Letting Go of the 'Work Harder' Mentality with Paul Farina

In this episode, Nicky and Ness have a thought-provoking conversation with Paul Farina about redefining hard work and success. They explore shifting from the traditional 'work harder' mentality to a new paradigm focused on rhythm, flow, and sustainable performance in personal and professional life.

Episode Highlights:

• Old Paradigm: Paul discusses the belief that hard work alone leads to success, sharing personal and cultural insights.
• Challenging Defaults: They explore the limits of working longer hours or increasing intensity when facing challenges.
• New Paradigm: Paul introduces a new approach centred on rhythm, flow, and effective resource use, challenging old industrial-era norms.
• Contextual Thinking: Nicky highlights the importance of seeing the big picture for strategic decision-making.
• Three Pillars of Performance: Paul outlines social, technical, and analytical competencies essential for sustainable performance.
• Navigating Pressure: They discuss elements contributing to pressure and offer strategies to focus on the work itself.
• Embracing Mastery: Ness talks about mastering basics and parallels between sports training and business practices.
• Shifting Mindsets: Nicky encourages challenging the glorification of overwork and adopting new ways of thinking.
• Sustainable High Performance: Paul emphasizes creating cultures prioritizing sustainability, growth, and well-being.

Website: https://paulfarina.com.au/
Directly for Books: https://paulfarina.com.au/books
LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulfarinamelb/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/paulfarina.com.au
As we discussed Contextual Thinking, Paul's Strategy Builder Program Page: https://paulfarina.com.au/strategy-builder

Learn more about Nicky and Ness https://businesstogether.com.au

Buy a copy of Healthy Hustle: The New Blueprint to Thrive in Business & Life www.healthyhustle.com.au

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Ness LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanessamedling/

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Nicky Miklos-Woodley 0403 191 404
Vanessa (Ness) Medling 0400 226 875

Or send us an email hello@businesstogether.com.au

Music by Jules Miklos-Woodley

Chapters

• 0:04 Redefining Hard Work for Success
• 8:28 Achieving Performance Excellence Through Contextual Thinking
• 17:04 Navigating Real Performance in Business
• 22:15 Embracing Humility in Productivity and Pressure
• 34:52 Creating Success Through Contextual Thinking
• 40:25 Thriving in Business and Life

Transcript

Nicky: 0:04

Welcome to the Smart Business Growth Podcast with Nikki and. Ness.

Ness: 0:11

We would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of country, the Turrbal and Bunurong people of Brisbane and Melbourne respectively, where Nikki and I both work and live both work and live.

Nicky: 0:30

Have you ever wondered about building a high performance team and culture and what the impact of actually labeling it that could be on your team, on the ways of working, on the expectations that people in that team feel? We speak today with performance expert Paul Farina. Paul has a background in professional sport and brings a high performance perspective with experience also in corporate business from across many markets spanning over two decades. So today we talk about how the label of high performance can actually add extra pressure and expectation on the team. Is that a bad thing? How do we navigate that? What does that look like? We also talk about redefining hard work, shifting from the old paradigm of what hard work has meant up until today and really moving to that future of work focus. What does it mean today and, more importantly, what does it mean tomorrow and in the future? How do we redefine not just our perspective but our ways of working with the new way of working, the new hard work? What does that look like? We hope that you enjoy this episode and take some of the nuggets of gold that we talk about to really impact the long-term sustainable success, your high-performance culture and the way that you do hard work. Paul, it is so wonderful to have you here. Thank you again for joining us. We're really excited to delve into this space of understanding and redefining what hard work is, what success looks like.

Nicky: 1:58

This is a conversation that Ness and I have a lot with our clients in terms of understanding that a lot of business owners and leaders their business is feeling chaotic, they're on juggle straight, so they're getting pulled in a million different directions, they're stuck in the busy trap and, as we've had conversations previously, the default is then I'm going to work harder I've just got to work longer hours. I'll pull the laptop out after the kids have gone to bed, I'm going to keep hustling, I'm going to hustle more and also I'm going to keep doing everything myself, for all the reasons that we can go into. But I want to start this conversation about really digging into, leaning into this definition of hard work, which in your book and viewers I'm holding up all the links in the show notes In your book you refer to it as the old paradigm. So, in the view of the new paradigm and redefining hard work, I'm really curious to know from you what does hard work mean to you these days?

Paul Farina: 2:59

Yeah, thanks, nikki. Good on us, thanks for having us. Yeah, I think that where hard work, work or performing to get to a result, a lot of us, what we're fed, so where it comes from and what's fed to us, I think, from a very young age, is that if you want to get anywhere, if you want to be successful, there's one common thread and it's to work hard. You've got to work hard, and it's just littered throughout a lot of popular culture. Someone who follows sport very closely I do a lot of work in the sporting arena you know once again, you'll hear this a lot what's been the secret to our success. Well, we've been willing to work hard.

Paul Farina: 3:36

And so you know, for me, my own experience was born to immigrant parents. That's what you had to do when you had nothing. You had no other resource. All you had was really your effort. So that was really drummed into us. And for me, my experience was that I saw my dad work himself pretty much into ill health and actually myself I managed to. I mean, my dad managed to work himself into a, you know, sort of a sickbed in his sort of 50s 60s. I managed to do it in my late teens, basically Wow an achiever.

Paul Farina: 4:14

Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, I won right.

Nicky: 4:17

Yeah, well done for me.

Paul Farina: 4:18

And so you know that came from this same old adage that I could do it all. I needed to do it all. So that's schoolwork, that's having a part-time job, it's going out and having fun with your friends as you're going through those adolescent years. And I was doing my senior school certificate in Adelaide in South Australia, called the SAE certificate, and during those years I was playing or training in sport seven days a week. So put that all together and there's just no bandwidth at all, you know. And so, ultimately, where was that all coming from? Paul, if you're going to be worthwhile, if it's going to be worthy of doing, if you're going to get anywhere, you just need to keep going.

Paul Farina: 5:01

And, of course, as I went into my, I went into a cricketing career a very short cricketing career, but a career nonetheless. And then, yeah, I went into the corporate space and into the leadership space. It is a reflection I've had throughout my whole career. But also, when I'm in a room with a bunch of leaders or teams, or even in individual coaching conversations, what will come out all the time and this has been my observation now over pretty much two decades is that when people are faced with a problem, they have two defaults all coming under this work hard. What is to work hard? What is it? To get the job done? The two defaults are well, we're going to work longer, and if I'm in a leadership position, I'm going to ask others to work longer. And if I'm in a leadership position, I'm going to ask others to work longer. And the second thing that we'll always do is to increase the intensity, which might come under the bracket of actually working harder. But what does working harder looks like? Well, I'm going to pump up the volume. You know the intensity will raise.

Paul Farina: 6:00

So, really, if you think about it, no matter whether you're in a business owner environment, you're in a solopreneur environment or a sole trader, or you're in the corporate space, whether that's in a small to medium size, you know, corporate area or in a multinational, it's amazing that, as humans in this day and age, that when we're faced with problems, simple or complex, we still reach for those two levers. That's it. That's all we got. And I'm sitting here going. Are you kidding me? Yeah, are you kidding me? Is that all we have? And we're meant to be intelligent, you know, like I do believe we can do better. So I believe what we've got is a situation where that is something that is ingrained in us and it's ingrained in our society, so we could have a very deep and philosophical conversation around this but it's ingrained into us and that's what I refer to as the old paradigm.

Paul Farina: 6:56

That's been in the ages, particularly in the industrial era. So in the last hundred years or so, and as we've moved into more of a knowledge, working, service, working sort of economy, we're transferring a lot of that old paradigm over. And what?

Nicky: 7:12

does it do?

Paul Farina: 7:13

Well, it increases pressure. It means that we, even if we do achieve or we create what's called a high performance culture, that culture just brings in and chews up and spits out a lot of really good talent, a lot of really good people. We've all been around long enough to see it with our own eyes. So I'd like to propose an alternative, an alternative to that in what I call the new paradigm, and a lot of it is inspired by my own experience in terms of firstly, I was my first thing I did out of school was I trained as a naturopath and a part of that was as a sports therapist. So I did a huge amount of massage.

Paul Farina: 7:53

And so, if you're going to do sports therapy massage yes, being six foot four and being a big guy did certainly help, but still, if you're going to do hours and hours and hours every single day of that like, you got to have good technique, and a part of that technique is to be able to get into some form of rhythm and find a rhythm so that you're able to perform and do what you need to do and get a result without breaking your wrists, without breaking your back, etc. Etc. And then it was exactly the same thing that I experienced as a fast bowler in cricket as well, and really in every other sporting arena. I was in that if I wanted to perform, if I wanted to bowl quicker or better, the one thing you cannot do is tense up and try and bowl quicker and I experience this now as a very, very poor amateur golfer is that if you want to hit the ball and hit the ball hard and hit it well, the last thing you want to do is tense up and try and hit it hard. So this is once again the old paradigm versus the new paradigm, and so ultimately, this idea of the new paradigm being around rhythm.

Paul Farina: 8:57

How can we get ourselves into that loose, relaxed, flowing in the zone sort of feeling where all of a sudden and I can actually sit here and still feel that ball leaving my hand and how it flicks out the hand and really penetrates past the batsman there's so many elements in it for individual performance. But then when we start to build that out into what it looks like in a team environment and all the dynamics around that, that's when it gets really exciting. There is a bit of complexity, but it does get really exciting in terms of okay, now we've got something a bit more sophisticated to play with. Now we've got many, many opportunities to invest our finite resources into, to be able to then truly get some real performance and I like to use that term. What's the difference between a real performance culture versus a high performance culture? A real performance culture, which is something that's sustainable and actually enjoyable and we're going to have fun, it's going to be attractive and we're going to get better results as well. Wow.

Ness: 10:00

I resonate so much with what you've said there, especially about the old paradigm. You know what we got, what I got raised on believing maybe a bit through my parents or society in general. You know media, whatever that the harder you work, the more successful you are. And when you were describing the you know in relation to bowling, or you know, you think about that. You think, okay, if we're going to put the pressure on, I think in one of my early jobs I worked like nearly 48 hours straight to meet a deadline exhausted, ridiculously, crazily tired. You know that whole. Where was my attention to detail in that? Why were we doing that so close to the cutoff time? I flew from Melbourne to Sydney on a plane, got in a cab, went to the tender box, dropped it in 10 minutes before the tender closed, got in a cab, flew back. It was ridiculous and I think about where is my best quality work ever produced?

Ness: 11:02

It's always produced when you're in flow exactly what you said when you are finding opportunities to work together in rhythm and in sync with each other and bouncing off each other, as opposed to feeling completely exhausted at the end of that. So what's it that helps people to make that shift Because it's a big shift in thinking like we're breaking a huge cycle here around the way we believe we should be doing business in those times and I'd have to say I even fall into that, nikki, I don't know whether you would agree with that as well, but we just go. If we've got all this work on, we're just gonna have to work longer hours, we're just gonna work harder. You know how do we break that, paul.

Paul Farina: 11:39

Well, firstly, I'm just exhausted listening to your story let alone, visualising, you do it right, and I think that a lot of listeners out there would have had their own experience of these times. And yeah, margaret Heffernan talks about crunch times, particularly in the IT arena, and I think, firstly, we just need to acknowledge there's always going to be those crunch times. There's going to be times when it's just pedal to the metal, the intensity raises. We see it for what it is, and we just need to push and push hard. I think the key thing, though, is that that pushing hard, that high intensity, doesn't just become the norm, and that's, ultimately, what we're talking about. So the first thing, I think, in terms of finding this rhythm and finding our flow and, as leaders supporting people around us to get into flow and get into synchronization with each other, I think the first thing is is to really come at it from what I call, or utilize, contextual thinking. So contextual thinking is the idea of basically zooming out and having a look at what's in front of us in our workflows, our projects, our tasks at hand, and just seeing how they fit into the broader picture. Now, this sounds simple, but to actually physically do it when you're in meetings, when you're in the business, this is actually harder than what it looks like. It's what I'd term a practice. So I think, when I'm doing a lot of learning and development, something I'll talk to my audiences about is the idea of when you there's a spectrum that you go through in terms of being able to take on things and actually execute them, and we start off by learning something. Okay, learning's good, but then what? Well, any learning needs to then be practiced over and over and over again. So any skill set that we're going to talk about, firstly, let's just say, let's just understand it's important to practice, and I'd love to use once again in sport. You have AFL players and they will still go to training and practice handballs. They'll do a thousand of them. What does that tell you? You know, those basics need to be practiced over and over, or perceived basics need to be practiced over and over and over again until it becomes autonomous. And if you do things for long enough, you then move into mastery. And a really good metaphor for this is driving. You know, we've we. Now we learn how to drive. We drive so much to the, we've mastered it so much, that we get to a destination and we can't even remember how we got there and so you know that's kind of a bit scary, to be honest. But you know, ultimately, if we're going to look at okay, being in our workflows, you know, having contextual thinking, what's going to help us to do that, well, firstly, just learn that that's happening and then practice it over and over and over again. Then we're in a position to go right.

Paul Farina: 14:36

When I'm actually thinking and looking at things a bit broader now what? What do I do? Yeah, and what do I use. And I've basically broken it into three key areas. So, when it comes to performance, a performance mindset, performance skills and getting that performance, that's sort of self-feeding that's sustainable there's three key areas. The first one is there's social competencies, there's technical competencies and there's analytical competencies. So the social competencies is very much about mindset and how I put myself out there and how I operate, ie very much in an interpersonal way. The technical skills is really around learning some key frameworks, around communication, planning and execution, and then also I split that into a second area, so that's like the universal technical skills. So I don't care if you're an engineer or if you're a footy coach or if you're a cafe owner. You can utilize those key skills. Then there's the unique technical skills, which is fundamentally.

Paul Farina: 15:42

I encourage everybody and I do this myself to around about every six months to pick something, pick something technical in terms of knowledge in your special expertise area and go and learn it. So I specifically remember working with a financial controller that's now a CFO and in the business he was working in he was really concerned when we nutted it out. He was really concerned about learning some legislation around importing and exporting and after about a five-minute chat we realized the best way for him to learn this was to reach out to a mentor who he'd worked with before that was really knowledgeable in this area. He went and forged, had a coffee and forged a conversation around that. He got some references, got some reading and within three months he had learned everything he knew around that unique technical area. So I just think that's a healthy thing to do, because I know I've been in that situation where you're maybe with a client or you're, you know, in a pitch or maybe even you know delivering a project and you're in the meeting and you're going. I'm okay, but I just hope they don't ask me that question and like that's a really good signal of what that unique technical skill is that I should really be hunting and investigating, so that already takes away a lot of doubt and hard work and all those sorts of things that are happening in the moment as well. We get better at what we're doing.

Paul Farina: 17:04

And then, finally, there's the analytical pillar, which is really about being able to build good strategies, good operational strategies, and I do a lot of strategic facilitation at a high level. But that is not where the game's played. The game is played in being able to lay out a strategy from end to end, the why, the what. A strategy from end to end, the why, the what and the how of recruiting a new person, of figuring out the workflow tool we should use for the projects going forward, for figuring out how we're going to put new furniture into our office. You know like it could be.

Paul Farina: 17:40

It really is the day to day stuff which, if we practice, once again, you know having a strategic way of approaching this stuff. Once again, we're contextual, so we're just zooming out and being a bit more strategic about our decisions. You add into this the technical skills of communication, planning and execution, and then you add to that the social elements and you've just got a really, really. It's a weapon. It's a weapon of skill sets. That means that we can hopefully and this is what it's all about get the most out of our resources. Get the most. I believe deeply that's what performance and leadership really is all about. It's about being able to get the most out of your most precious finite resources Effort, energy, attention and, of course, time.

Nicky: 18:28

Yeah, that's wonderful. I particularly love that whole contextual thinking and pulling back and so many great frameworks that I know are also in your book. So link in show notes there as well. If you want to go even deeper around that, viewers and listeners, do the Smart Growth Survey in under 60 seconds to get your hands on our Smart Growth Blueprint. You'll get immediate access to our four favorite strategies for sales, profit planning and team, and you'll identify which phase of Smart Growth your business is currently in, whether it's crisis, build growth or momentum mode, so that you can move your way to the next phase with ease. All you have to do is click the link in the show notes.

Nicky: 19:11

Ness, the story that you shared. That reminds me as well of a time when I worked in a PR agency and I remember getting a cab at like midnight. It was so late at night going back into the office to work in the campaign. But that also then reminds me of shows like I don't know if anybody's watched Suits. Yes, I just started watching it not long ago. All these shows, all these like it's glorified. It's sort of like we've learned this definition from our parents. And your story, your personal story, paul, really struck me when I first heard it as well. And it's not just that, but then there's this also glorification of oh, I've made it. And you know, even in my early corporate career I was like, yeah, I was the last one to leave and my boss saw me. Woohoo, nikki, high five to me because that's a good achiever. And so we've got these deeply rooted beliefs. We've then also had evidence shown around us that those beliefs are glamorous or whatever word we want to, you know, justified.

Nicky: 20:09

So and now what we're doing with this new paradigm is actually saying there's different frameworks and models for you to be using, for you to get unstuck, because also, paul, when you're talking about the unique techniques, you know I love that framework around the social, technical and unique technical and analytical and I'm thinking great. So for a leader, a business leader, to invest in their technical, unique technical abilities, you can't be stuck in the day-to-day weeds. You got to find a way to get that happening in a way that you can step back to what we call, say, the balcony of the business, to be able to invest in yourself as that business leader. So I see how, also, the model in itself helps people step back, because when you're prioritizing on the right areas. You're not stuck in the day-to-day weeds. And we know that one of the biggest reasons businesses fail aside from cash flow and that's kind of almost an obvious one right Cash flow, lack of strategy. But one of the main reasons is actually the business owners and leaders are stuck in the weeds, stuck in the day-to-day. So a big, big message here is how do we step back to that conceptual thinking?

Nicky: 21:19

And I think another really important point there, paul, is around high performance. So I like your reframe to real performance, because what I also know to be true is that I deliver high performance workshops and these sorts of things, and I have had conversations with really successful leaders who say ah, I just feel like there's so much pressure when we talk about high performance. It just adds pressure to me. So I think even that narrative I'm keen to get your thoughts on this around when we talk about developing high performance cultures and teams, which is ultimately what we want, whether we call it high performance, real performance, peak performance but there can be this underlying additional pressure and expectations. So how do we navigate that? We don't want to remove expectations and standards, obviously, but we also want to relieve the unnecessary pressure for people to then fall into those unresourceful behaviors of working hard and longer.

Nicky: 22:15

Also interesting start just before you jump in there, I was recently reading when we work over 55 hours a week. So if we're doing 70 hours a week, if you're listening and you're doing that, you may as well work 55, because your productivity is reduced to the point that you're only as productive as like if you're working 70, you'll only be as efficient as if you worked 55 hours. Like what Lucky I don't work 70 hours Exactly.

Nicky: 22:41

Yeah, I think you're doing a good job, but are you that is so true?

Paul Farina: 22:51

but are you? That is so true, it's such a big conversation, and so I think the first thing, before I launch into that, is that we need to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. So you go to the pub, you go out for a coffee, you're at a dinner party, you know it's almost like, yeah, hard work, bingo. When is someone going to complain about the 300 emails that they've got unattended?

Nicky: 23:10

right. Yeah, this is almost a badge of honor. Right, love that metaphor. Yeah, that could actually be a game that could actually be a workshop game hard. Yeah, yeah, okay, I'm gonna marinate on that you've got it.

Paul Farina: 23:22

You got it. Okay, good that was, but you know like I always think gee wh. You know, like I always think, gee whiz, you know people complain about their team, they complain about their clients, they complain about the string of emails, how behind they are on this project, this, that and the other. I'm like you know what I think. You know it's a bit of a cheeky thought, but I always think to myself how would you feel if I took that at work? And that's what's really uncomfortable for people.

Ness: 23:47

Yeah.

Paul Farina: 23:48

So I'm currently. I've just read Cal Newport's newest book, slow Productivity. I'm happy to give it a huge plug because it really says a lot of the things that we're wanting, we know in our hearts and we're wanting to say once again, it's an aligned message and this idea of once again taking industrial, an aligned message, and you know, this idea of once again taking industrial revolution, ideas around activity. He calls it pseudo productivity. We're putting activity in instead of productivity.

Paul Farina: 24:20

And so you know, ultimately it comes down to the old idea of input rather than output. So as long as we are inputting, then that makes us feel safe, that makes us feel comfortable, that makes us feel familiar. The first human need is ticked off, and so that's why people don't actually like me. I will challenge them on this and say okay, I hear that you're putting in the energy and the effort and that you care and that you're stressed out and you're doing all this jargon, but there really is an attachment to this stuff. And what if I asked you to drop that and to then and I challenged you on that and I asked you to then do the real hard work, which is to put that stuff down and then to actually pick up and start to learn and practice new ways of working which are deeply uncomfortable but will mean that you can alleviate that pressure to begin with and you can actually productively move forward with true productivity.

Paul Farina: 25:26

So that's the first thing I would say to that is that you know we're hanging on to the stuff that we're complaining about, or we love to complain about it as well. But then can we ask ourselves the question what does it look like if we did go from that paradigm to the new paradigm, and how scary that is as well. So you know, once again we've got to be empath as well. So you know, once again we've got to be empathetic here. Like you know, we've got deep sea. It's almost in our DNA that we're trying to break here.

Paul Farina: 25:55

So you know, this is not an easy game to play. But those ones that are brave enough to face up to that and then to get uncomfortable and start to lean into new ways of thinking, new ways of working, pick up new tools. And this is also about dropping the ego. So the first social competency is humility. It is the cornerstone. So being able to just drop the act, drop it, Because when you ask Ricky Ponting, why is it what separates all these amazing test batsmen and then the elite, elite, the top 1%, His answer is they do the basics better.

Ness: 26:33

It's so true, isn't it? And I think that's what we try to do in business, isn't it? We do fill our time with all the busyness that's out there. That makes us feel important, and you talk about being uncomfortable. Sometimes, though, though, we've got to do the boring things too, and it reminds me so. My partner coaches footy, and, and he talks about the fact that the boys just want to go and do like they just want to do the physical stuff and the running, and they just want to have like a muck around game, but the reality is, they've got to learn the skill, that, and that's what he wants to focus on, and they're like we're. We just want to, you know, feel like we're having fun and all this. You've got to go to the school, right?

Paul Farina: 27:10

And I think in business.

Ness: 27:12

We avoid that because it's boring.

Paul Farina: 27:14

Yeah, yeah, that's right. So that's the real hard work, right, and I love that because there's a purpose to that. He sees the vision, he sees where they need to be in the work they need to do and the beautiful thing is, is that then of course they do those basics. They do that because you know another word for mastery is boredom, by the way, and so you know. You do it time and time and time again. So when it matters, you're ready, you execute. And guess what? It's more fun, you're more successful.

Ness: 27:45

Yeah, and that's so true because they're winning. Now, right, they're winning because they're doing the thing, and that's what happens in business. Sorry, kate.

Paul Farina: 27:54

Yeah, I was just going to say. There's an old proverb I believe it's from ancient Greece, but don't quote me but there's an old proverb I love around this, around. You know, we train hard, we bleed less in war. You know to paraphrase. So you know it's that same idea. Do the reps, and then, when it comes to the crunch, actually you'll be prepared, you'll be ready, it'll just be easy, it'll actually be easy. So you know, that's the first thing. So, coming back to your question around pressure, I love this question because I recently came across Dr Jason Nowitzki, who's a sports psychologist, and he gave me the three key ingredients to pressure.

Paul Farina: 28:31

What makes up pressure? The first thing is you can only have pressure when you care about something, when you care about the result. Now, what that creates in us is it creates heaviness, it creates weight. That already increases the pressure. The second thing is that I have a desire to do well. Now we deal with a lot of high performers out there and one of the reasons they feel pressure is because they want to do good, right, they want to be successful, they don't want to fail. And so we bring in expectation, which you mentioned before. And then the third thing is a fear of being judged. So there's a fear of ridicule and not being held up and being recognized by your peers or your clients or whatever the case may be. Now, even if that's not true, we do get this sense that we're being judged all the time, in whatever our environment is. So you add those three things together and I think that's really helpful for even just understanding pressure in itself.

Paul Farina: 29:30

So once we know that and we understand, okay, how can I detach from the result? How can I acknowledge that I want to do well, but also acknowledge that setting up that expectation is hurting me? So how can I detach from that? And then the judgment as well, the feeling of the eyes on me. How can I actually then once again just turn those eyes around and put the spotlight onto the work itself?

Paul Farina: 29:53

So this is where I talk about humility being the cornerstone. So this is very helpful to understand that I'm in service to something else and kind of remove myself, take myself out of the equation. And I love what a coachee of mine said when it was like the first week of the first lockdown of COVID here in Melbourne and I was calling all my coachees how are you doing you? Okay, I remember one of them going yeah, I'm really good, I've been, you know, sort of leaning into humility like we've been talking about, and he said I found that I was calling around to my team and checking in on them, making sure, okay, having functional conversations, how we're going to set them up, and stuff like that, and I realized like the first week had gone and I hadn't even worried about myself. And, in his words, I was so busy serving them I didn't have room for my own anxiety.

Ness: 30:45

Wow.

Paul Farina: 30:45

I just, I just love that All right, and that's always stuck with me. So whenever I'm getting those feelings of pressure and anxiety, I take the attention from me and I go attention out on them, whoever them is. So I really like that. You know audacity to question. So I'm going to question the expectation. I'm going to question, you know, the result that I want. I'm going to question if I'm being present here right now. I'm going to question, you know, the result that I want. I'm going to question if I'm being present here right now. I'm going to question the people around me. So let's be audacious to step out of the norm and what's expected of us, to get outside of our own expectation. And then tenacity as well. Just hang in there. My only job is to be around, and that's what always happens. No matter what challenge is upon us, no matter how big and tragic it is, we're still here. It's amazing.

Paul Farina: 31:33

And so, once again, there's an old I think it's a Buddhist proverb that's been made famous on social media by Tom Hanks. This, too, shall pass, and so that's really helpful. This frees me up all of a sudden. So that judgment I'm feeling the internal expectation, the burden, the weight of trying to be what I want to be or trying to achieve the result. We can wash it away. We can wash it away really quickly and talk about energy, right, you know? Talk about, all of a sudden, I've got space, I've got time, I've slowed myself down. This can all happen inside a conversation in a meeting, as it happens as well. This can happen while we're performing a task in our office. The clock's ticking. You know, we've got a distraction here.

Paul Farina: 32:22

Once again, this is where it's played. This is not about, yes, I'm going to sit in a boardroom, I'm going to think about what you know. No, this is in the moment happening all the time and being able to go lean out, question, question, question and just make sure I hang in there. Just hang in there, paul. That's all I'm telling myself. And, yeah, there's a lot of equity to this and this can be applied to so many different environments, so many different stresses.

Paul Farina: 32:52

And you know, I'll always remember I was in a high performance volleyball program in high school and that was my first experience with sports psychologists and I always remember going into the national competition where there's like 50 courts and there's, like, you know, all of these people playing or whatever, and the sports psychologist standing next to me and just giving me a little nudge like this and going, hey, paul, tell me where all the pressure is in this room right now. Can you see it? Where is it? I was like I kind of half looked at him like what are you talking about? And then I go, no, you're serious, like where is it? And I looked around and I was like I don't know, I don't know when is it and he said it's between everyone's ears out there.

Paul Farina: 33:26

That's the only place it exists. So if we can just do that little reframe for ourselves, hopefully using some of the tools that I've curated there, then hopefully that can be helpful for loosening people up, making sure they're in present. And ultimately, what are we talking about? We're talking about tools that are going to help to knock us into that flow state and once we're in there, then we can be up to five times more productive. I mean, this is where it gets really exciting.

Ness: 33:51

Wow, I feel like you have already told us what our actionable action is in the next 24 hours because that was so powerful and, especially when you dropped that stat around five times more productive. So who doesn't want to be five times more productive and less stressed about it? So thank you in advance for answering the wrap-up question. I do feel like we could continue to talk forever, but I'm just going to suggest that people go out and get your book, because a lot of what you've shared with us today you go into detail in the book and we'll put the show notes in with that. So let's just wrap it up though, with you just highlighting, perhaps a succinct way and I know Nikki's probably got another thing she wants to say because she normally does. No, but coming back on what you just talked about, if we were just to leave the end message on the actionable action within the next 24 hours to help break that pattern, break that cycle, how could you just sum that up in a sentence or two based on what you've just talked about?

Paul Farina: 34:52

I think that we need to do a serious audit. And what I love about most of the work I'd say most of us do, but I'll speak for myself. Most of the work I do the biggest cost is getting a pen and getting a paper and that's it. And the other cost is switching the TV off, put your phone aside, just stop. I mean, let's all be honest, we do have time. We do have time to just take two or three minutes out and just journal down and reflect on where am I pulling those two old paradigm levers? So in what scenarios do I find myself in an anxious state where the first lever I pull is work longer. As someone in a leadership position, when am I asking people to work longer? When am I asking people to work longer? That's the first two things. If you can note down the problems that you and your team are solving through just working longer, you're already a step ahead. Then the harder one to reflect on is what are the problems we're solving by lifting the intensity? What are those ones where we're upping, we're physically working harder and asking ourselves the question. Because what I love about the idea of rhythm is that the ingredient is it's a series of weak and strong regular beats. So the idea is, if we're working intensely hard and we're solving problems through that, and then that becomes the norm, that means we're just in this strong beat position. No good music's coming out of that. So you know, we need to look at what I'd say then. The second thing to do after you've journaled that is to actually contextually think about how your year looks, and this is a exercise I do with most people I work with. Let's look at the year and let's look at our peaks and our troughs, and I love this because I can be sitting here in January and then know that the first week of October is going to be a peak crunch time, and so I love that because it puts us in a position of power where someone will say hey, paul, I've got a project coming up and I want to get you and your team involved and we need to do this and we need to do that and I need you to be a part of the whole process, and that'll mean this workflow and that workflow gets added to yours. And I'll say to them yeah, cool, cool. So you know, when do you think about doing this? Oh, in three months' time, and I'll say, okay, well, you know, in April, may, we're going to have this season is happening and therefore I won't be available me and my team won't be available, and you know, then in October we've got this event, we got that event and we usually have this reporting time, so it's going to have to happen in August. That's the only time I can do it. And people are looking at you strange and going how do you know that? Off the top of your head, you know eight months in advance, right, and so there's something very cool about that. Then, okay, when are our peak in our troughs? Let's start to work through that and let's work through a bit more detail of all the things that need to be planned out so that I understand what's coming.

Paul Farina: 38:05

It's all about avoiding the avoidables. Why would I put myself under stress? Why would I put myself under more pressure than I'm already under? And this, once again, really the conversation I end up having with a lot of people is going through a, once again pen and paper. A very simple, easy thing to do. What does this actually breed? Confidence. It breeds confidence, confidence in my decision making. It's such a powerful tool.

Nicky: 38:30

Yeah, the other thing I love about that is that the whirlwind is going to happen. The whirlwind, the unknown is going to happen. So when you can adopt this viewpoint and again that contextual thinking which has been a huge theme throughout today, then you are creating space to allow the whirlwind to happen without it drowning you, without it pulling you and again getting stuck in those weeds, because you actually have the space we can be forward thinking. You know we always talk about, actually we said this morning I'm so grateful for my past self. Thank you, nikki. You know we can thank our past selves. We can set our future selves and our future teams up for success because the whirlwind is going to happen.

Nicky: 39:11

Paul, there is so much that you have shared today. Again, that theme, that contextual thinking, really came up around all areas, I would say even in the conversation. I love this piece around how do we get into the flow? And so many sporting references which I'm totally, totally here for. Even I'm in the story with you because I have no idea what you mean about it, but I see it. I feel like I can feel it just from the storytelling. It's wonderful so much, even around managing expectations, self-feeding, performance, heaps and heaps of beautiful resources for us to really be able to redefine what hard work is, redefine what success is not just for ourselves, for our team, for our family, for our communities.

Nicky: 39:52

The ripple effect on this is huge. So we three here are on a mission and we invite you all to join us as well, to really make waves in this space and lean into the discomfort. It's okay, it's going to feel uncomfortable. Maybe that's an indicator that it's exactly what's needed right now. Thank you so much again, paul. We're going to put all the details in the show notes so people can come and friendly, stalk you and let you know how, the actions, you know what actions people have taken. Thank you so much, everybody, for joining us today. We'll see you next week.

Ness: 40:25

Bye. Thanks for listening to today's ep. If you loved what you heard, connect with us over on LinkedIn and let's continue the conversation over there. Nikki and I are obsessed with helping businesses install smart business growth strategies and leveraging people leadership for peak performance. We bring two business minds and two perspectives into your business, and our number one goal is to make sure that your business is thriving, your team are thriving and you are thriving. We offer a 30-day business diagnostic, taking you from chaos to clarity in just 30 days. Are you curious to find out more? Send us an email or go old school and give us a call. Until next time, happy listening and here's to thriving in business and in life.