Focused - 33: When You Say Yes to Everything

Episode Date: October 31, 2017

On Halloween, David and Jason revamp the podcast with a new format. David struggles with how he's spending his time. Jason tries to figure out when to say no and gets a better perspective about how well his business is doing, prompted by a job inquiry from a former co-worker.

David Sparks and Jason Snell spent their careers working for the establishment. Then one day, they'd had enough. Now, they are independent workers, learning what it takes to succeed in the 21st century. They are free agents. Welcome back to Free Agents, a podcast about being an independent worker in a digital age. I'm David Sparks and joined by my fellow host, Mr. Jason Snell. Hey, David. How's it going? Great, Jason. Happy Halloween. Oh, yes. As we release this episode, it is scary, spooky Halloween.

The most frightening of all days for independent workers. Yes. the most frightening of all days for independent workers yes because there's like people roaming your neighborhood in costumes small people yeah i know it's uh they want candy they get very angry if you don't give it to them i have some halloween themed stuff i think for the listeners if you're if you're home tonight you want to get in the mood uh if you're a subscriber to relay chasen did an excellent spooky manor uh bonus content this year that was with gray and mike that i listened to i listened to it too early i guess i'll have to go back and listen to it again on halloween but it's very good i i chose it i didn't choose it for the halloween theme i just chose it because i thought it was the

next one we should do because we also did one that was a sort of Wild West themed. But it is Halloween themed. It is there in Exploring a Haunted House. So if you aren't a Relay member, you should check that out. You can support free agents. You go to relay.fm slash membership and it's in there along with lots of other stuff, including our conversation about what we do when we're not working, which is. Yes. And a lot of other great bonus stuff too. Yeah.

But that, but spooky manner would be great to listen to as you're giving candy out tonight. So you can hear me be a spooky computer and a, a spooky video game that they're playing text adventure game that they're playing. Also, I will point people to the incomparable,

uh, all October. We've been doing a, uh, a dungeons and dragons thing on the total party kill podcast that's set in a haunted house and there are bats and vampires and a frankenstein and all sorts of other stuff werewolves are in there yeah there's a lot of ghosts there are ghosts too spooky ghosts it is a full-on haunted house uh dnd adventure and we started a couple years ago

and i've been doing it every october and it wraps up uh today in fact if you're listening to this on halloween the last episode of that story is today so it's complete and you could go listen to the whole save off manor shocktober story if you'd like did you know there's a dnd about star wars there's a whole like dnd series and rules and all that yeah the the amount of role playing on different uh subjects is kind of staggering like if if you can dream it there's a you know there's a marvel superheroes uh one um that they made in the 80s that i used to play when i was a kid uh yeah there are lots of them that themed too but i had to find a group of star wars nerds i want to do this but i don't know even how to get

it started but i'm going to figure it out at some point yeah yeah i bet it would be fun uh so this is a new kind of episode for us everybody out there has remembered that we do like we interview people and then we do topics but we're going to change it up 33 33 episodes in, 66 weeks into this show. It's time to, I mean, this could be a topic unto itself, which is it's time to reflect and adapt. You know, we had a big list of topics that we wanted to cover. And I feel like that was good that we did those topics, you know, the single subject shows. But we kind of got a lot of that out of our system. And the thing we found is, as we get deeper into this free agent journey, there's stuff that is happening to us that we want to talk about, but it doesn't fit in that week's topic. So we don't talk about it.

And, you know, we kind of want to be a little more indulgent, frankly, and talk about that stuff because I think it's kind of relevant. Yeah, I had that moment a couple of weeks ago where something happened and I was like, boy, this would be great to talk about on the show. And then I thought, but when? Like, when would we do that? Could we shoehorn that into a topic? And like, yeah, to your point, I feel like we have covered sort of all the basics that we have experience with and that we know anything about. You know, we're not experts. This is not a, you know, business entrepreneurship podcast where we say that we are experts about everything you should do. This is much more about

like how we are coping with our journeys as independent workers. And so, um, now that we've kind of run out that this was the choice is do we continue talking about our journeys or do we kind of delve into subjects that we don't actually know a whole lot about? We got a very nice email from somebody saying, I'd like you to talk about HR. And it was a very nice email. It was a great email from a very nice listener. And I thought about responding. And then before I did, David responded and said, basically, thank you so much for writing. We don't know anything about HR, right?

And so I think we're making a concerted decision to have the show we're going to keep doing interviews um alternating with uh what i would call kind of like a regular podcast episode where we talk about what's been going on in our lives as independent workers and how that has affected us and decisions we've made and struggles that we've had we'll try to do uh you know some uh mentions of other conversations that we think are interesting about these subjects, if we see links or podcast episodes about them. And we hope to regularly incorporate your feedback and questions into the show. So if you want to think about it as sort of like every month, we'll do a regular episode where we talk and have links and do follow-up and listener questions.

we talk and have links and do follow-up and listener questions. And then every month we'll also do an interview show. That's sort of what we're planning on doing with this. That's a good summary. Yeah. So I think it's going to be good and we'll tweak it as we go. And I do think this is one of those lessons of analysis of we've been doing it for a little while. It's worth looking at what were our assumptions going in? How has it progressed? How has it changed? And it's always worth looking at the stuff that you're doing every so often. It's almost like you should set a timer for it or put a calendar event, or at the very least have that, hopefully a timer that goes off in your brain that says, um, you're doing it the same way every month, but is it working? Like it was working

last time you checked, but how long has it been since you checked? And when I, uh, like lifted my head up and thought about free agents, this is what I came to is like, I feel like we're running out of those topics that, that, uh, excite me. And I just kind of want to go back to what's funny is go back to the original Genesis of this podcast, which is you and I having a conversation about the journey that we were taking. And so I'm hoping we can kind of capture a little bit more of that in these episodes. Amen, brother. Amen.

And with that, I'm going to move on to essentially a follow-up section like many other podcasts do, although it's really more of a follow-out section where I'm going to tell you about a couple of things that are happening out in the world that I think are worth noting. We had a couple of people on the Facebook page point to an episode of Under the Radar here on RelayFM, episode 102. And this is, if you don't know, this is a podcast about sort of iOS development and marketing, uh, by David Smith and Marco Arment who are independent iOS developers. Um, I think I can reveal that Marco will be our guest on our next episode. Yeah.

So people should check in for that. But this episode is really interesting because it's called procrastinate working. And it is about, um, both of these guys having this one particular set of behavior that I really recognized in myself. I don't know if you do this, David, but it's, as the episode description says, procrastinating by working on other productive tasks instead of the big one we really don't want to do. And I do this all the time. I did this back when I worked for the man. I do it now, which is there's this big thing that I need to do and I don't want to do it.

And so I solve the problem by working on something else, right? Something else that needs to get done, but that is not the thing that I should probably be doing right now. And I'm of two minds on that. Sometimes I feel like that's actually good because all that stuff does need to get done. The danger is if you're doing something that needs to be done in the next month and avoiding something that needs to be done in the next month and avoiding something that needs to be done in the next day, because those two things are not the same. So do you do this? I have a gold star in procrastination. I'm very good at it.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a, uh, I think, uh, it's human nature in a way. I mean, what's nice about it is the other way to do this is to just procrastinate and not do anything helpful and i i do that less often although every now and then i find myself um vacuuming or uh you know cleaning out a corner of the house or something and realize why am i doing or mowing the lawn and it's like why did i choose to do this right now and the answer is because again i'm avoiding the the work or just watching a baseball game. I suppose that could also happen. So this is more productive as an independent worker. We talk about it.

You need to do all sorts of things that you didn't used to have to do because you need to manage your business. And that's good stuff for procrastinate working, right? But as long as you don't lose sight of the fact that you do actually have to do those tasks eventually. Yeah. In fact, the thing that I'm excited about this month and talking about later in the show is all about this problem because I am trying to hold myself more accountable and it's kind of

scary as I'm starting to see the results. All right. So we'll dive into that a little bit more. I had one other link that we'll put in the show notes as well, which is a story on maxstories.net by John Voorhees, who's been contributing to them for quite a while. And he's the author of a couple of iOS apps that I use all the time, Blink and Associate or Associate, depending on how you want to pronounce that word. And it's called My App Story and it's about John going from being a lawyer to being a lawyer with a side business doing software development and writing about Apple stuff

to quitting his job as a lawyer and just doing the Apple stuff full time. Sound familiar, David? Yeah, John's a good friend and him and I have talked a lot because we have a similar journey and uh he he took it a little bit further than i did he he has absolutely he's just stopped me and a lawyer whereas i'm i'm still kind of living in both worlds but but he just he

just did that and uh he wrote a great uh piece about it over at mac stories and if you uh if you want to know more uh our plan is that John will be our November guest for free agents. So come back for that. That should be a really great conversation. All right. That's the follow-up section. That's new. There it is.

How are we doing so far? I think you did that really well, Jason. All right. I'm on a lot of podcasts, David. I do a lot of podcasts. So, David, you mentioned it. We should talk about it. What's going on with you and analyzing what you're doing? we started the show was when I had made the decision, I'm going to stop being a trial lawyer, which takes a tremendous amount of time, very lucrative. It's, you know, the, if you go back and listen to the first show, you hear me explain why I decided to make a lot less money. And, um,

but I feel like I started the journey there, but I didn't really finish it. If that makes sense. I guess that kind of relates to John's idea. It's very difficult to do two things, you know, to be a lawyer, a business lawyer, and also to write books and do the kinds of things I do for Max Sparky. And yet I'm not willing to go all in one direction or the other. I actually enjoy a great deal, both of my jobs, but I wanted, when I started this journey to get better at balancing them, you know, and, and that was the whole reason I left the firm because the firm, you know, they took so much of my time that I had didn't have control over. And I said, well, if I would only, you know, get out of here and be in control of my own destiny, I would do a better job of managing my time. So I would have more time to

do projects that are important to me. And I had a limited degree of success with that. But now that I've been out a couple of years, I realized that in a lot of ways, I've been building my own, you know, you know, traps that I was in at the old place, but I've been making them myself, you know, and, and it's really led me to question, I finally got a new book out. I mean, it took me a year and a half, but it's a, uh, I did a book with Brett Terpstra. It's a tips book, which is one of the easier projects for me to do in terms of writing a book. It took about three months, but there's another book I started writing before I left the firm that still hasn't been released. You know, it's a, it's got a lot of words in it and a lot of work involved. And,

and I started thinking, well, why is it that I can't get this thing done? And, um, I decided to kind of go back to the basics. So the obsession I've had the last couple of weeks is figuring a way to get better at figuring out how I'm spending my time. You know, the other thing that, that kicked this off for me is I started working with my accountant on my taxes and I was looking at how much money I earn on the various things I do. And I was thinking that in comparison to the amount of time I spend on them. Like, I mean, I'm not getting rich, but I'm doing okay with the books and stuff I make. And yet I still don't give them, I give them a fraction of the time that I give the legal and some of the other stuff I'm doing in my life. So, um, I, I want to, uh, get better at figuring out. I want to, I want to make

changes, I guess is the thing. So, but I didn't, I don't want to make changes blindly. I want to get smart about it. So I I've decided I'm going to be really good at tracking my time for a little while and seeing how I'm spending it. Does that make sense? Yep. Yep. Totally, totally get it. I mean, right. I, I've, I feel like I've, I've, I've been in some of those same circumstances where you feel like you're sliding back into, uh, ways you've done it before. And you look around and say, so much time has passed in this project that I always have right on the horizon and it's never happened. Yeah. Something super important to me. I'm super passionate about. And then I find every day I spend an hour answering email and an hour, you know, dealing with some other nonsense. And I started realizing

is all this stuff more important to me than this project that I want to finish. And obviously it's not so, but nonetheless, I've let myself make that project, you know, the last in line of everything I do. And so I want to figure that out. So I didn't just start cutting things. I decided I was going to go about this smart. And another show I would reference is Gray and Mike on… Cortex. Cortex, sorry.

Cortex. I have a cold. The one with the monkey brain. Yeah, I know. I'm heavily medicated today. I'll tell you. Okay. It's a special medicated edition of free brain. Yeah, I know. I'm heavily medicated today. I'll tell you. It's a special medicated edition of free. Yes, there you go. So they did the thing on, on tracking time. And, and as a lawyer, you always track your time because you,

a lot of the work you do is based on how much time you spend for clients, but I'd never really done a, a global, you know, track your time thing. So I started using, we have this great app. In fact, they were sponsored our show called timing that works on the Mac. So I can use timing to keep track of what I'm doing on the Mac. And then I also wanted to keep track of time I was spending elsewhere. So I started using this app toggle, which Federico and Mike and everybody's big fan of. And I've, I've created a bunch of workflows so I can kind of script and make it easy to push the button to track the time. And I've been doing that religiously for the last couple of weeks. I'm going to continue as we record the show.

October's not over, but by the end of October, I'm going to have a nice pile of good data so I can really see where is my time going? How much time am I spending on email for Max Barkey versus law? How much time, you know, all this stuff that I'm doing. And I also am kind of thinking about it in terms of how many of these things really need to be, be a priority. How many things actually need to be done? How many things can I give to somebody else to do? Maybe hire somebody to do some of these things for me, but I want to get better at managing what I'm doing. And I think fundamentally, I think right now that the first thing I need to do is get my arms around what it is I'm doing, because some of the data collection stuff I'm already

finding is really off. Like I thought I was spending a lot of time and OmniFocus, you know, which is the task manager. And I'm thinking, well, maybe I'm, maybe that's my procrastinate working is sitting in there and fiddling with my tasks for hours a day. So I don't get anything done, but I'm finding I don't, I mean, I'm maybe spending two hours a week with task management, which, you know, if you put that over seven days, it's really not that bad, but I'm spending a lot more time in email than I thought I was. And so I, I'm just learning things that I didn't know. And I think that's a really good step for me is getting my arms around what's happening. But, uh, I don't really have any answers right now, but this is something that's definitely on my mind right now. Uh, I am kind of, my expectations are open right now. I just

want to get the data and then figure it out. But I know that I need to make changes because I'm not happy. And I'm not sure where that all goes. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I've definitely done some of this analysis myself. And I need to do more too. It is, I can't decide how much of the tracking is using the data from the tracking and how much of it is knowing the truth of what is being tracked and changing my behavior because I know that truth is being tracked. If that makes, I mean, the way, the way I described this experiment affects this subject.

Yeah, exactly right. when I was counting calories, which I did for a while, um, because I was trying to lose weight and, uh, which I did. Um, and I was very grumpy because I wasn't eating enough. This was happening. My wife was like, you are very grumpy now, uh, and unpleasant to be around, maybe eat some more. Um, uh, when I was doing that, I realized very rapidly that after an initial period of time, where I kind of understood the data and started to understand how many calories everything was that I ate and what things were, were fewer calories and what things were more and what my habits were. Um, after that kind of brief reconfiguration period, I continued to track, but the tracking no longer mattered because I had internalized sort of like the truth about where I was in that case, eating calories that were a waste and, and didn't provide the, uh, the joy, uh, in, in return for

the cost, if that makes any sense. And I feel like that is the truth of some of this timing stuff is, uh, is at some point what you get is insight which is whether using timing app or a toggle or there are lots of other time trackers out there and timing is a past sponsor didn't sponsor this episode so we're just kind of talking about them but full disclosure um they i wonder how much of it is um ongoing data feedback or whether it really is just sort of like getting through that first moment of realization of like, oh, I see what I do. Like I see that I think I'm being productive, but then the web browser opens for 40 minutes

and it seems like no time has passed, but an entire, you know, almost hour goes by where there's nothing. Or alternately you look at and say, wow wow i do this thing and it takes a whole lot of time and it's like the empty calories analogy it's really not like now that i know how much i spend on this and i know how much it's it matters to me in terms of you know life or in terms of revenue for your business and you realize oh like now that i know how much time i'm spending it really is a bad move. I need to do less of that.

But you have to have that moment of realization. I don't see myself continuing to track time as aggressively as I am now once I kind of figure this out. To me, it's a diagnostic step. I don't need to know to the minute how much time I spend writing posts or whatever. But I need to get an idea of where I'm spending my time, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, that's absolutely it. And for me, it's very similar. Like there are different parts, especially if you're trying to open up a hole in your schedule, which is what you're trying to do and what I really would like to do too, which is how do I find more time to do what I want to do? And one way you do that is you take

inventory. You find out where you're spending all your time. You find out what, you know, essentially, without necessarily some people make a spreadsheet, but I think mentally, you rank the and weight, all of those projects, and you see which ones are out of whack. And that gives you a chance to kick things out, or change your behavior, or, or deprioritize things or some combination of all of those things to open a hole so that you can put in, in your case, getting those books out. And for me, it might be working on updating my photos book that I'm doing, or it could be finishing the rewrite of my novel that I've been slowly not doing for a year and a half. And, you know, but you can't change your behavior. Well, you can, but it's like, it's better to change it in an educated way, because you realize uh you know but you can't change your behavior well you can but it's like it's better to

change it in an educated way because you realize you know oh now i see where i'm wasting that time or not spending it not always wasting like not spending it wisely yeah well i what i can say is right now the situation is not acceptable i mean i'm generally working seven days a week and uh not being smart and wise about what i'm doing. And I'm going to make changes. I don't know what they are. I already have an idea of some of the changes I'm going to make, but my goal is at some point in the future, and I guess this is a journey we'll go on with the show is, is I'm going to not only am I going to be have time to do the things that are most important to me, I'm going to have time to do nothing as well. So I just have to figure out how that that's

going to come together, but I'm working on it. on it. Um, you know, one other thing that's on my mind right now is, um, it just kind of an update is I, I just opened my health insurance, uh, update yesterday, got it in the mail. And, um, I was, um, getting, when I first left the, uh, the firm, uh, my insurance was $1,500 a month for the family before next, starting next year, it goes up to 2000. So I'm going to be spending $24,000 a year on insurance. So those of you out there thinking about making a move,

be aware, you know, the stuff is not cheap. Yeah. And it's, and it's shifting and we don't know what, where it's going to go next. Cause there's,

you know, concern about healthcare markets in the U S based on a fund. And it's not even like changing the law but it's like changing the funding everything method of it's just it's a mess so it is this is one of those things where uh i uh my shift from being somebody who has nobody in the house making um uh working full-time to having one person who's working full-time in a regular job, which is my wife, who's a librarian, now full-time. And she has benefits, and that has been a big change in terms of the calculus of our business, right? Because now the healthcare stuff is no longer part of the cost

of running the business, which is previously what we did, is that the business had a benefit that was paying for our healthcare. And so that came out of the the business and now it doesn't and that changes our our finances there but it also really declutters uncomplicates the um the calculation of like what our household costs are because um now suddenly we've got one person so that's a that's a huge thing and i i do hear from a lot of people who say that the reason they are able to be a free agent is because their partner has benefits. And it's a lot harder if nobody does. Well, my second daughter is heading off to college in a couple years.

And as that happens, my wife and I are talking. That may change in my house, too. Daisy may end up going back to work at some point. And, and those are the things that come into the, uh, the equation. Yeah. Let's, uh, I've got some things that I want to talk about, but let's take a break first, uh, to talk about our sponsor. Our sponsor is fresh books. All you free agents out there, you know how important it is to make smart decisions for your business our friends at fresh books can save you up to there's a very precise number 192 hours with their cloud accounting software for freelancers it's ridiculously easy to use simplifies tasks like invoicing tracking expenses and getting paid online which lets fresh books

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billing agent. It's sending the reminders. It's, yeah, just don't worry about it anymore. Let the computer worry about it and you don't have to and you can go back to your work. It's, yeah, just don't worry about it anymore. Let the computer worry about it and you don't have to, and you can go back to your work. It's a great idea. There are more than 10 million users of FreshBooks, like I said, but they are still a pretty small company. They're on Forbes list of best small companies last year as a small giant. And if you're listening to free agents and not using FreshBooks yet, you should really give it a try. It may change how you manage your business. FreshBooks is offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial for listeners of free agents. No credit card is required.

No risk. You just sign up at freshbooks.com slash free agents and enter free agents in the how did you hear about us section so they know that we sent you. Thank you to FreshBooks for supporting free agents. So, Jason, what's on your what's on your mind this month? I had a couple of stories. I think these are the things that I mentioned at the top that I I thought, oh, I'd like to talk to David about that. When will we do that? And one of them is it's similar to what you said. For me, it's sort of like figuring out when to say no to projects and having the information and the mindset to be able to turn down paying work. And we've talked about this on the show many times, but it keeps

coming up for me. And I realized this is one of those areas where I keep kind of backsliding or going back into a default mindset and it can get frustrating. I had a moment where I needed to, for a story that I'll tell in a little bit, I needed to figure out what the what was the overall income that I'm generating, like day to day. First off, you know, a lot of what I do, it's kind of beneath the waves, I've got, I've got some membership stuff for six colors, I've got membership stuff from the incomparable, that's not as visible. I've got freelance, that's a little more visible although again once you're writing something every month or every week the amount of money that you're earning is no longer

negotiated it just sort of happens as you turn in the work and that uh that is very easy to ignore and you know what you lose sight um oh i get you know paid for doing podcasts and stuff but those are like all auto paid and they go into the bank account and lauren is my my business manager basically so she's doing she sees those numbers more than i do i don't see them very very often and so i had this request of her which is can you tell me what our income is like what what does my business generate for us like give me a give me what would have been easy before which everybody generally knows which is what is your salary and i did i didn't know i like literally didn't know and what i found is my assumption is that it's that it's bad and falling and everything is bad and i need to work harder because if i don't keep kicking my legs in the pool, we will just sink to the bottom.

And right. That's just me, too. That's my mindset. That's the default. Yeah, I know. And and so so and the way that behavior what that behavior leads to is that every time I get an email from somebody, it's usually an old colleague at some website or other who says, I've got this freelance story that I'll pay you $500 for or $300 for or whatever it is. And I look at it and think, well, I could do that.

And that wouldn't take too much time. And it's money. And I say yes. And that happens every time. I say yes. I take the work. I add it to my pile. And that has two effects, which is now I'm working more, even more.

I added it to a pretty full stack already. And it also means that in my particular case, it may also mean that I'm now spending time on that instead of kind of ongoing business development, whether that's more content for six colors or membership things or something for the incomparable or, you know, some other, or, or working on that, that book that I want to update, right. That which is less visible gets deferred sort of silently. It gets deferred. It gets, it gets, uh, uh, you know, shrunk. Um, but I would kept saying, yeah. So, so anyway, I get the number and, um, I found that the income, big surprise, the income that, uh, my business is generating

way above what I've internalized, uh, that we were doing great. We're supporting our family. Um, you know, it's not one of those things where you look at it and go, Oh boy, I can just stop working. Cause we've made so much money. It's not like that, but it's like. Not buying the condo in Hawaii. No, no, nothing like that. But, but like it's going well, it's going fine. suck up a day and i and push my work into the weekend or into the evenings or whatever when i don't when we're doing fine like why would i do that like every again it's easy it's easy to talk about this if you are turning down work and there are i want to be understanding of the people that sometimes people really are struggling and trying to find work and you're never going to turn it down.

But there does come a point where it doesn't make sense to accept certain work because it's not worth the time because you're already at the limit of what you can do or beyond the limit of what you can do. And that was what I realized. And that was great because I got to internalize, at least for a while until I forget again, I get to internalize that we're doing better and that my judgments about what work I should prioritize should be reset to new levels and new priorities, which is great. Which is great, except you know what happens next, right? Which is I tell myself, okay, we're doing okay, so I cannot do all this work. And this is, I've never thought of myself as a workaholic. I don't think I am. I think it's a dumb term, too, because it means you're addicted to workahol, which is not a thing. But I can see the mindset now.

Now I understand it on a level that I never did before. And it's this, which is, um, then I say to myself, I'm going to free up space to do other projects or to not work at certain times where I've been working all this time because I've been working really hard. And that's great. Except then I get the buzz, the paranoia in the back of my head when I'm not working that says, oh, you're not working. This is bad, which is a which is a real struggle that I'm having, which is how do I truly grant myself as my inner boss grant myself permission to not think about work for a while, not be working on a project to sit on the couch and watch a baseball game? Like, again, I don't want to be irresponsible. I don't want to say, Oh, this week, I'm just not working because I don't feel like it. But I also want to give grant myself the ability to truly stop work for a little while because I don't need to work. And that getting

that machine to stop the one that, that, that drives me the rest of the time is a real struggle. I have to admit, you know, like my, my mom, I talked about in the extra show or the show, when we talked about my origin story, you know, my parents were in the depression and they taught, they told me the stories all the time growing up. And my, my mom's family had it really hard. They didn't have any money. They, they moved into an abandoned cabin and just, you know, like when, when we had all those foreclosures a few years ago, all those people losing their homes, I would wake up in sweats sometimes for no reason at all. I mean, I've got enough money. I can pay my house payment, but there's part of me that is just terrified that I'm going to make some mistake at some point

where we're just going to lose everything. And it's not even rational, but it's part of me. And I have a huge problem with saying no as a result of that. And the thing I've been trying to focus on is finding small victories in this. Like lately I've realized I say yes to almost every legal client that walks in the door when I shouldn't. And can I start saying no to people maybe because it's not the kind of work I want to do, or maybe I just don't, I don't think it's the right fit with the person. And how much happier would I be if I did a little bit less of this? And, um, but i i don't i think you and i both struggle with this yeah and again on one level it's a really good problem to have because it means you do have work and you are able to support your family and and and you are you are bringing in money but at the

same time yeah it can be um just really corrosive to your, you know, to, to your life. Yeah. And there's a real cost to your business too. I mean, the opportunity costs when you say yes to everything, it really doesn't allow you to say yes to the big things, the important things. And you're, um, and, and you, you're devaluing yourself. I mean, it's, I, I logically, I understand, but emotionally i have a real hard time with this yeah so it's a this is part of my constant struggle and um and and like i said i feel like i feel like the challenge for me is just to continue to remind myself of how i'm doing like i need to get every um i've talked to lauren about the idea of doing like quarterly reports or something um where i get reminded of the fact that we're

we're fine right just so that i can and again and also be warned if we're not fine but i'm going to assume that the moment i looked away everything went terrible right and now now everything is ruined i'm just gonna that's just that's me i'm going to assume that so i need to um i need to do better at uh at at reminding myself and so that i can properly calibrate what my decisions are about working so i'm not saying oh well i have to do this. And this means that I'm going to work all night or all weekend or whatever. And that's that happens from time to time. But it needs to happen for good reasons, not for dumb reasons that you would never trade. We had this with with Lauren when she was working part time at one point, and I just

gone out on my own. And she picked up this extra shift that was incredibly inconvenient. It got in the way of like all the things we were doing and stuff with the kids and all of that and and at one point we finally sat there and looked at what she was getting paid for these like three hours in the middle of a of the one day she didn't have anything else going on and we were like this isn't worth it like what the the small amount of money you're getting for at a not great rate for three hours in the middle of the day so you can't do anything else with your Friday like the kids or shopping or doing the books for the incomparable, right? And we did the same process, which is, oh, this is not worth our time because it's just going to, for what they're paying us. If somebody came up to you and said, I'd like you to leave your house or leave your office for three hours in the middle of Friday and I'll pay you $100 every week. Some people would take that deal because that's $100.

But a lot of us would be like, wow, that's a real imposition on all the other things I'm working on for not enough money to make it worth it. But you got to see it. You got to translate it to that, which is hard. Well, I guess the theme today is, but I'm looking at how I'm spending my time. You're looking at where your money's coming from. I think both of those are really good ways to try and figure out the best way to go about this. Yeah. I have a related story, which is the reason that I looked at my overall income and I'm going to tell it in a very sort of simplified shadowed way just because it's i think it's interesting i haven't told it anywhere and it's a another kind of mindset thing which is we and we've talked about it before like just because i'm out on my own and i'm very happy i still have people talk about like jobs that come up and I still have a part of me that's

like, oh, that's a real job. I should look at that. Should I be interested in that? Should I go, should I get it? Should I get a real job? It still happens. Like still happens all the time because there's something deep inside me that's like, yeah, what you're doing now, you know, it's not a real job. There's real jobs out there. So I got approached by somebody I used to work with and there's, you know, people who know my background, you could generate some conspiracy theories. I can guarantee you, you don't know who this person is. So there are going to be lots of like, oh, it's one of those guys who went to Apple and that's who approached Jason. And it's not.

So I'll just throw that out there. But I did get approached by somebody I used to work with about a job. that out there but i did get approached by somebody i used to work with about a job and he has a very interesting job at a high profile company in a in a i would say major part of the company and uh and he said we have this potential job and when we discussed it i thought of who i thought of the traits of this person uh this potential job slot. And I thought of you. And even though we haven't worked together for a while, I thought you would be perfect for this. Would you like to talk about this? Now? I so I had that moment, which is like, well, this is, this is weird, and it seems unlikely to progress. And it comes out of the blue. But at the same

time, I was kind of curious, it is a high profile company and job and i had that moment of like there's no harm in talking right um yeah but what and it was a whole process i talked to somebody else it did sound like an interesting job it's very different it's using sort of like the other part of my business skill set that i i don't use as an independent worker that i did use when I was working for the man. And just kind of a fascinating look into how this company does this particular part of their business. And so, you know, I talked to a couple of people there and we set up an interview. And like the day before I was supposed to have the interview, they said, oh, that position's been eliminated, which really reminded me of back in the day when I was working for the man and that kind of crap happened all the time. And it's like, you guys approached me and asked me all these questions and, you know, had me set up travel and all of this stuff. And then at the last minute,

you're like existential hell, never never mind never mind but what i got out of it what that was really valuable was i had that moment and lauren and i were just you know taking a walk walking the dog and we're talking about it and i said i said the thing is what would it take for a in this case and put it in perspective what would it take for a very high profile company to hire me to be in charge of a portion of a business that is, you know, worth a huge amount of money to that company? Like, that's kind of wacky. And again, whatever you're guessing, that's not what it was. It's super weird and tangential. So don't know conspiracy theories, please. But and and so it's like, wow, this is like the reason I'm even talking to them is this is a totally weird but fascinating potential challenge. So it's like, why not see where they're going?

But what I realized is I was talking to Lauren about it. And this is why we looked up like the income and the fact that i work at home and all of these other things i started to realize this huge company that everybody in the world knows and this major part of their business that i would have a you know if i had taken this job if it had been offered etc etc uh had been a big like a big part of that. I had a hard time imagining how they would ever offer me a job that I would want to take. And that was a useful journey. I was like, would I relocate for them?

Would I work out of their San Francisco office for them? Would I do what some people do, which is like work from home two or three days a week and then fly to their location for a couple of days. Would I move my family? Would I tear up my travel? I'd have to give up all my existing business. I started to think of all of these things. And then I thought about what I make and how I work and the fact that I can do it all from home. it was really a kind of an amazing moment where i thought this is almost the it's not the perfect job it was it was different and a little bit unusual i think it would have been very interesting if we had gone further with it to find out exactly what they were thinking but it's not a bad example of like what if somebody just just knocked on your door and

said hey old buddy we used to work together i I work for a giant company. Now we have this awesome job. We want to hire you from it. Would you, would you say yes? And I realized, I bet, I bet not like unless I find it hard to believe that they would make an offer so great that it would be better in terms of money and life than what I'm doing. And so that was a great, that was kind of a great moment. It was annoying that they, that they, uh, canceled it all the day before, although it was kind of a relief too, because it was like, that's going to save me a day of travel and, uh, and job interviews. But, uh, it did put my current uh current status in perspective which may be a long way of saying the thing that we talk about when with our interviews all the time uh which is

um maybe i am kind of ruined for a job like that or certainly things are going well enough in my business right now that uh that it would be very hard for me to leave it and do something else because I have a hard time seeing, it would have to be the kind of thing that would make me stop doing what I'm doing. I think is the kind of thing that doesn't actually exist. It's literally in the realm of fantasy where somebody just parachutes in and says, we'd like to hire you and we'll pay you $2 million a year to, you know, to talk to people all day or something like that. It's things that don't exist are the only things that I think could beat what I'm doing now. And that was a great perspective to have.

Yeah, I'm with you. I don't. For me, you know, the fantasy job just isn't out there. There is no job for a Max Markey. That's an independent thing as it exists. And going into a law firm, to me, it's just not even an option. Well, there's a variety issue with me and with you, too, which is, and you just said it, which is that job, that mythical job that could come and sweep you away is never going to be as varied and and touch you know you've built and i've built businesses that are kind of like the stuff we know how to do and like to do and

have mixed them together and yeah we can fret over the mixture and if we're spending too much time on this and all that but ultimately like a job that comes down the pike is not going to be like that it's going to be doing x and it you know and so that's going to be part of it is any job that came down the pike i'm going to look at it and say well that obviously has something related to what i'm doing or otherwise you wouldn't be interested in me but it doesn't have it's never going to have all the things right never it's it's not possible for it to have all the things that we are able to assemble for ourselves. And that's, I think that's part of the truth of being out on your own is that you, you know, one of the great strengths of this approach is that you get to, uh, assemble a combination of work. Ideally,

that is, um, that is the perfect fit for you. And it's your, and it's your obligation to make it work. Yeah. If you want to, if you want to continue the privilege. Yeah. Anyway, so that was my, uh, you know, looking at my, uh, my income gave me sort of one, uh, set of mental gymnastics, but I did get a kind of a shot in the arm about what I'm doing now, which I, you know, I always have those moments of, am I doing the right thing? Am I doing the right thing? And this was a moment of like, wow, I must be doing the right thing to a certain degree because I can't envision a job, uh, that would blow me away to the point. It would take, I just realizing it would take a lot for me to want to make a life change right now. It's funny. Cause it was what really triggered me into this whole time tracking thing was realizing that, you know, I make okay money doing some of this stuff that I keep putting

on the back burner. Right. And I really like that stuff. So how come I'm doing this to myself? And so that's, I'm in my very plotting way trying to fix that. But the income source is a good starting point for all this. All right. We have one letter that I want to read from a listener, but we would like to do more listener feedback. So here's what you should do. You can tweet at us at freeagentsfm if you want to do that.

I signed up for that. So that's the account. I want to get it right. Freeagentsfm. There's no underscore. It's just freeagentsfm. Or you can go to relay.fm slash freeagents. And there's a contact link there that

emails an address that goes to both David and myself. So that's a great way to send us feedback. And the freeagents group on Twitter, which is, or sorry, on Facebook, which is facebook.com slash groups slash freeagents group is another place that you can post comments and questions. And we will check there too, because we're going to do this every month in in this in this segment i also wanted to mention we are doing a podcast listener survey if you go to podcastlistener.com slash free agents it is a demographic survey that tells our potential advertisers who you are broadly not like you personally. And that helps the good people at Relay sell ads for this show, which is very helpful for

us to keep doing it because we are trying to prioritize, as you've just heard, our businesses. And we want free agents to be part of what we do. But that would be helpful. Not mandatory, but it would be helpful if you did podcastlistener.com slash free agents. If you don't mind taking a few minutes to do that, we really would appreciate it. Yeah, it would be very helpful. And if you're not comfortable answering demographic questions, it is anonymized, but that's fine. If you're not comfortable, don't do it.

But it will help us if you do. So the letter that I wanted to talk about, we just got. We got like last week. And it's from Bruno. And there's a nice comment here and then a little bit of a tangent that I think is cool. Bruno wrote in and said,

I'm a full-time professor. As professors, we do need to work as free agents. I work a lot from home and I don't have a boss telling me what to do every day. Additionally, as many full-time professors,

I do freelance work and I'm involved in different projects not directly related to the classroom. So there's a lot in the life of a professor that overlaps with the life of a free agent now there's a second part that i'll read in a second but you and i have heard david i and and i think both of us have been surprised from a lot of people in academia who say i know you're talking about being an independent worker, but being in academia, we deal with everything you talk about. I'm shocked at the number of professors we hear from. And we also hear from a lot of preachers, people who are.

And this stuff overlaps. I can see it now, but I never would have expected that when we started this show. Yeah, what they have in common, I guess that you know like like uh like bruno says there's no boss in that in that sense like you have your i think for a lot of professors you know you have your teaching and maybe you have your research and then you've got other side projects you've got stuff going on but you've got to kind of manage it you're the boss of your career in a way that is very different than if you just are in a hierarchical organization and you come in and punch the clock and they do what they tell you and then punch the clock at

the end or, you know, the equivalent of that, that once it gets more loosey goosey and you've got side things that you're doing and you have to kind of chart your own path and people who are preachers, reverends, pastors, all of that, where they've got kind of like there's church and yes, there is a kind of like church over them but it's not quite the same and they kind of have to make their own way and figure out how they're doing it so that's it's fun to hear uh i guess that that uh what we're doing is more applicable than we thought yeah i always like hearing when the show reaches someone that i never expected it would it's it's great it's pretty cool um so bruno goes on and says a few weeks ago, Aline Sims mentioned that she teaches part-time.

And of course, she's not the only free agent who teaches part-time. But not all free agents may realize many schools would be thrilled to have experienced practitioners as part-time lecturers. Maybe you can talk on the show about how you can go and reach a local university or college and pursue this possibility of income, which I think is really interesting. I have taught at the journalism school at UC Berkeley. I also taught some stuff at my local library, actually, that they want to do a class teaching teenagers how to podcast. And I did that. That was that was kind of a fun give back thing. They didn't pay me very much for

it and it was fine but the UC Berkeley teaching was giving back but also it was a part-time job and it was it was fun and they paid me and that allowed me to kind of do it and I hope to do that again at some point down the road is teach something at at Berkeley related to something that I do and have knowledge of and i think bruno is right like this is another way i mean a school is probably not going to be like your big income source but if you know it could be an income source and also be a uh a way for you to do something a little different and share your expertise in whatever it is you do. I do know some people where it has become a primary income source, where they start teaching

a little bit and they like it and the people there like them and then they teach it more. And then all of a sudden, half of what they do is teaching and half of what they do is their job. And they make that work too. So it can vary but if if you're not thinking of this you it may never occur to you that as bruno says sometimes uh these schools really love when there's a professional person who can teach a class and guess what people with nine to five nine to five jobs can't do it i mean they could do maybe a night class but even then as somebody who had a nine to five job and taught a night class like even even that is kind of brutal. If you don't have a flexible schedule, it's much harder to be a teacher. And so if you're a free agent and an expert in an area

and you've got a local, uh, university or college or something, yeah. Do you know somebody there? Do you want to maybe introduce yourself to a Dean or a, or a staff member or something like that and say, I'm local and I have this experience. If you ever want to teach somebody to teach a course or do a guest lecture or something and just have them get to know you because you'd be surprised a lot of times they are desperately looking for people who are capable of teaching some of these topics. And if you could be somebody who gets put in their address book and maybe they won't call on you right away, but then something will come up and they'll be like, oh, you know, there's that person who does this. And then all of a sudden they call you and you're teaching a class. And that doesn't just apply to schools. I am. One of the ways I make money is

a lot of times I get hired by law firms to come in and talk to their lawyers about how to use technology and, and, you know, how to give a good presentation. I've gotten, you know, a variety of different, you know, little things I do. And, uh, so two or three times a year, I'll go to a law firm, retreat. A lot of times these big firms have retreats and then they have people come in to, to talk to the, to the members of the firm. And I do that, and I charge money for it. So, I mean, it is definitely teaching is another side thing you can do. And like we've said so many times on the show, so much of this free agency thing is just getting multiple income streams. Well, there's another opportunity for you.

Yeah. Well, I think we've reached the end of this, our experimental first podcast episode. But I thought it went pretty well yeah i like it i i um i feel like we we did a good thing by getting through those subjects to begin with and kind of getting a foundation that's like that's a free agents 101 and now we can kind of get into deeper the stuff that's really that we're struggling with and the stuff that we're ongoing yeah yeah the ongoing stuff absolutely but we'll be back in a fortnight with another interview show. Like we said, Marco Arment is going to join us.

And then next month, we'll be back with another one of these episodes. So please, again, send in your questions. Relay.fm slash freeagents for the contact link is probably the best way. Send us an email. You've got questions, comments, a little bit of a story, some suggestions like the ones we got from Bruno today. It would be great to hear from you. And until the next Fortnite, David, it's been a pleasure as always.

See you in two weeks.