Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Daniel Sih on the rich rewards of becoming a Space Maker

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

Productivity expert Daniel Sih reveals how to break free from dreaded distraction and digital addiction. Do you feel trapped on the treadmill yet strangely addicted to the churn of activity and constant distraction of your ‘always on’ lifestyle where you wear being busy as a badge of honour, yet secretly you have no space to think or do the things that are really important to you? So imagine if you could be both productive and rested by living an ordered, rhythmical life. What if unplugging was not simply a means of surviving week by week but a strategy to produce your best work and make space for what really matters to us?  Daniel Sih joins Get Invested to talk about how to transform your life in this way. Daniel is co-founder of Spacemakers, a productivity consulting group for busy leaders. He is passionate about helping people make space in their world for the things that really matter. He’s an author, runs training courses and programs, and coaches individuals and teams on productivity and performance. Enjoy the conversation. Spacemakers - to create more space in your life: Website: www.spacemakers.com.auLinkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-sih-86944a12/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/shiftthewayyouwork Spacemaker book (free chapters and videos):  https://spacemakers.com.au/book/free-chapters/  eLearning:  "Email Ninja: how to take back control of your email inbox" is Daniel’s most popular productivity course, with more than 15,000 students globally. You can sign up and watch free videos on www.emailninja.com.au. Hour of power with Bushy: If you’d like an hour of power to talk with me personally on any questions, queries or issues you’d like to discuss about your investment strategy, finance or property portfolio delivery, whether you’re an aspiring investor or an experienced investor with a substantial property portfolio, just go here https://knowhowproperty.com.au/contact-us then click on the ‘Lets Zoom, DeepDive Meeting with Bushy’ 1 hour  option to book in your preferred time. For a small investment of just $295 you can ask me anything you want about property for a full 60 minutes.  Daniel's book recommendation: 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman Join the Get Invested community: And if you want to continue investing in your knowledge, join me and many other like minded investors in our Get Invested community right now. I send a free and exclusive monthly email full of practical ‘Self, Health and Wealth’ wisdom that our current Freedom Fighter subscribers can’t wait to get each month. It’s full of investment and lifestyle tips, my personal book recommendations, apps I use to enhance life and so much more. Just visit bushymartin.com.au and sign up at the bottom of the page … because this is just the beginning! Get Invested is the leading weekly podcast for Australians who want to learn how to unlock their full ‘self, health and wealth’ potential. Hosted by Bushy Martin, an award winning property investor, founder, author and media commentator who is recognised as one of Australia’s most trusted experts in property, investment and lifestyle, Get Invested reveals the secrets of the high performers who invest for success in every aspect of their lives and the world around them. Remember to subscribe on your favourite podcast player, and if you're enjoying the show please leave us a review. Find out more about Get Invested here https://bushymartin.com.au/get-invested-podcast/  Want to connect with Bushy? Get in touch here https://bushymartin.com.au/contact/  This show is produced by Apiro Media - http://apiropodcasts.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're in a generation now where people have used up every bit of space in their life by reaching for their phone. So we've lost the art of silence. So I think we have this journey where we need to unplug from our tools to have silence. And then we need to stick with silence long enough to work through the painful emotions and thoughts and uncomfortable feelings that you've never dealt with, to recognize the data in your life and to contemplate what it means in order to then delight in silence. We're passionate about space, but I didn't have any in my life. And I needed to make some tough decisions in order to come to terms with the fact that I cannot do everything. I'm finite. I have limited capacity and I need to make some really tough choices between what is

important and what isn't. And that was really the start of me living a much more intentional life. The book really came out of the realization that we need a paradigm shift. We need to totally rethink our relationship with the online world because we've we've entered into a relational contract with our devices and we haven't understood what that contract is we haven't understood how how our technological relationship shapes our mindset so we talk about neuroplasticity and the changes to the brain i talk about freedom and choice and how our cultural understanding of what freedom is that freedom is to do what you want when you want and choice is more you know more is better, how that limits our ability to make good digital habits. But it's a book recognizing

that too much technology, if you overcook it, then you experience the negative effects of too much tech, which are a loss of productivity, multitasking, distraction, a loss of happiness and health. So how do we enjoy the best of the online world, but then make sure that our habits and our patterns shape um what we do so we change our paradigm we change our principles so we orientate our life around true north principles that always work uh including things like real face-to-face relationships time for contemplation um time to really invest in things that matter setting limits etc how do i actually on a very specific basis you know change my habits so that I live by design. I live the way I want to live. For me, it's about helping people to make space

for the things that matter in their lives and to really reflect on what that is and to shape their patterns and their habits so that what they do day by day actually aligns with where they want to head. Welcome to the Get Invested podcast, where we share great conversations with experts from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how and where they invest their time, their skills, and their money, and the benefits that this has created. You see, the truth is that everyone invests. Every minute of every day, we're investing our time, our skills, our energy, and our money in something. Some of us are investing consciously, some unconsciously, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, sometimes for no impact.

Get Invested will help you to start living by design, not by default. I'm going to help you to make it happen, not let it happen. You'll hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can live more, work less, and leave a living legacy by investing now. Listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started, make the most of your investment journey, and ultimately to be living your dream, not someone else's.

More episodes can be found on iTunes or at bushymartin.com.au forward slash GetInvested. Thanks for listening, and now, let's get invested. Welcome Freedom Fighters. Do you often feel trapped on the treadmill yet strangely addicted to the churn of activity and constant distraction of your always-on lifestyle? Were you aware of being busy as a badge of honour, yet secretly you have no space to think or do the things that are really important to you?

In the words of Richard Swenson, we no longer have any margin. We're margins, the space between our load and our limits. It's something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations. Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion. The space between breathing freely and suffocating. And nailing the insight that perfectly captures the illness of our age, Swenson goes on to further argue that we must have some time to breathe.

We need freedom to think and permission to heal. Our relationships are being starved to death by velocity. no one has the time to listen let alone love our children lay wounded on the ground run over by our high-speed good intentions who plundered those wide open spaces of the past and how can we get them back there are no follow grounds for our emotions to lie down and rest in and we miss them more than we suspect are you one of the many who outwardly pretends or kid yourself that life is good but secretly despairs that you desperately need more margin and more space. You quietly pine for more time and breathing space to enjoy all of the niceties that life has to offer and more

freedom to choose what you want to do when. But you feel trapped on the treadmill and fear that the minute you stop sprinting the hard-fought trappings of your lifestyle will grind to a screeching halt. Many of us feel caught in this time trap. We can't seem to take the time now so that we can invest in the time we have left to make the time we need to enjoy life to the full. So imagine if you could be both productive and rested by living an ordered, rhythmical life. What if unplugging was not simply a means of surviving week by week,

but a strategy to produce your best work and make space for what really matters to you? If this interests you, then you're going to absolutely love our deep dive conversation today with Daniel C. So welcome, and let's get invested, Daniel. Thanks, Bushy. Looking forward to having the conversation. Yeah, it's an area that has interested me for a long time, but I've never come across someone who's actually thought deeply about this

and has come up with a practical approach that can actually provide some solutions to that dilemma. But before we get into the guts of that subject, I'd love for you to share with us, for those who don't know you, who you are, what you do, and most importantly, why you do what you do, mate. Yeah, no, thanks. So I'm the director of Spacemakers. I live in Tassie, Hobart. And, yes, Spacemakers is a productivity consulting group. We help busy people make space.

And my why is to help people think deeply and rest fully and really live by design. that they'd be your they'd be your words for me it's about helping people to make space for the things that matter in in their lives and to really reflect on what that is and to shape their patterns and their habits so that what they do day by day actually aligns with where they want to head and so we work with people with practical training skills helping them get their inbox to zero you know use online to-do lists some some core productivity skills that we find really helpful for leaders and managers and execs. I do strengths coaching to help people walk in their strengths and a whole host of other things, partly coming out of my book, Spacemaker. So helping

people to unplug and unwind and think clearly in the digital age. So that's what I do for a job. In terms of who I am, I've got three kids. I'm married. As I said, I live in Tasmania. I share land with some friends that we built houses next to and we kind of have a bit of a sense of community, eating together regularly and living in each other's lives, not in a hippie way, but as two working professional families trying to have life without fences in quite a less of an individualised way and being a bit more interdependent with each other.

And I'm also really passionate about building community and serving and helping people develop in faith and spirituality in their life. So that's a bit about me. I love it. There's a whole bunch of stuff that you've sardined into, some great sentences there, which I'd love to dig into shortly, and I will do so because some of the strength coaching, the stuff around productivity,

and just what I'm loving about what you're doing is breaking through some of the traditional barriers to enjoy things like that and create a real sense of community just by sharing the land with... I don't know who you're doing it with, but we'll dive into some of that because I think what you're really doing by example

is challenging some of the assumptions that a lot of us just take for granted and get caught up in the ribbon without taking the time to go, well is this really how we want to live so uh to start that journey uh and to sort of share some of the the highs and lows the and the learnings that you've had along uh your life path so far can you take us back as far as you would like to go and as early as you'd like to go and talk us about where you've invested your time your energy and money what you've learned from what were the highs and lows and how has that led you to what you're doing and how you're living

today yes interesting how far do i want to go back that's that's an interesting question uh gosh let's start with uh can you can we pause for a sec bushy sorry i just have to think all right cool so look i'm bushy i'm from adelaide like you are from what i hear and i remember even as a very young child, I grew up in a family which was quite different and made me think about life. So my dad's Chinese. He's from Shanghai originally. And my mom's from Adelaide. She's a Dinky Diozzi. And they loved us really deeply as kids. I'm very grateful for the sense of security and connection I had with my family. And my mom was emotionally connected with us and would invest emotionally in us. Uh, dad was more distant, but he would provide for us. And I, I really respect

that and really valued that. Um, probably more and more now that I'm older, I see what he did for us. But, uh, they, they, they, when you say distant, what do you mean by distant? Oh, well, he, he was a Chinese man who was raised in the 1940s. So he didn't grow up with that sense of what we would say now is, you know, encouragement and saying that he loved us in kind of verbal ways. He was much more of a doer and he would provide for us by working hard and taking us on holidays and giving us experiences like taking us out to dinner and things like that. And that was his way of providing for us.

But, you know, nowadays with parenting, especially for guys, we're meant to be doing a whole lot of other things as well, encouraging our kids, saying they're amazing at art and telling them that, you know, they're princesses. you know that stuff didn't happen which i think is actually good it made me resilient uh but but that's what i mean by emotionally distance if that makes sense yeah it does yeah sorry i interrupted there mate uh no no not a problem uh but so it's interesting my family were completely different from each other so mom is like now she's like a farmer and uh lives in you know the country and is an environmentalist and really passionate about justice uh my dad can't stand camping

doesn't like the outdoors he loves gambling he loves living in the city so they were always very different from each other but I remember the one thing that did connect us was dinners we used to eat together regularly we always sat down and ate together and it was a place where we could talk and connect and I think one of the things in terms of investment for me is realizing the importance of social connection and even if we have differences to be able to bring people around a table which is probably one of the reasons why i do community that way now yeah makes complete sense so given that sort of uh contrast and dichotomy uh between your parents what influence did that have on you and and where you invested your time energy money do you think

yeah look it's a good question so i mean it's funny as a kid you don't really know that you're different but you feel that you're different so you know i look half chinese and at the time in adelaide i was in a very caucasian area so i certainly felt like i was different uh the food we ate was different and while i don't speak mandarin even just some of the cultural differences were present at the time and i think when you're in a culture that isn't quite natural or free flowing it does tend to make you think about why you're doing what you do and why people think the way they think does that make sense so i think when you go to another culture you can examine with objective eyes. Whereas if you grow up into a culture where everyone is just like you, then

you're like fish in water and you just can't see the assumption and the hidden ground and the unwritten ground rules that shape your narrative and your story. So I think that by design started me off on a journey where I started to ask bigger questions. I started to reflect on who I am and what life means. And potentially that's partly why I'm quite intentional in the decisions we make, particularly when they're not the same as the culture around us. Yeah, you make a really good point because it's, you know, when you're on the outside to some degree and physically and obviously different from the others around you,

that would create a situation where you do start to ask questions around that. Where did that lead to then? So in the early part of, let's look at your career, for example, you obviously finished high school, went to uni. what did you get into and why? Yeah, so I dived into physiotherapy. That was the first course that I did. Why physiotherapy? I've been asking myself that for 20 years. I mean, I did do 10 years as a physio and I'm really grateful for the experience. I like people. I love the habit change stuff that I learned out of it. You know, physio essentially is about helping people shift

their habits and their health behaviors, which very much is what I do nowadays in a productivity sense. But really at the time, as a young child, when I look back, I think it was a completely random choice. I remember as a child, I really wanted to get the best scores ever. And I worked my guts out. I got great scores. I think I got the best scores that I could have gotten with my talents and my particular genes and intelligence. And I didn't get into medicine, but I got into law. I got into physio. I got into psychology. And I remember being in Nepal. It was a trip we went on and I got my results when I was in Pokhara, which is this tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Uh, the, the results got faxed in and literally I went down the list and I thought

I'll just do the job that is the highest score, but the highest was dentist and lawyer. And I thought I was smart enough to know I didn't want to be either of them. Uh, my dad was a dentist and I didn't want to copy his kind of lifestyle. And the next one was physio. So that was how I became a physio, which is absurd in my thinking and it actually has shaped the way I speak to my kids. I'm like, guys, the aim can't be getting the right score. Who are you?

What are your strengths? What are your passions in life? How do we orientate your at least first career around where you might want to be and how you might want to serve? And those questions were absent in my thinking, which is so different to how I think today. yeah interesting so so you jumped into that uh and obviously there was a change at some point talk us through the evolution uh from that point what you did why what made you make some changes

in direction and how has that sort of led you to what you're now doing yeah so i did 10 years of physiotherapy uh i ended up you know becoming a senior physio because i work hard i did the job well but it just never really it never really made me come alive and I remember feeling stuck really stuck at about the nine-year mark feeling like this isn't the career I want to be in it's well paid people respect me they say I'm good at what I do I don't have to think too much about it but I just I just didn't I woke up and I didn't want to go to work yeah what was missing what what was it that uh this sort of a an emerging feeling that happened over time was like I'm just not fulfilled. Talk us through how you felt at that time.

Yeah. Well, I mean, even in third year physio, I knew this wasn't the career, like it wasn't my life career. I'm very much spiritually shaped. I love contemplation and I love big picture ideas and communicating things that are kind of strategic and large. And physio is brilliant, but it's just very people oriented and it was just one person after the next. It just didn't connect with me. I love helping people, but probably in a broader sense, rather than helping one person exercise one limb and so I kind of started to know myself but really I mean as you get to know yourself you start to realize well this isn't a good fit but I didn't know what would be a good fit because when you've gone down the trajectory of one job one career and

you're only in your late 20s or early 30s it's it's very hard to see what the options can be Yeah. So I went to a career counselor and I basically narrowed down my skill set. I love achieving goals. I thought maybe project management and I love training and educating and speaking to people. So maybe a trainer, but I couldn't see how I could make an income out of either of them. And I actually ended up moving from where I was into physiotherapy management and I ended up running big projects and I ended up training people and realizing I have a passion for both uh and and that led me to move into becoming a productivity consultant where i do all that stuff i love the management side of things i just needed to get out of the

people treatment side of things yeah and that was a journey of discovery over time how did that uh yeah absolutely the because it from the outside looking in and it looks like a big leap from from what you're doing in physio management into the sphere of productivity uh was something that came across your horizon that that piqued your interest in in going in that direction what can you sort of share with us what the thinking was around that that leap yeah well in terms of productivity that was a natural progression i just started to realize that the way in which we work in management and leadership but basically basically i realized that uh there's a lot of really unqualified or uninspiring managers and leaders around. And that was me for a while. But

I also realized there are some very practical skills and ways in which you can look at the world to actually be able to lead, to actually be able to manage. And that was part of the journey of realizing I needed to create rhythms and patterns in my life. I needed to create practical skills in my life. I needed to know where I was heading and why I was heading there and to have a language to communicate that to others so they're all the kind of management things that that actually are quite natural in me and they came alive in me and I started to become very frustrated with not seeing that in others around me others in my management team and so I started to train them and coach them just because I wanted to help with the skills I had developed

and then eventually that was like well actually I enjoy this more than my job itself let's take the plunge start a new you know corporation company and uh and i did it with another friend who had a very similar life journey yeah okay and and i mean that that chasm from being employed to self-employed uh is you know it's jumping off the cliff it takes a fair bit of courage to be able to to do that uh what gave you the confidence to go right uh let's make this happen yeah so in many ways it was a it was a jump out of a sense of crisis if I'm really honest and I think I speak about this in the book a little bit I so I ended up starting a business just as a bit of a play thing I didn't take it seriously we needed an ABN in order to train people and I ran this course

called email ninja you know how to get your inbox to zero and I thought I'd just do it as a way of having a creative outlet but that course just took off really quickly and so I was training people in email management under the banner of Spacemaker, but not really doing another job. I was still managing a physiotherapy service with multiple staff and sites and all this kind of stuff. And I was also doing some really heavy volunteer work in the church that I'm with and helping transition a community. And I had a young family and I was building a house. So it was this kind of crazy time in my early 30s. And basically, I started to have breathing problems. I didn't feel burned out. I didn't feel anxious in the way that I thought anxiety played out. But I just

started to be breathless. I was breathless when I communicated with people. Then I was breathless at the dinner table. Then I was breathless reading my young children books. And I just started to realize, you know, there's something wrong. And I did all the tests. There was nothing wrong with me physiologically. And the doctor said, this is stress and anxiety, particularly hearing my lifestyle. And, and, and so, uh, you know, ironically the book, the company was already called making space because we're passionate about space, but I didn't have any in my life and I needed to make some tough decisions, uh, in order to, to come to terms with the fact that I cannot do everything. I'm finite. I have limited capacity and I need to make some really tough

choices between what is important and what isn't and that was really the start of me living a much more intentional life it's a again there's a fair bit of courage there uh i'm hearing to really have a good look at that sure that breathlessness was probably the trigger that it's like okay well i need to do something this because it's it's affecting yeah it's affecting my health but uh there aren't many people who who take the time and you mentioned earlier and you mentioned a couple of times actually that the uh the contemplation is something that that obviously comes naturally to do to you and something you enjoy uh how how has that uh arisen is that just just something that's inherent in the way you are or uh because it's

something that uh that contemplation piece is is something that very few uh people make time for in this day may donate so i'd love to share your thinking around that yeah look it certainly hasn't come naturally. And I wouldn't even say I enjoyed it until more recently. It's something I had to lean into like any skill. And then, you know, it starts as a discipline and then it becomes a delight and then it becomes what you crave most, a bit like exercise. You know, it's hard to trigger, it's hard to trace back how far to go back. But I mean, I do remember a number of circumstances in my childhood where things happen and I really need to stop and just reflect on who I was and why the world is the way it is. I do remember a time where I went to Vanuatu actually

on a leadership development program and we were asked to spend an hour every day writing in our journal, reading scripture and just thinking at the same time as we're being bitten by a million mosquitoes outdoors. It was horrible. And I did that for months. And I also learned to practice full days in silence and so there was a training that happened in my life when i was in my early 20s that i started to see the value of thinking about the data in your life reflecting on the experiences and trying to make sense of them personally spiritually intellectually so if i think about that transition actually you're right that the that transition time from physio to consultant didn't just happen i remember two particular reflective aha moments or incidences

in that period of time, one, my physio manager above me said to me, look, I can see that your heart's not in this like it used to be, but we really want to keep you and we want to keep your skills and what you do best. How about we offer you a day a week? You can keep your permanency. You can do exactly what you want to do. And that way you'll be safe and secure if things go bad in business. And that comment, just this, it was like there was this fire in my belly.

And I just thought, I just really reacted. She was being lovely. But I remember thinking, just knowing that the only reason I would stay as a physio and not quit outright is because I was fearful. And I was worried about the future, you know, and I was fearful of losing the safety. And I knew that if I didn't burn the boat, so to speak, you know, if I didn't actually make that cut, then I would always be drawn back to what was safe and secure. So I actually made the decision to quit that day. And the other moment happened the week after and I had dinner with another consultant who was in my field who I respect. And I said to him, I've made the decision. You know, we're eating dinner. I said, I made the decision. I'm going to quit my real job and become a consultant, you know, start productivity consulting for real, do that entrepreneurial step. And he looked at me in the eye, and I still remember his look. He said, that would be dumb. And that's all he said. And it just hit me. And really what he meant was you are going to experience a whole lot of financial pain.

You've got a mortgage. You've got two kids. And don't underestimate what you're going to have to struggle through to make this work. and and armed with that other reality I made some sensible financial changes I graded in maintaining a tiny bit of part-time work casually and and the whole thing is history but that would they were both reflective moments so it wasn't just that they happened but because I took the time to contemplate what they meant to reflect on why I felt the way I felt and how they aligned with my values and my future that is what guided me forward and that is the value of contemplation

love it love it i'd love you to share because a lot of people and i get to talk to a lot of people who have a burning desire to do something but that as you so well said fear gets in the way and that and the financial concerns get in the way because it's surviving long enough to be able to then make whatever opportunity they want to pursue work from a dollar perspective you mentioned that after you had that dinner and he said that'd be dumb that you then reflected to make some changes financially what were they what what did you do that it allowed you to survive long enough for uh space maker to really start making an impact yeah so i did a few things uh firstly i had a buffer so i put a ten thousand dollar buffer in place which i already had but

I put what I call a what's it called a trigger there's a term for it anyway I triggered myself basically and said to my wife and also to my business partner and someone else you know if I spend 10 grand of that and then I go another 10 grand into my mortgage it doesn't matter how passionate I am about the business that's it so so I kind of had a preset end point because what people often do is they invest and then because they invest so much even if they are losing they just keep doing more because they feel like they've already put so much in. Does that make sense? Totally. Totally. So that's one thing I did. So I put in some triggers and some accountability mechanisms. Look, we got a really shitty car. We stopped going on holidays and we

made some decisions to simplify our life. So we just accepted that we're going to be living lean for the next few years. So that was another thing that we chose to do. And I also took up some paid work with my church on a part-time basis so that also helped bring in some type of stable wage in the meantime so it was just a whole lot of little choices and they weren't hard it was just re-examining and readjusting our lifestyle and I think often the secret to wealth is actually changing your expectations because I was absolutely delighted to be able to go have a few days in a shack on the east coast of Tassie rather than travel interstate there was great joy in that and actually i enjoy that more now than i used to but it's just about aligning your financial

expectations i think with your values and and the things that really matter in your life yeah love that well that's a great segue into getting you to paint us what what does your ideal lifestyle look like are you currently living it because it sounds to me like you've you've made some significant steps in that way. And what are you investing in to make it happen and to maintain keeping that happen? Yeah. So, I mean, I remember hearing a framework from a guy called Mike Breen and he talks about five capitals. And he says, you know, we all know about financial capital. Obviously, it's about money and investments. But we actually have five capitals that we need to consider in our life. And they're actually not all the same in terms of the value to

each person. So he says there's intellectual capital, which is, you know, knowledge and learning. I know you're a learner. I'm a learner. And I, you know, it's, it's, it's a form of capital, uh, physical capital. So that's time and physical health. And, um, certainly as a physiotherapist, that's what I was investing in other people's lives in. And that's what I invest in mine in, um, the, you've got a spiritual capital. So there's wisdom and knowledge and, and that deep sense of addressing the soul. So I would include the inner life. I'd include prayer. I would include uh knowing who you are and why you exist and you've got uh relational capital so just the depth of relationships that you have and the consistency of the community around you

whether that be your nuclear family or a broader community of people and so by looking at financial intellectual spiritual physical and relational capital I realized actually uh all are really important but at different points in my life some have had a higher priority than others so it's not like i have one perfect lifestyle actually i'm in my mid-40s and actually what i'm shooting for is actually different than what i was shooting for in my mid-30s which is different than what i was shooting for in my mid-20s yeah i don't know if that's everyone's experience um and and mike breen gave me this activity which i really loved it was he said imagine you've got 17 gold bars and you literally draw out these gold bars right yeah and um and i'll write the five capitals

down and he said firstly just at this point in time are your capitals going up are they staying the same or going down. So draw an up arrow if they're going up, side if they're going sidewards and down if they're going down. So, you know, I was too busy to spend time with friends at the time. So the arrows aren't going down. Finances were fine. My intellectual capital was going up because I was studying. Does that make sense? Totally. Yeah. Love it. Love that framework. And then, yeah, so with the 17 gold bars, well, then basically what you do is you draw your portfolio. And so you've got 17 bars and it's a random number, but you distribute

according to the five capitals and and so you literally draw these little square bars like they're gold bars and you realize okay i've got five gold bars for intellectual i own three for financial i've got two for spiritual etc etc so you have a bit of a sense of your current portfolio and then the last part of the activity is you get 17 more gold bars and in the next year to two years you get to invest another 17 gold bars across the five capitals where do you want to be and that's a fascinating exercise because when I've done that at different points in my life I'm like yeah finances are not my most important thing I'm going to stay stable here but I'm going to actually give myself more time so I can love my kids or love my neighbors or I'm going to take

more time so I can actually have the space to read and and learn or think and pray because that is that's what it means for me in the next season to live by design and when you know which direction you're heading and where you want to build your capitals the beautiful thing is all the capitals play off each other so you can spend finances to grow intellectual capital you can actually leverage relationships if you've got high relational capital in order to earn money like there's a all of them flip onto each other you just have to know where you want to head i hope that's a useful framework that's been helpful for me because honestly i can't say there's one lifestyle I want to live. Right now, for a number of reasons, all I want to do is

invest in my family, my neighbors, my land, and actually do a few podcasts and a bit of small stuff around there. But I pulled way back from some of the broader international training and coaching for particular reasons. But in another five years, it might change again. So it depends on what you value at a particular time and place. I love the evolution there because you're absolutely right it's it's it's something my good wife and i do because we take an annual retreat and we just plug out for a week and really reflect on where we're at what's changed what's important to us now and and you're right our needs desires wants uh do change over time uh and and making space for that to allow you to sit down and and what a great framework at the the five capitals

framework i haven't heard that before so i love it in terms of looking at where you are where do you want to be and then allocating the resources across that and then leveraging between the different capitals as you say that they are all interconnected to be able to yeah that's the beauty yeah it is it's i love it i'm going to chase that down actually uh yeah to have a good look at that mike breen you said was the yeah it's actually a religious framework he calls it all economics it's fascinating but it's the exercise is brilliant uh what i love about is i mean he comes from he comes from a conclusion that actually uh around us financial and intellectual capital are the two that society values the the most so when we particularly in the university

sector it's about degrees uh in the rest of the world it's about what we earn and what we can invest and yet what he believes you know coming from a christian framework is that spiritual relational and physical capital are most important and yet i must admit you know if someone was to say i'll give you five million dollars but you're going to have low back pain for the rest of your life i wouldn't even think like it's a game changer no i wouldn't even consider that um because physical capital is actually worth more if someone was to say i'll give you five million dollars but you're gonna have a crappy relationship with your wife you know i don't know maybe you'll live in the same house but you're just living in different worlds and your kids won't like you and they'll go

do drugs i don't know i wouldn't consider it like i would not trade my relational capital for money so we kind of know this but by default we just follow the narrative and script of society and say well because we're told we have to have a million super that's what we'll chase even if it's unconsciously at the expense of things that actually really bring me joy and that matter most so it's important to to see the value in the different capitals and also to realize that for For me, I don't have the most amazing kind of financial capital. I'm actually doing pretty well, but I'm not self-sufficient. But, gee, I have a relational network and I trust without a doubt that if something went bad, I'd have meals cooked.

I'd have friends there. They would pay for my kids' education. We have a friend who died recently and I put a GoFundMe page up and just said, you know, my friend needs some support and we raised $100,000 in 10 days because they have high relational capital. Not everyone would raise $100,000 in 10 days. I didn't even advertise it. I put one email out, one Facebook message, and we raised $100,000.

I had to stop it in the end because we were getting embarrassed with the amount of money coming in. So you can leverage relational capital if you've built it when you need it. For financial, there are other ways to build financial capital. Does that make sense? Totally makes sense. And I think it's the big miss. And it's something that we'll get into in a minute because we live in an always connected world digitally.

But in doing so, it's often at the expense of the actual relational capital that you're talking about because we're spending more time glued to a screen than we are actually spending face time. with people and building that depth of relationship that that really makes a difference so uh yeah i love that mate i absolutely love that i'd tell me uh before because i want to sort of uh drill down into uh your awesome book space maker in a minute uh but uh i'd love for you to share you know some of the key things what i love about you is that you you just don't talk the talk that you're walking your own talk uh which is quite unusual and and you mentioned earlier in our conversation that won the move to Tassie and I'm sure that was to slow the pace down

but you'll tell you'll tell us in a minute uh secondly the shared the shared property exercise and the community that you built around that can you can you share your thinking and and and the journey around that why you're doing it and what the benefits are yeah look the community piece is quite an interesting one so we did move to Tassie partly for the lifestyle uh partly because there was actually a group of people I wanted to learn from but it was very intentional uh but I met this architect I think you're an architect originally I was yes and uh and and he had this passion to use architecture to represent his values and for him one of his values was community and living intersected lives and that spoke very much to me because when I was in Vanuatu again I remember

meeting a man and I asked him what he thought was unusual about Aussie culture he was a near Vanuatu man yeah and he said actually one of the things that is so strange is that everyone has a fence around the house and you guys must be very scared or protective if you want to tell people to stay away and it just really surprised me and it stuck with me and I started to realize of course you need fences practically for dogs and animals but most of us have fences simply because we're saying this is ours and that's not you and that's not you know and yeah and it's a very individualized way of looking at the world and uh and so i came back with the conviction and this is when i was 19 that actually i want my life to metaphorically not have so many fences i

want to have more permeability and more interdependence i don't want to live this rugged individualism i see around me that i saw in my family that i that i that i see in my culture I wanted to live more communally and to invest more in relational capital. And so when I met Mick and his dream was, what if we built two houses on the same land without fences? We would share kids areas and barbecues, maybe build a garden together, some chooks, you know, we would have our own house. So we'd have our own space, but we would also try to intersect our lives more.

And we would open our land up to neighbors so that the kids could use our space and so that we could have a sense of community uh but they needed someone to do it with and uh we immediately connected and after a long journey of about a year and a half opening up our finances having some really honest conversations about whether we would invest at this level and whether we trusted each other whether we had the relational capital to take such a financial uh risk yeah we ended up buying half the land we built two architecturally designed houses uh and an architecturally designed chook shed uh and uh and started to to create a rhythm of life without fences um and that's been very intentional it's been one of the most valuable uh life-giving

um and and painful experiences of my life he he died last year randomly of a heart attack so the pain and the joy come together but uh we're still doing it together and and that it's like family and I wouldn't trade it for the world. Well, it's a real metaphor for your life, that rhythm of life without fences is an outward expression of exactly your ethos, I think, and it folds well into what you're doing with Spacemaker. It's breaking down barriers.

It's creating space for the things that are really important and doing it in a way that encourages connection because we all know as social beings just how important connection, real connection, is to our health and all aspects of our life. But we've allowed ourselves, the majority of people have allowed themselves to be caught in these tiny little individual squares,

which, as you say, represented by the boundary fence, that does nothing but reinforce that separation and the isolation and all of the negativity that ultimately folds out of that exercise. So I love what you've done in that space. And, you know, as an architect, it's funny. If you listen to my wife, over the years I keep saying, why do we keep painting ourselves into these little boxes that all look the same?

It just makes absolutely no sense to me. I lived and worked in Alice Springs as an architect for many years and my backyard was the Macdonald Ranges. There was no fences. I didn't want any fences because I just wanted to, the distinction between out there and in here, I just wanted to blend them because I just have a real issue with that level of fortress sort of separation.

Yeah, definitely. I remember I was a new graduate physiotherapy therapist in Bendigo and we just rented this place and me and my mate used to sit out on the porch and we used to just talk to people as they walked past and you'd get to know people and you'd get to know neighbours and you know, we'd always be drinking beer and people would have a chat with us and it was a kind of a sense of a pass by community and then we came home from work one day and we didn't even know about it but there was a six foot fence across the entire rental unit we weren't even told it was happening and we couldn't see anyone in the street anymore

and and for me that was another kind of like nail on the coffin of like when i you know when i build a house uh or if i rent a house i'm going to do it in a way that and fosters community and doesn't and doesn't reduce life-on-life relationships uh and obviously that's that's played out in our lives in terms of patterns and rhythms now you know my book i I talk about we have intentional patterns where it's not just about the two of us as families living side by side uh we we started to eat a weekly dinner together years ago when we had little kids just because we had to eat together and it wasn't a dinner party it was just a rough and ready meal and sometimes it would be kind of eat and run and other times we would stay and

drink and talk all night um but then other neighbors joined and then other friends connected in and it became a big dinner with 20, 25 people every week rotating around the streets where this ethos of having no fences was something that carried out through patterns and rhythms beyond the architectural design and into the way we live on our street. And so you can do it and you can build relational capital, but it's just about knowing that that's what really matters or if that is what matters to you. Totally, totally love it. Something that you've mentioned a number of times in our chat already is the importance of patterns and rhythms to the way you live can you expand on that a little bit because a lot of people are going to be what does he mean by patterns and

rhythms yeah so look my conclusion a number of years ago even when i burnt out actually uh the story when i was burning out and breathless i i got a mentor and i started to realize that the things we habitually do are our values okay and the way in which we shape our time uh represent just what we really care about. And I realized, you know, I didn't have patterns in my life to exercise, which means I wasn't going to the gym three times a week. For example, I didn't have patterns to think, you know, I didn't have intentional patterns where I had time out from the churn. Uh, you know, I was always listening to something in my, in my head when I exercise. So I decided, okay, I'm going to create a pattern where I run without music or without a podcast.

So I can just reflect on my thoughts. Uh, I didn't have patterns where I ate with people. I didn't have patterns where, um, I would pray and read scripture or journal. Does that make sense? Like, so, so for me, um, for me, productivity is actually about designing the patterns in your life and the things you do habitually lead you into a particular place and to a particular direction. You can't necessarily guarantee the outcomes, but you can actually, uh, create patterns that actually lead to a representation of what you want to do. And so I see that in the, in the way that I talk about technology, the patterns of unplugging. I also see it in the way in which I talk about making pace, not making space, the productivity patterns, like how do you get your

inbox to zero? What are your patterns of processing your inbox? How do you get through a to-do list? How do you plan your day? What are the patterns that shape your schedule? And I think we are really just an outworking of the patterns that we create in our life. They're really, really important absolutely i don't know whether you've read the slight edge by uh jeff from olson but he talks about uh the fact that it's our and i'd refer to them as happy habits and rewarding rituals and daily disciplines uh but because growth of any degree and it can be upper growth or downward growth depending on the habits that you adopt so you know that for unfortunately for a lot of hardworking Aussies.

They adopt some negative patterns and because growth in either direction is exponential, you don't realise the impact these are having on a day-to-day basis. But over the length of time, the direction that you've decided ahead becomes self-evident and it's exponential. So the impacts can be massively good

if you're investing in patterns that are sort of working on each element of those five capitals that you spoke about in a positive direction. And conversely, it can be like a frog in a boiling pot that is gradually cooking yourself to death without recognising until it's too late. And the hinge point on all of that is becoming aware and becoming conscious of what those daily habits are

that you currently adopt and deciding whether is that taking me close to where I want to be or further away from it. And that seems to be the gist of what you're doing in creating that space to allow that to happen. I agree entirely. In fact, when I talk about the five capitals, the part I missed is actually when you know

what you currently have as your capital base and where you want to head well how are you going to get there and really what you need to do is create one or two patterns that are habitual and regular that will logically get you from where you are to where you want to be so clearly with finances you know if you want to save a deposit well you need to put money aside when you get your income every single week and just those small deposits where you don't touch them will lead towards a larger exponential deposit if you're investing but it's the same with anything you know a negative pattern for example i talk about in my book is starting and ending each day with technology. You wake up and pull out your

phone and watch what's happening on, I don't know, Twitter or Facebook or maybe looking at the news or investment portfolios. Like if you start the day with other people's noise and other people's chatter, well, that will also shape your day. And I reckon those negative patterns can lead you into places you don't want as well. So it's just about trading the small habits for better habits and seeing the exponential benefit over time yeah love it absolutely love that exercise well that's a a really good intro into diving into your awesome book space maker which i've had the privilege of reading uh with the byline how to unplug unwind and think clearly in the digital age i think it's a it's a really timely and necessary intervention at a time to wake us up to the fact that we are

become so consumed and addicted to external noise uh loved in in your words to talk to us why did you write it what are the key messages uh so you know sort of boil those down and and who's the best who's the book best suited for yeah thanks boshi so i had an abc interview about six years ago after i wrote a blog post about why i unplug from technology for a day a week on my digital Sabbath or my digital day of rest. And at the time, you know, six years ago, people weren't really writing about this or speaking about it. So there was quite a lot of media noise just because it was novel.

And I remember thinking, well, there's definitely something in this. So I thought I'd write a quick, you know, 20, 30-page e-book about the habits and practices of unplugging from your phone because I'm like, how complicated is it? You know, turn off your phone at the start and end of day, charge your phone out of your bedroom, have a digital free meal, et cetera. But after writing the book, the ebook, and coaching clients and looking at my own habits, and then looking more at the research around behavior change and technology, the more I realized, well, this is

way more complicated than I thought. Because on the one hand, it's super simple to turn off your phone. I mean, how hard is it to say, don't look at your phone one day a week? It's really simple to understand but oh my gosh like the the the vitriol of the the uh the emotional responses that come out of that recommendation can be huge so there's something going on in the space of you know why can't we simply turn off our phone what why can't we not look at our phone on the loo you know why why do we keep checking our phone when we're chatting with our kids or at the park when we know we'd rather be paying attention to them so there's stuff going on in the space between does that make sense totally uh and and so the book really came out of the the realization

that we need a paradigm shift we need to totally rethink our relationship with the online world because we've we've entered into a relational contract with our devices and we haven't understood what that contract is we haven't understood how uh how our technological relationship shapes our mindset so we talk about neuroplasticity and the changes to the brain I talk about freedom and choice and how our cultural understanding of what freedom is, that freedom is to do what you want when you want, and choice is more is better, how that limits our ability to make good digital habits. How does digital power impact us? How do our loves and our longings that we express through our phones impact the paradigm in our relationship with our phones? And so you need to understand why you are so attracted to your phone, even beyond the design of the tools and technologies, which are highly addictive.

But what is it about our humanity that wants to connect with our phones so much? Not that that's all bad. I'm not at all anti-tech and it's not an anti-tech book. but it's a book recognizing that too much technology if you overcook it then you experience the the negative effects of too much tech which are a loss of productivity multitasking distraction a loss of happiness and health so how do we enjoy the best of the online world but then make sure that our habits and our patterns shape what we do so we change our paradigm we change our principles so we orientate our life around true north principles that always work uh including

things like real face-to-face relationships time for contemplation um time to really invest in things that matter uh setting limits etc and then the end of the book is about the practices how do i actually on a very specific basis you know change my habits so that i live by design i live the way i want to live love it love it that's a awesome summary i'd like to dig into some of that a little bit if we can uh and perhaps break down the because the way you've actually structured the book is is awesome uh and perhaps we'll put a little bit more flesh around some of those if we can and one of the initial sections of the book talks about how we can make space and and that that difference between space and pace can you sort of add a little bit more meat to the bones

on that yeah look it's a pretty simple concept that um if you don't invest in space it won't happen nowadays uh i read a i read a quote years ago um and it suggested that we are now in an age where time away from technology cannot be assumed that for many of us if we don't intentionally create patterns or rhythms in our life where we turn off our phones and our devices get off the internet get off the screens we actually may hardly have any time without them does that make sense which is a really different way of seeing humanity it's a completely new situation for us and so therefore making space from technology in order to rest deeply and think fully and connect with loved ones or or to pursue an art or or to do things that are non-digital that bring health

and happiness that needs to be designed intentionally now and the first step is to create patterns and rhythms where you unplug to make space for the things that matter making pace are the other habits which are about learning tech skills and and having technology in order to be productive you have to be great at technology nowadays for almost every job so you can't avoid technology and be productive so i tried to work out what is the intersection between both and what I found in the research is you imagine a curve you basically need to be using technology and to use it well to have great skills and to be aware of how to integrate your technologies well in order to be productive so it's like more technology equals more productivity yeah but then you reach

this plateau where you know if you keep using more tech if you're on screens more regularly if you just keep orienting more of your life and trading more of your life for the online world then the productivity gains kind of plateau yep but then there's a there's a curve on the right hand side so it's like imagine an upside down you uh productivity by using tech then you plateau and then you hit digital overuse and this is where most of our society is heading where you become less productive you sleep less uh you concentrate less you feel you do more but you achieve less and and anxiety and unhappiness and multitasking all those negative mental and social effects come into play when we overcook our tools so we need skills to make pace which is learning to use tech

well on the left hand side of the curve we need skills to make space which is pegging back our digital overuse and unplugging so we can truly live and work well and so that the book focuses more on the skills to unplug which most people don't really know because they're brand new but it also doesn't discount the importance of being great at technology which is the stuff i call making pace love it love it let's uh get into uh well firstly dive a little bit more deeper into the principles and then i'd love you to share and at least wake us up to some of those unplugging skills that uh when we it's the old story when we're so close to the the pine needles we can't can't see the forest uh can you sort of uh just drill drill down into some of those

principles and then fold that out into some of the practices that we can start adopting that will create some space for us for the things that are important in our lives yeah so i mean we talk about values and a lot of people talk about values nowadays and i think values are really important uh but i like how um uh oh is it manson i've forgotten the the The subtle art of not giving a hoot, I have to say it on this. Mark, Mark Manson, that's his name. He talks about shitty values and the fact that actually a lot of the values we have are just shitty. And just because you've developed a value doesn't mean it leads you in the right direction.

So I prefer the term principles because that comes from Stephen Covey's work where he says actually there are some principles that just align with reality. Does that make sense? And so we need to work out what are the principles or the values that actually align with healthy reality at all times and all places that we need to recapture in the digital age. And so I've picked five, set limits, plan patterns, assign rest, cultivate community and embrace silence. And it's an acrostic for space. But basically, we always need to create limits in our life, self-defined limits, because we are finite people and you cannot achieve everything. and and we do that across all aspects of life whether it be relationships whether it be speeding uh you know in on the road whether it be drinking etc but we we need to embrace the benefits of

limits when it comes to online tech uh plan patterns i've already talked about that the importance of rhythms and patterns and how they shape us um assigning rest before work the idea that actually rest in our day and age will also elude us if we don't intentionally design and plan and learn how to rest. Most people think about learning skills for work, but we just assume that we know how to rest. And I think it's almost the opposite nowadays. We actually need to design rest, learn skills for rest,

and to put it first and then allow our work to flow around it. Cultivate Community is about the value of warm-bodied, face-to-face community and the research on that is tremendous and the last one is embracing silence so learning to live a contemplative life and i think community and contemplation are almost two sides of the same coin you need both to invest in self yeah totally agree i'd love to just dive in a little bit into that the silence piece because i think a lot of people find silence or the art doing nothing actually very confronting so can you expand on that one a little bit and and perhaps share some of the techniques that people can start to adopt to actually

enjoy the silence rather than see it as a as a threatening exercise or we're still a complete waste of their time when they think they could be doing something else yeah sure in fact i'm really tempted just to be quiet now for two minutes and see how people feel but i will keep talking uh love it love it ruth haley ruth haley barton uh said that silence if you give it its time does its work by itself uh and that's a paraphrase but i really like that i don't think there's rocket science in terms of learning from science i don't think you need some amazing technique uh i think simply if you are willing to remove yourself so that solitude and actually be quiet which is silence and put them together eventually if you do that as a habit and a rhythm

then you will start to change it's a very painful process if you've never had silence but it's a really essential process to be able to reflect on the emotions that come up think about the thoughts that you have and actually find a way forward with the spinning churn that often happens if you never actually address your inner world so what i mean by that is if you were to simply have you know half an hour of silence every morning where you don't have your phone on maybe you just have a journal and you just listen or maybe you have longer periods of silence eventually the silence will work on you does that make sense yeah it does it does yeah what i find is um yeah younger like what i find is we're in a generation now where where people have used up

every every bit of space in their life by by reaching for their phone so we've lost the art of silence. In fact, there's this fantastic study of more than 700 people from a guy called Timothy Wilson in the Uni of Virginia. And he wanted to see what people would do if they basically were left in a room with their own thoughts and without technology. And so he put people in a room and he gave them six to 15 minutes just to enjoy silence and to reflect on their thoughts. And most people said that they found it an uncomfortable or painful experience, which is amazing. In fact, he went further and he zapped them with a painful electric shock, which was so painful that people said they would pay $5 to not have again. And in another series of experiments, he did the same

experiment, but he said, I don't want you to zap yourself, but if you really want to do it, I suppose you can. And like 67% of men and 20 something percent of women chose to zap themselves with a shock that was painful rather than spend 15 minutes alone with their thoughts. Now that says something about the culture that is emerging and so I think we have this journey where we need to unplug from our tools to have silence and then we need to stick with silence long enough to work through the painful emotions and thoughts and uncomfortable feelings that you've never dealt with to recognize the data in your life and to contemplate what it means in order to then delight in silence and and when you get there it's beautiful you can you can sit for hours on end

just look at a tree and just enjoy being there there's a peace in your soul there's a restfulness that doesn't need to achieve something but that takes you've got to work through the pain of silence to get there from what i've experienced and i don't know if that makes sense but um it's a valuable thing to do totally in fact you know last thing i had i had a friend who who said to me that they um they they they got they had a really bad bout of depression many years ago um and the way they dealt with it was exercising lots and being really active and they did all the right things uh but now um they're they're 10 years older and they they've said i'm terrified about stopping because if i do i think i'll go back in depression and i think

that's the treadmill that you talked about you know that there's a point where you can outrun yourself yep but there comes a point where we need to be able to stop and actually just experience the inner life uh if we're going to be really healthy and there's a journey towards that love it love it yeah absolutely love that some of the because you you run through some really good practical uh tips to develop those happy habits and rewarding rituals uh again do you mind just sort of breaking some of those down just so that people can start to go well how do you do this yeah look i mean so in the book i talk a lot about technology so as i said silence i don't think it's complicated i mean of course you can learn to meditate in a particular way

you can pray and journal and there are some great things you can build on in terms of the silence but firstly we just have to decouple ourselves from i don't know instagram does that make sense and so and so look here are some really simple habits and there are heaps in the book and and there's a logical framework so it's not just a random bunch of habits thrown at you but uh you know one of the things i just love is um unplugging from our phone first thing in the morning and last thing at night to create a pause where we start with our own thoughts and we end with our own thoughts or maybe talking god forbid to the person you know in bed next to you um and so the simple way to do that is get everyone in the family to charge their phone out of the bedroom

just have one charging dock and uh so at least you have 10 minutes to start the day where you wake up and maybe think or meditate or reflect on the day uh it's quite different than waking up and suddenly finding out what you know i don't know donald trump has said or finding out about the next the next covid you know like outbreak numbers like it it shifts your mindset and uh so start your day with some silence and end your day with some silence by charging your phone outside of your bedroom anyone can do that it's just really hard to do though because because of all the paradigm stuff that i talked about before yeah i love that another habit i love and the research is brilliant on this is just eat a digital free meal every day so if you uh have if you live with

others um you know you can do it with others if you don't live with others you can go to someone's house and create a regular pattern where you eat once or twice a week with different people but if you have people in your house then eat together without a meal uh without a phone i'm sorry uh Eating without a meal would be very cheap. It'd be good for the white lives. I mean, I was coaching a series of executives. Well, they were high-level professionals in their early to mid-20s in a global corporation. And I was talking about the research about eating together.

So when people eat together regularly, kids in that family have higher university entrance scores. They have less depression. They're less likely to be pregnant as teenagers, less drugs, higher reduced debt, higher happiness, like followed up 10 years later, high numeracy, high literacy, like it is literally a keystone habit to raise children to eat at a table without technology. and i said that and uh one one of the girls in the group on a zoom training said oh i've just started to have a wednesday meal with my flatmates and we put away our devices and we eat together and it's like the 1960s it's fantastic and and and everyone in the room agreed and wow wow we should try that and i was like wow we there is i mean i'm an old man now i'm 44 you know But I'm like, wow, there's a generation of people who literally the idea of eating together is like International Velvet or it's like a 1950s or 60s movie where families actually sit and talk.

And yet the research is so strong on the value of that. So for you, if you don't ever eat with others and if you always have a device on you, then I'd really encourage you to have a digital free meal. It's super simple and it's transformative to your life. and I talk about questions that you would ask in order to stimulate really simple but great conversation without a phone in the book so it gets quite practical yeah awesome and I'll be encouraging the listeners to grab a hold of that because there's some great questions in there that will just start that process quite easily any final thoughts then on on the the book before I transition into what I like to call the ambush series mate no go for it I think we've covered it

pretty well there uh so like most podcasts there's a quick five that uh where you get to share your words of wisdom that the listeners always like to glean first of those is what's your favorite quote and why i really like the man in the arena quote uh which was made famous i think by brené brown but it's uh yeah theodore roosevelt originally said it so a long time before it's essentially about the fact that we are like a man in the arena with blood on us and we're sweating violently. But the bit I love is it basically says that at the end, it's the people in the arena who even if they fail,

they fail while daring greatly, whereas that's much better than never getting in the arena yourself and being a cold and timid soul who never know victory or defeat. And when life is hard, and life is often hard, I go back to that idea that actually at least as much as I'm failing and I fail a lot in life a lot goes wrong but at least I'm in the arena I want to be in the arena yeah I want to make sure I'm in the arena and what I also love about the quote is that because that given our heavy reliance on digital and social media I've noticed a growing trend where where people

will say some shocking things on social media that they'd never say if they were sitting across the table from someone. But what I love about that quote is, if you're not in the arena, I'm not interested in what you've got to say. And I think it's really prevalent because I've become really disheartened actually by some of the terrible things that people say on all forms of social media. that can be quite soul-destroying to the person involved

if they don't have that sort of inner strength to be able to ignore it. So, yeah, I love that quote. Talking to the literary fraternity, because I know you and I both love to read, what would be, apart from your own book, what would be a top book that you'd recommend listeners dive into and why? Look, in the productivity space, I mean, I find it really hard to pick a favourite book, if I'm really honest. But look, I just read 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Bergman,

which I thought was really thought-provoking. He basically says we get 4,000 weeks. It's depressing I've got less than 2,000 left. But what I took away from that is actually that's a beautiful thing. And the more we come to terms with how finite our life is and how short we live and how little we will actually be able to achieve, then the more comfortable we will become with setting ruthless um prioritizing goals i suppose to to ruthlessly prioritize and and not even just say no to things that aren't important

uh you know like some of the social media stuff we've talked about but you'll actually start to say no to things that are really important that are simply not as important as the thing that you want most and i found that quite helpful yeah and i've also found particularly helpful actually, the idea that we delay gratification and that's a good thing to a point, but then you hit a particular point in life. And I'm seeing this in my life now. I think it's part of partly why we have midlife crises where actually it makes no sense anymore to delay gratification because you've only got 2000 weeks left. And, uh, and so I think there's a flip that happens in middle age where actually it doesn't make sense to, to save for the future in some ways

for the thing that i really want because i may not live to get there you know so i'm not saying don't delay gratification but there's a an almost a flip in where we spend time and money based on how old we get and he talks about that which was useful yeah i love it it sounds very similar to michael mccullough which is book uh life in half a second where he basically paints a picture if you look at our lifespan in the context of how old the world is uh our life lasts about half a second so what are you going to do about it and it sort of took me on a journey

because in my own book The Freedom Formula I talk about what's your drop dead date because rather than think about how old you are, you think about how much time you've got left, suddenly you become very motivated well I did at least, very motivated

and inspired about gee I haven't got a lot of time left so if I'm going to do the things that I've been talking about for so long, I'd better start now so yeah love that i love that um this next one's a little bit left field but most aussies feel like they pay too much tax uh what's so what's the top legal thing that you've done to minimize the tax that you pay look i knew you'd ask me that and there are definitely things i do which you would say are sensible but if i'm really honest the top strategy i have to pay less tax is not earn much

and so uh and i'm really okay with that i love it like i've downshifted very intentionally i earn way less than i used to and uh and i invest in a whole lot of things that i i just love what i do and some of it doesn't get paid that well but i wouldn't trade it for the world so i suppose um if if you know what you really want and it's not necessarily the biggest financial reward then you don't have to pay much tax so that's a bonus i love that because i i mean i've been saying for years that true fulfillment comes from giving freely to others without ever expecting anything in return but uh you can't enjoy that freedom unless you've got the time to be able to do that and it and you know one of the underlying i think messages that that threads through what we've been

talking about today is it's it's actually all about time and how you spend your time and where you put that time and and you know coming back to your point earlier where you know saying no to great things so you make space for greater things uh i think you're right on the money there and what i'm loving about uh your own example uh is doing exactly that you're downshifting intentionally so that you can put your energy into things that really fulfill you and your family so hats off to you one quick one quick example i mean uh you know i we looked at do I want to retire by 50 because I've got the financial capital but then when I think about it actually what I do now I I love and I wouldn't like I wake up every day and I love what I do

and I I can't imagine not doing this if I didn't get paid does that make sense like and so I thought well actually if I'm really happy to try to work until I'm 70 because I just love what I do and that's what gives me life I don't need to be in such a rush to earn the money I need to retire So I'll earn less, love life more and accept the consequences if I can't. And I've built up relational capital, intellectual capital, physical capital in the meantime so that if something goes wrong in and above my life insurance, well, I'll actually still have other capitals that can help me financially. Love it.

And I think my own belief is that retirement is actually a flawed concept. I'd like to refer to it as rewirement because we might rewire what we're doing, but unless we've got purpose and meaning in our life and that gets us out of bed every day, there's not a defined date or time when we're going to say, right, I'm going to stop doing that. For me, Daniel, I love this podcasting exercise and I've only been doing it for about four years now, but it's the best thing I've ever done because I meet some fantastic people. I get to have some awesome conversations like the one we've had today. And I don't see myself stopping that any time before they know I'm into a box. Exactly. And that's exactly what I'm saying. So if that's what retirement means, stopping what you love, well then, you know, leave it for someone else.

Love that. This one, and you can answer this the way it feels comfortable, what's the worst, and I might make this a bit more generic in your case, What's the worst and best piece of advice that you've received in your life today? I was ready for the financial question. I don't think that fast on my feet. All right. Okay. Let me get – okay, you can answer that.

What's the worst and best piece of investment advice you've ever received? Oh, dear. I probably would have – I wish I could think faster of my feet, Bushy, on big questions like that. Maybe I'm contemplative because I'm just slow. No. Look, honestly, I mean, I actually was thinking about the best piece of investment advice and it coming the fact that I'm not an investor, but I do love Jesus in Matthew 6, where he says, don't store up treasures on earth, but store them up in heaven.

And what he's saying is invest on this earth in the things that actually last and things that really matter. And, you know, that I'm a big fan and, you know, his teachings have shaped me. So in that sense, that's the best. I think probably the worst from a financial point of view is the idea that you have to have a certain amount to retire. And that's the goal in life. I've seen, um, someone close to me spend their life chasing the dream of retiring with a million dollars. Um, and I saw the cost of that and I saw, uh, the fact that actually when they reached that dream, all the other

capitals in their life that weren't there were what mattered more. So yeah, they had, they had financial capital but yeah at what cost you know and um and i'm not saying that it's wrong to aim for a certain amount of uh retirement money that may that makes sense but i don't think that's a goal in itself it has to actually enable something more valuable 100 i often talk about the fact that it's not about retirement and it's not about a certain amount it's about get clear on how you want to live work out how much that lifestyle costs and all you have to do is invest in such way that it's going to fund that lifestyle and the job's done it's not about chasing money for the sake of money it's about coming back to that vision and those values and then creating a

support network that will will fund and give you the time to put energy into things that are really important to you so love that uh final question and you've and you've answered some of this already but uh what's a a personal happy habit or rewarding ritual that you think has contributed most to your success today there's lots um i actually love exercising you can't take the physio out of me and uh i get a lot of joy in going for a walk or a bike ride or a swim every day doing something that gets me moving and i tend to make them spaces where i can contemplate as well so i have times where i listen to podcasts but i also have times when i can just be quiet and move my body and enjoy it so yeah i love the physical world yeah that's almost like

active meditation is what i'm hearing in in what you're saying there to some degree yeah love that last question then and the biggie if i gave you a microphone that spoke to every single one of these 7.7 billion odd people that are currently alive in the world and you had 60 seconds to talk what would you say to them oh gosh i didn't expect that um i mean i have to go to spirituality because for me that's the most important capital so i think invest in the eternal things and the things that really last in a life deep thought um just making space for what really matters and allow your why to shape who you are and how you live i think something like that yeah love it love it extremely well said mate it's been awesome i really enjoyed our conversation

for those listening that they've had a penny drop moment here in relation to probably the invisible unseen need to create space in their lives and they wanted to go and do more with that how do they reach out to you where can they get the book and in what other ways can you help them yeah so the book is called space maker how to unplug unwind and think clearly in the digital age uh it actually actually i should mention it actually won the australian business book award for best personal development book and you'll find it uh pretty much everywhere so um booktopia amazon uh most online stores you can you can listen to to me rabbit on for another few hours i think seven hours and as an audio book via audible and of course it's an e-book as

well on kindle and kobo you can reach out to me at info at spacemakers.com.au or look up my website which is a plural so spacemakers.com.au and there's a whole heap about what we do in terms of productivity consulting and training and there's a lot on the book and free downloads and things like that as well love it it's been awesome making space to have this conversation and invest exactly in that, mate. So I appreciate you being so generous with your time and I'm looking forward to staying in touch. Yeah, thanks.

Same with you, Bushy. All right, bye. Thanks, mate. To get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes, just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au. That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au. or check us out at www.bushymartin.com.au

forward slash GetInvested. I look forward to joining you next week for another episode of the GetInvested podcast. So thanks for listening. And as always, dream as if you live forever and live as if you die tomorrow.