Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host Roberta.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, and improve your life overall, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

By the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review.

Now so many of us are being bombarded with information, technology and all the things that come with living life in modern society.

My guest today, Jonathan Stewart, who is a business coach and the founder of Simplicity Specialist, is here to teach you that, hey, wait a minute, slowing down is actually good for you.

And not only that, it can make you more productive in the long run.

That and more is coming right up on this episode, as we speak to Jonathan.

Now, please help me welcome him.

Hi, Jonathan.

Thank you for having me.

I'm super excited to be here.

Thank you for being on our show today.

And in which part of the world are you in right now?

I'm in the southwest of England, down in Devon, where it stays wet most of the time.

Oh, rainy, huh?

Oh, yes, absolutely.

And it is my patriotic duty as a UK person to complain about the weather.

We have to.

It is law.

Not really, but we just like to complain about the weather.

I like that.

First of all, tell us a little bit about why you founded your business.

Yeah, so I founded Simplicity Specialist from a very long-held belief that has started all the way back when I first started as a business owner.

I taught guitar as a one-to-one teacher in schools, and I taught people how to play guitar.

But often the advice is all about, learn your scales, learn these things, do this, you must do this first.

And for me, I really didn't like that idea because when I started learning to play an instrument, I viewed music as an extension of who I am and the way that I worked.

And so I rebelled against all of that and ended up teaching myself what I wanted to learn.

And when I came to teach kids and adults and many types of different people, everyone just wanted to learn the things that they wanted.

They wanted to work with themselves.

And from there, that kind of thread has followed me through all of the types of work that I've done.

I've always been self-employed because for me, there wasn't even a choice as what I had to do to work because I couldn't hold down a traditional job.

I couldn't figure out the ways of working in a way that everybody else told me to.

So I did things like tech work where I worked and helped businesses from big and small behind the scenes setting up all the integrations and the really nerdy geeky stuff because I taught myself everything because I didn't want to do it any other way.

I have an obsession with learning and learning new things.

If I can learn something, I will go as deep as possible, academic papers, the whole fun, joyous stuff of it.

And I fell into a particular tool called Notion, which is an all-in-one workspace where you can really create something that fits your brain.

And I started in there and I realized the people who gained most success from working with me were people who knew the way that they worked, were people who could figure out and work with me.

And I found myself enjoying that interaction with other people of like, hey, so how do you actually work?

And that brought me to Simplicity Specialist, where I created a business around simplicity.

But the common misconception is that simplicity means less.

And for me, I see simplicity as enough in having just enough to do what you want to do, to achieve what you want to achieve.

And that led to what I do now, where I help people to work with themselves rather than against themselves.

The word enough.

We live in a time when you hear things like multiple streams of income, work more to gain more, do this and that, add this to your business, add that, you don't have this, you're missing out on this.

I don't think that word even exists in our vocabulary anymore.

Yeah, I actually looked up the meaning of the word enough, the origin of the word.

Whenever I find myself in a position where like, hmm, what does that actually mean?

Because we've taken these words and now they've been ruined and changed and morphed.

So if we look back at the origin of the word enough, it kind of comes from like the sufficient in quantity or number.

It is to go with, together, to reach together, with, together, which I think is the most exciting part for me of like with yourself is how I interpret that.

If you have enough, you can reach and attain enough with yourself.

It is sufficient, it is enough for you and you're working together with you instead of more.

More is what we live by and that's why we are burned out.

That's why we have anxiety, we have stress-related illnesses.

It's always more and more.

It's more.

That's why we sleep less.

It affects our health because we are chasing more.

What exactly are we chasing?

I love that question.

I think what we're chasing is to be enough to actually feel like there isn't something wrong with us, to feel that we're not actually broken.

Often when I talk to people and especially in the productivity space, there is so much trauma attached to being organized, having enough as you were talking about.

And I think there is what we're trying to find is something that makes us feel that we're not broken or that there isn't something wrong with us, that actually we are enough.

We have what we need and we can do what we want and we can be where we want to be.

And often we drive ourselves to burn out, to try and push past and get better and be better because what we are now is wrong, isn't okay.

When is that really true?

There was a study, a friend of mine recently shared with me, I think in the 1940s, the money that you earned versus the cost of living, if you compare it to now, now we earn less versus the cost of living.

So we have these economic demands on us, especially if you have a mortgage and children.

The fact that we are earning less in relation to the cost of living, isn't that what people are just trying to keep up with?

Yeah, that's probably very likely.

I think I'm in a place of privilege to be able to work for myself, to choose to have those options.

But there is this weird thing with people who are not necessarily spiritual, but kind of like the gurus and the people who are saying, just relax, just meditate 20 minutes a day.

I tried that.

I ended up having panic attacks every single time I did so.

And it's around like, it's almost the opposite end of the spectrum.

You have hustle till you're dead or meditate until you do nothing.

Why the extremes?

My understanding is the extremes are very much how our brains are wired.

They're wired to be negative.

Either we're working too much or we're not working enough.

And we're jumping between the two and trying to find the middle bit.

But we never want to settle for the middle because then we're not enough.

We're not enough of one or the other.

And so I think my assumption is we want to be at either end of the extremes and the fighting of that one.

Really, I like being in the middle.

It's kind of fun.

And being able to go, hey, what would happen if what you already had is enough?

What would happen if you could work 60 hours a week?

What if working two hours a week is enough or four hours a week?

What if however the way you work, as long as it fits you, what if that's okay?

What would it look like for you?

What would it look like for me to work in a way that fits?

The way that we actually work, instead of the externalities taking over everything, it becomes part of the conversation.

Often it's like just go internal, meditate, spend time, etc.

etc.

But for me, I love the idea of what do you actually want?

Because we all have wants and desires and we want these things.

We want to get these things.

But sometimes the reality of what we have conflicts.

When you know what you want and you know what you have, and you can see both of those together, they are always in friction.

They are almost always in some form of friction with one another.

And that friction in between to me leads to some form of action.

You're going to do something.

And then when you make that decision to do something, what you want may change, what you have may change.

And then this whole kind of process works together.

Rather than it being a one, two, three, you do this, then you do this, then you do that.

It's more of a coupling or cyclical nature of like, hey, this is what I want, this is what I have.

To me, that is what mindfulness really is.

It's not the sitting silently with headspace and stop thinking.

And it's the way that I use mindfulness.

It's very much like, where am I in all of this?

What do I actually want?

What do I actually have?

What's going on for me?

And often there are hundreds of things going on.

We're not simple.

It's not a math equation.

It's so complex.

We as humans are complex, so complex that even science cannot figure out everything about the way we work.

Believe me, lots of academic papers.

There are so many differing views of how we work.

And so if the scientists who spend their life not knowing, don't know, what do we do?

Well, my answer to that is to start from us.

Start from what we have and what we want and what we have, because there is horrible realities in the world.

There is injustice.

There is horrible, awful stuff for one of much stronger language going on in the world.

And that is part of what is happening.

But there is also what we want.

And we can make the decisions.

We have agency, depending on how much we have is variable.

Yes, but there is something we can always control.

There is something that is always in our ability to do something about.

So not only is life not a one size fits all, whether you're working for a corporate or you have your own business, but I think self-awareness is the challenge we are currently facing.

I've never even taken the time to explore what you just said about myself.

Yeah.

And awareness is a funny one.

I love awareness.

So there is a concept in Gestalt Psychology where we have the cycle of experience, where we have a sensation and we move through this cycle and we're moving through at an alarming rate all of the time.

And it's something that our body naturally does, but we don't realize it cognitively.

We don't realize it's happening.

We don't see it's happening.

And I think a lot of what I do is not necessarily awareness building.

It is, and here's something beautifully meta, it's awareness of what we're aware of.

It's that being able to see what we see, what we perceive, because what we perceive and what we see actually gives us options, gives us opportunities, gives us possibilities when we are aware of what we can see.

And if we don't like that, if we don't like what we have and we want something different, then it drives us to make different decisions.

Rather than choose, it's decide.

The etymology of the word decide is to cut off options, to reduce our options and to go, I want to do this because this is what I want, this is what I have.

And I don't like how those two match and I want to see what happens if I go this way.

And then when you go that way, you have that process and that cycle that goes on.

And being aware of what you're aware of is, it's so matter and delicious, but it helps.

So if anybody's listening right now and they think this is so brand new to me, nobody has ever put it to me like that, what is the first step that they need to take in order to start saying, I want to understand how I work, I want to be aware of what I'm aware of.

Where do they go for this?

Because this is not as universal as everything else that we've just discussed that we've been told.

Good question.

I love that.

What do you want is the first question.

You're listening to this and you've gained something.

What do you want is a really good place to start and to just sit with that and to completely brain dump everything.

This is one exercise that I do with my clients.

I want you to take everything from in here and extend it out of your head because often we spend a lot of time in our head trying to process, organize and do things.

Get it out of your head and just completely blast it out.

Don't mind whether you write, whether you draw, doesn't matter.

What matters is that you're taking it from inside of here and putting it somewhere and put down what you want.

And if anything else comes out of your head, write that down too.

Don't keep it all in here and try to go, oh, maybe I shouldn't want that.

Do it in a place where you can feel and you can trust the information that you're giving so that it's not out to scrutiny from your boss or your partner or your family, whatever it may be.

Have that complete and utter unfiltered brain dump of getting things out of your head of what you want.

Then once you've done that, you have something tangible to work from.

Often people talk about how amazing things have to be, how amazing people are when they can process things in their head.

But our brains aren't really computers.

In fact, something that I find super fascinating is how years and years ago, our brain was compared to a water pump because it was the most advanced thing that existed at the time.

So instead of trying to hold things in our head, get it out of your head.

Whatever's going through your head right now, whatever ideas you've got and things that you thought from what we've been speaking about, dump it.

Don't try to organize it as best as you can.

Just get it out of your head.

Save the organizing for later.

Because right now, just get it out.

Because it will help you to see and to perceive because what you're going to write down is stuff that you are aware of.

Aware of being aware.

We have so much information overload, and we always feel like, oh, if I'm not here, I'm missing out on something.

Or like I said, I'm not going to be enough.

I'm broken.

I'm this feeling and that feeling.

Hence, just trying to constantly keep up.

It's exhausting.

It is very exhausting.

Yeah.

For a very long time, that's how I work.

I have so much information processing in my head.

I'm on the spectrum.

My brain does not stop.

I have spent most of my life trying to make it stop.

And it was only when I stopped trying to make it stop that I was able to move forward and actually find the success that I define and continue going in the journey that I wanted to.

By taking it from here and putting it somewhere where I could hold it and see it.

Because then you have a very small constraint.

You have something that is helping you to just see something because we're not as simple as one, two, three.

We are one plus 80 million things that are popping off that just one single thing.

And it's, I believe, almost impossible to see the whole depth of our own understanding.

And you don't have to get to a point where you are aware of everything about you.

I still, even now, experience burnout.

But I know when I'm in that burnout, I'm more aware of what that looks like.

I'm not trying to fix my burnout because I think that's just part of the way that I process things.

It is part and parcel of the way I work.

That does not mean everyone should go and burn themselves out.

But I know that about me.

And I know that I will get burned out.

And I know how to manage that and to understand that.

Working with me versus trying to go against me.

If you're an entrepreneur, do you get to a point where you feel like it's enough how we are doing as a business, our revenue, our customers, our production?

Any of your client that says, you know what, I think we're doing good.

I think it's enough.

We don't need more.

Does that word even fly around the radio of any entrepreneur?

It depends.

It genuinely depends because what is enough is defined differently by every individual.

And that's the issue.

It's like, is it enough?

You can get to that stage.

Have I reached that stage?

No.

Will I ever?

Maybe not.

But I'm interested in the journey to get there.

And because we grow and change and adapt, we hit these places where it's enough.

And then like the context that we have around us, the environment has changed.

And so we're like, oh, something new is coming.

So maybe this isn't enough.

Maybe this isn't matching with and together with myself anymore because I have changed.

I have grown and moved into a different space.

So do I think it's possible to have enough?

Yes and no.

And it depends on what you want and what you have and what you want to do.

Because if you don't want more, then yeah, you have enough.

If you know what you have, you know what you want, and everything feels right, then you have enough and there is nothing to do.

That's when you can do something different and then you can go on another journey.

I think the idea that there is a limit to what we can do, I don't think there is, but it's a decision that you've got to find for yourself.

And for me, being okay with never reaching it, that was a hard one for me of like, I may never reach where I want to go.

If that, am I okay with that?

Am I broken?

Am I enough?

Am I broken if I don't reach enough?

One of the beautiful things that I used to do and still sometimes do is like, I want to be perfect at being imperfect, which is in itself is a complete and utter contradiction because I'm trying to perfectly not try and achieve things.

Which is another perfect action of not being perfect.

Yes, precisely.

Enough isn't an end point.

It's a sign.

It's a direction.

It's a thing that you're heading towards.

But maybe you never reach and maybe you do.

I don't know.

I only have my context to go by.

I don't have anyone else's.

When you talk about work-life balance, what does that mean for you?

It makes me sad.

For me, work-life balance doesn't exist because work is part of your life.

If work isn't part of your life, what's happening?

What is life?

Life is everything, all of us.

How can you balance between work over here and life over there?

For me, it's still not perfect, and I'm still trying to find the right words because words have different meanings to different people.

It's more of a work-life integration.

It's more like the two are one.

They come together.

Work is a big toe in the way that my life is led, and sometimes it fills up a little bit more.

Sometimes it fills up a little bit less, and that is not static.

It's fluid.

It's dynamic.

It changes.

There's so many assumptions with a work-life balance.

Where does it balance?

How do you define what is balanced and unbalanced?

What does that even mean?

From my interpretation, at least over the years, based on what others say, it's the idea of if I go home at 4.30, can I not get calls from my boss?

And over the weekend, can we speak about it on Monday?

Because I want to have time to go to my kids soccer game.

I want to have time to have dinner with my kids without anyone being on the phone.

So the question I have is, why do you answer the phone?

What would happen if you didn't?

Because that's the question.

I don't know.

Isn't that the fear of missing out that you're going to miss out on a potential client, a potential deal, more productivity?

Oh, I love that you've brought up the word productivity because I love that word.

Because if you look at the word productive and productivity in general, it is serving to produce, which sounds kind of, okay, fine, yeah, serving to produce.

Then you look at the word produce.

That makes me super excited because it is produce and the word produce comes from the Latin and that means to be in service, to lead, to draw out.

So productivity is being in service, to lead, to draw out, to be alongside, to be, well, you could always say enough.

Back to enough.

To lead.

How are you in service to yourself?

Because that's what it is.

That is what to produce is, it is that idea that you are leading, you're showing up.

And if you are showing up and you're in service to showing up, and bearing mind, productivity doesn't necessarily just mean business.

Are you in service?

Are you showing up with your kids?

Are you showing up with your family?

Are you showing up for yourself with rest, serving to produce in service to yourself?

And no, sometimes I'm not.

Am I okay with that?

If I'm not, then what I want is to be productive with my family.

And that changes what actions I take.

Because we always obviously look at it from the narrow minded viewpoint of it just means as much office work as possible.

It's not more.

It's how are you showing up, like in service to produce in service to showing up to bringing forth?

Like, how do you bring forth yourself?

How are you in service to bring forth yourself for your family, for your kids, for your partners, your friends, your everything, and your work?

Yes, and your work.

Yes.

I absolutely adore my job.

I love every minute.

I love talking to people.

I love hearing stories of their life and helping them to figure out what works for them.

Because there's a moment when I work with people and they're just like, oh, and I can see the cogs turning at the top.

The aha moment.

Yeah.

Oh, I can do.

Yes, you can.

Well, this is so simple.

Yes, that's why I'm called a Simplicity Specialist.

Because it's enough.

That lights me up just as much as my little boy coming up to me and giving me a great big hug.

They are together.

They're not separate.

I love my work and I love my kids.

And you can love them both.

You don't just have...

It's not a binary decision.

Because if you have work-life balance, it's a binary.

Either you're doing too much of this or too much of this.

With an integration, they work together.

They are not necessarily in harmony.

It removes the need for compromise.

And when in a family unit, like my partner and I know, we've had those discussions, we both know what we want.

I know what my kids want and we have those discussions.

And sometimes I have to work more than spend time with them.

It is dependent on what I have.

If revenue is down and I need to make sure that I can provide for my family, then obviously I'm going to need to work more.

Do I want to?

Maybe not.

But I want to provide for my family.

I want to be in service to them.

I want to show up for them.

And sometimes that doesn't mean just sitting in the living room watching TV.

It means being in here and working.

They are all one and the same.

They're not separate.

Instead of work-life balance, work-life integration is more like it.

It is equally more real and realistic.

If you look at the facts of work and home, they all exist in one thing, your life.

Your life is the entirety of where you are and what you do.

You are always working in some way, whether it be in school, whether it be in preschool, or I can't think of the American word now, kindergarten.

But you're always doing some form of work in your life.

And I work.

This is my office, so to speak.

I'm in my office, but it's in my house, and I live, do I not?

Yep, I'm definitely alive right now.

And so because I'm alive, it's part of my life.

And even if I don't like it, if someone doesn't like doing something, they don't do it.

There's a reason people stay in work.

And wherever that be, the sucky thing of like, hey, we've got to pay the bills.

If I get to a point in my business where we can't afford to live, I'll go and get a job.

Whatever needs to be done to be productive in your family.

Exactly.

To be productive in my family, to be productive in my life, to be productive in my work.

Because they are all the same thing.

I'm just saying the same thing over and over again, just with slightly different work.

Integrating.

Yes.

So tell us a little bit about your podcast.

What are some of the key things that you cover?

Yes.

So The Simplicity Specialist, which is my podcast, kind of talks a lot about the way that you can work in a way that fits you.

It's mainly me rambling to myself, talking about how you can rethink the way that you think you should be, and be more you, and work with yourself instead of against yourself.

Because that's the whole messaging of like, how can you be productive in a way that fits you?

How can you be organized in a way that fits you?

Which is what we've basically all covered in this episode.

Yes.

Some people say that they don't even have the time to sit down and take the time to find out who they are, what they like, how they work.

I just don't see how I can fit that into my schedule.

I'm so busy.

We're always busy.

We are.

Is it also the idea of differentiating between what's important and what's urgent?

Yeah, to a certain degree.

It all stems back to what you want.

Like urgency and prioritization, like all of that is stemming back to what you want and what constraints you're willing to put, what things you're willing to put it into, what boxes you're happy to fit things into.

Because that's all that I'm talking about is changing the environment that you're in.

And I don't mean physical environment.

It's kind of like taking a telescope.

There's this whole massive space.

It's beautiful.

It's wonderful.

But you're taking a telescope and you're just focusing on one area.

There are other things around that, but you're looking here right now.

And that's, to me, what I do all of the time.

It is moving my telescope around.

And when I want to, I will.

And just knowing what I want.

You have such revolutionary ideas when it comes to all the things that we've been dealing with lately.

And before you go, please, first of all, give us some last words of wisdom.

Start from you.

You're not broken.

As simple as that.

That's my namesake.

Start from you.

You're not broken.

Words of wisdom from Jonathan Stewart, The Simplicity Specialist.

And Jonathan, before you go, if you want to learn how to be more self-aware and learn how to be simple, where can we find you?

You can find me on my website, which is simplicityspecialist.com.

I'm also on Instagram all of the time at simplicity-specialist, because I didn't get the other one.

You can find all the other social links on my website as well.

I'll put all of those on the show notes.

Thank you so much for being on our show today and for helping us rethink how we live, work, and being productive and enough.

Yes.

Thank you very much for having me.

It's been a pleasure.

Thank you, Jonathan.

Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review, and we'll be with you on the next episode.