MBA1329 How to Reclaim Your Weekends

Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter?

Right? And the best part? They accept Discover.

Except Discover in a little place like this?

I don't think so.

Jennifer.

Oh yeah, huh? Discover's accepted where I like to shop. Come on baby, get with the times.

Right. So we shouldn't get the parachute pants.

These are making a comeback, I think.

Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report.

Ready to save on new Tech it's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster. And with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals foreign. Welcome to the $100 NBA show, the podcast where the show always must go on with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a company business training and community online. And in today's episode, you will learn how to claim back your weekends as you start building your business. You're hustling, you're working hard, you're putting in the long hours. Free time and weekends are things of the past. But as your business starts to get some momentum and some growth and it start doing well and you're starting to actually be a real company here, you start to realize maybe it's time to claim back your weekends so you don't totally burn out. How do you ease back into it without feeling like you're losing grasp of all the work on your plate? This is a topic that gets discussed a lot in entrepreneurship, a question I get asked a lot. It's hard to be go, go, go, working hard, nose to the ground, right? And having to do it for so long and then all of a sudden realize, hey, I can't do this forever. I have people in place now. I got a team. How do I transition out of that and start claiming back my weekends to recharge and come even stronger every Monday morning? That's what we're going to be talking about today. That's what you' to learn. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Many of us after our first few years in business, we start to have systems in place. We start building a team, have people in place to do their jobs and take on More responsibility. And we're not running around like a chicken with their head cut off. We're not doing everything in our business. Our to do list is not 10 miles long. We got organized and things are starting to shape up. The problem is that for the first few years, you're probably hustling so hard, you're conditioned to work long hours. You know, 12, sometimes 15, 16 hours a day. I've been there, no such thing as a weekend, working through the weekends. And that's just been your habit for so long because you had to do that to get some momentum for your business. But bad habits die hard, right? So even though you don't have to do it anymore, you find yourself doing it anyway because you feel you have to do it to keep the business going. Well, here's a news flash for you. That's not sustainable. And that's just the truth. You know, I've been there, I've burnt out. I've seen the effects of my business when I am totally burnt out and how negatively it affects the business. You don't want to get there. What you want to do is realize, okay, I have the resources and the people in place to take care of things. I don't have to do things like before. And you want to ease back into things and start claiming back your weekends. So how do you do that? How do you transition into that? First of all, it's not super simple to just do it cold turkey, like just say, okay, this weekend I'm going to start just taking every weekend off. I'm going to shut off my work brain and, you know, just enjoy and relax and recharge. You and I both know that's not going to happen because you can't even do that on holiday, on vacation, when you're traveling, you feel guilty. You feel the impulse to check emails, to check messages, to check social. You feel like you need to be doing things like that. And you don't really understand the value of a full recharge, of shutting off and being able to go back at it on Monday even stronger. So you got to take it in steps. So full blackout usually is not a good idea. So what I would advise people to do is let's say you want to claim back your weekends. So at the start of the weekend, at the start of the first day off, let's say Saturday, instead of saying, hey, I'm just going to chill, I'm going to relax, I'm not going to look at anything, say to yourself, I'm going to dedicate one Hour, one hour to work. I used to spend all day working. Now I'm just going to do one hour. And what that one hour does, and it gives you confirmation that things are all right. You've checked in with the team, you've checked in with your TO dos. Nothing's incredibly urgent. It gives you the sense of satisfaction that you have done some work and you've done something, you've made a dent into something, and it gives you this concentrated time. It's like, I only have one hour. Whatever gets done in the hour, that's it. And you can plug in this hour whenever you see fit. Personally, what I did is I like to have a kind of a slow morning. I like to wake up, have a slow breakfast, enjoy my breakfast, and then put in that hour after breakfast and then just literally have a timer on my phone. One hour and counting. Check my inboxes, check my messages, you know, go into intercom, you know, my customer service ticket system. See if there's anything assigned to me or any questions that need from me. And often I would find myself, okay, everything's okay. Let me look my to do list. Anything urgent? Not really. Maybe I could do one task that's gonna take me five minutes. And many times I would find myself not really doing work in that hour. Maybe half hour in, I'm going to Facebook. I'm doing kind of like quote unquote, busy work that's not really needed. And I stop myself and say, okay, I don't need to be on my computer right now. I don't need this. Everything is fine and nothing is, you know, burning up. And the good news is I can do this again tomorrow, on Sunday, again, dedicate an hour. So nothing's going to happen in the 24 hours that I can't handle tomorrow. So let me go ahead, shut down my computer. And that's what I do. I shut down my computer. And the next step is critical. So you spent your hour on Saturday, shut down your computer, no more work for the day. And you're going to take your phone and you're going to take all your work apps and you're going to shut off all notifications, no notifications, and never have any work apps on your home screen, on your home desktop, on your phone. So what I mean by that is when you look at your phone, open your phone, you shouldn't see any notifications or any kind of bubbles that, hey, you got pending messages or anything like that. And I recommend anything that's like work social, shut that off to all Notifications, Facebook, Skype, any of that stuff. WhatsApp, if you use WhatsApp for work, shut it off. It's only for personal stuff. You can keep it on because, hey, it's your weekend. But I shut off all my notifications on the weekend, like basecamp, intercom, any of that kind of stuff that deals with work. I don't want to see any messages. You're supposed to be relaxing here. You're supposed to be recharging, and you got to recharge your brain sometimes. That recharge, mentally, emotionally is much more important than the physical recharge that you're experiencing. You got to give your brain a break so you can be ready and equipped so you can make big decisions when you are working. So the plan is one dedicated hour, going to ease into it by saying, hey, I'm going to do some work. I'm going to check in. Everything's okay. If the hour's up, that's it. Shut everything down even before the hour's up. I could shut things down if I. If I'm just like, you know, doing nothing, not doing anything significant. I'm going to take my phone, I'm going to shut off all my notifications that has to do with work, and that's that. Come the next day, Sunday, I'm going to put in another hour whenever that I see fit. I feel comfortable. I have no anxiety. Again, no notifications. Now what this does is come Monday, when you start work, you are ready to get working. You went from working all weekend long not knowing the difference between Saturday and Monday or Tuesday or anything like that. I literally remember not remembering what day of the week it was because they were all the same to me. And that's nothing to be proud of. You shouldn't be doing that. Some people, you know, use busy as a badge. You know, a badge of honor. That's just not sustainable. That says just smart. It's not smart to do that. So what this does is it allows you to feel motivated and excited to really get some big things done on Monday. Wow. I only had an hour on the weekend. I can't wait to tackle this task and this test and this test, because I'll have tons of hours on Monday. And the beauty of restriction is it breeds creativity. It allows you to really feel like, okay, I was restricted. I didn't have time. Now I'm going to have so much more time. I'm going to take so much more advantage of it. And what you also do is you learn how much you can get Done in one hour. When you constrict yourself and say, hey, I only have one hour to get anything done on Saturday. You realize how much you can get done in just one hour if you focus and you shut all distractions off. So you realize, wow, I can get more done with more hours if I'm more focused. So now we talked about the hours and how to ease back into it. And obviously the next kind of phase would be not doing that one hour and really shutting off. On those days of the week, you should have your team trained where they know how to contact you. There's an emergency, so you feel, rest assured, hey, if I'm not being contacted, there is no emergency. So for us, we give our phone number. Just call us if there's an emergency. If there's no emergency, no problem, you know, send us a text if there's, you know, something that you need. Now, that's just the beginning. It's important for you to actually claim back the weekend and to relax and to have a good time to recharge those batteries. And recharging the battery doesn't mean just sleeping all day. That could be your meaning, but it could mean just going out for a great movie, going bowling, enjoying a pickup basketball game with your buddies, grabbing a coffee at the cafe and browsing, you know, the shops, whatever it is. But the point here is, is that you need to have something that is fun and relaxing and is rewarding and puts a smile on your face every weekend. Some activity, least one. I really believe this is important. Now, you can't avoid, you know, doing certain obligations. I'm not here to tell you, hey, never do something that you don't like doing. You know, if you can't avoid that, that's great. But sometimes you have obligations, family obligations, errands, grocery shopping, whatever it is, right? And you got to get those things done. But in order for you to feel relaxed and that you actually had a weekend, you have to make sure you schedule something on the weekend that gives you joy, that relaxes you, makes you feel good. And it doesn't have to be a full day activity. It could be a few hours, it could be an evening, it could be date night. It could be something as simple as walking to the local park, putting a blanket down and reading a couple chapters of your favorite book. Or you could treat yourself to a foot massage, or you can pick up a new hobby. Or it could just be something totally guilt free, you know, just totally like, hey, I'm going to just take a deep dive for A few hours into a video game I've been meaning to play or binge watch a show that I've been dying to see. Give yourself a bit of guilty pleasure. Give you something that's just for you, that makes you feel relaxed, it makes you feel alive and makes you feel like you're living. Doesn't necessarily have to be productive, but give yourself that every weekend as much as possible. You have other obligations, but give yourself a few hours where you do feel like you enjoyed yourself.

Thy ticket, Lady Jennifer of Coolidge. Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my Discover card. They accept Discover at Renaissance Fairs? Yeah, they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Get it with the times. With the times. You're playing the loot. Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right?

Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on the February 2025 Nielsen report. ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people to wrap.

Up today's lesson, it's not easy to go from go, go, go to just like playing relax and chill. You got to ease yourself into it. You have to have a plan. And you need to realize it's not just about doing nothing or not working. It's also about having fun. It's about having activities planned that give you joy. These things are just not going to happen by themselves. You have to plan them, you have to schedule them, you have to organize them. And again, it could be something inexpensive. It doesn't have to be something that costs you money. It doesn't have to be productive. It could be a guilty pleasure. It could be binge watching something. It just allows you to enjoy something guilt free. Free and claim back your weekends so you can feel totally charged. Your team, your business, your customers are going to thank you for because you're going to be coming in with a fresh head, fresh brain, new motivation, new energy every week, giving yourself that boost. And that's important because it's recognizing you're not a machine. And you need to recharge the batteries. Guys, thank you so much for listening to today's episode and listening to my under the weather voice. But if you love this show, let us know in an iTunes rating review. Also Hit Subscribe Right now, wherever you're listening to this podcast, whether it's on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Radio, Overcast, Himalaya, whatever app you use to listen to podcasts, hit subscribe. It's your way to show other people that, hey, I love the show and it's a way for you to automatically get updates as soon as we release an episode. It's available right on your device. All right, before I go on, I'll leave you with this Self management is one of the most important skills for any successful entrepreneur. Being able to manage yourself, your time, your energy, and frankly, your mood. Being into it. Being able to understand that you have to prepare yourself, to get motivated and to feel recharged. I always say that you know business. 90% of it is a mental game. You can acquire skills, you can learn things, you can gain experience. But you got to be willing to understand that what's between your two ears, that brain of yours needs to be trained and needs to be in good shape so it can serve your business and your customers. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

ADP knows anything can change the world of work. Like what if a blocked shipping port caused a worldwide coffee shortage? Suddenly, businesses are scrambling to manage an increasingly drowsy workforce. Productivity slips 20% just due to the extended time it takes to conduct a job interview while yawning. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything. ADP always designing for people.