[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Heart Rate Variability podcast. Each week we talk about heart rate variability and how it can be used to improve your overall health and wellness. Please consider the information in this podcast for your informational use and not medical advice. Please see your medical provider to apply any of the strategies outlined in this episode. Heart Rate Variability Podcast is a production of Optimal LLC and optimal HRV. Check us
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Welcome, friends, to the Heart Rate Variability podcast. I am Matt Bennett. Here just for a quick introduction, we're going to rewind an episode from a few years back, and I'm doing this for a couple different reasons. One, at least here in the United States, July kind of July 4 week is high peak vacation time and Jeff and I recorded an episode a while ago on HRV, healthy vacations. I thought the timing was just good. I know it's a down week for a lot of people, so if you heard the episode, you know you're probably off on a pontoon boat or doing something else fun this week. But if you haven't, I think this is a really important topic because there's so much data around the positive impact of vacation, especially from a business perspective and a mental health perspective. Both. It's a good investment for a business, it's a good investment for an individual. But how we take vacations can really determine the impact that has on both us and our performance for months into the future. And I just thought this was a good time to revisit this. It was also an opportunity for me to alert our listeners. I've really ramped up recently our blogs.
We've been publishing blogs on and off really since optimal has been around, but I've really started to publish on a weekly basis and, and I'm sort of doing a deep dive into this topic starting this week as well. So I figure it was a good time to replay this episode. I look back at it like, boy, this was pretty good. I didn't have anything really new to add to it. The blog post can, we can dive a little bit deeper into specific subjects around healthy vacation. So I thought it'd be a really good kind of one. Two thing to offer folks this week is, hey, listen to the podcast and you know, check out our blog and if you go to optimal hRv.com, you can scroll down and you'll see a free sign up where you can get our blog posts. We'll also be doing a little bit more with email list as far as just updates to the app and also you know, alerts you to new podcasts and those things as well. So. Plus, if you sign up, you can get both the heartbeat of business and my book, heart rate variability, you know, the future of trauma informed care for free. We're giving away PDF's there as well. So sign up for the email list. It's free. You'll get blog posts. I'm kind of happy how they're looking. We just actually got through a series on introspection. It's going to be a theme. I've got a couple guests here to talk about that topic. It's a really hot topic in HRV arenas. And so I did a, I think, four or five week series on introspection. So if you rewind a little bit, that was a fun series to dive into that research as well. So just want to alert you that. And without further ado, I will turn it over to Jeff to get this episode started. Thanks for joining us.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: Episode of the Heart Rate variability podcast. Jeff Summers back with my good friend Matt Bennett.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: Hey, Jeff. Hello.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: How are you?
[00:03:46] Speaker A: I am good, man. I am really good in this episode. So, yeah, I could complain about my week, but I know you've had a little rough on your end, so I'm gonna hold that.
Yeah. Glad we were talking. You're feeling a little bit better.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: Yeah. For those that are actually watching this on YouTube, my face is much closer to the screen than normal because I'm doing this podcast with my legs extended. Ice on my knee in bed right now. So, you know, I got.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: That's dedication. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. We had just so the audience know, I would not usually ask Jeff to do this in bed. We had a couple episodes set up and our guest had got Covid this week, so I really.
I'm a little obsessed with trying to keep our weekly publishing schedule, so I want to. I want a special shout out to Jeff. And Jeff, your haircut is looking really tight. So I think the close up. No problem.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: There you go. Everything's just. Yeah, well, when you're balding in the back, you gotta, you know, you can't.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: No, just. Just.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: That's right. You can't grow too much in the front. Otherwise you just feel silly about it. But, yeah, after an arthroscopic knee surgery this week, I'm feeling way better than I was. So it started at 09:00 on Tuesday, and by 1030, I was feeling better than I was at 830.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: So awesome.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Mission accomplished.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Yeah. So glad to hear that.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: And my HRV is bounced back to normal. Actually a little bit above normal today. So three weeks post surgery. I was pretty surprised by that.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Yeah. But interesting Wednesday, a little stress from.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: From what it sounded like after the injury, so.
[00:05:35] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. That's right. But enough of that. Let's talk about something fun and something very, very topical. There's a reason you have an even bigger smile on your face than normal right now, and that's because you are about to leave for ten days or more. Is it two weeks? I don't know. Ten work days plus weekend.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: But extend a week and a half, let's just call it that.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Week and a half vacation time off shutting down. And I know you well enough to know that it's got to be really, really important for us to try to track you down, and it won't be easy for us to track you down.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: And that's a great introduction.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: That's the right way to be.
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Yeah. My last email is that Jeff has my cell phone number. If something's on fire, Jeff can find me.
So I thought this would be just a great opportunity. I know we've touched on this subject before, but.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: Yeah, we have. It's been a long time. I feel like it's been a long time. A year or more. Yeah.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: And honestly, really thinking about this subject, about, let's call it HRV friendly vacations, you know, writing the heartbeat of business, our most recent book with Ina and Doctor Dave, you know, really thinking about this also from what are the organizational benefits of setting up a healthy time off? And really, I would say at this point, just rethinking, maybe reclaiming what a vacation really is.
And I know I'm kind of a lone advocate for this in our organization, but, you know, as the guy who sets the podcast schedule, hey, I can get my voice out there.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: Well, you know, and I think this organization is so different than so many of the ones that we've worked in, in the past. And so, you know, we're still, especially me and people that are, that have been in tech, we're having to change a lot of thought and habit and day to day around vacation. I've got a good story I'll share at some point in the podcast of somebody that I recently talked to in tech sales and their organization's lack of priority being placed on vacation. But yeah, yeah, you're right. I mean, look, people aren't used to, especially in our culture, in the US in particular, shutting down and actually shutting down. And, you know, there are some moderately good reasons for that, but not that many. And you know, we often search for them and find them even when we don't need to. That's what I found myself.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: I would argue there's more reasons, there's more reasons to not disconnect than to disconnect. Now. I think there's huge. The consequences of both of those, I think makes the opposite argument. But I want all of our listeners to know. I mean, I've got like three big projects right now that I could be working on, a meeting I could be going to.
I'm trying to publish kind of a second version, not quite an addition of my heart rate variability for trauma informed environment books. Like, it would be easier for me on one level to check emails and work 2 hours a day throughout this vacation. So, you know, I want, when, when I, when I talk about this, I do want to the audience to know I hold the dilemma and I appreciate people who come to different conclusions. I just think what we're not talking about, Jeff, is the science out there.
What is it? So let's acknowledge the argument is, do you want to come back to 1000 emails? I know you and I have talked, you get a lot of your salary and tech sales from closing those sales. And if you don't return a call, do you lose an amount of money? Which is astounding to me, both for you and for the company as well. And so I could list more reasons to maybe work during a vacation than not work. Now we start to look at the evidence on, and heart rate variability is coming up in these studies now on what we're really doing to ourselves.
There needs to be the counter argument that the benefits of disconnecting really the scales of this. Yeah, you might have a lot of reasons to keep working, but the benefits of this are so great, both for the individual but also for the employer. I mean, that's where just no longer.
This mentality that we're in doesn't make scientific sense anymore. And like I said, I get there's a dilemma still there, but when we start to look at the science, it just is overwhelming to say, what are we doing? Well, what are we doing? And we worked with some Europeans, right? They're like, I don't know, the number of bank holidays they get throughout the years. It's just like a norm over there that they do this. Now our Europeans could act a little better too, in my opinion, but at least, at least they're on vacation or holiday over there because they really love their banking system. But shout out to Ames, Viv and Ben, but exactly yeah. So, I mean, I think that it's just important to recognize and think about your own dilemma with this. And that's why, Kyle, I want to hope to talk about today with you.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's great. And, you know, to paint the picture in the world that I've worked in, I've never been in a company this intense. Maybe I could come up with better words, more pointed words, but we'll leave it at that. But I was recently speaking to somebody who's in tech sales, and he asked, he worked for a small company. He was the number one rep in his organization and carried a lot of the revenue for the company and responsible for a lot of the customers that they had. He has to take two days off for a big event for his daughter.
It is at the beginning of the quarter. Often our sales are sort of quarterly focused. So the beginning of the quarter is typically when people take time off. And Izboza told him, no, we can't have you. We can't have you out for two days.
The beginning of a quarter to go. I can't remember his graduation or a wedding or something. It was an important thing. Right. And they told him no. I mean, there's. How astounding is that? So, you know, just think about the, all of the ramifications of that with him. Right. And obviously, he didn't stick around in that job for very much longer. Yeah, surprisingly. Right. So if you think about the consequences, you know, not just scientifically, but from morale standpoint, from, you know, burnout, from all of those things, I mean, performance, you know, you're losing some of your best people because you're forcing them to work more because in their mind, they, quote unquote, can't live without them, but now they're forced to permanently live without him as a result of this.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: Right, exactly. And what's that?
What's the monetary, that's where we start talking about the monetary like argument here, much less with the business world. What we need to pay attention to is people that take vacations are more productive, they're happier, their heart rate variability is higher, and the productivity gains, especially around if people that take, like, two week vacations, which is almost like a unicorn nowadays in the US, their productivity throughout the rest of the year increases. And so we got to kind of look at, you know, is somebody not being in their job? Does that cost the organization money? Yes, it does. Like, especially, like, I work with a lot of medical clinics. If a physician is not seeing patients, there's loss there. But we know that in most places, and I haven't seen, like, post Covid. Well, not post Covid now, but, you know, post maybe the peak of COVID but it takes like, over a million, sometimes $2 million, depending on where you live, to replace a physician.
So it has to replace them. Exactly.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: Let alone how many patients you can't see while you're in the middle of replacing them.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Exactly. And if you're offering people paid time off as a benefit and then say, no, you can't take two days to go to an important life event.
But I think it's a reflection of where we've gone. Like, we. So let's let, I hope we can be part of reclaiming this, because what I really want, business leaders, managers, even, you can think about this as a teammate as well, is to think about really pay time off as an investment.
And theres plenty of data to show the return on that investment. Not to mention, we live longer when we take vacations. We actually can study that. We see a higher heart rate variability. We see lower cortisol levels, and again, productivity measures, those all grow dramatically. So, like, this idea that we've got to work 24 7365 or else just doesn't work. And one of the reasons that I really think to talk about this is just recovery.
And I think where a lot of people, we talked about this a few episodes back, just the stress we've all been under, and it seems like, again, every day there's something else to stress this out further. I was just watching the news, uh, today, I won't mention what day it is to keep this apolitical, but, yeah, uh, it's a big day. There's another one big day. Um, and so, I mean, you've got all this going on, and you know what? We know one of the things. And so people get burned out, people get exhausted in pretty much every job they have. I've yet to meet somebody.
I've got a buddy that works at Whole Foods. I know you and my friends in the technology world now, I know a lot of professors who we talk to, students, we get exhausted. And especially now that that's higher than ever, really, one of the best ways to get yourself out of exhaustion is not exposing yourself to the variable that's causing the exhaustion. So, I mean, it sounds very simple. You don't need a master's degree in psychology to figure this out. But if something's stressing you out and you're continually exposing yourself, and every job is going to stress you out in some way or the other. So what a vacation does or what it can do is detach us from the stressor that is our job, you know, and not some of that stress is good, some of it's not good. You know, we've talked about eustress and distress and motivation and all that in this, in previous episodes, but it's that disconnection. So if we never disconnect, our productivity starts to decline, our health starts to decline, our satisfaction with life, our ability to be the parent, the spouse, the friend, the family member we're supposed to be, that all really starts to suffer. So, you know, it's that detaching from that source of stress is just healthy to do. We should no longer feel guilty about that.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: It's, you know, you go back to. And interestingly enough, some of the most watched podcast episodes we've had are the job demand and resource model. Right.
This is a resource that goes into that model. And if you cut it out, that's one less resource. You have to meet the demands required and keep people engaged and excited, and that's where the good outcomes are achieved. So you only have so many resources. If you cut one out completely, the likelihood of good outcomes decrease significantly.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: Jeff? Yeah, and I'm really challenging leaders right now, and as I've mentioned several times, the industries I work primarily in are the most burned out industries. But aren't we all just a little burned out right now? I think that just because if you're not number one or two or three on the list doesn't mean. I think we've all felt life and the heaviness of life and in our work and just extreme ways the last few years. So we as organizations, we as team members, yes, there is an investment. There is a benefit to this, but we need to really look at the time people have away from work is an investment.
And so let's just, let's use an analogy, because, you know, I love my analogies, is that we invest. We invest $10,000 in the stock market, and because we're so smart, Jeff, we double our money. So we we bring that money out. So as we're talking about, there's huge mental health, cognitive health, medical health, and then you can bring the social health studies in there, too, of people who take vacations, that they're healthier, their medical expenses are less, they're more productive, they miss less days because they're sick. So there's that. There's this huge investment. So we invest money, we give people time off, I would argue, in the United States, especially with our european friends. Two weeks is ridiculous when you think about it, but we give that.
But now how we handle that investment, it's like pouring gasoline on that doubling of our money, $20,000 and just saying it on fire. And I want to talk about two ways that we do this. Is one, is people staying connected to their work. Now, Jeff, I know you're kind of an older millennial, maybe very young Gen X. You're right on that line.
I remember a time, my first job, that this might blow your mind. We didn't have email.
We didn't have cell phones. When you were on vacation, you couldn't work. I guess you could call in, but that was sort of stupid.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: What were you gonna do?
[00:20:42] Speaker A: I know. And guess what?
[00:20:44] Speaker B: It was great.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Kept going on without us. It's what it was for human history, as long as there was paid time off. Thanks to our unions, yeah, we really couldn't work. And the world went on. But now with this technology and we got some really smart people. I won't mention any names because I don't want to shame our coworkers.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: You want to, but you're not.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Oh, yes, I did. Thank you for that. But I will just in case.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: I'm sure. I'm sure I'm one of them. So I'll take. You can name me by name. That's okay.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: There you go. There you go.
Is working like 2 hours or so a day while on vacation. Now, again, I understand the dilemma. I understand your dilemma. If my paycheck, which helped pay my mortgage and feed my family, was halfway dependent on me locking in this sale and they don't care if I'm on vacation, there's that argument there. There's the argument I don't want to come home to 1000 emails. There's. The argument is I've got a lot of things in the fire that if I don't pay attention to them, who knows what's going to happen? There's a lot of anxiety of the modern work environment that pulls us in again.
That's always been there in some extent, and it's just been in recent history that we've say, well, you guys stay connected. Now I also.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: Accessibility, you know, I mean, with the benefits have, you know, there's. There's pros and cons with everything. And the consequences of accessibility is an expectation that you may be on a beach in Hawaii, but I can still reach you.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: Guess what? You got your phone on you, don't you?
[00:22:26] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:22:26] Speaker A: Yep. Answer calls and so I don't want to, because I want to be realistic. Working 2 hours on the beach in Hawaii and spend the rest of the time having fun. I'm not going to say there's no benefit to that, like, you know, let's be honest, like, but it's also kind of working with different scenery. Like, because here's what you're not doing, and this is what leaders, managers, organizations got to pay attention to. You're not disconnecting. So, so what we know about the science is the best way to recover from something that's causing you stress. And that's a job. Right. You may love your job. Your job is still causing you filling up your cup, adding dialostalic load. So when you don't disconnect, you never really get that recovery. Yeah. Now you can improve your health and wellness like, you know, sit on the beach, go and ski, those sort of things. Yeah. But you're not, you're not maximizing that benefit with this. And so if we can, like, I think we need to challenge ourselves, how do we do this? I'm getting to the point where I'm probably getting so annoying, people won't want to talk about this.
But I really think as an organization, if you can't figure out how to structure somebody's job that they can't go on vacation for a week, that's a failure of the organization. Like, you've done something wrong structuring your jobs. Because if you can't allow somebody to do something that's healthy from them, both from a work and a personal perspective, I think we need to challenge ourselves with that, you know, and I agree.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: And I think everybody in the equation needs to.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: Because, I mean, you know, Megan and I were on vacation in Mexico.
She would go to a massage in the morning, I would go for a run, and then I would work for an hour for the reasons you mentioned. Right. I mean, there's revenue on the line, there's catching up so that I don't have a million things to deal with when I get back. Nobody expected me to.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:35] Speaker B: That wasn't an organizational culture of. No. Just because you're, you're out.
You need to be doing this work. It was my choice.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: So, I mean, I think it goes both ways. I mean, you're challenging managers, rightfully so, and leaders to make sure that culturally you're setting up the expectation that they don't. Yes.
Not even not addressing the expectation, but saying, don't. I will be upset with you if you stay connected. So that's one thing, but also to the employees, like, do you really need to, will people really be upset if you don't?
Is this for you? Is this an obligation or is this just your own preference? And I can very confidently tell you it was my own preference.
[00:25:18] Speaker A: Yeah. And I would love a culture to develop. And I think some people are taking this serious, like, hey, you know, my boss, you know, I've got a vacation. I think when you were in Mexico, you were celebrating some. Was it your wife's 40th birthday? Was that. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, like, you know, great. I know you're a great husband and you got great.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: I didn't do it when she wasn't at a massage, by the way.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[00:25:41] Speaker B: It was only when she was doing something.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: That's good, that's good.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: That was very important. Exactly.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: But I would love for us to see, send the messages that, you know, it's the culture here, like, we're closing this deal. I'm going to go celebrate my wife's 40th birthday, and our culture will not allow me to do this. Here's the person that's going to cover. They know exactly where it is to walk you through the rest of this process. And I know that's easier said than done, you know, but, you know, if.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: You think through it, you know, I mean, anything can happen, right? If you, you set yourself up, you understand the benefits, you know the reason why, and, you know, you set that process up, then there's no reason it can't happen.
[00:26:22] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. So we just gotta change this. You know, it just, this. The science there is. I mean, again, heart rate variability is so based on the recovery, and we've just got to acknowledge that if we, if we don't disconnect, we're minimizing our recovery. It, you know, again, it's like that athlete who goes old school, like I used to do and you used to do, probably why our deezer shot. But, you know, you get up the next day and you push yourself no matter what. You lose a game. You better get up at 06:00 get into the gym and start. Start working hard.
[00:26:58] Speaker B: Work harder, work harder. You didn't get the outcome. You didn't work hard enough.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: Yeah. And I know in hindsight, I didn't show up to games nearly as in a state that I could have because of that mentality. Now would I keep, if I was an athlete now with all this knowledge, would I change? So I showed up better when my team needed me to? I'd hope so.
I sure I did. A lot of other things too that I thought were getting me there. So rethinking that and then the second piece where I just think we set our investment on fire is really bringing people back from vacation. This is where I think this is so simple, it's going to be an investment, but here we can think about it, right? So we know that there's a lot of benefit to taking a vacation, fully disconnecting from the stress of work. We also know that our biometrics start to trend in a negative direction around the Thursday before we're going to come back to our job. Because no matter what we start thinking about, what have we missed? What have we, how many new emails am I going to have? You know, people that have connected the whole way, they haven't quite had the same recovery. So you're, you know, so you probably spiking higher. I haven't seen that specifically in the research. But then Monday you come back and what so many people do right now is jump back full 2ft into your job and please catch up to the week or two weeks that you were on vacation. So we're almost punishing people who are taking healthy vacations, taking vacations that set you up to be productive throughout the rest of the year. You walk back in the office Monday after a week or two of vacation, please go to all your meetings, please do everything you're supposed to be doing as a typical Monday and go through 1000 emails while you're at it. The other thing I'm really encouraging employers and people to really advocate for themselves is whether it's a half day, whether it's a full day on the return from vacation. I want to trademark Matt Mondays or something like that.
I got really, this is why I need a vacation. I need to come out with a trendy term that, you know, give people a half day to just catch up. Like you have a half day to catch up from your vacation. And let's extend that positive investment so we don't burn people out on Wednesdays. I haven't. And this is just all, you know, really smart people that I know who do check email around vacation, I hear that same overwhelmness whether they've been checking emails or not. So I don't, I don't see any benefit. Like Wednesday, they're back to burnout no matter who. But we set this up. So, so give people like they can miss a meeting, like the right, of.
[00:30:05] Speaker B: Course they missed a whole week.
[00:30:08] Speaker A: Give them some time, catch up and their productivity, their health, their wellness is going to pay off. And. And that's just like, the real message is this is science. Like, there's studies, you know, on this piece, and so just really helping people be healthy, be productive, and there's just so many benefits there for the organization, the team. When somebody does that.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: Yep. Then it's easy. I mean, to your point, they've been gone. What's another half day?
[00:30:41] Speaker A: Yeah. So the other part of this, Jeff, that I think we don't talk about is thinking about what is a HR free or HRV friendly vacation, you know, because that's the other. So part of it is our culture that takes that away from us. Like I said, if you're working every day, if you come back and you're overwhelmed and burned out again by Wednesday, that is not a heart rate variability friendly vacation.
I think the bigger challenge, because this is also a dilemma, is on vacation, what do we do usually more? We usually interrupt our sleep schedule. We sleep differently. We're traveling different time zones. We're consuming more drugs than alcohol.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: We're playing.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: I know you and I are. I probably burn more calories on a week of vacation than I do any other year. Week of the year. Snowboarding, hiking, doing everything I love, uh, snorkeling, those sort of things that I love to do. And so. And, you know, flying, you know, three, four time zones away.
Horrible for your heart rate variability, but there is that experience that you have, right? There's the fun you have. There's the laughter you have. So my challenge is think about a balance. You know, just think about, you know, how do you utilize and set up a vacation to maximize the positives while understanding and accepting and maybe even trying to minimize the negative side of that? So, like, if you have an eight hour red eye flight, ten hour back from Hawaii, and you do that Sunday, and you go to work the next day without any sleep, you set yourself up for failure. So maybe giving yourself a day to recover if you got a lot of jet lag going on, um, you know, maybe throwing a day of sobriety in there or just minimizing, you know, having your fun nights. So, you know, you know, like, you know, you know how much I love going out to the clubs till two, three am, you know, you know, but always excited vacations. I'm going to bed, like, oh, my goodness, it's 09:00. It's like, yeah, I don't know if stayed out past ten in a long time. That cu game that we went to, that's about the last time. So, yeah, just to balance that, you know, like I said, I think you go from the US to Europe, have a great european. You go, you know, even Australia, you know, those big, long flights, huge jet lag. That's a good thing. Like, don't, don't, like, just try to, like, sleep and exercise because Matt tells you can't have any fun on vacation. Just try to balance it out. And this is where I would encourage you. Take your HRV monitor with you. Track your HRV on vacation and see.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:33:47] Speaker A: See what works. I found, honestly, there's been sometimes during this pandemic, I need three days just to crash out with Netflix and the Xbox, and I could see that my heart rate variability improved. Like, so exhausted, I just needed to veg out. And, you know, this vacation a little bit different. Like, I get. Go to my sister's wedding in South Carolina, so give, hopefully get to kayak. I haven't seen an ocean for three, four years. So, you know, have some fun there. I'll do a lot of hiking, be in the mountains, be in nature, you know. Yeah. Will I eat? Probably not quite as healthy.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I will vegan in South Carolina.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: I know that's not.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: You got your work cut out.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: I may be just eating greens and it may be healthier. And trying to get greens not soaked in butter might be the hard thing, but that's.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll see. I've survived worse.
Yeah. So, I mean, but it's just like, okay, how do I. I know I need HRV recovery vacation, but I need to have fun as well. So it's just like, how do I measure this of enjoying myself while really not setting myself to come up at the last day of vacation, being worse off, having more stock load than the day before that, that would be the challenge that I give to everybody, is just to like, you know, because that experience is good, that's long lasting. The. The experience, the fun with friends, the whatever. Having a drink or two on the beach, you know, those sort of things. Nothing wrong with that. Just, you know, have that balance. Whereas if you're going out getting drunk every day for seven days, you know.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: It'Ll be a rough Monday morning at work.
[00:35:36] Speaker A: It's going to be a rough Monday morning at work, and you may be more stressed than when you left. So that would be my goal to everybody. How do you, at the end of vacation, which shouldn't be too difficult, how do you end up with a higher heart rate variability than you do at the beginning? So again, have fun, have experiences, be active. All those things are not bad things. Just think about recovery every once in a while and how that benefits going to last. From the good news about the productivity stuff, the medical health data is that, that is just studying people that take vacations. It's not HRV friendly vacations. As far as exactly the research that I've seen.
I just want you to plant the seed. Number one, though, have fun, enjoy yourself. Because no matter what time with friends, family, or time, if you're an introvert alone in the forest reading books, whatever it might be, that is really showing us. Yeah, you could tweak some things to improve your health and wellness, but really, most of these studies I've seen is just people that take vacation happier. We live longer, Jeff. We live longer.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: That's it. Absolutely.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: Let's do it. Let's do it.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: So, yeah, and you are, you are literally minutes away.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: All I gotta do is publish a podcast, but.
[00:37:09] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:37:10] Speaker A: This has been a great way to kind of transition into that. So.
[00:37:15] Speaker B: Well, that's it. And the 4 July is close, it's holiday season. A lot of our friends, international friends.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: July and August are taking the next two months, huh?
[00:37:25] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. You know, and that's great, you know, and so for the folks here in the US, yeah, you know, challenge yourself.
And I need to do a better job.
But, you know, like you said, when you talk about the science and you talk about how important disconnecting is, even though it may be uncomfortable, we all need to try it and see, right? And, you know, like you said, track your TRV. Maybe it, maybe it doesn't for specific individuals. Right. And maybe depending upon the type of job you have, you take a disconnected holiday and your HRV gets worse every day.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: Okay, well then the next time, you know, check email for an hour and, you know, maybe you won't see that trend. Although I don't think much science is going to support that. You know, there might be individuals where that's the case. And so, you know, having this data at your fingertips, being able to use it, interpret it, understand how your body reacts to certain things, is why we advocate, you know, products like ours where you can, you know, have this, this biometric information to help you understand the best way to interpret things and live life the way it's going to impact you the most. Positively.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: Absolutely. And just for, for the bosses out there, for the supervisors, the managers, like I said, if I feel the need to check email, and I'm not saying that there ain't an exception to the rule, because there definitely is, I just how are we structuring people's jobs?
And that to me is that if you can't enjoy time off without getting more stressed out about not checking in. And I think that Jeff, what you just said might even be the majority of our population right now. So I think that's where we are as a society.
We've got it. We got to rethink this. We got to rethink that's a failure on management if I can't. And you're doing this for me, right? There's things going on with optimal HRV and everything else you're covering for me and, you know, absolutely. You know, and I know we got a great team, you know, now who knows? Something might be happen that you might have to reach out to me. Sometimes you send me good news, which I love that, you know, exactly.
[00:39:43] Speaker B: We try to reserve vacation communication for you.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: Text me all the good news you want, you know, and, you know, if you need me, if there's something in my folder that you have to have or we're gonna lose some big opportunity, you know how to get a hold of me and I don't. I'm gonna hesitate for a second to do that if that's necessary. Like I said, I like to say if the office is on fire, I need to be called. If not, pretty much I want to work with my team to say, I trust you, I trust you and we're going to set to do this. Like I said, if it's on fire, call me.
[00:40:21] Speaker B: If not, I want to know, I.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: Trust you, you do it. And so it's having these conversations about how we can do this healthier. And I put the emphasis on supervisors, managers, executives because they need to start the conversations we all need to be a part of.
[00:40:39] Speaker B: Set the expectation.
[00:40:40] Speaker A: Yeah, they do.
[00:40:41] Speaker B: Because without my expectation is that you're not gonna respond to emails.
[00:40:44] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:40:45] Speaker B: You're not going to be. If you do, you better have a good reason to do it. I don't want to hear from you. I don't want to see those emails. I'll be frustrated if I do not.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: There's a job expectation that you don't check emails when you're taking time off, you know, and there's, you know, and that's where we've got to just, we've got to change the conversation. And I can say this. I care about people. I've dedicated my life to helping people live healthier lives. At the same time, you're going to get better business results. Like, like this is the thing let's not even care about people. Let's say you hate people, but you have to work with them because you're a boss and you want to be rich and you got to hire somebody because AI is not there yet. They're just going to do more for you and make you more money if you do this.
Because if you burn people out and you're turning everybody over, especially in this job market, you're losing a ton of money. That that person, your friend in tech, you know, now it's kind of hard to measure on a balance sheet, but that was a loss. Like two days versus the loss to replace. We've been trying to hire in the tech world.
[00:41:55] Speaker B: It's hard.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it's hard. So, you know, all these variables come in. So even if you don't like people, if you don't care about your employees, this still gets you better business results. And obviously, I'm trying to find a backdoor to get you to care about people. But at the same time, even if you hate people, if you hate your team results and make you richer. So I'll take any level of motivation that I can get. And if anybody has some good terminology that I can trademark around Matt Mondays, I love to hear that. So.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: That's right. That's right.
Well, this is good, Matt. Good reminder. I mean, like we talked about, I think this is definitely something we've spoken about, but it's been, you know, at least a year, if not more timely with your trip coming 4 July holiday. And, you know, ultimately everybody planning, I mean, everybody I know is planning some sort of trip this summer. So, you know, disconnect. If you can just disconnect, just do it. Just do it.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: We used to do it, Jeff. I swear. We used to.
[00:43:00] Speaker B: Well, there were no plugs to pull.
[00:43:01] Speaker A: I know.
[00:43:03] Speaker B: That was the thing. There was no laptop, there was no phone. It was in the office.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: You were not working access your office from anywhere, too. So, like, even when we had email, like log in and what was it, webex or something back then, before, it was like immediate, you had to do all this thing and we, you know, guess what? The world didn't collapse. It's all we knew. The world kept going, and we can get back there. It's just setting expectations and look at the science. Just look at the science.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:43:38] Speaker A: Like I said, care about yourself, care about your family, care about your business. And with that, Jeff, I am going on vacation.
[00:43:46] Speaker B: You just got to pull, literally pull the plug right now to end the podcast.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: I do. I got to hit publish on a few things.
[00:43:54] Speaker B: All right. Well, Matt, always a pleasure to enjoy your trip.
Go avalanche in game seven tonight, and we'll talk to you when you get back. Thanks to all.
Always a pleasure. We appreciate the support. If you're ever interested learning more optimal hrv.com.
love to hear thoughts, success stories, interest, you know, reach out to us. We're, we're always interested in what our listeners are up to, so.
[00:44:21] Speaker A: Absolutely. All right. Take care, everybody. Thanks.
