Summary
Joe Hudson challenges the belief that working harder and longer leads to better results. He points out that somewhere in life, most people were taught that more effort equals more value — but this isn’t how the world actually works. Billionaires who made two or three good decisions outperform people who grind endlessly, and a jazz musician became world-class not by punishing himself into practicing but by falling in love with practice itself.
The video offers practical guidance: find your optimal effort window through experimentation (as Jeff Bezos did with his 10-5 decision-making window), identify the kinds of rest that work best for you (exercise, stillness, meditation, social connection), and quiet the inner critic that prevents genuine rest. Joe offers a simple exercise: close your eyes, listen to the inner voice, and respond “Ouch, please don’t treat me like that” to anything you wouldn’t say to another person. The voice quiets, and genuine rest — and then inspiration — becomes available.
Key Concepts
- Optimal effort is not maximum effort
- Falling in love with practice beats forcing yourself to practice
- What you really need is rest from your inner critic
- The “ouch” technique silences the inner critic
- There is a part of you that is always at rest
Key Quotes
“I know people who are billionaires who really literally made two or three good business decisions that took them no more than four weeks to become that billionaire.”
“He learned how to fall in love with practice. And so his practice wasn’t about getting better. His practice was like brushing teeth.”
“Once you beat yourself up for not practicing, then it’s harder and harder to practice.”
“Every time that voice in your head says something to you that you wouldn’t say to another person, respond out loud, ‘Ouch, please don’t treat me like that.‘”
“There’s some part of you that doesn’t ever stir. There’s always some part of you that is silent, that is undisturbed.”
Transcript
There’s a lot of people like yourself who have this tension inside of them. On one level, they are, “Wow, I didn’t get enough done.” And on another level, they know that if they don’t rest, they’re not going to get as much done. And yet, when they try to rest, they’re constantly telling themselves they have to do more. So, in this video, the main thing that we’re going to do is talk about how to see rest completely differently. And then we’re going to give you some very practical tools on how to make sure that you can rest without guilt.
So, where this whole thing starts is that somewhere in your life, you were told and you believe that if you work harder, you’ll be further along. If you do more, you’ll get more love, you’ll get more attention, you’ll get more money. That’s something that you were taught. And maybe you were taught that by a parent or by a teacher, but it was something that you were taught somehow. You got rewarded for doing more. So, it paid off in some way and then you believed it. But if you really look at the way the world works, it’s not the case.
I know people who I’ve worked with that are billionaires who really literally made two or three good business decisions that took them no more than four weeks to become that billionaire because they were investors and they didn’t have to do a tremendous amount. I know other people who’ve worked their butt off day after day and they’re still just keeping the checkbook kind of even and all that hard work that they put in day after day hasn’t paid off in the same way. We all see that there’s ways that people have figured something out that doesn’t require hard work and it’s in every aspect.
Now, obviously hard work is required for some things, but it’s also not the case that more hard work gets you even further along, right? It’s the approach as well. There’s this great musician who talks about how he became one of the world’s best jazz players. And it wasn’t just how many hours he put in, though he did put in hours, but what he did was that he learned how to fall in love with practice. And so his practice wasn’t about getting better. His practice was like brushing teeth. It was something that was supposed to feel good both in the moment and that would make you feel better in the long term.
And that approach made a huge difference rather than beating himself up for not practicing enough. Because once you beat yourself up for not practicing, then it’s harder and harder to practice. It doesn’t work as compared to somebody who is not beating themselves up. So it’s not just how many hours you put in, it’s how you approach it that makes you successful.
So once you realize that that thing that you were taught — that the more effort you put in, the more valuable you are, the more you’re worthy — and you start to see that, oh, there’s a certain amount of effort that I can put in that’s the optimal amount of effort. So quickly to understand that if a basketball player worked out 24 hours a day, they clearly are not going to be the best basketball player. They’re going to be — right? They’re not going to actually even be alive. So there’s a certain amount that you can work and there’s a certain amount where you can’t work because you need rest.
And you need rest physically so that your muscles can recover. But you also need rest mentally so that you can learn, so you can process the information so that you come at it fresh, so that you have the right energy. And a great example of this is an author that I met. He said, “I’m going to work 10 hours a day and see how much that produces or I’m going to do 3 hours a day for 7 days straight and see how much that produces.” And over time, what he found out was through this experimental process, he would take two 15-minute breaks where he got in his body, where he would dance or walk or something that got him grounded in his body. Even if he was in flow, he found out that, oh, if I stop and I get in my body, then I get more good pages in.
And so, even economists know this about factories that you can’t run a factory 24/7 and have it be in its optimal production rate. You need to actually rest the factory as well. You need to be able to have maintenance. There’s other things that you have to do. And so the first thing to realize is there is a maximum amount of effort that you can put in that’s going to get the best results. And to find out what that is is the first step of making sure you get the rest that you need. Because when you realize that, oh, I need x amount of rest to get the best results, you’re going to get that x amount of rest.
Just pick one thing that’s important to you. It doesn’t matter if it’s pickleball or if it’s creating great art or if it’s making great decisions. What you can do is you can say, “Okay, how many hours can I make great decisions in a row? How much time do I dedicate to get the best results?” And the funny thing is, you think about that decision thing. You know who did that? It was Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos starting at about 10:00 after 2 hours of what he called wandering and ending at 5 was the optimal amount of time that he could use to make great decisions. Otherwise, he started getting fatigued and he would make really bad decisions.
And if you think that’s true for him, it’s also true for you. Think about a decision that you made that cost you years of your life. Maybe it’s somebody that you dated or maybe it’s the way that you raised your kids. One good decision can save you years upon years of your life. So the job is to just pick one thing that you think is really important for you to do and do experiments to find out what’s the optimal amount of time that you can do that thing that gets you the best results.
The second thing you can do is really experiment how to rest. But here’s the thing about that is most people what they really need is a rest from their incessant voice telling them they’re not doing enough. Right? And so if you’re constantly beating yourself up for not doing enough, then you’re never getting the rest that you need.
So I had a CEO that I invested in long time ago and she was just a hard driver. And I asked her, “How do you drive so hard, so much, so long, for so many years?” And she said, “I don’t know.” And one day I was hanging out with her and she said, “Oh, it’s my time to ride horses.” And somehow or another she — she was 50-something years old and when she was 35 years old she learned how to ride horses and jump them. I went to go visit and we went down to the thing and she did it. We talked in the car on the way. Talked in the car on the way back. But I noticed when she was on that horse she couldn’t think about anything but the horse. 45 minutes straight she didn’t think about work. She didn’t think about herself. She didn’t beat herself up. She didn’t drive herself. And it gave her enough of a break so that she could be revitalized at the end of it and then go back to work. And that was her way of really getting rest and her way of stopping that incessant negative voice in the head which is constantly riding her which gave her no rest whatsoever.
Some rest is best done as exercise and some rest is best done as being still and some rest is best done as meditation and some rest is hanging out with friends. Different kinds of rest get you different results and sometimes you need one kind of rest and sometimes you need another kind of rest. So identifying the rest that gives you the best results is a wonderful thing to do.
So here’s a really simple easy way for you to get the rest that you actually deserve. And here it is. As you’re sitting there, close your eyes right now and listen to the voice in your head. Listen to how you’re speaking to yourself. And every time that voice in your head says something to you, like you should work harder, like you haven’t done enough, like you screwed up this, you screwed up that, whatever it has to say, anything that it says that you wouldn’t say to another person, respond out loud, “Ouch, please don’t treat me like that.” Silly, right? But so effective. Just close your eyes, hang out, and listen to the voice. And every time it says something that you wouldn’t say to somebody else, say, “Ouch, ouch, please don’t treat me like that.”
What’s going to happen is that voice is going to get quieter and quieter. It’s going to go into the background and you’re going to get some rest. Maybe you’ll fall asleep. Maybe you’ll just enter spaciousness. Something will happen, but it’ll become less and less. So that’s it. It’s a really simple way to make sure you get the rest that you need.
And what you’ll notice is if you do that long enough, all of a sudden you’ll be inspired. You’ll be like, “Oh, great. And now I’m up to do the next thing.” Whereas if you’re ignoring it like with a doom scroll or if you’re ignoring it by social media addiction or drug addiction, you’ll notice that that never really satiates. You never like all of a sudden pop up and go, “Okay, I’m ready to do the thing.” You might push yourself into doing the thing, but you don’t have that natural inspiration to do the thing.
The last component here that I think is really important is for you to actually notice there’s a part of you right now that is already at rest. There’s some part of you that doesn’t ever stir. So, I’m going to ask you to feel for that right now. It’s always there. There’s always some part of you that is silent, that is undisturbed. And if you just feel into that, you’ll notice there’s always a rest available to you. There’s always a quiet, settled place that you can go to inside of yourself. It’s just that easy.