Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of your Brain's Coach podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your Brain's Coach, and it is my job here to bring to you all the best recent, cutting-edge, most useful, important and applicable brain-body tools so you could take better control of your thoughts, of your emotions, of your actions, so you could create the life experience that you absolutely love living. And speaking about life experience that you absolutely love living, yesterday I did a workshop at Africa Tech Festival, one of the biggest tech festivals here in South Africa, and at that workshop, the workshop's name was Founders Shield how to perform at a higher level without destroying your life, destroying yourself. How to navigate this quite complex journey, quite demanding journey, without destroying your life and yourself while doing that. And we had really amazing discussion about long-term thinking and creating a very personalized work-life balance, and also the main thought, as I realized after, was about becoming more strategic long-term thinkers. The most lively discussion at the workshop was around work-life balance, work-life integration, how to balance your high ambition with your life so you have it all, and by all I mean life experience that you enjoy, that fills your soul with this feeling of meaning, fulfillment, being contempt and happy and, at the same time, which leads you or moves you towards the important goals. So that was the hottest discussion of our workshop and we started it with a question If you could continue going like this for a decade, would you be able to? And if not, what has to change Prior to that?
Speaker 1Let's go back a little bit. I put a picture of a person running a race on this sort of court with markers for distance, and I asked folks to think about how do you prepare for, let's say, a 5k race or a walk if you're not a runner? I'm not a runner. When you have a predefined length of your hike or of your run, of your sprint, when you have a very good definition, then you know exactly what pace to take and how to take care of your nutrition or rest or sleep, whether you should sprint or you should pace yourself better. You know yourself and when there is a defined distance and length and you know the terrain really well, it's quite simple to figure out the equation. How do you make it till the end and then you could continue living your life or, I don't know, going for other runs.
Speaker 1The tricky part about our journey as entrepreneurs and the tricky part about life. You have to figure out how to move towards your goals, but also don't burn yourself out to the ground so you end up not being able to continue, especially for a journey of an entrepreneur. Yes, we all want to succeed in a few months, in a year, in a couple of years. But imagine and for most businesses that is actually true that you have to take this journey for the next decade or a couple of decades before it really molds or fulfills or shapes into something that is successful and you can pace yourself in a different way, with more money, more support, more help and you can relax a little bit. But the journey of making a successful venture, it might take a couple of decades. It will most probably take at least five years, even more probable, 10 years, if you want to build something great and you don't want to rely on luck or some investor or some crazy idea that just takes off. For most of us it's close to a decade before we build something truly successful in this world. And that's why this question if you needed to continue like this for a decade without wrecking your life, burning yourself out, keeping your smile on having your life together, if you had to continue like this for a decade, will you be able to and, if not, what has to change? And then after that, I shared with folks a framework that I use with all of my clients. This is two-point framework to make sure that you have your stuff together so you could go as long as needed to succeed without again ruining your life, ruining your health and feeling like you're in some sort of prison and you can't wait till it's all over, or burning yourself out and not being able to continue. So what is this framework that I give to all my clients that we work together to install in my client's life and I have it in my personal life as well.
Speaker 1At some point, I figured out there are two essential elements you need to think of when you think about pacing yourself for long-term goals. Two things you need to think about your biology and your priorities and we talked about these at the workshop and I invited guys to think about that and biology. You are a biological machine. You're a bio-organism and you need certain things to keep functioning well. You need proper sleep, you need proper food, you need proper movement to keep yourself running smoothly without breaking down and then having to quit or having to slow down or reconsider or without hating what you do.
Speaker 1I also made this point to folks that your biology is a very powerful tool that shapes your mind, that shapes your thinking, that shapes your idea creation, that shapes your reasoning and decision-making. And so if you're running barely making it, the decision that you will make in your business are going to be short-term and they're not going to be that smart. And the reason is because your brain knows how much resource you have and if you don't have much, your brain will start making decisions which will most likely make you quit. So you cannot. In stress levels, for example, that is related to your biology. When you are under conditions of stress, because you don't sleep well, you don't eat well, you don't take care of yourself, your brain starts working less well, it is not as creative, it goes into this automatic decision-making mode. When you resist change, you resist innovation, you're like, oh, it's not going to work. So you become the cynic who has less chance of making this thing work, especially in our environment of fast change and uncertainty and things just changing super fast.
Speaker 1So biology is hugely important for the success of your business and yet so many entrepreneurs and business owners don't pay enough attention to that. And then they start thinking why am I not succeeding? Well, maybe because you're not taking care of your body and your brain. That makes the decisions in your business. So biology, as one of my friends puts it get yourself serviced like you would your car If you want to achieve big goals. Treating your body well isn't optional, it's essential. Treating your body well isn't optional, it's essential. And then the second part of this framework that we work on with my clients is priorities. You know, during our discussion at the workshop, there is this weird thing emerged. I ask people to talk about this topic, this question If you needed to go on like this for a decade, would you be able to? And if not, then what has to change? So people talk to each other and a weird thing emerged that they shared after Work-life balance or this ideal of work-life integration.
Speaker 1It is different for everyone. What I want for my work-life integration is not the same as what you want, and so we all need to understand that, and you need to figure out what your work-life ideal situation looks like, and will you be happy with that now, in a year from now, in five years, in a decade. Yes, it's going to change. But then, at the same time, don't put yourself in your situation where you ruin so many things while pursuing your high goals, high ambition, so there is no return. And there is this time when you push yourself that hard that there is no return, return and you create so much damage that it's very hard to almost impossible to reverse. So again, this whole questioning would I be able to continue this for a decade? It teaches you two things.
Speaker 1Strategically, I also with priorities piece. I give my clients this exercise time budgeting and I give them this worksheet which is linked in the show notes time budgeting. And at the top of this worksheet it says you have 168 hours. This is the total amount of hours you have in a week. And then below this it says sleep, food, work, family health, other non-negotiable things, how many hours you need to dedicate to each of these based on your priorities or your ideal work-life situation. So you put those in and then 168 hours that you get every single week. You subtract those non-negotiables from that and then you're going to be left with some number of hours Sleep. Let's say you sleep eight hours, seven nights, 56 hours, eight hours, seven nights, 56 hours, so 168 hours total and you subtract 56, and that's already 112 hours. And then you subtract things like food and family time, et cetera, and you get the amount of hours that you can dedicate to different work projects. And then you distribute that between different priorities or areas of your focus. And how you distribute those can depend on where you are in your business, in your life, and what you feel like working on and how much you feel like working on.
Speaker 1But the core idea here is being strategic and thinking long-term. Yes, you will have to sprint from time to time, but make sure that you don't sprint to a point that you can't finish your marathon. That your life and your work is. So. That was the longest and hottest discussion of our workshop, and then we talked about things like procrastination and motivation. And then, after the workshop, some folks came up to me and asked me about uncertainty, like how do you deal with this fact that you're never really sure if you're doing the right thing, and how do you still take action? And how do you stick with what you do longer or shorter, or do you change your decisions all the time based on the new information or your new thinking? How do you deal with that? So I chatted with folks about that as well, and it is a tricky one.
Speaker 1But there are great scientists and practitioners in the realm of business and life that have pretty damn good decision-making strategies that have been proven effective in real life work scenarios. So I usually share those because I also apply them in my life and in life of my clients and I see them work. I test them against reality and then I use them Like the book Decisive, for example, a way to make decisions about your strategy pre-mortem, post-mortem, things like that. These are great strategies that are adopted by great thinkers and practitioners and doers. So that's what I usually share with folks at workshops not something that I just came up with, but things that I learned, tested and this is how it works. Try it out and see how it might work for you. So that was yesterday and I hope you found this framework useful to you as well.
Speaker 1So first start with the question if I were to continue like this on this journey for the next decade, to continue like this on this journey for the next decade, am I creating a fulfilling life experience? Life is now. It's not when you're going to achieve a certain goal or success. Live your life now, embrace it now and understand that this is right now. This is what your life is, and stop pushing away things that you got to take care of because you think it's going to be easier or better at some point.
Speaker 1There is no guarantee. Life is this fog that we're all walking through and nothing is freaking guaranteed and if anything changed in the past decade few years is that change is just accelerating and we're gonna have more and more uncertainty and more and more change, and people who are gonna succeed in this environment are the ones who are gonna live it every single day seizing the moments, changing, adapting, testing things against reality faster, making adjustments and figuring out this work-life balance in the most strategic way, thinking a little bit or a lot in advance, making sure that when you sprint, you don't sprint that fast or that hard that you burn yourself to the ground, wrecking your life, your health, and then you can't even continue. It kind of reminds me of this startup situation where you get some funding, invest, investing, and then you, because you are in such a hurry, you spend it all as soon as possible to in your head, making things happen faster, but then they don't happen faster and you run out of cash and you can't continue and your vision just collapses on you and all because of that impatience and rushing things and pushing too hard yourself and people and resources, and then you burn, crash and burn and there is no point of return. So make sure that you don't live your life like this, because life is going to be long and you're in it for a long run, so treat it accordingly.
Speaker 1Thank you, guys for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Another panel is coming up today, so wish me luck. Don't forget to check out the time budgeting worksheet to live strategically, and that is linked in the show notes. And please do share this podcast with at least one person who needs to figure out how to create this elusive work-life balance integration that keeps you happy now and keeps you happy and smiling for a decade from now while you are pursuing your ambition. Thank you, guys, really appreciate you. Without you, this podcasting and the whole thing would not be happening. So thank you so much. Keep it up, keep working on things, keep yourself running smoothly and till next time, have an awesome day.