Why Your 80-Hour Workweek Is Stupid

Hey, are you working 80 hours in your restaurant and still not getting results? Well, sit down and let's have a real talk about why your 80 hour work week is not only a bad idea, it's actually kind of stupid. Hey, welcome to the Restaurant Coach podcast. It is the cure for the common restaurant. I'm your host, Donald Burns, and my mission is to help independent restaurants build their brand, strengthen their team, and increase their profits without sacrificing their life to their business. Now, in today's world, you hear that there's this kind of hustle, rise and grind, get some just kind of do it mentality that floods the Internet and social media daily. With a call to get up and get. After today, you hear like battle cries of the new order saying you gotta hustle to make it. You gotta outwork everyone beyond 24 7. Only losers quit. Yeah? Well, I have one for you too. How about this one? Only fools get stuck on the time treadmill, racking up work weeks that top 70, 80, and sometimes 90 hours. Let's have a little chat about why long work weeks are not a badge of honor. They're just stupid. So in this video I'm going to share with you 7 tips to get your time and your life back. Number one, you got to understand, not all time is equal. You're going to have productive parts of the day, but you're also going to find out that some of your parts of a day are not as productive as you think they should be throughout the rest of the day. However, if you change your mindset, you're going to come to realize that the hours you put in have really little to do with the results you achieve. The problem is we've become addicted to busyness. Looking busy and declaring how busy we are to the world on social media is a new status symbol. When you say you're so busy, what you're really saying to me is that you're too lazy to prioritize your life or your day. You're stuck on the hamster wheel of life, running as fast as you can, and you're getting nowhere. You need to get to the point where you muster up the courage to be brutally honest with yourself about where you are, how you spend your time. There's a couple ways you could do this. You could conduct a time audit, or if you like, if you have an iPhone running the latest iOS, you can check out the Screen Time feature, which shows you exactly how much time you spend on your device and what apps distract you and pull your time away. Both those Options give you a really rude awakening about how much time you spend doing things that are not important. Number two, learn a new word. No. Yes, I understand this is the hospitality business and you've been brainwashed to want to say yes to everything and everybody. But problems arise when we say yes all the damn time to the point where we're over committed. We're pulled in way too many directions at once. Let's clear the air on this right now. You're human. You're not a machine. You have a breaking point. Everyone has a breaking point. This phenomenon is called burnout and it's a direct result of pushing yourself past your breaking point. Burnout isn't something that happens to you, it's something that you do to yourself. I want you to remember that because it gives you power and puts you back in control. That control starts with not saying yes to everything that comes your way. The word psychologists use is boundaries and you need them to keep your sanity. In an industry that is anything but sane, having solid boundaries protects you. They allow you to say, this is who I am and what I stand for. Without healthy boundaries, you're just going to over commit to too many things. And sadly, that's when your results really start to suffer because you're doing too many things at once. And you're also doing too many things half ass. Here are some common boundary issues. See if any of these make sense to you. Fear of saying no, over committing people pleasing. Inability to make decisions. Feeling responsible for other people's emotions. Taking care of others needs, but not your own. Taking on the moods or emotions of other people around you. Being overly sensitive to criticism. See, setting boundaries doesn't mean going from one extreme to the other. Don't go from being a yes person to being a no person overnight. Instead, just be a little more flexible and don't say yes right away. I use this easy way to decide what tasks and projects I either tackle. I either say it's a hell yes or a hell no. There's no in between for me, if I'm not totally passionate and committed to a project, it's a hell no. You must seriously consider passing on things that don't kindle a fire inside of you. I get it. Sometimes there are things that we must do. As an owner or operator in a restaurant, just start being more aware of what you allow to be on your plate. Chances are that if there's something that you don't feel is a good fit for your natural strengths, there's someone on your team who probably is A good fit for it perfectly. You need to know your team better and how to use their personal strengths to build the business. This is otherwise known as resource allocation. See, when you don't allow your team to learn and grow, you increase the odds that they're going to leave for another restaurant while. Why? Because people need to grow. They want to learn, they want to become better. They have a need to contribute, they crave it. Those things people want. Give those who want to develop their skills the opportunity to do so. And you're going to build a really solid team. Number three, and hold on here, I'm going to say something that's probably going to piss you off. Your results suck. Okay, I said it. It's out there. Deal with it. Your energy level throughout the day is just like a battery. And here's the inside secret. Everyone's internal battery level is different. The issue is that most people don't properly recharge their internal battery enough to take on the demands of the day. Imagine if you will, that you went to work one morning with your cell phone only charged at 25%. Now if I said you couldn't recharge your phone all day, how long do you think it would make it before it died? 3 hours? 5 hours? It really depends on how much you used it. Right? Well, sadly, this is how most managers are. They're kind of like that partially charged cell phone. When they go to work, they haven't taken the steps to recharge their internal batteries, so they run out of energy before the day is over. And what happens when your internal battery runs low? Well, here are some very, very nice warning signs. Signs you become short tempered, easily agitated, stressed, unfocused, impatient, overeating because you need that sugar for energy. Caffeine dependency or energy drink dependency. You snap at people, you're overly emotional, you get depressed. There's not anything really good that comes from running your Internal energy below 50%. Bad things happen. Really bad things happen. When you get below 25%, managing your energy must become a priority if you desire to break free from the mega hour syndrome. Because energy is everything to outstanding leaders. Number four, Realize there is a better way. So if energy is everything, how do you ensure that you have plenty of it to make it through the day and still have leftover? It's easy. Take care of yourself first. Now I'm not talking about becoming a self centered asshole who only thinks about themselves. I'm talking about becoming responsible for your energy and taking better care of yourself. Seriously, you can't give to others without first giving to yourself. Self care is not selfish. It's actually very, very smart. So how do you recharge your internal battery? Here's some ideas. You can start working out the gym, go for a walk, hiking, biking, meditation, swimming, reading, writing, playing an instrument, taking a class, joining a club. How about spending quality time with family and friends? Anything that activates other areas of your brain and body are good for recharging. You are truly limited by your own imagination. Just make sure that you schedule it and then follow through to make it happen. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Please stop talking about taking better care of yourself and just fucking do it. The best way to accomplish this is develop a routine and set a time each day for your self care habit. Without setting firm time, you're going to find it kind of difficult to anchor the habit into your neural pathways. Number five. Outstanding habits create outstanding leaders. It starts with the simple habit of getting a good night's sleep. Too many run their lives with a mindset that sleep is for the weak. Let me tell you something you might not know. Sleep is for high achievers. Your body needs quality sleep. Without it, you risk kind of becoming a little loco in the head. Because lack of sleep has some very, very common side effects and you've probably experienced these before. Brain fog, irrational behavior, irritable, overly emotional. Have you personally experienced any of these side effects? I'm gonna go out on a limb and I'm going to bet that you have. Pushing harder and further is not always the answer. Your body's a lot smarter than you think and there are times when you really honestly, you need to listen to it. You want to start aiming for at least six to eight hours of quality sleep each night. Your body and brain need it to repair and reboot. Lack of sleep is a major contributor to many, many health issues. Take measures to really fix that by setting a steady bed and wake times and then following through and keeping consistent with it. Number six. The goal is to get better results. Here's the trick to getting more done. You have to set yourself up to accomplish more. And the key to this is to reduce distractions that bombard you all freaking day long. The restaurant business is full of distractions that pull at you from all different directions. You have a lot of personal distractions that compete for your attention. You get emails, text messages, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, all the social media. You get pop up conversations that distract you and they basically kill your productivity. Make sure to set up time to unplug and really dial in your focus. The most effective way to do this is to schedule short focus blocks throughout the day. These blocks are 20 to 30 minutes that you use to go dark from the world and basically get shit done. Now, many might think that 20 to 30 minutes isn't much time to get anything done. And I'm going to tell you that that amount of pure focus is life changing. You would be amazed about how much you can accomplish when the only thing you focus on is getting done. Now, ideally, you need to schedule these focus blocks like you would any other important meeting. I recommend a minimum of two focus blocks each day. If you can get in more, that's great. But the key is to start blocking off time and get 100% focused. This is how you implement a focus block. Set a timer for your allotted time, usually 20, 30 minutes. Turn off all your notifications, everything, turn your phone on, do not disturb, and you want to have everything you need to get to work. A focus block is designed to get results, not running around trying to get the materials ready to get work done. And then just make sure you stay on track and then track your results. You really want to measure your productivity during each focus block. An easy way to do this is by giving each session kind of a score from 1 to 10. 1 being least productive to 10 being ultra productive. Wherever you have a score under 8, take notes of what you could do better. Do this for a month and I swear you're going to see a dramatic improvements in your results overall. And number seven, make a plan to get off the hamster wheel once and for all. Okay, now you've seen that this 80 hour work week is really for people who seek to play the victim and want to keep the drama high in their life. Working long hours in a restaurant is not a badge of honor. It's actually, it's a mark of stupidity. It's piss poor planning, it's lack of priorities. It's failure to develop your team and to schedule focus block. It depletes your internal energy levels and all it does is as a result of you having the fear of saying no. Remember, the answer isn't more hours, less bullshit. It's facing the truth. Hey, if you want to learn the secrets to restaurant success, I'm offering viewers of my YouTube channel free access to the Three Frames to Thrive series. It's over three hours of training which is going to show you the three foundational frameworks that I teach all of my private coaching clients on how to make more while working less in the restaurant. Just head over to threeframestothrive.com and sign up now. Hey, make sure to hit that like and subscribe button. And in my next video, I'm going to share with you three big mistakes new managers make.