Rest for Productivity

Emily Thompson 0:02
I'm Emily Thompson.

Kathleen Shannon 0:04
And I'm Kathleen Shannon.

Emily Thompson 0:05
And this is being boss. This episode of being boss at Kathleen and I are talking about rest and how important it is for being creative work life balance. And we're also going to be diving into some business trends that we see for 2019. And finally, we're going to do a quick fire q&a and answer some of your questions. As always, you'll find all the tools books and links we referenced on the show notes at WWW dot bien boss club.

Kathleen Shannon 0:37
bosses, I have two ways you can start making more money right now. One, track and report your business expenses. Every dollar you spend on your business from that new computer to that conference you want to attend, it needs to be written off as a tax deduction to invoice your clients and get paid faster. Now this may sound obvious but even Emily once had a client who wasn't getting paid because she literally was not sending out her invoices. Fresh books cloud accounting makes it easier to automatically track and deduct your business expenses. Fresh books cloud accounting also makes it easier to invoice your clients so you can get paid faster. Fresh books will even automate follow ups for late payments. freshbooks is the number one accounting software in the cloud designed to make billing painless for small businesses and their teams. Today over 10 million small businesses use freshbooks to effortlessly send professional looking invoices, organize expenses and track their billable time. Try fresh books cloud accounting for free by going to freshbooks comm slash being boss and enter being boss in the How did you hear about us section?

Emily Thompson 1:50
Hey doing Kathleen.

Kathleen Shannon 1:52
You know what? I've been struggling with some insomnia again, bro, why are you doing that? I don't know. And as much as I'm like, I'm chill. I'm cool. I get shingles, I get insomnia. I know that last night for sure. I was thinking a lot about money. And numbers. Sometimes whenever I just need to freak out about something like whenever I have anxiety just floating around, it likes to find something to attach itself to. And so, you know, with the beginning of the year, we've been doing a lot of CEO day kit kind of exercises and really digging into the money and just business model. And I was running some numbers and I think it was stressing me out. So I finished a book that we're gonna be talking about today and I downloaded the book Searcy Have you heard about this by have heard about this book? Were you? Were you a Greek nerd? Whenever you were a kid, I feel like of course I was. I knew that you were into Egypt like,

Emily Thompson 2:46
Yeah, all of them, all of it cultures I was in there.

Kathleen Shannon 2:51
I was not. So I almost feel like I need to download some sort of family tree while I'm reading this book to see how people are related in that context that I don't know anything about. But anyway, so I'm excited to go from reading a very business e book that we'll talk about today. And now I'm reading a nice fictional book.

Emily Thompson 3:12
Good. I love a good piece of fiction, though. I will tell you it's like the business books that always put me to sleep.

Kathleen Shannon 3:20
But anyway, I don't know, I don't know what I need to do. I I guess I just need to do a little bit more meditation a little bit more chilling out before I go to bed.

Emily Thompson 3:30
Right? I think it's interesting that you like all of your anxiety and things manifest not during the daylight hours. But in the middle of the night, in the middle of the night, you'll be fine. You'll see yourself to the other side of this. It'll be great. You'll be good. Um, well while you're not sleeping. It's funny I I was running, I've been running lots of numbers and lots of spreadsheets and things too. And I'm sleeping but I'm definitely finding myself waking up in the morning feeling like I've done nothing but math all night in my head, which is a little bit disconcerting and waking up a little a little more tired than I would like. But I'm also spending my days in my inbox a whole lot at the moment. So I'm doing a cell cycle for my mastermind group. And it's some of the hardest work that I do or some of the most like time intensive, focused very different kinds of work that I have to do every couple of months and whether it's for a mastermind group or you know if we're doing a cu daycare push though that's not quite the same level or selling the New Orleans vacation I just sell cycles are hard. They're super difficult and you have to really be on for every conversation that you have. I'm having you know, sometimes three four sales calls a day, being super chipper for every one of them. It's It's hard work.

Kathleen Shannon 4:54
It's hard work us funny about sales calls I found is that whenever I'm in them, it's fine. And I genuinely love it. Like I genuinely love talking to creative entrepreneurs and whether or not they buy, I like to be able to give them a little bit of something that will help them moving forward or letting them know when they're the best fit for hiring me, so that they have something to almost work toward if it's not a good fit yet, but I always feel energized after those conversations. Well, I might crash like 30 minutes after the conference. Yeah,

Emily Thompson 5:26
like I'm like in it super high, excited, get off of it, loving it. And then 30 minutes later, I need an app real bad. But then there's like 40, other follow up emails I need to send or whatever it may be. So I'm right there with you. I love them too. I love getting on them and talking to creatives. But it is very energetically draining to do it. So I'm just in the middle of one of those cycles, where I'm using up lots of lots of like, personal energy throughout the day. And then working numbers in my head in the middle of the night. Alright, let's dive into this book that we've both both been reading, as it often happens with the two of us and one of us will pick up a book start reading it, and at least it's my case, I will bug the hell out of you.

Kathleen Shannon 6:13
Yeah. interesting is that I always read the books that you tell me to read and you never read the books I tell you to read?

Emily Thompson 6:25
Oh, that's probably true. That's probably because no one

Kathleen Shannon 6:29
listens to me, because I'm a little sister. No one ever listens to me. Oh, poor deathly. Okay, so we have been reading this book called rest the book is called rest why you get more done when you work less by Alex Sue john Kim pain. And we'll include a link to that in our show notes. For sure. I enjoyed this one, I got a little bit out of it. And just to give you all a summary of it, it's a little bit about successful creatives in history, who have dedicated their lives to their work, but they don't dedicate all of their time to their work, which is kind of interesting, such a big thing to note. And it really talks about how rest is a deliberate skill that doesn't take time away from your work, but actually enhances and supplements your work. And finally, this book is about keeping you from burning out.

Emily Thompson 7:23
Right, this is what really hit home for me because I think we both found ourselves really like mid last year feeling some burnout hardcore, but like needing to finish our year. But being more intentional as we were finishing out the year, and then really taking some time at the end of the year, which is when I picked this book up and started reading it. It really just sort of like hit home for me with the timeline that I was in and my life. Um, and if anyone has listened to one of the past episodes, we talked about geography of genius, this book that Kathleen and I read together into a book club together, I feel like this is a really good sort of follow up to that book, geography of genius has become one of my favorite ever books. And this one, it's really quite on my like, top favorite list. But it was a great follow up to a lot of the things that were talked about in the previous book by a totally another author, just yeah,

Kathleen Shannon 8:16
I also read atomic habits. And I felt like a lot of what was talked about in that book as far as building up some of the habits that you might need in order to practice deliberate rest, which we'll be talking about is really helpful. And then I also recently read a book on meditation that really ties into this one. Nice. So I'll I'll share the title of that one later.

Emily Thompson 8:37
Okay, let's dive into what arrest is to us. Because the thing that I learned in this book the most is that rest is very different for everyone. And there are a couple of things that you can do that is urgent can be restful, but you have to find the ones that are going to be the most helpful to you. So Kathleen, what does rest mean to you?

Kathleen Shannon 9:04
Well, before I define what rest means, to me, this book really got me thinking about what is work. So in order to think about rest and because there is so much of work life blend in the way that we work from home and that we do what we love. I really wanted to define what my work is first. So obviously brave creative is my work. Being boss is my work. But what I realized reading this book that managing my house has become a lot of my work. And this is really awkward for me to talk about because I've always considered work work and home home and they're very separate things. But since my husband has been working very long hours at his job, and we don't have a lot of support around the kiddos since moving to Detroit from Oklahoma, and I'm doing a lot of maintaining this house and a lot of that is falling on my shoulders. So a lot of places where chores were divided, or where, to be totally honest, my husband was doing all this stuff that I didn't even realize he was doing until he wasn't doing it anymore. And I was like, Oh, this place doesn't pick up itself.

Emily Thompson 10:18
Total Little Sister,

Kathleen Shannon 10:20
I know, I'm such a brat. Um, but anyway, it's just, it's a little awkward for me, because I don't like to think of my family as work. And I know that that goes against. You know, a lot of people do consider their family family their work. And that is like their primary job. But for me, I have, I have a job, I have expertise at braid creative and at being boss. So I think of that as my work, that my family has become a lot of work. And that's everything from you know, right now I'm gathering all of my materials to do all of my taxes. And then I'm also gathering some of Jeremy stuff. And I'm getting all of this financial organization stuff in place. So I'm contacting lawyers to do estate planning, and I'm contacting insurance agents about long term disability and life insurance. And just really organizing all of that stuff takes a ton of work, planning meals, grocery shopping, actually cooking, which is something that I value, and I love doing, but that has become work, then the dishes that used to be sitting at my husband did a lot. I'm doing all the dishes now the laundry and just general housekeeping and it's a ton of work. So I thought that that was a really interesting realization in reading this book is that not only is my work work, but that my house is work to

Emily Thompson 11:34
your realization is also one that I had to around how it is that we do separate work and life. Like on this side of things we're like, okay, Work is work like is life is life. But I found that the most interesting differentiator that they made in this book was the idea that rest is mostly going to be the time that you get to dictate yourself. And whenever it is, how stuff. A lot of that is dictated by everyone else's schedule. And I think just by defining everything by that term, like is this something that I'm choosing to do right now? Because I want to do this right now? If the answer is no, then it's work.

Kathleen Shannon 12:21
Well, except that we have a lot of autonomy in our work. I think that we take a lot of pride in choosing our choices. Work in home. So for me, I don't know that that definition fully. I'm

Emily Thompson 12:33
thinking dishes I'm totally, I'm not thinking my to do list at work. That's

Kathleen Shannon 12:40
dishes, because I want to sink that doesn't have dishes in it. I could not do the dishes and add dirty sink. Right? So it's still ultimately a choice as Yeah, most things in my life

Emily Thompson 12:50
when work is a choice. Like we are definitely lucky and knowing that work is a choice. But for rest or play, it's not a thing on your to do list. Right, right. And something that you can choose to do at your own freewill. Maybe there is those two things that make it rest and not work.

Kathleen Shannon 13:16
Mm hmm. Well, and then just a simple fact of like, what recharges you and I'm sure that I could reframe doing the dishes in such a way that is a meditation, but I'm not

Emily Thompson 13:27
I definitely know people like that I do too. I love doing their dishes is the most like calming moment of their day. I'm not one of those people. For me. It's funny, you said cooking meals. And we'll talk about that one that more in a minute. That's one of those that I like to try my best to reframe. And occasionally it doesn't even require a reframe around that being play around that being rest. For me, that's not worth pursuing that I do enjoy doing. But I also know people in my life that no matter what they're making, on what day for whom cooking is work.

Kathleen Shannon 14:04
That's a good point. And I think for me today, it especially feels a little bit more like work because I'm about to go out of town. And so I'm thinking about feeding my family while I'm gone. And that kind of anything that involves logistics and planning to me feels like work. But in this I got to really start thinking about what is rest and what's funny is that the cover of this book, I'm not a fan of the cover. It's like flip flops, and I don't think of rest especially as they frame it up in this book as flip flops rest is not flip flops. It's not numbing out and playing threes on my phone, which is what I'm which is what I'll tend to do whenever I'm quote unquote resting. And so upon reading this book, I'm realizing that the most recharging ress that I partake in already something I already do that this book suggests suggests are the long walks that I get in almost daily. I will say though This book made me think about how much I'm listening to podcasts while I'm doing things like cooking and walking. And I wonder if that's interfering with my ability to feel recharged in those as but I love it. I love listening to podcasts. But I think that it might be draining my attention a little bit and filling my brain with more stuff.

Emily Thompson 15:22
I've been thinking about that for you, because we've talked or you're so I tell you to read books you tell me to listen to podcasts, and I don't. That is definitely fact. And it's because whenever I am doing things like grocery shopping or walking, especially like I don't want anything in my head. It's not restful for me to be listening things I think about that a lot for you and how much you listen to podcasts and how you're always doing it. I've always wondered like, is Kathleen doing herself a disservice?

Kathleen Shannon 15:53
Well, I don't know. Everyone's different every race, I think yes and no. So as we've been talking about our planners, one of the things I'm trying to do is track which podcasts I'm listening to to get more intentional about active listening. So I would like to still listen to podcasts while I go on walks. But while I'm cooking dinner, I went to be listening to music. And then while I'm grocery shopping, listening to nothing, and then even sometimes while I'm driving to the gym or wherever, also listening to nothing. And I love sitting in the sauna for 10 to 20 minutes a day. That's where I can really practice meditating. And it's so easy to pop in my earbuds in the sauna to help make the time go by faster because it does get really hot. But instead, I've been leaving my earbuds out of my ears sitting in the sauna and using that time to practice meditating. And then the only other thing that I do that feels very restful and recharging for me is my morning coffee and staring out the window. And oh, this is really interesting. So this book is a fan of waking up early which Emily, I'm so curious to hear your thoughts on this because we've kind of been the anti 5am Club. I think that there's this trend A while back or probably even a book that's all about waking up early to get stuff done. If we were like what, no, we're sleeping.

Emily Thompson 17:14
Absolutely not that and cold showers will never be on my list.

Kathleen Shannon 17:17
Okay, cold showers is the best idea ever. But I'm actually since getting shingles. I have not done cold showers. I'm afraid of what it will do to my nervous system. Oh, I know. Right. But um, so anyway, I've been waking up in the early in the morning, my husband has been getting up as early as 445 for work to have phone calls with the other side of the world. And I will wake up between like 545 and 615. And Fox usually sleeps in for another 45 minutes to an hour and I have found during that time, I'm able to have my lemon water, my coffee with my mushrooms blended in. And after my husband gets off his calls, I feel energized enough to have a conversation with him. And there's not a kid interrupting us. I haven't been worn down by the day where I just don't want to talk anymore. So that's been really cool is like waking up early, not only to have time to zone out with my coffee and kind of wake up and look at my planner and start figuring out my day but also to have conversations with my man.

Emily Thompson 18:21
I love it. I love it. I love that this has prompted you to rethink about some things and how it is that you categorize work and rest. And how does your showing up to rest?

Kathleen Shannon 18:34
Okay, but what about you? How do you define rest?

Emily Thompson 18:37
naps? It's funny. Someone called me out recently because I'm always talking about naps. They were like, do you take naps off and I was like I never nap literally never nap is not something that I do. But

Kathleen Shannon 18:47
I love the idea of it.

Emily Thompson 18:48
I love the idea of napping, but the practice just doesn't really seem to fit in to my life right now. And this book talks about napping. There's a whole chapter on napping, and that was the one that was least inspiring to me. So as much as I talk about napping, I don't even want a nap. It's fine. It's fine. I'll do other things. So for me, my lazy weekends are like picking one day, at least every other week. That can be pretty vege out where I'm not expected to get out of bed early. I can go to bed as early as I want. I could stay in my PJs all day if I want to do minimal errands is not quite like lazy day like mandatory lazy day, which is when we talked about the being boss book where you know I'm not going to cook or even like go for a walk or anything and just go legit vege out but something that's really low. I have very few requirements for my day. I like to have one of those every two weeks as much as possible, or at least every two weeks, if that makes sense. So lazy day on the weekend is very restful for me I go so hard during the week that I find that I really need those occasional recharge days to just just rest to just rest. I've also found gardening insanely therapeutic. Like if I just need to get away from work, I love to go out into the garden and just weed a flower bed, which I know is the most grandmother thing that anyone could maybe ever say. But fact I find gardening and just being with plants in my hands in the dirt and those sorts of things to be something that is very recharging for me. And then also long walks, I love walking around our neighborhood. I even tried walking downtown recently, that was I almost get hit by a car. That wasn't fine. I like walking a lot. I wish I it was easier for me to walk longer distances where I live now. But I can walk around in circles. That's fine. I'll do some more. There

Kathleen Shannon 20:46
you go. Right. And then what about waking up early? Because I think that you've been experimenting with this. How do you feel that? waking. Sorry, I feel like we're bouncing between topics a little bit. But this book does talk about rest and this deliberate ressa we're explaining here like gardening and going for long walks. And I've even realized that some of the things that I've been craving myself like painting again, or mixing and more yoga with my harder workouts, or even my workouts themselves are kind of an act of deliberate rest. And I think that your body will crave you know, just like your body craves food that you need for nutrients that you're lacking, I think that your soul can also crave the things that will recharge you even if some of it seems like work, which we've kind of been talking about. Um, but I want to talk a little bit about this waking up early aspect because the book really digs into that a little bit. Right? Are you waking up early? What's your experience with it?

Emily Thompson 21:45
I am. And I even want to preface this with the book is called rest and is definitely talking about rest. What it's actually talking about is cultivating creativity. Like that is really what this book is about. It's about setting up your life in a way so that whenever you are showing up to be creative, you can be as creative as possible, because you've shown up to the rest of the the sort of the creativity can like just date, basically. So one of the things that I've

Kathleen Shannon 22:11
got one more book I need to recommend, while we're talking about this, because there is a book that I read a while back ago that reminds me a lot of this book, it would be very supplementary to this is daily rituals, how artists work. And it really just outlines a lot of the people that were even mentioned in this book, like, what their day from morning to night looks like and when they're working when there's taking a nap when they're going hunting. And I just found that book really fascinating. But this book really digs in rest digs into the science of it, like how it actually works to recharge you.

Emily Thompson 22:47
Yes. And so one of the things that it does talk about is your morning routine. So how can you prepare yourself for the most creative day possible, and to give yourself the space to rest whenever it's time to do that. And one of the things is waking up earlier. So I have for a very long time been insanely anti alarm clock like that is one of my tenants of being no alarm clocks. But I think I mentioned this in the in the January episode, where I decided to restructure my work days to redo my time blocking so that I was actually waking up earlier. And just to further explain, for the past several years, we don't get out of bed until 8am. Like we homeschool, we don't need to get up before 8am. So we don't we haven't been so as a family, no one's out of bed until eight. And even then that's Lily coming to get in bed with us. And I was really not getting out of bed till like 815 or 830. So this is a really big change for us to to restructure our day so that someone is up in the house quite a bit earlier. So I've set an alarm clock every single morning for 605. And I have a really good circadian rhythm like I can, I can readjust quite quickly and quite easily. And I'm finding myself waking up just before my alarm clock goes off every morning, but I'm still keeping it going so that I can get up, be in the studio by 630 and get in an hour and a half of work before 8am and the rest of the house start stirring. And I'm doing this because one of the things that it talks about in the book is how getting up really early in the morning to do your creative work first can be really good for like the place your brain is in at that time of the morning. You're not you know being super reactive to everyone around you. The world is quiet, no one's expecting you to email you can turn it all off and use that like kind of Sleepy brain to just create without judgment. And so I've been getting up to do that creative work first thing in the morning which usually includes some writing or some design work and I've been totally energized by it. I Definitely not much sleep er, I am going to bed a little bit earlier to compensate. But it's not affecting my day in a negative way. I also have we anticipated myself to only do it for about two weeks. But I've literally done it every weekday morning since I've started doing it. And I imagine I will continue doing it. And David has started getting up at 630 with me, night, which is crazy, because David is like, if it weren't for me, David would sleep until 11am. Every morning without even thinking about it, like he's just one of those people I think is night and day would switch really easily if he didn't have a family who would not allow it. So that's been a really fun adjustment that we've seen. And the thing that that has done for me is, I initially started doing it thinking that I would work the same amount of hours every day just in different chunks. What I found though, is once I get going, I have a hard time stopping guys. So what has basically happened is that when I'm just because or because I'm starting earlier in the morning, I'm kind of putting more hours in every day, and I don't feel any more drained at the end of the day, because I'm doing an hour and a half block in the morning, I'm taking a two hour block to like, have breakfast with my family and get ready. And then I'm taking a better lunch break than I have ever taken ever. But I'm still working more every day than I used to. And what this is equated to is now I'm taking Friday's off. So I'm having a four day work week, a three day week end, I'm working the same amount of hours and feeling significantly more productive and having better breaks during the day. It's kind of magical.

Kathleen Shannon 26:40
And you've also shifted how you've time blocked out your schedule, right?

Emily Thompson 26:43
Yes, yeah. So I'm, I'm only doing meetings now on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, like my last block of the day. So that's like 230 to five or so I'm doing a 10 to 12 block of working during night. That's usually just like tasks and emails, tasks and emails. And then that morning block is 630 to eight, which I'm doing creative stuff, whether that be writing or designing, so I get a two hour lunch break. Or it really a two and a half hour lunch break a two hour breakfast break, and then Fridays off.

Kathleen Shannon 27:18
So I rewrote my ideal day to good after you did yours. So I was like okay, well would mind look like so I will share mine with you. I wrote it down in my planner here. So my ideal day is that I wake up at 6am and kind of do my chillin zone and out with my coffee conversations with my husband. And then from 630. Until about 745, I would like to use that time to plan and outline my day and tasks and like really create the bones of whatever creative work I'm doing. So for example, if we have a marketing plan of being boss, I'm writing out the outline of that and starting to assign dates to it. Or if I'm working on conversation slides for braid creative, I'm figuring out the outline. And I'm starting to block out pages in InDesign of what content will go where. And then I would ideally at 745, go for a walk. And then at 830, I put down that I would work for that hour and a half chunk, because we have found intuitively and then this book confirmed it, that 90 minute chunks are really good. Like at 90 minutes, if you're putting your all in at 90 minutes, you're exhausted,

Emily Thompson 28:31
I do not find this to be true for myself, I could literally put in my all for five and a half hours and be fine. That which is why I have to time block because if I did that for five days in a row, I would have an issue. But I don't need to live by the 990 minute rule, just throwing

Kathleen Shannon 28:49
that out there. So at this point, I'm getting almost a couple of hours of work in which I haven't been doing like typically Lately, I've been doing coffee and then going straight to working out. So I'm kind of missing that most creative, dreamy space of my day where I'm not yet affected by demands of my inbox or, you know, even like slack requests or chats, not that any of those things are bad. They're just the kinds of things that come up and can distract someone who is the CEO of their business. And that's something that this book really highlighted to me is that whenever you aren't just the creative in your business, but the CEO and your business, there's a lot of stuff that comes your way and the nature of the role is a little bit more reactive than creative. So really carving out two hours at the beginning of my day to be creative again, is really helpful. And then I've got my workout and lunch happening basically at the same time that it does now it's moved forward a little bit from 10 to 12. Then from 1230 to 230. I just have work. So again, that might be deep work that might be meetings that might be whatever it looks like and then from 230 to four Put tasks and correspondence because that's kind of vintagey term that they're using. I put in parentheses, emails. And then off to the side, I wrote, you've got your meeting blocks. You know, I think that for me, that's not entirely feasible just between braid and being boss, and whatever. So what I would love is that I have one to two meetings, Max, three days a week. So in a week, the maximum meetings I ever have are six meetings. My schedule has been real aired out lately, and I'm liking it.

Emily Thompson 30:38
Let me count how many meetings I have on my list this week.

Kathleen Shannon 30:41
Well, you're in a sales cycle. So that doesn't entirely count.

Emily Thompson 30:46
I'm 14, we're in the middle of a launch phase that does not count 123. Sounds great. Right. And I think that's really important though, identifying meetings as work. And I think we both can both agree that meetings are some of the most energetically draining parts of work, and like, they're fun, and we love doing them, but a day full of meetings for me. And that's why I had to put it at the very end of my day, I'm not getting anything else done. Like, it doesn't matter how long I'm sitting at this computer, there is no more productivity after I have one good long, like hardcore meeting, or two meetings done.

Kathleen Shannon 31:24
See, that's funny, because usually my meetings Then give me action steps to do next. So let's say we have a big boss management meeting. If I have a little chunk to work, after that, I can start hashing out some of the tasks and to dues that we identified in that meeting. Yeah, then at the very end of my day, after the emails and the busy work, I have from four to five, go for another walk. That's a really good way to just decompress and get my mind out of work. And then I put from five to six, I actually time blocked out doing house stuff. So from five to six, I might be cooking dinner, I might be just picking up the house doing all that stuff I was talking about earlier that I now do like a grown ass woman.

Emily Thompson 32:05
Right. And if anyone wants to do an ideal day for themselves, we have a handy little worksheet that will stick over in the show notes at being boss club, if you'd like to go download that and check that out. This is one of those tools that Kathleen and I come back to obviously, over and over again. Because every season of your life and business I think requires a different way for you to show up. And I also I like to change things up like this, whenever I'm looking for a higher level of productivity or whenever I'm looking for change, because you can't or you can't expect change whenever you're doing the same shit every day. But if you're really changing up how you're showing up to every single day, then something's gonna change for sure.

Kathleen Shannon 32:50
Alright, so we've talked about all this, I want to talk a little bit about why rest is important. And what we really learned about the importance of rest from this book,

Emily Thompson 32:59
let's do it. My favorite thing about this is just illustrating how required it is for you to give your body and mind time to recharge. It really looks at the effects on rest on your work, which is important. The thing I've explained this back to a couple people and thing that I always say is you hear about Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours to be an expert. And when things he talks about in this book is the thing he doesn't talk about is like the 12,500 hours of rest and the 30,000 hours of sleep that it takes for you to do those 10,000 hours of, of work to be an expert. And I think that that's such an important piece of the puzzle that's not given as much weight. I also, it made me look at how rest plays into work, like sleep does on your day. And that if you're not resting, but working, you can have like a rest deficit, like you owe yourself rest. And when you're not meeting, that quota of rest, that's when burnout happens. Like you can almost look at it as like math, we're like if you are working X number of hours, you have to be resting X or Y number of hours in order for you to make up the energy that you're expending on that work. And if you don't do that, your work will suffer and at some point you will burn out and then after burnout is like a nervous breakdown. And so that was really huge for me to give me that like, I just need math. Give me that that mindset shift around understanding that if I'm doing the work, I also have to rest so that I can show up and do the work tomorrow to

Kathleen Shannon 34:51
100% one of the takeaways I really love to hear about why rest is important is because it allows your subconscious to work on problems. So it's that thing where you think of an idea in the shower whenever you're not thinking about the problem. And but I really thought, you know, that phrase that life coaches love to use, which is to get out of your own way, get out of your own way. I don't know, I don't know what that means. But this book helped me figure out what that means in the terms of rest, like rest is a way to stop revving the engine or spinning your wheels, and to go for a walk. And it kind of gets your brain out of its own way where you're not thinking about the problem anymore, but your brain and it talks about this in the book from like a neuroscience standpoint, how your brain isn't done thinking about the problem, though, it's just allowing your subconscious to take over and solve the problem for you, which is probably why we're dreaming about spreadsheets at night.

Emily Thompson 35:49
Yeah, for sure, have injected that into my subconscious. Right, I think one of my favorite things that I took away from this was the idea of deep play. Because I'm one of those people who has a hard time like, I have a really hard time vegging out in front of a television, I almost physically can't do it, like I have to, it has to be a special night. For me to be able to sit in front of a TV, I have to be somewhat busy. And I found that if I'm sitting in front of television with like, a crochet project in my hand, like because my hands are busy, I can, I can, I can sit there and watch television. And I always felt kind of guilty about that, because I felt like that wasn't really resting. But the things they present with this idea of deep play is that by you doing something else by you engaging in something else, the part of your brain that you were working can rest, so that the other part can go do the thing that you're doing. And that equates to the same thing. And another thing that it points out is that good deep play, the kind that's really rejuvenating and allows you to rest in that way, is also supposed to be something that you're great at, or that you become great at this idea of achieving mastery at this other thing. And so for me, it kind of gave me permission to crochet while I watch television because I can't sit there or, and I found this over my holiday break, especially where I didn't want to rest like in that way anymore. I wanted to go for hikes and do these things. So it really gave me a way of redefining what rest was. But really encouraging me also to think about the things that I love doing as rest. So like we were talking about earlier with this idea of cooking, cooking is one of those things that I love being in the kitchen. I love it when I'm making really great things. It's definitely something that I strive for mastery whenever I'm cooking, especially some of my favorite things to cook. And when I'm doing it well. It's definitely insanely energizing and feels like a form of rest to me. So I love that they presented this or I love that he presented this idea of deep play so that I could have permission to not vege out in front of the television. Basically, bosses a we know the struggles of shipping it can be complex. With the uncertainty over costs in deciding which carrier to use. Plus tracking your packages. Things at best can get confusing. But now there's a better way to ship send pro online by Pitney Bowes. With sin pro online it's easy to save time and money no matter what you send from letters and packages to overnights and flats and you'll always get the rate that's best for you. You can use send pro online to easily compare USPS and other shipping options. All in one online tool. You can use them to print shipping labels and stamps on your own printer and to track all of your packages and get email notifications when they've arrived. You send pro online for your business for only 1499 per month, and our listeners can get a free 30 day trial when you visit PB com slash being boss. You'll also receive a free 10 pound scale to help you weigh your packages and accurately calculate the cost of shipping. So you'll never overpay Get Your FREE scale and 30 day free trial now@pb.com slash being boss. Alright Emily,

Kathleen Shannon 39:32
we're a little bit late on this topic, which is business trends for 2019. You know how people like to say here are my here are my predictions for the next year. And I don't think that we can see into a crystal ball by any means. But Emily, can I but maybe nicer for me more of what I'd like to see along with trends that I'm already noticing

Emily Thompson 39:56
yet. These are some of the things that I've gathered from having Tons of conversations with creatives and ever I came back from the holidays, I basically started emailing everyone that I know. And I was like, let's chat. And so many of these things are coming up in literally every single conversation that I'm having. And these are people who have brick and mortar stores. These are people who do online and offline. And these are people who make all of their money online. And there is this very definite general trend, it trends multiple that I'm seeing, I'm excited to talk about them

Kathleen Shannon 40:30
might blow your minds. Alright, so the first one that I've got is that I think over the past few years, we've all been all about automation and playing the algorithms and sales funnels and automating. And I think that 2019 is going to be a little bit more about one on one services, an in person connection. So for example, you're in a sales cycle right now with your mastermind, and you're getting on the phone with these people you're getting face to face, you're sending out Wolfpack emails, it isn't just getting people through a funnel and signing up, it's very much more high touch. And I see that happening across the board. For

Emily Thompson 41:09
sure. And this is also one of the things that I'm seeing, everyone's like, I think I'm gonna go back to one on one work, everyone I'm talking to is experiencing what I'm calling the bubble popping, the bubble is popping of online marketing. And this is something that internally I've been talking about for probably about a year and a half or two where I could see it coming, or that now there's just so many of us in here, playing the game passing money back and forth, that the bubbles popping. The usual the usual strategies are not working courses are absolutely everywhere. And the vastness of social media is making our content harder to garnish, any sort of attention. So I think we're all thinking about how we can go back to the old ages of actually personally connecting with people of having 100 raving fans, over 1000 10,000 100,000 Instagram followers, and looking at how we can do things better and not bigger, because businesses, businesses are run through very few tight, amazing connections are the kinds of businesses that stay around for a really long time. It's not those that are blasting it out to everyone and hoping that it sticks somewhere. So yes to one on one yes to in real life. And yes to like those very personable connections, I think we're going to see a lot of people moving away from, from mass marketing and creating a thing for the masses, and really focusing on how it is that they can just serve one to three people at a time.

Kathleen Shannon 42:47
All right, I think that the definition of what it means to be a boss, you know, you're a being boss, we're talking to creative entrepreneurs. But I think that what it means to be a boss is about to become a lot more fluid. So I'm finding that bosses are finding employment in places that fulfill them. And that might be that they're working at a company, and that they're working at a day job. But they're taking some of the principles that we talked about here for creative entrepreneurs, and the things that we're talking about in our book. And they're taking it to the workplace to have ownership and creative fulfillment, even if they're working for someone else, I also see that there's going to be a lot more hybrid work situations, there's going to be part time work, you might be cobbling together a bunch of different revenue streams, where you're part time somewhere, like got a day job, and then you've got your side hustle, and that's taking up 25% of your time. And then maybe the other 25% of the time, you're doing another creative collaboration that's only going to last three months, but we'll pay you a little chunk of money. So I'm seeing that there's going to be a lot more fluidity between how we define ourselves as bosses.

Emily Thompson 43:57
I agree I completely agree with the these multiple revenue streams to is something that we've been doing for years. And it's something that I'm seeing more and more people either doing or wanting to do. I think for people who have full time jobs for a while they've seen it as are seen online business as a way to sort of stretch into other revenue streams. And now I think it's going to start going back in the other direction a little bit. or thinking about you know, someone who's built a really a really healthy revenue stream on you know, digital products or something like that, who are going to go dabble in physical product, or who are going to go back to that one on one coaching or work that they were doing or whatever it may be. So, I agree with that. I also think there's going to be a very big conversation about what entrepreneurship is. I think that term is going to be continually defined and redefined. And I think there's going to be a backlash against people who try to use that term, when maybe they shouldn't be or whenever they are not real entrepreneurs, however that is going to be defined. I think specifically about Uber drivers, I read a couple of articles recently about like, you know, someone who posts on social media or somewhere that like I'm an entrepreneur, I'm an Uber driver, and everyone's going, huh,

Kathleen Shannon 45:11
like

Emily Thompson 45:12
what? Or if you're grocery shopping for shipped or some other app, that, that you can order your grocery shopping from, I think there's a difference between freelancing and finding, you know, revenue wherever you can, or will or want, and what it actually means to start a business and be an entrepreneur. I think that's going to be a big conversation that will continue being

Kathleen Shannon 45:36
Yeah, and I don't doubt that there are Uber drivers who are entrepreneurs, again, is that hybrid where driving Uber might be helping you pay the bills while you're getting the other thing off the ground. Right. But I mean, that's what you were talking about.

Emily Thompson 45:50
There's no right. Because they feel like they're working for themselves and also see this, you know, we get lots of emails or like, have caught lots of conversations about people who are in MLM, like, if you are working for another businesses structure, you are a contractor or an employee much more than you are an entrepreneur.

Kathleen Shannon 46:08
Yeah. And if you're working for a business structure that's broken, then definitely not entrepreneurial. Yeah, that's as far as I'll go into MLM. Okay, um, one thing that I'm really hoping to see, moving forward is a focus on craft. I mean, we get so many questions about how do I monetize a podcast? How do I monetize a blog? How do I quit my job and start rolling in the money? We get a lot of coaches, coaching coaches, coaching coaches happening. And I think that there's going to be a backlash, I think that it isn't just about becoming popular or gathering a following. And I'm not saying that coaching is bad or wrong. I think that we need coaches and consultants and mentors to help us get us to the next level. I certainly do all the time. But I do think that the market of podcasting and blogging and coaching is becoming so saturated that credentials, experience, expertise, and great content is what's going to make you successful. And so for me, whenever I think about focusing on my craft, I think about whenever I first started as an entrepreneur, my goal and really a freelancer, my goal was just to be a really badass graphic designer, and to just practice writing on my blog every day, and to see what happened, the goal was to create good work, not to just make a ton of money. And so I think that I hope to see a focus on the craft again, I hope to see people really focusing on becoming amazing photographers, or becoming really incredible coaches, or making things with their hands, right. It's not just about winning a popularity contest, which I kind of feel like that bubble of online marketing has become a little bit.

Emily Thompson 48:03
Absolutely, it's not about who is running the best business that can give you the best advice, it's who was able to grow the biggest Instagram following as if that's a, you know, real measure of how good of a business person you are, or whatever it may be. And I also want to say that Kathleen and I are saying this, because we're both walking the walk, like, we're not just sitting here spilling platitudes and angry trends by any means. This is something we see from talking to all the business owners that we know, being in the online world, but also working in our own individual businesses and having conversations outside of the podcast as well. where, you know, as a local maker, now I'm having conversation with brick and mortar stores. And they're seeing the the influx of people who started out as like a great, let's say, flower grower who got caught up in the online marketing thing and stopped producing a great product. So they're, they're not carrying their product anymore, where people are getting distracted by the shiny flashiness of social media marketing or you know, creating a blog or whatever, that they're forgetting to focus on the thing that they are here to do. I think I've mentioned this in one of the one of the making a business podcast where I'm not here to be a social media marketer. I'm here to make and curate products. And I think the more that we can all go back and remember that the more we'll be able to do and make and the stronger our businesses will be.

Kathleen Shannon 49:37
Yeah, and I get nervous even saying this because I don't want anyone to feel like I actually, I don't get nervous saying this because I'm seeing too many people getting caught up in wanting to grow their Instagram account or to monetize a podcast and I just what I'm really trying to say is that's not what it's about. It's about the content. It's about what you're actually doing, and even for us at being boss. Our full time jobs became talking about business so much so that we weren't able to be in our own businesses anymore. It got very meta. And we were both craving something more real. So my business is actually branding and marketing and advertising. But I wouldn't be doing it for other businesses, I want to be doing it for other people who need that expertise, that graphic design, that positioning statement that helps to make it real for them. And so I wanted to get my hands back into pushing pixels and doing design work, because that's the craft that I really care the most about, right is like how things look, and it makes me feel like I'm doing something. And this is for anyone, like whatever craft it is that you want to be doing. But for me, it makes me feel like I'm actually doing something like I'm working on the work.

Emily Thompson 50:53
Yeah, I mean, if I look at three hours that I spend writing, writing social media content versus three hours that I spend, you know, making product or making choices for our next like season of curation, or even like, coaching my mastermind clients, or whatever it is, I'm definitely much more fulfilled when I'm doing any of those other things and not the social media, or, or whatever it may be, whatever it may be, I think the Internet has given us lots of flashy things that have worked for a lot of people. By I think the bubble is bursting. Guys. I totally think it's here. And I think it's happening. And I think that the ones who are left are the ones who make an impact in a way that is not just using the internet to make money.

Kathleen Shannon 51:42
All right, I don't know why I feel nervous talking about that one, but

Emily Thompson 51:46
probably address your emails to me if you have

Kathleen Shannon 51:49
beef. I think it's just close to home for the both of us, you know, like we we treaded that water too,

Emily Thompson 51:55
we did tread that water, and we made a different choice. And we're better at doing this like here talking about this now, because we run our own businesses and help other creatives and really tangible ways. So it hits close to home, but only because we faced it, and we made a choice.

Kathleen Shannon 52:17
So the final thing that I'm really seeing is more diversity and inclusion. And this has been a trend that is a totally worthy one and one that I'm so excited to be seeing. And I see that more companies as it's really genuinely being embraced. It's also I just I just love it, I love seeing it in the world, I love seeing more people being reflected. But where I really see this changing businesses in a really nuanced way. And sometimes maybe in a really big way, is less gendered marketing. So I think that as the world becomes more fluid and inclusive, so will our brands. And so an example of this is that we end up as being bossy on a lot of lists that are like podcasts for women, or like the being boss podcast is by women for women. And I'm just using us as an example because it's really easy to see. Because never once in any of our marketing have we said being bosses for women. And so in some ways, I feel like it's almost a little sexist that we are being bucketed as a podcast for women. Because we're women and we are for women, but we're also for men and we're for all genders so I think that also you know where this might be an example is just the other day I was coaching a former client of mine and she does kids t shirts and she was asking me just a very practical question about Should I separate them as like boys girls and then unisex and I was like I don't know like as a mom to a kid and Emily I'm sure that you've felt this too. Yes, there are some clothes that are very feminine and there are some clothes that are very masculine but for five year old boy a lot of times I'm shopping and whatever section has its size, you know and and so I was like I wonder how that's gonna affect even the way that we categorize clothing for example, and I think that that could be a very big change like imagine if you went to the target and there wasn't the women's section in the men's section but there was just clothes and I don't know how that would work that seems like a thing to solve. This is what's gonna give me insomnia tonight.

Emily Thompson 54:38
thing about all night, right? I mean at Almanac this past holiday season I at one point consider doing his and hers like gift guides. Once I got to thinking about it, like the things that I would put in his I would buy and the things that I would put in hers, David would definitely buy like it's definitely very fluid or has become very fluid. I will say on the other side of this, I think for every bit of fluidity that we gain, we get just as much polarization. Because one of the trends that I do see in our Korean our crowd especially, is women who will only work with women. People who are running businesses that are focused on a single gender, period, and are definitely not for anyone who falls outside of that, or especially anyone who falls on the other end of the spectrum will say, and so that's something that I see I have thoughts about how I think it will play out and where I may see or where we may see some, some backlash. But I won't make any more. Any more guesses than that. We can just see what happens. We'll just see what happens. We'll see what happens.

Kathleen Shannon 55:54
And I just want to be clear, thank you to any of you who have put us on a list of podcasts for women. I'm just saying that that's an example of where I've been like, but wait a second, we're for everybody. Or like, whenever I get emails from guys who say something like, I know you're a podcast for chicks, but I love the business advice you give. I'm just like, come on, right. Agreed, completely be frustrating. So that's what I'm kind of hoping to see. Or, you know, maybe not like, do whatever feels good to you if you want to if you want to stay. You know, for women in your marketing or just for men in your marketing. That's cool, too. I just think that it's going to be a conversation just like we're having here, I think it's going to be a continued conversation.

Emily Thompson 56:37
Whether we're planning out work or rest to tracking time is one of the ways that we hold ourselves accountable to doing the work we commit ourselves to do. But tracking time shouldn't take up the precious time you have. That's why we use timely, it's time tracking software that automatically tracks all the activity and time you spend on your projects while you work. No more lost time by forgetting to hit the start button and get fast and easy reporting that ensures you're showing up to do the work you're here to do timely for those who trade in time. Start your free 14 day trial and get 10% off your first year by going to www dot timely app.com slash being boss. All right, now we're going to do some quickfire q&a, which is basically my favorite thing ever.

Kathleen Shannon 57:28
We've been asking you all for your questions, and you've been sending them to us in direct message on Instagram. And we love it. So we're just gonna quick fire answer a couple of your questions. So quick fire. Question number one, what's the best advice you have for planning work in life when you're working moms?

Emily Thompson 57:48
What's funny is my kids schedule comes first period. So start with your kids schedule. But also we try to time block release schedule, just like we do ours like we know what she's doing. And you know, I homeschool. So she's literally with us all the time. So we think about what's on her schedule, and then we schedule everything around it. Because hers is the least easily maneuvered, I suppose. And then we just time block it around her schedule. So the same as anything else time blocking, you'd go to being boss club slash time and to learn more about our time blocking habits. But I start with her schedule, and then I blocked my stuff around it.

Kathleen Shannon 58:33
And mine comes down to one word daycare. And done. All right, next question. And the next question is how do you time block if your schedule is sporadic? So in this instance, it's a fitness instructor who will substitute some classes. So what advice would we give her?

Emily Thompson 58:55
I think same thing, except instead of a kid. I think for anyone, if you have a sporadic schedule, it's finding the things that you can nail down. And it's leaving open windows where things can be more fluid. So we do this on days where, let's say I have a meeting that's standing, but no one really knows when it's gonna happen until it happens. Like I'll do everything around that I'll time block my morning, I'll have my afternoon. But that time in the morning or time in the middle, just stay super fluid. I think you can make time blocking work for you, no matter what your schedule is, no matter what your priorities are, is just recognizing those priorities and leaving open open spaces to take care of any fluidity or sporadic pneus that you may come into contact with in your schedule.

Kathleen Shannon 59:50
Yeah, I love the idea of having just one thing a day that's a non negotiable for you. So really blocking out of time for something that you want to do and even if you're asked If you can serve a class, prove it to yourself that you're going to hold that one commitment by maybe saying no to just that one thing, or maybe having a stretch of time that you block out for I'm available during this time to move things around and to be flexible to sub some classes. And one thing I wanted to mention though, earlier, in this episode, I shared my ideal day after reading that book rest. And one thing I want to point out here is that I'm giving myself a lot of grace to not have the perfect ideal day, every day, I'm gonna practice just maybe getting one or two a week. I love being all or nothing. And I kind of want to just do it or not, like, if I can't do it all the way, I'm not going to do it at all. And I really just decided to give myself some grace in this ideal day and just to practice it and to try it on for size. So for this question, I would say just practice time blocking your schedule and started uncover some patterns along the way. whenever it comes to subbing classes. Are there certain times that keep coming up, and then maybe you could start time blocking? Okay, I might sub classes here. And really just gather the information and see what you can do. Great advice, Kathleen. All right. That's all we have time for today. But we have a ton of questions from you all. So we'll continue answering them at the end of every episode. Okay, Emily. So you busted out this beautiful color coded spreadsheet. And you had listed even in this spreadsheet some of our roles and duties and our marketing plans and our numbers. And it kind of looked a lot like our CEO naked.

Emily Thompson 1:01:41
Well, you better bet. That's exactly where it came from. And it stemmed from me doing some of the exercises in CEO day kit. It really spurred me to think about what it is that we wanted to do in our business for the new year, except a little differently. This year. I use those to create some spreadsheets, but it definitely started with the exercises, the worksheets that we include in CEO day kit, a tool that we use every year to plan our year ahead. So it really gives us a chance to sit down and get really clear on all of our goals on all of our attentions. It helped me think about my word of the year and some of my words of the month coming up. So if you guys want to get aligned and in the know with the nuts and bolts of your business, check out our CEO day kit at courses dot beam boss.com Thanks for listening. And hey, if you want more resources, we're talking worksheets, free trainings in person meetups and vacations and more. Go to our website at www dot bien boss dot club.

Kathleen Shannon 1:02:43
Do the work the boss