Episode 42 - Reclaiming Freedom: Work Life Imbalance

Scott, Michael, and Preston discuss the realities of the Western society's approach to work-life balance, or lack thereof, and how work-life integration, or work-life imbalance are more honest descriptions of our relationship with work.

Transcript

Scott: 0:45

Welcome to another recording of episode 42 of the Reclaiming Man podcast. I am your host, Scott Silvey. With me, as always, Michael, the mastermind Beckwith, and Preston, the Southern Canuck himself Radomsky, gentlemen. How are we doing? Great.

Michael: 1:02

Winding up next year already,

Scott: 1:05

so. I love that you added like this little fist bump thing to it.

Preston: 1:09

Yeah. You have to. According to what you were talking about, not celebration season, separation season, you're not winding down the year, Michael, you're winding up the end of the year, right?

Michael: 1:25

Yes. I mean, that's a, more cranking up the end of the year. Yeah, that's a more appropriate phrase. We're, we're stepping on the gas. For sure. Yep.

Scott: 1:33

Yep. All right. So this episode, we're going to talk a bit about, work life balance and it's one we recorded a couple of weeks ago. And by recorded, I mean, Preston and Michael started the recording. And I later joined, after landing from a flight from Washington, DC, I believe. And for whatever reason, my recording, when I joined, it did not record. So I was just joining and the video that came out of it was amazing when Preston and Michael were talking, but then there were long periods of them just going like this.

Preston: 2:07

And then kind of like nodding,

Michael: 2:09

yeah, that was

Scott: 2:10

pretty, that's pretty good. And that was me talking, but y'all don't get to hear that. So I wanted to release it because I feel like our episodes are best when, when I'm not, not only not seen, but not heard, but these guys decided that we needed to rerecord. It was a

Michael: 2:25

good, it was a good idea though.

Preston: 2:26

We should have just dubbed in, a bunch of random stuff as you talk and, that made no sense. That would have been amazing. People would be listening to the episode what the fuck is going

Scott: 2:36

on? I mean, think, think like the show Lost, right? Dane Cook has a joke about that. Every episode of Lost ended with, what the fuck is going on? And you came back for the next episode. Like maybe that's what a podcast should be.

Michael: 2:49

You guess. Just guess what we're saying next.

Scott: 2:53

Well, I could certainly bring on some of the, seventh generation Appalachian men that I've met here in Tennessee who need their children to translate their English and that would, we could just do that.

Preston: 3:08

Do it. Probably would be. I mean, if you could find one of those that doesn't have that bad of English that would be understandable, probably be a very interesting person to interview.

Scott: 3:18

Oh, I'm sure it would be.

Preston: 3:20

I was talking to a guy like that when I was at Dollywood one time, I was getting, looking at boots at a place in, what is that, is it Pigeon Forge, the little town there? Yeah, Gatlinburg,

Scott: 3:30

one of the two.

Preston: 3:30

And, I was actually wearing our Reclaiming Man sweater, and this guy, big old bearded guy came up to me and was like, Oh, what's that all about? That's like really cool. And we started talking, and he was telling me about just how The Appalachians, how in the normal, way people settled, in the town, there would be a blacksmith, there would be, a cook, all the different sort of jobs would be delegated to different people, but the way the Appalachians worked, it was like, w They all knew how to do everything. Like they were sort of super self sufficient in that aspect. And I, I thought it was very interesting. So to get someone like that on the podcast, I think would be fascinating to hear about that.

Scott: 4:16

I've met when I was, so last year I went through last year, the year before I went to the Libertarian National Convention as a delegate and meeting a lot of people from particularly Eastern Tennessee was fascinating. How even me, like with a similar political affiliation or leaning to some of these gentlemen, they would tell you if you showed up, like you're an outsider, like you are an outsider. And the idea of Appalachia Stan is not a joke to them. Like they want that, right? It's fascinating subculture. All right. That has nothing to do with work life balance. I could see Michael. How do I swing this back? What's the Segui, which is how you should pronounce Segway? Yeah. Segway is not spelled S E G W A Y like it should be. It's S E G U E. It's a weird, weird word. Segway. Is it French? Probably. French. Sorry to our one French listener. I didn't mean to insult you. He'll be fine. They, they will be fine. Alright. All right. So, so going back to, yeah, so we're going to balance. Why don't you guys, since you initiated the, the, the last episode, maybe it'd be interesting to kind of have you kick things off with the discussion. And, I'll just chime in.

Preston: 5:43

Yeah, that sounds good. The, yeah, the

Michael: 5:46

foundation of the conversation. Came from a few podcasts that I'd been listening to that talked about the end of the year is sort of the busiest time because you're fitting other things into your schedule that wouldn't normally be there and just various thoughts about what are the approaches to work life balance and taking time off. And my manager, specifically asked or told us to take time off at the end of the year. And so. I started to think about the work life balance and adding up some of the numbers and doing the math on it and realize like there's no such thing as work life balance and notoriety necessarily think there needs to be. There's going to be an imbalance or, as Scott will share a little bit later, an integration between work and life. And it's important for me to understand the difference from a mindset perspective on trying to achieve balance when that's not the goal. And so it's. I think discussed a lot in our culture is the end goal is to find a good work life balance while you're working and I just, after thinking about it and doing the math, I said, no, this is not the case. It should not be a work life balance. And, it kind of ties into redefining priority in life and essentialism that. Scott's been sharing quite a bit about and the books that we've been reading. So I wanted to have just a conversation between the three of us about what our approaches are. How much are we working individually on a weekly basis? And do we think that's the right amount? And so just on my end, I'll kick it off and, and then, actually Preston, I think I, you have a really good example of work life imbalance or integration, whatever you want to call it. And. It's a driving force. I know for what you're trying to accomplish in the next few years, but on my end, I'm generally working between 50 to 60 hours a week now. And, as I look towards the next year and beyond, I don't anticipate working fewer hours. It's just spending them more judiciously and making sure that I have the right types of tasks. And so, it's a big, it's a big chunk of your week when you think about, sleeping a third of the day. And then having really 50, 60 hours a week of the rest of your time is the large majority of how you're spending your time. So it's not a balance by any means. And, Preston I think in the episode I had asked you specifically about your schedule and how much you're working right now and how much you're committing to, learning. new songs for Broadway and pursuing that path and, you know, in parallel to what you've got going on with FedEx.

Preston: 8:34

Yeah. I mean, so I usually work Monday through Friday and. From door to door, I guess from my house to work and back is usually minimum 12 hours a day, sometimes less, sometimes more. And so it's interesting having this conversation again after having it and then thinking about it maybe differently. Cause the idea of like spending 60, 70 hours a week working on something. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing to be doing. Currently right now, it's just, I hate that I'm doing it for somebody else and making someone else money or whatever. It's kind of frustrating because it's like, that makes the working someone else's hours in a sense. But, if you are doing it for, like say I was playing guitar on Broadway for 70 hours a week, I mean, that'd be extremely fulfilling and enjoyable. I mean, it would still be a lot of hard work and a lot of I spent a lot of time doing something other than being home with my family, but whatever that time I'm working either at FedEx or playing guitar, when, when you are home, I think you, just the term like work life balance. Yeah, like how does something like that even realistically exist except for when you are home making the most of that time With your wife or your children, you know And that's something that I actually kind of struggle with sometimes not being present and you know sometimes being so overwhelmed with the amount of hours I spend at a job that is just kind of I don't know, starting to kind of kick my butt. It's like, I lose sight of being the leader of my family because I'm just so bogged down with a bunch of shit that I don't want to do, but

Michael: 10:37

it's Well, yeah, we're spending 50 60 percent of our time doing the things that have us caught in the cycle versus breaking free from the cycle. I think that's really what my goal was to try to highlight as we're pursuing, all three of us, new ways of wealth generation, new ways of living. new ways of thinking about the work that we do, our vocation, our calling, our, our time that we have to spend with family is always, it seems like at least put on hold until we achieve some level of financial success, which apparently our society says, age 65 is the magical number. Yeah. And we've talked a bit about designing a life that we can't retire from. And so that's where this concept of work life imbalance or work life integration. I think imbalance can have a negative connotation, but I'm not meaning it here in that sense. I'm meaning that in order for the three of us to level up, we have to put in even more time outside of those 60, in your case, 70 hour weeks. Sometimes we have to put in more time to pursue music or my case to pursue technical analysis and trading or in Scott's case to. Build multiple companies and

Scott: 12:00

I want to pause on that for a second because I've thought about this a lot over the last, the last year, the last few weeks as I've been reflecting a bit on the on the year, as you get the holidays. And there's been a lot of like, kind of year anniversaries for me that have come up in the last few months from. Kind of when I started my health journey to when I started 75 hard to, just kind of reflecting, as we go through some holiday situations and like where I was last year. And so I've had some thoughts on this a lot, even since we had this initial conversation, a week or two ago. I think I'm working less per week right now than I have at any time in my life. Maybe not. Any time of my productive life, for sure. But, I'm producing more value than I ever have. And it's not necessarily just because I'm older. This goes back to, to, this idea of multiple pillars. Right? We've talked about with Sean Whalen, it's power, purpose, passion, and production. And I know Ryan Mickler has his, and Brian Reeves has his and, Garrett White has his, they all have these different like pillars that every single one of them is going to tell you that what they do is like, if you over index on just one, which is what I did for most of my twenties and thirties was I said, when I figure out my career, then I will get healthy. Then I will spend more time with my family. Then I will. And if you think of each of these pillars as like living inside of a balloon, right? If you push too hard on any one of them, it's going to pop your balloon, or at least it's going to be a deformed, ugly balloon. And who likes deformed, ugly balloons? Where instead, if you're consistently expanding all of them. What ends up happening is like all of them have more room to expand further, right? So it's like the whole balloon, the volume gets bigger. And so for me, as I've been investing into myself and my mind and my body and developing an intimacy of self where like I'm not afraid to examine who I am. And what I stand for. In fact, I think anyone who hangs out with me now is going to be like, wow, that dude, like he's a man of principle. And that's not something I've been able to say in almost any point in my life. It's not that I've been dull or boring or uninteresting, it's that I didn't know who I was, and I didn't know how to articulate what I believe. So as I've been going through that, I've also been working to and investing in relationships with friends and family. I've been investing in my career, and so as I've been doing all of these things, and living a more integrated life, where, like, one example that I talked a little bit about in the last episode is this idea of savagery. So there's a company, a vendor of ours that we, we, we hired for some sales work and like they have a culture of like, so we've, we've talked about some of these challenges and things they do, like their, their challenges are so much more next level than ours. We're like, you don't even get to say you did something if it wasn't 300 reps, if you didn't do 300 squats, it doesn't show up in your list of PT, right? So like everything they do is, is really, excuse me. What I would consider kind of next level, like further along that kind of sort of journey, I guess, then that I'm on, right. Where like, I can't do some of the things that they're doing, but the point is, is like their whole company culture is like that. And that's something I'm starting to integrate into my company and into my business life is more of that mentality. Like Joey, the CEO of this company posted earlier today, and the quote was winning is more fun than fun is fun. Now, Ed, my let's talked about this before. So, I've heard this before, but this idea that winning is more fun than fun is fun. He said, this is the mentality we carry here. It's the mentality you have to carry to work here, or else this won't be the place for you. You will select, self select out. We move faster than anywhere you're ever going to work. We create opportunities bigger than anywhere else will even consider giving you. Our culture turns a lot of people off, like a lot, but it attracts the right select few that are required. Like, this ethos they have. I love it because it speaks to all the things I've been doing in my personal life, right? And so as I'm integrating all of these learnings, this, this kind of growth mindset, this savage mindset that I've been developing in my personal life, as I'm pulling that into my business life, like all these areas of my life that used to be so disparate. My wife and I talk a lot about how there have been times where we're kind of like roommates. Because my life and my career, if I'm over indexing on that, she's raising and homeschooling four kids and she's got all these things going on. Like, we have very little overlap where we actually get to sit down and like, talk about what's going on and, and build these bonds. As those, the lines between these things blur, and not in an unhealthy way, right? Like, I work from home. I'm sitting in my home office right now. And there have been times in my life where working from home sucked ass. Because I would walk out the door, but work would come with me, and I was never more than ten steps from this door. Nowadays, when I log off at four o'clock on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, because I'm taking my kid to MMA, the likelihood of me logging back in for work is almost zero. That doesn't mean that I don't get done with MMA and, check my email real quick, check my, my critical messages systems to make sure that, I'm not missing anything important, but like the lines between the, these areas of my life. are both, I would say they're, they used to be very disparate where now they're not, but on the flip side, part of what I've been able to do is establish healthy boundaries between them all. And a lot of that comes from having that, like, sense of integration. Yeah, of integration, but also that sense of self, and like knowing, and being able to admit to myself, maybe I'm, maybe I'm leaning into work because, man, four kids that are three and under are really fucking hard to deal with. Right, and it's really stressful and it's tiring and my wife can just handle that, right? Like once you get really honest with yourself and what's like what you care about and what's interesting and appealing to you The easier it is to like identify What those are and what the boundaries need to be and then to also be honest with yourself and like you're letting those boundaries You're crossing over those boundary lines that you shouldn't, right? Like, Oh yeah, I probably shouldn't just go sit at my computer and work on stuff. That isn't, isn't, it's, it's not urgent and it's not important, but I'm doing it because I don't want to do housework. I don't want to put the kids to bed tonight, whatever. Like there were times I did that, not necessarily intentionally, right? Like I'm not actively thinking that, but as I got more aware of myself and. Like the habits and the drivers, a lot of my actions and activities, I was able to be more honest about those things and then it does become more of an integration. So I bring all that back to say that the work that I'm doing, maybe the missing piece to this equation in my mind, and this is sort of stream of consciousness, though, is when I'm working, I am fucking working. Like I'm going, I'm very on point typically with what I have to get done today. And I get that done as quickly as possible. And then the next thing and then the next thing. And so I'm a lot more effective in the time that I'm spending in part, because my mental clarity is 10 X, what, what it was a year ago, a hundred X, what was a year ago, my energy, my physical fitness, all these things have contributed to that. So I'm getting more work done. But then I am able to, switch off and step away and be more present, not always, but yeah, I think

Michael: 20:13

that's what you should be asking yourselves, we should be asking ourselves regularly. Are we able to shut it off when we know that there are other things in life that we spend a disproportionately small amount of time on relative to how important they are. And all of us agree that we should be spending as much time as we can with our wives, with our children, with our tribe, with our communities, right? Sharing what we've got with each other. And we spend a very small amount of time doing that actually. So it's, thinking about those things and making sure that when, we're in seasons that we're going to over index and. And generating wealth

Scott: 20:56

for

Michael: 20:57

the vision of the future that we have, right? It's just the, the necessary part of separation, right? We have to separate ourselves from everybody else who isn't willing to work that hard, but at the same time, be mindful of the, the actual amount of time that we, we put it into it. So whether it's us pursuing our current career path, if you will, in parallel to our future. Calling your career path. I think it's all, it's, it's really interesting to me. And I think, Preston, you're probably the best example. I feel like based on how much time you actually spend and, and still make it happen. Right. You're, you're still unwilling to back down on practicing more learning new songs. I mean, as Scott, you were dialing in Preston was working on a couple of things and he's like, I'm working on these songs, it's like, you're putting in a lot of time to. Be able to make that transition successfully and to be able to pursue the things that you want. So, I don't know. Those are the things that I, I mean, I was hoping to cover in this podcast, to be honest with you. So I think you did a good job summarizing a lot of it, Scott.

Scott: 22:06

Yeah.

Michael: 22:07

Preston, I'm not sure what else you, what you're thinking.

Preston: 22:12

No, I, I think it's kind of all there. It's just being aware of, of that, that unbalance and just, when you can dig deep with what you really love, like do it.

Scott: 22:30

Yeah,

Michael: 22:30

that's it. So that's the challenge I would say this week. Hopefully you guys are, are starting to see, we've started to post some weekly PT challenges. They don't have 300 reps in them yet, but, just keep an eye for those that come out on a weekly basis and feel free to let us know how they go, how many reps you end up doing or. If you gave up after one day, please

Scott: 22:51

don't, please. If you don't do it on day two, just do it on day three.

Michael: 22:55

Yeah, just keep it up. Yeah, I hope you guys all have a great week. Scott want to sign us out?

Scott: 23:04

Yeah. I'll just echo what Michael said. Thanks for listening here to episode 42. And work life balance and work life integration, this all falls under this umbrella of if you design a life you don't need to retire from, then you don't have work life, you don't have to worry about work life balance. The living of your life is fulfilling. Your financial obligations, your familial obligations, and I don't say obligations is like a burden. I say the things that you're committing to as a man or a woman, as somebody that's providing for your family, whether that's monetarily or emotionally, or anything in between. It's really about centering yourself in a way that is sustainable in all areas of your life. Thank you for listening to episode 42. As always, you can come punch me in the face anytime. I welcome it 2024, the year of 2023, the year of getting punched in the face. That was episode 41 where we talked about. I can't wait to

Preston: 24:13

hear, hear you on here when you're like. Boys. You show up with like a big ol shiny and you're like, You just can't even see. Guess what happened? And we're like, what? You're like, I got hit by a

Scott: 24:25

car. Like, oh, that sucks. We will see you next time.