Transcription
Bryan Paul Buckley 0:00
Episode 86 of the Elite Road Warrior Podcast. Welcome to the Elite Road Warrior Podcast where we believe you can leverage the road to transform your work, health, and home life while on business travel to ultimately master the business travel life. If you’re a road warrior, and a great chance you’re on the road right now then this podcast is for you.
Welcome to the Elite Road Warrior Podcast I’m your host Bryan Paul Buckley, fellow Road Warrior husband one father of five yeah you heard me five. As an author, I absolutely love getting guests who I just feel like I can go mano a mano with on energy, but more importantly the content. But I’m also committed each and every business trip to becoming and remaining an elite roadwork I would love nothing more than for you join my master evil plan and this worthwhile road trip. Now, the problem. Finding a guest to interview for the podcast can sometimes be a challenge. I want to bring relevant content to the life of a business traveler.
So if and when I find great content, the question always comes down to one simple question. Can the content be translated to a road warrior’s life on the road? and I found today’s guest on one of my favorite podcasts, the read to lead podcast by Jeff Brown, if you don’t have it download it now, his content resonated with me so closely with a pulse of elite road. We’re in this specific interview, that I instantly bought his book and consumed it, which is rare. I then reached out to him to ask my one simple question of how he could translate his content to a road warrior’s life on the road? And he absolutely nailed this answer because he is a road warrior, and this episode is a result.
So let’s meet our interview guests right now. Dr. Garland Vance has been helping people when teams get clarity about their life and their leadership for over 20 years, he’s an author. He’s a speaker. He’s a consultant. Along with his wife, Dorothy. He co-founded “Advance” playing words with his name, leadership to help high capacity leaders in organizations live and lead with purpose, productivity, and peace. He has helped his clients which span from fortune 500 companies to nonprofits and stress less, accomplished more, and fulfill their highest priorities. He is the author of getting unbusy which Forbes named as one of the seven books everyone on your team should read. Garland earned a doctorate in the leadership in spiritual formation from Denver seminary. There he researched the effects of business on leaders and how to overcome both individual and organizational overcommitment. As much as he loves to work is not as high as priority Garland enjoys reading watching movies, drinking coffee, trying new food, engaging deep conversations running in East Tennessee hiking. But most of all, he loves spending time with his wife, Dorothy, and their three children. In a moment, I’ll be asking the following questions to Garland. What is the business vortex on the road? What is the core four? And how can we implement that on the road of all places? What are the productivity suggestions that help us to become unbusy? We should apply on the road. And how Here’s the money question. How do we become unbusy on the road? And it’s always so much more. It’s go time.
Well, I am live right now with Garland Vance, how are you in Where are you my friend?
Garland Vance 3:58
I’m doing great. Thanks so much, Bryan. I’m in Knoxville, Tennessee at my home right now.
Bryan Paul Buckley 4:04
Well and for the listener who’s an audio-only person right now they’re not witnessing your Monday shirt coming back after vacation. And just Can you describe it? I mean, I don’t know how many words that I could use to describe it Garland?
Garland Vance 4:20
Well, it’s a navy blue shirt with huge turquoise flamingos. I don’t know if turquoise flamingos even exist but they do on my shirt. And like I said, I was on vacation last week and knew I needed to come back and have energy and be ready to go this week. And so I wore my ugliest most energetic shirt that I could find.
Bryan Paul Buckley 4:42
And thanks for that. And if you’re a leg guy then man, I’m telling you, you got a lot of Flamingo legs here. So you gotta allow a lot of thought here, but we’re gonna keep this PG for the listener. Before we dive in and we go too far on the business travel side of your content Garland we had a conversation about Bottom Miami kings fan turned Florida Gator who lives in Tennessee Vols enemy grounds. Can you just unpack that for the listener? Who’s in the SEC gone? Come on, man.
Garland Vance 5:13
Yeah, so I grew up, my parents were Virginia Tech grads, I knew that I didn’t want to cheer for anybody who had a turkey as their mascot and so I picked the Miami Hurricanes when I was growing up, but then I married into a Florida Gator family. And it caused a lot of tension early on in the marriage. And so I made a deal with my wife and really hurt dad as well. I said, so this is back in 1999. I said the next time that the Florida Gators win like a legit national championship, not curling or something like that, like a legit national championship. I will become a Florida Gator fan. And so they pretty soon after that won two football national championships, two basketball national championships, I actually had a chance to go see one of the basketball championship games. And so I became a Florida Gator fan. And then a couple of years ago, my family decided we were ready to live where we wanted to live and move where we wanted to move. And so we picked Knoxville, Tennessee. So as Florida Gators, we came to the middle of a Tennessee volunteer country and I don’t tell a lot of Tennesseans around me what our allegiance is. It’s a dangerous place to live.
Bryan Paul Buckley 6:37
In that’s an awesome story. I’m just gonna leave that there and let him make the comments that are gonna be there especially if they are college football fans. So let’s unpack everything getting unbusy in so why don’t you give us the backstory of why you wrote the book called Getting Unbusy and maybe even a 30,000 foot you know all pun intended here. You know, with being a business traveler being on a plane overview of the book and your content Garland?
Garland Vance 7:08
Yeah, so back in 2013, I started having all of these physical problems like chronic migraine headaches and forgetfulness, and heart palpitations and ended up going to the doctor and saying, you know, what is the world is going on? And my, my doctor asked me to tell him about my life and I said, Oh, it’s a really good life. It’s just busy, right? That’s how we all respond that you know, how are you? I’m good. I’m so busy. And so I said, it’s a good life. It’s really busy. And he said, Well, tell me about busy. And I said, you know, well, I worked 50 to 60 hours a week with this nonprofit that’s part of Chick-fil-a. I’m working on my doctrine and leadership. That’s 10 to 20 hours a week. I traveled for 60 days a year. I am helping our church, get some leadership program started. I have three young kids, you know, it’s just a really good life. It’s busy. And he looked at me and he said, Garland, I’m actually concerned for your life because you’re so busy. That it’s going to kill you if you don’t kill it. And I wasn’t sure that he was right, I didn’t know but because I was working on this doctrine and leadership because so many people talk about how busy they are I started researching what is busyness? How to you be a type-A personality, while not having this, you know, chronic stress, exhaustion, and overwhelm. And as I started researching it, I became so impassioned by the topic, I ended up focusing the rest of my doctoral research on it and then writing this book, getting unbusy to help high capacity leaders like you, an elite road warrior like our like people who are listening right now, how to help them stress less and accomplish more.
Bryan Paul Buckley 8:46
And that’s a great overview and one of the quotes that you had Garland that I that resonated with me because your story is my story. And you know, it’s your quote said this, I cramped my life so full of busyness that I diminished my purpose, productivity, and peace. Which kind of leads into the next question? So you have just as Elite Road warrior has three focus areas of work, health, and home life, you do as well. So why don’t you share a little bit about that?
Garland Vance 9:12
Sure. So I talk, as you mentioned about purpose, productivity, and peace. So purpose is knowing your why it’s the reason you’re on the planet. It’s discoverable. It’s actionable. And as you discover it, your purpose leads to productivity, productivity is all about doing your “why”. And so it’s about the, you know, what am I actually doing with my time with my energy with my attention, but peace is about resting in your why it’s coming to the realization and becoming okay with the fact that I can’t do everything in the world. I can’t even do everything that I want. I have to be able to focus, my time, my energy, my attention on the impact that I want to be able to have. The way I’ll say it for a lot of people is you can do anything you want but you can’t do everything at once. And so peace is all about beginning to say, Okay, what are the one or two things that I’m going to do right now that are going to help advance my purpose?
Bryan Paul Buckley 10:14
So is that what we start with peace mean? What’s the reason cuz obviously you’re talking about that peace, peace, peace, which seems obviously almost like a forbidden or impossible word on the road. But why do we start with peace?
Garland Vance 10:28
Yeah, so I had this mentality that if, before I started studying dizziness, that if I am a person of purpose, and if I am a person of productivity, then the byproduct of that is I’m going to be peaceful but that was not the case. Because what happens is even as we become purposeful as we become productive, we begin to add more and more and more commitments into our lives. And the more commitments we add into our lives, the busier we become, the more exhausted stressed out, we become. And so we have to really shift and say, I’m going to start with peace. I’m going to start with rest, first mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, I’m going to start with rest. And as a result of that I’ll cut out on my overcommitment, which will let me discover and live out my purpose and do it in a productive way.
Bryan Paul Buckley 11:21
And I love that. And initially, we start reading the book, you feel like you got to push back on that since you do a great job unpacking why that’s important. But you also have a framework of the book and that’s why I love our conversation and kind of how we patterned each other because you’ve got your three areas and I’ve got mine work health and home life, you’ve got productivity, peace, and purpose. Then you also do you’ve got a framework garland that works you through the steps to getting on busy. So before we get too far down the road, give us the context of that specific framework. And then we’re going to kind of bob and weave on each one of those indirectly. So feel free to reference, you know which step that is.
Garland Vance 12:03 Sure. So as I was beginning to study busyness, I watched this television show on hoarding. And what hit me for the first time, is that you know, hoarders are people who try to cram too much stuff in too small of a space. But it doesn’t matter how small or big or even huge the space is, they’re always cramming too much in. Well, busyness is this tendency of cramming too many commitments into smaller space, all we have is 24 hours a day, and we’re trying to cram 28 hours worth of experience and productivity into it. So as I watched this television show, I was like, Okay, how do hoarders get out of their hoarding habit and therefore, how to get out of their busy habits? And what I discovered is there are five steps. The first step is decide, all right, you have to decide the business. Isn’t worth it that you’re too busy that you’re ready to get unbusy The second step is deconstruct, you actually need to deconstruct some of the inhibiting beliefs and unwanted habits, or bad habits, and unwanted commitments that keep you trapped in busyness. The third step is you begin to design what’s the life that you want to live the actual pace and space that you want to live? What are the relationships you want to build your life around? What are the dreams and the priorities that you want to build your life around because most busy people put their dreams and their priorities on the back burner for all of these lesser goals that they’re trying to achieve? So step, step three is about designing. Step four is developing, developing an unbusy calendar, unbusy mind, unbusy habits. And then finally, Step five is drawing people in drawing in your family, your friends, and your co-workers. And ultimately, this book was written for those leaders in business who are saying I’m doing so much my people are doing so much. But we’ve got to accomplish more Well, yeah, there’s actually a way of accomplishing more while doing a whole lot less. And I love that you and ended the book with that, which was not part of the original plan per our conversation. And also other interviews that you’ve done as well hearing that. So I really think that’s critically important cuz obviously if that’s how I’m able to stay unbusy, but then also to that, I can do life with others. So I really, really value that. So right out of gate, let’s define your definition of busyness.
Sure, so busyness isn’t over-commitment to too many good commitments, and I give this illustration.
Bryan Paul Buckley 14:43
That’s money. Say that again.
Garland Vance 14:45
Yeah. So it’s an over-commitment to too many good commitments. Nobody’s busy because a bad thing, but at least most people aren’t right like maybe a drug dealer or dictator is busy because they’re, they’re doing bad things, but for me. Sir, I’m really clear with them. Right? If you’re listening to this and you’re a dictator, you’re probably busy because of bad stuff. But right, but most people are busy because of work and it’s work that may be meaningful for them. It’s, you know, kids activities that you’re doing at night, it’s community obligations that they’re meeting. It’s none of the people that I met are busy with bad things. They’re busy because they’ve taken on so many good opportunities that when you put all those good opportunities together, it becomes bad.
Bryan Paul Buckley 15:35
An over-commitment to too many good commitments. love it. You define what’s called the busyness vortex. And obviously, we were going to put that in the context of the road. What is that?
Garland Vance 15:47
Yeah, so the busyness vortex is the easiest way to tell if you’re too busy. And it’s there’s three parts of it. So if you imagine kind of a tornado swirling around, there’s this tornado of hurry, worry and scurry, and I’m a traveler, so it’s so easy to see this when we travel. Hurry happens when you start moving your body at a super-fast pace, right? You know, maybe you’re not even late for a flight, but you’re just pushing super hard. You’re walking fast, you’re talking fast. You’re breathing fast, right? There’s just this, this fast movement to your body, which then leads to worry and worries about the anxiety that begins to swirl around in your mind and your heart. You begin to you know, just worry Am I going to be on time? Can I get it all done? You know, how am I gonna do this. So all these worries, some thoughts begin to fill your mind. And then finally, that leads to scurry and scurry is this inability to mentally concentrate on the one most important thing that you need to do right now. It’s when your mind is just racing back and forth and back and forth between all of these different topics and it feels like you’re not getting anything done because you’re not, but it’s because you can’t just concentrate for a minute on the next thing that you need to do. So this busyness vortex of Hurry, worry, and scurry is the easiest way to see if you’re a busyness addict.
Bryan Paul Buckley 17:18
And most of us experience that on Monday morning flying out of our said airport, wondering whether it’s the weather, whether we’re going to make it on time, or if you’re really good. You’ll hit traffic on the way to the airport, and you will start your hurry. At 5:15 am on Monday morning, right? And then you finally get to your destination running behind and the worry about the meeting and then you show up there you know fat man and a little coat you know that that just sweating because of what just happened, right? And the next thing you get to the meeting and that’s when scurry kicks in that inability to focus. When all of a sudden your heart’s still catching up with you. You’re still sweating on the back of your back, and you’re just not present. So I don’t think personally, busyness has anything to do with road warriors. So we can just, you know, skip that is completely irrelevant. It’s a great point, you know, and again, it parallels for us the exhaustion cycle. Busy, I can’t stop now. And I feel hurried right there. And then it goes into beat down where it’s just like, I don’t want to do this. I can’t take this in and I start to feel stressed. And then where we both end up, which is burnout, which means I can’t keep going. I just feel numb. I don’t care anymore. Yeah, so I love the business vortex and I’m going to use that hopefully with your permission and I’ve got on recording right now because it is that hurry worry, and scurry feelings which we have all the time. Now, the little bit, the antithesis of angle and back to the peace, a place of purpose, productivity, and peace. you discuss what’s called a Core 4, and how, how do we implement those on the road of all places? What are they and how do we implement them there.
Garland Vance 19:01
So the core four is part of the design step. And it’s the idea is that what I started with was this question of what are the best practices of highly productive unbusy people? And what I discovered was busy people put relationships and rest and recreation and reflection they put those on the backburner. Those rarely make it into a busy person’s calendar. They just hope they’ll find time to do it, but they rarely find time to do it. But highly productive unbusy people put recreation and relationships and reflection and rest first in their calendar and then build the rest of their life around those that wait for so you didn’t join before
Bryan Paul Buckley 19:49
You put those in your calendar ahead of time? That sounds like that’s on purpose.
Garland Vance 19:54
Right, it is on purpose. If you put those in your calendar first. When am I going to have time for relationships when am I gonna build time for recreation, for rest, or reflection? You put those into your calendar first. And then you build everything else around it. And this is critical for road warriors, right? I travel, you know, I still continue to travel. But as I’m traveling, what I have to do is first put into my calendar. Okay, what is my rest gonna look like? When am I gonna stop for the night no matter what, what is recreation, which is activities that you love to do for the sheer sake of doing them? So I love reading I love drinking coffee. You know, there’s a ton of recreational activities that I love to do, including exercise, and especially if I’m in a new city, I’d love to run that area and kind of check it out. So I’ve got to build those into my calendar first. When am I going to connect with the most important people in my life, my wife, my kids, and so I make sure that’s in my calendar first. And then I build everything else around that and so you know, in working with a client I want to make sure I first made time for those core four before I start planning the meetings with my clients that I’m going to be having. So that’s critical for road warriors who want to maintain an unbusy lifestyle on the road.
Bryan Paul Buckley 21:16
So let me make sure we’ve got this. call the core for four hours, relationships, rest, recreation, reflection, and I love you hammering these because they are part of elite Road Warrior. And so to hear from somebody else is kind of like not having to hear from dad or mom. Do you know what I’m saying? It’s like,
I think I think that hosts foot put him on to say something that I’m supposed to hear from a different person. Now it’s exactly and I think what’s love i love about it too, you do travel, you do have a family. So making sure when you’re taking care of the client or you’re trying to get out of the business vortex. Then you also you’re trying to make sure you’re putting the big pieces in within your schedule, being busy on the road just like everybody else. Imagine that, hence the book.
We’ll be back with the remainder of this interview after the short break.
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So, let’s kind of move into productivity here. I mean, you’ve got where there are a number of really good nuggets, which have not necessarily heard other people talk about the context that you have. And if you have a bill to talk about as a business traveler, so what are some suggestions that help us become unbusy to use your term that we can apply on the road?
Garland Vance 25:54
So I would say one of the first is to make sure that you build transition time into your schedule.
So you are going to go through dozens, if not hundreds of transitions when you’re on the road, you transition from home, to travel to the airport, from travel to the airport to checking into the airport, checking into the airport, waiting for the plane, to getting on the plane, right? All of that, I mean, just in a very short period of time, you’ve experienced multiple transitions. And so you’ve got to build time into your schedule to mentally transition to, to what is next. So I’ll just give you a really easy one for my wife, and I realized that when I come home from traveling, I have a very difficult time transitioning from the intensity of work to the rest at home. And I would a lot of times bring in a lot of stress. And so we just built an intentional transition where she actually picks me up from the airport, and we go on a date, and we just have dinner together and catch up.
And then I go home and I spend time with my kids, but just that little transition, you know, an hour-long transition helped me mentally make the shift. So you got to make sure that you build a lot of transition into and build time for those transitions. So I’d say that’s, that’s one. The second is make sure that your morning routine reflects peace. Most people continue their day, the way that they started their day. And so you want to make sure that your morning routine, when you’re traveling, has some peace built into it, whether that’s meditation, or just slowly waking up from me, before I open my computer, I’m going to make sure that I have a cup of coffee, hopefully, a good cup of coffee that I drink, that I’m going to walk around a little bit, even if it’s just my hotel room, I’m just going to walk around and get my body moving a little bit and I’m going to read something that’s inspirational to me. And once I’ve done that, then I can shift mentally into okay now, what do I need to be productive in. But it’s making sure that that morning routine is really peaceful first, and then I can shift into purpose and productivity.
Bryan Paul Buckley 28:10
And what I loved about in the book just kind of hammer down a little bit on morning routine, the ability of asking questions instead of being so regimented, which is kind of culture right now, you know, we’re 15 minutes of this 10 minutes of this if I and I fall prey to that, because that’s the rest of my day. And sometimes I start that way too early. I did like the grace that you had in your reasoning behind starting the day with peace, things that may be different today that will be different tomorrow, but I’ve got a buffet of options. They’re gonna allow me to choose from where you can have to be a little bit more organic of today, what would bring me the most peace today. So I really, really valued that. So thanks for sharing that. So maybe just for a moment share how we misconceived the calendar and how that kind of rules our life alone a bit more, especially in the context of the road, when we don’t always have specific control that we’re given meetings at this time, and this time and this time, so I guess it correlates a little bit to Garland of why we need peace. First thing in the morning, knowing our days gonna look like and maybe our lack of transition time to get from said meeting to the next meeting, and on and on and on.
Garland Vance 29:20
Yeah, yeah. So I think we tend to make two pretty big flaws with our calendar. The first is, is when we don’t realize that our calendar is only as good as we are disciplined in using the calendar, right. So for example, I have an amazing assistant and I’ve worked with her when I travel to make sure that she schedules margin in between my meetings, and travel time so that I’m not sitting there trying to think okay, I can have, you know, five meetings when really I can only have three meetings because they’re all across town.
Bryan Paul Buckley 30:01
Hurry worry, scurry
Garland Vance 30:02
Exactly. How am I going to be? How am I going to get to this meeting and then all of a sudden, I’m not showing up at my best for that meeting. So our calendar is only as good, as we are disciplined in using our calendar. And the second flaw that we make a lot of times is our calendar is a record of our best guess, at how the day is going to go. But the reality is, especially when we’re traveling, the day rarely goes as planned. And so there has to be just a lot of adjustments to our calendar, lots of margin that we build in there, but a lot of grace that we’re giving to ourselves at the same time to say this was my best guess, but it’s not going to go the way that I expected it to go. And that’s okay. As long as you’re adjusting your calendar and your time to make up for what changed.
Bryan Paul Buckley 30:59
That perfectly leads into the next question, which I really enjoyed. Maybe that was the word enjoys the right word. Maybe it was resonated with the different types of constraints and limits that we have on the road automatically. So what are those two different types? And how can we learn from them to actually have that margin that we’re all looking for on the road?
Garland Vance 31:27
Okay, so there’s actually two types of constraints. The first is what we call a movable constraint. And a movable constraint is something that you have the option on, getting rid of it, delegating it, deleting it, right? There’s all of these constraints that we kind of put on ourselves that we can give away to other people or remove from our lives altogether. So for example, I may not have to travel and so you know, for this year, I’ve put a… I had all of these conferences that were scheduled, and I have chosen to make those movable constraints where I said, I’m not going to travel right now for this period of time.
But then there’s what we would call unmovable constraints. And an unmovable constraint is something that is really hard for you to move. Now, sometimes those are imposed, for example, the flight time that you know, if your flight is leaving at 9:13 in the morning, that is an unmovable imposed constraint for you. You don’t have any say-so on changing that flight time, but then there are chosen unmovable constraints. And that could be something like you choosing that you’re going to take this flight you’re choosing to go on this trip, or a commitment or a project that you’ve taken on, you could get out of it, but you’ve chosen to make it unmovable in your life for the time being. And that’s where you’ve really got to decide what am I going to do with this unmovable chosen constraint that I’ve implemented into my own life, am I going to honor that commitment?
Or am I going to decide to change that to a movable constraint? You know the bottom line is though, we have to acknowledge the reality that there are limitations to what we can and can’t do in our lives. And only when we begin to acknowledge those limitations, can we actually begin to get unbusy.
Bryan Paul Buckley 33:28
And I love that too. Because of the amount of stress that it creates when we don’t accept the limitations, or we just try to push too much in, which is understandable. I’m on the road. I’m in Austin, Texas, and I’ve got these meetings and I’m there to do the meetings and I don’t know why don’t we back to Austin, Texas. So you know, of course, I’m going to do whatever I can to make that happen. And just the added traveling friction, the added stress, the curry worrying scurry, that it creates the lack of peace that creates an understanding that so real quickly, any suggestions when we are in that moment, and we’re recognizing, well, here’s the limitation. I’m watching the plane take off because now it’s 9:15 and not 9:13. So I’m literally buying a plane ticket, which I’ve had. I’m not a fan of connection flights for that very reason. Because then it’s just the Series of Unfortunate Events. And the one time that I have I literally watching my plane take off in those moments though how do we find peace? How do we learn from that of that, oftentimes unmovable in impose restraint, which increased strength that we never chose?
Garland Vance 34:35
Yeah, so the only thing that you can do with an unmovable imposed constraint is accept it as a reality. And so a lot of times what happens we create stress in our lives by trying to fight the very reality that we’re not going to be able to change. If I’m supposed to leave at 9:13 on that flight, it’s 9:15. And I’m seeing it fly away. There’s nothing I can do with that. The only thing I can do is accept it. And then say, okay, what’s my next step? And, sure, I mean, I think for a lot of travelers, the challenge at that point is, you see the domino effect beginning to fall. But what I can do is I can, I can start immediately trying to rearrange my plants, I can immediately get in contact with the person, you know, who’s traveling, or who’s planning the meeting, and say, This is what’s happening, this is what’s going on. And we accept it as reality and then try to take steps forward. When you try to fight the reality of it, though. It’s just gonna cause so much more stress.
Bryan Paul Buckley 35:40
And hopefully, at 9:15 we’re not heading to the bar if it’s aim to handle said stress that’s there. I think you’re right, man, there’s a right way to do and a wrong way to do it. And especially if it starts your Monday morning, and you’re just off to one of those. I mean, I was on a flight where we’re supposed to fly to Dallas and Dallas had all this fog and so delay coming out of Chicago, which we normally have the weather problems in Chicago. And so then they finally get us on the plane and then we’re on the plane for two hours and we can’t get off the plane. And then we… it’s just one of those things and it’s literally you go through you can watch people, their stress levels, how they’re handling it, and learning to go for me honestly, it is shutting my eyes, putting some music and finding that happy place. And it is meditation, just breathe a little bit. Just go You know what, it’s a constraint. And all I can do is I need to calm down first. So I can logically think to move on from that. So great, great suggestions with that, but do not I mean, well, they’re, they’re simple. They’re just not easy to do, especially when you’re in high stressful moments.
Garland Vance 36:46
Yeah, yeah, they’re not easy to do. And, again, I think asking yourself the simple question, is there anything that I can do to change the circumstance? And if the answer to that question is no, then it’s not simple, but kind of taking a step back and be like, Okay, what can I change in this time period? And what I can change is communication, what I can change is the flight that I’m going to take. Those are things that I can’t do anything about the flight that’s already taken off.
Bryan Paul Buckley 37:15
And my recommendation at that moment would be Wow, now I’ve got an hour, two hours that I had not planned on. So instead of just doing email, I’m going to pick up that book by Garland Vance called get UnBusy. So now what am I gonna do with right? Well, as we close anything from the book, that you were the mixture that we know.
Garland Vance 37:39
Yeah, I would say that you know, we haven’t touched on this, but the research about what busyness does to us, physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, what it does for productivity and what it does to entire organizations. That’s in the book under the decide step. And the bottom line is what my doctor said to me, if you don’t kill busyness it is going to kill you.
Bryan Paul Buckley 38:04
And the research is so solid but it wasn’t like dry scientifics I really enjoyed how you pack that together. And I’m sure it’s helping organizations, it’s helping individuals. It is helping me which obviously is now helping elite roadwarrior group so I appreciate you sharing that. So I’m gonna go through real quick. A road lightning round. You ready for this? ready for it? Here we go. Preferred airlines.
Garland Vance 38:29
American Airlines.
Bryan Paul Buckley 38:31
What’s the airline that you’ll avoid? No matter what.
Garland Vance 38:36
Oh, I don’t have one of those yet. hat’s a good question. I haven’t I don’t know on that one.
Bryan Paul Buckley 38:41
That’s okay. You don’t know that answer. That’s okay. Are you a window or an aisle guy?
Garland Vance 38:48
I’m an aisle guy. I need to stretch out my legs.
Bryan Paul Buckley 38:51
You and me both. I’m a frequent urinator on the plane. So which I prefer to be in the right location, hence being on the aisle. That’s it. Preferred hotel chain?
Garland Vance 39:05
I enjoy Marriott. They’re my favorite.
Bryan Paul Buckley 39:08
All right, and the Marriott Hotels if you’ve got a choice of any of their, their menu of hotels, and they’re all in a row, which one would you pick?
Garland Vance 39:17
Gosh, that’s a good question. I’m gonna skip that one. I don’t know. That was a good one. I don’t know.
Bryan Paul Buckley 39:26
Yeah, I’m a courtyard kind of guy most of the time because I enjoy that I enjoy the windows that are right there and I can move up a desk and I’ve got I guess got that lights and enjoy the room right there. So that’s fine, but this is your lightning round, not mine. Come on man. Rental car or rideshare.
Garland Vance 39:45
I’m a rental car guy. I like to have a little bit of control on when I get places.
Bryan Paul Buckley 39:49
You and me both and who’s your preferred vendor for rental cars?
Garland Vance 39:54
Enterprise I got one right by my house and so they just come pick me up, grab my car and go so I’m a big fan of Enterprise.
Bryan Paul Buckley 40:00
That’d be a good marketing little thing will pick you up. Least favorite airport?
Garland Vance 40:09
so far I haven’t done a lot of international travel but so far my least favorite airport is Dallas, the Dallas Fort Worth airport I just don’t understand the kind of weird bubble layout that they picked it’s very confused I get lost every time I go to Dallas
Bryan Paul Buckley 40:25
I’m with you on that there’s a lot of people that I’m that’s their hurry worry and scurry that’s their business for text. three letters deal. favorite city to frequent when traveling?
Garland Vance 40:37
Yeah, so I would say San Francisco at this point. I haven’t been to it as much as I would like but it’s one more I’m like man, I’d like to go back more and more there.
Bryan Paul Buckley 40:47
And last one biggest at road pet peeve.
Garland Vance 40:52
Bad coffee in the hotel room. Like if you don’t have good tasting coffee, then your hotel should be out of business.
Bryan Paul Buckley 41:02
Didn’t see that one coming at all with your reference to coffee early in the morning on that. So well, thanks for entertaining lightning round.
Garland Vance 41:10
Garland How can we find out more about you? Yeah, so, go to Advanceleadership.live My last name is Vance, so advanceleadership.live or you can go to gettinunbusybook.com. And you can actually take a busyness assessment for free. That’s there and get six free chapters of the book.
Bryan Paul Buckley 41:34
I was gonna take the assessment, but I was too busy. So I decided to.. just kidding on that. And so yeah, you have so much that’s there. Some of the book is a great place to start. So any listeners that are here, I’m gonna make sure that the links to everything that has been referenced here will be inside there. So Garland first and foremost, thank you for your time. Thanks for taking your content, putting the context obviously you are when you are on the road out an elite road warrior and to helping us to gettin’ unbusy.
Garland Vance 42:05
Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks, Bryan. Glad to be with you.
Bryan Paul Buckley 42:09
I like to thank Garland Vance for his time and his challenges and his insights for us to become elite road warriors who are getting unbusy.
You can find the transcript and everything referenced in this interview in the show notes at eliteroadwarrior.com/086. You’ll also find the seven early warning signs for companies to avoid business travel burnout, as well as a top 10 business travel hacks guide. Of course at no additional charge. As always, I’d love to hear from you. So you can connect with me on my primary social media sources, LinkedIn at Bryan Paul Buckley and Instagram at elite road warrior so wherever you are on the road, do something, do anything, just not nothing to begin to master the business travel life. Leverage getting unbusy to help you become and remain an elite Road Warrior today who eliminates burnout and exceeds results. You got this!
Love me some Gettin’ Unbusy!
References
7 Early Warning Signs for Companies to Avoid Business Travel Burnout
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