
Are you still working at 9 pm when you meant to stop at 3? If you're a solo herbalist or nutritionist, the line between working and not working can get quite blurry, because this work is part of who you are. Your clinical brain doesn't clock out just because you're supposed to be doing something else.
In this episode, Camille shares how she's managing this challenge right now - 20+ years into practice - and why systems that used to work may need to be revised periodically.
What's covered:- Why solo practitioners are especially vulnerable to chronic overwork
- The cost of "half-working" all the time - sleep, movement, and mental load
- How Camille is currently using Caveday, a co-working membership, to create defined work blocks and a clear stopping point
- The concept of monotasking
- Other boundary strategies worth trying: timers, app blockers, accountability partners, and co-working sessions
Key point: If your current plan for turning off isn't working, it's time to change things up. The fastest road to burnout is always being on, or never being fully off.
Resources mentioned:- Caveday - co-working membership with sessions available almost around the clock ($35/month; the link here is Camille's referral link, which will get you a month for $1, 3 months for $40 or 1 year for $300)
- Bloom & Grow co-working sessions (offered through Camille's own programs, once or twice a week)
Thanks for listening.
I'd love to hear from you. Leave me a voicemail with feedback or submit a question (click the pink "Send Camille a Message" button on the side of the page) 💚
Camille's Helpful Links for Practitioners
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Hi there. Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman.
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I'm an herbalist and nutritionist, and in this podcast, I share thoughts,
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tips, strategies, suggestions for herbalists and nutritionists who are running
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their own solo practices.
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Today, I would like to talk to you about time, your time specifically.
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I speak about this so often when I am teaching in my own programs or other people's
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clinical programs, and people are getting themselves settled.
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They're talking about forms and websites and how to get everything set up for
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your clients and all this.
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And I'm like, that is all great. We definitely need that sort of education.
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We need to be getting our ducks in a row. So the other thing that we need to
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be doing, whether you're just getting started with clinical practice or 10 years
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down the road or more, is we need to be thinking about how we manage our time.
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The reason for this is because when you have your own practice,
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and I suspect when you have any kind of business, but of course I'm only familiar
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with the business of running your clinical practice, you're going to be thinking
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about how we manage our time.
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It's so easy to always be working. Always be working. Because you're never totally turned off.
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For many of us, being an herbalist or a nutritionist is part of who we are.
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It's our lens through which we see the world. We are constantly thinking about
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our clients or nutrition or health or bodies.
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These things come up whether you're officially working or not.
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So it's really hard to turn your brain off.
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And when you have a business that's your own, nobody's telling you when to come
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into work and when to stop.
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You don't have hours. You're not getting paid hourly most of the time.
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And so if you do not set limits yourself, you're just constantly kind of working.
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You'll be cooking dinner and you'll think, oh, gosh, I should have written back to that client.
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I forgot. Let me just stop right now. Let me go do this. And then 30 minutes
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later, you've answered four emails.
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You've got to go back to dinner. All these things happen. So I am a huge advocate
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for figuring out how to set boundaries around your working hours.
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I have lots of different strategies that I recommend, that I have tried myself,
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that are worth playing around with depending on your own individual schedule,
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how your brain works, how your body works, all of these things.
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But today, I just wanted to share with you a little vignette to illustrate for
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you that I am constantly playing around with this myself.
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Again, 20 plus years into doing this work, I'm still having to adjust and navigate
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and adapt based on what's available, my schedule, what else is happening in my life, and so forth.
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So this has been an ongoing challenge for me over all these years.
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Sometimes I'm better at having maintained specific working hours,
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and other times I kind of lose control
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a little bit, and I find that I'm overworking. And when I'm doing that.
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It's okay for a couple days, but then all of a sudden I'm not sleeping well.
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I didn't have time to move my body in the ways that I wanted to.
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Oops, I didn't get out into the yard. I didn't get any sunshine today.
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All of these things start to creep up and you wind up paying a bigger and bigger
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price the longer it goes on.
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So recently I started something new.
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I tried out Cave Day. Some of you have heard of this. It's a co-working membership.
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And the idea is they have co-working sessions that start on the hour or half hour, almost 24-7.
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And you can sign up for these sessions. They start and end at a defined time.
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They have somebody to open the session.
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Then you do a block of focused work, and they encourage you to monotask. New word for me. Love it.
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They encourage you to monotask, and then you wrap it up. You do a little quick
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check-in, say how you did. They encourage you to move your body,
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look away from the screen, that sort of thing.
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Now, if you know me, you know I've been offering co-working sessions through
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Bloom and Grow for years because I love them so much. I find them so efficient.
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It's a great way to do this kind of work. But I offer them once or maybe twice a week.
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So I've been thinking, you know, lately I've had a couple weeks in a row where
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it's been hard to stop working for various reasons.
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And I was like, all right, maybe I should try this co-working membership.
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And I resisted because, A, I thought, it's $35 a month.
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Do I really want to pay $35 a month to sit at my desk and work,
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which is what I do anyway?
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Like, why would I be paying to do this? And I don't know if I'm going to like
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it. I don't know these people.
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It's a little weird. So I was sort of hesitant to try it, but they have a trial, a free trial.
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So I thought, okay, why don't I do this? And what I'm here to tell you is that
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for me right now, it's working really well because what I do is I say,
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hey, I'm only going to work when I'm signed up for one of these cave day sessions.
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Unless, of course, if I have a client or a class, obviously I'm not in a cave day session.
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I'm teaching the class or seeing my client or being in a meeting or whatever.
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But anytime I'm doing private individual work, I try to just do it when I have
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scheduled one of these cave day sessions. And because they are so often,
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I can pretty much any way, anytime I can schedule it.
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And then I have this visualization of like, hey, these are my working hours.
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And then somebody is telling me, hey, it's done. It's over now.
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And this is working really, really well for me.
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Also, the people are not weird. I mean, they're weird in a good way.
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But I found it to be really lovely to have brief check-ins with people,
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to have reminders to move my body, and to have these defined working hours.
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And I'm not telling you this because I think you too should sign up for Cave Day.
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You might if you want to try it. Amazing. I think I have a code where you can
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get extra free time if you want to try it out.
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But that's not the point. My point is that if you notice yourself overworking,
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if you're like, oh, I really wanted to stop work at three today,
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but actually it's 530 and I'm still working or I meant to go to bed at eight,
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but here it is, 9 p.m. I'm still at my computer.
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I'm still answering work emails on my phone. I'm still working on that client
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protocol, whatever it is. If that's happening to you.
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I really encourage you to say, oh, okay, my current plan isn't working.
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My idea to self-monitor and turn off when I thought I was going to turn off
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is not doing the trick. So what is my next option?
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How am I going to create these boundaries for myself so that they actually work for me?
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Because the quickest way to burn out as a practitioner is just to always be
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working or to be half working all the time.
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So whether it's cave day, whether it's being really clear,
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whether it's setting timers, whether it's setting up apps that they turn off
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at a certain time, or asking your partner or a friend or an accountability buddy
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to help you stay on track, whatever it is, maybe rethink it if it's not working for you.
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You might find that something's been working for months or years,
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and then it's not working, and you have to adapt. I don't know if I'll use cave day forever.
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Maybe it'll just be three months, and then I'll feel like, yeah,
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I've got this. I don't need it anymore.
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Life is different. I'll do something else. Or maybe this will be something I use for years.
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I don't know. But I can tell you for right now is making a huge difference in
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my energy and my ability to have working times and not working times.
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And that's important. It's important for me to say like, hey,
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I'm not working after three. I'm totally off. I'm doing a puzzle.
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I'm looking at my peonies. I'm out and about making dinner, whatever I'm going to do.
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And I want that for you to. Okay, so if you have other strategies that you use
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to define your work hours and your not work hours, I'd love to hear them.
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If you want to know more about my own strategies, what I've tried,
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anything like that, feel free to ask questions. I love questions. Send them via email.
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You can go to intheclinic.com. You can go to camillefreeman.com.
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Contact me at any of those places. I'd love to hear from you.
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All right, let's wrap it up there for today.
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If you would like to hear from me once a week in my Practitioner Notes newsletter,
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which comes out every Thursday morning, you can go and sign up on my website,
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camillefreeman.com or intheclinic.com.
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I usually have great content every week, some recommendations,
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a little note of encouragement, something that's been useful or interesting
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to me, as well as any information about upcoming events that might be of interest to you.
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So have a lovely day. Thank you so much for listening and thank you for doing the work that you do.





