Joe Fier explains how small buffers—5 to 15 minutes of decompression time between tasks—reduce anxiety and prevent burnout. He draws on Rick Rubin's The Creative Act and daily microhabits like journaling and breath work to show how spacing out your schedule actually makes you more creative and productive.
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There was something he said about creating schedules and creating a schedule that is around your life and what you know, how you function. And because it's your game, it's you're playing your game.
Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a Chron Hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy.
Hey there, it's Joe Fear and I got a solo episode for you. And this one's all about the concept of creating buffers in your business business, in your workflow, your days, and really for your life. And it was inspired by Rick Rubin's new book called the Creative Act. I'm getting through that book and it's inspiring. I highly recommend it. It's got these little mini chapters and it's an easy read and it's easy to get inspired and to take action from. And Rick Rubin is this iconic music producer who's spanned over multiple genres and so many different walks of life that he's worked with. And this book is just insightful. It's great for any entrepreneur, any person really, that wants to tap into themselves. And there was something he said about creating schedules and creating a schedule that is around your life and what you know, how you function and because it's your game, it's. You're playing your game and you know, this is, this is something I've been really paying attention to in my game, my life, building the structure, the business, the life that I want. It's very lifestyle focused. You know, if you remember the James Schramko episode I did with him, we talked a lot about change and how to adapt and honestly how to create the life and the changes we want to see. Because there's another Rubinism, I guess, from the book is that life is like a conveyor belt that just keeps coming. So there's. It's inevitable things are going to change and it's up to us to Embrace change. But also we can build these buffers. We can create a schedule in a way that we, we take on these constant changes in our life and the new things unexpected or expected, really it doesn't matter. We are always introduced with options. And if we create buffers in our days and in our work life and all the things that we can control, then it just makes life a little easier.
You know, it, it takes us out.
Of the, the anxious mode, the, the stress mode, the burnout, procrastination stops or at least minimizes because we're more in our flow. A reason why this kind of got triggered is. Well, there's a lot of reasons why this, this can happen. And I've experienced it in a lot of ways. It's like if something's last minute for work, you know, things can get rushed and things get missed. People get stressed out. Imagine. And this happened. My wife actually just came home and was telling me about how there is this driver behind her that was like honking and flipping her off and all that because she was letting a UPS truck pull out on a road. And this guy just, just ragey. You could just tell there was some, some anger there for whatever reason. And it had me thinking because I've definitely, you know, I've. I've been in that moment before. Not, maybe not that bad. I've not done that, that craziness. But at the same time it's not crazy because that's a reflection of something that's inside. It's like this, something hasn't been managed properly and that's just an example of, you know, it's like how you do one thing, you do everything and that's an example of that person and that could be turned around. I feel like for. There was a lot of moments in business and it wasn't until pretty recently I've been figured out to change all that and to really harness my own schedule and to create buffers. In my day using healthy habits. I talked about the different daily microhabits. I do things like journaling, breath work, push ups throughout the day, you know, like knocking out 100 total in the day. There's other things, there's check ins with people. I have music, I play music. And these are all the daily routines that I tell myself, myself. And they're not like scheduled throughout the days, but they're, they're things that I want to put in my daily schedule that are essentially buffers. But there's also other things that we can do to, to take down the stress load or the feeling of pressure. Because it's that feeling of pressure we want to get rid of or diminish as much as possible or else you're going to be the one. Maybe you're not flipping people off or honking on the road, but maybe that's the feeling you have inside of you if a client is, you know, asking too much of you last minute. Because maybe they didn't buffer time for them. They. They didn't expect unexpected things or even expected things. They didn't plan for it. Maybe that's you, maybe it's someone on your team. Maybe they got sick, maybe they got in an accident. I mean, these are unexpected things, but also things that you can buffer for and we can all buffer for to reduce the stress and all these different things to ultimately improve productivity, happiness, and allow us to be the best we can be in the creative sen sends, whatever sends them. And this is going back to Rick Rubin is kind of what he was talking about.
Hey, I wanted to pause this and give a quick thanks to my friend Greg Merrilies and his team at Studio One Design. They're the ones that built my website over at hustle and flowchart.com I couldn't be happier. They nailed it. It looks so professional. They basically read my mind on the vision and they executed it beautifully. I now have a perfect offer to display and it looks super clean. I've already been getting a lot of people asking all about it and I've been referring everybody to Studio One. So they actually put together a quiz for you if you're looking to optimize your current website or build a new one as a full quiz that gives you a ton of results on how to improve and optimize what you're doing. So go complete that quiz@studio1design.com Joe that is studio, the number one design.com/Joe. It'll give you a free report after you finish that quiz. He's also given away some cool bonuses, so go check it out@studio1design.com Joe but.
Then the buffers thing popped up for me and how this has been game changer for me. And when Matt and I had this show together, we had Jeff woods from he's the vice president of the One Thing and host of the One Thing podcast. And he actually looked at me and he was like, you know what it. What would do really well for you and your schedule? You talk about my personality is to buffer five minutes, 10 minutes after a task or after a workload. It's like a Decompression time. And it's a time to kind of reflect on what just happened, maybe plan for the next steps, look at what worked, what didn't work, and, you know, figure out what to do next. So I want to shout him out because it was. He was the first one that gave me this concept of buffering and this thought of, like, oh, man, that actually would make a lot of sense, and it could prevent a lot of the feelings of emergency feelings of Rush. And it was a concept of, like, he was just like, hey, just before you finish up work, put in, like, 10, 15 minutes of buffer time on your calendar to actually decompress and, like, clean things up, plan for the next day. So one of the beautiful things of creating a time buffer like that that Jeff suggested to me is that it allows you to kind of leave or turn off the work mode in our brains and in my brain, for instance, so it doesn't leak over into family time or into time away, where our brains are just working and trying to solve more problems. So creating that buffer time at the end of the day allows for that turning off time. And what I've noticed is for driven types like us, like entrepreneurs, these buffers are crucial because that helps us prioritize things. We can better plan and figure out how to delegate responsibility, responsibilities, and tasks and also think about realistic deadlines. I know for myself, and this is something that I've gotten feedback from, luckily from people that trust and love me and know how I work, is that I can put a lot on my plate and expect to get a lot of it done. Yet when I do that, that just creates more stress and pressure and anxiety on me. And I know that's not the case for everyone, but I know that's the case for a lot of entrepreneurs, especially the ones who are a little bit more on the visionary and they see that vision and maybe a little less on the analytical side. But either way, we all find ourselves sometimes in this trap of wanting to do more. Again, that's kind of a reason why I took this show this direction, is like, hey, let's figure out how not to always just do more, but do the right things. And in this case, let's create some buffers and know that we're able to do the things that we want to do and do it in a way that allows us to flow rather than feel like we need to push. Because at least from my experience and from the folks that a lot of the folks that have been on this podcast, including some of the latest Episodes, if you just go back, there was Anthony, there's Amber Spears, Roland Frazier even talked a little bit about how he. He does this. Theo Lucier and beyond.
Just check out how. How this.
This the way of arranging your time and setting boundaries and then ultimately really creating buffers for yourself will improve your way of being throughout across the board. You know, it's not just in business. You'll be able to feel more grounded and a lot more focused and attentive to the people you're working with. But also then outside of business, you're actually there for your family. You're not the one that's cranky on the road. When you're driving around, you might actually find yourself driving like a grandpa or your grandma going a little under the speed limit. I have noticed that lately in myself. It's crazy, which is. It's interesting because I've noticed when I'm putting these boundaries in consciously and thinking this way and then keeping up with those daily microhabits, which is another solo episode, and I did some episodes of Trevor Turnbull and Mike Prince. If you're curious of diving into the microhabits. Those have been buffers that are, you know, in addition to the business type of buffers and planning buffers like I'm talking about here. So that has allowed me to feel a lot more grounded and allows me to really slow everything down and then know that, oh, that that still allows me way more than enough time to get everything I know is important in that is most important to me to get done. It gets done without that pressure and it feels good and it's pretty cool because other people have been noticing that in me. So it's good stuff. I wanted to share that with you today about the importance of buffers and really why you should be thinking of. It's not even should, it's how to think of time and arrange it in a way that you can control. At least the pieces that you know exist because the unexpected stuff comes up. It's kind of like insurance. And maybe I'll throw this out there too, because I've thought a lot about this, like in future pacing, really, it comes down to knowing our numbers and expecting the unexpected. Even though, like in the case of insurance, like life insurance or health insurance, like, stuff's going to happen. We're all humans and, you know, we're not. We're not all machines or AI. Like, we're still flesh and bones. So it's accounting for these things and insurance, especially for entrepreneurs. Maybe I'll toss it out there if anybody knows some interesting folks doing stuff for entrepreneurs and thinking ahead strategically when it comes to any types of insurance. Because I'm a big believer. This is another book called Dai with zero. I definitely recommend it really comes into knowing your numbers because when you know your numbers and plan for things, that might not be sexy but allows you to take the pressure off of things. Again, it's creating buffers. That's just another example that shows up in something that we have the option to control. But it's like something that we might not know when it happens, but if we're prepared for it, boom, then at least we could sleep a little easier at night and everybody feels a little better. So that's what I got. I'm going to leave you there and until next time, thank you very much. Go share this around with someone that you think needs it and have a good one. All right. All right.
That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if.
You need to do the work.
But you know, work can be fun and it should be feeling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast and I will see you next time.
