132: You’re Invited to Hooky Headquarters (HHQ)

Hi, this is Charles Michael Davis. Toyotathon is on so stop by your local Toyota dealer for incredible year end deals on the cars, trucks and SUVs known for their legendary reliability like the stylish and efficient Camry, the Ready for anything RAV4 or check out a rough and rugged Tacoma or Tundra, all with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit buyatoyota.com to find out more. Toyota let's go places.

It can also be really fruitful that when we do step back and we realize how dramatically our energy is butting against something in our business, or how we're doing things, or how we're thinking about things, there is this opportunity to reimagine them. Because if you're getting so drained by something, it means there's intense friction there and there's probably a bottleneck too. So that's where we can start to look at that and go through what else the Free Time Framework Align Design, Assign.

This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the FreeTime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with fathers, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Well my friends, it is a small miracle of motivation that I am finally recording this episode. You see, I just came off of a week at hhq, otherwise known as Hooky Headquarters, where I struggled to do even the most basic day to day tasks. I remember one day last week I was starting and erasing a text to a friend multiple times throughout the day. Almost like you would see in a movie scene. Starting erasing, starting erasing. Just debating if I could muster the energy to record a podcast together. And I kept erasing it, thinking it's too late notice to cancel, it's too late notice to cancel. But simultaneously looking at my watch going when do I need to pry myself off this couch? I could not seem to move. One of my biggest values for this podcast and my private BFF community is truth. While it's fresh. That means that I don't always want to share things from the perspective of having it all figured out. Because who does? I don't want to be the all seeing expert. As I've shared in previous episodes here and on Pivot, I like to be a qualified curator, finding interesting things, packaging them in helpful, useful, inspiring ways and sharing them back out with you every now and then. I may have areas of expertise, but today is not one of them. The only thing that I've been an expert on this week is Hooky Headquarters. Many of you astute listeners will know that that's even how I open the entire free time. Book my manifesto and love letter to small heart based business owners on when to step back and realize that maybe it's time to make some changes. Maybe it's time to write ourselves some permission slips to do, drop or delegate things a little bit differently. So let me read you the excerpt from those opening pages of free time. It's 1pm on a Tuesday and I am glued to the couch, procrastinating so that I don't have to tackle the one thing I promised myself I would that day. Email Everest As I polish off a pint of Ben and Jerry's Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream, a fellow business owner texts. Do you ever have the feeling of just wanting to burn it all down? She asks with a laugh. Cry emoji. Why yes. Yes I do. Funny you mention it. I'm at Hooky Headquarters as we speak, I reply, glued to the couch, eating ice cream. I can't seem to move or motivate myself to do anything at all when invoked Burn It all down mode B Adam means we've reached a point of weariness, burnout, frustration, or dread in our business, and we wonder, fantasize whether instead of pressing ahead in our chosen field, we should just burn it all down and pivot into real estate. Or fill in a vastly different fantasy alternative career of your choice, one that probably isn't any easier in actual reality. Beatim can be a passing fantasy during a crushing week, or a crucible you endure after years of veering slightly off course until you realize you're completely lost. You might experience moments of burn it all down mode in response to compare and despair. While binge listening to business podcasts or during an exhausting social media infinity scroll, you might hear a fellow owner express wanting to burn it all down after losing their biggest client or even landing their dream client. Then in actuality becomes a bureaucratic and logistical nightmare of paper pushing, hoop jumping and people pleasing. No matter when it strikes, the impulse to burn it all down is a signal flare. When you are stranded on Burnout island, your body and your business start sending distress signals. These torching fantasies are a sign you're not working sustainably. Something is off. Whether your schedule, your projects, your margins, your clients, your day to day work, your team, your delegation, or a Mix of all of the above. These moments are also ripe for our biggest business breakthroughs. I'll pause reading there and I'll say that there's two concepts I'm introducing here. Hooky Headquarters, which is a term I invented for those days when I feel like I should be working. Maybe my to do list is climbing quickly, or my email inbox. The number is growing to an alarming rate and I feel like I should be working, but I don't. So Hooky Headquarters is not really a Saturday morning thing. It's a Tuesday morning or Tuesday midday. It's a time when I've promised myself I was going to get some work done and I'm not doing a damn thing. In both of these examples, I describe feeling glued to the couch. So that's how Hooky Headquarters manifests for me. It's like my laptop is in the other room, kind of beckoning, trying to draw me in, trying to say, jenny, you have work to do. You promised people certain things by certain days and times. Or even I promised myself, or I promised our podcast production schedule. And yet there I am in the other room, can't move. Hokie Headquarters is obviously rest asserting itself. I mean, I describe it in this kind of funny way. Hhq. That's the shorthand I would tell my friend, whether when I was working on free time or even recently. It's like, how are you doing today? Oh, I'm at Hokie Headquarters, as in I'm just completely playing Hooky on all my responsibilities. That's a little different than burn it all down mode. Burn it all down mode is where it goes beyond Hooky Headquarters. It's more than a day or a week. It's like you're actually just completely fed up and overwhelmed by your entire business. The business itself really needs to shift, or you really need to shift and maybe bring somebody on delegate in a much more serious way. Drop certain streams of income in the business in a really serious way. Overall, a need to make some big changes or you could say to pivot. I've also come to think of HHQ Hooky Headquarters as a kind of intense micro period of burnout. So there's probably big B burnout where you have full on adrenal fatigue and you need months off and you need to completely detox from the pace and the crush of work. And then little B burnout is rest asserting itself. I love Cal Newport. You know, I mention him all the time. I love his concept of deep work. While I would also say we need periods of deep rest. And if you don't give them to your body, if you don't take them from your business, as in step aside and away from your business, these periods will assert themselves to you as often. Catches me off guard when all of a sudden I find myself at HHQ despite my best laid plans otherwise. So little B burnout. Deep rest is where you just gotta recharge. And even if you don't think you should recharge or you need to recharge, or you didn't plan to recharge, sometimes it just makes itself known. Hey, I need you to recharge and says your body. And as I've shared for many years, your body, on some level, it is your business. And in every sense of the word, in every turn of the phrase. Because if you're operating at half mast, so is your business, your brain, your mind, your body. These are big resources. They're your partners, they're what fuel your engine. They're what keep you going. They're what help you be more creative and strategic and inventive. And we need to treat them like the Ferraris that they are and give them all the love and care. You'll know that you've tipped into big B burnout because it's a syndrome that is described by three dimensions. Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from your job, or feelings of cynicism related to your job, and a sense of reduced professional efficacy. So I could definitely say for myself, the last few weeks or last week in particular at HHQ was all three of those things. The ways that I know and I encourage you to think about what does HHQ look like for you and when does it go from being a one or two day thing to something that you want to take more seriously? For me, it feels like I'm glued to the couch. My body feels like it's on a blinking red battery. It's hard to muster the motivation to do anything, anything at all, Even things I usually enjoy, like podcasting, like running my business. I just cannot bring myself to want to do them. And the third big marker for me is that I get incredibly sensitive to and overwhelmed by people, specifically trying to keep up with people through emails, texts and calls. That's something you hear me talk about a lot because it's something I struggle with. Cal Newport describes it really well in his book A World Without Email. He says we are incredibly sensitive to pairwise relationship maintenance because it was crucial for tribal survival. We have an instinct that we take communication with others very seriously. No matter how much your prefrontal cortex tells you about norms, there's a deeper part of your mind that sees messages piling up. And that's the only way I can describe it for myself. I have my sensitivity switch to messages piling up and outpacing my capacity or ability to respond to them. It is primal. It is why it's an ongoing struggle. No matter how many tools, systems, processes, people I put into place, when I get tired or run down, I get completely, completely overwhelmed by the people side of my life and my work. And so I go into my turtle mode. That's where I retreat into my turtle shell. I'm often unresponsive. I'm slower to respond because I'm like, completely almost flooded with overwhelm. And I find it interesting to also examine what were you doing just before HHQ kicked in? And twice now because I described in the opening to Free Time. So it's now recorded and in the official record that it's often when I'm heading into a week where my biggest focus is email. And that's a really bizarre pattern to notice. I'm not trying to complain. Like, again, I've said it many times that I'm often so grateful for correspondence, partnerships, work opportunities. Email can bring really good things, and it's a primary way of communicating. There's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with any one email, any one person. But I've noticed that it tends to really overwhelm me in a way that I hear some people describe, but just feels very intense on my end. And so twice now, this last week and when I was writing free time, when I head into the week and I'm gonna stare down my inbox or some really older messages that require decisions or tricky conversations or feelings of obligation or feelings of really deep care for someone that I wanna make sure I create the best possible response with care. You know, when I'm tired, I have nothing to give, no resources to tackle this level of interaction. So there's a couple reminders. The reason I'm sharing this episode today and inviting you to Hooky Headquarters is that sometimes you just gotta give yourself permission that, oh, okay, here it is. I didn't realize I needed deep rest, but Deep Rest needs me to pay attention to it. And so I wanna invite you to Hooky Headquarters with a few reminders, things that I tell myself when I find myself in this pattern, when I find myself in this place.

We'll be right back just after this. Close your eyes. Exhale, feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.

Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.

And breathe.

Oh sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh sorry. Namaste.

Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.

1-800-Contacts.

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast Smart move. Being financially savvy Smart move. Another smart move having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.

So there's specifically five because you know, I had to make a list and give you a heads up of how many to expect. So far I can think of five notes to self or reminders and that helped me when I'm in times like this. And that got me to finally record this podcast. After feeling guilty every day that I wasn't going into my office and doing the episode that I knew would be due soon to the production team that got me to wake up early and say I can do it today. I can do it. Because I have finally come to the other side of Hooky headquarters. So let's dive in.

Number one. The number one reminder. Your body must need the rest. Our mind might think, what are you doing? You're being lazy. Why are you stopping right now? You have so much to do, but your body might need the rest. So take stock of all that you have been doing. Any recent sprints or travel or big projects. I find it helpful to look backward and go, oh yeah, I just came off of three weeks in a row of back to back travel or back to back projects or speaking engagements, whatever it's going to be. As my friend Sarah pointed out when I told her I was at HHQ the most recent time. She said it could also be conserving energy for an upcoming trip or big project. She said you likely need to have some HHQ because you have a busy stretch and some big trips coming up. You're just replenishing your energy reserves and that put me at ease so much. So number one, your body must need the Rest of the your body is an intelligent entity. It wants you to be healthy. It wants the whole system to be well. It's not trying to sabotage you. And so if you can look backward and see why it might need some rest. Sometimes it takes us stopping to actually think, oh, yes, I have been doing a lot. And to think that maybe you're replenishing your reserves for something coming up, that you can then see the ebbs and flows of your energy level as something that is normal. It's natural. Everything goes through cycles and seasons and that a period of low energy is really important so that you can go back to the sprints. We're not machines. I first loved hearing that term in a book by Tony Schwartz called the power of full Engagement. And we had a course at Google called Managing your energy that we all loved because it reinforced this idea that we are not machines. We're not just going to run on a steady state. And even machines, even your computer needs sometimes a to crash when you're not expecting it. You're working on something important or to be shut down or restarted. So take the pressure off and also go back to body basics. Sleep, healthy foods, movement. So that really helps me. I try to remember, okay, my body needs a rest. And now I need to give my body really good things, as I always do, but doubly so during an HHQ period. Sleep, healthy, foods, movement, and take the pressure off.

Number two, My second reminder note to self, trust yourself to bounce back, but only if you rest deeply enough. So I often find myself kind of My mind and body are a little bit at odds. My mind will say, well, you've rested for two days already. It's time now, on day three, to get back to it. Martha Beck describes it like an infinity loop with rest on one end and play on the other. And she says, ideally, your work feels like play because you drop any aspects of your work that don't feel like play, that don't energize you. And so her mantra is rest until you feel like playing and play until you feel like resting. So I've learned that I will bounce back, but only if I see the rest all the way through. If I cut the rest short, I'm just a disaster. So trust that if you rest deeply enough, you will feel like playing again, but it's often going to be twice as long, three times as long. It's not going to match what your mind thinks it should be.

Number three, refocus on what is truly urgent. Give yourself permission to set the Rest aside, when I hit an HHQ week, I know that I need to say no to things. I may need to cancel or reschedule some things on my calendar. I need to give myself permission that if an email's been waiting two weeks, it's okay if it's going to wait the third. It's not ideal, but it might need to happen in order for me to actually take a step back and rest. In her book the Work Revolution, my friend Julie describes this true urgency versus false urgency. False urgency are these deadlines we set for ourselves, but they don't actually matter in that way. Nothing is gonna break, Nothing is gonna burn down. It was like me saying, I have to do this podcast episode today. I have to record this solo episode today. And I was saying that to myself for about two weeks. And so my true urgency meter would kick in my filter and I would say, is it truly due today? This day where I can't seem to move off the couch? No, it's not. The true deadline for the production team is a week before it goes live. Now, I never like to get them things late or under the wire if I can help it. I'm a procrastinator. I like to get them everything they need early. I don't like to be up to the minute on a deadline. But the false urgency that I was creating for myself wasn't helping. It was adding extra stress and pressure on days where I just could not get my energy to align with getting on the mic and sharing anything at all, or even having my brain think in a cohesive way about what to share and in one order. Also, because I don't script podcast episodes. So if I had scripted this all out okay, I could maybe even during hhq, I wouldn't even want to do that of get to the mic and read a script. But I don't podcast like that. So I make a little bulleted outline of the things that I want to cover and I will pull any quotes that I want to read. So I give it to you verbatim. But during hhq, I just didn't have that in me. And I feel bad sometimes. One of my gremlins is, well, if you were a true professional, you would just not be waiting on energy or inspiration. You would just get on the mic, rain or shine. You know, inspiration strikes every day at 9am there's that quote about being a pro writer. So sometimes I'll be hard on myself. Like, well, it doesn't matter if you don't feel like podcasting just get up and do it. Go make it happen. And I don't know, maybe that energy works for some people, but ultimately it does not really work for me. Even though it's challenging sometimes to allow these ebbs and flows, I prefer a little more body kindness and that if I need to rest, I figure out ways creatively to make that happen. So number three to recap, focus on what is truly urgent and give yourself permission to set the rest aside.

Number four, rethink your approach to the work. Tackle things one by one, perhaps with a different perspective. One of the days I had an interview scheduled, podcast interview. And sometimes these interviews are scheduled months in advance, so there is no way I would want to reschedule and and there may be for a book launch that's coming up. So I also need to make sure that I record the episode in time to have it edited and slotted into the production schedule to be released on time to help with a friend's book launch or something like that. So one of the ways you can rethink your approach to the work is conjuring someone you admire. As I was heading into that interview, Michael said, how would Oprah or go in there like Oprah, you know, someone I admire for her interviewing style and the work that she produces. So if, let's say you're a podcaster, think of a podcaster you admire who motivates and inspires you. And then you have to do a task. There's one that you're not going to move out of hhq. So how could you show up like someone else if you yourself are tired and groggy and low energy? What would it look like to be there as someone else? Or how could you go into the room, your office, to your computer, with a feeling of letting it be easy, letting it be fun, dropping what drains you? Sometimes for me, it's actually just a shift toward gratitude. I just remind myself what I really appreciate about this type of work. Whether it's recording a podcast with a friend, a solo episode, even my email. I remind myself about the good what I'm grateful for, what I'm celebrating. And that also takes the pressure off and helps me go in with a sense of gratitude and joy. And hey, I'm lucky that I get to be doing this work. And even though I'm tired, I'm really grateful that my work includes X, Y and Z.

Fifth and final note to self for this list, although I'm sure you have so many more and you know, I would love to hear them Put down your quiver of second arrows. The second arrow is a Buddhist term. It describes having a feeling and then the second arrow is the feeling about the feeling. So give yourself permission to be where you are, to be yourself, and to need what you need. I can't tell you how many second arrows I have shot at myself throughout my life for needing rest or not being better equipped to handle things like email or text messages. Not feeling like I'm too sensitive, all the things that I've shared on this podcast. Feeling like I wish I had more energy to go out or stay out late or communicate in the way that seems to be normal these days. So to describe the second arrow from a site called mindfulnessmeditation.net au shout out to our Aussie friends. They say the parable of the second arrow is a well known Buddhist story about dealing with suffering more skillfully. It is said the Buddha once asked a student, if a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful? If the person is struck by a second arrow, is it even more painful? He then went on to explain, in life we can't always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. This second arrow is optional and that is why you are cordially invited to hhq. That if you too need permission to go into a deep rest day, week, month, you're invited and it's okay. We can withhold firing these second arrows of saying that it's wrong or bad or it makes us weak or bad business owners if that's what we need. You're invited to hhq. You might even have fun at HHQ playing hooky from your regular day to day. And the whole reason that we are designing smarter systems and creating high net freedom in our lives and our work is so that we can take periods of HHQ that we can accommodate when rest asserts itself. And instead of firing the second arrows at ourselves and making it wrong, something that I'm constantly reminding myself too, we can lean into it, we can embrace it, and we can trust that we will come out the other side with our energy back again. And of course sometimes that stepping back also, as I mentioned in the intro to Free Time, gives us breakthroughs because we realize we don't want to go back, that maybe the way things were going is exactly what was creating this big B burnout or little B burnout a day of HHQ or a week of HHQ or a month. So it can also be really fruitful that when we do step back and we realize how dramatically our energy is butting against something in our business, or how we're doing things, or how we're thinking about things, there is this opportunity to reimagine them. Because if you're getting so drained by something, it means there's intense friction there and there's probably a bottleneck too. So that's where we can start to look at that and go through what else the Free Time Framework Align Design Assign how can you realign your energy to better fit this area or drop it all together? How can you design your ideal outcomes, impact and process? And then most importantly, who can you assign it to to help you with the work.

And the one thing you can do right now, especially if you feel yourself getting a little bit run down in a very busy, hectic time of year, look at your calendar and block off those do not schedule days. Your future self will thank you, I guarantee it. From now, find a few days in all the midst of the madness and block them off. Create spaciousness for yourself in advance and that will make it much less tricky to lean into that rest and recharge and recover than what happened to me last week when HHQ just demands it, rain or shine. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day and I hope you can have some fun when you go to HHQ too.

If you've listened this far, you get a gold star.

Thank you.

Word of mouth is the most joyful way we can grow this show, and it helps us land interviews with the luminaries and insightful guests that you would most love to hear from. Please send this episode to a friend who might find it helpful, and for show notes and related links from this episode, visit itsfreetime.com while you're there, make sure you're subscribed the Time well Spent newsletter. You'll get instant access to my Tech Toolkit, a continually updated list of all the software I use, along with the total monthly spend to run my business where no one works full time, even me. Visit itsfreetime.com join remember, you are running the show. It's time for radical reimagining and everything is up for grab. Let it be easy, let it be fun, and build with love.

The Uniswap Wallet makes Crypto easier and safer to own and use. Discover new tokens, research confidently, swap instantly, and manage it all securely in one place. The Uniswap Trading Protocol has powered over $3 trillion in volume and it's trusted by millions worldwide. Buy your first crypto assets in a few taps and experience the freedom of decentralized finance with Uniswap. Tap the banner to get started.