#91: Mental Health, Managing Stress, Work/Life Balance, Productivity Guilt and more with Kara Hardin (CEO of The Practice Lab)

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Exit, exit.

All right, so back by Popular Demand. Kara Hardin is here. Popular Demand is also me. I count as a listener and host of this podcast. So how are you? What's up in your world? We traded some emails and we'll get there, but I figured I just would let you say hello first.

Hi, everyone. It's so nice to be back. It's humbling to be back by Popular Demand. It was really great to hear from so many of you in my DMs and my LinkedIn. Dave, you have, like, a really wonderfully kind, engaged community you've built.

Wait, did you really get messages? I always say that that's kind of like a joke, but did you? You get messages from people?

No. A gajillion percent.

Oh, it's awesome.

I just. The striver in me, it's not just 100%. It's a gajillion. Like, I got a ton of messages. Yeah. Well, thank you for to.

It's like, to the people, what was the overall message? Was it like, hey, I listened and it was great, or was it like, what was the overall sentiment?

There was two overall themes. Anyone who listened last time knows that I like to scaffold. So there we go. We're starting right from the top. The first theme is that people felt it really resonated, especially the idea that the ways that we find success are often the things that leave us fear, feeling the worst. And yet they're the only toolbox they had. And a lot of people, you will not be surprised to hear, had questions about how I put my phone in the closet. Like, phone. I. I started to like phone Purgatory. They're like, tell me more about how you do that. Exactly. So, yeah, two themes. Practical and also emotional.

Can we rehash that? The first part of that. So people were, can you reframe that? The way that defines success also leaves you with a lot of guilt or something like that.

Yeah. So in the last 10 years, what I found is there's a really gnarly relationship between high performance and mental health, where the ways that we're taught to succeed are often the very same. Practices, tools, ideas, beliefs, approaches that leave us feeling anxious, inadequate, lonely, disconnected from what matters, and lost. So let me take it from theory to practice. One of the things that we do is overthink. We're like, I'm going to think through. I'm trained to be a problem solver, so I'm going to analyze this problem from a ton of different angles. And that's really great. If you are trying to figure out a consumer insight or your content marketing plan or whatever it is, it's like great to have different angles. When it's not great is Saturday morning when you just want to relax or when you're trying to fall asleep at night. But the thing that we're trained to do when we feel uncomfortable, when we feel like we have a problem, is to do something about it, to work harder, to think harder, to work smarter. And so instead of feeling at night like we have a practice or a tool that helps us unwind, what we have instead is a brain that goes, here's when I'm going to think this through. And it like doubles down on thinking, which is essentially what anxiety is. So the very ways that we learn how to succeed often also leave us feeling anxious. And so too with inadequate. That's like the flip side of trying to be perfect all the time. If you are trying to always show up as being flawless, inevitably when your human flaws show, you will feel like you are not enough. So too with being disconnected from what matters. If you were spending every day lost in inbox zero, someone used the words today to me. I am. I conquered my inbox. And I was like, tell me about that colonial experience. Like, tell. Tell me a little bit more about what that, what that was, what that was. Like, one, it's totally foreign to me. And two, that's like the perfect example is like, I'm going to conquer my TO dos. And when we are in the minutia of conquering our to dos, what we miss is the like, joy and theme of our life, which I know we're going to get to at some point today.

The inbox thing is funny because then I've been experiencing this more recently, and I think it's. It's a little bit easier for somebody in my situation where I run my own business, I am my own boss. Like, I can decide to do as much work or as little work as I want, and I will face all of that myself, if that makes any sense. So it's not like I don't have a boss checking in on my deadline. And so I can be like, you know what? I kind of got a lot of stuff going on this week. Like, I might slack on a newsletter that I was supposed to send, or I might not push hard on this thing that I was going to do because I got these other things going on. But anytime that happens to me, or the opposite, the other side, that could be true. I have like one or two kind of deep work things, and I spend, you know, two days doing that and I ignore all of the stuff that's piling up on my inbox. Over the years, I've learned that sometimes, you know, I have that one side of my brain is saying, like, you know, how many emails you're getting right now, and you know there's people nagging you and, you know, you got support messages and partner messages and this and that. But then there's another side of me that's kind of found, like the roi, though, on doing that deep work is like, is so huge that, like, that thing that I just focused on for two days and didn't answer my emails because then whenever I get to my emails and then I rip through them in 30 minutes, I'm like, oh, like, that was so silly. Or this will happen. Like, if I go on vacation or something. Let's say we go as a family, we go away like Friday to Monday, and I don't really do much with work until Monday night or Tuesday, Friday to Monday. I have this nagging feeling of like, oh, man, like, I'm going to be so behind. I'm going to so behind. But then, like, something happens if, like, I get up on Tuesday and like, by like 10:15 on Tuesday, I'm all caught up again and my brain's like, oh, dummy. Like, it's never as bad as you think it is. You know. You know what I'm trying to, like, articulate with all that.

I know what you're trying to articulate, and you've given me a couple of ideas. If I pick up where you've just landed off. There's something that I see time and time again where we sort of talked about this the last time. So people might want to go back for the. The deeper dive. But remember that the body tells the brain more than the brain tells the body. And when we're stressed out, our attention focuses on what it deems to be the threat or what's dangerous or what's stressful. And in our world, the world of corporate work and marketing and advertising and sort of maybe we call it like knowledge work, very loosely meant to be inclusive. The threat is email, letting other people down, letting the ball drop. You know, you had this thing, you're like, you know, I think I have permission because I'm my own boss. But you could just as easily fall into the trap of saying, well, if I'm not working, I'm not making money and I'm not going to be able to support my family and my life. So there's something in you that's flipped there. And when we talk about being able to take a break, even in our language, the word you used a couple, I don't know, a minute and a half ago was slack. Like, sometimes I slack and I don't send out that newsletter. What I would say is that's an indication of how deeply embedded hustle and grind culture is in our idea of. Of success. The idea that we constantly have to be attending and doing things in order to be successful leads us to believe that we're slacking. When we're doing deep work or it is less important or what ends up happening in my brain is, I think, oh, well, the deep work is really important, but so are the emails. So you know what you're not going to do, Carrie? You're not going to sleep. Sleep is the. You're going to wake up early or stay up late. When the reality is when your brain has a chance to actually reassess the threat, it's just an email. It'll take, like, three seconds for you to write because your body is more at ease and more relaxed. You have far more perspective, and your output and productivity are higher.

There's something else related here, which is I often do this thing where when I'm not doing my work, I'm like, man, I hope this is a relatable feeling to some people, right? Where 90% of the time you love your job and you're doing the right thing, but, like, we're all humans. And I'll have days where I'm like. And you'll see me online talking about how great my life is and my business is so Great and Exit 5. There are days when I wake up, I'm like, man, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to do this anymore. I want to do something else. Like, I want to, you know, do this, do that, do that. And what is so interesting for me is that once I get into the work, I'm like, you could ask me three hours later. And once I get into the work and I make some progress and I get some stuff done, I'm like, why would I ever not do this? I love, I love this. And I. It's almost like it's like working out in some sense where like you want to go for. You need to go for a five mile run. It's like the first mile of that run sucks. But like once you hit that mile and you break the sweat, you're like, I love running. This is the best thing ever. And I've noticed that pattern with myself in work.

Sometimes I have that. I call it like the I don't want us. It's like, like I just look at my day and I like you, I'm in a position where I'm my own boss and I design sort of my time and my days. And when I get that, like wake up and I look at my day and I'm like, I don't wanna, I don't wanna like, I just, I'm often close or on the verge of needing a longer break. So for me, the. I don't wanna come up. When I've been extending and stretching myself so far that work as a bucket is getting more of my time and attention than the other parts of me, the other parts of my interest. And I start to feel resentful. Cause I'm like, yes, I love this thing, but do I love it for all of my time, exclusive of all of my other things? No. So it's often a hint to me and I wonder, is that true for you?

I don't know. Sometimes I just need to like, I need to get into it. And I'm like, okay, that I do think I'm very goal and accomplish this thing oriented. Maybe some might call that striver. I guess is what you say that. But once I do it, I'm like, ah, now I'm good. I cannot think about it before I forget this thought. I want to come back to something you mentioned earlier. So you mentioned that a lot of people have this. What makes you successful becomes this thing that you battle, which is like it's now 7 o' clock at night, you are trying to put the kids to bed or you're just hanging out with your friend, your spouse, want to watch Netflix. And that work thought comes into your head. Now I agree with you that most of the time you need to try to fight that and just put it away. But how do you reconcile that with. There is oftentimes that I don't know if it's serendipity or spontaneous like man, sometimes you do have an idea and you do need to write it down and act on it. And I think that a lot of when I think of like a lot of creative ideas or breakthroughs that I have, they do happen when I'm not working. And so like, how do you think about or how do you talk to others about balancing that? You know, you want to have the guardrails of like no be and be in off mode right now, but you also want to like set yourself up for like once you kind of. There was a great line from David Ogilvy about advertising back in the day. Is like the way to come up with creative ideas is to stuff your brain full of knowledge and then like go have a drink or do whatever you do. And then like, boom. That's why you get those shower thoughts. That's why you get that thought during a workout. How do you reconcile those two things?

I love the question, and I think you're talking to this bigger piece of how do we understand the division in our lives between when we are attending and giving energy to work and when we aren't? And you're also speaking to science. There's a series of parts of our brain that are comprised to call the default mode network. And it is the job of the default mode to. To go on when you are not actively task oriented in something and in that space. So actively daydreaming, being bored, watching Netflix with your kids. Like this default, although less Netflix because you're kind of passively taking things. But when you're idle cooking and doing something without actually focusing on the tasks of what needs to be done, your brain is making associations and connections. So if you can think about the last time you were ever kind of walking down the street not listening to a podcast, it might have looked something like, I wonder what's going to happen with that meeting or project. Oh, that building wasn't there when it came up. Oh, it's kind of a sunny day. Was that building there? You know who I know who does buildings is Patricia. And Patricia actually would be really good for this project. Did I get carrots for groceries? Like, so your default mode network is taking different parts of your experience and connecting them, which is the infamous shower thought. Like, we're letting our brain make connections for us and work. Which is another one of the reasons why this idea that constantly attending and looking at things is counting counter to performance and productivity. The other part of your question, actually the actual question you asked before the science had to do with how do you delineate, like when you should be working and when you shouldn't Be. I don't mean to say you. You should necessarily put it down what I recommend. And this is something I'm actively thinking about. So I'm curious if you're. I'm curious to see how this resonates and what you think. I actually have non technological devices. Like, I have a whiteboard where I keep my grocery list. I have journal journals kind of spattered everywhere. And when I get one of those ideas, I tell myself, like, go put it on the whiteboard or go write it down. Like, it's really good. Or I think it's really good, right? Yeah, you should see my whiteboard. It's like all the things I need from Costco. And have you thought about vulnerability from this perspective, Cara? Like, it's a real hodgepodge. And sometimes I'll have to say to my family, like, someone will say something to me. I'll be like, wait, like, please stop talking for three seconds. I have to write this down. And they know. And if it's so compelling that I want to go work on it, then I go work on it. Like, they're working isn't bad. It's just a matter of like, is it energizing to you genuinely?

Well, yeah. So I think where I was going with that question was exactly what you hinted at. And this is a system. I've had the same system for a while and I've done it for the exact same reason, which is like, I found that not having it be something on my phone, for example, like once I pull up my phone or I go to the computer, then like, I'm on email, I'm on Slack, I'm messing around on my calendar. And it's not so much like, you know, we could be hanging out, watching Netflix or whatever. And you have an idea. I found that it's not so much that I need to go do that right now, but I need to write it down and I need to just make a note of it. And so what I showed you, and we don't really put all of this on video, so people at home listening wouldn't have seen that. But when there was that pause and what Kara was saying, I held up a half. Just like a yellow legal pad that has a bunch of scratch on it and a bunch of post it notes. And that's kind of my home base. So, like, if I have an idea right before bed, I might run down here. Granted, my office is in my house now, but I would keep a notebook with me, a Moleskin notebook in my backpack or something. And I just felt like I would if I can just scribble down that bullet point, then when I'm in work mode, I can go attack that or go work on that thing. I don't know why I said attack. It doesn't have to be like that.

Conquer your email. It's because it's a battle.

Yeah, conquer my. Demolish my emails. Like liquid death. Like demolish your thirst. But I have found that like most of the trick with my brain is just like the. This is a good idea, write it down. Okay. And I know that I have, you know, three hours of like focus work time blocked on my calendar tomorrow and then I can not worry about that thing. It's when I'm in the in between stage where it's like, I got this idea I got to put down, but I also should I work on it right now. And I think that's. I love to hear that you have a similar system.

I'm so curious, Dave, as you're talking about how you think about allocating your time, I think one of the questions I get often is I want to journal, I want to meditate, I want to exercise, I want to do excellent in my work. And I also have a desire to pick up a new language. Like strivers are constantly wanting to improve and grow and learn. And the constraint we seem to come up against is like, what about time? So I'm really curious because you are a model of like a growth in a really competitive space, like the content creator space, but also, you know, marketing that seems to be experimenting around time in a really intentional way. So I'd love to know, like, how do you think about allocating and spending your time?

So there's a bunch of layers to that. I think you hinted at this like being in the marketing space thing, and I think I'm very consciously not doing many things that I could be doing that would probably help my business grow faster. And so, for example, one of those things is like, I'm actually not making a ton of original short form video content. I'm not going super hard on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube, despite that being like the number one most common marketing advice right now. Simply because I don't want to do it. It doesn't give me a ton of energy. And so like, if you actually go to my Instagram account, we have a, we have an Exit 5 Instagram account, but it has like 300 followers. And what we do is basically I have somebody that makes podcast clips and we use them to promote the podcast on LinkedIn, they just post to that page. For me, I'm not actively trying to grow it, and the person who does it is like, oh, you could really grow this page to, you know, 100,000 followers. I'm like, I could. I don't want to, though, because I know that would mean I gotta make hundreds of videos. And for anybody out there doing that, I'm not at all knocking that approach. And I could go build something else, and that might be what I want. But I've decided for this business and this life that I have right now, I don't. I don't want to play that game. And so I think part of it is, like, I have a very strong philosophy about, like, yes, I'm focusing on Exit 5, and, yes, I want to grow this business, but I kind of have a rough thought in my head, or I've even sat down and written that down on paper of like, what do I want to do and not want to do? And so I don't want to hire a team, I don't want to travel, I don't want to do events, I don't want to spend a lot of dollars on advertising. And so really quickly, I've given myself guardrails of like, okay, so what does that mean? How can I grow this business? Well, it's already growing at this rate. I have a good handle on it. We add, you know, a couple hundred members a month or whatever. I'm going to spend my time, I'm going to do two hours a week recording podcasts. I'm going to do one to two hours a day, like, creating content and being involved in the community, and the rest is going to be open time. And so I think a lot of times where people fall off is like, yeah, like, the world is your oyster, right? Maybe you want to learn French and learn guitar and go dancing and do this thing with your kids and do this other thing, but, like, that's not reality. And I had a great boss and mentor at Drift, David Cancel, who's the CEO. And when we would talk about marketing stuff, this is something that I've now taken to life. We were planning, like, our first conference, right? And in a vacuum, in a wide open world, it's like, well, what do we want this conference to be? And it's like, well, it could be anything. It could be in Toronto and It could be 600 people and you have to give yourself guardrails. And so everything that we would do before we went and created that campaign or that initiative, we'd Say, what are the guardrails? And so I think I would push back on that person. I would say, hey, it's great that you want to do all those things, but you can't. Yeah, there is only a finite number of hours in the day. And so this is where I use, like, writing or journaling or whatever to just like, write down, like, what are my priorities? And so there was a point in time, like maybe a year and a half ago or two years ago, where I was like, really into my business, really into my family, wanted to be into golf and into exercising. And I want to learn piano and play guitar and do this other thing and then write this other book on the side. And it was just like, I wasn't doing good at any of that stuff. And I've had much less stress and much more clarity in my life where right now I'm like, I'm not really messing with any other side projects. I have Exit five. That's enough. I have my family, I have golf, and I have fitness, and those are the four areas. And I've given myself those guardrails and actually have them in front of me on a post it note on my. On my monitor, because I am a driver and I'm always coming up with new ideas. And so I get in these, you know, moments where I'm like, oh, I'm gonna do this thing, this thing. And then I look at my note and I'm like, nope, this doesn't map back into one of these three or four buckets. So I think you need card rails is how I would first talk about that. And then secondly, actually last night I did this exercise where so I was feeling like I had a bunch of things to do, but I wasn't sure I was, like, investing my time in the right areas. And so last night I actually sat down and I wrote in my little notebook here. I basically, I documented, like, how many hours do I have in the day and where do I roughly want to spend my time? And so I basically made it out to say, like, I have. I want to have two hours to work out. I have one. Have one hour to practice golf. I have an hour to eat. I have three hours to work, and then have a bonus one hour. Now I can figure out how I want to allocate my time. It's been one day, but it's been a nice mental framework for me to have. Like, I don't have 12 hours in a day to spend on something. If I only have two, how is that going to change How I act.

What I was going to say, Sam. And I don't know if your reading is quite up to this level yet, but Oliver Berkman has this incredible book and the premise of it is we've got time management all wrong. Like every book that talks about productivity and work harder and work smarter is wrong. Because the fundamental reality is we have to choose. We have to make choices about what we're going to do and what we're not going to do. And we do ourselves a profound disservice when we say I'm just going to do everything because we don't get anything done. And so I really, really love the idea of guardrails. I think that journaling as a way to clarify not only your priorities, but what you do and don't want to do. There was something else that you mentioned that I'm a strong believer in that I don't think we talk about enough. As people are crafting, you know, job crafting for themselves is asking what do I want and what do I not want? That has nothing to do with the content of the tasks and everything to do with how do you enjoy spending your day? Not everyone will have the liberty to, like, some people work a nine to five and the reality is seven or eight hours a day or more. Like I work with consultants and attorneys and doctors that sometimes it's 16 hours a day and yet they have eight hours still. And what in that time, how do they want to spend it and what matters to them based on who they are? Like, if you're not into fitness but you're into pottery, how can you build that into your day to day life? I think there's a real power about saying, here's what I will do and here's what I won't do. And the fear or the programming it. You said like I chose to grow slower. I don't know if you're growing any slower. Like there's. It's possible that if you did videos and shorts and more things that it would be different. It's also possible it wouldn't be like doing work just leads to more work. Yeah, like, let's just be clear, doing work just leads to more work. And so if we want to have a life where work is a part, but not all of it, we have to really embrace the hard choices that come along with what does it mean to work less and have the privilege to do that.

In some ways, I think what you said is really a lesson that I've learned over time, which is like, if I'm not happy in a situation. We're talking to marketers that are listening, that are all humans. It's more of a human episode than a marketing episode. But in marketing we often talk about like you hire an agency and you say, I want you to make a new website or make us a new brand. Where that project falls down is when the market, when the company can't articulate what they want, want. And so they, if you fail to write a good brief, you're never going to be happy with the results. And so if I can't say what I don't want, then it's going to be tough for me to figure out what to focus on. And this is, I was just kind of feeling in like a, I was at a crossroads on a bunch of different things in the last couple weeks and I was having a hard time making decisions on what I should focus on. And so the other night I just, I wrote down like, okay, let's just start, let's work backwards. Let's make our no list. Like what are all the things? I know for a fact that no matter what, no matter what money or opportunity comes across my desk, whatever it is, what do I not want? And I wrote those things out. And it's so funny, when you work from that position, it's much easier to then go say, well like okay, yeah, then yeah, I shouldn't go spend a hundred hours and go make.

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You know, 500 TikTok videos. It becomes very obvious. I'll, I'll give you another example I had. I've been not doing consulting for about six months now and I got a great email in my inbox like last week and a really good company and I knew it would be good money. And for like one day I was like, you know what? Yeah, I'm gonna take this, I'm gonna take this. I'm gonna do it. I don't care. I'm gonna do it. And then like I was on my run yesterday and I was like, what are you doing? Go back to your first principles. You said coming to this year that you were gonna do no more of that. And it was just so liberating to be able to say like, I'm not, I'm not gonna do that. And you also hit on an important thing, which is, I do realize that yes, there are many people in jobs that are not able to articulate those conditions. We happen to be in positions now where we can. But I would say, you know what, even if you are in that position, like, this is why having goals and having a vision is an activity for anybody. And so maybe you are in a 9 to 5 job, you're a nurse, and there's not a lot of flexibility in your schedule and your time in your life. It doesn't mean that that has to be that way forever. And so, like, could you have a vision board and have goals and say, like, here's what I want to get to one day. And then, like, you can try to chip away at that over time, as opposed to saying, well, this is never going to be possible in my job, and so I can never do this.

I like to remind myself that 13 years ago, I was a corporate insecurities lawyer. Right?

You would have killed to have the flexibility and job that you have today.

And so I did. It took 13 years, but I did. And again, there are privileges associated with being able to do it, but it also takes making really cutthroat choices. I want to pull apart a couple of the things you just said, which is being able to articulate what you want, I think is sometimes way more important than articulating your why. And we could put a pin on that and talk about why. I think that is because there's a lot of noise around why that I find distracting in some ways. So there's that. The other thing is you wanted to make decisions about what to focus on. We are a multiplicity. Like, we are comprised of so many different parts of ourselves. The part of you that wants to, like, get to below par. The part of you that wants to watch the upcoming British Open or to be fit or to spend time with your family. Family. Like, there is a lot of different parts of us. And what makes deciding what we want hard is there are parts of us that will be satisfied and parts of us that won't. It's not that you stopped wanting to play guitar. It's not that you stopped wanting to be musically literate. It's that you made the choice to prioritize your fit self or your golf self over music for now. And that's really hard. And to do that. What I heard you say is like, I got this email, and you know what I did? I waited a day. I went for a run. Maybe I'm making up. You might have waited a week. I do the same thing, and I call it just trying it on. I'm just going to try on this opportunity, and I'm going to notice all of the different ways that I want to respond until I feel like I'm adult enough in my brain to respond in the way that's aligned with what I've articulated that I want.

Hey, it's Dave. So here's something cool. Did you know that we've had M and A happen through connections made in the Exit 5 community? Rowan Tonkin, he's a CMO at Planful. And Peter Mahoney, he's the CEO and founder of Plana. They met right here in our Exit 5 community. And now Plana is part of Planful. Planful builds financial performance management software and is trusted by CFOs in over 1300 companies to do their planning, budgeting, reporting, month end close, and more. Sometimes you might feel like your finance team hinders your performance. Planful is helping change that by making financial performance management a team sport. But Dave, why is Planful advertising to.

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Go to planful.com marketing to learn more. Or better yet, go book a demo right now and tell them Dave and the Exit 5 podcast sent you. Yeah, and I think if you want to have freedom and if you want to have the freedom of choice and decisions in life like you do, there are trade offs. And so you have to stack rank those things. And for me it was like, learn this instrument. If that means this, that means I'm going to have to give this hour back. Okay, so what's going to trade off? I don't want to sacrifice fitness. I don't want to sacrifice golf. Okay, so for now I just got to be. I got to be okay with that. You got to be able to make those decisions and make those trade offs.

Wait, I have a wonky analogy.

Okay, great.

Can I jump in with it?

Go, please.

So I think when we're deciding and articulating what we want, it can be a lot like dating. There's this idea that there's a soulmate out there. There's, like, one right person for any other person. Putting aside the, like, heteronormativity of that, this idea that there's one right person I think should be replaced by the idea of a Venn diagram. You are one whole circle complete unto yourself. Someone else has another whole circle complete unto themselves. Where you overlap is the parts of you that will. You will grow and amplify. So if you're, like, borderline vegetarian and you start dating a vegan together in your life, that aspect of you will amplify as opposed to if you start dating a pit master, then you're going to be deep in the ribs every Sunday because those are what you're going to do. It's not that any version of you is better or worse. It has to do with knowing who you are and what you want in your life. And what's really tricky about that for strivers is we are not told to honor our preferences. We are not told to explore our values and beliefs and dispositions and experiences in history. We're told success looks, walks, talks, behaves a certain way. It involves affluence, influence, ability, status, wealth, all of those things. And you are not worthy unless you wear those things. So inevitably, you and I are having this conversation. And what I want to ground the community in is it's. I have a graduate degree in this. I'm a coach. I have spent decades unpacking my. What I will and won't do. And so if it seems overwhelming, it started 13 years ago even probably when I was in law school, with me going, gosh, I don't really think I like the law. I'm proud of Pro rules.

Pro rules. But I don't like the law.

Pro rules. But the study, I looked around at all these other law students and was like, you're jazzed. Like, you are so happy to be here. And you know who's not? Me. Huh. That's really interesting. What do I like about this? What don't I like? It. It's like preferences over decades so that you can sit down like Dave on a Monday night and go, okay, I actually don't want to do that consulting job. And I know that because I have spent the last any number of years coming to know who I am and what I want and am comfortable navigating the distress that results from not being what anyone else tells me I need to be in order to be objectively, quote, unquote, successful.

And to your point about those things, constantly kind of being in motion and changing. There was also a time where probably, let's say if this was me two or three years ago, I would say, yes, I'm going to do that project. This is to your point about it taking 13 years for you to get to this journey and for us, like kind of speaking to people who want to make a change. Right. I don't want to do this forever, but I know that right now this would be good income that would allow me to do X. And so like, that's how I'm able to like separate myself from the job. And I.

That's right.

I shared something recently with the Exit 5 community. Just said like, hey, a lot of marketing people are working at companies that it's not that fun to be at the company right now because the growth isn't as good, things are slowing down. You know, they let go half your team, they let go your budget. Like you're questioning why you're doing this. And I just tried to share this perspective of like, you gotta be selfish and think about yourself. And so you may be working at this company right now, but if you can zoom out and try to look at yourself five and ten years from now. Right. What if, like, could you flip your mindset and say, like, all right, you know what, this is actually kind of good. So for the next year. I've never led a website rebrand project. I've never led the product marketing team before. Like, I don't know if I'm going to do this forever, but damn it, if I do this for a year, I'm going to be way smarter in this area. And that's going to be some like, points in my, in my equity pool, in my bucket for later. And so I think it's a similar example where like, yeah, I don't have to do the consulting thing now, but if I was in a place where like I needed a short term bridge to, for income or like we're going to try to buy a house, like, I could tell myself a story about why I'm going to do this. And so I also think when you do that exercise, when you write out the things that you do or don't want to do, you end up kind of finding your why to tie this all back together. You don't even have to be like a religious journaler or vision boarder or planner, but I would encourage you to just take one hour and just get a piece of computer paper or a whiteboard. And there is no framework I have for this. I'm sure there is one but literally sit down and write. Like, how many hours do you have in the day? What are all the things that you have to do? I gotta, like, you gotta make lunches, you gotta drop off the kids, you gotta go over here, you gotta go over. Okay, so that gives you this many hours. How are you gonna spend those hours? Okay, and then like, what are two or three big things that you want to focus on over the next six months? And how are you gonna work your way to that doesn't have to be scientific, but I found that just like you getting messy with like a pen and paper and scratching stuff off and writing things out. Like, that's where I've always done my best thinking and planning. And I even have like something in a book that I read like maybe five years ago where I basically unintentionally kind of documented what is now my whole life. And I believe that that is because five years ago I was like, here's where I want to get to. I don't know if this is going to be possible or not. And I just found it like a couple weeks ago. And I was like, man, this is pretty wild how close to accurate this is.

Now that clarity makes a ton of sense. And if someone's listening, like, I have a hard time articulating like 10 years from now. I think my brain from like a trauma informed perspective, like, the world is just such a wonky place. And so if your brain is like listening to Dave and super jazzed, go for it. And if your brain is thinking, like, I wonder what exercise I could try. Because I'm like Kara and I can't think beyond my nose. One of the things, there's two things that I've been practicing. One is a more regular journaling practice. When Dave, you put up that you were journaling, I was like, oh, tell me more. Because what I find is you see themes and I have really let my striver not make it daily. If I can't be, I have it out in front of me. It can be two sentences, it can be three. It can be on the go in the beginning. It's just the habit of carrying the GD book around with you. Just carry it. Just remember to bring it. And the other thing is, you can start a plus two, minus two. This is a Tim Ferriss idea. So at the end of the every day you just rate. Was it plus two or was it minus two? And what do you think contributed to that? Because if you're looking to build a life that is full and reflective of your Heart and your preferences and your desires. Doing that for a month, two, three, four, Will. Oh, every day, that's plus two. I go for a walk with my dog. Solid. Now you know where 20 minutes of your one hour of your day has to go. I am going to challenge myself to try and do a one hour. What do I want based on your. Your cell there, Dave? I just. I'm very curious how it's going to feel. I'll have to report back on the. The same bat time, same bat channel three peat.

I went for a run the other day and I. It was like 40 minutes and I spent 38 minutes and I had this problem solved. And then like, literally at the last minute, I'm like, no, that's a terrible idea. And sometimes you go full circle and you're like. And you're back to where you started. But that's a sign to me that I'm not ready to make a decision about that thing yet. And I just need to. Need to give it more time on the journaling piece. So I'm not very. Sometimes I am. It depends on my mood. But I'm not very reflective in the journaling. It's more about. I like to kind of just document what's going on in our life. And so the average journal that I might write is scribbled for 10 minutes before I get into bed. And it's like, woke up at 3 last night because my daughter peed the bed. Didn't sleep great. Woke up at. Kids were up at 7. We had breakfast, we got on the bus. Then I went for a run. Then I did. I caught up on work for two hours. Then I went and I hit golf balls for an hour. And then I had a call with Kara and I did this. And then I did this thing. And then Lee and I went for a walk. And then we did this thing. We did this thing. We did this thing. That's kind of the majority of what I write about. I do. If I'm particularly stressed or frustrated or just can't get clarity on something, I will find another point in time. Usually this is not before bed, because before bed I don't really have the energy to do it. But I found that exercise helps me sleep. It helps me just kind of like close the day out a little bit. I will. Like, if I'm stuck on a problem, like, for example, should I continue to grow exit 5 or should I sell it to someone who's interesting in buying it? Like, in that scenario, I have found that I need to sit down and like write that out, right? Or if I've been particularly grumpy for three days, I need to sit down and like write all those things out and figure out why. But I found that I don't need to do that every day. And so I don't put the pressure on myself to like write a 40 minute, you know, journal entry before bed. Or like, you know, Tim Ferriss or others will talk about like, you know, waking up at five in the morning and doing like, you know, six morning pages. Six morning pages. And I'm like, you know, with all due respect, he doesn't have children. So like some of that stuff is not, is not reasonable, nor kids are not. Maybe you just have no interest in doing that like me. But I just found like, it's like the daily discipline of documenting what's going on in the day kind of helps give me, I go to bed with a feeling of accomplishment. In almost every boring day now it.

Sounds like there's different kinds of documenting and recording or journaling you're doing. Like there's the end of the day chapter close, which is also excellent, by the way, for like running thoughts. People who have difficulty sleeping getting in the habit of like almost. It's like watching a movie on fast forward. Going through your day and here's what it was without evaluation, really. You can have observation, but there's like little judgment of this was good, this was bad. It's just kind of here's how the day was and maybe here's how it impacted me. That's the reflection piece. But it really could just be a record. And what I make up about that is 30 years from now when, God willing, your kids are grown and healthy, it's going to be so cute to go back and be like, oh, she used to pee the bed. Remember how tired I was? Like, it's gonna be so rose colored. But then there's this other type of journaling or writing that you do when you don't understand either an emotion you're having or you're trying to think through, sort through a decision, a business idea, a clarity that also you sit down and do you do that? Am I. When am I getting it? And two, do you do that by hand or do you do that with keys?

How do I pick what to go and focus on?

No, like, what is your. What am I getting that that's the second bucket of when you journal. Is it like when there's a deep emotion or when there's a decision? Like, what are the categories that will Inspire you to do that. Part one, Part two Do you hand write or do you type or do you telepathically dictate? What are the options here? Starvers want to know.

I just record a episode of the podcast, talking to myself. I usually just grab like, a pad and a pen and kind of sketch it out because it's oftentimes it's like. Like it's not just like this beautiful prose. It's like drawing a box and a chart and a grid and an arrow, and it's like half cartooning and half writing. And so it's typically like kind of sketching out an idea. I have found that in the past, more formal writing and not my handwriting sucks. And I'm not very fast at writing. And so there's also a lot of value in me, like, opening a Google Doc and like, writing out a formal, like, like, basically, I used to have to do this a lot at work when I worked inside of a company. It's like, hey, we're like, announcing some big change and, like, I need to write, like, the memo to the company. And I have found that writing is a great forcing function to, like, get clear on a headline, a story, a hook, three bullet points, why we're doing this. And so sometimes I will do that. Or I've even found, like, making a deck is a great way to do that. So it could be a Google Doc. It could be like, you know, man, I'm really thinking about growing Exit 5. I have a hundred ideas in my head. I might just force myself right now to do like a five to 10 side presentation to no one about, like, here's how I'm going to double exit five and, like, go through that deck. Because I found that Back again, back to guardrails. Having those guardrails forces me to do it. The pen and paper stuff is a little bit more just like, it's almost like working out to me where, like, you just have to kind of like, scribble it out and, like, get it out of your body. And then I'm not stress about it or obsessing over it anymore.

It could be an interesting exercise. Like, so, for example, if someone's listening and they're like, I want to make a change in my life, Dave just gave us like, eight different ideas on how to do it right. You can scribble something out, you can go for a run and turn it around. You can make a little deck. And it doesn't have to be like, as drivers, we're often like, well, what is the Result. What is the change I want to make? I was on a call with someone today. They're like in the middle of like a quarter life crisis. The existential, like, who am I and what do I want to be with my life? And the pressure is like, doctor, like, give me an answer marketer. I don't know, like CEO. Like whatever it is, CEO. And instead it's like, can you come up with like a five point deck and can you anchor it in the clarity even that you want to have five years from now? I want to have clarity about a pathway that could be interesting to me or what I know is my guardrails. Like, we can take a step back around. You can decide where you have gaps in abilities, skills or qualities we're discussing and deck about that or doodle about that or journal about that. The idea I think that runs through all of these is find a way to articulate to yourself the ideas that matter to you, that can guide you so that you can revisit them and anchor in them and have a way to assess and measure how your efforts are tracking against the passage of time.

Yeah, it's like giving yourself talking points. I think like the mind, your brain is great and your mind is great. But I think sometimes without, at least personally, without me giving structure to how I'm thinking about things, then my mind can just like think of 15 different scenarios. But like, once I've documented, like, hey, you know what, for the next two years, like I am focused on Exit 5 and I've written that all out and why. It's almost like now my brain doesn't even like wander and I've like closed the door on that. And so I think you just, I think writing is a great, is a great way to do that for sure. Although you've probably done your. As you've stepped away from the law, hopefully you're doing less writing.

You know, I like, actually it's like a, it's like a renaissance. Like I'm returning to writing because I, I had this gap for exactly the reasons that you are imagining. And I missed it. Writing is cathartic, it's creative, it's generative. And I don't know if you have this though. Like, I find that my pattern of writing often mimics what I'm reading. And I am in like a real deep 40 something, women, fantasy, romance, mystery, like thing. So I'm finding that like I'm trying like all of my writing ends with some sort of like, and what will she do next? I love that Hilarious, like hooks. And I'm like, perhaps I should read some Tolstoy or something more sophisticated to really upgrade my journaling.

I love that I'm not there yet, but I could see. Thank you. I need to broaden my reading.

I'll send you some recos. Yeah, no problem. Add that to in your guardrails. Put that in the bowling bumpers.

Okay. More mid-40s, more-40s romance novels.

Yeah.

I do find, though, also, like, there doesn't have to be an end result with the writing. And so sometimes, like, the actual writing is the act. And so I might, like, write for two pages, like, get something out of my system and, like, literally rip it up and throw it out and be like, huh, all right. You know, don't put pressure on yourself to have some, like, I wrote this thing. I need this definitive outcome. Again, it's an exercise in just kind of like, organizing your thoughts and clarifying how you're approaching something.

I love the focus on process. Again, as drivers, we tend to want, like, all or nothing, right or wrong, good or bad. And so the idea of developing a practice that is process oriented versus is outcome oriented is in and of itself valuable. It builds the muscle to be able to say, like, that's how you get to say, I'm going to sit on this business opportunity and just try it on. I don't need to immediately act. That's how you fight urgency. That's how you begin to quantify and value things other than, well, this will grow my business fastest. You're able to say, okay, I've put this out there. This is kind of it. I'm going to leave it or I'm going to change it. Like, 1 thought I was thinking, as you were talking about, for the next two years, I'm focusing on. Focusing on exit five is these guardrails are set up. And I have no doubt, maybe what I make up is that if something came up that was super compelling, that was a little to the left, you would be able to look at your commitment and say, I don't know, is it still that? Is it something else? Like, how aligned am I with that? Is it maybe two? Is it maybe 18 months? And then I try this. So there's a way in which it's like 99% clear, but it's never 100% certain. And that's constantly this iterative process of like, well, what's here today? What's here today? What do I know now that I didn't know yesterday?

Yeah, I love that approach. And I Don't think everybody actually takes that approach. I do think there's a lot of people who are like, well, I'm in this job, I'm in this house, I'm doing this thing. And I. I am just a believer in that. A lot of that stuff is not fixed or things are not as fixed as you expect them to be. You can make much more changes than I think that we often allow ourselves to think about. And so I'm with you 100%. I may have literally said this on this podcast, and then five minutes from now, I can get an email about something, and I'm like, yes, I'm done with this. You have to be able to be open and make big changes like that.

I have two thoughts in there. They're therapeutic, of course, to be for the end of the hour. Let's drop the bombs, and we can take it next time.

Okay, I'm ready for that.

So the first is I always reserve the right to change my mind. Like, one of the things I meant to say at the top of the hour is, I know I've discussed things. Last time I could say something completely contradictory today, and I stand by what I said before, and I have more data. I've changed my mind. I am not the person that engaged with you in this last conversation. These are different parts of me. So I always reserve the right to change my mind. And number two, I think the biggest challenge that I see when my clients come to me and they say to me, kara, I don't know why you believe. Like, why do you believe? Why do I get to change my life, my house, my this, my that? The challenge that, the belief that they're struggling with is, I got myself into this mess. Like, I got myself here. And part of it is I deserve to be here. Part of it is I don't know how to get myself out of it. Part of it is, who am I to get out of this? Am I worthy? Part of it is I bumbled. Like, there's a sense of, not only am I overwhelmed by the prospect of changing everything, because they see everything as one big thing. They also see it as being tied to their identity in some ways. And in the absence of knowing who they want to be, they feel stuck by who they are and the decisions they've made historically.

I'll give you one real example, and then we'll end. Before I worked at Drift, I worked at five companies in six years, and I was very worried about what people would think of somebody who jumped around that much and made A lot of job changes. And I met with a bunch of people and they're like, yeah, this might be an issue down the road, but then I landed at this one company and had this great run and it was like the kind of like career changing, you know, four and a half years. And I think everybody in their career has that kind of one, one or so anchor experiences. And ever since that moment, that has never come up, ever. It's like the stories that we tell ourselves. And so, like, yeah, I just was like, you know what? I'm going to make lots of changes and that's going to be fine. And maybe this will not work out. But it ended up working out and I'm glad that I did. And nobody's ever worried about that. And so I think the more you can, whether it's like, you know, working with someone like you or writing or having a mentor or even friends, the more you can just like talk this stuff out. Just so much of this is a story that I tell myself in my, in my head. And when you say it out loud or talk to somebody else about it, you're like, oh, this is really not a big deal.

I'm nodding 100%. I love that example.

Good. All right, Kara, thank you so much for doing this. We could do a six hour session. Do me a favor, go back to LinkedIn, go to Kara Hardin, send her a message, blow up her LinkedIn again, demolish her inbox, whatever word you need to use, check out what she's doing. It is thepracticelab.org, up there in Toronto and she's everywhere. Kara Hardin. Kara, great to see you. We'll be in touch as usual and I'll talk to you later.

Okay, thanks for having me. Thanks, everyone.

Bye bye. Hey, thanks for listening to this episode of the Exit 5 podcast. If you're in B2B marketing and you want to grow your career, you should also go and check out everything that we have over@exit5.com we've got articles, we've got videos, we've got templates, plus we have a community. A community of over 4000 B2B marketing pros. Whether you're deep in your career and want to connect with your peers or just starting up and you want a place to go where you can see what people are talking about, get smarter about B2B marketing in your own time to grow your career and help grow your company. Go and check it out. It's exit5.com you can get on the email list. There you can join the community. There's 4,000 marketers in the community. We have a job board. We're always adding new stuff. It's really becoming the number one one place you can go if you want to grow your career and learn more about B2B marketing outside of what you're doing inside of your company every day. So check it out. Exit5.com and I also want to make sure I give a shout out to my friends at Hatch. That's Hatch fm. They produce this podcast. It sounds amazing because of the work that they do and they work with B2B companies just like yours. They offer unlimited podcast editing and strategy for businesses. You can get unlimited for podcast setting and on demand strategy for a low monthly cost. All you got to do is just upload your episode and they take care of the rest. Go and check them out. It's Hatch fm.

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