Transcription
Hey everyone, Charlie Morgan here, and in today's video we're going to be discussing burnout. I even took the liberty of writing it in bubble writing for you.
Now, I am 27, and I started my entrepreneurial journey when I was 18. And over the course of the last 8 n years, I have done this more times than I can possibly count. I think I've burned out probably [ __ ] a hundred times, probably more honestly. And having done it so much, I've got quite good at it, and I've learned how to prevent it and, more importantly, how to deal with it. Because whether you like it or not, if you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to crack reality and bend the universe to your will to create something that otherwise didn't exist in the first place, that takes quite a toll on the body and on the mind. And so this is going to happen; you are going to burn out if you want to do something great. This is like a universal law of success. And so we need to learn how to cope.
Now, there are smart ways to do this, and there are dumb ways to do this. And I have done the dumb ones, and I have done the smart ones. And the smart ones are way healthier and also way more productive because success is basically about staying on the track. And so if we imagine for a second here that there is a definitive track for success, you want to stay between the lines. And if we if we go away from the lines and if we start going off the rails, so to speak, then we enter this territory of chaos. Okay?
And so what happens when you're trying to build a company or a business, or when you're trying to become successful in any realm of um of of achievement, we have these boundaries of of order where you're basically being disciplined, you're being healthy, you're taking care of yourself, you're doing the right stuff. And then what happens inevitably is there's you can't really stay in here constantly because this is your discipline barrier, right? And this is where you are well-behaved. And if you're too disciplined for too long, then your body is going to fight back and kick back, and the universe kind of just forces you to lie down and relax. And then you verge out into the the chaos territory, which is where, you know, this is, if we're going to call that disciplined territory, we'll call this a lazy territory. And so this is where you basically, you know, you start eating junk food again, and you start all your bad habits again. And that the inertia of your past self basically just, you know, reintegrates suddenly into your life, and you don't even recognize yourself for a while. And what we need to learn to do is going here is near enough like always going to happen. But what we want to do is we want to compress the time frame over which you spend in this version of you that you really don't like.
Now let me tell you a story about my personal experiences with burnout because I'm hoping it will relate to you. I'm making this video to talk to the 18, 19, 20-year-old version of myself. I didn't know how. I didn't even know what burnout was. I didn't know how to deal with this. This isn't something that you learn in school. It's not something that they teach you in the books or in the colleges. You have to learn this through experience. And what I'm doing in this video is talking to my younger self. And I'm going to make a desperate plea for him to stop being such an idiot and to start learning how to deal with this thing because I didn't really realize it at the time that burnout is there to stay. And it does not matter what level of success you achieve or what field you're trying to achieve it in. This thing comes with you, and you have to stay with the burnout.
So when I was 18 years old, I was absolutely desperate to be successful. And when I say desperate, I don't just mean like I wanted to succeed. I mean like I would stop at nothing to, you know, make this happen, and that manifested in some ways that weren't particularly productive or healthy.
Now, the first notion that you want to get through your head if you want to build big things and do successful things is there are times where you have to, in the short term, sacrifice your health and your mental well-being for your goal. Just like anything that requires sacrifice, it's the same thing with business. There are going to be periods of your life where you are unhealthy or you are not well because of the work. And what a lot of people around you will start doing is they'll start saying like, "Oh, you need to take a day off, or you need to relax, or you need to go on holiday, or you can't keep this up, or you're going to burn yourself out." And you're going to feel, you know, like they they don't make any sense because you understand that the only way to get this done is is to sacrifice yourself basically.
So when I was 18 years old, I was, like I said, absolutely totally and utterly desperate to succeed. And this desperation manifested into work. Okay.
Now, work is is kind of the the cause of burnout because what work basically is is it's it's physical and mental exertion in pursuit of an objective. Okay? And so the work that I used to do for my business when I was younger is I'd make cold calls. I'd do sales calls. I'd build a client project. You know, I'd do this, do this, do this. When I was 18, I I burned myself out to the point of almost no return. And I took myself to such a bad place with work that I ended up having to take off like 3 months.
So, let me tell you the story. 18 years old, I nearly 19, and I've dropped out of university, and I've got a big old chip on my shoulder because I feel like I've got a lot of stuff to prove. Um, so I drop out of university and I start an apprenticeship in in sales. Um, now this is before my apprentichip in sales. I drop out of uni and I get three jobs, and I'm trying to build a business, and I'm also trying to read like two books a week basically, and I'm I'm basically amongst these three jobs. So I worked as a bartender. I worked in a customer care center for a shoe brand. And um I worked in another bar. I had two three jobs. And I was so desperate to be successful and so desperate to prove myself not only to the world but to myself that I worked I think probably I don't know an easy like 110 hours a week maybe more. And this was amongst these three jobs that I kind of juggled like almost full-time. But also I was trying to start a business, and so I was doing 101 things trying to start this business whilst also trying to read. And what I basically did is I trained myself to ignore um what we would call symptoms, and we'll talk about these in a second because there are symptoms of burnout, and you can see it you can see it coming a mile off like the burnout will announce itself to you through bodily symptoms before it actually manifests. Um, but we'll talk about symptoms and how they happen in a second and how to recognize them. But what I did is I god I I didn't give myself any rest. And I remember this was um where where this came to fruition was when I went on holiday to with my parents to to a place I think it was in Bordeaux in France, and I spent that two weeks on neutropics and as much coffee as I could consume watching every single SMMA how to start a business course in like three times speed and that there was that on top of then the work and then all this all this information I was gathering and all these cold and I basically worked like 110 hours I think maybe maybe a little more a a week, and I did that for like a good 2 3 months, and my body was screaming at me trying being like dude what the hell are you doing, but I was so desperate that I polarized myself to discipline, and I was convinced that it was the only way, and anytime that I wanted to relax or take some time off I I would be like I I I demonize that idea. I'd be like, "No, that's not what we're doing here. We're here to grind grind grind." You know, you know when you like you see the David Gogggins reels and there's that archetype of that like that that meme where that guy is trying to relax and he opens up Instagram to relax and David Gogggins is like screaming at him. That that was what I did it to myself.
Now, here's the kicker. I remember after that holiday, which was the crescendo of my burnout, I I got very very very unwell and not not unwell in the sense that like I got like a cold or something. I I developed like borderline personality disassociation order. Um, personality disassociation order of I got I was a very poorly boy. I got very very anxious. I had chronic brain fog because I was so inflamed. Um, and I was not well. Like I remember talking to people and not thinking that they were real and I was the only person on the planet, and I went a little bit insane in hindsight, and you know I any sort of stimulant or um seditive would with would the the um the impact of that would be like 10x. So I remember and I'll be transparent with you. I was so stressed and I was so exhausted that I tried to smoke weed to relax myself. And this was this was when I would have been what 18 I think. Um and this is the last time I ever smoked weed. And what it did is it it basically sent me into this like chronic frenzy of pure like I had like panic attacks. And when this when this really came to its its end, when I came to my end, right, um what happened is I was driving back from one of my jobs, um not when I was high, but I was driving back from one of my jobs, which was um bartending at one of one of the local golf courses to doing catering. And I was I was in my corser and it was dark. So, you know, I was I finished work at like 5 6 p.m. in the UK. It's obviously that time in the in in the winter it gets dark, and I remember this very well. I I got lost. My phone ran out of battery, and I did not know how I was so [ __ ] in the head that this route that I'd driven, you know, all of 40 times in the last year or so cuz I I worked there a few times a week. No, it mean I must have done that route like a hundred times, and I got lost and I got lost in the dark in my car, and it was raining, and I I I I didn't know how to get home. I was like completely like in this almost dreamlike state where I was so brain fog and so tired and exhausted, and you know it was it was awful. And I ended up being able to find the way home cuz I clearly I knew what I was doing. I just thought I didn't. And I got home and um I got in and the thing is is no one really knew that there was anything wrong with me at this point because I was very good at like I could still communicate like a normal person, and no one understood what the hell was going on inside of my body in my head. And um and I got home and I went I went in and my my mom could see this look on my face like I said, "What's wrong?" And I just broke down like just just in in pieces like just a complete like I've never felt anything like it. And I sat there and I went I broke down. I went upstairs and I sat in my bed and I turn I had these red LEDs around my bookcase at the end of my bed. I remember it very well. And I sat there and I had I think probably three or four consecutive panic attacks just back to back. Like I I I felt like my memory of it is not that great, but I remember at one point thinking I was going blind. Like I I was I I went like deaf and blind and I couldn't see. And my I was just [ __ ] like in every way, shape, or form. And and that is true true burnout. There was nothing wrong with me. I wasn't mentally ill. I wasn't physically sick. I had just caused myself so much damage and stress through overworking myself that my body just shut down. And after that, I had to recover. And so, I had to quit my jobs. I had to stop trying to do my business. Um, and I had to basically sit in my room and do nothing for months. And what was extreme on one end had to become extreme on the other. And so this is kind of how how this works. And this is why I'm telling you this story is you know when you have so let's take on this side when you have um discipline. Okay.
Now, if we take discipline to an extreme where we're really ramping this thing up and we're going as hard as we possibly can, like discipline, discipline, discipline, discipline, discipline, then the higher we go with this thing, the further we fall because the antidote to burnout and the alternative to discipline is rest. Okay? And if we want to dial up and learn to dial up the discipline as much as we possibly can in life, then we also need to dial up the rest. Because what I can tell you is your body will almost always seek what we call equilibrium, which is like um think of you know how homeostasis works in your body where if you get too hot then you'll start sweating and your body will start doing things to cool you down, and if you get too cold then your body will start shivering and doing things to warm you up. Well, in your in your body, it's you you kind of have a homeostasis of your stress levels and your rest levels, and discipline causes stress. So, it causes an increase in cortisol, nor adrenaline, and other hormones. And what rest does is it it regulates them back down. And the thing is is that your body, if you don't if you don't intentionally integrate rest into your routines, into your life, your body will give you no choice. And so this is what I experienced in my um in my life when I was 18 years old, and I burned myself out to a to a tragic point of almost it's a miracle I got back on the horse cuz when I when I finished the the period of rest like I I I did an apprenticeship and then I got back on the rails and then I never took it to that extreme again. Um, but even then when I began my apprenticeship, like it took me six months, nearly a year to get over that because I remember the first like month or two of my apprenticeship, I'd be working, but I was I was still disassociated. And when I was making my cold calls, my first few months, I was making cold calls on the phone, and it was like it didn't feel like I was talking to humans. It was really weird. And so what I did is if we tracked my um let's what would what would we call this? Um well we can draw a graph here to sort of denote this right and you know let's let's just call this the discipline right and so my discipline if this is 100 you know this is zero then I was overshooting this thing like I was up here but my discipline was here for so long and the body doesn't like this the body doesn't like to be you know um bullied into submission for so long and so what happened is I had this drop off where I had to come into the negative And you know this is this is rest down here. So this is 100 rest and this is 100 discipline. Then my body dropped me to here, and I was I had to be here for basically an equal amount of time because this is equilibrium. And so you know your body will give you no choice. And so you know how like sometimes you you're working and you're making progress and you truly genuinely feel like you just can't do it anymore and you feel like you need to take like time off. And what happens is instead of it being intentional, what you start doing is you start scrolling through short-form content. You start eating junk food. You start watching Netflix. You start what masturbating. All this [ __ ] that you try not to do, you just end up doing. And you seemingly without any say or without any control. That's your body forcing you into rest mode. And you can't actually see that down there, but you can see it. It goes all the way down. Right?
So, we need to talk about this because, you know, I can tell you from experience that it's not productive to burn out. And so, what's happened is there's two there's two methods of thought when it comes to work at the moment on in this online space or just in general. Um, I'm going write this over here. And so, there's there's two modes of thought at the moment. Okay. Okay. So, we've got this dichotomy basically. And a dichotomy is where we experience a duality where we have two conflicting forces trying to battle each other. We have the the camp of discipline and we have the camp of rest. Okay. And what's happened is in in this um online environment, we've created what we would call an echo chamber for discipline, which is where everyone wants to be disciplined and everyone is striving towards this discipline thing. Everyone's watched David Gogins, everyone's seen the ultramarathon runners, everyone's been shouted at by Andrew Tape. And discipline is is this um digital virtue signal that must be abided by at all circumstances or you will be ostracized both both on a social level and an individual level because you've got to the point now where if you're not disciplined you feel like you're not worth anything. And that is a problem because on the o on the opposite side and you won't really have anything to know about this because your social media algorithms have been engineered and polarized towards this but on the opposite side we have rest, and there are people on the planet who have echo chambers for rest. Now they won't watch this video because they have never burned out in their life and they won't resonate with such a title or a thumbnail. But there are people who all they want to do is rest. And all they want to do is be lazy and lay around and not exert effort. And I'm here to tell you that anyone in either camp is wrong. So if you are a if you're this being of hyper discipline and you know all you do is just work work work work and you never give yourself a break then if you haven't yet you're going to burn out and basically what happens is when you spend you know I spend basically 6 months here without like and I'm I'm talking like I'm I'm I don't think you can comprehend the level of force that I use to force my body to to do things. It was it was when it comes to you know psychology identity um identity has so much command over the body like you you can if you really want something like like people who do hunger strikes like you you you can use the power of your mind to get your body to do anything but only for a period of time right um and so I spent so long here in this disciplined state that I basically did real time like emotional and mental and probably physical physical damage to my body. Um, and I my body forced me to come back to the rest mode. And so, you know, where I spent 6 months here, I know how to spend like 3 to 4 months here. And this is basically just called recovery.
So, let me tell you something because when we put this into a physical context, this starts to make a lot of sense, right? Um, and I'm going to tell you that all the solutions and all the stuff, we're going to get into the practical stuff in a bit, don't worry. But when we think about athletes and people that compete in sports at the highest level, what we find is a massive, massive emphasis on something called recovery. And recovery is what it says on the tin, and you should be familiar with the term, but that's where we allow ourselves time to recover. So, if you're an athlete and you're, let's say that
You're training for the um, let's say you're training for the 100-meter sprint, right? And you know, you're you're you're a foot runner, you're a foot racer, and that's your that's your objective, right?
Well, any athlete can tell you that the victories are made not necessarily in the training, but in the recovery. And you know, from the documentaries I've watched on the best sprinters in the world, they put a huge emphasis on recovery. And what that looks like for them is, you know, taking time to um, stretch their muscles, cold baths, like saunas, days off, etc., etc. Because what happens to athletes who don't recover is they face injury. An injury is the body's way of forcing physical equilibrium.
And so, I'm sure you've had this before. Maybe you exercise in the gym, right? And you know, because you're so polarized towards discipline, your oscillation of this this equilibrium-seeking thing that your body does. It probably happens in the gym as well, where you train, train, train for weeks on end and then you burn yourself out and your central nervous system is just absolutely cooked, and then you can't train anymore and you can't even muster up the motivation to even look at the gym, let alone go. And so in in in sports, athletes experience injuries when they overtrain.
And so when we look at NFL players or, you know, um, American football players or any any sport that has seasons to it. Okay. And this is so that the athletes don't become injured and also so that the sport maintains relevance. And so you know what we'll find, for example, um, in the NFL or in um American football is you have seasons. Okay. And so you have the off-season and you have the on-season. And so the on-season is when the athletes are playing the games and they've got a game every week and they're flying around the country and you know, this typically lasts for about 6 months. So I think the NFL season is September to February if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, it is. And then they have 6 months off. Now, during their off-season, they're still training and they're still exercising and they're still maintaining discipline. But I know from reading lots of biographies of athletes and stuff that when they're when the off-season is is happening, they they rest and they intentionally take time off because they're so [__] from the on-season.
And the same thing is true with boxers. So when we look at professional boxers, we have training camp and then we have sort of off-season again. And so, you know, when it comes to boxing, they have these incredibly intense, you know, couple of months leading up to a fight where they'll they'll really like lock in and, you know, they'll they'll force they'll be completely dialed in with everything and they'll put themselves through absolute hell before a fight. So, like a couple of months before a fight, it's called training camp. But when the fight is done, because boxers usually have a fight a year or fight every two years or whatever, when the fight is done, they'll revert to their off-season. And during their off-season, they still have to train, but it's with nowhere near as much intensity as the training camp.
And so what we can do in sports is we can map their efforts of intensity. So let's write this here. So, we have like an intensity graph where what what players will do is they'll have a pretty decent baseline, you know, professional athletes of of intensity of of training. And let's just call this intensity of training. And I'm defining training, by the way, what we would call work. So, physical or mental exertion on activities that are conducive towards the achievement of an objective, right? So, a goal. And you know, um, there the intensity will be like here, right? And so what they'll do is they'll hold it here for a while and then when it's game season or when it's like when it's on-season like the intensity will spike way up and they'll hold it here for a little bit and then bang they're back down and then they're here again and then bang, you know, and what they're what they're basically doing is is this where they're finding a healthy oscillation and their coach and their the team and the people that look after this athlete are responsible for making sure they don't go too far to the side.
Now what we can find happens to some athletes is injury. So some athletes who aren't as good at managing this, what they might do is they might enter a, you know, a on-season and they might forget to, you know, come out of the on-season and they might just stay in here for too long and they might put too much exertion onto their body and you know, you are a biological creature which means you have limits, right? And this is what I found with my personal experience, but they extend it for so long and then when they try and come back down or maybe they don't try, maybe their body forces them, they overshoot their standard baseline level of performance and they come all the way down here and then they carry on. And so this is this is what happens is what you need to do and this is different for everyone but you need to find what we would call pace, which is a level that you can work at whilst maintaining your health for the next 60 years. And this is why finding your limit and burning out a couple of times in my opinion is a good thing.
Now, I'm not saying you should find your limit in so far as where I went to where I had to go and see doctors and I had to go to hospital because I thought I was having like neurotic episodes and I was having night terrors and sleep paralysis and I was I was in a I cannot begin to describe what it's like, you know, having to basically be down here because, you know, your your body has depth to relaxation and there's there's relaxation that you know where you go on holiday or maybe maybe when you get a little bit sick and you just you feel a bit [__] cuz you haven't done anything for a week, right? But there are levels to this where your body will basically shut down. The ultimate level of relaxation, in case you're wondering, is a coma. So, when you've done such terrible damage to your tissue physically, your body literally enters a coma, which is where it doesn't do it won't do anything except try to guess what recover.
And so when we go to an extreme of intensity, whether that's in sports or in work or in entrepreneurship or with a physical accident, you know, let's say like this, this is easy to understand like when you when you drink too much and you poison yourself with ethanol and too much alcohol, your body comes down here and it gives you a hangover and that's that's your body just trying to process this stuff, right? So what happens to some athletes and some people is they stay up the top for too long because let me tell you something being up here is [__] amazing. This this although it's painful it feels amazing, especially if you have a psychological proclivity to punish yourself for not doing the work. So, you're watching this as someone who is quite abnormal in so far as the fact that you want to put yourself through some pain and you want to discipline yourself and you will derive incredible levels. Your serotonin and dopamine receptors, your happiness levels up here are significant, right? And so, it becomes quite addictive to stay in this state and um if you extend it for too long then you're you're [__].
And what your body will do, and this happens to athletes who have, you know, you know when we see like an up and down, a perfect example of this is Odell Beckham Jr. from the NFL. Now, you might not be familiar with him, but Odell Beckham Jr. is an incredibly talented um wide receiver in the NFL, which means that he he runs and catches the ball. Basically, that's his job. And he's caught some insane catches. He's a very talented athlete. But Odell Beckham Jr. has a severe habit of becoming injured and having to basically, you know, take time off and I don't know him or his life. So, but that is usually a symptom of overtraining and staying up here for too long. So, during his off-season, maybe he's staying up here because that's where he wants to be all the time because he's punishing himself for being down here. And then when it comes to his on-season, he's too low. Now, that is a speculation. It might not be true. In in sports, it's possible to just get injured just because you got injured, right? But, you know, the speed at which you can recover from injuries at the top level of sports is determined by how how much of an equilibrium your body is able to find at the time. And so, if you're up here too long, then you're kind of screwed.
And so the thing is is when it comes to sports and when it comes to physical exertion we understand this because you know this is why in bodybuilding we have Deload and a Deload um if I write this here a Deload something that bodybuilders will do where they'll train really hard for a really long period of time and then they'll basically take like you know a week or two or sometimes even a month-long break from training and you've you've probably experienced this before like you know try to tomorrow and this is not practical advice so don't actually do this but try tomorrow you can think about this for me tomorrow go and run a marathon get get up out of your bed and just put your running shoes on and go run a marathon what that is is for that short period of time that short burst those few hours that you're running you're pushing your intensity way up and what will happen is the next day you're not even going to be able to get out of bed your joints and your your muscles are going to be in severe pain if you're not, you know, if you're not um a seasoned runner, which you're probably not cuz running a marathon is not easy. Um and what your body will do is for in order for you to basically be here for a few hours, your body might need to be here for like a few days or maybe even a week afterwards. And so the thing about this is like intensity is is strange because it it compresses time. And so if you spend um 5 hours running non-stop, then sometimes the body might need 5 days or 10 days to properly recover from that. And so the amount of time you have on does not have to equal the amount of time you have off. And likewise, you can rest with very specific levels of intensity.
So let me give you a personal example from recently and really recently. So this is the thing is you know we know at this point that we have rest and we know at this point we have discipline but what we can do is these things aren't when you when you discipline yourself or when you rest yourself it's not it's not like an on and off switch. There's a there's a scale to it and that scale like I just drew works on intensity. So when you rest, you can rest with massive intensity or little intensity. So you know, for example, like today, if I wanted to rest, what I could do is I could go down to the shop, I could buy a 12-pack of beers and just lay in my bed and buy four buckets of popcorn and scroll on Instagram reels for 12 hours and drink a beer every hour and just live off popcorn for the day. That's an in like that's the opposite of discipline, like the polar opposite of what I'm supposed to do. And by the way, I've never done that before. Sounds like quite a fun day to be honest. Um, but that would be like very intense rest. And so what you need to learn to do is recognize that discipline and rest, they're not these binary states where you're on or off. It's how disciplined or how rested are you.
So let me give you an example. So I recently burned out um as I do as is my pattern of behavior. And what I did is um so basically I so we're now I'm recording this in May of 2025. And since the start of this year, I haven't had a break. I haven't had time off. I haven't really given myself any time. So in January, February, and March, I was working really hard on a course that I'm building. And anyone that's ever built a course um knows how hard it is to build courses. So I did that. I was keeping YouTube consistent. I was hiring, building the company. And I didn't really give myself any time off. And I was living in Dubai and you know I didn't I was just completely like you know if this is the the graph of intensity here I was hovering around here for quite a while. And usually like I'll try and hover like here because you know here is where like I know I can sustain for a long time and I'll have some something left in the tank. If I need to come up here I can go here. So I was kind of like in the danger zone and I knew this was happening because I've done this burnout thing many times before. And so, you know, I was I was hovering way too high up here. And, you know, we'll call this like the danger zone. And this is fine. I can stay here for a while. I can I can stay if I want to. I know this. I can stay here like way above for like 6 months. But then obviously I have to pay a price, right? And um and basically the the problem is is I was I was here and this was extending and extending extending. Then I had a mastermind event. So, an in-person event for 3 days, which is incredibly exhausting. And that requires serious discipline. So what I had to do for the mastermind for a couple days is is spike up here and then come back down, you know. And so this was this was exhausting. And then I had to move house whilst also running the business. And I had to move country from Dubai to the UK, set up an entirely new flat, integrate in a brand new life and continue to work. So I had to then come up here for like a little bit. And that this is basically where I was up until two weeks ago. And so, you know, if if this is zero and this is 100 intensity on the discipline scale, um, usually I can sit like here. And to be fair, like, what did I just drop? Doesn't really matter. To be fair, I'm I'm usually pretty competent at maintaining my discipline. But basically, the point is that I overshot my healthy limits, right?
And so, this this this level here is when I'm I've got full impulse control. I'm not eating any my diet's clean. I'm going to bed on time. I'm working as I should, you know, 12 hours a day. My the thing is about beautiful thing about discipline and the beautiful thing about burnout is what happens is you get quite good at it. And so my my threshold for what might be 40% intensity for discipline is could be your 120%. So if you try to, this is why you shouldn't try and emulate people off the bat because like David Goggins, for example, obviously a freak of nature, very good at building the image of being this hyperdisciplined individual. He runs his ultramarathons, blah blah blah. But the thing is is David Goggins has been a Navy Seal and he's got he's he's worked his discipline muscle to the point where his um his like medium level baseline is most normal people's like 200% overshooting chaos, right? And so for me, if I like, for example, today I um last night I went to bed at 10:00 p.m. This morning I woke up at 6:00 a.m. Um I'm making this video for an hour or two. Then I've got back-to-back meetings for 8 hours. Then I've got more recording to do. Then I've got more [__] Like I'm going to be at work for probably 12 hours. In the process, I'm doing an 18-hour to 20-hour fast. I'm not going to touch my phone. I'm not going to do anything out of order. I'm going to eat very clean food. I'm going to exercise. There's there's no like that to most people is a very disciplined day. But because I've been doing this for so long, it requires less energy. And the cool thing about this discipline chart is after years of doing it, like you you you get better at being disciplined. And you can end up relying more on habit than discipline. And you know, it becomes easier. And so I'm always working towards sort of a rising tide of discipline where I'm shifting myself up and shifting myself up to the point where you know my just standard baseline is just like a normal day in the life for me. But when it comes to program recording like you know not good. So right now I'm still up here. But what happened is I got to this point and this this was two weeks ago. So two weeks ago and the reason by the way that I was in this state and had this state for so long is because I had a holiday coming up. So what I had is um I went to Marba and I got back from Marba last week. So I was in Marbella for a week. Now I was supposed to spend two weeks in Marbella but because of the state of where we're at in the company and the we've got a lot to do and so I I cut my holiday short and only went for a week. So I basically knew [__] I'm going to be in Marbella for one week and one week only. I was expecting two, which is why I was putting I was managing my energy. So I was I was putting myself near the danger zone for quite a while because I knew I had two weeks off and so I had two weeks to rest and relax, which is more than enough for me to recover from a you know, three or four month stint up in the danger zone, right? But it ended up being the case I only had one week in Marbella. And so you know what I did is um I went down and you can you can see this here. So we'll just draw this down here. Okay. So this is the rest zone. Okay. So, we've got the rest zone here and we got the discipline zone here. And what I did, and I'll just bring this down. You can see that. So, what I did is I took I I I immediately went all the way down and I went as far to the bottom as the rest zone as I could. And I held myself there for a week and without any guilt or shame because I had to do this because if I didn't do this, then I would have been in deep trouble. And so, what does this look like? What does the bottom of the red zone look like from a holiday perspective? And this was this was binary cut off, right? So the second that I got on the plane and I got on the British Airways flight from Heathrow to Malaga, which is in Spain, which is where I was going, I just cut off everything. So for this week, no slack, no work, no emails, no stress, nothing, no thinking about work. And basically what I did for a week is I ate nothing but junk food. I started smoking again. I started drinking heavily and I started just watching like short-form content, behaviors that I would I wouldn't even think about engaging in when I'm up here. I I reintroduced and I just I started watching old video game streams and for basically for 16 hours a day, I did everything that you're not supposed to do as an entrepreneur or as a modern man. Now, the one thing that I didn't go back on was pornography because I'm way past that point. Um, and I'm not like I'm not going to the point where I'm introducing behaviors that I know are bad for me that I don't that I never used to do. So like for example, I would never do like sit there and do morphine or cocaine or heroin or like um there's there's lines. So like there's like porn, for example, drugs. Um I wouldn't reintroduce like playing video games. Like there's a lot of things that I wouldn't bring back, right? But basically for a week I laid in bed and I went to a villa with my friends and I laid around in the sun and I drank beers. I smoked cigarettes. I listened to music and I watched short-form content and I just watched TV for basically a week and I lived and for me for my body that is like um that is like rest paradise that's about as far as I can imagine pushing myself and
So what I did is what a lot of people do when they go on holiday, is um, they they they come to like here. So they they leave the disciplined like realm and they enter the rest realm. But you know, this is like activity holidays where they're still doing things, and they're still keeping their diet in check, and they're still keeping their sleep in check, and everything's, you know, and they keep themselves, you know, here. And that's fine because, you know, a lot of people they don't need intense rest, right?
But for me, like it was nothing but sugar, nicotine, alcohol, restaurants, the boys, partying, and like I went I went hard, and I needed to do that because I've been up here for an irrational amount of time. And so what you have to learn is that you are, when you are up here, is you are creating debt. And I'm going to call this um, burnout debt. Okay. And burnout debt is basically something we'll talk about in a second. But when you spend too long up here, and when you when you're pushing beyond your standard energetic expenditure capabilities, which you know when you're doing because you start experiencing symptoms and getting tired, then you have to learn to bring it down because if I stayed here for too long, then my body will force me here and worse.
So, you know, I basically guilt-free, like I gave myself the pass for a whole week to do whatever the hell I wanted. Not whatever exactly whatever the hell I wanted. I wasn't going to go raping and pillaging or anything like that, right? But really, I just sat in a sun lounger and drank beer and smoked cigarettes. And for my body, that was like that's like anti-stress relaxation paradise.
And so what I found is I'd been pretty intense up here for so long, but because I rested with such great intensity over the course of a week, and any of my friends that came with me can attest to this because they went out playing golf and they were going to the gym and like they were having fun, I just sat in bed and stared at Instagram reels. I won't lie to you. And I didn't even know Italian brain rock was a thing until then. And you know, I'm not sure I want to know about it again.
But what I've done, and this is where this is where you need to learn to do this, because what then happened is I finished my week in Marbaya and bang, I'm straight back up to here. So the second I get back, the second I I can break this. I I don't have to stay here. And what when you when you've been doing this for a while as an entrepreneur, you get really good at at basically telling your body what to do. And you're kind of like your own coach. So imagine that your body is um is an athlete and you are coaching the athlete. Right. Now a coach's job is to manage the athlete and basically put them here where they need to be here and put them here where they need to be here. And what I can do and what you should be able to learn to do eventually, what you should be able to learn to do is read the signs of your physiology and be able to adjust your behavior accordingly.
Because what people think is that extreme rest is self-sabotage. And it's not. What extreme rest is, and when you don't rest, your body forces you to. And what burnout is, right? Basically, we're defining burnout as forced rest. So, involuntary rest, right? What burnout is is it's your body trying to protect you. Because imagine if you stayed here unchecked for so long. Your cortisol levels go up, your stress levels go up, you get anxious, you get weird. Like your body needs to protect you. There you you have limits. You have limitations to your, you know, behavioral capacity when it comes to doing hard, painful things. You know, imagine if like, you know, you you went to the gym every day and trained for three hours a day to failure on every single set every day and you tried to do that for 3 months, you you'd end up in hospital. Like your central nervous system would become so distraught and destroyed and your immune system would go to [ __ ] Your everything would just fail, right? Your body has limits, you know, and even even cars have to be serviced and and you know, arrested, right?
And so people demonize rest, especially when you're on camp discipline all the time and this is where you've structured your identity on this on this scale. People demonize rest and they think that what they when their body forces them to rest, they see it as this horrible bad thing, but really your body is just trying to protect you. And whilst it might make you angry and it might make you sad and annoyed, this is very necessary. And if you don't learn to integrate this, then you're [ __ ]. This is a problem because everyone is very impatient and everyone just wants to go go go like all the time. All the time. Sorry, voice crack there. All the time. And they think that staying in the camp discipline is the fastest way to get to their goals. It's not. Like look at any professional in any sport or any anywhere else out if once you remove the context of yourself and entrepreneurship and business because entrepreneurship is a sport, right? So when you look at any physical sport, you think, "Oh [ __ ] that makes sense." But in our in in business and in entrepreneurship, we use our mind. But what is the mind an extension of? It's an extension of the body, which means that it is constrained and limited by bodily functions. And there's only so much you can ask of it, man. Right?
And so that's that's the way you need to learn to do this. And you know I have no shame in taking myself to, you know, what we would call pleasure island for, you know, a week or two if I need to, and you know the danger is staying there. So you know I can tell you I can give you the protocol that I use to snap out of it. Right. So first of all I knew I was only staying for a week and you know I knew that I was um going to be in Marbar for a week. So I was like I need to relax hardcore. So, I just removed all my inhibitions and I kept some so I'm not going to go back to like really terrible behaviors and I'm not going to start like shooting up cocaine or anything cuz I you know you keep your standards to a degree but then I just chilled and then what you do is you bookmark and this is this is basically what I call this is how to take a break right so you know you have the elapsement of time which in this case for me was seven days and this is this is seven days of rest and the main thing that you want to look to control um is is your diet. Now, you can let the diet go. So, I was eating burgers. I was I was eating like honey out of a jar. Like, I was just I my I was just gorging on like sugar and crap and I felt [ __ ].
Now, don't get me wrong, like my body didn't feel good, but it was I was resting. I was relaxing, right? And so, what I do when I'm going on holiday is I bookmark my holidays with a fast. So, what I will do is I will do a one-day fast before the holiday to get my body like just to sort of put myself into the thing. So, the day before I go on holiday, I'll do a one-day fast, which means when I arrive on holiday, then bang, the the gorge begins. Diet for me is a big trigger because basically what I find is the easiest way for me to rest is to sedate myself and b because in inside of my brain I've got this little demonic mechanism that just wants to make me work all the time. But when I eat loads of [ __ ] food that demonic little mechanism goes to sleep, right? And so diet for me and food for me is a great way to rest and and properly relax because when I'm when I'm carb the [ __ ] up and I'm sedated with so much sugar and bread and pizza and pasta and crap, I I I just that little voice in my head just goes away. And so for you that might be alcohol. I'm not and you know I'm not saying this is a healthy thing, but we we operate in a very strange place in the world as entrepreneurs, as business people. We our behavior and what we how we relax and switch off is not normal. Right? So for me it's diet big time.
So what I'll do for this seven days is eat whatever my body desires. If if it wants chocolate, it's getting chocolate. If it wants crisps, it's getting crisps. Like I I would just I would I was just I'd sit there and I remember when I arrived, there's a beautiful restaurant next to the house that we were staying at. And all I did I I ordered like two burgers and like two desserts and they have this Dubai chocolate French toast and I was just I was just bang and then once that's in my body I don't want to work anymore and so I can I can properly rest without this discipline polarization that I I'd coded into myself for like seven years. It doesn't kick in. And so basically I'm eating whatever the [ __ ] I want for these seven days. And then on at the end of the holiday, the two days after the holiday, I I rebookmark with another fast. Okay? And I'll do a two-day fast here. So, the easiest way to for me, because diet is my trigger to rest, the easiest way for me to snap back into the discipline state is with fasting. And so what I'll basically do is and what I did and this was literally last week. So I just came back from holiday is I I didn't eat anything for 48 hours.
And the cool thing about fasting and the best thing about this is it resets your dopamine system. So basically what I was doing during this resting state is spiking my dopamine levels like way up way above what they'd usually be because my body is not used to like sugar and um short form content and smoking and alcohol like this is this is this is like a [ __ ] foreign pleasure to my body like it never experiences that right so my dopamine shot way up and what this means is when I return from holiday or when I return from a week like that which I'll give myself once every 6 to 9 months maybe depending on like how intense my life is. Um then afterwards I know I'm going to enter something called a dopamine deficit state. And a dopamine deficit state is when you experience an incredible high of dopamine and then you know after you've experienced that high you come back down but you overshoot your previous baseline which means you do not feel adequately stimulated. This then registers on a um on a physical level and a mental level as you being I rate, irritable, slightly depressed, a bit apathetic. And these are very unpleasant feelings to feel. But what I found is when I do Dopamine is is the chemical of anticipation. And if you bookmark, and this is a [ __ ] hack, if you bookmark a holiday with a fast, which means you do one this side and one this side, then all of your dopamine, this this dopamine trail up here gets attached to the fast because because I've rested with food and because I've eat sedated myself with burgers and carbs, which I never do. So, I'm now just led in bed just scrolling through crap, right? It was a great week. I had a great time, don't get me wrong. But now I can't do if I keep doing that then my business fails. Right? So what I would then do is I do a fast for 2 days. And what this does is all of this dopamine this excess dopamine becomes attached to the two-day fast. And I've what I've done is I've given my body a 48 hour window to anticipate the pleasure of eating food. And by giving because food is by far the most stimulating thing that I was engaging with right during this time like it was the heaviest stimulating activity. The smoking like couple of cigarettes a day it's not that stimulating right the drinking like a few beers a day not that stimulating. The short form content like I can get over that in a heartbeat. But the food the the the the organic matter entering my body that was creating everything that was the thing that really gets me right.
So, what I do is do a two-day fast, which gives my body a 48 hour window to anticipate the next meal. And the key is in breaking the fast with something really healthy and really clean. So, when I got back, I I I didn't I didn't eat for two days. And then I broke my fast with steak and eggs and olive oil and beef tallow and and some hot sauce. So, like typ I'm back to my carnivore diet, my just typical like keto carnivore diet. And what then happens is my dopamine receptors because they've become so depleted because I was in such a high stage and now I'm below this baseline, I don't get the apathetic anxiety that you'd usually get of a baseline because there's this massive anticipation towards the next meal. And what happens when I eat the next meal, when I eat the steak and the eggs, my that food because I'm starving registers on such a massive dopamineergic high and and then therefore my dopamine receptors become reattached to what I ate before I left. And so it by doing this two-day fast, it's almost to my body on a physical level as if this never happened. So my dopamine levels, they might dip a little bit below baseline, but they don't create this weird apathetic anxiety that you would usually feel after, you know, seven days of just basically butchering your body with high stimulation. And so by doing this two-day fast at the end, I do any time that I rest or anytime that I experience heavy heavy intensive intentional relaxation through basically me eating [ __ ] do a fast because then you extend you have this wonderful like 20 48 hour period of anticipation and during those 48 hours your dopamine levels like they come down but they still stay high because you haven't eaten yet. So the anticipation is still there, but they they come low enough during the 48 hours so that something like a steak or something like a salad is stimulating enough so that the the dopamine receptors immediately reattached to what you ate before. I it's taken me [ __ ] eight years to figure that one out, but it works.
Okay, so the next thing that we need to understand is is debt. Um so you know how like in in um finance you know we have savings and we have debt. Okay. And so you know debt is a financial term used to describe having to pay something off. And basically what this looks like as an entrepreneur is you know if we if we draw out the the graph of discipline and if we draw out the graph of rest again like this. Okay. And we have this sort of thing in the middle. This is 100 discipline. This is 100 rest. And this is zero of either. Well, what happens is you you basically create burnout debt, which I've written up here. Okay. So, burnout debt. So, this is when you you go you overshoot this or you you go too high here for too long. And what that does is it it basically creates like a almost chemical it might be a chemical reaction. But it creates a reaction in your body where you now have a debt to pay. And so think about it like this. Sorry about that. I had a call come in on my phone so still recording. So if you stay up here for too long, you basically build up a debt with your body. And that then means that you have to spend, you know, more time down here. And the easiest example I can give you to explain this was the example I gave you earlier where I spent you know six months way above my discipline threshold like you know I was spent I I I was disciplined disciplining myself as if I was a business CEO of 30 years. Now, if a business CEO of 30 years held the level of discipline that I held for that long, he or she probably would have been fine, right? Because people who have been doing this for a very long time have very high thresholds for burnout. And so, my threshold for burnout now is significantly higher. Like I said, I can spend, you know, a good 3 or 4 months up here if I have to. I really can. But if you tried to spend three or four months up here, you'd burn out way faster than I do because my threshold for burnout is significantly greater. And so this is why I still believe that pushing your limits and going to your extremes sometimes is good because it forces you to, you know, it basically allows you to become more disciplined. Um, and it means that you can spend more time up here. But just remember that however much time you spend up here is always going to come down to here.
And how do you know? This is the question of how do you know when you're coping or when you're actually burned out because a lot of people may struggle with this and they they they think that the rest thing is a self-sabotage and like you know it's it's hard it's hard to discern because the question the big big ultimate question is you know when is when are you actually burned out and when are you just tired or you know when when is it the case that you're like just making some excuse? So, you know, you probably have this skepticism because it's hard to know because you're you like to make excuses to not do the painful things and you're well aware of this, but also you you you now don't know. Am I making excuses or am I actually burned out? Is my body trying to tell me to take rest or is my self-sabotage demon side just trying to force me to do things I shouldn't do? Well, we don't really have to look much further here, and symptoms. Okay, so everyone has symptoms when it comes to burnout. And a symptom is basically a physical it's almost always physical or mental manifestation. So for me for example with my with my physical um the the tellt tell sign that I'm burned out and that I'm spending too much time in my disciplined state is disassociation. And so this is when I'm if I've been working too much for too long and I'm seeing people and seeing friends and they start to not feel real. That's when I know [ __ ] I'm getting pretty close to the limit. And so what your body will do is it will it will start showing you signs that it's not well. Another one for me, although I don't really get this so much anymore, I used to get it would be getting sick or waking up at like 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. with my mind just racing and feeling like really nauseous in the night. You know, I used to get this when I was close to burning out where I'd feel really nauseous or I'd get really brain foggy or, you know, you should know what your symptoms are and you need to learn them and you need to figure them out. So, for example, for me, um a symptom of burnout that I might experience, what's one that I experienced before is is not um is not basically trying to work but not being able to. So, the week before I went on holiday, I was really running on fumes at that point. I was running on complete energetic reserves. And I was so exhausted that I didn't turn my camera on for any Zoom meetings that week because I was I was I had to like basically disengage from the meetings and I I was just I had my feet on my desk like led back like this just trying to pay attention. That's a sign of burnout, right, for me is when I'm trying to work but I just cannot get my I can't focus or engage. Um the main one is the disassociation. That's the serious, severe, big boy, bad, big time. Oh [ __ ] I've been here for too long. And what your body will do is it will put you through stages of symptoms, right? And so, you know, let's say that we've got stage one, stage one, stage two, and stage three. And so, what your body will do is it will give you warning lights before it gets to a point, right? And then, you know, we've got over here stage four. And trust me, you do not want to go to stage four. So stage one, this might be, you know, when you start coping a little bit.
Like, oh, I'm a bit tired, or like, you know, I'm I'm a bit brain fog, or I just can't really focus. Like, this is—you can push through this. This is fine, right? And this is just like, you know, maybe you get like, um, I don't know, may maybe you're like, um, you get a little bit stressed or something, right? This is—you can push through this.
Stage two. So this this is almost always mental. Okay, so this is when you know you get a little bit stressed out, maybe a little bit anxious, you start getting a little bit like freaked out, like just a bit weird, right? But you can you can generally push through and ignore this, and and you might be in stage one for, you know, this is arbitrary, right? But this might be, you know, one to three weeks. But if you ignore—and and by the way, you should push through stage one because, you know, you can, and it doesn't it won't cost you much. You won't get into much debt with your body for pushing through stage one.
Stage two is physical. So stage two is when you've pushed through stage one. Um, and I'm going to put physical um level one because stage three is physical level two. Okay. Um, and so stage two of the burnout cycle is is where you start to um you physically you start to notice things happen. Um, so you start getting headaches, or your sleep starts to suffer a little bit, or you know, you start feeling maybe a little bit nauseous, or or you—for me sometimes I'll lose my appetite. And so you the these are these are phys physiological symptoms, you know, physical symptoms, but they are once again bearable. Like, it's not—you're not at the point right now where you're like, you know, in in this horrible horrible way, but it starts to add up a little bit, and you know, you start getting to this point, and you know, once again this can last between like, we'll say one and 3 weeks—might be shorter, might be more. At this point, this is where you want to take your foot off the gas and stop because, you know, when your when your mind's not in a good place and your body's not—maybe you get like a little cold or you start getting a little cough—like you just start getting a little sick—things just don't feel right. You're not sleeping very well. It's it's once again it's completely bearable, but it's it's almost bearable to the point where you don't notice. You just think that you've eaten something weird, right? And you can push through this if you want.
But then what happens is we get to stage two physical, and this is where we start to get really problematic, right? This is where you cannot sleep, or you you you go to sleep later because your brain's racing, and you you know you're waking up—and for me this is like I'll wake up like really sweaty in the night, and I'll get like, you know, I'll get really—I wake up with like nausea or something sometimes—how stressed I am. This is when you start getting sick. So you start getting—for for my business partner B, his um my my primary burnout symptom is psychological disassociation. My business partner's primary burnout symptom is a fever. So when he's overdone it, he'll get a fever, and he'll have a fever for like a night or two where he's just getting all hot and cold. That's how his body um signifies that there's too much stress and that there's a there's this rest debt to pay, right? So, you know, it can be sleep, you can start getting sick. This is when you can start getting like um really really anxious, you know, and here you might be a little anxious, but it might just be a little bit of emotional turbulence, right? Like, "Oh, I don't know if I'm going to be successful or not." But here, this is when we're really starting to enter the realm of like, "Shit, I'm actually starting to feel really, really anxious." Um, this is when, you know, you might start getting nauseous. You know, you might start getting really poorly. This is at this point—you stop. This is when you need to rest, right? And this could once again be one to three weeks of these symptoms. Um, and so, you know, we come through these stages, and the problem that most people have is they push through these stages relentlessly over and over again. They ignore the symptoms.
By the way, once you get to stage three, sometimes all you need to do is just go and watch like [ __ ] nature documentaries and eat ice cream for like 48 hours, and then like you can completely reset yourself back to like, you know, this is this is the healthy point. This is the this is the healthy point of stress. So this is where you can work without feeling any of these symptoms. But what will happen is you will you will exit the healthy point again after like a month or two or maybe even a few weeks. So you know, don't think that you have to take—do what I did—and spend—the only reason I had to do what I did is because I was in stage three for three months. And bear in mind my stage three is far better than yours. So, you know, for for example, if you worked as hard as I did, and this is not like an egotistical oneup, it's just because I've got a lot of practice. If you worked as hard as I did with as much focus and intent as I did, with discipline that I did for the first 3 to 4 months of this year, you'd be deep into stage four, but for me, I was deep into stage two. So, I can go for like really—I was sort of hovering between stage two and honest honestly, I was kind of in stage three at this point. I start like—another thing that I get is I'll start getting like um little sleep paralysis things. It's really weird. Like I know all these symptoms and I know why they exist, and they don't frighten me. It's just my body saying like—cuz your body hasn't got words. Your body can't communicate. The only thing it can communicate with is pain and emotion. So, you know, you got to learn to listen.
So, anyway, like I was saying, if you tried to do what I did, you'd be over here. But let me tell you about stage four. So, stage four is Armageddon. And this is where this is where really bad things start to happen. So the thing is is you can—stage three is kind of like your body's last resort of like warning you like—do not push me because if you do there is going to be serious consequences. Um, and the the thing is is once you get to stage four, it requires a lot of rest to pay off the debt. So paying off debt by pushing past stage one is pretty easy. That's just a day day or two off. Paying off debt after stage two is once again pretty easy. That's like three four days off. Paying off debt at stage three isn't easy, but this is like when you have to take one or two weeks off, right? So if you if you push past stage one, you might need a couple of days off. Push past stage two, you might need something up to a week off. If you push through stage three for too long and you get to like here in stage three, then you're going to need to take like two weeks off. And so you know this is fine because you can be you know this entire cycle could be like a threemonth thing for you, and then you have a two-week break. So you don't need to adequate or doesn't it doesn't need to be like equidistant or equit time in so far as that you don't need to take the same amount of time off that you had on. It just means that you need to rest with serious intensity, right? So, for example, up until this Marba thing, I was getting like into the camp of stage three. And you know, I pushed through the physical, I pushed through the mental, and now I was getting physical, too, where I was starting to get like [ __ ] up sleep, and I started to like lose my appetite, and I was suddenly didn't want to go to the gym anymore, and like I was—my body just started to shut down a little bit, and I was like, [ __ ] right? So, I I just took a week off completely.
Um, but stage four, you've probably never been to stage four before. And if you have, you'd know about it. And trust me, I know some of you have, so some of you know this. Stage four, this is where we welcome things such as panic attacks. This is where we welcome such things such as inflammation. This is where we welcome things like weight gain. This is where we welcome things like depression. This is where we welcome things such as um night terrors. And this is where we welcome such things such as infections. Um, I'm going to run out of room. But this this is where—and this has all happened to me—where I've got so burned out that I have panic attacks. My entire body becomes inflamed, and I just I become a vehicle for brain fog. Basically, I'm just carrying fog around everywhere. You you start gaining weight because you can't exercise because your your central nervous system and your stress systems are just so shot. You know, you're just so stressed out. You start getting depressed. You start having night terrors. You can't sleep properly. You start getting infections because your immune system's so shot. And then suddenly everything starts going out of the window. Stage four, you do not push through because stage five, and I've nearly been here before. My body forced me. I could—I don't think it—I'd never made it to stage five before, but stage five is hospitalization. And this is where you'd have to be put on drips, and you you'd probably have to go into some sort of psychiatric. And I'm not even [ __ ] joking. And I know that might seem like an exaggeration, but if you push through these things and you push your body so far, this is this is when you do irreversible psychological and physiological traumatic damage to your mental and physical tissue. This is where you start de—this is how you develop mental disorders. It's how you ruin your body beyond repair. It's how you build addictions and habits that you cannot reverse. You do not want to go to stage five. You don't really want to go to stage four. What you want to do is cycle from stage one to three and then take a take a break for a week or two and then repeat the cycle.
And so that's what I'm doing right now. Like I'm I've been back at work for a week. There's no—I haven't even—I'm not even close to stage one yet. I can go for like an—I'm going to be going 12 hours a day, 6 days a week with full intent and discipline for maybe four to six to eight weeks before I even get close to stage one. And it won't be around until I've got this planned. It won't be around until October. So May, June, July, August, September, October. It's not for another four or five months I'm going to be in midphase three, right? And so what I like to do is I like to plan my rest because now I know in after four or five months of going [ __ ] hard, I'm going to be back at at stage three. I am. It's an impossible thing for me to not be, and I've done it long enough to know when I'm going to get there. And so I'm going to arrive there, and I've already scheduled time off, a week off in October to compensate for that. And you know, it's it's pretty straightforward. And what you also want to learn to do is you want to integrate this into your days as well because you know if you're moving through the stages you can you can slow down the speed at which you go through the stages. Um, and I can show you you know what this looks like. You can do this on a daily basis as well as a monthly or quarterly basis. Right? So I'll leave you with this in in in closing because this is really important. So, you know, if this is my um so we can we can map this diagram, right? Because we've got this graph here, we've got the discipline and we've got the rest line, right? Yeah, we can see that. Okay. And you know, we've got the middle here. So, what we can do is is we can track this in months. Okay. Where we're looking at the my monthly thing. So, what I'll probably do, you know, if we've got um if we've got where are we now? So let's just say this is June, we've got July, we've got August, we've got September, and we've got October. Right? So what I'm going to basically do for the next like four or five months is I'm right now I'm up here. So I'm in a pretty high state of discipline, right? I'm not pushing myself beyond—well I am to a bit, but I'm not going really like too hard where I'm trying to train for an iron man and learn five languages and read read a book a day. Like I'm just I'm just working. I'm just keeping a steady pace here, right? And so I'm going to be up here for a while, and every now and then, you know, over the course of this 5 month period, I'll have mini breaks. And so what I might do is I might go to, I don't know, Milan or something for a couple of days and just, you know, just for a very short period of time, only for like a couple of days in the scheme of the next 5 months, will I will I take this this time off and go and chill out, maybe see some friends in Sweden or something, and then I'll spike back up and keep going again. And the reason, you know, that—and then maybe I'll do it again. Maybe in like August, I'll go home, and I'll spend like a couple of days with my brother, and, you know, we'll chill out and go somewhere and just—we we do this—me me and my siblings. We go on little sibling holidays, right? And you know, I'll chill out. I won't go down here. What I—cuz what I did before—cuz remember this is a scale of rest. This is a scale of intensity. So I'm not—when I'm here, I'm not smoking and drinking and eating junk food. I'm just taking a couple of days off work, like a couple of consecutive days, long weekends, right? And then I'm coming back up. And what will happen is I'm at this point—I'm still building a debt because I'm not like—remember I'm up here pretty hard, right? I'm I'm really far up here. And so what I'll do when I get to October is I'll bring it all the way down, and for a week I'll come here. And because there's margin up here, so I'm I'm at 80% here, which means I'm building an 80% debt. So when I come down to here at 100% it has to make sense. Obviously, the math isn't quite—it's arbitrary, right? But my point here is if the longer you spend up here, like let's say that you're operating at 80% discipline for a month, then what that might mean is for a week, you know, you might have to operate at 100% rest. And so, it's not going to be perfectly matched, but I think you get my point in terms of what I'm trying to communicate here, right? And so the what I'm doing is I'm basically building disciplined debt because I'm, you know, I'm I'm way above the the standard equilibrium, right? You no, you never really want to be here. You never want to just be not disciplined and not restful because that's not productive either way. But because I'm way above my like rest level. There's no rest at all in my life. I'm building debt. And what I'm doing slowly is I'm building this burnout debt. So I'm building it here, right? Right? And I'm building it here. And I'm building it here. And what's going to happen is it's going to add up. And it's going to add up. And so what I'm doing every every other month or so is I'm going on a long weekend break. Um, and I'm resting slightly just to pay off part of this debt. And I'm just paying it off just a little bit. Like I'm just dipping down into like a 20% rest state just to pay off a little bit of the debt. Just because if if I build up too much debt like then I'm [ __ ] And this is how you enter the stages. So for example, you know, this is this is stage one. So I'm in burnout stage one at this point, and then this could be stage two, and then this could be stage three. And by the time I get to stage three, I then take the big the big serious like I'm overshooting my rest intensity and and really relaxing um by just eating loads of food and then doing a fast and then coming back up. And this this is how you cycle through the stages. But the thing is that if I didn't take this rest, let's say I didn't take this rest and I was, you know, I was like, "Oh, I'm not going to do that break. I'm not going to take any days off and I'm not going to rest at all." And I stayed in this state. Then what would happen is what would be stage two at this point is actually stage three. So you cycle through the stages way faster, and then this would be stage four. So when you don't rest, you cycle through the stages faster.
And so something that I will do religiously every single week is take off Saturday afternoons and Sundays. Now not always Saturday afternoons because usually I've got a lot of work to do, but without question I will always take off Sundays. And so every Sunday for me is spent down here. Not down here. I'm not smoking. I'm not drinking. I'm not eating junk food. But what I—I'm not watching Instagram reals. I'm not doing anything stupid. What I am doing is just is maybe watching like three movies and just eating a massive salad or something. For me, that's very restful, right? Um, you know, or I'm just sitting here and just like eating like a whole chicken from Nando's whilst watching like, you know, something on on Netflix. And then I'm going to like see some friends or something and maybe having like a pint of beer, but nothing like nothing like down here like I'd do if I was on holiday. And by doing that, by every Sunday, by really just taking myself to the opposite extreme to what I'm used to throughout the weekday, I'm able to just delay this climb because what you're doing when you're working is you're always climbing through the stages, and you're you're always gearing yourself up for this big reset. But when you integrate rest and when you have like a day or two a week where you are just like monging out and just relaxing, then you're set. What you never want to sacrifice during these little day long breaks—like your Saturdays and Sundays—do not sacrifice your sleep and do not sacrifice your diet. So you know, I will stay in ketosis. I will continue to eat clean. I'm not ordering like burgers and Shake Shack and milkshakes and sugary things, and I'm not going to bed at 3:00 am because what that does—that just [ __ ] me for the week. But what I am doing is just laying around watching like a Netflix series and just eating like chicken. Not like fried chicken that's covered in like [ __ ] but just like Nando's chicken—banging by the way—or like some big salad or something. For me, that's all of rest. It might not be for you, but you you'll work to this point. So yeah, that's basically how to deal with burnout as an entrepreneur. Pay attention to the symptoms and understand that you are a being of um nature. You are an organic beast. You—such a great insult. You [ __ ] organic beast. But you're you're made of organic material. And what that means is you have limits and constraints on your behavior and your stress levels and how much your body can tolerate before it sends you into pandemonium and and and and hurts you. And I've been there, and it's not pleasant.
By the way, I'm going to sell you something really quickly. You probably aren't this, but if you are a marketing agency owner, coach, consultant, or course seller, then there's a link in the description you can click because one thing that might be burning you out is client acquisition. You can click that link in the description if you're being burned out because of that. You're probably not any of those things, but if you are and you need to get more clients, you can click that link. I shameless pitch.
Over, right? But you've been with me for an hour and a half, or whatever, so I think I've earned the right to at least try and sell something.
So yeah, that's how to avoid burnout, and that's how I do it, and it works well for me.
So yeah, see you in the next video, and don't be a [ __ ] idiot. [Music]