Managing Work and Life (6 May 2026)

This transcript has not been edited for accuracy.

Transcripts are available on popular podcast platforms.

If you enjoy listening to career conversations, why not become a member of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh? Our membership provides you with access to the RCPE educational portal, the live evening medical updates and you have options to view the symposia both in person or online. If you would like to learn more about this, please go to the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh website.

Dr Marilena Giannoudi (MG): Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Career Conversations, brought to you by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh Trainee and Members Committee. My name is Doctor Marilena Giannoudi and today I'm delighted to be joined by Doctor Clare Bostock, who is a consultant geriatrician in Aberdeen and will be discussing some aspects of work life balance and how we can be kind to ourselves on a day to day. So, Doctor Bostock, hello. Welcome. Thank you for joining me.

Dr Clare Bostock (CB): Thanks very much for asking me to have a conversation with you.

MG: Obviously, the conversation that we've chosen is a huge topic, and perhaps outside of what we can cover in one of our podcasts. But I do think it's important that we talk about this on a very regular basis with how busy everyone is. And I guess the first question that makes the most sense to start with is, how do you manage work life balance? How do you think we should manage work life balance?

CB: Thank you. I think the key to that is manage, because I don't think we can solve this. I think it's an issue that requires frequent management and tweaks. And I'm happy to share with you some of the things that I've found helpful personally. But recognizing that we're all different, we've all got different lives outside of work and different responsibilities, and we've all got different lives within work. So, I think people will need to find their individual solutions, but I can hopefully share some things that I found helpful myself. You'd also mentioned about how busy life is, and I think life is very busy and I think a lot of the problems stem from our connectivity, especially our sort of digital connectivity. We are constantly connected, so work can be pretty much done anywhere. Now I have a work laptop, and I can do almost anything on that laptop in any location. So that means I think we need even more vigorous coping strategies and things to stop us working twenty-four over seven, because we could do that. That would be accessible to us. I think one of the really key things is having life outside work of having an alternative to work. So I got home last night and family were out, and actually I could have spent all evening on the computer, but I need to have a hobby or something else that I can do and have a commitment and make that personal commitment to an activity outside work. So, we have another focus in our lives. I think that's really important.

MG: I had never really thought of it like that before because sometimes you just think of it as a tick list of the things that I need to do, whether it's, you know, I must go to the gym, I must do this. But actually, if you think about it as you're doing it for you, and this is one of your hobbies, it immediately changes your perspective of that.

CB: Yes. And I think it's interesting you mentioned lists as well, because that's something I thought quite a lot about, because I think one way of managing work life balance is actually for me, I've become very efficient at work so I can try and get everything done at work. But the downside of that is we work faster and faster and harder, and we develop this maximal efficiency where that itself can cause problems because we are just then trying to fit in so much at work, and potentially some of those traits of doing more and more can sort of cross into our personal lives as well.

MG: And I guess that leads on very nicely to the next point of discussion that I wanted to talk to you about, which was the concept of hyper doing. And I know you briefly touched on that just now, but what is hyper doing, because it's a word that's being thrown out more and more recently, and I'm not sure that I fully understand all connotations of it other than doing lots. And I guess the most important thing is how do we recognize that we've fallen into the trap of doing that?

CB: Yeah. So, I've been hyper for years. I've probably been hyper for most of our lives. And I think lots of us are good at getting things done because if we weren't good at getting things done, we wouldn't be in the jobs we were doing just now. So, I first came across hyper doing online from a life coach called Rebecca Olson, who I think is the first person to coin the term. And really, it's that compulsion to always get one more thing done. So, every spare moment of time, two minutes of time, five minutes of time, what can I do in that spare piece of time? And then that leads to an inability to rest, and that constant need to tick things off the list. And the difficulty with that is that if we love ticking things off and getting things done, if we're not careful, we'll just do the things that are easy, that we can tick off the easy things. And actually, in order to be busy and occupied, but not get down to the most important things we're too preoccupied with doing rather than doing the things which are important, or the things which are nourishing, which are important to ourselves. And you spoke about kindness to ourselves. So, I think hyper doers tend to have a negative attitude towards rest, tend to multitask when you get home from work and someone says, did you have a good day? You're thinking about how many things did I get done on my to do list? That's the definition of a good day, is how much have I achieved where actually we should be thinking about other aspects of defining what a good day is. And the reality is we will never get everything done ever. So, there's always going to be things not done, and it's learning how to make peace with that. One thing that I have found helpful relates to lists is thinking about my most important tasks or my mites. So, on given clinical day, what are my two or three most important tasks for that day? And it might be doing a ward round, meeting someone for education review and speaking to a family, for example. I need to get those three things done. And if I achieve those, that's great. And then I could always move on to something else. But if we don't define what the most important tasks are, we risk getting lots of tasks done, but not the things that really matter. And I think the same is true in our personal lives as well. We need to prioritise the things that we really want to do, that are going to give us pleasure and are going to nourish us. So, if we can make those our most important tasks, I think that would go a long way towards our wellbeing.

MG: Just listening to you, I'm reflecting. And I think that's such an important way of thinking about things, because the moment your job changes slightly and the way you see your list and the way you see your things, you have to do changes because the job changes, you immediately crumble. I remember starting my PhD, which has its own stresses, but it's very different. I would leave work and I haven't achieved anything. I haven't achieved anything because the to do list just looked so different to what it does with clinical work. So, I think that the MIT list is a really good way of kind of getting around that and making it a skill that is adaptable, irrelevant of what our day-to-day job looks like. Because I guess in healthcare, we're lucky in that we do have lots of different options how our jobs can change.

CB: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that feeling of the things that you've got to do at work, especially when a job's changing, I think it can be helpful to clarify, well, why does this need to be done? Or who says it needs to be done? So has my boss told me this has to be done, or have I decided it needs to be done and maybe it doesn't actually need to be done. So, making sure that we're doing things that are adding value, adding value to person centred care, you know, patient care, we're not doing something just for the sake of it or making ourselves feel better. So, for example, if I'm typing a very long entry in the notes, it's taken me a very long while. Whose benefit am I doing this for? And I think circling back to that connectivity, you know, in terms of like checking emails and that sort of thing, whoever tells us we have to check our email at City Times? No, I've never been told that we do these things because we think we need to. But actually, do we? I think we need to question what's required and what's expected and what's actually helpful and not doing things because we think they need to be done.

MG: I think with that, there's the element of feeling guilty for not doing something that stays on the list or that you think is expected of you, or you think others are expecting of you. And I think guilt is a very difficult emotion to tackle with both at work and in our personal lives, because it's the thing that keeps drawing you back. And I'm just wondering how you would advise, or if you've noticed, any particularly good methods of dealing with the guilt, both at work and in our personal lives.

CB: I think I'm a naturally guilty feeling sort of person. So and I think lots of us probably are, because again, that links a bit into sort of hyper doing, as you say, feeling guilty, being perfectionist or having perfectionism tendencies, I think is quite common in healthcare and that feeling of wanting to please people. And I think that these things all go hand in hand. So, I think what can be helpful to do sometimes I write lists of things that I'm not going to do, and maybe reasons why I'm not going to do something. So, I may have some personal aspirations or some career aspirations at some point, but now's not the right time. And actually, just writing that down and saying, I'm not doing this now. I'm not going to put my hand up for this opportunity. But maybe in five years down the line, that's something I would like to do. And not feeling guilty about that. And I think it's so easy to feel work associated guilt and also home associated guilt and making sure that you're feeling in the right place. And a lot of this is just how we try and train ours. I'm not a coach, but how we reframe our brains so we can get negative thoughts out of our brain. So, there's certain sort of mantras and things that I've come across, and I think it can be really hard sometimes just to reaffirm some of these mantras, things like I'm exactly where I should be right now. So, if you're at a friend's birthday party, but you're worrying about work or a PhD deadline, just to be able to say to yourself, I'm exactly where I should be right now. Other things thinking like, I am enough, I have enough, I do enough just try to reaffirm some of these things and trying to reframe the way that our brains think because we will feel guilty. The other thing is, if you don't get something done and you feel guilty about it, I often find if it's a number of weeks and something's not done, actually, in the end, maybe it wasn't that important. Maybe someone's done it for you. Or maybe you realize, actually, I can just cross this off the list and forget about it. I think when it comes to perfectionism, another sort of mantra that I've come across is done is better than perfect. So, if you're writing a document or something and you're looking for it to be absolutely perfect, you know, and it takes you ten hours, but actually you've just got to get something done and sent. And just remembering done is better than perfect. I think that can be helpful as well.

MG: Yeah, that's very useful. And obviously we've got our own guilt with work or personal life, but how do we deal with moving away from wanting to please people? So I guess as more junior trainees, as resident doctors, how do we move away from wanting to for the sake of pleasing our consultants, as opposed to because we're proud of the good job that we did, and we know that we did the best thing for the patient. And I think that is quite difficult because sometimes you're like, well, I know this consultant wants things done like this, and I know this consultant wants things done like that. And then you end up thinking more about that as opposed to the task at hand.

CB: I think that's a really important point. And I think you hit the nail on the head by saying about what we're trying to do is in the best interest of the patient. We're always trying to do the best task we can for the patient. I believe in order to do that; we need to look after ourselves. I was taught years ago look after yourself first, then look after the team second, and then together. You and the team are capable of looking after the patients, so you need to feel well in yourself and rested and mentally fresh to be able to look after the patients. I think as clinical leaders and we're all clinical leaders. We have a responsibility about telling people what our expectations are and giving people feedback. Because if you're second guessing what each consultant wants and you're not getting the feedback from them, then we're always worried. Have I done the wrong thing where my notes clear enough? But actually, if we can seek out feedback, but also as clinical leaders, if we can be giving feedback, being proactive in giving feedback so people know what they expected, telling people they've done a good job when they've done a good job. So, then people know and we're not always worried about disappointing people. So, I think we've all got a responsibility to help one another know where things have been done well and where things could be improved. And I think if we all did that more often, that would leave less doubt in our minds. That might be one solution that we could all take on in terms of pleasing people. We mentioned, I believe that we shouldn't take on something for the sake of being thanked for doing it. So I think we should take on a task or commit to something because we want to do it, because we're going to get pleasure from that, because it's going to be nourishing for ourselves or going to contribute to effective patient care, but without the expectation that we're going to do it to be thanked. However, I do think that we've all got a duty as well as part of clinical leadership to thank one another in the team. So, when I go home, I would thank the resident doctors, I would thank the nurses and thank people that are consistently involved in delivering good quality care. So, I do think we could all do that again as part of each of our roles as clinical leaders.

MG: And I think that's really important. So, you're not constantly expecting the thank you from somebody else. Because sometimes for the environment to change, we should all be thinking about that. And we work in a team. No one works alone. So why shouldn't irrelevant of your grade. I guess that's really empowering for me, for our more junior listeners, to think I don't meet someone more senior to thank me to know that I've done a good job. Actually, I can thank my colleagues. I can thank other members of the MDT when I know that we've done a good job. It doesn't just have to come from the most senior member of the team because that immediately I think small words like that actually have a really deep meaning and can completely change your interaction with your team.

CB: Yeah, absolutely. And then you're becoming a role model. And when we're talking about work life balance and well-being, if we can all set that example and culture. So, if we're not sending emails at ten o'clock at night and we're not responding to emails when we're on annual leave, and there's that expectation and we set that culture, we set that. And then I think we can all help one another.

MG: So, I guess the big takeaway that I'm getting from this conversation is to feel empowered to be yourself, because the boundaries are constantly changing. The tasks at hand are constantly changing. And other than doing the very best for the patient, there is no right or wrong in the way that you deal with that. And as long as you're true to yourself, that's perhaps the best way of managing your work life balance because you're becoming yourself at work, which means you'll be calmer at home. And that will just have a ricochet effect on both aspects.

CB: Yeah, I think so. If you say if you're calmer and also if you're refreshed, if I've had exercise, if I've had a good night's rest, if I've switched off from work, especially on annual leave, and I can come back and I know how more effective my brain is, and I can just work better and feel more at ease.

MG: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for discussing these. I think we can say difficult points today. Certainly not something that we always discuss openly. Is there any kind of takeaway message that you think is important for our listeners to hear from yourself.

CB: So, I think one thing we thought about previously is how we make changes that last. And I think we can't rely on willpower alone because our wills are weak. So, I think we need to form habits and maybe rules that work for ourselves and can work for colleagues. So, using things like the out of office email reply, if someone's on annual leave, don't send them emails on annual leave. There's a scheduled send function that you can use to send an email for when someone's back, annual leave, things like that. So just trying to have changes which can last. I don't have work email on my mobile phone. I never have done. So, then that makes it difficult to check email, which is a good thing. It requires logging on to a computer. So, I think it's working out changes that will last for you and rules that you can stick by.

MG: Yes. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. And for all our listeners, you can read more about these kind of topics of hyper doing of how we deal with failure. Doctor Bostock has actually published several articles on this, so I'll make sure to include them in the footnotes for you to read in your own time. I hope you've enjoyed our podcast today. As always, we've got more clinical episodes for you on clinical conversations and a variety of podcasts on this channel, on career conversations, doctor Bostock from me, a massive thank you for empowering me and our listeners to be ourselves and to take the time to stop, think and reset. I think that's really, really important. So, thank you so much for joining me today.

CB: Thanks very much.