Why a Retreat Is Part of the Work, Not a Reward for It
About this episode
Mike Vardy discusses the importance of retreats as an integral part of work rather than a reward for hard work.
My book, Productiveness, is now available. It's about the difference between doing more and doing what matters, and how we lost the ability to tell them apart. I'll send the release date the day it's set. Visit https://mikevardy.com/productiveness to learn more and get your copy today. We treat retreats as something you earn — a reward that shows up once you've worked hard enough, long enough. I don't think that's right, and I think it's the exact reason most people never actually take one. A retreat isn't a break from the work. It's part of it. I had just wrapped a multi-day virtual retreat inside our TimeCrafting Trust community and was about to head into another one at a conference, so I was sitting right in the middle of two different kinds of retreat as I recorded this. That felt like the right moment to break down what a retreat actually is, the two forms it can take, and the five most common ways people sabotage their own attempt at one. Six Discussion Points Treating a retreat as a reward for hard work puts it at the end of effort, contingent on having "done enough" — which means most people never feel like they qualify for one. The military root of "retreat" isn't…
Topics covered
- retreat
- work-life balance
- productivity
- strategic withdrawal
- self-care
More episodes of A Productive Conversation
- PM Talks S3E9: What Problem Does This Actually Solve?
- The Five Kinds of Work Stress (with Amy Leneker)
- The Jolts That Make Us Quit — and the Ones Worth Ignoring (with Anthony Klotz)
- The Difference Between an Aha Moment and a Full-Blown Epiphany (PM Talks S3E8)
- Why Logic Alone Can't Explain the Human Mind (with Tom Griffiths)
- Why "Life Is" Might Be the Only Sentence You Need (with Gary John Bishop)
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the A Productive Conversation podcast page.