The Burnout Reset Base: How Airtable + Other Tech Helped Me Regain Focus with a Scattered, Tired Mind

Dama Jue: Hi, there. I’m Dama Jue. Welcome to The Burnout Reset Base: How Airtable and Other Tech Helped Me to Regain Focus with a Scattered, Tired Mind. Quick thanks to Claire for including me in the Neurodiverse Entrepreneur Summit. Super excited to be here and to share this topic with you. All right, let’s go.

Welcome to The Burnout Reset Base with Dama Jue. How Airtable, of all things, plus a little bit of other tech, help me regain focus with a scattered, tired mind. Okay, Airtable cures burnout. Let’s get into it real quick. Before we dive in, I wanted to share a little bit about who I am, and how I ended up landing in burnout. First things first, I am a Funnel Strategist and a ThriveCart expert, who loves helping the online biz owners build a profitable and impactful online presence through strategic funnels, and especially, all the automation you never knew you needed, with high-impact, low-stress trainings, and templates.

I also have a ThriveCart template shop. I’m big on ThriveCart, but I love all things Airtable, automation, email marketing, Zaps, you name it. I love automating things, because I forget a lot. [laughs] Let’s just be honest. The motivation there, I love automating things, because it’s like problem-solving, but also I forget stuff. This way, I disaster-proof myself from the forgetting.

Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about what led me to burnout, and how it was impacting my biz, and my mental health. 2023, I was having one of my best years ever. Financially, it was absolutely, hands down, my best year ever. I had a really successful group program. I had just relaunched in February, done this huge webinar launch for it. Everything was going great. Yay.

March comes, and I release two absolute bangers of an offer. Both brought in over five figures each, and that was just a big shift, and a turning point in my business. Holy crap, I’m on fire. I have amazing ideas coming out of my ears. Of course, if you’ve ever felt that way before, you know what follows. There’s a crash when you have a million great ideas, and you’re going in a million directions, and it’s go, go, go. There is an inevitable crash that follows.

It just so happens that, at the same time as I was really throwing myself into a million things, and creating that burnout, I also was coaching a group program. Some of the questions that I got, some of the support that I had to offer was much more emotional than I was expecting. I am not a therapist. I’m not a life coach. I’m a funnel strategist. I help people map out their offers, their launches, their automations, their tech.

I’m not necessarily trained to handle all the mindset issues that come with a launch. When people are talking about coming to me feeling really terrible about their launch, that happened to be a $20,000-launch, I internalize that. I thought, “Why do they feel like a failure? I must feel like a failure.” It led me deeper into a dark place mental health-wise. I was really struggling with mental health.

I was struggling with balance. I was struggling with supporting my clients, executing all the ideas that I had, maintaining the systems that I had built, adding more. There was just a lot going on in spring and summer of 2023, and I was really struggling. Yes, there’s no good way to put it, other than I was really struggling financially. Things were going well. The business was really lucrative.

Emotionally, not so great. I felt exhausted all the time. I was working late all the time at my desk at 11:00, or midnight frequently. Just, yes, it was not a good look, and I really needed something to help. It wasn’t going to be something that I really felt like, “Yes, you can always get help.” I’m going to talk about where I turned to get help, but I also knew that it’s something that was stemming from me, and I needed to work on myself.

Also, because I’m a systems person, and an automation and an ops person, of course, it was going to involve systems too. Before I go any further, I wanted to share, I do not have a formal diagnosis of ADHD. I’m fairly certain I have it. When I’ve looked online, the solutions that have helped other people, the advice that I’ve gotten, folks that I’ve spoken to, yes, I think it’s very, very possible that I have ADHD, but I don’t have a formal diagnosis.

I may talk about that through the course of this training. If that resonates with you, I’m glad it helps. If it doesn’t, take me with a grain of salt because, as I said, I don’t have a formal diagnosis. I also want to share a little bit about the burnout affecting my personal life. I was actually finding it hard to find joy in anything. There’s a lot of joy in my life. [chuckles] There’s a lot of joy in my life that is not related to my business, and I was really struggling to see that, and find that.

I was constantly feeling like, I’m never going to finish all the stuff that I started, or I promised, or that I said I would do, or, yes, I just felt like this pressure coming from work. It’s just not why I started a business to be the boss that’s constantly pressuring me, like, “Whoa, what just happened here?” Let’s talk a little bit about what I decided to do about it.

Oh, one more thing about the personal life that I also want to mention, and is relevant to this training, is that I also noticed that I was neglecting, because of that burnout, that overwhelm, that feeling like I have a million things to do, I was neglecting a lot of stuff in my personal life. Not just the joy, but the other normal human things like eating. I would forget to eat, or I wouldn’t get up from my desk for seven hours straight, and I would just work through meals, eat crackers or chips at my desk, because that’s what I could eat, while continuing to work.

I also wasn’t doing basic things like laundry, or remembering to pay my bills on time, putting gas in my tank, things like that, like literal actual gasoline in my car. I was just neglecting a lot of things, and it was having a really deleterious effect on my personal life, and just my overall joy. Let’s talk about what I decided to do about it.

Obviously, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. Me staying up until 1:00 AM again and again and again to work on something, or just one more thing, or just one more thing, was not great. Wasn’t great for my personal relationships with my spouse, but also just wasn’t great for me. I needed to create more boundaries. When I used to be a service provider, every single time I felt burnt out was, because I wasn’t either creating, or maintaining, and upholding, or holding my clients to holding my boundaries.

There’s no more clients, because it’s just me, right? It’s just me creating, and it’s the people in my program, but I wasn’t respecting my own boundaries. I had to restate them, and also, be more firm about actually holding them. I also decided to get help. That’s going to take a lot of different forms. One of the things, and the focus of this training is, how I use systems and tech to get that help.

Another thing that I wanted to do was, what can I implement relatively quickly to give me a– To help me create healthier boundaries? I created a 60-day reset challenge. Let’s talk more about that. I decided to build it in Airtable. If this is the first time you’re meeting me, you may as well know, I’m a big time Airtable junkie. I actually hated Airtable the first few times I came around it.

I was like, “This is like a crappier spreadsheet. Why do we like this? Why is it so rigid? Why?” I just hated it, until I saw the way someone used it, and seeing the way someone used it, it all just clicked. I was like, “Oh, I get it. I get it. Oh my God, I get it.” It just exploded my brain into a million different ways that I could use it. Now, I probably have 60 different Airtable bases that I use for pretty much everything inside my business.

Because, ah, I just love it. I love the way it works. It just works for my brain. It may not work for you. If it doesn’t, I totally get that. You can still follow this training, and get a lot out of it, and build your own system just like I did. The benefit for me with Airtable also was that, I just, I like it so much that I know how to build it. I was very comfortable in building inside Airtable, and modifying it to get the results that I wanted.

I also knew that I didn’t want to input things into tiny little boxes, like you would a spreadsheet. I like a form. I like a form that I can bookmark and save, and get access to it. It can be the first thing I do every single day, helping me create those new patterns and systems to help me get back on track. There’s also other features in Airtable like being able to share all of the data, some of the data, a preview of a teeny-tiny bit of the data, and that’s going to come in later in this training, and how I used it, and some automation capabilities.

Now, I didn’t actually automate any of this, really. I could have. I just focused on getting myself back to a place where I felt healthy, and balanced. I didn’t mess with automation, but there’s definitely some possibility there. All right. Let’s talk a little bit about the 60-day challenge that I mapped out for myself.

I, very clear, like we talked about boundaries and perimeters and rules that I really wanted to stick to. Every single day of this 60 days, I committed to filling out a form, planning exactly three things, just three things, and sometimes two that I plan to do that day. I also planned the chores, or other non-work tasks that I wanted to do. I’ll be blunt here. Some of this is really like, “Dude, you needed to write that down.” Yes, I needed to write down, “Shower, empty dishwasher, put the clothes to dry, fold laundry, go get the mail, drop off the Amazon returns, go buy groceries.” If I didn’t do this, I honestly– We didn’t have food, food was rotting, like produce was rotting in my fridge. There were so many ways that this burnout turned up in my life with negative effects.

I also committed to planning the chores, or non-work tasks that I wanted to do. I also created some structure for myself, because I noticed, I would get up, make an espresso, take my dog outside, plunk down, and then be at my desk from 8:30 or 9:00 AM until late. I would sometimes stop for dinner, sometimes wouldn’t, sometimes stop for a couple hours of a TV break, and then come right back, and work late into the evening.

I wanted to enforce the breaks in between projects, and also be strict with myself about stopping times. I had to stop at 5:00 or 6:00, no matter what, doesn’t matter, it has to stop. I cannot sit here all night long like I’ve been doing. I also set a goal, and this one I was a little bit less strict on, but this is going to vary on your work-life balance as well, but I set a goal to not work more than three days a week.

I, at that point, had been working Saturdays, Sundays, every single day, basically, seven days a week, and it was really just– [chuckles] I liked it, I love my job, I love what I do, but it wasn’t good for my mental health again. I put this boundary in, of no more than three days a week, that’s it. Then, I also, at the time of this burnout, at the time of this struggle, I had a lovely tech VA, who is brilliant, and very skilled in her own right, and very helpful, who had been with me for a long time, but I was not giving her tasks to do.

Too much control, not enough release, and relying on my team. It wasn’t even because I didn’t trust her, because I think she’s great. I just, I thought, “Well, in the time it’ll take me to outsource this, or to delegate this, I could just do it.” Then, it never works out that way. I made a renewed commitment to actually use the retainer that I had with my VA that had previously been mostly going to waste.

I also had just onboarded a brand new team member. At this time, she was brand new to me, a marketing coordinator, marketing assistant, I call her my marketing genie. My marketing genie helps me implement the ideas that I have, because up until this point, I was coming up with the ideas, while also fulfilling, delivering, creating, maintaining, updating, answering a billion questions, handling customer service, I was doing it all, and it was not healthy.

At this point, the business was doing really, really well, multiple five-figures every single month, I could afford to get some help. I finally took that on upon myself to, actually, not just hire the help, but also rely on them. That is the privilege that I’m coming into this with. If you don’t have a VA, or a marketing assistant, I totally get that. I still think this will help.

The other element that I added into this is accountability. I’m actually going to make sure I add one more bullet point here. Hang on. Okay. Let’s talk about accountability. Number one, I told my closest biz friends who already knew that I was struggling, that I was struggling with depression, that I was struggling with burnout, that I was dealing with anxiety, that I was working a billion hours a week.

They already knew I was in a not great place, and they already were concerned about me. I let them know that I was proactively trying this 60-day challenge to help me reset. I let them know that I was doing this, so that they could ask me, how is it going? How I’m feeling? Be observant, and see how it’s going for me as well from the exterior position.

I also created a shared view of my Airtable base. That’s one of the things I love about Airtable is, I can have this central database that has all the data, but I can create a little sliver view that I can share with anybody on the internet. They don’t have to have an Airtable account, or a login, but they could pop by any single time they want, and just take a peek in my Airtable, and see how am I feeling? How am I doing? How is my challenge going? Am I doing more than three a week?

I don’t entirely know if my friends actually looked at that shared view, but I gave it to them. I know that, at least, the first time that I gave it to them, they clicked on it, they took a peek, they noted. It was sort of this accountability of knowing that my friends could pop in at any time, and see how it was going. In fact, I actually considered sharing this with my entire email list, but I decided not to, [chuckles] because then I didn’t want it to slide into performative, or slide into a marketing opportunity.

I have this thing, where I’m writing a regular value email, and next thing you know, I’m talking about a relevant offer, or relevant affiliate link, or relevant blog post. I can’t help but do that. I really didn’t want to make this. I wanted to keep it focused on helping me get better. I only shared it with a few friends.

Just the fact that I knew that any given time, they could pop in and see, has she been doing this? Has she been tracking? How is it going? How is the emotional health going? Because I tracked that too, spoiler alert, was really helpful for me to stay on track, to know that my friends might at any time know that I’ve been cheating on my challenge, or cheating on your diet, or they could pop in and know, am I doing okay? Am I not doing it? That was really helpful for me, whether or not they actually looked, just knowing that they could, was great.

The last thing, and this is why I paused to edit my PowerPoint, or my gosh, not a PowerPoint, my Notion notes here, is coworking was a huge part of that. This has been a huge savior for me in running an online business that is just me sitting in my office, trying to do my work all alone, operating in, sometimes, what feels like a vacuum. This is also called body doubling. It’s a very common ADHD strategy or method.

I absolutely love silent coworking. My biz besties and I have a dedicated room that we hop into on Zoom. We’re both– We’re all camera on, camera off, but for the most part, camera on, because that helps me feel accountable, but muted. We just sit quietly and work together. Coworking is such a big part of how I find balance and peace, and productivity in the working alone in the online space, but this was also really valuable for the 60-day challenge.

That’s the kind of parameters. Every single day, I’m going to fill out a form, pick exactly three things I’m going to do, pick some chores I’m going to do in between, enforce breaks, and be strict about stopping time, and how often I’m working, how many days of the week I’m working. I also decided to track my feelings at the beginning, and end of each work day. That was really telling. We’ll get to that later.

I also made a more general commitment to rely on my team, because I had them, and I wasn’t relying on them enough. I wanted to work on that as part of this challenge. Real quick, we’re going to go into the tech. Let’s talk about the base that I built in Airtable. I started from a blank slate, and created fields for everything I wanted to track. If you’re following along, and you want to create this for yourself, or you’re more of a Notion person, create fields for every single thing you want to track.

The things that I tracked were individual tasks, my 30 things I was going to do each day, the chores that I wanted to do in between. I tracked my feelings at the beginning, my feelings at the end. I tracked the date. I gave myself a notes field, in case there was something I just wanted to riff on, or ramble on. I also noted anything that popped into my mind that I wanted, or needed to get done, but I already picked out my three tasks for the day.

Old me would just say, “Oh, who cares? Let me just do it. It’ll take me 10 minutes,” and then end up spending an hour and a half at my desk extra, or later than I should have. I added a to-do carry over field, so that anything I didn’t get to, or anything that came up or anything that came to mind that was outside of the limits of that day, I added it to a field in my form, so that I wouldn’t lose track of it, because I don’t tend to remember things if I don’t write them down.

I also created a calendar view that allowed me to see, and I did this fun color coding thing in Airtable, allowed me to see the days where my overall emotions were positive, or my overall emotions were negative. It was really cool to see that trend throughout the 60-day experiment as well. Aside from Airtable, and how I actually planned out my days, and tracked, and offered the accountability, and a shared view to my friends, and all that jazz, I used Pomodoro timers.

Now, Pomodoro timers, I will say, don’t work for everybody. A lot of people are frustrated, because they’re traditionally 25 minutes, and there’s just– That’s not enough time to get anything done, or they interrupt you once you get into flow. I get that. I don’t use them all the time. What I found was, some tasks are quite quick. Some tasks, I really, really want a 25-minute timer on.

For example, my inbox, and replying to emails, which I’m absolutely terrible at. I like that there is only a 25-minute timer. When it dings, guess what? I get to be done doing this task that is emotionally exhausting for me, or not my favorite thing, or whatever. I actually really like the timer, having the option of a 25-minute timer.

Designing graphics in Canva. I could spend hours doing that. I like that I’m racing against the clock of a 25-minute timer. Writing sales emails, creating assets, sometimes that 25 minutes is just not nearly enough.

I gave myself an option inside my Airtable base of doing either three 25-minute timers, three 45-minute timers, or a 45 and 25, something like that. Basically, I like a 45-minute timer better, but for the things that I dread, or the things that I can get carried away on, I like the 25-minute timer. I gave myself options. I gave myself the option to use either. It’s very easy to lose track of time, but I use something called a Marinara timer, and I use Google Chrome, so I’m going to scroll down here.

You can see it in here. This is the Marinara timer. It’s a free Chrome extension. When I click it, it automatically starts a 25-minute timer. It also– I have it set up to make a little sound every time one minute has ticked by. If I’ve zoned out, or picked up my phone, it also will remind me like, “Oh, time is passing. Got to go. Tick-tock.” I will get back to work. It also has a feature when you go into settings that will allow you to plan your 15-minute breaks, or whatever. That was really helpful for me.

The other thing that I wanted to talk that was really helpful for me was, while I was doing my timers was focus music. There’s a couple options for this. I love Brain.fm. This is a paid software called Brain.fm. It’s like $50 a year, or something like that. You can try it for free. I know I did a free trial, and absolutely loved it. It made such a difference in my productivity, and how much I felt like I was able to get done. I love Brain.fm. I’m a lifetime user with them. I just keep paying them, because it’s very helpful.

There are, of course, free options. Look up LoFi mix or LoFi on YouTube, and you usually find a 60-minute thing that you can watch. Yes, you do get commercials in between, and that can be disruptive, which is why I pay for Brain.fm. Brain.fm, yes, I just rave about it, because I love it. Another thing that was really helpful were timers, like on my watch, on my phone, because I would very easily get lost in a task.

I also had no idea how long chores really take. Sometimes, one of the things I would be adding to my list of chores that I wanted to do that day was, unload the dishwasher. Honestly, that doesn’t take very long. [laughs] That’s a five-minute task, and I would low-key put it off for forever, and it takes four minutes. Loading the dishwasher doesn’t even take all that long. It’s just little things like that help me be like, “Okay, I can actually get a couple of these things done. Load the dishwasher, and wash the two pots that are in the pan that I didn’t– In the sink that I didn’t put in the dishwasher.”

“Throw a load into the washer, throw a load into the dryer, fold the towels.” You know what I mean? Folding clothes takes forever, but folding towels is pretty quick. All those things actually just help me get a better grip of how many hours I was spending doing work that I could have had my team do, because, do I need to be messing around in Canva? No. Both my design– My VA, and my marketing genie are amazing at Canva. Why am I doing it? I’m probably the weakest link on the team.

I needed to stop doing that, and instead, hand that off to my team, and go do things that literally no one else is going to do, [chuckles] like put my groceries away. Sometimes I would leave them on the counter for hours. Not good if you have fresh food in your groceries.

All right, let’s talk about results, and next steps. If you want to try this, who I recommend it for? Who it might not be the best fit for? Let’s talk about the effects on my mental health. We’ll start from non-surprising. I totally felt worse at first. I hated those timers going off. I hated stopping at 5:00 or 6:00 PM, depending on when I started. Hate, hate, hated it. It’s really funny to go back and look at my Airtable base, and see how many of the emotional, like, how are you feeling today? The end of day feels were so bad [chuckles] in the beginning.

It took several days of me just pissed at the limitations, and the boundaries. The more I stuck with them, and I worked through them, actually, I started to feel calmer and calmer. I told you, I did a color coding thing. It went from red to green, and stayed mostly green, and I just felt more balanced. That was awesome. Not totally surprising, but awesome.

One thing that was a bit surprising, was doing chores was such an emotional boost. Something as simple as making my bed every single morning. When I finished work, and I wanted to go do my stuff, and then slide into bed at night, my bed was made. My room was tidy. My laundry was folded, and shock, put away, not just laying in a pile on top of my bed. All those things made me feel like so much less, like my husband and I joke around like, we’re trash humans.

Sometimes like we forget to buy groceries, or we forget to use the produce that we bought. We forget to take the trash out. We forget to do this, we forget to do that. We love to get takeout. Sometimes we call it– We refer to ourselves as trash pandas. We’re trash. We’re trash pandas. We like junk. We like the shortcuts. While that’s funny, and if like a silly like little joke between us, there is sort of an emotional tax of, “Man, I really don’t have it together.”

Especially when you run a personal brand online, you want to put your best foot forward, and show like, “Okay, as a business owner, I have it all together. Turns out, as a human, I don’t have it all together. Everything is a mess. I can’t find anything. I forgot to pay this. I forgot to do this. The groceries sat on the doorstep for this long, or I left them in the trunk of my car, and never put them away. My ice cream’s melted,” or whatever.

All those things can lead to some guilt, or some negative feelings. Doing my chores, like, “Wow, what a flex.” I have fresh towels that like everything is fresh and clean, and I’m really consistent about changing the sheets, or doing this and that, like little things. Such a boost. I felt like, “Wow, am I finally a functioning human? This is amazing. I actually did not expect this. This was really surprising.”

Another thing that was a pleasant surprise was the to-do box. Now, I’m a pen and paper list person, but the to-do box. As I’m filling out the form, I always kept it open on my desk. I never hit “Submit” until the end of the day. I could always add things to the to-do box was super helpful in helping me plan the next day’s tasks, or chores.

It also was really helpful to see how long things really took, and how long I was spending when I wasn’t paying attention to time. That was a nice, pleasant surprise as well. One more thing that was a total surprise, was my friends were like, “This is such a cool experiment. I want this space. I want to try this too. I’m feeling burnt out. We’ve all felt, I think, this in degrees. Maybe not quite to the degree, or maybe more, you felt it more than I did.”

I found that a lot of my friends who might potentially also have ADHD, but also work alone, also are in a big, creative push, then rut, then burnout cycle, found that this was a really cool experiment, and wanted to try it. Oops. Let’s talk a little bit about– I would say, overall, the net effect was really positive. It was really helpful for me.

I want to talk a little bit about the long-term uses, because, in full disclosure, I am no longer using this as an every single day thing. It was a 60-day challenge. I found it really helpful. It took me through the summer, and brought me into fall, and helped me create better, more healthy habits. I still use it often, not every single day, not every single week.

I’ve loosened some of the, “I must only do this many things and stop at this time,” because I found that the longer I used it, the better I internalized some of those boundaries, and I didn’t have to be quite as on it with filling out the form every single day, blah, blah, blah. I do still like to use it, and occasionally, I’ll do a five-day reset, or a two-week reset with the same exact base, and when I’m dedicated to doing it every single day, just to help me get back on track. It’s really nice as a reset.

I do eventually want to create a launch version of this to help me get through all the tasks involved in launching a new offer, which is something I love to do. It’s so fun. I love it, love it, love it, but it’s so draining. It’s one of the most mentally and energetically-exhausting, or draining things that I do in my business, and yet, I can’t stop, because I love it. I want to create one of these eventually that’s like a launch version.

I think that would be really helpful and help me maintain boundaries, because launching is usually when I smudge my own boundaries. If you wanted to grab a copy of this base, I don’t have it available yet. That’s something that I’m thinking about doing soon, or sometime this fall. It’s not yet available, but I do have plans to do that. Just stay tuned.

I wanted to say one more thing just about online business, and how you can stay in touch, so you would potentially hear about that base becoming available, and my system and things, the automations, and how I actually built it. I wanted to say a little something, because I’m a funnel strategist, and I struggle with burnout. I wanted to say a little bit about funnels and ADHD.

Are funnels a fit, or a foe for folks with ADHD or folks who struggle with focus and productivity? What I found is that, I have to have my unique approach. What works for me is to create something once, to deliver it live, so that I have that deadline, that accountability. I also really thrive off of the interaction with the people who are on live, and getting their questions, getting their questions pre-submitted, taking their questions at the end. I love, love, love that.

What I don’t love is relaunching, or reselling the same thing over and over again. Mentally, I cannot. [chuckles] I find it boring. I cannot. My solution for this is to offer, to create, and launch, and deliver that thing once, make it available at any time. Someone can pop onto my website, and buy it any given day. Also, instead of having to relaunch it again and again, and do a sale for that thing once every six months or something, I use it in my business as an order bump, and/or an upsell.

I love to let my systems, which are built in ThriveCart. If you don’t know me, do the work, so that I can go scroll out on the new thing, and also enjoy the fruits of my labor. Enjoy the fact that this thing that I built and delivered live once, is still so valuable, and available to anyone who is in my business, in my ecosystem, and I don’t have to launch it. I don’t even have to create like a seven-day email sequence with a countdown timer, and an opt-in, and blah, blah, blah. I don’t even have to build a funnel for it.

I can just pop it strategically into my other offers as an order bump, and as an upsell. If you want to see how that works, what does that actually look like? What’s the tech? What are the steps? What are the automations? The rules? How do I actually do that? Highly recommend you check out my ThriveCart Funnel Flow. It’s a free 15, 20 minute– I think it’s 20 minutes’ free training that takes you behind the scenes.

You’re seeing like a little snapshot of it here. Behind the scenes of every single one of my funnels inside ThriveCart, how I structure them, how I set them up? My approach. How the tech actually supports my goals, and how once I set it up, just like this funnel, I set it up in 2021, it’s still out there operating. Out there helping me make money, while I get to focus on my new thing, or while I get to go out and garden, or while I get to go take a nap with my dog.

Honestly, it’s been one of the greatest things to have that ability in my business. I highly recommend you check out the free behind-the-scenes Funnel Flow training, and stay in touch. Love to hear from you.