EP 01: Why Everything Feels Harder Even If You Are Doing Well

We live in a world built for speed, so why do we feel more overwhelmed than ever?

In this episode, we break down the hidden cost of modern life: constant multitasking, endless notifications, and the pressure to always be “on.” Even with AI, convenience, and faster systems, our attention is more fragmented and our energy more drained.

Candace and Jackie explore how context switching, digital overload, and urgency culture are quietly destroying focus and increasing stress, and what to do about it.

In this episode:
• Why multitasking is making you more exhausted
• The real impact of notifications and digital overload
• How to reclaim your focus with single-tasking
• Simple habits to reduce stress and mental fatigue
• How to redefine productivity (and stop the constant rush)

If you feel like your brain never shuts off, this episode will help you slow down, reset, and take control of your attention.

Follow us on Instagram: @wtf_womentalkfinance | Youtube: WTF! Women Talk Finance | The Founders Office: foundersoffice.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I'm Jackie. I'm Candace. And this is WTF.

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Grab your coffee, wine, water bottle, emotional support snack, no judgment.

SPEAKER_02 0:10

And let's get into it. Okay. We're talking about why everything feels harder right now. Even if you're doing well. And what I'm gonna say doing well, meaning like doing well financially, doing well with your mental health in general, um, why everything feels harder right now. And first of all, I do you agree with that statement? I do.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

I do 100%. I think I am doing well generally. Like, and you and I have had this conversation, just like our friend chat. We're like, we're doing pretty well, but also everything feels hard right now. As the world gets easier, it's flung somehow harder. Like I'm not out, you know, milking a cow. Yeah, I I am turning butter, but I I do have my hydroponic gardening, so I am like, you know, foraging for my own food.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

I think that type of stuff actually is what's contributing to our wellness, like those things that we're embracing in our life that we're really proud of. And we've had plenty of conversations about how we're we're happy and we are proud of what we're accomplishing. But going to the hobbies are meant our granny hobbies. Yeah, like mine are full-on great grandma hobbies. Like, I'm not even a young hip grandma. I am I am old in my soul.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

I've leaned so hard into the granny hobbies. The gardening and the crocheting is pretty lit over here.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

I like dinner at 4:30.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

I love an early nice with a nice nighttime tea before bed. Oh my god, remember that dinner we had that was like at 7 o'clock, and we were like, is everyone on cocaine? Why are we eating so late?

SPEAKER_02 2:04

What is happening? I was like, I full on, I will not sleep tonight. Like, I'm just gonna be fighting my digestive system. There will be no sleep tonight.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

So beyond our granny hobbies, though, it does, and so I think about this because I do we do have it pretty easy. I've got delivery coming to my door. I barely, yeah, don't have to leave if I really don't want to. I have AI, I have all these things that are making my world easier, and things feel really challenging all of a sudden. And they it feels like it's some days it feels like walking through mud just to get through the day. What do you think that is?

SPEAKER_02 2:54

I'm gonna go with some really specific examples that I think are contributing. I don't know what your day looks like when you wake up, but I can guess it is highly scheduled. Meaning, like I wake up, actually, I don't even wake up and look at my calendar. I look at it the night before because I need to mentally prepare for the next day. And when I look at my calendar before going to bed, it's like, okay, what time am I setting the alarm? Because I've got things scheduled on the half hour, you know, from like 9 to 5:30. And I have to think through when am I gonna eat? What am I gonna eat? Am I gonna have a chance to go to the gym? What's not on my calendar that I need to schedule in and get done? Like, do I have to run documents to FedEx and get them out today? Yes. I'm in charge of one person. You're in charge of three humans and animals. Yes, or approximately, right? Yeah. And you've got a fantastic spouse, but but still, you're managing a household. You're managing a career, you're managing little lives, you're managing at least three people's schedules, if not more, and you're managing a household, which means appointments, um, school commitments, activities, sports, maybe a minute for you to like lay on the floor and have a meditation reset for two and a half minutes. During those two and a half minutes, I'm guessing you have 18 emails, some texts, and a hella number of WhatsApp messages come through. I know you do.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

I need to send you the picture too of like my floor time the other day. I opened my eyes because it was one of those I felt like I was being watched. I am, I'm gonna send you the picture and maybe we'll load it in here. I had my kids and the dog standing above my head, and I'm like, I had been down for maybe 30 seconds just trying to like reset my nervous system. Everyone needed a little something from me at that exact moment. Um, so I mean it was like hilarious. You know, and I think I think you bring up a really interesting point. So today's a great example. I have been on calls with you since what, 10:30? It's 2:30. Um, I've like not had a chance to go to the bathroom or eat. I quickly shoved down a shake um while on a call with a a client just a couple minutes ago. Um I'm curious if this world we live in of AI, speed delivery, of all of these things being like instant gratification, while they make our world easier. I'm curious if they're making our world harder because the expectation is everything immediately. And that's even of what I can give. So I have to maximize every second of my day because we're just all so used to everything being instant and maximized all the time.

SPEAKER_02 5:59

I think you hit it like nail on the head. We had a great um webinar today with a gentleman who is brilliant at AI. And one of his conversation points was expectations are changing. You used to ask an employee or a colleague, um, okay, I need I need that deck. When will you have it done? And the answer used to be end of the week. Now the expectation is AI can do anything in 90 minutes, so it should be ready in 90 minutes. But what that statement does is it puts that client, that deliverable as top priority and the sole and single thing that needs to get done. It puts it in a vacuum. You cannot treat when you've got 180 different clients and different deliverables, not everything can be done in 90, in 90 minutes, in the next 90 minutes. And there is an expectation that because things are moving so fast, you can do it and you can do it now. And that's fine if you have one client and one deliverable, no other priorities or commitments.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Yeah. I mean, and in some days, like a day like today, I haven't had time to do anything on actually my deliverables of what's expected of me. That's not just professionally, that's personally. That's for my own human self. I haven't been able to properly fuel hydrate. Um, I did get my workout in this morning, so you know, that's well, and when would those things happen?

SPEAKER_02 7:35

If you when do they happen? They happen at night, and they're gonna happen when you're multitasking because at night you've got your littles, there's homework, there's dinner, there's cleaning the house, there's laundry. Even if you can have all of your groceries delivered, you've still got all of the all of the to-dos. And so what happens is we end up multitasking, doing two, three things at once, skipping things that do actually allow us to calm down because calming down is like not that doesn't fit the program right now. That's not part of the narrative. We're ramping up, we're moving faster, we can do more all the time. And so, yeah, you're we're multitasking and it feels harder. I cannot consistently do two to three things at once all day long. It w I mean, I can, it wipes me.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Well, so I think that comes up to something interesting that you and I have talked a little bit about, and it's like the our devices becoming this, they're shoving information at us. So even when we're like taking down time, even when we're like watching a movie, how often are we watching something or doing one of our hobbies without feeling like we have to multitask, have this device in front of us, have something else going on? Oh, I'm I'm doing this, so I need to also be listening to an audiobook or listen, you know, doing something else. We need to constantly be doing multiple activities. Is this the time to kind of take a step back and single activity it? Try to single task. I love that. Single tasking. Let's single task.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

I want to be your accountability buddy for single tasking.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

So hard. I tried to like watch a little show just to decompress. And it felt I felt guilty. And I was like, well, I need to, there's things I need to be doing. So I'm and it's it's like, no, just single task for a minute. And even if that single task is rotting, lean into the rot.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

I don't think you rot. I don't, and actually, I think that narrative needs to change a little bit because we should be allowed to sit and do one single thing and have it not categorized as rotting.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Sure. Maybe it's not rotting. I'm trying to think of like a positive spin on it. Um, like composting or generating for something new.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

I I love you. I don't love that because it implies that you're garbage or like food discard. And I will not have you known as a rotting banana peel. Okay, I love you too much.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Don't do that to my friend. Look at how hard I'm leaning into my garden life, though.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

It's there, it's there. I'm gonna pull up I'm single tasking here. This is all for our conversation. But this is again why we're doing well, we're happy, we're finding success, and it feels so hard. Um, in the workplace, digital workers, and I don't know what that means, but I'm I'm gonna take it as someone who works at a computer, someone who works digitally or remotely, or even if you're working in person at a job site, like if you're on a computer, you're a digital worker. Digital workers are switching contexts up to 1200 times a day, increasing cognitive load and fragmenting attention. If we break that down into eight hours of work, that is 150 times per hour, which is more than twice a minute. Meaning we're not giving ourselves one minute of focus ever throughout a day, not one minute. And I think about that in my own work day, and I'm like, that's that's true. If you're in a meeting, how many times every 30 seconds are you still in the meeting and present, but also thinking about the meeting you just had that you didn't have time to wrap up before you hop to this one? The grocery list, again, where are the kids right now? Like I would love to know what that how it feels in your body and how you notice it throughout the day. How many times we're pulled into different contexts?

SPEAKER_01 11:50

It gave me like a little bit of like elevated heart rate when you were saying that because I do feel that way. I always have a bunch of tabs open and I'm doing a disservice to myself, to everyone else, because I it's so hard to be fully present. It's really hard to be present. And one of the single task efforts I've made recently is I took notifications off my phone completely, which makes it hard to function. I will admit uh anybody who texts or emails or calls me is probably not thrilled. But I took every single notification off my phone because I was feeling this that's an interruption all day long of something text peeping, etching, just constant chirping. And it's just breaking breaking my focus. And the hardest part is what my family's getting at the end of the day is a shot nervous system. Because then I'm trying to do the dishes, which should be a task that I actually can mentally multitask through and carry on a conversation. But instead, you know, my kids are needing me and I'm like, I just can't, I can't do this task. And and so they're getting this like shot mom just having a hard time to do a basic task where everybody else throughout the day got where I'm able to switch hats. But I I've done it now, like you said, 1200 times.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

I'm saying you're being raked, you're being raked all day, and there's nothing left at the end of the day. When you're pulled in that many different directions, when you're asked, there's a lot of like everyone's talking about, you know, ADHD. It's like we're over-stimulated. There's so much stimulation, there's so many demands on our attention all day long. And it's yeah, let's talk about some solutions.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Well, yeah, so I think I don't know if I'm sure this is an actual movement and not something we just invented. But if it is, we fully want credit. So we have to do that. Single tasking. Single tasking. Single. No, I know it's like a thing. But being super intentional about single tasking is, I think, something that a lot of us could benefit from and really putting an effort into. I'm going to stay hyper-focused on this. And I don't think these are any sort of like, wow, we're coming up with such an innovative idea. These are literally tools that exist out there that are, you know.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

I also feel like it's hard to implement tools on your own. You can do them for yourself. But so for instance, we have a good opportunity because we work together. And a lot of this is it occurs during our workday, right? And I think for most people it probably does. Or even if if you work from home, if you work in an office member, if even if you don't work, it's like modern life demands that whatever you are doing with your day. I shouldn't say if you don't work, if you don't work in the traditional sense, you're still working all day, right? That's just modern life. Um, but there's the benefit for you and I of being like, we are doing this together, we're gonna help others do it, and we're gonna like require it for our working environment. Because I can identify 15 hot instances in any given afternoon where we could both be accountability partners for each other to single task.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

You can have a board, investors, advisors, and still have nobody you can actually talk to about what is really going on. That is not unusual. That is the founder reality, and we step in right there. I'm Tom Powell, and at the founder's office, we're proud to sponsor Women Talk Finance.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Uh yes, I think there's a lot of um company meetings where you and I are side texting. Wait, of course we do it to your obviously.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

Um, what I was getting so upset about is I was saying, like, are you gonna require that we stop texting during meetings?

SPEAKER_01 16:27

No. God no. I will get rid of all the other distractions, but that can't stop. That is the best part of our meetings, is our side dialogue.

SPEAKER_02 16:38

Here and there, we have a pretty powerful gif for the given situation, and I'm not committing to giving that up.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

There are so many times where the gift gods just really understand the moment, and yeah, it's pretty great. So, but yeah, now there's that's a multitask, I think, uh that's worthy of it.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

Thank you. I do think we could go through the WhatsApp and Candace and Jackie could leave several threads.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Yeah. I think taking while in convenient, I would say taking the notifications off of my phone. Now, I should say, like, yes, I do have kids, that those notifications are there. So, like, if the school called me, it's gonna come through. Um, but I took off the notifications for my email. I took off notifications for almost every text, every app, everything that seems pressing. Because as Jackie says all the time, we are not, we are not brain surgeons, we are not um, we're not fighting fires. What we do, it's not super urgent. Yes, our clients need things right away, and we do those things.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

Um, but I'm better served being focused. That was really well said, and thank you for the reminder on that. This is something I wanted to have a conversation about. There are careers where people choose urgency. You are an EMT, you are a brain surgeon, a heart surgeon, a trauma doc in a NICU. You're you you base your life on urgency. I specifically did not choose urgency. I chose the opposite, and I stand by that choice. I am very responsive. We are responsible. We are here to help, but I am going to challenge the statement made by that individual that just because AI can, that the whole expectation should change, just because AI can does not mean that the ultimate deliverable, like all timelines get sped up for anything and everything. Because again, that statement assumes one deliverable in a vacuum with nothing else scheduled and no other priorities, no, no other tasks. And so, yeah, I would love to challenge that. I also I turn my phone does not ring. Um, like you said, you put I feel bad for people who text you or call you. My phone will not, does not, has not rang since 2013. It won't make a noise. So if I answer your phone call, it's because I'm sitting here like this, and not in a meeting, by the way. Like, or not driving somewhere, or not, you know, whatever. I don't answer my phone.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

I can't I think of how like I am trying to raise my kids, and I'm trying to raise them in a way that has less stimulation because that's how we grew up, right? Like we went outside and played, and you got to just play and be present and like be in the dirt. And with all of the technology, all of the things, it's constant entertainment, it's constant. I mean, even TV now, remember you used to have to wait till Friday to watch your favorite show. TGI was on, and if you missed it, you missed it. Yeah, TGIF. So if you missed it, you missed it. Now it's like there's so there's so much coming at us, and then we can't figure out what to watch. It's like, I don't even know. I can't, I can't find anything. Um same thing with there used to be an excitement of you'd order something through a catalog, and it took a week and a half to get to you, sometimes longer. Now, if something takes more than one or two days shipping, you're like, ew, why? Why is but I have time. I know. But that expectation then came onto us too. So those expectations of constant availability, constant delivery, it's on ourselves. And so, how do we limit that? And how do we reserve that for the things that are most important? Because the people I would rather be constantly available for are getting the worst version of me some days because I've been constantly available for every other person. And I can argue the other side of it is then does that make me not as valuable in the workplace if I'm not as available, if I'm not as if I'm not completing a hundred tasks a day. It's a it's it's different it's really um an interesting time. I think it's it that's why in the world of ease that we live in, it's feeling like a grind.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

And I think the most beneficial thing one can do is say, like normalize it and have the conversation like this and think about it and go, This isn't just me. It's not that I'm struggling and taking on, you know, more than I can do. It's like this. Societal framework, and we have to acknowledge it and say, okay, here's where I'll participate, and then here's where I know myself and I know what's enough. To your question about the tasks, are you not as valuable if you're not doing a hundred tasks in a day? No, like no. And that's how we can support each other. Same thing. If anybody came to me and was like, How how do we get out of this? How do we back out of this? I think it's working together to acknowledge it is a problem. And it's not just ADHD and it's not AI. It's something we have to be very intentional about, saying, Yeah, I'm gonna single task. I'm gonna single task this today.

SPEAKER_01 22:44

Mm-hmm. And fiercely protecting each other's boundaries as fiercely as we because it's hard to protect your own. So it's easier when, and you did this for me last week. I did this for you.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

I was so excited for this.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

I did. You were on it. Um I and to the point where my husband noted, so I went on vacation with our with my family last week, and my husband noted we've been together 21 years, and he goes, I think that's the first time you've ever gone on a whole trip and not taken a phone call. Okay, but also, oh I know, I know I felt the same. I was like, wow, you're right. And oh, wow, yeah. And I was able to do that because you were it's like I would I felt like I owe it to Jackie. She's been working so hard this week to block everything out for me. I can't jump on this call. And I tried, and you said you sent back a in all. I wrote, you're out.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

Like, why, why would you be trying to join this?

SPEAKER_01 23:50

You're out. I know. It was like the last day, too. And I was like, I should join. And then you were like, no.

SPEAKER_02 23:57

No, and I almost it was it was the emotion, the charge behind it was like anger on behalf of myself and anger on behalf of you as a friend and knowing you and how long we've worked together. You asked for one week to do a spring break with your kids, and you gave a heads up like a month in advance. Like this week, yeah, I'm I'm going with my kids, and it's a goal to not take phone calls and not be on my laptop and not doing and not I I want to show them a mom who's present, right? You're very intentional about that. So I put it on my calendar right away because I was like, I will not violate this woman's intentional focus time. And it made me angry. People were like, you you had said you gave everyone for an a week ahead of time. People were trying to schedule meetings. You're like, well, I'm out next week. Let's do it the following. I'm out next week, let's do it the following. People asking for you during that week after you'd said you were out. I was like, no, did you not hear her? Like I I a demon like growled inside me, like a very fierce protector, not a demon.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Like a demon hunter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A demon slayer.

SPEAKER_02 25:05

I was like, we and then that's exactly the emotional charge. Yeah, there were lasers. And the emotional charge was because it's frustrating because this shouldn't have to be such a thing. You shouldn't have to work so hard to guard one week of time where you're not doing phone calls.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

And have I set a tone that Candace is out, but she's not really. So I've set a history of 20 years of like, uh yeah, I'm out, but like it's fine. Just go ahead and call me and I'll I'll answer.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Did you not have calls? Did you not take calls like at when you were about to give birth? Like I literally as you were having your kids?

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Yeah, yeah. I had a meeting that um the morning both days. Well, I'm sorry, no, scout was early, or like early in the morning, but um Ozzy on Christmas Eve, full on, had a meeting in the morning, and then um I was like, oh, I think I'm in labor. And it was Christmas Eve too. But at the time we were in a really busy season, and then somebody had to come to the house. I had her, and um uh we had to do some docs, and so we needed to have somebody come notarize some docs, like probably 15-20 minutes after I had her.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

Ducks relative to having a child?

SPEAKER_01 26:29

No, they weren't. They though they had nothing to do with not a birth certificate.

SPEAKER_02 26:33

It was something else.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Not a birth certificate. No, yeah, it was like work docs, and like Steve still thinks he laughs about it, and but like logically, it made sense. We were we were all together. I was there, Steve was there, my dad was there. Like, we all had to sign something and get it notarized.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

So it made sense, yeah. Stop. Um, okay, so here's stomach. Here's the takeaway and the tough love. We not just for you, but for me, for myself, we do this to ourselves and to all of our sweet listeners. We're all doing this to ourselves, and we're doing it to ourselves. We're gonna get ourselves out of this as well, just by having the like this normalizing conversation about it and saying we need to decide to be done.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Can we all just like take a deep breath for a minute and like make a commitment to each other? Yes. That like we will make an intentional moment of the day, even if it's five minutes of like I'm going to single task. I'm gonna single task for five minutes, I'm gonna set the timer and I'm gonna single task for five minutes. I'm not gonna let my brain slip to another task. I'm not gonna let my I'm gonna give myself this gift of five minutes of just doing this one thing. Another new thing I've been doing, which is awful that I've been doing, like just decided to start this. But I will sit in the moment, and sometimes it's as silly as like eating dinner. Like just, I'm like, I'm just gonna take a minute and I'm gonna be present and I'm gonna really enjoy my food. And I'm gonna think about my food, and I'm gonna think about how it tastes, and I'm gonna think about how many bites I'm like how I'm chewing. And like just trying to and you obviously are the yogi and lead meditations, and I know this is like basic, basic level of awareness, and it's so hard.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

It's so hard, and it's so easy to talk about it, and it's not easy to remember and allow yourself to do it. So I love that. That's a huge win. That's a really I'm gonna try that. Yeah, I'm just gonna sit and like I'm actually gonna sit because I'm eat most of my meals standing or driving or doing something else. So I'm going to sit and eat tonight. That's gonna be my goal.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Can you sit at a stoplight and just sit and not have stimulation, not have the radius? Red goes to green. Don't close your eyes. Just sit and just think about your breath for a second while it while it's a red light, you know. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 29:16

I have an idea for the work context for anyone that's feeling this within like a career framework. Um, a lot of us go back to back to back, meeting to meeting to meeting. And if a meeting runs over, Candace, you and I are talking about this, if a meeting runs over by one minute, you not only show up to the next minute, to the next meeting late, but there is zero time to make a transition. There's zero time to make a list of what your action items are, what you are supposed to think through next, digest it, like have an intelligent thought and process it and like you can't even remember, right? Because you're onto the next thing. And so this goes to that context switching. We're context switching so often. I would love in a work setting for meetings to be scheduled for 25 minutes and to be like ruthless about their end time. Like, we need to wrap this up. If we're having a great conversation, let's get back on the calendar to continue it. But like this needs to end on time because I need a minute to like process it, remember what we talked about, look at my action items and next steps and things I need to do, and then transition into the next one.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Yeah. And I think even outside of work, we need to be more in control over our information receptors and the things that are clawing at our attention all day long. Like you manage your social media content. You you get to decide if you want to have that coming at you all day. You get to decide, and it's an addiction, it's so hard. And I think the speed at which we take in that information right now is we're swiping through news, swiping through content, swiping through all of this information. Put the same boundaries around that. Um there's like this 24-7 just information dump all the time. And then the last thing is I saw I said something like 32% of people struggle with decision fatigue. Like basic decision making. Basic, like what to eat for dinner or what to wear. And it's because you've made 1200 other decisions, you've shifted gears all day. You should be and that's a very important piece of information for yourself, for your human self, right? Make that a priority decision versus some of the other decisions, right? I think sometimes like those things that should be important to me go to the back burner. They're like basic, you know, hierarchy of need, decisions, but they go to the back burner, and I'm prioritizing all these other things that are drawing my attention all day long. And I really should be paying more attention to all those other things that kind of seem like they easily go on autopilot.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

Yes. I'm gonna help you be a single tasker if you'll help me be a single tasker.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Oh single task.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

Minus our chat. Yeah, that's not going away.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

If you tried to get out of that, I would find a way to get back in. Yeah. Join us on the single tasking train. Be our single task accountability partners.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

And putting lip gloss on, which is our cue that it's in between shows. Okay, that was today's episode of WTF.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

If you laughed, learned something, or felt a little less alone, make sure you hit follow.

SPEAKER_02 33:07

And send this episode to a friend who might need it. Women don't gatekeep, especially not the good stuff.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

We'll be back next week with more real talk, more stories, and probably more over sharing.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

See you next time on WTF.