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We live in a society obsessed with productivity and working more, so how can we lean into rest? What are the benefits of building rest into our businesses? And how can we begin to do that?
We're continuing in our mini-series on my calmer framework for a calmer business. This week, we're focused on rest. Rest is often a challenge for us go-getters, solopreneurs, and entrepreneurs. But, it's essential to stop burnout, stay creative, and have a truly calm and sustainable business.
We're joined by Jordan Maney, a Radical Joy Coach™ and creator of the Radical Joy Collab who shares how we can build a rest ethic alongside our work ethic. She coaches others to learn the radical practice of rest so they can bring their visions to life. She’s been featured in New York Magazine, Yahoo, Attn, Oprah Magazine, and Martha Stewart Living.
On this episode, we learn how to design our work systems to include rest in a way that works for each of us, how to push back on scoetal pressure to not rest, and how our work lives and personal lives can be transformed with the power of rest.
Listen to the Full Episode to Hear:
- How can rest be intentionally designed and built into a business to make it calmer and more sustainable?
- Why is rest a critical element of productivity and how does it contribute to better creative work?
- What does a rest ethic look like and how can it be developed alongside a work ethic?
Learn more about Jordan Maney:
Learn more about me, Susan Boles:
We value your thoughts and feedback. Feel free to share them with Susan here. Your input is not just valuable, it's crucial in shaping future episodes.
- (00:00) - Introduction to Rest Ethic
- (00:51) - Exploring the Importance of Rest
- (01:44) - Challenges and Personal Experiences with Rest
- (05:42) - Developing a Rest Ethic
- (22:21) - Understanding Your Needs and Accommodations
- (25:36) - Challenges of Implementing Rest in Work
- (29:44) - The Importance of Rest and Its Impact
- (37:58) - Practical Steps to Incorporate Rest
Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here
Creators & Guests
What is Beyond Margins: Designing Calmer B2B Agencies & Consulting Firms ?
Can you build a business based on… “calm?” On Beyond Margins, host Susan Boles looks beyond the usual metrics of success to help you build a business where calm is the new KPI. With over 15 years of experience as an entrepreneur, CFO, and COO, Susan shares the business strategies that lead to a business with comfortable margins—financial, emotional, energetic, and scheduling margins. Join her and her guests as they counter the prevailing “wisdom” about business growth, productivity, and success to provide a framework for making choices that align with your values and true goals. Episode by episode, you’ll get a look at the team management, operations, financials, product development, and marketing of a calmer business.
So we have an incredible understanding of our work ethic, but we don't have a complimentary rest ethic to go alongside that.
Susan Boles:Hi there. I'm Susan Bowles, and this is Beyond Margins, the show where we deconstruct how to engineer a calmer business. Right now, we're in the middle of a miniseries where we're examining the common elements of calm businesses. So we're deconstructing what makes a calm business actually calm and exploring how you can intentionally design and build calm into your business. We've covered the other elements in the CALMER framework in previous episodes, clarity, autonomy, lens of care, margins, and efficient systems.
Susan Boles:So if you haven't listened to those episodes yet, I recommend you head back to the beginning of the series and catch up. Today's episode is all about rest and how to actually architect rest into the fabric of your business. Most productivity advice that you hear is all about hustling harder, doing more, more, more. But in my experience, the more I rest, the more productive I end up being. So figuring out how to create sufficient margin in your business so that you can have adequate rest is a critical element of building something that's calmer and more sustainable.
Susan Boles:My guest is Jordan Manney. She's a coach who helps progressive leaders, service providers, and changemakers learn the radical practice of rest so that they can bring their visions to life. She's someone who's helped me examine my own default decisions around rest or the lack thereof. In this conversation, we both talk about our own challenges around burnout and building rest into our businesses. And we talk about the systems we each use to make sure that we don't end up there again.
Susan Boles:You are my go to for all things rest. It's been a challenge for me personally to like, learn to rest. Like, for for most of my life, I felt like rest was kind of an annoyance. Like, sleeping was that thing you had to do, but you didn't want to do. And I think in general, we live in a society where rest is not a given.
Susan Boles:It's not a default. It's something to be steamrolled over, to be ignored, to be eliminated. So why do you think that is?
Jordan Maney:Okay. So I wanna give, like, a macro bird's eye view answer to this, and then like a more intimate example of this. When I think of this question of like, why why do we freaking suck at rest? Why do we hate it so much? Why don't we prioritize it?
Jordan Maney:Well, we didn't grow up learning that, right? And we live, if we want to take a big macro look at this, we live in a country in the United States of America, in a world predicated on labor, especially free labor, and plentiful necessary rest doesn't really live alongside, you know, exploitative labor, right? So we hear things like work hard, or work twice as hard to get half as far, hustle, grind. Like we hear all these terms about like how much we have to work, but we never really hear anything about how much we need to rest alongside of that. And so we think that's the part that we throw away.
Jordan Maney:Like, oh, that doesn't make any sense. Like, we don't need that. I just need to work harder. Like, how many times have you said that to yourself where it's like, oh, no. This problem that I'm having right now, if I just work harder, I'll be fine.
Jordan Maney:But, like, every now and again, you need a break. And so we have an incredible understanding of our work ethic, but we don't have a complimentary rest ethic to go alongside that. And then on an intimate, like, level to kind of see this as behavior. Right? Look at the behavior you've adopted around your ideas on work, your ideas about your labor and not just professionally.
Jordan Maney:If you are in a caregiving role, if you are a woman, if you are a parent, especially if you are a mother, we haven't really gotten any clear direction on what it means to rest. For the clients that I work with, it's fascinating when I sit down with really high achieving people who care very deeply about some of the hard hitting issues that we have as a society and changing those for the better. They're the hardest on themselves. I just got to work harder. Like, I just got to find a way to fit more hours into my day and fit more tasks into my day.
Jordan Maney:But the hard work is unlearning some of those behaviors and learning to actually, like, rest and what that specifically looks like for you. So I would say, we have a social structure setup that does not support a rest. We don't have a behavior or model of what it looks like to rest. And then we also don't know what feels good to us. Like, what kind of rest feels good to us?
Jordan Maney:And there's more than just, you know, sleep.
Susan Boles:We all are very familiar with, you know, the hard work. Maybe hard work and maybe play hard, but maybe we just skip and completely forget that playing part, which is, I think, more common. Yes. But you mentioned having a rest ethic to go along with having a work ethic, and I am very intrigued by this idea. So tell me more about what a rest ethic might look like.
Jordan Maney:Yeah. So rest ethic is basically taking, like, your practices of rest and like putting them in places so that they stay there. Right? So on an organizational, like, front, instead of saying, hey, make sure that you take your PTO, helping people really prioritize that, making sure that's actually being done, understanding, you know, for small teams and solopreneurs. There really there aren't a lot of other decision makers besides you.
Jordan Maney:Right? And usually these are the clients that struggle the most with taking time off and seeing that time as productive. So learning how to incorporate half days, vacations, learning not just how to take the time off, but what to do within that time. So a rest ethic to me is really the practice of your rest and putting that together on an organizational level, but also on a personal level too. Right?
Jordan Maney:So I'm going to use myself as an example, because it's my favorite thing to do because it shows that like, I'm not the wise woman on a mountain who has everything figured out. Right? I love telling people to rest, but I got COVID over the summertime and my body was like, okay, like, take a break. Just chill. And I was like, absolutely not.
Jordan Maney:We're not doing that. There are things that I have to get done. So let me just get those things done. July is usually my sabbatical month that I take off. I could have just chilled, but I was like, nope, no, no, no, no, no.
Jordan Maney:I'm so glad it's not just me. It's not, it's truly not right because these things are so like ingrained and conditioned for us to be like, oh, no. I got I just if I just work harder versus just like sit the hell down and, like, chill, you can do that. Work ethic is about diligence. Right?
Jordan Maney:Diligence in getting something done. Diligence in accomplishing something, how you approach your work, and rest ethic is the same thing. It's the practices that you have around rest that you practice personally, that you practice professionally, and how you intend to approach rest and how to stay in integrity with that. Right? Like I was not in integrity with myself when I was like, I don't know, just like running around.
Jordan Maney:It took me a minute and we got it back together. But those things don't have to live in competition with each other. I really believe that, like, rest and work, they coincide with each other really beautifully. I love
Susan Boles:how realistic your approach to rest is because I think we are all humans, and I talk a lot about running a calm business. And yet 95% of the time, my own business looks pretty calm relative to other people. You know, I have good rest practices built in. I have good balance most of the time relative to, like, working versus having a life. But also, I think it's really critical to point out that, like, even though you are somebody who talks about rest all the time, I'm somebody who talks about it being calm all the time, and rest is a really important component of that.
Susan Boles:It it's important to be realistic about the fact that sometimes that's just not what happens. And it's so important to have a touch point or a practice or something that you can come back to as kind of a a reset of, I remember that this is something that I value. I remember that this is something that is critical to producing really good creative work and being able to reset and not be like, man, I totally messed that up. I'm never resting again. That all
Jordan Maney:or nothing mentality is probably the hardest thing to rewire and navigate working with clients. There's a word you said reset, but the word I love, I love that just gives me like that buttery goodness feeling is return. Like, life happens. Right? I don't know what's going on with the planets and the stars this past summer.
Jordan Maney:Everything kind of just, like, went on clouded it. I would like for it not to happen again, but, you know, it's been fun as the seasons have changed. It's been fun to return to those routines and those practices that I know, like, fill me up and keep me rested. I'm always going to have, like, a really realistic approach to things because life happens and it's a state of transitions. Like, the amount of clients who are like first time moms transitioning into that and figuring out, like, what are your new routines now?
Jordan Maney:Like, everything's different. People who are leaving a corporate or nonprofit job and coming into their own consulting or business, like what does it look to transition through that? So I feel like approaching rest from a place of practicality and not perfection is the only way to actually make it sustainable.
Susan Boles:The way I managed to build more rest into my regular schedule, more rest into my work time overall was that I really had to approach it kind of the same as I approach, like, a creative practice. Like, you had to figure out, like, what are the routines that make it so that you're constantly coming back to what is your baseline? What what looks sustainable for you, and how do you make sure that even when things kind of get a little chaotic or things get a little overwhelming, that you have a practice or a routine or a touchpoint, something that allows you to do that return? And for me, it ended up really looking a lot like me intentionally doing creative practices, like the same practices I have around podcasting or writing or anything like that. I had to build those similar processes around rest in order for it to happen, and then I still messed it up, like, the first 85 times.
Susan Boles:Like so one of my one of my, like, annual goals this year was to take 12 weeks off of work. I planned it at the beginning of the year and blocked out all and this is kind of an an evolution of what initially started out as, like, 6 weeks. And the first time I tried to do the break week, you know, I set up my calendar scheduling appointment so nobody could schedule things, and then I scheduled things. Yep. Yep.
Susan Boles:Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.
Susan Boles:Yep. I think it took me, like, 4 or 5 break weeks before I actually managed to pull off a legitimate break week.
Jordan Maney:That's one of the hardest things that clients experience is not necessarily the boundaries we communicate with other people, but maintaining the boundaries we set like with ourselves. Yep. It's so easy to be like, I'll just move this around. No. No.
Jordan Maney:I can add this in. So I I I totally commend you and applaud you for being able to do that because it's people think it sounds so lovely. Right? And people think it's like so easy to do, but when you're so used to just like cranking things out and just getting things done, doing things differently feels like like a shock to the system.
Susan Boles:I had some business friends that were kinda trying to do the same thing at the same point, and we both noticed we're doing the same thing. We blocked it off, no calls, out of office message, yada yada yada, and then somebody would be like, oh, hey. Do you have a chance for your call? And he'd be like, oh, I really wanna actually talk to that person, and and just completely override it. And we all had very similar experiences and that you're right.
Susan Boles:We were really good with boundaries for other people, but then we were the the ones overriding those boundaries. It took several reps.
Jordan Maney:But, honestly, that's why I use the word practice.
Susan Boles:Mhmm.
Jordan Maney:Because I think it takes the pressure off of, like, this isn't a routine that you have to perfect. This isn't something you're gonna get right the first time, second, probably not the 3rd or 4th. Right? But it's something you keep coming back to. There's no perfect end point.
Jordan Maney:You're just it's kind of an experiment. It's play. Like, rest doesn't require perfection.
Susan Boles:That is an interesting point, and I think that's also one of the pieces that has been hardest for me to unlearn is that, like, I am a very black and white thinker. I am all or nothing. I very much struggle with the, like, in the middle consistency. I call myself I'm a potato or a tornado. I am either going at a 150% or I am going at 0.
Susan Boles:There is no middle ground.
Jordan Maney:The folks that I work with are either, you know, like, solopreneurs, service providers in leadership at, like, a socially responsible, like, company, b corp, or executive director of nonprofit. Like, that's kind of the lane. Right? And it's fascinating because all of them are incredibly driven folks. And I think that all or nothing thinking is something that, like, makes it so, like, of course, somebody who has all or nothing thinking is gonna be in business.
Jordan Maney:Right?
Susan Boles:Or Well, yeah.
Jordan Maney:Say, hell, yeah. I'm gonna start nonprofit or, like, be in leadership some type of way because there's, like, that drive behind it. So it's difficult to learn how to be like, okay. But you also have to it's great that you can put your foot on the gas. Can you pull over to the side of the road and refuel when you need to?
Susan Boles:I had to kind of recognize that I am all or nothing and then really lean into that. So, like, I can't do take a half day off. I'm either on and I'm doing stuff or I'm off and I'm not doing anything and leaning into figuring out, like, what is the right proportion of like, if I'm gonna go at a 150 percent or 0%, how much 0% do I need to build in so that over the course of a month or a quarter or a year, you know, I'm actually running at over on average, like, a 50, 60%. But on a day individual day basis, it's not 50%. It's a 125.
Susan Boles:0.
Jordan Maney:That just means that you're a sprinter. Right? But you can't you can't run a marathon on on sprints. Nope. So Listen.
Jordan Maney:However try. You could try.
Susan Boles:The me for the first 39 years of my life absolutely believed you can run a marathon by sprinting. Same.
Jordan Maney:Same. And I love that you that you lean into that because a huge part of understanding how you need to rest specifically is understanding yourself. So same, I take a whole month off in July because I know I arrive at that month like a person who's been shipwrecked to shore. I'm like, I told myself that I wouldn't do that thing where March comes along, and I take that very literally. And I just go crazy, like, with work and, like and then I get to July, but I build that in because I know myself.
Jordan Maney:Mhmm. I know myself. I also know how, like, the seasonality of my business and how, like, summertime, everybody's outside. People are going on vacation. People are doing summer hours, what have you.
Jordan Maney:Cool. So I can build in some time for myself to chill. Right? But it's a huge part of understanding what type of rest you need and what type of rest that you will actually practice. So understanding yourself.
Jordan Maney:Right? It's really about just like knowing what you need and if you're the type of person who wants to sprint, your routines and practices are gonna look different than someone who's a marathon runner. And it's just about acknowledging that, I think.
Susan Boles:Yeah. I see so many people end up having problems because they are trying to practice either consistency in a way that doesn't it it's just not how they are consistent or they're trying to do their work schedule or their rest schedule based off of what they feel like they're supposed to do. So much of being able to figure out what looks sustainable is so personal. You know, what's sustainable for one person is gonna be completely different than what is sustainable for somebody else. I really had to identify how I rest, how I work, and then try to work with that instead of working against it.
Jordan Maney:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's really about letting water flow the way it actually wants to flow versus, like, trying to dam it up and then being surprised. So it's, like, not flowing the way you want it to.
Jordan Maney:Like I want the water to go. Right? I want the water to go upstream so bad, but the river's like, no, it's going it's going downstream. So like that's not how that happens. We kind of come up against other people's expectation for, you know, how we work, how we rest, constantly come up against that and what we actually need.
Jordan Maney:And one of the things that I find really beautiful about rest is that it requires you to be present, and it requires you to slow the hell down and pause for a minute and just, like, listen to yourself. And in those moments, even though we don't always like doing that, we don't like slowing now. But in those moments, you can you can hear some of that of, like, that's actually not the way I work or that's actually another thing I need. And, I've learned this from Briar Harvey, who is an incredible accommodations consultant. I think she calls herself the systems witch.
Jordan Maney:I just love that about her. I love that. In the training that I got from her, she talked about accommodations in relation to neurodivergent folks. Right? And I think a lot of, like, these rest conversations and being practical and understanding yourself and understanding what you really need specifically, so much of that comes from my own neurodivergence and understanding that, like, oh, my brain just works differently.
Jordan Maney:I just have to, like this is how we arrive to a place of being like, yeah. I'm gonna have to own a business or I'm just, I don't know what I'm going to do. Yep. And just understanding and honoring the fact that, like, you're not broken. Nothing is wrong with you.
Jordan Maney:You're just different and you operate in a different way. And how can you accommodate what you need, right, in your business and in your life. And to get to that place, you have to understand what you need first.
Susan Boles:And if anybody is, like, unrealized neurodivergent for any part of your life, that's the hardest part is going, oh, I have to stop suppressing and ignoring my needs and start paying attention to them. I don't really know how to do that. Interesting.
Jordan Maney:It's difficult to arrive to, but when you get there, you're it's it makes a huge difference because it's about stating what you need, understanding what you need, and understanding what you need, not from a place of judgment. Because sometimes we're like, well, I need this, but I should. No. No shoulds. No shoulds, no shames.
Jordan Maney:This is what you need. And I think from there, you can customize what rest you need to accommodate that. Right? So, like, an example for me is, like, I know business wise, ADHD brain is always firing off ideas. And I think for the 1st couple years, used to be a wedding planner.
Jordan Maney:I was always just kind of like, oh, new idea. New shiny object. Oh, I wanna play with this. Oh, I wanna do this. But, like, what you said at the beginning of the podcast about, like, finding processes and practices that you're just coming back to, returning to that baseline, simplifying.
Jordan Maney:In my context, I needed a simple business, and that meant cutting away a lot of the little offers that I had, simplifying it down. And I'm going to flip this question. So for me, I would ask, I, I would be like, oh, I want to give everybody, I want to give clients like everything. But the question I had to ask myself was like, what can they receive right now? And I wanna flip that question to listeners as when you are starting to better understand your needs and your rest, what can you receive right now?
Jordan Maney:Like, as much as it's like, oh my god. I wanna go take I'm gonna take a 3 month break. Can you receive that right now? And it's okay if it's like, actually, no. I wouldn't know what to do with myself, and it probably wouldn't be restful.
Jordan Maney:I think just having that conversation, like, builds that inner relationship between, like, what needs do I have? How can I accommodate that? What needs do I have and how can I accommodate that? And that's a huge part of rest too.
Susan Boles:My neurodivergence and my journey towards rest ended up being a very similar path, sort of involuntarily because I had a huge burnout and could not function anymore. So I didn't really have a choice about it. It was an involuntary kind of thing. But I I think you're right. Whether you are neurodivergent or whether you're neurotypical, I think understanding and really deeply paying attention to what you need, how you work best, when you work best.
Susan Boles:What does that what does that actually look like for you? And the best part about being a business owner is that you can make that look whatever it needs to look like. And I think so many times we ignore that because we feel like we should be working 9 to 5 or we should be having meetings or we should be not working on the weekends or working on the weekends or not working in the morning. Like, there's so many constructs that the beauty of having your own business is being able to make it look however you want it to look. But also I think sometimes we come up against a I only know work that looks like this and trying to envision something different is really difficult.
Susan Boles:I did an interview for the series about switching to a 4 day work week. And even something as on the surface, it's pretty simple to switch to a 4 day work week because you like, you just stop work. You're just like, I don't work on Fridays or I don't work on Mondays or whatever. Like, logistically, that's not very complicated, but it is really, really difficult for folks to imagine a different schedule than Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 or whatever that looks like.
Jordan Maney:Should is such a shit word. I don't have a a better way of saying that. I hate the word should so much because there's so much shame attached to it. I feel like when we come up against what we need and envisioning and practicing something different versus like what we know, there's a canyon between, like, awareness and action. And I feel like in between that, we gotta give ourselves a shit ton of grace.
Jordan Maney:Like, so like, a heavy helping. The hamburger helper equivalent of grace. Like, we just just slather it on. K? Because because we all need it, and it's so normal.
Jordan Maney:And it's so common that oftentimes when we're like, oh god. I need something different. I need a schedule that looks different. Maybe you're somebody who does their best work at like midnight or you do your best work at 3 PM, whatever that looks like for you. You just have to have those, like, those moments of radical acceptance and be like, okay, but that's not what I need.
Jordan Maney:And that's not how I work and keep it moving from there.
Susan Boles:We are going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors. But when we come back, Jordan and I are getting into where folks get tripped up when they start building more rest into their work. And we'll also talk tactics. So how do you actually start taking steps to engineer rest? We have talked a lot about what rest looks like for us where we run into problems.
Susan Boles:But stepping back out to that macro area again, we live in a society where it's actually kind of difficult. You sort of have to fight pretty hard to make sure you're building in adequate rest, that you actually get adequate rest because that's not the default. That's not what we're expected to do. So kind of on the macro level, where do you see that causing problems? How does that present itself?
Jordan Maney:I try and make sure anything I do, people at least leave with this definition, and I promise it'll come back into this explanation. So the way that we define rest at the Radical Joy headquarters, rest is how you eat. It is the energy, attention, and time that you return to yourself. Why I love that word return. Right?
Jordan Maney:So when we say, like, what problems does a lack of energy, attention, and time return to self cause you hear it differently. We've all had this moment where, like, you get an email from a client and you're just kind of like, if you ask me one more question, are you serious right now? Like, where were this resentment builds up? Because maybe expectations weren't set at the beginning and now, like, your ability to return energy, attention, and time to yourself is now, like, severely limited. Right?
Jordan Maney:So I've seen a lot of resentment towards clients, resentment towards partners that you're working with. These are the clients that I've worked with, like, a real difficult time being able to to relax, like, constantly feeling like you have to react and being activated, like, constantly responsive. It's, Ron Swanson in parks and rec when he's in that circle desk that, like, just keeps going around and around. It's that feeling like, oh, I can't take a break. I can't take my foot off the gas.
Jordan Maney:I've seen on, like, a physical level, like, any unexpressed emotions, particularly anger, higher cortisol in your body, blood pressure issues, autoimmune disorders that pop up, relationship strain, like, there's so many things that a lack of rest impacts and, like, creates and worsens. And oftentimes, we will attribute it to something else. I think the way rest is taught to us, like rest in peace. It's something you do when you die. We never say it really in a positive way.
Jordan Maney:Nope. It's always kind of like the end of something doom, and it doesn't it doesn't have to be doom. It could just be quiet. It could be a day at the beach. It could be a walk with your friends.
Jordan Maney:Like, rest doesn't have to be this huge heavy, like, cloud that hangs over you. It's something that is a tool that allows you to have a better business, have better relationships, have a better positive self talk with yourself. So for the clients that I've had, the people that I have worked with, usually this looks like an individual level, like physical issues start popping up once you've been burned out for a while, problems sleeping, blood pressure problems, digestive issues, like anxiety on an organizational level. It's I don't fuck with her. I don't like her, but, like, it's a lot of, like, chattering and, like, resentment and anger towards people that you're working with.
Jordan Maney:And then on a personal level, because we can all pretend as, small business owners, it's easy to think that soon as as soon as I clock out, none of this affects me when I go home. Yes. It does. So like what's happening under the surface with your relationships? Are you feeling comfortable enough to communicate your needs when you're not even meeting them?
Jordan Maney:It takes a toll and it's just very interesting that we're so quick to name anything else, but not arrive at like, hey. It's I need more rest.
Susan Boles:It feels like it is in conflict with that work ethic. Right? It feels like if we take the time to rest or we give ourselves the space that we need or we accommodate ourselves that we're not working hard enough, we're not hustling hard enough, we're not gonna accomplish all our goals. And at least in my experience, I found it to be completely the opposite. So for me, like when I'm getting stressed or I'm getting overwhelmed, my instantaneous trigger is to work more.
Susan Boles:It's do more, work harder, keep going longer. So when I started trying to say, okay. Cool. My default now, I'm gonna try and train myself so my default action when I'm getting overwhelmed or I'm getting stressed, my default action is going to be to walk away and take a break. And for me, that has resulted in, honestly, some of my best, most creative work ever in so much less time because my brain has what it needs and it can function properly, which is important.
Jordan Maney:Oftentimes when you're getting those cues, it's like the brain, it's just like, I can keep going. I can keep going, but the body will tell you, like, yo. We need a break. You gotta stop. And I think that's beautiful to learn that if you're feeling overwhelmed or particularly activated or just, like, stressed out, it is not your body is literally sending up the flare to go take a break, not to dig in deeper.
Jordan Maney:We're trying to help people retool their understanding that it's not a versus. It really isn't in relationship, rest and work operate in relationship to one another. It's not in competition. And when you can start to kind of heal some of that for yourself internally, everything gets better.
Susan Boles:Coming back down from the macro into how this has affected you, clearly rest is important to you. I mean, you decided to base a large part of your business around this idea of helping other people rest, but why was that so important to you?
Jordan Maney:I was always a kid who put a lot of internal pressure on myself to, like, succeed and achieve. And so, like, super overachiever. And it's funny looking back that, like, when I would get to the to summer break, for the most part, when I got a summer break, because I'd always do some like activity camp, something that took up the whole time. But when I did have a summer break, I would just be like, don't talk to me. I don't want to see any of these kids that I go to school with.
Jordan Maney:I don't want to do anything. I see my break. And that's how I learned how to rest was by arriving to it, completely burned out. So it was when I got to college where I started to notice that those behaviors that I had around like achieving and working. The screws kind of came loose because I didn't have the same like support system that I did when I was in high school.
Jordan Maney:You're on your own. And I didn't know what I needed. I didn't know that I needed to take breaks frequently. I didn't know a lot of the accommodations that I now under have a better understanding of. For me personally, it led to a lot of, panic attacks.
Jordan Maney:It's been so interesting kind of looking back and seeing how rest has been important to me because I didn't know what it was and I didn't know how badly I needed it. And then when I started my first business as a wedding planner, don't know if you know anything about the wedding industry.
Susan Boles:I'm sure that was great for rest.
Jordan Maney:So good for rest. It was not. It really was predicated on everything that burned me out. And I had this, like, moment in late 2018 where I had a client, we didn't it wasn't working. I couldn't rest because I wasn't advocating for myself.
Jordan Maney:And so I didn't know how to rest on a personal level. And then in a professional business level, I didn't know what that looked like. And so it became really important to me, you know, 2020 happened and I, I feel terrible saying this. When Tom Hanks posted that glove on Instagram, he was like, me and Rita got, you know, corona. I remember being like, oh, this is going to impact, like, the next decade, but then I felt an instant surge of relief that I didn't have to do my spring weddings that were coming up, up, like, the next week.
Jordan Maney:That's a sign. Oh, that's a sign of something. Oh my god. So 2020 was a really pivotal year in that regard of understanding, like, there's something here about rest personally, rest professionally, and specifically for the people that I had been working with who were in the social impact socially responsible, social justice type of sphere about, like, wanting to run these races and change these things, but also not doing it in a sustainable way. So, like, we're running this marathon with this torch, and then the torch blows out, and we're like, oh, we're just in the dark, and we don't know where we're going anymore.
Jordan Maney:Because I had to learn the process for myself, and it felt disruptive and scary, and like something was wrong with me for a while. I wanted to make sure that nobody else had to navigate that process alone. And it didn't have to be scary, and it didn't have to be a place that you arrived at with shame and judgment, but it could be something that you chose to advocate for yourself and to keep your mission sustainable. Honestly, I think society would be better if everybody who figured this out didn't have to go through that part first. Nobody should have to burn out.
Jordan Maney:My business adviser always says, are you a multivitamin? Are you aspirin? And she's like, it's harder to sell the multivitamin. It's a lot easier to sell the aspirin. You're in pain right now?
Jordan Maney:Go get the aspirin. And so I'll have clients who are at that place where I'm their aspirin. Yeah. Where they're like, look. I'm about to burn down everything.
Jordan Maney:I'm tired. I can't function the way that I used to function. Like, I'm in therapy, but something else is going on. And I think it's this thing, and I think you can help me. Can you help me?
Jordan Maney:And I'm like, sure. And for them, it's like, being the lighthouse keeper of, like, you just got shipwrecked, you came to shore. Here's some food, here's a blanket, let's get you like warmed up, and then we'll begin. Right? And then for other people, it is more of like a multivitamin type of situation where it's like, what are things I can do to prevent burnout?
Jordan Maney:And then I have people who are like, what what do I need to do to recover from this? Because we're already in it.
Susan Boles:When people arrive at that point where they realize I need to rest or I need things to feel better. For the most part, people are at a point where they are overwhelmed. They're, you know, burnt out and their brain's not working. You don't make great decisions from that place. So where do you recommend folks start?
Jordan Maney:So I went to college for journalism, and one of my professors, who I shall not name, love to talk about killing your darlings. Like, if there's something that thing that you really love, that's that interview or quote that you really love, whatever, but you have to kill it sometimes because it just doesn't work with the flow of the story. I hated that because I'm like, no. I wanna keep my darlings. I wanna keep everything.
Jordan Maney:If you are at a place where you're looking around, that little meme of that dog sitting on a stool and everything is burning around it, you are at the kill your darlings phase and you need to give yourself, like, 30 minutes, sit down with a piece of paper, and write down everything that it is that you do. And then you're gonna have to start the painful, not fun, but absolutely necessary process of just crossing some of these things out. If you are at a place of, like, complete and total burnout, you have to acknowledge that you don't have the capacity that you once did. And that's not something to be ashamed of. That's just the reality of the moment.
Jordan Maney:So maybe that means if this was a small business owner, maybe we look at their marketing and it's like pick the one that you want to do. Maybe it's not Pinterest podcast, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, newsletter sub stack. Maybe it's not all that. Maybe it's just one. And maybe we change the frequency of that.
Jordan Maney:Cool. But you have to take stock and inventory of all of the things that you are doing because your capacity is different, and we have to adjust for what your capacity is right now, not what it was. And that's hard because we loved what it was, but what it was got us to what it is. So we have to make some adjustments. If you're listening and you're in that place where you're just like, everything fucking sucks, and I'm just like, over all of it.
Jordan Maney:Cool. Let's turn the volume down to 1 as much as we possibly can. And if you're at a place of, oh, well, I can't do that. I can't do that. Be really honest with yourself about whether it's I can't, or I don't want to because this might make me uncomfortable.
Jordan Maney:Or I don't want to because people might think that something's wrong with me, darling, something is, you're burned out. Something has changed. We have to acknowledge that. So I would start there of just like take an inventory with the clearest of eyes, pretend that this is a friend. If you really don't want to judge yourself, pretend this is a friend and just be real about what needs to come off of that list, because you have to acknowledge where you are if you want to get to somewhere else.
Jordan Maney:So a lot of conversations around rest, which I found interesting who some of these people are talking about rest, who like 2 years ago were like, oh, no, no, no. You need to hustle. And now it's like, no, guys, rest. Interesting. I find that a lot of the times when we're talking about changes, habits, health, but specifically about rest, we're not acknowledging the reality for some folks.
Jordan Maney:The framework that I built, I say rest with an equity lens for a reason. If you are in a place where you are the sole caregiver for maybe like your family, and you're also the breadwinner, the financial support for your family, your rest is going to look different than somebody who's not. If you have a marginalized or oppressed identity, your rest may look different than somebody who's not. It's necessary to acknowledge all of who you are and all of what you are experiencing if you want to get rest that feels restful. And it's okay to say like, hey, this season might suck because I don't have the community to support me.
Jordan Maney:I don't have a grandparent here who could watch the kids. I don't have a business partner that I can lean on for this season. If you are in that place where the reality is cold and dark and it does not feel comfortable right now, The reframe and work for you is not just about like, okay. I got to figure out what my my rest ethic is, but also just acknowledging like, hey, it might take me longer than other people. It might look different, way different than other people.
Jordan Maney:I might at best get care and might not necessarily get rest. And that's okay to acknowledge that. And I wish more people when we talk about being able to take our 12 weeks or being able to take a sabbatical, we arrive at those things with such guilt, because we know that there are people who can't do that. We, you know, remember images of our parents, like busting their ass to get things done. And we're like, well, there's no way that I could take this vacation.
Jordan Maney:I don't deserve to have this. No. Rest is a necessity. Your rest is necessary no matter who you are, no matter what circumstances you have. And it's largely important that we acknowledge that for ourselves individually and also collectively.
Jordan Maney:I think some of the biggest obstacles to being able to achieve for us is understanding, like, where in this labor spectrum we lie in terms of what people expect and what people want to extract out of us. Yeah. And also, like, what do we need? And can we approach those things without judgment and shame? Because I've heard that a lot where, like, it must be nice that you get to take your July off.
Jordan Maney:Reframing that for people of being, like, I can acknowledge, like, that for myself and still take that time without feeling guilty about it because feeling guilty about it is is kinda how we got here.
Susan Boles:Yep. I also one of the tiny acts that for me is so important is, like, when you see somebody's out of office message and they're like, hey. I'm taking a week off. Celebrating them and pointing out how proud you are of them for, like, being able to do this thing and for prioritizing their own needs. I would love to see more of that instead of the, it must be nice.
Jordan Maney:If I was president of the world, everybody would get, like, at least a month's vacation, monthly, voucher to go get, like, vacation, monthly, voucher to go get like massages because they're wonderful, and access to your personal therapist. Like, that would be that would be my platform. Right?
Susan Boles:I feel like the world would be a much better place.
Jordan Maney:There'd be no more, like, road rage incidents. Everybody would just be like, how are you doing? But but you're right. Like, approaching these things, not with a sense of guilt or shame and really asking yourself, like, when you feel that must be nice energy coming up. Right?
Jordan Maney:Or you feel like, well, damn, when am I going to be able to take a break? Asking yourself the question, who benefits from I don't use the word, I use burnout for marketing reasons, but once I get clients in, I don't use the word burnout anymore. I say unrest because I want them to hear it, hear the body and the mind, the lack of rest, and how that comes from like systemic things, but also behaviors that we adopt and practice ourselves and how we do have some agency there. Who benefits from your unrest?
Susan Boles:I think that is a fantastic place to wrap up because I that's what I want people to sit with. Rest isn't just about sleeping enough. It's about giving your brain and your body the space they need to bring our best selves to our work and to our team. Rest isn't the last letter in my calmer framework because it's the least important item or the one that comes last in the whole workflow of building a calmer business. Rest isn't something that you have to earn.
Susan Boles:It's the bare minimum, and it's something you need to consciously build space for, build systems around, and be consistently touching base on. In some seasons of your business, you might need more rest or maybe a different kind of rest, but it's something that always has to be there in order for you to do your best work in a sustainable way. So take a minute right now and start thinking about how you could build in just a tiny bit more rest into your week and into your work. A big thank you to everyone who supports Beyond Margins. If you're a listener, a sponsor, or a partner of any kind, I couldn't do this show without you.
Susan Boles:You can support this show by leaving a rating and a review. It really does help new listeners hit play with more confidence. And you can support our sponsors by using the link in your show notes. All of this helps me keep this independent podcast going and growing. So thank you so much for supporting me, and thank you for listening.
Susan Boles:Until next time, stay calm.