Take A Full Day Completely Off Every Week transcript

[Music] a few months ago I started to get really serious about a practice of taking one full complete day off of work like no work at all do not even check the ad account don't even look in the morning don't check slack my clients know that they should only call or text if there's like truly an emergency in which case they can do that but otherwise completely completely disconnected from work one day every single week with some Faith Traditions including my own would call a Sabbath and I want to tell you why I think it has been one of the best things I've done in a really long time and I want to commend the same practice to you so hello and welcome to the end feris podcast thanks so much for joining me once again as always for another episode of the show today a little less tactical a little less even business strategy oriented but I think something relatable to nearly everybody who is in business in some way to think about the organization of their work week The rhythms they live in and the way that those things create Joy fulfillment and even better quality work at the end of the day so I'm going to explain to you what I've been doing why I've been doing it why I think it's valuable and hopefully it'll be some help to you as you organize your work week as well let's dive in all right let's talk about what it is exactly that I been doing and I'm going to tell you what it is why I've been doing it and then why I think it's been so valuable for me so the simple practice as I said in the intro has been to set aside one day a week for it's Sunday where I do absolutely no work at all in fact I turn my phone completely off for the day as well at least for a lot of the day I have small kids so sometimes I got to leave the house I'll take it there maybe I'll check in in the middle of the day to see um if you know my friends get together on Sundays a lot so I just want to not miss that kind of thing but if I do that I'll like check my text turn it off Twitter no slack no nothing and and basically the goal of that is to get as much distance as possible certainly no email is to get as much distance as possible one day a week from work and instead to make my mind as present as possible on the other hand with the other things that are going on in my life those things include my family first and foremost probably my wife and I have two small kids and my friends I'm very often gathered with friends I said on Sundays I'll we'll get together especially in the afternoons and evenings typically Sunday morning it's just me and my family but Ty a lot of times on Sunday afternoon Sunday evening friends are getting together you know hanging out in somebody's backyard barbecuing it's La so it's like always nice basically you know you know have a drink whatever and so we we will do that fairly often and and I want to be as present with that as possible go to church on Sundays and you know I've talked before about my own faith background I'm a Christian and so that's been that's a big part of my Sunday Rhythm as well and that's certainly the Genesis of where I got this idea from in the Old Testament in the Bible or the Hebrew Bible if you're a Jewish person there is the practice in the Ten Commandments of Sabbath and the idea is take one day completely off of work and in that context the Sabbath is also built around the idea of recognizing your dependence on God and remembering that God ultimately is the one who supplies your needs now you may not believe in God or anything like that or you may have a different Faith background I understand that now I believe in those things but at the same time I think there is very obvious wisdom in this that begins to get us some things that are really really helpful and so I want to break those down and tell you what's been so helpful about it to me and I want to break it down both in a work and non-work kind of setting because again I think there's a lot of us who in some way or another can really relate to what the work week is like especially a lot of us who are around sort of entrepreneur land there's some kinds of businesses where there's just this way in which work eats up large parts of your life I I have some friends whose work really doesn't take up very much out very much time outside of their like regular working hours it's just like it's not very hard for them to turn work off at the end of the day I have other friends for whom it's really hard to turn work off and most of the entrepreneu types have been around in sort of dtoc land and and Beyond really entrepreneurs in general are really driven people excited to get work done you know they there CH always something more to work on I mean I own my own business right so like I can always go hammer away at generating more revenue or profit or solve more problems or whatever it is it's always there for me it's my business that that there is no task list that gets finished and then I'm done I did it all it just never happens and so that means that my life can very quickly become this creeping thing where work eats up all of my time and and while I would say I am not the kind of person who you know typically partly because I have small kids it's impossible I work doesn't hasn't been the kind of thing that really takes up my definitive attention outside of work very often particularly from like you know 5 o'clock when the work day ends until my kids go to bed at you know 7:30 or 8 or whatever in those hours it just it doesn't really do that much but uh you know I might I don't know I might send a Marco Polo to to somebody about a work thing or something like that because it's on my mind but those are sort of idle thoughts that I'm kicking around with friends more than it is real work per se so anyway the point is outside of that it's possible though for work to kind of just especially if I didn't have kids for work to sort of creep into all of the corners of my life and to begin to take it over almost completely and I think you know for people with kids this can be the case you just feel this weight in this sense especially the more the higher up you're going companies of this happening and of course there are some jobs that are famous for this right if you work in finance or something in New York City it's just you just are going to work 12 hours a day for a long time if not more and so there's this back and forth you know different different places different jobs have these different cultures well entrepreneur land as I like to think of a DC land is the kind of place that creates that kind of thing and some people are great about this and and one of the things I actually love is that it's also a little less Cutthroat than something like finance and therefore you see people regular saying hey go touch grass go get outside the house go do those things and and that's sort of celebrated I don't think D entrepreneur land is super hustle cultur all the time though there's some of that in a sense that it really becomes overwhelming but I do think that as I said this this really creeps and so I have found that setting up a specific and repeatable process which should be a relatable idea to anybody who's run a business to generate the outcome that I want in my life has been really helpful and that I think is what Sabbath basically is it is a repeatable process it is in my life it's border line documented right I almost have a notion card for it I don't quite have that but it's basically that and it's this I'm going to wake up on Sunday morning I am not going to check my phone I am not going to check my email I not going to check my ad accounts I'm not going to do any of those things and I'm going to as much as possible do that and what I have been amazed at has been in some ways actually how easy it has been once I've actually started to do it and how much I like it I've I've I've come to understand experientially the wisdom of doing this in a way that I really didn't know deeply before I think in fact I remember thinking of this idea and thinking I don't know I'm not a workaholic type does Sabbath really matter that much for me in the ancient world in which the idea of Sabbath would have come about right five 4,000 years ago or whatever it would have been when the Ten Commandments were were written or given originally right I mean you had to work all the time because you're you were gonna die right like it was it was survival and so the notion of taking a day off I could imagine was really daunting for people because man I mean that that that is quite an act of trust in God at that point because you know your subsistence farming basically that's that's really really hard work you'll be tough for me I'm I'm I don't live on the edge of starvation and I don't live on the edge of you know incredible disease that there's no cure for and those kinds of things all the time so for me it's it's it hasn't been that kind of thing but anyway that's the reason why I think that the wisdom nonetheless is really important is that it can just kind like again work can just kind of float in and out of life all the time but I think there is actually still wisdom to it even if you aren't on the edge of starvation or whatever right so what I do is I completely completely check out from work my clients know actually that I'm not available on Sunday I just tell them that I say hey just so you know on Sundays I'm going to be completely unavailable my employees know that as well I tell them if there is a true you know like if something's on fire in the ad account suddenly there's $50,000 in spend happening don't wait till Monday to tell me like I you know I'm more than happy to jump on real fast and and take care of a true emergency it's not like you don't have to be that rigid about it it's just that as a general rule I'm not going to work on small things I'm not going to even work on medium-sized things I'm not even going to work on reasonably big things I'm going to work on instead only things that are truly emergencies in the ad account and they know and if they want to do that they should call me I'll check my phone somewhere in the middle of the day for calls texts Etc I will not check slack and that'll be that and that boundary gets set and then I'm much more able to go spend some time doing these other things that are really important to me Family Friends spirituality all that kind of stuff so the first thing I want to lay out is some work reasons to do this actually and the reason I would commend it to you at a at a basic work level and the first of those is coming off of exactly what I just said which is it actually does a nice job I think of setting some boundaries immediately with both you know if you're with internal teammates and external teammates right so if you're the employees that are with you as well as if you're in client services with clients so consider that it says something to my clients and to other to other team members of mine internally that there is a day where there is no work that immediately sets a boundary for them to say I am not always available and what I have found is that first of all everybody understands that like you know I happen to be in a place in life and in work where I also can be sort of selective about clients and if client was like no I need you on all the time I would say well then good luck let me let me give you a different agency recommendation because I would not I would not take that client but it also just generally sets boundaries for them for the same thing often they're not necessarily trying to be rude or take you know take up too much of my time it's just that they uh it's just that they have the same work creep thing that I was talking about earlier for me right that they're I don't know they've idly sitting by they've been reading in the morning finished breakfast whatever maybe they go check their ad account and something looks a little bit off to them and or you know their Shopify is on their phone and and so then they just shoot a text over and say whatever well now they know I actually can't engage with that all the time I need some time to shut my brain off and it sets a boundary and begins to reinforce that idea there are some boundaries and there are plenty of Client Services people who know what it's like to feel like you've got six bosses telling you what to do every day all day all the time I've certainly had clients like that in the past that were just sort of really aggressive all the time and setting that kind of boundary ends up being a really good signal for what's going to happen and what's not going to happen in your working life okay uh number two and this is another really direct work thing which is that it gives you space for broader thinking just because I am not working does not mean I never think about work during the day very often what I find in fact is that as I am more idly living you know not NE necessarily true idleness per se but as I'm just sitting and reading a book that's not related to work it's not a business book that's another thing I don't do I don't read business books on Sundays I don't read a lot of business books in general but but I I don't I don't you know if I'm gon if I'm gonna read something that's going to be something that's gonna be outside of work and I'll explain a little bit more about that thinking in a second but as I do those things what happens is my brain puts together thoughts that then end up relating back to my work stop because it turns out that your companies are just companies full of people and your products are products that people use and it turns out people are more uh well-rounded than just work automatons or whatever and and product buyers and consumers there's more to it than all of that and suddenly your brain is Able by spending some time away from the uh specific and located problems in your business instead your brain is able to go step back a little and think bigger deeper broader thoughts about all kinds of things related to work and to product and to customer and whatever else and make larger connections and I found regularly that this really helps me reapo different businesses I had a situation yesterday where I thought about I'm recording this on Monday so I just did my my Sabbath day yesterday and yesterday I had this thought that wait a minute I should readdress something that just kind of happened and we all agreed on it quickly in work last week but I didn't really I didn't take it seriously enough and it occurred to me it just occurred to this is actually a bigger deal than I realized because I'd gotten outside of it a little bit and was able to reflect on it a little bit and think about the financial implications of it and my mind just kind of went there and I'm not gonna fight my mind going it's not like I can't think about work on Sunday or whatever and so I just kind of made a note to myself and said and said wait a minute I need to go pursue this tomorrow and so I put it on my as task list dated it for Monday and I looked at it again this morning when I started work and it was really helpful I was able to readdress the issue discover what was going on and actually made a change that that mattered for the client to some degree and and I think will probably hopefully help push them forward I just don't know if I would have thought of that if I would have been in the day-to-day of work all the time and so by stepping back from work could help me to think a little bit bigger broader and including sometimes really broad like what happens if this business triples and size and how do you get there and that as opposed to the sort of real day-to-day how do I optimize this particular ad this ad account this offer whatever okay third I think every piece of evidence suggests that rest creates better work that there's some limitation to how much you can work I know there's exceptions to this people can work all the time but it seems to me that rest creates better work that by taking a day off you come to work the next day more energized more focused I slept great last night like all of all of those things I I I was de-stressed completely and I I don't I'm not living a very high stress life necessarily with work but I just by doing that I came in excited to get work done today I plowed through a bunch of stuff this morning and was able to generate what I think was a good day of work today hopefully I can do the same next week and throughout the week and so on and I think part of that is just to create some better work I noticed the same thing really happens even on a day-to-day level if I try and go work 12 hours someday I give the the extra four hours of work from the eight hour work day to the 12 hours I worked I tend to give that four hours back at least part of the way the next day what I mean is yeah I worked 12 hours and maybe I got some stuff done but the next day I work a really crappy eight hours and it probably ends up being more like four hours worth of work that happens all the time I think that same kind of thing happens at a weekly sort of level for myself this is what I've noticed at least for me okay so there's some work rated reasons to pursue that I think your work gets better when you do some rest uh now that said if those were all not true I would still think it was a good idea because I'm actually not primarily thinking about Sabbath from a work utility standpoint and that's a really important distinction people sometimes do this with work well you know I've heard this with Fitness sometimes where people will say the effect of you should work out in the middle of your work day because it will make your work better you know you'll come out of working out and that will make your work it better well I don't really know if that's true I think there's some studies to back that up but even if it's not I still think it's probably a decent idea for me to step away from work and workout at times or to work out before work or whatever it is because even aside from the benefits that it may have to my workday I'm a human and I have a body and it is good for my body to work out and I want to be careful in taking care of my body even aside from the work output that it will create because I have a wife and I have kids and I have a quality of life and all those things go Way Beyond work and so whether or not work produces better work or working out produces better work utility does produce other benefits in my life that I care about because I am actually not just made I'm not just a worker that's not my entire purpose that's not my entire self and that basic thought right there that basic thought that you you're not just a worker that's not your entire self is the other part of this for me that I think is really crucial if you are looking to add talent to your e-commerce team at this point grow your team as your business is growing I do not know why you wouldn't look in the Philippines with my friends at more Staffing the value exchange is really simple here you can hire Filipino Talent by paying a higher salary than most of what is available in the Philippines to those same folks and at the same time less than it would cost you to High equivalent talent in the US and that makes it a great deal for both sides to win-win and my friends at more Staffing can help you find that Talent they will help you recruit train onboard coach Filipino e-commerce Talent people with deep resumés Wells of strategic thinking like manager director executive level Talent who will come and bring tons of value to your team right away and it will even give you a one-year guarantee so that if that tire does not work out within a year they will replace them for free for you I know how good more Staffing is because I have used them for my business over half of my team now at this point is based in the Philippines all of them were hired for more Staffing they have been awesome I love them they're great people they work hard and they bring tons of value to my business and to my clients go to more now.co it's more now.co link is in the show notes as always and go get a conversation started at least get a conversation started if you're exploring Adam Talent so you can build an incredibly Commerce business great talent from the Philippines located by my friends at more Staffing it is so possible to and this is I think the thing that's really creepy and I think especially for entrepreneurs and people who have a chance to make a lot of money and to have a lot of success and all those things it is so easy and so possible to build my entire sense of self around my work and there is a reason for that that I think is really specific maybe two reasons the first is work actually is I think good I think it's good for people I think almost everybody's experienced this in some way this is just one of those things that I think is intuitive about sort of human nature but many of us have worked and experienced the pleasure and the joy of producing work that generates an outcome solving problems in a work environment that generates an outcome that generates value for myself and for my family in terms of economic outcomes and experiencing the you know the fruit of your labors you know what happens when you accomplish this is why people are constantly creating work for themselves outside of work and calling it a thing like a hobby like woodworking literally right there in the word requires a bunch of work and effort and people like doing woodworking or cooking right is like a creative output people like doing these things because they are actually kinds of work if you think about it but they require solving problems and overcoming challenges and sometimes doing a bunch of things at once that are really hard and making mistakes and you know all that kind of stuff but it's so satisfying it's so satisfying to create those kind of outputs and everybody I've known and talked to just about in my whole life knows that feeling of having that done so I think there's this element where work is this good thing in our lives that we have this ability to connect and if you if you talk to people who are retired sometimes they will tell you that this is precisely why they hate being retired suddenly you've taken something away that they actually like doing and there important output and it can be really really hard for them this is one of the problems that people who study homelessness talk about which is that if if you're not creating any economic value and if you're not producing any value for yourself it actually has a deteriorating effect on your sense of who you are and makes it really really hard to come out of that you know it it becomes this uh thing that eats away at you and and it's not good it's not good it's not good for you it really harms you in significant ways and so that can be a really big Challenge and so I think there's this way in which we work is this really valuable and important and good thing but like almost all good things right too much of it can become a problem and so there's that so if you take that element that I think most of us feel in some way pretty intuitively that work is has this sort of dignity to it and this virtue to it even and then you combine it with this thing that's more pernicious which is that work is really good at giving you a sense of purpose even if there isn't real purpose there or even if there isn't that much purpose there because work is full of challenges to overcome and problems to solve there is this constant feedback loop of you did it you did this great thing and in that respect it can sometimes feel like if you've played video games where you have you know constant like little games to win and little upgrades to get and little levels to advance and suddenly something happens where you just want the next level and the next level and the next level the next level and the moment you cross one level then there's a new one to get to now that's EX exactly what's fun about it that's precisely the thing that's fun it's overcoming the obstacle but what also many people know is that if you do that too much with video games right it can eat up your entire life and can turn you into create antisocial behaviors and like all these things right you know what I'm talking about I'm not saying never play a video game blah blah blah I'm just saying you know this feeling like you can eat up 20 hours in a day you you finish it and you go like what did I just spend my whole day doing at least I've experienced that right I'll speak for myself okay I've had that thing where I've spent I mean I've spent five six hours sitting down and I'm not a big gamer but five six hours sitting down making my creative player in a baseball video game better and better and better o get overcoming each obstacle and when that happens then I finish it and I go wait a minute I just I just like quote unquote accomplished all these things and it actually didn't accomplish anything that was meaningful to me I didn't really care once I put away the video game I walked away from it then I just felt like I had wasted my time if I you know not all the time again I hope you know what I mean okay so here's the thing that effect that I just described is exactly what I see happen with everybody's Shopify best Revenue day ever I've talked about this a lot of times but it's it's one of the things that is most pernicious about owning your own business work getting cars the moment you hit your highest revenue Day Ever it is awesome for like a minute and then what happens is immediately you think how do I level up to the next level how do I get to the next new highest revenue day ever and it gives you very short-term satisfaction it keeps you coming back for more it keeps you coming back for more and I think that coming back for more that next problem to solve that next challenge to solve is both precisely what's great about work and precisely what's dangerous it's the it's the exact thing that can make it so that work eats up your whole sense of self in your whole life and in my experience the problem with that is if you keep doing that and that's becomes the only thing that you give yourself to all the time that actually there is a a way in which at some point you walk away from the work video game and you go what did I just do did I care about that as much as I felt like I cared about it at the time or did I just level up a bunch of things that didn't matter that much to me and I have heard this story like my very favorite conversation to have right now is to talk you might have noticed this on my podcast I've talked with a few people to talk with really successful people about the success they've had especially people post exit and hear from them about whether or not there any or different or better after an exit I talked to one friend recently who says he knows like seven people who had had huge exits like the kind of exit where you walk away and you buy everything you could have ever dreamed of and you live in a monster house and all those kinds of things and he was saying he was actually referencing that specific person and he said that guy actually is the most miserable person I know because he went from having this thing to pursue all the time to getting it and then he lost the possibility of pursuit now the pursuit went away and he didn't have anything else in place of that and so once the pursuit went away once he sold his business he had cashed out he made all the money now he had no game to win anymore no battle to fight and it didn't matter and so then he walked away and suddenly and suddenly that that didn't matter to him any and so there was nothing to replace it with that's what I'm saying there's nothing to replace it with and so he was just miserable he just had he had no reason to get out of bed every day and it became this really really miserable thing in that respect not you know there was no sense of value to add into the world cuz he just didn't he just didn't have something else that he cared about and work is so good at giving you a sense of purpose because its goal goal orientation all the time even if you don't have like another sense of purpose in your life and my theory is that actually work doesn't do very well at deepest purpose that it's really good it's valuable and we we have that sense of pride in the work that we accomplish but that actually deeper levels of purpose and meaning are not necessarily what work can deliver very well and therefore taking one day off per week forces you to bring this back around the original Point forces you to connect with some other area of purpose in your life I think this is incredibly valuable if what I'm saying is true and you are not wired for made for just work then by taking one full day away from work every week you have to find something else that you're made for you have to find something else to invest in and find other things you know for me I think about again I mentioned the things that take up my Sunday right family friends my my faith those things I didn't mean to do three FS there but there we are family friends and Faith okay there you go three FS you can remember them okay all of those I think tie me to things that all have deeper capacity to give me something more significant in purpose in life and I and I care about those and I believe and here's the thing I think most people listening to or watching this agree with me about this that they also believe that there is a deeper level of purpose Beyond work I actually think most of us have a creeping sense in some way that work can't deliver everything that that people want now it keeps keeps you coming back for all the reasons that I said and I'm not again look I work hard like I'm not I'm not saying don't do that I like my work I'm proud of my work all those things but I think that again many of us have this sense that we know intuitively that there are other things this why we talk about the importance of family and some of that and some of that stuff because we know there's something about my child that has a better ability to deliver something important to me than than just my work itself and this is why people also sometimes really like the idea of like reaching uh the fire movement right finan Financial Independence retire early the notion behind that idea is that what they want to produce is the ability to spend time on things that they think matter more now I think actually you take work completely out and now you have a different problem right now again you don't feel like you're adding any value and so that creates Z own problems as well so I actually I'm I'm not interested in retiring going sitting on the beach for forever I think I'll work for as long as I can at least in some capacity now may not be paid work there could be all kinds of ways that I spend my time but I think there has to be some way in which you're trying to add value to the world via your labor you know and via your time and your your best efforts and your best mind your best strategic thinking all that kind of stuff but that's the point by spending one Sunday per week doing that I begin to invest in those things with more seriousness I'm building operational process with more serious now seriousness now around the other things in my life that matter the most to me and it's not like I never look into those things the rest of the week but by focusing a day on those I remind myself that's the case in that respect it's sort of a diversification strategy right if it's true that work is good but work can be allc consuming in a way that isn't good then one of the ways that I fight that I diversify my my meaning channels right by pursuing other other kinds of work or excuse me by not pursuing other kinds of work but by pursuing other outputs in my life and in that that that's what I mean by it's diversification strategy it points me towards these other things and makes me connect to them okay so that hopefully gives you some sense of the way I'm thinking about this but I want to give you one last point and that is I think that the thing that nonwork Pursuits like relationships uh you know three things I said earlier right faith family friend friendships I think that those things also have one more Capac to give me and this is a this is a baseline belief for me in life I believe that all three of those have capacity to deliver to me deeper Joy than anything else and as I've you might have heard me say before if youve followed my content for a little while I am attempting to optimize my life for Joy actually in some respect that is the starting place for this whole episode my goal in life is to optimize for Joy I want to as best as I can organize the behavior behaviors of my life around the things that are going to optimize and produce the maximum amount of joy and so I have to begin to develop theories and strategies around what is going to deliver the most joy to me and the the place I'm planning my flag on that right now is that things that have more deeper meaning and value have the ability to do that and I think nothing is more valuable than God nothing is more valuable than my family and nothing is more valuable than my friends and what I mean by valuable there is imbued with a sense of depth of meaning and importance by nature of being humans or the case of God by nature of being God to do those things and so again I organize my Sunday specifically to pursue those things because I am optimizing my life for joy and it keeps work to some degree in its place now I'm giving a lot of time to work in my life again I think it's important don't hear me wrong but I'm attempting to do those because I think there's also something else which is this sense of joy and in as much as possible I'm doing that now imperfectly of course right I'm sure there are dim on Su where I pick up work again I yeah you you see what I'm saying but in all of these things attempting to pursue as best as I can the things that I believe as best as I can look around the world pay attention to smart people and wise people around me and think about the inputs that I have access to I'm looking at what are the things that have the highest capacity to deliver me joy and then trying to build again operational process around those things and I believe that on on once a week I'm going to connect to those things better by total disconnected from work and then I'm going to show up on Monday I'm going to report record a podcast or I'm energized thinking about things that I'm excited about and I'm going to go jump into an ad account and see if I can fix it and I'm excited to go serve my clients and all those things will fall back into place along the way and we'll keep going and repeat that each week with some vacations in the middle so hopefully you relate to some of those things that I'm saying I'm curious to hear your responses to that but that's the way that I'm organizing things now hopefully for the benefit of my work hopefully for the benefit of my sense of purpose hopefully for the benefit of joy [Music] all right like I said very different episode today than other ones I've done I would love to hear from you about what you thought about this I'm curious if you have similar practice I'm curious if you have disagreements with me or agreements with me I would love to hear about them put them in public on Twitter at Andrew J Ferris is the best place to do that if you want to talk about there you can email me at podcast ajg.com you have any thoughts questions any ideas around anything that I just said I would absolutely love to hear from you about those things and of course anything else that I'm doing can all be found as usual at ajg.com but yeah please do please do give me any response you have about that also even if you just have any thoughts about whether or not this is the kind of topic you're interested in hearing from me about I would love for you to tell me I'm just curious what you thought so as always please do go reach out to my great friends at more Staffing who will help you Source incredible Talent from the Philippines for your e-commerce business they're amazing I love them go work with them don't just get virtual assistants go get virtual professionals from the Philippines let more Staffing help you go do that all kinds of great episodes coming up I got an episode with Barry hot coming very soon to talk creative strategy with a guy who's thinking on this has really helped me as I've developed my own thinking Barry and I are going to chat about that real soon and again there's just a whole bunch of great episodes coming I have a few more interviews lined up I'm going to catch back up with Jack Rubin pretty soon how things are going up PR and fig preview they are going awesome and of course solo episodes mixed in all the time as well any thoughts you have please send them my way otherwise I would love to have you share this episode with somebody if you thought it was useful to you and a rating and review and a subscription are always helpful until next time thanks for listening thanks for [Music] watch