S2 Ep.11 Work Life Balance w/ Lily Hammer

Work Life - Transcript

[JAMIE] I was thinking about it. And I'm interested in your take on this, because I think that you'll agree. We're super chill. When it comes to other people and like what I expect you know, any of that—I am, I'm super chill. On the inside when it concerns like anything I'm in charge of, there is no chill. [chuckles]

[KARLI] You have no chill.

[JAMIE] And I think that you're the same where you're like, "Well, you know, I don't have any like, expectations or pressures on other people." But like when it comes time for yours, [chuckles] there’s no chill.

[KARLI] Yeah, my personal portion of the thing, there is no chill inside of me. [Jamie chuckles] I don't, like I don't have any expectation for anybody else to be anything other than themselves. But I have a weird set of standards for myself that I can't even define or explain, if I tried.

[JAMIE] I would generally tell people like yeah, we're really super chill people. And then I'm like, but we're not internally. [both laugh] Inside we're screaming. [Karli laughs]

[INTRODUCTION MUSIC PLAYS]

[JAMIE] Welcome to The Act Break, where we're talking about all things story.

[KARLI] Take a break from your creative endeavors and hang out with us.

[JAMIE] Have a little simulated human interaction.

[KARLI] Because internet friends totally count.

[INTRO MUSIC FADES]

[JAMIE] Welcome to The Act Break everybody, where you can listen to us struggle to make sense of our own thoughts on whatever topic we have picked for the week. [Karli laughs] The most accurate depiction of this podcast ever.

[KARLI] [laughing] Yes.

[JAMIE] I'm Jamie. I am a science fiction and speculative fiction writer who makes a podcast.

[KARLI] I'm Karli, writer and … cohost. [laughs] I know, that was really compelling. You're welcome.

[JAMIE] I am starting to wonder how long I can say I'm a writer to people before they start demanding actual proof. [Karli laughs] Luckily, most people have taken my word for it. Today we get to talk to one of our busiest friends and that is Kate, a.k.a. Lilly Hammer on Instagram, about the infamous but elusive subject: work life balance. [Kate laughs] Which, depending on the day can make you cringe. Hi, Kate.

[KATE] Hi.

[KARLI] Welcome.

[KATE] Thank you for having me and labeling me one of your busiest friends. [Karli laughs] I feel like I'm gonna have to wear that as a badge of honor now.

[JAMIE] Yeah. I'm just here to hand out labels. You’re welcome.

[LAUGHTER]

[KARLI] Slap a label on it.

[JAMIE] Yeah. Listeners might remember Kate from an episode last season where we played writer would you rather, which was a really good time. [Kate chuckles] And I think people enjoyed Yeah. So thanks for coming back.

[KARLI] This is the first episode with just Kate. So we're getting to have a little bit more chat time with you about you and your experiences rather than just the randomness—

[KATE] Spiders. [laughs]

[KARLI] Of that game—spiders.

[JAMIE] You remember the spiders in the cabin?

[KATE] I can't forget that.

[JAMIE] The biggest thing that stood out.

[KARLI] Kate and I have nightmares about that now.

[KATE] Yeah. [Kate and Karli laugh]

[JAMIE] Meanwhile, the alternative was just sitting in a cafe next to your worst enemy.

[KATE] Well, that was my worst nightmare. [Kate and Karli laugh]

[JAMIE] Would you like to do a quick introduction tell people about yourself.

[KATE] So I have a—my day job. I work in social media for Satellite Radio. I also write and I am a drummer in a band, blues rock band. And yeah, those are my three points of what I guess you would consider work that I have to balance. Writing, a grimdark fantasy novel that I am still in the third draft of called The One Horned Heretic.

[KARLI] [singsong] And it's so good. [Kate chuckles]

[JAMIE] Yeah, some of us been privileged enough to read it. [Kate and Karli laugh] Not all of us but here we are. The sound of me not being bitter. [Kate and Karli laugh]

[KATE] I get you in the next round.

[KARLI] Jamie’s not salty.

[JAMIE] Not salty at all. You have a full time job that you have to travel for often. And you know, responsibilities and the like, as most writers do. Pretty much, most of us don't write as a profession, or as our primary income.

[KATE] Yeah.

[JAMIE] Even when that is your full time job. You still have like a personal life, and hobbies. And it all is things that you have to manage. So that's what we're talking about today. Because why not? It's funny that it fell this week, because I feel like all of us have had like a really busy couple of weeks that have left us super drained, or, like out of the flow of what our usual balance is, quote unquote. [chuckles] So I'm like, oh, good. Yeah. Let's talk about this while we're all completely messed up. [laughs]

[KATE] Oh, yeah. It was very funny. Because even before I was, I was talking to A.P. And I'm like, Yeah, I'm gonna—about to record a podcast with them about work life balance, and I am having my most unbalanced week I have ever had in my life. And I'm like, this is so fitting. And also, I should be ashamed of myself that this is the topic you chose for me on this week.

[LAUGHTER]

[KARLI] No, I think it's perfect, because that's one of the biggest things that we're talking about why it's such a difficult and elusive thing, because we can find something that works for us. And then a week, two weeks, a month comes out of nowhere, and then suddenly everything is off.

[KATE] Yeah, totally. And I was thinking about it recently, because like, I took on more responsibility in my job this past year. So I have to do things like be aware of when the quarter changes. So like the quarter changed in April. And so now, I like—not only do I have to manage my days, my weeks, but now I manage my quarters. And I'm like, there's just always something more to add to it and more to manage.

[KARLI] Yeah.

[JAMIE] Yeah, and it's ever changing.

[KATE] Yeah.

[JAMIE] So what we mean when we talk about work life balance is basically just the amount of time and energy you put into your writing passions, and the amount of time and energy you have to put into your everything else.

[KARLI] [laughing] Your everything else, I like that.

[JAMIE] You know, you still have to like, earn a paycheck and like feed your family, metaphorically and physically, when you have children. I’ve noticed a lot of people not asking me but asking other people, like, how do you do it? And everybody's answers always like, I don't, or like I just struggle my way through it. When you hear like work life balance, what does that immediately make you guys even think about? What does that even mean? [chuckles]

[KARLI] It makes me think about anxiety.

[LAUGHTER]

[JAMIE] Does it make you think about anxiety? Or does it make you anxious? Because those are two different things. [chuckles]

[KARLI] [laughing] Both. Oh boy.

[JAMIE] How do you say, it's just like, it feels like such a broad question when people bring it up. Like what does work life balance even mean?

[KATE] Yeah, to me, it's all about boundaries. I think over the past year, I got very good at setting my boundaries around each smaller thing within. So it's not just like work. And it's not just life. It's my my day work, my writing work my personal life and like anything else has to do with life. And then I set very staunch boundaries between them. So like when I am writing, I am not working or thinking about work. And when I'm working, I'm not thinking about writing even though it is always like in my brain, I try not to. So like that is I think the first step when I think of like work life balance, setting boundaries, and then working from there.

[JAMIE] Yeah, I totally agree.

[KARLI] Um, I think that boundaries are crucial to having any kind of balance in life without going completely insane. I definitely struggle with that separation of like, I am doing this right now and so I'm not thinking about all of the other things. But whenever I do try to do that, it's very helpful. [laughs]

[JAMIE] It's hard to get in the habit of something that doesn't come naturally.

[KARLI] Yeah.

[JAMIE] It's like it takes very conscious effort to build up like a practice.

[KARLI] Yeah. So Kate, it just sounds like you're pretty good at compartmentalizing.

[KATE] Yeah. And it took me a while, like, as I was thinking about, like, all the boundaries I set and I, I have set so many on sets, like a minuscule level, like the amount of hours my phone has access to social media and like when my email notifications pop up, and they don't do it after five, and I can't imagine a time when that didn't exist. It took me a while to get to this point. But now I can't function without like, I can't imagine doing all the things I do now without having those boundaries. And like you said, Jamie, like making those habits. It was crucial.

[JAMIE] I agree, where it's like, it doesn't all happen overnight.

[KATE] No.

[JAMIE] It's like a thing that you build up over time. That makes me think of like my bullet journaling. That's how I track things. That's how I keep like appointments. That's how I remember what bills to pay when. It didn't just like magically happen. But now I feel like I don't know what I would do without it.

[KATE] Mhm.

[JAMIE] How did I even function? How did I remember anything before I did it this way. It takes time. But eventually they start paying off and then the gain is an exponential gain.

[KATE] Yeah.

[KARLI] Yeah, I agree with that. I am very new to the boundaries thing in all facets of life. But I have noticed in the last couple of years, how much more functional I am on a day to day basis, because of those boundaries, it feels like an exponential growth, like I still feel like a hot mess, and I'm not as organized as I want to be. But I am far more organized than I ever was even six months, a year ago. It is, it's a growth.

[JAMIE] It's going to be different for everybody. There's nothing I love more than disclaimers that seem obvious. [Kate and Karli laugh] Everybody’s going to have a different amount of time and energy that they can put in to different aspects of their life. And that's why it's hard to watch. Other writers take larger strides. Like I want to be able to get that much done that fast. It just is going to be different for everybody because of whatever you have going on.

[KARLI] Yes, it is challenging to see other people seemingly making more progress than you. But you really unless you know them very personally, you really have no way of knowing what they have going on behind the scenes. Comparison is bad, don't do it.

[KATE] Do you know I became really humbled in that thought process with Flights of Foundry, which we all sat in on. Just like seeing these authors who are published, published books, book series, short stories, and magazines, none of which I have done yet. And they are still working a day job. And they're talking about how they like work the night shift as a nurse or they did this during the day. And I'm like, oh, my—like, it humbled my ass so hard.

[KARLI] Yeah.

[JAMIE] We're so steeped in like "the writing community." But almost no authors really have that as like, their only source of income. It's very rare that even a traditionally published author is going to like out earn their advance and have no other revenue streams.

[KARLI] Yeah, they tend to diversify what they've got going on. They sell courses or, you know, other things to help supplement.

[JAMIE] Or even just day jobs.

[KARLI] Or even, yeah, or even just a day job. Absolutely.

[JAMIE] Yeah. I mean, I wish all the writers could just write. [Jamie and Karli chuckle] So just in general, like the tasks and the time, they're, they're going to be distributed differently at different times. You're gonna go through seasons, where you're going to be able to focus on your work more than other times.

[KARLI] Depending on what you have going on in your personal life or at your day job is largely going to affect how much—even if you have the time, you may not have the energy. And that's when we have to figure out when it's healthy to push ourselves. And when it's healthy to take a break.

[JAMIE] Have either of you experienced this? This was something that it took me a while to learn because I'm a planner. But I've figured out sometimes planning too far in advance can be like a problem. It can kind of set you up for failure. Because you don't really know what type of season or what's going to be going on in your life or in the world. Then you're like, "Oh, I failed, because I didn't do this." Have you guys ever encountered that?

[KATE] Oh my god.

[KARLI] Yeah. [Karli laughs]

[KATE] Acutely with me, I—oh my god—I’m like so frazzled right now. Because this is such a big like, important thing to me. I do not plan. And I mean this so fervently like I don't plan ahead of a week in my life work in my writing, because I have had so many things happen to me that have blindsided me and thrown me in a loop for like, months after that. I'm like, scarred for life about planning ahead of time. [All laugh] I get deeply disappointed when like, my plans don't work out. Like if I say, and this is [chuckles]—this is me looking back on sweet summer child, Kate, when she thought she was gonna have an agent by last December and I'm still writing my 110k book. So like, it's things like that, where I'm like, "I'm gonna finish my book by x," and you don't get there and it's so disappointing. But if you say, "at the end of this week, I'm going to get this done." And then if you get it, it's fantastic. If you didn't, you only have a week to reflect on what went wrong. Instead of like a year's worth of how did I get here? [Kate and Karli laugh]

[KARLI] That is so relatable. I am very similar. If I plan too far ahead, I get anxiety. Because of that very reason. I've had, like crazy stuff happen where yeah, I am like, completely out of it for a month, and then it takes me another couple of months to recover. Then I'm like, there's three months, “what just happened, all of my goals are gone, I will never become a writer.” And it's soul crushing. I like what you were saying about the week to week goals. They're like the micro goals, but if you achieve the micro goals, even if you know, sometimes you don't quite make the goal. But if you're consistently pushing yourself forward, and you're going to achieve the bigger goal, it just maybe pushed out further than you originally thought.

[JAMIE] When you have a goal for six months, or a year or whatever. Sometimes that can be so ambiguous that you don't actually do the steps that it takes because you're like, well, that's a year, I have a whole year to accomplish that. And then you might procrastinate or not do the everyday things. Whereas if you just have a week, it's a much more actionable step that you have to take to reach the week goal. And instead of being like, well, I have three months to do that. I really like that, Kate, because it's much more realistic. But I usually pick like, for the month, my goal is to do this. And then if I reach that early, then I'll do like a push goal. [chuckles]

[KATE] That's a good plan, too. And I—this may be wrong—but I think it was V.E. Schwab that said this in like one of her Instagram stories, and specifically for writers, when you set a daily word count goal. If that's like how you set your goals, it's more depleting. Like when you don't make that goal because it was a small daily goal. But then if you make it for the week, you have wiggle room. So if you don't do it one day, you can make up for the next day, same thing with a month, like you do Jamie, like you could start to gauge where you relax a little bit. Or if you had like a really good day it makes up for that day, you know?

[JAMIE] Yeah.

[KARLI] Yeah, definitely.

[JAMIE] Like a month has been the sweet spot. And then there are days where you just know you're not gonna get anything done. [chuckles]

[KARLI] Yeah, especially with having kids, they're sometimes sick. Or sometimes there's just a school break or a holiday and I have extra on my plate for that time period. I used to get so overwhelmed and frustrated that I wasn't able to have a consistent schedule, I've had to really embrace the fact that I have no guarantees, anything can happen. But yeah, having the month, you know, like spring break happened in April. And so that whole week, they were out. And I knew I wasn't gonna get as much done. And I was able to be more relaxed about that, knowing that the second half of the month was going to be a little heavier and work but that's okay.

[KATE] Yeah.

[JAMIE] It's often better to like, stay loose, about like, what your goals are gonna be. You just never know what's going to come at you. And there's so many outside factors that affect like your energy level and all that. [chuckles]

[KATE AND KARLI] Yeah.

[JAMIE] Mostly I was thinking about tips for helping with that sort of thing. That was my, my first listing was just flexibility. Being able to shift and be like, oh, I was going to try and write a short story today. But I feel a deep sense of existential dread. So instead, I'm gonna sit on the couch and read. [Kate and Jamie chuckle] And it's reading, so it still counts towards work goals.

[KATE] I agree.

[KARLI] I've definitely gotten to a point where I set alarms throughout my day, that helps kind of cue me into like, okay, this time of day, I need to make sure that this thing is happening, and it kind of helps keep me moving forward.

[KATE] I do the same thing. I'm so glad to hear that someone else does that, like my phone—I don't get dings for Instagram or Twitter. But I get dings that say like, check your email, get up and stretch.

[KATE] Yes.

[KATE] This is a writing time. This is a working time.

[KARLI] Yeah, I don't have alerts for any social media. I get distracted way too easily. And then hours are gone.

[JAMIE] I turned off push notification years ago, on like, pretty much any app that I get. And I'm like, you don't have to say yes to that. [laughs]

[KATE] Yeah.

[KARLI] Say no.

[JAMIE] And then when people mention it sometimes now I forget that other people have them. [laughs]

[KARLI] Okay, I liked what you said, I didn't even realize that you could set your email to where you don't get like notified for your emails at a certain time of day. And I'm totally going to do that now.

[KATE] That was the best thing I ever did for myself. Because like, I don't use my personal email much so I only ever check it in the morning and then it's off for the rest of the day. But then my, my work email, I only check it three times a day. And I don't get push notifications for it and I just have a reminder that goes off to check your email at this time. Because I have a job where like, I'll get 300 emails in a day. [laughs]

[KARLI] No, thank you.

[JAMIE] Yeah, know everything about your day job, it just sounds like my personal nightmare. [Karli laughs]

[KATE] I am very fortunate with my job. But it's since it's an entertainment company, it's just like the communications are endless.

[KARLI] Like drinking from a firehose. [Jamie laughs]

[KATE] Yeah. Yeah.

[KARLI] I mean, it sounds like a lot of fun and a lot of ways, but it sounds very intense and very, like high demand for your attention.

[KATE] Yeah, and especially because I work in the social media department, which is a thing that never shuts off and is endless. That has taught me a lot about the internet this past year, just like not only setting boundaries with my like, coworkers, or my own personal social media, but like the world. Setting my, my own boundaries with the worldwide web.

[JAMIE] Yep, me too.

[KARLI] And I think it is so important to learn how to set a boundary with that, because I think that we are stifling our creative growth and our rest time and our peace of mind because we don't have boundaries with it.

[KATE] And it's also balanced too, like not just boundaries, but the balance of it. Because like, on the same hand, I would never have met you guys. And I would never have met my writer group. And I like the writing group that I joined with you is like the one of the best things that happened to my writing. And then it's also part of the internet that just like rots my brain. And haunts my dreams.

[LAUGHTER]

[KARLI] I think that that's just it is like, during the times that you can spend time on social media, you engage with the people that you engage with, and then you—off. Done. Move to the next thing.

[KATE] Yeah.

[JAMIE] If I can tally up the number of times I've had to be like, don't go on a social media rant [Karli laughs] on the podcast. But those apps are designed to keep you there. They're designed to distract you and suck you further and further in. So having just a timer that's like, hey, did you mean to spend two hours here? Sometimes I'll have just like, I call them like days on and days off. Where you like specifically—I dedicate that energy to this aspect of my life. Clean house. That one doesn't come around as much as it probably should. [Karli laughs] But days off, let's talk about that. Because I know that that's something, Kate, that you do. You specifically pick days off, right?

[KATE] Yeah. And I don't do it often enough. Like I've been an athlete my whole life. And I have, I have to remind myself that I have been taught this with everything that has to do with athletics my whole life that if you don't take a day off, your body will pick a day off for you. [Jamie laughs] Yeah, I forget that a lot. And then I end up having to force myself to take a day off. I struggle with scheduling it because one thing that ends up happening is Saturdays are my best writing days. It's like I unwound Friday night, Saturdays, I go all out and write for like seven hours. And the next day, I have that excitement from writing. And I like, I want to do it again. And then I have seven days of work that I've just done. And I'm like, what am I doing? So I've started making Sundays my complete day off and I begrudgingly do that every Sunday. [Jamie and Karli laugh] And I mean it begrudgingly. Like I get very salty about it, "I could be writing." I am resting. [laughs]

[JAMIE] Yeah, it's hard to pick like a day that's ever really like off off. Yeah, I either want to like be writing, or be taking care of personal stuff, or at least work out. But I agree burning yourself out … isn't going to help any aspect of your life.

[KATE] No. One thing I do, which is a luxury to me, because I am able to work from home, is sometimes I'll have nights where it's like, I don't have a name for them. But it's like, just do stuff in bed nights where it's like at five o'clock, I'm done. And I go immediately into bed like at 5:30 at night, and I'm in bed just like on my switch or like reading. But I'm in bed resting until like I go to sleep and like I tend to do that and call it a rest day. It's like it's like a half rest day, you know. But I do that more often than take a day completely off because I section my days off so much and I occupy so much of my time when I have a day where I don't have anything to do I am like lost. Where do I begin doing nothing? [Kate and Karli laugh]

[JAMIE] Do you guys ever feel this way? Because I recently had a day like this where I'm like I'm gonna take the day off laying on the couch reading But then I feel guilty or at the end of the day, I'm always like, I feel like a potato. I accomplished nothing. And for some reason, my brain says you are less valuable now. [cuckles]

[KATE] Oh, I have that all the time.

[KARLI] Intensely relatable. Yes, society tells us that if we're not productive, we're less valuable. It's just a thing.

[JAMIE] It's not true. But like you still feel that way at the end of the day.

[KARLI] I'm better about it more recently—thank you therapy—in having like compassion for myself and allowing myself to have downtime. But my days off, are kind of weird, because I never really have a full day off because I have kids. So it's like, I always have to do stuff.

[JAMIE] Well, it's very much like we were saying that what something is looks different to different people. A rest day for you is not going to look the same.

[KARLI] Yeah, exactly. Figure out what works best for you. And what actually feels restful, or something as simple as yeah, going—putting your ass to bed with your Switch. Like, that sounds magnificent. I have definitely had days where I put my kids to bed, and I immediately go to bed myself.

[KATE] Yeah.

[JAMIE] The other thing I really liked that you both mentioned is just the, what's the term? Compartmentalize. That's the term I'm looking for, where you can just like try and be doing whatever it is you're doing—being present. And giving your full focus to a person or a project is hard sometimes when you're not practiced at it. But it is incredibly valuable. It's so easy to have that focus pulled away. But when you focus fully on it, you get more done.

[KATE] That I learned. I don't remember if either of you read Deep Work?

[BOTH] Yes.

[KATE] You both did. So I read that for writing. But I also read it for my drumming practice, because my drum teacher read it as well. And it has helped. And now I do everything because of that book in 90 minute blocks, because you need time to sink into it, and then stay in it. And that has helped me. I've stopped doing ten minute sprints here and there for writing or doing a random little twenty minute drum practice. Maybe for me, and for other people, it could help. But for me personally, having that sink in time has helped with all of these things.

[JAMIE] I agree with that, Kate. I think it's one of those things where if you're scheduled only allows you to do a ten minute or twenty minute sprint, or—regarding anything—that is better than not doing it at all. Yeah, but I'm the same way where I like the camaraderie that sprints can build, but I'm not getting as valuable work done. I need at least forty minutes. And—but ideally, I would be talking and in contact with nobody for like, three hours.

[LAUGHTER]

[KATE] Yeah.

[JAMIE] But it's like yeah, if that's all you can do, absolutely do it. But if you can manage more or shift things around to potentially focus more, you could try it and see, you know, if it works for you.

[KARLI] I loved Deep Work. I'm so glad you brought it up again, because it's really got me thinking that now that my kids are both in school full time, I should try to start implementing it and seeing how it works for me because the sprints and the timers and the smaller blocks of time are what I tend to do just out of sheer habit. But now like they're both school age, and I have like hours of time where I suddenly got very overwhelmed. This school year was the first time that it's happened, I'm like what do I even do with myself? The idea of sitting down for that long felt like a long stretch goal. I need to look at it more of like starting out maybe with some smaller like sprints to get me going, but then try to settle into a deeper focus state.

[JAMIE] The general, like idea of work life balance is that things take time, it takes time to figure what's going to work for you out. And it's a marathon, not a sprint. It's not like you're going to discover the secret and for the rest of your career or life you will have perfect harmony. [laughs]

[KARLI] It will always work this way. [chuckles]

[JAMIE] It will always be turbulent and you'll they'll always be—

[KATE] Oh my god, always.

[JAMIE] Change. It's just balancing, when to take a break and when to hit the gas. Burning yourself out is not going to help you but also dragging your feet is not going to help you. Basically a whole bunch of conflicting information. [All laugh] You’re welcome listeners.

[KATE] I'm gonna put on my former personal trainer hat for a second. Sleep [banging sound] is [bang] one of the most [bang] important things. [bang] And as reclusive writers.

[KARLI] Are you slamming your hand on the desk while you talk?

[LAUGHTER]

[JAMIE] She really means it.

[KATE] I really mean it. I am a person that has a bedtime and I have a whole sleep routine. And I take sleep very seriously. And it helps. You don't think it does, but it helps.

[KARLI] It does. I am that person that does not function well on little sleep. I got myself a Fitbit. I wear it at night, even though it took a little while to get used to it. Because now I have no excuse. The app tells me I didn't sleep enough. And then I'm like, why do I feel like garbage? Oh, because I only slept for four and a half hours. That's not acceptable.

[JAMIE] From the personal trainer aspect, I'm not one but I almost became one once upon a time, but your muscles need time to recover. And that happens while you sleep. The same thing, your brain needs time to recover. Most people have experienced this where it's late at night and you're trying to either write or edit and things stop making sense. [All laugh] Why can't I make anything makes sense anymore? It's because you need to go to damn bed go to bed.

[KARLI] [laughing] Go to damn bed. [Kate chuckles]

[JAMIE] What makes it worth it? Why even trust? You know, because it wasn't an existential enough. My reasoning is that time is going to pass anyway, you might as well make good use of it—or as best you can.

[KATE] That's good. I like that. Mine is because when you get real good at managing your time, it feels good to see all that you've accomplished in a day or in a week. And then when you get really good at it, you find more time to do and learn more. Like I've read more books, and I've read like eleven books so far this year, I've never read that many books ever like that fast. And like you find time for more hobbies just to do more things because you organize your time in a way where you could see like, oh, I have some extra time here. Or I could do this here.

[KARLI] If you allow it to, time will slip through your fingers. There are certain things that are outside of our control, absolutely. But we all have more control over our time and our days than we realize. There are things that we can put into place to help time serve us rather than us serving it. I used to hate the idea of schedules and all of these things. And I still don't love the idea of it. But I know that when I'm actually following my schedule, I have more time and energy to do the things that I want.

[JAMIE] It just reminds me of working out when I was like I'm too exhausted, how on earth am I going to start working out? And then you start working out and you're like, oh, all of a sudden I have more energy. That applies to organization and scheduling and to writing. It's like the act of doing it increases your capacity to do it.

[KATE] Yep.

[KARLI] Yeah. And it's more exhausting when you first start, when you're onboarding the system. But then once you get used to it, it does. It does offer you more.

[JAMIE] The other thing that I was like why? Why keep going, especially in regards to writing. And I just wrote the inexplicable compulsion to do so. [Karli laughs] That’s pretty universal to writers. We have to have some weird, some weird compulsion inside of us. That just is like, yeah, keep going. This is a good decision. [laughs]

[KATE] Yeah. And like in terms of because I wasn't just thinking about this, the topic of this episode, just in writing, I was thinking about other things. But just in writing is, I have an entire world of people inside me that I've been trying to get out for years. Like that drive to just get it done. Makes all this worth it and makes me need to organize it in a way so that I know it's gonna just get out get out of my head. [chuckles]

[KARLI] Yes, absolutely.

[JAMIE] Yeah, you can just like spew them out. And then it's like it opens up that space in your brain because they don't have to only exist there anymore. [chuckles]

[KATE] Yeah.

[KARLI] And then new ones come in, and then you have to write those ones down. [Kate chuckles] So you know the explicable compulsion yes, that.

[JAMIE] So nobody ever gets it right. All of the time.

[KARLI] Nah.

[JAMIE] We all are just doing our best. Kate, did you have a recommendation you wanted to share?

[KATE] Yeah, I actually was gonna recommend Notion, which is a free software. It's very loosey goosey open platform like planner where you can make literally anything that you want to organize. I like it better than Excel because I use Excel in my professional life. So it feels work-y to me, now this is just fun.

[JAMIE] Is it like a digital planner with like templates?

[KATE] Yeah, it's not—it's not even necessarily templates. It's like blank space.

[JAMIE] It kinda sounds like a digital bullet journal.

[KATE] Yeah, it kind of is. I track all of my home renovation projects in it. And I track my writing and my like wellness, my finances. So it's like those people that have a spreadsheet for everything in their life. I have a notion sub-section for everything in my life. It's visually pleasing, and it's easy to use. And so, I use that every single day.

[KARLI] Nice. Wikipedia says it's a project management and note taking software.

[KATE] There you go. Yeah, tech companies usually use it. And then it got popular in the student realm, where they were, were tracking all of their studies and homework and stuff. And then I know a lot of writers that use it and just people who use it for personal stuff.

[KARLI] Gonna check it out. Thanks, Kate.

[KATE] Yeah.

[JAMIE] Kate, thank you for coming on the podcast again.

[KARLI] Yes, thank you.

[KATE] Thank you.

[JAMIE] I'm glad we didn't scare you the first time.

[KATE] [laughs] Never. Thank you for having me. I love talking to you guys.

[JAMIE] You can find Kate on Instagram at @lilyhammerwriting. Is there anywhere else that you like to direct people?

[KATE] There and on Twitter it's lilyhammer0709.

[KARLI] Website?

[KATE] Lilyhammerwriting.com. And I recently made a Ko-fi. Oh no, they pronounce it Ko-fi. Because it's supposed to rhyme with no fee. So I have a Ko-fi. That's lilyhammerwrites also.

[JAMIE] Awesome. Thanks again for listening. You can follow or subscribe to the podcast while you're, you know, listening to it. We keep on saying we need to pare down our call to action. It's a, it's a hot mess.

[KARLI] And then we don't. [laughs]

[JAMIE] Find us on Instagram @theactbreak_podcast or on Twitter @theactbreak_. Get a transcript and sign up for our newsletter at our website, scifiohmy.com/podcast. Thanks for being here, everyone, and we'll talk to you later.

[KATE] Bye.

[KARLI] Bye, internet friends.