You need to take  TIME OUT – to breath, relax and get out of overwhelm. You need to be mentally and emotionally recharged to take on your daily challenges.

Transcript:

[00:00:14] Stephen:  Hey guys, Stephen Esketzis here from Marketing on the Move.  And today I’m going to be talking to you about keeping yourself emotionally recharged for your business.

Now, this is something which affects all business owners.  It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, whether you’re online, whether you’re offline, whether you’re on a farm, it really doesn’t matter.  But one thing I want to talk to you about is keeping yourself emotionally recharged.

So what that means is keeping your brain active, but also fresh enough so when you need to work on projects that are important to you, you’ve actually got that brain power there with you.

[00:00:45] So that’s something which I think is absolutely critical because every single day you go through good things and bad things that happen that pull and push you away from your work.  For example, you’ve got to provide that every single day.

So let’s say an employee doesn’t turn up, you’ve got to cover some of their work.  That pulls you away and that drains you mentally as well.  And then you’ve also got to manage a lot of things that you do all the time.

So you’ve got to retain a lot of tasks that you do day in and day out and they’re mentally exhausting as well.  Now, I’m not really talking about systemizing, that’s something different.  I’m talking about keeping your brain energized and fresh for when you need to do work because there will be some days when you’re going to have to work two, three days in a row of really long, 12, 15, 16-hour days non-stop work in a row.

And these days are going to absolutely crush you.  After a while, you might get drained at the end of that.  And there’s also going to be weeks where you’re going to work a solid eight hours for the whole week and it’s not going to be a whole lot of work upfront, but overtime it will start to exhaust you.

[00:01:42] So what are some of the ways you can get mentally recharged — well, emotionally recharged and mentally recharged, to be honest.  You really want to be able to make sure that you can change your state when you’re working.

You want to make sure that if you’re feeling tired, if you’re feeling drowsy, you’re feeling not motivated to work, you want to be able to be in control of your state to really change it and get work done.  So a couple of the hacks that I usually do, one thing which — we moved into our office very recently was, bringing a little trampoline — and now it’s going to sound silly and childish, but bringing a trampoline into your workspace just so you can jump up and down halfway through the day, every now and again when you’re feeling tired and bored if you’re sitting down all day, really gets you moving.

And it doesn’t just get you physically recharged, but it actually gets your brain moving as well.  The endorphins are — look, I’m just throwing around words here, but I’m pretty sure the endorphins would actually clash with each other and produce — well, something clashed with each other and produce endorphins.

Some scientists will have to back me up there, don’t quote me on it.

But basically, the more you move, it gets you up and about.  It actually helps your brain as well.

I know that for a fact.  So, that’s one of the hacks that we use in the office, just getting yourself up, bringing a trampoline in there.  Using a standing desk is another one.

[00:02:59] And then also over the long term, make sure you plan in your year exactly how you really want to recharge through the year.  Rather than just in your day-to-day, when are you going to take time off in your work, how are you going to take time off, where are you going to go, what are you going to do.

And they’re some of the things that you need to keep in mind.  For example, what I like to do is every quarter, I usually like to try to plan out a little weekend getaway.  Whether it’s with my partner or whether it’s just me and some friends, whatever it is, kind of get away somewhere without the work and just sit there and recharge, try and get your thoughts together.

You can do some planning as well, planning for your business, but not actually getting in the operations of your business that you are everyday, day-to-day.  You want to make sure you can actually get in there, recharge and start planning and think strategic in your business.  And that’s where you’re emotionally and mentally, you actually start calming down, you get some clarity in your business.

And that’s really important because when you’re mentally drained after a long period of work, you can’t think straight.  It’s like working at night.  Sometimes I’ll work at night.  I’ll start a session at 9 o’clock and after I’ve handled a few things, I have to do some things, meet people and have dinner, come home, relax for about an hour or so and then I’ll start another work session about 9 o’clock, then that also takes a toll because you feel pretty drained and you might have work to do the next day or you have to do that you really get done and push out of the way.  So that’s really important.

[00:04:29] So one thing that you want to do is stay away from the energy drink.  Stay away from your Red Bull, your this and that.  They’re only temporary and they’re not going to do you any good in the long term.

So that’s something which I think is a massive downfall for a lot of people, especially people that are online and developers and things like that.  Almost all the developers I’ve spoken to that work in my business say they run on Red Bull.  They drink Red Bull.  And a lot of them now I’ve actually helped take them off.

This stuff is not helping you on your long-term productivity.  You need to actually use strategies which are going to help you over the long term.  It’s not a short-term game being in business.  And especially on your brain and physically on your health, it takes a toll.

[00:05:12] One thing that I’ve started to do as well is watching what you eat and what time of the day you eat it as well.  So in the morning you want to make sure you got something, you got enough food, ready to go.

The morning is the most important time to be productive.

So, you need to be productive, you need to get the hardest work done in the morning and that’s when you’ve got to make sure you’ve got food in your stomach.  You’re not going hungry, you’re not thinking about it in the office.  You just want to get the task done.  And that’s super important.

The next thing is as well, not really based on food, but when you’re in the evening and you’re working, before you go to bed, making sure you’ve got a plan, a schedule.  You want to make sure that there’s no screens and no phones around your bed before you go to bed.

[00:05:54] I’ve struggled with this a lot.  I used to wake up — and I still do occasionally.  I’m still guilty of it.  I haven’t gone through it a hundred percent just yet.  But when I wake up in the morning, I grab my phone, I sit for 45 minutes and catch up on Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, going through all the analytics, catching up on emails, reading them all while I’m still lying down in bed.  45 minutes goes by and I’m still in bed here while the world is going on around me.  It’s just stuff which is just pulling you away, rather than you focusing on it yourself.  So you got to get rid of these negative forces that keeps pulling you away from your work and away from your schedule and your routine.  So that’s one of the main things.

[00:06:33] The other thing really is to just focus on keeping the screens away, actually stop doing work before an hour or two hours you go to bed.  That’s really important.

If you want to do some reading, that’s okay, or listen to an audio book, that’s fine too.  But actually doing work and keeping your brain thinking on problems that are going to affect your business in the long-term right before you go to bed isn’t such a smart idea.

You want to feel really refreshed when you’re working on your business.  Whether you’re doing stuff for clients or yourself, all of that is super important and you want to make sure you’re feeling refreshed and ready to go when you handle those things.

[00:07:08] So, just a couple of tips there, guys, for you to help refresh today and the rest of your week, your working week.  The reason why I brought this up was because today is a Sunday and I was actually — me and my partner, we went to a couple of wineries and it was really, really refreshing to actually get out there and clear your head and get out and just get some fresh air.

All I had with me was a mobile and that was pretty fun.  So all I do is take some photos and put them away and not handle any work for the day.  It completely recharges you.  Tomorrow I’ll be completely fine and ready to go and back into work.  The problem is, especially with myself and a lot of you who are most likely listening, we spend a lot of time in front of the computer sitting down.

So most of those things are really bad, number one, your computer, number two, sitting down.  So you’ve got to try to combat that as much as possible in your business, so you’re actually acknowledging what you’re doing.  We’re going to be doing this long-term, especially–  like I’m 22, so if I’m going to be sitting down in front of a computer for 8. 9. 10, 12 hours a day looking at a screen, that’s definitely not going to be good for my health at all.

So I want to make sure I can get as much juice out of my body as possible, be as productive as possible, handle as much work as possible, produce the best output as often as possible.  And to do that, you’ve got to do certain precautions.

[00:08:31] Actually one that I’ve just taken this week, which I’ll tell you about how it goes is, I ordered a pair of — they’re not sunglasses, they’re just glasses, but they remove the backlight from your computer.  So you wear them when you’re on the computer.

You wear them when you’re looking at your phone or any sort of screen and they’re kind of a yellow tint and it removes the backlight from your screen and it’s supposed to be really good for your eyes.  So sometimes if I’m looking at the computer for extended amounts of time, you feel your eyes start to not water, but like that slight burning sensation.

It’s hard to explain.  But if you look at it and you’ve done that, I’m sure you felt it before, this will really help this go away.  So you can look at them for that period of time and — it looks a little dorky to begin with.  It kind of looks like a cyclist’s sunglasses sort of thing, but I think it will be really good.  I’ll let you guys know how did it go once I get them.

Hopefully they arrive this week.  I’m really pumped about that.  They’re about $100 and they should be really helpful, especially when working in front of the computer.  So I’m really excited about that.  Yeah, so they come in all the way from America.

Looking forward to that.  I’ll let you know the brand as well.  I can’t think of it off the top of my head, so you guys can go check it out.  That’s another thing that really helps and obviously the standing desk that I’ve mentioned is something that we used.

[00:09:47] But also one thing I noticed, and the product which actually brought this to my attention is standing does you good, but you also shift your weight when you’re standing.  So whether you’re leaning on one leg, leaning on another leg, all these types of things are really good for your health.  So just keep an eye.  Standing is a good idea.

One thing I’m going to be looking at picking up is like a mat you can get on to, and that way you shift your weight accordingly so you’re not just leaning and actually injuring anything if you’re going to be standing for a while.  So try and mix it up.  See what works for you.

There’s no right or wrong way to do this.  You’re just looking to mix it up and get the most out of yourself, whether it’s your food, your productivity, your business, pretty much everything that’s involved.  Just try to be as productive and as happy and as physically efficient as possible and you’ll get the most out of your work too.

[00:10:35] So they’re my tips for today, guys.  Hopefully they give you a bit of a helping hand moving forward with your work and building your office and building your dream job and lifestyle and your workspace.

I think your workspace is something that you need, you feel really, really at home with, something which you need to go to and just really enjoy and kick back and just say, “Yea, this is it.  I got the right lighting, right seat, right everything,” and just focus on work because once you get your workspace right, everything else sort of falls into place.  You feel way more competent.  You look forward to actually going to your office, going to your desk and getting work done.

So that’s my tips for the day, guys.  I’d love to hear what types of workspaces you guys have.  What are some of your productivity hacks?  What are some of your lifestyle hacks?  How do you guys recharge and refresh mentally?  I love to hear it.  Shoot me a message and let me know.

And that way hopefully, if there’s any tips, I’ll make sure to share them in the podcast in the future.  All right guys, take care, and I’ll speak to you soon.