Good morning. Happy Monday. It’s John Garrett coming to you with another episode of Green Apple Slices where every Monday, I always talk with the Accountants Group Leader for Sage in Canada, Rachel Fisch on the other line. How are you, Rachel?

Rachel: Hello. Hi. Good. How are you?

John: Doing great. Everything’s really good. I’ve had a couple of trips to Texas to speak. Actually, the last one was at a CPA conference where they had Frito pie which is a bag of Frito chips and then you pour in chilly and cheese and then you have a heart attack. I think that’s how it goes.

Rachel: I did see that on your Twitter feed, and I was like, I’m going to have to ask you about this one because —

John: Yeah, at a conference.

Rachel: Yeah, no. I think I’m a little too Canadian for that. I don’t know. That doesn’t seem like a thing, but —

John: It was awesome. I mean it’s no beavertail, but it’s pretty awesome. Every Monday, we always get together and talk through an article that we find online about culture engagement and things like that. This one is on Forbes by Dan Pontefract, and it’s, “You Are Way Too Busy; It’s Hampering Your Ability to Think and Be Productive.”

Rachel: I agree.

John: I love how he talks about those phrases that are so cheesy. Give 110% effort or do more with less.

Rachel: Worst phrase ever.

John: Phrases like that. It’s impossible. You can’t do 110% effort. It’s crazy.

Rachel: You can’t, no. It’s totally true. It’s really funny because I kind of feel like this is — like I was just listening to this successful bookkeeper podcast with Michael Palmer. In it, he was talking to Kathleen Chan. This was a little while ago, it’s a few episodes ago. But yeah, they kind of went on this little tangent about working better actually has to do with being healthier and taking care of yourself and then you’ll take care of your business better. A tweet from my boss Paul Struthers was an article, an hbr.org article, however it is. In his little quote, lack of sleep is not a badge of honor.

And then we’ve got for example Ariana Huffington who had her own little breakdown and was hospitalized and recently wrote an open letter to Elon Musk about like, “Look, dude. You’re not winning any awards for burning the candles at both ends.” I just kind of feel like all of these things that I’ve listened to were seen or have occurred recently. It all has to do with the fact that there is — I feel a level of expectation. The really cool thing is that you could work anywhere, but the really horrible thing is that you can work from anywhere, right?

John: Right.

Rachel: It’s like it really has to be up to you to turn off.

John: Absolutely. There was a survey that stress polls SM did. 60% of employees report being in the high stress category which is crazy and it can lead to — well, it says here at the statistics, 41% of people lost 15 to 30 minutes per day in productivity specifically due to stress. Another 36% lost one hour or more per day. That’s 77%.

Rachel: I actually was surprised that that wasn’t more because if you think of your lack of clarity and focus, your lack of creativity and ideas like all of the things that help you be really productive at work, your body simply can’t handle that when you’re overstressed. It just doesn’t work well. Kind of like forgetting what you were talking about in the middle of a podcast.

John: Right.

Rachel: I’m sure that never happens.

John: It happens to — wait, what was it? I didn’t even hear what you said. Is that bad? But no, absolutely. If you want to read the article, there’s a lot of great statistics in hearing some different data from different studies that were done. You can go to greenapplepodcast.com. You could check it out there. Don’t forget to subscribe, because every Monday, Rachel and I talk through an article that we find online. Every Wednesday, I interview someone who’s known for a passion or an interests or hobbies outside of work. If that’s you or someone you know, let me know because I’d love to have you on the show. That’ll work, Rachel. I hope you have a good rest of the week. You’re off to Calgary?

Rachel: Yeah. I am leaving tomorrow for Calgary for the whole week for our Institute of Professional Bookkeepers of Canada National Conference. That should be fun.

John: Fantastic.

Rachel: Hanging out with all those bookkeepers.

John: Nice.

Rachel: Yeah, lots of stuff going on right now. Cool.

John: Very cool. We’ll check back in next week. Have a good one.

Rachel: Yeah, you too.