These Cars Will Still Be Broken Tomorrow

Thank you for joining me This week on the show . I'm going to keep it rather brief . I'm recording this prior to the 4th of July weekend 2023 . This will be released on Sunday or Monday , but I'm recording it prior to the weekend which I'm going to be taking a little bit of time off from work . That is the topic that I wanted to cover here Again .

Briefly , i won't spend too much of your time because this is a non-technical episode . I do like to mix it up and cover a lot of different areas in the automotive world , and this is definitely one . A lot of stuff has actually happened in the last few weeks that's really got me thinking about this subject . I'll share some of that with you .

What the main idea here is that I'm sure this is common across many , many industries , but I see it a lot in ours , and I live it myself is where we can easily work too much , i think , especially in the last few years , with shortage of help and absolutely no shortage of broken cars , and the amount of repairs that seem to be approved , or just the value

that people put into used vehicles compared to purchasing a brand new one , is the prices , or even a used one have gone through the roof . Anyways , what I'm getting at there is there has been a lot to do . It's just a never-ending avalanche of broken cars . It seems . Someday I get that . That is definitely not the worst problem to have .

It's far better than the alternative . Not enough to go around and everybody scrounging around for scraps and fighting against each other . In today's climate . There is more than enough for everybody that's out there . But , that being said , it is or at least it seems to be very easy to work too much , to overwork yourself .

Again , there's been a number of factors in the last few weeks that have come to my attention and why I want to talk about this . I know personally that I've been guilty of this for a very long time . I think it's just in my personality and I just happen to do something for work that I really do enjoy .

Well , the problem is I do let it dominate everything . I let it fill all of the potential space that's available to my free time . Quote unquote . I find something else to fill it , and it's usually related to cars . Hey , here I am at 8.30 at night on a Thursday recording a podcast about my job .

I obviously let that happen too often and it definitely has affected some of my relationships in my personal life . Now , i met a lot of really awesome friends through this career and I'm very thankful for that , but if you let work dominate everything , you're going to pay a price in your personal life or your family life .

That's the topic that I wanted to broach here . One of the other discussions that brought this topic to mind recently was in a Facebook group , where the discussion was talked about technicians spending personal time time that they're not necessarily on the clock , getting paid for to improve their skills .

There's obviously differing opinions on this and it really is its own separate conversation , and I truly understand that . It takes additional effort in this field , and probably most , but I know in this field it takes additional effort outside of your normal work hours that you have to dedicate yourself to improving .

You can't just grow your skill set while you're working .

I mean you can definitely gain experience , but the training , the research , the experimentation , all that stuff generally is going to happen in an unpaid environment where you're sacrificing your personal time , and it is necessary if you want to get to the top level , you want to be a top level professional in this field .

You're gonna have to do that to some degree . If you're not doing any of it , you're really not going to move the needle much , and so wherever you're at , you're most likely going to stay at that place . So most people want to improve , they want to grow , and so they're gonna put in time .

But how much and that's where the topic of that conversation was was okay , you know , should technicians specifically be putting in a bunch of their own personal time ? should that be expected of them ? And if they're not , are they , you know , being lazy or whatever ?

and again , as that's not the exact conversation I want to get into , but just the idea of spending your personal time time , you know , when you're not on the clock , maybe you're not at work , but you're still dedicating it to work . Or I mean , you could just be staying at work to write .

Maybe you're not on the clock , maybe you're not busting out flat rate hours , but you spent two , three additional hours there researching a car , learning how something works , a scope or scan tool , or whatever it might be .

You're spending additional time at work Or , heck , you might even just be working to make money still , but you're taking away from your personal time right and again that all adds up and you , basically , you have to make a trade off .

Right , if you want to improve , you want to get better , you've got to trade , you know , personal time for this time , to improve with your career . So there is a definite balancing act there , because of course we want to .

But there's a point where it's definitely too much that you let it dominate your life and , like I said , hey , that's me , i'm Sean , i allow that to happen a lot . Why I'm talking about this to ? and don't mistake this , for I have all the answers . I should probably have started with that .

This is just me reaching out to everyone , explaining you know kind of where I'm at in my thoughts , and I love to hear everybody else's thoughts on this and even advice to . But The biggest thing that happened this week is my employee . His mother passed away this week and it was rather unexpected , like they didn't see this coming .

She was actually out of town visiting someone and it just went all south very quickly and you know , obviously it's terrible , awful thing To lose a parent , especially in an unexpected manner like that . I mean any situation , and my condolences go out to Steven , his whole family . You know it's a really tough time for them .

But again , this happening really drew my mind in towards this topic of Working so much , in sacrificing personal time and time you could be with friends , family , things like that . You know how do you balance that out ?

that makes sense and I'm sure that the answer is going to be different for everybody , but For a lot of us it's easy to get wrapped up with I gotta get this done , i have to fix this car , i gotta make this money right , all of these things . That pulls us away from everything else . That is easier to .

Oh , okay , i'll go hang out with my friends the next time , or I'll go on that date with my wife a couple weeks from now . It's just this week , it's just too busy , right . And the thing of it is , you never know . I heard this one time and it has really stuck with me .

I don't know it was implemented , but it really stuck with me is that you never know when the last time you do something will be , and it doesn't have to be something dramatic or major , i mean it can be . Steve probably didn't know the last time that he was gonna talk to his mom , but it happened , right .

And things like that happen all the time , and sometimes it is little stuff . Most of the time we don't even realize it , though , right , you don't know when the last time will be that you pick up your kid . You don't know the last time that you'll play a sport , right , it's gonna happen for just about everything in our life .

There will be a last time that you do something specific , but you don't know most of the time . You don't know when that exact time is right . You can't know these things , but it is going to happen . And what does that mean ? What do you do with that information ?

Well , the idea is to be more mindful and more in the moment , but also to tie value to those moments , especially with friends and family and things outside of work , because the fact of the matter is , these cars will still be broken tomorrow and , no matter how hard you work and how many cars you fix , there's still gonna be more broken cars .

It is a never-ending avalanche , though if you are good at this , we'll never stop until you decide to say , no , i'm good , i don't wanna do this anymore , and all of this is really just to get at .

Make sure that you do take some time away from work on a regular basis , even during a busy week , when it is easy to spend all of your time centered around this world . That there are a lot of other things going on in your life I'm sure there are .

There is in mind that you Could be , and probably should be , putting more attention and effort towards right , and again , almost all was that's going to be friends and family . That you should be spending time with right .

You know , if you think about losing a loved one or a parent , if You were able to Rewind time , you know to a point where they were still here and maybe just a mundane conversation That you had with them , or maybe even a time when you were annoyed with them or upset with them .

If you could rewind time and go back to that and you know they're still here , you can Converse with them You'd completely change the conversation , right ? but the thing , if it is , is most of us have these moments right now With the people that we're with , and we can change those conversations right now , or we can just .

It's as simple as Putting your phone down , putting the laptop away , putting the modules away and really spending time with your family . And What better time to do it than fourth of July weekend ? right , and we're taking we were already scheduled to take Monday off .

I'm gonna be doing some camp in this weekend , probably go down the river low kayaking , try to just get away from work . And It was tough telling people today that I'm booked out until

next Wednesday . But you know , that's the thing is , you tell people and they're like okay , i guess that's what it is . Don't be afraid to put off that work and Get away from it from a little while .

So if , if you're like me , it's important that somebody says that to you every once in a while , or you just fall right back into letting it dominate everything . So That's all I got for you today and , in the spirit of the message here , i'm not gonna take up a whole lot of your time . I hope this Message helps you .

Maybe you're somebody who already realizes this and does this stuff already , and that's awesome . Maybe you're like me and you just feel like you're working all the frickin time .

But the fact of the matter is is you can say no , you can step away , you can have some fun , enjoy your family , enjoy your friends while everybody's here , cuz you never know when they might not be . So with that all out of the way , have a happy 4th of July .

Happy birthday America , and let's all get out there , start fixing the world , one car at a time .