Uppercase Life

Life is full of cycles. We can see them all around us. We can look outside. We see the seasons changing. Unless you're in California, of course, we can see plants growing, blooming, dying and growing again. And we talk about things like the circle of life, because we know that life is full of cycles and you also are full of cycles.
In fact, there's one in particular I want to talk to you about called the circadian rhythm. And you may have heard this term, it's been around for a very long time. Circadian as a concept has been around at least since the fourth century B.C. and people use it to talk about the circles of events in a day. It comes from the root "circa Diem", which means around a day, and it refers to like a daily cycle of your body.
A lot of times you'll hear people talking about circadian rhythms in relation to sleep and wake cycles, and that is part of what circadian rhythms are. But I think it's really important for us to know and be aware of how our body operates in a normal day and how that operation, whether it's going well or maybe not so well, is going to impact the other activities that we do throughout the day, because if our bodies aren't functioning well, that's going to affect a whole host of other things.
And one of the first big steps is just to recognize and acknowledge that we do have a daily cycle and not every person has the same daily cycle. But there is some similarities for pretty much every human on the planet when it comes to the circadian rhythm. Often we are not aware of that rhythm and we don't think of it very much until it's disrupted.
Say, for example, you travel overseas. It's very likely that your sense of meal time and your sense of sleep time is going to be thrown off by the different time zones and probably by the long trip getting there. And you're going to start noticing the effects of that in your body. We talk about jetlag, and part of that has to do with your circadian rhythm.
Your circadian rhythm also influences your melatonin, which is how you get ready for sleep. It affects your hormones, your digestive system and other body activities that are linked to that rhythm. And being mindful of this is really important. If you want to be alert and energetic and engaged in your daily life. And I'm just going to go out on a limb and assume that you probably do want these things.
But if you want the benefits of having a healthy circadian rhythm, you need to be aware of what might be causing you problems in that rhythm. Because if things aren't going well, you're going to feel off. And sometimes you don't even know how to articulate that. But it's true. You are just out of sync, out of rhythm, if you will.
So here are a few factors to consider when it comes to maintaining a healthy circadian rhythm. One of the more undervalue food aspects of a good rhythm is light and the primary source of light in all the rhythms of life, not just for us, but also for the animals and the trees is obviously the sun. Sunshine is a really important factor in your circadian rhythm.
And a lot of times we work jobs that keep us out of the sunshine to a certain extent. So it's really important to expose yourself to some sunshine throughout your days. This really helps your body know when to produce certain chemicals, and the sunlight enlivens you, tells your body it's time to be awake and move. If your environment is too dark during certain parts of the day, your brain really is thinking about sleep and rest, and it's not being conditioned to feel like it should be active or awake.
So it is important to get a good amount of sunshine, not just light from a screen. However, light from a screen is also a light source and it needs to be taken into consideration. And if you are taking in light from electronics, particularly mobile devices that you have around you near times when you should be resting and going to sleep, this is also going to disrupt your circadian rhythm.
So it's best to be using your devices and your screens during an active time of the day. If you're trying to wind down and go to sleep, you should not be on your phone. You may think of it as a method for unwinding at the end of the day, but it is a light source that's very close to your face and it can cause your brain to think that it should still be awake.
So while you may be thinking that you're doing it to help you fall asleep, you may inadvertently be creating some very poor quality sleep patterns in your circadian rhythm. Another thing to consider is physical motion. Being active produces physical fatigue, which is really important to getting sound sleep and that sleep wake cycle is a big part of the circadian rhythm.
So if you're not tired by the time you should be going to sleep and be tired. I mean full body physically tired, then you probably won't sleep very well. Being mentally exhausted can be a type of tired, but sometimes that actually keeps us awake more than it helps us sleep. So it's really important to be getting some physical motion in your day, whether that's running in the morning, going to the gym, playing a sport, or even just doing some basic stretching and free body weights at home is a great way to get your heart rate up and to get your body moving something else.
And you're going to hate me for this. I know, but I have to bring it up because it's very important is caffeine. Caffeine is a huge factor in your circadian rhythm and a lot of people simply take it whenever they want it or feel like they need it without thinking of how it's actually impacting their sleep wake cycle.
So caffeine is something that a lot of times experts will recommend that you avoid, particularly during the later times of the day. Research has shown it's not just if you're going to drink a coffee or some caffeinated beverage before bed. It's actually any time after noon. When you are taking in a lot of caffeine, you are risking your ability to sleep better later on.
And I know that's difficult and I know sometimes we feel like I can't get through my work day without that caffeine, but actually that dependance on the caffeine may be causing you problems in your circadian rhythm. So be careful with that and don't be sending the wrong signals to your brain through caffeine. And lastly, one of the most important factors of the circadian rhythm is consistency.
And depending on your lifestyle, that might be really difficult for you to achieve. But just like the name implies circadian rhythm, it's a rhythm. So if you are not sleeping and waking with some regularity, your rhythm is going to sound wrong. Your body is a beautiful machine and it can do marvelous things, but if you're not caring for it properly, it's not going to be able to function well.
So when your circadian rhythm is suffering, your concentration in your awareness, your energy levels and even your overall happiness is going to suffer as well. And conversely, when you have developed a really good circadian rhythm, you're going to find that you can concentrate better, you're more aware, you retain more information, you have more energy to do the things you want to do, and you just feel better.
Overall, as a person, I don't know about you, but I'm trying to do some difficult things in life and I want to accomplish some hard goals. And if I'm going to do that, I'm going to have to make sure I'm taking care of the body that's going to help me accomplish them. And you can't ask your body to do hard work and accomplish big things if you're not giving it proper sleep and proper activity.
So what are some things that have worked well for you in building a healthy circadian rhythm? I'd love to hear your feedback, your thoughts and your experiences, and you can email me at [email protected]. Until next time, live like it matters in.

You're listening to The Uppercase Life where we make technology work for us. And I'm your host, Joseph Brewster. Like you, I have numerous apps on my smartphone, and they're pretty cool. I mean, there's so many apps in the world to do so many cool things from order food online to buying your movie tickets in advance to translating languages.
But there are a few apps that have the distinction of residing on the home page of my phone, and for a reason I try to keep distracting apps on a second page or buried somewhere in a folder so I don't see them when I first unlock my phone. But I try to keep important apps where I can see them easily to encourage myself to use those apps more often.
So here are some of the apps that I have on my front page. First of all, I have calendars five. Now I use Google calendars and I actually have quite a lot of calendars and they all sync together. But I purchased Calendars five, which is an app by Riedel many years ago, and I've been using it religiously for probably close to a decade at this point.
The reason I use it instead of the default Google Calendars app is because it allows me to just tap and expand or shrink the length of any item on my calendar. And also it allows me to do some little things like to duplicate, to copy stuff that right now isn't in the Google Calendar app, which they probably will put in a future feature.
But I just really have liked Calendars five, and that is the calendar app I have on my homepage right now. I also have my Reminders app and I just use the Default Apple Reminders app and honestly, I almost never tap on the app itself. I almost exclusively use it with Siri, so I use reminders to send myself a message later when I will be at my desk or when I will be near the thing I want to accomplish.
Sometimes I think of things while I'm out and I'm on the go and I don't want to forget them, but I don't have the opportunity to put them directly into my calendar. Maybe I'm driving or otherwise occupied, so I will use my Siri voice command to give myself a reminder for later when I know that I should be around my desk or wherever so that I can address the issue then.
Along with that, I also have a budgeting app on my home page, and I am not someone who's naturally gifted with numbers or with money. And it's one of the reasons why it's even more important for me to be tracking my expenses. So my wife and I share a budget app so that we can put in our expenses whenever we eat out or buy something.
And this is really helpful for me because it brings my finances in front of me more than if I were just using a card or using Apple Pay and not seeing what I was spending every day. So when I have to manually track each transaction, it really helps me be mindful of the way I'm using my resources. And because I don't really like budgeting and money, I put the app right on my home page so that I have a habit of tapping on it more often and just making sure I'm using it.
I also have Sleep Cycle, which is an alarm app that helps wake you up gradually and I have loved and used this for a long time. I can't remember the last time I just used one of these loud annoying alarms. Sleep cycle is really helpful for me because it tracks my sleep during the night. It can record if I was making noises, like if I wasn't breathing very well, or even if I woke up with a nightmare and was making noises.
And it wakes you up gradually over a period of time that you determine based on your movements in bed. So I really love that app. I've been using it for a long time and highly recommend it. I also have notes, just the default Apple notes. Now I used to use Evernote and I've used an app called Note Master.
I've used a lot of Notes App over the years. I still have an ever note account and I have thousands of notes in my Evernote account, but I've started just using the default Apple Notes because it syncs easier across all my Apple devices and it doesn't cost any extra money. So I have a lot of folders inside of my notes to keep things like this episode.
For example, I type out everything I'm going to do on my podcast inside of my Notes app, which is really useful. I also put meeting notes, agendas, reminders, lists of goals and various other things, but I use my notes all the time, and right next to that is the Books app. I love using books, e-books. I like real books with covers and and paper pages as well.
But, you know, sometimes I can't take them with me. So I like to have an e-book that I can read. So I have my books out there so that I can just pop open a book if I'm going to sit somewhere for an extended period of time. And I'd love to be able to read. It's very relaxing for me, and it can be educational depending on what I choose to read that day.
I also have a translator app. I actually have three translator apps right now is because I'm learning a language currently, and I'm constantly curious about how you say different things in this language that I'm learning. So I keep my translator app right on the front page because there's still so many words I need to learn, and I'm constantly curious to try to figure out how this is said in another language.
And then I also have a Way of Life app, which is a habit tracking app, and I use this to just track daily habits. Now caveat here, I don't always track same day. Sometimes I'll let a few days go by and then I will catch up on the tracking of my habits. So it's not like a hardcore religious thing for me, but tracking habits is something I have been doing now for over a decade and I really find it useful for me to be conscious and aware of a few important things.
Now you can track, obviously whatever you want, and maybe I'll go into further detail in a future episode about how I use a habit tracker. But just suffice to say that I have been regularly using a habit tracker for at least a decade and I find it useful and important to. I want to make sure I'm being mindful of the way that I'm spending my days, of how I'm feeling, of what I'm putting in my body.
And the Habit Tracker allows me to do that. So what is it you have on your home page? What is the app that you use the most or the collection of apps that you use the most? I'd love to hear what it is you spend your time doing on your phone and any other comments, questions, criticisms, or random conversation you want to have with me.
You're welcome to email me at [email protected]. And until next time live like it matters.

You're listening to the Uppercase Life, and I'm your host, Joseph Brewster. Life is hard. You need money. The cost of everything is up. Jobs are harder to find. And sometimes it feels like we have a lot of reasons to complain and feel discontent. There's political division. There's cultural problems. There's financial problems. There's probably difficulties within your own home.
Among family members. Among friends, it sometimes feels like we need more than we actually have. And there's some great tragedy lurking around the corner to sabotages when we least expect it. But these feelings can have negative impacts on our brain. And while obviously there are a lot of things in the world that we wish were different, there's probably also a lot of things that you have to be grateful for, things that you are not giving thought to, because you feel so overwhelmed by the needs that you have or the challenges that seem to be presented in front of you.
But I'm here to tell you that gratitude is really essential to a meaningful life, and it comes with a whole host of really positive health benefits as well. But we have to cultivate an attitude and a practice of being grateful in order to get this positive result from it. UC Berkeley released some information a couple of years back that I remember reading about how gratitude changes you and your brain.
And I remember really being struck by some of the facts that they discovered when they were studying this. Gratitude has an ability to temper your toxic emotions. And we've probably heard things like for every negative thing you say, you've got to say so many positive things to offset it in order to change the mood. But it really is true that the more negative language we use on a daily basis, it really strongly affects our mental health so that when we choose to employ gratitude in our language and we use words that aren't all about us in our problems, but are more about what we're grateful for, it actually can help temper some of the struggles
that we deal with when it comes to mental health and also gratitude helps both. When you have it yourself and when you share it with others. So in other words, I could have a good relationship with you and I could feel grateful toward you for that. Gratitude actually benefits me, even if I don't share it with you. So even if I just think in my mind about how grateful I am for my relationship with you, I am still going to reap the benefits of gratitude.
And of course, even more so if I choose to share it with you. That gratitude can be more helpful between two people. But even if you're telling no one, in fact, I've had a practice for years of waking up in the morning and starting my morning with a five minute gratitude practice. And all I do really is in most of the time I just start while I'm laying in bed.
I just run through in my mind and start giving thanks for whatever it is that I see. First, when I wake up in the morning or the thoughts that cross my mind about what I'm going to do that day, I just think to myself how grateful I am to have these opportunities, and I just speak it out into my own head like, thank you for my wife, thank you for my family, thank you for the job that I've got.
Thank you for the work that I'm going to be able to do today, which is super cool. And, you know, thank you for the roof over my head and that you have a hot shower that's waiting on me and you know, these things. I don't have everything I want in life, but I have plenty to be grateful for.
And that's helpful. Even if no one else hears you being grateful. But it is true that gratitude is a practice that's going to take some time. It is a practice. So you might find it a natural right now. You might find yourself in a season of life where you only see the negatives and trying to be grateful feels disingenuous.
But if you, despite your circumstance, is can cultivate an attitude of this gratefulness and you can start practicing it on a regular basis, you can start seeing a difference in your state of mind, in your perspective, and eventually in your overall health over time. But you're going to have to institute it as a practice. You can't just start today and expect a magic fix.
However, just like working out at the gym over time, this is going to accumulate into something that really benefits your life. And did you know that gratitude actually improves your brain in certain ways? Being grateful actually activates a part of your brain that's linked to learning and decision making so that you might actually learn better and make better decisions every day.
If you're in a mindset of being grateful, whereas you're probably aware of this, but things like anger, fear, guilt, these things do the opposite, right? They inhibit our ability to make good decisions and to learn or even to enjoy the tasks that we're doing. So I think it is critical to your day, even though it might sound really insignificant, to be grateful, be grateful for the people in your life.
Be grateful for the opportunities you have, even if they haven't been realized yet. Be grateful that you woke up this morning, which might be one of the only things you can think of to be grateful for. But that is a gift some people didn't get today. There are so many things to be grateful for and there are so many benefits to being grateful that if you can cultivate the discipline of gratitude in your life and really engage in it, the benefits may surprise you.
Thanks for joining us on the show today. What are some ways that you cultivate gratitude in your life? I'd love to hear your feedback, your thoughts, your comments, and you can email me at [email protected]. And if you enjoy this episode, consider sharing it with a friend who might also need to know that gratitude is important to their daily life.
Or even if you're feeling extremely generous and grateful, go over and give me a review in the podcast app that just helps this show become more visible and it allows more people just like you to experience this content as well. And until next time, live like it matters.

In 1929, things are a little different than they are now in the working world. Sunday's We're a day off and most establishments were closed on Sundays. Most restaurants, gas stations, people on the whole just didn't expect to be working on a Sunday.

But in a very controversial and now legendary move, Joseph Stalin in what was then the Soviet Union, decided that Sunday was a wasted day. He was scheming ways to supercharge the productivity of his population and to eliminate what he considered to be like the pointless recreational time that Sunday brought about. Machines were sitting idle on Sundays and people were working.

People were going to church. They were worshiping, which was something that he saw no value in. And so in 1929, Joseph Stalin canceled Sundays. For real? You should look this up. It's a very interesting story that I won't have time to go into today. But Joseph Stalin effectively got rid of weekends. And for 11 years, the Soviet Union wrestled with a schedule that forced people into a sort of always on workweek, dividing up time off so that a lot of times husbands and wives didn't get the same days off and families didn't get to hang out together when they did have time off.

And the impact of the changes as a result of Stalin's new laws is now legendary. We need time off. And if we didn't know it before, we certainly realized it. After their experiment, people started feeling unmotivated. Machines started breaking down because they were always going 24 seven. People were discouraged that they didn't have time off. That coincided with their friends and with their families, so they didn't really get quality social time on the days when they were off.

And overall, things just didn't go well. They ended up changing up the system multiple times over the course of those 11 years and then eventually completely abolished the system that Joseph Stalin set up. We need time off. It's just a fact. And in America, we are nothing like Communist Soviet Union, right? I mean, we get time off. Everybody who works for somebody probably has a certain amount of days off or vacation days a year.

And when Americans were polled, that was actually one of the things that they cared most about when they were looking for a new job. They wanted to know what were the paid time off options. Were they going to be able to go on vacation? Were they going to get regular days away from the office? We say we care about these things and yet pulls from the last couple of years show that we don't do so well at actually following through on those.

In fact, in 2019, there was a poll done that showed that 768 million days of paid time off in America went unused. That means there were 768 million opportunities for someone to take a day off and they just didn't do it. In fact, polls show that Americans really struggle with unplugging when they take time off so that sometimes when they take time off, they're actually sneaking work in while they're on vacation.

There's even a trend that's been going around that's been documented on social media and in research that shows that it's not uncommon for people to actually lie when they take time off about where they're going or what they're doing. This is really interesting. People have a tendency to lie and say they're going somewhere where their connection isn't great or their phone isn't working because they're concerned and that when they take time off, they're going to get pulled back into work on accident, or maybe that they won't even have the willpower to stay away from their device.

And when we look at what Stalin did in the Soviet Union and think how awful that is, do we realize that even though the government imposed it on those people, we in our culture are sometimes self inducing a crazy level of always on torture because we don't know how to rest. So I'm asking myself, why is that? Now there is a lot of good research done on this and there are a lot of potential answers.

And I'm about to give you what I think are some of the most interesting, but definitely not the only reasons that we have these issues in America. But I see these as definite problems, so hear me out. I think we have been duped by the hustle culture. We have been duped into this way of thinking that says it's super cool to be always on your grind.

24 seven Nothing but the money. And that's what we care about. In fact, that's driven home to us in media, both in music and in movies that we have this respect for people who just never stop and never quit. And we think to ourselves that in order for us to achieve our dreams and to, you know, make the money that we want to make or be able to get the education we want, we just can't stop.

We've got to go 24 seven. And the truth is, we can't always be on the grind. The truth is, the research just shows that our bodies don't function like that. And if the Soviet Union weren't a good enough reason, we see it in our own culture that the more we stress, the more we work and refuse to take time off, the worse we actually do it our jobs.

The truth is that time off allows our time on to be more focused and to be more productive. So if you really do want your hustle to be top of its game, you're going to have to let your rest and your relaxation also be on the top of its game. Here's something else I notice about our culture. We see non-work time as wasted time.

In fact, we term it. Things like free time and I think free insinuates that there's not a high value on the time, but actually there is. And the truth is that playing that exploration, that those faith traditions and those casual social interactions really have huge health benefits that are part of a fulfilling life. Not to mention, they help you be a better worker, employee, leader, manager, whatever it is that you do when you're in your vocational status.

But, you know, it's not just about being good at work. It's just about being a good human being. And that's not wasted time. That's vital. You need that time. So don't see your time off as wasted time. And maybe it depends on how you're using it. So make sure that you are looking at that time as valuable and giving some intentionality to those days off.

Here's another thing that I think hurts our willingness to take rest, and that is that we don't want to go home. I mean, sometimes let's be honest. Home is where more problems are. Problems that no boss and no team is helping us fix. So it's easier to stay at work to avoid our personal stress, to avoid people, to avoid our mental health problems.

And the truth is that we often categorize our family, our friends, our personal life, our health as top priority over work. That's just across the boards. When people take surveys, that's what they say. All these things come first and then work. But if that's true, our passionate investment should start there, and then it's going to spill over into our workday.

We've got to start at home. And if you're working a lot because working is easier than fixing what's going on at home, I'm telling you that it's going to come back and bite you. You need to spend some quality time in your off days making sure that the life you're creating for yourself is amazing and that if that job changes or goes away entirely, your only reason for living didn't just vanish.

Here's another thing we struggle with. We are afraid of being expendable. So we think that if we don't show up, maybe things will go well in our absence, and then they'll realize they don't really need us there and we'll get fired. But, you know, that's a really selfish way of looking at the work that we do. The truth is, a good leader.

They can leave. They can go on vacation. If everything falls apart when you're gone, then you're not doing something right at your job. You nee...

A couple of years back, I was invited to come and speak to a group of business women. Most of them were business owners. We're CEOs or we're launching startups at the time. And I can't remember exactly what it was that I talked about, but I know that it was about time management and scheduling and about how that, regardless of how busy you were, that you could accomplish your goals.
And I felt like I had been very encouraging. But after the talk, a lady came up to me and said, I really appreciate what you said here, but I am struggling to execute on this every day. And it's not because I don't have the information. I know how to set up tasks. I know how to schedule things. I'm just not getting those tasks done, and I'm not really sure why.
And at the time, we were standing in front of a dry erase board. So just on the fly, I picked up a dry erase marker and I asked her, What is it that you have to do every day? And she laughed and started explaining that as a startup she was doing quite a few different tasks every day. And so it was hard to determine what role she was going to play from one day to the next.
So I asked her name off for me the roles in a typical company from the top to the bottom. Any role, just throw them out. And by this time, a few more people were coming up and standing around and we had a little group there and people started throwing out the different roles that you would expect in a company.
Everything from CEO, just CEO to CFO to lower down the ladder. People like contractors, secretaries and janitors. And I remember pointing at this list of titles that they had thrown out there and asking a lot of these business women, what roles do you play currently where your business is at? And like you might expect from a lot of start ups and small business owners, they were playing multiple roles on that list.
Sometimes a lot of the roles on that list. And I remember recognizing something that day as I looked at this list of job descriptions on the board and as I talked to this group of highly ambitious entrepreneurs and small business owners, a realization that had never really hit me before, and I had been functioning as though I knew it, but I had never been able to articulate it.
But when I explained it to you, you're going to say, of course it's obvious. And yet I don't think that we always function as if we comprehend this. So allow me to demonstrate. Imagine a company in which you have a CEO. The CEO is on the top floor in the corner office, and she is calling all the shots for the company.
She has the big vision. She takes the responsibility of the overall direction of the organization and the brand. And she spends a lot of time looking out that window at the city and engaging in what I would call high level thinking. But then just down the hall, there is a janitor in. The janitor also has a set of responsibilities and a certain type of skill.
The janitor is often operating on a list of tasks that's been given to him by a superior. In fact, he's often responding to requests in real time. Maybe somebody is calling and saying there's a toilet stopped up or the hinges on this door are creaking. Could you please come and fix this? And while the actions that the janitor is taking are critical to the overall health and function of the company, the janitor does obviously occupy a completely different role than the CEO.
The expectations should be different and the job roles should be different. The hours are going to be different, and of course the pay is going to be different. The janitor doesn't have the freedom to walk into the CEO's office and to question the decisions that the CEO is making in regard to the direction of the company. Nor should he.
It is not his area of expertise. It's not his responsibility. He deals with the maintenance of the facility and the CEO. She deals with what I'll call the big picture, so to speak. But the two are intertwined. And the decision making that the CEO does in the corner office is going to cascade down to the tasks that the janitor is performing.
But high level decision making and low level task management are very different head spaces to be in. And you can imagine that CEOs go home from their job and probably keep thinking about some of these big problems, whereas a janitor can pack up, change clothes, and maybe completely leave the job at the job. So what happens when you are occupying both roles?
Maybe you are engaged in a project or an organization where effectively you're having to fill a high level thinking role and also a low level task execution role. At the same time, what happens a lot of the times is that you you have really good ideas on the high level thinking side of things. But then when it comes to the task execution, you find that you're getting hung up.
And what's happening is you're going to execute the task and then you're second guessing yourself or you're going back into CEO mode. In a moment where you really need to be able to be in janitor mode. And because you can never fully transfer over to janitor mode. The basic tasks aren't getting done. Now you're thinking and you're thinking a lot, and maybe you're thinking too much.
And the key here is to understand when and where you're going to occupy both roles. Ideally, we would want two different people and two different job descriptions, but realistically, that can't always happen. So you need to identify what kind of roles you're going to have to fill. And then you need to find a way to make a distinction between when you were filling each role.
Otherwise, that CEO brain is going to take over your janitor tasks and you'll find yourself sitting down to do a simple thing and then rethinking the whole vision of the company again in that moment. One of the things that really helps me with this process is to make sure that I'm doing these two types of actions in two different physical spaces.
I find that it's really helpful to have a place that I will normally go to do the big vision and high level thinking for the sort of work that I'm doing. And then I'm going to sit in a different place with a different environment to do nothing but task execution. So I really want to teach my brain that I'm occupying one role here and the other role there, and that can be as easy as moving from one room to the next.
So maybe you choose to sit at your dining room table with a cup of coffee to do your high level CEO thinking, and then you move to your desk with your computer in front of you to do that. Janitorial task driven work. That can be a very helpful shift that lets your brain know that we're now in task mode.
I don't want to rethink this because the bottom line is a janitor can't afford to rethink their tasks. They are delivered these tasks from someone else and their job is to check them off. And it really helps that janitor to feel good about doing that when the janitor trusts the people further out the chain of command. So for you, it's going to really help you accomplish your tasks and trust the process when you trust that CEO side of yourself that already made the decision.
So you said at that one table with your cup of coffee and you made a decision about what needs to happen today. Now you sit down at the desk to execute that. You're going to have to trust that CEO version of yourself. You've got to start questioning and second guessing that part of you all the time. You made the decision.
Follow through. Execute the tasks. That's your job as the janitor and occupying these two spaces. It is hard. It's not ideal. And there may come a time where you can staff up or where you can collaborate in such a way that you don't need to do both in the same day. But if you do find yourself in that situation right now, I encourage you to identify those different roles that you're occupying, establish spaces to make sure that you're shifting your thinking between those ro...

Adulting is hard. And I write. I mean, I think all of us at some point or another feel like I don't want to be an adult being a child was so much more fun. And if that's you, if that's the way you have been feeling about being an adult, I want to challenge you that that is a matter of perspective and that you as an adult have a lot of autonomy to create fun for yourself.
In fact, being an adult can be a lot of fun. In fact, there's a lot of research that indicates it's really critical. Otherwise, you're going to be miserable in your life. But not only that, I mean, you're generally not going to be as good at things like problem solving, things like productivity. So fun is not only, well, fun, but it's critically important to the way that you function in your daily life.
So I'm going to take you through some of the types of play that are recommended for children in early stages of childhood. And I'm going to flip that around on you. Adult and I want to encourage you to consider the types of play that we expect in a child and how you can integrate some of these into your daily life as a full grown adult.
And full disclaimer here If you just Google types of childhood play, you're going to come up with all kinds of lists that have various types of play. And I'm just going to give you some common types of play that you're going to find frequently repeated on these lists. These are not the only types of play, but let's get started.
The first type of play that is frequently recommended for kids is called physical play. It's a movement play. And as the name implies, you're using your body, you're doing stuff physically. And I think this is something that we as adults maybe really struggle with, because sometimes we have jobs that demand for us to sit still all day, which is not really something that we as a species are good at doing.
We shouldn't be good at doing it. So you do need to be able to get up and physically play? Sure. Going to the gym may count, if you like, going to the gym, but maybe you go to the gym just for health considerations and it's not really fun for you. So it's really important that you can engage in some physical types of fun that aren't merely obligation or you're your to to try to keep yourself healthy.
Although the two things can go hand in hand. Activities like dancing come to mind as easy examples. But, you know, just the simple act of skipping instead of walking is something that children do naturally, but adults think of as being weird. However, you can be a little weird. You can have a little fun with the way that you are moving from one space to the next.
And in addition to physical play, there's what's called dramatic play. And this is playing pretend. And, you know, we don't think about this as much as adults, but as children and as teens were often really taken by the world of fiction. And we love reading books that are fiction and watching movies that are fiction. And then as adults, we tend to get more into the practical side of the world, and we lose interest in the fiction.
But that dramatic play of our mind pretending things that aren't necessarily true is actually really critical to our creative skills and our problems solving. So can you integrate some make believe into your day? Can you play pretend in some way? Tell yourself some stories in your head, read a little short story of fiction and just allow yourself to imagine it like you were in it.
Let your brain play in a dramatic way. Sensory play is also a really vital form of play, and this is just simply using your senses. So this crosses over into other types of play as well, in that you want something tactile, auditory, kinesthetic ways that you can engage the various senses that you have in playful and find ways learning, messing with things, just feeling new textures, stopping in, smelling a plant as you're walking by.
These are all fun and enjoyable activities that you can allow your mind to just play with. And speaking of smelling a flower, one of the other forms of play they encourage in children is called nature play. And this is just being aware of and interacting with the nature around you. This is something, as a kid you probably did really easily.
And as an adult, sometimes we take for granted the nature we see and we just walk by it on our way to the next task. But can you engage some with nature? Be curious about the plants that you see, the smells, the textures, the way that they grow and just allow your mind to enjoy and play with the experience of the nature that you see every day, even in an urban environment.
And then the last form of play I'm going to talk about is creative play, which is something like music art, something where you are using creative skills to make something but just for fun. So not because your boss is asking you to or for any client project, you're just taking a blank piece of paper or you're taking a piece of Play-Doh or clay or Legos, and you're making something just for the pure fun of it with no pressure involved.
And there are all kinds of opportunities to do this around you every day. In fact, we have a burrito chain where I'm from called Freebirds, and part of what they encourage you to do is take the tinfoil from the burrito that you purchase and turn it into some sort of creation and then put it on their walls. And I think this is a great example of how you can use something that you might have otherwise discarded to practice creative play, because we need to play.
Play is fun. Nobody likes a boring, serious adult. We like to see people who are enjoying their job. We are encouraged by people whose attitude is one of curiosity and joy, and that requires some play. So go out there today and get some work done. Sure. But you know what? While you're doing it, get some play done as well.
I'll see you next time.

Picture this. You have a question about something. You're trying to accomplish a task. And you think to yourself, I really need to look up some information about how to do this. You think what better place to go than YouTube?
So you open your browser, you type YouTube, you go to the front page of YouTube and at the very top of the page you see a trailer for an upcoming movie that piques your interest. It has an actress in it that you recognize from another movie you really like and you think to yourself, Now, this might be a cool movie.
You look it up and you see that the movie is getting pretty good ratings, and you think to yourself, Maybe I'll go see that movie this weekend. Maybe you take a second to watch the trailer. Maybe you even send it to a friend. Check this out. Have you seen this? And after all this has happened, in a couple of minutes of gone by, you find yourself staring at your browser and thinking, What was I going to do?
Oh, that's right. I was going to look up this one thing that I need to know how to do. And it isn't just the fault of YouTube. I've been on my way from my bedroom to my living room to do a task and got sidetracked by something strange that my cat was doing. I stopped to see what it was doing.
I had my cat and then tried to remember what it was I was on my way to do in the first place. Well, there was a lot of research done on this, actually, even before we had smartphones. And back in the nineties, there were some researchers named Mya Evans and Rubinstein that did some really influential work on this topic.
They looked at what they called goals shifting and rule activation, and they identified these two processes that our brains engage in whenever we're moving from one task to the next. We have this mode of shifting goals. I want to do this now instead of the thing that I might have previously been doing. And then the rule activation part of it is that in order to do a thing, we kind of have to get in a certain headspace.
So our brain kind of turns on and off certain switches about the rules for how we should act in certain circumstances, depending on what we're trying to accomplish. So you have goals shifting and you have rule activation happening in your head. Our brains are very good at changing between things. However, there is what's called a switching cost. Every time you switch from one task to the next, there's a cost and that momentary lapse of remembering what you were on your way to do or why you were in this space.
That's an indication of that switching cost that your brain having to change gears, so to speak. And while we have to do this because obviously we have a lot of different things that we need to do throughout our day. Some of the side effects is that it uses time. Obviously, it uses mental energy, which I think is sometimes something we undervalue, is that not only is it taking seconds, but the mental energy, it's draining out of you to change back and forth between different focuses is also a limited resource.
So eventually that lack of mental energy that you've used up while switching leads to you feeling really fatigued. It also breaks what I would call our flow of concentration, so that when you are engaged in a task and then you have to stop and you have to refocus on something else and then come back, your flow is broken and you have to reestablish that which is going to take some time.
And studies also show that the act of switching actually prevents us from retaining a certain amount of information so that when you're moving from one task to the next, during that period of having to switch, you're going to lose some of that information that you might have otherwise retained if you hadn't had to switch your concentration. This is true everywhere, which means that in your personal life you also endure switching costs.
That means that if you're hanging out with friends or if you're on a date with somebody you're really interested in, and you have to switch your concentration from that person, and maybe the conversation that you're having to some incoming message on your phone or even to the question that the server is asking you about what food you want to order.
This is costing you. This is preventing you from retaining some of the information that they might have been giving you when you were talking. And in addition to things like relationships, it also affects things you enjoy doing. So you have switching costs even for relaxing. Suppose you want to sit down on your couch and just chill for a little while and then as you're chilling, you get a knock on the door or perhaps you get a notification on your phone.
So these switching costs are costs that we incur in every area of our life. It's something that our brains are good and efficient at doing, but we want to do it correctly. I mentioned earlier about the idea of goal shifting and rule activation. And I want to encourage you that it's important when we are goal shifting and we are activating this new set of rules in our brain to do so intentionally, as often as possible.
And I'm going to give you a few what I feel like are really helpful and simple ways to reduce the amount of switching costs you're going to endure in any given day. The first thing is, I'm going to encourage you to establish a start and stop time for tasks and activities that you consider important. So in other words, if you are going on a date, that date probably has a start and a start time.
And when you establish that start and stop time, you can focus on shifting your goal at the beginning of that timeslot toward that activity and then maintaining that goal and that focus on that activity for the duration of that time and then at the end intentionally switching it to do something else. If you're just sitting at a desk trying to do a task, maybe setting yourself a timer is a good way to start this practice.
Schedule a time on your calendar and then in that period of time, don't put on music or anything that you're watching outside of that. That could pull your attention away from the task. Really give your task your all. And then when that task ends, let yourself switch to something else. Which leads me to my second recommendation, which is engage in what I'm going to call true immersion, truly immersing ourself in a task or in an activity is really rewarding.
You're going to get so much more out of your conversations with your friends if you allow yourself to really immerse yourself in that conversation, ignoring everything else and really allowing yourself to deep dove into whatever it is that you happen to be doing at the time. And then don't feel bad when that task is over of coming out the other side and allowing some of that distraction back in.
So other than establishing a start and stop time for the thing you're going to engage in and using true immersion and ignoring outside stimuli, another critical step you're going to have to take is to control interruptions. That being said, I think it's really important that you start where you're at. So maybe you're someone who it's very difficult for you to cultivate immersion in tasks.
Maybe you struggle with attention. Maybe that's just not part of your common habit. I would say don't set your goals too high here. Start small and just set yourself smaller blocks of time. Say I'm going to really immerse myself for five, ten, 15 minutes at a time in this task. I wouldn't advise you to set like 2 hours as a block of time that you're going to deep dove.
The goal here is to limit the cost you were paying every day for switching. You probably don't have to switch as often as you have been doing and your tasks are probably suffering as a result. So how can we lower what we're paying for the cost of switching? Because at the end of the day, if the thing you're trying to do here really doesn't matter and doesn't deserve your attention, why are you doing i...

You're listening to The Uppercase Life, and I'm your host, Joseph Brewster. Are you listening? Statistically speaking, you're probably doing something else right now. Driving. Working. Some other task. Is occupying your mind at the same time. You're listening to this podcast. You have an average attention span of 4.2 5 seconds. That's pretty impressive. But it makes sense when you think about the fact that on average, you spend 7 hours a day on devices.
You see between 4010 thousand advertisements every day, both on your devices and just in the environment around you. And you deal with social anxiety, with mental fatigue, with feelings of unresolved tension. But this isn't how you were designed to live. In fact, it's difficult to appreciate just how incredibly fast the culture around us as a species has changed.
For the first time in history, we don't get lost. We constantly have a connection to a global satellite system that can tell us where in the world we are and how to get to where we need to be. For the first time in history, we don't have unanswered questions, so to speak. We have unlimited knowledge, for all intents and purposes, at the touch of a button in our hands.
And boredom today means something different than it used to mean. In fact, it's almost impossible to be bored. We have so many apps and games and movies and TV to watch that there's no possible way in an entire lifetime that you could consume something like YouTube or Netflix. And even our video games now are not designed to end.
They are designed to be open ended and continuous so that you can play these games every day for the rest of your life and not technically beat them. And all of this all of this noise, all of this available ability crowds out something critical to the human experience, something that deeply impacts your mental and physical health, your ability to focus, your investment in your relationships.
All of these things are crowding out stillness. We, as a culture, struggle with stillness. Statistically, we even struggle with taking vacations. So much, so that Americans report having great difficulty not doing work while they're on vacation, or even just relaxing when they're in their beds at night. And it's because we weren't designed for this. Our brains weren't designed for this.
And the great thing is, you have the power to end the tyranny of interruptions and constant availability in your own life to a great extent. And you must, if you want to protect your sanity, if you want to get the most out of every day of your life. And if you want to be in the right mind frame to really enjoy your relationships and to be creative in the long run, and to have ideas that are going to benefit your workflow, you're going to have to cultivate stillness.
So I want to give you what I think are some really vital practices that you need to consider. In fact, I will say if you are not doing these things, I can guarantee you that you're going to be enduring stress, anxiety, exhaustion, and you're going to experience burnout if you're not already. Just wait. It's there. In fact, I would wager that if you cultivated additional stillness in your life, you'd probably identify that you had some stress on your shoulders.
You didn't even realize you had because you hadn't been able to stop long enough to really feel it. Okay, so let's get into this. Four things I want to talk to you about. The first one is tame your technology. Technology is amazing. And listen, technology gets a bad rap. We blame technology as if it's the technology's job to manage our decisions.
And I just want to push back on that and challenge you. It is not your phone's job to protect your focus. That is your job. That phone is a tool and you need to tame it. You need to take control of how and when you interact with your devices. You really need to consider that statistic. Are you spending 7 hours a day on your device?
That's a lot. A lot of time. So take control of how and when you interact with your device, you need to delete some things. You don't need everything you have on your apps, on your television, in your house. I can almost guarantee you you need to tame that technology and delete some of it. There are some things you need to unsubscribe from.
There are some subscriptions you don't need. There are emails you don't need to get their notifications you don't need coming in. Tame that technology. And then here's one that I think is really vital. And a lot of people don't consider physically move some of that technology because let's face it, if you walk into a room and the central feature of that room is an electronic device that's going to suck your time away.
Is that what you want that room to be? So maybe you have a room in which you're going to regularly watch TV, but maybe you need to have some rooms in which there are none. Maybe you need to physically not take your phone into the bathroom with you. Because let's be honest, and I'm guilty of this. You spend more time in the bathroom when you have your phone in your hand.
You are killing time. And it's like, we can't spend a minute and a half in a bathroom stall without a phone because we don't have that long of an attention span. So you can physically move technology as a method of taming it. All right. But technology is not our biggest enemy. So that's it for technology. Let's talk about some other things.
I want to challenge you with an idea of leaving the room, leaving the room, as in not allowing yourself to be available to people. So think historically about the fact that in the past 100 years ago, there were things that we deal with today. There was violence. There was discrimination. There was bullying. But there was an aspect of culture at that time that we don't have today, which was that whenever this was happening, it was by default happening in person.
So if someone was bullying a kid at school, that kid was eventually going to go home. And when that kid went home, there was no social media, there was no texting, there was no tech talk, and they couldn't be bullied from that distance. We don't have that kind of culture now. We allow ourselves to stay in the room at all times.
Have you ever been having a difficult discussion with someone and you're texting them and you're waiting on a reply, but they don't reply right away and you feel stressed out like I don't know how they took that last text. I don't know what they're going to say. And you start feeling this tension of they better respond back. Keep in mind, that is a relatively new thing to experience in most of history.
You either have to physically be in front of that person watching them respond to you, or you'd be sending a telegraph or a letter which would take days, months, maybe even more than a month to reach that person. Now we have to sit with the anxiety of waiting on that response, and we don't allow ourselves to leave the room.
So be socially unreachable at times. And I don't mean being antisocial, I mean engage intentionally in social activities. Community is amazing. People are really vital, but then you need to step out of the room, which means you need to not be available on social media, on text, via email. You need to get out of the room literally and you need to get out of the room metaphorically.
And then when you're leaving that room, be okay with cutting off communications. I regularly do this where I exit my phone and just leave it somewhere. And I tell you what, not just putting it on airplane mode, not just, you know, silencing notifications, physically leaving that device is a method of leaving the room power off things. Make sure that you are making yourself socially unavailable at certain times and intentionally.
And this is not about isolation. This is not about you're dealing with depression and you're retracting from people. This is about making sure that you allow yourself space be...

You're listening to The Uppercase Life where we're not just doing good things. We're doing great things. And I'm your host, Joseph Brewster. If you are anything like me, there's a lot of things you want to do in the world. Can you relate to that sentiment? I have sometimes felt like if I had five lifetimes, I still couldn't accomplish all the cool things that I'd really love to try to create, to experience.
There's so much. And on the one hand, that feels like a positive thing. It feels great to look at the world and think of all the potential amazing experiences I could have. On the other hand, sometimes that's intimidating because I also feel like I'll never get to do all that. Or maybe I feel like I can't do that because I'm being forced to do something else which is less desirable.
And it's true that for each thing you are doing, there is something else you are not doing that is called opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is the idea that in order to commit yourself to one thing, you are saying no to another thing and recognizing this trade off is a small step toward making better choices. As someone who is an intentional optimist, I think that at any given time there are a number of really good things I could be doing.
It's really hard for me to say no to some things I like because I feel like, Well, I really want to do this thing and I really want to do that thing, but I can't do them all. However, one way of looking at it is I can do the highest value thing. And what I'm not looking for in the world is something which is simply good to do because there's an endless number of good to do things.
I want to know what is the best thing I could be doing now? I can almost hear some of you out there saying, But isn't this going to lead to me overthinking? And then I'm going to constantly be second guessing whether the thing I'm doing right now is actually the best thing or not. So let me clarify that.
What I'm not saying right here is that you need to deeply consider every single decision in your life to see if there is like some bigger and better thing you should be doing. No, what I'm saying is, with that simple change of thinking, recognizing that I'm not just looking for a good thing to be doing, I'm estimating what is the highest value thing that I could be doing in that moment.
And I am going to have to be willing to say no to a lot of good things, a lot of other good things that I'm not going to do because I'm doing this one even better thing. That is a really freeing feeling, because sometimes when we recognize that an opportunity is good, we almost feel obligated to do it simply by virtue of the fact that it is good to do.
And yeah, I appreciate that. I love that the world is so full of cool things we could do. But you will need to say no to doing good things if you're going to do great things, which means that you're going to have to know why you are saying yes to the things you're saying. That means having a really close connection with your own personal values.
You're going to need a high awareness of what your own strengths are. And above all, and this is the hardest part for me. You're going to have to be willing to say no to good things and good people so that you can say yes to other, even better things. I'd love to hear your feedback on this. When was a time you gave up doing something good so that you could do something even better?
Drop me a line at [email protected]. And if you enjoyed this, consider sharing it with someone who you feel like needs to hear this. And until next time. Live like it matters.

You're listening to The Uppercase Life where we're developing the stamina to work harder and go farther because we've got things to do. I'm your host, Joseph Brewster. This is part two in a two part series on stress. And if you haven't already, I encourage you to go back to listen to the previous episode about types of stress and how to deal with them.
But today, I want to talk about something a little bit different, and that is what I'm going to call a stress transfer. Stress is an expected side effect of any significant effort. I mean, when you're trying to do things, whether personally and professionally, you're going to deal with a certain amount of stress, and that's completely normal. However, sometimes we're dealing with other people who are experiencing high levels of stress, maybe for reasons we aren't even aware of, and we may begin to take on the weight of their emotions by proxy in what I'm going to call a stress transfer.
I'll define it as a situation involving at least two people where one person is experiencing an elevated level of stress, which they're then passing on either advertently or inadvertently. In a lot of cases, to another person who wasn't stressed before that time, it's almost like contracting a virus. One person gets sick, the other person is healthy. The sick person coughs on the healthy person.
And now both people are not feeling very good. I want you to think of a time when you hung out with a friend or family member or maybe talked with a coworker and you contracted a case of stress accidentally. This might be even more common if you're a naturally empathetic person or someone who generally feels obligated to help other people fix their problems.
So how do you go about dealing with potential stress transfers? I want to give you a few things that I think are really important when you're dealing with someone else who typically transfers stress to you. And here's the first one. Choose compassion over personalize ation. So I have my own company and I work with a lot of different clients and recall distinctly having a situation where we had a project with a client and we had an established deadline for some of the things we were trying to get done.
And something came up unexpectedly in which the client had an account that had lapsed due to a credit card being changed, and as a result, that service had shut down their account, which then threw the whole project into a bit of a disaster mode. And the client was calling us and was very stressed and anxious and asking, can we push all of these deadlines forward?
An immense amount of time? And I was looking at these emails that were coming from the client and thinking to myself, This is going to be a nightmare. And I found myself feeling stress. In fact, I found myself feeling like late in getting this done, which really wasn't true. We had agreed upon a deadline that the client was now trying to change.
I think so often we encounter people who are going through difficult times in life, and by default they're expressing that to us in a way that pushes those problems over onto our shoulders. And we think, Well, I care about the person or I care about the project, and therefore I should take on this stress. But really, that's not what they need you to do.
There's a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt that I've heard many times throughout my life, and it goes something like this It's no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. And I always thought that was a brilliant quote and very empowering in the sense that you can tell in this dynamic. Eleanor Roosevelt talking about there is someone who's making choices you can't change, who is trying to make you feel inferior, but they can't do that without your consent.
You see, they can make choices to try to transfer stress over to you, but you also have to make a choice to accept that transfer. And when you do that, you're personalizing it. So when I say choose compassion over personalization, what I mean is don't take it personally. To a certain extent. You're hearing that this person is feeling the stress.
Respect those feelings. Acknowledge those feelings. It will benefit them more when you don't take the stress on personally, but you see them as an individual who's struggling with the stress. And you have the self-will to say, But I'm not going to take that personally. I'm going to be compassionate for you instead. Second thing is, and this one could be probably a whole episode.
Establish boundaries. We all know this intuitively, but sometimes in the moment it's really hard to do so. Here are some different types of boundaries I'm going to encourage you to establish, especially in relationships with people that have the ability to transfer stress to you, establish boundaries around your reactions. You don't always have to react. And even though you can't change how they feel or the stress levels they're experiencing, you do have control over your reactions to make sure you have some boundaries around that, because sometimes we're put into what feels like compromising situations and we react to that stress in ways that we're not really proud of later.
You don't have to react just because someone comes at you with stress. You don't even have to respond back to them in that moment. Make sure that you have some boundaries for your own reactions so that if you see an email or text or even somebody says something to you that feels highly stressful in that moment, you can step back.
You don't have to react to that in that moment. Put some boundaries around your reactions and then put some boundaries around your personal access. Can people interrupt you at any time? Can people just walk in when you're working? Can they text you at any moment, call you at any time of the day? Maybe you need to have some boundaries around access because if you know you're going to be dealing with situations that might be stressful, you want to be able to deal with them intentionally.
You don't want to be interrupted at any given time, and then you need to have some boundaries around your interactions. Can they just say whatever they want? Can they cast you out? Call you names when they're stressed out? That's not okay. So we need to set some boundaries around what is it that they can do in those interactions while they're stressed?
Because I respect that you're stressed and I want to respect your feelings, but at the same time, I have the ability to set some boundaries around the way you treat me when you are stressed and you can't just act however you feel around me if it's going to be damaging potentially to me, and then consecrate a sanctuary for yourself.
And what I mean by this is find a place that you don't permit people to disturb you and make sure that you can take retreats or relax and establish that sacred space for yourself. I would suggest just don't even take your phone that place. Go there and just relax. Now, I do want to take a moment and say this.
If you out there listening and you are a mother, especially if you are a mother of young children, you probably just heard everything I said and thought to yourself, I can't do any of these things right. I mean, maybe I'm in a situation where I just can't set boundaries around. When they can interrupt me, they're going to interrupt me in inopportune times all the time.
And and we really are on call as parents. And maybe you have some other situation that's like that. Maybe you're a caregiver for for someone in your family. The way you can do that in those sorts of situations is by relinquishing control. And this is really important. So when we started having children at a very, very early age, as early as I felt like it was safe to do so, we started leaving those children with babysitters and caregivers so that we could take time away.
It's really important to do this because if you're in a situation where there just isn't a lot ...