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One of the things I’ve been practising since my ADHD diagnosis is finding ways to work with it. Sure, there are strange little quirks that come with it (like Ben’s ghost 👻) and there are ways that it can sabotage my best intentions, but there are elements that can definitely be harnessed as strengths.

For example, my hyper-fixations have come in handy more than once. Without those spurts of obsession, I wouldn’t have become a Notion power user so early on, or developed the journalling practice that has been so impactful for me — and I wouldn’t have gotten into one of my favourite pursuits to date: Permaculture!

While Notion, journalling, and horticulture seem like entirely separate things, those pieces of the Marie Poulin Interests Puzzle have overlapped into mutually beneficial zones of genius and become my superpower.

I’ve built much of my business design philosophy using permaculture principles — especially when it comes to managing personal energy.

The overlap is obvious to me: permaculture is a design science that looks at how we can create sustainable systems that function in harmony with nature, much like good system and workflow design is about discovering your needs, then building your supporting systems and practices based on those needs.

(Ben and I talked about how permaculture influences our business strategy in this conversation of the Bootstrapped Founder.)

In his book, The Permaculture City,Toby Hemenway talks about the importance of tracking non-traditional metrics in our businesses and organizations as a tool for sustainability and profitability. This idea made sense to me, and is why I started using Notion for daily journalling — to help me capture non-traditional data (like feelings) that my brain would otherwise ignore + lose track of. 🐿

Why is it important to reflect on happiness, emotional health, and well-being when growing a business?

Because the data those metrics uncover point us to our needs.

Sure — it’s helpful to know if we missed our sales goal by 20% and didn’t send out as many promotional emails as we wanted to. But you know what’s even more valuable? Knowing why those things happened so that we can make informed decisions next time.

And let’s be honest: If we give our energy to our businesses but don’t take time to energize ourselves and our team members, our business is not sustainable.

What’s the point of running a business if it isn’t returning the energy we put into it?

Now let’s connect the dots between these personal reflections, energy management, and profitability.

When I took my permaculture course, it completely changed the way I looked at every part of our business because of how I started looking at where to get the most return for the time that I was putting in. In other words, it’s all about obtaining a yield.

We began to look at our services in a different way, asking ourselves if the places we were spending so much of our time, energy and attention were giving us the kind of value that reflected our efforts and investments — not just financially, but in terms of our own enjoyment.

I started developing a mindfulness of my energy inputs and outputs that I didn’t have before.

The relationship between energy and profitability

The math is pretty simple here: when you take care of yourself, your energy increases, your focus is sharper, and your productivity improves.

Marie Poulin @mariepoulin Pretty proud of the changes I've made in the last 3-4 mos, and it's cool to see it in my Oura data (activity score/burn). Got tired of feeling crummy. I'm now moving my body daily, strength training 4x/wk, and playing sports regularly. My mood has significantly improved too! pic.twitter.com/aXnhS4GvOc March 28th 2023 0 Retweets 105 Likes

I know that when I’m hungry, tired, and pissed off, I’m useless. I end up making mistakes or accomplishing nothing at all, and that’s not helpful when it comes to billable hours or creating content to support our business. 🙅🏻‍♀️

We run a small team here at Oki Doki and if all of us weren’t taking proper care of ourselves, it wouldn’t be long before our profits (or lack thereof) would prove the link between energy management and company profitability.

Luckily, we don’t have to test that theory — because I have experienced this in my business, and thanks to regular reflection and journalling, I already have the supporting evidence. 😅

​One of my hot takes on Twitter this year was that people look for technical solutions to what are actually human problems. It’s not our tools that solve procrastination, prioritization, overwhelm, or over-commitment because these are emotional challenges, not technical ones.

I absolutely stand by that statement today — and — I hope that in the weeks to come, I can help you get over some of those emotional humps by sharing the mindset shifts and strategies that I’ve used to tackle those challenges in my own work (and play!)

Not because I have “the answer” but because I know the power of knowing yourself, and the impact of using that information to create a supportive environment that meets you where you’re at.

Oh — and if that conversation tickles your fancy, stay tuned for the next few weeks… because I’ve signed up for culinary bootcamp, and we’re cooking up something new around here. 👀

See you next time!

P.S. Have you heard about our demo days? Whenever Notion does a new feature release, Ben does a live workshop in Notion Mastery, followed by a Q&A, to show you how to put the new features to use.

It’s just one of the perks of the community-based learning we’ve got on the go here at Oki Doki, and we hope you can join us at the next one!