If You Spend Time Performing, You Need to Invest Time in Recovering
Most contractors work punishing schedules, and yet at the end of the week or month, there is still more to be done. The solution for most is to double down and work even harder, but at some point the extra effort produces diminishing returns. Given that business is more of a marathon than a sprint, what’s the key to building long lasting resilience? What does it take to recover from the relentless pace of this industry?
Please join Wayne this week as he likens successful contractors to top athletes and discusses the concept of “load management.” As always, we welcome your comments.
The Contractor Business Boot Camp can be transformational for your high potential NextGen employees and family members. Please contact Charlotte at [email protected] to learn more about the program.
Hello. This is Wayne Rivers at FBI, and We Build Better Contractors. We have Boot Camp coming up, October 21st this year.
So limited seats available. Go ahead and enroll your people now, so you don't get shut out until 2022.
This week, I want to talk about resilience being greater than endurance. Contractors work punishing schedule. It's just a
part of the industry. It's a part of the culture of construction that people work really, really, really long hours and difficult,
stressful schedules. Every contractor starts off the week or the month with a checklist of things he or she is going to do.
At the end of the week, maybe some of the things got checked off. But even if you checked all your things off, now you've
got a new list of things to do. It never stops. It's relentless. So, what about this is important to you then? What are we
going to take away from this?
Well, we've got four tips for how you build resilience rather than so much endurance. And hopefully, you'll be able to take
something away from it. When we're really challenged, we have a stressful month coming up or a stressful quarter coming
up, we all think, "Why can't I just power through? Why can't I be tougher? Why can't I endure?" Right? It's like running a
marathon, except this is a 30-year marathon. It's not a 26-mile marathon. "Why can't I just endure? Why can't I be
tougher? Why am I not good enough?" That's what we ask ourselves. And I want to move you away from that. I think
that's the wrong question. Just because you leave work at six o'clock in the evening or something, it doesn't mean you've
left work. That doesn't mean you're refreshing and recharging, does it? Because you're thinking about work issues when
you go home, you've also got family issues that you have to deal with, home issues that you have to deal with.
If you go home and turn on the TV and listen to the news or look at politics, it's so...there's a schism in our country in
terms of politics. Stopping work is not the same as recovering. If you're adding stress in other ways, you're looking at the
political websites or something, then you're not relaxing, you're not getting away, you're not recovering. There's a
definition of workaholism that I found from some researcher in Norway, I think. And they defined it this way, "Being overly
concerned about work, driven by uncontrollable work motivation, and investing so much time and effort," now this is the
important part, "investing so much time and effort that it impairs other life areas." Oh, my gosh. So much time and effort
that it impairs other important life areas. Is that not every one of us? Could every one of us not be guilty of that at some
point in our careers?
In sports today, they talk about load management. So, it used to be that Joe DiMaggio tried to play all 154 games, or Albert
Pujols tried to play all 162 games. It's not that way anymore. Athletes and the teams that employ them know that recovery
is just as important as... Weight training, for example, everybody has weight training now. But you can't do weight training
every day. You've got to let your body recover. You can't go out and abuse your body in pro sports every game, every
week, every however many times a week. You've got to have time for recovery. And business people need time for
recovery, too. So, if you spend time in the performance zone, that is you're executing your job five days a week, then you
need recovery time, too. Okay?
You need to think of yourself and your body and your mind the same way a professional athlete does because you're out
there competing at a high level, too. Right? So, here's one thing. The average person checks his or her cell phone 150 times
a day now. Now if you spend one minute on every time you check your phone, and let's be real, often you're there for a
whole lot more than one minute. But if you just spend one minute, that's two and a half hours a day you're interacting
with that phone for things that are usually neither important nor urgent. Right? So, there are four tips that we have from
actually a Harvard Business School article, June 24th of 2016. Four tips for building your resilience.
The first thing is there are apps you can buy now, or maybe even not buy, maybe they're free, but there are apps that will
automatically turn your phone over to airplane mode at certain times of the day. So, you can put your head down and get
things done. Or maybe more important, you can get away from things for a little while and not be so stressed.
The second recommendation from Harvard Business School is take all of your allocated time off. If you have three weeks
of vacation per year, take it. If you have X PTO days, take them. By gosh, get away from the office, get away from your
phone, get away from stress, get away from the daily grind of the news, and do things that are relaxation. Go for relaxing,
go for walks, get out of the office, experience nature, go to the beach, watch the waves come in. I mean, those things are
very relaxing things.
The third thing is get a coach. Sometimes we're our own worst enemies and we are workaholics. We just think about work
all the time. We don't sleep because we think about either opportunities or problems or something else. Get a coach that
can help you come up with new ways and techniques for breaking off and getting away.
And the fourth thing is obvious, but exercise is a great, great stress reliever. Go for walks, play golf, play tennis, go to the
gym, do something, but get your body moving, get out of the chair. Take care of yourself, so that you'll have a longer,
more vital and more healthy life. So, I'd like to hear what you're doing to build your resilience, so that you can come back
stronger the next day.
This is Wayne Rivers at FBI, and We Build Better Contractors.
