Making time for reflection
Domain7’s Kevan Gilbert made sustaining his energy levels an intentional business goal. This is what he learned.
This month, we sit down with Domain7’s Kevan Gilbert, Director of Engagement Strategy, to discover how he keeps himself fuelled for a demanding job that requires everything from business, project, and marketing strategy, to facilitation, content creation, and speaking.
Kevan works remotely from his home in the countryside surrounding Kelowna, BC, where he lives with his wife Kendra and their three kids. You can also regularly find him on an airplane on his way to a workshop, speaking engagement, or team event. Here’s what he had to say about creating a personal rhythm of self-care in order to maintain insight and productivity.
As someone who facilitates, ideates, speaks and travels for Domain7 on a continuous basis, you have to maintain a level of energy that many would find challenging. So I found it interesting that you created a quarterly goal designed to address your energy supply: “Create a rhythm of personal reflection: An everyday habit of reflection will aid in my ability to ideate, contribute and engage as needed.”
Could you speak a bit about what led you to create this goal?
This fall, we looked back over the past year in four categories: how we show up, how we engage with others, how we partner externally, and how we prosper.
I was taking notes on all the places that I had literally “shown up.” I had gone to all these different parts of the world — from the UK to California to Toronto to Vancouver to Seattle. These engagements required me to say “yes” with very little notice and to do my best work. To be very present. It seemed the best way for Domain7 to get the best out of me is to make sure that I am healthy, I’m rested, I’m stable, I’m in a good spot.
I also wanted to see if there was a way to get “corporate buy-in” to my own well-being. I wondered if we might see it as the company’s shared responsibility to help ensure that the conditions are met where I am healthy so that the company can flourish. It would mean that I would’t have to feel a sense of guilt to say, “I’m going to take a break from my screen and go for a walk right now.” It can be a little bit challenging to give myself permission to do that.
What were some ways you went about creating this rhythm for yourself?
I think it’s important to say, I’m not a well-tuned reflection machine who has personal balance figured out. I am prone to over-exerting myself and being completely burnt out. It’s very much a work-in-progress.
My first thought was, “I don’t necessarily have enough data this quarter to know what to tweak or what to put in place. I don’t have a threshold of documenting what works and doesn’t work. So maybe this needs to be about learning.”
That quarter began the busiest travel season I’ve ever had: in the space of six weeks I was visiting Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, Nashville, London England, and back home. And doing really intense engagements, from leading full-day workshops, to pitching new clients, to working with existing clients. There were some successes, some failures, lots of learnings.
What I saw is there’s a couple different zones. One is daily life and the other is …I don’t want to just generalize it as “travel mode”…it’s more like “engagement mode” or “stretch mode.” It’s the difference between daily work happening and when it’s on.
So different practices for different demands. What were some rhythms that helped in the area of “daily life”?
A must-have component for me is a 30 minute walk by myself. I just dwindle without it: it’s like I’m a smoking ember of firewood without the walk. Obviously it’s getting outside, it’s the endorphins and exercise, it’s the chance to just process things a little bit more deeply. On the walk I’m not listening to music, I’m not listening to a podcast, I’m not looking at my phone. And I live amid horse pastures and vineyards — no traffic, no people — so that walk is in nature.
When it comes to journalling…I found an old journal written six years ago, before my first daughter was born. And it’s amusing because the handwriting is so neat. And the intervals are daily or several times a week. In my current journal, I write like a doctor does charting notes. The amount I can capture is really limited. I’ve wondered, could I give myself a four-minute check-in once a day, around a few specific questions, to help with calibration? I resist the urge to always be entering the same templated questions every day, but that’s an experiment I’m interested in checking out.
What are some practices that help center you when you’re travelling, or when “the pressure is on”?
When I’m travelling, one practice I attempt daily is creating a list to capture every activity in my notebook. It’s a bit weird, but helps my brain engage with where I am. So let’s say I have been workshopping all day, and now I’m on the train: I’ll write down a list of all the activities that took place, chronologically, in list form. Documenting my entire day, with no commentary, no emotional insight. It’s like a deep breath. I never read those lists again, but it feels like my brain was able to catch up and acknowledge what just happened. Then I can pay attention to the next thing.
Another practice is trying to give my brain specific instructions for how to spend idle time. I’ll make an A list, a B list, and maybe a C list. An “A list” is ideas/projects that I’d really love to spend time thinking about if I have the energy: things to do if I’m sitting on an airplane. If I just need to zone out, here’s the B list: less productive but maybe more entertaining things. I experience this big difference between the unavailable “spare time” in a home environment with small kids, versus, “now you have eight hours on a trip. What are you going to do?” Having that listed out in my notes on my phone in advance, so I’m not just on Facebook, really helps.
I continue the walks when I’m away. I had an extra day in London recently and I kept thinking, “I’ve got to find something fantastic to do. Maybe I’ll go to a play or maybe I’ll go out to find a nice place to eat or something.” It was valuable to remind myself that, “actually, it would be most important if you didn’t do anything. The most important thing to do would be to walk by yourself for an hour.” And I did. I just walked. It was dark, it was rainy. I didn’t find “cool” things to do, and I had an awesome week because of that investment in not depleting myself.
Something restorative for me when I’m away is just making sure there’s time to be calling home to connect with my kids and wife.
Not because it’s an obligation, but because it returns me back to where I am with greater presence and the feeling of being known.
Especially with facilitating or speaking — the participants don’t know you, you don’t know them. The intensity required to keep those relationships warm and on track — it takes a lot of batteries. And being able to connect back into relationships where you are known is just such a vital contrast. Reconnecting with my family is one of the best breaths of fresh air.
Is there anything that you’ve tried with this that hasn’t worked well?
Just understanding my relationship between working at my computer — with the constant digital contact to my colleagues through email and platforms like Slack — versus being comfortable walking away from that, to go be engaged and other modes of work. Like workshopping or writing by myself. It’s challenging, because I feel that draw to show that I’m working, by being online. It’s hard to give myself permission to do those more disconnected activities of research, or reflection — whatever it might be.
I’m also realizing during this interview process, that I’ve been “letting myself off the hook” by letting certain practices go, like regular journalling and adequate sleep. I have three kids; I felt that if I have that “8 hours of sleep” expectation of myself I’m going be a little bit mad at the world for not working properly. But looking at it now, that’s an obvious miss. I can’t possibly expect anything except fragmentation if I’m neglecting core activities of rest and contemplation in the name of “simplicity.”
What would your advice be to someone who may be feeling on the verge of burnout and is interested in establishing a rhythm of reflection and self-care in their work life?
If somebody is on the verge of burnout, the first thing would be to say “you’re valuable already.” You’re not going to prove yourself or win favour or approval by working more. You’re hired for a reason, don’t feel like you have to keep being on the treadmill in order to prove something. You might become more valuable by getting off the treadmill for a moment.
Similarly, invest in your own sustainability. You get nowhere by reducing yourself to paper thin margins.
Also the idea of “establishing a rhythm” can be a weighty thing to consider. Maybe just try something — or maybe better yet, try not doing something. You don’t need to invest in a giant infrastructure for self-care. As they say, a change is as good as a rest. So just go try something different than what you’re doing, because your current path is probably costing too much anyways.
Everybody is different. What I have listed is what some humans would find to be useful. And somebody different than me would not want this particular set of practices in their life. It would actually not improve them. And I want each person reading this to realize that a recipe for them is out there that might look like something completely different.
The moral of the story is design your own way of sustaining your energy.
Yeah. Exactly. And it’s a continual redesign of life. Not just one thing to try one quarter. It’s piloting different ways of doing it, to orient us towards not just what we want out of life, but how to be what we’re meant to be.
One thing in closing—now that I’ve had the chance to have your helpful coaching questions through this interview, it’s easier for me to see where I was missing some important things. I mentioned the miss of sleep and journalling earlier, but I’m seeing a bigger gap: I see that, in some ways, I’ve missed the value of connection and community. We are people in community, and being known is a critical part of our ability to thrive. I can’t “redesign” anything, without considering where I’m supported by, and connected to, others.
For more of Kevan’s take on work life, watch him speak on “Creating a Healthy Digital Strategy: How Empathy Can Transform our Organizations”.
