300. What to Do When Life Hits the Fan?

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Joel: Hey, everyone. Joel Miller here. You probably know this already if you’ve heard the last few weeks, but Marissa is out, uh, temporarily. She injured herself, shoulder. Turns out you need that, and hers isn’t working all the way. So in the meantime, I have Hannah Williamson with me, and Hannah is going to take over the other half of the show from Marissa very temporarily.

[00:00:27] Hannah: Life has a way of laughing at our plans. So what do you do when the phone rings and it’s bad news? When there’s a crisis in your family, when your car is totaled, and when you have to find a solution ASAP? How do you stay afloat when you start to feel like you’re drowning? Let’s talk about it.

[00:00:51] Welcome to Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the internet. I’m Hannah Williamson.

[00:00:56] Joel: And I’m Joel Miller.

[00:00:57] Hannah: This is where we remind you of something you already know. It’s not about getting more things done. It’s about getting the right things done.

[00:01:06] Joel: Both at work and in life. And today we’re talking about what to do when life, as it sometimes will, hits the fan.

[00:01:17] Hannah: That… No, that never happens.

[00:01:19] Joel: Except every other day. I often think about this line from Mike Tyson, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” First off, it’s j- it’s just kinda funny, but it’s so true. You know? Like, we have the way we’re think that it’s gonna go. Mm-hmm. And it’s all clear, and it’s, it’s in our planner.

[00:01:38] I got my big three. It’s right there. I’ve got the schedule written out. I know how it’s gonna go. But then you get the phone call. Mm-hmm. Then you get the email. Then just go down the list. So he’s not talking about productivity. He’s literally talking about getting punched in the face, but life feels like it punches you in the face, and it just, like, it never goes according to plan.

[00:01:59] If there’s one thing that you can plan on is that it won’t go according to plan.

[00:02:03] Hannah: That actually, it makes me think of… You would know. I think it’s the Eisenhower quote when he says, um, “Plans are useless, and planning is everything.” Like, it’s this idea that, like, you make a plan, but you make a plan knowing it’s probably gonna be derailed in some way.

[00:02:16] Yeah. And so it’s the process of, like, resetting and readjusting and, like, forming that plan that’s so valuable, but you make them knowing that life is gonna happen.

[00:02:25] Joel: I think he might have said that, but it goes back even further, or ideas like it. I know there’s, like, a, a very dead German general, for instance, who said something similar to that.

[00:02:35] It’s just, like, a known fact. You know, you get, you get all the guys on the field to go do the thing, take that hill or whatever, and they’re… It’s not gonna go the way you think. However If you didn’t plan, it would be worse.

[00:02:48] Hannah: Yes. You know? So,

[00:02:49] Joel: like we know that too.

[00:02:50] Hannah: Yeah, and when I think about the places that this shows up, at least for me, I mean, I think about family, right?

[00:02:56] Sure. This could be something happens with one of your kids. That’s never happened to you, Joel, right?

[00:03:00] Joel: Just every other day. Like I was saying

[00:03:03] Hannah: before. Something happens with your kids or maybe there’s like a ruptured relationship that then is like bothering you and is like lingering in the back of your mind.

[00:03:11] Maybe there’s a health thing, a health scare that happens for you or maybe your parents, someone you love. I’m thinking about maybe you’re at work and you like find out that there’s a new project that you need to accommodate or make space for, or maybe there’s a financial thing, an unexpected… Earlier this week, I found out I need to fix the AC in my car, you know?

[00:03:30] There goes a few hundred dollars. Sure. And there are these things that we don’t ask for that just kind of intrude upon how we would idealistically form our lives, and we need to be able to accommodate them, right? Like, there has to be some slack and some flexibility to be able to make space for those things.

[00:03:47] Joel: Well, okay, the premise holds. Life is gonna hit the fan. What do you do?

[00:03:53] Hannah: Mm-hmm. What, what is the

[00:03:54] Joel: plan? What’s the response?

[00:03:55] Hannah: Definitely one of the first things I tell coaching clients when I’m chatting with them is, one of the first things I try to do is help them scale back their expectations a little bit, which is counterintuitive.

[00:04:08] I think a lot of people when they hear an invitation to lower the bar, they equate that with some kind of failure, right? Like that somehow they’re gonna be more behind. It’s gonna get worse. But what I frequently find with people is that when you keep that bar at its height or, or whatever it is, one of the things that can do, that can happen is that you can actually become less consistent, right?

[00:04:32] Mm-hmm. If I’m trying to optimize for I want you to be able to reliably win and reliably make progress, then when you lower it, that bar, when you make it a little bit easier, it increases the likelihood that you’re gonna follow through. Because when… it’s almost like when the chaos around you gets louder, then you need like even more clarity and even more specificity, and you need that clear specific win to be attainable.

[00:05:01] Joel: I think that’s really true. And when you continue to be consistent, even if it’s at a lower level, you maintain the discipline that will enable you to ramp back up when you have the bandwidth to ramp back up. Yes. But if you become inconsistent, you will have lost that momentum, and then it’s like rebuilding this whole thing from scratch.

[00:05:22] Yes. And so I notice, for instance, one of the things you suggest is like, if you can’t go for a walk, or if you can’t work out for an hour, you go for a 10-minute walk. Mm, mm-hmm. And one of the things that I have noticed about my own- practice of walking, uh, and exercising over the last many years now is if I fall out of the habit of walking for a few days, it’s harder for me to get back into it.

[00:05:47] Hannah: Yeah. But if

[00:05:48] Joel: I even just go walking 20 minutes-

[00:05:50] Hannah: Yeah …

[00:05:50] Joel: I maintain the practice, and it’s really easy the next day when it’s time to go walking, or a month later, when it’s time to go walking now at a longer amount of time again, I just pick right up where I was before because I’ve maintained some consistency.

[00:06:05] Hannah: Yeah, I mean, I, I think it’s this question of, like, what’s actually realistically doable in your daily life, right? We wanna set goals that are ambitious, but the daily execution of them needs to actually feel manageable, right? And so I think particularly when it comes to habits, I know you guys have talked about this before, but I think about, like, people’s over-architected morning rituals or whatever it is.

[00:06:29] Yes. Like, whatever that, like, crazy, like- Can we

[00:06:32] Joel: just stop and do a public service announcement for something really quick?

[00:06:35] Hannah: Yes.

[00:06:36] Joel: In your Full Focus Planner, should you be wonderful enough to use one, and I hope you do. In your Full Focus Planner, there is a set of rituals that you can fill out, and I think because there are the number of lines that are in there, sometimes people feel like they need to have a lot of stuff- Mm-hmm

[00:06:55] in those rituals. Yeah. And I think one of the most important things for, like, true productivity is remembering it’s not about getting, as we say at the beginning of the show, all the things done. Yeah. It’s about getting the right things done. The question is, what are the highest leverage things that you can reliably do consistently- Yes

[00:07:14] in that ritual? That may mean just, like, three or four things, and those may be exactly what you need. And that helps you be resilient when, when life hits the fan, too, because the more complicated and over-engineered your rituals are, the harder it is to maintain them.

[00:07:28] Hannah: And that brings us back to, I think, the idea that keeps running through my head is this idea of continuity, right?

[00:07:34] How can you create, like, have as few misses as possible? Because to your point, once you start stacking up misses, it’s really hard to get back into it. Right. But if you create that consistency, then again, you’re making reliable progress. Even if it’s not quite as fast as you would want, you’re making reliable progress, and that is what’s gonna win the day.

[00:07:56] Joel: Totally agree. You can think about this in all sorts of areas, but another one that’s directly related to daily productivity is your daily big three. Mm-hmm. If you have a… You’re in a particular season where things are really tough You may not have a daily big three every day. You may have a daily big one- Yeah

[00:08:14] for a couple of weeks. Don’t worry about it. Just, like, maintain the practice because if you maintain the practice, when your bandwidth opens up again, you will have not lost ground, and it’ll be easy to just, like, pick up where you left off with the higher number of tasks that you’re trying to get done.

[00:08:32] If you, however, slip, that’s the kind of place where you start looking at that planner and you feel guilty that you haven’t opened it in four or five days, and then a week, and then two weeks, and then pretty soon you’re just not using it and you’re not getting the benefit of it, mainly because you just kind of fell off the wagon.

[00:08:49] And it’s not that hard to stay on the wagon with a minimal viable dose or a minimum effective dose. It’s just that you have to do the minimum effective. And so, like, what is that dose for you? Do that. That will end up preserving not only your margin, like you need the extra space, you need the extra bandwidth ’cause you’re, you need to be more flexible right now, but it will also preserve your momentum- Yes

[00:09:14] so that going forward you still keep that as things improve.

[00:09:18] Hannah: And just for those of you who are listening and you’re feeling skeptical, and you’re, you’re saying, “You’re gonna ask me to set a daily big one? Like, how is that ever gonna get me where I wanna go? How is that gonna help me?” I just wanna say I have coached numerous clients on this, given them some form of this advice, and more than any other coaching that I have offered people, this is the one they come back to me and say thank you for.

[00:09:41] Oh, wow. This is the one they come back to me and they say, “It helped me feel so much calmer, it helped me stay so much more focused. It helped me, again, create that clarity for what I needed to be doing.” And so particularly, like, I’m thinking about clients I’ve coached who, like, who they have health crises coming on or, or relational crises coming on, or things happening with their kids.

[00:10:01] This is the one game changer that helps them stay connected to themselves, have a sense of sanity, and keep making progress toward where they wanna go. So if you’re feeling skeptical, I would ask you to try it. Just give it a try, and if you don’t like it after a week, well, you can do something different.

[00:10:17] Joel: Because this season will pass- Mm-hmm … and you will be into a new season, and you might as well be picking up from some degree of momentum than none.

[00:10:29] Hannah: Yes. And it’ll keep you sane along the way, which leads us where I wanna go next, which is to say when life is chaotic around you, you need some kind of anchor.

[00:10:40] You need some kind of touch point that is keeping you sane and, and stable in the middle of the swirling storm around you, right? And there are lots of ways that these can look. Primarily, it’s thinking about what grounds you specifically and how can you create a rhythm, a ritual, a, a moment that creates space for that in your day-to-day life.

[00:11:04] Joel: Well, this is Maybe more important than we often recognize, but it’s like these little habits that kind of enable us to just stay human. Mm-hmm. And I, I don’t mean that in some, like, large existential way. I mean it in, like, the smallest little ways. Like, as creatures, we- Mm … are creatures of habit, and we feel off, we feel funky when, like, the little rituals of our day get kind of obliterated.

[00:11:36] And emergencies can obliterate those little rituals of the day, and so kind of like fighting for just a few of them to maintain really does enable us to stay sturdy when everything gets crazy. It could mean, like, if you have a, a walk after work, that’s great. If you have a bath before bedtime, that’s great.

[00:11:53] If you get coffee on the front porch in the morning, that’s great. Just, like, hold on to a few of those things because what you will find is they keep you centered. They keep you feeling like yourself. And if you wanna, like, not feel like yourself, drift far enough out of your habits that you don’t know those things anymore and what happens is you feel completely bewildered and disoriented.

[00:12:18] The easiest way to get unbewildered and reoriented is just to keep doing the few things that are just habitually yours that you do.

[00:12:28] Hannah: Well, and I think, too, we’re starting to talk about in the literature and in kind of the culture more about our nervous systems and, like, realize- Yeah … just how important our nervous systems are.

[00:12:40] And just to say that, like, when something unexpected happens, when something chaotic happ- happens, your nervous system is, you know, elevating, right? You’re flipping into probably that fight flight, maybe even freeze if it’s bad enough. And we just know that our brains, the, the parts of our brains that are firing, like, we’re not at our most creative.

[00:13:00] We’re not at our most kind of able to be relational and, like, communicate effectively. Like, when you’re firing on all cylinders, it’ll help you run away from a bear, but it might not help you resolve this argument or make this business decision, or, like, even things as simple as asking that, like, what matters most right now question, right- Mm-hmm

[00:13:20] that we were talking about a couple weeks ago. Like, in order to get that kind of clarity, you have to be able to downshift. You have to be able to kind of calm yourself, and these little moments can be so effective for that because really what you’re doing is you’re cueing your body and your mind that you’re safe, right?

[00:13:39] You’re, you’re doing something that’s predictable, that’s hopefully intentionally regulating that either, you know, you’re talking, you’re getting connected with a person, maybe you’re outside. You’re having some kind of sensory experience that’s grounding you, and that is, like, biologically that’ll help you slow your heart rate.

[00:13:56] That’ll help your, your muscles unclench. Like, you’re cueing yourself That it’s okay and I’m safe. And we’re seeing that this is the kind of thing that actually makes us resilient. It’s these small moments, these small practices where we’re kind of self-communicating that we are okay.

[00:14:13] Joel: If you think back to the premise of this show, that this is about productivity, here’s where this matters.

[00:14:18] If you are not in that state of calm, your ability to just push through yet again- Yep … when it’s total chaos starts to degrade, and your ability to be effective and productive at work is, it’s gonna slip. Yep. And, you know, you’re gonna find yourself exhausted, distracted, scattered, unable to focus. It is like returning to that place of calm that enables you to stay grounded and effective throughout the day, regardless of what’s going on.

[00:14:48] Hannah: Well, and I think it’s this counterintuitive, we think we should be able to think ourselves into doing better, into making better decisions, into, like, whatever it is, but when we’re activated, in order to get to that higher level thinking, we actually have to be able to downshift. And so it is these small moments that can help us to get there.

[00:15:09] Yeah. So, I mean, my invitation would be to just pick one thing. And like you don’t need this extensive self-care routine. Pick one thing that you will reliably do, even if it’s just for the next few weeks while you’re dealing with whatever this intrusive crisis or whatever it is. Like, just pick one thing that you will reliably do and make it 15 minutes or less.

[00:15:31] Like, make it super easy, super doable, and make it super easy and doable enough that you will reliably do it on a daily basis.

[00:15:40] Joel: Well, part of that comes down to reducing decision load. Mm. So here’s another angle to keep in mind. If you’ve only got one thing to do, you don’t have to think about the five things that you might do, for instance.

[00:15:51] Yeah. And reducing decision load across the board during this kind of season of hard stuff happening is always a good idea. We had Barry Schwartz on The Double Win Show recently. He’s the author of The Paradox of Choice, and he said something that I think a lot of us have experienced in some form or another.

[00:16:11] I mean, choice is great, right? But at a certain point, there’s too much in order for us to function well, and I would rather live in a world of abundant choice and then try to figure out ways of navigating that- Yeah … than to be impoverished of choices. But at the same time, I’m not deluded enough to think that infinite choice somehow makes my life better.

[00:16:32] Yeah. Choices can exhaust us. Mm-hmm. And if we’re in an environment where we’re already under siege, so to speak- That’s not a good place to be. You’re gonna be less effective. You’re gonna be less decisive. So the more decisions that you have, the less good you’re gonna be at making those decisions.

[00:16:49] Hannah: It makes me think of everything is competing for our attention, right?

[00:16:52] We know this, and decisions are one of the things that compete for our attention. And so we don’t necessarily think about it this way all the time, but decisions cost us something. Yeah. They cost us at least the attention of the moment, but also, like, that exercising of our thinking, right? And so if you are kind of optimizing, if you have…

[00:17:11] If you know that you’re in a season where, for whatever reason, you have less to give, you’re stretched more thin, you have less energy, less attention, well, then one really easy solve is to just say, “How can I eliminate as many decisions as possible so that I’m making the cost of those decisions more manageable?”

[00:17:30] I’m thinking about, I mean, I feel like these are age-old examples, but, like, Steve Jobs in his black turtleneck or Barack Obama apparently had, like, three suits that he cycled through, right? They were just saying, “I don’t wanna think about what I wear in the morning. I’m gonna make this decision one time, and it’s gonna be recurring.”

[00:17:48] And that’s just a small example of intentionally reducing your decision load.

[00:17:52] Joel: I, you know, even things like the Daily Big Three, you may cut it down for one, like, for a season like we’re talking about, but the whole idea of the Daily Big Three is to actually help reduce the choices during the day. When you sit down and you look at a to-do list that’s got 19 items on it and they’re unsorted, they’re just all there on a list, you have to make decisions repeatedly throughout the day as to what to do next.

[00:18:16] Hannah: Yeah.

[00:18:16] Joel: Whereas the Daily Big Three, you do that thought process one time, you identify what you wanna do, and then now you just need to execute on the things that you’ve decided. When you can reduce decisions, you get to reduce decision fatigue, and that means you have more capacity to actually do the stuff that you need to do.

[00:18:35] And when you’re under strain, when you’re under siege from whatever’s going on in your life, that’s when you need to preserve your ability to make important decisions at the greatest level anyway. So this is the time to really invest in protecting your decision capability because that’s gonna be strained.

[00:19:04] Hannah: Okay, so let’s think about this practically. Like, if I’m thinking about places where people can start eliminating some choices and reducing that decision load, I mean, you could do something around mealtimes. You could have the same breakfast every day or the same lunch every day You could, like Steve Jobs and Barack Obama, have, like, an outfit rotation, right?

[00:19:24] Joel: I, by the way, I do a version of this myself. I have, like, a winter outfit, and I have a summer outfit. The summer outfit is a white polo, and the winter outfit is a white button-up. I mean, like, I wear this- You could be your- I’m wearing it right now. Yeah. This is, like, what I do. Outside, the only other thing I might wear is a sweater.

[00:19:42] Mm-hmm. Like, that’s kinda, like, that’s the only thing. Or your

[00:19:44] Hannah: vest. You have your vest.

[00:19:46] Joel: I guess the vest. If I’m cold, the vest goes on. But it makes it so that, like, when I decide wh- what to wear each day, it… I didn’t even do this because of this reason. It’s just that it happens to just be easy. But what it means is I don’t have to make decisions.

[00:20:01] I mean, I literally, I, I, I don’t even think about what am I gonna wear. I just go pull the thing off the shelf and, and put it on.

[00:20:07] Hannah: Okay, so I’m curious. Do you have other places that you do this in your life, like, you know, maybe with what you’re gonna read or where you’re gonna go? Do you have any ways that you reduce decision load?

[00:20:17] I mean, I’m sure you do the same commute every day. That’s a super simple-

[00:20:21] Joel: I am a minimalist by inclination and probably by habit also. I don’t like to have all the loose ends of things in my life demanding attention, maintenance, demanding all that kind of stuff. I value maintenance. Mm-hmm. I’m kind of, like, a new convert to the maintenance mindset, but I would rather not bring unneeded maintenance on myself.

[00:20:46] And so, I mean, I just prefer having less stuff. I have one pair, I have two pairs of eyeglasses. Mm-hmm. They’re identical. I never wanna think about, I never wanna think about that. You know? Like, I don’t wanna have to choose. Does, do these frames go with this shirt? Like, I don’t know and I don’t care. I just want simplicity, and so I’m always looking to, like, just get rid of stuff so I don’t have to make decisions about things.

[00:21:11] Hannah: That makes me think yesterday I saw something that was like, um, walk around your… Get a, get a bag, walk around your house, and put five things in it that you don’t need anymore. Do this every day for the next 30 days and see what happens. And I was like, oh, that is a really simple application of this. Like, you’re reducing kind of the environmental noise around you.

[00:21:29] Joel: I don’t think that we appreciate how much environmental noise there really is- Mm … in the stuff that we have. And I’m, like, I’m not an evangelist for, like, minimalism or whatever. I’m never gonna go tell someone to go do that. I just happen to like it. Yeah. And I’m surprised when I do have too much stuff around me, how it drives me nuts.

[00:21:52] Like, I hate it.

[00:21:52] Hannah: Well, and too, I feel like one of the underlying premises that we’re getting at is that you’re trying to eliminate decisions and noise where you don’t care so that you can redirect that time, energy, attention towards what- Yes … you do care about. So like Joel, in your case, you don’t care about your outfits, but you care a ton about books.

[00:22:14] You are not a minimalist when it comes to books, as we can see behind you. I’m-

[00:22:19] Joel: And so- … something of a maximalist- And- … when it comes to books … and so,

[00:22:22] Hannah: like in your case, having identical pairs of glasses help you have that much more attention that then you can apply to reading, writing, and the things that you care about.

[00:22:31] So maybe you’re listening, you’re like, “I love expressing myself through all the different outfits and all the acc- accessories and all that.” Great. Where can you eliminate elsewhere where you care less so that you’re, you’re, again, you’re allocating your attention to the things that matter most to you?

[00:22:48] Joel: I should say something just outright so no one misunderstands me.

[00:22:52] I want you to live however you wanna live, right? As long as it doesn’t hurt me, I don’t actually care. I think you expressing yourself how you want to is amazing. Uh, so I’m not evangelizing for anything that I’m doing. I’m just saying it works for me. So- You’re gonna find versions of it that work for you, and you wanna go find those because your life will work better- Yeah

[00:23:11] if you do that. But at the end of the day, it’s your life and, and I’m m- I’m excited for you to live it however you want.

[00:23:17] Hannah: So we’re gonna say you being you, look for places where you can eliminate decisions in areas of life that don’t matter as much to you so that you can have more of yourself to give to the things that do matter to you, particularly in these seasons where you know that you have less to give.

[00:23:37] Joel: That’s a very eloquent way of saying it, and I commend you on that. That was great. It’s almost like

[00:23:41] Hannah: I’m a writer. But we don’t just wanna talk about decision load because we also wanna talk about- Oh, that’s good … something that is really important that I think people are so hesitant to do. Like, I think there is a little bit of emotional resistance on this one, that we should just come out front and say, like, you might have some initial, yeah, resistance, some initial hesitation.

[00:24:04] Joel: If you’re the kind of person that breaks out in hives, it’s time to get your EpiPen and your Benadryl ready- … because this one, this one might set you off just a little bit. Whi- which

[00:24:14] Hannah: is to say… Should we tell the people, Joel?

[00:24:17] Joel: It’s time. It’s time. I think they’re ready.

[00:24:20] Hannah: They’re adults.

[00:24:21] Joel: Unless you’re a kid listening in your parents’ car, then you’re not an adult and you need to ask your mom and dad- Yeah

[00:24:25] if it’s okay. Kids

[00:24:26] Hannah: might actually be more practiced at this, honestly. I think kids have a-

[00:24:30] Joel: They probably are better … a good time at this,

[00:24:31] Hannah: which, because- Yeah … adults tend to be really bad at asking for help.

[00:24:37] Joel: Wait a minute. Help? Help. As in, like, like going to another human and, and seeing if they will lend assistance?

[00:24:47] Hannah: Yeah. Even if you’re not, even if you don’t necessarily have something to give them in return in that moment, even if it’s not strictly- Hmm … bartering, like it’s actually just you’re in need of something and you’re relying on someone else

[00:25:00] Joel: So we’re talking about vulnerability, humiliation, slaying of the ego.

[00:25:05] I mean, what else? I mean, this is, this is fraught, Hannah. I,

[00:25:09] Hannah: I do think that we, we have grown up in an environment where there’s this expectation that maturity and self-sufficiency go together. So somehow, if you have failed to be able to manage all of your problems on your own, you’re failing as an adult, right?

[00:25:28] You’re, you’re not adulting correctly.

[00:25:30] Joel: It reflects badly on you that you don’t have it together enough that you might actually need to go find some resources outside of yourself to weather a thing, to get through a thing. And A, that’s not true, and B, it sure as heck feels true.

[00:25:49] Hannah: Yeah. But, I mean, one of the easiest ways I think of addressing some of this hesitation is to think about when the script is flipped, right?

[00:25:58] Like Joel, if you were to come to me and say, “Hannah,” like let’s just think in a work context. Like, “Hannah, I’m slammed doing this project and I really need to get this thing done today. Would you be able to step in?” Right? Like, there might be some initial like, “Oh, I have to move these things around,” but I’m not gonna think less of you as a person, right?

[00:26:16] Like, there’s this like… I think that more often than we realize, particularly when we’re in relationships where there is mutuality, where we know that there’s this kind of teamwork aspect, people are happier to help than we think. I think we anticipate judgment more than we are actually judged.

[00:26:35] Joel: Oh, 100%.

[00:26:37] The reality is, unless you’re surrounded by jerks, and you probably are not, they don’t mind helping. Yeah. Like, they love you. They like you. They think you’re great, and you probably are. Why would they not want to help you?

[00:26:49] Hannah: I do think it’s an unfortunate reality that it’s frequently in the moments that we need help the most that asking for help is least intuitive, right?

[00:26:59] Yeah, I agree with that. This goes back to, I think, the, that whole nervous system reality where when we are in fight-flight, we’re not in our most relational space, right? And so you’re, you’re in this mental space where your focus is really narrowed. You’re focused on this immediate threat and you’re trying to resolve it.

[00:27:21] It’s almost like you have to step out of that survival space for long enough to say, “Who can help me right now?”

[00:27:29] Joel: Yeah. Like,

[00:27:29] Hannah: what do I need and how can I ask for other people to step in and move towards those means?

[00:27:36] Joel: Well, I, I think that that’s really true, and I have nothing else to say about it as a result.

[00:27:41] But yeah, I mean, I think that’s totally right.

[00:27:43] Hannah: As you’re thinking about, I mean, I’m even thinking, I’m recalling some of what your family even has been through in the past year. Mm-hmm. And just as you recall, as you’re thinking about the kinds of people that stepped in to help- Like who comes to mind? Like what are, who are those people, those groups of people others could be like reaching out to?

[00:28:02] Joel: Well, for us, there was a lot of family and a lot of friends, and I was even surprised at the number of friends who just volunteered to step in and help, in part because, like I have not asked, I did not ask them for help. They just volunteered, and I was really surprised by that and grateful for it. Even in…

[00:28:21] I, we actually ended up having more help than we could use. There were people that were, I would say, even disappointed they couldn’t help- Yeah … because we had enough people helping that I didn’t have a place to plug them in to help. But people are that willing. So I would say family was huge, friends, uh, folks from church that were just interested or concerned.

[00:28:41] Hannah: Even, I’m thinking about you had a Substack post, and this isn’t, this is less kind of practical help, but I’m thinking about your Substack post that seemed like it got more engagement than most of your other stuff, was just you posting updates and people responding and like feeling empathy and, and wanting to move toward you.

[00:29:00] Joel: Yeah, this is really random, but I’m not really big on social media with personal stuff. But in this instance, I was on Substack Notes and I was in the hospital with Naomi, and I just asked, you know, like, “Hey, if you’re the kind of person who prays, be thinking about Naomi, be praying for Naomi. This is what she’s going through right now.”

[00:29:20] And gobs of people jumped on to wish well, to say that they would be praying and, and all of that. And I was, I mean, really humbled by just how interested people were in our life and, and in particular, Naomi’s plight. And when the hospital finally, you know, unshackled her and let her go home, uh, how exciting it was to share that with all these people that were now kind of invested in her story and, and happy for her all of that.

[00:29:49] And so it was, it was actually quite rewarding and community building, so to speak.

[00:29:54] Hannah: Well, because I think we know, people know about pain and people know about love, you know? And so there are these moments- Totally … where when those two things converge, it’s almost instinctive that we move toward one another and like try to alleviate.

[00:30:09] Joel: Yes. And I think this is actually one of the things to just keep in mind about the asking for help thing. None of us are so independent that we have never needed to, never not needed help. And so all of us have an experience of having been in a place of need and people stepping in for us or helping and, and we just, we want to be able to give that to other people.

[00:30:31] And I think it’s easy to assume that people don’t wanna help. I think that’s the wrong assumption. I think most people do. And if we, if we think well about our neighbors, if we think well about other people, we’ll, we’ll have a more generous- appreciation for how much they want, might wanna help, and they do, and giving them a chance to help actually is enriching for them as much as it is for us.

[00:30:56] Hannah: Yeah, so there’s, there’s this relational aspect, but to the productivity lens, I don’t wanna miss the really practical aspect of this too, which is that when you feel alone in a problem- Totally … the problem feels bigger than it is. Yep. It seems like you could never get past it. When you feel supported, all of a sudden that problem feels a little more manageable, and it could be that the problem itself hasn’t changed at all.

[00:31:23] But there’s- Yeah … something about not being alone in it, knowing that you have backup, knowing that other people have your back, that makes it feel like you can keep moving forward. It’s making me think of the, um, Kelly McGonigal episode we did recently. She talks about the difference between feeling stressed and feeling overwhelmed, and she talks about how stress is your body kind of giving you biologically the resources that you need to keep moving forward, versus overwhelm is your body signaling that you need help, is your body signaling- Yeah

[00:31:56] you are a relational creature, go find some people because you need help with this. Yeah. So I think just- That’s great … just practically, if a problem is feeling too big for you, it probably is, and if you want to actually make headway on solving that problem, you need to bring in the troops.

[00:32:12] Joel: And you also, I think, just in general, need to recommit to doing less.

[00:32:18] So if the plate is too full and that’s when an emergency strikes, and let’s be honest, emergencies rarely strike at any other point. They don’t feel like emergencies when the plate isn’t full, so almost by definition, an emergency happens when the plate is full. It’s time to recommit to doing less, just, like, as a principle, as a commitment, as a promise y- you make to yourself.

[00:32:44] This is not the time to be extra bold. This is not the time to be extra brave. This is not the time to somehow gird thy loins and face down yet another Goliath. This is the time, frankly, to take it easy, to the extent that you can.

[00:33:01] Hannah: Yeah, you’re, you’re right-sizing. We think that white-knuckling is gonna work, and white-knuckling works for a little bit sometimes, but is not, uh, an effective strategy long-term.

[00:33:12] It’s like-

[00:33:12] Joel: I think it’s worth saying it works pretty well for a lot of people, and definitely people listening to this. It has worked really well. I mean, like, you’re a proda- you’re a productive person. You are listening to a podcast about productivity. You are the kind of person that has white-knuckled it and succeeded at it many times.

[00:33:32] And yet, just like Hannah said, it is not perfect nor flawless. It will fail you. It probably has failed you, even if you haven’t noticed it exactly. But We sometimes think about our personal histories very selectively, and we just remember the times we white-knuckled and it worked, and we don’t remember the times where we tried pushing through and, and it didn’t.

[00:33:58] You know- And so we just imagine that we can just keep resorting to that tactic and it’s always gonna work.

[00:34:04] Hannah: I, a lot of times when I’m thinking about time and energy, I find myself drawn to budgeting analogies, right? It’s like- Yeah … whenever life is really chaotic, you have less of yourself to be spreading around, right?

[00:34:18] And it’s almost like you can operate at a deficit for a while, right? Like, a business can operate at a deficit, a person can operate at, at a deficit for a little while, but at a certain point, the bill comes due, right? Like, at a certain point, that’s not gonna be working for you if you’re spending more than you’re, you’re getting in.

[00:34:35] And so I think that is, if you’re thinking about it in terms of whenever that crisis happens, whatever that big problem is, that is a huge drain on your resources. Mm-hmm. And so again, it’s a strategic move to be thinking, “How can I reallocate what I have so that I’m doing fewer things?” Because this, this big problem over here is draining so much of what I do have.

[00:35:00] Joel: One of the challenges, of course, when a crisis hits is that it’s harder in that moment to make the sorts of decisions that will, like, free stuff up, get stuff off your plate than at any other time. But it’s also more essential at that time than at any other time because you just don’t have the resources to do anything else than cut.

[00:35:23] You have to do that. And so I wanna use this moment to just reintroduce this question we used a few weeks ago in talking about, like, really the most essential question in productivity. Turns out it’s the most essential question in, like, crisis management, too. What is the most important thing I can do right now?

[00:35:43] And as you’re looking for a way to get stuff off your plate, this filtering question is the primary question. When you’re thinking about the schedule, when you’re thinking about your task list, when you’re thinking about who you need to meet with and why you need to meet with them, when you’re thinking about all that stuff, the real question, the only question is: What is the most important thing I can do right now given the fact that you’re in the midst of a crisis?

[00:36:08] Hannah: I mean, even I’m thinking about communication-wise, right? You don’t have to keep everyone updated on everything at all times. Like, who needs to know what? What is that, what is that one person, that one decision point? How do you, to go back to earlier in the episode, reduce decisions? That’s what this question makes possible- Mm-hmm

[00:36:25] is you’re able to say, “I don’t have to worry about these other things. I can focus on just this.”

[00:36:29] Joel: When we think about, you know, what is productivity, it’s not about doing all the stuff. It’s about doing the right stuff This is how you get to the right stuff in a season where it really matters

[00:36:39] Hannah: It, it allows you to separate out what’s absolutely essential from what’s not essential.

[00:36:44] And that- Right … that, the ability to do that is more important when you’re in the midst of a crisis. Because the things that aren’t essential, they can be rescheduled, they can be managed later, they can be, like, picked up after as needed. It’s the things that are most essential that deserve your attention.

[00:37:00] And I think- Yeah … also just this idea to this through line of doing less and doing it better, like that shorter list when you’re actually executing on it will serve you way better than trying to deliver on everything, but you don’t actually have the ability to do.

[00:37:16] Joel: Especially when you’re in the midst of total chaos.

[00:37:19] Hannah: Totally.

[00:37:21] Joel: Okay. We talked earlier about one thing you could do. Let’s go back and echo that. As we’re thinking about a tip we can leave people with that would be genuinely useful in a season of chaos, we just gave you the question that you need to ask, but what’s an activity that you could do that would help reduce a little bit of the chaos?

[00:37:42] Yeah.

[00:37:42] Hannah: I want people to create a moment, a small, predictable sensory rhythm that they will stick to. So that could be in the morning, it could be in the evening, it could be at lunch. But decide what that one kind of grounding, rooting anchor is going to be that’s gonna help you feel saner as you move through this season.

[00:38:05] And it could literally be as simple as when I’m holding my cup of coffee, I’m gonna be quiet for three minutes. Like, it doesn’t have to be a big thing, but choose that small, predictable rhythm that’s gonna help you this season.

[00:38:19] Joel: I think the big idea here across the whole episode fundamentally is that productivity doesn’t have to be about constantly maximizing, and there’s nothing like a crisis to remind you that you don’t have that luxury anyway.

[00:38:31] Yeah. It’s about doing the best that you can do with what you have on any given day. And in a chaotic or a crisis season, the best might change. Mm-hmm. It might be significantly less than you’re used to, and that’s great. That’s, like, how you’re gonna stay productive in this season. That’s how you’re gonna stay human in this season.

[00:38:53] So you just wanna basically say, “How can I keep myself whole and intact until I get to the other side of this emergency?” And part of that is it’s time to throw some stuff off the boat. Yep.

[00:39:05] Hannah: And g- coming out on the other side intact is the important part.

[00:39:09] Joel: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:39:13] Hannah: Thanks for joining us on Focus on This.

[00:39:17] Joel: This is the most productive podcast on the internet, so please share it with your friends, and be sure to subscribe at wherever you listen or at focusonthispodcast.com. Stay focused.