All Around Growth — reflections on faith, freedom, and finding purpose through Orthodox Christian living, formation, and the long work of becoming. Earlier episodes available to supporters.
Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast. Today is Wednesday, November 17th, 2021. My name is Rob Kaiser, and I am your host. This is episode number 228. This is an audience feedback show, and we are going to talk about putting too much on your plate. Last week I put out a poll on social media inquiring about what topics that people would be interested in hearing about. What should we talk about? And those options were perfection, the enemy of the good, the art of de-escalation, putting too much on your plate, standards, personal standards versus professional standards, writing an autobiography, social media revisited, along with uh touching on past episodes I've done, a discussion on Alan Watts, finance and debt freedom, a topic called love and passion, and is it a burden? And then knowing when to quit something. And of all of those choices, putting too much on your plate was the one topic that people seemed to be most interested in hearing about. So that's what we're gonna get into today. Uh for those that listen to the show and are accustomed to hearing what I talk about, you probably know that I am guilty of putting too much on my plate. And if you are listening to this, I suspect that you too are guilty of putting too much on your plate. I mean, this podcast is called All Around Growth. The idea behind it is providing insight and tools to building the life and homestead of your dream. If you're listening to this, you're somewhat of a go-getter, I presume. And you desire for more. And accordingly, we oftentimes put too much on our plates. So what do we do when we have too much on our plate? Well, I can tell you what I do. I create lists to manage it, right? And then I get overwhelmed by those lists. And that's how I've historically done it, and I still do it today, I just do it a little differently. And what I mean by that is as my jobs began to change, as my roles and responsibilities in terms of how I earned my income changed over time, I began to use different tools. And initially, one of the first tools I used was Outlook, and that was primarily for email. But back in the day, and still today, I'm sure in a certain capacity, I don't use it this way, so I can't really speak to it. But there was Outlook tasks, and I'm talking at this point, you know, 15 years ago or more. Goodness. I'm an old guy. But that was uh that was how we did it. Uh Outlook. And not everybody, not everybody used Outlook in the manner that I did. I made a point of geeking out on it and uh just trying to, you know, really trying to utilize the program as much as humanly possible and and and and and and so that was how I started with my task management. As I began traveling and being on the road more, I began using Google uh mail, Gmail, along with Google Tasks, and this allowed me to have the ability to easily access what I was doing anywhere. And moreover, I was able to integrate my Outlook accounts into my my Google uh accounts and see everything on one calendar, and this is when things started to become overwhelming, right? And this has been a this has been a pattern, and I've got a lot here to cover, so I'm gonna try and keep moving through this. Then I began to use Evernote, and when I was using Evernote, I was still, you know, this is when I was getting into the corporate ladder, trying to be Mr. Uber productive, reading productivity books and you know, business books, and really getting down with things like getting things done, the GTD method of task management, and I stumbled across something called the secret weapon. And you can see that at secretweapon.org, the secretweapon.org. I'll link I'll try to link to as much of this stuff in the show notes as I can, guys. But the secret weapon was cool because it was a way of using Evernote that aligned well and integrated with the overall getting things done methodology of task management. Now I would put things in Evernote and just stack, stack, stack in there, and that got overwhelming. So I was looking for another solution, right? Begin to see a pattern here. So I started using Nosby for task and project management, and I'll link to that. And I still use Nosby today. I'll link to everything in the show notes. This was cool because it integrated with Evernote, it integrated with all my calendars, it integrated with Dropbox. I can still do things the way I was doing them, but I could just add another layer on top, right? And it seemed sensible when I first started using it because what Nosby is, is like I said, it's a task project management software. It allows you to make lists, assign to projects, delegate to other team members that are using it, uh, check things off, complete projects, and also see what's been completed by those whom you have delegated it to. And it was great, and I wanted my uh team to use it, but um couldn't really catch on. And at the point where I was really using it heavily, I was sharing an office with that individual, and it just didn't it didn't really make any sense. And I also at that point began to use it improperly, and I kind of began using Nosby like I began using Evernote, putting things in there just to house information instead of self-delegating tasks. Now, before I go down too far down that road of the different ways in which I managed all of the things that I put on my plate, the bottom line is that I had put too much on my plate. And I've still got too much on my plate, and that's I I believe that is a big part of why I have been dealing with and trying to work through some of these health problems that I have consistently had for a number of years. I've been stressed, my body is uh our bodies, the human body, is not accustomed to the type of stress that we put on it oftentimes for many of us in the 21st century. So the bottom line was that you know, like, why did I do this in the first place? Like, I can we can think about managing how all this shit on our plates, but why do we have all this shit on our plates in the first place? Let's get down to root cause. For me, I have all this shit on my plate because I've been living a life that's been out of balance. I've been focused too heavily on one singular aspect of my life for too long and all the while sacrificing all of those other areas of life. And if this sounds familiar, this balance in these aspects and areas of life, it's because I've spent the last two weeks talking about this. More on that in a second. So now what? Our lives are out of balance. How do we regain balance? What do we do? It's easy. Well, it's simple rather. It's not easy. It's simple. We work through our goals. And yeah, yeah, yeah, we talk about that all the time. I do at least. What do they say in Texas? All hat, no cattle. It's time to put up or shut up, Rob. And goals really only work when they are specific and measurable, actionable and time-bound. Right? Smart goals, guys. And I am I'm excited because the the way that I've been the way that this came together this morning and thinking about putting too much on our plates and what that means. And trying to assemble some ideas on this so that I could provide something of value in the show today. The way that the way that all of this thought train came about is simply because I sat down to write a little bit this morning. I didn't spend really any more than 10 minutes writing, and they were not, it's nothing I would I would share. It's not like some sort of blog post, it's like bullet point sentences. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And that was enough to get the gears grinding for all of this. So I was going to touch on this on another episode, but I've got a little bit of time still. And some of the ways that I'm well, let me conclude that thought first real quick. Um, the 2022 goal setting workbook was so appropriate in this because it allows me to acknowledge that I've got too much on my plate, but it also gives me tools that I can implement in order to work through all of that and determine what's really important in life so that I can focus on that. But seeing as I've had and currently use all these other mechanisms to manage stuff in life, and I don't just want to cut clean, right? I don't just want to like you know cut the cord. So what I'm going to do with Nosby is begin delegating to myself, right? Like, I'm still going to maintain the primary account that I've got all of my current projects in and my current, you know, all my current stuff in. But what I'm going to do, I'm gonna I'm gonna try to be mindful of what I put in there. Evernote is my digital library, that's where I house my stuff. Evernote, or knows me rather, is for tasks. And since I can pull from Evernote and link to Evernote for things that I need to reference, that just seems like a sensible way to do things. It's not what I've done, but it's what I'm going to try to do. And the only way that I can really, I think, effectively manage that is by self-delegating tasks. And I'll get more into that later because um that's that's a little bit more involved, and I'd like anybody out there who's interested in Noseby and the idea of the task and project management um functionality of that program to take a look at it. There's an affiliate link in the show notes, and if you're interested, just use that link, it helps me, helps the show, and um helps us all, right? So uh check it out, and you know, if you if if you don't want to use it, cool, but at least look into it so that when I come back and revisit what I'm gonna do and how I'm going to use that a little differently, you'll have some context for it. And if you've really been looking for something to use that's an effective project and task management tool, um that is certainly a good option. I have been using it now for probably seven or eight years. Uh not definitely long. I've been here. This is my seventh season at the day job, and I've been using that for a few more years. Um so yeah, probably eight or nine years, possibly longer. Um, anyways, guys, as you can hear, I am at the day job waving hello to people. We've got trucks in, and at least the weather is warming up somewhat. So hopefully it's going to be a good day here. I hope that it's going to be a good day wherever you are. Along with what I mentioned, I would link to in the show notes. You can also find links to the Telegram group chat where you can participate with myself and others who are on this path. And you can find that. Just search your internet browser at t.me slash allaround growth. We've also got a broadcast channel if chat groups aren't your thing, but you're on Telegram and you want updates and periodic inspirational quotes and things that I enjoy sharing. If you want to subscribe to that with no chat, you can do that as well by checking out the show notes. In the show notes as well, there is a link to a short one-minute video on how to leave a rating in review in the Apple Podcast app. At this point in time, uh, it really does affect the algorithm. And like I said, at this point in time, I would invite you to do that. The podcast game is changing, and until bigger changes happen, I would invite you to help the show out in that manner. So check that video out, one minute long, how to leave a rating and review in the Apple Podcast app. Help the show, help me just do it. Alright. And as always, if you have a question for me directly that you do not want to share on social media or some constructive criticism or anything related to the show, or not, you just want to reach out to me directly. I welcome that as well. Allaroundgrowrowth at gmail.com is the email address to do it. Allaroundgrowth at gmail.com. And that is about it for today's show, guys. I hope that the show was of value to you and as far as all of the things that you've got on your plate eliminate them.
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