Getting to Good Enough

This week we're rerunning an episode from September 2019, back when we recorded slightly longer episodes. This one's all about keeping focus when we're surrounded by distractions. Who can't relate to that?

Every day, we're bombarded by constant distraction and it can really get in the way of productivity. This week, Janine and Shannon talk about the challenges presented by distraction and some strategies for dealing with it.

Discussion topics include:

• The toll distractions take on our productivity

• Janine’s distracting quest for birthday-gift suggestions

• Fun subscription boxes

• Open loops and how they can be distracting

• How to close those open loops

• Stopping mid-sentence to prompt yourself to go back to writing

• How stopping mid-sentence backfired for Shannon when she was participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

• The prospect of writing a graphic novel or an illustrated novel during NaNoWriMo

• Janine’s #1 tool in avoiding distraction: A timer

• Shannon’s technique for dealing with distractions: writing down the bright shiny object and moving on

• Shannon’s three-pronged task management system (Todoist, Trello & Bullet Journal)

• The value of knowing which tasks are important—and why

• How a good task management system can help you avoid succumbing to distraction

• Some strategies for minimizing distractions

• The easiest way to deal with distraction: eliminate the opportunities to be distracted (we’re talking to you, iPhone on the nightstand)

• Creating awareness of the things that distract you

• How just knowing you can get a notification reduces your IQ

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

Holding someone (or yourself) accountability doesn't mean holding their feet to the fire. Accountability can be really effective. This week Shannon and Janine discuss ways to stay on track without beating yourself up.

Discussion topics include:

• Our love for the words gentle and kind

• How accountability doesn't have to be harsh or forceful

• The effectiveness of a carrot over a stick

• Fun accountability: To-Do List Bingo!

• Janine's powerful habit tracker in her Bullet Journal

• How gentle accountability doesn't prompt resistance

• Wanting to do something rather than making yourself do something

• How gentle accountability can be helpful in relationships

• The language Shannon uses at home to ask for or provide gentle accountability 

• How neither Shannon nor Janine likes to be told what to do

• Asking how you can be supportive versus nagging someone

• Follow up question: How will I know if you don't want to support?

• Starting a conversation off with a request for the right kind of support

• Making it easier for people to give you accountability

• How the type of accountability that works for you might have to change periodically

• The gentle accountability of Janine's 30 x 30 genealogy challenges

• The ways Janine and Shannon are holding themselves accountable with yoga

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

We can be our own worst critics. Being overly judgmental does not help us achieve happiness (or anything else). In this episode, Janine and Shannon discuss some strategies for letting go of judgment and living with more kindness and compassion.

Discussion topics include:

• How unhelpful self judgment can be

• How Shannon sometimes feels disappointed in herself

• Unrealistic expectations for what we can accomplish in a day

• How Janine and Shannon never judge our clients but often judge ourselves

• Shannon's expectations for her clients (spoiler alert: she doesn't have any!)

• Practicing treating ourselves with the same kindness and concern as we treat our clients

• Stopping the cycle of self judgment

• How people with perfectionistic tendencies might be particularly judgmental

• Using feelings of disappointment as a reminder to look on the situation with kindness

• Thinking about what you'd tell a friend in a given situation

• Making "good enough" a happy phrase

• How perfectionism is all about judgment--and how we often think we're being judged

• Letting go of concern for someone else's judgment in a situation

• How so much self judgment originated externally from us

• Examining the things you're feeling judgmental about and checking in to see if it's something you really feel

• Cultivating compassion and kindness for yourself

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for a note from Janine and links.

Staying focused on a single task is so beneficial--and so challenging. This week, Shannon and Janine discuss how our brains aren't wired to multitask and some strategies for doing one thing at a time.

Discussion topics include:

• The soothing and healing power of a cat's purr

• How hard it is to resist multitasking

• The impossibility of doing more than one thing at the same time

• How multitasking usually results in none of the things being attempted done well

• Situations where you can truly multitask (at least sometimes)

• Shannon's strategy: Placing a sticky note about the one thing she's trying to do on her computer monitor to keep her on task

• Another tip: Turn off notifications

• How focusing on doing one thing at a time seems more important these days than ever

• Acknowledging the temptation of other things and jotting the distraction down to come back to later

• The relationship between our poor memories and distractibility

• The limits of our working memory

• How we can (purportedly) hold only seven pieces of information (plus or minus two) in our memory at a time

• How multitasking is actually rapid switching between tasks--and it takes a lot of brainpower

• The benefit of staying focused on one thing until you complete it: The reward of completion!

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

This week, we're re-running an episode we originally recorded in January 2019. Despite all the changes that have happened since then, the message still rings true!

Feeling satisfied--even when something isn't perfect--allows you to embrace a good-enough mentality. This week, Janine and Shannon discuss the importance of finding (and recognizing) satisfaction. Feeling satisfied doesn't lead to complacency--in fact, it's life enhancing.

Discussion topics include:

• Janine’s shocking (to Shannon) inability to tell a joke

• How feeling satisfied is an important aspect of a good-enough mentality

• Looking for places to feel satisfied without perfection

• Paying attention to what you can do instead of what you can’t do (and feeling satisfied with that)

• Shannon’s post-concussion challenges and how she is trying to feel satisfied with what she is able to do

• Gratitude vs satisfaction

• Setting yourself up to feel satisfied by putting the brakes on perfectionism

• Applying this concept to your task list (hint: include tasks instead of projects on your list and keep the list short)

• How being satisfied with less than perfect doesn’t make you complacent

• The fact that feeling satisfied can actually enhance your productivity

• How you can feel satisfied with something while also looking to improve it (which Janine is proving with her new yoga practice)

• Cultivating the habit of finding satisfaction in where you are, rather than waiting for satisfaction to find you

When your mind is too clogged with thoughts for your comfort, there are some things you can do for relief. This week and Shannon and Janine discuss some techniques clearing your cluttered mind. 

Discussion topics include:

• Janine's cluttered mind

• One of the most obvious strategies for clearing your mind: Writing things down

• The tricky way our brains count thinking about something as doing something

• How writing things down lets you focus on other things + helps put things in your long-term memory

• Hand writing something vs typing it into a computer

• The more senses involved in something the easier it is to remember it

• The value of writing things in a  consistent place (like a Bullet Journal or Evernote)

• Practicing mindfulness techniques to focus on one thing and quiet your mind

• Paying attention to your breathing

• A strategy for clearing your mind to go to sleep: Coming up with a list that is enough to occupy your mind but not interesting enough to keep you awake

• Janine's enthusiasm for Fifty Nifty United States, the song she learned in grade school that has benefitted her so much

• Allowing thoughts to pass through your mind without paying attention to individual thoughts

• Letting go of worry by asking yourself whether there's anything you can do about it now

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

Janine and Shannon have talked quite a bit about electronic task management, but in this episode, we delve into bullet journaling, a hand-written task management system. Shannon's been using this system for years and Janine is a starry-eyed novice.

Discussion topics include:

• How Bullet Journaling is one of a number of things that Janine has embraced after Shannon did it for a long time

• Shannon's assertion that she benefits because Janine then tells her stuff she didn't know about

• Janine's shift from electronic to paper for task management

• What is a Bullet Journal? A bound, indexed journal in which you capture information quickly

• The Bullet Journal's special sauce: Its index, which is brilliant in its simplicity

• The value of handwriting the weekly schedule and tasks for Shannon (even though she also captures them electronically)

• Shannon's weekly approach to her Bullet Journal vs Janine's monthly/daily approach

• Shannon's notebook recommendation: hard cover, dot grid with pre-printed page numbers

• Pen recommendations: Shannon loves the Pilot Frixion pens and Janine loves the Pigma Micron 01 + Zebra Mildliner markers

• Fast-writing vs slow-writing pens

• The perils of watching Bullet Journal YouTube videos

• Our agreement that the fancy spreads shown off on YouTube don't really represent what Bullet Journaling is all about

• Shannon's advice to new Bullet Journalers: Read Ryder Carroll's explanation and avoid YouTube

• Keeping Bullet Journals simple and sustainable

• The Bullet Journal Companion App

• How the ever-changing content of a Bullet Journal helps keep the system fresh

• How a good-enough attitude helps when you Bullet Journal

• Shannon's weekly spread that she based on the Planner Pad

• Bullet Journal Collections + the Future Log

• Starting small with the Bullet Journal

Check out the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for sample pages from our Bullet Journals and links.

We all know how bad regret can feel. But did you know you can turn it around? In this episode Shannon and Janine discuss how to glean the learnings from a situation and then let go of the regret. And Shannon demonstrates the process on Janine, helping her let go of regret around catching COVID.

Discussion topics include:

• Janine testing positive for COVID

• Janine's regret over letting her guard down by going to a restaurant

• Shannon's process for letting go of regret

• Taking Janine through the process to help her let go of regret over how she thinks she caught Omicron

• Why regret exists: To keep you from making the same mistake in the future

• Taking it that extra step: Ask yourself "What can I learn from this to make it easy to let go of the regret?"

• Recognizing the positive intention of the regret

• Looking for additional learning in the situation

• Janine's COVID silver linings

• By the end of the process, Janine let go of her regret! (Regret she didn't even realize she had.)

• Shannon's process for letting go of regret (we invite you to try it!):

• Identify the thing that you are feeling regret about

• Ask yourself what you can learn from it or what is important for you to take forward from the experience. You can ask, "What's the positive intention of the regret?"

• Keep checking in with yourself until the regret is gone ("What else do I need to know to allow me to let go of this regret?")

• Applying this to all sorts of regrets, including not sticking with your resolutions

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com

Janine and Shannon have been selecting a Word of the Year for years. In this episode we reveal our 2022 Words of the Year and discuss the power of having a special word to guide you each year.

Discussion topics include:

• The weather. Spoiler alert: It's cold but our electric cars started up like the champs they are!

• Janine's love of having a Word of the Year--she's had one every year since at least 2013

• The mistake Janine made in 2019 by selecting three words of the year

• Christine Kane's Word of the Year selection tool

• Shannon's 2022 Word of the Year: Encourage

• Janine's 2022 Word of the Year: Generosity

• Our excitement over adding categories to our YNAB budgets based on our words

• How having a Word of the Year helps you frame your decisions and priorities

• The adhesive power of a really good Word of the Year

• The Word of the Year selection process from Cultivate What Matters

• Choosing a word that helps you move toward, rather than away, from something

• Words of the Year designed to help yourself vs help others

• Trying on a prospective Word of the Year for size

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

After six weeks off, Shannon and Janine are happy to be back recording a podcast episode. We missed our weekly conversations! In this episode, we discuss some of the ways we benefited from taking a break.

Discussion topics include:

• We're back after our hiatus!

• Our mixed feelings about our break

• The beneficial rhythm of regular podcasting

• It turns out we're out-of-sight out-of-mind people!

• How being actively involved with the podcast on a weekly basis makes life easier

• Shannon's hope to come up with some touchstones during a future hiatus in order to be more mindful with the time that is saved

• The possibility of scheduling time during the next hiatus to discuss topic ideas or do other things to stay more connected to the podcast

• How we've both missed podcasting (and how we're glad about that)

• Weekly tasks as an anchor for the week and the passage of time

• How a break can help you purposefully choose whether you want to keep doing things the same way or do something differently

• Our gratitude for our show notes to remind us what we have talked about

• A diversion into a brief discussion of Jeopardy! and life without cable TV

Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com.