Roadman, today I want to talk to you about another way to approach…
Roadman, today I want to talk to you about another way to approach productivity. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our longevity? That is the question. This podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Walsh and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Welcome back to another roadman cycling podcast. Today I want to talk to you about another way to approach productivity. If you haven't checked out yesterday's podcast yet go check it out. Johnny Brown was brilliant. It's the real David vs. Goliath story, the youngest ever American national champion in his hometown, sticking it to the world tour guys. I love chatting with Johnny. He is a funny motherfucker. I just saw it easy to chat to it. Oftentimes you get podcast guests in the conversation, it's forced and it's awkward and it's kind of, you know, as soon as the podcast ends, that's it, there's no chat. Johnny's a dude, I could have chat to it all day. So it's definitely worth checking out the interview if you haven't checked it out yet. Today I want to talk to you about another way to approach productivity. I've been complicit in this kind of giving you tools tools and software for like planning and organizing your day, but often these tools, they lead us to a place that undermines our productivity and can actually have a detrimental effect on our productivity. I want to dig into what I mean by that today and a solution. And I think you're going to like the solution because it blends in to a podcast I had last week about van life. So this is pretty cool. Before I jump into all that, guys, let me remind you about Patreon. You listen to a lot of podcasts where there's Ben Greenfield show where Tim first, they read out this stupid long list of dispassionate ads that the starart and everyone's like, okay, fast forward to seven minutes into the podcast so I don't have to listen to this bullshit about him selling me some cereal that doesn't have sugar in it. That's not what this is, guys, to start the podcast. Just don't confuse it with that because this is your podcast. This is a completely user-funded podcast. We've had That sponsor is knocking on the door and up to this point, they haven't fitted. I felt like they delude the content. I felt like they take the run as the authenticity away from it. So we've said now and we've kept it 100% user-funded. That only works if the users are fond of it. And we're not asking for huge contributions guys to keep this moving forward and build it into something special without that censorship. We're asking for the price of a beer once a month. So if you head on over to patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch, you can boy that price the beer once a month and that keeps the show on the road. Okay, today we are all obsessed. Well, at least I am anyway. And I know I've advocated on the podcast before with tools like to do T.E.
UX D UX. It's brilliant for creating to do lists
UX D UX. It's brilliant for creating to do lists. We all have our little task sheets are cut Google calendars, which integrate with everything. There's a John Lennon quote that sticks in my head that sits only easily with all these new modern tools And it's this idea that life life is what happens when you're busy planning because if Every day we're tasks to do this Google calendars Medying productivity getting to the next goal life just ends up passing you boy and your day is become your life So if you see yourself and I found in this trap years ago If you see yourself as this sporty athletic guy, but you don't ride your bike every day, you're not that guy. You're the, you are what you do. We are what we repeatedly do. So you need to build a life style for yourself. That's true to your vision of who you are. That's authentic to you. Because ultimately, even if your goal is productivity, and you're like, I'm going to head down, grab ankles. I'm going to hit this project real hard. This constant tasks calendars to do lists. It's undermining your mental health. It's making you less happy Which is totally counterintuitive of the idea of head down and grab ankles because poor mental health is gonna lead to poor long-term productivity The cycle that most of us are in it's like task objective task Then we might squeeze in a coffee to open productivity Then we go task and we keep going in this task objective task coffee task objective task coffee until we finally break down and we rest and that's the end of the day. We worked later than we showed up. We've had more stimulus than we showed up and if you listened to last week's podcast on caffeine and it's half-life, coffee becomes this credit card that you need to pay back to debt. So now we're not sleeping as much as we showed. We're not sleeping as well as we showed and this leads into the next day and a good analogy I can think of is a mobile phone. You know if you just keep charging it all the time when it's you know it doesn't need to be you know you're going against the manufacturer's charging guidelines, eventually what happens, your battery is fucked, you get 20 minutes of your iPhone battery and it's dead and it eventually end up replacing your phone. We all know this is a cunning trick Apple play on us, that you could actually make a battery last more than a day but you just choose to focus over. But that's a story for another day. But our body is like this broken battery and we need to break this cycle, we need to be proactive with rest. We need to be as proactive with rest as we are with striving for progress and whether that's progress in our cycling or whether that's progress in our personal life or progress in our professional life. So what I'm proposing is and this is something that guys, this is what the podcast is. This isn't me coming to you as the finished product and saying, I'm the Messiah up on the hill.
Is all the shit that works. I'm living and I'm learning and I'm…
This is all the shit that works. I'm living and I'm learning and I'm making mistakes just like you and I have the same insecurities and I'm just a dude behind a mic with some ideas who's trying to make you laugh, who's trying to make you cry and who's trying to inform you. So these are, this is a work in progress. It's that brilliant quote of I held strong opinions loosely. So my latest kind of tweak I'm making to try and improve my happiness is this creating boundaries, making sure I have a time that I start work each day and I have a time that I finish work each day. And if that's the micro, extend and then that's the macro, making sure I have days off each week, whether it's Saturday and Sunday or whether it's Monday and Tuesday, whatever works for you, but making sure I'm taking those two days off a week and then also making sure I'm scheduling holidays. Even though you're in lockdown mode and you can't actually travel anywhere, schedule a four day block where you're going to chill out and you're going to read books, you're going to go walk the dog, you're going to spend some extra time with your girlfriend. Deep breaks, deep breaks in your day, deep breaks in your week, deep breaks in your month. And that's kind of the idea behind this new van life project that I'm pushing and I bought the Honda Step Wagon and now I'm figuring out, thanks for everyone to hit me up on Instagram, rollman.saitland over on Instagram, hit me up with your van idea suggestions from outside showers to pop up roofs to rock and roll beds and I'm learning loads of cool awards I didn't even know before. So I sound like a mad van life hippie. But that's the idea to have this deep rest, deep rest baked into your day, your week, your month. So we're not on this constant cycle of being almost overworked, almost overworked. Because what happens then, we come to the point when we eventually do crack and boom, that kills our productivity and it's counterproductive to everything. Roadman, thanks for listening to my rants and I'm going to chat you again real soon. Hey everybody, it's Anthony again. quick I want to invite you to join arguably the best thing I've ever put out inside the roadman community. It's a challenge. It's a challenge called a 14-day Kickstarter challenge. So regardless of where your fitness is at right now, this is going to be the catalyst for making you faster and making you the leaner. I've created this challenge to take the guesswork out of everything. It's 14 days training plans regardless of what your level is. There's the master's beginner advanced. There's meal plans shopping list and even a video course holding your hand and talking you through at all. So what I recommend you do right now is just stop everything, press pause on this audio and go to roadmansoidglings.com forward slash 14 day or check out the link in the bio that's roadmansoidglings.com slash 14 day.