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We’re Jason and Caroline Zook, a husband and wife team running two businesses together and trying to live out our version of a good life in the process. In this business podcast, we share with you our lessons learned about how to run a calm, sustainable business—one that is predictable, profitable AND peaceful. Join us every Thursday if you’re an online creator who wants to reach your goals without sacrificing your well-being in the process.
[00:00:00] Caroline: Welcome to Growing Steady, the show where we help online creators like you build a calm business. One that's predictable, profitable, and peaceful. We're your hosts, Jason and Caroline Zook, and we run Wandering Aimfully, an un-boring business coaching program, and Teachery, an online course platform for designers. Join us each week as we help you reach your business goals without sacrificing your well being in the process. Slow and steady is the way we do things around here, baby.
[00:00:29] Jason: All right, cinnamon rollers, that's you. Let's get into the show. Welcome to the podcast that you've been waiting for. How do you feel?
[00:00:42] Caroline: That just reminded me that the sound of your voice just took me to like a weird memory. Do you remember my friend, Wes, that I used to work with at the advertising agency who did your I Wear Your Shirt intro video?
[00:00:52] Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:00:54] Caroline: That's what that voice reminded me of.
[00:00:56] Jason: Yeah, that was that was a very fun video to put together where there were ninjas.
[00:01:00] Caroline: Do you still have it?
[00:01:01] Jason: Yeah, it's still... It's on the YouTube channel.
[00:01:03] Caroline: Okay, we should go watch that.
[00:01:03] Jason: That's very funny that you bring that up the other day in our Wandering Aimfully Slack community. Someone had a little jingle that they put together for WAIM Unlimited to the tune of, oh, let's see if I can find it very quickly.
[00:01:14] Caroline: Our producer is...
[00:01:16] Jason: To the tune of Let's Get Physical. You know that? And then she even wrote like a little rhyme. I'm not going to sing it to you 'cause we're terrible singers, both of us, but what made me think was. Back in this I Wear Your Shirt journey that I went through for five years, I recorded 1600 videos of myself on YouTube doing things, so many skits. So I basically have a video for like any occasion. Do you remember...? You probably don't because there's just too many, but Sean, who worked for me at the time, and I did a video where we danced, but in like 80s, like windbreakers, we went and bought a Goodwill and so I clipped a little gif of that and then dropped it in a thread and was just like, I just... I always have like a gif for any occasion, which is a very silly thing to share here that is absolutely apropos to nothing other than just, someone brought that little funny song up. I had a my own version of me doing something silly on the Internet.
[00:02:07] Caroline: That also reminds me that our Portuguese teacher taught us a jingle last week. Do you remember what it was?
[00:02:13] Jason: Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Something with...
[00:02:20] Caroline: Basically, it's a jingle to the tune of Can’t Touch This. It's like, I, or it's like you want. You want toast? You want toast?
[00:02:29] Jason: You want toast?
[00:02:30] Caroline: Basically, like hot sandwiches.
[00:02:33] Jason: Yeah, that was great. I did ask her to send multiple other jingles that we could learn that are in Portuguese.
[00:02:38] Caroline: Yes.
[00:02:38] Jason: For all of you who don't know. We live in Portugal now. We're trying to learn the language. We are a year into taking lessons. I would say, you know, we have reached the goal of what my initial goal was.
[00:02:49] Caroline: Really?
[00:02:49] Jason: Yeah.
[00:02:49] Caroline: Well, let's celebrate.
[00:02:50] Jason: We could go to a coffee shop.
[00:02:52] Caroline: And we could...
[00:02:52] Jason: We could order a cup of coffee. We just went to a restaurant the other night that we go to fairly often. And the server who was there was... I heard it as, we're only going to speak Portuguese tonight, but I think he actually asked if we wanted to speak Portuguese.
[00:03:07] Caroline: He did. He posed it as a question. I mean, this is the thing about Portuguese is like, a statement and a question are the same words, just with a different inflection. And so Jason was like, I'm pretty sure he told us we're only speaking in Portuguese tonight. I'm like, no, I think he asked us.
[00:03:19] Jason: Which is probably what you would do as a person working in a restaurant. Like, you wouldn't tell somebody, but we do see them often enough. But anyway, it was very fun to try to order and ask and do things, but it proved the goal that we had, which was we could go into a restaurant or a cafe and you could have a conversation fully in Portuguese. Again, it's not a full conversation. You're not talking about the, you know, emotions of life and the depths of color in the rainbow and all the other things, but you can absolutely communicate.
[00:03:43] Caroline: And that is a very exciting milestone for us. Speaking of communication.
[00:03:48] Jason: Yeah. What's up?
[00:03:49] Caroline: Well, let's talk about this episode. So we... the impetus for this episode was I wanted to share some feelings about what the journey to growing Teachery has been like this year. And that's where the idea for, you know, this past month, I've been very, very excited about working on Teachery and I have wanted to share what that has been like and then we had a nice conversation before this episode started about... that was something I was trying to share last episode that maybe didn't come across and I also wanted to share with people because I think it's helpful and instructive of how we communicate with each other when like, maybe one of us is not feeling like they're being heard.
[00:04:30] Jason: Yeah.
[00:04:31] Caroline: I don't want to go off on a super tangent, but I just think it's helpful to share.
[00:04:33] Jason: No, I think this is like a... it's a very good example of the what you think of in like a great relationship is like, oh, they hit a little snag and then they just talked it out right afterwards and it was perfect. Everything was fine. And what actually happens is you go through something together and it doesn't go the way either of you wanted it. And then for us, instead of just like dwelling in it too hard, like we talked about it a little bit. We both walked away. Neither of us felt fully, I think, heard in what we were trying to do. But we just, you know, took a couple of days, everything was fine, it wasn't a big deal. And then we came back to it today and we were able to kind of like work through some more of the things that were going on and it was like, Oh, okay, I, as an emotional robot who doesn't understand human feelings, was like, oh, I didn't understand that you were feeling all of this.
[00:05:22] Caroline: Mm-Hmm.
[00:05:22] Jason: But then you as a person were like, oh, well, you know, I might not have fully voiced all the things I was trying to say to you.
[00:05:29] Caroline: Yeah. I wasn't, I was making.
[00:05:29] Jason: So you had a full experience.
[00:05:31] Caroline: I was making, and I think this is a familiar trap that we fall into sometimes for our particular relationship is that I was making some assumptions about things that I thought you understood about my emotional state, that were... I shouldn't have been making because you needed more explicit communication about what I was feeling and what I was expecting out of certain moments and... and this is the hard part about, you know, being in a relationship where you are experiencing two different sides of the emotional spectrum at all times, or maybe not sides, but like two different... like amplifications of the emotional spectrum. Jason is much more like even keeled. I'm much more experiencing a wide range of emotions. And it's actually one of the benefits that I think about running businesses together is that you have all of these opportunities to communicate on these like micro situations that are not like really very high stakes all the time. And so we get to practice like communicating and being like, well, this is how I was hoping that would go. This is how I didn't feel like I necessarily was able to, you know, do X, Y, and Z. This is how I feel like it could have gone better, et cetera. So that when you hit life's actual like really hard stuff, you kind of have practice for all of that. So all of that is to say we finally arrived at a place before this episode and it does tie back into the reason for the episode, which is that I wanted to share that I'm feeling lately like I've been on a... not burnt out at all, not even close to burnout, but I'm witnessing within myself that I'm so excited to work on our, both of our businesses really. I'm so excited about work right now that I'm like a dog with a bone. Like I just... I truly wake up in the morning and I am excited to get to work. I'm like, I can't wait to go upstairs and grab my coffee and like, watch a educational video and then get into my Notion and like, write down notes. Like, that's literally what level I'm at.
[00:07:27] Jason: The ideas are brimming.
[00:07:28] Caroline: I go to bed at night going, I can't wait to go to sleep so that I can wake up tomorrow and work on this business. I'm not exaggerating. That's how I feel. And it's bringing me a lot of joy right now. However, I have recognized that recently that can all be true. It can be bringing me so much joy. It can be so fun to work on. It could be like really igniting everything about what I love about my work right now. And I can also recognize that there are some other areas of my life that are going a little bit neglected that I don't feel comfortable with because, if I extrapolate that out four weeks from now, that is where burnout will be waiting for me. Do you know what I mean?
[00:08:04] Jason: For sure.
[00:08:04] Caroline: And it doesn't even mean if... you could be working at an unsustainable pace because of a negative reason. Like you're... You feel like you have to keep up. You could be working at an unsustainable pace for a positive reason because you're so excited. And the outcome is still the same. You will end up in burnout and that's not where we want to be. And hopefully you're tuning into this podcast because you want to learn from business, you know, coaches or people who have been in the industry who are interested in not burning out. And I wanted to do a whole episode about what happens when I recognize that within myself and I'm sort of like headed toward burnout and what do I do? How do I interrupt that?
[00:08:38] Jason: Yeah. I think that's fantastic. We're going to get into all of that, but I have a little housekeeping item, which is we are four episodes away from hitting our 200th episode of this podcast. It's very meaningless milestone to hit in the podcasting world, but we just thought it'd be fun to share some of your messages about what you've loved about the podcast, a favorite episode, a favorite moment. Maybe if you're just like a cinnamon roller, true and true. And now your entire life has revolved around them. You have cinnamon roll sheets. You have a cinnamon roll eye mask. You know, cinnamon rolls are the thing you see all day long and you just think of me. Like, let us know what those things are. But you can leave us a message, a little voice memo over at podcast.wanderingaimfully.com. Click the little microphone down in the bottom right. Record your message. It doesn't have to be perfect. We'll grab a little clip of it. We're gonna share some of those on episode 200, so get those in the next couple weeks here before that happens.
[00:09:29] Caroline: And, and no pressure, it can be super short. You could just tell us where are you typically when you listen. You could say an episode you like. You can do a callback to a silly joke or a bit that we do. Like, just really anything.
[00:09:40] Jason: Yeah.
[00:09:41] Caroline: Just... We wanna hear from you.
[00:09:41] Jason: Just some memories to share in that 200th episode. But for now, let's get into this episode. And I believe we have six areas we want to reassess?
[00:09:53] Caroline: Yep. So I took some time to write down some notes and trying to deconstruct my own mental process of when I notice that I'm in this place, like headed towards burnout, what are some things that I do? And I hope that these can apply to you and your situation, no matter what kind of business you run. And so I basically boiled it down to these six different things that need to be kind of reassessed. So when you notice yourself headed towards burnout, take a step back, try to find some quiet time and reassess these six different things. Before we get into the six things, I do want to point out the first step in being able to recognize, like I said, you need to intervene way before burnout even happens. So, to me, I have a couple of indicators that tell me and kind of indicate to me that I'm kind of creeping towards that little ledge well before it ever hits me. Because like, when you think of burnout, you think of like, I'm exhausted, I don't even want to look at my work, I feel no spark whatsoever. This is like eight steps before that. What are the indications that I'm like, headed in that direction? And for me, it's like I was saying, certain things start getting neglected. So it's like, I'm not returning text messages from friends is usually a good one for me because I'm so focused on work that I just like, I just sort of like isolate myself and I don't, you know, connect with people. I noticed myself rushing from moment to moment. This is a big one for me. If I'm just sort of trying to pack my day so full that I'm not being very present in each moment, I'm just trying to get to the next thing.
[00:11:17] Jason: It's like you brush like half your teeth. You don't have time to brush all of them.
[00:11:21] Caroline: Yeah. You're laughing, but seriously, it's like, you know, our electric toothbrush has a four minute timer.
[00:11:26] Jason: Two minute timer.
[00:11:27] Caroline: Oh, but it does four...
[00:11:28] Jason: Quadrants.
[00:11:30] Caroline: Four quadrants. Yeah. I do the thing where I press the button so it doesn't go for two minutes. I just do one minute. I'm so bad.
[00:11:37] Jason: So you're brushing half your teeth.
[00:11:38] Caroline: Yeah. Brushing half my teeth. Literally. That's a good example of rushing from moment to moment though.
[00:11:42] Jason: Yeah.
[00:11:43] Caroline: You know, ending the day and seeing all that I accomplished, but still feeling like it wasn't enough. Like I wanted to do more. And I look back and I'm like, this is the amount of things I was able to get through in a day is ridiculous compared to what I was, you know, used to be able to do. So that's an indication to me that it's not sustainable. And also the last one is just having trouble sitting in stillness. So it's like we'll have lunch and usually like being able to just take a moment after lunch to kind of sit together, look at the view, walk outside, something like that. Those moments of stillness feel incredibly hard for me. That's how I know.
[00:12:16] Jason: Almost feels like a waste of time.
[00:12:18] Caroline: Exactly. That's how I know I'm in the wrong direction here. Okay. So let's get into, what do you do about that once you recognize it? So the first one that I have on this list is to reassess your workload. And I think that this is a pretty obvious one, but the phrase I want you to think about here is, think pull, not push. And this is top of mind for me. I was listening to a interview recently with the author Cal Newport, and I think he has a new book coming out called Slow Productivity, which to be honest, I haven't read. I don't even know if it's like actually out yet.
[00:12:48] Jason: But we got into Cal Newport with Deep Work way back in the day and it's a very helpful book.
[00:12:52] Caroline: If you've listened to this podcast at all, you can understand why he very much advocates for this idea of, you know, I think he would, he would approve of the Growing Steady mindset, the calm business mindset, going deep...
[00:13:02] Jason: Not that we need Cal Newport's positive approval, FYI.
[00:13:05] Caroline: Just to be clear, we don't, but...
[00:13:07] Jason: Don't give a crap about Cal Newport.
[00:13:11] Caroline: But...
[00:13:11] Jason: You don't need to tell us how to live our lives, Cal.
[00:13:13] Caroline: Stop it, Cal. But he was talking about this idea of how we often just cram, like, especially with what he calls knowledge workers. Like, we tend to just like cram our to do list, right? When we think of a new thing that needs to get done, when we think of a new project that needs to get done, you just sort of like keep putting it on your plate versus, and I thought this was an interesting metaphor that actually related to Teachery, he's like, think about like a software developer. They have developed in the software engineering world a system where, you know, they have a board of like, these are the features that need to get shipped. And when you're a developer, what do you do? You pull one, this is why they're all, they all operate off of Trello cards, right? It's like, I'm pulling one card onto my plate and I will work on this feature. And then when it's done, it's done and I will move. And so it's this idea of pulling tasks onto your plate, not pushing things onto your plate. And so I really liked this visual metaphor for me because I do think I can get in a place where immediately once I think of an idea, I'll just start putting it on my mental plate of like, even if it's not a big deal, but it's like, Oh, I'll kind of like go over here and do some branding stuff and I'll go over here and I'll do some research on onboarding and I'll go over here and do some research on marketing, et cetera. But then it's all occupying space in my brain. And so what I've done recently is just look at my workload and go, listen, I'm going to put everything else in this holding tank, which is to be clear in my mind, not on my plate. And what I'm going to do is one at a time, I'm going to pull things onto my plate and say to my brain, this is the priority right now. We're going to finish this to completion. And once that is finished, we can pull something else onto the plate, but we're not going to do the thing where we cram the workload into like one plate.
[00:14:52] Jason: Yeah. And I think this is very tough for those of us who own our own businesses. We're trying to build all the different parts of that. So it's like, you want to work on your website. You want to work on your discovery marketing, whether it's like YouTube videos or articles or whatever, and you want to be on social and you want to write emails and you want to have a good customer experience and they're buying your product, you want to have a good product, you want to have a good fulfillment experience. It's like all of these things are so overwhelming and they all feel like they have to be done right now. And I think the real key to this is just trying to extend the timeline out a little bit in your mind and just being like, it's okay if just this week or month, I'm just figuring out that like, I'm only going to be able to get my email marketing set up and I'm not going to worry about anything else. And so I'm only going to pull email marketing on my plate. And honestly, that's why we thought about building our un-boring business roadmap within our WAIM program, the way that we did, which was like, just go through these things one at a time. Don't put the entire thing on your plate. Just pull what you're kind of like, that's in front of you next. Work on that thing. Put it to the side. Once it's done, then move forward. Now you're always going to be tweaking and working on things.
[00:15:54] Caroline: And of course there's flexibility here. I also want to point out if you're someone who, you know, your brain works in such a way that you really need to kind of like bop around to different things. I know I can be like that. I need to follow my joy and my passion, like where it's leading me. But that just means maybe you have three things instead of, you know, 30 things, right? So it's just... obviously tailor this to your brain and how you like to work. But the idea here. I think the pull versus push is a... is one that everyone can use where you're letting your time container dictate what you can work on and not just like trying to... pretend that you can cram an unlimited amount of things onto your plate, which is what we often do. So, that's the first one. Reassess your workload.
[00:16:35] Jason: I just want to share, I had a little back and forth in email actually from someone who is on our email list who said, you know, I'm kind of early on in my, like, working for myself journey. They just didn't want to be working nine to five forever. And they're like, I'm feeling like everything is urgent. And they're like, do you have any tips on how to handle this? And I was like, this is what I would do if I was in your position. Open up a Google sheet and every single thing that comes in that feels urgent, write it as a new row, write it down. And then make it sit for at least an hour and assess it with a score immediately. What urgency do you think this is as soon as you get it? Come back to it one hour later, And then reassess the score. How urgent is it? And however you want to handle those tasks, that's fine. But I just want you to rate all these over the course of like a three day period. And then at the end of that, look and see if you've gotten any better at like, realizing what's urgent and not, because I think you will very quickly. But the problem is if you never write them down, you never see them. You never see the scores. It never helps you kind of like visually assess, Oh, I got an email from a potential client. I need to respond to that right now.
[00:17:36] Caroline: And the idea there is you're trying to show your brain that it does this recency bias thing that when something comes in immediately, it's going to filter it into urgent because it just came through.
[00:17:48] Jason: Exactly. And when you don't have enough experience, when you get those things to come through, they all feel urgent because you've never seen them before.
[00:17:54] Caroline: Right. And you've never experienced the discomfort that comes with waiting to reply to something. So you have to practice that discomfort.
[00:18:01] Jason: Exactly. And a couple days later, the guy wrote me back and, and he was like, this was fantastic. Like, also I realized 95 percent of things were not urgent. And I was like, that's honestly just true of all online business owners. It all feels urgent, but it's not.
[00:18:13] Caroline: Speaking of urgency and time, that actually leads us into our second thing. So after you reassess your workload, you want to reassess your pace. And this is, I realized what is getting me into trouble lately. It's, I think I'm doing a fairly good job at the pull versus push. Especially once I heard that interview, like probably for the past, like two weeks, I've been getting better at that. But my issue is my like internal pace that I'm trying to work at, my internal impatience that I'm having about how quickly I want to get things accomplished. And what's happening is, when you are working, like, at an internal pace that you can't keep up with, things will start to stack, right? And so, the, the advice that I give here about reassessing your pace is to double your time estimates for everything. For, like, whatever these projects are that you're deciding to pull onto your plate, not push, extend out the timeline, double whatever you think it's gonna take to work on. And so I had to sit down and do this with our Teachery timeline and just go, 'cause I had been thinking in weeks. I was like, okay, this week we're going to work on the new onboarding. This week, we're going to do the new signup process. This week, we're going to, you know, add that color palette feature, like those things. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:19:27] Jason: It's also really nice to think of these, like, linear timelines. Like, Oh, it's one week. I'm going to work for one week. And it's like, that's an arbitrary amount of time.
[00:19:37] Caroline: And it's an arbitrary amount of time. Yeah, exactly. It's like, why would I think that each one of those tasks was going to be...?
[00:19:42] Jason: Five perfect days.
[00:19:43] Caroline: Yeah, exactly. And yeah, all weeks are not created equal. There's going to be some weeks where you have appointments. There's going to be some weeks where you're not feeling very motivated. You know what I mean? Like all weeks are not created equal. So the doubling your time estimates is really important so that those timelines don't stack and challenging your own impatience, which is what we just talked about, about this idea of challenging the urgency. And just, and it's going to feel super uncomfortable. I'll be honest with you. Like I've been really being intentional about this the past, like, three days of just like going through things. Just trying to slow down that internal clock that has me rushing from moment to moment like we were talking about. Doing the full two minute teeth brushing, taking the longer time, taking the break after lunch. Like you have to, I mean, this is where mindfulness becomes like a very important tool is just paying attention to what you're doing and how you're doing it throughout your day so that you can kind of intentionally slow that engine down. And it feels super uncomfortable, but I keep reminding myself that it's for a purpose. And the purpose is I'm in this for the long haul, so I cannot burn myself out in April and still reach our goals by the end of the year. Like, I need to be in it for the sustainable game, even if I find it enjoyable at this moment.
[00:20:56] Jason: Great. All right. Want to move on to reassessments, number three?
[00:20:59] Caroline: Yep. So again, on this time notion, I think my next kind of tactic that I go to is to reassess my time allocation. And so the advice here is to set non negotiable life boundaries. And we have an entire video and article about this in our Calm Business Encyclopedia. So I think the URL is calm-non-negotiables?
[00:21:21] Jason: Yeah. I can link to it in the show notes.
[00:21:23] Caroline: And this just means, you know, you have to create these like sacred containers for time that is devoted to activities that are not work. So for me, and again, a way I know that I'm on the trajectory is when I start like, you know, compressing my workouts into 15 minutes, or I start skipping my daily walks, or I stop doing my art on Sundays, which is something I was really consistent with at the beginning of the year. And what that tells me is that I'm taking, I'm stealing that time from my life areas and I'm giving it to my work areas and that is what create, is creating a sense of imbalance. And so what I need to do to reclaim that is to make that time much more sacred, which means much more non negotiable. And so it means I can't fudge that with myself, like I have to honor that time for myself. So some ways I'm doing that is having an accountability buddy with my workouts and just agreeing to myself that I'm going to treat my art time like it's sacred. And I'm going to do that even if I want to be doing work stuff, because my overall goal is to be more balanced. And that just comes with reassessing how I'm allocating my time between work and other things.
[00:22:32] Jason: And I think there definitely are some life boundaries that are, they show themselves a little bit more clearly than others. So for those of you who have kids. I'm sure there is an entire, you know, bit of guilt that comes over you when you realize like, Oh, I'm not giving my kids as much play time, or I'm not giving them as much attention, or I'm being very short with them or whatever, because I want to get back in it. And a lot of this, you know, the root of this, especially for us in the phase that we're in right now is like, we're very excited. So it's like, it's not work that we don't want to be doing. It's like, we're fighting this urge against, you know, the momentum, you know, the thing that you, you want in business where you're like excited to get up and work on a thing every day. And so I think whether you feel excited or whether you feel unhappy, but you still feel like you're like, have to focus on that work, I think the real key is just to look for the things in your life that you can assess very clearly of like, Ooh, what am I letting slip? And what do I need to just take a step back, reassess these things, you know, have some type of forced accountability so that you put those things back into your life and don't let them just kind of like go by the wayside and then you fall into burnout?
[00:23:33] Caroline: Yeah, and a good tip with this is that we've said for years is when you look at your calendar for the week, Plot your life activities first. So say the non negotiables, like plot the workout blocks, plot the art time, plot the time with your kids, and then let your work filter in around that.
[00:23:52] Jason: All right. Numero cuatro.
[00:23:55] Caroline: Okay. Moving on to number four. So the fourth thing that I go to when kind of I'm on the verge of burnout or maybe close to it is to reassess my frame on happiness. And so the advice here is to remember the arrival fallacy and this is a hot topic in our household this year. I again, this is from another interview that I was listening to from the happiness researcher, Arthur Brooks, but he talks about this idea of the arrival fallacy. And I think we've mentioned it on the podcast before, but I just took a quote from him so I could explain it succinctly. The arrival fallacy is the assumption that once we hit our goal or reach a destination, the bliss that we get will last. This is impossible because of our evolved inability to maintain any strong emotional state. We move back to our emotional equilibrium quickly, which is a tendency called homeostasis, to be ready to process whatever new circumstances we face. So what Arthur Brooks is saying there is our brains are quite literally wired to go back to like a base level of happiness regardless of if we hit our goal or not. And so that is the fallacy that our brain tells us is that when we reach that new, you know, milestone in our business, when we hit a million dollars, when we hit six figures, when we finally launch that project, then that's when we'll experience that lasting happiness. And the truth is no matter how big that goal or how big that celebration, you're always going to kind of come back down to this like base level of happiness because your brain is wired for it. So what does that tell us? It means that if that's not sustainable, you're going to spend so much more time in the journey than you are in the moment of arrival. And so why don't we optimize for that, right? And so it's just, it's the classic thing of, it's about the journey, not the destination. And yes, goals are still very important. They give you a sense of purpose. They motivate you. They're exciting. They, they, you know, have you waking up in the morning, being excited about your life, but it's really about the journey and enjoying the journey. And so if now, if this present moment is actually what the reward is, not the future destination, the question becomes, how can you make the journey more enjoyable? So if I change my frame on happiness, that like, my brain wants to tell me that we'll be the just elated if we can grow Teachery to this milestone by the end of the year that we hope for, right? But I look back and I go. I'm going to remember the feeling of building to that so much more than that actual moment of destination. So I need to find a way to, yes, I'm excited about my work right now, but if I think about the holistic picture of joy, you know, I don't want to sacrifice these other areas of my life in pursuit of that enthusiasm and momentum. And so I need to find a way to enjoy this present moment now, which means stretching out the moment and really being present in the moment. And that goes back to the second one of pace. I need to not be working at a pace where I'm trying to get to the next thing.
[00:26:47] Jason: Yeah. And I really think too, I mean, this is, goes back to our year end review year in year end preview, year end preview where, you know, my focus is on revenuns this year. So, you know, for me, this is like... you know, there are so many things that you can do to grow a business. There are so many different ways that you can market and promote and sell and blah, blah, blah. But my whole thing is like, yeah, what I don't want to do is sacrifice a whole bunch of things that feel crappy and I don't like doing to get to some milestone that's not even going to feel that great when I hit it anyway, because of the arrival fallacy. So it's like, yeah, I want to do things that feel fun and that feel interesting and that feel challenging. But what I'm not going to do is like sit in some type of strategy or idea or concept because it works for somebody else. And I think this is a really important one for everyone listening to this, who is building a digital product business where you've watched all the videos and you've listened to all the podcasts and people are saying like, these are the three ways that work right now to build your business. Those are not the only three ways. So if you hate doing those things, you're never going to have an amount of revenue that comes into your business. And I know this sounds so easy and cliche, but like that, it's not going to make you happy to work for two years doing crap you don't like to then hit a number in your bank account to then only realize you have to keep doing work that you don't like that makes you feel like crap. And I think that that's the position that we have tried to be in for the past five years with Wandering Aimfully was we did all of the things in the years prior to that. We, you know, I had this, I Wear Your Shirt business where every single day, like I tried to enjoy it, but by the second year it was not fun. And it just led me to the worst burnout I've ever experienced in my life in 2013. And I know that you have done the same thing and you listening to this have probably experienced this in some way too. The way that you can kind of reassess the entire picture of your business and look at everything as like it doesn't all have to be fun, but how can it be not shitty? So it's like every part of this process is like, well, do I really want to be on TikTok? Do I really want to be on Instagram? Like just because those are the two most influential and important apps that people are on right now, it doesn't mean it's the only way to grow a business. There are other ways. Now, they might be slower, they might take more time, they might take more energy, but that just means you have to extend your timelines out and your goals to be a little bit further in when you achieve them.
[00:29:03] Caroline: Definitely. So, moving on to number five. Reassess your motivation. And so I wrote down here, find a cleaner fuel. And I don't know if you've heard this metaphor, but I, I just... Again, I like the mental picture that it paints for me. You know, you have different types of fuel. You have, you know, for example, gas or electricity and they'll both, they both can power a car. One of them has kind of side effects that it has. There's a word I'm looking for, like...
[00:29:35] Jason: Greenhouse gases?
[00:29:37] Caroline: I can't think of the word right now, but one of them like burns kind of like dirty, you know, it, yes, it has like coal runoffs and whatever. The other one is maybe a little cleaner. This is not an energy debate right now. The point is there are different types of fuel. There are different types of motivation and some of them come with greater consequences than others. And so I think that when you are experiencing or maybe like going towards burnout, you have to reassess: what is motivating me? What is making me kind of run at this pace that maybe isn't sustainable? And is it an intrinsic source of motivation or is it extrinsic? And so, you know, intrinsic motivation would be, I'm doing it for the process, I'm doing it because I enjoy it. Extrinsic would be I'm doing it to impress other people. I'm doing it to, you know, prove my parents wrong. I'm doing it to get respect from other people, all these things. And I'm not saying that one of those is like morally good or bad motivation wise. I'm just saying that extrinsic motivation means that you're putting, you know, your motivation in the hands of how other people are behaving and you can't control that. So I just think being intrinsically motivated is a much cleaner fuel, a much cleaner way to motivate you because it doesn't have all these unintended consequences of like a lack of control of how other people are perceiving you. So I think the advice here is find out what's motivating you and maybe making you go at a pace that isn't sustainable and try to find some way to shift that back to an intrinsic source of motivation, a fuel that is maybe burning a little bit cleaner. So like, you know, if you're the YouTuber who's chasing views, that's an Extrinsic Motivator, trying to focus that back on, I just want to focus on the craft of storytelling and expression, and I want to make really good videos that I'm proud of. Or, if you're the business owner who, like, really wants to prove to your parents that, like, you made the right decision in dropping out of college, or whatever that is. Instead, it's just you're now intrinsically motivated by the process of learning new things and applying it to business and focusing on that being your motivator, not this like, I want to prove my parents wrong. Yes, they're both effective, but one of them is going to come from a psychological place that is going to make you ignore the signals that your body is telling you about when you can slow down. And I just think when you're intrinsically motivated, you can control that pace a little bit more.
[00:31:52] Jason: I think this one's also very cyclical too. Like, I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of extrinsic motivation when there are external vanity metrics that are popping up in your face, especially with online business, right? So it's like, okay, you know, I'm just starting an email newsletter because I want to share my passion for... you know, basket weaving. And I would just want to like, I have a real drive to become like one of the best basket weavers in the world, because I just really want to be that, right? You start doing that, you start doing that, you start getting some notoriety. And then all of a sudden you look up and you have 10,000 email subscribers. And now every time you're writing an email, you're like, ah, but like, how's this going to help me get to 11,000 email subscribers? But before that, your goal was just to be a really good at basket weaving.
[00:32:35] Caroline: Yeah.
[00:32:36] Jason: And so it's about coming back to that. And we've experienced this multiple times. Honestly, I think this is why our YouTube channel has literally never become like a priority for us because, every time we start to dip our toes into it, it becomes less of like a, well, let's just make videos that are actually like helping people nail my business space. It's like, well, yeah, but also which one of these could get like a thousand more views or 10,000 more views? And then we catch ourselves in this cycle where we're like, yeah, but I don't want to do that. And so we just stopped doing it. And because it's like, there's too much external motivation staring us in the face with that type of work. And I'm not saying that we, you know, shouldn't do a better job of, you know, fighting that urge. We should, but there's other battles that we're fighting that are more important. So I just bring that up as, I don't think this is one of those it's a set it and forget it either. I don't think any of these really are set it and forget it. But to me, this is the one that's like very clear. Like it will happen again as you continue to work on your business.
[00:33:25] Caroline: Yeah. And just to apply it for a concrete example, I, you know, sat down and did some journaling about this myself. And I was like, what is it about this impatience? This like inner pace, where is that coming from? What is the deeper motivation that maybe is extrinsic and not intrinsic? And that's, what's making me try to go at this like extremely accelerated pace. And I think if I'm really honest with myself, it is, it goes back to that newsletter I wrote at the end of last year, which was like the valley of the beginner and how it makes me feel to be in an arena of business, in the software business world, that I'm not as experienced in. And so I feel like I'm a beginner again. And I have a little bit of this chip on my shoulder of wanting to feel competent and wanting to feel like I have the expertise that I have in this other side of our business, which is digital products. And you know, we've been doing that for years and years. I feel extremely competent in that area, but applying it to software, I feel new and I feel green. And so there's this part of me that I think that desire to feel, and it's like, who even am I talking about? I don't know in my head who I need respect from. I guess it's just my own self perception, but there's this desire within me to feel competent in this area that is driving my desire to like learn at such an accelerated pace. And so just by doing that journaling and realizing that that's happening, I'm so much more well equipped to be like, exactly. Ask all the important questions and go, who, Caroline? Who do you need respect from? Oh, it's just you? Okay. Well then you can control that. So how about we just give ourselves the time and space to learn things because we are new at this. How about we not try to like, accelerate our way to being an advanced level user of, you know, SaaS marketing?
[00:35:08] Jason: Yeah.
[00:35:09] Caroline: In a span of three months.
[00:35:10] Jason: Yeah, exactly. And a lot of this also comes down to comparison traps. So it's like, if you're following a bunch of people, if you're doing much of that.
[00:35:17] Caroline: That's a great point.
[00:35:18] Jason: Yeah.
[00:35:18] Caroline: And it does segue so beautifully.
[00:35:20] Jason: I know.
[00:35:20] Caroline: Into our final point.
[00:35:21] Jason: Yeah.
[00:35:21] Caroline: Which is to reassess your inspiration. And basically the advice here is just to say no to comparison. I think this is the last thing that can drive a lot of people to the edge of burnout is It's this natural inclination to go get inspired and see what people are doing around you. But in looking at what other people are doing, you suddenly forget that you're on a journey and you start acting like you're in a race.
[00:35:44] Jason: Yeah.
[00:35:44] Caroline: And we've said this many many times before but like it's not a race. It's really not. Our brains want to tell us.
[00:35:51] Jason: It's your own race. Like you have to do...
[00:35:52] Caroline: Yourself, exactly. It's like you might be running alongside other people, but you're trying to beat your own time. It's not, I'm trying to beat their time. And so I think when you are finding yourself in that direction towards burnout, it's worth assessing where am I getting my inspiration from? Who am I comparing myself to? Why do I think I should be moving faster or working more? And trying to uncouple yourself from that like group that you've mentally put yourself in. And again, going back to what I just said about the last point, realizing that I'm getting a lot of my inspiration from these, you know, big SaaS companies. I learn from them, right? I go watch their podcasts and I listen and I learn incredible things and it makes me feel so happy because I love learning. But somewhere along the way, that gets into my head that we, as Teachery, who are just, you know, two, three, a team of basically three people, needs to be going at the pace of a company that's 3000 people. And I think some of you listening to this can relate to this. Maybe you're a solopreneur and maybe the person you're looking up to has a team of 10. And so without realizing it, you find yourself finding things that they're doing and go, Oh, I want to implement that in my business. And that's great. Get that inspiration, but be honest about the fact that it might take you 10 times as long to implement than it did for them.
[00:37:12] Jason: Yeah. And I really love just going on like an unfollow or unsubscribe spree. And I think that this is something that's, again, it's one of those things you just kind of have to do every couple months or at least once a year, which is just to go through your inbox and like, what are all the things that I'm comparing myself to that show up in my inbox every single week? That's someone who has a business similar to mine. And actually I get their emails and it makes me feel bad every time it shows up. And I know we all have those things. Immediate unsubscribe, go on Instagram, TikTok, wherever, who are the accounts that you are following that you kind of look at and you're like, Oh, but I'm just looking to like, learn some stuff. But really you're looking because you're like, you're comparing yourself to them and you're seeing what they're doing and like, Oh, I could do that too. Immediate unfollow. And so anytime you have like any of these feelings, it's a good time to go on an unfollow or unsubscribe spree and just clean everything out, get yourself down to like a bare minimum of you're just doing your own work in your own silo, in your own space. And you can resubscribe and refollow later on if you need more advice or information. But for the most part, I think most people listening to this, especially all the way to this point of the episode, you already have enough information.
[00:38:13] Caroline: Yeah. I think it's also about recognizing like. How big the flame is burning on your Inspiration fire. So for me, it's like in the beginning of the year when I'm kind of coming out of the holidays and I'm trying to, I don't know what to focus on and I'm trying to kind of get ignited, inspiration is fantastic, right? Because it's like, it's like a flint, just like all these like flecks of flint on my fire and, and it's helping me spark and get that fire going. Well, the problem is that the fire started to grow and grow and grow. And now we're in March, my fire's already roaring. I don't need to go then add more flames to the fire because I will burn out, you know, and so it's about recognizing where, where you are with your own little inspiration fire. And if you need to put a little inspiration moratorium on yourself and say, for the next month, I'm going on my unfollow, unfollow spree, like Jason said, or I'm just not, I'm going to keep subscribed to all my newsletters, but I'm going to keep them in a folder and I'm not going to look at them for a month and I'm just going to let my fire kind of like get to a more crackling, sustainable place before it starts to like take over the forest. I'm just mixing metaphors, but you get it.
[00:39:13] Jason: I think you're basically there. Yeah. I think these are six good things to look at on a consistent basis, especially if you're feeling that like. Oh, like, you know, I'm, I'm pushing everything to the edges. I'm only brushing half my teeth. You know, I'm rushing to get to everything.
[00:39:27] Caroline: I admitted that. I'm embarrassed, but it's just...
[00:39:30] Jason: It's the truth. And I think if you're starting to feel that way, I hope that there's a lot of really actionable stuff you can walk away from this episode with to immediately apply and like pump the brakes a little bit and slow down and then also just extend your timelines. I think we really lose sight of the fact in this like super fast paced online business world of how quickly people get to success. And we see so many of those stories, but that's like 1 percent of the stories. For the rest of us, it takes time. Like it took us five years to get to our enough number and it took us a long time to get to sustainability. And it took us a lot of experiments to figure it out. And that doesn't mean you get to just stop once you get to those points. Like you still have to do the work and you still have to take care of customers and you still have to do marketing and you can't just disappear and ride off into the sunset. And I think for you listening to this, like, I just really hope you, if you're starting to feel some of these pulls toward burnout, that you pump the brakes a little bit, don't stay into the same habits and patterns, like break up your routines, move your workspace around, reshuffle your schedule, put your life items on your calendar first. And yeah, you're going to have less time to work, but that's probably what you need right now.
[00:40:36] Caroline: Exactly. So I just want to recap for everyone. If you are on the verge of burnout, here's what we want you to reassess. Number one, we want you to reassess your workload. So think pull, not push. Number two, we want you to reassess your pace. So double your time estimates and kind of stretch out those expectations for how long you think things will take. Number three, reassess your time allocation. So set your non negotiable life boundaries and put those life activities on your calendar first. Number four, reassess your frame on happiness. Remember the arrival fallacy and really find ways to try to enjoy the journey and be present in the moment. Number five, reassess your motivation. Find a cleaner fuel, a more intrinsic source of motivation. And number six, reassess your inspiration. Say no to comparison.
[00:41:20] Jason: Nice. And just one final reminder. Send a message to us at podcast.wanderingaimfully.com. Click that little microphone in the bottom right corner. Maybe you want to tell us about your half brushed teeth. I don't know, but if it's one of those fun things that you remember from this podcast, leave us a little voice memo. We want to share some of those in episode 200 and we thank you for listening to this one.
[00:41:39] Caroline: Thanks for listening.
[00:41:40] Jason: Bye.
[00:41:41] Caroline: See you next time.