When Your Work Culture Isn't A Good Fit

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This one got a bit more personal than I intended when I went in, but here we go! Hope it’s helpful if you’re in this spot!

And heads up: Enrollment for my 10-week program closes on March 18, 2026 & won’t open again until September. Hope to see you in there!

Full transcript:

Kelly Nolan: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bright Method Podcast, where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up the bright method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all personally and professionally. Let’s get you falling asleep, proud of what you got done today, and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in.

Hey. Hey. All right. Today’s episode might be a little bit meandering. We might cover some wide ranging stuff here. I don’t know how well organized it’s gonna be, but I think it’s worth talking about and just getting the conversation going around, and that is around when you realize or maybe could try to realize, like have your eyes open to the idea of that your work environment.

Is not the right fit. [00:01:00] Now, this is a, I would say, relatively rare outcome when I work with clients, but one that does come up and one that I have experienced. And so I wanna share that because I think that we as women sometimes, well, I should say often blame ourselves for things that aren’t working. More often than warranted do.

I think it’s great to have like accountability for ourselves and change what we can change and control what we can control, and as I said, make changes where we deem it necessary. Yes, I absolutely love that. In addition though, I think women can take blame and fault and try to change things that are outside of their control sometimes without even realizing it.

They think, you know, if I just work harder, if I just. Whatever, fill in the blank, then this would be fixed when what they’re trying to fix is beyond what they can control. [00:02:00] And as I’ll dig into, you know, that’s something that I had to realize for myself in a work environment. And then also I have seen other clients also kind of have their eyes open to it because in part.

This goes beyond the bright method in a lot of ways, but it also has, everything HA does relates to time. And I think when we get clarity in a new way about what is our capacity, what is our workload, what is realistic, what is doable, what is fair to ask of you, and then to see with much more clarity the delta between what is fair to ask of you and what is being asked of you.

Despite changes that we talk about making and we try and all this kind of stuff, when we try to explore all of that and change all of that, and still the deltas there we’re still being asked to do something that is not fair, and I mean fair in that it’s not doable, it’s not realistic, and yet the demand is still there.

You know, if you’ve listened to my [00:03:00] past episodes, it’s like take a car full of things and shove it into your carry-on suitcase. And you’re like, that’s just not, that’s not gonna happen. And it’s not fair to be asking me to do that. And no matter how hard I work, it’s not gonna happen. And those realizations, while never fun, are very freeing because then you have that clarity of, oh.

It’s not me, it’s the culture. It’s the boss, it’s the company. It can be a lot of different things that are causing that situation to happen, yet it’s not in your control. Working harder wouldn’t fix it, and that’s very freeing to be like, oh, this is a you problem, not a me problem. I’m gonna stop trying to solve the me in this and I’m gonna start finding a different solution to this.

That involves leaving. Now I know we are in a weird. Economic, among other things, time in our country. And so I’m not trying to live in denial of that or things like that. [00:04:00] And I also know that these types of changes, as I said, I, I hope that you don’t have to make these changes, but for the people that decide that they do, I know that there are financial privilege elements of this healthcare privileges.

In this determination, all of that. I’m not trying to live in denial of that. I also do wanna note that I do know of people who’ve been hired in very cool jobs right now. So I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not trying to live in denial of that, but I also know that it is possible, and so I don’t want you to stay stuck somewhere potentially for years when there are pretty cool jobs out there that are hiring.

So. You don’t have to leave right away, but starting to protect time for yourself to do job search, to interview with people, to have informational interviews with people, to learn more about their jobs, their work cultures, which we’re gonna talk about, all this kind of stuff. That’s something to [00:05:00] maybe start pursuing just to see what is out there.

Okay, so that’s a meandering introduction for a meandering episode, but let’s dig into it. So what I wanna talk about, I’m gonna talk a little bit about my history of experiencing this, like awareness around, oh, this work culture is not going to give me the life that I want, and I’m gonna leave it. I’m gonna talk about though that element, and then I’m gonna talk about a couple more things.

I do have some outline for this. To tease this into like more practical than just telling you about my history. So as you probably know at this point, I started my legal career in Boston. I worked at a big law firm there for about five years, and then we moved to California for my now husband’s residency.

I took the bar there again, and then I practiced there after passing the bar for about a year and a half at my first firm. Particularly that first year was when I was [00:06:00] feeling that overwhelm and all that kind of stuff, and started piecing together the Bright method. And long story short, during those five years there, I learned a lot about managing my workload, drawing boundaries, both from a workload perspective, but then also like once a week I’m gonna do this art class with a friend and I’m gonna leave at four 30 and I hold that boundary firmly.

I learned a lot about what types of partners I enjoyed working with and the types of partners I didn’t, did not mean they were bad people. They just had a different work style. Some of them wanted me to stay in their office for hours on end, which prevented me from doing the headstone work I needed to do.

Other partners would call it like four 30 and want a meeting right Then. I think one thing we lose sometimes is thinking. Someone has to be bad for us to not wanna work with them when really it’s more what’s their work style? Do they work how I like to work? Are they working ahead and having a [00:07:00] good organization around how they do their work?

So there aren’t as many scrambles unless they’re truly out of our control and we have to deal with it. Or is that just like a matter of course of how they operate? So I learned a lot about picking bosses, picking. Cultures of teams, which in law firms it’s almost like little fiefdoms under partners. And so like the culture can really vary by person you work with.

So picking the work cultures of teams, as I said, drawing boundaries, workload, when I worked, that kind of stuff. And that was all wonderful for the most part. Obviously there were fire drills that we couldn’t avoid and that kind of stuff, but on the whole baseline I learned how to. Manage all of that in a way that I made me really enjoy the practice of law in my life there.

I don’t know what it would’ve been like once I had kids, but my baseline there for the life I was living then was wonderful. And it gave me hope on how I would navigate that if I were to start a family [00:08:00] while we were there. But we moved, as I said, to California for my husband’s job and took the bar there again and practiced there.

And my second firm was very different. I just wanna reiterate really nice people. Very nice people, but almost all of the workload boundary setting I tried to set was really blown through. There are a lot of examples of, I would say, like moving goalposts and then just ignoring what I was saying. So, oh, when we hire more peop, when we move office spaces, when this construction’s done we’ll hire more people, the workload will get better.

It went on and on like that, just like moving goalposts of when life would get better. There was a very big acknowledgement that we were all overworked, but the goalposts of like the relief just kept being moved. I would also be up very late at night working on something and then get called in by the head of the department of the whole firm [00:09:00] to, uh, not, not just San Diego, like broader.

And be told, essentially, we need you to jump on this other matter. And I was like, I, I really can’t. My plate is completely full. I would love to help you, but I cannot. I’ve been up till three in the morning working on some stuff. It’s ongoing. I, I cannot jump in. And it was a little bit of, okay, but you need to, and so I remember working like Saturday and Sunday back to back 10 hour days.

And that was just, I mean, these are just examples that was not, it’s just. That grind of all of it. And candidly, my plan was to stay longer, but I got a call. You know, it’s like the things where you’re like, you’ll just be local counsel, and suddenly I’m taking all the depos in the case. And then I was on a trip doing that and writing a brief for something else.

And I got a call that was like, we need you to take 20 depos this summer. And I was like, I’m outta here. And what I want you to hear is I had the benefit in that [00:10:00] scenario of knowing. I know all the boundaries. I’m stating all of the ways I’m communicating this, all of the ways that I’m trying to hold firm on all of this works because I’ve been in another work environment where it works and it was respected and solutions were found, or work was denied to keep our workload reasonable.

Like to me, that is such a part of leadership is. You don’t just say yes to everything, even at a law firm where that means money. If you don’t have the bench deep enough to support it, that’s leadership versus that scarcity mindset of just saying yes to everything, even if you’re like running your team completely ragged.

And because I had that clarity, and don’t get me wrong, I tried. I stuck around, I tried many times to draw boundaries. ’cause I wanted to make sure that I was reading the situation right and giving opportunities to correct it and all that kind of stuff. But when I was really struggling, my frustration very clearly was at the [00:11:00] team, like the other people in the firm.

Again, not because they were bad people, but because I didn’t feel like they were managing the workload appropriately. And what I’m really grateful for is that I had had the experience before, as I said, to know that the things I was doing. Would’ve worked in an environment that was going to gimme that life.

And the fact that they weren’t working in this one was not a reflection on me, but on the work culture. Because again, setting aside that they were not, they were not bad. People set aside their personalities for whatever the reason was. They were not giving me the life I wanted for myself. And I wanna tease this out.

Just to be clear that that is what resulted in me leaving law and kind of bumbling around for a year trying to figure out my business because I didn’t realize that time manage approach was interesting to other people. So I bumbled around for like a year and then I finally [00:12:00] landed on time management, but I left before I had like a lot of clarity and as I said, there’s financial privilege in that.

There’s healthcare privilege in that I could join my husband’s health insurance, all sorts of stuff, but I’m just sharing that. I was really prompted to leave by the clarity of this is a them problem, not a me problem. No matter how hard I work on me, this is not gonna gimme the life that I want. So I wanna tease out, first of all, there was clarity around workload and that it was a workload problem and not a me problem.

As you can guess, bright Method really helped me see that. It helped me not just know that it was time to go, but it helped me all along the way in laying boundaries, because very quickly I could see my capacity was outstripped by my work and I could flag time and time again. There’s too much work. I can’t take this on.

I need to extend deadlines, that kind of stuff throughout. So I had that clarity throughout that [00:13:00] experience that had I not had the bright method, I’m not sure I would’ve like, I’m not sure I would’ve even given. Myself, the opportunity to raise those flags throughout so that I could gain the clarity that it wasn’t a me issue, it was like a culture fit.

But I just wanted to flag that, that a lot of my clarity along the entire way was due to having the clarity of the bright method showing me that so clearly. So you get that. I don’t think I need to go into that in a lot of detail, but it is an important point. ’cause as we talk about. Culture and drawing boundaries.

For some people it’s hard to know when to do that because they don’t have the clarity of the capacity versus workload, and so I just wanna flag that for you, that if you’re like, but how would I even know when to flag some of these things? I completely get that. And that to me is where the bright method comes in and really helps me obviously, like that’s what helped me in Boston, try all those boundaries and they [00:14:00] worked and it helps.

Clients draw those boundaries in the same scenario where then when they raise the flag in a different good culture, work environment, bosses are like, I had no idea all this was on your plate. I didn’t know you were in this many meetings. I didn’t know all these priorities were on your plate. And then they help them fix those situations where.

The flip of that coin is you raise those things and the bosses are like, yeah, I know it’s really hard and it’ll get better here. Or I just need you to keep doing it, or whatever it is. That’s the flip response, and so I just wanna flag that for now. Turning to the work culture, I already kind of touched on this.

I don’t think that. That we should only leave bad people. I think that sometimes they’re wonderful people we work with who still aren’t giving us the work experience or even the broader life that we want, and that’s a very valid reason to leave someplace. You can do it with kindness. You can do it with some white lies to help you get out and keep that bridge intact, [00:15:00] but you also can leave.

So I just wanna say that the one thing that prompted this episode that I was thinking about when I was talking about all this with a friend. Also, I just feel so grateful that I had had a variety of work experiences before I had that one. And yes, I had my first one at k and l in Boston. That the juxtaposition between my experience there and then in San Diego later was so different, and that helped clarify a lot to me.

But I have also been working. Since I was 15, you know, I’ve worked at places like Jamba Juice. I’ve worked at Caribou Coffee. I’ve taught tennis with my tennis coach. In high school, I worked in the backend of like a catering company and helped prep food, which if you know, my history with food prep is hilarious.

I worked at the Aspen Institute in Colorado. I waited tables there. I’ve babysat since, I think always. I’m grateful that I’ve had a [00:16:00] variety of work experiences that obviously are not the same as a law firm experience, but there’s something so valuable in that, that I’m grateful to my parents that they nudged me to do that and that I, I’m grateful that I’ve had those experiences because even if they were completely different than a law firm in a lot of ways.

The understanding of what makes a boss a good boss, the understanding that some bosses really care about the people they work with and others don’t. Again, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. It’s just maybe their plates are full, maybe their brains are consumed by other things. But I’ve had bosses who wanted to understand my workload and help me with it, and others who are just like, just do it all.

You know, there are wide variety. Of bosses and what work cultures you can be in. And I think the knowledge of that really [00:17:00] helped me understand not just comparing my first law firm to my second, but having all of the experience with all these different work environments helped me understand this is just a culture mismatch versus a me thing.

Or like, this is just what work is, or this is just what this industry is. There is some truth to that. I’m not trying to dismiss, like certain industries do have certain cultures and you might, and one, fortunately, I think that something we don’t do in our culture is in our entire American culture, is talk about what real day-to-day life looks like in any given job.

So we can go and invest a lot of time and effort to get to a certain job and realize, oh, I don’t even like the day-to-day life of this, or the day-to-day stuff I get to do, or the hours or that kind of stuff. It’s fascinating to me that we don’t. Talk about that with kids or life like I don’t, it’s, I could go off on that and I won’t and now I’ve completely lost my train of thought ’cause I went [00:18:00] down it in my own head.

But I think what I was trying to say is I wanted to flag that for you. If you don’t have a lot of work experience and you’re really unhappy in your work culture, or you have had work experience, but you’ve been in your current job for like 10 plus years. To remind yourself in that scenario or to flag for you if you’ve never worked in other places, that work culture can vary a lot.

Boss experience can vary a lot, and I just wanna remind you of that, that if that’s, you don’t assume that other places would be the same and at the very least. Maybe start asking people for 20 minute Zoom chats, just to understand more about what their jobs are like, what their work culture’s like. How do they have conversations with managers around workload?

What are their expectations in the [00:19:00] evenings? Having those questions when you’re not asking for a job and can be genuinely curious and ask the real questions without feeling like you might be judged and not hired for something. I mean, it’s fascinating. It’s fascinating to have that opportunity. And so I just wanted to nudge, you know, if you’re listening and you’ve been feeling stuck, but also kind of assuming that that’s.

What the culture like anywhere might be or, and it might not be that clear in your head, but somewhere in your assumptions are that this is just what work is. Or if I just work harder. As I said, I just envision me at my second firm in California not having worked anywhere else and just kind of assuming that’s what law was, or assuming that that’s what working was.

And if that’s you, I just want, as I said. I’m not saying like leave and go find another job right now, but start exploring and talking to people and talking to friends about this [00:20:00] kind of stuff in a way that I don’t think we always do. Talk to friends about their work or dust off LinkedIn and go in and find people on there that have interesting jobs and see if they’d be open to talking to you about it.

I would share, you know, not just don’t do the pick your brain email, but you know, say I have like five questions I would love to ask you. I think it would take 20 minutes. I’m not, you know, looking for a job. I’m just trying to understand this field and what the realities are in it, and I would love to hear from you.

Like, not everybody will say yes, but I think a lot more people will if they know that you’re that organized and focused and specific and strategic on it. The other thing I wanna raise in this discussion. I mean, probably a few more things, but is I think for women who I tend to work with, who I relate to, ’cause of who I am to is the high achiever in us can struggle sometimes with feeling like it’s on us to fix a culture or a [00:21:00] place or a boss or a work environment and all that kind of stuff.

And. The hard part with a lot of this stuff is there’s always like a little bit of truth. There’s enough truth in it that we’re like, well, yeah, I mean, maybe I should, and again, what I love about the Bright Method is that it does give so much clarity so that if you could fix it, it becomes more clear how to fix it, or at least have conversations around how you would propose that you fix it.

How it’s received is, you know, I can’t predict that. What I will say is I do firmly believe that if you can fix it, the Bright Method is very valuable in getting specific, and I keep saying clarity, but just understanding the specifics of what would have to change to make it better, to have a shot of making it better.

And then you can ask for it and see what happens. And that’s great because I do like knowing even that second firm that I left, I know. I, I tried, you [00:22:00] know, and that part does feel good. So I, I do understand that of like, let me see if I can give this a shot. And I just wanna flag that I do believe the bright method is awesome there, but sometimes we can’t.

And I think that can be a weird pill to swallow that no matter how great you are at your job, at being a manager at all, the other skills that go into it. Sometimes we can’t, as a single individual, fix an entire corporate culture or even a department or team culture. And I also wanna say that even if you could, and that is a big if, really think through what that entails.

Do you want to spend your next two years, three years, four years, exerting the time and effort and energy into that? At the expense because your time and energy and all that is limited at the expense of the other parts of your life. And if there is a long-term play that makes sense, go [00:23:00] for it. I’m not saying that, but I do wanna just flag really understand the cost of what you might be doing, even if it were possible.

And I think that that’s just an important thing to think about. For me, at my second firm, I knew there was no way I was gonna fix the culture by staying. I. But I do also wanna throw out there that I also, we were trying to start a family. We, I didn’t want to be spending my energy on that. I wanted to be working, don’t get me wrong, I wanted to be excited about my career.

I love working. Like, I’m not saying that this is not like some coded thing for like, everyone should leave work and be like, stay at home moms. If you have kids or things like that, don’t get me. I truly love working. I love having a business. I think it’s. Terrific, and I’m very grateful that I still get to work right now, but it’s almost too binary, you know?

It’s like stay in this culture that’s not making you happy [00:24:00] or be a stay-at-home mom, which also might not make you happy or whatever it might be. There’s so much other opportunity out there, like I just want you to hear that it took me leaving law to understand there was like a hole. Industry of like online business space that I had no idea existed.

I think a lot more people are aware of that whole industry now, but there are other industries that you might not even know about that would light you up. And so I just think that it’s worth nudging that you can still be a high achiever. You can still go after other things. It just doesn’t have to be that thing.

And I think that’s a really important thing to understand. The last thing here, it’s a little bit of blend of like. When you’re a high achiever, when you care what people think, which I get when we get a little wrapped up, like our whole world is spent with the people we work with. So, or not whole world, but no, so much of our wake hours are spent with the people we work with.

And so I think sometimes we worry about what they’ll think like can, will they think, [00:25:00] I can’t hack it, they think I can’t cut it. I’ve heard how they talk about other people who leave that kind of stuff. Or you might be worried about family or other people, like will they judge you? That kind of stuff. And I just wanna throw out there, man, I mean, do you know how many people gave me the side eye when I left big law in Boston to move to California for a guy?

Or when I left law to start a very weird business that was very unclear and I just bopped around and flailed for a while. Or when we left California to move to Minnesota, there are always gonna be people who don’t understand what you’re doing, but. You are the only one who has to live a hundred percent of your life and the decisions you make in your life, you’re the only one who has to live that out a hundred percent of the time.

And so I just wanna encourage you, I think I’ve talked about this in terms of like wearing the mittens, if you know that [00:26:00] analogy, like yes, people might judge you, they might, I get it. I’ve heard things people have said about me at various stages of those things. Doesn’t mean that I. Regret doing them and that I should have listened to those voices.

No. No. I have very intentionally, most of the time, not always intentionally all of the time, designed a life that I really love that has gotten me here. And listening to those other people often who are just random people and not even that close to me, listening to them would’ve kept me in a. Situation that I knew wasn’t happy versus finding and working towards something that I was pretty sure would make me happy.

I also think, I mean, people just are not thinking about you that much. That’s what I meant by the, you’re the only one who’s to live a hundred percent of the time in this life that you pick. Yeah. Other people might judge you, but they’re thinking about you for two minutes a month. I have no idea. But really think about that.

Like [00:27:00] don’t let the high achiever. What will people think? Part of you, and I know, I don’t mean, I know not high achievement is what people think of you, but there is an element of that. If you are a high achiever and you have been a lot of your life, what people think of you has often been positive and feels good, and so it feels scary to lose that and maybe have it flip into something negative.

So to the extent that’s what I mean by like the high achiever part of you that cares about what people think, which there’s zero judgment. I get it. Just be wary of that. I’m very glad that I did not listen to those voices and it doesn’t mean they feel great when you hear them, but man, like I just can’t imagine how different my life would look like right now.

Had I listened and felt stuck because I worried about, I. What colleagues who I barely would see again, would would say, or, and by the way, I’m very good friends [00:28:00] still with some colleagues. I don’t mean all of them, but I just mean, I don’t know. Just don’t give too much credence to other people’s opinions when chances are they’re not gonna play a major role in your life.

And even if they do, they’re not thinking about you all that much. Okay. I know that was all super random and rambly, but I just thought it was worth talking about because again, it’s not a, actually a very big part of my clients’ like experience. I would say most of my clients stay in their roles. Most of my clients actually, they stay in their jobs because.

They now can enjoy it more. Their workload’s more reasonable. They keep the parts of their work that they like. They try and get rid of other parts of their work. Like they enjoy their experience more. They get to enjoy the rest of their life more. So I’m not trying to say at all that people should leave.

I hope to be able to help you enjoy your career [00:29:00] and figure that out. But there is a subset of people who do, who do leave because of the clarity that all this gives them. And. I wonder sometimes if we avoid that clarity because we’re worried what comes from it. And so I wanted to talk about what can come after it to the extent I can.

I’m not trained in any of this stuff, but I’ve lived some of it, so I wanted to share my own experience with it to the extent it helps and to the extent I’ve seen it with other clients as well. Okay. Wide ranging, very random. Hopefully one or two nuggets that are helpful to you. I would love to hear what you think.

Let me know, and if you don’t mind, if you wanna leave a review for the podcast, that would be wonderful. I really appreciate it. And most importantly, thank you for being here and I’ll catch you in the next episode.

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When Your Work Culture Isn’t A Good Fit

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