Milena Regos is revolutionizing how we live, work, and play. She gives keynote speeches and trains professionals on a different way of living and growing in a culture addicted to doing. Milena leads high performers and executive teams into creating a calmer, more humane and more sustainable future with well-being, joy, and fulfillment. She’s been on NPR, CNN Business, Entrepreneur, spoken at the World Economic Forum, and many others. Her Unhustle movement brings a lot of insight into how businesses need to be thinking and doing in order to succeed in today's world! https://unhustle.com
Milena Regos is revolutionizing how we live, work, and play. She gives keynote speeches and trains professionals on a different way of living and growing in a culture addicted to doing. Milena leads high performers and executive teams into creating a calmer, more humane and more sustainable future with well-being, joy, and fulfillment. She’s been on NPR, CNN Business, Entrepreneur, spoken at the World Economic Forum, and many others. Her Unhustle movement brings a lot of insight into how businesses need to be thinking and doing in order to succeed in today's world! https://unhustle.com
Triple Bottom Line | Episode 52 | Milena Regos
[Upbeat theme music plays]
Female Voice Over
[00:02] Welcome to the Triple Bottom Line, where we reveal how today’s business leaders are reaching a new level of success with a people-planet-profit approach. Here is your host, Taylor Martin.
Taylor Martin
[00:17] Hello, everyone. So happy to have you here today because I want to shake things up a little bit, much like our guest today, Milena Regos, has done with her career. She’s been on NPR, CNN business, entrepreneur. She’s spoken at the World Economic Forum and many, many others. Why? Because she’s making the case for the need to unhustle our business lives. What is this unhustle culture all about? Let’s dive right in. Milena, can you explain the unhustled movement to us?
Milena Regos
[00:49] Thank you so much for having me on. The unhustle movement is really a rebellion, a mindful rebellion towards more meaningful productivity without sacrificing our life, and health, and happiness. In other words, how can we create more intentional life work play by design so that we can fit our work into our lives instead of the other way around, still do our ambitious work goals, still make a difference in the world, still create change and build companies, but do it in a lot more sustainable, healthier, and fulfilling way?
Taylor Martin
[01:28] What pushed you to push to make this unhustled movement be?
Milena Regos
[01:32] That was my personal experience and struggle with trying to fit everything into my busy day, working crazy long hours, sleeping with my phone, spending far too much time in front of some screen. I’ve had a long marketing career. At some point in time, I was a marketing director for a ski resort, overseeing all the activities for the town of Incline Village in Lake Tahoe. I was in that corporate environment where we do have a lot of demands on us and obligations. I realized I was working far too much, and I decided to start my own agency when social media was just taking off. I went full on into digital marketing world, which is something I’ve been involved with since ‘96, ‘97 right at the forefront of online taking off, deciding to create my own marketing agency, especially in the marketing agency world. Everybody knows that. It’s just nonstop. It’s constant demand, constant barrage of information. Everything’s changing really fast.
I build a really nice little boutique agency, but the exchange of sacrificing health, and relationships, and fun, and I just didn’t have really a life outside of work. A lot of entrepreneurs, business owners know how that feels because business – there’s actually a study that shows that entrepreneurs have the same relationship with their business as we do with our kids. In other words, hardwired to have the emotional attachment to our business. When people say, your business is your baby, your business is your baby in a very neurological kind of way.
[03:12] It’s really hard. I don’t come at unhustle with the idea of saying, stop working and don’t do anything else and just enjoy your life, because obviously, that’s not sustainable. We have a lot of, for lack of a better term, yin and yang in our lives, and we need to complement both. Unhustle isn’t about being lazy, or apathetic, or not working, or just chilling. It’s about finding what sparks you, what drives you, and creating life that is sustainable that you can still do what you love to do, but also find time to leave, find time to be more present with your family. Realize that our time is finite. Our to-do lists are not finite. We are never going to get done everything on that to-do list.
It’s okay to call it a day without getting everything crossed off. It’s okay to say, I’m human. I’m tired. I’m exhausted. I need a mental break. It’s just we’ve gone away from that idea of us being human, and we try to compete with robots, and AI, and technology. It’s showing 80% of people are burned out, 80% plus are stressed out, 60% are lonely. Mental health is considered the next pandemic. What we are doing is absolutely not sustainable. The young generation, the Gen Z, the Millennials, they’re seeing the older generation doing this, and they’re not interested in this kind of lifestyle anymore. That’s why we’re struggling to find good people, and train good people, and retain good people.
[04:46] With engagement being so low at the lowest, I think it’s been in a decade, we need a completely different way of living and working. Thanks to the pandemic. We all had a chance to slow down just a little bit to say, okay, what does really matter here? Is everything I’m doing needs to be done? What does really matter to my life? What are my values? What do I believe in? What matters to me?
Taylor Martin
[05:10] What I’m hearing is balance. I’m hearing the need for balance. Not just a balance in terms of so many hours here, so many hours there, but also, I could see the balance of having mindfulness about what you’re doing and clearly understanding what it is that you’re – if you will, put on this earth to do.
Milena Regos
[05:29] Yeah, purpose. It comes down to purpose. It comes down to fulfillment. It comes down to your point of balance. How do we find that in a world that is go, go, go, constant demands? We need to do more. More is better. Once you get something done, then you’ll have a chance to slow down and enjoy. That’s just that fallacy, that absolute delusion that we all have fallen to in some point. I want to read something to you actually from Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote in 1873 in Untimely Meditations. He wrote, “We labor at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because to us, it’s even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.” In a way, we don’t allow ourselves to stop and to enjoy doing nothing because we’re afraid of what’s going on in our heads. We’re running away from it. It’s much easier to work than it is to pause and take a bit of a break and say, “What really matters to me?”
Taylor Martin
[06:45] It sounds like – I’ve heard you say this before in some of your other videos. You say, “We need to slow down to speed up.” Sounds like a paradox.
Milena Regos
[06:53] It does sound like a paradox. It sounds like maybe a cliche by now. Really, what it comes down to is finding the moment. Especially if you’re a CEO, business owner, entrepreneur, you need to take a break so you can take a look at the 30,000-foot view, figure out what the priorities are, take some time away to find your own center and to say, okay, what matters for the business right now? Where should we focus all of our energy? Maybe make some connections that are not necessarily happening while you are in the midst of doing things. Just having time to be more strategic, think of the big goals, connect with yourself, think of the right effort that needs to happen.
I’ve been reading a lot more lately about Taoism and the whole Taoism philosophy. I don’t know how much you’re familiar with that, but it really comes down to instead of forcing things, allowing things to happen. I know this sounds really crazy in our modern world, but I’ve been experimenting with it more and more in my life and seeing it how it actually works. Just being more in harmony with ourselves, being more in harmony with nature, and getting the whole team to be onboard. We’re just constantly in this pressure, and effort, and stress mode. When in reality, if you get into more of a relaxed state of mind, relaxed body, things just begin to unfold. You have more energy, you have more clarity, you have more creativity, and everything just begins to flow more, obviously flow state. I like to spend a lot of time in that, in my leisure time, as well as at work and flow drives more flow. It all comes down to being present, dancing in the moment. Yeah, we have goals and we have ambitions, and we have our egos. It’s a question of, what realistically can be done so that we go to our life a little bit more joyful and fulfilled instead of constantly competing, and striving, and struggling, and sacrificing?
Taylor Martin
[09:02] I’m shocked and surprised that you actually mentioned Laozi because when I was a younger wee lad, I read his book probably the age of 18 or 19, the teachings of Laozi. It was a pivotal moment for my life. That was the book that resonated with my soul more than anything I had read up to that moment in time. It put me on a trajectory of thinking that has produced a life in which I have led. I think the teachings of Laozi was just – everything he said, it made sense. It was just honest. It was smart. It was a way to enjoy your life, kind of like no matter what circumstance. I am pleasantly surprised to hear someone speak about Laozi in such demeanor. That is awesome.
Milena Regos
[09:49] Thank you. I was just reading about something. Probably a lot of people know a thousand-mile journey begins with one step. Probably a lot of people have heard this. Something I have not heard is those who procrastinate or act prematurely fail. Wise people succeed because they never force an outcome.
Taylor Martin
[10:09] Yes.
Milena Regos
[10:10] What are we doing on a day-to-day basis? We’re forcing an outcome.
Taylor Martin
[10:14] Yeah. One of the things that really stuck to me – and I’m not going to mention religions in the example that was given in the book. Basically, four religious people come to this barrel of vinegar, and the first religious person sticks their thumb in, and tastes it, and says, “Oh, it’s too sour.” The second one tastes it and says, “Oh, it’s too tart.” The next one says this, and the Laozi comes up and tastes it, and he smiles, and he walks away. He smiles because it was a new experience.
Milena Regos
[10:48] Exactly.
Taylor Martin
[10:49] It was a new experience and it was something he had never done before. He appreciated the moment for having had that experience. That just resonated with me so well. I think that’s just genius.
Milena Regos
[11:02] Speaking of failures – not speaking of failures, but apply that principle to failures. So many of us are just afraid of failure, whether you’re trying to do something bold in your business, or whether you want to pivot career, whether you want to pursue something completely different. There’s a lot of fear, and failure is just another experience. It again comes down to dancing in the moment. It’s learning. It’s just an experience.
Taylor Martin
[11:31] We learned from our failure. Our failure is a teacher. Failure is wonderful because it shows you what not to do, but it shows you all the different things that led up to that, and how that orchestrated, how that happened. Then you can, as they say, fail forward and take that and grow from that. Failure is a great teacher. When we talk about culture, you were talking earlier about the younger generation, looking at the older generation and saying, “I don’t want that. I want to have a more enriched and more balanced life.” Can you elaborate more on that in terms of the work culture and how it’s changing?
Milena Regos
[12:08] Yeah. From everything I’m reading, researching, and I spend quite a bit of time reading reports about Millennials and Gen Zs, and how are they shaping work culture. Because what’s happening, you and I are probably on the Gen X areas. We were still analogs. We still remember time when we didn’t have internet, we didn’t have computers, but Millennials and Gen Z grew up fully digital. I call them iHuman. Some people call them digital natives. Digital natives or iHumans, they’re a new breed of human. Business owners, CEOs, owners of company, they need to figure out how to treat this new human, but they’re coming in from an old perspective.
Really, I think I was telling you in one of our conversations that I did a presentation to a national company about the differences. Back then, it was between Gen X and Millennials, and the research was done by actually a Gen Z-er. It was fascinating for me to see the differences back then. Now, all of this has changed all over again. Some of the things – I’m going to give you some ideas from a recent report from – I want to say it was from Deloitte that showed the Millennials and Gen Z see flexibility as the most critical employee characteristics for successful businesses.
[13:32] Now, after that is creativity, technologically savvy. Things like inclusiveness is further down on the bottom line. That tells you how much flexibility really matters to them. To be honest with you, I was just on a call with somebody from Unilever. A young gentleman, he’s probably a millennial. He’s a global in charge of employee experience for Unilever. He’s currently working out of Paris. He gave me some great ideas how Unilever is applying flexibility to their employees. Now, Unilever is one of the oldest, probably company that believes in purpose and believes in treating the whole human.
What they’re doing, which I thought was really a great approach, is you work – they believe in the fully hybrid approach where you can come to the office or work from home. Then they give employees the ask of employees, three days to be in the office, one day to work from home. One day, they give them just for learning. In that one day, they can also work on a different project as long as they’re non-competing so they can get involved with a different business and get paid Unilever wages. That’s their version of flexibility. I’m sure anyone can create their own versions. It’s just this works for them and their people are very, very happy with that kind of flexibility.
[15:06] In terms of an example of how this shows up, Millennials and Gen Zs are fairly economic and socially pessimistic. They think that things are going to continue to worsen. It’s sad to see that, but they’ve seen a lot of things that just haven’t happened well in pandemic and all kinds of things that happen in America that they’ve been part of their childhood. They don’t want to wait to retire one day. They want to live now. They can’t afford to buy a house, so they want to have experiences now. They’re happy not pursuing material success as long as they can live now.
From a business standpoint, understanding how important this is to them, I had to do it with my own team and allow them to work whenever they want, however they want, as long as the work is getting done. Creating different ways of measuring quality of work, it’s more output or work as opposed to number of hours or location.
Taylor Martin
[16:13] Yeah. I think the pandemic squeezed us business-wise into a new way of thinking on all levels. Some people that were – the employees doing the work realize, hey, I can do this from home and be more productive. If I’m sequestered in my office, my home office or my bedroom or whatever, and I’ve made into an office, but I don’t have to spend so much time commuting to and from work, and getting ready for work, I can just work here and I can work when I want, what works for me for my schedule. Which to be quite honest, when you’re working at a space for 8 hours straight, 9 hours, 10 hours with one break for lunch, you’re working too long, too hard. If you’re working from home and you’re going with the ebb and flow of your life, whatever that may be, it’s different for everybody, that I can only see is going to produce a better product of output, and that goes for anybody.
Milena Regos
[17:09] Yeah, absolutely. Knowing your energy and how your energy fluctuates in your own biorhythms, tapping into that, having that self-awareness to know whether you’re a night person or a morning person, and being able to know the peak hours of your energy. For example, there was a Nobel Prize given to three gentlemen, which I can’t remember their names right now, but it’s got to do with circadian rhythms, biorhythms, and how everybody’s different. If you’re having trouble falling asleep till 2 a.m., that might be just your DNA and you’re not going to change that. If you’re not a morning person, that’s just maybe your DNA. You’re not going to change that, but understanding that that also fluctuates throughout the day.
Knowing when your peaks are – and they’re free quizzes people can take online to determine their biorhythms. Knowing when your peaks are tapping into that for creativity. You may have one deep work session for you, 60, 90 minutes, first thing in the morning, and then take a break, and then have another session. Grab some lunch. Have another session. Take a nap. Have another session. Four sessions, day is over. If you design it so it’s around your productivity and your creativity is the highest, then you’ll get a lot more done if you can get into that flow state, which is very deep work, fully present, being in the zone, minimizing all the distractions.
[18:31] There was a research by McKenzie over 10 years who studied executives, who can get into a flow state and show that they’re 500% more productive when they’re able to get into a flow state. These are consultants in high pressure jobs. We distract ourselves with too many blings and notifications, and too many tabs open, and we are trying to multitask instead of single-tasking, and we’re robbing ourselves of ability to actually produce something meaningful. Meanwhile, we end up working longer hours and burning ourselves out. It’s once you tap into that mentality for energy management and being able to work with your energy, you can have more energy outside of work and have more energy while you’re working and not become depleted and burnout.
Taylor Martin
[19:21] Yeah. I think we’re still revolving around my word of balance. It’s not just the balance of how many hours because what you’re saying right there could be, maybe you spend six hours and you’re producing nine hours of output of your typical job. Plus, just think about the location. If your location at your home, you’re more relaxed, you’re more focused, probably because there’s not outside things coming at you unless there’s children around and things like that, but you got to figure that out. When you’re at the office, people are stopping by your desk, and things are moving, and things are ringing, and it’s just like all kinds of things are going on, which makes it sometimes hard to hit your maximum peak there of your rhythm or whatever it is, or your productive style. There's also the element of that.
I just want to circle back to what you said about Unilever. Unilever is a mega brand. When I hear people saying our company is too big to do this and that and to offer this flexibility, no, that's a cop-out. I mean, Unilever, huge, global, mega brand, and what they're doing – I'm going to watch that like a hawk. I'm going to put that on my radar, because that's really interesting on so many levels. Some people, when you're at your home office, you might be more productive, but you need that social interaction, so you go back into the office and you have the interaction. I think if everybody's doing that and everybody's hungry for that interaction when you get to the office, it's probably more “fruitful” interaction with people because everybody's hungry for that collaboration between colleagues. Do you agree with that?
Milena Regos
[20:54] Yeah, absolutely. I actually use the term idea sex. When you're not in the office, when you're on your own, it's great for deep work. It's great for that deep concentration and focus. When you do go to the office and when you have all these conversations, when idea sex is born, you have people throwing ideas around. One idea leads to another idea. I do miss that part of my work, being surrounded with people, because I'm very extrovert person, so I get some of it through interaction with people. Being in real life, there's no replacement for it, which is why we're really missing that, especially after the pandemic. Being able to accommodate a hybrid environment of some sort I think would be very beneficial for people because that's what people want. Back to the Millenials and the Gen Z, in general, what people want is flexibility and meaning and being able to work for a company that aligns with their values and contributes in some kind of a better way to the world. These are all very, very important things to keep in mind when building that human culture.
Taylor Martin
[22:10] What are some of the fastest and best ways to unhustle for busy people, no matter what generation you're in?
Milena Regos
[22:17] I think it's very individual, but I think for everybody, it begins with bringing in more self-awareness of who you are and what you need and what can you do to bring in a little bit more stillness, more slowness, more reflection time, maybe more connection time, maybe time in nature. Again, everybody's going to be very individual but taking time to exhale, taking time five minutes in the morning to sit and reflect on your day, on what you want to accomplish, on how you feel, and what you need to make sure your mind, body, and soul are at an optimal level.
I used to talk about this unhustle morning rituals, just different practices you can do to make sure you start the day with being grounded and having energy and having a clear, calm mind. I don't want to talk about another morning routine, but having your own rituals you can reach out to in the morning and then in the end of the day in the evening so you can calm down and release the anxiety and just building up a little bit more space in your day, whether that's not putting your meetings back-to-back, maybe leaving a 10, 15 minutes in between meetings. It's a give-and-take. If you just look at your breath, if you intake, intake, intake, you also want to give some time to exhale. We're missing that time to exhale.
[23:56] I read reports on senior heads and global leaders who constantly say stress, pressure, lack of work/life balance are the primary causes for people to leave their jobs. The easiest thing to do is to learn how to manage that stress and getting out of that fight-or-flight system into more of a relaxation. We've lost that. The relaxation, going back to Taoism, is where relaxation allows you to create from a place of abundance and creativity and clarity as opposed to being in that stress mode, which affects your cognitive executive function of the brain, and then you get into just the reaction mode and you just can't even think. Actually stress makes you dumber. That's what the study shows. Burnout can change your brain so much. It turns into a vicious cycle. Giving yourself a chance to recover, to rest, to recuperate, to reset is the key. How you do it is going to be individual.
Taylor Martin
[25:05] I was just listening to the Huberman Lab Podcast, and they were talking about task bracketing. It was about visualizing something you want to change, like a habit you want to change and what I've been doing is what you've been saying, actually. I see it like the breath of the day and then the exhale at the end of the day. I have 20 minutes in the morning, early morning, to plan out my day and just get my head wrapped around the things that are coming at me and organizing them on my calendar to make sure everything's good so I have a mental picture of it. Doesn't take that long. I do it with a cup of coffee, just very easily going through my plans for my day. It's a great way to hep set the – it's like seeing the slopes before you go down the hill. You know what to expect. At the end of the day, I think about what happened during the day, and I look at tomorrow's calendar, and just look at it in a sense of ah, exhale. Okay, we accomplished these things. Let's move these things that didn't finish from today to tomorrow, just so that I can mentally put it down so that when I go to bed moments later, I have that ability to disconnect and have that less of a stressor, if you will. I don't want to take that to bed with me.
Milena Regos
[26:18] Yeah, and you mentioned something really key here. Taking a moment at the end of the day to note all your accomplishments and the achievements gives you a lot of pride and a lot of feeling good and a lot of gratitude for what you did do. We're just so tough on ourselves. We always look at – coming in from a place of lacking, what we didn't do. We're just so harsh on ourselves and our teams. We didn't do this and this didn't get done; this didn't get done. Let's acknowledge the good, too, because we did a lot of things. Even if you didn't, you needed to take a break, and you needed to take a mental day off, then you took care of yourself. We just need to be a little bit kinder and compassionate on how we talk to ourselves. I think that's a bit missing component right now in our culture.
Taylor Martin
[27:06] One of the things I want to circle back to that you mentioned, it was more – it wasn't exactly spoken this way, but it was something that made me think about this unhustle movement is not about not working. It's not about, I would say, working less. It depends on how you look at it. It's more about being, I think, more transparent with your managers or with your employees, depending on where you're at on the ladder of business, and communicating with them that I need to have more time to do X, Y, and Z because my life demands this. I really need this out of my life. To fulfill that, I'll still make sure that all my deadlines are met. Everybody understands what's going on. There's that flexibility that you mentioned earlier. I feel like that needs to be underscored because I could see upper management sees unhustle as oh, yeah, people don't want to work past 5 o'clock. There very well may be some people that do not want to work past 5 o'clock, but those might be the same people that get up at 6 a.m. and start their day at 7:30. They get there early. I just want to stress that this unhustle is not about not working. It's about working better, within more harmony of the individual to produce a better outcome for the whole, which is the company, right?
Milena Regos
[28:20] Exactly, yeah. It comes down to being human, seeing ourselves in other people as human and how can we, together, create more harmony and more balance and more effortless success as opposed to constantly fighting with each other and comparing with each other and going through our days stressed out, overwhelmed, and burned out. We can allow ourselves to have more joy, to play, to slow down and smell the roses, to focus on our well-being, and still produce high-quality work.
Taylor Martin
[28:56] For those managers out there and directors, what are some best practices in managing the people?
Milena Regos
[29:06] I would say taking a really good look at listening to your people is the first call. How can we incorporate listening tools in the company so that we can gather feedback about what is really going on, where the opportunities for connection and community that are forming with your people, how can you enable work/life harmony to happen; what are the opportunities for growth? A lot of people want to that learning opportunity, so they feel challenged and they feel fulfilled. How is purpose connecting the company with the individuals? What can you do to minimize harm to your people?
There's a lot of different paths managers can take or combine them all into one framework. Really, it all begins with listening. It all begins with having that heart-led leadership to say okay, I'm struggling with my own stress and burnout. I am not being able to see my family. I haven't had time to book my appointments. How are you doing and just starting from the top, because the people would watch what the leaders and managers are doing and do the same. I know there's a lot of good intentions out there, but sometimes we get so busy in our days and in our bubbles that we forget to, again, slow down so we can all speed up.
There was a study on slowing down to speed up. I want to say 343 companies in Europe, they measured the companies that go, go, go, go constantly versus the companies that slowed down to take a look at the initiatives and say what matters, what doesn't matter and have that priority and strategy in place. The companies that slowed down increased sales by something like 40% and were able to make a lot more profits in the long run. Don't underestimate the power of being in a culture of doing.
Taylor Martin
[31:18] What you were just saying, I just want to say that I know businesses where that applies with management itself. It's not just management and maybe some of the lower level employees. I've seen managers with directors, and they don't communicate. It's about this transparent communication, this two-way system, that's just not being utilized. That's what I'm hearing.
Milena Regos
[31:40] Yeah, exactly. I was talking to a big finance company this last summer, and they were very, very – I can't mention the name, but they were very interested in the whole Unhustle philosophy and the Unhustle approach and well-being practices. You know how the economy is going; there's the obvious and immediate pressure to perform and to succeed and to show profit. Immediately, well-being efforts get put on the lower burner. There's so many studies in science that shows how well-being is cornerstone for performance, how when you come to the office feeling refreshed and well-slept and not stressed, you perform better.
We're so ingrained in our thinking that we just have to nose to the grind and work all the time and that's how you achieve success when in reality, we need to look at the whole human and realize that we are human. We need to show up being human with all of our strengths and weaknesses, and feeling perfectly safe about saying that something's not going well. What would you rather take, give somebody a week off who needs time off, who's on the brink of burnout, or have them go to burnout, maybe move on to another job, and then you have to train a new person that's something like three times the salary of the old person? Again, it just comes down to being realistic with our expectations and our demands in what we can achieve in a fast-moving world.
Taylor Martin
[33:11] Yeah, especially with burnout. Burnout is at its all-time high right now, for the last three years, with COVID, post-COVID. That's something not to think lightly of. We did a podcast on burnout with a burnout specialist. I was surprised at just how complicated that system is of burnout and how to overcome it. It's not an easy – like go on vacation for a couple of weeks, and you'll be fine. That's not how it works. Burnout is something that's much deeper than that. It's a dark force, if you will. I think when you're adding that into the equation – possible equation, putting burnout in there, I think you really need to be mindful of that as a possibility.
Milena Regos
[33:56] Yeah. To your point, burnout – what I've been reading is how it changes not only your body but your brain as well. It's not just yeah, take a vacation, take a day off. It could occur for long periods of time. It is a combination of the organization as well as personal responsibility to, obviously, take care of yourself. To the point of Unhustle, I don't know if you're familiar with the research from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow state.
Taylor Martin
[34:27] Hm.
Milena Regos
[34:28] He's the godfather of the flow state. He's an American-Hungarian psychologist, and realized that we are the happiest and most fulfilled when we are in that flow state – flow state being characterized as being in the zone, when you're running, or when you're fully doing one activity at a time where time stops around you. You could be working; you could be writing; you could be playing music. Creatives, professional athletes fall into that category. They find that flow state. You forget about everything else. For some of us, it happens while we're working.
Actually, what he saw for knowledge workers, the research shows that even though we say we'd rather not be working, for a majority of us, we're in the flow state while at work about 64% of the time, because we're feeling challenged, and we're being pushed to meet deadlines, and we're creative, and we experience fulfillment out of what we do. We love what we do. In our leisure time, because our leisure time is passive, we're only in flow state about 20% of the time. Automatically, based on our own biology, we would gravitate more towards working, which is probably why over 50% of the people in America are workaholics. We gravitate towards working.
[35:47] Now imagine if we challenge our leisure time. Instead of passive leisure time, we create this active leisure time, deep play. When you do things outside of work that are just as creative and just put you in the flow state or challenge you physically or mentally, you will have more of a reason to not be working. From an individual perspective, it could be argued that you need to increase – you need to fix your leisure time, not fix the way you work but fix your leisure time so that you can recreate and come back to work rejuvenated and with more energy.
There was a couple studies done recently in Europe that showed how people – if you're doing something with, let's say, spreadsheets, and using one side of your brain, then doing something more creative in your off time to balance the brain means you can come back refreshed and rejuvenated with more energy and prevent burnout. If you're doing something sitting all day, maybe you want to do something more active. I think that's fascinating from a perspective of work alone, but what are you doing in your leisure time to make sure you're recovering? Just like a high-performing athlete, there's times to be on and there's times to be off. Your off time can be almost looked at as – I don't want to say look at it as a way to get better at work, but look at it as a way to recover and rest. You can get into deeper elements with some kind of biohacking and cold showers and cold therapy and saunas and all these protocols that allow you mentally – to me, it's physically recover but also mentally detach from work.
Taylor Martin
[37:34] I think you hit the invisible nail on the head. I really think that that's wonderful because it's – what you're really talking about is when you're leaving work, you need to find this balance, this fulfillment in your life as well as work. You might have fulfillment in work, and that's great. A lot of people do. That's wonderful when you do, obviously. It's the balance of your existence, your life, your being. That's what you're speaking to. You're saying don't just think about work. We're not just talking about work as a whole. We're talking about the fulfillment of your entire life. Make sure your work is fulfilling and make sure your personal life is fulfilling. Sometimes you need to look at your personal life in, I would say, a business lens, if you will, in terms of structure and choosing and time bracketing and things of that nature, to know that you are doing things that you like to do as an individual, so that you bring joy to yourself and your life and those around you. When I hear you say that, I really, honestly, wholeheartedly believe that that is the missing element that a lot of people just don't get.
Milena Regos
[38:40] Yeah, I call it creating intentional life-work-play by design so that you have all the elements to your point of balance, or integrate it so you have time to enjoy your life, do the work that matters, have fun. At the end, we all have a finite amount of hours, 40,000 weeks on average, in our lives. As weeks go by, we need to make sure that we're enjoying life while we're also doing the meaningful work that we want to do.
Taylor Martin
[39:11] Yeah, not just following the shiny object syndrome.
Milena Regos
[39:14] There's a lot of shiny object syndromes out there, but to each their own. You have to create your own balance, your own ratio of life, work, and play, however that looks to you, so you can have that 360 degree life. The longest Harvard study, 75 year old, show that happiness comes from relationships. Whether you have these relationships at work, whether you have these relationships outside of work, making time for relationships is important. That's the first thing that I sacrificed when I was working, was relationships. I don't time for my friends. I'll see you later. I'm too busy right now. It's the first thing when we put our health on the back burner, and we put our relationships on the back burner. The CEOs and executives that I speak with, it's the same story over and over again, which leads to divorces and broken relationships and people being lonely because all you do is work. In this fashion as you are about work, the other things in life that can bring you fulfillment and happiness that I don't think need – we need to ignore for work.
Taylor Martin
[40:21] What's on the horizon for the Unhustle culture that you're leading the charge on?
Milena Regos
[40:27] Well, I've been working on a book for a couple years, and I'd like to get back into it and ship that out to the word. I'm planning a eight-week program to take a few brave souls through an align program with me, led by me, to take it from that burnout state to that balance state, leading to in-person experience here in Baja, California Sur, where I moved to so they can put some of these practices into play, not necessary, but it will be fun to see the complete transformation starting with the online component and the offline component. I do require quite a bit of work with companies, company trainings for their employees as well. I'm excited to continue on this front.
Taylor Martin
[41:23] That sounds like a very interesting endeavor. I like that. It's probably going to be a very eye-opening and expected and unexpected resolutions. I could see a lot of different things happening with that. If I gave you a magic wand and you could just sprinkle it over business leaders across the world, what is the one thing you wish they would be able to do, whether it's thinking or a service or a doing? What would it be?
Milena Regos
[41:51] Achieve more peace of mind.
Taylor Martin
[41:54] For themselves.
Milena Regos
[41:55] Mm-hmm. Everything else will follow from that.
Taylor Martin
[42:01] I was not expecting that, but I like it. I like it a lot.
Milena Regos
[42:03] What were you thinking?
Taylor Martin
[42:05] I don't know. I was thinking it was going to be more like – I don't know, listen to your employees more or talk more, be transparent more. I don't know, but that peace of mind, it's actually interesting because it's talking about take care of yourself before you take care of others. That's the way I hear it.
Milena Regos
[42:21] Yeah, you can't lead your people if you're stressed out and overwhelmed and concerned with what was going to happen. There's so much uncertainty in our world. We live in a world of chaos. That internal peace of mind, that space to be able to think clearly will bring all kinds of other good resolutions and activities. It starts in our own heads. It starts with us.
Taylor Martin
[42:47] Excellent. Milena, thank you so much for being on the show today. How can our listeners follow you and follow the Unhustle culture, the movement?
Milena Regos
[42:56] Thank you. That's easy, unhustle.com is the website. They can find everything I'm up to over there. It'll be great if I can get a few beta testers for my book. They can find some information on there as well. I have an Unhustle podcast they can tune into. There is a newsletter, the program, and there's a free e-book they can download to podcast listeners with how some business leaders and companies have incorporated some of the Unhustle practices. They can download that at unhustle.com/ebook.
Taylor Martin
[43:32] I also want to add your Instagram account because I am now a new follower. I've really enjoyed going through your Instagram thread because you just have all these little moments and all these little messages. It's great to just add that to the feed. You have these little pearls of wisdom that you're sharing, so I encourage the listeners to follow you on Instagram.
Milena Regos
[43:51] Yep, and the handle is on Instagram as well. I'd love for listeners who are listening to this to tag me on Instagram and let me know your biggest takeaway from this show. Tag both of us, actually. What's your Instagram handle?
Taylor Martin
[44:05] Designpositive.
Milena Regos
[44:06] There you go. Tag Design Positive and Unhustle and let us know what your biggest takeaway is from this podcast.
Taylor Martin
[44:15] Excellent. Milena, thank you again for being on today's show and sharing all these pearls of wisdom with everyone today. It's really a joy to have this conversation.
Milena Regos
[44:23] Thank you so much for having me.
Taylor Martin
[44:24] Over and out, everybody.
Female Voice Over
Thanks for tuning in to The Triple Bottom Line. Your host, Taylor Martin, is founder and chief creative of Design Positive, a strategic branding and accessibility agency. Interested in being interviewed on our podcast? Then visit designpositive.co and fill out our contact form. If you enjoyed today's podcast, we would appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or whatever provider you're logging in from. This podcast is prepared by Design Positive and is not associated with any other entity. We look forward to having you back for another installment of The Triple Bottom Line.