 Welcome everyone. This is Susan Hope-Bard at TechSoup. Thank you so much for joining our webinar today, Combating Non-Profit Burnout, Managing Tech, and Email Overload. We are simply thrilled to bring this topic to our audience today. And I wanted to make sure that everyone is aware that this is a very interactive event. So before I explain our platform, I did want to remind everyone to just grab a piece of paper and pencil because you are going to be doing some polling questions, and you are going to be analyzing some of your habits along with Beth, and answering some poll questions within the webinar. And before we actually get to the topic, I do wish to tell you a little bit about ReadyTalk. This is our webinar platform. The full left-hand side of your screen should be a chat box. During the entire event you should feel free to chat into me if you have technical difficulties. I have chatted out an audio line that you can call into if the sound isn't coming through your computer speakers. If you have questions for Beth or for me, you can feel free at any time to chat them in. There is no need for you to raise your hand. I will be queuing the questions up for Beth to answer periodically. If you lose your Internet connection, you can just use the link that was emailed to you either in your confirmation email or in the reminder email that you received. If you are calling in by phone and you lose your connection, just read out using the phone number, and I will be chatting that out periodically. All lines are muted so that we can get a good clear recording. So great news, this is being recorded. We will notify you when the recording is available. We will send you an email. The email will have a link to the recording. It will also have a link to Beth's presentation. So no need to copy down everything Beth says. We will be sending you her full PowerPoint presentation after the event once the archive recording is available. You can also go to our TechSoup website where you can view any of our past webinars, and that is www.techsoup.org, community, events, webinars. We also have a YouTube channel that you can go to. And you can also join us on Twitter at TechSoup or use hashtag TSWebinars. I am simply thrilled to bring our presenter today, Beth Cantor. She is a master trainer, speaker, and author. She has put together an amazing presentation, and I've had the opportunity to look through it. And I'm actually really excited for the things I'm going to learn today so I can become healthier because when I did some of these polling questions I didn't score so well. So I'm interested to hear what Beth is going to share with us. I'm at TechSoup. I'm the training and education manager. I'm located here in San Francisco, California. And we'd like to know where you're joining us from. So test out the chat box. Go ahead and take about 15 seconds to tell us what city and state you're joining us from, or if you're from out of the country. Please do take a minute to tell us where you're joining us from. Oh, I was just in Arizona. Vanna, I was in Scottsdale, Arizona not that long ago. Great. We've got folks from Virginia, Connecticut, North Carolina, LA, Los Altos. Oh, that's Beth. Excellent. Oh, someone just moved to the Bay Area from Southern California too. Great. Thanks so much everyone for chatting in. We're thrilled that you're here today and we are going to get started. And I am going to turn the presentation over to Beth now for her to inform you and also engage with you today. So thanks Beth. Take it away. Great. Thank you Susan so much. And welcome everybody. I'm just thrilled that we're all here together from wherever you're dialing in from. And so just a little bit about me. I've worked in the nonprofit sector 35 years. And 25 years ago I discovered the Internet. I didn't invent it, but I had a front row seat at the creation of a field, and that's how nonprofits can use the Internet for mission-driven work. And TechSoup was right there. Also one of the early adopters of this mission. And I was lucky because I sort of came into this as a trainer and a teacher, and I had a job with an online network called Artswire. And this is back in the day in the early 1990s when the Internet was all tech space. And I was lucky enough to learn from the techies and then turn around and teach nonprofits how to use these tools. And this sort of became my career of doing trainings literally all over the world, sort of learning the technology and then quickly teaching it to activists and nonprofit professionals and other nonprofits. I've written a couple of books, The Network Nonprofit, Measuring the Network Nonprofit. And of course my recent book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit. I've also published books on leadership development including the Emerging Leaders Playbook, which is to support young leaders in the field. So my newest book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit, is sort of comes, you may wonder, well, why would somebody who is known for tech and digital strategy and networks, why would they write a book about self-care and well-being in the workplace? Well, this is something that evolved for me and it's a very sort of personal journey. I have gone through my own burnout and being burnout through tech and you name it and sort of coming back to it. And so by practicing a lot of the ideas that are in the book. And so I really believe that taking care of yourself and then having this culture of well-being in the workplace is really sort of part of doing the work. And I'll talk a little bit about that in a moment. So what I am going to talk about, this topic is a slice of the content that is in the new book. I am going to drill deep into what we call technology wellness. And we are going to look at it from the lens of nonprofit professionals and teach you about understanding the connection between tech and burnout and then some personal technology wellness tips. And then we are going to look at ways that these ideas can be brought into the workplace. I am going to show some examples and also provide you with lots of really good tips that you can bring back to your team or to your organization in the effective use of technology to avoid burnout. So my book, The Happy Healthy Nonprofit that I co-authored with Elisa Sherman, it's based on hundreds of interviews with nonprofit professionals about their approach to resilience both personally and in their organization. And so the book is part, Manifesto for Mindset and Culture Shift in the Nonprofit Sector. And so I am hoping that we are sparking a conversation about the importance of self-care for nonprofit professionals to avoid burnout and to gain more sustaining energy for their work, their causes, their mission, the people they serve, and their personal lives. So the book has two parts. There's lots of advice and stories around how individuals can practice self-care. But because we fundamentally believe that it's also an organizational responsibility, there's also lots of frameworks and tips and examples of how this can be sustained in the nonprofit workplace by building a culture of well-being. So just on a high level, in the nonprofit field, burnout is pretty common. And there's lots of reasons for that. And I think a lot of it has to do with the passion that we all feel for our organization's mission because we're trying to change the world and make it a better place. And that can be a passion, it can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it helps us keep going in the face of challenges, but on the other hand, we can be so driven by our passions that we don't stop to refuel or smell the pervoral, the old roses. Or even notice if we're burning out or feeling those symptoms. There's other reasons too, scarcity mindset, lack of resources. And what we do in response is to kind of overwork to compensate. We have toxic workplaces and so on. And there's a lot of reasons why burnout is so common. And in the book, there's a lot of cartoons. And I think this cartoon really says it. I don't know if you can read the caption about what you see. Imagine this is a fundraising development director or maybe it's an executive director. He had a couple of chest pains and he's brought into the ER. The doctor is leaning over him and this executive director, development director is mumbling. What's he saying? He's saying grant deadline due on Thursday. So I think this says that we're so passionate that we could potentially work ourselves to death. So let's begin with what the clinical definition of burnout is. So the clinical definition of burnout is, and I'm going to actually read it to you, burnout is a state of emotional, mental, physical exhaustion that occurs when we feel overwhelmed by too many demands, too few resources, and too little recovery time. So does that sound like working in the nonprofit sector? And the symptoms of burnout are they're physical, they're emotional, and they're attitudinal, and they're also behavioral. Physical symptoms like aches and pains and headaches, increased illness and insomnia, loss of appetite, exhaustion. Emotional symptoms, anxiety, depression, anger, getting angry, having apathy. And then this leads to a lack of productivity and performance, memory issues, concentration issues, a feeling of worthlessness. And so what happens with these symptoms is they're really sneaky, and it happens in phases. So it's really important not only to educate yourself about the symptoms and then start to practice different ways to practice self-care. And the thing is that technology can be a big cause of stress and contributor to burnout. And so the first step in avoiding this kind of burnout from technology is to recognize when you're on the path toward it, and before those symptoms kind of get out of control. So to start us off, I'm going to actually do a fun little quiz to figure out what your, to give you a personal technology wellness assessment. And basically we have 10 questions here. And Susan and I are going to alternate reading it, reading the questions. And you just write yes or no to the question, and then at the end just tally up your numbers. So the first question is, is the only time you take a break from your tech when you're sleeping? Yes or no? Number two, do you check your phone before you go to bed or right when you wake up? Yes or no? Number three, do you have problems recalling information and resort to searching on Google? Yes or no? Do you feel that you often have a hard time paying attention or focusing on a single task? Yes or no? Do you experience frustration at the amount of online information you need to process every day? Yes or no? Number six, do you frequently or constantly check your email, Twitter, Facebook, or other online services? Number seven, do you sometimes check your mobile phone for messages while in the bathroom? And a bonus question, how do you ever lost a phone due to a water damage? Number eight, I'm laughing and everybody probably knows why I'm laughing. Number eight, do you find yourself reaching for your phone even when you're with other people? Yes or no? Number nine, do you sit at your computer at work or home for longer than 30 minutes at a time without getting up to take a break? Yes or no? And the last question, do you ever check your mobile phone while you're walking outside? Yes or no? So we'll just give you a second or two to add up your scores. You're going to count up the number of yeses to these 10 questions or 11 questions with the bonus question. And then once you have your number, let us know whether you scored between zero and three, four to six, seven to ten. And there's no shame in any of these answers. We've got a lot of time. What do you think we're going to get, Susan? I don't know. I know what my score was. I was an eight. So someone has admitted, self-admitted in the chat that they were an 11. So don't feel bad. Stop multitasking and pay attention. All right, we'll give them five more seconds. Four, three, two, one. Great. So do we have to do anything to make it show? Oh, skip to results. Click that button. Yes, everyone should see that. Look at that. Okay, so let me tell you, if you scored between zero and three, and I think we had one person, Bravo, you have really great habits. So now we have two, okay? So you have some great habits. Maybe share some of those in the chat as we go along. If you're in the four to six range, and it seems like 40% of you are in that range, you have some good habits, but you also have some bad habits that you might want to think about changing. And those of you that are from 7 to 10, you need to stop multitasking, pay attention right now. You need to really think about what you want to change. And I have actually scored an 11 myself. I'm down now with a lot of work over the last couple of years. But first, if you're still not convinced, let me tell you a little bit about the problems that having the always-on life can do to our brains and to our health before I get to some of the tips. So the first thing is that technology use is really changing our brains, and this comes from Larry Rosen's book, Eye Disorder. And Eye Disorder is that technology has changed your brain's ability to process information and your ability to relate to the world due to your daily overuse of media and technology. And this results in signs and symptoms of psychological disorders such as stress, leapslessness, and even behavioral addiction, a compulsive need to check your technology. We have less downtime in our lives than we did compared to say 5 or 10 years ago. And then the statistic comes from a recent Lou Harris poll, 52% of smartphone owners check their phones a few times an hour or more. This is known as behavioral addiction. We're actually addicted. So if you're like me, you probably don't even think about how dependent you are on your smartphone, or you might laugh about it, or you might even be in denial. Now, I was in denial, okay? So no, I'm not addicted to my phone. And then I downloaded an app called Moment that actually tracks my usage. And this is what I learned, that I pick up, the phone is in my hand two and a half hours a day, almost 20 hours a week. I pick it up 30 times per day, almost 200 times per week. Now the next report it gives you, and I'm not going to show you this one, is the percentage of that time is devoted to different apps. So this kind of said to me, you know, well, am I really being productive with that time on my phone, or is this really just out of habit? And what's happening is that in some ways it's not our fault because mobile apps, social media, and such, they are being designed to get us addicted. And these apps have something embedded in them called a ludic loop. And a ludic loop is when we get into a repetitive activity and we keep on doing it and doing it, never so often we get rewarded. Kind of like a slot machine. And so that is how technology apps and mobile is being designed. And so Larry Rosen who I mentioned earlier in his research, and he's the premier researcher on kind of technology compulsions and addictions. And what he talks about is that the urge to check our phones comes from within. So we're sitting around and we're thinking, oh, do I get an email? Or maybe I should check Facebook. And then once we have that thought it creates this bit of anxiety around it. And so what we do to reduce the anxiety, we pick up our phone and we check it. And of course this releases a hit of Endorphins which makes us feel better and then it gets us into this cycle of behavioral addiction to our devices. And that has a lot of consequences. So one of them is that it can also erode our attention span. So what do you think? Just type in the chat for a moment. What do you think the average attention span is online? Take a guess. Now type it into the chat. No, I'm seeing some good ones here. 30 seconds, 4 seconds, 30 seconds. Okay. Yeah, so it is 20 minutes. I think that's optimistic. 1 minute, maybe 60, 60 seconds. Okay, so let me show you the answer. Okay, so the average human attention span in 2000 was 12 seconds. The average human attention span in 2013 was 8 seconds. The average attention span of Goldfish is 9 seconds. So this constant checking makes us into ADD Goldfish. All right? So there are other problems that occur. There are physical problems. There is an element called text neck. And what that is, it's from us holding our phones and texting and looking down and our heads weigh a number of pounds. And our necks weren't designed to have that weight hanging on it. And so if you're beginning to feel aches and pains in the back of your neck, it's from text neck. There's also something called distracted walking, which is really dangerous because it leads to pedestrian accidents. And in fact, according to a recent Pew Internet poll, there's been a 35% increase in pedestrian injuries because people are texting, and while they're walking on their phone, they're not paying attention, they're tripping off of curves, and they're walking out into traffic, and some people are getting killed. Now here's another thing that happens is what you're looking at is something called a Kelvin scale. And that's from bright light to warm light. And so the color of light is measured in kelvins. So for example, a bright, direct, sunny day, a sunny morning is 5,500 kelvins. But your screens, your iPads, and your iPhones, they have something called blue light, and those are about almost 7,000 kelvins. So the problem is that when we look at our screens during the day, actually it's not a problem because it's telling us, hey, it's daylight, wake up. But when we do it at night, right before we're going to bed, for example, what it does is it wakes us up, and it gives your body signals to say, it's not time to sleep, it's time to wake up, and what happens is you don't get a good night's sleep. And again, lack of a good sleep can be an issue because it challenges your ability to concentrate or to perform. And if you're doing this over time, it can lead to different diseases, and it can also accelerate and contribute to burn out from other things. And even if you're using the setting that is on iPhone, which is the warm light, I think it's called night shift, that may reduce it, although it hasn't been scientifically proven. But if you are looking at your phone before you go to bed, you may be going over to email and checking CNN news alerts or whatever, and it makes you feel anxious. And then you have weird dreams, and again, that contributes to a lack of sleep. The next problem, at work, what do we do at work when we're using our technology? We're sitting, all right? And so sitting has been dubbed the new smoking because our sedentary lifestyles can be contributing to an increase in different diseases, organ damage, muscle degeneration, foggy brain and strained neck. So it's important that you're not just sitting all day long, too, because this can also lead to have health impacts and also contribute to burnout symptoms. Okay, so maybe I have to press you enough with the research about why technology use can cause stress and burnout. And I also want to point out that what I'm saying is, I'm not saying to stop using the technology. I'm an early adopter. I love technology. I'm telling you I'm not saying don't use it. And the technology is not going to go away. And we have to use it as part of living now where you have digital lifestyles. But what I am saying that it's important to be very intentional about how you use it and to develop good technology wellness habits. So let's look at these from the point of view of the individual. Personal, technology, wellness. Okay, so the first thing is to protect your sleep. The secret sauce to resilience is getting sleep. And many of us are going through life in a state of sleep deprivation. We're skimping on our needed sleep. And that doesn't let us perform our best for organizations and the stakeholders that we are serving. So how much sleep do you need? Let's get on that. Type into the chat. How much sleep do you think we need per night? How much does the average adult age 18 and over need? Okay, I see a guess at 8 hours, 7 to 8 hours, 8 to 10. Great. Okay, so you're kind of almost exactly right there. According to the National Sleep Foundation, it's between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night for the average adult over 18. Now there are exceptions, but most of us need that. So what you need to do is to start to rethink your bedtime routine. Think about like if you have kids, you read them a story before bed and give them a bath when they were younger. Your bedtime routine should not be cramming in one more email before you go to sleep. Think about reading a book. Think about having a cup of tea. Think of a more relaxing kind of wind-down book so you can get off to a good night's sleep. Of course, one tip, a pro tip is to use an alarm clock. Kick your iPhone out of the bedroom. I kicked my iPhone out of the bedroom. I let my husband stay, but I kicked the iPhone out of the bedroom, and I got this wonderful alarm clock called Loombeam, and it wakes me up to nice pleasant light. And the reason for that of course is I had no impulse control before when I was using my iPhone as my alarm clock, I would go set my alarm, but then I would go look at Facebook, I would check my work email, I would look at the news alerts, and that didn't help me get a good night's sleep. So use an alarm clock and kick the mobile phone out of the bedroom. The next thing is to think about how you can stand up at work. Now some of you may be already using a standing desk, and that's great. This helps us with that sitting disease. And what I hear mostly from nonprofits is that, oh, standing desks are expensive. But as you can see in this photograph, my colleague, Beverly, who is out in Sacramento and works with nonprofits, hacked a standing desk out of a cardboard carton and a music stand. And I'm seeing somebody in the chat saying that they sit on a pink ball all day long, which is great. So get a standing desk. They don't have to be expensive. And I think the pro tip here is to make sure you get a soft pad for your feet because they will get sore. And also think about the types of activities that work best for you standing. For me when I write I have to sit, but when I'm on a phone call like this, I'm standing. Or when I'm doing email I tend to stand. So think about the activities that lend themselves to standing. And also if you're just starting out, you're not going to start standing 8 hours a day. You're going to kind of ease into it. And also you want to make sure that your posture is ergonomically correct, or you're going to create more problems. I've seen lots of creative standing desks. Here's an example. Somebody who turned the grand piano in their office. It was an arts organization. To a standing workstation. Another tip is to stop using your computer keyboard as a lunch tray. We're all given a lunch hour. Go out and take a walk. Leave the mobile phone behind. Take a walk. I hear lots of nonprofit professionals, especially as the weather is getting nicer, are going out. They're taking their lunch break, coming back, and avoiding that afternoon's slump. Another thing that I use, I use a Fitbit Charge 2, and it actually prompts me to take my little walking breaks. You might think that this is kind of distracting. What it does is every hour on the hour it kind of little buzzes me, and it says, you need to walk 250 steps. So now it's kind of like it breaks me from being glued to the screen, and I get up and I walk around. I walk around my office just a few minutes. It's like rebooting your computer. So think about ways that you can walk more and get more steps into your work life, and to avoid that sitting disease. Now, if you think that you might be thinking, heck, I go to the gym. I don't need to get up and walk around my desk every hour. So the problem is not getting exercise, but it's being sedentary for more than a couple hours at a time. And that's what's causing the problem. So you want to kind of get into this pattern where you are not sitting for too long. Another tip to avoid being addicted to your mobile phone is to organize it in a way to avoid that addiction. And this comes from an article, and you can Google for it. It's from Tristan Harris. He's a former Google employee who has actually one of the first ones to talk about how Silicon Valley Interface Designers are designing these things so we'll get addicted. And he writes a lot of tips about how to avoid it. And so one of the things I think is really good is to scramble your apps every now and then, because what happens is you might be after hours, after work, and you have your phone in your hand, and your thumbs have this memory. And maybe you didn't have the intention of doing email after work, but all of a sudden your thumbs migrate over to your phone, and all of a sudden you're answering emails. So think about migrating your apps. And if you are going on a vacation or taking some downtime, think about moving all those work apps to that last screen. Make them less accessible. Another tip is to have a charging station at your house. My co-author does this, Aliza Sherman. And so she makes everybody check their devices at the door after hours. And it works pretty well because if somebody starts walking across the house to the device charging station, it's kind of like the walk of shame. And it's a way to keep people, you know, to have some control over our compulsion to be on our devices 24-7. The next thing is to think about quiet time and more importantly, scheduling that quiet time. Now, maybe you don't need to go to the lengths of this guy who's put a sign on his back that says, do not disturb. I'm on a tight schedule today. Exemptions in case of emergency are permitted. Am I on fire and don't know it? Are you a pizza? So one simple tip to do this is just to schedule your alone time. Yesterday when Susan and I were chatting, yeah, it is a woman. I'm not sure. It's whatever the gender. They, it, her, he. But when Susan and I were chatting yesterday, we both discovered that we both do the same. We both color code our Google calendars and we both schedule power hours for ourselves to get this alone stuff done that isn't meetings or involving work on the Internet. Okay, so now what I'd like you to do is just to take a mindful moment before we go to the organizational tips and think about one personal wellness, technology wellness habit that you can start doing tomorrow. And when we think about habit change, we want to make it tiny. Okay, don't make it so big that you're going to fail at it. Make it tiny. And also think about when in your routine that you can, that will trigger you or remind you to do this habit. And that's how you start to establish good habits. So if you want, you know, type those into the chat. I love this. I will no longer take my cell phone to the pooper with me. Great habit. Taking more breaks, especially because I work in a chaotic office. Meditation before checking phone in the morning. Great, great. Program times for all notifications to activate and not activate. That's really good. I use the Do Not Disturb on my iPhone. There's only certain people that can get through to me after hours. Another thing too is to make sure that all your notifications on your mobile phone apps are from people and prioritize those. Using a timer to take breaks, get out of zombie mode, that's great, that's terrific. You can, you know, there are apps for that that you can use. There's one called Desk Yogi that prompts you every so often to do some yoga moves. I tend to use my Fitbit or I will actually use the timer on my iPhone. These are great first steps, so I hope you write them down and do them. Okay, so I'm now going to shift us a bit and I'm going to talk about technology wellness and the nonprofit one place. Okay, it's one thing for us as individuals to practice these sorts of things but I really believe that it also is an organizational responsibility and we can, you know, bring these ideas also into the workplace and start to build a culture around this. Okay, so the first thing I'm going to talk about is walking meetings. Okay, walking meetings are right there. You can see me, this is a walking meeting. It was a brainstorming meeting with a group that I was working on a project and we took a walk on the dish which is right down the road in Stafford and there were five of us and we just did it for a brainstorming meeting. As you can see, we're wearing comfortable shoes. We brought water with us. You know, if you're in a place where you don't have nice weather, you can also walk inside. Some organizations have inside walking groups. When you do a walking meeting, you want to plan your route. I often get asked about note-taking and I tend to do this. I use a pencil and a notebook and I jot down notes. I've had other colleagues who do voice memos into their iPhones when we're walking. Another thing is if you are doing a meeting and then you could navigate it, plan the end of the meeting to be back in your office and you can take down notes at your computer. So there's lots of way to organize this. Now to get started, I think the important thing is to think about the type of meeting that is best for walking meetings. And the best meetings for this or to start are to do one-on-one check-ins. They're great. And meetings where you are building relationships, I know I've heard of nonprofits where they do walking meetings with their donors. Another is also when you're doing brainstorming meetings. Because brainstorming meetings, according to research, and this research comes from Stanford, they help us be more creative. And so one of the organizations that we interviewed in the book, they do walking meetings routinely, but what they do is they have a whiteboard in their conference room. And whenever like a problem comes up or something that they need to like work out, they put it on their kind of walking meeting list. And when they do their walking meetings, it's all focusing on brainstorming and problem solving, which I think is great. And let me tell you a little bit about the research behind that. So here's an example. So this comes from some brain research from Dr. Chuck Hillman at the University of Illinois. And they basically scan people's brains. And the brain on the left that is dark, that's a brain that's been quietly sitting for like 20 minutes. And then the brain on the right that's all lit up and awake is a brain that's had a 20 minute walk. So I guess you have to kind of think, what kind of brain do you want your team to bring to the work? Do you want the brains that are asleep and kind of grumpy? Or do you want the ones where they're lighted up and the synapses are firing and lots of great ideas and energy. So think about that as a sense of for a walking meeting. Here's another example. So walking, there's also movement rates. And this is actually an animated gift and you actually see that group stretching. And it's a whole organization at the United Way in South Dakota every morning at 10 o'clock and in the afternoon at 2 p.m. at bell rings and everybody gets up and they do stretching exercises or they do a group walk. And it's only for 20 minutes and they've been doing this for 10 years. And it all started with listening and engaging with employees. They had some wellness coaches and they heard from the employees that they'd like to get more exercise during the day and they tried this as an experiment. And then it just kind of stuck in the culture. And everybody really likes it because everyone's doing it together. It helps them not get into that sort of zombie zone. Here's another example. And this is an example of walking for meetings for team building and also for energy. And so this is Gina who works at Hazan which works on sustainability issues in the Jewish community. And she is the development director and she went to work for this organization after being a consultant. And she's also a big marathon runner. So when she went into this office she noticed they had sitting disease. So she decided that she wanted to get them into doing a group walk but just for the express purpose of building community. So she scheduled the first one and she called it the Wednesday afternoon weekly walk or the wa and no one showed up. Then the next week she found that there was a Google calendar for everybody and she got it on the schedule. And then for that meeting somebody showed up. And then what happened is at the first meeting they took a selfie and then they sent the photo around to everybody on staff and said come join us for the weekly afternoon walk. It's only going to be 20 minutes. It's exactly at 2 o'clock. It's going to help us avoid the afternoon slump. And then next week two other people showed up. So they did the selfie again. The next week three people. The next week four people and so on. And now it's become a part of what they do. So I've talked about focus and the importance of focus. And a lot of us may have these open offices and this is a global giving open office and it's great for collaboration. But you also need to have focused time and space and an organizational culture that values that. So what they also have is the quiet zone where they have their standing desk and where people can work on this solo task. But it's not just that they created the space. They've also got employee input and talked about it and sort of become part of their values about respecting others who are focusing. So these are just a couple examples of how some nonprofits have brought some of these ideas around technology wellness into the workplace. And what I'm going to do in this last section is go a little bit deeper with some specific tips around technology wellness. So I'm just going to take a little bit of a breath and ask Susan if there's anything in the chat that we should address before moving on to this section. Susan Sure. I actually have a question about how to influence leadership to integrate some of the ideas that you spoke about in some of those examples. How do you get leadership on board with that type of culture? Susan Oh gosh. That's a whole chapter of my book, The Happy Help Me, so I think the very first step is to educate them about the research. I've summarized here, summarized in the book about why these things can help the organization be more productive and more effective and why they really is an ROI on being healthy and happy and practicing technology wellness and showing examples. Susan Great. So this presentation would be very helpful if someone wants to use that. Susan Oh gosh. Susan So I'm going to speed up because we have a little bit more to cover and I want to leave some time for Q&A hopefully. So Collaborative Tech Overload. It's all connectivity driven. What this is is the burnout that results from too many emails, too many back-to-back meetings, and too many different collaborative tech tools that limits our ability to get stuff done. And while connectivity, having connected with our stakeholders from various inputs or else working across departments is really great, it can lead to this feeling of being overwhelmed. And of course we have meeting as murder. According to studies we have 15% of organizational time is spent in meetings and as your job function increases, more of your time is spent in meetings. And not all of that time is productive. There's wasted time for things like those status update meetings, those meetings that should have been an email that we take 4 hours out of our week to do. The downside of that, and maybe this sounds familiar, you go through the week and you realize that you're not getting anything done because you've had all these back-to-back meetings and no solo time. So you start doing that solo time during the evenings and maybe on the weekends, but you end up not doing it because you're too exhausted. So how do we get out of this? So it's called the four piece. And it's about planning, people, priorities, and being present. So let me give you a couple of tips on each of these areas. So planning is kind of the rituals that you create around getting the work done. And it's rituals, and it's also structure. And some people like a lot of structure, some like less structure, but you have to find that balance in doing the planning. So a couple of tips here is to use look ahead rituals. Look at what's coming up the next quarter, the next week, so it doesn't hit you by surprise. And also making that solo time, that focus time be part of your team culture. I love this like sort of office accessories that are kind of like these foam boots and maybe you don't have to go and buy that one, but maybe having it be an explicit part of how your team does its work. That we do recognize that there is time where we need to concentrate and to do solo work. Another tip is about clearly defining the workflow for online collaboration tools and platforms. So a lot of us are using box.org probably, or Dropbox, or Google Drive, or when it's Slack, or whatever. There's lots of these different tools. A lot of them offer through TechSoup. So it's really important not only to get training, but also to map out your workflow. Simple things like what folders are we going to keep things in on our shared drive can save a lot of stress and time. The other thing is having a policy around after-hours emails. You can see the little comic there that says, I'm leaving work to go home and check email. And so the thing is that being accessible online 24-7 is what is exhausting us. That expectation that we could always there. And we have this culture around doing after-hours emails. We reply after email, and then it starts a whole reply chain. And so sometimes this happens because of the leader, and maybe if it's non-emergency work, maybe they need to be taught how to use scheduling programs. On the other hand, we also need to discipline ourselves and have some impulse control about replying right in the moment when somebody sends an email. And if you learn to disconnect a little at night, that can also help. So the next P is people. And that might seem strange, how you are dealing with technology, but people are behind the technology. So another thing that can contribute to collaborative overload and burnout are people frustrations. And this happens when we are communicating virtually. So a statue of limitations on people frustrations. Don't let it ruin your whole day or week. And of course learning how to say no with grace is really important. And I think it's a little bit harder sometimes when there's all these virtual demands that we can unwittingly just say yes to everything without checking our calendar. So learn to say no. Learn to kind of stop that knee-jerk yes. Another important thing around people is writing precise emails with military precision. So for example, having emails that have keywords in the subject lines like this email requires an action or a signature. Using a style of writing called bluff, bottom line up front, get to the point in the first sentence, use fewer words in your emails, and link to attachments. Don't have endless kind of reply chains where you are inserting quotes and stuff because that definitely leads to this collaborative overload and burnout. The other thing is if you do have remote working opportunities for your team or if you have remote workers from other places, set up a working charter of how you are going to work together because this can be really frustrating if the remote people are multitasking, they are on their email, or you are not facilitating the meeting so that they are being included. So go through and have a working charter about how you do your work together. The next thing I want to talk about is priorities. And this is about intentionally deciding how you spend your time. How do you feel about prioritization? Are you ruthless about what matters worse or is everything a 10? Do you keep options open? Do you have margin times? Accept that top realization that time is finite. So a couple of tips. You can do a trend line view with your team. What you are looking there on the left is a Google Calendar, a color-coded one. Now look at that. I do this. That's my calendar. I do that. My color code purple is travel. I look at that every so often and say, well, I am doing too much travel or I have too much back-to-back time. Do that exercise as a team. The other thing you should think about is rethinking your status update meetings. Those things where everyone reads off and goes around and tells about what they are doing in their project. Try those as a scanning meeting and have them done for 15 minutes and challenge everybody to give their status update in a minute or two. And you will have less time wasted around that and people will really learn to prioritize what they are going to communicate. The other thing is, of course, meetings, it is not really a meeting until you waste someone's time. And I think we schedule our meetings by default. Think about scheduling 20-minute meetings or 15-minute meetings or 45-minute meetings and not having them start on the hour. And of course, programs like Google Calendar can – you can change the default from on the hour to 15 minutes after the hour. And then, wow, what happens is if your meetings are shorter, you might get time to go to the bathroom in between meetings or to actually write some notes or to catch your breath. And the final thing is being present. And being present is your attention. Not only is it important to manage your time, you have to manage your attention and energy. My tips here are understanding your kind of rhythms of working. And one of them is the Altradian rhythm, which are these cycles of energy that we have during the day. And really, we can pay attention and have energy from 90 minutes to 120 minutes. And then we lose our attention. So then we need to take a rest, a 10-minute, 15-minute rest. And that's great for a little brief walk and then go back to work. And what happens is when we try to power through, we've used up that resource of our energy and we're really not being productive. Now, some organizations have actually had their employees track their most productive time and then they do creative scheduling for all their workflow around employees' productive times, so that they are having times to be productive and times to actually replenish. Also being explicit about downtime or what we call white space. At Google, they call it the 20% time where there aren't meetings scheduled at all. I've heard this lot from nonprofits where they might not schedule meetings on a Friday afternoon. Or one day of the week, this is time when everybody is not traveling. They're either in the office or they can go out to a coffee shop and it's quiet time to think about doing creative strategy work or planning. Another important thing is maybe having a device-free zone in your workplace. That photo on the left comes from a nonprofit that's in London. And they have this beautiful conference room that has glass walls and plants in it. And this little sign that says, no electronic devices, please. So you can go in there and meditate or else they use it for meetings without devices. Now we all have to have meetings where technology is needed. So it's important to have an explicit policy about use of devices to avoid something called technofearance. Now if you look at the photo that's on the right where everybody is on their devices and they're not engaged with one another, that's the definition of kind of workplace technofearance. So have an explicit policy about using the device. You're only going to use your device if it supports the meeting or else the rule is that everybody is going to give their attention and their eyes to each other and not on their devices. Some organizations have actually done phone stacks during meetings. I just heard from one nonprofit actually that has a fish bowl, a glass bowl and everybody puts their phones in the bowl. And I realize that I have to say with all these tips I've just sort of plowed through. I want to say that there are some times like when you have emergency work at that's the nature of your nonprofit's work, you may not be able to follow some of these tips. So you have to have some flexibility and also understand the context but you can begin to apply some of these ideas to have increased technology wellness in your workplace. So in summary, I want to say that our personal and organizational use of technology can create stress that leads to burnout. But if we are intentional about our own habits and about how we use our devices we can be more productive, healthier, and happier. So with that I'm going to open it up now. I think we still have a few more questions. I'm sorry, a few more minutes that we can open it up for questions. Great. Thanks. Yes. One thing I think that someone wants to know is about multitasking. I think in line with some of the other things you talked about when folks come into a meeting, that's a regularly scheduled meeting, and the leader of the meeting is multitasking like flacking, Skyping, emailing during the meeting. How do you get people to stop that? How do you model the right way? Or how do you encourage your boss to do that? Okay, that's a hard one because it's so important. Leadership is everything, and leadership's behavior can be contagious. Just like with other areas of self-care and well-being, like if your leader is eating chocolate donuts at a meeting, and you wanted to eat healthy food, and everyone is eating chocolate donuts, you are eating chocolate donuts. So it may be a private sideline conversation, maybe to start it, and to talk about the myth of multitasking. When your attention is distracted like that, when you're jumping back and forth between a meeting and then checking your email, what that's doing, it's using up brain reserves, and it's using up attentional reserves. So you're actually not being that effective when you're doing it, and there are studies that back this up. So maybe having a conversation about that, you can also talk, depending on your relationship with your boss, and there's different ways to kind of up manage and side manage, to kind of talk about how it's important for people to give full attention. The work is really important, and it can be difficult sometimes to be effective, if not everybody's giving attention. Great, thank you. When you are the leader, you're trying to encourage your staff. It's a little bit easier because you can actually just do call-outs. I've seen work groups come and say, okay, we're going to do this. And they say at the beginning of the meeting, we're going to give our full attention. And it works for a couple of weeks, and all of a sudden they sort of fall back into the habit, and so it's being vigilant. And I'm on a board, and I'm in the chairperson, and we use technology on the board, but the board chair is always saying, give us your full attention, and she can tell them when we're checking our email, and she won't actually call us on it. Not the specific person, but she'll say, hey folks, I want to make sure that everyone's paying attention and you're not off doing email. Anyway. Sorry, I was talking on mute. Yes, thanks. If anybody else has questions, we do encourage you to chat them in because we only have about two more minutes, but I did want to start wrapping up, but if you have questions, please chat them in and we will address them. Let us know one thing that you're walking away with. One tip, one thing you learned, one thing you might share as a result of attending this webinar. So go ahead and chat that in. I'm also going to remind you that you will receive a survey when you X out of this event. When you close this event there will be a pop-up. So please, please, please do complete the survey so that TechSoup can continue to provide webinars that are relevant to you in your nonprofit or library. We do have a few other upcoming events. On the 31st it's a library event for libraries as innovation hubs, community-driven design. Then on June 1st we are going to have a special guest from Tech Impact about IT staffing. Who are you going to call? And it talks about when it is appropriate to have a professional IT staff, and when you might want to have someone that is off-site or a consultant. And on June 8th we are going to have a tour of our TechSoup site so that you can learn more about the many products that are available to eligible nonprofits and libraries, especially because for many folks it is the end of the fiscal year. So we want to make sure that you have the opportunity to take advantage of our special products, whether they are donated or discounted. I do want to thank Beth for her incredible knowledge, experience, and really making this webinar engaging. I could tell by everyone's chat and by everyone's state on task, we didn't have drop-offs. People were actually engaging with the content and that makes me so happy. So Beth you were modeling appropriate behavior and folks were excited about it, so that's great. And I also want to thank all of the attendees. We know your time is valuable and as we are just learning how we are always multitasking we do value your undivided attention. And for participating today, chatting in the chat box, taking the polls, we really appreciate it. And we appreciate everything you do out there in nonprofit and library land. Also a huge thank you to ReadyTalk. ReadyTalk is our webinar sponsor. So thanks everyone. And we hope you have a great holiday weekend. And hope to see you next week for another webinar. Beth again, thank you so much for your information and sharing that content. Have a great day everyone. This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.