🧩 Decolonize Your Systems & Yourself — Neurodivergence & Notion with Podge Thomas [BEST OF]

Amelia Hruby: 01:55

Welcome to off the grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients.

Amelia Hruby: 02:20

Hello, and welcome to Off The Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients, your income, your friends. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. And basically, I'm here to help you see that it is possible to live your life, to make money online, to have a thriving community without social media, without extractive algorithms, without big tech companies. I believe it and here it off the grid, we do it. Today, I am pulling an episode out of the archive.

Amelia Hruby: 02:57

I originally shared it about a year ago, and I'm super excited to bring it back to you. One, because I think the topic is timeless and important. It is about decolonizing our systems, decolonizing how we learn, getting in touch with the way we can work with our brains instead of against them. These are things we always need support to remember and practice. And also because the person I interviewed has shifted her business this year and is doing such cool things that I want to make sure you know about.

Amelia Hruby: 03:33

So today on the podcast, I am joined by Podge Thomas. You'll hear me read her bio and go into the conversation in a second. But what I wanna say before that is that I really, really, really, really, really recommend heading to the show notes and signing up for Podge's new free email course on metacognitive learning design. Now those are some big words, I know. But basically, this is a free four day class on understanding exactly why and how certain things might be hard for you to do in your business, why you're struggling with stuff that other people seem to have figured out, and then identifying how you learn best and what conditions you need to create so that you can run your business instead of a, running anyone else's business or b, your business running you.

Amelia Hruby: 04:29

I love Podge's approach to learning, especially for all of our neurodivergent babes out there. Babe, of course, is a gender neutral term, and I'm just really excited to invite you into it. I'm also gonna link in the show notes this really amazing decolonized learning glossary that Podge made for creative entrepreneurs. It's probably my favorite thing that landed in my inbox this summer, and I just want everybody to know about it. So if I haven't plugged all of

Amelia Hruby: 05:02

this enough, these recommendations are genuine. This is not SponCon. It is someone whose work I really admire and I wanna share with you. So you could head to

Amelia Hruby: 05:10

the show notes to grab all of that, and then stay tuned for my conversation with Podge Thomas.

Amelia Hruby: 05:18

Podge is a queer POC neurodivergent notion consultant. Her clients are progressive and radical self identifying women and non binary business leaders. When she's not notionizing, she is renovating her seventeen eighties home in New England with her partner. And she's here today to talk to us about decolonizing our systems and ourselves. So welcome, Podge.

Amelia Hruby: 05:41

I am so thrilled to have you on Off The Grid.

Podge Thomas: 05:44

Hi, Amelia. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited for this conversation.

Amelia Hruby: 05:48

So I wanna dive in today by actually getting to know a bit more about what you do and how you work. So I love that you are a Notion consultant, and many people don't know what that is, or that it's a job, or a business that people can have. Could you tell us a little bit about your background and how you found Notion and what it kind of unlocked for you when you discovered it?

Podge Thomas: 06:13

So I don't have like a clean professional story. I didn't do anything at the traditional time, right? So I had grown up in The UK, did not go to college at 18, got pregnant at 21 by some guy I had just met, like literally after maybe a couple months after I had moved to this country. It wasn't I think it was like a month. I got pregnant right away, so I had this child and I kinda did that thing for a while, had all these different jobs.

Podge Thomas: 06:40

But there was a lot of pressure on me, I felt. Societal pressure, family pressure to go to college. And it felt like the easiest path to do it for music because I was already a fairly decent musician. Right? That was something that I understood.

Podge Thomas: 06:54

I understood music, I knew how to play music, and you had to sing music, and you had to write it and read it and all that kind of stuff. So as a musician, right, quote unquote musician, I was technically a musician on paper. But there was clearly for me a disconnect between me as a musician and my classmates as musicians. And at the time, all that felt like was was impostor syndrome. I didn't unpack it.

Podge Thomas: 07:22

I didn't try to understand why I felt different. I just knew that I somehow didn't belong even though I was doing a lot of the same things that they were doing. And when I think about it now, I think all those people would have considered themselves artists or creatives and I definitely did not. I did not consider myself to be artistic in any way, I didn't consider myself to be creative in any way, even though music was a big part of my daily life. So when I graduated with my college degree in music, I did my senior show, that was in 2,008, that was the last time I sang publicly.

Podge Thomas: 08:04

And I had been singing publicly since I was probably eight, nine years old. Wow. And I don't miss it. And for a really long time, I just I didn't understand why I didn't feel bereft, why I didn't feel like I was some guilt, right? I had this big old college debt, nothing to show for it.

Podge Thomas: 08:26

This was also, you know, 02/2008, 02/2009. That's when I graduated college, which was when our economy collapsed in a pretty epic way. So for a number of years, I was just kind of flailing around trying to pull different jobs together so that I could make ends meet. And eventually, you know, after multiple attempts of getting sort of what what I thought that I was supposed to do, which was sort of a, you know, career position, like a nine to five, I did get a job working for a non profit organization Francisco, and I worked there for four years. And that was the first and last proper job that I had.

Podge Thomas: 09:07

And so, you know, there's a bunch of stuff that happened in between. But when I left that job and I started to work for myself, I had gone to graduate school, I got to business school, and I really don't for a lot of years, I worked for a lot of different small businesses, you know, so it was easy for me to make this leap between having a graduate degree and having this experience into being a a business coach. Right? So it was fairly simple, I kinda got that going. So what's one of the first things that you try to do when you start a business?

Podge Thomas: 09:34

Well, you gotta get organized, right, digitally. And so there were lots there are lots of different tools out there that I had tried, you know, I think I worked with Trello for a while, I tried Asana which was always, you know, Asana, like Asana nine, like I don't know, it just never worked for me at all. No shade, use what works for you, right? That's it's super important. But around 2020, I was doing a mastermind, and that's when I was introduced to Notion.

Podge Thomas: 10:01

And at first, I was sort of using it fairly statically, like, think, somebody created a template, and it was just one page with, you know, some check boxes and some drop downs and some, you know, very basic stuff. No databases or anything. I was like, okay, this is cool. I can kinda have everything on one page and, you know, Notion works in blocks so you can put all different kinds of things in, you can create columns and all this kind of stuff. I thought, this is this this is good.

Podge Thomas: 10:23

This fun. I like this. And then I don't remember how I made the shift, but at some point, I learned how to use databases and how to connect databases to each other. And I was just like, what is this? Right?

Podge Thomas: 10:36

What is happening? This is incredible. Because all of a sudden, had a tool that was outside of me that could give me the capacity to connect information together in a way that was visual in front of me, right, that was external. It wasn't just all up in my head feeling out of control or discombobulated or couldn't see the themes, I couldn't see the connections, and all of a sudden now I can, now I can sort of get everything organized. So very, very quickly, I started just to pull Notion into all of my clients' work, all of my clients' work.

Podge Thomas: 11:10

And then one day I was like, okay, I guess I'm just a Notion consultant. Right? So that's sort of where I made that shift. But the big piece of this was for me. As an adult learner, school was always a struggle for me and not because of my intelligence.

Podge Thomas: 11:26

And I could never really understand why, I just felt like everybody else understood something that I didn't understand. Everybody else kinda got, like some things clicked for other people, and it just didn't click for me. I didn't know how to make notes. I didn't know how to stay on track of things. I didn't know how to get assignments done on time.

Podge Thomas: 11:42

Right? There were all these different things about being in school that didn't work for me, and I've always had to adapt what has been presented to me in an institutional setting, like an educational institutional setting, and also a work setting into something that I could work with. And so I was always looking for tools to help me sort of do that. And so I was really easily able to, like, structure my business in a way that worked for me, and then also the business of my clients. So now here I am working with my clients, asking them, well, how do you think about this?

Podge Thomas: 12:18

What makes sense to you? How do you deliver on your service? How do you talk to your clients? You know, what's your story? What's your journey?

Podge Thomas: 12:26

And then I could translate all of that into an operational system in Notion that didn't look anything like mine. It looked like what it needed to look like for them. Yeah. And so I put a whole system together. I initially did it inside of Google for a client, and then I translated the whole thing over into into Notion.

Podge Thomas: 12:47

But it was this entire system around human resources, what I call employee stewardship. So I actually developed this whole system inside of Notion, not just to manage and steward people through the job, but also do it through this lens of, I mean, what I now think about as decolonization, but really through this lens of operational transparency. Right? Through this idea that if you understand how the business works, if you understand what it is you're supposed to do, if you understand how you're supposed to work with other people, if you understand what is expected of you, if you understand how to navigate the systems within your organization, then you have a much better chance of being successful at your job. Right?

Podge Thomas: 13:30

So this was all kind of coming together in a soup. Right? I was doing operations. I was in doing employee stewardship. I was doing notion consulting.

Podge Thomas: 13:37

And what it led to, and this is where it all ties back into the music, what this led to was I realized this is my creativity. This is how I am creative. Because I was thinking about very, different ways to treat employees, very different way to manage people, very different ways to, you know, hiring and onboarding, bringing people together, getting the best work out of them, having better relationships. You know, I was talking about wielding power responsibly, right, that as employers, we can't create a flat hierarchy, although I think some people believe that we can. But what we can do is we can acknowledge the power that we have as an employer, and we can mitigate some of that through our operational systems at work.

Podge Thomas: 14:32

And this felt like I was creating things for my clients that I had never seen anywhere else in this. It felt creative not just to come up with those ideas, but it also felt creative to be able to build them inside of Notion. And that was so exciting for me to realize, finally finally, I'm an artist. Finally, I'm a I'm a digital creator. Right?

Podge Thomas: 14:54

Maybe not in a traditional sense, but I don't I don't care because it clicked. And I was like, oh, this is how my musician friends felt. This is what they felt like. They felt like creatives.

Amelia Hruby: 15:04

Yeah. Wow. Thank you for

Amelia Hruby: 15:07

sharing your story with us. And there are so many threads I just want to pull out and reweave with you. I really appreciated you sharing about music having been with you your whole life, and then when you felt that pressure to go to college, you're like, okay. Well, I I'll just put this together. Like, here's this thing I've been doing forever, and I'm supposed to go to college, and so I'll go to college for this.

Amelia Hruby: 15:31

I feel like that's so honest and is so frequently how many of us at any point in our life who go to college choose something. I feel like the paths are either you just figure out what you like and you do that, question mark, like I'm making a face, but like you do that with kind of like a hope and a prayer and we'll figure it out, or like you go to college because you're like, I want to be a lawyer, like your career that I have picked and I will go to do this. I was definitely with you on the former rather than the latter, so I appreciate that honesty. I also really appreciate it when you shared that you spent all this time getting this degree, and then I'm so struck by your final performance was the last time you performed publicly. And I actually think there's really something beautiful in that even in relationship to your creativity.

Amelia Hruby: 16:15

Like, sometimes we have these identities and these practices, and then they are done. And like you said, you didn't feel bereft, didn't feel lost without it. And I think it's beautiful that you committed all this time to this and also that you were able to recognize for yourself that like, okay, I've I've finished with this. And I can relate to that as someone who got a whole PhD in philosophy, and then has been like, cool, I'm gonna never read a philosophy book or think about this again. And I devoted my entire twenties to that endeavor.

Amelia Hruby: 16:49

And I feel good about that, and I feel great about never going back. Like, I have certain skills and talents from that experience, but I don't need to carry them forward in that way. And so I really appreciated that you highlighted your version of that in your own story. I think one of the ways this all comes together is the way that both like educational standards and expectations and societal forces coerce us into these certain ways of doing and being and thinking and learning. And it's really flattening.

Amelia Hruby: 17:23

It's like the same for everyone. I used to say that the reason I got a PhD is just because I was good at school. My best skill was not philosophy, it was like capital s school. Like, I am different than you in that way. Like, I was just great at it.

Amelia Hruby: 17:36

I knew how to do deadlines and papers and juggle the tasks and go to the classes and please the professors. Like, that was at my actual skill. I did not really have any philosophical prowess. I had school prowess.

Podge Thomas: 17:48

You being good at school very much reminds me of Ken being good at beach.

Amelia Hruby: 17:53

It's so true. I was school Barbie. That was like, oh, that was exactly 100% what I was. It's been interesting to leave academia and have a whole another way of just seeing like, oh, the people that I love the most in the world, school is not actually their thing at all. They think in all these exciting beautiful ways, and they've figured out how to make the world work with them instead of against them in this, and that's a really challenging path.

Amelia Hruby: 18:23

So I think I'm curious. There are so many just like artists and creatives and neurodivergent and nonlinear thinkers in our off the grid crew. And I would love to just hear any reflections you wanna share on like how education forces our brains to, like, work a certain way or tries to force them to, and then kind of how we can or how you have, like, deconditioned and even you use this word, like, decolonized your, like, way of thinking and and working. Could you, like, maybe dig into that a little more for us or share your experience around that a little more?

Podge Thomas: 19:01

So there are two parts of education. We've got on one side, we've got curriculum. On the other side, we've got learning style. Both of these, in my opinion, are super problematic. I found this and somebody later told me that it was bunk.

Podge Thomas: 19:14

I don't know if that's really true, but I found this online test where it's just a five minute test that you can take and it will spit out what your learning style is. Right? So you've got audio, visual, and kinesthetic or tactile learner. So I took this maybe five or six years ago and come to find out that I'm a tactile learner. And if you're a tactile learner, sitting in a classroom is pointless.

Podge Thomas: 19:39

It is absolutely pointless. Right? I learn something by doing it and I need a practical application that is going to matter to me. So what is school? It's theory.

Podge Thomas: 19:51

And right from kindergarten, unless you've gone to, you know, Waldorf or Montessori, the platform for teaching is you sit and I talk. That's it. So if you're a kinesthetic learner like me, a tactile learner, you're gonna get bored, you're gonna get fidgety fidgety, you're gonna be distracted, and you're not going to absorb the amount of information that other people who are more visual or audio learners are going to be able to absorb. So then in theory, you can just sort of get further and further behind, it gets harder and harder. And then as an adult learner, and I when I say adult learner, I'm talking about people that go back to school after the traditional age like I did, where you're not absorbing information the way that you did as a child, so you have to work a lot harder in a setting that is not built for you.

Podge Thomas: 20:46

And this is the only option you give me to be able to learn. I happen to be somebody who can't take notes. So if you're talking, I can't take notes at the same time. I can try to listen to you or I can sort of, which is how I do it now, I I and I use YouTube a lot because I find that really helpful. I'll watch it, I'll pause it, I'll take some notes or even better, I'll actually apply it to something and then I'll go back and hit play.

Podge Thomas: 21:15

I can't do that in a classroom. This is it. Right? There's no recording. I can't go back and listen to it and I have to be there.

Podge Thomas: 21:22

Right? It's something like, you know, 10% of your grade is attendance. What kind of BS is that? It makes no sense for somebody who is like me where sitting in a classroom for ninety minutes is really hard. Right?

Podge Thomas: 21:33

And when I was in grad school, we would have class only once a month, and it was four days of classes, and it was one whole day per class. I had to sit in a seat from 09:00 in the morning until 05:00 in the afternoon. This flattening, this one way of doing it is very much influenced by white supremacy and colonialism. Right? This idea that you have to go to school and to go to school you have to do it this way.

Podge Thomas: 22:03

And if you sit outside of that, it's gonna be really hard for you therefore you sort of get behind in all these other ways. So that's the that's the learning style piece of it. And then the other the other piece is the the curriculum, just really problematic in so many different ways, right, that somebody else gets to decide what it is that I'm supposed to learn, and the people who decide that are oftenly often white and they're often male. So what I might be learning in a classroom is gonna be limited to what somebody else sees of the world. And if you're a white male, what you see of the world is very different from what I see of the world.

Podge Thomas: 22:38

It's very different from the experience that I have in the world. I remember in grad school, we had this quote unquote leadership class, which was a joke. And I go on the first day to this leadership class and the teacher has put she has made this sort of fake fire on the ground in the middle of the classroom and she's put around it all of these books, different leadership books. One of these books was an anthology of stories about different native traditions, native American traditions. And the whole book was written by a white man.

Podge Thomas: 23:16

And one of these stories happened to be a story from my tribe that was written by a white man. And this teacher, her introduction to this class was that we were to think of ourselves as a tribe. And as an enrolled tribal member, I had to go to that class for the rest of the semester. And I had no choice, right? I was in this dual MBA MPA program, so my access to getting an MBA was to sit through this for an entire semester.

Podge Thomas: 23:48

And to hear this woman tell the stories of my people and other people as examples of leadership. Education, when I look back at it now with the, you know, this ideology that I have developed around decolonization, these were very colonized institutions that that I feel they brainwashed me and they brainwashed a lot of people. And so now as a business owner, as a creative, as a Notion consultant, what I get to do is decolonize my business, help my clients, the clients that I work with, look through their own businesses through a decolonization lens. But most importantly, is I get to decolonize how I think. I get to decolonize my brain.

Podge Thomas: 24:42

I get to question, and this is why I've really enjoyed your podcast and listening to the some of the conversations you've had with other colleagues because a lot of them are centered around looking at our system so differently. Looking at capitalism differently, looking around the distribution, the redistribution of revenue differently, looking at collaborations differently, just looking at work differently. What does this need to look like? What can this look like? How can it be different?

Podge Thomas: 25:17

And really questioning what we have been told is the correct way. So, you know, I'm not a well read person, I'm not an academic person. So for me, this process of decolonizing the way that I think my brain is very intuitive. It's having an understanding, a growing understanding of where we've come from, systems of colonization, you know, from from The UK, from England, through slavery, through systems of oppression of lots of different people, and really thinking about and trying to see more clearly how those things still present today, how they still present in our businesses. Even as a solopreneur, those things can still present.

Podge Thomas: 26:00

Even as a solopreneur, I can easily tell myself and believe that I'm just supposed to grow and grow and grow and grow and grow, right, year on year on year, just increase my income. Right? I'm supposed to farm things out to other people that I can I can pay them less, I can pay them $20 an hour, meanwhile over here, I'm sort of pocketing all of that profit? Right? Like all of those things that we have been told that we're supposed to do in business are to me, those are up for grabs.

Podge Thomas: 26:28

We get to question that and decide whether or not it's actually what we want. And if it isn't, we get to think creatively about how to do it differently.

Amelia Hruby: 26:37

I'm struck by so much of what you shared in so many ways, and thank you for all of these stories and learnings. I feel like I just wanna highlight something that you're really exploring or like maybe some language that I I'm thinking of or I'm working with for something you're describing around like how education is such a colonial institution is it's just really striking me as we were talking about the way that like so much of education, like k through 12 education is about coercion, and like forcing people into this one way of spending their day quite literally, like in school from eight to three or whatever your school schedule is is I know it's different literally in every school district, but roughly that. And then from there, we're supposed to go to college where I feel like the task then is self coercion. They're like, okay, cool. You should have learned in those twelve, thirteen years what we want from you.

Amelia Hruby: 27:37

And now your job is to like prove that you got that, and that you will do it to yourself, which to me is like definitely a colonial tactic, right, as to like oppress and then convince the person that they need to like continue that oppression on of themselves. I think this is something that came up in my conversation with Chloe, the way that like we internalize these things as you said at the very beginning of our conversation like impostor syndrome. When in fact, what's happening is we're just starting to see that like, oh, this is not for me. It's in fact like against me, but we're taught to see it as our own failing. And I think that that's really important to understand and to tease out about education and about business.

Amelia Hruby: 28:25

Like, it comes up in both places. Right? Like, a lot of us go through that whole process in our schooling, and then we get out of college, and we're like, okay. Gotta get a nine five job like you shared in your own story. And then we start this again where like we go even deeper almost into the self coercion of like, well, I have to do this, and I'm supposed to like this, and I'm supposed to show up a certain way.

Amelia Hruby: 28:43

And I'm supposed to learn all that without asking anyone. Right? Like, I'm supposed to learn how to dress and behave and reply to an email and have the right tone and quote unquote be professional without ever needing to ask or be taught. And then maybe to kind of shift us into the more expansive place in this conversation, which is where you were taking us, is the way that so much of our work for many of us, like if you've landed off the grid, our work is to unearth and critique and release so much of that, those expectations, that coercion, and especially that self coercion. Like, if you're listening to off the grid, it's probably because you've realized, like, social media feels awful, and you don't wanna have to do it anymore.

Amelia Hruby: 29:29

And that idea that you have to do it is coercion by big tech to a certain degree or society at large. And then we internalize it, and we think like, well, I have to do it. I'm just not good enough. If I was better, it'll work for me. And, you know, I've loved meeting you through this podcast and other creatives and business owners who are like, no, I'm not gonna do that anymore.

Amelia Hruby: 29:53

I think identifying all those places where we are coerced or coercing ourselves is an important practice. So I think the next step of this, or one step of this that I know has been true for both

Podge Thomas: 30:08

of us, is like one of

Amelia Hruby: 30:09

the ways we start to figure out where we've been coerced, how we've been coerced, and how we're repeating that internally is through self knowledge, is by getting to know ourselves. And I know that, you know, human design has been really important in both of our journeys there. I know that embracing neurodivergence has been really important in your journey. Could you maybe speak a little bit to that self knowledge piece and how that supported you, and and how I assume it supports your clients as well or has supported them in the past?

Podge Thomas: 30:40

This journey of self discovery, for me is connected right now to my age. I'm in my late forties. I'm an empty nester. I I don't have a child in the house anymore. I'm probably premenopausal, and I'm also just mature enough to be seeing things so differently to how I saw them ten years ago, certainly twenty years ago, absolutely.

Podge Thomas: 31:12

And from our human design girlies out there and other genders, I'm a projector, my sun is in Scorpio, my moon is in Gemini, and I'm a Leo rising which I just found out recently, I did not think that was the case, I was a little horrified because sometimes Leos and Scorpios just don't mix. So I have to learn about what that is and try to find the silver lining. And these frameworks that help one discover oneself, I'm sometimes worried a little bit about am I being ruggedly individualistic? Am I abandoning the us in pursuit of the self? I hope that's not true, but I think I bring that up just to say that self discovery and self learning, I think, is one of the biggest gifts that we can give to ourselves.

Podge Thomas: 32:12

But I think that we still have to understand what that means in the context of of community. Right? And you and I here are here to talk about business. Right? So in the context of business community, like how do I serve the whole by understanding and learning more about who I am?

Podge Thomas: 32:31

How does my deepening of myself learning benefit us as a community? And I think on a very simplistic level, that just means showing up, it means having conversations, it means showing up even when I don't feel like it, it means showing up when I'm asked, it means making a contribution, it means calling myself a member, right, of our community. But I think it also means that understanding who I am, learning how I learn, gives me the tools and the knowledge that I need to unpack these systems, you know, white supremacy, colonialism, racism, and to say no. I actually don't want this, and I don't want to have to be on social media. I'm over here being like a like a weirdo digital creator.

Podge Thomas: 33:18

So how like, how do I do that? And then how can I marry that with the parts of my business that are necessary for me to be able to do what I want to do? And that's marketing. Right? How do I learn about myself?

Podge Thomas: 33:30

How do I understand how my brain works? How do I use that to contribute to my community? How do I market my business, market my services, market what I do, talk about myself? And then how do I deliver? That's sort of the journey.

Podge Thomas: 33:50

That's to me how all of those pieces tie in together. And then there's the list Right. And then there's the feedback. There's the listening. There's the there's the receipt part of it.

Podge Thomas: 33:57

How am I receiving that? How am I learning more? How am I listening to other people? And further expanding this whole cycle.

Amelia Hruby: 34:05

That was really beautiful. You took us such an interesting place. As I was listening to you, I was thinking a lot about how I would definitely agree that so much self knowledge is posited as a sort of like self help that's simply here to make us more individualized productive workers, and that is not what I am or I believe we are interested in. And so for me, I think when we're on a journey of self knowledge, it's always about liberating ourselves from these oppressive systems. But as we're breaking away from the systems to the extent that that is possible for any individual, of course, we can't just like pop our whole lives out of capitalism or something like that.

Amelia Hruby: 34:51

But as we break away from systems, we're doing that toward other people, not away from them. Like, I think there's an orientation here that's important. Like, we learn about ourselves so that we can better embed ourselves and communities, not so that we can opt out of them. Like, the commitment under the self knowledge is to something bigger than ourselves. It's to each other, and it's to shared values that we choose to live out together.

Amelia Hruby: 35:21

I wanna make sure we take some time in this conversation to, like, mutually nerd out on Notion a bit. When I first went to Notion, I was like, tell me what to do, Notion. Like, I opened Notion as like a blank page. What am I supposed to do? I hear this from everyone.

Amelia Hruby: 35:38

But what I realized eventually is actually that liberated me. Because when I tried to work in Asana, as we talked about earlier, like, I had to work Asana's way, and that doesn't work for my brain. Even when I tried to get into Trello in the past, like, I had to work that way, and it doesn't work for my brain. But what I love about Notion is it it a little bit like forces my hand on like, yeah, Amelia, what do you what do you wanna do here? I'm like, I don't know.

Amelia Hruby: 36:03

Tell me what I want. But it's a little more like asking me, and I have to step into that. And so that's where I start to think of Notion as almost like it's like a liberatory tool to me. And it has really empowered me to understand and communicate about how I work. And then also often like document that so somebody else could look at it and make any sense of anything I have going on.

Amelia Hruby: 36:32

So I would love to hear what are some of the things that you have built in Notion that have supported your unique way of learning and working.

Podge Thomas: 36:45

If I'm working with a client, developing an operational system for Notion that their whole staff is going to use, we have to assume or I want to build it as though nobody knows anything. Right? Somebody comes in and they're looking at this for the first time, they have to be able to make sense of it. I always tell my clients, okay, we're gonna create a task database, and we're gonna have some rules about how we create tasks. And when we write tasks down, they have to be in full sentences.

Podge Thomas: 37:12

They have to have a verb. They have to have an article. Like, it has to make sense. If somebody walks in off the street, they have to read that task and understand what it is that they're supposed to do conceptually even if they don't understand anything about your business, which is like a nightmare for some people.

Amelia Hruby: 37:31

I feel so called out and in right now. Okay.

Podge Thomas: 37:34

Now I need to go into your Notion task list and see what it is. Because there's probably something in there that's like called Janice.

Amelia Hruby: 37:41

Or like, I can think of a recent task that was just cut the green shoes story. That would make no sense to anyone other than me.

Podge Thomas: 37:49

But all of this to say that my notion space, there's a lot of instruction in there. Because the chances are I'm gonna come back, let's say for example, the structure that I use for my monthly review. I only do it once a month. I don't remember what I'm supposed to do. And so I need it to be really really self explanatory, like I need it to be very detailed in its explanation because I I'm not gonna remember what I did a month ago.

Podge Thomas: 38:13

Same for like my quarterly review or my annual review. Right? Like it has just has a lot of detail, a lot of instruction in there. Because when I built it, I had an idea of what I thought it was gonna look like, and the year from me now isn't gonna remember what the year ago person was even talking about. Right?

Podge Thomas: 38:29

So for me, a lot of my own system is around that. And I actually don't use my task database very much, which is a little surprising just because I I tend to be able to carry a lot of tasks in my head. And instead what I have is a is a mind sweep system. So every couple months, I'll get really overwhelmed and I'll feel sort of stuck and I don't know how to move forward. So I have a place on my main dashboard where I just brain dump everything.

Podge Thomas: 38:57

It's just a full mind sweep. I just write everything down that's in my brain that I don't want to forget or that I or that I that I think I'm supposed to do, and I just put it all down and I just dump it, and then I can sort of triage from there. So that's like one of the tools that I use for me, and sometimes I'll present that to a client. Right? Like, are you the type of person who needs to document everything, or do you need a place like every couple of weeks where you can just sort of brain dump it out?

Podge Thomas: 39:22

And I think that can be a very helpful tool for people who don't need to write all their tasks down, right? We don't have to write every task down if that's not what's going to work for you.

Amelia Hruby: 39:32

I really appreciate you sharing these sorts of different approaches to task management, and something that's standing out to me is that when you're thinking about tasks in a team setting, it's kind of that place where self knowledge meets community. Right? Because for me, when I'm just in my own task database by myself, I don't necessarily feel like I need to spend a lot of time making tasks that make sense to other people. But also, I do work with a small team of contractors, and so when I am working with them, there is no task that isn't explained. Often a task becomes like a whole project page because I need to like really walk through everything that's involved.

Amelia Hruby: 40:13

And so I think that, yes, of course, it might be easy for me to just like have the task that has cut the green juice story. But if I want anyone else to be able to do that with me, I need to add more context, and I need to do that. And, yes, that may be a little uncomfortable for me or take a little more of my time, but, like, that's the work that we do to move between our, like, self knowing and our community sharing and, like, how that can all live in Notion with us. And I love hearing, you know, about these different ways that you're even just thinking of something like task management, that what works for you can be this brain dump of sorts every few weeks, and that gets it all out. And then you feel clearer, and it's somewhere you can look at doesn't have to just live in your brain.

Amelia Hruby: 40:55

But also, you maybe don't always need it on a day to day way. And I think that I don't do that method, but I also have different task management modes depending on how things are going. Like, sometimes everything is in my Notion weekly agenda. I have a task database and I like assign things to dates that they're going to get done throughout the week. And then sometimes if I have a really heavy week, it's actually really overwhelming.

Amelia Hruby: 41:19

Or if I if I don't know what days things are gonna happen and I wanna be a little more fluid, I will still make a paper list. And I will still have something that I'm kind of going through and as I as I go through it. And I also think there's something about when I feel overwhelmed, making it tactile is grounding for me. Whereas for other people, it would like, the overwhelm might come from seeing the full list written on paper. But we have to learn these things about ourselves.

Amelia Hruby: 41:43

And again, think what I'm hearing you say and I'm just repeating at this point is like when we spend the time getting to know ourselves and cultivating systems that meet us where we are, we can expand, we can grow, we can evolve, we can shift, we can take on more or less depending on where we are at. And that's something I really appreciate about Notion specifically, and it's definitely transformed how I approach my work.

Podge Thomas: 42:08

Yeah. You know, this this idea of task might I I feel like I could just spend a whole hour just talking about task management. Right? Because this is something that we all do, we all have to do to some degree whether you have a business or not. Right?

Podge Thomas: 42:21

There's always you've always got a to do list. You're gonna die with things on that to do list. Right? That's just the reality of it. One of the big shifts that I made was moving away from due dates.

Podge Thomas: 42:33

So I went from task managing not just by due dates, but like this is when I'm gonna work on this. Right? So time time blocking. This is the this is the task. It needs to be done by Friday.

Podge Thomas: 42:45

I'm gonna work on it on Thursday from three to 4PM. That didn't work for me. I didn't really understand why, but that didn't work for me. So I shifted from still got a due date, but am I gonna work on it today, tomorrow, or next week? And so I used a status property or a single select property to create that.

Podge Thomas: 43:04

Right? Is it today? Is it tomorrow? And then I can use a Kanban, and I can just sort of move things around. That didn't work for me either.

Podge Thomas: 43:11

Still didn't really understand why. And then I think I shifted to like, priority. Is it low, medium or high priority? Right? This also didn't work for me.

Podge Thomas: 43:23

And I sort of realized after time, if I think someone, even if it's me, is trying to tell me what to do, I just buck against it. Yeah. The other thing is my energy level shift. Sure. It needs to get done by Friday, but I don't know if that means I'm gonna, you know, have the energy to do it on Thursday.

Podge Thomas: 43:45

I might have to just squeeze it in on another day when I've got more energy. So what I do instead, and this really has nothing to do with Notion, is I build a lot of on reps. I give myself lots of time, and when I work with clients, I let them know. I build it I build out a lot of time to get these things done because I'm gonna have spurts of energy here and there. I don't know when it's gonna come and I don't know when it's gonna go, and so I just need to know that I've got plenty of time.

Podge Thomas: 44:14

So the due date, you know, the due date, it's weeks or it's months out So that I know that I can really get that done with my energy as opposed to based on the priority or based on the time that I think I might have on any given day or any given week.

Amelia Hruby: 44:31

Yeah. I think that's really astute and important. And I appreciate you kind of walking through all the different ways that didn't work for you. And I'm just hearing in this as sort of like rejection of or like allergy to coercion as well as to urgency. And I think that it speaks to this just overarching theme of like decolonization, decolonizing your systems and yourself.

Amelia Hruby: 44:56

Like, you have built systems that do not rely on time based urgency, or that try to work against that as much as possible even within a late stage capitalist work setting. And that's one way of decolonizing. And you have created and said like, I love like your use of on ramps. You've made these ways that you can flow in and out of your work that work for you, and that soften some of these work experiences. At least for me, that's part of what those sorts of processes do.

Amelia Hruby: 45:25

And, yeah, I'm just really struck by all the ways that sometimes those like sites of our imposter syndrome of or of our like self perceived failure of like living up to an expectation are actually the exact places where we can go and be like, okay, wait, this is where I just kind of innately break with the system. Like, I can't do it their way. And I think those moments are challenging, but also like ripe for reclamation and liberation. And in that decolonization, if we can learn to understand them through a lens of, okay, what if this isn't a personal failure? What if this is me rubbing up against a oppressive system or structural expectation?

Amelia Hruby: 46:10

And instead and instead of taking that in on myself as a failure, I can decide that I don't have to do it that way. Like, is that a possibility here? And that could be due dates. That could be social media. There's so many places in our businesses we rub up against those things.

Amelia Hruby: 46:25

And what I love about being self employed is because I don't have like a boss over me telling me I have to do it that way anyway. I actually have the space to ask myself if it's possible for me to let this go or to do it differently or to radically reimagine what that looks like. And it's hard, but

Podge Thomas: 46:43

it's honestly like fucking great on the other side. It is. Well, it feels like freedom. That's why I think it is liberation. It is freedom.

Podge Thomas: 46:53

It is choice, and this is why the practice of learning how you learn is so important. And I would be remiss here if I didn't talk about Trisha Hersey and the Gnat ministry and you know, rest is resistance because this is something that has really taught me especially as a projector that when I'm feeling that resistance, when I just can't go on and I I might go to a coffee shop or I might move outside or I might try and take a break or something that is nothing shifts is is actually I need to rest. And that is the ultimate decolonization act is I am not going to work actually. Just not gonna do it because I I literally can't. My partner pointed out the other day, I I I said to her, am I losing it?

Podge Thomas: 47:41

Because I've just been having all these big feelings, probably a premenopausal thing. Am I losing it? I feel like I haven't always been like this, and she said you know, Pudge when you were working, you were just masking all of this. You were masking all of those feelings and now that you work in a way that works better for you, these feelings are just coming up all the time. They're coming up a lot more.

Podge Thomas: 48:01

They were always there, you know. And it's not possible for everybody to be self employed. It's not everybody's choice to be self employed. But for me, self employment gives me a level of liberation I know I can't find in a traditional workplace.

Amelia Hruby: 48:19

Yeah. I feel similarly. Well, Pudge, thank you for this entire conversation. I feel like we covered so much, and part of what I love about this, just to get a little meta for a moment about this conversation in this episode, is I feel like we talked about so many different aspects of decolonizing our systems and ourselves. But we did not wrap it up in this cute little like five step how to, because I think that in and of itself is like counter to the project or like counter to the intention.

Podge Thomas: 48:54

I don't know how to wrap this up. I have no way to wrap this up. I don't have a see, I'm not good at school. The conclusion thing was all I was always screwed when it came to the conclusion. So yes.

Amelia Hruby: 49:06

But I think that that's really beautiful and also speaks to why systems speak to you. Because, you know, I really love Danella Meadows' approach to systems as living beings. Systems don't end. They don't wrap up in a tidy boat, especially when we're cultivating them for ourselves and our communities that we know, like, deeply and love well. And so I just think that in this conversation, what we've done is provided so many examples and so many possibilities.

Amelia Hruby: 49:34

And listeners, like, there is a bit of an invitation and perhaps even a challenging one to you to think this through on your own terms, in your own self, in your own communities without that sort of like five step here's how to decolonize your system. Like, we I don't want to offer that because I think it's not true to what is necessary for doing this work. Even though I love a checklist. I love a five step how to, but like that impulse I have to recognize is one of the reasons I love school. They they don't work together, like, and that's okay.

Amelia Hruby: 50:12

And that can be okay. And that can be both nourishing and challenging at the same time. It's like a call to accountability, like that kind of challenging perhaps. So thank you again, Paj, for joining me and for joining us on off the grid. Is there anything else that you'd like to leave listeners with before we go?

Podge Thomas: 50:36

Yeah. We've talked a lot about Notion and we've talked a lot about self learning, and I create a lot of Notion templates. Some of them I sell, and I'm working on a a newsletter right now that sort of highlights some of the reasons why you might want to buy a Notion template. Right? So if you're listening to this and you're a Notion nerd, probably downloaded some free or low cost templates.

Podge Thomas: 50:58

I I kinda just wanna use that as an example of how you can use Notion and use Notion templates to deepen your own understanding of, like, how you learn, deepen your own understanding of how you want to implement something into your system. Right? That a Notion template and I think we often buy Notion templates or things like this. Right? We buy a new tool.

Podge Thomas: 51:17

We we buy a new outfit. Right? Because we think that it is going to fix something. It's we have a problem. I'm gonna purchase this thing.

Podge Thomas: 51:25

It's gonna fix it. Right? But a Notion template or any kind of digital tool, it's a starting point. It's not the end point. Right?

Podge Thomas: 51:34

A Notion template about, you know, employee stewardship or, you know, hiring or content management, something like that. It's a place for you to start. It's a place for you to look at how somebody else has structured something and have it help you understand how you want to structure it or how you think about it. Right? You sort of purchase this thing.

Podge Thomas: 51:55

It's $5. It's $30, whatever it is. And it actually gives you a starting point so that you can sort of understand, okay, so this is how somebody structured their content management system, or this isn't gonna work, and this isn't gonna work, and I need a different view, and just that act helps you learn about yourself. And for me, learning how you learn, learning how you understand, learning how you communicate, that's what this is all about really if we're gonna tie this into a neat bow at the end. Right?

Podge Thomas: 52:25

That the opportunities as radical business owners, as business owners who are trying to decolonize our systems, decolonize our brains, decolonize our environments, that's the key to it. How how do you think about this? How can somebody else's thinking challenge how you might be thinking about this? And how can it deepen your understanding? How can it help you serve better?

Podge Thomas: 52:49

How can it help you be in community better?

Amelia Hruby: 52:52

Beautiful. Thank you so much. I will link to all of your work in the show notes so folks can connect with you in new and exciting ways if they wanna go deeper into what you do and how you work in Notion. Thank you listeners so much for being here and for joining us in this conversation. And until next time, we will see you off the grid.

Amelia Hruby: 53:17

Thanks for listening to off the grid. Don't forget to grab your free leaving social media toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. This podcast is a softer sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter of making audio magic, and our logo is by N'Atelier Studio. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby, And until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the interweb.