How To Slow Down and Get More Done

Welcome to today's episode. Today I'm going to teach you how to do less, how to slow down, but also how to get more done. Let's go ahead and dive in. I started in personal development when I was 19 years old. And I started my first business 17 years ago. And I was 20 years old. I'm 38 now, so it's about to be 18 years since I started my first business. And when I was younger, the only thing that I knew was go, go, go, go, go. And it was something that I built into myself over time. Before I started my first business and, you know, discovered self development, I was incredibly lazy. And it's just, I had no direction, nothing to be excited about, nothing to want to put work into. And when I found something that I was passionate about, the only thing that I knew is that if I wanted to be successful, I had to be going at all times. I had to be working all the time. And in the moments when I was at home in the shower, my brain had to be thinking about work all of the time. There was almost no off switch. And from basically 21 to 25 years old, I worked around 110 hours a week every single week. So it was basically on average it was about 9am, I'm sorry, 7am to 9pm or 11pm I was in my office every single day, seven days a week. And so it was like 7am to 9pm, 11pm every single day. Because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. I thought that's what that was the only way to get to success. Now I can tell you at this point in time, it's difficult. Definitely not. And it's actually the fastest way to burn yourself out. I completely burned myself out. And I went from running a super successful business to running it into the ground because I was just done with it. I didn't want to do it anymore. And now that I've been doing this for, you know, 17, 18 years at this point, and I'm 38, a secret to success that I have found that I don't hear anyone really ever talking about is rest. And I'm not talking about taking a nap. Sure, you take a nap if you like, that's completely fine. But what I'm really talking about is there's, there's two sides to your, to your nervous system, right? So your nervous system, you have a sympathetic nerve part of your nervous system and you have the parasympathetic nervous system, right? The sympathetic. There is no good or bad in this Too. Just so you know, sympathetic nervous system. That's the side of you that is fight or flight. That is the side of you that is go, go, go, go. Running from something, whatever it might be, fight or flight. That is. For me, the sympathetic nervous system was the part of me that was turned on 110 hours a week and it was go, go, go, go, go. The other side of that is the parasympathetic nervous system. And parasympathetic nervous system is rest, relaxation. And the way I like to schedule my days now, and I actually have been doing now quite recently, and it's working really, really well for me over the past year or so is this is the way I like to think about it. If you go into the gym and you work out, chances are you don't work out and you're there for an hour, chances are you're not working out in straining your body all one hour that you're there, right? It is a strain and a rest for a minute, a strain and a rest for a minute and a strain and a rest for a minute. That is actually how I plan out my days now. And so what I find is I can go from. It's, it's a lot easier to, to go for, for sprints throughout the day for me than it is to try to act like it's a marathon, like it has been where it's like I gotta have my sympathetic nervous system and I gotta be go, go, go, go, go for nine hours a day. It's a lot easier if I'm go, go, go, go, go for a sprint and I get a whole lot more done and I go further in that sprint for about 45 minutes to an hour and then I take about a 5 or 10 minute break and then I go, go, go, go, go for an hour and then I take about a 5 or 10 minute break and I'll tell you what I do on those breaks just to kind of help reset my nervous system. But really what it comes down to is taking that break to allowing my brain to rest for a minute to be alone with my thoughts. Because if you were just going to the gym and you were just lift heavy the entire time, you, you're going to weaken that muscle very quickly in that gym session that you have. But if you go, go, go, go, rest, go, go, go, go, rest, you can lift a lot more reps. It's the exact same thing as you can, you can put in a whole lot more reps and more quality reps of work and getting things done when it is sprint rest. Sprint rest. And so it's basically the rest is just simply existing with nothing that you have to do. And now I know if I were to rewind 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and try to tell this to Rob, he would be like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Because those five or 10 minutes off, I'm not being productive. And that's the way I used to have it in my head. And I used to think that about meditation. And I hear people say it all the time to me with meditation, where it's like, in those 10 minutes of meditating, I could have been productive. So it doesn't seem like meditation is productive to me. But if you can sprint harder and further because of the fact that you rested, doesn't that mean that the rest is a really important part of the sprint? Of course it is. The problem is, is that we think, oh, I'm not being productive. I could be doing something else. And so this is really hard for a lot of people. This is really, really hard for me. Just to give you an idea, lots of people, myself included, are go, go, go, go, go. Because they struggle with being alone with their thoughts. They struggle to be able to turn it off. You know, for me, it was a struggle to turn it on until I found something I was passionate about, and then it was a struggle to turn it off. And I was like, damn, what's the healthy balance? And that's what we all really need to find. There was a study that was done, and I've said this before on the podcast, and they gave people an option to either be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes or get an electric shock. Seems like it'd be a pretty simple choice, right? Be alone with your thoughts for 15 minutes or choose electric shock. 30% of women chose electric shock instead of being alone with their thoughts, and 60% of men chose electric shock. Let that one, like, just think about. Let it once. Let that sink in for a second. 30% of women would rather take an electric shock than be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes. And 60% of men would rather take an electric shock than be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes. And you have to realize, one thing that I like to learn a lot from is nature. We're a part of nature. We are. You might live in a house, but you. We humans come from nature. And the world goes through seasons. Humans go through seasons as well. We go through seasons throughout our entire year where things are going good, things are going bad. Things are up, things are down. There's ebbs and flows of life all the time. But there's also ebbs and flows of your day. It's not spring forever, it's not winter forever. You know, in the winter, the trees and the plants have to lose their leaves and contract in order to expand and grow in the spring. A tree has to grow, has to contract in order to grow and expand in the spring, right? It has to contract, has to lose its leaves. But because of the contraction, it's able to grow stronger the next spring. So everything expands and contracts, expands and contracts. You can't always be expanding. You can't. You have to be contracting at some point. And so the same way that there's some weeks that are amazing, there's some weeks that are bad, there's some days that are amazing, there's some days that are bad. Every day that we have, there's expansion, there's contractions, Expansion. Contraction and rest can be a quick 10 minute breath work or meditation in the middle of the day. I've been on this kick for about the past eight months where I'm doing meditation and breath work for about 15 minutes a day, four to five times a day. Just what it looks like for me now. You might go, okay, well, hold on. If he does it four times a day and it's 15 minutes, that's an hour of his day. That could be productivity. No, you have to understand, when I get done with my breath work and meditation and then I go back into working, I am way more productive than if I just go from task to task to task to task, mind you. I understand. I, as I'm saying this, I can feel Rob 15 years ago being like, just be productive. Like you just gotta be productive. Like just yelling at myself. But Rob 15 years ago was a whole lot less wise than, than Rob is right now. A whole lot less successful. And I know a whole lot more. And I can tell you that I get more done. Win. It is sprint rest. Sprint rest, Sprint rest. So it doesn't have to be 15 minutes. Actually, in fact, I would recommend, don't do 15 minutes like me at the beginning, just try five minutes. You can go onto YouTube and you can type in breathwork. Five minute breath work. And you just do that breathwork and you use it as kind of like a reset where you don't have to be doing things. Your eyes are closed, your brain can rest a little bit, you, you can breathe, get more oxygen into your body because most people usually don't breathe fully like we should. We have really shallow breath so we're not even getting as much oxygen into our blood flow. And so rest can be those little mini micro rest sessions throughout the day before you switch to another task. You get done with a meeting seven minutes before your next meeting, and you were expecting to be in it. Okay, give yourself five minutes off. Close your eyes. It could be breath work. It could be putting on a relaxing song that's five minutes long. And you don't even have to put on a timer because when the song ends, you know that you're still good and you have, you know, two more minutes to get on your call. Rest can also be turning off work at 6pm and enjoying your life and deciding, you know what, I am working to be able to grow myself, but I'm also working in order to be able to provide a life for my family. But I'm working so damn much. I'm not even living life with my family. You know, I have a friend who is pretty successful. He's run, you know, he's exited, I think seven or eight businesses at this point. And you know, a couple of them, over $100 million a year businesses. And he said something one time where he had ridiculously successful businesses doing really well. And he said that one night he came home after midnight and his wife was still up and they already had all of the money, all the things they needed. And she said to him, she said, you can keep doing what you want or you can keep doing what you're doing, but you can't pretend that you're doing it for us anymore. I was like, holy shit. Right where? It's like. She didn't say, you have to stop, but what she said is, you can't pretend the reason why you're pushing so hard even though you have so much successes for the family anymore. And so for some of you, it could be turning off at 6pm and enjoying time with your family, because that rest, being fully off of work or your business will then make you better. When you show up in the morning to run your business, Rest can be planning a weekend trip with the family and not taking your cell phone with you. It's okay, your wife has a cell phone. If you're the business owner and you're the wife, your husband has a cell phone, right? Your partner has a cell phone, I bet. Don't bring yours. I recently just went on a vacation in Mexico. I didn't bring my phone with me anywhere. I left it inside of the safe because I was like, I'M not going to do any of it. And then when I came back, I was like, ready to go, ready to work. And then we think to ourselves, and the thought might be running through your head, but if I slow down, won't I be less motivated? I won't get to where I want to be. Won't I be less motivated if I just kind of chill a little bit more? Okay, let me ask you a question. Is it easier to go for a run after a night of really good sleep or after a night of shitty sleep? After a night of really good sleep. Why? Because you rested. So if you turn off work, you turn off your business at 6pm, 7pm, whatever it is that you want, and you just disconnect fully, you're going to be more rested, your brain's going to be more rested from not having to think about the business all the time. So that when you go into the office, you're rested. Now I get it. Because I have been the guy many times that's up working at 11pm midnight, 1am because I just have so much that I could do. There's always moments where you could always. If you're a business owner or if you're pretty high up in a business, you could be working all day long, you could work all night long. Businesses can. There's always something that can be done. But if you don't contract, you're not gonna be able to expand at the level that you can. One of the reasons, if you've been stuck for a while in your business, I coach a lot of business owners, and one of the things I found is that if are stuck in your business right now, if you've hit a glass ceiling, it's probably because of the fact that you haven't contracted, so you can't expand. And so you're trying to expand, you're trying to expand, but there's nothing left. The tank's running on E. You got to give yourself a little bit of a break. And you have to realize it's not taking a step back. That's what people think. And so you've got to change your mindset on it. It's not taking a step back. It's like a bow and arrow you've got. In order for the arrow to be launched, you have to pull the arrow back. And the harder that you pull an arrow back, the farther it's going to fly. So it's not taking a step back, it's pulling the arrow back. To shoot an arrow, you got to pull it back. And the further that you pull it back, the further that it flies. Which means when you turn off work, even if it's just for five minutes multiple times throughout the day, turn it off completely, you're pulling the arrow back. So that therefore when you do go back into work or you do go back into, you know, after that five minute break, you're able to be more productive. Study after study after study after study after study show that, that quick meditation sessions, meditating throughout the day makes you more productive. So when you go into work tomorrow, you take that little bit of break, it can fly further. When you notice yourself midday, not a hundred percent mentally there in the situation in the room, and you're in a meeting and you're like, I'm not here fully, you gotta look at it. Have you been go, go, go, go, go. Have you been in full expansion mode? Do you need a moment of contraction? For me, there's many different types of breath work, and one thing I'll recommend is I'm not a breathwork facilitator at all. But you can go on to YouTube right now and type in 10 minute energy breath work to get some energy from it. And you can get, you can relax from breath work and there's, there's definitely ones for that. And you can do energy for breath work. If you don't feel like you've got as much energy, maybe you just need a quick break. If you don't feel like you're 100% there in the middle of the day. Sometimes your brain just needs to file things away. When you go to sleep, there's a part of your brain called the hippocampus that replays the entire day and files things away. And it files them away 30 to 60 times more than they happen throughout the day. So, you know, one thing happens and it's like. And it files it away 30 to 60 times so that it's basically locking it into your brain over and over and over again. But when you actually start to sit down and you close your eyes and you do just a quick rest session, your brain will start to file things away 20 times faster. And so it actually allows your brain to not be so overthinking, to not have so much in it, but it allows us to start to file it away. When you take these breaks, a quick meditation or just going out with, going outside without your phone, staring into the distance, just staring at a tree, doing breathwork, doing a quick meditation allows your brain to be able to rest and start to file things away. So if Your brain's going crazy throughout the day and you can't stop overthinking. Maybe you need to file some things away. Maybe you need to give your brain a little bit of a break and then come back a little bit more productive. So trust me, I understand. I get it. Because Rob back in 2006-2007-2008-2009 would have been like, this doesn't make any sense. Rob now is like, this works. There's studies that show it. And I know I have my own anecdotal evidence that it works for me as well. So give it a shot. Give yourself a quick 5 minute, 10 minute break multiple times throughout the day and you're going to see those little rest sessions allow you to sprint quicker, faster, longer, and be more productive in the times when you sit down and work. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in it. Robdial Jr R O B D I A L J R and I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission. Make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.