The Dx2 Podcast
Two sisters discuss what they are learning about having a balanced wheel of life that rolls along as smoothly as possible.
The Dx2 Podcast
Slow Down to Speed Up: Finding Balance in a Fast-Paced World
What if working less could actually help you accomplish more? In this thought-provoking episode, sisters Denise and Debra challenge conventional productivity wisdom by exploring the paradoxical concept of "slowing down to speed up."
Through personal stories and practical examples, we share how intentionally creating space in our schedules transformed our productivity, health, and happiness. Debra reveals how restructuring her work schedule to include regular breaks not only prevented burnout but actually improved her bottom line and client satisfaction. Meanwhile, Denise shares family strategies that helped maintain balance while raising four children.
The conversation delves into the philosophy that "fast is slow, and slow is fast" – demonstrating how rushing through tasks often creates more work through errors and inefficiency. We offer actionable advice for those with traditional jobs, busy families, and seemingly inflexible schedules. From strategic lunch breaks to mini-adventures that break you out of life's ruts, there are ways to implement this philosophy regardless of your circumstances.
Perhaps most importantly, we challenge the toxic belief that rest must be earned through productivity. Just as airline safety demonstrations instruct parents to secure their own oxygen masks before helping children, prioritizing your wellbeing isn't selfish – it's essential for showing up fully in all areas of life.
Whether you're feeling overwhelmed by your current pace or simply seeking more intention in how you structure your time, this episode offers a refreshing perspective on productivity, balance, and what truly matters. Join us to discover how slowing down might be the very thing that helps you thrive.
Ed Mylett Episode we referenced
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Welcome to the D Times 2 podcast, hosted by Sisters Denise and Deborah. We are all about finding balance in the various parts of life. Using the Wheel of Life as our guide, we explore how to keep each spoke rolling smoothly. We discuss health and wellness, education and spirituality, as well as mental and emotional growth. Join us for real conversations, practical tips, and a few laughs as we share stories, insights, and strategies to help you create a life that feels balanced, purposeful, and designed by you. So I've been thinking a lot lately about slowing down to speed up. What does that mean to you? Yeah, what do you think of when I say that? Slowing down to speed up? Yeah. You know, my husband used a phrase I'd never heard before when we first got married, and he said, fast is slow, and slow is fast. And I was like, what does that even mean? But it's the same concept, right? Slowing down to speed up. Sometimes we get going so fast in our lives that we're not doing anything really well, and we have to go back and do things over or things snowball on us, and we're doing way more than we should. So to me, that means big rocks first. Stephen Cubby's big rocks first. Do the big important things first, and then the other things can happen. And don't be in such a rush to get everything done because not everything has to be done fast. We don't have to do everything all the time. We can't do everything all the time. We might think we can, but we cannot. No. And if we try to, we will inevitably burn out or crash and burn. That's worse, I feel like, because there's a crash involved in the burnout. Yeah. Yeah. So back to what your husband said about slow is fast. Last week we got an order from ButcherBox. Actually, two. It's two boxes. What's ButcherBox? So it's all like good, clean, pasture-raised, organic, regenerative meat, all kinds of meat. I think they have other stuff, maybe like seasonings, but we get meat from there. So we got a double order, so two boxes of it. And it comes frozen, packed in dry ice. And my husband was very concerned that he get it off the porch as soon as possible and put it in the freezer. And normally I do it, and I know how it's packed. I know it's gonna be fine. But he was like, hurry up and get it done. So he brought it all in and just threw all of it in the freezer saying, We will organize it later. Oh we. We by we he means me, which means I can then take it out, organize it, and put it back in. So it's basically double the work because he was trying to go fast. Instead of slowing down just a fraction and doing it right the first time, that would have saved us both time. Yes. So we haven't gotten back around to organizing it. So now every time he goes to the freezer, he thinks we're out of things because they're not in the place he's used to finding them. Because he just threw them in the freezer. Yes. So then I have to, it's double the work for both of us all the way around. Slow is fast. Slow is fast. Yeah. So what I think of about, or why this has been on my mind a lot lately, slowing down to speed up, is I've been kind of assessing my work schedule. I am still working one-on-one with clients, part-time, very much trying to keep it part-time and very much trying to scale back a little bit without it affecting the quality of work I give to my clients, and without it affecting my income, my bottom line. So I've been looking back at the past couple of years, and it was about a year and a half, maybe, maybe two years ago, I was talking to you about work schedules, and you said, you know, I've given this a lot of thought. My perfect work schedule would be blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you laid it all out for me. And I had been so busy with work, I had never even stopped to think about how I could optimize it. So I hadn't ever given the schedule any thought. I just showed up, did all the things, went home exhausted, did it again the next day. So after we had that conversation, I paused and I looked at things and I thought, I can still have as much, have as many client visits, still give give you know the same quality of care, attention, effort to all of my people, and literally work half the time and have almost like four or five five days off, technically every week. And that was huge for me because at the time I had been spending so much, spinning so much, going so hard that I kept getting sick. I was burnt out, I was fatigued, my adrenals were crashed, so I would get sick, and then I would have to cancel people. So even though my schedule was busy, technically I was taking time off every month for about six months in a row because I wasn't good. I was burned out and I needed to spend some time on myself. So I immediately revised my schedule. Literally, starting the next month, I put your suggestion into practice where I could kind of just juggle the days and have it work a little bit different. And immediately I was better. I remember. Yeah. What do you remember? I remember you were sick so much. And I was like, the time. I was like, this is not right. Something is up. And then I was talking about changing my schedule. I needed some time off to just be a person and not a worker. I mean, I you know, you you work, but you have to have time off to regenerate and just be a person. So and I always feel like we work to live, not live to work. Yes. I remember talking to you about that schedule. You did take it and you did change your schedule, and you you have been much healthier since. Been much less stressed, and you laugh more, you play more. I definitely play more. I will play into my schedule. Yes. And you can do that when you're not going so hard, so fast all the time that you don't have time to play. Because play play is important. We're not meant to work 24-7 or even 18 hours a day or 16 hours a day. We're not designed that way. We have to have wholesome recreation in our lives and play. Yeah, so we pickleball. We do. Hopefully twice a week. Yes. Sometimes we go paddle boarding, like in the summertime. Like we sometimes we get to go hiking. Yeah. We we play. Yeah. And it it has, I have noticed that it has made you you you seem happier and way less stressed. Yeah. More easy, more easy going. So that's good. So I I'm gonna just mention I then like after I did that for a year, and I'm gonna say all of my numbers went up. My client visits visits went up, my revenue per client visit went up, so my bottom line increased, and I was working less and I felt better. And and then you tweaked it again, didn't you? That's what I said. So I was like, what if, what if I could adjust this even more? So midway through last year, so I had been doing it for about a year. Midway through last year, I thought, what if I deliberately schedule a full week off every month? Can I do that and still have it not affect everything else? My numbers, my, you know, all of that. And so I did it. I was gonna do like a trial experiment. I think I was trying to do it like October through the end of the year. Yeah. And everything was fine. The world didn't come crashing down on you? I and I thought, holy cow, it really works. So then that's how I set my schedule up. And then I decided, what if let's tweak this some more? How I mean, how efficient can I get, but still be effective? Right. So this year I am intent on doing a two-week break at the end of each quarter. So we just finished the second quarter, and I had the last week of June and the first week of July off. And it was wonderful for me because I had time to recover and recuperate and play and also get a bunch of projects I wanted to get done that I don't that I just kind of put off until the weekend or put off until I have time off. It was amazing how much I got done in my life, aside from work. Yeah. Because you have a life. Work is not your life. I got some good quality time with my husband, you know, that kind of thing. And again, my numbers were fine. I worked a little longer each day that I worked, like an hour longer each day that I worked. But that was an easy adjustment. Yeah. Because they're part-time days. Yeah. Yeah. So I am 100% sold on I am better. My service I provide to my clients is better. My time with my husband is better. My family life, home life is better. My play is better because I slowed down to speed up. So you work for yourself. Yes. What kind of what do you think that looks like for somebody who does not work for themselves? Say they have a part-time job or a full-time job and they can't change their schedule like that, and they still have their family or friends or whatever. Do you have any suggestions for people in that kind of a situation to slow down? So I have thoughts and I have suggestions. And part of it, I think, comes to planning because I think people, I mean I know I've been there, you just get caught so much in that gotta do this, gotta do this, just the roller coaster or snowball effect of life that we never stop to make a plan. So life happens and you roll with life instead of planning your life and designing it with intention and purpose. Yes. So I think very well put. Thank you for summarizing my thoughts. I think that if you can take an hour or a half hour or whatever time you need to just think through either the upcoming couple days or the upcoming week or the upcoming month and check in with your partner about it so that you're on the same page, whether it's your husband, your wife, whatever. And then, like, does that look like meshing schedules? Does it look like like in my house, my husband is responsible for dinner two nights a week? Sometimes he orders DoorDash, sometimes he makes dinner, but either way, I can get home from work, he's made dinner, and we can have dinner together before he leaves for work. Because he works nights. Because he works nights, yeah. So that that that takes intentional planning so that so that you can have that dedicated time to the two of you. Because you guys are like ships crossing in the night. He works nights, you work days, he sleeps during the day, and so that does take there are complicated schedules like that. And if you if you take just a little bit of time and plan it, talk to each other, then you can make sure you get that time with each other. Yeah, and that's great. Back to the if people have a full-time job, slowing down doesn't necessarily mean taking more days off like I did, or adjusting the schedule. It can look like on my lunch break, I go take a walk out in the sunshine by myself in the quiet and listen to the birds and hear the wind and feel the sun when you can. You can't always be around everywhere, but like just to get a reset basically for your nervous system and for your mind and like your thoughts. So I have done that before when I did work full-time in a hospital. You know, there were days I would go take a walk, I would set a timer on my phone. I would sometimes listen to just classical music, sometimes I would listen to nature, I would walk by myself because for me that was better. For some people, they're more extroverted. They want to walk and chat. So walk with a friend and chat. Sometimes I would go to my car, lay down the seat, and take a little 20-minute power nap just to reset. For some people, it could look like actually putting more in their schedule, getting up an hour or a half hour earlier just so they have solo time to get their thoughts together, to get their plan for their day together, whatever they need. Like it can look like different things. So I have four children, and when they were little, one of the worst things that could happen to me in the day would be to wake up two children. I love them to death. But when you wake up to busy, it really makes your day more busy, more chaotic in and of itself. So I would intentionally wake up at 5 a.m. and go to the gym and be home by six, get cleaned up, and then my kids would be awake and I could make them breakfast. But I had time to be myself before I was thrown into the day as a mother. Those days were good days. Now I have a daughter that has three children, and they're all small. They're all small, they're six and under. And she has started to do that as as well. She will wake up early and exercise. Sometimes she takes them with her and they run around and play, but she's still getting her movement time in before she's on full duty as a mom. And she says that helps her so much to be able to focus more on being a good mom. And it's really important that we have time to to ourselves to be us. To be an individual. Yeah. We we we all wear lots of hats during the day. And it's important to wear your own hat for part of that day so that you can be you. Another thing that helped us with when we were younger, to the slow down to speed up, is on Sundays we would have at our Sunday dinner, we would have a mini planning meeting and we'd say, Okay, what do you have going on this week? What do you have going on this week? And we'd go around the table and we'd talk about it. So we knew your husband, all your children. So we'd know what was coming up and we would know where we needed to be and who was going to watch who do what and all of the things. And that that helped us be a part of each other's lives. I think it's important when you have more than just you, to be a part of the other person's life, whether it's a a spouse or a partner or children, so that there's cohesiveness in your family. Anyway, so that we did that, and that helped us a lot to not be scattered throughout the week. Yeah. So I think, you know, I think it can be a daily set, I think it can be a weekly, a monthly. I don't think it should go any longer than than a month. No. Where you at least think through what's coming up, what can I do. And, you know, some people do meal prep, some people do freezer meals, some people do whatever for food. Sometimes it's just calendaring things, or there's holidays from school. So back to people who have a full-time job. I don't want to let this go past because sometimes just strategically stacking your paid time off, your vacation days, whatever, together with upcoming holidays, you can end up with a larger chunk of time off than you would for just the holiday. True. So you can be very strategic about it. And I have seen people do that where they almost can get a week off almost, I mean, maybe eight times a year, just by using paid time off together with holidays, whether it's, you know, whatever the company gives. Some people get Presidents' Day, some people get Fourth of July, some people get a couple of days at Thanksgiving. And yeah, some of them are higher requested days off, but it you can be strategic about it. Yeah, for sure you can. And it takes planning. And it doesn't take an hour of planning every day. It's just intentional planning. So Jesse Itzler, we were talking about Jesse Itzler earlier today. He has a big A calendar, he calls it now. And it's a wild calendar, and he intentionally puts like four giant events on in at the beginning of the year, so he knows that that's coming up. And you can do that with your family. Like some people plan vacations out, and then you have something to look forward to, and you know that nobody's planning something around here. You can do it a year at a glance, like that. I don't think you should go less than a week. For a big thing? No, just for life. Life planning for a week. Like look at your upcoming week and talk about that and and at least get that on. But your big things like holidays or or vacations or whatever. Yeah. It's okay to plan those out just so everybody knows. Hey, this is coming up. Don't plan anything. We're not doing sports, we're not doing lessons, school or work if you need to. And so back to Jesse Isler. He itsler. Just fler. Yes. He does it, the big A dollar sign, dollar sign calendar. And I think there's actually logic in that. It can stand for a different thing. But again, it's like the slowing down makes you better, you more productive, so you get more from your life. So that equals dollar signs. It does. In whatever your dollars may translate to. For some people it's feeling better, for some people it's energy, for some people it's actual dollars. But he also recommends putting mini adventures on. So it's like a weekend adventure, not a whole big deal, but something you wouldn't normally do. And that takes planning too. But it's something that can be just for you, or you can involve family, or you can involve friends, or whatever you want to do. So what do you think, if somebody were to incorporate that into their life, what do you think that would do for their mental, emotional, physical health? Tremendously up-level it. So part of it is because it's a pattern interrupt. So it gets you stuck out of the looping of the daily life. It gets opens new pathways in your brain. It provides excitement of something to look forward to doing. And half of it is the looking forward, having something to look forward to, an adventure to look forward to. What do you think? I agree. I think that it does give you something. It gives your brain something to look at and plan that is going to be good and fun and not the drudgery of just living life. Because sometimes we get we do get stuck in that. I think of wagon wheels of the old days. They used to get stuck in the rut because the the wheels would just go. And we see it on our roads today. You know, there are black lines where the wheels go. Everybody's tires go in the same place, so there's lines. So we we get stuck in those. And it's really important to get out of those. You talk about pattern interrupt, which is what that is. We get out of that. And when we come back, our ride is much smoother. The ride of life is much smoother. It's much better. It doesn't mean that it's not there's not stress in all of our areas, we can handle it better. I think too, you come back kind of with renewed enthusiasm or renewed vigor for life. And it's like, okay, I can keep going. I've got, you know, you're recharged. Yeah. And in three months we get to have another one.
unknown:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:If you plan them right, if you plan them, you know, the mini things like Jesse Itzler does is So I think he he recommends they be every other month. So you end up with a total of six every year for the mini adventures. And you can plan that however you want. That that's how he does it. But it just it does give you something to look forward to, something that can rejuvenate lots of areas of your life. The quality of life is a is a huge thing. It takes it does take planning, it does take intention to do those things. Yeah, it won't accidentally happen ever unless you crash and burn. And then it's not an accident. You kind of drove yourself to it. Yes. You drove yourself off the cliff. Yeah, and that's not it's not fun. We don't want to do it that way. We might as well plan fun instead of crashing. So I just know for me it has worked out all the way around in my favor. To slow down, deliberately, be intentional. I have definitely sped up. That's good. Plus, I benefit. I benefit because we get to go play. We do, we get to play and off and we have a great time together. And then we get time to do this so we can help other people too. Yes. Learn from learn learn from our craziness and our ideas. Speaking of craziness and ideas, I was listening to Ed Milette this week and he did a podcast and talked about how he is being kinder to himself. I think he said he's 52. And he is jacked. Like he is his muscles are huge, right? Like, and that's been something that's been very important to him. Yes. He worked hard on that. And he said lately he's been slowing down and taking it easy and being nicer to himself, like not working out so hard. He's he's uh, you don't see a lot of big, strong, muscly guys doing yoga, but he started doing yoga because it's stretching and it's helping him just slow down and feel better. And he said, doing that, he's been more productive. He feels way better about himself as a person. His health has been better, his sleep has been better. And he also talked about how he goes all full out all the time. Like he's done that gas pedal gas all the time. And he and he thought that was the only way to get things done. But in the last little bit, when he has slowed down and taken better care of himself and not beaten himself up emotionally, mentally, or physically through his workouts, that he he does feel better. And the person who was interviewing him asked, you know, he said, I'm I'm 25 years old. What would you tell me to do so that I don't burn out? And he said, slow down now. Yeah. Take better care of yourself now, be kinder to yourself now. And I thought that's that's great coming from somebody who's built the the huge things that Ed Milette has built, not just his physique, but his businesses and and life are huge. So slow down and be kind to yourself and and give yourself some room to not have everything figured out. I think we try to do that, we try to figure everything out, and you just there's no way there's no way to do that. Life happens, people happen, and the people in your life are way more important than any amount of money you could make, any amount of physique you can build, or status, or status, anything. The people, the relationships in your life, the people closest to you, those relationships will be way more important to you in the long run than anything else. So if we slow down to speed up, the real things that matter in life will improve our health, our relationships, our spirituality. You know, the the scriptures say, be still and know that I am God. You can't be still if you're constantly running. Yeah, you cannot be still. You have to slow down. So we should link that uh podcast from Ed Milette if you feel like it would be beneficial. I'll put it in the show notes. Just as we wrap things up here, I just want to talk about earning the slowdown or not. Okay. We don't because I think some people feel like they have to earn time off, or their productivity then entitles them to slow down or to take it easier. So you gotta hustle before you can relax. And it's a hundred percent false. And it's the opposite. Yeah, the analogy that always comes to my mind is mom putting on the oxygen mask in the airplane before tending to the children. You don't earn that, you just do that because then you are capable to help others because you have taken the time, done the thing for yourself that you need to do. You it makes you then better for others. We all are inherently worthy of doing what we need to do for ourselves, however that looks. True. And it doesn't take a lot of time. Like, like I said, I got up, you know, five o'clock in the morning before my kids. Not everybody needs that. I did. I needed that time, that amount of time. Like sometimes it's a half an hour. And I needed the sleep, so I took it at my lunchtime. Yes. Sometimes it it's just a little bit of time. Just a little goes a long way. Take care of yourself. Yeah. Yep. You'll do better, you'll be better, you'll have more fun, your family will be happier, your friends will be happier, your relationships will be better, everything will be better. Yes. Slow down to speed up. Fast is slow, and slow is fast. Amen, sister. Thanks for listening to the D Times 2 podcast with Denise and Deborah. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Be sure to subscribe and share it with someone who's ready to roll toward a more balanced life. Your support means the world to us. And just a quick note we're sharing our own experiences and ideas, not professional advice. Always do your own research and talk to a qualified professional before making big decisions. Until next time, keep your wheel rolling strong.