How to Accomplish Nothing While Being Constantly Busy

Some people wake up, focus for eight uninterrupted hours, crush their goals, optimize their workflow, and become millionaires by age 25.

I hear footsteps upstairs and immediately abandon my entire personality.

In this episode, I talk about trying to create while living in a constant state of distraction, anxiety, responsibility, codependency, household chaos, barking dogs, crowing chickens, buzzing dryers, and the overwhelming feeling that every tiny noise in the house requires immediate investigation.

Also:

•  why productivity gurus terrify me, 
•  why every task somehow becomes life-or-death, 
•  why perfectionism makes simple things impossible, 
•  and why adult nap time should absolutely be mandatory. 

This may be the most honest episode I’ve recorded yet. Or maybe I’m just tired. Hard to say anymore.

Transcript

I've started and deleted this video like six times because I'm already, I'm already like, I'm stressed out. Okay, I'm gonna start this again. You know, I've already started and deleted this video six times just to get started because as I record this, upstairs right above me is my mother-in-law's room, her bedroom, and she has dementia and she's in late stage Alzheimer's, and right now I hear footsteps.

And if, if you've ever wanted to go mental, just listen to very methodical footsteps. And as she's getting along in her Alzheimer's, it's more shuffle, but it's, it's a very methodical, very measured. Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom.

So as I wake up and think, oh my gosh, I'm going to record a video. This is going to be the greatest video the world has ever heard. Upstairs, I hear noise. 

And just now, so we have four dogs and three cats. And what sounds like upstairs is like a dog running around or doing something. So as I sit here trying to record, I hear, I hear shuffling.

I hear feet going. Sometimes I'll hear crashes. Sometimes I'll hear just some of the most bizarre sounds.

And it basically freaks me out because I didn't sit at, I'm not sitting at a microphone to create a bad video or a bad podcast. I want to, you know, get into my thoughts so that, I can relay them. Yet every time I hear something upstairs, every time I hear a noise anywhere, it just, it totally throws me off.

And I know the success gurus and the self-help folks are all about, you know, sit down, sit in your chair. Do all, you know, just focus, set that Pomodoro timer for 25 minutes and don't get up until it's done and everything. Yet when I sit, when I sit down and if you're dysfunctional at all and you sit down, everything is an emergency.

Everything is a distraction. I just remembered I have dryers in the, dryers in the clothes. I have clothes in the dryer and I'm thinking I need to get up and fold those and get those out of here.

So those are not far from me. And yet that is the best excuse I can have for not making a video is like, oh my gosh, the clothes have to be taken care of. We have chickens outside and right now I hear the rooster crowing and I think, man, I got to, I got to get out there.

I got to let those, those chickens out there. They're going to, they're going to, they're going to like start fomenting rebellion. They're going to, I can hear them sharpening their knives right now on the whetstone because they're going to, they're going to come out and slice me if I don't let them out and get them outside.

Yet every time they stay in there till 11 or 12 o'clock, they're fine. They lay eggs. Everything's wonderful.

I wonder if my, my wife has everything under control, which she does. She's an adult. She's a very smart person.

And yet, as I sit here trying to make a video, all I think about is like, I need to run upstairs. She needs help. I've got to find out if mother in law fell, that she hurt herself.

I have to figure out if I can just stand here and sit here in my anxiety and wait for the, you know, are the chickens going to be okay? Spoiler alert. Yeah, they're going to be okay. So I get up every morning and I tell you the one thing that I've been really good at is getting up for my prayer time.

And it's probably the one thing, it's the one thing that keeps me sane because you sit there and you, and your prayers are to God and you're asking for help. In my case, I'm begging for help, almost crying, right? Give me, give me some help. I got to make it through this day.

And almost without fail, after every, my time of prayer and meditation, by the time I'm done, I'm calm. I'm ready for the day. I'm ready to take it on.

That all falls apart by like nine o'clock because all of a sudden I hear the sounds. I get the anxiety about what to take care of because if you're codependent, you know, dysfunctional, you've got to take care of the entire world because that's more important than anything you, you have to do. So I've got this great list, you know, and, and they're all simple things.

Like write a, write a novel, a complete, polished, edited and finished by, you know, 12 o'clock. Okay. That's good.

Let's do that entire novel. Let's write some very snappy and incredible articles and post them online that are, you know, proofread and just ready to go. We should have those done by maybe 11 because they're shorter, right? Let's create a half hour video podcast episode.

In fact, no, no, no, no. Let's, let's create a series. Let's create a 10 part series and let's have that done by, by one o'clock.

And that's going to be the editing and the, and all this stuff that goes with that. Let's, um, I don't know. Let's do something small.

Let's, let's paint a Van Gogh. Let's paint. Um, let's play with watercolors.

Let's, let's make art. Let's create a cartoon series that really gets my thoughts and emotions down and that makes people laugh. It's going to be great.

So here's my list. Now my list is about, it's about 25 items right now. And of course those are all going to be done by end of day today.

And, uh, you know, of course I won't ever get derailed because I'm going to sit in this chair and not move. And even though I have to run to the potty, uh, I'm going to hold off because then I have to reset everything. So he can't do that.

So am I the only one? Am I, you know, because it's funny, cause I read the success books and they're, they're so, man, you sit down, you do the most important thing, do the most important thing first. What does that eat the frog first or something like that? Like do the things you don't want to do. And everybody has advice about how to do it and what to, what, what to do and when to do it.

And they're not me and they're not you because they don't realize that, okay, I'll speak for myself. They don't realize that, you know, having grown up, you know, dysfunctional and codependent. If you're codependent where you're a people pleaser and you got to make sure everyone else's things are taken care of and you've got to martyr yourself, right.

To make sure that everyone has what they need and that you're always there for them. And I, you know, I feel my, wow, I feel my anxiety just, just talking about all that because you're always trying to get your, your, your dreams and your goals and your sport. You're trying to grab them right now, right this minute.

And yet there's, there's noises everywhere. There's something right now it's quiet upstairs. So I don't know if the dogs ate my mother-in-law, just kidding.

Or if everything's, everything's fine. But as you sit here, as the anxiety grows and you're like, I've got to, I've got to, I've got to fix the world. The whole world needs fixing.

So I don't know who put that, that on me, but apparently somebody did, I guess I did. So I've got a checklist of things I want to do. You know, obviously it's not going to be a novel.

That's silly. And the whole, the whole thing is to do little things. And I can't seem to get this down, especially when you're a perfectionist or, or if you're really hooked on perfectionism, you can't sit down and say, okay, I am going to write one scene from a book.

That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to write it. It's going to be fun.

We're just going to be done with it. Move on. It's gotta be the whole book or nothing.

When you're, you know, when you're doing laundry, it's like, okay, let the wet clothes sit there for 20 minutes for goodness sakes, right? They're not going to mold, but no, you gotta wait. You gotta wait for the buzz. You gotta then rush to it, get those clothes out, get them into the dryer, make sure you've got the dryer sheet in there, make sure it's all ready to go. 

And then press the button. And as soon as that button rings, you better get up from whatever you're doing. You know what? You could be applying a tourniquet to a person who just had their leg shot off.

But if you heard the buzzer on that dryer, be like, okay, stay here, dude. I'm going to go. I got to get the clothes out.

Otherwise they could get wrinkled. And again, maybe I'm the only one. Maybe.

But when you get up and you make these great plans and everything falls apart by 10 o'clock, I feel like some old Civil War veteran. I'm ready to just go take a nap. That's the one thing.

That's the one thing on my to-do list that I will not sacrifice. There are two things I will never sacrifice. One is getting up to do my prayer time.

And two, getting that nap in. Because I wish they had taught you. You know, they actually did teach you this.

Well, at least when I grew up, is that when you were a small kid, like in kindergarten or I don't even know what they had. I remember going to kindergarten when they had a nap time, a quiet time, a nap time, lay down. They should do that at work

They should do that in offices and companies everywhere. They should have a dedicated room for naps. Everyone should have a nap because we all know how cranky you get.

They should have the nap time right after lunch time because everybody knows how sleepy you get after lunch time. And yet, all these morons schedule meetings. Hey, let's have a 1.30 meeting.

It's like, what's the matter with you? I don't know. I think you should just do a nap time. I think the whole work situation where people go to offices and go to factories and go whatever, driving stuff.

I think there's people in Mexico or in Europe where they have the siesta time, right? There's a lot of wisdom behind that because by then you're ready for your reset. You're probably tired. You probably haven't gotten anything done anyway.

Maybe you have. And it's time for a nap. It's time for a nappy.

It's time to go to sleep. Close your eyes for 30 minutes. They should encourage that.

I wish every company would encourage that because it's real life and it's going to help people. It's going to help their brains and especially the young people. You need to learn that you've got to slow down because you're just, what do you call it, white knuckling it where you're trying to get everything done.

And yet, I am the poster child for getting derailed as soon as the day starts or within a very short amount of time. So here it is a Wednesday and I've got my list. On my list was, hey, make a video.

And here's try number eight or nine. And we'll get it done. We'll post it.

We'll see what happens because perfectionism means that you're not going to finish anything or get anything done because it's not perfect. Sounds like the rantings of a lunatic. You're just trying to get through life and yet everything is a distraction.

When you're younger and you have kids, they're a distraction. Well, they're not a distraction. It's like the purpose for your existence is to help them grow and be better people.

And as you get older, like, okay, what are the distractions keeping me from everything? Well, for me, the distractions are a clicking noise, the dryer going off, the dog door flapping here. But mostly it's the bumps, it's the sounds because everything has to be investigated. Everything has to be looked into because if I don't do it, who's going to do it? And the weird part is, I think the world went pretty well without me before I got here.

And it's probably going to go pretty well after me. Well, probably not. Things are pretty lousy right now.

But somehow the earth has survived for thousands of years because, you know, the novel I didn't write isn't out there. The articles I didn't write aren't out there. It's hard to imagine that the world's going to get along just fine with or without you.

I mean, obviously, God has you here for a reason and a purpose, and he wants you to do stuff. And he's got a mission for you, and he designed you with a purpose. At the same time, if you fail and you don't do all that stuff, is it going to matter? I don't know.

I don't know. So for me, it's making a small list, a few items, doing little things, because I just can't seem to sit down and not get huge things done. Like, there's something wrong with doing little things.

Like, I don't know, after I'm done with this, open the gates and let the chickens out, right? That'll take 10 seconds. Maybe sometime today, get the laundry out, okay? Maybe don't be so worried about what mother-in-law is doing if she's falling or hurting herself, because if I hear a huge crash, that probably means that, yeah, maybe I can run up and be of some help, but not little bumps, not little footsteps. Even those footsteps that go, boom, boom, boom, boom.

So for today, it's little steps. It's baby steps. There's that movie, What About Bob, I think, with Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss, and it was about taking baby steps.

Maybe that's the book I should have read, is how to take baby steps, instead of the one that says, sit down, be a success, have everything done by the time you're 25, be a millionaire by the time you're 25, and spend the rest of your life spending your money to make other people miserable. Wait, maybe that was the wrong book. Anyway, so it's going to be baby steps today.

I'm going to try little baby steps, but we're getting close to nap time, so maybe I'll try that tomorrow.