SPI 511: Why Thursday Is the New Friday with Joe Sanok

SPI 511: Why Thursday is the New Friday with Joe Sanok

Pat Flynn:
Now, perhaps you've heard about the four-hour workweek. Well, a lot of us have come to realize that a four-hour workweek was quite hard to come by. I mean, that's almost outlandish, right? And Tim even has mentioned ... This is Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4-Hour Work Week, had said that maybe that wasn't the best name. It was a great clickbaity kind of name, and it definitely put them on the map of course, and his strategies do work, but four hours a week, he's even admitted that four hours a week is very, very unlikely. Even with passive income coming in, you still have to upkeep things and whatnot, but have you heard of the four-day workweek? Four-day workweek. That means three days for a weekend, four days of work, then again, rinse and repeat. It is actually a norm in Iceland. Iceland, 85% of workers are actually working four days a week.

And guess what? They still get paid the same, and productivity is up. So the question is, when is this going to happen in the U.S.? Well, the truth is it can happen right now if you are an entrepreneur and you control your own time. And even if you're not an entrepreneur, you can do this and implement this within your own employer as well if you are smart and you have conversations about this.

But my good friend Joe Sanok from Practice of the Practice, which is a podcast that you should listen to, especially if you have a practice, even if you don't. Great marketing strategies, great strategies for building a business and winning with helping and serving clients. PracticeOfThePractice.com is his website. He has a new book coming out called Thursday is the New Friday, How to Work Fewer Hours, Make More Money, and Spend Time Doing What You Want.

And what was really cool, and he and I have been friends for quite a while. I've been a guest on his podcast. I've been a guest in his masterminds. When we had this conversation, he was actually in an RV with his kids and his family on a several-month trip. And we do talk about that a little bit on the show, but he was able to fit this conversation in during that time. And he's literally not working very much, but he's doing so much to help people, and he's making good money as a result. And he's teaching us. And he's going to tell us all about it today too.

So make sure you stick around because this is going to be a good one. If you've ever felt overworked or that you put too much time into something that maybe you're not getting a lot of results back, well this is the one for you with my friend, Joseph Sanok. Let's cue the intro. Here we go.

Announcer:
Welcome to the Smart Passive Income podcast, where it's all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And here's your host. He purposely puts himself under pressure because he's more focused that way: Pat Flynn.

Pat:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to session 511 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. My name is Pat Flynn, and I want to thank you, all of you, who have listened to the show before because I've gotten so much great feedback from episode 500. A lot of people who maybe took a pause with the show for a while, came back and started to resubscribe and come back in and just is catching up with the archive that they missed. COVID and all that stuff put a halt to a lot of people's listening patterns. But hopefully if you're listening to this right now, you are subscribed and you're ready for a fire episode because this episode with Joe Sanok, author of Thursday is the New Friday, host of Practice of the Practice. This is going to blow your mind. It blew my mind. We have some great conversations here, and we have a lot of fun too. So here we go, Joe. Here he is. Joe. Welcome to the Smart Passive Income podcast. Thanks for taking the time today.

Joe Sanok:
Absolutely, Pat. I'm so excited to be here.

Pat:
And speaking of taking the time, that's what we're talking about today because time is of the essence, and that's something that you are an expert on. I heard that you work five days a month. Is that actually true?

Joe:
Yeah, so I work the first and third Tuesday and Wednesday. And then when there's a fifth week, I do either Tuesday or Wednesday at the end of the month, I do a little bit of email, but yeah, I've really pared down.

Pat:
You have a business, and you are focusing on growing that and making sure your clients are happy. Talk about your business so we can get a sense of, first of all, people are going to feel a little bit of a disconnect. Like wait, how are you able to do that? And of course you got to stick around to figure out how. Joe, what do you do? What is your business, in fact?

Joe:
I have a business called Practice of the Practice, and it all started because the things that I learned in graduate school did not help me with having a counseling private practice. So I started blogging and podcasting about what I was learning really as a co-learner and saying, “Here's how I'm applying things to my private practice.” I read this book and listened to this podcast, and then we just share what I learned. And then through that process, people started reaching out for consulting. And at that time I was working a 40 hour job. I had my counseling private practice. Practice of the Practice was genuinely that side gig that might take off, it might not.

And then over time was able to leave that full-time job at the community college and do my private practice and then Practice of the Practice. And 2019, sold that practice and was really able to niche in even more. And so now we have a team of four consultants. We have a team of five people in South Africa. We've got sound engineers. So we have almost a 20-person team that directly supports counselors, coaches, and therapists that are starting, growing and scaling a private practice at every level from the moment they decide, "Hey, I think I want to start a practice" all the way till they want to sell it.

Pat:
And I know time is obviously important to you. You've obviously built a business in a way to get time back and still have it be run. And you now have a book about this and Thursday Is the New Friday. What does that mean exactly?

Joe:
I think at the beginning of my journey, I said to myself, what if I just took Fridays off? And really in retrospect, as I worked through this book, it all started when I was at freshmen orientation for college and the advisor said what do you want your schedule to be? And I said, well, I don't want to take classes on Friday. And he said, okay, you don't have to. And it was this initial lightbulb of adulthood. And that's really carried through where my first job out of graduate school, I negotiated to do a four-day week and realizing as I prepped this book, that that idea of working four days a week has always been how I've lived my life. It was just putting some structure on that.

So for me, "Thursday is the new Friday," is we have seen a shift happen, especially starting in the 1980s, and we can dig into this more if you want to, where Fridays are this half-lived day in the workforce. It's when we have birthday parties, maybe we have baby showers. We have a visioning meeting when we're all just ready to peace out for the weekend. And really, we've seen that we've been moving towards a four-day workweek anyway. And if we dig into how we got here, there's a lot of things that we think right now are just structures that are set in stone that really are pretty new in regards to humanity and dissecting where time came from and how we got to this point was really part of putting together at the beginning of Thursday is the New Friday, How to Work Fewer Hours, Make More Money, and Spend Time Doing What You Want. So we understood the problem before we said, “Well, let's jump into the four-day workweek.”

Pat:
Well, let's talk about that. I mean, I'm curious, where did this whole 40-hour workweek situation stem from that we literally, most of us live by now?

Joe:
Yeah. We actually have to go back a few thousand years to the Babylonians. So the Babylonians, they, in regards to their astrology, only thought there was seven major planets and beings in the universe. So there was the sun, the moon, earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter, that they could basically see with their eyes. And so they said, let's have a seven-day week. And so that's literally where a seven-day week comes from. Years make sense because we go around the planet. Days makes sense because the planet spins. Months makes sense because of the moon, but weeks are actually completely arbitrary. So if we start with the premise, we made this up, we start to deconstruct some of it. So the Egyptians actually had an eight-day week. The Romans had a 10-day week. And so even the seven-day week is just made up.

So fast forward to the late 1800s, and the average person was working 10 to 14 hours a day, six to seven days a week. And so they're working in factories, they're working in farms. Life is really, really difficult, and something needed to be shaken up. So Henry Ford in 1926, he actually institutes the 40-hour workweek really to sell cars. He thought if people don't have leisure within my company, they're not going to have anywhere to go other than work. And they're not going to buy a car from me, even though they work for me. And so he institutes the 40-hour workweek that starts to spread across the nation. And so in 1926, less than a hundred years ago, we get this 40-hour workweek. He could have said 45. He could have said 35. There's really no rhyme or reason as to why it was 40 hours.

So then we fast forward to the ‘80s and ‘90s, and I'm sure you remember, TGIF with Full House, and all of that. That really represents when we see that cultural shift of the industrialists, who I would say in my book is the big enemy. They came and they did something that was very important for the time. They saw people as cogs, as part of a machine. They saw it as very analytical. That starts to fade in the ‘80s and ‘90s. And we see the Fridays start to get looser and looser. We see the rise of casual Friday, and I would actually argue that we're right now in that messy middle where we're leaving the industrialists behind and we're moving into something new. And we see a lot of indicators in the market. COVID really revealed and fast-forwarded that in a way that we just couldn't have anticipated. And we see that shift happening in a lot of different industries and in a lot of different environments.

Pat:
That's crazy, dude.

Joe:
I know.

Pat:
That's like all the way back to the Babylonians and why it's seven to Henry Ford, and that's just mind blowing. And it reminds me of how education was and how education still is, what it was and should be changed to accommodate for where we're at now. Yet it seems to be moving very slowly. With regards to our work as business owners, entrepreneurs, or even us working a nine to five job, working 40 hours a week, what do we do? We are kind of like cogs. This is the world we've been given. And this is the set of boundaries and constraints that we're in. What can we do?

Joe:
I think one big shift we're seeing with businesses is that they're moving from looking at the roles within a business as being parts of a machine, and they're starting to see it more as an organism. And so take my team, for example. Sam has been with me for years. She started as someone that was just doing quotes for Instagram and images for Twitter. You see those inspirational quotes. So she started with that. And then I every year asked her, “What do you love about what you're doing and want to keep doing more of? Second, what do you hate about what you're doing and that you want to get rid of? And third, what's something you'd like to learn and have be part of your job that you would like to learn?” So over the years she's gone from just doing design to, we put out a magazine, she got trained in doing video editing.

She's now overseeing our whole design department. So she learned some management skills. So the idea is that, instead of just saying, “I've hired you for this one role. If you want to make more money, you have to be a supervisor.” So when people think about individuals as being just a part of this machine, that's completely different from saying, “This is an organism that's evolving.” And so for Sam, for her to keep leveling up within the company, she gets to decide that. So then there's more buy-in from her. She wants to be stronger in her job. She gets to set the direction, and she can also remove the things that she doesn't want to do anymore. And so businesses that do that, that see it more as an organism that's evolving, changing, and shifting, then have happier staff, but then also are moving out of that typical industrialist mindset.

Pat:
We're all talking about what is, and what we're seeing shifting in the environment right now. Let's talk to the entrepreneur, the business owner, the one who probably is working more than 40 hours a week, who is likely grinding, trying to get away from the 40 hours, nine-to-five situation to create a life of their own. Just like you have, just like I have, and many other people here who have been on the show. Time is interesting because we would love to get to that point where we could work five days a month, but I mean, we're hustling upfront, right? You've got to put in that time and effort in the beginning, so you can reap the rewards later. How do we fit that work that we're doing to build something into the busy schedule that we already have? What are some of the tactics you've used to create, especially in the beginning days?

Joe:
One thing is that myth of the hustle culture. We may feel that we're doing all of this and we're spending hours and hours, and we may very well be working that many hours. But when we actually look at the brain research in regards to how the brain does its best work, typically it's not hustle, hustle, hustle, then just burn out on the weekend and probably overeat and overdrink, and then just do it again. It's actually flipping that where we start with slowing down so that we optimize the brain and then we go and kill it. So there was this study out of the University of Illinois on “vigilance decrement.” So vigilance meaning how well we are able to pay attention to something. Decrement meaning breaking down over time. Their theory was we fill up our energy and then it just dissipates over time.

So we have vigilance, and then over time we have decrement. So the first group ... They brought in these students, and they had a four-digit number that everyone was assigned. And so say it was 2, 3, 1, 2. You looked at a screen and for an hour, all these four digit numbers came up and every time 2, 3, 1, 2 popped up, you had to hit this button. Super boring task. So we noticed over time that we have vigilance decrement, that they weren't clicking the button as much. They weren't paying attention. They weren't able to stay focused. I had a second group that at the one-third mark, instead of just having them go straight through, they give them a one-minute break. They just said, "Hey, we got to put you on a different computer. Just have a seat. Walk around. One-minute break." At the two-thirds mark they did the exact same thing, gave them a one-minute break. And they found that within that there was no vigilance decrement.

Now that one minute, just two minutes within that hour, was able to help them refocus. So when we think about the brain, the brain is here to help us survive. The evolutionary nature of our brain is that it wants us to survive. So we still have that primitive reptilian part of our brain that says, "Is there a tiger around the corner?" And when we go into a new environment, there's all sorts of new things. We're scanning. We don't even realize how much we're taking in that is helping us get information on, “Are we safe?” And so when you give yourself that one minute, your brain is hyper-focused for a bit. And that's why we see the vigilance decrement not break down as much over time when you give yourself even just a short break.

Also we know from Parkinson's law, which I know you've talked about here on the podcast, that work expands to the time that's given. When you give yourself 15 minutes to do something versus three hours, you're going to get it done. Now it may not be as perfect as if you spent three hours on it, but that's where we have to really focus in and say, "Is it better to have something done or moving forward or something we can test well before we put that perfection into it?"

Pat:
Question. How do we ... Sorry, I'm just going all over the place here. But I'm thinking of the fact that you are only working five hours a month. How do you, with discipline, not fill in the rest of that time with work? That's a huge problem that I have and many other people have. How do you do that?

Joe:
Yeah, five days a month, just so people aren't like, "What? Five hours a month?"

Pat:
Oh, five days. Excuse me.

Joe:
I would hate to have a quote. "Pat Flynn says Joe works five days a month." And it's like, what? Yeah, no. So what that looks like is I have my schedule, and my assistant knows what sorts of things I'll do on that Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm going to put in my one-on-one consulting clients, and we'll fill out the entire year. Also I have a membership community. And so we do a “What's working?” once a month. And then we do also a “ask the expert.” You are one of the experts for our community. So we'll bring in top-tier experts that will talk to our community about a particular topic. I really think about where am I most needed within the organization. We all have things that we could do. And that's where we want to think about hard boundaries and soft boundaries. So I didn't just jump into five days a month.

It was a whittling down process. So initially it was, “Let's take Fridays off and see.” There was one summer that I said, "What happens if I take Fridays off? Let's just do this as an experiment." And that's one of the big things that we see between people that are highly successful and those that maybe don't have the same success is they go into everything thinking this is an experiment that's going to give me data. If it "fails," great data. If it does work, then great data. And so for that summer, I looked at the four days I was working, I made sure I took every Friday off. And then in the fall, we had a conversation and said, "I made more money. And I had worked four days a week. Now let's have that be not just an experiment. I'm just going to work four days."

Then the next summer I took Mondays off and said, "Well, let's try this," and did the same sort of thing. Last fall, I was still working three full days a week. And so that was 12 days a month unless there was an extra week. So that was going to be Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. But we went on a road trip. We got in a camper and went to national parks instead of having Zoom school for our kids. And so as part of that, there was lots of travel time, and it was super inconvenient to try to work every single week. And so I shifted it to just say what if I worked Tuesday and Wednesday every other week? And we'll just see how that goes. It was always a step-by-step of removing things from my plate, hiring people that could take that off of my plate, but then saying, "I need to replace that. I need to be able to replace that income and be able to make sure that I'm doing higher-tier work that then pays for those people and continues to help the business grow."

Pat:
I love the iterative approach. It's a similar approach that I take with teaching people how to start businesses with Will It Fly?. And I love that with the reduction of your own time for things. I think, I don't know why, but humans seem to have this sort of binary approach to things. Like it's either all in or not all in at all. Right? A yes or no or this or that. And I know Chip and Dan Heath have spoken about this in their book Decisive. Why are we not? I mean, it seems so obvious, like, “Oh yeah, just slowly go into it.” Well, why don't we think about that more? Why do we always feel like it's such a huge decision to go down this route?

Joe:
Well, I think as entrepreneurs, if we're mostly talking to us, we are often people that have ADHD. We have squirrel syndrome, however we want to describe it. We get excited by new ideas, and we want to run to them. And so it doesn't always feel like we're working or that it's a business when we're going down these rabbit holes. So I think that's part of it. I think also understanding the true value of slowing down. And so I hosted this event in the summer called Slowdown School. So entrepreneurs fly into Northern Michigan. We pick them up in a big yellow school bus. So we slowly drive throughout Northern Michigan. We stay at this place right on the beaches.

And I say to them on the way there, and they actually know this ahead of time that I only want you to use your phone for photos. So turn them off, and then turn them back on when we're doing photo time. From that Sunday night and all day, Monday and Tuesday, we have massage therapists come in, we do yoga on the beach. We skip stones. We day drink. We go for hikes. I mean, we just literally slow down and we just create relationships with each other. But then on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning, we run full tilt towards their business and just see what happens during the sprints that we do on Wednesday. It's just remarkable because your brain starts to get pumped up for that Wednesday morning. You just want to work on your business. You're around all these people. And maybe you're having some entrepreneurial conversations, but you're still like, "Oh, I'm supposed to be slowing down. I'll talk about that Wednesday." So the excitement builds up. And then on Wednesday morning, we start working and we frame up the sprints, and people get so much done in just 20-minute sprints.

There was one lady that was stuck on her consulting business. And in 20 minutes she brainstormed the name. She figured out the name. She bought the URL and she sketched out her entire email course. It was nine emails that she sketched out in 20 minutes. Her brain was optimized. It was ready to get it done. There was another guy who had been stuck on writing a book about this unique counseling approach that he takes to working with couples. He could not get the book sketched out chapter by chapter. And so he said, "For this sprint, I'm going to sketch out as many chapters as I can." And he got eight chapters sketched out. He got into that flow state because he had first optimized the brain by being able to slow down.

Pat:
That's so cool. It's counterintuitive sometimes. But I think that this idea of a slowdown school and not necessarily always going to the mountains and being even with a group of people, but just implementing that on your own, which is why a lot of countries I see are actually now mandating a four-, even three-day workweek situation, I think. And they're seeing more productivity, just like you shared.

Joe:
And we're seeing that throughout Europe. There's actually a great community college that does this. They've done it for five or six years. I mentioned them in the book: Kalamazoo Valley Community College in Southwest Michigan. So this HVAC instructor, he started to notice how few cars were in the parking lot on Fridays in the summertime. And so he took all these pictures in the summer and then took pictures in the fall. And then he looked at how much savings there would be just from turning the air conditioning off, starting on Thursday night, and then turning it back on overnight into Monday morning. And he brought that to the board, and it saves millions of dollars. And they switched to a four-day workweek in the summer. They save millions of dollars just with the HVAC system. They've retained employees, and the students are happy because they have later hours and it's more student friendly as well, and students didn't want to come in on Friday anyway. There's so many examples like that, that I discovered of just really cool businesses that are regular businesses. It's not some startup. It's Kalamazoo Valley Community College. It's a random community college that said, “We can be innovative in this way.” And they switched to the four-day workweek years ago.

Pat:
That's pretty amazing. How do we get to the point where this becomes more widely adopted? It's not just like these one-off randoms, but it becomes the new new?

Joe:
Yeah. It only took Henry Ford to switch to the 40-hour workweek. It was one big business that said, "Hey, we're going to do this." And so I think we're seeing it be adopted more and more. Microsoft tested it in Japan. We see throughout Europe right now with Spain testing it. I think COVID actually is going to help in this area, and that that's where the switch is starting to happen because people realize there's managers or direct employees that just sitting in the chair for 40 hours a week isn't good enough for anybody. There's this discrepancy between, “Am I just paying somebody for these hours, or am I paying for outcomes?” Both have their advantages, but if you just pay people for outcomes, they may rush through it. They may not be as creative. They may not take their time in a way that you want. Whereas if you pay someone by the hour, they may take their time and go slower, but they feel like they have more liberty to dance around the options. So there's a lot of unknowns that will shake themselves out in the coming years. But I think we really are seeing this move towards the four-day workweek and seeing it take off in many businesses. We just don't know which one's going to be the one that's the Henry Ford of our day.

Pat:
Sure. And I hope it goes down that route because for my kids and your kids and just mental health all around, I think it would just be better for everybody, honestly. And quick pause to talk a little bit about where we can get your book, Thursday is the New Friday, How to Work Fewer Hours, Make More Money, and Spend Time Doing What You Want. Where do you recommend people go from here if they want to check it out and read more about what you got going on?

Joe:
Yeah. So they can read it at ThursdayIsTheNewFriday.com. They can order it. That'll take them to all the links that they want. They can go to Amazon, their favorite bookstore. It's through Harper Collins, so it's going to be everywhere. So wherever you like to get books. Local bookstores always need to have your money and your support. So buy a coffee there and pick up Thursday is the New Friday: How to Work Fewer Hours, Make More Money, and Spend Time Doing What You Want when you're there.

Pat:
Thank you. And all this talk about time, I think we need to talk about the real why behind all of it, because we don't just want to save time just to save time and put other things to make us more busy. I know there's more important things, and perhaps, maybe there was some events in your life that have triggered a lot of what is now this passion of yours in helping other people with their time management and businesses and such. So could you go back into time and tell us maybe some important things that may have happened that you helped you put things into perspective?

Joe:
My first daughter, Lucia, was born. She was born with a congenital heart issue that we didn't know about. And when she was probably two months old, I got a phone call from her mom saying that Lucia was going to be in the hospital and that we needed to go there. And so we went and they had to put her on all these medications and we had to get her up to weight. So she was having these breastmilk milkshakes that were trying to get her up to weight. So probably, let's see, it was eleven months in. It was right before her first birthday. She was finally up to weight, had full-on open-heart surgery. And it was just terrible. I mean, we were staying at the Ronald McDonald House for a week and just working through having your first baby ... Just every two hours, she would wet her diaper because of the medication.

It just kept the fluid off her heart, but then she was thirsty enough, but she wasn't strong enough to drink enough, and so she was losing weight and it was just like nothing any parent wants to go through. And then we get the all clear a couple of weeks later. We're thinking medical is all done. And instead what happened is I was diagnosed with cancer and it was like, how much more can a family take? And this was actually on the heels of my mom having cancer as well. And my grandma died that year in the middle of it. It was one of those things where when it's your kid, it's totally out of your hands, but when it's you, it's like this could be the end. This could be the thing. And you just think through more of your life, not that you wouldn't with your kid, but she was healthy and she bounced back.

And for me, I didn't know how it was going to shake out. And so ended up having radioactive iodine treatment and had my thyroid out. And the doctor ended up saying when it comes to thyroid cancer, that's one of the best cancers you can get. So luckily when they dug in more, it was highly treatable, but I had lost a bunch of weight through that process. But in working at the community college, having the side gig with the counseling practice, having the podcast, it really made me step back and think how do I really want to live my life? How do I want to show up and be an amazing dad for my kids, be able to help them experience the world? And I realized that the typical 40-hour week wasn't going to afford that to me.

I know a lot of people are in a position where they have to do that, but for me, it was, "I'm going to keep being innovative. I'm going to keep growing this business and see where it takes me." And then we've been able to do amazing things like this camper trip across the nation for nine months. And to be able to take time, to have our girls travel with us and be able to go all sorts of different places, to allow them the experiences to learn in a way that's different than maybe other kids have the opportunity to learn.

Pat:
Well, thank you for sharing the story, and wow, what trauma within a short period of time to have gone through. There's a lot of people, and I hear the same kind of story where something happens and then finally they open up or their eyes are open to what's actually important at that time. And how do we frame in our minds? How do we get to feel that urgency without having to go through something perhaps so traumatizing to discover that?

Joe:
You know what? I'm not saying that you have to go through it to get there. But I do think that just the idea of people building their own awareness ... So much, I think, of our lives is either reflecting in the past or planning for the future and taking that time to build awareness. I was just walking with a friend yesterday. We've been walking two or three times a day to just get out some extra energy. And he was talking about the past and the future and all this stuff. And it was this beautiful day in Northern Michigan. And we were talking about how summer's coming and all these different things. And to be able to say, I want to right now be in this moment rather than say, "Ooh the seasons are changing, and then I'm going to be going out to eat. And then while I'm going out to eat, I can't wait to get home."

And so much of our life is thinking about that next thing that I would just encourage people to slow down, whether that's through meditation. There's a lot of great books that have been helpful for me to just be more centered and just not feel that I had to run as full tilt all the time. I mean, I think it's more just pacing how I sprint rather than saying, “I'm not going to sprint.” Of course, I'm going to sprint, but just how do I do that in a different way, that's more grounded and clearer?

Pat:
Yeah. It reminds me of, I don't know if you've seen or you and your kids have seen Soul yet, the new Disney Pixar movie?

Joe:
When we were on the road, we met some people from Denmark. And so the kids all watched it and we all hung out and ate good food. So I saw it in the background, but I always associate it now with people from Denmark.

Pat:
That's funny. I mean, it does tell a similar story of somebody who was always working toward the next thing and the next thing. And then I'm not going to spoil it, but it teaches us to be present and be thankful for the things that are there and to look at the day or the little leaf that just fell on your hand. Little things like that we often just don't see because our blinders are on, right? And it's funny because we always are told when you're working on your business and like you were saying earlier, “Hustle. Put the blinders on. Nothing else matters. Get this done.” I love this idea of slowing down. It's been a theme here today with time because the truth is you can always make more money. You're never going to get that time back, though. And you having kids on a nine-month road trip, that's amazing. Me having kids here at home that they really do give you a measuring stick in terms of how quickly things go by.

Joe:
I think that even just looking at this road trip to have times that we just stopped and pulled over and looked at the sunset over New Mexico or took the time in petrified forests to let my six-year-old really look at the petrified wood instead of being like, "We got to get going back to the campsite," which we very well could have done. But just even in those moments, in those Fridays or Saturdays, whatever it is for someone's schedule, to say, "How do I make this an adventure even if I'm not going somewhere?" Finding a new hike, finding some time to play a game with your kids. We hear this all the time. But then when we actually start making it part of our life and say by me optimizing my brain and doing these things on the weekend, adding Friday in. Maybe Friday becomes the day you get all your chores done or your shopping so that you have two full days. You'll start to notice that when you show up on Monday or whatever day you start your workweek, you're going to have so much more energy and so many more creative ideas. The research that's emerging right now on just how much productivity and creativity comes out when we actually optimize our brain, it's just shocking to continue to see.

Pat:
So true. And man, I'm so grateful for this conversation, Joe. I think it might be the exact conversation that people needed to hear at this time. Especially as things start ramping up again, coming out of COVID. We start to put the blinders on again, to crank on something. And I think that despite there being a ton of opportunity, you definitely got to take that opportunity, but don't miss the things that are right in front of you as well. Selfish question: Had you driven an RV before your trip?

Joe:
Pat, I had never driven any trailer before. No boats, no jet skis. This 37-foot pull-behind camper. The first time I drove it was when we picked it up, and the RV guy was like ... He was just like, "We need to go on the road before I send you home." And so we did. We did this maybe five-mile loop and then he sent me home with this thing. It felt like it should be illegal to just go drive it. I took a lot of time in a parking lot practicing backing up, but I would say that by the time we really got things loaded up and within a day or two, it just clicked. And you can just take it slow. You can max out at maybe 65. And so take the turns wide. You take it slow.

Pat:
You'll have to give me a lesson.

Joe:
I would totally give you a lesson. There's so many great YouTube videos out there that can just show you how to back up a camper. It is a whole new world, and it's just like a documentary waiting to happen.

Pat:
Oh man, you've inspired me. I want to do a trip like that with my family. I can imagine just pulling up at a campsite, sitting by the fire, looking up at the stars and time just being frozen for a moment.

Joe:
Yeah. Yeah. Text me anytime. I'm happy to give you all the resources and things because there's so many moments. I could spend hours just talking about the trip because to have a six- and a nine-year-old where they're at that magical age and just ... they have a sense of geography and science and wonder and learning. All these things that you want a kid to have and just being able to do that sort of thing. It's because I enacted the things that I write about in the book. I actually live what I write about.

Pat:
Well, thank you again. And I'm looking forward to checking out the book. Make sure you do check it out. ThursdayIsTheNewFriday.com, and take it all the places the books available. Congratulations on the book, Joe, and just what you've got set up there. I appreciate you. I'm grateful to call you a friend, and I'm looking forward to more fun times together with you both online and hopefully offline as well.

Joe:
Awesome. Thank you so much, Pat.

Pat:
Where else can people go to check out your work?

Joe:
PracticeOfThePractice.com is my main website. Also JoeSanok.com is my speaking website. So if people are looking for public speakers, I do keynotes as well.

Pat:
Joe S-A-N-O-K.com. Awesome. Joe, thank you so much. I appreciate you. Enjoy the day, and we'll talk soon.

Joe:
Thanks.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Joe Sanok, author of Thursday is the New Friday, How to Work Fewer Hours, Make More Money, and Spend Time Doing What You Want. You can check it out on Amazon or wherever you can get books. Also, you can check out his website Practice of the Practice. And of course, if you want to hire him potentially as a speaker, he's a really great speaker. He's got a TEDx talk. You can find him at Joe Sanok. That's S-A-N-O-K.com. And remember, time you can never get back. You can always make more money. So think about that as we finish up the show today.

Thank you so much. Make sure you subscribe because we've got a follow-up Friday episode coming your way this Friday, where we're going to talk a little bit more in depth about this. I'll tell you some stories and we'll go from there, but I appreciate you so much. Thanks for all the amazing reviews that have come in, and I look forward to serving you in the next episode. Peace out, cheers, and as always, Team Flynn for the win.

Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I'm your host Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess. Our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. The Smart Passive Income podcast is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.