Greg McKeown:
Welcome everyone. I’m your host, Greg McKeown, and I am here with you on this journey to learn to understand so that we can make a higher contribution in our lives but without burning out. This is part two of my conversation with Anna McKeown talking about transitions and how we can transition more gracefully. By the end of this episode, you will be able to more gracefully handle the transitions of your life. Let’s get to it.
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Yeah, I feel like the last nine months, I don’t know that we’ve really had routine in the richness we would normally associate with that term. Where things really work. It works.
Anna McKeown:
Yeah. There are certain things that we would do every day at some point.
Greg McKeown:
Many things.
Anna McKeown:
But as far as routine goes, I feel like routine is when I feel like I’ve, like, I’m feeling good.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. I felt like in order to achieve the things that we have been able to achieve over these nine months, the state has been something like somebody engaged in a Kung-Fu battle. Do you know what I mean? Like, you are like, okay, I’ve got to be fully present to be able to handle this right now, and if we can handle the things that we’re trying to achieve today, it’s like, that’s success.
Anna McKeown:
That is really interesting. I think that vibes with you. I don’t feel like I’m in a Kung-Fu battle, but I’m glad that you are. That has been a real asset. Thank you so much.
Greg McKeown:
Why do you say that? Okay, so curious now, like you’re thankful for that. Yeah. Why? Why? Why is that helpful?
Anna McKeown:
Because sometimes that is the only thing that gets certain things over the line is your excellent Kung-Fu skills. You know? Seriously, I, you know, I think that I try to have more of a Zen approach, but you know, it’s interesting because I, I think I’m just getting into who we are as people now. Which maybe is less interesting to the listener, but yeah.
Greg McKeown:
That which is most personal is most universal.
Anna McKeown:
But that’s interesting. You know, the Kung-Fu analogy, I think you have a certain energy of go hard, take a break, go hard, take a break, you know, this kind of, this kind of approach. And I tend to, you know, tick, tick, tick away at things and not take a break. And that’s not super healthy. We found, you know it, like I have a little app that monitors my readiness, and it gets docked because I’m not taking enough breaks in the day.
Greg McKeown:
And you get more sleep than me.
Anna McKeown:
Yes.
Greg McKeown:
But I have more resting hours in the day. Well, it’s not hours. It’s not plural, but still, it’s, that’s…
Anna McKeown:
Yeah. More downtime.
Greg McKeown:
Well, that’s pretty much…
Anna McKeown:
Which is so important for mental health. You know, it’s so important for creativity and those types of things.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. And I also want to just come staying with a sort of Kung-Fu analogy, which might be a bit of a self-serving thing now that we’ve established that it’s more my approach than yours or it neither feels to me like, like it’s not not Zen. That’s not quite how I see it. It requires a lot of mental energy and presence. Okay, we’re here. We need to now deal with this situation. And there’s some, there is some excitement in it, but after nine months of doing it, I just find myself now ready to…
Anna McKeown:
Has the Energizer Bunny run out of batteries?
Greg McKeown:
<laugh>
Anna McKeown:
I don’t believe it.
Greg McKeown:
Now we have this image of an energizer bunny in a Kung-Fu costume, you know, trying to conquer the world over these months. It’s more like, yeah, I don’t wanna do this forever. It’s just like that. Yeah. It’s like this is what it has required to be able to continue to do the things that seem important within a state of major and multiple transitions. This is the price to pay. This is what is required. You know, we chose to do many things we didn’t have to do. We chose to do them. Yeah. We chose to travel. We chose to even go to Cambridge. You know, these were choices. But now I find myself going, and I know you do saying…
Anna McKeown:
How do you know I do?
Greg McKeown:
Because you say so, so clearly to me, like…
Anna McKeown:
Yay!
Greg McKeown:
Just doing this episode was worth it for you just to hear me say that out loud and to feel heard, wasn’t it?
Anna McKeown:
It’s been enjoyable, for sure.
Greg McKeown:
What’s been enjoyable for sure? The podcast? Or just to hear me saying it?
Anna McKeown:
All of it. All of it.
Greg McKeown:
Here’s what I want to say is coming back to something from the beginning, this idea that you are not good at transitions. That you shared that with me as self-awareness early in our marriage, maybe even before we were married.
Anna McKeown:
Yes. It was before.
Greg McKeown:
So it’s so interesting to me because, really, I think you might have like a black belt in it now. <laugh>. No, I’m serious because even now, your language will be, oh my goodness, this is a big transition. I, you know, I, you know, I don’t, you know, don’t really do transitions. But the thing is, you do. You know?
Anna McKeown:
That’s very kind.
Greg McKeown:
I’m not trying to be kind. I’m trying to report as I see the situation.
Anna McKeown:
Well, this podcast has been really lovely in that I think I can see that I have grown over the past 25 years, that I have learned to approach transitions with some experience, knowing that it’s going to be uncomfortable at times, that it’s not going to transfer. You know, I’m not gonna be able to transfer everything I was doing over to this new, you know, this new phase with flawless smoothness. So thank you. It’s helped me to see that there’s been some growth.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. I’m trying to put my finger on what the things are that have helped go from someone who perceived themselves to be not good at transitions, and let’s say genuinely that is true, to someone who can, at the very least, handle tremendous levels of transition simultaneously.
Anna McKeown:
You mean, what have I learned?
Greg McKeown:
I mean, we’ve just been talking about it. So it’s not like I’m not necessarily saying, well, what are they? These are the things that we’ve been talking about, but what can we say in terms of portable mindsets or skills for other people to make the same kind of transition on transitions? If that’s not too much of a mouthful.
Anna McKeown:
I feel a little bit inadequate in giving anyone advice, but I’ll give it a shot. I mean, one of the things I, a tool I, would suggest is to hold in your present that you are going through a transition and have some sort of amount of time that you are allowing for it. Maybe even do a little research on it. I mean, I know with moving to a new community, they, I said that earlier in that podcast, but I guess two to three years is a pretty normal amount of transition until you feel settled, till you feel like you have your people, you know where things are. You know, you have a community and a routine that can be daunting. When you’re going into it, you’re like two to three years, you know? But it’s not all gonna be a challenge the entire time. You know, they’re gonna be many phases of acquiring knowledge and meeting people and et cetera, et cetera.
Greg McKeown:
Okay. So you said two things so far. You said naming it. This is a transition. We are going through a major transition. This should be hard, this should be a challenge. Then even further, not just naming it, but giving a period of time out loud. Okay, this, when we travel somewhere when we come back, we need to allow ourselves a week. That doesn’t mean you don’t do anything for a week, but allow yourself to feel a bit crazy for a week.
Anna McKeown:
Yeah. I remember talking to a woman whose husband traveled all the time, and she had read that it took, do you remember this, Greg? It took like…
Greg McKeown:
Oh yes, I, oh, I remember. I’m not gonna, I don’t wanna interrupt you, but I wanna give more context for those that don’t know. So in this situation, the husband is a CEO of a major pharmaceutical company. The wife is an educator and highly intense in her own right. And what I remember was that she’d learned it was sort of three to four days for them as a couple to be able to reconnect. That it took a couple that amount of time. But the problem…
Anna McKeown:
Is that if they’d been gone for more than two days, I believe, right? That it would then take three to four days to kind of get back in sync with each other.
Greg McKeown:
And what she was concluding was what was…
Anna McKeown:
That he traveled so often that they were never in sync because they were never like three to four days together at a stretch. Is that right?
Greg McKeown:
So literally, yes. Literally their entire marriage, she was like, oh, that’s why we don’t feel deeply connected, even though they are connected.
Anna McKeown:
Yeah, they were great and made it work.
Greg McKeown:
But that deep connection is basically never in existence because every trip disconnects them, and it takes all the time they have back together just to even start to feel reconnected before the travel happens again.
Anna McKeown:
Right. And it’s a real, I feel like balancing act for me to not get discouraged by that kind of information, but rather give myself some grace because of that information and work toward, you know, building a lifestyle where you’re not in transition all the time.
Greg McKeown:
Well, this is one of the reasons that I don’t travel in that way. This is deliberate too. So, you know, it’s no secret that I travel that’s the least family-friendly element of my career.
Anna McKeown:
But early on, we made the choice that you would take a family member with you as often as possible,
Greg McKeown:
Which was one way of alleviating the cost of it.
Anna McKeown:
Well, we’d learned that from another CEO who’d done that. And that had been an enriching experience for him and his family members.
Greg McKeown:
Precisely. And so, that was one thing we did. But another is just, I’m thinking about people who are listening to this who may feel they just don’t have a choice because that’s the company they’re in, and it’s a global firm and so on.
Anna McKeown:
Or, well that’s the military, you know, I mean, there’s lots of careers where that, that just is the way it is and…
Greg McKeown:
An embedded part of it.
Anna McKeown:
But as I understand it, I mean, they’re not alone, and they have a community to be able to support one another and talk through those things.
Greg McKeown:
And regardless, taking that information, taking that knowledge, and recognizing that it takes time to handle transitions and to create buffer deliberately, even putting it on the calendar. Okay, these, so there’s a variety of things you can do with that knowledge. If you have enough influence on your schedule, then you can literally build buffer. Right? Okay, so here’s several days we’re not having appointments because we’ll need to transition. If it’s a major transition you’re going through, if it’s something like you say the military, you’re moving for the military, okay, but maybe you can’t change that aspect of it, but what can you do to make up for the collateral damage of the transition so that you don’t pretend, well this will just be fine, this is, this will have no impact. I can just pretend it’s away so that you build it into the equation and then make whatever accommodations you can make for the things you can’t change.
Anna McKeown:
Yeah. And I just say, you know, prioritizing the things that matter most to you and letting go of as much as possible because some things you just, you need to do for your own health.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. So you could call, you know, this third, either reminder or principle is protecting the asset is recognizing the transition is already going to be taking so much from the asset. And that’s how I, that’s how I feel about this whole Kung-Fu metaphor, is that you are using a lot of the asset in order to deal with this situation that you are in. And so, you can choose to be a little imbalanced over a certain period of time if you then make adjustments to be balanced over the longer period. Right. So this is nine months of extremely intense experience and adventure, and transition. But now, what can you do? You sort of say, okay, it’s a little like the Joseph in Egypt with seven years of good years, that’s very, and seven years of famine. And trying to do that a little with transitions where you say, okay, if this is, if I’ve gone through a major transition, how can I then create, in our case, let’s say, nine months of maximizing, steadiness, and recuperation.
Anna McKeown:
I like the sound of that. I’m in. Sold.
Greg McKeown:
Seconded.
Anna McKeown:
I have it in a recording. I will be playing this back to you.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. But you’re not having me to drag me to this. I mean, I’m somebody who’s listening to this; they’ve been walking along, they’re running, they’re in the car, they’re in the shops, maybe they’re cleaning at home, maybe they’re preparing for a meeting. As I think about all of them there living with transitions in their life, what is final comment or quote or piece of wisdom that we can offer them?
Anna McKeown:
I would just go easy on yourself, you know, and prioritize your relationships and the health of those. I don’t know, what do you think Greg?
Greg McKeown:
Well, I mean, in the same sentence, you literally said easier and prioritize, which is, you know, pretty much the last 10 years of my professional life writing essentialism and effortless and teaching those ideas. So it’s a pretty great place to go to. You know, as I’ve said before, you don’t write a book on effortless because life is easy. The only reason you do it is as an antidote because life is so hard and so often suffering. And so what you said is, it just feels exactly right. It’s this is grace, right? Yeah. And now the question that you’re asking is like, how can I smooth this transition?
Anna McKeown:
Yeah, I like that. How can I smooth this transition? Because we are probably all in some sort of transition right now. And if you’re not, one is coming. So allow for it, embrace it.
Greg McKeown:
Anna, I really thank you for taking time to have this conversation and sharing your insights and your honesty with everybody. We’re all better for having you.
Anna McKeown:
I love these conversations.
Greg McKeown:
For everybody listening out there. I know I speak for Anna when I say this. Like it’s really a blessing for us to be able to have these conversations with you. We talk about this. That the people like, we see you in our mind’s eye practically right now. Maybe you are walking outside, maybe you are on a run. Maybe you are in the car, on a train, on the bus, maybe you are cleaning up inside. We see that part and feel privileged to be a part of that in your lives. But also it’s more than that because even though that might be what you’re doing on the outside, what you’re really doing is trying to live your life in a meaningful way, to design a life that really matters, to make a contribution, to make a difference, and are dealing with so many challenges of so many kinds and all of the time. And so just thank you, really thank you, for being a part of this conversation today.
Well, that’s a wrap. What is one thing that you learned from today’s episode? What is one thing you can do immediately to put this into action? I mean, in the next five to 10 minutes? And who is someone you can share this episode with so that the conversation can turn into an actual improvement in your life and theirs? Thank you, and I’ll see you next time.
