Welcome to the 30th episode of Weirdos in the Workplace, where we discuss how authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose lead to more visionary organizations. I'm your favorite weirdo, Erin Patchell, and your host. And today we're going to talk about a topic that is very personal to me right now because it's something that I'm actively going through as we speak, and that is, what do you do when you're making a lot of amazing progress into all your goals? You're juggling a lot of balls and you keep telling yourself, oh, that's a good problem to have.
Maybe I've got too many clients, too much interest in my business, too much creativity, I'm pursuing so many beautiful goals, but all of a sudden you feel like you're a little bit overwhelmed. Hmm. So if that resonates with you, then stay tuned.
[Intro Music]
I think in almost every single conversation that I've had for the last two or three weeks, there's been a moment where I said, you know, though, that's a good problem to have, right? It means that I'm motivated. It means that I'm getting shit done. It means that people are aligning and engaging with the work that I do, and it means that there are opportunities in the business landscape that I'm capable of problem solving.
And if you, maybe, listened to my podcast with Joel Silverstone a few weeks ago, you'll know that I'm definitely a "yes-and" person and I believe in saying yes to opportunities. But that's not infinite, right? We can't say yes to infinite possibilities and opportunities if we have limited availability and capabilities. And I expect that many people who are listening to this podcast are "yes-and" people as well.
You probably want to make the world safer, a better place, a more productive environment, a more joyful way of living, and more sustainable. But we can't be sustainable and do everything. We do, have to narrow down our priorities and focus and then get things done before we move on to other opportunities. We've got to have some kind of balance between thinking big and then zooming in on the details and actions. And the last couple of weeks, I've been finding my own work life increasingly unsustainable. And that's one of the reasons why the podcast that I had intended to put out today didn't go out.
I am actually re-recording this basically on the fly and it's going to be a little bit later coming out than it would normally. Normally I like to post my podcasts like, first thing Wednesday morning, and it's currently Wednesday at 12:15 P.M. And I literally just decided to rerecord this basically stream of consciousness and post something that I thought was a little bit more real and related to my current life.
Sometimes you've got to ebb and sometimes you've got a flow. And while I'm a little bit tired right now, I'm not burning out. I think there's a very, very big difference between being tired and burning out. I'm lucky that basically all of the work I do gives me energy. And that is actually sometimes part of the problem because I'm so passionate about it and I'm so purpose driven and motivated towards these goals that they can sometimes be a little bit all consuming.
I personally think that burnout often happens when we're... the work that we're doing does not give us energy back. But what do you do when you're tired because you are working really hard towards goals that motivate you and that give you energy? So that's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about burnout. The burnout to me is a completely separate topic. How do you manage doing great things, a lot of great things, being motivated and making sure that you reach your goals while also managing many other things. For example, I have a family, right? I have three teenagers who are in my life. I have a husband who I deeply care about, who I want to make time for. I have friends that I deeply care about, who I want to make time for.
And I also have very, very big goals with respect to my business and doing great work in the world and doing good for the world and my community that I absolutely need time for. So when I failed - keeping that word held lightly, holding that word very lightly, when I failed to post my podcast at the usual time of 09:00 a.m. this morning, I didn't guilt myself over it or shame myself over it. I just accepted that this has been a crazy time for me and that I'm going to rejig things a little bit and do things a little bit differently this week to make sure that everything works. So for me, that's number one. I'm not shaming myself. I'm not forcing myself to maintain a schedule, a specific schedule, just because I have decreed that that is how things are done here. And the second thing that I'm doing is planning.
I think as soon as you get to the point where you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed with all the balls that you're actively moving towards and keeping in the air, you need to stop and take a minute and take a breath, maybe meditate. Find something that is going to help you slow down and then do the planning that you need to do. Do the thinking that you need to do in order to make sure that you're focused on exactly the right priorities. If we stay in that fight flight freeze mode too long, then our bodies will start to get overwhelmed and it won't be a motivational stress. It'll become a more toxic sort of stress. So recognizing once you've gotten to that point where you're thinking, how the hell am I going to get all this shit done? That is exactly the point where you need to stop. I promise you that it can wait. The projects that you have on the table, the goals that you're moving towards that no one's pushing you towards but yourself.
Those are the goals that you need to just put on pause for a day or two, stop and reevaluate, go back to your strategic plan if you have one. And if you don't have one, start one. Start with your mission, vision, values and your strategic objectives for the year. Review it in detail and figure out where all of these priorities align underneath them. Most of my activities align generally under three categories. The first category is revenue building activities and those are any activities that are directly tied to revenue generation such as delivering business to clients, creating proposals and strategic business development. Not just business development like any business development activities, but for example, like following up with key potential clients. The next category is revenue supporting activities.
So that would be your business development and marketing, building strategic partnerships, but again very, very targeted, very targeted to your specific customer profiles. And then the next category for me is community building activities. And a lot of the time these are the free things that I tend to do. For example, we developed and promoted for Small Business Week this week an elearning course that will help small businesses begin to do business with the federal government and support them in applying for their ProServices supply arrangement. So this is generally for B2B service suppliers. Or the Small Business Book Club that I run once a month. Or this podcast as an example. Or the free or pro bono coaching and consulting that I do for different types of diverse businesses and business owners.
And while I would love to just be able to do those community building activities full time and those are the things that often create so much energy for me because I absolutely love doing it. But profit always has to come first. You can't have a business without profit and so your passion projects always have to take slightly a backseat sometimes to those other activities that I mentioned before. And of course throughout all of this there is also the business side of it. So in addition to either of these three categories, we have to do human resources, we have to be recruiting, we have to maintain operations. And while these activities are extremely important, it's extremely important to do them exactly at the right time. I try to make sure that my efficiency in these areas are as maximized as possible because they are not revenue generating and they are not community building or leading towards the purpose of my organization. They're simply maintaining the structure and integrity and sustainability of the organization as a whole.
As I'm planning, I am thinking about what do I prioritize, deprioritize or delegate in order to make sure that I have the time to do the things that are the absolute most important for my business and for my clients.
As a person with ADHD, it's sometimes really easy to get swept up in the romantic ideas for the future instead of continuing to work through and complete the projects that we have on the table today. And so that's always the first place that I start. Those beautiful ideas that we like to brainstorm don't have to go away forever. We just put them in a parking lot. We use Miro which is a whiteboarding tool that I love personally and we have a parking lot ideas brainstorming space where anyone from the team can add their ideas so they're not lost in the ether. They're great ideas, they're just not ideas for today. And I do tend to focus on revenue generating and revenue supporting activities as much as I can because I know that the faster that I grow my business the more resources we have to do good in the world and the more people we can hire and delegate to in order to get work completed.
And I think it's really important to do the work and the labor that comes with planning your short, mid and long term objectives, holding sometimes those mid and long term objectives somewhat loosely in order to make sure that you're driving towards your future goals while also maintaining current sustainability within your current resources but also making sure that as the business evolves, you're mapping it into a system that is integrated and as simple as possible.
Since I want this to be a positive and proactive exercise I have to make sure that I'm not in a position where I'm struggling and putting out fires and overwhelmed to the point where I can't really function anymore. I have to always be very familiar with my own feelings and the feelings of the people around me and my own body to make sure that I'm catching any situations before they become emergencies. We don't want those good problems to have to become bad problems to have. And we know that life can sometimes throw us curveballs. So leaving availability for things that are unexpected should always be very important. And that's not just mental availability or schedule availability it's also emotional availability. Sometimes I think the best thing that you can do if you're feeling overwhelmed and your schedule is filling up like crazy and you're not entirely sure what it is that you need to reduce or remove, the best thing you can do sometimes is just to take a day off, do some meditation work, really slow down and just process everything.
Sometimes it helps to phone a friend or a coach or a mentor and get their feedback, get their perspective be really honest about what you're going through if you feel stuck or if you're struggling or even if it's your inspiration that's taking you in 15 different directions and you're just not sure which direction to pick.
Remember, we don't have to do everything all at once. We can chip away at things we can move things forward very incrementally, breaking them down into tiny, tiny steps and tiny pieces of work and then slowly building on there. But it only works if you keep going back to what you're building on and continue moving forward. And there are definitely limitations to how much we can all do all at once. And I am definitely finding myself at pretty close to the end of my limitations. So I am going through this process actively. If you want to go through this process with me, we have a small business book club that I host once a month and it's full of beautiful entrepreneurs and business owners who we're willing to be super authentic and vulnerable with each other.
And even though I help businesses with this exact topic, I always say a business coach, she needs a business coach. A leadership coach needs a leadership coach, an executive needs an executive coach.
We all need coaches, we all need mentors, we all need support around us and community around us and I encourage you to join.
So feel free to send me an email at erin@positivist.ca or feel free to PM me on any of the social media platforms that I'm on. Typically you can find me at Erin Patchell or some combination thereof.
And this has been the 30th episode of Weirdos in the Workplace. Don't forget to stay weird and stay wonderful and don't stay out of trouble.
