Kim Groshek: 35 Incredible Years in Business
I’m Kim Groshek, a seasoned business professional with over 35 years of experience working with Fortune 100 companies like Kraft, GE, New York University, and UW Madison. In fact, I even helped establish the infrastructure for realtor.com in 2000 during my corporate journey focused on mergers and acquisitions.
But there’s more to me than just business. I’m also a passionate professional athlete who completed an Ironman run in all 50 states. However, these days, my attention has shifted towards empowering individuals through effective time management techniques, specifically a new approach called time boxing. My goal is to restore balance and productivity in people’s lives, particularly for busy families in higher income brackets who are working professionals.
You see, as a computer scientist, I once battled with social media addiction and constantly being tied to my smartphone. To break free from this cycle, I took a radical step—I turned off my smartphone, deactivated my social media, and unplugged for an entire year. This experience led me to discover the power of intentional pausing and reconnecting with myself. Now, I’m on a mission to help others develop this practice of intentional pausing to activate their own intimate connection and be fully present with their loved ones.
So, if you’re someone who values efficient time management, is open to learning new strategies like time boxing, prioritizes tasks and resource allocation, and aims to increase productivity while enjoying quality time with family and friends, I’m here to support you on this journey. Let’s restore balance, optimize your output, and create more meaningful moments together.
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Interview Transcript Kim Groshek
Richard Lowe 00:01
Good day, everyone. This is Richard Lowe with author talks. I have here Kim, who helps high stress professionals and busy families to keep the pause in their life to get courage to try new things and get to know themselves again, I’m sure Kim will explain that during the interview. I’m Richard Lowe, like I said, and I’m the owner of the writing King and a ghostwriter. And I also do book coaching and LinkedIn branding. So let’s get started on that interview. Tim, how you doing today?
Kim Groshek 00:27
I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.
00:29
My pleasure. My pleasure. This is loads of fun. I’m doing three of these a week now. And appeals to having having a great time doing interviews and meeting new people. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and your business?
Kim Groshek 00:41
Yeah, so I am, I’ve been in the industry for over 35 years, I’ve worked in Fortune 100 companies with kind of revamping companies, and I’ve made a major pivot in my career in the last year, where I’m creating a movement, it’s called the pause Power Movement. And basically, it’s encouraging everyone to take 15 minutes a day, and to pause, unplug, and breathe. And just kind of be in the space and, and kind of under, you know, uncover whatever you uncover. So that’s really what I’m doing. Why I’m doing it. I’m a computer scientist by trade. I’ve been doing this since 1980. And I’ve been riding the wave, right? Anytime, something new came up, I was on it. I was I was on the top of the wave, right. And I was the first one to adapt, you know, going on Facebook in 2005, I’ve anything right I created over here realtor.com. I was the person that created that whole infrastructure. So that’s kind of what I did. I do a lot of people transformation as well. And so in 2000, I’d say 15 ish. So about 10 years later, I kind of realized that I was in social media way too much, I’d get up in the morning. And the first thing I did was kind of just dive right into that social media. And I found that all of a sudden, whoa, you know, three hours later, I just was I didn’t have anything done. And I was still on social media. So I decided to take deactivate my social media for six months. And I actually deactivated my phone for a year during that time to test out because you know, the whole everyone the whole infrastructure is made up of this now, right. And it’s the driving force. It’s really the thing in the driver’s seat, right. So I wanted to see if I test the theory, if I could do this right without it. And I could, I did. And I actually journaled about it every day, actually, I found that I had a lot more time, I found that stresses in my neck, I had a lot of stresses, which I didn’t realize, right, kind of just lifted. And then I realized that I had so much time on my hands to do the things that I really want it to do. And so I just kind of you know, I went on my merry way, I had this all journaled. And in the last year is when I started to kind of pull everything together, I actually wrote a book, I just pulled all my stories and books and all the lessons that I learned. But really, what I’m seeing is, you know, anytime I go out into public right now, I see people, you know, sitting around the dining room table, for instance, and everyone is like this. And many times there’s, you know, mom’s sitting next to maybe the child and the child’s and they’re looking at the note in the phone, and the child might be dealing with, you know, some anxiety or bullying or whatever, right within that. And mom doesn’t even know what’s happening. And there is this disconnect in communication. So so what I, you know, in my experience with the pause, right, I just kind of, it’s really just a word to help remind us to pause. That’s the only reason why I brought that into the picture. So then, you know, when we say it, we pause, and we actually agree to take that 15 minutes or even more, right? Then we can really just get back into our body and our mind and maybe even spend time with people or just ourselves. Sometimes it’s even uncomfortable to just to be with ourselves, right? Sometimes it’s going to be uncomfortable just to be disconnected. Because we’re so used to holding on to that smartphone or, you know, whatever gadget that may be being an app or whatever. So that’s what I’m up to. That’s what that is. Do you have any questions about it?
Richard Lowe 04:50
Well, it’s very interesting. I’ve done a similar thing, in that I jumped on social media. Well, I started roughly the same time you did. I started in 1980 on PDP 11 and the VAX PMS and kind of rode the wave I was a VP a couple times to Trader Joe’s, I was a director of tech services, and super stressed. So I left that to become a ghostwriter. And that was a very good decision. But of course, I jumped straight into social media because it’s a good way to advertise. least it appears that way on the surface, wasted a lot of money and time advertising on social media with very few results. Because you actually need to know what you’re doing there. No kidding. It’s, it’s not easy. You can’t just throw out ads. And now what I do is every day, I get up rather early, do my my normal routine of posting and stuff, and then work on some customers and then take a break for about an hour and get on the exercise bike and just watch a movie or something. And then later in the day, I take a break and work on my hobbies, which is building model kits and things. And that has had a dramatic effect on my mood, and my life. Because I’m not putting in 18 hours a day working. And I got rid of all of the cruising on social media, I don’t care what’s on social media, I’m just using it for business. And that’s a lot less labor intensive than sitting there and scrolling through and reading all the stories and writing my opinions getting trolled and all that kind of stuff happens. And so I can, while I haven’t read your book, I can speak from, from experience that social media has its value, but it’s not what most people are using it for. It’s not, you shouldn’t be using it as a babysitter. Because if you are, you’re not being a good parent, in my opinion, you should be watching your own child, and so forth. I mean, I’m sure there’s times I’m throwing them on a video, when I’m falling with a movie is a good thing you would think. But having them sit there on Facebook, I’m not sure that’s a good thing for a kid. I’m really glad it wasn’t around when I was a teenager, because I would have turned out very different. And I’m glad cell phones weren’t around when I was a teenager, because I would have turned out very different. So, we had to it’s just fascinating how much people are dependent on those little, small boxes with screens on them. And they use them for so many things that they don’t need to. And I think the pandemic made it worse. And it’s still getting worse.
Kim Groshek 07:26
Yeah, and you know, the thing is, so just the other day, I was I heard I didn’t, didn’t see I’m not on tic tac. But there was a parent that was, you know, really concerned and really anxious and frustrated that, you know, they couldn’t get their 20-year-old to, you know, up and out in kind of they weren’t having the opportunities that we might have had. And that’s actually what I actually, when I saw, I have, you know, as I said, you know, I went into two different large global companies. And I would use I’ve actually learned through the 35 years, and sharpen these skill sets and tools, and approaches that actually can be applied in a family situation like that. In fact, I have a 35 year old daughter, and I actually did apply this, and she was really little. The first step that I did was, she had a lot of she could she had a lot of emotion, but she could never articulate or say the words to the emotion. And this is a simple exercise. And I’m sure you’ve probably seen some of the same similar exercise out there. But what I would do every morning is I would, you know, there was a I had all the different emotions on a board. And then I had a magnet, and then I would just have my she was around three at the time. And I would say How are you feeling today? And then we would go through the words, you know, because at three she was still learning how to read. And she would so now select how you’re feeling, and I would explain the field the different words to her as well. And she did this eventually she got to you know, at the moment, right? How are you feeling at this moment, because during the day, you’re gonna have different moods. She was able then to associate those words with the emotion. And even today at 35 we there are a lot of words that mean something similar, but not exactly the same, or the word sound like something that would be an emotion and there are times when we’ll even bring up emotion again and talk about the two different types of words. And I think that that’s just one little nugget of things that is part of this whole framework that I actually work with families, moms, dads and kids, even millenniums, right the millennial age, really that area to help that group articulate because I think there’s times where we’re taught. We’re in this and we’re not even articulating a lot of how we’re feeling or even just Talking, right? And so that prompts, that has been really a good thing for even my relationship with my daughter, because she can, you know, she can regulate and then actually articulate those words, where I think she probably would have missed that if we would have never gone through that one. One exercise, there’s so many different types of things that we’ve done to make her successful. She’s actually very empowered. Now, she’s working for a national organization, and she’s a director, and she’s on her way to, you know, she’s very much on her own. So, and I get what people are dealing with in their 20s, because I went through it with my daughter as well. But we I applied all of these different approaches to that. So you know, it can be stressful, these are stressful times, you know, eight people can be anxious. And that’s what I do is I’m a mental health health expert. for busy professionals, students in schools and families.
Richard Lowe 10:58
I understand Yes, as a solopreneur, you can imagine I go through times of anxiety and stress and feelings of that it’s out of control, and blah, blah, blah. But it’s nothing like it was when I was working for a corporation, because the person that I have to satisfy as my clients and me, I don’t have to satisfy anybody. Well, I mean, I’m a tax man and usual stuff. But I don’t have to satisfy any boss, other than my clients, you could consider them bosses, I guess. And it’s become much more fulfilling, because I’m working port for me. And any money I make goes to me, and whatever I decide to donate to, and I get to make my own choices, when am I going to work? When am I not going to work with them? Who am I going to work with? I’ve decided I don’t work with toxic customers. That was a big change. I mean, it turned out at 200,000 on a client a couple years ago, just because like oh my god, I left corporate for this. Something that that I see a lot of lately is people wandering on the supermarket’s having fun conversations with Lord knows who that they’re sharing with the world. They’re having they’re in the middle of a bitter divorce and just talking about it while they’re in the supermarket on the phone. It’s like, this is really not appropriate, because first of all, we don’t care, we’re being exposed to your personal drama. And it’s very rude to do that, like to the checker and all the people who are in the market. And I don’t even know where they get the idea that that’s okay.
Kim Groshek 12:31
Yeah, and that’s, and that’s exactly the reason why I’m doing this, because what I’ve seen, and I actually predicted this would happen is, you know, imagine having that device in the driver’s seat of the bus. And we’re sitting in the backseat. And that’s kind of what I’m hearing you say, it’s really your, your work, we, you know, we are all in your situation that you were just talking about, is that we’re, you know, just having to sit back here because, you know, that device is driving that conversation, right. But what the pause does, is it gives you the opportunity to be empowered to say, I’m going to pause, and then you’re in the driver’s seat, and then you choose, that’s your choice. That’s your, that’s what makes you empowered. And then you can choose to shut down those apps, you can choose not to answer the phone, you can choose when to talk on the phone. And even like I just took seven days pause an entire unplug for seven days. I do this periodically. And I know that’s extreme. But it sure certainly gives me time. And you know, I’m out there doing I’m an athlete, I like to ride bikes and do all those things, right? And be in nature, and it gives me time to just really, you know, be in God’s country, right in nature. And really give me time to imagine or even reflect on everything that’s going on, because you can be in the weeds, like you were saying in when you were working for corporate, which I did for 35 years, right. But I also use these different approaches, compressing time, to give me time back to do a lot of cool things, you know, like, like, you’ve seen all the published books that I have, I have, you know, produced documentaries. I created animated shorts. I’ve I’ve been a commissioned to play that went around the Midwest, right? For anti-bullying, just a lot of really wild stuff and people and I’ve done an Ironman, right? And people say, how can you do that? Right? Well, it’s because I am proactive, right? I’m I’m empowered to make my choices. When I worked for corporate and I was a consultant, I had my own business, but I go into the companies and of course, you’re still working for them, even though you’re your own boss, but you aren’t. But I would set time. And I’d say I’m done. You know, I’m working these many hours and I’m shutting it off. And then I’m going to focus in that’s the whole thing about the compressed time that I actually teach people as part of some of my programs. And you have that time to choose whether to be with your family or focus on getting that book published or whatever, you know, get get that run in for training or whatever you’re gonna do.
Richard Lowe 15:10
Yeah, yeah, when I was at corporate, I worked for Trader Joe’s, I was on call 24 by seven for 20 years, literally plugged in literally told you answer the phone within five minutes. Or we’ll be talking to you. And not a nice way. So I remember I wanted to go to the Grand Canyon, and I was told, well, you’re gonna keep your phone plugged in your laptop with you. And that was very disconcerting. And that’s probably when I got the first idea like, this isn’t the right place for me. And there were times lot of times where I’d go hiking and things. And the idea was, I couldn’t receive cell phone service in the middle of Joshua Tree National Park. And too bad. I have backup people. I always did. So they could handle a disaster. So, it was it was very disconcerting, and I had to come up with ways to handle it. Now. I keep my phone in the front room, and I sleep in the backroom. I don’t answer the phone at night. There’s there’s never been an emergency since I’ve left corporate that required me to jump on the phone right away. You know, is there’s anybody in my life, friends and family and stuff. They’re, they’re not children, they’re expected to be adults, they’re expected to call right people, I’m not their emergency contact. For you know, I’m not their 911. Ambulance Service, I’m not their chauffeur and stuff like that. That may sound cruel or something. But they’re expected to be adults. And
Kim Groshek 16:38
well, that’s, you know, I mean, that’s a very good example of being empowered, you are empowered to make your own decisions, you make your decision, you you actually articulate or explain that to the different people. And you’re actually getting an agreement. That’s the other piece of this puzzle, I have three different pieces pausing time box, which is time compression that I just talked about. And then this agreement, and this is kind of something that is very interesting. And I’m gonna kind of sound like I’m doing double talk. But it’s really, it’s really, this is very, very important to listen. So, when we make an agreement, like say that in the morning, you say, I’m going to, I’m going to go on a walk every day at eight o’clock. And we make an agreement to do that, but then we don’t do it, we never really agreed to do it. So, the agreement is so important that we actually aren’t agreeing with ourselves half the time. And then, which is this was actually a skill that I used in corporate, right. And I’ve used it in my life. And it’s the again, it’s the you and I are talking we agreed you and I agreed to have this time to do this interview and everything. And there was some back and forth to make sure we understood what the group was, and all of that. But we came to the agreement. And I showed up because I agreed I was going to do it. And you showed up because you agreed that you were going to interview me, right? And many times there are people that will not show up because they walked away agreeing but not really agreeing. Right. And so that is such a key thing. And it’s about that. If you ever watched Leave It to Beaver back in the 1970s there was a lot of articulation and, and verbalization about, you know, lessons. And I think I think we miss a lot of that conversation because we’re relying on this to teach us instead of June Cleaver sitting down with beaver right and saying, hey, you know, do you remember today? What happened today? You know, and then he explained it, and then she would give her little lesson, right? That’s all that’s very, very, very important. And that’s there that has a lot to do with agreement. Because beaver was then agreeing he understood because he could associate what he’s experienced in that morning. And she could explain as in a kind way, right? So there and then and they were talking, right that talking between each other in person.
Richard Lowe 18:58
Yeah, I read a book many years ago by Larry wing it. He’s a public speaker who speaks about mental health issues and things. And one of he wrote a book many books, but he wrote one book called people are idiots, and I can prove it. And it’s a very interesting book, the title is purposely inflammatory. Get people to look at it. And one of the things he says if you make an agreement, you keep it. So, if to write into what you’re saying. So, if you’re a parent, and you tell the child, I’m going to punish you, if you do this, you darn well, better punish that child if they do that. Because otherwise you’re teaching them that you’re, you don’t keep your word. worse and worse. Yeah, and that
Kim Groshek 19:40
And they’ll keep they’ll just get worse and that has a lot to do with integrity. And that’s really what it’s about, right? It’s about an an and so when you say something and then follow through with that the doing right says I do remember that saying say as I do and that is or whatever they say is I do not as I do.
Richard Lowe 19:56
or whatever that was I say and not what I do, do as I do and not what It doesn’t have integrity, right?
Kim Groshek 20:00
You know that you say what you’re going to do, and you do it. But the thing is, sometimes things in life come up, or you need to re say what you’re going to do, because you might have to remake a new agreement. And that’s the whole crux of this all, we can’t mandate that if you know, you’re not going to follow through, then you’re out of integrity, it’s when you’re out of integrity, because you never explained to them that something changed. And now this is my new agreement with you. Right? And what is discipline, right, and the agreement around discipline, which is not being talked about. So then when I hear the word discipline, my, my definition of discipline is different than yours, possibly, or someone else’s. And the agreement is different now, and I walk away with a different agreement than you again, agreement is such a, it’s all about talking about what the discipline means, then you’ll get disciplined. And what does that mean, you’ll go look at that, you’ll be sitting in the corner, at the wall for five minutes, or, you know, whatever that discipline is going to be, right, it’s very clear to that child or that person. Right?
Richard Lowe 21:10
When I was growing up, discipline meant getting hit with a belt, getting spanked, and getting hit with a pipe. Yeah, and out there anymore. Well, they’re both past long passed away, and I’ve moved out a long time ago and put up with it anymore. And my mind discipline means, you know, more, more like, we’re going to have a discussion about this, and you’re going to come up with an amends for what you did. So, if I had kids, now, I would say you did that you weren’t supposed to do that you stayed late, you weren’t supposed to, how are you going to make up that damage, because you damage our relationship, you need to fix it. And that would be more discipline than then they decide. And I agreed to it, what that punishment is, it might be okay, I’m going to stay home and do this, there has to be something. And I would agree to it, and they would agree to it. And then they have to do it. That’s the way I would do discipline these days, as opposed to the lead pipe and two by four. One by one.
Kim Groshek 22:13
And here’s an example of there’s some problems that I’ve heard, and I’m going to share, and then the reason why it’s happening because of the agreements are different. Okay, so. So, you know, a parent, or even a child, a teenage child or Millennium in their 20s, talk to the parent and said, I wanted you to do this for me, or vice versa, right. And then the person that was receiving that didn’t hit the deadline that was expected. I’m hearing a lot of that, you know, the kids didn’t do what they said they were going to do at the time that they said they were going to do it. And the reason why that’s happening is again, it’s about the conversation about what it is. It wasn’t they didn’t go it’s almost like a root cause analysis, right? They didn’t go far enough into the conversation to understand what it is that they were each agreeing to and doing going to do by one or even they didn’t say what the deadline was, but the one person assumed the deadline was this right? And then, you know, it’s all that stuff.
Richard Lowe 23:20
Well, another thing is, the importance of it is how important is this task, the child might think it’s not important at all, the parent might think is critically important that we have the dishes on the table for the company, the child’s like, I don’t care, you know, I’ll say, I’ll say I’m going to do that and then not do it. So, if the child doesn’t think it’s important,
Kim Groshek 23:36
and that begs the conversation, the continued conversation, again, about root cause if you want to kind of go in that level of the depth of the conversation, because if the child or the Millennium that’s living at home, doesn’t care, it begs the let’s sit down and talk about this a little more and understand, why is it that it isn’t important to you and why it’s important to me? Right, so that people can understand each other. Because that’s what’s that’s what’s missing is the It’s a misunderstanding between the two people. Right.
Richard Lowe 24:09
Right. And then that just builds up until they’re a teenager. Nobody’s talking to anybody. Right? Yeah, it’s hard to recover from that. Yeah. Well,
Kim Groshek 24:17
and that’s, that comes to the they’re just not motivated problem, which, you know, you see, you hear a lot of like, I had an interview for a pause challenge. In July, I did a little five day pause challenge work to encourage everyone to take 15 minutes and and there were about 42 people, experts that came in and many people shared what the what they’re dealing with with their kids and there are a lot of them are 16 age or above which are the Millennium age, right? Gen Y’s I think that’s the what we call that. And I heard a lot of the same thing. They’re not motivated, and I think it’s not about they’re not motivated. We’re perceiving them that way. It’s about the conversation. And again, about the agreement. Because, you know, this the person, maybe the 20-year-old, whoever that is, that’s being perceived as not motivated, it’s probably because no one’s talking to each other to understand, you know, maybe they feel are motivated, maybe they’re doing things that the parent doesn’t know that they’re doing, or the teacher, whoever is saying that they’re not motivated, right? So, it’s all about a conversation, let’s sit down and talk about this. That’s the biggest thing.
Richard Lowe 25:38
And it’s not just one talking about it’s a continued, you’re building your relationship, you’re building rapport, you’re building your wisdom, right together, right in person, my parents, my parents used to gaslight me, which is a term I only recently discovered the meaning of where I think it’s called gaslighting, where my problems, more problems. So I would say I have this problem going on at school, and I was getting beat up. But it wasn’t, wasn’t anywhere near their problems. So, you don’t have real problems. You don’t even know what real problems are. We’ve got real problems, blah, blah, blah. And it made me just not talk to them at all. And that, that happened all the time. And it really pushed us apart until when I was a teenager, my dad just wanted me out.
Kim Groshek 26:14
Well, that’s interesting, that gas, I mean, I that’s a new term, I in the last five years or so it’s I started seeing that come up. But that is something the behavior has happened for many years, I’ve seen I’ve seen it and heard about it from, you know, friends or colleagues are in throughout the years, too. And that is another problem. And that is about the busy professional or the pressure that the parents are under, right. And they’re exhausted, like, I remember when I was working, I’d work 10-hour days, I’d fly out to a company, right? And I’d be out there for isn’t back. And I was so exhausted, because each day at work 12-hour days, because that’s how it worked, right? And then I’d have Friday’s off to recover. But really, I was so exhausted, right? Because I worked all those hours, and I flew back and forth. And it was huge. It was a lot of miles flying. And I could I remember how I felt as a very busy professional, and how sometimes I would get short. And then I’d realized I was doing that, right. And I had to really be aware like I was I was talking to my daughter, I say, pretend that you have your eyes out here looking at yourself, I do do that a lot for myself, because I have to, it’s almost like I’m trying to catch myself in integrity. Again, the integrity is so important to me. I’m trying to always balance that and try to bring myself self-back into integrity, because there’s many times, I know I’m not in integrity, right? So, it’s not kind to do that that’s out of integrity to be be like that to your child. You know, like, it’s just not fair. It’s not, you know, it hurts, you know, the receiver, right? Whoever that may be either the parent or the child, because the poor children can do the same thing with the parents back and forth.
Richard Lowe 28:04
Of course, of course, then they were self. They fed each other. Yeah. So, you know, it started probably something small and life and they had big problems, and they wouldn’t talk to their kids. And it just me and my sister just became burdens really, to them got in the way. And it was it was an interesting childhood. I’m not going to get into many more than that this isn’t a therapy session. But I noticed the same thing at work is the bosses sometimes do the same things where they have importance. And they don’t understand that so to the employees. And it’s on the surface that seems to be changing these days. But I don’t think it is because like I’ve seen companies demand everybody come back in the office period, no exceptions. You have to work in the office. It’s like, really, this day and age are forcing everybody back to the office. Yeah, I know, you got all this real estate that you got to pay for. But in the No you don’t. I think the problem is managers don’t know how to manage people who are remote, they just don’t. And it’s a different type of management. You can’t manage by wandering around. You can’t manage by looking over people’s shoulders, you can’t micromanage as easily. And it makes the workplace if you’ve if you demand everybody come in work inside when 30% of them want to work from home. You just alienated 30% of your workforce. And the company I’m thinking of 30% Quit in one day, just yet.
Kim Groshek 29:30
So, and you know, and you and I know i mean i i I’ve experienced being in the environment, having to go in every day. And I then I actually probably was the maverick from working remote starting in 2000 as a remote employee, and I’d always have to convince them I’d always have to go in to where I was consulting for a couple months so they could trust my work ethic and my habits and my get my relationships built and then they could sit And they would say yes, and then I’d be working from home. But what I would structure there is a structure to it that can work. And that’s, again, the stuff that I know has been very successful, because many times I will be called in after four different people or even groups will come in to try to do what I did. And they failed, right. And it had a lot to do with the bottom line, these companies needed someone to fix it. And I would come in and fix it within six months or two years, or whatever the timing would be. And they would ask me, how are you doing this, or I don’t know how you’re doing this, right. But it really is this framework that I share. And that’s, you know, something that can be done remote that you can design, you can alter it, there’s always an alteration based on, you know, understanding how the family unit works, or the culture works, or the environment or the community, whatever groups you’re working with. And you can adjust it and make it work remote does work. And I can prove that it’s been very successful. But it’s all the biggest thing that’s made it successful is the communication and agreement. And knowing how, and you and I personally
Richard Lowe 31:06
have, you have to change to a product-oriented management style, where you have to deliver these things in this timeframe, rather than focusing on hours or being there and stuff, right. I mean, I worked at a place I won’t name the name that for a long time. And my wife was very, very ill she was ill to the point where I was doing IVs every day with MRSA and things. And she passed away. But during that time, it was very difficult because my boss required me to be at work. And I was like, Look, if I’m not home, she could die. And I’ll never forget this day said, I don’t care. You need to be here at work. And, you know, what, are you an employee? That’s sort of motivating, right? Man. And I remember that day very well. And he became I guess he lost my respect at that point. And I don’t know if it’s just because he didn’t care if he didn’t believe me or what. But if that’s people have concerns at home, and that needs to be taken into account. And I think that the the younger generations aren’t tolerating it as much anymore. As a baby boomer, I’m on the, the young side of the baby boomer. We used to tolerate it all the time, because we our mission in life was to have that job, the American dream, get a good job standard the rest of your life. That was the American dream, by the house, blah, blah, blah, never bought a house. And I don’t think the young people are putting up with it anymore as much. They’re not as I was terrified of leaving the corporate world until I finally left. And then I realized, Oh, this is better. I’m actually making more money than I did when I was a corporate like by far. And as a writer. And that’s not something I ever would have predicted. I mean, how could a writer make that much money. But you’re right about the pause, I’m gonna bring the conversation back to that. me taking a break in the middle of the day, to take a nap, to get on the exercise bike to work on my model kids, whatever I didn’t want to do. It’s different than I’m doing during the day. And it actually makes me more productive for the rest of the day. So even though I’m taking an hour out, it actually gives me an hour back. It’s interesting to think of it that way.
Kim Groshek 33:25
It’s very true, isn’t it? And, and it’s great to hear that because there’s different approaches, right, I had someone that was practicing the pause during the challenge. And what she did was, she’d set the alarm at the top of the hour. And instead of doing a whole 15 minutes, she would just get up and walk around for 15 or five minutes outside or something and come back to work. So then it accrued to 15 minutes or even more, because she did it almost every hour on the hour during her workday. And like you said, that you actually gain, there’s this mindfulness that you gain, as well as you gain your time back. It’s crazy. Because you are taking that time away to reflect you actually get creative. You let things come in. And I think without taking the pause there. There’s only that when you take a shower or something like that, it’s when you actually have time and that’s very little time. It’s not enough time to, to really, you know, just give yourself time to be, which is so important.
Richard Lowe 34:25
Yeah. Something that I practice is called the Pomodoro Technique. If you’ve heard of that. Yeah, you take work for 25 minutes and then you take a five minute break. And then every once in a while you take 15 to 30 minute break. For writing that works very well. What I do is I work I have like five books going at once and I switch them so I work like a one book in the morning one o’clock in the afternoon and I switch books and when I’ve switched books I do a break because creativity is not something you can force something you have to nurture and I have to Sometimes I just have to get up take a break, even though it seems like I gotta get this done by the, you know, by the deadline I got when you got to this week. But without taking the break the writing quality suffers. And then the client sees that and they know the writing quality suffered, and I don’t want that. I want them to finish up their contract and maybe do another one or refer me or whatever, want to have a good ending to that relationship. So I have to take the breaks, even though it seems counterintuitive sometimes because I grew up in corporate and corporate least when I was there, you don’t take breaks. They didn’t they didn’t want you to take breaks. You know how you know you’ve been in the bathroom for five minutes? What’s going on here? That literally got that bad sometimes. And it’s like, Boss, this isn’t none of your business. Your timing me here? You know, you’ve been outside talking on the phone for 10 minutes. What’s going on? It’s not your business boss. Am I getting my job done? Well, yes, but you’re not getting the hours in. I have a boss who doesn’t understand.
Kim Groshek 36:04
Yeah, you know, the thing is to you know, some when I took that seven days afterwards, I you know, dove right back in. And I had a lot of emails, but people that asked me, you know, well, what if someone urgently needed you? Well, you know, it all worked out and the emails I went through them and pretty much the important ones I kind of put to the top and the rest of them just we’ll get to them when we get to them or the messages will get on my paws. Right. For the seven days, I also communicated to certain people that were critical, right in part of what my business and what I’m doing. So that they knew I was pausing. So that, you know, they just would prepare whatever they did prepare until I came back. And then we just met up and got caught up. So you know, it can be done, there’s way to do it. It’s I think we create almost anxiety just because we’re wanting to pause but just let it go. Choose to pause right and just let just be in the moment and experience the I mean, it was just a great experience. I biked right from the south tip of Michigan all the way up to Mackinaw City, and I camped in between and it was with my husband and we just had we got to reconnect be with each other the whole week. And it was wonderful, right? There was no plugging in at all during the whole time.
Richard Lowe 37:21
i When my wife passed away, I I just told everybody, I’m going to be out of pocket for the next month. And you guys, you know, you’ve worked for me for 1015 years, and you have to handle it. And if you can’t handle it, you need to find new jobs. So I took off and I did a trip through the desert that lasted about two weeks. And I think I drove almost 10,000 miles in two weeks, and visited national parks and things picked up my cameras started photographing stuff. And I came back and guess what the company survived. There were a couple of disasters or problems and they dealt with it. And I didn’t answer the phone once it did rang. And I did check my voicemails and found out it wasn’t important enough for me to break that vacation. And besides my wife had just passed away. So you know if that if you guys think you’re more important than that, you got a problem. And I learned a lot from that. It changed my attitude. Unfortunately, not enough because I probably should have gone off my own business then. But it’s stayed there 15 more years. The way it is, I guess. So we’re coming up on the on the end of this.
Kim Groshek 38:30
Yeah, so I just wanted to mention, I mean, the pause can be done by anyone. If you’re interested in participating in cars, and you want some support, you can reach out to me it’s a 90 day challenge where you take 15 minutes a day and you just pause, unplug and breathe and do you know you can just sit and be you can do meditation, you can do some art you can take a walk, do something that’s going to satisfy you without any electronics, even televisions any kind of electronics I’m not just talking about a smartphone, just unplug walk away and just really experience it but you can reach out to me I’m sure ritual have my links nearby and you can always search for me as well. I’m available to do keynotes and, and come in to help you to support you. I have several packages that can support you in you know putting in this with your family or even your bigger groups.
Richard Lowe 39:31
Well, thank you very much for being here. I am Richard Lowe, the writing King. As I said I’m a ghostwriter and a writing coach. I do LinkedIn profiles, you can reach me from my website. This particular episode will be on my website and it’ll be on YouTube. And once they figure it out, it’ll show up on SoundCloud and all the other audio podcasts. I’ve been doing video podcasts for a long time but audio podcasts are relatively new to me. I always liked video better. And, you know this is actually doing three author talks interviews per week. So can you keep subscribe to these and keep getting them and you’ll, you’ll enjoy hearing about the experiences of other authors, especially if you’re an author. It can be very encouraging to hear that other authors have had success and give you tips on how you can do it to you have a great day and thank you for appearing. All right, thank you. Bye bye
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Learn a l little more about me and why Pause on the WRITING KING: I loved talking with Richard on Authortalk Podcast, a down to earth interview, who created a safe space to share. Listen while you work out, do chores or chill. Let me know what you think, post in the comments below.