The Science of Success Podcast

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Get What You Want Without Working So Hard with Denise Gosnell

Lace Gilger
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In this episode we share how to decide what’s really important in life, how self care can actually lead to massively increased productivity, and how you can put away the guilt of not working hard enough with our guest Denise Gosnell. 

Denise Gosnell is a serial entrepreneur, business strategist, lawyer, and author. She owns Vacation Effect, Inc. and Gosnell & Associates. She is frequently asked to speak on her wide range of expertise at events, interviews, and shows. Denise is also the author/co-author of eight business and technology books, soon to include The Vacation Effect book based on her training methods. She has been featured on media outlets across the web.

  • What happens when your house gets struck by lightning and it burns down?

  • “What do you want to retrieve in the next 5 minutes?"

  • Do you really want to work for money just to pay for stuff that you don’t care about?

  • How do you balance achievement vs appreciation?

  • “I’m no longer going to neglect my family for the sake of money"

  • Do you make more money while working less?

  • "How can I have the money I’ve always wanted without working so hard?”

  • All you have to do is decide to make today what you want tomorrow to be. 

  • Are you addicted to work?

  • The importance of self care to being productive and creating results 

  • What is growth by subtraction and how can you use it to improve your life?

  • How do you stay fully present on when you’re away from work?

  • Should I feel guilty if I can get as much done in half the time as I used to?

  • First step is to acknowledge that the guilt is there… then ask yourself if the guilt is really true.

  • Using the concept of forced hyper efficiency to create more results more quickly

    • Set a timer for half of the time the task should take to accomplish 

  • Break your goals down into stepping stones and short action steps. 

  • The joy comes from the journey of getting to the thing, not from actually arriving at the end point. 

  • If you don’t enjoy the journey, then it’s probably not something you actually want. 

  • How do you make your “someday-maybes” a reality 

  • How do you find your values? How do you stick to your mission and your “purpose?"

  • What are the top 3 things you would do whether or not people paid you for it?

    • What’s a power word that you can give all 3 of these things that encompasses all of them?

  • You get amazing insights when you give yourself the space to create mental clarity 

  • How can I make this obstacle one of the best things to ever happen to me?

  • Homework: Ask what the top 3 things you would do come up with your own power word 

Thank you so much for listening!

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[0:00:11.8] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success; the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than five million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.

In this episode, we share how to decide what’s really important in life, how self-care can actually lead to massively increase productivity and how you can put away the guilt of not working hard enough while being more productive, with our Denise Gosnell.

I'm excited to tell you that my producer, Austin, is going to be joining me for this interview. Get ready for a great conversation.

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our e-mail list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How To Create Time for What Matters Most In Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you’re on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word smarter, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222.

In our previous episode, we shared how to deal with self-doubt and what you should do if you don't feel like you belong. We explored the power of kindness and how to build your kindness muscle, as well as much more with our previous guest, Gabriella van Rij.

Now for our interview with Denise.

[0:01:49.0] MB: Denise Gosnell is a serial entrepreneur, business strategist, lawyer and author. She owns Vacation Effect Inc., and Gosnell & Associates. She is frequently asked to speak on her wide range of expertise at events, interviews and shows. Denise is the author and co-author of eight business and technology books, including the soon-to-be-released, Vacation Effect book. She has been featured on media outlets across the web.

Denise, welcome to the Science of Success.

[0:02:15.8] DG: Thank you so much for having me, Matt. I'm excited to be here.

[0:02:18.5] MB: Well, we're really excited to have you on the show today. I'd love to start out with your story and how you came to some of the revelations in the Vacation Effect, this idea of somebody who is really successful, serial entrepreneur and you were working super hard and then you really had a breakthrough and a shift that transformed the way you think about life and business and productivity. I'd love to hear that journey and how it shaped your thinking.

[0:02:44.7] DG: I'd like to say that there was this magic epiphany that I had on my own and that I just came to realize it from my own wisdom. Sometimes, we get thrown curveballs in our lives, don't we? That was what happened with me. In June of 2011, I was running three companies, working like crazy. I'm a recovering workaholic, which that's what my story would be about today.

I had this house fire, where literally struck by lightning on June 20th, 2011 at 8:00 a.m. My husband and I didn't even know we were on fire until there's this knock at the front door. I go to the front door and there's this fireman saying, “Hey, your house is on fire.” We’re like, “Okay. We knew we were struck by lightning, but we didn't know we were on fire yet.” We were trying to figure that out.

Then what was so interesting, Matt, was he asked me a question. It brought a pit in my stomach, because how I answered him made me realize I wasn't living my life in alignment with what really mattered. Is it okay if I share the question that he asked?

[0:03:39.7] MB: Yeah, please do.

[0:03:41.1] DG: He said, “What do you want us to retrieve in the next five minutes before your house is destroyed?” Can you imagine only having five more minutes in your house and having to pick what you want to have them go grab? That was the question that I was faced with. How I answered him really shocked me and made me realize I wasn't living my life in alignment with what mattered. What I asked him for were things like my then five-year-old daughter stuffed animal bunny. Bunny was a member of the family and my wedding photos from 25 years ago when we got married in Jamaica and my grandmother's blanket she made me as a child.

Those were the things I had them retrieve. It's like, what are those represent? They represent the people in my life that really matter to me and the memories, not the stuff, not the artwork from Italy on the wall, or the jewelry in the jewelry box. All that stuff can be replaced. That was just a really eye-opening moment for me where I vowed that day that things were going to change.

I was no longer going to work for just the sake of money to pay for stuff that I didn't care about. It was tricky, because I also realized that I really liked nice things. It's so interesting. We fight with our self. I like nice things and I want to provide vacations and a nice life for my family, but not at the expense of never being with them and being present with what really matter. Does that make sense? It's like that interesting conflict.

[0:04:56.5] MB: It's something that I think about all the time. I think many people struggle with the same balance of striving and achieving on one end and yet, appreciating on the other end and how do you stride that really tough balance beam and figure out where you land on it. I'm curious to see how you struck that balance.

[0:05:14.7] DG: Yeah. It actually took me five years from the fire to figure it out. That day, I vowed that I'm no longer going to neglect my family and the people that I care about for the sake of money. It's like, I will figure out this balance thing, if there is such a thing, how to have more money, how to have good money and plenty of free time without having to pick one over the other. That was always what I wanted.

If I'd work more, the free time would suffer, the family would suffer, I would suffer. Then if I worked less, the revenue would suffer. Surely, there's a way to do both. I just stumbled my way along for five years after the fire and I just kept experiencing one or the other. It was either one would suffer, or the other would suffer. Then interestingly, I went to this meditation retreat. We were supposed to come with one question we wanted answered.

What was interesting was the question that I wanted the answer to was how can I have this schedule I've always wanted without my revenue suffering? During that meditation, it was like, a God again answering my call, or my higher self, or whoever was talking to me, the same person that gave me – being that gave me that lightning bolt from trying to help give me the wake-up call, just whispers in my ear, or I heard it like somebody whispering in my ear. When I asked that question, “Denise, what are you waiting for? All you have to do is decide and make today what you want tomorrow to be.”

That's interesting. Make today what tomorrow to be. I'm like, okay. Well, I'm scared as hell to have the three-day a week work schedule that I've always wanted permanently. As an entrepreneur, I can commit to just doing a little experiment. What if I just do a 30-day experiment for eight days? What if I just block off eight business days for the schedule I've always dreamed of, which was having a three-day work week, where I had Tuesdays and Thursdays, I call it my Tuesday-Thursday schedule to do whatever makes me happy. We're not working in the trenches of the company.

That's what I had dreamed off. I said, someday I'm going to do that. I said that someday for 20 freaking years, right? After that epiphany, I'm like, “All right, I'll try it for one month and we'll see what happens.” I went back to the hotel that night, I sent out a bunch of e-mails, rescheduled a bunch of meetings, carved out Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next four weeks. It was really surprising what happened.

It was painful at first. I've realized I was addicted to work and it was like, I found myself resisting and I felt really guilty at first. I was like, “Where is this guilt coming from?” I had to deal with the emotion of the guilt and we can talk about that more if you want to. After a couple weeks of resisting the urge to jump back into work, I'm like, “No, no. I'm going to give myself this free time, just as an experiment. I don't have to do it forever.” Gave myself permission to do it.

What happened after weeks 2, 3 and 4, each week got a little better. I realized that I was wasting so much time. I was being inefficient with how I was using the time I was spending. After the end of 30 days, I decided to extend it for another 30 and then another 30. Before I knew it, I decided after 90 days to make it a way of life. There's a lot more of the nuances that of course go into that, but that's the high level of where I actually figured out how to grow by subtraction by removing from my to-do list, instead of adding to it.

[0:08:06.0] MB: I love that idea of improving your life by subtraction. I'm curious, before we dig into that, when you took that leap, I have a couple questions in there and they're interrelated, but did your results suffer? Let's start with that.

[0:08:19.4] DG: At first, the results were suffering, because I was feeling guilty, and so I was working through the kinks. Overall, no. I ended up making the most money I'd ever made in my life that year that I had worked the least and I've been able to maintain and sustain that.

[0:08:35.3] MB: That's really interesting. I mean, I've heard many stories like that. The next piece that I always think about and this is honestly my own internal dialogue that I think about a lot too, which is let’s say you can be that productive on three days a week, what about if you just worked all five days a week at that level of productivity and then got exponentially more results? How do you think about that balance and when to stop and versus when to keep pushing it?

[0:09:00.1] DG: I've thought about that and I think that the reason why I've gotten more done with less time is because of the self-care that it has allowed me to do that I wasn't allowing myself to do before. Before when I was working 80 hours a week, just because I was grinding at 80 hours a week, doesn't mean I was doing 80 hours’ worth of quality work. When you're exhausted and you're staring at the computer, you make a lot of mistakes, or you're not solving problems from the purview of having a clear head and making good decisions.

I was making bad decisions when I was working all the time. You make mistakes, or you're not thinking clearly, you make bad decisions. What I found was that it's like allowing space between the notes. When you give yourself the space, have some thinking time – on my freedom days, which is what I call those Tuesdays and Thursdays when I'm not traveling, the days that I'm not working in the trenches of the company, I solve problems in the company that I'm not even trying to solve.

If I'm out hanging out with friends, or visiting my mom, or just doing whatever makes me happy, I can't tell you how many times I've solved some of the biggest problems when I wasn't trying to. I'm sure you've experienced that before too in all your companies.

[0:10:02.6] MB: Yeah, absolutely. There's actually some really interesting neuroscience around that whole idea of they call it creative incubation in the science research, but basically this idea of feeding information into your subconscious and then consciously focusing on something completely different. Then when you're away, you often have these breakthrough insights.

[0:10:19.4] DG: Right. The more I gave myself the space, the more I realized that was a much needed space in order to be actually more effective as an entrepreneur. Don't get me wrong, with the way I have my schedule structured now to run my three companies three days a week, it's like when you're about to go on vacation and that's where actually the name of my company The Vacation Effect was born. It's like, how you're super productive right before you go on vacation, when you get a month's worth of work done in the two days before you leave. I’m sure most people have experienced that.

It's like, why is that? It's because you're forcing yourself to focus on the critical few thing, the things that really matter that have to be handled because you're going to be gone and you magically figure out how to get it done faster. Now in my three-day a week schedule, it's like I'm doing that every single week of my life. I'm forcing that – I call it forced hyper efficiency into my schedule, where I'm like, okay, I'm not available tomorrow to work on it. I literally write the day off where I'm not allowed to work in the trenches of the company, unless it's a true emergency. That's very rarely and maybe once a month is there a true emergency that would justify that and it's for two hours or something.

What happens though is that if you give yourself permission to say, “You know what? That day is no longer available.” It's amazing when you do that, what else you have to figure out and you have to focus on what really matters. You have to get rid of a lot of stuff. That's why I say grow by subtraction. You have to figure out how to eliminate all the shit that wasn't going to produce results anyway.

[0:11:35.6] AF: Denise, I wanted to jump in here, because I'm hoping you can help me with something personally. This sounds great, having a full Tuesday, Thursday for freedom time. As someone who really – I don't have really a set schedule, or a certain amount of vacation time, but I really find when I do make this time, it's really hard to stay present, right? Because I'll glance at my inbox and all of a sudden, I go down this huge hole that pulls me out of the time that I'm supposed to be spending with my family or friends are doing something else. I'm curious, how do you remain fully present on those freedom days when you're not working on a day where 99% of everyone else is?

[0:12:13.9] DG: Yeah. I just don't open my e-mail. Actually, that's not easy to do. It takes some training. I close the e-mail app. On my freedom days, I try not to even boot up my computer, unless I need to because I'm writing a book, or I'm doing something fun online, which sometimes I'll do that on a freedom day.

For me, a lot of times I might be working on starting a new company or researching something that's totally fun that I never would have time to do. My only rule for myself is just that it be something fun and that it's not in the trenches of the company. It doesn't mean it can't be something that others would deem work, but to me it's just pure joy. Does that make sense? To answer your question, it's just a matter of not going there. That takes some practice.

[0:12:53.9] AF: Yeah. I think just to clarify there, so what you said an hour resonates with me is there are definitely tasks that are “work,” but that I just enjoy doing, right? There are also things that I could probably delegate, but I don't because they're fun to me. They let me do something that I may not be an expert at, but I can tinker and learn a little bit. Just summarize, I guess what I hear you saying is it is okay to do those things that maybe work, as long as you're enjoying them and they're part of that freedom day.

[0:13:25.7] DG: Yeah. For me as an entrepreneur and I know a lot of your listeners are not entrepreneurs, so me as an entrepreneur, that's my criteria is I just don't want it to be in the trenches of the company. I want it to be something that lets me work on the company, or myself, or my family, or whatever makes me happy. Like, what can I do today that really lights me up? Because if I don't get myself the time to do it, it's not going to happen. It's going to be one of those someday maybes as I call them.

Yeah, so that's the distinction that I make. Some people might call it work, but I don't. It's pure love, pure joy of the stuff that I do. I just try to make sure it's not in the trenches of the company, because then you get sucked into that rabbit hole that you're talking about.

For those people listening that are not entrepreneurs, you can also apply the principles of this within your own job, with your boss and in your team. One example is if you can show your boss that you get as much done in three days as you used to in six, you can negotiate things. You can say to your boss like, “Hey, what if I work remotely which some people are doing that more and more now for a variety of reasons.” What if you would negotiate a way to work from home and then you say, “If I can show you that I can do X, Y and Z and get this result, can I have a four-day work week?” Or whatever the case is that you're looking for.

You can totally negotiate that. I did when I was an employee. I negotiated that as a young software developer back before I became an entrepreneur. I totally negotiated it. It was the beginnings of my first test into this world.

[0:14:45.3] AF: It's so funny too. We had an interview a number of years ago with a gentleman by the name of Chris Voss. He was saying some of his wisdom was everything in life is a negotiation. He obviously takes it really far. You can go to Starbucks. There are stories out there of people getting their latte at Starbucks half off, just for asking for it, right?

I do think it's funny what you said. I mean, I've experienced that as well in a past life. It almost seems like I worked a Fortune 50 company and it was very rigid. I mean, vacation time was monitored very strictly. If you weren't in the office by 8:00, if you were gone for lunch for more than 45 minutes, if you left any time before 5:00, it was all being watched.

There was this group of three people there who would get in at 4:00 in the morning, but they'd be able to leave 1:00. Or they'd have just – they wouldn't be in the office for a number of days. Then finally, I would ask, Anthony, my boss at the time. I was like, “Hey, where's Mark?” He’d be like, “Well, you know, Mark's been here and he's demonstrated the fact that he can work from home and get just as much done, so we don't really monitor his time.” For me, it blew my mind and it was like, “Well, how do I get there?”

The issue was then I went back to my cubicle and I would socialize this and I was like, “Do you guys know that you could do this?” Everybody was like, “Oh, that's not true. There's no way.” Just because it wasn't an option that was readily presented, they didn't really rise to the level of action, or the challenge to demonstrate that they could actually handle what it was that they wanted, because everyone complained about being there, but no one really worked hard enough to say like, “I can do this on a beach. Give me a shot.”

[0:16:15.5] DG: Right, exactly. That's exactly what I did. This was over 20 years ago, back when nobody was doing this whole work-from-home thing. Internet wasn't that great. I just made myself so valuable to them that I made it where they couldn't say no. That's people don't realize you can absolutely negotiate that. Chris Voss of course is a master negotiating teacher, so that's cool that he shared that with you guys.

The other part of the story though is I don't want everybody to think that you just magically reduce your schedule and everything just magically falls into place. There's more that actually has to be put into place in order to make it sustainable, at least it was for me as an entrepreneur. The forced type or efficiency part where you limit the amount of time that you're willing to spend, that helps you focus on what really matters, but the way you sustain it is also by putting into place other things, like being smarter, being effective in how you actually use your time, goal-setting in a way that when you are working in the company, you're working on the right things, delegating better to your team if you're a supervisor or an entrepreneur, having standard operating procedures, so that you can clone your knowledge where other people can do it without you having to be the one doing it. There's different little pieces to the puzzle that then make it to where you can make that schedule permanent. Does that make sense?

[0:17:28.5] MB: That's great. I want to dig into forced hyper efficiency and some of those other strategies. Before we get into some of the tactical stuff, I want to come back to the guilt. Because to me, that is one of the biggest barriers to anyone taking a step like this, or even if you have control over your time and your schedule, often that's what really ropes you back into grinding and hustling, pushing working really hard. How do you overcome all of the guilt and all of that baggage associated with the being addicted to work?

[0:18:00.3] DG: Yeah. First of all, Matt, that's a great question, because it was the biggest obstacle for me to overcome and every single entrepreneurial client that I've worked with that I've had to help them overcome. That is the one thing they all had in common was getting past the guilt.

We have this culture in North America. For example, we idolize the people who grind all the time, as you mentioned the word grind. It's we got the Gary Vs and the late Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and those guys. Elon Musk had this tweet back and it was November of I think was 2019. He's like, nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week. That's an example. I have respect Mr. Musk for all the cool stuff that he's done in the technology and whatnot. That attitude is why entrepreneurs feel guilty to answer your question.

It's so ingrained in our culture. Workaholism has become the respected form of addiction. It's a badge of honor, if you don't take your vacation time and some badge of honor who worked the most hours and that's just messed up. That's why we've got this deep subconscious belief that we're less than if we're not working all the time.

The way I dealt with it and that I've helped my clients deal with it is to catch myself. I do it less and less now that I've just given myself permission to let the guilt go. At first, I had to just acknowledge when it was happening. When I'd have that tendency to, Austin, your point about picking the resistance to pick up the phone on a free day, I just have to be like, “Wait a minute. Should I feel guilty if I can get as much done in three days as I used to in six? Is there logically anything to feel guilty about?” Of course, logically the answer is no.

I have to remind myself of that question over and over again. Then of course, you got to actually take the steps that it takes to pull that off, right? It's not just saying it. You got to actually learn to be effective in those three days as you used to in six, or whatever your version of that is, that for those who may be listening, you can have any variation of that that you want. That's just my example.

The first step is to acknowledge that the guilt is there. Then the second step is to say, is this really true? Once you say, “No, this really isn't true,” then you can start taking steps to dismiss it and give yourself permission to say, “You know what? That's bullshit. I'm going to call bullshit on myself and say I'm going to take this freedom day without guilt, but I'm going to honor it by the next day at work, I'm going to prove that I did get a lot done and the results were there.” It's a deal I make with myself to get over it, if that makes sense.

[0:20:16.0] MB: Yeah, that's interesting. I like the idea of almost using it as fuel when you come back to work and saying, “Okay, now I really have to justify the fact that I took yesterday off.”

[0:20:26.0] DG: Right. That's how my recovering workaholic mind get around the guilt is like, “No, no. Logically, if I get as much done, there's nothing to feel guilty about. I'm going to give myself that wonderful freedom day and I take that wonderful freedom day and I have it.” I have great time and then I'm back to work refreshed and you know what? It's funny how I'm like, “Okay, I'm ready to rock and roll.” Then I focus on, “Okay, what do I need to do today that is going to produce the results?”

I know I got tomorrow as another freedom day. Man, I better produce today because I'm not going to be working tomorrow. It's just interestingly motivating. It's like lighting a match and knowing you're going to have to get out of the room quickly, because it's about to be on fire. It really does help instill that force type or efficiency.

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[0:22:50.1] MB: Let's dig into that. Tell me a little bit more about the concept of forced hyper efficiency and how we can start applying it.

[0:22:57.8] DG: Forced hyper efficiency is where you put circumstances around yourself that forces you to focus on what really matters and ignore the stuff that doesn't. That's what I would define it as. Then so one example of how you can do that is using a timer. A lot of times when I am doing a task on one of the days I'm working in the trenches of the company, I'll set a timer for half of what I think the task is going to take. Let's say I think it's a 30-minute activity, I'll set the timer for 15 minutes knowing that it's a 30-minute task.

What's interesting is there's this little clock ticking, I actually use a timer that's not my iPhone timer, because that way I'm not looking at text messages or something that's coming in. I use one of those just battery-operated timers and I watch it clicking down. What's interesting though is even though I don't normally complete the task, in this example the 15 minutes, I usually complete it in less time than 30 than I originally intended.

Maybe I get that 30-minute task done in 20 or 25, because the timer was clicking. If it weren't, I would have taken 30 or longer. Isn't that interesting? I encourage everybody listening to try this out for themselves. There's something magical going on in our brain when we set this timer there for half the amount of time we think it's going to take. It's like, our brain magically figures out how to get it done faster. Even though I have to hit reset on the timer and I let it continue, when I continue it, I don't continue it for another 15. I only continue it for 3 or 5 minutes. Does that make sense? I'm psyching my brain out when I'm doing it. This is a little game I play with myself.

[0:24:25.6] MB: Yeah, that's a great tip. In many ways, both really comes to the concept of Parkinson's Law, which I want to explore a little bit more. Also, just demonstrates that there's so much dead time, so much wasted effort, so many times where we just get distracted or spend 5 minutes doing this, or 2 minutes, or we get up and walk around or whatever. When you create those really powerful constraints and guidelines, you force yourself to create the results much more quickly without wasting any time.

[0:24:56.2] DG: Exactly. You're right about Parkinson's Law, the idea that the time that it takes you to finish a project fills to expand however long you allocated for the project. If I give myself 30 minutes, well guess what? It's going to take 30 minutes. If I give myself 15, knowing its a 30-minute task, somehow my brain magically figures out how to get it done in just a little over 15 minutes. I can't explain why it happens. I just know that that's what happens to me. It's this intense focus that I think what you said, Matt, is true. We don't goof around when we know the clock is ticking.

We don't get up and take the break or do whatever. We're like, “Okay. I'm just going to focus here for 15 minutes and knock this out. I may only need 3 or 4 minutes after that to get it done. Okay, great. I'm done. Now I can take that break.” I give myself rewards too when I meet different milestones. I think that's important as well. To me, my reward is having the freedom days every week. It's like, “All right, I'm going to be really focused and get this stuff done and by God, I'm going to reward myself with those to freedom days.”

[0:25:47.0] MB: Yeah, that's great. It's funny, I literally had an experience earlier today where I had a call coming up and I had just under 20 minutes to knock out a task that I thought would probably take me – I didn't actually set a timer. I didn't even think about this concept, but I wanted to knock this out, because if I didn't do it then, then I would be busy the rest of the day and it was really important task that I wanted to try to knock out before I got stuck on a series of conference calls.

I somehow, like one minute before the call started, I was hitting send on the last e-mail to knock that out. I guess, just a personal experience that really tied in exactly with what you're talking about.

[0:26:20.5] DG: Yeah, and how did that make you feel? You're like, “Man, I just pulled that off.” You probably thought it was going to take you 40 minutes or an hour or something.

[0:26:26.8] MB: It would have taken me an hour if I had sat down and said that I needed to do it, because I would have been really overthinking it and double-checking everything. I was just like, “I got to get these e-mails out.” Bang, bang. Just hitting send. Okay, if there's a typo or whatever, it doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

[0:26:40.2] DG: See, that's the thing. So much of the stuff we waste countless hours on doesn't even matter. That's key what you just said there. That's what I love about forced hyper efficiency. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying to become shitty quality. That's not what I'm talking about. I pride good quality work when it matters, but there are many times when it really doesn't matter.

When it matters, I'll prove something three times. When it doesn't matter, we don't need to overanalyze this stuff as much as we do. If there's one little typo, it really doesn't matter. Unless it's a legal complaint, or a bank transaction, a little typo doesn't usually matter that much where you don't need to prove it six times.

[0:27:16.2] AF: Denise, one thing I was noticing in some of the research that grabbed me a little bit and I think just based on the conversation I've gathered this, but what's a someday maybe?

[0:27:24.5] DG: Yeah. To me, a someday maybe is all that stuff that you tell yourself. We've all done this before. Someday when I have more time, I'm going to travel more. Someday when I have more money, I'm going to donate more money to charity; all those some days that you're going to get around to when this other thing happens.

To me, I call those the someday maybes. It's either give yourself permission to bring them into now, because you're either going to wait till retirement when you don't have the money to do it, or you're too sick or old to even do it anyway. Why not find a way to bring them into the now in some fashion? Even if it's not in the way you've dreamed of. There's always a way to bring some version of that thing that would make you happy. A someday maybe is just delayed gratification that you're delaying for no good reason.

[0:28:10.8] AF: One key thing you just touched on there that I think is really important is you said, you bring these things in into the present, but maybe not in the way you dreamed. If I have this goal of something that I want to accomplish that I've been putting off and then when I do have a little free time like, “Man, I need to get around to that.” I know that the way that I've envisioned it, the way that I've dreamed would involve too much work, or too much time that I don't have right now to do.

When you would look at pulling a someday maybe into the present, how do you sit down and think about different ways to approach it that might not be the standard 1, 2, 3 that you would previously envisioned?

[0:28:44.9] DG: Yeah. That's a great question. A simple example is like, what if somebody wanted to be a master guitarist, right? You're not going to become a master guitarist overnight. What are you going to do? You're going to learn to play the first note. Guess what? You could book yourself an online class to learning how to pick up the guitar and play a few notes, play a basic song. That's an example of we're chunking it down. Maybe your goal is to travel the world on some three-month long cruise that touches every continent.

Well, guess what? Whatever your resources are now, let's say you could only afford to do a weekend getaway to somewhere in your own country to where you could then go see this performance of somebody talking about traveling the world, where you could then plan out more what do I want those countries to look like, which stops what I take? It just brings joy. The act of pursuing something that you have always dreamed of, even the planning of it brings you immense joy when you don't even realize it.

[0:29:35.8] AF: I think that's so true. I think a meta point in there is really breaking things down bite-sized actions, right? You don't have to be on stage with Mick Jagger shredding the guitar in a month. Taking those little steps brings the joy of pursuing that long-term goal into the present. You enjoy doing it, but at the same time it's a stepping stone and thus knocking out one of the steps towards that big dream.

[0:30:00.1] DG: That's so true. What you just said is perfect. Part of what people don't realize, the joy comes from the journey of getting to the thing, not from arriving at the thing. The joy comes from actually the journey of getting there. You'll get as much joy from planning the trip as you do from actually going on the trip. At least I do. For most people, that's true. The journey of taking the lessons and becoming better at guitar or whatever the thing is. Is there one you've always been telling yourself that you want to dissect?

[0:30:27.6] AF: I think it's interesting too. Before, I've got a number of dreams and things up in my head. Something you touched on I want to make sure we highlight real quick is that if you don't enjoy the journey, then it's probably not something you actually want, right? I mean, I have friends who went out into LA for two years, three years after college. They went out and they were wanting to become actresses and actors, but they hated auditioning. They just didn't want to do it.

Looking on the outside in, I was like, “Well, maybe that's not what you actually want.” I think, we really need to take some time to evaluate these goals of who we see ourselves as and say, is that really an honest depiction of what I really want? Everyone wants to be sitting on the red carpet, going up and accepting an award and get all this praise and recognition, but you don't see the down times. You don't see messing up on stage, forgetting your lines, standing on stage in front of thousands of people and blanking at the teleprompter. 

If you can't find the joy in the struggle, then you probably not only don't deserve the dream, but you probably wouldn't even like it when you got there, because you'd be so stressed out from the energy expended getting there.

[0:31:37.7] DG: Yeah, I think that's a key point that you just highlighted. That's why one of the things that I work with my clients and as I mentioned, either give yourself permission to let them go, because you're just lying to yourself. You aren't going to enjoy it anyway and you're never going to get around to it. Or bring it into the now. If you're really serious about it, bring it into the now in some way.

I'll give you a quick example that everybody can understand. I used to always have a someday maybe. I said, “Someday, maybe I'll learn how to be a great cook.” I can cook a basic recipe, but I don't enjoy it and I've never gotten – I just don't do it. I hire a chef, or my husband will cook, or we’ll warm something up in the microwave or the oven. Gourmet cooking, I'd always said that someday, maybe I'll get around to that.

Once I really realized it and I analyzed it to the point you were just making, I realize, you know what? I don't ever want to be a gourmet cook. If I'm really honest with myself, I like cooking for the holidays with my family, making cookies and the active – that's more the family thing and just doing it for fun. I gave myself permission to mark that one off the list and say, “You know what? I'm going to let it go. I no longer have that someday maybe of wanting to be a gourmet cook.” I just choose to cook whenever it makes me happy. That was what I gave myself permission.

[0:32:42.6] AF: Yeah. It's like the idea of being able to cook up this incredible Southern Living incredible spread that’s great. Then when you're there, you're like, “Man, it's hot in here. I don't want to deal with this right now.”

[0:32:52.6] DG: I don’t want to do these dishes. I mean, this is a lot of work. I don't want to do the grocery shopping that goes with it. Just send me the stuff.

[0:32:58.7] AF: Something else while we're on this train, I was in the research we were looking through, there's something that I've really, really struggled with in the past and I'm really hoping you can help me work out. Are you game to maybe help me with something?

[0:33:09.4] DG: Sure. Let's do it.

[0:33:11.4] AF: You talk about life, purpose and power words. This is something that I have personally struggled with a number of times, is to sit down and map out my life purpose. I think a subset of my life purpose is core values, do's and don'ts. All the experts we've interviewed, I mean, I think it's come up many, many times. Your decision-making even becomes less stressful, or less tiresome when you have this list of values and purpose. Then any decision you have to make, you can say, “Does this align, or does this conflict with my life purpose and my life values?” It's an easy answer, right?

I find myself sitting down and I'm looking at a blank page and I'm – I've tried to do it in the morning. I've tried to do it at night, I've tried to do it in all manner of different moods. I find that I can do it and I can sit down and I can write it, but I have a really hard time sticking to it. I feel as though there'll be a season and I'll grow out of that season, or an opportunity will come up that maybe doesn't directly conflict with my values, but maybe isn't super aligned and I'll run with that.

I'm just curious, based on your work and your life purpose and how you came to discover what that is, maybe you can help me craft how I can best put together my life purpose and my mission statement.

[0:34:29.6] DG: That's a great question. I love talking about that, because I'm on a mission to help people have a framework that they can use to really make that easy for them to implement in their lives, because the big thing for me is I was always struggling with the whole life purpose thing and I researched everybody's definition of life purpose. I finally came to something that felt good to me. Some of your listeners I think well I really love this. If you don't love what I have to say, that's okay too. If you have a religious or other belief where you disagree with me, that's totally cool. Take the part you love and ignore the part you don't.

I believe your life purpose, you're going to love this, it's really simple, is simply to live in joy. I believe God put us on this planet and the way that we live in joy is when we are the happiest when we're doing the things that we're best at and that we would do whether anybody paid us or not.

I'll give you an example to answer your question on how this applies to me and how it can apply to other people. What I recommend people do in my life purpose framework is that they identify what are the top three things you love doing whether anybody pays you or not? It's independent of any company. For me, mine are I love learning new things, I love problem-solving/simplifying the complicated, because those are two sides of the same coin and then I love helping others. I do that in all three of my companies. I recommend people pick what are the three things you love doing.

It doesn't have to be three. I just recommend three. It's easier to name it with the power word and to use this framework if you have just three of them. What I then recommend is once you identify those three things that you love doing that are agnostic to any business or job and it's just what is it I love doing, whether anybody pays me or not? Then what's one word? I call it a power word, that I can give that as a name, so that I can just remember what those three bullets are by just thinking of that one word. For me, my power word is amplifier, because what does amplifier do? It's a piece of equipment that takes in a bunch of noise, which for me is learning new things and it does some stuff to that noise and outputs something beautiful.

To me, an amplifier symbolizes learning new things, when it transmits the stuff and outputs something beautiful, it's simplifying and problem-solving. Then others are enjoying this beautiful output of it, that's helping others. To me, that word encompasses all three of those.

Now that I have my power word, I can be like, anytime I have one of my companies or I have a new opportunity or a decision I'm being asked to make, I can ask myself, does this let me be an amplifier? Does this let me problem-solve, simplify, help others, or learn new things? If not, then it answer is either no, we're not going to do it as a company, or is there somebody else on the team that this is their jam, that they, I should let them take on? Does that make sense? That's the big picture of how I go about that.

[0:37:05.7] AF: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Amplify is such a great – when I'm sitting, you're trying to think of mine, I'm like, I can't 1 up amplify.” That’s pretty good. I love the piece too about how finding someone else that is one of their three things, if it's not one of yours. Because I think that that's where our ego can come into play a lot of times, is I might be able to do something and I might want – at times, I might want credit for it. I might want to sit down and figure it out.

The whole time, I'm thinking about other things I got to do. You'll soldier on, because ego drives me at times to do things that maybe could be outsourced and done more efficiently, more quickly and ultimately better, but I want to do them myself. I think a key piece of that among many key pieces is if it's not one of your three things, if it doesn't allow you to be an amplifier, someone else chances are it does allow them to enact their power word and it is one of their top three things. Even if you think it's something that you hate and how could any human being on the planet earth love doing this? I guarantee you, there's someone that loves doing it.

[0:38:02.3] DG: Right. Then the real question is are they on my team and do I want to let the company do it or not? If there's somebody on my team, I'll let the company do it, right? If not, it's like, you know what? The company just needs to say no to this, or maybe it's a new team member we need to bring on to do this great thing.

[0:38:15.9] AF: I want to backtrack a little bit though. This is pretty buttoned-up, right? I mean, I like this framework. I'm sitting here taking notes. It's the top three things you would love to do if you're being paid or not. Find a power word that really exemplifies who you are and what these three things allow you to do. Where'd you find that, or how did you come up with that? It seems very buttoned up and it seems very efficient. I mean, that you've even got my gears grinding right now. What was the process of you coming up with these three things you would love to do? I mean, how did you bucket something so big and undefined, there's a life purpose down to what was I think two and a half minutes of explanation?

[0:38:51.0] DG: I just literally was not happy with any other answer that anyone else had ever given me, all these convoluted answers about your purposes to solve world hunger or whatever, that you've got some predestined thing of what it's supposed to be. If you don't, you failed in life. I just kept praying and meditating on it. I just got the answer one day in one of my meditations. I think you're getting a sense here that I like to meditate and get clarity.

When I give myself space to do that, it's amazing the insights I get. I just got the answer is just be happy. It goes back to that meditation retreat that I was talking about when I went there with the purpose of saying, “Hey, how can I have the schedule I've always wanted?” Then the answer that I got was all you have to do is make today what you want tomorrow to be. To me, I think that was the first insight I got into the whole be happy thing, because if you think about it, isn't that really saying, be happy today?

I think that was the first glimpse I got into coming to this be happy conclusion. Then, well how is it that I can be happy? I'm happiest when I'm doing these things that I enjoy doing, no matter what. We've all heard the exercises of what would you do whether anyone paid you or not. Just put that together with my idea of being happy and that what if I gave that a word? There are other people that talk about giving it a word that I hadn't even heard them talking about it. I didn't get the idea from them, but they've also come to the same conclusion. It's really cool that as collective consciousness, we're all starting to come to these conclusions and have ways of articulating it. I just want to help as many people as I can with the idea.

[0:40:14.4] MB: Well, it's such a great insight to the clarity that you create when you give yourself space and you step back. You've shared that was at least the second or third example of just how you can create these really novel breakthrough insights when you actually create some space in your life.

Funnily enough, I thought that was a great question as well. I literally made a note to myself to journal about this tomorrow morning, because I want to ask the same question to myself and figure out, are there some answers, are there some things that would come out of that thought exercise that could be really helpful for me?

The truth is, maybe nothing comes out of that journaling exercise, or maybe something really awesome comes out of it. Taking 15 minutes or 20 minutes and journaling on it is a very low-risk, high-reward way to potentially reap some fantastic benefits out of a really simple thought exercise.

[0:41:01.8] DG: Exactly. You might ask the question tomorrow and you might not get the answer, but your brain will still be noodling on it. It'll come to you at some point in the near future when you're not even trying to answer it. You might get it tomorrow too, so I don't want to say you won't. You know what I mean? Once we plant these questions to ourselves, we may not get the immediate answer right then. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

I've been asking myself that meditation question forever and I never got the answer. When I went there and went there with the intention of I'm going to this whole 3-day event with the intention of solving this question, guess what? I got the answer when I gave myself the space to get it.

[0:41:33.4] MB: I mean, there are questions that I've wrestled with for years and years and years and slowly iterated and found pathways and eventually, had some breakthrough insights around. It's definitely something that you may not get a total breakthrough day one, but you might. The practice of creating that space and having the ability in your life to step back even just a little bit and say, “Okay, what's really important? What am I really good at? Where should I be spending my time?” Asking these deliberative, contemplative questions as opposed to just being in the trenches 24/7, jumping into battle every day without even thinking about why you're doing it, or what you're doing, or what you're working towards, or whether or not you're happy. That's the reality and that's what most people are doing.

Take the seasons, take the opportunities and maybe even in today's environment, it could be a great time to really step back and start to think about how can I create a little bit of space to figure out what matters.

[0:42:25.9] DG: Absolutely. It can be so life-changing. The other part of that too is to always even when tough times happen, when the ebbs and flows of life always happen, another thing that was transformative in my life was just I've always had this uncanny way of saying, how can I make this obstacle one of the best things to ever happen to me? I did that after my house fire. The lessons I learned from it were one of the best things that ever happened to me, probably the best thing that's ever happened to me.

It's like, I also encourage everybody listening to any obstacle you have thrown your way that's big and you're like, “Oh, my gosh. This is gut-wrenching.” Ask yourself and say, “How can I make this the best thing that ever happened to me?” If you keep asking your subconscious that question? You'll find it even when you don't think it's there. Might not come immediately like we were talking about with the journaling, but if you look for it, you can find that golden nugget of how to reinvent yourself, or how to overcome that obstacle.

[0:43:14.9] MB: I mean, the elephant the room, we'll go ahead and just talk about it for a second, which is as we record this and probably when we air this that maybe not for the listeners in the future that are going to be digesting this, we're in the midst of the coronavirus lockdown. One of the things I have three or four little personal projects that are just fitness goals, nutrition goals, I mean, I'm planning on emerging from this thing healthier, happier, in better shape than I've ever been in my entire life and trying to use every little edge and every opportunity I can get from the constraints that have been created by this quarantine to emerge better than I went into it.

[0:43:49.1] DG: Exactly. If you keep asking yourself, “How can I make this the best thing that ever happened to me?” Your answer is you'll keep getting is all right, go work out right now, Matt. Go do this and go do that. You're like, “Okay, I'm going to do that,” because you'll feel that pull to do it. I felt the pull to keep making these changes, because I asked myself that question.

I wonder whether I had been led to go to that meditation retreat, whether I'd been led to always be doing experiments in my life, whether I'd be doing all these different things if I didn't keep asking that question to myself. I think that's a key question to implant in your psyche is how can I this obstacle one of the greatest things to ever happen to me? Because your brain will look for the answer.

[0:44:23.3] MB: Yeah, I love that question. That's another great one that I think we could put in the repertoire for people to think about, journal about and implement your lives as well.

[0:44:32.1] DG: Definitely.

[0:44:33.1] AF: Who in your life has had the biggest impact on the way you think and your work in general? It's someone who's maybe outside of your current circle or network. Whose work or whose advice, or whose content that you might not interact with personally has had the biggest impact on you?

[0:44:51.4] DG: There were people that were coming to my mind that are people that I've all personally talked with. I'm trying to think of an example of you're talking about thought leaders, or people that maybe I haven't personally met?

[0:45:01.0] AF: For instance, there's a lot of folks, like depending on what challenge I'm faced with in my research on solving that problem, I'll find an author, or I'll find someone on YouTube. I'll just completely digest everything that they put out. Oftentimes, it's like a phase, but I'll come out of that with three or four things that just completely change the way that I approach everything. I guess at the heart of the question, it's like, who would you look up to that you maybe haven't had the chance to interact with?

[0:45:30.5] DG: Yeah, that's a great question. I'm inspired and I look up to people like Bill Gates. I grew up being a Microsoft engineer, so I always admired Bill Gates and the things that he's done and his philanthropy in the world in trying to solve the bigger problem. That's an example of someone I admire and going from changing the world with his software to now working, just change the world with the money that he generated from the software. That's one example of someone who I follow.

He says so many amazing things, even to this day when he comments on different problems in the world. I just really admire his position on those things. There's some different authors of books that have been transformative in my life. I don't know if that's part of what you're referring to too. There's a couple books that are just wow, that was just so brilliant. I think of it every time I think of certain things in my life.

[0:46:16.1] AF: Name some of those books for us. That'd be great.

[0:46:18.7] DG: Okay. I talked about I was the workaholic who had my house fire, it's like saving the unhappy millionaire. There it was. The Unhappy Millionaire as it was all going up in flames. I'm going to do a new book on that in the future, like Saving the Unhappy Millionaire or something like that.

[0:46:32.5] AF: I like that. That’s a great title.

[0:46:33.7] DG: Robin Sharma's book, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, is actually about a workaholic lawyer, one of my companies is a law firm.

[0:46:39.4] AF: Ding, ding, ding.

[0:46:40.2] DG: Yeah, exactly. That one really resonated with me. Even if you're not a lawyer, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari is this great set of principles around discovering that what really matters in life is not all the money that you make and all the things that you do, but it's about being happy. He doesn't say it in those words, but the essence of the story is all about having time for yourself and for self-care. It's the best self-help summary in the form of a parable that I've ever seen in any one book. Yeah, the monk who is by Robin Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.

It's a brilliant story that sucks you into the story, but it's got a great summary of all the greatest thought leaders and self-improvement things, you've heard over the years all summarized into one parable that you can remember. I just love it. It's a great story. If you buy the audio version, you'll listen to the whole thing from start to finish, because it just sucks you in.

[0:47:28.7] AF: Yeah. I'm always looking for a nice audio book to listen to during [inaudible 0:47:32.5]. One last thing and I think we would be doing a huge disservice, not only to ourselves, but to the audience if we didn't ask, what's the name of this meditation retreat you went on?

[0:47:43.2] DG: It was actually a meditation retreat that a guy named Jesse Elder held. Jesse E-L-D-E-R. I think he called it prime light meditation. I don't even know if he does these retreats anymore, but Jesse is just a really interesting guy that taught me how to be better at meditation. He was doing those retreats.

There was only eight of us that were there and it was a really small group, intimate setting. He just curated a really cool environment. Thank you Jesse if you happen to listen to this. It was awesome.

[0:48:10.1] MB: We'll throw all that stuff in the show notes for listeners who want to check that out. That book sounds really interesting as well. For listeners who want to take action and start to concretely implement something that we've talked about today, what would be one action item, or action step that you would give them to begin their own journey of living a life of purpose and happiness?

[0:48:30.2] DG: I would recommend that they do that life purpose exercise that we talked about, of brainstorming on those three things that really bring them joy no matter what, whether they get paid or not and trying to come up with a power word that summarizes that one word. I actually heard the word amplifier from Jesse Elder, not at that event, but a different event of his that I went to. He made the comment, “I'm an amplifier.” I'm like, “Oh, my gosh.” That gave me goosebumps.

When you hear the right word that somebody else says, or that you read in a dictionary, or wherever, it may give you goosebumps, it may not. In my case, it did. He was just talking about himself in a sentence and I'm like, “Holy cow. That's really cool.” That was how I found my word. My original word was something else. I forget what it was, but I iterated on it for a while and it wasn't the right word.

My advice to answer your question is do that exercise and come up with a power word 1.0 that really summarizes your life purpose and keep iterating on it until you find a power word that really lights you up. Use it in your daily life to help you make decisions on, am I going to take on this for the company or for myself or not? Is it in alignment with my life purpose, or somebody else's that might be on my team?

[0:49:30.2] MB: Denise, where can listeners find you and your work online?

[0:49:34.1] DG: Yeah, so the best websites to find me are my company vacationeffect.com. That’s effect with an E. Also denisegosnell.com. They can find everything on vacationeffect.com. Those that are entrepreneurs, I've got the most resources there for entrepreneurs. They can learn about my book, my podcast and the other free resources that I have.

[0:49:52.7] MB: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all these insights, some great stories and some really fascinating takeaways around how we can be happier and maybe more productive at the same time.

[0:50:03.5] DG: Thank you for a great conversation. I had a blast.

[0:50:06.5] MB: Thank you so much for listening to the Science of Success. We created this show to help you our listeners, master evidence-based growth. I love hearing from listeners. If you want to reach out, share your story, or just say hi, shoot me an e-mail. My e-mail is matt@successpodcast.com. That’s M-A-T-T@successpodcast.com. I’d love to hear from you and I read and respond to every single listener e-mail.

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Thanks again, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Science of Success.