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Five years into his corporate career, Grant Gurewitz found himself experiencing burnout, being constantly needed by his company and sacrificing more and more of his peace and personal life to be at the company’s beck and call. The usual lifestyle hacks such as journaling, diet and exercise and other changes only added to his burden, and traditional masculine attitudes dictated he just push on through.
Things finally began to change when he began to define success on his own terms outside of Western capitalist values. He has since founded The School of Logging Off where he teaches others how to redefine their relationships to work while remaining in the corporate world.
A balanced life and career success need not be mutually exclusive. In fact, many aspects of wellness and sustainability – taking time to exercise, taking breaks during work hours to be in nature – are exactly the kind of unconscious activities that help with problem-solving and creativity. Though the time spent may cut into the conventional notion of productivity, they can make for a better employee, and the value of work can begin to mean more than just the hours spent at a desk.
In this episode of Expansive Intimacy, Grant and Jim discuss the rejuvenating power of nature and why transactional thinking – though it seems so naturally opposed to intimacy – can actually be a good thing.
Quotes:
“I felt like I couldn't log off for fear that something might happen when I did.” (6:23 | Grant)
“I realized something had to change, but then that opened up the next daunting task, which was how do I even grapple with that myself? Because I don't want to start mailing it in, I don't want to be seen as this lazy employee. I don't want to turn into this clock punching mentality, essentially.” (8:04 | Grant)
“The first piece that really fell into line for me was really getting crisp and clear on how I define success for myself and not how I thought society shouldn't define success for me.” (9:29 | Grant)
“The way I always think and talk about positioning is, if I don't do these things, then you're going to get a lesser me and you're paying me for my creativity, my knowledge, my brain. And if my brain is working at half capacity, you just aren't getting the best out of me. So the things I need to do to recalibrate, and rejuvenate and fill my cup are going to be the things that actually make me a far better asset to the organization anyway,” (19:43 | Grant)
“I think you have to give yourself the freedom to do really high impact work in a high quality way, and then be done with it.” (30:42 | Grant)
“I do not have the career aspiration of becoming the Chief Marketing Officer or like a VP of Marketing, necessarily. That's not my career aspiration to continue to climb that corporate ladder, the dangerous game that you describe of continuing to chase because–here's the football goalpost analogy– it's going to continue to move on you and you're never going to get there.” (33:00 | Grant)
Connect with Grant Gurewitz:
Website & newsletter: https://schoolofloggingoff.com/
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The views expressed are that of the individual and do not represent the opinions of any companies past, present or future.
Intro Music: Catch It by Coma- Media
Outro Music: Upbeat Funky Retro by QubeSounds