Opting Out of Hustle Culture with Matthew Smith of Wimp Decaf

It ain’t easy to step off the beaten path or to swim ashore from the river of what everyone else is doing. But consciously choosing to opt out of hustle culture and the grind of unrealistic expectations isn’t impossible! It’s hard, for sure. It’s also hella worth it.

In this conversation with Matthew Smith, founder of Wimp Decaf and multi-passionate entrepreneur, we talk about his journey of stepping off the hustle treadmill and onto the path of living the life he actually wants.

The conversation is also about our mutual journeys of sobriety and spirituality, the playfulness of accepting life as it is, learning what it’s like to have a regulated nervous system, defining what matters to us, and the liberation of getting to choose what counts as enough.

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Connect with Matthew and Wimp

Buy some decaf and/or sign up for the awesome Wimp newsletter at WimpDecaf.com

Follow Wimp on Instagram @wimpdecaf

Join the conversation on Reddit r/decaf_life

Resources, References, and Links

Note: book recommendations include affiliate links. If you buy a copy, I’ll get a tiny commission, and that would be super cool.

Zazen. A form of seated mediation practice.

White Mountain Druid Sanctuary in Trout Lake, Washington.

Attention economy. Idea that attention is a limited resource that companies are trying to capture:

South by Southwest (SXSW). Conference and festival in Austin, TX “that celebrate[s] the convergence of tech, film, music, education, and culture.”

Nonviolent Communication. A strategy for understanding needs and feelings in relationship. I wrote a great post about it: “The Life Changing Magic of Nonviolent Communication”

Got Done List. Oliver Burkeman is a proponent (and I’m a big fan of his work).

Reddit. Social media platform with endless conversations, semi-curated by users up-voting and down-voting content.

The Hunter Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century by Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein. Great reflection on the ways that we are not evolutionarily equipped for contemporary (digital) life.

Figma. Design tool.

Transcript

Note: this transcript was generated by AI. Please forgive any malapropisms and misspellings. It’s the robot’s fault!

Matthew Smith (00:00)

So much of hustle culture tells me faster, harder, more cheaper, always more efficient. Productivity is like tantrums everything, it’s a religion. And if you’re not doing those things, then shame on you. mean, that is the definition of cultish behavior. If you’re not part of this and like totally bought in, then you’re out. There’s sort of this cyclical shame that can come with a lot of that comparison engine.

Cate Blouke (00:35)

Welcome to Settling is Bullshit, a sweary podcast about claiming your joy. If you are craving healthier boundaries, a greater sense of purpose, or an increased capacity to feel at ease in your own skin, then you are in the right place, my friend. I’m your host, Cate Blouke, joy activist and life coach to smart and sensitive humans.

I’m here to offer you practical tools and playful encouragement to step forward and be your most awesome self. My hope is that each episode will leave you feeling a bit more empowered to make brave choices and claim your joy. Hey friend, today’s episode is all about the spirituality of slowing down, of making conscious choices in our life, and potentially like opting out.

of the shit that doesn’t serve us. My guest today is Matthew Smith, who is a designer, writer, and builder who’s worked with Walmart, MailChimp, and dozens of early-stage teams. He co-founded a company called Really Good Emails, sold it, and now runs Wimp Decaf. Yes, that is a decaf coffee company because decaf needed a serious rebrand, as he would put it. Matthew and I met in Greenville, South Carolina when I was still teaching in academia.

We were in the rooms of recovery together and became friends. And he actually helped me transition out of academia and into the digital marketing space. We worked together on a number of different projects, including really good emails for a while. And Matthew, in a lot of ways, was my kind of paradigm of what it meant to be an entrepreneur. He is one of those guys that tends to have his hands in a lot of different projects. He had a lot of different companies at the time. And…

A couple of years ago, he started to opt out of that and started this decaf coffee company, which is part of what we’re going to talk about today. But I was really interested in having him on the show to kind of talk about that choice to opt out of hustle culture, to look around and say, I don’t want to do this anymore. There are things in life that are more important to me than the grind. So we had a really fun conversation talking about that.

and we ended up talking a lot about spirituality, about sobriety, about neurodivergence, about taking care of our nervous systems, all the things that we end up talking about on this show. One of the things that really comes out of this conversation for me is this idea that we have to decide for ourselves what is enough, whether it’s in the realm of how much money we’re making or how hard we’re working.

Ultimately, it comes down to us making the decision of what is enough, and that’s a hard decision to make. So I hope that you find the conversation inspiring, that it helps you think about what’s enough for you. And as always, please like it, leave a review, share it with anyone you think would benefit from hearing it too. And if you want to help out in supporting this podcast and helping me keep the lights on, I would love it if you considered joining my Patreon. The membership is as low as $5 a month and it would really do a lot.

to help me keep this podcast going. Links are in the show notes and I hope you enjoy.

Yeah, so I’m having a great time in Portland. It’s like really a good vibe for me in a way that South Carolina was not.

Matthew Smith (04:08)

Yeah, I mean I really get that you know I remember you and I you know being in the rooms and Right around the time when you and I were connecting and hanging out and playing cards and you know being sober together it was Right when I started questioning out like 20 years of Christianity in my life and you know I had I’d gotten into the church through a girl. I had just finished a

week long session in Denver, which is a silent, Zazen Buddhist retreat. It was incredible. was 17 years old and classic Matthew kind of like, you could see the alcoholic early, like whatever I do, I do it fucking to 11. You know? And so, you know, this silent retreat, brown robes, not talking to anybody, not looking at anybody.

No mirrors, you know, it was like very austere and powerful, just incredible. You know, it took me decades to really understand how special that experience was. But coming out of that, I also was in a zone where my family was, really, I now understand, you know, the way that trauma and other things informed them. And so I’m

I’m at this Zen retreat. I’m coming out of this experience. I don’t have the connection, the feelings, like the warm that I want in a family. And here’s this, you know, hot Christian girl in her community, like, copy it.

Cate Blouke (05:45)

⁓ Yeah, if I hadn’t grown up in Las Vegas, I could see that might have happened. Or if some very cute Mormon boy had been like, hey. But I wasn’t Mormon, so it didn’t happen. Exactly.

Matthew Smith (05:47)

Of course that felt amazing.

It’s such an allure, know, and then so fast forward and 20 years in the church. And so I was like unwinding at that time when you and I met. And I just, it’s hard because, you you’re in the rooms in Greenville, South Carolina, and 95 % of the people there are Christian or near Christian. And so the language in those rooms is tough. It’s like,

You know, they say the big book is ⁓ the blue AA book and the big, big book is the Bible. you’re like, keep that shit out of here.

Cate Blouke (06:44)

Yeah, I don’t hear that in the rooms around Portland and I didn’t hear it in Austin where I got sober.

Matthew Smith (06:51)

Right? So I’m stoked for you and I’m living kind of vicariously through you. I think I started my time in Greenville as a Christian and now I’m very happily atheist. in the, just, I love being where I am. I’m so, I’m the kind of atheist where it’s like, am not, how do I say it? I’m definitely not agnostic. I’m atheist. I don’t believe there’s anything. However,

The universe is fucking incredible and amazing and big and just strange as fuck. That’s amazing. You know, like, I don’t know how quantum theory and all that stuff works. It’s wild. Does something like, you know, is there memory that is embedded in a cell in such a way that like we hold memory of all the, you know, people that have ever held those atoms and molecules? I don’t know. That would be crazy. Kind of interesting.

I don’t know, but I don’t think there’s anything. And I’ve done a lot of work to just grieve and accept that. now I’m just kind of enamored with like, wow, from dust to dust, incredible. And that’s been a journey. It’s pretty interesting.

Cate Blouke (08:05)

Yeah, that is so interesting. And I feel like I moved to Portland and I’ve just gone like totally opposite direction of like polytheism. Like there’s a druid sanctuary in an hour and a half away where they celebrate the high holidays and like, you know, make offerings to various gods and nature. I go out there and I’m having a great time. I’m like, I love this. Why not? Why not?

Matthew Smith (08:27)

I kind of love that. just sounds like a real exploration and a permeability, like an openness to just enjoy everything that’s Very cool. How did that transform? Because I don’t know that we really talked about faith or spirituality other than ⁓ higher power in the rooms, but like what transpired to lead you to a place where

Cate Blouke (08:43)

Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew Smith (08:59)

You really have enjoyed the creativity and the exploration of that. That sounds really interesting.

Cate Blouke (09:04)

I mean, honestly, it’s partly culture and community. It’s sort of the similar thing to what you were talking about. You know, I moved to Portland in August of 2019. And when I got here within my first week, like I went to a bunch of meetings, I’d go out to like eat with people afterwards. And every fucking conversation I had, somebody else would be like, so what’s your sign? Like, and shitty shit and paganism is like everywhere here.

in a way that makes this, you know, really allowed and welcome and invited.

Matthew Smith (09:39)

that kind of sounds sweet. Like just the idea of being able to have that kind of exploration and be in a community where that sort of freedom and playfulness is the way I think about it. You know, the creativity, the sort of free-spiritedness of that sounds sweet. We don’t have much of that around here. So atheism isn’t very playful either in its intellectualism.

So I love Buddhist sitting and Buddhist philosophy. And so from the perspective of really embracing life as it is, that’s quite playful. And that’s very dancey, flowy, you you got to roll with stuff. so atheism tends to kind of lean, it’s almost like intellectually, it can be kind of staunch and grumpy. And I don’t prefer that.

But I think the wonder of just how big the universe is and how little we know and the kind of curiosity at poking at things and asking big questions and that’s the stuff that is playful to me and I love that. There’s just so much room out there for so many different ways to live and I just appreciate it. And as my friend, I’m really stoked for you that you’re in a place where there’s just so much more freedom.

Cate Blouke (11:05)

Yeah, and I mean, I think this sort of ties into what I brought you on to talk about. You know, it seems a little far afield, but really it’s about that idea of like the cultures that we’re saturated in, right? The communities that we, the ways that they shape us and the ways in which contemporary digital culture is hustle culture, is pushing past limits, is…

all the time, urgent, everywhere, all at once in a way that is deeply exhausting. And I love this kind of stance that you have taken in the, what I’ve heard about your journey and I wanna hear more about, from going from really being in that world and taking a very conscious step back.

Matthew Smith (11:52)

Yeah, this material is so interesting to me. And it’s weird because unlike something like a faith tradition, hustle culture doesn’t have a doctrine. Yeah. It doesn’t have like some book that people ascribe to. It doesn’t have a church unless you want to count like Wall Street or something like that. But I just think the influence of hustle culture, know, there’s sort of two dynamics to it, at least two.

One is this energy for working and grinding and like there’s, you know, this excitement ⁓ and this sort of enthusiasm. And I would actually say like an untethered enthusiasm, like a friend of mine and I, talked about this sort of the cycle of entrepreneurs where you have this uninformed.

fantasy about like the future about what it can be. ⁓ my God, you know, you’re just charging and it’s easy to really get excited about that. And then if it’s not happening, you can crack if the fantasy isn’t coming true.

Cate Blouke (12:58)

Yeah.

I do know deeply having launched a business and a podcast in the last 18 months and just like, absolutely get that cycle of like, the world is my oyster. can do everything. It’s gonna be amazing and everybody’s gonna want it and it’s so cool. And then, ⁓ my God, the attention economy and the just saturation and the social media and the everything behind the scenes and then the where are the people and why don’t they want the thing and what’s going on. Yeah.

Matthew Smith (13:31)

And

that like disconnection between, how do I say this? You get to watch and you get this insight or a kind of like false insight into how other people are doing. You get to see their audience and their likes and the numbers and some of those kinds of things. And your perception is, that’s accessible. I’m going to go do that over here. And then the other part…

of this kind of culture that comes together to me is scarcity, right? So why am I hustling? Why am I grinding and driving and pushing? And, you know, for me, some of that comes out of, you know, it’s informed from my trauma experiences and a sense of, you know, usually my OCD brain will go, okay, if I don’t land this contract, then I’m without work until I get back from my trip. And if I’m without work,

until I get back from my trip, I might have to dip into savings a little bit. And now there’s a hole. It’s like I poked a hole in savings, which is not accurate. I was going to maybe take some savings, but literally like the visual for me is like, now there’s a hole in that cistern that holds savings and it’s leaking. And I can never plug it again. So that’s going to drain. And then all that work that I put in, I’m going have to do that all again, but I probably won’t be able to. And then I’m going to die. And it, you know, it’s just like.

Cate Blouke (14:57)

Yeah, no, 100%. That’s my exact experience of savings. I had to do some, I had to get some coaching around this also, right? This idea that like my relationship to savings was always like you put it there and then it just stays there forever. Like it’s not, because as soon as you dip in, then it’s like never gonna re-fill and like it’s gonna be gone and everything’s gonna like crash and burn. Yeah.

Matthew Smith (15:20)

Yeah, it’s weird. I’m curious. there’s just, you know, for me, I was working, I’ve owned a design agency for roughly 20 years. So, you know, there was, was so exciting when we first started, so few people were doing it. And so I went from like my first website to within three years speaking at South by Southwest. Like it was crazy how fast that happened. And, you know, I made a name for myself. I got out there, like really freaking cool things were happening.

And I joined startups along the way and I started drinking more and I’m drinking because my nervous system is so crazy. And then I’m pouring coffee down my gullet in the mornings, caffeinated coffee, because I am exhausted or I don’t feel good and that’s curing my hangovers. And I’m just creating this insane cycle.

And I’m getting so excited by the work that I’m doing because I’m getting paid well for it. The economy is sort of supporting some of this. And so it just was creating this engine. Well, you know, the first real break in the engine was when, you know, my now ex-wife said, hey, this isn’t working. And within, you know, six months of us, you know, getting going on a separation, she had

said, okay, I’m ready for a divorce. And that leveled me. was, alcohol in that time was hard, but the much harder thing was really, and now I understand is I was relationally addicted. I had no personality that was my own, completely 100 % codependent. And so I had to start over like an infant and…

slowly untangle every belief that I am nothing without somebody else’s approval, connection, touch, affirmation, all those things. And slowly through neuroplastic work, through yoga, through meditation, through a lot of freaking AA meetings, you know, I began to map out, ⁓ I’m different than I thought I was.

And I, you know, I left my faith tradition. I started really thinking differently about who I was, what I wanted, how I wanted to relate to the world. And that started me down a path where not, guess probably three years into my sobriety, I noticed I could suddenly start like feeling what was going on in my body for the first time in my life. And I’m like, oh shit. I thought I liked caffeine because I would start drinking it and it would give me that

But then as I was paying more attention, was like, oh, this other feeling, I don’t like that. I don’t like it when it starts caving in and I’m sweating even though I’m sitting here, you know, and that kind of stuff. And it’s just, holy shit, this is fucked up. What is going on? And so, you know, very reluctantly said, I don’t know, maybe I’m going to try and go off caffeine for a couple of weeks and just see if that… So that’s now…

Cate Blouke (18:32)

with that.

You still had caffeine when I was in South Carolina. So 2018, and I will say, you have persuaded me. I have been pretty much off of caffeine now for like three weeks to a month. And I’m sleeping better and I feel less anxious. So.

Matthew Smith (18:57)

It’s

so annoying, right? It’s such an easy, like, button to push, but you’re like, make off!

Cate Blouke (19:03)

It’s not easy, how dare you?

Matthew Smith (19:06)

Comparatively. So like, you know, we could do like millions of years of therapy or we have to like figure out which particular special drugs to take and, you know, go down this weird, you know, thing with psychiatrists and all the things, or you can stop drinking caffeine. And it’s like, you think for a minute that means not drinking anymore coffee. And we’ll get to that part of the story. it’s so, you know, I, I am addressing this thing with

caffeine and I was so annoyed. I’m like, I already gave up one social drink. I don’t want to give him another. God damn it. You know, but I noticed my sleep was so much better. I wasn’t feeling the like tumbling stomach, the shortness of breath, the sweating, all those things. And so, okay, I really want to feel better. It’s not worth the little like short, you know, pop I get. All right.

Let’s go find good decaf. That surely that is out there. I just got to go hunt for it Yeah, and goddamn is really hard to find and so in a typical Matthew move I Embedded in my head then and I I mean it took years for me to do anything about it, but I thought somebody should do something about this and you know somebody should make a good decaf coffee company and just zone in on that yeah, so

That’s in the back of my head, but in the meantime, I’m still running, you know, my design agencies and, and I’m just crunching on things. you know, there’s, it’s exciting. Like I think I heard this recently. I always thought that I ultimately would need to somehow have a calm life to be happy, ⁓ but I don’t really want a calm life. love adventure. And so I always saw these as like, ⁓ this sucks.

you know, how I don’t know how to be able to have the adventure and like feel good. And then somebody said, ⁓ I don’t want to calm life. want to calm nervous system.

Cate Blouke (21:13)

Yeah, I was just thinking about that. I kind of have the inverse a little bit. We’ve both been on our own neuro-spicy, figuring it out adventure. I thought I liked adventure. I thought I liked travel. I thought I liked doing all of these things. Then I figured out what it’s like to have a calm nervous system.

to have a regulated nervous system, to actually feel in my body that I’m grounded, I’m regulated, and not in the anxiety or in any of that. And once I had a taste of that, I was like, I don’t actually like adventure. I actually really like routine and cozy beds and not a lot of noise for a lot of people.

Matthew Smith (21:58)

Amazing.

Cate Blouke (22:03)

There’s been a lot of grief around that for me because it is this sense of identity that anytime we make this either increased awareness in ourselves, like we figure this out about ourselves, or figure something out and then have to make a pivot in our lives. Something that has been so present for me as someone who has made a number of pivots is that there’s always a grief that comes with that. No matter what change we’re making in our lives, there’s a loss.

Like there’s a loss of who that was in order to make space for something that’s new. And so it’s just so interesting to me to be getting older and to be sober a long time and figuring stuff out. ⁓

Matthew Smith (22:51)

we get to choose the life that we want. I love that. And I think the freedom to do that is one of the best parts of sobriety. Like, I can choose to make this maybe sketchy decision. I can choose to make this maybe more thoughtful decision, you know? But I have a choice now. I didn’t always. And I think that’s, you know, this incredible part. So for me, you know, a big part of that was I had to start recognizing

I like starting business. like running business. I like being really valuable to clients that feels good. It matches a lot of my needs. And, you know, I’ve, I’ve done a lot of work in the non-biotech communication space and really like thinking through, you know, matching feelings to needs and some of that material. so it’s been wonderful to recognize a lot more of that for myself, but I think

ultimately the complexity of running a design agency where I’m putting my sense of reputation, which no matter how much work I do around codependency or you know, valuing myself, I’m still human and I’m still have a lot of programming. And so I get to decide, ⁓ when I hand over my reputation to too many other people with whom I don’t have enough for me,

agency or management over like the work they do that has such direct impact on my reputation, then the anxiety just goes through the roof, right? So I have to be really thoughtful about that. So when I reduce complexity and make that simpler, I’m able to do like big things, but just at a smaller scale, right? And so I ultimately ended up quitting.

my agency getting bought out and starting a decaf coffee company because with the specific ethic of can I run this, can I start this and actually be decaf about it. know, idea of like decaf is an expression that is not sleepy and lazy. It’s being present and kind of like no rush.

you know, or doing less better is something I think a lot about, right? So that it’s this quality of so much of hustle culture tells me faster, harder, more cheaper, more optimized, always more efficient. Productivity, you know, is like tantrums, everything. It’s a religion. And if you’re not doing those things, then, you know, shame on you. I mean, that, that is the definition of cultish behavior.

You know, like if you’re not part of this and like totally bought in, then you’re out, right? And like the more and more like there’s sort of this cyclical shame that can come with a lot of that, that comparison engine, right? And so I was just like, okay, I’m not going to do this perfectly, but I’m going to start practicing a different way. And that practice is, wait a second, am I?

Am I living decaf? Is this the decaf answer? And it’s just a question for me right now. Like met today is a great example. I have not been very decaf today. I had too many meetings and too much going on. And it’s like, ⁓ okay. Note, note to self to, you know, when I go to sleep tonight, I’m going to try and incorporate this into, you know, the neuroplastic shift. This was too much reminder again, I do better when, you know, I have more free time.

I get make sure I get my exercise. did take several walks today, but like some of these things. Okay. Is that decaf? And then another example is, okay, I’m starting this decaf coffee company. I finally have it to a place where one part of my brain says, Oh man, it could be a hundred million dollar company. we just like, you know, wouldn’t that be great? I could stop working eventually. Like that’s the fantasy, right? Yeah. But the reality is it’s not costing me money, right?

Cate Blouke (27:05)

Great.

Matthew Smith (27:05)

And

that’s incredible. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not profitable in the sense that I’m not paying myself. Yeah. But it’s not costing me money. There are two of us running it, and it’s making enough, and it’s slowly getting its way out there that I’m able to just sit on the sidelines a little bit be like, what is the thing, what is the one priority that I can do this week to move that forward? And at the end of 52 weeks, that’s 52 things that…

it’s going to move it a little bit further forward. But living decaf is each week being like, Matthew, I know you want to do 10 things. I know you see the future of what WIMP could be, but let’s see together kindly if we can prioritize toward one thing, do it well, do it with thought, and put it out there in the world. And then next week you got next week’s thing. that’s sort of the

the direction I’ve been trying the head, it’s, it’s hard.

Cate Blouke (28:06)

Yeah, yeah, and like letting that one thing be enough. That’s right. I really love this metaphor framework terminology of decaf because like when I think about it, it’s like, know, caffeine isn’t a part of our diet. So that this idea of decaf is…

Matthew Smith (28:10)

Yes.

Cate Blouke (28:32)

For me, a return to presence, a return to being in myself and with myself and in the moment ⁓ and intentionally moving at the pace that our system wants us to move, instead of trying to amplify ourselves in some way. This has been on my mind in the last year as I’ve been in entrepreneur mode.

on paper have all of the skills that I need and know how to do the thing. Like I know how to fucking do social media. I know how to write email. Like I know how to do all of it. And in order to be able to do it is a hustle. It’s so much work. It’s so much fucking work. And I’ve been thinking a lot about nature, partly because I’m like in the Pacific Northwest and like I have a yard and I’ve learned to like plant things and grow flowers. But like.

Matthew Smith (29:23)

Incredible.

Cate Blouke (29:25)

fucking trees don’t grow in a year. They just don’t. That’s not how nature works. know, and nature has cycles and spring and summer and fall and winter. And I think that something that’s been really present for me is just the ways in which we have gotten so detached from those cycles. The ever presence of instant gratification, the like industrial farming, whatever, like we’ve just gotten so…

We can get anything anytime we want it all the time. It’s exhausting.

Matthew Smith (30:01)

It really is. We have a disproportionate and kind of a broken barometer for understanding what’s possible in a day or what we can accomplish. And I think, and then you just run in a cycle of shame trying to do more than you could. One of the things that I think you have picked up on from one of my newsletters was this idea of a got done list instead of a to do list.

You know, being able to look at the things that we did each day, because sometimes we can get to the end of the day and think, oh, I didn’t do anything. But if you actually go back through, there’s so many things that, and it doesn’t have to be even tasks that you’d normally put on, you know, your typical accomplishment list. Like for me, it might be tonight, I’m looking back and thinking, I know that I will have had a conversation with my 18 year old about kind of his life choices and some of those things.

And that’s been riding on my mind big today. And so to say, know, good job, Matthew. You had a hard conversation. Like, that really is an accomplishment, but that wouldn’t show up on a to-do list. Right? But it’s something that I should, I can feel like, okay, I’ve really accomplished something as a human today. Like, this is important work. And so it’s sort of reorienting toward what matters. And, you know, the other thing,

A friend of mine once said this and it just blew me away is, you know, he had exposure to people making crazy amounts of money. And he said, I know people who retired with like $3 million in savings. And I know people who have retired with $300 million in savings. I, the person who has 300 million, definitely not a hundred times happier. And so I don’t know.

You know, if the sacrifice that that person had to make to work that hard, you know, and some people just get stupid lucky and that’s different, right? Like they push a button that nobody knew was going to do a thing and you know, they, they win. You could argue whether they did win or not. There are a bunch of ways to think about that, but just simply showing up, doing hard work and staying alive and eating.

and having friendships and sleeping on a bed, that is better than the vast majority of human history. you know, we, like even the simplest lives of any of us right now are living better than kings lived in the many centuries past. And I think we really have to take that into account and maybe sort of look at what we’re trying to do a little differently. I think…

One of the things that I’ve been thinking about is, know, Ako and I, my wife and I, we’re hypothesizing moving to Japan in a few years. And the idea has been, well, okay, what am I going to do when I get there? How much money do I need to be making? Can I work for American, you know, clients and stay there and all those kinds of things. But the reality is that like the amount of money that I have to spend there to just live a very normal life is actually very low.

And that’s true of like if I were to live rural, really here in the United States or some other places and some of those expectations that I’ve put around myself about the way that I think I need to live and the money I have to make. It’s part of having been caught in this hustle culture engine.

Cate Blouke (33:46)

And what I heard in that, listening to you, know, who we surround ourselves with is like who we compare ourselves with. And part of my departure from academia and the choice to go freelance and the like life choices I’ve been making for the past number of years have really been oriented around what do I want my day-to-day life to be? And what do I need in order to be able to sustain that?

Matthew Smith (33:55)

Eww.

Cate Blouke (34:15)

I realized that like when I had what I call an adult job, you know, when I was a grownup once upon a time, and like had a salary and all of that, I realized that like what I was making with that adult job was, you know, radically more than I was making as a graduate student, but I was not radically happier. And when I was willing to sort of make a pivot and make changes in my life,

that we’re gonna be, you know, appreciably making less money, I realized that like, man, I want the space back. There’s this necessity to me of like really calibrating what enough is in all areas of our life, but like, especially with money. ⁓ But we have to get conscientious about it because in the hustle culture,

in the comparison culture, in the perfectionism culture, if I don’t really make a conscious choice, nothing’s enough. There is not ever enough. When I was working as a freelance digital marketing person and doing agency work and contracting, people would be like, do you want work? I would say yes, because I’m like, cool, more money. I’ll take more money at the sacrifice of sleep and stress and time.

Matthew Smith (35:40)

And there’s always the fear that if you don’t take this now, then you don’t know what’s around the corner. Right. And when you’re living that way, there’s never an end. That equation is, ⁓ it’s looped, right? So there isn’t a stage at which you, ⁓ okay, this is good. I think one of the things that I’ve had to do is actually start defining some of this more carefully.

So for instance, a conversation that I regularly have to have is, okay, how much do I want to make this year? How much is enough? What is a stretch goal? And then when am I getting into a zone where I’m sacrificing work for another form of value, which is rest and breathing room and play and enjoyment of this one precious life?

getting that a little bit more defined and clear so it’s not ambiguous. Because it’s a little bit like if somebody is having extremely depressing feelings, you need to have a plan, right? When you’re in that zone for when things are really bad, who am I gonna talk to? What is that like? You don’t wanna make the plan then.

Cate Blouke (36:56)

No,

you don’t have access to it. When I’m depressed, everything’s terrible and I can’t call anybody because nobody cares, right? Exactly.

Matthew Smith (37:05)

You come up with a story that is twisted and turned. And so it’s when we’re in our moments of sanity that we need to make clear, where do I want to be? And then let that be sort of this mantra and the thing that you recycle in your mind. And then to your point, a big part of shifting for me has been putting myself around people who are also thinking about this.

You know, my buddy Robert, he and I regularly are kind of coming back to each other gently, kindly. Hey, are you fantasizing? You know, are you thinking you can do X, Y, Z and maybe that isn’t realistic. And then when you aren’t able to hit that realistic goal, now you have shame and you’re in this cycle. ⁓ yeah. Thanks for pointing that out. Yeah. I think I’m doing it. Yeah. Okay. I’m going to need to grieve for a minute, you know, but like.

You process that and then you can try again, learn a different way, try the different way. And, one of the things I’ve been, you know, kind of trying to figure out is like, oh, weird. I gave up my agency. I’m doing freelance. I’m working probably about half of what I was working before. And I’m really making up about as much, maybe a little bit more. And what happens in my brain is, wait a second, if you’re working half,

What if you worked, do it like 5X as much? Couldn’t you like, could kill it, you could make so much money. And like that sort of ethic wants to sneak in. But I think, wait a sec, if I did that, then I would again, not have time to justify going to the gym in the mornings three times a week. I would not have time to justify getting the meditation in that I get, you know, every day. I would not have the time

to be able to spend with friends that I have that have just been so enjoyable since quitting my agency. And I’ve learned that flexibility is important for me. And so if I amp it up, if I try and go get more, I’m killing the margin I’ve built into my life, right? And I don’t want that. And so, yes, I’m looking for how can I get more leverage out of my time? Like WIMP coffee is this way of saying, well, maybe I can create a product

that can be sold over and over and over again. And so each time I make it better, it just sells better, that one thing. And then maybe I can sell that company in five years. That’s a goal. But I also don’t want to sell out making that goal and end up crippling myself. Because I could die between now and five years from now. Yeah. And that’s it. So I don’t want to like have…

wasted this precious moment trying to get to some future moment that doesn’t exist yet, you know? These are the things that I’ve been thinking a lot about.

Cate Blouke (40:04)

I like that metaphor, the word you use, like that margin in my life. Like, I really try not to schedule anything before 11 a.m., ideally, because morning is like my best thinking creative time. Like, I do not stay up late, but like I’ll wake up at five and then go to the gym and then be in my like creative writing jam. And like, I just don’t want to have the accountability or the space interrupted.

And that’s like a conscious choice that I have made, you know, at the cost of then having like fewer hours of like available hours for monetary gain, right? But again, one of the sort of values calibration that I have done that I certainly talk about on this podcast and that I encourage folks that I work with to think about is just like, how much is your life worth?

Matthew Smith (40:59)

Okay.

Cate Blouke (41:02)

How much is your time worth? Like, are you really enjoying the life experience you are having in this particular job or in this particular mode? Right? Because we only get it once, you know, and I don’t want to look back on my, now I’m in my 40s, you know, like, I don’t want to get to the end of my 40s and be like, man, I worked incredibly hard and earned a ton of money.

and didn’t enjoy my body and my time in the way that I could have at the time. know, like my, I’ve been complaining about this a bit, but it’s like my knees are starting to hurt. Like I want to go do the hikes and the things that my body is able to do now because I’m just very aware that I’m not always going to be able to do that.

Matthew Smith (41:53)

Yeah. There’s that preciousness to take a hold of. And there’s also this quality of like, can see the naysayer saying, ⁓ wait a second. Like, are you saying like, you want to, you just want to chill? You can want to be, you know, do nothing. You want to be lazy? And I think the way I respond to that is we’ve come to this sort of space. It’s so much of the rhetoric in our lives right now is either or, right? The sort of like max.

or men and that’s it. And I think either I’m selling myself out to just, you know, burn, you know, to the absolute hottest degree on anything I can possibly do, or I’m homeless and doing nothing and there’s nothing in between. And that’s just not accurate, right? The ability to one, think with intention about what we’re doing. So we’re not just kind of floating and

and just doing what’s in front of us because it’s in front of us. We’re looking at, if I value my time, how can I be doing the things that are the most potent, add the most value? Are there things that I can do, like as I look at the variety of tasks in front of me, that are more likely to be flywheels or stack? So that when I do them, by doing this one thing,

it enables all these other things to be able to be done. Or it means that I get some sort of motion going. for instance, like I have the possibility tomorrow to write a WIMP newsletter, which I love doing and I really enjoy getting those out. Or I need to make a choice and I might need to send the WIMP newsletter from the plane on Saturday instead because on Friday, if I can take

three or four hours and create a new ⁓ email flow for brand new customers. We just launched a new part of the site and that new flow unlocks new behaviors for the customers and ultimately moves WIMP much further forward than the newsletter. And so that helps me make a prioritization. And I don’t have to feel bad that I didn’t get to the newsletter. It’s just, okay, this is how I’m doing it.

But I limit myself. So the way I think about this is like, I like to time box on my calendar so that it’s like one, if I start to see meetings stack up, I either reach out to folks, hey, I did it again. know, like I did too many meetings. We got to push these out. Sorry. Or I immediately block everything out so nothing else can be scheduled. And like here’s free time, here’s creative time.

Here’s breathing time, here’s walking time. And I know, okay, I have to have that balance of stuff to be a living, breathing human being who’s a kind person to my wife, who’s kind to myself, who can get up and do it again tomorrow and believe it’s all worth it. know, so it’s like I’ve figured out the budget, if you will, for, you know, the, there’s a couple different ways to think about it, like budgeting, which I think of it with margin or like ingredients. You know, I know that, ⁓

Cate Blouke (45:14)

It might work better for me. Like I’ve tried, I’ve tried the time budget and the, there’s, there’s a threshold for me of like things being on the calendar that works. And then even if it’s like free time, creative time, like putting that on the calendar, like then there’s too many things on the calendar. Like there’s a sweet spot for me around that. But I like that idea of like, what are the ingredients for the recipe of like me being

the person I want to be in the world.

Matthew Smith (45:45)

I like thinking about that because you can only have so much spice before it gets untenable or you can only have so much starch before things start going awry. So there’s something in that. But I spent a lot of time thinking and so having a metaphor to kind of guide that helps me think about some of this stuff. It’s hard though. I think one of the big things that I have to keep coming back to is

This is not yet another thing to optimize. Right? Like this is, no, this is more like a rhythm that I’d like to develop more awareness about so that I am in line with my values. Right? And actually determining what my values are was a really important, you know, first step in all this. Like I couldn’t have made some of these decisions without that. So.

Cate Blouke (46:16)

Right.

Matthew Smith (46:42)

this work I did with this guy, Sean Blount, one of the coolest, craziest things that he helped me do was really establish how important curiosity is to me and action. Those are my two highest values. I love action. like doing, right? I like to see things happen. But I love curiosity. And so I like the kind of tension between those two things and like…

There’s some dynamism, there’s some opposition, there’s some interesting stuff. So I was able to unearth those two core values for me. And then he asked me this really interesting question, series of questions. One was, okay, what are the three most important things in your business that you would, you ⁓ absolutely like for this year, you think this is, you know, what needs to happen. We wrote those down and we had a series of ways of kind of unearthing them. Then he said, all right, what is your…

vision for what work looks like in five years. How much do you want to be working? What time of day do you want to be working? How many meetings are you having? What kind of work are you doing? What kind of work are you not doing? What kind of people are you working with? What kind of people are you not working with? All of that stuff. And man, I was so dialed on that because I had just burned out so hard, like a couple months before working on this with him.

And so I was really clear on, five years, this is what it looks like. And then the next question was, are those three things on your list moving you toward that five-year goal? No. Not only are they not moving me toward that goal, my entire career, the way I’ve set up around design agencies is antithetically opposed to really where I would like to be. I need to rewrite everything.

And I basically in my head quit my agency that day and then I think it was that week that I, you know, more or less said, hey guys, to my partners, like, I want out. And at that moment, what was so helpful is I knew that the fundamental way that agencies are set up requires a kind of chasing for reputation, value, affirmation, appreciation. And I’m like,

Wait a second, that sounds like childhood. Like, I don’t wanna do that again. Fuck that.

Cate Blouke (49:12)

Yeah, I do. Yeah.

Matthew Smith (49:15)

Just like, nope, I’m done. Like, I don’t want to put myself in that scenario where I continue to work in those ways. And so even now, I’m, you know, freelancing is so much less of that. And I have more agency around who I work with, how I work, when I work, all of that. And so many fewer meetings, et cetera. And there are still ways daily that I think, okay,

How could I change this a little bit to continue moving toward, you know, that five-year vision? And that’s not going to be perfect, but having it means that I can pattern match toward what is serving that or what’s not, you know? Yeah, totally. That’s been helpful.

Cate Blouke (50:03)

Totally. Yeah. I mean, that’s been kind of a big component of, you know, not in quite such a structured way. Cause like, you know, when I was going through my pivot out of academia, I didn’t know what coaching was. I didn’t have a coach. So didn’t have the structured process for like figuring this shit out. But I think for me, there was just this awareness that like, I really wanted a needed agency over where I could live. That was fundamentally important to me.

And I need flexibility around my time. Now that I’ve become more aware of my own neurodivergence and needs and nervous system, it’s like, oh yeah, this is why. I don’t have a 40-hour work week in me. And that’s okay. That’s just the reality that I’m working with. And this is circling a little bit back to that voice that comes in about being lazy and…

and you know, whatever the inner critic voice, like I just want to live a life where I’m being productive enough, where I’m doing enough, right? And then the rest of the space is for like showing up well, both like for myself and for the people in my life. And so a big component of getting clarity on the enoughness

And then it’s getting clarity on like, like what would be cool that would be more than just enough? But finding ways and structures, whether it’s blocking out time on my calendar or what have you of like, okay, like there’s that margin of between here’s enough and here’s more. And then everything over more is too much. Like that I’m sacrificing the things that are actually important to me, the going to the gym, to the going to the meetings, to the like…

being able to like cook food that I want to eat and not be stressed out all the time. Like fundamentally, like I do not want to live a life of being stressed out all the time. It does not work for me. I cry a lot.

Matthew Smith (52:09)

We never used to have so many inputs and variables and we forget we would like our, I say, nervous systems and our biology to have evolved with our culture. But that is not happening. We are still stuck in a primitive brain, primitive body. you know, yeah, there’s some probably evolution within a species happening as we speak.

with all the digital stuff and, you know, it’ll be interesting. My guess is in a hundred years, there’ll be some cyborgian, you know, people that will go off to Mars for a while and then they’ll come back in a hundred more years and defeat, you know, those of us who have none. But the idea that we, as just these beings who used to live in tiny villages and had less than 50 people that we would know and relate to,

are now exposed to hundreds if not thousands that we kind of need to keep a little gear running in our mind all the time. And then all the different permutations to all the ways that we need to relate digitally across every little channel and all the different interfaces that we have to like, how does this button work? ⁓

Cate Blouke (53:30)

You were teasing me before we got on the call because I was talking about like figure out Reddit so that like, cause you started a Reddit thread about decaf life. And I was like, yeah, this is cool. Like I want to participate. I’ve like actively not gone down the Reddit rabbit hole because I have a limited capacity for digital tools. know, it’s like, I got Instagram. I’ve like, like Facebook exists, but it’s for the boomers these days. Let’s get real. And there’s just, there’s just too much.

There’s a book I read a few years ago called The Hunter Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century that’s really pretty good that’s talking about evolutionary biology and the ways in which like we are not evolved for all of the shit that’s going on. like our systems have not caught up for it. And there’s all these reasons that we’re all having a hard time with it because it’s too rapid. It’s moving too fast. And I found that really helpful.

Matthew Smith (54:13)

Yeah.

Cate Blouke (54:28)

Just in the like, permission and reminder and like, invitation to recognize that like, we are not designed for modern life. It is not our fault that this is fucking with us real hard. Like, even for folks who aren’t neuro-spicy. And I was also reading something, I’ve been reading a lot about ADHD and ⁓ nerd emergence lately and…

It’s an ADHD thing to overcommit. Like that’s just a thing that happens for us. Like it just, it’s, it’s just part of how our brain works. We’re real bad at estimating how much time things will take and how much capacity we have. We get excited easily. Like we want to do the thing. Like for me, I, three months ago was looking at some August plans and was like, yeah, like I could do that.

Matthew Smith (55:00)

Isn’t that interesting?

And we get excited easily.

Cate Blouke (55:24)

And then that, that’ll be fine, right? And now it’s like two weeks away and I’m like, I can’t do both of those fucking things. Like, can’t. Like, old me could, you maybe me in my 20s when I was like, you know, took a lot of weed and drinking and just like thought I had endless energy and didn’t know what was actually happening in my nervous system. But like now me is like, that is too much for me to be able to like be fully present and enjoy both things.

And it’s just been really helpful in terms of self-compassion and giving myself grace to be like, all right, like, this is an ADHD thing. It’s not entirely my fault. I wish I weren’t in this pattern. But like, also it’s okay. Like that’s the thing. It’s the thing. And like, it’s not the end of the world. And in this particular circumstance, like I’m not going to be disappointing anybody when I bail on one of the things, but I think what is important in all of that for me, at least,

is that like, there’s not like a tool or a system or a process that is going to solve any of this for us, because we’re not going to be doing it. Like, we’re just doing the best we can in a system that like we’re not built for.

Matthew Smith (56:39)

Yeah. And to me, it’s like, ⁓ that gives us permission to grieve that things aren’t ideal. And then to make decisions about, where am I willing to adapt? And where would I like to sacrifice some of the fantasy for reality? You know, I have a friend right now who works for Figma, the design tool, and they just IPO’d.

And based on how long he’s been there and so on and so forth, he’s probably looking at 10 to 15 million. And my feelings that come up are a lot of jealousy, a lot of like, ⁓ I could have done that. You know, I should have, you X, Y, Z. And also I think about how hard he has grinded for the last five years, six years. And the sacrifices he’s had to make.

And here I am working from home, looking outside and the water from the rainstorm is kind of glistening off the leaves. I’m looking at my cat sleeping on the couch. ⁓ My wife is in the bedroom, you know, doing her work so that we can record this podcast. And my son’s upstairs, you know, having come home from his bike mechanic job. And like I’m here, I’m with my family. Like what a.

What an incredible gift. And I’ve already done two walks today with my dog, one of them as a meeting, and I’ll probably do another here at the end of the day. And I’m working, like I’m in my 40s, I’m not retired, but I’m living in a way that is really kind to myself. And most people, if they looked at my life, would say, you’re doing a lot.

And I am, but the things that I’m doing, I’m doing carefully and thoughtfully and I’m doing them well. And I really carved out margin. And so it is possible. And the way that we can think about, the way that I think about these things is like, I would love in some ways to buy my wife an old Toyota from the 60s that she would just love to have one of those, but I don’t have an extra.

50k lying around and then all the maintenance and all those things. Wouldn’t that fantasy be amazing? But at the same time, like, would it be amazing? Like, what comes with that? And all those other things where if I could travel more and all that stuff. But if I just stop and just appreciate kind of like the ground under my feet, every day I’m just like flush with more than enough.

It actually does take work for me to recognize that. That’s not a thing that’s just going to come naturally. For me, and I think as somebody who’s done a lot of recovery, you’ll get this. It’s like the amount of pausing I have to do to stop the story and then note the story, look at who’s trying to tell me this story, what part of me needs something that is not getting met. And I can sit that part down and like,

have a conversation and be like, homie, what’s up? Talk to me. I’ll listen. And then, know, soothe that part of me so that I can calm the fuck down and just enjoy what’s right here. Cause every fucking moment is just incredible if we let it, you know, be what it is. Even the discomfort, even the really difficult things. mean, somebody said not long ago to me, something like,

The fact or the possibility, like all the incredible things that had to be true for any of us to just have a consciousness, let alone be alive at the same time and be friends is many, many, like I don’t, it’s, don’t even think I understand the way, the level of math that needs to be true for that to be a reality. Like it’s not even a trillionth of a possibility.

weighed smaller than this possibility, like the opposite. And clearly you can tell I’m not a math major.

Cate Blouke (1:01:10)

Me either, because I was with you. I was like, yeah. Yeah, that’s right. What did that guy say? Yeah.

Matthew Smith (1:01:15)

But

that’s so incredible to me. And when I stick a straw in that reality and ⁓ drink deeply of that, there’s more than enough. So that’s where I’m trying to live these days. ⁓ Which is, I’ve kind of labeled as decaf, because it’s a fun way to think about it.

Cate Blouke (1:01:36)

Yeah, it is. It’s a fun way to think about it. I like it a lot. Well, Matthew, thank you so much. This has been a delight.

Matthew Smith (1:01:45)

But it’s really fun to reconnect and get a picture of what’s going on in your life and collect around this topic. That’s important to me. Yeah. ⁓

Cate Blouke (1:01:56)

So how can people find you?

Matthew Smith (1:01:58)

You can find us at wimpdcalf.com and then wimpdcalf on Instagram and wimpdcalf on X and wimpdcalf on Reddit.

Cate Blouke (1:02:12)

Yeah, yeah, and I’ll have those links in the show notes.

Matthew Smith (1:02:14)

But I think the most important thing that, you know, that I’m excited about is like if anybody resonates with this topic, like, and you’re willing to like hop on Reddit and talk about it, it’s the stories that I want to get into. You know, I love coffee and I love being able to drink it and so decaf is how I do that. And to be able to talk about the things underneath it, it was like I started a business so that I could

have story time, you know? And really that’s the better part of it for me. It’s fun to sell coffee, but it’s like, I want to talk to people about like how they’re figuring out how to have margin in their lives. And that includes like, I don’t know how to do it. Like, you know, let’s talk about that and the frustrations that come up or let’s laugh about, you know, a meme that’s funny. So that material is, is what I’d love to get into conversation with over there if anybody’s interested.

Cate Blouke (1:03:13)

Yeah, and I’ll put in a plug for the Wimpy newsletter. ⁓ It’s a really lovely sharing of five links that you come across. appreciate, I personally appreciate the way you curate the internet for me because I find the internet overwhelming. It’s totally crazy.

Matthew Smith (1:03:30)

I’ve found some resources that I draw from to really find some fun, playful, restful, interesting stuff. So I love curating. It’s great.

Cate Blouke (1:03:40)

Yeah, it’s pretty great. Cool. And then final question, what brings you joy? mean, I know we’ve talked a lot about those things, but.

Matthew Smith (1:03:48)

You

know, for the first time in my life, probably in the last couple of years, I can actually say sitting and being quiet with myself is the most joyful experience. And it’s because of two things. I actually enjoy myself now as I am, and I am a, I’m a handful. But also when I’m quiet, I get to be with everything and everyone that is. ⁓

you know, right now in the world and without judgment, without needing them to change, without, you know, needing anything to change. And that’s special. I really enjoy that space. So that’s my happy place.

Cate Blouke (1:04:31)

Oh, I love it. might go sit in my hammock chair and do that.

Matthew Smith (1:04:36)

There you go. I love that. ⁓

Cate Blouke (1:04:39)

Well, thank you so much, Matthew.

Matthew Smith (1:04:41)

It’s good to be with you here, Kate. Thank you.

Cate Blouke (1:04:47)

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please help me grow the podcast by subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with anyone you think would benefit from hearing it too. Your support means the world to me. If you’d like to get updates about new episodes, posts, and offerings, please visit settlingisbullshit.com to subscribe to my newsletter. You can also find information there about working with me one-on-one to build your most amazing life. Until next time, remember that I believe in you, and that you are

fucking awesome.