Welcome back to the Bringing the human Back to Human resources
podcast, The Replay series. I'm your host, Tracy Turn off,
and I'm thrilled to have you join us once again as we journey
through the episodes that have top charts around the world.
In this podcast series, we're revisiting some of our most
insightful, thought provoking, and transformative conversations
with industry experts, thought leaders, and practitioners.
These episodes have made waves. Sparking meaningful conversation
and inspiring positive change throughout human resources.
Whether you're a dedicated listener who's been with us from
the start or you're just tuning in for the first time, the
Replay series offers a chance to dive deep into the core
principles that guide our exploration into HR practices.
So get ready to rediscover the discussions that continue to
shape the future of HR. Without further ado, let's step
back in time and immerse ourselves into the podcast's top
charted episodes. Let the replay begin.
Welcome to the Bringing the Human back to Human Resources
podcast. I'm Tracy Chernoff, and I've
spent my entire professional career in HR.
Each week, we'll explore the delicate balance between people
and business with the aim to reconnect the two and create
meaningful outcomes. Listen in as I share my own
experiences, challenge the status quo, and chat with guests
from various industries about our mission to bring the human
back to human resources. Hi everyone, welcome back to the
Bringing the Human Back to Human Resources podcast.
Thank you so much for being here for another week.
And I have the best episode for you yet here.
And that is specifically because my guest's last name is Best,
which just means that she's the best.
I'm sure, Bianca, I'm sure you hear this all the time.
It's always special and very. I literally, I had a moment last
night where I was like, I'm just going to have to do it.
Like when you have a last name of Best, you just have to lean
in. So I've leaned in.
So everyone welcome Bianca Best to the podcast.
Let me tell you a little bit about her before we dive into a
very exciting topic and one that comes with something to
celebrate. So, Bianca Best is a globally
recognized speaker, author, and strategist whose career includes
collaborations with some of the world's most influential
companies such as Google, Amazon, WPP, Deloitte, Barclays,
and Unilever. Now, as an international speaker
and strategist, she is dedicated to empowering professionals to
achieve extraordinary results without sacrificing their health
or happiness. Her latest book, which This is
What We have to celebrate that came out today.
It's called Big Impact Without Burnout and offers actionable
strategies. There it is on the big screen.
Bianca's holding it up. I Love It offers actionable
strategies to help leaders align purpose with performance while
navigating the challenges of today's demanding world.
With her engaging energy and practical insights, Bianca
inspires audiences to embrace a fulfilling and sustainable
approach to success. And I have to, I, I must say, I
have to double down on that part of your bio because you are so
engaging and you're so much fun. And that is why this episode is
going to be so much fun. So welcome, Bianca, and kudos
and congratulations to you on the launch of your book today.
Thank you. It's definitely a milestone day.
And how fantastic will we get to celebrate this moment together?
Oh. My gosh.
For having. Me, of course, I am so deeply
honored. And of course the podcast
listeners are gonna be like today, like when did they record
this? OK, fine.
We're time traveling. It's coming out on March 11th.
Yes. But I have to say we're not
recording so far away from that. We're calling it today.
This today is when the book comes out.
We're so excited. And you know, they're, I'm going
to have in the show notes where you can pick up Bianca's book
because it is a must read. And I think everyone's going to
get a lot of a lot of really, really helpful insights out of
your book. So we're not.
We're not actually really faking it because this really is the
beginning of the launch period. I'm actually launching in London
and Dawn's bookshop tomorrow and then US are doing my U.S. tour.
So this is this is really the special moment.
That is your, no, this is just the, this is the start of all of
your celebrations and all of the launching that you're doing over
these next few weeks, which is it's a great way to put it,
actually. Thank you.
Thank you for keeping us honest here at the podcast.
With that, I, I think it's really important for everyone to
hear your story because it's what really captivated me and
why I wanted you to join us on the podcast.
So maybe we start there. Where did all of this big impact
without burnout come from and and what's your story?
Well, it really comes 100% from the heart and from my own life
experience. So I am unashamedly ambitious.
I chase my dreams, I reach for the stars, I go, go, go, as a
lot of us do. But along the way I kept
slamming into walls and burning out.
And whilst I was absolutely reaching my dreams and really
enjoying life expansion along the way, I really kept pushing
too hard, too fast, too far, in too many directions
simultaneously. So I'll give you the sort of
chronology of my work experience and tell you about the sort of
burnout undulations that that happened simultaneously.
So back in 2004, I fell into entrepreneurialism.
I was at home with two young children and I spotted an
opportunity to really disrupt the personalized gift
marketplace. And I spotted that opportunity
because I was in bed breastfeeding a baby, toddler
running around the room, realized it was my then husband
and I. It was our ten year anniversary.
I was like Oh my God, how am I going to get a gift?
I ended up writing a poem called A Decade to Remember, finding
A-frame at home and putting photos around this poem, which I
printed out, gave it to him in the evening.
He was like, oh, that's so romantic and lovely.
We hung it up in the hall. Everyone that came round to see
the baby and visit us was like, oh, where did you order that?
And my brain started worrying that maybe that could become a
marketable commodity. And off I went.
And I just became this relentless entrepreneur
determined to build a business with my double buggy and my
twins, my little babies in tow. And I went out and set up a
trade manufacturing business, sold these products online and
it just grew and grew and grew. And I had a decade of learning a
lot about myself, about expanding from the seeds of a
little idea into running an Omni channel global business that was
trade and consumer. And it was phenomenal.
That chapter came to an end when I found out I was pregnant
again. This time it was twins.
So I had four children under 7 and a business.
And it was an intense but invigorating time.
And I really took that as a moment where the universe was
signalling to me. Focusing words, focusing on
family. This is a precious, precious
moment. Work will be there forever,
Making money will be there forever.
Business will be there forever, just focusing on family.
So I did, and I sold that business and enjoyed adjusting
to this world of how to sustain that are everywhere and keep
myself happy. And interestingly, that first
year after the twins were born, I can honestly say it was one of
the happiest years of my life. And if you'd come around and see
me, my hair wasn't clean and you'd have been crunching on
cornflakes on the carpet. Chaos.
But I was so happy because I was so purposeful.
And that's a really interesting lesson that I learned.
So I sold that business and fell into corporate.
And then I've spent the past 12 years sending corporate ladders
and really learning different skills, how to apply myself
where I'm in arenas with a lot of people, a lot of work
agendas, a lot of politics and stuff that was very different to
me when I was being entrepreneurial.
I could drive everything in an organization.
As you well know, there's rules that need to be adhered to and
it's a different game that we have to play, but I've loved it
and I've learned it well. I'm now stepping into
entrepreneurialism again, leaving corporate to now work on
the burnout business, which is my pride and joy, and hence the
book. So in those, in those chapters
of having run the business, had a million children and climbed
corporate labels. And now where I am today, I
found that I started falling over into walls of total
collapse and burnout from my mid 20s through to my mid 30s, where
yeah, it was fantastic. I had a home now, I had a lawn
to mow, I had children to feed, and I had this expanding life, a
business that was growing. But I started to really get ill
and I wouldn't get a common cold.
I would get pneumonia or bronchiolitis, and I would be in
bed for weeks. I was properly being floored
time and time again. And then I'd recover and I'd get
straight back onto that little life treadmill and keep pushing
and going again and again and again.
And that became very much a problem because I didn't want to
stop chasing my dreams. But I was realizing that this I
can't function like this because when I was floored, I'd need
help from friends or family or my husbands.
And when I had my job and I was in a corporate arena, you can't
be off sick week after week with constantly.
So I kept, I started dabbling with, well, how can I self
manage to still do all these fizzy, dynamic, juicy, brilliant
things but not keep falling over.
And I finally perfected that. So in 2015, I had my last
burnout. I say perfected it.
I mean, I learned how to manage still a work in progress, but I
haven't had a burnout since 2015.
And that's what I now have bottled up.
And I teach to people and try and encourage everyone to still
change your dreams. It's OK.
We just need to have a conscious plan.
Amazing. See, This is why everyone needed
to hear that because your story is so inspiring.
And as a fellow twin mom, I do think I can say that twin moms
are built a little differently. We are kind of destined to.
Yeah, right. Destined for being able to
handle maybe a little bit more, a little bit more chaos.
But I love that you even just, you know, for a moment of
relatability for me that you talked about that first year
after the twins were born. I mean, I totally agree.
Mine are almost 16 months now as of the date of this recording.
And it's like the most fun I've ever had.
Even though it's the most hard work ever, it's just the most
fun and so. You just see people used to stop
me in the street and see the double buggy and they'd be like,
oh, Double Trouble and I. Would.
Yeah, I know, Double. Blessing.
Yes, I say the same thing even even after we were hiking with
them this weekend and we brought the stroller and we were like,
why did we do this? And we're like lifting it up the
that's terrain. It was a nightmare, but it's so
true. I mean there it's all about
mindset. I think this is what we're
probably going to talk about a little bit today, because so
much of what you shared and actually something I'm going to
touch on is about how we prepare our minds and how we adjust our
mindsets to best suit what we need.
And one of the things that I wanted to mention is that you
talked about how leading a purposeful life.
I think that's what you said leading a purposeful life was
the difference for you that leaning into, you know, your
family unit and what you wanted in that moment within your life
at that point was really what allowed you to make this
connection. So when you think about leading
a purposeful life and, and really now you know, you know,
it's 10 years since your last burnout, knock on wood, thank
goodness. What what what do you think in
terms of like purpose and mindset has allowed you to stay
burnout free? It's honoring my values with
total integrity the entire time and not compromising on them.
And that was the biggest epiphany for me in my journey to
working out how I can self manage and still have all these
children and this work and the dynamic life that I wanted.
When I first started applying strategies to try and make sure
I was functioning well, I really veered towards physical.
It was first. The first thing was like, right,
well, I'm physically broken. I keep getting I'll it's
physical. So I started trying to improve
my diet, cut back on processed foods, eat more nutritionally
dense meals. I started focusing on sleep,
albeit hard when. True.
But making modifications like reducing caffeine to make sure
that I could sleep if I got a nap window, stuff like that, I
started focusing on exercise. So I was very much in the realm
of let's sort out my physicality and that was good.
I got better, but it wasn't enough.
So then I was OK, let's try the mental realm.
If you look at all the self help guidance, the well-being advice
out there, a lot of it veers in the realm of physical and then
mental. So I've always been a very
strong journaler, but I started really trying to hone the art of
journaling, introducing more conscious gratitude and
journaling as a spiritual practice, more meditation,
mindfulness, really trying to focus on that, soothing the
mind. And that definitely helped as
well. But it was only finally when I
really found the missing piece of the puzzle was the emotional
realm. My emotional realm was where I
was creating unnoticed stress and I started to realise that if
we are compromising on a particular value, so something
that matters to us, something actually we cherish.
So whether it's how a team works or who you're married to and
what your friendship group is like or whatever it might be in
particular areas of your life that matter to you.
If you are compromising any particular aspect of you to be
in that environment or in that relationship or in that
situation, even if it's slightly subconscious and it might just
show up like a little nickel or a little irritation.
It is creating systemic stress within the body.
And as we all know, we cannot live with permanent stress.
That is not a state that the nervous system, the autonomic
nervous system was created for. We're only meant to be in a
stress state in in small fragments and pockets of time.
So if we've got an emotional stress that is draining and
depleting us, that is also contributing to our ability to
show up and be productive and achieve all those dreams and
goals. And so for me, once I started to
lean into triggers and lean into emotional disquiet, I started to
really knowledge and see and learn more about myself, but
really see where I was compromising aspects of me that
were too important and I shouldn't be shutting them down.
And so I had to do a lot of work and I'll make a lot of very
brave decisions to get myself into a place of integrity.
And I really came to learn and this is what I teach all my
clients. You will never ever feel
fulfilled if you're compromising on your values.
And that's it. Amazing.
I am like as you were. I can't even find the words.
As you were talking, I was really thinking like, I need to
just delete social media. Like I, I don't know why that
was like my first thought. But when you talk about this
like constant state of stress, you know, and I, I really think
about the physiological damage that comes from this constant
consumption of very serious things, which inevitably are all
over social media. Sometimes funny things too.
There's this like dopamine response and then you have like
the stress and dopamine, the stress.
And I'm like, I don't know, for whatever reason, I related a lot
of what you just said to this, this feeling that I get from
like scrolling on social media and the listeners who have been
here know I'm always talking about I need to get off the
social media, but I can't. But I need to get off.
It's like, OK, get over it, Tracy.
If no, that's your intuitive hit as I'm talking.
Pay attention to that as well, because this is also something
that we don't do enough. We don't trust our intuitive
hits, and your subconscious is giving you that little
metaphorical punch. Like, listen, hello, we've been
trying to tell you something. You know, I'm, I'm sure that
there are listeners who thought of something also.
Maybe it's like their marriage, maybe it's their job, maybe it's
like whatever hobby that isn't such a hobby anymore, or maybe
it is social media. So that's actually a really good
kind of like activity for us to do is like, what is that first
thing that you come to that it gives you that signal of like,
oh, this is a little bit stressful in your life.
Totally. Because quite often when we're
like, oh, I'm exhausted. Life is.
Overwhelming. You know, the first thing we do
is like, I must be missing a mineral or, or just some more
vitamins. And, and actually, if we look at
where there is that little rumble of this doesn't feel
good. Like for me, one of the biggest
moments, 22 big moments once I was in a corporate environment
where I would be walking to the office and I would feel myself
shrinking. Like physically I didn't want to
go into that office. I was just absolutely struggling
with the very concept of a day in that office with those
people. And I was, but I had to do the
job because I'd bought this house and I had all the
dependents of the children and I needed to stay in that role.
But I really was unhappy. And then I, I just suddenly,
well, my instinctive reaction to the unhappiness was I need to
work harder. I need to prove myself more.
So I would work longer hours, try and over produce to make
myself succeed in that environment.
But I wasn't succeeding and I could see that management
weren't happy with me and that was making me shrink.
And I was feeling uncomfortable and frightened because, you
know, I've started to feel like I couldn't be me in that I cut a
fringe. Cut a fringe.
Wow. Yeah, and that's, you know,
somehow 'cause I thought, oh, we.
Just hang up in the That was like when I cut my hair off
after college. I'm like, what did I do?
Yeah, exactly. Exactly that, but I thought this
would make me fit in and it would make me somehow succeed or
but I was squashing bits of me. I was talking about myself any
from my hair, but but I realized I had this epiphany moment of
hang on a minute. It's it's not this
disempowerment is me putting myself in this state of
disempowerment. I can empower by myself by
going, OK, this isn't working for anyone, but it's up to me to
conscientiously go, what do do I want my working environment to
look like? What cultures do I want to work
within? And then to go out and find
them. And the minute I just had that
moment of I could change it. I don't have to say, and I know
it sounds like, well, that's obvious.
If you're not happy in your job, you leave.
But I felt sort of trapped and and trapped in a world where I
was trying to prove, prove, prove myself that that would
make it better. Yeah.
I went hang on, our values are misaligned.
I don't agree with the way they're running the company.
That's where this tension is. I want to be somewhere else.
And then I went somewhere else and I was happy.
Now, of course, and you know what, I, I really appreciate
that you're talking about the values alignment.
Of course, you know, it's an HR podcast.
We talk about things like this all the time, but it's because
of how important it is for people to recognize that they
cannot. Sacrifice their own values or
compromise on their own values and then at the same time find
happiness in that company or in that job.
It's just impossible. I mean you when when someone
feel like, even if we put this in a in another real life
situation, if someone's in AI always talk about relationships.
This is not a relationship podcast.
But if someone is in a relationship with someone, maybe
that's my next thing, right? Let the wings flap in the wind.
I'm going to go into relationships next.
My husband's going to be like, please don't.
No, I'm just kidding. But like my thought is like
you're going on a date with someone.
And to me, dating and finding a job very similar like you when
you're interviewing, you are on a date and you're looking for
your match. And when you're on a date with
someone and they say something or they tell you they believe in
something, that isn't pretty much an exact contradiction to
what you hold as a dear value of yours or a belief of yours.
It's not going to work. Like no matter how many times
you try to make the the puzzle piece fit it will not work.
Exactly that, Exactly that. Because yeah, if you're not
resonant with each other, there's tension and there's
energetic depletion because pride and torture to sort of
make it fit and there's there's no need.
No, no. Especially when there are
companies out there that are harmonious with our values, I
mean. It's.
Right, like I, I, I shared candidly with the podcast
listeners a number of about 3 years ago almost to the day,
probably around 3 years ago when I left a job after three months.
And it was the shortest stint I had ever done in my career.
I'd always had at least three years of tenure somewhere and it
was because of a lot of things. But one something fundamentally
was that the there was a values misaligned assignment.
And I believe like you have to call things fast.
It's either going to work or it's not going to work.
And once you realize that something's not going to work,
you need to find something else. And thank you, thank you.
I, I sometimes see it as a fail fast, but it's not a fail to
realize that something, it just isn't the right fit.
It's a win. Exactly.
Do you know I sat next to a man once at a corporate dinner?
And I've recently got divorced and I have a very positive frame
around divorce because it's simply evolution.
And with my ex-husband and I, we just recognized after 26 years.
Yes, it was sad, but we were evolving separately and
differently because our values didn't chime.
Interestingly, this chap that I was sitting next to at this
dinner, the spilling was red wine and saying to me, well, you
failed, you failed, you failed at marriage and I was saying no,
didn't feel we evolved and that's the.
Thing, it's totally OK, Bianca, tell us, did you spill the wine
in his face? Did you say no?
He spilled it. That's.
Amazing He did it all on his own.
That's amazing. Oh my gosh, no, but it's so I
mean it's I again, it all comes back to mindset.
When we think of things that might be negative to someone and
we see them as a positive force in our lives or something that
has a positive current. There's there's momentum there.
I mean, this is, this is resilience.
Exactly that. And I, I love where you're, you
know, talking about momentum. The first strategy in my book is
energy, because actually energy management is what it's all
about. And if you follow what energizes
you and understand your own energetic rhythms so that you're
not constantly chasing the next high, the next high, because
that's sustainable. But generally, if your life is
about pursuing that which energizes you, which tends to be
aligned with your values, and you can understand how you can
manufacture all the energy that you need and then restore so
you're aware of when you need those restorative, nurturing,
gentle moments. If you can weave your way
through life managing your energy, then all of the worries
around burnouts and productivity, everything seems
to recede if you start with energy management.
That's really interesting. You know, I'm sure there are,
there are people listening who are like, oh, I'm just a runaway
train. I used to be that way.
I was, I, I mean, and, and as you shared, I really, I think
there's a lot of relatability in your story because it's there.
I see even myself in your story where it's like, you know,
you're just proving yourself, proving yourself, proving
yourself. And then you can sometimes lose
yourself, the one person that you're doing it all for.
You can sometimes lose yourself and all of that.
And when you re center and you really think about, well, you
know, obviously of course, centralizing your energy, but
also thinking about where you're spending your time and how
you're expending your energy, all of that, I would imagine
makes a huge difference. Yeah, absolutely.
So it's understanding what energizes you, but also being
really tuned into this. There's a new school of
psychology called ecological psychology, and this is about
our response to different environments and how different
environments can stimulate us to do different types of work more
naturally. So the example that I use in the
book is think of an Olympic swimmer.
The minute she sees the pool, her body is primed and ready.
She is just off because she knows that pool represents where
she's in her peak performance mode.
So for each one of us, if we think about the different types
of work that we're doing and in the hybrid work worlds that we
have today, we'll be working at home, maybe working in a coffee
shop, maybe working in the office.
It's up to us to really try and identify and hone what are the
types of tasks that we do best in which environments, and then
to organize our calendars and our geographical bases to honour
that. And even take it a step further
where there's a ritual that kind of gets you into that mode in
that particular environment. So you kind of hone your brain
so you're optimizing yourself into this system of ha, this is
where I do this kind of work. And then you're primed and
you're ready to go. Totally.
I love that. I mean, I think there is,
there's definitely something there because even when I'm sure
that you can relate to this also as a as a mom, but I really love
a change of scenery. There's nothing needed more,
especially on the weekends when it's kind of just you and your
spouse or maybe just you and you're with the kids and you're
like, we got to get out of here. We got to get out of this house.
And it's kind of the same thing with work, right?
It's like when you give yourself a different environment to
thrive in and you sometimes some work is just done better outside
of the house or some work is done better outside of the
office. And it does also make me wonder,
this is maybe a more statistical question, but it, it makes me
wonder a little bit about how some of this can be more or less
seen depending on someone's gender.
And I ask that because the, you know, for the listener base,
around 80% are female. And so of course, that is pretty
indicative of the HR industry and where we tend to see not
women in business, but at least the HR profession, the, the kind
of the makeup, the demographics. Have you seen from your clients
or even in the work that you've done with your book, where
gender plays a role in burnout, if at all?
Sadly, yes, women are hit with burnout at a higher rate than
men and that's attributable to a number of different factors.
But probably one of the core ones is that we still hold
around 68% of the emotional and domestic labour at home.
So we've got the added stress as well as work of all of the that
emotional labour labour at home. So yes, we have a higher burnout
rate and we have a tendency towards perfectionism across the
board. No, you don't say.
Too well, so that has been perpetuated by the technological
explosion and the pandemic work. So we've got 22 technological
impacts. SO1 is the fact that social
media is portraying this world where everyone's a high
performer and a high achiever and everyone's got it going on
and they're amazing. And so we're just sort of
scrolling it. Oh my God.
Well, I should that too. And then you've also got this
always on factor that has just really crippled us with this
almost acceptance that that's the norm.
During the pandemic in Europe, we went from working across
Europe standard of eight hours a day through to 11 hours a day is
the total, the norm. And we've really struggled to
get back to normal working hours.
And it's because there are no boundaries and it's all blurred.
And so many of my clients put the children to bed to get back
onto the laptop to do work until they fall asleep.
And there's none of that nurturing, nourishing me me time
that is so essential. That's yeah, that's a problem.
I mean, I, I think this is where we're almost in a, at a
crossroads. I feel like societally from a
business standpoint, we see, you know, a whole host of companies
saying, especially in the US, you must be back in the office.
There's no negotiation on this. Like five times a day, five
times a week. Excuse me.
And then there are still companies like the one that I
work for where? You know, remote.
Is what it is and remote 1st and flexibility and all of that.
And then of course there's in the middle, there's this hybrid
approach. But what that tells me is that
everyone is trying to figure out what works best for their
business, what works best for their people.
How do we get the most out of people?
Because that's kind of just the way that business works.
It's like, how do we get the most productivity out of people?
And for some companies, it's like getting the most while
giving the least. And then, you know, it's also
for the for the people, for the employee, they are trying to
balance what they want out of their careers while also
prioritizing themselves. And I think generationally we
see Gen. Z doing this probably the best.
One of the things that I thought about when you were talking
about just in general at the top of our recording where, you
know, we think about our values and how they align or don't
align with companies. And Gen.
Z is a really good indicator of how I think generations are
changing and saying oh this doesn't work for me, I'm out and
I don't care if I have a job lined up or not.
And for them it doesn't matter if it's even.
My husband actually the other day told me that Gen.
Z is, it's really amazing. I'm kind of inspired by them,
but it, they are retiring after three years.
So they're doing three years on, one year off, three years on,
one year off. Wow.
And I, I did not Fact Check my husband.
I will just put this out there now.
I generally just kind of fully trust what he says because he's
a very intelligent person, but he like found it somewhere and
I, I have to find it now. If I can find an article to
this, I'll send it to you and I'll post it in the show notes.
But this is kind of like a transformation.
If this is what happens, I, I, I can't even imagine how that will
impact the workforce. But I share this because I also
am curious if there are any generational studies that you
can share with the podcast listeners.
But in, in general, let's just say, I mean, we see that there
is a another major shift potentially coming at the hands
of Gen. Z really being transformational
within the workplace. Yeah, I didn't realize how
extreme that was. A lot of the work I'm doing at
the moment with large organizations and smaller
businesses where I consult around burnout prevention and
what the the businesses are struggling with is mass
absenteeism, low employee engagement and the cost of long
term sick leave. And actually, if we look at the
whole macro burnout landscape, it's costing the world.
It's meant to cost the global economy, economy a trillion
dollars a year. Oh my gosh, cost the global
economy a trillion dollars a year.
And the majority of this is attributable, attributable to
being lifestyle based and preventable.
So this low employee engagement, this high absenteeism is all to
do with the individual self management and the fact that
they are not necessarily managing themselves optimally.
So I love what you've just shared in terms of Gen.
Zeas just going, Nope, that's it.
Actually what we're seeing generally the organizations I
work with is people reaching a place of total utter overwhelm
where they then crash and they're out and they go.
And so I'm being asked by businesses, well, what can we do
to and manage this? And I'm coming at this from and
a place of empowerment for the individual.
So it's not about blaming the company or blaming the employer,
but actually self managing in such a way where we shift into a
place of graceful productivity instead of frenetic productivity
because that has what is what's happened over recent years.
We're in this flurry of produce, produce, produce because
economic contraction means workforces are potentially
smaller and yet the work still needs to get done.
And it's all about output, output and people are being
measured on volume of output quality.
So there's so many stresses that are impacting how people are
working, but actually to blame the employer or blame the
company isn't the solution I don't believe, because we have
the autonomy to actually understand how we can self
manage so we can thrive. Now, if we are in a role where
at any level, you know, I'm talking about entry to mid,
right up to to senior, at any level, we have got to manage our
energy so we can show up every day and deliver.
If we are in a role where we are feeling our values are
compromised, so we are emotionally stressed, we are not
particularly enjoying the tasks that we're doing or the people
that we're working with. We are spending 80% of the day
in a very miserable, stressful state, which is going to be
depleting and depleting energy. So we are way more likely to
roll into a permanent state of burn burning out.
So it's up to us to look at the role and go hang on a minute,
how much of this do I enjoy? And really you want to have an
8020 ratio. You want 80% of the time to be
stuff that invigorates you, stuff you can get lost in and
have a bit of flow time doing it.
Stuff where you're learning and growing, stuff where you've got
bit of autonomy. Because we want that all to do
with the sort of self development theory.
When we've got those parts, we're generally going to feel
energized and that little 20% of the boring, we don't like
whatever it is, it shrinks that because 80% of the time we're
energized and we don't have what we're doing.
But it's up to individuals to do that.
So if the organization is saying you've got to do all these
projects in this amount of time and it's not something that you
can naturally do or are aligned with, get out.
You know, I can't think of a better place to kind of leave
the listeners and their thoughts.
I think that is exactly the message that we can close off
with because you've shared so many amazing insights.
I'm just really endlessly inspired by you and your journey
and your story and everything. And I really sincerely hope and
I, I feel confidently that the listeners are going to feel
similarly, if not the same. And so with that, I'm so excited
that your book is officially out as of the time this podcast
launches. But also obviously you are
getting everything kick started over in London, but where can
the listeners get your book? Where can they connect with you?
Where can they learn? More about you and maybe even
work with you as part of, you know, your client base.
Thank you. Well, I would love to work with
anyone, individuals or organizations.
And obviously geography is not a problem.
So my website, biancabest.com is where you can find information
about the types of work that I do, the books that I've written,
and how to connect with me and then please.
There it is. Oh, is that the hardcover?
Yes, I love a hardcover book. And it's actually endorsed by
Arianna Huffington, so. Oh wow.
Really. Yeah, that's.
Amazing. Yeah, she's given me.
Shall I read it if I can? Excuse me please.
Ariana Huffington says it's a guidebook full of practical
steps, tools and strategies showing women how to transform
manic busyness into meaningful productivity, both at home and
at work. OK, Ariana Huntington, that's
amazing. But really I should say Bianca
Best. I mean you, like I said at the
top of this call, I mean you are really putting your last name,
you know, at the top here. You you received that last name
because you were in that. That's amazing.
But you know, well, you know, the main message I want to share
is around hope and optimism because I feel so many people
feel, oh God, I don't even want to go for that promotion or I'm
not going to chase that dream. And actually, I hope that I can
inspire that it is absolutely possible to define your version
of success and stop chasing a myth of having it all that is
someone else's and just step into your perfect integrity.
And I promise life will be magnificent.
There you go. Wise words.
Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
And I know I, I don't have to wish you the best of luck, but
I'm wishing it to you anyway because I know that you're going
to get it all. But best of luck with the book
and everything. I can't wait to see your
continued success as you, as you continue to, you know, promote
your book and have all that you do so.
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me
and likewise thank you for being so inspiring and being an
amazing twin Moms. Twin moms unite, thank you so
much. And for the listeners, all of
the links will be in the show notes, so don't even worry about
getting a pen and paper if you're still old school like me.
Everything will be easily clickable for you.
Bianca, thank you so much. Thank you.
Hey, just before you go, don't forget to subscribe to the show
so that you are the first to hear when an episode drops each
week and maybe leave a five star review and a comment about how
much you loved this episode. Plus, if you have someone in
mind who would really enjoy this episode, make sure you share it
with them. Thank you so much for tuning in
and I'll see you next week.