301. What’s Ahead This Summer

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Monotone Voice: Hi there. Thank you for your message. Focus on This is currently out of the office and will not be releasing new episodes during this time. For any urgent or pending needs, please refer to our archive, which is managing priorities during our absence. Thank you for your understanding.

[00:00:22] Joel: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[00:00:24] We can do, I think, a lot better than that. I mean, it’s true, we are out of office, but it’s not just, like, the archive is gonna be handling the show in our absence. At least, not exactly. We are taking the summer off. It is true. And I, I thought maybe we could actually spend a little bit of time, Marissa, talking about maybe why we’re stepping away, what we’re gonna do, and then what, what kind of hands we are leaving our listeners in while we’re gone.

[00:00:52] Marissa: You know, we talk a lot at Full Focus and here on the podcast about having work/life balance, about really living a full life beyond just your work, and it may surprise you guys, but we do live by those principles here at Full Focus. Yes. We really live and breathe this. We don’t just talk about it. And so part of what this looks like is we’re gonna be taking the summer off of podcasting, Joel and I will be, to focus on some other projects at work over the summer and to give ourselves a little bit of a break, and we wanna encourage you guys to do the same.

[00:01:28] We’re gonna talk about some really great ways that you can spend this summer, even though we won’t be necessarily live, or I guess we’re not really ever live, but you know what we mean. Not technically. Um, not really live, but somewhat live in your ears every week. But this will be a way for you guys to stay connected to us while also still getting some good nuggets throughout the summer.

[00:01:48] But we wanna encourage you guys to go live your lives, too, and we’re gonna be doing that. So, you know, we really do try to actually live what we teach, y’all.

[00:01:57] Joel: In the practices of flourishing that we talk about, recreation is one of them. Yes. And we all need it. And so what I thought might actually be a great send-off for the summer, in part, would be for the two of us to share some of what we plan to do for this recreation.

[00:02:15] Yes. As broadly as you wanna define that, why don’t you give me three things you’re planning on doing this summer, and then, then I’ll share mine.

[00:02:22] Marissa: Okay. Well, most of mine is gonna actually go under one primary umbrella. Okay. So I don’t know if it’s specifically three different things, but it’s kind of like what my summer plans are gonna look like.

[00:02:34] So I think I’ve talked a lot over a long period of time about my desire to have a beautiful backyard that had beautiful flowers and garden beds and fruit trees and a place that I can entertain and enjoy my morning cup of coffee, and I am happy to report that project is finally Underway

[00:02:56] Joel: Amazing As

[00:02:56] Marissa: of actually today of this recording.

[00:02:59] They took down my… There was a big carport in the back, and they’ve officially demolished that. And so we have officially kicked off the project. And so most of my summer is gonna be spent building garden beds, planting things, tending to things, and really just creating a sense of beauty around my backyard.

[00:03:19] I am really wanting to have a place that I can entertain and talk about engaging, uh, with nature. That’s one of our other- Mm-hmm … practices of flourishing. This is gonna be a way that I’m gonna be able to do that. When I get done with a workday, I can go out there and kind of let my mind decompress, you know, and just relax a little bit.

[00:03:39] I know you, Joel, you and Megan have a beautiful garden at your house, and so I’m aspiring to have some version of that at my house. Love it. So it’s gonna be all things garden for me, I think, this year. And that will probably include a lot of hangouts and, you know, gatherings with neighbors, with friends, with family, cooking things from the garden.

[00:03:58] Monotone Voice: Mm-hmm. And I’m

[00:03:58] Marissa: just thrilled. This has been a long time coming. It’s been one of my primary goals to be saving money, and I’m finally here and ready- And it’s happening … to make it happen.

[00:04:07] Joel: All right. So just so takeaway, what I’m hearing is number one, garden.

[00:04:11] Marissa: Yes. Number

[00:04:12] Joel: two, garden. Yes. Number three, also garden.

[00:04:16] Marissa: Also garden. Love it. Yes. Yeah. That- that’s gonna be… It’s the summer of gardening for me. I love that. So

[00:04:21] Joel: I

[00:04:21] Marissa: think it’s gonna be good. What about you? What are your one, two, and three? summer plans?

[00:04:25] Joel: Well, Megan and I are keeping bees, and we have- Oh … just started that. And so I anticipate that I will be spending time with bees.

[00:04:34] Mm. That’s maybe my number one. My number two is I have some big novels that I wanna read this summer, including Moby Dick. Ooh. I have avoided this novel for, you know, just a few decades, and so now it’s finally time to go face the white whale. And so I’m going to do that this summer, along with a few others.

[00:04:56] Love that. And then the third thing is I’m just gonna spend a lot of time with Meg and the kids, so I’m really looking forward to that.

[00:05:03] Marissa: It’s nice. It’s nice to have a different change of pace. I think this is what I love about the seasons, is things change, right? And one of the things I should have mentioned as we were talking that I know I will be doing, we’ll be going to my parents’ lake house and spending some time- Mm-hmm

[00:05:19] at the lake with family. Hopefully you guys will be coming out at some point. But I love the reading one. That is such a good one, and I didn’t think about that- Which by the way,

[00:05:27] Joel: I will be doing in the garden, at least from time to time. Ooh, yeah.

[00:05:30] Marissa: Yeah. You guys have beautiful Adirondack chairs in your garden that you can go sit out there and just hear the humming of the bees and the hummingbirds and all of that energy happening around you while you just relax, which is- Totally

[00:05:45] really incredible. By the way, if anybody l- is looking for a great summer read, I am currently reading The Correspondent.

[00:05:52] Joel: Mm, I’ve heard great things about that.

[00:05:53] Marissa: And my next one on my list is Theo of Golden, which is supposed to be a phenomenal novel, so that’s my reading for the summer. So you may be asking yourself as we, you know, are off enjoying our gardens and our family time and all that, where does that leave the podcast, right?

[00:06:11] What does that mean for the podcast? And we’re really happy to share that we’re gonna be replaying some of our favorite episodes between now and about August, when we’re gonna come back and have fresh new episodes for you guys. But during the summer season, we didn’t wanna leave y’all hanging, so we’re gonna be airing some of our favorite ones that we’ve done together, and then some we’re gonna be dipping into the long lost past.

[00:06:35] Joel: The deep archive.

[00:06:37] Marissa: The deep archives of- Yes … hosts of yesteryear who have come and gone at this point. But there’s still a lot of value there, and we’re really excited to be dipping back into the archive. In case you don’t know, we have hundreds of episodes over the years, and we’re gonna be sharing kind of the best of with you guys every single Monday.

[00:06:56] So you can expect those to drop in your feed just like normal, but they’ll be some of those best of episodes.

[00:07:01] Joel: I’m looking forward to that because the truth is, I have missed some of those. Yeah. And in between chapters of Moby Dick, maybe even I will be going back to refresh my memory on some of those great episodes.

[00:07:13] Marissa: Yeah. We should listen along with everybody else. It’ll be

[00:07:15] Joel: fun. Yeah. It’ll be awesome.

[00:07:16] Marissa: We do have an assignment for each of you. So turn up your volume in your headphones, in your car, wherever you’re listening, because this is important. We really don’t want you guys just completely abandoning what we try to teach you guys week after week, which is we want you, again, living this really beautiful full life.

[00:07:37] One that’s fully productive and successful while you’re at work, but then a life that you can go really flourish in in all the other areas of your life. And so we have a few specific things, a little bit of homework, shall we say- Mm-hmm … for you guys to accomplish over the summer. So Joel, do you wanna share that with us?

[00:07:55] Joel: Yeah. Well, there’s three things, and Marissa and I will give you, uh, maybe some suggestions on each. But the first is we want you to read a book.

[00:08:05] Marissa: Yes.

[00:08:06] Joel: It can be anything you want. We’ll give you a couple suggestions. The second is we want you to try out a habit, a new habit. Maybe it’s an old habit you wanna revitalize in your life, but we want you to, like, decide to set a practice for the summer that you’ll be consistent with.

[00:08:23] And then the third one is a question That we would like to pose to you, that we would like you to kind of like ruminate on throughout the summer. Come back to it several times. Uh, so like let’s just start at the top. Marissa, what is one book… There’s billions of them. Like people have been writing books ever since like Gilgamesh, so we’ve got a lot to choose from.

[00:08:45] What’s one book that would be beneficial for our listeners to read this summer?

[00:08:52] Marissa: The first one that comes to mind to me is Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity. Oh, wow. Yeah. If you haven’t read this book, I think it’s really perfectly positioned for all of you who are listening because it’s a book about productivity, but it’s all about how to do things slower, more efficiently, and, and do less things, but have more impact.

[00:09:16] And it’s a phenomenal book. We read this as a team probably close to two years ago, I guess at this point.

[00:09:22] Joel: Yeah. I love that. Um,

[00:09:23] Marissa: but it feels like a really good summer read because it’s a little bit of a slow read, right? Like the title suggests, and so it’s not something you’re gonna feel the need to rush through, and you’re gonna want to marinate on these ideas and really implement them, and it is fantastic.

[00:09:38] Um, so that is one that I would recommend on the business side, and I’m gonna give you guys a non-business book to listen to- Hmm … in case you’re just looking for something enjoyable. I already gave you two that are on my list, ones I’m reading currently. But one that I read, uh, just recently that has been one of the most entertaining books I’ve read, frankly, in years, is Project Hail Mary.

[00:10:02] And some of you guys- Hmm. Yeah … may recently have gone to see the movie in theaters, but the book, and specifically the audiobook, is incredible. It is super entertaining. The narrator does an incredible job keeping you super engaged. And if you’re like me, where you were kind of a reluctant novel reader for a long time, I think this is a good one to jump into because he really keeps you engaged, the narrator does.

[00:10:30] And the book itself is funny. It’s interesting. There’s a lot of kind of heady science in it, and yet somehow it doesn’t- Mm-hmm … feel heady at all. It feels very funny and light and enjoyable, and I kept finding myself wanting to go back and read, um, and go listen more because of how much I enjoyed it. And pro tip, if you do this book, it’s a great way to get stuff done around your house.

[00:10:55] So you can just pop in your headphones, and you’ll wanna keep listening, and so you’ll just find new projects to keep doing around the house, whether it’s laundry or cleaning or organizing or whatever it may be, so that you can keep listening. So those are my top two recommendations.

[00:11:10] Joel: Wow. Those are fantastic.

[00:11:12] Marissa: You are the, you are the book king And I don’t know that our- Yeah … listeners know this. Joel has his own Substack.

[00:11:19] Joel: Yeah, you can find it at millersbookreview.com.

[00:11:22] Marissa: It is fantastic, and so if you are a reader and you are curious about what to read, Joel writes about this, is it twice a week you come out with?

[00:11:29] Joel: I don’t have a book review every week, but I have two posts I do every week on something literary or a book review.

[00:11:35] Marissa: He’s a fantastic writer, so absolutely go sign up for his Substack. It’s fantastic.

[00:11:40] Joel: Wow. Well, thank you for the plug.

[00:11:41] Marissa: Now that the king is here, please tell us

[00:11:43] Joel: what we should read. I was just gonna say how much I loved Project Hail Mary.

[00:11:46] Such a good book. Uh, okay, the main book that I would like to suggest is Stewart Brand’s The Maintenance of Everything. Um, this book is really fascinating. First off, Stewart Brand, if you have any familiarity with, like, the hippies and all that good stuff, like, he was the creator of the, the Whole Earth Catalog.

[00:12:10] Mm-hmm. And he’s still around. Like, he’s getting up there in, in years, and he’s still blowing and going, and most recently he wrote his book Maintenance of Everything. And it’s really a book about the maintenance of everything, and I think this is, like, one of those neglected areas. When we think about productivity, we’re always thinking about what’s next, what’s happening, what are we doing that’s future-focused.

[00:12:32] Everything is future-focused, and yet so much of our life is actually really, it involves maintaining the things that we have already built and created and, and generated and all that. And what’s so great about this book is he helps give, like, a mental framework for thinking about that not as an annoyance or as just a necessary evil, but rather as part of the fulfilling aspect of our life and our work.

[00:12:59] And he does this in part by juxtaposing these two ideas, what he calls the maintenance mind and the neglect mind, and I found it very convicting and I, and really helpful

[00:13:10] Marissa: And I just

[00:13:11] Joel: think that’s like that’s just an under- an underappreciated and an underconsidered area of our lives. Yeah. And it’s a really riveting read.

[00:13:19] It’s full of all kinds of amazing anecdotes, including, like, boat races around the world in which some people do okay and other people really do not do okay. Yeah. Uh, it’s fantastic. And then if I were rep- recommending something that was, like, not work-ish related, but also still in its own way completely fascinating that was not fiction in this case, I’m listening to the audiobook right now of Ada Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance.

[00:13:46] And if you have ever wondered about the history of the Renaissance and then even underground below that, like how we even think about history and how we tell it and how we come up with the stories that we know about ourselves, Ada Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance. Holy smokes, it’s fantastic.

[00:14:01] Marissa: Okay.

[00:14:02] That sounds amazing. Well, regardless of if you take our recommendations or you find your own-

[00:14:08] Joel: No, you don’t have to take our recommendations at all. You have your own. But- Do your own … we just figured, you know, we’d just give you a shove.

[00:14:15] Marissa: Yes. A little push. And we are big readers, so we do, we do know what we’re talking about a little bit, um, here, especially Joel, because this is really his domain.

[00:14:23] So the assignment here is read a book this summer, just one at least, and hopefully something that you can really kind of get lost in and really enjoy, whether related to work or just something for pleasure.

[00:14:36] Joel: All right. The next thing we would like you to do is to try out a new habit. Could be like, again, it could be an old habit that you just would like to, like, reinvigorate.

[00:14:44] It could be something totally fresh. What’s one habit that you’re thinking maybe of, of doing?

[00:14:49] Marissa: My habit that I’m gonna choose here for the summer is getting morning sunlight.

[00:14:55] Joel: Oh, yeah.

[00:14:56] Marissa: We’ve talked about this a little bit on the podcast, but this is really important for several reasons. It’s really helpful for your circadian rhythm, so enabling you to sleep really well and have your body functioning at its best, right?

[00:15:13] Like, our bodies run on a certain clock, and this helps reset that when we get morning sunlight into our eyes, preferably without sunglasses, glasses, or even contacts. Um, so you want to be mindful of that. But it’s also really powerful for your nervous system. And, um- This is gonna be really important for me.

[00:15:35] I’ve fallen out of this habit, and I’m excited, especially when I think about going and having my coffee out in my garden in the morning. I think this is gonna be a habit that we’ll find- I’ll find pleasurable again- Yeah … rather than feeling like, “Ugh, I gotta go out there.” And it won’t be cold, and if you’ve ever tried to do this in colder months, that is really challenging.

[00:15:56] So my hope is that I can establish this habit now in the summer so that as I go into those colder months, the habit’s already installed. Um, I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to work as hard for it. So that’s my habit that I’m gonna be installing this summer. What about you?

[00:16:11] Joel: I love that. Meg and I started doing that, um, last summer, and, like, I cannot recommend it enough.

[00:16:18] It’s, like, literally fantastic. Yeah. For me, I think I’m going to get back into walking at a level that I used to but have largely fallen out of in the last six to nine months. Mm-hmm. Walking is just so great. Cardiovascularly, that’s fantastic. Cognitively, like, if you look at… You can find pictures of, like, brain scans online that’ll show you this, but, like, sitting, here’s, like, your dull brain, nothing happening.

[00:16:43] Walking, here’s your brain all lit up. It looks like- Yeah … Christmas. So walking, I just wanna get back into that on kind of a regular basis, uh, at least once a day. I mean, this was so habitual, I literally never thought about it. I was just… I would always just go out and walk. Yeah. And I have just fallen out of that.

[00:16:59] Marissa: I am excited to get back to walking, too. I feel like what I like about both of ours is it involves being outside. Yeah. Both of our habits. And it’s a perfect time of year to re-engage in those habits that are outside because unless you’re doing something… You know, like us, we live in outside of Nashville in Tennessee, where it’s gets really hot and really humid.

[00:17:19] The morning hours are the perfect time to get out, and so it’s a great time- So true … to get out in the sunlight or get out for a walk. And so maybe consider having a habit outside.

[00:17:42] Joel: Okay. The third assignment: What’s a question that maybe our folks ought to be thinking about this summer? Mm-hmm. Now, remember, these are just suggestions. All we really want you to do is find a thing to noodle on for a while.

[00:17:57] Marissa: Yeah.

[00:17:58] Joel: These are suggestions. You can come up with your own, but I’d love, Riss, for you to give us, like, what’s one question they might consider sitting with throughout the summer?

[00:18:06] Marissa: Yeah, I think a big one is when it’s related to your work, are you spending the majority of your time doing things that you feel like only you uniquely are gifted to do and that are in alignment with your role?

[00:18:26] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:27] Marissa: And if you notice that you’re having a lot of meetings crop up or task on your task list or requests from team members or things like that that fall outside of that, it might be time to consider what to do with those things or maybe a better way, you know, forward, um, and ask, how can I do more of the things that I’m uniquely gifted to do that are related specifically to my role?

[00:18:54] And how can you step more into the authority of whatever role you are? It doesn’t matter if you’re in a leadership position or not. How can you own that role more and kind of put that on more in your day-to-day work, like the actual work that you’re doing? How can you really own that space as the insert whatever job title you are?

[00:19:16] Joel: What I love about that is I think I have the side B of that question. Hmm. Great. Which is there’s not only the things that you are uniquely gifted at doing, like that’s kind of the what, but then there’s the how side of it, which is how do you do the work that you do? And I think it would be useful to sit with the question, what is it or how is it that I tend to work and how can I work more closely to my natural tendencies rather than constantly trying to fight against them?

[00:19:48] I think one of the challenges of a lot of productivity advice is it’s like one size fits all, and it assumes that we all basically can optimize the same ways to get the same results, and that’s just not true because we all have different proclivities, different tendencies, different ways that we show up, different ways we like to work, different things that feel natural to us, different things that feel very unnatural to us.

[00:20:11] And just sitting with the question of, like, how is it that I do what I do, I think would be really helpful and interesting.

[00:20:18] Marissa: I think these are really powerful questions to sit with. And so that’s where we’re going to leave you today, um, and for the summer. So just as a reminder of your assignment, your summer assignment, you have a little summer reading.

[00:20:33] Pick one book to read, one habit to try, and one of these questions, or maybe you have another question that you’ve been kind of already marinating with that you want to sit with for the summer.

[00:20:47] Joel: And that is it, at least for now. We hope that this will be a great summer for you. There is three months ahead of a lot of joy, potentially, a lot of even self-discovery and just recreation.

[00:21:02] And you know what’s great about recreation? It recreates you. You potentially will be an entirely new person come, uh, late August when the show comes back, and we certainly hope to be.

[00:21:16] Thanks for joining us for Focus on This.

[00:21:19] Marissa: We’ll see you in August.

[00:21:22] Joel: Yeah.

[00:21:22] Marissa: And until then…

[00:21:24] Joel: Stay focused. Stay

[00:21:25] Marissa: focused.

[00:21:26] Monotone Voice: Thank you. If this is an emergency, please consult your Full Focus planner.