“My goal isn’t to win the hours. I want to be present.” — Shelley Evans

When a “good career” starts to feel like a bad relationship, walking away is just the start. After you escape the grind, you realize the grind is YOU, and the work has just begun. Shelley and Matt share how crisis-mode and productivity hacks kept them reactive—and what changed when they chose a self‑sustaining creative practice over the fool’s gold of trying to do it all, all at once.

In this open, honest discussion, we look at why mainstream productivity culture fails creative people—and what actually works instead.

Shelley describes realizing her Hollywood career was akin to an “abusive spouse”. After she chose to step away to write her novel, her biggest achievement wasn’t logging more hours, it was moving from punishing deadlines to presence, using “marbles in a jar” to measure engaged time and pulling the Creative Focus Workshop “ripcord” to recenter herself when she got off track.

Matt shares how 100-hour weeks in tech and spinning in endless “preparation” felt productive but in fact kept him from writing. When he (finally!) chose a single project, he created steadiness and progress he could trust.

We talk about “finish and ship” as the foundation of art as communication, why the Motion AI calendar that postponed lunch until April is the clearest sign yet that productivity hacking is a dead end, and how short, ten‑minute sessions beat perfectionism because you discover better questions once you’re in motion.

If you’re stuck in reactive mode, or drowning in “optimizing,” this conversation gives you simple, human practices to return to your work and keep going.

• Why “crisis‑competence” isn’t a creative practice
• The exact moment Shelley realized the Hollywood grind was “an abusive spouse,”
• How “marbles in a jar” beats self‑punishment when you’re stuck
• When to pull the ripcord and return to Creative Focus
• “Finish and ship” as the completion of an act of creative communication
• The fine line between useful tooling/worldbuilding and sophisticated procrastination
• “I teach productivity, but I hate ‘productivity’” — e.g. the Motion AI calendar that tried to schedule lunch in April.
• The value of ten‑minute sessions over painstaking perfection

If you’re ready to swap punishment for presence with your creative work, and actually finish, watch the free Creative Engine workshop. Master the 4 simple steps to finishing your dream creative projects!

Shelley Evans is a screenwriter and teacher (Harvard Extension School) whose credits include ABC, CBS, Showtime, USA, Hallmark, and Lifetime. She’s now focused on her novel and on building a sustainable, presence‑based creative practice.

Matt Griffin is a writer, adjunct professor (NYU IDM/ITP), conference producer (NarraScope 2025), consultant, 3D printing and biofabrication expert (MakerBot/Ultimaker). He’s currently writing an interactive novel for Choice of Games.

• The Creative Focus Workshop (CFW)
• The Creative Engine class: 4 Simple Steps to Finish Your Dream Creative Projects (Live Oct 9; replay after)
• Choice of Games

What happens when you follow your curiosity down an unexpected rabbit hole…and it leads to massive business success? Marie Poulin started as a freelance designer, but her obsession with systems thinking and digital organization evolved into something much bigger. In this candid conversation, she reveals how a side project teaching Notion exploded into a thriving business, and the hard choices and major pivots it took to get there. For anyone who's ever wondered if their niche fascination could become their whole career, this is a must-listen episode.

• The lucky break that taught Marie everything about running a creative business
• “Just because you can doesn't mean you should”: How Marie learned to stop being everything to everyone
• “What have I done?”: How Marie navigated the shock of transitioning from client work to course creation
• The unexpected way Marie still leans on the Ideal Week calendar that went viral in 2017
• The super-simple “living room strategy” Marie used to sell her course before she built a thing
• The surprising connection Marie makes between permaculture and business systems
• The hidden danger of building a business around someone else's software (and Marie's clever strategy to future-proof her work)
• Why being multi-passionate can be a superpower—if you know how to harness it

Marie Poulin is a designer, systems thinker, and co-founder of Oki Doki. She's the creator of Notion Mastery, a course and community that helps entrepreneurs and small teams build sustainable, customized systems for work and life. Through her work, Marie helps people rethink how they work, from workflow to knowledge management, focusing on building more human and neurodivergent-friendly ways of organizing digital lives.

• Find Marie on Blue Sky @MariePoulin
• YouTube: @mariepoulin
• Website: notionmastery.com
• Company website: weareokidoki.com

What happens to your business when you take an extended break from social media? Will it fall apart? Wither on the vine?

What if the answer is…not much?

Meg Casebolt is an SEO expert and the founder of Love at First Search, an agency that helps online businesses get found in search results, and to turn new readers into leads, subscribers and sales.

Meg’s business used to be super active on social media, until a few years ago when she took a 100-day social media break. Kind of by accident. That’s when Meg discovered that even though social media had been taking up a ton of her time, it wasn’t contributing much to her sales.

In this episode, we discuss Meg’s new book, Social Slowdown, which examines the intersection of entrepreneurship, social media, and mental health, and explore creative new ways to engage with your audience and find clients without relying on social media.

• Meg explains the difference between social media and SEO. (As well as answering the question, what is SEO, actually?)
• Brownies vs. Painkillers: How to determine what problem your work solves.
• The pro and cons of using social media for your marketing.
• How to set healthy boundaries around your social media usage.
• What are some effective networking strategies for introverts?

Meg Casebolt is a digital marketing strategist, SEO specialist, boy mom, productivity nerd, and bibliophile. Meg’s been helping business owners create beautiful, search-friendly websites and strategic content for the past 6 years.

https://loveatfirstsearch.com/

https://www.socialslowdown.com/

Social Slowdown: Take a social media break,... by Casebolt, Meg (amazon.com)