Co-Authors, John Fitch, the CPO of Voltage Control and Max Frenzel, the R&D Lead at Bespoke join The Culture Factor for a truly deep dive into Time Off. A study in Rest Ethic, Work Ethic and Noble Leisure. Amazon's #6 Book in Business Health & Stress, #28 in Work Life Balance in Business and also ranked in Time Management.
Co-Authors, John Fitch, the CPO of Voltage Control and Max Frenzel, the R&D Lead at Bespoke join The Culture Factor for a truly deep dive into Time Off. A study in Rest Ethic, Work Ethic and Noble Leisure. Amazon's #6 Book in Business Health & Stress, #28 in Work Life Balance in Business and also ranked in Time Management.
linkedin.com/in/max-frenzel-60597361
https://www.be-spoke.io/index.html
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Holly Shannon
I want to thank our listeners for joining the culture factor and ask that you subscribe rate and consider leaving a review. We'd love to hear who you'd like to listen to next. And a thank you to our sponsor company tribes. They have an app and a virtual experience to help keep your tribe together during difficult times like now and business as usual. How strong is your company culture? Reach out to Paul at company tribes calm. Hi everyone. This is Holly Shannon, your host, and co-producer. Welcome to the culture factor. We are with the Time Off co-authors. We have John Fitch the CPO at voltage control and Max Frenzel the R&D lead epi spoke and I just want to point out that I was looking at Amazon today and time off is ranked in a number of different areas. And I wanted to bring that to light that they're number six in, in books in business on health and stress, number 20, and work-life balance in business and they're also ranked in time management. So I think this will be a very relevant conversation for everybody to have. I would like to introduce John Fitch. Welcome back. I know that we did one podcast together. How are you?
John Fitch
I'm doing amazing. And thank you for hosting so many great conversations. We can keep diving deep and Max is usually my trusted backup to make sure the things I say are legit. So I'm, I'm less nervous this time with my co-author here.
Max Frenzel
I'm doing great. Thanks for having us holiness Jones that thanks for hosting such An amazing show and highlighting such amazing company culture.
Holly Shannon
Thank you. And thanks for arriving with this great accent so people can tell the difference between all of us. So I'm gonna dive in by asking you both to unpack some definitions that are in the book. Because I think it's important as we go forward with some of our questions to be able to understand your viewpoint on these terms. So you use the terms rest ethic, and noble leisure frequently in the book. So I'd love for you guys to address that. You also address work ethic, which, you know, might in many people's minds have an obvious definition, but maybe you want to refine that a little bit. So, I think we were going to pass to John Fitch to start with rest ethic. Can you just dive in?
John Fitch
Totally. So I think rest ethic and work ethic can be discussed in tandem and a rest ethic is the exhale to use a breathing analogy, and a work ethic is I take in inhale and notice I immediately exhale because it's necessary if I sat here, Holly and only inhaled, I would not be on this podcast for very long. Exactly. And so a rest ethic is we like that analogy because they're both essential. And an intentional oscillation between the two is essential. And all of us as professionals put a lot of energy, a lot of thought, a lot of refinement and a lot of discipline into our work. And that's awesome. We need to do that to get quality work done. But we also deserve to put that same energy, that same intent, that same discipline into time off into our rest and hence rest ethics. So, rather than me giving you a boilerplate definition, I would say for you, and anyone listening, the things right now that energize you that build up your enthusiasm, that refill your tank. All of those practices put into one bucket would be your, your rest ethic, and, and for it to become a rest ethic. Our book just reminds you of the importance of prioritizing it, protecting it, and being proud of it because it's not just a nice to have it enables a more calm and creative version of you, which then takes me to work ethic. In our book, we just want you to know that a work ethic is not being a person who is obsessed with business or visible business. So a work ethic is not being a master at Slack, it's not having an inbox zero. It's not making sure all notifications are answered. It's simply sticking to your word, getting a great project done and shipping and doing great creative work, when you do decide to be on and get something done. So that would be our definition of work ethic and rest ethic. And again, we hope to help you redesign your intentional oscillation between those two.
Holly Shannon
That's a great, great answer. And now you have me thinking that I have to stop working on my zero inbox.
John Fitch
I'm not saying that it's, it's a problem. But if that habit is getting in the way of you resting if it's just if you're doing it, just to stay on top things. My question to you is, is that really helping you move the needle on the things that matter?
Max Frenzel
Right? It's kind of like a problem that it feels like a problem. That's the key issue, right?
Holly Shannon
Okay, I will work on that. We've already identified my first problem.
Max, can you share with us a little bit about noble leisure?
Max Frenzel
Sure. And I think a lot of it ties into what John was just talking about. So we wrote a book called Time Off. And I guess a lot of people when they first hear that, think it might be a book about vacations, or, I don't know, sitting on the couch watching Netflix, but it's absolutely not a book about being lazy. If anything, it's really the opposite. And I think business and the celebration of the hustle and grinding things out. This culture of workaholism, I think it's actually laziness in disguise because it's really hard to pause sometimes and take time to reflect and think about is well is all your hard work actually working is the way you're doing things, really getting you results. Busyness and productivity are absolutely not the same. And yeah, as john already said, like, we believe in time off, it's an investment in your productivity. And no Malaysia's sort of ties into that, especially in a concert or context of knowledge work. And it goes back all the way to Aristotle. So if you look at ancient Rome and Greece, they were actually celebrating leisure and time off as one of the highest things in society and in culture and the thing you should aspire to. And in Aristotle's hierarchy, rest was not the same as leisure. Because rest always asked that question restful what and usually the answer is to do more work. So rest is just there to support more work. And then work sits in the middle of this work really, it's necessary, but it's only well, it's for a utilitarian purpose. So it's defined for a certain purpose. But ultimately it supports leisure. And that's really this highest goal of well, Aristotle and his contemporaries, and leisure and this noble leisure is defined through giving you meaning in life. And that's really the key difference, like what are the activities that fill your life with meaning? So you might look at a knowledge worker who really cares about what they're doing. And Aristotle would have actually defined that not as work but as noble leisure in a way, this can be time spent with your family, but it can also be time spent put into a project you really, really care about. So that's where the difference and this definition of noble leisure come from. I mean, some of the rest is really great. And we talked about a lot of pure rest forms in the book as well. But some of it also falls more into this noble leisure category, which to some people might actually look like work and it's not always easy, but it fills our life with meaning and it energizes us.
Holly Shannon
So, when I was reading the part from Aristotle's view, so I had sum that up as you know, we rest for the sake of work, and we work for the sake of leisure.
Max Frenzel
Yep. I think that's a really good summary.
Holly Shannon
And so I'm a little further like, so that was like chapter one and then into like, maybe chapter two chapter three and sort of like paraphrasing as I go here and guessing which chapter it was, but to further that conversation, so then you get into religion and how religion elevated the concept of that finding work at that that was a blessing and that was sacred. That works as a construct that, that it's noble for the church. But then leisure for yourself was more like a sin if I understood that correctly. And then further along down the line, as we got into industrialization, Ford was looking at that as a construct of creating a classic workweek, where now you defined not only what work was for, but it was in a certain time zone. I know I'm getting ahead and you're probably going to trackback but that was sort of a nod to capitalism, to ensure that people had weekends free to boost the economy. So he looked at it as leisure as profitable leisure. And so I know I'm somewhat kind of paraphrasing some of these a minute and I hope I'm getting it right but if I'm not gonna let you correct it for living sinners but those were sort of the three views that I felt started your book was sort of Aristotle's, and then some religion, and then the Industrial Revolution. And then we went from there. So maybe you guys want to elaborate a little now that I spoke so much
Max Frenzel
So at the beginning of the book, we really look into the history of time off and how we came to actually forget about the value of time off. And as you said, it started with Aristotle, then we went into sort of this 16th 17th century, and their religion was really a key driving factor, but it was not really religion itself. It was more religion being used to justify why people should be busy. But really, it was the kind of upper class that was worried about the lower classes and the poor people not knowing how to use leisure not knowing what to do with their free time, and being worried that if they have too much free time, to just going to start I don't know, rightly I'm writing exactly, basically to use religion to justify why idleness and leisure are such a bad thing and why to work is the noblest thing in the most precious thing you can do. God gave you this time on Earth, so don't waste it by slacking off. And that over the centuries wormed its way so deep into our culture. And we still have it today, even though we completely forgot the origin. We still have this guiltiness associated with not working. And the thing like the idea that something that feels hard, must be so much more valuable than something that feels easy. And then yeah, as he said, we got to Ford later on. I mean, there was a lot of stuff in between, but Ford was sort of the first one we're actually realized, hey, there's something wrong with our culture. I mean, his reason to go back to more leisure was very economic. He realized that while he gives us workers more freedom time, he'll get the best workers there are like people are gonna line up as factories to work for him. The people need free time to actually buy the products they're producing. If they're working 24, seven and seven days a week, more or less, they're not going to buy any cars, if you give them a two day weekend, and also fair wages, they can buy the cars that they're producing and really keep the economy going. And also to realize that people work better on less time. Instead of just grinding things out. They actually think about how to be more efficient, how to get work done in a better way. And also they make much fewer mistakes. So back in, I'd say the 1920s, although I might be making that up. But roughly around that time like early 20th century. He realized that eight hours a day, five days a week. That's a good amount of time for a factory worker to work right manual labor. But it's crazy to think no. And he even made the prediction that that's only the first step in shortening working times like he was very, very positive that very shortly, those times are going to drop down even further. But now, about 100 years later, it's crazy to think that not only did they not drop work back to much longer working hours again, and it gets even worse, because we're now not doing factory work, not doing manual labor, but we're doing knowledge work. And your brain tires so much more quickly than say, physical labor and also creative work. And the work and knowledge workers really paid to do. It needs a lot more time off and like you can't go for eight hours straight and doing effective knowledge work as manual labor can. So it's crazy to think that we are actually working longer hours than factory workers did. And we do a type of work that's even less suitable to those long hours. So it's kind of really this crazy issue we have currently in society and crazy culture and a lot of companies.
Holly Shannon
You make me want to jump forward in my questions now because we're talking about knowledge work and the hours. So, in your book, you discuss a Tower Paddleboards, how they work a five-hour workday versus an eight-hour workday. And they feel that that's enough time to focus on knowledge work and that it forces better processes. And that 30% reduction in hours actually does not diminish their productivity. He also comments in there that there's higher retention, less financial pressure, and increased creativity because they encourage entrepreneurship in their culture. So maybe we should jump forward a little bit in the But since we're talking about hours, and there are companies that are kind of looking at their culture and how they work a little differently.
John Fitch
I'll jump in. And I like to help the audience. Just reflect and ponder. Think about your career. Think about people you've worked with. And that whole group of people, I want you to segment out and think about those that were highly creative, highly enthusiastic, very calm, and think about what it was like to work with them, versus the people that were burnt out or high strung, or sleep-deprived, or slightly neurotic, and everything's urgent. And just inside How does when you think about those people, what's the difference of what it makes you feel? And you know, at the end of the day, who do you want to collaborate with and I think if I'm an entrepreneur if I'm a leader of any kind, it what is the energy of the people I'm working with? And we don't live in a reality where we're no longer cogs in a wheel. I mean, there are some, I'd be ignorant to say that there isn't still manual labor, there is. But there's a trend that more and more that's going away and being handed over to robotics and in machines that are much more precise and accurate. And for the rest of us, what's left is ideas, creativity. And so I look at it as if you're an e-commerce company or your product company, like the anecdote you just mentioned. You're really in the business of ideas and creativity. And so your co-workers ideally are very calm, very creative to think about the evolution of your company. Whereas if they bring a factory mindset into it, it just doesn't it isn't very reasonable. So yeah, who are the people you want to work with? And how do you want them to be? And if you expect them to just work all the time be a machine, they're not going to be very human. And so I think the more humanity you have inside of your company, the more resilient you are, the more creative you are, the calmer and therefore the more enjoyable. The culture is. And I think ultimately, the more you have that, the less amount of escapism needed from like, oh, I need to go rest. I need to peel away from work because it's draining. Versus Yeah, if you're only working four hours, five hours a day, which is more than enough in a creative economy. You can invest in your noble leisure and show back up the next day or next week. energized, enthusiastic, calm. Creative, which not only makes you better in your work but likely your co-workers around you pick up on that as well.
Max Frenzel
Totally, actually, just let me add a little bit to that. Because John, you brought up a really great topic. I think the idea of like automation and machines taking over much more of the busywork. I spend most of my career working on AI and doing AI research and a lot of people worried about AI taking over more and more jobs. And I'm not that worried about it. Yes, the job landscape is going to change. But what's going to be left afterward are much more human jobs and no one's going to busy the machine. So if you currently priding yourself in busyness, you might want to rethink, but if you're doing creative work, and if you're doing work that requires empathy, then you should really double down on that. And I think every knowledge worker has components of that in their job and those components will be much, much more valuable in the future. So really creativity empathy. And I guess creativity is kind of hopefully obvious why that's so important to knowledge workers and why that's so important for innovation. But maybe we should stress the empathy component a bit as well. I think good leaders have very, very empathetic, and I'm sure we all know bad leaders who are not empathetic. And often those are exactly the leaders who pride themselves in busyness, and how little sleep they need. But I think there's also another component to empathy that may be overlooked a bit. Now, I'm working on chatbots. And I had to realize no one actually wants a chatbot. Similarly, as an offer, I had to realize no one actually wants to buy a book or cares about your idea, right? What people care about and what they want is what can this thing do for me or what can a service do for me, what can this product do for me? And also, how does it make me feel and to understand that as business leaders or as authors or whatever that reason requires empathy. But busyness and empathy are almost mutually exclusive The way I see them. So I think it's so important for us to actually step back and really think about, like put ourselves into other people's shoes. Sure, the constant hustle and shoving down our ideas, people's throats might lead us to some quick sales, but in the long term is not going to generate that culture. And that connection that leads to word of mouth and ultimately long term success. So I think focusing on creativity and empathy, rather than busyness is something leaders in business should take very, very seriously.
John Fitch
I'm going to add something Holly that came to mind I just felt like sharing honor, in a recent podcast interview. I was asked a very difficult question. And but my answer to it, I've incubated on a bit. And the question was this. Now that the books out and you've talked about it, and it's resonating with If you were to reword it, what would it be? And I was like, Oh my goodness. That's such a good question. And, and my answer to it is, if we were to ship time off to point, a potential supplemental title would be why your most important work happens outside of work. Speaking of the future of work, and Max and I have been lots of experience and automation if you just look across classic practices and leisurely activities, call it your volunteerism bucket, your extracurricular bucket, your found time, or free time bucket, your hobby bucket. Those things that we do are deeply meaningful from helping elders planting trees, cooking a meal for a group of people, sharing things with our neighbors. Listen calling someone when they're deeply upset or needed advice, these things that we do, quote outside of work provides so much value for humanity. And we're here to say, hey, those things that fit in all those buckets, those practices for a very, very long time, If ever a machine or an AI algorithms not going to do so that stuff you currently do outside of work well on you. That's probably the only work left as we automate more and more. So keep practicing it and hopefully fit more and more of it, because not only is it nice and provides you rest and replenishment, but it’s actually practiced for the skills of tomorrow.
Holly Shannon
So, what I'm also getting from here is that choosing the path of range, practicing empathy, choosing the path of exploration, our The next sort of the next big thing in your mind, because it overspecialization and the 10,000 hours theory because you feel that AI is actually going to be in that space.
Max Frenzel
Yeah, so the AI we currently have is what researchers called narrow AI, as opposed to general AI. And what that means is we have algorithms that are very, very good at very specialized tasks. And making them more general is actually a very, very difficult problem. And it's not going to be solved anytime soon. So what we have right now, and what we will have for the foreseeable future, are AI systems that are very good at solving very specific problems. And I think we should embrace those systems and use them to like think where can we use them as collaborators? Where can we use them to replace our tedious, busy work, but then the key skill, the skill that's going to be left is how do we connect these different systems? And how do we connect the dots, because that's what creativity is really all about. It's connecting those distant dots. And AI can be an amazing collaborator, an amazing enabler, an amazing tool to do that. But ultimately, the creative work in between those things, that's what's going to be left to us. And, I mean, it's great to have specialists and specialists will be important in the future as well. But I think being the person who is in between those different things, and you can connect those different things and also communicate with specialists as well as AI systems in those different domains, that will be so much more valuable in the future. And I think more people should look into this more kind of looking at range, over specialization. And I think again, actually, empathy comes into that as well, because communication is very important. I've seen in so many companies that the different department especially if you think about tech and sales, they're often very siloed and very separate from each other. It's so valuable if you can be the person who can actually go in between those and speak both people's language and be empathetic to understand their problems. And then while communicating properly between those, I think that also requires a certain amount of range. So I'd really encourage people to think about a bit more about generalizing rather than depth.
John Fitch
That is one way, we talked about it in the book that I found to be quite the dinner party morsel when I'm talking about the future of work with friends and family is the analogy we use in the book is in the future of work. It's much more valuable to be an improv jazz music than to be specialized in instruments in an orchestra. Because again, the specialization is more likely to be automated versus your ability to flow. In the future of work like an improv jazz musician is much more of what the domain will all be working in. And speaking of which, your ability to flow and improvise, you can talk to literally a jazz musician or you can talk to maybe an improv actor, he or she will tell you, it's all about being interesting. And having hobbies and exposing yourself to different cultures, which again, is stepping away from the actual work and going in extracting inspiration and epiphanies from elsewhere. hints, a rest ethic being an important contributor to that very skill.
Holly Shannon
You know, you have me thinking, you know, back into my more creative side The other side of the business you know, I was in the jewelry industry for a long time as well. And I always felt that each thing that I did each type of medium I undertook informed how I worked in the next place. So it's creativity. Strangely, you even though it's not addictive, it's it can be in a way and how it informs what you do so, so for example, you know, oil painting and color theory might have really informed when I was working with gemstones and, and working with metal but yeah, that was that feels like a lifetime ago. Let me jump further into the book. You have a piece on here with Derek sivers. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. But you do talk about or he talks about out how the world pushes us to add because it benefits them. So what happens when we remove that forced collaboration, that excessive communication? I mean, we're all like zoom fatigued. And that forced teamwork. What happens? Are we actually inhibiting growth? Like is our company cultures inhibiting growth because we're trying to enforce creativity? Instead of cultivating it and letting it take a more natural course?
John Fitch
Hmm, that's a good question. Very, very, very passionate topic. And Max back me up here. Max specifically contributed a chapter I remember when reading it I just, my soul was smiling as big as it possibly could when I was reading it as we edited and it's called collaborative solitude. And I'll let him speak to that. But before he does Just wanted to mention, shout out to the team at 37 signals. Jason freed one of the co-founders, they create software like Basecamp. And hey, just a new email service that I'm a fan of. They have a book that was on my desk as we wrote our book as inspiration. It's called it doesn't have to be crazy at work. The title says it all. And he had a tweet recently when someone asked him why he wasn't a big fan of frequent meetings and this whole on-demand, ASAP, cultures dogma, and he's like, how can you expect someone who's been interrupted every 15 minutes frequently throughout a workday to actually get anything done? Like that's, that's just a basic question. And yet it's so pervasive this concept of just frequent interruptions, whereas you'd be amazed that like tomorrow, maybe just shut it all off. literally give yourself three hours of solitude to create. And at the end of the three hours, you're probably going to be exhausted and realize like that's, that's actually more than enough time. And it was just three hours. And just wanted to say like I thought his recent tweet summarizes that greatly, which was rather than him lecturing on why they run their company their way. He was just like, literally, how do you expect anyone that's been interrupted every 30 minutes with a new meeting TO ACTUALLY SHIP something meaningful? So that's a question I asked the audience to ponder on if you're contributing to that behavior. But Max, perhaps you educate me again because I thought the chapter was so amazing in the book, but I think Hollywood be fascinated by this concept of collaborative solitude.
Max Frenzel
Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up. I wasn't actually going in that direction. But it's really good reminded me of that as well. What I wanted to say briefly before, to your point, I think so many companies stressed the importance of innovation, but they don't actually do the hard work and think what is required to have an innovation that is required to foster a culture of innovation and creativity. And often that does require stepping back and pausing sometimes. And now we actually get John brought up this idea of collaborative solitude. Because if you look at a lot of almost all creatives, including scientists, including intrapreneurs, as well, working on a business plan is a very creative exercise. And all the hard work is usually done in solitude. Kevin Kelly actually said, artists work best alone and there are many others who echo scimitars sentence there except, as you mentioned like he's very, very strong on solitude. Like he's very extreme on that, but so many great creatives, historic as well as presidents, they really do their work in solitude, their best work. But then it's important to actually bring that back together and meetings are not in general, bad communication, in general, is not bad. It's just how do we use them? Do we use them consciously? Or is it again, just a form of visible busyness to look like, hey, look at me. I'm sending an email to the whole company, cc, and everyone. So I must be working really hard and must be doing something. We need to become more conscious of how we collaborate and how we communicate. do the hard work, in solitude, do the deep thinking in solitude do the really creative brainstorming exercising workshopping in solitude? And then bring it to get together and combine those different parts with other people? The way we wrote this book is really a great example of collaborative solitude. So fun fact, John and I have so far never met in person. The whole collaboration was virtual.
Holly Shannon
You know, I saw that in your book I was gonna ask, have you finally met?
Max Frenzel
No, like the whole COVID-19 kind of made that a bit more difficult if anything based in Tokyo and John in Texas. But hopefully, at some point soon, there, a lot of the time we spend working on individual parts. I mean, the book is structured was very, it lends itself to doing that into different deep dives into different profiles. But then, the hard work of that was studying solitude. And then we brought it together and wrote this thing into one coherent piece and also shared the pieces with the other person who could then again in solitude, go in and do deep edits deep thinking about it. So I think we really need to become more content. It's really a flow of solitude and connectedness. Often we just default To thinking connected good solitude, bad, and often, we also mislabeled it as loneliness. But there's a huge, huge difference actually. Yeah, I really encourage people to become more conscious and really take their time in solitude as something valuable and as an investment into their creativity. It goes so much against what we're led to believe is good and valuable, again, comes back to like this historic and religious origins almost, we have this guilt associated with not working. And we have this guilt associated with looking like we're not working again comes to this visible busyness thinking in solitude can look like you're just being lazy. You're just sitting on a couch you just lying on the beach, whatever, but you actually might be indeed forward and a deep Ford might be so much more valuable than visible busyness. So I really encourage people it's not an easy exercise but letting go of that guilt associated with visible busyness and investing in solitude.
John Fitch
One thing, Holly, that I'll add a lot of my workshops that I do with helping companies create not only calmer cultures but calmer meeting cultures, there's a phrase that will summarize all of my wisdom. So you're saving a lot of money right now by hearing this.
This is this is summarized knowledge.
Holly Shannon
Wait, are you gonna drop the mic and leave the podcast?
John Fitch
I'm not. But one of the principles that pretty much summarizes all of the transformation work that I've done is this phrase, a picture's worth 1000 words, but a prototype is worth 1000 meetings. And if people are in more solitude, they actually have the quiet still time and is usually not a lot of time to produce a meaningful artifact prototype, that no word document, no email, no slack message. No, what's that voice message can do justice, it is literally the thing. And when you bring that thing to a meeting, usually don't have to have many follow up meetings because you just tweak and have a couple of pieces of feedback on it and then back to making again, whereas so many companies waste millions of dollars on having what feels like a productive meeting, but all it was was a meaningless status update, and nothing really changed. And so by embracing more maker culture, more solitude culture, you'll have people creating more prototypes, therefore actually having an artifact to center and gravitate the entire meeting around. So if you can embrace that phrase, you would have upgraded to be in a more modern distributed autonomous company. And yeah, there's a bunch of free advice.
Holly Shannon
I love that I love that
there's a part in your book. And I think it's maybe a good segue because it's still in talking about creating. But that creating requires the ability to use divergent thinking. And that divergent thinking is the skills we use to ideate and think big picture. So I'm gonna play a little bit of a bad guy here because I think that unfortunately, there's a lot of companies that are laser-focused on putting strategic initiatives in place, you know, that's like, you know, what all companies talk about, and that sometimes they're almost unattainable and at the detriment of divergent thinking, so what are your thoughts on that?
John Fitch
When I think about the angle of time off as it applies to this question is, regardless of your time off practice, for example, some prototyping workshops I do are highly strategic. It's all about moonshots. And sometimes it's signing up for a path that is a bit too ambitious. It's very common and innovation work, you know, shoot for the moon,
Holly Shannon
Fair enough.
John Fitch
Fair enough. My question is what could he achieve if he was more calm, rested? No. I don't have an answer for that. But there's plenty of leaders throughout history, who not only achieved great things, but they did it in a calm fashion, which also improves your relationships. And I think often about the book, The five regrets of the dying which is a lot of summarize knowledge and a topic regret is that people wish they wouldn't have worked so hard. And so my time off practices helped me ask the question to myself frequently is all this hard work actually working? And you may have put together the most awesome strategic innovation plan. And your, your work ethic is strong, you're prototyping, you're moving forward. But unless you detach, you can't really ask that question. And that's, that's an important thing to zoom out, you know, change your altitude. We talked about it through the lens of playfulness, like if you look at the child's mind, it has more and this is Alison Gopnik research, a beautiful, poetic way to look at different mindsets. She says children have a lantern consciousness, right. They're kind of illuminating everything around them giving a 360 perspective of what's actually happening what's actually there. And adult consciousness is more of a spotlight. Super-narrow, get it done, hyper-focused. Both types of lighting are awesome. But if you're only fixated to one of them, then you won't know the gift of the other. So, for me, it's important to not only work hard on very important initiatives and also be very strategic and shoot for the stars. But you have to have an intentional oscillation. And for me, it's seen rest and time off as a contributor to your work. And we broke down Time Off and in the creative process and only through stepping away Can you unlock 50% of the creative process, which is incubation and illumination. And again, that can be in various scopes. It can be literally on the project, it could be across your whole company, it could be across your whole industry. You need moments of being lantern focused and very spotlight focused, sorry, spotlight focus, but then you also need to step back and look at everything around to ask yourself is all of this hard work is all of this heart strategy and what we're currently doing actually relevant any more. because everything's changing. And unless you step away and detach, you can't unlearn. And unlearning allows you to give space to learn.