I Feel Like I Didn’t Get Anything Done

0:00I feel like I didn't get anything done this week. I don't know if anyone else feels this way sometimes, but I wanted to reflect on, well, I may feel that way, but is that actually true? So this week, I am by myself in my home. Steph is away visiting family and I've been by myself from Tuesday and today I'm recording this on a Friday and it snowed this week and I was trapped in the house one day just because it just snowed like pretty much all day and it was just not worth going out and for the most part like I've done my best to get out of the house but I really just went like grocery shopping and I got a

1:02coffee one day and it's you know I just I didn't see any friends I didn't see any like anybody I knew it was really just you know bopping around town if you will but I feel like in terms of work like I had all the time I could have worked until 10 o'clock at night and got up super early and worked but I didn't do that and I think I know why I feel like I got nothing done and it's because I had a lot of meetings this week and usually when I have a lot of meetings I feel like I don't get a lot of work done even though because I'm the type of person who just has this feeling and again it's this is not like rooted in reality or anything it's just a internal that meetings are not

2:03work so today as an example I had a three-hour meeting with my brother which I know is a long time but also like we're family and I had a maybe a 45-minute meeting after that with my developer and that both of those meetings mind you were productive they we talked about work and we came up with plans to help increase productivity in our work and now we have to execute on those plans which are which executing to me is not an issue but sometimes like that communication that long-term long-form communication is important and then after that I filmed four short-form videos which would basically close out the rest of 2025 and so yeah I did that and I'm trying to think like did I do

3:12any email stuff that I know it's like that's the only thing I really did like physical labor I guess and it's still early in the day I still have I still could do some stuff but I just basically just filmed videos which honestly is enough it's enough work for some university now yesterday I had another meeting wasn't as long with my the my team member Kayla who runs our customer service and we did update our SOP in a few places for customer service and I did what did I what did I do I'm drawn a blank here oh yeah I had to look into I did I was doing research on coming up with a comment DM system because that's the thing

4:15we're working on right now is trying to figure out how to incorporate answering DMs and in comments in our customer service SOP and we're having a hard time figuring out how to do that technically because there's no like one system that allows us to have like a company inbox for that there are systems like I looked into Hootsuite buffer has one but honestly all of those are like they work for some and they don't but they don't work for all and so we're just we're still trying to figure that out and that's part of my research so I'm doing research which also doesn't feel like work doesn't feel like you know I'm not producing anything today I did produce stuff yesterday I uploaded an article to our blog so I published an article yesterday I didn't write it but I published it so that is something and I scheduled a story to go out and I published I did some

5:20social media stuff so like and in every single day I posted on a story on social media on three of our on Facebook Instagram and you know I wrote some tweets the other day and it's like you know it yeah it doesn't feel like I'm getting a lot done for the amount of free time I feel like I have and I think a lot of that comes from calls and my day gets interrupted a lot with errands and there's another piece of this that I am starting to feel I'm a little up in the air about it I don't know how to feel about it but it's I'm doing brew cabin videos again and yes yesterday I went out to the store during work hours because I had to to pick up ingredients for a future video I haven't I didn't film it but I had to pick up the ingredients and so it's like yes I

6:23accomplished a task for a thing I'm going to make in the future and so all of this like this prep work and these meetings and I had a meeting the day before for another I had a meeting like two other meetings that they were for so yeah honestly the reason why I think I feel like I didn't get anything done is because my day was interrupted with meetings and I just wonder how people feel about productivity like what does productivity mean to you to me productivity means I made something like I spent all day updating the website with new graphics and like new code or I wrote code for the website that would feel like a very productive day to me another day would be I was in Figma all day designing a

7:26new feature for our app like that would feel like a productive day I published or I I filmed you know two long-form videos and six to eight short-form videos and like that would feel like a productive day even though that would only take me maybe an hour to do but I would be like oh I accomplished a lot today but if you said like oh I had a you know a two-hour meeting with my brother about social media video editing I'd be like I don't I didn't do anything and it's like you did but it wasn't production you had it you had a manager day or a CEO day and I think I'm starting to understand the value or at least I'm trying to I'm trying to feel the value of those types of days or even just

8:32downtime sometimes like sometimes like I'm like oh I just doom scrolled on Instagram all day and it's like and doom scrolling is not the right I don't actually doom scroll because I know doom scrolling is like people watch like the most awful shit on social media all my stuff is really like honestly it's like beer comedy filmmaking techniques and like business tips SEO you know like all my stuff is pretty you know sometimes like weight loss and like fitness stuff so I don't know I don't I've I have always had sort of a healthy relationship with social media even in this new form where I know it's destroying people's brains and I do I just I just don't have that problem because I don't I don't like consuming that type of content I'm not a I don't watch reality TV it's not interesting to me so anything that feels like rage baiting is like I immediately see through it and I've always been that way it's

9:38like it's like you know I had had friends in the past that like get in rage when like people just post pictures of their kids and I'm like what the fuck does that bother you that's so weird so I'll just pitch the people to eat food I'm like stop stop looking who cares but anyway I digress so in those moments of like just resting or like having a coffee between work and getting some steps in between work and maybe recording this podcast like sometimes I've recorded God I like there's there'll be days where I record three to four episodes of this podcast and I get 10,000 steps and those days I will feel like I did nothing and the reason is because technically I didn't do anything for swim university I didn't make any content for some university or I didn't update you know something in the product or one of our products or update the website like I didn't do that type of work and I think this leads me to the

10:42feeling that I'm having with doing this brew cabin project in fact I've talked to my brother today for three hours like I mentioned and he was getting he was getting fired up in a good way like in a positive way toward me because I told him that I go oh you know like I released this video on on brew cabin and like a bunch of companies and a bunch of like associations reached out to me and like the it just like I got this like overwhelming positive response to this video that came from like I mean if like I would have been ecstatic like four years ago how did this happen to me and I and my brothers like how is this not like how are you not dropping everything to just make more videos like what you just did after like

11:44that type of reception and he's like what are you he's like what are you afraid of I'm like it's honestly not it doesn't come from a place of fear like I actually you know like it comes from a place of productivity I think in that like the way he saw it he's like you love home brewing like that's your passion you love making videos you're so like clearly you're good at it that like the world is responding to it and that doesn't happen at some university like like I you know we get comments at some university on our YouTube videos but they're just more questions no one's ever praising us like I shouldn't say that we get praised for what we do it just doesn't hit me like it just doesn't hit me because I'm like well you know I'm just helping

12:49somebody with a chore I'm not passionate about pool care I'm not passionate about you know I don't care if you have a pool or not it's like not interesting in them but if somebody were to email me or leave a comment that's like hey this video made me want a home brewing I started buying equipment and I followed your recipe and it's like yeah that feels good because that feels like I'm you know I'm again I'm a part of this hobby and oh my god if if if anybody and I think this is the clear difference here somebody if somebody were to sort of reach out to me and say like hey do you want to talk about like I have a pool I have a million questions like do you want to talk about pool care with me and I'm like no not really I don't want to do that but if someone's like hey I just started home brewing I have a million questions you want to talk about I'd be like fire away I have all day for this

13:51and the same is true for business like the other day and this was another thing where I felt like I got nothing done but in fact you couldn't argue that it was something a friend of mine came over and I showed her my entire video studio setup and how we film long form and short form content for streaming diversity and it was basically like you know she brought a notepad and taking notes and or it's not a notepad but she like took notes on her phone and and I was educating somebody and showing off my systems for how we create content and I'm like yeah in those in those few hours I didn't personally do anything I didn't get anything done but I crystallized my process by just going over it with somebody else and having them like sort of dissect it and ask questions

14:52and go like yeah oh you know we could be doing it this way and oh that's a good idea and I would like write down a little task that I would do for myself later so like technically helpful wasn't the intention to be helpful but in that moment I was like I could talk about this all day like there's no end to how much I could talk about this and it's why this this podcast has been going for as long as it's been going and for as many episodes as I put out because I can do this all day I love this I love talking about the nuances and the and the technical details of running an online business but specifically like a lifestyle business I like it and man if you were to talk me about brewing I don't have that in my life I have one you know industry friend that we talk about it sometimes but it's more in the context of like recording an episode and it's

15:56not as frequent as I would want it to be and and I don't know like and that's that's kind of what I got my brother is like I got a hybrid of you know like with this podcast I get to talk about business and like the strategy behind it and all that then when my friend came over I showed her the process and that was super helpful in clarifying and then when I talked to my brother he's working on videos and I'm telling him about my experiences and he's like oh well shit you know like you should be doing X and you should be doing this and like how are you not doing that and I'm like well the reason is because I feel like I should be working on suit University and the amount of effort that it takes to put

16:58toward doing like a brew cabin video which will make no money but will be excellent for my mental health in this year it's really hard to say okay today this Tuesday I am only working on brew cabin because when I work on brew cabin it is kind of like an all day event I have to brew beer and brewing beer is not a you know I can do it for like an hour a day it's I have to commit to at least a four to six hour day and if I'm filming then we're we're talking about even longer and if I need help filming I have to like coordinate with other people I have to there's a lot of logistics that go into producing brew cabin videos but I did say to him like look in the past I would have said in 2025 I would have said I do not have time for anything other

18:00than suit University when it comes to making stuff in 2025 I barely cooked I used to cook all the time in 2025 I was like nope I'm cooking the same goddamn thing every day and it's I have to focus on work and I did and I didn't brew beer and the only I use my free time to basically just like hang out and relax which was good that had a good year in 2026 I'm like well I think that swim University can kind of like I've built enough systems at swim University where I don't have to be as involved as I used to be because we've outsourced so much of it and I have yet to like sink into that feeling I still feel like if I'm not doing something then we're not selling stuff and that's not

19:01true that's not true but I still feel that way and this episode is about feelings but I realized that like oh I kind of like it's not even like I'm not even spreading myself in like I can do both I can make I can dedicate two to three days a week to just making brew cabin videos even if it means working with other people and the work that I do at swim University I feel like sometimes I try and I said this in the past I try to push that business into a place it doesn't want to go like I try to like I'm like alright we're gonna do you know this and we're gonna do that and it's like yeah you don't have to push that hard it's a seasonal business when you push too hard it's like well wait

20:03a minute whole it like kind of pumps the breaks it's like look we really make our money in the summer and in the summer when we're producing content like it's really not that difficult and you know when I even when I did the the hot tub book this past year it was like yeah that was that that was a hard month but it was only a month it wasn't like you're working on this 24-7 blah blah blah right so it's like this year my plan is to do more content at swimming University but it doesn't mean that but my hours are gonna be greatly reduced because I'm not shipping books anymore we don't have really any products to like focus 100% of my time on making everything is been systematized and I've outsourced a lot of those system tasks to other people and I'm planning to do that even more and so it's like I'm basically a manager or I'm in CEO mode with with swimming University and I have some

21:08light tasks that I have to still do like recording videos and uploading articles to WordPress but all of those tasks are really easy and again I can outsource the article one and I plan on doing that but I can't outsource the filming because it's my face so that's the one thing I'm be stuck doing all the time and I'm still gonna be doing meetings but you know what it doesn't it means like I can take full days to work on other things and those other things are not money makers and I think that's a clear separation of me in the past versus me now which is I used to spread myself between money lab brew cabin and swimming University because they all made money they were all business that's businesses that required my attention but here's the thing brew cabin and money lab don't make money money lab is my is really a

22:10podcast that helps swimming University and my physical health it's really a physical health task great getting ten thousand steps a day recording some podcasts a byproduct that I get to you know have more clarity in my thinking great I'll take that brew cabin is my mental health task you know like I feel great working on that I get to express my creativity I get to you know travel and do interesting things and learn new things and it's just like a really and you know I love home brewing and I love beer it's just like it's just a really fun place to live and honestly like I'm not even really drinking that much it's just I just like making beer I don't this is like I love drinking beer don't get wrong but like I'm not getting like shiss you know and I'm only drinking like

23:13sips to be like did I do this right whatever whatever like it's really not about getting hammer it's about the craft right and I have been doing the same thing with like cooking like dude I would just cook for the for the fun of it I don't need to eat the whole damn thing you know so what's interesting is like I am I'm in this transitioning process where I am going from like the worker to the manager that that's happening and I'm having a hard time wrestling with that I'm I'm I'm not used to the feeling of having meetings like I had a meeting with with employees or should say contractors and those meetings were all about work every single thing I did this week every meeting I had wasn't just for bullshit it was for work it was for so many diversity but I

24:17treated as like I didn't do anything it's like yeah you did you managed that that is work that's like most of your like 45 plus friends that's what they do for their job and I'm like bonkers bonkers to me right I'd have to look up I be curious like you know what I actually should I should read this or I should watch a video of like what do CEOs do all day because I I would love to know what that is I actually don't know the answer if you I'm just the first person that came to mind was Tim Cook I'm like what does that motherfucker do all day I'm serious like I know he's not making iPhones right but in my brain in my business I feel like no he's making the iPhones right that that got that's who else is and it's like the whole company is and but I think about like Elon

25:18Musk and like no but he's like he's and I'm bad example of a person but like he's sleeping on the floor of the Tesla felt like he's fucking building these goddamn cars himself and it's like and I hear him talking about rocket technology he's like hands on right it's like yeah he maybe him at some points but like no that's not what he's doing so I think that might be my homework after recording this is like go find out go find out what that is because I even like I'm thinking myself well Tim Cook doesn't write SOPs for his team right like that's that that like he must be in meetings all day like he must be on the phone all day like I was just like another another thing that came to mind this is so silly because it's it's fiction but like Jack Donigey from 30 Rock what the fuck does he do all day like I know it Liz Lemon does right she's the head writer of a

26:22television show she's writing what does Jack Donigey do all day I actually don't know the answer to that and I think that that's interesting that I don't know the answer to that and I think I need to go figure out what the answer is so I don't know what we learned from this but I just wanted to I just wanted to share the feeling that I had at the end of the week and I and my reality does not match the feeling that I'm having and so I'd be curious to know what you think so shoot me an email mad at moneylab.co and I'll talk to you next time