The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 141. The Reset Mindset with Penny Zenker

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

We are excited to welcome Penny Zenker on today! She is sharing more about focus and productivity which is crucial for entrepreneurs facing burnout. Penny Zenker is known as “The Focusologist.” She’s a sought after international keynote speaker and best-selling author. Penny is sharing more about focus and productivity which is crucial for entrepreneurs facing burnout. She shares insights on eliminating distractions, perfectionism, and self-sabotage to maximize results. Penny introduces her new book, “The Reset Mindset,” and outlines a three-step practice: Recognize, Get Perspective, and Realign and Execute. We talk about the importance of managing focus and energy, nurturing existing connections, and adopting practical strategies like the 80/20 rule and daily planning methods to enhance productive and achieve greater satisfaction. If you feel like you are hitting a point of burnout, tune in to hear the insights that Penny has to share!Thanks for listening! Let us know your thoughts on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsSign up for our newsletter here at  www.theultimateblogpodcast.com/newsletterCheck out the show notes (link below) for more information including links and resources mentioned in today's episode!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode141**We want to thank you for being a listener of The Ultimate Blog Podcast for the last 2.5 years! Join our new podcast newsletter and receive a FREE Blogging Essentials Guide HERE!**

For the last two and a half years, we have shared weekly podcast episodes with you every single Tuesday, and we just wanted to share even more with you. So launching now is the Ultimate Blog Podcast email newsletter, and we want to just personally invite you to join us on the inside. You already know that you get episodes each and every Tuesday whether you listen on Apple or Spotify or any other podcast player but we want to take it a step further. We really do want to connect with more of you who are listening each and every week or more of you who are learning how to blog or learning more

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We can't wait to learn and grow with you more. Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you are just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we are excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside

the norm and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging and work from home life, all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. This week I was going through our emails and I had an email from someone who was interested in coming on the podcast and it felt like

it was just meant to be, to be honest. In May, I released an episode. It was a solo episode talking about burnout. And then this email came in about Penny Zinker and her new book that's coming out called The Reset Mindset and talking about our focus and how to eliminate distraction. And I just feel like this is really an area of need, not only with bloggers, but entrepreneurs in general. And so we got Penny on our calendar really quickly

and are really excited to share her with you today. Penny Zinker is known as the Focusologist and she is a sought after international keynote speaker and best selling author. She centers her work on the psychology of productivity to eliminate distraction, perfectionism and self sabotage to maximize results personally and professionally. And today she's going to help us with our focus and how we can go into Q4 with a renewed sense of purpose and focus. So Penny, welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast. Thanks for having me. Excited. We are too. Like I said, when I checked the email and like read through, I was like, oh,

this is what we need to have on the podcast for sure. I think that focus and making sure we're focusing on the right things to help eliminate stress and overwhelm and just that weight on our shoulders is something that a lot of bloggers and entrepreneurs feel. And I'm just really excited to kind of hear your approach in this way. So can you start out just by sharing a little bit about who you are and who you serve. Sure. So you introduced me as the focusologist. So maybe just to put some understanding as to why I call myself a focusologist,

because I think that'll explain also who I serve, is that people think, oh, you're super focused because you're the most focused you can teach everyone else. Squirrel, not necessarily. No, I built my own technology business from just me to a multimillion dollar business. And I pretty much learned all the wrong things to do because although on the outside, it looked like I was really successful, I was killing myself. And it led to burnout. And it led to some important lessons about how we need to

focus on the things that matter most. And today, the reason I call myself a focusologist is A, because I recognize that since then, that's always my questioning is what matters most? What's the 20% that makes 80% of the difference? So that I just hone in on that one thing that I could do next. But we're in a focus crisis. You just said it. Like we all have this heavy weight of the distractions that we have

plus the rate of change and the level of uncertainty. And so I believe that we all need to become focusologists which is to control and direct our focus towards more meaningful results and practice it daily. I think that's so true. And I think especially for those listening, we're content creators. So we're the ones creating the content

that's causing the problem maybe. But we are pumping out content to help people, but in turn it is coming with some overwhelm, for sure. Well, actually, I don't know. When you're in your zone of genius and you're pumping out really relevant content to your audience, I think that's exactly what they need to be listening to.

That's who you wanna be is that trusted partner. So you're not, at least this is the way I see it, it's not just information or content that's being put out. It's extremely relevant to those that you're serving. And I think that's the difference is how do you make yourself of the highest value and let go of those other things that really aren't adding that much value. For instance, I just I'm on a newsletter of somebody who I find their content really interesting and it's very long format, which I don't typically like because usually my eyes will roll over if I get a long email, but because I like the content I can stick with it. And they wrote to say that they were reducing the number of newsletters that they were doing because they wanted to continue to deliver that quality and that value. And they reported back that it didn't affect people leaving or any complaints that people

wanted the value in the content. So step back away from it if it's too much for you and still be focused on that clear value. That's kind of what that taught me as well or reinforced. So when you are talking to entrepreneurs, especially like online entrepreneurs and people like that who have a lot of drive and motivation, so they have this huge list of things they want to accomplish, they probably have a lot of personal goals as well. What do you see happening to these people? What's their biggest challenge and where are they seeking help with?

Where are they putting their time that's probably not the right way to go about accomplishing all of these goals? Okay, there's probably a lot of questions in one. So let me focus on the last part first and then you you can see where you wanna go with that. You said, where are they probably focusing that isn't getting them to where they want? So I'm a big fan of the 80-20 rule. And most of the time, if we really plot out, and I do this exercise where I have people plot out where they're spending their time,

what's the category that it belongs in? Is it administration? Is it revenue generation, right? Or depending on the categories of their business, to find out where you're spending your time. Because most of us, and I get caught in this too, and I have to regularly take a look at how things have slipped. I find myself sometimes spending more time in the 80% than in the 20%, then it's time to reset and say, hold on a second, what are the most valuable things that are gonna create the most income, create the most connection and value with my audience,

et cetera, and what are those things? And then find creative ways. It's amazing how creative you get when you get really clear on what matters, how creative you can be to get rid of the things that don't matter as much. That's what I would say is we just get caught in that because someone will say, you need to be on Instagram because it's the best. It is going to change your business.

Maybe my clients aren't on Instagram, but I said, okay, you're right. I just spent all this time trying to get onto a platform that isn't the best platform for me. So, you know. I love that advice because I think that especially in this industry, we kind of do feel like we have to be doing all the things. We need to be pumping out blog posts weekly, multiple blog posts. We need to be having an email newsletter and making sure we're showing up there. You need to have an active social media presence. And it can feel very almost suffocating, if I'm honest. Like how am I supposed to do all this? I am just one person that is supposed to be doing all of this. And a lot of times we encourage our students like don't focus

on everything, especially when you're starting out, you know, focus on your blog and then one other thing. And typically for them, we're telling them to focus on their email marketing and leave it there. And in the world of social media, that is very much going against the grain. But I think that what it's kind of doing is kind of sucking the joy out of what we're doing when we feel all of this pressure. Yeah, I relate.

I mean, I'm not in blogging per se, but I feel the same as an entrepreneur. So I think that there is that constant and that's why I talk about dynamic reassessment. We have to dynamically reassess our priorities on a regular basis because what we might have started out today with the priority something may have changed and we need to pay attention so that we can pivot that and then when we consciously change our priorities it actually relieves stress because we realize that we don't have to do it all we're saying okay well I'm dynamically changing this has to go if this is coming in. So having this dynamic prioritization process actually can be hugely supportive for anyone, but especially for entrepreneurs.

Okay. So can we talk about that a little more? Because I'm picturing in my mind how we make this long list of to-dos. Somebody told me I should do this to grow here, like we talked about Instagram or so we've created this huge list and we're like, okay, if I'm just really good at managing my time, I'm going to be able to get this whole list done. But I think what I hear you saying is we're not going to get the whole list done. We have to look at this list and see what's important. So can you talk about what it looks like to figure out where we should be spending our time instead of trying to like, I don't know, harness and manage our time? Sure. Well, so the first thing is like an exercise that I was just talking about earlier. So take a, I'll visualize it since we don't have a picture of it, but the axes instead of urgent versus

important, which many people hear, my belief is that when we look at it like that, we're giving far too much value and importance to urgency. Whereas half the time we create the urgency, it doesn't really exist, right? Yeah, totally. I guess we're not asking the right questions or we're just not able to prioritize, so we have these competing priorities, I say that in quotes. So if we take impact on the upper side and effort on the lower, now our four quadrants are what's the highest impact with the lowest effort? There's your 20%. Identify what are the things that are going to get

me the furthest fastest that require the least amount of effort. Then in the second quadrant, and that's what you prioritize, then in the second quadrant is high impact and high effort. Now the question there is that's what you want to, you need to do those things. We want to stay above the line in the high impact, but you also want to take a little bit of space to look at where you could optimize. So how could you take those things that are high effort and move them to low effort?

Maybe as high effort for you because it's not in your genius zone, but it still has high impact. Well, that's a great place to hire somebody in to do that, a contractor or an intern or whatever, depending on your budget and what it is. And then that way, you can move that to high impact, low effort. And then the things below the line, those are all low impact.

So of course we have to still do some of those things, but we wanna put it into perspective. And we wanna say, okay, well, in those areas, we want to both compromise and minimize, right? So we wanna look to see how we can reduce those down to the minimum. Where can we let go? Where can we really delegate that and have someone else do it? Because sometimes we get caught in this perfection loop as well, where we feel like it has to

be done perfectly, where reality is it doesn't. And if it's okay, maybe I can give an example of that. Yeah. I think that'd be great because I can give an example of that. Yeah. I think that'd be great because I think that that is very, very common for bloggers, for entrepreneurs, for business owners in general, this need for like, I have to be the one to do it. And it's like this, yeah, I do it best. There's nobody else that can do it.

And they have such a tight hold on it that they can't, you kind of can't see the forest through the trees and it's killing them, that's what it's doing. Yeah, totally. And then before you know it, you're burnt out, you don't know why, right? And by plotting this and really visualizing it, it gives you a better understanding of why you feel exhausted at the end of the day,

because you don't feel like you're making progress. When we make progress, we actually feel good. We feel productive. And when we don't, then that's where it compounds. And then we feel more stress and more stress. That is so true. I've never thought of it that way. But that is you just nailed it. Yeah. Because I used to do this. And before I get to that example, one of the things that really helped me was that I started to do, and I have this 135 daily planning method. So in the morning, I'll identify one thing

that is going towards a long-term goal, three things that go towards midterm milestones. So these are kind of my impactful, but not urgent, like not needing to be done today, but really needing to focus on those. And so I'm not saying that there aren't urgent things that happen every day. So I'm also making myself a list of five things

that are absolutely urgent that must be done today and a qualification must be done by me, right? So then I have a challenge question there for myself is, must this be done by me or can I delegate this to someone else giving me an out on those things? And that helps me to kind of get that balance in there of things that are impactful and important and how to still get things done that need to get done.

But the key of what I wanted to say to that other point is at the end of the day, right? I'm bookending the day with an important planning on what matters most. And then I'm going to end the day by reflecting on what did I do? So what did I do that maybe wasn't on the list, but that I can celebrate and I can say these things actually, I did do these things and they move me forward because we have a tendency to focus on what we didn't do And that's where the stress happens, right? So what am I grateful for? What did I do? You know some of those things that put me in a good state to make a transition into

My my family life or whatever happens after work. Yeah So that's that's bad. And then I'll share an example with you But you know, do you guys do you see something like that as being valuable? Definitely. Having a system? Yeah, definitely, because I think that as people that work on our own at home probably, you're not setting even any kind of structure around your day sometimes.

You're just like, I'm going to get up and I'm going to get as many things done as I possibly can today. And you're not intentional about making that list of here are the important things. And then here's where I'm ending my day. I'm going to recognize the things that I have accomplished. I think that is so, so, so important because otherwise speaking for myself, I know I'll beat myself up at the end of the day like, oh my gosh, what did you do all day? Where did you spend your time? Why didn't you get anything done? And I'm like, I don't know, I never sat down once today, but

what did I get done? So I really like how you said that and I think it it puts some like structure around the day for for those of us who who work in that way. Yeah, it made all the difference for me and And now, I have this, I call it a reset practice, because I'm all about creating more reset moments in our day, in our day to day, so that we can do that dynamic prioritization so that we can either take a moment to create some space, so we can be more creative so that we can recharge. But it can also be where we get reconnected to what it is we're doing and

why we're doing it, right? So that we can examine the, you know, are we in the 80% or are we in the 20%? Yeah, I love that because I think that, you know, it can kind of have like a Groundhog Day approach. You wake up, you do the same thing, and it's just this constant cycle that I think a lot of us get into, you know, entrepreneurial work because we don't want the rat race of the corporate world, or we don't want to work for somebody or whatever. But what we end up doing is just creating that at our own level in our own homes,

behind our own computers. We kind of end up doing that anyway. So I love the idea of reset moments because I think when we lose sight of what we're doing, that's when the burnout happens. When we've lost all the insight and we just feel like, we're kind of running around like a maniac all the time and not ever feeling fully accomplished, that's when we lose sight.

And then that's where we become unhappy and stress and lower productivity. I would also say probably lower revenue because I think that people can see when you're like that. I think they can feel it. And when you have a different vibe, I think they can feel that too. When you're in your own zone and your energy is more positive, I think that people feel that too. And they want to be part of that when it's almost energetically contagious. Absolutely. I was just going to say, I say that energy is contagious. It is, right? It's

so true. And in my first book, The Productivity Zone, I talk about energy management as one of the keys to time management or staying focused is to really manage your energy in a way that helps you to show up to your best to whatever time slot you're and whatever activity you're working towards. Yes, I love that. So you were gonna share an example and I would love to hear that Penny.

Sure, so somebody I was working with is an entrepreneur and growing his business and LinkedIn was one of his priorities that he wanted to build his LinkedIn community. And he was spending probably, so video at the time was the big thing, let's put some videos up. And he wanted to be perfect. He wanted them to have, be real and you know, all these things that come up and everything. And so he would record it and then he would spend about six hours editing it to get a maybe it was a 10 minute clip right five to 10 minute clip.

And you know I had to say to him is that the best use of your time. First of all building a community on social media takes a long time. So you can imagine how many hours and how many videos he has to do, right? Because consistency is really important. So I said to him, you know, is this the best use of your time? What if you didn't edit it and you didn't put Be Real and all of that in there, people want the content that you're delivering and it's good content. They're not there for all the bells and whistles. I said, why don't you do a test

and do one where there's none of that, record it, pop it up there and see what happens. So he got two times better results, at least two times better results of more people commenting and liking and even requesting to work with him than when he did the Flash formalized version, which I thought was really interesting. It is.

Plus, the amount of time that he saved was instrumental. He said that one of the key points that I was bringing his attention to is we have to shift away from task management. So he was so focused on the task and all the little tasks that get into creating the video that creating the video wasn't the objective. The objective was to make a connection with his audience. And we get lost in the task. And so we have to shift it from task management to performance management.

What is, again, back to that impact versus effort, right? We took something that was high effort and we just tweaked a little thing and we moved it into low effort. I love that. Yeah. Hey there, listeners. Are you ready to take your blogging game to the next level?

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to enhance your blogging journey. Head to theultimateblogpodcast.com backslash niche and sign up for the newsletter to get your freebie as well today. Your blogging adventure awaits. And remember, it's free, it's fun, and it's full of fantastic insights. See you on the inside. So when you're in that mindset and you're so focused on tasks, I know, you know, we can put it on the quadrant, but like, what does that look like in terms of actually, actually doing it? Like, do you sit down one day and take a time inventory?

Are you just brainstorming all of the tasks that you do? What's a practical way for somebody who's like, I'm at this point, I've had enough, I'm just putting out fires all day and what I'd really like to do is really get productive. What's like a good starting point for them to start working through this exercise? Well, I think the fastest and quickest way is just to take that matrix and take one week's worth of work and plot it into those categories and then take a percentage that you're spending, it's an approximate, right?

So that's the fastest and easiest way because you can more or less in 30 minutes, you can have a picture to assess and decide, okay, what am I gonna do with this picture? What you said is also valuable is take two weeks and do a time audit and track where you're spending your time. If you want to lose weight, you're going to track your food and your water and your calories and your macros and all that kind of stuff.

And it's the same if you're looking to go on a vacation and you're going to track where you spend your money and how much you're able to spend. It's part of reaching a goal is understanding where you are now and setting and being very intentional about where you want to be. So that time audit could be really valuable. What I encourage people to do is not to get lost in the minutiae, because that's not the point. So you want to block by category. So you want to again come back to how much time did I spend on administration, depending on what those categories of work are, and make sure that you're catching all the categories.

Is there a category missing? So as an example, I was working with an entrepreneur. She ran a magazine, and she was spending most of her time onboarding and getting new clients, which is great. We think, oh, that's perfect. But one of the things that we miss is doing more with what we already have. So for bloggers, right, keep the audience

that you have happy. If they're leaving, then you're having to work twice as hard to get new people to come to you. Whereas if you just really please the people you have, they're gonna talk about it and that doesn't cost you anything and they're going to bring other people with them. So sometimes we just need to do more with what we have. So what she was missing out was that customer loyalty.

So she added one extra block of time. Literally, I think it was an hour a week or an hour every two weeks where she spent on doing something that would be towards improving customer loyalty and she went from having a very large percentage of people I think it was over 80% of her advertisers were leaving to now having 80% that were staying. Made a huge difference for her. Yeah I have a friend who works in the nonprofit space and she's always been really, really good at that.

We've had a lot of conversations about that and it, I think, is pretty much true for any industry to show up like exactly what you're saying. She's like, you have to show up for the people who are already there. So like for a lot of donors, she's like, I take them to coffee. I send them a personalized thank you note. She is like queen of sending like a personalized thank you note that as a blogger, it can relate to like sending an email when somebody like responds to your email, email them back, like remind them that you are a real person and,

and engage with them in a very real way. And I think that we've lost the art of that a little bit, but I think that we can get that back because in a world that can feel lonely, we're also the most connected that we've ever been. And so I think getting back to that connection is important. And I love that you gave the analogy of taking care of those people

because you're gonna have to go find a lot more people when the people that you already have just use them as your marketing. I mean, that's a word of mouth is I think the best marketing that we could ever ask for. So if you're showing up for them, just think about kind of the burden that that can take off your shoulders too.

Because feeling like you have to reinvent the wheel or constantly trying to find new people to like your content or engage constantly trying to find new people to like your content or engage with your content. It can feel really exhausting. It can. So I love the idea of just taking care of the readers that you have right now. Yeah. Maybe more ways to explore what could help them to share it. Like giving them more tweetables or, you know, little bite sized things for them to be able to share so that, you know, so that they can, like you said, take that burden off them.

Yeah, right. Right. So Penny, you have a new book that's coming out and I would love for you to take a couple of minutes here and just kind of explain what the reset mindset is and who this is for. Well, the reset mindset is and who this is for. Well, the reset mindset is for everyone. And I know that that's, you know, a faux pas in targeting, but it is because we were just talking about how, you know,

we're kind of in this focus crisis and we're all addicted to distraction, right? It's not even just that we're distracted by this or that. We're actually addicted to it. We crave it, we look for it. And so the reset mindset is to help us to own our focus. It's to help us to step into that space of dynamic reprioritization and reassessment on a daily basis, but also to manage it both actively and, you know, reactively and

proactively because there's things that we do have to and do end up reacting to, but where can we be more proactive? And that's first, it's by recognizing it, right? A reset mindset is taking it one reset moment at a time. We talked about those reset moments. So it's like, where do we recognize that we're exhausted, we're short and snippy, we are not creative,

we're feeling stuck? Where are those signals? Or maybe we see it in someone else. Maybe it's in our kids, and this is why I say it's for everyone. Maybe we see they're struggling with something. Maybe we see it's a colleague that we're working with. Maybe it's a parent.

So how do we also help other people by creating these reset moments? So it gives us permission. And when we, when we take one of those reset moments, like a purposeful pause is really what that is to rethink, to reconnect and really be intentional. It triggers what I call a reset practice. And that is a three-step practice that it's, it's intuitive. We just do it. I mentioned the 80-20 rule.

It's one of those practices or that one three five is one of those practices. It makes us step back, right? Step away from the emotion, from the biases, from the chaos, so that we can, number two, get some perspective. And that perspective can be used in, so it's a very high level framework of thinking, right? And then once we get perspective, and let's take that 80 20 rule, for instance, where we could say, okay, where is the 20% that's getting me 80% now I know what to focus on that I can go into this phase three, which is to realign around that, you know, what's what's the 20% that I need to focus on, but also

maybe what's the 20% that's distracting me the most so that I can block that out and then I can realign and execute and focus on what matters most. So that's kind of the high level gist of it. And in the book, I talk about different scenarios of how we can use it around creativity. It's a tool across a strategy resetting across all dimensions. So it's a time management tool to focus on what matters most. It's a communication tool to be more in tune

and meet you where you're at, be more empathetic and listen better proactively. It's an innovation tool to be more creative and open to inputs. It's a life and leadership tool, right? As well as clearly everybody knows it as a resilience tool too, right? To let things go and to focus on what you can control. I think this book is going to be so good for so many people. Before we hit record, we were

talking about just kind of like this pandemic of focus being an issue for all of us. And it can be really difficult to say, I think I kind of need help and to recognize, hey, I'm actually not as focused or I feel really burned out or stretched thin or I am irritable and I don't know why and all of these things. So I'm really excited to share your book with our community.

And it's been enlightening really to have you on today and talk about this. I think oftentimes we talk about this time management piece in a different way. So I really appreciate your perspective on it and helping us kind of think outside the box. I think that's always helpful because you never know how that can impact somebody who's really struggling with the time management piece and how they can maybe find freedom with the reset mindset. So thank you so much Penny for coming today and when is the new book out and where can they purchase it? Well it's from May to September it's in pre-order so they can get it on Amazon

or any of their favorite platforms but it's gonna be released September 3rd and so that's when they'll be able to get it live in their hands. But for anybody who does order it in pre-order, there's also a bunch of bonuses that come along with it that give them the PDF and get them started right away. We will put a link to that in our show notes. And thanks for being here today. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with us, please find us on Instagram at spark media concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes. For those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog, join the wait list for the ultimate blog bootcamp. The link to join the wait list is also in the show notes.

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