How do you pull yourself away from a side obsession that’s hijacking your attention and pulling you away from important work? I’m sharing how a recent brain-hijacking experience got me questioning how to prevent or at least minimize the damage when it happens.

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When I decided to share the ups and downs of my experience trying to

reach 1 million people through writing and speaking, I

promised to be honest. And, uh, yeah, this

week I'm gonna do that. I talked about sharing ups and downs, and

last week was a down. It was definitely a down

week, and it's because my brain got hijacked by a

7-year-old show on Netflix, and I

genuinely did not see it coming. And that doesn't mean

that it was new to me. It actually felt very familiar,

but I have to be careful. It was a really good reminder how

I am a person who struggles to follow through with my

own internal commitments. I find it much easier to

keep my external commitments, but if I just say, hey, you gotta be

careful because you need to stay on track,

that is really hard for me to do alone. Also, if you

are new here, welcome. I am Kat, and on this podcast I am sharing

behind the scenes as I try real-time experiments to help me to

follow through on what matters and find momentum as a

speaker and a writer. And last week,

things fell off the rails. Now, as to what

happened, for a long time, a friend of mine had been

talking about a show that she absolutely loved. Shout out to Heather.

Well, we're going to see if this is going to be a shout out or

not, because what started as a simple, oh, that might be a

nice show that I can watch while I'm cycling at home on my

stationary cycle. Well, that's how it started. And then

it very quickly turned into me walking around the

house with my iPad, watching this show during every spare

moment I could get. And it slowly slipped

into creeping into my work. Things started to pile

up, and then I actually experienced a crash, which is

kind of ironic because the show— Is a

2019 Korean drama called Crash Landing on You.

It got its hooks in me and just would not let

go. And I share this story

because I have absolutely had this happen to me

on multiple occasions. And the times where I've struggled the most

is when I'm the only person at the helm. In other words,

university, this used to happen, although Thank goodness

that looking back, I— DVD sets weren't even that popular

yet when I was in university. So it was harder

to have this happen. Now in the age of everything is accessible at

your fingertips, it's so easy to get hooked into consuming,

say, a show, a series, or something like that. And

when this happens, if there's no one else that I'm responsible to,

like in university or like right now, Mm-hmm. Where I am my own boss,

it is so much more difficult compared to times where I

was employed, had more structure, had bosses to report to. I

had to show up at work and I couldn't just be sitting there binging.

And that, so, but I wanna share about it because

what actually happened is I kept my external

appointments, things that were in my calendar. I would absolutely show up to those. Mm-hmm.

For example, a week ago recording this podcast, I

showed up, I did the podcast, I recorded it all.

And then when I had lunch, I started watching the show again

because I was hooked. And after lunch I thought, well,

you know what? I need to decompress. I'm just gonna watch one more episode

and then I'll go back to work, which turned into 2 episodes.

And I finally got back to work prepping my podcast and actually

getting it ready to publish. When my spouse came home and

I realized, oh my God, I've just spent the entire afternoon watching

this show and I need to get back to work. And

then the— that's when I start to negotiate, where I start to think to

myself, okay, how about if I just take the next

half day and just get through the rest of it? And then it's

just kind of small pain and I can get back on track. It's this

negotiation that I start to have in my head of, I will just

shirk all my responsibilities for a while and then I'm fine.

And I managed to not totally do that. I paced

myself. I even, you know, didn't just spend the entire

night watching the show. However, the next day,

as some of my responsibilities and commitments did start to pile,

the things that I was in control over the timing, that's

when I hit a tipping point and that's where things

fell off the rails. Mm-hmm. Now, when I say fall off the rails, I mean

emotionally, sort of the burden of the fact that things are piling and

I am falling behind and I am feeling guilty and I'm

also just feeling out of control. And so when all of those things happen,

that's where I start to just kind of have like a mini meltdown.

And so on Thursday evening last week,

that's when things kind of hit a wall where I just, I got

an email about something that I did not realize I was responsible for.

Um, it's, it's personal in my personal

life. I'm responsible for an estate for a family member, and

I got an email that I was not expecting, and that just put me over

the edge where I just kind of melted down and fell into a bit of

a puddle. And I just, I couldn't, it's like I stopped

functioning. And that can happen when I get really overwhelmed.

But it's one thing to be overwhelmed just because you have a lot going on.

It's another thing to be overwhelmed because of your own inability

to stop consuming a show that is just addictive.

It feels like there's just a bigger layer of judgment that's going on.

Now, I recognize that this is actually an

over— a compulsive overconsumption, and that's something, if you haven't

read it or if you're not familiar, Anna Lembke has Dopamine

Nation, which is a book that explains this. Mm-hmm. And how we

are in a culture where everything's at our fingertips as soon as we want

it. And so it reminded me of that around

this compulsive overconsumption that can happen very easily, where

it is a neurochemical reaction that is happening in our brain,

and we can start to feel a little bit of helplessness against it.

And there are things you can do. Absolutely. But I also know that the

way that I'm wired makes me more prone than other

people to fall victim to this.

And I was not initially thrilled about the idea of sharing

this story because I am

embarrassed, frankly, but I don't think I should be

because I talked to a few trusted friends last week,

told them straight up what was happening, that I felt like

I was a monster and could not stop.

And then people were just saying, oh, I feel that. This happened to me when,

and this, I had that experience. And when a friend said to

me, well, how do you stop it?

I was floored by the question 'cause I realized that the way this usually

stops is one, I kind of have that meltdown crash where I just

actually stop functioning properly and I need an intervention.

And luckily I do have support for trying to help me with that.

But the other way is when I do have these outside commitments that

are stronger and that I want to keep and they're more important.

And then that gives me the structure of saying, you can't just

watch this show all day or binge this series or read this book or whatever,

insert the thing is that's got its hooks in me.

But it usually needs to be external. It's either external

or I crash and I admit I cannot keep doing this. Now

in the book Dopamine Nation, uh, Dr. Lemke does talk about this idea of

self-binding. And actually it's very timely because in

The Odyssey, there's the example of this siren call

and how Odysseus actually ties himself to the mast

and everyone else just has beeswax. It's kind of like that. And

there are different ways that you can use what's called self-binding. So whether that is

actually deleting apps off your phone, restricting

access, having someone else have a password so that you're, you're signed out.

Luckily in this case, I think because I started to have a mini meltdown last

week, um, I was able to say, I gotta

slow down. I, this show is

7 years old. I have been hearing about it for months from

my friend and it's still gonna be there in a

few days. And I was able to actually sort of regroup, but it's

almost like I got bonked on the head and was able to see what exactly

was happening. And that's when I was able to step in a little bit more

calmly, but also having discussed it with people close to me and

recognizing this is not cool. This is having negative impacts.

You need to focus on the things that are going to alleviate some of

that stress, meaning deal with some of the backlog that has been

building. And I was able to do that really well on Friday. I

set in place rules like you can't start watching it while you're eating

breakfast because that's— I literally was getting up and I was—

Had my iPad going all through breakfast, all through lunch. And then as soon

as I had free moments, I was finding myself back on

Netflix. The other kicker that I'll just

explain here is it is a Korean drama that is all

subtitles. So it's not exactly something that you

can just have on and hear in the background. I do

not understand Korean. I had to be looking at the screen. And I'm

not kidding you when I say I was walking around with my iPad in my

hand looking at the screen, which is probably— Physically dangerous,

but even something like trying to prep, like

making breakfast, I would sometimes pause so that I could see what I

was doing and then go back to watching it. However, I

mean, it's not a great thing. Drying your hair, you can actually watch

subtitles really easily while you have the hair dryer, which normally I

wouldn't watch TV while I'm drying my hair. But so this is the level, just,

just so that you can understand how much this got

its hooks in me. The other thing is that it's

16 episodes, but these are not 20-minute

episodes. They're not 40-minute episodes. They're not even an hour. They're all

around an hour 20 minutes. So this was a very big

commitment. I'm pleased to say that I was able to step away

from it all day Friday and all day Saturday,

and then came back and was able to slowly finish the series

on Sunday on a weekend. And one of the things I

did was actually have structured

things I had to do in between. So I would watch an episode and then

do laundry and then watch an episode and then I cleaned the bathroom

and then watch an episode. And actually I think I only had 3 left on

Sunday, so I was able to pace myself, but I did it in a

way where I had to be so intentional. I had to share my plan.

I'm going to watch and then I'm going to do something productive. And that,

that was me slowing down the train. And I use a train analogy

where it feels like someone has just come into the train and taken over and

it's just going faster and faster until it falls off the tracks, which is what

happened on Thursday. And what I have to do in those moments

is to just really slow it down, let someone else

maybe help me to guide it, and just really, really

calm things down. Now. When it comes to my

actual business, some of the things that happened is that I

did not do all of the things that I said

I would do, which is a very common thing. And that's one of the

reasons that I even share my real life experience on this podcast

is because if I'm the only one who's accountable,

it's easy for me to push it off. But last week I noticed there were

even things accountable to other people that I was delayed on.

They still got done eventually, but not on the timeline I liked. And that is

something that I really struggled with. And I think that's part of this

mini kind of meltdown or crash that I had on

Thursday of just recognizing how much I was

derailed and I was off the tracks. And

I had shared with a couple of friends how much I was enjoying this. And

when they offered new suggestions, I just said, please do not tell me. more

suggestions, or I am not going to start. Or if you tell me

something, it needs to be paceable. And in one

case, my friend Heather who recommended it actually said, why don't,

what if we do a watch together where it's 2 episodes a

week? And that is something I could easily do, say over a

lunch hour or while I'm cycling or something like that, that feels like a better

pace. And if there's another person that's pacing with me. It is

much easier for me to actually kind of pump the brakes,

slow down, and not have it completely derail me. But this is

a true threat if you are wired like me, but also

self-employed where it's just easier to quote unquote

get away with it. Um, but it was problematic. And so

on that note, I do wanna share my tracker. So I have been

tracking my progress and let's take a look,

but It's actually not very different from last week's numbers

because of this, this down week that I had. So when it comes

to my monthly tracking with posting for the month,

I have 8 posts out of my goal of

20. So I'm at 40% and it is the day I'm

recording. It's the 19th. There's not a lot of the month left.

So I don't know realistically if this will happen or not.

I am going to keep posting. But obviously the derailment hurt

me a little bit. Outreach is probably where I got hurt the most.

I have actually only reached 7 out of 40.

However, I am going to share that I

think I am going to hit this goal because I did take

time during this week's coworking session. I couldn't attend the whole

thing because I had a client call. However, I was able

to make a list of, I think around 50 people

that I will be reaching out to. About an upcoming workshop.

And I debated, does this count as outreach? Because I'm

not necessarily connecting about a, an

opportunity for speaking, but then I realized, actually, no, this is

part of the outreach and networking. And it is about one of the

workshops that I run. So this is about the Immunity to Change workshop. I'm

going to be hosting a live workshop on September 3rd. And I

want to make sure that people know about it. Whether they have experienced it or

not. And I recognize that this is also a reminder

that, hey, I run these and I can run these for teams and groups, et

cetera. So I do actually think that I'm going to count it.

I'm my own boss and I get to count outreach where people are becoming

aware of some of the speaking engagements that they could attend, but

also what's possible for me to do with other groups.

The outreach results I did record. A podcast last

week on Friday. So that counts as another appearance. I've got 2

appearances for August. Uh, my booked speaking

gigs is at 3. And then the final

number that I'm keeping track of is my sort of outcome tracker

where I look at audience members I spoke to. So it's at

13 after doing a talk last week and

subscribers for August right now are at 39. Full

disclosure though, this is only counting people who have subscribed since the

start of August. And I recognize that that might

not reflect people who might have left the list, which is a

completely normal thing to happen.

And I want to make sure that I allow

for, like, I want realistic numbers because you can lose

people when you are communicating. And so I need to figure out a way, I

want that to be a net new number. So I'll figure out what that looks

like so that I, when I share those numbers, they are the real numbers that

reflect how many people are on the list, not just adding everyone who

joins and never reflecting people who might say, you know what, I'm

good. Bye. And I did notice that happened

earlier this week. I had promoted

an appearance that I am doing tomorrow, or the, if you were listening on

the day this comes out today, and I'm partnering with

Senja, the testimonial software that I use. To run a

webinar and we're talking about procrastinating and I'll specifically be telling my story

about how I put off collecting testimonials for almost

2 years. And when I promoted that, I did

notice there were a few people dropping off the list, which is completely fine.

Unsubscribes are normal. They are part of business, but that did happen, which

when I logged in today and I looked at the total number, but the new

subscribers, that's where I realized, okay, I need to Have a way to reflect this.

So that's something that I am gonna do. But

I think that this recent experience has been

a cautionary reminder for me of

noticing, trying to notice early once I start to see

the pattern creeping in where I am wanting to sort of shirk my

responsibilities, where I'm wanting to step away from work

during the day in order to consume something that has nothing to do with

work. And even, even consuming things that are work-related

can be a slippery slope of, oh, I'm gonna watch this

YouTube video about something for my business. I'm gonna listen to this business podcast.

Those also can be problematic with having

things to fall behind. So I do like to have guardrails on what

I am willing and not willing to do. I also have a rule, generally

speaking, that is you cannot sit on the couch during the workday.

And unless you're actually doing work. And only

this couch. So basically the, the living room is off limits to me during the

workday. But last week I sat down, I broke the rule, but I, it's like,

as I said, someone else had hijacked my brain and took over

and, and I, yeah, paid the consequences of it.

The other thing is just to remember that I do work better

when there are external commitments and external

people. supporting me and that my brain

is wired to be more susceptible to it. And also not to

beat myself up when it happens, but to ask for help as soon as I

notice it's happening instead of trying to do the internal

negotiation, trying to hide it, minimize it,

or say, oh, well, I'll just pause everything

until I finish this because that's faulty.

faulty thinking, unhelpful things that are just going to make the

situation worse. And actually, it does remind me of a book

that I was recently reading, which is How

to Try Again by Steve Kamm. I think I got the

title right, and if I didn't, I apologize to Steve. But it is

this idea of using the PACT formula. So pause,

accept, C is for change, and then try.

And the Pause is around noticing that something is not working

and not make it worse. And that to me is actually a

really big key here is don't make it worse. And I

think that there are times when you're in that negotiation spiral where I'll say, oh,

if I can just finish all of it, then I'll be on the other

side. And that would actually make it worse.

And so in a way I did that, yes, last week, but I kind of

did because I was forced to because I just started to crash.

And that is not a pun because of the show being called Crash Landing on

You. And also I feel torn because I want to recommend this show to

people who might like it, but I also— maybe just go

in knowing you need some boundaries if you, if, if what I shared

is similar, because man, that show just,

it got its hooks in me. Um, not to say that I regret watching it

because I did love it. I just wish maybe I had paced it a little

bit more and also reminded myself that the show has been on Netflix for

a long time. And it's still going to be there and

it's not going anywhere. And actually, if you pace yourself,

then you get to enjoy it over a longer period. But as

Dr. Lemke in Dopamine Nation reminds us, it's very

hard to step away when we're, when that seesaw of our pain and pleasure

is out of alignment. It can be really hard to actually just

stop things, uh, because it's, it's actually painful. In your brain.

All right. I would love to hear in the comments if you do have any

advice or what works for you when you notice you're on a train that is

kind of running away and derailing you. What works

for you? Are there any other tips and tricks? Because I am open to them.

I am 100% open to hearing what you have to say, and I will

continue to share the ups and the downs, and hopefully I won't have

too many of these updates because I'll be able to catch them early. But if

it happens, I'll share it here on The Momentum Experiment as I try to

figure out how to reach 1 million

people through my speaking and writing and finding my momentum.