[00:00:08.760] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:09.080] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:09.240] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:11.130] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:13.080] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week with Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. And look, we've got a new set.

[00:00:24.820] - Taylor
We do.

[00:00:25.360] - Gordon
Yeah. What we've done is we've taken everything out of our lounge and we've brought in a bedroom to make it look like it's a different location. Or actually, we could be in a different location. In fact, we are in a different location. And I will explain all about that when we get to my topic. Any news, first of all?

[00:00:45.520] - Taylor
Not from me.

[00:00:46.270] - Gordon
Okay, shall I go first so I can explain why we're here?

[00:00:49.330] - Taylor
Go for it.

[00:00:50.250] - Gordon
So my topic this week is taking time for yourself, recharging those batteries so you can come back with renewed energy. That's what we're doing today. Now, I must say this is recorded because we are away on Friday. So this is being recorded on Tuesday. Where are we, Taylor?

[00:01:12.810] - Taylor
We are at Alton Towers.

[00:01:14.110] - Gordon
We are at Alton Towers. Now, this is actually a birthday present to me from my lovely partner. She has given us two days at Alton Towers, and we are coming up to the evening of the first day. So it's really important to take time for yourself because if you just end up working, working, working, you get a bit stale, you get a bit Groundhog day. It's really nice to just take a break and just recharge those batteries. It gives you time to think things through, relax a bit, and come back to your normal work, thinking, having thought rather of all the things that have been going on. Sometimes you come up with ideas that you wouldn't have ever come up with if you hadn't have taken that time out. I don't recommend you do it if you've got a deadline. I think that's a really bad idea. But if you've got the time to do it, and when you're self-employed like we are, sometimes you get this tendency to sometimes work seven days a week. I know that I quite often do. My Monday to Friday is my time in the office, and then at the weekend, I'm quite often off doing shows. Personally, I don't get a lot of time off, and that's a choice thing. It's not something that I have to do. I can very easily take time off if I wanted to, and that's one of the reasons I'm here, because I have chosen to take time off. So we're at Alton Towers. We left early in the morning, this morning at about seven o'clock, got here about half eleven-ish, went to the water park, spent a few hours in there. Then we went and played our 18-hole, 9-hole golf. We get nine holes of golf included in our package and there was 18 holes in total and no one stopped us and everyone else seemed to just be carrying on; so we joined in. And then we checked in. And here we are sitting in our room. We're going to go to the Rollercoaster Restaurant this evening where your food is delivered on a roller coaster, which is quite cool.

[00:03:32.640] - Taylor
Yeah, very.

[00:03:32.960] - Gordon
And then tomorrow we're in the park all day and we have fast track passes as well. So thank you, first of all, to my partner, Clare, for the tickets and for arranging this trip for us. It was a lovely birthday present. And it is actually really nice to just not think about work. I know you've been sitting here and actually doing a little bit of work, but you've had most of the day off and you'll have all of tomorrow off. But there's a few last minute things you had to do, isn't there?

[00:04:06.920] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:04:07.470] - Gordon
We're in this room and this is my bed here and that's Taylor's bed. Yeah, the little one on the... You don't want to go to the top?

[00:04:18.070] - Taylor
No.

[00:04:18.490] - Gordon
Okay, probably best. We only get one chair in our room, which is what Taylor's sitting on. Look, I've got the bed to sit on. We've had to move everything over a little bit so that we are next to each other, which is a little bit odd, but there you go. Anything else you want to say on this, Taylor?

[00:04:37.050] - Taylor
I think that when you go for walks and you give yourself time to think, you sometimes come up with some ideas of the problem that you're tackling at that time of the day, for example. And I think that by giving yourself time off over a longer period, it gives yourself time to reflect more as a whole on whatever you're doing. So whether it be a business, whether it be your career, whether it be your relationships and things like that. And it gives you a chance to reflect as a whole of the whole part rather than just a small part of your day.

[00:05:18.840] - Gordon
Yeah. And you may not actually think that you're thinking about these things, but they are going around in your mind. And at some point, you might come up with a great idea without even thinking about it. It's percolating up there while you're doing other things, especially if you've got a project on and you've got maybe a couple of problems with that project and you're thinking, "How can I get around these?" By not thinking about it, sometimes you come up with the answer. Having breaks and holidays is a really good idea. This is only a couple of days. It's not like a holiday holiday where you go away for two weeks, but it's long enough and it's longer than we normally get to allow these thoughts to happen. So that's our time here. By the time you watch this, we would have got back and would be back into the full swing of things, just not available on the Friday to go live, which is why we're recording it. I should also say that by the time you watch this, I would have had two pantomime rehearsals.

[00:06:30.300] - Taylor
Wow.

[00:06:30.690] - Gordon
I'm in the local amateur pantomime, as I have been for many, many years. And this year I get to be Dame. I've never been Dame before. I've done an ugly sister. Not sure if I've mentioned this before or not, but I get to be the lovable Dame. Well, hopefully, the lovable Dame. So if you're in the area in January between the sixth and the 13th, you can get tickets. They're available now. I'll put a link in the show notes and yeah, come along and watch. It's great fun. Really, really good. What's your topic today, Taylor?

[00:07:02.650] - Taylor
So I want to talk about getting up early.

[00:07:05.180] - Gordon
Ooh. Like today?

[00:07:08.340] - Taylor
Yeah. So I've been reading a book called "The 5 AM Club," which has been really good. But before I started reading that, I had started getting up about half five.

[00:07:18.130] - Gordon
Wow!

[00:07:19.020] - Taylor
Which is very early for you.

[00:07:21.700] - Gordon
I didn't even know there was a half five in the morning.

[00:07:23.900] - Taylor
Yeah. And something that was a couple of years ago would have been very, very early for me as well. And something that I realised is that if I get up earlier, although I end up going to bed earlier, I'm a lot more productive. And the reason for that is because during the day, you have distractions, whether or not you want the distractions, they're inevitable. People messaging you, emailing you, people, family at home, people at home that want, you know, ask you questions or come in to say hello, things like that. And they don't mean to distract you, obviously, anyone really, but they end up, do distract you.

[00:08:07.490] - Gordon
Nicely phrased. I do apologise to the person transcribing this. They're going to have great fun with that.

[00:08:13.910] - Taylor
They end up... They do end up distracting you. There we go.

[00:08:19.120] - Gordon
Very good. I'm going to move the mic so it's pointing towards you a bit.

[00:08:22.770] - Taylor
And by getting up earlier, you not only feel better, you feel a weird sense of superiority. And it's a very bizarre feeling, but it's basically the idea of that by the time you've done three hours of work, most people haven't even got up yet. And it helps, I think, keep me at least, on track. It allows me to go to the gym in the morning and then that sets me up for the day. Or it allows me to knock out a good three hours of work before anybody else is awake, anyone's going to be sending me emails. It's a nice way, place to focus without feeling that I'm ignoring people. Because you don't want to ignore people, but at the same time, you don't want to be distracted and not be able to get the important work that you need done. So by getting up earlier, it's just helped me get a lot more done. And then by the end of the day in the evenings, I then don't feel a sense of rushing because I'm trying to get something finished by the end of the day because my day essentially finishes a bit earlier than other people. And it's helped me keep a routine. So by making sure that I go to bed at a reasonable time, I've started reading before I go to bed, doing some brain training and things like that, and having a strict schedule that I go to bed and wake up, it helps me keep routine. My body knows what's happening, and it's just a lot easier to keep track of how I feel. Because I think a lot of the reasons why you feel horrible and you just feel all over the place is because you don't have a routine. And that's something that I've been working on trying to stick to. And it is difficult because you have life. If you go out for a meal or so, you can't be back in time for when you want to be starting to wind down and things like that. And I've definitely been looking into sleep and how it works and the science behind it, which is also really helpful to go into in another episode. But yeah, just routine and getting up early has really helped me.

[00:10:39.780] - Gordon
I think it does depend on what sort of person you are, because I'm not an early morning person unless I have to be. I will get up and I will... This morning we were out the door and on the road by 7am. So when I have to be, if I've got shows or whatever, I will be. But I find I do most of my work in the evening, so I'm more of a night owl. I'll work later and then go to bed and get up later because I find I'm more productive. For the same reason as you, you're not distracted so much at night time because everyone else is out enjoying themselves or sleeping.

[00:11:19.040] - Taylor
Yeah, I did used to do that. I used to stay up late and go to bed at 2, 3am in the morning. But what I found was it was very hard to keep that schedule and to a way that worked for other people. At least I feel like it's more acceptable to go to bed earlier than it is to get up earlier, go to bed later, I guess. Get up later. Just because there's a lot of people that whenever I want to go for walks with my friends and they would say 8am and I'd be like, "Oh, I'll still be in bed, asleep at that time." I shifted my mentality to getting up earlier, but also because I wanted to go to the gym. For me, the gym is not only about getting fit, but it's also about being able to clear my head, being able to just help me start my day. By starting it later, it was always crowded and things like that. And yeah, it just helped me keep a routine.

[00:12:28.190] - Gordon
Yeah, it's very good. I think you just need to find out what sort of person you are and do it to the extreme. Either get up really early or stay up really late, either way. Anything else you want to say?

[00:12:39.620] - Taylor
I don't think so. I think that that's it, really.

[00:12:43.800] - Gordon
I do hope everyone can hear us okay, because we've got our mic with us, but it's obviously a lot further away than we're used to, so it might be going up and down. And if so, I do apologise to everyone. So, just realised, those people who are listening to this, we're in a bedroom. We're in a hotel room at Alton Towers. I should have mentioned that, talking about the bed and everything else. I think that's everything I want to say.

[00:13:11.420] - Taylor
And me as well.

[00:13:12.660] - Gordon
We need to go and get ready because not only have we got the Rollercoaster Restaurant tonight, we're going to see a magic show, aren't we?

[00:13:19.170] - Taylor
We are.

[00:13:19.620] - Gordon
Yeah, there's a magician on very shortly. And as a magician myself, professional curiosity has got the better of me. I want to go and see who it is and what they do and how it all works. Because even though I do magic for a living, I do certain types of shows. Going to a venue like this is not one of those shows, not on a regular basis anyway. So I'm going to be really interested just to see what it is, and I might even know them. You never know. That's it from me. Thank you so much for joining us. As always, you can like, share, and subscribe. We're on Facebook and on YouTube.

[00:14:02.550] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.

[00:14:07.130] - Gordon
Don't forget, we do have our chatbot on the website and you can ask it questions about any of our content from any of our episodes and find out what we said and it'll direct you through to, hopefully, where we said it. Until next week, thank you for joining us. We'll be with you 1pm on Friday. You'll be back by then, won't you?

[00:14:31.920] - Taylor
Yes.

[00:14:32.470] - Gordon
Because Taylor is going away, which is the reason we can't do Friday. I'm sure you'll hear all about that next week. Until then, my name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.

[00:14:42.410] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:14:44.740] - Gordon
Goodbye.

[00:14:45.420] - Taylor
Bye.

This Week's Topics

Show Notes