0315 | Gettin' (un)Busy: 5 Steps to Kill Busyness and Live with Purpose, Productivity, and Peace with Garland Vance

This is garland Vance from advancedleadership live and you're listening to EA interviews.

EA interviews. Episode 315 inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's expert Authority effect interview. I want to be productive. I want to be successful. You want to be all these things. You want to grow the business. Look at me. I can work 16 hours a day. Look at me. I can work 18 hours a day. Oh, 18. I do nothing but work 22 hours a day. All of these things are perpetrated by society. And I have never liked it even since high school. And that is why I'm so excited to have time saving hero himself an author of the brand new book Garland Vance. We're going to be talking about how to get unbusy. One of my favorite quotes is stop the glorification of busy. So many people think If I'm working 22 hours a day, if I'm working 10 hours a day, if I, if I just do anything but kill, if, if I do nothing but kill myself, I'll be successful. And Garland's doctor told him his lifestyle was going to kill him if he didn't kill it first. So I'm going to bring him up right after we thank our sponsor. So you've got your book mostly written, but now what? Visit getmybusinessbookpublished.com today to learn how you can publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's getmybusinessbookpublished.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Garland Vance. Garland, how are you feeling today?

I'm feeling great, Mario. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to talk with you and your audience about getting unbusy.

Well, I appreciate that. I'm excited to relax because this is, I don't really consider this work and I definitely don't want it to be busy work. So what was it like when your doctor told you, you need to cut this out, otherwise it's gonna kill you?

Well, it was simultaneously terrifying and infuriating. It was terrifying because, you know, you don't want your doctor to look at you and say, garland, I'm concerned for your life. And that's exactly what he told me. He said, if you don't kill busyness, it's, it's going to kill you. So it was terrifying, but at the same time it was infuriating because I kept looking around and I was like, there's got to be a better Reason that I'm having all these chronic migraine headaches and heart palpitations and all of these physical problems. It can't just be that I'm too busy and I didn't really want to slow down, but I also didn't want to die.

Well, I can appreciate that. And I know in your background you worked with a 9,000 person church 15 years ago as a director with Chick Fil A, which is awesome. I mean, was there any one thing that contributed to it or would you just say you're like many others that are just ambitious?

Yeah, for me it was a combination of so many things. And that was one of the things my doctor asked. He said, you know, Garland, you tell me that you're busy, tell me what you mean. And I said, well, you know, I work 50 to 60 hours a week. I am working on this doctorate in leadership for 10 to 20 hours a week. I have three young kids. I'm helping our church grow and create new leadership programs. And as I just began to unfold everything, that's when it hit my doctor that he was really concerned. And that's actually what busyness is, is it's an over commitment to too many good commitments. None of us are busy because of bad things. We're busy because we have so many good things going on that it ends up creating a bad life.

That is a huge expert authority insight. And I think a lot of people need to hear that again because.

I felt that way before and you know, it was, well, I would say a few years ago now, but man, time's flying when you're having fun. We get that. We get so many good things and opportunities. You know, everything is an opportunity. And it's like when, when do you, you don't want to say no to them, but that's where the real power is. Because like you're saying, if you're just saying yes to everything and you're over committed, how effective were you doing? Any one of those?

Yeah, not very effectively. You know, I thought as a type A personality, the harder I worked, the better my results would be. And the reality was I thought I was an amazing dad and I was okay at best. And I wasn't doing anything with excellence because I was doing so many things that it could all just be mediocre.

Jack of all trades, Master Denun syndrome.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So tell me about your book getting unbusy. Why, why, why'd you want to write that?

Yes. So when my doctor told me, you know, that busyness was killing me, I'm working on this doctorate in leadership. And I, I just had this thought of if I'm struggling with busyness and I'm in leadership, I know that others must be struggling with this as well. And, and so I began to do the research because everybody talks about how busy they are. They act like it's a really great thing. I was doing the same thing. And so I started doing this research. And what I realized is that busyness is the modern day smoking. You know, in like olden days, like my grandparents time, it was thought that smoking was really good for you. And so everybody smoked and it was culturally acceptable. And then all of a sudden the, you know, surgeon general comes out with these warnings that it's actually killing you, it's doing all of this damage. And it changed the way that we perceived smoking. And I think busyness is the modern day smoking. And that's one of the reasons I wrote the book, is because I was sitting there and I was like, we're all huffing and puffing on this cigarette of busyness and we don't know the damage that it's doing to us physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, and even in our productivity.

Now, I want to ask you about a comment I made earlier because I could be off my rocker and completely wrong, and if I am, I'm willing to admit it. But I said I believe this is perpetrated by society, and I do since high school. I'm like, this is stupid. That's a whole other topic. But what's your take on it? Do you really think that society, you know, makes it sound like you'll be rewarded the more you do and just, you know, I hear two types of conversations among people I just overhear in crowds and stuff, and it's usually like, oh, you wouldn't believe how bad I'm feeling. And then someone else is like, well, let me tell you about how I almost lost my legs. Or it's like they're always trying to one up, like who's worse off. And the second one is like, oh, I cut the lawn today. And I'm thinking, well, why don't you have a service? But whole other thing, I cut the lawn today. Well, I cut the lawn and the roof and I built a new house. And then someone else is like, yeah, well, I built a street. And someone else is like, well, I built a state. It's just like these one upmanships contest because there's another word I could use, but I'm not going to. But. But it's just like where do you think this stems from.

Yeah. So I think it really comes from two significant areas. The first, I think you're absolutely right, Mario, is that we live in a society that really tries to one up one another. And so how do we respond when somebody says, how are you doing? Oh, I'm so busy. Oh, yeah, well, you're busy. Look how busy I am. Right. So then we get in this rat race of trying to be busier than the other person. But there's another place that I think it comes from, and that's really a deep seated identity issue. See, if I'm not busy, then something must be intrinsically wrong with me. That's kind of the way that our minds think is to be busy is to be important and unbusy people must not be very important. And so when somebody asks me how I'm doing, the quickest way for me to tell them that my life is, is meaningful and purposeful is for me to say I'm really busy. And then that lie begins to perpetuate itself.

Can you dive deeper in that? That is fascinating. And I want to hear more on the identity piece specifically because it sounds like people are searching for significance. And that's one way anyone can do it. And the keyword I picked up on was you said the lie.

Yeah, it's a lie. And so one of the things that I actually call it in the book is I call these inhibiting beliefs. And there are these three inhibiting beliefs that drive us into busyness. And it's I need to be more, I need to do more, and I need to get more. And the more that we believe those lies, those inhibiting beliefs, the further we're going to go into busyness. And so this, this idea of I need to be more is fascinating. In fact, this is the part of the book that took me longer to research and to articulate than any other part because I was trying to understand what is the psychology of busyness. And so let me just give you an example. Maybe please do the best way to do it. So, so obviously I'm a lover of books. I love reading books. So anytime I go into a bookstore, I'll normally go into the self help section, the managers and leadership section, and I start looking at titles. And as soon as I start looking at titles, I'm confronted with the reality that I'm not living up to all of the potential that I have. Right. I see a book about being a great dad and I'm like, well, I could be a better dad. And I see a book about being a great leader, and I'm like, well, I could be a better leader. And I see a book about, you know, being a great speaker, and I'm like, well, I could be a better speaker, all those things. So I'm confronted with the reality that I haven't met my own potential, my own reality of what I want to live up to. And as soon as I feel that, then the immediate reaction is shame. Something is wrong with me. What is wrong? That I'm not as good in these areas as I should be. And as soon as I feel that shame, the only response that I have is in order to deal with that shame, I need to do something. I need to read this book. I need to follow all of the principles in the book. I just need to do something. And so all of this shame drives us to do more, to try to get more, to try to be more. So there's just this deep seated identity issue that's really driving a lot of the busyness because we look at ourselves in the mirror and we're like, I don't have the six packs that I want to have. You know, I'm not as great in every area of life as I want to be. And so the only thing I know to do is, is to work harder, work longer, and stay busy.

Wow, that's powerful. What's the real solution?

Yeah, so I think the solution is actually to get unbusy now. Now, one of the first things that you have to do is you have to deal with those inhibiting beliefs and replace those with empowering truths. And for so many of us, those empowering truths are things like, I don't have a six pack of abs right now and I'm okay with that. Or I'm a really good parent. I'm just not the best parent in the world and I'm going to make mistakes. Or I, you know, living with even there's this inhibiting belief. I think a lot of entrepreneurs and type A people think of, I have to work 16 or 18 hours a day. And we've got to replace those inhibiting beliefs with these empowering truths of actually, the less time I work, the more focused I can be. And so we start building boundaries around life. So that's a big part of it is to get down into this inhibiting belief section of our lives and to root that out.

I love everything you're saying. And I want to say that the parenting thing, I would say is subjective too, because.

You know, entrepreneurial, you could argue, well, who has the bigger Business who has this, that, the other thing. But maybe that's not the goal. Same thing with parenting is like, is it to be able to provide anything you want for the kids or is it to be there for them? Because there's a lot of people that make arguments, both sides. I think one's better than the other, but you know what I mean, it's like these different levels. Will you see this book of someone teaching, and this is true for any book or subject, you see this thing where someone got to this other level. And I think a lot of people don't even ask themselves, do I even want to aspire to be that?

Absolutely. Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. And I think a big part of it, even with parenting, is beginning to get outside of ourselves and to say, what does it look like, you know, what's the end goal of parenting? Is the end goal of parenting for me to raise responsible adults or is the end goal of parenting for me to become best friends with my children? There's actually been a pretty significant amount of research that parenting today is adding even before work from home, but now, especially with work from home, that parenting is adding significant amounts of stress to parents lives and to children's lives. Because we're trying so hard to turn our kids into our best friends instead of trying to raise them. And it's actually leading to a condition known as depersonalization where we begin to actively resent and dislike the very people that, that we're supposed to care about and love the most.

Wow, that's an eye opener.

So is the solution not to be best friends with them?

Well, I would say the solution. You know, I'm no parenting expert. I'm still trying to figure this out as well. But I do think it's changing the model. If the, if the goal of my parenting is to become best friends with my children, then then that's a pass fail quiz, right? I'm going to get to adulthood. And if they're not my best friend, then I as a parent and I don't think that's a good solution for us. Rather it's to think in terms of what does it look like to raise a responsible adult who creates and contributes to society more than he consumes and or she consumes from society. That begins to change the model. It's not a win loss model anymore. It's okay. There's kind of a target that I'm aiming at that, that I can move them toward, but ultimately they're responsible to choose it.

It's A whole new paradigm. And I think that's great.

Well, well, thanks. I, you know, that that's certainly not what getting unbusy is. As folks all know, I do have some, some areas of where I talk about family, but I think so often it's these inhibiting beliefs that keep us trapped in this stress and this overwhelming exhaustion. Whether it's work or whether it's parenting, whatever it might be, it's a busyness is ultimately a self inflicted injury.

Yeah, I know the book's focus isn't on it, but I want, I appreciate you diving deeper because I see a lot of people and personally I wouldn't want to look back 80 years into the future and be like, wow, I got to whatever level it was in business and I have no one to share it with. And I think there's certain people in generations that subscribe to that and now they're seeing it later in life. And it's. I don't even want to say anything negative, even jokingly, because it really.

I.

Pray for them and I sincerely don't want them to be feeling that because.

It'S sad and lonely and I know there's more to life than just, you know, in the whole thing. Oh, so you made the success model, you know, using dollar signs. You made how much money? Well, there's someone that made 10 times as more. 10 times. You know what I. And it's, it's so arbitrary and subjective and it's like there's a lot of people miserable at every level. So what is the end goal? And I think family's important of that. And I'm glad you touched on it and I'm glad you're addressing, you know, getting unbusy because everyone has the same 168 hours. So take me through the five steps that you do in the book. Where should someone start?

Sure. So I take people through five steps and this was based on. I ended up doing my entire doctoral research around this because it just became so important for me to figure out on my own. So the first step is you have to decide that busyness isn't worth it. Look at the research of what it's doing to us, physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, and what it's doing to our productivity, what is it doing to companies and to organizations and make a decision of are you going to stay busy or are you going to live an unbusy life? So the first step is you decide. The second step is you deconstruct. And that's where you begin to deconstruct some of those inhibiting beliefs that I talked about earlier, as well as some of the commitments in our lives that keep us trapped in busyness. The third step is you begin to design your life. And one of the biggest parts of design is you change the way that you design your weeks so that you design it with relationships and recreation and rest and reflection. Because what busy people try to do is they take those, those four, I call them the core four. They take relationships, rest, recreation, and reflection, and then try to cram those into what my grandmother would call the nooks and crannies of life. But busy people don't have any nooks or crannies. Life is just overflowing for them. And so you actually put those core four relationships, rest, recreation, and reflection in your life first and then build everything else around those. Fourth step is to develop. That's all about developing some habits and some even calendar practices around busyness. Busyness isn't a calendar issue. It's really kind of a commitment issue. And so you don't really need to even deal with your calendar until step four. And then the final step is, is you draw others in. And this is where you begin to invite in your family and your friends and your co workers and you invite them into an unbusy life together. And I'll tell you, this is one of the best parts, because we've been, as a family, have been able to invite people into an unbusy life with us. And so we have time and energy to spend with the people that we care about the most and in the projects and in the hobbies that we enjoy the most.

And I'm just going to ask. They're also getting higher quality time with you. It's not the leftovers.

Absolutely. And that doesn't mean that I'm, you know, my kids have undivided attention 100% of the time. I still have to be, you know, have to say no to them. And sometimes I have to say, dad, it's got to go to work right now. But from where I was in 2013, where my doctor was like, I'm concerned for your life, to where we are now and the opportunity to go play tennis with them. We're terrible at tennis, but we're learning it together for the sheer enjoyment of learning it, or whether it's going on hikes with them or just spending time, I make sure that when my youngest son wakes up that every morning that I'm spending the first 30 minutes of his day with him. Those are things that never Would have happened way back in 2013 when I was stressed and exhausted all the time.

When you were doing all that in 2013.

Did you ever think you would be talking about this? Was it even on your radar? What led you to it beforehand? Give us a glimpse of life before 2013.

Yeah, so. So before 2013, it was. It was nonstop. You know, I wanted to be great at everything and start a side hustle and do another side hustle to my side hustle. I was just so driven. Everything. So I would, you know, if there was a minute that was free, I had to be doing something, and it had to feel productive. And I think this is one of the myths that I believed so often, is that I wasn't stewarding my time and I wasn't stewarding my life well, unless I was productive every waking minute. And so only sleeping, you know, four or five hours a night, just doing everything in my power to squeeze as much out of life as I could. And really, the problem was I was squeezing life out rather than. Than squeezing joy and squeezing enthusiasm out of life. I was just squeezing the life out of my life. Wow.

It's. You know, even God rested on the seventh day.

Yeah.

And absolutely. You know, I can't argue with that one, because there's times in the past a lot less now. But in the past, it was like, I felt that way. You know, I. I'm ambitious. I want to do this, I want to do that. And it's like, you really are gonna go 20, 22 hours a day. And, you know, there's this meme I've seen, and I'm probably gonna get it wrong, but it's like, wow, I finally got eight hours of rest, eight hours of sleep. Best week of my life.

And, you know, especially when I was. I don't want to say a lot younger, but when I was younger, it was just. I just remember that distinctly. Oh, you got three. Well, I got four in a business. Well, I got five and two businesses, and that was the truth. When I was 18 and 19, I was working three jobs and had two companies. I was selling off one. Actually, at one point, there may have been a crossover for three. I was selling off one and starting two others.

Wow.

And it was just like, what more can I do? And it's not the answer. So I love talking about this subject because it does hit close to home, and there's much more effective ways to do it. So thank you for sharing on that. What would you. I got one more question for you before we go to the Imperfect action round. And it involves, I don't know if you saw it when I was trying to pull it over, but it's the wheel of whatever.

You want. Yellow or black?

Yellow.

Okay, so I could do this either way. Do you want to go into the future or do you want to go back in time?

Oh, I like the future better.

There we go. What do you think your life's going to look like 20 years from now now that you're incorporating this principle?

Yes, that's a great question. So.

I actually write this down every morning. I write down my. Not my 20 year goals, but I write down my 10 year goals. And so here's a few things that I think is. First, in 20 years that I think that I'm going to still be leading a company and I'm still going to be speaking, but I'm going to take 150 days off every year. Like no work, just 150. I'm going to enjoy hiking and walking and doing things. Second, I think I'm going to be traveling pretty significantly to see people that I love, to go to places that I want to go to be with people that I want to be with. But I think more than that, my hope is that I will be able to sit on my porch at that time with my grandkids, which is a little shocking, but I believe that I will. I have truly changed the trajectory of our family and I hope and pray that I've changed the trajectory of society in large part where we can look at people and look around our neighborhood and see that there are people who are sitting on their porch and they're spending time with their most important people. And they wouldn't have done that if they hadn't gotten un busy. So that's a dream of mine in the next 20 years is to make busy a bad word in our society.

I like that. Thank you for sharing. That is fantastic. That's fantastic. We're going to come back with the imperfect action round right after we thank our sponsor titles, cover designs and promotion. Oh my. You are all excited to achieve your goal, maybe even dream of becoming an author to serve more people with your business. But it's turning out to be a lot more than you expected, huh? I get it. I've done it numerous times personally. Visit getmybusinessbookpublished.com today to take the first step on making this process enjoyable, dare I even say fun, and most definitely profitable. Your business and audience depend on it. But you know what? Don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having.

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I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful.

In getting me where I needed to.

Go with promoting my books. Rocio there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. If you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficini or Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit getmybusinessbookpublished.com today to take the first step and I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that's getmybusinessbookpublished.com and we're back with the imperfect action round. Garland, are you ready to take imperfect action? Sure. I got three questions for you. 60 second or less answers. The first one is what is the fastest path to the cash?

The fastest path to the cash is robbing a bank. It's also the fastest path to robbing a bank. I think the fastest path in life is to be willing to take the slow lane and to do it well, to do it right, to systematize it. And as you do that, you're going to be able to scale much faster.

I love your answer, but I'm going to add an extra 60 seconds because I want to know more about this bank robbery. Are we talking like online offline? How many man, maybe woman in the crew, Helicopters, boats, what's going on?

If, if I give you all of the, all the details, then I might, you know, reveal a little too much from my previous life.

Okay.

Number two is something about the prospects and it's fantastic. As I've said it 300 plus times. What is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it? Hmm.

I think the biggest problem that I see prospects making, which is actually a big chunk of my next book, is failing to develop the leaders around them. So I work with a lot of CEOs and a lot of business leaders. And I just see this consistent problem of complaining about how overwhelmed they are, but having no action that they're taking to develop the leaders around them and figure out how to do that. And so when you begin to do that, you begin to really minimize a lot of that frustration and stress that you're feeling because you're, you're delegating so much authority and responsibility.

Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

So this is going to be a fuzzy answer. I genuinely believe it's to love people. In fact, part of our book, part of our core values is, you know, we talk about, we want great processes that solve people's problems, but it's to genuinely love other people. That's become a core commitment of our business is if we get to the end of, you know, one year with a client and we can't say that we love them, we're probably not going to work with them any further. Because love tends to be the thing that transforms people's lives the most and ends up having lifetime value.

Love that. There's no better answer, I don't think. What books would you recommend to Expert Authority World?

Oh man, that's a mean question. I love books. So I just finished Donald Miller's Business Made simple, which I think is absolutely phenomenal, especially for somebody who did not come from a business background. I think it's outstanding. I would highly recommend Leadership and Self Deception by the Arbinger Institute.

That's.

I reread that book every year. And would also recommend Influence, which normally sits right above me on my shelf. But I took it off the shelf to reread it to this last week. But it's really, how do you influence people in a multi directional way that gets the results you're going for while still building the relationships with them?

And who's that by?

That's a great question. You know what, I may have to get up and check. Hold on, here it is. Okay, I got it.

You might not have had a whole lot of people do that. So it's by multiple authors. So Patterson, Grinney, Maxfield, McMillan and Switzerland. Influencer. Power to change anything.

Well, it sounds like a great suggestion. Thank you for it. But it's also, when it was one word, I'm like, oh, that's going to be a lot of search results on Amazon.

That's true.

We need to narrow this down.

Yes. So thank you for that. Where would you like people to learn more?

Yeah, I'D love you to go for them to go to Advance Leadership. No D on the end there. Not advanced but Advance. My last name is Vance advancedleadership Live. Love you to find out more there or Mario, I got something special for for your group. If you go to killbusy.com I will actually send you a free copy of Getting Unbusy if you'll pay for the shipping and handling.

Oh fantastic. I will definitely make sure that's on your show notes page. Thank you for that. Yes, it has been an absolute pleasure. I had a lot of fun with this. Thank you for all your insights and your time.

My pleasure Mario. Thanks so much for your time. Love what you're doing.

Well, thank you again and Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 247 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With the Expert Authority Effect publishing method, it's easier and more profitable than ever. Visit getmybusinessbookpublished.com today and take the first step to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book. Eight weeks. Visit getmybusinessbookpublished.com and take the first step knowing it will be your very best and you're leaving it all on the field. Oh yeah, and it's also free. Once again, that's getmybusinessbookpublished.com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview, video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.