🗒️ How to Plan Without Becoming a Perfectionist — with Lauren of Nine to Kind

Amelia HrubyHey there, off the grid listeners. Amelia here popping in before this episode with a special announcement. Come to class, which is my three day workshop intensive, where I will teach you how to teach and sell online with confidence and care, has been rescheduled for June fourth, fifth, and sixth. You probably heard me talking about it here on the podcast in May, and I had to push the dates because my beloved dog, Zoe, sadly passed away the week that come to class was going to happen, and I just couldn't teach in those immediate moments of grief. So I rescheduled come to class for the beginning of June, and I added even more support if you'd like to join us.

Amelia HrubySo this is just a very quick message to invite you to head to the show notes and check out come to class. You have until the end of May to sign up. It's going to be a great time. And since it had to be rescheduled, you can still join. Again, head to the link in the show notes to sign up.

Amelia HrubyNow, let's get into this episode.

Speaker 1Okay. Let's go off the grid. Okay. Let's go off the grid. Okay.

Speaker 1I know that you really wanna put your phone away. Yeah. Okay.

Amelia HrubyHello, and welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients. I'm your host, Amelia Ruby, and on this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for sharing your work and making money online without relying on social media or big tech. Today, I have a very special guest with me, Lauren Ruth Martin of nine to kind planners. If you've been listening to the podcast for the past few weeks, you've probably heard me talk about nine to kind because they are very generously sponsoring our twenty twenty six Astro and biz planning summit. I met Lauren earlier this spring and have been able to try out some of the planners, which you'll hear me talk about in this episode.

Amelia HrubyAnd, honestly, it's been such a refreshing reframe for me and really helped me change my relationship to daily and weekly planning. I used to be, like, a hardcore Notion daily dashboard person, and I still love Notion. I use it every day in my business, especially for planning and scheduling off the grid related things. But at the start of this year, I wanted something that just felt more analog again. I wanted to write things down.

Amelia HrubyI wanted to be on paper. I didn't want everything in Notion anymore, and so I was looking for a planner. I ended up buying something, like, on clearance at Barnes and Noble just to try it out, and it was fine. But once I tried Lauren's planners, I was hooked. I'm a big fan of how gentle and supportive they are.

Amelia HrubyThey help me get things done without pushing me into overworking, which is definitely something I struggle with. So today Lauren is here to tell us about why she started nine to kind, ways to combat perfectionism, and how supportive tools can help us step back from overthinking and overworking. If you're listening to this episode when it comes out, I do wanna remind you that today is the last day of our twenty twenty six Astro and Biz Planning Summit. You can still RSVP. The link is still in the show notes.

Amelia HrubyAnd when you do, you can come to our sessions today or you can watch the recordings through April 30. But really what I think is maybe most important, if you're listening to this episode, is that if you RSVP to the summit, you will get a code to claim the nine to kind digital daily notepad for free. So you can get a free amazing resource from Lauren just for RSVPing to the summit. And if you like the sound of the other planners we talk about, Lauren has also provided discount codes for all off the grid listeners. You can take 50% off nine to kind's digital planners and 25% off their paper products.

Amelia HrubySo while you're listening to this, I highly recommend heading to the link in the show notes to explore their products and your exclusive discounts today. Thanks so much to Lauren for joining me on the show. Thanks so much to everyone who's teaching at or attending our Astro and Biz Planning Summit. I really look forward to seeing some of you this afternoon for my spring biz planning workshop. If you're listening in the future, that will be available inside the clubhouse.

Amelia HrubyIf you wanna catch it later, you can join us there for the recording. But for now, let's just get into my conversation with Lauren of nine to kind. Hi, Lauren. Welcome to Off the Grid.

Lauren Ruth MartinHi. Thanks for having me.

Amelia HrubyI wanna take us right in to your business, Nine to Kind. I know that you are a licensed therapist. You're a business mentor. I also just learned that you used to be a radio DJ. So with all of that past and present work going on, why start a planner brand?

Amelia HrubyCan you tell us where the idea for nine to kind came from?

Lauren Ruth MartinIt's interesting because here's the full disclosure, and then there's, like, the attitude behind it. I was trying to give myself an alternative to manage my own burnout in regards to I'm a manifesting generator in human design. So I always say I do, like, a charcuterie plate of jobs. And I was wanting to come up with something that just applied what I teach in session outside of it. And I was sitting in session, and I realized that my clients that come in that are typically perfectionistic, they would open their planner at the end of each session to schedule.

Lauren Ruth MartinAnd I was like, this is it. This is, like, how I can infiltrate anti perfectionism into everybody in the, like, kindest way possible is with the thing they probably look at more than their phones.

Amelia HrubyI love that the idea for this business actually came from moments in your other work, like, in your existing business. Right? Having this realization that you're in session with someone, you're working with them on perfectionist tendencies, on struggling, I assume, with letting go, surrendering, not always doing the very best possible job on the planet. Right? Things I can relate to.

Amelia HrubyAnd just seeing so tangibly in that moment that, like, you do all of that work in session, and then they pull out the meticulously color coded planner tabs, the six different highlighters. Let's be real. We've all been there. I have many multicolored highlighters, so this is I'm laughing at myself when I giggle here, but I think that that's such a nice, just example of building a company from, you know, a a real need and struggle that you've identified. Because I think that so often, I talk to people who they just have, like, clever ideas, and then they like to spin it up, and then they sell it.

Amelia HrubyAnd then, eventually, it just kinda falls flat because it was nothing more than, like, a clever idea. So I just wanted to really sort of underscore how this planner company came from clear needs that you were seeing in your therapy work, and I love to hear that. So with that in mind, you call your possibility planner, the anti perfectionism planner for overthinkers and overdoers. And I'm just so curious, like, how does a planner help us combat perfectionism? Like, I hear you say that the perfectionists were pulling out the planners, so then you just gave them a different planner instead of no planner?

Amelia HrubyLike, could could you talk me through how your planner works and how it helps us get rid of our perfectionism?

Lauren Ruth MartinThe planner's not the problem. It's the attitude of the planner. Anytime you will walk through a store or you are googling online, like, where to find your planner, you know, when you're searching for it, it's all about productivity, goal setting. There are self care planners, but they don't take into mind that you still have to have a full day and you have to exist. You have to pay bills.

Lauren Ruth MartinAnd so there's almost, like, this two sided way of planners being made, and I am very much a both and person. There are no goal setting pages in my planner. There are exercises and there are weekly sort of touch points and daily touch points for you to prioritize, but it's just all about the attitude of how it's packaged. I personally hate when I say I hate talking about planning, it's because I'm not a planning expert, but I am a self compassion like, a practical self compassion person. And I know how even just those I don't know.

Lauren Ruth MartinSo back in the day, I used to wear Apple Watch, and now I don't because it freaks me out. But they would have that reminder to breathe every hour, and I would always ignore it. But then I would find myself taking, like, a really good deep breath. And so it's like, even if you don't necessarily do the avoid avoiding for the weak or the self compassion, you at least have that reminder. And then it starts to sort of infiltrate your brain.

Lauren Ruth MartinInstead of seeing this planner as something that you are at war with, now you're companions with each other. So it's just a very practical way to do self compassion because we think it's all about being nice to ourselves, and it's really just about being a little bit more flexible.

Amelia HrubySo often I encounter planners where it seems like the purpose is to help me get more done. I just think that in planners, the spirit is often more and more and more. It's like, if you're planning, you can do more. The purpose of the planning is to add more to your week, is to check more things off your list, it's to be more specific, accurate, accomplished with your goals. And I'm just hearing such a different ethos from your planner coming from this place of self compassion and really coming from this place of permission.

Amelia HrubyI love that the top of every page on the digital planner and your daily notepad is a permission slip. I give myself permission to fill in the blank. I think those permission slips really changed the game for me because, you know, in the past, I had bought the really intense productivity planners, the passion planners, the everything else, and I thought they would help me, frankly, get shit done, and they didn't. So I abandoned them, and then I just kinda had nothing, and that also didn't help me get shit done, frankly. Like, no plan also didn't work.

Amelia HrubySo this year, I had purchased this, like, very bare bones undated planner, like, on clearance at Barnes and Noble, I think. It was, like, a very random purchase. Purchase. And I used it for about ten weeks of the year, and then I kind of abandoned it because there wasn't any scaffolding in it either. It's like with planners, you really have to find this just right place between there needs to be space to fill out what you wanna get done.

Amelia HrubyThere needs to be invitations to think more deeply about the how and the why of what you're doing, but without that tipping over into that intense productivity focus. And that's what I really think you've managed to do, and I'm so impressed by it.

Lauren Ruth MartinI'm also neurodivergent, and I had all of that in mind too. And, unknowingly, I've really created a planner that a lot of my friends that are neurodivergent and other therapists, they're like, this is perfect because it has the scaffolding, but it doesn't dictate. And even with the the habit tracker that's on the weekly planner and the energy tracker, we had those intentionally lighter colored so that you could make that space if it needed to be something different. And then with the bubbles next to the habits, they're not labeled Monday through Sunday. It's just open ended.

Lauren Ruth MartinSo if you did it once and that was it, that works for you. Because we get so discouraged by all the things, and I'm now on my third year of using the planner. And I can look back, and I can tell what weeks I was, like, on it and the weeks where I was like, I wrote this down, but there's no judgment because it's meant to hold all of that.

Amelia HrubyAnd those, like, small design details you just mentioned, I don't think that many of us think enough about, like, sort of the built space of our planner. If you have a habit tracker and it's giving you, like, a Monday to Sunday schedule, you're gonna feel pressured to be on that schedule. But if it is more open ended or if it's, you know, printed light enough so you could do something else in that space. It feels more like an invitation than an expectation, and that makes all the difference. But, like, literally, it's just removing some letters or changing the color a little bit is what does that.

Amelia HrubyLike, it's it's such small shifts that you're making, but they're so intentional. So you mentioned that many of your therapist friends and clients, I assume, love the planners, use the planners. How did you integrate your therapy training into the planner contents? Because I know there are some therapeutic tools inside. I would love to hear about those exercises and how they're informed by your work.

Lauren Ruth MartinYeah. So I every everything in there, the credit is where it's due. So it's mainly from three different therapeutic models, standard DBT, which is dialectical behavioral therapy, radically open DBT, which is more it's the same structure, but more for over control. So that's that's what informed a lot of the attitude of the planner. That's a a type of therapy that I am certified in or I've done two intensive trainings in, and it just really changed my approach into being a therapist because a lot of people that are perfectionistic or that or that are keeping it and holding it all together or that are chronically responsible, we're having the same struggles, but just in a more subtle way.

Lauren Ruth MartinA lot of people were coming to me post, you know, not to get dark, but a lot of people were coming to me post hospitalization. And they didn't realize that all of that had been building up for months, and it just caught them on a bad day. And that a lot of people were struggling with that process. Because up until that point, anybody that had to go to treatment or had to, like, have a hospital stay, there was this sort of stereotype around it that they were all over the place, and they didn't feel like they belonged. And that's what I wanted to bring into the planner was this attitude of and then there's also acceptance and commitment therapy.

Lauren Ruth MartinBut I wanted to bring in this attitude of, yes, you're doing the most, and we don't wanna completely knock that because there is so much good that comes from it, but we just have to make sure that you're good with you. And so every tool in there is mainly about giving inventory or structuring your thoughts to where it's like a reference guide. Like, there's a self care quick guide where you can write out all of the things that work for you. So if you're in a panic, you can refer to that and then take care of yourself as opposed to reinventing the self care wheel when you're in a moment of crisis. Same thing with slowing down.

Lauren Ruth MartinLike, my favorite exercise in there is finding flexible mind because it's all about finding possibilities. If there's a and b, there's a whole gray scale in between. So how do we find that? And where where am I stuck? And the that's just a really kind of prescriptive way of finding out which side you're stuck on and where you need to go.

Amelia HrubyYeah. I really appreciate so many of the tools that you've included in here. I love the exploring flexible mind. I really was grateful for the burnout assessment and baseline, a little close to my heart right now. And then I also liked that you have the boring self care plan and the not boring self care exercise.

Amelia HrubySo I think that it also has the spirit of, like, lightness and joy I found throughout even when you were really sort of helping us grapple with really heavy topics. And I appreciate that you, you know, shared that some of the inspiration for the planners comes from, you know, working with people who are coming out of inpatient or even outpatient treatments. I feel like I completely understand what you're saying that there's this sort of, maybe just, like, cultural stories around, like, if your mental health is not doing well, you're, like, quote, unquote, a mess, or you're scattered, or you're all over the place. You can't handle it. And that that is true for some people.

Lauren Ruth MartinAnd there's nothing wrong with that.

Amelia HrubyOf course.

Lauren Ruth MartinThe my temperament, I am under controlled. I just have perfectionistic tendencies. So when we talk about hot hot mess express, I am leading that train. That is me. But my coping tendencies speak more to what that other side is of the the doing it all.

Lauren Ruth MartinWe don't wanna say it's a problem, but it kind of is. Like, anything can be problematic.

Amelia HrubyOf course. Yeah. And I was thinking for myself, like, the times when I have been most mentally unwell personally are often the times when I appear to be the most on top of everything, doing it all, like, killing it at work, killing it at school. Like, you know, I because the only way I'm handling the, like, out of control feelings I'm having is by, like, forcing all this control into the tasks at hand because I feel like I can have control there. And, again, there's no shame in a coping mechanism.

Amelia HrubyLike, the struggle for me has always come when I then, like, over control my way into burnout, and then I'm left with all the hard feelings and the burnout, and it just feels like it's compounded. And so anyone listening in, if you find yourself or you're feeling that really resonates, we're not saying that a planner is gonna solve all your problems. Probably some support network, relationships, a therapist of your own is gonna be really helpful. But as I've worked with the planner, I've been able to see some of, like, my patterns and be like, oh, okay. I can, like from a good place, I can now gently interrogate this.

Amelia HrubyI can now start to make a different decision. And I think just having a tool like that, especially right now when I'm not currently or actively in therapy, is just a really helpful sort of, I see it as like a maintenance exercise. It's like I'm just keeping my reps in so that I can stay doing well over time.

Lauren Ruth MartinYeah. Because most of us therapists, we don't want people in therapy forever. Like, believe it or not, I like, I feel like if the world were to come to a place where people did not need to come in for therapy to process, you know, capitalism and patriarchy and whatnot, I would be thrilled. And a lot of us like having these tools with us, and therapy is a lot about the talking, and the planner to me is more about the doing so that you can take that data back into therapy or have those compassionate call outs with yourself and just be able to track it. Again, our emotions are data, and that's so helpful because it then takes which and what I feel like you're speaking to is the nonjudgmental aspect of, like, oh, wow.

Lauren Ruth MartinLike, this burnout thing, I'm actually burned out from a lot of really good things in my life. How do I balance that? Or I noticed that I'm operating. I'm trying to do stuff that's fit for 80% capacity when I'm at 20%, and I need to, like, throttle it back a little bit. Those are the things not many therapists are on call.

Lauren Ruth MartinAnd so why not have those tools accessible? And sometimes it's the best route into getting into therapy because then you know exactly what you need to talk about, and sometimes it is that maintenance piece too of how can I just do this do this cool thing that my therapist is talking about?

Amelia HrubyI also really loved just while we're, like, in the therapy weeds with it. I love that this planner includes many DBT practices specifically, because as someone who has done a lot of CBT and a little bit of DBT, and as someone who is an overthinker and a perfectionist myself, CBT is actually kinda hard for me sometimes because it's very habit focused and behavioral focused. And that was also something that drew me to this planner was, like, seeing what you had written and now hearing you talk about the sort of, like, how do we help you stop overthinking? How do we help you stop overworking? How do we help you stop being a perfectionist?

Amelia HrubyIn my personal experience, like, DBT was much more helpful for that, and I love seeing that come up in a planner because planners are typically so habit and behavior oriented. That also kept me away from them.

Lauren Ruth MartinYeah. Because, like, we know our bullshit. And so then rather than making us feel like garbage, how can we just be like, alright. I'm back on my bullshit again. Like, let me come back to where I am.

Lauren Ruth MartinAnd that's what drew me right out of grad school. I went straight into a DBT practice. People thought I was, you know, crazy. Again, that was just a ton of stigma, but it changed my life because it validated that everything we do has a purpose. It has a function.

Lauren Ruth MartinWe just need to find another way around it, and it did take the mass out of therapy. CBT has lasted a long time for a lot of reasons. It has its places, but I have found, especially in my own experience and trying to navigate my own neurodivergence and history, it felt very invalidating. And I think that's the thing. A lot of us just we really struggle with validating our struggle or how we got here because, like, we know it's not great.

Lauren Ruth MartinLike, we know what we're doing, but we just need that that other voice in our head to be like, hey. It makes sense. Like, it made sense that you slashed your boyfriend's tires because, like, what he did was really messed up. Could there have been a better way? Maybe.

Lauren Ruth MartinLike, maybe we could have just, like, you know, took shoe polish and wrote, like, cheater on his window. Like, that's far more effective.

Amelia HrubyI love these destructive examples you have. I'm sorry Carrie Underwood.

Lauren Ruth MartinI mean, it that's that's, like, the irreverence that I love about DBT too. It's like, hey. We're not trying to teach you, and this is a big thing when I talk about clients, whatever end of their temperament they're at, whether under or over controlled. We're not trying to get you to the other side. You know, if you're airing more under controlled like me, like, putting me into, like, a sense of calm and prim and proper is not gonna be good because that's just not how I roll.

Lauren Ruth MartinI I in fact, I would like I would implode. And then with, like, over control that, like, sense of dutifulness and always being on top of it, I don't need you to be under controlled. Please don't because people like you need to run like, build our buildings and keep us in line. There's value in both sides, and my hope. And, again, like, what you're saying, it just makes my heart so happy, is that I want this planner to be shame free.

Lauren Ruth MartinAnd just to kind of have that acceptance piece of, yeah, this is who you are. This is where your burnout's at, and okay. Like, cool. What are we gonna do about it, but also not get so prescriptive that we try to be a plus in therapy? The gold stars.

Lauren Ruth MartinIf I had gold stars, I would be so popular.

Amelia HrubyYes. And problematic as a therapist.

Lauren Ruth MartinAnd sometimes I even say, like, hey. I don't wanna reinforce this, but I

Speaker 1do wanna say that was a really good job.

Amelia HrubyEspecially when we're really, you know, digging in and unearthing patterns and and seeing what's really there, of course. You know, maybe to pull us out of the therapy weeds a bit, which I could definitely spend much more time with you there, but I just wanna ground us back in to how simple some of this is in the planner, because at the end of the day, most of us get a planner because we wanna get things done. And you've built this planner that has really supportive therapeutic exercises and a sort of built structure that perhaps works against or at least doesn't indulge our more overworking or perfectionist tendencies. And, like, we can say all of that, but I just wanna name that. So, for instance, on the daily notepad that you have, the way that this is set up is so simple.

Amelia HrubyAnd that was also something that I really appreciated when I started using it because sometimes also planners feel like they just give me more work to do. And I'm like, I have to fill all this out now. I don't wanna do this. But particularly on the daily notepad, I love that it just starts with I give myself permission to, and then there are these four boxes at the top. Today, I'm feeling, I will not avoid, today, I need to, and I can't wait to.

Amelia HrubyAnd all of them have these, like, simple prompts as well as the deeper layers of support, which I'm really, really grateful for.

Lauren Ruth MartinYeah. Because we're a lot of us overthinkers, overdoers. We exist in the deep end. Like, we don't do surface level talk. We don't think about something on the most basic level.

Lauren Ruth MartinWe care a lot, and we've tried so hard for our lives to care less, but that's not the solution. It's just to be more intentional of where, you know, for lack of a better word, where our fucks go.

Amelia HrubyWhat the planner allows us to do or what I've found in my use of it throughout the spring is it's not asking me to care less. It's just helping me see what my coping mechanisms are, name them as coping mechanisms. It's helping me check-in with my capacity so that I can, as you said, just kind of, like, reorient my fucks instead of trying not to give them.

Lauren Ruth MartinI love that. Yeah. Because we give many fucks, and we shouldn't be like, we have enough people in this world that don't give a fuck. And we need more of us to be resourced so that we can, you know, redistribute our folks or reorient our folks into the places that need it the most.

Amelia HrubyAnd we're being called to because of the state of the world. Right? Like, we wanna step in to these places where we're seeing a clear need, where there's so much support being asked of us. And I think that instead of just drowning in overwhelm, which I definitely did for a few weeks or months or, frankly, years at this point. But in addition to that, having a gentle planner that helps me through has been a supportive way to sort of reclaim some of that energy and be able to put it in places that I want.

Amelia HrubySo, Lauren, you have very generously provided discount codes for off the grid listeners, and there's a special perk for people who are coming to the Astro and Biz Planning Summit. So could you just tell listeners what those perks are and how they can check out the planners with them?

Lauren Ruth MartinYeah. So the Astro Biz Summit attendees get the digital daily notepad on me. And then if you go to 9tokind.com slash off the grid discounts for off the grid listeners, they are listed there. It is 50% off of digital products, 25% off of the analog products. And I do wanna highlight because I wanna give them a shout out because you mentioned mutual aid earlier.

Lauren Ruth MartinSo every quarter, I give a profit or I give a percentage of my profits to an organization that's dear to my heart. They're called Healing in the Margins. They're in Nashville, and it goes to their therapy fund. And so people in the BIPOC and queer communities, they get to stay with their therapist because Healing in the Margins provides they reimburse the therapist for that session so they can stay with their they don't have to go anywhere else, especially if they're tight on money. And they also pay for trainings that are more comfortable.

Lauren Ruth MartinLike, there's a specific type of therapy. They have BIPOC and queer specific trainings. And so Healing in the Margins gives to that too. So I just wanted to shout them out because it's like we're putting that in practice too of we're gonna give you know, redistribute, and we like to give back. So

Amelia HrubySo beautiful. I didn't even realize that. Thank you for sharing. So, again, folks, if you come to the summit, you will get the digital daily notepad for free. All you have to do is RSVP for the summit.

Amelia HrubyIt's free to RSVP, and then the code to grab the notepad will be included in your email that you get for signing up. And then if you want the full digital planner or paper planner, the codes for that are in the show notes for this episode. You can find them all at 9tokind.com/pages/offthegrid. Lauren, thank you so much for being here. This has been so lovely.

Amelia HrubyDo you have any final words for the people before we sign off?

Lauren Ruth MartinJust thank you for having me here, and I hope even if you don't get the planner, I hope that you took away some compassion. That's just my whole thing with this is I'm one of the people that are so hard on themselves. I'm raising my hand because I'm in that crew too just to know, like, we're doing a good job in a really hard world.

Amelia HrubyCompassion and permission. I love it. Thank you again for being here. Thank you so much, listeners, for tuning in. I hope I'm gonna see you at the summit today or on the replays, which will be live through next week.

Amelia HrubyAnd, otherwise, until next time, we will see you off the grid.

Speaker 1I kinda hate social media feeds on my brain like a bacteria. If you're in my Wikipedia, it'll say I kinda hate social media. Host a picture of myself. Sacrifices my mental help. Use your product time to tell.

Speaker 1I would rather go to hell. Do you like this? Leave a comment? Do you share this? Do you like this?

Speaker 1Okay.

Amelia HrubyThat was an abridged version of Social Media by Surfer Boy and Rectangle. To hear the entire song, find Surfer Boy on Spotify or head to the link in the show notes. Thanks so much to them for sharing the song with us, as well as to Melissa Caitlin Carter, who sings our theme song that you hear at the start of every show. I'm your host, Emilia Frooby, and if you enjoyed this episode, I hope you will download the free Leading Social Media Toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. Until next time, I will see you off the grid.