Episode 80:Self-Care
In this episode, Nick and Kai discuss how to care for yourself when you’re running a business.
Summary
Nick and Kai answer a listener question about maintaining a balanced lifestyle while running solo businesses. They cover calendar discipline, non-standard work schedules, a dedicated savings buffer for burnout, physical self-care, time tracking, and the risk of accidentally turning hobbies into work.
Highlights
- Kai books personal activities on his calendar the same way he books client work, and coaches clients to schedule six hours of their top three favorite activities in the coming week.
- Nick gives Draft formal business hours and vacation days, communicates them clearly to clients, and says he does not care about the reaction. His framing: if he calls his own shots, he should actually be able to take vacation whenever he wants.
- Kai splits his workday into 6–10am and 3–5pm blocks, keeping midday free. Nick reserves mornings for writing and afternoons for client work and meetings.
- Kai saves a dedicated ‘burnout month’ in the business bank account on top of the standard three-month operating buffer. When burnout symptoms show up, he pushes new client availability out six weeks and draws from that reserve instead of grinding through.
- Nick says solo business owners who eat poorly or drink regularly every night are directly clouding memory and execution. He frames it as a business problem, not just a health one.
- Kai tracks time with Let’s Freckle even though he does not bill hourly. One week he felt like he worked 40 hours but only logged 14, which showed him that the other 26 hours were spent sitting at the desk not actually working.
- Kai deliberately chose weightlifting as a hobby because he has no interest in competing or monetizing it. He killed a 13-year Magic: The Gathering hobby by going too deep on the business side of it, and now optimizes for hobbies that remove that temptation entirely.
Read the transcript
So, I’m a big advocate of work-life balance and That’s a funny thing to say as I’m entering month three of my work remotely from Oregon to escape grass seed hell. So A reader wrote in with a, or a listener wrote in with a wonderful question. What regular actions do you take to make sure you maintain a balanced, healthy lifestyle that works with the running of your business? And Nick and I both thought this was a wonderful question for the podcast because. Well, I’m in the middle of this extended trip while I’ve launched three products, run a coaching practice, run my consulting practice. Nick frequently travels, and there’s a lot to unpack in terms of What we do and what we recommend, and what we aren’t doing and recommend to maintain that balance. I’ll start off one thing that’s been very important for me, and it’s one of the things that I actually start off every coaching engagement with. Is encouraging my students to start using their calendar aggressively. Book out the time you’re spending working on client projects. Book out the time you’re spending working on personal projects. And book out the time you’re spending on personal activities. If you’re vacationing somewhere or you’re living at home and you’re saying, well, hey, I don’t feel I had a healthy relationship or a healthy, balanced lifestyle. Well, A, make a list of the top three favorite things you love doing. B, open your calendar and schedule six hours over the next week, just dedicated, devoted time inside or outside of the workday. To spend on that thing. So you’re just like you’d schedule time to work on your business or work on a client project, you’re scheduling time for a balanced, healthy life.
Yeah. So I mean, this is one of the most important things for myself. I am very deliberate and intentional about. The way in which I spend my time, right? And so, towards that end, Draft has business hours, it has closing times, it has vacation days. We’re recording this at the beginning of a four-day weekend for myself. And I travel enough to make the French blush. And so or I take enough vacation too, I should say. And then I, you know, I I communicate all of those things very clearly to my clients, and I don’t really care about the ramifications. I have chosen not to care about the ramifications about that. If someone is envious or thinks that I’m taking way more vacation than their company policy, I don’t I don’t care. I don’t know what else to say about that. I have chosen to make a part of my practice doing what makes sense for myself. I try and do the best thing for myself and care for myself as well as possible because otherwise, why am I in this job? Right? Like. If I get to call my own shots, it seems a little bit disingenuous if I can’t take vacation whenever I feel like. So that’s one thing. Completely agree.
Just to jump back a second, you mentioned office hours, and I know you aggressively Promote the office hours you have within draft, I sort of take an opposite approach to it. I’ve realized that as I’ve become more independent, I don’t necessarily work best in the nine to five. Business rhythm, just like we have a circadian rhythm. Let’s call it a business rhythm. And that there’s points where I peak and points where I vally or trowel and just don’t have that energy. And so What I found is splitting up my personal workday, and I share this just to encourage you if you’re an independent freelancer and saying, How do I arrange my day? It doesn’t necessarily need to be the 9 to 5. I found I work best 6 to around 10 a. m. Then a four or a five-hour break, and then from three to five, eat dinner, and then do a little bit of like reading and stuff six to seven. So I’m not working more than seven or eight hours in a day. I’m just splitting it up. And this lets me do wonderful things like: okay, it’s 11 a. m. and my girlfriend is off and has some free time. Let’s go have a two-hour lunch in the park. I’m still meeting my commitments, meeting my obligations, but just aggressively scheduling around a work schedule that’s non-standard. But works for me and lets me do the things I want. So, a nine to five, completely optional. That’s one of the perks of being a consultant.
Yeah. I mean, you don’t really have to do a nine to five, but the problem is for me, I personally need the structure necessary to do that. The 9 to 5 is the time when I you know if something goes wrong, I’ll be around to actually help you. But beyond that, unless like your website is on fire, which is like a once a year thing, it’s not really, not really a thing. one thing that I do do, and I mentioned before, is during the mornings I write and during the afternoons I do client work and design and meetings and stuff like that. And that’s pretty inviolate. But if I’m like not feeling writing or if I have another appointment or something like that, like the nice thing is I can go to like a doctor’s appointment anytime I want. And I can go, if I need a new driver’s license, go down to the DMV at 2 p. m. when no one is there. I can go on grocery runs whenever I want, and it’s amazing.
The unspoken privilege of being an independent business owner or a Solo business owner is showing up at your grocery store at 2 p. m. on a Tuesday and having nobody there except four open cash registers. That’s so sad. It’s honestly, that’s why I do it. I’m not joking. Like, if you’re not sure, if you don’t have W-2, you don’t know what you’re missing out.
The grocery store at 2 p. m. is like the best place.
The experience of like walking into a Whole Foods or a Trader Joe’s or an Albertson’s at 5:30, never again.
Never. On like a Sunday. People that buy groceries on Sunday.
One, one, jumping back to the topic question of actions to make sure you maintain that work-life balance or that healthy balance. One thing I strongly recommend, and we talk about in terms of financial planning, is have two, three, four plus months of runway in the bank. So If you hit a famine period, if you hit a lull, you have cash there. I go a step further and I say, I want three months in the business minimum of three months in the business bank account. To cover, like, I lose all clients. Okay, I could still pay for the services and pay for my work and my salary from that, but I’ll put a bonus month aside. And this is the burnout month. This is. If I feel like I’ve worked too hard, I’ve hit that wall, I just unmotivated, I’m just feeling completely burnt out. I am dealing with the symptoms of burnout. I’ll start. I have projects and commitments that I’m working on right now, but I’ll minimize those as much as possible. And I’ll start telling new prospects and new clients: hey, My availability is in plus six weeks from now. So I’m booked with secret project X. And for secret reasons, you won’t be able to schedule me until six weeks from now. And clients either say, oh no, we need you immediately. Okay, we’ll go somewhere else, or that works fine. And then I start spending from that burnout month. I’ve socked that money away so I could take, even if it’s just half time or three-quarter time off for my business, I’m giving myself that additional capacity to recharge. And I think It’s an approach we don’t often hear talked about about how to overcome burnout, but by saving in anticipation, just like for a medical emergency. For burnout. Hey, I’m going to hit a point sometime in the next year where I might need to take two or three weeks off of my business to mentally recharge, to unkink myself, to feel like I could work again. Well, Plan ahead and put that money aside and then say, Oh, hey, I’m starting to feel burnout. Let me shunt future work a month down the line and draw from this reservoir.
I’m going to switch gears a moment and talk a little bit about a topic that has unfortunately become politicized, but I think it’s important for independent people, which is self-care. I think that you should always be listening to yourself and your body and understanding what it needs. And the best way to do that is to have more focus. And so anything that you can do to live a healthier lifestyle, like you’re the only one in your business probably, if you’re listening to this podcast. And if that’s the case, or you run your business or something like that, and you’re not eating better, you’re fucking up. If you’re drinking every night, you’re fucking up. It’s not okay. And I hate to be terribly nanny state about this, but like you’re going to have a clouded head the next day, you’re not going to have a good memory, and it’s going to affect your ability to execute correctly. And it’s going to affect your ability to make money and actually succeed at this. So I have not really personally regretted like Exercising more often and eating better, you know. Like, and I’m the guy who like eats the thing with a face at every restaurant, you know?
Like, I’ve seen it, it’s scary. There were eyes.
There are eyes and brains, and I’m sucking them out, and it’s making a terrible, terrible slurping sound. Talk about something that we’re not doing on the podcast. Right. Kai, please don’t. I hate you. That was Basil. That was not Basil, even though he’s right here. But no, I think there’s something tremendously important to talk about when you’re thinking about The way that you care yourself for yourself, and honestly, like love your own self and figure out how you can Provide for yourself.
Can I give a list of the quick hacks I have around self-care, just tiny little things that help? Do it. So, one small thing is Schedule, if you struggle with clutter in your life, I have been a messy person at times. Entropy happens around me, let’s put it that way. That’s true. And one habit I’ve developed is every time I enter or leave a room, I want to take one object with me and put it back in its place. And so I’m just doing these micro acts throughout the day to say, like, oh, this cup, this should be in the dishwasher. Oh, I should now start the dishwasher. I also schedule just a 15-minute time period. Hey, clean for 15 minutes. It’s not overwhelming. I could do a tiny little thing. I just shove the stuff off of my desk and I’m done. But it builds that habit of cleaning my space around me. If the space around us is dirty and messy and overwhelmed and confusing, we’re going to feel confused and not able to practice self-care. Other quick tips, 15 minutes scheduled as a walk. Just get out there and exercise. Just get out in the fresh air away from the desk. Green drinks and green smoothies, honestly, have been wonderful. Sensa fucking tea. Sensha tea? Meda n. com.
Get your senta tea there. Don’t get it bagged. You respect yourself. It actually, it helps so much for focus and antioxidants and all the other good words that you hear about when you’re living a healthy lifestyle.
I’ve started tracking my time on projects I work, even though I don’t bill hourly. I use Amy Hoy’s Let’s Freckle to track my time. And the benefit I found is for each project, internal or external to my business. I’m able to track how much time I actually spend on it, and then I see this really interesting delta. Okay, I worked 40 hours last week. Okay, but I only tracked 14 hours of work. Where did those 26 hours go? Well, I was sitting in front of the computer feeling like I should work, but I wasn’t really working and wasn’t billing my time. But that’s an anti-pattern. I wasn’t able to observe until I started tracking my time. So using tools like Let’s Freckle, Rescue Time, they’re great ways to see where your time and attention are actually going when you’re working and then optimize around that. Figure out where you should be spending more time or where you’re unintentionally spending time and want to pull back and focus on something else. So I think that’s an incredibly valuable tactic to use, especially if you don’t bill hourly. Feel like, okay, great. I did a day’s work and I’m done. I build for a day. Well, did you actually only do three hours of work but sat in your office for five hours? That’s a day’s work. Absolutely. You solved an outcome for the client, but. Wouldn’t it have been more pleasurable to spend those five hours seeing a movie or reading a book or going for a walk or cooking or watching your favorite show or just chilling out instead of being in the office? And you only get that data, you only get that insight into that data. When you track it?
Yeah, I’m one of those people who, like, the quantified self should make a whole lot of sense, and I just never do it. I just kind of like.
Constantly zooming out sense with your calendar. This gives you the same outcome.
Time management is so different from how many steps you put in in a day and like what you eat in a day, you know? I can say, yes, I’m going to Lula Cafe for lunch or something like that. And I have kind of a sense of how big the meal is. But that’s very different from saying I ate this, it was this many calories, and I, you know, like, I don’t know. I don’t really. I don’t really practice that terribly well. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing. I don’t have an Apple Watch. I don’t track my steps. I don’t do anything like that. And I don’t think that I end up living an unhealthy life because I just know that I should be exercising and I know when I’m, you know, falling off the wagon I know when I’m not biking and I’m letting my quads go to hell, and like, whatever, you know.
As somebody who does aggressively track things like, hey, how far did I walk today? How much time did I spend exercising? How many calories did I eat today? I have noticed that just by tracking it, I use the app Pedometer on the iPhone, and it has an Apple Watch version as well. To track my steps day to day and see week-long streaks. And just by seeing that, I’m able to see sort of the Seinfeld method. Oh, I have an unbroken chain of 14 days of walking, let’s say, three miles. Ah, today I feel really lazy, but I don’t want to break that chain. It gives you that psychological motivation to move forward. Likewise, with tracking body weight and tracking calories and intake overall. It lets you see, oh, okay, I have the streak, I’m meeting in this way. What exactly is that data point? I think there’s value in maybe not going full-on quantify itself with it, but Tracking these things like, well, how much am I eating? Weighing your food, how much am I walking each day? How much time am I spending sleeping? There’s a wonderful sleep app I use as I pull up my phone, a sleep cycle. That tracks the quality and duration of my sleep and intensity of my sleep. And just having these metrics, by tracking it and having it as data, it gives me a better idea into how I’m doing. If I start experiencing insomnia, well, I’m experiencing insomnia. Or I could look back and say, hey, you know what? For the last week, I’ve been feeling kind of down and haven’t been sleeping well, and I haven’t been walking a lot. And looking at what I’ve eaten, oh, I’ve eaten a lot of shit. Oh, okay. I could start to see that more full picture. So, by using these simple things, how much are you walking? How much are you exercising? How many glasses of water are you drinking? I track that in my fitness pal. How many calories are you eating? I’m on vacation, so my diet goes a little wonky, and so that impacts health or energy levels. It lets me better see that. Week-long or month-long view and understand, well, what is the current state of kind? Am I heading towards or away from my destination?
Yeah. I track sleep a little bit. I know that when I’ve had a bad sleep night or something like that, that it’s going to catch up to me at some point. Journaling helps a lot. It’s very qualitative for me though. I talk about I talk more about myself and my feelings and what led me to a certain thing that happened. And that’s about it. It’s very fuzzy, which is weird for a guy who does data and like. A lot of analytics for a living, but it works, it works for me. And I think the goal is, it depends and find what works for you, which is totally not helpful. But beyond that, like you know the techniques and you know that living a healthy lifestyle is better than not living a healthy lifestyle. And also, The fact that you are running an independent business makes it so much more imperative that you be responsible for yourself. I think that’s really what it is.
I’ve started advising friends or coaching students or clients. A lot of the times when it comes to a, well, hey, I feel like I should be working, I feel like I should be working on the business right now, but I also have this family thing and it’s optional. But what should I do? Do I do the family thing? Do I do the work on the business thing? I’ve been following more and more on the side of do the family thing. Like if we imagine a fair coin, a 50-50 shot if we flip it, I’m starting to think, well, let’s play with an unfair coin, let’s have it 60% family stuff or self-care stuff. And 40% business stuff, and just have it weighted and leaning towards doing more of those activities that involve other people or involve getting out of the office There’ll always be more time for business, and there will always be priorities that come up where you shift it so you’re focusing more on business in the short term, but long run over the course of a year or multiple years. On the balance, have more non-business than business activities in there. Just a hobby. Get a hobby, yeah.
Make that hobby not JavaScript. Like, please.
And as somebody who’s repeatedly turned hobbies into income-producing activities, Magic the Gathering, other projects.
You can’t not do that. You’re caught. I can’t not do that.
And it’s weightlifting, honestly, is one of the reasons it’s been a great hobby for me, is because I don’t want to compete. And I’m never going to win money from it, and I’m never going to turn it into a revenue-generating activity. So I’m able to do it as a hobby full stop. So If you have a tendency to turn hoppies into income-producing activities, A, congratulations, you’re a hustler and wonderful, that’s great. B, Optimize for hobbies that you enjoy, that you cannot or do not want to turn into revenue-producing activities. So you avoid that temptation and that trap. I killed Magic of the Gathering as a hobby. It was a 13-year hobby because I went too hard into it at business and I wasn’t able to appreciate it as a hobby anymore. It’s a very fine line to walk, and you need to be aware of it if you have that tendency within yourself.