Episode 16: Productivity Whiplash

Sarah: Welcome to Founder Problems podcast. Today, we’ll be talking about productivity, our obsession with it, and the whiplash it can cause when you let’s say, take a vacation or have a normal summer.

I’m Sarah Schumacher. I build websites for service businesses, and I am joined by my co-host, Zach and Lee.

Zach: I’m Zach Oshinbanjo. I run a nonprofit that is pursuing the American dream of creating housing

Lee Zuvanich: I’m Lee Zuvanich, and I build apps for people and try to keep them secure so that LLMs don’t take all their data

Sarah: Worthy goal. Cool. We’re gonna kick this off by talking about the deep, potentially spiraling question of why are we all so obsessed with productivity? Zach, do you wanna kick us off?

Zach: yeah I would say [00:01:00] the obsession with productivity for me is personal. I think I, I have a mindset that is very much focused on if you aren’t doing anything, then… I don’t even know who came up with it. It might even be, what is it called? There’s a movie or maybe it’s a book, The Fantastic Mr.

Fox or something like that. He says, tired of living in a hole.” And then his wife’s like, “We’re fox, we live in holes or burrows or whatever.” And then he’s I wanna do something different.” And then he says, “If nothing changes.” So that’s where I think a lot of my basis for productivity comes from this movie.

I would,

Lee Zuvanich: That’s awesome

Zach: d- I would say that- If we’re– If you’re trying to get any work done or if you’re trying to get something done, I think you have to have an impact on it yourself. And so a lot of that influence is you have to be… I don’t know. It almost feels like I can’t get to the point. I’m being very unproductive in my answer.

But I think it’s a personal decision of wanting to [00:02:00] have impact, want to have some sort of involvement in my environment or my community or… ‘Cause if you’re not doing anything, then I feel like there’s this stagnation where nothing happens and nothing is– nothing changes. ‘Cause if you’re lamenting constantly outside that there’s not enough X or Y or Z, or there’s not enough housing and you’re just on your porch shaking your fist productivity would lend that you do something about it.

So I think there’s a, an ability for everyone to have some semblance of control of their own life, and I think that is productivity. You can choose to be productive and have impact, or you can choose to be unproductive and just lament and anguish about things all day.

Sarah: That’s a really healthy perspective on productivity. My my mind went somewhere completely different. I was like, that’s actually really great. That is that’s like a self-actualization. That’s like positive. That everything you just said is good. That’s like the angle that you wanna have.

Whereas like my [00:03:00] angle is it- the roots of this are like religious in nature, and like this concept of if you’re lazy, like I’m reading a book called The Laziness Lie right now, and I would just quote the whole thing if I started quoting it ’cause I saved so many things, so I’m just gonna link it in the show notes.

But this concept that we’re told that if you’re not being productive, you’re lazy, and that laziness is bad, and that goes all the way back to this idea of if you wanna get really technical, like this, this religious Christian concept of like predestinate like being, like you were chosen to be saved is a certain theological idea that the early people in America had.

Again, like this is very American-centric, I should say too. And so the way that you proved that you were a good person, that you were, chosen to be saved, whatever, is you had to work really hard ’cause how else would other people know? And so there’s like all these weird religious fundamentals of working hard and laziness is bad and if you’re lazy, you’re bad.

[00:04:00] Like it’s the equiv- Like the two are equivalent in our minds, and so we don’t really…

Lee Zuvanich: work

Sarah: Yes, ex- exactly. That’s a great quote. Yeah. And so it’s like this whole thing is built into the foundation of American culture, plus this concept of pull yourself up by your bootstraps and s- like extreme individualism.

And so you take all that and you put it on your own shoulders and you just absorb it and y- because it’s the water we swim in, I don’t think a lot of us think about how deeply it affects us. And then you add in like what, the healthy perspective, like what Zach just said, and then you also add in whatever weird, mental disorder we founders have.

We have to go start things. And it’s just like this like triple whammy of all the things. Lee what is your angle on why we’re obsessed with productivity?

Lee Zuvanich: I think, so both of you have really compelling answers. I was also really raised in the Protestant Christianity world in the US where what are you doing? Why are you sitting? You could be dusting. Like you lazy little child kind of environment. And I [00:05:00] probably internalized that. I think it’s interesting that you found Zach’s answer so healthy, and you kept calling it healthy because while I was, he was describing it, I was imagining the therapist that would psychoanalyze the three of us and be like, “Oh, you’re all very similar. me make a list of all the things I can diagnose you with.” I feel like that therapist that kind of lives in my brain would say something in response to Zach’s answer like, “Oh, did you not have a lot of control as a child, Zachary? Did you feel out of control?”

Zach: This is

Lee Zuvanich: and so

Sarah: man

Lee Zuvanich: I might say yes, actually. I take great comfort in rearranging furniture, too. I like to have control over my environment. Also, that’s just a fun Saturday night in my opinion. But I actually, I think I pissed off the neighbor last night ’cause I was rearranging the furniture at 2:00 in the morning. I’ve read that’s a, a s- very specific thing ADHD people take pleasure in for some reason. [00:06:00] But I like to customize my environment.

I like to curate my world. I like to have control over, know my day and feel like I’m something of it for many reasons. I’m sure I probably need that, a real therapist to help me unpack. But the answer that I wrote down when we were preparing for this episode is that I was raised in a place where I could see what happens when you don’t hustle. So that’s the first thing that came to mind for me with a blue-collar background, coming from a small refinery town on the border of a Native American reservation, whereas there’s just… There’s a lot of poverty everywhere. And in my entire family, I love my family, I’m really proud of my family, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this, but my entire family is comprised of artists, and there’s a few engineers, but a lot of machinists and people, and craftspeople, people who work with their hands or woodworkers, that kind of thing. Things that I aspire to be. But [00:07:00] as a single parent, I looked at all these options and was like, “None of those make me enough money provide what I wanna give to my kids and give us just the financial stability that I think that we need.” I had to work my ass off. Nothing was ever really handed to me in the sense that there wasn’t family money to make sure that I went to college, for instance. I had plenty of other privileges, but to get to where I am today, I had to work very hard. So I had a, just a very concrete reality that without optimizing my time and working harder than the people around me, I was never going to leave my small town. I was never going to escape middle class. I might end up on welfare forever, I was on welfare when my kids were young and I was a single parent, and it felt really good to get off of it, and that was a direct result of, better or for worse, hustle that hospitalized me more than once because I was working too hard. So [00:08:00] yeah, productivity’s done a lot for me, and it’s one of those things I have to unlearn as I get older

Zach: Definitely the, the influence you can have on your environment. I think I also recognize in an environment where you don’t necessarily see, or you do see things that don’t go the way that you want them to go in a positive way if you aren’t engaged or you’re active, I think. ‘Cause the alternative is what if you choose to be unproductive, what does that actually accomplish?

I think you nothing. You kinda it puts you into a dead end potentially, and I tend to live with this ideology that We all have the opportunity to make a decision where we choose to some degree what the rest of our life is gonna look like Within reason

Sarah: Yeah. I, so I, the, I wanna clarify, the reason that I thought that Zach’s answer was healthy is because it’s really [00:09:00] important for personal growth that you have an internal locus of control. So an external locus of control would be assuming that everything happens to me, I don’t have control over my circumstances, and it’s because you create your own reali- reality with how you think about things.

If that’s your mindset, you’re never going to make changes. You’re never going to apply yourself. So it’s important to have that internal locus of control, be like, “Okay, even if my situations are ba- like bad, like even if this, I was unlucky or this thing happened, like I still have the ability to affect change.”

So that’s the positive thing that I saw in what he was saying is like I think that’s, you want that. You you’re raising kids, you want that. It’s like the growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. Not you are smart, but you worked really hard to study and that’s why you did well on this test, and so it encourages people to grow.

So I think that’s healthy. I think that’s important. The problem is that we lean so far in that direction unknowingly because again, we’re just, we just live in this environment. We just are told laziness is bad. We are given these [00:10:00] examples of people, like it’s just, it’s crazy. It’s not something that I think we think about or realize until it’s bad, until “Oh wow, I’m really burned out.

How did that happen?” So let’s like yeah, step back and analyze that a little more. Yeah, ex- and that’s what’s hard is ’cause when you’re productive, you feel like you did something, and you don’t really have anything to show for rest per se, which is what makes it hard. With that, let’s jump into the deeper angle of this.

Who benefits from productivity obsession? Is it us?

Lee Zuvanich: This is such a good question

Zach: Yeah. That’s– We’re getting very introspective here. I’ll say that it depends, ’cause there’s certain situations where it could benefit a lot of people, and I think we’ll probably have some differing kind of takes on this. But if you’re being productive so that you could help yourself, you’re trying to work on a new business or something like that, obviously that benefits [00:11:00] you and your immediate family and things like that. But if you’re also– If your business is output, say civic or nonprofit focused, that productivity benefits ma- the, not the masses. It, a, a group of people. Maybe it’s a particular neighborhood that has housing shortage, a food shortage, instability in one way or another. It could benefit a lot of people, and I think it, it also matters, too, how are you defining productivity? Because you could scramble in a hamster’s cage or hamster’s wheel like, “Oh yeah, I’m doing 100 things, 100 things today,” and then it’s ‘Cause I, I was gonna say I have a kid, and sometimes she thinks she’s helping, but she’s not. But that’s just kind of– That’s just, like, where you’re at. But it’s how do you define what is productivity?

If you set out a list of things and say, “I need to write 15 grants today,” and you just put together a pile of horse manure and send it off, that’s not productive. So I think it’s how do you define productivity? the successful completion of task? Is [00:12:00] it moving and edging things forward? I think that’s all important, but I think it to the, the basis of the question is who benefits? It could be yourself or it could be others. I think we should strive, call me selfish man that it should benefit us. We should benefit ourselves as much as we can, because oftentimes other forces benefiting from us, sometimes without permission or authorization,

Sarah: yeah, I was just thinking, I’m glad you mentioned the definition ’cause I just realized like we haven’t actually defined what we mean by productivity. I guess we’re just assuming that people that listen to this are the type that Read those books are familiar with productivity culture. But yeah I think defining it for yourself is really important because y- you could define productivity as a list of 15 different things.

It’s just unrealistic. So you’re setting yourself up for failure in the first place. It’s not just getting things done, it’s also getting the right things done. What if you did get all those 15 things done and they [00:13:00] weren’t even moving, huh, moving the needle?

Zach: Half,

Sarah: Oh. God, I hate those, these business cliches, and I just used one.

Yeah. I don’t know. I think I have in my head this imaginary, “I need to get blank done to feel like I had a good day,” and I don’t think that’s totally defined always. I just … it’s a very ephemeral feeling, and if I break it down at the end of the day, I can pick it apart sometimes.

But I wonder even just if I sat down and was like, “Today, I would be productive by doing…” Here’s the bare minimum, which I kinda try to do. I use this concept of most important tasks, MITs or whatever, so I’ll be like, “Okay, my MITs for today are,” you pick a few big things. But that’s not really enough.

I feel like I had a productive day, think on Tuesday, and then I was, like, at the end of the day like, “Okay, why did that feel like a good, balanced day?” ‘Cause I didn’t overwork, and it was like, okay what’s [00:14:00] different about this? And I think it was just that I actually solved some

I did some actual development that solved some things. It was like I checked boxes. It wasn’t like this unending answering questions about a thing or putting together… it was concrete stuff, I don’t know. But it’s … I think, yeah, defining what productivity looks like in the first place makes a big difference.

Because who benefits? If I’m going to benefit, then I need to decide what that line is and make sure it’s realistic, and then I benefit. But if I’m not doing that, if I’m just in this grind of I have to work as much as possible, we’re all, entrepreneurs here, but … I know, Zach, you work a day job.

But if you’re obsessed with your day job your employer benefits. If you’re like, “Oh, I gotta be productive. I gotta work. I’m gonna work extra hours. I’m gonna be on call all the time,” who benefits? Your employer. Who benefits at the end of the day? Capitalist society.

Like, all the the grinding that we do for a job that doesn’t … You’re a number to them. That’s who’s gonna benefit at the end of the day if we’re not more cognizant of what it actually means. And I [00:15:00] I understand we also have a lot of freedom to say “Who benefits? We’ll just structure it so you benefit.”

Okay, I can say that ’cause I am the boss. I’m a really bad boss, though. Entrepreneur’s their own worst boss. But yeah I

Lee Zuvanich: Mhm.

Sarah: Man, I think the definition thing we should’ve probably started with. But That, that has me thinking about how I’m going to reassess my mornings now actually.

Lee Zuvanich: What,

Sarah: The what do you think about…

Lee Zuvanich: I

Sarah: So was that

Lee Zuvanich: hear more. What, just what do you mean? What would you reassess about your mornings?

Sarah: Knowing, I know that if I can do… Honestly, this is why it’s so hard for me to delegate, I think, some of the development stuff, ’cause I’m like, “I’m not gonna do delivery anymore.” I’m trying to step back from that. But that’s when I feel productive, if a client’s like, “Hey, we need to update this blah, blah, blah,” whatever, and I go, “Update it.”

Lee Zuvanich: met you.

Sarah: I know, and that’s, it’s the same. And that’s why it’s hard, because s- this, the higher level strategic stuff, it doesn’t have a clear end date necessarily, [00:16:00] or,

Lee Zuvanich: Mhm.

Sarah: It takes longer. It doesn’t feel as… Like launching a website and being like, “This is public now,” after all this work is very satisfying. Or even just updating a thing or completing a task.

And so I think that’s part of why it’s hard for me to let go of all those things, because if I do at least a couple of those things, then I feel like I did something. So I th- I think that’s just what I’m saying. My, if I’m assessing my morning, I should at least make sure I have a, is there some easy thing I can check off the list that’s not me getting pulled into the weeds that still feels complete?

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, what you were describing about just the endless answering of emails to me I feel like is that water torture of owning a business. But what you’re describing as being very pleased with your day when you’ve completed something like development work, we’ve talked about this before, about personalities and how you’re a builder and an,

Sarah: Ja

Lee Zuvanich: what else. But daughter’s like that. She has a goal for herself of [00:17:00] at least one website page per day. She has this sprawling, insane website maze art thing she’s building, she wants it to be hundreds of pages, and you just wander through it, it’s an experience. It’s very avant-garde. and if she doesn’t complete a page per day, she gets depressed. And if she does compl- And it takes her, it can take her as little as five minutes. She’s just doing these little concepts, and learning JavaScript and stuff. This is her hobby. This is what she considers fun but it’s also part of her portfolio. And if she gets it done, she’s just happy all day long. I think that’s a mindset, but it’s also a personality type, and she already knows that about herself, so I think she’s got a, kind of a, an edge on other kids her age who don’t know what to do with their life yet. She doesn’t know exactly what she’s gonna do for a living, but she knows how to be happy already, which is

Sarah: Mhm, mhm.

Lee Zuvanich: need, too.

I don’t know if that’s true for me. It probably is, but I don’t know if it would be in the form of a website or app dev, ’cause sometimes when I’m [00:18:00] done building features for an app, I do not feel any better about my life. I might feel like I can check a box, but I need to make art or I need to write something or I need to be outside moving around go be in nature.

Those are the things that make me feel like that was a day worth living. And when the kids and I are not achieving goals, doesn’t matter what it is, but if it’s something that we know we need for our own happiness, when we’re just not doing it, we start to get cranky and disaffected. So I put this huge calendar up on the wall, and we wrote one simple goal on it.

Jasmine’s was make one website, one w- web page per day. Isaiah’s was, I think, learn part of a new song every day, ’cause he’s teaching him- himself piano. mine, true to form, was like five things. It wasn’t just one thing. But it was just basic, some basic health goals, get outside, read a little bit.

And when we check those boxes, we are happy, and we can see this giant wall visual of whether or not we’ve done them. [00:19:00] So when we’re talking about productivity in a negative way, I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing. I think that for at least me and my family, it gives us a g- sense of groundedness when it’s, like Zach was saying, to us.

It’s designed to be, first and foremost, something that makes our life better. But to answer the question, who benefits from productivity my answer originally was shareholders, bosses, and men in general. Thinking of it as a more, like, It sounded almost sinister when you originally asked the question. Who,

Sarah: Is

Lee Zuvanich: anyway? Yeah is that wealth really trickling down? No, it’s not. And it really made me… For some reason, the question, who is benefiting from this productivity, is- specifically makes me think of the unpaid and unseen labor that women do in society, and how we, it, they subsidize everything we need as a society. And similarly, Zach, you were saying, [00:20:00] like, when you’re productive on behalf of a, an NGO, a nonprofit then let’s say, who need food or housing benefit, which is very worthwhile work. But I also believe that productivity is subsidizing the responsibility of the government that I’m paying taxes to make sure those things happen. But maybe those taxes need to be coming back down in the form of grants to people like Zach, and I sure hope that people like Zach are working hard to make sure those houses get built. So

Sarah: Ja

Lee Zuvanich: it’s a good thing.

Zach: Ja

Lee Zuvanich: it can… So yeah, it’s a good point. I really hope that all putting our productivity, to work for the greater good.

When you’re just grinding away in the service of shareholders or stakeholders or own ego, then get stuff like ChatGPT, we get things that are, like, impressive and also destructive, maybe.

Sarah: Yeah, I, so okay, so I think there’s a line here. The, [00:21:00] what you described about having that list, and Jasmine’s decided she’s gonna create a page every day or whatever, so she’s doing the thing that she knows she wants to do, and she’s putting her energy into that. I think the problem is that we, because we have to work to make money to, buy food and live, the,

Lee Zuvanich: Darn

Sarah: default i- becomes the work.

It’s I have to get enough done at my job to feel fulfilled because I go home and I crash and I veg out and then I go to sleep and then I repeat the whole thing again. And, ’cause for me, like I have to, I’m a maker. I have to make things. I make things, I build things. That’s really the key.

So if I didn’t get anything productive done, like for a work task throughout the whole day, it was just all frustrating, troubleshooting or whatever, but I was able to, write an essay or work on a painting in the evening or even build something with Legos for my kid or something, that’s productive.

So I think the issue it’s not, and then we’re, I think we’re all like that’s what makes humans unique [00:22:00] versus animals is we’re driven to create things. We have to create. S- like we look at what we’ve created. We have to create stuff, but if you’re only creating stuff for your job or for your business and never for you as an individual, I think that’s where it gets dangerous.

So it’s a requirement to balance out if I’m going to get my tasks done at work, great. I should be on top of project management. I should know what needs to be done. I should work on the actual tasks that actually make sense. But then I also need to stop at a certain point and make sure I’m also making time for these other things that are more important to me personally.

So I think that’s the problem with this productivity obsession. It just all gets poured into the capitalist machine and not into us. And then even if you, let’s say someone starts painting and they get really into making like little watercolors or something, people are like, “Oh man, you should start selling those on Etsy.

Turn it into a side hustle,” right? It automatically always becomes commercialized because it’s not seen as having any value if you’re not making some sort of money off of it. [00:23:00] But like for my art, if I were to sell it, it would defeat the purpose of it having… It wouldn’t have any purpose anymore. Like that’s, the purpose is like countercultural.

It’s like to do a thing that does not have a purpose tied to like a commodity.

Zach: I don’t need

Sarah: So-

Zach: this. It’s not a, a, a

Sarah: Yes

Zach: function. I have a friend who’s, he’s, works at a city-run, agency, and

Sarah: Mhm.

Zach: His time doing overtime. He’s there from like sun up to sun down. But at the same time he’s a fishing enthusiast, and he also makes his own bait and tackle. He can do the whole thing. He has molds he’s pressing and molding, doing all the stuff, and he loves to do that. It’s very time-intensive, and he’s actually proactively taken the steps to sell them.

So he goes to conventions, he does consignment deals and stuff like that, but that’s his passion.

He could literally, and he often spends weeks just going down to Alabama, going to Louisiana, going to T- go, just out in the water all day. Not for me, but great for him. And he has the passion to do it and loves to [00:24:00] sell and can talk to you about baits and why it matters that the eye is canted to the left or to the right, and what impact that has, and he can sell it. But he has to spend so much of his time doing all this city work that by the time he gets home feel like doing it, and he also can’t buy the goop that you make the bait out of, and

Sarah: Mhm.

Zach: like this endless cycle to feed the machine. At, which at this time obviously is like someone else’s machine.

I’m such a movie, music, media-focused person. When I hear different concepts, I instantly relate it to like a show or a movie that I’ve seen, ’cause this makes me think of, ah, what it, there’s this

where like people are on like giant moving countries, and like the big countries eat the smaller countries. It’s like fantastic machines or fantastic,

Sarah: You watch way more movies than I do.

Lee Zuvanich: we don’t watch a lot of movies.

Sarah: I’m the last person you need… I have no idea. I don’t watch any. All I watch is anime, sorry.

Zach: There’s like a giant [00:25:00] Great Britain like roaming like Mad Max style truck that eats up like Czechoslovakia or something ’cause it’s smaller and they’re like, “We need the resources.” So this monster truck country eats another… all right. Anyways, it’s either that or

Sarah: I’m intrigued

Zach: they got, there’s a slug in like this little factory, and he’s like the party slug, and

Sarah: Beautiful Katamari. How about that for the video game reference?

Zach: Yeah,

Sarah: You play the guy that rolls the ball and it rolls up everything and just keeps rolling and getting bigger. Yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: Mhm,

Sarah: Like the snowball.

Lee Zuvanich: Ja

Zach: Now I gotta show note all these references. But but it goes

Sarah: We have a long list

Zach: You’re just feeding the beast and it’s not your own beast

Sarah: Yes. You’re feeding the beast, it’s not your beast. That’s, no, that’s exactly, that is a great point because you’re describing your friend to me is, if you can balance, the problem is work expects so much of us, but if you can balance those things, to me, that’s ideal. My husband works a full-time job.

He’s very committed to his job and all that stuff, but he gets off work, and unless he’s on call anyway, he’s off work. [00:26:00] So he’s off today, so he goes and he plays Frisbee golf this morning. That’s his thing that he’s into doing, and it’s like, that’s very healthy and probably what, more normal people not like us do, that aren’t constantly over here “I gotta start another business.

I have another business idea. How would I turn this into a side hustle? I also wanna make this on my free time that I don’t have.” Some of us are just wired differently to make it more difficult for us to resist some of that. You must be productive all the time. Yeah.

Zach: Mortal

Sarah: So

Zach: the name of the

Lee Zuvanich: What engines?

Zach: to see a movie with giant country sized vehicles eating other countries

Sarah: That sounds wild. We’re gonna have a great random list of show notes in this thing, okay, so let’s jump into some more positive, actionable things related to this and ask, when is it time to just close the laptop and do something else? Versus like being caught in this mindset that [00:27:00] maybe you’re not fully aware of.

And I will actually, I’ll just jump into this ’cause I, the, part of the reason that we are on this topic is ’cause I just took the entire month of July off. We’re recording this, what? August 7th. So I took the entire month of July off, which is crazy because I have been working nonstop, just insane, juggling giant, complex projects and things since almost a year, at this point.

I think it was like after school started last year, and this year kicked off just chaos, absolute chaos. And I knew, like I just didn’t have time to take a break ’cause I had to get through all these projects. And the second that the last, like middle of June, we like launched the last big thing, I was like, “Okay, I have a little bit of a gap.

I’m gonna step back for a bit. And you know what if I just took the whole month of July off? My kid’s out of school. It’s chaos anyway trying to figure that out.” And so I did, and the beauty of having that distance is that it gives you some perspective, which I knew that I needed. And one of the things that I was thinking about going into it is of course my typical like planning “Oh, I’m gonna take the month of July off.

All right. What do I [00:28:00] wanna do on my time off?” And then it was like, “No. That’s a productivity thing. That’s like this whole thing of “What am I gonna do? What am I gonna have done? I’m gonna come back from July, and I’m gonna have all this stuff to show for,” and I was like, “No, I can’t.”

I cannot even think this way because that’s that whole productivity obsession. If I take time off, I’m supposed to come back and be like, “Oh, it was great. I s- restarted my newsletter. I reviewed some more manga. I read a bunch of manga. I did…” Like all, whatever. I have to be productive, otherwise it will feel like I wasted that month.

And so just going into it, I just decided I wasn’t going to think that way. I did pretty good I think, but at the end, the last week of the month, I’m like, “Man, was this good? Was this worth it? Am I refreshed? Did I relax?” How do you relax? That’s why I read manga.

So that’s my only way to relax, it shuts off my brain. So I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Okay, now that I’ve had some space, the first thing I realized is I took too long to take some space, and I knew that. But again, I was just, there are phases where the projects I was in the [00:29:00] middle of, I couldn’t stop on those.

And so now that I’m like, okay, I took too long, and so that means my current, my work pace was unsustainable. I could’ve made different choices that would’ve made it more sustainable, now I’m coming back, so I’m gonna reset how I work. So what does that need to look like? What is a reasonable day?

What does productivity look like every day? How much should I be working? And so I’m thinking about all of this stuff that I haven’t had time to think about ’cause I was just too busy. A big issue is that we wait too long to close the laptop, and then it’s oh, a month isn’t enough to process everything, ’cause you need a week to relax and to collapse essentially, and then you need some reflection time, and then have some energy to work on your projects or whatever.

So I think that there needs to be some sort of a trigger or a fail-safe or something which is gonna be different for everybody, but in your working environment, be like, “Okay, I’ve noticed that when I start to get overly stressed, I drop the ball.” I don’t know. Ag- people have to figure this out for themselves, but all I know is that coming back, [00:30:00] I’m paying a lot more attention to certain things.

What do I hate doing? What really sucks the life out of me? What more can I delegate? Do I need to bring in someone to help with things? And I’m thinking a lot, not that I already wasn’t thinking about those things, but I’m thinking about that a lot more so that I can be more proactive next time.

So well, there shouldn’t be a next time. I’ll just put it that way. I need to balance out what I’m doing now, but I’m only able to come back to that and look at it clearly ’cause I’m not running non-stop. So my answer to when is it time to close the laptop is before you get burnt out.

Good luck figuring that out

Lee Zuvanich: once every three months you close your laptop?

Sarah: To be honest, when I do my 12-week, 12-week year planning properly you’re supposed to work on reassessing your goals the end of every quarter. So yes, actually. If I do a good job of doing that, I actually the last week of each quarter I’m like, “Okay, how did this quarter go? What is next quarter gonna look like?

What are…” So yes, if I’m on top of that, I would actually be doing that. But that hasn’t happened in a while, [00:31:00] unfortunately But yeah, yeah, Lee, that’s a good point also. We should have more vacation time built in. I say vacation time, but honestly, it could just be take a personal day.

Entrepreneurs are really bad about doing that. That’s why I say I’m a terrible boss to myself. I could take a personal day anytime I want it. Do I wanna do that? Do I ever do… No

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah,

Zach: of

Lee Zuvanich: same

Zach: you do with the time I think is sometimes where my brain goes. Like sometimes my

“Why don’t you take a day off? You have know…” Whether it be for my day kind of investments or what I’m doing in there, or what I do for the nonprofit, it’s like, “And do what? And do what? Like what am

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, I know

Sarah: That’s why

Lee Zuvanich: goes like, I don’t wanna be like those people who take days off.

Sarah: That’s why you have to have a hobby. That’s the problem is too many of us turn our business or our hobbies into our businesses,

Zach: Yeah

Sarah: is what we do all the time. So it’s like you have to have [00:32:00] hobbies that you refuse to let be touched by commercial interests. For me, that’s okay if I’m gonna be do– If I have to create something, again, that’s, it’s gotta be something that’s separate, and I think most of us just don’t prioritize that ’cause time is money, right?

That’s also I should also throw out, a lot of us get paid hourly if you’re doing freelance work. And so if you’re used to trading an hour for dollars, why wouldn’t you continue trading more hours for more dollars? And if you’re not working, you’re literally losing money. It’s like this weird mindset thing I think we have sometimes that you have to just stop, just cut it off.

As hard as that is

Zach: I think the time you know that it’s time to close the laptop is probably when it starts being, like I, like we referred to earlier, it’s when you start just sending out swill, just a bunch of just trash emails, your half-cocked replies, just grants aren’t up to muster. You’re just, y- [00:33:00] your, when your heart’s not into it, I think that’s the time.

But often I feel like the time that you recognize that’s happening, you’re already, 20 deep in rejection emails for grants. So you’re like, “Oh, I should probably offload this.” I think one of the things, like, that might be productive maybe in your situation, Sarah, would just like to recognize the feeling you have you’re not working or when you’re taking a, quote-unquote, “vacation,” and try to work back things off your plate that look like that.

I don’t know, like not wanting to be on discovery call or a sale call or doing the f- last mile delivery, doing those different components, every s- component of that as it comes off your plate takes you towards this vacation-like reality

But that’s probably super impossible for most people to do, ’cause eventually you can’t get rid of everything unless you’re, like, some spirit investor and you’re, like, 1,000 miles back from the [00:34:00] business, and you

Sarah: Yeah

Zach: of peek in to see how things are going, read the P&L every month, and mail it in.

But I think you’ll know when it’s time to close the laptop when you start being ineffective, and you just feel like you’re just putting out rubbish. I think that should be a very critical period. Sometimes I feel like that, especially when you’re trying to put out 10 fires at a time, and you just have to, “Okay, nine of these small. of these, if you do nothing to prevent the fire from spreading, will collapse everything as you know it.” That is probably foremost what you should focus on. So would say

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah

Zach: you know it’s time

Lee Zuvanich: I was sick with a cold last week, and I was hitting a point where I couldn’t engage with technical concepts in the way that I needed to, that’s how I knew that I just had to go to bed every day. I would try to work a little bit every day, but I [00:35:00] just wasn’t feeling well. And sometimes when I’m sick, I don’t really realize how sick I am until something like that happens, and it’s like the math is not mathing. It’s, for me, it feels like a lack of excitement. I was reading through scopes of work and technical architecture for systems, and I, maybe I’m lucky in that I still get excited about this stuff. But I was not excited. I was so bored, and I was just so over it. I just was, like, almost mad that I had to be doing this work, and I don’t normally feel that way.

That’s not normal for me. I usually get excited and I’m engaged with the ideas and I’m like, “I can make that better,” which is the mental illness that we were talking about. The idea that m- in that personality of who I normally am, I’m not feeling that, that tells me I need to be done for a while and just go rest. But my answer to this question was before the sun sets every day. Are we not closing our laptop and ending work to, and

Sarah: Ja

Lee Zuvanich: some [00:36:00] sunshine? Is that just me in Spain?

Zach: Yeah. That’s a unorthodox of a viewpoint there.

Sarah: Yeah. I think, breaks

Lee Zuvanich: it’s something I’ve been trying more recently, and it’s a new idea for sure, but it’s been good for me

Sarah: I think everyone thinks about, yeah, I need to stop sooner or whatever, but I also think breaks are really underrated. One of the things I’m like, okay, when I come back, I’m gonna tr- first of all, try to take a lunch break, and then read a chapter of one of the business books I’m reading on that lunch break.

That’s a really small thing, but it’s a little minor reset that actually makes a huge difference, ’cause I don’t… I stopped letting myself read business books before bed, so I can’t really… if I’m… It’s not a good idea. So if I’m going to do that, if I’m not making time in the morning, which is what I will s- you know, would sometimes do if my schedule w- allow for it, just do on a lunch break, just take 15 minutes and instead of just wolfing some food and then running back to your desk it…

That makes a massive difference as a [00:37:00] consistent easy to achieve thing throughout your daily schedule that’s going to prevent you from burning out, and it’s not that hard. We always look at this like crazy, “I’m gonna start ice plunging,” or whatever nonsense. You’re like, “I’m gonna get up at 4:00 AM and work out for two hours.”

No. Just take a lunch break and maybe eat some food. Start there. I’m talking to myself. And then throw in a, a chapter of a book. That’s not, again, that’s not that hard, and if I’m really… Or meditate for five minutes. Okay, if I can’t meditate for 20 minutes a day, five minutes.

If these, all these little things I think don’t seem like much, and so it’s so easy to skip them, and then you end up at the point where you’re like, “I need to take a month off from work.” So yeah.

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, no, all those little micro habits really for me make the difference between getting so sick that I have to take work off and being healthy and happy in my day. So actually, I’ve been [00:38:00] circling this different, like, hacks, because I’m obsessed with productivity. We’re not talking about it as if it’s a good thing, because we’re trying to find balance but I am obsessed with optimizing my day, and I’ve been trying to find a way to those little things in a, in…

with accountability because I just won’t do them even though I know I should, right? It’s the get up at the same time every day, get enough sleep every night, drink water, in some, some way. Even if it’s a 15-minute walk, exercise every day. Eat lunch away from a screen. All those little things that sound too easy, like they’re not gonna make a difference, they do. They really do. And I, yet I cannot bring myself to do them. I built an entire app around this concept, but then I was also using it for my kids to hold them accountable, and their favorite thing to tell me was, “The app’s not working. There’s a bug, so I can’t do it.” Which was

Sarah: Founder problems

Lee Zuvanich: Yes. [00:39:00] It was the opposite of productive, among many feelings that brought up for me, ’cause I’d be like, “Oh, let me just stop everything in the middle of a workday to fix the app that I built so that we would all save time,” and it became infuriating.

So I regressed us to a spreadsheet with an accountability ADHD coach-type person who is our accountability backup to me, making sure everything gets done every day, and she checks in 20 minutes a day on this spreadsheet. And it has been life-changing for us, because all those little things that you know you should do but you won’t do it turns out if you’re paying someone or there’s a penalty of some kind, do them. So

Zach: Yeah

Lee Zuvanich: It’s good. It’s been a really helpful system to implement that.

Sarah: Okay, so if we’re thinking more positively about it then how what changes when we come back to the laptop? If we, if our last question was about when do you know it’s time to close it, I kinda covered what I would do coming back or what I am [00:40:00] doing coming back, I should say. But is that your answer to what you would change coming back is maybe more accountability around meaningful tasks?

‘Cause you could have… I feel like you need to say meaningful ’cause you could just be like, “Make me accountable to my list of 15 to-dos.” But

Lee Zuvanich: Yeah, I’m still working on it. It’s been a really interesting experience, like finding a balance between now I have extreme accountability, so how hard can I push myself?

Sarah: Exactly. That’s the Depz of, Depsession right there

Lee Zuvanich: ironically, actually, the week after we started doing… It was like the most productive week of our lives, me and my kids probably.

But after that, we all caught a cold, I think because we were not sleeping as much. We were trying to make sure we always get up on time, ’cause one of the, the first things on the list is verify that we’re up by 9:00 AM. we all like to stay up late together. So late night hanging out, making art, watching TV, [00:41:00] we didn’t necessarily stop doing that. We’re trying to pack it all in. We’re trying to do everything we like to do, plus this new list of things, and we all caught a cold. And so then I had to rein it in and be like, “Okay, I don’t have to have a million things on this list.” But there’s just… Giving our day some structure is really all we needed.

We need to make sure we get up at the same time and we eat something. We’ve got the dogs to force us to go outside- Nice … which is nice. So we’re going outside a few times a day. We’re eating dinner together at the same time every night now. I used to be pretty bad about that. I would just make dinner whenever I finally got done with work, which varies. And and we have just a block of time that’s just focused work, that’s not even part of the accountability. We all know what we need to do and we do it. That’s, that wasn’t the issue. The issue was the table stakes, go outside and move your body. Go to the gym and work out together as a family.

That’s a really big one that we never made time for. Yeah, we’re getting… Now that we’re over our cold, we’re getting back to that. But we’re not [00:42:00] using it to grind super hard, because I think that would almost be opposite of what we want, which is some flexibility between framework of structure and the freedom to move within it and do what we need to do.

Sarah: Zach, what do you think?

Zach: I think you don’t wanna just be a person who repeats and does the same mistakes over and over. If you end up in this back-against-the-wall situation where you’re about to, as the young people say, you’re about to crash out or something because you’re overworking, you’re trying to be– You’re maxing and all this other buzzwordy stuff. So I think you have to be able to come back to the laptop or whatever the job or whatever, and make sure that you’re creating the changes that create positivity in your own life. I don’t wanna just sound too, foo-foo or anything like that, but I think you have to be able to look [00:43:00] at what happened to put me in this position and try to make the reasonable change in your own life.

If you get to the position where you’re like, “I’m, I’m doing 15 grants at a time,” and that just doesn’t make sense, you’re pushing out slop, AI slop at that you have to be able to say, “Okay, maybe I need to do this on a weekly basis. I’ll do three here.” Or what proactive measures can I take in my life where I’m not trying to crash course 15 applications in one day when the reality is NOFOs and NOAs, Notice of Funding Agreements and stuff like that, that comes out months in advance.

So it’s not like it’s a secret where you should be waking up every day like, “Oh, shoot, 10 grants today?” No, pace it out. Give yourself some spacing. Maybe you do two, maybe you do one. Maybe you outsource it. Maybe you pay somebody a couple bucks to help you write it and do some strategy and like just focus on what you can do to make changes in your own life. You have power than you believe. As He-Man says, “I have the [00:44:00] power.”

Lee Zuvanich: It’s true

Sarah: I think, yeah, understanding the point of diminishing returns is something that some of us that tend to get in hyper-focused states can blow right past. I saw some research recently that was not six-hour limit for knowledge workers. It was actually less than that.

Six hours is the upper limit of what a knowledge worker can achieve, and that if you go past that, you’re, it’s over. You just, you’re, there’s a point of diminishing returns. So I think being aware of what those are for you and just learning when to stop, honestly, is, if you did nothing else but that when you came back, go on vacation, come back, and then pay attention to when that stopping point is for you, I think that would be a good place to start, awesome. Thanks guys.

I think we lost Lee, so

I guess we’ll just close it out.

Thanks for listening.

We will have some more episodes coming out soon.