 So there are a couple of practices that I consider to be essential, foundational in my business that no matter what, I will keep coming back to again and again. Well, one of those practices, if you watch any of my other videos, you know that I talk about this all the time. It's consistent content creation. Even when I'm sick, there's one thing that I do, which is I create content no matter what. Right now I am recovering from a cold. The cold kind of started a little bit last Thursday and then Friday was full on symptoms, a little bit of chills. As you know, on Friday I made my video anyway. I was trying not to cough in my last video. I don't know if you noticed. Now I've gotten to the worst part of the cold. Now I'm kind of starting the upward swing. My wife just made me put this on so I don't get too cold. I said, no, this is too formal or whatever. She's like, no, put it on. So content creation, consistent content creation, even when I'm sick, is like a religion for me. If there is a business religion, authentic business religion, I would say content creation is one of the foundational tenets of it. Because it's too easy, it's too easy to fall off that wagon. Oh, I'm sick right now. So I don't feel like it. I can't create content. No, no, no. No matter if I'm sick, I can create bad content, but I'm going to create it. Because, of course, bad is only in my own head. And of course, when I'm sick, I'm even more judgmental probably of myself, more critical. So bad content usually turns out to be OK content, sometimes even just right content from one's audience. So even no matter if you say it's bad, it's going to be OK. So the other practice, though, that's foundational, which I don't talk often enough about, and I probably should talk about more often, is frequent creative rest. And in fact, the fact that I'm sick now is a reminder of how important it is, frequent creative rest. And I especially during intense times of business, like this, you know, March was a very intense time in my business. I launched my most popular course of the year, which is my Facebook ads course. Almost 200 people have signed up for it already. And the year is just beginning. And my most popular course. And then I launched my new book. And so these two things, so intense, I needed even more rest than I already am good at doing. So let me just tell you what my regular rhythm is. And I want to encourage you to think and consider and practice. Or if you want to let me know below this video what your rhythm is, always curious. But I'm here to remind you to go back to thoughtfully creating and implementing your own rhythm of rest. Now, why do I call it frequent creative rest and not just frequent rest? Well, the reason is that when you are sleeping or when you are relaxing, okay, let's just start there. When you are sleeping, your brain is as active as when you are awake. Did you know that? A lot of people don't. When you are relaxing, just hanging out, doing nothing, however you relax, your brain is as active as when you are focused on your work. So how can that be? It's different parts of your brain being active at different times. When you are focused, it is called your, I think it's called the default mode. I'm not sure, but it's called the focused mode. You know how it is. All of us have experienced being focused on our work. Usually, sometimes your face looks like this and you're really just intensely thinking about something or working on something. But when you are not working on something, your brain is in the diffuse mode, D-I-F-F-U-S-E, diffuse mode. Especially after you have thought about something for a few minutes and then you stop thinking about it and you go do something else, your brain is in the diffuse mode. You probably have experienced moments of breakthrough, flashes of genius, when you are not focused, when you are taking a shower, when you are going on a walk, when you're just sitting down doing nothing, when you're eating. Where did this idea just come from? This is amazing. Those breakthroughs and those flashes of genius are because you are using your brain's diffuse mode. And that is where most of your creativity, most of the source of your creativity, actually the power, that your creative power, most of it is in your subconscious mind. I should have the stat for you, someone please find this for me. But something like your subconscious mind is however many more times more powerful than your conscious mind, it dwarfs it. Your subconscious mind is at least a thousand times more active and powerful and creative and just has more connections than your conscious mind. It's something like a thousand, it's maybe even something like a million, I don't know, but I know it's at least a huge number, so it's at least a thousand times. So why do we spend so much, why do we think that working means that you have to spend time going like this in front of the computer, like thinking hard, okay? Now of course you could be in diffuse mode in front of the computer, it's not the computer, it's the thinking hard that ironically we misunderstand. You're actually thinking harder when you're not thinking hard. Let's put it that way. So back to this idea of frequent creative rest, why? Because if you don't rest, you don't allow, if you don't stop focusing, you don't allow for the mind's diffuse mode, which is your most creative side of things. Problem solving, overcoming a challenge, whatever it is, your brain's diffuse mode has more resource for you than your typical thinking hard focus mode. Okay, so why frequent? So now we know why it's creative rest because you're tapping into the subconscious mind. Right now, by the way, we can bring spirituality into this if we want to and say that maybe when you're not ego-conscious focused, you're more open to spiritual intuition. And so whether you want to call it neuroscience, diffuse mode, learning state, or you want to call it openness, non-ego, openness to angelic divine guidance, however you want to say, it's probably the same thing. Obviously, science and spirituality, if they're both true, they describe one reality. So it's just different language of describing different things. Eventually, hopefully, one day in not too distant future, there may be more merging of the two. But the fact is, when we're not ego-focused mode, we're more creative. So now we know why creative, why it's called creative rest because you're more creative when you're resting. Assuming you also add in occasional focus times. Now, why do I say that again? It's kind of like, again, I'll describe it in a scientific way and I'll describe it in a spiritual way. The scientific way is the diffuse mode is most effective when you have already done some focusing. So if somebody all day long, they never focus at all, the diffuse mode is basically using its power to do very random thoughts and nothing that productive, you might say productive. But if you want to solve a problem or create a project, you can focus for a little while and who knows how long that little while is before the diffuse mode is effective. Some people say it's a few minutes and people say it's half an hour, some people say it's 60 minutes, whatever. But if you focus on a project for a while and then you walk away from that project and you go and relax your mind basically, that's when the diffuse mode kicks into action. And sometimes, oftentimes, you have some kind of breakthrough or some new perspective when you come back and work on the project again. So creative rest. Now, why frequent? Frequent is because we are interspersing focus mode and diffuse mode. Focus mode and diffuse mode. So instead of egoic, left brain, focus intensity for like hours and hours and hours, which number one is not fun for most people. It's not fun. It's not fun for me. And number two, it's not that effective. And number three, it's a recipe for burnout. But ironically, this is how we've grown up. We've grown up learning that we're supposed to somehow be able or train our minds to be able to focus left brain intense study or writing or whatever for hours and hours and hours. It's outdated. It's not, you know, it doesn't work. I mean, people can force themselves to do it, but they would have been even more creative and even better problem solvers and even better writers or, you know, musicians or artists or business people if they had respected the diffuse mode, not just the focus mode. So I said I was going to describe it in scientific and spiritual. So scientific is your neuroscience is showing us the importance of switching off between focus mode, diffuse mode, focus mode, diffuse mode. Many times as long as you have enough focus where you can actually plan something and write something or create something and then diffuse mode. How long is it should the diffuse mode be? I don't know. Maybe someone can do the research and find out. But even two breaths, I find, even two breaths of gentle breathing kicks the diffuse mode in just a little bit. But I would say usually several minutes at least is good for the diffuse mode. That's a scientific description. The spiritual description, spiritual way of saying it would be, well, this is where this is where the law of attraction makes sense. You focus on something and then you surrender. You, you intentionally work on something and then you surrender it to God and let God do the rest. Focus, let God focus that God. And that's a spiritual way of saying focus mode, diffuse mode. So you focus and then let intuition guide you. Left brain and then right brain. You know, scientific and then spiritual, right? So frequent creative rest is continually interspersing the focus mode, diffuse mode, left brain, right brain into your day. So how do you work is the question that needs to be addressed here. Do you have this model of, well, if I work, I'm going to be sitting down at the computer for an hour to four hours at a time and then getting up and taking a break. You are not just not respecting your focus mode, diffuse mode. You're not respecting your left brain, right brain integration. Okay. I have a, well, recently there has been the popularity of the Pomodoro method, which you may have heard of. If you haven't heard of it, it's basically working for 25 minutes and then taking a break for five minutes and then working for 25 minutes and taking a break for five minutes. So every time you work for 25 minutes and you take a break for five minutes, that's called one Pomodoro. Okay. It's called one Pomodoro. And then after several Pomodoros, 25, 5, 25, 25, 25, you then take a longer break of 15 to 30 minute break. So that's become popular in the recent years. And whoever came up with that, I don't know if they knew about this focus mode, diffuse mode, neuroscience, but it matches the neuroscience very well. And it matches spiritual productivity well as also. So that's how I work throughout the day. If you ever do co-working with me, I use focusmate.com, which I feel like everybody should use. Whether you are productive or you're not productive, focusmate seems to multiply one's productivity. I'm extremely productive. Focusmate has 10x my productivity. Someone who is not productive at all, focusmate, maybe only three times their productivity, but that's still huge, right? That's still really big for them. So please everybody use focusmate.com. Great, great service. I use it all the time. So except when I'm sick, the week that I'm sick, I don't use focusmate, but otherwise. I work 25, I actually do more like 26 and three. So I work for 26 minutes and then I take a three minute break and then another 26 minutes and then five minute break or whatever, longer break at the end of the hour before my next session or before my next appointment. And during those breaks, what I do is I do a three minute stretch routine along with my energy reboot. Now, if you want the full stretch routine, I taught that in my short for productivity course. So for those of you who have that course, just go into session one and you can see my full stretch routine there. And if you haven't bought the course, you can. You can buy the course if you want my full teachings on short for productivity. But anyway, just wanted to make sure you do at least this. You at least look at your own work habits and say, am I respecting the diffuse mode enough? And my way of thinking about that is frequent creative rest. Or by the way, another way of saying it is frequent self-care. Frequent self-care. That's really what it is. Okay, frequent self-care or frequent creative rest or respecting your diffuse mode or whatever you want to call it. Pomodoros, are you doing that? Are you doing that? Now, by the way, I'm not saying you have to do 25 or 26 minutes before you take a break. Some people like to do 45 minutes, 15 minutes. Okay. And some people like to do 60 minutes, you know, in 15 minutes or whatever it may be, but design some kind of regular rhythm of breaks into your day. And during the break, you could like I do my stretch routine with my energy reboot. Okay. Or you can go and get some tea. Okay. Go for a walk. Go take a nap. Go get a snack. Go play with your pets. Go, you know, whatever, whatever, you know, go text a friend or whatever you want to do. Go read a book. Go listen to some music. Go do a dance. Dancing is a great way to take a break. But the key is to build in frequent breaks. And honestly, I think the more frequent, the better. This is why the Pomodoro method works so well. Now you might say, George, do you really feel like taking a break after every 25, 26 minutes? No. And I think that's also one of the keys to personal development, right? Is to do things when you don't feel like it. Knowing that it's good for you. Knowing that whatever you feel like in the moment is probably a trance. We are in trances all day long. We get into this trance and then that trance and this trance and that trance. And it's up to you for your own self-care and your personal growth to break the trance consciously. That's what conscious living is. It's breaking your trance at any one time to say, no, I'm going to insert a purposeful activity now into this trance that I'm in. So work is a trance too. You're like writing something. You're like, no, no, no, I'm really focused right now. This is really working. I'm not going to take a break. It's probably a mistake. I interrupt myself all day long. I interrupt myself, interrupt myself, interrupt myself because I noticed that when I interrupt myself and go take a break, walk around, pace around, do my stretch routine, get some tea, do my energy reboot, come back. I always, almost always I have a new perspective about what I'm writing about or a fresh energy to continue writing or whatever it may be. So just because you're on the train, a thought train, don't be afraid to pause the train, go move your body so you move your brain, come back and continue the train because you'll find that you have a better perspective. It's always something, again, why? Because you have just engaged the diffuse mode of your brain. You have just surrendered spiritually and allowed intuition to come in. So that's all I want to say today. I think it's a very important message. Like I said, the two essential practices of my business, if I did nothing else, content creation consistently and frequent creative rest because those are the bedrock for all the other business success that I've experienced. I hope this is helpful. I look forward to seeing how you want to design your work day or your work hour as a result of this. And I look forward to your comments. Thanks for those who are joining me live. Alejandra, Peter, Jason, Wendy, Gudrun, Indra, Lisa, Diane, Sharon, or Cherine, Cindy and Clara. Hello. Matthew, great to see you. Rachel. And some comments here. Just want to take a look. Yeah, Diane says, all my genius breaks through in diffuse mode. Yeah, there you go. Diane has experienced it. She's very wise. Check out Diane's podcast, by the way. Someone gets me. That's the name of the podcast. Someone gets me. Let's see here. Peter says, when you said frequent creative rest, my laptop switched off because of low battery. I got the message. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. Spirit is working on your laptop. Yes. Alejandra says, yes, we could tap into both intuition and intentionality or focuses into intentionality and then diffuse mode is intuition. Yeah. So absolutely. Yeah. Lisa says remembering to take breaks has always been an issue for me. It's for all of us. It's true. If you would like some help on that, there are apps software that can help you because a lot of times we've refute, we forget to take breaks when we're at the computer where zoned into whatever we're working on or, or when we're at the phone on the phone or whatever. So if you want to go, go, go to your phone. If you want the app on the phone, if you want the app at the computer, go and search. Go in the app store and search break reminder. And there are probably dozens or at least several for you to try out both on the computer. You can find it and both on the, on the phone as well. Break reminder app. Okay. So go and go and look for it. I don't use it anymore because I've gotten so good at looking at the clock and then taking a break or I use timers. I actually work with timers throughout the day. I use egg timer e.gg timer.com. The letter e.gg timer.com. It sounds like egg timer, but there's a g, there's a dot in between e and the gg egg timer.com, but with a dot in between e and gg. So I use that all day long. Just to, I do, I do 10 minute timers just to kind of keep me sharp. I just kind of see the timer on the bottom left of the court, my, my screen, just to where that time is happening. And, and then I'm continuing to work. But you could do like 25 minute timers or there's another website called tomato timer, which is tomato dash timer.com. Tomato dash timer.com, which is nice because they've already done, they've already programmed a Pomodoro for you 25 minute work, five minute breaks. So that's a really nice website to kind of get started with this whole work habit. Yeah. So with that, I want to wish you a happy working, creative resting. And let me know how it goes as you try these things out. All right. Be well.