Stop Being the Employee In Your Own Business

• Why hard work isn’t always what pays off (and what actually does)
• How Genevieve turned “earning” rest into simply taking it
• Why rest, play and a planned mental health day are part of productivity, not a break from it
• The seasons framework I now use instead of rigid yearly goals
• Why none of us know how much time we actually have, and what that means for how we show up today

“I really was that believer of you need to do more. And I don’t believe that anymore.”

“Hard work and doing more is not necessarily productive. It’s not creating always the right output.”

“Maybe I don’t need to do more. Maybe I need to strip it back, be more intentional and more focused on what really matters.”

“There was no room for me. There was no room to play and to just be.”

“It’s less mom, it’s more me.”

Expert

What if the belief that you need to do more to succeed is the very thing holding you back? In this episode, Anne Rajoo sits down with fellow podcaster and productivity coach Genevieve Pool for an unscripted conversation about work life integration, and the moments, sudden loss, burnout, a whole year that felt like nothing got done, that broke the hard-work myth open for both of them. They talk honestly about protecting your energy instead of chasing more, why reducing work stress starts with noticing where you’ve stopped making room for yourself, and how planned mental health days and quarterly planning became their own kind of sustainable energy in work. It’s a conversation about being intentional, redefining success, and the self compassion it takes to admit that rest isn’t something you have to earn.

TRANSCRIPT

Genevieve Pool: Okay, so today we’re talking about productivity and everything that comes along with it. I was wondering, what’s something that you used to believe about success or productivity that you no longer believe? So what did you debunk for yourself?

Anne Rajoo: Oh yeah, that’s the deep question. But basically, I really was that believer of “you need to do more.” If you’re not succeeding the way you hoped, wished, or planned, you’re not working hard enough. You just need to work harder, manage your time better, set smarter goals, and find a way to get it done. That used to be my belief, and I don’t believe that anymore.

I don’t think hard work is necessarily what pays off. Of course, there are time periods and seasons where things are intense, like right now. But I also know that next month my children are going to be on holiday, for example, so that’s the season when things slow down. Hard work and doing more isn’t necessarily productive. It doesn’t always create the right output, I’d say.

What about you? What comes up for you when you hear that question? Do you not believe that anymore?

Genevieve: Well, before we go back to me, I’d like to hear how you debunked that for yourself. Is there something that changed your opinion or your view on it?

Anne: Well, there’s a whole experience of burnout underneath it, of being like, heck, this is hard. Nobody told me that adulting is such a struggle.

And then you throw motherhood into the mix. It was just this uphill battle of trying to do everything, to be an amazing mom, to be a successful employee back then, and then obviously you throw the business into the mix and try to be a successful entrepreneur too.

It just felt so exhausting. And I also felt like there was nothing left for me. There was no space for me as a person. There was no space for anything I used to like before children, before the business. Hobbies didn’t exist, all of that.

And then at some point my mom passed away really suddenly and unexpectedly, at only 56. I remember these conversations my mom and my dad used to have about retirement, and how they would do all these fantastic things once they retired. “56, oh, just four more years, then we’ll do this, then we’ll travel.” And then that never happened for her.

It was really this moment of, oh shoot, this whole saying of “life is short, tomorrow is not guaranteed,” it’s real. And I just felt like in that moment I was just working and doing and battling through my days, and that doesn’t feel good. Life should feel exciting and fulfilling right now, because I don’t know if I’m going to see my own days of retirement, suddenly have all this time, and who knows what.

So yeah, that’s the long story, short two-minute summary.

Genevieve: Yeah, but you’re totally right, because who knows if you’re going to see that period of time. My grandpa, he passed away, at the time of recording, two days ago, and he turned 88. He had a lot of time and he really enjoyed it, he kept doing his hobbies and everything until quite a well age, I’d say. But in some cases you only turn 30, 40, 50, 60. You don’t know. There’s always a clock ticking, and I feel like we tend to forget that.

Anne: Yeah. We were just in that state, like I said, the survival state. Just wake up tomorrow and do the same thing again, Groundhog Day, and time just passes by. I’d often find myself looking back like, whoa, what did I actually do the whole year? What have I achieved? It didn’t feel like I’d achieved anything.

But then when I dug deeper, I was like, actually, hold on, I did this, I did that, wow, amazing. But the feeling was very different. The feeling was always this sense of, I’m not doing enough, I’m not working hard enough, I’m not progressing enough, I don’t have enough money, this constant sense of never being enough and always being behind. I found that really disturbing.

And again, there was burnout, there were health issues, because I wasn’t taking care of myself, because there wasn’t enough time to exercise, there wasn’t enough time to eat well. But then once I changed that, there was enough time, because I had to let go of a few things that didn’t actually matter, or things I’d told myself were important.

When I really looked into what life I wanted to live, what really matters to me, it wasn’t that. It was different things. And that’s really when it clicked: maybe I don’t need to do more. Maybe I need to strip it back, be more intentional, and more focused on what really matters. That’s really when it changed, because it stopped being about finding more time to cram in more things or managing my time better. It became a completely different way of looking at productivity.

Genevieve: Yeah. And that’s also what you help people with, right?

Anne: Yeah, it’s all my own journey that led me to this. I never intended to talk about productivity, let alone help people with it.

But it really was me sharing and talking about it openly, my own experience, and suddenly I had especially women and moms coming to me like, “oh, me too, me too.” That’s when it hit me, oh wow, first of all, I’m not alone, I’m not crazy, it’s not just me who doesn’t know how to live and work.

It was really this realization that a lot of women carry this same belief of not being enough, and maybe there’s a way we can change that. When I offered solutions, those solutions were really just me trying things out and understanding what stuck for me, and generally learning about productivity, neuroscience, habit formation, beliefs, that sort of thing. Then I started sharing it, and people actually wanted to pay me for that. I thought, well, maybe that’s a business opportunity.

That’s when my business turned around into something different. I was running a virtual assistant agency, which was more systemized, I was helping people with productivity but from a systems perspective. Then it switched over to a more holistic view, and that’s what I do now, because it’s a lot of just lived experience, sharing, talking, and trying to find ways to help people with that.

Genevieve: Yeah, exactly. And there’s no one-size-fits-all solution in this. I do feel like we both help people with kind of the same type of thing, and it’s just beautiful to look at these humans and see, okay, what fits for you?

Because for me, it kind of was like, yeah, I believed I had to earn rest before. I have several brands, one that I run with a co-founder and one I run on my own, so that’s a lot of work. I always believed I had to go on and on and on, and that I shouldn’t communicate when I was feeling terrible that day, or that something bad had happened.

But actually, people really appreciate that. Right now, with one of my businesses where I run a business club and people come together to connect and work together, I told them, “hey guys, my grandpa passed away. Until further notice, all our activities will go on as planned, but besides that, I’ll be offline. I’ll only take on the things that feel good for my energy right now, like the talk with you, the coffee meeting with them on Thursday, things like that. For the rest, I’m just going to do a little bit of admin and really grant myself some grace and rest, because I actually do deserve it.”

I do deserve to take a nap, and I do deserve to be there for myself, especially in a hard time like this, because my grandpa, frankly, was one of my very best friends, and I took care of him for years. I know he would also want me to rest. Sometimes, when I was sitting with him in the elderly home, where I couldn’t do anything except just be with him, which is already magical, he would tell me, “Jen, please go home and rest a little bit, you work so much, you’re writing your manuscript right now, please go rest.” And I’d say, “no, no, no, I can rest here with you. This is actually a great opportunity for me, because I get to hold your hand.” So we would sit hand in hand and rest together. I could only sit down, because what can you do in the elderly home when your grandfather is bedridden, you can’t do anything, so we rested together. I feel very grateful for that.

And now, because I’ve learned all that, I’ve talked about this in one of my previous episodes too, I have a planned mental health day each month, so I don’t have to think about it every four weeks on Wednesdays. And I think you can also check a fact here for me, because Wednesday is psychologically seen as the hardest day of the week, right?

Anne: Yeah, exactly. For me, Wednesday is a short day because of school, so I use it as overflow, like buffer time and creative thinking. So, yeah, I like that.

Genevieve: So every four weeks, on a Wednesday, I get to sleep in, I have nothing planned, and I just listen to my body. I go, okay, what do I want to do today? If that’s taking myself out for lunch, I’ll do that. If it’s just sitting at home doing nothing, I’ll do that. If I want to clean my whole house, I’ll do that. It’s planned, I don’t have to “deserve” it anymore, it’s systemized. No one can book any calls with me on that day.

I feel very grateful that I started doing that, I think for the past seven months now, and it really recharges you to give yourself that break during the week. Even if it’s only a mental health hour, we forget to just be, sometimes.

Anne: Absolutely, I can’t agree more. At some point I read this book, something called Peak Performance. [Note for host: exact title unclear on the recording — please confirm.] It was a really good book, and I thought, “performance, yeah, I need to perform better.” That was in the early stages of this whole journey.

Eventually the book talked a lot about recovery, and it kept bringing in the athlete example. When I was young, I was an athlete and I wanted to become an Olympic athlete, but my parents moved to an area where they had nothing, so I had to give up that dream. It’s such a thing for me, I really wish I’d had the opportunity to be that athlete.

But when this book spoke about recovery and how athletes approach it, I thought, yeah, true. They taught us that it’s part of your performance, you’ve got to recover so your performance stays at a high level. I needed that reframe for my logical brain, to understand that it’s not useless or lazy, it’s part of being productive that you also recover, because that keeps your performance at a high level.

That’s sort of when I thought, okay, I need to figure this out, because like you, I also felt like I needed to earn it. It didn’t come naturally, I needed to finish everything, tick every box, and only then could I maybe put my feet up. It’s very different now. Even with my children, it’s quite cute, when you have kids they sort of hold the mirror up to you. They’ll say, “Mom, I think you need a break here,” when I’m feeling a bit agitated, or I say I’m tired, and they’ll say, “I think you need to have a little rest.” They wouldn’t have said that a couple of years ago, but they do now. So, yeah, rest is part of productivity.

Genevieve: Yeah, exactly. But why do you feel like so many people put that pressure on themselves? We’re doing so much right now, especially with technology and everything, we’re pressuring ourselves so much. Help us out.

Anne: Well, I think there are different reasons. It’s really about how we’ve been taught about productivity. That model we work in goes back to the shift from farming into production, into factories, and all those changes in how we live and work. That was very much performance-driven and output-driven. We’ve kept that model, but work has changed, and the way we live has changed.

We don’t necessarily go to a factory anymore, we don’t have those specific working hours, and technology has enabled us to work from anywhere, all the time. Then we’ve got technology like social media pulling at our attention too. All of this is different, but deep down we still believe that to be successful, to contribute to society, we have to be productive, because if we’re not, something must be wrong, some value we’re not providing. I think that’s one of the social aspects of it.

Then, when we talk about women in general, and you’re a few years younger than me, but I grew up in this era of “you can do it all, you can have it all, you can be ambitious, you can have the family, you can do everything.” So there’s this belief I grew up with that if I don’t do everything, then something’s not right, then I’m not ambitious, I’m lazy, and so on.

On top of that, technology has made everything move so fast, and we see all these possibilities. The people who listen to your podcast and my podcast are usually ambitious, they have big dreams, they want to enjoy creating. And then we end up in this loop of always more, always doing, and we don’t really learn about the “being.” We don’t really discuss what’s enough.

I think it’s a whole connection of things that, over the years, has manifested into this sense that we’ve got to be productive, we’ve got to do, and it needs to result in something. That’s another part of it too, not everything we do has to have a result, or something tangible, this whole money story of needing to earn more. I’d love to see that change, where it’s more like, I can also create something without any reason, without any financial or material reward, just because I can and I want to.

But yeah, we could probably talk for hours about the reasons we’ve ended up in this place, so that’s maybe not a very specific answer, and a little vague, but it’s just so many factors that come together, I think.

Genevieve: I think you’re right. Also, the reason you don’t need a reason to do something is kind of like the play element in life. I do feel like we’ve forever forgotten how to play, because we’re like, “oh, I need to be an adult, I need to be serious, I need to do this and that, I need to take care of my kids, or my job, or the elderly,” and we don’t grant ourselves time to play.

I love playing. I love drawing random stuff, I have this yellow piece of paper, no one sees it, but I just started drawing daisies and I’m filling the whole paper up, just playing around. Or every morning, with my yoga, I play with my own existence, with my own being. These are things you have to consciously incorporate into your life at first, so they become a subconscious thing, and you realize you’re entitled to some playtime.

Because if you’re only in overdrive for work, or only focused on caring for someone, or only focused on being productive, how are you going to give your brain time to relax? And if you don’t, you become so much less creative and productive, I think you can confirm this too. If I’ve rested well over a weekend with my partner and my family, and we’ve had some fun, that Monday I want to work, I want to create things for the community, I want to create mental health content. But if I don’t take that time for myself, I feel terrible. I also don’t know about you, but I have huge Monday blues.

Anne: Yeah, exactly. This is really when procrastination kicks in. I was asked the other day, “how do I beat procrastination?” And I said, well, I don’t think it’s necessarily that you need to beat it. It just shows up, especially when your energy isn’t there, when your brain is in overdrive, like you said, and when you haven’t rested or played or enjoyed life, because that’s really when things get hard. That’s when our brain finds all sorts of reasons not to do things, because it just doesn’t have the capacity or capability to do that thing right there. So I don’t think it’s necessarily always procrastination, it’s a physical and mental manifestation of what’s going on underneath, which maybe just needs a slower pace.

Genevieve: Yeah, just some good rest times. Grant yourself some play too, with your partner. We were talking about it just yesterday, and I said, “I love how we get to play with each other, how our inner children get to show up, how we just get to be silly together.”

We also have very serious moments, especially now with my grandpa’s passing, that’s a big, serious deal. But my inner child is showing up way more, she’s like, I need to take up some space, I need to be here, I need to be tickled, I need to do some fun stuff. And I told her, I love that we just get to be silly together, because that actually creates space within my being, for myself.

Because whenever, and I don’t know about you, but whenever there’s no space for myself, I feel locked up. I get sad, depressed, I feel lonely.

Anne: Yeah, exactly. This is really when, going back to the story I shared earlier about burnout, one of the big parts of it was that I felt like I couldn’t be me. There was no space for me. My life itself, there was nothing wrong with it, I was doing the things, I was working, I had my beautiful child, I had everything I’d sort of wanted and needed. But I didn’t feel good, because there was no room for me. There was no room to play, and to just be. Every minute of the day was filled with something that needed to get done, some responsibility, someone else’s agenda I needed to take care of.

It really starts with this feeling of, hmm, but what about me, who am I, what do I want to do? I think you described that beautifully, and I think it’s probably really undervalued in society nowadays.

Genevieve: Yeah, no, definitely. I do think for your listeners, they already know this, but maybe not for mine. You talk about peaceful productivity a lot, but what does that entail in your business?

Anne: For me, that really means shifting from this busyness, this constant doing, to more intentionally looking at the things that truly matter, that feel aligned, that you enjoy doing too. I always focus on things where you have this zone of genius, where you get into flow, because the more we work in that space, the better we feel. The more we bring ourselves, going back to this whole conversation about who you are, what you like, how you feel better, into our work, the better our work and results automatically become.

It’s really about understanding: what do you actually want? What sort of life do you want to live? The people I work with particularly often want a more simple life. Yes, they have goals, but they’re not necessarily the women chasing the biggest empires. A lot of the women I work with are mothers and caretakers, and they want that balance between family, a life that feels good, joyful, and playful, and has the things they need, but not necessarily chasing some big shiny thing. There’s nothing wrong with the women who want that, but it’s not who I attract, because this is about peace, about feeling calm in the storm that life tends to be.

It’s about really knowing what you want, what needs to be done, what expectation society has put on you, or you’ve put on yourself, and realizing maybe it’s not actually true that you need to do all these things. Maybe you can run a business in a very different way from what you’ve seen in the world, or learned from other people, and find your own way. In that, you can still feel a sense of peacefulness while you do.

I’m still, you know, the doing and being productive is important to me, it makes me feel good, but at the same time, it can’t be that we all burn out all the time, because in the end that’s not good for us physically, and it’s not good for the people we love. My children don’t want their mom to be that exhausted, patience-less person. That’s not what they need, they need a mom who’s available, who’s present.

The same goes for you, and your grandfather. For you to be present in those moments when you’re sitting with him, if in your mind you’re running through your to-do list, or already checking the clock because you have somewhere else to be, it’s a bit of a disservice to the people we love, because then we don’t value the time we have with them. Going back to the very start of this conversation, we just don’t know how much time we actually have.

Genevieve: Yeah, I think that’s what comes up for me with this question. That’s gorgeously answered. And yeah, forevermore, we’ll have a ticking clock. I’m tired, Friday is the funeral, we’ll be okay.

Now I wonder, how do we both live intentionally? How do we implement that for ourselves? What’s a ritual you have? How do you create space for yourself right now? Because that also tends to change through time, your body and your brain are both telling you, “oh, this year we’re going to do A, B, C,” and the year after, “we’re going to do X, Y, Z.” But how do you do that now?

Anne: I love that, you’re actually asking the question that’s really on my mind constantly. I’ve been leaning more and more into the seasons of my life lately, just really understanding what season I’m in, and adjusting to that.

For me, as a mom, and moms can relate to this, but I’m sure others can too even without children, my children are a little bigger now, so I feel like I’m getting a bit more of my life back. It’s less mom, it’s more me. That’s a different season, so I feel like I can adjust again to a different rhythm, different things I value.

For example, I took back up my running. I used to run almost every day before I had children, then I stopped, I felt like there was no time or energy to go for runs. Last year, I had this sense of, oh, I actually really want to start running again, so I shifted my schedule, I created space for running. Now I’ve run my third half marathon, and I’m just like, I’m going to go for this. I love it, this is me, this has been dormant for years because it was a different season of my life, but now it’s coming out again, and it feels so good, I’m so excited about it.

Even in my business, right now it’s really in an expansion phase, and that requires different energy, a different way of thinking and doing things for me. So again, it’s about really looking at what I’m actually doing, how my schedule is, I’m working a little more than I probably did last year, because again, my children are bigger, they don’t need me as much, they have activities after school where I don’t have to be there. It’s about constantly, continuously taking time to look at how your life is going at the moment, what season you’re in, and where there’s maybe a shift needed from the things that are important. Are they still aligned with your values? Are they still aligned with your goals? It’s about regularly looking at those things.

For the past few years, I’ve been doing that through what I call quarterly planning. Every quarter, I take a good chunk of time, at least two hours, sometimes more, to look at everything I’ve done in the previous quarter. How does that stack up against the goals I set at the beginning of the year? Do those goals still match, are they still valid, or do I want to change them, because things change. The one constant we know is that everything will change. Then I look at what’s coming for the next quarter.

I didn’t used to do that, ever. It’s only a few years ago that I thought, hold on, I need to break this down into more manageable chunks. The whole approach of setting goals at the beginning of the year and only looking at it again at the end of the year never worked out for me, I always ended up somewhere completely different from where I’d planned. Then I’d feel bad about myself, like, I just don’t hit my goals, what is that, all this goal-setting, and it really just felt like, again, feeling behind and not good enough because I hadn’t hit my goals.

Now it’s quarterly planning, really intentionally taking time to look at what’s happened and what’s coming, and at what feels good, what feels right. No one ever told me I should listen to my feelings, it was always, no, you need to be strategic and logical, manage your time. I do that very differently now. So, yeah, I hope that answers the question.

Genevieve: Yeah, that is gorgeous. I do a yearly plan for my businesses too, but then I also do a quarterly check-in, okay, where am I headed, because otherwise you’ll deviate on everything. I also have a monthly planning ritual. In my kitchen there’s this huge poster, like a blackboard, and every last Sunday of the month, except for last Sunday, for obvious reasons, I sit down with my planning board and look at all the appointments I have coming up, my whole schedule, and ask, okay, what’s coming up for me, how am I feeling about this? In my intentional way, I also block out things in my calendar, so sometimes, if you want to book a meeting with me, it takes a while before you can.