In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson takes listener questions in an “Ask Us Anything” segment. He offers practical tips for avoiding burnout and shares insights on navigating relationships, including communicating about long-term commitments.
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Best Moments:
(01:04) Work-related question about avoiding burnout
(01:51) Jay’s daily motivational thought
(03:00) Practical ways to avoid burnout
(04:13) The importance of learning to say no in personal life
(05:27) Dealing with “energy vampires”
(06:24) Ad read for Marigold’s Consumer Trends Index report
(07:35) Dating advice question about long-term relationships
(08:14) Jay’s personal experience with engagement
(09:19) Advice on communicating about marriage in relationships
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Transcript
Foreign welcome to do this not that the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.
You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that.
We are back for Ask Us Anything from the do this not that podcast presented by Marigold. This is our short episode where all week long we get in questions, we get in work questions, we get in ridiculous questions.
We try to tackle one of each. It would be amazing.
If you want to submit one, just go to jschwettleson.com there's a button that says podcast, another one that says ask us anything. And that's how we do the show. So submit anything you got. Let's do the work question first. We got a question from Michaela from Nashville.
Love Nashville. Oh, I had their hot chicken there. It is good, but it also is very hot. Anyway, what's your question, Michaela J.
You seem to put out a ton of content and you're kind of all over the place. Do you ever feel burnt out? Because I feel burnt out. And if so, how do you stay on track and just keep doing stuff?
Well, first off, everybody feels burnt out, all right? And this is a super important topic because we're all trying to navigate.
Anybody that pretends like they got it all figured out, they are full of it because we're all dealing with it, right? So what do I do? How do I avoid kind of feeling that burnt out thing?
Well, every morning, and this is true, I wake up and I have this one thought in my mind every day. It's been like this forever, okay? No matter how tired I am, how stressed I am, how overwhelmed I feel, I have this one thought.
And the thought in my mind is this, is that whatever I'm dreading today, whatever my day is going to be, it is a day that somebody out there would dream about doing that. They would dream about having the opportunities that I have. And that's not because I have some sort of special day.
That's the same case for all of you, right? If you have a job right now, somebody would love to have your job. It is their dream to have your job. Let's say you don't have your job.
Let's say you just got fired. You're like, nobody's dreaming about getting fired. No, but you know what?
People are dreaming about having the resume that you have, having the experience that you have because you're going to get that next job, whatever it is, people out there are dreaming to be in the spot that you're in. And baking that into my mind makes me feel like I have a responsibility to get up, do what I gotta do, no matter how I feel in that day.
And it's the ultimate motivator for me. Now, beyond that, let's get into some practical stuff. What are practical ways to kind of avoid burnout?
Number one, you need to treat people, not treat people. You need to get people to respect your time. What do I mean by that? I used to always be available treatment 24, 7. Seven days a week.
I would give out my cell phone number, text me, and I would respond to texts immediately. I would respond to emails immediately. And I was this always available person. And I trained people to think that I would respond really quickly.
And it was driving me bananas. Because then when you didn't respond really quickly, right, they're like, well, where are you? Hello?
So I learned to actually train people about how I respond. And I will actually ignore first and respond later.
And it's not like you're disappointing the person because the person's not accustomed to you responding that fast. So you can't be this always available person. It doesn't allow you to win the day by being always available.
You really want to think about training people to respect your time. And this is something I wish I learned a little bit earlier in life because it's helped me out a lot.
Now I'd say the biggest thing I've done the last few years that has helped me to avoid burnout. And it's all about learning to say no, especially in my personal life. Okay. Learning to say no in my personal life, like, oh, you.
You want to go out for this dinner, you want to meet up, you want to go do this thing? You get invited to this party. Oh, yeah, I'm going to be there. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And you're saying yes to things. And then what happens is.
Okay, what happens is you wind up having to do those things that you don't actually really want to do.
And then your free time is taken away by stuff that you actually don't want to do because you kind of feel a little bit bad saying no when you say no. Yeah, you feel bad for a little bit. Maybe for an hour, two hours, maybe even 24 hours.
But then by saying no, you're allowing yourselves to have more of the free time for what it is that you want to do. And the other thing is, you don't want to be apologetic for saying no.
Prioritize yourself instead of saying, sorry, I can't make it, you know, say, thanks for the invite, but I won't be able to be there. Okay, stop apologizing for prioritizing yourself. Right. That's really important. Get. Be more confident and less guilty.
That was something that I've only learned in the last few years. And I cannot tell you. It's really been a game changer. I think another one that's always on my mind is this idea of the energy vampire.
There are certain people that are just an energy suck. Then when you talk to them, they take you down a rabbit hole. They're annoying, they take forever, and they're an energy suck.
They're an energy vampire. I cut these people off. I don't care. I can't deal with energy vampires. I know, that's weird. And the truth of the matter is, I don't.
Burnout is going to happen. Most people have burnout. And the reality of it is we say, I'm burnt out. I can't do it anymore. Listen, the truth is, hard work is hard.
I'm not saying that burnout is not something you should deal with and think about whatever, but hard work is hard. And being mentally tired doesn't mean you need to quit. Okay, maybe you need to refocus, simplify, reorganize certain things. But hard work is hard.
And so, yeah, we all face burnout. Right? All right, before we get into the absolutely ridiculous question, I want to let you know this podcast is presented by Marigold.
Now you're like, oh, no, Jay's doing an ad read. Who cares? I'm tuning this out. No, this is where you got to pay attention. Yes, Marigold is my email sending platform and they're awesome.
But let's put that to the side for a second. They just now released a new piece of content, their consumer trends index report. Now you're like, who cares? It's another piece of content.
But that's the thing you don't realize.
They surveyed 21,700 people, asking them a bazillion questions about why they're feel strongly about the brands they love, will they spend more money for the brands they love, about loyalty, about marketing tactics, about all this stuff. And you can get access to this report for free. And it's ungated. You don't even have to fill out a form.
You just go to meetmargled.com cti if you're in marketing, you own a business, whatever, and you don't download this thing. You're wild. Okay, it's meetmarold.com CTI all right, let's get into the ridiculous question. We got a question in from Britney from New York.
Meanwhile, putting aside you, Brittany, That's a question. I wonder how Britney Spears is doing. I'm always worried about her. I'm worried about Justin Bieber, too.
I don't know what's going on with that dude, but I'm worried about everybody. But Brittany, what is your question? Oh, boy, here we go. It's a dating advice question. I don't understand. I get a lot of dating advice questions.
People think I have any idea what I'm talking about. I do not. But, Brittany, I'm here to help. What is your question?
Jay, I've been my boyfriend for four years, and I feel like we either need to get engaged or I need to move on. How do I bring up this topic and make him understand he needs to do something?
Oh, this is a very heavy question, because if you listen to me, I don't want to break up your relationship. So whatever I'm saying. I'm doing a big disclaimer here that you probably should ignore what I'm saying, but I will give you my two cents.
So first off, from my own personal experience, I'll tell you about me and my wife. So me and my wife were dating for, like, what, I don't know, a year and a half or so. And she was my girlfriend.
And she said to me, while, you know, kind of casually said, listen, no pressure or whatever, but if we're not kind of, like engaged or getting really close to being engaged by the summer, then I think something's up. And that in the summer was, like, I don't know, seven months away from when she said that to me at the time.
And it freaked me out because I was like, oh, my God, I don't want to lose her. And. And to be honest with you, I didn't even know that that was on her radar. It wasn't on my radar, really. And I didn't know why I was so clueless.
But when she said to me, like, oh, my God, I got to do something, because I don't want to lose her. And I think that her bringing it to the table was so valuable, by the way. What did I do? No joke.
Within 48 hours, I had bought a ring because I was like, I'm not losing her. And so we got engaged within, like, I Don't know. Three weeks of her saying that, because I was like, I got to get on this.
So I think it's really important to not be cryptic and to be very clear about what's going on. And you could say things like, listen, we've been together for four years and I need to know if marriage is in our future.
You know, I, I got to know what's up, right? And now I, I like being even more direct because you've been together four years.
I mean, come on, you want to say something like, listen, what is stopping you from proposing? Is it, is it timing? Is it money? You know, do you have some sort of commitment fear?
Because we got to find out what's going on here and figure out if this is going to work.
And the truth of the matter is, what you don't want to do, in my opinion, which is meaningless, obviously, is you shouldn't have to convince somebody to marry you. If you have to convince somebody to marry you, that ain't going to work. Okay? It's just not going to work.
And you could even say, listen, I don't want to convince somebody to marry me. I want somebody to be so excited about taking the next step together because it's this adventure together that you're going on for your life.
And if the person's not excited about taking that next step together, then what are we doing? What are we actually doing?
So I'm a big fan of being super clear, super upfront, and understand that my advice is worth, like, less than toilet paper because I don't know what I'm talking about in any aspect, but especially on dating advice. So thank you for listening. You're awesome. I appreciate you all listen. Hit me up@jschweddelson.com I would love to partner with you.
I want to go on your podcast. I want to do deals with you. I want to work with you. I want you to work with my agency. I don't know, just go to jschwettleson.com let's hang out.
I appreciate you. Later. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.
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