166: Crashing into Quiet Time 🏝️

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The longer and harder you're working, the more free time you're gonna need and you need buffer within the free time within the vacation, within the time off to settle in and really get in a groove and then to transition out and come back out of it. Now I know this is a luxury. It is not easy to carve out double the free time just so that you have these transitional moments this buffer. And yet I find that this is a case where my expectations often crash up against the reality and I end up almost poisoning the free time that I have created.

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Raise your hand if you've ever worked so hard to set your time free that by the time you get there to vacation to your free time, you can't even enjoy it. I often call this feeling skidding into vacation. You work so hard you double down to earn the right to take that time off and then the dread starts setting in halfway through the vacation as you anticipate your return. In today's solo episode, we are going to explore this very phenomenon. I'm going to talk to you about crashing into quiet time, a recent experience I had, and some strategies to help us get a little better at actually enjoying the time that we set free.

First, I want to give a very special shout out and thank you to two new reviews and reviewers. Gal0824 said helpful and enjoyable. Great podcast to listen to on my commutes back home. It was the right amount of productivity advice under Jenny's free time mantra and fun and her work is relatable to someone in academic science leading a small team versus an entrepreneur. So happy to hear that. Thank you. And Lisa Bragg, who has her own book coming out bragging rights. I'll put it in the show notes said Generous Jenny is so generous with knowledge sharing. A mutual friend Pamela Slim Woo hoo. Previous podcast guest, longtime friendor put me on to Jenny's book launch information as I set to launch my first book. I I wish I had Jenny's advice from this podcast when I started my first business 15 years ago. Jenny, thanks for being effervescent. The world needs it. Lisa, you rock. I can't wait to have you on one of the two shows. And if anyone else wants to check out the author resources, that's@itsfreetime.com authors now let's get into today's show.

Allow me to zoom you in to a recent Crashing Into Quiet Time story. It's the middle of winter in New York City and I was very grateful to be invited to a mini mastermind that my friends Dorie and Alyssa were hosting in Miami, where Dori is now living part time. Shout out dc it was so fun. This is a group that formed from one single Zoom call that they set up right when the pandemic hit in 2020 and it just snowballed into multiple zooms. Some Marco Polos. We attempted to get together in person a year ago and we finally made it happen this year. So there I am so excited to be going on this trip, having just recovered from getting Covid to kick off the new year and still having lingering asthma. Even as I record this, I hear myself like rattling in my lungs. But alas, I get to Miami and all I can think is I am a grumpy monkey. In free time, I cite the podcast Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet because the title alone just makes me laugh so hard. They pick different topics and then they read reviews of very grumpy, quirky people complaining. Here I was in Miami and the beach was too sandy, the water was too wet. I woke up at 7am that's usually my go time when I'm on a trip. I love getting up early, but in this case I told myself, okay, it was a Thursday and I wanted to get all my work done so that I could head into the Mastermind weekend feeling super relaxed and accomplished and caught up from everything I was behind on. But sure enough, instead of just enjoying this cafe, it took 30 minutes for someone to bring the coffee. Now you know you're grumpy when, like, we all love our coffee. Or at least if you're a coffee lover, you know how just ooh, that sweet anticipation of the first morning brew. But in this case, they just hadn't quite woken up yet themselves. So it took a really long time for a server to come. Took over 30 minutes to just get that first cup of coffee. And I was sitting there, almost like my knees bouncing, just feeling anxious and annoyed. And I had this big list, like I said, of what I needed to get done before I could, quote, relax. And instead, I just stared at the walls and did nothing. I was such a Grumpy Monkey. That's the name of a great children's book that my friend Laura turned me onto. I'll put it in the show notes. I just discovered there's a whole series of Grumpy Monkey books, and it's just so cute. But there I was, and I realized that it's exactly as the saying goes, wherever you go, there you are. I remember exactly 10 years ago, I had just left corporate, and I had booked a month, actually a couple months to go to Southeast Asia. But one month was gonna be in Bali, and then I was gonna visit a friend and spend another month or two in Thailand. And I realized that I kind of went skidding in, as I mentioned in the intro, crashing in to getting to Bali. I was still this, like, wound up, tightly wound, pale, pasty, like, New Yorker, getting to this very spiritual chill place where everyone's meditating and doing yoga and eating organic food in these cafes. And so at that time, I realized, wow, it really takes a week to unwind, to relax from the inside out. It doesn't happen in a day. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes time. And on that trip, I kind of clocked myself in. Week one, I was totally wound up. And everyone could kind of tell, like, oh, this one's just in from New York. This is like a neurotic American, you know, who works too much too hard. Then I took a week to really settle in. And I noticed it was only in week three that I started to find true flow, that I started to really have fun, that I would walk down the streets whistling to myself or listening to music. I had a glow from getting enough vitamin D and sunshine. My body was starting to feel really relaxed. I wasn't rushing. I wasn't walking as if I was still walking through the streets of New York. I was finally in a groove. But that was only in week three. And then in week four, again, that anticipation starts to come in a little bit. But you need a week to prepare for a big transition. And then after I returned home from that trip of a couple months abroad, it took me over a week to do nothing, to just have Jet lag and reintegrate and get my body clock set back on us time. But also my spirit is this sense of collision, almost like oil and water, of just having a certain mode and way of being and a type of environment and then being dramatically dropped back into regular life. And sometimes my dad calls it a bliss crash. When you finish a big creative project, there's a crash afterward. But there can also be a bliss crash from vacation and the bliss of giving yourself permission not to do anything, not to work, not to check your email, to check your phone, and then the crash afterward. In high school, my friends and I coined a term for this birthday party syndrome that when we would come home from a trip together where we had so much fun, one of my friends said it's like when you're five years old and you had so much fun at your birthday that you cry when everybody leaves because where did all your friends go? You were having so much fun, you were having cake and playing and all of a sudden everybody's gone and you're all alone. So that's birthday party syndrome, AKA bps. My friend Jonathan Fields also put words to this really well. He recently took a month long sabbatical and this was a result of some coaching we did when FreeTime first came out. I was on Good Life Project and in the second half of the conversation we started to talk through how he could create more free time and how he had this creative project he wanted to work on. And so he looked ahead in the year and picked October to do a sabbatical. Then he did a follow up episode and I'll link to all these in the show notes called How I Took a Month off to Write and Make Art. Then what really happened in that episode he talked about very similar themes to what I'm sharing is that he worked so hard he doubled down because he also produces two podcasts, I believe 12 episodes a month across both shows. And so he had to really double down to get enough content in the can so that when he went on the sabbatical, the team wasn't in a pinch and they weren't behind. But that meant that he was working twice as hard heading into the sabbatical. And we can't really expect ourselves to just get to a new location or get to our free time and suddenly feel so relaxed and creative, especially if we're working twice as hard just to earn that free time. And that's what I really want to shed light on today. It's not that I have all the answers, but. But at least just recognizing and naming the fact that the longer and harder you're working, the more free time you're going to need. And you need buffer within the free time, within the vacation, within the time off to settle in and really get in a groove and then to transition out and come back out of it. Now I know this is a luxury. It is not easy to carve out double the free time just so that you have these transitional moments, this buffer. And yet I find that this is a case where my expectations often crash up against the reality and I end up almost poisoning the free time that I have created.

We'll be right back just after this.

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When I headed to Miami and I said, ooh, I'm going to be so productive the day I get there before the mastermind starts, I was kind of setting myself up for failure because when I arrived, all my body wanted to do was rest. Did I get any work done that first day that I promised myself I would, that I had saved up a bunch of tasks and emails and communication? No, I did not. I didn't do anything. So instead I spent the first day of this block of free time feeling guilty and disappointed in myself. There's also research from Cassie Holmes. She wrote a book called Happier Hour that having more than five hours of free time actually leads to declining happiness. So it's interesting because they did research that shows that ending up with entire days free to fill at one's discretion may leave you similarly unhappy to not having enough free time. And sometimes that's my experience when I first get somewhere I'm taking time off is I almost feel aimless. Like here I am, I'm not yet relaxed, my body's still wound up, but yet I have all this, quote, free time. What am I going to do with it. And if I don't either go relax, go to the beach, go to the spa, you know, do something. And yet I have an expectation of kind of working at the start to earn the rest of the free time, then it feels even worse. And I do think that that speaks to Cassie's study about too much free time sometimes makes you feel anxious or like you're not using the time. Well, sometimes free time creates a sense of extra pressure where you think, this is it, my precious time off in the middle of winter. I'm finally in a warm climate. Why aren't I just blissed out and walking on clouds? I better make the most of this. And again, the kind of self flagellation that sets in of, wow, I'm grumpy as hell. I don't want to do anything. I don't even want to get my work done. I don't want to see anyone. And why am I in such a sour mood? The takeaway for me from this recent trip and this recent bout of crashing into quiet time, and I use that verb on purpose, it's like a crash, a clash of energies, sometimes crashing and clashing into free time. Sometimes you need a day to float. You need floater days. And there can be immense friction that sets in if work isn't flowing. And neither is relaxation. I found in this recent trip, it was kind of like my inner kid was rebelling. Like a rubber band pulled tight that wants to snap back in the other direction that I had been sick, not feeling well, I had a lot to do. I felt behind on work and that rubber band of tension and friction was pulling, pulling, pulling. By the time I landed in Miami, that inner rebel of mine was like, hell, no, we're not going to work. Just completely snapped. Like, no. Almost. I picture a kid folding their arms, sitting on the floor like, no, I am not going to work. We are here in Miami. It's warm, the weather's beautiful. Go put your feet in the ocean and sit on a lounge chair at the beach and just watch the horizon. That is what I ended up doing that morning where I was grumpy without my coffee. Right around the time of this trip, I heard a great interview of Mike White on fresh air. Mike White is the brilliant creator of White Lotus. And in that conversation, which I'll put in the show notes, he was talking about how White Lotus both seasons is really a commentary on wealth, class and the existential angst that it can lead to that here you take all these super wealthy privileged people and just because you put them in Hawaii or in a beautiful villa in Italy, they still take themselves with them. And in fact, because they're so wealthy, their problems turn almost existential. So here you have all these people and there you go again, wherever you go, there you are. Because he places them in these beautiful environments and you see the contrast, that they're still themselves, their relationships still have cracks in them, they're still reconciling with their innermost desires and needs and obligations. Just because you put them in this gorgeous environment doesn't mean that it's going to solve any of their problems. And in this case, having wealth, class, discretionary time, discretionary money, it just doesn't buy happiness. And that that's a lot of the undercurrent of what he's illustrating with the character development of these two seasons of the show. Part of the reason that there is this crash and clash into quiet time is that it's almost like, at least in my case, I've built up an R and R deficit and then the bill comes due. So if I have not been integrating rest and relaxation, there's been great research that came out recently. Shout out to my friends Sarah Young and Sarah Peck, who both linked to it, that there are many different kinds of rest. There's spiritual rest, physical rest, energetic rest. I'll put a link to that research in the show notes because it's really interesting to think about. If you have seven or eight different rest bank accounts, how's the balance? And when the bill comes due, you don't want to go crashing into free time. You actually want to be able to enjoy it. So how can we build free time and rest and recharging and replenishment more into our day to day lives?

You know me, I cannot end a solo episode without at least one list of items of strategies that you can try to improve your sense of actually enjoying the free time that you create for yourself. So here are five strategies that I've come up with. And of course I would love to hear your ideas too. You can always leave me a voice memo@itsfreetime.com ask. Here we go.

Number one, start your autoresponder early. If you are going on vacation, do not start the autoresponder the day you leave because all the messages that come in in the days prior you will feel obligated to respond to because they didn't get your autoresponder. And yet it's a never ending treadmill if you don't start it early. So start the autoresponder sometimes even a week early. Why not buy yourself some space and then end it late? I always end the autoresponder a week after I get back so that nobody expects anything from me in the days before I go somewhere and the days right after I return.

Number two, try to exercise every day, even if it's restorative. Get your body moving. Don't do the kind of exercise where you're just pressuring yourself, making more demands. But I found that doing even a restorative yoga or walking meditation, those kinds of things just got my body moving and got me out of my head.

Number three, take plenty of quiet time. Don't overstuff your vacation. I remember traveling with my mom when I was a kid and everybody has different travel styles. But my mom was always had us up super early. There was an agenda. We were going to take so many sights off of our list of sightseeing and by the end of the day my brother and I would be absolutely exhausted from having done so many activities. So now I think as an adult I rebel. I don't make any plans, I don't call anyone, especially in the first days after I get somewhere.

Number four, tune in. What's sitting just below the surface? What are you noticing? Once the busyness and the daily routine recedes, sometimes we crash into quiet time because whatever we were suppressing, whatever we were holding down, comes up for air. And the quiet time allows really things to come to the surface that maybe you do want to fix or address when you get back to the day to day, but you didn't have the time or the energy to look them straight in the face when you were in your day to day routines. Be observant. What's sitting just below the surface? In what ways have you been working yourself too hard? In fact, why do we think we need to earn our free time at all and punish ourselves heading in and then punish ourselves heading out? How can we be kinder? How can we build it more into every day so that it's not so much pressure when bigger blocks of free time arrive?

And number five, I encourage you to experiment with my friend. Steven Shapiro calls goal free living. And Tosha Silver calls outrageous openness. As always, I'll put links to both of those books in the show notes. In his book, Steven shares the eight secrets for goal free living. Now we have a list within a list. See if you can keep up. Secret Number one, use a compass, not a map. Number two, trust that you are never lost. Number three, remember that opportunity knocks often, but sometimes softly. Number four Want what you have. Number five Seek out adventure. Number six Become a people magnet. Number seven Embrace your limits. And number eight Remain detached. I'm going to have Stephen on the show soon, so stay tuned. I think you're going to love that conversation. His most recent book, Invisible Solutions, is so good as well for learning how to think differently about your business and Tosha Silver's work. I mean, that's just a bedrock of how I think in so many of the free time principles as well of outrageous openness. Just surrender. Let life show you the way. Let serendipity come in. Don't make too many plans and don't beat yourself up.

You hereby have permission to relax, to leave things undone, to take a longer break than you think you need, and to not be nearly as productive as you want or even as relaxed as you expect at the beginning, middle and end of your big blocks of free time. Thank you so much for being here listening. Have a beautiful rest of your day.

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