3 Essential Ideas

  1. One of the dangers we face today is midgrade burnout where the function of life continues but the joy is gone.
  2. We each have green, yellow, and red zones throughout our day. Your “Green Zone” is where you are most productive. Try to do your most important work in your “Green Zone”
  3. Live in a way today that will help you thrive tomorrow. Find what refuels you and prioritize it. 

1 Essential Action 

  • Identify when your green zone is. Tomorrow, schedule what’s most important during your green zone time. 

Key Moments From The Show 

  • How to build a business that can run independently (2:00)
  • The three levels of business (4:59)
  • How to move your business from Level 2 to Level 3 (7:57)
  • The most frequent challenge Carey hears from leaders (14:04)
  • The danger of midgrade burnout (15:18)
  • 3 actions you can take right now if you are feeling burned out (18:03)
  • How to find your “Green Zone” (19:24)
  • How to set a sustainable pace (23:11)
  • The question Carey hoped Greg wouldn’t ask (25:33)
  • The most important thing you must figure out (27:19)

Links You’ll Love From the Episode

At Your Best: How to Get Time, Energy, &  Priorities Working in Your Favor by Carey Nieuwhof
The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
Carey Nieuwhof’s Free Burnout Quiz
Cal Newport’s Digital Detox

Connect with Carey Nieuwhof

Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube | Podcast | Facebook

Speakers

Greg McKeown, Carey Nieuwhof


Greg McKeown

My guest today is Carey Nieuwhof, he is a leadership expert is a nonprofit leader is a former attorney, which appeals to me as a as a law school dropout. Founding pastor of Connexus church, he began serving. his ministry in central Ontario in 1995, was lead pastor until 2015. He’s the author of several best-selling books, including his latest, didn’t see it coming. But his newest book at your best how to get time, energy and priorities in your favor releases this September. As a speaker as a thought leader, Carrie spends much of his time speaking to leaders around the world about leadership about change personal growth, but at all levels of an organization Carrie is host of the top rated Carrie new half leadership podcast which I was just on with Carrie not very long ago, enjoyed thoroughly, which can be found Of course on Apple, Spotify Stitcher, tune in and YouTube, Carrie and his wife, Tony reside in central Ontario, and have two grown sons. You can find Carey at careynieuwhof.com. That’s careynieuwhof.com. On LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube at CareyNieuwhof. On Facebook and Twitter at CareyNieuwhof. Carey, welcome to the What’s Essential podcast.

 

Carey Nieuwhof

Oh, it’s such a thrill to be here, Greg and congrats on the spelling bee yo  get first prize that was really nobody knows how to spell my name.

 

Greg McKeown

Your name isn’t really Carey Nieuwhof is it?

 

Carey Nieuwhof

It was an available URL. So I changed my name. Like honestly, I remember like as a little kid that things you remember growing up. And I remember I must have been four or five and you know time to go to kindergarten know your ABCs and I’m like holy cow. This is a complicated name. I knew that at four or five.

 

Greg McKeown

The good news is if you have a weird name like I do, the internet tends to reward you that now the unusual things about us can feel like the greatest burden at first but can become and be turned into our greatest advantages in the long run. It’s true. Right before we got on air, I was asking how you were doing since we chatted a couple of weeks ago. On your excellent podcast

 

Carey Nieuwhof

I really enjoyed that conversation. People should go and listen to it. We give us your third your next book, like you know my listeners got the scoop. It was a scoop, right? Yes. And that’s on TEDx listening. Like that’s incredible. The three levels of listening like I took notes, and I’ve thought about that a lot. It was really, and it was a tangent, right. Like we eventually got to effortless but it was just so good. If so if you want the scoop, you know, Greg spilled the beans.

 

Greg McKeown

The right before we got on the air here, I asked you what you’ve been up to the last couple of weeks, you said you were preparing for a month off from the business? And but then you said something like, maybe you have the words for it. You said no. No cheating. Yes. No cheating. Just really unplugged. And, and you said, fortunately, the business is getting to the point, or is that the point that it can do that. And I think that’s worth getting into. Because it seems to me that a lot of people design or end up with lives. And then businesses that are so dependent on them. They are they have to be or feel they have to be linked to their phones every second of every day, doing email, what you’re always on the things won’t work without them. And in this way, I think make life much harder than it needs to be for themselves. And so can you just talk to me about that? And you know, what have you learned about building business that can operate when you aren’t there?

 

Carey Nieuwhof

Yeah, I’ve learned a lot about it. And I learned it the hard way. And the way I think about it, Greg, is and I’ll give you the framework and then sort of explain the narrative. Yeah, but no cheating means no, no hour of email in the morning while the kids are asleep while my kids are grown now. But you know, that kind of thing, which I did too often. When I was in my 30s. My kids were young. I would cheat that way. I’ve tried working vacation. Listen, I love what I do. I loved it. When I was in ministry as a pastor, I love running a business right now just to help people thrive in Life and Leadership. Like I love that stuff. So in this is the poison, right? It doesn’t feel like work. If you’re doing what you’re enjoying. You can justify it. Last summer, I finished up this book at your best which releases as you mentioned, this September, and you know, as final edits, and I’m like, that’s it, no more working vacations because I wasn’t very good at work. And I wasn’t very good at vacation. You know, you’re like, Okay, I don’t know, that was my best writing because I kept thinking about when are we gonna go to the beach. And then when I was at the beach, it was like, Okay, I got to do some more writing. Because when are you ever done a book rank like never right. So that was my experience. And I’ve taken a week off for two weeks off and totally unplugged. But my company now is really, in its current form started as a hobby, just a blogger and podcaster. And then, you know, millions of people showed up and I’m like, holy cow, what is this? And I hired an assistant and then hired another one. And then podcast manager. So now we have eight. There’s eight on the team. So now we’re at the point, we’re not a startup anymore. And I’ve really built into a team. My assistant has only been with me for a few months, but she’s really, really good. And I’m like, okay, we’re ready. And we’re ready to move to what I call level two as a company. So level one is exactly what you hinted at. It’s where most businesses operate. And I call it level one where nothing operates without you. So when I was a pastor at small churches, you know, back when I started Yeah, almost nothing did run without me. Yeah, hire someone to cover Sundays and everything else waits till you’re back. You know, you think about a mom and pop shop, lots of people run their own businesses or a boutique or an Etsy store. And like if you’re not actually there to do shipping and receiving like there’s no shipping and receiving. And you often don’t have the financial margin to hire someone even at minimum wage.

So mom and pop get there before dawn, they leave asker after dusk. They’re tired. They get maybe a week off if they’re lucky, and they run ragged all the time and most businesses run that way white collar blue collar, the owner, the founder runs everything. That’s level one. Then there’s level two, which is like things run without you, you can take a week off, two weeks off, a month off and not cheap, like not cheap. You know, if there’s an emergency, sure someone on your team will text you or whatever. But you can really automate it and get things down.

But the third level, which is exceptionally difficult, in my research, only a tiny fraction of businesses ever get there or any organization not for profits as well, is that things grow without you. So I’m a founder, I founded a church, I founded a company now that’s what I’m doing these days. And, you know, the real challenge at the church is it got way bigger than I thought. And you know, it’s the church, don’t screw that up, like that’s not yours. If I start a company running into the ground, okay, that’s on me. But like, don’t mess this up. And so we got to the point where it would run without me. And now I’m pleased to say five, almost six years on the other side of stepping out of the lead pastor role, it is growing without me and thriving without me. And I think that’s where every leader wants to be.

 

Greg McKeown

What do you think it’s going to take to go from level two to level three?

 

Carey Nieuwhof

That’s a great question. So what it takes is a couple of things. Number one, it takes you as a leader to relinquish control. I don’t need to sign off on every page. I don’t need to sign off on every email. I don’t need to sign off on every decision. So there’s, there’s something where you could say to yourself, Oh, you don’t understand, Greg, the organization needs me. Right. But you could, you could actually, if you sat with therapists for a little while, you might realize No, you need the organization to need you. That’s your problem. So number one, the leader has to cut that tie. The leader has to say the company, the business has a different identity than I do my future, even though it’s my name, like isn’t tied up with a company to get a separate that and sever and be happy sitting at the beach like you might go through withdrawal once or twice. But you’re not like, Oh, I’m just checking in Is everything okay? No, you got to cut that. So that takes maturity, and it took me years to get there. Second thing is you need a team who can who can actually be equipped to make decisions that will actually grow the company. So they’re no longer asking what would Kerry do? What would Greg do? They’re saying, you know, in terms of my company, which is Carrie Nieuwhof communications, just again, the name was available. So not particularly creative. You know, our mission is to help people thrive in Life and Leadership. That’s it. And we want to help people live in a way today that will help them thrive tomorrow. So we do podcasts, blog, posts, courses, all that stuff, I have now hopefully embedded the culture in them deeply enough, given them clarity in Oregon, the organization, what their role is hired competent, smart people who can make quality team based decisions. And when they get good at that, like I would say we are moving from level one to level two. Now this year in our company, give it a year or two, we may be able to move to level three, where even if I’m not on Permanent Vacation, like for a month or two or whatever, they are now making decisions that are growing the company and then if I remove myself from that the quality of their decision making and their ownership and the mission, and their ownership of the culture is strong enough that they can they can run the whole thing themselves. And this is really hard on the ego do a better job than I would do if I was making those decisions. And whew, that one’s tough. And that took quite a bit of counseling for me to get through that.

 

Greg McKeown

Yeah, this reminds me of a few things. Steve Jobs was once asked, you know, what’s his favorite innovation? You know, is it the Mac is it the iPhone? Is that the iPad and so on? And his answer was Apple and I thought that was, you know, another brilliant insight from Steve, in terms of how he was thinking. He was thinking of the company, in a sense as a product. That I’m, I’m thinking of this, because this is the most important product, if this is done right, then it can produce many, many products. And you know, outlive himself.

 

Carey Nieuwhof

And you know, as a leader, as a founder, as a CEO, you’re sort of the face of the company or the decision maker, but you get the credit, but you also get the blame, right? If something doesn’t go well. So that I think forces us to say, Well, let me just be in on that meeting, or at least brief me about it. So it’s a it’s a real growth area for me as well. Greg,

 

Greg McKeown 

What’s the longest you’ve gone without checking your phone?

 

Carey Nieuwhof 

I don’t think I like the answer. Probably a day. And I’ll tell you why. And this is the challenge. I don’t have a work phone. I you know, my phone is like, okay, where are we going to go for lunch today when I’m on holidays now? Yeah, probably the short answer to that is probably a day. Even when we were camping. We were totally off the grid. There was no power, no cell reception, nothing like that. would check it for the time in the stored weather forecast. But like, you can’t go online. That was when we were in the wilderness last summer. So if you count that three days, yeah.Like without the phone is one thing without things on my phone? Easy. I’m gonna do a month without apps on my phone, no slack, no email. Now, but like without my phone? That’s a really interesting question.

 

Greg McKeown

The longest I went without internet access was two and a half weeks on a family vacation. And the children still talk about it. They don’t say, remember those two and a half weeks? You didn’t have your phone? No, they still remember the experience. Now. It’s not just because of that. But there was no question that it was different than I felt different, that the experience was different. Because you are, you’re really getting away from the typical routines and habits and rituals that have been created. So that you can without really any attempt to do so, look at your life.

 

Greg McKeown

I remember a friend once saying to me, Greg, I’m too busy living to think about life. But I think that’s I think that’s true for entrepreneurs. I think that’s true for a lot of people in today’s environment, that they’re too busy checking email to think about their life or think about their business or think about what they’re doing.

 

Carey Nieuwhof

I think I think it would be you know, I’m a person of faith as you are Greg. And so I think if I put a spiritual element that this was gonna be like a spiritual retreat for me. time of prayer growth, meditation, digital detox, digital detox. Yeah. Like Cal’s digital detox Cal Newports digital detox. Yeah, I think that would make it easier. But if I’m trying to go about my everyday life, like it kind of is, you know, part of what I do for fun. Hmm. And I barbecue. It’s like, well, where am I gonna get a great recipe? I have a couple of bucks. But you know, online, I’m going to figure out how to nail this brisket.

 

Greg McKeown

In all of the work that you’ve done on leadership development, what do you find is the most frequent challenge people raise with you?

 

Carey Nieuwhof

Yeah, there are a lot. But I would say what comes up again, and again, and again, especially in the last three or four years, leaders are exhausted, they’re tired, they’re overwhelmed. They’re overworked. They’re over committed. And largely because of what we’ve been talking about, you know, work used to fit into a nice little bundle, I’m old enough to remember going to the office, and not being able to take the office home with you. Right, like when I was in law, you know, it was only one year, but like, if you brought a file home, you literally brought the file home, like a manila envelope full of legal papers. And if you lose them, you get fired. And now unfortunately, you know, if you were going to law firm, which I don’t anymore, you have your file with you 24, seven through the VPN, and it goes with you to the beach, and your job goes with you. And a lot of us, you know, some people have worked phones, but a lot of us everything is fused up on your life. And so, as a result, you’re watching Disney plus with your daughter, and you get a text from your VP who’s like, Hey, what are we gonna do about this, the clients waiting and you’re like, Okay, and there’s no break. So people are overwhelmed, overworked, over committed. And probably I think, on the edge of burnout, like not like go to your doctor take a pill or take a sabbatical level of burnout. But just where the I call it middle, mid grade burnout, where the functions of life continue, but the joy of life is gone. In other words, you can do your job, you can go to the beach with your family, you can you can have that function on the weekend with your friends. But the joy of it’s gone, the joy just got sucked out. That’s what I see from leaders again. And again.

 

Greg McKeown

It’s an interesting distinction. You’re not talking about diagnosable medical burnout. But as sort of precondition to that.

 

Carey Nieuwhof

Yeah, like a life condition. And you’re right, I was really excited a couple years ago to see that burnout was actually now an official diagnosis. You can go to your doctor and get diagnosed with it because I think it puts a label on something it was a term I think only invented in the 1970s I was doing research for at your best and I think it was like a they came up with it and like the early 70s to describe really doctors who felt burned out and then it kind of spread and then it was a workplace condition but now I think it’s a life condition because I talked to stay at home parents who feel burned out students who feel burned out retired people who feel burned out in it’s that drone of never really being off and sometimes you know never really being on you’re just in this perpetual gray zone

 

Greg McKeown

for a certain group of people. And I think that group of people is, has grown significantly over the last year and a half. It’s not universal. But there’s a lot of people living. I only half-jokingly say, there’s only two kinds of people in the world right now there are people who are burned out. And then there are people who know they’re burned out. And, and so especially if the kind you’re describing, where, where it’s like, you’re sacrificing more and more of your joy, more of the, let’s say, the color of life. I know myself when I literally when I take a nap. Yeah. When I wake up from the nap, the world seems more colorful, literally, to me. And I’m not sure whether that’s like psychological or I don’t know quite what is causing that. But it’s an experience I’ve had many times and I think, well, it can’t actually well can’t be more colorful, something’s changed within me within my physiology. And I think that’s not a bad metaphor, though, for the idea that people get more and more exhausted, more and more burned out and sort of slow away. And so their life just is less colorful. What? Give me maybe your top three, immediately actionable suggestions for what somebody can do. Who is sacrificing this joy for living because of burnout? What can they do right now?

 

Carey Nieuwhof

Couple things is number one, to name it. Just acknowledge it. I’ll give you a link to something at the end, they can take a free burnout quiz again, I’m not a doctor, but we’ve run 1000s of leaders through this quiz. And it’s very illuminating. So little signs for you to pay attention to your passion is gone. You no longer feel the highs and lows, right? You hear good news, and you’re like, oh, okay, or maybe you have a good game face. But like on the inside, you’re flat or you hear terrible news like so and so just died or was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And again, you’ve got manners, you know what to say but in the inside you you don’t feel it even though you know that person. Those are signs of burnout. So if that’s you, even those two out of I think we got 11 signs to look for. I mean, really pay attention to that, and just kind of go for help. So that would be I call that tell someone just just tell someone tell your doctor, tell somebody who’s for you Tell, tell a friend who’s in a position to help you about that. Second thing I would do is this could produce some immediate results is think of your day in terms of timezone sweet so we all get 24 equal hours in a day but not all hours are created equal. I’m a morning person Greg, would you call yourself a morning person? afternoon evening, like when do you kind of come alive most in the day?

 

Greg McKeown

Yeah, I would say I would say morning.

 

Carey Nieuwhof

Yeah, morning. Yeah, me too. But seven to 11. And most of us have three to five peak hours a day. For some a lot of people it’s in the morning, some it’s the afternoon, half my teams the afternoon Some are night owls like I come alive at 8pm. Great, I’m going to bed at that point, but I’m also up at five. So I call that your green zone those three to five really productive hours. Think of that as your green zone. And then you probably got a couple hours minus four to six in the afternoon when I’m pretty tired. That’s your red zone. You’re like trying to stay awake in the meeting. Trying to fall asleep at your desk you need extra caffeine that kind of thing. And then everything else in between in the workday is yellow. And the problem a lot of people run into is is they take their best work the thing that is most important in your case as an author or speaker working on that talk finishing it and they leave it for the cracks. They end up doing it in the redzone because everything got in the way and if you’re gifted at it, you’ll do a good job. The thing that really helped me is I started doing what I was best at when I was at my best And did all the stuff that was most important in the green zone and man, it like supercharged my productivity? So I would say do that what are you best at what is your most important work? Not necessarily the most urgent but the most important and you make those distinctions. Greg in an effortless, like, what are the most important things you can do get those done in your green zone, the time when you’re at your best and let everything else Wait, you’ll get way more done, you’ll be better at it. It’s great. That’s a second thing.

The third thing I would do is don’t look to time off to refuel you as much as we’ve been talking about vacation. That’s awesome. But but so many people today are stumbling into their vacation. So mind starts two days from now. I’m not that tired. I feel like I go for another month or two, which is awesome. The challenge with that is, you know, you stumble into your vacation exhausted, you get better, you go back after a week, two weeks, a month, whatever you get. And by 11am, your first day back, you’re like hit by the train, it’s over, you’re exhausted already. And that’s because the problem wasn’t how you spent your time off. It’s how you spend your time on. And so the mantra that I’ve adopted and this is the third thing is try to figure out how to live in a way today that will help you thrive tomorrow. What sleep do you need? What work do you need to do? What do you need to say no to? How do you avoid over committing? What do you need to do today that will help you thrive tomorrow. And if you can do that you can enjoy your time off, but you’re not going to need it to continually refuel you. And it can’t it can’t do that, you know, a sustainable pace. is the cure for an unsustainable pace, not time off.

 

Greg McKeown

How can people set a more sustainable pace?

 

Carey Nieuwhof

I think you got to look at a couple of categories. One would be you got to limit what you say no to what you say yes to. And again, your your stuff into centralism still challenges me to this day. That whole idea of it’s not a 90 It’s a zero, right? Not 100 and zero. Yeah, that is that is super challenging and very difficult to master. I’m still working on it. But most of us just start with way too much input because we’re people pleasers. We don’t know what to do. Second thing is you got to figure out like what do you need to refuel you? spiritually? Whatever that is for you. What do you need, so my day starts with an hour would just be really quiet. I pray I reflect. I personally read the scriptures. That’s what I do in the morning. It’s really a powerful time for me when I do that, well sometimes it’s 15 minutes. Sometimes it’s an hour, I’m an empty nester, so it’s easier now. I did that anchors me in a day. I ignored physical margin before but I realized, okay, I need to exercise I need to pay attention to what I eat. I need to pay attention to how much I sleep. And I used to pride myself before I burned out 15 years ago on how little sleep I got. Now I’m a napper I will try to get seven to nine hours a day of sleep. And I’ve been looking at the patterns of athletes, top athletes do that. Because they know if they’re gonna explode on the court for that hour or two hours, they need to be rested to do it. So pay attention to your physical margin, and then your emotional margin. For me, it was a lot of counseling and some really good coaching, leadership coaching. But you know, if you’re always flying off the handle at home, or you’re upset with your inner circle at work, and they don’t know whether they can talk to you, those are signs and I got to get enough margin in my life, physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually and even financially, that I’m in a place where I’m I’m coming with something to give. And when I do that, that is living in a way today that will help me thrive tomorrow. So even in the busy seasons like this a really busy week getting ready to sign off for a little while. super busy week. I I’m still gonna sleep seven, eight hours tonight. And because I know my work is going to suffer tomorrow if I don’t.

 

Greg McKeown

What is something you were hoping I wouldn’t ask? Haha. Oh, that’s great. Nobody’s asked me that or something I wouldn’t ask. Here’s Give me your first thought.

 

Carey Nieuwhof

What are you most afraid of in leadership?

 

Greg McKeown

What are you most afraid of in leadership? You mean in your own leadership? What are you most afraid of in your own leadership?

 

Carey Nieuwhof

It’s strange. There’s two answers that surface so I asked the question I give you a hybrid answer. Okay. I don’t know if that’s fair. But he caught me off guard. I would say laziness which is really irrational. That’s probably one of the reasons you know, I’m working really hard at getting a month off like laziness. I tell my wife that I’m like, I’m afraid of being lazy. She’s like, you’re the last person who would be lazy but like, where does that come from? And then honestly, just to be transparent, this one hurts a little bit but irrelevancy, like, did I live my life in vain? That may be that may be connected to my unwillingness to walk away from my phone. But I would say it might be the fear that none of this actually mattered in the end or that I didn’t make a difference. irrelevance.

 

Greg McKeown

Yeah, those they do seem to form a sort of trifecta relationship, at least on the surface, like fear of fear of irrelevance. fear of being lazy of wasting, you know, perceiving to waste a moment to write day and night, like you’re running out of time, to call upon Hamilton’s phraseology, and the musical. One of the reasons it grabbed my attention, perhaps is just because somebody posted recently, after reading effortless, and I love the way they said it was very simple, but they just they had they said easy. And then they had don’t equals, you know, like an equals with a line through it. Easy, does not equal. lazy. Yes. And that grabbed me is such a great banner or slogan. For some of the things we’re talking about here, I went back and looked in the dictionary just you know, cause and, of course, they aren’t the same words and they are you know, they don’t have the same definition. But lazy means unwilling to put in the effort. Whereas an easy is something Doesn’t require great effort. So for me, that was quite an interesting distinction because I think they are often used by overachievers, by insecure overachievers, by high performers, in this cultural norm of the world we live in right now of a 24 hour hustle 24 seven hustle, that hustle almost is success, you know, lifestyle, and it’s, if you’re hustling, that is a successful lifestyle. I mean, that whole sort of aberration of, of I think of original virtue, which is work, and put in work and give honest labor and so on. This aberration, it’s like lazy and easy at the same thing. Carrie give us the final word?

 

Carey Nieuwhof

I just say one of the most important things you can figure out is how you’re going to spend your days and try to spend them in a way that living in a way today that will help you thrive tomorrow. The problem we see so often with overwhelm, is that people look to time off to heal them. And the problem is time off won’t heal you. And the problem is how you spend time on how you can spend your time on can you live at a sustainable pace that will help you live in a way today that will help you thrive tomorrow, if you can crack that nut and I’d love to help however I could. Then you are going to live effortlessly, and you are going to figure out what’s really essential and you will find time for that.

 

Greg McKeown

Carrie, it’s been a real pleasure to have you thank you for being on the What’s Essential podcast. It’s been a joy, absolute joy.

 

Carey Nieuwhof 

Thank you Greg.


Greg McKeown

Credits:

  • Hosted by Greg McKeown
  • Produced by Greg McKeown Team
  • Executive Produced by Greg McKeown