The Value of Free Days and Free Time – Episode 439

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[00:02] Prosperity thinkers, welcome to the podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking about free days and free time. Kim, this is something that you’re actually experienced right now. So let’s hear it. Well, it’s fun to share this right now because I am in the middle of two, what a lot of people would just call long weekends and the value of free time as defined by Dan Sullivan in the entrepreneurial time system. So I’m sure we can include a link in the show notes is so incredible. I learned it when I was 25 years old, I think I learned it in 1994, however old I was then. And I have been forever grateful for it. And in case you’re not an entrepreneur, please keep listening because this is something that

[00:56] every single person, no matter how old, how young, what their role is in life can install in their life if they understand the benefits and they get the priority. So to back up, when I joined strategic coach, like I said, it was 1994. I’d been in the financial services business really since graduating from college in 88, but first as an employee. And then I started on my own and I’d been kind of on my own under another umbrella for three or four years and I was doing well, but I was hitting what Dan Sullivan calls a ceiling of complexity. In other words, I had so much stuff going on that I was becoming inefficient and ineffective. And so I heard about strategic coach. This was of course before the internet existed. And so it was on a cassette tape and tells

[01:55] you how long ago. And for those of you who don’t know what that is, think about like an MP3, but long before that. And I was in my car listening because that’s what people that are interested in getting good results in life do in their car. They listen very carefully to things that are not gibbering, jabberish from talking heads on the radio or whatever that are depressing or news that is not anything that they can do about. They basically turn their car into a university on wheels. And so I had this series of cassette tapes from this conference and Dan Sullivan was one of the speakers. He talked about the free day focus day buffer day idea, which I’ll explain a little bit more in detail and the ceiling of complexity thing, which

[02:43] I just got immediately, in fact, promptly signed up for their program. And the strategic coach community kind of laughs because I didn’t even have a salesperson like I just called, paid and went. And on the very first day, I learned about this concept of a free day. And the definition is midnight to midnight, no business activities. Now, this could be for a retiree, midnight like no errands or no, you know, whatever it is that you want to be free from for a full day. And ideally you lump together two or three days. And of course, when you go on vacation, you lump together five or six or 10 or 15 or however long your vacation is. But here in the midst of a very busy time, we’ve done some rebranding. We have two new employees. We’ve got a lot going on

[03:31] in our organization right now. I had long ago been given a gift of some concert tickets from Teresa Sheridan, my right arm that many of our listeners know. And I was so excited to go and it was in Houston couple hours away. So we were going to get a hotel and then as it turned out, we ended up having an opportunity to pick up Todd’s daughter in a couple days at the airport right near this hotel. So we just decided to stay and it was glorious. I shut off slack. I didn’t even bring a computer. So slack, if you don’t know is like a work space chat room. So my entire team is on slack and it works way better than email. I mean, you still use email amongst your team for attachments and that kind of thing.

[04:18] But slack is much more immediate, you can get results quicker, keeps your team on the same page, etc, etc. So I literally shut it off on my phone. I didn’t I don’t check email on my phone anyway. But no slack, no email, no phone calls, of course, nothing, nothing, nothing for two straight days. And it enables me to come back and be so rested, so much more effective. Dan Sullivan has a funny term, if you get tired, everybody else gets stupid. And the calendar control of just saying, okay, stop. I mean, it was a Friday. But so the concert was Thursday night, all day Friday, nothing, I did only what I wanted to do. And so if you’re a younger person in school, you can still take like a Sunday, and just totally protect it like cram hard

[05:10] on Saturday. And I used to do this. When I was new in the business, I would stay late at the office on a Friday night. I know it sounds a little like, boring from a social life standpoint, but it saved me a lot of money, right? Not, not going to the bars or wherever anybody else was going. I would stay late on a Friday night so that I could have my Saturdays protected. And then when my kids were born, and they were, you know, we were a young family, I still took one day, sometimes a year, sometimes I could pull it off, maybe twice a year, or even once a quarter, and just made it my own, whereas a Kim day, I got to read, I got to get a massage, I got to do whatever it was that I wanted to do. And it took me a

[05:52] little while to actually learn what I wanted to do. Like first, I would go and try to have a spa day, I hated it. I had to learn like, I can get a massage, but then I want out like I need to be outside, or I need to be reading, or I need to be swimming or doing something like that. That’s what re energizes me. And so if you’re a retiree, and you’re like, do you think you’re on free days all the time, right? Well, this is the problem. Just like from an entrepreneurial standpoint, any day can be a workday. From a retiree standpoint, any day can be a free day. And then they’re not fun anymore. They’re not special. They are not rejuvenating. So that’s where I am. And Spencer, I’m sure you have some awesome questions.

[06:34] You know, what’s amazing is that you’ve bottled up some frameworks in here in your language. And it’s because it’s become who you are. You’re not explicitly saying what what those frameworks are. And so I’m going to unpack them. And so one thing you said, which will lead to the next piece is, you took time, it took time to learn what you wanted to do. Yes. Meaning, on your free time, it wasn’t as though it was completely obvious. Why is that? Well, because we go into life, especially when we’re in our 20s. And we just do what other people are doing. We think that that’s going to work for us. And so, you know, I’m a girl spa day, right? Like, that’s what’s supposed to work. And it actually it took me like six months to

[07:29] figure it out. You know, I had a spa day here a spa day there. This was before the kids were born. And I was not feeling rejuvenated. I know another story that actually was shared with my sister Tammy Brannon of blueprint process. Somebody had told her that it had been their goal of the guy it was a guy and his wife to spend a day in bed watching movies like they you know, that was just like what they wanted. They thought that was going to be rejuvenated. They wanted to do that. They told Tammy afterwards, like we felt so horrible, like totally lethargic. And it is funny, like sometimes we we like the idea of something but then we don’t. And I will tell you something else that helped me discover what works for me. Because all of us would like

[08:15] a shortcut, right? Well, there’s a mental hack, there’s no better way to say it, called the strengths finders. And it’s it was originally done by the Clifton organization, like the big Oh, shoot survey people. I think now it might be owned by somebody else. But if you just look up strengths finders, and it’s usually about 20 bucks, it’s, there’s probably some free ones, but it’s probably worth paying for. I believe that there’s some like one for teenagers, one for, you know, whatever, there’s varied ones, that’s fine, you can just take the regular one. I think there’s one for entrepreneurs, I wouldn’t mess with that, I would just go for the regular strengths finders. And what it does, they identified 34 strengths amongst

[08:53] Americans, I believe, maybe worldwide, I don’t know. And it gives you your top five. Well, I had been working with Colby, who I love the Colby profile, we’ve talked about it on podcasts before $55, like the best money you could spend and super valuable. But when I also learned my strengths finders, my five strengths, one of them is accomplishment. And so it helped me understand that in order for me to feel rejuvenated, I need to accomplish something. So like going for a walk, or reading a book, and I choose my books, it’s a free day book, right? It’s not a business book, is more about accomplishment, while at the same time being free from business. And so it just took some experimenting and some time. But at the same in that same sentence, I’m going

[09:42] to tell you, a hack to get through that learning faster is these five strengths finders. Yeah, that’s really powerful. You know, you mentioned accomplishment. So what that means is, when you’re going about the filter, you’re using is you’re saying, I need to be able to achieve something, we’ll call it like that, versus sitting in the bed all day, watching a movie. There’s another piece in here that I want to unpack, because I think it’s helpful for listeners, and for myself as well. So this is good, is the constraints you put in place. So oftentimes, we think that it’s the prosperity mindset is because we have the abundance of everything and abundance is wonderful. There’s also the constraint, we

[10:35] have day and we have night, we have opposition of that. So you mentioned the constraint of not having slack on your phone and not working. What other types of constraints have led to your prosperity, the delineation of books, so free day book, I literally call them my free day book currently reading John Grisham for my free day book, versus business books like Gap in the Gain, which I know we’ll do a podcast on here soon. And then also the disconnect from business activity. And so everybody has to define what their quote business activity is. But, you know, maybe it’s your schoolwork, maybe it’s running errands, maybe it’s mowing the lawn, you know, whatever it is. Even like my in-laws, I’ve got one is

[11:21] still working, but the other is retired. I’ve really encouraged him and business owners know this too, batch your work, like, take all of your errands, take all of your housecleaning, take all of your quote chores, shove them all into one day, and then have the other day be totally free. And that midnight to midnight thing is because of what you said, that disconnect that we get during sleep. So a free day, noon to noon doesn’t count because in the morning, you’re thinking about the afternoon, in the afternoon, you think about the morning. But when you sleep, it is a disconnect. And then, of course, you know, we can’t overlook the value of good sleep and a dark room. And you know, all the things that we now know, if

[12:03] you don’t, please just look on the internet for good sleeping habits. All of those models, frameworks, guidelines, restrictions, you know, you think weird, you know, a free day shouldn’t be about restrictions. Yeah, well, if it’s not, it’s a mushy mess. You know, this ties back to biblically thinking, which is pretty, you know, pretty important in meaning that regardless of the religion or the faith of the person, taking this time to depart from the normal and create that constraint, that’s really powerful. I’m going to share a recent constraint that I put in place, and it actually made things even better. So we were in an Airbnb, and the grocery store must have just done amazing marketing, because

[12:52] they convinced me to buy a bunch of tomahawk steaks. Those are my favorite. I just love them. And so I made a vital error. I didn’t see if we had all of the spices and tools and everything that I would want back at the Airbnb. Got back, steaks in hand. Lo and behold, I don’t. But I made it work. And the family was happy with it. So I had these tomahawk steaks and instead of having tongs, I had to use like a spatula and a fork and balance it so I could build a crust on the outside. And I just had salt and pepper and garlic and onion and that’s it. But everyone loved it. And so, you know, in the same way that you’re mentioning here having these free days, and this free time, and not doing work, and if a person’s too busy, they’re not going

[13:43] to get to enjoy the benefits that come from it. So well said and enjoyment of life enables us to have a working life that lasts for 60 or 70 or 80 years. It’s so much more fun than trying to work really hard for 30 years and then do nothing for 30 years. Yes, absolutely. So listeners, as far as a principle from this episode, the taking the free days and free time that midnight to midnight, if you haven’t done it, give it a try. Now, I will say one exercise that I’ll lay on top of this that helps me if you ever have the fear of you saying, okay, well, I own a business, something bad could happen. Just take a moment and figure out what’s the worst thing that could happen or go through and make sure you

[14:37] have a redundancy in place. Someone that can pick up the slack while you’re gone, your operator knows exactly what’s going on and they know that you’re away. But having that free day free time that Kim that you’re mentioning, I can I can tell you it works for me. I know it works for you. I would love to hear listeners responses. So send your experience from doing free day free time to hello at prosperity thinkers.com. Any final pieces of advice, Kim? I love what you said, just give it a try. And once you’ve experienced it, keep fine tuning it so that it gets better and better and serves you and serves your family and your team. Thank you for listening to the prosperity podcast to take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit us at

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