769. I Was Winning at Work and Losing at Everything Else

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Governeck and welcome to the No Days Off Podcast,

where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better.

When did rest become something you have to earn?

When did taking a weekend, like a real weekend, start to feel like a character flaw?

When did you start measuring your worth by how exhausted you are at the end of the day?

If you've been in the entrepreneurial world for any amount of time, then you know the culture that I'm talking about.

The sleep is for the weak culture, the outwork everybody culture, the No Days Off culture.

Now, to be very clear, I believe in hard work.

This show is called No Days Off. Now, it's called No Days Off for a slightly different reason than what many may perceive, but it is called No Days Off.

Today, I want to challenge something though. I want to challenge this idea around hustle culture, or at least the way that it's being sold right now.

Because I think that this hustle culture is quietly destroying a lot of the best entrepreneurs I know, especially some of the younger entrepreneurs, those earlier in their careers.

And I'm sharing that as somebody that had some personal experience with it.

I don't really talk about this all that often, but early in my career, when I was on my honeymoon.

Right. So this would have been almost, let's see, 19, 19 years ago, 18 years ago, sorry, sorry.

18 years ago, I was on my honeymoon, you know, with with my wife, just newlyweds, right.

We probably married three days by the time we arrived.

And I was up every day on my honeymoon between three and four a.m.

Not to, you know, watch a sunrise that someone's coming up that early or not to have some, you know, time to mind.

None of that. I was up at three a.m. working.

And my objective was to get five hours of work done before my wife, before Ellie even woke up.

And I think the crazy part, maybe the worst part, I didn't think anything was wrong with that.

I wore it like a badge, like I took pride in the fact that, man, I clocked five hours a day before my wife even woke up on our honeymoon.

Back at the office, I always felt guilty.

If I left the day before anyone else, I had to be the last to leave.

I felt guilty if I arrived later than anyone in the morning. I had to be the first one in.

I was tethered to my phone. I was constantly refreshing email.

I was taken every call.

I had a real hard time being present, present at dinner or at, you know, family functions or events.

I had difficulty being present in conversations like day-to-day conversations, many of which deserve my full attention.

And that was because some part of me believed that if I wasn't working, I was falling behind.

And that my value, you know, in hindsight, my value was measured in hours.

That rest was for people who weren't really serious about what they were building.

And I had to learn that that was wrong.

And I wish I had learned it sooner.

Now again, I don't want to take away from the fact that I do believe that hard work trumps most all.

But there is a way to be far more strategic and purposeful versus just simply clocking hours for hours' sake.

That's what I think hustle culture actually gets right.

Results do require effort.

There is no version in my mind of building something meaningful that doesn't demand sacrifice.

That doesn't demand some late nights and some early mornings and doing the hard things when you don't feel like it.

That's just the reality.

That's not going away in my opinion either.

And in a world full of people who talk about what they're going to do, the ones who actually show up and do the work, they have a real advantage.

And I don't want to minimize that.

Because when I look back on whatever success I've had, I know that that's played a role in some of it.

But here's where I think it goes wrong.

Hustle culture has confused activity with progress.

It's confused busy with productive with sacrifice, sacrifice with strategy.

There's confusion there.

There's a version of hustle that builds something and then there's a version of hustle that just burns you down.

While giving you the feeling that you're moving forward.

And there's a dangerous part to this.

They look identical from the outside.

Both people are working 60 hours a week.

Both people are probably grinding.

One is actually building something and the other one is spinning.

The truth nobody in hustle culture wants to say out loud that a tired mind makes bad decisions.

A depleted leader creates a team around them that's depleted as well.

A business that's run by someone who never stops is a business that never gets the benefit of its owner's best thinking.

This was my world.

Again, we still had success.

I think all the time, gosh, what would what kind of success might we have had?

If I slowed down, made better decisions, took care of my people a bit better and was doing some better thinking.

I lived this high activity, low clarity, lots of motion, but not enough momentum.

It was working, but not necessarily building.

And there's a big difference there.

And again, it took me longer than it should have to really see it.

There's also a cost, of course, that doesn't show up on the PNL, doesn't show up on a spreadsheet.

And that's relationships, that's health, that's presence.

I mean, I've been the entrepreneur, I've seen entrepreneurs who hit all sorts of financial goals.

I've built up to find the people that maybe they were building it for.

They weren't as connected with as you'd hope.

I've even seen it worse than that where kids grew up or the marriage frayed, the friendships disappeared, faded.

And none of that happened in like this single dramatic moment.

It happened slowly through a missed dinner at night, a skip vacation, you know, one at a time.

A mindset of, you know what, I'll be more present when things slow down at some time.

Hustle culture doesn't really like, especially in social media, it doesn't tell you that story.

Instead, it shows you the yacht.

But it never really shows you what was traded to get there.

So I built this up, what's the alternative?

Maybe the better question is, if I had to go back in time, what would I maybe do differently?

So if you have some younger entrepreneurs that are feeling this sort of way, what might you do a little differently?

Because I'm not selling you on doing less.

I'm just trying to sell you on doing better.

The most effective entrepreneurs I've been around, they all work hard, like really, really hard,

but they protect their recovery like it's a business asset.

And that's kind of because it is.

They understand that the best investment they can make in their business is showing up each day as clear and rested and focused as possible.

Not reactive, not running on fumes, not depleted, not that version, but the other side of that.

There's a difference between intensity and endurance.

I think the best don't just go hard.

They know when to go hard and they know when to recover so they can go hard again.

So here are a few things I wish I could go back and talk to my younger self about.

Maybe three things that younger Brian could have considered.

Number one, I would tell myself to make sure you audit your hours.

Not for the quantity of hours you're working before the quality.

Are the hours that you're putting in actually moving the needle.

Or are you just staying busy because being busy feels safer than asking whether you're focusing on the right things.

So I'd ask myself to audit my hours.

I'd next ask myself, or more specific, I would ask myself to start doing this, schedule recovery the same way you schedule revenue producing activity.

Not as a reward for some, you know, milestone.

Not as something that I'd get to eventually, but as a non-negotiable part of performing at my highest level.

So schedule recovery.

Now when I say recovery, I don't necessarily mean physical recovery, but I mean time and experiences and fun and social.

All of that falls under the bucket of recovery.

And then the third thing I think I would have asked the younger version of me.

I would ask actually the people closest to me.

What it's actually like to be around me at that very moment right now.

Or let's put this in present tense that this you ask the people closest to you.

What is actually like to be around you right now.

Not your business partners. I'm talking about the people at home.

I then really listen to the answer.

Because sometimes the most important data about how your business is affecting your life isn't in the business scorecard or the dashboard.

It's in the conversations.

So I would ask the people that are closest to me.

What's it like to be around me and I have some awareness and maybe make some changes that result.

So here's what I want to leave you with. No days off.

It doesn't mean no rest.

It just means no waste of days.

It means every day you're going to be intentional.

Every day you're going to move forward.

Forward doesn't always look like more hours.

Sometimes forward is just taking a walk and clearing your mind.

So you can make smarter decisions.

It might be a real conversation.

It might be eight hours of sleep.

It might be a day that restores you when you're untethered from the phone.

And that's also that on Monday you could come back clearer and sharper and more dangerous than you were the week before.

I wish someone had told me that at three a.m. on my honeymoon.

If someone had shared that with me, I probably would have gone back to bed.

Because I couldn't even tell you what I was doing those five hours every day.

I don't know if it had any bearing at all.

But I was so caught up.

I was telling you now, don't wait as long as I did to figure all this out.

So here's your action item.

Okay.

This week I want you to identify one thing that you've been sacrificing consistently.

That you know is costing you.

Maybe it's costing your health or your sleep or your presence at home or your downtime.

Whatever it is, just name it.

And then block one hour this week.

Just one.

To give it back.

Not because you've necessarily earned it, but because you probably need it.

And a better you ends up building a better business.

And that's where we're going with this whole thing.

That's all I have for you today.

The No Days Off podcast.

Thank you so much for listening.

And remember every single day brings a new opportunity to get better.

So let's get after it.