Work Besties Who Podcast

Pause Before You Burn Out: Stay on Track Without Hustling Harder

• Work Besties Who Podcast • Season 2 • Episode 81

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Have you ever looked up from your laptop and thought, how is it already December? Or finally sat down for a night off… and your brain is still sprinting?

Today, we’re saying something mildly offensive to hustle culture: if you never pause, it’s not just your energy that suffers — it’s your judgment, your relationships, and your career.

In this episode, Jess & Claude break down the difference between a break (physical step-away) and a pause (a mental pattern-interrupt), then share our Work Bestie framework: the 4 P’s of Pause:

  • People: who energizes you vs. drains you
  • Pace: how fast you’re living and where you need space to think
  • Patterns: what keeps repeating (overcommitting, last-minute scrambling, self-doubt)
  • Pulse: what your body is telling you (sleep, stress, headaches, gut, fatigue)

Plus, we share micro-pauses you can actually do in real life: transition pauses between meetings, a 10-minute screen-free reset, a walk-and-talk with your work bestie, and a simple Friday reflection.

Take a breath, pick one “P,” and start small. Your pause isn’t a problem — it’s your power. 💎

Key Takeaways

  • Why working more hours can create less output
  • Break vs. pause (and why pause is the productivity game-changer)
  • The 4 P’s of Pause: People, Pace, Patterns, Pulse
  • Micro-pauses: transition resets, screen-free time, walk-and-talk, weekly reflection
  • A simple challenge: pick one P and check in with your work bestie

Work Bestie Challenge:

This week, choose one P (People, Pace, Patterns, or Pulse) and do a 5–10 minute check-in with yourself (or your work bestie).
Then tell us: Which P do you need most right now?

Links / Resources Mentioned 

  • Deep Work — Cal Newport
  • Atomic Habits — James Clear
  • EP 79: Your Phone Is Not Your Work Bestie: How to Set Screen Boundaries Without Burning Down Your Career
  • EP 75 Why You’re Still Burned Out (Even After a Weekend Off)
  • EP 52 Power of Breaks
  • EP 38 Self Love & Resilience: How to Stop Doubting Yourself and Own Your Confidence

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Work Besties! Theme Song Written by Ralph Lentini @therallyband

Claude F:

Have you ever looked up from your laptop and thought, wait, how is it already March or June? Actually December? Or you finally get a night off, sit on the couch, and your brand is still spreading through your to-do list with what happened during the day.

Jess K:

Today we're saying something mildly offensive to the hustle culture. If you never pause, it's not just your energy that suffers, it's your judgment, your relationships, and your careers.

Claude F:

We're talking about the power of pause, how to stop running on fumes without quitting your job or moving to a cabin.

Jess K:

If your blowing down makes you nervous, this episode is absolutely for you.

Claude F:

Hi, I'm Cloud, and I'm Jess. We are corporate employees by day, entrepreneurs by night, and work besties for life.

Jess K:

Join us as we explore how work besties lift each other up, laugh through the chaos, and thrive together in every industry. Work besties! Hey Work Besties, welcome back. Today we're here to talk about the power of pause. And what we mean by this is that we've all been in some environments where that person will send you emails at crazy hours of the night. Like 3 a.m. Those persons believe they're sending them because they feel committed. They feel like they have to get the work done. And what we're here to say is we've gotten a lot of feedback from our work dusty community about burnout. And these are some of the things that cause that. So we thought we'd end the year by helping provide some tactics to prevent burnout by taking a pause now.

Claude F:

And trying to go outside as well. Because sometimes we can put depending on the moment of the year, we might be in one of those people.

Jess K:

So for this episode, we really do want to talk about how do we avoid the crash, right? How do we ensure that those things that we do cause the long-term impacts are prevented earlier?

Claude F:

And if stopping for 10 minutes feels scary, then another 60-minute meeting, well, that's a red flag. And I know we've been there. And at the end of the day, you're not lazy. You're just very well trained to ignore your own limits or making an excuse for yourself that you need to do it.

Jess K:

So we all know I love stats, although Cloud has been probably the provider of more stats in this year's episodes than me, which is fantastic. I'm rubbing up on you. Uh it's a new one. We actually haven't talked about this one. This particular one is by a Stanford economist, John Pencaval, who really was the leader in looking at the employees' workloads. He did a whole study around the number of hours you work in a week and how that impacts in your productivity. So not truly a shock, but what he was finding is that more and more people were pushing past that 40-hour week. In fact, on average, he was finding people were doing the 50 to 50 hours a week. And he started to notice once you got past that 50 hours, that your productivity started to really curve down. And beyond that, he was noticing people were working up to 70 hours a week, thinking that that was gonna get so much more done than that 55 hours. And the curve goes down so quickly that he found the hours between 55 and 70 provided absolutely no additional work, and it caused more fatigue, and stress.

Claude F:

Well, that that must be so after 50, your brain is like saying stop. But what I think that's where it's hard also is that when you're in that you don't you can't stop. And that's where it's very hard to stop and to step back because, like, first of all, you've been doing that for so long. Your coworker are doing, so you don't want to be the one that doesn't work as much, even though it's not well.

Jess K:

I think what this is saying that this there is hard biological facts to state that it doesn't work for you. Your brain is not really going to give you what you need by pushing forward with it. So you do need to reward your brain. So, in essence, what it's saying is like all these tactics we're about to talk about are going to be super important, and you should think about incorporating one to maybe all of them, because the more you do the rest, the more productive you will be in those 50 hours. So it's all about productivity versus hours. That's what you need to think about.

Claude F:

And and also like trying first, and then you'll see a difference.

Jess K:

Right.

Claude F:

You know, especially we are at the end of the year, we're all tired. I'm exhausted.

Jess K:

All right, that so today we'll learn about ways we can incorporate other pauses into our um lifestyle. Before we move forward, you will remember that we had an episode called The Power of Breaks. We do want to make it crystal clear that this version, what we're talking about today, is pause, which is really more about your brain, your mind, and how we can impact and help with your productivity. So it's a little different because the power of break was really more about you physically. Stepping out. Yes, exactly. It was it was physically stepping away from a task or an event.

Claude F:

For example, to take a coffee or a walk or stretching. Exactly. So explain again, pause.

Jess K:

So pause would be more about the breaking of a pattern. Why am I doing this? Why, when I go on to post for our TikTok, do I just automatically start scrolling and watching everybody? How do I break that so that I can do other things that are more productive? So it's a little bit more about reflecting.

Claude F:

One is more reflecting. Correct. One is like brain rest, the other one is reflecting more on do I really need to do that?

Jess K:

Yes. So it'd be like the the daily versus the longer term is really what you're trying to do. The power of the break was about your physical energy level or who and what you're feeling in that day, right? It was a little bit more about like mood adjusting and like like making sure you weren't so tense. While the power of pause is more about how do I create a new approach or direction. Okay. Yeah. For anyone who has ever read Deep Work by Cal Newton, this is very similar to that. Um, or Atomic Habits. It is more around taking little steps to build to a bigger opportunity and direction. So one of the things we came up with is our own little work bestie spin. We're calling it the work bestie four Ps. And if you remember from a lot of our other episodes, we have a lot of like four I's four I's for this, for that. So we came up with the four P's of pause. So what is it? It's people, pace, patterns, and pulse. Correct. So the element around this is you don't need a whole silent retreat to do this. Our direction and why we're giving you these four Ps is so that you can take maybe five, 10 minutes a day and start incorporating them. And that will longer term build to a pattern. Even though the retreat sounds good. I don't know that I could do a silent retreat. Oh no, it's silent. Not silent, but maybe uh a nice like spa retreat. All right, I'm gonna bring us back to the the four Ps of pause and kick us off with number one. People. So this is all around who's around you, of the people you engage with, who's energizing you, who's draining you. Now we understand we're in worker environments and there might be individuals who are draining you that you really can't get away from. But the point of this is to pause and recognize that. And what you'll start to see is once you recognize those people that are causing the draining, you'll start to see the patterns why. And then likewise on the off-flip side, you can see who are the people that are energizing you. Maybe write those people down. So anytime you do have interaction with somebody that's going to drain you, you find a way to go back to those people that will energize you. And over time, what you'll notice is you will start to be energized by everybody because it really helps you to see the things that are causing your energy levels.

Claude F:

So if every check-in leaves you exhausted, that's really not teamwork, right? That's a data point. And also, I think if someone is like draining you, is really how to change the pattern. Right, right. And if it you cannot change it, then you know, don't engage.

Jess K:

Well, yes. I think the other thing I was suggesting was in a work environment, you have to, right? If it's somebody who drains you who's on your team, what I'm suggesting is then find other people around you who do energize you and help to balance that. Because you can't avoid those people and you shouldn't. You shouldn't be short with them. You still have to engage and act in appropriate professional ways. Yes. There's ways for you to do your own check and balances with recognizing what those draining elements are.

Claude F:

And then the pace, right? How fast are you living? A lot of time. There are like back-to-back meetings, there's like decision fatigue, or even you don't have time to really think. It's always on the go, on the go, on the go, and you don't have this the time to do any strategic work because you don't have the time. You don't have time to think. How do you do it? How do you, you know, change the pace, that pace without burning yourself? Do you have any ideas? No.

Jess K:

So I obviously there's two there's two paces that cause uh I do have an idea.

Claude F:

From time to time, blocking your calendar and just saying if you have a boss saying, look, I need to do that, I need to think, I need to, I have a lot of things on my plate. I don't have time because of all the meetings. I'm actually not going to be available for one day or two days. Of course, I'm available if it's something urgent. I did that also for my team. If you need me, I'm here for you, but not going to any meetings. And I was able to do so many things and catch up and not having to burn the midnight oil because then working. That's awesome.

Jess K:

Do you ever think about doing it continuously? Like I know on my calendar I block out certain chunks on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, purposely knowing. I have my Friday.

Claude F:

I have my Friday, 2 p.m. No, I don't have the others. I only have on Friday, and it's not enough. So I have to really find a way to incorporate more time. So this is a good one for you to focus on.

Jess K:

Exactly. Alright, so pausing as we called pacing, sorry, as we commented on, is there's things like blocking times on your calendar for sure. I think there's also taking stock in certain meetings that are going on. And if you've got a big team, not a lot of us do anymore, but if you do have a big team, think about prioritizing or delegating certain people to go to those meetings, and then in your team meeting, everybody shares back. On my team, we have a lot of tools and systems that we all use. Instead of us all being the lead or master, I have assigned one to each person so that they lead it and they are the ones who come back. So there's definitely other things that you can do to help take the pace of your day. And it's also, yeah, you just need to take a step back and like think about it from a strategic point, which is sometimes hard to find time.

Claude F:

And I I like also what you said because at the end is also trusting your team. Because they'll now their meetings are on go because I know the team is taking care of it. Right, right.

Jess K:

So it's and if anything is just elevated, they'll come back. Yeah.

Claude F:

Exactly. That's a good one.

Jess K:

Yeah. All right. So the third of our P's is patterns. This relates to what we were just talking about and the fact that we want you to think about what keeps repeating in your day-to-day, your life over time. I've owned up to how I overcommit. We find times on my team where we are doing a lot of last-minute scrambling and saying yes to things that we probably should have said no to. So, what we've started to do on my team, and my hope is that in 2026 this becomes a bigger practice of ours, is sitting there and doing that Monday morning quarterback of what did we do? What could have we done differently last week? You do that? Yeah. Oh, that's cool. And I think that and I sit there and tell my team, I apologize, I we I overcommitted us. This is where I think you could have come in and told me we needed blah blah blah. So I think it gives us all the comfort to understand it's okay to make mistakes, it's okay if we couldn't get to anything. But how do we stop that from being a pattern? Yeah. Yeah. Um, and how do we make sure that there's comfort level around that like that?

Claude F:

And also there's another pattern that we spoke about with Miss Franco Francoise, which is tied to imposter syndrome and the self-doubt doubt that we all know in the deal who is the one that has more of the imposter. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you don't need to to work so hard to really make a point. True.

Jess K:

Right. And and in your case, there are times where you feel you don't feel as confident in it, but you already do know it, and you you need to help remind yourself that you do know more than you are giving yourself credit for. Yeah, totally. I love that. That's those are definitely some patterns that everybody can be thinking about and breaking for sure. Because yeah, you you're smarter and stronger than you know. What's number four, my friend?

Claude F:

The number four is put. So what is your body saying? Sleep, headaches, gut issues, pattern, right? A whole uh meeting with uh Kate, the guy's doctor. Like right now, for me, I'm tired. I need to sleep. I don't sleep. What is my body saying? My body's saying you need a pause. Right. Especially at the end of the year, listen to your body and find a way to help it. Yeah.

Jess K:

I think that's something we all can be thinking about. Not just at the end of the year, but in the beginning of the year too. As you think about making sure you schedule all your physical exams, your routine exams, all those things. While it seems not important, it is so critical because if something goes wrong, you don't want it to be at a bigger place. So thinking about all those P's, Claude, we talked about people, pace, patterns, and pulse. Any one of them stand out to you as the one you feel you need to take thinking about the most when we go into 2026?

Claude F:

I think it's going to be the pace. And maybe the pattern, hold on, it was peace, people, purse and purse. I think it's going to be purse and pace. Yeah. Yeah. I need to listen to my body and slowing down or finding a way to be maybe more effective. It's funny because minor people and patterns.

Jess K:

Yin and yang, people, yin and yang. I need to stop letting people affect me. And then obviously, I need to be better about my intentions with my patterns. I start them and then so I need to be better about consistent with them. So I'm so low patterns. For sure.

Claude F:

And let us know also for you. What would it be? You and your work bestie.

Jess K:

You want to move on to our next one? Yeah.

Claude F:

So, how do we do some uh tiny pauses for really busy brains? Cool pauses for people that we all think we don't have any time. So, for example, uh, you have one, right?

Jess K:

Yes, mine that I was thinking of is something that I do pretty consistently. My transition pauses when I'm going from one event or one thing to another, whether that's one meeting to another meeting, or to go pick up my daughter, or to go to an exercise class. Those Gertie to 60 seconds, or let's be honest, we're commuting, so it could be a little bit longer. I let myself be in a space. It's not truly meditative, it's really more just thinking about how do I want to show up in the next place I'm going, and what did I learn from what I had just ended.

Claude F:

So if you go, you just drop your daughter and then you're commuting to work. Or you're not on your phone.

Jess K:

No, I stopped that. Wow. I text to say your center's been dropped off, and then after that, I just put it in my pocket and I just sit there and think. Usually, about what do I have? What's the first meetings of the day? Wow. What do I still have to to get done that I didn't do for those meetings for the day? Or something else that's going on.

Claude F:

That's pretty cool. Thank you. I'm uh I'm on my phone.

Jess K:

That doesn't shock me because as soon as we hit end on this, your phone's gonna come out. I know you.

Claude F:

I know. I'm on my phone. However, sometimes I do that I like also, which obviously I cannot be on my phone. I go from work to the subway, whatever I'm on my phone. But then or I walk and I'll be on the phone, but talking to someone or to one of my friends, which is nice because it's like my space, or be on the bicycle, and that also helps.

Jess K:

That helps you too. Yep, yeah. One of the ideas that you were thinking of to work, not to be on my phone as much.

Claude F:

Yes, yeah, well, yeah. Yes, so screen free, which I have to admit for me is going to be an issue. We did the episode, your phone is not your your work bestie. Yeah, and one of the things was to be like a whole day. Let's start slow and just do 10 minutes, and I think it's really good. Yeah, so that could be an example, just 10 minutes. And I'm trying to do also because I kind of have insomnia lately. And of course, what do I do? I watch a movie, I do like on my phone, which is not good. Pick up a book. I know, so I've been better. Okay, so I'm like, no, I'm not going to do it, not I'm not going to do it. And you know, it takes quite a bit of time, but it's starting.

Jess K:

So 10 minutes a day. 10 minutes a day, I think it's a good thing.

Claude F:

Um do you think you could do that the 10 minutes in the morning or on your commute home? Maybe. I mean, I have to do something, I don't want to think too much. So what? There's a lot in there.

Jess K:

The point of that though is to get it out so that you can when you go home scary.

Claude F:

Go to sleep and you don't have to worry about it. No, but I would read a book. So that's what I have to do. It's read a book and stop it. And then also when I watch a movie or whatever, sometimes I'm still on my phone, which pissed my husband off, which I understand that. So it's not to do that, like being in the moment, I think is important. One thing that I used to, but I haven't done that anymore, was I was waking up and I was looking at my work email and answering. No, and when you're half asleep and you're answering, it's never a good idea. And I stopped doing that, and I'm so much happier and more not as stressed.

Jess K:

Yeah, yeah. Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. I do, I do think that that is the thing that sets the most people off when you first wake up in the morning. Exactly. All right, we did have another one. We would not be a it would be a work bestie podcast if we didn't bring this one up. Yeah. But we do think that, and I think we actually did bring this up also in the power of. Breaks because it it works in both ways. We do think one that can help you with the power of pause is the walk and talk with the bestie. So it kind of covers both the break and the pause. And what we mean by this is just finding that five, ten minutes in the day. It actually doesn't even need to be in real life. You could call each other.

Claude F:

Like you did that la when it was last night. Yes, we did we did it. Even though you're not a phone person. I know. You answered, you answered me back. I did. I called you back. You called me back? Not only did that talk on the phone, I called she called me back, people. It couldn't be. I'm the work bestie.

Jess K:

Gonna have like a laundry list of angry people writing to me after that. Yes, she did. She called me. What we believe that this would help to do is um, and we've heard this through some of our other guests, some of our other work besties talked about. Their favorite part of their day was finding that five, 10 minutes for them to just go walk outside. Even when it was really cold, they would do it. Um, and some of the things that were we started last night, maybe we'll continue doing this. Um just kind of talking about how we were, but then it kind of went into ideations of what was going on from us from a personal, like from a work personal versus the work bestie side of the the business. It was the bestie.

Claude F:

It went from work bestie to bestie.

Jess K:

Yeah. So I think there is important. There's a way, it's almost like uh the non-status status meeting.

Claude F:

Yeah, where it's just conversation. And and also I think that's when you say, you know, the the the difference with the post and the break. Sometimes it is going to have it was a break, but then a post, because sometimes you actually can speak to your work bestie, and I say, Oh, I've I was working so much or whatever. And you can have the vanting, and you can even your work bestie, if you're there to reach you want to understand or whatever, you know, they can give you some perspective. Totally, totally. And that's important. What you're saying is free therapy. Yeah.

Jess K:

The free therapy with with free brainstorming. That's all. What more would you ask? Next time you see. I guess for free dinner. I was gonna say for you to pay me. I can't pay you in drinks. I will gladly take that. All right, and then we did have one more. This is something that um I do personally. I will be honest, I started off the year really well and kind of have fallen off. My intentions for 2026 are to bring these back. I called it my Friday five-minute pause. And right before I logged off for the day, whenever that was, I would sit there and think about, similar to the conversation I have with my team, what's worked this week, what didn't, what could I have maybe been a little bit more planned on, what drained me? Um, what do I know is coming up for the next week that I can learn from what I did this past week that I could do differently?

Claude F:

Yeah. Actually, I I kind of do a bit that, but yeah, the it's not on Friday, is I have my to-do list and every morning, and someone actually had told me about that, and that's what I do. Like every morning, I'll go over my to-do list and sometimes redo it and what is the priority. So it's kind of helping me to be more organized because I tend not to be very organized, but to be more organized during the day and knowing what is important to do. That's awesome. So it's a bit my reflection.

Jess K:

I love that, and you know what that is? That totally leads back to that book that I read every year, usually at the end of the year, which is The Atomic Habits by James Clear, where it's all about starting small, starting and incorporating it into an existing routine because if it's something that you're already doing as a routine, it's more likely that you will continue to do it. And it's not huge things. You start one little thing, and once you feel after a week or two that you've mastered that, you add another little thing, and then you start to add another little thing. So you're doing a list of what you have to do? I do a list, I'll be honest though. Like I usually don't write the whole list of everything I want to change, but a couple things, and then it kind of ebbs and flows as as life goes on, right? Like prioritization of different things occur, and then I sit there and think, okay, I've already mastered this new one. What next can I add? Yeah. Wow. Like the no the no phone in the morning, that was one of them that I started. It took a while. Once I mastered that, then it was then thinking about something like adding something else. In the evening to another. Yeah, my affirmations. I do my affirmations, those types of things.

Claude F:

So what are you going to try to do then in 2026?

Jess K:

Okay, so I mean in 2026, I think the patterns are my bigger focus, right? So there are definitely some things that I do are personal that I don't want to bring up right now, but that I will be focusing on, but I have to start small with those too. Some of them are a little bit more on the personal side than professional, but it's how do I start small with those and consistently incorporate them into my life? Yeah. And then obviously from the work bestie side, I do have things that I'm want to do differently, right? So we we're now on LinkedIn, everybody. One more social test before you operate. I do want to get into a better cadence of elevating some of our things to be more on the business side. Yeah. How do we how do we leverage some of these things? When we started this, it was to talk to the people, and we love our work bestie community, but now how do we bring this broader? How do we make sure that organizations are thinking similar to us and really supporting the work bestie environment? Those are some of the things I'm thinking of. What about you, anything?

Claude F:

Um I think like I'll do the phone thing, be more intentional. And then also I told you on the like the work bestie also, be more I did do. It's been one year, no smoking. Oh yeah, that's a huge one. So that was 2025. So hopefully it's going to stay that way. So 2026 or so. I'm not going to say I mastered it, but keeping it that way.

Jess K:

And that's a great example that you did with the habit stacking. It was small. I'm only gonna do it for a week. I'm only gonna do it for two weeks. And then you were like, I'm gonna start eating healthier once you felt like you were we both kind of fell off holidays though, right? Like you kind of both fell off that. So we'll get back to it.

Claude F:

But yeah, no, but that exactly that's it's all psychological, right? If you go s right away, you're not going to do to start walking the you know, Mont Everest. First, you're going to do, you know, a small little hill.

Jess K:

Agreed.

unknown:

Yeah.

Jess K:

It's like you don't start at a marathon, you start at a 5K and then a 10K, and then a 15K. All right, so just to wrap this up, um, there's a lot of things that you guys can focus on when we think about the power of pause. Um, but we do believe that there's really an importance uh for thinking about it and to reflect, adjust, and really take that time because it's so important. You are only one person, you only have one life. And the amount of work um and stresses that we all have are just gonna continue. So, how do we help by preventing burnout? It's really through the power of pause.

Claude F:

Yeah. And really, we have to learn that, especially at the end of the year where we are all exhausted. And how can we make it better in 2026? Understanding all the stats. Like I love that stat that between 55 and 70 hours you're done.

Jess K:

1555 is the sweet spot. Once you get past that, you just let know your limits and think about how to be more productive with the time you have. So if there's one thing that we hope you take away from today, it's that pausing is isn't proof that you're falling behind at all. It's really how you choose what's actually worth running towards.

Claude F:

And you know, your work doesn't need a hero that never stops. It is important to stop and also maybe to show your team that it's important and then they can do the same thing.

Jess K:

Or even your work bestie.

Claude F:

Or your work.

Jess K:

So you all could just think about picking one of our four pause peas. People, pattern, pace, pace, pulse. Make one of those a check-in with you and your work bestie. It could be something as simple as that 10-minute screen free morning or that Friday five-minute reflection. Think about how to show up differently and make that small habit that you can persistently change.

Claude F:

Less noise and more presents at the end of the day. And remember, your pause is not a problem, but it's your power. So if this episode gives you a little excel, send it to your work bestie who deserved one or two. And we'll see you next time. Bye!

Jess K:

Remember, whether you're swapping snacks in the break room, rescuing each other from endless meetings, or just sending that perfectly timed meme. Having a work bestie is like having your own personal hype squad.

Claude F:

So keep lifting each other up, laughing through the chaos, and of course, thriving. Until next time, stay positive, stay productive, and don't forget to keep supporting each other.

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Claude F

Co-host
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Jess K

Co-host