Work life balance seems like this never-ending game of counterbalance.
And the reality is this roofing industry somehow.
Takes over our life in many ways.
And it can, and it becomes an addiction and it's tempting.
Sometimes we do it by choice.
Sometimes it feels like we're reacting.
And if this has happened to you, you're in the right place.
You wake up in the morning.
One of the first things you do is you reach over on your own table.
You grab your cell phone and you see notifications just like my phone is
blowing up with notifications right now.
And you look into them.
Your eyes are barely open and boom, you are in.
You're reacting.
You're putting out fires.
You try to get out the door, but all of a sudden you were distracted
by your email, your notifications, that you're behind schedule.
You're racing out the door, you don't eat a good breakfast.
And then your entire day, it feels like all you're doing is in reaction mode.
This person ran late.
This person showed up early.
I space to this.
And then all of a sudden, the end of the day comes in all your life thinking is I
just wish I had a few more hours to get.
That's what happened to me and I'm sure it's what's happening to you right now.
Or maybe if not right now, you can relate.
Cause it's happened to you.
And we begin to sacrifice the quality of our life.
By first giving up on the things that are healthy for us, maybe it's exercise.
And then it's how we eat.
And many of us like myself, 30 pounds.
When I got into the roofing game, 30 pounds, I'm this frame.
All right.
There was a lot of weight.
And after we give up the healthy stuff, the consequences begin to lean
on us, on our family relationships.
The people we love, the most, the people who we want to be spending time
with and it's work and their family.
Right.
And then we peel back on that.
And then all of a sudden it bleeds into our personal lives
and our personal relationships.
We just don't have time.
And before, you know, it, it feels like everything outside of work
is just second to the main thing, which is this whole work thing.
So I wanted to do this video to share with.
Nine different strategies to help you find a true work life balance
because this industry's addicting, it's addicting because the more we work, the
more we earn and the more we can make.
And if we work to cubicle job or a salary job, you're not going to be
busting your butt or burning the candle at both ends because you get
paid the same amount, no matter what.
But we essentially write our own paychecks here.
So without further ado, let's get into it nine different ways for
you to develop work-life balance.
And I got to do a quick disclaimer.
I need to work on these myself.
I am very, it's important to me and I find myself constantly going from this
state of balance to working too much.
And.
I'm no Saint, all I'm just saying is I'm not sitting here preaching,
like I have this mastered, but I want to share with you.
What's been working for me and the people I work with.
So, uh, again, welcome or welcome back.
My name is Adam Benjamin.
If you're new here, uh, the roof strategists, everything I do here on this.
And my podcast and my all-in-one sales training and sales system
is designed to help you and your team smash your income goals.
And if you like what you see here, and you want more than go ahead
and smash that subscribe button to be notified of every new video.
All right.
Let's get to it.
So nine different ways to get work work-life balance dialed first,
uh, and by the way, big credit to.
Shana, bandsmen on the other side of this camera.
Thank you, Sheena, because she helped brainstorm all these things because
as a couple, who is married and business partners, we work together
and this is something that we both are trying to do, and I probably
need more help than she does.
She's she's my, she's my rock.
All right.
First is you want to audit.
Now this Sheena started, she goes, first, you got to just say, you
got to audit your time, figure out where are your time leaks?
A lot of people say, oh, I don't have time for that.
But if you had screen time on your phone and it showed Facebook or
social media or Instagram showing.
With the amount of time he spent on there, or maybe you get, you know,
some people say, oh, don't have time.
What do you do at night?
Oh, I've been bingeing through Ozark and I've watched 17 episodes in two days.
You just need to give your self, an honest assessment of where you spend your time.
And it, previous videos I shared with you, my journal, which is right here,
just off camera, where I've literally documented with a, with a time log,
what I do when, and you can see.
Some through, um, I've been on the road a lot, so I haven't been, been doing that.
So audit your time and give yourself a true and honest assessment of where
you're spending it and where it's leaking.
Uh, number two is with your cell phone, turn off all notifications.
And when I say all, um, and I'm just gonna write notice for short.
So the reason when I say all that includes your email and your text message.
What I've found is that text messages are seldom.
I think people need you.
They're going to call, so I don't have text message notifications.
Um, I don't have email notifications.
Anywhere on my phone.
Why?
Because they're nonstop.
And then I get trained like a Pavlovian dog thing, Oop there,
and then I'm pulled into this.
So what I do is I have dedicated times that I'll check my inbox
and sometimes those are scheduled.
Sometimes those are just batch throughout project time or working with customers
and you need to do the same thing.
So get all those notifications off your phone.
I've watched people that I've been in meetings who are paying for my.
They have an apple watch on and it Danes and like a dog we're in the middle of
conversation and thinking, and they turned to read it and then they go
through this and then they respond.
They go wherever we again.
And I realized this is a truly dysfunctional way to operate.
So get those, uh, cell phone notifications all turned off.
All right.
Tip number line nine.
This is we're going back.
We're going old school.
Get in alarm.
Now the reason I say, get an alarm clock, Gina.
And I, we say that there's no contraband allowed in the bedroom,
contraband his cell phone.
Why?
Because they're a distraction.
We end up finding that, like we're sitting here looking at our phone
instead of talking to each other or you get on your phone and you're scrolling
or reading, or you're on Reddit.
You're on Facebook, you're reading the news and the entire night slips away.
And you're like how to get to be 1130 or 12.
Right.
All the way already.
So getting that phone out of your room is going to break the
habit of falling asleep to it.
You're going to sleep better.
And then when you wake up to the alarm clock, You don't
first thing, grab your phone.
So it's a habit, ours charge in our laundry room on
chargers out of the bedroom.
And we have our emergency list of who would call if anything actually
happens, we would be notified.
So there's tip number three.
Number four, we have is the morning routine.
Now I'll tell you if it's important to.
The only time that's going to get done is in the morning.
And it needs to become that daily routine when it's routine, it becomes
daily habits, very simple to do.
And what I've found like working out to me, I always waited.
I want to say, Hey, I'm going to go work out at the end of the
day and blow off some steam, but then I kept finding the same.
The end of the day was six bleeding on seven bleeding
on eight and I was starving.
So then I prioritize cooking a good meal.
By the time I'm done, it's like nine o'clock.
I don't want to work out.
I got a full belly and trying to squeeze in the important pieces.
When you actually think about it, it's kind of funny.
We all do it, but it's nuts.
It's like, this is the most important thing to me, but I'm going to build
this around the rest of my life versus building my rest of my life around this.
It's a pretty substantial shift.
So to me that morning, Every day, I, I meditate.
First thing, I then go and I do a stretching routine.
And then I work out and I generally do either some reading or some sort
of, uh, learning whether that's on specific YouTube videos, whether it's
podcasts or whether it's audio books.
But I like to stimulate my mind and I journal.
So those are to me, the most important things.
And I just build my day around it.
So I started to wake up earlier.
So I have three hours to myself.
For this stuff before things get crazy.
All right now, uh, and by the way, I realized three hours might
not be possible for everybody.
And the truth is when I was commuting an hour and 45 minutes, one way
that has to come from somewhere and those times got shortened.
All right.
Now, morning routine.
Uh, next one is scheduling all of your big commitments.
Now, what do I mean by this?
I'll give you an example, sheen and I, we hadn't taken a vacation in two
years and we've just been really busy.
And all of a sudden we're getting I'm booked out, booked out, booked out.
And we were like, if we want to get a vacation in the only way isn't to figure
out like, when's it going to work?
We'll just squeeze it in.
We needed to just schedule it.
So we schedule the vacations, we schedule that time off.
So it's on the calendar and we've made that commitment.
And now that the decision fatigue has gone, the anxiety about it's gone.
Decisions made.
And now as the things come in, we can say yes or no to the opportunities
because we have a schedule already there.
And I've found when I was roofing, if I was out of town or between
offices and I knew it was a big event, I just planned around it.
It's like, oh, there's a graduation or a birthday or an anniversary.
I have to be there for that.
So getting those commitments scheduled early and not just trying to wing
it, if you're a non-committal person, you just got to commit, you're
going to feel a whole lot better.
All right.
Next is giving yourself office hours.
And the main reason is so you can have permission to turn off.
You can choose to put this on your email auto response in your email
signature in on your voicemail.
Hey, this is so-and-so.
I respond to all emails, texts, and phone calls between the hours of 8:00
AM and 6:00 PM Monday through Friday, which by the way, it's a lot of hours.
And if you set this, what you now know is expectations have been
set, and you can give yourself permission to actually turn off your.
Alright, my next piece here is having one day off a week.
Now I know this might sound like for some, if you're maybe like me, you're like,
whoa, like a full day and other people are like, how are you only taking a day?
But to me, like that's the day to turn off.
If text messages come in, don't respond.
It's not, you can absolutely love.
I am deeply in love with what I do more than anything that I've ever done.
And at the same time, I'm fighting.
That it's beneficial for me to serve better when I have some grounding time.
So having that one day off for me, that's usually a Sunday.
Sometimes it's a Saturday.
If I got travel, I'm getting ready for on a Sunday.
Cause I know I'm usually working at the airport or to me that
travel day is filled with some sort of workout work obligations.
So just having that one day to just tune everything out, it's amazing how
much just one day can help return.
All right, which brings us to number eight.
And this one's my favorite one.
And this one is the one that has helped me the most.
And that's having a bedtime, true story.
I have a bedtime, I am in bed between nine and 10:00 AM.
Excuse me, PM.
That'd be funny if it was nine or 10 and I'd get a lot done all
overnight, uh, 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM.
And the reason is.
At 5:30 AM.
I know some people, which I love by the way, seeing the guys at the gym
by three 30, I wish I could do that.
I'm slowly inching it up.
Now I'm up to about five naturally before the alarm.
And it's funny.
I didn't think that I'd just wake up naturally eager to start the
day, but it's through routine.
I ensure that I sleep enough.
I ensure that when Sheena and I, which by the way, we also got hooked into
Ozark, we're like, ah, one more episode.
It's nine 30.
I don't want to start an episode at nine 30 because then I'm
going to want to finish it.
And then it's going to be 10 30 and then we get ready for bed.
And then it's 11 and then I just lost an hour asleep and then they wake
up groggy and don't do my workout.
So to me, wind down is usually about 9, 9 30 ish in bed.
That way, if I want to read a little bit I'm asleep and then
I can be up at, at my time.
And again, Laugh at me that I'm sleeping in too much.
Some people might say, how do you start wake up at early?
But my point is not to preach.
It's to say, you got to find what works for you.
And then here's the last one is you need to develop a daily routines.
And these daily routines become habit.
There's a couple of really good books on habits.
I really liked Charles Duhigg's book the power of habit.
And by the way, if you download a free copy of my pitch, like
a pro roofing sales training, There's a link in the description.
Uh, it's now in there, my recommended reading list and you'll see all
these books on there, but there's, uh, Charles Duhigg did a great one.
Um, the one thing, not quite on habit, but really talked about kind
of daily initiatives and plans.
And the big idea is that when we remove willpower, these routines.
Become habit.
Now it's routine for me to wake up at five before my alarm naturally.
Now it's routine that I fall asleep either with no TV on or reading a book.
I don't have a cell phone.
So in the room, all of these little things you just don't think about,
and it becomes second nature.
We live life on autopilot and we can control those autopilots by either
being reactive or taking control.
And all we got to do is commit to that for six weeks and boom, before.
It takes off autonomously.
I absolutely love it.
So there you have it.
And by the way, I got to say one last thing.
What I miss, what keeps you grounded with work-life balance?
I'd love to hear from you.
And I know, so what other people, so drop a comment in the comment section below
and let's hear what keeps you relaxed?
What do you find rejuvenating?
What's your biggest tip for keeping work-life balance?
I'd be curious.
Cause I'm always working on myself.
Uh, One more thing that I didn't even think to add.
I started to write a list.
It was actually the other day flying back from a speaking event.
I started to write down as many things I could think of that relaxed me,
even things like taking the dog for a walk or reading to just become more
consciously aware, to build more time in my day for those daily routines.
So there you have it nine different ways to help improve your work-life balance.
Appreciate you being here with me and if you want.
Happy to this video.
And if you haven't done it, you can download a free copy of my pitch.
Like a pro video training right here.
We'll see you soon.