The Paradox of Productivity with Joe Fier

Do you struggle with this balance of hustling and flowing in your day and do you find yourself maybe burning out, feeling like you've just worked way too damn hard and you have no time to rest? You know, you have this feeling like there's always a go mode. Your to do list is just a mile long. It's this thing I think about often. It's like the paradox of productivity. You know, we feel like we get a lot of stuff done done when we are just hard nose grinding it out, you know, staying up late, getting back to things right away and always, you know, always on feeling like there's we, we're productive when we're in motion but in all reality it's, I've found it's the complete opposite of things.

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Had a lot going on on the personal side. And I was welcoming in, luckily, a very healthy daughter of mine, second daughter, and she is amazing and beautiful and I was connected and I was focused, but I wasn't as focused or prepared for that time as I want it to be. And, you know, if I were to go back and do it all over again, I would have had planned. I would have you know, kind of prepared not only myself, my team, my partners, my clients, all the people around me to help support me in that. Because there's. There's this mental. There's an emotional shift. All this stuff is needed to break the cycle of the doing. And really that's the hustling. And so, you know, and. And not always lost. So luckily, you know, I kept myself sane. I just ended up working way too much during that period of time in, you know, last December where I just didn't want to do that much work. But you know what? Luckily, I cannot complain. There was so much happening on the. Obviously had a great, you know, time with my new daughter and, and my. My existing daughter, but my. My older daughter, we were all there. We were present and happy, but at the same time, I wasn't fully disconnected like I wanted to be because work was still lingering. It was in the back of my mind. So if I were to say, you know, I was there fully present and everything, yes, I. I was. But at the same time, maybe that's a kind of a no or, you know, there was. There was some lingering stuff. So what I've found, because I reflected a lot on this, is that we need to really release this whole mental attachment of doing. And there needs to be this shift. And it's kind of like an emotional shift. We really need to do this to commit to ourself and being intentional about, like, okay, so is there a big date coming up? Maybe it's the birth of someone, you know, someone that's going to be arriving into your family. Maybe it's something else. Maybe you're Planning a big event. It could be your wedding, could be some kind of trip that you're taking, something that you really want to be fully present. And you know that this pause in your life and specific word meaning pause.

It'S time for you to commit to that. Because us as entrepreneurs, we're so driven. There's so much that we know we can do, and our brain, our mental space is like, we start to come up with solutions, and there's so many things that we could see us as entrepreneurs, especially now at the digital age and AI and all these things happening so fast, our brains literally will not turn off unless we. We are deliberate and intentional and actually commit to this break in the action, to slow down and disconnect, disconnect from screens and cameras and phones and, you know, go on do not disturb mode and don't feel bad about it. I think that's the big thing, is a lot of us entrepreneurs, not only do we get caught up and swept up in the motions of the doing, AKA the Hustle, which is only half of the title of this podcast or the show name, Hustle and Flowchart. It's not all about the Hustle. It's not all about the Flowchart and that side of things either. But I don't know, I almost say that it might be a little bit more than the Hustle, because I feel like that's the foundation. And I say I feel because it's genuinely a feeling, it's not a knowing thing. And we've all had these stories where we step away from the computer, the screens, we go outside, we go on a walk. There's a reason why so many people say, oh, man, everything just comes together when I go outside and I move my feet or I lay down, or I maybe just have a talk with someone, maybe myself, you know, on these walks or these talks, and just getting out of the normal, you know, everyday motions of work. So in doing this, I'll go to my trip in a little bit and I want to give you some practical tips. But a big thing that with this podcast, Hustle and Flowchart podcast, I really love to anchor in the fact that us as driven people, entrepreneurs and folks, it doesn't just stop in our business. It goes in all aspects of our life. I don't know if I'm the only crazy one, and I don't want to say I'm not labeling myself as crazy, but at the same time, it's not like our driven minds and actions stop at our business. Like, it continues on in all aspects of our life, into our family life, to our kids, to our dogs, to our friends and family. And, you know, we owe it to ourself to take a moment to just breathe and slow it down a notch and to start to really feel what is the thing that we need? Is it to do more or is it to take a slow intentional break and pause, to maybe recalibrate? It could be the smallest little pause. It could be a tiny 5 minute, 10 minute break in our day, or it could be a week, it could be two, it could be a month, it could be a whole summer vacation. Whatever it is, it's this time that we want to be intentional. So, you know, getting into the practicalness of things, because I really don't think I'm the only one in this yet. When we introduce more of the flow or the flowchart ways of being, rather than just the doing of the hustle and grinding, that's where I feel like things just come together and we're allowing ourselves to just kind of ease into the motion of things to really, to make the connections. Maybe there's someone that you should be or wanted to reach out for a while, but you've just, you know, you've just started doing, doing, doing. Well, I bet that person's name might pop up in on a walk, on a meditation or whatever. It might be just in passing, but, you know, so taking some of these pauses in our day is absolutely crucial. And you know, I'm not great at this and this is partially why I'm creating this episode. And I would say the very first thing to do when planning any of this being or the flow part, you know, the pause of your workday is to be intentional about your time. It could be five minutes, it could be 10 minutes, it could be a week, you know, longer. And it's, it's time. Blocking this stuff is a really good way to really leverage our, and create the time. So literally opening up our calendars. I use Google Calendar for everything. I mean, if you looked at it, it looks crazy. But honestly, like 80% of the stuff on there, man, maybe like 70%. They're time blocks. There's, there's things on there like after 2pm you're not going to be able to schedule a call with me through a booking link. There's certain days of the week that I record podcasts or go guest on podcast. I don't take calls on Friday, you know, I have certain calls lined up with specific people in my team on certain days of the week. Those are all time blocked out. There's also time for me to remind myself to breathe, do breath work, or to work out, or to clear my emails, my asana.

Am I perfect at any one of these? No. But I'm gonna do my damn best. And that's where it starts with, is to time block these things and even time block your breaks. Time block lunch. Time block your naps, time block your walks. I mean, it might be a little crazy to do this, but, like fill your calendar up because you're literally creating these bumpers. I'm gonna pause this really fast and shout out another podcast that's on the Hub Space Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. This one's a podcast hosted by someone I've followed for years. I've read his books. His name is Donald Miller and he hosts the podcast called Business Made Simple. The whole premise there with that show is that it helps take the mystery out of growing your business. And one of the recent episodes is one with Alex Hermosi, someone else I followed for years now. And it's all about talking about, talking about the uncertainties that we're living in right now in 2024 and beyond, but how we can take our business and shore it up. There's actually four principles Alex shares and Don gets into it as well. So definitely recommend checking that out to go. Listen to Business Made simple, hosted by Donald Miller. Wherever you get your podcast, are you juggling multiple tools to run your online business? Well, thankfully there is a better way and it's called Kartra. So with Kartra, boosting your income has never been easier. And, and that's because it's the ultimate all in one platform for online success, offering every tool you need to grow. Imagine building pages, funnels, courses, autoresponders and checkouts all in one place. And now for one affordable price. So the best part about Kartra is that you can automate just about everything. It's like having a team of experts working around the clock all the time, helping you earn more. So now is the time to streamline and scale your business business. Visit hustleandflowchart.com Kartra for a free 30 day trial. Again, that's hustleandflowchart.com K A R T R A for a free 30 day trial. A guy that's been on this podcast a couple times is Nick Peterson. He wrote a whole book on this is to create bumpers in your calendar and in your life. So now you're able to not haphazardly take these breaks or go on this vacation, but you're legitimately blocking this time. And I know this isn't anything groundbreaking, but it's a good reminder, I hope, that if you're not time blocking or filling your calendar with your time, you ain't doing it right. Because this is how you create time. I think it's Einstein, he said something like einstein time. Or maybe he didn't say it, but he kind of talked about it. Is that we create this. You know, we're able to actually do this. I mean like schedule dates with your partners, schedule dates with yourself. That's what this is all about. And this is how you can bring this. It's not only a relationship to yourself, but to others. Scheduled dates with your family, your friends. A lot of us get caught up in the motion of the doing again and it's honestly unfortunate and I think it gets to the well being of a lot of entrepreneurs and driven people is that we get caught up in the motion of so many things and you know, we, it's the all or nothing things. We put a lot on our shoulders to get things done and to get results. And honestly, if the results are great, awesome, we celebrate it. We honestly should be celebrating everything, even our failures. But unfortunately with our failures, sometimes it feels like, well, shit, we didn't do it good enough or it's all, it's my fault or there's just so much pressure and you know, that could be very, very. It could hurt us as driven people feeling like we should be able to get this done and do, do, do and hustle, grind harder. But I think you would grind yourself into a grave if, if you just keep pushing and not schedule time for yourself to pause and slow down. I was looking at some crazy stats and they're not perfect stats, but if you look this up, I mean there's a lot of stats on them or at least articles being written. And I think it's a big piece that this podcast is coming to. You know, I want to really start to highlight more is the mental health and honestly the suicide rate of entrepreneurs. And you know, you see this a lot in the startup culture, Silicon Valley, and for all sorts of reasons. And after Covid, during COVID it's. It was a big issue and it still is increasing from what I can see. And there's no perfect stats, but the suicide rates and the mental health of entrepreneurs and people just like you and I, it ain't good, it doesn't look good. And I think that comes a lot down to not creating time for ourself, not to be mindful, not to have a great relationship with not only ourselves, but with others and to get out of the box that we all live in or work in, that is, or it could be both. And you know, this is crucial for our well being. If you ain't going to be able to last, you know, cutting it out here and work or whatever, I mean it's.

I don't know, it's, honestly, it's hard to have words around this because, you know, I lost my father to suicide about five years ago. He was not an entrepreneur, but.

I see and I understood a lot of patterns about him after he took his life. And a lot of those things can be related to us and what we're doing here as entrepreneurs. There's a lot of patterns that help anyone stay who they are and then when they stop being the person they are and doing the things that, and I'm talking about the flowchart side of things, the things that are being mindful to yourself, things like working out, breath work, mindfulness, rest, connection and you know, relationships with yourself and others.

Things can get dark pretty quick. And the unfortunate thing is is that a lot of entrepreneurs face this because we feel like we're in this world by ourself but we're really not. So at the end of the day, the reason why I'm choosing to take a week off in Kauai or and do a lot more of this and also to become a lot more mindful in how I spend my time during my days. Take a break. It's okay. Go take a walk, you know, go take a nap. Go do some NSDR or some yoga nidra for 20 minutes. I mean these are things that keep me sane. And I, I, I hope that you can practice this yourself as well because work does not make your life. A lot of us define ourselves through our work and I think it's very dangerous and it can, it can definitely lead to burnout. It has us disconnected from our body and our being side and it keeps us in our brain. And going back to this thought of the pause. You know, a good friend of mine and client as well, Lauren Abrams, has 52 weeks of hope is her podcast and she talks a lot about this, about the power of the pause. And there's so many benefits. There's a lot of evidence behind this that shows that taking breaks, leaks, leads to better creativity, problem solving and overall mental health. I mean there's so many case studies of this all around and I Feel it in myself when I take these breaks, when I do breathwork in the morning to not only revitalize my or like get me going in the morning, but also it's like taking that break in the middle of the day. It's a quick reset. I talk about it in the Sally up episode. I did the push up challenge I do every day. So, you know, to help you prepare for this time. And maybe it's a trip or maybe it's just, you know, maybe you're going for a week or maybe you're, you're, you're just trying to take a day off. Like figure out how you can get some help, communicate this to other people, maybe it's to your partner. Communicate to yourself first, you know, like time, block everything on your calendar, but also communicate to your team members, tell them what your intentions are and utilize things that keep communication quality quieter, you know, quiet the communications. Like out of office messages on your email. Like I said, do not disturb on your phone. Do it during the day, do it during your workday. Definitely do it when, you know, you're on trips, when you're not trying to bring that work into things and people get it the more you communicate. And that's exactly what I've done with my team, done with my partners, with customers and clients.

There's a clear delineation of like, this is the digital detox time that I'm choosing to take for myself and I genuinely think you should do the same. That helps with reducing screen time so you don't get those triggers. It reduces any kind of messages, email, texting, calling. And the more that we can quiet this down and then get the support from people around us who are obviously going to feel better. And this thing can extend into, you know, if you're practicing this around maybe a trip like I am, I can also practice this around mini breaks, staycations, or even just like a day, you know, if I don't want the inputs from others, then maybe it's a time to just detox for a day even. And you know, there's so many ways to do this for ourselves. There's. You could do this at your own place, you can go do a local retreat if you want to. I mean, there's so many ways to recharge, but the big thing is to really figure out what lights you up. Maybe it's a hobby, maybe it's an interest, something out of work that helps you feel more connected to yourself and then also connected to others because that's genuinely how you're going to feel better. It's how you're going to stay in the game longer. Because like I talked about, it's all about slowing down to be more productive or to slow down to speed up is another saying as well. But really it's all about the long term game. That paradox of productivity is genuinely slowing down to get more done. And that's not the common thread, it's not what you normally think of when you think of productivity. But this is exactly what's worked for me. It's what I'm doing right now. And that's why my upcoming trip is going to be a success, because I planned for it and I know you can do this yourself, not only for a trip, but for every single day and create that time for yourself. So I want to hear what you think about this. If I'm alone in this, well, you know, I'm going to be that crazy person in Hawaii by myself, having a great time and not thinking about work. But at the same time I love it. I'm going to come back recharged. That's what it does for me every single time when I do this. So I hope the same for you and I. Let me know, you know, email me. I'm just gonna joe@hustleandflowchart.com Let me know what your thoughts are. If you practice this, if you have other ways that you approach work and, and to take this time off and to flow more, I would love to hear it because I want to keep talking about this and let me know if this resonates with you. Okay? All the best. I'll see you when I'm back from Hawaii. Bye.

Sam.