No, we’re not actually talking about being drunk…

Today’s episode is about that slump you get into during the holidays. You sort of check out for the year around Thanksgiving in November, only to try to shock things back to life with a New Year’s Resolution in January.

Is this good?

Should you give into the hangover, and just relax until the new year, or should you start setting up next year for success now?

Has your work changed in any way the past few years?

Consider your home office. At one point, you arranged your space for the type of work you’re doing.

Over time, the work you do changes. Priorities change, but your environment stays the same. This means your office space is no longer ideal for the work you do. You’re not as productive as you could be.

Join us today for a journey of reevaluating your office space. We’ll talk about how to better organizer your environment (both physically and digitally) for maximum productivity.

You need dedicated time to think.

The actual work you do is only part of the process. What work you do, how you do it, and when you do it, are all determined in your thinking time.

You don’t want to work hard on the wrong things.

Clarity is everything. Thinking time helps you solve problems and clear your mind.

Today, we talk about why you need thinking time, how to find time to think, how to get mental clarity, two kinds of thinking times, and more.

Before we record the podcast, we stream a live “Pre Show” to the seanwes members in the Community. It’s a casual and fun segment where we catch up with what’s going on in each other’s lives, share behind the scenes stuff, and have a good time.

Coffee With Sean and Ben has the same casual vibe. It’s like a longer, public Pre Show where you can see the kinds of things you miss each week by not tuning in live.

With our topical shows, there’s not much time to share what’s going on or what’s on our minds. The “coffee” format gives us time to share more of what we’re thinking about as well as respond to things like listener feedback (should you send any via seanwes.com/contact).

This week, we cover:

• Gratitude
• Ben’s new AirPods
• My nearly starting an electrical fire in my office
• Sabbatical and holiday recap
• Updates on my months-long Learning Paths project
• Updates on how seanwes is doing and my outlook
• My excitement for the two Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 4K Cameras I pre-ordered
• Plans to ramp up content production (of all kinds) in 2019
• Teasing and upcoming show on the topic of: “Is it possible to be friends with someone who doesn’t share your values (and if so, should you?)”
• Thoughts and ideas about the fast-approaching 2020 sabbatical year

I like efficiency.

I want all of the information I can get fast, fast, FAST! I pride myself on digesting loads of information quickly.

For this reason, I’m a big fan of writing. Written words are easy to skim and take in quickly. If I want to find something specific, I just search for a key word. You can’t scrub through (or gloss over) videos or podcast audio content as easily.

So writing wins, right? Reading is best because it’s faster, right?

Well, not so fast (heh).

Faster doesn’t always mean better.

Here’s a thought: what if all the information and wisdom you ever needed in life you’ve already heard? What if you didn’t need *more* information, but instead to reflect on, meditate on, and APPLY the information you’ve already consumed?

It’s likely you’ve already consumed more information than most people did in their entire lives just a few hundred years ago.

I’m not saying we’d be better off in the dark ages. Information is a wonderful thing!

But while we’re often in constant pursuit of more, more, and more information—at 2X speeds, skimming, glossing, scrolling, and digesting in quick bite-sized chunks—it may not be the best way to learn and internalize important topics.

I started taking off every seventh week in 2014 as a sabbatical.

The only reason I followed through with it is because I told people I was going to do it. I was public about the fact that I was going to try out this sabbatical idea I had.

Committing publicly is actually what got me to follow through with taking a sabbatical (I might not have otherwise).

Sabbaticals are the topic of my next book. My next book is called Seventh Week Sabbatical. I was writing the book offline, but I thought, “You know what? If I get hit by a bus, I want at least part of these ideas to be out there.”

So I decided to write the book in public on a new website at sabbatical.blog (there’s also a separate email newsletter there if you want to get notified of updates).

My mission: By 2047, I want every company in the world to pay their employees to take off every seventh week as a sabbatical.

In today’s episode, I share a clip of an interview I did with Brent Weaver on his podcast, The Digital Agency Show, where we talked more about sabbaticals and preventing burnout (spoiler: Brent committed to scheduling his sabbatical on the recording!). If you want to hear the full conversation, you can check out his podcast for more.

You have stuff around your house you’re no longer using. You could turn it into money by selling it.

“But it’s such a hassle.”

I hear you. I’ve procrastinated on getting rid of things I haven’t used in months or years because I don’t want to go to the trouble of selling it.

Maybe you’ve used eBay before. Maybe you used eBay back in the day. I’ve been selling on eBay for 17 years. A decade ago, it was a hassle, I’ll be honest.

What a lot of people don’t know is just how easy it’s become to sell things on eBay. It’s practically as easy as posting on social media now.

eBay autofills all of the details about the product you’re selling. You can sell right from your phone. Just snap a few pictures, and tap to select the photos you want to include from your camera roll.

In fact, eBay has gone so far out of their way to make it insanely easy to sell, a lot of the advanced options are nearly impossible to find (unless you know where to look). Their idea is to get the complicated stuff out of your way so it becomes absurdly easy for anyone to sell.

I’ve sold cameras, computers, and all kinds of electronics on eBay and turned it into thousands of dollars—that I then spent on new, upgraded equipment! What I’ve found is so many people either haven’t tried eBay themselves, or they did years ago and assume it’s still a hassle (it isn’t).

Yet, even knowing how easy it is to sell things these days, I still procrastinate myself on offloading my unused devices. Why do we resist? Why do we put off selling stuff? We talk about some ways you can make selling easier, practical tips for turning unused items into cash, and even flipping (buying things for cheap and selling them for more).

So you want to read more books but you just can’t find the time.

How did I know, right?!

Okay, so it’s not an uncommon problem. You’ve probably bought some new books as a way to kickstart your new reading habit. Surely if you stack more books on your nightstand, you’ll eventually read them.

But somehow, you keep going to the phone. “What’s new on social media?” You look for bit-sized content you can consume in seconds. You don’t have time to read a book right now, but you can get a few scrolls of your feeds.

Next thing you know, it’s time to sleep. Another busy day ahead tomorrow. The books remain unread, and now you start to feel bad. Your books start to represent guilt itself.

Where do you find time to read?

How can you stick with a reading habit consistently?

Can you ever overcome the guilt of buying books and not reading them?

We’ll answer all of these and more.

We’re introducing a new show type we might continue doing periodically called, “Coffee With Sean and Ben”.

Before we record the podcast, we start streaming a live “Pre Show” to the seanwes members in the Community. It’s a casual and fun segment where we catch up with what’s going on in each other’s lives, share behind the scenes stuff, and have a good time.

Coffee With Sean and Ben will be in that same spirit. It’s like a longer, public Pre Show where you can see the kinds of things you miss each week by not tuning in live.

With our topical shows, there’s not much time to share what’s going on or what’s on our minds. We’re thinking this format will give us time to share more of what we’re thinking about as well as respond to things like listener feedback (should you send any).

In fact, we’re hoping you do send in feedback. We’d love to hear what you think of this occasional show format and if you have any questions you’d like us to answer: https://seanwes.com/contact

Since Ben will be out of town, we decided to record a long episode and break it into two parts. This episode is Part 2 of 2.