Balance & Beyond Podcast

Ever found yourself drowning in notifications, constantly interrupted, yet still expected to produce miracles?

You're not alone. The modern workplace throws a staggering 117 emails and 153 messages at us daily, creating interruptions every two minutes. No wonder we feel perpetually behind.

The solution isn't what you think. Time management strategies won't save you in a system designed to fragment your attention. What you need are boundaries—the essential skill for not just surviving but thriving in today's distraction economy. When you've outsourced your boundaries to systems that profit from your exhaustion, you're trapped in an endless cycle of reactivity that steals your strategic focus and career advancement.

High performers, especially those who pride themselves on "getting shit done," suffer most in this culture. The dopamine hit from clearing notifications creates a false sense of productivity while deeper work remains undone. This podcast explores how to break free from this trap, protect your time and energy, and reclaim control over your career trajectory. We challenge the perfectionist belief that you should respond to everything immediately, revealing how boundaries can exponentially increase your productivity without changing the system itself. If you're ready to stop living in perpetual catch-up mode and start doing work that actually matters, this episode provides the framework you need to make that shift happen. 

Ready to protect your peace and watch your career flourish? Visit balanceinstitute.com to discover tools that have helped thousands of women create lives of meaningful balance and achievement on their own terms.

Episode Transcript

INTRO: Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we’re committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance, where your career, relationships and health all thrive, and where you have the power to define success on your own terms. I honour the space you’ve created for yourself today, so take a breath, and let's dive right in…

Some recent data has come out from Microsoft, and it paints a crazy picture of the environment that many of us are now operating in. Let me read you some of these stats that are probably just going to be a reflection of the life that you lead. The average worker receives 117 emails every day and 153 Teams messages or notifications. This means that the average time in between interruptions is two minutes. That’s right — by a meeting, a message, a ping during your call, walk hours — and 57% of all meetings are called on an ad hoc basis, as in in the moment, without a calendar invitation and very often without an agenda.

Is it any wonder that this chaos is completely minimizing our ability to be productive and to focus, and why so many women are feeling completely snowed under, as if it’s a full-time job just to keep on top of their inbox and their calendar?

So today we’re going to break a myth. I’ve had many women come to me lately saying, "Jo, I need better time management, I need to learn how to focus," and I get it. I know that feels like what’s going on. But the problem actually isn’t your calendar. The problem is your boundaries. Email is always going to create more email.

We live in this crazy world where we seem to think that we can reach this crazy goal of inbox zero — which I still hear some people looking for — or live in this world where we feel like we have to be on top of everything all the time. But that's not possible. With the volume coming in, you could literally do nothing else except spend the entire day on your inbox and in your notifications, attend no meetings, and you could still work 10 hours a day in almost every single job.

What is happening, though, is we have outsourced our boundaries to a system that is profiting from our exhaustion. I'm going to say that again: we have outsourced our boundaries to a system that profits from our exhaustion.

We are expecting the emails to somehow disappear or to slow down and live in this misguided belief that one day we'll get on top of it. If we just work harder and longer and faster and get up earlier and sit on the couch, then we'll be okay. But that is not working, and so many women are at the end of their rope — whether it's burnout, health issues, or relationship issues — because they can't find a way forward.

So, without boundaries, you're going to be in this constant race to catch up, always feeling behind, because a system that is interrupting you every two minutes is actually designed to keep you reactive. There is no space to be intentional.

And you combine all the notifications and all the emails with how many people's calendars look — that is, back to back — well, then you come back from a meeting, you have a 10-minute window, and in that window, you're just trying to deal with the urgent things that are coming in: the urgent notifications and the urgent emails. And then you go into your next meeting. You come home exhausted and now look at this massive to-do list that you have no chance of ever getting through.

Heaven forbid you're actually in a global role, like I often was, and you get pings all night long — because just as you start going to bed, Europe and the UK come online. And then, all overnight, you wake up to 300 messages from the US because they've been pinging you while you sleep. So it's this infinite workday that never, ever ends.

Compounding this is the "get shit done" trap. This is why high performers — and particularly women — who identify as "get shit done" people, who have that really strong identity, are actually going to struggle more in this distraction culture. Because a "get shit done" person has the identity and the belief that I've just got to get more shit done. My value is in how much shit I can get done.

Every little email, every little notification that we complete becomes a dopamine hit for our brain. And so, of course, you're getting an average of 117. I used to get between 250 and 300 in a 24-hour period.

I still remember getting home one day and I opened up my laptop, and I had — I had to count them — 37 emails either open in tabs or in progress, half-written. Because of that, "Oh, do that. No, this one's more urgent. Let me start this one. Let me start this one." And that is how her brain feels — 37 tabs open at once.

And when you've just got one tab open, you think, "Oh, it's just one little thing, it's one little response." But you hold that open for a week, and every time you log in, you see all those little tabs and you see all those little notifications — the numbers that are on your phone that say how many un-reads you have — and you live in terror of what's in there.

I used to wake up and see 57 emails, and my whole nervous system went, "I don't know what fires are in there. I don't know what I need to do. I don't know what I need to respond to."

And then, particularly in some cultures that are very distraction-driven, it becomes this race as to who can be on top of their email. So if you don't respond to things quickly, you either miss out on things or your opinion isn't counted, which continues to fuel this get shit done trap, where we spend our entire lives in reactive mode.

And then what happens is we get to our performance review, or we get to bonus time, or an end-of-year key milestone, and you get the feedback from your boss: you're not strategic enough, or you haven't moved the dial on those key initiatives that you agreed to. And you sit there and want to tear your hair out, because if they could only see that you've responded to 72,453 emails, they would see how much you have got done.

But it is time to put that to bed. One of the biggest questions I get is: "Jo, how do I cope with this? How do I cope with this volume?"

The truth is, you have to learn to manage it. You can't get on top of it, because the belief that "I should be able to stay on top of it all" is actually a form of internalised perfectionism, which means you're failing if you aren't on top of it all. Because you have to be perfect, you have to have an inbox perfectly filed, perfectly under control, and if you don't have that, then you're not good enough, or you're failing, or you're falling behind, and you live your life in this perpetual catch-up.

So why are boundaries more critical now than ever? And it's because without them, you have Buckley's chance of being intentional, of getting to the strategic work, of actually moving the dial on anything that matters — not to mention doing work that actually fuels you and is probably in your zone of expertise.

Pretty sure responding to emails is below your pay grade, no matter how much you are earning. So boundaries have become the number one skill that you need to actually survive in today's workplace environment — and, ideally, not just survive, but thrive.

When I say the word boundaries, most people — particularly women — recoil. I can't say no. I can't say no to that thing. What are they going to think if I'm not responding, if I don't respond quickly to that request? They're going to think I don't know what I'm doing. They're going to think I'm not on top of things. Well, that's one view, driven from a get-shit-done identity, driven from somebody who gets their worth from their output.

But here's another perspective that might help shift your viewpoint.

Now, if I send somebody an email and they don't respond straight away because they're working on that really big project that's going to move the needle, or they're deep somewhere, hiding away, immersed in flow and actually getting three hours' work done in one — which one would I rather? Which one of those is actually going to be more beneficial for your career when it comes to boundaries?

There's a brilliant quote that I heard, and this is that the people who most object to you holding boundaries are the ones who profited from you having none. Those people who send you a note and want a response instantly — when you start being more discerning and strategic as to how you manage all these distractions — they can not be happy with that. But you know what? Let them. They're not the ones who are trying to drive your career. If they are there in reactive mode — and I know some cultures can be this way — then you’ve got to let them.

There comes a point in time where you have to say: I'm going to start putting up boundaries. I'm going to boundary my time, my energy, my values, and my peace, because that is what’s at stake here.

Without boundaries, living in this constant interruption culture, there is a huge emotional cost: feeling scattered, the shame that you feel from unfinished tasks, this chronic depletion and exhaustion that follows you no matter where you go, and that feeling of being behind at work when you have come back from leave and you come home to three and a half thousand emails. Any benefits that your nervous system had — and your joy and your family had — from your break, whether it was the weekend or anything longer... you open that laptop and bang, you are straight back in it. You are flooded with cortisol, you feel behind, and the franticness steps up a notch. The adrenaline kicks in, cortisol runs wild, and you're back in it as if the holiday or the weekend — or even the evening — never happened.

The hard truth is, you cannot outwork an ecosystem that is designed to distract you. It is designed to keep you reactive, and so it's so important that you understand how boundaries are designed to actually protect you from the system that is actually stealing your joy, your peace, and — let's face it — your career.

Boundaries are there to protect you. Boundaries say that you are not responsible for how someone else thinks, acts, and behaves. So, if boundaries are the key to your peace, your sanity, and your success, let's talk about what a boundary actually is. A boundary is there for you. That's right. It's there to protect you, and a boundary dictates that you are not responsible for how someone else thinks, acts, and behaves. So your fear about what someone's going to think of you if you don't respond instantly if you put up a boundary — it's not your job to worry what they're going to think of you if you don't respond instantly if you put up a boundary. It's not your job to worry about what they think of you. They're judging you anyway. Let them. What does it matter?

We have to take these people-pleasing sides of ourselves — which is that people-pleaser and the perfectionist that are very, very concerned with external appearances, external validation, adrenaline, ticking things off, task orientation — is not getting us anywhere. It's not getting us ahead in our careers because we become glorified list tickers. Lists upon lists upon lists. It's not getting us peace, it's not getting us sanity, it is not getting us joy.

So boundaries are here for you. When you begin to understand how to put up a boundary, and it's not just about saying no because often you're not in a position to say no, but when you understand how to put them in place, how to hold them, and where you are most likely to sabotage them, you regain your freedom.

OUTRO: Thank you for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who might need to hear this today. And if you're feeling extra generous, leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice would mean the world. If you’re keen to dive deeper into our world, visit us at www.balanceinstitute.com to discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women avoid burnout and create a life of balance, and beyond. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance & Beyond Podcast.