Joe Mosely on the day the grind broke, the three tactics that stuck, why RevOps people fail by over-indexing on the wrong things, and running ad hoc and roadmap work as two streams
Why this conversation matters — and who should spend the hour.
Joe Mosely, VP of GTM Strategy and Operations at Coactive AI, opens with a quietly contrarian position: there is nothing wrong with work-life balance as a goal, but it fails as advice. Every time someone suggested it, he was already underwater, and his first thought was easier said than done. Balance sounds like a destination — a steady state where everything is weighted evenly — and telling someone in a hole to get out of it is not actionable. What changed things was realising he had spent years trying to solve an energy problem with his calendar. Once the question became how to consistently do his best work, rather than how to fit more in, things started moving in a positive direction both personally and professionally.
The break was gradual. Over an extended period he had replaced sleep with caffeine and worked evenings and weekends, on the theory that working harder now meant not working as hard later. The day he remembers came in a previous role, working from home: competing RevOps projects, deadlines, reactive support requests and interpersonal conflict on his team, ending on the couch beside his wife, who could tell it had been a bad day before he spoke. When he said he would fix it, she told him she didn't know that he would, because it had become a pattern. That was when he accepted that change needed specific tactics rather than intentions.
Three tactics have stuck for the last few years. The first adapts Google's 20% rule: instead of a passion project, he reserves 10 to 20% of his week to step back and check whether projects are in the right execution order and whether each planned approach has the right depth for what the business needs at its current stage. That check matters most in RevOps, where he argues people struggle more often from over-indexing on the wrong things than from not working hard. The second is a reasonable amount of sleep and regular exercise as non-negotiables, because the cost of losing them — to communication, critical thinking and how you show up — builds slowly and silently. The third is therapy, which he believes everyone should use when things feel fine, not only when they fall apart.
Anthony Enrico asks whether this is a luxury earned through the grind. Joe partly agrees: earning your stripes matters, and a long-time mentor taught him that early on people remember how you show up — presence, listening, accountability and the quality of the work. Anthony's frame is marathons, not sprints: everyone needs a beast mode button, but burnout comes from holding it down all year. Both treat balance as seasonal — a new role or career pivot can justify being unbalanced, provided there is a plan to come off it.
The operational core is prioritisation. Joe says saying no was never the skill he had to build; demanding early bosses forced him to learn ruthless prioritisation instead, including what level of quality was acceptable. Today he runs two work streams in one project management tool — ad hoc requests and ideas on one side, roadmap projects and initiatives on the other — so quick-twitch execution cannot silently overcommit the roadmap. He pairs that with communication: RevOps has to share objectively what the data says about performance, and the same honesty applies to its own trade-offs and backlog. The episode closes on that discipline applied to life. With his first child, a daughter, due in November, he is training for an October half marathon now, expecting fitness and sleep to be the trade-offs later.
The load-bearing ideas, each with the business implication and who should care.
Joe has no objection to balance as a goal. His problem is practical: it was always suggested when he was already underwater, and it describes a steady state where everything is evenly weighted rather than anything to do next.
Why it matters: Telling an overloaded operator to find balance does not help them. The useful replacement is a question they can act on this week.
The shift came when he stopped asking how to fit more into his calendar and started asking how to consistently do his best work. Everyone has roughly the same hours once sleep, meals and other non-negotiables are covered, so cramming more in has a ceiling.
Why it matters: Instead of adding hours, he steps back and asks what matters most and what the negative implications would be of trading something else off — which is how he found time he didn't think he had for fitness and for experiences with family and friends.
Over an extended period he replaced sleep with caffeine and worked evenings and weekends, believing that working harder now meant not working as hard later. On the day it cracked, in a previous role, his wife could tell it had been a bad day before he said anything — and when he said he would fix it, she told him she didn't know that he would, because it had become a pattern.
Why it matters: Promising to figure it out was part of the pattern. For Joe, change only started once he put specific tactics in place.
Joe adapts Google's 20% rule — roughly one day in five for a passion project — into a weekly block, sized between 10 and 20% depending on the week's priorities and bandwidth, for looking at every project and initiative from a higher level.
Why it matters: The block exists to answer two questions: are projects in the right execution order, and is the planned approach at the right depth to produce the outcome the business needs at its current stage of growth?
Joe sees struggle in RevOps come more often from over-investing in the wrong work than from a lack of effort. You want scalable, effective systems and processes, but every deliverable has a level of execution that is optimal for the business in its current state.
Why it matters: Right-sizing depth to company stage is a sustainability decision as much as a quality one — and Joe says he still grapples with it every day.
When you stop moving, work more and sleep less, most people start replacing sleep with caffeine — Joe included. The result shows up in mental capacity: how you communicate, how you think critically and how you show up.
Why it matters: He describes the damage as slow, silent and consistent, which is why it has to be protected rather than traded away when work gets busy. Anthony's gloss is that even with fewer hours, you are probably operating with higher leverage.
Joe advocates for everyone doing some form of therapy — not only when things are going badly, but when they feel more or less fine and under control. He values an objective professional perspective on why you prioritise and make decisions the way you do.
Why it matters: The grounding built in calmer periods becomes a useful tool when overwhelm does arrive. Anthony adds that many people need to externalise what is going on before they can make sense of a big decision.
Asked whether sustainable habits are a luxury earned through the grind, Joe partly agrees. A long-time mentor, one of his previous bosses, told him nobody expects deep experience early on; what people remember is your voice, presence, active listening, communication, accountability and, above all, the quality of your work.
Why it matters: The grind still has a place: you need the ability to put in extra work and hard problem-solving when it is needed, and to do it under control.
Anthony's framing for his own team is marathons, not sprints. Everyone needs a beast mode button — or a NOS throttle — they can activate when it matters, but nobody can hold it down for the entire race.
Why it matters: Burnout comes from running the button all day long, all year long. The capacity to push is valuable because it is used deliberately.
Anthony argues that the first six months or year of a new job, or a career pivot, may call for being unbalanced while you learn — as long as you know you have to come off it. Joe agrees it is seasonal, and says extra work early in a career, when people usually have fewer responsibilities, pays real dividends later.
Why it matters: The failure is treating one mode as permanent. Paying your dues for a year or two is different from doing it for a decade.
Anthony's forcing function is the to-do list that would take ten years if you worked every hour of every day. Joe says saying no was never the skill he had to build: demanding early bosses gave him more than was physically possible, so he learned to decide the order to tackle work in and what level of quality was acceptable.
Why it matters: Ruthless prioritisation — choosing sequence and acceptable quality — is the transferable skill, and it still works where saying no is not an option.
Joe, currently on Asana after Trello, Monday and Jira, separates ad hoc work — unexpected tasks, support requests, ideas that come up in meetings — from the projects and initiatives on the broader roadmap, and brings both into the same project management tool. Whether the ad hoc side needs a formal ticketing system depends on the size and current state of the organisation.
Why it matters: Quick-twitch execution has to be visible against the roadmap, or you discover too late that you have overcommitted for the next week or two.
Joe borrows a RevOps recruiter's description of the function as truth tellers: RevOps has to share objectively what the data says about the business and how departments and individuals are performing. The same applies to its own workload — here is everything on the plate, how it is prioritised, and what is going into backlog.
Why it matters: Consistent communication keeps leadership on the same page, and Anthony notes that once the details are laid out it is hard for anyone to answer with 'just work harder'. Joe's warning is that the lack of communication is what sets you up for failure.
With his first child, a daughter, due in November, Joe is putting extra time into cardio training for an October half marathon now, expecting fitness and sleep to take a hit later. His boss's framing on parental leave was that he will want time with his daughter just as much whether she is one month or eight months old — which shaped how he is thinking about using the leave period.
Why it matters: Joe expects much of his planned prioritisation to be flipped on its head, and says that is okay. Anthony calls it another forcing function to prioritise both work and life deliberately.
Every framework Jimmy names, defined and time-stamped.
Reframing overload from 'how do I fit more into my calendar' to 'how do I consistently do my best work', on the basis that everyone has roughly the same hours once non-negotiables are covered and cramming more in has a ceiling.
Joe stepped back to ask what mattered most and what the negative implications would be of trading something else off. He credits the reframe with improving his physical and mental health and his effectiveness at work.
Joe's three consistent practices for doing his best work: a weekly step-back block of 10–20% of his time, sleep and physical exercise as non-negotiables, and therapy used proactively rather than only in a crisis.
He prefaces them by saying he has not figured it all out, but that these three have remained consistent over the last few years and moved the needle for him.
Google's 20% rule dedicated roughly one day of a five-day week to a passion project. Joe's adaptation reserves 10–20% of each week, depending on priorities and bandwidth, to step back and review all projects and initiatives from a higher level.
The review checks whether projects are in the right execution order and whether each planned approach has the right depth for the outcome the business needs at its current stage — the antidote to over-indexing on the wrong things. Joe says he encountered the original rule at Google earlier in his career.
Anthony's framing that everyone needs a beast mode button — a NOS throttle — they can activate when it matters, but that holding it down all day and all year is what causes burnout.
Joe agrees, pairing it with his mentor's point that you need the ability to turn on the grind when needed and to do it under control.
Treating balance as seasonal rather than as one mode to optimise in perpetuity: a new role, the start of a career or a career pivot can justify a period of being unbalanced, provided there is a plan to come off it.
Anthony suggests the first six months or year of a job, or a year or two learning a craft, but not a decade. Joe agrees and adds that early extra work, when responsibilities are usually lighter, pays real dividends later.
Separating ad hoc work (unexpected tasks, support requests, ideas from meetings) from roadmap work (projects and initiatives), then bringing both into one project management tool so they are planned against the same timeline.
The goal is to balance quick-twitch execution with tracking progress against the roadmap and strategic direction, so you notice before overcommitting for the next week or two. Whether the ad hoc side needs a ticketing system depends on the organisation's size and state.
Pulled verbatim. Copy or share any of them.
“Every time in the past that I have heard the idea of work-life balance or someone has suggested work-life balance to me, usually when I'm already underwater, my first thought is easier said than done.”
“It sounds like a destination, like there's this steady state that you arrive at where everything is weighted evenly and distributed, and everything is fine, but that's never usually the case.”
“When you're in a hole and someone's telling you that you need to get out of it, it's not really actionable advice.”
“What actually changed for me wasn't finding the balance. It was realizing that I'd been really trying to solve an energy problem with my calendar and the hours that I have in a day.”
“I was subconsciously making the decision to replace sleep with caffeine, to work evenings and weekends”
“She called me on it, and she said, 'I don't know that you will, because this has been a pattern.'”
“In RevOps, I think it is a lot more common for people to fail or to struggle, not because they're not working hard, but often because they over index on the wrong things.”
“It's a negative impact that I think builds slowly and silently, but consistently”
“I support and think that everybody should be doing some form of therapy, not just when things are going bad or feel overwhelming, but actually in the opposite when things feel more or less fine and under control.”
“Even if it's less hours, you're probably operating with higher leverage when you're there.”
“Nobody's really going to expect that you're going to have a really significant depth of experience, but what people will actually remember is how you show up every day.”
“Hey, we're running marathons, not sprints.”
“I think what happens is people are running their NOS, running their beast mode button all day long, all year long. And then that's when things start burning out”
“It pays real dividends in the later stages of your career if you do put in that extra work earlier on.”
“If I spent every single hour of every single day working on all of these things, it might take me 10 years to get this done.”
“Ruthless prioritization, they say, as opposed to needing to learn how to say no.”
“You need to be able to balance quick twitch execution in your role, at the same time ensuring that you're tracking your progress against your roadmap and your strategic direction.”
“It's the lack of communication that can really set you up for failure.”
“I'm sure a lot of the way that I plan to prioritize things is going to be flipped on its head, and that's okay.”
“It's another really good forcing function to ruthlessly prioritize your life.”
The playbook, split by the seat you sit in.
The same conversation, filtered for RevOps, pipeline/marketing ops, and customer ops.
The original practice of dedicating time to a passion project, which Joe adapted.
Sized to the week's priorities and bandwidth, and used to review project order and depth rather than for a passion project.
A weekly step-back block, sleep and exercise as non-negotiables, and therapy before you need it — consistent for him over the last few years.
Ad hoc work and roadmap projects, managed together in one project management tool.
The window in which untracked ad hoc work can leave you overcommitted if it is not planned alongside the roadmap.
Anthony's illustration of how long a full project list could take working every hour of every day — the realisation that forces prioritisation.
Anthony's framing of when being unbalanced can be the right call, and why it cannot last a decade.
Joe is prioritising cardio training now, expecting fitness and sleep to be the trade-offs after his daughter arrives.
Auto-extracted and linked into the knowledge graph.
Joe's employer, where he is VP of GTM Strategy and Operations. Introduced as the multimodal AI platform helping enterprises turn their video and image libraries into searchable, monetizable intelligence.
Origin of the 20% rule — dedicating roughly one day of a five-day week to a passion project — which Joe says he encountered at Google earlier in his career and adapted into a weekly step-back block for reviewing priorities.
Co-founder of LeanScale and host of The LeanScale Podcast.
Joe's current project management tool, which he calls pretty good, and where he is working to bring ad hoc requests and roadmap initiatives together as two work streams.
One of the project management tools Joe has used, named alongside Monday, Asana and Jira.
One of the project management tools Joe has used, named alongside Trello, Asana and Jira.
One of the project management tools Joe has used, named alongside Trello, Monday and Asana.
Generated from the conversation, marked up for search and AI extraction.
Joe Mosely, VP of GTM Strategy and Operations at Coactive AI, says there is nothing wrong with balance as a goal — the problem is that it fails as advice. It tends to be suggested when someone is already underwater, and it describes a destination: a steady state where everything is evenly weighted and fine, which is rarely how work goes. When you are in a hole, being told to get out of it is not actionable. What worked for him was replacing the goal with a question he could act on: how do I consistently do my best work, rather than how do I fit more into my calendar?
It is the mistake of responding to exhaustion by trying to fit more hours in. Joe Mosely spent an extended period replacing sleep with caffeine and working evenings and weekends, believing that working harder now meant working less later. Everyone has roughly the same hours once sleep, meals and other non-negotiables are covered, so cramming more in has a ceiling. The alternative is to step back, look at everything objectively, decide what is most important, and ask what the negative implications would be of trading something else off. Joe credits that shift with making him more effective at work while freeing time for fitness, family and friends.
Google's 20% rule set aside roughly one day of a five-day work week for a passion project. Joe Mosely adapts it for RevOps by reserving 10 to 20% of each week, depending on priorities and bandwidth, to step back from the work itself. In that block he reviews all his projects and initiatives from a higher level: are they in the right execution order, and is the planned approach at the right depth to produce the outcome the business needs at its current stage of growth? He treats that last question as the key, because RevOps work easily drifts into more depth than the business needs.
According to Joe Mosely, it is more common for RevOps people to fail or struggle because they over-index on the wrong things than because they are not working hard. Operators want to do their best work and build scalable, effective systems and processes, but every project has a level of execution that is optimal for the business in its current state. Over-investing past that point consumes time and energy without matching value. Combined with lost sleep, caffeine and evening work, the cost to communication, critical thinking and how someone shows up builds slowly and silently until something breaks.
Joe Mosely argues yes. He is an advocate for everyone doing some form of therapy, not just when things are going badly or feel overwhelming, but when they feel more or less fine and under control. His reasoning is that an objective professional can help you see why you operate, prioritise and make decisions the way you do, and help you become the best version of yourself. The grounding built during calmer periods then becomes a useful tool when you do feel overwhelmed. He counts it as one of the three tactics that have consistently helped him avoid burnout.
Joe Mosely separates RevOps work into two streams. Ad hoc work covers unexpected tasks, support requests, and ideas raised in meetings that you are asked to scope or should proactively pursue. Roadmap work covers the projects and initiatives in your broader plan. He brings both into one project management tool — he currently uses Asana — so quick-twitch execution is planned against the same timeline as strategic progress. Whether the ad hoc side needs a formal ticketing system depends on the size and state of the organisation. Without that view, it is easy to discover you have overcommitted for the next week or two.
Yes, for a season. On The LeanScale Podcast, Anthony Enrico and Joe Mosely agree that balance is seasonal rather than one mode to run forever. The first six months or year of a new job, the start of a career, or a career pivot can justify putting in extra hours to learn, and Joe says that early investment pays real dividends later. The condition is having a plan to come off it: a year or two learning a craft is different from a decade. Anthony's image is a beast mode button that everyone needs, but that causes burnout when held down all day, all year.
Click any chapter to open it in the transcript.
Broken into chapters, searchable, verbatim from the audio. Speakers inferred (not diarized).
0:00 That's when it actually started to move things in a positive direction for me.
0:05 Joe Mosley is the VP of GTM Strategy and Operations at Coactive AI,
0:10 the multimodal AI platform helping enterprise turn their video and image libraries into searchable, monetizable intelligence.
0:19 Joe, you said something that really stuck with me during our prep session that the goal isn't actually balance,
0:25 which is a pretty contrarian thing to say out loud in 2026.
0:29 So what's wrong with balance as the goal?
0:32 Usually when I'm already underwater, my first thought is easier said than done.
0:36 The clear tactic is I am a big advocate for mental health and particularly therapy.
0:45 I support and think that everybody should be doing some form of therapy, not just when things are going bad or feel overwhelming,
0:57 but actually in the opposite when things feel more or less fine and under control.
1:04 Yeah, and I think anyone who's been really ambitious in their career,
1:09 I feel like they have that moment or some people listening maybe haven't had that moment yet, but it might be on the way.
1:16 Even if you're cutting back on sleeve, you need to make time to eat.
1:19 You need to make time to do certain things that are really non-negotiable.
1:22 So everybody's left with pretty much the same potential amount of time.
1:26 Instead of thinking about how to cram more in, what do you do instead?
1:32 I try to step back and look at things objectively.
1:36 I try to think about what is the most important for me to prioritize and focus on.
1:50 Joe, you said something that really stuck with me during our prep session that the goal isn't actually balance,
1:56 which is a pretty contrarian thing to say out loud in 2026.
1:59 So what's wrong with balance as the goal?
2:03 Honestly, there's nothing wrong with balance as the goal.
2:07 My grappling with it is a little more practical rather than philosophical.
2:13 So every time in the past that I have heard the idea of work-life balance or someone has suggested work-life balance to me,
2:21 usually when I'm already underwater, my first thought is easier said than done.
2:26 It sounds like a destination, like there's this steady state that you arrive at where everything is weighted evenly and distributed,
2:37 and everything is fine, but that's never usually the case.
2:41 And when you're in a hole and someone's telling you that you need to get out of it, it's not really actionable advice.
2:51 So what actually changed for me wasn't finding the balance.
2:57 It was realizing that I'd been really trying to solve an energy problem with my calendar and the hours that I have in a day.
3:07 Once I reframed the question and kind of shifted my perspective to think more or question more, how do I consistently do my best work instead of how do I fit more into my calendar,
3:22 then that's when it actually started to move things in a positive direction for me, both in my personal life and physical health and mental health, but also in my career professionally.
3:38 I think one way to think about it, there's a limiting factor to how much time everybody has. So everybody has the same amount of time and you need to at least sleep a little bit, even if you're cutting back on sleep.
3:52 You need to make time to eat. You need to make time to do certain things that are really non-negotiable.
3:57 Everybody's left with pretty much the same potential amount of time. And I think you can only cram so much in. Instead of thinking about how to cram more in, what do you do instead?
4:11 I try to step back and look at things objectively. I try to think about what is the most important for me to prioritize and focus on and what would happen, what are the negative implications if I traded something else off that's on my list.
4:32 I think that's the way that at a high level, I've been able to become more efficient and effective in my job and still be able to make the time that I didn't think I had before for things like physical fitness or for fun experiences in creating core memories with my family or friends.
4:59 Yeah, and I think a lot of people, maybe early on in their career, really, especially if you don't have too much experience in the field, you're really making a trade on time.
5:10 So you may have more hours than everybody else just because you don't have as many responsibilities. So you trade that time for output.
5:18 I think the way you framed it is there was a point where the grind just stopped working. What was that experience like? Was there anything in particular that happened? And how did you start to reframe how you approach stuff?
5:33 Yeah, there was a particular experience or story that I remember, and it wasn't something that just happened overnight. It was over an extended period of time where I was subconsciously making the decision to replace sleep with caffeine, to work evenings and weekends,
5:59 and to try to get ahead, or at least the way I thought about it was that I was working harder now so that I wouldn't have to work so hard in the future.
6:13 The particular experience that I remember as I was thinking about this when things started to feel like they were breaking was in a previous role, I was working from home, and I was just having one of those days where everything was going wrong, and I was totally overwhelmed.
6:34 I was buried in a mix of RevOps projects that I was trying to balance, deadlines, reactive support requests, interpersonal conflicts with my team, and through all these things I was just becoming more and more stressed throughout my day.
6:54 And I was sleep deprived on top of all that running my caffeine. And at the end of my day, I came out of my office and sat on my couch in the living room where my wife was.
7:06 She said something to the effect of bad day, and the way that she said it was the norm. She knew that I had already had a bad day before I said anything to her.
7:27 She told me that even before, you know, commonly, even before I see her, or before I would leave the office that I was working in all day, she could literally feel my stress and feel me having a hard time.
7:48 And when I started to follow the same pattern in that moment, where I would say that I'm going to fix it, I'm going to figure it out, even though I didn't really actually have any sort of a clear path or plan to do that.
8:05 She called me on it, and she said, "I don't know that you will, because this has been a pattern." And it was hurting her as someone, as the most important person in my life.
8:20 It was hurting her in the same way that she was having a hard time, it would hurt me. And there was nothing she could really do anything about it, and I knew that I had to.
8:29 So I had, you know, started to miss different experiences that really mattered. And I think at some point, you know, I just realized that I needed to actually come up with some tactics and put some things in place.
8:48 Otherwise, no change was actually going to happen. But that particular experience, that particular workday was the point in time, as I recall back when all this started to crack for me.
9:02 Yeah, and I think anyone who's been really ambitious in their career, I feel like they have that moment, or some people listening maybe haven't had that moment yet, but it might be on the way.
9:14 What did you end up changing? What was the impact and the effect, as tactical as you can be, though? I don't know if it was a schedule change, anything that you did that helped move you through that moment.
9:28 Yeah, I think I'd want to preface all this in saying that I absolutely have not figured it all out. I haven't figured out the solution to all this, to being able to show up exactly the way that I want to for work every single day.
9:48 Things are unexpected and they say the only constant life is change, and you're going to have days where everything seems to be going wrong.
9:58 But some of the tactics that I did start to put in place that have remained consistent for me over the last few years and have really moved the needle for me are the following three.
10:13 So the first was earlier on in my career when I was at Google, Google had this thing called the 20% rule, and the idea was that you would take 20% of your work week, or roughly the equivalent of one of your five work days, and dedicate that 20% to a passion project of your choice.
10:40 And my variation of that rule, or my adaptation, is that I consistently try to reserve, I'll call it 10 to 20% based on the week and the priorities and the bandwidth to step back from the work I'm doing, and to look at all of my priorities and projects and initiatives from a higher level.
11:07 By doing that, I'm able to think if the order of my projects is set up in the right execution order, if I'm prioritizing things in the right way.
11:21 And within the projects and deliverables themselves is my approach, what my planned approaches to all these projects, the right level of depth or going to produce the right outcome that the business actually needs in its current stage of growth.
11:38 I think that last part is, is actually pretty key to making this an effective thing.
11:45 In RevOps, I think it is a lot more common for people to, to fail or to struggle, not because they're, they're not working hard, but often because they over index on the wrong things.
12:05 And it's something that I still grapple with every day, because you want to do your best work. You want to implement things the right way you want your systems and processes to be scalable and effective, but at the same time, there's a certain level of execution
12:24 and a certain outcome for everything that you're working on that is actually the optimal version for the business in that current state. The second thing was my health and prioritizing as a non-negotiable, a reasonable amount of sleep, as well as physical exercise to be part of my routine.
12:49 Because without that, when you start to become stagnant, and you're not moving, you're not exercising, you're working a lot, and you start to sleep less, most people end up starting to replace their lack of sleep with caffeine, myself included.
13:10 And then the negative result of that is your mental capacity and how you show up, how you communicate, how you think critically, all of those things are impacted. And it's a negative impact that I think builds slowly and silently, but consistently, the more sleep that you accumulate and the more you don't take care of your physical and mental health.
13:39 And the third thing that I think I would mention as far as a clear tactic is I am a big advocate for mental health and particularly therapy.
13:54 I support and think that everybody should be doing some form of therapy, not just when things are going bad or feel overwhelming, but actually in the opposite when things feel more or less fine and under control.
14:12 I think it's really valuable to be able to take time to reflect and hear objective feedback from a professional to help you see a different perspective for how you operate, why you might be prioritizing things the way that you are,
14:36 why your decision making is the way that it is and just have a objective guide to help you become the best version of yourself that you can be.
14:50 And that gives you a level of grounding in your mental health that becomes a really useful tool when you need it and when you do feel overwhelmed.
15:02 I think those are really good tactics and really good advice for anybody to hear, taking the 20% to step back, focusing on your physical health to help you stay efficient and effective throughout the day.
15:16 Even if it's less hours, you're probably operating with higher leverage when you're there.
15:23 And then the mental health aspect, there are a lot of things that people have significant mental blocks on or they need to externalize things that are going on to even make sense of how they should approach something or make a big decision.
15:37 And the way you framed it, yes, not just when you feel like things are going wrong or things are falling apart, use it as a way to optimize. I have a question though because I hear a lot of people kind of go through this perspective change.
15:59 Is this a luxury that you earned through the grind earlier in your career? Or if you were to go back, do you think you would have been even more effective, more successful if you had been following these practices that you just laid out?
16:13 Partly yes, I think that is valid. And it's important to earn your stripes, so to speak, earlier in your career and to develop a real work ethic.
16:25 For me, a particular example that comes to mind is in one of my earlier jobs, where I actually met my first long time mentor of my career, who's one of my previous bosses.
16:41 Something she shared with me was that earlier in my career, nobody's really going to expect that you're going to have a really significant depth of experience, but what people will actually remember is how you show up every day.
16:58 Your voice, your presence, how you're actively listening or communicating, and your accountability. And I think most importantly, the quality of the work that you produce, even if it is not business critical or you're not managing a massive amount of responsibility.
17:22 Those things stuck with me from earlier in my career.
17:28 And I think you need to be able to have the ability to turn on the grind or to put in the extra work and hard problem solving when it's needed. And you need to be able to do that under control.
17:57 The way we frame it at lean scale, because I thought that people know any agencies are pretty notorious for burning people out and just loading them up with an unreasonable amount of work.
18:11 So I always let people know, I was like, Hey, we're running marathons, not sprints.
18:16 But everybody does need to have a nice mode button that they can activate doesn't mean you hold it down.
18:21 Or maybe I'll use like fast and the furious. Like you have the NOS throttle. You can't hold it down the entire race, but when it's important and when you need it, you need to have that button ready.
18:31 But I think what happens is people are running their NOS, running their beast mode button all day long, all year long. And then that's when things start burning out, things start coming off off the rails a little bit.
18:44 Yeah. Yeah. I'd agree with that.
18:48 But yeah, I think, you know, early in the career, showing up, having poise, keeping the quality of your work really high.
18:57 And also, sometimes you have to put in the extra hours just to learn the job.
19:00 So I think maybe knowing, okay, where am I at in my career? Where am I at in this experience?
19:07 And do I need balance in the next six months or the first year of this job?
19:13 I don't know. I would argue maybe not. Maybe you need to be a little unbalanced at that time and then tee it up.
19:20 But no, like, okay, but I got to come off this, you know, train eventually.
19:26 So I have a plan for it when I can settle in and take care of those things. Do you see this more as like a seasonality thing rather than a one mode optimization that you can run in perpetuity?
19:39 Yeah. Yeah. I do see it as a seasonality thing. And I also do agree that earlier on in your career,
19:49 at some point, as people progress through their careers, they're going to hit this fork or this perspective shift and realize that they don't have enough hours in the day to do what they want to.
20:01 Across these three things of their professional, their physical and mental and emotional health and then their relationships.
20:10 Like, there's just not enough hours in the day. But earlier in your career, you naturally have less responsibilities. You often do.
20:20 So with more time, if it becomes a question of, do you put more of the free time that you do have into going out and dining out and just spending time with friends?
20:35 Or do you double down earlier in your career and try to learn as proactively and as much as you can? I think it can really, it pays real dividends in the later stages of your career if you do put in that extra work earlier on.
20:56 Yeah, I think it does, too. And I think a lot of people just don't, they think of it as like, oh, there's one optimization mode, best way to do something.
21:05 But it might be, hey, you're early. Yeah, you're going to pay your dues and do the thing. But you can't do that for a decade.
21:13 Maybe it's a year or two learning a craft and really diving in. Or if you're doing a career pivot, like, okay, well, then we're going to have a season of not having a lot of experience to arbitrage in this.
21:23 And I'm going to have to put in extra time to just learn and pick it up. But I think something that's really important for everyone to experience is when you open up your to-do list, you open up your project list, everything that you would want to do.
21:42 And you realize if I spent every single hour of every single day working on all of these things, it might take me 10 years to get this done. So it's physically impossible for me to get everything done on the list of things that I would want to do.
21:56 Because then I think when that happens in your career, I think that forces you to start, okay, I can't just do everything. Now I need to prioritize and figure out which ones drive the biggest impact, and then start focusing on those.
22:11 And I have to get really, really good at knowing how to say no to things.
22:16 Was that a skill that you felt like you had to work on how to say no to things and take things off your plate?
22:25 I don't know if it was a skill. I think that's a common skill that you need, and you need to develop it, especially later in your career. For me personally, I don't know if that was a skill that I had to make sure I developed because it came a little bit more naturally from more demanding
22:46 bosses earlier in my career. That would put more on my plate than I knew was physically possible to be able to execute against within the given timeline without the option of, you know, even if I tried to say no.
23:05 So I had to just prioritize. I learned organically, I guess, how to prioritize against the work that I needed to execute and decide what level of quality was acceptable across those projects for initiatives and what order I tackled them in.
23:25 So the prioritizing, I think, is like really the bigger part for me. Ruthless prioritization, they say, as opposed to needing to learn how to say no. That is extremely important, though.
23:40 Do you have any frameworks that you like to follow to prioritize things? How do you go about making that decision and then communicating it to a demanding leader that's expecting everything to be done?
23:55 Yeah, yeah, definitely. Work in progress for me. It always is. But I think if you have a particular project management tool that you like, that's a must-have for me.
24:08 I've used a lot of them from Trello to Monday to Asana to Jira. Right now I'm using Asana. It's pretty good.
24:19 And the way that I utilize it or that I am trying to get to is I think that there are two different work streams.
24:31 One is what I'll call ad hoc. This could include unexpected things, support requests, ideas that come up in meetings that you are directly asked to or maybe just proactively should go and scope out or action.
24:48 And the other work stream is what you could consider like your projects and initiatives that are part of your broader roadmap.
24:59 And I think a project management tool lets you bring those two things together. So that way, whether you need an actual ticketing system or not on the ad hoc side, it depends on the size of the organization and whatever the current state is there.
25:15 But you need to be able to balance quick twitch execution in your role, at the same time ensuring that you're tracking your progress against your roadmap and your strategic direction.
25:32 You just need to come together because at some point you're going to realize if you're not currently managing how those things fall together in your timeline and in your calendar that you may have overcommitted to more things than you could handle within a particular week or two weeks.
25:51 Yeah, I think age old adage of under promise over deliver and then just being realistic like hey, these things take this amount of time.
26:00 Can't do it. We can maybe get more resources if you want to invest more and maybe I can bring in people to help or whatever it is.
26:06 But I recommend doing these. They're going to drive the biggest impact move the needle the furthest.
26:11 So what do you think? And then I think laying it out like that it's pretty hard for somebody to come back and just say, well, just work more or just work harder as long as you show them all the details behind it.
26:25 Yeah, yeah, it's definitely.
26:32 What was I going to mention. There is, there's a rev ops recruiter names David quarter month, he was on another podcast that I was listening to and I liked a phrase he you referenced, related to or about rev ops in particular, he said that in rev ops we are
26:55 preventable truth tellers. And that really resonated with me because in rev ops you need to be able to objectively share what the data is presenting the performance of the business how different departments throughout the go to market or individuals are performing in
27:18 different roles. And, you know, from that data, it's it's it ties back to the project management prioritization in the same way it's like you are presenting, here's everything that's on my plate, and here's how I'm planning to prioritize it, you're the trade offs.
27:35 Here's what's not going to be done in a particular, you know, this next timeline or on this roadmap like what's going into backlog. And when you do that and you maintain consistent communication with leadership, and they're on the same page with you, and you're
27:50 setting yourself up for success. But it's the lack of communication that can really set you up for failure. And again, this is one of those things where I'm working at that every day.
28:02 Because things have been flow, and like right now I know I still need to go in and update my project board and my sprint is on.
28:14 One thing that's going to compress time, a little bit more.
28:18 You have a baby on the way in November, congratulations, by the way I'm really really excited for you and your wife and just starting off your family.
28:27 But anticipating. Okay, there's less abuse mode time, there's going to be more responsibilities outside of work, anything that you're getting ahead of or preparing for to make sure that you can still deliver at work while taking care of home base.
28:44 Yeah, yeah, and thank you. I'm super excited.
28:48 I think about this is going to be our first. So there's there's a ton that I am not ready for that I'm not expecting.
29:00 There's a ton that will be surprising and overwhelming in a great way.
29:06 And I'm sure a lot of the way that I plan to prioritize thing is going to be flipped on its head, and that's okay.
29:12 I think, right now, what I am doing is trying to spend some extra time prioritizing my physical health and my cardio training for half marathon.
29:23 And that's going to be in October, and our baby girl is doing November, so I'm intentionally doing that because I am assuming and expecting that on the physical fitness side.
29:37 I'm going to have to. I'm not going to have the time to, to train as much I'm going to want to be as a non negotiable really present with my family and for my baby girl, and I think that means deciding now and expecting that I'm going to make trade offs on a couple
30:01 of things. When it comes to my work. Thankfully, there is, you know, of course parental leave, but my boss framed it up, I think in a really honest and good objective way which is that when I was thinking about how to use my parental leave period, which
30:19 is that whether your baby is one month or two months or six months or eight months. I'm going to want to spend that time with them, just as much, whether it's earlier or later in this first year of her life.
30:36 So, I'm going to need to, to figure out, you know, like what, what is going to be deprioritized and I think the physical fitness is going to take a hit for sure, and I'm sure sleep inevitable inevitably will, as you shared with me.
30:54 Yeah, well I think you probably have the most sober approach to becoming a new dad that I've ever heard of just knowing, knowing that you don't know what you don't know, and just getting ready for it and I think that's probably the most honest way to approach it but intentionally
31:09 carving out some space like right there's going to be more on your plate but, but I also think it's another really good forcing function to ruthlessly prioritize your life.
31:20 Like, when you have too much on your plate at work it forces you to prioritize your work.
31:25 Now you have too much on your plate at work and you have too much on your plate at in life, and it's going to force you to prioritize things in life and force you to prioritize things and work, and I think that's a really good thing.
31:36 Some people think of it as like oh, you're doing less or taking less out or taking more out. Now I think you're carving out time for things that are really important, and you get even more out of during that time so I'm excited to hear the stories after, and,
31:54 and see how it goes. And, yeah, just thinking about you and your family and everything that's happening but I think that's just get another function that people run into it's like okay, less time, more prioritization to follow.
32:07 Yeah, and I know that you're not going to plug this so I will. When it comes to saving time and bandwidth.
32:16 It's been an absolute pleasure, getting to work with the lean scale team, and that has been a huge help for me now and as I think about the future with bandwidth and type constraints.
32:28 I really really appreciate that. And what's, I don't know if funny is the right word, but interesting is, we have been a very big bench player, I'll call it for when people have their rev ops team out on paternity or maternity leave.
32:49 And I think it's such a, such a cool thing because I hope that anyone we're engaging with, they can feel like, hey we're keeping the lights on for them, keeping things moving forward, so that when they come back and see they're not coming back to a complete mess the house
33:03 is still in order, and they can take some time, not feeling like they need to be fully plugged in, and feeling like they have someone taking care of them. So I really appreciate that and I hope that we make your paternity leave experience as enjoyable and unplugged as possible.
33:20 Awesome. I appreciate you Anthony. Well Joe, thank you so much for sharing everything I think this is a really big topic, a lot of people aren't really shedding a lot of light on I think some people are afraid to afraid that maybe it makes them look like they're not a high performer or that
33:34 they're not committed or anything like that but I think everything you shared about it, hey this is seasonal. So yes, there are times you need to press beast mode button, you need to step on the gas you're going to have to learn you're going to have to make up for not having the experience just yet.
33:49 But don't make that a forever thing. So, balance in the long term is really what you're advocating for looking for and I think some of the tactical things for people to focus on are really really helpful one, 20% of your time, 10% if you're busy, taking a step back,
34:07 obviously prioritizing your day to you have to take care of your physical health, it'll show up in the leverage you have throughout the day. So shedding a few hours of sleep doesn't mean you're working less it means those hours where you are working are more impactful.
34:22 Same with your physical fitness as well.
34:25 And then I really appreciate you shedding some light on taking care of your mental health and not taking care of it when you feel like you have to, but making it a priority and getting ahead of things.
34:35 Joe, I've always been impressed with not just the work you do, but how you do the work and how you show up and who you are. Thank you for sharing everything today.
34:44 And congrats again, can't wait for you and your wife to grow your family, and we're happy we're here to help.
34:49 Thank you so much, really appreciate it.