Focused - 97: Emotional Overload

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

David & Mike continue the overload series with a look at emotional overload. They consider the value of introspection, share some fun distractions, and discuss being ok with not being productive.

Welcome to Focus, the productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? Doing well, all things considered. But as we were talking about before we hit the buttons, feeling a little bit overwhelmed emotionally. But I guess that's kind of to be expected. But we figured that might be a cool topic for an episode. That's what we're going to talk about here today. How about you? How are things in the land of milk and honey over there? I'm doing great. The family's home.

We're all healthy. And we're doing our best to get through this. But I do think emotional overload is a thing. We've talked about information overload, attention overload. We're kind of working through the overload series. And we did our last episode on working from home. But now that we've been at this a bit longer, I feel like everybody's feeling a little strained. And it would be interesting to talk about emotional overload and how do you stay focused or try to stay focused with all the things going on in the world right now. Yeah. And to be honest, this wasn't part of the original plan for the overload series. We had

a couple other topics that we were going to tackle, but emotional overload wasn't on the list, but it seems like a very timely thing. It's something that I've been struggling with myself recently. And kind of, as we were talking about before we hit record, I kind of feel guilty about it to some degree because I'm not as negatively impacted by a lot of this stuff as many other people are. I don't have anybody personally that I know that is dealing with the coronavirus stuff. My work online is mainly unchanged. The big difference is that my family is with me all the time. And that's actually a kind of a nice thing, honestly. So I feel a little bit bad about that. I know a lot of people are struggling with that. But for me, it's kind of a good thing. But I know that in the back of my mind, I kind of feel like I shouldn't

really be enjoying this either. It is a weird feeling, Mike. I am the same. My kids are home and they aren't going to school. Obviously my wife is working from home. So all four of us are here together. We do have this new family member, this puppy, which is fun. And we are doing some things together that are quite enjoyable. But at the same time, there's thousands of people that are dying alone. And there are people who've lost their jobs. And, you know, I have a job. I'm still, I still have work to do and I'm healthy. And I just have these, I don't know, man, it's really hard for me. Sometimes I woke up this morning at like 3am just thinking about all of this stuff going on in the world.

And it is overwhelming. It is. And I do want to call out right here, you know, we don't want this to be more bad news for you to endure. Yeah. But we also think that this is probably the place to talk about how to cope with this in a healthy way, at least from a productivity perspective, because I think there's a lot of stuff out there right now. We'll talk about this more later on, but everybody is working from home. So the first reaction typically is, well, I've got more time, so I'm going to finally start doing X, Y, and Z. And that doesn't always

happen. And you shouldn't necessarily feel bad about that yeah so don't make it harder than it has to be by heaping guilt upon yourself for not living up to your own self-made expectations during this time recognize that we haven't lived through a global pandemic before most of us yeah so cut yourself some slack everybody's figuring out a new normal. No, totally. It is hard. And one of the things I keep doing is keep counting 9-11s as I look at the death toll, which is, that's not helping me. And I also keep trying to move the needle and looking at my moving the needle thing. But what I'm also doing now is trying to take care of my family, emotionally take care of them as well to take care of my family, emotionally, take care of them as well as take care of myself. And there's just a lot of moving pieces that we

didn't have last month. So the question to ask yourself, and this show at least, is how can you deal with all that overload and also try and keep focus? And I think that's what we want to address today. Absolutely. And focus not necessarily being how do I minimize all of the family stuff and view that as a distraction and focus as doing your work. Sometimes the most appropriate thing you can do is chuck the plan, say, I'm not going to get much work done today and I'm going to tend to my family instead. That's absolutely the case. I mean, I think focus doesn't necessarily mean traditional moving the needle stuff that we talk about on the show. You know, focus may be bringing some comfort to someone close to you that is dealing with some

hard stuff right now. Right. And can you be there for that? That's just as hard, if not harder than what we normally talk about here. Absolutely. And another side to that for me is that I tend to be very empathetic. So I can fairly easily put myself in somebody else's shoes, which is positive in a lot of places. But I'm recognizing that right now it can be a detriment too, because I do have to take care of myself, protect the golden goose. And ultimately, the thing that has been brought to light for me is that I need to do a better job of managing my emotional energy. That's the thing that has been clear to me over me is that I need to do a better job of managing my emotional energy.

That's the thing that has been clear to me over the last several weeks. Yeah, it's funny when you talk about empathy. I think that is an issue for me as to it is very easy for me to empathize with other people. And throughout my life, it's been a challenge. I mean, when I first started practicing law, I did a lot of litigation. And so I was helping people out with really difficult problems. And I remember being a young lawyer and I would be laying in bed in the middle of the night, just looking at the ceiling, questioning everything I had decided the day before, and thinking about everything I have to decide the following day

and always worrying, what if I made a mistake? You know, it's going to screw up this person's life and they brought this problem to me. I need to solve it and I cannot make a mistake. And I would sit there and, you know, empathize with their, their position. And eventually I realized that if my job is to take care of them, getting no sleep worrying about it is not actually taking care of them. Absolutely. Yep. And that I still struggle with it, honestly, but, but the, if the oxygen masks drop, the very first thing you need to do is put the oxygen mask on yourself because if you pass out, you can't take care of your kids. And I think emotional overload can work the same way. Exactly.

is the fact that in your position with your legal position, maybe you do have the ability to help these people, but with a lot of this stuff, there's not a whole lot you can do. So yes, you want to be empathetic, but at some point, the struggle for me anyways is I have to learn to release those things. Otherwise, I just sit and dwell on it and it can consume me if I'm not careful. And I find myself in this place where I'm not motivated to do anything. I'm just tired all the time. I don't even know why. It's kind of what

spurred the idea for this episode is I kind of found myself in that place and I'm like, well, what is going on? Why do I feel like this? And I recognize that I kind of let my guard down in that area. And that's not to say that you, you keep it up. I think that's maybe what people are worried about on the other side is we don't want, and probably, uh, we don't, we would fall into this category too a little bit with, uh, with the show is we don't want to be the experts who just drop the formula and be like there that's all you have to do xyz done yeah like he people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care but at the same time you can't carry that weight of everybody that you come in contact with either you gotta gotta pick your battles agreed this episode is brought to you by pingdom from solar winds while you've been Agreed. You need something that will tell you that everything is running smoothly on your site,

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on yourself first, I thought it'd be fun to talk about some ways to kind of identify how to use some of the tricks we've talked about in the show to kind of get a handle on your own emotional overload. And I think the starting place for that is journaling. Yes, definitely. There's a couple different resources that have come to my attention recently. We just had Matt Regland on the show, and he's actually pre-selling as we record this, his journaling course. And also at The Sweet Setup, we've got

a course on how to use day one. And Sean's been talking a lot lately about how during this whole thing, his day one usage has gone off the charts. And I am not as a prolific journaler as a lot of other people. But I do believe that there is a ton of value in using pen and paper, or if you want to use digital, go right ahead. But getting your feelings out, journaling can be very therapeutic in helping you to do that. There has never been a better time to start a journaling habit than right now. If you have been toying around with the idea, now is a great time to give it a shot. Yeah. And I just think the trick to it is just get a pen and paper or open a text file and just start emptying your brain. You know, we've talked about

in the productivity space about how refreshing it is or how great it feels when you get all your tasks out of your brain and into your system, whatever your system is. I feel like, you know, doing that brain dump of mental energy is just as useful, if not more useful. And right now is a good time to do it because you're right. We all have a lot on our mind right now and we're all processing a lot and getting it out on paper or into a text file can, can really help you see it. Yeah. And one of the things that I've found interesting about journaling during this time is I have been using prompts for quite a while inside of day one. So I've kind of used that as a quantified self, kind of a log for how my day has gone. that has become less relevant, less useful for me. Maybe when I look back a year from now and I'm going through all my old journal entries, I wish I had had some of that stuff, but it just feels

kind of pointless to sit down at the end of the night and to talk about all of the things that you did, the places you went, because you didn't go anywhere and maybe you got something done, but you kind of know how your day is going to go. You're going to be home and you're going to be dealing with a bunch of stuff that you hadn't had to deal with a few short weeks ago. Yeah, I think I use some basic prompts, but not as advanced as you are with the prompts. But I think the reason they often exist is because you need a starting place. And in the world today, we don't really need a starting place. If you just sit down, thoughts are going to come to you for your journal. Exactly. That's what I was going to say is what I've found more useful

now is not trying to answer some questions so that I have some numbers and some data that I can look back later and see how I did. But just the mental release, it's more like the just sit down and just start writing sort of journaling that has really helped me to sort through some things. It's almost like the morning pages from The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. That's a practice that I'd never really stuck with me, but I liked the idea. It's basically stream of conscious journaling. And her formula is you write three whole pages, no matter how long it takes, just stream of conscious, and then you're done. That's it. You're not trying to create something necessarily, although you might, through that stream of

conscious, find something that you want to publish or that turns into something that you create, but that's not the goal. The goal is just to fill the pages. And I find that doing that sort of thing, while I haven't had a habit of that in the past, so it's a little bit harder for me to sit down and do it whenever I feel myself just really stressing out about things. I have tried to tell myself, okay, you need to do something about this. You need a release valve. And the stream of conscious journaling has been the thing that's really helped with that. And I find analog seems to work better for me than digital, interestingly. I mentioned the prompts with day one, but there's just something about the fancy fountain pen in the, in the paper that especially with stream of conscious

journaling just feels really good right now. Yeah. For me, the reason the analog journaling works is because number one, I spend so much time in digital work that the, the, the change of, you know, of environment helps, you know, like going away from the computer, sitting at a table, you know, you know, removing myself entirely from my digital workflow helps. And also I think the fact that it's slower helps because it takes me longer to write than it does to type or dictate. And, um, that gives my brain time to catch up with the pen. And I think I do a better job of journaling with that. But, you know, like I said, this is something that I think can help anybody

right now. And you don't have to do it with a fancy pen and fancy paper. You can do it with a pad of paper and a BIC. You could do it with a text file or Apple notes file, whatever works for you. But I think stopping to collect your thoughts can really help. Now, do you just do your journaling at the end of the day or, you know, what's your workflow for that? Well, the prompts have always been at the end of the day, but I find myself resisting the prompts. I have not firmly created a new habit of doing the analog journaling at the end of the day. That has kind of been in the middle of the day whenever I feel like I can't take it anymore. That's my sign that I got

to do something, which it would be better if I had a system where I just did that at the end of the day. And maybe I will try to incorporate that. It just feels like everything is in flux right now. And it's hard for me at the moment to, even in the last episode, we talked about using this as an opportunity to create some new habits. Well, at the beginning of the day, that's easier for me. But at the end of the day, I find myself just so emotionally drained that I don't want to do anything. So I'm really struggling with my evening routine. There's a joke in my family that I have what my kids call the upstairs downstairs bag. Okay. And because I have a studio, but right now it's more of my daughter's bedroom than a studio,

but I'm also actively working on a field guide. So I have to go up there and work on videos. But then I have this little bag that I keep my journal and an iPad in, and I carry it around the house with me all day. You know, it's like it goes upstairs, it goes downstairs. And having the journal with me at all times actually is really useful. And I do it kind of as a log format. And I don't just do it when I find myself emotionally overwhelmed. I also find it in moments of joy. You know, I had a phone call with a friend yesterday and I hadn't talked to him for some time and I just felt so great after talking to him. I journaled that, you know, and sometimes when I'm doing stuff with my kids, I'll journal that. journal that and you know as goofy as it sounds i helped my daughter i taught my daughter how to install a light fixture yesterday because i don't want my kids growing up and dependent on smelly boys and uh nice so i turned her into an electrician and i journaled it afterwards because it just felt good to do that i also journal when i feel overwhelmed but i i think that putting this

running series of entries in for me works really well. This would be really good with day one if I did day one. But for me, it's just I put a time stamp with my pen. You know, I'll say 11 a.m. and then write a paragraph or a sentence or a few words. And it's just that's the way I've been doing it. And that's the habit I've got ingrained. So if you want to try it out, that can work. Also, honestly, if you just wrote one sentence a day, I think it could help you.

Yeah, I agree with that. I like the idea a lot of the downstairs bag. I don't have a downstairs necessarily of a ranch house, but I do grab my iPad and bring that around with me just so I'm not down in the basement all the time trying to do my work. I sent you a picture the other day of I got this stand that Mike Hurley had talked about and Bluetooth keyboard and a mouse. And I like using that upstairs as kind of like a writing work station. And it would not be a whole lot more for me to throw my journal on the pile with the iPad and bring that with me. I think I'm going to have to start doing that.

If you have it with you, you'll use it. Yep, that's true. I mean, that's the real advantage of digital journaling is that, you know, day one is in your pocket at all times. And day one has a feature now they've added recently where you can scan from the application. they've added recently where you can scan from the application so uh just to get in the weeds a bit um a listener was kind enough to send me a link because i was complaining about my love of rodeo paper this is a rabbit hole gang hanging with me but you know i want i really also like the kind of leavener disc system and somebody sent me a link to rodeia a4 size paper pads so i get the rhodia paper that i can just punch myself and now i'm like rocking it but you can pull that stuff out and day one

has a feature where you can scan those pages especially when you pull the page out of the book with a with a disk system you get a really nice clean scan of the page so then you can actually you know tack it into a digital system very nice i think we're going to need to see some pictures of this i am such a nerd but anyway uh but having uh you know the point of this segment is if you want to do some introspection a meditation practice would be good too prayer would be good i mean what you know everybody's got different you know things for themselves, but, but adrenaline practice, this would be a great time to do it. And it may be something you really want to read in a year or two and go back. I know you're a pretty consistent

meditator has what has happened lately changed your meditation routine, or do you just find that having the routine has helped you weather the storm a little bit? It's, it's been harder, Or do you just find that having the routine has helped you weather the storm a little bit? It's been harder, frankly. I get up and I get distracted with the news. We'll talk about that later. And the room I did it in now has a sleeping, you know, 20-something-old in it. And then downstairs has a puppy running around.

But when the puppy takes a nap and I'm alone. So I'm hitting it, but not every day right now, which is probably a mistake. I need to figure that out still. But yeah, I think, you know, whatever you can do, I think that introspection and self-care right now are super important. That's interesting. I mean, it's not a surprise, but we talk about how the moments that you need those things are also the moments when you least feel like doing them. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, it's journaling for you. It's meditation where you feel the temptation to skip that thing, even though, you know, that's the thing that's really going to help me out right now. So even us, we're not, we're not infallible. Totally not. Yeah. Well, I mean, I I'm getting back on the bandwagon, but I honestly, this whole

thing kind of threw me for a loop for a while and I'm just kind of getting my arms around it now to the extent you can. Right. every day at the hospital. And I am, I lost the meditation thread there too. I mean, so much of this stuff is habit-based and you create this situation where you have a place that you do it and you have a system and you have a schedule and it's very easy to continue a habit when you have that. But when you take yourself out of that, when you repot yourself in some other place and, you know, change your schedule,, it's not so easy. So it's something we all have to work on. Even if they are minor changes happen in isolation,

everything is independent but interdependent. So one little thing can be enough to throw off your entire day, especially if you didn't have much margin built into to begin with. No, I caught myself a little kind of hairy on the inside, you know, in the brain, just getting really upset about things I was reading and, and really just catching myself not being myself. And I realized, oh, you know what, you haven't meditated for three days, you know, and, And I realize, oh, you know what? You haven't meditated for three days, you know? And, um, and, uh, so I, I know what I can do to kind of straighten myself out, but, but journaling meditation meditation would be to focus on the positive. Yeah. Have a gratitude practice. I think especially if you find yourself getting

sucked into the news, regardless of what your political affiliations are, no matter what site you go to, there is going to be, it's all going to be negative. It's all going to be bitter. And that has an impact on you. Even if you feel like you are getting the truth from your selected source, it does have an impact on you emotionally. And it does make whatever you're going to try to do next, at least for me, a little bit harder. And it's hard to balance that because you want to be in the know. You want to know what's going on, but also recognizing that you can't tread too deeply into those waters. At least I can't. Five, 10 minutes, that's it. Then I got to cut it off and I got to not look at it again until the evening. Because it's so negative, it'll put me

in that state. And gratitude helps me snap out of that. I'm ashamed to admit that I don't do this as often as I probably should. But every time that I do, it does instantly change my state. So having a habit of gratitude, and this is again, where the prompts, that's one of my prompts is what are you grateful for? And as I'm talking through this right now, I know that if I were to do that more consistently, I would be in a better state, but I have trouble doing it because I'm so drained at the end of the day. It's a negative cycle. It's a struggle, you know, for all of us, but gratitude does help you focus on the things that are going right. Here in Wisconsin, it's springtime, so the snow is finally melting and we do have some decent weather now. And that has helped a lot to

get outside on those nice days. That's one of the things that I've been doing is just trying to get outside as much as I possibly can. We'll talk about some other things that we're doing to cope here in a little bit, but focusing on what's going right instead of what's going wrong, even if there is a lot that's going wrong, focusing on even just one simple thing can help put you in a better state to help out everybody, not just yourself, but everybody that you're responsible for. Everybody in your sphere of influence, like you were talking about with your family, with my family. It's not just about us. We can't just go sit by ourselves for the next four weeks till this thing blows over. There are people who depend on us. So you need to realize that and need to make sure that you're taking care of yourself

first. And gratitude is a great way to do that. There's a legal term called contemporaneous documentation. It's the idea that if you and I shake hands on a deal today and then we email each other, that's like contemporaneous documentation. Whereas and I shake hands on a deal today and then we email each other, that's like contemporaneous documentation. Whereas if we shake hands today and then I send you an email in two years saying, well, we shook hands two years ago and you said you'd do this and that, that's not contemporaneous. So the idea of the upstairs downstairs bag with the journal in my bag all the times, it allows me to contemporaneously document gratitude and joy. And the idea is not to wait till the end of the day for this stuff. It's like right after something

nice happens, right after you get off that phone call, right after you have that good experience with your kid. Write that down. And you can also use it for stuff that overwhelms you too. But I think that doing it in the moment has far better value than waiting till the end of the day. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it gives you those gratitude feels too, if you're looking for them. Yep, for sure. This episode of Focused is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move with Squarespace. Squarespace lets you easily create a website for

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I use it myself and it's been rock solid. It just makes everything so simple. And Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month. You can start a trial with no credit card required though by going to squarespace.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. When you decide to sign up, use the offer code focus to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain

and to show your support for this show. Once again, that is squarespace.com slash FOCUS and the code FOCUS to get 10% off your first purchase. We thank Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. So when we were prepping the show outline, Mike added this following heading, and I think this is maybe the takeaway from the whole show. It's okay to not be productive. Yes. I put a link in here that I was alerted to in the focused forums, actually. One of the listeners had linked to this in the New York Times,

on the article is stop trying to be productive. Since then, I've seen several other articles along these same lines. I saw one in the Huffington Post recently, too. And I think this is really, really good advice, because I think that there are a lot of people who are beating themselves up right now, especially people who work online and not being able to go to an office technically hasn't changed much about the way that they get their work done other than they're in a totally different emotional state right now. And the temptation can be, well, nothing's really changed. I'm just going to keep doing what I've been doing. And that is not the case. I was talking to somebody earlier today, and they mentioned that since they've been staying at home, even though they work online, they estimate that on a good day, they're operating at about 80%. And as an average,

it's probably about 50%. And no one likes to hear that. We'd like to think that we can still keep doing what we're good at. But the truth is, this is challenging. It's different. None of us has been through this before. So we got to recognize that. We got to cut ourselves some slack. Yeah, I've been corresponding with a lot of teachers um and i'll talk about later but one of the ways i'm trying to deal with this is trying to help out with where i can and the uh these teachers are now home a lot of them with their kids but they're still expected to teach you know and it's like you don't have the feedback of the

kids in front of you. You've got your own kids running around like banshees in your home. And you've got to use this digital platform. I really have so much sympathy for them. Because how do you do all that? I mean, it's just not possible. And, you know, and that's separate from emotional overload that we've been talking about throughout the show. You've also got all this weight you're carrying around. It's tough. Yeah. I have a close friend who is a teacher and

he's been trying to come up with creative ways to keep his kids engaged, even though they have to do it all online. Yeah. So one of the things that he's done is he's done like a, he's an artist too. So he did mention last week, he did a time-lapse painting and shared it via, I guess, Google Classroom is the tool that they use. But what stood out to me from talking to him was that, yes, even though you have a curriculum and you have technology-based tools that allow you to deliver some stuff, it's not the same. And I was kind of taken aback at how much he has to figure out on his own. Now, he really loves teaching and he really cares about those kids. So if he's going to be at home, he's going to be thinking about how can I reach them every minute of every day anyways.

But for somebody who is thrust into this position kind of unexpectedly, that can be a really heavy weight to carry too. You're not only responsible for teaching all of these kids that look up to you, but now you kind of have to do it without the structure and the support that you've come to rely on over maybe many, many years. So you have to kind of go back to the drawing board and figure some things out, which requires creativity, which is harder when you're not in a good emotional state and yada, yada, yada. Yeah. I have a bunch of lawyer friends that are used to going to a fancy office and having paralegals and secretaries and all this work done and this system that's been in place for a long time in the

legal industry in the united states and suddenly they're just torn away from all of that i mean i've spent the last five years perfecting how to work for myself but they just went straight into the deep end and they're having so much trouble being productive. And, you know, it's just, everybody just take a breath, you know, that's all. Yep. It's okay. I was just talking to a banker for a client, you know, and I was just saying, look, if everybody would just relax for three months, we can get through this, you know, but if everybody wants to fight about everything, it's not going to, it's going to be pretty hard. It's going to be pretty hard. So let's talk about what we're doing. You know, I think we've, we've stated the problem. We've given some general advice,

but I'd like to talk about kind of boots on the ground. What are we doing? And I think rather than taking turns, um, kind of going through what we're doing, I think let's break it down. And the first one for me, and this has been kind of a running theme through the show, is just self-care, putting the oxygen mask on first. I think the one thing I've been trying to be very conscious of is getting back on the wagon of meditating every day, of journaling, and most importantly, being forgiving toward myself. journaling and most importantly, being forgiving toward myself.

Yeah, I think that's really, really important because you're not going to live up to your expectations. And it's also important, I think, to recognize that for other people too. Going back to your point a little bit ago about cutting people some slack. And if everybody would just chill, we'll make it through this fine. If we can recognize that we're not going to be as productive as we want to be, and the people around us are not going to be as productive as they want to be, again, using productive as the amount of work that you're able to get done, and maybe that's not the right thing for you at any given moment. So being willing to recognize that and say, this is not the most important thing right now. That's okay. That will go a long ways into making this all work. Yeah. Yeah, agreed. I think that after yourself, the next thing you can do to help yourself out

with this emotional overload is take a close look at the people around you. I've been thinking in my head, the term has been emotional radar. Just, you know, my youngest is a senior in high school. So she is no longer going to have a senior prom. She's no longer going to have a graduation. She went to an art school. She's been waiting six years to do her senior recital. That's off the table. She's in a play that just got canceled, you know, and it's just, there's a whole bunch of stuff in her life. She just got into a bunch of colleges and she's been, we've been talking for years about once we know what schools she got into, we're going to take this trip. It was going to be just me and her. We were going to get on a plane and go to these

colleges and look at them together. That's no longer on the table so a lot of things and you know you know granted there are people dealing with much worse problems i know there's people listening to this show that are really dealing with much worse problems but for her it's a real bummer you know and uh she has good days and bad days and i have to be really careful to pay attention because that's one thing I can do right now is trying to help her through this. From the parenting side, I recognize that too and I don't always do a great job of this, but recognizing exactly what you just said, that something may not even be a huge deal to you, but it might mean the world to somebody close to

you. So recognizing that and allowing some margin and some grace for that, I think that could be very important right now. And honestly, it's a great way to take care of yourself too. Because when you help people, you're helping yourself as well. Yes, very true. But I mean, everybody that's listening has significant others. And as silly as it sounds, even this new dog in our life, taking care of the dog, it's just like keeping track of where

people are and trying to, you know, help them with problems, help them with small problems before they become big problems. It's, that's something that I think we could all do right now. And we have a unique opportunity because a lot of us are, you know, shuttered in with our family where we aren't necessarily that way all the time. Yes, definitely. Big thing for me is just to recognize that now is not the time to say that's not a big deal. Yeah. Even to a five-year-old who is freaking out about something that really is not a big deal. It is a big deal. He hasn't been able to see his friends in a long time. That's no doubt impacting his emotional state. So got to recognize that and give him the benefit of the doubt. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's his world. It is a big deal.

Exactly. And that's true whether he's a five-year-old or whether he's a 20-year-old and she hasn't seen her boyfriend for three or four weeks. You know, it's all the same, you know. And you've got to be there for them. But it's not just your kids. It's your significant other. It's your parents. It's your siblings.

I've got a sister who took care of her grandkids every day up until about a month ago. up until about a month ago. And, you know, I try to be very present for her when we talk, because I know she is really missing the most important thing in her life right now. Yeah. I can only imagine how hard that is for grandparents. My parents go down to Florida every year and they just made it back, but they just traveled across the country and they are self-isolating now for a couple of weeks. i know it's hard for them to do that grandkids want to see them they want to see the grandkids but now's not the time to do it it's hard to say no but but when you're when she's on a facetime call with a three-year-old who says grandma i just want to come see you that's all i want and she's like yeah i sent it she sent him some presents she's like he said a three-year-old

says i don't want your present i want to come see you you know, I sent it, she sent him some presents. She's like, he said, a three-year-old says, I don't want your present. I want to come see you. You know, how does, how does she deal with it? All of us have people in our life that we can help get through these things. One of the things I've been, ways I've been dealing with it is I have been using the heck out of FaceTime. More, you know, for someone who works at home, I should have always been using FaceTime. someone who works at home, I should have always been using FaceTime. But now all of a sudden, I'm on FaceTime calls between three and six times a day with friends and family.

Yep. We've been doing that too. And like you, I had the realization that I should have been doing this all along. This is my year of rest and relationships, right? So I'm getting the rest part down because I can't go anywhere. But the relationships piece, I've kind of had to get creative with that. And I recognize from doing the FaceTime that I could have been doing this for a long time and I haven't been. So I feel like I kind of have a missed opportunity,

which again can produce the guilt, but that doesn't help at all. So just recognize that, you know, maybe we should have been doing this earlier. It doesn't matter. We can do it now. So let's figure out who we're going to contact and do it on a regular schedule and keep building those relationships, even though we can't be in the same place. Yeah. A couple of things that have occurred to me is that FaceTime is very easy and we're, you know, both of us are Apple nerds, so you don't have to use FaceTime. You can use any

of the many video conferencing solutions out there. But having made a lot more FaceTime calls recently, one of the things that stands out for me is the focus that you bring to a video call versus an audio call. I used to always joke that when I had an attorney that was a troublemaker. You know, some of these attorneys, they just want to yell and scream and act like animals. So whenever I would take a deposition, I knew the other attorney was an animal. I would do it as a video because for some reason,

the presence of the camera always made their behavior better. And I think it was because I could always bring the video to the judge. You know, the cold transcript isn't going to have an impact, but if you see someone actually having a tantrum, you know, they're just not going to do it. In a certain way, I think that my own behavior is modified by the existence of the camera. I think I'm way more focused and attentive to the other person because we're looking at each other. I'm much more tuned in to the other person because we're looking at each other. I'm much more tuned in to the emotional radar as opposed to just hearing their voice.

And I'm much less likely to multitask on a call, on a video call than I am if somebody's on the phone with me. So there's some real benefits to that. In fact, I was just thinking, Mike, you and I have these calls offline all the time. How come we're not doing them FaceTime? We should do that. We totally should.

Yeah. But so that's something you can, you know, there's a little silver lining. I think that's something you can do right away and it will improve your mood. Have some nice calls. Call an old friend, not just your family. And then when you get off, journal it. I like it. So the other things we've been doing is, you know, with the family all together is we've been working on rituals together.

We've got a bunch of games, board games, card games. You know, there's certain TV programming we watch together. I think I said was on this show or Mac Perry's Jeopardy is like a contact sport in our family. We really get into Jeopardy when we watch it together. Not necessarily healthy. we watch it together um not necessarily healthy uh my my daughter is teaching me how to bake because i've known she's a baker and i've never baked so i'm like well we're here together so i've made cookies i'm gonna make bread next and then i'm gonna make a cake so you, just I think there are some things you can do with this, and that can help you also manage the madness. Sure, yeah.

I want a video, I think, of a Contact Jeopardy event. Oh, yeah. Well, we scream at answers. We have, yeah, it gets crazy. And then we have no respect for poor betting strategy by Jeopardy players. Sure. Anyway, every family has got its weird foibles. My advice is embrace them right now.

Sure, yeah. Anything else you're doing, or should I share some of mine? Well, I'm trying to help. I think part of the thing here is we do feel powerless with all this going on. And we're trying to do our day-to-day work. But also the world is suffering. And what can you do to make a difference? So for whatever reason, many teachers wrote me when this all started with asking for advice on how to screencast and how to do some of the

production stuff I do for the field guides. So I've been corresponding with many teachers and I've been trying to make those a priority when they come in. So that it's, it's nothing really, but it makes me feel like I'm helping a little bit. Um, and then my daughter and I are, we're going to get into face mask production for the family. So we're going to, we've been researching that. We're going to try and get some materials and make some face masks. So, you know, trying to do something to help, I think helps out. Yeah, for sure. is rough. I don't like to get political on podcasts, so I'm not going to, but the news is rough for me. I just keep reminding myself this too shall pass. We're going to get through this.

I want to keep up with the news. I want to know what the developments are in terms of what we are doing as a country and as a planet to protect ourselves and what I can do to help, but I don't need to know every fine grain detail. I'm not going to be in the lab doing the research, so I don't have to know everything about the disease. I'm not going to be in politics, so I don't need to know every injury and insult that happens. But I do want to know what's going on. So, so the way I've been doing that is I, um, I will do a news check-in in the morning and I do one in the afternoon. Um, I mentioned it on the show earlier, um, that there's an, an application on the Apple TV that,

that summarizes the news in 10, 15 or 30 minutes. My wife and I watch that in the evening, but I do not read it after I go to bed or basically after about 6 p.m. I'm done. Sure. At 6 p.m., does that give you enough time to wind down, you find? Yeah, I mean, that's usually when the Jeopardy battles begin. Gotcha.

So you have something positive to look forward to right afterwards. Yes. I think is good. We've been trying to do something similar where we'll play games at night. Yeah. Lots of board games lately. That's true. Yeah. That's helped a lot. Like you, I also want to limit my time in the news, which I struggle with this. I do want to be informed. I want to understand it from all

the different angles. But I know that if I spend more than five or 10 minutes looking at things, that it's just going to make me depressed. So it's better for myself and for everybody that I am in contact with if I am careful about how much time that I spend there. I also have been intentionally spending more time with my family. I think I mentioned this on the last episode, but we had a family meeting day one, and we said, okay, we're going to be spending a lot of time together. This can be really great or this can be really annoying. It's kind of up to you guys. And everybody has been, has responded very well. I know that my kids miss even more than I do seeing other people. I'm a bit of an introvert. So this is, this is not as hard on me

as like my wife, for example, she would much rather be out seeing people. But we have been making the best of what we've got. I think it was you, David, who said in the last episode, like when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and there's a whole lot of lemons laying around. You know, I've kind of made that a mantra. It's like, we're going to make lemonade out of this. We're going to redeem this time that we've got together. So how can we do that? Just by scheduling things and intentionally doing things together, not just hoping that it'll pan out or the stars will align and after dinner, everybody's going to want to do something. We have to communicate about these things in order for them to happen. But like I said, lots of board games. Actually, last week, I put together a basketball hoop. So we've been playing family basketball games. We've been playing lightning.

It's one of those adjustable hoops. So we bring it all the way down and pretty much everybody can play then. That's been a lot of fun. The biggest adjustment for me, I think, has been allowing my family to interrupt me. It's a perspective that I've had to have about my workday that I didn't have previously. And I recognize now that part of the reason that, or part of the way that I coped with it previously was I would leave the house. When I needed to go focus on putting together a podcast outline or writing an article, I would go to the co-working space and I would just go into monk mode and crank out a bunch of words.

I can't do that anymore. We communicate about the expectations. We've got the hue light at the top of the basement stairs so people know when I can't be interrupted. And for the most part, they respect that. But I can't do that all the time. interrupted. And for the most part, they respect that, but I can't do that all the time. So I have to allow them the other times when I'm not recording a podcast, when I'm not doing a webinar or whatever, that they can come in and they can interrupt me and I got to be okay with that. I

have to tend to them when they think the sky is falling. And even if it's not, recognize that what I'm working on is not as important as what is dominating their world at that moment. And that really has been the thing that got me thinking about the whole productivity thing in the first place, cutting yourself a break, not being as productive as you thought you were going to be. If you have that attitude, as I look back, I recognize that I had that attitude at the beginning, then you're just setting yourself up for frustration because you are going to be interrupted, your flow is going to be messed up. And at that point, you know, if you're just measuring output, you're going to beat yourself up. So having to take a different tact, a different strategy, and prioritizing family and saying, you know, whatever happens happens and it is what it is.

I'm not going to get upset about these interruptions. I'm just going to roll with them. Sometimes, you know, they interrupt me because they want to go do something. And in the past, I might have said, you know, I can't do that right now. I got to work on this thing. But I find myself more and more being like yeah okay let's just do that but after this i gotta get back to this other thing so kind of flipping the priorities there where family is always first because they're always there yeah and i think you know that the show is called focus and i think a focus under these circumstances is entirely something that can change. And it certainly can be the family comes number one, because that's what we're dealing with. They need you emotionally and you need them. Yep. For sure. One other thing I've done a lot is to get outside as much as possible, which I said with the weather, it's getting a little bit easier to do that. But I have, on the days that it has not been raining, I have been biking or running every single day,

which is not normally how I would handle my exercise routine. Normally I'm at the gym three times a week and I'm squeezing in the cardio stuff in the margins there. But I've kind of flipped that around where I do have some weights at home and I do a little bit of the weight training, but I just find being outside puts me in a better state. So even if I don't go for a super long run, my half marathon got moved. So I'm not training for that anymore, but go for a four or five mile run instead of a 13 mile run. That's enough for me. I still get my heart rate up and I feel a lot better when I come back, especially if it's kind of nice outside. I feel like I'm in a, even though I just exerted a bunch of physical energy, I feel like at that point I have more emotional and creative energy to sit down and start working again. Yeah. There's a hike near my house that my wife and I do

often. And interestingly, my kids have been doing it with us and it was their idea, you know, and so we're doing these hikes together quite often. And, you know, we're very being safe, wear masks, we walk far, we give everybody a lot of space, but I noticed that there are more people on these trails now than there were before all this started. not that many people where I go. So I still can go for a run and not see a single person most of the time, but I do have to be conscious of that. And it is kind of frustrating to recognize that I'm usually the person that is moving so we can keep our six feet, six feet of distance. And, uh, but it is, it is what it is. You know, I try not to let that stuff frustrate me. I just enjoy being, being outside and limit my, the number of people that I can see as much as possible by planning my routes ahead of time. Uh, also I do that. I find like in the past, I might have looked at my day and everything I needed to do and figured out when am I going to squeeze in this run? That's kind of changed now to where I'll sit down and I'll work for a while.

And then when I feel like I'm kind of stuck, that's when I'll use the run as a reset. So it's a little bit more flexible about when I choose to do it. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because I have this system in my journal where I have the day, you know, I write the times down the center of the page and I put the plan and the day on the left side and the right side respectively. And the plans aren't quite as plenty as they have been in the past because, because I've just come to realize I don't have that much control that I did when I was, you know, working for myself and everybody else was off doing their thing. I've got to be way more flexible now. So, so at least

temporarily that system is kind of out the window. Sure. Hey, before we end, we have one more sponsor. But when we come back, I want to talk about some stuff we're doing, some fun stuff for distractions. We've been both kind of downers today, but we're kind of feeling it. And we do have some fun distractions I thought would be fun to share with the audience, including something new that you have made. the audience, including something new that you have made. But before we do that, I want to thank our last sponsor, and that's our friends over at ExpressVPN, high-speed, secure, and anonymous VPN service. Get three months free with a one-year package. You might think nobody wants your online data or to snoop on you, but when you browse the web without anything to protect your privacy, you risk hackers and ad companies and more collecting your data. And it does happen to people like us, which is why I recommend ExpressVPN.

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Take back your online privacy right now. Go to expressvpn.com slash focused. Our thanks to ExpressVPN for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. So Mike, like I was saying earlier, let's talk a little bit about distractions. And I know you have a big one right now. Yes. So one of the things,

I had this initially under the section of one of the things that we have done to cope, but I do think this fits under distractions as well, is that my wife and I have started a podcast. So that's a very Mike Schmitz thing to do, I guess. You're trying to cope with things. As an introvert, start a podcast and talk about your feelings, but that's what we did. I thought I was the only one with not a single unpublished thought. No, I'm approaching that milestone too, it appears.

What's the name of the podcast? It's called The Intentional Family. So the URL is intentionalfamily.fm. It is in Apple Podcasts. And if you want to go subscribe to it, you can. It's something that my wife and I have been talking about for a long time. She is officially the host. She is all in with this idea. I just want to help support her, basically. I connected all the pipes. I introduced the first episode because of my experience with podcasting, but the goal is that she's basically running things after that. But we want to talk about the things that we do to intentionally build a positive home life. And this is something that we've been thinking about and documenting for years. I think I've shared on this podcast quite a few of the things that

we've done, like the Schmitz Family Core Values. We've got these pie charts where we win or we lose as a team. All these different systems that we have for managing things in our household, the create, not consume when it comes to our kids and screen time and things like that. And we recognized a while ago that people would come over, they'd see these things and be like, so what's the deal with that? Then we explain it and, oh, that's awesome. I want to do that. We're like, yeah, go ahead. So we knew we wanted to do this to help other people to do the same sort of thing. Not that we have it all figured out, but kind of share the things that we've learned, what works, what doesn't work for us. And it got to the point with everybody staying

at home, a lot of people reaching out because they know we homeschool. They're like, hey, you have any tips? We're like, we got to do it now. So first episode is published. We hope to do them every other week. And they're about 30 minutes long. We want to keep them shorter, bite-sized, especially with family stuff. You got to get a bunch of people on board. It's not the type of thing where you want to give people a whole bunch of information and then they try to apply it. It's the small little things that can help set the course for, for your family. So that's the podcast. That's the goal behind it. And, uh, if that sounds like something you're interested in, you can go over to intentional family.fm. Yeah, I can't wait. I'm going to listen to the first episode as soon as we get

done recording this show. So I'm going to go from interacting with Mike to listening to Mike. get done recording this show. So I'm going to go from interacting with Mike to listening to Mike. You also put in here that you're playing Animal Crossing. I need to know about this game because my daughter is kind of obsessed with it and I don't even understand what it is. Well, I am not as well versed in it as the rest of my family, but I downloaded it one night, spent maybe an hour and a half in it, got on my island, got my tent set up and all that. And then basically everybody started the next day and they have quickly surpassed me and they've all got these beautiful houses. But it's the kind of game where you are going around doing these things that really aren't time sensitive. There's no goals, projects that you're trying to complete. It's just you collect these things, you build these

things, and you kind of create your own alternate reality with cute furry animals on an island. So it's not something that I have spent a ton of time in, but my family just absolutely loves this game. I can totally see the attraction as we're going through this. Yeah, it's the right game at the right time. I heard somebody say somewhere that this is setting all sorts of switch sales records, and it's no surprise to me. People are looking for a distraction. They're looking for something to take their mind off of things.

And it's just a super chill, very low pressure sort of a game where you just are. You're not trying to do something by a certain time. You just go around and have fun on your own little island. We bought a game for our Switch. It's called Dance Dance something something. I forget the exact name of it, but it's a nightly thing after the Jeopardy battle is we have a dance battle.

And super fun. You hold the Switch controllers and you dance to it. I am by far the worst, and my kids are by far the best. But man, that's another thing. It's very tiring if you're there and dance for an hour. A couple of things I'm doing for fun is I'm re-watching a show that my daughter and I were re-watching a show that we watched together, I don't know, it was like seven, eight years

ago, called The IT Crowd. It's a British show about these guys who are the it department at a big company and they have a boss who gets assigned to them who doesn't know anything about it she doesn't even know what it stands for and they're it's just a silly comedy but it makes me laugh nice i've never heard to this show oh you've got to watch it man just watch one episode you'll know if you're in or not after one episode um and it's on netflix so if you have Netflix, that's something kind of fun to watch. And just kind of in terms of nerd nostalgia, I also went back and started rereading Hitchhiker's Guide,

which the last time I think I read it, I was 10 years old. So I'm having a really good time reading through that book again. I have not read that book. I kind of famously don't read fiction, much to the chagrin of a lot of listeners who think that I should. Yeah, I think you should too, but just me. The movie's awesome. The book is way better.

I'm sure. I'm sure. I have been reading a lot. Bookworm is still going. It's still a thing. So I have been reading a lot of books for that. But now might be the time for me to dabble with fiction books again. Let me think. I have some recommendations for you. Number one, I think Hitchhiker's Guide would be fun. You're nerdy enough that you would get it. But for whatever reason, when I was a kid, I read it when it first released. And I thought it was like I'd never read a book like it.

And it was so eye-op never read a book like it. And it's just like, it was so eye opening for little, little Sparky. But the, um, uh, another, uh, good series of books I could recommend that I, I try to get people to read. Nobody reads them is the, uh, Timmer rare series. It's a, it's a set in a Napoleonic wars, except there's dragons and the, uh, the dragons, uh, speak English or French respectively. And they're like battleships. These guys climb on the dragons and they go up and they have battles in the air.

And there's a very special dragon that gets intercepted by a British commander. And he's a Naval officer, but now he becomes a dragon officer because the dragon bonds to him. And it's just a great fun read and it's not too heavy. And she made seven or eight of them in the series. Nice. I make it,

I may get you on some fiction, Mike. That's my goal for the year. All right. Any other great distractions for you? I don't think so. You've got one more on here, which also applies to me.

That is puppy training. Yeah. So for listeners, Mike is the one who said, Oh, Dave, come on, you can do this puppy thing. It's not that hard. It's just a dog. You know, cause I was thinking it's a lot of work. And, uh, I found out that Mike is right. It's just a dog, but it is also a lot of work, but the kids and I have, we've really gone deep on YouTube training videos because you're supposed to be socializing these dogs when they're young and now we can't, you know? Yep. And so we're trying to give her good training and we're all taking turns and we have like,

we have plans about, you know, what's the next thing we're going to try and teach her. And so it's been a real distraction as we've gone through this, but it's been a fun one. Yeah, for sure. Our dog is a little over six months old at this point. So still has a ton of energy, quite a bit bigger than your dog, which is a bit of a challenge when you're supposed to be inside most of the time and avoiding people. But she's been really great so uh taking her for walks has been also part of the getting outside strategy my wife and

i'll kind of alternate on on that but but yeah it's uh nothing like a like a puppy to bring you some joy in the midst of all the chaos yeah Yeah. She gets, as we record this, she gets her final series of shots tomorrow. And I cannot wait to get her out for a walk because we haven't, she hasn't even been out of the house really. Sure. How old is your puppy?

Four months. Four months. Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, gang, I don't know. This was kind of a navel-gazy episode that happens here on the Focus podcast once in a while, but I hope we were able to help you a little bit. And, uh, you know,

we're all in this together. I heard Stephen Colbert say something last night. He says, my thoughts and my prayers, if you want them are with you. And I think that would apply from me and Mike to all of you. Absolutely.