IDL16 Season 1: Win at Work and Succeed at Life with Michael Hyatt
How can you structure your work so that you do not sacrifice your family in exchange for success? What does real success, in life and in business, look like? How can you as a business owner create real change in the lives of your employees and recreate the meaning of being a boss?
Michael Hyatt and I speak about how to win at work and succeed in life and we question where this cult of overwork comes from.
Meet Michael Hyatt
Michael Hyatt is the founder and chairman of Michael Hyatt & Co., which helps leaders get the focus they need to win at work and succeed at life. Formerly chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, Michael is also the creator of the Full Focus Planner and a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of several books, including Free to Focus, Your Best Year Ever, Living Forward, and Platform. His work has been featured by the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Businessweek, Entrepreneur, and other publications. Michael has been married to his wife, Gail, for more than forty years. They have five daughters, three sons-in-law, and nine grandchildren. They live just outside Nashville, Tennessee.
Visit his website. Connect on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Subscribe to Michael’s YouTube channel and see all his books here.
In this episode we discuss:
Constraints are counterintuitively helpful
Values, community and self-leadership
How did we get to the cult of overwork?
CONSTRAINTS ARE COUNTERINTUITIVELY HELPFUL
Placing constraints in your life are one of the secrets to finding a good work-life balance that allows you to excel while spending time with your family.
“It’s counterintuitive because essentially what these celebrity entrepreneurs are advocating is that you dispense with constraints so that you don’t have [any], that you just become a working machine … but the truth is constraints actually help us be more focused and more productive and the likelihood of success is greater when we do that.”
Constraints are the key to comprehensive, long term success and to making sure that you do not lose one in exchange for the other: that your family does not suffer for your work and vice versa.
By placing boundaries around your work and life schedule, it encourages you to get done what needs to get done, because you know that when you get home you are going to be present with your family. Constraints motivate you because they are laced with discipline and commitment.
“That kind of constraint was really, I think, the secret to my success [because] it made me focus, it made me more productive, it made me more successful.”
VALUES, COMMUNITY, AND SELF-LEADERSHIP
The group of people that you align yourself with, be it your colleagues, your competition, your family and your mentors, are all a part of the road to success that you will walk.
It is important to surround yourself with people that bring out the best in you, and encourage you to do the same for them because any powerful business is created by serving people. When we draw motivation from those around us, we are propelled far into our capabilities.
In this way, self-leadership is also vital in a business owner because you will work in your business with the skills and discipline that you have now. In order to grow, you need to govern yourself and grow with yourself as well.
“That’s why self-leadership always precedes team-leadership and why self-leadership is the key to creating culture [because] you’re going to replicate yourself whether you like it or not. In your organization … [if you talk about] work-life balance but you yourself are working until 7, 8 o’clock at night, getting there at 6 am in the morning … [this] creates an unspoken expectation on the part of everyone in your organization because they’re looking at the boss and they’re saying ‘that’s what the boss does, and regardless of what he says, that’s what he expects.’”
Be the example that you want to set in your business because it does not work if you say something and do something else: you are the creator of the work-culture, and if you want to make it a good place, you have to embody that in your work there.
HOW DID WE GET TO THE CULT OF OVERWORK?
Working hard usually starts from a good motive, but it can shift:
One problem is that it is fun, especially if you are doing work that you enjoy. You can get lost it in and spend hours doing it without realizing that you are potentially neglecting the people around you, or even yourself.
Another potential issue is that with work, we can produce measurable outputs that make us feel good because we can monitor and track our progress and this naturally makes us feel fulfilled, which makes us want to keep doing it.
For some people, they enjoy the acclaim they receive from colleagues and bosses.
For other people who have families, sometimes doing work at the office, no matter how tiring, is easier than dealing with family issues. Therefore they choose to stay at work for longer to avoid having to deal with stresses at home that seem – in the moment – without end.
“I think if you were to really peel the onion back and get to the core layer, the issue was [that] I didn’t know what to do at home, but I knew what to do when I was at work, and that became a convenient excuse for me to not have to engage with the family so much.”
Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:
Visit Michael’s website. Connect on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Subscribe to Michael’s YouTube channel and see all his books here.
The Impact Driven Leader YouTube Channel
Join the Impact Driven Leader Community
Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn
BOOK | Ryan Hawk – Welcome to Management: How to Grow from Top Performer to Excellent Leader
BOOK | John Maxwell – Change Your World: How Anyone, Anywhere Can Make a Difference
BOOK | Paula Faris – Called Out: Why I Traded Two Dream Jobs for a Life of True Calling
BOOK | Michael and Megan Hyatt – Win at Work and Succeed at Life: 5 Principles to Free Yourself from the Cult of Overwork
BOOK | Simon Sinek – The Infinite Game
BOOK | Rory Vaden – Procrastinate on Purpose
BOOK | Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy – Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want
BOOK | James E. Loehr and Tony Schwartz – The Power of Full Engagement
BOOK | Alex Soojung-Kim Pang – Shorter: Work Better, Smarter and Less – Here’s How
BOOK | Alex Soojung-Kim Pang – Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
BOOK | Napoleon Hill – Think and Grow Rich
About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast
The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.
Rate, review and subscribe here on Apple Podcasts or subscribe on Stitcher and Spotify.
Constraints actually help us be more focused and more productive and the likelihood of success is greater when we do that.
Michael Hyatt
Podcast Transcription
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
All right. Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. Welcome in and today I get to introduce our next book in the Impact Driven Leader book club. Now we're moving into our fifth book in the month of May. So let me just kind of recap. We started with Welcome to Management by Ryan Hawk, Change Your World by John Maxwell, Called Out by Paula Faris, Think Again by Adam Grant in this month. And the book that we're going to be reading in the Impact Driven Leader book club and talking about in the round table is Win at Work and Succeed at Life by Michael and Megan Hyatt Miller. And I had a great time sitting down with Michael. You guys are going to hear that interview shortly and it was really enjoyable because as a father of five girls, as myself as a father of three children, being able to see someone 20 years down the road, maybe 15 years down the road, Michael's a young man in heart and spirit, and yet learning from his wisdom.
And I think we're at such a pivotal age in leadership. I continue here at everyday, I was on Clubhouse and we're talking about the advent of modern day leadership. It's really moving into this healthier manner. And so much of our conversation between Mike and I, to me centered around that. It's this idea of being a hard charging executive like he was at one point. He earns this bonus, he comes home and he's kind of proud to share it with his wife, Gail and yet she looks at him as like, "Was it worth it?" I mean, that's the way I took it contextually and that's something we have to wrestle with every day. So as a leader, as someone who owns a business, maybe you listening in or are finding those challenges yourself. Am I helping lead people? Am I going to really making sure that I'm winning at work and succeeding at life? Because too often is we find people win at work and fail in life or challenges are I'm going to prioritize life so much that maybe I just barely get by in my profession.
And as this desire to win, shouldn't complicate the cost of others. You know, if I circle back to another book that I truly admire The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek, it really isn't about winning the game. It's just staying at play, in the game. And I think this is the context that Michael and I dig into and really understanding where does this cult of overwork stem from? Is it based upon productivity? Is it meeting our mission? Can we meet our mission in different ways? So I really believe that you're going to get a tremendous amount of value out of this. Can't wait to wrap it up at the end and really invite you all listening in, be a part of our group, be a part of the book club, engage in it, because I know you're going to get more than just by reading the book. I truly believe it. I know the people that are part of our round table get so much value out of the experiences they're having and I know collectively we get to share so much together. So I invite you go, right now to the website, theimpactdrivenleader.com, check that out, look at it, try it out for a month. You don't have to do the full year, do a month, a month, just dip your toe in. I know you're going to get value out of it. Until then, you're going to get tremendous value out of this conversation I had with Michael Hyatt.
[TYLER]
So I'm excited to talk to you about your newest book Win at Work and Succeed at Life and would like to just kick off and have a great conversation about how that really has, as you know, here in 2021, why has that become a topic that you and your daughter decided to write about?
[MICHAEL HYATT]
Yes, because I think we see in so many entrepreneurs, this burnout factor. And I think that unfortunately, a lot of the celebrity entrepreneurs that are writing books, that are out of the speaking circuit are advocating for what we call the book, the hustle fallacy, which is working 70 to 80 hours a week to achieve your dream and usually at the expense of everything else, your health, your marriage, your kids, and everything else. And so we said no, no. And we saw a lot of millennial leaders, a lot of gen X leaders, a lot of people that were falling prey to that, and we have about 600 entrepreneurs or business owners in our coaching practice, and we were seeing it in them when they came into their program. And we said, there's got to be a better way. And so that was kind of the Genesis of it.
[TYLER]
Well, I love it. And as you and I were getting ready, I think it's something so pertinent in my life. You know, I've talked to a lot of friends, a lot of other dads in this chase and I've been guilty of it. You know, when my kids were little and I was starting my own business and really had this desire to serve and for me, it was trying to establish what I was worth, where my value was. And so I was constantly trying to drive and drive. You're a dad of five, a grandfather is, did that play out in your life as well?
[MICHAEL]
Oh, totally. So just to tell you how much, about 20 years ago, I became the divisional manager of one of Thomas Nelson publishers, 14 book publishing divisions. And it was like my dream job. You know, I'd worked my entire career for that. I was super excited, but what I didn't realize when I accepted the job, but found out a couple of weeks into it was that our division was dead last in terms of revenue growth, in terms of profitability, in terms of employee morale, I mean, everything you could measure. We were dead last out of the 14 divisions. So the CEO asked me, he said, "How long is it going to take you to turn this division around?" And I said, I pulled a number out of the air, I said, "Probably three years." And he said, "Okay, that sounds reasonable. It's kind of what I was thinking, so have at it."
So I rolled up my sleeves, got the team on board, painted a vision for a bigger, better future and we got to work and I was working 70 to 80 hours a week, including evenings and weekends. You know, when I would go on a vacation, I wasn't really on vacation. You know what I mean? I had to check an email and checking in with the office at all hours and so, but we did it like, and it didn't take three years either. Like in 18 months we went from 14 to number one, fastest growing division, most profitable division, best employee morale. And I got, Tyler the biggest bonus check that I've ever gotten in my life. In fact, it was more than my annual salary, so I could not wait to get home to share it with my wife, Gail.
She's always been my biggest cheerleader, my biggest supporter, and I just knew that she'd be elated. So I bounced into the house, caught her in the bathroom and said, "Hey, I got us," she's getting ready for something. And I said, "I got to show you this." And I showed her the check, you know, tah-dah and she just wasn't that enthusiastic about it. And she said, "Honey, we need to talk." So she led me into the den and we sat down and I can kind of see her eyes welling up with tears and she said, "You know I love you. I appreciate everything you've done so much." But she said, "I got to tell you. You're never home and your five daughters need you." Boy that sank in hard. And then she said, "And even when you are home, you're not really here."
And I wanted to defend myself, but I knew she was right. But then it's your role to led a cheek and then she said, "Honestly, I feel like a single mom," and she started to cry. I mean, that was a gut kick. I thought I had reached the summit of my career, the pinnacle but what I realized was that it was a false summit. And most people, when they find themselves in that situation, and I felt like there was this impossible choice, you know, I could either win at work or I could succeed in the rest of my life, but I couldn't do both. And in the book, Megan, my oldest daughter who wrote the book with me, she and I call that the impossible choice, and most people think when they're in that position, either they can hustle harder and hope to get to the place where they can finally give attention to the other things that matter, the other priorities in their life, or they apply what we call the ambition break, which is to throttle their career ambitions and really give attention to the other areas of life, which might be the better choice but I really don't think you have to choose. I really do think you can win at work and succeed at life. And this book, it's taken me 20 years to figure out how to do that but now it's really what our whole organization is about.
[TYLER]
Man, there, I want to jump ahead because one of the comments that you make here in the book, which I think is so profound and it fits where we're going in this conversation is constraining labor to make room for the rest of your life is how you win at business and succeed at life. And I want to kind of unpack that as I see that as is I believe our society has just put the cart before the horse. It's start a job, start a career and make all this money so you can provide for your family but as you just mentioned, you run the risk of, there's no one there with you. And yet we look at some of the older cultures, I grew up in Northeast Ohio. There's a lot of Amish there in Mennonites and one of the things they do culturally, is they support the young families. The elders give them money, allow them to build a farm, build a business so they can grow this family and yet our Western culture hasn't turned around.
[MICHAEL]
No. Yes, that's exactly right. And you know, you mentioned the word constraints and that's one of the real secrets to being able to find this work-life balance. And it's counterintuitive because essentially what these celebrity entrepreneurs are advocating is that you dispense with constraints and you don't have any constraints. You're just going to be a working machine, total work all the time. But the truth is constraints actually help us be more focused and more productive and the likelihood of success is greater than we do that. And I'm talking about comprehensive long-term success. So I don't consider it success. You know, if I wouldn't consider success, if I wanted business and I'm running a multi-million dollar business, but I lost my marriage. I've been married for 42 years or my kids wouldn't talk to me and all five of my daughters live right now within about two miles of my house, and my grandkids live here, but if, I wouldn't exchange that for my work.
And so constraints are the key to making sure that that doesn't happen. So if you think Tyler, about the Friday before you go on vacation, how stinking productive you are because you have a constraint. You have a boundary. So one of the things that happened to me was back in those days after I had that conversation with Gail, I immediately hired an executive coach. And I said, "Look, buddy, I need some help because I can tell that I'm losing my family. My wife's holding on by her fingernails, she's trying to do her best, we're both committed to our marriage and to our kids, but if something doesn't change this whole thing's going to blow up. I don't have a way out." And so the first thing he said to me is he said, "I want you to put some constraints and boundaries on your work."
So he said to me, "When are you willing to quit work in the evening?" Because here's how I worked, in the afternoon, I'd think to myself, "Well, I'm not going to finish by the end of the day, but no problem. I'll go home, eat a quick dinner with the family, pop open the laptop and finish up." Or if I didn't get done by Friday, no problem. I can work on Saturday morning. I can work on Sunday night. Or even if I don't finish before the vacation starts, I can still be checking email and doing some of the things in the early morning before the family gets up. But he said, "No, I want hard boundaries." I said, "Okay, I'm willing to quit by 6:00 PM." Now that sounded like a big stretch in those days, but I said, "I'm willing to quit and fold it up by 6:00 PM, be home by 6:00 PM."
And he said, "Okay, what about the weekends?" I said, "I'm willing to not work on the weekends." And that was really a leap of faith. "And I won't work on my vacations." He said, "Okay, great." He said, "Do you mind if I occasionally call Gail periodically and check up on you and see how you're doing?" So I said, "Yes, you can do that." And he did do that. And it was enormously helpful because I had real accountability. It wasn't the kind of accountability where he would ask me occasionally, "Hey, how are you doing?" Because that's probably not the best source to get the information from, but to get it from my wife, that was powerful. And so that kind of constraint really was I think the secret to my success. It made me focus. It made me more productive. It made me more successful. And so check this out, so at the beginning of the pandemic, because we want this, not just for ourselves. We want it for our team.
[TYLER]
So I think that's what's most important is you're saying something that's just not for you. It is culturally, I want this to be the case.
[MICHAEL]
Yes, absolutely. I want it for my team, I want it for my clients, I want the whole world to have it, but it's got to start with me first. Then it needs to go to my company. So we have about 50 full-time employees and so at the beginning of the pandemic, we said, you know, when all of these young parents suddenly had toddlers under foot, no daycare, no childcare, and life was a mess and all the stress of the macro environment, including the uncertainty of the economy and everything else that came during the summer and everything. So we said, "Okay, here's what we're going to do. Just as an experiment, we're going to go from an eight-hour workday," and we were rigorous about that. So we were practicing the double win, but eight hours a day, 40 hours a week. We said, "We're going to go from eight hours a day to six hours a day and we're going to go from 30 hours a week, 40 hours a week to 30 hours a week. And we're not docking anybody's pay, nothing's changing there, no change in benefits, nothing. We're just going to reduce the time so that you've got time to take care of yourself and take care of your family."
Of course, they loved it. We said, "We're going to set this up as an experiment. We're going to try it for two weeks and then we're going to check in with the executive team and see how it's working." But the key, and I told everybody this, the key is we got to maintain our level of productivity. I don't want any slippage in the budget, especially." Okay, great. So two weeks later we checked in, everybody said, "Man, I cannot tell any difference. We are still crushing it. We're doing great." So then we decided, okay, we're going to roll it out through the summer, and we did that. And then finally in our strategic planning in September, we said, "We're making this permanent because not only are we more focused and more productive and people are having a life and greater work-life balance and satisfaction, all that, but we finished 2020 ahead on revenue over 2019 by double digits and doubled our profit from the previous year. So it didn't hurt our business performance one bit, and in fact, I would argue that it enhanced it and made that possible.
[TYLER]
Well, I think one of the things that I've experienced myself when I was in college, the more I had on my plate, the better I did. As of recent, I even know, when I have self-imposed deadlines, man, I get stuff done. I mentioned earlier, I've gotten to know Rory Vaden and Rory has this book Procrastinate on purpose and it's all about delegating. It's all about creating this and I think that's so important, but one key that I think you made, and I think it's so important, you hired an executive coach, but there was also this other level of accountability. It's creating that community around you that says, "Hey, where are your priorities? Are your priorities where you're just trying to chase the next best thing in business and status from a monetary or a possession point of view, or are you really focused on your family? Are you focused on your community? Are you focused on serving people and that being the priority, as opposed to just something monetary?" You can have both, but you have to put them in the right place in the right, I guess the right balance per se or harmony.
[MICHAEL]
Yes, absolutely. And one of the things this executive coach did with me, one of the first things he did with me, like it was like the second meeting, he assigned to me the project of working on a written life plan. And in fact, I have an entire other book about that called Living Forward, which I wrote with Daniel Harkavy, who was that executive coach. Daniel Harvey was the executive coach that helped me. So we wrote that book together, but it's basically about getting a 25 year vision for every different domain or as we call it in that book, life account, like, where do you want to be spiritually in 25 years? Where do you want to be with your marriage in 25 years? Where do you want to be with your kids, with your grandkids, with your friends and with your work and with your hobbies? Because all those things are important to have a deep, rich textured life that is fulfilling long-term and make sure that you have that sort of comprehensive success that I mentioned originally.
[TYLER]
You know, I've never you know, success has always been this hard thing for me to quantify. It is what it is, but having spent time with John Maxwell and John impressed upon me and shared this example. He had to come to grips with this at some point and he said, "To be a success, I want to be respected by my wife, my kids, those closest to me." That is a success. And that's something I so admire and love that example and coming back to yourself is modeling that for others. It is so important because it's those values that we live by that then becomes transcendent in our society. But if we're saying one thing and our choices show something different, that's when we just have this incongruence and culture that can really stifle a business.
[MICHAEL]
It really can. And that's why self-leadership always precedes team leadership and why self-leadership is the key to creating culture. You know, you're going to replicate yourself, whether you like it or not, and in your organization if you're the person that's sort of giving tacit lip service to the fact that people can have work-life balance, but you yourself are working to seven, eight o'clock at night, getting there at 6:00 AM in the morning, and I've done that a lot in the past or working weekends, what that does is it creates an unspoken expectation on the part of everyone that's in your organization, because they're looking at the boss. And they're saying, "That's what the boss does. Regardless of what he says, that's what he expects and so you better fall in line." So this makes it tough to create culture. We got to start with ourselves. If we own a business it's easier. The good news is if you don't like your culture, you can change it. The bad news is it has to start with you. You have to change what you don't like in your culture. If you've got rampant gossip in your culture, you got to stop being a gossip. Whatever it is, it's got to start with you. And so it's going to flow out from you. So yes, really important.
[TYLER]
Let's talk about, there's two symptoms here, which you identify in the book and there's a symptom and there's a cure I'd say. The first one is this cult of overwork and I think as you mentioned, 2020, the pandemic allowed for a lot of people to revisit that and say, "Wait a second." We have circumstances constraints that are forcing us to be different, but how do you describe, why did we get to this cult of overwork or how can we really evolve forward from it? What's the solution?
[MICHAEL]
Well there's probably a gazillion reasons and we try to articulate several of them in the book as to why we develop this. But part of it was just people, honestly, wanting to get ahead, wanting to provide for their families. I mean, it usually starts with a good motive. I don't know too many people, I'm sure there are people out there, but I don't know too many people that say, get up in the morning and say, "You know what? I'm working hard because I want to be filthy rich." You know, it's never really that. It's usually something more mundane, but the problem with work is it's fun, especially if you're doing the work that you love. And I talk to people all the time that said, "Well, you talk about work-life balance, but I love my work. This doesn't feel like work. I could do this all day every day."
Yes, the other problem with why we do this, I think is because work, we could produce measurable outputs where we also get rewarded. We can see our progress, it's tangible, and that makes us feel good. It's a little dopamine hit every time we sense that progress, we get the acclaim of our peers or the rewards of our colleagues or our boss or whatever. And then also, I think we have to say at, home very different. You know, not as measurable. Those kiddos, they are a long, long term project. And sometimes it feels like it's three steps forward, two steps back. Sometimes it's three steps forward, four steps back. But I mean, there were times when I was raising my girls, they're all grown right now, but when I was raising them, I thought, "Oh my God we're a disaster as parents."
But we weren't because we just stayed in it and stayed working at it and I heard somebody say one time, and I think it's true, "The average kid can survive the average number of mistakes made by the average parent." And if you just stay engaged, but what they can't do is survive your absence. So if you're still in the game, if you're still working on your own parenting, if you're willing to say you made a mistake and you're sorry, would you please forgive me, that covers a multitude of sense and you can keep progressing and I'm living proof of that. You know, I can't believe that I have the relationship with my daughters that I have, because it was tough, but that's why people gravitate to work, because it's, frankly it's easier psychologically. And so I made up stories, I was lying to myself first, but I would tell Gail, "No, honey, I've got to be at the office late. I got to work through this weekend." And I think if you really were to peel the onion back and get down to the core layer, the issue was, I didn't know what to do when I was at home. I knew what to do when I was at work and that became a convenient excuse for me to not have to engage with the family so much.
[TYLER]
Well, I think as you described that, and I think of myself to this exact point is it's easier for us to find fulfillment in our work. And it's whether we've chosen to be there, and that struggle with the family, we have to celebrate the little wins and sometimes they don't seem like wins, but it's important to do that. Especially I think something that's been modeled to me that I continue to try is focus on those little wins, because that's what keeps everything going. That's where you find that fulfillment which brings you to a place of wanting to create more of those constraints because you're like, "Oh, I'm seeing the fulfillment outside of just my occupation."
[MICHAEL]
That's right. Yes, and I think what you said, Tyler is so important and that is you really have to catalog those little wins. And one of the things I learned from Dan Sullivan that has been a great practice for my wife, Gail and I, is at the end of the day, we ask each other the question, "What were your three wins for the day?" And honestly, some day suck. Some days it's hard to find a win, but you get to choose as a human, what you focus on. And I can focus on the things that went well or the things that didn't go well. I remember home one night and complaining to Gail and I was just saying, "God, it was a horrible day and this happened and that happened," and she listened patiently and then she said, "Well, it sounds to me like you had a pretty horrible 20 minutes, but the rest of the day was pretty good."
[TYLER]
I mean, we all need people in our life and it's even better when it's our spouse that can shine that light on to say, "Hey, it's not that bad chill out. It's okay." One of the things in the book that I'd love to jump to now and discuss a little bit is this idea of the profitable pause. Could you unpack that for us?
[MICHAEL]
Yes. The idea is that, I think the way that we're taught in our culture is that you work and then rest is the reward for work. So, "I'll go to bed when I get done with this project or I'll take that vacation when I accomplish some major milestone at work." And you find out that most people do not take, in the US, I think we call it the statistic of the book, most people don't take all their vacation time because they see it as a reward. And what we argue in the book, the profitable pause, the idea that actually rest should proceed the work. Rest is what rejuvenates you and equips you to be your best self so that when you show up at work, you are focused, you are productive, you're creative, your best thinking is available because you've taken care of you.
It's like they say on the airplane, you know, in the unlikely event of cabin depressurization, fix your own mask first before attempting to help anybody else. And that's really true because you're not going to be able to help anybody else if you don't take time for yourself. So self-care is critically important. And it's not just rest. I mean, rest is a huge component of it, but it's movement. It's the way you eat, it's all those things, your mental hygiene, the thoughts that you let roll around inside your brain. All that stuff is important but to take the pause and to really be thoughtful about what you're about to do next and make sure that you're ready and able to do that. And I've recently, at the time we're recording this, the super bowl happened a couple of weeks ago and so I did a little research on Tom Brady's kind of schedule and his workout regimen and all that kind of stuff. The man is a machine. Here's the thing I learned from him, success is not an accident. So he is rigorous about going to bed at the same time every night. He gets nine hours sleep every single night because he knows when it's game day, he's got to show up and he's got to deliver the bacon.
[TYLER]
Well, and I think it's so exciting. And I know you guys talk about sleep and I can't wait to dig into that because I've really dug into that myself. I've done metrics that a whoop band that really helps me measure that, my nutrition manipulates that and one of the things that I want to say here is, you mentioned having that routine. And so often people are like, "Well, get up early." The 5:00 AM club or whatever else. And I could dig into that and say, "I believe that's the best time of day to set your routine, to get your head space right." For me personally, I get up early. I do my morning devotions, I read, I get my mind right, I work out, my kids then get up, but I'm going through the day. So by the time eight o'clock rolls around, I've already been up for three and a half, four hours. I would love to know what Michael, you have done as your routine as you've evolved through this practice.
[MICHAEL]
Yes. Well, I'm a big believer in intentional rituals. And so we have a product in Michael Hyatt and Company called the Full Focus Planner. Not sure if you're familiar with that, but one of the things we talk about in there is developing at least four daily rituals. So a morning ritual, a workday startup ritual, a workday shutdown ritual, and then an evening ritual that sets you up for a great day the next day. So my morning ritual, it sounds very similar to yours, I get up at 5:00 AM. And so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to read my Bible and then I pray and then I journal and then I work out and then I get ready for work. And so I'm very intentional about my nutrition and thoughtful about that. So I help prepare that. So, yes, that's my morning ritual that sets me up for the best day and I've got to have, and I'm an introvert too. So I got to kind of have that alone time before I engage with the world.
[TYLER]
I am an extrovert, but I have found if I don't have that routine, over Christmas holiday our family, we went to Hawaii. And so my schedule was this little out of whack, and I didn't have that normal routine and what I found is I wasn't as creative or inspirational. I found when I had that time, I was able to be more creative when it came time in the day that I needed to do things. And so to me, that was a big part of understanding, "Oh, I need that routine to get my juices flowing, to get my brain thinking," as opposed to, if I just hop into it and figure it's going to come, it doesn't work out as well.
[MICHAEL]
Well there's another great book by Jim Loehr called The Power of Full Engagement and he studied a lot about high performance athletes. That's kind of his specialty, but the book is written to corporate executives and business owners. And he says game day for Tom Brady comes once a week and it's only during a defined season. Game day for us that are in business is every single day and if game day, once a week merits that kind of routine that Tom Brady observes, what does that mean for our lives? I mean, and just to your point, I think it means that we've got to be very intentional, very thoughtful, very deliberate about how we prepare ourselves to win the day. Because from my perspective, the day is won or lost in those early morning hours in that morning ritual.
[TYLER]
I would agree and that leads me to the next thing. How I wake up is determined by how I sleep and how I take care of myself the day before, what I eat, what I put in my body, how I prepare myself to sleep yields how I sleep and how I feel the next day. And so there's things that, I have cut out sugar because I noticed how it affects my heart rate variability. You know, at times, I don't consume a lot of alcohol, but I found it just doesn't help my sleep. There's other those factors. So I'd love to know what you found out, how you guys made it such a big part of the book about sleep. I'd love to know what you guys have learned there.
[MICHAEL]
Well kind of some of the similar things to you, I mean, there's some, first of all, the average adult needs between eight and nine hours of sleep a night. You know, some extreme athletes will get 10 hours of sleep a night, but you really need that much time for your brain to do its thing, to kind of cleanse itself, file away the memories, get them in the right place and just for you to be refreshed and rejuvenated. So I make it my aim to sleep, and I almost never miss this eight hours of sleep a night. You know, if I get seven and a half, I'll call that close enough, but I'm aiming for eight or eight and a half per night. So what I've found is that really means that I need to manage not when I wake up, but when I go to bed. My body, I mean I'm 65 years old, so my body wakes up when it wakes up. It knows that it's time to get up. I never have to use an alarm clock, but getting to bed, that takes intentional discipline.
So I've got to be in bed by nine o'clock and I really need to head the pillow about 8:30 so I can allow myself a little bit of time to fall asleep. So I'm very thoughtful about that. You know, I think blackout curtains are really important, so there's no light. All the research shows that any kind of ambient light that's in the room will disturb your sleep. No electronics a couple hours before. To be honest, I'm not always as rigid on that as I should be. A lot of times, I like to take a warm bath in the evening too. But alcohol consumption also, like I drink occasionally, but it does disrupt my sleep, especially if it's too close to bedtime. So yes, all the things people are saying about sleep, but it's more important, it's really important for heart health, not to mention just business performance, but everything related your physiology is important.
[TYLER]
Yes. That's what I've learned and it's helped me make some of those changes in my routine, is watching my heart rate. And all that comes back to as if I am not ready to perform that next morning, if I'm not ready to show up as a dad, if I'm not ready to come and to lead and really serve people, well, then I'm fighting from behind it. I don't want to be there because then I don't have the fulfillment in my job. It's just this perpetual cycle. That's what I found it. I don't know if you've seen that.
[MICHAEL]
Yes, totally, absolutely. It's snowballs. And it's not like, you know, you can survive on five hours sleep at night and then make it up on the weekend. You know, all the research shows that that's not possible. You're doing irreparable damage to your brain and to the rest of your body by doing that. And I'm sad to admit that when I was at Thomas Nelson Publishers, we published a book back in the eighties, there was basically an argument for how to get by on four hours of sleep a night, to train yourself to do that. And no telling what kind of damage we did to people, but it's just a false kind of gain. We think, oh, we'll get all that time back and we can work. But here's the thing. Again, all the research shows that after you've put in about 55 hours, the rule of five, five, 55 hours, there is no productivity gain for the additional hours invested. It's busy work, it's fake work. And that's what we've got, I think that's where we've got to get really focused as leaders and focus on what are the few things that are kind of like the Pareto principle, what is the 20% that drives 80% of the result? And that's where our attention and focus needs to be not on all the 80% of the busy work.
[TYLER]
Well, I love this premise of your book because it fits into my belief that gen X, millennial leaders, we are this bridge of the gap, the bridge from the baby boomer generation into the gen Z and saying, "What does work look like? What does this life look like?" And as you're recognizing this, you've seen this in your kind of, you're doing a great job of teaching us as this next generation of leaders. It is our opportunity to say, "Hey, there's a better way. We can learn through the process instead of having this culture of butts and seats equals productivity, it is what do the metrics show up?" And some of those metrics is I would imagine Michael Hyatt Company is not solely dollars, but also what's going on in your family life. What's going on in your community. I'm guessing without knowing, that's a big part of it, because I know your heart. I've seen your heart and I know that's got to be a part of it. How do we make sure that as leaders, we really stop and think about that?
[MICHAEL]
Well, I think there's a lot of practical ways you can do it. First of all, if you're a business owner, you can construct your benefits so that it really serves people as a whole, not just their business life. So at Michael Hyatt and Company, for example, we have unlimited paid time off, PTO. And when we first instigated that I was pretty fearful and so I had a friend who had, he did it at his company and he had 750 employees. So I called him up and I said, "David, I just want to make sure, have you ever had anybody abuse this?" And he said, "Not once." And I said, "Remind me again, how long have you been doing it?" He said, "We've been doing it for three years." I said, "Okay, I'm going out on a limb and we're going to do it."
So we did that. Never once Tyler have, we had that abused and we're still having to coax and encourage people to take time. We give people a paid one month sabbatical every three years where they don't have to report in, they don't have to check in, that times out. You know, we're very generous on maternity and paternity leave, you know, all those kinds of things, 30 hour work week, all that stuff. But you know, if I'm listening to this, if I'm somebody that's listening to this podcast right now, and I think it was great, if you're a business owner and you can affect the change. But what happens if you're in middle management or you're just starting out and you're in a company that doesn't have that philosophy, which frankly is most of them right now. And I think one of the things you can do there is go to your boss and try to negotiate.
And here's what I would say. "Look, I want to be a hundred percent, 110% accountable for the results and I want you to be very clear on your expectations for me in terms of the results." And I'd like our focus to be there not on how much time my butt is in the seat, because that is so stinking old school. If you're running a company, if you're a leader, a business owner, entrepreneur, and that's how you're measuring people's productivity, that doesn't mean Jack. So last year our company won the Inc. Best Places to Work Award.
[TYLER]
Congratulations.
[MICHAEL]
Yes, thank you. So as a part of that, what they do is they send out a survey to all your employees and no one who has equity interest in the company like me can take the survey. So it's all the employees. They can say whatever they want, totally anonymous, and we never see the results. So when Inc. set the results back to us, they said, "This is pretty amazing. You're like in the 0.1% percentile, because you have 98% engagement, which is phenomenal." And they said to us like, "The average engagement is something like 39%, but to have 98% engagement," but I really think it's just because we've purposed to put people as a priority. It's one of our core values.
[TYLER]
Well, I believe this, I believe, and I have this conversation with some friends this morning we're meeting is we're going to see people evolve to corporations and entities that practice what you practice. And they're going to evolve away from companies, because with, you know remote work, I could work for your company and I live in Spokane if it was set up, because we can do that. We can do that everywhere in the world and so saying that I have to be tied to a company because I'm close to, it is not going to apply going forward. The other belief that I have is as we go through the younger, the generation Z is very used to just get your tasks done. You know, I think about it and it's so funny here. We go from high school where we have to go to school at, we'll say normal, you know, we have to be there by 8:00 AM. We're done at three.
Okay, we go to college and it's what you want to make of it. You know, whenever you show up to class, if you show up to class, whenever you, it's up to you, but then we go into a workforce ad it's like, "You have to be here at 7:00 AM. You can't leave till 5:00." And it's like, "Wait a second. We just taught a group how to be accountable on their own and get their work done and now you're saying they can't." And so I think we're going to see companies that embrace this thrive, and the ones that fight it are going to die internally, culturally. That's my belief.
[MICHAEL]
Well, totally. And it's already happening. So another great book, we're talking a lot about books, which is good.
[TYLER]
Yes, I love this. This is great. That's why it's a book club, man.
[MICHAEL]
So there's another great book by Alex Pang, P A N G, called Shorter. He also wrote a book called Rest, which I also recommend, but his book Shorter is kind of the business and the scientific case for working fewer hours. And so he has case studies of countries all over the world that decided to go to a six-hour workday or a five-hour workday or working three days a week instead of five days a week and how their productivity and profitability shot up. So I think kind of the old school mentality is the amount of work equals your profitability. If you want more profitability, if you want to make more money, you got to work harder. You know, I mean, frankly, that's the Elon Musk philosophy. You got to work 80 to 100 hours a week. Meanwhile, he's gone through two marriages, and I'm not saying this in a judgy way, but just in a ---
[TYLER]
It is, the results speak for it.
[MICHAEL]
Yes. And so, I mean, and by his own admission, his sons don't talk to him. So he sacrificed everything on the alter of Tesla and Space X and all the rest and you know, that's his choice, he'll have to live with it. But there are other companies that are completely the opposite of that. And yes, they don't glean the headlines and all that but those entrepreneurs I got to believe are having a much richer, fuller, satisfying life.
[TYLER]
Well, and I think that comes back to my personal desire to make an impact in the community and make a positive impact in the community that we can have richer, fuller, more supportive, engaged life. And if we're doing that, that starts by the culture we develop. And I love this conversation. I love where we're going. I thank you for all the resources you've shared with us.
[MICHAEL]
You're welcome.
[TYLER]
And just to put a bow on this where do you see the opportunity? This is a book club I told you. This podcast is about a book club where readers read it together, we interact together. Where do you think, as you wrote this book, man, this could be really impactful if people do this with this book?
[MICHAEL]
I think one of the things we've tried to do at each one of the principles, because we've got these five principles that sort of make up the book, and one of the things that we do at the end of each one of those is we have an exercise where people can apply it. So this is called a practice. So we have these five practices that go with each of the five principles and so that's what I would do there. Don't just read this book and expect, because you read it that you got the transformation. Information does not equal transformation. You got to do something. You've got to make some decisions. I don't think you have to do a lot of work, but you're going to have to make some decisions like to put some constraints around your life is one of the practices.
[TYLER]
Well, Michael, thank you so much. I've enjoyed this opportunity to visit it with you. I've enjoyed the time to learn about this book. I can't wait to read it and I want more parents, I want more leaders, I want more individuals to read it because I think this is is a very pivotal point in our society as leaders to grow and create better organizations and create better committees.
[MICHAEL]
I agree wholeheartedly.
[TYLER]
I really hope you enjoyed that. I mean, I truly did and I truly feel honored to be able to have the conversation with Michael and you know, there's so many questions that he answered for me. It's this idea of you can have it all. You really can, and that's something in my career. The last 10 years, really primary to the last five years and in my network marketing business to then helping leaders get healthy ,like I'm doing here is you can really bounce it out and one of the greatest parts of my day. And I'm going to share this with you and I hope you can do the same. The greatest part of my day is being able to learn with my kids. Now, part of that is learning for my profession, doing stuff like this, to help and coach other business people but it's also helping coach my son.
My son right now were listening to the book, The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor. We're listening to that as we're going to practice and here the other day, we were talking and I had this segment about mindset and I shared with him and he and his teammates are entering in a phase of competing at the state finals in soccer here in the state of Washington. And the team that they're going to play as a team that has beat them. They haven't beaten them and yet my son's team has the talent to beat them if they have the proper mindset, if they believe it. And so I share this with my son and I encourage him, "Hey, Braxton, that's his name, talk to your teammates, encourage them, encourage them to say guys, if we believe it, we know we can beat them."
So I share that with my son and there's a railroad track that is along the road in between his practice complex, where they train and our house. And we come up to that railroad track and all of a sudden the gates come down and it's, you're thinking, "Okay, how long is this going to last? We got eight minutes till he needs to be at training. is this train going to take two, three, four minutes? And all of a sudden the engine goes by and it's got two cars. Like seriously, when do you ever see a train that has two cars? Usually it's 100, 110 cars. And I look at my son afterwards and he's just like grinning eye to eye and he goes, "Dad, I believed that train was only going to have two cars." Now you can think that's crazy, whatever. Yep. As I've learned, that's the power of manifestation. That is the power of mindset. If you believe that you can win at work and succeed, I know you will find the way to do it. If you believe you can win at work and you can help those people that you work with, that you engage with in life, when it works, succeed at life, I believe it can happen.
And that's my encouragement to you today as you're listening in, as you're taking in this podcast, believe it. Now, once you believe it, go find that action to make it happen. That is the power of mindset that we've talked about the previous month from our guests. If you haven't listened to those, go back to them. You're going to get so much value out of mindset. And I am a believer. I had someone ask where did I start believing? That's a couple of years ago when I read the book Think And Grow Rich. If you haven't read that book, I encourage you to. It's a great book.
So as I leave you with this, I would love for you to give this podcast a rating. If I earned a five, great. If it's a one, let me know. I want to get better. I want to be able to serve people in a bigger, better way. At the same point, I'd love to know some feedback. What did you like about this episode? What didn't you like about this episode? How can I get better? Because I've learned when you offer criticism and it's constructive, that's feedback that everyone wants to hear. And I certainly do, and I want to be able to be better every day. That's what I desire to be.
Now, if you want to be a better leader, if you want to link arms with others on that journey, too, I invite you to one, be a part of the book club, then two take the opportunity to be a part of a round table. We talk every week on Zoom, we interact. It's not me just lecturing to people. It is all of us sharing what we're learning right now from the books that we're reading and experiences we're having in our everyday business life. Maybe you feel alone on an island. Maybe you feel like you don't know where to go and get help and guidance and curation. Well, that's why this podcast is here. That's why I started the round table. And I'd love for you to take part in it. This is about as hardest sell as you get, but I know you're going to get value out of it. So thanks for joining in. Appreciate it. Can't wait for you to be back here and listen to our next episode.
