Productivity Vs. Wellbeing: The Surprising Truth on Making Them Coexist, With Jeanette Bronee

Productivity Gladiator

Can we be productive at work without ruining our own wellbeing? Jeanette Bronée shares insights gained while recovering from burnout and losing both parents. We discuss tangible ways individuals and leaders can shift perspectives to promote sustainable productivity grounded in humanity and wellbeing.

See the full details and links on the episode's page.

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Links to References In This Episode

Nail in the forehead video.

Study from Finland on children, 15 minute break each hour for learning.

Microsoft’s study on why you need breaks between meetings.

Episode Digest

Achieving Balance: Productivity and Wellbeing in Harmony

The perpetual balancing act between workplace demands and personal wellbeing frequently fuels feelings of stress and inadequacy in the modern economy. We aim to seek success in our careers, often convinced we must sacrifice self-care along the way. It leaves professionals endlessly asking—can productivity and wellbeing peacefully coexist?

Fresh perspectives, such as from Jeanette Bronee, reveal achievable ways individuals and organizations can shift limiting attitudes about performance at the expense of health. They highlight small but mighty everyday habits that transform not only individual resilience, but ripple out to impact workplace cultures as a whole.

Reframing Wellness as a Lifelong Practice

An emerging view proposes letting go of thinking about wellness and self-care as a fixed goal, like pounds to shed or boxes to check off a list. Rather, it suggests embracing the ongoing daily relationship with caring for ourselves and listening in closely, without judgment, to what we need in each moment. Contentment comes from accepting our ever-changing state of balance, not upholding perfectionist expectations.

The Restorative Power of Mini-Breaks

Even small, 60-90 second pauses in the frenzied workday to simply breathe, move, or reset, prove powerful. These moments of micro-recovery improve mental clarity, energy renewal and sharper focus to tackle tasks at hand. Skipping our body’s cries for regular respite often backfires by depleting cognitive reserves and performance over time. Think of it, even boxers in the ring get breaks between rounds. Why shouldn’t you between activities?

Cultivating Emotional Wellbeing Accelerates Results

Physical health certainly impacts daily effectiveness, but science shows our emotional states wield equal influence. Feeling valued, seen, and heard has profound effects on motivation, engagement and work fulfillment. Those leading teams see substantially higher performance and retention by encouraging idea exchange and taking time to actively process responses. Fostering emotional health requires enhanced presence and listening—not necessarily extra minutes in the day.

Solutions Emerge by Reframing

Refocusing how we frame problems makes all the difference. When facing roadblocks, ask “What do we need to move forward?” rather than “Why isn’t this working?”. Leading with what IS possible sparks collaborative problem-solving, whereas dwelling on deficiencies fuels frustration. This outward and forward-looking orientation cultivates optimism and belief in our collective ability to handle uncertainties on the horizon.

Scheduling Intentional Transition Time

Back-to-back meetings often zap productivity despite tight scheduling. Agendas benefit from built-in buffers between sessions, allowing participants to solidify takeaways, recharge focus and emotionally transition between topics. Rather than defaulting to 30 or 60 minute blocks, strategically calendar 25 or 50 minute meetings, and hold to those time slots. Guarding 5-10 minutes between commitments grants much needed mental space. If you’re leading the meeting, you can also give everyone 1 minute at the beginning of your meeting, to afford them that time to process. Try taking a moment of silence in your next meeting, see how it works?

Leaders Set the Stage for Cultural Transformation

Individuals certainly own responsibility for self-care habits that enhance resilience. However, organizations seeking lasting change must evolve. Leadership carries responsibility for sowing seeds that gradually transform company culture and assumptions. Simple but consistent practices like starting meetings with one minute of quiet centering or group reflection demonstrates that employee health and humanity matter, not just performance.

In reality, the two aims need not compete—sustainable productivity requires sound wellbeing. By raising awareness and implementing small but consistent changes, both individuals and organizations make progress towards resilient cultures where people energize their best work without depleting inner reserves. What shifts might you experiment with to bring your physical, emotional and cognitive wellbeing into greater harmony this year?

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Key Quotes

"We do need to pause more. We need to be able to calm our nervous system down or we basically can't think straight. Um, some people will argue, well, I'm better at it than others. Yes, we all different at it. But if we don't pause throughout the day, if we don't do the, even the basics of water, food, and a couple of pauses and rest here and there, if we don't even do that, there's a good chance that cortisol just keeps rising and rising and rising and rising and rising all throughout the day."

“instead of running around taking care of me, could you come over here and sit down and just talk to me? I wanna know that you care about me. I don't need you to care for me.”

“It may be that they also feeling that they were dismissed in the previous meeting, and then they show up in this meeting and they're like, want to show that they know more because they are not feeling heard and seen.”

Today’s Guest

Jeanette Bronée
Speaker, Culture Strategist, &
Author of “The Self-Care Mindset”

Jeanette is rethinking self-care in the workplace as the foundation for peak performance, engagement, and a culture where people belong and work better together.

As an internationally recognized self-care mindset expert, she has spoken at the United Nations, given keynotes across the US, and spoken to audiences on five continents. She shares the tools to reclaim agency and cultivate the human connection that helps us communicate and collaborate with curiosity and care so that we can navigate challenges, innovate, and grow stronger together in our constantly changing reality.

She gives us the C.A.R.E. driven framework so we can change our relationship with self-care at work in order to be busy and healthy at the same time, cultivating a culture where people create impact and sustainable success together. Her clients include IBM, BlackRock Lockheed Martin, Kaiser Permanente, Genentech, Microsoft, Facebook, ebay, Siemens, and more.

Her new book, “The Self Care Mindset, Rethinking How We Change and Grow, Harness Well Being and Reclaim Work Life Quality” is a book of tools to harness our human advantage to grow through adversity.

Website: jeanettebronee.com

Book: The Selfcare Mindset

Podcast: Pause On This

Blog: jeanettebronee.com/blog

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/jeanettebronee

Instagram: instagram.com/jeanettebronee

YouTube: youtube.com/@JeanetteBronee-PathforLife

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About The Creator/Host: I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. As a kid I took time for granted, but now as an adult, time is the most precious thing that I have. After spending a career hands-on in the trenches as a senior project manager, I now help others to level-up through my Productivity Gladiator training. These Gladiators wield email management superpowers, a laser-guided ability to focus, samurai-grade prioritization skills, a sniper-precise task tracking approach, Jedi time management skills, and a secret sauce for maximizing their personal life balance. If what you’ve seen here intrigues you, reach out, let’s chat! Time is the currency of your life, spend it wisely.