Plenty with Kate Northrup

OMG, this has been a year in the making! I’m soooo excited to be sharing the name, art, and trailer for my re-envisioned podcast… PLENTY! After pouring a lot of love into this project, next week the first full episodes will finally be dropping. I can hardly wait for you to hear what I’ve discussed and discovered with my guests. You know how sometimes you can feel how big something you’re part of i...

I’m coming to you with a full heart that’s a little heavy and also that’s bursting with excitement for what’s next. This week we released the final episode of The Kate & Mike Show. It’s been 4 beautiful years, and we’re bringing this particular chapter to a close. Last week we sat in a cozy rental cabin in Bethel, ME, where we were having a little child-free getaway (our first break from the k...

We’re in the season of endings in the Northern Hemisphere. Autumn is a time of bringing things to a close. The leaves fall off the trees. The year winds down. We let go. We release. Most of us haven’t really been taught how to deal with endings well. I recently gave the Origin Mastermind members the assignment to be in relationship with their relationship to endings. I wanted them to notice what c...

I’ve been sitting at my computer screen looking at the blinking cursor, then typing, then deleting, then typing again, then deleting. As Mike and I bring our podcast, The Kate & Mike Show, to a close (and also our business relationship as it has been for nearly a decade to a close), we’ve had some surprises along the way. Surprise #1: The episode where we announced we were ending the show got...

Our first episode with Zach Bush, MD, "The Solution to the Pandemic You Won't Find in the Mainstream," has been downloaded 4x more than any previous episode we've ever done. We also received some important feedback that we'd missed the mark in going deep enough about the disparity with which COVID-19 is affecting the Black community. We are always listening and wanting to do better, and we knew th...

I write this with a little tear in my eye but also a swell in my heart knowing that we’re in the final countdown of The Kate & Mike Show. Thank you if you reached out to tell us you’re going to miss the show. We’re going to miss it, too...and we’re also SO excited for the new possibilities that ending it will bring. (More on that in the weeks to come.) We’ve talked about doing a show where we...

At the very beginning of the pandemic, I somehow came across a podcast episode that introduced me to a person who’s become my favorite thinker/teacher at this time (and up there in my top favorite thinkers/teachers of all time). I have never before gone to the podcast app and typed in somebody’s name and then proceeded to listen to every podcast they’ve ever been on. My family can’t even get me to...

While a huge part of the Do Less Methodology is about learning to let go and let others do things, there’s one thing that I don’t recommend outsourcing. Ever since I started talking about the power of our monthly energetic ebbs and flows and how tracking them can change your business and your life, I’ve gotten the following question a lot: How do you talk to Mike about your menstrual cycle, and wh...

The last week of July I was supposed to be in NYC with the Origin Mastermind on our second live retreat of the year. For reasons that I think are obvious, we begrudgingly decided to have a virtual retreat instead. At first, I was feeling really concerned that I was disappointing the Mastermind members. But then, as we embraced the “is-ness,” as my friend Dr. Shefali says, and surrendered to what w...

I’m keeping it short today. Mike and I have some bittersweet news to share, and we recorded a new episode of The Kate & Mike Show to tell you. Here’s the episode. Whatever moment of endings and/or new beginnings you find yourself in, we’re with you. Show notes and links for this episode can be found at http://www.katenorthrup.com/podcast .

Last night I sat on my couch, cheeks still wet from tears, soaked in the bittersweet moment of feeling sad that I was closing the cover of a book I’d just finished and that I was deeply moved by. I both wanted there to be more to read and also felt so totally satisfied and changed by the experience of taking it in. We’re 3 months away from the 2020 United States Presidential Election. An election...

If you’re new here, there’s something you need to know about me and this space: I’m obsessed with the body and I talk about it a lot. I love to learn about how our bodies work and how they relate literally and metaphorically to everything, specifically our emotional lives and productivity. If you’ve been around for a while, you already knew that. So many important conversations are missing a MAJOR...

We’ve just crossed the threshold into the second half of the year. Every time I look at this wall we have in our basement of 12 really big monthly planners with a beautiful plan we made for 2020 back before we knew what 2020 was going to be, I chuckle. None of us could have planned for this year, I think that’s clear. This year has been particularly humbling for a planning nerd like myself (who al...

So much of the information we take in as humans is based on this idea that when we do or get x, y, or z, we’ll finally feel better and then we won’t have to feel discomfort anymore. We’ve been told that the whole point of being human is to find ways to either feel less or feel better. But what if that were not the point? What if trying to feel a different way than you feel and popping out when you...

There’s a pattern so many of us have been indoctrinated into that’s depleting our bodies, our relationships, our planet, our innovation, and even our productivity. What makes it so insidious is that we’re celebrated for it, and many of us spend our whole lives in a reward loop that affirms a behavior that’s not doing us any favors. The addiction? Work. Alcohol addiction, drug addiction, sex addict...

There are people called to do the work of pulling people out of the river when they’re drowning. We need these people, and I’m so grateful for them. There are also people called to do the work of going upstream to figure out why they’re falling in in the first place and seeing if something can be done to prevent that. We really need these people too, and I’m extraordinarily grateful for them as we...

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been posting on social media primarily about anti-racism and the collective opportunity we have right now to step into racial healing and liberation. I rarely check my own Instagram stats, but I decided to take a look and found that for the first time in months, I’m losing more followers than I’m gaining each week. These two things coinciding with one another is n...

One of the walls of our basement is covered with 12 poster-sized dry-erase calendars showing a truly stunning 2020 business plan. When I look at it, I chuckle. Because so far, 2020 has been the year that cannot be planned (nor planned for). None of us could have planned for sheltering in place. None of us could have planned for the number of things that have been cancelled. None of us could have p...

When I checked in with myself and listened to our community and the pulse of the world right now, what felt right this week was not to publish a new podcast episode, but to point your attention to one of our favorites from the past that features a black woman whose work is devoted to black liberation. In the summer of 2018 I savored every word of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds...

The world is heavy right now with the increased awareness of violence and injustice against black people that's been going on for over 400 years here in the United States. To the black people in our community, you are in my heart and prayers but most importantly, my actions. As one of my favorite writers and teachers, Adrienne Maree Brown, said: "Things are not getting worse, they're getting uncov...

When the final numbers came in at the end of April, both Mike and I were in awe. Despite working half the amount, having no childcare, not being able to follow through on any of our growth plans, some of our customers having financial difficulty and needing to extend payment plans, and feeling uncertain about the future of our planet and humanity, April was an above-average revenue month. And May...

On Mother’s Day my husband Mike saw several posts from guys about their wives/partners which said something to the effect of: “I don’t know how she does it all.” While the posts were meant to be in appreciation of these women and the way they show up for their families, something about them didn’t sit well with Mike. As we talked it through and he noodled on it over the next day or so, Mike came b...

When you think about something that you want, do you immediately think of all of the different things you’re going to need to do in order to get it? Even if you’re a student of metaphysics and you practice ways of attracting what you want energetically, does manifesting sometimes feel like a slog (or a lie)? The heaviest belief a lot of us are carrying around is: In order to get what I want I have...

The longest chapter I wrote in the first draft of Do Less was the chapter on Asking for Help. It was originally 25,000 words (one third of the contracted total word count) and it ended up becoming both the Receiving Help and Asking for Help chapters. But there’s something super important that I left out of the chapter...because I was today years old when I realized it. Yes, many of us struggle wit...

When we were in the first year of doing The Kate & Mike Show, I made a list of “Podcast Unicorns” who I dreamed of having on the show. TBH, I never reached out to ask this week’s guest onto the show, but I held her name close to my heart on my dream list, trusting that the time would come and that when it did, I would know. Well, my friend, the time came, she said yes, and I’m SO thrilled to b...