Stress Relief - How to destress as an entrepreneur

How to destress as an entrepreneur. So I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers, love you guys, Marilyn, who wrote in to say, hi Evan, can you make a video about taking a day off or just turning it off? As an entrepreneur, we're always working both mind and body. How do you destress and detoxify yourself from all these buildups? Do you turn off your phone, no emails, put up a do not disturb sign? Do you believe in holistic cleansing? Just wondering, thank you. Thank you for the great question, and running the business is not easy, right? This isn't easy. Whoever said this is gonna be a walk in the park, they're kidding themselves. This is, this is the hardest thing you're ever gonna do in your life. If you're pouring your heart into it and you're facing rejection, you're not seeing momentum, this is hard, and you are gonna get stressed out. And, and just battling through and staying motivated helps, but I'm gonna give you my 3 Suggestions to help you de-stress, maybe detoxify, but help you build a better business, one that you're proud of and one that you can continue on running. Number 1 is eliminate distractions. You mentioned, do I turn off my email, do I turn off my phone? I don't have a phone, I don't use a cell phone number, I don't check my email during the day, I don't check my social media accounts, you know, I have designated times for everything. It's really important if you want to stay as stress-free as possible as an entrepreneur to have dedicated times of focused work. I prefer 90-minute chunks, and I say, in this 90 minutes, I'm going to focus on this and only this. And every time you get distracted, you lose your focus, and then to get back into where you were was— it's hard, right? You lose your momentum, and it stresses you out because you want to get this thing done, and it's like you keep getting interrupted, and you can't make any progress. I remember last night I got an idea. I wanted to interview Howard Schultz, who's the founder of Starbucks, as the chairman of Starbucks, for my book. And so I started writing him an email. I started writing, and my wife Nina says, "Hey Evan, can you come look at the freezer?" And I'm like, "Ah, you know, let me finish writing this note and I'll be right there." And then I'm still writing, I'm still writing, and she thought I finished. She said, "Hey, can you come look at the freezer?" I'm like, "Oh, fuck!" Fine, fine, I'll come look at the freezer. And there are these icicles that were forming or whatever, and then I got frustrated, and then I went back and I looked at my email. Like, I totally forgot what I was doing, and I had to get back in the zone. And like, I just wanted to finish. And so that happens to a lot of people all the time. You keep getting interrupted with people knocking at your door or calling or emailing you, and that you're always in reactive mode. Instead of chunking out times, blocking it off and saying, this is what I'm gonna work on for this 90 minutes. So that's what I do. 90-minute chunks, 15-minute breaks in between to let your brain, you know, de-stress a little bit and shift gears and just not look at the computer or whatever you're doing, and then into your next 90-minute chunk. And don't let people walk all over your time. You've gotta set up limits and say, this is what I'm doing, nobody bug me. And, you know, I don't check my phone or email or any of that stuff, so you gotta turn all that stuff off. Number 2 is design a better business. Design a better business. I hate the idea of I'm going to work so hard on my business and stress myself out so much and then just take a break from it all and build up the fortitude to go off and do it all again and invest all this time and then have to go take another vacation. I think your business, you're not working for somebody else. Right? This is your business. You could design whatever you want to do. You get to create the world that you want to create. So design a world that supports you. I don't think you have to be all stressed out and then take a break from it all. Your business should be designed in a way that you get energy from it. It shouldn't be an energy stealer. The things that you do in your company should lift you up and not super stress you out all the time. I make these videos Not because somebody told me to do videos, not because it's a smart business thing to do, but I love it. Like, I love being able to answer questions, I love being able to reach people. Your comments mean the world to me. They make my morning every day when I'm eating my lentils and checking out my computer. That's the first thing I look at because it gives me energy. You guys fuel me to do more and to be better. And if there's something that kept stealing my energy, kept stressing me out, I would eliminate it. Gone. Like, that does not need to be in my life, and I'll focus on something else that gives me energy. So design your business in a way that supports you and feeds you instead of drains you. And number 3 is follow your flow. As much as I have my day scheduled and I have my 90-minute chunks at a time, and, you know, Wednesday is my video day, so I'm sitting here recording all of these videos, I like to stay in flow as much as possible and try to get to flow and listen to your body and having an awareness over what you're feeling right now and how it's translating into your work. And so what I mean by that is sometimes you're working on something and you're feeling it and you're in the flow and just, um, awesome stuff is being cranked out and you know that you're creating great work. And the other times it feels like a struggle, you know, like, ah, like you can't get in the zone and the quality, you know, is suffering. To force that Doesn't work. Like, you know you're not going to get great results from it, so stop and go do something else. So when I'm making these videos, you know, I do 2 videos every day, so like 14 videos a week are coming out, and I got to sit down and record these things and answer your questions and do all this stuff. And some Wednesdays I sit down and, and I could pump out 20 videos, and it's like boom, I'm on fire answering questions. You know, I had a great session with Janie before I'm drinking my smoothies, whatever it is, and, and I am just killing it. And other Wednesdays I feel like I'm not in my rhythm yet, and I'm, you know, just not hitting it. And so I'll stop early. Maybe I'll do 5 videos, or maybe I get to my 10th video and, and I poured everything into it. It's like, you know what, that's it. I have no more left. There is nothing left here to create another video. I feel like my next one won't be good, so I'm gonna stop. And so it's designing the business, back to number 2, designing the business where I don't need to have 14 videos every single week. I can create more one week and less the next week and so on. So I've designed it to support me and I can stay in my flow. So remember, if you want to de-stress as an entrepreneur, number 1, eliminate distractions. Number 2, design a better business. And number 3, follow your flow. Believe. For those of you watching, if you like the video, you want to see more just like it, you can click on the subscribe button to subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.