4-Hour Work Weeks, Flow States & Quality Family Time with Ashao Freesky

10:42AM Aug 2, 2022

Speakers:

Angela Foster

Intro

Ashao Freesky

Keywords:

day

people

angela

business

energy

tasks

important

attention

work

delegating

hours

activities

week

realise

chunk

scheduling

family

depleting

residue

switching

There are two concepts. One is context switching, and the other is attention residue. And so context switching is every time you switch from one activity to another, there's a new set of rules that you have to reorient yourself to.

Welcome to the high performance health podcast with your host, Angela Foster, the show where we talk about everything you need to break through limits and achieve a high performance, mind, body and lifestyle.

Well, hello, we are going to be talking about productivity in this week's podcast, a slight departure from health, but it's definitely something that can really actually help to give you less stress in your life and time back, which I think is super important. I'm always trying to systemize things wherever I can outsource as much as possible, and give myself more free time to spend with family and on the things that I love. Right, he doesn't want to do that. We're also diving into how you can achieve flow states what attention residue is when you're switching between tasks, and really how to make your brain more efficient. And while we're on that topic, I thought I'd mentioned something I've been playing with recently, that's actually really fun and very effective. And that is a brand of nootropic supplements called New topia by my friends over at by optimizers. And they have a great set of stacks that you can experiment with, they have this 30 Day guided Newtopia journey of experimentation, where you set your goals and look at shifting your brain into specific states that that basically make it easier for you to succeed at your goals. I've had a lot of fun playing with this and definitely established some key capsules are mostly and they're some of them are in powdered form and a drink that you you take in the morning. Definitely a less need for caffeine and hyper productivity with some of them. But it's all very, very personal in terms of what works for you. And so I highly recommend trying out the 30 day guided Newtopia journey. That's what I did to work out the best stacks for me. And you can get 10% off if you want to try this you just head over to newtopia.com forward slash Angela and enter code Angela 10 at checkout that's Newtopia Isabel, n o t o p i a. So that's newtopia.com forward slash Angela and enter code Angela 10 at checkout. And you can have a fun 30 Day experiment really increasing your productivity, your flow, state your attention and mindful focus and maybe even cut down on some of that caffeine, just like me. So enjoy is newtopia.com forward slash Angela and Angela 10 for discount. But in today's episode, you're going to hear about how you can really chunk your time shedule things ahead of time so you know what you're working on. And really start to understand what the downside of switching between tasks is and how you can really optimise things and my guest to tell you how to do that. On this week's episode is ash our free sky and it's a shells passionate belief that parents deserve more time to enjoy with their family. And so he basically empowers parent printers with his nine step blueprint to systemize their business and become more effective and share a 15 to 20 hours of their work week. Unlike others who focus only on increasing revenue a shower helps parents create a lifestyle that reclaims magic moments with their families without sacrificing any business growth. He's the founder of double your time. off.com has some great strategies that he shares in this episode. So without further delay, let me introduce you now to a show. Enjoy. In today's podcast episode, we're going to be talking about a topic that actually we haven't talked about that much on highperformance health but something I'm very passionate about. And something that I think is going to prove to be invaluable to those of you listening because time is definitely something that I think we all feel we don't have enough or enough quality time with our families. And today in today's podcast, I'm sitting down with a shell free sky who is passionate about parent printers, and how to help them become more effective with their time so they can reclaim magic moments with their family. I just love that intro because the more magic moments I can have with my kids and my husband the better so I'm excited. welcome Michelle.

Hey, Angela, thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, it's really cool to have you here. So one of the things that that I see a lot with my own clients and with myself right is it's really difficult as a mum printer. And obviously there's there'll be fathers listening as well is just trying to fit everything in because children are time consuming. And I don't mean that in a in a in a in a bad way at all. They are very pleasurable. But what I've noticed is that actually as the children get older, the demands become greater because when they are young, it's quite easy. to outsource certain things they can go to, you know that you can have a nanny to help out do school runs. But as they certainly mine become adolescents, they need me more. They also have their own lives. And so you turn into a bit of a taxi service. And so the demands on my time, much greater. So I'm very excited and interested in the tips that you have. And I do want to dive into how you encourage people to approach their businesses. But I guess let's just kind of helicopter out a little bit and think about these parent printers. And the demands that are on them, what do you find is the best way to to segment their time really, and avoid that trap of always working? When you're not with the kids and working at weekends or working in the evening and working and getting up early? What would your advice be?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I think it starts with having the right mindset, where we think that we kind of almost see ourselves as machines where we can, okay, I have time, let's just fill it with something to do, because I want to move forward on whatever it is I'm working on. And we tend to forget that we're actually energy based beings. And that time in does not necessarily equal output created. Because if we are draining ourselves depleting ourselves of the energy, and the attention that we have, the time we you know, you hear the term like, Oh, time is your most valuable resource. And yes, it is absolutely valuable. But time without energy and attention is meaningless. And so, being intentional about how we structure our time, and not fracturing it, so that we fracture our attention and giving ourselves time for renewal and time to be with family time to take care of ourselves in our in our health, only then will we actually spend the time at work, or whatever it is, if we're with family or with ourselves in a way that we show up with full intention and full energy so that we can really be present and make the best use of that time. It's more than the mindset component. I don't remember exactly what your question was, I don't think I answered it.

No, no, you did. And I think I touched on that, because actually saying there, I think is so important. Because when you're looking at time, and you do the fractionating of activities, there is always a lack right there, you leave a little bit of energy in one place. And I think people often don't realise this, it is the fastest way to take yourself out of flow, you cannot be in a flow state, if you are focusing on more than one thing. And as a CEO of a company, you've got to be an incredibly creative because you're driving the vision and that company forward. But also, I think people don't realise that there is this sort of deficit that's left behind as well, part of your attention is now over here. And then over there. And, and actually, it's almost like having lots of windows in my experience open on your computer, it's slowing down the operating system, without you realising whereas when you become and it's become quite popular when people talk about conscious living. But when you focus your mind on that task, actually, it's a lot more effortless, and it flows and you get things done more quickly. And I think as women, we have to learn that because we're so used to multitasking when I think you can easily multitask administrative things, right? So it's all things for example, where you're listening to something so All right, often listen to a podcast like we're recording. Now, while I'm folding laundry, for example, an example of where I think multitasking does work, I don't feel the need to be fully present with the laundry. It's not something that I get tremendous transfers of action from. So actually spending my time upgrading my mindset on my knowledge feels very productive. But I think when we're in our in our businesses, we do need to be really focused. I also like Tim Ferriss concept that we probably only have around four hours in any one day, that is really, really quality output. What have you found in your experience is the best way to make those hours really meaningful in terms of that button to sustain that high energy? Do you encourage people to have them in a block to find their own way to use the Pomodoro Technique? I'm really interested in what your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I'll get to that in one second. I also just wanted to anchor in some of the things that you said because they were really important. And so just to give some some labels to what you mentioned, there are two concepts. One is context switching, and the other is attention residue. And so context switching is every time you switch from one activity to another, there's a new set of rules that you have to reorient yourself to. So it's like what are what are what is required for this task. What are what are the related resources, your mind is switching from one context to another, which takes time. And then like you said, having multiple windows open at once, which was a great analogy, that's attention residue, which is when you finish one task, your attention from the previous one still bleeds into the next one. And so if you are switching from one thing to another constantly, like you said, you have all these windows open, you're, you're depleting your mental RAM, because all of this, this attention from each other, just bleeding into each other. And you can, that's when people get overwhelmed. And you get you can't focus, because you're literally trying to think of like 15 things at once. So I just wanted to emphasise that because those are really important points. That is really

hard as well, that attention residue, because I think it happens because of the dopamine kick that people are getting. So they constantly feel they need to check email constantly feel they need to check social media. And you know, certainly for entrepreneurs, you're often on multiple platforms. And I think there is that dopamine trigger. And so people go check maybe too often as well without realising it's an intentional that they have this attention residue that's being left in all these different locations.

Yeah, and so that kind of ties into the question you just asked me, which is how do we make best use of the time that we have? Because, you know, I don't know, if I necessarily agree that we only have four hours of productive time, I think it's, it's how you structure your day. That, you know, if you're trying to work just straight, then yeah, your problem. You know, if you're not taking many breaks in the day, I don't think you can even do four hours, productively, but I think you can, you can maybe expand that more to five to six hours. But it's really about being intentional about how you structure your day. So if you're, if you don't have any structure to your day, you're going to react sporadically, you're going to be reactive, like oh, I don't know, if something important came into my email, I need to go check it right now. Instead of, you know, having a breather, I know I have a designated time to check my email, nothing's gonna blow up between now and then I can wait until that point of time. So how to maximise the amount of time that we have in a day, I think comes down to scheduling it. I know people have resistance to this. I've certainly spoken to people I've worked with who've had resistance, I myself have had some resistance to scheduling my day. But what I really find valuable in that is that if I know that there is time and place for all the different things that I need to do, I don't need to think about them. I don't need to think about my email, I don't need to think about this other project, because I know that there is a time for it. And I can be present with what I'm doing right now. And that's the power of scheduling is being intentional with how I spend my time so I can show up and be fully present and completely block out everything else.

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. And so what would you say then for parent foreigners who are listening? What have you found from working with them? And they're trying to couple this with children gets increasingly more complex when it moves, as we are about to into school holiday time? How would you suggest they begin in terms of portioning

their day? Yeah, so when I'm looking at my day, really, I started off more on on a week basis, that tends to be a good cadence, where things tend to repeat on a weekly basis and day to day, things might change a lot. And so I like to look at three different categories. When I'm looking at how to plot up my day. And this is beyond just business. This is just my life in general, which is first health and self. So I want to make sure that I have a chunk of time in my week where I'm intentionally focusing on maximising my own self so that I can really show up as a leader, my business and my family. And so those were things like, you know, making sure I'm getting adequate sleep, movement, and growth, you know, feeding my mind and having fun. Those are the kind of main things I look for in my in my time and for me, that's, that's the morning, I have a chunk of time, that is just my time. And I'm alone, get to, you know, reflect, ponder, move my body, that's really important to fuel me and so that I can show up and truly serve. Second category is family and relationships. So, you know, when we have demands on on us, it's going to be inevitable that we're going to spend time but how are we carving out the time in a way that's intentional. And if I know that this is my time with family, and I'm not going to be trying to multitask anything else, because there are some things we can multitask and like you said, those are things that don't require. And you know, the prefrontal decision making is something that's automated like folding the laundry, but when we're with our families, we don't want to be multitasking, we want to be present with them. And so knowing I find it helpful looking at my schedule, knowing like this evening blocks, these are my time to be with family, and to not be checking anything on my phone. And to not be thinking about I wish I went and I could go read a book. I mean, sometimes you do need more time than what's scheduled. And that's like, you know, being flexible also with your schedule. So, yeah, having a chunk of time that you know, is quality time with your family. And third is, of course, service and work, which is the time that you're going to be spending at work. And that in itself, I break down into further categories, just because of more complexity. And in that category.

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So just make sure I understood the question. Is the question that can we still move our business forward in a meaningful way without burning ourselves out working these crazy long hours? Yeah, so the question,

yeah, so most people would assume that actually, I need to, I'm going to need to put in, you know, 5060 hours a week. But actually, you know, things like The Four Hour Workweek would suggest No, because with the right systems, that isn't the case. And I'm just curious as to what you found working with people, whether there is a sweet spot, in terms of amount of time that's given to really be able to move because otherwise we won't come and patient, right? It's nice to allocate those categories and to make sure you have time and I definitely agree in agreement that we need that sense of renewal with family time and family is first and it's really really important. Similarly, health, as you know, I'm pretty obsessed with is a huge priority for me. But it's when people tried to couple that and still move on that service and work and allocate that time and have success that I think they struggle because they feel like they're having to work longer when actually that often there is a smarter

Yeah. So first of all, I'm going to touch on the mindset again, there's something a concept that's important to know is the concept of diminishing and negative returns. So if you think of like a curve and as you put in the beginning of the curve as you put more time and energy into the work, you're getting positive returns, but as you put in more time the curve starts to become less, less high of an of an incline, and it starts to curve down. And so you're starting to get after There are certain point diminishing returns, which means every hour you put in more of work, you are getting less output because you are depleting yourself of your of your energy, your, your attention is fading, decision making ability is depleting. And so you're not actually getting as much out of the work that you were putting in, and then there comes a peak, where you actually hit the peak, the point of maximum return, which means now, every extra amount of time you put in, you are going to start getting negative returns, which means you're going to start making bad decisions that are going to negatively impact your business. And so I think there's studies that show that people, you know, they've done groups where, you know, one group was working 80 hours, one group was working 40 hours, I don't know exactly what the numbers were. But basically, managers couldn't tell the difference between those who were working twice as much. They just couldn't see an increase in output. And so we need to be cognizant that that is not the lever that we need to press on as entrepreneurs to make more progress on our business. Because not only is it not effective, but it's actually harming our health. You know, there's there's a term in Japan karoshi, which is death from overwork. And so work related stress, and health issues is a major issue. And so we can't be relying on that we only have so many hours in the day, we want to be spending time with our families taking care of ourselves. So what do we do instead? Well, we as entrepreneurs have the ability to level up our, our activities that we are working on. So there's, you know, as business owners, you're gonna know this, there's way more activities and roles that you can get to in a day and a week, in a month, you're not going to get through it all. So you need help. And so, you know, if you've never hired someone before, that can feel scary, but it doesn't have to be a big deal, you can just add those exercises you can do that I that I gotten my clients through on how to identify what are the tasks that are taking up most time out of your day, they're essential, you don't want to be delegating something that's not essential. And that they are a lower level activity that you can hire someone. And so you're paying, you're paying them, you know, whatever it is, but then now you're able to trade off that time to do something that's a higher value activity. And so if you can meet those criteria, then you can just start with something small, you can start with a few hours a week with with a contractor, you don't need to hire someone full time, and just get used to the delegation process and start alleviating things off your plate. And as you do that, the more that you can hand things off your plate, the more you can move yourself to activities that are revenue generating activities that are really going to make a difference in your business. And, and that's that's how you're going to make more progress. And your business is building out a team and not thinking that you have to do everything yourself and working

within your zone of genius, right? I mean, what would you say? Although I think when they're beginning, like there may be people listening, who may be starting a company as a side hustle, or they're very new, they're a parent, and they're looking to start a company. And they feel like the financial resources until they bring in that income are small. So they are bootstrapping it effectively, what would be the first things that you would outsource? Are there particular software's, for example, that you found to be super helpful? Or management systems and things?

Yeah, and, and that is, that is a real thing, right? When you're starting out your business, you're going to be bootstrapping. And I think people hold on to that longer than they need to be. And, you know, there's, there's multiple fears that come into that, you know, like the fear of, they're going to screw things up, they're not going to do things as well as I, as as well as I can, or, you know, the fear of like, I don't have the money yet. And so, you know, there's, there's no quick and easy answer that I can come up with. One is knowing your finances. And that's a whole other topic. But, you know, when I'm running my business finances, I have income division, which is the money that comes in gets divided up. And so I have a portion that goes to, you know, my team. And so that's part of it is knowing your finances and what you can what you can afford. Another is, again, you don't have to start very big, you can just start small and that this is this is really a principle in any kind of behaviour change. And habit creation is to start small, because it seems like we have no time. You know, I have no time in the day to you know, go do some exercise. I'm too busy with kids and stuff. It's like, what if you just took literally 10 seconds and when did a few push ups and just built that habit? You know, whatever it is you have some kind of an anchor. So that's going to ingrain a habit which then grows. And so it's the same thing. With with delegating, you can just start small, start delegating some tasks, and you're gonna want to identify what are the tasks that are, you know, like I said, taking up a lot of your time, and, and maybe it's administrative tasks, tasks, could be bookkeeping, I like to delegate tasks that are related to revenue generation. So if I'm doing like, let's say, you know, a podcast tour, and I'm meeting people like you, there's a lot of related tasks that are, I don't need to be necessarily doing, like doing the research and finding podcasts, and that I can delegate, and that is also related to revenue generation. So if I can find tasks that are revenue generating, and also, you know, more add administrative tasks, then those are that's also a really great sweet spot. Yeah, for

sure. For sure. So tell me about your own day. I assume you have have a family. Well, how do you structure your day for maximum productivity? Morning Routine from morning to evening?

Yeah. So it's, it's evolved over the years. And so that's something that, you know, I've learned is to not be super rigid. With the structure, there's kind of two, one side is like just super flowy, you have no structure at all, it's kind of chaotic, the other is super rigid, and everything feels stifled. So I've learned to flow more in the middle. And so it changes. But right now how it is I get up between six and 630. And I have a chunk of time, to myself. So it's about an hour and a half, two hour chunk, until 8am, where I take care of myself, I go for a walk first thing in the morning, I get up, go outside, go for a walk, come back home, do some movement, do some mobility work. And then I'll do some some kind of growth oriented things. So if that's reading a book, or taking a programme, and fueling myself for the day, then I go and I am with the kids, I take start taking care of them, my wife goes and she does her morning routine. And so she has her own set of things that she does. She's a fitness instructor, so she does her dance, dance fitness. And then I'm with the kids and feeding them, you know, playing with them, I have two hours where I just so actually, you know, I do have a chunk of family time in the morning, not just in the evening, as I said earlier, but the morning is also kid time where I get to hang out with my kids, and play with them a little bit before I go to work. And then 10am more or more realistically, like 10:30am is my start time. And so just for simplicity's sake, this in itself is quite structured. But I have that until 5pm. Where is my work block? And it's not I only have. So my week is not is not? Every day is all the same. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is that block I said 1030 to five. And then I work a half day on Thursdays and Fridays. So it's kind of more like a four day, four day week. And then evening after work is again family time. So we have dinner, we hang out as a family. And then kids go to bed my wife and I have some time to ourselves. And then yeah, in bed, hopefully sleeping by 10pm.

makes a massive difference. Yeah. Okay, so you're running your business on on? Yeah, what many people would call part time hours but still able to move? meanings that he had by the sounds? Mm

hmm. Yeah. And, you know, like I said, people will think that you can't make progress in less time. But it's it's really about, as we touched on earlier, having larger chunks of time where you're not fracturing your attention. And I like to front load my week with the most important tasks of the week. And then also front load front loading my days with the most important tasks, which are, you know, I think it'd be revenue generating, maybe it's my outreach, and that kind of thing. And that way, as things shift throughout the week, at least the most important things got got done. And then other things that were less important. Maybe we move to the next week.

Yeah. So do you block time where you will have like sometimes client focusing time and that gets scheduled into that block time when you're creating your own resources and things do tend to structure so there are certain days you're doing certain things.

Yeah, so I do. I do like theme days because it gives you the ability to have kind of one Single mindset for the day. And you can get into that mode. And it's like the opposite of attention residue in context switching, it's, you know, singular focused. And so there's some different types of theme days you can have is like content creation, client work, team meetings, those kinds of things can be different themed days. And so when I'm planning my week, I think of it also in kind of three things that I'm planning in the week. One is I'm planning my planning time. So when of the week am I going to be planning, so that's on Fridays, the end of the day on Friday is when I plan my next week, and then at the end of every day is when I plan my next day. And then there's the other two are maker time and manage your time. So maker time is like the high value deep work long blocks of time where I'm I'm just in work mode getting getting, you know, maybe it's marketing or client work, these are the things that are that are like my activities that are really important. And then manage your time are things like delegating, communication, meetings, you know, any any activities that are supporting the high value work, that's more of the manager administrative time. And so I like to think of those as their own chunks. And so ideally, you have them on their own days, that's not always going to be possible, but maybe you can also think of it as like half days. Like when you're theming it.

Yeah, the different things. Okay. And the last question I have, because I know we're going to time is you mentioned about energy ratios for energy maximisation rituals, what would some of those be that people can start adopting and using straight away to really enhance their energy?

Mm hmm. So, you know, one of the most important ones, that's, that's so obvious, but but very overlooked, when it comes to performance and productivity, and that kind of thing is sleep. And making sure you get an adequate amount of sleep is so crucial to fully refuelling yourself and having sharp decision making abilities. And so I like to make sure that I'm in bed for at least nine hours, so that I end up getting eight hours of sleep. That's, you know, an obvious one. But it needs to be said, because many people try to cut down on their sleep, but that's, you know, you're then now cutting out the quality of your life of the rest of the hours that you have awake. So sleep is a big one movement is a big one. And so I have I do have a, you know, a movement block in the morning. But then I also move throughout the day. And so I've tagged on to every time I go pee, I after that have a after P ritual. So I'll you know do some push ups or some pull ups or some handstands. Some kind of movement, that's going to raise my energy pump my blood. And so all throughout the day, I'm doing that and I'm keeping my energy high. So that, you know, obviously there's there's physiological health benefits to it. But But mainly, as a business owner is I want to be sharp, and onpoint throughout the day.

I'm a big fan of that. But as those movement breaks, I just think movement snacks is the way forward. I think it really optimises the kind of cognition, the brain power, the ability to get back into flow to focus and concentrate, but also amazing benefits for your body and your metabolism at the same time by focusing on do like you can't just shedule one gym workout and expect it to undo a whole day sitting. I absolutely agree with you. Cool, well, thank you so much for sharing all that. Where can people find more about you and your, your coaching shop?

Yeah, so I if you're interested in working with me, I do do one on one coaching with people to help them, you know, instal the systems and habits. Basically, it's like a one day implementation day where we go and create a plan where, you know, what are the things that you need to do to shave 10 to 20 hours off of your work week, and then you have unlimited access one on one coaching to me. And so if that's something that interests you, I actually have a 90 day planner, and 90 day execution planner that you can download, and that link is double your time. off.com forward slash Angela. And so if you go to download that planner, on the next page, there'll be a spot where you can get a complimentary business audit, which is, you know, I'll look we'll assess your your business and find what are the one or two things that are really going to make a big difference in terms of your effectiveness. And then if you want to work with me, we can talk about that too.

Amazing. We will link to that in the show notes. Thank you so much for sharing that a shout out for coming on today and sharing all of those really, really super helpful tips. All of the show notes will be over on my website, Angela Foster performance.com and also linking to your A 90 day planner. Thanks again for coming on.

Oh, thank you so much for having me, Angela. It was great.

Thanks for listening. Remember to review and subscribe, you can grab the show notes, the resources and highlights of everything Angela mentioned over at Angela Foster performance.com. You can also snatch up plenty of other goodies, including the highly helpful Angela recommends page which is a list of everything she personally recommend to optimise your mind, body and lifestyle.