Patrick Mosher spent 30 years in consulting running on low sleep and high passion until chronic exhaustion caught up with him. He shares four recovery practices: the 20-20-20 eye rule, 50-minute brain breaks with movement, weekly innovation days with no agenda, and a three-week July vacation he calls his Happy New Year.
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Yesterday I delivered my Wisdom Mastery Monthly program. I love the community, love the interaction. I spend quite a bit of energy setting it up, showing up, and following up. It's a passion of mine to serve my Wisdom Mastery community, and I'm exhausted. Over my 30-year consulting career, almost every project evolved into a passion project. I cared about meeting milestones and deadlines. I cared about the quality of deliverables. Mostly though, I cared about the people, my clients, my team. And over 30 years, I averaged about 5 hours of sleep a night, and that's only if I include weekends. When people asked why I didn't suffer from jet lag when I flew all over the world, I told them I was so constantly exhausted, my body just didn't register jet lag. If you're a consultant, entrepreneur, executive, or mom, or, or, or, You know what I'm talking about, right? We run and we run. It's what we do to excel. It's what we do to survive. Passion fuels us, true, but our bodies also keep track. It keeps track on its own scorecard. Is yours keeping score on your kidneys, your liver, around your middle? And most certainly, your brain keeps score, giving you clear indicators showing up as Doubt, fatigue, and stress. Are you feeling any of those lately? Yeah, hard not to these days. Personally, my body keeps track with my lungs. When I stress my body, I breathe lighter using only the upper part of my lungs. What emotion does my body equate with shallow breathing? Fear. 30 years of shallow breathing. Oh, yikes. But there's a simple solution, and it's called recovery time. Athletes know to perform at a world-class level, they need a world-class recovery time baked right into their schedule. If you want to be world-class, allocate world-class recovery time. Here are 4 of my recovery time practices. Experiment with 1 or 2 of them. Recovery practice time number 1. The 20-20-20 rule. Every 20 minutes, look up from your desk and focus on an object at least 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds. Ophthalmologists call this the 20-20-20 rule. Get it? Eye doctors, 20/20 vision, 20-20-20 rule. It took me a little while to get that one. Recovery time practice number 2, brain breaks to reduce brain breaks. Give your brain a rest. Every 50 minutes, stand up and move around. Swing your arms, jump up and down, do some sit-ups or air squats. This activates your circulatory system and delivers oxygen to your brain. Recovery time practice number 3: innovation days. Allocate one day a week with zero agenda. I call these my innovation days. Can't block out an entire day? Then block out a few hours just for you. And don't fill it with ketchup tasks because ketchup are empty calories anyway. Do something new, creative, empowering, serene, harmonic. Fill your soul. And then recovery time practice number 4: Happy not January New Year. Every year for 24 years, I took 3 consecutive weeks of vacation days in July. Those 3 weeks zeroed out my work stress bank. Once a year, I came back to work refreshed and ready to face another year of challenges. I celebrated my new year in August. Treat yourself to an annual vacation. Do something not related to the normal functions of your brain. Yesterday, I delivered my monthly program to my Wisdom Mastery Community. A satisfying, fulfilling, and fun day. And I'm tired with a capital T. It's time for recovery time.
