The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Cheers to Monday: The Surprisingly Simple Method to Lead and Live with Less Stress and More Joy by Amy Leneker

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

Cheers to Monday: The Surprisingly Simple Method to Lead and Live with Less Stress and More Joy by Amy Leneker https://www.amazon.com/Cheers-Monday-Surprisingly-Simple-Method/dp/1394388802 What if the secret to less stress is just three simple steps? If you’ve ever woken up on a Monday already exhausted – or spent Sunday night bracing yourself for the week ahead – the problem isn’t you. The problem is stress. And there’s a surprisingly simple way to break free. Stress is embedded in today’s workplaces – disguised as drive, rewarded as resilience, and even praised as passion. But chronic stress isn’t a strength; it drains leaders, divides teams, and damages entire organizations. Cheers to Monday is the joyful rebellion against stress and burnout you’ve been waiting for. In this transformative book, Amy Leneker – a former C-suite executive and now a trusted leadership advisor to Fortune 100 companies and public sector organizations – reveals a liberating truth: stress isn’t the price of success – it’s the thief that steals it. And she proves it with sharp wit, refreshing honesty, and laugh-out-loud stories. You’ll get the same coaching and science-backed strategies Amy shares in boardrooms, workshops, and conferences around the world. Learn how to: See stress differently – and finally break the cycle of exhaustion, overwhelm, and self-doubt Sort stress into five clear categories – so you know exactly what to do with each one Solve stress with a simple framework to reclaim your time, energy, and focus – at work and beyond Celebrate the shift – because reducing stress isn’t just a wellness strategy, it’s a joy strategy…and much more. Cheers to Monday isn’t just a book – it’s a movement to transform how you lead, live, and work. It’s for every leader quietly falling apart, every team crushing goals while getting crushed in the process, and every human who’s tired of pretending they’re “fine.” Whether you’re just starting your career, climbing the corporate ladder, or reflecting on the legacy you’ll leave behind, this book gives you three simple steps to finally break free from stress – and reclaim the life you were meant to live. About the author You deserve to lead—and live—with less stress and more joy. Amy Leneker will show you how. Amy is an optimistic, joy-seeking, recovering workaholic. She’s also a leadership expert, keynote speaker, and author of Cheers to Monday, the Surprisingly Simple Method to Lead & Live with Less Stress & More Joy (Wiley, 2026). After two decades in leadership (including ten years in the C-suite), Amy stepped off the hamster wheel of hustle and onto a more meaningful path. Known for her warmth, wit, and wildly relatable stories, Amy has trained over 100,000 people around the globe to lead (and live!) with less stress and more joy. She and her family make their home in the Pacific Northwest.

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. In the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready.

Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education role. roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Welcome, welcome, welcome, one and all. One and all are welcome as long as you're good person and not evil, and you're here to learn how to be a better good person if you are.

Go to goodreads.com, Fortressch, Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Voss won on the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet. Today we had an amazing old lady on the show. We're going to be talking about her book that's coming out on, let's see, May. Add it up here and it changed it on Amazon for me. We're going to say May, or I'm sorry, March 30th, not May, folks. I'm just winning here. March 30th, 2026.

And we're going to get into with her and her insights and how you can make your life better. Her book is entitled, Cheers to Monday, the surprisingly simple method to lead and live with less stress and more joy by Amy Lenacher on the show with us today. We're going to get into with her and her insights and everything she does. She is an optimistic joy seeking recovering workaholic. She's also a leadership expert, keynote speaker, an author of Cheers to Monday, the surprisingly simple method and lead to lead and live with less stress and more joy. So welcome the show. How are you, Amy?

Great. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Thanks for coming. We really appreciate. Give us your dot-coms. Harkabee will find you on the interwebs. Sure, amy-Lenniker.com.

It's L-E-N-E-K-E-R. Amylickr.com. So give us a 30,000 overview. What's inside this new book? Thank you for asking. Cheers to Monday is a joyful rebellion against the way that we're working. Because the way we're working isn't actually working. Stress levels are high engagement is down.

And so this book takes a really different approach to managing workplace stress so that we allow more time for joy in our workday. Oh, you want to enjoy things at work? What kind of scam is this? I do. I'm afraid you. Who hired you? You were working for my bus, aren't you? I do. And it's so interesting because I want to know this from your own life, that how we're doing at work impacts how we're doing at home. Oh, yeah. Part of my mission of creating workplaces with less stress and more is that it doesn't end there. The ripple effect carries over into families and communities far beyond work. Communities and places far beyond work. Yeah. It's interesting, you know, and people want less stress,

more joy. What's this? Give us a little tease out. We want people to course buy the book to get the details, as they say. But what do we have to do? Do we have to create more boundaries? Do we have to move to a to a cabin in the woods in Montana, like that Unabomber guy and like just live off a typewriter and don't talk to anybody. That sounds like a great way to have less stress and more joy. We're telling no. You don't have to do anything that extreme. And in fact, the reason why it talks about a simple method is we've been over-complicating our reactions to stress. And in fact, what I saw, I interviewed 150 leaders and I did focus groups. And what I found is that the ways we're trying to manage stress at work actually make us more stressed. And so this is about not overcomplicating

it and instead just doing three really simple steps. So first we got to see it. We got to see what are all the work stressors out there. Secondly, we sorted. We sorted into actionable categories that we can do something about. And then third, we solve it using a really simple framework that wherever your stressor lands on that quadrant, you've got a next action to take. So incredibly simple, it's meant to stop the spinning and the overthinking that can happen when we're stressed. When you're overstressed, that could be an issue. So, you know, it's, there's a lot of like, you know, you hear things that you didn't hear back in the days. Like, you know, your boss can call you 24-7, the middle of the night, middle of the weekend, middle of your vacation, and be like,

hey, you got to get in here. You know, we need you to answer emails or get on the Zoom thing, whatever. and there's a lot of that going on where, you know, some countries have actually, you know, I've heard places like, what is it, you know, like France or other places in Europe where they go, hey man, people off the clock, you can't contact them anymore, right? And, you know, that sort of thing.

And that seems to be the way it was. Like, when my players are off the clock back in the old days, I mean, if it was after five and they were gone, you were just like, well, I'll talk to tomorrow. You can call them up at their house. Sure. I mean, unless you're, I don't know, you had some really major sort of thing, but a lot of stuff can wait until tomorrow. Or not, you know, worst case, you know, you send an email, but, you know, there's some people that are, they're trapped by emails.

And I think one of the laws are in some of the other countries you can't email a person after hours. And do we need more of that in your research that you've done? When you're raising an interesting point, because what you're talking about is that blurring between work and life. And you were describing a really simple work ends at 5 o'clock, and now I'm moving into my home life. And yet, that's really not the reality of how many people are working today. And if we look back, it really escalated during the pandemic. Yeah. During the pandemic was the first time that we ever saw a separation of work in life as one of the key factors, one of the root causes of burnout.

And it makes sense, doesn't it? Because people were working at home and they were living at work. I mean, it was all just one thing. And even though, of course, the pandemic is over, I don't believe that we've come back to a better-boundaried way. And that's certainly not true for the leaders and teams that I work with. Much closer to what you were describing, the always on, always feeling some sense of desire to be connected.

Yeah. And yeah, you're right. I didn't really thought about that, how COVID had kind of, you know, everyone's suddenly working from home, so you're working and living at home and kind of broke, those things and now we've kind of come out of it, it seems like the expectation is still, well, you know, you're still at our beck and call,

you know, which is more like slavery as opposed. You know, I mean, I used to have this, one of my girlfriends used to be a flight attendant and so she would fly it at two different cities sometimes during a day and then fly back or she'd have to stay overnight and fly back. And I remember saying to her, you know, she's like, oh, I have this great job. And I mean, it is a good job. But I said, you know, one of the problems,

is you only paid to fly the one way. You know, if she's not sitting on the, you know, sometimes they just ride along to come back. But you're only paid for one way. So if I, if you fly in Chicago, you only get paid to fly to Chicago. You don't get paid the hours that you spend there overnight or the flight back and the hours of flight back.

Technically, you know, I used to tell her, I'm like, if I'm away from home for work, you're paying me by the hour. That you're paying me an incredible sum that when I equated down to the hour, you're paying me. And I think on two of my girlfriends that were flight attendants, I pretty much figured the hours they were putting in were basically minimum wage. Oh, I can see that.

Yeah. Because, I mean, they, you know, sometimes they, you know, they couldn't get back right away. And so they'd have to stay overnight. Yeah, they do get a free hotel and they do get a free taxis and they get all sorts of reimbursement for. Sure. And so, but you're still not home. Because I'd be like, I still don't have you. Like, I'm just here at home going, I have a girl.

from bedded out. Yeah, that's a hard schedule. And I can certainly see how there are different seasons of life where probably that schedule might make more sense than in other seasons of life. But if you're single, it's great, you know, you can go to another city. And, you know, a lot of people love being a flight at flight attendants because they can travel and see the world. And, you know, it gets been and they got great benefits too and stuff like that from what I understand. But yeah, I was just like, no, man, if you equate the hourly and break it down, So what do we need? Do we need more boundaries? As boundaries is the key word? What is it that we need? Boundaries are a huge piece of it. And I think even before boundaries, what I encourage the leaders and teams that I work with to think about is awareness.

So many people are just not even aware of how much stress they're carrying. And I've done this exercise with so many leadership teams. And I'll ask them on a scale of zero to 10, how challenging has your stress been? And then they share the number. And it is not uncommon at all, Chris, for a leader to share a number and have the rest of the team shocked. Wow. So I've had it where a leader said, I'm a two, maybe a three. And the rest of the team is staring at them going, no way, you're at you're at 11 on the 1 to 10 scale. So just completely unaware of how they were showing up at work, completely unaware of how their stress was impacting other people. So I think even before boundaries, which there's no question are important, I think, think we actually have to start with awareness. And I think do a lot of managers, do a lot of managers

need to start being empathetic toward this as well and stop going, yeah, you quit being a dick. If this can wait until tomorrow, I want to see them, let's do that. Let's, you know, let's try and think of our employee's mental health for change maybe. I think managers are part of the puzzle, but they're not the only part of the puzzle. And I say that because having been one, I remember feeling like, gosh, it's so easy to blame a manager, but it really, it takes a manager doing exactly what you just said, when it takes leadership not putting unreasonable amounts of pressure on managers, and it takes the people reporting to the managers to be on the same page. So absolutely yes, and it's when the whole system works together that you can finally start to see some meaningful change.

Sounds like more CEOs and leaderships need to embrace this policy. I mean, you know, the other game that causes stress, I think, to people, and you're the pro on this, so you can tell me on this question. But it's, you know, one of the things that as an employee you're sometimes fearful of is FOMO, fear of missing out. And, you know, oh, well, maybe if I don't take the boss's call at nine o'clock at night, he's going to call my competitor, fellow employee, who might get the promotion over me if I don't put in that extra effort. And I've done that a lot at where I work for other companies or even my clients. I put in extra effort for them. And I think it will get recognized and it doesn't. And so is that an issue too?

The FOMO, the like, well, I got to keep up with the Jones. Does it work? I think it's absolutely a part of it. And I think what starts out as feeling like you're doing something above and beyond. Like, oh, gosh, I'm on email at 11 o'clock. That's something unusual. Suddenly just becomes the norm. And so many people that I work with are in.

meetings all day, every day. And so the only time that they have to do non-meeting work is after the work day ends. So it's not, for I think the film old thing is real. I agree with you. There's no doubt that that's true. And I think there are some folks who would be just fine missing out, but they're not email because they're trying to get ready for the next day. They're trying to respond to everything that had come in earlier in that same day. And so it's this bigger look at how are we structured at work. Do we have too many meetings? And chances are the answers yes, because I've never yet worked at an organization and said, you know what? We need more. We need more meetings. So I think it's a great, a great way to look at that. I've had to get some time back. I think leadership needs to set

the standard. That's usually the people who need to put their foot down on stuff. You know, I mean, uh, people need, people need downtime to refill their bucket and refresh. And the other thing is, too, is they need to be with their families. They need to, you know, assuming they like them, what you found in COVID, a lot of people didn't like their family. Yeah. And it's like, you know, I can avoid you guys for most of the day, but, you know, I can't. I really hate you people.

But, you know, it's not my problem. But, you know, they need that downtime. They need the time to reset. You know, even me as an entrepreneur where we live, drink, sleep, eat, drink, business. I mean, I have dreams of business. I remember years ago when I had three companies at the same time I was running, I would just sit and go, can I please have a dream about a Bo Derek running down the beach or something?

Anything other than business? Anything other than business. Like I would dream about who is going to fire the next day and how they'll play out, the meetings I was going to have, the negotiators I was going to have. I would dream like my whole next day and then I'd have to go do the next day. Right. And I'd just be like, for love of God, can I just think about beaches? Yeah, that's all consuming.

Yeah. And but people need their downtime. They need to reset, you know. You certainly, I think, as a leader, you have to look at your people and go, not only you to reset, it's important that they spend time with their families and check in with them because, you know, I learn as leader, if you don't have family support for the work they're doing with the hours they're putting in, especially if it's overtime, they're going to have problems.

And, you know, a lot of my guys are. usually sales guys. So if their home life is mucked up, you know, they've got issues and problems, you know, you're never home long enough. Sure. And the research backs up what you're saying. There's a, there's a study that talked about 70% of people who have had a divorce or had a breakup with a significant relationship attribute work stress as one of the main pockets. 70% and what's even more interesting to me, that number jumped to 79%. for Gen X. Really?

The sales guys that you're talking about, the ones who are saying, gosh, I'm having a hard time balancing this demanding job and trying to keep it all together at home, that is not unusual. That's the norm. We're seeing it in 70% of people. And there's that ripple effect that we talked about earlier that when we don't have this work stress figured out, it ripples fast and furiously through our lives. Yeah. And so many times we think about, well, you know, we're paying them well, so they must be

happy, you know, that sort of thing. We're giving them plenty of pizza lunches, you know, that kind of running joke there on LinkedIn. Yeah. Just have a pizza party. We just rather have more money, please. Exactly.

Or less hours or, you know, and to me, I mean, you know, like I've asked myself many times, can this wait until tomorrow? Yeah, they can wait until tomorrow. No one's going to die. Everyone's going to be fine. Yeah. You know, unless it's some sort of emergency, like, hey, where are the keys of the

office? We can't lock up or something like really crazy or, you know, something's on fire and you got to try and put it out. But other than that, you know, so do I need a restraining order from my boss? Is that how this works to get them to quit calling me after hours? Like I have to have a specific restraining order served on them that do not. You cannot come within 500 feet of Chris Voss from 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. So I don't typically talk about restraining orders in my work as a leadership consultant. But I do talk...

There's still time. Still fine. But I do talk a lot about team agreements. It's as simple as what's okay and what's not okay. So it's okay to reach out if there's an emergency. It's not okay to expect a risk. I mean, just having those really simple agreements on a team, where I see conflict often arises is where we hold people accountable for things they've never agreed to.

And that's a recipe for disaster. So we've got to take the time to figure out. what is okay and what's not okay and how we're going to work together and then we've got something that we can hold each other accountable for yeah then we'll have something that we can hold each other accountable for yeah it's uh you know it it it's just i can see it playing on the fear of missing out where people oh like god i answer my boss and and uh yeah it does seem a little much of a hindrance like let people go cool out i'd rather have you come back to work feeling refreshed and you know know, you've taken care of balance out your life with some other stuff.

But man, I'm an entrepreneur. I've worked all my life 24-7, asleep, dream, eat, poop. Everything I do, I'm doing business usually when I do it. Even when I'm asleep, I'm like, I don't know, doing counting for my company or so. Your brain is still going. My brain is still going, five plus ten. And how are we going to meet the month and quota this soon? Hot?

You know, that sort of thing. But how does one, an entrepreneur like me who doesn't, who I am my own boss, you know, one of the things I have struggled with this, I wrote about my book Beacons leadership where I had to start teaching myself to take breaks on weekends and to go chill out, have downtime, celebrate, have some gratitude. I also kind of spoil myself. I usually try and take myself or whoever I'm dating out to a really nice, beautiful dinner, maybe out to the theater.

And I do that because during the week, if I start kind of going, I can go, hey man, you know what? Saturday night, you got a wonderful date. You're going to have some great food. You're a beautiful steak. And it's just going to be a great time. And that's your reward.

So just get through the week. And I just kind of treat myself like a dog. There's always a reward. It needs to work. It's a great strategy. this idea of recognizing that there's going to be cycles and you're overworking and then you're resting and having a cadence that makes sense for you and your life. And I think you're hitting on something really important for you as an entrepreneur. And also, I see this happen for people

who do work in organizations that sometimes we're our own worst enemy, that sometimes those really hard deadlines or those really tough expectations are coming from us. Right. And so there's this, like, awareness piece. And that's right hearing you described, but you've really honed that over the years of an entrepreneur figuring out what is urgent and when do I need to

actually take a step back and relax. Yeah. It's, and I still to this day struggle with it because I'm like, I know there's 500 things I've got to do at work right now. And yet if you can take a break, you come back refreshed, you come back clear-eyed. Sometimes

you can look at your work and whatever sort of problem you've been trying to find the answer to. you can suddenly see it because you stepped away from it. Yes. I do that with photo editing. When I'm editing photos, I'll edit a photo at time, then I'll take a break, maybe do another photo edit the next day from a shoot. And I try and break it up so that I can come back with kind of a fresh perspective.

Because it's so deep in the weed, you can't find your way out and everything you see is weed. Yes. And you're just like, you're just scrambled. And you know, and you're just kind of feel reactionary as opposed to pro proactive. And you're describing something that actually happens in the brain. The default mode network is that part of our brain that actually engages when we're not focused on something. It's why so many great ideas come when you're in the shower or you're taking a walk or you're driving. One of my favorite examples is how Paul McCartney wrote yesterday.

Are you familiar with how he did it? I'm not, it's not coming to me off the top of the head. So the story that I've read is that he woke up with the melody in his head. And it was so good that he thought there's no way that I didn't steal this. Oh, he's not somebody else wrote it, huh? Yeah, like clearly, so we went around asking, asking, and everyone's like, no, we've never heard that, but it's great. And so then he wrote the lyrics and, of course, made musical history. But it's that idea that it came to him while he was asleep.

Like you've actually got to give your brain time to turn off as you were describing. And then that's where the magic happens. Yeah. Yeah. That's where the magic happens, as they say. Yeah, it's sometimes taking that break from things and just kind of seeing if it really is. There's a lot of great songs that were written that way too where the contributors that were like, I don't know, I had this thing kicking around, you know.

I think like enter salmon, Lick was kicking around for a while. from Metallica. And, you know, I remember, like, Black Sabbath, they aided the song Paranoid. They didn't want to put on the album. They thought it was a goofy, you know, kind of pop spin-off, which wasn't really their style. It's one of the greatest hits.

And there's a lot of songs like that. But people just never thought they did. What are some other suggestions that you have in the book that people need to maybe start incorporating to kind of take back their home life, personal life? I think one of the most important things that we can do, is to start normalizing having conversations about stress at work. And so the simple question that I shared with you that I asked leaders and teams on a scale of zero to 10,

how challenging has it been, but actually starting to normalize conversations about stress. The latest report from the American Psychological Association showed that over 80% of American workers are experiencing stress at work. That's a lot. And so even if you're not, even if you're listening to this and you're saying, I don't, I don't really feel stressed out at work. It's worth noting that 80% of your colleagues might. So just that awareness,

just that ability to start talking about it, because the sooner you can intervene, the better. It's much easier to figure out how are we going to manage stress than it is to figure out how are we going to recover from burnout. Sooner you can catch it,

the better. And that comes through conversations and dialogue on teams. And maybe more people need to have this conversation or broochist conversation with their company. Like, how can we have a better work-life balance? I mean, is work, you know, I've heard some people say work-life balance is BS. You know, you hear all sorts of things on TikTok and the internet and, you know, people drop in all sorts of attention, posts and hustle, whatever they're doing. You know, some people said, hey, you know, you need to have work-life balance.

Some people would say, eh, it's BS, blah-b-b-da. What have you found? Is work-life balance really that important? Is that what we're describing here? Here's my take on it, and I feel really strongly about this. So I apologize in advance if I come across as emotional. So I don't like the term work-life balance because I think it sets us up to fail. Because balance by definition means at any given time you have two things that are equal.

Never going to happen between me in life. Never going to happen. And so for me, when I was a young mom in a leadership role, trying to achieve work-life balance, it was impossible. And I felt like a failure every single day. If we let go of work-life balance and try something different, if we try to achieve work-life harmony, now we're on to something. Harmony is different. Harmony doesn't mean that these two things are equal on any given day. harmony means that it's in a mix that's uniquely satisfactory to me. So what works for me for work-life harmony might look really different than it does for you or really different than another colleague.

So it's figuring out what is uniquely satisfactory to me in this season of my life, which is very different than trying to balance these two competing things on any given day. Work-life harmony. You know, I mean, technically your home, if you work eight hours a day on average, technically your home was 8 minus 24 is 16. Yeah. So your home price as much as you're at work, or you're supposed to be, assuming you sleep. You know, one of the other things I saw, I don't think I brought this up, but we touched on a little bit. But during COVID and after, it might still be going on, I don't work for other people. there was

you know my friends that worked for these big companies they were losing their minds with like 20 25 Zoom calls a day yeah and it was just back to back sitting there and during Zoom calls that 90% of could have been an email

yeah yeah it's always the guy who just wants to hear himself talk wait that me research shows that too Microsoft did studies during the pandemic and they found that their use of teams, so their number of meetings, tripled during the pandemic.

Triple. And it makes sense, does it? Because, funnily, meetings got shorter and they just became back to back to back to back. And what used to be some time allowed for, I could have walked down the hallway or I'd by a drive to another location. All of that buffer time went away. And meetings were just stacked one after another after another. So, yes, the volume absolutely.

increased and we've got the data to back that up. And I think a leader or a manager should say, hey, look, these Zoom meetings are great. Yeah. Give people an hour break between them. You know, I even, you know, we do three podcasts today. At one point, we were doing four. Yep. And the one thing I found out very early on is I can't do them back to back. I can't, I need like two hours between them. And I think we have it at three now. Let me see here. It spits too. But we have a standard two hours you can't schedule. There's a two hour block that's in there. And I take Fridays off.

Great. And I started about, what is it? I think about three or four, six months ago maybe. I started taking Fridays off because, you know, I do three hard interviews with people. I love interviewing people. But to be on, to be funny, to be interesting and, you know, try and write jokes in your head as you go and stuff. It's a lot of work to do a show. if you do a great show.

Yeah. And we're still, you know, we're good at it. We're not great at it, but we're working on it. You're straight at it. I'll get there. Thank you. But we're always striving for perfection. But, you know, as soon as the show goes, the curtain comes down and I say goodbye to the guest, it's like, I kind of like, I'm like one of those balloons that looks like somebody.

I just kind of decompress. And I got to go someplace quiet. and try not to murder anybody for like, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes while I take a press. And by the third show, it's hard to maintain that level of being on because I have to be on his post. And so by usually after three shows, I'm pretty cooked for the day. And so I started taking Fridays off because I do more podcasts per day than a lot of people do, probably 99.9% of podcasts. caster's and so we hit it hard and Monday through Friday I do my little gig and I know that Friday I get to go do the thing one of the problems I was having and you know part of it is my age

if I was younger this wouldn't be a big deal I'll probably do 10 a day but uh and it's a sitting too that kills you I think that's what really drives people crazy on the Zoom calls you're just sitting there and you know your their legs are going numb and your brain's rotting and you're really on the side of your mouth and, you know, the keyboard, and it's not a good look for promotions with the bottom. Right. Not a good look at all. Are you drooling? So you've been doing it for a few months now, these Friday's off. Six months out. They take Fridays off? I don't love it. I'm so curious. Tell me about, tell me about what you're seeing as being different.

So one of the problems I was having is I do Fridays as work. Been there before this. And so I do five days of work and two days of no work. Well, Friday night, I feel just run over like a bus by the end of the week. I'm just, I feel just run ragged. And so Saturday, you know, I'm usually sleeping in a little bit. I'm wandering around, trying to have a coffee. I'm trying to enjoy my day. And, you know, and then usually I'm trying to get, you know, I'll have a date on a Saturday. And so I'll, like, you know, be trying to, now I've got to go entertain somebody else.

Sure. And be on, if you will. And that or I go do photo shoots and photo work and photo studio work. Then I have to be on again. And by the time I really feel decompressed, it's Sunday. And I'm mounting into Monday, right? I'm like halfway through, I'm like four o'clock on Sunday going, I finally feel at peace.

Right. And you know, what's funny is Sunday is my great gratitude for gratefulness day, I call it. And so Sunday is my day. There's no dates allowed on that day. It's my day. I take myself out to dinner on that day. I go to things to my dogs. I go edit photos and I kind of archive my life.

I kind of take a look at what happened the week before, where things are going in the future. I were going to have some of the backups on my photos and myself. And it's kind of like he would have to use to have one day out of the week. I believe it was Thursday where he would do his archives. No women allowed, no visitors loud. He goes in his library. And he just kind of enjoyed.

enjoys his life. He gets to, okay, what pictures do I want to put in my archive and what I want to do? And, you know, some planning goes into it too where you kind of plan the next week. And I can just slowly mount the next week. I can look at, okay, where's my appointments? Looks like I've got this going on. And I can slowly start kind of absorbing the upcoming week without just like, in your face. And it's been a godsend. I'm more productive. I feel better. You know, on Friday, kind of sitting around doing things and I'm starting to decompress. Everyone's out working. You know, I will answer like emails and text messages and stuff, but, you know, no fires. I'm not meeting people, not performing, you know, and I'll just kind of pace myself through it.

And, I mean, it just feels great because Saturday, I feel fully refreshed. Right. I feel Friday's got me out of the can, you know, I'm out doing my errands or whatever I need to do instead of wasting that time on Saturday. because this is what a lot of people doing on weekends. They're just running errands and doing probably clothes and washing and, you know, trying to get the house vacuumed. And, yeah, it's just running, running, running. And so by Saturday, I feel decompressed.

And I can sit and enjoy my Saturday and then I can move into my Sunday. It's great. And then I can start mounting up for Monday and maybe, you know, plan some things like, yeah, what should I do in the future and stuff? And I love it. I mean, I've been telling all my friends, now I understand the four-day work. week and why and I'm a guy who sent thousands of employees I've had thousand employees underneath me through over 35 years of work and I can tell you they're not working

much on Friday I don't mean to throw everyone under the bus but a lot of people aren't they're just they're starting to tune out they're watching YouTube videos at work they're starting to I don't know playing their you know their party that night on Friday night a lot of people are I mean they're just winding down mentally sure And so it's just a throwaway day as far as I'm concerned. And I can see why countries now, like European countries are saying, hey, it's just a four-day work week. And I got to tell you, I'm more efficient than I've ever been. I've made more money in the last six months than I for a long time since before the

of the 2008 mortgage crisis. It's made me much more successful. And I just feel more fulfilled, too. Like there's nothing, I can't tell you. You know, when you get to the end of Friday and you're just like, oh, thank God, it's Friday and go, thank God it's Thursday. This is my Friday night. And people are like, are you okay, man? What's up with you?

It's not with you. You still got Friday. And I'm like, no. I think I'm fine. Paul Hartman. phrase a couple of times that I picked up on where you said where it feels like you've always got to be on. And I think this idea of really paying attention to how we're wired and what brings us energy versus what gives us. is what gives us energy and because that's connected to our stress levels too.

And so your ability to be self-aware enough to say, gosh, after all of this interaction, I need some downtime where other people might need to recharge in a very different way. And I think that all helps with our stress joy now. What about murdering people that piss you off? That tends to help with my stress and increases my joy. No comment. But the judge says they can't do it anymore. something who

David Jones. Yeah. He seems biased to me. I think he has some he has something against me. But no, I mean, that's the,

this is the schedule that keeps me from the murdering. That's basically or something. I love how you were describing Friday because that's how, that's how most people describe Friday. You walked into the office and people are saying, happy Friday or have a great weekend.

There really is a different, there's a different, sense of the world on that day. I'm a certified mediator, I specialize in workplace conflict. I can count on one hand the number of meditations I've done on a Friday. People are not thinking I'm going to directly deep hard conflict on a Friday. It doesn't happen. And so that was kind of the cheeky title of the book came from that, which is, well, what if we could feel like that at the start of our week? What would that be like then? If instead of our life being a countdown, trying to get to something else, what if we could begin it that way?

What would it take and the organization would have to do in order to build that kind of a culture? Cheers to Monday, the title of the book. Yeah. And there's kind of a you you go through when you decompress, right? Yes. You're kind of this high stress level. And then you go down and you're kind of living in that cabin in Montana writing a, writing, hate mail and manifest or something.

And then you start feeling good. And then you come up and you're feeling up. And I got to tell you, by Monday, I'm happy to be on Monday. Because I've had three-day, I've had basically get a three-day weekend. Yes, every week. Yes. Imagine, folks, if you could do that, you guys would work for people. And every now and you get that rare three-day weekend.

I do it every week. So hate me. You can send your hay mail to Chris Foss. Don't give a. I love that you're doing that. that and why not? I mean, there's a thing about recognizing

how many of these constraints are we putting on ourselves? And I would assume if I see you a six months from now, you'll still be doing Fridays off because why don't yeah, I think I will. I don't, I'm more productive.

I think I doubled my income last year. And I think that's one of the biggest contributors because I really accelerated when I, and it's really hard to double my income. Yeah. I was kind of surprised too. I was like, wow. And yeah, and so by the time I come up, the you, where I'm feeling all good and happy, and I've got my Sunday of gratitude and I'm just spending times appreciating life and my quality of life and what I can do maybe to improve it in the next coming week.

And so my Monday, I'm, I had Monday refreshed, man. I'm bright and chipper, ready to go. I'm kind of excited to meet my first guest because, you know, and then even sometimes I'm just like, like, what buttons do I push again? How is... Right. Well, it doesn't work. I mean, good for three a day. That's good.

That's a great problem to have. After 16 years, I'm like, which button do I put? Right. I've been gone so long. But no, I think we should do it to everybody. This whole nonsense, you know, you've seen Elon Musk and other people be like, you know, drive training their employees, you know, when he took over Twitter. He's like, I expect people to sleep on the floor at the office.

Yeah. And that's just abuse, I think. I think we need to legislate some of this, really, you know. And but I got to tell you, my mental health is way better. My spiritual health is way better. My just, I hope I'm going to live longer maybe. Sure. And, you know, I'm single and with no kids.

So I have two dogs to make happy and that's, you know, probably someone I'm dating who's already hating me after a date or two. So I don't have a lot that I have to do. And, you know, I hire all the other stuff out. You know, I don't have to deal with the stuff. But, you know, a lot of mothers or fathers, parents with kids, you know, they got to do the laundry and they got to clean the house. And, you know, because you clean the house once. And then by the, you know, within a couple days, it's a tornado again. And you got to do all this stuff.

And I remember living that life back when I was younger. And you're just like, oh, God, you know. I mean, I don't mow lawns. I don't do laundry. I don't put out clean bathrooms. I'll vacuum every now and then, but, you know, there's mates that you can hire for this stuff. And that's the other key, too, is, I don't know if you talk about this in your book, but that's the other K2 thing. The other thing, too, is to kind of go, hey, man, what if I could put this out to somebody else and they could do a better job and I could spend more time just being happy?

I mean, and I know a lot, some women love to clean and stuff like that, but I've even told my girlfriends, I'm like, hey, man, let's get this maid back over here. Because that way you don't have to deal with, well, I like, no, no, you don't. Let's get the maid over here. You know, she'll put the little corners on the toilet paper, wash the, I mean, all of these folks that do cleaning professionally, they clean better than anybody I've ever met. And they might have a problem or something they should look into. But no, they're usually super a clean. And why go through the stress of spending five hours on your Saturday or Sunday cleaning stuff? And you're just sitting there going, I'm going to have to do this again next week.

You know, or you got the kids wandering in with the muddy shoes, you know, like screaming at them. And, you know, by the end of the weekend, everyone hates you. I think that used to be my relationship. Yeah, I think it really is an individual choice. And I think it's based on what resources you have available at any given time. I think back times in my life, I would have loved that. And it just wasn't an option when you're living paycheck to paycheck, not even something you consider that you're going to outsource. But as your circumstances change and the seasons of your life's change, it's worth evaluating what makes sense right now.

It might be the biggest ROI for our joy right now. And that may change as all sorts of factors change. the family dynamic or income or health, there's so many things that impact what we have access to and what some people simply don't have access to. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, even then, you know, it's a delegate, you know, delegate to the kids. You know, my parents, we cleaned and did everything. Yes. Not everything, but, you know, ask for help. Ask for help. But I'm on board with you on this. I would like to see more of this. I know we've kind of gone back to where people aren't at home as much.

There used to be kind of a nice thing about working at home is because you could mix business with pleasure. And it's like, hey, I need to run the dishwasher real quick on some dishes. You could do that between your Zoom calls or something. You know, I mean, there's a little bit of that. But for the most part, you know, now everyone's kind of, I think most people are going back to the office. Now aren't they forcing everyone back to the office at this point? For me, it's still a mix. Some of my clients are in the office full time.

Some are hybrid. So I work with a mix of all different kinds of organizations. But I'm certainly seeing it with a number of the public sector organizations that we work for that many government agencies. Oh, yeah. That's right. Are starting to bring people back on a much more regular basis than we saw just a few years ago. Yeah. It seems to be really going back the other way.

But I don't know, whatever it works. I'm just glad I don't have to do it. But, yeah, I mean, I can tell you the testament, taking that Friday off. Yes. It was the best thing I ever did. I felt it that week. And just having more time to decompress. And that probably speaks to like what we've been talking about when you wrote in your book,

is giving your employees a break. Yeah. You know, I'm an asshole for a boss. So my employees, you know, the break they can get. I can barely put it with me half the time. You just fired yourself once a day. Every day, two or three times a day. And you just won't leave the office.

I tried to get a restraining or against myself. I don't know. I mean, the judge says, that's not how that works. What you're describing about breaks, it's so important because it's actually, there's a physiological reason for it, and it's the stress cycle. So what you're describing is you have brilliantly, why they're intentionally or unintentionally, you've given yourself an entire day. You've given yourself all of Friday to complete that stress cycle.

So by Saturday, you're rocking and rolling. But so many organizations aren't set up that way where it's back to back things and there is no break. There's no buffer to actually give our bodies a chance to complete that stress cycle. And so compounds throughout the day and throughout the week and the month and it just goes on and on. And most people are like, what's the thing that you on Saturdays, relax clothing, leisure Fridays? You know, you don't have to wear your suit on Friday or whatever it's called. Like casual Friday? Casual Fridays.

Okay, I'm not hurt. I wasn't sure. I work for myself, so I'm casual. I always be shorts and flip flops. But it's casual. My boys one time said to me, they go, they go, eh, how come you get to wear shorts and flip flops and stuff around the office? And I'm like, it's a casual boss's day.

And they go, well, but you do that every day. And I'm like, every day is casual boss. There we go. That makes it. The only thing keeps me from spontaneously exploding. but I really think more leaders need to look at this. I, after what I've gone through at doing the four-day work week, I'm more productive.

I'm more productive. And kind of the 50 on Friday, I mean, I'm not lying. I'll get into email a little bit and text. And sometimes I'll just kind of go through my emails and see if there's anything I missed. And then I'll kind of like, oh, there's maybe some business opportunities. Let's talk to this guy. But I have more time to ponder and to kind of delve. into some different things.

Or if I have something like, oh, I always wanted to check on this, that, or the other, and find out more. And so I'll take and do that. And so I'm not fully checked out on Fridays, but I'm not on. Exactly. I'm not on when I'm answering emails.

I'm just like blah, blah, blah. Yeah, everything's fun. But, yeah, I'm not having to perform per se. And I imagine technically, you know, when you're at work, I don't have this problem because I don't work for other people, when you're at work, you're on because your boss is watching and you're worried about. Sure.

You know, you can't sleep at your desk. Yes. And I think what you're describing is called social stress, this idea of the stress that we feel in social situations. And sometimes relationships at work are making it so much harder to get the work done. I worked for a leader once who was like, work would be easy if it weren't for the people. It's like, we're here how we get to do that. How do you get to work without people? be brief it really it does impact our stress levels when those relationships are are not quite where we want them to be well as we go out amy anything else you want to plug as we go out thank you for asking i think the only other thing i would say is to just start small and maybe folks can't take every friday off forever in the way you described but what if they could take one are he speeding on any vacation days or any pto days are there are there ways to be thoughtful and

strategic to to lower our stress and increase our joy. That's why I'm not to leave your listeners with. I love that. I had to learn that as a business entrepreneur to take weekends off. And when I vacation, I try not to do it on the same time the whole world freaking vacations. Yes. We're all of America. All my friends are like, hey, we've got a three-day weekend. We're going to go to the link. Then you see them later. And you go, hey, how's that lake? I don't know. We spent five hours in bumper to bumper traffic of everyone going to the lake and then all the way home bumper to bumper and then we're on the lake it was bumper to bumper traffic of boats. I'm like that sounds like hell and you spent 10 hours in a car.

Like I'd rather be at work and spend 10 hours at a car. Like and so I do my vacations on the weekends I learned and so I learned I go go to bed, bed and breakfast. I go do you know, what they call them stay vacations, stay vacations, you know. And that way, I'm not flying where, you know, oh, it's Christmas and 2000 flights got canceled, you know. Yeah. And so I try and alternate that, you know, so they don't have to travel.

And I can actually enjoy my vacation. But now having those three days makes all the difference. So I think you should hire a lobbyist to see if you can't get some laws passed on the 40-a-week workweek. Made a note of it. All right. Well, Amy, thank you very much for coming the show. Give us your dot-coms as we go out. Amy Lenaker.com.

Thank you very much, Amy. It's been fun to have you. Thanks, Chris. Great to meet you. Now I'm going to get a hate letter at mail from everybody. How dare you only work four days away? You're a healing. You're a horrible person.

The rest of us are working hard and you're just being lazy. But you can write those emails to me. That's fine. I'll sit with my martini while I'm drinking them on the back porch of my feet up on Friday. Think of all. Folks, we did the book where our fine books are sold. It's entitled, Cheers to Monday, the surprisingly simple method to live, or I'm sorry, to lead and live with less stress and more joy. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.

You'll be listening to the middle of me and tell us a lot. To improve your brain and your life. Lord. Tell me too much of the Chris Wancho podcast. It'll lead to people taking you're smarter, younger. Your resist both than human regularly moderate in the mouse. He saw the doctor who was something very late. All right, Amy, that should be it.