Getting to Good Enough

Squee! Janine and Shannon have exciting news to share: We've both completed a training program to earn the certification YNAB Certified Budgeting Coaches. We're very excited to coach people so they can benefit from this unique budgeting methodology and software as we have. This week we talk all about why we love YNAB (You Need a Budget).

Discussion topics include:

• We've finished our certification program and are now YNAB Certified Budgeting Coaches

• We learned so much!

• What's YNAB? It's You Need A Budget, a methodology and software for budgeting. We love it.

• How the training program gave us a deeper knowledge of both the methodology and software

• How YNAB's Rule Three: Roll with the Punches appeals to the "good enough" in us!

• The baked-in expectation that you will change things in your YNAB budget

• A key component of YNAB: You budget only money that you have

• The similarities between YNAB and an envelope system of spending

• A major YNAB goal: Get out of the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle

• The peace of mind YNAB has given Janine while she and her husband plan the financial implications of his retirement

• How YNAB is helpful for people with lower and higher incomes (and everyone in between)

• How YNAB is useful for both getting out of debt and saving money

• The two-person virtual YNAB retreat that Shannon and Janine are planning

• The joy of having a new focus

• Shannon's 20th anniversary as a life coach!

• Our plan to talk about YNAB monthly in this podcast

• The freedom of having clarity around your finances

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links!

Having fun is important! In this laughter-infused episode, Shannon and Janine have fun discussing how to prioritize fun and adding fun to every day life.

Discussion topics include:

• Our criterion for continuing with our podcast: We'll keep doing it as long as we're having fun

• How fun is different for different people

• We agree: Things are fun when laughter is involved

• Things can be fun without laughter too!

• Fun with jigsaw puzzles

• Janine's upcoming trip to Australia to attend a super-fun live-music-centric wedding party

• All the fun dancing at Shannon's wedding

• How your attitude can affect how much fun you have

• Understanding what fun is for you and incorporating it into your life

• Making day-to-day stuff more fun

• Janine's dog Bix, the Fun Enforcer (and how perhaps she should change her attitude about it)

• Letting things be fun

• Shannon's cat, Cleo, who thinks being chased is very fun

• The psychological and physical benefits of having fun

• Prioritizing fun

• Janine and Shannon's obsession with the TV show Station 19

• How things are more fun when you share them

• How YNAB has made budgeting fun

• Finding fun ways to do the things you need to do (Zumba class vs step aerobics, for example)

• Gamification

• The fun reward of gold stars

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for a link

One of the hardest parts about perfectionism is that it can mess with your feelings of self worth. In this episode, Janine and Shannon discuss how your value as a person has nothing to do with how perfectly you do things.

Discussion topics include:

• Early spring in Portland and St. Louis!

• One of the difficult things about perfectionism: Feeling bad about not being able to be perfect

• How some people can really beat themselves up over imperfection

• How hard it is to get over this when you're caught up in it

• The valuable message from KC Davis of Struggle Care

• How a messy house is value neutral

• Starting to consider the possibility that your struggles don't make you a bad person

• How your worth doesn't change based on how perfectly you do things

• How recognizing that your actions don't define you can calm down your nervous system

• The debilitating effect of letting perfectionism dictate your self worth

• How things can be organized and still a little messy

• Thinking of yourself as a good person independent of the state of things around you or your unfinished task list

• Entertaining the idea that it's okay to be imperfect

• The heart of our podcast: We want people to feel good about themselves and be okay with however they are

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for a photo of the card Shannon painted and for links!

Life can get so frazzled when you don't build in buffers. In this episode Shannon and Janine discuss the value of buffers and some different ways you can build them into your life.

Discussion topics include:

• Janine's current frustrations about her busy schedule

• The culprit: She's not scheduling the desk time she needs

• How Janine gets cranky when her schedule is too full

• Being realistic about what you can do in a day without feeling tired and cranky

• How we are able do fewer things in a day as we get older

• The importance of being aware that things needs to change

• Different ways to build buffers in your life

• The demoralizing effect of having things undone on your task list day after day

• How arriving somewhere early is creating valuable time, not wasting time

• Making a buffer non-negotiable

• Shannon's three-thing limit in her calendar and how she builds a buffer around that limit

• Building a buffer when you don't have complete control over your time

• Delegation as a tool for building a buffer

• Building a financial buffer (hooray for YNAB!)

• Allowing a buffer of white space in your physical surroundings

Doing the easiest thing first (the low-hanging fruit) gets a bad rap. But it can actually make everything easier. In this episode Janine and Shannon discuss strategies around using low-hanging fruit to get stuff done.

Discussion topics include:

• Low-hanging fruit counts!

• How allowing yourself to address low-hanging fruit first can help you get started

• Starting with something easy and stopping when it stops being easy

• Shannon's ingenious closet-cleaning method

• How there's always the lowest hanging fruit

• Addressing low-hanging fruit in any situation

• Low-hanging fruit in task management

• Remembering that you don't have to do everything at once

• Counting every step (even the easiest step!)

• Magical words: "Done for now"

• Giving yourself credit for what you're doing

• Making sure your next action feels really doable (and if it doesn't, scale it back or move on to something else)

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links!

In honor of next week's big in-person and virtual genealogy conference, RootsTech, we are re-running a 2018 episode about applying a good-enough mentality to genealogy research. Enjoy!

Shannon and Janine are among the millions of people who enjoy doing genealogy research. In fact, as a genealogy blogger, Janine devotes a significant amount of time to it. In this episode, we discuss Shannon's challenges with her genealogy research (which involve an enviable literal treasure trove of original documents given to her by her mother) and discuss some strategies to help her get past the perfectionism that's stopping her from proceeding with her research.

Discussion topics include:

• How a lot of people get hung up on perfectionism in genealogy

• How genealogical standards can feel intimidating

• How the discovery of Shannon's treasure trove was both wonderful and stress-inducing

• The responsibility Shannon feels to the rest of her family to care for these documents correctly and share them

• The importance of knowing why genealogy research (and anything else) is important to you

• Some practical advice for dealing with these precious documents (keyword: checklist)

• Creating a "good enough" standard to make source citations easier

• Getting past the overwhelm of genealogy research

• Janine’s “good enough” research log

Bonus! We get an update on Shannon's morning routine at the end of the episode. She shares how her good enough attitude and the minimum standards she has set have helped her establish and stick with a great morning routine.

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links and an update from Shannon.

Why are we so hard on ourselves? It's not a rhetorical question. This week, Janine and Shannon discuss self-compassion and treating ourselves as nicely as we treat our besties.

Discussion topics include:

• The folly of harping on your past mistakes in an attempt to avoid those mistakes again

• How constantly reminding yourself of your mistakes makes it hard to do the thing you're trying to do

• A technique for letting go of past mistakes

• Acknowledging a past struggle before asking yourself to do the thing again

• Shannon's Boring Change technique that helps you understand the deeper need behind your behaviors (and can help you modify your behavior)

• Understanding when you're struggling and being kind to yourself

• Channeling your own BFF and thinking about what they'd say to you

• Ask yourself, "What would I say to a friend with this challenge?"

• Recognizing that you're not the only person struggling with something

• Nobody  is flawless!

• Setting realistic expectations so you don't beat yourself up

• How it's helpful to put a positive spin on things

• An important reminder: How you choose to perceive things makes a big difference in how you experience them because it has a bearing on what you notice

• The value of a gratitude journal to help you look for the good things in your life

• A recipe for being your own BFF: Acknowledge the issues, looking for the good, and let the feelings that the good inspire in you help you move forward

Check out the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for some great links!

Prior to recording this episode, Shannon and Janine listened to a podcast discussing the new book "The Perfectionist's Guide To Losing Control: A Path To Peace And Power." The podcast sparked this week's discussion of aiming for ideal rather than flawless, the more commonly used definition of perfectionism. To us, ideal feels much more attainable and healthy than flawless.

Discussion topics include:

• The inspiration for this topic: a Life Kit podcast episode called "What Kind of Perfectionist Are You?" featuring Katherine Morgan Schafler, the author of the new book, "The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path To Peace and Power."

• The Latin root of the word perfect: "Completely done" not "flawless"

• Shifting away from thinking that perfect means flawless

• The author's take that perfectionism can be powerful if it is approached in a healthy way

• The interesting idea that there is a constructive, rather than destructive, side to perfectionism

• According to the author, people who are perfectionists are people who see the gap between reality and the ideal and want to bridge that gap

• The problem becomes when the reasons behind bridging the gap are unhealthy

• How Janine's husband is happy to be a perfectionist and uses his drive in a way that serves him (and her)

• How the word "ideal" is more subjective and therefore more attainable than "flawless"

• The relief in pursuing an ideal rather than striving for perfection

• How this is one of the least flawless recordings we've done, but we're embracing it!

• Thinking about what parts of perfectionism can be useful

• Letting go of the idea that perfectionists are striving for flawless

• Getting in touch with your why to identify whether your perfectionistic drive is healthy or not

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links to the book and the podcast that inspired this episode!

The anticipation and anxiety around starting a new adventure can be even more intense when you're dealing with perfectionism. In this episode, Janine and Shannon discuss a new adventure they're both embarking on and how they're preparing for it.

• How Shannon is feeling good (not just better) at good enough!

• Janine and Shannon's excitement to be starting the YNAB (You Need A Budget) Certified Coaching program together

• How there are some nerves mixed in with the excitement

• Easing our nervousness and setting ourselves up for success

• Our different approaches to getting ready for this course

• Electronic vs paper note taking

• The value of staying flexible when you're starting something new, because you don't know until you know

• How our plans for structure around Getting to Good Enough fell by the wayside very quickly

• Thinking about whether a project needs to be structured or not when you're starting out

• How building in some structure can make a new adventure feel doable

• Getting in touch with why starting a particular new adventure is important to you

• Putting your why into a few words to help you stay on track in your new adventure

• Acknowledging that things probably aren't going to go perfectly so that you're not derailed by problems

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for some YNAB-related links!

In what appears to be a new tradition, every other January we run this episode on Hobbies, one of our favorites. It first appeared in January 2019. Enjoy!

Perfectionism can get in the way of starting or enjoying hobbies. This week Shannon and Janine talk about  their hobbies (and attempted hobbies) and share strategies for getting past perfectionism so you can enjoy your hobbies.

Discussion topics include:

• How every hobby Shannon’s had has been marred by perfectionism

• How perfectionism can get in the way of starting and enjoying a new hobby

• The fact that new hobbies usually have to be bad before they can get good

• How Shannon inspired Janine to start knitting fourteen years ago (spoiler alert: only one of them is still knitting)

• Process versus results in doing hobbies (like knitting)

• Janine’s 12-year adventure with Barbara Walker’s Learn-to-Knit Afghan

• Why starting a hobby by shopping can be a mistake

• How Shannon is managing to stick with her latest hobby: Learning Portuguese

• How guided lessons can help provide structure to make learning a new hobby fun

• Figuring what counts as engaging in your hobby when you’re starting out

• How frequent practice can make learning a

new hobby easier

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenogh.com for loads of links and some pictures!