🎙 66. Embracing the 9-5 to Support Your Prolific Creation

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Written By Lyndsee Nielson

the spiritual 9-5 podcast transcript

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Episode Published on March 5, 2024

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Intro to the Intro

If you are interested in entrepreneurship, and most especially creative entrepreneurship, like writing novels, or screenplays, or poetry, or nonfiction, or making music, or creating art, or podcasting, or knitting, or knowledge work, or any form of entrepreneurship where your content, or your creation, or your mind, or your human expression is how you make your money…

Having a 9–5 or some sort of “day job” can be really supportive for this. 

And this episode today is about why that is. 

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I believe that working can be one of the most spiritual paths that we walk.

Whether that work is turning your passion into a business, or sitting behind a desk for eight hours a day, or anywhere beyond and in between. And yet, we often take the way in which we show up to work for granted, even though it's where we spend the majority of our time.

Here on The Spiritual 9–5 Podcast, we talk about that. We talk about entrepreneurship, we talk about the 9 to 5, we talk about what it's like to be multi-passionate, and talented, and inspired, and also utterly demotivated. 

We are here to support you in your work, whether your work is sacred to you, or just something that you do to get by. We are here to help you see and know yourself a little bit deeper, and to inspire you to show up no matter what it is that you find.

I'm your host, Marie Groover, and like you, I am as multi-passionate as they come. I'm the founder of two businesses that are here to bring the soul back into the office. I, too, work a 9 to 5 in corporate tech. 

I'm a surfer, a writer, a philosopher-artist, if you will, and I'm so excited to bring you this episode today. If you haven't, please leave the show a 5-star rating, and if this episode resonates, consider saving it and sharing it with someone you think it would resonate with too. 

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Having a day job and balancing that with your creative work forces you to learn discipline. It shows you what matters most to you, and it shows you what is superfluous. 

It can teach you how to surrender to the work rather than overthinking it. It can inspire you, but also keep you grounded and empathetic. And it supports the cycle of completion. You get more done with less. 

I'm going to break this down into five categories, or ways, that your day job can support your prolific creation.

But first, I want to talk a little bit about resistance. The number one thing I hear from everyone when it comes to holding both (a day job or a career and a business or a passion or a hobby) is “I can't.” “I'm too busy.” “There isn't enough time.” “Must be nice.” And “I'm just too tired at the end of every day to even consider it.” 

I said one thing because, even though I quoted many sentences, many things, I said just one because all of those statements are variations of the same thing: which is that it feels either too hard or impossible. And by the way, it only feels too hard or impossible if you have the thoughts that support the impossibility or the hardness of the work. 

The truth is, there are many prolific creators who held full-time jobs (and also full-ass families with kids and aging parents and full lives). Prolific creators who lived big but who held a lot, where most of them attribute their success in their craft or in their creation back to the work that supported them and resourced them and inspired them, ultimately. Even if the work wasn't necessarily inspiring, even if the 9–5 was like meh.

So I'll name some of them: 

George Saunders, prolific writer, but also a geophysical engineer, a previous technical writer, and a professor at Syracuse. He worked in oil exploration in Sumatra. He worked at an environmental engineering firm, which by the way, shout out to one of my clients, Hannah, who was also an environmental engineer and a writer of many flavors and a maker of many flavors and a multi-business owner. Back to George though. George Saunders actually attributes his writing career and his success in his written works to his odd background. Much of his writing inspiration came directly from him being in his day job. 

We also have Jeff Koons. Jeff Koons is an installation artist who makes millions with his art, who was also a Wall Street commodities broker before he got famous for his work. 

Barbara Kruger is an artist who dropped out of college, got a job in graphic design, and she claims that it was her exposure to advertising and publication through her day job that inspired her art. 

We have Winston Churchill. So many of us know him historically or politically, but did you know that he wrote 42 books in his lifetime? 

And then we also have Octavia Butler, a science fiction writer who achieved the MacArthur Genius Grant. She worked as a telemarketer, warehouse worker, dishwasher, potato chip inspector, so many things to support herself and her writing. 

T.S. Eliot was a banker. 

Harper Lee dropped out of law school to pursue her writing career and simultaneously supported herself as a ticket agent for Eastern Airlines. 

Wallace Stevens was an insurance executive, worked there for 40 years and wrote poetry in between writing claims and policies and being a boss and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1955. 

I'm going to stop now, but there are so many more people. I've added a few links to the show notes so that you can reference all the people that I just listed and more, but if you just google “artists who had day jobs” or “writers who worked full-time” or some variation of those threads, you will get a long list of results. 

The next thing that I'll say before I go into five ways that your day job can support your prolific creation or career as a creator is this, something that Mel Robbins once said on her podcast, she said, “When you are really busy, if you add in something more meaningful, it changes everything. And if you don't feel like you have enough time, then you aren't doing anything meaningful. You aren't living big enough.” 

It is you making choices with how you spend your time. And if you feel like you don't have enough of it, you are probably wasting at least a bit of it. 

When you add something meaningful to your already packed and busy life, your life rearranges itself and you ultimately find out what really matters. You start to actually live. You take control of your life and you feel fulfilled and you show up on purpose. 

You live on purpose. If you don't believe me, find out. Not hypothetically.

I don't care about the research or the stats. I want to hear your experience. Find something with meaning. Dedicate yourself to it. Notice how everything shifts and report back. 

Now let's get into how a day job or a career can be supportive to your creative pursuits. Can be supportive to your passions, artistry, life's work, writing, entrepreneurship, all of it and more. 

Whether or not you implement or experiment with these, it's up to you. 

So the first thing out of the five is routine or structure. 

Routine and/or structure for many reasons supports a life of prolific creation.One of those reasons is discipline. One of the hardest parts of pure and straight up entrepreneurship is structuring my days and continually bringing my focus back to needle moving activities versus busy work, nice to haves or distractions. 

When you have all the time in the world it can be hard to focus it, and when you have all the options in the world it can be hard to stay the course and give one plan or idea the time and the testing that it really deserves. 

Freedom is a beautiful thing but freedom without discipline is dangerous. You start a lot of things but do you ever finish them or take them far enough to see their results? Now having a 9–5 may not solve this for you because some of you listening probably do have 9–5s and are still not necessarily finding the discipline that your work needs to thrive. 

So my guidance is this, allow your work structure and schedule to inform your creation. Build or stack upon your work structure. Build or stack upon your work schedule and first establish consistency. That's it. 

So at first don't even worry about doing the work, or getting the most done, just tap into a routine or ritual that works for you and the aspect of your life that routinely and structurally takes up the most time. Which for most of us is a 9–5 or work, some sort of work function, right? And find out do you create best first thing in the morning or do you create best after hours? Great. Now stack that onto your working day or within your schedule somehow. 

Put it in your calendar. Consider it a part of your work day. It is no longer an option but it is now a non-negotiable part of your routine. 

For context, the way that I structure my day is early a.m. I do my own work and creation in the morning so I'll take one to 1.5, so an hour to an hour and a half, before my work day to focus on my businesses, to write or to chat with clients. During this time I sip my coffee. I allow it to be enjoyable and the structure that I've created is also constrained. 

So I don't work on my business for more than one and a half hours. Wherever I am, I cut it off. I don't have a lot of internal meetings when it comes to my business but if I do have one, I'll tend to take it after hours. So I talk with my team after my working hours. 

Occasionally, I'll schedule a client chat after hours as well, and the reason I do this is because those things, when I hop on calls with people and get to talk about my work or get to talk about their work, those things are energizing for me and no matter what state I feel I'm in, like if I'm super tired and drained after working for a full day, my inspiration and my energy carries me because I love those types of connections. 

In terms of the morning work, I chose mornings because that's when my brain is the sharpest. Because it allows me to get the most important things done first and completely out of the way so that I can clearly and presently focus on my job or whatever is at hand. Mornings for me also keep me from pushing anything out or pushing anything off until tomorrow, whereas, if I start to plan out evenings for productivity, I may or may not actually follow through. 

I know this about myself. Because I know this about myself, I try to do the things that are important in the morning within that time frame that I set for myself because in the evenings my energy is way lower so it's really easy for me to tell myself that I'll do it tomorrow instead and so for the most part, I keep my evenings free. My evenings are my time to work out, to be a blob, to explore, to spend time with loved ones and to work but only if I feel inspired to do so.

And personally I do work on the weekends, but I try to limit my work to a half day on Saturday mornings, again, unless I'm feeling inspired. So if I'm feeling inspired, I let myself work as much as I want to on the weekend but not past like exhaustion because I always want to start my week feeling fresh. 

Tagging on my business to my 9–5 structure or rather around my 9–5 structure creates discipline and consistency in showing up in the work that really matters to me. 

I treat this work as a non-negotiable just like my 9–5 is a non-negotiable. It's something that I show up for Monday through Friday, week in and week out, minus vacations or sick time of course and this discipline leads to clear prioritization which is number two. 

Having a day job or 9–5 gives way to clear priorities and precision focus.

It shows you what matters most because you can't do it all and when you work a full-time job and try to run a business or/and try to do anything outside of a full-time job that requires persistent dedication and focus, you realize you can't do everything. And you have to really pick what matters. So for me if I'm committed to working on my business for an hour to an hour and a half of my day and that's all, I have to choose wisely what I want to work on and where I want my focus to be. I am almost forced to stay in needle moving activities on the regular. 

I know what is superfluous. I know what is busy work. I know what matters and I have to choose actively. 

The same thing is likely true for you. If you are an artist and you have a 9–5 which limits your time to produce art, you build the discipline or the muscle to get right into the work. To crack open your supplies and roll up your sleeves. Which by the way, I offer this question to you

What would help you get into your work most efficiently? 

Sometimes we know our needle moving activities but we resist them really hard. You know, maybe you're a painter and painting is the thing that moves the needle more than anything else, but you resist that by spending more time creating adjacent content like stuff for Instagram or LinkedIn. You have to know what your ratio is.

Like, maybe 80% of your time goes to being in the work or painting itself and 10 to 20 percent of your time goes into the operations and enablement of that work which would be like adjacent content, marketing, sales, networking, etc. Maybe that's having a dedicated room or studio space where your supplies are all there and set up and ready already, so that you don't spend too much time with the setup and the cleanup around your job. Maybe the setup is what gets your juices flowing, though.

Only you know this so honor and allow the limited time or space that you have to show you. This bleeds into number one a little bit with structure and routine. I mentioned that my routine is nearly daily. 

It's every day that I work for CrowdStrike that I also work for myself plus one Saturdays. 

A friend of mine is a writer and when she decided to get serious about her writing she realized that it doesn't work for her to write daily on top of her job and her relationship and everything she has going on in her life. So instead she writes weekly. She schedules in a long slot four to six hours every weekend to go to a coffee shop and write. 

I know a few people actually who have adopted this approach quite successfully. So what does this do? When you have this kind of structure which is limited to a chunk of time or a particular place or space, your energy can be more focused. 

You know exactly what that space is for or what you're meant to be doing, and again you can't do everything so you're almost forced to focus on what matters the most. 

Which leads us then into number three. Surrender and steady pacing. 

If you do something every day for one to one and a half hours or every week for four hours or two times a month for six hours or whatever you decide your dedicated cadence to be. If you show up to your passion, your creative work, your entrepreneurial pursuits, whatever they are, if you do this consistently for your small and scheduled windows of time which is a muscle in itself to strengthen you can't not see results. 

Because what you're doing is creating a steady and dedicated pace of work and when you have something that takes up most of your time like a job or a career or a family you're forced to surrender to that steady pace. You are forced to trust in that steady pace. 

This is uncomfortable for many of my multi-passionate multi-talented clients, this – surrendering to steady pacing – is a growth edge and when you are a solo entrepreneur or creator without a job and without this kind of discipline and focus steadiness and surrender is I think the hardest skill to master based on my experience and based on the experience I've been able to witness with my clients. Because what inevitably happens, which also happens in the 9–5 on the regular by the way, is that you go through spikes of high activity and spikes of low activity. 

You're in the needle moving work for like 17 hours and then you burn out and sleep for a couple of straight days. And then you get back to it which also spikes your nervous system and it also contributes to self-doubt and feeling scattered and not being entirely sure of your progress or your efforts or feeling like you aren't doing enough. 

Not to mention we get addicted to these nervous system spikes and then we subconsciously need them to feel productive at all. When you are steady and consistent, even over small chunks of time every day, it becomes undeniable to yourself that you're moving the needle and that you're showing up.

And when you are steady and consistent, which again having a day job can really help us with if we allow it, you learn how to surrender to the process. Which means you stop over planning and stop trying to control and you free up so much energy and space for just being and flowing and showing up in the present moment because it's already mapped out for you. 

You don't need a 9–5 to be steady by the way or any of this you don't need a 9–5 to have structure or discipline or focus or steadiness but having one helps because if you're serious about your work, your creative endeavors, you will inadvertently flex these muscles because you have to. 

Number four R&D. R&D, inspiration, empathy, relatability.

R&D is research and development by the way. 

So we're switching gears for just a second. Having a day job can fuel your creative pursuits if you allow your day job and career or working identity to be integrated with your creative identity. Many of us try to compartmentalize our personas and our dreams and our goals of work or professional life. 

Some of us even have very separate goals for our work life and our home life, but what if they were all related? What if they were all connected? 

Coming back to some of our prolific creators that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, something that many of them were quoted in saying is how much their work, their day work or their career or their meh job, contributed to their artistry and their creation. 

This is the thing: the human experience, having a job working for a living, it's very much a part of the human experience. It doesn't get more human or real than working with colleagues. If you have frustrations at work I hope you don't think that you're alone. If you have frustrations at work you're not alone. 

It's grounding. It keeps you humble. It keeps you connected to humanity. It reminds you what it's like for most of the population because most of us have responsibilities and commitments and shit in our life that is inconvenient as fuck, and moments of highs at work or at home, and moments of lows, and the in-between moments, and having a job if you allow it is a conduit. 

It can become a wellspring of inspiration and connection that informs your work. 

If you're thinking right now “but my job has nothing to do with what I want to express or bring into the world,” if you're thinking some variation of that, stop looking at it so direct. Stop looking at it like it needs to translate directly. 

How do you feel at work? Express that. What relationships or human dynamics do you see at work that are interesting? Write it down. Write about it. Paint it out. Find the lesson for yourself or others. The subjects that you marinate in at work don't have to be the subjects that you talk about in life. 

This is what I meant when I said stop looking at it so directly. No one wants to hear about your excel formulas or automation unless you want to talk about it by the way. If you're passionate about excel and automation please keep talking about excel and automation. But what I would say is there's no need to talk about what you do, and focus on what you do, rather start paying attention to how you feel, to what you think, to what motivates you and moves you at work, and find this for others as well. 

What is the sense or sensual experience in your body, in your mind, at your workplace, virtually or in person, whatever it is that you do. No matter what you spend your time doing, you are still a human and there's a connected human experience that you can tap into. That if you use can inform your work in such meaningful ways. 

I once wrote a poem about a manager who used to take credit for my work. It was a hit and it felt so good to write. 

I also once wrote a poem that was inspired by an office romance that was so subtle, where both people clearly had feelings for each other but had opposing lives outside of work. But imagine if I were an aspiring romance novelist. That would be some pretty good stuff, right? 

And what about the lives that go unlived or not fully expressed and our fears around this especially in relation to work? Holy shit, so inspiring and so relatable! So informative of the human experience in psyche and your perspective on this experience, your perspective infused into your creative pursuits is meaningful. It's worth sharing.

And then there's also the R&D that is a bit more direct. Many writers many artists will take up actual jobs, not because they want to be in the job, but to understand the function of the work or the people that work in that space. To inform their characters and to inform their stories and to paint richer pictures. 

And as for me, an entrepreneur, I love that I get to see behind the scenes and be a part of decision making that totally drives the decision making of my clients and whether or not they hire me. Which goes far beyond just me but enters into the realm of the business and the culture and budget and priorities and it's cool to understand that. And to be able to incorporate it into my marketing or my sales or my ability to support an individual in executive coaching. Or my ability to support a team in development or team building.

Remind yourself that your job, when not looked at like an obligation, when looked at beyond the money that it brings you, it can become a window into inspiration and empathy and integration and a wellspring of research and development. All of these things that support your creative entrepreneurship. Use that. Personally, I think you would be a fool not to. 

Okay, number five. Back to constraints. Number five is deadlines and constraints. 

Because, through deadlines and constraints you get more done with less. 

I will use myself as an example. If you go back through this podcast, The Spiritual 9–5 Podcast history, what you will see, which simultaneously is when my life was falling apart by the way, and totally packed to the brim, sometimes two episodes every single week. My episodes became a little bit more sporadic. 

Now to be fair, I spent the last two years really marinating in freedom. And experimenting with what that looked like and felt like for me and for my work, and for my business. So discipline, devotion, commitment, consistency – these were not focus areas necessarily.

And coming into 2024, I decided that they would be. Which does coincide with my having a real job again. But/and, if you look at the podcast episodes – this might not be you…this might not be many people – but what I personally have found, is that when I am constrained or limited on time and I have an objective focus or deliverable, I tend to use that time way more meaningfully. Actually there is a law about this. I feel like I was just talking about it as well. In a past, like recently passed, podcast episode. But the law is Parkinson's law. It states that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. If you give yourself one day to do something you'll do it in a day. If you give yourself one week to do that same something you'll do it in a week. 

If you give yourself unlimited time to do the thing, will you even finish? 

Deadlines are great for this. If your boss tells you to finish something in the next 72 hours you're probably going to find a way to do it. If you need to do your taxes by April 15th and you'll be penalized big enough for not doing them you're probably going to do them by the deadline. If you only have 30 minutes every day to say, write a LinkedIn post or send out a sales email, you will train yourself to get it done in that time. 

And when you have those constraints and you adhere to them when you practice meeting them and executing within them, you get better, you get faster, you get way more done with way less and not just time but also totally total energy expended.

My month over month sales so far this year I think are double, if not triple, what they were at this time last year. To be fair, I've added an entire new business to my portfolio, we could say, but I'm also working now on way less time with way less energy. And I am making the best use of the time that I do have. 

What I will also say is that I think, I theorize, that I'm a way better manager in my business because I have clarity and focus, and I can articulate that same clarity and focus to others. Whereas when I was just living in *Marie's experimental land of freedom and work when I feel like it with loose deadlines and swirliness everywhere* I was just not so clear on where I needed help or support or work to be done on my behalf, because I just wasn't in the work in the same way. I wasn't in the work every single day for even an hour, all the time. 

And that really changes the way that you can show up for your people and for your team. And for me personally, having those constraints has kept me so clear and so focused that I can show up in such a more effective way for others but also for myself. Constraints focus us and they create a sense of urgency. 

At the end of the day they might not be a tool that you want to use all the time. But having constraints is a tool that can be really supportive at the right times. And having a 9–5 definitely supports prolific creation in this way

So, summary: routine and structure, clear priorities, steady pacing, research and development, and constraints. Five ways that having a 9–5 can really support prolific creation because having a 9–5 helps develop these five things. 

These are some elements that we're invited into when we have a day job, a drive to create or build. These are some ways that a 9–5 can really support your prolific creation, if you choose to accept the invitation, and take your work and your dreams and your creations seriously.

I'm really curious now: Do you have a 9–5? And, are you living big enough? Are you making the time and the space to focus your energy on things that matter to you? How devoted are you to what's alive within you and your expression of that? And, are you waiting for the weekend, or a big chunk of time off, or until you quit or retire, before you take your dreams seriously? 

Your career, your day job, your part-time job – whether or not you enjoy it, or are passionate about it – can really support you in pursuing your dreams and your passions and your prolific creation, if you let it. 

It's not your job that's holding you back because you are so much more than that. 

Outro music 🎶

Thank you so much for listening to The Spiritual 9–5 Podcast. I'm your host Marie Groover and I am beyond honored that you are here. Please follow, save, and rate the show and if you can, share your favorite episode with a friend.

It makes the world of a difference. Connect with me on LinkedIn. I would love to hear from you what you think about the show or my work, so don't be shy.

And I'm always here to connect and support you or your business through coaching, team building, and leadership development. You can find my work in the show notes. 

Until next time, Big Love.

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Shownotes:

Is your 9–5 job supporting your life’s work?

How about using your job as a means to prioritize and accomplish your personal and creative endeavors?

In this episode, Marie outlines the following ways that your 9–5 can support your prolific creation: providing routine and structure, clear priorities, steady pacing, research and development, and constraints. If you’re not making time for your own pursuits, this episode will help get you on the right track.

Episode themes: Creative Pursuits | Life’s Work | Time Management | 9–5 Job | Inspiration | Structure | Leadership Development | Creative Entrepreneurship

Episode References: 

Links:

The production of this episode was in collaboration with Lyndsee Nielson. See her work here: www.lyndseeloves.com

Lyndsee Nielson
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🎙 65. Coming Full Circle: 7 Reasons Having a 9-5 Can Be Cool