• Coaching goals about setting boundaries and saying no have nearly doubled, from 11% to 21%

• Goals to delegate or cut workload are up by three quarters, from 8% to 14%

• 72% of goals to protect focus time and set an end-of-day cut-off are completed within six months

• Behind the shift: mentions of burnout in coaching sessions have doubled in eight months, from 12% to 24%, and people are choosing to act

LONDON: Professionals are saying no to say yes. Goals to set boundaries and turn down work have nearly doubled in less than a year, as people make room for the work that matters most, according to new analysis published today by tech-powered people development platform Bloom (www.usebloom.com) at the start of National Work Life Week (5th–9th October).

They now make up one in five (21%) of the work-life balance goals people set in coaching sessions, up from 11% in October–December 2025.

Targets around delegation or cutting back on workload are up by three quarters, from 8% to 14%, while those focused on self-care and recovery have fallen from a third (34%) to a quarter (25%).

Taken together, the findings point to a hopeful shift. With burnout rising, the pressure is real, but rather than only finding ways to cope, busy professionals are taking the initiative and reshaping the work itself, so there’s more room for the things that make the biggest difference.

Small changes that stick

Better still, intentions are turning into action. Bloom users completed 72% of the goals they set around protecting focus time, taking control of meetings or setting an end-of-day cut-off within six months.

Goals that involve saying no to other people take a little more courage, but more than half (58%) are still followed through.

Meetings are the biggest opportunity. Half (51%) of sessions that mentioned back-to-back meetings or a lack of focus time also involved boundary struggles, compared with one in five (20%) of others. For teams, rethinking meetings is one of the quickest ways to hand time back.

Same workload, different journeys

Men and women bring workload into coaching in equal measure, with mentions appearing in 38% of sessions across the board.

When workload is discussed, four in ten women (42%) are also talking about boundaries, compared with a quarter of men (25%), and more than a third of women (35%) connect workload with burnout, compared with one in five men (20%). Women are also leading the way in acting on it: setting boundaries makes up a bigger share of women’s coaching goals than men’s.

Why now

Workload remains the most common topic in coaching, up from 35% of sessions to 41%, and burnout is nearly four times as likely to come up when workload is being discussed. Burnout came up in 24% of coaching sessions in July 2026, double the 12% recorded in November 2025. That makes workload the place to start, and the real question is where that pressure is coming from.

Samantha Clarke, Chief Experience Officer at Bloom, said:

“This is an encouraging shift. The people getting ahead at work aren’t the ones doing more of it; they’re the ones deciding what matters most and saying yes to that. Every no is a yes to something else. Self-care has its place, but you can’t bubble-bath your way out of a workload problem. Real change comes down to three things: your mindset, the approach you take to how you work, and the attitude you bring to situations. And the practical changes, like protecting time in the diary, are the ones that stick.

“With burnout doubling, employers can’t simply expect people to say no. In most workplaces that isn’t easy, and back-to-back meetings are a fact of life. The bigger opportunity is to step back and ask where the stress is really coming from. Which processes are consistently broken? Where could AI take on the tasks that eat up time? And are people having honest conversations about how their workload is growing, and whether it plays to their strengths? That’s where the real gains are.”

Say no, say yes: top tips from Bloom’s coaches

For individuals

• Start with what matters most. Ask where your time makes the biggest difference, then say yes to that first. Everything else is a candidate for a ‘not now’.

• Line up your tasks, calendar and tech. Block focus time, save different types of work for the part of the day when you’re at your best, and let AI take on the tasks that eat up your time.

• Say no in the right way. A no doesn’t have to be a flat refusal. It can be a “not now” with a later date, a referral to resources that will help, a handover to someone better placed, or an offer to team up and crack it together.

• Build your support system. Know who you can lean on, at work and outside it, before you need them.

• Spot what’s missing. If work is taking longer than it should, ask whether it plays to your strengths, and raise it with your manager while there are still options.

For employers

• Make workload conversations normal. Give people regular space to say where their workload is growing and where their strengths aren’t being used.

• Fix what’s consistently broken. Look for the processes that keep causing stress, and where AI could streamline them.

• Make meeting culture a win. Meeting overload and boundary struggles go hand in hand, so every meeting you retire hands time back.

• Reward focus, not busyness. Judge people on what they deliver, not how full their calendar is.

What people are working on

What people are bringing to coaching

Notes to editors

Samantha Clarke and Bloom’s ICF-accredited coaches are available for interview. Charts and a full methodology note are available on request. National Work Life Week (5–9 October 2026) is run by the charity Working Families.

About the data

Goals analysis: Bloom analysed work-life balance actions (around 7.5% of all actions) set in coaching over the past year; 43% of those with a known location were UK-based. Trends compare October–December 2025 with July–August 2026. The rise in boundary and saying-no goals is significant (p=.0025) and holds when controlling for organisation; the rise in delegation and workload reduction goals is also significant (p=.041). Completion rates cover actions set by 28 March 2026, giving each at least six months (72% vs 58%, p=.048).

Gender analysis: Coaching sessions where gender could be reliably identified, with similar numbers of women and men, controlling for organisation and month. Boundary-setting made up 4.2% of women’s actions and 2.8% of men’s (p=.019); completion rates were similar.

Trend analysis: Bloom analysed anonymised, AI-generated summaries of coaching sessions (known on the Bloom platform as Check-ins) from people in 44 countries (45% UK-based where known) between September 2025 and July 2026. The rise in burnout between November 2025 and July 2026 is significant (2.05x, 95% CI 1.27–3.30, p=.0025) and holds after controlling for participants’ stage in their coaching programme. Meeting findings (2.50x, p<.001) show association, not cause.

Workload analysis: A separate analysis of session summaries from people who completed a full coaching programme found burnout was nearly four times as likely when workload was discussed (relative risk 3.69, p<.0001).