Larry Weidel argues that high performers like Coach Buddy Ryan and presidents Obama and Bush deliberately schedule breaks to recover without tanking their work. The trick: plan your schedule tight enough that you can afford to rest when you need it.
Foreign. Let's talk about taking time off when it's smart to do it and when it's not smart because believe it or not, winners do take time off. Let's take a look. I'm going to tell you about Coach Buddy Ryan of the Jets, Coach Switzer, who was the last coach to take Dallas Cowboys to a Super Bowl. And then we're going to talk about Obama and Bush. Obama, Bush actually, and Clinton and all the rest of them. These are people high profile jobs, but you can't work all the time. Now you got to get this clear in your own mind because you're always going to be criticized when you're in the public, public eye or you have people who stick their nose in your misses. But Coach Ryan, the, the thing with him was he had the audacity before the season started when he knew he couldn't do it anymore. Take off this past Saturday and go and watch his son play. It was a walk on at Clemson. He thought he could get in the game and he wanted to be there to see him. He wanted to spend Saturday evening with his son. Oh my goodness. And all hell broke loose in the media because you know, he's right before the season. He's leaving his team. You know, they're all idiots in the media. He had everything handled. He had handled the cuts, which is what was happening that day. But. And he's putting the family for. He needed a break. He needed to go see his son. He could afford to do it. Barry Switzer took a lot of abuse with when he was with the Dallas Cowboys because he did the same thing on a Saturday. And what he called up the media. He called the media up and said hey listen, do you think Jimmy Johnson was coach before him who won two Super Bowls and that Switzer was judged in comparison to that? Everybody thought Switzer was a goof off and Jimmy Johnson was the genius. Switzer actually wound up winning the super bowl that year. But he called the meeting. He said, look, he said Saturday nights before the game, did you think Jimmy Johnson without going over film, sitting in there studying getting ready game? No, he was up in his room drinking Heineken's, watching college football, taking a breather while his assistant coaches were watching game film and looking for last tendencies and adjustments. He, he was taking a break. He said that's what I was doing. Obama, Bush and Clinton, last three presidents, tremendous pressure. Regardless of what do you think about them as their job or their performance. Let's face it, need to take a break. They all took off on Saturday mornings and went to play golf, took the helicopters, go play golf and say, how dare they do that? Well, hey, everybody's got to have a break. So when is it smart? Winners goof off too. But when is it smart to goof off? Because if you don't understand this, you can put yourself under the pressure of trying to please other people and please yourself, thinking that it's an endless round the clock thing. And for 20, you're going to be 24, 7, 365, relentless. This idea of work around the clock and nobody does it, it's going to put you into a frantic panic mode. You'll be on frantic panic mode. You're going to be ineffective. You're going to be like a gerbil on a treadmill, going faster and faster. I mean, going what you think is faster is faster, but you're going to be going slower and slower and you're going to be ineffective, not getting anything done while you think. And you're going to be driving everybody else around you to do the same thing. It's just unrealistic. So, but you know, you hear about balance, you hear about things like that. How can you afford to have balance? How, how can you afford to take these breathers? What is the answer to being able to do what you need to do but not be in a panic all the time? And that is you've got to get it clear in your mind so you don't drive yourself nuts and you don't drive everybody else around you. When you do take the time, regardless if you're criticized, you know you can do it because you've worked your schedule and you know you can afford it. You know you've earned it. You know it's necessary to recharge and to move to the next stage. You know what's coming up and you want to be ready for it. So the thing is, winners have plans, winners will have schedules. It's like this. If you have, you're driving to Atlanta and you've got 60 miles to go, you've got three hours to get there. Well, if you got three hours to get there, you can afford to pull over the side of the road, have a dinner, maybe do a little sightseeing, take a break, but you got 60 miles to go and you're 45 minutes outside of town, you're going to have to hammer down. You don't, you can't afford it. You didn't start early enough. You didn't manage your time. See, time management, this is about being smart. Time managers where you do your work on a schedule. You do what's supposed to be done, when it's supposed to be done so that you create extra time in your schedule. Every loser I've ever known, when I ask them when you're working, what's your schedule? Losers always think they say a breathless. They say it all the time now, somehow they never notice the discrepancy. It's supposedly they're working all the time, but they're getting nothing done. See, what will a winner do? The difference between a winner is a winner is going to to operate in the biblical way, like Ecclesiastes. A time for every purpose. When you're supposed to work, you work. You don't start late, quit early, goof off. Winners have schedules and they work their schedules so they create time for breaks, time for breathers. If you want to get ahead in life, operate like the winner, operate like they say in Ecclesiastes, have a schedule, have a plan, work it, take it serious so that you can get your your hit your your goals early and have time to take your breaks. When is it smart to goof off again? When you can afford it. And taking breaks, recovery times are not optional, they're necessary. And so you want to plan to be able to have time to do that. When is it smart to goof off? When do winners goof off? When they can afford it.
