Tina Essmaker

Interview by Madeleine Dore

Tina Essmaker: Coach, writer and speaker

Full transcript

“It’s okay to not know and, even though you’re 36 and you feel like you should know, it’s okay to not know because you’re starting over and that’s just where you are. I did feel so much pressure to know what was next and to have a plan, and then I did a lot of exploration around what are the things that I really need for my work in this next season?” 
– Tina Essmaker

Madeleine Dore: One of my favourite metaphors for work-life balance is actually borrowed from an essay by the writer David Sedaris called Laugh, Kookaburra. In it, he describes a car conversation whereby a friend was asking the passengers to picture a four-burner stove, and each burner represented a part of life, so family or relationships, friends and social life, health, and work. 

So the gist of the four-burner theory is that, in order to be successful in one area of life, you have to turn off one of the burners. In order to be really successful, you have to cut off two. So, if you want to be really successful in your work, you need to cut off your relationships and your social life, for example, or maybe your health and your social life.

It is a favourite passage of mine because it does illuminate how no one has it all together, but I do wonder if it’s entirely accurate, that success comes from cutting off parts of our lives. 

Firstly, success is kind of murky to determine anyway, but also our days have an ebb and flow to them, and the burners therefore should replicate that ebb and flow. What if we didn’t have to cut off any burners, but instead learn to adjust our expectations of how intensely they burn at any given time?

The perfect balance might be a myth, but what if we embrace the act of balancing? 

I might not have any answers, but I did enjoy this weeks’ guest and their focus on how we can have an ebb and flow to the parts of our lives, season by season. Rather than cutting things off entirely, we can adjust as we see fit, depending on our main focus or priority for that season.

Tina Essmaker is a coach, writer, and speaker, and in early 2017, she had the opportunity to reimagine her career and her stovetop when she transitioned out of The Great Discontent, a publication she started with her former husband and business partner.

She took what she describes as a gap year to figure out what she wanted next, and eventually returned to her roots as a social worker, now helping the creative community to navigate uncertainty and take action in their ideas.

I’ve been a great admirer of Tina’s work for a long time. The Great Discontent in particular was one of the inspirations behind my interview project Extraordinary Routines. It taught me to create the thing that you wish existed, so it was such a pleasure to speak with Tina.

We had plans to meet in person but, as days can go off track, we ended up having to speak online, so I just wanted to let you know because the audio is a little bit quirky at times. Nevertheless, there’s a lot to enjoy.

In this conversation, we speak about why sometimes we flail when we don’t have constraints in our days, we speak about that dance between having a schedule and also allowing for spontaneity, and Tina also opens up about finding space for yourself after a divorce, and what can help when you’re dealing with a period of change, hurt, or uncertainty.

One of those small things that can help is the simple act of asking someone, how are you today?

Our lives do ebb and flow so much and, especially during difficult times, ‘how are you doing’ can be so specific to an hour. By asking ‘how are you today?’, it bypasses the wrote, I’m fine, I’m okay, not bad, and instead it demands a specific. It gives someone permission to talk more deeply about what’s going on in their lives. About each burner, not just the generalised niceties about the stovetop, and maybe we can inch closer to knowing what’s on or off right here and now, for the people around us, and ourselves.

So, on that note, here is Tina on how she’s doing today.

Tina Essmaker: Today is interesting because it has been very non-routine for me. There is construction across the street, which can be noisy and throws me off a little bit because I really like quiet when I’m at home working. I’m also getting ready for a week of travel, so I was running errands and I had a to-do list of things that I needed to get done before I fly out, so you caught me on a very non-routine day.

MD: I think that’s so interesting because we can have the routine, but so often our days veer from it, and I’d love to hear a little bit more about the veering because part of your career as a coach is really kind of helping people mould their ideal day, which can be such a powerful tool and it can really serve as a guide for us. But do you think it’s also important to know the ideal day is often something to strive for, rather than achieve every day?

TE: Oh, absolutely. It’s interesting when I work with coaching clients and even when I’m speaking with friends, we really romanticise the idea of having a day with no constraints. We think, oh my gosh, if I had a whole day to myself, I would get so much done, and the truth is that we often flail when we have a full day with nothing on the calendar and no constraints, right? We can just really waste that time away reading articles on the internet or wandering around the house thinking, what am I doing? 

And so, for me, it’s really about the dance between having a schedule and some structure and expectations, and then allowing for spontaneity, so that provides me some goals and some constraints to work within, so that I don’t feel like I’m just floating around aimlessly, but it also gives me flexibility to know that, if something comes up that’s more of a priority, I can do it.

And so it’s always this dance, but I think that throughout the week, having certain touchpoints or milestones that you want to add into your calendar can be a really helpful way for you to feel like you’re on track and making progress, because we all love to feel like we’re making progress. We like to check off the item on the to-do list and tick the box and feel good.

MD: Yes, exactly. There’s something so satisfying about that to-do list check. So, at the moment, what are your current milestones week by week?

TE: I like to give different days of the week a different focus, because right now my business consists of coaching, writing, and speaking. Normally Wednesdays and Tuesdays are my days where I do coaching calls or coaching meetings. I also have an in-person one-on-one mastermind session that I do with people here in New York City, or wherever I am, and I like to reserve Tuesdays and Thursdays for that, depending on people’s availability.

Mondays are more for admin and planning out the week. Perhaps I have some writing that I want to do. Fridays are my days to work on articles, personal writing, internal projects for my business that can help my business grow. Really thinking about what’s coming next week.

And then Tuesdays, in addition to coaching calls, because Tuesday is really the overflow day for my calls, there can also be meetings and sometimes admin. I like to automate things on my calendar, so things that happen every month, I know that they’re coming up. Things like balance my budget, do the books, write my monthly newsletter. Those kinds of things. Those are already automated in my calendar.

And then the thing about that is I believe our work is really seasonal, so certain seasons of my work will have a different priority focus and then I look at my weeks based on that. For example, this week I had three articles due because I’m travelling and it’s just the way deadlines hit, so this week there was a lot of writing. I also did a mastermind session with a client, so one day was consumed with coaching work, and then I had some admin in between all of those things.

MD: I do really love what your describing there with the seasons, and it’s interesting because I interviewed a musician, Jen Cloher, and she described the process of writing the material for her songs, coming up with the lyrics, as really very much the wintertime, and then you move into the spring when you’re starting to put it together and you’ve done all of the hard thinking, and then the summer is the big release of the album, and then the fall is really when you rejuvenate and take that moment of rest and let the leaves of your mind fall, I suppose.

And I’m just wondering, it’s nice to see that across disciplines, and I’m wondering if we construct our own seasons or if sometimes we actually need to let seasons dictate what we’re doing?

TE: That’s interesting. I’ve actually been speaking with friends about this recently because for my coaching business, coaching, writing, speaking, all the things I do, December and January slow down. Clients are wrapping up, events are not happening, people are on holidays, and then in late winter, early spring, things really start to ramp up. Summer, again, people are travelling, and then fall, people are back in school so there’s more a routine and ritual in place and people want to work with me again before the new year hits.

Now that I’ve been doing it for two years, I can see the natural rhythms and I know that this season is going to be a little slower for you, so what can you do internally to begin to plant some seeds so that you have some work that you’ve done? For example, the online course that I launched. I actually started writing that last winter when client work was slowing down, and then I set it aside because things got busy and I was speaking. Then things got a little still again during the summer and I was able to come back to it and dig back in and finish it and create the site, then I launched it in the fall when the timing was perfect and people were thinking about how they can learn and grow again.

So I think it’s really important to work with the natural rhythms of our businesses. Maybe for some people it never slows down and they’re busy all the time, but, for me, I’ve found that there is really a cyclical pattern to the work and to when people want to work with me and when they’re thinking about getting support from a coach, because their work is also seasonal.

The first time it happened, I freaked out and thought, oh my gosh, my business is over, no one’s ever going to want to work with me again, and then things picked back up and I realised, oh, it was just a season.

MD: I think that’s so comforting when you have those realisations and you realise it’s not personal, it’s just part of a bigger picture. But one other part of this building process that a lot of creative people might go through is that it can be kind of daunting because you put in a lot of time with not a necessary guaranteed outcome or guaranteed client or guaranteed income.

I know that you’ve spoken or written about this quandary before, but what’s your advice to other creative people when they’re building something, but also need that baseline at the same time?

TE: Sure. While I was building the course initially, I still had some coaching clients and I was still writing articles, so I had money coming in. It wasn’t as much as a super busy season, but it was something, and this is the way life as an entrepreneur or freelancer or small business owner goes. There are months where your bank account is so full and you’re like, I just made the most money I’ve ever made this month, and then there are other months where things are a little leaner and lighter, and you’re like, hmm, interesting.

So I think we need to plan for that and know that it’s going to ebb and flow, and be able to create a sense of consistency for ourselves. For me, having multiple revenue streams, such as coaching, writing, and speaking, I can match those up as I see fit.

You do have to support yourself and ultimately you need to know what you need to make every month or know if you can work for three months and make enough to cover the next six months, so then I can then spend three months on this internal project that I’m going to launch.

I had faith that I would finish the content of my course at some point, even though I had set it aside, and when I came back to it, I had faith that I was going to launch it and that there would be students, paying students, who would be a part of it, and then I would get my money.

Essentially the time that I put into it would be worth my while financially. Of course there are all kinds of non-financial rewards, and now I have this content and I’m talking to a publisher. Could it be a self-guided journal? Could it live in another format? 

So it was really me investing in the business, believing that there would be a return. But there is no guarantee. Sometimes the outcome you hope for doesn’t happen, but something will happen. Some opportunity will come, a door will open, you’ll think about the work you’re doing in a new way, and that will open up another opportunity for you.

For me, it’s not about being rigid about the outcome, it’s knowing that something cool is going to happen, and I’m creating some momentum because I’m taking action.

MD: Yes, oh, I love that so much. It’s just this reminder that the pay-off isn’t linear. I’m wondering if this comes back to your routine in some way, because you’ve got these various revenue streams and then you’re chunking your day. Was that deliberate so that you could have that kind of balance between all the different things that you’re doing?

TE: No. It was not deliberate. The first year I did my coaching business, I was doing freelance work in addition to [inaudible 15:14] because my coaching business itself could not sustain me. So I was doing freelance work as a content strategist and community builder, which I had done previously through co-founding a magazine I did for many years called The Great Discontent, and so I knew content, I knew community, and I knew that I needed money to augment my coaching practice. As I built it, again, there would be mean times and there would be very fruitful times and, as I was coaching, I saw opportunities to add pieces along the way, so reaching out to create opportunities for yourself creates more opportunities.

But it wasn’t planned to have these different streams. It just felt natural along the way to add them, and so I decided, okay, I’ll explore writing, I’ll explore speaking more, and now I’m really interested in making some sort of book or maybe a longer publication from all the work that I’ve been accumulating over the past two years.

MD: That would be so exciting to read when you do, and I also just love this peek behind the highlight reel in so many ways because we see people who have these opportunities that we might be lusting after and wonder, why does it always go this person? And what we’re not seeing is that snowball effect of reaching out and discovering what you want and then going after it, and then that building the momentum. It doesn’t just land in your lap.

But there’s an interesting balance because I think what you said before in other interviews is that passion isn’t something that you just have, it’s something that you find and build and, even if we go back to how The Great Discontent came about and in terms of you becoming an interviewer, you didn’t know necessarily know that that was something that you would have passion for until you did it.

TE: Yeah, absolutely. I had no idea that I would enjoy interviewing people so much. I had no idea that I would enjoy hosting a podcast, when we did that through The Great Discontent. So I think that passion for something develops as we develop skill for it, and that takes time. I was interviewing people for six years, and that’s a long time, and I’ve been coaching for two years.

The other day, I did a mastermind session with a client in person as I mentioned, and I felt like, wow, okay, cool, there was just this sense of flow and this sense of ease that I’m where I’m supposed to be and I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, and using the skills and strengths that I have in a really impactful way.

So I think it takes time. And there’s a really wonderful podcast episode on Freakonomics and it’s about how we develop grip, and it talks about this idea. And this is initially what sparked me to begin thinking about how we develop passion, so I would encourage anyone who’s interested in diving into that more to listen to that episode.

MD: When was it that you first heard this episode?

TE: It was actually when I was going through the transition of wrapping up my role at The Great Discontent, but I don’t believe I had yet decided to become a coach, so it found me at the best time because I was in a big transition and I felt like I didn’t know what I was going to do next and I wasn’t sure what I was passionate about, so to speak. I was leaving the thing that I had become passionate about and that I had become known for, and I didn’t know if there was anything else for me. I believed there was, but I wasn’t sure what it was yet.

MD: I’m thinking about how you were talking a little bit earlier about this dance that we play between needing flexibility and needing constraints and how it can be quite difficult to float around, but during this time you’ve described that your life was starting to fall together, and I think that’s such a lovely way to put it.

But there’s this uncertainty that we have to wade through in order to see that our life is actually falling together, not falling apart, and I’m wondering if you could talk about how you actually let go of something that you were known for without having the next thing to go to?

TE: Oh, absolutely. Goodness. I mean, first of all, we all need to make money. I needed to make money, so it was practically and logistically, what will I do? So I decided that I would spend a year transitioning out of The Great Discontent and I spent six months continuing to work full-time, so from January through June. And then in July, I transitioned to contract part-time to finish out hosting live events and some other minimal duties. So I actually began the transition in January, but fully wrapped and ended my goal with The Great Discontent in December.

So I spent a whole year, and during that year, I did freelance work to augment my income, and that October was when I went and was trained as a coach and opened my practice and began seeing clients, so there was a lot of overlap. There’s always overlap when we transition. For me, the transition was very emotional and there was some pain involved.

Leaving a business that I had co-founded and built with my former husband and business partner, everything was enmeshed and it was really hard to separate all of that and I think when we’re in pain and once we know we’re leaving a situation, whether it’s a relationship or a job, all we want to do is just cut the ties and leave. We want it to be a clean cut, leave, gone, done.

And sometimes we can do that, but sometimes the transition has to be slower. I was married for ten years, we were in business together for five, and so I had a mentor tell me during that time that you don’t spend that many years building something and untangle it in a day. It takes time. And giving myself time to leave the business helped me mentally shift and prepare for the fact that my identity would no longer be The Great Discontent. It would always be part of my story, and it still is, but it’s not what I do anymore.

I really treated that whole year like a gap year. This was a suggestion from a friend who was very, very wise. He said, why don’t you look at this year like a gap year? You’re exploring and discovering and learning about yourself, and I thought that’s a really nice way to frame it, and what does is I know that it gives me a whole year. All I need to do is think about how I can financially sustain myself and make money, and I don’t have to put pressure on whatever’s next, so I can do any kind of work this year that pays the bills while I’m reading and journaling and seeing a therapist and hanging out with my friends and doing things to get back in touch with myself and who I am, and so that’s what I did.

Giving myself that space and taking the pressure off to not have an idea of what I was going to do right away and to not say I’m leaving The Great Discontent but here’s my new project. Taking that pressure off felt so, so good, and looking back, that year flew by. In the moment, it wasn’t flying by, but now I’m like, wow, where did that year go?

We can do anything for a year, so that’s what I told myself. You can do this for a year and during that discovery process was when I decided to combine my background in social work with the six years I spent essentially researching creatives, to become a coach who specialises in the creative community.

MD: How powerful that year must have been. I can just imagine myself in that situation and I would really have to fight against rushing through it or finding the next thing. I think it’s so easy to look for decisions or clutch onto a goal without actually giving yourself space. So, other than this wonderful Freakonomics episode that you mentioned, is there anything else that was really useful to give yourself that space during that time, or advice that you’d have for someone else who might be taking a gap year?

TE: My routine during that time, almost every night I would spend some time reading and journaling and reflecting, so there was a lot of processing who I am now, what do I want my identity to be, what kind of work could I do? I was thinking about these things daily, it’s not that I wasn’t thinking about them, it was just that I was allowing myself to hang out in that space of ambiguity, which nothing in life is certain. 

I think that, when you go through an experience where there are some things that are out of your control, it makes you realise how little we do have control over things in our lives and that allowed me to step back and I guess detach a little bit and just say, it’s okay to not know. Even though you’re 36 and you feel like you should know, it’s okay to not know because you’re starting over and that’s just where you are.

So it was consistently reminding myself that it was okay because I did feel so much pressure to know what was next and to have a plan right away. And then I did a lot of exploration around what are the things that I really need from my work in this next season? I call them my north stars and I talk about this sometimes at conferences and events, but your north stars are your things that guide you home and they help you make decisions about work that you might say yes or no to.

For me, it was what are the criteria by which I will make decisions about the work that I do next? And so I had a list of five words, and I defined what they meant to me. During this time, I actually interviewed for a full-time job somewhere and I ended up declining after multiple rounds of negotiation, and I just knew, even though on paper it looked great, and my friend would say it’s a greater paper boyfriend. On paper, it meets all the requirements, but there was just something about it that I had this feeling in my gut that this wasn’t where I was supposed to go. There’s something else for you and it was shortly after that that I’d decided I wanted to go get trained as a coach and open my practice.

Having that list of things I wanted out of my career was really helpful because it gave me some kind of criteria to make decisions by. Knowing what you want and knowing what you don’t want, and really spending time thinking about those things, is very helpful.

MD: And especially not only would you have been redefining what you want to do with your career, but I’d imagine there would have been some extent of heartbreak or redefining who you are as a single person in the world if you’ve been in a ten-year relationship and that relationship was a dynamic duo, not just a romantic relationship. Any interesting learnings about navigating the world single?

TE: My identity came really wrapped up in my marriage and my business, and I think it was extremely hard for me to separate myself from both in the beginning. I told my friends that no one’s going to want to work with me, no one’s going to invite me to speak anywhere. They only wanted me to be a part of things because I was married to this person or because I was involved with this business.

I felt like things were ending and it was scary. Friends, of course, said oh no, no, you have a lot to offer and you’ll see, and I actually ended up getting quite a few speaking invitations for events and now I realise that it wasn’t because I was with a certain person or because I was running a particular business. It was me.

I had a conversation with someone, and they said to me, aren’t you scared of what’s going to happen when you leave The Great Discontent? And I don’t know where this came from, but I replied no because the magic is in me and I’ll take it wherever I go. And I don’t know if I fully believed it at that time, but I believe it now, and now I know that it’s me. I have a lot to offer to the world and the people I work with, and that was manifested through the work I did and maybe it was present in my relationship, but it wasn’t because of those things that I am who I am. Or that I’m important or valuable.

But it took a long time. I read so many relationship books, I read so many books about boundaries. I talked to my therapist about all of this and trying to figure out where my boundaries are, how can I have healthier boundaries in the future with both friends and romantic relationships, and I just did a lot of personal work. 

But there was a period of grieving, of course. You’re grieving the identities that you’re giving up, you’re grieving the future that you thought you were going to have, the plans that made already based on the way your life was before, and you just have to do a lot of crying and venting to friends and therapy and journaling. There’s no other way than to just feel the pain of letting go of something that you thought was going to be a part of your life forever.

MD: Exactly. That’s so important to remember. I’m not sure if you also read Ask Polly columns by Heather Havrilesky.

TE: Oh, I do. She’s wonderful.

MD: So wonderful. And interviewing her earlier this year for my website was really wonderful just to emphasise this idea that we can’t hack our emotions in the same way that we’re told that you can hack productivity, which is also very questionable. 

But just knowing that the best way out is through… I guess you would’ve had to make some major adjustments to your routine and renegotiating things like alone time and solitude and getting used to that space in your life. How was that?

TE: It’s so interesting because I saw this listing on Craigslist. It was a block away from the apartment that my former husband and I shared, and I was getting ready to go, this was very early on in my separation and the divorce process, and I was getting ready to go back to Michigan and just spend time with family indefinitely. I just bought a one-way ticket because I needed to be around family and friends who had known me forever. That felt like it would be very grounding, and it was.

So I looked at this apartment and it was two roommates, and one roommate was moving out. The roommate who would be living there with me actually wasn’t there when I toured the apartment, she was travelling, and so I spoke to the roommate who was moving out. But when I walked in the space, the space itself felt just so peaceful and warm and had this energy that was very calming. I almost knew right away that I had to get that space.

When I was visiting family, I did a video chat with the roommate who was staying and we talked for 45 minutes and essentially interviewed each other about all these things, like what is your routine? What is your personality? Are you introverted or extroverted? Do you like to have people over? What are your leisure activities? Hobbies? What’s your work situation? Do you like noise? Do you like parties? Do you like quiet? Do you like solitude?

And, interestingly enough, I feel like the universe just sent me this amazing person and space. I applied even though I wasn’t sure. The other lease I had wasn’t up, but I felt like this is too good, I can’t pass it up, so I just applied, and I got accepted. My roommate is also introverted like me, we both love to read and journal and have alone time and solitude, but we also enjoy having a meal together or chatting about our day at the end of the day.

I think I just got really lucky, but it was what I needed at the time and it somehow found me, and I said yes to it. Even though I had a roommate, we were both so introverted and liked our alone time, I had a lot of time and space to just hang out with myself and get to know yourself more. It’s a little different now because I’m actually living with my partner, but we have our routines.

It’s also been an opportunity for me, as a person who was revaluating my value and identity and who I am outside of any kind of relationship or job. My new challenge has been how do you be in a healthy relationship with healthy boundaries and maintain your own identity? But it’s really, again, a stance between being together, but as separate individuals. 

You still have your own identity and you’re still your own person, but then you come together and you’re part of a team and a partnership as well, and so that’s a dance too and it’s been wonderful so far. There’s been a lot of really open conversations about that and what boundaries look like and expectations and routines and the kind of life we want to make for ourselves together.

MD: I’m so happy to hear that. It’s always nice when someone finds new love. And it’s also just so interesting how, with each new partner or relationship or even friendship, you kind of have to redefine your routine and rituals with each other. It does change our days in small and beautiful ways.

Speaking of your day, it would be nice to return to what your routine is looking like at the moment.

TE: Sure. I’m not a morning person at all and I never have been, ever. My family also. We’re just not morning people. I don’t know if I was born into being a night person and I’ll always be that way. I was the person in college who would stay up all night working on a project that was due and that’s when I really hit my stride.

I can’t really say I bother anymore. I need my sleep, and I like eight hours of sleep, so I’ll get up at like eight or nine, depending. If I have something in the morning where I have to travel, then I’ll get up earlier, but on any given day at around 9am I will be in the kitchen making tea and toast, and then having a few quiet moments.

I might read. I’ve been reading a lot on my Kindle lately, so I might read a chapter in a book, I might journal, and then we have a second room that’s an office here in the apartment, so I’ll go to the office and get to work. I like to have my calendar sorted out ahead of time, so Friday’s are a good day for me to look at the next week. So I can go to my desk and I already kind of know.

If I need to do any planning for the week, I’ll do that Monday morning, and then I dive into work. When I’m working on something that’s writing or requires focus time, I turn everything off so that I’m not distracted.

I’ll break for lunch and then, in the afternoon, I’ll come back and do more work, then wrap anywhere from 5, 6, 7pm, it just depends on the day, like if I have dinner with someone or an event in the evening. So if I’m working from home, it’s pretty straightforward and boring, but I like it that way. 

Right now, I’m mentoring residents for the New Inc. programme. It’s an incubator that’s affiliated with New Museum. And they have 108 members who work at the intersection of art, design, technology, and innovation, and I work from their space on Bowery in Lower Manhattan on Tuesdays. So Tuesdays I’m available to the community to meet with them and hear about their challenges and offer feedback and support and guidance.

So I’ll work from that space and that’s a little more loose because I might meet with multiple people, I might meet with one, and I do some work in between. And on days that I have coaching calls, like Wednesday for example, is a lot of phone calls and in between the calls, I’ll take care of admin work or email or little things that I can do in between.

MD: What would be your biggest distraction, or what could cause a day to have one of those… well, I’m not sure if you have these days, where it just sort of feels like a domino, but in the wrong direction, where you’re being knocked over and you can’t get back on track?

TE: I think it’s personal admin stuff for me. For example, earlier today, thank goodness they’re done now, but they were replacing the lock on the doors downstairs because there were issues and the landlord we’re renting from had to contact me and text me, and then I had a package go missing yesterday with the postal service, so I had to stop by the post office. 

So it’s the life stuff, the personal admin and life stuff that can get in the way, where you have to do things that are not always fun and take up time.

MD: Is there ever any kind of internal distractions? Whether it’s the inner critic or procrastination or perfectionism that interrupts your workflow or your ability to work well?

TE: Oh, for sure. Writing is something I really enjoy, but it’s also something I procrastinate on because I really like to let ideas roll around in my head before I start drafting. I’m not someone who will write five different drafts. I kind of do the drafts in my head and then they come out on paper and then I edit and refine as needed.

So I might procrastinate because I feel like the idea needs to incubate in my mind a little bit more before I put words to paper. But I know I’m procrastinating and I know that I’ll get it done, but I might be like, oh, I have to empty the dishwasher, or I should get groceries, or I should do this or that, and find things to take up time because I’m not ready to actually sit down and do the writing yet. I think that’s the biggest thing I procrastinate on.

In terms of client work, things are scheduled, so the calls are when they are. I mean, I try to make my week as distraction-free as possible, which is why I like to schedule meetings and calls on particular days, so that I’m not distracted on days. Like on days that I need to write or maybe focus on business planning, those days are only devoted to that so that I have no distractions and nothing else to kidnap my energy.

But I know that’s a privilege. I know that a lot of people have demands on their time, or other people who have access and power on their calendar. I have no one else demanding. Obviously my clients and then personal obligations, but I’m in charge of my calendar. No one’s putting meetings on there for me. I’m managing all of it, so I really have all of the control over what I say yes and no to, which feels really good to me. I know, again, that’s a privilege. Not everyone’s [inaudible 39:15] anyway.

MD: Yeah, exactly right. As someone who describes themselves a non-morning person, what does your wind-down look like?

TE: It can be hard. If I haven’t worn myself out during the day, I can find that it can be midnight, 1:00, 1:30am, and I’m not tired. If I’ve done a lot of running around the city or had an intense engagement with a client or just have mentally taxed myself, I might be a little more tired and sleepy. It just depends.

It’s interesting because my partner and I have different preferred methods of wind down. He’s very visual and likes visual narratives, like TV or movies, and I really love reading and imaging things in my mind, so we alternate. Some nights I might hop in bed and read on my Kindle for a little bit, and other times we might watch a movie before bed. Other nights we might be out to dinner, or I might be out to dinner with a friend, and then come home at 10 or 11pm and be exhausted and just go straight to bed.

But I’m usually up until midnight, that’s just how it goes. And then my partner also travels for work, so we have periods of time together. He’s not gone a ton, but probably travels more than most people do for work, so he might be gone for a week to London and, during that week, my routine might become more intense. I’ll have more time to work and more time to just be alone and enjoy the solitude.

We joke that I get so much done when he’s gone, but it’s true, I do. I have so much focus time with no interruptions, and when he’s here I want to enjoy being present with him and spending time together, so it’s a nice dance, again.

MD: Do you find that that’s one of the plus and minuses of working from home? There is that convenience element to be able to spend more time with people, but there’s also that distraction element.

TE: In a previous life, I would’ve said that I didn’t want any separation, that I’m fine with everything being in one bucket. Now I would say that I like separation. For me, having an office as my designated spot to work, I close the door at the end of the day. At the end of the day, I shut down my computer, and I try not to check my emails. Sometimes I fail at that because it’s just a natural instinct to pick up your phone to do something else, and then you’re like, oh, I’ll see what’s going on in my email. But I try not to check my email after work.

So I have some kind of end of day shutdown rituals that work for me, and being able to tell myself, okay, now you’re done with work, you can relax or go meet that friend or whatever you want to do for the rest of the day, you don’t have to get back on your computer and do any more work. That feels really good.

Whereas, before, I just wasn’t able to shut down and that can grow very taxing and can lead to burn out, so I think it’s really important for me to have a ritual that says, okay, you’re shutting down. If I shut down my computer and my work, it doesn’t mean that I can now hop on my phone and be on social media all evening.

I’m really rethinking my relationship with social media too. I’m on it and I share on there, and I met a lot of amazing people through social media, but I actually just deactivated my Facebook account the other day because it’s mostly family and friends, people I went to high school with, and I just wasn’t posting on there a lot and it felt like an obligation, like something else I had to maintain, and everyone who needs to reach me has my number anyway and I thought I didn’t really feel like my relationships were deepening because of my presence on this platform, and so why am I even on it? So we’ll see.

MD: You’re so right, especially with so many different platforms and other ways to reach people. I just don’t think we need that additional clutter in our lives. But that’s also really interesting to hear that you’ve now put that delineation between work and life for want of a better word. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with David Sedaris’s Laugh Kookaburra?

TE: No.

MD: He’s got this great analogy at the beginning about how life is like a stovetop and there’s four different burners. There’s work, health, relationships, and social life, or family, relationships, and then our social life, and it’s difficult if not impossible to have all four burning at exactly the same time. And I think, from the outside, we assume that somehow other people have managed to crack the code and can simmer them all away somehow, in a way that we can’t.

So I’m always interested to hear, if you think of your own life as those four burners, what do you think people would be surprised to hear isn’t burning brightly necessarily?

TE: Oh, that’s really interesting. For me, previously, I think that I had the work burner going all the time and I neglected everything else, so health, relationships, and what was the other one?

MD: Family and friends.

TE: Yeah, exactly. But I think now I feel a little more, you know, turn work on and during the workday, that’s what I’m focused on, I have that burner going. And then in the evening, I’ve made a point, and I’ve talked to my girlfriends, and my guy friends as well, on the phone on a regular basis. We do text, but even friends that live in the city, sometimes it’s hard to physically get together, so if we haven’t hung out in a while, we’ll hop on a phone call and I literally schedule them on the calendar. We’ll text each other and say, hey, when can you chat?

So usually at least once a week I’m talking with someone, friend or family, on the phone probably for an hour, just to catch up, which has been so nice. It’s way different than just looking at what someone’s been doing on social media, which feels so impersonal, and you don’t get the whole picture.

So it’s turn the work burner on, then turn the work burner off. Then, in the evening, maybe I’m working out. I don’t like to work out in the morning, I’m too tired, so I work out in the evening as a way to separate the day and then maybe I’m turning on the burner of friends and family and having a phone call or a catch up.

So I feel pretty good about how I’m using the burners in my life right now, but I know that will change. Every season is different. I think I’m prone to always have work burning, which is why I need the shut off, so that I can turn some of the other burners on and cook something with those.

MD: Yeah, I love that. The metaphor that just keeps on giving. Your answers made me just think that in some ways it’s actually more to do with the expectations of how bright or big that flame will be. When it comes to maybe relating to your coaching practice and helping other people navigate their work, and I’m assuming their lives a little bit as well, does this idea of expectations ever come up?

TE: Oh, all the time. I mean, most of it is about expectations. The expectations that other people have for us, including our bosses, our friends, our family, and then the expectations that we put on ourselves from ourselves, and the expectations that we imagine that others are putting on us.

So there’s many layers of expectations, and I think one of the priorities with my clients is to help them discern between what are your actual expectations, what do you want for yourself, and what are you doing because other people expect it from you or you’ve been told this is the life that you need to create?

So there’s this interesting analogy about the ladder against the wall. So it’s like, are you going to get to the end of your life having climbed the ladder and actually looked at the wall that it’s leaning against and thought, oh my gosh, this is the wrong wall. I’m at the top, but it’s the wrong wall. This isn’t for me.

And I think we can do that with our work or our lives to recreate what society or family or friends or peers or whoever tells us. Well, you should’ve worked this job, and your life should look like this, and you should hit these milestones, like go to college, graduate, get a job, meet someone, get married, buy a place, have a kid, work more, have another kid.

You know, it’s kind of all like the American dream laid out for us and what we should do, but the truth is that we take many different paths and there are many different milestones that we reach, that do not look like what I just described, and so I think it’s really about redefining the kind of life that we want to live and the kind of work we want to do and how all the pieces fit together.

MD: That’s lovely because I think it can be hard to remember. The podcast really does explore the routines and the ruts, and you spoke so beautifully about our seasons that we experience in our work and also our lives. Do you have any particular advice? I’m sure you’ve got lots, but for someone who might be in a low season or experiencing a creative rut?

TE: Everything changes. You could be having the best time in your career or you could be in a rut and feeling very low. Both of those things will change with time. Sometimes we experience higher highs and lower lows, and when I’ve been in the periods that feel like, gosh, I feel so low, I feel so discouraged, I look at what I can control and what I can do something about because wasting my time and energy on the things I can’t control is not going to serve me, so what can I do? And then also, where can I find support?

We can’t do this life alone. We’re social creatures. We’re not meant to tackle everything by ourselves, so it’s very hard to reach out for support because we often feel like it’s a burden to other people and we don’t want to ask for help, but think about how much you enjoy helping someone else and how good you feel when you listen to a friend and offer support. Give someone else an opportunity to do that for you if you need it.

MD: There was so much to reflect on with this conversation with Tina, and something that really stuck with me was her process of letting go of a project and a career that was part of her identity. It was incredible to hear the words that surprised even Tina herself. “The magic is in me, and I’ll take it wherever I go.”

Sometimes we need to remember that the drive that created something, that’s within us, and it doesn’t go away when we finish a project or leave a business or fail or experience a rejection or change our entire careers. We can navigate the uncertainty knowing that we have the magic in us.