Charlie Gilkey on Getting Things Done

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Our guest on this episode is Charlie Gilki, the founder of Productive Flourishing, a company that helps professional creatives, leaders, and change makers take meaningful action on work that matters. He's the author of Start Finishing, How to Go from Idea to Done. He's widely cited and outlets such as INC Magazine, Time, Forbes, The Guardian, Life Hacker, and more. He's also an Army veteran and near PhD in philosophy. He lives in Portland, Oregon. Hi, Charlie, Welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me here today. Eric, I've been looking forward to this for a long time. Well, I'm excited to have you on. Your book is called start finishing, how to go from idea to done. And we'll talk more about that in a moment, but let's start like we always do, with the parable. There is a grandfather who talking with his grandson, he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always

at battle. What is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that

you do. I love this parable for many different reasons. And actually I wrote about this a few years ago, and I think it's about the time you started this podcast, so it was in that pace, and so I find it interesting and useful on that first level about what are we feeding in ourselves and what are we seeing

in the world. But there's a deeper level I think to the parable is what are we feeding in other people, And so I like to think about it in both ways, because if we feed the dark wolf in other people by how we show up and how we project who we think they are to them, then that's the wolf that gets fed in others, and it's those are the wolves that end up biting us, you know. And so there's both this altruistic way of thinking about it and

there's a self interested way and think about it. Altruistic way is how do we leave each person better off after interacting with us than before we found them or before they found us? So that's one, but the second sort of self centered way is how do we orient ourselves and navigate in this world such that we are feeding the good wolf that ends up not biting us nearly as much as the bad wolf. M that's a great way to look at it and think about it. I really like that, that sense of of what are

we feeding in others? And we do tend to sort of feed certain things and others. I'm thinking of a quote and I feel like it's attributed to Nelson Mandela, but that I might be completely wrong about that, but it's something along the lines of it never hurts to look for the good and someone else they tend to act the better because of it. Yeah, I find that to be absolutely true, and especially in times like these.

You know, there's there's been over the last few years, um, just this sense of darkness out there in the world, and I think that has been accelerated for a lot of different reasons. And we didn't listen any need to

go into the political landscape side of things, um. And it's also been my experience that there are plenty of actively good people out there doing great work, and there are plenty of people who are just confused and with just a little bit of guidance or which is a little bit of inspiration or a little bit of kindness,

become those active good doers. And if we approach people with a sense of hostility, a sense of us and them were more likely to take those people that are you know, doing the best I can and maybe you know, have their heads down and just wanting to get through the day. We can either alienate them again, get the bad wolf, or maybe we can pull them in and say,

you know, we're in this together. And it's a quote often attributed to Plato, but it's actually Ian McLaren, which is be kind because everyone you meet us fighting a hard battle, right, And I think if we sort of look at it that people have their own things going on, and they're fighting their own battles. And if we approach with kindness, but much more likely to get the good wolf, the kindness to see the goodness and others as opposed to just have the defensive shield and the biding coming

back at us. I couldn't agree more. I'm gonna take a brief diversion for us before we go into the book, because you mentioned in the book of quote and you say it's from one of your favorite books, which also happens to be one of my favorite books, which is The Doubt a Chain, And so I wondered what it is about that book that you love, or any particular sections from that book. But I thought we'd talked about

that for a second as a place to go first. Wow, Eric, I think we could spend the whole podcast talking about the dow a Ching, And I love that we're not going to do that. I don't think we're gonna do that. But yeah, I've read The Doubtating so many times I can't count. So there are a few things that I

really love about it. UM. One is there's the approach that I love and and my favorite translation is by Derek Lynn from I think It's Skylight Press, because what unlike Stephen Mitchell's version, UM, he tries his best he can to translate the Chinese the way that it was literally written and then have interpretations on the right side. So the left side of the page is the as close to as possible Chinese translation, and on the right side is commentary on that, and so you get to

see the beauty of the language in that way. So very very good translation. UM is one of the I think eight copies I have of it. I'll have to look at that because I am a fan of the Stephen Mitchell version, but I should check that out for sure. Yeah. What I love about it is one, it says a lot in a little amount of time, and as someone who is not always well practiced at being six inct, I appreciate UM. And the other thing about it is,

you know, writing of that time. I'm a trained philosopher by nature, so I have an m a And philosophy and I'm completing I'm a PhD candidate in philosophy, and so UM, what I love about works of that era is that they saw the connections between individuals and societies and communities, and so they can, like if you read Plato's Republic, he's talking on the one hand about a good city or a good policy, but what he's doing is showing that what's true of cities is true of individuals,

and what's true of individuals is true of cities. And so there's this way where in the data ching lots of will talk about a city or talk about something that seems to be completely remote from a person, but you understand it more because he didn't focus on the person. I mean, you can see that, you know. So I

think three quotes that I love. One is because of Stage knows her faults, she is faultless, understanding that if you understand those faults and challenges that you have and you actually acknowledge them and build around them, they don't trip you up nearly as much. And there's the other one about the cup overflowing. What's that one. I don't know that one nearly as well, but it's like too much water in the cup in and and overfolows and spills.

And so it's about boundaries and it's about completeness in a way. Um, and then this is actually from Mitchell's version, is the master does his work and then steps away. And for so many of us that get so wrapped up into our work and into the meaning making that we're doing and not being able to step away. It's just one of those good things of being able to remind myself in that moment, like a, haven't done my work and be is it time to step away and

let it unfold? Because me trying to strangle hold it into a certain way is going to keep it from being what it might become. Yeah, that's a great, great point. And I love that sort of overall idea of do your work and and step away, which is reflected in a lot of spiritual traditions, but not reflected as often perhaps in the work world, which is really where it is really you know, particularly uh sage for our time, which is we can't control results would be the way

we'd say it in the business world. We can't control results. We can only control, you know, the actions we take, which is such a profound truth. And when we understand and live according to that, BOYD, is our stress level

change absolutely. And I think the more something matters to you, the more you have to focus on, like doing your best but letting go of the rest, right, Like did you do you know what you could do in accordance with your values, when in accordance with your constraints and accordance with your challenges to make a certain outcome happen.

But above and beyond that, it's out of your control, Um, And you're absolutely right, like every especially when you look at the spiritual traditions that were formed around you know, around zero BC, Like there's a five d R plus or minus crucible period where they're saying many of the same things. UM independently co created a lot of times and at that time they knew way better than we

did it. Like nothing is boundary lists, like everything is contained except for you know, gods and things like that. But like in the human realm, everything has a limit and we humans have limits. And where we find our suffering is when we pretend as if those limits don't exist, or when we try to push past those limits and need to be reminded that we are in fact humans. I couldn't agree more. It makes me think of to quote the doubt aching things like true mastery can be

gained by letting things go their own way. You know, it can't be gained by interfering. And again, I think on one level, you hear that and you go, oh, well, I shouldn't do anything. And I don't think that's what's being said. I think the way you just said it

is really good. It's sort of the serenity prayer, which I bring up on the show all the time because I just think it's so wise, right, know what you can control, you know what you can't, and stay on the on the control side, spend your time over there and don't spend your time on the other side. And boy, a lot of things seem to sort of solve themselves when you do that. Yeah. Well, I mean one last thing.

My my other quote I think it's relevant right now is um, he who masters the world I count as strong. He who masters himself I count is truly powerful. And there's that sense where I think we lose our balance, we lose our serenity, we lose our power when we're so focused on changing external circumstances and changing those types of things. And this is a weird tension that we have to live in, is these creative human beings as

we walk on this planet is there. There's just a series of tensions, and like, you're absolutely right, we can't just be that bump on the log just letting life go bias. That's not at all what's being recommended, right, But what is being recommended is, you know, no matter what sense of agency we take in this world, it's always going to be limited, and and our vision, our grasp, our hopes, our dreams are always going to be on

the other side of those limits. And so it's finding that balance of like, where have I pushed in the right ways in the world, um again in accordance with values and my doll or my my nature, and where do I need to let things unfold? I guess the fifth quote there's like it's always sees like you. The

best leaders this is from the Daoist tradition. The best leaders are those ones where you don't really know they're there and everyone's saying we did this right, we did this, and and there's not that sense of domination by a leader, and they don't have that super charismatic you know on stage present that we in America really love to see in leaders. That's not from the Dallast tradition. The pinnacle leader.

The pinnacle leader is the one whose nature, in whose guidance and who's behind the scenes things empowers other people to take action, to develop all to get things done and realize that they don't need someone cracking the whip behind them. They don't need to be led, they need to be let go. That's wonderful. Well, let's move on

from that to your book. Even though, like I said, like we could probably trade quotes from the dad reaching with each other all day long, I had like five more, and I was like, all right, hold on, let's let's move on. So you mentioned getting things done. Uh, there was some phrase like that in in your last couple of sentences, and that's kind of your book start finishing,

how to go from idea to done? And you say very early in the book, the reason I'm guiding you to finish rather than start is because I'm near certain that you've already started quite a few things. And so let's talk a little bit about that. Hi, I'm certain that people have started things, or why I'm focusing on finishing just your idea of why finishing is so important.

So finishing is incredibly important because one, well, there are a lot of reasons but one is because when we look at the impact we're trying to make in the world, that only comes from finished projects, from the things we have done, not from the things we are thinking about doing or that we've half done. So if you're starting a nonprofit, if you're starting a business, writing a book, whatever thing that is, the impact comes once you finish it.

And so we you know, in many different ways, we want to go out and we want to either make a dance in the universe or leave our fingerprints on it, depending upon your your feelings about you know, our our agency in the world. But we forget like just my only doing a bunch of stuff is not nearly as important as like finishing it, seeing it and getting it to the people and the people who need to see it,

including ourselves. I think a second piece about it is um mastery, Like we only get mastery from finishing things, not from like half doing a lot of things. And so if you look at mastery is one of the basic human drives, as Dan Pink does in his book drive, Um, it's super important for us just to be on that curve of you know, continual improvement. But again, we don't just improve in our brains no matter what. Well, there are some things we can improve just by thinking, but

most things we actually have to make something. We have to do something, we have to like present something, we have to show our work, right. I think another piece that is important to talk about, and this is especially for those creative souls out there, is if we're not finishing the work that matters to us, we can get, um what I call creative constipation. And it's what it

sounds like, right, Um. It's you take in a bunch of ideas and inspirations and hunches and all the ted talks and all the podcast and all the books and all the things, right, and you don't actually push those ideas out into some form in the world. And just like physical constipation, you get toxic and you start, you know, not wanting to take on new ideas. And and we as the spiritual, creative human beings that we are, we're

either creating something or we're destroying something. There's a reason why our spiritual traditions tie creativity and destruction together because they're like one and the same force just depend on how do you use it. And if you're not finishing that work, if you're not creating your best work. You're going to be destroying other things. You're gonna be destroying your relationships through resentments and frustrations and all the things that happened when you get bitter and toxic. And if

it's your own resources, it's your time. You know you'll find it. You'll figure out like, Wow, I've done it yet another Netflix binge, or have done yet another Facebook crawl and I don't feel good. Or you do retail therapy because you're trying to buy something to feel that whole that's in yourself, which is really ironic because most of us tell ourselves that we had more time and more money, we would do the thing right, whatever that

thing is, we would do it. But then when we don't do it, we destroy the resources and time that we already have. But lastly, and most importantly, I think the object of destruction that will lash onto the most is ourselves to the stories that we tell ourselves, that limiting beliefs through our sense of own capabilities and the labels that will give to ourselves. Being in the process of finishing the work that really matters to you and getting out some of this work that your soul calls

to do. It it's not just about economic livelihood and things like that. Is actually, I think a much deeper human need, much for lack of better word, spiritual human need that if it's undone, will leave you unsatisfied and frustrated and really resentful that you spent yet another week really rocking that to do list, but at the end of the week looking up and saying, like, but did it matter? Those things that matter most to me, I didn't spend a minute on them, but I've been quote

unquote productive all week. Let's talk about getting things done, going from idea to done. You say, we don't do ideas,

what we do projects. Yeah, And I think that's the thing is, like we take on all those ideas, we take on all those things, and unfortunately some of us to quickly attach some commitment juice to those ideas, right like just because it's a great idea, that means we should do it, or we don't even separate that moment of time from getting the idea to starting to research what to do with the idea, starting to make it to do list right and just jump right into that

um And the beauty of it is as the types of beings that we are, we can hold onto a practical infinity of ideas. The downside is projects have to be done through time and space, and there's only so many that we are going to be able to do. And so part of the issue here is that you know, we are these unlimited to sentience in this very limited body, and so um, yeah, we don't do ideas. We do projects.

And the second you start talking about projects, you start talking about time, you start talking about schedule, and you start talking about space, you start talking about resources and things like that. And the grace is that we can hold on to the beauty of those ideas and hold on to all of that joy around them, but not fall into the trap of thinking that we can do all of the ideas and end up frustrated because we're

caring too much. Right, And I think the other way that gets in our way is that thinking about an idea is generally fun and pleasurable, you know, thinking about I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, it will be like this, it's generally fun and pleasurable. And as you say in the book, as we get into doing you know you call it our best work. Doesn't mean that it's easy. A lot of times it's really hard. And so you know, doing and finishing is

a lot harder than thinking about and dreaming about. Absolutely And there's this really counterintuitive thing that like, the more it matters to you, the more you're going to thrash. And by thrash, I mean that metal work, that flailing, that quote unquote research. You know, Um, all the stalling you might do with an idea or a project that

doesn't actually push the project forward. Um, we don't thrash about taking out the garbage or doing the dishes of the laundry, like we either do it or don't do it. We might be frustrated about it, but it doesn't cause

a mini existential crisis. But when we start thinking about you know, starting a business or starting a podcast, or writing the book, or getting married or you know, moving across the country or finally getting our kids off the couch, you know, and off the college, that actually does invoke that who am I? Who am I to do this is at the right time? Do I have what it takes?

Maybe someone else can do it. You know, we start going into all of those sort of maneuvers about it, and that's not a sign that it's not the right project, which, unfortunately, I think is the code that many people receive from that.

And I don't know where we get it because I haven't been able to find it literally said this way, Eric, But somewhere along the way, I think many of us have gotten into this trap that like, if it's meant to be for us, that it's supposed to be easy, right, that it's just supposed to be super clear and you know what you're doing and it's easy, and it just

sort of unfolds in this beautiful way. I hate it because a lot of times the things that you're most here to do are going to be the ones to thrash about, and they're going to be the hardest thing that you do. Now, I don't think we should be going out there and using difficulty and challenge as one of those tags to find out like if a project is worth doing, because you may end up in that place to where your best work flows with ease and grace and things like that. So I'm not going to

deny that possibility. But for many of us, actually it's hard. Um, And why it's so hard is like, well, unless you live in the Midwest, and that's a whole another conversation. But most of us don't attach much status or image to like how nicely laid out our trash cans are out front, right, we just put it out there, the trash Man's gonna come like. It doesn't say anything about

who we are. But when it comes to our best work, when it comes to especially our creative work, as well, it says something about us, how well it's done, how artistic it is, how statically pleasing it is, how whether it does it like we attach our identity and our moral worth to the work itself, and that's a huge pit to fall into, because if it's not quite right, and if it doesn't live up to the ideal of perfection and so and so forth, what does it say

about you? By the very nature of a lot of these creative projects, you start out, necessarily in a lot of cases not as good. And the only way, as you said earlier, the only way to get there is

to do it. You know that this video is probably watched by countless people, but it's the Ira Glass video where he talks about the creative gap, and he basically says creative people have good taste, they know what's good, so they start doing something creative and what they're doing doesn't sound like that, and they go, I'm not any good at this right, when the reality is it's it just takes time. You have to go through that period.

We had David Cadavy on the show who wrote a book about the Heart to start and talks about you know, you got to give yourself sometimes permission to suck. Yeah. Well, and anything worth doing is worth doing badly at the beginning, right, And so absolutely, I don't know where we get this from. Eric, Well,

I do know. It's it's the stupid talent myth that I can go on a whole rant about, right, But the talent myth is basically, there are some people who got the goods, they got the modi, they got the talent, and this type of stuff we're talking about just comes easy to them. And if you're if it's not coming easy to you, maybe it's not your thing, right, Maybe there's some other thing out there that you should do, because clearly this prodigy over here it comes easy for them.

And it turns out almost all the prodigies are actually just well practiced people that started earlier. Right there, chest master at three, because both of their parents are chest master and they've had this kid playing it since they were two months old. Right, whatever, Right, Most of the truly prodigiously talented people that are in our in our ranks, actually we're grown up in a culture of talent or nurtured to be talented, but many of us were not.

And so again we latch onto that myth and we go out there and we do something and it's hard at first, and so what do we tell ourselves, Well, maybe that's not for us, Maybe that's not our talent. When you know, I think the super talent it's just learning to sit down when something's hard and when when you suck at it, and saying, you know what, I'm going to do this until I get good enough to determine whether I want to keep doing this or not.

You might get good enough at something and determine, Like, know what, I started playing tennis. I was terrible. I'm good enough at tennis. I'm adequate, But this is not my thing that I want to invest my life and soul energy towards for the next three to five years. I don't want to do that great do something else. Um. But that process of just sitting down and saying, you know what, I'm going to do this, and tool I'm competent enough to know whether or not I don't want

to do it anymore. It's a really great skill to learn. You sort of talk about five things that get in the way of doing our best work, and I thought maybe we could run through those five as a place to sort of dig a little bit deeper into your work here. Great. So we're talking about the air sandwich here, right, And the basic idea is that I think we all have this vision of ourselves for this best version of ourselves,

our best life or our best work, um. And you can kind of see that as the top layer of a sandwich, and then we look at our day to day reality as the bottom, and we notice that there's a lot of gap in between those two, like we're away all from this best life for this best you know, work that we want to be at and what do we do about that? And it seems to be a gap.

But underneath, when you look deeper, those are the five challenges that you just talked about, Eric, where we're talking about competing priorities, heat, trash, no realistic plan, too few resources, and poor team alignment. Most of those are pretty straightforward but I'll talk about poor team alignment specifically because a lot of times when people here team, they think professional team or economic team, like the people your coworkers. But I want people to think about the broader group of

people in their life. It could be that neighbor kid that watches your children and pets on a Saturday afternoon so you can go do your thing right. It could be grandma grandpa that does the same thing. It could be a coworker that does some heavy lifting for you. So it could be a lot of different things like that.

But you know, I'm going to hang out on poor team alignment a little bit because many of us have not set a really clear vision for what we want to become and what we want to work on, and then we get frustrated when the people around us are not supporting it. But how can they? Are they telepass like, are they just supposed to figure out, Oh, this is what Eric wants to do today. So I'm going to align myself to make sure that happened. There's no way, um and and a lot of times the reason we

haven't been clear about it. It goes back to that second thing that I laid out is head trash, the limiting beliefs, the stories, you know, just the bullshit that we get from our society that we latch onto. And the thing about head trash is that it doesn't matter whether or not it's true. You're believing it gives it all of its force, right exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I've told myself I'm a terrible writer. It's not true. I know it's not true.

I would not have my life and job if I were a terrible writer. But if I were to believe that idea in the moment, in that throw, then I would not be a good writer, like I would be a terrible writer. Um. So it's that belief in that

head trash. And so if you say, you know, I'm not the type of person that excels at this level, or I'm not the type of person to do that type of work, or I don't have what it takes, then yeah, it turns out that head trash is gonna make it really hard for you to point your ship in the direction you want to go, you know, good winds or poor winds versus just sitting in the harbor, you know, wondering when whether it's gonna be nice for you to take that voyage, right. It's such a big one.

I've been contemplating this idea recently. I've been talking with some coaching clients around it and really kind of you know, trying to dig into it more deeply because at first glance and we'll go, yeah, yeah, that's true. But just because you know it's in the idea is just because I think something doesn't mean it's true. And I think we have this tendency if the thought keeps coming back that we then go, well, it must be true if it keeps coming back, and it's that's not the case.

It's just a habitual conditioning of the brain. But that ability to start to go just because I think it it's not true is so important dealing with things like

you're talking about here, like head trash. Yeah, and it's just purely you know, neurological of what fires together, wires together, and you think, I thought long enough, and that's you know, our brains are lazy, and that's where our brain is gonna go, is like I'm not or I am it's going to feel in the blank with whatever you've sent down that read long enough, right, And it's really one of those things where when you sit and you meditator,

you have sort of meticognitive processes where you look at this like whenever you start playing with what you can follow I am with, it really throws your brain for a loop because it's like, well, you could be a lot of different things, and that's exactly what that's the growth mindset you want to have. But if you tell yourself, I'm not a good planner, or I'm not the type of person, or you know, I'm not good at math because in third grade Mr Wilson hit me on the hand.

You know, those types of things, none of them are true. But that loop, that firing together and wiring together process happens so frequently um that a lot of times we don't even see it. And something that can be really helpful here is I think we try to pay too much attention to what's going on in our heads, and we pay too little attention about what our bodies are

actually doing. And a lot of times, if you're paying attention to what your body is doing, it's acting as if it's afraid, it's acting as if it's you know, it's acting in a certain way, or you're doing certain behaviors and if you work backwards, I sometimes have to do this because as my mind, like you know, we we can do the whole guerrilla warfare thing where it's hightening for me and I'm hiding from it, and we can do that whole thing for a long time, but

I can't hide from my body and my body's signals, And so just paying attention to that and looking at those natural urgences or looking at your patterns for instance, I know and most days at four thirty, like that's the weakest willpower time of the day for me, Right, that's what I'm going to do all the dumb things. So um, I have a program called Cold Turkey Blocker set up on my computer that goes off at four thirty that blocks me out of all the dumb things.

Why because I know that at four thirty that's like when my willpower and strength and everything wanes, and I'm going to end up on Twitter or Facebook for two hours, right, and then let me super mad about it. So um, I don't have to get into my head about like what is it about four thirty in the day and go into a big major story about it. I could just have a blocker that keeps me from doing the dumb things that I know I'm going to do and

just go on with my life. You say that an upshot to discipline is it limits decision fatigue, And that's a perfect example of it. It's like, I don't decide it for thirty what I feel like doing, because, like you said, I know at four thirty, I'm gonna feel like doing things that aren't that good for me. So I'm going to just predecide and set things in motion.

But another of your five things I really want to get a couple of minutes on is competing priorities, because I think this is a big one, right, because we have so many things in our lives these days. If you're the average adult, you've got a job, you've got kids, you you might have your creative thing you want to do, your side hustle, you might have elderly parents that are sick. I mean, the plates pretty full. The plate is indeed

preently full. And then you know, because we have never had more communication technologies, you know, throwing it as at once. We see everybody else's life and see what everybody else is doing. And for most of human history we've been in these smaller circles of fifteen to twenty people where that's the limit of sort of the emotional and social exposure that we've had on a day to day basis.

And so I think we're at a point to where, because of you know, social media and some of these tools, like we're now got access to fift three thousand people a day in their worlds, in their lives and what they're getting into, and also how much better their life is than ours and all those different things that we get into. But what I've learned from a lot of the coaching work and overdoing this over the last decade is that many people's actual priorities are ones that they

don't count, and we make aspirations into priorities. By by that, I mean, I'll take parents, for example, whichever parent you are, if the school calls you up and says, hey, your kids sick, um, you're going to you know, go pick that kid up. Unless you have some you know, someone help you out with that. Your your day is fundamentally going to change, right, You're not going to go through this whole sort of like, I don't know, is this

a priority? I don't know, kid, Maybe I can do this maybe I could do that, like, no, you drop everything you take care of kid, right, same with elders and things like that. And we know that at the same time, when we're deciding what projects to do and we're deciding how we're going to spend our time, we don't use that same sense of certainty about it, and we assume in the way that we make decisions that we won't have that priority come up in the way

that it is right. And so um, I think there's a lot of peace when you really lean into the consequence of say, your children being your priority, which means that you don't have the amount of available time, energy and attention available to you as other people who have not prioritized that way, right, because they don't have the three to seven hours a day of child care stuff that they need to do. And it's not that you're

better or worse, it's just you've made different choices. But that also means when you look at all the other projects and priorities, you might assume you are now three to seven hours down from doing that, right, you don't have that same amount. Except what we do is we compare what we're doing two people who have prioritized in other ways, how are they getting that much don how

are they blah blah blah. Well, maybe they don't have kids, or maybe they prioritize that differently, or maybe they have grandparents taking care of them, or there are a lot of different things, and so the competing priorities comes up because we, unfortunately um like to choose projects in the abstract because they sound cool and fun, but we don't necessarily tie them to the priorities and values that are

actually going to show up day to day. And I've very much follow the quote from Gandhi that action expresses priority, and that can be really frustrating for a lot of us because if we look back over the last two weeks and look at what's on our schedule and get real with it, whatever is on your schedule has been your priority because you have chosen not to do a lot of other things. So we have to get real that.

Maybe you know, this is for creatives and entrepreneurs and people like that who dreamed like, you know, I want to start my business, I want to do all that kind of whatnot, but they feel sort of bogged down

by the day job. Well, that day job is actually tying into some sense of priorities and values for you, right, maybe it's providing security for you, maybe it's writing stability, maybe it's providing professional status, and actually those things matter to you a lot, and saying you know what, those things matter to me, those are part of this broader matrix and priorities in my life, I think can give people a lot of peace because maybe you can be

at peace that with all things considered, maybe starting a business right now is not right for you. And until you change some of those priorities in those values, it's never going to be a congruent choice for you. Yeah,

I could not agree with that more. That's so important on so many levels, And one of the big ones is, like you said, we end up feeling bad about ourselves because we're not doing all these other things because we have these priorities that we've not acknowledged our priorities, Like you said, like if we say, are right, our kids are our priority, then that dictates a certain degree of action. But when we're doing those actions, we tend to forget

that we're doing something that's important to us. And and that's the thing I think that we miss a lot with what you're talking about is that we think that in order for something to be important, it's got to be something in addition to Right, But the job of raising kids is a really important job. And the fact that a lot of people prioritize that, I think is a wonderful thing. But a lot of people who prioritize that feel bad because they're not getting all these other

things done. You want to get me on a rant, like, I will sometimes lose my mind and I can't help it at this point in my career when people are like, well, you know, I really like I need to take care of my kids, but I got to be more productive or I'm not being productive, and I'm like, what are

you talking about? Like you're taking one of the most productive things that we humans can do, right, if you're being productive in a different way, right, And so, and I think when we make it all like we put it all on the table, and then you know, in my language, if it takes time, energy and attention, it's a project. And I have no real difference between economic projects and life projects. In fact, I want us to

do more of the work of life. Then as much as we talk about life of our work, right, So we spend so much time talking about work, work, work and all that that is. But we does work of our lives. You know, it gets quart of crammed into these empty spaces left over after work, and there's not

nearly enough empty spaces. So yeah, like I agree, being mid career and having a big project deck on you and then you realize, um, you know that your dad has dementia and you need to help figure out how to assist him in this next stage of his life and what that looks like. And that makes you drop other projects. It's not that you're being unproductive. It is not that you're not honoring commitments and thought that you're

a flack. You're focusing on what matters in that moment, right, And yes, that means that you have to renegotiate and you gotta do all this other things. And that's I'm not trying to say people should do that, but if that is what really aligns with your values and really aligns with the relationships as you've been in with people,

you're being incredibly productive. Is just taking a completely different direction than you thought it might, right, And I think it's so important to realize the choices that we're making. And the example you just gave is a great one for me because I spend half my time in Atlanta and my partner's mother has dementia and we do our living caregivers every two weeks down here, and so that's a choice that that we're making. And the more that I remember I'm making that choice, the better that whole

experience is. Right. When I realize, like, I am choosing this because it aligns with my values and what I think is important, then I go into this whole thing with a totally different attitude than I do if I'm like, oh, I have to go do this thing right, because we are always making a choice. We are always making a choice,

and it's just whether or not that choice matters. And you know, this comes from sort of the existentialist philosophers were like, not choosing is also a choice, right, going and just showing up and doing the grind and not making some of these greatest choices, Well, you've chosen other things, and absolutely, and I think that's where it can be really helpful. You know, however, you do your planning. We have a certain type of methodology we talked about in

the book. We don't need to get into it, but however, you keep these broader projects front of mine is super helpful because you're going to get a bright, shiny object pop up, right, you're gonna be I'll pick on Eric here, like you're you're going to be on a plane flight and you're gonna have this idea and you're like, oh wow, I can totally do that and so and so forth. But it's like, how does that fit in with this

project of being a half time caregiver? And if I had to choose between those, which am I going to and you might find it like, you know what, I'm going to continue to choose to do this thing that I've committed to do. I can't convert that idea into a project, And you know what, that's great, Like that's one less thing for me to think about, right it's and it's one less thing to feel bad about that

I'm not doing. That's the offshoot. And I do think this topic is really I think you and I both feel passionately about this because I see a lot of people feeling bad about themselves when I look at their life and I go, I think you're living a great life, Like you're doing well, You're taking care of people around you, you're doing all. You're not a failure, you know, And

I just think that's so important. Yeah. Well, in the work that I do, so I work with people on strategy execution and on you know, productivity as we need to. And there will often be times when I'll come to the meetings with Shane right like I didn't do the things and I say, okay, it's so what did you do? And they sort of talk about what they did, and it's like, well, were those your priorities? Like would you had made a different choice knowing everything you know now?

And they're like no, one, Like, well, we don't have a problem here, right. The only problem we have now is a logistical problem. What are we going to lift and shift and put where? But we don't have that sort of character problem that you came with, like oh, I'm not this person and I didn't commit, like you live according to your value, like my work here is done.

Like if I can get people to do that, fantastic right. Um, So yeah, I think it's just I may take this a different way, but if we treated ourselves half as kindly as we treat other people that we loved, man, would we be so much more at peace? And would

we be I dare say it more productive? Um, because you know, when we look at people going through things and whether it's there mother in law that's got dementia, whether it's you know, the brother that's going to depress about or what maybe they slipped down the stairs and busted their knee, right, and we look at someone in

those situations and they're like, I'm not getting done. Of course, we look at with compassion and say, you know, like maybe you're kind of going through this thing and it takes time, and you know, maybe you should be with the process. We say, when it's someone else, we do. We admire it in someone else, Yeah, but when it's us, it's a defect. Right for us, it's one of those things.

And so slight pause here, but just in case someone needs to hear, like being sick, it's not a character defect, right, it's not. It's just something that's happened to you, having a chronic illness or whatever thing you're going through. It's not a character defect. It's not something that needs a you know, story about. It's just something that happens as

a part of being human. It's your response to it that matters, and it's how you make choices, you know, in the way I think about it, recovering or having a chronic illness, like that's a project. Um, it takes time, energy and attention. You've got to do all the things it takes to you know, either hell or if it's something where it's like chronic fatigue, you just don't have the inner g that other people have and it doesn't make you less, then it doesn't make you a weaker

from a moral perspective person. It's just a constraint that you're dealing with. So I just add that because I think we forget that these trials of life, that we forget that these transitions of pain or transitions of relationships and you know, breaking up and getting married and all these types of things, they take life force that we can't put towards other things. And yet we think we should be able to and think that if we're not, that's somehow like we're not one of those golden people

that can do all the things. And you know, we're not the whoever your icon is, We're not the that person because they've apparently got it figured out. But when you look two or three clicks under the image you'll see people then maybe don't have the family relationships that you want, Maybe they don't have the health that you would want to have for yourself. Maybe, um, they've done things that when you look at what matters to you,

you wouldn't choose to have those outcomes. So most importantly, live life on purpose and on priority, and choose the projects that support those and as best you can, let go with the rest. Yeah. I think that's great, and I think that's a great place for us to wrap up. You and I are going to continue talking in the post show conversation about some of your uh techniques for going from idea to done and they are really good. Um we we barely even touched on them, so we're

going to do that in the post show conversation. Listeners you can get access to that by going to one you feed dot net slash joint and becoming part of the community there. But Charlie, thank you so much. This is I've really enjoyed this conversation and I think it's been a really important Eric. Thanks very much for having me, and anytime you want me back, I'm here, all right. Bye. Ye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to The One You Feed podcast.

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