PTP:082. Garland Vance “Gettin’ (un)Busy: 5 Steps to Kill Busyness and Live with Purpose, Productivity, and Peace”

Brad Miller 0:00
We have garland Vance with scars advances and author of the newly released book, getting on busy. And you can find that at getting on busy books. com that’s gigttinunbusybwok.com. So you make sure you get the spelling right there and we’ll talk about that. Garland has been helping people and teams get clarity on their about their lives and their leadership. He’s been doing that for over 20 years. He is an author and a speaker and a consultant. He is a has a great wife named Dorothy and he is in fact he co founded a organization advance leadership. And he has a is all about helping people overwhelm, who are overwhelmed to become influencers and live their life with purpose and productivity and with peace, and he is a senior consultant was Suarez. Leadership is a doctorate in leadership and spiritual formation for Denver, Denver.

seminary. And he’s especially in his research and his doctoral degree was the study of dizziness. apropos topic, welcome to pathway to promise, Dr. Garland Vance.

Garland Vance 1:14
Hey, thanks so much Dr. Brad Miller. It is great to be here. Thanks for for having me. And I’m excited to talk with you and to share with your listeners about business and purpose, productivity and peace. It is such an appropriate thing to talk about here garlin I literally just just a little while before we got together to have a conversation here. My have a 21 year old son who’s starting his senior year of college and he left the house here.

Brad Miller 1:46
Not too long before we chatted, and the topic of our conversation was how busy he is. Busy his life is with he’s getting ready to start classes and moved into a new place and

As a part time job at the university, bookstore and social life and all kinds of other things that he’s in. And he just felt he was talking about how overwhelmed that he felt in his life and how busy and he is common refrain. I think a lot of folks business, what’s business to find it for us? carlon? What is that? Sure. So I defined business as an over commitment to too many good commitments. So let me unpack that just a little bit. All of us who are over committed, whether that’s your son, whether that’s a CEO or a stay at home parent, everybody I know who’s over committed, they’re over committed because they have so many good commitments, school is good church activities are good work is good, family is good. You know, everything we’re doing is good. But when you put it all together, it becomes too much. It’s kind of like when I was in middle school and I would go to an all you can eat by

Garland Vance 3:00
Faye, and all of the food on the buffet was good, but by the end of the meal, I would feel sick because too many good things put together become bad and that’s what business is.

How’s that impacted your life? My man? How is that? You said that impact you that episode of the buffet, you’re talking about there. But I got a feeling that maybe been some larger life events that have happened here in life that you’ve had to deal with to overcome in some form or another how has been too busy, put some blocks or some HAMP hampered your life in some way. Sure. So it was about five years ago that I went to a doctor’s visit with some pretty serious physical problems. I’ve always been in good health, but I was having four chronic problems that I wanted to talk to my doctor about. The first was I was having chronic migraine headaches, three or so migraine headaches.

per week, and it would be where I would come home and have to go to bed and sleep, you know through the night because I was in so much pain. So I was having those these migraine headaches. I was having severe forgetfulness where I would have conversations with people walk away from those conversations and the next day they would reference them and I would have no idea what they were talking about. Third problem I was having is I was having heart palpitations, I would be sitting at my desk, checking email, and all of a sudden my heart would start racing, I would start pouring sweat. And then finally, I was having

just extreme exhaustion where I would wake up exhausted, go to bed exhausted, and I’ve always been a very energetic person, and I just didn’t have anything left in me. And so I went to the doctor and I was really concerned about what was going on. I wasn’t sure if they’re, you know, is there some kind of tumor that’s affecting me is, you know,

Is there the forgetfulness is this early onset Alzheimer’s, I was really concerned. And the doctor asked me to describe my life. And as I described my life, I told him about the 60 hour work weeks that I was doing. I was working 60 hours with a chick fil a nonprofit, one of chick fil A’s nonprofits. I was leading it. So I was doing that I just started working my doctoral program. I had three young kids at home, I was helping create some discipleship training for or our church. And a year earlier, my mom had had passed away. And so all of these, you know, these commitments that I was involved in, and they were all really good commitments, and my doctor looked me in the eye, he put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, Garland. I’m concerned for your life, because stress is killing you. Hmm, wow. And I

So yes, yes, a really, these the physical health manifestations of your stress and your business was impacting you on a much deeper level than you really appreciate it. He went to the doctor was Yeah, absolutely. And when he told me that I, you know, he said your stress is killing you I I actually got very frustrated with him, because I didn’t consider myself a stressed out person. And so I said to him, I said, I don’t feel stressed out. And he said, Well, your head does three times a week. And, and that big wake up call for me. And so I said to the doctor at that time, why, why do you think I’m stressed out? And he said, because you’re so busy. And my response, Brad was, Well, yeah, I’m busy, but everybody’s busy. In fact, ask anybody on the street, how they’re doing, and they’re going to tell you that they’re busy. I’m know you know, I know that I’m busy but so as everybody else, and he again looked me in the eye and he said,

know everybody’s busy, and it’s killing us all. And it was a wake up call for me and and I didn’t believe him at first I really said no, I gotta do some research around this to make sure my doctor is not crazy You sound like you might have thought he was maybe even speaking some sort of a metaphysical terminology or you know, just an example, you know, like

Brad Miller 7:23
extreme example, you’re killing yourself. It can be thought of it, but in a way that you were just an example of that, but he was really talking about physically healthy was killing you. Right? You were going to die,

Garland Vance 7:35
you know, right. Yeah. He’s He’s looking at me and saying if if your way of life doesn’t change, physical death is not like he wasn’t exaggerating, physical death will be the result.

Brad Miller 7:46
You think that’s the case for a lot of folks early?

Garland Vance 7:49
Yeah. If you know, so it’s, it’s interesting. Brad, what I ended up doing is I started researching it. And I was working on a doctorate at the time. And so I started researching the effects of business and what business does two leaders and, and I can tell you that the effects of business are profound. It’s it has been linked to colitis, diverticulitis, two diabetes, two major stress, migraine headaches, or, or shoulder tension. It’s even been linked to karoshi, which is death by overwork. And in Japan, there are people who are over committed so much that they’ve created a term for these people who drop dead at their desk, and its death by overwork. And, and it’s a result of an over commitment to too many good commitments. And, and, and what’s crazy is, is it’s not just physical problems. In my research, I found there’s emotional problems, relational problems that result from it, there are spiritual problems that come about, there’s a diminishment of our productivity. And there’s even whole organizations who are so over committed and busy, that it’s actually hurting the bottom line for them, and it’s hurting their customer service. So it’s really kind of an epidemic. In fact, some people call it some people have said that business is the new smoking.

Brad Miller 9:20
Wow. Yeah. So culture as it at our culture has a lot to do with the expectations of being busy. And course with social media and, and pressures of our workplaces and so on, there’s always an expectation to produce produce produce. Yeah, it just continues to put stress on us. And, and we, we have to take, what I’m hearing you say is that we this could either happen to us let it happen to us, or we can take some control of this. And it sounded like you chose to take some control and your circumstances. Yeah, so I’d like to be I’m interested in hearing you. I know, you’ve done a lot of research on this. But I find a lot of research online stems from our own personal experiences. And tell me little bit about your personal experience, what sort of things you did then share in reaction to that doctor’s visit? What did you do then to counteract? You said you did some studies about it. So interested in how you implemented what you learned what you chose to do that? Right?

Garland Vance 10:19
Yeah, so I had to go through some, some steps. And it wasn’t until after taking them that you really begin to to realize what you did. But the first step that I had to take is I had to decide that business was not worth it, that it wasn’t worth the toll it was taking on my body, it wasn’t worth the effect that it was going to have on my friends on the work that it was doing on my family. So I had to decide and really put a stake in the ground and say, That’s it, whatever it takes, I’m going to learn to beat this. And then the second step that I had to do is I had to begin deconstructing some of the the beliefs I had and the inhibiting beliefs in particular that were keeping stuck in business. And what I found is I had three inhibiting beliefs, and that was, I need to be more, and therefore I need to do more. And as a result of that, I need to get more. And and that getting more wasn’t for me, physical things, it was experiential opportunities. And so I had to deconstruct some of these false beliefs that, you know, I’m not enough, I’m not good enough. My value is found in what I accomplish. And even though I had taught people for years, through my my ministries, that that that was not true, you know that our value is found in the fact that we are children of God, even though I taught that I didn’t practice that in the way that I I acted. And so once I began to deconstruct some of those, inhibiting beliefs, then I had to deconstruct some over commitments and some unwanted commitments that I had. And really began to strip away commitments that were not life giving to me, things that I had said yes to that I shouldn’t have said yes to or that I didn’t need to say yes to and really had to go through a lot of soul searching of, I’ve only got limited time and limited energy, and how much am I going to get? You know, what, am I going to get bad time and energy

Brad Miller 12:22
grows? Was this simply a matter of setting priorities? Or there? Was there something deeper here than that? Tell me about you kind of how you did is how you sorted out these things. So as he, as you said, you had a lot of good stuff going on. But how did you actually do it? How did you use writing zone?

Garland Vance 12:39
Right? Yeah, so for me, it wasn’t so much about priorities as it was about boundaries. You know, I had taught lots about time management and read a lot about time management. And so I knew how to create priorities. But what I think most people do is, is we create not one or two priorities, but we identify our top 10 priorities, or 15. And so part of it was having to minimize the number of priorities that I had. But the other part of it was really about building some boundaries into my life, where I would say, you know, at this time, every day, my work ends, I’m done, I’m not going to pick up the phone, I’m not going to look at the computer, I’m not going to respond to email, my work ends at this time. And then having three young kids at home, having to do the same thing at home. And so our family decided at 9pm. Every night, we’re done. Even if we’re not finished with everything we’re done. And you know, the dishes will still be there, things will still be dirty, but we’ve got to care for ourself. And so setting boundaries was a huge part, and then implementing some some very intentional rest and sleep slowing down practices were also a huge part of that learning to walk more slowly, talk more slowly, which I still struggle with that right, I still talk pretty fast. But But all of that became just a very intentional slowing down of life. And what was crazy is how much more I actually started accomplishing. Because my mind and my body were slowing down enough to pay attention.

Brad Miller 14:29
That’s awesome. It’s that. So those are some intentional actions that you took to slowing down the quitting things, even when they were done at nine o’clock, for instance, and stopping work. Those are some intentional things. But you mentioned an aspect here that I’m interested in, that you just touched on there briefly there girl. And you mentioned about some kind of a spiritual element of this. I mean, I’m interested in how that comes into play here. What kind of a higher power what kind of a resource beyond your own wherewithal did you draw upon to help you enact this new lifestyle?

Garland Vance 15:05
Right? Yes, so so I am a follower of Jesus Christ. And and so part of that was I started going to the Bible to understand, you know, what does the Bible say about speeding up and slowing down. And what I realized is, there aren’t a whole lot of times in the Bible, when God tells people to go faster. But he really tells people to slow down whether it’s taking a Sabbath, or whether it was, you know, taking an entire year off with the year of jubilee. And, and so I knew that I needed him and really needed to lean on him, him very strong. Now, what I discovered in, in getting on busy is getting on busy is not the process of it is not even written, I didn’t even write it as if it’s a religious book, it’s really written for, for anyone, but I but there is a critical element in which you’ve got to realize that any addiction, and in my case, it was an addiction to commitment. And any addiction necessitates a higher power in order for you to deal with it, and and struggle through it. And so I leaned on his energy a whole lot to help me slow down.

Brad Miller 16:27
Interesting that you term a few terms, something that so many people considered such a just kind of a given in life, the busy nose and the pressures, your terminal and addiction, which indicates that is something that is has a physiological aspect that you have to part. And most of us know whether it’s 12 step programs, or whatever, an aspect of dealing with this physiological addiction is drawing on some higher power.

Garland Vance 16:52
Yeah. And there is a physiological element to it, Brad, whenever we encounter stress, our body releases adrenaline and cortisol because of the sympathetic nervous system. And adrenaline and cortisol make us feel good. They give us energy they, they help us to focus on you know, what’s right in front of us, adrenaline and cortisol feel really good. The problem is that our bodies are designed once we’ve dealt with the stress to, to wash that adrenaline and cortisol out using the parasympathetic nervous system. Well, what business does is it it it creates stress, which releases adrenaline and cortisol, which gives us the energy that we need. But then it introduces almost immediately another stressor into our lives, which releases the adrenaline and cortisol again. And so we when I say business addicts, we really are a society of adrenaline and cortisol addicts, and all the physical symptoms that I listed earlier, are, are the result of adrenaline and cortisol overload in our bodies. And so we are we are physically addicted to it, and it is tearing us apart. Sure.

Brad Miller 18:10
Well, part of addiction, of course, is that constant need for stimulation, you know, and then yes, you don’t get the stimulation, then you have the crash, and you have the other aspects of of the depression and all the things that go along with that. And if people didn’t seek out that stimulation again, and so what you’re describing really is the classic cycle of, you know, of an addiction. So part of the part of this process of you have to identify the problem, which you did, by going to your doctor and, and you’re you’re sharing with, with your readers as your book, how to do some of that. And you shared here now about having calling upon a spiritual force, spiritual power is a part of this process. Let’s talk now about your emotions and about people in your life. Who you impacted impacted by your addiction to business you had you shared about your, your children, for instance, let’s talk about the importance of loving relationships to fuel this change, you know, to help setting those priorities, what is the role of relationships, and helping you get a handle on this addiction to business?

Garland Vance 19:24
Yeah, I think that, for me, a big part of relationships was beginning to value relationships, even if I couldn’t see an immediate payoff to it, and beginning to spend time with people that I loved, but also people who energized me. And so so I loved my kids. And I wanted very much to be around for their lives for much longer. But But my youngest, my young kids at that time, were were also tiring. And you know, there were there were days of where they were part of the reason for exhaustion, because little kids require so much care. And what I started doing is I would, I wanted to care about them. And I wanted to beat business for them. But I also needed to begin investing in relationships with people that I loved, and who energized me. And so I would begin, I started meeting with a group of guys who, once a week we go out, we get Chinese food together, we would talk about theology and about leadership and about sports and about fun things like that. And I would walk away from that feeling energized and strengthened. And that would give me the resolve that I needed to continue beating business. And so when I was too busy, I didn’t have time for for relationships, right, there was so much that I was doing that I didn’t have time for deep relationships. But as a result of getting and busy, I had more time for those deeper relationships, and those relationships helped fuel my commitment to get and to stay on busy.

Brad Miller 21:12
Yeah, that’s awesome. And that, also, I believe a piece when you have to get other folks you mentioned about some of your colleagues and friends there that helps hold you accountable. If you have a right type of relationship that can help to fuel you properly. You know, some people, you know, some people have that type of relationship with their spouse, with some people with their own children even or they have been able to frame their relationship with their kids or other people in such a way that they can leverage kind of appropriate accountability, even appropriate guilt at times to help to drive for the positive things, the positive changes we need instead of just being, you know, driven by, you know, regret and guilt and things. Right. Right. See the positive sides those relationships? And sounds like you leveraged a lot of that, and he encourage your readers to do the same.

Garland Vance 22:02
Yes, yeah. relationships. In fact, towards the end of my book, I talk about how do you draw in your family? How do you draw in your friends? And how do you draw in your co workers to and business because what I found with people that I was working with, is they would, they would beat business, but then they would look at their lives and all of their friends around them would still be over committed and stressed out. And so you’ve got to lean on those people as you’re going through the process of getting on busy. But you also have to then draw in other people into your business so that they can begin to experience the the purpose and the productivity and the peace that comes as a result of it.

Brad Miller 22:48
Love it for that purpose for productivity and peace. Because I think what’s what a lot of people are really seeking. Regardless, what you think is, you know, they have a sense of their busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, but they still may have a sense of their life. What’s it all about? What why if they say, if I’m so busy, and so much stimuli going on? Why do I feel like my life or my relationships are so empty or meaning less? Right? There’s people are seeking meaning fold as? And many times the answer to that is not in more and more stimuli it is and slowing down and doing the other, the other tactics and disciplines that you advocate here. Yeah, yeah,

Garland Vance 23:29
absolutely. And you know, I mean, if you think about, even if you have kids, or if you have grand kids, if you’re in this mode of Hurry, worry and scurry with, you know, with the grandkids, they’re all around you, and you’re moving so fast and bossing them around and you’re trying to get somewhere you don’t appreciate the those those kids but it’s when you get down on the floor, and you play with them. And you get eyeball to eyeball and knee to knee with those kids, that you you enjoy them and they enjoy you. And I think that’s a big part of it is we’re looking for meaning in our lives and significance. And the way that we’re doing it is by filling our calendars so full, that we can’t appreciate the the little enjoyment of life, we can’t even slow down enough to to stop and smell the roses as

Brad Miller 24:22
well. That’s very true. And as it’s been shared, and I’ve heard this said and preached it myself and funerals is such that almost nobody attended or alive cares how much time you spent in the office or how much time you spent being busy based use care, but how much time you spent in, in relationships, those those, as you said, the eyeball the eyeball and the need to need moments, those special moments and there’s, if you think about in your life, there’s really nothing better than those intimate relationships that that that you have. Yeah, absolutely. So now the question is here garlin, how do we get there? We’ve identified the problem we have I did, we’ve shared about some of the ways that we can take some action and but what you’re all about is being helpful to other people who read your book and have your leadership programs. What are some ways because this guy, I believe, you’re right, garlanded, this is an epidemic thing. You know, it’s it’s, it’s impacted me personally, and my own family shared about my son a little bit earlier. Right? Certainly in the circles, I’m in lots of busy professional people and all kinds of things. But how do we impact people’s lives to help them get this turned around and be at the same time? Slow down, but also understand they’re being productive? They’re getting stuff down? What are some? What are some things that people can do? help us out here, girl? And what are some sure actions that we could take?

Garland Vance 25:43
All right, so I would say so I have five steps that I that I’ve identified and I mentioned a couple of these already. But But the first one is, you have to decide you have to decide that business isn’t worth it, and that you’re going to beat business no matter what. And then the second is, you’ve got to begin to Deacon instruct these inhibiting beliefs that you have some of the bad habits that you have for For example, one bad habit is we say yes to other people too quickly. And we’ve really got to strengthen our no muscle. And then we need to deconstruct some unwanted commitments, what I found, so I, I take people in my book and in my courses, I take them through an exercise that helps them identify activities that they want to uncommitted from and what their next action is for that. And what I found is when people do that, they almost immediately get back 10 hours a week in their lives. Because they are so over committed to things they don’t even want to do. So once you deconstruct things, then the third step is you begin to design you design, the pace and that you want to live at and you design margin into your life. you design your life around relationships, and recreation and rest and reflection that I call the core four. And then you design your life around your dreams and your priorities. And so then the fourth step is you begin to develop and this is where actually time management finally begins to come in and but it’s how do you develop and I’m busy mind and I’m busy calendar and I’m busy habits. And then the fifth step is you draw other people in to it your friends, your family, and your your co workers. Because when when a leader begins to live at an unhealthy pace, it has a ripple effect on those that that whether that’s a leader of a family, you know, a leader within a friend group or a leader of, of a workforce, when you begin to slow down, it has a ripple effect on the people around you.

Brad Miller 27:49
Hmm, that’s awesome. I, I picked up on what you share there about this continuum with these five steps here how the calendar management part of it is actually the fourth step, not the initial step. Because a lot of people think, well, I gotta get control of my time. That means I gotta calendar stuff, that means I could get more rigid, and how I do my time management. And that’s a piece of it. But that’s 111 piece of it, you got to do the work ahead of time, and then also see the legacy part of how you share that with others. I think that’s awesome. So when we speak about and when you hear, reflect now about that kind of that legacy part about that. The next steps here, I’d like for you to share with me if you will try to put put in your mind’s eye or maybe your own experience about people, you know, not yourself. Now you’ve taught them how you kind of manage this on your own, but other people you’ve worked with, or people you know, who have been able to implement some of your teaching or as someone from another have made some transition in life. And so transformation to Hello more quality, a little more peace in their life and prosperity, as you said, to someone you’ve worked with.

Garland Vance 28:58
Yeah, so. So the list is long. Fortunately, one of those that I’m that I’m most proud of is is a friend who was with me in the beginning of this journey, her name is Jessica. And Jessica is a mom to five, her husband is an ER doctor. And Jessica like me what is a type A personality who really goes after, you know, goals and dreams, and she’s just a go getter. And as we began to talk about business about slowing down about taking I’m all over the course of for her, you know, it took a couple of years because I was formulating the ideas, as we were, you know, as she and I were talking. But what I’ve seen is they’ve replaced crazy hectic evenings with family time that is rich and meaningful and has has good discussions in the evening with with kids. She told me recently that they’ve decided to to get rid of all Saturday commitments and just be together as a family on Saturdays, and bring other families over to spend time with them to enjoy football together. So I’m really proud of Jessica. And I would say I’m proud of another person who is named Scott and Scott’s the CEO of his own organization, and he’s an entrepreneur, and I’ve been able to work with him and, and what I’ve seen Scott news, he’s gone from this non stop pace of constantly putting pressure on himself to do more, do more, do more, but not do any of it really, really, really well. And now he is an entrepreneur of his own business, his businesses doing amazing he he and his wife have have four kids, and he’s making very intentional time to be with them. And he’s still a go getter. He’s still a type A personality. But he’s a type A personality who’s learned to live at a slower pace with a lot more more grace in his life.

Brad Miller 31:15
That’s awesome. When you have that you have that piece of what Yes, you spoken of and that is incredibly valuable, yet. And also we know that forever. Yes, Scott and Jessica, that are are there that we have in the world. There’s lots of other folks who have the need and have the yearning, they know their life is not quite in balance. And they want to seek out some leadership in some direction. And I know that you offer through your book getting on busy. And also through your your company advanced leaders. Yes, tell us how that you might be able to be helpful to folks or how folks can take if someone else is in our listening audience who wants to take the next step, either with you or somehow another, what would be a first step to do to get I’m busy to get some control of this chaos in their life?

Garland Vance 32:04
Yeah, so I would say, you know, part of the irony of writing a book about business is that busy, people don’t have much time to read. And so so if you’re a reader, then I would say a great first step would be to look up getting, there’s no G on the end of that getting on busy. Or another option is to go to getting on busy. book.com. And you can contact me there I, in addition to the book, I also have an online course I do coaching for people, and I’ll even I do consulting with entire companies where I work with them to slow down the entire company, as a whole. And so, but I would say getting on busy book.com. And just as an FYI, people can actually download six free chapters there, so that they can check it out before they buy it. That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

Brad Miller 33:01
And of course, just to kind of reminder to all of us that when we talk about getting busy, it’s actually does that mean become an unproductive? It actually has the opposite effect, it can help people be more productive. So if we’re thinking that the, you know, the end result is to get more done, you get more done off dies by slowing down. So awesome, good. Good work here that we will command to you Dr. Garland Vance, who’s the author of getting busy and and we can find more about him but getting on busy. book.com Thank you for being our guest today on the pathway to promise podcast Dr. Garland Vance.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai