009 - Procrastination, Networking, a Bleak Worldview, and Keeping Goals in Focus

[0:00] Welcome to Build Horizons, a show about picking the life you want to lead and how to make it happen. Today, we're going to answer some questions about worldview and how that can affect you, procrastination, and strategic thinking, and a bunch of other stuff. But before we do that, we're going to do the intro.

[0:30] Place them up, big dreams unspoken. Laugh till it hurts with miles to go. So run far, build it slow. Chasing down a brighter horizon. You and me in a road unknown. Building horizons. Let's go!

[0:55] All right, I'm Jeff. This is Katy. Click subscribe. the graphic says too so gotta do what the graphic says um katy yeah hi good morning good morning fancy seeing you here it's seeing you here uh last time we before we got into things uh we talked about your new workout plan you want to describe what that was and then how that went yeah so i have signed up to do personal training sessions with our almost 10 year old in literally like a week i think he turns 10 yeah um and it was so much fun highly recommend i think that sometimes you should go and swap places we um not a big group workout kind of no no it's just but it's just your son i would yeah i mean i would do stuff with them it was so much fun so we what did you actually do i mean we kind of talked about it but i didn't yeah what what's the what's the down low on that how that well we i mean it was the first time so it was a lot of meeting each other failing out our capabilities and you haven't hit auto button yet so go ahead and hit that auto button thank you you're welcome i got you such a good i'm a good auto button reminder

[2:10] person um anyways so um what are your capabilities that you tested what how'd you do oh well a lot of so it was a lot of like agility ladder stuff which is always fun because of course i haven't done that in um ever i don't wonder if i literally maybe once or twice in my life honestly i didn't do too bad i actually got them quick feet i got them quick feet um and then so we did a whole bunch of different agility ladder stuff and then we did a game where he laid buttons down little i don't know just on the floor and we would he had it automatically i think there were like seven or eight buttons and they would light up and we were supposed to shuffle and click them and it was basically like a game and dude i'll tell you averyn was so much faster than i gave him credit for i could barely hang which was slightly concerning considering i am running a marathon and so you couldn't hang because of fitness level i don't know like i was winded i don't know

[3:27] apparently you need to click more buttons or i just need to do more hit training which is maybe i should make you hit the auto button what i'll make you hit the auto button that way because you need to practice hitting buttons get winded from hitting buttons oh I see I feel like that was a dad joke um anyway so it was a lot of fun I think it's gonna be a really great bonding time for Averyn and I and um I'm excited we have it actually again tonight so we will see how session two goes more to come um but yeah so what I gathered from it is I am really bad at doing things high intensity i'm really good at running slow yeah and steady yeah we're running you are very averse to i mean i don't like i don't like 170 heart rate it hurts why do you not like it i don't know it's just uncomfortable but well yeah but like i i'm okay with feeling uncomfortable comfortable obviously but i feel like with longer distances it's a more ease obviously like you ease into it whereas if you're sprinting or doing HIIT training it's just so

[4:42] immediate and yeah but it is good for you and i know i need to do more of it for you and i'm trying dude when we were running and you need to like tell them because you make it sound like i don't run hard we literally just did a hard effort yesterday and then i did one how much mind you by myself by myself while you were involved like how you waited for me to start talking again so you could interrupt me and i did a good effort and i went hard like i was i did a whole mile hard so it's not like i'm i won't do it but i just don't it's not my how much encouraging did you need on that run honestly i was a little nervous i was going to be late getting back to the kids and getting them ready because i've been solo parenting a little bit this week procrastination is not always a bad thing we'll get to that later yeah so yeah it was uh yeah it was good so yeah that was my i i know you were in vegas this week and yeah any fun vegas stories you took it off i put it in there oh no you left it in there well i don't know anything cool in vegas i mean i vegas is not my favorite place i've literally only been in the airport so i don't know much about vegas pretty much that yeah just a lot of uh hot air in between other

[6:00] places i but you ran and it didn't feel too bad well i mean i did run yeah and uh despite it being like the low the entire time i was there was 86 degrees so that was the coolest it ever got uh but yeah despite running when it was like 90 uh the experience i would say would be significantly better than running here at home even though it was super super hot uh just because the humidity was like nothing what was the humidity i don't know it's 10 oh okay okay it's super super dry desert um sydney's gonna be a little humid though yeah but it will be cooler for sure yeah oh yeah much cooler i don't even remember what it's like to run in that run and not i i don't my body has forgotten what it's like to run in 60s it is super nice yeah i was in denver a couple few weeks ago and being able to run in the cool is is quite fantastic yeah i'm excited uh but no the the thing i i mean there's lots of things about vegas that aren't my favorite thing but my thing that is the least favorite thing is first off it's two hours uh before us two hours ahead oh gosh yeah the time changes so

[7:16] hard you wouldn't think two hours but it's a big difference when it's uh 8 p.m at home it's 6 p.m in vegas time which 6 p.m in vegas time is two hours until it's time to eat usually because seems like every dinner doesn't start till eight local and uh dinner is not like a quick 30 minute affair it's like two and a half hour experience well and you were there for work so yeah so it's typical fancy stuff in vegas and so the uh yeah my eating time which is normally i mean we normally eat at 6 p.m maybe or earlier we are definitely ones would we get hungry this morning 4 35 o'clock this morning i i checked my phone and my mom had texted me and she texted me at 9 11 p.m which i I had already gone the frick to bed. I know, you were crashed. You were so tired. Pretty tired. So yeah, I'm not a late night person. My mom stays up later and takes me apparently. And so for me to start dinner at 10 p.m. is, yeah, quite an adventure. And finishing dinner at midnight 30 is oof. yeah i know when you told me that i'm

[8:34] hearing our children again i'm well they're fine it's such a funny experience hearing the arguments through the floor and basement but it's fine we're gonna we're just gonna roll with it anyways is you were going to have dinner literally as i was going to bed yeah i was getting ready to leave to head toward dinner so yeah two hours time difference not great yeah also i'm bad at darts i didn't even tell you that oh no i haven't heard this story i'm terrible at darts that's a big that's all there is to that were you like last place terrible uh it took me so like we had a game and you had to like hit your number and i got i hit my number for the first time at the attempt to number 18 so wow that's 17 misses but nobody nobody beats me 18 straight times um should we do some questions katy well we didn't talk about oh shoot oh yeah what's your sydney nail situation oh my goodness okay so apparently this is a thing yeah so you can't get the camera to come over to me come here camera come here come here i guess if you remind me to hit auto i'll do it for you okay ready there's my nails right now these are

[9:49] not my sydney nails though oh wait those aren't yours no i don't have you do know we are leaving in like 24 hours i have my appointment scheduled for this morning after i go to the gym i'm going straight to my nail lady and i'm very excited and we've been planning these nails for a minute we've been both scoping out nails because i told her i want bright oh i thought you were meaning me and I'm like no yeah I'm really I'm really invested in this nail situation um but so I guess you'll see it on the video blog if you watch it my nails will be on there maybe we'll have to have like a little section where I show my nails um and I'm really excited I haven't had nails like this ever so we're gonna go bright it is gonna be our second start and I was seeing what other people had done and it seems like um the sydney vibe is definitely kind of like blue and like a navy blue a little bit of a lighter blue um so i've seen a lot of blue nails but i feel like i do blue all the time so i don't want to do blue nails dude this is the i thought you had your actual sydney nails no i'm getting them on but anyways okay i'll wrap it up but very boy i'm not gonna do

[11:05] two stars i'll probably do three stars whenever we get to three stars i'll do three stars oh okay not yet anyways that's all okay moving along okay questions and topics let's oh if people are even still listening it's fine they love us anyways god bless you okay so question number one is from user realistic summer 884 how do i finally lock in um i have a very bleak perspective on the world which is partly holding me back and succeeding I don't know how to change my worldview they go on to say they're not the best at socializing which applies to networking as well and that can be detrimental to financial success and they don't know how basically how to do it um how to finally lock in and um I'm trying to read like kind of like wrapping it up just basically how do they move forward with where they're at and become better at socializing which actually i think you have a lot of feedback on um because this was something that you've had to grow that skill over time yeah sure so the first off i'm

[12:23] curious what do you think of like we don't use the word lock-in very much this is a very no your face what what what's wrong with my face you're so happy about that no i try to be i'm trying to stay smiley um so what do you think lock-in means katy is this going to be a new word that you use that you found in our questions katy was our question finding i did i found these questions i thought they were a little different from last year just a little i'm having man it's in a struggle bus this morning um last time a little less career focused but this is also kind of career focused um lock in uh it means to figure it out figure out how you do better at something is what i would and like actually figure it figure out what it is that you need to do better at and then do the thing that's how i interpret it but maybe i'm wrong that's fine um wow that was very anticlimactic of you i don't know what about you jeff what do you think i'm gonna talk about gonna be your new favorite word you're all smiley about it

[13:39] i'm gonna talk about the networking thing first so yeah i the idea of showing up at networking events and then you just have like a bunch of people talking and you walk up and you start talking to them like it doesn't that is hard not my jam uh i i don't even know that i would say that i can do it like i mean i can and i i i can do fine just because i can normally be there with another person um but if i'm not that I don't know. Actually, let me reframe this. I think I do better if I don't have another person. I think if I have another person there that I know, then I'm just going to stick with that person and we're just going to hang out and talk and then maybe we'll bump into some other folks through that. But that ends up being a crutch and not something that I find particularly easy to get past just because that is definitely the easier route is if there's somebody you already know. If not, then I mean, I've found my way through that sometimes, but it is it is just weird and hard and I don't drink these days. And so there's no like easy button alcohol to

[14:57] make you feel better. And so it really is just a willingness to have the first five minutes be super awkward. but usually if you can find a, a group of people who are laughing and have a good time, that's the sort of folks that I tend to gravitate to because I mean, if nothing else, laughing is an easy way to spend some time. And then if you, I don't know, then you end up sharing a story or two and then it feels like normal and I don't know, you make it past that initial awkwardness uh but yeah i mean for me in general one-on-one stuff is super weird uh and so that that part of it is uncomfortable um yeah i was just going through and reading a little bit more of this i feel like there's kind of layers to this because they are talking about making friends in general but then also networking so i do think there's kind of two different things but in the networking um scope of things I definitely also know what you mean with going to for example a conference and not really knowing very many people and trying to start up conversations it's just really hard and kind of awkward

[16:13] but everybody feels that way I think I don't think that's a unique experience um but I do think just going up and introducing yourself um asking what they do a lot of the time is such an easy way to just start a conversation you don't have to overthink it yeah um but again i am also i'm also and i'm a pretty social person but situations where i am walking in and really don't know anybody and there's a lot of people i i do also struggle with networking in general um but it's so funny because my boss little uk lady has no reservations i mean that girl will talk to anybody and it's so fascinating to watch her work a room like it didn't make sense because she's built a company and she we've been she's been doing this for 12 plus years now um but she is a pro at networking so that would maybe be another thing i would suggest is if you have an opportunity to get a i don't know mentor or somebody that you

[17:28] might know that you can go watch network i think you can learn a lot that way too yeah no it's just i also think that i mean yes you can definitely get better at it yeah about that but like also sometimes it's just okay for it to feel weird and hard yeah um i like not everything is necessarily a you know a thing that you can just master master i mean i don't know maybe i'm selling myself short in that but i just i don't i it's not that sort of situation is not where i thrive i mean if there's a reason like if we're gathered together for a similar purpose like we have a very like like in in my role uh where i've been at a place and we have very similar jobs not just like a broad conference but like where we're literally the same people at the same type of organizations um those are a little bit easier for me because then you have a shared like i have this thing to talk about we have similar problems and then you can really easily like just start talking about the things yeah um like if i just go to a broad like okay we're literally everything from finance to like uh you

[18:46] know the technology side to operations to etc like if it's just everybody uh those are a little bit harder for me yeah just the not not knowing where we're gonna find you know whatever particular common ground find your people i mean honestly though it's even in the times where it sucks though and like it feels awkward if you just go and do it like with most things in life if you just take the steps and go and do it ends up not being that big of a deal so even if even if you feel like you're not like the the best at it just going and doing um and the other part too you know making friends is also hard sometimes and there can be seasons where that you feel like you have better friends or like you're better at at you know having or maintaining a friend group other seasons of life where you don't um and and i think that's okay too like there's yeah what if someone wants to what applicable thing could you say or do you have any good advice for somebody who is wanting to try and have a friend group meet some people um i know i have some ideas but do you have no i mean why don't you share yours because honestly um my

[20:01] perspective on this and because it is because i'm such a natural introvert is i love having close friends um but the necessity to like there's there's several friends that i have that i won't talk to for long stretches of time and then pick up and like it's just you know like we just pick where we left off we don't but like they're not heavy maintenance friendships yeah and the ones that i do spend a lot of time with which typically is around work people uh those like very you know i spend a lot of time with them because of proximity and time uh but like i don't if i if i didn't for a while like that would be okay too and like it would very much be in my opinion And just the people that I would stay close with would be the people that would be, you know, OK, if we didn't talk for a couple of weeks, months like and that'd be no big deal. So what about your football friends? Do you want to how did you get into that? How did you put yourself out there enough to make friends like that? Cause that has been something that has surprised me with you because you're a

[21:17] pretty introverted person, but you did some pretty like extroverted activities recently with your football friends. Yeah. So that is a group of people that I've met online. When I started prior podcast attempts, made a friend just talking to people on Reddit about similar things. uh, then ended up in a dynasty football league for like the last six years or five years, something like that. And we met up and went to the draft in Pittsburgh. And so, yeah, I mean, definitely not the sort of thing I would typically do, but I think it's also, you know, if you have situations like that, it's, you know, being willing to do stuff that's outside again, it's not like I'm doing that all the time. Like I, that can be a once every couple of years type of activity um but yeah but i think the thing that kind of rolls into what i was gonna say is try to find things that you love um like you love football you found a reddit group found some reddit people and you you did put the effort in to get to know these people enough for them to invite you to a dynasty league and now you have i don't know i mean you talk to

[22:33] these guys quite bit especially now with football season coming up um finding things that you have a passion for and just go after it there are so many online groups there are so many probably local opportunities um so try to lock in on that for friendships and then i did see what i did there um but then also for things that i did which i don't know if this is as relevant to um what they're wanting but i joined a book club that i literally knew nobody at which was honestly a little bit refreshing um and it was really great and you know i've i've got some friendships from that and i don't talk to these ladies often and i think we're gonna do another we've been on break right now just with summer um but it was really fun and you know i kind of put myself out there and it was really beneficial and then the other way that i've recently made new friends because um i don't even know if we've really talked about this on the podcast but we moved a little i guess like a year and a half ago has it been yeah um so kind of had to start over not so much like but i mean

[23:48] we're definitely in a brand new community um new schools yeah new neighbors yeah we didn't know anybody. And, you know, I've put the effort and time into trying to meet some neighbors and have a really great friend that I've met. And we have a lot of common interests. And one of the things being workouts to go work out right after this. Yep. Go into her class, actually. So I just think you have to find like things that you really love and put the work out put the work in and I guarantee you if you do that you will be successful in finding people that also have the same interests and that always just makes a friendship so much easier that's just like the groundwork and then it just grows from there and I also know and I learned this from the book club there are there are actually apps for like finding friends locally um that you can meet up and i know like for parents and stuff if you wanted to give little ones like it's like you can meet up at a park and go do a play date but i'm sure that even can be other ways to make friends um so i do know that we with this with this day and time and um social media friendships can be

[25:05] really hard but if you do put the effort in i absolutely believe that you can um build on friendships and find people with same interests but yeah we spent a long time on that question but i do think friendship is something people really do like to hear about yeah i do want to say there is a piece of this question that's mentioned twice uh which is that the the world is crap uh basically like you know things are bad and and that being a reason to not feel motivated to you know better one's self and i had some thoughts on that because i mean sure there there's absolutely crappy things in the world um and it feels like we're bombarded by that information all the time Well, it feels that way because we are bombarded by that all the time. And I don't want to diminish the fact that, yes, there is a lot of suffering in the world. Yes, there is a lot of corruption in the world. Yes, there is a lot of manipulation in the world. Yes, there is a lot of bad stuff out there. There's lots of things that if I had a magic wand, I would absolutely get rid of in an instant.

[26:22] But I will also balance that with there is a lot of really good in the world, too. A lot of awesome stuff in the world, too. And especially on some of these big problems, the general trajectory of where that is going humanity-wide is in a positive direction. Even though there are bumps along the way, we are a more equal society. We do have less childhood mortality. We do have less disease in the world, and we do have lots of things. Now, that doesn't mean that there's not asterisks to that statement, but by and large, we are a more prosperous, healthy, equal society over time. And I don't think that it is helpful to let so much of the negative dictate what you do and how you behave yourself when there is so much positive that you're ignoring when you're saying that, like, you know, in the statement or the question on here, writing all that up, the statements are, you know,

[27:38] the stuff is bad. And so I don't have the motivation to do things and that, but the, all the good stuff is just left out entirely. And there's plenty of good things. I would say that the perspective on that is probably dictated by what you allow, um, your, your brain and eyes to see. And so if that is, you know, scrolling Reddit or whatever the kids are doing these days, the that and that's just flooded with a bunch of negativity um then change what you look at because there's plenty of stuff out there that is positive you just have to not let yourself spiral into that you know just i'm feeding and bombarding myself with all the things that are wrong with the world yeah yeah and you only get one life so you only get one life and do you want look back and think about how much time you spent um being depressed about doom scrolling things versus uh being excited and motivated by all the cool things because you know i i know that that might feel hard because there's definitely um plenty of things that if you want to spend your time looking at negatives there are enough things to fill your time and there's

[28:54] enough things and it's the thing that gets clicks so it's going to be the things that just overwhelmingly so will show up on wherever really um this made me think of last night i was at our daughter she's doing a ninja warrior class and it's so funny she was the only girl i don't think i told you that she was the only girl i had no idea yeah adorable she loved it though uh but parents aren't allowed to really watch them i think that's just to make sure the kids stay on task and listen to their teacher so like parents can't really watch I mean I can see her but I can't be like where she's doing the class but obviously I was just sitting there for an hour and I had forgotten my Kindle because it was just a crazy get out the door but I opened up Instagram and started scrolling and my Instagram algorithm is genuinely just funny stuff to me which is usually just funny little fails and i was just cracking up watching these reels and got a little bit embarrassed because i couldn't like hold in my laughter so i'm like okay i need to turn this off because i can't stop laughing but anyways just all that to say watch things that you know make you happy smile in this

[30:09] case watch people hurt themselves i wasn't watching people hurt themselves it was a video of people hurting themselves no not the whole time there was the the one the part that made me laugh it was like delivery drivers this guy was delivering a package and he kept getting hit by a sprinkler it was so funny i'm sorry delivery drivers you're amazing and i love you thank you for all the work that you do but it was just it made me smile yeah you can't give delivery drivers too much crap you keep them amply employed i think everybody does to be honest don't if they say they don't then they're lying just kidding not actually not actually just kidding katy taking hard stances yeah all right uh do you want to read our next question do you want to is there any of these that you definitely want to hit on or do you want to just try to both question two question two okay okay so this comes from user raised i don't know if i did that right um help with bad habits and procrastination and they go on to say they know they have problem with procrastination and often slip back into bad habits um they have managed to cut down their phone use and social media in general but then they relapse

[31:27] and do scrolling and pointless social media feeds watching hours of videos on their computer without actually getting anything done that they'd like to do. So they just kind of fall back into these habits. Um, do you have any advice on how to improve even small steps that can help me stay consistent? Yes. Yes. We've talked about this a few times, but I think it's just great to talk about it again. And I do have things. I think that first off you need to have something that is, that you are passionate about trying to further, whether that is a skill or learning something or a particular hobby that you want to spend time in. You do need to spend the time to figure out what that thing is. And if you don't have something like that, if you don't have anything that's pulling you toward it, then you will fall back into the lowest common denominator of whatever way that spending time feels easy. And unfortunately for us right now, there's lots of easy ways to spend time on your phone just looking through whatever oftentimes like we were talking about above just a bunch of depressing crap and i do not think that that is a

[32:43] good use of a life and so i would heavily recommend uh yeah i think thing one is being able to answer the question how would you rather be spending your time i think it's a uh you're setting yourself up for failure. If you're just like, I want to spend less time on my phone. And then that's the end of the declaration. I think you need to be able to say, I want to spend less time on my phone because I want to learn how to do advertising for my business. I mean, that's my thing. Um, and if you don't have the answer to the other side of that question, then it's going to just, it comes back to, I only can do this thing, or in this case, not do this thing, as long as I have the willpower for it, which will last for somewhere between, you know, a few days, few hours, few minutes, few seconds, not a ton of time probably. And then you'll just be back to where you are, which is exactly what they're describing here. So I think you just, yeah, you have to have the answer to what the other side of that coin is. And, um, that's part one. Now, part two to this

[33:58] is I do think that there are some small things that you can set yourself up for, for success. And if you do have the answer to that question, but you still find yourself taking the easy path, I do think that there are certain things that you can do to make your life a little bit easier. So like for me, for example, one thing that I am figuring out is setting up my phone in such a way that if it is during a time that I have set as dedicated, like I don't want to spend this time on my phone. I want to spend this time intentionally on the business, just as an example. The thing that I've done is I have a focus mode on my phone that is the business focus mode. And in there, it makes my phone have a big old red X and all the words are red. And uh like there's nothing more uh like it's like instant condemnation if you pick up your phone like out of habit and you're like you're just gonna go through and scroll and then like you pick it up and it's just a big giant red x um that will remind you i assure you that like hey i'm i said that i wasn't going to be doing this and so like the number of times i've like picked it up look at my phone here's a giant red x set it back down and then like you know maybe

[35:15] that's like literally two minutes later, pick up my phone, look at it, giant red X, set it back down. Like we are a, you know, we are creatures of habit. And so you might need to come up with something to break you out of that cycle. But I do think if I were to do that, but then I don't have anything that I'm actually trying to spend my time on, then I'm just going to probably flip it out of the focus mode to just the normal one. And then now I'm back down to, you know, I'm using my phone for going through Reddit or YouTube or Instagram or whatever. And whatever it happens to show me is what it shows me. And then I spend all my time and then it's time to go to bed. That, that, that is one thing too, is sometimes the answer could be like, I'm not going to do this so that I can go to bed on time. Like I, that I've had to definitely do that before. Cause like, I know if I just start down that path, I could easily lose a half hour, 45 minutes a whole hour and that's a less time that i'm gonna get sleep and then i'm gonna feel more tired all the next day and um it's like a vicious cycle it's a vicious cycle yeah um i want us go back to your step one of identifying what it is that you would want to get better

[36:31] at or learn more on if people have a hard time because i actually i do like sometimes i have a hard time even what is it that I even want to do better at or learn right now? What are some tools that people could do to try to figure that out for themselves? Do you have tools that you've used in the past that really helped you figure out what it is that you want to be able, like what you want to spend your time doing? Well, I think first off, I mean, it's a pretty big question of like, what do you want to do with your life i mean i realize that's a big thing but i i do think you're probably able to identify certain people that like i i aspire to be more like this person or there's things that this person does that i would also like to do and and so you can kind of through that like figure out like okay this sort of person spends their time doing these sorts of things um and so i want to do these sorts of things. Uh, reading is another way to get a lot of good people's ideas and well thought through concepts into your own brain. And that can help kind of drive that direction. Um, I mean, I think reading in

[37:48] general is a fantastic answer to the question, uh, read more. There's, I mean, I, it's like the, the antidote antivenom to, uh, doom scrolling is, is spending time reading a book and for me like i'm not a big fiction reader i would say maybe five percent of what i read is fiction um but i would even as a non-fiction person i even reading fiction is a hundred times better than scrolling whatever social media yeah and i think too one thing you didn't really touch on that you actually do a lot which i'm surprised you didn't say is you kind of word map it out a little bit literally on paper big marker big piece of paper whiteboard and kind of just start writing without sometimes a lot of yeah just direction into paper yeah yeah and you do that quite a bit and I think it kind of helps gather your thoughts and I think for I know we weren't really going to talk about AI but I think sometimes if you even you know take those first steps to figure out what it is that it is you want to maybe do it like not with a lot of direction but you could even plug that into ai and um it might come up with some

[39:04] really great ideas to get started on some things that might you know help you grow and help you learn new things and yeah i do it is an interesting thing i think that's always been helpful i think that is especially helpful in our ai future is writing down the stuff that you are trying to do because then when you want to go ask AI a question, if you have like written down all that stuff, then it can pick up all the context that you have, you know, thought through yourself and you can have some thing, be able to, you know, bounce stuff off of really, really effectively. Um, and obviously, you know, you've got to use that carefully and things like that, but that is that, that it, cause it will definitely just affirmation you into whatever you want. but if you're using that as a tool of saying like here's my things here's the few things i'm thinking about help me write out the pros and cons to each and you can still use your own brain to like think of like okay based on that what direction i go yeah that that can be a really strong thing for sure um yeah and writing down stuff is fantastic in general and it's really helpful to be able to reference that actually that's part of the the next question a little bit um, that I'll, that I'll get into, but it

[40:20] is a really big strength. If you can articulate your thoughts that that is a, like, if you can, if you can put pen to paper on a thing that you're feeling, even if it's not being able to answer the question or answer the problem just yet, solve the problem just yet, uh, being able to just write down the problem can sometimes be clarifying. And I think that's a great segue into question number three. All right, go ahead. Um, So this comes from user who knows the day. And the question is, I've managed to organize and track my projects and tasks. But how do you handle your thoughts and course course corrections? And they go on to say, they get lost in the, you know, the daily shuffle and tasks, and I constantly need to pause and reflect. and they give the example of, okay, my goal is X in six months. So I need to do Y to reach Z while handling W in parallel. And then they say, I want to document this because honestly, I forget it all within two days. And I'm tired of realizing after a whole week has gone by, I've lost my way again, because I focus on whatever was screaming the loudest for the attention and it's usually work. So they don't really know how to organize this.

[41:37] And there are also thoughts or insights that pop up out of nowhere moments of clarity i didn't have before only to vanish just as quickly um they try to jot it down to help them get back on track but they end up buried in a conversation with myself or scattered across random notion page how do you organize and capture this kind of thought yeah i think maybe i wrote this i know i thought the same thing was this your question are you who knows the day i don't know i'll have to go read their other comments yeah this maybe is me um no yeah so like we recently had a like i had a pretty bad like anxiety spiral um maybe a week ago last weekend or something uh which was spawned on by this exact thing and like i have a really hard time which is really funny because it came through after like writing out a bunch of stuff um and getting a lot of clarity on a particular piece of things but then that kind of threw everything else into a wrench into it uh it just it wasn't even so much that anything necessarily even needed to change i just didn't know how to think about all the stuff in the light of what i had figured out elsewhere and so it's like everything went out of focus all at once and when that

[42:54] happens to me like i can't function like it's such a big like with the business it's such a big part of how i spend my time and what i spend my like extra energy on to not know how to even look at stuff uh was really unsettling and it took a while to kind of rally with that um so yeah definitely this feeling is something i feel very strongly and um a thing that i'm currently working through it's actually one of the things that i'm building out is trying to solve for this thing which can be a system that helps handle the more tactical things that you need to do but also keep front and center the actual like the north star of why you're doing what you're doing and some strategic decisions that you've made so that that can be very front and center or just a click away to like re-go through why it is that i'm doing all the rest of the stuff that i'm doing um and so you know that that's the thing that i'm working through. I think the important things

[44:10] that I've found is having, and one thing that I've even found through the business and working with my sister is having a central place to go to put ideas and things like whether that's strategic thoughts or like, Hey, we should do this thing soon or now or whatever um having a having the place where stuff goes and um and going back to that in a regular basis and building that habit hopes at least know that it's not just going to be a bunch of random stuff everywhere like having a fixed number of certain places and and not constantly just recreating new places for things to land i think is one helpful way because yeah definitely feel the the sprawl of things um and also like it keeps you from completely reinventing the wheel every single time that you have a like a little shift um which is you know i'm saying some of these things as if i have a i've done a good job and you know there's certain things that i've done a good job at and certainly some things that i haven't um but that that's when i have done a good job that's kind of

[45:26] been the common thread is it's a recurring place go back not sprawling spend the time uh but then uh make it part of your routine to revisit those things regularly not just when you have a anxiety spiral but when you also wake up in the morning and you're going through your to-do list maybe that's a once a week thing is to go through and review your strategy document and make sure that the things that you're wanting to achieve and the goals that you have are top of mind and that could just be a quick one minute read of the summary at the top with the goals and then you just go on through the rest of your to-do list for the day yeah i think for me too and i'm not honestly this isn't even anything i feel remotely equipped to give any advice to but i felt so bad when you had that anxiety spiral because i felt like i was kind of the one that caused it in a way just because i wanted us to just think through because you know we can be totally real here we had done a meta ads um ad and it didn't it it like performed well but didn't get any conversion um yeah so it just and we had kind of thought okay

[46:44] we're gonna do this thing but then it didn't perform well and one thing for me i have to remember these things take time um but i made us sit down on that saturday and really think through things okay who are we trying to help what are we trying to do then i kind of caused this anxiety spiral for you i felt so bad um so i guess even just you know on this podcast like for someone like me that's kind of just more of your support system and the company but also like i know i do have a hand in it like how can i help support you in this to try to help you not spiral and not get to a point where you feel like you're doing this how can i as somebody because i feel like there's got to be people out there that their partner their spouse is the visionary kind of like you and and they want to help support this but also want to be able to ask questions when it makes sense to ask questions but want to ask questions but not in a way where it's going to cause anxiety spirals so how could i help support you in this goal to not get lost in the shuffle of things and to keep track on the end goal well i think for starters um the the the mission

[48:04] in life isn't to avoid all pain. And so that's part of it is like sometimes the, uh, uncomfort, uh, or discomfort from having a shift like that is part of the process and just getting better and more comfortable in that. And that comes with perspective and in some things in life where you've gone through it a bunch of times, then it becomes more and more comfortable. Like I don't, uh, with my day job, Um, I have much bigger problems that caused me one 50th of the anxiety because I have done it for a decade and a half. And like, I know I can see the, the way that a strategic shift, uh, plays out and I'm okay with it. No big deal. That'll be fine. I know all the, all the ways, uh, with the, with the business that we've started, I don't have that same level of knowledge and background and understanding on how certain things work, especially in the advertising space. And so I'm trying to figure that out and then build the company based on what I learn. And I still, to this day, feel like I double in knowledge every week. And so when you double in knowledge every

[49:19] week, you are in a situation that you feel a lot stronger in what you know. But that does make it so that things that you used to think were a good idea are you realize like, ah, frick, that was this isn't going to work this way. This isn't going to work the way that I thought. And like even this morning, like in typing some stuff out that I mentioned on that document of like thoughts and strategic things and et cetera, kind of as I was writing that out, realized like, oh, I don't think the thing that I thought was going to be the path is the path. And it's like, oh, now I'm going to have to figure that out, too. Um, but like, that's just, I think over time that'll just get easier and easier. I think for me, and this is actually different. I definitely see people be different in this depending on what their strengths are naturally. Uh, for me, if I have somebody who like, I need somebody to bounce off of, um, or someone to throw the first pass, uh, like to, to get me to think if there is a question or an idea that is posed, uh, for whatever reason, for me, I can see that as

[50:35] something that either makes a lot of sense. And I have a lot of clarity on that, or I can see why it doesn't make sense. And I have a lot of clarity on that. Sometimes generating that first thing to like help decide where to divide the thought like that, that is sometimes really hard for me. And so having somebody who can ask honestly, almost any question, uh, or have almost any idea, I might immediately be able to see like way off into the future of like, okay, yes, this is a thing I can see is latching onto, or I can say like, ah, something about this isn't right. Let's think about it. And then like, okay, this is, this is why X, Y, Z thing. So it actually needs to be like this instead um but yeah i like having having somebody who can help keep it moving like help help the ideas keep flowing um i think is is super critical for me as a person who doesn't always have the ability to like have that crystallizing thought just because i get stuck in my own head about like thinking through all the different possible permutations

[51:50] of things and and having somebody almost ask something to like lock it in place is helpful but that's what i did and it was not productive i mean i guess i did later on because i saw you spiraling all day and then i was thinking like how oh my gosh what have i done and then i kind of took a step back and was like okay we need to focus on this i think i think this is the answer i don't know and then we kind of had a full circle moment but i just felt like when i did ask those questions because it was literally kind of a train like a play through the day that was in the morning we sat down at the kitchen table that was all really good and you got to see that like the good part of it of being able to like talk through all the things yeah yeah you give ideas and then we bounce and get it all figured out and um and like honestly like as we were doing that like i didn't realize that i was throwing everything into else into chaos but like it was a very clarifying experience yeah but then had to then figure out all the rest of it and then like we also have real life things of like we have kids we can't just sit at the dinner table and and work literally all day yeah and and so but it

[53:06] did quickly become apparent afterwards i'm like well i have no idea how all the rest of this plays together and um and and like honestly like as i started writing that out i started to figure it out and feel a little bit better uh but then you had stuff that you wanted to go do and so it interrupted that and i scared you so bad yeah because I was writing all my stuff out in VR and then you scared the absolute I try to be I scare I scare Jeff all the time it's not on purpose but I'm a jumpy person yeah you are a very jumpy person yeah but no and I think that kind of comes to putting things on paper and and what's kind of cool about that technique and I'm still kind of learning it is it doesn't you don't have to have the answers when you go into it you just got to start writing and it a lot of the times will just build from there and i definitely think that was what was happening for you yeah i was just writing down like what what are the questions that i have what answers do i know like what what truths do i know what questions do i have to figure out and then working through and writing out what the answers to those questions might be yeah and what things do you need more information on to better understand and what next actions

[54:21] are it just takes time to to work through that um i i think like if you want to know what sort of things are not helpful um like don't like it's not a catastrophe to feel uncomfortable it's not the end of the world it's not permanent it's it's a temporary state uh it's not going like if you if you think about it like it's there's no way that a week is going to go by and you're still going to feel like this like like it's all going to get resolved and it'll all be figured out and so like having having that attitude is helpful um being able to not ask catastrophizing questions yeah that's really helpful for sure and and what i mean by that is like um like being willing to just ask a like well what what would you do about thing like being willing to like get into the crazy mess that is currently brewing in my brain i think is a is a helpful thing and and like i also have to be a willing participant to like not

[55:37] catastrophize not spiral and being able to just think they're like okay let's let's answer let's think about this question because honestly if you can start to figure out any piece of it then the dominoes kind of click into place um picture puzzle whatever things something clicks into place something clicks and you work through it and you lock in oh my god you had a look in your eye and i didn't know what it was for and it was for the call back but yeah uh i don't know it's definitely a real real challenge this thing yeah it's hard and we're still figuring this out and you know if we get we might someday come back to this question when we feel like we have some really great tips sure all right um so we are recording this and when it releases we will be flying back yeah from sydney australia uh or maybe have just arrived um home yeah i think we would have just got back and but when we're recording it we are about to start down our adventure my goodness we leave tomorrow we leave tomorrow so crazy very excited um the training block in general

[56:52] i would give a solid c minus two um it wasn't great have a lot of things that we want to spend our time on so that was part of it also one really big giant giant part of it is this time of year in kansas is yeah it's impossible hot yeah it's impossible to train like productively i feel like it's just hard yeah these okay especially this time of year is horrible like this type of this timing of a marathon is by far the worst possible time. Like the, the, the mid July, early August training is, I mean, it is, and here's the thing is like, we have to be out for hours and hours, uh, when we go on these runs. And honestly, I don't even know that I would be super able to just be outside ride for three and a half hours, not moving. And so to be running that entire time, like it really just sets a timer off, especially like someone like me who sweats a ton. Like I, I'm just not going to survive. The body can only, it doesn't matter how well hydrated you are. You can only get rid of so much water and such a short amount of time before you're just going

[58:10] to fall apart. Yeah. But it's going to be fun and we're going to enjoy ourselves and we don't have to run the Sydney marathon again so we don't have to train now it was kind of funny though I was getting we were getting ready for the podcast and I told you that I'm just a little burned out of marathon training to then realize like I think we've been training for a marathon for about six months which would make sense I'm ready to be just able to cycle or lift weights or do shorter runs and not have that training pressure however i do think training pressure is really good especially if you want to stay um on track with staying consistent to have something to be training for but i'm i'm good i think i'm good to not have something well not have the pressure yeah basically having to grind yourself into a pulp every saturday or once a week yeah because that it just it really does tough especially during this time of year you're because of the heat you are going to be a little bit heat exhausted afterwards and you almost have to sleep after a long run and it's like that ends up turning into your whole it kills your day yeah i'm excited to be done with that but it'll be fun and we

[59:27] are going to um video blog yep it'll actually probably already be up by the time this podcast oh yeah or at least some of the some of the video on that so go check it out that'll be yeah we're trying to make it have a fun time with sharing some of the things do you think that we'll be posting on instagram too or on your instagram instagram and youtube we'll have stuff out there yeah so check it out i think it'll be fun um and if you guys really like this type of format where we do our just i don't know daily life stuff or traveling we could maybe try to do some more of it yeah comment let us know uh also to get to the housekeeping part of the show uh if you would like to have anything that you share with us You can email us at buildhorizons.com. We would love to hear from you. Follow us on socials. Comment, like I said, there. Also, yeah, hit subscribe if you've listened to this far. We appreciate it. Any final words, Katy? Nope, but bring on Sydney. All right. Thank you for building with us. We are cheering you on. And cheering us on as we go run. And cheering us on.