Transitions ARE the Work: Building with more runways and landings

0:00To a very special and what I hope is very speedy for you, bonus episode of Small Business Casual. Today, I want to talk about how transitions are actually part of the work. As some of you and others that you may not know this, but I got a new dog. His name is Finch or Finchie or Finchester or Gold Finchers or Finch-Testic or Finch and Stein, whatever you want. But I call him Finch. He is a ball of energy. He is a goofball. He is cuddly. He is so sweet. And it has been a huge change and transition point in our lives. In the first week alone, this guy taught me like so much about being human. It is not even funny. And not just about being a human, but being a better human being, being calmer, finding

1:01more inner peace, more confidence, finding my way back to that state, more easily, more consistently. And really having to do that in the moment and not like going, can't always carve out time and regroup before handling a situation. So while I could do a whole episode titled like Business and Life Lessons for My Dog, which not saying I'm not going to do that, I'm also cognizant that like not everybody is like obsessed with dog lover. So I'm going to skip that episode for today. And I'm going to give you kind of like bite size little treats, what I'm learning as here and there as the revelation strike. So they may just pop up as little bonus episodes here and there or they may turn into full fledged things. We'll see. So let's get into the quick story first and then we'll get into the takeaway and then we'll get into the application and then we'll be back off chasing squirrels or whatever

2:02else you were doing before you popped in your earbuds or just put it on not earbuds. Anyway, before I popped into your ear holes, how's that? Okay. So let's go back to the day I freaked out. The first weekend that pinch was here. And he was like this chill, relaxed, calm, super snugly, just like love everything, everything so wonderful. He was a dream on walks. Okay. He pulled and he definitely had somewhere to be for sure, but he was pretty mocked up with me. He was like, all right, I'm not really sure what's going on here. So he was like very much like with the person who was walking him. Now we have this super cool like we live on a very quiet road. You hardly ever see a car. And when I do, I, you know, make sure to reel him up close to me and we stop and we sit and we take a minute. But we have this really long lead. It's actually like 20 feet long and it allows him to do like a little bit of exploring.

3:04But then when I need to, I can pull it back in by my side and we're both quite adept at this. Like I have gotten to be like the guru of this dog leash. However, it was working fine for like the first week. It was lovely. But as he started to come out of his little shell and get really, really comfortable with us, I noticed he was super, he was getting more comfortable doing what he wanted and like letting me know what he wanted to do. And as he was doing that, what he wants on walks is, I mean, he does want a sniff and we let him sniff and search things out and like investigate. That's all good. But he also wants squirrels and birds and turkeys and basically anything else that can flit around faster than I can, which is to say pretty much everything is far more interesting than the human on the other side of the leash. So on one particular walk, he was getting a little agitated because I do let him sniff a ton of things and I let him like, you know, indulge his little curiosity.

4:07And once in a while I'll let him like get interested in an animal and I don't want to like encourage that, right? So anyway, one day I had to draw the line because he decided he was going to be chasing these turkeys and in the process, we're being off my own and these things are not like, these are not large biceps. Okay, they don't do much to stop. He tore their forest going after some turkeys. So he almost, and I kid you not like he almost yanked my arm out of the socket in an effort to have an early Thanksgiving dinner. And he did not appreciate when I, Emily, the human was trying to stop him from this. So the rest of the walk I could tell he was like, he was continually getting like, amped up and then agitated and then amped up and then agitated like because I wouldn't let him get what he wanted. So when we got back home, he seemed to kind of like struggle to settle down and like shake it off and calm down. And I was like, oh, let's just do the cuddly thing, right?

5:07Like I thought like, okay, we're home. It's not going to cut off. It's great before we go into crate for crate for nap time. And he had no interest in any of that. He was so super charged. So I had to get ready for my work day and I was like, well, what do I do? So I had to put him in the crate eventually. He did need to settle down and take a nap. So I put him in his crate and eventually he did settle down. But I heard something different that day. I was like, he's having a really hard time settling down like a lot longer than usual. And if you're like a dog trainer or something and you know all of this stuff already, please do not judge me. I am learning. I am making mistakes. We are learning together and this is a very enjoyable and also really, really hard and journey. So I mean, send me any tips you have, but please also do not judge me. So fast forward to the next day. And that kind of like same sort of cycle happened again. And I was so confused. I'm like, okay, does this dog like suddenly hate me? Like is he turning on me?

6:08Is he mad because I just didn't give him like the taste of the turkeys, right? And what is going to happen from here? Like, does this continue to escalate basically? So I turned to the internet, ye old Google. And I found this great article on exactly exactly what I was going through and exactly what I was looking for. And it was talking about giving your dog transition time. So kind of like options you might do are like either using, there's like this little tug stick that you can kind of like play with them way at the night. They sort of get like a little bit of the crazy's out. Zoomy is going to be good. He doesn't, he's not into the zoomies. But so I talked, it talked about giving your dog like transition times. So in our instance, it would be instead of just coming right inside, we kind of take like a snow, a simple, slow sniff around the yard, you know, kind of like sniffing to your heart's content, getting a little excited, but not like what kind of calming downs. We're discharging some of that adrenaline that they feel when they want to chase things,

7:09but they can't. You might also use like a stimulating brain game. There are all kinds of ideas that would help them to kind of cool off after this intensity, moving to like a sort of a training period and then keep on winding down. So the next day, the very next day, actually, I don't even think I waited till the next day, the very next walk. I decided, okay, when we come back, I'm going to transition him in steps and in phases and do it a lot more calmly because I realized he needs transition periods for everything. I can't just like prod him out of a dead sleep and be like, okay, let's go walk time, be time, that's time. This, that's the other thing, right? We have to kind of ease into things more slowly. And yes, it takes more time. It takes a lot more time. And in fairness, he is a rescue. I mean, we all kind of are, you know, we all are kind of like, we've spent our whole lives sort of transitioning, being joked about a reality. This poor dog has two. And for him, it's been very, very quickly. Like overnight, he went from long, from longing to be like, or just, you know, in a, in

8:14a kennel situation, in a shelter to loungy and being loved. He went from a shelter to a home. He was like moving all the time, his whole entire life. And then all of a sudden, it's like forever settled and safe. I mean, that's a little bit shocking. So when I think about the fact that, you know, that's kind of how my life was, and it has taken me 13 years to settle into the reality of the fact that I can have a stable life, and that my relationship has been stable for 10 years. And to settle it, or actually 13 years, and my health has been stable for 10 years. And even then, sometimes I can still feel like I'm being like, oh my God, I wasn't expecting this, right? So how can I expect that from this poor little pup, who this is like literally his first week with us? So I, as I kind of had this realization, I was like, all right, how can I apply this as a human being to my life, but also in my business? And in fact, that whole first week I had him, thankfully, I had kind of like, earmarked

9:18it as a transition week. Like I was like, okay, this is going to be a weird week. We're getting used to things. And so I was starting a project, but when I'm starting a project, it's like the, it's like actually one of the slower points of the project. When I'm starting and finishing other slower points of the project, so it wasn't like a high intensity, like do all the things think week. So I had like a kind of nice transition week. And then I started thinking about like, well, why am I not just putting those transition weeks into my normal life? Like, why do I do project, project, project, project, project, all overlapping? Why am I still trying to expect like pandemic Emily? Who did she could do that girl could do 10 calls in one day back to back with just a like a sip of water and a pea break in between. And I booked my projects that way too. The transitions for so many of us, that is the work. It's not like the throat clearing before you get started. For so many of us, we might feel like these transitions are kind of like the dead time, right? Like the, oh my god, can we just get to the good part, right? The actual work.

10:19Can we get to the actual roar? Can we get to the joy on the other side? Can we get to the relax nation at the end of the day? But I do believe that really setting it up with a mindful and intentional transition can be where so much really great foundation and groundwork is lead. This is actually the good part. Like this is the part that makes the rest of it all so, so, so much better. So I kind of asked myself like, what would it look like for me to build more transition times in my life rather than expecting myself to just kind of like hop to this, hop to this, hop to that, all these things all the time. So I decided to start and I kind of made like a week of it where I just was like, okay, instead of just like jumping from task to task, it has, I'm taking more breaks in between. I'm kind of starting things, getting them set up for the next day and then coming back to them. So I also put together a few ideas for both of us and how we could do this in our everyday day and also and sometimes in entire weeks or entire seasons.

11:25Like personally right now, I'm in a very transitional season. This whole entire season for me like realistically for the next probably through the end of the year, the next 16 weeks is all kind of a building and transition time for me. I'm spending four weeks right now like kind of building up my body, building up my strength and building up my health before I kind of get into like a little bit of an intense protocol into what's been like causing me so many problems. So I was also thinking about the month of September as a whole and it really is kind of like a transition month. So you kind of start the month in summer, right? And then you end it in full and then there's part to school and back to routine and for so many of us that can feel like a real jolt like a real like oh my god, it's fall or oh my god, it's back to school or oh my god, I'm back in routine. So what if we just took it like a little bit slower and we kind of layered in things to make that transition time a little bit smoother for us. So entire seasons of our lives can be transitions a month can be a transition a week could be a

12:30transition, you know, you could have just like a little bookmarks of transitions, right? But I do think that as you get better at these and being really intentional about them, it can make it a lot easier when you have one foot on one side of the line and one foot on the other side of the line and you're just allowing yourself to make your way fully into the next phase by taking a little bit more slowly, easy yourself and taking it comfortably, simple baby steps instead of just making that plunge into the next chapter. Like we don't need to be cold plunging in our businesses. So I thought of some small things like I said that we can do regularly to just kind of help make our day and our week more smooth and more easy to navigate because we have a lot of things on our plates, right? And so this can just kind of help, I think, to alleviate some of the pressure. So the first one is a pre-project setup. Now when I do a project, I have a folder for every single client and so when I do a project,

13:31there are phases to my projects. So when I'm kicking off with somebody, some of it is them, some of it is us meeting together and then there's me where I come in with the setup and that setup involves research. It involves setting up their actual website and their pages. It involves like kind of like any notes I need to put for myself, all these like little things I need to remember. So that for me is the pre-project setup. And when I do that the day before, like if I say, okay, Tuesday, I time blocked two hours to work on their stuff and Monday, I actually just spend 20 minutes setting up their folder and setting myself up for the next day. It makes that two hours so much more effective. I'm not spending most of that time researching or most of the time setting up the thing. The other one I love and I do this every day is an end of day shutdown routine. For me, this looks like deleting files off my desktop or off my downloads folder, closing tabs, emptying my inbox. I love an end of day shutdown routine, something that just like says, okay, now I'm moving

14:33into cooking for my family. Now I'm moving into outdoor time, you know, whatever the thing is. The other one I love is setting yourself up with a runway before like a work block. So I usually try to get into our work blocks. And what I love to do is set up my space. So I'll get a cup of tea like I have here. I'll maybe put on a nice playlist. I'll close out any distractions by light candle. Just things to help signal my brain that I am focusing. I am entering the cave now and I am focusing. And it also helps my body to come down because like when I just go from like walk to work, you know, that is really, really hard. So this is kind of just like a like a runway. And the other is like a landing after a work block. So instead of just like bumping out of a project and going on to the next thing, I take a little break. I might take a short walk. I might get a snack. I might have a cup of water. I might, you know, have a celebration moment. So I'm not just kind of like screeching and scratching and scrambling into the next thing.

15:35Prasal, dazzled, doozled. The other one I love is a, and I'm trying to get better at this, but is in putting a little bit of a buffer zone between calls. We are not in 2020 anymore. Toto, okay. So we need a little bit of a buffer zone between calls. I'm not kidding you when I said I used to do 10 in a day back. And now I am so, so much better about that. And even I'm now even getting better at putting them at different times in my day than I did before because I'm kind of like working on a different sort of schedule. So the other thing I love is having a Friday list for Monday success. So every, at the end of every week, or at least by Sunday, at the very least by Sunday, I set myself up for the week ahead by writing down everything I need to do the next week and actually putting it into spots on my calendar. And it helps me so, so much. Kind of like a little handoff for myself. So I'm like, look, you know, you maybe didn't get everything done that you wanted to last week, but here's the handoff. So you know what you stopped, where you stopped, and what's next.

16:37The other one, I'm going to forget the term, but there's this term of like a ritualistic shower. And I love it like that night, but I think you can do it anytime, anytime that you take like a really nice that like, just me time shower. It's the one that you would do this in, but you really just like take your time and you like smell your shampoo and you like really enjoy the way that the water is hitting your head. You know, like you really, really take your time. There is a very specific term for this, but I love a ritualistic shower. And sometimes I will use that like after a big, big project is done, I will like just take, I'll like save my shower for then and like, oh my god, this is the best shower ever, because that is like done, right? Or if I want to start a project, I might take one then to kind of like get the creative stuff going. So a shower is like super helpful for this. The other thing I am starting to work on a lot more is just putting some breathing room

17:37between my client projects, like my actual projects. So a lot of times my starts and my deadlines would like kind of just blur into one another. Now I'm giving myself time because actually what's become very apparent to me is that I need to cleanse myself, not like in a like it was a toxic way, but just like cleanse the creativity and make ready for the next thing because I don't want any clients getting like residuals from the last project I just left off or like have any voice from my last client kind of like rolling into the next client. Like I want it to all be in their voice. So that's another one. And then I guess just like using different seasons or in my case like this month as like a well, I'm using the whole season, but just like, you know, not going through busy to slow, busy to slow, busy to slow, launched recovery quarterly to monthly, you know, whatever that looks like for you, but just kind of like transitioning from season to season, like a little bit in a more fluid, slow calming way.

18:39Of course, reentry time after we hands lots of people talk about this after vacations, after sick days, you kind of want to ease back in. You can't expect yourself to work a 10 hour work day right after like you just took an entire week off. That's going to be very jarring. And then the other thing I love and this is like for those of us who get lots and lots of ideas, I know, I know, I know where to you. You get lots and lots of ideas and you want to act on them all right away, but instead what if you put what I call an idea parking lot together, which is where you create it, like it's just actually where mine is just like a list. And it has all the ideas that I want to implement, but then I don't take action on them all right away. They're all there in that little parking lot waiting for me and I probably will do most of them, but it gives me just some time to let the idea sit and build and gives me time to really, really do it well. And I also get time to evaluate whether or not it's like stick withable and whether or

19:40not I have everything I need to execute it clearly and also well. So that was probably more ideas than you needed. I hope that you got way more of your own as I was kind of sharing them with you. I didn't want to overwhelm you with ideas, but do remember transitions can be a time, a very, very valuable time where either I think our energy can kind of leak and get depleted or we can bolster it stronger and protect it and it can make the next step even better, even more focused, even more energized. Harsh transitions can be a big part of the reason that we feel behind or unable to slow down after being revved up or that we're just always, always on, on, on, on, right. So transitions can really help to cue your brain. What mode do I need to be in next? And most importantly, I think that they help you be more present in the moment that you're in rather than always with one brain cell in the in the last minute or one brain cell in

20:42the future. So setups, shutdowns, they really help your brain to clock in, clock out. And I know it's like not the most interesting thing like transitions are seemingly the work, right? People talk about their work. They don't talk about the shutdown and starting routines, but I do really believe that this is the work. It is key to having a much more enjoyable time working. So that is all I have for you. It wasn't as short as I was hoping, but it was short. So go forth, transition into your next task with ease and mental fortitude. And I will see you on Tuesday for another episode. Thanks for joining me on this week's episode of Small Business Casual. If you love the show, make sure to rate, review and share it with a frazzled business owner that you care about. Because this shouldn't feel like a roller coaster ride or like a scenic train ride with snacks. Don't forget those snacks.