Work by Design
An OffScript programme
You care about the work. You are good at it. Somewhere along the way, being the person people rely on began to cost more than you meant to give.
Work by Design helps you work out what is creating that strain, decide what needs to change and test one change in real life. You can do it in your own time, without another call in your diary.
Do work that matters, in a way that works for you.
You already know something needs to change.
You can describe what is happening. The requests that keep finding you. The responsibilities that have accumulated around your actual job. The feeling that you have plenty of responsibility, but too little say in the conditions under which you carry it.
What is harder to answer is what to do next.
Is it the work itself? This organisation? A wider expectation about what committed people should give? The season of life you are in? Or a pattern of your own that has made an already demanding situation harder to leave untouched?
It is unlikely to be only one of those things. Treating it as one enormous personal problem makes every option feel equally difficult.
Work by Design helps you separate the parts.
Once you can see where each part sits, you can make a decision about the part you can influence, name the part that needs a conversation and stop blaming yourself for what was never yours to fix alone. You do not have to decide between putting up with it and walking away
The programme helps you work out which one fits, rather than assuming you should already know. You do not choose a route on instinct in the first lesson. You build the criteria to judge it, look honestly at the practical and financial realities, then test a next step before calling the decision finished.
There are four routes through a situation like this.
Move On
If the evidence points there, you can explore a different role or direction with a clearer sense of what you need from it.
Hold the Line
Sometimes the workplace will not change quickly, and leaving is not financially possible or desirable right now. This route helps you decide what to protect, which optional costs to stop paying and when you will review the situation again.
Reshape
Have a conversation about the role, hours, remit or working environment so that the job better reflects what is being asked of you and what you can reasonably do.
Change in Place
Stay in your role and organisation, but change how you work within them. Staying becomes a decision you have made, with terms you have chosen.
Work by Design is a self-led online programme built around six decisions.
Each module gives you a question to answer, a tool to use and a clear point at which that part of the work is done. You add each decision to The Plan, one document you open at the beginning and build as you go.
Three parts of the programme take you beyond reflection. You deliberately break one inherited rule to see what happens. You have a conversation that resets a responsibility. You run an experiment with a change you are considering.
The aim is not to finish with a better description of why work feels difficult. It is to finish knowing what you decided, what you did and what happened.
The six decisions
See the pattern
What is actually creating the strain?
01
You name three inherited rules shaping what you agree to do. Perhaps you have learned that a good leader is always available, or that being able to help means you should.
Then you break one rule deliberately, on a small enough scale to notice what actually happens.
Question the script
Which rules are you still working by?
02
You set five criteria for the way you want to work and live. Then you use them to assess all four routes: changing in place, reshaping, holding the line and moving on.
Your decision has something firmer underneath it than the mood of a particularly hard Tuesday.
You identify the two or three factors doing the most work in your situation and locate each one. Some may sit with the job, the organisation or the wider structure. Others may belong to this season of life or to patterns you have developed yourself.
You leave with a more accurate picture than “I need to cope better”.
Reclaim your compass
What are you using to decide what fits now?
03
You look at what belongs to your role, what you can influence and what you have quietly absorbed because nobody else picked it up.
You make one request, hand back one responsibility or have the conversation needed to change how it is held.
Choose & test change
06
What will you change next, and how will you know whether it works?
Design what can hold
What conditions do you need, and what does the money have to do?
05
You choose a route, run one experiment and give your plan dates for action and review.
You leave with evidence from something you have tried, rather than a promise to yourself that things will be different eventually.
Reset responsibility
What is yours to carry?
04
A way of working has to hold up in your actual life. You consider your time, energy, responsibilities and the financial floor beneath your choices.
Money belongs in this conversation. Knowing what you need to earn, and what your current pattern of overwork is buying or costing, helps you make a decision you can live with.
You begin The Plan in the first module and add to it six times. By the end, it holds:
- what is creating the strain and where each part sits
- three inherited rules you have named
- five criteria for future decisions
- the line between what is yours and what you have absorbed
- the conditions and financial floor your choice needs to respect
- the route you have chosen, one change you have tested and the dates for what comes next
The Plan comes with you
It is a record of decisions made and actions taken. You can return to it when the next request, opportunity or difficult week makes you question your judgement again.
All the modules are available as soon as you join. There are no cohorts, live calls or deadlines. The suggested pace is about 75 minutes a week for six weeks, but you can move faster or take longer. Each module tells you when to stop, so the work does not turn into another open-ended demand on your time.
A short email sequence helps you keep moving. You will not need to wait for someone else’s availability to do the next part.
Built to fit alongside a full working life
Work by Design is for experienced people whose work matters to them and who have become accustomed to being relied upon.
You may work in a charity, the NHS, local government, another purpose-led organisation or a very different setting. You may manage people, or you may lead work and carry significant responsibility without a management title. You do not need help recognising that something is wrong. You want to make a sound decision about what to do with that knowledge.
This is unlikely to be the right programme if you want a time management system, have already decided to resign and need practical help doing so, or are looking mainly for reassurance. If you are in crisis or need therapeutic, medical or clinical support, please seek that support first. A self-led programme cannot provide it.
Is this for you?
Why I made this
I am Sarah Swaroop, a Chartered Marketer, certified coach and consultant.
I have spent nearly two decades working in and alongside organisations doing work that matters, including senior marketing and communications roles in the charity sector.
I have led teams, sat on hiring panels and seen what happens when a capable person becomes the unofficial solution to every gap in a system. I have also had to rethink my own relationship with work.
Work by Design brings those perspectives together. It is built on my OffScript approach and The Unscripted Path: unlearning the rules you have absorbed, reclaiming your own judgement and redesigning how work fits into your life.
I will not tell you which route to take. The programme gives you a way to make that decision with your eyes open, then see what changes when you act on it.
£297 including VAT.
Most people who do this work will consider a change in how they work, rather than simply a change of employer.
For an organisation, the value is in keeping the people it cannot afford to lose, working in a way they can sustain.
Work by Design helps a participant diagnose the source of pressure rather than absorb it, recognise working norms that create avoidable costs and make decisions against explicit criteria. They examine how responsibility is allocated, hold a conversation to reset it where needed and test a practical change.
An organisation funding places receives an invoice, confirmation of enrolment and completion, and a one-page programme summary for the manager. If you would like to fund more than one place, please contact me and I can arrange the purchase.
The participant’s work remains theirs. The organisation does not receive what they write, individual progress reports or influence over the conclusions they reach. That independence gives people room to look honestly at what is happening and make useful decisions.
You can send your manager this link
