The One You Feed - Rethinking How We Work and Live: Why Freedom Is a System, Not a Feeling with Jenny Blake

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Starting point is 00:00:37 Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. We often think control will give us peace. But as Jenny Blake says, control is just another. hungry ghost. It never satisfies. We never have enough of it. In this episode, Jenny and I explore what it really means to design your life and work around freedom, not fear. We talk about systems that create space instead of pressure, the trap of chasing metrics that don't matter, and how to

Starting point is 00:01:18 let go without falling apart. This one was really important to me because I know what it's like to build something successful and still feel stuck. I'm Eric Zimmer and And this is the one you feed. Hi, Jenny. Welcome to the show. Hi, Eric. Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here.

Starting point is 00:01:35 Yes, you and I are in Gotham production studios in New York City. So we are here, Jenny and I, for a week of in-person interviews, which are always so joyous for me. And particularly being with you, it's really been fun to get to know you. And I'm glad you're here. Likewise, I know it's such a treat to meet for the first time and just hit record. So in a way, if you're listening to this, you're experiencing. experiencing this connection and conversation in the exact same way that we are. So that's always

Starting point is 00:02:03 has a little edge and get a little nervous, but the good kind of nervous. Yep. We're going to be discussing your book called Free Time, but before we do, let's start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second. And they look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins?

Starting point is 00:02:35 And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I share your love of this parable. I included it in my second book, Pivot. I hold it close to my heart, especially when I'm making decisions. A challenging part of decision making is often saying no to something good. something that's working or something that's perfect on paper. So the way that the wolf parable plays out most frequently in my life is,

Starting point is 00:03:04 am I making a decision based on fear, either fear of what is already happening or fear of what could happen in the future, or am I feeding the wolf that's magnetic, that's about joy, that's about following my energy, even if I'm uncertain, and I don't know how something is going to turn out. Am I acting out of fear, out of avoiding fear, or am I moving toward something that my intuition, my heart, my soul, my spirit is pulling me toward. Yep.

Starting point is 00:03:33 We've engaged coach, Ginny and I over the last few years that I know you know well, Charlie Gilke. He's been a guest on the show a couple times. And that has been a real orienting principle that I have needed is that looking away from fear. Because, you know, I left a pretty lucrative, full-time software development world job. to go out and kind of do this and money was uncertain and so you know fear was an element of it and sometimes it's easy to get stuck in there and so it's been really good for you know our work with charlie for him to sort of remind me of that and guide me towards more joy which has always been the orienting way like with the podcast i've just always been like i'm just going to follow my curiosity

Starting point is 00:04:21 like if i do that with guest selection with everything we do i think it'll be okay And it tends to work out fairly well. It's funny you mentioned that about Charlie. He's the one that 12 years ago, when I was thinking of leaving Google, I said, am I crazy to do this? He and his friend, my friend, too, Pamela Slim, both looked at me, said, Jenny, you would be crazy not to. And I needed to hear it from them because sometimes all of this, it's harder when, even with podcasting, people say, you can't make money podcasting. You can't make that your full-time gig. And so sometimes I find those voices can be so loud that we need the Charlie Gilkees of the world, somebody to say, I believe in you, you can do this.

Starting point is 00:05:02 And in a way, then they become an external version of the wolf that we want to feed versus the loud chorus of the one saying, stay safe, because it's about survival. And the other thing I wanted to mention about this parable, I got into self-help and even coach training when I was young. So I did coach training when I was 24, but was self-helping myself before that devouring. everything I could find to soothe this deep anxiety and worry and neuroses. I joke that I have 10,000 hours of neuroses. That's what I became really good at in my teens and 20s. It never worked for me. I felt like all the literature for so long is like the ego is bad. Banish the ego or your inner critic is vicious. Like tame your grumlins. Get rid of the inner critic. And that just never worked for me. Even these formulas like, oh, you have to love yourself before anyone else can

Starting point is 00:05:53 love you. I don't believe it. And so the only thing that has ever worked for me is welcoming these other voices. They're not going to go away. I don't need to banish them. They're here. I joke that my imposter monster is just like the big furry blue monster from Monsters Inc. Sometimes it helps me to just personify them as like, yeah, he's big. Or I call one of mine the furry rest monster who pulls me into the couch and I can't move. This is when I kind of burnt out. Yeah. At the end of the day, they're just trying to be helpful. So even in this parable, the wolf we're not supposed to feed. He's not really going anywhere. Or they, whichever gender of the wolf, they're not going to go anywhere. And it's okay. It's actually like petting a rabid dog. Like, oh, you just are neglected or you're afraid of things. And it's okay. You know, I used to say instead of taming dragons, domesticating dragons, that what if we didn't have such an adversarial relationship with this part of ourselves that we think is so bad? even the bad wolf, what if you could just pet them and they just need a belly rub and then they'll just quiet down. It's not that we want to listen or let that one dominate, but

Starting point is 00:07:00 it just doesn't work for me to imagine that it doesn't exist. That's right. That's right. Or ever will stop existing. Yep. As you were talking there, it brought a quote to mind of a gentleman I'm going to interview later this week whose name is Andrew Solomon and he's an amazing guy anyway. But he has a line in his book about depression. He says basically, if you banish the dragons, you banish the heroes. And I love that. As you brought up dragons, you know, these so-called negatives are often the way we become the best version of ourselves. Yeah, and it doesn't help because when I was operating under that paradigm that these voices are bad, it's bad that I have them. And it's also bad that I can't make them go away, that my self-helping isn't working.

Starting point is 00:07:43 Yeah. Even part of how I describe my podcast and my work is embracing fear, anxiety, insecurity, uncertainty as the superpowers that they are. Yes. Because I've been podcasting almost as long as you, not quite as long. You have the epic nine years in. I've been doing eight years. And I joked with you before we hit record. I still feel awkward every single time.

Starting point is 00:08:05 Before I start, after I finish, when I listen back, it's all awkward. But if I let that awkwardness be bad, I wouldn't have a show at all. I wouldn't produce anything at all. Yep. That's sort of the way that I team. The perfectionist is just, yeah, it is awkward. but I keep going anyway. Yep.

Starting point is 00:08:21 So your book Free Time talks a lot about building what you call a heart-based business. And it's oriented towards business owners. And, you know, if you're trying to build your own business, I think it's an outstanding book. Thank you. I'm going to take some of the things from it and just shift it a little bit more to the personal level, even though the entire book is personal, right? I mean, it's about building a business that supports you and who you are. not just a business that makes money, but just to give an orientation for kind of where we're going

Starting point is 00:08:54 to go. But you talk very early on and you say that stress is a systems problem. So just talk about that broadly. Sure. And yeah, I appreciate you shifting toward the person because really we could say heart-based anything. It just means that we're not letting external markers of success and drive how we act, how we structure things. And when I say stress is a systems problem, even in the the context of a household. If I noticed myself fighting with my husband about how tidy it is, he doesn't notice clutter at all, and it really bothers me. And when we have friction about that, that's really a system's problem. He's not bad or wrong, and neither am I. But the only way that we could address this is to create a system that will work for the whole triad,

Starting point is 00:09:43 you know, for all of us. And because if I become overly demanding, like, that's going to wear away at his soul and his way of being. So long story short, stress is a system's problem is really an invitation to look at anywhere that we're experiencing stress or friction. And instead of trying to make one or the other wrong, it's almost elevating to another perspective of what steps, what system could we put in place that would alleviate this stress or friction. So in the household, it's a cleaner comes once a week on Fridays.

Starting point is 00:10:14 Now, sometimes my husband doesn't like having another person around. Too bad. Like, you're not allowed to complain. We set up the system. Importantly, it's on a recurring basis, so I don't have the decision fatigue. I used to think it was bad to spend so much money on cleaning. And I also used to try to wait. Is the house dirty enough yet?

Starting point is 00:10:31 But even the constant wondering, when should I call her? When should I schedule it? What day? It's tiring. And then a person becomes resentful, the one who's managing all that or the one that cares about a clean house. And I got that from Byron Katie. It's like, if you're the one noticing the dishes,

Starting point is 00:10:47 in the sink, guess what? You can do them because you're the one noticing it. So I often take my own little annoyances or things in life and business as, okay, I'm the one noticing it. So instead of demanding that everybody around me change, what could I set up that makes an even better scenario? And why I say system, some people feel allergic to that word, is that a good system is recurring. It's kind of set it and forget it. This is about setting your time free. Yes. So that once you put in place, it's harder not to use it. Like we get pre-made meals delivered once a week. It's not the only thing we eat, but it saves so many moments of friction or tension.

Starting point is 00:11:25 Who's cooking? What? Where are the groceries? Yeah. There's a couple things in there that I want to hit on. The first is, you know, when we say that a systems problem between people, one of the systems that is between people is the system of communication, right? And so there's a lot of couples therapy ideas around you focus on the dynamic of what the conversational system structure that has evolved between you is.

Starting point is 00:11:54 Then it's not you versus the other person. It's you and the other person versus this dynamic, this conversational dynamic. And I've also heard people say, if you're having problems and arguing a lot, focus on the process. Oh, right? And then the second you mentioned is this decisional fatigue. And I love the idea of being able to decide things once and not have to keep deciding them, you know, being able to say, like, every Friday, I go rock climbing. Now, does that mean I climb every Friday? No, of course not.

Starting point is 00:12:25 Sometimes it doesn't work. But I'm not having to figure out, like, well, what do I do on Friday? Or when am I going to rock climb this week? It's like, well, Friday. Right. And then, again, there are exceptions to the rule, and I can handle those. But the more we can sort of decide that sort of stuff, like, this is what I do in the morning. It's always set that way.

Starting point is 00:12:44 Separating that decision from the action is so valuable because, as you mentioned, how much time and energy goes into deciding or figuring something out, let alone then taking the action, right? So how much time do you spend swirling in your mind about, like you said, the cleaning lady, calling the cleaning lady is not very hard. Right. But for those of us who have minds that tend to get stuck in a groove, you know, can churn up a lot of energy. And it exacerbates the situation because if I'm booking on an ad hoc basis, oh, now she's not available. Now we're going back and forth 10 messages for the next date. When it's recurring, it's set it and forget it. So in your rock climbing example, if you don't block off your calendar with a recurring do not schedule block, then you might say, great, I'm going to go rock climbing.

Starting point is 00:13:32 Oh, no, my team has booked me for five podcasts. So you can in a calendar sense, and I encourage everybody to do this, grab some time. Design your calendar first before anyone else has a crack at it. And so you could have a recurring Friday. And then you could even, and I know you're big on connection and community and accountability, you could even always meet somebody at the rock climbing gym. So you feel even more like drawn to go or, oh, I don't feel like it today. Well, I'm meeting my friend there.

Starting point is 00:13:58 And so there are just all these ways that we can set up the system to be a little more ironclad. part of the reason we're recording here at Gotham, as you mentioned. And I record here a lot for solo episodes for the sole fact that when I show up, I don't want to burn my own money. So I have to produce. Because if I try to record my solo episodes at home, it's like, oh, I don't feel like it. I'm not in the right mood. Oh, whatever's happening in the living room is more fun. I just fritter the time away. But when I come here, it's like, no, you're paying for this. Yeah. Yeah. Make it happen. Yep. If there is a rock climber in Columbus, Ohio, listening to this who would like to meet me at the gym, let me know because I do not have a

Starting point is 00:14:37 climbing friend. My son, when he's in town. So you talk about not chasing what you call the four horsemen of the business ambition apocalypse. And again, this applies whether, you know, you're talking about your own business, somebody you work for, any of that, but you call him the hungry ghosts of money, fame, power, and control. Talk a little bit about those. Money, power, and fame are the ones that we most commonly hear as vices. And even one of my friends has a theory that each of us has a proclivity toward one of those three, even if it's not in an extreme or nefarious sense, we might be a little more driven by money, by power, by fame. But the one that I think we don't talk enough about that I sort of added is control. And that whether it is as a business owner or

Starting point is 00:15:22 in your own life or in your relationships, control can be a hungry ghost because you'll never have enough of it, it will never actually soothe the existential discomfort of whatever it is, trying to be in relationship or trying to be in the world, trying to be in your career. We try to control things or we think we somehow can control things and that that will make us feel better. And I just don't think it works. It ends up kind of suffocating the life out of most situations when control is taken to an extreme. So let's go a little deeper on that because a lot of your book is about creating systems that give your life more freedom and that happens by imposing some degree of structure and repeatability. What's the difference between doing that

Starting point is 00:16:10 wisely and chasing the hungry ghost of control? Part of it for me has been a lesson in choosing what to be a perfectionist about and then letting the rest go. So I'm very detail-oriented when it comes to my books, no stone goes unturned. I went through the entire free time manuscript and made sure no hyphenated word was hanging off the right side of the page, stuff like that that drives everyone around me crazy. So sometimes I think you're right. Control can tie into structure, rigidity, boundaries, you know, these all have a dance. But in the free time sense, when I started the book launched a little over a year ago and people would say it's a time management or productivity book.

Starting point is 00:16:49 And I know I share this thought with Oliver Berkman, who wrote 4,000 weeks. I know you've had him on the show. He and I both share this philosophy that just trying to squeeze more out of the time we have feels terrible. So in a way, efficiency means, oh, can you do what you're doing but more, better, faster? And then time management, just the word management, it's like time is in a box slash prison cell. And we're going to manage it and even micromanage it and control it until it produces exactly the peak performance output that we want. And there are so many podcasts about peak performance

Starting point is 00:17:21 and the phrase itself kind of drives me nuts because we're human beings. Like sometimes we're at our peak and a lot of times we're not. So to me, the systems are actually a gentle way of putting things in place so that we relieve the burden off of our mind to have to think about that thing again. Even teaching team members, you know, if you ask, me a question and it doesn't live in our documentation, please add it for the next time. That's a step that takes a little extra time now, but it's going to save us all time in the future. And so I think trying to control, and this is why I don't advise like manual time tracking or putting your calendar 15 minute increments. That does work for some people.

Starting point is 00:18:05 But I find that imposing too much control feels quite constricting at the end of the day. I would rather create the loose boundaries, even, oh, I don't take calls before 11 or after 2, then I can be really loose and free. And then the work is actually dropping the guilt. Oh, I should be working. So that's who? Factory system. It doesn't work for most of us.

Starting point is 00:18:26 The factory system was not at any point, and even the way it manifests in today's corporate structure, was not in any way designed for our physical and relational health and thriving. It was purely designed for productivity. And really the only person that it benefits to burn everybody out is the one at the top who benefits from reaping all that reward. And for the rest of us, it's just not a sustainable way to be. the recruiter, HR, and on rough weeks, the team therapist all before lunch. So hiring has to be simple and it has to work. That's where LinkedIn jobs earns its keep. You can post your job for free and track qualified candidates in one place. No 35 different Google Sheets. Not that we'd know

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Starting point is 00:20:02 That's LinkedIn.com slash one you feed. Terms and conditions apply. I think it's always interesting the level of structure and system that gets put in place for anything, whether it be a business or own life. I was in software startups for a long time. And I just used to say, like, what we're looking for is enough structure that the train doesn't come off the tracks, but that it also doesn't get slowed down. You know, and you can use that slowed down metaphor doesn't mean you have to go faster, right? in the case of a train, you might want it to go faster. But what's the level of structure that sort of keeps things in place?

Starting point is 00:20:44 So I don't have to keep deciding, keep thinking about them, but then also does allow me as much freedom around that. And I see what you're saying because, yes, there is a level of discipline. I think when people join my team, they often say like they're learning a lot, which I think is another way of saying, oh, I'm very particular about how things are done. For me, the systems, as it would relate to even the word or idea of control, it's actually a way to mitigate the chaos or the repetition or the busy work or minutia that would result from just not having designed an intelligent, elegant, graceful, repeatable system in the first place. So I guess it's almost like without controlling how things are done in the sense of very intentionally saying, how could this process flow more smoothly? And even your example of in relationships, how could these conversations when we're in intense disagreement, how can we move through this even when we don't agree? And if we can design that intentionally up front, yes, that might seem like a little more sort of structure or rigidity or control than people are used to. but I just think it saves so much chaos and wasted time and energy down the road.

Starting point is 00:21:56 You talk about in a lot of businesses, you know, there's a missing metric. And again, I want to expand this more broadly to human things, right? Because we all are measuring our lives in many different ways, kind of all the time. You know, and so when we're unstructured about that, to me, then it's very easy to start chasing the hungry ghost. of money or fame, whether that fame be big time fame or just being well known on the school PTA council, right? Or how many likes a photo gets? Yeah, how many likes of photo gets, right? And you introduce a new metric that I love, which I didn't have these words to use it, but has been, again, with a lot of help from Charlie in particular, been something that we have really oriented

Starting point is 00:22:42 around over the last couple years, which is the time to revenue ratio, right? Like how much time does it take me to earn X amount of money? It's a really interesting way to think about it because most of us think about revenue, you know, how much money is being made without thinking as much about what's the cost to do so. Right. And in a way, it makes sense who could blame any of us because money seems so fundamentally tied to survival. Right. And you and I are both stateside. I know many listeners may not be, but here in America, we're particularly obsessed with money. How much do we have? Do we need to make more? Because we don't have some of the broader social support structures that say the Norwegian countries have. So money is vital because if you don't have health insurance and anything happens to you, it could spiral you into bankruptcy or, I mean, there are very serious money related concerns. Even the phrase from Benjamin Franklin time is money. But it's so much more than that. And so the missing metric is time. How much time did it take you to earn that revenue in your. your business or let's say you work for a company, okay, you're making seven figures, but you're

Starting point is 00:23:51 completely burning yourself out to the point where you might get very sick. Then your time will really be cut short. I had friends who entered investment banking and they were making more money than me, but they were sleeping at the office. They were sometimes getting three hours of sleep a night. And each person, I can't tell anyone what to think or what to do, but each person has to decide if I die tomorrow or if I die in a year, is this tradeoff worth it? The amount of time that is yielding a seven-figure salary or a seven-figure business and to be really intentional because sometimes what you hear from even those people that, you know, in free time, the way I put it is the way we bake is as important as what we make. I'm not convinced that if you burn yourself out

Starting point is 00:24:33 or you spend so much time to achieve the money at the expense of your health and the expense of relationships that you'll be any happier when you get there or that you'll even be able to change those habits once you get there, wherever there is. If you talk to wealthy people, a lot of them say, they're just as miserable as the next. Or then they become worried about losing that money. Or then they escalate their lifestyle on the hedonic treadmill and never ends. So I just, my curiosity is what if we could spend the time and specifically measure not just how much any of us is making. How much time did it take to get there?

Starting point is 00:25:07 How much life force did that require from us? And you could have a really peaceful, joyful, joyful, six-figure job or business. or you could have one that's killing you slowly. Yep. I keep referencing Charlie, but it's been fundamental because it really became clear like I've coached a lot of people on this too over the years, which is like if you're building a business because you are saying that part of what you want is freedom, be careful because you can build a business that will make you much less free than you were in your day job if you're not careful, you know? And so it's about being really intentional about what am I doing and why. And there are different times and places for different things, right? Like what I had to prioritize the first year or two, as I left my corporate job to doing this full time, you know, there were certain priorities there given where we were and we had to orient in a certain way. But over time, what I've seen happen is how easy it is to box yourself into a corner where you get what you think you wanted. And then as you said, it doesn't. doesn't make you happy, either because the thing itself isn't what you thought it was, which is often the case.

Starting point is 00:26:17 Okay, I've got my own, you know, seven-figure business, but I can never be away, can never take a week off. I'm always working. I can never stop thinking about it. So it's, you don't get what you thought you were going to get. Or, to your point, the mind state of, you know, I'll be happy when is one of the most pernicious mind states. I'm sure it's a human thing because I think.

Starting point is 00:26:42 We're wired to always sort of want the next thing. It's part of the survival mechanism. But it's something to really watch for because if we get where we thought we wanted to be and we're incapable of enjoying it because the goalpost just moves, right? And this is something we all know. And all we've done is deepen the grooves on those neural pathways. So we're even making even harder to break those habits down the road whenever we get there, wherever there is.

Starting point is 00:27:10 I've also tried to be really intentional about. decoupling the idea that if I work less time, I'll make less money? And just, is that true? What if? What if I work half the time and earn twice as much? Who says? So I noticed myself, I had these narratives that society is very happy to hand us that we assume a linear causal relationship. Yes. Even maybe even subtly as we're talking now, it's like, well, if I scale back my time or my energy, well, earn less, but I'm okay with that and make it something. It's assumed. Yes. And that says who? Yep. Says who. So I'm always just questioning that. Says who? That is one in me that really takes effort to unwire. Because I don't know what it is. I mean, I guess there's a lot of it that's cultural. You know, it's around this work ethic idea, which has served me very well in many different ways in my life. But it can get to the point that the point is how hard you're working. Right. And so I've had to really work to unwind that. Like you said, says who. I might work less. Does that mean I'm going to earn less? Maybe. Maybe not. And if you work less hard, does it mean the work quality will suffer, the impact or output?

Starting point is 00:28:16 Maybe not. Might get better. Yeah. Well, last summer, I was able to take a month off. I've never had anything approaching that amount of time off in my life. I started working at a job when I was like 14. And before that, I had paper routes and I never went to college. I don't think I'd ever been off more than maybe two weeks.

Starting point is 00:28:38 And the two weeks I'd been off might have happened the year before. So I'd never had any time beyond a week, and I took a month off, which seemed gratuitous, right? I mean, it just seemed, even saying it, there's a little part of me that's like, oh, my God, everybody's going to think I'm spoiled, you know. It was probably one of the best business decisions I ever made, because in order to take that time off, we had to systematize a bunch of things. Ah, yes. It was very hard to get to where I could take a month off. So all of a sudden, I came back, and there were two things that were very different. One is my energy level and my interest in what I was doing had been restored.

Starting point is 00:29:19 And the second was there was systems in place to handle a bunch of things that I now didn't have to do so that I could then turn my attention towards what I actually, quote unquote, do, which is talking to people and building programs. Like all of a sudden there was more energy in time for that. And it never would have happened if I hadn't done what I thought was a decision, I'm going to take a month off, and that's just going to be a hit to the business. But I'm willing to make that because I really want a month off. Afterwards, I went, oh, not only did I take a month off,

Starting point is 00:29:56 I've now put it in place that I can do it again. That's so amazing. Right. And it all speaks to these things you're talking about. But I had to question some fundamental assumptions that that, That was doable, possible, reasonable, acceptable, morally correct. I mean, all those things. I know.

Starting point is 00:30:15 I feel like there's a lot of talk about examining our money stories. And, you know, in the book I talk about our time, our energetic time blueprint is as powerful and sometimes pernicious as the money blueprint. So I think some of us know, oh, I need to confront my money stuff and I need to, you know, I have some limiting beliefs around money, but we don't even question the ones around time. Say more about that energetic time blueprint. Well, I just think we get imprinted, what time is, how to spend it, how to move through a day, how hard to work or not from the time we're kids. We grow up in a household. We grow up in a context of our home, what we see in our parents, how schools are set up,

Starting point is 00:30:53 how our first jobs are set up, how society is set up. And absolutely, here in the States, we have this Protestant work ethic, hard work equals good and virtuous. Yes. And more work is good and virtuous. More money is good and virtuous. And yet the story I share in the book is that as a kid, my mom worked full time. So I was a latchkey kid, but I used to go to all these activities after school because then I didn't realize until as an adult that part of it was I needed to keep myself busy until she could pick me up, essentially.

Starting point is 00:31:23 So I would go to school, then do homework, then have a piano lesson, then do ballet, then do aerobics or acrobatics, then do gymnastics. And I would have this massive stack. So then, of course, as an adult, working at a fast-based company like Google, my calendar, was stacked in the exact same way. Then when I go out on my own in my business, my calendar was stacked the exact same way. No matter how much I said I wanted free time, I was always mapping my calendar to this time blueprint of cramming things to the gills, stuffing them to the gills, making exceptions for everyone else, not myself.

Starting point is 00:31:54 Like, I always felt this unnecessary and false pressure. Someone asks me for a meeting or asks me for my time. I better squeeze it in wherever I can. Or when I started coaching clients, whatever's good for them. Yep. You know, roll out the red carpet. But then I'm a disaster. So it got so refined, talking about systems, it got so refined that I'm not taking one-on-one

Starting point is 00:32:13 clients anymore. But when I was, I would have them every other week. So A and C weeks of the month only on Thursdays and only between 11 and 2. And that might have meant I could take four clients at a time. But my rates increased at that point. I also put the billing on monthly retainer. Good until canceled. I bill everyone on the first of the month because I was tired of knowing who's canceling when.

Starting point is 00:32:36 Who am I billing when? Oh, you're on a three-month package. You're on a six-month. And I'm coaching every day of the week. There was no time to think. Yes. So just consolidating and batching in a really what seems from the outside, like really strict parameters set me free.

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Starting point is 00:34:02 What's one thing that has been holding you back lately? You know that it's there. You've tried to push past it, but somehow it keeps getting in the way. You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major saboteurs of self-control, things like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, emotional escapism, that quietly derail our best intentions. But here's the good news. You can outsmart them. And I've put together a free guide to help you spot these hidden obstacles and give you simple,

Starting point is 00:34:34 actionable strategies that you can use to regain control. Download the free guide now at one you feed dot net slash ebook and take the first step towards getting back on track. One-on-one coaching was the way that I made the transition from the day job to other things. And so yeah, I did a ton of it until I realized like this is all I'm doing. And it's chaos. I mean, I love it. I mean, I love working with people. Like so question put to me is, you know, well, are you going to give it up? And I'm like, I don't think I will entirely. I don't think I'll entirely give up working one-on-one with people because I love it. But I have scaled it way back. And like you said, you know, it happens in these windows of time and it's just gotten much more refined. And so I enjoy it much more and I think

Starting point is 00:35:21 it's just better for me and the clients. And even that's a more nuanced understanding of time because sometimes context switching is very jarring. Like if you had to go from an operational team meeting straight into a podcast interview, straight into a coaching session, that would probably be a more taxing day than one where you have three podcast interviews back to back, where you get in the zone and you stay there. And then what you just described is hearing you talk about coaching, it's clear though that's life-giving when you're in it, that that hour of a coaching session or a podcast interview, and they have a lot in common.

Starting point is 00:35:54 They do. They do. listening, curiosity, exploration, that those hours are life-giving and that those are the hours to figure out how to block them, how to structure the week so that you can get in the zone and stay there. But then knowing, oh, these energize me, these give me energy, give me joy. That's also so much more important than just how much money that hour delivers. Right, right.

Starting point is 00:36:18 And to a point, that's the other thing I sort of learned was like, I can love doing something until there's too much of it. Yeah. You know, and I'm such a big proponent of the middle way that any tends to be at the extremes we find ourselves in trouble. So loving doing something doesn't mean I want to do it 60 hours a week, you know, might mean that the optimal amount of time for me to do it is five hours a week or 10 hours a week. You know, just everybody's different.

Starting point is 00:36:42 And even to your one month that you took off, I mean, just hearing how much it energized you reminded me of Stefan Sagmeister. He has a TED talk explaining how he. He takes a year off of his business every seven years. He shuts down the whole company. There's no one even remaining behind in his design studio. He's a graphic designer, but so much more. And he says always the next evolution of his business, their best work, their best art installations that he kind of does on the side to the design work.

Starting point is 00:37:11 Always, always, always comes as a result of the year off. Yep. You talk about lowercase hard work and uppercase hard work. So we were sort of talking about this idea that hard work is a virtue. you, but you're making a distinction between uppercase and lowercase. What do you mean by that? This is one of these lines of the book that I sometimes lose a little sleep at night or during the day of, should I have said that?

Starting point is 00:37:33 Is that the right thing? So I'll be curious to hear your take. My intention when I put this in the book is that uppercase hard work is this grind. And it's almost like we're grinding ourselves, we're martyring ourselves so that we can do the hard work. and it's almost capital H, hard work is at the expense of ourselves. But we think it's the right thing or it's what we need to do. I need to do this and then it will pay off later. Lowercase hard work is, of course, you're going to invest time, energy, money, resources

Starting point is 00:38:07 into work or projects. That's what we love actually secretly. Even when a project, like a lot of people are intimidated to write a book, but they say they want to write a book someday. One study said as many as one in three people. have dreams of writing a book. And I used to find myself complaining, oh, writing a book is so hard. And I stopped saying that. Like, writing a book is complex. It's meaty. It's challenging, but it's exciting. And so even myself talk to myself, I try to notice when I'm saying, oh, something is so

Starting point is 00:38:36 hard and complaining about it versus challenge that I'm choosing and also being mindful not to work hard just for the sake of working hard. Because while that can sometimes be rewarded if you work within a company, when you're self-employed, there's no reward. There is no correlation between hard work, martyring yourself for the business, and any promise of success as a result of that. In fact, I think that energetically kind of sends the wrong message. Can you imagine if you were constantly complaining on this show of how hard podcasting is, how hard it is to prepare for your guests, how hard it is to stay listening when they get on these tangents and they're so boring.

Starting point is 00:39:16 And then how hard it is to grow the show, it's like, it kind of sucks the joy out. Yeah. And who would want to listen to that? So it's either hard work in a really friction, you sort of way where you maybe should stop doing that all together, or it's lowercase hard. We accept that hard and we find the good. Yeah. I think there's a couple things there.

Starting point is 00:39:34 I think there's sort of knowing what work gives you more energy and you really like and what sort of work wears you down and you don't like. And then there's even in that. work that we do enjoy, as you're saying, we can get very serious about it, right? Or martyred about it. Like, I come by the martyrdom idea fairly naturally. I will not say from who, but it's family inheritance that I have to watch for. And recognizing that it was happening this week a little bit, I have a bunch of interviews this week. I'm so excited in person with all these amazing people. and it's a lot because I'm a diligent preparer but reminding myself as our producer Nicole will do you did this to yourself first right but secondly reminding myself like yeah this is what I love to do yes it's going to take a lot of effort but don't turn it into a problem when it's not a problem it's effort it is hard work yeah so I do like this uppercase lowercase because if I remind myself this is the work that you love

Starting point is 00:40:42 How fortunate to be able to come to New York and talk to people and have a podcast that supports you like, that is the dream. Yeah. You know, I remember being here, I don't know the number of years, six maybe. Ginny and I came to New York. And the reason we came was to attend a course Jonathan offered called The Art of Becoming Known. I was still working my full-time job. And I had a couple interviews while I was here also. And I remember this moment, we were in a cab driving from one thing to the next.

Starting point is 00:41:12 next. And I don't know if I said it out loud or I just thought it. But it was like, God, I just wish this was my life. Like, I wish this wasn't going to end at the end of this week. And I was going to go back and go back to this job, which was actually a pretty good job in a lot of ways, but wasn't my thing. And I keep trying to remember that. At that time, if you told me I would be here doing this, I would have said, yes, please, anything for that. And to remember that helps me move away from uppercase hard work to lowercase. Like, yes, we're putting a lot of effort and it's doing something I love and how fortunate is that. So reframing things as a choice is always enormously powerful. That reminds me of two things. The saying abundance

Starting point is 00:41:54 is the overwhelm you've been asking for. Even this week, this abundance of interviews, well, this is the dream that you asked for all those years. And then I forget where I heard this, but whenever you say, oh, I have to do a podcast today, or I get that way sometimes about solo episodes because it's just me. There's no accountability of another person across from me and to just shift it to I get to dot, dot, dot. And truly, it actually works for me where I'll be grumpy with my coffee and then I'll go, I get to record an episode today. That's a privilege. That's a treat. Or I talked about authors. Sometimes they're like, oh, launching a book is so hard. But it's like, I get to launch a book. This is the ultimate champagne problem. Oh, I don't know how to market it.

Starting point is 00:42:36 It's like, well, you created this thing. I just did it. a solo on the glass half full or half empty. But you created a glass. I was evaluating the first year of the launch. How did it go for free time? And sometimes I'd find myself getting down because again, the hedonic treadmill of metrics. Yes. It's never enough. How many listeners? How many readers? How many downloads? It's never enough. And so I have to remind myself, the glass isn't half full or half empty. I created a glass out of a figment of my imagination. That's the thing to celebrate. That's the thing to stay focused on. Well, and it's getting to that idea of a heart-based business and a missing metric is,

Starting point is 00:43:14 yeah, what am I measuring and why? You know, because you're right. When we're looking at external metrics, the scale just keeps changing. You know, if you told me when I started the show that we would have the number of downloads we had, I would have, A, never believed you, and B, jumped for joy for a week, right? But then you get there and you're like, well, yeah, that's good. But, you know what? We kind of need the next level and the next level.

Starting point is 00:43:38 So those external metrics, they have a role. And I always have to sort of reorient back towards like, okay, but what about this is important? It's not just downloads. Right. Like faceless, nameless listeners. You're a download now. Yeah. What about this is important?

Starting point is 00:43:55 And I go back to why did I start the show? And I was like, well, I wanted to spend more time with Chris, my best friend, who's the audio guy. I knew it would be good for me, like good for me to have these conversations. Those were the two primary reasons. And I look back and I'm like, those have been fulfilled in spades and continue to. And then when it started helping people, it was like, oh my goodness, you know, that's the extra bonus. And so, yeah, the connections that I've made with guests and listeners. And there are so many things that if I'm just looking at the main metric of downloads, all that gets washed.

Starting point is 00:44:32 way, and it's not enough because you're not Tim Ferriss or Joe Rogan or name your podcaster, right? So all this stuff is just a really important reflection, I think. For me, it kind of comes down to always coming back to like, what really matters here. Yes. What's really important? And that is heart-based anything, which is that money isn't the only metric. For me, heart-based is I'm not going to sacrifice my values or my integrity for the sake of growing the business or making more money. I, in those cases, will sometimes take the longer route or the scenic route because I don't want to put money into something I don't believe in or just because everyone else is doing it. There's a certain ginormous social media site that started as a way

Starting point is 00:45:19 to rate women on their looks. I'm not going to give you my ad money. I don't care if 99 out of 100 companies advertise there or say that's the only way to grow XYZ thing. It doesn't resonate for me. I'm not going to do it. I'm stubborn about that. Yeah. But the other thing about heart base is it's a permission to follow your heart and follow your intuition. And sometimes people denigrate intuition as, oh, I'm a data person.

Starting point is 00:45:42 What is intuition, if not a thousand subconscious data points, if not a million that you've been collecting your whole life? So there is a place for heart and soul and intuition in the decisions that we make and the ways that we operate. And I just feel so strongly about that. And my creative coach, Jay Ocunzo, to your point about metrics, he had us do this great exercise of determining our even more meaningful metrics. So it's not that we won't measure the really straightforward stuff. Like downloads,

Starting point is 00:46:11 revenue, whatever. But what's even more meaningful? So one of his is CPP, cackles per piece. How many times does he crack himself up when recording one of his unthinkable episodes? Or one of mine, number of friends made through podcasting. Wow. That's a great metric. Holy mackle. NNF. Number of news. friends. Because I joke, podcasting is like the introverts guide to making friends, you know. Totally. Yeah. So what if I measured a number of new friends made over the last eight years? It's like, oh, it's priceless. It's been priceless. Even if no one's listening and zero dollars are earned. Yes. I have hundreds of new friends made. Right. Yeah. It's that intrinsic motivation. Like, yeah, these shows, I do them because I love doing them. And they're good for me.

Starting point is 00:46:56 And but I have to remember that because I will turn anything into a job. I've talked. about this a lot on the show. I will turn anything into something that has to be strived at and conquered and improved. I took up rock climbing. Why did I take it up? A, my son does it, and I thought it would be a great way for us to be able to do something together. And I wanted something new and interesting and challenging to do with my body. So I'm climbing. It's great. But within the second time I'm there, I'm like, well, I'm going to get a rock climbing coach. And I'm going to, I'm just, because that's the thing. It's like I've just had to consciously with that really work on like don't turn this into a job and there is a natural joy in

Starting point is 00:47:37 improving right and it's probably what's made you so how do I how do I balance that so I wanted to come back to something you just mentioned which is intuition I find intuition fascinating and what I find fascinating about it is how do we tell the difference between our intuition and to use a word that you used earlier my neurosis because but both feel very strong and feel very natural, right? Just because it feels real doesn't mean it is. So I'm just curious how you sort those two things out, given that you said you've got, you know, 10,000 hours of neuroses. Of neuroses. Yes. How do you separate that, which is very natural to you at this point, and what is an actual intuition that's worth following?

Starting point is 00:48:22 And specifically, my neuroses tend to manifest as people pleasing, perfectionism, worry, anxiety. So those are my. That's what I have a lot of practice in. Intuition, I love Penny Pierce's work. She wrote a book called The Intuitive Way. And thanks to the podcast, we did a whole series. She became a great friend. She actually gives a lot of practical ways to grow intuition because I know you've said behavior changes the skill. You can actually build the skill. Same thing with intuition. We all have it. And to answer your question, we can all improve how to discern the difference by growing the skill. paying closer attention, observing things, making a note of what we thought was intuition versus what was just fear or anxiety. Intuition comes to me when I tend to get, it's very quiet. It does come to me kind of as a download, whereas anxiety and fears a little louder, a little more panicky, a little more impulsive. So I try to pay attention. And I guess we can't always know as well. So sometimes, I don't know. I mean, I know, of course, you've talked so much about different mindfulness practices and those help, but I won't even just say, oh,

Starting point is 00:49:32 meditation is the answer to everything. I just think it's learning how does your intuition speak to you? When has it spoken in the past? And something that I learned from Penny is that, well, a couple things. One, when we're at the level of like red flags, let's say in relationships, that's almost intuition in its lowest, loudest form or you get sick. That's where like you're not really listening. And so life events have to become increasingly dramatic.

Starting point is 00:49:57 for you to listen. Over time, it can become more nuanced. And so in our book Frequency, Penny talks about finding your home frequency. When are you? Or what self-care practices lead you to be sort of like calm, peaceful, have that equanimity. That's when we can hear the more subtle, intuitive clues. And then she says the highest form of home frequency is self-entertainment, where we're entertained, we're delighted, we're curious. Even doing something you love is a form of self-entertainment. rock climbing self-entertainment. And when we're in that playful spirit, we also can get more creative ideas. And I find that I get more creative ideas. The last thing I'll say here is I've just also learned to sit with my discomfort for longer and longer periods of time. Like the last few years,

Starting point is 00:50:43 the pandemic have been really tricky in my business because I used to earn a lot of income from keynote speaking, which all but dried up. I keep thinking every year we're going to turn the corner and then new chaos unfolds. And so just sitting with how uncomfortable it is, not to have that income stream or not to know when the next speaking gig will be booked, just letting it be and not rushing, I call that when the financial tides recede, not just rushing to chase after those receding tides, but what has washed up on the shore? What's the new insider opportunity here if I don't rush to chase after what was? That takes courage. Yeah, but that's a skill too. I don't have courage. I don't have some innate, courageous gene, and I never had an innate

Starting point is 00:51:27 confidence, Gene. It's like I just allow myself to not feel courageous or not feel confident, whereas we said earlier, to feel awkward. Like all the things that we would make wrong, I just keep taking the small steps. A while ago, I had postcards made for my business. They said, build first, courage second. Just courage follows action. It's not the other way around. Absolutely. Yes. I mean, that is such a truism, you know, that if we wait to do certain things so we're not afraid of doing them, we will never do them. Yeah. And there are just some things, that are for certain types of people always going to produce some fear. You know, like, I'm never going to have a difficult conversation with somebody

Starting point is 00:52:05 where I have to bring up something that they're doing that I'm not happy with that I would like to be different or at least discussed. Maybe I'm selling myself short, but I think it's pretty unlikely that I'm ever going to go into one of those without a great deal of trepidition. It's just there. I just know it's there. It seems that the more I do it, it gets a little bit easier. I'm not saying it doesn't get better, but I'm still like, I don't like doing it.

Starting point is 00:52:30 It makes me anxious, makes me nervous. And if I wait until the right time, I'll never do it. Yeah, and I feel like something else that we don't really discuss enough in the realm of career and business are different personality types. Like, the more empathic you are or the more sensitive you are. And I find that for me, being a highly sensitive person and empath, I get overwhelmed very easily. And just like you, if it's going to involve a tough conversation, It's very easy to get overwhelmed.

Starting point is 00:52:57 That's very different than if I'm taking advice from practically like the sociopath CEO next door who just doesn't care at all. Right. Some people are just built in a way that they don't care. They're not bothered. Now, it doesn't have to be a sociopath, but that's giving an extreme example. I cannot compare what I find challenging or overwhelming. I mean, even often I kind of used to beat myself about networking. Like, I get so overwhelmed that big events or parties or I don't want to be on the phone with anyone.

Starting point is 00:53:25 let alone like running around trying to build my network. It just doesn't work for me the way that I know other people are so good at it because it energizes them. And I've told myself, oh, if you were better at, if you had more patience for like connecting with people. But I love being with my dog at the park just like listening to podcast nonverbal, you know. And so anyway, I think we need to give ourselves some grace to anything in this self-development world, spiritual world. It's almost like everything is a paradox. So everything has two sides of the coin. And also these neuroses, or with the sensitivities, their superpowers, and they mean that I'm overwhelmed more easily than some next person or someone that wrote a book where it makes it sound so easy. Yeah, I think that's so important because if you're an empathetic person, it's going to make certain things harder, but it's going to make other things easier and better. And trying to be somebody where not is really problematic. Like, I used to think I should be able to just have that conversation and not have it worry me.

Starting point is 00:54:23 But that would make me not me. Because part of the reason it's hard is because I actually do care. And I am compassionate. I am sensitive to not wanting to make someone else feel bad. But that is also, as you said, sort of a superpower. So I have to balance those things out. We are running out of time, but I want to hit one last thing, which is you've actually made an acronym out of something.

Starting point is 00:54:45 I've said to coaching clients for years, a little bit of something is better than a lot of nothing. And you have a phrase better than nothing. And you actually call it BTN. So talk to me about better than anything. nothing. Yeah, BTN can work both ways, as in it can be positive, and I think sometimes it can be negative. Where I originated this, a brief, BTN, was actually in relationships, where sometimes I was finding myself in bad relationships, dating-wise, because I would say to myself,

Starting point is 00:55:12 well, it's better than nothing. And I would kind of be settling. Yeah. I also, at that time, we'd call it, like, cookie crumbs from someone who's just tossing out a few crumbs, and I'm like, oh, thank you for these crumbs. And somehow operating on a paradigm that, well, this is a This is better than nothing, having no one. That's not true. So anyone or anything that's draining you that you dread that is just any manner of making you feel worse after an interaction than better, that's not better than nothing. They're actually taking your life force.

Starting point is 00:55:42 Yes. I'm sure you've talked about that many times. However, on the positive side of better than nothing, it's like, again, if either of us were perfectionists about our podcasts, we wouldn't have one at all because no episode is perfect. They have to go out every week, no matter their imperfections, no matter the misspeaks or the filler words or the awkward knit moments. Sure, some of it gets fixed in editing, but then some of it doesn't. Some conversations are better than others. And sometimes I feel so bad, like, oh, no, but if I produce something that's not the best there is, people stop listening and

Starting point is 00:56:13 the whole cascade of future tripping, worry of catastrophizing what's going to go wrong. But the better than nothing is, something is better than nothing. And if you put something out and you do it again, And it's really a thousand tiny iterations over time that are what you see from anybody producing anything. I guarantee that none of us goes home at the end of the day. Well, don't let me speak for everyone else, but saying, oh, that was so perfect. Right. It's just that I did it.

Starting point is 00:56:38 Yep. And that was rewarding and it's imperfect. And actually, now with all these chaty BT and AI and deep big video, they're so uncanny and horrible. Like if you hear a podcast, I don't really like the shows where it's clear they're just reading off of a script. It's too perfect. Right.

Starting point is 00:56:55 Right. It takes some of the humanity out. Yep. So secretly, I think even though we are hard on ourselves and we think that, oh, perfect or nothing, better than nothing is actually the life-giving mantra. Done is better than perfect. And in the book, I say it's like cookie dough is just as good as the baked cookies sometimes. So look for the cookie dough in your life or your business where unfinished, imperfect is sometimes even tastier than the finished product. Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this.

Starting point is 00:57:26 Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices didn't quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe it was autopilot mode or self-doubt that made it harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why I created the six saboteurs of self-control. It's a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to break through them. If you're ready to take back control and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at one you feed.net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen starting today.

Starting point is 00:58:03 Onewfeed.net slash ebook. Well, I think that is a beautiful place for us to wrap up. Thank you so much for coming on. It's been such a pleasure. And my new friends from podcast metric, it is increased by one today. Oh, I love that. Thank you so much. Eric, yeah, and like any love notes from listeners. It's like if one person, if this helps your

Starting point is 00:58:27 day improve, we've done our job. So thank you so much for having me. And big thanks to everybody who's here listening. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend. Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don't have a big budget, and I'm certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better, and that's you. Just hit the share button on your podcast app or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one you feed community.

The One You Feed - Rethinking How We Work and Live: Why Freedom Is a System, Not a Feeling with Jenny Blake

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