Speakers

Greg McKeown, Joanna Davey

Transcript

Greg McKeown 

Jo, welcome to the Essentialism podcast. 

Joanna Davey      

Thank you. 

Greg McKeown   

Now, the background is that you emailed me. 

Joanna Davey   

I did.  

Greg McKeown   

And for everyone who hasn’t read that email, tell me the story that tell everyone else’s story you told me. 

Joanna Davey    

Okay, so I’m actually sitting in the place. So about four years ago, I read your book, I was in France. And I remember getting to the bit about where you talked about family and the importance of family, and how you nearly didn’t make the birth of one of your children because you hadn’t prioritized it. And I remember bursting into tears. And it was a real sort of critical moment in my life, where I realized I needed to make some changes. And I was very, I was a workaholic, I couldn’t not work. And I got quite sick. And anyway, I did start practicing essentialism. But it’s funny, I was just reading a blog I wrote right at the beginning about how I was doing deep work and focusing on important things. And it just feels like, you know, it was very much at the beginning of my essentialism journey, then anyway, so that, you know that, you know, I did practice essentialism, and it is a muscle that you have to practice for a long time. And then one day of suppose, well, I was working for myself. And my mum had had some minor infections, she’d had antibiotics wasn’t really working for her. So my mom was 67, not in brilliant health. And I’ve got a phone call from my dad saying mums has gone into hospital. She’d been in hospital the week before, and she’d come out and dad sounded knackered. And I was sitting at my desk, and I just started working for a new client. And I looked out the window, and I’ve been practicing the, what’s the most important thing, thing. And the day that that day, I thought, actually, the most important thing I need to do is go down to the hospital and see my mom and give my dad a break and call my dad and said, I’m coming. And he said, don’t, you know, you’ve got a lot on your plate, and I said I must. And I took my laptop, which is, you know, never needs to be far away from a laptop, I felt like there was work there. And I got there set my dad home, and my mom was looking absolutely terrified. And doctors and nurses were looking pretty worried. And so got my laptop out. As I thought if mum sees me using the laptop, she’ll be less worried. And some, and then she had just went into a seizure, and, and then they put her into a induced coma in front of me. But before she did that, I got to say, I love you more, and everything’s gonna be okay. And she said, I love you, too. She didn’t look so convinced that everything was going to be okay. And then, and then, you know, it was full on ER, running down the corridor with my laptop into the intensive care unit. And I spent a week in intensive care with her. And then sadly, a week later, we switched off her life support machine. And, and I just wanted you to know that, that that had been an outcome of the work that you do, because, you know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t it didn’t make the grief any easier. But it, you know, it was the without a doubt the most important thing I’ve done at that moment, and I was glad I was there. I think about that moment, every day and how lucky I am to be alive. And that’s why I continue to practice being an essential.  

Greg McKeown   

I’m, I’m sorry for your loss first of all. And I was touched in the story that you told in the email originally, that this question of what’s the most important thing to do today evolved for you. So the question was the same but over time the answer changed. So it seems to recall that at first you were it was almost always a work answer, something that you needed to do at work, but then slowly, it became sometimes work and sometimes self-preservation and, you know, looking after yourself and then in this moment, in this moment, there was enough discernment, enough space that you really knew. Don’t, don’t listen to dad actually. Follow this feeling within you to just, you know, drop everything really drive two hours to the hospital, be there and have this moment with your mother. 

Joanna Davey  

Hmm. I thought of you actually. Literally thought of you and your wife as I sat there at a desk looking out the window. And I think so. Yeah, certainly at the beginning of my Essentialist journey if I think about your circle where you put yourself in the middle and your family around the next circle and other people I’m, I was really rubbish, putting myself in the center of that circle. And I still am. And that’s, you know, the next part of my journey. But it’s my family, I think my family have always been in the center of my circle on the outside. So that was kind of unnaturally, it, I then had a very essentialists grief experience. So I’d seen my husband lose his father, I think, a couple of years before, I saw how he, you know, we’re very rubbish at grief in Britain, I don’t know what it’s like in America. But, you know, we tend to sort of like, brush it, brush it under the carpet and carry on. And I saw how effective that was as a strategy. So I got all essentialist about my grief. I mean, if I could have worn black, like a Victorian woman for years, I would have, and I did brief writing course. And I got therapists, and I found my grief tribe. And I remember saying to people, I can’t come out to see you. I’m grieving. And, you know, again, I think I remember thinking in them, but I think I was protecting the asset, because I had to get back to work. And I knew that if I didn’t focus on this, then I wouldn’t be able to do that. And then I wouldn’t be able to support my family. 

Greg McKeown  

No, but I understand what you’re saying there. And you’re saying that you, you tried to actually make a trade off? You tried to say, No, I’m not going to pretend everything’s all right. I’m going to actually experience this and prioritize it. 

Joanna Davey  

Yeah, absolutely. I had to I just, you know, sometimes something shifts in my brain, and I just have to do, you know, so this path comes before me and I, you know, I remember seeing the pain of my husband A year later, and it starts to come out. And still the pain feels, and I just thought I can’t, I can’t do that. And mum would not have wanted me to do that. And, you know, I just take it slowly. And I refuse to be hurried. I really was quite, you know, I was my grief. And I wasn’t proud of it. But I, you know, I was not going to make everyone feel better by being jolly the whole time. And beef comes the door, and I could sit with it. Yeah. Again, essentialism helped me out there. 

Greg McKeown  

No, I appreciate so much that essentialism didn’t just play a role in that moment, at the, you know, at the hospital, but in the journey afterwards. And I think for a lot of people listening to this, they will relate to that feeling of being rushed through grief. And, you know, hurry up and pretend that everything was okay. And, and get over this and do everything you were doing before. And what you’re saying is, is that you resisted, and that that created health, for your emotional health, to be able to mourn, to be able to, to feel what you’re feeling. 

Joanna Davey  

Yeah, I just had to strip away things were not necessary and being jolly. To make everyone else feel better was not necessary. And being on my own and having space was really important so that I could feel what I needed to feel. 

Greg McKeown    

You sent to me a photograph I’ve never seen, actually something like this. But you sent me a photograph of like a before and after photograph. Can you describe that, what you know why you sent that and what that is that? 

Joanna Davey  

That was being burnout. So that and burnout, typically is a mental health thing, where you burn out on the inside. So you basically work yourself so hard, that you go into kind of like, internal breakdown, and you have adrenal fatigue and depression. And you know, your body just says, enough is enough. And with me, I had eczema and so when I know that I am overdoing it, and it comes out externally. So it was me. And it was the day I just had to leave, I left work I took some time off. And I took a picture of myself because I thought I’ve got to never be like this again. But the weird thing was I didn’t see the signs and I think that’s the thing we don’t create the space in your life. In the silence is quite easy to miss the size that things aren’t getting how they should be. So I guess that the picture after is when I sort of had an essentialist approach to my own health. It wasn’t about getting myself well for me it was getting myself well for my family so I could support them again. And then I got myself a life and health coach and I discovered yoga which is just life changing for me. I have a toolkit now of things that helped keep me in balance, like yoga and walking in nature and nothing like brain surgery, but I, it helps me protect the assets that have long term and keeps me standing up, right? 

Greg McKeown 

I think a lot of people, you know, I’ve got to figure out a way to be able to share this picture with your permission, because, of course, because if somebody’s tidying their closet, the before and after picture is so, you know, so clear, that, you know, it’s a mess before it’s organized afterwards, there’s something very nice about that. And, but when you talk about before and after living life as a non-essentialist where you get exhausted, and then the life after as an essentialist, it’s hard to present that. But in this picture, I feel like you are giving us such a gift, because there’s a lot of people right now, who are exhausted, who are fatigued, who are teetering on the edge of total burnout. Yeah, and actually may be in a similar way you were describing, not so much in denial about it, but just not even really aware of it. 

Joanna Davey  

It’s about it’s like an addiction bit working too hard. It and you become really clever at covering this, the things that are not great. So you know, because I remember thinking, why I’m not very well, I can’t stop myself, why people around me not stopping me. And it’s because I hit it, you know? And I said, you know, people say, wow are you and I go, I’m fine. I’m fine, I really am fine, and I really wasn’t fine. But you become very clever at hiding it. And then you hide it from yourself. And then it kind of goes. 

Greg McKeown  

The research I’ve read about this is that when people are sleep deprived, for example, they’re actually very poor judges of being sleep deprived. So the cycle can continue. But that’s what I hear you saying is that when we’re exhausted, maybe we’re bad judges of that. Or but you’re saying more than that? You’re saying hiding it, so you wanted somehow to hide that from others and from yourself? 

Joanna Davey      

Is that right? I mean, clearly towards the end, I knew I was unwell. That adrenaline was pumping through my, you know, I couldn’t sit still. But I remember thinking I cannot run this, I cannot run this. I could just work a little bit harder. And I cannot run this. Yeah, eventually it did stop. But having taken its toll and providing a lovely picture like that. 

Greg McKeown      

I think what you said a moment ago, about a fought I could outrun it is insightful to me because it’s a it’s basically a true principle and strength gone wrong or being taken too far. Because, of course, in many instances in life, if there’s a problem, and you work at it, and you work hard at it, you can improve that situation. But that is true. And someone’s not doing anything about a problem when they start to do something they can get somewhere, and you will no doubt have been rewarded for that in various ways in your life. But the thing about burnout, is that the thing that caused it is not the thing that will get you out of it. 

Joanna Davey      

No, no, it’s the opposite of that. I can see it with others now. And that’s why I talk about it. And when I’m you know, in this COVID world, and we’ve all the meetings online, I’ve been very strict to ensure that people put their screens on because I can see it in people’s eyes, I can see if someone’s struggling. You know, it worries me that they’re asking people to be managers and friends and family on in this completely new world that we’re not equipped to maybe deal with and, and people are going to get stuck, you know, they’re going to fall between the cracks. And if we’re not careful, 

Greg McKeown    

And my sense is that people have used up deep reserves to get to here. So it’s about a trend if each day you can cope but you’re coping by mining more of that the energies and deep energies and that took a long time to develop. If every day you’re using a little more of that than over time, you’re you know, you’re scraping deeper and deeper into the bottom of the barrel. And so well now what do we do? 

Joanna Davey      

I it’s funny I knew at the time I don’t know whether you did that this was a moment in time, and I say many positive things for me about not down and I I remember thinking, I’m going to forget all of them. So I wrote it all down. Because it was a full color experience for me, that really was, you know, I, for the first time in my life, I got to spend every meal every evening meal with my kids, my family, I’ve never done that. And I’ve been back to work when they were three months old. And obviously, they don’t eat anything because it’s fussy teenagers. But it was a really, it was amazing. It was and there were other amazing things like getting to Saturday morning and not having to do this. Just it was it was very refreshing. And so I need to just work out what was good. And make sure I do that. And then try and think of ways. centralist ways of dismissing the things that didn’t work. And I think if I can work that out, and then hopefully I can share that with other people. 

Greg McKeown      

So really, what you’re saying is that something that seems essential to you now, is making a plan for lock down two, or phase two of this era of uncertainty. Before we go there, is there some anything else in your life? Like if we just clean slate for a second? Is there anything like what is essential for you that you feel like you’re under investing? 

Joanna Davey    

Okay, so I’m definitely getting me in the center of that circle. So I am perimenopausal. So that means I’m kind of in the well, it’s not the end of my life, but it’s the end of my child kept me to bring me up life, which is fine. So I didn’t want any more children. And I really was unwell until I worked out how to get better. Now I’m feeling on fire open fire got the hormones. But it’s very odd, there’s, I really want to consciously plan the rest of my life. And I know that sounds really nice, probably sounds very old. But it’s quite a monumental time when it comes to this part of your life. And no one gives you the guidebook, obviously when you know when you when you’re when you’re young. There’s lots of people helping teenagers about what GCSE, to do what college to go to, then when you have a baby, there’s loads of stuff about how you spring a baby and all the different things and what you need to buy. And then when you get to this time of life, you know what I’ve really got another 20 years working me, there’s no map. And, and, and I and I want to consciously plan that because at some stage, my kids will leave, and they’ll have other priorities and I want to live the best life I could. And but I need the space to work that out. And it’s very uncomfortable for me to put myself in the center of that circle. Because actually, I’m doing it for me, I’m not doing it to protect the asset to provide for everybody. Now, my husband is an equal provider. But I just it’s a switch I don’t know quite hard to make. 

Greg McKeown      

What I heard you just say is that you are in a time of great transition. 

Joanna Davey      

Definitely. 

Greg McKeown      

There’s this physical hormonal transition. There’s this anticipation of, of just your family transition, your children will leave you know, they’re not there just yet. But you can see on the horizon now that’s coming. And you’re wanting even in even while lots is going on around you, if a while COVID ramifications are happening around you to create enough space. You’re saying it’s for you. But what you mean I think is space to get clear about what your highest contribution will be post these transitions. Does that sound right? 

Joanna Davey      

You know, when it came to these getting wells, I could get back to work dealing with my grief so I could get back to work when it when this is it feels just very selfish to go. I want to plan consciously planning the rest of my life. I’ve started to think about why is that where’s that come from? And I’m starting to understand what gets in the way. It’s a big leap. And I’m sure it’s not I’m not the only one I’m sure. 

Greg McKeown      

I’m sure that’s true as well. Let me ask you this, why does it matter so much to plan you know what you’re saying the next the rest of your life the next act of your life, why is it important? 

Joanna Davey      

You know, I saw the fragility of life. You know, it sounds corny, but I saw my mom go from well, and I’ve got you know, weirdly I’ve got all her text messages I’ve got it’s just like I could go back for months. And look at the different text messages, saw that, go, you know, and I sat in intensive care. And I saw that go for lots of people and you get one life, and I don’t want regrets. And I think I have got a contribution to make that’s valuable. I mean, I, I like helping people to help themselves. And like, when I shared that picture, I could see there’s a lot of people in pain and that picture helped them feel less alone. And now I’m talking to people about menopause. And I’m helping people connect the dots. And I’m not saying that, you know, that’s my, that’s what I’m going to do. But it’s, it feels a lot better than just slugging for a big job title and company car. 

Greg McKeown      

Yes, what I heard you say was that you feel a mission, you haven’t quite crafted what the messages are even what the mission is still a sensation, that there’s a difference to be made, and something meaningful to contribute? What is that? And how can I be used best? And who can I serve most in this meaningful potential mission? 

Joanna Davey      

So Rachel Hollis, I know quite a bit. She’s great. And, and it is about the one isn’t it? It is about thinking about the one person you can help. And if I think back to myself, about four years ago, I went to a conference, a couple of conferences, and its women stood up and she talks about being ADHD. And I it was incredible. I went, that is my life. you’ve just described my life. And at 45 years old, I was diagnosed with ADHD and I’ve had ADHD all my life. You know, it’s moderate. It’s not there are people with far more severe, everything started to kick into place I’ve got, I’ve got a dyslexic daughter, my other daughters, definitely somewhere on the spectrum. I’m sure my mom had it. I have become so much kinder to myself. Now that I know that it’s made after a bit of grief when I thought why did no one spot this? And I think that’s, that’s one person who stood up, she didn’t know she’s gonna make that difference that day. But she’s made a profound difference to my life. And actually, she’s made a profound difference to my children’s life. Because, you know, now they’re lucky enough to live in a house where their mum gets them and lets them flourish with the different neurological wiring. And that dad does, of course. 

Greg McKeown    

Yes, I hear that the story you were just telling about this lady that stands up and tells her story, I think the reason you were telling that story was just as a, it was an empowering moment for you, not just with ADHD, but also symbolically as a normal person, like me, like Jo can make a difference by telling this story by getting out there. And so you’re saying it was sort of a justifying story that you’re telling me like, Look, I’m not, I’m not being crazy. I just would like to do what that person did. And it’s not so unrealistic, or, or so. And that’s what you were really telling me in that story, I think. 

Joanna Davey           

Yeah, I think so. And, you know, it’s not I don’t need to sit here and start a movement, or they movements are great. And thank goodness, he started essentialism. But it’s, it’s finding the time to, to make that contribution. 

Greg McKeown   

And again, it comes back to this idea. I’m going to need some space to think, to plan to be a bit more strategic about my contribution, you know, over the next few decades of my life. 

Joanna Davey      

And I know what’s going to get in the way. I’ve got a fair idea. And I’m going to make you laugh. It’s the sun blush tomatoes, the sun blush, tomatoes are going to get in my way. And by that, I mean= 

Greg McKeown      

Yeah, I mean, I have no idea what you just said. 

Joanna Davey      

So I my husband, he’s a wonderful man and the love of my life and my soulmate. He goes to the fridge and he goes where the sun blush tomatoes have, we got any sun blush tomatoes. And what I am hearing is not where sun blush tomatoes, it’s useful to have I’m hearing I have failed to provide a Pinterest type fridge with an abundance of sun blush tomatoes type condiments, and I think that is just and I’m like, he’s not saying that he’s not saying you failed as a wife and a mother because you haven’t got sun blush tomatoes. He’s just asking if they’re there. But I have taken that to be some kind of personal slight on my child rearing and family creation which does saying out loud I just sound nuts. But it, you know, it takes up an enormous amount of energy to live this Pinterest life. 

Greg McKeown      

Everybody fails at that the Pinterest life, right? I mean that, because that is inherently a curated, you know, image of just the right angle of the photo and so on. So, so we can’t live our whole life like that, I think it would be a very odd life to try and live. But really, you’re saying something, you’re saying two things. One is that you feel judged in those moments, but I think underneath it, it’s just to do with expectations, and how many expectations you have of yourself and others have of you and you say, it’s that multiplicity of expectations that is going to get in the way of me actually creating space to think and plan and, and design you know, the next act of my life? 

Joanna Davey      

Definitely. Which sounds so simple to say you should do but it’s so part of the fabric of me and I didn’t know whether other women or the way I, you know, was brought up. Have you ever done the Harvard implicit bias tests? 

Greg McKeown      

I have yeah but go on. Tell us about those. 

Joanna Davey      

Yeah. So there were I was working in a talent development. And we do a lot of work in inclusion and belonging and unconscious bias. Actually, I wasn’t familiar, particularly with unconscious bias. But there’s a test you can do called the Harvard Implicit Association test, it asks you lots of different questions about a number of different subjects. So and I did the one for gender, and career, and I came out much to my shock and horror, considering I went back to work when my kids were three months old, and have worked pretty much full time since as a moderate association with a man having a career and a woman taking off the family. 

Greg McKeown      

Again I think it has to do with expectations, like role expectation, even if you think about from a business point of view for a second, if you’re on a team, and everyone thinks everyone else is doing everything, right, a very randomized team expectation, then that’s no good for anybody. If you’re on a team, and for whatever reason, personal or team dynamics, you’ve ended up with way more responsibilities than anyone else on the team. But that’s not going to work and be sustainable. And sort of getting to be explicit about expectations. And really answering that, what sounds like a simple question, which is, who does what I can think of really no exceptions, in my professional experience, where you have a high performing team, where people were not highly clear about who was doing what, and doing the work together? Not who did what in our parents’ generation, not what did our next-door neighbors who does what, in our family who does what, and you can’t solve that? That conversation in an hour, you know, that’s part I think, of this next six months journey that you’re on, we would give our children a checklist of what to pack. And that didn’t mean that, that we as parents weren’t responsible to then go and kind of make sure when they’re young, you could still forget things. But it was about training them to be responsible for, for more, maybe than they would otherwise be responsible for. And that was true with packing lists. It’s true. Now we have a system for cleaning up after dinner every night. And we literally have it written up who does what, and how we do it. People know, who’s doing what on the things we have and the things that are still exhausting other things that we haven’t yet really clearly identified who’s doing what, and in many families, I think that when it’s not clear who’s doing what, it’s like a table that faces frankly, often the mother it rolls back to her. And so what I think is going to be key is tipping the table by actually writing this these things out piece by piece. I had Eve Rodsky on 

Joanna Davey      

Fairplay, I’ve got that on my list now. 

Greg McKeown      

But it’s doing it together as a family. It’s not just now all the responsibility on you but bringing the family together to have family executive meeting or a council for want of a better term. And every week, we’re going to go through this and keep working on it, it will take a journey. But your job isn’t just to try and force X amount of time for thinking that won’t be sustainable. I think it’s creating a system that supports you being able to do that. So that you don’t just do it by willpower and muscle your way through for three weeks, you’ve created space, but no, week four, five, six, ten you’re still having time. Because, you know, you’ve created rules that allow you to do that. What’s your thoughts as I share that? 

Joanna Davey    

Loads of light bulbs going off, so yeah, you know, go, I was sent on a woman’s management retreat, which we’re very lucky that they sort of things have business and effect effective Actually, it was about essentialism, I think in its core, you know, how are we going to live our bigger game, what’s our bigger game? So my bigger game was, I want to help other women understand what’s happening to their bodies when they get to 40. And so I came back and I, you know, I bought four laundry baskets, and said, from now on, everyone’s doing their own laundry. And that was that everyone went okay. After week three, I’d gone back to living my bigger game, and adding all the laundry because I just didn’t see it through. And I don’t think I explained my why, if I think about it, respectively, I didn’t explain that. They should, I didn’t explain, I just, I just got the laundry baskets and just said write your as what you’re doing from now on. So I need this system, which they will go they will go they will find it really difficult, but doesn’t mean it shouldn’t. 

Greg McKeown      

Well, and there may be, you know, this change takes time. But I think there’s a long journey here of giving people responsibility, and then letting them deal with the natural consequences. And you can do it together. And we can come up with other solutions. But I think that this is what I’m hoping for you is to is not just to create space for a week or two but is to create space for months for you. For years. Let me ask you this. How much time do you want to have available for just this thinking, planning? You know, the next act what would success look like? 

Joanna Davey 

At least half a day a week, half a day a week. I mean, the irony is that as I’m sitting here thinking, yeah, I put a lot of emotional energy into making them independent. Both my husband and I are independent thinkers. Now we have really honest conversations about Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ and, yeah, really important life stuff. And they’re very independent, independent thinkers. And then I’m sitting here going, don’t worry, I’ll do your laundry. I’m not helping them in any way, really, that that’s not helping drive, push them in the right direction. And so, I need to reframe it in my head around that I think a bit because I’m not helping them to help themselves.  

Greg McKeown   

Because I think that if you can reframe it around, I am empowering my children. I am helping them to become leaders of their own life, I am preparing them for their future. I suppose it’s to be a leader in your family, not just not just an individual contributor in your family. 

Joanna Davey   

I mean, two weeks ago, I went for afternoon tea with some mums from school who not only say they’re my closest friends, they’re people that I like and, and have five, six hours with them. And it was so refreshing and lovely. And I felt it was such a nice time. And we shared just talks about everything from COVID husbands to school to you know, let’s just and I just never that has to be part of the plan is to carve out time for relationships like that, because it’s always been the thing that falls off. And it isn’t easy for me I find making friends quite can be quite challenging. But there has to be a priority. It has to be what’s the point otherwise? 

Greg McKeown   

What you’re saying really is this was a success moment. It was some time where you weren’t in the doing mode. You were just able to be. It was rejuvenating for you. And again, it matches this approximately half a day a week aspiration that you have. Yeah, that’s doable. So speaking of it being doable. What adjustments need to be made in order to make it doable? We’ve talked about it. I think, in some, I mean, some specifics, we’ve talked about delegating laundry again and getting that fully, you know, on each member of the house, let’s say, but what else can be either delegated or eliminated, so that it’s so that having this half a day a week to be thinking planning, recuperating, actually becomes the norm, and not the exception to the rule. 

Joanna Davey   

I think it’s about understanding for my children and my husband and me, what are the what are the priorities? You know, what, what, what matters as a family unit and what doesn’t matter? That’s applying the same rigor that I applied for my grief experience and my getting back to help experience which I’ve not done before. And I’ve I don’t know, gosh our brains are funny, aren’t they? There’s just forget, success. Well, that’s why I said essentialism is a muscle that you have to keep practicing and practicing and practicing and it doesn’t go away. 

Greg McKeown   

Yeah, I mean, I personally really relate to that. Just recently, I finished a major project at work and Anna was the one that wisely said, look, I think instead of I think you need to take a couple of weeks just to not take get on to any new project or, or even just get back to normal work, or even do catch up, just to think and in that process, it’s almost like I’ve discovered what being an essentialist is, again, I’m like new to it again. And I literally said just the other day, I said, I feel like I’ve got my life back. And that’s like quintessential, what it means to be an essentialist is that you aren’t just saying yes reactively. And I this time around, I feel no selfishness about it. This time, I feel clear that the reason for creating the space is precisely because I want to make the best contribution, I can possibly make with the precious limited time that we have on Earth. I know, that’s my motivation. And I know completely clearly that you have to create space to think, dream, plan, instead of just do. There’s plenty of doing in life, even with this intent that I’m describing. But if we just do and then do more, and then do more, we lose discernment. And therefore, we start to become first tired, then fatigue, then actually fully exhausted and burned out. And the patterns that we started on today, I think it is about this half a day, I think to get that half a day, you may need to just go and literally say that’s what you need. That’s what you’re wanting to have and explaining your why, saying this is this is how we’re going to get better as a family. And it’s important to me because I want to make a contribution, you know, in time beyond my family. And I want to set that example for all of you for all of those reasons. I need this space and time and therefore, we need to get clear about who is doing what. So that this is possible in my life and so that we can operate as a better I hate to say it this way very business way of saying about high performing family, you know, that we can be a great team together. And, and it’s this ongoing iterative process of that people are responsible for their separate parts. And I think this is an application of essential ism for your life so that you can get this space back to be able to design what I think will be a really wonderful contribution in this next act of your life. 

Joanna Davey   

So thank you, that’s amazing. I’m going to buy some highlighters and some notes  and this weekend, I’m going to get some pizza, but we’re gonna sit down and do it. 

Greg McKeown   

Well, it’s just been my pleasure. And I look forward to seeing the actual concrete output and seeing those pictures and to be able to share the story into your ongoing journey with lots of people I think can relate. Thank you, Joe. 

Joanna Davey    

Thank you. It’s been amazing. It’s been absolutely amazing. Thank you. 

   

Greg McKeown

Credits:

  • Hosted by Greg McKeown
  • Produced by Greg McKeown Team
  • Executive Produced by Greg McKeown