The Importance of Getting Away

Stepping away for a month in Mexico

00:00Bill Gallagher: Have you ever had a week when you're completely slammed, but somehow nothing actually moved? Is this one of those weeks? That's not really a time problem. It's a busyness habit problem. My new book, Busy Is Broken, Do Less, Scale More, is all about growing by doing less, not more. Read or listen to a sample chapter over at busyisbroken.com. That's busyisbroken.com. It's also on Amazon and other booksellers.

00:26Bill Gallagher: I've gone and done something different, and I want to share it with you. I'm here in Mexico. I've been here for the last month. I've never done anything like this before. I got away for a whole month to go do some thinking, to do some writing, to generate something new. My theme this month was generate. I thought about this for a long time. I fantasized about taking a month away. I famously talked about taking a month away with my family and getting away and recharging. Trips away. I take a lot of time, but taking a whole month away by myself in Mexico on the beach, next to the beach, is like something I've never done.

01:09Bill Gallagher: I thought about it for a while, and then I heard Chip Conley talking about creating writing retreats, time at his place, the MEA Wisdom place where I am right now, in the summertime when it's their slow season, where writers, thinkers could come, take longer times, not come for a week, but come and reflect and settle in and do something different, and write a book, work on their memoir there, their manifesto there. And I jumped at the invitation. I knew when I heard him say it instantly, I wanted to do it. I thought about writing a book. I've sold a book once. I didn't finish it. I worked on another book a couple years ago. I didn't finish it. And I'm like, I really need to get away and go deeper and think about what it is that I want to create, who I am, what matters to me. So I set out to step away for a whole month. A whole month to drop in and really work on what it is that I want to create.

Overcoming anxiety about taking extended time off

02:15Bill Gallagher: I was uncomfortable. I jumped right in. I said, great. The deal was good. And he announced it would be for the summer. I heard about it roughly in January. I jumped in. I committed myself as soon as possible. I reserved. I put my money up. I committed myself to doing it. I blocked my calendar in. I had friends who said they wanted to join me. They didn't put their money up. They didn't block their calendar, and so anything could intrude. I didn't do that. I know better by now. I put my money up. I blocked my calendar. I started to protect the time. I did have a couple of things eat away at the two ends. I came in a day later. I'm leaving a couple days earlier because of other commitments, that kind of thing. So it got eroded by a couple days. But I treated it as special.

03:08Bill Gallagher: As the date approached, I became anxious about stepping away. I'm going to be lonely. I'm going to miss my family. Something's going to happen. I'm not going to have any fun. I'm not going to like the people. I'm going to be uncomfortable. I suppose all sorts of things are true. There are aspects and moments that were uncomfortable. Right? A bug bite that itched too much at night, a particular dinner, a dish I didn't like or times when it was hot or somebody of all the people that I didn't care for. Of course, all those things were true on some level at some point. I have been lonely at times. I miss my wife. She came down for a few days in the middle of my trip.

What dropping in for a month produced

03:55Bill Gallagher: But dropping in has been really, really good. I have written about the preciousness of time. Posted, written a post about the preciousness of time, about remembering who I am, like deep inside my heart, what I care about. I wrote about Kalani, how I was known as a boy. I've written about connectedness, like the astonishing number of people in this very small place that have come through while I've been here that I have known firsthand or been directly connected to, and I wasn't expecting. Right? People arriving at the same place at the same time from all around the world, people that I've known from other countries and that kind of thing, and then discovering connections to people I didn't know. Right? So it's been so much more than I expected. Right? Amazing sunsets, time surfing, surfing almost every day or a beach trip. If I wasn't surfing because I was sore or something some day.

04:52Bill Gallagher: To reflect. Like, I don't think about cooking or shopping or fixing things around the house because I can't because I'm here. Right? So here I am and dropping into that, setting a goal to work on this book, and reflect then more broadly, in addition to the book, who am I? What do, like, at this point in life. Right? I turn 61 in a few weeks. What matters to me? What am I going to do with the time I have left? I think about this kind of thing all the time. But dropping in for a month long trip to do this changes things. The amount of time that I give myself, allow myself. Right, stepping away for a whole month to write. So I've been writing, I don't know, more than a thousand words a day for sure. There's been some thinking and some research days. I've written about 40,000 words in this book, so I have a first draft, more than a rough draft, but a first draft of 14 chapters. Outline courses, workbooks, worksheets, things to follow up on the whole thing. It's a direct complement to the kind of work that I do, will continue to do, have always done. So it's a real self expression. It's also unique for me. Like, it's the kind of thing that I talk about that not everybody talks about.

Why getting away matters for every leader

06:14Bill Gallagher: And this setting is absolutely perfect for it. Right? And I don't know what it would be like for you, why you would come and get away, but I think there's something valuable in all of us getting away. Right? If you've got young kids, maybe you need to get away with the family. Maybe sometimes you need to get away with some girlfriends or guy friends. Maybe you need some time to get away by yourself. I know I start to realize the value in all of these retreats, pulling back, reflecting, recharging, recentering. We get so busy. That's what the book is about. The book is, at least the working title at this point, we'll see what actually gets printed at some point. But the book is titled Busy Is Broken.

The cost of being chronically busy

07:03Bill Gallagher: And I think you and I are busy people. I talk to busy people. I work with busy people. But it's busyness, being too busy. Being busy as like a habit. Being busy as an addiction that is the problem. Busy, the addiction of busy. The racket of busy. Like, being busy for busy's sake is what I would love to put an end to. And all of the things that come with it. Right? We think there's like a trade off in the busyness. Like, the trade off is, well, I'm busy now, but I'm building something. And so I'll sacrifice my health, my relationship, my family, my friends. Think more about like your health and your friends and things like that before you willingly sacrifice. But you know there's a cost often to some of those other things. And what I'm here to tell you, what I've seen in my own life, my clients' lives, public figures that I write about in the book, I'll talk about them later, Michael Eisner versus Bob Iger. I'll talk about Gwynne Shotwell. I'll talk about others that have done it well, that have not done it well. And the research that goes along with it, it actually costs your company when you're too busy. Busy like a bad habit, busy like an addiction.

08:21Bill Gallagher: You overwork, your strategic thinking suffers, the quality, your energy, your balance, your creativity suffers. You burn your people out, you stress your people out. They are left frustrated, unhappy, unsatisfied, not fully used in a good way. And then they churn, and they don't do their best work. You end up as an overworking micromanager. You end up as a gateway through which everything in the business comes, and another term for that is bottleneck, right? You become the bottleneck. You become the brakes. You become the constraint on the business. When the constraint on the business is you, when your business, your energy level, the hours in the day that you have, and I've known many who've tried to work and get by on two, three hours of sleep a night, it's disastrous. Their work quality suffers more than they realize, and they're not nearly clear headed. The quality of their work is, they don't get away enough.

Distance creates perspective and better work

09:20Bill Gallagher: Go skiing. Go surfing. Go on a riding retreat. Go take a dance class. Like, I don't know what it is that you would love. Go horseback riding, as I heard from one of my clients, something they love to do. Go kayaking. Go, like, do something. Get out of the norm. Get some perspective. You'll see your problems in new ways, right? There are many famous stories about people who are grappling with a problem, then they had an idea, like, oh, snakes biting each other, whatever. Oh, boom, there's DNA. There are many things like that where we've had insights because we took the time, we sat back. So it's good for your soul. It's good for your relationship. It's good for your creativity, your energy. It's good for your team. You step away, they get a chance to step up. You have things to compliment them on or even support them in that maybe they grappled with, didn't go well later, right? But everybody gets something out of our stepping away.

Protecting time for what truly matters

10:26Bill Gallagher: So whether you're the founder, the CEO, some other kind of leader in the company, or an aspiring leader, there's opportunity and value, not just in the work you do, the way that you work, but the way that you pull back, the way that you learn, restore, recover, refresh yourself, where you get infused with things, you flex, where you do soulful work, where you think about what really matters to you in the long run, the long arc of life. So a month I've spent here. First time in my life, almost 61 years old, I'm so glad I took the time to do it. I don't know if you could figure out how to get away for a month. I recommend it. But get away for something. Get away for a week, a solo backpack trip, a something, something that helps you. What would it be? Love to hear about it. I think it'll do us all a world of good to do this a little more. I'm now wondering what I'll do next year, and will I come back to the same place and do the same kind of thing? I have time off, right? A little bit of self-discipline can protect that time off and can make time for something different than just more busyness, more of the same.

11:39Bill Gallagher: So busy is broken. Escape the bad habit, the addiction of busyness. Get out of our cultural predilection to just fill our stuff, inflate our self-worth by how many hours a day we are filled up with. Take a walk. Like, it doesn't even have to be away. Go out to lunch. Do your one-on-one walking around the block or, like, that kind of thing. Change it up. Change up the structure. Change the environment. I think it's super, super valuable. I hope it's helpful for you. I hope this conversation is, I hope it inspires you to do even a little thing. I'd be delighted. So drop me a note. Send me, like, I read all the comments, so it's not going into some ether being answered by AI or some assistant. Send me a private note, comment wherever this is now for you. I'd love to read all about it. Thanks so much. Talk to you again soon.

12:27Bill Gallagher: Thanks for listening today. One last thing. If anything in this episode hit home, my book digs into it further. Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More. It's all about how to stop drowning in work and build a business and a team that scales without you. Available right now with content samples at busyisbroken.com. Go grab it. Be less busy.