Episoder
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Janine and Shannon have made the difficult decision to stop recording the podcast. In this episode, we discuss how we came to that decision and how life-changing the podcast has been for us.
We are so grateful to our listeners for their attention and support over the five years of this podcast. We hope that you've benefited from listening. Our plan is to keep past episodes of the podcast available indefinitely, so you can listen to any of the other 253(!) episodes whenever you want.
If you're so inclined, please leave a comment on the show notes of this episode and let us know how Getting to Good Enough has made a difference in your life! Or feel free to leave us a voicemail at 314-413-GTGE. -
Getting a great night's sleep can be elusive, especially as we get older. Shannon and Janine have tried a lot of things to improve the quality of their sleep and we're excited to discuss them in this episode. We provide lots of great links with this one!
Discussion topics include:
• The good old days when we could get a good night's sleep and not even notice
• The app Shannon uses to check her sleep: AutoSleep
• The sleep app Janine uses: Sleep Cycle
• Shannon's sleep-talking habit (she runs meetings in her sleep!)
• The double-edged sword of electronically monitoring your sleep
• Adjusting your sleep goals so you can achieve them more often
• Shannon's current sleep solution: Drinking four ounces of tart cherry juice
• Janine's current sleep solution: Dream Powder
• The challenge of varying temperature preferences when you're sharing a bed
• Shannon's eucalyptus weighted blanket
• Listening to sleep stories to get to sleep
• Shannon's sleep mask with embedded bluetooth speakers!
• Practicing good sleep hygiene
Be sure to visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links to everything we talked about. -
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Why is it so hard to acknowledge our small victories? In this episode, Janine and Shannon discuss taking the win and how it's good for our productivity (and our health!).
Discussion topics include:
• How it can be hard to accept that what you've done is valuable and counts even if it's not perfect
• The (erroneous) idea that if you feel good about what you've done you might slack off
• Would you play a game on your phone if all it did was buzz you when you got something wrong?
• How the things that are most addictive are the things that are rewarding you constantly for doing something
• If we talk to our friends the way we tend to talk to ourselves, we wouldn't have a lot of friends
• Remember: Everything counts (even the easy stuff)! You can still take the win.
• A good companion to your to-do list: A "Done" list
• Paying attention to the areas where you could be kinder to yourself and feel good about what you've done
• How taking the win can help you get more done
• Accepting compliments (and taking them in)
• The person who gave us the idea for this topic: Shannon's husband, Mike!
Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com. -
Shannon's back from Italy and we're running some episodes we recorded before she left. This week, Shannon and Janine are talking about the beauty of taking a simple approach to starting something and how that can be challenging for perfectionists.
Discussion topics include:
• Our virtual retreat to plan our YNAB coaching practices (simpler than trying to figure out how to work together in person)
• How starting simple can help you actually get started on a project
• Leaving open the possibility for change when you're starting something
• Applying this concept to decluttering your closet
• How Janine made starting her car-buying process very simple by buying what Shannon had
• The beauty of narrowing down your options (and how Shannon accomplished that when she built her most recent house)
• How starting simple can make a project feel less overwhelming
• Remember: it's not necessary to plan every single step of a project before you start it (something that perfectionists tend to want to do)
• How you can get more information with each step of a project (after you get started)
• Starting simple by guessing
• Figuring out what barriers need to be taken away to allow you to get started
• Getting past the "What If?"
• Recognizing that what feels simple to one person may not feel simple to someone else
Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links! -
It's our 250th episode! This week we're re-running an episode from May 2021, almost exactly two years ago. Next week, keep an eye out for a new episode.
Getting comfortable with stopping at good enough (rather than pursuing perfection) can be tough for some people. But it can also be really beneficial. This week Janine and Shannon talk about how and why to feel good about good enough.
Discussion topics include:
• Embracing the goodness of "good enough"
• Rejecting the negative connotations of "good enough" and "taking the easy way out"
• The journey of getting comfortable with good enough
• How Shannon was able to get more comfortable with good enough a little at a time
• Questioning the thoughts you have about perfectionism to make it easier to embrace good enough
• Paying attention to progress (and feeling good about progress), rather than trying to do something perfectly
• Being okay with what's reasonable as opposed to striving for the unreasonable expectation of perfection
• Practicing feeling good about good enough in every day life
• Shannon's practice of feeling good about good enough (and working little and often) in her garden-clean-up efforts
• Shannon's good-enough lawn mowing practice
• The beauty of being able to walk away from something knowing that it's goof enough (if not perfect)
• Saving bandwidth by embracing good enough
• Being kind to yourself about having a bad memory -
This week we're offering a repeat from January 2020.
Shannon and Janine are living the "less is more" mantra this year as Shannon makes it a focus of her 2020 goals and Janine focuses on helping her organizing clients let go of excess. In this episode, they discuss how less stuff can add up to more freedom and happiness.
Discussion topics include:
• One of Shannon’s focuses for 2020: Letting go of excess
• How Shannon feels encumbered by her stuff
• A cogent quote from one of Janine’s clients: “I feel handcuffed to my house because of this stuff”
• How stuff tends to proliferate when you don’t focus on it
• The natural tendency to fill up empty space
• How having extra space after you finish decluttering is a good thing
• Shannon’s plan to re-embrace a version of Project 333 for her wardrobe
• The joy (and beauty) of a not-full closet
• How excess can get in the way of people’s freedom and happiness
• Janine's truism: The more you keep of a collection, the less special any of it is
• Clearing out the excess so you can enjoy and access what you decide to keep
• Storing items according to frequency of use
• Shannon’s shopping-list strategies that stop her from overbuying
• Less is more in practice: How Janine and Shannon decluttered their topics list for this podcast
• The key to less is more: Paying attention to what feels good about it and knowing why you want it
Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links! -
We first published this episode back in February 2019. It feels more relevant than ever in our post-pandemic world.
If you feel you should be running at 100 percent capacity, you're not doing yourself any favors. This week Janine and Shannon discuss personal capacity and how making sure you're giving yourself plenty of room capacity-wise can help you be happier and less stressed.
Discussion topics include:
How personal capacity is like the memory capacity of your computer or phone - when you fill it up, everything slows down
The fact that it's unreasonable to expect that you can function at 100 percent capacity
• How unnecessary thoughts can take up valuable personal capacity
• Letting go of worry so that you can use that energy for more important things
• The many things that factor into personal capacity, including having a realistic perception of how long something will take
• Managing your own expectations of what you can get done in a given amount of time
• Setting yourself up for success with a realistic task list
• Ways you can expand your capacity (hint: stop overthinking and close up your loops)
• Getting stuff out of your head and onto paper (or pixels) to free up your brain
Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links! -
Shannon's on vacation, so we're rerunning some favorite episodes for the next month or so. This week, we're revisiting Janine's bad day in 2021 and how Shannon helped her (and, we hope, you) turn it around.
Everyone has a bad day some time. On the day we recorded this episode, Janine was experiencing a bad day that left a dark cloud hanging over her head. Shannon was able to make suggestions that helped her (and can help you) make a bad day better.
Discussion topics include:
• How it's possible to reset bad day
• Janine's terrible, horrible, no good very bad day
• Taking a step back during a bad day and looking on the bright side
• Wallowing vs trying to snap out of it
• "Yes, and..."
• The importance of acknowledging when something sucks; it allows your unconscious mind to feel gratitude
• Learning from our bad days
• Giving yourself a reset by moving your body and shifting your energy
• Getting in touch with what's important to you to help you get past a bad day
• The value of a good laugh on a bad day
Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links! -
Bothered by an overabundance of paper and email? This episode is for you. Last week, Shannon and Janine discussed working through backlogs and this week we share some strategies for creating systems so those backlogs don't come back. Specifically we talk about ideas for email, snail mail and paper in general.
Discussion topics include:
• How having a system allows you to bounce back when stuff piles up during transitions
• That it’s totally normal for systems to fail sometimes
• The more successful your system, the smoother things will go
• Creating systems for email
• Automating systems as much as possible
• Unsubscribing from email lists
• The value of daily attention to email
• Shannon’s strategy for handling her email by ignoring it most of the time
• Freedom Filer, the filing system that changed Shannon’s life
• Being very discerning about the paper you want to keep in your life
• Shannon’s need for a system for storing her cartoons and urban sketch notebooks
• Keeping accessibility top of mind when setting up storage systems
Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links! -
We published this episode back in February 2020 and unfortunately backlogs are not a thing of the past! We thought we'd rerun it for those who are still dealing with this challenge.
When stuff piles up in your home or office it can overwhelming to contemplate plowing through it and getting rid of the backlog. Add perfectionist tendencies to the equation and it can be even more challenging. In this episode, Janine and Shannon discuss some strategies for working through a backlog. Stay tuned next week when we discuss preventing pileups so the backlogs don't come back.
Discussion topics include:
• The satisfaction of working through a backlog
• Our own current backlogs
• Dealing with a (tremendous!) email backlog
• Picking the low-hanging fruit first
• How putting like things together can help you decide to get rid of stuff
• An easier way of dealing with filing: Keep less paper!
• The value of doing a high-level presort before filing
• How a timer can help you get through your backlog
• Allowing yourself to deal with a backlog with as much ease as possible
• Isolating a backlog to allow you to work on it a little at a time without adding to it
• Dealing with a backlog of postal mail
• Remember: The job’s not done until the tools are put away
See the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for a link and an update! -
Squee! Janine and Shannon have exciting news to share: We've both completed a training program to earn the certification YNAB Certified Budgeting Coaches. We're very excited to coach people so they can benefit from this unique budgeting methodology and software as we have. This week we talk all about why we love YNAB (You Need a Budget).
Discussion topics include:
• We've finished our certification program and are now YNAB Certified Budgeting Coaches
• We learned so much!
• What's YNAB? It's You Need A Budget, a methodology and software for budgeting. We love it.
• How the training program gave us a deeper knowledge of both the methodology and software
• How YNAB's Rule Three: Roll with the Punches appeals to the "good enough" in us!
• The baked-in expectation that you will change things in your YNAB budget
• A key component of YNAB: You budget only money that you have
• The similarities between YNAB and an envelope system of spending
• A major YNAB goal: Get out of the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle
• The peace of mind YNAB has given Janine while she and her husband plan the financial implications of his retirement
• How YNAB is helpful for people with lower and higher incomes (and everyone in between)
• How YNAB is useful for both getting out of debt and saving money
• The two-person virtual YNAB retreat that Shannon and Janine are planning
• The joy of having a new focus
• Shannon's 20th anniversary as a life coach!
• Our plan to talk about YNAB monthly in this podcast
• The freedom of having clarity around your finances
Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links! -
Having fun is important! In this laughter-infused episode, Shannon and Janine have fun discussing how to prioritize fun and adding fun to every day life.
Discussion topics include:
• Our criterion for continuing with our podcast: We'll keep doing it as long as we're having fun
• How fun is different for different people
• We agree: Things are fun when laughter is involved
• Things can be fun without laughter too!
• Fun with jigsaw puzzles
• Janine's upcoming trip to Australia to attend a super-fun live-music-centric wedding party
• All the fun dancing at Shannon's wedding
• How your attitude can affect how much fun you have
• Understanding what fun is for you and incorporating it into your life
• Making day-to-day stuff more fun
• Janine's dog Bix, the Fun Enforcer (and how perhaps she should change her attitude about it)
• Letting things be fun
• Shannon's cat, Cleo, who thinks being chased is very fun
• The psychological and physical benefits of having fun
• Prioritizing fun
• Janine and Shannon's obsession with the TV show Station 19
• How things are more fun when you share them
• How YNAB has made budgeting fun
• Finding fun ways to do the things you need to do (Zumba class vs step aerobics, for example)
• Gamification
• The fun reward of gold stars
Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for a link -
One of the hardest parts about perfectionism is that it can mess with your feelings of self worth. In this episode, Janine and Shannon discuss how your value as a person has nothing to do with how perfectly you do things.
Discussion topics include:
• Early spring in Portland and St. Louis!
• One of the difficult things about perfectionism: Feeling bad about not being able to be perfect
• How some people can really beat themselves up over imperfection
• How hard it is to get over this when you're caught up in it
• The valuable message from KC Davis of Struggle Care
• How a messy house is value neutral
• Starting to consider the possibility that your struggles don't make you a bad person
• How your worth doesn't change based on how perfectly you do things
• How recognizing that your actions don't define you can calm down your nervous system
• The debilitating effect of letting perfectionism dictate your self worth
• How things can be organized and still a little messy
• Thinking of yourself as a good person independent of the state of things around you or your unfinished task list
• Entertaining the idea that it's okay to be imperfect
• The heart of our podcast: We want people to feel good about themselves and be okay with however they are
Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for a photo of the card Shannon painted and for links! -
Life can get so frazzled when you don't build in buffers. In this episode Shannon and Janine discuss the value of buffers and some different ways you can build them into your life.
Discussion topics include:
• Janine's current frustrations about her busy schedule
• The culprit: She's not scheduling the desk time she needs
• How Janine gets cranky when her schedule is too full
• Being realistic about what you can do in a day without feeling tired and cranky
• How we are able do fewer things in a day as we get older
• The importance of being aware that things needs to change
• Different ways to build buffers in your life
• The demoralizing effect of having things undone on your task list day after day
• How arriving somewhere early is creating valuable time, not wasting time
• Making a buffer non-negotiable
• Shannon's three-thing limit in her calendar and how she builds a buffer around that limit
• Building a buffer when you don't have complete control over your time
• Delegation as a tool for building a buffer
• Building a financial buffer (hooray for YNAB!)
• Allowing a buffer of white space in your physical surroundings -
Doing the easiest thing first (the low-hanging fruit) gets a bad rap. But it can actually make everything easier. In this episode Janine and Shannon discuss strategies around using low-hanging fruit to get stuff done.
Discussion topics include:
• Low-hanging fruit counts!
• How allowing yourself to address low-hanging fruit first can help you get started
• Starting with something easy and stopping when it stops being easy
• Shannon's ingenious closet-cleaning method
• How there's always the lowest hanging fruit
• Addressing low-hanging fruit in any situation
• Low-hanging fruit in task management
• Remembering that you don't have to do everything at once
• Counting every step (even the easiest step!)
• Magical words: "Done for now"
• Giving yourself credit for what you're doing
• Making sure your next action feels really doable (and if it doesn't, scale it back or move on to something else)
Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links! -
In honor of next week's big in-person and virtual genealogy conference, RootsTech, we are re-running a 2018 episode about applying a good-enough mentality to genealogy research. Enjoy!
Shannon and Janine are among the millions of people who enjoy doing genealogy research. In fact, as a genealogy blogger, Janine devotes a significant amount of time to it. In this episode, we discuss Shannon's challenges with her genealogy research (which involve an enviable literal treasure trove of original documents given to her by her mother) and discuss some strategies to help her get past the perfectionism that's stopping her from proceeding with her research.
Discussion topics include:
• How a lot of people get hung up on perfectionism in genealogy
• How genealogical standards can feel intimidating
• How the discovery of Shannon's treasure trove was both wonderful and stress-inducing
• The responsibility Shannon feels to the rest of her family to care for these documents correctly and share them
• The importance of knowing why genealogy research (and anything else) is important to you
• Some practical advice for dealing with these precious documents (keyword: checklist)
• Creating a "good enough" standard to make source citations easier
• Getting past the overwhelm of genealogy research
• Janine’s “good enough” research log
Bonus! We get an update on Shannon's morning routine at the end of the episode. She shares how her good enough attitude and the minimum standards she has set have helped her establish and stick with a great morning routine.
Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links and an update from Shannon. -
Why are we so hard on ourselves? It's not a rhetorical question. This week, Janine and Shannon discuss self-compassion and treating ourselves as nicely as we treat our besties.
Discussion topics include:
• The folly of harping on your past mistakes in an attempt to avoid those mistakes again
• How constantly reminding yourself of your mistakes makes it hard to do the thing you're trying to do
• A technique for letting go of past mistakes
• Acknowledging a past struggle before asking yourself to do the thing again
• Shannon's Boring Change technique that helps you understand the deeper need behind your behaviors (and can help you modify your behavior)
• Understanding when you're struggling and being kind to yourself
• Channeling your own BFF and thinking about what they'd say to you
• Ask yourself, "What would I say to a friend with this challenge?"
• Recognizing that you're not the only person struggling with something
• Nobody is flawless!
• Setting realistic expectations so you don't beat yourself up
• How it's helpful to put a positive spin on things
• An important reminder: How you choose to perceive things makes a big difference in how you experience them because it has a bearing on what you notice
• The value of a gratitude journal to help you look for the good things in your life
• A recipe for being your own BFF: Acknowledge the issues, looking for the good, and let the feelings that the good inspire in you help you move forward
Check out the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for some great links! -
Prior to recording this episode, Shannon and Janine listened to a podcast discussing the new book "The Perfectionist's Guide To Losing Control: A Path To Peace And Power." The podcast sparked this week's discussion of aiming for ideal rather than flawless, the more commonly used definition of perfectionism. To us, ideal feels much more attainable and healthy than flawless.
Discussion topics include:
• The inspiration for this topic: a Life Kit podcast episode called "What Kind of Perfectionist Are You?" featuring Katherine Morgan Schafler, the author of the new book, "The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path To Peace and Power."
• The Latin root of the word perfect: "Completely done" not "flawless"
• Shifting away from thinking that perfect means flawless
• The author's take that perfectionism can be powerful if it is approached in a healthy way
• The interesting idea that there is a constructive, rather than destructive, side to perfectionism
• According to the author, people who are perfectionists are people who see the gap between reality and the ideal and want to bridge that gap
• The problem becomes when the reasons behind bridging the gap are unhealthy
• How Janine's husband is happy to be a perfectionist and uses his drive in a way that serves him (and her)
• How the word "ideal" is more subjective and therefore more attainable than "flawless"
• The relief in pursuing an ideal rather than striving for perfection
• How this is one of the least flawless recordings we've done, but we're embracing it!
• Thinking about what parts of perfectionism can be useful
• Letting go of the idea that perfectionists are striving for flawless
• Getting in touch with your why to identify whether your perfectionistic drive is healthy or not
Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for links to the book and the podcast that inspired this episode! -
The anticipation and anxiety around starting a new adventure can be even more intense when you're dealing with perfectionism. In this episode, Janine and Shannon discuss a new adventure they're both embarking on and how they're preparing for it.
• How Shannon is feeling good (not just better) at good enough!
• Janine and Shannon's excitement to be starting the YNAB (You Need A Budget) Certified Coaching program together
• How there are some nerves mixed in with the excitement
• Easing our nervousness and setting ourselves up for success
• Our different approaches to getting ready for this course
• Electronic vs paper note taking
• The value of staying flexible when you're starting something new, because you don't know until you know
• How our plans for structure around Getting to Good Enough fell by the wayside very quickly
• Thinking about whether a project needs to be structured or not when you're starting out
• How building in some structure can make a new adventure feel doable
• Getting in touch with why starting a particular new adventure is important to you
• Putting your why into a few words to help you stay on track in your new adventure
• Acknowledging that things probably aren't going to go perfectly so that you're not derailed by problems
Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenough.com for some YNAB-related links! -
In what appears to be a new tradition, every other January we run this episode on Hobbies, one of our favorites. It first appeared in January 2019. Enjoy!
Perfectionism can get in the way of starting or enjoying hobbies. This week Shannon and Janine talk about their hobbies (and attempted hobbies) and share strategies for getting past perfectionism so you can enjoy your hobbies.
Discussion topics include:
• How every hobby Shannon’s had has been marred by perfectionism
• How perfectionism can get in the way of starting and enjoying a new hobby
• The fact that new hobbies usually have to be bad before they can get good
• How Shannon inspired Janine to start knitting fourteen years ago (spoiler alert: only one of them is still knitting)
• Process versus results in doing hobbies (like knitting)
• Janine’s 12-year adventure with Barbara Walker’s Learn-to-Knit Afghan
• Why starting a hobby by shopping can be a mistake
• How Shannon is managing to stick with her latest hobby: Learning Portuguese
• How guided lessons can help provide structure to make learning a new hobby fun
• Figuring what counts as engaging in your hobby when you’re starting out
• How frequent practice can make learning a
new hobby easier
Visit the show notes at www.gettingtogoodenogh.com for loads of links and some pictures! - Se mer
