Welcome to The Bureau Briefing, our community podcast. Be sure to find us on iTunes or Google Play!
Dr. Sherry Walling
ZenFounder
In this episode, Dr. Walling and Carl talk about the mental challenges of being stuck at home and balancing work, family, and personal time. Lots of great questions from Bureau members as well, covering the dangers of remote work for workaholics, how to deal with slowdowns in new business, and manging with the fear of losing your livelihood.
You can also watch the live video of this episode here: https://youtu.be/5TyGJP76W_E
Carl:
Hey everyone. It is Carl coming to you live from my backyard. You'll probably hear birds chirping, lawnmowers, and possibly a dog barking because that's what podcasting is in the age of COVID 19. I hope everyone is doing well.
Carl:
I want to take a minute to thank those that are helping us through this ridiculous time that we're all facing. MailChimp, not only an amazing marketing platform, but an amazing partner to the Bureau. Thank you so much. InVision, not only are you the top digital product design platform, but the content that you've been putting out to help everyone as we go through working from home and working remotely, top notch. Thank you for that. I also want to welcome our newest sponsor, Platform.sh. They are the fastest way to build modern web apps. You'll hear a lot more about them in the weeks ahead. If you have an opportunity and you're not already a member, please take a look at Bureaumembership.com and see some of the great stuff we've got going on for you.
Carl:
In a quick shout out to everybody who's been sending me messages asking when the podcast was going to be back, I appreciate it so much and I'm sorry that we took it offline for a while, but all the episodes were so positive and upbeat, it felt totally tone deaf to put them out. But today, we've got an amazing episode for you with a Bureau favorite, Dr. Sherry Walling coming back to talk with us and take our questions about how we can get to some sense of stability in a world that just seems to be shaking left and right. Let's listen in on that conversation, and thank you so much for being back with the Bureau Briefing.
Carl:
Sherry, this may be an odd question to ask you. As a psychologist, how are you doing?
Dr. Walling:
Good question. Oh my gosh. This is where I start crying. No, I have good days and bad days like everyone else. In my work because I do a lot of being present and showing up for other people in their journeys, all of that work has become, I think, a little bit heavier because the people I care for are working with heavier things. Like many other people, I'm trying to do my work. Now, woo hoo, homeschool my three children. There are days when I'm like, "What happened to my life?" But generally speaking, I'm finding ways to cope relatively well and so I'd say good days and bad days.
Carl:
Well, there you go. For everybody who doesn't know, Sherry is one of the co-founders of Zen Founder, which I believe you put together after helping people and realizing you needed a place to collect everyone so they could help each other as well. You specialize in entrepreneurs and I think I read somewhere 72% of entrepreneurs struggle with their mental health. What does that number go up to now?
Dr. Walling:
105%.
Carl:
105%.
Dr. Walling:
All the things, everyone.
Carl:
There you go. Well, I am curious. I know that you do aerial yoga. That's one of the things. I've been trying to figure out everybody and how they do their different stuff to take care of themselves. Have you been able to do that while you're at home?
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. I practice aerial yoga and then kind of a level up, which is really circus oriented aerial sling.
Carl:
That's so awesome.
Dr. Walling:
Which is my deep love and really, you're right, the way that I work on my own mental health stuff is through this really creative, really physical expression. I do have a small rig in my home, so I can do some yoga ish stuff, but I can't do my big fancy circus tricks because I just don't have the right set up to do it safely. So I am missing that, but glad to have something I can do in my home at least.
Carl:
I look forward to when you can do your big circus tricks again.
Dr. Walling:
Woo-hoo. Me too.
Carl:
That'll be great. Well, as we always do when we have you on the show, I like to start off by having my personal therapy session.
Dr. Walling:
All right.
Carl:
I hope that's okay.
Dr. Walling:
We'll just dial in.
Carl:
I'm going to do it. I know I've heard this from a lot of other people too. I can't find my focus. It has been such a challenge, and my family is home and that's been great. My oldest daughter is taking remote dance classes from [Geoffrey 00:04:56]. My youngest has got her own thing going on social so she's recording all the time. My wife has got a room. I'm in the backyard. It's this thing where we're trying to give each other space, but at the same time, I just find myself clicking from one tab to another on my browser. I'm replying to emails and I'm doing things. I'm going through the motions, but how do we find our focus right now when all this craziness is going on?
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. I think first we have to be really compassionate with how many things we're working with now that we weren't working with six weeks ago or certainly eight weeks ago. The sense in which the world is in this big crisis and we're keeping tabs on that. We're thinking about our own health and wellbeing. We're thinking about the health and wellbeing of people that we love. In some ways, deep focus is probably not a super reasonable expectation right now. I know that that's a little bit contrary to some of my brothers and sisters in the marketing world who are like, "Hey, pivot your business right now. I've got the five week course to help you do it." The reality is that a lot of our bandwidth is taken up by family things and world things and health things. So I just really encourage people to kind of dial back your expectations and choose one or two things a day that you can feel good about having accomplished and not expect the same level of productivity that you may have had previous to this.
Carl:
Well, you wrote an amazing book, the The Entrepreneur's Guide to Keeping Your Shit Together. It has been a godsend over the past five weeks. But the section I keep finding myself reading is about keeping the haters in my head quiet. How can I give myself permission to not be okay? That's been the toughest thing because running and organization and trying to be part of a family, I don't want to say I run the family. We kind of collectively try to get it moving in the right direction. I know everybody's going through this, but logically, I can see it, but my brain just won't allow me to be okay with the effort I'm putting forth.
Dr. Walling:
I mean, that's okay. It's okay. Hey, I'm present to the people in my household. I'm taking care of the people that I work with. I'm listening. I'm showing up. I'm doing a little work here and there. Let's define what's okay.
Carl:
Right. My running has gone through the roof. I'm at like 35 plus miles a week now.
Dr. Walling:
Amazing.
Carl:
Never been there before, which has helped to balance the two or three glasses of beer at night to do all that kind of stuff.
Dr. Walling:
We're all on the COVID plan.
Carl:
We are on the COVID plan. I know you and I were joking about that before, that COVID 19 is about the weight that you gain. But what are some of the things you're hearing from the people you talk with? What are some the common challenges that people are going through?
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. I think that sense of feeling really fragmented, like you're pulled in lots of different directions at one time. I think people are kind of feeling like they're failing at everything a little bit. Nobody's awesome at their work right now. Nobody's awesomely creative. Nobody's an awesome parent. No one's an awesome partner. Everyone is kind of like, well I'm at 30% capacity, which for you and I and for the people that we serve, for these high performing, ambitious folks, that feels really crappy. So I think that the hater in your head is really loud right now because it's like, "You're not doing this well, and you're not doing that well. You should be doing this better." Ugh. That noise is really, really exhausting for people.
Carl:
It is.
Dr. Walling:
That's one of the main things I'm hearing.
Carl:
Yeah. I'm not surprised. Especially depending on what your role is where you work and a lot of people are having furloughs which I just think is the funniest word. And lay offs and this sort of stuff. Some of the conversations we had at the Bureau with a couple of people that weren't going to be able to be with the team for a while, we talked about it like going into a deep freeze while we found a new world. Like I was going to wake everybody up once we got over there and we'd figure it out. The amazing understanding everybody had, they were like, "You didn't screw up the company. You didn't do anything wrong. It's a pandemic, for god's sake."
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. Talk about things that are absolutely outside of your control. I mean I think that's another thing that a lot of entrepreneurs are really carrying is the sense that as they're having to make adjustments in their staff, the guilt and the weight of that when, I mean wow, really let's talk about things that are so far out of the scope of your control. You can run an excellent business that's really careful and thoughtful and still need to make some adjustments right now. I think giving yourself the grace to say, "Hey, this really is not what I would've chosen and that's outside of my control." And be okay with the existential crisis of that.
Carl:
Yeah. We did get some questions in ahead of time. I wanted to go ahead and go with those. They're all anonymous, which is why they came in ahead of time. But I'm just going to pick the ones I like. What do you think?
Dr. Walling:
Cool. I think that's your prerogative.
Carl:
I'm going to take control. Life feels like a marathon of sprints right now. How do I feel normal again? It's just a simple question. Yeah. Obviously time is so weird right now. I think that's what they're trying to get at is how do I get to this sense of normalcy just in terms of my day?
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. I don't know about the word normal right now. I mean people say, "This is the new normal," or, "When we get back to normal." I mean, I don't know.
Carl:
I think normal is gone.
Dr. Walling:
I think the thing though that is possible for all of us is to feel grounded and present in our own bodies and in the moments of the day where it feels like, "Whoa, I am riding these giant waves and I don't know what's going on or what's coming or how long this is going to last or where my emotions are or how my brain works anymore." Just like dial down, sit on the floor, lay on the floor, feel your body in space. Take some deep breaths. I mean I'm being a little bit playful, but really what does it feel to be fully present body and just say, "Hey, here I am in this moment. I'm sitting with my dog. I'm sitting on my grass. I'm sitting in front of my computer. And I'm here, and this is what I'm doing and I'm doing my best." That's the best version of normal that I can come up with right now.
Carl:
Right. Go ahead.
Dr. Walling:
I was just going to say, and it's really, I think, quite anchored to being in your body and not in the hamster wheel situation up here in your head.
Carl:
That is so crazy. I use Headspace, I know a lot of people do. Meditation has been hit or miss for me lately. I can get like five minutes in and be like, "Nope. It's not happening." But I think one of the things in Headspace that was amazing to me was this idea that thoughts are cars on a highway and you can choose if you get in or not.
Dr. Walling:
Sure.
Carl:
That's been kind of my thing is when I find myself going down that path, I'm just like, "You know what? No." I see you-
Dr. Walling:
Don't get in the creepy Uber.
Carl:
You're real. I'm just going to let it go. Yeah, because how many people have been in the backseat of that thing without gloves on? That's all I'm going to say.
Dr. Walling:
Right. Don't get in the creepy Uber.
Carl:
I'm not going to get in there. Not at all. Journaling is a big thing for me as well. It's been funny to just go back a few days and see the difference in my mindset and realize... I actually wrote this the other day, and I don't know if I'll get in trouble because I'm live streaming this on YouTube. But the end of a post, I wrote, "Happiness is a fucking choice!" I swear, if it had been a pencil, I'd have broken off the lead.
Dr. Walling:
Bam.
Carl:
It was so crazy. Let's see. Another question here. I feel like I've kept my work life and my family life in pretty good shape. But I've put on about 10 pounds in the past few weeks, and I feel like crap. I don't know if that was just a confession. I don't know if there was a story there.
Dr. Walling:
Well, I mean we can focus on the negative there, which we can also talk about the body stuff. But you've kept two out of three really, really important categories running.
Carl:
Pretty good.
Dr. Walling:
So I think that's probably like a net win if you feel like your work is really solid and your family life is great.
Carl:
Yeah.
Dr. Walling:
That's amazing, so pat yourself on the back there. I would say about the weight gain, that's the reality for lots of us right now and I think especially if you're nailing your work life, that may mean you're in front of screen a lot. Just looking for little ways to make adjustments where as part of connecting with your family, you can be moving. Or as part of engaging with work life, you can take some calls where you're walking. Just little adjustments. Don't be super, super critical of what's kind of not thriving because so much is thriving. You can raise the part of you that's not thriving to align better with what's working well.
Carl:
I think that's great advice. I was talking with a friend the other night. We were having a virtual glass of wine because we don't want to drink alone. He actually said, "You know what? I'm just going to be okay with no worrying about anything else except for my family and what I'm doing at work right now. I'm going to give myself time after we get through whatever this is to get back in shape." I was like, "Can you do that? Is that allowed?"
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. We do it all the time. I mean you've probably seen the meme where it's like, you can have a great body, you can have a great career, you can have nice kids, you can have a sex relationship with your partner, you can this and you can have that. Then it says at the bottom, it's like, "Pick three." That's the reality for what most of us do do in our lives where we are always prioritizing one thing over the other. This is condensing life and making those choices more complicated, but maybe you say, "Okay, I need to take better care of my body right now." So let the kitchen go. Just do something that you're like, "I'm deciding not to worry about this so that I can worry about that." That's an okay choice too. No one's going to see the inside of your house. Just put on one of those funny Zoom backgrounds and people won't know.
Carl:
There you go. Yeah. My favorite is when people have filmed themselves interrupting themselves during the meeting now. That's just like...
Dr. Walling:
It's really meta.
Carl:
Let's be creative. Let's see. Yeah, this question. Our company is really benefiting from the pandemic and I feel horrible. I don't want to share how we're doing. Everybody keeps saying it's okay to not be okay. But is it okay to be okay?
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. It totally is okay to thrive. I mean honestly I know a number of companies. I work with a number of companies who, again, through no fault of their own, are absolutely thriving. I think there's the humility of realizing, hey, we just happened to be the right business with the right model at the right moment and people really need our services. I think there's a way to honor your own success, honor the success of your team, to celebrate it quietly with some sensitivity to people around you, with some humility. Then make all the piles of money that you can and then shop at all of your friends' businesses and just spread that money around.
Carl:
There you go. Yeah.
Dr. Walling:
Again, I hope people do just create some thoughtful private space to celebrate. But you should celebrate if you're doing well. It's okay.
Carl:
Yeah, and you might have the opportunity to hire some of the other people, right?
Dr. Walling:
Totally. Yes.
Carl:
You might be able to bring on their business or whatever. So I think that's a great idea. Yeah. Think about how you're going to use some of that money to make other people okay.
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. To improve your community. Yeah.
Carl:
Yeah. To everybody listening live, we've got a few more questions here but we'd love to get to your questions. So feel free to put it in the Q&A or you can also just raise your hand if you want in the chat. I know a few of you. I might just call on you. So there. Figure that out, scientist. Okay. This one is-
Dr. Walling:
Carl takes control.
Carl:
Yeah. This is all I have. I can't even say my name. Tarl. Carl. Yeah. The haters will be on that one. Yeah. Well done, podcast boy.
Dr. Walling:
You're all good.
Carl:
Okay. This one, I don't know if there's an answer, but I love it. Is everybody drinking more?
Dr. Walling:
Yes.
Carl:
I find I can't get to sleep without two or three glasses of wine every single night.
Dr. Walling:
Everyone is drinking more.
Carl:
Okay. There you go.
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. I mean in all seriousness, it's going to maybe get to be a problem for some of us because I think it's so easy when you've been slogging through the day and the one easily accessible way to modulate your inner state is alcohol and it's right there and it's totally socially acceptable and lots of jokes are going around about it. But over time, it certainly can become problematic. When you start to feel like I can't sleep without that third glass of wine or the second bourbon or whatever, without judgment or shame, I might just say, "Hey, maybe do an experiment with moderating your drinking to where it's a Friday night, Saturday night thing." Or capping it at one glass.
Carl:
There you go.
Dr. Walling:
Experimenting, exercise. There's lots of other sleep strategies, but I do think we should probably be pretty mindful of alcohol as a collective me, myself included.
Carl:
Well, and it's interesting because you watch these waves of us connecting online. That first wave was the virtual happy hours.
Dr. Walling:
Sure.
Carl:
I went to three back to back to back. Not a good plan. I was over served at the second one. Heavily over served. I'm still talking with the management about it.
Dr. Walling:
It's like your frat boy days in college.
Carl:
Right? Yeah. Now people are starting to do coffee and conversation. You're already to see people adjust from what that was. But I am curious, what do you think about Zoom fatigue? What do you think about where we're trying to connect through video and a lot of people are doing it? Even what used to be a phone call. Like you were saying, take a phone call and a walk. Do you have any insights into why this is so exhausting?
Dr. Walling:
Well, I think on one level, you get a call and you fidget with your mic and you fidget with your lighting and your fidget with your thing. You can't just show up. I'll tell you the truth. This morning, I met my girlfriend in a parking lot and she sat in the driver's seat of her car and I sat in the driver's seat of my car. We yelled back and forth while I drank my coffee and she drank her coffee. Because I was like, "I need to see a human in three dimensions that I don't live in."
Carl:
Yeah.
Dr. Walling:
We're socially distancing and we're careful and whatnot, but good lord, I just want to see a human. The Zoom fatigue thing is real. The screen thing is tiring.
Carl:
Yeah, it's exhausting. I did the same thing two days ago. A friend of mine I hadn't seen in a while who lives in another part of town said, "I'm picking up chicken schwarma wraps, and I'm going to be at this park. If you want to meet at this park." So we did and we sat at different tables and we ate and we talked to each other and we laughed. And it was great. We did kind of the virtual hug or distance hug, which I'm sure anybody else in the park, which we didn't see anybody, would've been like, "What the hell are they on?" Look at them over there trying to do a thing. Oh man.
Carl:
Okay. Here's another question here. Then I see we've got one from Ivy in the Q&A. That's great. So much uncertainty right now. It literally feels like it's killing me. How do I figure out what's going to happen next?
Dr. Walling:
If you don't have a crystal ball.
Carl:
Yeah.
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. I think it's helpful to really dial in on what is controllable to you. That's not as much as we probably wish, but to some extent, controlling your body, controlling the space in which you live, controlling the extent to which you're reaching out to other people. You can be an active agent in the world without knowing what's going to happen because none of us do. I mean even on a good day without a pandemic, our predictions are subject to error. Now the variables, there are way more of them and they're fluctuating wildly. So the predictability of the world is less than ever. I think to some extent, we have to get more comfortable with that because we never really could control or predict what was going to happen anyway. We just sort of had less... Well, we had a little bit happier of a delusion about it.
Carl:
Yeah. We were totally into that illusion.
Dr. Walling:
Now all our delusions are being stripped away.
Carl:
Yeah. Now we're seeing what's really there. I appreciate the uncertainty side to that question because I think that's a big part of... For me personally, I mean that's the big part of the struggle is I'm charging down a path and I'm like, "Does this matter?" Or, "Where can I focus?" To your point, I think that's great. Our sphere of influence may be the size it always was, it just feels so much smaller right now. But we can focus on those things that we know matter. Which generally is going to be the people that are close to us I would imagine, and we can help them.
Dr. Walling:
We're going to assess risk differently.
Carl:
Yeah.
Dr. Walling:
I just want to reaffirm, it's okay not to know. It doesn't feel comfortable, but the pressure to know is just not helpful or possible.
Carl:
Yeah.
Dr. Walling:
Yeah.
Carl:
This question actually got texted to me. On top of everything else, I got laid off last week. I'm struggling to figure out my purpose. I feel like I'm just floating.
Dr. Walling:
Yeah.
Carl:
I know. It's such a tough time for everybody.
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. It's so heavy. I think when I hear something like that, I want to say be super gentle and get back to basics. Even thinking about what kinds of things brought you joy when you were a kiddo. Was it building with Legos? Was it art? Was it writing? Let yourself do some of those very basic joy giving things and give yourself a couple weeks before trying to plot your next move. I know that sounds crazy. I know it's supposed to be like, get back on the horse. But recenter, figure out what your deal is right now.
Carl:
That's amazing.
Dr. Walling:
Let yourself have a little rest.
Carl:
I mean that's true. I've thought about that from a business perspective, but it's true from a personal perspective as well. There's no better time to reinvent who you want to be moving forward. Right?
Dr. Walling:
Yeah because everything is-
Carl:
Two weeks sounds amazing.
Dr. Walling:
The deck of cards just got thrown up in the air.
Carl:
There you go.
Dr. Walling:
There's not a lot of order to the universe anymore.
Carl:
All right, great. Well, Ivy had a question here. Ivy, I'm going to allow you to talk. Zoom is giving me so much control.
Dr. Walling:
Carl control man.
Carl:
I know. There you go, Ivy. Talking is permitted. Go ahead and ask your question.
Ivy Hastings:
Hi. Yeah. I have an employee who has workaholic tendencies. We all used to go in the office and she would kind of take her time commuting home to have that transition from work to being off work and mentally. Now that she's working from home, she's having a really hard time even though she has an office space. She leaves that office space on time and goes on to the rest of her evening. But she's really having a hard time mentally shutting off from work. I know most entrepreneurs and business owners have that same problem where we're taking work home for sure. Any advice on what she might be able to do in her day?
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. There are sort of two things happening in my head at once. One is it'd be an interesting conversation to try to do a deep dive into what she's holding onto and why. We're sort of playing with this theme of control a little bit today, but I think sometimes our work can feel more controllable than the rest of the world and so there's a tendency to overemphasize that because it feels like, hey, I can do something about this. I'd be curious about what is pulling her and why. The other thing though more practically is I think as you identify this transitional period of commuting home from the office used to be important to her, there may be some other rituals that she can start to implement that will help her shift from one part of her identity as a professional to the other part of her identity, which is as a private person or a family member.
Dr. Walling:
If you think of good old Mr. Rogers, he had his sport coat and then he would take it off and put on his cardigan. He had his brown leather loafers and he would take them off and put on his house slippers. Even dressing for work and then changing or thinking about shifting, obviously she's got this office space, which is perfect. That's the work space. Nothing else happens there except work. Then the transition to the rest of the home. So getting really creative with how you artificially move from office to home can be helpful, I think, for lots of entrepreneurs, especially folks that work at home.
Ivy Hastings:
Thank you. That's really helpful. I love the Mr. Rogers analogy. I'm going to tell her that. I think that will be helpful for her and for me.
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. I really do like the aspect of getting dressed and then changing. So wearing your nice work clothes and then shifting into your jammy pants, yoga clothes, whatever your off time outfit might be.
Carl:
That's great. Thank you, Ivy.
Ivy Hastings:
Thank you.
Carl:
All right. We have an anonymous question that came in. How do we stop apologizing for not being our best selves right now?
Dr. Walling:
Just stop. I mean you make it the tagline in your email, which I probably should. It should just say, "Dear World, I am slow to respond to email. I'm running three to five minutes late for everything." Because inevitably, anytime there's a gap in my meeting schedule, some child comes running into my office with some child emergency. I think it's helpful to think about our language around world and just to say, "Hey, thanks for being patient with me. Thank you for waiting for me. Thank you for understanding that I'm juggling lots of things right now. Thanks for being gracious." Whatever it is, make it a "thank you" instead of an "I'm sorry". I think that will help us all stop feeling shamed about the fact that there's just a lot we can't control that happening around us right now.
Carl:
Wow, that's really powerful. I swear I've started 100 emails with, "I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to you." Just the idea of saying, "Thank you for your patience." Just that little shift does really make a little bit of difference because it's praising them versus-
Dr. Walling:
Shaming me.
Carl:
Self-deprecating. Yes, shaming me. Don't you know that late shaming is not acceptable anymore? Okay.
Dr. Walling:
Yeah.
Carl:
Let's see. Ah, Ben Kalkman. Hey, Ben. Let's put Ben live here. He has got a question for Dr. Sherry Walling. Go ahead, Ben.
Ben Kalkman:
This is cool. My first therapy session. I love it.
Dr. Walling:
Hey, Ben.
Ben Kalkman:
At least officially live. Okay. Here's my question. There's a lot of talk right now, noise at least, about mergers and selling and closing down. Even putting it out, I think David Baker is doing something on this next week. My question is this. All that noise and uncertainty really piles up on me and sometimes I feel like I'm trapped by this thing I've created, this business that has evolved. My question is, what's a good strategy to manage that stress? I don't have business partners. I've got a really large family, so I don't want to put this on my wife. So I kind of feel like I'm on my own island right now. What is a good way to kind of deal with that? You might have some ideas. That's what I was hoping for.
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. Hey, thanks for the question. I think as much as possible, not knowing your background, but I think as much as possible, if you can write down a series of well thought through if then statements. If revenue drops below this level, then I need to look at layoffs. Or if this happens in my business, then it may be a good time to consider selling. I guess the point is try to write down the principles for making those decisions that is grounded and centered for you so that every time you get a news clip or a piece of information or a headline or a story from someone else, you don't have to go through the same thought process over and over and over again, which is of course exhausting. Write down for yourself when it might be a good idea for you to make a move independent of what's happening with all of these other folks.
Carl:
That sound good, Ben?
Ben Kalkman:
Yep. I'll give it a try.
Dr. Walling:
Does that make sense? I think another thing is it's a great time to be in a mastermind to get a couple of other business owners who have similar kinds of situations who are trustworthy. It's a great time to just spin up a couple of those relationships to talk through some of this stuff with. I'm sure there are other people in the Bureau to gather a little crew around you.
Ben Kalkman:
Cool. Thank you.
Carl:
Yeah. That's great advice. All right. Let's see. I'm learning to drive my Zoom. I'm doing well. All right. We have another anonymous question that just came in. Any advice on how to try to get focus back with things that are not work related? I feel like there's so much effort to stay focused at work that the things that used to be some brain downtime, reading, Netflix, et cetera, I can't really focus on. Which makes it feel like there's only work, worrying about job security, et cetera, taking care of the family and no downtime from these concerns.
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. I mean I think we have to think about what kind of mental capacity we have at the end of the day. If you have a business that requires a lot of interpersonal interaction or requires a lot of creativity, requires a lot of screen time, maybe those muscles are sort of fatigued at the end of the day. So the you want to think, okay, what other parts of me might have some bandwidth? One of the things I know a lot of people are doing right now is a lot of baking or making bread.
Carl:
So much bread.
Dr. Walling:
Which is a great thing to do with your family and also just for most of us, a really different set of skills than the kinds of brain muscles, to just speak in a highly technological way, the kinds of brain muscles that we're using in our day job. I think it's also okay to just sort of wonder, hey, what do I have energy for? A walk around the block, play with Play-Doh, do some drawing. Open up the range of activities that may previously have been helpful or soothing to you and see if it's not time to maybe return to an earlier form of play from an earlier time in your life or just a different creative strategy.
Carl:
Yeah. I think that's great. For me, I went back to watching television. I quit watching television for a long time and Ozark makes me feel great about me because I'm not in the shit show.
Dr. Walling:
There you go. There you go.
Carl:
The catharsis of something horrible. But you watch Breaking Bad, you're fine. You're going to be good.
Dr. Walling:
Your family is totally normal.
Carl:
Yep. I love this. It was anonymous. All the cookies all the time. Because now we know who stole the cookies. It was anonymous. Let's see. All right. Another anonymous question. Is it normal to have a few days of productivity followed by one or two days of struggle? How can I find better balance? Man, I have experienced that as well.
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. I think that's super normal. That might be good balance. Again, I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but right now, that might be a really good balance for you. On the days that you feel really focused, man, double down. Maybe work a little longer. Protect that time. On the days that you're just like, huh, I'm not feeling it today, I would say as much as is reasonable, don't fight it. Check in with your email, do the bare minimum, work for three hours, go for a long walk. Have a nice lunch. I mean just listen to your own body and your own mind and your own heart and what you have energy for and try not to be forceful on the days that you just don't have it.
Carl:
Yeah. I think that's great. Two days ago, I was working on a proposal and I closed my laptop and got in my car and just drove for a while. I was like, I just can't do this right now. I don't know why. I ended up at this little park and sitting by the water and opened my laptop and I wrote the proposal. I just had to give myself that distance and get out of a room. Which I know not everybody can do right now.
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. But in normal times, you might go to a coffee shop or you might go to your office.
Carl:
Exactly.
Dr. Walling:
Again, changing the setting is super helpful. Maybe it means working in the basement instead of the living room or maybe it means working outside for a little while. So mix up the setting is helpful.
Carl:
All right. We've got another anonymous question. How do I stay motivated with almost no attention from my superior? I do best with communication.
Dr. Walling:
Wouldn't that be a good thing to tell them?
Carl:
That's valid.
Dr. Walling:
It is valid because most of us are used to having... If we work in close knit teams, we're used to having a tight feedback loop around our work. Now that we're suddenly distributed depending on what the situation was before, we're all reconstituting what the feedback loop looks like. Normally, I do something, I get feedback from someone else, I make an adjustment. There's this iterative process. If that's something that's really helpful to you and it's not happening, I think that's a really great piece of feedback and reasonable thing to request. Also, thinking about how you can maybe loop in peers or other people who might at least be more available for some more check ins so you don't feel like you're working in a vacuum. Because I think, yeah, it's certainly hard if you're used to having a more communicative and then all of a sudden the focus is gone.
Carl:
Yeah.
Dr. Walling:
If that person is at capacity, then I think you have to get a little creative and maybe be a little bit more self discipline or also maybe your productivity is a little less. Both are possible.
Carl:
Yeah. It's interesting because I've felt that, not necessarily with... It's just that isolation of I'm putting all my energy into something but I'm not getting any energy back. That's when I get exhausted. I mean that's kind of what burnout is, when all the energy leaves. It's like, "All right, is anybody out there? What's happening?"
Dr. Walling:
Yes.
Carl:
All right, great. Well, we have got a question here from my good friend Matthew Oliphant known aa Matt O. Matt O., I am going to allow you to talk. We used to work together and I would never let him talk, so we'll see how it goes right now.
Dr. Walling:
Well, I had a long conversation with him at a Bureau event one evening.
Carl:
You did?
Dr. Walling:
We did. Yeah.
Carl:
Go for it, Matt O.
Matthew Oliphant:
I am well sought after for conversations.
Dr. Walling:
Hello.
Matthew Oliphant:
Hello. My question is... I struggled to figure out how to ask this as a question. It's not really a statement but a state of being where I have a couple of proposals out and people have gone dark. Normally when prospects go dark, I poke at them a bit, friendly wise. Right now, it feels very weird to try and be selling something. I'm struggling with this needing to follow up because I'm trying to make income for my business and also don't want to bother them because one of them lives in Italy and I last heard from them about a month ago and they haven't responded to anything, even just, "Hey, how are you doing?" Potentially the worst has happened for them. It's just very weird, and I'm not sure how to proceed with this other than the fumbling that I'm usually pretty good at, I suppose.
Dr. Walling:
So you have been doing some of just the general friendly prompts, like, "Hey, checking in."
Matthew Oliphant:
Yeah.
Dr. Walling:
Okay.
Matthew Oliphant:
But it's like, I would like you... You want to do this. They don't seem to be shopping around to anybody else for doing the work. But they've just gone dark. I feel awkward poking at them now because of everything that's going on.
Dr. Walling:
Well, I think what I would initially suggest, it sounds somewhat like you've already done, which is just the friendly authentically concerned, "Hey, are you okay? What's going on on your end? I know you're in the middle of a pretty intense part of this pandemic. How are you?" If you've done that just human to human check in and it's still no response, I mean I think you can patiently wait and keep doing that a little bit more. But when the lead's gone dark, the lead's gone dark. I'm not sure how much more... I think I would just say that to you in the sense that you can only do what you can. You can't get them to respond if they're not responding. One resource that might be helpful to you is my friend Steli Efti, he's the CEO of Close.io. He's been, I think, really thoughtfully talking about how to sell in the midst of this or just how to have sales conversations. His material might be helpful to you. It's certainly a really sensitive human conversation.
Matthew Oliphant:
Thank you.
Carl:
Matt, I'll also just share. This was some other conversations that we've had. There are a lot of people that are going through exactly what you're going through. Again, the beating yourself up when you're in a situation that everybody's in. We actually were joking about eating versus empathy the other day. It's like I want to care about everybody, but I've got to feed my family. I think that becomes the challenge the longer that this goes on. Yeah. Well, that is our questions and it's actually our time as well. Sherry, do you have anything you want to share with everybody or any of those fun things? It's always nice to get put on the spot right at the end.
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot is just really the sensitivity around figuring out how to grieve well. I don't know that we're using that word enough, but I think all of us are in some level of grief, whether or not we've lost someone that we care about. We've all lost a lot of our plans. We've lost the intentions that we had. Some of us have lost employees. There's just a lot of loss happening around us. When you're in grief, I think that framing of it is an invitation to really be quite tender with yourself and with the people around you. I think of just even our children, like kiddos who aren't going to have Little League and who are going to miss the spring musical or aren't going to have graduation ceremony. Big, big losses. When we can conceptualize those things as loss, I think it helps us to be pretty gentle and tender with ourselves and with our families who are in some pain. Yeah. That would just be one way to end it. Be gentle, be nice.
Carl:
That makes a tremendous amount of sense. I think that is the struggle. It's realizing that we're not going back to somewhere. We're going somewhere new. We couldn't bring everything with us.
Dr. Walling:
Yeah. Yep.
Carl:
Well, Sherry, thank you so much for being here with us today. Thanks to everybody who came in for Bureau Briefing live. I think we'll keep doing it this way. It was a lot more fun. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week.
Dr. Walling:
Thanks so much everyone. Take good care.
Carl:
Thanks, Sherry.