Episode 6 - Rest, Intentionality, and the Treadmill

JB: Field notes where we talk about faith, family, tech, business, and all the things between. I'm Jared joined by Brandon and Travis. This week we're going to deep dive into self-care and rest, led here by Travis. before we do that, let's do a little check-in. Brandon, how was your week?
Brandon Middleton: Amazing week. kids are doing well in school, work is humming. All of the college students are getting back to their thing. So our programs are launching. The professors and the teachers are taking advantage of all the stuff we're putting in front of them. And sun is still shining here in the Bay Area. Everybody's happy and healthy. So counting my blessings every day, pinching myself because the thing that I'm doing is the thing that I want to do. So yeah, all good on this side. I'll pass it over to Travis.
JB: Well, before you do that, I wanna know what's the coolest thing that you like saw someone build with Replit and you're just like, I can't believe someone came up with this idea and you're like, Please go sell that. Like I just wanna know the coolest thing you've seen.
Brandon Middleton: So so this week, funny story, my kids are gamers, like everybody's kids are gamers. So one of my educational kind of teammates bought a knockoff Game Boy off of Amazon and
JB: Mm-hmm.
Brandon Middleton: used Replit to build a game making software that they've loaded onto this Game Boy device. And they've been making video games on top of this new hardware. So I showed my boys a video of them Traversing a level of the game that they had made with Replit. And now my boys are like, Dad, what do we have to do to get some Game Boys? Like I'll do all the drawers. I'll do whatever you say. So hey, there we go. There we go.
JB: All the chores. All the chores. That makes me so happy. I what? Do you keep
Travis Z: I've got my classic one from the nineties. Yeah, dude. It still works. It I g I
JB: everything? That's like pristine too, man.
Travis Z: know, yeah, it's pretty
Brandon Middleton: And
Travis Z: I Tet Tetris is still loaded in this thing, right? It's a time capsule. Yeah.
Brandon Middleton: Wow. If you're only listening, unfortunately, Travis just pulled out a
Travis Z: yes.
Brandon Middleton: OG nineteen eighty nine Game Boy, the gray one with the red buttons
Travis Z: Green screen.
Brandon Middleton: and the green screen. That's that's classic.
JB: Dude, Brandon, pass me that link. If you can if it's a public link, I will put it in the show notes because like now now I want to show it to my boys. Cause they've tried to get me to buy that for them too. And I was like, why w what's the use of this thing? You have a thousand video games. But again, it's a new video game, right? So Okay, send me the tweet link. Awesome.
Brandon Middleton: Yeah, I tweeted about it, so I'll send you the tweet link.
Travis Z: if I can add, what I love about that is it's not just, hey dad, can you buy me a Game Boy so I can it's hey dad, I'm inspired and I wanna get some hardware so I can build something. That's kinda cool.
Brandon Middleton: Yeah, I mean this creation versus consumer, like I'm happy to fund your creation adventures. And if you want to build a gazillion games and you hit, you know, bumps in the road and you have to debug it and you've got to like learn and fail
Travis Z: Yep.
Brandon Middleton: and then triumph eventually, like that's that's learning to me. So I am as a dad very happy to pour resources into
Travis Z: Hundred hundred percent.
JB: My last night my my kid had a birthday party with one of his friends and I picked him up from it way too late. my gosh, it was like eight or nine o'clock. I was like, Man, this is my bedtime. And he gets in the car and I was like, Well, how was the rest of the day? I hadn't seen him all day, since I dropped him off and he said, Hey Dad, someone I found out someone can code faster than me. So you know what I'm gonna do this week? So I'm gonna build a game. I'm like Let's go, man. Hey, let's go. Like I'm all for it. So he's like, Yeah, some kid made a game in like thirty minutes or something like that. And he's like, I'm gonna beat that. Like, let's go.
Brandon Middleton: If you need some replic
Travis Z: Love it.
Brandon Middleton: credits, you know who to call.
JB: That's actually not a bad idea. I've been trying to point him towards Replit. I think They I'll be honest though, they actually maybe it's just a generational thing. He's like, I kind of don't want to use AI. Like I don't want to use
Brandon Middleton: More interesting.
JB: yeah, like I don't want to use help, like because he's still trying to learn. And so he's like, I don't learn as much. It just kind of does it for me. So when he hits a wall, we talk a lot about my observation from Silicon Valley is that the best engineering teams are small teams, a pair, three, four, and they're there. And the reason they exist together is So much of coding, gosh, I should be talking about this, but Brandon knows, but he's an actual coder, but is problem solving. And so you can problem solve bests in kind of these small teams. And so I say, hey, I get it, you don't necessarily have a bunch of peers around you to do this. So use AI for that. When you hit a wall, you can't stop. But then he'll go to YouTube and he'll find the answer too. Right. So he has that kind of little community to to create that kind of secondary person to talk to.
Brandon Middleton: That's so good.
Travis Z: Cycle.
Brandon Middleton: Cool, Travis. I'm sorry. We went down this whole tangent because
JB: 'Cause you held up your Game Boy. I think it's not that you have a Game Boy, it's that you still have a Game Boy. Squirrel, squirrel.
Travis Z: Shiny object. Shiny object. Yeah. my week has been fully consumed with family and funeral preparations for great grandma. she passed away a week and a half ago, almost two weeks ago, I think. And the funeral is was yesterday. So it's it's good. It brought a ton of family together. It's a lot of closure, a lot of processing, a lot of also I think it dovetails in today's topic, which is it refocuses, I think, a lot on priorities, on like where you're spending your time, what's really important, and how we get again easily distracted by shiny objects and get maybe off purpose. So all good stuff. Just heavy emotionally, but all good stuff. Jared, how about you, man?
JB: I was salty this week. my gosh. I think I caused some collateral damage on Monday because I was so salty. And then I kinda spent some of my week kind of cleaning up the mess I made. And but I did have a fun week. I texted you guys a photo. I took my first painting class and I sent you guys a photo of that. so that was just nice to be able to do that. And then last night, my oldest was at a birthday party, so I got some one on one time with my youngest, which was great. I I I always try and get one-on-one time with them, but it'd been a little bit. I knew it. And so I was like, I'm gonna protect this time. I'm gonna make sure he and I can go grocery shopping together, which is he's just like the best person to shop with. And and by the way, I tell that to everyone in my family. I'm like, no, I don't wanna shop with you, I wanna shop with him. Like I don't know why. It just like we vibe and we have a good time. And then we had dinner together and we're just kinda hanging out like on the couch and it was just really fun. So I just enjoy spending time with him.
Brandon Middleton: if you're if you're just listening, shame on you, because here here's Jared Bob Ross Backlund.
JB: Okay. Thank you, man.
Travis Z: Yeah.
Brandon Middleton: might have to drop something in the show notes for for your beautiful artwork. I'm a little curious
Travis Z: We should.
Brandon Middleton: about like what made you salty. I don't know if you want to go into that, but like
JB: I I don't. Sometimes I just like let's be honest, like I I think that I always tell people I get paid to be an extrovert. Like I'm like that's what my paycheck's for. And I think I was a little burned out for being an extrovert. And I think I was I'm also very what does my therapist tell me? Like I'm a catastrophizer. And so like if something's going wrong, like I lean into it. I'm like This didn't go my way. Well, I'm gonna burn this mother down! Like I was just like and so it's probably has more to do with like my own mindset. So I had some things not go my way, and more than a few things. And I think it just kind of made me like a little salty and it takes me a while to get to that moment where you're like, okay, like who cares? It's all fine, it'll all work out. I wanna deal with it right then, which is super not healthy most of the time, at least for me. And I wanna like react and I wanna do something and I wanna I wanna show you and so these aren't healthy things but
Brandon Middleton: No, I f I feel like all humans on earth can definitely like feel you on that because hardly any of us get our way as much as we want. So I I could just see you like therapeutically painting it all away and you're like your nice vibes are coming back to you.
JB: I was, I was. I'm I'm
Travis Z: You are not
JB: going to god let me say I'm gonna s I wanna I wanna rename my class Rich White Ladies Talking about how t great and how terrible their life is. Like it was like it was the craziest class. I was the only guy in there. I was probably just like young like mid like mid-level youngest, right? Like, you know, within five or ten years. And it was one one set of ladies was white lotus-ing, talking about all the cool vacations they'd been. And they're like, Well, have you ever been to Patagonia? And they were talking about some high-end resort in Patagonia. Like, you gotta go. And then some other group was talking about how terrible their lives are And I was just like, and again, all rich white lady problems. Like it was very entertaining. And God bless the instructor, what's her name? Masha, I think. She was like complimenting. She's walking around and I'm like, some of these suck. And she's like, that looks so beautiful. Like she found something beautiful to see in every single one. Which you should. We're all beginners. Like mine's not very good. Like none of them are very good. Like
Travis Z: Thats Deep.
JB: And so you're just like it was just really neat to see like she was it was a good she was Russian, so she was very not necessarily patient with I don't know, I used to date a Russian girl. Like
Brandon Middleton: That's right.
JB: she wasn't very patient with you're not listening to me. I've told you this, this is the third time I've had to tell you, right? Like so her voice would get very that, but then she was so complimentary and so just helpful. She'd be like, you know, Jared, if you did this, like this and then she'll like, let me see your brush, like I'll show you how to do this. And it was just like she was a really Good teacher from that perspective because I expected Russian all the time, right? And it wasn't like she was just really neat. So Travis, you were gonna hold up a quote.
Travis Z: But this is not No, that's right. First of all, this is not your normal like wine and paint, you know, grab grab some Pinot and paint kind of thing.
JB: No. No, this is like I I've never done acrylics and and she taught me like four or five things that are like just basic acrylics. Like there's something called a wash and then you're supposed to draw on the canvas. I had no idea. There's like I was just painting it like a house. Like I was like, hey, let's like, you know, w left to right, like paint the fence, right? Like karate kids style. And she's like, That's
Travis Z: Yep. Yep.
JB: not how you do it, you do this. And so it was just it was great. Like layering, I'd never I just didn't know how to do any acrylics, so
Travis Z: Okay, cool. back to that like stimulus, right, and that response
JB: Mm.
Travis Z: and how you wanna burn the house down. you're not alone in that. literally my wife so I found this quote from Victor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning. It was the biggest thing that stuck out to me in that book, which was between stimulus and response, there is a space and in that space is our power to choose our response and in our response lies our growth and our freedom. And I I said it too much to my wife, so my wife like gave this to me qu like framed and put it in my office for me. So But it's stuck with me because it comes up so much as I'm thinking about like what what triggers, right? And then what I wanna what I wanna do and how I always have the power to have space and time between to figure out how I should really respond. Sometimes there are some some edge cases I think where the right response is to burn the house down, but we can go into that later.
JB: That is true. There are absolutely those spaces, but it's probably not every time like it is for me. So it's probably not every time. So Okay, so why don't we head over to headlines and hot takes. Travis is gonna be our guide today, so let me hand it over to you.
Travis Z: All right, here we go. So last time we talked a little bit about work. And we've talked a lot about work a lot on this this show. It's just a thing that is a big part of our life. And in talking about generational differences and how much people work, we saw in the data at least, even though we think that we're working that the previous generations worked significantly more than us, the diff there is a difference and it's less. It's not as big as you might think, but it is less. It is trending downward according to the data. Also though, rest is still really hard. Taking vacations is really hard. Burnout is a real risk that a lot of people have either dealt with, know somebody who's dealt with it, or had has at least aware of it through some of the programs that you might see in a corporate environment to try to avoid it. Americans, though hot take, are bad at taking their vacation. Even if we're working slightly less on average, we're actually some of the worst in resting. We're some of the worst in taking our vacations. 2024 survey found that 53% of Americans said they did not expect to use all their available time off. 65% said that they still felt that vacation deprived, though. So you've got this weird juxtaposition of people feeling like I need more vacation. And if you look at the asset side of the balance sheet, right, you've got vacation, you're just not using it. We're bad at using it. What do we think? Are we are do we need more vacation? Is this a corporate problem? Is this a personal problem? Discipline problem?
Brandon Middleton: got the idea that it's more our society. So like I've actually been laughed at by Europeans who actually, you know, you can't find them in summertime. You're like, I emailed you in June and you haven't gotten back to me until like August
Travis Z: Yeah. Yeah.
Brandon Middleton: first. And they're like, yeah. I was just traveling to Mars and to the Baltics and to like everywhere.
JB: And and not checking email. So that's the other call out I'll make here is how we vacation. So I took two weeks in Hawaii and I spent the first week working. Like it was I was i I had something that needed to be done and and there was apparently no one else to do it. And it didn't bother me 'cause I'm used to it. Right. So to your point, Brandon, like they they're not even gonna pretend to email you back, right?
Brandon Middleton: Yeah, so like I the idea of, you know, I have an unlimited vacation at the startup I work at. It's like you can take Yeah, you can take as much as you want. Like
JB: what a what a scam. What a scam, by the way. my god, we should talk about that, but keep going. But like the what a scam.
Travis Z: It we'll we'll get to that. Yeah, we'll get to that.
Brandon Middleton: I think I I worked like this first six months before taking any of it, but you know, I feel like you literally have to focus on not picking up your device and doing the thing that like is is productivity and It's hard for people to like change their behaviors. And if your behaviors have been, you know, a certain way for the last several months or years or decades, then it's not a trivial thing to try to like change that. And in your vacation time, you're like sitting there twiddling your thumbs, trying to keep yourself from doing the thing that is in your routine to actually do. So I feel there's elements there. There's also some like consumerism that's like baked into Our culture so that even when we are like vacationing and just chilling, like we are tending towards like looking at stuff that make us want to buy the thing that we don't have or do more and not just like sit in contentment and like actually chill out and recharge. So that's kind of the the the first knee jerk reaction to to some of those statements. But you know, curious JB if you feel a certain way about these or Travis if you got hot take care too.
JB: N no, hot takes work great at this and this episode can be over. I think that's man,
Travis Z: And done.
JB: we s man, we suck at this stuff, right? Like it's it's so hard to I remember one vacation I was used to we're at this house down in Paso every year and had a pool and I got a phone call on say like the Wednesday of my vacation. Let's say I started on Sunday. And and someone on my team called me to help them solve a problem. And and it was a legitimate need. And it made me and it kind of ruined the rest of my vacation. Like because I just kept like fixating on this thing. I couldn't fix, right? Like I couldn't, it was to influence somebody to do something. And they were being super stubborn. And I couldn't do it from far away, right? I had to go sit down with them in person and I don't think I had their phone number, but I also didn't like want to like re-engage and call a meeting, which maybe I should have in retrospect just to get it behind me. But it like it's the turning off. Like and to me, the difference I see between say like Europeans and and us isn't that they take vacation. It's their mental connection to it. And I've talked a little bit about it on here, but I've never founded a company, but man, you would think I did, and the amount of like personal value I put in my job and my career and how much like I tie myself worth to those things and if work's going well, then life's going well, and if work's going terribly, then life's going terribly. I give it so much power and so it's I think it has a lot to do with that mindset of how do you think about your job and how do you think about your career and and so then by the time you get to vacation for one or two weeks a year, like it's too late, right? And yeah.
Brandon Middleton: Think how you are made to think about your job is also different from region to region. Like there's a thin line, like I think in America, of like, I mean, you've only got X number of weeks to have a baby and come back, or you've only got X number of like months to take, you know, paternity leave and then come back. Whereas it's baked in and you got a lot more social safety nets and support when it comes to other parts of the world. So that maybe They're not as like frantic and frenetic about these kinds of things and getting back to that email or getting back to the job because they know that the region they live in or the country kind of the structure is a little bit different than how we do capitalism and like work in in the USA. So I I think there's something to the system and kind of the structure as well as kind of the more micro stuff.
Travis Z: Yeah. That sounds like fear to me, right? I mean there's a there's a s a fear of not having something, so I've got to hang on tightly to it. I can't I can't let go of it, I can't drop the ball because it might not be there when I get back, as opposed to maybe having some sort of safety net or more s more security and less fear in a different region, different environment, different set of social programs that say, you know what, like it's gonna be there when I get back. we went through layoffs
JB: I I
Travis Z: in in the company I was at previously, right? And in France,
JB: Mm-hmm.
Travis Z: man, if you ever want be safe from getting laid off, you should move and work in France. Wow.
JB: Yeah, but then you have to live in France. like Seren
Travis Z: I I I could go red red, wine, and croissants. I'm I'm done with that.
JB: Come on. I I agree. I'll I'll drink their wine and croissants all day, but I'm not sure I want to be a French citizen. you talk about fear, but fear is a reaction to something. And so the question is, like, is this a real expectation that we feel from work? Like are they legit about it and they just like they're maybe not, maybe they're subtle about it, but is this a real expectation from co-workers and work, or is this an invented expectation?
Brandon Middleton: That's interesting. I would say it's real. I I'm thinking like the first people that I worked with when I came to the Bay Area, my team was pretty populated with folks from Asia. So like a lot of like H one Bs and a lot of people I'm like, why are they working so hard? Like I I'm in and out, I'm playing soccer during lunchtime, I'm like, you know, get getting a a good sense of this area. But they're like so fixated on getting a A plus plus in this software engineering job. And then I learned about like, you know, as a H one B, like you if you have to be sponsored to B in the United States, then it only takes, you know, one B plus year of your career to maybe get an unfavorable rating. And then like there's this cascade of things that can happen that could literally be a ticket out of This American dream and back to the country that you came from. And it that just wasn't a reality for me. So that I could like do a diversity of things and kind of experience work and life in the Bay Area a new way. So I think it's it's not invented. Like there's real consequences for maybe not doing that A plus plus job if you're in a certain category of work. But this comparison. this comparison culture that we live in as well is something that can make you think that, if I'm not doing this amount of activity, as I like look on Twitter or as I look on social media and see all of these very beautiful, polished versions of the way people live and the way people work, that I am kind of creating a little bit of a fantasy land and trying to compare and compete with that, even if it's not real. So I I do think there's a little bit of both.
JB: Are you tapping into how I feel every week when I see you on Cameron, Brandon? Like I'm just jealous. I'm like this good
Travis Z: Ha ha ha.
JB: looking man who's like got it all together. I'm just like, is that how? No? No? There you go. Yeah. And some of us
Brandon Middleton: What you know how those ducks above the water appear to be just it takes
Travis Z: Yeah.
JB: are some of us there is no there is no depth like me, so it's all good.
Brandon Middleton: It's the coffee, it's the Bible, and it's a lot of prayer and the idea that I can only control what I can tr control. I don't like try to think through too many orders of magnitude. Like if it's in my Spanish control, I think about it, but if it's not, I'm totally fine. Like that's that's on them. That's outside of my scope. Let me not worry about it or lose any sleep on top of it.
Travis Z: Yeah. Well I think there
JB: see, I just I think I can control everything. So Brandon, that's why that's my problem. I I do. Like I really, I
Brandon Middleton: yeah.
Travis Z: Ha ha ha.
JB: really I this is the only child syndrome probably. Sorry, Travis, what what were you gonna say?
Brandon Middleton: Okay.
Travis Z: No, no, it that that's exactly right because we think we can control everything. And also some of the things that we are wired to control for are not real threats, right? I I think there's a bunch of studies on on I'm saying early humans and how we are wired to scan for risks, right? That we were we are built to scan for things that might threaten our lives or threaten our families, the saber-toothed tiger, I think, problem. We're we are s wired to scan for saber-toothed tigers. They don't exist anymore, but somehow we still, in our in our nature, like scan for threats that might, you know, risk our existence. And whatever we perceive those threats might be is where we allocate that that stress, even though these things don't really exist anymore. And the things we allocate stress. Stress to really aren't usually life-threatening, right? and so there is, I think, I'm gonna say an imagined or some sort of psychological element to it that that people smarter than me have have proven out. I think there's some real stuff to it though, too. have you guys been through at your company's rounds of layoffs? Have you seen members of your team get laid off? Peers, have you had to lay off people from your team? And also it's a real risk that whoever might look like they're enjoying noontime soccer too much, the people who you you know, show up at nine thirty and leave at four thirty every day. might be on the bottom third of the list when HR rolls in to make cuts. and so there is maybe some real risk to to looking less than your peers as well.
Brandon Middleton: There's some of it's like wrong place, wrong time. Like I've been in companies where they've done a limited restructuring or layoff and I could have known that being in that part of the company was just a bad place to be at that particular time. So like there's like a reading of the tea leaves, like a
Travis Z: Sure, sure.
Brandon Middleton: a sense that you can move before that kind of thing happens. I don't think they teach this that well in undergrad at least. So some of it was a shock and a surprise to me when I first got into the working world in Silicon Valley. I'm like, man, those are good people. Like that's that's a great set of engineering talent, but we're cutting that whole division and like we're investing in like acquiring this other company. And like you started to see that cycle and learn how the game is played. but yeah I've been in in it. I've been on teams at have been cut and then had to find a a new spot within sixty to ninety days or, you know, severance kinda kicks in. And a lot of that is just like learning on the job for me because I didn't have a family member that was necessarily like skilled or like experienced enough to be able to help me anticipate things like this as I was entering the workforce.
JB: I think too, to your point, I've consciously like I've chosen jobs I actually just want to do or people I want to work with sometimes or even inside large companies. But my I guess my main tip on that I always give folks is if you want to get promoted quickly, go see which division is getting all the money, right? Who's getting all the investment? And I don't care if you're like you don't have to be the most talented, just be in that division because there's like a drafting effect to that success. And I've made choices as to not Go to those because again, it is harder. You're gonna work harder. Like it's it's definitely, it doesn't come with, I'm gonna work the same amount, but you can be a mediocre person. And I can't tell if that's like the investment banker thing where investment bankers, you work really hard for two years and it's like working five years. So suddenly you're just better because you put in more reps, right? So maybe it's some of that, but I think also there's just that draft-on effect of Brandon, to your point, you could be the best player ever, but if you're in a declining industry, it doesn't have anything to do with the product or the company. It's just like you're making yellow page books, right? But over here you're trying to sell AWS cloud. Like go work in AWS cloud if what you want to do is get promoted.
Travis Z: So Jared, for everybody who's under thirty five, what are yellow page books?
JB: You've gotta be kidding me. No way nobody knows what that is. Stop that. We used to get these pay these books mailed to us and that's how we looked up businesses' phone numbers. And yeah, it was no, I why am I explaining this? No, people know what a
Brandon Middleton: Even people's phone numbers. Like in individuals' phone numbers used to be in the yellow pages. So I could like look up my neighbor and be like, okay, let me call the gord family. Yeah.
JB: Nobody calls anybody anymore and we just text. So I
Travis Z: it was an a anal analog database.
JB: someday we'll get to a point where you'll have like you'll have like a text where you won't even need someone's phone number. Like you'll probably just like like Venmo, I just search your name, right? And then it it connects the phone number and all those things. By the way, you had said people who work nine thirty to four, that's called Googlers, Travis. That's everyone that works at Google. Yeah.
Travis Z: Well I will disagree. Yeah. And that that's the hard thing, right? It's 'cause we can paint some pretty broad brushes, right, and stereotype, whether regionally, culturally. So but a lot of stereotypes are are rooted in truth. Yeah. I mean if you've watched
JB: That are true. Sometimes stereotypes are true, I tell you, man. Especially the nine.
Travis Z: Silicon Valley, right, the series, right? The you've got the guy who sits on the roof and does the the rest and vest thing, yeah. big
Brandon Middleton: Great show. Big hit. Big head.
JB: Great show. I love it.
Travis Z: head, yeah. okay, so what what we're like taking away here and what I'm hearing is cultural aspects from where whatever region you're from make a difference. The work culture makes a difference, right? The the environment that you're in also can can influence you, the way you were raised can influence you. So all of these things can make it challenging to take time and rest. How do you guys do this? And do you split it between small micro burst? Do you have like a daily habit as opposed to an annual habit? I mean I assume rest on a daily basis looks significantly different than a weekly basis than a monthly basis than that big two week vacation to Hawaii. How do you how do you think about these things?
Brandon Middleton: Yeah, it's seasonal. I'd say they're natural like rhythms in the year and natural places where at least like tech companies usually like take the foot off the gas for a little bit. So I know that we even when I worked at like Cisco systems, like to start my career, they started to implement like a mandatory shutdown at the end of the year. So like Christmas time, to New Year's, like those two weeks, nobody was really working that hard anyway. So it was just a easy mandate to shut the company down for a week or two during that time. So, in that forced rest period, what are you gonna do? Are you actually gonna rest and recharge? Are you gonna like take up a you know, a new project or like do something that will you know, not allow you to be rejuvenated? I'd say spring break and ski week. I I literally didn't know what ski week was 'cause I grew up in Illinois and like there's no such thing as pre-spring break week that you take off before your actual spring break. So I'd say lots of parents like they'll take the ski week in February off. They'll take spring break and like the end of March, beginning of April off. So I just try to set the the rest and the relaxation and the vacation times around parental breaks that correspond to school being out for kids. That's typically where I'm aligning my PTO and like trying to trying to do that. I don't know, JB, if you feel different.
JB: Think I'm that smart. I'll be honest. That's really smart. I I in my company kind of August, September tends to be a little bit slower, just because of like people's locations and things. And then you get to kind of December and it's actually not as slow because we don't have a a heavy kind of US presence. And so that's been like a change, right? To learn how to kind of follow maybe a a a company's rhythm. I think the thing I'm kind of ruminating on it came out last week and stuck with me all week. But I was thinking about like our dads and how much their choices around parenting evolved around cultural societal norms. And here I am thinking about the same thing here, right? Like we all work for tech companies or have or or even other industries that are all in the United States and they have kind of these norms around two weeks' vacation or career expectations and and I wonder how much of this I guess what I keep thinking is if you want to really rest and take a different path, you're swimming upstream. So if my dad had been a stay at home dad, they would have come with judgment. It would have come with some societal pressures, it would have been swimming upstream. So what we're talking about, trying to discover right now in America, for us, like I think it would be me swimming upstream. Travis, I think what you do and where you're at in your life right now is swimming upstream. Like you are taking a path that I think matches closer to a lot of the things I see around what makes people happy. But But it's different than what Brandon and I do all day. And it's different than what you did for the last twenty years, right? And and I'd love to hear your your take on it. But so I don't know, it's it's that am I ready to be this counter cultural? It takes a lot more effort and time. Yeah, I'd be curious, Travis, like how do you feel? Like you're doing a very different path right now. Like I'm sure personally you feel very good, but do you feel some of that pressure to like go back to a big job? I mean, to to get back in the stream?
Travis Z: Yeah. I think you're you hit the nail on the head, which is it's swimming upstream. It's hard. It has taken me some time to find my group of people who are like minded. and there are there is a growing group around this. so for everybody who's listening, I've I've gone from in the past two years from a traditional corporate workload, big tech kind of thing, to something a lot of people are calling a portfolio career. so it is a mishmash of a number of different things that do have some common threads through them but look pretty pretty scattered on the outside. pros and cons to that. I get to manage my schedule way more than I used to. So that gives me a lot of flexibility to take the time and rest that I need or to prioritize as necessary. Also though it can I'm kind of on my own in a lot of ways. I work with a bunch of different groups but as a a solo contributor, as a consultant, as an advisor, as a creator And that means that I eat what I kill. Like I I am out there and I have to put in the work to be able to do the the biz dev, so to speak, to be able to get something out of it. And that lead time is a long time and there's nobody else out there doing that biz dev for me. So there's an element of kind of always always be closing, always be hustling to trying to figure out what how how we move all the things forward. And that can be stressful. And in some ways it feels like I'm always a little bit behind. some of the advice I got from another colleague here in the Twin Cities who's been down this path as well, really interesting guy, runs a solo consulting practice, former longtime rabbi, said he for him it was three years to survive and three years to thrive. He's like, so this at least for him was a a five to six year journey to really find the groove and make the transition.
JB: Yeah, it's I had lunch with my buddy John yesterday and and he was a full time pastor. He's founded a church here for thirty years here in the Bay Area. And he hit that stride a little faster than three years, but just saw him yesterday and man, he is just crushing it. Like it's so cool. He's got a lot of his kids are kind of growing up, they're starting to get married and and he's got his first grandkid and stuff, which is really cool. But he's I might have even mentioned it before, but he runs like a a non profit around the unhouse, so he could be actually maybe we'll have our first guest. But I you know, he's also got a co coaching business. He runs Compassion Week. And but you're right, like he's eating what he kills. He's like, Man, if I could like there's a version where maybe I could step this one up so I could kind of get rid of this. Not that I don't love it, but like it's again, it's that constant hustle. Now, he does seem very happy. But you're right, like it took him a little bit to kind of probably that first year, year and a half. Let's get a coaching website, let's find some regular clients, let's find the thing. He's everyone who does this really well in the consulting piece finds a niche. And I know some people who started out and were smart enough to predict a niche. I have a friend who said, Hey, I want to be a cannabis CFO and just went like just pick that niche and like crush it and it did very well. I have another friend who's doing it and is leaning into robotics, but it didn't necessarily start that way. It was more like general startup partial CFO kind of consulting. And now it's like, no, like he's a node figure. He was telling me we were catching up this week and he was like, I'm at a conference and I've got people who are like recognizing me and like, hey, I love reading your stuff. And and he's a very talented writer and and he has a really he balances hot takes really well, but says some real things and he's like meeting the CEOs of these companies where he's like he said something. And so it's it's he's like it's weird, but it's it's fun. So yeah, I I to your point, like it doesn't hit from day one, but I don't know, Travis, like you seem happier than I do. Like in just in terms of like day to day, like he seems just very good. This portfolio life man, it's starting to look pretty good.
Brandon Middleton: On the f on the face of it, there there seems to be like a in my mind at least, like you've gotta go and exert yourself more on at least on the front end of things in order to be successful in this portfolio life CEO role. But the idea that you're hustling, hustling, hustling in order to establish it up against like the rest topic that we're talking about, Travis, we would you say that you can actually find some rest or some solace or some like how do you balance both of those or can you do both at the same time as you're like getting your your your niche established?
Travis Z: I it is harder than it ever has been for me. So I can I can have more flexibility to carve out the time, but I think that the rub comes in the ability to disconnect. and maybe I'll throw it back to you guys. What I'm experiencing now that contrasts with my corporate career is that when I was running orgs that had large teams under me, I could, with enough planning, two weeks in advance, take two weeks off and say, I'm gonna be gone for two weeks. Here's the big things that are going on, here's who's on point for these seven things, here's my cell phone number. Number, if things hit the fan, I'm gonna be available. You can call me. But generally speaking, it would have to hit the fan and and be really significant to have to call me. And I'll get maybe get a couple calls, but generally speaking, would be able to disconnect. So the big contrast here is there's no team, right? there it there are people I could theoretically hire, but at this point I'm just just solo right now, working with a bunch of other people who are more like partners and we all have our individual roles and responsibilities. So it's it's just me in a lot of ways to. Your point, JB, like I think at some point you can maybe scale that up. you could maybe get to a spot where something dies off, something really grows, and then you can use the profits from that to scale that up and get myself some support, some backup. But right now that's not the case. so I can't disconnect the way I could in a corporate career. And maybe I'll throw that back to you both of you, which is do you feel like you can disconnect? Can you take two weeks in Hawaii or whatever it is, and really do you have do you always have to work the first week? do you have to use that first week? just to be able to mentally disconnect and then you actually feel rested after the second week. An experience I've had personally.
JB: I I think the older I get, again, because like I'm not just a corporate employee. I'm a dad. I'm like a friend. I'm I have other responsibilities inside and outside of work. Just cause I walk away from my corporate job, which again is the biggest part of that responsibility besides being a dad, maybe not the most important, because dad may dad's the most important, but I think it's I've walked away from or started to think more and more about W working fifty weeks and then taking two weeks is like a stupid way to think about rest. Right. Instead I need to figure out how to and I've spent a lot of time with my therapist trying to think about this like what is rest versus avoidance? And how do I actually create habits that get me rest, like just even a little bit every day. Like I know that when I meditate, I am better. You know part of why I would think I was salty this week? I did not take any time to meditate because I had like a six AM start, I think every day.
Brandon Middleton: Yeah.
JB: And and it's just like those small things you realize it's like, I know that's good for me, but like I'm like, I don't have time for it. I choose not to have time for it is probably the right thing to say. It and so I I think trying to figure out how to and I I think I actually wouldn't mind having to be on, say, fifty two weeks a year. If I could take every Friday, right? If I could know that my mornings were blocked to go to the gym. You know, I take the kids to school and I go to the gym, right? Like I can't do that now. It's hard for me to find time to work out just in terms of logistics, right? Because drop the kids, get into meetings, mentally tired at the end of the day, cook dinner, like get them into bed, do their homework, like all those things. And you're like, you're staring at it, you're like, the last thing I want to go do is lift heavy weights, right? Or run on a treadmill. And so I I've been trying to think more and more about how do I actually rest? What makes me feel restful? Watching TV can sometimes, sometimes it can't. A glass of wine can be great. A bottle of wine's not great. A nice dinner is great if I'm also socializing with my family or a friend, right? But a large pizza on my own is probably terrible, right? Like which man's so good. So so many tacos, so many tacos. it's
Brandon Middleton: What are you talking about? No, I'm just kidding.
JB: so good. So So it's that it's that how do you find in the midst of all this on a day-to-day piece what I work a lot about is I think I'm thinking a lot about habits and habit stacking and you know what's that book, atomic habits is good. It's the how do you stack these things so that I'm constantly letting air out of the balloon. Like I'm not just trying to wait for that two weeks where I can like let a lot of air out, right? Like I I should be constantly kind of keeping this pressure, the stress, a certain amount of size. And there are weeks where like the lung capacity on whoever's blowing that balloon got big, like the the made it really big. So now I've got to like remember and pay attention to those weeks because my rest wasn't enough. I can't just do what I do normally. I've got to do a little bit of extra to kind of figure out how to deflate that balloon.
Brandon Middleton: I love that analogy of like constantly letting that air out because there's certain amounts of like tension that if you you go too long, that even the two weeks that you're supposed to be off, you've gotten into the habit or the routine of doing one thing a certain way, and you actually can't even even get the benefit of that two weeks off after 50 weeks of doing, you know, something the same exact way. So you're Putting yourself into the habit and like creating a routine where kind of rest and relaxation is in is in there, I think that's that's really, really healthy. I know like this week for me, I was actually on PTO, but since my job is about education and I'm the head of education at Replit, it's like, I can't actually all the way be off because all the kids are going back to school and The c the professors and faculty that we've done all this work for this summer are like now just being able to benefit from all the resourcing that we've made available. my, you know, interns, a couple of them are going back to school and like we have to have the, you know, Friday party to send them off the right way. So there's something about like, I'm responsible for this whole thing and I can't be like like hands off the wheel. even if my intent is to like take a little bit of time off. I I
JB: It's good to
Travis Z: Brandon, you have your company has unlimited PTO, right? Is this is that real? Is it a scam? Yeah. Every day you're on vacation.
JB: I mean totally. I mean Are you on vacation every day, Brandon? Like e every day aren't you a PTO? I feel like and by the way, did your interns get their trophies? Like you give everyone a trophy, right? Just for existing? No?
Brandon Middleton: They got some custom Nike Replit dunks that are orange,
JB: What?
Brandon Middleton: black, and
Travis Z: Dang.
Brandon Middleton: white. And they say rep repple on one shoe and it on the other shoe. So like they got some pretty sweet merch to leave.
JB: So i in Nike I'm size twelve Brandon. just letting you know,
Brandon Middleton: Ha ha.
JB: like, my gosh. And you know me, I love my shoes, so whenever you wanna hook it up.
Brandon Middleton: Yeah, yeah. We try to send them off with a little happiness, you know, we wanna have them rep our colors and stuff when they go back on their campuses. But yeah, it was a good time. this week was kinda sad to see go, but they're gonna be ambassadors on their campuses and evangelists for for AI literacy environment.
Travis Z: There is an element here to what you mentioned as well, which is how do we how do we use what we have? So when we get this time, do we use it wisely? We make money. We we we trade our time for money in a lot of cases. Do we use our money on things that actually add value to our lives, actually bring rest, or is it just keeping up with the Joneses? Jared, maybe I'll throw it back to you here as we transition towards that. Like is there is there a treadmill that we just that you can't get off, that we can't get off? Is it an American thing? What do you think?
JB: probably.
Travis Z: Do you spend all your money on Nike, Air Force Ones, Dunks, Jordans? What and and does that bring happiness?
JB: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna lie. I might have I'm I so like the well I mean yes. no I think you know the running joke around my office is how many pairs of shoes do I own? And I hope nobody from work listens to this, but I might have bought six more this week. And again, they were all on sale, but it was like when you add it up it was a little pricey. have you guys ever heard of what was it? It was out of Yale. I think it was called the Happiness Lab. It was Lori Santos, doctor. I I think I discovered her during COVID, but have you guys ever heard of this?
Brandon Middleton: have heard of the happiness lab. I am not an expert, but yeah, go ahead and go down this path.
JB: Okay. They
Travis Z: Tell us more.
JB: they have like this online thing. So remember B, you had that course you did, I think was it during COVID, the like safe spaces for BIPOC?
Brandon Middleton: Okay.
JB: so it was kinda like that. Like they kind of just offered it to everybody. Or remember you just kinda sent out a link and said whoever wants to join and I joined a a couple and there was like hundreds of people there who weren't at Stanford or wherever you were, teaching that. So she kinda did this. She kinda just took all her stuff and threw it out there. So actually, Steph and I took this course together. And so I guess like by the big takeaway is that like we are really, really bad at predicting what makes us happy. So we chase things like more money, more success, more status. The next achievement, like I love checking a box. my gosh, I love checking a box. but we adapt to those things really quickly. The okay, where's my bell? I'm gonna find my bell. So the the big word to use is hedonic ap adaptation. yeah.
Brandon Middleton: Ooh, I like it.
JB: Had hedonic with an X. but it's this idea that like we get used to improvements very quickly. So it it actually is like a concept in weightlifting as well, where like again, this like your muscles get used to things back when I could lift heavy things and didn't lift just pizza to my mouth. And and the other part that you've brought up a few times and it's come up a a recur theme on this podcast is social comparison. Instead of saying, Is my life good? We unconsciously ask, Is my life better than theirs? I think that all the time. Like I really do. In in both very negative and positive ways where I'm like, my life is better than theirs. And then I feel better. And then like, my life's worse than theirs. Right? I feel worse about myself. And and so I'm guilty of both of these. But She spends this whole time saying, hey, like we suck at this. We think we know it how to create happiness, but we don't. But the things that actually drive it are things like relationships, like the three of us hanging out. We've we've talked about that before, like offline of just like that's why we do this to hang out. Experiences, gratitude, helping others, taking care of yourself, like exercising, eating well. and then you've talked about this, Travis, a lot. And it's something that's challenged me of just like being present for our lives. And so happiness, I guess to sum it up, is like it's less about what you have or achieve and more about how you spend your time and attention. And I will tell you, like, I it it challenges me as I was we were thinking about this topic for the week of I'm in a season where it feels like I'm in this have and achieve like check the box mode. And and it's a known season. Like it's when I've stepped into knowing what it would be. But when I read the when I started thinking about all these things, and I Googled it this week, like, hey, what were all the things again that would make me happy? I'm not doing enough of those. And my one zero thinking says Well, I gotta do all of them like tomorrow. Like, let's start big. And then my therapist always takes me back. And yesterday she said to me, She's like, just do one of them. Just one, man. Just one. Like it's all good. and and so I've been thinking a lot about this. But going back to these principles of, I think this will make me happy. You know, I just ordered a bunch of Nike shoes. I think it'll make me happy. It did. It really did. Every time I put on one of the new pairs of shoes, it makes me happy for that day. And then I forget it, and then I it goes in a closet, and it's like I have two feet and more than Mm-hmm.
Brandon Middleton: Mm.
Travis Z: I I just hear Marie Condo. Do you remember Marie Condo who was like organizing people's closets five years ago? They spark joy.
JB: All of them bring me joy, Travis. All of them. Every single one of them. I will know. I am not a s I'm not a stuffed guy. No, I'm No, I'm I have a 529 for every single one of them, Brandon. They're that they're that important to me.
Brandon Middleton: Are you gonna have like a funeral service for each of them and just like r you know, respect them as you like sell them? okay, okay.
Travis Z: Brandon, what do you think, man? Are you do you feel like pretty well aligned in this moment between like what your priorities are and how you spend your time and your resources? Do you feel partially aligned and what's what's driving any misalignment?
Brandon Middleton: I'd say I mean, right before COVID, my my wife's mom got a little sick and she ended up going to heaven and a lot of the choice making that I do now is I talk about this concept of intentional congruence and like doing things that maybe I'm interested in anyway, but then I can find a way to make it align with the corporate priority or be a win for the community that I care a lot about. So I when she passed away, like we made the choice to kind of move from our house to Palo Alto, whereas a little bit closer to my sister-in-law. My we decided to like intentionally do family together and l be closer to each other. a lot of the things that I work on and had worked on up to that point, teaching, volunteering, and all that stuff, I took it a little bit more seriously. And it's funny that those investments like outside of kind of my nine to five now are literally the thing that I do for my nine to five. So I literally teach and talk
JB: Y yeah.
Brandon Middleton: to teachers and do stuff in the community and fund different ideas that I think are going to be helpful for like AI literacy at scale. And the idea that I work hard and do a lot, you know, compared to the average f person from France, I guess. It actually doesn't feel that
JB: All French people. All French people, Brandon. All of Every single one of That's right. Young or old.
Brandon Middleton: Okay. Mi men and women and children. Okay. So maybe I work a little harder than than French people, but like the work that I do fulfills me and I feel like I'm making a difference when it comes to kind of what I want my life to mean or what I want my body of work over three or four decades to actually like impact. So I'm I'm more proud of what I put my hands to and work on. And yeah, every once in a while I need to like take the foot off the gas and and chill out and do nothing, sit on the couch watching TV or like you know, hang out with my family or like do stuff that has nothing to do with my my my my corporate mission. But yeah, it's been really fun to slowly pivot off of what corporate priorities said were important and then see multiple things, the economy crashing in 08 to COVID, all these things that really show you that relationships and humanity and a lot of a lot of things outside of corporate priorities are actually worth kind of giving energy to. And if I f if I can find a way to do both, then that's kind of where it's at for me. So I'm still on a journey,
Travis Z: Yeah.
Brandon Middleton: but man, I I don't feel I don't feel really anything about the b the balanced conversation. I feel like I'm at a decent point at balance at this point.
JB: I'll say it's like
Travis Z: It
JB: your friend who, you know, every time we would catch up, like I w watched you on this like journey, right? Of of like discovery and and movement. And I would say it was always like this is a good comparison. I would walk away from our lunches or catch-ups or coffees just around, like your mindset's better than mine. And like I want to learn from this. Like it's grounded in our faith and values, it's grounded in This person who's trying to figure out where he should go. And it was really neat when you you said on the episode, because I asked you to, but like the You said, Well, I'm doing the job I would do if I were retired. And I was just like, how cool. So it was neat to it's been fun to watch you, but I've always you've always you're a lot more intentional than I am about this stuff. Like I I tend to just let things happen. and so it inspires me to watch how intentional it's been where you picked these things, but then you really did make them a priority. Like you would dip out of work and I'm like, I can't do that. Right. Like in my mind, I'm like, I can't do that. And and again, maybe my job is a little different and maybe I've made choices that are put me farther Down the path that make that less of an option for me. because maybe I have retired prioritized money and and status in those things more than you did. But I I will say, as your friend, like you've been an incredible positive influence on me of forcing me to question, hey, how is this? And to see you end up in this spot where you're so everything all kind of came together, just I don't know, makes me so happy.
Brandon Middleton: Yeah, I feel blessed, man. I love you so much, Jared. And and you, Travis. make sure we capture
JB: Mm. Same brother. Same brother.
Travis Z: Which what you're talking about here reminds me of two different things. One book recommendation for the week. Daniel Pink has a book called Drive. I don't know if I can
Brandon Middleton: yes.
Travis Z: recommend it. If if you
JB: Yeah.
Travis Z: have time, read it. If you don't, here's one thing to think about this week. the crux of the book is that Daniel Pink says what really motivates us and drives us is not money, is not status, is not 12 pairs of Nikes. Sorry, sorry, Jared, even though it sparks joy.
JB: What's let's be c let's be
Brandon Middleton: He says.
JB: clear, the fact that you think it's twelve is is an undercall. So that's like this is the sad part of it, guys.
Travis Z: Ha ha ha.
JB: It's it's a it's a disease, it's a problem, it's a feature, not a bug. I don't have a problem.
Travis Z: First step is admitting you have a problem. but what Daniel Pink says is is what actually drives us is autonomy, mastery, and purpose. So again, like that's really where I'm hitting right now is I got a ton of autonomy, mastery. We we are we love to be able to improve ourselves. We love to be able to check the box, like Jared's saying, as humans, to just show that we've grown, we've achieved. And then purpose that it that it all like adds up to that is all worth something. It was for something better. And these are the things that really, really actually drive people. Not not the bonuses, not the the 5%, 10% raise or whatever the promotion. And it reminds me of one other what what
JB: Ten percent raise? Where do you work?
Travis Z: I there there are people who have less and I feel bad and there are people who have more and I feel jealous. So wherever you are in that spectrum. here's one other book out there. again, I don't know if it's worth reading or not. I have not read it, but there's a lot of just summaries of it. It's called The Five Regrets of the Dying. a woman had interviewed a number of people who were on their deathbeds and just found out about their lives but asked if they had regrets too, and kind of aggregated that all together to see some trends and the five you can Google this, the five regrets of the dying, and ways to avoid them. one One was I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. So what do I really want to do? Two, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. And I I actually I'm okay with working hard, but as long as it's back to that autonomy, mastery, and purpose, it's aligned to something I really believe in. And I and I think the regret here for maybe I'm misinterpreting is I worked so hard on somebody else's dream, on something that didn't have a purpose, on something that I wasn't allowed aligned. third was I wish I'd had the courage to express myself. Four was I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends and family. so again, Brandon, like you're talking. Like how do we how do we be intentional about this time? And five, I wish that I'd let myself be happier. 'cause happiness is a choice, right? So we we can choose our attitude in a lot of these things. But I'll throw that back out on the table for the group here.
JB: So much of this is like mindset, right? I think I've I've really adapted and changed to I am not my career, but that like I have a calling and really focused on what am I great at? What is Like how has like the spirit gifted me? How have I what have I been born with? What talents have I developed over the years? And where can I apply those? And when I think about that, my world suddenly opens. Like I I can do my version of my job or you know, my boss's job. And there are large financial rewards that come with that. but there are also a lot of versions of doing what I do and doing my calling for maybe less financial rewards, but maybe more helping people, right? Back to those things that make us happy. So that has been so so much of this is like one, the mindset and how much you can control. Like that there's always a superpower I think Brandon had that I that I tried to steal through osmosis was the mindset of how you think about these things. And then To like again, that swimming upstream, knowing that it's not gonna be easy. Travis, you talked about finding that community is really important. But like it's still, I think, a small group of people, right? And maybe not super diverse yet, right? Like probably a lot of folks about the same
Travis Z: Racer.
JB: socioeconomic level, same education level, same same kind of family backgrounds or or something like that. And so You know, you're swimming upstream, you gotta think about it differently. and yeah, we're just you guys have said it a few times, like our education system just doesn't do this to us. They teach us how to fit into the stream and go well. And and the reality is honestly, when I was twenty-five, even thirty-five, I didn't have the skills to have these options. So I have spent a long time and and maybe we spend the next one thinking about jobs and careers and skill sets because I I've spent my whole career just thinking about building skill sets. And it's neat to see how now at this At point, I am at a place where I can maybe if I want to kind of make more choices than I could because I actually do have skills to offer.
Brandon Middleton: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I I feel blessed to be able to give opportunity to folks that, you know, it might not have, you know, been granted that opportunity by the system kind of as it exists today. So a lot of you know, in my day-to-day work, right, I get to give a lot of replit credits away to people so that they can experiment and like build things. And the idea that, I mean, it's real money that I'm giving to people in order to basically put on self-confidence and I can kind of build and I can participate in the economy of the future that's got a lot more AI sprinkled into it. the fact that I can, you know, offer, you know, employment and internships and jobs to people that the you know, the American Dream has let down several of our graduating students because there's not as much opportunity. So like these kind of things really like fill me up and give me joy. And It is something that I think we can as leaders and as like owners definitely contribute even as we swim upstream. Like there's there's ways that we can meaningfully plant the seed and like signal I believe in you, like I'm trying to open up a door for you, make an opportunity and hopefully that kind of heart and that kind of intention can scale once these stories of what we have been doing behind closed doors get get get to be publicized and known and all of that. But Yeah, we still got a lot of work to do, roll our sleeves up and keep putting one foot in front of the other one day at a time.
JB: And and if you guys want to be an intern that works for Brandon, you guys should listen to some of these episodes. He can be bought with Jordans. That's what
Brandon Middleton: Yeah.
JB: I rem that's like just
Travis Z: Ha ha ha.
JB: remember, like just bring him a pair of Jordans or a couple and like you can be Brandon's intern too.
Brandon Middleton: I'll try to keep up with Jared. That's all I'm trying to do, folks.
Travis Z: Yeah.
JB: Again, everything I buy is on sale. I'm just gonna be like, what was that? Do
Travis Z: Yeah.
JB: you guys remember that Modern Family episode where like Cam is working at the card store and and him and him and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, whatever his character's name was, are sitting there and he like buys like a hundred gift cards or a hundred like greeting cards and he's like and Jesse Tyler Ferguson's like Why did you buy this? And he's Well, they were on sale. And I'm like, no, but you had spent money. And he's like, no, like 50% off, 50% off, 60% off. He's like, no, but you spent money. And like that is like a very typical spouse argument: like, yeah, I bought six pairs of shoes this week. They were all on sale, guys. Like you had to buy them, they're on sale.
Travis Z: love it. I love it. so this is this has been a really good discussion. I I really identified too with what you're mentioning, Brandon, too, which is w how do you how do you enable, how do you give back, how do you pay forward, and how do you make a difference there? And I love that too. That's been one of the most fulfilling things for me too, is the coaching and teaching aspect of the portfolio that I have right now. Some of it's formal and paid and some of it's informal and more mentorship, some of it's just, Hey, you've got some experience in this space, could you help me out? And it's it's coffee. Once and that's great too. but I really love being able to to feel like the the work and the investment upfront it pays off in investing in other people. Going forward. So as we wrap up here, I just think about like w we're what have we covered today? we've covered that Americans work a lot, but maybe not as much as they have in the past. And even though we we work a lot, we still are also bad at taking vacation and resting. Taking time off of work doesn't mean it's restful, so we've got to be intentional about that. Burnout is a real possibility, especially if we're just hedonists on a treadmill adapting to our our people around us, buying dozens of shoes. but If we are intentional about this stuff, set good priorities, focus on and try to check in regularly and keep realigning ourselves to what really makes us fulfilled from a purpose, mastery, autonomy perspective, I think we're on a good path.
JB: I'll I'll I'll reflect something back to you two that I think you're both really good at is is I think you you both very purposefully try and find a way to give back to others. You're very open with your time and you're like, hey, if I can pass it along or teach it if someone asks for help and you're also people who ask for help. Like you're not a know it all. And so I think that when you talk about these things that make us happy, this like giving and helping others isn't just necessarily those less fortunate. Sometimes it's just people who n need a cup of coffee. and a piece of advice. And and frankly, like sometimes that's us. And I know it's been us and and so I just I reflect back to you guys. You guys are really good at that. And I I appreciate the the piece that you played in my life in those pieces. So let me transit transition us to the window and we'll kinda get into that.
Brandon Middleton: Let's do it.
JB: So we use this wine down to kind of reflect and and Travis you you tease something. So I I'm super curious. You sent us some texts, guys, I got an idea. And so I'm very excited. So Travis, let me hand it over to you to see what the wine stop doing Mr. Burns. It's so like disconcerting. Whenever you do that, it's so
Brandon Middleton: I love it. I love these fingers.
JB: I know you do. And like, well, one, let's be clear, part of it is jealousy. My fingers don't work like that. And two, it's creepy. Sorry, Travis, I'm being distracting by Brandon.
Travis Z: No. It's all good. Now I'm just curious why your fingers don't work about this. So so we also have to do like maybe a personal health and mobility episode at some point in the future. as we age. Yeah.
JB: Yeah, I it d I can s I can end my part now. I don't I don't bend very well. So I don't yeah, look at like look at this. Like it's even creepier. It's like it'sy
Travis Z: you don't bend well. Okay. Well we'll get you some y we'll get your gift card to a yoga studio.
Brandon Middleton: Piano. Like piano fingers.
JB: bitsy spider got trapped and died. Like
Brandon Middleton: You put together.
JB: I don't
Travis Z: Jared, d do you have abnormally short fingers though? I mean, relative to your hand? Okay. Hmm.
JB: No, in fact the opposite. In fact the opposite. I have giant hands, giant feet, giant head.
Brandon Middleton: Giving Shaquille O'Neal vibes when I taught him how to vibe code, man. His hands were so big, dude. He never he
Travis Z: Yeah.
Brandon Middleton: could he could not type, so we had to teach him F five to speak into the mic and just say what you want, built
Travis Z: Ha.
JB: And I I would bet that it didn't understand him. Check wont replit.
Travis Z: We should we should link to the the reels from that too because that's pretty it's a pretty funny snippet to watch when Brandon and Shaq are vibe coding.
JB: That is mm that is awesome. Agreed.
Travis Z: okay, so instead of doing like the reflection wind down this week, I thought it'd be fun to do a little bit of a go with your gut type moment. So I'm gonna hit you with some questions. Totally impromptu, folks. These people have not been prepped on this at all, so they don't know what's coming. No.
JB: Miss Chenandler Bong. No, is that no? Althea. Okay, sorry.
Travis Z: All right. When it comes to vacation, here's the first one. I got five for you. One, number one, beach or mountains. Brandon, go.
Brandon Middleton: Beach.
Travis Z: Beach,
JB: Beach.
Travis Z: Jared, Beach. I I like the mountains. cool.
JB: It's okay to be wrong. It's cool.
Travis Z: I lived in Santa Cruz for a long time, so I feel like maybe I just got my cup filled perpetually there. number two, one long vacation or four three day weekends? Ready, go. Jared.
Brandon Middleton: sorry.
JB: four three day weekends.
Travis Z: Four three day weekends for Jared, one long vacation for Brandon. I think I am a long vacation as well. I need some time to like actually get into vacation mode. number three, email on vacation. Yes, no, maybe so. Brandon, what do you think?
Brandon Middleton: Not even a question. Absolutely yes.
Travis Z: Absolutely yes. Always email on vacation. Okay, Jared, go.
JB: No work, yes, personal.
Travis Z: yeah, okay. I I feel like I'm in the middle and it's not a good place to be a lot of time. So it's like it's it's either neither hot nor cold. Four day work week or six weeks of vacation. Jared, I think I already know where you're at on that one for four day week work work week. Yeah, yeah.
JB: Four day work week, all day long, six weeks vacation, you'll never take it.
Travis Z: Yeah.
Brandon Middleton: That in fact is the right answer, four day work week for sure.
Travis Z: Yeah. And th then this is coming from somebody, Brandon, you've got unlimited vacation, right? Are you actually taking six weeks? It's a scam
JB: Again, sorry, let's pause here. Scam. Okay, let me so let me tell
Brandon Middleton: Yeah.
JB: you where this came from. Okay, let me tell you where this came from. folks needed to hit their quarterly numbers, and every CFO in the world figured out that if you've offered an unlimited vacation, you don't have to accrue a vacation on your balance
Travis Z: There's no accrual.
JB: sheet. And they got a millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars, one time credit. So they had a bad quarter, they're meta, and they lost an 18 billion dollars, should have been 180 billion dollars. loss and they needed to offset that. So they released their vacation call by releasing this unlimited vacation. Every study in the world says you take less because there's never a good time because it's not like sanctioned. So if your company offers unlimited vacation, consider that a red flag.
Brandon Middleton: I I work at a company that has unlimited vacation. But another cool f cool thing, my first job almost worked a decade at Cisco. I remember that when I left to go to Microsoft, all the money that I got from the PTO that I never took that
JB: It's so nice.
Brandon Middleton: actually felt so good, which was like a small subconscious thing of like, if you don't take it, then you'll just like get paid out whenever you roll out from this place and go to the next one. So we I
JB: And if your company has unlimited, you get nothing.
Travis Z: You get nothing. Yeah, no accrual.
Brandon Middleton: Exactly. Yeah. Anyway, we're we're like diverting from your five questions. So sorry. So sorry.
Travis Z: That's all right. L last one. That's well
JB: Sorry, sorry, I just I I
Travis Z: we got one more here, guys. It's a two-part question. Okay, so Bran, I'll go I'll hit you first. Right now, what do you need more of? Sleep, vacation, or purpose? And what are you gonna do tomorrow to realign on that?
Brandon Middleton: Hmm, I don't even know the definition of that first word. Slit sleep sleep, did you say?
Travis Z: Sleep.
Brandon Middleton: I'll say purpose as I move forward into this like AI literacy, you know, campaign that I'm doing. I feel like more of the onion is starting to unpeel. I'm learning more stuff and really excited to go into purpose as we move move forward. So yeah, that that
Travis Z: Cool.
Brandon Middleton: third option for me.
Travis Z: Cool. Jared, how about you, man?
JB: I'd say purpose. I'll be I'll be honest. I'll
Travis Z: Sleep, vacation, or purpose?
JB: be honest, I'm a really good sleeper. So I I got my aura ring a couple of years back and and you know, ten years ago I was reading articles about how to sleep better, but I sleep great now. vacation, meh, like I don't know if I'm feeling burned out. Purpose and and that is more around, you know, Travis, you've you and I have talked about, you know, you put these irons in the fire and you see what happens. And then maybe some of them heat up and some of them don't. I have a few irons that are earlier in the fire now, and including like painting and like stuff and so those things are all tied to like a greater purpose or pursuing better happiness or some of those things. So I am thinking more purposefully about some of these things around purpose and and how do I add more of those things in my life. So that's that's what I need. What about you T
Travis Z: More intentional focus. I like it. I'm gonna go team sleep here. my sleep habits are terrible right now. It's it's there's good nights, there are bad nights, and I just I think my my my I theory here is that everything will be easier or better if I always have a foundation of a good night's sleep. And so folks, this episode is brought to you by the Aura Sleep Ring. so if you haven't if you haven't picked one up yet, please go ahead and or if you there's a sub
JB: it's so good. Man, their monthly subscription though pisses me off so bad because I have a I have a Gen 2 and like and it still kinda works, but like it doesn't last that long. But then to get the new one I have to pay like ten bucks a month and I'm like so angry at recurring revenue. I'm just like
Travis Z: Hmm. It's that razor razor blade business model, man, right? Hardware and subscription, there you go. It's it's good business. no.
JB: yeah, I I work in South, so I probably shouldn't be too mad, but okay, Travis, I got one for you. If I told you you could sleep well but you could never drink coffee again, would you do it?
Travis Z: that gosh. What y you didn't I didn't know there would be an impossible question on this podcast today. I think so. Yes.
JB: Sorry, man. It's and and I be honest, like it's as a guy who cracks sleep, as guy who cracks sleep, it was it was even early morning coffees, even that thing of like that became interesting to me. So two things in the morning that I did, and I I've gone back to it, but like to start, I stopped drinking coffee all day and I got headaches like crazy and even Diet Cokes and stuff, which man, I love a Diet Coke.
Travis Z: Yeah.
JB: and then the second one was I have a little bit of seasonal affective disorder. And so I started I'd bought one of those lights for like the winter and
Travis Z: yeah, yeah.
JB: my therapist had recommended it and and it was really helpful. So then I started getting sunlight every morning, either going outside. I tend to get up early. So then I started using that light. So that light in the morning and not having caffeine at all for a little bit r like really got me into a good rhythm. So I'll I'll throw it out there of like that was my first crack.
Travis Z: I I've done it before, but I've slipped back into my old ways. So last year I had some health stuff going on, and so one of the things we tested out was caffeine intake. And so I switched off of coffee to a lower caffeine matcha tea and a lower caffeine black tea. and it wasn't as bad as I feared. I thought I'd have a week of the jitters or or of withdrawal symptoms, and it was actually just a a couple days of headaches, and it was then fine afterwards. And I did it for three months. but man, I do love the taste of coffee. I love the ritual of coffee, I love the communion. union element of coffee with friends and family.
JB: There are some really good natural decafs now. So the way they make decaf coffee is really horrible. but they're now they there's two processes. Yeah. Yeah, and there's
Travis Z: There's there's two processes, right? There's like a natural way and a chemical way, right? Yeah.
JB: a they've now genetically engineered some. So there was a coffee company out of Sacramento called Mast that a friend of a friend worked at, and they made a just kind of genetically engineered decaf coffee. And so I just I lived on that. Because you're right, like I love the smell of coffee. There's something about it.
Travis Z: Starbucks, if you're listening, we also take sponsorship money. So please tune in next week.
JB: Every you know, Brandon's grandma if you're listening, like we take sponsorship money.
Travis Z: Ha ha ha ha.
Brandon Middleton: I'm just chuckling over here. You just said that was my first crack and I'm I just flashed to Dave Chappelle and like Tyrone Bigams. I hope nobody I hope nobody clips I hope nobody clips this episode and takes that was my first crack out of context. That was
Travis Z: Yeah.
JB: good that's good my gosh what a way to wind out okay folks you'll catch us every week here on field notes you can find us all on linkedin i've got a newsletter over at myoldnotebooks.com boys this one's been fun I appreciate you both have a great rest of your week
Brandon Middleton: All right, see you guys.
Travis Z: Peace out.