So, what do we think about wellbeing?

Now, I am sure that when asked, most of us would want to answer, "It's really important to me to maintain a healthy work/life balance," or "Absolutely, without the best inner me, I have no chance of exerting the best working me," or even "My team and me all understand the importance of balance, balance to work in the day, balance of downtime in the evening, balance of playing hard socially, balance in the...".

And I am sure that we have all finished listening by this point.

Maybe some of us will even answer with no small sense of irony, "I rely upon my family to help me rediscover the best version of me."

However, my experience is somewhat different. Personally, I don't think any of us really talks about wellbeing, except at Christmas time and on holiday.

For the other 48 weeks of the year, wellbeing gets thrown down our lists of priorities as the pressures of work takes over.

Before we go too far with this blog, I do want to give one small assurance.

This blog is not about balancing your yin or your yang. Please do not ask me for my advice; my only experience of a yang was when a client once greeted me outside the courtroom with the words, "I'm not feeling too good, my yin is out of balance with my yang."

My reply did not exactly fill the client with confidence. "Yes, I had a rather heavy night last night as well." The client looked at me blankly. "I don't drink." No prizes for guessing if we won or not...

Nor will this blog require you to meditate to whale music, whilst suffocating to an over-priced scented candle as some sadomasochist stabs you with the hundredth needle to divert your attention from a dull ache in one part of your body to agonising discomfort in another.

I shall also not advise you on how you can go about improve your own wellbeing; there are so many "life coaches" out there who at least talk as if they are better qualified than me, even if they know as much about the subject as me.

What this blog will do is help you identify traits which may indicate you are at risk of an imbalance which may result in poor wellbeing.

The challenge is being honest with yourself, and I would urge every reader to now take a few seconds out to consider the following:

What is the strength of your castle defences which we discussed last week?

It is important for you to remain honest with yourself as you read and consider this blog.

I would like you to consider something else; why is this question so important?

Believe me, it's not so that I can fill up blog space.

The answer is the stronger your defences, the better your balance, the better you can function professionally. Simply put, the better the "internal you", the better the "professional you" performs.

Okay, I appreciate that this sounds very similar to the people I mocked right at the start of this blog, but hopefully I have lacked the usual pomposity to which usually accompanies such statements...

Personally I think one of the biggest threats to our wellbeing and to our castles are our mobile phones.

Now don't panic, I am not going to say anything quite so deluded as "get rid off your phones." That would be stupid, unrealistic, impossible and would help bring about economic collapse. Smart phones have revolutionized our lives, primarily for the better, and I bet the majority of you are reading this blog on your phone.

The danger, however, is that we can become too reliant on our smartphones for just every aspect of our lives. Shopping, entertainment, banking, holidays; absolutely everything can be organized on our phones. We have become so used to clicking onto various apps, that we no longer stop and think before clicking onto our work email accounts or opening a WhatsApp message from a client.

It is a perfectly logical step to progress from 1 data usage to another in a single click.

Our downtime, which we traditionally relied upon to recharge is infringed.

The cost-of-living crisis, near instantaneous communication with any part of the word, the perception that hard work is having to work all the time. These are the main reasons as to why we now feel that we have to be on call for work nearly 24 hours a day.

It is too easy to feel tempted to respond to that one email, or to send that one invoice at 9pm on a Wednesday.

We all know our thought processes. "I had better respond to my team now, even if it's a Saturday, so they know I'm onto it." "What is the harm of checking on a Sunday whether client or a colleague has responded to our proposals, so that I can give thought to how I will respond tomorrow?"

But before many of us realise, that one email becomes several, five minutes becomes an hour.

It is all too easy for our castles that we have already spoken about to be invaded.

And what is the result? Whether we intend to or not, our focus goes to back to work, we don't switch off and we build up the stress which can contribute to below par performance.

We are, therefore, preventing our minds from gaining the rest required to recharge ourselves so we can go back to work stronger the following day.

Our focus becomes on the quantity of our work, rather than the quality.

Let us consider professional sportsmen.

The physical training schedule of a Formula 1 driver focusses primarily on 30-minute high-intensity blocks, rather than hours sluggishly spent in a gym. Data proves that the results are better.

Likewise, contrary to the myth that they are all gym monkeys, rugby players will only spend (on average) two or three sessions on a week in the gym.

Anything more than that, and they know that their focus becomes too narrow on one area and they start putting their bodies in danger of overwork.

Let us now use these analogies for ourselves.

It may seem important at the time to check the WhatsApp message or to send the email, but ask yourselves the question: is it?

Now, before all of you deluge me with comments that I'm talking rubbish (feel free to, it would still be great to hear from you), I know full well that there are jobs that demand constant checking in.

I am married to a doctor.

International markets, global clients, projects and deals take us beyond the 9 to 5.

I, too, have worked on international deals. They are difficult to balance, especially when you are dealing with a client in Australia or California and, of course, our castle's defences understandably go out of the window when the completion date approaches.

Don't panic, I would never advise you to slow down in that regard, and long hours are a pre-requisite to most professional careers.

What I am discussing are those non-critical times at work, and when you are reliant upon your castle's defences to recharge.

A very good friend of mine is a chief buyer at a one of the UK's biggest supermarkets. Not a single night passes without her checking her phone at least twice, monitoring production, supply and whatever else it is that buyers do. I would stress that this is not necessarily her choice, but she has been influenced to do this by convention.

I am not sure even she knows why she needs to do this apart from appearing to be working and, therefore, worthy of career progression.

Frankly, if quality control has been failed by a batch, then what difference does it make knowing this at 3am or 7am? Likewise, in the event of a truly catastrophic event (like a container vessel sinking), then there would be so many parties involved that no true implications will be known for some hours. Therefore, once again, what is the importance of knowing this at 3am?

The disadvantages for my friend can be profound.

A minor crisis can be exaggerated, the brain switches back on and the stress levels can raise again. It also helps to ensure that she will go back to work the following day without properly resting.

How will that affect her long-term wellbeing?

Next time you are on your phone in the evening, having had a stressful day and you are fighting the children when trying to put them to bed, or you are trying to cook dinner, ask yourself this question; what will the impact be if I ignore work, put my phone down and switch off?

I know what is like either running a business or being a member of a team. I know the pressures of invoicing, or the need to continually needing to demonstrate why you should remain in the team (although in reality, no one else thinks this of you because they're too worried about their own positions...) or you feel that there is never enough hours in the day.

But are clients really going to pay your invoice at ten passed nine in the evening? Likewise, is everyone in your team really going to study your latest message at 10pm, apart from sending you a genuine answer to appear that they are taking note? Will it, therefore, not be better to send it in the morning, when everyone is fresh, alert and able to engage with it?

We have all seen the research that indicates that a sender of an email expects a response from you within 90 minutes (or some other such arbitrary figure). Too engrossed are we in this, that we actually don't consider who commissioned the research and what research marker did they use, except to attain whatever magic number they wanted.

The answers are, firstly, communication companies or consultants trying to sell their services based around greater team efficiency, and secondly, we just don't know because no one has tried to find out.

We are, therefore, worrying ourselves with something which could be total nonsense.

Of course, smartphones are not wholly evil; they are more of a symptom of the imbalance between our yin and our yang.

They are indicative of a growing imbalance between work and our downtime, the time needed for us to recharge and refresh.

The last 10 years have seen a real shift in focus in our working lives. It is now easier for us to work longer hours without consideration as to how this could wear us out, like rugby players who spend too much time in the gym. Sense of guilt for not pulling our weight in a team, fear of a negative appraisal, or fear of missing out of a promotion can fuel our sense of need to have to be constantly switched-on.

Perhaps we should be more like sportsmen, with short intense sessions to prevent burn out.

Of course, such a change would require a broad refocus across many sectors, which may or not be achievable. However, everyone single one of us can start in our own small ways to grab the initiative and to start implementing the small changes will improve our own wellbeing.

By allowing our homes to remain our castles, by learning how to value quality over quantity, we will help to re-establish our wellbeing. At no loss to our productivity, we can ensure that an improvement in our private lives can improve upon the quality of our professional lives.