[00:00] Katie: Welcome back to the Focus B show. This is Katie Sudddhart here aka the focus b. And on this show I interview high performers and leaders around the world to discover their secrets on peak performance, productivity, mindfulness and leadership. So if you want to take your performance and your leadership to the next level, then you're in the right place. Listen up and connect with the magic.
[00:38] Katie: Welcome to a new episode of the Focus B show. I am super excited to have Milena Rigos on the show today. Milena is the founder of Unhustle and an international speaker. Her work has been called amazing by Ariana Huffington and Milena helps us to deconstruct the way we live, work and play. Hello Milena, fantastic to have you on the show today. Very excited about our conversation.
[01:11] Milena: Thank you so much for having me.
[01:13] Katie: Real pleasure. We connected through an old podcast colleague, friend, person I interviewed who's also big on this whole unhustling and taking time to rest. It was previous episode with Max Frenzel. I'll put in the show notes and I'd love to hear how it all began with you. How did you get into Unhustling?
[01:35] Milena: Wow. Do you want the long story or the short version? Short story.
[01:38] Katie: Then we could give how to do it and why it's so great afterwards. So short version, like how did you get there?
[01:44] Milena: Long story longer. Like a friend of mine says, I came to the US to pursue career in marketing. I told you I'm originally from Bulgaria and I haven't gotten a lot of sleep tonight, so my accent is a little bit stronger actually. I can feel it. But in any case, I came to chase the American dream and I went full on. I completed a master's degree in international marketing in San Diego. I started working for a media company the early ages of online marketing. I worked with some phenomenal clients for about five years and then I transitioned into being a marketing director for a ski resort, which was a big checkoff on my bucket list. I did that for ten years, got paid to ski and market something that I love and have loved since I was a kid and that was super fun. Eventually bureaucracy and paperwork and emails and meetings started to get to me, so I decided I'm just going to and social media was really taking off and I have this entrepreneurial spirit in me, so I decided I'm going to start my own company. So I went full on and started my own venture. I called it out and about marketing and it was going great. I built a phenomenal team, an eight figure business. I worked with some amazing clients. I actually was pretty focused on health and wellness, so I had clients in the gym industry, health and wellness, travel and recreation, fun stuff. I worked with some celebrities like Madonna and Steve Nash and Dr. Weil and everything was going great except that I was hustling. I was hustling a lot. I was working 1214 16 hours days, sleeping with my phone. I would come home from the office, cook dinner with my husband, and then get back to work and work till one, two a. M. My sleep started to suffer, my health started to deteriorate. I had one year, I was spending a lot of time in some doctor's office for some bizarre reason that normally 80 year olds get. And I was in my 30s. So I started to realize that my mental health is suffering. My health suffering, my relationships were suffering. My marriage was not really existent and I noticed that my attention was getting really fragmented from all this time on social media channels. So long story longer. I told you it's going to be a long story. We planned a ten day trip to Baja California, sir, which turned out to be a digital detox trip by default, not by design. There was just no internet in the town we were in. And it was in that time when we decided to learn to kiteboard. Now, kiteboarding is a really, really dangerous activity and you really have to focus so you could possibly die. It was in that moment, it was one of the first mindful, very mindful moments that I've experienced in a really long time that I started to think a there is more to life than working and B, is there a way we could do this better? Instead of hustling on a treadmill 24/7, is there a way we can redesign the way we work? And so that took me down on a long path of self discovery, self awareness, mindfulness training, and human potential training, coaching, training. And eventually in all of these trainings, I realized that the way we are working is broken. And it's not just in the US. It's worldwide. Europe is quite a bit better, actually, but there's still some countries that are doing it wrong. The way we're living is broken. The way we're playing is broken, really. And so Unhussle was born as a desire to create this movement, to shift our perspective. And by slowing down, we can actually speed up. But it's so counterintuitive for us to understand.
[05:51] Katie: That's amazing. And it's funny how it's something that's difficult somehow that we all have this tendency, especially when we're passionate, especially business owners and entrepreneurs, to want to hustle. Like you were explaining when you had your own marketing business and you grew it to eight figures. It's almost an addiction that work, that dopamine that kick we get from it, and then we're in this vicious cycle. And then this is something that I found that's really interesting, that when our energy is depleted, we get even more hooked. It's like this is the only thing giving us energy. And we no longer have the willpower or desire or discipline to switch off and take time off. So reversing is a whole other game. So I'd love to hear, and I'm sure this is what the audience would love to know how do you then go from being such a strong hustler to becoming an unhustler?
[06:46] Milena: Well, I do believe that the right amount of hustle or the right amount of hard work is important and noble and meaningful. But I don't believe that if all you do is work, the research now and the data and all the studies show that it starts to impact negatively your productivity and your performance and your creativity, which is actually what happened to me. Now, my clients were hiring me for my creativity, but my creativity was getting depleted. I don't know if I had burnout the way burnout is currently defined by the World Health Organization, but definitely it suffered my creativity. Now, here's an interesting piece of research that I find fascinating and has really been able to when I explain this to people, it's a very easy way to understand why we're so addicted to work in the work of Mikhaili Chicks and Mihai. Very difficult name to say. Thankfully, I'm Bulgarian. I can somewhat wrestle with it. He's a Hungarian American psychologist we get this right, who coined the flaw concept. Now, in his research, he discovered that even though people say they would rather not be working and have more time for leisure, most people who use their minds for work, I refer to them as mind workers, spend 64% of the time in flow at work. And flow is defined as really being in the zone, as an activity where you're focused, it energizes you, it motivates you, it fulfills you. Right? All these things like you were saying, dopamine is one of the neurochemicals of flow. There is more, right, serotonin and all this cocktail of neurons going on through your body when you get into a state of flow, this is where high performance are at their optimal. Performance creators, musicians. So if we're at work on average 64% of the time, then when we go to leisure or time off, our leisure time for the most part, is passive leisure. We're scrolling on social media, watching TV, hanging out with friends, but we don't have a challenge to skill ratio. This is where skiing, an activity like skiing or kite boarding, that can actually put you in flow. So most people, when they're in leisure, it's only about 20% of the time that they're in flow. So even though most people say that rather not be working, they feel better when they're working. And I think we saw this with the pandemic as well. We ended up working three extra hours on average, partly because we didn't want to deal with the news and we didn't want to deal with the house errands and the kids playing. And so we ended up spending more time working. It feels safe, it makes us feel good, which is crazy, but it's just how we are hardwired. So when you understand this concept, you can spend more time in deep play and active recovery. It's much easier to get the same amount of dopamine and feel good chemicals that run through your body as the ones you get from completing a challenging project or doing something that feels good, but if you do too much of it, you end up burnout. Does that make sense?
[10:17] Katie: Yes, absolutely. And I've got his book flow behind me. Mihali chiseng mihai. I always struggle with his name, too. I feel I'm always checking on the Internet because I'm always quoting him. Wait. Oh, SCZ. Okay. Yes. And what you said, that book yes. And I remember reading that and also being totally struck by how strange it was. So essentially what you're saying is the reason we work so hard is because we haven't learned to rest or play in a way that's as fulfilling to us. We get more of the dopamine kick, we get more of the flow feeling when we're working because the tasks are more challenging and rewarding. And if our playtime or recovery time is passive, if we're not doing something like skiing or climbing or maybe reading, but active reading, not passively, then we are less likely to be in flow and get dopamine. So I feel that already you're sharing one of the secrets of unhustling around rediscovering how we can play. But in practice, how can people learn to really develop the superpowers of unhustling?
[11:24] Milena: Well, the entire framework that I came up with has seven steps. They all start with UN. And so unlearning is the first phase. This is where we have to look at the research, because just me sharing with people what my opinion is doesn't count for validity. And so looking at the research that shows that working over 55 hours a week decreases your productivity, looking at the research of something like the four day work week, right, which shows that people can work less and be more creative, have more time for well being. So unlearning is shifting your mindset, your perspective, this indoctrination that we have in the coat of projectivity right, this trance of being on the hedonic treadmill. And it starts with that, right? It starts with your mindset. The second step is unplugging from technology, which is a big one. And this is where mindfulness comes in. And I know. Especially Gen Z and Millennials. They're digital natives. They grew up with phones in their hands. Their digital lives come before their analog lives. So, still taking some time away to just sit with your thoughts without listening to a podcast or an audiobook or something going in nature and all these things we know we need to do, just taking some time to unplug on a daily basis, maybe you can't go on a ten day digital detox trip. Very few people can afford that. But you can possibly spend half a day without your phone, without constantly looking for your phone. I think we touch our phone something like 2347 times a day, subconsciously or consciously. I mean, it's just ridiculous. And I have a lot of stats in my book, upcoming book about the crazy amount of time we spend online and on social media, and it fragments our attention. And then all the distractions while we're working is also part of this. So something simple is removing all the notifications from your phone. Or I did something great with my I don't have my phone with me, but I did something I was going to show you. I did something where you can change the Raise Awake on your phone. So when you pick up your phone, it doesn't light up. And just doing this little change, it doesn't grab your attention right away. Research now shows that even if you have your phone face down on your desk with no notifications on it, just the actual proximity to your phone decreases your working memory and your focus. So you're better off leaving your phone in another room like I did. And I can't show you now what a Raise awake is. Okay, back to the steps. The framework. The unhustle framework. The third step is unthinking. This is where we do practices to get you out of your head and into your body so you can tap into your inner wisdom. Again, comes down to a lot of mindfulness practices so that you can actually know what emotions are running to, you know, what limiting beliefs you're dealing with. And you can tap into a lot bigger intelligence of your body. Your intuition, curiosity, wonder, all these things that we are forgetting how to do. So how do you do this? Again, the must go to are like exercise, yoga, qigong, walking barefoot. All these practices that you can do to connect with who you are and listen to what's going on inside. And that's where a lot of mindfulness practices come in. The next step is uncomplicating. This is where you can really simplifying your life and your business. I think we're just overwhelmed because we think we have to do all these things, or we think, like, I'm currently simplifying redesigning my life again, and I'm looking at all the stuff we've accumulated in our house and I'm going, Why? A why? And B, the more I'm clearing up my office, the more I'm realizing that my mind's getting clearer. I can actually focus on a project. So decluttering in a way. There's a lot of people talking about minimalism. I think minimalism is great. I'm not necessarily saying everybody should be a minimalist, but I did live in an Airstream for four months out of the year, and I realized that you can live in a tiny home and be very happy with very few things, which actually opens up space for the energy and time for the things you want to do. Another step really important is unwinding. And this is where, well, being becomes a priority. Right? This is where things like, I have like, a non hustle morning practices, taking care of your mind and body and just really tuning into what you need without listening to any fads and any practices and just do what feels right for you. And I have a set of practices called the Sunrise Method, which is why I was getting distracted by the sunrise, where you go outside and get some sunlight on your face. It improves your sleep. You start your morning without your phone so you don't go into a reactive mode. N stands for nature, connecting with nature. R stands for reading and writing things like journaling morning pages, reading something inspirational in the morning instead of negative news. I is for setting your intentions for the day. S is for stillness, mindfulness, meditation, just sitting still, even if it's just drinking your coffee for a minute. And e is for energy. This is your cold shower, bulletproof coffee, a little bit of movement, so mix and match however you like. Obviously, there's a lot of people talking about morning routines. I'm not talking about a morning routine. I'm all about sleeping, feel good. You'll perform better. And finally, we have unbizzing, which is where you really decide what you want to prioritize, what absolutely needs to get done and removing everything else. I just posted something on LinkedIn, this little visual about how we have this big box of what we want to do and a much smaller box of what's realistic to do and a tiny little box of what really matters. And it really resonated with people when they saw that visual. And it really comes down to what do you want to say no to? What are the big projects that really make an impact in your business? And ultimately, and I think one of the biggest things you and I want to talk today about is unleashing your human potential, which is really how do you create peak experiences with more flow at work, in life, and in play, right? How do you design your life work and play so that you spend more time in flow, which pushes you in a state of high performance. But I feel like without the previous steps, that high performance is not reachable. It's not realistic. Realistic. So that's kind of the unhustle framework.
[18:42] Katie: Amazing. Thank you for saying all of this and summarizing them in the 7th step. I want to sort of recap them. Let's see if I got all of them. So, first of all, unlearning. Get rid of all the preconceived ideas that we have. Then unplugging, which I love, definitely connect with nature and spend time away from technology. Then unthinking, which I really like, because that's something I only realized, I don't know, a few years ago, about the power of being in your body and not in your mind. So that was amazing then. Was it uncomplicated or uncomplicated? No. Step four also super important. So easy to complicate things and not realize how we can simplify them. Then it was unwinding. No.
[19:26] Milena: Yeah. Without making time and space, you don't have time to take care of yourself.
[19:33] Katie: And then there was one more and then unleashing. Unbusying. That's right. That's the one a lot of people need. And then unleashing. Yeah.
[19:41] Milena: And then unleashing your human potential. A lot of entrepreneurs, we get told to hustle, right? So I had to figure out, how do you build a business without hustling? And flow is obviously one way to do it, but another way to doing it is by differentiating yourself. Now, if you don't make time and space to think how to be different, you're going to continue to hustle and compare yourself with everybody else. So I talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, startup founders, I'm mentoring for tech stars. And I see this all the time. People miss clarity, self confidence, self awareness. Most entrepreneurs, 99% of entrepreneurs I speak with, it's the same challenges. All of these challenges are not overcome by hustling.
[20:32] Katie: Yeah, I think the part on clarity, definitely, I see that time and time again. I see it time and time again in myself. And I think if I don't take time to have a walk at lunchtime or finish earlier one evening or just block an hour in my calendar to reflect, there's no way I would have that clarity. I just think we can't move forward unless we're clear on our intentions, our goals, our processes, our ideal client, our products, how we're different. And to think we need space. You can't think if you've got 20 zoom calls one after the next, then you're just in reactive mode. So I feel it's so important to have the clarity and yes, definitely also the self confidence, the self trust, which comes up time and time and time and time again, which is linked, but different to self confidence. So I agree with you. Those are definitely very common entrepreneurial challenges that we can't solve by hustling.
[21:25] Milena: And not just entrepreneurial leaders, right? They need time to think. They need time and space to think. Because without that clarity, the team is overwhelmed and burned out. And without the clarity, performance drops, burnout, increases. So super important. I think it was Warren Buffett who said, busy is the new stupid. Right?
[21:50] Katie: I never heard that. Great.
[21:52] Milena: He has something like three things on his calendar for the month, three meetings for the month. He says the most important thing is to take time to think. Without time to think, you can't go into action. We're just on this rat race, go, go. Without taking the time to be strategic about what we are doing and to be creative with what we are doing so we can shine our own superpowers and stop comparing ourselves to millions of other people. Right. You're one in 7.75 billion people. One person. Right? And we want people to shine with their gifts and abilities and be at optimal high performing state, not be burnout, depleted and sleep deprived.
[22:39] Katie: Absolutely. So in our last part of the podcast, how do we unleash our potential? How do we create these high performance cycles so we can thrive, grow our business, be successful, all of that? By working hard strategically, but not in an over hustling way?
[22:58] Milena: Yeah, I do believe it starts with experimenting. And even if you do it for just a week or just even a day to see if you can shrink your work day increase your focus and optimize your leisure time and playtime even if you take five minutes a day in the morning to just breathe and say, what am I the one most important thing for today that I want to accomplish? And then do that for the first 90 minutes of the day, most of us shy away from the projects that really make an impact on our work. And so we get distracted with busyness and emails and meetings. So I think the step to high performance and unleashing your human potential starts with self awareness, self mastery and unhustling.
[23:54] Katie: Yeah. Taking time to slow down and breathe and reflect strategically. It's interesting what you were saying right now, that we shy away from the work that really moves the needle forward in our business. Do you feel this is linked to fear of failure? Do you feel this is linked to just being reactive because we get a dopamine kick? Why do you think there's such a tendency to actually avoid the most meaningful work?
[24:20] Milena: Yeah, fear is the biggest one. Whether it's fear of failure, some version of impostor syndrome, lack of confidence, all these things. And that's why I'm saying take as much time in the morning that's why the unhustle morning practices. Take as much time in the morning to clear your mind, to increase your self confidence, to think positively, to develop that growth mindset. Because your rest of the day is going to depend on how you show up every day. Right. So that fear, though, can be turned really quickly into excitement. And so how do you find because they show up the exact same way in your body. So how do you find the courage to turn fear into excitement so you can show up and do the work that actually matters and not seek the short term dopamine heats that we get from emails and meetings and the other projects that we love to do and check off the little to do list. But in reality, they're not that important. So it's finding courage to focus on what matters.
[25:31] Katie: Yes, I think courage is definitely a huge part, but also focus that I'm really passionate about that's directly linked to unhustle. They go sort of hand in hand, for sure. Because what you were saying earlier on in the interview was how when you had your marketing business, you'd lost that sort of attention that you weren't as mindful and present. And so I feel definitely fear is one obstacle, but also people are shrinking their attentional span, so they just don't have that focus first thing in the morning. It's almost like a noise in their head even before they've checked their emails and be able to clear away from that. Hence the mindfulness practice. To be able to say all this can wait an hour, two hour, while I do this most important work and task. I think that's also a habit, a habit of focus, a habit of changing the way we work. Hence the unlearning phase.
[26:25] Milena: No? Yeah. A really great practice that everybody can implement is just the ten minute rule. Mel Robbins calls it the five second rule. I call it the ten minute rule. It's basically say, I'm just going to do it for ten minutes, whatever it is, exercise, yoga, meditation or work, just do it for ten minutes. Because if you can do it for ten minutes, you most likely continue to do it. And I try to shift my mindset about this and ask, what if it was easy and fun? Could I make it effortless? Can I make it easy and fun? Or do I look at it as I don't really want to do that? Can you shift your energy around? And I guess a big portion of how you do this is with what's the bigger purpose behind it? So let's say within Hustle, let's say I'm working on a book, and writing a book I'm discovering is extremely difficult. I did not think it was going to be that difficult at all for me to shift my mindset around. I have to look at it as I'm writing a book to be able to share my knowledge and my experience and my lessons learned with other people. And so I'm trying to shift my mindset and said, if this book helps one more person, then it's worth it. Right? And not just focus on I'm writing a book, but focus on how you serve and help other people. Which is why finding my deeper purpose within Hustle has been key to allowing me to work in a state of law and with ease and joy and fun, as opposed to with the marketing agency. And I still love marketing, but I was doing it more from a perspective of monetary rewards and growing a business as opposed to being of service to humanity. It's a completely different way of looking at things.
[28:25] Katie: It's interesting you mentioned this because when I was preparing for the interview, I checked your website and I really thought, I can feel the purpose coming through it. I can't explain. But you could just sense that it was really purpose driven. Of course there are other businesses like this, but you felt a real purpose behind the whole movement of unhustle the community you've created your story behind it. And I think it shows. I think it shows when someone is really or when a business is really purpose driven, that they're really doing this to contribute, and they believe it's going to change the way we approach work and live. And that drives you in a certain way. And it's just not the same to businesses that aren't like that. And not all businesses are really purpose driven. Some businesses are just businesses. They like what they do. They help their clients, they earn profit. Nothing wrong with that. It's just there's a different touch, there's a different feeling, there's a different energy that comes out when there's a strong purpose. And it also helps not only clients and people to be attracted to it, but like you said, the person running the business, it helps you in those moments of when you need to shift your energy or when you're getting discouraged to reconnect with that purpose.
[29:39] Milena: Thank you so much for saying that. It really means a lot to me. What's interesting about purpose driven businesses, too, is especially right now, it's very relevant, purpose driven businesses are actually more profitable. They're like 15 times more profitable than the S and P 500. So this is from a book, I forget the name of the authors, but yeah, they did research. And so if we take a look at companies like Zoom, which had huge potential during the Pandemic to make a lot of money, they stayed true to their purpose and gave away their software to a lot of schools, still made a lot of money. Very purpose driven company. They had their employees come together in once a week, chat with all the leaders where everybody was equal, and just share stories of how they're helping people. And they just inspired everybody. And the employees worked really hard, obviously, so we can all communicate during and now, so still, people want to work for a company with purpose. People want to work for a company that have shared values with them. And a lot of companies are struggling to find talent. I don't know how things are in London, but in the US. We have the great resignation. So as a business owner, having a strong purpose can benefit not just the bottom line, but also hiring top people to work for you.
[31:22] Katie: Absolutely. I think it's so interesting. I don't know how we move from unhustling to purpose, but they're all connected because when you're purpose driven, you don't need to work as many hours at least, but the hours that you put in will be more effective because you're driven by your purpose. We're already approaching the last few minutes of the podcast interview. I feel you've covered so much. You've given us your whole framework of unhustling, which was fantastic. What's the last note you'd like to leave the audience with before the end of the interview?
[31:51] Milena: Yeah, I have a free ebook that they can download, which includes the unhustle framework with some stories from. People and companies as to how they're implementing it to design life work and play effortlessly so they can download that@unhustle.com ebook and connect with me on social media. And let me know your biggest takeaway from this podcast. I'd love to hear it. And you can find me at Unhustle as well as on the website unhustle.com.
[32:22] Katie: Amazing. I've put them all in the show notes anyway, but you can find it unhustle on social media, the website, the community, the podcast even so, yes, lots of ways to get in touch with you. Thank you so much, Milena. I've really loved our conversation. I think it's such an important message to get out there into the world. So thank you so much for being a guest today.
[32:43] Milena: Thank you for having me.
[32:48] Katie: Thank you so much for tuning in today to the Focus Bee show. I would absolutely love to hear your feedback. So let me know in an Apple review or YouTube comment what was most valuable for you, and feel free to share this episode with a friend or a family member. Wishing you a wonderful, magical and focused day ahead.