Social Free Sundays

If you have spent even 5 minutes on Linkedin, followed Gary Vaynerchuk, Grant Cardone, or Ross Simmonds you have heard every variation of the following phrases: 

"Hustle beats talent"

"Everyday hustle"

"Weekend hustle" 

"Detroit hustle harder"

"Hustle mode on"

Understand this, hustle is important and the person who hustles harder has a GREAT shot to beat most. However, even a Tesla Model S has to recharge every once in a while to keep at peak performance.

You simply cannot win on hustle alone, you need inspiration to fuel it. 

The twenty years I spent in radio taught me hustle, I can work longer hours without even thinking about it than most people I know. Especially in those that few years spent working in the digital strategy realm it was a 24/7 job as there was always one more thing to post, one more pageview to get, or one more unique to deliver. The problem I would discover, is that pace isn't sustainable and I burned out very quickly while putting a great deal of stress on every relationship that mattered to me and missing out on a few new ones. 

So, when I had the opportunity to change, I wanted to make meaningful change in every facet of my life. The first thing I did was set up some boundaries for my family, the first of which was Monday thru Friday from the time I get home until my daughter goes to bed, the phone is in a drawer or on the charger. We spend time together as a family sharing a meal, connecting, relaxing, and most importantly playing.

The benefit? 

Besides the relational benefits, I find the work I do during the later hours of the evening while everyone sleeps MORE impactful because I spent time recharging, imagining, and getting inspired by the things around me, in the real world. 

After a month, I didn't feel that was enough of a change, so I established another rule, one in which I am breaking to write this blog post about said rule. That rule is one day during the weekend, every weekend, I forget my phone. For 24 full hours (this usually Sundays since lots of UFC events are on Saturday and I cover that for my podcast) I spend the entire day unwinding, playing, reading, running, exploring, shopping - whatever the girls want to do I am all in. 

You may be saying at this point, "I unwind all the time, just look at my Instagram" but that misses the entire point of losing the phone. You see, when you are posting on Instagram you are creating a version of yourself, not the real you, but a digital mock-up of what you want to be allowing the world to view it through the lens of Instagram. So that post of you in a hammock by a beach on Instagram is you posturing to get the best photo of that exact moment, while what I propose is just enjoy the hammock and ditch the photo op.

Have that moment, just for you. 

What I have discovered is Monday mornings I am up earlier than most ready to destroy the day because I stopped for a second and got off the ride. We all work very hard and we are all very busy (that is blog post for another time), but we don't all take real time for ourselves and our family, but we should. 

The fun thing about weekends is there is another one in just a couple of days, so try ditching the phone and just doing the weekend "social-free, " we even call it "social free Sundays" at my house and you may feel free to steal that name for yourself. 

If you afford yourself the opportunity to unplug and decompress without the seen and unseen pressures of the social web, you would be amazing the change you will see in yourself, your attitude, your relationships, and your actual social graph.