Being a More Sustainable You

- A couple of months ago, at a conference
- Talk to a friend about the past year
- Last year, had a fulltime job
- Didn't have too much to worry about
- Constantyl physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted
- Stressed, wasn't sleeping, struggling, not happy
- Now working for myself
- So many more responsibilities
- Faced with so many unknowns
- Responsible for all my work
- Money si sporadic
- Just had to take a client to court
- Still physically exhaused adn sometimes mentally exhausted
- No longer emotionally exhaused
- Even after long week, still have energy to spend time with friends
- Happy again
- After conversation, friend told em to share what I'd learnt and gave me title of talk

Amy is hard headed

Amy's Mum

Good Worry v Bad Worry

- Been a bit of a worrier
- Worry unnecessarily and catastrophise
- Without a job, enough money to last a fortnight but I wasn't worried
- Learnt the difference between useful and useless worry
- Worrying about money led to apply for jobs, seek out work and cut costs
- After that, it was no longer useful, becoming stress and not sustainable
- Really hard change to make, can't just turn it off and on
- Need to continually remind myself that worry isn't useful
- Gotten easier
- Change a good one, able to use worry to my advantage
- Gave my first conference talk, and was freaking out
- Used the worry to my advantage
- Rewrote my talk from the top down
- Organised a bunch of training sessions
- Sent the organisers a list of questions about the venue and setup
- Thought of everything that could go wrong
- Able to take my worry and use it for good not evil
- Able to give a great talk on the day

Prioritising Me

Boundaries

- Always prided myself in my business that I'm always available to help
- Got more and more clients, no longer sustainable for me to do
- Spending too much time dealing with mostly non-urgen questions
- Context switching killing me
- Spending 4 hours on a task but half of that was trying to get back into the zone after being pulled away to a phone call or email
- Came to a head when contracting
- 3 days a week but with constant phone calls
- Saw a panel, compared employers to relationships, decided to tweak it and give it a go
- Constantly calling you, didn't like you seeing other frineds, didn't give you space? - Drew lines and implemented boundaries
- Gave them my schedule of when I was working on their work
- Told them I wouldn't be responding to emails immediately or answering phone calls outside of those times
- Technically didn't object to boundaries, they ignored them altogether and continued to pester me
- Even tried to get me to come into the office at 8.30pm and work in exchange for beer (no money, just beer)
- Told them it wasn't working, stood my ground and stuck to my boundaries
- Thankfull other clients have understood
- More productive and easier to manage it all

Subtlety #3: Whether you realize it or not, you are always choosing what to give a f*ck about.

Sustainability: avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance