When Everything is a Priority, Nothing Is – Why Are We Still Doing That?
No Vacation Required
Why Are We Still Pretending Everything is Important?
In a world where “busy” is a badge of honor, we frequently fall into the trap of treating every task as a top priority. In this episode, we explore the heavy toll of "pretending everything matters" and share why true prioritization is impossible without a deep, foundational understanding of yourself.
From discussing a high-profile exposé on toxic workplace culture to navigating their own "Chapter Two" growth pains, we break down how to say a "positive no" to things that don't align with your values. Whether you are struggling with a packed schedule or feeling the pressure to say yes to every good opportunity, learn how to triage your life into what matters a lot, a middle, and a little.
Onward and Inward,
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CHAPTERS:
(00:00) Why are we still doing that?
(00:46) Mind Share: The Noma exposé and toxic "superstar" culture
(05:08) The core value of balance and the prioritization series
(06:30) Chapter Two: Learning to say no during a period of abundance
(09:44) Why prioritization requires knowing yourself first
(12:03) Moving from "flimsy" decisions to intuitive responses
(18:47) Triage: Matters a lot, a middle, a little, or not at all
(27:17) Worth the Time: A "shameless plug" and the No Vacation Required book
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
The Priority Paradox: If everything is a priority, then nothing is.
The "Positive No": Saying no with intention isn't about being negative; it's about protecting the energy you give to the people and projects that matter most.
Know Yourself to Triage: You cannot effectively prioritize if you don't understand your own strengths, values, and what you actually care about versus what you are told to care about.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
At Noma, Accusations of Past Physcial Abuse – New York Times
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Caanan: Most of us are walking around with a to-do list that is actually just a list of everything, including everyone else's priorities. We've convinced ourselves that if we just work harder, we can do it all. But if we know deep down that trying to please everyone means pleasing no one, including ourselves, why are we still pretending everything is important?
Kent: Welcome to the No Vacation Required podcast, where we break down tired traditions and outdated thinking by asking the question, why are we still doing that? It's all about building a life you don't need a break from, being more present and fulfilled, and showing up in a complicated world that needs your voice and unique talents. Guess who has a mind share?
Caanan: Is it you?
Kent: I do.
Caanan: I had a 50% chance of getting it right.
Kent: Yeah. And it, this all just happened. I'm gonna be honest. Because this should be its own episode of why are we still doing that? It should be its own month, this kind of theme. Uh, and it'll probably inspire that, but I just wanna say that I just read this New York Times expose on the world's top rated restaurant. And I don't, I don't even think it, I think it closed a couple years ago and is now doing popups or whatever, but Noma.
Caanan: Okay.
Kent: Um, what a decade plus world's top rated restaurant in Copenhagen. Yes. Remember we were there. There's all this craze about it. We know people here. We've read stories about people building their lives around getting to this restaurant. Um, having this experience. Bottom line, this expose, which really is not much of an expose, thus the, why are we still doing that bent? I'm going to give this terrible place to work. The founder, superstar, lead chef, creating a truly psychotic workplace.
Caanan: Oh no.
Kent: Punching people. We're punching, hitting, verbally abusing, the whole bit.
Caanan: Wait, why am I acting surprised? This is always the story.
Kent: Yeah, it's always a story. New York Times does a great job with this kind of stuff. They, they interviewed, I think, 36 people, let me try to see this, 35 former employees. I mean, it's just, it's tight. And what, what really is bothersome, and I know this isn't a full episode, we have to move on, is that this has been known for a long time, but yet everybody still wanted to go to Noma, even though this information was out there, uh, to some degree. There was also a lot of secrecy because, as you learned in this article, people feared for their futures. You know, if you speak out against the superstar chef of the world, you will never work in the industry again. So this hits for us so hard, you know, we're organizational development specialists, workplace career issues are at the heart of what we've done so much work in.
Caanan: And fundamentally decent people who try to care for others.
Kent: Yeah. You mean we are?
Caanan: We are. I'm not too proud to say.
Kent: No, it's kind of a given. Yeah. I mean, this is the kind of life we want to live, the kind of, the kind of vibe we've helped instill in people and in places, and it's just disgusting. Why are we still doing this kind of thing, holding these people and institutions up that are unquestionably bad and abusive.
Caanan: That's so frustrating. You know, it didn't, that's like what happened at, uh, Willows Lodge up on Lumi Island here in our part of the world.
Kent: Yeah. Fun fact, the lead chef to the lead chef at Willows where we went, which was a wonderful dinner, was the star pupil of this person, the founder of Noma. This guy from Willows peeled off, developed this beautiful place, which we went to when it first opened years and years and years and years ago to create. We had what? It was like a 20 course meal. We had whatever. He turned out to be a huge abuser. Didn't pay people like culture of abuse. Well, I wonder why the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Caanan: No. Yeah. Oh.
Kent: Let's put a stop to this.
Caanan: Yeah, enough of that. Let's not support that. I mean, you know, we can talk about cancel culture, but let's just cancel that **** altogether. Please.
Kent: So this series, as we hope you know by now, we're talking about balance, a topic we love. In the first episode, go check it out, the last episode. We talked about energy management, and that's something Kanan and I are working on. We're schedule guys, but we're trying to be more intuitive. Balance, as we said in that episode, is such a important thing to us.
Caanan: Yeah. It's a core value.
Kent: Haters, if you hate the word, that's on you, not us.
Caanan: No. Yeah. If you hate the word balance, like I said in the last episode, check yourself. That's not healthy. That's not good.
Kent: Oh, here's a fun thing. And I was inspired, as I said in the last episode, to kind of put this forward, this topic balance forward as a potential show topic for these four episodes, because so many people's questions and feedback to us revolves around what's ultimately around balance and time and energy. Yeah. How can I do it all? So this week we're talking about prioritization. And last week, we're in the trenches with everybody. This week, I'm so proud of all the work we've done as individuals and as a couple, as it relates to prioritization, we kind of hit a wall in our chapter two, our big growth chapter. Yes. You know, when we were, we finally had our ultimate no vacation required life, as we've said before, be careful what you ask for because our good fortune came in the form of an avalanche and we were sort of forced to lean into prioritization and to get comfortable saying, these things matter a lot. These things matter a middle. These things matter a little. And these things don't matter. So we're here to tell you prioritization and being able to say, yeah, wait, no, what? This is what I'm focusing on. Not this. I'm not interested. I'm not talented. I don't have time. Really knowing what's a priority. It's such a key part of your energy management. So asking, why are we still pretending that everything matters? And, and kind of a, a spark point I wrote down here, if everything's a priority, nothing is.
Caanan: It makes me so happy that you brought up our chapter two, our big growth phase. I love to talk about it because it was, by all external measures, wonderful. There was nothing about it that is easy to complain about because it was so much good stuff. And it also was making us literally sick because we were saying yes to everything because it all was so easy to say yes to because it was all good stuff. And wouldn't we all like to have this problem? No, no, actually we wouldn't because it's funny, it's, it's, a lot easier to say no to things you don't want to do. Now, very few of us actually do that, hence this podcast. But it's very difficult to ask the universe, if you will, to set the intention and say, I want all this abundance and good stuff in my life. And then to get it and realize, oh my God, I don't have the time or energy or ability to regulate to actually handle what is coming my way. So it's very difficult to say no to things that are an easy yes. So how do you do that? How do you say no to things that are an easy yes, or as most of us are dealing with, how do you say no to things that should be a clear no? And the answer is yes. I'm going to say it again. Know yourself. I doubled down on it in the last episode. I'm going to triple, quadruple, quintuple down on it in this episode. You literally cannot triage priorities. You cannot prioritize if you don't know yourself, if you don't know your strengths, if you don't know your values, if you don't know what you actually care about versus what you're told to care about, if you don't fundamentally understand why you believe things, or if those beliefs are yours or somebody else's. Listen, you have to do this foundational work. You have to know yourself if you're going to ever actually choose how to show up in the world. You can't do it if you don't know yourself.
Kent: Okay, so we talk about getting over this idea of thinking everything is important. And you just talked about, yeah, in our chapter two, the pull to say yes to everything because it's all we ever wanted. And what we realized is that you can start making a lot of decisions that feel flimsy if you don't know yourself. Because in the back of your mind, you're thinking, what do I know? Maybe this person knows better. Maybe I should do this, go to that event, do this project. Oh yeah, I better do this project because look at what my co-team members are doing. They're staying up all night doing extra products and projects. So if things aren't grounded in who you are, you're going to have no idea about prioritization because I use, I wrote down the word flimsy when I was taking notes for this show. Like, when you don't know who you are, everything starts to feel flimsy. So prioritization starts to feel impossible because you feel more like you're, you know, kind of drifting in the wind rather than standing on your own two feet, making solid decisions. And I want to say something about balance and kind of a controversial thing where sometimes being out of balance is okay because like for us at this point in chapter two, and we have versions of this that happen to this day, it takes something getting off kilter to know some things out of balance. Actually, we're kind of regularly going through this as we lean more into responding intuitively from a scheduling standpoint, a recognition like, Ooh, I'm having an intuitive response to blank. Therefore, I feel like a change needs to be made. So we're not big on, as Canaan always says, the view of balance is something that can come when you're dead. And I want to, you know, I think of people who are like, I eat 5000 calories one day and then 200 calories the next day and 8000 calories the next day and sick, you know, this sort of like pride in being forever off kilter. Yes, bad out, but in is recognizing out of balance because sometimes it takes a leaning in or a miscalibration to then know when you need to bring something back into balance. I know you have something you want to talk about with this chapter two.
Caanan: Yes. You actually just said so many things. I have to prioritize what matters to me in this moment. I'm checking in with my intuition and what I know about myself.
Kent: Hey listener, we are going to, you're going to hit the pause button and Kanan is going to actively do prioritization meditation. We'll be back with you shortly.
Caanan: I just, I'm gonna have to leave some of what I wanted to say on the cutting room floor here because I so wanted to respond to everything. And now I can't think of anything I want to say.
Kent: I know you wanted to talk about our chapter two projects.
Caanan: Oh my God. Okay. Yes. Thank you. I totally drew a blank there because I had like way too much going on.
Kent: He was giving me emotions all through that, like, stop, stop, this is too much.
Caanan: Yeah. So chapter two projects. So as I talked about that period in our life where we were growing so quickly and so ferociously in our business, and that was a wonderful period. We were getting exactly what we asked for. We had dreamed of starting a business, working for ourselves, doing work that was fulfilling, helping other people, leaning into our strengths, a fully values aligned business. But we were getting at the peak so much business that we literally couldn't handle it. I'm not ashamed now to say that at the time, we didn't really know what we didn't know. We didn't know ourselves well enough to recognize that we were making ourselves crazy.
Kent: Yeah.
Caanan: So we were saying yes to so much that we were actually miserable.
Kent: Yeah. Well, it came at an interesting time because all of this was happening as we set out to have this no vacation required life, a life we didn't need a break from. We knew we had to know ourselves. And it was at the core of the work we'd done. But as we, you know, back at that kind of growth stage, we're doing what you do, getting the education and the tools and learning about our craft. We were also figuring out ourselves at this time, and it kind of culminated in this beautiful no.
Caanan: Yeah, I don't want to denigrate us at all for that period. Like I said, we didn't know what we didn't know, but we were figuring it out and we did figure it out and we had to make some really difficult choices. They were difficult for us. We recognized that if we wanted to take on all the business that was coming our way, we would have to scale and neither of us wanted to do that. We knew that didn't align with our priorities. managing people or having a big business?
Kent: Yeah.
Caanan: So we only had the option to start saying no. And it was terrifying because no is uncomfortable. But we did start saying no. We started saying no to projects that weren't squarely in our wheelhouse and stopped contorting ourselves to say yes to things that weren't a perfect fit. We started asking clients to hold off or saying like, we'd love to help you, but it's going to be in five months.
Kent: That's what I'm most proud of is even, even the ones that were in our wheelhouse. Being able to take a breath and say, wait, these are our return clients. These are the people that matter the most to us. We've got to give them our best energy and we can't do that if we're overloading. So we just have to lovingly tell them, like, we have a spot for you in four weeks. We have a spot for you in six weeks. We have a spot for you in five months.
Caanan: But this, this is something that I think people can actually relate to, which is we were worried that if we started saying no, the abundance would disappear somehow. Totally. We were completely wrong, I'm happy to say. When we said no with intention and a positive no, if you will, people understood. And they accommodated us. And so that will happen for you too. If you are saying a positive no because something doesn't align with your strengths or values, it's not a priority, and you can say that with that intention behind it, people will understand. So what do we do with all this? It's, we can talk about this, we can intellectualize about it. You can be saying yes internally to saying no to things. But that doesn't make it easy to do. Otherwise we'd all be doing it already. So I'm thinking about something you said earlier on that I'm still kind of chuckling about. Something matters a lot. Something matters a middle. Something matters a little. Something doesn't matter at all.
Kent: Yeah, because it's what we do, basically.
Caanan: Yeah, that's what we do. And that's the goal, so that you can say no to the things that don't matter at all, matter a little, maybe to some of the things that matter a middle. And if you're really lucky, like we are, even saying no to things that matter a lot, but easy for us to say. How do you do that? How do you know what matters a lot, what matters a middle, what matters a little, what doesn't matter at all?
Kent: Yeah, what's interesting, I just was thinking of, wait a minute, I think it was the last episode, again, the first in this series of Balance, where you talked about your mind share, which was saying no to the FIFA tickets that we had in our cart. And that's such a perfect example of saying no to things that matter. Gosh, here's the little full circle moment you're witnessing between the two of us. Like, I was having a hard time connecting fully to what you were saying about, you know, saying no to things that matter. Uh, not because we don't do it, but because that's a tough thing to explain, but to share that, yeah, having tickets to tickets in our cart to FIFA games here in Seattle, something we thought would never happen cuz what 5 million people were trying to get tickets to right all the games across the United States alone and you just had this feeling like nope we don't need to do this it's in our wheelhouse but we've got these in our wheelhouse things that we've said yes to lately so we're going to say no to this that was your vote yeah no to something that's so powerful. And yeah, the only way you can do this is if you know yourself. And remember I was using the word flimsy a while ago. When you don't know yourself, everything feels flimsy and then saying no to things you like. It's like, well, why am I doing that? And I'm saying yes to things I don't like. Everything feels flimsy and uncertain.
Caanan: Wait, I have to riff on flimsy. This is why I had a total brain fart earlier because you had said the thing about flimsy and it's something I wanted to touch on. I'm sorry to interrupt. It's not just about saying no to things, knowing yourself well enough to say no to things. It's that when you know yourself and you are saying like a positive, fully embodied yes to things, then you can really appreciate those things that you are agreeing to. Otherwise, everything does feel flimsy. Even the things that really matter to you feel flimsy because they're not an embodied yes. They're just... a big cache of things you've agreed to that you don't have the time for, and you're sort of like zombie working through.
Kent: Yeah, for sure.
Caanan: Okay, I'm sorry. I hope I didn't derail you.
Kent: It's huge. Before we wrap, I do want to say a couple things about the, what did I say? Middle important, little important. There's a place for that. And we've gotten so great with those categories as individuals and as a couple, because I think when you're first starting and kind of go girling yourself and saying, yes, I can do this, I can do what matters, and I can say no to what doesn't matter. But that kind of middle arena gets real tough. Oh yeah. And some of that, to overuse a word, flimsiness persists, but I think I'm really proud. And we want this for our clients, our friends, we want this for you too, to be able to have those middle things, that are like, yeah, that's, that's not something that matters hugely. It's not something I want eliminated from the arena, but it's time to do that again. It's time to, you know, what, I can't even think of something actively, but we've got a lot of these things where it's like, you know what?
Caanan: I can think of saying this like volunteer opportunities or, you know, your school board or whatever actually matters to you and you want to participate, but you can't participate in everything. So sometimes you're saying yes and sometimes you're saying no and you're pulsing that and you're feeling really good about saying no because you have said yes in the past.
Kent: Yeah, that's a great point and something actually I'm actively thinking of. Some friends are trying to see if we were available for a upcoming advocacy thing and we're going to be out of town, so we're not. But that prompts us to think about how important advocacy is to us. It's at the core of who we are making a difference. So it prompts us to think, okay, when can we do something? Because we need to be doing something advocacy. So it kind of creates a rolling vibe. Schedule and appropriate prioritization of things. And back to what we talked about last week with general energy management and how we're both schedule guys and our couplehood works best from a scheduled perspective with lots of flexibility, I think having that for us creates these moments of this is a priority. This is why it's on the schedule a lot. Getting in nature is a priority for us as a couple. So if we are not in nature every week, minimally. Something is off and we're very aware, like, that's not a priority we're gonna let fall off. But I think it's those things that are important, just not critically important, that flow into this beautiful space of showing up because we make them middle important or little important, feels very gratifying and satisfying. And you can have that too. This whole idea of prioritization just lights me up right now because so many people are depleted by what's happening around the world and with just so many, if not all facets of their life, Canaan and I are just huge proponents of, then don't do it. Then don't do it. And people just, their face sort of drops in ultimate relaxation, like, you're ****** right. I do not have to do that.
Caanan: Remember when Shonda Rhimes came out with that book, like 10 years ago, that was like, say yes. Just say like a year of saying yes to things.
Kent: I had not remembered that, but now I am remembering that.
Caanan: That aged like milk we we're not doing that anymore.
Kent: We're not I remember she had her kind of year of saying yes yeah I mean coming from that perspective wasn't it like the the busy network executive yes who basically couldn't see her kids didn't have any fun so it was like her kids be all I want to go to Disneyland right now and she'd be yes uh yeah totally.
Caanan: We're not saying yes to everything anymore you don't have the energy you don't have the bandwidth. You don't have the regulatory system to pull that off. None of us do.
Kent: Protect your peace, baby.
Caanan: I have the world's most self-serving worth the time. Worth the time It's a shameless plug of our own book, No Vacation Required.
Kent: You never do a shameless plug. There's got to be more to this. So what's the more to this part?
Caanan: It's just that I think a lot of people will find the information we put in there. If you find this podcast helpful, you will find the information in our book, No Vacation Required. I'm saying it again, like I'm on a press tour. I think you will find that information very helpful. It's very straightforward. It's couched in real stories of real people. And it's a great framework that will help in what we were talking about this episode, knowing yourself, knowing how to prioritize what.
Kent: Wait, what? I think you're forgetting the full story because this is so unlike you. I think I know why you're bringing this up. And this is because somebody got in touch because they misunderstood what the book was about.
Caanan: Oh my God. That is, yes. This is why this is on my mind.
Kent: This is why. No vacation required. Our book is on your mind. So yes, please share that part because that makes this, this makes more sense of why our own art.
Caanan: Okay. I'll try to keep this quick because this is running along, but somebody got in touch and, uh, praised the book. Thank goodness. But they said they misunderstood the title. They got it because they thought it was like about hustling. Like a life hack thing. Like no vacation required meant you could work more. And not take breaks. Like how to work more?
Kent: Be so thrilled with your work. That you didn't feel like you did need a break. And
Caanan: I was like dead inside. I was like, oh my God, I never thought of this title in that way because it's so the antithesis of what we're full existential crisis.
Kent: It's so off brand.
Caanan: But I actually came to as we talked about it and I was like, oh, we're changing the title. We're tearing it all down. Burn it all down. It's so wrong. I started to really love it because if you think No Vacation Required is about how to hustle harder. If you think that's a life hack, this book is for you. And if you understand what it means, this book is for you. I'll leave it at that.
Kent: Yes. Thanks for listening to the No Vacation Required podcast. For more information, including services designed to help you build a life you don't need a break from, check out NoVacationRequired.com. And if you found this information helpful, please subscribe