Ep. 96 Screw Your Morning Routine + Your Work Life Balance

Screw Your Morning Routine + Your Work-Life Balance

You’re supposed to have a work-life balance. You’re supposed to have a spectacular morning routine to be successful. And you’re supposed to grind yourself into the ground so that one day, just maybe, you can retire.

In this episode, Torie Mathis and her cohost Sean debunk all the things you’re supposed to be doing and go over real strategies to success. Burn the handbook. Punch the guru. Blow up the morning routine. Let’s get real.

Listen or watch the full episode below:

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 96

Torie: [00:00:00] Just because you see that this is the map of success. That doesn’t mean that’s your map.

Hey guys, what’s up? I’m your host, Torie Mathis. And I’m here with the one and only Sean Mathis, founder of Miles Through  Time Automotive Museum. 

Sean: [00:00:24] What up you, 

Torie: [00:00:25] Sean mentioned something very interesting in an episode a little while ago, and I think it is worth revisiting. I don’t remember which episode it is. I’ll have to look that up, but you said that you don’t want to work hard, play hard. That is the wrong way to think. 

Sean: [00:00:43] I remember that. 

Torie: [00:00:44] What’d you say? 

Sean: [00:00:45] I want to work smart and play often. 

And that 

Torie: [00:00:48] is a really big difference. I think that people have in their mind this, and I hate it. It’s this work-life balance. And even though everybody knows that it’s bullshit. I think it’s ingrained in us subliminally. I don’t know, subconsciously that we really go back to this whole but wait a minute, we’re supposed to have this work here and Life balance here and it’s supposed to even out, or, and then it always feels like we’re off ah this doesn’t feel right.

We’re not, we must not be doing this. And I hate that. I hate that. There’s this. And I don’t know if it’s a society thing, but because we see things on TV or we see ads, or we see social media, we see the highlight reel of people’s lives. That we feel like we’re not balancing up to whatever this like fake persona is that we think we’re supposed to do.

And the work-life balance. One is one of those that I think is super crappy and makes people feel like crap or feel like they’re missing out when really, I think that it’s just like readjusting how you look at things. 

Sean: [00:01:51] You look up anything and there’s like this entrepreneur grind and you’ve got to grind and just do all these things. And what happens is you can grind all day long and there’s still potential. You fail, you lose your family. Yeah. The risk for that kind of mentality is so high as psychologically because, you think I gave it absolutely everything. The thing is there’s no guarantees. So you give everything, you potentially lose everything.

And then what are you supposed to do from there? Like you’ve done everything you’re supposed to do where the thing is, maybe you just didn’t do it the right way. Yeah. 

Torie: [00:02:30] Or maybe that thing wasn’t for you when you were just talking about we had family come visit and it’s so interesting to be under around other parents. Because everybody parents so different and you’ll obviously everybody’s doing the best that they can and doing what they think is the best, but it’s still very different probably than, I probably parent very different than you parent. And so everybody does it so different. So it sounds like it’s kinda crazy that somebody could write a book and be like, this is the right way, because there’s no fricking way that any of it is the right way.

There’s no little map now. 

Sean: [00:02:59] There’s a C there’s my sister, I’ve got two brothers and you’ve got Three more siblings. So all of us, similar ages with kids, not one of us parents the same way, 

Torie: [00:03:13] not even close. And I think we all probably look at each other and we’re like, dang I can’t believe you do that.

Sean: [00:03:19] Yeah. That, there’s so many differences between all of us and when you’re talking yeah. Two different sets of parents between all of us. And yet we’re still all that different with our own kids. And yeah, I was like, I see how these books on how to parent and all that. It’s all bullshit.

All it is like some information it’s not the, go to parenting for dummies. Like you can’t take that. And. No, that’s the only way. 

Torie: [00:03:45] It’s the same with diet books. Like they put out this this is the diet, but everybody’s different. Your body’s different. You’re at a different time in your life who knows, your stress level is different.

Like you can’t really compare your journey to whatever there is out there saying that it is the one. And parenting dieting work-life balance, like it’s not really a one size fits all and you can’t. You compare yourself to that because it’s not real. And I fell for this super hard, the morning routine.

I thought, oh I want to be successful. I should do one of these morning routines. And I went 110% in it. And I got up early before everybody else. Because you need that hour of time before. So I got up way too early in the morning. I had this whole checklist of all these ABC, things that I was supposed to do.

And I did all of them. And then the, took the kid to the bus stop and I ran, walked three miles and you did all the things. I got so sick. And I think that maybe that was a good thing that happened because I think after that happened we switched things around a little bit. And I think you take on Sean, we’ve talked about this before.

Sean makes like the kids’ lunches. Riley’s making his own, but so Bella, Sean does that. I don’t have to worry about that. And there’s no reason that it needs to be me that does that. But like at that time, I really thought that like I was supposed to do all these things and I needed to do these. And if I checked off every single little line item and I would be successful, you know what? I was burning the fuck out.

I cannot wake up at 4:00 AM and be a good mom and a good wife and a decent human. And when I did do that, oh my gosh. And when I did do that, like I had to go to bed so much earlier than everybody. It just like in order for me to try to balance it and work it out, like I lost my evening time with Sean because I was dead tired that I had to go to bed.

Just because you see that this is the map of success. Doesn’t mean that’s your map. Like you really got to figure your own map out. 

Sean: [00:05:53] The thing is you’ve run even more productive because you worked harder. 

Torie: [00:05:59] I checked off the all a lot of stuff though, Sean. But it wasn’t smarter the right stuff. Do I need to meditate every day? No. Do I need to read this amount of pages and No. I think those things are good. And I think that figuring out like what it is that works for you is good. But like that, it just because you didn’t check off all those things or you’re not like 

Sean: [00:06:19] It’s not the end of the world.

Torie: [00:06:21] And I think it’s good to even with dieting, people are always trying to figure out what the one is and they just haven’t found it yet. You can’t go find it. I like that. And you mentioned before that give and take, like it’s a guide and there’s lots of guides out there. So go look at all those different guides, whether it’s parenting books or diet books, or, morning routines and pick and choose what you want, because that’s totally allowed.

My mom was always good at telling me that he’s take what you want, leave what you don’t want. And I think you can do that with everything. 

Sean: [00:06:53] The thing is you don’t know what works for you until you try. And just the same. You don’t know what doesn’t work for you until you try it.

Torie: [00:07:03] Just because something worked before doesn’t mean it’s going to continue to work for you. So things aren’t set in stone. 

Sean: [00:07:09] That’s evolution like you, you like how you are today, most likely isn’t how you were 10 years ago. At least I would probably hope not because you’re living in the past. If that’s the case, you should.

Changing and evolving and, especially like kids changed everything as the kids get older, it changes stuff. We cannot be the same people. We were pre kids. We can’t be the same people. We had toddlers or to get it. It just it doesn’t work out, especially with move and, we change all these things.

You can’t just keep doing this. Thing. It doesn’t make sense. So you keep trying different things and it stuff, some stuff will work and some stuff won’t and, but trying it and like stopping shit that doesn’t work is what is needed. You try, it works great. You doesn’t, don’t do that again and keep going.

And eventually you smooth everything out and stuff starts running autopilot, which is what you want. If you have to consciously think of all these things all the time, it is it’s going to stress you out because what it is it’s decisions decision. Whereas if you just start trying things and we even stuff out like become, it becomes habits and habits is what you want. You don’t want to have to make all these decisions on what to do, 

Torie: [00:08:23] But if a habit stops working for you, has a good habit, might end up. A bad habit. And being able to shake that out and yeah. Keep it as like the waking up early I was in the army. I had to wake up at the crack of Dawn.

I was also very young, and so my body then is different than my body. Now having two kids,  it’s totally different. Like I could get up earlier than now. Like I am not my best if I don’t get eight hours of sleep like in, I know that’s how I am. And I try to tell the kids out.

Whenever Riley stays up way too late. He either is super grumpy or he gets sick and I’m like, dude, you have to realize that, sorry, you don’t get to be the party animal. Like you need sleep or look what happens. Bella naturally knows that she needs to get to sleep. When she puts herself to bed, 

Sean: [00:09:11] she wakes up early and no matter what time, she goes to sleep.

Torie: [00:09:15] She wakes up early, but she’s pretty good at feeling that out for herself. Whereas Riley, like I really have to point that out. Cause effect like every single time, it’s the same thing. Sorry, no party animal for you. Do you want to be grumpy? Do you want to get sick? And he’s no, don’t stay up late then.

Cause you stay past 11 and it doesn’t work for you. But I think that’s interesting that like some people can see that in themselves and some people like want to find it. And with the work-life balance, if you’re looking at it and thinking like you see somebody else that like they have kids and they do this and they do that.

That’s one thing that’s really bad for me is I see other business owners that don’t have kids and I’m like, man, look at all this stuff that they’re doing well, no, we didn’t have kids. Not that I want to get rid of the kids, but I think that you can’t really compare because you don’t know what’s going on with other people and you definitely can’t compare people that don’t have kids.

Or that their kids are grown because man, that is a whole different life. 

Sean: [00:10:11] Even if it appears that they are just like you. And yet they’re light years ahead of you. Chances are, you still don’t know the whole story. What you’re seeing may not be what or how it really is. There, there’s constantly famous people out there where you think everything is great.

And then next thing you know, that, the couple’s getting divorced or they committed suicide. It’s really, probably one of the most unhealthy things you can do to ever compare yourself. 

Torie: [00:10:39] My brother used to always get pissed off at me because I was, a few steps ahead of where he was and he would like really get mad. I’m not you dude, like I’m older than you. I joined the army. I left. I am like, you can’t even compare, like it’s not even fair to either of us to do that. Different places, different lives, different everything. 

Sean: [00:11:00] It’s like your life is your journey. You might as well compare yourself to yourself. If you want to do something and you haven’t done it, go do it. 

Torie: [00:11:07] And then just compare yourself to where you were yesterday, rather than where somebody else. Yeah. It’s like the kids whenever they’re, when Bella wants draw something and she’s you tried to, and I’m like, man, you can’t compare my drawing, your drawing.

I’m a little bit older. I’ve been drawing a lot longer, 

Sean: [00:11:24] although her drawings, because she is drawing so often are getting really good, especially for her age and bounds. 

Torie: [00:11:31] Like even if you would probably look at stuff like two or three months ago man, she is just getting so much better because every single day she is just like knocking stuff out.

Sean: [00:11:38] She was still tracing stuff. And not only was she not tracing, she’s actually reversing the image that she’s sketching from. So it’s not even in the same direction. It is weird to me. Like it’s, but it’s damn good because she does it all the time. 

Torie: [00:11:53] I was not going to say it like the tracing. I had no problem with that. Cause then you start to figure things out, even though you feel like maybe you’re not really doing it. It’s enough to get that muscle memory going. That man, her stuff is good. She is really doing really good. Yeah. It’s pretty amazing. So Sean what would you say for somebody with your whole work-life balance theory, your work smart play often?

What advice would you give people for that? Trying to think we do it. Other than COVID happened. And we really haven’t had that, that play. Like we normally do. We’re travelers. We usually stay at home and we work and we have our routine and everything. And then it’s really nice to take a really big trip.

When we can, and we haven’t really been able to do that, but I’m advice would you give.

Sean: [00:12:41] I think it’s, don’t compare yourself to other people. But maybe you should compare yourself to yourself and, reevaluate where you are and see is that where you want to be. And if change things.

But comparing yourself to other people and making yourself miserable is not going to do it. So if you want to be successful, but then you also, want to have a good family life or you want to travel, or any of those kinds of things, you have to evaluate that kind of stuff compared to yourself.

If you do have a spouse and you do have kids and you do want to travel and you find yourself. None of those things are participating in any of those things and your spouse’s miserable. Your kids don’t even know who you are. You’re grinding away and you’re working and you’re your business, is fine, maybe you don’t need to be doing all those things, make your businesses more self-sufficient than you thought.

But the only way to realize that. To evaluate those things and look at that stuff and go, holy shit. I’m going into the office that I don’t need to go do. I’ve got this right-hand man that can be doing all these things that I don’t need to be doing. You can outsource all this stuff that you don’t need to be doing.

You could go spend more time your family, you could travel, would that make you happy? Don’t compare your again, don’t compare yourself to somebody else and what they’re doing. Are you capable of doing those things? And if you want to, or you can’t take the steps to do that kind of stuff, and you will find, you will start to work smarter.

If you try it to be smarter about it, don’t work hard. Because harder is just more work. Like work is work. 

Torie: [00:14:13] I’m checking stuff off. 

Sean: [00:14:16] Really try to like, what is it you want to do across the board, work life balance, all of it, figure out the smartest way to do it. And that way may not be the way for you. So you’re going to have to do this constantly to make sure that you are doing it the smartest way possible new technologies will come. Things will change. You’re going to have to keep doing it forever. But it will keep it so that you are doing it smarter and you’ll have more time to do the things that you actually want to do.

Because again, if you just work harder and harder, You will continue to just work harder and harder. And I take it back to when I worked for Pepsi and I could work as hard as I wanted. All that’s going to do is make it more work for me. Like it did absolutely nothing for anything I actually wanted to do.

It just was work. And that’s, to me, that’s one of the most miserable ways to live. I am not here on this. To just work, like you got to work and you’ve got to do things, but you can do it in a smart way so that you can actually enjoy the life. I got brothers that it’s all about work so that hopefully one day they can retire and then play like, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life work smarter.

Like what if there was a way to, to work for them? 10 years and then retire versus 40 years before you can retire. What would you do? If it was option a and option B option a 40 years and then retire option be 10 years and then retire. None of the other stuff even matters. Those are your two options, the hell are you going to choose 10 years and then retired 

Torie: [00:15:55] Most people can’t. That’s so far fetched for most people. I would rather play a little bit right now and work a little bit longer than. Plug away, so hard, like some of these corporate people, or I don’t know, different types of professions like that. And I could definitely do that in my business too, and I can work so freaking hard in hopes that some other time, work through the weekends, work through the evenings because once I reached that, whatever, that thing learning, that’s not the way that, that I would want to do it.

Sean: [00:16:28] No. Now you want to have that time to go and do fun things. Whatever that is, whatever your hobbies are, it’s just being around the people you love. And otherwise what’s the point of it. Yeah. 

Torie: [00:16:44] I think in that, you bring up a couple of really good points. One is figuring out what those things are that are going to make you happy. I think some people don’t even think about that, which if you think about that and really think about it, like what is really going to make you happy and if it’s travel or if it’s, working out more or if it’s spending more time with your kids, or maybe it’s just you want to sit in the backyard and hammock, a couple of hours, like a day, like whatever that thing is, once you figure out what that thing is, Because you don’t have to just hustle, work.

Once you figure out what that thing is, then you can put that into your schedule so that you’re happy now. And not just delaying that happiness for some other time. I think people think they have to delay, like they’re supposed to, again, it’s like that written rule of you’re supposed to work really hard right now.

And then later you can have fun. No, you’re supposed to have this beautiful work-life balance. You’re supposed to have this morning routine. And I think that falls into that same thing, that there is nothing that you’re supposed to do. There is no parenting book that tells you the exact map. You gotta figure that shit out for you because you are different than other people, but you totally have control and probably more control than you think of exact of your happiness.

And like what goes on in your life. Like you don’t have to delay everything. You can make smarter decisions in order to have a more happy, more productive life, because it’s not about just like trying to check all those things off. If you’re checking off the wrong things. And man, I was checking off the wrong things.

You, for Pepsi to Sean working so hard, trying to, get ahead and make good numbers and they didn’t care. It didn’t matter. But you worked so hard. 

Sean: [00:18:22] In fact, if there was then something that was out of my control or, maybe I took that holiday during that period of time and my numbers tanked a little bit. It made me look bad. Yeah. That’s awesome. Fulfilling as well, because no, because ultimately, no matter how good you are, all they remember is when you screwed up. And even when I was doing that and it was, eight hour days, like I don’t want to work eight hour days if I don’t need it. If I can get everything done in six, like that should be how long I work, not trying to fill the two more hours.

Torie: [00:18:53] Some of this COVID stuff shakes up a little bit of the workforce. It’s like we talked about in another episode about working by the hour. We don’t work by the hour. We work by the project. And I think that a lot of things could be by the project, because just because your employee is there eight hours doesn’t mean they got eight hours worth of work done.

And they probably didn’t, they’re just filling that time with all these other things. But I think if you try to aim for like project based and getting things done, I think that people will be more productive. And so hopefully some of these people that work, they are able to adjust themselves to work smarter.

All of these office jobs or like phone type jobs computer jobs that people are doing that they don’t have to be there physically. If they’re able to get their stuff done quicker, I think that’s the way to go. And I hope more things change that way. 

Sean: [00:19:44] Yeah. I, if you call my Miles Through Time, I’m going to answer the phone. Guess what? I had somebody call the other day and it’s Hey, I’m here. I brought you something. Where you at? Oh my God. I’m not there man. In fact, I’m over an hour away from being there. But that doesn’t stop me from being able to answer pretty much everybody’s questions. Whenever they call. If we lived 10 years ago, I would have had to be.

Torie: [00:20:11] Shit when he was in the other location, he had to be there. But that, thinking of that, like that was something that was important for Sean, not to have to sit there. So they didn’t miss out on just like what we were regularly doing a smarter way to do is able to work it out. And it wasn’t, it’s not like you mapped it all out and figured it all out either. It was just like what is going to work. And it ended up working out. 

Sean: [00:20:33] I went from paying the house. I have a phone line and all that kind of stuff. So I then had to be there to answer the phone and all this shit that goes with it too. I just got a Google number, which is free, so it doesn’t even cost me anything.

And then it goes straight to my cell phone and I can actually program it so that it doesn’t go to my phone while we’re closed. So I don’t even have to be bothered with any of those kinds of calls, which are probably just fake spammy calls anyways. But during normal business hours go straight to my phone.

As long as I’m not on it with somebody else, usually from the museum I can answer it. It’s worked out great. It’s definitely the smarter way to do it. 

Torie: [00:21:10] Absolutely. So you know what? We have to go play. We have a vacation to go to. We’re out of here. We’re going to Florida. We have our first trip since all of this COVID stuff, we haven’t gone anywhere at all.

And so finally we are doing our first trip. Right after this. So if you like this episode, we would love it. If you would come back and join us on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because that is where, when our episodes come out, we always talk about things like this, how to live a little smarter, work a little bit smarter so that you can enjoy your life a lot more.

And we will see you on the next one. 

Sean: [00:21:50] See the beaches later.