The Anti-Hustle Guide to Doing Better Work with Paul Shirley

Paul (: 00:00

Makes sense.

Brett Trainor (: 00:02

Hey Paul, welcome back to the Corporate Escapee Podcast.

Paul (: 00:05

Thanks for having me back. This is what time for me. Okay, that's getting serious.

Brett Trainor (: 00:08

This is number three. I think it is. Well, and again, I was talking a little bit offline with you and we'll get into why it's so important to have you back on the podcast is, you you were one of the authors and you weren't even, I think you were, definitely weren't an author at the time, but more speaker, followed your basketball career, et cetera. That really got me to think about work differently, like the focused work and your first book, the process is the product.

which I still have all my sticky notes from. But it kind of changed the way I thought about how we work. And I thought I was late to the game, right? And maybe I should catch some people up. So anyway, welcome back to the podcast. You have a new book that's out now that I'm still waiting for my copy. can put all my sticky notes in, but I did read that the PDF version and it's outstanding by the way. And so I thought.

Paul (: 00:37

I love those sticky notes.

Paul (: 00:46

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 01:03

It's time to get you back on. Our community has grown. Our listeners are grown. All people looking to exit corporate and figure out how to do work on their own. But guess what? No one ever taught us how to, I don't want say think for ourselves, but do focus work. So I thought the perfect time. You've got a new book. I've got a new bigger audience. And I'll shut up for a minute. Welcome back.

Paul (: 01:19

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 01:27

Thank you. I think you're right on one thing I see a lot with people, not only who are moving out into the work world on their own, but maybe are moving into new roles at work in general, is that some of this stuff that I had to learn just by nature, just by evolution, and is now somewhat second nature to me, is really new to people. Even thinking about

I will ask people often, okay, so when did you plan out your week? And they will look at me like I have three heads, right? Like, why would I plan out my week? And you're, well, the answer is because there's going to be stuff that you can control and there's going to be stuff that you can't control. So how are you going to lay this out in a way where you're going to, you know, maybe hit 92 % of the stuff that you can control and then let some other of the stuff you can't seep in. But

The reason for that is that they have been told what to do their whole lives. It's show up at work and do this thing. And in researching this book, which really a lot of that research has just been running workspaces, right? I've been doing this now for 12 years. One of the things I've stumbled upon is this idea that work has changed so much in the last 60 years, right? So we moved from the real history there would be that

Prehistory, we were hunting and gathering and then for 12,000 years or so we were mostly farming and then the last 170 or so years it was the industrial revolution. But then we got about as good as we could get at this idea of like speeding up operations. So we switched to project-based work where we tell you, okay, Brett, I need you to do this PowerPoint and have it done six weeks from now. And that sounds great. It sounds really freeing. The problem is we never taught people how to build in these segments or how to...

plan out their lives. This book, The Art of Focus Work, I'm really locked in on that idea of how do you do the short bursts of focus. But overall, a lot of what I'm talking about remains this idea of building systems or processes so that you can not only count on having a way through this madness, but also adapt as you go. So the next step to all of this is helping people see, you know, last week I did, or I set out to do

Paul (: 03:51

whatever, let's call it just for the sake of argument, 30 tasks, whatever that might be. I only got to 10 of them. OK, so let's not beat yourself up about that. Let's figure out how can you set the goal at 10 for this next week and then expand from there. What I see in the world, and then I want to, of course, let you dive into some questions about this. But one of the reasons I get excited about this is that there's so much opportunity because people are riddled with shame and guilt around not being able to do it.

And if we can get them back to a more structured way of looking at things, not because rigidity is fun, but because those constraints are what drive the creativity when you're trying to innovate, when you're trying to do something entrepreneurial. That's where, like, I just get so jazzed up because it's not that I'm saying I want to be hard driving and make you do stuff you don't want to do. It's that we can

open this up, this discussion and give people a framework with which they can work where suddenly they are feeling like they have some control over their day. So I talk a lot lately about getting people to go from reactive where they're just like their hair is blown back by the world by all of this information that's coming at them and moving them into a space where they're productive or proactive, where they have some control over that, where they're like now hunkered down. And it's almost to me, it's really visual, like this idea of

Right now, a lot of people are just like this and how can we get them to move forward? Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 05:24

Yeah, it's so true. thinking about, because originally I think last time you were on it was, I didn't really have systems in place. And, you just for the audience, you know, my transition out of corporate was all of a you've got all this time, right? We're good and bad. And I was all over the place. It was scattered. There was no organization to everything. And I over-indexed and went back to every 30 minutes was structured. I'm like, this isn't going to work.

Paul (: 05:39

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 05:51

But then again, after coming out of your book, putting some of those processes in place, which would have been over two years and up to this day, those still work for me, right? So, and it's funny, it's six, I like to get up early. So it's like 5.30. So from six to seven, probably six to seven days a week, that is my most productive time. I don't need the cues, which you can talk into in the rewards anymore, just because for that hour, I get more done than I probably do the rest of my day.

Paul (: 06:01

Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 06:13

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 06:21

I can probably, your new book reminded me, I'm like, yeah, I got a little sloppy with some of the things that I'm doing, but because of that, I'm a heck of a lot more productive doing that. And I think even if I had applied that while I was still in corporate, I would have had a lot more free time, right? Because if you have six weeks to do it, you're gonna do it in six weeks, but if you could have blocked it. So maybe even go back, I mean, I think in the book you talked about, right, 15 minutes of focus time.

Paul (: 06:38

Mmm, right, right.

Paul (: 06:43

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 06:50

is better than two hours of unorganized time, which I 100 % subscribe to. So maybe go back to that, right? So all of a sudden we've got all this time. How do you encourage new folks, right, to start thinking about this? Because you can't go from zero to 60 and just flip it. And it took me a bit, but over time it stuck.

Paul (: 07:07

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 07:12

Well, that's one of the reasons in this book I've really have taken the time to dive back into my basketball past because I think that gives us such a good lens for this in that if I said to you, Brett, in order for you to train as a basketball player, I need you to go lift weights for eight hours tomorrow and then every day from then on for the rest of your life, you'd be like, well, that's insane. I can't do that, right? Like that's not a possibility. But if I said, what I want you to do is

we're going to get to a point where you're doing a workout that probably lasts 45 minutes, right? It's going to be intense, but then it'll be over. Tomorrow, we're going to start with 15 minutes or 18 minutes, whatever it might be. But keeping in mind that like we're going to max this out at 45 minutes, right? We want it to be intense, but we're not here to beat you down. I saw in my basketball career, because not only did I need to focus on the court or in the weight room or on the track,

that day, I also needed to be able to do it in a week, in a month, and for years on years, right? Like in going into the future. And so it's similar. I think there's this job of changing people's thinking around thinking. We think that we can just, that it's an inexhaustible resource to be cognitively on during our days. And you see this with people who will accept all kinds of meetings and just take on all this stuff.

and then they're destroyed. They don't really know why because it is, we have to cop to the fact that it is harder to note brain fatigue than it is body fatigue, right? Again, largely because most of our history was spent working with our bodies. So we are really attuned to like, my body is out of gas. I'm going to lay down now, right? But with our brains, a lot of what we're doing is changing so rapidly. We don't know how to make sense of that. And I wouldn't claim to be a

neuroscientist or to know the exact ins and outs, but nobody does. People will tell you they do. But I think that using this analogy of our bodies to our brains is a good start because it's so intuitive. Right. So, you know, we've been around people, we've been through days where we're like, I can't I can't look at another email. I can't read another page. Why is that? It's because you're tired effectively. So how do you

Paul (: 09:35

train your brain over time in the same way that you would train your body, which matters because it's not just about, I want you to be able to focus today, but like you said, I want you to able to build a system so that you can do that focusing over the long run and so that you can manage your time over the long

Brett Trainor (: 09:54

Yeah, and I don't think until you actually do focused work, right? Because originally you sent me down a rabbit hole with, I forget, not the zone, what do they call it? you get, flow state, yeah. And so I'm like, occasionally I've been there, but that's, I probably find myself just short of that, but it was an interesting dive to go down. And again, I pulled myself back because I need where I'm at right now, but can I get to that next level for another hour later in the afternoon?

Paul (: 09:57

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 10:05

like flow states and stuff? Yeah, yeah.

Paul (: 10:10

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 10:23

And they do, but the other thing I didn't appreciate is that your brain does get tired. In corporate, everything is reactive. You're going to meetings, you're in the meetings, but you're probably not a part of the meetings. So don't have to think very often, but when you gotta get that presentation done at the last minute, we do rise to the challenge. But when you're working for yourself, you want that time back. It's a great motivator to figure out how do I get more productive.

Paul (: 10:38

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 10:49

It is, I think what I see what is worrisome and has to be addressed and identified is that a lot of people are actually really addicted to the chaos of kind of feeling bad, right? They live in that world and they do that. It's basically a maladaptive coping mechanism where accepting all the calls and saying yes to all the meetings keeps you from having to think about why you're doing what you're doing.

Right? It truly is an addiction for people too. Because I will see this a lot where I will say, well, what if you could do your job in an hour and a half? What would you do with the rest of that time? And they will run through it. But then when the rubber hits the road and we're really getting into it, they continue to let it bleed into their day.

continuing to check the emails and you know, look, I'm guilty of this too. We're all looking for like the dopamine hit of the good news from some email or from some text. So, you know, I'm not I'm certainly not perfect about this, but we also I think have to talk then societally about how we turn off and how we rest our brains and how we move forward. I saw something the other day about the value of the siesta.

in Mediterranean culture, right? I got to live and play in Spain and Greece and I saw that in action where, you know, the stores will close at 2 p.m. and reopen at five or six. And there's a pretty good, like, association of diminished heart disease when you take that nap in the afternoon. But, you know, all of this is a little bit conjecture. It's not like we can do a one-to-one comparison. But thinking about how can we run our lives not only

better in the sense that there's more leisure time, but that that actually makes us better at our jobs, right? Like this balance, which is never gonna be perfect. know, people love to talk about work-life balance, but this balance between being on and then turning off and what are we gonna do with that off time matters because again, it's all so new to us.

Brett Trainor (: 13:01

new and yeah, again, it's almost coming. right. It's almost like an addiction coming out of the work, the corporate busy, right? Because busy means that you're either important or you're not going to get fired, which we know isn't the case. You're just a number. because I remember back the first time the other thing I'd much better at was being, because you talk a lot about distractions, right? The world is geared for us to be distracted. That's how big companies make their money.

Paul (: 13:08

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 13:14

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 13:23

Yeah.

Brett Trainor (: 13:28

And to this point day, I still don't wear an Apple watch or I have zero notifications. I still turn the notifications off on my phone when I'm doing that work. some of those things against that system stuck. But when you realize that the world's not going to end, if you're not checking email for an hour and a half or two hours, or you don't get real time notifications on anything, the world still hasn't stopped. But again, I think we just kept getting pushed further and further into this world of

Paul (: 13:45

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 13:57

busy and notifications and the dope, all at 100%. And yeah, sometimes I do think, I know my family looks like I've got something on my forehead because what do mean you don't have your phone? Like you guys are all here, I don't need you to, so again, I think you're probably ahead of your time, but I think people are catching up and starting to realize, or I used it, I think it's a superpower.

Paul (: 14:10

Yeah.

Paul (: 14:22

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 14:22

Right? Because I can get a lot more done in a two hour window than most people that have six hours to do it. So that gives me more free time to do what I have. And that's the other thing too. You just mentioned when we have things stacked, right? Some days again, cause I need to do a better job planning my week. Like tomorrow I've got three podcasts. I'm going to be absolutely wiped. I'm wiped out after one, let alone three. So I'm like, yeah, shame on me. I didn't think through that, but yeah, I think mentally you have to, to

Paul (: 14:44

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 14:50

be there and be much more intentional about it. And it's gonna free up the time if you do it. but I think this is just such a foreign concept to people. Yeah.

Paul (: 15:00

Yeah. And, you know, you mentioned the, the stacking up of the meetings and the calls. think one of the reasons that people stay in that chaos is because they have detrained themselves from thinking about how they feel. my mom is historically, it was a nurse then in public health and she for a long time was going out talking to business groups about

nutrition, so was working for an insurance company. It behooved everybody to have these workers like in better shape because their premiums go down. They're less costly to the insurance company, to the hospital, etc. So it's kind of a virtuous cycle. And we would talk a lot about how some people truly can't tell how bad they feel physically because it's been so long that they've been pounding sugary sodas or processed food, whatever it might be.

And I think something similar is true with just how we feel during the day. We're so used to, and again, I will raise my hand and say, I'm completely guilty of this right now at this phase in my life. We're so used to seeking that next dopamine hit or that next maladaptive coping mechanism where in this case that is really just staying in a state of kind of frantic energy that we aren't even able to notice that we are tired until it's too late, right? That we're so burnt out.

There's just nothing to be done. That's something I see a lot with calls and meetings, right? Where there's pretty good evidence that especially video calls are just destruction for your brain because you are searching for the same cues that you would get from an in-person experience, but they're just not there. so your brain is like constantly seeking this out, which takes energy away from your ability to just be present and think.

But because that has become so the norm and because people are afraid to say no to those things, they just think, well, I guess this is just how people feel. they think, I guess these people just feel bad all the time. And I feel like I'm a part of a group of people who are hoping to show people a path through this wilderness. I do want to say one last thing about that, which comes back to the idea of how do we

Paul (: 17:24

hit the reset button, which I think has a lot to do with letting go of some of the guilt around this. And the best way into that, I think, is almost anthropological, where if you think about our history, we were not designed to be particularly robust creatures, right? We're not very strong. We don't have like big thick hides or fangs. What we have going for us is our brains. And with those brains, we develop this ability to be

threat detection devices at all times. Like we're always on guard for something that might want to make us into food. And that trained us to be really interested in taking in information, right? Because new information kept us alive, allowed us to reproduce, kept the species going. And what people are now faced with, as you alluded to earlier, is the fact that companies have figured this out, that we are so addicted to information that there's almost no upper limit on

how much we'll take in. I saw, again, the numbers are debatable because how could you truly measure this, but I saw a number where we are now exposed to something like 74 gigabytes of information in a day, whereas 500 years ago that number would have been 74 gigabytes for our entire lifetime. So, even if that number isn't exactly true, it feels anecdotally correct, right? We didn't just have all of this information coming at us. And so, I...

Brett Trainor (: 18:41

That's insane.

Paul (: 18:49

I bring all of this up because I think it's important for people to forgive themselves for this, what is really an addiction, but is a very rational one. Like it makes a lot of sense that we would want all this information at all times. I think once you start there, then you can start to think about, okay, so how do I build some strategies for dealing with that? Blocking out all of that input so that I can create output or just have the stillness to sit with.

how I feel about what I just did or whatever it is. A lot of this is coming back to elements of mindfulness and ritual building, all of these things we can use, which historically made a lot of sense because those rituals, that presence allowed us to then sink into better connection, more innovation. Building the big church happened because you had time to sit there and think about like, how am gonna put these blocks together?

It didn't happen because you were in meetings all day.

Brett Trainor (: 19:51

Yeah. And again, think too, part of my journey over the last five years has been more holistic, right? It has been getting, first it was getting the time back, right? Realizing, holy crap, this is much more important to me than the money part. Money's still important, but having this time open it up and then getting the health back all started to tie back. one of the things when I was in the book, you talk about alignment and with purpose. And I think that is

Paul (: 20:00

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 20:18

one way I started thinking about where am I gonna burn the calories of the information that's coming in? Is it tied to where I'm trying to go and what I'm trying to do? And if not, how do I just let it go? Frozen, just let it go, let it go. Easier said than done, but I think I'm getting better at it, or at least I'm aware of it, right? So it's just not always, because you see people, they're just always getting information coming at them across any topic. And like I said, I'm getting better at saying,

Paul (: 20:25

Mm.

Paul (: 20:31

Right.

Paul (: 20:36

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Paul (: 20:44

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 20:48

I don't argue with people anymore trying to change their minds on things. It's just life's too, that pisses them off even more when you try not to change your mind. anyway, so I think you're on, because even in the book you had a chapter on the health, but I do think everything is connected. I'm really starting to believe that. I think you're right, the brain is, yeah, we're overworking it in the sense of never anticipated having that much information. So yeah, it's kind of counterintuitive, but it makes sense.

Paul (: 21:15

Yes, and this is where, again, I think there's such an excellent

corollary between sports and what we're talking about in that I You know I talk about in the book when I was playing even in at the highest level of basketball when I was playing in the NBA I was thinking very little about Nutrition rest I was sleeping a lot because I was really tired right like there was just kind of no two ways about it you just like I'm exhausted because I played this game and you're getting all these signals of

broken bones or surgeries, whatever, where you have no choice but to rest. But I wasn't really thinking too much about the nutrition aspect. Now, of course, this is de rigueur in professional sports that you're thinking hard about what you're putting into your body. And I would argue that this is massive for people in your world, right? Where you do not have the safety net of, I'm just going to have my job next year. Or even maybe as

to be blonde, the health insurance, you may be paying now for your own health insurance. But more importantly, that there is almost no way that it's not connected, that, you know, eating well, sleeping well, et cetera, is going to allow you to focus more. It's going to be allow you to have better ideas, to be more connected. So I think we can't talk about this stuff without talking about what I would call personal infrastructure, right? Like, how are you managing the roads and bridges of your own life? In fact, I had a

I had a panic at one point toward the end of getting this book done. It doesn't matter which draft where I was like, is this really like just the art of focus work? Because it's so much about like the totality of your career too. And I thought I for a second, I kind of toyed with changing the name of the title to build your own ladder because in the world of corporate, right, we talk about a corporate ladder and now we've left people without that easy to

Paul (: 23:17

Calculate ladder and in a lot of ways you're having to figure out like how am I going to? maintain this pace for five years ten years, whatever it might be in order to start this business or kind of redirect where I'm headed I have a you can tell I have a lot to say about these things but one thing that comes to mind is I At the beginning of my professional career. I wish somebody had taken me aside and said

We want you to plan on 10 years of this, right? The reality was I was fresh out of college and went to Iowa State, as you know. I was thinking I'll be lucky to get a professional job this next year. And then the next year I was like, I'll be lucky to get one the year after that. And so I was almost always in triage mode of just how do I get through the summer, the season, not so much thinking about the long-term until I got three or four years into it. And then I was like, okay, this is real now.

Now I need to build some systems that I can count on, which I will bring up because I think they're applicable here. You know, in the summers it was I'm going I'm only going to lift weights Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or I think it was Monday, Tuesday, Friday. Doesn't matter. I'm only going to run at the track Tuesday and Thursday. I'm only going to play Monday and Wednesday. I'm on Wednesday going to get a massage, whatever whatever the routine was. But it was built to sustain me for this long haul because I didn't know where my next job.

was going to come from, I had to be able to count on these systems I was building, which I think is a lot like what people go through when they are launching out into this new entrepreneurial life path, where they think at first, like, all you gotta do is get through the week, get through the month, get through the year. But then if you start to like sit in, well, how is this gonna be sustainable for the long term? A lot of that comes back to those systems you build around how you take care of yourself.

Brett Trainor (: 25:13

Yeah, it's so true because I think that's what happened to me at least five years ago. was like, well, what is the exit strategy here, right? I'm not going to work in corporate for another 20 years, right? mean, because one, they got rid of pensions, right? So the boomers, those went away and they gave us 401ks, but I'm not wired to live off of 401k withdrawals at some point. I need to have more control and flexibility and freedom, but what does that look like?

Paul (: 25:22

Hmm

Paul (: 25:35

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 25:40

And I think a lot of us are going through that. We don't have systems. We don't know what's next. And that's kind of where the escapee thing started. But, you know, that's why I think why I resonate so much with you, because I think, you know, the escapees started as purely how do I replace my income? Right. That's that's what it is. It's I want to get out. But what I found is this escape. I don't call it a lifestyle, but it's more of, know, we're the first Gen X is going to be the first one that outlives traditional retirement. Right. With medicine, if we take care of ourselves.

Paul (: 25:56

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 26:07

Hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 26:09

90 functional healthy 90 is is going to be very very common I think I read that 50 % of us that are 55 are gonna live healthily to the age of 90 That's a long time. What are you gonna do? What are you doing with your health your brain? You're all these things that we in corporate We're just taught just do your job right and build your life around that job and all of a sudden we've got to flip it and Like I said over the course really over the last two years. My focus has been more of the holistic escapee not just the

Paul (: 26:19

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 26:39

still have to have money, you gotta pay bills, which you know, but it's become much more of a, I don't know if it's a quest or a vision quest or something to see, and where it's not all in on it, but it just becomes a part of the life that I wanna live, right? So I think there's a lot of us are in different stages of that, and we're just starting appearing up. It would have been helpful at 20 to know this, but hell, even at 50, it's not too late.

Paul (: 26:56

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 27:06

Well, it's there. There are lessons to be taken from past experiences. As you were talking about that, the thing that I kept kept dinging in my brain was how unsexy this stuff is. Right. And that's important because one of the reasons I ever got to be well known as as a writer was because of that first book, Can I Keep My Jersey? And the main

point of that book was this life is not nearly as glamorous as you think it is. Right. Now, I frame that a lot around kind of the mundanity of it and how I could find the humor in that. But there's this other side to that world, which Steven Pressfield talks about in The War of Art, which is that when you turn pro, things get really boring. Right. Like it's actually the case that most of the great basketball players I was around, not most all, were

pretty boring when it came to their day to day. They had these routines that they went through that they knew they could count on. What people thought from the outside was, if I could be a professional athlete, it would be so glamorous. I won't have to work so hard. The reality is you actually have to work even harder because there are so many people that are so good at it that when you get to those top levels, it's the people who can show up every single day, who don't get hurt, who don't get sick, who don't miss the bus.

who make it, which is not what people want to hear a lot of the time. And so they often have to kind of go through this bottoming out where they recognize, I thought it was going to be fun and glamorous and filled with like big ideas. Well, it is if you can build these systems into place. And I think like that's that's something I see a lot with people who come here to the process, the workspace I run where

They come out of the gate so hard with like, well, I set up a website and I got a financial planner and I have somebody for the social media. You're like, well, that's cool. But let's think about how you're going to manage the ability to just get up and do this every day for three years when you don't necessarily want to. That's going to pay off in the long run a lot more than a lot of the whiz bang stuff that you think is going to take you to the top.

Brett Trainor (: 29:27

So true. And the light bulb went off as you're talking about that. I, again, originally when I started this, I thought it was going to be all the toolkits and the strategies and how do you build the offers. It's much more around, I want to say motivation, but just the reframing of the mental that's set. Because there's a lot of people that have super successful corporate careers. One, they're not sure they could go out and do this on their own, even though they're doing the same thing. It's not that big of a leap.

Paul (: 29:35

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 29:51

But now we're starting to doubt their abilities in corporate just because of what's been happening in corporate. So, so I think there's a lot to building out the mental aspect of what does this look like and how do I start to manage the day to day? Like I said, you probably, I probably could have saved, you know, a year of trial and error and you're still going to have to have some of that figure out what works for you. But to go, like I said, from the complete freedom to way over indexed and then kind of find that happy medium without

Paul (: 30:05

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 30:20

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 30:20

being intentional about not knowing how to run my day. It just seems like, that's easy. It's the foo-foo stuff, But it's the important.

Paul (: 30:28

Right. Well, and along those lines, it is and you're doing a great job of this. It's also finding connection and community that supports you, which also doesn't sound sexy. Right. Like what people want to they they really and I've seen this because I've worked I used to I used to work with writers a lot. Right. So in Los Angeles, I ran a space that was just for writers. We don't do that anymore because fucking writers, man.

Brett Trainor (: 30:41

Right.

Paul (: 30:57

And now our space is for all entrepreneurs, creatives, et cetera. But what I would see often was that people believed that they could write a book or screenplay that would be so good that it would just be unimpeachable. And occasionally, very occasionally that happens, but it's a really narrow path to attempt. The more realistic path is, and we would have writers in all the time who would talk about this. They would say, you're not going to write the perfect script.

but you might be able to buy a beer for the person who gets you the meeting that leads to you getting to show your not so perfect script to somebody who likes you and just gives you the job, right? And I think it's really similar in this world where I see this here sometimes too, where people think like, well, if I can just have the right ideas and make the right LinkedIn posts and hire the right marketing director, that that will be the path to success. And I'm forever, there's a...

Nobody can see this, but there's a bar about a block from us. I can see it out this window. I'm like, just take four people to that bar and buy them drinks and sit around and kibitz and say, when are we going to do this again? That's going to lead you a lot further than the perfect social media manager that you think exists because, you know, it's the it's a cliche, but the whole idea of like the rising tide raises all boats. It's, you know, tipping like, Brett got this job and now I can like get some

some connection with him because of the beer we had five years ago. That's another aspect to this that sounds so unglamorous. And here's where I will turn it. But it's actually like easy and fun, right? It's not that hard to go have a beer with four people. And in fact, it's quite fun a lot of the time, but it's a long game. It's not as simple in our minds as I'm going to create the perfect blog post, which in reality is not going to lead you anywhere.

Brett Trainor (: 32:54

Yeah, it's all it's all building towards that long game again. Yeah, because people sell you know overnight success and right into you know build your online business in two days and again I think you're right because the connection has been One of the biggest things and I tell people all the time the best thing about leaving corporate I have zero negative people in my life anymore. I just don't write there's no corporate clients There's no co-workers if somebody's got negative energy it

I just don't have time for it. And people don't understand how freeing that is when you have a bunch of that toxic people still in there. And I don't know where I was going with that. But...

Paul (: 33:24

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 33:34

Well, I think that's, mean, that's also that also echoes sports, right? Where, you think not you, but a person, a fan often thinks these professional athletes are are probably like split evenly between good guys and and bad guys, let's say. The reality is it's probably 97 percent good guys, right? Just people who show up are generally happy to be there. Look you in the eye, you know, do what they say they're going to do.

They may seem a little cantankerous, a little egotistical, but deep down, they're mostly people of really high integrity who are somewhat optimistic. Again, you're going to get some like behaviors that seem foreign to the average fan. But in general, I saw this all the time that I thought, you know, getting to the NBA would be like dudes doing cocaine in the bathroom stall. But it was Quinton Richardson who has a great podcast that people should investigate Chicago guy. Right.

Quentin Richardson not only would show up early for the games, but he would go out for a pre pregame workout where he would, you know, it wasn't it's not, you know, I always want to caution people against thinking it's about quantity, but he would show up super early. He would go get this routine of shots in and then you would get treatment. Then he would do pregame warmups. And then it was just every day a guy like that where you think Quentin Richardson, like big personality, dated Brandy, I think at some point like like

Kind of a cool guy, but in reality showed up the same every day. saw this when I, so I wrote about music for ESPN for a year and a half. And I think I really connected with bands because of the same thing, right? Like people think being a musician is all glitz and glamour, but it's really, the bus is leaving at 11.45, because we got to drive to Madison, Wisconsin. You got to be on the bus. We don't care like who you met after the show.

Brett Trainor (: 35:08

working.

Paul (: 35:30

and then we're gonna get to Madison and sound checks at this time. Like it's just this ritualistic behavior that oftentimes people don't wanna believe in, because they wanna believe in the romance in part because they think the thing that's keeping them from succeeding is some divine spark. When in reality, it's almost always the thing that's keeping you from succeeding is doing all of this unsexy work that we're talking.

Brett Trainor (: 35:57

That's so true. I was listening to a podcast and I was, I don't have the note in front of me, but it was a sports psychologist talking about, right, know, sports is good metaphor for life and business and those things. And this guest, can't remember her name, said, well, the difference between sports and life is, you know, in sports, 90 % of the time you're practicing, right? Only 10 % is actually when you're performing, you're doing probably the same with music and everything else. And so,

Paul (: 36:15

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 36:21

But yet in life, we just show up and expect it to hit that home run and do those things. But I think it goes back to, if I can connect the dots, what you're talking about is putting in that structure, the system, the work, and maybe it's not the one blog post, but it's the accumulation of the four blog posts that you write, because you put the work in every morning and taking one more step with connecting those dots. It's how do I get focused on that work? So I'm not spending eight hours to do what I could do in 20 minutes, right? And start to, right?

Paul (: 36:39

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 36:50

Right. thinking, I wanted to dial this back in case we are verging on intimidating someone. like what can happen too is that people think, well, I don't want to do all of that. But what I find is if you're able to really home in on some pretty simple techniques that you can make a big difference in a hurry. you mentioned

the way you start your day. I talk when I work with people one-on-one, I will really lock in on how do you start your day and also how do you finish your day to set up how you start the next day. But I think it's important to go back to one thing that I've written about a lot, which is that a lot of times people will try to intimidate you from trying something new because they are kind of trying to pull up the drawbridge behind.

Right? Like they're, kind of trying to say, Hey, this is really hard. so don't try to do what I'm doing as opposed to a demystification where if, when I can get people, worked with somebody recently who runs a company that's worth a whole bunch of money. And we were able to get him to doing 20 minutes of focused work, five days a week. And once he got to that level, he was like, it's been years since I've actually gotten to do stuff that's productive instead of just reactive all day. So we're not talking about like.

You've got to go to the library and grind it out for eight hours like you talked about at the beginning of this. It's more, can you build in these 15 minute blocks to start and how do you do that? So this comes back to the demystification, helping people see that one of the reasons this stuff is so hard is because we are adults who have all these patterns laid down, right? And a thing I see a lot from people, this goes back to this guilt and shame cycle.

is that they will say, well, I'm a grown up. I should just be able to force myself to concentrate. Well, that never works because we have built all these habits around maybe, for example, every time you turn on your computer, you check Twitter. Well, that kind of gets you out of the mode of productivity and now you're taking in information. So how do you build a system where every time you sit down at your computer, you're going to work for 12 minutes on

Paul (: 39:10

this presentation, this mythical presentation that you got assigned that's going to take you six weeks. Again, all you have to do is 12 minutes. So maybe it is that you cue yourself into a new pattern by going to the same new place every day where you create a sacred space that's like, know what, I'm going to this coffee shop to do this kind of work every day, or I'm going to go to this room in my house, but I really getting out of your house as much as possible. And then if you are able to do that 12 minutes,

without looking at Twitter, you reward yourself with something like a scone, whatever, like something they maybe have at the cop shop. And here's where this matters, I think, is that people will say, it didn't work, so therefore I can't do this. Instead of, it didn't work, so how can I change the queue and the reward? So, okay, it didn't work, great. How are we going to overload that queue even more so that like, okay, at night you're going to somehow

disable the internet on your computer and you're going to reward yourself for taking that action so that in the morning you can't even turn on your internet. Again, these are just examples of the ways that people can do this. But I think they get frustrated because they think, I should just be able to gut my way through it. Instead of thinking a little more in a more childlike way of like, if I wanted to change the behavior of my child, I would need to do this in a very whimsical and kind of joyful way. So how can I?

Brett Trainor (: 40:18

Yeah.

Paul (: 40:38

incorporate that in my own life instead of thinking I didn't do it, I'm a bad person. And now this shame cycle continues where you don't ever like get out of that without these guardrails of the cue, the reward, the making it fun along the way.

Brett Trainor (: 40:55

Yeah, no, it's such a good point because again, I'm a walking example. I tell people all the time, if I can do this, you can do this. Right? There is no hidden power. It was trial and and I did use the Q system, right? It started with music and the reward was coffee. now I've, like I said, you do it long enough, it becomes a routine. And my routine in the morning is I will do go, I won't go through email, but it'll be like all you get the morning newsletters, right? Sports, business, news. First thing I do, cup of coffee.

Paul (: 41:01

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 41:21

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 41:25

catch up on all the news. So I've got all, all right, I'm up to date worldly. Then it leads me into that hour. And then after that, I'll check, right, the social media or whatever else it is. And so now I don't even think about the queue, but it took some trial and error to figure out what was that that got me locked into. I think I still have the clock that you recommended back in the day. But the other thing I think that's important for folks is, again, it seemed counterintuitive, but now it makes sense.

Paul (: 41:45

No.

Brett Trainor (: 41:54

is don't overextend. If you say, hey, I'm gonna do 15 minutes of focused work, don't go for 22 because your brain will eventually fight back on you because you're like, hey, you only said 15, it's been 22. I'm not gonna concentrate. I don't know if you've changed your thinking on that, but to me, it makes perfect sense.

Paul (: 42:00

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 42:05

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 42:09

No, I've yeah, I actually have probably doubled down on that. Like you said, so much of of my work with people, it comes back to honestly keeping promises you make to yourself. So that's not only saying this happened to me the other day. Actually, I was we had a big event here on a Friday night and we had a bunch of leftover pizza and

Brett Trainor (: 42:15

Okay.

Paul (: 42:39

I needed to get some stuff done in the morning. And then I was like, you know what? I'm going to reward myself with like three. I'm going to heat up three pieces of this pizza. It's going to be so nice. I don't eat a ton of pizza, but whatever. And so I did what I needed to do in the morning. And then I got home and I thought, man, do I really want to eat that pizza? Because like it's it's probably not going to sit all that well in my body, blah, blah, blah. And then I reminded myself, no, you told yourself in order to help.

to help yourself get through this morning that you're gonna have that pizza, right? So I was like, well, I'll heat up this pizza and eat it. And I think we break these deals with our brains so often that we don't even really think about the long-term repercussions. Like obviously on some level, who cares if I ate the pizza or not, right? But in the long-term, if we're able to keep these promises we make, then we can start to count on ourselves because, and this is why this matters,

People will say, well, you why does it matter so much if I stop myself? The reason is because that's going to be how when you are faced with when you Brett trainer or in Pensacola, Florida, giving a talk that you've gotten paid $10,000 for the next day and the whole world is screaming around you, right? Like something maybe has gone wrong at work and your family's like made a mess of something at home. How are you going to be able to tell yourself all I have to do is sit here for 12 minutes and review my notes?

Right? Like that's when it matters. And that's when all of this stuff pays off where you have practiced for so long at being able to say, if I need to review my notes for 12 minutes before this presentation, I'm going to go straight to a bar. I'm going to buy myself a Budweiser. I'm going to put on headphones and I'm going to sit here for only 12 minutes. And then I'm going to be prepared or as prepared as I can be for tomorrow. I love how the mindfulness coach and teacher

John Cabot Zen talks about meditation. says, we need to be able to count on that meditation when we're at our worst, which is why we call it a practice before that. And it's really similar where the thing that I do today, you know, this morning I'm working on a novel now, right? Does it matter if I write this novel? No, but it's such good practice for the same stuff we're talking about of

Paul (: 44:59

I'm going to do my 30 minutes on this novel and that's all I have to do. And then I'm going to walk away from it. I am thus practicing my ability to get into a state of focus and then come out of it because there will come a time where I'm asked to write something on deadline for something quote unquote important. And I will need to be able to call up or conjure up this ability. And that isn't possible without all this practice along the way.

Brett Trainor (: 45:26

Yeah, no, so true. And again, I think you're right. people, it's still in corporate thinking the outside. It's not rocket science, what we're talking about, right? It's just rethinking, reframing, taking the baby steps in order to do that, but prioritizing. Because again, I think when I overindex, now, like I said, I've got that five to six AM or six to seven AM is the high, anything strategic, I really need then a little bit of a break and then I'll do.

Paul (: 45:35

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 45:55

probably till nine, but then every day from nine to 10, 30, 11, I'm going to the gym, walk to the gym. I'm outside every day to the gym, probably six out of seven days. I'll make sure that happens. Then when I get back at 11, I'm like, I'm like, ready to go. So it's not the same as the six to seven, but there's still some really good quality work in the next couple of hours. And then another break. And then, then it becomes the email and maybe more networking and those types of things. part of me,

Paul (: 45:59

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 46:16

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 46:21

thinks I need to start moving some of my networking, at least the key networking where I'm still more, I don't know, alive, awake or still, right? So I haven't quite figured out the full day's worth of it. I've got the good hour, right? So how do I make sure I'm doing without, to your point, going too far the other way where it feels like work because everything is so structured in those things. So.

Paul (: 46:28

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 46:34

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 46:45

Yeah, and think that's where also finding the fun of potentially an evening session, right? So saying to yourself, like, I think based on working with so many people now, it's a pretty standard pattern. This isn't necessarily true for every single person, but it seems to be fairly common that our best productive work happens in the morning before we let all of the world's chaos in.

Brett Trainor (: 46:50

Yes.

Paul (: 47:10

And then in the late morning, I think we can start to get into kind of a flex space where we're able to interface with other people and allow for maybe the give and take. feel like the afternoon is often shot in terms of like trying to concentrate beyond, you know, really short bursts or maybe meetings that aren't the most important. Maybe that's where, like you said, that the networking comes in. But also thinking about then there seems to be this natural kind of cycle to after supper, like

from eight o'clock to eight thirty or eight thirty to nine fifteen. Like, can we build something in that's maybe a little bit more exploratory, like where we take ourselves to a hotel bar and say, you know what, twice a week, I'm going to do something that seems insane. That's not even in the five year plan, but it's in the 20 year plan. Something a little more dreamlike or crazy. Or, you know, sometimes that might be just answering emails. But I think thinking.

about how we can use the flexibility in ways that are untraditional and that might not seem exactly like we would have done it when we were in the corporate job.

Brett Trainor (: 48:20

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, mixing it up, right? Because if you get into too much of a routine, then your body gets used to it. So it does make sense to mix it up. All right. I mean, this time it's absolutely flown by. So is there anything we didn't cover?

Paul (: 48:26

Right.

Paul (: 48:32

Anything we didn't cover? Yeah, I think there's a few things, I think we've hopefully given people some ideas. I will say that one thing I think about a lot in trying to help people leave, quote, the normal world or attack new things is how they manage failure. Because in the

let's say the normie world or the corporate world, a lot of times you're fine until you're not, right? Like the failure is you just got fired, but otherwise you're kind of okay. And I think what happens in a world where you are kind of your own boss is that you're having to deal with these many failures or things that feel like a failure all the time, right? Like everything kind of feels like a failure because it's not so easy as I have a job or I don't. And so how to get to a point where people really are looking at

these attempts at things as opportunities to learn, which sounds kind of hokey, I recognize. I was thinking about this because we did a book launch for this book here in Denver and I did two nights of it. So it was different people, but kind of the same presentation each night. And I was worse the second night. Unfortunately, we filmed the second night, right? Which is just how that goes. And I was watching that and I was thinking to myself, God, I wish I

Brett Trainor (: 49:56

of

Paul (: 50:01

wish we would have filmed the first night, of course, because that's how you would think. But then as I I dove further into it, I was thinking about, again, the sports past and how when you see yourself on film, you will think, God, I wish I had made that play. Like, why didn't I go set that screen when I was supposed to? Or why didn't I try a little harder on that rebound? And then, of course, as you become a professional, you realize, well, I was doing the best I could, right? Considering the circumstances, whatever it was, it wasn't like I wasn't trying. And I think that

ability to look objectively at our quote failures is another aspect to this that's not to say that it's more important or less important, but it is a part of this job of managing our own self-esteem, our own confidence, our own willpower that often gets overlooked and I think then contributes to that cycle of shame that I was talking about earlier.

Brett Trainor (: 50:58

No, it's a good point. I think that's right. Because I encourage the experimentation. There lots of experiments. And the other thing that it's, when I first started focusing on GenX, you play to the cliches. We grew up latchkey kids. There are no helicopter parents. It's all true. We got ourselves out of trouble. ran into trouble. it was all self-reliant. Into the corporate world, we get put into this box. And you're rewarded for not rocking the boat, not making mistakes, overanalyzing.

Paul (: 51:02

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 51:12

Mm.

Brett Trainor (: 51:26

And earlier in your career, you probably take a lot more chances, but over time, you're like, you know, I'm just, I'm just sitting in box. I'm okay. Now all of a sudden we're out. And the one thing that I've realized, and again, not intentionally, just over time, was I stopped caring about judgment and corporate. You're judged all the time. And that's just the way you're rewarded. So you have to wear the mask. You have to do these things just to play the games. Then when you get out, you realize that nobody's judging you. Even if you had your second night.

Paul (: 51:32

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 51:54

you probably thought it was terrible, but anybody in the audience probably had no idea. thought, shit, Paul's the best. This is exactly what I needed to hear type of a thing. And once we get beyond that the only person judging you is you and or your partner's spouse that can judge for you, that it just doesn't matter. And again, that was so hard to let go of and not worry about. And I would say, again, through the course of the five years, the escapee wouldn't have happened if I was worried about what people would think and were doing.

Paul (: 51:57

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 52:05

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 52:14

Mmm.

Brett Trainor (: 52:22

But it took me almost the four years to get to a point where I was willing to take the chances and look at the many failures and say, it didn't work, right? We'll try something else. And again, I wish there was a magic pill I could give to people that just says, hey, when you're leaving, we can get you to hear this quick. It's gonna be the journey, right? But as long you're patient and understand and stick to it.

Paul (: 52:33

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 52:43

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 52:48

Well, yeah, as long as you're patient and impatient in that, like there's so much power to that expression fail fast, right? Like just to try stuff and have it go badly and but then try it again. that's what a gift my sports career gave me because there was always another practice. There's always another game. There's always another shot within the practice, right? Where you have this chance to like do it again. And I think we we are kind of robbed of that.

Brett Trainor (: 52:57

Yes, yes.

Paul (: 53:20

because we don't have these.

iterative bouts, right? Like giving a talk is you could frame that as a bout where like, okay, this happened. How did it go? How do I sort of see how that went? and adjust accordingly. That's often not an opportunity people have other than like sending emails.

Brett Trainor (: 53:43

But I do think that's what's changing when you leave corporate because corporate is your job. You can't lose it, right? For failure, the money, whatever. But when you're working with smaller clients, it may not be the perfect engagement. But guess what? There's 10 million other small businesses out there. So even if this one wasn't right, you reposition. You didn't charge enough. You charge too much. You over prompt whatever it is. The next one's right. Your next engagement away. So.

Paul (: 53:49

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 53:59

Mm-hmm.

Brett Trainor (: 54:08

Again, we were brainwashed into a way of thinking. Now, to your point, I think there's value in knowing that this next customer is not your last customer, it's not your last job. It's okay if it doesn't go perfectly. It is about, and you can make adjustments when you go forward. So again, that's a hard mental block to get over when you've been doing it for two decades.

Paul (: 54:25

Mm-hmm.

Paul (: 54:30

Right, right, Totally.

Brett Trainor (: 54:33

All right, Paul, well, I really, really appreciate the time. Yeah, I'll put all this stuff in the show notes. People can find you. But again, Corporate Escape, the process is the product was a must read for folks. Now we'll add the art of focused work as its companion, because I think they go hand in hand. And as you're transitioning to owning your own time, this is going to be a lifesaver for you. So I'll have to keep you.

Can't be two years before we bring you back in. And for all the Denver folks out there, check out the process. I I've the chance to go out and see you, it was over a year ago now, I guess. But again, I'm like, that's what we need. We don't need co-working spaces. Some people may, but again, I just really, really am behind your mission. And like I said, anything I can do to support you as you go through this, just let me know. all except all of our Denver escapees out there, check out the process. think...

Paul (: 55:27

Yeah, I didn't know there were some Denver people. Come see us. We're probably not far away from you.

Brett Trainor (: 55:32

No, highly recommend it. any last words of wisdom,

Paul (: 55:37

That's all I got. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Brett Trainor (: 55:39

Appreciate it, Paul. We'll catch up with you soon.