How can you break free from being busy?

​Farra Trompeter: Welcome to the Smart Communications podcast. This is Farra Trompeter, co-director and worker-owner. Today we’re going to ask the question: How can you break free from being busy? And I am delighted to talk with Kishshana Palmer. I first met Kishshana, I don’t know, probably about five, 10 years ago, somewhere around the nonprofit conference circuit, and had the pleasure of being on a panel together at the Association of Fundraising Professionals New York City Chapters Fundraising Day in 2019, where Kishshana literally got between Chris Tuttle and I in a session about getting your teams to stop fighting like cats and dogs. We even had live cats and dogs with us. You had to be there. It was a thing. But let me tell you a little more about Kishshana. Kishshana uses she/her pronouns and is an author, coach, trainer, podcaster, keynote speaker, and a certified fundraising executive. She is the foremost expert on the future of collaborative leadership and building thriving, high-performing teams. She’s an evangelist in her belief that having amazing talent is the number one competitive advantage in your organization and her focus ensures that talent found at the highest and lowest levels of an organization can build the most vibrant cultures of philanthropy. Like me, Kishshana also holds a deep appreciation of pop culture and describes herself as Clair Huxtable meets Blanche Devereaux, quite the winning combination. Kishshana, welcome to the show.

Kishshana Palmer: Hey. Hey. Thank you for having me. I was just like, “Ooh, this is so delicious. I love it.”

Farra Trompeter: Love a good intro. So, Kishshana, you recently published a book that is really gonna drive our conversation today. The book is called Busy Is a Four Letter Word: A Guide to Achieving More by Doing Less. In the book, you invite readers to ditch the chaos and focus on what truly matters by embracing balance and reclaiming your time. Now, many of us have heard the advice from many productivity experts to work smarter, not harder. Let’s talk about it. What is this book all about? What led you to write it? And how is it different and better than all that other advice that’s out there?

Kishshana Palmer: So I would say, first of all, this is not a productivity book, nor is it a time management book. So if that’s what folks are signing up for, just unsign, okay? Right? Because I have not figured out that part, and I’ve given up on that. But what I will say is, what caused me to, to really sit down and write this book is that I realized that over the course of my career and then my journey through motherhood, that I, that like overachiever situation was not actually a compliment, which is why I now say high-achiever, because that is a compliment.

Kishshana Palmer: But that I was running this race that I’m not actually sure if I were like, who asked me to run the race. Or what race I was in. And I have been known to say, “What are we running from?” Every time somebody’s like, “Oh, you wanna run a 5K?” Why? So I was running this marathon at a sprint speed, and my body was literally breaking down. Like I’m having this metabolic age of like, you know, somebody who was in their late fifties and sixties and I’m a 30-year-old. Like, that’s not making sense. And so I decided that if I was going to have a shot at achieving some of the things that I wanted to achieve on my terms, (and I didn’t really start figuring out what that was until I was in my early forties,) that I was gonna have to slow my roll, because the way that I was doing it when I was raising my child as a solo mom in New York City, was not going to cut it in this next season of my life where I sent her off to college. I moved to a new city. You gotta rebuild your network, your friends network, your community. I mean, like, that’s a lot, right? That immediately somebody’s head is spinning, right now they’re like, “Pack what box?”

Farra Trompeter: I still have boxes I have to unpack from when I moved into my apartment 15 years ago. But whatever, we’ll get to that another day.

Kishshana Palmer: Listen, no judgment. Okay. I embrace it and you.

Farra Trompeter: No judgment, only love here.

Kishshana Palmer: That’s right. So that’s basically what caused me to, like, kind of sit down. And then what gave me space to write was that my business hit an unexpected and damn-near-catastrophic, like, skid. And it was in that pause that I decided once I got over, like the anger, you know, I went through my five stages of grief. I don’t know if I went through all five, but let me tell you something, I hovered in anger for a long, Farra, okay? But somewhere in there I said, “Oh no, this is gonna be an opportunity for me to reset the game and reset the board,” and what would need to be true for me to be able to do that? So, what have I learned so far so that I do not get knocked on the head with the same lesson again? And that created the space for me to be able to put pen to paper. And I’ll say one more thing. My daughter, right before she went to college,

Farra Trompeter: The queenager? But now, is she still a queenager?

Kishshana Palmer: This is her last year. She turning 20. What do we call this kid?

Farra Trompeter: She’s gonna need a new nickname.

Kishshana Palmer: She needs a new nickname. I need to crowdsource this. What do we call the queenager when she turns 20? I got nothing. So, the reality was that she said to me, “Mom, you working yourself too hard.” And for any of us who have kids who or nieces, nephews got kids who are in that, like late teens, early twenties, they’re looking at us real crazy, like “I don’t wanna do that.” And we think that they’re lazy or that they don’t want to do anything and they’re too entitled. And it absolves us from the responsibility there of like, you know, we did this to these babies. Okay, we did that. So all of that hit me at once, and I just had to put pen to paper.

Farra Trompeter: Great. Well, in addition to both of us being Gen Xers, right? We grew up in the seventies and eighties. We were, you know, in that time we were rewarded for being in leadership positions, winning awards in schools. And then that just like came into the workplace. And I think in your book you refer to that as chasing gold stars..

Kishshana Palmer: Yes. “Gold star for Kish!”

Farra Trompeter: That’s right. That’s right. My fridge is covered with them. Now with the constant celebration of achievement over rest, how does that lead to burnout? How do we begin to challenge that being in the rat race nonstop, going, going, going and doing that Many of us are just used to operating it on, to just being?

Kishshana Palmer: So I have a friend, Timmie, who she, let me tell you something, she is a true Energizer Bunny. I don’t know where her source of energy comes from. It comes deep within the well of her purpose because the way she is able to navigate the number of obligations that she has with grace and she enjoys it, right? She does not complain about the stuff. And, partly, she we’re the same age. So she’s taught not to complain, but also ’cause that’s actually how she’s built. I am not built that way. All of my busyness and activity was driven from my desire to please. And I think many of us, whether you grew up in the most stable home environment ever or you grew up in something that was tumultuous, we were seeking validation and love from our parents that was attached to achievement. So it makes achievement and love conflate, right? So that you start performing for that affection. And let us not pretend that we are not seeking affection at work. Let us not pretend.

Kishshana Palmer: And so, to me, one of the things that bravely made me say you got to get off this rat race is that I was like, how much money am I spending on supposed preventative care? But it felt like maintenance to keep my body pain, my mental anguish, my financial stress at a low hum of stress as opposed to figuring out strategies to, like, not actually engage in that way. So I had to pull up, Farra, like I pulled up from what my parents thought. I went back and asked my mom, “Why did you want me to go to college?” She said, “Because you’re supposed to.” And I want you to know that in the 90s, when I was applying to go to college, that was the response then too. The lady has not changed in 30-odd years.

Kishshana Palmer: So I had this idea. My parents did not know what the heck they wanted me to be other than safe and secure. And for them that meant: Get a good job, find a good partner, buy a house, love Jesus, have babies if your body can do it. And that was the end. There was no other way. And so, as a firstborn, oldest child, oldest girl, first in family to go to college, first in family to have my own business, first in family to get an advanced degree of my generation. Because my youngest uncle, my dad’s youngest brother is actually literally first. There was no real roadmap. So I thought that they knew what they were doing, they ain’t know nothing. And then when Samaya was like 15, 14, maybe 14, right before she went to high school, we got into this big, you know, when the kids, when you’re in middle school, Farra, these kids are like aliens. So, shout out to every parent who has a middler right now. Your children are aliens. They smell weird, they act funny, they’re a little bit psychopathic, and just pray for yourself. Stick with them, though, because they will come out on the other side.

Kishshana Palmer: So, I remember me saying to her one day, like in frustration, “Look, kid, I don’t know what I’m doing either, okay? I’m growing up at the same time as you. Okay? And don’t let any adult tell you they know what they’re doing. We don’t know. I’m just figuring it out.” And she said to me now, as a young person in college, that that day she started to give me so much grace. And she still does because she remembers me saying, “I don’t know.” And so what I want to encourage folks who think that they need to have all the answers, which is what keeps us on that hamster wheel, free yourself by saying, I don’t know. “I don’t know.” Why are you at that event? “I don’t know. I don’t know. Me: stay home.” Why do you want that award? “I don’t know.” Like, I guarantee you Farra, if you ask yourself the why with like, just name five/six things, and you say, I don’t know. If you don’t know, stay home. You don’t need it. You don’t want it. FOMO is real.

Farra Trompeter: Yeah. So it sounds like the first step is just sort of like challenging assumptions. Challenging what’s like the ingrained beliefs in, the voices in your head that keep telling you to do the thing. Chase the thing. It’s like, “Wait a minute, do I still need to listen to you?”

Kishshana Palmer: Correct. And the answer is no, you don’t.

Farra Trompeter: Exactly, right?

Kishshana Palmer: No, their time is up.

Farra Trompeter: I know we were talking about, you know, this isn’t about necessarily productivity, it’s just about, again, challenging what we’ve been told and a lot of what we’ve been told in the world of burnout prevention tells people to take care of themselves and says, you know, look at self-care. And a lot of that might be some quick fixes, some short-term and immediate solutions like getting a massage, which is my favorite form of quick-fix self-care when I can. Or maybe taking a quick trip. You in your book talk a lot about the difference between self-maintenance versus self-care. And the kind of actions people can take to actually prioritize self-care. So can you talk about what that’s about? Like what is self-maintenance versus self-care and what have we maybe again, it’s about, you know, I think so much of what you have to say is about retreading your brain.

Kishshana Palmer: That’s exactly what it is.

Farra Trompeter: And like telling yourself some different stories. Let’s talk about that.

Kishshana Palmer: So for me, self-maintenance are the things that I do for myself to just keep myself at that steady hum. So for me, that looks like (and somebody’s going to laugh, but I’m just telling you it’s still probably one of my few joys in life,) which is getting my nails done. And I’ve been getting my nails done since I was 14 years old, y’all, okay? And I’m a big grown woman now. That’s back when acrylic was so dangerous that you had to put the mask on. I mean, it was terrible. So for me, it is self-maintenance because that is a part of my image. It’s a part of who I am. It actually really is a part of who I am. What will up it to self-care is when I turn off my phone, where I’m not looking at emails, you know, you’re peeking over while you’re getting your nails done. Where I’m actually in conversation with my nail tech, who I adore, where I bring my little lunch. And if she takes longer than the two hours that it normally takes because I get nail art every time. “You’re like two hours? Holy crap.” Yes. Sometimes longer, okay? This nail art is serious business. So for me, that’s what ups it from maintenance to care. It’s the ritual that I do when I go there. I turn off my phone, I dress a certain way, I bring my certain drink. I always do it on this day. Self-maintenance for me is also making sure that my skincare is on point. And I have a daily skincare routine that folks are like, “Why does your skin always look so good?” Like, I don’t really wear makeup. I’m like, “Because my skin routine is serious. Okay, I don’t play these games.”

Kishshana Palmer:What takes it from self-maintenance? Making sure that my skin looks good. because I have to wear makeup because I’m on stage all the time to self-care is every Sunday, you will find me locked in the bathroom. I have a TV in my bathroom, and don’t judge me, people. I have a TV in my bathroom. Yes I do. And I have my steamer, and I have my little chair that I have and all my products laid out, and I have my little TV going, all the music going. Look, I set the stage. My candles are going out, I am relaxed. I put on my nice robe. Okay, Farra?

Farra Trompeter: It’s a vibe.

Kishshana Palmer: It’s a vibe because I believe in everyday luxuries. So am I using fancy products? No, no, I don’t. I have one or two skincare products that I just don’t even talk about how much I pay for them. But for the most part, they’re just regular-degular stuff. But what ups the game for me to that care, right? The maintenance is I take care of my skin every day. The care is the ritual piece that I get to add in. And you get to decide what makes something ritual. One of my girlfriends, her self-care, she drinks coffee, okay? Just like me. She’s a coffee drinker. But she has a very specific way, she does her pour-over every day. And I am obsessed with that. My ritual is to go to Starbucks because that’s the only time I really see people every day unless I’m on the road, right? And so, differentiating between the things you need to do for yourself every day for your general upkeep and the things you need to do for yourself to refuel how you show up in the world. Those to me are different. Sometimes, they are the same activity, but the time and care and attention running in to get a 30-minute manicure because you got to run out to go pick up the kids. That to me is not self-care. That’s maintenance. When you can decompress and take your time, that goes into care for me. And so how do we introduce care into our regular everyday routine? And for me, that’s with my five-star wellness plan.

Farra Trompeter: Well, there’s the segue. I was just about to ask you about that, right? I love that you have lots of ideas in the book about what people can do and particularly the wellness plan. And I’m just wondering if you can talk a little bit about, you know, what does it look like for people to design their own five-star wellness plans, and what does it look like for people when they start making more time for dreaming and less time for doing?

Kishshana Palmer: Ooh, come on! Dreaming was hard, even for me. Like, I have to literally leave my house, leave my environment. Some people, they have to go touch a tree, right? They have to touch grass. Some people they have to go touch rock, some people have to go touch sand, some people have to go touch water. Our ability to be able to connect with the element that brings us back to ourself is a part of the plan. Okay, so I’ll start there. The reason that I talk about five-star wellness is because it actually comes from Gallup. I’ll give that attribution. Gallup has, like, five ways that you can deepen employee engagement, what would need to be true in the workplace. So everything I talk about in my book, Farra, how you do one thing, in my mind, is how you do lots of things. And so the reason I focus so much on your personal development is because I believe that personal development is professional development.

Kishshana Palmer: And if you are dealing with a mess at the house, let me tell you what you bringing to office. Let me tell you what you bringing to your team. Let me tell you what you bringing clients, okay? To your donors. Mess. And so for me, I adapted it to say there are five things that I want us to be able to think about. One, your physical wellness and well-being. And that for me is both your dwelling. How is your physical environment? Is it set up for you to be well, okay? The second thing is your vessel, we only got but the one. So, what do you need in this season of your life? Not for the rest of your life, just this season. That will allow you to focus on saying to yourself, “God, I feel well. I feel, you know, I’m alright in here. I’m doing all right, I’m looking around. I’m feeling good in my body. I’m feeling good in my space.” The second thing is your mental wellness and well-being. And that, for me, is do you have a board of directors, one of the people on there that you pay to talk to you about what’s going on up there in your noggin? Do you have an outlet? And there’s tons of different tactics, right, Farra? We’re talking about from all the different experts. So there’s the journaling and the meditation and the mindfulness and the yoga and the this and the that. I don’t care what your modality is.

Farra Trompeter: I love acupuncture.

Kishshana Palmer: See, I still haven’t tried it, Farra.

Farra Trompeter: We’ll talk about it. Do it.

Kishshana Palmer: Okay. Okay. Alright. Alright. You like my fifth friend who has said to do this, now.

Farra Trompeter: See it’s all, it’s all a sign.

Kishshana Palmer: And for you, is that care or maintenance, or both?

Farra Trompeter: Well, admittedly, it’s probably more in maintenance mode these days, but I can make it into care soon enough, again.

Kishshana Palmer: Nope. Nope. It doesn’t have to. You can be like, “How I maintain is this thing.” It doesn’t have to. No requirements. Okay, so, then there is your spiritual wellness and well-being. And for me what that looks like is: What is the thing that outside of yourself is your grounding stone, right? Like what is your touchstone? So I don’t care if it’s Jehovah Jireh, Hari Krishna, bees trees if you’re Wiccan, I don’t care what the thing is, right? But do you have a center outside of yourself that you can come back to, to commune with, to have conversation with? To me, I think that is really, really important.

Kishshana Palmer: The fourth thing is financial wellness and well-being. And I think particularly for folks who identify as women and queer folk really and particularly in our sector, let go of this idea that well you know, we work in nonprofits, we are we not supposed to make any money. Boohoo. What you talking about? So we have to be able to to grab back our autonomy, our agency, and our power as it relates to our finances. And I am not immune. Having grown up in the social sector and also having been somebody who was fortunate to actually earn a good salary, I still suffered from the same scarcity disease. Okay. I really did and still do some days. So I’m in the season of my life, Farra, where I am really focusing on my financial wellness and well-being because that is the domino that if it tips in the wrong direction, it affects everything else.

Kishshana Palmer: And then last but not least, because I’m curious, where you think you gotta focus in on this season of your life, is your community wellness and well-being? For me, that means being willing first to take a self-assessment. How am I showing up for the crew? And then being willing to say, “Who belongs here in this season of life, for me?” And to understand that you need time, you need proximity. And as Mel Robbins would say, you need energy as well. To think about the three components that are necessary to have good friendships. Right? And so whether that’s your business relationships, whether that are your personal relationships, your civic relationships, familial, you get to decide. So my word-of-the-year this year has been all about cultivation. And it’s because I realized that my move disconnected me from the community I already had. And it made me aware that some of my connections were not that strong. So I got to dial back in. So out of the five, those are my two that I am, in this particular season, really having to dig into. So what I try to do with the five-star wellness is give you your power back until you don’t got to do all those things. Just pick the one. Okay. Alright. Alright. Something is really sticking out there that you’re like, “Oh hell,” and that’s your one, and that’s what’s gonna be the domino that’s gonna help knock over the other dominoes to have that effect of wellness and well-being for you in this season of your life.

Farra Trompeter: Yeah, I appreciate that. It is seasonality, or seasonal, I should say, because I can imagine needing all of these things all the time. I think for now, for me, in 2025, with everything that is happening in this country, working from home for the past four years, I’m feeling the last one in particular. That community piece and in all the relationships with my family, with my colleagues, with people I work with in the sector you know, with the community, with my friends, you know, and really cherishing that time. That one is really showing up. I want to note, you mentioned Gallup and we will link to the employee engagement work they’ve done and for those who are wondering the five drivers that they come to as: Purpose, development, a caring manager, ongoing conversations, and a focus on strengths. So you can see how all these things weave together. So, for people who want to dive into that again, we’ll make sure to link to it.

Farra Trompeter: Now, you know, I’ve seen people start to rethink the idea of work-life balance and talking more about work-life harmony, which I’ve been kind of latching onto for the past few years. And you take it further and talk about work-life synergy, and I’m curious if you can talk about what you mean by that phrase and maybe share some examples that might be applicable for those who are working in or with nonprofits to move toward achieving work-life synergy.

Kishshana Palmer: So one of the first things I want folks to let go of is this idea of balance. Okay? When I think of balance, I close my eyes, I think of the circus and folks on the tightrope, and they just a-wibbling and a-wobbling and walking slowly. Now, I’m the kid that was running by the time I was probably one, right? Like, so this idea of balance does not make sense to me. And so I want to bring all of us back (someone’s going to laugh) to your favorite amusement park as a kid. And all across all of the states and in several countries, there is this ride: the pirate ship ride, right? And you get on this pirate ship ride, and it swings like a pendulum up and down. And so when it first starts, Farra, it just starts in that little middle, right? And you get the little whoosh in your belly, but you’re not going anywhere, really. And then it starts to really pull up, and then you get a “Oooh”, a deeper whoosh coming down and then for it’s final act, it stands in place up at the top, and you’re like, is this the end?

Farra Trompeter: I’m feeling it in my stomach right now.

Kishshana Palmer: See? Okay, that is work-life balance for me. So instead, I just want accept if you accept the visual, so folks who are listening just go along with me on the visual. What I want to bring forward to you is when you are in synergy, that means for all of us who are, listen, I’m going to date myself is when the Voltrons come together, okay? All the parts lock up, do, do, do do. Synergy is about things working together in concert, which means you cannot ignore your home life. You must be clear about your priorities at work. And I think what happens when we try to do balance, we try to do balance, but we are not clear, we are fuzzy and just feeling our way through. Just trying to make it. So if you’ve ever heard yourself saying, “I’m just trying to make it through the day, I’m just maintaining, you know, I’m just here.” You know, “I’m just trying to keep my head down.” Any of those to me say balance is nowhere near. So synergy is about bringing all those pieces back into that integration.

Kishshana Palmer: So I’ll give you a live example. So I’ve managed quite a number of fundraising and communication teams over the years. One of the things that I do, and it was definitely a risky thing as a manager because it didn’t really always go with organizational practice, but I didn’t care. Okay? So I like to put, and I do it now with my company, personal holidays. And for me, some people their personal holiday is their birthday. Some people their personal holidays, their family reunion, others is their anniversary. Some people have parents who passed. They have to be out for at least a week because they can’t get their minds right. Okay, let us be realistic about the human side of people. We put all that on the calendar. Then we come back, and we put all of the federal holidays that we still are able to acknowledge evidently on the calendar. And then we start to lay on top of it the events, the activities, the campaigns, the rollouts, and then we start to look at it and go, “Oh hell, well nobody gonna be in the office on this day and this day. How specific is it for to do this thing, right?” So, we’re able to start to see where are time and actual energy.

Kishshana Palmer: And I want every manager who thinks they do not have control of their schedule and their life and organizational calendar. Yes you do. You got to map it so you can see it. Because then what I get to do with my team when we see, “Oh hell, we have this big campaign we’re rolling out, also three people are gonna be out the office because of their, remember personal holidays.” Things that I think matter to really keep you. That’s a retention tool to me. Then we get to make some decisions. Do we have to roll it out that week, or can we do it the week before? Who’s going to do coverage? So months out we’re able to name, we’re gonna work like a whole fool for these three to six week periods. We all know it because we can see it. And then we have staggered time off. So that integration is recognizing that I have three team members who have small children. And so back to schools August or September, let me tell you what we’re not doing during those six weeks, launching a damn thing, that’s the time that we do GSD, that’s our Get S*** Done time period where we do operations, back of the house, make sure our documents are together, make sure operational plans work, all of these things I’ve done in-house in nonprofit organizations.

I promise you, small and big because I work for medium-sized and large organizations, and I promise you, friends, it works, and it works when you make the decision to not burn your people to get to the outcome.

Kishshana Palmer: And for me, that’s where that synergy and integration starts to show up. Because your team members will fall over themselves to get stuff done when they believe and they experience that you see them and that you hear them and that you are willing to model what it is like to take care of yourself. That to me is the new charge. Okay? That to me is how the integration and synergy shows up. Okay. Fair. I’ll get off. Let me get off my soapbox.

Farra Trompeter: That’s good. No, I love it. Listen, we’re going to end on that. So you know, if you’re out there, do yourself a favor, read or even listen to Kishshana’s book. She narrates it herself. If you want to. If you are a fan of the audiobook, you can also follow Kishshana on all the major social channels. Listen to her podcasts and access some amazing resources on her website, Kishshanapalmer.com. We’ll link to that and lots of other things in the transcript at bigduck.com/insights. Kishshana, thank you so much for being here. Before we go, any other words of advice you’d like to share with our listeners?

Kishshana Palmer: Listen, friends, you have everything you need to be successful right now. You hear me? Everything you need and if you start to feel a little rumble in your belly at the point of going to another event, you know you don’t want to go, just decline and get in your bed with some good snacks and relax. Trust me, it’s a muscle that you get to work. It’s atrophied, but I want you to work it, and I want you to let me know how you did it.

Farra Trompeter: Listen, as Gen Xers, I feel like we have to quote Nancy Reagan. “Just say no.” Just say don’t go to that event. We perhaps mean it a little differently than she did.

Kishshana Palmer: Absolutely. Okay.

Farra Trompeter: Alright, everyone, have yourself a great day.