Blog Bytes #6: Self Processes, Burnout, & Priority Alignment

Blog Bytes is a series that shares ideas to help you live your fullest every day.

This is a snippet from the Nathan Barry Show E038 with special guest Steph Smith. You can listen to the full episode here.

Steph Smith is a growth marketer, writer, and indie maker. In 2019, Steph founded Integral Labs. Integral Labs supports top tech companies with technical writing, content strategy, marketing, and analytics. In 2020, Steph became the Senior Manager of Trends.co. Trends identifies emerging patterns in business months before they become mainstream. In less than a year, Steph grew the number of paying subscribers by more than 400%.

Nathan: “I imagine at The Hustle there’s so much going on. There’s tons of content going into… you know there’s the newsletter side, the Trends side, everything. I’d love to hear more about your process for keeping all that straight. What do you use for organization, like, maybe somewhat on tools but even more so process?”

Steph: “What I try to do to orient myself — because I’m not a task person or a calendar person who’s super, super regimented — is to check in either every day or every week and make sure [I] have very, very clear priorities as to what would I be happy with at the end of this week. Where would I feel like [I’m] actually moving towards something and be okay with it if I did nothing else during that week? 

Because I think it can be the case sometimes where we just get so lost in the weeds and we feel like we did so much, but then we look back and we’re like, the needle didn’t move at all. 

I mean, I know burnout is a much more serious thing, but lately, I feel like some of my co-workers or other people I’ve worked with in the past will say they’re burnt out. And honestly, a lot of the time they are, but one of the things I’ve noticed is that sometimes people feel burnt out when they’re working very hard and they don’t see that translate at all. 

So it’s not even necessarily the degree they’re working or the amount of time they’re putting in, but it’s the lack of relationship between the amount of time you’re putting in and then actual movement or progress, and that can be really defeating. Whereas, I’ve seen people who work much harder, but don’t feel as degraded because they feel that movement.

I wish I could give better tools or processes or things like that, but I feel like everyone has their own thing. But one thing that keeps me really motivated and really excited about doing things and building things is that feeling of progress.”

Nathan: “That really resonates, because there are definitely times over the years of building ConvertKit and other projects where you’re like, I’m working the hardest I’ve ever worked and it just doesn’t feel that hard because we’re getting results. And then other times you’re like, I’m not even necessarily putting in more time or it’s that much harder but it’s a slog because it doesn’t feel like it’s working.

When you find yourself in that space [where] the inputs are not directly affecting the outputs, either from a mental side or process… how do you handle that and get through?”

Steph: “[It’s] just about continuously revisiting what your priorities are. If you imagine yourself as a vector, how closely aligned is your vector and your priority vector? They’re always going to be a little off, but is it perpendicular, or is actually aligned? How much of your day is actually due to inertia versus actual intentional thought of ‘what do I really need to get done to reach my goals?’ ”