Stop Doing Busywork

Hey there, welcome to Inside Scoop. I'm Paula Rizzo. Busy work, it's the worst, right? I know, I know, but we get all into it and then we're doing 1,000 little things when it was supposed to take 5 minutes and then all of a sudden the whole day is gone. Raise your hand out there if this is what's happened to you. I get it. I mean, I'm a productivity author and it happens to me and, you know, I'm always looking for better, smarter ways to work so we don't get down the rabbit hole of doing all this busy stuff that doesn't actually bring us to the end game, to the goal that we're looking for. And so I have a guest today who I'm going to bring on in just a moment. She's a podcaster, she's an author. I'm happy to call her my friend for many years, and she has lots and lots of great tips and tricks and a brand new book that we'll talk about, uh, so that you can work smarter, not harder, and get rid of all of that busy work. Okay. Uh, but before I bring her on, I want to give you a little freebie that I think will also help if you're looking to be more productive, my List Making Starter Kit. You can grab it if you go to paularizzo.com/list and you'll learn all about how to, you know, make sure that you get the right things done, be less stressed and more efficient. So you can check that out right there. I'm also a LinkedIn Learning instructor and I have several courses that will help you in all areas of your life, including how to protect your time and set boundaries. That is something I'm sure we'll talk about today because it is very important to be able to make sure that you have time to do the things you really want to do and you're not just doing busy work. So if you check out linkedinlearning.com, or there is a QR code right there that you can click on to get right to those courses. And my guest today is Jenny Blake. She's also a LinkedIn Learning instructor. And so there are many courses that she has as well on LinkedIn that you can check out. And Jenny, I want to thank you so much for, for being here. Thank you for for Jenny.

Thank you for having me. I know I loved meeting you for coffee that first time in New York many years ago.

That's right.

It's just great to be in touch, and thank you for having me here. It's fun watching all of your career pivots along the way.

Ah, thank you. Yes, and one of Jenny's books' name was Pivot, if, if you've seen that in the past. But the book we're talking about today is called, uh, you got it right there, Free Time. Free Time: Lose the Busy Work, Love Your Business. It's It's so important. And actually, the first time I found you on the internet, Jenny, was because I had seen, it was your first book launch. And at the time, I think I was starting to launch my first book. And I was thinking about how can I do this in a smart way? Isn't there a checklist somewhere? And you had a spreadsheet to beat all spreadsheets. And I was like, "This is my girl. This I love." Yeah.

I called it the Ultimate 15-Tab Book Marketing Spreadsheet. This was in 2011. And the funny thing is nobody would know about this spreadsheet if not for the fact that I got invited to Domino Project, which was Seth Godin's offices at the time, from a friend named Willie Jackson, who I adore. And Willie said, come prepared to share something about your book process. And I thought, I was actually embarrassed by this spreadsheet. I thought if I show this group this spreadsheet, they're going to laugh me out of the room at how neurotic and crazy I am. And instead I presented this. I was so nervous. And then at the end, Seth was like, this is incredible. Can you, can you give me a link that I can share on the blog? And after that, it's been downloaded thousands of times. I since created an, an updated one.

Uh-huh.

And I still have an author toolkit to this day if anyone wants to check it out. Um, but what would happen was I would start going to book launches in New York City and elsewhere, and I would go up to the author at the end, not knowing them at all. And once I said my name, they're like, oh, Jenny Blake, we used your book marketing spreadsheet. So it was a really rewarding thing to be able to give back to authors. And that's exactly part of the mantra and message of Freetime, which is why are we all reinventing the wheel? It bothers me when we all work in isolation on the exact same thing, and publishers for some reason had not systematized the marketing process enough to give this resource to authors. And I thought, if every author like me is struggling to figure out what to do, When you're launching a book, why don't I create something, systematize it, share it back out? And that's truly what I love because it saves us all time.

Yeah. And it was gold. I mean, honestly, it really did help me launch both of my books. So I appreciate that. That's amazing. But I knew you had a keen eye for productivity at the time when we met. I was still a TV producer in New York, obviously trying to be efficient, trying to use the best of my time as someone working full-time and then also someone with a side hustle, which you, you know, you understand. And a lot of the people watching too, you know, if you have questions about how to be more efficient in any area of your life, whether you're an author or not, uh, you want to be an author, you know, ask questions here, whether you're watching live with us or you're watching the replay. Leave those questions below because we want to hear from you too. We want to be able to, to get in there and say, hey, you know, if you have a side hustle, here's how you can make sure to do that. Uh, but But tell me a little bit more about this, this new book, because this is now your third book, and, um, you, you really wanted to dig in on busy work, right? Why specifically that?

I mean, the opposite in a way. Like, I don't want to do busy work, and I don't want any of us to have to be doing busy work. And I say, like, a lot of us get bogged down by the burdensome Bs. We're bored, bottlenecked, burned out or buried by bureaucracy, AKA busy work. And that is the worst feeling. Boredom at best, almost, and then burnout at worst, where we just cannot sustain the pace and the pressure. Whether you're in corporate, you're working for yourself, it's so tricky not to get to that point, as I say in the introduction, of burn it all down mode, where you're just so fed up with the way of working and how much is on your plate, you want to just burn it all down. And I have friends that will joke like, I'm just going to go teach kayaking in a river. Like, I can't take it anymore. And so it's, it was kind of a combination of, and I'm now a decade into running my own business, but I had worked within fast-paced companies like Google at a startup before that. And I just see how we are so inundated and overwhelmed, all of us these days by email and social media and work pressures that it's a lot for anybody to handle. So free time, yes, it's what do you do when you're not working, but it's also a muscle. How I, I wrote the book so that we could all get better at the skill of generating free time.

Yes.

And the nerdy way to put that is systems thinking, as you mentioned. Like, the kind of back end is productivity, but a lot of books about systems and operational efficiency are very boring. So I kind of wanted to democratize these topics and teach people how do you take small steps to today that will free your time infinitely into the future. And once you can start thinking that way, everything becomes a game.

Yeah.

And then you get better and better to free your time up to do your best work, your most creative strategic work, because you're less exhausted by the rest.

It gets addictive once you start protecting your time. It's like saying no to setting boundaries. Once you start, it feels really uncomfortable in the beginning. And then when you start to do and you're like, wait, I actually got to do all these other things that I really wanted to do. This is not so bad. I'm going to keep flexing this muscle. And see how it goes. But, but when we talk about business, this is a whole other layer, right? And this is something that, you know, when you're a business owner, you are every single person in that, in that C-suite, right? And so how do you prioritize what needs to get done for your business?

I like having one big creative goal. Sometimes it's a growth goal, so it might— I might be creating something, and that's what Cal Newport calls deep work. Or maybe in the case of a book or my podcast, I'm launching or trying to grow something. So I tend to have 2 modes. There's— and I, and I like to know what mode I'm in. So for example, right now my job is to stop myself. I'm not allowed to create anything new. I have 2, 3 books, 2 podcasts. Like, grow what exists, you know? Sometimes we chase shiny objects, just like you said. A big focus for me this year has been streamlining and, and again resisting the urge to do more or to add more to my schedule. And it's hard It's hard not to do that. Like, the clutter, just time clutter, can accumulate without much attention put on it. So I try to get really clear, what is my one mission? I won't even call it a goal. What is my mission right now, whether it's for 3 months, 6 months, this next year? And then be really discerning and do less, less and less and less. And a lot of that, in the book I call it sailing the sea of shiny shoulds. Is, is separating what is truly joyful for me that I feel I'm uniquely good at, that I can share things like this I really, really enjoy. And can I drop the rest even if it's really shiny and I think that I should be doing it? Do I? Is that true?

Yeah, it's, it's sort of that gut hit, right? That's what brings you joy. You know, there's things that you do because it makes you money and you have to do it, and there's things that it's like, hey, I don't know, I just really like doing that, so I'm gonna make sure that I prioritize it. It's important to like go with your gut and know that about yourself. But it's interesting because I learned this lesson, unfortunately, because my appendix burst. And this was several years ago. This was after my first book came out. And I had to stop. I was out of work for 6 weeks. I had been in the hospital for 9 days. It was awful.

That's so stressful.

Right. And everything comes off your to-do list because you have no choice, because health is the only thing that you're focusing on at that time. But I learned a really great lesson when I came back into the world. It's like, what do I actually want to put put onto my to-do list? What are the things that do make me excited or happy? And I started to use the mantra, "Rest is the new hustle," because I was so used to hustling and hustling and more and better and what else can I do? And yes, I'll do that speaking thing or whatever. And then I was like, "Yeah, you know what? Rest is the new hustle." And you have your own perspective on hustle too.

It never worked for me. I just kept Same as you, body stuff would happen. I'd get sick. I would get bronchitis or an ear infection. It's just, I always joke my body has me on a short leash. So it just doesn't even feel like an option for me. And the only way that I can sustain what I'm doing is to be very mindful about my health and my time. And, uh, I say like how we bake is as important as what we make. I also don't believe in, and I did this, I kind of made this mistake with my first book. Of like complaining and sweating and burning out and getting sick. And it's like, oh, and here I sacrifice myself for you, for this book, and for all of you reading it. I just think that's— I don't want to live that way. I feel like how we create things in our life and our business and work is baked into the final product. And so if we can learn and we can have it actually does take some discipline to work with ease and joy and at a sustainable pace, I do believe that what we create will be more resonant and connected. And we won't be martyring ourselves for these punctuated moments of success that really are quite fleeting in the grand scheme of things.

Yeah. And also thinking through, "Oh, is that what success looks like, to be stressed out and to be overworked and to be at the end of the book launch, I can't believe that I got through that." That is not how you want to feel at the end of that. You want to be excited and get your book out there. And I want to talk a little bit more about what you've learned launching different books through the years, how you've changed that. But first, I just want to take this comment from Rachel Hayes, who's on LinkedIn, who says, "Love that. Rest should be cherished." It's so true. I mean, burnout is a real thing. It's recognized by the World Health Organization as an actual disease. Condition. And, uh, you know, we know this more now than ever with the pandemic. People are really feeling it.

Well, that's the thing, we're all juggling a lot even outside of work. So I, I think sometimes, especially when you do work within a company, it can be even more challenging because the pace is what it is and you kind of like have to keep up or else on some level. Although I think even within a company you can, you can start to pull back a little bit. Like, you don't have to kill yourself for your job, and I don't think he wants that at the end of the day. But, um, we're all feeling so much stress and pressure and uncertainty from these last few years, and I just believe there is no— and I would encourage everybody to question the, the time-money. It's not always a linear correlation, and success is not always going to come from whoever works the hardest. Yes, of course we know. Like Dory Clark, our friend Dory, wrote a book called The Long Game. Yes, putting in small reps over time, the long arc of your creative journey, like hitting publish over and over. I used to call it a thousand tiny iterations over time. That all counts. And simply working hard doesn't guarantee you anything. And I find that if I'm sleep deprived, I don't think clearly or strategically or creatively. I'm not that original when I'm tired. It's all I can do just to get through the day. I can barely do anything at all. So I feel like it's not even the best business move for me to be tired and burnt out, that the best, most unique resource I have is my own mind. And caring for that with a lot of spaciousness is so much better than that mantra like, oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead. I don't know who that works for, but I'm dysfunctional when I'm tired. I can't—

I don't—

as one of my clients put it, like, I don't even know my own name.

Yes, totally. It's like, you don't want to see me on that day, right?

You know, I'll be useful.

Being in tune with yourself, which, you know, you have long been into meditation and yoga and all of this. And so, and, you know, me too, you know, that's— I covered, you know, health and wellness when I worked at Fox News. And so I also appreciate this. This is not innate for everyone though, right? And so how can, how can people sort of get to know themselves and see, you know, I call it, you know, your, your unique productivity style. How would you say that, that people can tune in to see these things about themselves so they can, you know, use that to their best advantage?

One of the exercises I share in the book comes from my friend Josh Allen Dykstra. And he just asks, what are your Energizers? What are your Drainers? So be an observer over the next 2 weeks. What energizes you, whether it's people, projects, different of your talents that you're leveraging? And what drains you? And it changes over time; it doesn't always stay the same. So I think being really mindful of what charges your battery and what drains your battery. And that's step one. And, and sometimes what you first think of, if I— as I'm saying it right now, that's obvious, you already know that about yourself. Where it's more interesting is tracking over time. Yeah, just keeping a piece of paper by your desk or a note on the Notes app in your phone, and then looking at the more nuanced levels of that. Same thing, you could do a calendar audit, look for the next 2 weeks ahead or the month ahead What are you actually excited to show up for? And what's on there because you were people pleasing or just afraid to say no? Going back to your topic of boundaries. So doing a calendar audit can also be interesting. And even noticing within a given day, when are you your most creative and strategic? And then when does your energy flag? And how can you schedule accordingly? But claim the most creative, energized time for yourself, for your big creative work.

Yeah.

Rather than letting other people take that by default.

Yeah, and it's true. I mean, we let people get onto our calendar all the time, and then you look at it and it's like, wait, I didn't get anything done that I wanted to do today, because it just, you know, you get hijacked. And I love the idea of checking in with yourself. I try to do this quite often too. After I do a task right away, or a meeting, or I meet with somebody, or I have a client, or whatever it is, I will write down right after that, how do I feel? Because you think that you'll remember, but what happens is then you go on with your day and you sort of forget how you felt in that moment. And then you do it again and again and again. Again, and you're like, "I don't understand why I'm so exhausted." It's like, because that thing is exhausting you, but you keep ignoring it. And so you really do need to stop yourself and say, "Hey, hey, let's look at the trend here." The trend is— Yeah.

Do you review that data? Once you write it down, are you reviewing it somewhere?

Yeah. I mean, I had done this. I haven't done it in a while, but when I wrote my second book, Listful Living, it was— I mean, that's how the book was born because I had been checking in with myself to say, "This doesn't work." It was my first year of working for myself. And I was like, Everybody's on my calendar. More, more, more, more, more. And you would have thought that I would have learned from the appendix thing, right? And so you learn in short, in short stints, you do it for a while and then you have to recalibrate. It happens to all of us. You have to rethink it. You have to, so, you know, I think, I feel like I'm coming up on the time where I have to redo this again, Jenny, because I'm getting to that point. And that's the thing. We're all work, a work in progress. This is, this is over time that you, that you make these little changes, but hopefully You will learn from your mistakes. You will learn from the things that you did before, which is getting back to your book launches and the way that you've published the 3 different books. Could you talk a little bit about that and how intentional you've been about this book launch as opposed to in the beginning when you hadn't done it before and how would you know?

Well, my first book, Life After College, came out in 2011. I was working at Google right up until the book launch, like 2 weeks prior to the launch. So I was already burnt out. Before the book launched. I tell this story, I think in Pivot, where a friend asked me in Chipotle, "How are you doing?" And I just burst into tears. And I was just at the beginning. Ryan Holiday says in his book, Perennial Seller, the thing about being an author is you feel like you finish a marathon, which is writing the book, and then only to have someone walk you over to a new starting line of a new marathon. And that's promoting the book. That's the marketing piece. It's its own journey. So life after college, I was just a hot mess. And so with Pivot, I really decided that came out in 2016, that I'm going to market Pivot with magic and serendipity, and I'm going to trust the process, and I'm going to be delighted and surprised by whatever comes my way, but I'm not going to push the river, as the Zen saying goes. And I really took that same tack with Free Time, where I had a team, Stephanie Houston, helped spearhead, and Courtney Kenny was really tremendously helpful. So we assembled this pop-up delightfully tiny team. The theme of our launch was fun. So for everything from the COVID that has confetti on it is meant to be delightful and fun. We only did fun things. We only— they even— I'm not on social media, but Stephanie and her cousin Haley, they did a transparent takeover. So I didn't want them to post and pretend that they were me, but Stephanie loves social media. So she authentically posted on my accounts as her. And in fact, a lot of my friends from all different parts of my network were really happy to see those posts and know what was going on. Meanwhile, I didn't have to do it, but it still felt in integrity because she was signing them with her name. So that was kind of cool because it enabled us to have fun, to try something new, and yet I didn't have to dive back into the infinite scroll, right?

It's such an interesting idea to, to have a theme, you know, an intention for the launch. Here is what the theme is for this. And to have everybody on board, that's such a really nice way of thinking about it because launch is any kind of launch, but book launch especially can really take over your life, your soul, your energy, everything that you do. You mentioned that you don't do social media. Is that a way for you to sort of simplify your life and protect your time? Or what's your thought on that?

Yeah, absolutely. Everything we've talked about, time, energy, attention, I found that when I would sign off of any of those apps, I felt worse, not better. I felt that my attention was being splintered and fragmented. So I was always thinking of small little quips to post, and then I was feeling pressure or guilt if I didn't respond to all the comments. I felt like a jerk if I would post and then, oh, I don't read comments. Okay, but then it's this one-sided soapbox I'm standing on. And then 3, I felt that I was overwhelmed. I'm, I'm deep introvert, and I'm already most of the time overwhelmed by feeling guilty, like I'm not keeping up with my family, my close friends, and my inboxes— just my main email. And the fact is, every time there's a new social media app, there's a new inbox that comes with it. So Twitter, I was on in early days. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram— I can't keep up with that and create deep work that has like the most original thinking I'm capable of. So by me not being on there, I just keep my mind more quiet. I have less guilt. I have less compare and despair of just coveting things that other people have.

Yeah.

Um, that really gets triggered in me when I'm on those apps. And, um, I'm sure I'm missing out on some things and some would argue like platform size and reach and impact, but I also know myself and if I burn out trying to keep up with all that, I won't, I won't have the two podcasts and the two newsletters that I do. So I've just decided those are my main channels of how I communicate. I do believe it's important that everybody, everybody who wants to build a platform have some form of what I call public original thinking. It's good to think out loud in small bits over time, as awkward as you feel, as imperfect as those things are, hit publish on a regular basis. But I just feel at this point, that's where you can find me. And if I'm not in the other places, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I would stop doing all of it if I had to be everywhere.

Well, it is good to be able to prioritize. And that's something that I've always admired about you is that you are heads down on the thing that really matters and looking towards, hey, this is for this. I'm doing this because of that. And it's very strategic and not everybody can do it. It's a skill that you build over time. Right? Are very good at project management, obviously you're great at productivity and making lists and all the things that I love too. But let's talk about that, like coming up with the— being able to prioritize. I mean, I know we talked about this in the beginning a little bit, but it's really hard for people. It's one of the questions that I get the most. And speaking of questions, if anybody has any questions out there, leave them in the chat boxes below and we'll get to them at the end. But I just, I really want to dig in on the prioritizing because for me, when I think Jenny Blake, I think like clarity. I feel like you're always so clear. Yeah.

Wow. Well, I'm honored to hear that because I was afraid you were gonna say hermit, recluse, horribly unresponsive, you know. Uh, that's what I would say is that— so that clarity, yes, clarity is good. Less is more is really helpful because again, just the splintered, fractured death by a thousand cuts of trying to put your attention in too many places is, um, harder to feel accomplished at any one thing, I think, personally. And then what trade-offs are you willing to make? So I will tell you that when I was writing any of my books— Pivot, Free Time— I truly was a hermit. Like, I was a bad friend. I was bad at email. I'm not going to say bad friend. I do the best I can. But I was bad at email. I would sometimes take 3 weeks to respond, and in one case, I respond— I replied 2 years later to the day. And I said I'm so sorry I missed this the first time around, but wanted to pop in and say hi. And that was the trade-off I was willing to make. I was willing to be— I say I put the snail back into email. Um, I was willing to be slow in order to write a book. And you can work around that. Like, if you have a really strong team— I know plenty of people who have someone in their email, and the person like me doesn't even read anything. The person, their helper, is just in there responding. So there are ways to go about it where you necessarily have to compromise on response time, but then you need a right-hand person who's in there all the time. And, um, so I think it's just trade-offs. What trade-offs are you willing to make? Are you willing to spend on team in order to free up that part of your time? And just being willing to, I, I'm like, there, there's gonna be some FOMO, you know, if you're prioritizing and you want to have clarity and get one really big thing done, you will have some FOMO that you're not in all the places, or you can't say yes to all the invites during that window. But for me, the thing that I can say, if I die tomorrow, I'll be okay, is because I've written the books. It's the books and the podcast. Those are the things I'm most proud of. And, um, that's what I think. If you can get clear on that, like, what are the— what are the things that you will be the most proud to say that you did in your life and that you created, then it does put some perspective onto some of the the smaller stuff. Again, the shiny shit.

Totally. Yes, for sure. We have a question from Rachel. Let's, let's take this. Any best practices to keep your focus— keep you focused on your writing? Any habits that have helped you to actually follow through?

Yeah, well, um, I don't write my books in a linear way. I like— I organized this last one in Notion, and I have a few Looms in the Author Toolkit on this. That's That's— we'll put the link in the chat or somewhere. It's freetime.com/author. So I don't write in a linear way. I find that really stifling. Like, if I had to just open a Google Doc and just write from the start of the book all the way till I was done, 30 or 50,000 words, I wouldn't be able to do it. So I think in a really nonlinear way, everything is the length of a blog post, even 500 words. My friend MBS and I did a 30-day challenge where we each had to write 100 words a day and just send each other a check mark in Marco Polo. Hmm. And that was so cool because 100 words is about 7 sentences, as he pointed out. And I could sometimes just voice dictate a voice memo on my phone into a little Notion card. I would have a Kanban-style book board. So I generally had— I knew with free time it was going to be mine time and team. And I just had cards. Like one little card would say, the floor is lava. That's a metaphor for working on the process, not just in the task. If you're only working in the task, like in your email inbox, you're the floor, you're standing in the lava. How can you build the furniture that you hop to? Okay, well, that's just a little 500-word essay. And then over time, I would move those cards around and I then realized, okay, those three parts, my time and team, it's not that active. How do I create a process? What's the transformation? Okay, and then so you— it's a big puzzle that you're solving, and I know people did more puzzles than ever during the pandemic.

Yes, true.

If you think of it like a big puzzle, and within that I made sure the chapters were really short. You're only ever writing 500 words, like a short little blog post at a time, and then it's just tying it all together. So that, that was helpful for me to not have too much writer's block. And I take a page from Nassim Taleb, who If you're bored as the author, then the reader is going to be bored. So stop, stop writing that stuff.

Don't do it.

You're not excited to write it, chuck it.

Yes. Well, that's, that's great advice. And the website there is itsfreetime.com/author. Yes. Uh, and accountability. Ryan on LinkedIn is saying accountability in the, in the writing process must be a powerful tool. It is. I mean, it's a powerful tool in any process, I feel like, you know. And, and I'm really good— I feel like I am very good at accountability for myself. Like, I will get things done, I will do it. But even those those of us who are predisposed to be doing things feel like we need a push. Every Friday I have a writing partner and I did that for all of my books. They were different people, but I had a different writing partner for each of my books. And I'm working on fiction now, which is totally different. And so every Friday I meet with my writing partner and she's working on something completely different. We say, "Hello, how's it going? How was your week? Whatever. Okay, great. Let's do our writing." It's, it's a great way because I show up even when I don't want to, and, and that is— it, it's important because I don't want to let her down, you know.

I love that, and I love that you're doing fiction. How brave. It's so fun. I, um, my friend and I also had— my friend Sarah and I, we call it Author Support Group, ASG. We would collect in a Google Doc all the questions where we were unsure about what we were writing, like, is this going to be controversial, or is this confusing, what should I call this little section, which headline do you like better, A or B? And we would just collect them, schedule an ASG, get on the phone and review each other's section of the Google Doc. And that was also really helpful for getting—

and nice to get it out of your head, you know, get it out of your head, get it down on paper, say it out loud, you know, talk about it with somebody. It's great. Jenny, I mean, I feel like we could talk forever, so thank you for being here. I want to, uh, direct everyone to your podcast because you have some great— obviously the book, that's number one. Sorry, back up. Number one, the book. Pick up the book, Free Time. You need some more free time in your life. Believe me, you need some Jenny Blake in your life. And then the podcast, of course, which you've been doing, many podcasts, you have two podcasts, but this one is specifically about this topic, Free Time with Jenny Blake. There is a code right there that you can make sure to grab. Also, the website is there, pod.link/freetime. And you do have a toolkit for this. For this book as well. Right. And so what, what will people get if they go, if they go here to this, to this QR code?

Yeah. Thank you for all these links. The toolkit's totally free. There's templates for all the stuff we've been talking about. So delegation, task tracker, if you want to, there's basically templates for every single thing I talk about in the book. It's all free. It's built in Notion. That's what I use now to organize my entire life and business.. So you can kind of see what that's all about. And, um, yeah, just truly it's packed with stuff and it's free. And the same thing with the Author Toolkit. It's like, I just can't stand to struggle with something and then think anyone else has to do the same, this long, slow, hard way. So wherever I can, I just create the resources and I'm more than happy to share them because I love setting your time free. Like, I love that everyone who's here, that's That's the dream that you guys—

you've saved me a lot of time through the years. So thank you.

You have.

Yeah. And you mentioned Notion before I let you go. I've heard other people say that they like it. What do you love about it? Why should we try it?

Love. Obsessed. As soon as I moved to Notion and I did create a full free time operations dashboard. So it's already done for you if any of you want to implement this for your business. Notion, as soon as I moved over and really got the hang of it, that replaced Google Docs, Sheets, Airtable, Asana, and Evernote and more. I was able to stop using all these frankenstring of services. Notion is my entire— Tiago Forte calls it a second brain, but for work and personal life, every bit of data is in one place. It's searchable, it's interlinkable, and it's customizable. So the way you can navigate within the information, because ideally no piece of information lives is only in your mind.

Sure.

That allows it, makes it easier to delegate, makes it easier to bring people on, makes it easier to automate things, find things what you need. I even track doctor's appointments, vet appointments, grooming appointments for the dog. Like everything goes in Notion so that I always know where to find everything. And I even use it for idea collection buckets. So as I find little clips of inspiration that I curate as I encounter articles, podcasts, and so on. I have a database, like a synthesis, where I collect all that, and then I can very easily create different views for myself of what I— where I might want to put that stuff.

Wow. All right, well, I'm sold. I'm going to check it out because I, I had been on my list for a while to look at, and then I never did. But now, you know, now that you're saying it, I got to check it out. And wow, um, Ryan loves your, your Franken-string. Uh, he loves Franken-string. He thinks that that's very funny. I agree.

Yeah, because that's what we do, and then we We chase all the shiny software objects and we're still no better off. So yeah, the dashboard is that if you go to itsfreetime.com/dashboard, that I will say that it's, that one's paid. It's not free, but I put 2 and a half years, almost 3 into building out every single nuanced detail so that again, you don't have to do it from scratch because it's very intimidating.

Yes.

When you sign up for Notion, it's just a blank page and that is super intimidating and there is a big learning curve. When it's like, oh, the possibilities are endless.

Sure, what should I do with this? What could I— I mean, that's probably why I didn't do it. I was like, oh gosh, there's too much that I can do here, forget it. You know, even though I could figure it out, I'm not going to right now. So I appreciate you doing the work ahead for all of us. You got it.

You know, that's what I love to do. Yeah.

And good luck with the, with the rest of the book launch. I know the book has been out for a while, but everyone watching should pick up a copy and definitely listen to your podcast. And to be continued. Thank you so much for being here.

Can't wait. Yeah, thank you for having me, Paula, and big thanks to everybody who's here watching and listening.

Yes, for sure. And to those of you, you know, I have a freebie too. I mean, you know, I would love for you to get your list-making together over there, even if you are a list-maker. I have a list-making starter kit for you, which has all kinds of templates and things like that to help you to be more productive and less stressed. That is the whole name of the game here, right? So if you go to paularizzo.com/list, you can check that out. And thank you for watching. If you have more questions, leave them below. We'll be continuing to check it out, even if this is the replay for you. So thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.