast itself started because I was having that lack of learning or that lack of, you know, interaction.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
16:12

So I started to reach out to people and they started to give me information and then I started to share that information and, before you know it, the podcast is born and I'm talking to you and it just I think the more conversations that you have is, the more the conversation kind of obviously, the wider your network grows and you feel better. Actually, actually, when I spoke to you that time when did we speak? Was it last week? Well, what spoke to you? I felt better after the conversation because I think, like you said, sometimes you tend to beat yourself up about certain things or you think you're not doing something right or you think you're the only person doing that thing, but when you start to speak to other people, it kind of it's a bit of a pressure release, almost. So I was really appreciative for that.

Rowena Henningan:
16:53

Uh, appreciate, you know my pleasure, but it's interesting. I mean, a lot of teachers go out of heart. I'm a teacher and I still lecture with the university. You know, as you mentioned at the start, and my other work that I might do, but fundamentally I'm a teacher and people listening who relate to that whether you're teaching your kids or you have a hobby that you teach something. The lot of teachers, I'm sure, listening because we we teach things that we're not maybe aware of it.

Rowena Henningan:
17:20

But one of the beauties of being teaching is that you learn about something in another way yourself. When you, when you share with someone and and, for example, with the self-care template we were talking through your possible improvements in your self-care as a remote worker, alex, like I'm learning as well, I'm reminding myself and it's one of the reasons I love doing the work on self-leadership for remote workers and for organizations, because it reminds me for remote workers and for organisation, because it reminds me. It makes me, when I look at my calendar, go, yeah, I need to put another break in there or I'm going to go for an extra walk, and it's almost like preaching back myself. So it's kind of selfish in a way. But I think in general, when we're knowledge workers on computers and that's the main profile of everyone listening, I'm sure, to counteract the screen time, to counteract the potential oversaturation on digital devices and screens, we need that quality human connection.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
18:21

We need to share and we need to to explain honestly to people that you know about what we find helps us and that we're kind of leading into the the whole idea of um wellness, and I'm still myself understanding what's best for me, physically, mentally, when it comes to wellness, rowing and what. What is your? How do you defy wellness, and you know what kind of things does it encompass, then, because that's you mentioned part of it. What does it encompass for a remote worker?

Rowena Henningan:
18:54

and so I'm personally, for me, so my understanding of wellness is being at peace with my whole self, with my, the holistic me. So it's not just uh, I get a little bit esoteric it's not just the physical body, the mental, the brain, the intelligence, uh, you know, it's also the spiritual, the soul, the whole lot. For me that's, you know, quite honest for you. That's the way I see my life. So and I think people are struggling with that even just we think your intuition, and when you're just not sure, if something feels a little bit, you know I'm not too good and I don't know why, which many of us often feel, and that's what I kind of mean by that intuition or soul or that part of you.

Rowena Henningan:
19:34

And for me it's been a piece, in the main, being okay in all those parts, right, and when I check in with myself I'm sort of like, and it's not going to be perfect, but it's asking myself in a little bit of self-talk how am I? Most days I try and do it intentionally. How am I physically? Oh, I've got a bit of a stiff back, so I'm going to stand at my standing desk today. How am I mentally? I think I'm okay, but actually I've got a busy day, so I must make sure that I go out for lunch or I make sure I speak, have a proper conversation with my husband without my daughter around, and I'm parents listening.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
20:15

I know what you mean by that.

Rowena Henningan:
20:15

Yeah, and and then just my gutter, my spiritual side. How is that does that feel? Feel okay. And that part for me is to do with my values and to do with me living honestly, truthfully, authentically, all that stuff and that's important part. And living to my why I chose remote work and why I chose to set up, you know, a company where I could work from anywhere, work that I could work from anywhere. So for me, that's my big picture on wellness. But, alex, yours could be really different, different.

Rowena Henningan:
20:47

I've spoken to people where it's all about their physical right yeah I've spoken to people where academics, where it's all about their sort of intelligence, mental, okay. So it's personal, it's very personal. We can't have a general idea of it. What I'm more interested in is asking people to look at that for themselves got you, and is that I mean the wellness?

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
21:13

you mentioned also as well when we were talking, uh, previously, the holistic individual worker, and that is that part of that. Then could you describe what you mean by the?

Rowena Henningan:
21:24

holistic is so holistic worker. Holistic is a word that you might hear used in medicine and what it means is that if you go to the gp and use a sore throat, they'll ask you about the sore throat, for example. Right, if you go to a holistic practitioner, normally they're in the alternative space. They'll ask how you are generally, they'll talk about your mood, they'll ask questions about nutrition. They look at the big, the holistic, because they they think that that one symptom is only one part of the, the solution. Right, and that I mean that's where the term, my term, holistic work becomes and that's what we bring, actually completely as remote workers, normally in the normal model where you're working separately from that physical connection to a company or to colleagues. Yes, you might be in a co-working, yes, you might be sharing a space, but you're maybe on your own from that perspective.

Rowena Henningan:
22:16

So how are you? Holistically? Because, especially if you're only working from home, we need to care about work-life balance, we need to care about fatigue, we need to care about screen time Because otherwise, because you're home and your lives are together, out, fatigue. We need to care about screen time because otherwise they your whole, because your home and your life are together, the whole holistic person is going to be affected, as that worker in the home. So that that's what I understand by and that's why I ask I often. I often hope that people will see the bigger picture now. The other thing to add to that is what I've noticed, since we've all gone fully emergency remote, is we are all being much more open in these virtual worlds. We're sharing what we think, we're sharing our home lives.

Rowena Henningan:
23:02

In general, you're getting a view into someone's kitchen, sitting room, bedroom, chaos, whatever it may be. So that is the full person really, isn't it? It is much. It might not be everything. I'm not saying that we don't have to have a privacy or a private part, but I think through this what's happening to us as a world, as a, you know, a global population of workers. That's what's happened. The holistic person has been brought to work and a lot of company missions would say bring your whole self to work. And it's idealistic to a point, but I still think that it's nice because it's human centered. It's the full worker and the full person that comes to work, and for me, that's why I use it in in in some of my teaching and some of my in a lot of my work, because I believe we have to care about the whole person.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
23:52

Yeah, I think we do, and you're right. I mean lots of the experts, ceos from remote businesses I've spoken to. They've all mentioned similar sorts of words to you being human-centred, bringing yourself your whole self to work, being truthful as well, not truthful to the point that you're bearing all. But you, you know, you have to be truthful in the sense that, or at least you know, build that trust between each other. And how can you do that? That's by, obviously, the way you work, but also, um, letting them have an understanding, for example, of your home life, so that it can be more, you know, adapt to how you are. So, yeah, I think this, this, the situation that we're in, will probably, actually, will probably begin to separate the lenders who are, you know, human centered, from those who are, who are not, you know, because you have to have that empathy, don't you as well, to exactly understand different people's salarios and adapt.

Rowena Henningan:
24:50

Exactly, and it's exactly what I try to do, even through my conversation, with sharing that personal, how remote working as an ethos, way of life is so personal to me because it is Because of my life experience with my daughter and I had no choice during those two years but to bring the real me to the situation, because that was what I was faced with and a lot of people. There's a lot more authenticity, people being real coming through. But I really like that point and I really want to want to highlight what you said, because I've heard it too from c-suite, I've heard it coming from that that human center that more and I hope that's the case, alex, because leaders who can share a bit more vulnerably and openly, it can make all the difference it really really can in terms of team dynamics yeah, totally agree, totally agree.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
25:52

And talking about dynamics of a team, I think, was it you told me in that conversation as well, when it comes to supporting each other as well, it's so much more if you're working in a remote team or if you have, if you have a distributed team or work within distributed team, you have to have that support of each other anyway. You have to understand each other, work together and what I've seen it normally happens quite naturally within, again, within remote teams, that that support network and building that support network um up, um. But if you don't, for me, when, again, when I first started out I probably didn't have that network, that I should have had that built up over time and I was again quite deliberate about, about building it up. So that, honestly for me, and what prompted that post on linkedin, the post I linked? I posted a post on linkedin about burnout just the other day and quite a few people have actually um, um she's seen that post now.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
26:55

But I became burnt out because, and the signs for me was, you know, I was feeling tired, I was, you know, my, my rate of work wasn't what it was, I wasn't productive, as you might say. I was probably isolating myself deliberately as well. Those were some of the giveaway signs for me, rowena. I mean, I know there aren't typical giveaway signs, but are there any sort of signs that you see generally that are signs of um, signs of burnout, or that you're not going as well as you should be going?

Rowena Henningan:
27:25

so it's interesting because we can only see. We need to notice those signs from a baseline or a foundation. So, say, alex is normally quite chatty, or there's this this and this that we know about working with alex in a team, then obviously if there's any change in that, that would be a sign and a good colleague or a good manager would reach out and say, oh, you haven't had your video on on calls, you know, or whatever, and sort of tweak that out okay. So that would be what I would advise people to look at those little changes in behaviour, okay. But also, be brave, have those honest conversations in your direct network of a team. Why not do what you know? So you've told me honestly there, alex. Alex, thanks for sharing that.

Rowena Henningan:
28:16

I'm known to keep an eye out in the future. It's good to know that when you experienced that before, these are the things that happened. Is there anything else that you think I should know so that I can support you about? If you're feeling a little bit stressed or older working, you share with me, you ask me back. I mean, so this, some of this does happen, naturally, but part of the work I do is working with teams to help them have those conversations and practice through a type of role play. Because you've been around since 2009, you're probably would know, maybe, how to do that, how to share, how to, but other people may not or it may not be something they're comfortable with.

Rowena Henningan:
29:01

So, to summarize those two points look for a change in behavior and then maybe check in, okay and ask and then also, why wait for being reactive? Be proactive, kick off a conversation with the people that are in your team. Is there anything you know I need to know? Are you not the? Hey, how are you? Hey, I'm okay. No, tell me, are you really it? How could you be? Okay, you're homeschooling. We're in a pandemic oh yeah etc.

Rowena Henningan:
29:31

And and just tell me what's the three crap things today you know of whatever, and people will answer you believe it right and you'll start that open dialogue. But if you have that kind of open conversation it can lead into a good supportive colleague or a good leader or whatever going. And how can we support each other? What could I do for you? What are the signs, alex? If there are those signs, how can I help you? And just chat it through? It's not really obvious, but it does have to be intentional and hopefully people listening that will resonate with them as a way of approaching that conversation and you mentioned another um where that I'm hearing quite often and reviews myself quite often is, and that is intent.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
30:14

It's important to have intent where your self-care is concerned. And again I, you know, going back to myself and our initial conversation, I was talking to you about how my self-care is lacking at the moment, or was lacking, and I didn't really have or stick to any sort of plan or any sort of activities. And we started to talk about having a self-care plan and you've sent a self-care plan. In fact, what I'll do is obviously I'll leave a link to that plan in the show notes. So have a look in the show notes, because I think it's really started to help me to to visualize how my day is going to be in this scenario as it is now, because I had a plan before. But that plan is kind of a bit different now to what it was before giving my children a home and I'm homeschooling as well, so that having a plan is so important, isn't it? Isn't it, rowena, and you know what?

Rowena Henningan:
31:11

yeah, tell us about that well, yeah, I've developed, or just my framework for looking at self-care and it's from my own experience is having those chunks of self-care, that 30, 40 minutes that you do your Pilates class or yoga class, if it's online, your run your gym, whatever you can manage and I know we have to. You know, be creative, maybe restriction. And often I would ask people, and they'd have it in in mentoring sessions and they'd have one or two answers and then I'd think, well, what short activities do you do? And they're like what do you mean? Okay, or a lot of parents would say to me I don't have time for portabellum, I don't have any time for self-care, and and and. So I would, I would help them to see that we all have a minute.

Rowena Henningan:
31:57

Most of us are living in the first world.

Rowena Henningan:
31:59

We do have a minute if we want to make it, and we we might need to be creative, we might need to plan it, but it's there and you just need to tap into it.

Rowena Henningan:
32:08

But I'm really glad you used the words visualization, because that's my interest in psychology and the therapy is why, when I work through this self-care for myself and with you, when we talk through these chunks, these little activities, maybe some new activities to explore. I always try and visualize myself doing it and I did it with you when we were talking about the drumming, so I hope we can use that example. Yes, so I said to you, if you were going to do your little bit of drumming, you probably think, well, if I'm going to do my drumming with my son, I need to have it all set up and get ready. And I said, well, what about coming up with like a biscuit tin or something or box that you could drum on? And you went, wow, that's. And I said exactly, that's a five to ten minute fun way of bringing in one little snapshot of drumming into the day so it was a great idea.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
33:02

It is a great idea because I think, as I said to you when we spoke about it, when I first started playing the drums myself, that was how it all started. It started with me banging on my lap, banging my knife and fork on the dining room table and annoying the hell out of my mum, so it was such a great idea it's almost a bad idea, you know so if we were doing more sessions, I would actually tap into that.

Rowena Henningan:
33:29

That was a really positive memory for you, a real, you know, brings up your senses, remembering, tapping really good, really good you could share that with your son.

Rowena Henningan:
33:35

But then you can picture yourself doing the old box from a christmas present or the biscuit tin and and just maybe challenging him into let's have a little go together. And it's about that frequency of of the activity because that's because if we try and do the big chunk only we might fail. So if we've the five, ten minutes I and suggestion or or activity that's shorter, that we can pull on when we have a really busy day, you can say to yourself I have a, I have 10 minutes between meetings, I'm going to go out and do that, tap, tap, tap, etc. And that's that's where the planning is still really important.

Rowena Henningan:
34:17

With self-care, I have to say the most success I've seen with clients bringing in a good, healthy self-care is where they have built it into calendars and they have looked to that profile and extended it out. But it's it's. You know, I want to encourage people because every little bit helps and sometimes you're already maybe listening to a piece of music on a break or perhaps you're picking up a magazine and reading a couple of articles. So what also helps us, alex, is to say that intention at the start of doing that. I am taking a break from work now and I'm going to read those three stories in my favourite magazine.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
35:00

Yeah, there's so much there that I could talk about, and I think, having somebody to, having somebody like Rowena to speak I'm so lucky that I've, you know, found Rowena, um, and I'm lucky as well to have other people within my network.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
35:14

But that did that didn't come about by chance. That came about by, you know, conversations, but all the things that are in your mind and again, with the conversations that you and I had about the drumming, that was something that was the back of my mind, which, through a conversation with you, it pulled it out to the front. So I was thinking to myself because previously I was thinking to myself how am I going to teach my son to play the drums and how can I build that into sort of like my routine? And I was thinking about the complicated things like the practice pad and the, the drumsticks and the, the drumsticks and the stand and setting it up and all this sort of thing. But Rowena was able to just simplify it for me. You know it was just. It made things so much easier, and so it's important to have the, the people who can help you with it, like Rowena. But also, I think another important aspect really is having somebody to be accountable to for it, so that you can actually maintain it right thank you.

Rowena Henningan:
36:08

Exactly, and all the psychology we know about making commitments, changing ideas and suggestions into real behavior and habits, exactly that, and that's why it does help to work with someone and and to link it back to productivity and overall effectiveness and that whole holistic remote worker. I want to highlight something we spoke about as well. Alex, you know I'm using a bit of minimum coaching here, but you you know that taking that 10 minute break and going away and connecting with your hands on the drum and listening to the sound you're playing out and progressing along that little beat, that that will help you be a better remote worker when you come back to the machine yeah because and for anyone who wants, anyone who's feeling a bit skeptical just even think of what we've lost in commute time social interact from being in an office, the thing like if you could get a little image here of all that commute time people grabbing you for a coffee, you going down to the shops, you popping out for your lunch.

Rowena Henningan:
37:13

Over here we're in the home only so. So I think there's such gaps there and that's why we have to be. That's the reason for being more intentional. Movement has gone down with homework only. We know that. I mean productivity has been maintained. But part of being that holistic remote worker is also saying I need a break. It will make me better, if you need to say that to yourself. When I come back, I will be more productive, I will be more alert and uh yeah, it's been a pleasure to work through with you, but I have to say that the drums you gave me a really gem of a one, alex, because drums are so tactile and assassin yeah it's a really lovely example no, it's good and it's like I said it's.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
37:59

It's simplified things for me, and it's been like I said I'm very lucky to have had you come um into into my world and, at the right moment in time as well, to kind of show me that. So that's part of my part and parcel of my routine, though, but I really want to thank you. I mean, I've got so many more questions that I'd like to ask you um, but I know we're coming towards the end of time now, so I just wanted to thank you for your time.