How to Work Smarter & Happier

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Adeo Ressi  0:01 

Hi, welcome to Mind Storm, I'm Adeo Ressi, CEO of the Founder Institute. I'm joined here by Josh Whiton.

 

Josh Whiton  0:07 

Hi everybody, I'm Josh Whiton, founder of makesoil.org.

 

Adeo Ressi  0:13 

We're going to be talking today about something that a lot of entrepreneurs deal with. And that's productivity guilt. And I'll take a stab at defining it. It's a concept that and I'm experiencing it right now. So I can speak firsthand that if you are a busy entrepreneur with tons and tons of things to do, and all of a sudden you have a moment of downtime, or you consciously decide to take a moment of downtime. You almost feel a sense of guilt, that, Oh, I'm not working hard enough, or I'm not doing something I'm instead enjoying myself, but I need to be productive. And with this time, and I don't know if you feel the same way if that's how you would define it, but

 

Josh Whiton  0:58 

I feel it less than ever, but remember As a younger entrepreneur being plagued by it, and I think when you say when you take downtime you feel guilty. What we also see is that people just never take downtime because they feel too guilty to even take it.

 

Adeo Ressi  1:11 

Well, and on that point, even when I was like, imploring you to come out, we're here at life is beautiful festival in Las Vegas, run by a very good friend of ours, Tony say, and even you said, Oh, I had second thoughts because I had a lot to do. And you would have just sat in a house in San Francisco working on email. Now you can sit in a recreational vehicle at life is vehicle and do your life is beautiful, and do your email. So you know, we all have it, right? We all think we have more important things,

 

Josh Whiton  1:44 

you know, it feels wrong to go like really enjoy ourselves, right?

 

Adeo Ressi  1:48 

Well, because you have so much pressure, so much responsibility, so many things, so many emails. I mean, but what I'll say him and why I think it's important. We talk about that. This openly is that taking time for yourself, pays dividends to the business. And if you feel guilty about taking time for yourself, it's makes that time for yourself less effective and making you a more effective leader. So it's actually, the guilt itself is a problem. Because on the few moments that you get to be by yourself, if you do something you won, but you feel guilty, you lose the benefit, right?

 

Josh Whiton  2:29 

Yeah. A couple couple ideas. Like one is like, where does this come from? Right. And maybe it comes from watching our parents are not feeling good enough for childhood experiences. But I think another place that comes from is just

 

Josh Whiton  2:42 

Nobody really knows what it takes to create a startup, right? Like, we maybe we succeed, and we look back and say, Well, how did you do it anything? How did I do it? I did like 8 million things to get to this point, right? It really you don't know which ones are those really mattered? It's probably kind of a Pareto principle thing, right? There was A lot of it that didn't matter, but we felt we hustled right. So I think what the default a lot of people fall into entrepreneurs is, I'll just work myself to the bone insanely hard so that if it fails, I'll know that I did everything I could. Right. But if it would be better it would be if we actually did the stuff that we had to do to make a company work

 

Adeo Ressi  3:19 

on the burrito distribution. Yeah, that says, like, one tasks that you did that actually 90% of the value and then 90% of the tasks that you do add very little value, right? You know, and that and that's a reality. And that's not anti value.

 

Josh Whiton  3:34 

Making work where there isn't any right.

 

Adeo Ressi  3:36 

Well, we talked about that and like where, where entrepreneurs, actually, if they don't feel busy, right, that guilt of productivity comes in and they might unconsciously make themselves busy, so that they feel fulfilled in the role. So not the guilt of productivity comes into play both when you're trying take time off, but also when the business is going well, I know. You know. It's not in every culture though. I've met some Brazilian CEOs and some CEOs and other cultures that companies are doing really well and they seem busy but relaxed and better able to cope with it. You see it more in the Americas and in what in Europe, where, you know, oh my god, I'm successful, I need to be busy, I need to do more. There's more things I have to work on. And it's a sickness really. So, you know, maybe we could go through some tools that we use to cope with it and you know, UN experience today, I'm having an experience right now. I've got a lot of stuff going on the business things are going really well. They're all being managed, but it's a Thursday afternoon and I'm at a festival not working and I have productivity go. Right. I'm like, I should be more productive. But in fact, it's it's totally psychological. Everything's going well. Not needed for anything right now. Yeah. So how do you overcome it?

 

Josh Whiton  5:06 

I gotta be honest where I am in my journey after having an exit it's like all the work now is self chosen it was before as well, but I also just needed to make income right I had I had no money so now it's like if I don't find a better way to work, that is not just flogging myself for another decade of entrepreneurship. I'm just not willing to do it. Right so for me it's like it's kind of a non negotiable in that I have to find a balance a balanced way to live or else I'm not gonna I'm not going to work on these companies anymore. Right? Right. And yet, I want them to be successful. I want to be as I want to be as a more more effective than I've ever been in my entire life. And so for me, and you care

 

Adeo Ressi  5:49 

Yes, that's another thing that I can't

 

Josh Whiton  5:51 

just chill out and do nothing for the ride.

 

Adeo Ressi  5:52 

right but but but the let's go into the care thing for a moment because the first thing that came across my mind when you said that is like I You made a lot of money and you don't care. At least that's the stigma. Right? And it's like, but you do care, right? You just don't want to work yourself to death.

 

Josh Whiton  6:09 

I want to help. I want to help as much as I can. But I think many entrepreneurs know it's, it's easy to have an unsatisfying, entrepreneurial journey where you're, you're hitting milestones, there's no celebration, there's no enjoyment, you're off to the next task, right? I've spent years living that way. And at some point, you just say, Look, I'm not willing to live that way. what's the alternative?

 

Adeo Ressi  6:30 

Well, so So, right. You just brought up one tactic, right? Taking the time to take a break and celebrate achievements. And you know, at least in that time, where you're celebrating the achievements at yourself, oh, I don't need to feel guilty. So Josh, what way are you willing to live?

 

Josh Whiton  6:55 

a great article came out a couple weeks ago friend sent me and it was by By Deepak Chopra, and he was talking about the difference between intelligence and awareness, and I would, I would say that when we're in that mode of just cranking and cranking just revving the engine and working and checking things off of to do lists, like, yeah, we're busy, but I think our awareness is actually quite low in those situations. And I want to live to answer your question. I want to live with more awareness. So right, you become kind

 

Adeo Ressi  7:25 

of robotic. And I think a lot of CEOs become robotic. And they get busier and busier and busier as the company gets busier and busier busier than they attribute the success to them being busy and they equate success to being busy. Yeah, and then what happens is when you're not busy all these fear of failures and like having to fire people and lay people off oh my god and and work hard enough air go the company started suffering, air go and by the way, this isn't like Problem of new entrepreneurs You know, every great entrepreneur I've ever met from Ilan Musk, etc, have this exact problem they have a real. I mean, I guarantee you that Ilan works harder than most people can imagine. I guarantee you that Jeff Bezos works a lot harder than most people can imagine. And it's this trap of like, Oh, I got successful by being busy. And then you equate the two and that that's part of where the guilt comes from. Yeah. And so celebrating successes, so you're like, Oh, I am actually successful. But you know, I think being aware that taking time for yourself, and being a happy and balanced person is actually both good for you. And the company is another very important thing.

 

Josh Whiton  8:49 

Yeah. And, and so that's true. And getting to the place where that feels okay as part of what we need to do, though, right. And so I remember dealing With this, and I think it was maybe reading a maybe as a Peter Drucker book about time or something time is your most precious like resource or whatever. And I remember this epiphany I had that work was endless, the amount of things to do was truly endless. It's endless. And I had, I had this sort of falsehood in my mind, which was that I was going to get it done. I was somehow getting this stuff done. I was getting some things done, but I was getting some amount of an infinite workload done, right. And it really sunk in that there was no end to this. There was no end. You could never you could double your productivity could quintuple your productivity and you still would not get all the things done. And that was very sobering. I think that started to sink in and break this kind of subconscious myth that I was somehow going to get it done.

 

Adeo Ressi  9:47 

Well, and you know, I get so well, and that begs the question like, what should you be working out? Yeah. And then if you're mentally healthy, balanced and in a good spot And you walk in the office and you know, Hey, man, how's it going? And like, yes, I'm really excited to be here. That's a productivity boost, right? People feed off that relative energy. Whereas if you come in the office, you're like, why isn't this done? Where's the stuff? That's right. And then this kind of negative power of, and it persists in the culture and like

 

Josh Whiton  10:19 

it can make a CEO resentful can make a founder resentful, right? You stay there 18 hours a day. They're whales only there for 10 hours a day. Right? I've seen that too.

 

Adeo Ressi  10:27 

I'll tell you a great story that illustrates this in a very real way. So a friend of mine is scaling out clinics all around the world. And these are general practitioner clinics. And he interviewed tons of people to try and figure out retail stuff and he studied tons of things. And this is what he discovered from operating experience. If he goes in, and he puts like beautiful layouts and like nice carpets and big exam rooms and all this stuff. Patient happiness is average. Right. If he goes in, demolish his exam room, turns it into a break room for the staff gives the staff really good benefits make sure they have flexible time treats the staff really well. The the customer satisfaction interesting goes through the roof. And so much so that he's like, it doesn't mean I can take away exam rooms. I can not decorate it. It could just be a kind of rundown old place. And the reality is if the people working there happy the the metrics of the business go through the roof because the customers are happy the customer retention goes up, they come back more often all the metrics of the business go way up. Because the people working, they're happier and if the CEO is running around, like a stressed out monkey pounding on the table, trying to get people to work hard and the team Just is not going to

 

Josh Whiton  12:01 

be that happy, which in that highlights another part of the dysfunction we're talking about or the trap here, which is that it's so easy to get a twisted idea of what productivity looks like right? Or what what wall Are you trying to climb the ladder of? Right? Right? When really like this, this employee happiness thing had the biggest dividends that you that could be completely in your blind spot if you're just cranking on some other metric that's robotic. Yeah,

 

Adeo Ressi  12:25 

right. So like, he might not have even discovered it because he went in and was like trying to make these beautiful clinics with like fancy machinery and like automated reception, all this stuff. And the reality was like when when the people were happy, the business as well, right and like, you know, that's, it's kind of a truism for the world. Like, right now. At the founder Institute and company I run morale is high. It's it's not like extraordinarily high but it's quite high and we have no problems in the business. Thank There's no stress, there's no pressure. Of course, things happen, right? We're really big in 200 cities, things are bound to happen. But you don't go in the office and feel like oh my god, it's like, it's like, it's command central for some, you know, war in Afghanistan that we're losing. You go into office and you feel like well, things are running smoothly, people are happy, like, you know, getting stuff done, productive know. And so in part, it stems from the top because I've been taking the time overcoming my own productivity guilt, and trying to be a balanced and good leader and a role model for the team that we can accomplish things and be happy at the same time. Yeah. And I think that's another kind of replace the productivity guilt comes from because you need some negative emotion, to motivate in human amounts of action that are required at times. So I'm not going to say that the inhuman action is required. If you're building burns down or you know, key team members quits, you might need to

 

Josh Whiton  14:05 

happen.

 

Adeo Ressi  14:07 

Yeah, exactly. But then you get this cycle of like, Oh my god, the world's on fire work hard. And that instead of saying, Okay, and now I'm done, let me go back. You just continue this world on fire work hard and you know

 

Josh Whiton  14:22 

and when the world isn't on fire and when people don't have to be sprinting, you know what they start to do if they don't feel safe, they start pretending that they're working. Now, you've just introduced something really stupid into your culture, right? And it happens. There's lots of companies like that

 

Adeo Ressi  14:35 

CEOs pretend that they're working they do things as you said, that don't matter. And just like they're like, Oh my god, I need to be busy. I'll tell you a story about doing things that don't matter with me but this is so I guess being conscious of everything you do, but I took over multiple areas of the business and and I didn't need to but it was like I wanted to learn them and optimize them. Some of them I had no one running them for some time. No one ever running them. And so I, you know, build structured in and and hired people to run them. And you know, there were times when I was working 100 plus hours a week. And it got to a point in some of these where I had hired people in, and I'm in meetings with them. And we had talked about this earlier and I was like, why am I in this meeting? am I adding any value? Like the person's train, they know what they're doing? They have a team, why am I here? And I stopped going. And was the best decision ever brought my work workload down from 110 hours a week to maybe 60. Totally. And it was just looking at things that I was attending, asking the question, am I adding value? And if I wasn't able to add value, or I added like a very little bit of value than I could say, you said in your meetings, invite me in when you need me. Yeah, and just leave it Yeah, and I got over the productivity kill by being conscious and saying like, maybe if I'm a happy CEO, the business will do better. And that's been ever all those things have been true.

 

Josh Whiton  16:15 

Yeah. And that productivity guilt drives a person to show up at every meeting because they right it's just kind of they're not needed there may not be wanted there yet they feel the pressure to be there,

 

Adeo Ressi  16:24 

right? They need to show the value. So I mean, maybe let's leave some closing thoughts for everyone. You know, here's what I would say we've all had it. It's it's an you know, it's it's almost par for the job being an entrepreneur. It comes from a variety of things. We talked about the negative emotions coming in when you need to do a big sprint, comes in with the guilt of responsibility. And then when you don't have that you feel like

 

Josh Whiton  16:54 

you're not really knowing what's important versus what isn't right.

 

Adeo Ressi  16:57 

And so being conscious That it's there and and maybe accepting an alternative view that if you take time and find some balance in your life without the guilt, that I might be one of the single best activities you could do for the business.

 

Josh Whiton  17:16 

Yes. And from my closing thoughts, since this is a podcast on mindful entrepreneurship, I want to recommend a little book to our listeners called the doubter Ching. And this is like 1000 year old book of Chinese wisdom and this is where you get these Zen kind of statements of work without effort act without doing you know, this, these if you've heard these kinds of statements, and it's an it's a really interesting book to read or listen to, because it is it is it is the opposite of the productivity guilt. It is actually saying, there is a universal force that you want to embody and align yourself with That life force coming through your life is true productivity. You'll, if you're in alignment with that force, you'll create the number of companies you need to create you'll, you'll have the right balance between your energy and intelligence going into venture versus your family versus your personal development. You're in flow with the Dow, you're not just out of harmony with it, and just trying random things like a robot or something. So I highly recommend that book. And I can tell you, I listened to it sometimes. And my rational mind is saying, This is insane. How can doing less be doing more? How can you work without effort or blah, blah, blah? And I'll tell you that I believe it now. I believe that there is a state of consciousness whereby acting and not acting feel the same. They feel like the same amount of effort. Sitting feels as restful as taking a meeting and but it is a it is an unusual type of consciousness. Very few people find their way to But I am beginning to believe that it exists. So check out the doubter Ching

 

Adeo Ressi  19:04 

well and it relates to our manifesting episode does I recommend that it does listen to as well. Yeah. Thanks, everyone for listening. We'll be back with another episode soon. Bye

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