Focused - 79: Reclaiming Margin, with Shawn Blanc

Episode Date: August 6, 2019

The Focus Course founder Shawn Blanc is back to talk about the importance of margin, how it gave him the space he needed to work through a personal crisis, and life lessons learned from his orange 1984 Jeep CJ-7.

Welcome to Focus, the productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. How's it going today, David? Great, Mike. How are you today? Doing well. I actually just saw you as we record this at MaxDoc, which was a lot of fun. Got to meet some Focus listeners, so thank you to everybody who came up and said hi. yeah, it was. It was so much fun going to MaxDoc. When I was flying home, I was journaling it and thinking, you know what? That was good for me. I'm going to do that again. So hopefully we'll go again next year. Definitely. And hopefully our special guest will join us. Yes. I am really excited about our special guest today. Welcome to the show, Sean Block. Hello. Hello. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Now, Sean has been on the show before, but Sean has done something really great for all of us recently. He just released a brand new course, and it's called the Margin Course.

And I was telling Sean before we started recording, when I went on my little kind of productivity vision quest a few years ago, for me, the concept of margin was something that was transformative. It was like a turning point for me. I felt, Sean, and maybe you can relate to this, or I'm sure you've heard from people that can relate to this. For the last couple of years, I was at the firm and doing Max Barkey. And then sadly, the first couple of years I left the firm and was doing Max Barkey and doing the legal thing on the side. I felt like, you know, remember when you're a kid and you would run, like maybe run downhill and you'd run so fast that you knew there was a possibility you were going to splat on your face at any point, right? I felt like I was doing that for like four years.

Like I was just running so fast. I can never stop. And the margin book and frankly, the essentialism book as well, Those two together really helped me sort things out. But tell us, Sean, what's margin? Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So I read the margin book as well, Dr. Richard Swenson, and really just a game changer for me in terms of, I think, just mindset. And so for years, it's kind of been just a journey for me personally, as well with our team and the company here. But yeah, so to answer your question, margin, basically, it's just that space between what you're responsible for and what you have capacity for. Or as it's in the book, Richard Swenson defines it as that space between your load and your limit.

And that's right. It's just that white space. It load and your limit. And that's right. It's just that white space is that breathing room. And it's something we often consider to be a luxury. But it's actually a necessity. And so that's a huge, huge part behind the course is just helping people realize that this is not a nice to have. It is a must have. It's interesting to me because I feel like that's a fairly recent phenomena.

It is a must have. It's interesting to me because I feel like that's a fairly recent phenomena. I look back at like my father and how he worked and he had plenty of margin in his life. But now there's a lot of us, you know, that don't. And there's some normalcy of it, like it's okay to not have margin or that's just the way it is. It's like kind of an acceptance of your fate. And do you think this is, is this a recent thing in your mind or is this something that's always been around? Oh my gosh. Yes. So it's, well, it's both. So like you've got these five areas in your life and we'll just jump right in. Right. So you got financially, in your life. And we'll just jump right in, right? So you got financially, you've got your time,

you have your physical, like your physical body, emotionally, and then creative. So these are sort of the five areas that all sort of need to have some breathing room. You need margin, obviously, with your finances. You don't want to be living paycheck to paycheck. You don't want to have, you know, zero dollars in your savings account or $0 in an emergency fund. You need to have some financial margin. Same with your time. You want to have some breathing room so you're not going from meeting to meeting to meeting to thing to whatever. Just constantly on the go. You need to have some of that breathing room with your schedule.

And so I would say these two areas are, you know, it's been up and down, you know, I would say like my parents and, you know, David, your parents, you know, maybe they were a little bit tighter on the schedule. Perhaps some of our parents, or maybe we grew up a little bit tighter financially. And so margin in this area has, you know, been a common, more common theme that maybe some people have had it. Some people haven't, but the other areas, I think, especially just emotionally and creatively, this is like been a massive change in honestly, just like the last 10 years, uh, sort of since the invention of the internet in our pockets, because now you're never, ever right like you can always you have a down moment you have a like one minute where you're bored you're in line at the grocery store or you're

in a stop at a stoplight that's like my biggest pet peeve is the stoplight where the person like really like for one second you stop at a red light and you're gonna pull out your phone and check facebook like right there but But people do, right? It's super, super common. And so all these little moments all throughout the day, people are now filling them up with something. And so that just completely drains us of our mental and our emotional margins. the two that were really seeing the issue coming up in these, like, we call them semi-visible areas of life that, you know, in the past, like that was natural to have that, that mental creative margin because you'd come home from work or whatever. And like, there wasn't, you're not

constantly feeling every single moment of the day. You're able to sort of decouple different activities from different things. And like the pace of life was different and how we spent our time was different, you know, even 15 and 20 years ago than it has been in the last 10 years. That's interesting. I mean, not to go all old man yells at cloud, but that's true that with the invention of the smartphone, basically, you have something on you at any moment that you can use to fill margins. So I think that's kind of become the default, as we talked about with John Zeratsky when he was on the show, the author of Make Time, a phenomenal book, which kind of addresses that idea of the infinity pools and the endless feeds and things like that. And I would say that's probably the number one enemy of margin is that

type of stuff. You know, the one that kills me, there's this guy, there's this hike I do, it's a two mile hike near my house and it's beautiful. There's these old Oak trees and there's wildlife and it's just a great way to reset yourself. And I see this one guy walking it quite often the same times I do. And every time he's got his phone out and he's literally walking through this gorgeous area and he's got his head down in his phone. I mean, I'm surprised he doesn't trip on a rock or a rattlesnake or something, but it's just crazy that he's got his phone out on this walk. It's, you know, anyway, now I'm training the old man yelling in the internet. Old man yells at cloud. Yeah. It's interesting though, because I think another aspect of this is, you know,

I'm really intrigued by the statement that you had made, David and Sean, you kind of alluded to this too, that like, it wasn't always like this. People didn't lead marginless lives and what got us to the point where we are now. And I feel like another kind of famous internet meme is the dog sitting in the house that's burning down. It's like, this is fine, you know? And I feel like another kind of famous internet meme is the dog sitting in the house that's burning down. It's like, this is fine, you know? And I think that's the initial reaction probably that people have when they first encounter the idea of margin. That's kind of the impression I had when I first read that margin book was like, well,

it sounds kind of nice, but there's no way I can get there. Like my current situation is what it is. And I just got to figure out a way to make it work. But as I've got some distance from that, I'm recognizing that margin is indeed valuable and it is the thing that makes the difference. And that's not really a sustainable pace like you were talking about at the beginning. Yeah, Mike, I think you hit exactly like that's the nail on the head of, well, this is my current situation is I am living a life without margin and there's no way around it. There's no alternative. And

this is something we really try to address in the course. And honestly, like this is something that I have, I've had this conversation with so many friends. Um, and I've been there personally as well. Like Michael, like you were saying where you're like, the schedule is just completely jam packed. And that results in this, like you're just tired, you're physically tired. So there's no time for physical rest or physical activity that that gives you energy. You're emotionally exhausted, you're creatively exhausted. And you're like, well, this is what I need. Like I've got to, you know, work hard now I got to hustle to get to where I'm going.

And it's almost like this idea that, well, I'm going to sacrifice margin now and it's going to get me to the place that I want to be. And then once I'm there, then I'll, then I'll be able to say yes to margin. And then I'll be able to like slow down or whatever. And there is, I think there is often, there is some truth to that in terms of like, yes, maybe we're in a situation where things are a little bit more intense or a little bit more going on than we would want. But the idea that goes, well, I have to sacrifice margin now in order to get it later is like saying I have to sprint the next 18 miles so that later I can, you know, walk or whatever. And like, it's physically impossible.

Like you couldn't sprint for 18 miles, right? That's physically impossible. But that's sort of the mindset that we have. And so it's a mindset that leads towards burnout. But like you're saying, we're, it's, you know, people just, oh, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Because we look around and everyone else is doing it.

Oh, if everyone else is doing it, then it's probably fine. But it's a path that leads to burnout, which ironically gets you in the opposite direction of where you want to go. And it keeps you from actually accomplishing those goals. So you're saying yes to all these extra things. You're burning the candle at both ends in the hopes of going from A to Z. But the very activities that you're doing that you're thinking are going to lead you to your goal are actually going to compound and keep you from getting to that goal because you'll burn out before you get there. You'll be exhausted or you're not doing your best work or something will come in, something unexpected,

an emergency or a crisis or a tragedy will hit. And because you have a zero margin, it will completely derail you either financially or with your emotional, like you'll, you'll just hit that wall and you'll not be able to move forward because of being derailed without the margin, without that breathing room to be able to handle it. So I like the idea of the marathon. You can talk about that in the course a little bit, too, where you mentioned just now that you're not going to sprint for an entire marathon. But I think maybe the description that really was powerful to me when I read it was the fact that you as I've trained for a half marathon. I've not done a full marathon. I'm only half crazy. But you train for a long time and then you run this marathon, half marathon, whatever it is, distance running, and you get a snapshot of the people who are running next to you, but you don't see the totality of the time that it takes to get to that point where you're able to run from start to finish. And I think even if you were to take

several snapshots, I mean, a marathon is a good chunk of time. It's several hours in order for you to run that. But that is just one moment. And you can't run that marathon pace for 365 days. Like that's the part that just smacked me in the face. Like, wow, you're right. Or the foreseeable future until you drop dead, which some people seem to think they can. Yeah. I think, yeah, the older I get, the more I realize, like, I need a nap. Yeah. Naps are so great. I think we could do a whole show on naps.

Write that down, Mike. But I wanted to talk. So I just took a trip, Mike and I were together. And I left Illinois at 10 a.m. Central Time, and then I landed in California at 1 p.m. Pacific. And a few minutes, literally a few minutes after we took off the plane, an attorney wrote me an email saying, your client's a dirty, rotten scoundrel. We have to resolve this. Now you have four hours to respond to me with a thorough reason, blah, blah, blah. Basically I landed almost already at the deadline for something, which sent me into a

tailspin of like three days of intense negotiation and work of legal work. Now, a few years ago, when I hadn't given thought to margin, that would have been the end of me. That would have wrecked me for the month, honestly, trying to do that. But, but having the ability to look at margin and deal with that emergency really actually made it very simple for me. I mean, it's been an intense few days as we record this, I have resolved that dispute, but the, but I actually am able to get up today and record and none of my other life commitments got dropped or broken. And I think that, to me, was the payoff for this stuff. But, Sean, there are people out there working right now who've got bosses throwing constant emergencies at them.

Can they find margin? I mean, going through your course and reading these books, is there hope for them? Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of it, you know, David, like you're alluding to, a lot of it comes down to mindset. And it's choosing margin in your life. And so I think a huge, huge just starting point is your phone and the iPhone and the social networks, the constant media streams, the, I mean, I call them like the just checks where it's like, oh, okay. Yeah. I'm at the stoplight or I'm in line somewhere. Um, or the, like a common one for me that I noticed was happening

was if, uh, my wife and I were watching a show or whatever, and like, we'll hit pause to do a snack break, like, Hey, let's go upstairs and, you know, grab some popcorn or whatever. Um, we hit pause and immediately it's like, Oh, I got like 30 seconds real quick. While Anna goes upstairs to get a snack, I'm going to, you know, like what's happening on my phone right now. And like, literally it's like, I'm sitting, you're watching TV. And then there's a pause. It's like, well, I got to fill this 30 seconds with something. And so I think that's a huge place to start is just the phones and sort of beginning to allow ourselves just moments of downtime in those in between, like those, those breathing moments in between a meeting or in between a commitment or whatever it may be, where like, it's's just this is a moment

instead of filling it with what's in my email what's in twitter what's on instagram what's on facebook instead of just filling it with nothing and allowing a moment of solitude basically i love what you said you started out saying you choose margin and that i think is if there's one thing you take from listening to this show is that you can choose this. I mean, when I finished that Swenson book, that was the, rarely do I have like a hallelujah forehead smacking moment reading these productivity books. I mean, they helpful, you know, they kind of like give me this kind of context for my life. But this one, once I close, I'm like, yes, I've been running without margin all these years, but I could

choose to do it and I could start that today. And I love your course because you do that. You embrace that. You have this, you have like a plan. You have a five day kind of work through for folks and anybody can choose this. And I don't want to be gushing, but this stuff really changes everything. Yeah. And it's it really does come down to that mindset stuff and like saying, hey, I'm not

going to be a victim. Yeah. And I'm not going to assume that my lack of margin is everyone else's fault. And that's just a huge starting point, I think, especially with finances, you know, with your schedule. And there's so many little things you can do. And, you know, like you said, with the margin reset is something we do at the very end. And we just kind of walk through each of those five areas of your life and hit on the financial stuff, the schedule, your emotions, your physical health and your creative work. and we do like this little, just like something so small, but it proves that you're in control and you can make a choice and you can do something about this that can begin to restore the margin. And we also talked about there's two different ways to restore margin. Maybe we can, we can dig more into this later, but it's not just about going like, oh, I need more time or I need more

money or whatever it may be. Like there's other things that you can do. And we kind of hit on the two different approaches, but the huge point, you know, like you were saying, when someone feels like, uh, it's outside of their control, we spend a lot of time just going like, no, like it's not outside of your control. And maybe you won't have as much margin as you would like, but you can have more than none, for sure. Yeah, it's the difference between life happening to you and you happening to life. Mm-hmm. I like that. Yeah, absolutely.

Good way to put it. I do want to follow up with that before we get into the two different ways to increase margin. And maybe, Sean, you can share just a personal experience. Like what was, if you can remember, like what was the tipping point for you? The point where you realized that this was no longer a luxury, this was a necessity and kind of what did you do to start reclaiming margin? Oh man. I don't know if there was a specific tipping point for me. I think it was kind of gradual. I used to work, you know, my previous job, gosh, it's been like almost nine years now. So it's been a little while. But I used to work as a creative director for a large

nonprofit here in Kansas City. And I was working 70 to 80 hours a week. And this was before my wife and I had kids. And so I felt like I kind of like I wasn't doing any damage. You know, I'm like, I enjoyed my job. It was fun as the people that I liked. But 70 to 80 hours is a lot, right? Like literally, you know, I'm getting up at 530 in the morning and I'm basically working from the time I get out of the shower until the time that my head hits the pillow at night. And just I'm just on call constantly and whatever. And it was, you know, I thought this meant I had a good work ethic, that I was a team player, that I was, you know, look, I'm committed. I'm part of the team. You know, here I am because look how much I'm giving, look how hard I'm working.

Look how much I'm sacrificing for the cause, so to speak. Um, yeah, which is, I, there's just a corporate language and it's not just nonprofits that have that mindset. Like that's very common, uh, just in corporate culture. Like, Oh, if you want to be a team player, if you want to get noticed, if you want to get a promotion, then you got to be the first one in the last one out. You've got to be available in the evenings, on the weekends, you've got to, you know, be, get an email and then respond to it within, you know, 15 minutes,

or, you know, someone's going to come tap you on the shoulder and ask you, did you get my email? And that's sort of the mindset of like, we're, we're allowing work or we're allowing other responsibilities to have say. And so that was sort of my starting point as a young man in this context. And then when I quit, for other reasons, you know, I quit and started basically blogging for a living back in like 2011. And I still sort of brought that mindset with me. And I was still working 10, 12 hours a day. Like I would get up in the morning and I would sit down at my desk and I begin writing by 7.30. I'd take a break at dinnertime and have dinner with my wife. And then after dinner, I would usually go back to work and I would be online again from, you know,

7.30 or 8 in the evening until 9 or 10 at night and then get up and repeat. And I just felt like there was that same pull as someone who works online and had a business based on Apple News and design trends and all this stuff related around, you know, the nerdy stuff. I felt this need to be constantly online or like my readers would get upset. And I had a, you know, people who paid me three bucks a month to be members of my site that kind of supported me. And I felt like if I'm not constantly online, like doing stuff, I'm going to lose my audience. I'm going to lose their respect. I'm going to lose money. Everything's going to go away. And there was this fear that I had. And I think just slowly over time, I just kind of matured a little bit and realized

that my emotional health and my physical health were not only more important than the health of my business, but were actually, they were like leading indicators to the health of my business, if that makes sense. That, you know, killing myself, not literally, but giving up sleep, giving up emotional strength, giving up my creative strength to try to build this business was not a long term sustainable thing. It was it was literally impossible over the long run. thing. It was literally impossible over the long run. And so I realized that getting a good night's sleep, having rest, having time away from my screen, having time away from all the online news and the feeds and everything actually would give me the strength I needed to build a better business and do better work over the long run. And realizing that was way more valuable, but it took,

you know, kind of took some guts to make that choice and to begin to slow down a little bit. So that was sort of like the initial mindset shift. I don't know how many years ago that was, five, six, seven years ago for me. Yeah, that can be scary. You know, you can believe that, yeah, I should get more sleep and recognize that I can't function long-term on five hours a night. But when you have bills to pay and things to do, your task list is staring at you and you're the person driving the ship when it comes to your business. It's hard to justify putting the things in the, I would argue, the proper perspective and saying, you know, this stuff that's urgent today, that's not going to be the thing that's

going to direct me. I'm going to live for tomorrow, so to speak. Yeah, absolutely. It is hard to justify. It really is. And I think especially so in our culture where we look around and our bosses are emailing us in the evenings and on the weekends or they're responding to stuff on the weekends. And it could be that they have an unhealthy work ethic as well. But it also could be that maybe their schedule is just different. Right. So for me, I work from home. I get to pick my own schedule.

And so there are times where i will take a morning off and then i'll catch up in the evenings and i'll trade that but if i'm not communicating that to my team then like they may think i'm just always on i'm always there i'm i got an email from sean in the evening and like i guess i should be working evening right but what i'm doing is like no i just i took four hours off this morning. You know, I'm catching up in the evening, whatever. And so being able to even communicate that sometimes our bosses or the people we work with, they do have that healthy balance. But it just looks different than what we see. And it's hard to navigate that.

So there's the challenge there where we're like, I got to I got to do everything that everyone else is doing, plus a little bit more so that I can get ahead or so that I can be a good leader or I can be a team player. And that's just a broken mindset. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Squarespace. Make your next move and enter offer code FOCUSED, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. Squarespace lets you easily create a website for your next idea with a unique domain, award-winning templates, and more. No matter what you make, it probably needs a website, and Squarespace is the place to do it. Maybe you want an online store or to create a portfolio. Maybe you want to make a blog. Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that

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We thank Squarespace for all of their of this show and RelayFM, and I personally thank them for keeping my website running. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. You know, Sean, before we took the break, you were talking about the perceptions in the workplace, and I hope maybe it's a historical anomaly. I feel like with the advent of internet in your pocket and just the general connectivity we've had of the last 10 years that we kind of went into, it's like a teenager that first starts drinking,

right? We went on a binger and I'd like to think that we're starting to wake up from that. Am I overly optimistic? No, not at all. I think it's very true. You see, those are the trends. Even just in podcasts, like Justin Gleis' show on Hurry Slowly, and you've got Cal Newport writing this book on digital minimalism. And these themes and these trends, people going, I don't think I want to spend every spare moment on Facebook. And people taking long extended breaks from social media and then coming back and going, I don't know if I missed anything.

This is becoming more and more common for sure. And I've even noticed it as well. And we do different live trainings and we've done some in-person workshops for different companies. And whenever we get onto this topic of margin and the breathing room, like people are just, there's an excitement there. There is an energy on this topic and people are going, yeah, I feel like I've sort of been redlining it at work. And they're going, I feel like I've got a lot going on with X, Y, and Z related to my schedule. And, you know, maybe I've said more, you said yes to too many things or whatever. And people are just not only catching on to the topic right away, like, oh yes, I get that. That makes sense. And then they're hungry to say, how can I

implement this more in my life? And how can I get there? So I think that is absolutely like swinging the other direction going. I don't necessarily want to be connected all the time. One of the things you did in your course is for folks listening that don't know, Sean is a gearhead. And particularly, he loves his Jeep. And I love that your Jeep made a guest appearance in your course. Yes, it had to. And not only did it make a guest appearance, it was very appropriate usage. Could you talk through a little bit about the similarities between what we're doing to ourselves and your Jeep's transmission?

And maybe help folks out i mean because for a few people listening i think i thought the way you explained it really kind of summarizes the problem and and where we can get better at this yeah so okay so i have an orange 1984 jeep cj7 which is okay this is another thing sean every time you mention your jeep you explain that it's orange and it's a CJ7. I love that. I'm surprised you don't tell me the year, though. But I suspect it's practically new anyway because you're replacing all the parts as you go along. Yeah, it was built in 84.

But yeah, it's got a lot of updates. I do love the description. I can tell there's a deep well of love right there. It's great well you gotta say it's a cj7 because anyone that's listening that maybe knows something about like older vintage trucks and four-wheel drive stuff um will respect that it's a cj so all right uh anyways so it's got a three-speed transmission in there and the basically this is something that is is relevant to margin and this is a concept that we as well pulled from Dr. Richard Swenson's book. And the idea is that a car has, you've got park, you got first gear, second gear, third gear. This is how many speeds my Jeep has.

Park, first, second, third. And the same way like we as people have gears or like a speed or a pace that we live our life. And my Jeep doesn't have just third gear constantly driving at highway speeds 24 hours a day. Like it wouldn't do that. Like you don't drive a car that much. Actually, most of the time my Jeep is in park. Like that's where it spends most of the time my Jeep is in park. Like that's where it spends most of its life is parked. You know, obviously all night long, it's not driving around. I'm not

driving in the evenings and I only drive it a little bit each day. Right. So it's not, it's mostly in park. And for us as individuals, we have these different gears. And so first gear is sort of like the slow and thoughtful gear. This is where you have time, you know, for me, it would be like a date night out with my wife where, you know, I'm paying close attention. We're in conversation. I'm not in a hurry. Like we're just there. We're enjoying each other's company or I'm on Saturdays with my kids. I'm spending time in the backyard with my boys and we're playing catch or like they just learned how to play 500 with football so that's like the new thing right now is we're just always in the backyard playing 500 um and like this is quality time with my kids and so at and that it's like okay this is

first gear because i'm i'm not in a hurry i'm here i'm paying attention i'm methodical i'm present right now and that's like that's our relationship gear. And then you got second gear. And this is sort of like normal. This is sort of that normal pace. Uh, you're not going slow, but you're not going really ridiculously fast. And this is, should be like a healthy, normal pace of life where you're, you're doing work. You're on track. You're focused. You're, you're moving through stuff, uh, whether it's at work or at home, whatever it is, you're on track, you're focused, you're moving through stuff, whether it's at work or at home, whatever it is, you're just kind of moving throughout your day. And this is like your normal gear. And then third gear is for when you got to go fast and something's coming up.

But this isn't like the normal, like your normal speed. You're not going in overdrive constantly. And I don't know if you guys remember remember like my dad's first car, or at least when I was first relevant to be able to drive the first car that, that I had when my dad had it, there was like the button on the transmission, uh, stick, like coming off of the, uh, the steering column. Like it was, you know, uh, first, second drive. And then there was like a button that you would push for overdrive, which was like fourth gear, I think. You know, and I just remember like that, I thought thinking that was so weird, like this is overdrive, like whatever, like you push the button to go into overdrive. And so that's sort of like similar for us where there are times where we need to go into an

overdrive, but you can't live there. And then park is you park the car and that's when the engine cools down, which it needs to. It cools down when it's in park. That's when you're doing maintenance. You're working on the car like you need to repair something or replace something or upgrade something. Those all happen when the car is in park. And the same goes for our lives. And so being able to recognize that there's these different speeds and then like the different needs for those different gears and that if we're constantly in overdrive, then we never have, so to speak, in our life. And if we're never in first gear, then we never have time for people for the relationships. And you can't survive, you can't

do it. If you're constantly in overdrive, then you're, you're just moving too fast. And that's the that's the path towards burnout. Well, that's a great summary. And I think that's something we all need to keep in mind is how are we managing our own internal engines? Because I know for me, for a long time there, I spent all my time in overdrive and it affected everything. I mean, the work wasn't as good, the happiness was down, and honestly, I made less money. It's just such a myth. And I guess I really want folks to get your course and kind of get their heads wrapped around this because it's like a superpower once you figure it out. It really is. I love how you brought up that you're actually happier and made more money. This is something that we incorporated with our company. So in 2017, like January 2017,

So in 2017, like January 2017, I went to Chicago and attended one of the base camp, like the way we work workshops. And they would have they have this little theater in the base camp kind of headquarters office there in Chicago. And it seems I think it seats 37 people. I think originally it sat 37 people might It might seat more than that now. But there was like maybe 30 of us, 35 of us there. And basically like kind of got to get a glimpse into the way that the Basecamp team works and operates. And they actually just have a book that came out online. It's called Shape Up. That actually goes through a lot of the similar stuff that they discussed in this workshop. And one of the things they talked about was their six-week work cycles. Now they'll pick work and kind of define the scope for six workshop. And one of the things they talked about was their six-week work cycles.

Now they'll pick work and kind of define the scope for six weeks. And then when it's done at the end of six weeks, they kind of ship the project and then they move on to the next thing. And this was really, I just loved this idea. And then I have another friend, Sean McCabe, and he does something called a seventh week sabbatical.

And he basically every seventh week, him and his company just shut down the office for a week and they take a break and then they come back. And I was like, I love these two ideas. I kind of want to like mesh them together. And so we do something really similar, but also kind of unique here at Blanc Media, where we do these six weeks of a focused work cycle. here at Blanc Media, where we do these six weeks of a focused work cycle. And then we'll add one extra week and we call it a buffer week where we basically sort of review what we've done in the past six weeks, kind of wrap up the work cycle and then plan for the future. And OK, what are we going to do on the next cycle and take that time to sort of think and breathe and do the retrospective, do the planning, make some decisions. And then we'll take that eighth week, the last week of the whole cycle, and that's a sabbatical.

And we shut down the office and we just take time off to do side projects or be with our families or whatever. And then we come back and then repeat. And so every eight weeks, we have six weeks of focused work, one week of planning and thinking, and then one week of rest. weeks of focused work, one week of planning and thinking, and then one week of rest. And it's, it's been fantastic. So we've been doing this ever since 2017. So we're into our third year now. And, uh, we, you know, we're growing as a company, we're healthy as a company, like it's impacted our culture. It's impacted our ability to focus on projects and ship work that we really care about in a sustainable way. And also, like what's huge about this is that it helps us to be productive, but then

reap the rewards of our productivity. And I don't know if you guys have talked about this on the show in the past. If not, you should. But the idea that we're so we're getting so good at getting more done in less time that we just then add on more work to the time we saved. It's like, oh, look, I saved all this time by doing X, Y, and Z productively. Now I have more time to do more work. And then I got productive at that. So I compressed that down. And I have more time to do more work. And I'm compressing that.

We're to the point now where we're doing what used to take 50, 60, 70 hours. We can now do it in 30 hours. And so we're adding even more as opposed to reaping like the benefits of that productivity and allowing ourselves to rest and to recharge and to actually enjoy free time instead of just filling it up with more work. Yeah. The reward of more efficiency is more work. Right, which sucks. Yep. Well, it's an easy trap to fall into. And it is worth talking about, because I think for a lot of folks, that's what happens.

And no, the idea of all this is to spend more time playing 500 with your kids or doing whatever floats your boat, you know, but maybe it's floating a boat. I don't know. But, but the, but I think it is very easy to fall into that trap. It's like, okay, I got more done. Especially when you get in this work culture where, you know, the idea is the person who shows up first and leaves last and the person who produces the most is the one. And it's not healthy. And we really don't want to be part of that. So if you're listening, you know, give some thought to that. You know, what are you doing with the benefits of finding focus and productivity and realizing the importance of margin? Are you

turning that into something that at the end of your life you're going to be happy about? Right. And then kind of tied to that, you know, we talked with John Zeratsky about changing defaults. So what stood out to me from the story that you were sharing, Sean, about how you've implemented it in your business is you have an online business. So people can go to your site at any moment. They can request support at any moment. And so the natural default for that is, we have to have somebody who is going to be on call for this, that, and the other thing. But you've basically challenged the default and figured out a way for that to work instead of just saying, well, this is the way everybody

else does it. So I guess we got to do that. Yeah, absolutely. And there are trade-offs to be sure. You know, we got an email. We basically had someone who had emailed us on Saturday with a support request for one of the products that they bought and they didn't hear back from us on Saturday. So they emailed again on Sunday, still didn't hear back. So emailed again early Monday morning, didn't hear back, emailed later on Monday morning. You know, all before like 9 a.m. Monday morning, like four emails had been sent. And at this point, they were now irate because they'd sent four emails that were all unresponsive. And, you know, we just had to like politely say like, you know, sorry, we didn't get back

to you on your time frame. But, you know, it was the weekend and we don't work on the weekends. And, you know, part of that is like, hey, we're still a small company. We just have one customer support person and uh so you know if we had 50 customer support people then yeah maybe there would be a weekend crew uh but there are that those trade-offs and you just sort of have to say it's worth it to have the trade-offs and because we're playing the long game and we want to enjoy the work that we do and and um do our best work over the long run and that requires that that time to enjoy the work that we do and do our best work over the long run. And that requires that time to rest, the time to recover, the time to have that breathing room to allow for the ebbs and the flows of life.

Yeah, we had Sean McCabe on the show and he was talking about his sabbatical. And I think it's just a wonderful idea. But there are people out there listening who work for a company where they're not quite as enlightened. They don't have the sabbatical week with their employees. I have that problem in my life, frankly, because while I could probably engineer sabbaticals into the Max Barkey work, the legal work, it's much more difficult to do that. What do you tell people out there who aren't in a position where they can go that far? But, you know, how do you how do you still find space for rest and recovery when you've got a nine to five?

Yeah, well, I think there is a lot of opportunity. So like we said earlier, just even with those the just checks where your phone is kind of permanently attached to your hand. And, you know, the guy who's going out on the walk and he's looking down on his phone the whole time, he's going, Hey, you know, at least I'm getting some physical exercise or whatever. Right. And I guess that's true. So for me, I'll try to, when I go to the gym or when I go out on errands or whatever, I'll just leave my phone behind. And I have an Apple watch, which I'm a huge fan of. And so that way I can get a text message on my wrist. So if I'm out and about and my wife needs to get a hold of me or someone needs to reach me, they can text me or call me and it'll come through on my watch.

But I don't have any email on my watch. I don't really have any other push notifications or anything like that. So I'm still reachable, which, you know, it helps. It feels, you know, it feels easier to leave the house and still be reachable. You're a dad, so you got to be, you know, I get it. You're a parent. Yeah. But you still want to be separated.

Yeah. So those things like that. And then even just going, hey, is there a day of the week, you know, maybe on Saturday or Sunday where I can decouple from digital and technology or things like that, or the things that sort of erode margin is a huge one. And just, you know, for the person who can't take a whole week off on a regular basis, but say, hey, I can take time on the weekends. I'm going to set aside Saturday and I'm going to have no obligations, a day of the week without obligations or a day of the week without obligations or a day of the week without responsibility other than just being present with the people that I love. And

that could be huge. And I know I have a good friend as their kids got older, they started doing more and more sports. And then he realized one day, he's like, man, literally every night of the week, we barely have time to eat because as soon as the kids get home, we got to do their homework. We got to eat and we got to get out and then do sports and practice. He was like five, six, seven nights a week. They're doing this. And he was like, it just wasn't worth it. Our family dynamic was stressful. It was difficult. And so they started canceling a lot of these responsibilities and doing less sports and having, then having more just free time and downtime as a family in the evenings together.

And so that's something that my wife and I were trying to be intentional as our boys get older is just to say, what are we going to allow in our life and what responsibilities are we going to have and what are we going to say no to, to allow that breathing room. So that's just a huge one of just being intentional with the responsibilities that you have so that you have some breathing room and just saying it's okay to come home and not have like a whole bunch of responsibilities constantly. It's okay to just be able to have dinner as a family and then time to breathe and not have responsibilities. And even just choosing that can be a huge first step.

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But do you mind just speaking briefly to that, Sean? I know it's a lot more detailed in the course, but kind of if people listening at this point, they're saying, OK, you convinced me I need some margin. What's the kind of the next steps for them? Yeah, I love this. So basically the idea behind margin, we talked about the very beginning. It's it's that space between what you're responsible for and what you're capable of doing. And so we use money as an example, this is a really easy one to kind of understand is let's say my monthly responsibilities as a homeowner and as a

dad, let's say it's $2,500 a month and that pays for my mortgage and for my groceries and for my utility bills and my car insurance, whatever. So I got 2,500 bucks a month going out the door. bills and my car insurance, whatever. So I had 2,500 bucks a month going out the door. So that's my responsibilities. That's my financial load. And then let's say my incoming paycheck is $2,500 a month. So my load is equal to my limit. What I'm responsible for is right equal to what I'm capable of doing. I have no additional financial capability if my outgoing is $2,500 a month and my incoming is $2,500 a month. So I have zero financial margin in that scenario. And that sucks, right? That's literally paycheck to paycheck living. You are right on the edge. And so any financial emergency, anything new that comes along, whatever it may be, if my insurance goes up,

if the price of gas goes up, if the price of groceries goes up, I have no margin to be able to handle that and to cover that. And so I would be then I would move past what I'm even capable of doing. And that's, you know, I basically would be financially burnt out, though finance isn't interesting in this context, because I could then begin to put that stuff on the credit card and go into financial debt. Whereas no other, you can't go into debt with your time. You can't go into debt with your physical health. All those other things, you literally just burn out or something breaks. Whereas with finances, you can, you just put on the credit card, which a lot of people do. So if I need financial margin, I'm at, you know, I of people do. So if I need financial margin, I'm at the capacity.

If I need financial margin, there's two ways that you can get it. And so the first way would be to increase what I'm capable of doing or increase my income in this scenario. And the second way is to decrease what I'm responsible for or reduce my spending, so to speak. So those are the two things. You increase what your limit is, like raise the ceiling, so to speak, and or decrease what you're responsible for by cutting costs or cutting out obligations. So this works with finances.

Obviously, you can say no to certain things. You can reduce your costs. You can tighten up your budget or you can go earn more money or get a better job or whatever it may be. And so those are two ways that you then increase your financial margin. And so let's say I'm able to decrease my spending by 500 bucks a month and also increase my income by $500 a month. Now I'm making $3,000 and I'm spending $2,000. I have $1,000 a month of financial margin that I can now set aside to save. I can set aside for the emergency fund for rainy day. And I have that breathing room, that flexibility within my monthly budget. So if the

price of gas goes up or we want to go on a trip or we do something that costs a little bit more, we can afford it because there's a little bit more, we can afford it because there's a little bit of financial margin and we're not living paycheck to paycheck. You can actually get ahead. You can save up. And so now, you know, like all of this stuff is that's a healthy financial spot where you have that financial breathing room. You want that. And it's this exact same for every other area of your life. So you want to have margin with your schedule. You want to have that margin with your creative energy, margin with your emotions and margin with your physical energy as well, where you're not on the edge and all these different areas. So those are

kind of two main things. You can increase your limit, increase what you're capable of doing, your capacity, or decrease what you're responsible for, decrease the load, or do both honestly is a great approach to it. So those are the two ways you restore margin. And recognize that all of the areas of margin that you just listed are interrelated. That was a big thing I got when I went through the margin courses, recognizing like the financial example you shared, the, I don't know how to describe it, but like me personally, my, if I were in that position, I'm like, I need more financial margin. My default would be, well, I'll get another job. I'll work more. Right. But when you do that, you have less time margin. You have less emotional margin. You

probably have less physical margin because it means you're sacrificing going to the gym every day or whatever it is. You know, you're grabbing fast food on the way from one thing to another because you have less time. So all of this stuff can compound pretty quickly. Yes, absolutely. They really do interrelate. I actually just am working on an article right now I'm going to be publishing tomorrow about some stuff that my wife and I went through earlier this year. They basically, uh, about some stuff that my wife and I went through earlier this year. They, uh, basically they found a tumor in her eye and we thought it was secondary cancer. And there was a two month period where she was going through getting all the tests to find out what was going on and trying to find the cancer in her body and see what was coming from that. And it was an incredibly, uh,

like probably the most stressful, challenging, um, time of my entire life. Uh, you know, thinking that I didn't know if my wife, you know, had stage four cancer or not. And it was really, really difficult. And, uh, just through insurance stuff, basically like we're a cash pay insurance people. Um, but we had the financial margin to be able to, to, to go through and pay for all the tests for cash, uh, without it causing a financial strain for us. We had, um, the, the ability in our schedule to, to do this. And so literally one little thing comes in that completely like, you know, just was like just this slicing right through financial, our time, our schedule, our emotions, and all these things,

just eating up almost every ounce of margin that we had in those areas and getting us to like the edge almost. And if we'd have been tight financially, or if we didn't have that breathing room in our schedule, if we didn't have the emotional margin within our relationship where there was that ability for us to go through something really, really difficult together, it would have put a huge strain. But instead, it actually allowed us to kind of link arm in arm and go through it together and strengthen our relationship. And, you know, when something like this happens and it puts a strain in one area, like you're saying, Mike, it puts the strain in all the other areas as well. But then when you have, because we did have financial margin, uh, that we were able to pay

for everything and it didn't, uh, you know, didn't cause the, there was zero financial stress, uh, through that. And that gave us, that didn't then eat into the other areas as well. So it gave us strength in the other areas as well. So when you're, when you do have margin in one area, it can, it can help lend margin to those other areas as well. So when you do have margin in one area, it can help lend margin to those other areas as well when you need them. And you never know when that stuff is going to happen. That's the thing. You can say, well, I'll get some margin someday, but tomorrow might be the day that you need it. And I think we've said the point, but I just want to emphasize it, that getting a toehold of margin in any

one of those categories is going to help you find the toehold in the other areas. I mean, you start, you've got to start somewhere. If you're, if you're listening to the same man, I am out of control, you know, look at those categories, find some place you can get started. And you'll be surprised because as soon as you get started in one area, you find opportunities in the other area. They build on themselves. Absolutely. And, you know, David, when you asked me this question earlier, like what the tipping point for me was, what got me to begin implementing this stuff, because for me, the biggest challenge was my health. I had really poor health habits years ago and not the greatest with managing and scheduling my time because I was

working. You know, even though I worked for myself, I could pick my own hours. I'm still working 10 hours, 12 hours a day. So in 2012, we started doing cash envelopes for our budgeting and it took me a few months to sort of like get things under control. But I used to just do my money was I was like, well, you know, if I'm making, you know, I got $3,000 a month coming in. As long as I spend, you know, $2,999.99, like I'm okay. You know, like as long as I'm at least one penny. And I didn't really have a budget. I just tried to spend at least a little bit less.

But our budget was not really under control. And so we started doing these cash envelopes and completely like got our budget figured out and brought it back under control. Began saving, you know, began building up that emergency fund, things like this. And like, once I had that going and I saw just like the health of our finances begin to like, like literally within just a couple months, like completely changed, uh, over, like I started getting, uh, more energy to like, Hey, I want to, I want to get my health in, in order. Like I started getting more energy to like, hey, I want to I want to get my health in order. Like I began. So I actually began running on a regular basis and exercising more regularly. And that made me want to start sleeping more and eating healthier as well. And then adjusting my schedule. And it really was this domino effect that getting health in one area

of your life really does give you a momentum to continue getting it in the next area and in the next area. So totally agree. Well, now, if you're listening and you're thinking about it, there's a couple of things we could recommend. I think the book is great, a great place to start. It's called Margin. We'll put a link in the show notes. But even better is Sean's course, which really walks you through it. I like the idea of video courses, as you would probably not be surprised. And interestingly, the opening for Sean's course or the enrollment period ended

the day before the show publishes, which would make us sad, right? But no. Very sad. But Sean loves Focus Podcasts and the the focus listeners and you're doing something special for us right yeah so we set up a special backdoor link for anyone listening to the show that would like to get access to the course even though it's not open to the public right now i love that guys you're getting in even though nobody else can but there's gonna be some limit

on that though right i mean that's because the way you run these you don't keep them open forever uh yeah that's correct so we'll probably close it down um you know in a month maybe i'm not sure all right so if you're listening get in there um do we have a link we can share right now i definitely use the link in the show notes but as we record this do we have one yes if you go our our website is called the focus course. So if you go to the focus course.com slash podcast, then that'll be the backdoor link for all the, your guys podcast listeners to, to be able to, to get to sign up for it for there.

Awesome. So focus course.com slash podcast. Sweet. Thanks, Sean. Yeah, absolutely. I,

I, I mean, you guys, I'm, I love you guys. So great show. Oh, we love you too. Yeah. Uh, it's, it's mutual. I, I, I mean, you guys, I love you guys. So great show. We love you too. Yeah.

It's mutual. I do feel like, um, I love what you've done Sean over the years. I, you know, when you kind of turn the corner from tech to, you know,

just helping people out with a lot of problems, I was very, uh, I was very impressed with the way you've done that. And you continue to bring quality materials to people. Like I said, in my own personal journey, the day I decided to choose to put margin in my life was the day that suddenly I started getting field guides produced. I started doing a better job with my legal clients. And honestly, I found a way to

enjoy my life more. And I didn't feel like I was running so fast. I was going to smack my face in the concrete at any moment. And it didn't happen overnight. And for me, it's a journey as me and Mike talked about on the show. I still occasionally fall off the wagon. But, you know, these tools that you give people, I think, really can make a difference. Yeah. And I think I think everyone kind of occasionally falls off the wagon, right? Like occasionally we just hit our limit and we're on the edge there. And a huge part is just recognizing I don't want to stay here. Yeah. And and then having the systems or the processes in place that can help us pull back and then restore that margin again. Yeah, and I'd say even more than saying I don't want to stay here is the realization that I don't have to stay here.

You know, I'm not stuck here. Yeah, that's huge. Whether you're working for a tyrant or working for yourself, there are ways out of this stuff. Or maybe they're the same person. Exactly. Sometimes they're the same.. Or maybe they're the same person. Exactly. Sometimes they're the same person. Often they're the same. Oh, yeah.

I have no idea what you're talking about. That jerk. One last question. I'm still thinking about that hypothetical person there who still isn't totally sold that they can choose margin. What's the one piece of advice you would give them? hypothetical person there who still isn't totally sold that they can choose margin, what's the one piece of advice you would give them? It would be to basically take a step back and kind of just look at life right now and be like, do you feel overwhelmed? Do you feel that things are just a little bit tight? Do you feel a little bit stretched thin?

things are just a little bit tight? Do you feel a little bit stretched thin? Do you feel like it's a little bit out of control or not? And usually just that gut instinct is like, oh yeah, like I do. I get easily frustrated when it's dinner time with my kids and they're telling potty jokes at the table. Or I get easily frustrated when I'm driving down the road and someone cuts me off. Or I get easily frustrated when I'm trying to do such and such a project and someone has a question for me. Or, you know, I wake up feeling anxious about money. Like, is there a hint somewhere that you would recognize that, yeah, I think I'm a little bit stretched thin? yeah, I think I'm a little bit stretched thin. And if so, then just consider like, okay, between your money or your time or your physical health or kind of your emotional state or your creative energy, kind of looking at that and going, do I need a little bit of breathing room

in one of these areas? And it might be all of them. And usually it is like, usually when we're lacking that one, like you guys were saying, when you lack margin in one area, it begins to creep into the others, but you can't restore all your margin overnight. But even just going like, what's one thing that I could do, uh, maybe related to my finances or my time. Those are really easy ones where you can say, I'm going to cut back on just one area of spending. I'm going to have, you know, or I'm going to cut back on one obligation that I have right now that will give me back, even if it's an hour a week, or even if it's half

an hour a week, or even if it's just a few dollars a month, something where you can say, I'm in control. This is a choice I'm making. And it kind of just puts that first step forward and helps you realize like, okay, I can do this and I'm going to go forward. That would be my recommendation. That's great advice. I'll tell you for me, my leading indicator of when I'm losing grip on things as someone who's kind of gone through the whole journey is when I suddenly find my time blocks are too short. Like when I start,

because I block my time for most of the things I do. And when I have margin, when all the cylinders are clicking, my blocks are always a little bit longer than they need to be. So I have time to go pull weeds or just take a walk or something in between. And then suddenly when I find all those blocks are too short that I'm getting to the end and nothing's done, that's when I, that's how I find that I'm, I'm trying to trick myself into throwing the margin out the window. That makes any sense.

Yeah, absolutely. You're, you're, you're beginning to say yes to a few too many things. Yeah. And it's just like, there's a part of me that's, that's trying to creep back in. Do you ever catch yourself doing that, Mike? Yes. All the time. Uh, that was one of the things that I had to realize was you hear people like us talk about this stuff. And if all you do is hear all of the, the positive stuff, you can, you can have the impression of they've got this all figured out and they never struggled with any of this, but you're not getting the whole picture there. Everybody struggles with this. And what's more important than the fact that maybe you're going

to fail with this is that you have a way to get back on the horse and you don't let that failure be fatal. You readjust, you try something different and you try to do it better for next time. Yeah. But yeah. And margin, I think, is one of those things where you might have it all figured out for the current state that you're in and then something changes and then you've got to go back to the drawing board and figure out, well, okay, so what did this new situation do to my margin in these different areas? Because margin isn't one of those things that you can really gauge easily. It's not like you look at the gas gauge on your car and you say, well, I've only got a quarter tank left. I better refill pretty soon. You don't know how much emotional margin you have sometimes until you go through something really tough and you can't take it. And at that point, it's too late.

Yeah. And just like this thing I had the other day, I got off the airplane, something came out completely out of left field and took over three days of my life. And it's okay. I was able to adjust, but that's exactly what you have to do. You have to stop it. When that freight train arrives, you've got to immediately stop and adjust. But when you have to do. You have to stop it when that freight train arrives. You've got to immediately stop and adjust. But when you have margin, you actually have time to do it. And you have the knowledge that you can make it work. When you've got the emotional breathing room,

something like that doesn't immediately throw you into a tailspin where you're just like angry or frustrated or suddenly stressed out. Like you can come at it still with a clear head and make intelligent decisions instead of being rash and just reacting to the situation, you're able to respond better. Exactly, yep. Well, I will go out myself and say

that I fall off the margin train at least once a month, you know, where I find myself in some area of my life, um, screwing up on that because there's a part of me that wants to run on overdrive a hundred percent. You know what I mean? It's just, it's, I don't know how it got in there, but it's in there. And, uh, I really have to constantly be aware and, and try and readjust and catch up. Yep, exactly. try and readjust and catch up. Yep, exactly. All right, gang. So, Sean Blanc, thank you so much for coming on. Go check out themargincourse.com and also thefocuscourse.com, which is another excellent product Sean's made. And of course, you're over at Tools and Toys. Anything I missed?

No, that's great. We got all sorts of stuff. That's great. Yeah, it's great. I love the stuff you're bringing to the internet and I love how much you're helping people, Sean. Thanks again for coming on. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me. Once again, it's themarchingcourse.com. It's going to be open for a limited time for the podcast listeners. Sean's done us a big favor by keeping us open for you. So if you're at all interested, head over there, but don't waste time. Like I said, it's only open for a month. Thank you to our sponsors, Squarespace and Hover, and we'll see you all in a few weeks.