Getting to Good Enough

An opening exchange that once might have earned a do-over stays in. Noise from the other room is ignored, in spite of that one review that complained about the lawnmower in the background. None of it keeps the podcast from doing what it needs to do—which feels like a pretty good illustration of eight years spent practicing good enough.

But practice doesn’t always feel free at first. Shannon can leave an imperfectly loaded dishwasher alone now, most of the time, but she may have to close the door and take a deep breath. Janine can live with haphazard loading, though perhaps not Barry rearranging it. Along the way there’s a wooden butter knife refined until it broke, one shiny pan in an otherwise dirty kitchen, and a very useful question: What actually has to be true for this to be good enough?

• 01:31 — Letting an imperfect opening stay in—and living the theme of the podcast
• 03:39 — Why a little background noise and human imperfection can make a podcast feel more real
• 05:42 — What happens when you keep refining something past good enough, including Shannon’s broken wooden butter knife
• 08:13 — The time cost of perfectionism: literary-genius emails, spotless grout, and one very shiny pan in an otherwise dirty kitchen
• 09:14 — Opening the dishwasher can of worms: Janine and Shannon’s very different relationships with “correct” loading
• 11:41 — Shannon’s current good-enough practice: leaving the dishwasher alone when everything fits and will get clean
• 15:51 — Getting clear about what actually matters, from clean dishes and shared work to Shannon’s old standard of avoiding botulism
• 18:07 — How good enough has become more relaxing over time—and why having a minimum acceptable standard can make it easier to know when enough really is enough

• Good enough becomes much easier to recognize when you know what you actually want from a situation.
• Practicing good enough doesn’t necessarily feel freeing right away. Sometimes it feels surprisingly uncomfortable before it starts to feel easier.
• Pursuing perfection can make the result worse: a butter knife breaks, the whole kitchen stays dirty while one pan gleams, or time gets spent improving something that was already doing its job.
• A minimum standard can provide a useful benchmark when perfectionism makes things feel black-and-white or makes the “right” way seem like the only way.
• Letting some imperfection show—whether in a podcast, a creative project, or everyday life—can feel more human than polishing every rough edge away.

Shannon is still uncomfortable looking at bowls behind the big plates in the dishwasher, but she doesn’t rearrange them anymore. That seems to be where good enough lives in this conversation: not in suddenly ceasing to care, but in noticing what actually matters, letting the rest be imperfect, and practicing until that choice requires a little less effort (and a lot less stress). The dishes get clean. The podcast gets recorded. Nobody got botulism. And life feels more relaxing.

Episode 48: Flexibility — A look at what happens when high standards become rigid, and how practicing flexibility—even when it feels uncomfortable—can make life easier without requiring you to abandon those standards altogether.

Episode 105: Enjoying Imperfection — Shannon and Janine explore the possibility of not merely tolerating imperfection but actually enjoying what it adds, from hand lettering and gardens to imperfect solutions around the house.

Episode 156: Feeling Good About Good Enough — A conversation about getting more comfortable with stopping at good enough, practicing that skill in everyday life, and discovering how much bandwidth can be saved when perfection isn’t the goal.

We’d love to hear from you. Have you embraced good enough, or are you still struggling with perfectionism?

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There’s something delightful about a competition where everyone is genuinely cheering for everyone else—and something decidedly less delightful about a reality show where everyone is mean. That contrast gets Janine and Shannon thinking about community, and all the people who can make life feel friendlier without necessarily becoming close friends.

It might be neighbors who bring in your packages, people you chat with in the elevator, fellow volunteers, the staff at the post office, or the folks at the Japanese restaurant who wave when you walk by—even when you’re trying to hide a Shake Shack bag from them. Those small connections can add a surprising amount of warmth to everyday life. And apparently, being part of a community does not require remembering everybody’s name, although figuring out how to ask someone how to spell a name on text can get unexpectedly complicated (if you're Shannon!).

• 00:21 — The unusually supportive community on American Ninja Warrior and Great British Bake Off, the pleasure of a competition where people cheer each other on
• 02:10 — How familiar faces and everyday hellos can make a neighborhood feel warm and connected
• 03:44 — Missing casual connections during COVID—and the many ways people found to create community anyway
• 05:32 — Janine the “indoor cat,” who nevertheless jumps at the chance to run errands, see neighbors, and chat in the elevator
• 06:50 — The difference between close friendships and community, where people don’t have to be best-friend material to look out for one another
• 08:59 — Volunteer communities and the value of all those small, recurring connections that don’t have to be deep
• 11:17 — The downside of a transitory community, the upside of new people arriving, and thoughts about social connection as we age
• 13:13 — Shannon’s anxiety about entering an established neighborhood when she was struggling with memory—and the surprisingly simple solution of asking people to remind you of their names

• Community can include a lot more people than the ones we’d call friends: neighbors, restaurant staff, fellow volunteers, competitors, and people we simply see regularly.
• A quick hello or wave can matter. Janine keeps noticing how those tiny interactions “fill her cup” a little more.
• Some of the nicest community connections are quietly practical—bringing in a package, helping move a giant TV, watering a garden, or sharing travel suggestions.
• Communities change. People move away, new people arrive, and the prospect of running into someone can be meaningful even if you never deliberately make plans with them.
• Forgetting someone’s name doesn’t have to derail a connection. Asking turns out to be much simpler than the elaborate workarounds Shannon can construct in her head.

Neither Shannon nor Janine is talking about filling the calendar with more socializing. What they keep coming back to is the pleasure of being known just a little bit: a wave through a restaurant window, a chat in the elevator, a neighbor who will grab your package, someone who’s glad to see you. Community doesn’t have to be perfect—or especially deep—to make life feel warmer. And if occasionally you have to say, “Remind me of your name,” that seems like a pretty reasonable price of admission.

Episode 101: Cultivating Friendships — Shannon and Janine talk about making and maintaining friendships, including the small, easy ways to reach out and stay connected without letting perfectionism make it harder than it needs to be.

Episode 135: Keeping Challenges Easy — A conversation about the challenges Shannon and Janine enjoy taking on, including how much easier and more enjoyable things can become when there’s a community doing them alongside you.

Episode 222: Charitable Actions — Shannon and Janine explore volunteering, including the importance of finding a volunteer opportunity that feels right and the benefits that can come from being part of a community of fellow volunteers.

We’d love to hear from you. What kind of community do you have, and how do you maintain those connections?

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There’s something very satisfying about a good checklist—right up until you forget to use it and arrive on an overnight trip without your chargers.

Shannon is deep in pre-travel mode, which means checklists are everywhere, and Janine is an enthusiastic fellow traveler. Soon they’re remembering the podcast checklists they once relied on, comparing Apple Notes and Bullet Journals, talking about pilots who run through the same steps every single flight, and finding entirely new uses for plastic sleeves and dry-erase markers.

Of course, even a great checklist only works if you remember it exists. And in a nicely timed demonstration of why external memory can be useful, Shannon ends the episode by confidently saying the podcast phone number wrong.

• 02:33 — Travel checklists, the importance of chargers, and what happened when Shannon skipped her list on an overnight trip
• 04:42 — Keeping checklists current and Mike’s method of refining his travel list after each trip
• 06:19 — Remembering the things that can’t be packed until morning, plus the growing pre-trip mega checklist
• 08:49 — Checklists beyond travel: Janine’s new bookkeeping system and the podcast’s shared mini operating manual
• 11:31 — Apple Notes, Bullet Journals, and the deep satisfaction of watching checked-off items move to the bottom
• 12:15 — The Checklist Manifesto, pilots who never skip the routine, “clear prop,” and Barry’s occasionally irritating checklist advice
• 14:13 — Fighter pilots, astronauts, The Apollo Murders, and what can happen when every complicated process has its steps written down
• 18:32 — Todoist routines, laundry that isn’t done until it’s put away, resurrecting forgotten checklists, and reusable list hacks that keep things fresh

• A checklist can take over when memory gets unreliable under pressure—or when a task happens too infrequently to become automatic.
• Useful checklists aren’t necessarily finished products. Mike keeps revising his travel list based on what he used, didn’t use, and wished he’d brought.
• Repeated checklists can become a kind of operating manual: eventually the process may feel automatic, but the written steps are still there if someone else has to take over.
• There’s a catch to having a great checklist: you still have to remember it exists. Writing it down at least means it can be resurrected when you need it again.
• Sometimes a little novelty or visibility—a different app, a reusable card, a plastic sleeve—is enough to make an old checklist interesting again.

Checklists seem to earn their keep most when memory is least dependable: before a trip, during an infrequent bookkeeping task, or when somebody else has to take over a process. They still need updating, they still have to be remembered, and sometimes adding a little novelty is what keeps them alive. And after all that talk about brain muscle memory, Shannon closes by getting the phone number wrong—apparently the right thing does not always come out at the right time.

Episode 22: Creating Helpful Habits

Automating mundane tasks, finding ways to remember new habits, and linking actions together into routines—the habit-building side of what checklists are doing here.

Episode 121: Productive Preparation

Travel preparation gets the good-enough treatment, with Janine using Trello to plan packing, Shannon using Post-it notes, and both trying to prepare without letting perfectionism take over.

Episode 196: Building an Anti-Perfectionist Toolkit

A particularly fitting companion to this discussion: useful tools are easy to forget. Shannon and Janine talk about collecting them in one place, revisiting them, tweaking what stops working, and writing things down so they’re there when you need them.

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Janine’s new car seems not to have been a mistake—even if maintenance may someday require a trip to Chicago. That gets us talking about the very different feeling when you do realize you’ve messed something up: the sinking stomach, the panic, the self-recrimination, and sometimes a strong desire to pretend it never happened.

Shannon’s missed physical therapy appointment turns into a bigger question about why mistakes—and even simply not doing something when you intended to—can make it so much harder to take the next step. Soon there are tasks that keep moving from one week’s list to the next, Janine’s months-long avoidance of creating a procedure that ultimately took virtually no time, and a “seven-layer dip of dread” built around a job Shannon estimates might take fifteen minutes.

Somewhere in there, we start teasing apart what makes moving forward feel so hard and what might make it easier. And then Janine comes up with a much more appealing name for those lingering tasks: Opportunities for Achievement. Somehow, that makes all the difference.

• 02:48 — That sinking, panicky feeling that can come with realizing you’ve made a mistake
• 03:05 — Shannon misses a physical therapy appointment—and briefly considers pretending it never happened
• 05:36 — Why mistakes can make it so much harder to go back, face the person involved, or keep moving
• 06:35 — The utility bills Shannon keeps carrying forward on her task list as the task gets bigger and more unpleasant in her mind
• 08:27 — Janine’s months-long avoidance of creating a procedure that ultimately took virtually no time
• 10:18 — Looking at what a dreaded task actually requires—and Shannon’s “seven-layer dip of dread” around a fifteen-minute job
• 12:23 — Shifting the focus from personal discomfort to making life easier for someone else
• 14:27 — Rewards, self-recrimination, background stress, and the birth of an “Opportunities for Achievement” list

• Mistakes can bring embarrassment, panic, and self-recrimination that make the next step harder than the original problem.
• Repeatedly moving the same task from week to week can make it grow much larger and more unpleasant in your mind than it is in reality.
• Even a task that has already been simplified with templates, instructions, and systems can still accumulate plenty of dread.
• Thinking about how getting something done helps another person can shift the focus away from your own discomfort.
• Changing the language—like going from a list of things you haven’t done to “Opportunities for Achievement”—can change how the whole thing feels.

For most of us, a mistake can bring embarrassment, self-recrimination, and that sinking feeling that makes us want to avoid the whole situation. And when the “mistake” is simply not doing something when we meant to, every day of avoidance can add another layer of dread. Looking at what the task actually requires, remembering who benefits when it gets done, and changing the language around it all seem to make moving forward feel easier. By the end, “Opportunities for Achievement” sounds a lot better than a list of things we’ve failed to do.

Episode 228: Managing Mistakes

Janine shares a big mistake she made and how she dealt with it, including apologizing, moving on, and trying not to spend more time and energy on the mistake than necessary. It’s a particularly close companion to this episode’s questions about what happens after you realize you’ve messed up.

Episode 165: The Power of Language

Words matter—and sometimes a small change in language changes the way something feels. Shannon and Janine talk about replacing “need to” with “choose to” and other subtle reframes, making this a natural match for the newly christened “Opportunities for Achievement” list.

Episode 104: Try Compassion

Shannon and Janine explore how hard we can be on ourselves and the idea that we somehow need that harshness to keep from repeating mistakes. It connects especially well with Shannon’s realization that part of her seven-layer dip of dread is feeling she doesn’t even deserve a reward for finally getting the task done.

We’d love to hear from you. What’s it like for you when you make a mistake? Are you able to keep going? Do you need an Opportunities for Achievement list?

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Is stopping because something is good enough the same thing as being lazy? Janine’s first answer to herself was basically yes—until she caught the name-calling. What if the additional time she was considering just wasn’t worth the extra effort?

That opens up all kinds of questions: Why does “busy” sound like a badge of honor? Why can doing nothing all weekend feel like something you have to defend? And if time is finite in the same way money is, what are we choosing not to spend it on when we keep polishing something that doesn’t matter that much?

Energy complicates the math even more. Some days you have more of it than others, and the same stopping point can feel completely different depending on what you say to yourself: “Ugh, I’m lazy” or “This is great. I can stop here.” Good enough starts to look less like taking the easy way out and more like something worth aspiring to.

• 01:01 — When “I’m too lazy” might really mean “this isn’t worth more effort”
• 03:11 — Celebrating stopping instead of criticizing yourself for it
• 04:11 — Busy as a badge of honor and productivity as a measure of worth
• 05:11 — The glorious appeal—and social weirdness—of doing nothing all weekend
• 07:06 — Good enough as something aspirational, not lazy
• 08:45 — Deciding consciously whether something really needs more
• 10:33 — Spending time like money—and adding finite energy to the equation
• 14:00 — Catching the name-calling and letting energy help determine what’s reasonable

• Sometimes stopping at good enough simply means recognizing that more effort wouldn’t add enough value to be worth it.
• Consciously noticing that you chose to stop can turn good enough from a shrug into something that actually feels good.
• Time and energy are finite. Spending more of either on one thing means having less available for something else.
• Energy isn’t constant, so what feels reasonable to expect of yourself can change from one day to another.
• The stopping point can be exactly the same while the emotional experience is completely different: “I’m lazy” feels nothing like “This is great. I can stop here.”

There may be nothing lazy about deciding something has had enough of your time. The useful question is whether more effort would actually matter, given what else deserves your time and the energy you have available. And maybe the particularly good part is noticing the choice when you make it: same stopping point, but “good job, Janine” feels very different from “lazy ass.”

• Episode 7: What Is Good Enough? — An early look at how personal our standards of good enough are, and how the importance of what you’re doing can help determine where to stop.
• Episode 38: Personal Capacity — Shannon and Janine talk about the problem with expecting yourself to operate at 100 percent capacity and the value of making realistic choices about what you can actually do.
• Episode 252: Taking the Win — A discussion of noticing and giving yourself credit for what you’ve done instead of immediately focusing on what could still be better.

We’d love to hear from you. Do you find it easy to know when to stop? Have you experienced the freedom of good enough?

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There’s a small problem with taking a carefully planned podcast break: apparently you have to do a whole lot of work first!

You were on break from GTGE in August. We were not. We recorded and edited and scheduled episodes so Shannon can actually disappear for more than three weeks in September—without a computer—while Janine gets to enjoy a break from podcasting in the comfort of her apartment.

From there, we wander through northern lights, unexpectedly expensive rustic accommodations, strategically scheduling the relaxing part of a vacation at the end, and the very sensible idea of leaving a bit of time to catch up before returning to real life.

Which leads to the less relaxing question: What happens when you step away from something long enough that you worry you’ll forget how to do it?

• 01:57 Why planned breaks were part of bringing the podcast back
• 02:43 Staying off the hamster wheel—and keeping the podcast fun
• 03:30 What an actual vacation looks like when you’re self-employed
• 04:46 Doing a lot of work now so you can really stop working later
• 05:20 Norway, Sweden, Denmark, northern lights, and some pricey “roughing it”
• 07:49 Ending a trip somewhere relaxing so you don't need a vacation after your vacation
• 13:26 The slightly unnerving side of stepping away for a while
• 14:42 Writing things down so Future You doesn’t have to remember everything

• Apparently, a real break sometimes requires a very busy stretch beforehand.
• “We only do it if it’s fun” is still a useful measure for the podcast—and one reason taking breaks matters.
• There’s something appealing about putting a buffer around a break: time to settle into being away, and time to settle back in when you return.
• Worrying about what might happen while you’re gone doesn’t necessarily mean the break is a bad idea. Shannon can worry that she’ll forget how to podcast and still go to Scandinavia without a computer.
• Writing down a process is useful even before you need the instructions. And checking the instructions while you’re actually doing the thing may be the best way to discover whether they bear any resemblance to reality.

Taking a break sounds restful. Preparing to take one? Not necessarily.

But Shannon and Janine keep coming back to the same thing that has guided the podcast since 2018: if it stops being fun, something needs to change. This time, the change is a planned break, some real time away, and a little room around the edges for reentry. There are still nerves about stepping away, but there are also notes, backup plans, and some real-time documentation.

And if Shannon almost forgot the tagline before the break even started, perhaps updating those podcast instructions really is a good idea!

Episode 100: Our 100th Episode!

Shannon and Janine celebrate making it to 100 episodes and revisit the agreement they made at the beginning: they’d keep doing the podcast as long as it was fun. Six years later, that principle is still doing some useful work.

Episode 150: Creating Helpful Work Boundaries

Work has a way of sneaking into the rest of life, especially when you work for yourself. Shannon and Janine talk about ways to make work and non-work time more distinct—including what Shannon learned from a beach trip that wasn’t quite as vacation-like as it could have been.

Episode 183: Taking a Break

The earlier version of this very experiment: Shannon and Janine announce a five-week podcast hiatus and talk about what they might gain by actually stopping instead of filling the gap with more work.

We would love to hear from you, our listeners. Do you remember to take a break? What is it like for you when you do?

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Shannon and Janine talk about taking a real break, planning time off, easing back in afterward, and the nerves that can come with stepping away.

We’re taking a summer break!

When we brought Getting to Good Enough back last year, we decided that building in some time off would help keep the podcast fun and fresh. So we’re taking August off and enjoying that back-to-school feeling of excitement about summer vacation.

We’ll be back with a brand-new episode—and a brand-new season—on September 10. See you then!

Disappointment comes in all sizes. Sometimes it’s losing your AirPods somewhere in your apartment and having to fall back on an old wired pair. Sometimes it’s discovering that the IKEA cabinet system you carefully planned cannot coexist with geometry, physics, and an 82-inch basement ceiling—and suddenly not wanting to organize the basement at all.

Then there are the disappointments that change much bigger plans, and open the door to something else entirely. A layoff can make space for a new YouTube channel. A canceled Camino can become an RV trip through eastern Oregon, complete with fossil digging and the Painted Hills.

The disappointing thing doesn’t have to become secretly wonderful. But when one imagined outcome has started to feel like the only good outcome, remembering what actually matters can make other possibilities visible again.

• 01:44 — The IKEA cabinet plan that seemed perfect until geometry and physics got involved
• 03:14 — When disappointment makes starting over feel so overwhelming that doing nothing becomes tempting
• 04:22 — Lowering the basement floor, raising a house, and other "reasonable" ways to preserve the IKEA plan
• 06:14 — How an idea can start to feel like the only solution
• 07:30 — Returning to what Shannon actually wants from the basement instead of how she expected to achieve it
• 08:38 — Shifting to the hope that something unexpectedly better might turn up
• 09:30 — A layoff, Hannah’s new YouTube channel, and disappointments that lead somewhere surprisingly good
• 11:10 — A potentially disappointing Polestar test drive, a wrong apartment floor plan, and the canceled Camino that became an eastern Oregon adventure
• 16:32 — Outsized disappointment as a clue that an idea of perfection may have been hiding in the plan

• Disappointment can feel especially intense when a particular outcome has quietly become the perfect ONLY desirable outcome.
• Once the preferred answer seems impossible, black-and-white thinking can make every other possibility look inadequate.
• Some disappointments require an immediate adjustment, while others leave a project sitting untouched until there is enough energy to reconsider it.
• A changed plan may lead to something unexpectedly wonderful, but it could also lead to another disappointment—the Polestar test drive could still go either way.
• The solution doesn’t have to be found before the feeling shifts; by the end, Shannon’s unresolved basement problem has become a fun puzzle again.

Disappointment might mean wired earbuds instead of AirPods, donating furniture because the floor plan was wrong, canceling a long-awaited trip, or having to rethink a carefully planned basement project. Sometimes the alternative is simply what has to happen, and sometimes it turns into an experience that would never have happened otherwise.

The realization isn’t that every disappointment is secretly a gift—it’s that an outsized reaction may point to a perfect outcome that had started to crowd out every other possibility. Janine still doesn’t know whether the Polestar will be a revelation or a huge disappointment, and Shannon still doesn’t know what will go in the basement, but the uncertainty feels less overwhelming by the end than it did at the beginning, and new ideas become possible.

Episode 48: Flexibility

Shannon and Janine look at how rigid expectations and standards can make life harder, and how greater flexibility can create space for other ways of doing things.

Episode 123: Adapt with Ease

Wildfire smoke disrupted Shannon’s eastern Oregon RV trip, while Janine’s computer failed during an important project. They discuss how preparation and knowing what mattered helped them adapt when events did not go as planned.

Episode 177: How to Change Your Mind

Once we’ve committed to a particular outcome, it can be hard to step back when circumstances change. Shannon and Janine discuss commitment bias, perfectionism, and the value of considering alternatives—a good match for the broader question of what comes after a plan doesn’t work out.

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You know the one. That awkward goodbye. The thing you said that came out wrong. The gift giving you wish had unfolded just a little differently. Everyone else has probably forgotten it...but somehow your brain keeps bringing it back.

A Fourth of July host gift wrapped in Japanese fabric leads Shannon down that familiar path of replaying an interaction she wishes had gone differently. Janine counters with a thirty-year-old hug-that-should-have-been-a-handshake memory that's somehow still hanging around.

Somewhere between laughing at themselves and gently questioning why these moments stick, they wonder whether our brains are actually looking for something useful—or whether it's finally time to admit those experiences were simply...good enough.

• 00:42 — Surviving a heat wave, celebrating the Fourth of July, and how a handmade Japanese fabric gift wrap unexpectedly became the source of an awkward memory.
• 02:49 — Why embarrassing moments seem to replay in our heads far longer than they deserve—and why that happens less often than it used to.
• 04:11 — Janine shares a thirty-year-old crossed-wires goodbye: she went in for a hug just as a colleague offered a handshake.
• 05:18 — Could our brains be hanging onto embarrassing memories because they're still looking for the lesson?
• 06:09 — Shannon reframes her host-gift experience and realizes she doesn't need to explain, manage, or perfect someone else's experience.
• 08:30 — Using visualization to brighten the parts of a memory worth keeping and dim the parts that aren't serving us.
• 11:48 — Is replaying awkward moments really another form of perfectionism? Maybe recognizing they were simply "good enough" is enough to let them go.
• 13:15 — The conversation ends with a surprisingly funny realization: if you're here now, you survived the awkward moment—and maybe it's finally time to evict it from your head.

• If an awkward memory keeps resurfacing, ask yourself whether there's actually a lesson to learn—or whether you've already learned it.
• The people involved in your embarrassing moment probably remember it far less vividly than you do.
• You can intentionally emphasize the parts of a memory you want to keep and soften the parts that aren't helping you anymore.
• Sometimes "good enough" applies to entire experiences, not just projects or tasks.
• Looking back on an awkward moment with humor instead of embarrassment can completely change how it feels.

Our brains have a funny habit of giving awkward moments far more attention than they deserve. A slightly uncomfortable goodbye or a gift exchange that didn't unfold exactly as planned can occupy valuable mental real estate long after everyone else has moved on.

Maybe the goal isn't to erase those memories. Maybe it's to recognize that they were good enough, learn whatever there was to learn, and let the rest become just another funny story. If one of those old cringe memories pops into your head this week, ask yourself: Have I already learned everything I needed to learn from this? If the answer is yes, see what happens if you simply let it go.

Episode 238: Be Your Own BFF

Instead of beating yourself up over past mistakes, this conversation explores how treating yourself with the same kindness you'd offer a friend can make it much easier to move forward.

Episode 68: What's Wrong with Perfectionism?

A foundational discussion about why perfectionism gets in the way of happiness—and how embracing good enough frees up energy for the things that really matter.

Episode 228: Managing Mistakes

A perfect companion to this episode. Janine shares a significant mistake she made, and together they explore apologizing, learning, moving on, and resisting the urge to keep beating yourself up.

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Some days the hardest part of any task isn't doing it—it's stopping what you're doing so you can do the next thing.

That shows up everywhere: going for a run, getting into (and out of) the shower, heading to an appointment, downsizing to a new home, or simply standing up from your desk. Along the way there are tomato plants that suddenly need cages, dogs who don't want to leave the air conditioning, and just one more thing that distracts you.

Rather than trying to solve transitions once and for all, Shannon and Janine get curious about why they can feel so surprisingly difficult—and share the little things they've discovered that make changing gears just a bit easier.

• 00:00 — Why switching from one thing to the next can feel harder than the task itself.
• 01:36 — Staying in a pleasant groove, reluctant dogs, and the universal appeal of not changing gears.
• 02:45 — An all-too-relatable reel, shower resistance, and why transitions seem to take so much mental energy.
• 04:17 — Big life transitions, from moving and downsizing to discovering apartment living was exactly the right fit.
• 05:52 — How outside accountability—and sometimes professional help—can make overwhelming transitions much more manageable.
• 08:28 — Reducing friction with prepared bags, designated homes for keys, and other small systems that make leaving easier.
• 12:30 — Using a physical "bridge" between tasks instead of letting a transition become an invitation to get distracted.
• 15:28 — Repeating "This is what I'm doing now," remembering why the next task matters, and making it more appealing than the one you're leaving.

• Transitions often become easier when you remove little points of friction ahead of time, like gathering what you'll need before it's time to leave.
• Giving frequently used items permanent homes can eliminate unnecessary stress and decision-making.
• A brief physical reset—stretching, getting water, or simply standing up—can serve as a bridge between tasks instead of a detour.
• Quietly reminding yourself what you're doing next can help keep your attention from wandering during transitions.
• Connecting with why the next task matters can make it feel easier to begin than simply treating it as another item on the list.

Changing gears is work. Whether it's leaving the house, starting a workout, finishing a favorite activity, or making a major life change, there's often a surprising amount of invisible effort packed into the transition itself.

The encouraging part is that the conversation isn't about becoming someone who loves transitions. It's about noticing where they get sticky and experimenting with small ways to make them feel a little smoother. Maybe that's putting your keys on a hook, taking a stretch break, or simply reminding yourself: "This is what I'm doing now."

• Watch the conversation on YouTube!
• The "Doorway Effect"

Episode 151: Task Management Revisited

Task systems are only as useful as the way they fit your brain. Shannon and Janine explore how to build a system around what you actually need rather than searching for the perfect tool.

Episode 153: Helping Your Future Self

A practical conversation about making present-day decisions that reduce friction for future you—from morning routines to planning ahead.

Episode 152: Practicing Being Present

If the idea of paying attention to what you're doing right now resonated, this episode explores simple ways to be more present without expecting perfection.

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