HealthyGamerGG - Why I Work 7 Days A Week

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

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So if we really look at it, a key thing to understand is that work is quite heterogeneous in nature. And there may be some tasks that you really enjoy doing, but there are other tasks that you really don't like. And all of it kind of becomes work. And a big part of what I'm going to share with you all today is how to understand those different segments of work so that you can optimize and actually become the most productive over a long period of time. So I'm going to talk to you all today about something a little bit different, which is why I work seven days a week. Now, this may sound kind of interesting, right? Because nowadays, everyone is so concerned about burnout. Everyone's like, oh my God, I'm burning out so much. I also know that there's a big kind of anti-work movement

going on where people are sort of emphasizing, I should be working less. Why do I have to work so much? And I think a lot of that is really valid because, you know, we do have a lot of companies and managers and people like that who are really looking to extract the most labor out of people. But what I'd love to share with you all today is a little bit about how I work seven days a week, why I work seven days a week. And the most shocking part of it all is why I really enjoy working seven days a week and how paradoxically working seven days a week actually decreases my burnout and leaves me feeling more energetic than before.

So I know that sounds kind of shocking, especially if you're kind of listening this and you're feeling burnt out all the time and you're sort of struggling a little bit with like knowing, hey, I should be working more, right? You know that there's this like Sigma grind set and that people are like, yeah, like every day you work, you got to be productive, you got to do side hustles, all this kind of crap. And oddly enough, I do work seven days a week, but I don't consider myself Sigma grind setting. And if the Sigma grind set isn't for you and actually you're kind of like lazy and sort of like about optimizing your workflow and trying to get the most value out of the least amount

of work, which is actually what I do, hopefully this will be a little bit helpful to you. So let's start off with the way that we usually start things here, H.E., which is to understand what work means and understand a little bit about why work is taxing and how work can actually be invigorating. So there's a famous kind of quote that people will say, which is that if you do what you love, you will never work a single day in your life. And so there's this big debate about passion versus work. You know, if something is your passion, people will also say, if you turn it into your job, it's the quickest way to extinguish your passion. And so there's this tension between should I do what I love and make it my work so that I can work a ton?

Or should I keep my passion separate and work is something like that should be completely separate from my passion. Work is a price that I pay, a sacrifice that I make to be able to support my passions. And then that in and of itself leads to more frustration as well because then if it kind of feels like, okay, I'm working, you know, five days a week for this tiny sliver of time. So what I'd like to do is actually step away from all of that crap and start with the fundamentals. Let's start by understanding what is work. How does work drain us? How does work potentially even invigorate us? Or what invigorates us at work? And as we understand some of

those fundamentals, I'll share with you all some of my experience about how I set up my work week so that I end up being quite productive and actually working seven days a week and feeling more energetic after all of it. So let's start with defining terms. So when I say work, what I mean is something that produces value. So I don't consider work. I mean, there are a lot of things that people, you know, I think are work and require effort and gain yield. But we're talking about things like raising kids, doing stuff at home, potentially personal development stuff. But for the sake of this talk, I'm not focused on any of that stuff. What I'm actually talking about is something that produces value in the external world, right? So it could be like doing tasks related to work. It could be

creative work. We'll kind of talk a little bit about that. But it's actually stuff that produces value. The next thing that I want to kind of point out is that not all work is the same. So when we say I'm burnt out from work, if you really tunnel down into it, not all the pieces of work are actually what burns you out. And this is where I think we can start to understand this tension between doing what you love is a passion and sort of like how your passion gets ruined by turning it into your job. Because let's say I love playing the piano. I may love the actual playing the piano and teaching students how to play the piano, but all this stuff about building a website, finding clients, securing contracts, chasing down people who cancel at the last second, all of that stuff burns me out.

So if we really look at it, a key thing to understand is that work is quite heterogeneous in nature. And there may be some tasks that you really enjoy doing, but there are other tasks that you really don't like. And all of it kind of becomes work. And a big part of what I'm going to share with you all today is how to understand those different segments of work so that you can optimize and actually become the most productive over a long period of time.

The next thing that we need to understand about work is that there are some tasks that are easier to do at particular times. I'll give you all just a simple example. So I can usually teach a room of students at any time during the day. So for example, like if I see patients from, let's say, 8 to 6 and then I have to teach a lecture from 6 to 8 p.m., I will have enough energy to do that. If I just walk into the room and there's a group of students there, even if I'm feeling kind of tired and I can kind of acknowledge that time, something about the enjoyment of working with a group of students at 6 p.m., like, I can still kind of do it. On the flip side, there are some elements of work that actually make you tired,

no matter how energetic you are. So on the flip side of teaching is one of the most draining activities that I have, which is like administrative work or dealing with insurance companies. And when 6 p.m. rolls around, I have no energy left, and I sure I can teach. But if you ask me, oh, like, Dr. K, do you want to do your billing paperwork and, like, write letters to insurance companies at 6 p.m. on a Friday, I'll be like, there's no way in hell I'm doing that. And furthermore, even if I do that work at like 10 a.m. on a Monday, I will feel so drained afterward. So the next thing we need to understand about work is simply that not all work is the same and that certain kinds of work will drain you more or invigorate you more.

So here are a couple of examples of different kinds of work that I tend to do on the weekend and some of the advantages of that. The first is creative work. So in my experience of doing like creative, work. And what I sort of mean by creative work is like ideating on lectures, maybe thinking about particular things I want to talk about, thinking about, you know, how to develop educational curriculum, program development. Like, this is all kind of creative work. Sometimes it also means like actual writing, so writing fiction or nonfiction or things like that. So there's like a certain pile of creative work. And what I've sort of found about creative work is that it's not transmissible from day to day. I can't do like 14 hours of creative work on a Monday.

and have it be the same quality as if I do creative work when I'm inspired. So it's almost like I have this creative energy battery, like this particular pool of creative energy, which regenerates at a particular rate. And I can't, if I'm like, if I run out of mana when it comes to creative energy, grinding even further sort of yields very like crappy outcomes. So sure, I could sit down and write 14 lectures in one day. I could technically do that. but the quality of the lectures will suck.

Instead, if I write like one lecture a day, I wake up, I kind of get excited by something and I do some amount of work. And after about an hour, I've got an outline for a particular lecture and I kind of feel like I've used some of that energy and it'll kind of regenerate later. So one of the key things that I tend to do on the weekends is some amount of creative work or ideation. And this is just the acknowledgement that work isn't perfectly interchangeable. So if you've got this battery of energy, you can sort of use it on a

a daily basis, and I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but I feel really good about myself when I do one hour of creative work on the weekends. It feels so awesome to be like, you know, Sunday at 11 am. rolls around, and I've like written a really awesome lecture. It's something that I want to share with the world. It's something that I'm really excited about. And the cool thing is since I did it on a Sunday, like it's Sunday at 11 a.m. And now I feel really great about myself, right? Because I was like, I was productive today. Today hasn't been an absolute waste. not that it needs, I mean, it's okay if it is an absolute waste, but I've been productive. And so one key thing about working every day is I try to really like use that creative energy up

because I can't always, you know, do 15 hours of creative work in a particular day. So I find it to be quite efficient. The other thing that I tend to do on the weekends especially, but also spaced out, is I tend to do a lot of my work-related reading on the weekends. So I tend to read somewhere between, at a minimum, 20 scientific papers a week. And what I tend to find is that reading a little bit on the weekend, like, really helps me. So I don't mean just like general reading, right? So what I'll do is sort of a focused topic that I get kind of curious about because, like, on the weekends, I have some energy.

And as I have some energy, I tend to get curious about things. And what I tend to find is especially when it comes to doing things like reading scientific papers, I can read five papers a day pretty easily, but I can't read 35 papers in one day. So what I'll tend to do is a lot of the research that I need to do. okay, if there are particular topics that I want to look up or like things that I want to learn about, that I don't get the time to do during the week because I have all these other random tasks to do, that's when I really think about zeroing on the weekend and doing a lot of my reading. Now, this leads to, I think, a really important segment, which is part of the reason I really love working on the weekends or working seven days a week,

is it allows my brain to do something that I call mental composting. So if we look at neuroscience, we know that the way that our brain processes, as information is quite complex. So a couple of things that we know are pretty almost certain of is the first is that ideas get consolidated through sleep. So if I read, let's say, five papers or six papers on a Saturday night, my ability to learn from those papers and use them the next week is way better if I actually like give myself time to sleep on it. So if I read five or six papers and then I kind of like go to sleep, then what's pretty cool about that, is if I talk about them on Tuesday, like I'll be able to recall statistics, citations, things like that.

So it's like some amount of energy that I start the process of composting. The next thing that's really cool about that is that that mental process of composting actually generates ideas over time. So if I sit down and let's say try to brainstorm for four hours on a Tuesday and I've got emails and meetings and stuff like that, I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but it's really hard to brainstorm on a Tuesday at 5 p.m. when you've been in meetings all day. If I really want to create an environment that's conducive to brainstorming, what I really want to do is give my mind time to like mull over things. And what I've really found is that that mental composting yields a lot of efficiency if I space out my creative work. So if I'm reading research articles on Saturday, you know,

I'll kind of remember them a little bit on Sunday. I'll wake up on Sunday morning. I'll be like, oh, that's kind of interesting. I liked this stuff from what I read. Let me investigate this tangent a little bit more. So as I investigate that tangent a little bit, I start to develop some kind of idea. And then when Thursday afternoon rolls around, now remember, this is five days since I read the first research paper, I sit down with our content team and we're sort of talking about ideas. And I'll say, hey, I want to talk about this, this, and this. And then as we bounce ideas back and forth, I've actually done a lot of the work. And so then what happens is like the lecture is sort of like halfway written. I can sit down and write it in one hour because I've done that mental composting.

And we sort of know this about the human brain as well that we do a lot of our subconscious processing and connecting of ideas and pattern generation over time. So the bizarre thing is that when I work seven days a week, I actually find that the actual amount of work it takes to produce one thing goes down. So if you had to sit me down on a Thursday morning and say, hey, I need you to write a lecture in six hours about this thing. It'll take me six hours to write it. because I'm not giving my subconscious a chance to play around with that stuff. I'm not doing that composting. And so what I've actually found is by working on the weekend, I can take a six-hour task and actually reduce it to three hours.

And furthermore, each step of the way, I find incredibly gratifying. Because I want you able to just think about this for a second. Once I read something on Saturday, I get curious about something. Let's read something. If I get bored of it, I'll set it down and I'll go do whatever I want. On Sunday, I have this kind of new idea. Oh, let me like read about the second thing. So I read about the second thing.

I feel way better about it. And now I feel pretty good at the end of the weekend, right? Because I've like, I've done some work. And then when Thursday rolls around and someone's like, hey, we need you to write a lecture about this or give a talk about this, I'm like, fantastic. I can get that done in an hour. And so that whole process actually like invigorates me because it's like, wow, this is really fantastic that I'm getting a lot done and it doesn't feel like a whole lot of work.

The last thing about working on the weekend that I think is really, really important is that sometimes I enjoy doing the work that I hate the most on the weekend. Now, this may sound kind of bizarre, but I want you all to bear with me for a second. So there's some work that we all really, really hate doing. And generally speaking, when there's work that we hate doing, it hangs over our head. It sort of weighs us down. It kind of mentally paralyzes us, makes us feel kind of overwhelmed. And I want you all to think about a work week, okay?

So when you think about, let's say, today's Monday, but think about your work week and think about, like, how much stuff weighs in your mind. It's like, oh, crap, I have to do this, I have to do this. And on Sunday night, right? So Sunday night is like the worst night of the whole week. And why is that? It's because tomorrow is Monday. And so as you go into the week overwhelmed by your least favorite tasks because those are the things that occupy the most, you're already burnt out on Monday morning. So I want to give you all kind of a bizarre scenario. Imagine that on Sunday night, the least favorite tasks that you have for the coming week were actually taken care of. How would you feel about waking? up on Monday morning. Because if you really think about what those tasks are, oftentimes they're not actually large volume tasks. It's not like 15 hours of work, right? It's usually like little crap that piles up. It's like I have to fill out an expense report. I have to take my car in to get registered. It's this little crap that weighs on you. And then when you're actually trying to do your work, right, because you sort of enjoy your work. Let's say I'm a graphic designer. But on Tuesday,

I get an email from HR, hey, have you done the HR, you know, fishing, training that you're supposed to do. That's one hour and you're like, oh, crap, I haven't done it. It's a waste of time. It's a waste of time. It's all so incredibly training. And so one of the things that I really discovered that was really bizarre is I looked at my week and I decided, okay, what is the thing that I hate the most? I hate these small tasks where once again, if I do one hour of HR training on a Tuesday at 1 p.m., at the end of it, I kind of feel tired and don't feel like doing the rest of my work anyway. And so bizarrely, what I've actually discovered is that if I really want to be efficient I want to feel good about it, what I'll actually bang out is I'll do one hour of stupid,

you know, HR-related work or administrative work or the work that I really hate the most, I'll do it on a Sunday. And you may ask yourself, wait, wait, doesn't that ruin your Sunday? And actually not really. So I do the work and then how do I feel afterward? Imagine Sunday at 2pm, the stuff that you dread the most about this coming week is actually done. It's invigorating. It's actually freeing. So now I'm like, oh, crap. like, I don't have to actually deal with this crap anymore, right? Like, I did it. And now I get to go into Monday morning not having worried about this stuff. So I know it sounds kind of paradoxical, but I actually find that working seven days a week is actually quite invigorating. It actually, like, I feel better about it. I feel like I have more energy going into Monday morning, having done some work on Saturday and Sunday. The main reason for that is because I've realized that work is not homogenous, that there are different kinds of work. And if I really want to optimize some of my, energetic outputs, if I want to optimize the value that I produce, it actually means spacing out some work. It's sort of really giving myself an opportunity to take advantage of my creative

energy battery and making sure that I use some of it every day. It's also giving my mind a time to like mentally compost so that I can start to generate a lot of ideas and then those ideas come out cleaner because my subconscious has already played with them. That in turn leads to better outcomes, right? So once your ideas are organized in your head and you sit down and try to produce something out of it, it ends up being like way cleaner and better received. And the last thing, this is the most bizarre thing that I discovered, and this was through a lot of introspection, is that the tasks that actually burn us out, if we actually bang out even half an hour of them or an hour of them on the weekends, it can be so mentally freeing. Like it actually, it's like

the feeling of checking things off your list and now you're going into Monday morning and you don't have worry about that stuff. Because what is it that really burns you out? It's having to worry about that stuff. And then since you're grappling with that crap, you can't focus on the work that you actually enjoy. Your creative work takes a dip. And once your creative work takes a dip, that's the reason that you're actually there. Then you're not producing at the level that you really want to. And as you're not producing at the level that you really want to, you get increasingly frustrated and that sort of leads to burnout. So I know it's quite paradoxical, but one of the things that I've really discovered is that working seven days a week not only reduces my burnout, it actually makes

me more productive and makes me feel more invigorated and also frees me up during the week to focus on the tasks that I really want to at work. So I hope that's been a little bit helpful. I know it's kind of bizarre. It certainly isn't what I would call the Sigma grind set, but I'd encourage you all to think a little bit about the heterogeneity of work and really think about how to optimize your own creative energy. If you found this video helpful, check out Dr. K's guide. We've spent hundreds of hours right. writing and filming to help people understand their mind so that they can build the lives that they want.

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