Ep 756 | The Power of a One-Day Reset

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let me ask you something, No Days Off Nation. I have a question for you. When was the last time that you intentionally stepped away. I'm not talking about a vacation day or a long weekend when you're sort of half working. Not really talking about a working from home day. I mean, when you truly stepped away, when you were totally alone and there wasn't any noise. Ideally, there's not meetings, there's no you know, passing somebody by at the water cooler. There's no reacting. It's just you. Well, for the past couple days, I went up to my family's house in the mountains, about 3, 4 hours away from Phoenix. And yes, I had a few things to handle at the house. But the truth is that I went up there because I needed a moment to reset. I needed time to, to think without interruption. I needed time to, to read without checking my phone every 7 minutes. I needed time to work on, on the business instead of working in the business. I guess bottom line, I needed some time to recalibrate. Now, I've been doing this sort of routine at least once per quarter for years, quite a long time. And, and I'm telling you here today, it might be one of the most high-leverage habits that I have in my life right now, at least over the past, you know, couple decades that I've been doing it. And here's the thing with this: there's more happening in those 24 hours than just getting work done. See, we talk a lot on, on this show, on this podcast, about structure and discipline and repeatable routines and habit creation. And you've probably heard me say many times that, that success doesn't come from random bursts of effort. It comes from systems and it comes from consistency. But I think that even the best system needs some maintenance. If you never stop to assess the machine, eventually the machine starts kind of running you. And, and for me, the quarterly day away from everything does a handful of powerful things to address the machine itself. First, it shifts me from reaction to intention. Let me explain. I think most of us have a tendency to live in reaction mode. We get emails, we respond. We get a Slack, we respond. We get a call, we answer. We get a text, we reply. Problems come up, we look for solutions. Opportunities come up, we look for solutions. You wake up and the world starts pulling at you. But when you remove yourself from, from the environment, physically remove yourself from the environment, something changes. Your nervous system kind of settles a bit. Your brain has a, has a, an opportunity to slow down a bit and move from tactical to strategic. For me, I stop firefighting and, and I start designing. I start architecting. You start to remember in your world, business or otherwise, what really matters. I think when I take these quarterly trips, it also exposes what I like to refer to as drift, because drift happens quietly. What I'm really talking about is, you know, your calendar slowly fills with things that don't necessarily align with your priorities, and your energy gets spent on low-end, low-impact activities versus where we know our energy should be spent. Your standards, your personal standards, subtly start to soften. See, you don't notice it day to day when you're in your current environment, but when you go away, when you physically change your environment and you sit in silence at least for a few hours without any noise, you start to look at your life a bit more objectively. You start to see this drift that I'm describing. You see where you're overcommitted. You see where you're avoiding something that's important. You see, maybe at least for me, I start to see where I've let something slide. And I think that awareness is uncomfortable, but it's also pretty darn powerful. I think when I go away on these quarterly trips, it gives me space to think at a higher level. In your normal environment, you have a tendency to think at ground level, but on a, on a reset day like I'm describing, you're able to get to that 30,000-foot elevation or that altitude. You could ask questions like, hey, where is this project or this business really going? What would this look like if it were 10x simpler? What am I— what am I tolerating? What would make this next 90 days a win? So you start to see patterns a bit instead of tasks, and I think patterns really help you expose where the leverage lives. Lastly, when I go on these trips, and I think maybe the ultimate focus of it, I restore energy. Because let's be honest here, you and I, you know, those listening to this podcast, those that are literally taking every day and saying, "Hey, how do I get better?" We operate at a pretty high level. We push, we compete, we care deeply. All of that takes a toll. Like, you just can't grind that hard indefinitely and always expect peak performance. As you all know, I'm into, uh, endurance sports, right? Even elite endurance athletes, they don't train hard every single day. They, they have recovery built into their plan. Well, this time away is mental recovery. It's not meant to be an escape. It's certainly not meant to be laziness. It's recovery, but it's recovery with a purpose. So, you can see I'm an advocate for getting away at least every quarter by yourself, changing up the environment. Now, maybe you don't have some random, you know, mountain house to go to. That's good because this isn't about the location. It's just about the separation. So, you don't need a second home or you don't have to go rent a home or whatever it may be. You just need to create some intentional distance between your everyday environment and where you're maybe going to go hang out for a day or two. Here are some ways maybe to create the environment that I'm describing. Can you book a hotel room 30 minutes away for one night? No one knows you're there. Get your phone on airplane mode. Maybe it's just for blocks of time, but just book something down the road that just creates a new environment. Maybe, uh, an idea: go to a park with a notebook. Not headphones, no podcasts, just, just you and an opportunity to think. Maybe rent a a coworking space for the day, but do it in a different part of town. So you can change the, the visual inputs and you change all the stimulus. I think even a, a long solo hike or a long drive, I think there are effects that come along with that that are very similar to what I'm describing. I think the key is this. You've got to remove yourself from your normal environment. Because that environment, your normal environment, drives a certain behavior. And, and, and it's kind of crazy, but it may do it more so than willpower ever will in terms of driving behavior. So if you stay in the same place, you're going to default to your same patterns. So change the setting, and of course then you change the thinking. So what do I actually do on my reset day? Because it's not just show up and it's totally random. I, I do a handful of things. I review the last 90 days trying to figure out what worked for me personally and professionally, what didn't work, where did I waste energy. I then look at the next 90 days and ask myself, hey, what would make the next 90 days a win? What needs more focus or more space? I then audit my calendar and I ask what shouldn't be there, or what boundaries do I need to reinforce? Then I usually read something, something that is a little different than maybe the book I typically pick up. You know, I'm looking for something a little bit different, maybe to spark creativity or something of that nature. I could tell you what I'm not doing. I'm not scrolling. I'm not trying to read news headlines. I'm actually doing some, some very purposeful deep reading. And then lastly, I just kind of enjoy the silence. Now, I know all of us are a little different with respect to this. But, uh, I like kind of sitting and doing nothing or going on a walk with nothing, right? And just be in that silence. In my opinion, that sitting in silence might be the most important of the bunch. I think most people avoid that sort of thing because it's uncomfortable. But I think for me, the clarity lives in that degree of discomfort. So as we wrap this up, I want you to recognize that I don't think that what I'm describing here is a luxury. I actually think it's part of your growth, part of your leadership journey. I mean, if you're running a business or you're running a team or you're leading a family, you can't outsource energy, you can't outsource clarity. You have to create it. And that kind of clarity doesn't just come from more hustle, it comes from perspective. I think once per quarter going away like I'm describing is enough to create massive compounding benefits. I'm talking 4 days a year. Maybe for some of you, you want to do it a little bit more, but 4 days a year, that's it. 4 intentional days to really realign and reset. Just think about what the ROI, what the return on investment might be if you did something like that. So, I'm going to wrap up. Here's your action item. I don't want you to just nod your head and say, "Hey, this sounds like a good idea." I want you to open up your calendar right now. And I want you to look at, call it the next 60 days, and I want you to book one day away. Again, if you have the luxury of going away somewhere like I described, great. But if it's just going down the road to a new environment, that's great as well. Let's book the one day right now. Not sometime, not let's see how things go. I mean, book it right now. That's the action item. Reserve it and then block it in the calendar. Defend it. Because if you don't schedule it, it's not going to happen. And if you don't create the space I'm describing, then the drift I talked about, ultimately that's what's going to win. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.