Some people chase “work-life balance” like it’s the Holy Grail—spending time, money, and mental energy trying to keep work and personal life perfectly split down the middle. But what if that balance doesn’t actually exist? Live from Joe’s mom’s basement (and not nearly as glamorous as it sounds), Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, Paula Pant, and Jesse Cramer pull back the curtain on whether we should be aiming for balance… or something else entirely.
In this roundtable, the crew wrestles with the difference between work-life balance, alignment, and integration—and why chasing balance might actually keep you from a truly fulfilling life. You’ll hear personal stories, some hard-won lessons about productivity, and a few well-placed digs at Nautica (including the questionable financial moves Joe made in his youth). And because no basement chat is complete without it, we bring you a trivia challenge you didn’t know you needed.
From managing notifications so they stop managing you, to building a life where work and personal priorities don’t compete, this episode digs into the practical steps that help you get more out of both your career and your free time. Whether you’re climbing the corporate ladder, running your own show, or plotting an early retirement, you’ll walk away with tools to rethink how you spend your hours—and why.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- Why “work-life balance” might be the wrong target—and what to aim for instead
- The difference between balance, alignment, and integration (and why it matters)
- Practical ways to keep work from swallowing your personal life whole
- How to reclaim your attention from constant notifications and distractions
- Mindset shifts that boost productivity and satisfaction in everyday life
- Lessons from real-life wins and missteps (including Joe’s Nautica saga)
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Topic:
Why Work-Life Balance Is Overrated — and What to Pursue Instead (MSN)
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- Work-life balance
- Life-life balance
- Seasonal balance
- Vacation first mindset
- Finding joy in work
- Balanced diet analogy
- Sprint and rest cycles
- Wheel of life
- Time tracking
- FIRE movement goals
- Time vs autonomy
- Alignment vs balance
- Presence over balance
- Email distractions
- Slack responsiveness
- Social media dopamine
- Work-life integration
- Athlete mindset
- Halftime breaks
- On-season/off-season
- Environment and focus
- Home vs office mode
- Phone boundaries
- Strategic rest periods
- Entrepreneur archetypes
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Jesse Cramer
Another thanks to Jesse Cramer for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Jesse on his show, Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors – The Best Interest, on Apple Podcasts.
Learn how you can work with Jesse by visiting The Best Interest – Invest in Knowledge.
Paula Pant
Check out Paula’s site and amazing podcast at AffordAnything.com
Follow Paula on Twitter: @AffordAnything
OG
For more on OG and his firm’s page, click here.
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- What year was Nautica founded?
Mentioned in today’s show
- The Family-First Entrepreneur: How to Achieve Financial Freedom Without Sacrificing What Matters Most
- The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again
- The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal
- Why Having Fun Is the Secret to a Healthier Life | Catherine Price | TED
Join Us on Monday!
Tune in on Monday when we welcome you to estate planning and charitable giving week on the show.
Miss our last show? Check it out here: How One Entrepreneur Constructed a Better Tomorrow (with Cheryl McKissick Daniel) SB1721.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Doug: Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:00:24] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and on today’s show is work life Balance, really what we should be aiming for with our free time. Our money and our work. I prefer life, life balance and leave the workout completely. But apparently they didn’t love that idea and thought we should focus on work life instead. [00:00:44] Doug: Yeah. What Eves, but that’s not all. We’ll pause halfway through today’s topic to see who’s gonna win this installment of our year long trivia challenge. And now a guy who can barely balance on two feet. It’s Joe Sa Sea. Hi. [00:01:02] Joe: Barely is the operative word. Hey there everybody. Welcome to Old Hs Fun podcast because balance is a real thing. [00:01:11] Joe: I’m Joe Saul-Sehy, and today we’re balancing a great discussion about work-life balance. You heard on Wednesday from Cheryl McKissick talking about her family and. Uh, all the construction her family has done to build America. So today after a work, work Wednesday, we’re gonna talk work Life Friday. And that means we talk with a guy who’s all work. [00:01:36] Joe: No play. Mr. OG is here. How are you, man? [00:01:42] OG: Uh, what day is it today? I, I keep getting it messed up. Is today August? Uh, of [00:01:47] Joe: course it’s Friday. [00:01:48] OG: I know that. But is it the eighth or the 15th or [00:01:50] Joe: five? 6, 7, 8, 15 [00:01:52] OG: 15th. 15. Oh, well then, uh, future me says that I’m feeling pretty good. Kids are back in school. Two of them. [00:02:01] OG: One of ’em is gonna be in school next week. Feeling pretty good after school activities in full swing. That’s [00:02:06] Joe: fantastic. Over you got the house to yourself? Well, I mean, not house to myself, [00:02:12] OG: you know, he was still here [00:02:16] Joe: and the woman who, uh, has, um, I I, I don’t know all the stuff going on in New York City. Paula Pans here. [00:02:26] Paula: Uh, New York City is good. The hottest days of the summer hopefully are behind us. I mean, we never know. ’cause New York has like lots of false starts and stops to its seasons. But hopefully the worst of the heat should be behind us. [00:02:40] Paula: And we’re going into fall, which is my favorite time. ’cause it’s sweater weather. I’m wearing a sweater right now for those of you on YouTube because in my studio it’s air condition. I, I don’t control the air conditioning. The, uh, management does the building management. It’s freezing. It’s, if I could wear a hat and gloves right now, I would. [00:02:59] Paula: I’d be in a parka if I had one [00:03:01] Joe: when I moved to Texas. People are like, oh, I could not, how did you even stay in Michigan? ’cause it was freezing cold. I’m like really? Like every living room in Texas I go into in August. Like I swear we don’t like it to be winter, but we certainly like it as cold as as ice. [00:03:17] Joe: Yeah. I don’t know what they’re doing here. And a guy who is still in the great North, Mr. Jesse Kramer is here. How are you man? [00:03:27] Jesse: Hey, I’m doing well. Uh, what’s going on here? I think I’m in Buffalo today. I’m in Buffalo this weekend. Another great upstate city. Nothing else to report though. Nothing too exciting. [00:03:37] Joe: What happens in Buffalo that you have to leave the wonderful confines of Rochester to go to Buffalo? [00:03:43] Jesse: Uh, my wife’s family lives out in Buffalo and it’s only about an hour’s drive away. So, um, I’ve got a few clients I work with outta Buffalo and just some, some friends who I check in with. So I think Buffalo would consider itself the primary city in Rochester, the secondary city. [00:03:57] Jesse: But either way, sibling cities, just, uh, a few miles down the throughway from one another, [00:04:01] Joe: both nice places. And you got, speaking of fall weather, Paula, have you been out to the Finger Lakes by Jesse? [00:04:07] Paula: No, I’ve never been. I’ve never been that far upstate, so I’ve been to like the Catskills, uh, which are beautiful. [00:04:14] Paula: Mm-hmm. Yeah. But um, I’ve always wanted to go to the Finger Lakes. I’ve never been. Well, [00:04:17] Joe: sounds like we got a [00:04:18] Paula: meetup coming. Come on [00:04:19] Jesse: up. It is gorgeous. Lots of great recommendations. Happy to give you some itinerary ideas and it’s really cool. Each one of the Finger Lakes, for the most part, has like a cool place at the north end of the lake, and then another cool place at the south end of the lake with wineries and sightseeing in between north and south. [00:04:36] Jesse: So tons of recommendations and, and things to do. [00:04:39] Joe: Ah, that sounds beautiful. We’re gonna have a great discussion today on work life balance and is that really a thing? Should it be a thing? We’re gonna dive into that, but first we have a few sponsors who make sure that we can keep on keeping on and you don’t pay any money for the goodness. [00:04:55] Joe: That is the Friday show of Stacking Benjamins. So sit back, we’re gonna hear from them right now. And then Jesse, Paula and OG are gonna talk work life balance. [00:05:12] Joe: I wanna begin this discussion by reminding people, if you’re new to the Stacky Benjamin Show, these guys are not, uh, work-life balance experts halls. We are not people who constantly help other people with work-life balance, but we are people trying to stack Benjamins. And that’s what we do on Friday is take a topic that’s in the media and dive into it. [00:05:33] Joe: And on this particular day, I’ve got a piece that’s from MSN and it says, why work life balance is overrated and what to pursue instead. And I thought is work-life balance overrated? So og let’s start with you, is do you think work-life balance is just this fancy myth? [00:05:54] OG: Oh, there’s so much to unpack here. [00:05:56] OG: We’re just going right to the end of the story. That’s, that’s where we’re at. Yeah, I think absolutely. I don’t, no, I don’t think so. I, I don’t understand. I mean, I like the idea of, you know, having purpose and working for a reason that you’re excited about and that sort of thing. But golly, if we haven’t learned anything in the last five years since COVID that tomorrow’s not promised to everybody, why would you want to trade any extra moments that you can afford not to? [00:06:27] OG: I was flipping through YouTube this morning and a clip from Dave Ramsey came up. He was taking a call from somebody who was asking whether or not they should sell the family business. Uh, and he said it’s really hard to kind of decide on how to do that in the near term, right? It’s like, well, I’ve got these terms and I’ve got dah, dah, dah, dah, and, you know, whatever. [00:06:44] OG: He’s like, like, think about it in a, a longer timeframe, like the next decade or, okay, you’re 46 today. If you’re 56. Put yourself, having sold the company, you’ve got money that you invested, you know you’re living on your portfolio. Like does that sound like a better outcome to you 10 years from now or does continuing to grow the company and potentially and that’s fulfilling as well. [00:07:07] OG: It’s not, there’s no right or wrong answer. I think we look at work as this thing we have to do in order to get the leisure and I’m so fundamentally opposed against that theory that we start our team annual planning every fall with, put in all of your vacation days and then we’ll see how much work we can get done in the year. [00:07:30] OG: Like we do it the complete opposite way. Start with the leisure days in mind. Yeah, because I think you have to have, most people think you need to work really hard in order to earn time off. And I think in order to work really hard you have had to have had time off. [00:07:44] Joe: Well, Jesse, let’s ask you, when you hear this idea work-life balance, right? [00:07:48] Joe: You hear that phrase, I mean, OG was talking about the imagery is starting on the other side. What image do you even think of, uh, when you hear work-life balance? And is that image even realistic? [00:07:59] Jesse: Yeah, I like that OG was talking about, it’s like, pay yourself first. It’s vacation yourself first. Yeah, [00:08:04] Joe: right. [00:08:04] Joe: Yeah. [00:08:05] Jesse: Tm. The image that I think of is, I, there’s so many parallels and, and maybe this is just, uh, says more about my psychology than anything else. There’s so many parallels between food and diet and then like finances and work and kind of the stuff that we talk about here. ’cause I think to myself when someone says like, oh, you need to have a balanced diet. [00:08:23] Jesse: There’s kind of this like subtle connotation there where really what they’re saying is, you’re eating too much bad food and you need to eat more healthy food. Like, that’s usually what people mean. They don’t mean like, Hey, you’re eating way too many Brussels sprouts, like throw some ice cream in there. [00:08:37] Jesse: It’s usually not what they’re saying. And I think there’s something similar here when, when people say like, oh, work-life balance, the connotation is you’re working too much and you need to focus more on some of the free time. And so to that end, I think to myself, like I personally get a lot of joy out of work. [00:08:53] Jesse: I didn’t always, and I think that’s maybe something we can get into today that like my opinions on this whole topic have changed over time. There’s no doubt that too much work makes all of us, uh, dull people as the saying goes. And, uh, yeah, there’s a lot of, there’s a definitely a lot of benefit from work-life balance as long as you don’t, again, you can’t have it swing so far in the other direction that it just becomes life like fun. [00:09:15] Jesse: You, you really do need to balance in both directions. Is is kind of my point. I saw a TikTok [00:09:20] Joe: video yesterday, Jesse, of this, uh, woman interviewing a guy who’s, I don’t know, maybe in his late nineties, right? And she’s asking him for the meaning of life. And the guy’s like, you know, as I sit here, I just think to myself, I wish I’d spent more time on my KPIs at work. [00:09:37] Jesse: Right? Exactly. That stuff, the day-to-day stuff. A lot of times, on the one hand, it doesn’t matter. I, I don’t know how to maybe explain it the right way, but we don’t look back on life and be like, oh, those KPIs is a perfect example. But at the same time, the kind of things that we all do for work, however we define work, is something that. [00:09:56] Jesse: Provides a lot of definition to our day-to-day lives. So to that end, you hope you can fill it with something fulfilling, something that makes you happy. And I suppose for me personally, a lot of my work-life balance problems in my career so far have been a function of that day-to-day stuff, just not being nearly as fulfilling as I wanted it to be. [00:10:17] Jesse: And when that improved. Everything else kind of improved in lockstep. [00:10:20] Joe: That is interesting finding joy in the work that you actually do. And I think about this idea, Paula, of work-life balance, and I remember a conversation I had with a mutual friend of ours, a pretty brilliant guy named Steve Chu. Steve wrote a great book about being an entrepreneur and his quest to get work life balance, right? [00:10:39] Joe: Spends as much time with the family as he can, but also build a business that he loves to run. But he also talked about a friend of his who prefers to work in sprints, where he will just go nose to the grindstone. He doesn’t even pursue balance, he pursues. I’m gonna be, I’ll work, I’ll work, I’ll work, I’ll work, and then I’ll play, I’ll play, I’ll play, I’ll play. [00:10:59] Joe: Mm-hmm. Can balance be seasonal or should we be looking for balance on a Okay. Yeah. Run with that. [00:11:05] Paula: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it’s actually really difficult, like if you think about the span of a normal day and you want that particular day to be balanced between sleep. Exercise work, family time, chores and errands, reflection and meditation, reading and learning, like that’s a lot to cram into a day or even a week. [00:11:26] Paula: It’s hard to, you know, on a small scale, like when you really shrink that time, it’s hard to get all of that done simultaneously, like everything all at once. If that framing of seasons, you think about when you’re in college, right? There’s finals week and finals week is that week where you’re just like nose to the grindstone, absolutely cramming for those, uh, final exams, you know, working like every hour, every waking hour of the day. [00:11:55] Paula: What is finals week followed by? It’s followed by winter break or summer break. I think that’s a perfect illustration of that. Seasonal, if you think about it. Um, in exercise terms like interval training. Yeah. Um, sprint rest. Sprint rest. [00:12:11] Joe: Oh gee, it strikes me going back to what you were talking about, that you begin with leisure time. [00:12:16] Joe: But isn’t there also something to be said for what Jesse talks about, which is getting fulfillment from your work? Like instead of chasing balance between leisure and the suck, that is work, chasing work that doesn’t suck [00:12:31] OG: Well, yeah, and I think also as you look at the things that you’re not doing, are you not doing them because you can’t because of a time situation or because you’re choosing not to, you know, for example, if you really wanna go to all your kids’ soccer matches. [00:12:49] OG: They’re all on Tuesday or Thursday at three o’clock. ’cause that’s when they do it at school. And you have no ability to do that because of your other commitments. Maybe work is that big commitment and that bothers you and you’re like, I need to reorganize this priority ’cause I really wanna be available from three to four on Tuesdays and Thursdays to go to these soccer matches. [00:13:13] OG: And you’re not able to, I think you are missing out on opportunity. But if you have the opportunity for life, if you have the flexibility or you have the ability to, to say, I’m gonna schedule my life around these things that are most important. And you don’t find yourself missing out on stuff because of other obligations, but you’re choosing not to do things like, I don’t like third grade soccer. [00:13:39] OG: I don’t care that my kid’s playing in it. I’m not gonna go and you’re doing other stuff instead. Then I think you’ve got a decent balance there and your balance is gonna be different than mine. You know, we learned in Strategic Coach that every day is a day, right? 24 hour period, midnight to midnight. And some people work on Saturdays and other people go, how in the hell can you work on Saturday? [00:14:00] OG: Man, that’s the weekend. The guy who cuts my hair works his tail off on Saturdays. He doesn’t work at all on Mondays. And if you asked him, how come he doesn’t work on Mondays? He goes, ’cause that’s not my day to work. His Saturday is Monday. Yeah, I have exactly, I have a different schedule than you. And he’s content, you know, with that schedule. [00:14:18] OG: So I don’t think that work life balance means I’m not gonna do any work or I’m only going to, you know, we think like leisure activities, like I spend my entire day fishing or golfing or skiing or whatever. But it’s the combination, like Paula said, of all the stuff that’s important to you and is that, to borrow a phrase from nameless consultants out there is that Wheel of life evenly balanced? [00:14:43] OG: If you start getting fat, then you’re skipping out on your health stuff. If your psyche goes sideways, you’re skipping out on personal development or spirituality. You know, if your business takes a crap, you’re not doing enough of that. And it’s just like all these little slivers of the wheel of your life need to be in balance so that the wheel continues to go. [00:15:03] OG: If it doesn’t, you’re gonna find out where that happens pretty quickly or where the, where the issue is. [00:15:08] Joe: It was great to see Jesse, the fire movement get on, uh, CBS this morning a couple weeks. That was fascinating and fantastic, but it also, you know, made a point. Fire movement really seems to be tied to this idea of work-life balance, right? [00:15:22] Joe: Adding more life, not trading time for money, but it strikes me, is early retirement actually about time or is it about autonomy? [00:15:32] Jesse: Hmm. Probably depends on the person to, is part of my first answer. Is it about time or is it about autonomy? I mean, I think for a lot of people, the way I see the fire movement, like my personal interpretation of what I’ve learned about it over time is just that a lot of people are locked into this thought process. [00:15:49] Jesse: That retirement is a specific age, 62, 65, whatever. Uh, and instead the fire movement says like, no, no. It’s really just about understanding what you spend, how your portfolio can support that spending over time. And really it’s about a certain number of assets that can support a certain level of spending, and thus open up all this free time to you that maybe you didn’t realize you, you could have, uh, accessed. [00:16:12] Jesse: So that, that’s the way, I guess I think about the fire movement. And then so for some people. This is just reading firsthand accounts and listening to podcasts like some of ours here or, or listening to the guests that we have on. For some people it really is about autonomy and just like, I wanna be the captain of my own ship and I don’t wanna work for corporate America. [00:16:30] Jesse: I don’t wanna have a manager telling me what to do. And so for them it might be a lot more about financial independence, like reaching that point where they can work if they want to, they can work for themselves, they can choose how they spend their day, but then, right. I just think of some of the other stories I’ve heard from people, and for them it was, if I can retire at 45 instead of 62 and reclaim 17 years of my life to go off and see the world, that is a top priority to me. [00:16:55] Jesse: So, coming back full circle to your question, Joe, I, I’ve heard both stories and I think it just depends on the person who’s pursuing fire. [00:17:03] Joe: Yeah. It makes me wonder, Paula, I mean, if we’re chasing fire, you know, there’s the age old question, are we running from something or running to something? Mm-hmm. If I’m chasing more quote balance through fire. [00:17:14] Joe: And am I really running toward anything? [00:17:16] Paula: Well, all right, let me take a step back where I question. The premise of the notion of work-life balance is that it pits work and life as mutually exclusive. It pits work versus life as this competition in a zero, you know, locked into some zero sum game where every incremental unit dedicated to one comes at the expense of the other. [00:17:39] Paula: And I think that that is not a healthy way to look at work life. It’s probably a paradigm that developed in an era when there were no smartphones, when even knowledge workers had to commute in person to an office and talk on a landline every day. Like there was much more of a separation between your home and your office and you know, work and life these days. [00:18:04] Paula: In the era of smartphones, in the era of remote work, in the era of much more flexible situations, I think. Work and life are much more integrated rather than separated. And I think seeing the way that they can sort of flow together rather than pit them as in the zero sum like competition is, uh, a healthier way of viewing it. [00:18:26] Paula: And so then to your question, Joe, is the fire movement running from something or to something? I don’t think anybody, well, I don’t think most people I should say are running away from work. I think the majority of people are running, at least anecdotally, are running towards a more integrated whole. [00:18:49] Joe: You don’t think the beginning of this movement was frustrated engineers who just, who just are sick of the grind? [00:18:56] Paula: Well. I mean, I guess tech Well, the beginning of the movement is so it sure seems [00:19:00] OG: statistically it was, [00:19:02] Paula: I’m thinking predating, uh, Mr. Money mustache. There was Vicki Robin. [00:19:06] OG: Yeah. [00:19:06] Paula: And predating Vicki Robin. There was probably somebody else. Right. You know? Right. [00:19:11] Joe: No. Yeah. The fire movement happened way, I mean, people were dreaming about not working at each 40 way, way, way before the fire movement. [00:19:19] Joe: My scream [00:19:19] OG: not, not working, and they don’t even have jobs yet, [00:19:23] Joe: so maybe that’s not as interesting as Paula. What you really said that I think I wanna dive into if you’re like, okay, balance is kind of yin and yang is not really what we’re after. What, what are we after then? Is, is I guess is the real word, alignment that we’re after. [00:19:36] Paula: Yeah, I think so. Work life alignment. Work life integration. I actually really like the term alignment because that feels healthier. It suggests that the two can work together rather than exist in competition with one another. [00:19:50] Joe: Does that speak to you more og the alignment versus balance? [00:19:54] OG: I see ’em as fairly synonymous. [00:19:55] OG: I, I think about it, like I said earlier, a little bit more like there’s all these different slivers of your life. Like Paula was talking about kind of on our first point, you know, it’s like if you’re not paying attention to all things, if you’re not living an ideal life, you will find very quickly where the area is that you’re neglecting and you can choose to do something about that or not. [00:20:20] OG: But to me it’s not like, like Paula said, I’m not challenged to say, well, it’s either work or I have leisure. It’s not this opposite thing. It’s just I have to make sure that there’s a good balance alignment. Evenness, whatever you wanna say. Yeah. ’cause that seems [00:20:36] Joe: more, I mean, it seems what you’re talking about. [00:20:39] Joe: You know, when I think of balance, I think about the calendar. I think about managing my day so I get some relaxation time that I get some work time. But really what you’re talking about is, you know, I’m sure you’ve had these times og. ’cause I certainly have where I really felt like my day was balanced, but it just felt off like it wasn’t it. [00:20:56] Joe: And instead of calendar management moving to am I truly working on the thing that I should be working on right now, or should I be in the place where I should be my kids’, you know, third grade soccer match or [00:21:09] OG: whatever. Yeah. And I think this is good for anything, like in your financial life, we talk about if you don’t take account of your money and you don’t track your spending, you can’t make any improvements on it. [00:21:19] OG: And it’s not like you’re saying, Hey, I’m I, there’s something wrong. That’s why I need to track. No, you track it so that you can have some data points from which to. Do something if you wish. And so I think it’s equally important we’re doing this right now. As a matter of fact. I think it’s equally important to track your time a little bit. [00:21:37] OG: You know, take two weeks and say, I’m just gonna write down, you know, a good old pen and paper every 20 minutes, what I’m doing, or every 30 minutes, what I’m working on. And I think it’s a good audit to. Number one, find out what you really are spending your time doing. Are you really doing that 40 hour work week there? [00:21:54] OG: You know, oh gee, no, you’re not. You liar. You know? What is your life so challenging with your 19 hours of work this week? Or whatever it ends up being, right? It’s like, let’s define it how it is. It’s 11 [00:22:03] Joe: hours. [00:22:04] OG: Yeah. You know, but you can’t make changes unless you have the data like Jesse was talking about in terms of engagement or whatever you were talking about, whatever word you used, Jesse, about finding joy in what you’re doing. [00:22:14] OG: You can also look at that and say like, golly, I’ve spent a lot of time doing this specific stuff that I just don’t, you know, I maybe I used to really like doing it, but now I’ve, you know, I’m at a different level now and somehow that got still attached to me. Now that I know that I can work to eliminate that from my life, whether I can outsource it or I can hire somebody if you’re in charge of that, or just delete it all together and kind of claim back some of that. [00:22:39] OG: But all of that comes from data. And if you’re just going. I feel like I’m not balanced. I mean, you probably aren’t, right. We have some pretty good intuition there, but it will certainly help to have data. I look at this from an energy standpoint. My given F’S today was at a level of zero. Like, I don’t know why. [00:22:57] OG: Just that was how, that’s how it worked out today. And I tried, I tried a couple things, did some exercise, ate some pretty good food, you know, like healthy stuff. And I was like, okay, maybe that’ll stoke the fires a little. Did absolutely nothing. So today has been a, you know, an energy balance day. I, I think about life as an energy component and, and sometimes you got a lot of energy to sit there, like you said, and grind out like Paula was doing earlier. [00:23:21] OG: Just head down, just. Banging out work, right? Af you know mm-hmm. In the zone, in the flow. And then sometimes you got a big pile of, uh, given Fs and, and you’re all out of ’em. [00:23:31] Joe: What’s the guy’s name that, um, uh, the open AI guy? Sam Alman. Sam [00:23:35] OG: Altman. [00:23:35] Joe: Thank you Sam Altman. [00:23:36] Jesse: Paul and I are gonna split that trivia point. [00:23:40] Jesse: Wow. Everything’s a trivia point. Now. [00:23:43] Joe: They’re like, there’s the trivia question. We got it right. I think it’s interesting ’cause Sam Altman talked about Jesse, that, um, when we think about work-life balance, we think about burnout. I work too much, so I burn out. Sam Altman made this comment that he said, he said, you will never burn out if you’re working on the right thing. [00:23:59] Joe: The thing that you truly should be working on that, you know, Marie Kondo sparks joy like that. If you’re, if you’re working there, there will be no burnout. [00:24:08] Jesse: Yeah, it, I don’t disagree with him. I feel that way personally, but at the same time, there’s this like backlash against thought like that, right? [00:24:15] Jesse: Because you’ll hear some billionaire founder, influencer type person saying exactly what Sam Altman said. But then you’ll get like maybe a Scott Galloway who comes on and says like, no, no, let’s be realistic. Find some job, get some master’s degree in a technical field. Move yourself to a big city. Find a job that pays you $200,000 a year, whether you like it or not, and then go use that money to live the rest of your life. [00:24:38] Paula: Mm, mm-hmm. [00:24:39] Jesse: We can’t all be the person who finds their deepest passion and also has that passion, pay them a livable wage and therefore has the best of both worlds. So I, I don’t know. I’m a little conflicted myself. ’cause it’s not that the world needs ditch diggers, that’s not really what I’m saying. But at the end of the day, it’s like. [00:24:56] Jesse: I suppose it’s like where do we draw the line between someone saying, no, no, this work genuinely makes me unhappy no matter how much it pays me, versus the other side of the coin, which might be, is it worth pursuing your passion to any end? Even if that means, you know, you can’t really put food on your table. [00:25:14] Jesse: Uh, there’s some balance in there that I don’t really know where to put it. Yeah. What do you think, Paula? [00:25:17] OG: Is that work life balance, Jesse? When you said there’s surveillance, [00:25:22] Jesse: it might be, it might be. [00:25:24] Paula: Well, I think Cal Newport has some good insight on this when he talks about how passion is often the result rather than the precursor of being in the work every day. [00:25:34] Paula: So assuming that you have a minimum level of curiosity about some given topic, then often once you dive into that topic, you start to discover. Like with any topic, you realize how little you know, you get past that Dun and Kruger effect hump. And so once you start learning about something, you realize how little you know, which makes you curious to learn more. [00:25:59] Paula: And then the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. [00:26:02] Joe: The deeper you get into it, the more it spurse the Yeah, [00:26:05] Paula: exactly. And so passion, therefore is often the consequence rather than the cause of going into a given field. [00:26:13] Joe: NBC Universal Vice, uh, chairwoman, when she was on her Memorial Day episode, Bonnie Hammer said something similar. [00:26:19] Joe: Paula, she was like, chase, opportunity, not passion. You chase passion. You often don’t even know you don’t have enough data to have the passion yet, but if you chase these opportunities, there’s at least enough interest there that you’re diving into the opportunity and then the passion comes. It’s so interesting. [00:26:35] Joe: We record these live on Monday. You can join us. Most Mondays at uh, three 30 Eastern Time and we’ve got a great discussion going on here In the chat. Jennifer says, maybe it’s actually presence that we’re looking for. Whatever I’m doing, work or home, I’m focused on what is in front of me or am I focused on what’s in front of me? [00:26:56] Joe: Looking at data, is OG suggesting to track helps you figure out the balance of energy. I wanna talk more about that in the second half of today’s show. And leisure enthusiast says, I think a huge problem is some of the nine to five companies. Drain your PTO. If you have a sick day or a dentist appointment, they shouldn’t be taking sick days from your vacation days. [00:27:14] Joe: We need a four day work week. I think OG would say we need a one day work week based on your given Fs right now. Uh, I’m gonna [00:27:21] OG: go about an hour and 20 minute work week today, so maybe tomorrow. We [00:27:25] Joe: we’re gonna pause there. In the second half of this discussion, I want to talk about, you know, work life integration and about a piece of this article talks about thinking like you’re an athlete and I want to ask about that because I think there might be some interesting things we can do to help our work-life balance or whatever it is, more after we have that discussion. [00:27:47] Joe: But at that way point, we dive into this year long trivia challenge we have between these three contributors. And right now, well, the score was getting close, but last week Don McDonald scored a big point for OG making the current score. OG 11, Jesse, eight and a half, and Paula five and a half. I will caution everyone. [00:28:11] Joe: We had an incident last week when Don was here, where in the live chat somebody decided to put the answer. So please, uh, if you’re here with us live hanging out. Don’t do that. Let’s let, let’s make sure this is a good time. Uh, we don’t have to change up the trivia question, but Doug, you’ve got the trivia today. [00:28:30] Joe: What are we talking about? [00:28:35] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and on today’s date in history was a headline grabbing event in 1995 that Joe followed closely. Shannon Faulkner became the first woman to walk through the gates to attend military college, the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, which had previously been an all boys school, but Joe went there, so it wasn’t really. [00:29:01] Doug: If you know anything about Joe’s history, he famously purchased a Nica sweater with his new American Express card, a sweater that he couldn’t wear because it was a military school and he was in Charleston, South Carolina, where you might have two or three days where you actually could wear a sweater like that. [00:29:18] Doug: Anyway, Nica has moved to most of their sales online in recent years. So here’s a question about the iconic brand that helped wreck Joe’s financial history way back in the eighties. What year was Nautica founded? Okay, I’ll be back right after I go turn on some Duran Duran or maybe stick a big comb in my back pocket. [00:29:41] Doug: Paula’s looking [00:29:42] Joe: excited. Woo. Like she’d prefer to go first this time. [00:29:45] Paula: Yikes. No, no, I’m well. I have no idea what the answer to this is. [00:29:50] Joe: You were just running, what a weird, uh, mix. Yeah, yeah. We start off with Citadel. We end up with what year was Nica founded? [00:29:57] Paula: When I thought it was a story about the Citadel and your spending story. [00:30:00] Paula: I was excited because I know that story really well. ’cause he told it all on the Afford Anything podcast. So I was like, oh, if this is a story about Joe’s Finances, this is a question about Joe’s finances. I’ve got this answer. [00:30:13] Joe: Well, sorry Paula. Sorry about that. Og, you’re going first. Nica, you own any Nica clothing? [00:30:18] Joe: Og? [00:30:19] OG: Uh, no. [00:30:20] Joe: No, but it is an iconic brand. And you’ve heard of Nica. Well, what year was it found in og? Hmm. Thank goodness. [00:30:33] OG: The wonderful brand Nica that everyone knows and probably has many, many clothes from. I think tying it to Tommy Hilfiger for some reason. Are they related in any way? Uh, I, I don’t know. [00:30:47] OG: Beyond the scope of the, the judges? No, I don’t know why. You have a similar logo, not a similar clothing, similar [00:30:56] Joe: style of clothing. Maybe that’s it. [00:30:59] OG: Maybe one was that JC Penny and one was at. Kind of bonkers. [00:31:03] Joe: Eighties preppy. I bought my nautical sweater at, uh, Nordstrom. Oh, [00:31:09] OG: okay. Well that tells me a little something. [00:31:11] OG: That’s a little, that’s a little highbrow. Nordstrom’s. A little highbrow. Because if [00:31:15] Joe: you’re gonna wreck your credit, by the way, when you’re a freshman in [00:31:18] OG: college, don’t do it at Kmart. Just [00:31:19] Joe: go, Hmm. What’s the most expensive store in the mall? Oh, I know. Duh. [00:31:24] OG: It’s so funny. Just as a complete side note, it’s so funny the, the lessons that we teach our kids and kind of, you know, how they grow up with money and that sort of thing. [00:31:33] OG: ’cause I did the exact same thing, by the way, Joe, like just terrible with money. No money talk in the house, no example to learn from. And so Alex is going to college and we’re talking about this and he has some money in a debit card. And I said, you need to have your own credit card. Dad’s credit card is for emergencies now, not for your daily spending anymore. [00:31:52] OG: And he’s like, I just won’t spend any money. Why would I want to have a credit card like that can just get you in trouble? And I’m like. Oh, who is this responsible young man? What happened to, how do I get a bigger limit? Where did you come from? From that thing up? Yeah, I know you did not. You are not your father’s son. [00:32:10] OG: Anyways, Nautica, so I’m gonna say it was a relatively new brand in the grand scheme of things. Not like Levi’s, you know, 19, 18 hundreds, I’m gonna say it, uh, came about after the turn of the war. Uh, all the fine fellas coming back from overseas went, Hey, those Parisians, those dudes know how to dress bra. [00:32:31] OG: So we need to kind of get with their vibe. So I’m gonna say, uh, somebody came up with this in um, uh, 1948. [00:32:39] Joe: 1948. Do you know the brand Nica, Jesse? [00:32:43] Jesse: I do. And I was gonna say, because I think it, and Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren and some other brands like that were on JC Penney’s shells. Not that I really went into there like that often, but. [00:32:55] Jesse: Growing up whenever I needed, like the nice clothes, you know, not the ERA pastel or the Abercrombie, whatever they were, JC Penney was one of my options. And yeah, Nica was there. And I’m actually kind of frustrated ’cause somewhere in OGs uh, 14 minute answer I was thinking to myself like, what were the approximate events before the founding of Nautica? [00:33:17] Jesse: And one of my thoughts was, oh, maybe it was the wealth generation and like the baby boomer generation and just the post World War ii. So I was thinking along the same lines, but I’ll go, I’ll, I’ll switch up ’cause I genuinely have no clue. And I’ll say that, uh, maybe it was the money that was, uh, and then the economic boom of like the twenties, like the flappers, like the Gatsby era. [00:33:41] Jesse: So I’ll just go right in the middle and say the Gilded Age. Is that the Gilded Age? Yeah, so I’ll say 1925. [00:33:46] Joe: 1925. Paula, we’ve got 1925 and 1948. Do you know Natica? [00:33:56] Paula: I can picture the label. I have a visual in my head of like the logo. I can’t think of an article of Natica clothing might look like, other than my general vibe is preppy. [00:34:08] Paula: Mm-hmm. Like, you’re the type of person who wears boat shoes, you know, basically, [00:34:13] OG: think Joe saw Sea High. Think me. And you’ve got Natica. There you go. Obviously. All [00:34:19] Paula: right. You bought Natica. Okay. Within the question it said that your financial mistake was in the eighties. That doesn’t sound right. [00:34:29] Joe: Why [00:34:30] Paula: wouldn’t the, wouldn’t you [00:34:30] Joe: think it was the 1940s? [00:34:32] Joe: What? What are you doing here, Todd? [00:34:34] Paula: No, it just, that just sounds like too long ago. [00:34:36] Joe: Math checks, [00:34:38] Paula: trust me. Hmm. Okay. Sadly, it was [00:34:41] Joe: 1986. [00:34:43] Paula: All right, so I’m gonna guess that Nica was established enough. But not so established that it was like the establishment. It had to be like that perfect sort of age of brand to appeal to the the young folk of 1986. [00:35:03] Joe: That’s how we refer to ourself too, as the young folk. We walk around the mall with all the other young folk. [00:35:10] Paula: All right, so I’m gonna take the over. I’m gonna say 1949. [00:35:13] Joe: 1949. All right. OGs got 48. Paula’s got 49. Jesse’s going back to 1925. Who’s gonna win this thing? We’ll find out in just a minute. All right, og, you kicked this off by saying 1948. [00:35:28] Joe: You still have the years between 48 and halfway to 1925. Feeling good. [00:35:32] Jesse: You’ve got all the Great Depression, [00:35:34] OG: og I do. Joe Clothing circa 1986 is really not my specialty of trivia. I like the fact that you guys have really tried to niche down to something that I have absolutely no concept of. So. Uh, I feel zero confidence [00:35:50] Joe: that warms my heart, that OG just has no idea about Natica. [00:35:55] Joe: Uh, Jesse, you’ve got 1925. [00:35:58] Jesse: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I feel okay. I, uh, but I, I just really like the fact that I’m, I’m pretty sure what happened was like, it’s 1935, uh, someone in the Dust Bowl is like struggling to put food on his table and he’s like, I’m gonna design shirts for preppy kids. Right? And so that’s how it got founded. [00:36:17] Jesse: And OGs gonna win [00:36:18] Joe: what goes good with trying to feed a family in the Dust Bowl. I know. Boat shoes. Boat shoes. Yeah, exactly. Paula, 1948 [00:36:26] Paula: and up. In 19 49, 49, 19 49 and up. Yeah. You know, I feel good. So if it was founded anytime in the 1950s or sixties, or even the seventies, I’ve got some good decades there. [00:36:38] Joe: All right, Doug, who’s gonna take home this week’s winning answer. [00:36:47] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m sweater, weather lover and guy who loves imagining Joe’s work in ROTC, class Joe’s. Bob’s neighbor, Doug. We were gonna ask you, how many hours did Joe last at the Citadel before receiving his first wedgie? But it turns out you can measure that in minutes, not hours. So instead, today we’re talking fashion because we thought it’d be fun to have some laughs at the way Joe wrecked his credit while attending the Citadel by paying for a Nica sweater with an American Express card. [00:37:16] Doug: A company, by the way, that Joe later represented in the media, don’t they do any research before sending people out to the microphones? Come on, people. So what year was this credit destroying fashion brand called Nautica founded? Well, the correct answer is 1983, making Paula miraculously our winner. Whoa. [00:37:40] Doug: What is going on here? [00:37:42] Paula: Amazing, incredible, incredible. I’m gonna have to buy an nautic sweater with my Amex. [00:37:48] Joe: I gotta tell you, Paula, when OG said, well, I think it’s a fairly recent brand, I’m like, oh, he’s not gonna do this again, is he? [00:37:55] OG: I think when you put it together that I didn’t think of Paula, which was what brand would the kids want and like how new does it have to be for kids to be interested in it? [00:38:06] OG: And I might’ve got a little closer if I would’ve thought through that. [00:38:09] Joe: And I think that’s why you put it with Tommy Hilfiger, because I haven’t looked this up, but I bet Tommy Hilfiger if we did look it up, if somebody wants to do that, uh, came out probably around the same time. [00:38:20] OG: Well, them Ralph Lauren? [00:38:21] OG: Yes. Yeah. Tom Ford, maybe like kind of all those. That vibe was around [00:38:26] Joe: the same time. When was Tommy Hilfiger brand founded? I’m being told it’s 1985. Oh, very similar time between Natika and Tommy. Interesting. And to your point, also Achi. Very similar. Look. Alright, let’s dive into the second half of our discussion on balance work life alignment. [00:38:46] Joe: Or maybe I like what Jennifer, who’s hanging out with us talked about, maybe it’s being present in what you’re doing. Let’s shift this kind of to work life integration, because this is a question we get often and I think people ask often. Paula, do you think blending work and life is more honest because you were talking about now that it’s kind of blurred, right? [00:39:08] Joe: The lines are blurred between when I’m home and when I’m at work. So is blending more honest or does that just blur boundaries until we burn out? Because work is following us home. It’s following us. On the weekends, there’s no lines anymore. [00:39:24] Paula: I think it’s just more honest to the way in which we live. [00:39:27] Paula: Because the reality is technology is such that we are reachable 24 hours a day. That was not the case back when we were in the era of landlines. Even then, people when fax machines first came about, people were like, oh, look at how much technology is advancing. And it’s only getting even more intense now. [00:39:47] Paula: You know, I get, once somebody buzzes on Slack, I get a notification on my wristwatch. I wanna make a note here that I’m specifically talking about knowledge workers. ’cause certainly if you drive a truck, it’s different, but even still there’s so much identity tied up in work. You know, you go to a a party and everyone’s first question is, so what do you do? [00:40:08] Paula: And then that often, because that’s the icebreaker, leads to just talking about work, even when you’re at the backyard barbecue, right? And so even if you’re not on your phone, even if you have your notification silenced. Even if you have the type of job that really respects boundaries, you’re still thinking about it. [00:40:27] Paula: Um, you’re still percolating on it. You’re still talking about it. So I think that we just need to accept that because that is the reality of modern work. [00:40:36] Joe: I don’t know. Do we have to accept it, Jesse? I mean, just hearing Paula talk about, I’m at the cookout, I’m not really paying attention ’cause my brain is on work, my wristwatch buses, and I’m looking at my wristwatch instead of talking to you. [00:40:49] Joe: Like, I feel like this work distracting us with everything just leads me to less balance. [00:40:55] Jesse: Yeah. I am bad at this, like, full disclosure, I’m bad at this, but on the infrequent occasion. Whether intentionally or just kind of accidentally, I’ve been able to ignore notifications for like a full day or even like half a day, right? [00:41:10] Jesse: Instead of having Outlook and Gmail constantly open in the background, I just shut them down and don’t look at them for four, six hours or the entire day, like I, or a whole day. Just see [00:41:20] OG: four whole hours you go without checking the email. [00:41:22] Jesse: I know. I know. Exactly. I mean, just the way I’m describing this ought to tell you something about where my baseline is at, right? [00:41:28] Jesse: But I have a solution for, for this buddy I found. I know. I know. And by all means, listeners right in, tell me what I’m doing wrong. I guess what I’m saying, what I’ve found is that my productivity gets way better because I’m not constantly distracted. And then do the people on the other end of the email notice the difference? [00:41:45] Jesse: I’m pretty sure they don’t. In other words, my communication to them is just as good. My ability to respond quickly is just as good because 99% of people out there, they don’t care if I respond to them in 15 minutes or in a day. For the most part. And so for that reason, I, I guess what I’m saying is I ought to be better at just shutting, like checking email once a day, responding to everything, and then not checking it again until the next day. [00:42:10] Jesse: But like Paula, and like, I think a lot of people out there, I fall into this trap of the phone is buzzing, my desktop is D, people are calling me Facebook, this, whatever it may be like notification, notification, notification. And then next thing you know, you’re kind of caught in the hamster wheel of always responding and then more notifications come in. [00:42:28] Paula: I do wanna make a note that when I mentioned Slack buzzes on my wristwatch, the reason I specifically talked about Slack is because I distinguished between internal communication with my team, which I am. Ultra highly responsive to versus email, which I check like once a decade. [00:42:47] Joe: And if people think she’s joking, she’s not. [00:42:50] Joe: Yeah, seriously. [00:42:51] Paula: Well, Jesse, you know, you sent me an email and like a month later I was like, oh, hey, just know this. Yes, look [00:42:57] Joe: at this. You [00:42:59] Jesse: emailed me in May, it was Paula, in six weeks, I’m gonna release this cool multi person podcast episode. I’d love for you to participate. And like three months later, she’s like, Hey, how did this turn out? [00:43:12] Jesse: How did it go? [00:43:16] Joe: You know? And for anybody that has a really hard time with distraction, I, I really like this book, the Power of Fun by Catherine Price. You can watch her TED Talk, which has had millions of views. It’s a fantastic book. Chapter three, I think is called Why You Feel Dead Inside. And it is this idea that we’re so distracted, Jesse, to your point, we’re so distracted and we’re getting that dopamine hit from our phone over and over and over and over and over, that when real dopamine stuff happens, we, we don’t feel it anymore because we’re so addicted to our phone. [00:43:50] Joe: And that distraction that. We’re not finding what she calls true fun. Yeah. In our life. [00:43:55] Jesse: Super scary. That like, that’s genuinely frightening. And uh, my wife right now is reading, uh, is it The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haight Height? Mm-hmm. Who’s like a NYU psychology professor. And it’s because we have a daughter. [00:44:09] Jesse: We have a kid, and we’re thinking about like, man, I, I think about it all the time. Like, my daughter is never gonna know a world, she already doesn’t know a world without smartphones and social media and, and like, what does that do to a person when they’re potentially exposed to these like, dopamine machines, right. [00:44:25] Jesse: At such an early age. But yeah, I know exactly what you’re referring to there, Joe. Maybe not through like personal experience because I don’t know about you guys. I, I don’t have a really good way of monitoring my dopamine levels. Uh, but just through hearing other, other people talk about that fact, my [00:44:40] Joe: dopamine is up. [00:44:41] Jesse: Exactly like we become so used to the dopamine hits that we get from notifications and, and this kind of social engineering that these big companies have done that we forget about the fact that it’s like, oh yeah, like a nice sunset with an ice cream cone is supposed to be this magical experience, but it doesn’t feel that magical because no one’s liking my photo on Facebook right now. [00:45:01] Jesse: And it’s like, okay, that’s, that’s a bit of a problem. Yeah. So anyway. Yeah, I don’t know what the answer is. I just know it’s a problem. Isn’t weird. We’re addicted [00:45:07] Joe: to the thumb up. Like it’s crazy. Just, just, you know, a stranger gives me a thumb up and I feel this warm fuzzy, who the hell cares versus Right. [00:45:15] Joe: And in chapter one of her book, Jesse Catherine talks about the fact that she had just had a baby. She’s sitting with her baby and they had just remodeled their kitchen. She grabs her phone while she’s, she’s holding onto her baby and she starts flipping through furniture, even though she’s already completely bought the furniture. [00:45:33] Joe: It, it was just a reflex now. And then she looks and her daughter’s staring at her and she goes, I’m looking at stuff I don’t care about that I’ve already bought. When this living human being is, is is not getting any attention from me. It’s just horrible. Uh, Shane hanging out with us says, that’s why I turn off my phone. [00:45:50] Joe: Notifications for social media. I check it only once a day. It drives my wife nuts. It’s funny. Well, oh gee, you and I talk about Strategic Coach. I mean, one of the first things that they talk about is what Jennifer’s talking about here, which is presence, about getting rid of the distractions. When you’re at home, be at home, and when you’re at work, be at work, [00:46:10] OG: it takes so much, um, energy’s not the right word here, but to belief that it’s not going to, you know, the world’s not gonna fall apart. [00:46:19] OG: Your world’s not gonna fall apart without your constant supervision and attention. On whatever it is that you’re doing. So, you know, to your point, Jesse, about email and that sort of thing, obviously Paul has mastered this. To my knowledge, Paul is pretty successful. Doesn’t check email still successful? [00:46:37] OG: It’s okay. You don’t have to, you just turn it, take it off your phone, buddy. Just take it off. Just take it off. We will sit here. We’ll wait. You can grab your phone. We can do it. [00:46:48] Joe: I felt like this went from a podcast episode to an intervention. [00:46:51] OG: Well said. He can only make it four hours out. Checking as email. [00:46:55] OG: It’s like, Jesse, there’s a reason [00:46:56] Joe: we invite you here today. [00:46:57] OG: Yeah. Yeah. Have a seat buddy. Take a seat. Jesse. You know we all love you very much, right? We all care about you. We, we love you so [00:47:03] Jesse: much. Yeah. [00:47:04] OG: Just wanna see you. Happy Uhhuh. [00:47:06] Jesse: Will you text that to me instead? Yes. Email that to me. That’s a joke. [00:47:09] Joe: Speaking of, because then you get the dopamine hit from quitting. [00:47:13] Jesse: Yes, [00:47:14] Joe: exactly. [00:47:14] Jesse: Exactly. [00:47:16] Joe: Speaking of good books, another book that I love is, uh, Jim Lair and Tony Schwartz wrote a book a number of years ago called The of Full Engagement, and they talk about treating yourself like a tennis player, where there are days that you need to show up and there are days that you don’t need to show up. [00:47:34] Joe: And we talked earlier, Paul, about sprints. You know, and this kind of gets back to the sprint idea. Tennis players play in tournaments all year long, and yet they really are only. A hundred percent engaged on four or five, you know, that they really want to, the majors, they gotta be there for the majors. [00:47:51] Joe: Golfers are kind of the same way. Like I feel like Paula, maybe if we looked at ourself more like we’re an athlete in our life. Mm-hmm. And we’re like, I’ve got these times when I need to show up and I got these other times that I’m in quote training for those times. Mm-hmm. Maybe that would work better. [00:48:06] Paula: Yeah. Yeah. I mean that goes back to, yeah, exactly as you said, the interval training, the sprint rest, sprint rest athletes have, they have their off season and they have their on season. Heck, even in the middle of the game they have a halftime. Yeah, right. No one says halftime is for the lazy players. Right. [00:48:26] Paula: You’re so lazy. Gotta take a break halfway through. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Mr. Pro football player. [00:48:31] Joe: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Og do you think it worked that way in terms of on season, off season? [00:48:37] OG: Uh, yeah. Everything I think of in that way. Yeah, whether it’s training for athletic stuff, whether it’s eating and how that fuel can cycle both on a daily basis, but then kind of over time and then certainly for work, right? [00:48:53] OG: Like there’s periods of time where we’ve uh, intentionally been a little lighter in review meetings and that sort of thing. Here it is a great example. Our team takes, from the time that we start asking for stuff to have a review meeting until a review meeting is maybe about a month. Sometimes that’s because it takes a while for people to go, oh yeah, I need to send this in. [00:49:15] OG: But sometimes it’s just ’cause that’s the pace in which we go. And so we intentionally don’t have meetings in January, review meetings in January, because that would mean our behind the scenes team would be fully working in December, in the last couple weeks of December, getting ready for those meetings. [00:49:32] OG: That would happen in the second week of January. And that just seems to me to be fairly. Unfair. Everybody else like, ah, it’s the end of the year. You know, let’s kind of be, and it’s like the prep team is like going, oh, that’s not the end of the year for us. We got, we’re up to our eyeballs and work. And so we intentionally say, well no, we’re not gonna have meetings in January or, you know, scheduled meetings in January, because then that gives everybody the same, you know, the same treatment in terms of time off. [00:49:58] Joe: But then in March you’re cranking in March, you’re, yeah, it’s, but that’s the trade off. [00:50:02] OG: And you have to remember that. I think if you’re gonna have periods of cycles like this, whether it’s work or exercise or whatever, there’s a time where you have the cut phase, you know, where you’re like getting skinny for your, you know, summer bod. [00:50:15] OG: And then there’s the period of time where you’re bulking up and the scale is gonna move. And you can’t just look at it on a daily basis and go like, oh my gosh, the scale’s going up. Well, yeah, it’s, ’cause that’s, that’s the season you’re in, that’s the time that you’re in. But when it’s time to do the other stuff, it’s time to do the other stuff. [00:50:30] OG: You can’t always be in let’s eat cupcake stage of your life and you can’t always be in, well, it’s always January, so we don’t have work to do. That’s the trade. The trade is if we’re gonna have periods of time where it’s a lot less busy, then we have to be okay with periods of time where it’s a little bit busier. [00:50:47] Joe: Jesse, as a business athlete yourself, I like the idea that Paula talked about of even halftime in a football game. Like, you know, even for overachievers, right? Like NFL football players, it’s a time when an overachiever goes, you know what? I gotta relax for a few minutes before I hit it hard again. How do you experience that halftime? [00:51:04] Joe: Like how do you schedule that out? We heard OG the way that he does it, you know, by setting up his calendar, how do you do it? [00:51:12] Jesse: Uh, still working on it. I think that’s may be my first answer. Still working on it a little bit. My weekdays in the office maybe I, I kind of partition my brain a lot of times that when I’m sitting at this desk, this very desk I’m sitting at right now, I’m very much in work mode. [00:51:29] Jesse: And that is both the content work and also the client work. Whereas when I’m home, I try really hard, especially when my family is awake. I try really hard to not be in work mode. To be present. To be present. Exactly. I’m not always perfect at it, but did you guys ever hear that one? Uh, thing I remember people would say it in college. [00:51:49] Jesse: I never subscribed to it until much later in life. They said If you take a test in like sweatpants and a hoodie. Versus if you kind of wear some nicer pants, you tuck your shirt in, you, you know, you dress up a little bit, that your brain will kind of be in a bit more of a, uh, professional mood to take your test and you’ll actually perform better. [00:52:07] Jesse: There’ve been [00:52:07] Joe: studies done on this. I mean, it’s a fact. It’s a fact. Exactly, [00:52:10] Jesse: exactly. Uhhuh. So I didn’t do that in college. I just wore whatever the hell I wanted, but now I kind of feel it. And part of that I think, extends beyond just what you’re wearing to where you are. Right. It’s part of your environment. [00:52:21] Jesse: So when I’m here at the office, I’m very much in work mode, and when I am at home, I, I try to detach as best I can. So that’s probably the best way that personally, like that’s where my halftime is. It’s once I’m at home, until I’m back in the office the next day, or it’s the weekends. And even now, if I, if I need to work on a weekend, I try hard not to just break out my laptop. [00:52:41] Jesse: At home for four hours in work. I’d rather drive into the office and actually physically move myself to the workplace in order to get things done. [00:52:49] Joe: It’s funny how for all of us, it’s a work in progress. We were talking about the phone earlier. I used to make a big deal going to a restaurant with people and I take the phone, I put it face down and I put it in the middle of the table. [00:52:59] Joe: And then I remember hearing Simon Sinek go, when you put your phone down in the middle of the table, you’re telling everybody that this is super important to me and I’m gonna take a short break where this thing that’s way more important than you because I set it right out in the middle of the table. [00:53:12] Joe: I’m gonna take a break from that. He’s like, if it truly is important, you just put it in your pocket, which now I’m trying to do. So I think like you, uh, it’s a work in progress for all of us. Well, hopefully we helped a few of our stackers with some work-life balance. Is it work-life balance, work-life alignment, presence. [00:53:28] Joe: I think those are all worthy topics to end this week, where on Wednesday we talked about really entrepreneurship and building America and um. Working hard. Speaking of hard work, the hard work you guys do wherever you’re at, og, what are you gonna work on this, uh, mid August weekend? [00:53:44] OG: I am working on my athletic work, so lots of fun, outdoor athletic stuff. [00:53:51] OG: Every weekend for the foreseeable future. Busy, busy, busy. [00:53:55] Joe: I’m laughing at some of the comments. Oh geez. As you’re talking, Dan, Dan likes to bulk up with Christmas cookies, so that’s part of his, [00:54:01] OG: see that’s, that’s the seasonality part [00:54:03] Joe: of his work. And Shane is asking if that’s why Doug is unprofessional. [00:54:07] Joe: ’cause he comes to the podcast with no pants. He, he would do better. He would do much better. Doug, you’d do much better if you would wear pants. Paula Paul, speaking of pants, Paula pants. What? What’s going on at the Afford Anything Podcast? [00:54:22] Paula: On the Afford Anything Podcast? We, uh, have an interview with Lori Rosen Cough. [00:54:26] Paula: She’s a, uh, professor of management at Wharton Business School and the head of Never heard of it. Venture. Yeah. This, this little place in Pennsylvania. She’s also the director of Venture Labs and she talks about the seven different types of entrepreneurs. So oftentimes we have this media image of the entrepreneur as the disruptor. [00:54:44] Paula: You know, somebody who comes in and creates. The next Airbnb or the next Uber and totally disrupts an industry. And they’re, you know, seated by all kinds of venture capital and create this unicorn. She talks about how that is one of seven types. Sure. But there are all of these other varieties of entrepreneurs. [00:55:02] Paula: There are some people who are funders, there are some people who are social entrepreneurs. There are some who are bootstrappers. And so we go through the seven archetypes of entrepreneurship. [00:55:12] Joe: When you said funders, I thought you were saying thunders with a lisp. And I was like, who’s a thunder? [00:55:20] Paula: You know, like the Thundercat, [00:55:22] Joe: the Thundercat. [00:55:24] Joe: You gotta be a person of a certain age to be a Thundercats fan. Uh, and that’s an afford anything where that’s [00:55:30] Paula: on the Afford Anything podcast [00:55:32] Joe: or the finest podcast. [00:55:33] Paula: Yes. Wherever you enjoy downloading podcasts. We’re there [00:55:37] Joe: Jesse. When people enjoy downloading your podcast, what will they hear? This fine week. [00:55:43] Jesse: Uh, this fine week, they’re going to hear, uh, ask me anything. Episode number eight, which just came out a few days ago. Uh, or depending if they get the Stacking Benjamins a little bit after the Friday episode comes out, they might hear an episode with Kelly Klein about, uh, he, he’s a cool entrepreneur who I’ve gotten to interact with here in Rochester. [00:56:02] Jesse: And we talk a little bit about some of the interesting lessons that he learned from quitting his full-time job and diving headfirst into, uh, running his own now very successful business. Wow. Cool. What type of business? It’s actually funny, it’s content creation. Have you heard of the Savvy Couple? Have you heard of that brand couple? [00:56:19] Jesse: Yeah, [00:56:19] Joe: sure. [00:56:20] Jesse: Yeah, so that’s Kellen and his wife Brittany, who live just west of Rochester, out in the burbs. And he and I discovered one another, some at one point and started chatting and it’s, it’s a really cool business and he’s really done a lot of, uh, he, he just, they’ve been really successful with it, so. [00:56:35] Jesse: It’s got some interesting lessons to share with all of us. [00:56:38] Joe: I love it when you can get together with people offline who all work online together. I just met two gentlemen in Texarkana who have a million followers. They’re storm chasers, they’re YouTube storm chasers, and we’ve got a guy who does photography on YouTube with about, uh, 200,000 followers. [00:56:55] Joe: Of course, uh, Devon Carroll social security expert is here and I’m like, we gotta start doing our Texarkana meetup group. Maybe would be. Yeah. Super fun. That’s really cool. So [00:57:04] Paula: this is where the thunder entrepreneurship comes from. The storm chasers. This is, this [00:57:07] Joe: is the, that, that’s the thunder. Yeah, the thunder, uh, that’s gonna do it for today. [00:57:13] Joe: That is the thunder and the lightning and everything else. Uh, thank you everybody for hanging out with us. If you wanna watch this being made, hang out with us on Monday afternoons. That is at, uh, three 30 Eastern time. Generally, we start within about 50 minutes of that time. So come say hi and, uh, hang out, like all the people hanging out with us today. [00:57:32] Joe: Thanks for being a part of the show. And if you know somebody that should hear this show, they maybe have some problems with their cell phone, with distractions, or just they feel burnout. Man, this is a great discussion that we had today. So please forward it to those people, but at the end of every episode, we hand it over to you again, Doug. [00:57:50] Joe: Doug, what should be on our to-do list today? [00:57:53] Doug: Well, Joe, here’s what’s stacked up on our to-do list today. First, listen very closely when Paula says [00:57:59] Paula: something like this, remember, if you’re ever playing football, halftime is not just for the lazy players, [00:58:06] Joe: it’s for the overachievers. [00:58:08] Paula: Yeah, exactly. [00:58:10] Doug: Second, I’d pay a lot of attention when Jesse talks. [00:58:15] Jesse: There are many ways to get work life balance, right, and maybe you can take a page from OGs book and vacation yourself first. [00:58:22] Doug: But the big lesson, you should all be sad. Joe got better with money because now when we go to the Sizzler, instead of him buying, like in the old days, he’s happy to let me pay not cool, man. [00:58:34] Doug: Why can’t we focus on helping my credit? Thanks to the Jesse Kramer for joining us today. You’ll find his hit podcast, personal Finance for long-term investors, better known as the Ply Podcast wherever you are listening to us now. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. [00:58:56] Doug: Thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us today. You’ll find her fabulous podcast, afford anything wherever you listen to finer podcasts. And finally, thanks also to OG for joining us. Looking for good financial planning. Help head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash OG for his calendar. This show is the property of SP podcasts, LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. [00:59:23] Doug: Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah. And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. [00:59:45] Doug: This show is for entertainment purposes only before making any financial decisions. Speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
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