What I am about to share with you is tough, but it is an important message that I could not leave out of the book.
I had a tough season after my trip to the emergency room. It was a season filled with more stress, anxiety, and work than I had ever experienced.
In the heart of this season, I hit a wall. I had just finished a podcast interview that I thought went very poorly.
I ended the interview with a clear sense of frustration, angst, and regret. I also knew I needed to get my feelings out of my head as a cathartic means of calming down and figuring out exactly what to do next.
I hopped onto Facebook and just started typing.
What I ended up writing truly surprised me. It was more real and open than I had ever been on a public platform.
These were feelings I had in my head, but rarely spoke aloud or shared with others—even my wife.
It was not a marketing ploy, as some perceived, but rather a public venting session to help keep me from a near certain breakdown.
I hesitated before I hit the post button.
I was legitimately scared to share some of my darker moments, not only with strangers online but especially with my close family and friends who knew nothing about what I was experiencing in private.
I am sharing this with you now for the same reason I shared it at the time, which is to make one point very clear: you are not alone.
Here is the unedited post in full.
To summarize what we have covered so far, let's run through a hypothetical scenario where you have effectively completed each step of the formula.
Imagine you completed The Free‐Time Formula Self‐Evaluation and Time Audits. By asking the right questions and determining exactly how your time is being spent, you now have a greater sense of where you are today and what is getting done.
You then clarified your vital few goals that will make the greatest impact on your future success. After reviewing the Five Stages of Project Prioritization and Thirteen Strategies to Filter Your Ideas, you were able to efficiently organize your goals and determine what the next best steps should be.
You then prioritized a quick but intense daily exercise session of interval training, followed closely by a few minutes of mental bicep curls (meditation). By flexing your physical and mental muscles, you were able to sharpen your ability to move forward with increased clarity, energy, and enthusiasm.
After reviewing your calendar, you determined it was more than necessary to cut the nonsense. There were many tasks to eliminate, material possessions to donate, and commitments to opt out of forever. You effectively reduced the ongoing friction that was holding you back from making direct progress on your vital few goals.
You then designed your own Red‐Carpet Calendar, complete with your highest priorities scheduled first, and plenty of focused batching sessions on your customized theme days. After reviewing the Three Planning Models of Free Time, you mindfully chose the best activities in the margins of your calendar to help you replenish your energy and get back to your craft every day.
Finally, you identified exactly how you are consistently distracting yourself and intentionally set up barriers to keep you on track. Also, due to the ongoing interruptions from your coworkers, you set up clear external boundaries to help others recognize when you need a little space to do your most creative work.
This brings us to the seventh and final step of The Free‐Time Formula, which is to solidify your ideal rhythm, and it is divided into two parts: crunch and release, and your seven‐day action plan (see chapter 14).
There is an ideal rhythm to work and play that unleashes your best self.
Author and speaker Todd Henry puts it this way, “Hustle brings incremental results, rhythm brings intuitive leaps” (Henry, 2017).
For reasons that are hard for me to articulate, I have always intentionally hustled and worked hard for what I want, but I cannot say I have always intentionally prioritized a rhythmic approach to achieve intuitive leaps.
Hustle gets results, but it is short‐lived. Hustle is the drive that pushes you to finish the marathon or the big project at work, but how will you have the energy, enthusiasm, and creativity for the next marathon or the next big project?
Rhythm is the crunch and release that creates the opportunity for infinite intuitive leaps.
Digging in to work hard is what pushes you forward. Immediately following this productive session could be a well‐deserved, well‐designed, and purposeful recovery period—the kind of recovery period that replenishes you and allows for continual progress long into the future.
Rhythm allows for sustainability. It creates a routine that allows you to repeatedly access your greatest creativity and your best self over and over again.
The story I shared to open this chapter is a pristine example of hustle run amok. Rhythm was totally absent from my calendar. Taking a break was a fantasy and pausing to purposefully recover would have felt like a clear waste of time.
That approach failed miserably.
Hustle is a small piece of a larger puzzle, a puzzle dominated by purposeful recovery, crunching and releasing, working hard and playing hard.
Peter Awad, host of The Slow Hustle Podcast, is a shining example of a man with a well‐balanced plan.
As an entrepreneur and father of four children, you might expect his life to be continually chaotic or holistically unsustainable. His reality, however, is much more rhythmic, balanced, and beautiful.
For much of the year, Peter, his wife, and all four kids travel together in a motor home around the United States. Working remotely, Peter can grow his business on the road while maintaining a close connection to his family and seeing more of the world every year than many do in a lifetime.
Peter works hard to keep his business running, and he plays hard by prioritizing his family time and his desire to stay mobile as often as he can afford to do so (Awad, 2016).
Systematically taking time away from your work on a regular basis is paramount to your ability to stay fully engaged when you are working, and totally unplugged when you are not.
Sabbaticals are traditionally designed for academics to break from their normal teaching schedule to travel, study, and research, often for many months at a time. For our purposes, think of a sabbatical as precious time away from your normal routine to replenish your soul and reengage with your greatest passions.
Consider when, and for how long, you could guarantee quality time for recurring sabbaticals in your current season of life and work:
Working hard and playing hard are two sides of the same coin. We need to work hard to provide for ourselves and our loved ones, but we also need to play hard for the same reasons. There is more to life than work, and there is an ideal rhythm to life that can sustain your soul. Crafting that lifestyle is a bit of a challenging art form, but it is a challenge worth accepting.
When you are in a tough season, it is immensely beneficial to get your feelings out of your head as a cathartic means of calming down and figuring out exactly what to do next. Remember that you are not alone. Whatever it is you are fighting, you are not alone. Whatever your struggle, you are not alone.
Hustle gets results, but it is short‐lived. Rhythm is the crunch and release that creates the opportunity for infinite intuitive leaps. Rhythm allows for sustainability. It creates a routine that allows you to repeatedly access your greatest creativity and your best self over and over again.
We need to work hard to provide for ourselves and our loved ones, but we also need to play hard for the same reasons. There is more to life than work, and there is an ideal rhythm to life that can sustain your soul. Crafting that lifestyle is a bit of a challenging art form, but it is a challenge worth accepting.
Learn from others who have pushed too far. Pull back before you fall off the cliff. It is all too common to get overly ambitious and pursue new goals at a rapid and unsustainable pace, only to find yourself crashing and burning. If you find yourself getting frazzled, pause to regroup, make a new plan, pull back, and then only push forward again when you are truly ready.
We all have our own unique rhythms that allow us to live our best lives. Your rhythm will look different from mine, and each of our rhythms will fluctuate from one season to the next. Take a little time between goals, or between seasons, to identify what your next season could look like if everything were ideal. Use this template as a guide to living your best life.
There is a time to celebrate, though you have to stop working to do so. If you are like me, working is the norm, and pausing to “play hard” is tough. Make the call to balance time spent on your craft with legitimate leisure activities. When you look back at your life a year from now, you will smile at those moments. Taking time off is part of your productive flow, so be sure to enjoy yourself!