We cover information about effective strategies to organize your workday for maximum focus and reduced mental clutter, while also uncovering ways to find deeper fulfillment in your work.

Listen on the player in this post or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or your favorite podcast player. Or scroll down to read a full transcript.

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Guest Details

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Bjork loves to find ways to maximize potential – of people, of technology, of life. His wife Lindsay started a food blog a few years ago and they decided to do just that – maximize its potential. They hope to share what they’ve learned with other food bloggers here on Food Blogger Pro. Bjork is a terrible chef.

Takeaways

  • Purpose prevents burnout: Clearly define the purpose and mission behind your work to stay motivated and avoid burnout.
  • Recognize “enough”: Determine what “enough” looks like for your business and personal life, and set boundaries accordingly.
  • Implement effective systems: Develop repeatable processes to manage tasks, priorities, and projects, keeping your brain uncluttered.
  • Practice self-care: Prioritize your mental and physical health, as your brain is the primary tool for your creative work.
  • Embrace imperfection: Accept that you’ll never be “done” and that some level of imperfection is inevitable – focus on continuous improvement.
  • Seek alignment: Ensure your daily work aligns with your deeper purpose and brings you a sense of flow and fulfillment.
  • Set boundaries: Establish clear boundaries around technology, work hours, and other commitments to protect your time and energy.
  • Reflect and adjust: Regularly reflect on what’s working and what needs to change, then make small, incremental adjustments.
  • Leverage support systems: Build a team or community that can provide a “fallback” when you need it, reducing stress.

Resources Mentioned

Pinch of Yum: Lindsay Ostrom’s blog

Clariti: A tool that helps WordPress site owners manage and optimize their content by integrating data from WordPress, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console. clariti.com

Things: A task management app based on the “Getting Things Done” methodology. culturedcode.com/things/

“Getting Things Done” by David Allen: A book and methodology for personal productivity and task management. amazon.com

“The 5-Hour Workday” by Stephan Aarstol: A book that discusses the author’s experience with implementing a shorter workday to improve productivity and work-life balance. amazon.com

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Transcript

Click for full script.

EBT642 – Bjork Ostrom

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom. Whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

Supercut  00:37

You are going to want to download our bonus supercut that gives you all the information you need to grow your Instagram account. Go to eatblogtalk.com/Instagrowth to download today. 

Megan Porta  00:52

As we launch into New Year, I think it is so incredibly important to discuss burnout. We don’t want to get to the place where we are burned out in our businesses or in our lives, and as content creators and business owners, it is very likely that at some point you’ve either been there or will go there. I have an amazing conversation in this episode with Bjork Ostrom from Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro. We talk about everything burnout, how to avoid it, how to define your purpose so that you have your sights on the things, the dreams, the desires that you want in your business and in your life. We talk about setting boundaries and how important that is. Also how to implement effective systems in your business. This is a really simple process. You don’t have to overthink this. There’s so much more in the episode that is going to inspire you as we launch into 2025 I hope you love this episode. It is number 642. 

Sponsor  01:52

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Megan Porta  02:56

Bjork loves to find ways to maximize potential of people, of technology end of life. His wife Lindsay started a food blog a few years ago, and they decided to do just that, maximize its potential. They hope to share what they’ve learned with other food bloggers on the Food Blogger Pro podcast and community. Bjork is a self proclaimed terrible chef. 

Megan Porta  03:17

Bjork, welcome. How are you today?

Bjork Ostrom  03:20

Good. It’s fun to be on the other side here. I know be hanging out to get to answer questions, as opposed to ask questions. 

Megan Porta  03:25

Yeah, it’s kind of fun, isn’t it? Yeah, for sure, that side, yeah. So great to have you on the podcast. Now, I like to start each episode by asking my guests if they have a fun fact to share about themselves. So what do you have to share with us?

Bjork Ostrom  03:38

Yep, this is relevant as of recent because has to do with me collecting things. So there’s two things that I collected when I was a kid. One was like, sports cards, so baseball college football cards. But one of the things that I did that was really fun was I would send them out and get autographs. So I created this little system where I did a mail merge, which was awesome, because then I could get somebody’s name and it would merge into a letter. I would take that letter, I’d print it out, I’d take a card, like a sports card, I’d put it in an envelope, and I’d mail it out. And what ended up happening is, over time, I started to get all these cards that I would get back, and it was this great little feedback loop that I had as a kid, and I built up this great Autograph Collection, which is really fun. The second thing that I collected was turtles. Like, literally, not like live turtles, but like turtle figurines, which has been really fun because my parents kept them. God bless them. They kept these turtles. And then now our girls, who are four and six, have just like, loved playing with them. So they’ve had, they’ve had the second life. They’ve been stored away for decades, and now they’re coming out and having a second life. So, yeah, I’ve always been somebody who kind of, once I have a thing that I’m interested in, I kind of go deep and cards and turtles were the two things that I was really interested in as a kid. 

Megan Porta  04:57

I love it. So what is, is there a meaning behind the turtle? Is it just something happened? 

Bjork Ostrom  05:01

Zero. I mean, okay, just other than like, was a fan of animals. Like, in our oldest, Soldy, she’s six. Is also that like, which is fun to see. So always was fascinated by animals, and like the animals, and we did have a stretch where we had, like, pet turtles. We like in our house right now we have a pet frog named Rice, tree frog. So, and that was like, our daughter soul, who was like, hey, that would be so fun to have a pet frog. So, yeah, zero. Like, meaning, or, you know, there’s nothing in my life where it’s like, oh my gosh, I had this moment and I saw the light and standing next to a turtle. And therefore, I have this affinity to turtles. It’s just for whatever reason, that’s what it turned into.

Megan Porta  05:41

Turtle into your lap. 

Bjork Ostrom  05:43

Totally. 

Megan Porta  05:44

I love it. Okay, well, I would love for you, Bjork to talk just a little bit about Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro, in case anybody listening is not filled in yet, give us a scoop on those.

Bjork Ostrom 05:55

Yep. So Pinch of Yum is a food and recipe website or brand, I guess, more holistically in that primarily we think of it as a website. As people go there, they get recipe content. They make recipes those. 99% of those on the site were my wife, Lindsay. Pinch of Yum is kind of synonymous with Lindsay. I help with some of the like mechanics of keeping that business going. I do a podcast kind of similar to this, where have conversations with experts. Part of that is information gathering, and so it’s me learning. We take those ideas, we apply them. I’m learning in other places, foundational like business best practices. How do we keep these businesses running well, in order to Lindsay create well? So that’s kind of my role within Pinch of Yum. But really it’s food content on the internet, website, Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube, but primarily the website and Instagram are the two channels for that. And then food blogger pro started over 10 years ago. There’s a period of time on Pinch of Yum where I was coming on and talking about some of the business behind the scenes, and saying, here’s what we’re learning, here’s a tool that we bought, or software that we purchased, or here’s how we’re earning money using this ad network. And from that, we started to get other people who were following along and interested in creating a similar food business. But you know, for some people, they did it in, like, with budget in mind. So hey, if you want to have affordable meals, or other people did, I’m going to cook like Middle Eastern and so there’s all these different varieties, but the best practices are the same for all of those. So I was doing those posts on Pinch of Yum once a month. From that, we’re like, hey, actually, there’s a lot of people here, relative Right? Like, not a lot, like hundreds of 1000s, but 1000s of people who are interested in this. 

Bjork Ostrom 07:54

And so we said, We think there’s an opportunity to create a small business around helping other people learn all the best practices around search engine optimization and photography and video and ads, and as you know, there’s a lot that goes into running a website. So that’s what Food Blogger Pro is. It’s essentially community, so people to have conversations in a forum, training videos that people can sit and watch on how to use WordPress or any of those other things I mentioned, and then some other things, like deals and discounts on common tools, or we’ll do like a live Q and A as an example each month, and talk through different things that people might be interested in talking about. So Pinch of Yum is really that’s our main business. That’s the biggest business in terms of revenue. Food Blogger Pro is also a great, successful business. But one of the things that we like is, like, the training material that we have is a smaller business than, like, the what we’re training, what we are doing in the day to day. A lot of times it could be the opposite, where it’s like, you discover thing, and then you build this business, and it’s like you’re making all of your money from the thing that trains the people. But for us, it’s the opposite. It’s like Pinch of Yum is the main thing that we do. It’s the main revenue source. We have these other businesses that we’ve built kind of adjacent to it, but it’s still that’s kind of the main thing for us. 

Megan Porta  09:18

Yeah, you do so much to help food bloggers I know, through Food Blogger Pro, through the podcast and your community. So thank you for all that you do. 

Bjork Ostrom  09:25

And you too. Yeah. It’s like, yeah, it’s great to be able to have resources for people to learn it didn’t exist 10 years ago, 12 years ago. And it’s a wonderful thing about industry growing is that if industry grows big enough, then you can have these weird, unique, little, niche businesses that support it and can be sustained by it, which is really great.

Megan Porta  09:50

Yeah. It is so cool. Yeah. 14 years ago, when I started my food blog, there was nothing available. Nobody knew what was going on, what was happening. We were just flailing about so it’s great that we have resources now. So having been in this space for quite a while, I think pinch of yum is about the same age, right? 14 years old. Okay, so you and Lindsay, I’m sure as well know that burnout is something that is kind of sadly inevitable if you’re in the in the game long enough. Do you personally have a story with burnout? Have you experienced it as a business owner and creator?

Bjork Ostrom 10:30

Yeah. So I think for me, where I’ve felt this the most, one of the things that we’ve been great at is we’ve been able to work with people to help, like, scale a business. And so kind of, if you pull back even further, we have this parent company called Tiny Bit. Tiny bit is over for smaller businesses, Pinch of Yum, Food Blogger Pro, Clariti, which is a software tool, and then a smaller DIY site called Curbly. Also within that used to be company called WP Tasty, which was a WordPress plugin, still is a WordPress plugins business, and then another business called Nutrifox. And I think one of the things that I learned in starting, which I love doing, starting a thing, is, if you start a thing and it’s successful, that thing needs to be maintained. That’s that could be more true than in software, where, in the case of WP Tasty, you know, there’s multiple 1000s of people who are running those plugins, and I think I experienced it the most burnout, or just the kind of realities of building a business that is successful to a degree within the context of that business. Because what I realized, and this is why we eventually sold those businesses is that I’m not like a WordPress developer, like my day to day. I’m not thinking about WordPress. I’m not thinking about development. And we worked with to build WP Tasty. This really incredible developer. His name is Daniel, who actually went on to be lead at word, wordpress.com, like so it’s like that was his next position after WP tasty. But what I realized different than Pinch of Yum with a business like that is that if you don’t have 10 people, you know, you have a smaller team, and you have, you know, a really skilled developer, in this case, it could be any business, then what you’re in a situation where you can’t be the fallback. And I think what’s different for Pinch of Yum, what’s different for food blogger pro is that, like we can be the fallback for that. And in a lot of ways, Lindsay is the creator and is the main person for that. And so one of the things that I think is important as a consideration as your business building. You know, people often talk about this idea of, hey, it’s great to like not be the one that’s doing the day to day or figuring out like a team that you can work with. But I think one of the downsides of it is that you need to be really smart about being a business owner to make sure that you have the ability to have kind of a fallback for a small team, could be even something as simple as customer support. It wouldn’t have to be a developer. And so I think in the experience with that business, one of the things that I learned is, hey, if we’re going to start businesses, I need to make sure that we have an understanding of kind of what the fallback looks like for them, until you have redundancy within the business, because otherwise it’s like a stressful process to navigate. 

Bjork Ostrom 13:31

So I don’t know, when you think about burnout, you can think of it as, like, I think a multitude of things, which is, you know, there’s stress with it, there’s workload with it. There’s other life considerations. So I think of 2020, 2021, for us, it was COVID. We had our daughter, Lena, and she was, you know, this really fussy baby for nine months. And so that would be another season where I was like, gosh, this was really a hard season. And experience some of those elements of, like, gosh, this, I feel a little bit burnt out, like trying to, trying to keep going, or trying to do this thing. Or, like, in that case, this didn’t exist at the time. But like, let’s say there’s a change with WP Tasty, this WordPress plugins business, and suddenly I had to run the day to day with that business, even just the thought of that is like, Oh man, I don’t think I could do that, like, I just don’t have the capacity to do it. And so there’s some things that I’ve learned through the process 14 years both Lindsay and I in order to have a better understanding of how to kind of put some boundaries up and to kind of protect against some of the downside of burnout. 

Megan Porta  14:39

Yeah. So I’m also hearing you say that alignment is important, because you mentioned fall back. It’s great to have somebody or a team to fall back on if needed. But do you feel like the project that you’re working on needs to be aligned, kind of like with your soul and what your skills and your passions are you mentioned you’re not a developer, so yeah, you probably, maybe you’re not the best person for that fallback to happen too. So yeah, what do you think about alignment?

Bjork Ostrom 15:13

Yeah, for sure, I think you know, a huge part of it with the work that we’re doing. I actually just did an interview earlier today talking to somebody, and we were talking about this kind of general idea is, like, the best work that we can be doing is the work that we show up for and are really excited to do. Like, it’s work that we feel motivated, we feel skilled and capable for. And the word that we came to was this idea of flow. Like, how do you figure out when you were in flow, flow is such a like desirable state to be in for a lot of people who do photography, it might be if they’re in the middle of doing a shoot and you have music playing, and you know, you’ve kind of set this scene where it’s it’s just enough to be challenging. But it’s not so challenging that you can’t do it. And it’s also something you want to get good at. You want to develop your skills, and you have a desire to get better at it. Sport is another example of a lot of times people find flow in sport. But if you can find flow in something that you do for work, that can be a really incredible thing. And I think a component of that is you call it alignment. I think you could also call it purpose, like if you have a deeper purpose for what you’re doing, and you can get into this flow state that can be really powerful. An example might be, you’re doing a series on a recipe series, Lindsay. Well, Lindsay did this. She called it the SOS series. And it was kind of came out of COVID. And this idea of, hey, if you want to figure out how to still put a homemade meal on the table, but you feel really stretched for time. What does that look like? And I think flow for Lindsay, in that case, is like, she loves recipe development. She also loves thinking about, you know, creating something that is doable for people like that’s easy enough, but also tastes really good, and then packaging all of that up and almost like presenting and marketing that to people. And that feels like a really big unlock, if you can get to the point where you can discover that type of work, that flow state work that also has a purpose behind it. Because, you know, hey, not only is this going to go into the world and, you know, hopefully people are gonna see it, but it’s gonna make somebody’s life better in a way that you hope to be creating work in the world. 

Megan Porta  17:27

I think most food bloggers and content creators want that. They want to find purpose, but in this landscape where things are a little bit chaotic, how do you recommend that people go about finding purpose. If they haven’t, they don’t feel like they’ve done so yet.

Bjork Ostrom 17:47

Yeah, I think sometimes people start with tactics or platforms, or they start with what they think is the end point of where they want to be. Hey, I want to work from home. And love the idea of, I also like food, and so I’m going to start a blog, because I know that I might be able to make money from that. And I think a better place to start from is to think about how, what is the canvas you want to create on, and what is the picture that you want to paint. And in your case, and in my case, the canvas that we are creating on is audio. It’s podcasts. That’s not what Lindsay does. Lindsay creates, and she’s doing it today. She creates on a canvas of, you know, short form video and the blog and writing and photography. That’s her canvas. And so starting by thinking about what is the canvas, and then what is the picture that you want to paint? And for me, the picture that I want to paint is you can do this. You can be a successful business person. You can do a hard thing, if you break it down into little chunks and work on it every day. That’s the general sentiment of what I’m trying to do and the canvas that I’m trying to do it on, and and if you start with that, what happens is, you’ll have a clear picture of what work looks like. I think it’s still great to think about what does it look like to create revenue within that you know. Simon Sinek talks about this idea of, you know, you you have a you want to get from point A to point B. You want to accomplish a thing. You want to have a purpose, a mission, and you need a vehicle to do that, to get from point A to point B. But in order to get there, you need gas, and gas, unless it’s electric car, but we’ll just say it’s gas. Gas is revenue, like within the business, if you have a purpose and you have a mission, whether it’s a nonprofit or for profit, you need revenue in order to move the thing forward. You need gas. But the point isn’t just to, like, accumulate a bunch of gas and have a gas storage and just. Have a bunch of that. It’s to use that to advance the vehicle. And so I think having a purpose, having a mission, having a hope for why you are creating content in the world, is an important motivator, and it helps avoid burnout, because it’s there’s purpose behind it. And I think when you have purpose, it creates a different dynamic with your work, versus just doing it, to do it. 

Megan Porta  20:25

How do you keep your personal purpose at the forefront during hard times?

Bjork Ostrom 20:32

Yeah, I think it’s there’s multiple considerations that we have. One of them is like, outside of the context of business. It’s just like, for as an example for our family, like, Hey, we’re gonna this week as an example. You know, we’re recording this in a week where we’re gonna go in for some Christmas stuff for our daughter kindergarten class. Like, that’s gonna be a priority over some of the other things that I could be doing this week, but it’s just what we do. That’s what I’m going to prioritize. So I think that’s a piece of it, is understanding, like outside of your work purpose, what are the other purposes you have? And then I think, I think there’s something be said about micro alignment, and it’s not necessarily going off. Sometimes, maybe it’s this going off into the woods, and, you know, journaling for two days on what your purpose and your mission and your hopes and dreams are. I think, you know, there is a value in that, but I don’t think it has to be that. I think there can be reflections at the end of the day, around Hey, what felt good about this day? What did I feel like? Was most meaningful from my day and making those micro adjustments I think of for both Lindsay and I, we’ve done that, and you need to do it, because things change like what our life looks like now is very different than what it looked like 14 years ago. And if we were still operating in the exact same way that we did 14 years ago, it would be a huge issue, like we there’s just no way we could do it and but you have to make these small, micro adjustments along the way. 

Bjork Ostrom 22:16

An example for me is I’ve realized that as our work has shifted and things have shifted for me, like I just have less time to be in my email and respond to email and do thorough follow up. And so one of the evolutions that I had, one of the micro changes that I’ve had that I’ve never done before, that I’m now doing is in my calendar, and I have it pulled up next to me. I have on Mondays and on Fridays from nine to five, it just says focus, and that’s recurring forever. Part of that is just a reminder to myself to as much as possible avoid scheduling in those time blocks, not so I can take the day off, but so I can focus, so I can get stuff done. Because I know coming into the week, I’m gonna feel more restored if I feel like I’m caught up on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and coming out of the week, I know that I’m gonna feel more restored if I am able to get through what I need to get through. And so I think it’s a lot of self reflection around, hey, I have a feeling. Why am I feeling this feeling? And what is the small change that I can make to fix this problem forever? You don’t always fix it forever. But what is the what is the one change I can make that’s probably going to help this or improve this, and to be aware of how we’re feeling and make those changes along the way, I think can go a long way.

Megan Porta  23:50

I love your example of just sitting down at the end of the day and doing a reflection. I think even the positive things that come from that, like you said, what felt good today, and just noting that and then trying to repeat that, if something didn’t feel good, then, yeah, one step at a time, right? Let’s try to refine this and get better over time. And it’s never done. It’s it’s not like there’s an end to this journey. This is ongoing. 

Bjork Ostrom  24:19

It’s a practice, and I think it’s a never ending practice, and I think one thing that’s important is to remind people to give yourself grace. It’s the goal isn’t to avoid that feeling and to never feel the feeling of stress or overwhelm, or, you know, burnout. We don’t want that, but we will feel that. The goal is to know how to respond to it when you do come up against it, and as much as possible, catch it as early as possible, and to get good like at developing the skill of being aware of that and changing based on how you are, how you’re feeling. But yeah, I think sometimes we’re. Hard on ourselves, and we think we can we like I need to be better at this. I need to get get there faster. And if you’re in a new season of starting to experience this, be gentle with yourself and know that it takes time to develop the skill of responding to kind of your state of being and making adjustments around it.

Megan Porta  25:23

You mentioned your Mondays and Fridays focus time. I love that, and I see that as a boundary that you’ve set. So you’re telling other people, your you know, people that you serve in your community, also your family and also yourself, that this is your time. That’s a boundary. What are your thoughts on? Like, how important are boundaries for people in the food content creation space?

Bjork Ostrom 25:48

I think it. I think it really depends on who you are and how you operate. And I think one sometimes, what can happen is you can hear people, they give advice. Here’s what I do. It like, you know, my case, I take Mondays off and I take not off, but I block Mondays off. I block Fridays off as much as possible, in order for that to be heads down, focus time. That’s been a really good thing. Somebody else might hear that, and they’d be like, oh my goodness, that sounds terrible. Like I want to have as many meetings as I can and interact with people. And so it really depends. I think what a boundary looks like depends on who you are and how you work. Another example is, I was up at 5: 45 today, working, you know, from six to 730 until our girls got up. But Lindsay loves to work from, you know, 1030 to midnight, whereas that’s for me, there’s kind of a boundary on, like, I’m probably not gonna turn on my creativity at 10pm whereas for her, it’s like, oh, that’s a really good stretch. And so I think it’s understanding how you work, when you work best, understanding it’s a lot of it is like, what is the what’s the game that you’re playing? And defining how you keep track of the score, defining what the rules are for that, and we get to the nice thing is we get to do it. There are literally no rules, right? Like, I’ve been thinking of this idea that everything is made up, like money’s made up, like the rules that we operate under in government are made up. And it doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean it should be ignored. It doesn’t mean we should break the law. But I think it’s important for us to remember that all of that stuff is made up. Somebody had the idea for a the United States dollar and was like, here’s how it’s going to work, and then it changes over time. It goes off the gold standard, and like, now you can print money. And so somebody made up and evolved that. And so I think we have permission to make up how we want to exist and what we want our work to look like, which is this great privilege. And I think sometimes we forget about that, and we’re like, well, a work day is eight to five, Monday through Friday. It’s like, for a lot of people, but that’s made up. Like, right? It’s a it’s something that somebody has created and said exists in the world. And so for us as entrepreneurs, as people, really, it’s not, maybe you have a w2 job. I think it’s a good reminder for us to say, like, if everything is made up, then what do we want to create as our own thing to make? Yeah,

Bjork Ostrom 26:58

design your life, right? You can design, especially as an entrepreneur, you really can design your entire situation, whether it’s your week, your month, your year. It’s all up to you. Do you set boundaries around technology, screen time, social media, things like that? 

Bjork Ostrom  28:45

I don’t, I just installed Instagram on my phone for the first time. Oh, really, ever. So that’s like, going backwards, but I don’t really use it for work. Like, we’ll post stuff to Instagram, but like, you know, Lindsay uses it in a different way. It’s a tool. For me, it’s mostly like, consumption, not really, no, like, we had this stretch where, like, we had a phone holders in our garage, and we’re like, we’re gonna put our phones in the garage, and it’s like, you do it for a week, and then suddenly you have your phones in I wear an Apple Watch, so like, I’ll get notifications, and if we’re sitting down at the dinner table, I’ll be like, Oh, I just need to, like, turn this off. I’ll work on my computer. And, like, our daughter will get up and she’ll color, and I’ll still be working on my computer. So not really. And I think we’d probably be better if we did, but we just don’t.

Megan Porta  29:38

Yeah, yeah. And I think some people need tech boundaries more than others too, right? Like, some people really struggle with that just needing the mindless scroll and, I don’t know, constant online chatter, but some people don’t struggle as much.

Megan Porta  29:55

It’s really hard. I think that it’s hard because it’s not binary. It’s not good or bad, like in a case where, let’s say we put all of our tech away, there’s some really rich, fun conversations that Lindsay and I have in groups that were like message groups that were part of and let’s say we didn’t have our phones at night, and that was just like a clear boundary we would that would be a thing that we would miss out on, but also we’d probably be have conversation that would have felt different or so there’s like, a benefit in that way. You know, I think about it within the context of, do I bring my phone to bed. And the the non clear answer is, well, what if something happens? Am I going to need this? And that’s the story I tell myself. But I think the downside is like, but what if I get, like, half an hour to 45 minutes less of sleep every night for the next decade? That’s probably the bigger risk than something happening in the middle of the night and me needing my so it’s, it’s like a it’s a complex thing to navigate, and I think, personally, I could do better at it. And it’s one of the things that, like, I’m constantly thinking about, what is, what is the role of technology? Role of technology, especially as it relates to our kids. Like, yes, I know. I just don’t ever want to be have them remember me being distracted. And I think to some degree they probably will, unless I get better at literally just not having my phone. Because I can be I can tell myself I’m going to put this away and I’m not going to be distracted by it, but then it’s like, I get a message from my mom, and then I respond to that, and it’s like, well, they don’t know that it’s my mom that I’m responding to. They just see me looking at a phone, yes? So I think that’s the hard part. Is we can exist in our world, and it can feel like I’m doing this thing that is productive. I’m not scrolling Instagram, yeah. But to the outside, nobody knows that. And I think that’s the the hard part with a like, a boundary like that, is understanding what it’s like for somebody else to experience that moment with us. I think I could get better. 

Megan Porta  31:51

Yeah, phone time is phone time at the end of the day, yeah, right.

Bjork Ostrom  31:54

Doesn’t matter what it is that you’re doing. 

Megan Porta  31:56

Yeah, exactly.

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Megan Porta  33:31

Do you have any specific tools or systems you have in place in your life or business that really help you to avoid burnout? 

Bjork Ostrom  33:40

Yeah, I think where you store things is really important. I’ll give you an example. Throughout any day, I feel like I probably accumulate 10 to 30 tasks, things to do, things that have to and that could exist. So we have commercial real estate like that. We operate in a building that we own. There’s other tenants in it, like, today, they were cutting trees, and there’s like, a literal, like, toilet that needs to get fixed last week. So the very typical commercial real estate stuff. So there’s that, there’s home stuff. Like, we have somebody who’s doing stuff at our home. We have all these projects that we do. So that’s happening today. We have our businesses. We have these multiple businesses that exist, and there’s always something that needs to happen. Something that needs to happen. So David Allen says this, he wrote the book Getting Things Done. Did an interview with him years ago, and one of the things that I love about what he says is the brain is like a really terrible place to store things, but it’s a really great place come up with creative ideas and to problem solve. So it’s not a great file cabinet, but it is a great paintbrush or Canvas to use that word again. So for me, a lot of it is like, what is my system or process for storing? And I was just talking about this with Lindsay. She’s like, she didn’t know this was something that I did. She’s like, Oh, that’s fascinating. One way that I do that is so I have my phone, my. It’s an iPhone and it has iCloud Drive, which means that I have access to My Documents folder and my desktop. And so oftentimes there’ll be something that’s happening on my phone that results in a task or to do, or even on my desktop, like my computer desktop, and one of the processes that I have is I’m screenshotting and saving to my desktop all throughout the day. And so I’ll end the day with maybe 12, 14, 20 different screenshots, scans, things like that. They all go into my desktop. And then every morning, I have a morning routine that has multiple different steps that I follow, of which one is organized desktop. 

Bjork Ostrom  35:37

And from that, take another David Allen nugget, which is, if something takes less than five minutes, do it right away when you come up against the task. And so I would say, half of those things on my desktop take five minutes. So I go ahead, I take care of those, I send a message, I ask a question, clear task, I delete the screenshot. I put the other half 25% whatever it might be, are probably projects. And so then I take those, and then I use Things personally, which is a it’s by culture code, which is based on the Getting Things Done methodology with David Allen. And then from that, I’ll create a little task that I then have available in Things. So it moves off of my desktop into Things, or it goes into Asana, which is what we use with our team, and so that as a little example of a system or process that helps protect my brain space around feeling like there’s all this stuff going on, and what am I going to do and how am I going to prioritize it? And it creates a repeatable process that I know, hey, if I need to remember to call my mom back about if she’s gonna stay overnight or not tonight, in order to, like, be here so we can take our daughter in tomorrow to the doctor appointment that I know that there’ll be something there that that catches it. And then one of the other pieces with a morning routine that I do is I prioritize the day. So, like, I stack the day, and I say, okay, what are the most important things that I want to get through today based on all of these different projects and tasks. And then there’s some version of almost like you can kind of get into for me, at least this meditative state around like, okay, now I have this list based on the things that I feel like are most important, and I work through those, there will always be something that’s broken, something that has to happen, an opportunity that I could move forward on, that will never not exist. And I think part of it for me is also then accepting that I’m going to, for the rest of my life, live in a state of being where I’m never done with anything like nothing is ever done and nothing is ever perfect, and that’s just like the way that I’m existing world, and I’ve come to accept that. 

Bjork Ostrom  37:46

And so then I’m deciding, how am I working within the time that I’m working okay, I prioritize the list I work through that these are the things that I consider to be most important. And then when do I say I’m done and draw a line? And that’s when I’m done. And for me, it’s like, if it’s a normal day, it’s five o’clock. I one of my one of my things, of my morning process is like, close it’s, it’s called close out reminder. And so I grab my phone, I press the Siri button, and I say, remind me to close out at 4:45 oh, and I know I get a little nudge on my watch. It comes up on my desktop, and I’m like, Okay, I need to start thinking about making a transition. And for us, it’s a short we have an office, and so it’s a short five minute drive home. And so then it’s like, okay, there’s some dishes that need to get done here at the office. I’ll do those. I’ll straighten things out a little bit, put my coat on, and I’ll head down. And so all of that has come from those micro adjustments along the way that we talked about before, which is like, gosh, it doesn’t feel good to get home after. I said I will. So what do I need to do in order to keep that from ever happening again? I need to set a reminder to myself to do that. And then it was like, well, actually, today I had to be home at four because Lindsay had an appointment. And so what do I do in order to make sure that each day I know when I’m supposed to be home? Well, in the morning I need to look at my calendar and see when I need to leave. And so then in my morning routine, you see, like that has to happen in order for me to know later on when I’m going to leave. And so all of that to say, I think creating those processes and those systems allows me to sit with the reality of never being able to accomplish anything, but also then knowing what it is that I need to do and what my focus is.

Megan Porta  39:33

The acceptance of imperfection is huge. I hear so many people in the food blogging space just so upset because they’re not perfect. They can’t get it right, and then I feel like it’s so easy to throw in the towel and just, you know, this isn’t working. I don’t know where to go from here. So that acceptance is, I think, the most important step in getting those effective systems in place and setting back. Boundaries and defining your purpose and doing all of the stuff we’re talking about, it is never going to be perfect. Yes, yeah, totally, yeah. Okay. I love this concept that you have in your notes, which is recognizing the power of enough. I love this. I want you to talk about this a little bit.

Bjork Ostrom 40:16

Yeah, you know, I think that we have to define what enough is, because if we don’t like we’re never going to get there, if we let somebody else define it, if we look at what somebody else is doing, there’s always going to be somebody who’s a step above us and also a step behind us, in whatever way you want to look at that, followers, money. It could be how successful your relationship is with your spouse, and what that looks like like. There’s always going to be something that we could look at and say, I wish there. I wish I could be a little bit more that. But I think this goes back to defining the game that you’re playing. I think if we say, here’s what enough looks like for us, then we are able to say, I’m gonna, I’m gonna like work until that point, and then what else do I want to do? Like we could say, an example might be, you know, we want to build a business and get it up to the point where we’re earning $100,000 that would be really awesome. That for me, let’s say it’s a revenue consideration is enough. Then, then what? And it’s like, well, actually, it’d be really cool to spend more time with my kids. It would be really cool to, you know, prioritize health and fitness two hours a day. It would be, you know, great to start a nonprofit, but when we are setting out to do work, to build a business, to create a thing in the world, to have some understanding of what our goal is within that, and it’s going to be different for everybody. But if, if we don’t do that, I think what can happen is we can get in this spiral of just continuing to try and get more more page views, more money, more followers, more accolades, more praise and adoration. But if you set that upper boundary and again, it’s going to look different for everybody. And it might doesn’t have to just be a revenue upper boundary. It might be like, I want to grow 10% a year, and that’s good to me. Or Lindsay did this with sponsored content. She’s like, I want to earn X amount in a year. Once I get to that point, I’m gonna scale back. And I think what it does is it gives us permission to, like, remove some of our identity from the thing that we’re doing and growing that thing, and that thing being more and kind of the almost like the dopamine cycle of more, more is better. This month was better than last month. That’s a good thing. Then if it goes down, that’s a bad thing. And disconnecting from that a little bit and saying, like, actually, this is what enough looks like. I’m going to be good with that, and then I’m going to shift my focus to other places once I have what I consider to be enough.

Megan Porta  42:40

And then it’s never enough, right? If you don’t set those limits for yourself, then it’s this endless game of just chasing, like you said, more revenue, more followers fill in the blank. And that is not a good feeling to have. You’re never getting there. So do you recommend. So you used revenue as an example, setting one metric, and then like, how do you determine where to go next? So I can see food bloggers studying, like, the 100k goal, but then how do they know what’s after that? 

Bjork Ostrom  43:12

Yeah, I think people, I think people know, like, if you step back and you think, like, what is it that I need? What is the where is my biggest deficit, I think generally, people know what that is. And this is like broad. This isn’t like within the business. This is like relationship with a spouse. This is personal, yeah, this is connection with kids. This is like seeing and spending time with my parents. It’s, you know, prioritizing health and fitness, or, you know, it might be that, like you to use a revenue example, it doesn’t have to be that. But like you get to that point and you look around and say, like, I feel pretty good, like I feel like things are like, holistically healthy. What does it look like to maintain that and then kind of go for an like, to stretch a little bit further. But I think that the the thing to avoid is to like, get swallowed up. I think that’s what the hope in this idea of enough is, because I think what can happen is like this, it can become addict and but it’s a weird type of addiction, because it’s a generally praised addiction, which is, like you are successful, you have followers, people like what you’re doing, you’re making money, you’re building a successful all of those things are great, but I think they can also be addicting in that, like we think, we think about them all the time. We spend most of our time doing them. And there’s this quote that I came across the other day that I’ve personally been thinking a lot about, which is, I think, is that a man, because a person, a person is what he thinks about all day. And it’s like, Oh, interesting. Like, what do I think about all day? And what do…

Megan Porta  44:55

Let’s evaluate that, yep, what do I want to be? 

Bjork Ostrom  44:59

What’s desirable state of like, what do I think about all day? Because I think, again, it can be the kind of thing where we are in these groups and we’re listening to podcasts and which, again, it’s all good things, but it can become kind of the only thing, or a major thing that we think about. 

Megan Porta  45:17

Do you find that going on vacation or taking downtime is hard as far as turning it off, because I can so relate to what you’re saying. I think about work a lot. I mean, it’s most of what goes on in my brain. So when I do take downtime, which I very much look forward to, I find that it’s it’s really hard to disengage, and that makes me frustrated. It’s like, the cycle of, why am I doing this? I’m here with my family. I need to disengage. And it just gets so hard to do that. Do you feel that too? 

Bjork Ostrom 45:50

I mean, I think I’m, how would I say this? I’m not. I’m very similar. I’m like, I don’t necessarily enjoy unplugging for two weeks and like, not checking or not working, like we’re my preference would be, hey, we go on vacation. I’m doing like, an hour or two of work, like, maybe in the morning, as everybody’s kind of hanging around, maybe at night, and I don’t know, I don’t think that’s bad. I think there’s probably different versions of how people do that. Well, like, I know there are some people, and I’ve heard people who hustle super hard for eight weeks and then they’re like, off the grid for a week. Yeah, and that works for them. And I think I’m somebody who, like, I’m working hard every day, but it’s not like a mega grind, like I’m not doing 12 hour days, but also I’m probably doing a little bit every day, and on vacation, it’s like, I think I would probably, depending on what it is, in my ideal vacation, do a little bit of cleanup work, stay on top of things, almost, because it just kind of feels good for me to like, Hey, I’m gonna go and do, I don’t know, it’s kind of like, folding the laundry. I’m gonna go and kind of like, make sure that things are taken care of, clean things up a little bit, right? Do a little bit of this, do a little bit of that. I think if it work, feels different. If it if you get in and it’s stressful and it introduces all of these, you know, stressors or projects that you needed a break from, that’s different. I don’t feel like I necessarily have those, or I’m in a season where I have those, but I think that could definitely exist all that to say, I think, as a highly individual, what best practice looks like for you to create those margins, like for me, I’m probably not going to work a normal day. I’m not going to work between five and when I go to bed, but on a normal vacation, I probably would work a little bit. I think there are a lot of people would work evenings, but then would take a vacation and not touch anything. So, right? Yeah, pretty individual. 

Megan Porta  47:44

Since you are an avid reader, I know, have you read the think it’s the five, Five Hour Work day. Is that right by Stephen…

Bjork Ostrom 47:53

Or four hour? I’m thinking of the Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss?

Megan Porta  47:56

Five Hour Work Day by Stephan Aarsto, I think. But he, I don’t know if you’ve read that, but it’s a great book. He talks about something he does. I believe every year it’s been a while since I read it, so I can’t remember exactly, but he takes a season off of work. So I want to say, like months on end. And in my mind, I think that sounds so amazing. I would love to take a month or two, and I do take a lot of time off in the summer, but I like you, I work every day. I dig into my computer just to kind of get through things and make sure nothing gets out of control, to make sure I’m staying on top of my community and all of that. But I like the concept of it. He is able to massively refresh during this time, and he talks about it a lot in the book. 

Bjork Ostrom  48:45

That’s cool. 

Megan Porta  48:45

And it’s so rejuvenating for him. And it just sounds super appealing one day, maybe one day, I’ll try it, but I’m not.

Megan Porta  48:52

I think if one of the things that probably when just looking at, you know, reflecting on what I had said, one of the things that probably feels good about working while on vacation is just making sure, like, Hey, is everything good? Like, we good, this stuff taken care of. And if you didn’t have that feeling, it would probably, for myself, feel better to not do that. Like, I think the reason it feels good is because there’s probably a little bit of a pressure release around like, okay, things are good, yeah, but I contrast that with a very different business that we do, which is commercial real estate, and that is very different, like, it doesn’t require me actively. I think I could be gone for a month or even a year, probably, if I just tweaked a few different things within that business, and they could continue to run and be successful. And so part of it is just, what type of business are you building, and is it one that is on the spectrum of really easy to really difficult to have it be managed by team or self managed, or whatever that looks like? What does where is that? And for you and I Lindsay, for anybody listening to this podcast, to have a personality centric business, it’s got on the spectrum. It’s going to be harder, yeah, to unplug from that, versus retail building with an Edward Jones and a pizza shop and a fitness center like, that’s going to feel very different. So part of it is, I think, just the nature of the businesses that we’re in.

Megan Porta  50:13

Right, yeah, that makes sense. And then kind of along those lines, just taking care of yourself. Do you think that falls into the scope of preventing burnout, self care?

Bjork Ostrom 50:24

Self care, for sure. And here’s why, you know, I think it can. You can get a little bit eye rolly with self care of, like, okay, like, what? How does that practical? What? How does that actually help? How is it tactical? I think at its core, what we do, like, what you and I are doing, right, and what anybody is doing who’s listening to this is like you and I are sitting at a computer and we are relaying information with our brains like that. Is the tool that we are using, is our brain. We’ll wrap up this call, the files will upload, I’ll pull up my email. Is what I’m gonna do after this. And it’s just my brain, like it’s just my brain thinking about stuff and responding to stuff. And then I have one more call today, and I I’m not going to move. I’m going to be in the same chair. It’s just going to be my brain thinking and interacting. And it’s different than 50 years ago, where you’d show up and like the value that a lot of us would have been creating is in the effort that we do. We would it’s a manufacturing line. It’s, you know, working the fields in a farm. Not that all jobs were like that 50 years ago, but for what we do, it’s creative work and it’s knowledge, and what we use for that is our brain and our mind and our brain and our mind like the brain is the mind and the brain is a thing, and our body is a thing, and we need to, if that is sub optimal, it’s like a sub optimal tool. It’s like a hammer that’s a little bit crooked and you’re trying to build a house, or, you know, tape that isn’t quite sticky when you’re trying to package the package. And so I think the point in that is, if we are doing knowledge work and we are creating things in the world, the way that we do that is with our brain. The brain is the mind, how do we have the highest chance of success? We that tool has to be really healthy. And what does that mean? I think we all know what it is. It’s like, lower amounts of stress, higher amounts of sleep. It’s social connection. It’s like loving relationships. It’s other things that again, it comes down to individual prioritization. For some people, it’s extended times alone. For other people, it’s extended times with groups of people, and so understanding what you at your best looks like in building your days, your weeks, your months, your life, towards that version of yourself, not because you’re selfish, but because that’s going to allow you to create the greatest things in the and that’s what we’re all trying to do, is create really great things that impact other people, that make a difference. And so I think prioritizing taking care of the thing that is most important to us, which is our brain, our body, is going to result in better work.

Megan Porta  53:08

Beautifully said, and perfect way to end. Thank you. Bjork, and is there anything that we missed, that you feel is really important on this topic before we say goodbye?

Bjork Ostrom  53:17

One of the things I always talk about alluded to a little bit. The name of the parent company is this idea of showing up every day and getting a tiny bit better. And I think that’s the thing I would want to leave people with. Is if you’re feeling overwhelmed, if you’re feeling like there’s an endless list of things to do, number one, you’re not alone. It’s this universal truth that, like we all have never ending list of things we could be doing, should be doing, but the goal is to show up and say, back to that first point, like, what am I marching towards? What my what’s the purpose in the work that I’m doing? And how do I get a tiny bit better? And it’s, it’s incremental, you know, it’s, it’s tiny bits of percentages over 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. And I think if we reduce the pressure and the urgency around getting somewhere and increase the focus on, like, what, what’s the small thing that I can do today, then we can continue to show up for a long period of time. And I think that’s really what it’s all about. It’s like, it’s, you say this all the time, but like, people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade. And I think they especially underestimate what they can do in a decade. If you think about this idea of mental improvements with you, the people you work with, the systems you have, your knowledge, self care, things like that. So that’s what I would want to leave people with. 

Megan Porta  54:35

Yeah, I love that. That’s one of my favorite concepts of all time. Is just doing the little things repeatedly, consistently over and over to find the success you want. I mean, it’s really such a simple concept, but yeah, it feels draining, I think for a lot of people, yeah, for sure, yeah. But thank you so much. Bjork, this was super fun. Great to chat with you. I know you have, Food Blogger Pro and Clariti. Do you want to mention just a little bit about that? If food bloggers are interested in either of those? 

Bjork Ostrom  55:06

Sure, yep, food blogger pros, membership, site membership meeting. You can sign up. You can cancel anytime I mentioned on the podcast as we were talking, but there’s a community forum, there’s lessons, there’s courses. You know, our hope is to be a partner in a certain stage of somebody’s journey to get up and running, and we’ve had some great success stories of people who have been able to really work hard and build successful businesses. So that’s Food Blogger Pro. We also have a podcast, and people can check that out. You could just search food blogger pro for either of those, and then Clariti is a tool for anybody who has a WordPress site. Most of the people listening to this will be food people, it’s not necessarily you don’t have to, but you probably have more than 300 400 pieces of content, and you’re starting to think about, how do I manage this? What is my system for managing this content, keeping track of improvements, finding things to improve. So Clariti is a tool that brings in WordPress data, Google Analytics data and Google Search Console data and creates these really great interactive pages that you can understand your content better. And we have, gosh, it’s maybe almost 700 folks who are using that now as a tool to level up their content. Started out of a need for us. We created it because we were massive. Had this massive spreadsheet that we’re managing all of our content optimization and updates in and switched over to using a tool like anytime you have a spreadsheet, it’s probably good opportunity for software. So that’s why we created Clariti. And then now we have folks who are a part of that.

Megan Porta  56:34

Awesome thank you for that. I hope you go check that out, listeners and yeah, just thank you again. Bjork for being here. It was such a pleasure. 

Outro  56:45

If you enjoyed this topic, you’ll also love the episode. I recommend in the show notes, click on the episode description to find the link. Thank you, and I will see you next time you.


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