Focused - 254: Battling Burnout

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

Welcome to Focused, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I am David Sparks and joined by my intrepid co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hi, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? I'm doing good. I'm doing better than I thought it was, actually, as we talk about burnout today. I was going to say, you sound pretty chill for an episode on burnout. Yeah, I know. It is. It is. Before we get started today, I wanted to talk about something.

you have a new YouTube channel. I do have a new YouTube channel. So it's at YouTube.com slash Mike Schmitz reads. I'm not sure if that URL is going to automatically point over. So I'll put the link in the show notes. It's a little bit finicky when you have a new channel on YouTube. And this one is really starting from scratch.

And it's really a channel about books and the little 15 minute book review videos that I would occasionally try to do on my main channel, but every time I did that, they just did not do very well. And I talked to several people who really know YouTube, and they're like, yeah, the algorithm doesn't know you as book review guy, even though I do a bookworm podcast. They know you as obsidian guy.

So whenever you release one of those videos, even if it's really good, you're fighting an uphill battle. You're better off just starting a new channel, letting the algorithm know exactly what, what this is and then it can help you get in front of the people who actually want to want to see it. So I've been wanting to start this channel for a while. It's been more work than I could just, I could handle. And a couple of weeks ago, I cracked the nut using our friend

Claude where I could pull in my book notes. I'll just keep it top level here. We won't get too nerdy. But I created a skill that pulls in my book notes. It interprets my emoji coding system. It pulls in the transcripts from the bookworm episodes. So it's all stuff that I've written, I've decoded, and I've said about the book. And then it drafts a first draft of a video script based on, you know, the three that I had published previously that I fed it. You know, this is what it should look like. And then I go through and I edit that line by line. So I'm touching all the text.

I want to make sure it's authentic before I show up on camera and read it. But it did a surprisingly good job. And I was able to edit the script and record. and record the video in about an hour. I'm getting really good at reading off a teleprompter, so I can almost one shot it now. Good. And then because I am starting a new channel,

I'm working with another video editor and gave him basically a clean slate to work with. You know, what do you think this should look like? And shot some B-roll, gave everything over to him, and he was able to crank out a very, very well-put-together video. I'm really happy with how the first one turned out. The first book I did was Wisdom Takes Work by Ryan Holiday. So yeah, it's a 15-minute book review video.

I share my ratings at the end and just like my thoughts, my ideas, my big takeaways, essentially from the book. If you want a more condensed version of bookworm, it's kind of what this is for. That's a great example of giving it the donkey work. Yep, exactly. That was a thing, you know, I've written all this stuff. I've talked through these books before. So in the back of my head, there was this voice saying, oh, just do it.

It's really not that much work. Whenever I would sit down to do it, it would take like eight hours to do all the scripting. And it's like, I can't do this. Like, it's not worth it. I can't not do the other work as well. You know, so if I can make this really minimal effort, maybe I can build this into the whirlwind. Because I do want to make these videos every once in a while I throw one out there. But I really just needed a way to enable me to make the videos I wanted to make.

And so, yeah, Cloud has allowed me to do that. By the way, I wrote about kind of the whole thought process. how it all works in my most recent newsletters. We record this. I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. People want to go deeper into how I put this thing together. But yeah, I'm really happy with the results. Yeah, you know, so I got an email from someone saying, hey, like your newsletters are getting longer. Are you using AI to write them? And I said, no, but AI is doing so much of the other stuff that I have more time to write them. So I feel like, you know, in some ways, using AI, if you're smart about it,

will free you up for the creative work to do more of it. And that's kind of nice. So that's something we all got to be thinking about. As a focus, somebody interested in focus, can you harness it in a way that gives you more focus instead of less? Absolutely. And I got to give props to you, because when I was talking through this with you,

I kind of was having trouble getting over the fact that I didn't actually write every single word that appears on that script. So am I cheating? Yeah. And talking through it with you, I kind of realize that, you know, you go to these, these big channels, and they have research assistants, and they have script writers, and they're putting together the first drafts of the script, and then they're recording them. And I don't think that the people that I look up to in the YouTube space, I don't feel like, well, they're not writing this thing. This isn't actually what they think. Yeah. So that was a limiting belief I had. And then I realized that what I was able to do was, essentially,

hire Claude for those two roles. Yeah. I can't hire people for those two roles yet, but I can get, you know, 80% of the way there with a little bit of time building these skills, and that's pretty exciting. I mean, there's a lot of downsides to artificial intelligence and disruption and environmental impact. There's a lot to discuss there, but I do think for small time people like you and I who are running, you know, a small creative business, it is transformative, you know, and that's just the way it is. I mean, I couldn't afford to do it any other way. Yep, exactly.

Anyway, today we're here to talk about burnout. I think it's an interesting kind of side path along this focus journey because a lot of people who are interested in the stuff we talk about will push themselves too hard. And we have heard from several of our listeners that have struggled with us, so we thought this would be a good show. Yeah, so there's a lot of, there's a lot of, I was going to say overlap, that's not the right word, but there's a lot of burnout and focus, I feel like, are closely related.

Yeah. In some ways, focus is a detriment to burnout, but in other ways, I feel like focus can actually encourage burnout if you're not careful. So I wanted to talk through this today. This is something that has been on my mind lately. I had a newsletter that I published a couple months ago where I kind of talked about how I'd been dealing with some of this lately and I just feel like this is a topic that's becoming more and more relevant in

the digital age that we live in and it's something that goes hand in hand with focus and something that everybody is going to struggle with to different degrees depending on your situation. But I think it's worth unpacking some of the root causes and then maybe what we can do to fight back against it if we're experiencing it or put up the guardrails so we don't go down that dark path if we're in a good place just to make sure we don't end up there.

Yeah, I mean, everybody I know that's gone through this, it just sounds like misery to hit that. Because I'm observing this from the outside. I don't think I've ever really experienced. it. But it seems like, you know, the thing you rely on is your creative spirit, your ability to produce. And then at some point, that stops working for you. It's like a muscle that fails you. And it seems like it's a real challenge for people. It is a real challenge and the consequences are real. So, I mean, there's a lot of things that go along with burnout.

consequences can include things like physical illness, hopelessness, irritability, and patience, poor interpersonal relationships. Sure. It can affect executive functioning, attention, memory, but also the thing about burnout, I think is we have this picture of burnout as this destination. Like, once you completely burn out and you completely crash, you know, you use that analogy of running downhill a lot, and I like that. that resonates with me, where you can barely maintain your balance or you're going to fall on your

face. A lot of people think burnout is the moment that you fall on your face. And I would argue that really the process starts and you start experiencing burnout long before you ever hit the wall. So let's, uh, let's break it down, Mike. Um, there's science around burnout, right? There's a lot of science around burnout. And, um, the, so there's a, there's one person in particular.

Christina Maslack, who's kind of the person who's done the majority of the OG research on the topic. And our mutual friend, Chris Bailey, recommended to me actually a couple of years ago at this point that I take the Maslack burnout inventory. So I have my results. You have yours, and we can talk about this a little bit later, but just to set the stage, you know, I think that's the thing we'll use as we talk about this because there's three main scales in there. The first scale is exhaustion, and that's basically when you have no energy. The second scale is cynicism, and this one is a little bit deceiving, because when I think of cynicism, I think that I'm not a very cynical person. However, cynicism, in this case, it really is your emotional, social, and cognitive

connection with your job, your coworkers, and your clients. So really it's it's sort of a values alignment piece or are you just kind of going through the motions or are you completely invested? And then the other one is the efficacy piece. And the efficacy is basically like your self-worth,

what you think about yourself. And so what's interesting to me about this is that the assessment basically gives you results on those different scales and based on which scales are high, which scales are low, you have these different scenarios where you can end up in. And yeah, I guess before we get into the results, so what do you think about those three components?

And is there one of those in particular that really resonates with you? So I read the paper and took the test. And I feel like the cynicism one I'd like to punch in on just a little bit, I feel like the idea of cynicism is your belief, that the work matters is really kind of what that's saying. So the components are, are you tired, are you exhausted? Do you believe the work matters? And do you believe you're good at it? And it's the interrelation of those three factors that give you an indicator of burnout. And obviously, if you're exhausted and you don't think the work matters, you don't think you're good at it,

you are on the fast track to burnout. And that's, you're, with the test measures. So it's an interesting concept, but there's a lot of science behind it, like you're saying. And I think this is a great way to take stock if you're worried about this thing right now. If you feel like you're on the edge, this gives you an actual quantifiable way to see how you're doing. Yeah, exactly. And really the scales and the whole paper about burnout, the quote unquote solution, or the problem it's trying to solve is the fact that more and more people are disengaged from their work. Now, what in the world does that mean? I like to think of, you know, if you're engaged at work, you're fully present. You're all there.

Your mind is not being pulled in a million different directions. And I think burnout is one of things that can pull it in different directions because, oh man, I'm just so exhausted. I can can't possibly endure this two-hour budget meeting today, or you notice that when you are on your way to work during the commute, you feel yourself starting to tense up because you just don't want to have the conversations with the people in the office today. Like, those are all things that we tend to just sweep under the rug. And well, no situation is perfect. That's true. You are going to have to just put up with some stuff, no matter where. you work. It's not all puppies and rainbows. But if you just continually ignore those types of things,

that's when, you know, this stuff really compounds and it creates that nightmare scenario. But I think that word engaged, you know, if you ask yourself, am I engaged with my work? And if there's even a little bit of you that's like, well, no, or I'm not as engaged as I could, be, then there be dragons. Like, you should be asking yourself, why is that? And what can I do maybe to fix that? Yeah. I mean, to me, one of the reflections I had on this is my scores on this test would have been very different back when I was at the firm, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So that was a different career, different position. But this whole process led me to some interesting reflection. But I think, this is the well kind of accepted measure of burnout.

And I do think another thing about burnout is it's a term that people like to throw around. Oh man, I'm so burned out. You know, you hear it all the time. And I don't think there's a lot of quantification behind that a lot of times. And people, that's a term people will say, like, busy sometimes. I feel like people think of it as a point of pride. Oh, yeah, I'm burning out, man. I'm doing, I'm working, I'm doing going.

day and night. I'm putting it all in. I'm burning myself out. And I don't think that's good or healthy, but it's just an interesting concept how it's taken on this life of its own. Well, underneath, there's actual science that can help you figure out how you are on that journey. Yeah, but that's one of the tough things about it is that there really isn't a standard definition of what burnout is. We read, we read the, end of burnout by Jonathan Malisich, I think, for Bookworm not too long ago. And that book kind of talks about how, if we could just define exactly what burnout is, then people wouldn't say, oh man, I'm so burned out all the time.

But you do hear that all the time. And so it's kind of hard to nail down exactly what this is. but then also he makes the point in that book that people can experience burnout without being burned out. So you can have kind of the symptoms of burnout without just completely identifying with the end state. So that's why you kind of have to have your head on a swivel a lot of times when it comes to this sort of thing.

You've got to be looking for those little paper cuts because sometimes it's, it is a bigger deal, especially if it's, it's recurring. Maybe it's a result of the environment that you're in. And the solution isn't necessarily, well, quit the toxic job, go independent, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. And so I feel like we should really unpack here today in a little bit after we share our results here.

You know, what are some of the things that you can do to protect yourself against this? Because, you know, control what you can control. The solution isn't to just exit stage left every time that something gets hard, but also you got to recognize the impact that the environment that you're in is having on you. I can tell you I had lawyer friends that experience a proper burnout, and they were unable to function in their career, one of them for two years. Like, he just was done, you know, and I have some terrible war stories. about this. I had another friend in law school who was a real high flyer, got a job at a big firm.

Then one day she didn't show up her work. And it was like, well, where is she? And then they actually found her in the parking lot. She, no self-harm. It's just, you know, let's be clear. But she was unable to get out of her car. She just, you know, she was so wipe. I guess is that burnout? I don't know. but the um but like it it was career altering for her like the stress of it all there's real consequences to this stuff if you're feeling it you've got to you've got to be on top of it yep and i think the focused audience in particular kind of fits the demographic for who is most susceptible to burn out yeah because if you're interested in focus you're probably interested in productivity if you're interested in productivity you're probably fairly driven so high performance

performers in particular are susceptible to burnout. And the other type of person who's susceptible to burnout, and this one is definitely me, are the systems thinkers. And I was kind of noodling on that the last couple of days. Why would the system thinkers be susceptible to burnout? And I think it's because when you think in systems, you tend to craft these systems, right? And you put all the work into building these systems and then when the systems don't work the way that you design them, it can be really frustrating. And there's also a little bit of a, I think, a pull towards whatever problem you're facing, don't just deal with it in the moment but build a system to fix it. And that takes a lot more time. So if you have a bunch of those that are stacking up and you're

trying to build all these systems at the same time. Number one, the systems that you build are not going to be as effective. And number two, you're going to, you don't have enough time. You're going to maximize your exhaustion score that way. I would argue also a successful system thinker like you. If you build enough systems, you effectively put yourself in harness, right? You've got all these systems that you have allegiance to. You've got to do all this work to keep up with them every day.

Before you know it, you have no more agency. You've effectively built your own prison. That's a good way to put it. So we both took this Maslake Burnout Inventory. You want to talk about our results? Mine doesn't say I'm burned out. It says that I'm a narcissist. So there's three ratings.

And on each one you have scores for exhaustion. So I guess the high is 36, I believe, if you add up the various categories. And they do it cleverly. They mix all these things together. And I guess just to tell how the test works, you rate it on a score of one to six. You know, do I, do I have regrets about work? I don't remember what all the questions are, but you go through and answer them zero to six on each one. And then at the end, you get a score for exhaustion, cynicism, and efficacy. I took the general test, right? That's when you took my, I'm suing. Let me see. I took the, yeah, the general survey individual report that's what i'm looking at yeah that's what i did too uh so then at the end you get a score for

exhaustion cynicism and efficacy my exhaustion score was two which is pretty low nice uh mine was 5.4 so i'm pretty high yeah and then my cynicism score was zero nice i don't know is that nice Does that mean I'm whistling past the graveyard? I don't know. Good point. I don't really know. Mine was 3.8. So it's not crazy high.

And just for context, I guess, when you rate these on a scale from zero to six, zero is never, one is a few times a year or less, two is once a month or less, three is a few times a month, four is once a week, five is a few times a week, six is every day. So the cynicism stuff, basically the 3.8, that, means somewhere between once a week, few times a month. It's not a constant thing, but still on a scale from zero to six, it's fairly high. So just to highlight the point that if these things pop up every once in a while,

don't just brush them under the rug, be like, oh, well, I don't struggle with that. Like, yeah, you got to recognize those warning signs. Okay, so I need to stop for a minute. I think I did the test wrong because I just added up the totals of all the categories. So my exhaustion is two out of 36. Oh, okay. So my results, they actually give you,

when you take that Maslake burnout inventory, a PDF report. So my report, I've got section four, my MBI results, and then it's got my scale scores, and then it's got the scores for each one of those scales.

So mine is 5.4 for exhaustion out of a six would be the max. Wow. Yeah. 5.4 out of, Yeah, cynicism is 3.8, and then professional efficacy is five. Now, these are interesting because they're not all higher equals bad. No, no. Higher exhaustion, that's negative. Higher cynicism, that would be negative. But higher professional efficacy is actually a good thing. Yeah. So you're doing,

you have, you believe in your work, but you're wiping yourself out at the same time. And that's the dangerous part is because you can push through stuff when you've got a strong enough why. Yeah. Yeah. But then the cynicism stuff, even though it's not crazy high, it's still higher than I'd like it to be. So what happens every once in a while, and it used to happen more frequently, I feel like I'm taking steps and I'm getting this a little bit more under control, but let's just

talk about it because people don't. I would be fine for a while and then I would have a day where it's like, oh my gosh, none of this is working. This is so hard. I'm just going to go get a job. Yeah. Right. And so like the professional efficacy can get me through for a while, but every once in a while the armor comes off and that's when I'm susceptible. Yeah.

That's what those are those are my moments of not being able to get out of the car as I'm sitting in the parking lot at work. although it wasn't as extreme as that, but I definitely felt that where it's like, I really got to get up today and do what I got to do. I really don't want to. Not every day, every once in a while. And it's like, where the heck did that come from? Well, my efficacy was very high too. I got a six in efficacy.

But I think the journeys are important here. For me, I spend almost 30 years as a practicing lawyer where the stress is real. you know and and dealing with the the firm politics and all that and knowing when our second child was born, Daisy stayed home with with her. So I knew for, you know, 20-ish years that if I didn't get out of bed and do it, that we didn't eat. So that was the motivation. But also, I've always, I've been reflecting on that career now that I've got some space from it. I wasn't, some extent a square peg in a round hole as a lawyer because I had too much empathy for the people in the process and made it harder to separate yourself from it. And whereas the career I had for that

first, that middle phase of my life was a bit of a poor fit for me. Like I'm good at the knowledge part. I'm good at the wisdom part. I'm not good at the emotional part of that job. And I can see that clearly now being out of it, whereas the new career, this next phase of my life I'm very well suited to. But I also think the experience of having gone through that, of, you know, going through that crucible help prepare me for this. So nothing really throws me in this new career, you know. The other thing I did that you didn't do, Mike, is I had a very successful run. I spent 15 years building it. You know, I had a lot of. I've got a reliable source of revenue.

I'm not getting rich, but I'm making enough money to get by. I knew that coming in. And you jumped a little early. So you've got a financial pressure that I think is creating a lot of this for you. Yep, absolutely. So, you know, you have to kind of look at the whole picture, but it doesn't matter what the reasons are. I mean, the fact that I had this thing before makes me so much less susceptible to burnout now.

The fact that you made that move when you did makes you more susceptible to it now. and whoever everybody listening, you need to take all that into account and understand that wherever you are in life, there are influences here that may push you or pull you from this burnout, which is a terrible thing if you, you know, if you get there or even get close. Yep. A hundred percent. And you are absolutely right about the financial stressor. I would be interested, not that there's any way to do this, but when you left the

the lawyer job and you started going out on your own. And you, that version of David had taken this assessment. I wonder what the scores would have been like. Because the thing, going back to a lot of people feel burnt out, they did research on this, right? And really it's not being fully engaged with your work,

but that can manifest a lot of different ways that are tied to these results. So if you have high exhaustion, but your cynicism and your efficacy are good, then you feel overextended and 15% of people in the workforce feel overextended. I think that's very easy to do. Even if you are in a position like you're in David and you've got things dialed in and you feel really good about where you're at, it's still easy to be overextended.

Then you can be cynical. 10% of people fall into that category where your cynicism is high but not your exhaustion and your efficacy is good. You can be frustrated. 20 to 25% of people feel frustrated. That's actually the biggest one. And I would argue that that's when the professional efficacy just isn't there. And then burned out is really when you've got multiple issues here, when you're high exhaustion,

high cynicism, low professional efficacy, and five to 10 percent of people in the workforce they estimate fall into that category. So not everybody is truly burned out, burned out. But the point of sharing the results that we did here is you can kind of see when you're on that slippery slope. And that's when you got to start taking steps to make sure that. but you don't fall all the way down. This episode of The Focus Podcast

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Vitally is offering a free pair of AirPods Pro for every focused listener who takes a qualified demo call. So if you're a customer success decision maker, schedule your call by visiting vitally.io slash focus. That's V-I-T-A-L-L-Y-O-S-Focus for a free pair of AirPods Pro when you take a qualified demo. And our thanks to Vitally for their support of the Focus Podcast and Olive Relay. You know, Mike, so I had good results on this test, which is great. But I also have a separate kind of protocol to help me keep high energy towards the work and belief in myself and all that, which I don't really know how this fits, but I'd like to share it with you and get your thoughts on it.

So I have a couple things. I started this experiment a couple years ago because I felt like I wasn't spending enough shop time. I do for folks. I don't know. I have a wood shop. I like doing craft with my hands. And it's more than a wood shop. It's a leather shop and does a lot of stuff.

But I felt like I wasn't doing enough of that. And that was stressing me out. So that is like some low-level indicator towards I'm working too much. And so I made a rule going into 2025 that I was just going to spend an hour a day in the shop no matter what. You know? And it really was kind of transformative for me because getting that hour out there makes everything else more fun. And then I expanded upon that over the last couple of years now. So now I have, I try to do meditation every day.

I've been doing that for 30 plus years. But that's another thing I need to do every day. I try to exercise or do something to help my body every day. And I've been a lot more serious about that the last six months. And so I spend about an hour doing that, whether I'm taking a hike or going to the gym or whatever. And then I also have one. So I keep adding on to this mic. The other one is called Read and Reflect.

I spend an hour reading a good book and thinking about it. And then now I also have a bonsai garden and I'm spending more time with that. So that is also like a thing. So I have on my daily list a bunch of checkboxes. And not every day. I call it daily-ish. I don't make it to everything every day. and the bonsai thing isn't an hour,

but I actually work with my trees every day, to some degree. And some days I don't get a full hour in the shop either, but at the top of my list for every day, it says, you know, garden, you know, shop time. It has a list of all those, and I put a little check by each one. And I try every day to hit every single one of those.

And most days I do to some degree or another. And I feel like that is my burnout insurance plan. by doing that, it makes me feel good. It makes me feel my life is more than just my work. And I don't know how this fits in the Maslock theories, but this is a little trick I put together that has really helped me. Yeah, well, I think you kind of just encapsulated the rest of the outline. Oh, sorry.

That's okay. You got to figure out. I just want to get your feedback on it. I should have held that powder, apparently. That's okay. That's okay. So the big takeaway, and I think it's fine to talk about it here, and then we can share the principles, and maybe this is helpful to help people see, you know, how we ended up there. You have to figure out what you can do on a consistent regular basis, which is going to just sort of

nudge you back on the right track, away from the dark place. And I wrote about this in the blog post that I alluded to earlier. And my big takeaway from thinking about my results and something's got to change, what am I going to do, was to, you're basically talking about building and practices which are going to fight against burnout. And I had one specific thing that I started doing from that, which was I'm going to start having more fun. Yeah. I, maybe it's the systems thinker in meat. Maybe it's the productivity nerd in meat.

Maybe it's the high achiever in meat. Maybe it's all of them, but I always am striving to get more and more done. And I work at home. Everything I do is on my computer. It's always right there. My brain is always thinking about the creative projects that I'm working on, the next thing that I'm building. It's really hard for me to disconnect. And the result is that I do the things that need to get done.

And some of the things that need to get done, I really enjoy doing. I really love reading books. I have a podcast about that, now a YouTube channel about that. I don't consider that to be work necessarily, but it kind of is. So I need something that's just like totally different. The thing that I ended up doing was finding we homeschool our kids. And so we're part of this homeschool community. And I found out that a lot of the dads in the homeschool community end up playing basketball

on Sunday nights at this church gym. And I was like, oh, maybe I could, maybe I could make that work. And I think I've gone like six weeks in a row now. Yeah. And it's awesome. I love it. look forward to it all week. Not because I'm a great basketball player or anything like that, but it's just nice to do something

fun with people who are there for that specific purpose. I don't see these people really the rest of the week for anything else. And that's kind of nice. These are my basketball buddies. You know, we're not talking about work is not an option to talk about in that scenario. There's some other things that I'm doing, which is like I have this YouTube schedule. for my regular videos and I get stressed out whenever I don't release a video on time. But in the big scheme of things, it doesn't matter if I release a video a day late.

It's not like a podcast episode, you know, where we've got sponsors who are paying for these, these episodes and it's got to come out on the regular schedule. YouTube's a little bit more lax. At least the way that I run my channel with, you know, me and a part-time editor to help me. So, yeah, and then the other thing that I took away from that was, putting up boundaries, you know, not working on the weekends. That's, that one I was making progress on. And then it sort of got reset with all these college visits I got to do recently.

Because those ends up end up being on Fridays a lot of the times. So I can't get my work done in four days. It means I got to do some on Saturday usually. But yeah. And then just identifying a couple of those things that you can do consistently, that is, that makes a huge difference. And it's part of me because I understand the concept of the 1% better and the compound effect is like, oh, well, you really got to do this for a while before you start seeing a payout. I can tell you from my experience that I started getting the benefit immediately.

I'm sure that there is, you know, long-term compound effect. I like my scores to look a lot more like your scores six months or a year from now. But already I can feel that it is making a huge difference. So just start, you know, do something and it'll help. Yeah. I do think it really can be influenced by a feeling that that all you do is the work, right? Yep. I mean, I didn't say in my list, but also I'm very flexible with my family.

If there's something going on with my family, I'm often, I just make time to be there. And one of the privileges of my career right now in my life is I don't have to be in court every day, you know, Monday through Friday. So if something's happening on a Wednesday, I will do it. And I don't really think twice about working on the weekend because I know I take plenty of time off during the week. I think that's a perfectly acceptable approach. I'm not quite at that point yet, unfortunately. But yeah, something that you mentioned, though, which I wanted to double back on. The way I put it in the notes is identity fusion. I forget exactly how you mentioned it. But when you identify yourself, your identity becomes the work that you do, that's dangerous.

Yeah. And you got to keep those separate. And it's hard for, well, it's probably hard for everybody. But I've noticed when I stepped out as an independent creator and it's my face on the things that I publish, it's my words that are in the newsletter, it's my voice on the podcast. asked, I felt this more than ever. Like, I knew this principle, but I still feel like I, I succumbed to this a little bit. Yeah. I mean, the identity thing is not just a risk around burnout. It's a risk around. It's just, it's a terrible thing to do. I, you know, I've got to the age where I've seen some friends who are, you know, around a retirement age, and they are

terrified because they've adopted the identity of their career so, so deeply, and it's so ingrained in them. They feel like if they retire, then they no longer exist. And I know they know intellectually, that's not true, but in the gut level, that's what they think. And I like to talk to some of them about it. Like, come on, man, this is, there's more to you than this. But then you look and that's their life. You know, they don't. have the hour of shop time a day in their life. They don't have anything but the work. And that's just not healthy. It's not healthy. And I think part of the, there's a couple layers to this, I think. Partly, I think, we associate our identity with the work that we do because we feel that we have a level of

control over it. And so we want to, we want to be able to be able to, to maybe manipulate as a strong word, but we want to put our fingerprint on that. And that's also, I think, where the productivity systems come in, because we have this idea of what we want to be known for, the legacy we want to leave. And we create these systems to help us move in that direction. And like that's all great. But then those systems can actually mask burnout for a while because you end up being productive on the surface, but you're running on empty underneath. And then you've got on top of that, the always on culture, the digital overload, you know,

we optimize our way into overcommitment. And then we create this scenario that's completely unsustainable. And if your identity is tied to that, at that moment, you've, feel when the things start when the system start breaking that's when you can feel like i am completely worthless and and nothing i do works at least that's the that's the version of the story i tell myself in my head when i when i'm in that that spot i also think it can be cultural i think there you know not every culture on the planet thinks about that like when you go to a party and you meet somebody, do you say, what do you do? And the answer is supposed to be, well,

I'm a, I'm a mailman or I'm a, you know, I'm a lawyer or I'm a podcast or, you know, people want when they meet you in my culture, they want to know what you do to make money, you know? Yep. And like, I have, I've always resisted that, even when I was a lawyer, because I never wanted to tell people as a lawyer because then you had to hear all the lawyer problems of their lives, you know, and I would always just make up jobs. Once I told somebody I was the Churro vice president of Disney. I was at like a big Disney thing. I said, yeah, I'm the VP for Churros and they're like, wow, that's impressive. I told my son that that story the other day and he's like, wow, David is so cool. But it's just like, but just think about why do we do that, you know, maybe.

be that's another indicator that you're susceptible to this if you if the when someone asks you what you do the first thing you want to talk about is what how you get paid well there's a couple couple ways that that could go right uh if you really identify with the work that you do you probably have a lot of alignment between your personal values and the the occupation i guess the the term would be vocation where you know this is what i was put on this earth to do and I'm really good at it and I'm going to do it well. And that can lead to burnout. But also if you don't have that alignment with your values, that could also lead to burnout because you get asked that question and you're like, I hate my job. Why do I need to answer this right now?

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's why I was so resistant to it back then. I don't know. Yeah. But it is a societal thing. You know, the culture works against us a lot of, in a lot of ways with with this sort of thing, which makes it even more important to establish your own boundaries because nobody's going to do it for you. The next time you go to a dinner party or something, someone is going to ask you what you do. So being ready for that and recognizing that in the moment, you don't have to have your identity completely tied into what you do. That can be a little bit of preventative medicine. I've heard people talk about those shirts. I've been, I still haven't been able to find one that says, I do a lot with computers lately or something like that. I feel like

that should be my answer when someone asked me that sort of thing. Your answer should be, I'm a dad, I coach soccer, I like to read books. That's the stuff I do. True. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Gusto. Is there any better feeling than cleaning out that junk drawer that's been bothering you for months. That's what switching to Gusto can feel like for your business. The admin chaos gets organized all in one place, payroll, HR benefits, all that stuff that has been piling up. I've used Gusto in some way, shape, or form for the last several years, both from the employee and from the administrator side. From the employee side, it makes it really easy to follow up and get those tax documents

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of the Focus Podcast and all of Relay. All right, Mike, let's help people out. What can you do if you're worried about this stuff? Well, there are a couple things that do work and there are a couple things that don't work. So let's talk about what doesn't work maybe first because this is probably what people will naturally tend to do listening to this episode so far. The first one is to just power through. Don't do that.

Maybe that is necessary, but that is not a solution. Okay, so you can power through for a little while. I'll just recognize that at some point you're going to reach your limit and you need to do something besides that in order to avoid falling on your face. Also, don't do what I would do, and that's add more systems. I say what I would do because that's my natural response to things, is, well, let's create a system for this.

More systems equals more complexity equals more opportunities for things to break. And that is not a solution when you are all, already overextended and nearing burnout. The other one that's interesting to me because this is probably the one that seems to make the most sense is to take a vacation. A vacation can actually work against you in some ways. If you resent your job, don't like being there, and then you take a vacation, when you come back, like the last two days before you have to go back into the office, you're just

going to, it's going to hit you hard and you'd be like, I really, really don't want to go back there. So again, like, vacation is good. take a break from the work, but that's not a solution. Yeah, that's interesting. And when you think about it, like if you ever had a job, you didn't like coming back from vacation can be really hard. That also reminds me, I think another indicator might be the Sunday night blues.

And people experience this where it's Sunday night and they just can't sleep, they just dread the next morning because they have to go back. And I think that would be a good indicator that you've got something to think. about. Yeah, I've heard the term for that being the Sunday Scaries. And that's the one that definitely, that resonates with me because I've been in that spot before where Sunday night, it's like, I know I have to go to work the next day and I can kind of just feel my pulse quickening and feeling a little bit more anxious as Sunday goes on. And it's not because of what's happening on Sunday. That's the thing. Well, I just need to, you know, not doing anything on Sundays.

Well, yeah, that does help, but not with the cynicism piece. If that's really the thing that's contributing to it, doesn't matter if you just lay on the couch all day Sunday, you're still going to be stressed out and anxious and not rested by the time you have to go to work on Monday. And also that also is a good example of not living in the moment. It's like you have this Sunday, you have this time where you're not doing that. So why are you letting that take this time too? Yep, exactly. But there are things you can do. So what does work, a couple of things. The term here I like is radical subtraction, which is really cut before you optimize. At some point, you have to recognize, you can't do everything. And so one of the ways that I regularly

build this in during my quarterly personal retreats. I have those three questions, which I start doing, stop doing, and keep doing. And I force myself every single time to pick something to stop doing. So it's sort of a systemic way to build in, build in some margin. Also, rest as a practice, not as a reward. So that's where the stuff that you talked about earlier, David, I think is pretty brilliant. You're checking the box, did I get in the shop today? And you're able to do that almost every day. that's a practice. It's not, well, I got done a little bit early, so I'm going to reward myself with some shop time. That's the wrong approach. And then the other thing you can do is, and you and I both have our versions of this, you know, the productivity field guide and the life

theme stuff, reestablishing your North Star, your values, and then your priorities should be tied to those values. Those priorities should ultimately end up on your schedule, aligning, you know, what you're doing with why you're doing, it can help, uh, combat, that burnout as well. I mean, I think that can't be understated. You have to know what's important in your life to do any of this stuff, like to talk about, you know, radical cutting, what was the term you said radical reduction? Radical subtract.

Well, you have to know what to subtract. And the only way you can know what to subtract is if you know what you have to keep. And I do think culturally, while we're very encouraged to take out a lot of work and stay busy and burn ourselves out, there's almost no cultural push to figure out what's important to you. And if you don't do that, of course you're going to get lost in this stuff because you're not going to know what's important and what can get cut. You can't make those cuts until you know what you got to keep. Exactly. And that's hard work.

It's easier to just continue to go with the flow and live a default life. It seems like it's easier, but it's not. Exactly. Exactly. In the moment, in your busy day to day to think about, well, I need to get away for a couple of hours or a day to think my deep thoughts and decide what's really important to me, I don't have time for that. You don't have time not to do that, I would argue. Because I've experienced that. I think I've kind of nailed it down because I was 42.

I remember 42 because that was like a magic number, right? and that was when I finally started, like, getting serious about figuring out who I am and what's important to me. But from, like, 27 to 42, those 15 years, I was, like, doing my career, trying to keep the family afloat and really not thinking about that stuff. And I had this itchy feeling in the back of my head that I needed to figure my life out more, but I didn't know where to start. I didn't know how to do it and the thought of like taking that on felt so overwhelming but you know when i finally did like everything else you realize it's not that hard and if you had just done this 15 years ago you would have been in such a better place you know exactly but uh but that is i mean i think that's the

that's the through line of this entire show is you got to figure that stuff out but once again here's an example of where it helps you figure that stuff out take the first step and then don't get discouraged if it doesn't happen as fast as you want it to because that's the other thing is that if you are moving towards burnout and you start fighting against it, the recovery timeline may be longer than you think it would be or it should be. And that's okay. Progress, not perfection, eventually you'll get there. Now, if you are not completely burned out, right, but you want to establish some boundaries to protect against this. I think maybe the next thing we should do is talk about some of the ways that we can build

some resistance to burnout. And this applies to everybody, I would argue. Okay. Let's get started then. Okay. So the number one thing I think that you can do to build resistance to burnout is to implement margin as a lifestyle design principle. And margin is something that I really started to understand when I worked with Sean Blanc at the Blanc Media and the focus course. He's got a whole section in there about the importance of margin. And I just actually was reviewing that course material the other day. And it's so good. The thing about margin is that we have margin maybe in different areas of our life. So you have to kind of figure out what are the areas that you're

going to keep tabs on. So Sean's got five of them. I think. think that he talks about, but you can kind of probably identify the major areas. Do you have mental margin? Do you have emotional margin, physical margin, financial margin, time margin, things like that. So time margin could be the ability to, like you were talking about David, something happens at home and you just are not going to work today. You're going to deal with the family thing and it's going to be okay. If you don't have time margin, you take that approach, then everything comes crashing down. Financial margin, that's the one you alluded to this earlier when I went out of my own. I had no financial margin. That caused a lot of stress. So these different areas of your life,

they're connected, they overlap, and a lack of margin to one area produces stress in all the areas. So you kind of have to take stock of where you're at on a regular basis and then do what you can to establish some margin in all of those areas. I will say I think physical margin is probably the one that is the most important because if you don't have physical margin, then you don't feel well. You have no energy. Maybe you're sick a lot of the time. You know, if you're not if you're not feeling well, you really can't do the other stuff. So take care of that one. But then all of the, all of the other ones really is just identifying, this is where I'm feeling the squeeze. You know, what could I do to alleviate some of that pressure? And then when you have that margin, what it does is it

allows you to kind of roll with the punches a little bit as you, because it's going to happen. You know, you're going to go through life and things aren't going to go the way that you, you plan that they were going to or the way that you wanted them to, and you got to be able to kind of figure things out on the fly. Margin allows you to do that. Mike, I want to talk about that for a minute, this idea. Something I've been dealing with personally is I've had a busy six months on me. I did grade on the scores. I don't think I'm burning out or anything, but just, you know, we had a host change on Mac Power users. I released the productivity field guide, but then went quickly. into this robot field guide.

And now I'm doing effectively three hours a week of workshops in that, in addition to all the other stuff I'm doing. So right now I'm going through a period where I'm busier than I'd like to be. Some days I don't get to check off all my shop time boxes and everything because of that. And I'm aware that that is busier than I would like to be. But I feel like what I'm doing is I'm buying myself margin for the rest of the rest of the of the year by doing this. And I'm just, I am powering through to a certain extent right now, but I see I'm already making plans for what I'm going to do with my margin later in the year.

And I don't feel like that's a burnout situation, but I think part of the reason why I don't feel that way is because I went into it knowingly and with a plan and understand that this is not a permanent situation. You went into it knowingly with a plan. and you had the margin to accommodate it for right now. If you had been doing this this way for the last 10 years, you probably would feel a little bit differently about the workload. But because it's a temporary thing, yeah, you can push through. That's the whole idea behind having the margin.

And I think it's okay to, you know, for this period, I'm not going to have margin in this particular area. You're right. Recognizing that is kind of important. I was going to say key to the, making it work. But the real idea behind all that, I think, is the intentional imbalance where you're not maintaining perfect balance in all the different areas of your life all the time. You're focusing on different areas for different periods. And it's okay to say, I'm going to put my thumb on

the scale a little bit for this area right now. There are going to be ramifications for that in some other areas. But it's okay. It's just for, you know, the next three months or whatever. And then I'll reevaluate. And really, in three months, that's the key. is like, do you still continue to do that or do you course correct? Do you go back the other way? Because I think you kind of got to have that give and take. Otherwise, that's when it can lead to a burnout situation. And in fairness, I'm still making it to Pilates and doing the shop time. It's not such a lift that I have to stop doing all the things that bring me joy. Yeah. Now, so far, systems thinking has been a villain in this episode, right? Yeah. Okay. Is there a way

systems thinking can help us out of this? Yeah, so I like this phrase, build systems that sustain, not systems that squeeze. So systems that sustain, to me, what that means is I have this standard that I want to maintain

for the different areas of my life that is different than the amount of work that I am able to ship. It's building in systems, that are going to protect margin in different areas or bolster other areas that are not work for me. One example of a system that sustains, I think, because my relationships are important to me. My relationships with my kids and my wife specifically is that we have a weekly date night on Tuesday nights most of the time. And then a weekly one-on-one with one of my kids where I take a different kid to a coffee shop and we just hang out,

play games for an hour. Those are systems that I can prioritize, regardless of how busy the work is, most of the time. Again, most weeks, I'm able to hit both of those, not every week. That's okay. I'm able to do it much more than I'm not able to do it. And that sustains those areas of my life, instead of trying to pack more and more things in, if that makes sense. So I mentioned at the beginning the system that I was able to build to produce these book summary videos. That could be viewed as a system that squeezes. I don't view it that way because I was doing these things already as part of the main channel. And this is a different way that it gets applied. Those are important to me because I'm reading all these books. I'm doing all this work already anyways. I wanted

another way to repurpose the things that I was already doing. It's not an additional thing. It's just a different avenue for those videos. And it's a more efficient way that it's going to allow me to do it on a consistent basis. But if I were to decide, you know what, I think I'm going to launch another business that is going to build a SaaS product that is sort of related to the things that I do, but it's its own entity. You know, that's the type of thing that I've, I view as a system that squeezes. Yeah, I could dial in that system and I could figure out this is, you know, how it's how it's going to work and put that into the time that I have available. But the thing we got to fight against with the margin specifically is if you pack that schedule,

right, we try to do things more and more efficiently with the 40 hours that we got or whatever number of hours we're working. We compress that a little bit. Now we've got a little bit more, more time, a system that squeezes is going to fill that with more work, and then that's going to get compressed, and then you get a little bit more time, and then you're going to fill that with more work until you get to the point where it's unsustainable. So I don't know if that makes sense. Maybe you want to, how do you view the difference there between sustaining and squeezing? Does that, does that make sense to you? No, it's very much on my mind right now, because we're talking at the beginning of the show of the robot assistant and getting AI to do some of the donkey work for us. And I know that there's a part of me.

It's like, well, if it's doing the donkey work, then I can create more stuff. I can write more. I can make more creative work. And I'm really trying to use the boon of that to get into the bonsai garden and the shop and work on my body and, you know, spend time with my kids. I'm trying to look at that as an opportunity to find time for other pursuits, not to take on more. But that's obviously something that a person like me struggles with, you know, because it's very easy for me to want to compress that and say, okay, now I have a row between this. I can do more.

And yeah, I'm aware of it. And I think that's something we all have to be careful about. Yep, we do. And then kind of related to that, one of the things, on the list here, which I really like this. We know we need to say no at some point, right? But it's hard to say no in the moment. We don't want to be the bad guy.

We don't want to let people down. We don't want to disappoint anyone. So framing it this way, I thought, was pretty brilliant. Saying no is an act of integrity, not an act of laziness. What does that mean? Saying no as an act of integrity means I'm going to say no to this thing because it's not the most important thing to me. And in the moment, you see the person's eyes and they're disappointed because you're not doing the thing for them. And they think maybe the story you tell yourself is

they think I'm lazy. I'm just not willing to help them with this. And so recognizing that, no, I have to say no sometimes, but it's so that I can say yes to the things that are truly important to me and be the best version of myself show up in the best way for the people that are the most important to me. It kind of changes the discussion a little bit. Yeah, you have to have those big yeses in your life, though, again, to get back to the point to have that integrity. A little hack I use is I, for real commitments, you know, someone asked me to come speak somewhere or something, I just have a rule that say I'm not allowed to say yes until I sleep on it. And that's something I developed 10 years ago.

And people know when they ask me, I'll say, okay, well, let me think about it. I'll sleep on it. I never say yes immediately. And that has given me the space to say no. So if that helps, try that. I love that. And then also I know you've got your Artae stuff. I've got my life theme,

but any sort of like personal mission statement, that can kind of act, or core values, that can act as a commitment filter. You still do have to deal with your limits and you can't say yes to everything that's in alignment with those things. But for me anyways,

I'm going to sleep on it. And I like that rule, you know, where you sleep on it and maybe I'll come back and say yes then. But if it doesn't connect to that sort of, that's those important documents, you know, the where you've identified, this is really what's important to me. That should be blaring in your, your ear. Like this is not something that is worth your time, energy, and attention right now because it's not congruent with what you say is really important to you. And that overnight yes thing, you have to use it in all circumstances, even when you think it's an obvious yes.

Yeah. That you just kind of have to do that consistently. That's the way I practice it. And sometimes I will come back and say yes. But other times I'll come back and say no when I might have said yes. Because in that moment, there is a lot of pressure on you. Like they're especially if you're in the room with the person, they're looking at you and you want to please them. Right.

So give yourself that. need help with this. Do you ever say no immediately or do you always take a space before you respond? I, you know, I used to clerk for a judge and he always would tell me if you're going to give a really bad ruling and you know that they're going to really be upset, just take it under submission. That's what the judges call it, you know, and then issue it so you don't have to deal with the lawyer having a tantrum in the courtroom. room. And that stuck with me. So a lot of times, oh, boy, I'm giving way all my secrets here, Mike. But a lot of times I'll just say, I need to sleep on it, even though I know it's going to be a no. That's good advice. I like that. Yeah. All right. So if you're trying to figure out, you know, what is one thing that you could do today that's going to help you build some resistance to

burn out? I think the question to answer is, what's one thing on your plate? right now that you would drop if you were being fully honest with yourself. And maybe, like David said, you don't have to make the rash decision today. You can sleep on it, but start identifying some of those things because we've got them if we look for them. Yeah. And I would pair that with what's the one thing that brings you joy that you're not doing? Like if you drop something, what could you do that brings you more joy to help you suck the marrow out of life, right?

You know, what is your version of the shop time or the basketball game? And how do you find time to do that to make your life more enjoyable? This episode of The Focus podcast is brought to you by Incogni. Go to Incogni.com slash focus and take your personal data back with Incogny. Use the code focused with that link and get 60% off an annual plan. Almost everyone experiences robocalls from time to time. If you've ever wondered how they keep getting your number, the answer is data brokers.

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Protect your privacy with Incogny and experience peace of mind when your personal information is safe. Take your personal data back with Incogny and use code focused via the link in the show notes to get that 60% off an annual plan. Check it out now, incogny.com slash focused. And our thanks to Incogny for the their support of the Focus Podcasts and Olive Relay. Well, Mike, that was fun.

Let's move to the mundane, though. We like to talk about our shiny new objects. What have you bought lately? We do. I bought a new Bluetooth water bottle called Lark. Did your water bottle need a firmware update? It does sometimes. But this one, yeah, so I had a Bluetooth water bottle previously.

and it was actually the thing that got me to drink enough water for the first time in my life, and that has had a lot of positive health benefits for me. So I feel pretty strongly about the value of this sort of thing, especially for me. But the one that I was using, the battery was no longer lasting more than a couple of days. And I started looking at, you know, what's out there because I've been using the same one for probably five plus years at this point. And came across this one by a company called Lark. And it's just a very nice, minimal water bottle that you probably wouldn't even know is Bluetooth. There's no, like, fancy glowing LED puck that flashes in your face when you don't drink enough.

It has a very subtle LED rim on the top of the bottle, which will flash when it registers that you've drank water. And then it's got an app that tracks all that stuff and sinks it all to Apple Health. And so I like to keep tabs on that sort of thing. It also has a built-in filter. And so I've tried like the Life Straws before. Are you familiar with those? No, I'm not. Okay, so Life Straw kind of was made famous by, it's this filter.

You can, you know, bring it to and drink out of the dirty rivers in the middle of nowhere because it filters out all the nasty stuff, right? So that was a big, big deal back in the day. And this one basically that I got, has a filter built into it as well. So not that I'm traveling all the time, but when I do go to a conference or something, I don't know that I'm going to have access to filtered water all the time. It's nice. I can just feel it from the tap in the bathroom, my hotel room, and the filter is going to catch all the nasty stuff. This one, it has a feature also where it's self-cleaning. I don't know exactly how it does this, but one of the other things with the water bottles is that they can get a little nasty after a while, and I don't remember to clean them as often as I should. So this one actually, about once a day, will clean the bottle for you. And yeah, it's nice.

The battery lasts. I bought it about a month ago, and I just had to recharge it for the first time yesterday. So last pretty long, and I like the way that it looks. Excellent. I got, this one I didn't buy. It was given to me.

We had a sponsor of Mac power users. Insta 360. You know, they make those 360 cams. They are getting into the kind of the home support and they have a video camera on a gimbal now i don't know if you've seen like a webcam it's really nice and but they have a set now you can get and mine it has a speaker it's like a little column and it's very cool it lifts up when you turn it on and it's a it's a microphone and speakerphone and then the camera just attaches to the top of it so all together it's a really nice little set

if you do a lot of home like Zoom calls or conferencing. And it's an excellent microphone. So the other benefit of it that I've really been enjoying is I do a lot of dictation. And I like having a really good microphone. My Mac Studio does not have a really good microphone. And I've got a really good microphone array on my desk in addition to a camera and a speaker. And it's called the Insta 360 Wave. Full disclosure it was given to me, but I am really digging this thing.

I think I'd probably buy one if I didn't have it sent to me. Nice. I'll have to check that out. I'm a big fan of Insta 360. I've got a couple of the little link cameras on my desk. Yeah. Well, this has got the link two with it, which is the newest one. It's got the bigger sensor.

And I don't know. I just feel like I've really upped my audio and video quality for that type of stuff. I mean, obviously, I also have a nice rig here with it. podcast microphone things. But you know, for normal calls, I don't want to set all that up. This thing really is an improvement. What do you read these days, Mike? We recently read the Way of Excellence by Brad Stolberg for the Bookworm podcast, and I dig this book. Yeah. I find the whole topic of excellence to be fascinating. And this is a book that has two different parts. The first part It's kind of the foundational philosophy type stuff.

And that part I didn't really care for. But the second part, he gets into all the different characteristics. So there's like a short chapter on the relationship between failure and burnout and things like that. So I thought it was pretty interesting. Brad Stolberg is a friend of Cal Newport's. That's how I found out about the book. He was on the Cal Newport podcast.

and I guess spoiler alert for the bookroom episode. I rated it four stars. I think it's pretty good. I would imagine that the people who listen to the Focus podcast, specifically the people who this burnout episode has resonated with, would really like some of the stuff that Brad talks about in that book. So yeah, I recommend that. I'll check it out.

I finished a nonfiction book. talked about in the last episode. I'm doing fiction right now. So I thought I'd just share. It's not reading a book, but listening to a book, but there is a cast recording of the Harry Potter series on Audible. And I haven't listened or read those books for a long time, but just on a whim, I got the first one. And I'm really enjoying it. And it's the full book. You know, the movies are a concise version. They don't include everything. So there's a lot of stuff that happened in the book that I forgot. I read these books to my kids when they're little and now my kids are grown.

So it's kind of fun listening to them and I'm enjoying it. So the cast recordings of Audible at Audible for the Harry Potter series are a great listen. Awesome. We are the Focus podcast. You can find this at relay.com slash focus. We're about to do a feedback episode. So maybe get some feedback on the burnout episode or any other topics we've covered recently. We love to hear from you.

There's a feedback form right at the website at relay.fm slash focus. If you are a deep focus subscriber, and if you are, we appreciate that. You get the ad for extended version of the show. Today we're going to talk about journaling, check-in, and where AI fits with that. We've got a couple things around journaling we wanted to talk about. So we're going to be covering those in today's Deep Focus episode. And thank you for all your support. Thank you to our sponsors this week.

and that is our friends at vitally incogny and gusto, and we'll see you next time.