Systems as Rituals: Don’t Let Your Business Burn You Out
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Jillian and I have been in each other’s orbits since 2019. It was one of those kismet encounters where you begin to chat and within moments have a clear sense that you are meant to know this person. Since we first connected via a Virtual Office Hours chat, we’ve supported each other, collaborated on many client projects, and have been each other’s #workwife to alleviate a lot of the loneliness that also comes with being a solopreneur.
We both have our ascendants in Virgo, so there is a way of working and a love of organization that we both hold dear. We also have both experienced severe burnout as a result of our Virgo-rising, people-pleasing, and perfectionist tendencies. We both hold this dichotomy of LOVING a system to work within, while also finding that we will buck any system in order to honor our nervous systems and current capacity.
Because of this, one of our favorite musings (and a common conversation topic) is how can we create more ease in HOW we are working so that the ideas we have are actualized, but the path to do so is imbued with a gentleness not often seen in traditional workplaces?
We do this for ourselves, and we bring it front & center to all of the work we do with our clients.
What we have seen over the years is that so much of our work is predicated on obligation and an externally imposed sense that it’s what we should do. Our hope, not only for ourselves but for everyone we are able to reach, is to shift away from this obligation-based way of working and instead embrace a purpose-centered style of work.
I strongly believe that where there’s truth, there’s strength. What I mean by that is that when we allow our truth to guide us, we will find a groundswell of clarity and power there. In order to tap into that inner truth, we have to find dedicated time & space to quiet the external world.
Jillian is driven by a belief that how we work matters, and if we desire to create the most impact, the way to do so is to work with intention.
So how exactly do we do this?
We’ve experimented with different processes for ourselves, and what we ultimately discovered is that instead of habitually following a structure—even if it was one we created ourselves that felt aligned at one point in time—we continue to question, iterate, and refine so that the systems we build are continually evolving to support who we are and what we need now.
For us, adding this bit of reflection (and therefore intentionality) is what transforms a rigid, unyielding system into a ritual where reverence is an inherent part of the process.
Rituals to Fortify an Intentional Way of Working
How Jillian Utilizes Ritual to Shift from Reacting to Responding
One of the largest parts of my burnout stemmed from feeling like I needed to respond to everyone immediately, everywhere, all at once. ;) It didn’t matter if it was a personal or work notification, when I got it, my body would immediately go into fight-or-flight mode. Someone could have been sending me an “I love you so much!” text or email, and it would trigger the same anxiety response throughout my body because I had taught myself to respond that way.
As I was coming back to work after an extended pause post-burnout, Amy Kurtetsky’s Patreon has been a huge resource for me. Within her community she shared this question from Jerry Colona: "How are you complicit in creating the conditions you say you don't want?"
That question hit me like a punch to the gut because my need to respond immediately to everyone and the resulting burnout was 100% my own creation. I could feel resentful and blame others, but it was my need to be seen as valuable and irreplaceable that led to me feeling constantly on edge waiting for the next notification so that I could be the quickest to respond.
So, I went through inquiry questions and reviewed why responding immediately became my reflex reaction and then really sat with how I wanted to create a new communication condition for myself and my work. What ritual could I create to re-teach my body’s response to notifications by actually allowing myself the space to respond vs. immediately reacting?
This is the ritual that was created in response to that inquiry.
When a new notification or email comes in:
I take 3 deep breaths.
I repeat the following mantra: “The fastest answer/response is not the best or right response.”
I wait a minimum of 5 minutes before responding to each email/notification/ask (including personal asks) that comes my way so that I can respond in a more intentional way instead of in a reactionary way.
This reminder is kept on my Notion dashboard so that I see it daily. It seems like such an easy ritual, but in busy seasons I will default back to immediate replies and reactions, so it is important that I see the reminder to come back to myself and create space around responding as often as possible and, slowly, but surely, responding in a more intentional way is becoming my new default.
How Maggie Protects Her Creativity
After a few years into business, when I finally hit my stride with a steady flow of client work, I felt myself drowning in perpetual context-switching. The urge to always reach inbox zero would pull me away from the deep work required for a particular client project. Then I found myself losing sleep over always feeling the need to catch up.
I knew something needed to change, but I wasn’t sure what… and certainly did not yet know how to make the shift.
So I decided to make a point at the end of every day to “rate” the day based on how I felt energetically, mentally, and emotionally. There’s a whole other long story here about why I chose this particular method but to keep it relevant to this blog post, the rating system I used was Lisa Frank stickers. Yup, that’s right! The bigger, brighter, shinier the sticker… that marked a good day. The great days were denoted with a cat or leopard sticker. (What can I say, I’m a cat lady to the core! 😹)
Over the course of a few weeks, I reviewed my paper planner, freshly adorned with Lisa Frank stickers, and began to see the pattern of what transpired on days when I felt more aligned versus when I felt more depleted.
A few observations came from that process. I discovered:
I was allowing myself to have client conversations whenever the client wanted them. It left me with no extended time to get into a creative flow that is needed for a lot of the client work I do (which was often relegated to weekends and evenings when it felt like the rest of my work world was quiet).
If I had more than 3 client conversations in one day, I would begin to feel overly tired.
I was not reserving any time on my calendar for my own work, so it wasn’t happening.
After seeing this laid out so clearly for me, I started to experiment. I felt called to create a structure around my calendar, where previously there wasn’t one:
I updated my scheduling system so clients could only book calls with me on Tuesday/Thursday, leaving MWF to be days I can work on my own business and also do the work from the client calls. :)
I kept an eye on my days, and once I had 3 meetings scheduled, I would block the rest of the day so no more could be scheduled.
I started using “buffers” after each meeting to write notes while the topic was fresh on my mind rather than hopping from one call to the next and losing the thread by the end of the day.
I now block Wednesday mornings to be my creative time where I can write and explore and continue to learn and grow.
I also decided to check my inbox twice a day (and I pause it at all other times) to help reduce distractions throughout the day and I can remain focused on what I’ve set out to do.
In those first few years of business, my calendar was a free-for-all. Once I had a better understanding of my energetic capacity and what I needed to not only perform my best but also to get my life back, I took a look at how to modify my calendar so that it was a system that could be in support of reaching my flow state.
Now, my calendar allows for the ritual of starting and ending my work days with time in my inbox, of keeping MWF as unscheduled as possible, of working for me rather than being something I feel beholden to.
Whatever this may look like for you and whatever challenge seems to be calling your attention, our hope for you is that you may greet it with a gentle curiosity. In so doing, may you even consider how introducing a touch of intentionality can shift the energy from have-to to want-to. May your work be purposeful — and full of ease.
Would you like some support in tapping into your curiosity to see what system you might want to translate into a ritual? Download this Notion template as a complimentary companion to this post.
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Photo credit: Creating Light Studio