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17Twenty
17Twenty
E159 || Live Recording, Part 2 || Burnout and Overcoming Exhaustion
In this second part of the live podcast recording, Kevin and Stewart discuss practical "wisdom nuggets" related to managing burnout and exhaustion.
We talk about the power of regular exercise and rest, share our insights on prioritizing tasks, discuss the necessity of protecting your time and energy by being selective about what you say yes and no to, and the conversation certainly doesn't shy away from the challenges of mindset and managing emotions ... all the while offering practical strategies that are tailor-made to keep you in control.
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I love going to the gym and I didn't fully understand all the benefits and reasons why I like going early in the morning to start my day, but that's actually one of my rest items. When I work with my mind so much, I rest with my hands.
Stewart Shurtleff:Every single individual has a story to tell and their great stories that need to be heard.
Kevin Carey:I want every listener to know they have the ability to change the world.
Stewart Shurtleff:Welcome to the 1720 podcast.
Kevin Carey:So we're going to drop some wisdom nuggets that's what we call them. So be on the lookout for wisdom nuggets. When something registers with you, write it down and, most importantly, implement it. But we're not serious all the time. If you've listened for a while, we get pretty weird. And I was just thinking as Wes is just dropping bombs and so elegantly. And then that prayer at the end, my ADD brain was going and it reminded me of my favorite Christmas decoration I've ever seen. So you have this house. Every square inch is covered roof walls, grass, lights, galore like insane. And then the dude next to him just bought a sign that has an arrow pointing and it said ditto.
Stewart Shurtleff:And that's what that prayer made me think like wow, good luck following that, yeah yeah, this is part of the beauty of the podcast, and what we've been doing over the last few years is having guests like Wes. I don't know that every once in a while, kevin or I accidentally says something that's relatively or marginally interesting or funny, but for the most part, the beauty of what we're doing is just mining intelligent people, getting them to speak into things that I think lots of us talk about or think about or rustle with or whatever, and having a great network of folks say, hey, and you're, you're a pro at this, come tell me your story, come talk me through this. And so having Wes to kind of be in the middle of this today on that topic is perfect, because that's exactly what we do Find someone who's awesome at it and then ask what. I would say our superpower is just asking curious questions. Tell me more about that.
Stewart Shurtleff:What does that mean? Why did you say that? What does this mean to you? Why did you say that? So it's just asking questions and making it, or hoping at least. It feels like our listeners are brought into a conversation with a couple of dudes just drinking coffee and hanging out, and that's sort of the at least I hope the vibe of what we've been doing and then involves jokes and silliness sometimes too, and getting in the ditch and you wake up or you look up and you're like we've been making quarters at jokes for 15 minutes. Let's get back on topic here. So, anyway, I hope, I hope that if you're listening, it feels like that in the car, just like hanging out with some buddies.
Kevin Carey:Yeah, and that we have a ton of bits on the podcast, one of which being guess how many quarter zips Stewie owns, and so I'm wearing one to recognize him. But speaking of recognizing, we didn't really introduce him. So he's happily married, three kiddos, a great lawyer, great friend, and he's really the yin and my yang when it comes to personality traits, and Aranda and I were talking about that during break and we didn't realize this until we took a personality test in a leadership group sort of like this, and the instructor had us line up for each dot of the profile and him and I, for every single dot, would high five each other as we walked opposite ends of the spectrum and so many things clicked like why we work so well together. Also the frustrations we would have with each other, cause I'm this like gas pedal down and he's the wait. Did you cross your teeth?
Stewart Shurtleff:Kevin, have we thought about this? I don't know. Let's spend a month thinking about it before we do something. I was listening to one of my other than the 1720 podcast. One of my favorite podcasts right now is this thing called acquired. Right, it's very interesting. It's a podcast called acquired. They usually do very long form interviews of companies. Like how did Costco become Costco? They walk all the way through that. This week's was with Charlie Munger for Matt Fisher's benefit. Charlie Munger is Warren Buffett's right hand man. Like he's been on the Berkshire Hathaway journey with him forever. He's 99 years old. They called him like at a dinner party, sat down and talked with him and they asked him like you've been business partners with him, with Buffett, for over 50 years. Like how does that work? Like what's the magic of it? You don't even. You have no idea what I'm about to say to you.
Kevin Carey:No, no, no.
Stewart Shurtleff:This is why the podcast is great. What's the like, what is the hallmarks of that partnership being great? And he said the two things. One, generally like hanging out with each other. I was like, yeah, story checks out. And the other one. The other thing that Charlie Munger said about his relationship with Warren Buffett was he's really good at things that I'm not good at and I'm really good at things he's not good at. And I was like man, isn't that it Like that's the ying to your gang, that's the this is it?
Kevin Carey:What do you call it? What's the coin? You coined it and it's going to be the name of your book that you write in the future. I have no idea what.
Stewart Shurtleff:No, I don't know.
Kevin Carey:Accidental genius.
Stewart Shurtleff:Oh yeah, that's it. Accidental genius, yeah, just there. My whole life story involves, like me, just kind of stumbling into cool things, including, but not limited to, the podcast. So yeah.
Kevin Carey:So we're going to lean further into burnout and exhaustion. You know whether you're through that season of life or you're right in the throes of it, or maybe it's about to come and you can't even see it coming. That's what we want to talk about and personally for me, I've been through some, some testimony that includes drug addiction, rehab, a fork in the road with suicide and a lot of things that my South side of Chicago kind of personality was like stuff, all that down, negative emotions. You're weak. If you show any sign of weakness, you know you're not a man like all that sort of stuff.
Kevin Carey:And those are all lies and I am so much busier with my family now. I didn't have a family then. I have different career paths that are happening and despite all of those things happening, I'm less burnt out and exhausted than I've ever been. So there's more on my plate but I'm feeling less like that and that's why I'm so passionate to come and talk about this, because I want that for you and this segment. We did a little bit of it with Wes, with the EKG acronym, but we want you all looking in the mirror on what are some tactics, some tangible tactics that you could take away, to start chipping away at this, because if you're in it and it's at a ceiling or a maximum, it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to be a process, but you may look back, if you put the consistent effort in, and say, wow, we got through that and now I'm going to help others.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, one of the things Kevin does really well is giving practical, tangible, tactical advice. Say, okay, a couple of episodes ago I forget what it was, we're talking about mindset and the thing that I took away from that part of this has just been like learning from one another was like the things that jump out in your mind when you have a certain thought right, like you're having like I should go do whatever I should. What cost was the one that from a few episodes ago that stuck in my mind like that. If that becomes like your trigger and that's that's like a very practical, tactical thing, not just ethereal, like hey, go evaluate everything, like that's great, you should do that Absolutely 100%. But take another step into the weeds a little bit, and I think that's where we live for the next few minutes is know how. How. So hopefully you take some notes, grab some, as we would say, grab some wisdom nuggets, so that when you leave it's not just like, well, that was a good talk, but I don't know what I got from it. When you leave you think, okay, that was a great talk, I took some great notes and tomorrow or this afternoon or this evening when I get home I can do X to begin taking those steps towards, you know, changing something. So one to me jumps out right at the top unless you got a list, you wanna go through yes and yes, yes and yes. And, ironically, protecting or guarding your yes or guarding your no is something to me. That is just.
Stewart Shurtleff:It was in my particular season, it was killing me. Part of your, you know, the spirit of your youthfulness is I could have said yes to a lot of things, and I did. I said yes to a lot of things, I did a lot of things, I was everywhere, I was doing everything. And then I now have well, we're in birthday season, so in 30 days I'll have a 16 year old, a 14 year old and 11 year old, and we're busy and that you know. I was saying yes to everything. And then they started needing me more, and so it was just the convergent of busyness and I think Wes talked a little bit about like you can get busy, you wanna be busy, you can get busy, but just protecting and guarding your no around that so that you can really focus on the things that are most important.
Stewart Shurtleff:And as a man who is I just turned 45, like there are a lot of things that start to converge at that time of your life that actually I've been married about 20 years, my parents are aging, my I don't look like I'm 16 anymore, my health and behavioral and exercise habits are different, like it's the convergence of all these things and if I'm not really intentional about guarding my no and saying like that, I would love to help do that but I can't and I'm just saying no is just it's been very helpful for me in the process and part of the saying no was as derivative of that evaluate everything process.
Stewart Shurtleff:Like there was a spreadsheet and I ranked everything and I got to the bottom and I was like you know what I'm doing, that thing, but it's not a top five priority for me and it's gonna suck because I'm a people pleaser man Like Kevin and I have talked about this before. I'm a people pleaser. I want nothing more than for you guys to think that guy's awesome and he's got it all together. Like that's like like the siren song of my soul and it's really hard for me to say, kevin, I know you need me to help move that date, that, what was it that you need help moving?
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, it happens so often. No, it was no, we were just talking about it. The bed, the bunk bed.
Kevin Carey:Oh, oh help. Yeah, he didn't actually ask for help.
Stewart Shurtleff:He never asked for help. But I know you need help doing that. But like it's not in my top five and I can't do it, that kills me, cause I want you to think I'm awesome, right, but I have to. I have to, like get in a spot where I'm saying yes to my family, my kids, my health, all of that to avoid just running myself ragged being busy. So on the list, that one is just at the top for me. Guard your no man.
Kevin Carey:Yeah, let's go into that further, protecting your yes, you might. So if you're not a business owner, you might not be able to do that at work. Well, how do I say no? And you still can. And it's about the spreadsheets that Stewie's talking about. It's about staying organized and prioritization. Cause I could tell you right now, as a leader, if I came and asked Stuart, and Stuart direct reported to me hey, I need you to do this. If he countered with well, check this out, here are my priorities. I could get that done by Thursday. But this slides. And then I say, no way, that's a higher priority. I want you to stay on that. And let's get to that afterwards. And I like to refer to that as, like this upward, downward arrow of communication goes up and assumption goes down, and so if we're communicating these things, we could better protect our yeses at work.
Kevin Carey:And then, when it comes to overall life, do your yeses and noes align with something Like being a people pleaser? It breaks my heart when, if Stewie says, hey, let's go to this happy hour so and so is gonna be there, and I say no without a purpose tied to it. Well, my purpose to guarding my evenings is my beautiful wife and princess daughter. Like the period, I wanna go see them. Yeah, it'd be awesome to see my friends and chop it up and have fun. But if that's a B, my family's an A and understanding like here are my. He talked about ranking it. Whether you go one, two, three, four, five or A, b, c, d, your one or your A is a non-negotiable. What are your non-negotiables? And if something interferes with that non-negotiable, your no becomes a little bit easier to say, and I don't know if you think about this too, but it does get easier with time, especially if you're a people pleaser.
Stewart Shurtleff:Oh yeah, the industry that we're in has lots of evening things, right, like there's always. You can always find a happy hour, something to do or something to go to, or a game to go to, or whatever. And when we had William, that very quickly became my no. Like y'all wanna go to dinner? Cool, not going, because I was not going to be the dad who wasn't tucking him in at night. Right, and that doesn't sound like.
Stewart Shurtleff:It was never as wonderful as I'd imagine, cause it was a disaster and there were toys on the floor and it was a mess, but all that like it's, but I wasn't gonna not be there for that. And so the hey, I can't make it home cause I'm going to dinner with so and so or whatever, ended abruptly, but I replaced it with catching for breakfast. You wanna grab coffee? How about lunch? And so the no was derivative to your point, my no in those instances with derivative of a purpose I'm gonna be home and with an understanding that the meeting that we needed to have was important. Let's just figure out a way to fit it into the space and the time that I've allocated for it. Yeah, I'm not gonna let that interfere with the space and time that I've created for something else.
Kevin Carey:And there are always our exceptions to the rule, but that's how you have to see it. There's exceptions. And now I need to put that same arrow to work at home, communication up, assumption down with my wife. Three weeks from now, there's this event. I have to be there. I have to be there. Can we reorganize some things? Can you pick our daughter up from school? Now she's in the? No, because I used to fail at that all the time and as we were trying to merge technology and calendars together and what we ended up doing is just a marker board calendar in our kitchen. And it's my responsibility, when there's a non-negotiable event that's gonna take my time away from the family, that it goes up there. And if I didn't do that, it's on me. And once we implemented that as a family even the ones because there are exceptions to that rule at least we're proactively planning and we're increasing our communication that doesn't cause heartache within our families.
Stewart Shurtleff:Okay, so another one on your list that's huge to me is find what your rest is, and during I'm an attorney, and during this season of like just really just burning myself out, I'm a trial attorney. So we're gonna prep these cases, we're gonna go down to the courthouse or private arbitration or wherever we're gonna go try these cases. There's a lot of work that goes into that, while simultaneously managing a practice with a bunch of people in a corporate organization that was coming from the directors. There was a lot of stuff going on, and all day long it was just me sitting at a desk working with my mind right. I never left the office. This is one of the frustrating things about being a lawyer. I never left the office and I was like I built that, I did that. Look at this thing I accomplished. I was like no, this is I did this, like this TPS report, tps report. This is what I did. And then that's not to diminish the import of it it's just like there was no physical, tangible manifestation of the work that I was doing.
Stewart Shurtleff:And at about the same time, we had an opportunity to purchase a piece of property out in the middle of nowhere that had nothing on it, and so what I would love to doing on the weekends was going out there and just mowing, like I just want to go mow and weed, eat and, like trimitry, and just be exhausted, like just miserably exhausted. That's what I wanted to do on the weekend, and my wife didn't really understand. She was like that doesn't sound like a lot of fun. That's not her voice, that's the voice I just gave her, though, and she was like that doesn't sound like a lot of fun. I was like no, this is amazing, right, and it was in those moments where I was like, well, that's not her rest, right, like her rest looks completely different than my rest, but that was because of the season and because of the work that I was doing during the day. That was my rest, and I would go out there for two days and come home like dehydrated and exhausted and sunburned and be like man.
Audience Member:That was awesome.
Stewart Shurtleff:She was like you're crazy, but the point of that being like you have to know what it is that's recharging you and know what it is that's der you're deriving energy. That's not sucking energy from you, and so that's the way we sort of phrase it is. You need to define your rest.
Kevin Carey:Yeah, I'll just elaborate on that because even with Stuart, I love going to the gym and I didn't fully understand all the benefits and reasons why I like going early in the morning to start my day. But that's actually one of my rest items, Because when I work with my mind so much, I rest with my hands, and so when I'm pumping iron or doing cardio, like my brain's able to space out for a little bit, just like mowing the lawn or working on the property. And I had such a struggle of, like you, asking like why do you do that six days a week? And it's like it's because I love it, it brings me joy, it charges my battery to somebody else. You're like are you out of your mind? Like that's not what charges my battery.
Kevin Carey:Laying in a coma is what charges my battery. I just want to melt out. And even with me, I'm the supercharger, my body. I forget. I think I call them shutdown days. There's like one every other month where my, when I wake up, my body says not today, you are on that couch today and it's coined in our house as a shutdown day. So even me, I have one where I'm just like a vegetable for a day and that's it.
Stewart Shurtleff:Well, but knowing it right, Like knowing it, communicating up and down, like if Sadie didn't know that that's where you were living or that was like the recharge day, or whatever the case may be.
Stewart Shurtleff:I mean, communication is high on this issue because otherwise she's like bro, why are you being such a lazy slugger today? Like no, we have an understanding that this is rest for me right now and you have a different form of rest, and sometimes we can rest together and sometimes we work differently or whatever. But just understanding the rhythms and patterns of each other I think is very, very important, because it's very easy for and I'll be Sadie in this instance to be like this is not what I had in mind, like breeding resentment or frustration. And then you put that back into your EKG, like as you're assessing all things, like is this healthy or not and how are you solving that? How are you growing? What's good there? I think communication is sort of the super, ultimate superpower around all that. It's just having great communication with those people who are in your orbit so that they know like, oh, he's actually not being lazy. That's rest today, and I can see it as what it is and appreciate it for what it is.
Kevin Carey:Yeah. So define those, define what charges your battery, reflect on it, write them down. And you might not solve them today, but that's the goal. Like this is just a launching pad for some of those things. And the next one is near and dear to me and I love that Wes brought up the kind of starter to all of it for me, which is finding your routine. And so these guys know that I have a routine for every day of the week Monday through Friday has routine, saturday has its own, sunday has its own, and it allows me to automate a lot of my days so I can force, multiply my capacity.
Kevin Carey:And the very start of it was exactly Wes's story, was step one of finding my true routine moving that phone into the kitchen and buying an alarm clock. It was a huge one because every 30 minutes I was looking at this phone like I was so important and like he said, maybe once, the entire time, the years that I've had it at my bedstand, I actually needed that message and the freedom when you move that out and you just have the er, er, er. Now your next wrestle is are you gonna hit the biggest button on the alarm clock? They make it so convenient. And so, with finding your routine, the beginning of your day is everything, and why I go on such a tangent with that alarm clock is that snooze button. That's your first negotiation, and so are you negotiating with that thing. And if you hit it three times, like, is it causing you to fall further into a hurry mode when you already have a busy schedule? Because there's a big difference between being busy and being hurried. And if you hurry your way through each day, that's gonna lead you to burnout and exhaustion. And so I like to say, like, first 10, what are the first 10 things you're gonna do in your day? And that's routine, but that's not the only phases of the day that we need to pay attention to.
Kevin Carey:So the very start of your day is one, and then the very start of your work day, it doesn't have to be a 10, but just like, what's one thing that you could do? That's a trigger to make you more efficient. What's one after lunch? So you, you crush the morning and then you crush some fajitas, and then you, you go back to your computer or job site or whatever and you're like eyes crossed, you can't really see. For me, that's turning on my Spotify, worship music and that habit. When I do it, it's like my hands get drawn in and start typing on the keyboard and then before I leave work, there's a trigger. What is the one thing Before I walk in the house for the day? There's a one thing in that routine. And then the end of the day I set some steps, kind of like a last 10, to make sure the next day goes more fluently.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, all of those things. Like I couldn't say yes more to them. I was speaking with somebody out at the buffet table earlier and I think what I said was it's easy to say, it's really hard to do. Like it's like, oh, a couple of guys with a microphone are telling me to like set a top 10 thing. It's easy for me to say that to you this afternoon when you're thinking about Monday, or Monday when you're thinking about Sunday, when you're thinking about Monday, I don't need to do that. Like that's the thought, the process is here. Like I don't need to do it. It's yeah, it's fine, status quo is okay. I've been doing it like this for 20 years. No big deal. And that's the hard part, right, like it's the mental mountain, if you will, to overcome. Like that's the hard part. Easy for me to say. It is gonna be harder for you to do it. And so I guess my challenge for you guys would just be like no, think about it. And on Sunday, when you're, you have what do they call it the Sunday scary. Somebody say the Sunday scaries, where you're just like oh, my God, it'll work tomorrow. Stop and just make a top five for tomorrow morning and get your Monday kicked off. There's a period I have a tendency to create run-on sentences period, hard stop, hard stop.
Stewart Shurtleff:Who's seen that video from Admiral McRaven I think he was delivering a commencement address to the University of Texas where he talks about make your bed every day. Yeah, I mean, this is not that you need additional words on the same topic, but if you haven't seen that video, go watch it and I think that probably gets you close enough. Admiral McRaven was well, he's an admiral and he does a talk generally speaking. Yeah, how he left for intro. He does a talk generally about how making your bed is the first hard decision. It gets your day launched into being productive.
Stewart Shurtleff:You've done something from the jump of your morning. You've done something productive, and then it makes all the other decisions a little easier. Same exact same thing. We're talking about Same exact thing. We're talking about Different opportunity to utilize it from a tactics perspective. But if you want to, if you think, oh, I want to hear more words about that, go YouTube that on the way home, or actually not on the way home. Don't watch YouTube in the car, but later, right, like, check that out. So that's another resource to look at.
Kevin Carey:Yeah, and you got to just like all of these points. You got to find what works for you, because if I made my bed to start my day at 4 am, my wife would divorce me. So there's a different routine for me that I have to go find.
Stewart Shurtleff:Also, I don't understand I've never talked about this how the ah, ah, ah doesn't get you divorced at 4 30 also, cause I know it only happens once.
Audience Member:Fair.
Stewart Shurtleff:This is an idea I just had and no one's. You can't take it, cause it's mine right now, but you should. I'm going to develop an alarm clock with no snooze button on it, and then I'm just going to sell them to you.
Kevin Carey:Yes, yeah, you'll. Buyer of one, buyer of one. So ditch, this is what we call going into the ditch. Wes was talking about classical music. I think mine plays like Beethoven, so it's not as alarming, oh gosh.
Stewart Shurtleff:Sorry, I actually like deep inside love that joke but I have like feign discussed for the bit.
Kevin Carey:but like it's I heard groans, which makes me win as a dad. That's, that's what.
Stewart Shurtleff:I'm after. That's beautiful, okay, so I'm going to keep us going. I see the clock ticking over there. One of the one of these, kevin, preaches that I need to be preached to me is like pre-decision making. It kind of goes along with routine and I'll let you speak to more. More to it a little bit, but I want to set it up because it's super important to me is like I'm going to decide right now that on Monday morning I'm going to do X and so the one Monday morning gets here. You don't think? Uh, I don't know, should I? You can be reminded? No, I've already made this decision. Kevin calls it pre-decision making. I don't know if that's unique or you came up with it, but we'll give it to you here full, full and free credit.
Stewart Shurtleff:Um, but think about those things in your life that you're negotiating with yourself about that are just causing extra stress. Um, we had an episode it was back in the two digits, I forget exactly the number, but it was with a guy named Barry Brooks who was at the time with a law partner in mind. Home dude ran like 17 iron man, something like this. Uh, he and he had all the metals hanging on the wall in his office and, um, barry's listening right now. He's like, oh gosh, I hate you, but we're really good friends. The, the. The thing that Barry said it is to this point is there was a point on his drive home where he had to go onto this like overpass ramp and decide if he was going to go left and go home to rock wall or make a right and go to the I think it's called a natatorium, where you swim inside and then like an inside swimming gym. It's called an editorial and he would. He. That was the moment that the, the, the, the, shrugging that, shrugging that off, mads, that was called. Yeah, the, um, the.
Stewart Shurtleff:The decision mattered right then. Right, like he could have thought about it all day long or wish washed about it all day long, but really it only mattered right there, you're going to put your left blinker on and go home, or you're going to put your right blinker on and go to this go, just go swim. And he said he just thought about it all day. He's like I'm not making the decision. When I'm tired, when I've had a long day, when I'm super frustrated by work, when I know I just like would rather get home because the Rangers are playing. I'm making the decision right now that when I hit that intersection I'm putting the right hand blinker on and I'm going to the gym. I'm not going to try to make that decision in that moment. So this is I've said it a couple of different ways, but it's Kevin's idea Making those pre-decisions. It really does change everything. I'll let you say more about that.
Kevin Carey:Well, where I've been really doing some deep work in my life and don't have it by any stretch figured out. I am a broken person and I continue to find out how many layers of this brokenness I have. So let's get that fact straight. But we work so much on leading others and routines and setting goals, but then we let this thing between our ears run wild. So like pre-decisions of mindset, and what pre-decisions do you have to make? Because what was happening to me was the sleepless nights and being medicated in order to sleep, and if I was trying to make that decision to shut my mind down at the very end of the day, there's no chance.
Kevin Carey:I need to build that habit during sunlight and so started working these pre-decisions of mindset and I kind of coined it are you watching the movie of your life or writing the script? And so, forever I was watching the movie. I'd wake up and all of a sudden, all these thoughts would enter my head, some good, some terrifying and like whatever. The shower for me was like a black portal of darkness, like I'd go in there, probably because it's quiet, and then something from 10 years ago that scares me to death, like something that I did, would pop in and I'd have to, like, shake it off and I'm like, why am I continuing to do this to myself? And when we allow ourselves to do that, it only manifests stronger. So if you're saying, I'm burnout, I'm exhausted, I'm burnout, I'm exhausted, I'm burnout, I'm exhausted, guess what? Like it's almost, you're allowing yourself to be there and for it to grow.
Kevin Carey:And so the first pre-decision of mindset that I was trying to wrestle with was being where my feet are. So I could do that as I'm talking to y'all and in my meetings, but in my quiet time I would bounce around everywhere, and when I caught myself bouncing around, I tagged a statement to that weakness. So if my weakness was being present, my statement was what is your next thought? And that was from a book. Just got one nugget from that book, and that just cleared the space in my head and just for a millisecond I didn't think about something, and I have to do that hundreds of times. But what I ended up finding out to the onion layers is the next thing I peeled back was okay, being present. I figured that out and I have a tagline to there.
Kevin Carey:Why am I so angry? Why do I beat the steering wheel and go nuts in traffic and go 20 miles per hour over the speed limit when I'm a half hour early, like what is the deal there? And found out that it's tied to fantasy land. I get wrapped up in these thoughts of like, oh, that HOA guy that wrote about our subdivision, I sure would like to punch him. And I start thinking about all that. And where is that getting me? And so the statement to that is quit watching the movie. And now when I catch myself getting angry, it ties me there.
Kevin Carey:And then that peels back the next onion layer. Why do I need to make that story up in my head? Because I'm a control freak. I can't control that HOA guy typing on our Facebook page calling everybody's house out, but I might be able to control kicking his door down. Like that's not for me to control and I think Wes said it really well with we're not God. We don't have to have control over all these things he does, and we're not that big of a deal.
Stewart Shurtleff:I just want to know so much what the guy wrote on the page, but I don't know if I'd.
Kevin Carey:Oh, it's everything Like he called. Like that trucks leak and oil. How dare you get that hunk of junk out there and out of our subdivision? And the guy that owns the truck is like I'm so sorry I can't afford to change my own. I'm like yeah, it gets me.
Stewart Shurtleff:So when we get done, we're going to rally together, we're going to get that guy. Is that what the takeaway is here?
Kevin Carey:Yeah, he has a name at our house that I won't say because I don't swear anymore.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, so we have. I think, what's our stop time, that clock stock to stop ticking down. We need to stop here and take some Q and A. Yeah, let's do that. We got a couple of other things, but let's, let's just pause for a minute and see if anybody has like a question or say, hey, I'm, I'm also on this, or what about this? Or if you all have, you got a anything. I mean, it's okay to not have a question also, but I would. I would hate for us to not offer you all that opportunity.
Audience Member:Matt Fisher. So how many pullovers do you have in your closet?
Stewart Shurtleff:Well, are you asking about pullovers or quarters? Quarter is two different articles of clothing. No, the number use what? Was it 39? No, it was like 42. 42-ish yeah, we did like an online contest. I guess how many there were? I guess 42 at the time. I've cleaned some out since then, so the number's probably in the mid-30s, but and then question for Kevin.
Audience Member:You said you turned into a vegetable every other month. What vegetable do you turn into?
Kevin Carey:Let's go with carrot carrot.
Audience Member:All right, then the serious question. So when you're talking about burnout, we talk a lot about work and burnout at work, and then we come home and that's our recovery, but too often today we burn out at home. We're so busy at home doing different things. How do you work through burnout at home when you're burning out at work and at home and you're not? Don't have that recovery period and I would.
Stewart Shurtleff:There's a guy in my small group With West, me and West, and there's four of us, but the guy's name is Josh and when we first started like our community group there, like children started showing up, he wrestled with that. First he has the oldest kid and he was like I just I'm showing up at home and I'm giving Melissa like not my best and I don't know I'm bringing it home. I don't know if this is exactly to your point. I think I'm gonna get there eventually. I'm not giving Melissa my best and I don't know what to do about it. So we talked about it and eventually the idea that we we eventually Like came to was you need to have a trigger to snap yourself out of it. Like you got to bring your best home, like whatever happened to work that sucked. It was your, I get it, your family deserves your best. And so to him. This is crazy. The smell of the diapers sitting in the garage, like that just y'all just smelled it. I know you did like it stuck in there, like that smell was his reminder that what's on the other side of that door deserves my best. And he crew that we like talked through an actual Smell trigger to like snap them out of that. I've learned out of work sort of pity party right, but it looks different for everybody. How you snap yourself out of it is different. Well, how, what your relationship is with your family and your kids and your wife and how you, that all looks different. But I really just want to emphasize that, like, no matter what else is going on at work or your fantasy football team is terrible, man, I get it, but when you smell those diapers on the way through the door, the people inside that house deserve your best. So figure out how to hold something in the tank. You have to have reserve. So when you get home, they get your best.
Stewart Shurtleff:And I will say a million times over I'm not the best at doing it Right, like I have a really short commute. I'm very lucky to have a short commute. Sometimes I hit the door, I'm still on the phone and the the time trigger has to be immediate. So sometimes I'll take an extra lap. I'll sit in the Sit out front before I hang up and like try to take a breath. I'm not saying please don't mistake anything. We're saying up here to be like we're great, like we're really crushing. That you should definitely like he that we're so good. No, we're wrestling through it too, right, we're wrestling through it too, and I don't do a great job of it, but I think I got at least kind of close. Yep, you might have some other thoughts on that.
Kevin Carey:Teach their own. It builds on that a little bit in the find your routine. Earlier, I have to literally shake off my days in the driveway. There has to be a clear separation, because what I found out in my my Discovery was it wasn't that I left it all on the line and I don't have gas left in the tank. It's a lie. I was letting myself manifest a lie and a lazy excuse to not give the people that love me the most the best attention. And so once I stopped lying to myself and Walking in the door and saying no, the when, if my deathbed, they're the ones that are gonna be there, not the employers. They deserve my best and they're gonna get it. And to this point I still fail at it. But at least there's a mechanism now to catch that lie, because in my head it was just a lazy cop out. I could just say that to y'all and it makes me feel better. A little hit of dopamine, all right, it's. There's my excuse. No, not anymore, it's an excuse.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, there's. How many of y'all know Jesse Itzler? But Jesse Itzler has a saying. I think it's mostly intended to revolve around, like your body's ability to Exert physically. And he says once you run out of energy, you've got a. You've only expended about 20% of it. Is it that or is it the reverse? Either way, that's it. It's it.
Stewart Shurtleff:Once you feel like you ran out of energy, you still have 80% of the tank. That's your mind lying to you, one of the things I would tell the boys. So my oldest, william. He's about to turn 16. He's a prolific cross-country runner.
Stewart Shurtleff:I didn't know at the time, but when he was in kindergarten we would go running and Now realize it was weird because he was a really good runner and I just thought it was normal because he's my oldest. But I would tell him, like your mind is weak, your body is strong, your mind is weak. And he learned to like just say that's right. Like when I start feeling tired, I've only spent about 20% of my energy, and I think that translates to your mental energy too, and I don't have like some scientific evidence of this or whatever. But when you hit the door and you're like, oh man, I'm out of steam. No, you're not Like you. You have 80% left. You're just choosing not to give it. And so what? Like, physically shake it off, make a lap around the house, have a routine to snap out of it, something To realize. No, no, no, no, you're not actually out of energy. You're making an excuse and the people who are inside those doors is are the best.
Kevin Carey:Yes, man you.
Audience Member:Not really a question necessarily, but kind of. You know, I thought a little bit more about your question about how do you give to when you're drained from your work and your home, but what I've gathered from this as well is sometimes relying on your community. So this group that we're in right now is a community, because it's something that we're all struggling with. The gentlemen up here have talked about how their you know church groups and friends and community have helped them self-realize as well, so maybe that could be another avenue to look into as well.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, let me. I'm going to speak to that for just a second. And Kevin, kevin wrote a book. It's called the Mountain Mover Manual. If you don't have a copy of it, you should get one. It's on Amazon, it's on Audible. What Plug? Thank you, that's a I had. He didn't ask me to plug anything there. It is right there. It's an Audible version of it.
Stewart Shurtleff:But one of the things in the book that he talks about is find your tribe and you talked about two tribes right there of folks who can speak into it. But one of the things and I meant to say it when West and I were, or when West was up here and we were talking was I wouldn't have wrestled through that phase were it not for him saying I think you're in a phase right, and Kevin has been a part of that. Matt, some of the guys back here at this table, gerald has been a like hey, man, I know you, like I know, you know you, and that's not okay or that's not normal and having a community of people who can speak into your life because, guess what, you're probably blind to some of this or you're making an excuse for it this guy right here will be the number one guy that I heard that that's an excuse. Cut it out.
Kevin Carey:Like and to just really that's Matt in my life.
Stewart Shurtleff:I mean Matt too, like we've I'm having is it lunch or breakfast next week? Because I want that feedback. For I reached out to Matt. He don't know this yet, but I was like we're going to have lunch next week and I want the feedback. I want somebody to say I know you, I've known you for a long time, I know the way your mind works and your heart works and I know what's important to you.
Stewart Shurtleff:That's not okay. You need to fix that. And that feels like it. First, when I say that somebody's like yeah, all right, but I know when those guys say that it's not because they're trying to like lord over me or be better than me or dominate Like my. They're doing it because they love me and they care about me and they want what was best for me and my family. So if you don't have, if you haven't found your tribe to your point, get busy. Get busy finding it. It's here at a church, a community of faith, it's in your peer groups, it's in your networks, it's out there somewhere. Go find it, cause it is. It is instrumental to helping you level up wherever you're going.
Audience Member:Hi, thank you. I hope I can get this question out right. But it's about the routine and the plans and kind of thinking ahead and, pre you know, planning out. I love all of that. That speaks to my soul and who I am. But how do you then deal with the changes that pop up that are unpredictable? So you know, you have your first 10, you have thought out Monday morning, you kind of have in your mind that the day that it's you know going to happen and and all of those things and I struggle with control and letting go as well. So sometimes those changes that pop up that just completely affect your entire day really are a huge wrench for me and being able to continue, like to shake it off and have the joy and the energy, it just kind of sucks it all out of the day. So how do you deal with that? Or what do you have to share, maybe to help with that?
Stewart Shurtleff:Have you tried like throwing things, I finally get breaking something usually solves that, no, but maybe I do need to do that. No, that's not actually that's disregard that I did delete back there. Just cut that out. Now go ahead. I got a couple of ideas, man.
Kevin Carey:I love that question because it's a real. It's a real situation that happens and there are I call them to do list days where I have my prioritized list out and then we're, I'm in construction. The world just goes crazy. And then at the end of the day I'm like I did, I did nothing on this list. But I'll give you a little story that happened, where in a prioritized week I'm knocking out my priorities and I'm not letting things procrastinate into the next day when I do have the time because I don't know what's coming, and so on this sample week, monday through Thursday, I haven't had the big fire pop up, pop up, pop up. And then that Friday morning my daughter's school called and said your daughter has a 102 fever. She's got to leave right now.
Kevin Carey:I still had all of my Friday things to do. But guess what? That became my new A in my priority list, non-negotiable. Everything else is going to the side. So on my way to that school I called the people that I was going to meet, which they're all under. If they have kids, they especially get it. And now I'm adjusting to it. If I hadn't executed when the fires weren't there Monday through Thursday, now Monday through Thursday's things that I've slipped on is also on top of that Friday. Now I'm in deep, and so that's why you do it so routinely that when the fires do pop up, the adjustments not so radical, because you could go right back to it once you put that fire out.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, I agree with that, Having a priority system, right. Another thing that I mean, kevin is, I will say, teaching me is like having an immediate mental response to it. So I don't know if we've talked about this or not, but what I was thinking when you said that is like what's a big deal? Like something popped up. What's the big deal? Trust me, I get it. Like the big deal is I want to break stuff too, like I'm not diminishing that feeling, but what's the big deal? Okay, something popped up, put it in order, get to it when you get to it.
Stewart Shurtleff:The other thing is and I really, really, really, really keep going into infinity struggle with having margin. Like if I flip my calendar up here, you'd be like, oh my gosh, you are crazy, you're triple booked all day. I'm just like I don't know, like I need to not be busy, right, but I remember I'm a people pleaser. If you need me at a meeting, I'll be at a meeting. Like I'm quadrupled, triple booked all the time and my like focus is finding margin. Like I need spaces in my calendar where there aren't things so that when the phone rings or something fell or whatever, it's like I got an hour or two o'clock to take care of that. It's no big deal. It's no big deal because I have margin and I think that margin needs to exist across all those things. You're performing your EKG on, right, because it we're talking about it in the work context, like, ah, I had a to do list and now there's something interfering with it.
Stewart Shurtleff:Well, you have that same like lack of margin at home too. Like, oh man, we really you really need to talk about, like insert big thing at home here, right, but we're just so busy, like I got to get William to this and I got to get Hayes there and Stella's got to be here, and then I got to get the carpool and we have no margin. So the important thing is slip right. And so, anyway, this idea of creating that and holding fast to it and some people in the like get things done scene would say making appointments with yourself.
Stewart Shurtleff:I mean, you create margin like that too. Like no, no, no, from two to three every day, that's my time. Like you don't get to book a meeting there, I'm already meeting with somebody who's really important, it's me, right. That's how you bake margin and just just create it. So, anyway, again raising my hand saying oh yeah, I have that huge problem too, and I. Those are some ideas of how I'm struggling to wrap my head around it and work through it, but you know, perhaps one of those tactics is helpful for you to and we're 155 episodes in, but we've never had a timer, yeah, and so I know she's probably panicking that we're way behind schedule here.
Kevin Carey:So you could take over if you'd like.
Stewart Shurtleff:Yeah, somebody come rip these mics out of her hand. Any other? I have a couple like parting shots. If there are any other questions, I'd be happy to take them though. Yes, ma'am.
Audience Member:Personality test called true colors, and you have the orange personality, which do not like structure and they're very spontaneous. And how, what kind of advice would you give this personality that doesn't like the routines, that don't like, you know, structure and that's more of your blue personality.
Stewart Shurtleff:That's a great question, could you hear?
Kevin Carey:No, could you say it?
Stewart Shurtleff:out loud for this old man. Well, let me, I'm going to read. I couldn't hear you really well, so I'm going to say it back just to make sure I heard it. But the gist of the question is, like, when you need personality surveys, like some people have like a more free spirited spontaneity based like I just don't work well with rules. That's my words, not yours.
Stewart Shurtleff:But what we're talking about is like, man, you need rules, you need structure, you need discipline. Like how do you take those two ideas and sort of jive them together? That's a great question, right? I mean, it goes to like everybody's a little bit different and some of the things that we're saying are like well, that's great, that that shoe would fit well if I had an 11 and a half, but I don't, so the shoe doesn't fit right. I don't know that I have a good answer for that. I am a rules based lawyer, right? Like everything has a rule, there's a reason, everything happens and we do it in an order, and that's just my personality. So I hear the question, I understand the consternation and I don't know that I'm equipped to have a very good answer. I don't know, maybe you have better one. I got one.
Kevin Carey:Yes, rip off, jaco willing. Discipline equals freedom, so like your freedom is that spontaneity.
Kevin Carey:You need to create it through discipline. So, like him and I are polar opposites. I'm the gas pedal, chase squirrel, all that sort of stuff my deep work that I have to prioritize, that I hate doing is the stuff he loves, like a boilerplate contract reading the legal agreement oh it's. I don't know how he does that for a living, but I got to make it a priority and they call it eating the frog to start the day, like I'm going to get through this and I'm going to do it, so then I could go do the things I love, because if we don't and we keep stacking those things up, it's going to rob us from being who we want to be. So we have more incentive with our personality profile to do our deep work. His and I deep work is different. He has to put more effort into maybe the shallow things that are my deep things and vice versa. But same rule applies discipline equals freedom.
Stewart Shurtleff:You got a parting shot Kev.
Kevin Carey:No, this has been awesome. We get somebody's got to rob these microphones. Thank you so much for letting us come.