Nixing Busywork With Niksen

Frank Butler  0:16  
Hello Busybodies, welcome to another episode of the Busyness Paradox. I'm Frank Butler here with Paul Harvey.

Paul Harvey  0:23  
Good day, Frank.

Frank Butler  0:25  
And on today's episode, what are we discussing Paul,

Paul Harvey  0:27  
We are going to discuss nothing. More specifically, doing nothing. And the value, potential value of doing so. So a recurring theme of our show, as you know, is busyness. And the sometimes counterproductive nature of always being busy or acting busy, or making yourself busy. And a topic that we've already subtopic that we've kind of danced around in a few shows, and certainly in our own conversations is the benefits of not being busy at all, of making time every day, to basically do nothing. And every so often, this idea comes up in the popular press in the media, there's been something of a movement based on the Dutch word niksen, which I believe translates as "do nothing." More recently, a book by Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon touched on this point, and he explains that he prioritizes doing nothing every day, when he wakes up in the morning, says, I like to putter around in the morning, get up early, go to bed early, read the newspaper, have coffee, he says my puttering time is very important to me. That's why I set my first meeting for 10 o'clock. So he makes time every morning to just sort of exist. And that's the idea behind this Dutch term, niksen as well. Apologies to our Dutch friends, for my probably horrible pronunciation of that. It's an idea that you're letting your mind be awake, but at rest, not engaged in doing something all the time. And Mr. Bezos outlines a number of benefits to doing so as easy as it says it helps to create boundaries between your work life and your personal life, especially important these days working from home, as many of us are, increases what he calls margin kind of difference between the bandwidth, you have the cognitive bandwidth, you have to do stuff and the amount of stuff you actually have to do. So by stepping away from all that stuff, you have to do what kind of let your mind prioritize things and sort things out. And he says, ultimately, it leads to better decisions. So he has his own take on this idea. But it's a topic that we have danced around quite a bit. The idea that idle time at work is not necessarily a bad thing for a number of reasons. One of which is that it can be good for your brain, basically, it literally is the time when to get all neuroscience for just a second, the brainwaves associated with creative processes, the alpha waves are those that the brain mostly produces when you're awake. But in a relaxed state, like sitting back with your eyes shut, not really doing or thinking about anything in particular, that's when the creative juices really flow in your brain. So everything he's saying can jives with what we think we know about the creative process in your brain and the innovation that can come from that. So I like what he's saying. And I thought we could dive into this a little bit more in the context of our show. And the war against the Infinite Loop of Busyness.

Frank Butler  3:27  
You know, I really liked this, one of the things that I was looking at with this was, I immediately started trying to make connections to everything we've discussed in our show up to this point, and things that just stand out to me. First and foremost is the idea of structure. This is a structured exercise. He, as in Jeff Bezos, every morning makes time to quote unquote, Potter. And that includes spending time with his kids, making sure he has breakfast with his children. He doesn't schedule his first meeting until 10 o'clock in the morning. So that's one thing that really stood out to me. The other thing that really hit me was that he said that it leads to better decisions, because it allows his brain to sort of be idle, in a sense, he's not taxing himself constantly is what he really gets into. And he says, If I make three good decisions a day, that's enough, and they should just be as high quality as I can make them, unquote. So here's something else where he's talking about something that we also have addressed, which is the notion of focusing on on output. Yes, we're big on the 40 Hour Workweek as being obsolete and focusing more on job output. And Jeff Bezos right here summarizes that perfectly in that idea that leads to better decisions. So those are two things that I take away. And another thing he says is that he prioritizes his sleep unless traveling to different time zones, but he tries to schedule eight hours of sleep. So another thing that allows the brain to recharge I know, so often that people are quote, unquote, burning the candle from both sides or what have you. And all that stuff is working really against you. And as Paul and I have both said, We are really big on understanding nowadays that we actually needed more structure than we thought we did years ago. And so this fits into also our theme for this year, which we both have, instead of New Year's resolutions, the idea of structure and this is just another element of structure, structuring in time, that's really for you to exist just exist. Exactly. The idea of niksen, very similar to the German word of nichs, you know, I'm not doing anything, nothing, just means nothing. Not to be confused with the Seinfeld show about nothing. Although I also liked that idea too, so... 

Paul Harvey  5:52  
That's true too. A different take on on nothing. 

Frank Butler  5:55  
A different take on it, yes. 

Paul Harvey  5:56  
Yeah. Yeah, I have nothing more to say about this, go out and do nothing. No, this is one of those things, that's obviously easier said than done. And I want to reiterate what you said there that it's, it can be so tempting to burn the candle at both ends. I have certainly been guilty of this. And I've certainly seen the consequences firsthand, and a lot of us have, because it's, as we've talked about in past shows, it's one of those things that society sort of not encourages, necessarily, but...

Frank Butler  6:26  
Seems to expect it

Paul Harvey  6:27  
To expect it. It's the sign of your hard worker, we are an industrious person, if you're working late and getting up early, and working 20 hours a day are a real go getter. And really, you're, you're shooting yourself in the foot in a lot of ways. By doing that in a number of different ways. Psychologically, just practically, you can't be super productive. If you're falling asleep in your oatmeal. First of all, you can take it from whatever angle you want to go and back to the brainwaves like a lot of the the cognitive processes that your brain needs to go through to be creative, and to be generally productive. Those things don't happen if you're not sleeping enough. Now, not everybody needs eight hours of sleep, especially as you get older, most adults know how much sleep their body wants. But as long as you're allowing yourself to get that much, you're going to be more productive in the long run. And really even in the short run, you know, yeah, there are these occasions where you just kind of, you just have to go through the night, once in a blue moon for a deadline or something, say, But to do that, with any kind of regularity, the health consequences are bad. And productivity wise, it's a net loss in a lot of ways. So it's nice to see someone who's currently holding that mantle of the modern day industrialist Jeff Bezos saying no, actually eight hours a night, you know, that's more or less non negotiable. Makes me happy to see someone who's got a lot more visibility than we do putting that out there. 

Frank Butler  7:49  
Yeah, I'm curious how that applies in Amazon, how he might partition those ideas for his employees. My understanding the culture at Amazon is it's relatively cutthroat. They're pretty intense. So I just wonder if he takes what he believes in, and really translates that to what he expects of his people as well, hey, go get eight hours of sleep or whatever amount of sleep your body needs, make sure to have some downtime, where we're not having meetings. So that way, it allows your mind to be idle. I wonder if that's being preached to the organization in some way, it'd be interesting to know,

Paul Harvey  8:26  
It'd be interesting to hear from anybody who works at Amazon in any capacity. You know, oftentimes, the culture of a company is driven by the most visible member of the organization, usually the CEO, especially when that CEO is also the founder. But you're right, you do hear stories that that don't seem consistent with that. Who knows? What's the story? what's real, it'd be interesting to hear from some people with boots on the ground at Amazon, help us answer that question.

Frank Butler  8:50  
Yeah, for sure. I keep thinking of these things. And I do strongly believe that these are great concepts. Like I truly think that having some structured, unstructured time where you're just taking a couple hours or not even that, right taking maybe a half hour of just you time, in a sense, where you're in your own zone doing something that's going to be beneficial to your mind to let it come in some way. Some people might choose to meditate.

Paul Harvey  9:17  
Now that's not niksen. 

Frank Butler  9:19  
That's not niksen. 

Paul Harvey  9:20  
Yeah. That is anti-niksen...niksen apparently 

Frank Butler  9:24  
Right but I think in general, that having some some structured time to focus in on you, so maybe it's not the niksen idea, but rather, if you don't feel like your mind can really deal with the niksen this idea of nothing. And I can see how that's hard. Meditation might be a good way of filling that space in because there's a structure to that to where it's at least decoupling you from the idea of thinking about work. I'm real big, actually in the morning. I get up in my first probably hour and a half of the day really is me drinking some tea, reading some news. But I'm really trying to force myself from not being overly engaged in work in general, just to keep my mind free in a sense, or to let it pick up and kick in and its own. I think, for me, it allows those guests the lubrication of the mind, in a sense, because it allows my mind to start warming up. And I find that morning is really important to me. Now, Paul, I know you're a little different in this, you say you like to get up and hit it? 

Paul Harvey  10:28  
Yeah, yeah. I'm usually doing something productive within about three minutes of waking up in the morning. But that's me. And and I'm not firing on all cylinders all day, my...my shut down, niksen time comes in the evening. Usually. We all have our own preferences and flows throughout the day. The important thing is that you do it, you structure it in, like you said.

Frank Butler  10:50  
Right, I think that's just it is that you've got to make it fit you. That's something in this case, for me, I'm much better taking that time in the morning, Paul is much better within the afternoon or evenings, I think Paul tends to get up a little earlier than I do, for example. But I think for both of us, we do have these different structure times, the time that we tend to schedule, our recordings tend to be at a time that both of us are nearing our peak, in a sense, or maybe coming off the peak. But at the same time, that's the idea is that we try to structure our work around the times, we know that we are going to operate at our more optimal positions.

Paul Harvey  11:29  
And that can change. When I was younger, my productive hours were 11am, sorry, 11pm to 3am. Now 

Frank Butler  11:37  
Mine too 

Paul Harvey  11:37  
That is no longer the case for me. So you have to be in tune to your own your body and your mind. And back to your point about meditation, I think that is helpful with that. And I honestly, I don't claim to be that much of an expert on niksen or meditation. I, you said that and it just brought to mind this article from the Sunday Times, discussing what niksen is all about. It says, "watching a Netflix show about how you should be categorizing blinds into plastic containers is not niksen, meditation classes are fake niksen, whereas making time to gaze out of a window is the quintessence of niksen, because it can be performed at a moment's notice without kids". So I think maybe I was a little too fast on the trigger there. If you're meditating, maybe that is How I learnt the Dutch art of doing nothing, but meditation classes where you're driving to a place and getting your yoga mat out. Like, that doesn't count I guess.

Frank Butler  12:27  
Yeah, I think the idea is that you don't want to have stressors sort of before and after, in a sense, right? Good point. And that's maybe the difference between going to a meditation class, versus just taking the time to sit there and spend some time of getting your mind and your body to relax and focus in on the year I'm not a meditation person. My mind is way too all over the place for that.

Paul Harvey  12:51  
You I've tried it. I can't shut that thing off.

Frank Butler  12:55  
No, me either. But I do take around on a guitar for example, actually, I for me, one of the things that I find to be very relaxing, and something that really helps occupy my mind in a relieving type of way is actually building Lego. My wife and I are huge as a perfect one. Lego fans Yeah, we're very much a Falls is what they call us adult fans of Lego. We love it but I find it to be a good structured activity in a way that helps keep my mind calm. And I find it helps with a lot of things I had a bout of significant anxiety a few years ago that I had to work out and Lego is one of those therapies in a sense because it helps my mind calm down

Paul Harvey  13:40  
Oh, man once Frank starts talking about Legos there's no stopping him. that will take well he's going on about that so let's get real for a second herself out all this doing nothing niksen stuff. Sounds great. Right in Balkan, it's a perfect paradox. Doing nothing makes you less busy. Or too busy to be less busy. So what do you really do and you don't have time to do nothing really taking you outsource it to someone who does compress I got to do haven't actually run this idea by Frank. Yeah, there's for a mere $50 an hour and things so we can Hey, look, that's all your next for you things in SEO, you can literally pay us do nothing. I mean, it just sounds like he's wrapping up over there. But seriously, give us some thought. But don't sit there doing nothing. Pay us to do

Frank Butler  14:22  
it for you. That's the way I tend to approach it with Lego.

Paul Harvey  14:26  
I like electrical wiring, 

Frank Butler  14:27  
Electrical wiring, yes

Paul Harvey  14:28  
Everyone's got their own thing. You know, it doesn't matter as long as it works for you. 

Frank Butler  14:31  
Right

Paul Harvey  14:31  
Yeah, it's something that's kind of, I think, like your Legos, put your mind into a bit of a meditative state, where you're just in a flow of sorts. Maybe it's not exactly niksen, but it's something close to that, I guess where you're, you're letting your brain calm down and just roll with its own momentum.

Frank Butler  14:49  
I find the way to best do that is to pick an activity that's not necessarily complex, but requires some level of focus. In the case of wiring. For example, you have to have be focused just enough because otherwise you're you might do something wrong there or miss wire something burning your house down. Yeah, right burn your house down. There's some risk to it. But it's not overly complex, in a sense that you have to go and spend days diving into literature to really make yourself an expert on all things electrical. It's complex enough, but not overly complex. Same thing with building Lego. It's a bit like a puzzle. Yeah, yeah, puzzles, Lego, these things are complex enough, but not overly complex, where you're taxing yourself too difficult or too much, rather, here's something else. This is from that ink magazine. And I'm going to quote this right out of the magazine, because I do think that this is a very important phrase: "There's a misperception that in order to be productive, you have to spend more time doing things." That to me, is...wow

Paul Harvey  15:54  
That says it all right there. 

Frank Butler  15:55  
Yep, exactly. That's what we try to talk about here. faking busyness or using that busy that takes actual energy. Being on social media doesn't really count. Social media does not recharge the brain. Nope. reading the news is probably not even the best way of doing it. And a lot of ways, the focus needs to be doing something that's more inward, I go for a walk, just take a walk, or maybe listen to some music or the idea of niksen, it's literally to look out the window and just take it in.

Paul Harvey  16:27  
And we're not the first people to advocate - us and Jeff Bezos that is - are not the first three people to advocate the importance of this in the workplace. What year is this...2021, and about 15 years ago there was a an article called enhancing creativity through mindless work, a framework of work day design, and the abstract. To quickly summarize, they say we introduced the concept of mindless work, ie work that is low in both cognitive difficulty and performance pressures. As an integral part of the workplace structure. We suggest that to enhance creativity among chronically overworked professionals. workdays should be designed to alternate between bouts of cognitively challenging and high pressure work and bounce of mindless work straight to your point about Legos puzzles, having something that's not completely mindless, like, okay, they do use the term mindless, but you're not shutting your brain off, you know, you're using your brain, but in a way that really just allows it to coast and do its background housekeeping and run his alpha waves and do whatever else it needs to do to kind of rejuvenate itself and solve problems. I think we've talked about this before how that phenomenon where if you stop thinking about a problem, you find the solution. And we've all had that experience. And just you come back to your work. And you see things you didn't see before you have ideas you didn't have 20 minutes earlier, that's your brain doing what it does best. And so this niksen mindless work, however you want to conceptualize it. That's the goal here, trying to let your brain be a human brain and do what it needs to do. So you can do your job as best you can.

Frank Butler  18:04  
And I think that's at the end of the day, where we always are trying to say, give yourself the opportunity to provide the best output not just to provide output

Paul Harvey  18:14  
Not the most time, not the most output, the best output.

Frank Butler  18:17  
And I think there's been plenty of research out there that has shown that if you are earning the candle from both ends, that your brain activity is hindered in a sense, it's not, you're not getting the ultimate decisions, you're not able to think through things clearly. And

Paul Harvey  18:33  
You literally become dumber, you're dumber, when you're overworked like that. It's just a fact.

Frank Butler  18:40  
It works against you and you increase the chances of mistakes happening, you're more likely to get into accidents. If there's the whole idea of saying driving tired is like driving drunk. It's that same sort of slowing down in a negative way of how your brain functions and your reflexes work. That's the same idea. And again, we believe that output is key. So if you are burning those candle, if you are burning that candle from both ends, you're not doing yourself, your employees, anyone a good service,

Paul Harvey  19:14  
You're not doing anyone any favors, least of all yourself, but no one else either

Frank Butler  19:17  
Least of all yourself.

And that probably is part of that thing that leads to these burnout situations or increasing xiety I can tell you with my anxiety, for example, I put myself heavily into work. And all of a sudden next thing you know, I'm having a massive panic attack. And I was having all these weird feelings and it was really stressful. And it made things stressful because I didn't have an answer to it. But I just kept working and there was a lot of rewards. So I was being rewarded for all the stuff I was doing. But at the same time, I was really hurting myself. And that's something that I know I'm not alone and I know that there's plenty of other people who've gone through that. And now during this pandemic, too, I know that there's a lot of this going on because of the lack of connection or communication that's going on. So finding a way to get yourself to find a calming place, is going to help finding a way to get your brain to silence itself. And to do something where it can recharge itself, get those juices lubricating, whatever it is, but trying to find those ways in, there's some things that you need help with. And in my case, it helps to see a professional, either a licensed counselor or a therapist,

Paul Harvey  20:29  
Or a pet cat, whatever helps. Yeah

Frank Butler  20:31  
Yeah, exactly.

Paul Harvey  20:32  
You know, you just mentioned a point that I'm glad you did it really is important to highlight, you mentioned that your performance was suffering. And anxiety and stress levels are increasing. And in response, you're working even more. And that's this negative, what's the word I'm looking for not feedback cycle, but self perpetuating kind of cycle, where the downward spiral is a downward spiral where you're less productive, because you're overworking your body in your mind. So you have to work longer hours to make up for the fact that you're not getting as much done in your working hours. So you're working even more hours, and it just spirals out of control until you're a walking zombie. And you know, I've been there, you've been there, a lot of us have been there. And it's not a fun place to be. Nope. Again, another paradox of busyness The more you work past a certain point, the less you accomplish. And that's exactly what were this niksen and everything Jeff Bezos is talking about in his new book comes into play.

Frank Butler  21:28  
And from all of that, this is not something that you're just going to rip the band aid off and start doing a lot of the stuff takes time to develop the skills or competencies and doing, you're not going to magically come out and start being amazing at niksen, unless you've been doing it for a long time, and you just didn't have a name for it. 

Paul Harvey  21:47  
Although I think you will reap the benefits very quickly. As soon as you start trying, at least I did say, oh, wow, this is better. I'm happier. My work is better, everything is better. I'm gonna do more of this. So I found it to be very self perpetuating in a good way.

Frank Butler  22:00  
Yeah, I agree. It's about creating some level of routine or habit with it. And so that just takes time. This is one of those things that we all have to understand that there's some level of routinization that comes with that, again, that structure and I know that a lot of people are like, Oh, no, I don't need structure. I'm just gonna wing it with the reality that this actually helps you wing things better, to be quite honest. Yeah, you can wing the right things. Whereas when you just don't have any real structure, you're like, Oh, I'm just gonna wing it. And then you find yourself in a situation at some point that way isn't going to work anymore. 

Paul Harvey  22:34  
You've got nothing to wing it with. 

Frank Butler  22:35  
That's right. 

Paul Harvey  22:36  
That's a really good point. 

Frank Butler  22:38  
If I try to wing it for a class, for example, and I'm tired, and I've been working too hard before, that class isn't going to go well. 

Paul Harvey  22:46  
It's gonna be a painful class for all involved yeah.

Frank Butler  22:48  
Everybody, my students aren't going to enjoy their will see it in their faces. Of course, I'm tired, too. So I'm already going in with a negative feeling toward it. So I'm going to miss read the situation. There's just a lot of things in there,

Paul Harvey  23:00  
Especially when your students are all wearing masks. 

Frank Butler  23:02  
Yeah, well, that makes it harder, right? You're not getting those full facial expressions. 

Paul Harvey  23:06  
Yeah

Frank Butler  23:06  
Yeah, there's here's another thing that I just want to come back to the idea of structure, Jeff Bezos. He says in here, this doesn't this Inc article. Even more important by building it into his routine, he protects that time and ensures that it doesn't get overwhelmed by the flood of incoming information, and communications that can easily take over our day,

Paul Harvey  23:26  
Especially when you're the head of Amazon. The fact that you can ever turn off the flow of information is kind of incredible. The fact that he does it every day is impressive.

Frank Butler  23:35  
I think that comes down to representing that he probably has a great system of delegation.

Paul Harvey  23:42  
But it also represents that if he can do it, we can all do it. 

Frank Butler  23:45  
Right exactly. And if you are in the upper echelons of an organization, this might be something that you want to encourage of people now, not to a point where you're finding it's detrimental. But there's certain ways that you can encourage this behaviors. But the whole idea is that by making it routine means that inherently it's structured. That's what routine really is, there are things that you should recognize, I don't care if you wing it, and you believe in this whole idea of winging it, I'm pretty sure you probably brush your teeth at night before going to bed. That's routine, that structure that's sort of a signal that, hey, it's the end of my day, and it's time for bed. So that's that same thing with doing all of this stuff. And however you need to do structuring. That's important. That's another thing too, actually, I meant to connect the the idea of margin that comes back to something we discussed in the business, too, with the idea of the Eisenhower box, a prioritization of your different activities. So again, as you can see, what Jeff Bezos has done here is basically covered a lot of the stuff that we do

Paul Harvey  24:47  
He's following our advice, and that's why he's so successful. 

Frank Butler  24:50  
That's right. 

Paul Harvey  24:50  
You're welcome, Jeff.

Frank Butler  24:52  
Thank you. Yes, yes. You're welcome, Jeff. I'll give you my address. So you can send us the check. Yeah. No, but truly I've come to appreciate it, Paul has come to appreciate it, this notion of, you have to build in some level of structure, so you can be better at winging it when you need to wing it.

Paul Harvey  25:10  
Have some reserve juice in the tank for those times you need it, and don't live by winging it

Frank Butler  25:15  
Right

Paul Harvey  25:15  
Save it for when being successful at winging it is very important, then.

Frank Butler  25:20  
Exactly, no, I agree. 

Paul Harvey  25:22  
And credit where credit's due just before I forget, I just wanted to, as we've been talking about it, the name of Jeff Bezos book is Invent and Wander the Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos, and the Inc article that we've been talking about this whole time, it's by Jason Aten, Tech columnist for Ink magazine.

Frank Butler  25:39  
Yeah, no, I think that's a great to shout that out. And, again, one of the things for me, just to remember, is you can see the connecting the dots idea, it might be sometimes, or it might seem like it's a stretch sometimes. But really, when you think about it, you can make connections, a lot of things. Don't get caught up in buzzwords, don't get caught up in terminology, get thinking about the processes, and try to look at different things. And you'll notice that there's a lot of similarities between all of these different things, the idea of niksen, and what Jeff Bezos tries to do with his doing nothing idea, they're all related in some way. Don't get yourself too sucked up into things like listicles, or what have you focus in on what they're trying to say,

Paul Harvey  26:21  
For those who aren't familiar with listicles, go to our website, and we have a blog post about that wonderful topic.

Frank Butler  26:27  
Right, find what's right for you. That's why we encourage you all to reach out to us. Because we want to share those ideas with others of what it takes for you to do this kind of thing. So if you are already practicing something like this idea of niksen or doing nothing in your schedule, let us know how you do that. What do you do? What is the process by which you get your minds straight during those times, it's one of those things that we'd like to see. I know, for example, that was sleep, I'm not always the best at getting seven ish, eight hours of sleep, my wife needs a little bit more than I do. And sometimes I get up much earlier. And it's not very good, because I disrupt her sleep. So sometimes I know that's because my mind is already stressing out about something. So sometimes I find that a melatonin or some Unisom, like a half a tablet of unisom or something is gonna help me make sure that I get that sleep though,

Paul Harvey  27:17  
Not alcohol. I know some of you are thinking of it, not alcohol, use one of those, like sleep tracking apps on your phone, or your Apple watch or whatever. And look at the data. If you go to bed with even like a beer in your system, it's shocking how much poorer you sleep with alcohol in your system.

Frank Butler  27:35  
And as you get older to you, you'll find that drinking caffeine after a certain time is much more influential on your sleep. I know when I was five years younger, I could drink coffee at night and still go to bed and sleep well, these days, it's not so great. So again, I know it's frustrating to have to think about changing your habits or the way you work or to accept that maybe what you used to be able to do, you can no longer do but you still try to do it because you don't think that's the case, or That's not the thing that's triggering whatever it is, just that's something to try to always think about is think about what you're doing and what that might have an impact on yourself, it's really hard to do, it's really hard to make that level of self awareness, but you'll find that you'll make some positive changes as well.

Paul Harvey  28:22  
You are at the whim of a bunch of chemicals and electric waves firing around through your brain and the rest of your body. And you can't beat physics, you know, those chemicals are going to do what they do and those brain waves are going to do what they do and you got to play by their rules.

Frank Butler  28:37  
Exactly. So anyway, please let us know what you do what habits you have that help you with this idea of structure or more so this idea of what helps you lubricate your brain is sensitive rested, so that way you are more productive at work

Paul Harvey  28:53  
And more creative.

Frank Butler  28:54  
Yeah more creative. If you have questions if you have comments or if you have anything you want us to discuss as a topic would have you please reach out to us and I think on that I'm going to go do nothing pretty sure we I'm going to go do nothing. I'm going to actually have to go build something but yeah, I'm going to do nothing for a little bit.

Paul Harvey  29:11  
That sounds fun, too. I'm just gonna be here staring at the camera, Frank so yeah

Frank Butler  29:15  
He's gonna watch me build something. That'd be pretty mindless. I think that would be recharging. that

Paul Harvey  29:22  
That would be mindless, I think so.

Frank Butler  29:25  
Thank you, everybody. Have a great one. 

Paul Harvey  29:27  
Bye, everyone.

The Busyness Paradox is distributed by Paul Harvey and Frank Butler. Our theme music is adapted from "It's Business Time" By Jemaine Clements and Brett McKenzie. Our production manager is Justin Wuntaek. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and we'd love to hear from you. Please send questions, comments, or ideas for future episode topics to input@busynessparadox.com or find us on Twitter. Also, be sure to visit our website, busynessparadox.com, to read our blog posts and for links to the articles and other resources mentioned in today's show. Finally, please take a moment to rate and follow or subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, I-Heart Radio, Google podcasts or your preferred podcast provider.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai