52. Greg Wells on Optimizing Your Life with Deliberate Recovery

Speakers

Greg McKeown, Greg Wells

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Greg McKeown

Dr. Wells, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for joining me on the What’s Essential Podcast. It’s a pleasure to have you,

Dr. Greg Wells     

Greg, it’s so good to be here. You know, we’ve been getting rid of so much stuff out of my life over the last year that it’s some it’s quite wild that we’re here to talk about this, because that’s pretty much all that I’ve been doing for about 14 months. So super psyched to connect actually.

Greg McKeown     

The pandemic came, and you decided you would just shred the non-essential from your life.

Dr. Greg Wells   

Oh, you have no idea how much stuff we got rid of, like, it was just amazing. I’m like, first of all, very, very grateful that you know, healthy and happy. So to start with, with that, and the fact that I had the, the ability to actually have too much stuff and too many things in too busy of life. So we took a look at everything, ended a hard inventory on what’s essential, what’s not essential, and punted everything that was not essential. And oh my god, did it ever feel good? Like shockingly, it was amazing.

Greg McKeown     

One of the reasons that I invited you on the What’s Essential podcast is because I have just well not just finished a few months ago finished a new book called effortless. And one of the people that I had working on Team Effortless was Jonathan Cohen, who works at Pfizer, one of the one of their top attorneys, and he was listening to a presentation that that you were in and said, Oh, this is so aligned with the things we’ve just been researching and that you’ve been writing. And there’s I think a particular thread of this new book that you your research in your work is particularly complimentary to it.

There’s three parts to effortless. There’s effortless state, effortless action and effortless results, three concentric circles that build on each other, they’re complimentary to each other. And effortless state is really the difference between like two states, that’s the state of suffering, where you’re exhausted, burned out, blaming the world frustrated, angry, fearful, that and then there’s the effortless state, which I think everybody has experienced, but perhaps only spend a few percent of their, their life in, where you’re rested. You’re mentally at peace. You’re emotionally steady, and you’re really at ease. And because you’re at ease, you’re better able to take appropriate action, and not force interactions and try to force you know your way power through in order to get results. But you can do it in a more natural, rhythmic way to be able to actually get the results you want, but without burning out along the way. So that’s the context. But one particular element of it I want to put to you and see what your specific thoughts are, is the idea of taking of making rest and responsibility to treat it in a sense as we would our professional pursuits are career with deliberate we know that’s a responsibility to provide for my family. You know, look after the clients and so on, but that we should take make relaxing and rest, as clear a responsibility as that, that burnout is no badge of honor. And I wonder if you could speak to the research that you’ve done either on the problem side the evidence that this is a problem, but also the opportunity and how we can achieve it. So there’s a three questions there. You can begin however you want

Dr. Greg Wells   

So much there to dig into, we could spend hours just talking about everything you just mentioned. You’ve done your research. So that’s cool. Let’s have fun with this. So let’s talk about effortless first, I think that effortless is so important. Just this morning, I did a session for a client of mine on more energy, less tension, which is essentially what you’re talking about. And when I was a physiologist for Olympic athletes, and I worked a lot in swimming and canoe, kayak and sports that were rhythmic in nature, walk, run, jog, swim, bike paddle, those sorts of, you know, rhythmic, repetitive sports. One of the things that we often worked with our athletes on, especially as we approached competitions was go fast, not hard. So you can imagine running hard, right, you’re running, your arms are tight, you’re like faces gridded, you’re like, I’m just gonna go as hard as I can. Which is an entirely different experience from running fast, which is effortless speed. And that is exactly what I think we can all take away, whether you’re running, whether you’re swimming, whether you’re paddling, whether you’re doing a speech at work, whether you’re writing an exam, the game playing music, doing drama, it all is exactly the same. It’s a universal human truth. And when we release tension, especially when we release physical tension through breathing, as I just did you enable energy to flow a lot better through all of your nervous system, your muscles, and your performance at everything that you do increases.

So all of these ideas of essentialism, of effortless performance are all interrelated. And ultimately, you finished with asking about rest, recovery and recharging, which is that when we’re performing, we’re performing at the highest possible level. But then when we’re not performing, we’re also practicing that essentialism and getting rid of anything that doesn’t serve us and not wasting our energy. So we perform at the highest level, then we recovered deeply and completely. And that enables sustainable, high performance and actually better health at the same time in a very different way of living, which is contrast that to what so many people are doing right now, which is just, you know, pushing so hard for so long with no breaks and ending up in a state of total burnout. So it’s definitely something for us to take away. Love your question.

Greg McKeown     

Oh, I loved everything you said, there’s so many things to build upon that I love run fast, not hard. That’s just perfectly said. And captures the argument for effortless, right, that that’s the point you’ve been taught, we’ve been taught in so many ways to run hard If you want to achieve things quickly. And it’s the opposite argument. If you’ve got to learn how to run fast, if you want to go fast, it’s a different, it’s a different orientation, a different approach. Let me ask you this, because this has been a question in various ways. I’ve been asked a few times as I begun the media tour for the new book, it generally has come from people who have had a lot of sports experience in college. And they’ll say, well, they don’t necessarily use the term but the no pain, no gain argument. Well, you know, sometimes you just have to work so hard in order to get the results. And that’s what you need. And there’s something there that seems right about what they’re saying. But something is off too, what are your thoughts and reactions to that? What have you learned as you’ve been working with people at the absolute top of their performance?

Dr. Greg Wells   

I just listened to that term, no pain, no gain, I just cringe. I think that there is no way around the fact that you’ve got to do the work, you need to put in the repetitions, you need to put in the hours of deliberate training to learn how to play an instrument or deliver a line if you’re acting or deconstruct a business to figure out where the improvements lie, or even answer questions on a math exam. Like you have to do the repetitions, there’s no way around that. But the idea around no pain, no gain, isn’t that an antiquated concept. I think the idea that we have to put in the work still exists, you do need to do the practice, the better your practices, the faster you achieve what it is that you’re trying to do. So you want coaching, you want mentoring, you want to learn as much as you possibly can so that your practice is effective. But at the same time, we’re not working harder, we need to work smarter, and that’s very, very different. So in a sports analogy back in the 80s and 90s, the approach to training in many different sports was high volume, how many meters can you run or swim? How many weights can you lift? And that was pretty much the extent of the training program, which is volume, you’re going to do a lot of hours. There was no discussion of mindfulness training. There was no discussion of massage therapy unless you were actually at the competition itself. Sports Nutrition was like yeah, let’s do some carb loading. Don’t forget to drink some water some, you know, from time to time, like there was zero support for that training. Whereas now, through an evolution that happened sort of starting in the early 90s, all the way through to today, the approach is completely different. Instead of a high volume approach, it’s a high quality approach, the workouts are done in such a way that you’re warming up, you’re getting the body completely ready, you’re executing race quality performances in practice, then you’re completely, you know, warming down and recovering and clearing lactate, after which you might do some yoga, and you might do some, some massage therapy, you might do some cold therapy to decrease inflammation once a week, you might do a sauna. On the weekends, you’re going to go for a walk-in nature, you’re going to be doing some mindfulness training, it’s, it’s all based around recovery, and regeneration, so you can get to the next high-quality workout as fast as possible. So instead of training all the time, it’s 70 to 80%. Now, things are done in such a way that you’re training at 90 to 110% interspersed with 30, to 50%, bouts of recovery, easy, easy, easy work on technique, and other things like that. And that’s actually an approach that I think works for us in all aspects of our lives. So yeah, no pain, no gain. I mean, there’s an element of truth there, you got to get the work done. But we want to be working smarter, not harder, interspersing bouts of World Class performance, where you’re able to reach your potential, whatever that happens to be at any given moment, interspersed with rest, refocus, and recharging, which enables you to ultimately continue to do that consistently for a long period of time without getting injured without getting burned out. And continuing on a very cool growth and development curve.

Greg McKeown     

What are some of the other practical ways that people can achieve a better rhythm between doing the work but also getting this rest and recuperation? Because for a lot of people, especially if they’re high performers, and they’ve really been sold a bill of goods and believing that 24 seven hustle is the way to get ahead? Are actually novices at this, they don’t know how to relax, they don’t know how to do that without just feeling guilty and feeling like they’ll fall behind and so on. What practical things can people do in the midst of the pandemic still, to be able to get this dynamic equilibrium between work and relaxation? Right?

Dr. Greg Wells     

That’s a really insightful question. And it does require a mind shift along the lines of everything that we’ve been speaking about so far. And the mindset shift is that recovery and regeneration, in and of itself is a skill, just like work is a skill, you gain knowledge, you gain skills, get better at your job, or whatever it is that you’re pursuing, professionally or academically. Similarly, the ability to rest, refocus, recharge, recover, and regenerate is also an incredibly, incredibly important skill that needs to get cultivated and developed. So you can do a number of different things. I love the 123 rule, I love the idea of doing. So one hour a day is a very powerful tactic just in terms of making sure you have time to recharge one hour out of the 24. And then two days a month. So that’s one weekend a month. Take it off, don’t check your phone, don’t check your email, get away from tech, get into nature, go for a walk, spend some time with your friends, do a hobby. So one weekend, a month completely off. And then three weeks a year, I’d love for everyone to take their actual vacation time and really take a vacation, like make yourself unreachable. Drop your phone in the ocean if necessary. And really give yourself a break to disconnect. And I know a lot of people are thinking I can’t do that I’ve got too much responsibility. In fact, I would submit that the more responsibility that you have, the more important it is that you completely unplug. Because when you do so you empower the people around you to cover for you, to learn, to get better, to add those skills. So that when you come back, everyone’s skills are up leveled. And then you can cover for someone else at some point when they go off to the 123 rule is a very, very powerful one. And then what do you do in those times? There’s some incredible research showing that gratitude journaling is so effective takes five minutes or less a day. Three bullet points about things that you’re grateful for super fantastic. You can also do things like mindfulness and meditation, just taking some time to stare at the trees or listen to some music or look at some arts or practice mindfulness meditation using an app like Headspace Calm or 10% happier. So there’s so many different things that we can do, I would just request that people find something that you like, explore, test, try, experiment. And when you find things that you enjoy, photography is one that I’ve discovered over the last couple years I absolutely love. Gets me into nature gets me hanging out with my kids and not checking my phone.

So whatever it is for you just build it into your life. And you’ll feel easier and easier and easier about it and better and better and better about your overall health and well-being.

Greg McKeown     

What other rituals do you use yourself that have proved helpful? And by ritual, I don’t just mean habits, but you know, I think of a ritual as a habit with a soul. You know, something that that the very way of doing it is somehow rejuvenating. For people that have gotten to the Marie Kondo-ing, it’s not just tidy your stuff? Yes, that’s nice. It’s not just organize your stuff is not just the output is the way you’re doing it itself is satisfying. I think that’s one of the reasons she is such a nerve is because it’s saying this thing that used to be drudgery. You’re going to fold your clothes and put them away, suddenly becomes its own ritual somehow rejuvenating in and of itself. So I just wonder what rituals have you developed or have you heard of other people developing for being able to more effectively rest and recuperate?

Dr. Greg Wells     

Yeah, my wife Marie Kondo’d our entire house over the last 14 months, so I am extremely familiar with all of that, hold this shirt, and does it bring you peace and love and if not, it’s going outside.  You can’t throw away my favorite shirts like that. Anyway, two ideas for you on this, which I think are just ideas that I’ve been putting into practice. The first one is, I’ve been trying not to think of exercise as a workout. And this comes from someone that I was a swimmer growing up and, you know, I went to workout. That’s what we did for all the way through college, we went to workout and workouts were hard and you trained hard. I have completely pivoted that into practice.

So I tried to think of it now as a movement practice, not as a workout. So you can think of yoga as being like, Okay, I’m just gonna follow these moves. Or you can think of yoga as you know what I’m just going to flow through and try to do these moves, and relax at the same time or breeze through this stretch. Or when I’m out for a run, I’m not thinking about anything deliberately, I’m just allowing myself to run with no resistance. And when my mind does get locked on to the pain, the discomfort, the muscle burn, I just do my very best to breathe through it and let it go and release that. And that’s transforming exercise for me from being a workout to being a movement practice. Which is ironically enough, even though I’m trying to go easier, actually made it a lot easier for me to go into much tougher workouts, much longer workouts, and be much happier doing it. When I finished, I just feel good. I feel like I’ve been training my mind and my body.

Greg McKeown     

There’s a lot of outdated thinking that says, well look, work hard, play hard. And this complete separation of, of enjoyment from, you know, the work itself. And in the kind of work I’m doing where I’m advocating people do essential work. And they really think carefully about that. It’s been surprising to me how often there’s an underlying assumption that says, well, the more essential the work is, the harder it has to be. In fact, if it’s not hard, it can’t be valuable. It’s like a distrust of easy. And one of the things I think we need to learn to do that you illustrate in both of your examples, is to make the essential work more enjoyable. So that instead of you saying, Okay, I’m going to work hard, so that I feel good afterwards. I’m going to go on the run, I won’t enjoy the run, but I’m going to enjoy the feeling afterwards, is it well, that’s fine, if that gets you to do it. And you want that that’s one way of approaching it. But why not just not do the running do something else instead that you do enjoy that’s healthy, or you want to swim or you like to swim? And what if you do it with someone you like to spend time with so that you’re accountable, and it’s enjoyable, and the thing itself becomes a more joyful ritual.

Dr. Greg Wells     

Yeah, and let’s take this is step further. Choose the things that you love and that serve you and make you happy. And guess what, it’s easy, and you’ll do more of them. Which actually leads me to my next thought, which is, well, why not just do the stuff that’s easy. Why do the stuff that’s hard? If you think about it, what’s easy for us is probably something that we’re talented at something that we have a propensity for, something that we enjoy doing. And when you are talented at something, when you enjoy doing it, you’re probably going to do it at a really high level, especially if you do it quite often. And it’s always easy. So for me public speaking is easy, it’s so easy, I absolutely love it. And I’m getting better and better and better at it, which lo and behold means that eventually someone’s going to pay me for it, which means I can make it my job. And so that’s, that’s something to consider as well as is lean into what’s easy for you. Because that may be where your hidden talents lie that where that may be where the opportunities lie, and concurrently, where you feel resistance, where you feel like it’s hard lead, explore that, journal about it, do the notes. Why is it hard, what is it about that that is difficult? And they that may lead you to some very powerful insights about where the resistance is coming from. And the resistance may be self-created probably is in many cases, in which case you, you can often realize it, I’m making this hard myself, it doesn’t need to be. And you could choose to carry on down that road, or you could choose to do things differently. So it’s a very interesting journey that we go on, when we start to explore these ideas that you’re talking about.

Greg McKeown     

Well, you just named really, the sort of the why for writing effortless at all, was that life is hard. I mean, it’s not, that’s not an afterthought. For me, that’s the driver. Life is hard in 100 ways for different people, it can be full of suffering, it’s almost a universal thing, people are challenged with all sorts of things. The complication is that on top of that, we have many ways we make life even harder than it needs to be. So we add on to the actual challenge and test of life, all these additional complexities, this perfectionism that we can have, these outdated assumptions we can hold on to. And the impact of that is that, and I’ve seen it throughout the pandemic, is that people burn out and still don’t get the results that they want. That having it’s twice as much work to get half the results. And my position is that we can make a different choice that we can learn a new mindset. And then with it, a new tool sets specific things that we can do differently so that we can make it a little easier today and a little easier tomorrow to do what is essential. That’s the context for what we’re doing. And what use you said that made me think of all of that is just that phrase, there are ways in which we make things harder than they need to be.

Dr. Greg Wells     

And imagine as we cultivate this new future was we reimagine our future if we deliberately tried to make our lives easier and better. You know I listen to Tim Ferriss a fair bit. And one of the things that he has said, which I really love is, you know, what would this look like if it was easy? And that’s made me rethink processes. It’s made us restructure our business. And the outcome is, is quite interesting. Sometimes you cannot make changes it is what it is and that’s fine. But you’ve done the thinking to be well, is it necessary that I do it this way? Or is there a way to do things differently? So for example, a simple thing is, what we did a couple of years ago is we’re like we want to exercise more. Well, it’s hard to get to the gym, what would that look like if it was easy, gym should be in the house. So we cut the cable and we you know, converted a TV room into a little Fitness Studio, we got a secondhand treadmill, and we put a yoga mat on the floor and we got a whole bunch of kettlebells. And lo and behold, we have a fitness training studio inside of our homes that when it’s raining and cold and you don’t want to go to the gym, you literally have to you know, you have this thing in your house. That’s what it’s now easier. So you can do that systematically throughout your entire life. What would this look like if it was easy is a great question to ask yourself?

Greg McKeown     

Well, that’s exactly it. I was just on with Tim just recently, and we were talking all about this on lots of levels. But if you just take that question what can how can this be made effortless? I was asked recently. Well, how effortless is your life, Greg? And I’m like, oh, there’s so many things that are so much harder than I think they need to be still. And that’s why I like this subject is because I want to pick up one by one. Each thing that feels overwhelming. Well, how could it be effortless? And sometimes I think you’re right sometimes at least yet I haven’t got the answers to them but surprisingly regularly. I will ask that question and ideas will just start flooding to my mind of how it might be done more easily more effortlessly. And if you aren’t, don’t ask that question you don’t get those answers. So the question alone that you’re asking from Tim is powerful. And to ask it every day, on the things that really matter produces new insights to things that that aren’t otherwise obvious to don’t come to you. You said, you’ve done it in your business as well. How have you applied this basic question to your business?

Dr. Greg Wells     

Well, one of the things that we did was we automated investing as an example. So you know, a percentage of your earnings can be automatically invested every month, you never see it, it just disappears from your account.

Greg McKeown     

So it’s automated. You don’t one time the effort is put in one time. But it produces results for you again, and again. And again, a little more effort upfront, but then it isn’t an exaggeration to say it is literally effortless after that.

Dr. Greg Wells   

I don’t even notice it to be honest. Like I just live within a certain different number. And it’s like, at the end of the year, you get this report, I literally don’t think about it, because I shouldn’t it’s I’m not a professional investor, I shouldn’t touch it, because I’m not good at it. So I just outsource that completely.

Greg McKeown     

Let’s stay it for just a second because I think this is the point. Earlier on, we talked about the cutting the cable bill. And, and sort of the fortunate accident for me of discovering that I had cut it at some point, didn’t know I didn’t even have it. So often, these automated billing cycles, a setup in the favor of another company, where we don’t even we’re not checking closely enough on our bill, or close enough on our bank statement to notice that it’s still going so effortlessly, money is going away from us. This is just taking advantage of the same idea. So if people are looking for an easy way to get started on a more effortless life automation is I think, a really good place to look.

Dr. Greg Wells  

Yeah, let’s just dig into that a little bit further. So there’s two sides of that equation, both of which we did this year, the first one was to go through every single subscription that we had. Both Judith Knight and delete every single one of them that wasn’t absolutely essential. So you know, I love Fast Company magazine, 20 bucks a month. So when you delete that line item, it’s only 20 bucks, it’s not, you know, a huge number. Over the course of the year, though, that’s $240, you match that up with the cable bill, which we also cut, and the second car bill, and guess what, that’s a lot of money that instead of going out is going into investing. And that over the course of six months, a year, two years, 10 years, 20 years until I retire. Because I actually like, you know, I enjoy what I do. So I’m not gonna retire anytime soon, that’s a complete game changer. The other major thing I did, which has been hugely helpful with regards to my time, is using an app called Calendly, to automate all of the booking for my time, and you and I set this podcast up. We basically sent one email, Greg, do you want to be on the show? Absolutely. Here’s the link to book it. And it gives you access to seeing the gaps in my calendar, you chose a time it dropped the booking into both of our calendars. And here we are today. But that used to be like when are you available, you go in and look at your calendar, I’m available at these times and send those to you check yours get back to me it was a long process. And so we actually implemented that for all people in my organization, just to make sure that when we are booking or allowing ourselves to be booked, it’s during times when you want to be available not during creative times when you don’t want to be distracted and minimizing the admin and leveraging technology and artificial intelligence to make that happen even faster with none of your times. That’s been another big one that we’ve been put into place.

Greg McKeown     

I love all of these practical suggestions, I especially liked the combination of if you can have a one-time elimination of a non-essential but recurring expense, you are combining essentialism and effortless, right, because you had one time change many, many advantages, because you’re not paying every single month, month after month. But then also, I love that it’s like this high leverage thing, because you then trade off into all that same money can go into investments, same thing, one time, decision, one-time setup, and the results flow in your favor. From that point on. I mean, that’s to me, it’s, I get that somebody listening could say, well, that’s such a small thing. But it’s actually a great illustration of, of have the power of being able to make these one-time tradeoffs, set them up, right, forget about them, then life starts to work in your favor. It isn’t an exaggeration to say it’s effortless. Once the system set up, that’s the whole point of automation. There’s an upside to it and a downside. If you if you automate the wrong things, non-essential stuff gets automated. And that goes on forever in your life. If you can automate the right things, it also flows onwards and forwards. Give me the last word here, what have we missed? What do you want to share or teach on the subject either of really of essentialism, of effortless, of your own research that we haven’t covered?

Dr. Greg Wells     

I just love this conversation we’ve had so much fun, and it’s gone in so many super cool, you know, interesting places that’s been so fascinating to explore. I don’t think that we’ve missed anything. But I’d love to do you know, and we should do this again and explore it a little bit more, because there’s so much to unpack here. But I think that the final thing that I would throw is just to highlight a word that we mentioned early on in the show that I made a note about its responsibility. And I think that many people hear responsibility, and they think, oh, that’s something I’m supposed to do. When in fact, if you look at the origins of the word, it’s combination of response, dash ability, right? It’s your ability to respond. And I would love for people to have more response – ability in their lives, rather than just simply reacting to everything that’s coming at us so quickly these days. So we give ourselves permission to do the thinking and the journaling and the upfront work to be more effortless, to have more essentialism in our lives, which upfront takes some thinking and work but then liberates you there after that, I think is really a good example of execution of response ability in our lives, which I think is so key for everyone’s health and happiness, and enables us to take control of our lives, which is what I want for everybody. So that’d be the only other thing that I would highlight is something to think about moving forwards. And it’s a it’s a pretty good place to stop this particular chat because we’ve covered so many incredible areas that were so fascinating to talk about.

Greg McKeown  

Dr. Greg Wells, it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you on the What’s Essential podcast. I look forward to continuing this conversation now that we’re in each other’s worlds. Thank you for being on the show.

Dr. Greg Wells   

Greg, thanks so much for having me on the show. It’s an honor and a privilege really happy to be here.