How I Can Help You “Get a Life”
Why do I do the work that I do? I’ve had a variety of experiences that have led me to helping business owners get a life.
Bad experience with managers only concerned about length of work, not quality
Way back at the turn of the century (snicker), I worked for a large international Swiss bank that had recently taken over an American brokerage firm. I lived in Manhattan at the time, on the Upper East Side, and our offices were in Midtown. Unfortunately, my small department was transferred to the offices in Weehawken, New Jersey that housed the other company.
I usually took the ferry over from NYC and I didn’t mind the ferry ride over, it was kind of an unusual commute. What I did mind was that my job as an analyst had gone from mildly interesting at times (in NYC) to a really boring job in New Jersey where I didn’t need to think or problem-solve.
I was in my twenties at the time and living in New York City, so you can imagine the amount of extra time I wanted to spend in New Jersey: zero! Because my work was easy and dull, I usually finished it pretty quickly. Sometimes I’d ask the others in the office if they had work for me to do (I was SO bored). In general, I was out of there at 5 pm to catch the ferry back.
And I REALLY minded when the managers sat me down and told me it was a bad look that I left at 5 pm exactly. I think I was smart enough not to tell them that I was bored out of my mind, didn’t have enough work to do to even get me to 5 pm most days, plus I had absolutely no desire to spend extra time in Weehawken when I lived in Manhattan.
There are people who might have decided against having a life in one of the most vibrant cities on the planet. They’d rather climb the corporate ladder and start hanging out in Weehawken. I am not one of those people.
I did have a life outside work. I think at the time I was a member of a local writing group. I also may or may not have been swimming for a Masters team – I can’t remember whether I started then or after I got my next job back in Manhattan.
I wanted my life to be more than work. I hated the idea of face-time. No, not the app, but the idea that it’s not as important what you produce or what problems you solve: instead, your butt must be in a corporate chair X hours of the day every day. Actually longer, since they wanted me to stay past 5.
My inability to deal with interruptions at work, especially during deep work
At the next job (which was also in Midtown, oddly enough), I had interesting work to do and people I enjoyed working with. Those of you who weren’t working age (or alive, ha ha) in the early ‘00s may not know that back then there was basically no cybersecurity at small firms. I could download any software I wanted onto my work computer, so when instant messaging first came out I put it on my work computer.
I think it was AIM back then? Not sure. There were no dating apps (I used Craiglist for that – and yes I survived!). The IMs were kind of free-floating apps, though we didn’t call them apps back then.
I had IM on my computer for maybe two minutes. I got two IMs and both times I almost fell out of my chair in a panic. I quickly uninstalled it, and I refuse to use any similar apps to this day. When I work with someone who has Slack, I change the settings so that I get a daily digest.
It’s pretty common for people with the ‘tism to have difficulty with interruptions to their work, especially when they’re focused. People on the autism spectrum and those with ADHD are capable of hyper focus, where you really lock in. But for those on the spectrum, being interrupted in that state can cause panic.
Research shows that people who get interrupted can take up to 23 minutes to get back on task. But when I’m interrupted in deep work, it takes me about half an hour to just calm down, slowing down my heart rate and taking deep breaths. I might even have to go for a little walk to get the cortisol out of my system. That’s before I get back to the task and need additional time to get back to where I was.
That’s why I had to design ways to avoid being interrupted during deep work. Not doing deep work is one way to avoid it, but that’s not a great solution! One thing I’ve done for decades is to turn off email notifications completely. They don’t pop up in the corner of my screen (holy f*k that is annoying) or make any noises or in any way bother me.
That doesn’t mean I never answer emails, but that I answer them in batches at times that are good for me to answer them. Obviously I have no “social” media notifications on either, though of course we didn’t have those platforms in the early ‘00s.
Once I worked in places that allowed me to have my own office, I could shut the door against interruptions. If I wasn’t doing deep work, I’d leave my door open, so at least I looked accessible. But when I was working though a problem or needed focus, that door got shut.
Smart people don’t necessarily make good decisions, and neuroscience helps us understand why
The dot-com boom and bust occurred while I was at the Swiss bank. I kept buying stock funds the whole way through the crash, and I remember talking to my dad, a very smart man, about it. I kept urging him to keep investing – he was notoriously cheap about a lot of things and I remember telling him to buy because everything was on sale. And he told me he just couldn’t do it because the crash was too scary.
Years later, in 2013 I was a CFP at a regional financial advisory firm. You may not remember this, but that year was a huge stock market run. Large caps (big companies you’ve heard of with high valuations) were up over 30% for the year, and small and mid caps were up 40-50%.
I was in the DC area at the time, so of course we had some clients with government ties. I remember one (another smart man) called me up several times that year. We had him in a pretty standard 60% stocks/40% bond mix, and he would tell me he wanted to sell out of his stocks. I would tell him why he shouldn’t.
Fortunately he listened to me. I think part of the reason he called me is that he knew I’d talk him out of it and he just wanted some reassurance. All this made me wonder why smart people had such a hard time doing the right thing as far as their portfolios, and that got me into reading about behavioral finance.
I like to write, and my writing brought me neuroscience research
I’ve been a writer my whole life, even when I worked in finance. I wrote on the side mostly, until after I launched my own business. I started Desert Diva LLC in 2017 as a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (I did write an article in the Journal of Divorce Financial Analysis!) and then discovered I didn’t have a passion for the work.
I then started ghostwriting, all non-fiction. I wrote about leadership, project management, Agile project management, and psychology (specifically the Dark Triad of personality traits.) As I researched the books, I discovered a lot of neuroscience by looking at articles published in PubMed. I always look to original sources, not just the summaries people (and now AI) generate.
As I did that, I understood why focus is so important for getting $hit done. That’s why I was usually finished with my work first, because I was able to focus. Due to my personal issue with interruptions, I was able to create environments for myself that allowed me to focus without interruption when I needed to.
I also found the basis for “unproductive productivity”: neuroscience shows the brain needs inputs other than work to be healthy. Nutrition, exercise, sleep, hobbies, time with loved ones. These are critical for brain health and we know this from all the research we’ve done.
Having a life helps with retirement worries too
As a CFP, I worked with many people who were either close to and planning retirement, or already in retirement. There were clients who didn’t even want to think about it because not working scared them – they didn’t have much else in their lives.
Clients who were retired and had discovered there are only so many times in a week they wanted to play golf, and needed something else to do. Clients who missed working because they didn’t have anyone to hang out at lunch or happy hour; turned out all their friends were at work and now they didn’t have any other friends.
These were not happy clients. I did have happy clients, some of whom had gone back to consult or mentor others in their profession, and others who had hobbies and friends outside work.
The pandemic reminded people of the great things in life
The pandemic came, and suddenly so many of the workaholics I knew realized that although their kids might drive them nuts, they enjoyed being able to spend time with them. People who got back into an activity they loved when they were kids, and loved it. People who found new activities they enjoyed.
And as the pandemic came to an end, they didn’t want to let go of the things that brought them joy during the pandemic.
These are my clients: business owners who recognize how dangerous it is to let their entire lives revolve around work. They want to spend more time with the kids or doing activities they enjoy, but don’t have the time because they’re so busy working. They also frequently feel that they’re busy all day, but realize they didn’t actually accomplish anything among all that busy-ness.
The answer is to cut down on the time you spend working in and on your business, without sacrificing profits and revenues. It can be done – but you do have to rebel against the ways of working that we’ve been taught.
How I collaborate with clients
I offer:
My book explains the basics of working with your brain instead of against it. This can also be good for those working in corporate who may not be able to entirely reimagine they way they work but can still take some steps to carve out more time for the good things in life.
1:1 training This offering is a 12-week program specifically designed to help you implement changes to cut down on busyness so you can be more intentional about your business.
Consulting package For those who’ve mastered the basics but find that they’re still stuck, we’ll review their business processes to find productivity bottlenecks, rework the processes to remove them, and implement the new processes.
Recap (tl;dr):
I’ve done a lot of different things in my career that led me to understanding the neuroscience behind how we work. I collaborate with business owners to organize their day so they can have a life they love in addition to the business they love.
Want to get a life? Click here to buy my book, The Rebel’s Guide to Getting $hit Done: Peak Productivity for Business Owners