Root Ready

Stop Ending the Day Exhausted: A Playbook for Peak Performance

• James Conole, CFP® • Episode 18

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Ever finish a day full of meetings or creative work and feel wiped out, even when you love what you do?
James did too, until one image changed how he looked at energy forever.

After seeing a scan of a “brain on meetings,” he realized the problem wasn’t the work itself, it was the lack of recovery between high-focus efforts. That insight led him to rebuild his days around structure, not hustle: plan like an athlete, recover like one.

In this episode, you’ll hear how a simple system (three priorities, real breaks, no dopamine drains) transformed his output and his evenings. The goal isn’t just to work better, it’s to end the day with enough energy left for your life.

Here’s what you’ll take away:

  • Why fake breaks (Slack, email, quick scrolls) keep your brain on alert—and your energy tank empty.
  • How to plan tomorrow’s top three today so you start with direction, not distraction.
  • The power of micro-recovery—five minutes of breath work, walking, stretching, or quiet reset that restores focus.
  • How deep work feels easier when recovery is built in, not earned after burnout.
  • A mindset shift: you’re not a machine managing output—you’re a performer managing energy.

By the end, you’ll know how to structure your day like a pro athlete trains: clear priorities, deep focus, and real rest in between. Because performance doesn’t come from doing more, it comes from recovering better.

Submit a question for James here: https://rootreadypodcast.com/


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The strategies, case studies, and examples discussed may not be suitable for everyone. They are hypothetical and for illustrative and educational purposes only. They do not reflect actual client results and are not guarantees of future performance. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principal.

Comments reflect the views of individual users and do not necessarily represent the views of Root Financial. They are not verified, may not be accurate, and should not be considered testimonials or endorsements

Participation in the Retirement Planning Academy or Early Retirement Academy does not create an advisory relationship with Root Financial. These programs are educational in nature and are not a substitute for personalized financial advice. Advisory services are offered only under a written agreement with Root Financial.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back to another episode of the Root Ready Podcast. I'm your host, James Cannole. Tell me if this is an experience you can resonate with. You wake up, you look at your day, you have a couple client meetings, you have a couple team meetings, you go into the day feeling great. Meeting number one, you feel great. Meeting number two, you feel great. Meeting number three, you start dragging a little bit, and by the end of meeting number four, you feel completely physically and mentally exhausted with nothing left to give. Why is that? Is that because either you're an introvert or an extrovert and it's the wrong mix of types of activities? I don't think so. I would consider myself more introverted, and there's been days that I've had 10 meetings, and I walk away from that day feeling totally alive, totally energized. I get home with tons of energy to play with the kids. Then there's been other days where I have zero team meetings, zero client meetings, and I walk away from that day completely drained, completely fatigued. So it's not an introvert versus an extrovert thing. So what is it? Well, the issue comes down to two things. Number one, how are you structuring your day? But number two, how are you recovering in between the different types of tasks and meetings that you have in your day? And that's what we're going to spend a lot of time talking about today. Here's when this really became evident to me. Here's when this became clear that this was an issue I was dealing with. Whenever I record content, whether it's for Root Ready, whether it's for Ready for Retirement, whether it's the YouTube channel, whatever it is, I try to batch four or five episodes all at once. And so I used to do this for the main core YouTube channel, my YouTube channel under James Cannol. And what would happen is I would record and I would record five in a row. And by the end of that, I felt so completely drained that the rest of the day I didn't want to talk to anyone. I didn't want to do anything. It was a drag to get through emails and getting through the rest of the day and anything that needed to be done. So for the longest while I just chalked it up to, yeah, it's just kind of a drag. It takes a lot, it takes a lot of energy to do this. It's kind of felt like running a marathon, but for your mind, it's just three, four plus hours of straight content. Of course, you're going to be tired. And then I saw something. This was an image. And what the image showed is if you remember, there used to be those things that you would see when they try to keep kids from doing drugs, it'd be the here's your brain normal, and here's your brain on drugs. You know, the normal brain looks cool, it's healthy, it's the blue and the green colors. Here's your brain on drugs. It's the inflamed colors, the reds, the yellows, the oranges, to try to show you here's the difference physically of what happens when you take drugs. Well, I saw the same thing, but it was for here's your brain versus here's your brain on meetings. And I'll flash that image on the screen right here so you can see it. But what it shows is it shows your brain after four consecutive meetings. And the brains on bottom, they look nice and cool. It's the greens, it's the blues, it's the purple hues, it's that brain is not overly inflamed, not overworked. But the brains on top, the scans of the brain, I should say, they're not actually showing real brains or showing, I don't know what type of a scan it is, but whatever that scan is, where it shows kind of like that heat map of what's going on underneath your skull there. So the brains on top, the images of these, it's more inflamed. You know, the first one's fine because it's the first meeting. But by meeting number two and meeting three and meeting four, you start to see that your brain is in overdrive. If you think of it like a generator, this generator is at full capacity, it's kind of doing all that it can do to continue functioning. So when I saw that, that's when it clicked to me. The reason I'm walking away from these recordings so exhausted isn't because of the recordings themselves, it's because I'm doing them back to back to back. And sometimes in between meetings or in between recordings, I'm checking, is there anything urgent on Slack? Is there anything urgent in email? Is there anything urgent going on that I need to address? So even in those moments between recordings where it felt like, okay, there should be five minutes, 10 minutes of recovery, it wasn't really recovery. It was jumping into email. It was jumping into Slack. More on that in a second, but that is not recovery. So it became three and a half, four hours of really what probably felt like just squeezing the brain, kind of like running the marathon for the brain, such that at the end of it, there's I didn't want to do anything. I was completely spent for the day. Well, once I saw this, once I saw this chart, this graph, this illustration that showed here's your brain on meetings and here's your brain without them, or with breaks in between meetings, that's when it clicked. What if I could just do something really quick, really short, really simple in between each of those recordings, just to see how would I feel. And so what I started to do in between each of those videos I would record is I would do three, four, five minutes of breath work. Now, I'm not an expert on breath work. I think there's many different ways that you could do it, but there's a certain way I saw Wim Hof recommends doing it. If you've ever seen Wim Hof, the Iceman, he's got a book, he's got videos, pretty fascinating guy. But, anyways, he talks about breath work. And it's really just these 20 to 30 big inhales and big exhales followed by a prolonged breath hold. Seems simple, seems relatively ineffective. If all you're doing is talking about, I'm breathing all the time. Why would this be anything different? But I would do that and I would just do one round of that, sometimes two rounds of that. Took five minutes in between each video. And I remember the first time I did that, I recorded all five videos and walked away from the fifth one with just as much energy at the end of it as I did going into that day. And that's when it clicked for me. This isn't just a meeting issue. This isn't just a, oh, of course, recording is kind of difficult. It requires all of your attention and focus, and you got to really, really, really be thinking. That's true, but it was very much a recovery issue. I was not recovering between each of these meetings, between each of these recordings. And because of that, half the day would go by. In the second half, I felt completely useless. So as you are looking at your day, maybe you're recording videos, maybe you're not, but there's absolutely things that you're doing regularly, and some of those things are draining to you. This could be meetings, this could be studying, this could be certain things, whatever the component is of the job, what are those things that you're doing that you would consider? If you're an athlete, what does performance look like? Is it recording videos? Is it being in meetings? Is it doing the advanced planning work behind the scenes? Is it leading company presentations about how you're doing different things? Whatever performance looks like, think of your job as a financial advisor the same way athletes think about performance. If all you're doing is training hard, hard, hard and you never rest, you're not gonna recover. Or if all you're doing is training hard, hard, hard, and in between training, you're eating junk food, you're not sleeping, you're not taking care of your body, you're not gonna recover. Well, here's the equivalent of junk food for us as financial advisors. It's scrolling Instagram, it's scrolling the internet, it's going on X, it's getting through Slack, it's getting through emails, reading and rereading the same email over and over and over again. And each time you say, maybe I'll deal with it now, you read it, you know what, too much time, I'm gonna mark it as unread and come back to it later. And once you've done that 10, 12 times the same email, you start to realize there's no nothing restful about being in your email inbox, about being in your Slack inbox, about being in Teams, about scrolling X, scrolling Instagram, whatever it is. That is the equivalent to eating junk food. It's cheap dopamine, it feels good, it's exciting, you see the notifications, you feel like you're doing something, you're actually not doing anything. In fact, it's counterproductive. Now, let me qualify that real quick. If you're actually looking at your inbox from the standpoint of, okay, I'm actually gonna start working through these things, either take these messages and assign them out as tasks, or take these messages and put together thoughtful responses to my clients, that is very different than what I was doing. Where in between videos, okay, I'm just gonna check my inbox, is there anything urgent? It's activating the brain, it's kind of activating in some senses that fight or flight response of what's going on, is there anything of an emergency happening? Not allowing your body to rest. That's a very different experience than saying, I'm gonna carve aside 30 minutes, 60 minutes to actually get through my inbox. Or I'm gonna set aside some time to actually get through my Slack messages. Very different. But if you're just scrolling email, just scrolling Slack, just scrolling LinkedIn, you're not resting. It feels good because it's a cheap dopamine hit. But there's something called dopamine fatigue, where if all day long all you're doing is bouncing around from email to client meeting to Slack to LinkedIn to whatever, you're constantly activating those dopamine receptors, such by the end of the day, you're feeling completely drained. You're feeling completely wiped out, but you didn't actually do anything. So, how do you do this? What's the right thing to do? Well, number one, I'm gonna go big picture before I actually go back to how do you rest and recover. But big picture, if you just walk into your office, if you just walk into your virtual office, if you're working from home, and you just get the day started, it's kind of like dropping yourself into a battle zone. What you're doing is you're dropping yourself into a battle zone without a clear mission, without a clear point of attack, without a clear sense of what am I doing here? And things are noisy, they're hectic, they're chaotic, people need things from you, you don't know what you're supposed to be doing. And all of a sudden your day is going to be driven by what other people need from you, not what you know are the top priorities for you. So, big picture, it starts with understanding how are you planning out your day. If today is Wednesday, then ideally Tuesday, before I'm done for the day, I'm looking at all my tasks, all my priorities, what are my quarterly goals, what are my weekly goals to say, okay, what are the top things I can do tomorrow? What are the top if all I could do was get three things done? What are the most important three things done? I actually use a physical planner for this, the full focus planner, where every day I will write out, I don't put it online because I like to do deep work where I don't look at anything online. All I have is the written pad of paper I have. What are the top three things that I'm gonna do? And I write out each of the meetings that I'm going to have. What that does is Tuesday evening I'm doing that, or Tuesday afternoon I'm doing that, so that Wednesday morning comes, I'm stepping into that battle zone. But instead of being drawn in to other people's needs, notifications, messages, things going off everywhere, I have a very clear mission. What do I need to get done to support the team, to support our clients, to support the business? And that's what I'm fully focused on. So that's actually where it starts. Don't jump right into how do I rest and recover. Start with how do you plan your day so that rest and recovery can actually be additive to what you're doing. The second thing, number two, so once you've already planned your day, ideally the day before, number two is execute, execute, execute. I remember growing up as a kid, I'd have basketball games turned on, and my dad and I would always joke that during the basketball timeouts, they would zoom in on one of the team's huddles. And it just always seemed to be the coach saying the same thing over and over. And that was we gotta execute, we gotta execute, we gotta execute. And we would joke like I could be an NBA coach. All he's saying is execute. Now, I didn't understand at the time, but really that game was won or lost in many cases before the game was actually played. The game was won or lost based upon the game plan, based upon the preparation, based upon what the plan was going into the game. And once you're in the game, it truly is. Just execute, execute, execute. Going back to our job as financial advisors, how can we prepare for today? Yesterday, what's the game plan for the day? Doesn't need to be as complex of how are we beating the other team and what are the plays we're running and what's the rotation gonna be. It's simply what are the top three things I need to do? And then can you execute, execute, execute? Execute could look different for all of us. Execute could be getting follow-up emails sent out to clients who need it. Execute could be finishing up that continuing education that you're working on. Execute could be reached out to those 10, 15 people or so that you told you're gonna reach out to about potentially working together on the financial planning process. Execution could be anything, but it's driven by your plan. Then finally, this is where rest and recovery become important. For me, my game plan yesterday was I need to record five videos. Today, it's execute, execute, execute. I'm not looking at Slack, I'm not looking at email. I have no idea what's going on in either of those right now as I record this today, because that's not my top three. My top three is really getting all my recordings done. But what I am doing is I'm resting and recovering in between each one of these videos that I record. Before I hit record here, I did about four minutes of breath work. Why? Because if I don't, I'm gonna have that same experience I shared before. Video number one, great, record it, feeling energized. Video number two, great, it's recorded, feeling energized. Video number three, I'm starting to drag a little bit. Video number four, I really start to not like this. This is really not fun. Video number five, it's taking everything I have just to get through it. And by the end, I just want to stare at a wall for a few hours. Well, what I learned is if I take time to recover in between each of these, by the end of video number five, I'm gonna have just as much energy as I did going into this. So, what can you do to rest and recover? Breath work's an awesome one. This is one where if I only have five minutes between a meeting, I can do three minutes of breath work. I just lay down on the floor and do it real quick and it's done. And you would not believe how different you feel mentally and physically through one, two rounds of doing that. Go on a walk. Ideally, without a podcast on or anything productive related on. Just go on a walk, get some sunshine, get some fresh air, get your body moving, get the blood flow pumping. That is going to be a great thing you can do between meetings. Stretch. When was the last time you actually stretched, did a deep stretch? That makes your body feel so much better, helps to clear your mind in a way too. Hydrate, have a light snack. I think the point of recovery here is that this recovery goes well beyond our job as financial advisors. Don't just do this so you can be a better financial advisor. Prioritize your health so you can live a better life. This starts with sleep. This starts with nutrition, this starts with moving your body. What are the things that you can do to take care of yourself? Which, by the way, is a big message a lot of us end up telling to our clients. How do you take care of yourself? It doesn't matter how much money you have. If you go into retirement, it's so unhealthy, so physically unfit that you can't enjoy it. Do you truly have wealth? No. How do we live that as advisors? The ability to prioritize our health, getting enough sleep, taking time in between meetings, and not time in between meetings to do what we want. The tempting thing is to say, hey, here's my phone. I just recorded. Why don't I just check to see what's going on in LinkedIn for a second? Why don't I check to see if someone responded to that YouTube comment? Why don't I check to see how that new LinkedIn post is doing? That's what the temptation is. The temptation is to do the things that release that dopamine, that make us feel better, but it's short term. The same way eating a donut makes you feel better in the moment, you're gonna feel awful in about an hour. That's what social media is. That's what uncontrolled email scrolling, Slack scrolling, team scrolling is. If you do it in a controlled way, that's very different. If you want to treat it as a reward, I have to earn the ability to go on LinkedIn. I have to earn the ability to go do some of these things that aren't actually productive. And guess what? When I do that, it's a lot more enjoyable. It's a lot more fun. When I wrap up these recordings and say, okay, I'm gonna take 15 minutes just to fully go on LinkedIn, to fully go on X, to see what's going on, fine. But I've earned it. That's very different than saying I'm gonna treat that as recovery. Just because it feels good short term does not actually mean it's recovery. In fact, it's the opposite. It's not helping you to recover. So, how do you do some things that are stimulant free, that are ideally moving your body, relaxing your mind? This could be meditation, this could be stretching, this could be walking, this could be breathwork, this could be journaling, anything to remove yourself from the chaos that can be work. This laptop right here seems relatively innocuous until you realize I can access anything here. I can go on social media, I can see what's happening with the chargers, I can see what's happening with friends from high school, I can see what's happening with work. All that stimulation is so tempting to jump into instead of doing the deep work that matters, instead of recording the video, instead of preparing that plant that's gonna take a deep amount of analysis, instead of reaching out to the prospect that you told you to reach out to. That's the hard work, but that's the work that matters. Here's the ironic piece though. Giving that short-term satisfaction, that short-term dopamine hit, scrolling instead of doing the deep work feels good instantaneously. But my bet is that when you go home from workday, you're gonna feel totally discouraged and feel like you didn't get as much done as you would have liked to. Versus doing the deep work, it requires some friction. It's not always easy. It takes 10, 15, 20 minutes recording something, feeling like nothing's really clicking today until you get into that flow state. It takes 10, 15, 20 minutes to be like, oh, what am I really doing for this client here? This is a tricky problem to solve until things start flowing. But doing that difficult work long term, so much more rewarding. When you leave work today, you're gonna have a feeling of accomplishment, of pride, of energy, knowing that you got that done. Compare that feeling to the feeling of leaving work feeling totally discouraged. You caught up with every single thing on LinkedIn, but you have nothing else to show for what you're doing. So the ironic thing here is this isn't about saying, hey, do the stuff that kind of sucks and work isn't as fun. It's work is so much more fun when you prioritize the things that you need to get done to move closer to where you want to be, and you rest and recover in very intentional ways beyond that, so that you can be the best you can be at work, be the best you can be at home, and really be the best you can be in life as a whole. So, in summary, treat your work as an advisor, as a financial professional, as anything that you do, very much like an athlete would treat their performance. How do you do work that matters, strenuous work that matters, that moves you closer to where you want to go? And then how do you truly recover? Not the cheap recovery, not the stuff that feels good, but long-term leads to dissatisfaction and feelings of disengagement, but true recovery that prioritizes a healthy body, a healthy mind, a healthy spirit. When you do all those things, your work's gonna be better, you're gonna be happier, and your life as a whole will be much better. That is it for today's episode. If you're enjoying this, please leave a review. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen, helps more people find the show. If you're a growth minded advisor listening to this, loving this, want someone else to experience it, share with them, please. The goal is to help as many advisors as possible who are looking to be the best they can be with the skills needed to be that best advisor. So thanks for listening, and I'll see y'all next time.