Afford Anything - How and Why I Took a Mini-Retirement, with Bob Lotich

Episode Date: December 3, 2018

#164: As an entrepreneur, Bob Lotich loves growing and expanding. But after a particularly stressful year, he realized he had burned out. He woke up one Monday morning and, for the first time since he’d started self-employment, he realized he didn’t want to go to work. This was a new and uncomfortable feeling. He decided to take a mini-retirement. He had taken long breaks before. In the past, Bob had taken a full month off of work. This time, he wanted to a more ambitious break. He wanted to take a quarter off. He went to his whiteboard. He wrote the goal “take a sabbatical,” intending for this to last for three months. But then he paused. He wondered if he spelled the word “sabbatical” correctly. He Googled the word, then started reading about the concept. Bob learned that a sabbatical is historically a one-year break. Hmmm. That’s when he changed direction. Bob Lotich shares the reasons he decided to take a full year off work. For more information, visit the show notes at http://affordanything.com/episode164  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything, but not everything. Every decision that you make is a trade-off against something else. And that's true, not just of your money, but your time, your focus, your energy, your attention, anything in your life that's a scarce or limited resource. And so the questions become two-forward. Number one, what matters most to you? And number two, how do you align your daily decisions to reflect those priorities? Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice. And that's what this podcast is here to explore.

My name is Paula Pant. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast and the founder of Afford Anything.com. Today, Bob Loddick joins us on the show to talk about why and how he took a mini retirement. I've known Bob for several years. Bob is a 30-something entrepreneur living in Franklin, Tennessee. He is not financially independent, but he did at one point realize that he was burned out from working so hard. And so he decided to take a mini retirement. he took a 12-month sabbatical.

Now, if you've been listening to this podcast or if you've been reading my blog for a while, you've probably heard me say the phrase retire early and often. And what I mean by that is that I encourage people to take mini-retirements on their way to an early retirement. So I wanted to bring Bob onto the show today to talk about his experience as somebody who is not FI. He's not retiring early forever for the rest of his life. But he is someone who got to a point. where he just needed a break and he knew that the right thing to do was to take a mini-retirement. How did he get to that point?

What did he do? And what advice would he share to anybody who wants to follow in his footsteps? Including people who have a 9-to-5 job with a W-2 employer and who can't just tell their boss that they're going to not show up for the next year. What can anyone listening do if you're also feeling burning? out. Here he is, Bob Lodick on how and why he took a mini retirement. Hi, Bob. Hey, Paula. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I am doing really good. Thanks.

It's great to talk to you. So I haven't talked to you in a few years. I didn't realize that during one of those years in which we hadn't connected, you had chosen to take that year off. And that's what we're going to talk about today is you took an entire year off of work. Yeah. I still kind of don't believe it. but I think it actually did happen. Let's go through a little bit of your background. Now, part of the reason that you were able to take this mini retirement is because you are self-employed. Introduce yourself.

Sure. I actually began a blog in 2007, and that was kind of what led me into, I guess, self-employment. And more or less began a blog where I was just kind of talking about money and talking about the Bible and how these two things intersect and my faith and all this. Long story short, over the next year and a half, I was able to do. to kind of turn that into a full-time income. From that point, I just kind of desired to be able to build a business where just kind of on my own terms, where, you know, I'd come out of a corporate job that I really did not like. I'd come out of really being frustrated with corporate America and frustrated with the rigidity of everything. I wanted to build a business that had some flex and

some give and that was going to allow me to do really what I wanted to do on my own terms a little bit and didn't want to become a slave to the business I created. And so over the next couple of years, I just began stretching myself in terms of how can I take more time off, keep the business afloat, and not have it crash and burn. And, you know, and ultimately that's kind of what led to this one year off last year. Before you took your year off, how much were you working? I stuck to a pretty typical 40-hour week schedule. I mean, certain weeks, if things were really busy, I might hit 50, some, they might be 30. If it was like a, I kind of have a rule on sunny days. If it's like sunny and 70, like I'm taking a half day. Like no questions asked and then I should go outside. So I was pretty

flexible, somewhere in the 30 to 50 hours a week. And did you tend to keep normal business hours? Or did you stick to a predetermined work schedule? Or did you work when the inspiration struck? Yeah, I played with a lot of different things. You know, immediately when it came out of corporate America, I was like, no, I'm not doing an eight to five. You know, I'm going to do something else. So I started working nights. Tried that for a while. I didn't really like it. And then I've tried like some second shift stuff where I'd start at like 2 p.m. and work to maybe 10 or something. And those aspects of that that I like, but in general, I tend to find myself coming back to a standard workday schedule. And it has its pros and cons. But for me, I tend to find myself back

in that normally. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny how that happens. You get out. out of the nine to five just to choose to put yourself back in it. Yeah, exactly. Tell me about what happened leading up to your decision to take a mini retirement. Yeah, so pretty much 2016 was the busiest year that I had ever worked. And that year, I was definitely, I probably had some 60-hour weeks. And it's not the amount of time, I don't think. I think it's just the fact that I was doing things that weren't fulfilling. I didn't realize this, but they were wearing on me. They were wearing on my creativity. They were wearing on me emotionally. They were just wearing me down to the point that I didn't know it, but I actually was burned out at the end of that year. You know, kind of the way

I discovered I was burned out is I'd take a month off every year, which we can get more into that in a little bit. But every year, that's just kind of standard operating procedure. My wife and I take a month off. We typically go down to Florida and enjoy the warm weather. And anyway, that year in 2017, the beginning of 2017, I had taken a month off. And normally, really like two weeks into that month-long break, I am just itching to get back. I am so excited to get back to work. I have so many ideas. I'm ready to explode. And it's really hard for me to take an additional two weeks off. And this year, I didn't feel like that at all. And in fact, after the entire four-week period, I still didn't feel like it. And I pretty much felt just as burned out as I did at the

beginning of the thing, which I know sounds like insane to anybody who like has a job where they can't get a single day off. You know, I know how insane that sounds. And I'm not at all like asking for sympathy. It was just my situation that it didn't do me any good for whatever reason and taking that month off. And that was just kind of the whole thing behind that, I guess. You mentioned that the work that you were doing was not fulfilling, and that was a big piece of what led to your burnout. And yet it was your own company,

and the work that you were doing to an extent was by your own choice. Why was it that the work wasn't fulfilling? Yeah. So I think that's the interesting thing about, or one of the biggest challenges about being an entrepreneur is there's so many options. so many things you can do. And there's a lot of directions you can go. And a lot of those directions you can go for the wrong reasons. It's easy to do something because other people are doing it. It's either to do X because it's working for this person over here. It's easy to just kind of get

in this shiny object syndrome, like falling prey to that where you're just looking at the next thing that's right over here that's working really well for everybody or that everybody says you need to be doing this. And, you know, and I think I just fell a little bit too. much into that trap where I was doing too many things. There were other people's ideas that weren't really what I wanted to be doing or should have been doing with my business. And ultimately, it just had me doing too many things. A lot of them weren't things I even really wanted to be doing. And it kind of took me, you know, getting burned out to like see that and to realize that. What does burnout feel like? For me, having a topic that I had written about for, you know, six or seven

years. You know, initially I thought that that's why I didn't want to write about that topic anymore. But what I've realized is that that's not really the issue. That for me, I actually was burned out. And so that was a big clue for me that I didn't want to write about this topic that, you know, I had more or less devoted my life to for the last seven, eight years. And that was a big clue. One day, one morning, I woke up, you know, it was a Monday morning. And normally every Monday morning. I mean, I've been running this business for almost a decade now or over a decade now. And I always am excited on Mondays to get to work. And it wasn't like that in my corporate jobs. I did not enjoy them. I'm still glad that I'm out of them. But for me, that was one of the

major blessings I've had in my own business is that I was excited on Monday mornings. And I was actually looking forward to Monday on Sunday night. One Monday morning, I woke up and I was dreading to go to work, you know, or go sit down in the office. And that was like a warning sign for me. You know, it's like I kind of slapped myself upside the head a little bit. Like, you built this business that you are now loathing going to work in. Like, this is a problem. Something needs to change. Had you been feeling that for a while and it suddenly became unignorable or did it all kind of come rushing in at once? Yeah, I think it's one of those things that it was just slowly building up. I honestly think it had been building up for a couple years, but in 2016, like, you know, by the end of that

year, just had come to a head. I was just taking on too much stuff, had my hands involved in too many things. And like I said, too many things that I wasn't joined, that I wasn't, you know, yeah, it just felt like I was spinning my wheels, you know. Right. So tell me about what happened then. That Monday morning, you woke up, you realized with this sinking feeling that you didn't want to go to work, even though it was a work of your own creation. Yeah. What happens next? So yeah, at that point, I think that was like early December of 2016. I think that's about when that was. And so what I realized at that point, like, all right, I'm in trouble, but we already had my, or our one month sabbatical kind of planned out. I think we were going in February, you know, so I knew it was about two months away. And I'm like, I can make it two months. I'm going to survive. And I talked to my wife Linda a little bit. And she said, like, are you sure you don't need to just take some time off now? Because she can tell I wasn't doing real good. And I said, no, I'll just wait. It'll be okay. I can push through, you know, whatever,

another six, seven weeks or whatever it was at that point. And that's what I did. And I just held out until February of 2017. And then what happened in February? So that's when we took our one month trip. That particular February went down to Scottsdale, Arizona instead of Florida, which is beautiful in February, by the way. If you've ever visited or you ever get the chance to, it is fantastic in February, great place to be. And so we spent a month there, you know, and like I said, had all that time off.

I read a whole bunch, you know, spent a lot of time with Linda and my son at the time. And it was just time that was good and I enjoyed it, but didn't refresh me in the way, just didn't solve that burnout issue, you know. And so at the end of that, month, you realized you were still burned out. And I'm guessing at that point, you knew that you needed a longer break. Yeah. And so my first thought was, I'll just take another two weeks. And so I decided, we're just going to push this in the middle of the march. And so we'd come back home from Scottsdale. And so I'm like, yeah, I'll just extend in our two weeks. Maybe that'll help. I don't know. I don't know what I was thinking. I should have known better. But yeah. So I extended another two weeks and just kind of went from there. After that, I found myself in my office. I had an office outside the house,

and I found myself there looking at my white board ahead. Basically, monthly goals set out. And for February, I had written sabbatical, and I had this checked off. And I was looking at the word sabbatical. I'm like, I don't know if I spelled that right, because it's kind of a weird word. I don't write a whole lot. And so I wanted to check how to spell it. And so I Googled it. you know, it's like my spell check. And so I typed it in there and this Wikipedia entry came up and I was kind of reading it. And as I was reading it, basically long story short, in this Wikipedia entry and hopefully it still says this. I don't know if it still does, but it did it at the time.

It said that technically sabbatical is a one year period. You know, if you're actually following the whatever, the true definition of sabbatical. And when I read that, it just kind of like jumped off the page at me. It's like, wow. Hmm. Maybe I'm supposed. to take a whole year off. And that was just kind of when that first thought was planted in my head. And did that thought scare you when it first entered your mind? Or?

Oh, yeah. It terrified me. It terrified me because honestly, like, even though I was kind of burned out, I enjoy work. I enjoy creating. I am not someone who is looking forward to getting to be 65 and not doing anything with the rest of my time. I mean, I want to be able to be able to. I mean, I want to be able to be to be free financially. I want to be financially independent, but I don't want to, yeah, just be in a situation where I have nothing to do but twitle my thumbs. Like I have to have purpose in life, you know? And so this idea of taking a year off was just terrifying because I'm not that type of guy. I need to be doing something. And when I initially think of taking a year off, I'm like, what am I going to do? So that's one big part of it. And then obviously the financial part of it,

like, how am I going to handle this? How am I going to pay the bills? How are we not going to lose a house. Is this possible? Is this even possible? What does Linda do for work? Linda stays at home with our kids. She helps me with the business a little bit. Certain stuff, and we're doing a lot more video these days on YouTube and stuff. So she's helping me with some certain videos and things like that. But yeah. So you and your business is the sole breadwinner for your family. Yeah. Wow. So taking a year off from a business that provides for your wife and your son. Yeah. It's scary. Like, because I, I, just had no idea what's going to happen. And so there were a whole bunch of reasons why I was like,

this is a insane idea. Why even entertain this thought? So why did you entertain the thought? Because it just kind of felt right. It kind of felt like it was what I was supposed to do. So I talked to Linda about it. And I honestly thought that she would, well, I kind of hoped secretly that she would be like, that's just crazy. We're not doing that. But she actually was 100% on board. in which she has been so many different times when I've kind of come to her with some sort of crazy idea. And yeah, and she always just seems to know whether it is a crazy idea that should be avoided or one that we should follow. And she was on board with this and felt like it was something we were supposed to do. And so we did. How did you prepare for that then? What steps did you

take to get yourself ready to take that year off? Honestly, we had been pretty well prepared in that the previous, I think, six or seven years, we had taken one month off every year. And by doing that, it forced us to build systems. It forced us to create strategies for delegation that I didn't have before I did that. And those same systems that we kind of built allowed us to do this. I don't think we ever could have done a year without taking those months off a couple times. A lot of what that looked like is, you know, I have an assistant who manages a lot of things on the website. And so that was a big part of it is getting her up to speed and basically giving her the authority to make a whole lot of decisions while I was gone. And then on our part, not on the

practical side, but just kind of a bigger picture is just asking myself a lot of tough questions. Like, what does it look like if I don't answer blog comments for a year? What does it look like if I'm not responding to readers who are emailing me for a year. Does that mean that my business is going to be gone? Is this something a sacrifice that I'm willing to make for, you know, the purpose of what this thing needs to be? And so those are some tough questions that I had to answer. But ultimately, you know, I concluded for those two particular questions and, you know,

a whole bunch of others that it was worth it and that it was ultimately better for me to say no to some of these things that I did think were really important. but, you know, not important enough. So how did you handle that? Like, we'll take the blog comments, for example. Did you have your assistant respond to them and say, hey, Bob's taking the year off, but here's how I can help guide you. Yeah, I mean, a lot of it was that.

You know, and to be honest, I don't know how these two terms compare. I'd be interested to hear about this. But, like, what's nice about the term sabbatical is that it carries a weight with it that brings a lot of understanding, I have found, with a lot of readers. And I don't know if mini retirement would have carried the same respect, wait, whatever, but we, you know, had email auto responders going on telling people I was taking a sabbatical. I never had a single person be like, well, you didn't answer my question for three months or whatever. I just never had any of that. And I don't know if it would have been the same if we would have used the verbiage mini retirement.

I don't really know, but I'm just curious. But that was part of it. I had heard take care of a lot of those things and just, you know, be honest with people. It's like, this is what's going on. And she is knowledgeable enough that she can help with a lot of stuff. And she did, you know, so in terms of blog comments and emails and things like that, she helped immensely. She did my inbox for the entire year.

And there were a lot of balls that just needed to be dropped. So if an advertising deal came in or something like that, it's like, we're not doing that, which is not the time, you know. And so it was just a lot of opportunities that had to be passed up on. You know, that was just part of the sacrifice of doing that. What were some examples of some decisions that she had to make? You know, so practically speaking, we met once a week. I would jump on the phone with her and she would answer any or let me know about any super urgent stuff.

You know, if the website had gone down and she didn't know how to get it up, like that would be when we would talk about that. So we had basically one hour a week where we'd chat about that. I kind of wanted to do a hard and fast zero work the entire time. but out of respect to her and to some of our students who had paid for some level of access to me, I wanted to fulfill those obligations. So there were situations like that where I made that sacrifice for the sake and benefit of others, even though I would have preferred to cut the court completely, you know. But there were a lot of small decisions within that kind of framework that she was making for us.

Wow. I've heard of the four-hour work week, but you've beat that with the one. hour work week. Yeah, next time I have coffee with Tim, I'll let him know. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. I'm going to make a guess about you. Are you ready? I'm going to guess that you're the type of person who thinks about your long-term financial future. After all, you've self-selected as the type of person who listens to a personal finance podcast, right? So clearly, you think about your finances in the long-term. And when we think long term, oftentimes we think about retirement, but we don't think about the thing that comes next.

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Yeah, I mean, really what I feel like I was running away from was the chaos that I'd kind of built up in this business that I created. And I guess if I was running to something, it was running to peace, a little bit more clarity of mind, a little bit of headspace that I hoped would provide some level of, yeah, I was just hoping that through this, through taking an entire year. year that it would clear my mind in a way and offer new insights and a new life and breath in me. And it did. That's one of the really thrilling things about being on this side of it and seeing the benefits

that I've gotten from it. It really was an amazing thing. So it kind of was running from, but it also was running to at the same time. Take me to the first day of your mini retirement or your sabbatical. Day one, you wake up. It's Monday morning, 8 or 9 a.m. you're not going to work. What do you do?

Yeah. Well, so what's funny about it, so I had this office outside the house. So it was about two or three miles away from our house. I decided to keep the office for the duration of the year. As long as we could afford it, I was going to keep it. And the main reason was I decided if I'm going to take a year off, I'm going to do this thing right and try to get the most benefit out of this as possible. This might be a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

You know, I hope it isn't. But if it is, it's like I really want to get the most out of this. So I kept my office and the main reason was I figured with our three-year-old son at home, I would be able to soak up a lot more, just have a lot more opportunity to think and to read quietly, distraction-free and to be alone and just to really decompress. So I kept the office and so that first day, I do remember going there and just sitting down on the couch, I had grabbing some books and just feeling like, this is crazy. I can't believe I'm doing this.

But I did, and that's what I did. So a lot of those days I read, I ended up reading a whole bunch of books last year. And yeah, so it was just really good in regards to all that. And then the clarity of mind that comes from doing something like that, it's just unparalleled. Were you reading business books or were you reading any type of book? No, I actually decided not to read any business books because I, figured that would clutter my mind more. And to be honest, like part of the whole thing, part of the tension and the stress that was coming from the end of 2017 or 16 was just an abundance of

ideas, too many ideas. And I was reading a good amount that year. And I was in a mastermind with a bunch of really smart guys. You know, I was just getting too many ideas and I was just overwhelmed. And so I really didn't need to read any business books. And so most of 2017, I was reading some fiction. I was reading, you know, just all kinds of stuff. I was learning about gardening. I was learning about cooking. Just different stuff. There are a lot of people who are listening to this who are probably at this moment thinking,

well, that's wonderful if you run your own business and you can just decide to take a year off and then hire an assistant to execute your job for you, or at least, you know, keep the business on maintenance mode during this one year sabbatical. But I have a nine to five for an employer. What can I do if I'm also feeling burned out? Yeah. No, I mean, that's a completely valid thought. Like, I would feel exactly the same way.

But the thing about it is I don't think it's the amount of time. In my particular instance, I do think I needed to take a year off. I don't know, maybe six months would have been fine. For whatever reason, I did a year. But every time prior to that, I had taken a month off. and I had received phenomenal benefits from taking a month off. And I still know plenty of people can't take a month off. Like, that's completely fine.

But I don't really think it's the amount of time. I think it's just starting where you are, taking off what you can. You know, so even if it's one day a week where you choose not to do any work, delete your email app off your phone or whatever, just have one day a week to decompress. I think that is a great starting place that far more people would be benefited by in this 21st century world that we live in. In terms of that one day a week off,

so one thing that I've noticed is that oftentimes, if I take a day off of work, I end up filling that day with chores and errands. For example, I can't find the key to my PO box. One of the things that I need to do, the next time I take a day off, is turn everything upside down so that I can find that key

so that I can then open that box so that I can then deal with my mail. Yeah. How do you balance, even when you take time off work, how do you balance that with the need to take time away from just managing the demands of home life as well? Yeah. Well, for me, there was a book I read that just kind of touched on this a little bit. And it was a Christian book, but the point I think applies to everybody. And basically the author was saying that what a sabbatical should look like is it should feel like you're playing hooky. And I really like that a lot because it's this really simple task that you can ask yourself. You know, and so if I find myself doing chores on a particular day and I feel like this is something I have to do, that's kind of my way of knowing I probably shouldn't do this today. And if it's something where it's like, oh, that'd be fun. You know, like if I'm thinking about it in those terms and I kind of feel like that, that's what I should be focusing on on that day.

And that's kind of how I've broken it down, you know, and I don't think there's necessarily a hard and fast rule here. You know, everybody's different. But for me, that's worked really well just as a real simple framework on how to kind of differentiate. And it sounds to me like the way to do it is to commit to doing it, even if it's only one day a week. Yeah, I mean, that's what it's been for me. And, you know, and so I've done that on for Sundays for the last, I don't know, a couple years because I honestly got a start on doing the month off thing before I was doing it once a week. I kind of went backwards with that. But since I've been doing that, it's just been really nice. It has allowed me to focus time on my family and on my loved ones and maybe on hobbies that I would otherwise ignore because there are so many demands to all of our lives. We all have so much going on that it's really easy to let all of that stuff just kind of dominate. And it seems like, well, I have more hours here, so I'll get more done. But I don't know, sometimes you have to ask yourself what the cost is. Right.

Speaking of costs, so you, because you ran your own business, presumably you still had some level of income, some passive income that was coming in during your sabbatical. There are people listening to this who, if they were to take some time off of work, maybe they're able to take a month leave, but it would be unpaid. what advice would you have for them in terms of how to manage their money, how to plan for something like this, if their sabbatical needs to be unpaid? Yeah. In my experience, you know, to get the most benefit out of it, I do think it's better if you can leave where you live and get a new fresh environment, you know, because that always just, you know, at least for me, has stimulated different levels of creativity and I just think different when I'm in a different environment. but obviously that is not always the case, especially if it's an unpaid leave. Like that just might not be the case. But, you know, I mean, just from a money management perspective, we just tried to reduce our expenses as much as we could and scaled things back, scaled back on non-essentials. I mean, you know, a lot of the stuff is really pretty obvious,

but that helped a lot, like knowing that we might not have much money coming in. And so we do have some passive streams with our business, which is really nice. and that's ultimately what made this possible. But yeah, just anything, any little thing that we could do to kind of shave off those expenses to get those expenses as low as possible just made it that much more possible. You know what I mean? It really similar to the whole FI thing where it's like just get those expenses down so you can get there, you know? Did you find that your expenses naturally dropped by virtue of having more time to do things like cook or garden?

Yeah, they did. And one of the things I did for the year was I built this really big. garden. I don't know that it was profitable because it was pretty expensive to build, but we did grow a lot of food, you know, and we had a pretty good harvest that year. And, you know, so that offset some of the grocery bill and stuff like that. But in some ways, I think, yes, being at home, reduce some expenses. Obviously, it wasn't driving as much. You know, not that the office was that far or anything, but cooking more at home, obviously, is cheaper than going out. And so some of those things we saved. But on the other hand, I had more time, you know, more time to look at Amazon or whatever.

And that always works against your cause. Right, right, exactly. More time to get bored and encounter the temptation to fill that boredom with unnecessary spending. Yep, for sure. Shortly after you started your sabbatical, you got a life-changing phone call. Yeah, so one of the really interesting things about the timing of all this, you know, in which to me just is not a coincidence. but it was pretty much right around the end of March, we were officially doing this and taking the year off.

And within six, seven weeks, I think it was, we got a surprise phone call about an adoption opportunity that we had completely were not expecting at all. And so long story short, we were working with adoption agency that we had signed up with and we hadn't heard anything from them in months. I didn't forget about it, but I just wasn't thinking about it because we hadn't heard from them in months. And they had told us that basically they were really structured in the way they operated.

And they pretty much told us, we're going to give you a three to six month window heads up. You know, once we find a birth mother and adoption opportunity for you, you're going to have three to six months to kind of prepare and plan. And so we were expecting maybe the end of 2017, you know, if we're lucky, if things go really fast. So literally just six or seven weeks after I decided we're going to do sabbatical thing, we get a phone call saying we have an adoption opportunity. It's a unique one in that baby girl was actually born yesterday. And so how fast can you get down here? So my wife and I just looked at each other like, this is crazy. And so, you know, so anybody who knows about the adoption situation or particularly interstate adoptions, which is what this was, you have to go to whatever state you're adopting from.

and you might need to stay there for up to two weeks in a hotel until the state gives you clearance to pass back to your resident state. And so we had to, within, you know, an hour pack up, get all of our stuff to be able to stay in this other state for up to two weeks, take care of our three-year-old son, just all these things. All these emotions are flooding in like so quick. And so we rushed down to the hospital and meet her baby girl. And anyway, the timing it was just amazing because I got to spend almost that entire year with our newborn. That was just really, really special. And not to mention our three-year-old boy was, he was a three-year-old. Three-year-olds were just so fun. It's such a fun age. And I get to spend so much great time with him. So it was just,

I'm just incredibly blessed that I got to do it. It was really amazing. And that's beautiful that that happened in that year. Yeah, for sure. One thing that strikes me when I hear that story is that part of the benefit to a mini-retirement is that total flexibility that you could get a phone call and within one hour be in a car driving to another state. You drove to Alabama, yes? Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, what's funny about that is as we were driving down, I was thinking back through all the stuff I had planned out because I kind of had the year planned out like each month, like massive projects that I had for each month. And had I not taken the sabbatical, like, I don't even know if we could have adopted our daughter, because I would have been right in the middle of a big huge project that I was

planning that might have just almost ruled this out as a possibility, you know? And so it was just mind-blowing seeing how all those pieces worked together. And so the flexibility aspect of it is really, really good. Wow, that's a strong, a very strong statement. I'm imagining if you were still working and you were in the middle of that big project, getting that phone call and then facing the conflict of, am I ready yet? Yeah, I know. What's her name? Valerie.

Nice. How old is she now? She is 18 months, 18, somewhere around there. 18 months. We'll come back to this episode in just a minute. But first, as creatives, we're in the business of turning our ideas into value for our customers, but we need time. to cultivate fresh ideas.

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It's winter. And if you've been reading my blog for a while, you've probably, read me mention how I tend to wear yoga pants every single day in the winter because they're comfortable and why would I want to wear uncomfortable pants? That just doesn't make sense. But unfortunately, I do sometimes have to leave the house and occasionally that means that I'll have to go to a setting where it's not appropriate to show up in a pair of yoga pants. I have to wear something more professional. That's why I like beta brand. They make yoga pants that are workplace appropriate and conference appropriate. They're called dress pant yoga pants and they look

just like professional dress pants. They have a button and belt loops and a faux zipper, but they feel just like the same yoga pants that you'd wear when you're lounging around the house. So you can get pinstripes or navy or gray or khaki colors, or you can even get jeans. Like, I wore this the other day to a meetup, and it looked like I was wearing really nice dark jeans,

but they were actually yoga pants, which meant that I could move around and be really comfortable. Visit betabrand.com and use my code Paula to get 20% off yours. Millions of women agree these are the most comfortable pants he'll ever wear to work. That's betabrand.com, B-E-T-A-B-R-A-N-D.com. Use my code Paula and get 20% off your dress-pant yoga pants. Again, use the code Paula, P-A-U-L-A for 20% off. So I want to bring this conversation back to advice that we can give to people who want to incorporate some of the lessons of a sabbatical, of the concept of a sabbatical into their lives.

because I know that there are many people who are listening to this right now who have a nine to five job that might be inflexible or maybe they have debt that they're trying to pay off before they're ready to do something like this. If you can't take that type of time off, how can you incorporate that into your life? We've talked about trying to structure your time so that you can take one day a week off. In what other ways can you incorporate some of these ideas into your life right now, even as you're working at a W-2 job? Yeah. One of the things that would be a really valuable exercise for really all of us is identifying those things in our lives that cause stress. I mean, and this is kind of obvious. I think we know a lot of them. But, you know, so one way that I would do this if I were in a nine to five job is I would go on a social media. fast. That was another thing we didn't really talk about, but I avoided social media for the entire year as well. That in and of itself was amazing. Because while I enjoy social interaction,

I enjoy spending time with people, you know, social media is just a, it's a different thing. It's a different animal. And I think we all know this, but I think breaking away from that, especially if you don't get joy when you go on Facebook and sit on Facebook for 30 minutes. You know, if you do and you go through your news feed and you're like, I feel better after you're done, you know, spending 30 minutes. Like, if that's you, they're great, like more power to you. But most people who I talk to, it's just like an addictive drug and they go on there just because that's just what they do.

They're mindlessly doing it. And then they just feel like they bingeed on a bag of Cheetos or something, like afterwards. and you just don't feel real good. You know, and that's been my experience. And as a result, like, I work really hard to structure my social media time and, you know, because it is essential for my business. And so I kind of have to do it. But I think just asking that question of what are these things that are,

a, making me feel burnt out, making me feel like I need a break or whatever. And how can you eliminate them, reduce them or like partition them off to smaller windows, you know, windows of time. Yeah, and that's how I would approach it if I were in a nine to five. I mean, finding ways to kind of eliminate some of that. How did you deal with, because I've thought about taking time off of social media, but people reach out to me on social media with questions and I feel guilty about not responding. Like, these are real people who have real questions and they want my input or advice. So sometimes it's about something big, Like, what should I do about this financial situation?

Sometimes it's about something small, like, hey, what type of microphone are you using? Can you send me the link? Yeah. But I just feel bad ignoring the human on the other end. Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, I feel the same way. And that's where if you have an opportunity to delegate that to someone who can take care of it for you, that's the best case, I think. But if not, I do think that's a decision that needs to be made, evaluated. You know, because as you know, Paul, like, as the audio.

grows, there's a point to where, you know, as it continues to scale up, there's a point to where there's only so much of you. You can only answer so many questions. And, you know, as your show continues to explode, I hope you get to that point where you can't answer everybody's question. And I think that's a challenging thing as a human being who wants to help people. And that's, you know, just that's why you set out to do this. And that's why a lot of us creators create. I think that's a real big challenge, but at the end of the day, if we are less of ourselves and we have less to offer, I think that it's a net loss. Do you know what I mean? And it's hard to make those sacrifices, but yeah, it's just an individual basis decision where I don't think there's any hard and

faster rule here. I think we just have to know what we're supposed to do at that given moment, you know? Yeah, no, I know what you mean. It is hard. I sometimes have my assistant answer. I think answer certain things. And I want to always be honest. So I have her say like, hey, this is Erin. I'm Paula's assistant. I'm answering on her behalf. Here's some things I can point you to. I agree. It is helpful for me preserving the energy that I need to be able to create. Yeah, because I think a lot of non-creators don't think about that and don't understand that, you know, we can live in our inboxes all day long. And we can help a handful of people in there, but it sucks the life out of you creatively. You know what I mean? Like just answering emails over and over and over and over again,

you know, or answering questions. And it's a good thing. And I think we should do it. But it's just one of those really, really tricky balance things, you know. Yeah, exactly. But I've also noticed that when I don't, even when I have Aaron do it, the guilt that comes from not doing it is itself creatively draining. So I guess that's my next question is how did you deal with that guilt? And did you, Even when your time wasn't being consumed by taking a particular action, was your energy being consumed by the guilt of inaction? And if so, how did you deal with that? Yeah. So coming back to this whole thing, like I have always wanted to want to design a business that, you know, this is my business. I can set the rules how I want. Not many people feel bad about, well, I mean, I actually don't hang up on telemarketers, but a lot of people do. It don't feel bad. about it all because we feel like we don't owe a telemarketer something. And when you get an email

that, and honestly, emails are far more, you know, a telemarketer doesn't necessarily require human, but a lot of times it is a human on the other line, actually making that phone call. It's not a robocall, even though those exist. But like with emails, you can send out one email to 100,000 people instantly. And yet some reason in our inbox, we feel like this urge to respond if we perceive that it's a human being, you know? And I don't know. It's just one of those things where I kind of feel like I don't, and I've had to work through this,

but I don't need to feel guilty for not responding to someone who I didn't invite this conversation. You know, and this is a different thing than a reader who has a genuine question. But even still, yeah, I don't know. It's just a really tricky thing that I, don't have all figured out, but all I can say is for those moments where I have stepped away, I honestly haven't felt really guilty about that, you know, and I think part of it was that I worked

to have some sort of system in place to handle those, you know, in my case, it's with my assistant handling them, but I think I would have done it even without that and created some sort of auto responder, some sort of like auto response. I'm assuming there's a way, I don't know, I'm assuming there's a way to do that with Twitter or something like that, that just, honest and says, here's a deal. I just need a break. And so I'll get back to you at this point. If that's not okay, you know, I'm sorry. Zooming out at the high level, it sounds like what we're really talking about is the art of setting boundaries. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. And it strikes me as we talk that a big part of what a sabbatical is, is the practice of boundary setting.

And at the obvious level, at the surface level, it sounds like it's a conversation about boundary setting around work hours. but really there's also a huge component of emotional boundary setting and mental boundary setting as well. Yeah, and that's a good observation because, yeah, I think the way you put that is just really good because it's just about making calculated sacrifices. Like you can't do it if you're not willing to make any sacrifices. I mean, whatever it is, even if it's taken one day off, even if it's taking a few hours off of email or whatever, it requires some sacrifice. And, you know, sacrifice normally is a little bit painful.

in some way. And so, yeah, I think it absolutely does require sacrifice. How do you make calculated sacrifices? What thought process or intuitive process do you use to feel out whether or not a given sacrifice is worth it? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, for me, I like trying, and I don't always do this, but I like trying to see things from the long-term perspective. Somebody said this kind of framework where the idea is that you ask about a particular question, you ask what's going to be the effect of this in five minutes and whatever, in five months and in five years and just kind of evaluating that decision through those different lenses. And when you see this decision that I'm making

right now, how is this going to affect me five months from now or five years from now? Yeah, it just helps. You know, so me taking this time off is going to have a really big, beautiful benefit for me, you know, five years down the road and probably for the entire rest of my life. But at this particular moment, there are some struggles and challenges that might result. Like my business obviously or isn't going to do as well if I'm not in it for an entire year. And there's going to be some sacrifices there and whatever. I might have to make some of those sacrifices like we're talking about about not answering some people's emails and missing out on opportunities or whatever all along those times. but the long-term benefit, I don't just kind of outweighs it.

And I think that's just like so many other decisions. I mean, as we take care of our money wisely, I think that's what most of us are doing. We're choosing to make short-term sacrifices for the long-term benefit of what we're trying to do financially. It's funny because as people who write about personal finance, there's a small piece of me that thinks, well, if you look at the lost income and then you compound that at an 8%

return over the next 40 years, right? But if you make decisions from that framework, then you end up making decisions from this extremely spock-like rational framework that just don't actually fit into the wisdom of a well-lived life. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, I think ultimately it comes down to what's the goal. Like, what are we optimizing for? And I think anybody who is honest, well, maybe not anybody, but a lot of us who are honest, it's not about having as much money as possible. It's about, you know, like you just said, living a good life, living in a life you can enjoy. And I think when you see that, it's easier to step away from your calculation you did, which I ran those same numbers myself. So I have that same mindset. But yeah, it makes it a little bit easier kind of stepping

away from that and being like, ah, I'm okay, making that sacrifice. Thank you for sharing the stories. Are there any final pieces of advice that you would want to end this with or any principles underpinning this that you would want to emphasize? Yeah. Just in general, it's hard to put into words how beneficial it was. You know, I've talked to some other friends about this since. And for as burned out as I was and as tired as I was about writing, I'm the exact opposite now. I came back into this year. more excited, more on fire, more full of ideas, more everything. Everything you could be more of, I am more of. And it's just been really, really, really fun to work. Like I said, every time I took one month off, I felt the same way. And before I took a month off, I was taking a week off. Like, I still remember my first test where I took a week off and did no email. And I thought my entire business was going to go down the drain and my site was going to go down and everything else.

And every single time I've done that, I've just been, blown away with the benefits of doing it. And so I would just encourage anybody who can to try to do something, you know, and start with the day and just keep trying to stretch that, you know, use that muscle and just see how far you can take it because the benefits are really, really good. I've never heard anyone who has taken any sort of many retirement or sabbatical say that they regretted it. Absolutely. Thank you, Bob. Where can people find you if they want to know more about you? Sure. Seedtime.com. We're doing a lot on YouTube so you can look us up over there as well. And so, yeah. Excellent. I'll link to that in the show notes as well. Great.

Thank you, Bob. What are some of the key takeaways that we got from this interview? Here are four. Number one, burnout is not necessarily the result of a high workload. It's the result of the wrong workload. It's not the amount of time, I don't think. It's just the fact that I was doing things that weren't fulfilling. I didn't realize this, but they were wearing on me. They were wearing on my creativity. They were wearing on me emotionally. They were just wearing me down to the point that I didn't know it, but I actually was burned out at the end of that year. You may find yourself getting close to burnout, not depending on how much you're working, but depending on what you're working on or what you're working towards. And this might have

happen if either the big picture of what your work builds towards is not something that resonates with you. It's not something that's your calling. Or it could also happen if you're totally on board with the big picture, but the day-to-day minutia is the thing that's creating burnout and wearing you down. In either event, it's still the wrong workload that is the source of the burnout. And I think this is important to note because a lot of people use the number of of hours in which they work as a proxy for how tired they are or as a way to describe how dissatisfied they are. So you'll hear somebody say in casual conversation, oh, I did a 50-hour week last week. But 50 hours spent in a way in which both the daily operations as well as

the long-term cause that your work fuels, 50 hours devoted to that is totally different than 50 hours in which one or both of those are out of line. And so that's key takeaway number one. Burnout is not necessarily the result of a high workload. It's the result of the wrong workload. Key takeaway number two. To quote Derek Sivers, if it's not a hell yeah, it's a no. None of our part, not on the practical side, but just kind of a bigger picture, is just

asking myself a lot of tough questions. Like, what does it look like if I don't answer blog comments for a year? What does it look like if I'm not responding to readers who are emailing me for a year? Does that mean that my business is going to be gone? Is this something a sacrifice that I'm willing to make for the purpose of what this thing needs to be? And so those are some tough questions that I had to answer. But ultimately, you know, I concluded for those two particular questions and, you know, a whole bunch of others that it was worth it and that it was ultimately better for me to say no to some of these things that I did think were

really important, but, you know, not important enough. Bob cites examples that are specific to running a website, but this idea can be applied to any industry, because the concept that Bob is describing is the concept of essentialism. Bob is talking about the notion of saying no to the good so that you can leave space for the great. And all too often, people have a tendency to say yes to anything that sounds like it could remotely be beneficial. The author Cal Newport, who is a previous guest on this podcast, refers to this as the any benefit hypothesis. He describes how many digital workers use that framework. Does this provide a benefit, any benefit, in order to make decisions? Whereas farmers or woodworkers,

they don't use that framework because there are an infinite number of tools that they could use. well, not infinite, but many, many more tools that they could use than they actually could. And so they don't ask, does this tool provide any benefit? They ask, what are the few tools that will give me the most outsized benefits? And you can take that same framework and you can apply it to decisions that you make about how you spend your working hours or how you manage your personal finances. There are many things that you could do to improve your financial life. And those things range from adjusting the thermostat to properly inflating your tires to starting a side business that brings in an extra $200 a month.

So how do you make decisions? Well, if it's something that can be automated, if it's something that doesn't require a high input of your time or energy, such as adjusting the thermostat or inflating your tires, those things are so simple that there's no real cost to doing them. But then when you take that same framework and you apply it to something like spending four hours of your Saturday going from yard sale to yard sale to yard sale because you need to buy a blender and you want to buy one used so that you can save 50 bucks off of the cost of a new one. Well, doing something like that at the expense of time and energy that you could put elsewhere, that tradeoff may not be worth it. And again, Cal Newport says this very well when he says, quote, if you serve it, to slow impact activities, you're taking away from time that you could be spending on high-impact activities. It's a zero-sum game. What that means at a practical level is that when you decide to go the essentialist route, that means that there are certain opportunities that you're just

going to have to let go of, certain ways that you could optimize that you're just going to decide, you know what, I'm not. And there were a lot of balls that just needed to be dropped. And there were a lot of balls that just needed to be So if an advertising deal came in or something like that, it's like, we're not doing that. This is not the time, you know. And so it was just a lot of opportunities that had to be passed up on. You know, that was just part of the sacrifice of doing that. So that is key takeaway number two. Be okay with just dropping the ball on certain things in an intentional, deliberate way.

Because this gets to that minimalist reduction of where and how to focus your two most valuable assets. Time and energy. One more thing about this before we move on. As this concept applies to starting a side hustle or running a business, here is the paradox about it. When you're starting a business, opportunities are often so few and far between that you pursue them all because you're hungry. But after you gain traction, the problem is not that you're hungry, but that you're

too full. You're overstuffed. And so that same practice that allowed you to get your business or your side hustle off the ground, which is saying yes to opportunities, could later be the identical practice that is holding you back. And that reminds me of this quote, what got you here won't get you there. And so implicit within this key takeaway is also the importance of adapting. So that was the second key takeaway. Now, key takeaway number three, even if you can't, and I understand the majority of people who are listening to this, cannot take a year off. Don't get caught up in what you can't do.

Think about what you can. I don't really think it's the amount of time. I think it's just starting where you are, taking off what you can. So even if it's one day a week where you choose not to do any work, delete your email app off your phone or whatever, just have one day a week. to decompress, I think that is a great starting place that far more people would be benefited by in this 21st century world that we live in. Don't compare your chapter one to somebody else's chapter 100. Bob's example is extreme, which is exactly the reason why he's now giving interviews about it. The natural bias of any media, blogs, podcasts, including mine, is to report the extremes.

And how I took a year off is a much more compelling headline than how I started taking Sundays off or how I started taking weekends off. We want to hear about ideas that are aspirational. But in the process of hearing about these aspirations, it can be easy to get discouraged because you recognize that yawning chasm between where you are and where you want to be. Sure, maybe you want to take a year off or a month off, but that's impractical in your situation. How can you take this lesson and apply it in even the smallest way? To take this to the most granular level, can you find one time of day, any time morning, evening, when the rest of your family is asleep? Can you find one time of day when you can make a cup of coffee or a cup of tea and just say, And just sit there.

No phone. No external stimuli. Just sit and savor. Can you do that? Because that is taking a pause. It's taking a break. And that's the concept that we're really talking about here. In addition to boundary setting, in addition to adaptation, in addition to all of the other concepts that this touches upon,

we're also, when we talk about many retirements, very much talking about the notion of stillness. So can you start with five minutes? The entrepreneur Rand Fishkin, who was also a previous guest on this podcast, he once was working very, very hard. He did not tell the story on the podcast, but I read about it in something that his wife wrote. He was working extremely hard, and he was on the brink of burnout. And his way of scaling back was that he decided he was going to take Friday evening off. He didn't even take a full day off. Bob was talking about taking Sundays off.

Rand wasn't there yet. He couldn't take a full day off. For him, just getting to the point where he could take Friday evening off. That was a victory. So no matter where you are, take one step. Find one improvement. Finally, key takeaway number four. Everything is a trade-off.

Everything carries an opportunity cost. And in order to get the benefit of a sabbatical or a mini retirement, even if it's just for one evening a week, you still need to be willing to make the tradeoff to give something up in order to get that. Because it's just about making calculated sacrifices. Like you can't do it if you're not willing to make any sacrifices. I mean, whatever it is, even if it's taken one day off, even if it's taking a few hours off of email or whatever, it's it requires some sacrifice. And sacrifice normally is a little bit painful in some way. Do not frame every question by asking yourself, how much money will this save? What impact will this have on my net worth?

If you frame everything through that question, that can create a one-dimensional framework by which you make decisions. And on the Afford Anything podcast broadly, when we talk about the art and science of decision-making, which is truly what this show is about. This show is questions about metacognition disguised as finance, and it's a philosophy of life disguised as finance. And when you are making those decisions, the question is not, in one narrow lens, how will this impact my finances?

The question is, through a much wider lens, what are the calculated sacrifices that I find valuable? The question is not, What do I want? But rather, what pain am I willing to accept in order to get there? So those are four takeaways from this conversation with Bob. By the way, if you'd like to learn more about this topic, there's a great book.

It's called Pause, harnessing the life-changing power of giving yourself a break. It was written by Rachel O'Meara. We will link to that in the show notes. The show notes are available at Afford Anything.com slash episode 164. That's Afford Anything.com slash episode 164. Also, if you would like to learn more about starting a business, starting a side hustle, anything like that, I've created a free seven-day email series. You can sign up for that at afford-anything.com slash online business. And when you sign up, you'll get an email a day for seven days that touches on partially tactics, but largely overview, strategy, the thinking about how to think with regard to starting your own business or starting a side hustle.

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