Tonya Dalton is a productivity expert, speaker, the author of The Joy of Missing Out, and the CEO and Founder of Inkwell Press; a company that’s centered around productivity tools and training. She has been featured in Real Simple, Entrepreneur INC., Apartment Therapy, and several other places.
In this episode, Tonya shares how she came up with the perspective and title for her book, why she refers to herself as a “recovering perfectionist” and how she accomplished that, the difference between actually wanting something and only wanting it because you think you’re supposed to, the importance of finding a balance between doing something well and letting perfection stop you from moving forward, her advice for making decisions with your ultimate mission for your business in mind, the negative impacts of overwhelm, why she wants you to throw away your to-do list, the main thing she wants people to understand after reading her book, and more!
Mentioned in this episode:
- Tonya Dalton’s Website
- Tonya Dalton’s Book | The Joy of Missing Out
- Tonya Dalton’s Podcast | Productivity Podcast
- Tonya Dalton’s Course
Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Transcript
Hey, hey! It’s Andrea and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today, I have with me Tonya Dalton. She is the CEO and founder of inkWELL Press and the author of; get this, The Joy of Missing Out. I’m so excited to talk with her about her book today. Tonya is a productivity expert, writer, speaker, and as we previously mentioned, the founder of inkWELL Press. It’s a company that centered around productivity tools and training. She has been featured on Real Simple, Entrepreneur, Inc., Apartment Therapy, and bunch of other places.
Andrea: So, excited to talk with you, Tonya, about your book today, The Joy of Missing Out.
Tonya Dalton: I am excited to be here. I can’t wait.
Andrea: So first of all, I want to start with the title because it is such a great reframe of that familiar FOMO kind of a feeling that people have all of the time. We’re always worried about missing out on things. And at the very beginning of your book you define it as JOMO. I love that. And you say “It is about intentionally choosing to live in the present moment by embracing open spaces of unrushed time.” Tell me about how you first of all came up with The Joy of Missing out as the title of your book and why you think it matters to people? Why this reframe?
Tonya Dalton: Well, I think you’re so right when you say so many people have this fear of missing out, and I feel like I see again and again where people are overwhelmed. They’re stretching themselves so incredibly thin because every single time that opportunity knocks, they feel like “I got to answer that door,” right? “Opportunity only knocks once, so I got to answer it.”
And so, here they are opening that door again and again and again not even necessarily the things that are meaningful to them or things that feel good. We just opened that door to opportunity because we think we’re supposed to and we fear missing out that if we let this go by that it’s never going to come back again.
And so, really, for me as an entrepreneur, as a mom, as a wife, as a CEO, and as a former perfectionist; I like to call myself a recovering perfectionist because it is something I struggle with as well, I found myself in that same situation where I was saying yes to too many things. I was not really actively choosing how I spent my days because I was in this fear of missing out. So, when I really started to reframe my life and make it so I was living more intentionally, both in my business and in my personal space, I found that I was so much happier.
I was doing less, but I was feeling so much happier. And I was actually achieving more because I was able to give my time, my energy, and my focus to these fewer tasks that were more meaningful and were really more important driving me closer to that North Star. And so when it was time to name this book, I was thinking about, you know, we obviously went through a lot of different titles and what could this be called. I thought about playing on that word overwhelmed because I hear that so much from so many people.
But really when it came down to it and I thought about it, it really is about the joy of missing out. That when we think of our ideal day, when we daydream while we’re in the shower or we’re standing in line at Starbucks waiting for our coffee, we think about this ideal day and there’s a lot of amazing things in it. But there’s also some key things that are missing, stress, overwhelm, feeling stretched too thin, saying yes out of obligation and guilt instead of saying yes out of, you know, happiness and excitement.
So, to me, there is joy in those missing pieces, in those things being gone. So, let’s really structure our life so we can actively choose to miss out and then focus our life on what we really want to do and what’s truly important to us.
Andrea: Oh, I love that. One of the tools that you use is this idea of, is it clear, is that what it’s called?
Tonya Dalton: Yes, the clear framework?
Andrea: The clear framework. I mean, it’s connected to your North Star, linked to a goal, having been essential, advantageous and reality-based. And I’ll let the listener actually read your books to find out most of that. But I lived the last one, in particular I wanted to pull this out, you talked about asking yourself if it’s really reality-based and you say on page 98, “Oftentimes we feel something is important because we believe it’s something we are supposed to do even if it’s not something we really want.”
Tonya Dalton: Yes.
Andrea: That is so true. OK, why do we do this? Why do we think that we are supposed to want things?
Tonya Dalton: Well, I think there’s this whole obligation. If you pay attention and you look around you and you check out the social media, it feels like everybody’s doing it all and doing it extraordinarily well, right? I mean that #allthethings that’s on a lot of posts and then we see this glorification of busy.
You know, I’ve seen posters and bags and I’ve seen notebooks that say “I am very busy.” Like, that’s a badge of honor, because I feel that when we are not busy, we somehow worry that we are failing, that we’re not doing enough, that we should be filling our days running from things to things.
And so in order to do that, we just cram our day full without really paying attention to what we really truly want to do. So, we have all of this, you know, pressure from society and from these stories that we tell ourselves. You know, a lot of us have these stories about what a good mom always does. A good is always there when her kids get off the bus or a good boss always stays later than their team. A good entrepreneur never stops working.
So, it’s these ideas that are so unrealistic, but they become this truth to us. There are these stories that we tell ourselves that often are not really stepped in our own values, but things that other people have kind of pushed onto us. And because of this, we lean into a lot of our perfectionism tendencies. And that’s what I question, is this reality based comes in because when that clear framework is designed to help you really discern whether something is important or unimportant.
Because that line becomes really blurred and it’s easy when it’s black or white, you know, good or bad. It’s harder when it’s good, better and best, when that area becomes gray. So, this question of is it reality based is really are you telling yourself a story that you are supposed to do this even though it’s not really tied to the life you want?
I feel like we go through life and we see these pictures and these images in magazines and on Pinterest. And we scroll through Facebook and we see these people with these exquisitely designed desks, you know, and these office spaces and we think, “Oh my gosh, I cannot start a podcast until I have this beautiful space to do my podcast because that’s what everybody else has.” I’m going to be honest with you, those people who have those pictures of those beautiful spaces probably cleared out a lot of stuff.
Andrea: They definitely are not looking at me right now in my husband’s closet.
Tonya Dalton: Well, you know, I have a podcast with over a million downloads and I still record it in my closet. You know why, because _____ are so good and it’s readily available.
Andrea: Exactly.
Tonya Dalton: So, yeah, it’s not Instagram worthy but it is working and that’s really what’s important. So, the reality I could tell myself is “Oh, I can’t podcast because I don’t have this beautiful space or I don’t have like a studio or having a studio,” when really I just drag a table and a chair and I go down in my closet just like you do. And you’re able to create something amazing because you didn’t wait, because you didn’t get caught up in that story of what you were supposed to have it look like or what we really want in life when really what you really wanted was to have a podcast.
Andrea: Absolutely.
Tonya Dalton: You know it’s not about the fancy office; it’s really about what are we creating and putting forth into the world.
Andrea: I think that that you’ve brought up another really important point that’s almost like an extension of this idea of what do you really want, and that is that we put things in between ourselves and what we really want in the pursuit of perfection, in the pursuit of doing it really well. There are times when we need to be careful. I’ve noticed, I was just listening this week and I tweeted something out, I was like, “There are a lot of podcasts out there put together by people who are selling really high end programs who don’t edit their podcasts and it just absolutely drives me crazy.”
Tonya Dalton: Yeah.
Andrea: So, there is a sense of like “But we need to do what we’re doing well.” Where do you see the harmony or the balance of wanting to make sure that we actually, you know, pursue the goal and actually execute on it versus putting something in between ourselves and that whole idea of not doing it well enough? Where should we find our balance there?
Tonya Dalton: Right. You know, I’m not going to start to, “I have to have it perfect.” Where is that middle ground of where it’s good enough, yeah? I love this question because you’re right, I mean, yes, it’s OK to do the podcast in your closet but take the time and the care to really edit it. And I think probably what ends up happening for a lot of these people who are not really editing their podcasts is there’s not that care behind it.
To me, taking the time to edit your podcast presented in a way that’s professional that represents you and your brand that shows a lot of meaning. It shows a lot of thoughts and intention behind it. And I think that’s where we really need to draw the line is what is your intention with whatever it is you’re putting forth. If your intention that it’d be absolutely positively flawless, because if that’s your intention, I’m sorry, but that’s not going to happen because perfection does not exist.
So, we don’t want to get stymied by this idea that it has to be perfect, but what’s in that middle ground? What’s really acceptable? And to me, all of this comes down to this idea of your North Star, which we talked about in the first section of the book, but it’s essentially your mission, your vision, and your core values. So, everything that I do, everything that I present, everything; whether it’s writing a book or a course or it’s a podcast or whatever it is, does this work with my North Star? I use that as my filter.
And so, if it really does filter through this North Star, if it’s why I do what I do, which is my mission, where I want to go with my business, which is my vision and how I want to get there, which is one of my core values, that’s really what helps me make those decisions. So, for example, one of the parts of the North Star for the inkWELL Press brand is our core value is excellence. That I’m not going to put something out there unless I feel like this is a benefit to my customers and it’s presented in a way that’ll be meaningful to them.
So, perfection is not one of my core values. Having things to be absolutely, you know, flawless or with no mistakes. That’s not really part of my brand because there needs to be an element of authenticity there that we are humans and it’s OK to show some softer sides of ourselves. But two, because everything is filtered through your North Star, you’re not trying to do so much that you don’t have time to edit the podcast.
If you want to do a podcast, do the best podcast you can. That doesn’t mean being perfect but what’s the best vision of what that could look like for you and sit down and map that out. Does it mean that you have to have, you know, some fancy editor editing your podcast? Probably not. You can use GarageBand on your Mac and edit your podcast. It doesn’t take a lot of work to really, you know, take the time to Google up a couple of, you know, YouTube videos on how to edit your podcast. So again, if it’s meaningful, you’re going to do it right. And I think that’s really where this comes into play this idea of whether you want it to be perfect or just start finding that middle ground of what’s acceptable for you and your North Star.
Andrea: Mission, vision, values, this North Star, this is something that we don’t necessarily call it North Star but we talk about this a lot. And so, I am so curious when you talk about actually applying it, how does this work when you are making decisions? Do you have it like put up someplace on some board on your wall and you go to that and say, OK, does that fit this, this and this? Or is it just now ingrained in your head? Or how do you recommend that people who are really just starting out trying to make sure that everything fits their North Star? How do you recommend that they do this, like what is the practical application of that?
Tonya Dalton: Yes, so what I would say is when you’re first starting with your North Star to write it out because you want to put it in a place where it becomes really easy to integrate into your everyday life. Now, what you know, one of the things that’s really key I think with your mission and your vision statement especially is that they’re short. They should be concise. They should be kind of to the point. You don’t want these long fancy words that don’t really have any meaning. You want that to be meaningful to you.
So, really making sure that it’s concise and short enough that you could memorize it so that when an opportunity comes up you can say, “OK does this really fit why I do what I do?” Your mission statement, “Does this really fit what I’m wanting our company to do?” Then you look at the vision of “Is this going to get me closer to my vision of where we need to go?” So, having that written out to start really does help because you can actually literally ask yourself the question that’s written out on the page.
You know, for example, the inkWELL Press North Star is to provide productivity tools and trainings that empower you to achieve your goals and dreams. So, when an opportunity comes up, I ask myself, “Is this really going to help people empower them to get closer to their goals?” If this is not going to get them closer to their goals and this is just in some way to elevate myself or something that’s, you know, extra then that doesn’t really fit that mission statement. So, you just turn it around and make it work for you. But eventually that mission statement, that vision statement of your core values become just so internalized that those questions become a little more natural.
But here’s the thing that I think is important too is those things are always evolving. Your mission statement that you had two years ago may not apply now. So, I think it’s really important to make sure that you are revisiting that mission and the vision and the core values to see if it really does still fit with where you want to go and how you want to get there.
Andrea: OK, I totally agree, re-evaluating is so important; question though, what about the person who is saying to themselves “Yeah, but this would still really help people.” They see something that would be good for them to do and even though it doesn’t quite fit the mission, it still would really help people and I feel this obligation to help people. What do you say to them?
Tonya Dalton: Well, here’s where we get into that thing with opportunity knocking, “Oh but this would somehow be good because of…” We can always make up excuses why something is good. Here’s what I would say to you, every time you say yes to an opportunity, to a project, to a task, you are saying no to something else.
Andrea: Bingo!
Tonya Dalton: So, yes, this opportunity that comes up that may help other people, but could I help people better if I was not spending my time on this and instead spending it on what is truly part of my mission, my vision, and my core values. So, really thinking that through every time you say yes you’re saying no to something else. Take that time to really pour your time, energy, and focus into that North Star because that’s really when you will help people the most.
Andrea: I think that it’s really a muscle that people have to kind of build up because it’s often people who are really creative and caring who have the hardest time with this, like they want to do so many things. They want to help in so many ways and it’s hard for them to recognize that; wait a second, I need to stop for a second and ask that question that you just, you know, presented which would help people more. And it’s a hard question to ask. It’s a hard question to answer, but it’s so important and I’m really glad that you are helping people with that.
Again, I encourage people to get the book to be able to really help themselves think through these things.
All right, let’s shift gears just slightly. So on page 111, I want to go to that as well. You talked about overwhelm and you kind of give this example from a Stanford University study. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how overwhelm really affects us?
Tonya Dalton: Well, you know that feeling when you get to the end of your day and it’s time to eat dinner and you think, “All right, what do we want for dinner?” And then you can’t think of a single thing.
Andrea: Oh yes!
Tonya Dalton: You can’t even think of a single restaurant or anything that you make out of the pantry. Like there’s just no thought in your mind and you feel just literally brain dead. That feeling is a reality. That’s a real feeling. It’s actually called decision fatigue. And what happens is our brain is burning all of its calories, making all these little minute decisions in our day.
You see, our brain is literally 2% of our body and yet it burns 20% of our calories every single day. Your brain is this calorie burning machine. So, every time we make a decision, whether it’s a big decision or a small decision, we’re burning calories.
So, when you get to the end of the day, when you’ve made all these like little minute decisions where you’re spreading yourself really thin, making all these choices instead of using habits and routines and automations to your advantage, we end up burning through all those calories. And your brain is like, “Nope, I’m done. I’m not making any more decisions.” And it quite frankly can’t. This is why, you know, even though we’ve eaten healthy all day, we’ll eat that cookie that’s been sitting in the break room for two days at the end of the day, right?
Or when we’ve gone on a shopping trip why we would buy three pairs of shoes at the very end of the shopping trip instead of at the beginning because we’ve ran out of calories for our brain to make decisions. And this is when that feeling of overwhelm really does start to settle in over us because we cannot make good choices if we’re spending our day all day on lots of menial things, on lots of things that are insignificant.
We really want to focus our brainpower on those big things, on the goals, on the passion project, on the things that do drive you towards that North Star. And there’s so many great ways to do that. And we walked through that in the book through habits and routines and automations and different processes that you can do so that those things happen seamlessly without a lot of thinking. I like to say you can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan, but if the kitchen is burning down around you, it does you no good.
So, we want to make sure all those things are still happening in the background. You know, laundry still needs to happen, bills need to be paid. You need to do, you know, yard work. You need to, you know, make sure you call your mom. All those things need to still happen, but we don’t want to spend all of our brain energy and all of our calories on that. We really want to spend our brain focus on the things that are most important.
So, that’s really where this study comes in where you know, these researchers found that when people had to memorize a number and they had two groups, one had a two digit number and the other group had, I think it was a seven digit number, after they had to memorize that number, they walked down the hall and they were offered a snack. The people who had the two digit number most often chose the healthy snack.
The people with seven digits, only five numbers more that they have to memorize yet they shows the unhealthy snack like I think it was, you know, a piece of cake or something like that. They chose the unhealthy snack more often because their brain was tired of making decisions. It was too busy thinking about these numbers, these seven digits, it ran out of calories. Even something as small as that really they can make a difference in how your brain works. That’s why we want to do less and that way we achieve more. When we focus on fewer things, more important things, we really can achieve bigger things in the long run.
Andrea: Love it. OK, what about when someone is kind of prioritized a project, they know that it’s important. They’ve decided that it’s more important than a lot of the immediate things around them, but they continuously do not execute on that project.
Tonya Dalton: Uh-hmm yes.
Andrea: What is getting in the way?
Tonya Dalton: I would tell you honestly, my first thought would be, it’s probably the to-do-list because I think you have to throw away that to-do-list. A to-do-list really just takes you everywhere but where you truly want to go. So, what I really encourage people to do is not to make it to-do-list, but instead make a priority list.
Because what happens is when we have a long list of things that need to happen, even if you know that task is important and it’s just there on that to do list, you know, amongst going to the grocery store or running to Target, you know, picking up the flea medication for the dog and everything else, it gets lost there. And we will naturally go for the easiest win because our brain loves dopamine. We get a little dopamine hit every time we scratch a line through something on our to-do-list. And your brain doesn’t care whether it’s a big task, an important task, or a small task.
So, our brain naturally navigates towards “Hey, let’s get that flea medication for the dog” instead of working on the presentation that really will drive you forward. So, when we make a priority list, we start with our list at the top and we work our way down based on priority, based on whether something is important, whether it’s urgent and we work our way down. And again, we go through that whole system of how a priority list works. But the best part to me is a priority list takes the exact same amount of time as a to-do-list. It’s just a to-do-list with intention.
So, when you start your day at the top and you work your way down that to-do-lists or down that priority list going from top priority down to your lowest priority, that’s when you make sure that you make time for those big things that truly are important. It’s no longer a jumbled mess of, you know, unorganized tasks that are written on a sheet of paper. It’s now organized and intentional making sure that you carve out time for those things that do matter the most.
Andrea: If your readers could make one shift in their lives from reading your book, what shift do you hope that they make?
Tonya Dalton: I want them to understand that they have choices. You know, a lot of times we believe that we don’t have ownership over our calendar. The number of times that people say to me, “Oh, I wish I could do that, but I just don’t own my day.” Or “Oh, I’ve got an overbearing boss and they take over my calendar.” I want to remind people that you do have choices and we talk about choices throughout the entire book.
Truly choices are what helps us discern and stop being busy and move towards being productive. Understanding that even in situations where you don’t think you have a choice, there are still choices there. But we just have to dig for them. We have to use what I call squirrel strategy to approach it at different angles and try to, you know, think outside the box to make this happen, but we have choices. We just have learned helplessness that tells us that we don’t.
Andrea: Oh yes.
Tonya Dalton: So, we go into that quite a bit in the book, but when you understand that you have choices and how you spend your day and where you focus your time and your energy, that’s when opportunities, the true opportunity to move towards that North Star. That’s when that begins to open up and that’s really when you can step into that greatness that you really want in your life and what you deserve in your life.
We all deserve to end our days feeling happy, feeling satisfied, feeling successful, and far too many people right now because we don’t feel like we have ownership because we’re running around trying to check a thousand things off our list, slip into bed at night and think “I didn’t get enough done. Why didn’t I work harder? Why did I do this? Why did I do that?” And we don’t feel satisfied. That’s what I want most for people is to finish their days and to really feel like, “You know what, today felt good and there is a lot to be said for feeling good, feeling happy,” and being productive really does make that happen.
Andrea: That is a incredibly empowering and I think we have a voice of influence and you have a lot of synergy here because we really want to see people realizing their own agency in their lives and being able to realize that they have choices like you’re talking about is such a huge piece of that. And so, I am sincerely grateful that you took time to come be on our podcast and share this message with our listeners and I hope that they get your books. So, tell us about how they can get your book.
Tonya Dalton: Yes. So, if you go to joyofmissingout.com, there’s information about where you can buy. It’s available really anywhere that books are sold. And then really if they’d purchase before October 1st, I have some really amazing pre-bonuses including a discover your North Star course, which is a $247 value which you get for purchasing the book before October 1st and you can redeem that at joyofmissingout.com.
But we dive deep into how do you decide what your mission is. Well, how do you decide what your purpose is and your passion and your priorities and we get into that. We peel back the layers of the onion and dive into who you truly are.
So, I’m really excited about that preorder bonus because I think that’s one of the things that people really struggle with is who am I and what do I really want out of this life? So, that is one of the preorder bonuses, but you can get the book at any time at joyofmissingout.com. Get on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Target. But joyofmissingout.com is the best place to get all the information.
Andrea: And if they want to learn more from you from your podcast, what’s your podcast called again?
Tonya Dalton: Productivity Paradox. You can find information on me at tonyadalton.com, so Tonya with an O and a Y.
Andrea: All right. Thank you so much again for sharing your voice of influence with our listeners, Tonya.
Tonya Dalton: Thank you so much for having me.