167. Cultivate Gratitude Naturally While Combatting Workaholism

Episode Transcript

Courtney Baker:
Well, we are talking about gratitude, and I don’t know if you three have tried to instill a practice of gratitude in your children, but I find that it doesn’t come naturally. And I think we see it pretty acutely if you’re trying to teach a child that, then it’s like, “Oh, this is something that we’re going to have to be intentional about if we want to instill this in our child,” but I think that’s also true for us. I think we probably, obviously if we asked each other, “Do you want to be grateful?” Well, obviously, yes, I would love to be grateful. But I think that’s an idea and sometimes harder to actually put into practice, so I’m curious today to hear your thoughts on how we can be more grateful.

Blake Stratton:
I’m so thankful that you asked me that question, Courtney. I love just being called upon. You’re 100% right, everyone wants to be grateful. We acknowledge, “Oh, this is a healthy practice,” but like a lot of healthy practices that are good for our soul and good for our minds and good for our productivity, it does require some intention. It’s not going to just happen, you actually have to make some intentional choices.

Courtney Baker:
Do you know what it reminds me of? My husband’s a pastor, and he preached this last Sunday, so I’m going to steal his sermon illustration. He was talking about how McDonald’s, I think this was back in the early ’90s, McDonald’s did all of this surveying of what people wanted to eat. And on the responses it was like, “I want to eat healthy.” “I want to eat a balanced meal.” They had all these good intentions. Well, McDonald’s rolled out these healthy hamburgers, I can’t even remember what it’s called now, these healthy hamburgers.

Blake Stratton:
Big Mac.

Courtney Baker:
Well, Big Mac, no. And so people would come, they would see the healthy burger, but you know what they didn’t do?

Blake Stratton:
They didn’t buy it.

Courtney Baker:
Buy the healthy… They didn’t buy it because it’s like they had great intentions, but in practice, they wouldn’t do it. And so hopefully today, we can talk about these things in a way that is not just, “Oh, we have the intention. It’s November. Yes, I want to be grateful, I want to be thankful for the things around me,” but how can we practically put these into action? By the way, that burger’s now known as the McFlop, I believe, because it did so poorly.

Verbs Boyer:
Whomp, whomp, the McFlop. As long as it wasn’t the All Beef Patties special sauce, lettuce, cheese.

Courtney Baker:
That one did not McFlop.

Verbs Boyer:
Something, something. [inaudible 00:02:54].

Nick Jaworski:
Does anyone remember the vinyl, the record-

Verbs Boyer:
Yes. Come on, Nick. I thought I was the only one.

Courtney Baker:
I have no idea what you all are talking about.

Nick Jaworski:
… you had to cut it out. It was in the paper.

Verbs Boyer:
Oh, my goodness.

Nick Jaworski:
It was like you had to memorize this long song about the Big Mac, I think, and if McDonald’s called you and you could sing the song you would-

Verbs Boyer:
That’s amazing.

Nick Jaworski:
… win something. But it came in the paper.

Verbs Boyer:
That’s cool.

Nick Jaworski:
It was also a record.

Courtney Baker:
That’s amazing.

Verbs Boyer:
On today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about how you can build more gratitude, more organically into your weeks. And we have two tips to help you do that today. Welcome to another episode of Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the internet so you can banish distractions, get the right stuff done, and finally start loving Mondays. I’m Verbs, here with Courtney Baker and Mr. Blake Stratton. Happy Monday to you all.

Blake Stratton:
And a happy Monday unto you, Verbs. It’s so good to see you both.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah, happy Monday.

Verbs Boyer:
Likewise, my friends. And I’ll go ahead and introduce tip number one, but tip number one is to find open pockets. And so when we talk about open pockets, we’re talking about that space where you can often find yourself, where your body has to be present somewhere, but your mind has the ability to wonder so you can actually think about other things other than just doing the thing that you’re in the space of. So with an example of that is you could be driving your car during your commute to work. You could be in the shower, you could be walking the dog. Certain things like this, waiting in the pickup line for your kids at school. These are often spaces where you have capacity to let your mind think about other things and hopefully think about things that you may be grateful for. I don’t know, Courtney or Blake, do you have any of these moments? They’re your key go to moments to where you allow your mind to wander a little bit.

Courtney Baker:
I would say, I think all of those are really good. I would say for me, when it comes to installing something like this, of taking a moment to be grateful, it’s helpful if there’s a really strong correlation to the action of when I pick up my toothbrush, I’m going to just list three things that I’m thankful for. And obviously, that just sets your mind up to wander in that direction, but I tend to, if I can tie a very specific activity to what I’m trying to trigger, that helps me a lot.
Usually if I just say, “Hey, when I get in the shower, I’m going to think of some things,” that sort of helps, but if it can get even more minuscule like when I am washing my face. I don’t know, really get specific about that open pocket that you found, I think that works better for me. It also helps if I make some kind of pneumonic device. If I think about, you know what? I’m really glad in the United States we have really high standards of hygiene for our teeth, and while I brush my teeth, I’m going to [inaudible 00:06:16] list of three things that I’m thankful for. I know that’s dumb, but it works for me.

Verbs Boyer:
I think what you’re saying is great because I think sometimes we can overthink things that we’re grateful for. We feel like there’s a certain threshold for it to be considered great enough to be grateful for it. So something as small as teeth, obviously that’s something you want to be grateful for, so just the fact that we note that and don’t take those things for granted. I think it triggers something inside of us that helps us stay in that mode of counting even whether it’s a small thing or a greater thing that we can be equally as grateful for both of those levels of things that we’re grateful for.

Blake Stratton:
I remember when I was little and I would have trouble going to sleep or I’d be having a nightmare or something like that, and one of the things my dad, as he’s sure desperately trying to just get me to go back to sleep, he said, “Well, Blake, one thing you can do is you can just start listing or praying about things that you’re thankful for and just see how many you can think of.” And by being grateful, and I don’t know if my dad understood how brain science works or anything like that, but when we’re practicing gratitude, it sure is a lot harder to be practicing fear or anxiety, and so sure enough, I just start listing, “I’m grateful for this, I’m grateful for this, I’m grateful for this,” and eventually I just fall asleep and it’s something I do now, one of the things that’s hard to do when we’re instilling a habit is to think, I’ve got to layer this on top of my already busy schedule.
And so by finding an open pocket, you can integrate it into something that you’re already doing. The first thing that came to my mind when we brought this up, Verbs is I still do this. I do this basically every night. My routine part of, I guess, an evening ritual, that’s not like an actual thing I’ve got to… It doesn’t feel like I’m necessarily doing anything. It’s just say goodnight to my wife under those cozy blankets, and when I’m closing my eyes, as a means to fall asleep, I just start imagining what I was grateful for that happened in my day, and just think about the day, “I’m thankful for this and thankful for this,” or just start drifting into other forms of gratitude. It’s a great way to fall asleep and not be up thinking about all the stuff you didn’t get done and all the stuff you’ve got to do tomorrow, so that’s worked for me.

Courtney Baker:
That is a really nice time trigger and a really nice tool that I think helps combat what normally happens at night is the anxiety, your brain just is a little irrational at night, I find. It’s like the things that bother you at night, first thing in the morning you’re like, “Why was I even thinking about?”

Blake Stratton:
You’re totally right.

Courtney Baker:
It’s not a big deal. It’s so weird. And so I love that trigger of actually helping your brain go the way that you want it to, and I’m sure you probably actually sleep better because of it, what your thought processes were in the midst of falling asleep. There’s probably some really great science out there about that.

Verbs Boyer:
I wonder if there’s something to be said about the things that we often feel anxious about at night or feel burdened by if we looked at the converse of that, if we can actually pivot into something that we’re grateful for. There’s that, everybody used to say, “I lost my Wi-Fi today, da, da, da.” That’s the first world problem, but are there things that we feel like were burdened by in the moment that other people may love to be burdened by, that we could actually pivot into some sort of gratefulness or grateful mindset about it?

Courtney Baker:
Not to bring this back to Peloton, but-

Verbs Boyer:
What would be a focus on this episode?

Blake Stratton:
We haven’t gone there in a while. I’m glad that you’re-

Courtney Baker:
… we haven’t. Well, one of the instructors on Peloton always says, “We don’t have to. We get to,” and I think that’s actually a really powerful reframing of things. And I have found it seeping into other areas of my life. Nick, you and I talk about how the resetting of the kitchen at night… It’s like, I don’t really want to do this, but actually I get to do this. I get to have this beautiful kitchen with two beautiful children that make it a wreck. I get to be the one to pick this all up at the end of each night, and it does, it changes how you think about it when you can switch from, I don’t have to, I get to. She’s obviously using it with working out also, but it’s a powerful tool there. But I think that’s a nice credit to Jess Sims, I guess, I should say her name for that one.

Blake Stratton:
… the first tip is to find open pockets for gratitude. The second tip is simple, start with thank you. Sometimes Courtney and Verbs, I don’t know, if you’re like me, I want to be grateful. Maybe I take the time to go, “I need to think about what I’m grateful for.” I’ll make a gratitude list or something, but it feels a little forced, and if you were to look at my gratitude journal, it would come across that way. It’s like, “I’m thankful that I’m breathing air and that I’m sitting and my legs work and whatever,” and it can feel forced. But installing the habit of taking an extra second to say thank you more often, one, it’s easy, it doesn’t take a lot of creative power like a gratitude journal might, but two, you get this benefit of seeing the impact of your gratitude on somebody else.

Courtney Baker:
I love this tip because I feel like so many times when you talk about being grateful, it’s usually what we talked about in tip one where it’s all just you’re taking the time to figure out what you’re grateful for, when really it’s as easy as just sharing probably your actual gratitude with people just verbalizing it more often.

Nick Jaworski:
We had an audition, my son and I auditioned for a district band last night, and afterwards we got his favorite local pizza chain, it’s called Imo’s for any of you St. Louis people out there, very controversial.

Blake Stratton:
Because it tastes so good, sorry.

Nick Jaworski:
I-M-O, apostrophe, S.

Blake Stratton:
Okay, sorry.

Nick Jaworski:
But we went there and there was a new location near the school that we were at and we just ordered it there. We had to sit outside because there were no seating inside, so we get the pizza, we get this salad and it was all so good. It was like the best Imo’s we’d ever had, and I’m hit or miss with Imo’s, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, it’s so good.” So I went inside and I told the guy, I was like, “I need you to know this is the best Imo’s that I’ve ever had. I’m in St. Louis, I’ve had a lot of Imo’s.” And he was just like, “Oh man, thanks.” He was so excited about it and so appreciative of it, and then I felt really good that I took the time to do it, and so it was a win all around and I got good Imo’s which is a win.

Verbs Boyer:
Man, this is probably my favorite tip of the day too because of what we’ve already stated, but not only what it does for you and your journey of being more consistent with being grateful and expressing gratitude, but just the acknowledgement of somebody else and bringing them into that moment as well because you don’t know what that guy behind the pizza counter’s day was like, and that little thank you that you took time to come back into the restaurant, express your thanks, I’m sure that put his day on level 10 at that point.
And I’ll say this, just a note as to how powerful a thank you is, think about how much you dislike it when you’re in traffic and you let somebody in to your lane and they don’t give you the waving of the hand, the thank you. You’d be like, “Dude, I just let you in. You didn’t even have your turn signal on, and you couldn’t say anything? No, thank you.” Think about how you’d feel, now I think about how it would be if the person just said thank you, “Hey, no problem man. Anytime. See you tomorrow morning. Same place.” But thank yous are powerful, and I think, again, this is the fact that it acknowledges others and brings them, I think, to a spot of gratefulness as well, it’s big.

Courtney Baker:
Well, I think I said recently on a podcast about if the basic level of kindness is human acknowledgement. This is basically the step above that of, it’s acknowledgement with a thank you. It’s the hand wave of when somebody lets you in, it makes everybody feel good, and more of that is certainly what we need in the world.

Blake Stratton:
Thank you in the world. What we need today-

Verbs Boyer:
To level up. Level up your focus. We’ve got trails blazing.

Courtney Baker:
Yes. Leave that in.

Blake Stratton:
… man.

Courtney Baker:
Hey, guys. We have another Full Focus planner certified pro with us today and I’m really excited because Jeremy Clapton and I are going to be talking specifically about using the Full Focus planner when you have tendencies to be a workaholic, and so I’m really excited to welcome Jeremy to the show. Hey, Jeremy.

Jeremy Clopton:
Hello. How are you?

Courtney Baker:
I’m good. Why don’t you tell everybody really quickly, just a little bit about you and maybe how you became a Full Focus planner certified pro?

Jeremy Clopton:
Yeah. I appreciate that. So I am a consultant in the accounting industry, except I’m no longer an accountant. I actually work with accounting firms which is a whole lot of fun. I’ve been doing that for about four years now. Before that, I had my own company, and then before that I was actually a CPA, so I spent 12 years in the public accounting space which is where I developed my workaholic tendencies and actually have been following the concepts around the planner for a really long time.
I actually remember way back when there was an Excel version of the ideal week on a blog post that Michael Hyatt did a long, long time ago. I don’t know where it was. And I really got hooked on the principles then, and then it’s probably been almost year and a half, two years I guess, that’ve been all in on the planner. But I’d used the principles for a long time, so I actually didn’t go all in on the planner as early as I should have because I kept thinking, “I got the principles that I’ve picked up as they were laid down,” and I finally just realized, this is a whole lot easier, that it’s all in one place with the planner. And it was just way more streamlined, and man, I’m so glad that I did.

Courtney Baker:
So I’m curious with, I know you shared a little bit of your own, that got ingrained. I mean, how has the planner helped offset that or helped counter that, especially I think probably when we learned those kind of things early in our careers? Sometimes it’s hard to break.

Jeremy Clopton:
Yeah. And I learned it right out of the gate, was more hours is going to work better, so I’m just work, work, work. I wasn’t married, I didn’t have a family. I didn’t have a whole lot of hobbies, so it was really easy to do that. And the thing is, I love work and I love what I do, so it’s not like work is the villain in this which is, I think, where typically the workaholic conversation goes is, how do you almost vilify work? But I love what I do.
What the planner allows me to do is it really gives me the freedom to leave work at work and then be present when I’m not there, and that to me has probably been one of the biggest things because I can very easily think about work nonstop. And I think anybody that’s got those workaholic tendencies, it’s not that we’re doing it because we don’t want to. It’s not like it is this bad thing. We love it, so it’s always on our mind. And there’s a couple different aspects of the planner that have really helped me with it, but it’s provided me the freedom to say, “I’m done for the day, I can go do something else and I can be all in there,” and that’s going to be okay because I know that I’m set up for success.

Courtney Baker:
It’s interesting, I find that sometimes we talk a lot about winning at work and succeeding at life, when you’ve had a season where that’s been really weighted towards just winning at work and you’re like, “If you let me just think about work all the time, I will and I’ll love it,” but when you’ve been in years of that, sometimes it becomes really hard to find things or to actually end the day and actually switch to something else to fill the time. You’re just so used to saying, “I’m going to fill even my free time thinking about my professional life.” Were there things that helped you or I don’t know, hobbies, things that you put in place to help you fill that mental space?

Jeremy Clopton:
I don’t know that it was necessarily finding hobbies to put into that space. It really is, at this point in my life. I’m married, I’ve got three kids, so it’s changed obviously since or early in my career. And the workaholic tendency kept going even when my wife and I started having kids, and that was really the thing. I don’t know that it was creating something to fill the time as much as it was, “Okay, I need for my own,” I don’t know if mental health, I think is probably the right phrase, “I’ve got to be able to disconnect from work so I can be present at home,” and it’s really hard to do that when you’ve always been in that mode of, “Well, no, I can just work, work, work.” And then we always tell ourselves a story, “Oh, well, it’s for the family, so therefore it’s okay.”
But it’s a whole lot. It’s way different than actually being present with the family, and what I was realizing is, unless I give myself the time to really be present and go all in on that, the work at the end of the day became less joyful. You start to lose the passion, and so it wasn’t even having to find things for it. In my mind, I knew that I had to figure out a way to create that separation. And I mean, the planner was, I would say, instrumental in that and really creating… And I’ve recommended it to friends in the industry and outside the industry that they’re like, “Man, I’m just never present. I don’t know how to do it,” and that’s one of the best solutions I think.

Courtney Baker:
Were there specific tools for you that you found most helpful for that? Or was it the Full Focus system, what was it that really helped you?

Jeremy Clopton:
I always talked to folks about this, and I always get a comment afterward and they’re like, “Okay, well, I hope you go enjoy doing,” whatever the example is that I shared that day. I am really intentional that when I am home, because I travel a fair amount 40, 50 nights a year, but when I am home, my daily big three, even during the work week includes at least one thing non-work related. And I always get pushback on that because people are like, “Oh, well, is that really necessary?” And for me it is, and the reason was, the very first time I went to write something down on my big three that wasn’t work related, I stopped myself and I started to erase what I’d written, and I’m like, “All right, that’s not a big three item. I’ve got to put something else on there.”
But then something that one of my colleagues had mentioned, somebody in our industry that I work with a lot, she said, “There’s this idea of selective disappointment, and when you choose work over something else, you’re choosing to disappoint somebody. Same way when you choose family over work, you’re choosing to disappoint, perhaps, a client or whatever.” Well, the thing that I had written down in my planner that day that I started to erase, I was on the road and I was coming home that day, and my five year old had said, “Hey, will you play hotel with me when we get home?” And I’m like, “Sure, it sounds great.” I went to write it down and I erased, and in my mind all of a sudden it was like, “Am I really willing to tell myself that isn’t one of the most important things? I’ve been on the road for three days, am I really comfortable telling myself that there is another work thing that is more important than when I get home playing with my daughter?” And that was a really hard thing. It was a punch to the gut the very first time.
But since then, I’ve been very intentional about at least one daily big three item is non-work related because what it does is it forces my mind to get in the habit of focusing a little bit more on non-work rather than constantly thinking about work. And as much as people tell me, “Oh, that’s silly or whatever,” I think it’s critical actually. I don’t find it to be, it sounds like a small thing, but it has a significant impact on just how you approach the day when every single day you’ve got one thing that is meaningful outside the office.

Courtney Baker:
I love that. And I feel like that is such a great recipe, especially for people that lean that way where you have a strong pull to just focus on professional activities. But again, if you look at the full system, if you’ve got goals that are across different life domains, obviously it only makes sense that some of your weekly big three should be things that aren’t just professional, and then therefore, you would have also things that are daily big threes that wouldn’t be. But Nick is really, I was like, am I about to cry right now, when you were saying… I think that’s so true of really having that focus of, “Yeah, that actually is the most important,” it’s such a great check of saying, “Am I winning at work and succeeding at life?” And unfortunately, I think our culture, and I’m going back to the hustle fallacy really puts a lot more prominence on winning at work. And so there’s a lot of intentionality of, “Okay, what am going to say is actually important? What do I want in 10 years from now?” I think that’s a really wonderful reminder for all of us.

Jeremy Clopton:
And it really is, it’s that intentionality of thinking through, “Okay, there are things that are important outside of work,” and I mean, it’s something that I encourage people all the time is, this planner is not a work planner. It is everything, it is work, it is life. It’s every aspect, but you’ve got to use it that way, and for me, that’s what that daily big three… If I can incorporate one thing that’s really helpful, and I have a mentor who’s the founder of the firm that I’m with, who’s actually getting ready to retire, and we’re working through succession which I’ve got to say the planner helps with just organizing all of that. And he always said, “I love Mondays,” and I always thought it was the weirdest thing in the world. But he goes, “I love what I do, but I don’t do it all the time, so I always know when I’m going to do something else so that when Monday rolls around, I’m so excited to get back to it because I haven’t done it all weekend.”
And the planner helps me do that. It helps me be sure that I intentionally plan, “What are the things that I’m going to do to get away from work so that I always love what I do,” because that’s really the challenge for us. From a workaholic standpoint is, it gets to a point where it’s not sustainable and you lose the joy and you lose what Shonda Rhimes called in her Ted Talk, my year of saying yes to everything. She called it the hum, and that was probably one of the most powerful Ted Talks I’ve ever seen.
And she said, work doesn’t work without play is what she realized, and it’s that intentionality. And the planner allows you, if you think about it in the weekly preview, it has the rejuvenation section and it says, “How are you going to do this?” And for those that are workaholics, maybe it’s just me, I’m guessing not, that’s not the section that I immediately go to, isn’t the rejuvenation section and I give that as much thought as I probably should have. It was, “Yeah, I’ll get to that eventually,” but I found that, that’s the aspect that keeps work joyful and keeps that passion going so that you just absolutely love it. And Monday is a great day, and it’s such a wonderful system for it.

Courtney Baker:
Jeremy, I think there’s so much wealth in this discussion, but I’d love for you to share maybe a final hack or just a tool that you’re like, “Hey, if you find yourself leaning towards overwork, leaning into being a workaholic,” that you would recommend for those listeners.

Jeremy Clopton:
As I think about one other tip we already talked about incorporating one of your non-work item into your daily big three, and to me, that’s probably the most important tip when you find yourself gravitating toward that. But if you’re looking for that sustainable change where it’s not just, “Okay, I did it today,” create a habit goal. I mean, you’ve got the Streak Tracker there in the goal detail page. What a great way to say, I shut down by 5 o’clock or I shut down by 6 o’clock or whatever it is, and I disconnected and was present for at least four hours with my family, my friends, whomever it may be.
I was present for four hours in the evening every day. Make that a habit goal for you, and then use the Streak Tracker to really figure that out because what’s wonderful about the Streak Tracker is, it doesn’t have to be perfect. If you’re trying to break the workaholic tendencies, you’re not looking for perfection, you’re looking for progress, and the Streak Tracker is one of the best ways to track your progress on this. Use the smarter goal framework, make it actionable, and then just shoot to do a little bit better this week than you did last week, and then keep that going for a quarter, and I think you’ll see amazing progress in your ability to maybe dial back a little bit on the workaholic tendencies and still have that joy and passion for work.

Courtney Baker:
Well, spoken like a true pro. That’s for sure. Do you want to join this podcast with us?

Jeremy Clopton:
Sure, yeah.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah, come on. We’ll definitely need to have you back again. If you are wondering how you might work with a certified pro like Jeremy, you can find them all at fullfocus.co/directory. Make sure that you’re searching for earners and you can even find Jeremy there, and you also find him in the Full Focus Planner community on Facebook. Again, there are so many wonderful, very sharp, smart users of the Full Focus system there to help you. And we’ll also put several links in the show notes for how you can find Jeremy specifically. Jeremy, thank you so much. This has been such a wonderful conversation.

Jeremy Clopton:
Oh, you’re welcome, Courtney. Thanks so much for inviting me. I’ve really enjoyed it.

Verbs Boyer:
So we do have a level up tip for you today to level up your focus. Today’s tip is, find two opportunities to say thank you to someone else today, and may I suggest let that take place during your commute in traffic at some point, just to say thank you.

Blake Stratton:
Especially if Verbs lets you in. Okay, [inaudible 00:31:46].

Verbs Boyer:
Well, if I let you in.

Blake Stratton:
At least do the two fingers lifting from the steering wheel, at least that.

Courtney Baker:
Today, we mentioned several times about a journaling of gratitude and how to make that part of your daily interactions. If you’re interested in pursuing that more, we have a fantastic journal, the Full Focus journal, and if you want to find out more about it, you can go to fullfocusstore.com to get one.

Verbs Boyer:
So thank you for joining us on today’s episode of Focus on This. Thank you for joining us.

Courtney Baker:
Yes, thank you. Because this is the most productive podcast on the internet, so share it with your friends. I’m sure they will be thankful. And don’t forget to join us over in the Full Focus Planner community on Facebook. We’ll be back next Monday with another great episode. Until then, stay focused.

Blake Stratton:
Stay focused.

Verbs Boyer:
Stay focused.