The 24/72 push: James Geering urges shift schedule reform

This episode of the Better Every Ship podcast is brought to you by Lexipol, the experts in policy, training, wellness support, and grants assistance for first responders and government leaders. To learn more, visit Lexipol.com. That's L-E-X-I-P-O-L.com. Now let's get into the show. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Better Every Shift podcast. My name is Aaron Zamza. I'll be your host. One of my podcast idols, I like to call him the OG, is my guest. It's the one and only James Gearing. First and foremost, welcome to the show, brother. Thank you for being here. Great to see you. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's funny because we were joking before we hit record like, oh, everyone should know you. No one knows me. And that's the whole point. It's called Behind the Shield. well yeah well behind the shield podcast but you've done over 1200 episodes so somewhere along the lines someone has probably heard of you or heard you you also have two books um that are are out um right now you are soon to have i'm i think this is going to go through i love your idea you're going to have a show hopefully a tv show um you know based off of the books the two books are kinder and then one more light um life death and humanity through the eyes of a firefighter you have had a very extraordinary path you are a stuntman a firefighter um and paramedic and you know podcast host i mean 1200 episodes you've been doing this for a long long time we'll dig into that too um but what an extraordinary life like do you ever look back at and go how did i get to this point i mean 1200 episodes how long have you been doing that the the podcast? It's been nine and a half years now, I think. It was, I think, September of 2016 when we started. And so for people that are listening, like we're at one 60, 170 here on Better Every Shit Podcast. And I think someone told me once, like you were in the top 5%, like a podcast that start never get past a hundred. Right now, what's the biggest motivation for you? What keeps you going on these podcasts? When you look at social media and you see all the deaths, I mean, that's it, whether it's in our profession, other professions in uniform, civilians. I think the, if I was to summarize the entire mission, it's that so many of these deaths are preventable, you know, and it's premature deaths. We're all going to go eventually, you know, but the longevity and the quality of life, this is one of the big things that I talk about when it comes to our retirees, you know, we say, oh, we lost 86 people in the fire service to, you know, cardiac arrest or cancer. I was like, no, you didn't. Not even close. Because the moment you walk out the fire station for the last time, you cease to become a statistic. And when do most mental and physical health issues manifest in your 50s and your 60s? So, you know, it's hundreds times that what we've actually got. So unlike the military, where even though it's not scientifically super accurate, the 22 a day, like we woefully, woefully understate how many people we lose and the numbers that we're presented with are bad enough, you know, and the national statistics are so wrong because you just look at the number of, you know, Maltese crosses with black bands that we see every day. It doesn't add up that we only had, you know, 76 suicides the whole year. Like I could, I can think name how many we lost in florida you know and we got the other 49 states so yeah i think that's the biggest thing is and i'm sure we'll get into this you know we talk about cancer and we like clean your gear use the prime event and we're still dying of cancer left right and center we talk about mental health well now if you smash the stigma well we're still overdoses and suicides and murder suicides i mean that's that's a thing in our profession so knowing that there are solutions to these problems. And it's not an easy fix, but there are solutions. Until we've made a massive dent, you're not going to save everyone, but truly got the conversation on the healthy work week and fitness standards and, you know, zero barrier to entry to mental health tools and then expanding into the actual nation, you know, the obesity crisis and the, you know, opioid crisis and homelessness and, you know, recidivism in our prisons. I mean, I know it sounds super macro, but they're all the same issues, unaddressed trauma, you know, unhealthy environment that's just kind of manifested through life. So, you know, you didn't exercise, you watch TV all the time, your local food was from a bodega. Well, if no one corrects that path, then now we're looking at you in the back of a rig with a tube down your throat and defib pads on your chest. So that's really what it is. You know, we are the 911. We're the reactive. and I want to really push the proactive. Yeah. We are a microcosm of really society when you look at it, right? Like when you want to break down some of the issues, you said some societal issues, you look at what's going on in the fire service. You're right. We don't do data on, as soon as someone walks out the door, if they die the next day, they're not a line of duty to die. But yet we all know, right? That can be traced back to that or tracked back to that. And that's a great point. And that's why I love our conversations because hopefully someone is not in their head going, oh, shoot. Yeah, nobody ever talks about that, right? I mean, I'd say, hey, let's see if the IFF can start with something with that or, you know, volunteer fire council. Like, hey, do we know of our members that leave the fire service and die within the first five years of retirement? Or how about even this? Like, what's the other issue we're facing? Members are jumping ship. They're leaving the fire service early because they just can't do it anymore, right? Like you're you see that as well more than when we first joined the fire service. Yeah, no, exactly. And that needs to be acknowledged. And if we really want to just go straight for the throat right at the beginning of this interview, there are things that need to be discussed. And I was a union dues paying member of my whole fire service career. But as I point out, our leadership in the IFF comes from Boston now. They work 24-72. Where is the national conversation that that should be an industry standard across the board? You know, so this is what saddens me is there are a lot of people with a lot of money and a lot of influence that should be blazing a path in some of these areas. You know, instead, you've got people all over the country that, you know, doing grassroots, whether it's firefighter fitness or, you know, trying to push the work week or mental health. And I'm not saying it should be solely on some big governing body, but if both were doing at the same time, we'd move mountains. But it really disappoints me that big organizations, chiefs associations, all these groups that have the ability to really, really make a difference. in a case in point, the Florida Fire Chiefs Association, after they signed the bill in for recommending the 42-hour work week in Florida, the Fire Chiefs Association put out an email amongst their members saying that they oppose the 42-hour work week. Now, these are chiefs that work 40 hours a week. They go home at five o'clock every night. So I personally, morally, have an issue with that, that our men and women are working 56 and then 80 with mandatory overtime. and you've got people that are opposing a healthier work week who enjoy an even healthier work week. So we really do have to look in the mirror and question, you know, who's leading? Where's the moral compass? Where's the moral courage? And again, as I said, the preventable deaths, we got to start addressing them now. We can't just put on a class A's, play the bagpipes, cry a bit, and then go on doing exactly what we've always done. Yeah. And I was just in a live burn class the last week. I'm trying to do a lot more of the skills, firefighter skills and becoming a training officer. So I'm really looking at that side of it. And we talked to say the same thing was said there. We keep killing our own, our own keep back from our same mistakes. And we need to honor them by making some changes. And, you know, and I think one of the changes you and I talk about, and it's a statement that I use a lot. And it's why are firefighters having to work 56 hours. Why is that the norm when everyone else like chiefs are working 40 hours? You know, now they would, they would say, Hey, I, I take my job home with me and I do, I get that part of it, but like you're at least home to be able to sleep. But why are firefighters working 56, 52, 48 hour, you know, work weeks when, you know, sometimes nurses, not, not like, this isn't personal, but they're doing like 12, you know, three 12s in some cases and still getting the full-time benefits. And you actually have some statistics and some data and a little history as to where and how that got started. Do you not? I do. I don't remember it because I got a credit. There is a St. John's County firefighter, and I don't want to butcher his name. So go to Behind the Shield Instagram and you'll see I kind of posted the video, put the subtitles in, but it's crediting him at the beginning, but an amazing history on how the FLSA thing came in in the first place and how basically everyone else went to a 42 hour work week. And we're talking about, you know, 80 plus years ago now. And yet I think there was some, you know, state thing like, oh, we want, you know, we want our, our employees, our firefighters to work this longer work week. and it just never evolved. Like, you know, a lot of us, when we look back, like, okay, if they literally were sitting around and maybe got one structure fire a week and genuinely slept like babies, slightly different conversation. But that's not, even the fire service that you and I entered, even, you know, the old salts when we got hired, you know, I had one of my Anaheim firefighters was in Compton. He was a Compton firefighter in the 80s. You think that core load was sleepy? not at all straight out of compton you know i mean so right we've been telling ourselves a lie that oh yeah you know it's it's an easiest job in the world and we sleep at the station and you know no that's i've never worked anywhere like that and i've worked in four fire departments across america so you know we have to stop telling ourselves that myth we have to stop using the phrase one day on two days off because as i always point out to people an eight an eight excuse me a Workday is an eight-hour day. It's a nine-hour, one-hour lunch. It's your usual business day. We work three days crammed together, of which the third day bleeds over into day two, from midnight to 8 a.m. You actually work three days on, one day off, or 30 days a month. Or as I showed in the presentation I did for St. John's a year ago, trying to help them get this work week, I put up that, you know, how many days the civilians work, you know, if you put in an eight hour week, sorry, eight hour day, 40 hour week. And it was like 200, I forget exactly, like 200 and say 80 hours, so 280 days a year that they work. And I said, does anyone know how many days a year a firefighter works if we break it down to eight hours? Break it down into eight hour shifts. 364. So that's one day off a year on paper if you divide it the same as everyone else around you that works in the store or an office or a bank or, you know, et cetera. And so when you put it that way and this video that he made does such a great job over 25 years you worked 10 years longer than a nine to fiver 10 years Yeah Say that again So we were 10 When you look at eight hour like breaking things down into the eight hour shift right Like a normal person would. That's insane. Right. And you mentioned to earlier when they first, I think when they first started working that, like, you know, you get maybe a call at night randomly, but you'd normally be able to sleep. Not anymore, man. I know like our fire department where I work, I haven't had a night where I haven't had at least one or two times that I've had to wake up in years, you know? So did you just do the math? What was it? No, I was just getting it. I want to make sure I say his name because he's the one that made this video. So it's Tony Singari, S-A-N-G-A-R-I. So if you go to Behind the Shield, I got it posted everywhere, but I want to, that's his video. So he's the one that came up with this, got all the stats. But it's, I mean, it's exactly that. It's just, it's breaking the myth. And then as I'm sure we're going to get into now, unlike when we were testing, when it was still competitive and people seem to have forgotten that that was a thing until about 10 years ago. Now you've got departments that are so, you know, skeleton crew that their men and women are being forced to work extra shifts, you know, everywhere. And then we're offering crazy hiring bonuses and begging high school kids to work and we'll put you through all the schools. And, you know, at some point, again, we've got to say, well, what are we doing wrong and how do we fix it? And then the reality is the job hasn't changed. The job is amazing. And I adore it, which is why seven years out of uniform now, I'm still fighting for everyone. But what is broken is the way that we're worked. And it goes fundamentally to if a barista in a coffee shop taps out at 40 hours, why is the person who wakes up at three in the morning from a dead sleep, slides down a pole, gets in the back of a tiller and drives to a call? you know throws a ladder makes and makes entry finds a kid pulls them out doffs their gear now works a pediatric cardiac algorithm and they're working 56 hours 80 hours a week and just it makes zero sense and we have to acknowledge that take the money that's downstream that's being wasted from the way that we're destroying our firefighters and our fire department put it back into the front end put in a fourth shift and then you'll see Gainesville Pasco County Boynton Beach all these departments that have done that, I mean, the proof is in the pudding. They've got lines out the door to work for them and their crews are healthy and happy again, how it should be. Well, let's keep that barista to a paramedic. Who would you want to have be more rested? Exactly. Right? It's a no-brainer. It's a no-brainer. And I think the other side of this too is you look at that force shift and you had mentioned the difference between, you know, let's break that down a little bit more. So right now you work at 20, if someone works at 24, 48, 48 hours is not enough to recover from a night of inconsistent sleep, you know, two or three, four or five hours, maybe if they get it right. Like the research overwhelmingly shows that, correct? Yeah. And then also even let's say, let's say you had two calls that shift. When you're air quotes sleeping, you're not sleeping because it's impossible to get into a deep restorative sleep when you've got one eye open waiting for the tones to go off, scare the shit out of you. And it's either a tummy ache times three weeks or, you know, it's a pediatric arrest, you know, and then your heart goes through the roof. So it is scientifically impossible to sleep well on a station. The only time I've ever really heard an example where I'm like, okay, well that, that maybe is the air force firefighters when they're at an air base and the entire base is shut down, nothing is landing. Okay. Maybe then you're sleeping. But again, that's not, you know, the municipal fire service. Yeah. Well, they're working at 72 federally. I think 72 are work weeks. Yeah. 24 on, 24 off, which needs to change because, because I'm on a base again, it could be argued it's slightly different, but the federal firefighters, I had a Hawaiian firefighter just, you know, working the same kind of things that we are, or I was, fire an EMS in a city, but he's working 24 on, 24 off. So we have to fix it for the 56 people. But then the next step is all our wildland and federal and some of the state departments that are working these crazy 72s. Because again, they're human beings too. It's no different. And it's not just our health. No mother or father should be kept from their children that much during a week. Yeah. And then the side note of this, and I, cause I've had this discussion with a lot of people that I respect are very intelligent. You know, they, you know, the other, like we talk, we are so resistive to change, meaning the firefighter side, you know, I had someone say, well, I like having my vacations that I can choose a couple of weeks or whatever off. And I just said, you know, what, how good of a father do you think you are when you work like, you know, we work a modified California with a furlough. So we work a 48 hour work week on paper, but you might work a Monday, Wednesday, Friday swing that Tuesday, you know, you work Monday that Tuesday, when you go home, how good of a father are you? How patient are you after not getting a night's sleep? And then what research also shows is, um, and I want to confirm that you've heard this as well. We had some statistics and some data that shows that you're not getting a good night's sleep the night before your shift because you're trying to get everything ready for the shift, right? So you've heard that as well, correct? Well, there's a solution to that. So Joel, who did the study on the 4896, which again, he went in with all the best intentions, but the fire service ran with it with a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. And they're like, oh, this has proven to be the best. The only, well, firstly, preface this, the department that they studied ran about one call a shift and on average less than one call at night. So usually they'd never ran at night. The study of them for a 48 hour 96, the only benefit they saw was that second 24 of the 48, they were more rested, but that's because they woke up at the fire station. So they hadn't commuted to the fire station getting up at five in the morning. So here's a, you know, free fix for you. Get your pen and paper ready. If you work 24 hours, that is a dial that you can spin any way you want because you start and you stop on the same exact time. So if you shift your start time to 11 a.m., 12 noon, the people coming to the station, the relief, they wake up, they have breakfast with their kids, you know, they kiss their spouse goodbye and they go off to work if that's what they do. They get to take the kids to daycare or drop them off to school or walk them to the bus. Then they get the stuff. They go to work. And it's the same exact routine, but instead of breakfast, it's going to be for lunch. Now I'm relieving you. You just got murdered the night before. And instead of the tones going off at seven in the morning, hey, Aaron, get up because James is coming and you need to be awake for no actual reason. now you get up i relieve you and now you're trying to drive home on fumes and the likelihood of you getting into an accident is much much higher so instead now you get to sleep in and hopefully you know let's say your last call was five you cleared it and let's say you sleep till 9 30 10 o'clock now you actually got three hours sleep yeah you know again call willing i get that but But that's the kind of time where we seem to get less calls in the morning. So now you get up, and then what I love as well, we used to do in Anaheim, if you were still sleeping, I would just take your gear off the rig anyway. Yeah, we do that too. What could be that important that you couldn't write on a whiteboard if it was critical? Hey, we're down a med. We got to fill this. Okay, you stay asleep. You got murdered. I just came from my family and from my own bed. I got this. You wake up. You're much more rested. You drive home safely. And as you said before, now when you walk through the door, you're actually in a good headspace to be mom, dad, parent, spouse, whatever the thing is. And that's a completely zero cost change as well. So at 2472, with a start time that makes sense, now you've got the force multiplier of two different elements that are going to make you healthier physically and mentally. There's one easy solution. Just switch the way you operate a little bit. You know, the second part about that, too, is you combine the 72 or 24-72 with that. And one of the things we mentioned earlier is the recruitment side. Tell me a little bit, dig into that a little bit, because I don't think departments understand how many people are flocking to those departments. Right. Like you have a couple examples, correct? Oh, yeah. Loads. So in the last two years, we've had 10 fire departments go to the 2472, either like they're doing it now or they're already on their steps to it. And two of them, Pasco County and Palm Beach County, which is the biggest county in Florida. So we're not talking about little one station departments, even though they're in that group, too. You know, you've just got thought leaders and whether they're in charge of one station or 100 stations, they're like, OK, my people are important. We're going to change this. um but so it's interesting because just reverse engineering well why is there a problem in the first place when i was testing back in 04 all you could really find on the internet was ladder 49 and there was a site called the golden nuggets or something which was how to do well in your oral interview that was pretty much all that was on the internet really about the fire service and so now fast forward you know let's say 10 years ago so you know what 2016 now when you start googling it all of a sudden we're starting to have this mental health conversation and you know the stats are being talked about with cancers and heart disease and now we're saying oh you know you wait you'll be on your third marriage and have an alcohol problem in 10 years that's a ha ha ha joke that we're hearing over again now you put that on the internet and all of a sudden the excited young person is starting to Google, hey, what's it like to be a firefighter? And like, well, hey, here's saving babies and cool shit. But on the other side, here's all the bad stuff that we weren't even told about 20 years ago. So this is what these people are now being given. So you've got this really smart generation who's Googling, is it worth going to university? Well, here's $60,000 worth of debt and a piece of paper that doesn't guarantee you a job. They are seeing a lot of the Gen Zs going into the trades now Because, well, the trade's like, well, you know, you can go to lineman school and you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars after a year in technical school. And like, well, that sounds a lot better. And so when they're looking at, you know, the trades, we're one of them. You know, I love the fact that we're kind of blue and white collar all meshed together between the fire and EMS. But these young people, it's not because they don't want to work. this whole rhetoric about, oh, kids today, there's some phenomenal human beings of that generation that are fitter than any of us were, you know, so prepared now because of the environment that we have CrossFit and mud runs and, you know, all this really great understanding of strength and conditioning and nutrition and mindfulness and breath work that we, none of that was around when we were. So you've got this great pool, but we're losing them because we're not showing them, we value them. When you come and work, we're going to put you in a meat grinder. And then, oh, there's this thing called mandatory overtime. You know that you just met that girl and she's really cute and you want to go on a date with her. And you said that let's do it tomorrow. Well, guess what? You're not going because we mismanaged our profession so much and you're going to pay for it. I'm going home at five, but you're going to pay for my mistakes. So they're looking at this going, well, this sounds like bullshit. I'm going to go be a welder. And so we missing this massive pool of really enthusiastic you know great potential firefighters because we haven done the work to fix what is broken And what is broken is not the profession You see a lot of rhetoric people saying oh you know so much negativity Well there is you know it like talking about people being stabbed Until we stop stabbing people we going to keep talking about getting stabbed You know what I mean? You can't just turn your head and go, oh, it's the greatest job in the world. It is, but not the way it's being worked. It's literally one of the worst jobs in the world. If you look at, that's why we keep dying. You know, there's kind of a correlation there. So in answer to your question, I know it's kind of a ramble. I love it though. Do you know you, this is, this is what, this is what we do. Every time we get together, it just goes full circle into solving the greater problem, right? Like, so we, we started talking about sleep and health and wellness, but I think it, it, it parlays into this recruitment issue, right? This is just it. And the goal, like I always tell people, cause I've had, I had the former fire chief turned deputy city manager of Plano, Texas, who just became the first department to start going towards a 2472. They're doing it in four years. And he was saying that he's been getting a lot of hate from chiefs around him saying he's taken all their good people. And we were talking about this. I was like, that's not the goal. But if you're an early adopter, guess what? You get to take the people because, for example, Pasco County used to be a revolving door department and everyone took their people. Well, now, since they had an incredible, you know, leadership, union leadership, and they all communicate with each other. Now, guess what? Everyone's going to Pasco and they're leveling up. They got a great, you know, health screen and got great mental health resources. They're looking to put a actual punitive fitness standard in, you know, imagine that in a profession where you rely on your fitness. So they're doing incredible things. But the goal is the rising tide lifts or ships. It's not to be playing the poaching game. It's to put the standard back where it needs to be. You've got these awesome departments that are blazing a trail. You've got the second followers, if you like, the next tier that's going to follow because they're like, okay, I was on the fence, but we're not going to be able to avoid it. Let's do it. And then we got people like Marion County that protect my family that are digging their heels in the ground and their head in the sand and refusing to say that we were wrong. And so we're just going to keep doing the same thing, you know, like five suicides in five years and four people just arrested on a hazing incident. And, uh, yes, that's right. Yep. I just learned that in five years, they've lost 527 firefighters so far, you know what I mean? Through, through leaving. So, you know, I mean, those stats speak for themselves, but the answer is when you take the money from downstream, that, like I said, the overtime costs, the costs of hiring someone who then turns around and leaves after you've educated them. You know, the lawsuits. You think, how much am I going to pay as a taxpayer in Marin County for all this bullshit with this hazing thing? Probably hundreds of thousands. And you put that front load in a fourth shift. So you're just taking the money and you're just reallocating it to where it should have always been. And now you're showing these young people, hey, we've got a 42-hour work week, occasional overtime that will never be forced. You know, it's going to be, you can sign up if you want, and there'll be a fair rotation. but basically you're going to do a 42 hour work week. So 24 on 72 hour period off, you know, you are encouraged to do something on the side. If you, if that's what you want to do, you're a fitness trainer, you're a carpenter, you're a swimming coach, whatever it is. Podcast host, a crappy podcast host, whatever it might be. Yep. Yeah. But the only stipulation is that you don't work overnight somewhere because you have to have ownership of your, you know, your sleep as well. So, you know, overnight ERs or private ambulance companies or second fire departments. We're going to give you this healthy work week, but there are obviously stipulations. It's like you've got to use it to rest and recover. So work your ass a full day, but just go home with your family, sleep in your own bed. That's all we say. So you do that. And these young people now look at what's it like to be a firefighter and that's what they see. You're going to then have the level of recruitment that we had with literally thousands of people trying to become a firefighter paramedic or a firefighter EMT. So we were there 10 years ago, and then it was even better if you go back prior to that. So it's very, very recently that it's just nosedived. And what we need to do, like I said, IFF and everyone else, we need to just say we were wrong. We thought everything was okay, but it's not. And then we were like, oh my God, at the surprise phase, and we were all dying. Now we realize that sleep deprivation is a massive amplifier of cancer. Sleep deprivation is related to every mental health issue there is. And just to illustrate that, we use sleep deprivation deliberately for special forces selection, interrogation, and torture. So there's your science. If you need more, there's a thousand papers, but think about it. So fix the things that are broken and it's, you know, build it, they will come. They will return because we were that massive crowd fighting for a handful of jobs before. And now you get to take the top tier again, not begging people who are then going to be a liability and either get hurt or be a mental health liability or just be so bad at their job that they're going to kill someone. This is not the job to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. We have to be held to a high standard to be challenged to rise to that bar. Well, we also, this isn't the profession that needs to be forced into 80 hour work weeks either. just based on liability sake. I think too I'm going to use American football here. I know. You've been in the States long enough to football. The egg throwing competition that I see on television? Yes. They throw the eggs. They used to really hit helmet to helmet but they changed that culture because what did the NFL do? They denied, denied, denied and then they finally saw the data and said we have to make a change. Now, are they 100% better? No, but they've really made some great strides. And remember, everyone said, no, it's going to kill the game. These ticky-tack fouls when they had that helmet to helmet. But I like to say, right now in the fire service, the data is being thrown at us, and some are taking a blind's eye, like you were saying. And the ones that are adapting to it are coming out of it way ahead from a budgetary standpoint, from a recruiting standpoint, from a health and wellness standpoint. and those are the things that are like the biggest nemesis. And so when you really step back and look at problem solution, that's where we aren't very good in the fire service, man. So the researchers that you've talked about or talked to you about sleep, what's the first thing they tell you when they start to investigate and look into what's going on in the fire service? What's the first thing they tell you? I can give you a perfect example. So the hospital district here in Marion County sponsored what's called a blue sky project, the IHMC. And IHMC, we just happened to be lucky in Ocala. We've got a satellite branch and it's the institute. I shouldn't have started that because I can't remember exactly what it is, but it's robotics and human performance. That's not quite the acronym, but that's what they do. And so these, they are used by NASA, by DARPA. If you ever heard of DARPA, they're the ones that develop, like, you know, they'll say, you know, Aaron says, you know, He can fly if he's holding a toothbrush. And I'm like, right, well then go prove that you're wrong. Here's a bunch of money because what if we discover that you can actually fly with a tooth? Like crazy, you know, this is how, you know, all the most advanced technology is discovered. So NASA, those guys, not nasal special warfare, naval special warfare. You know, this is the kind of, these are the organizations that trust this group. And so what they do is they collate a bunch of experts. They spend a weekend, you know, longer if it needs to, hashing out what this problem is. And then they come up with a solution. So the hospital district did it for Marion County here after they had numerous suicides. Two of them were both young guys within 12 weeks of each other. And it's not a big department. I think they've got about 600 people, if I'm not mistaken, something around that. And so the head of this whole organization sits down and it's the chief and myself. and then one of the head of that office as well. And they're talking about what the issue is. And then again, no one wants to talk about the work week. So I was like, well, let me explain what they work, what understaffing looks like for their firefighters. And immediately this guy goes, well, then sleep deprivation. And I said, so we didn't even need to have the weekend because it's so obvious. And then even, and it's funny because we'll get to this too. he was asking what about you know health and wellness and fitness standards and he's like well we have this you know firefighter mile that we do once a year where they come around and i've seen him do it you know they drag a hose carry a ladder a couple of things and he goes that's not a fitness you know program that's a skill basically yeah what i you know just to illustrate is our conversations are like why do we keep dying the rest of the high performance world is like how can we eke out a high level of performance? So when you have strength and conditioning coaches working with the SEALs, how can I, you know, rock with X amount of weight on my back? You know, how can I be more efficient in the water and a nutritionist, you know, how can I lower my heart rate? How can I, you know, hydrate, you know, all these different things so that I can optimize my performance. With us, when the strength and conditioning coaches, coach come, they're like, well, here's a Swiss ball and a stretchy band and you can do that. Maybe your shoulder will hurt less. We're not talking about what I literally would have had to done in my last station, which was next to me was a 30-story hotel and a high-rise strip on my skinny ass is 100 pounds. So I've got to ascend 30 floors with 100 pounds of gear before I start work. Then I go to work, do a search, knock down the fire, maybe even have to do some sort of medical intervention, and then possibly, depending on the circumstances, maybe even have to carry that person down 30 stairs 30 flights of stairs so high high level of performance but we don't talk about performance but the irony is if we actually focused on performance on the physical side the impact that would have on our strokes and our cancers and our heart disease would be immense if we did the performance on the mental side you know sports psychology and you know all the same tools which is okay breath work and meditation but also hey you know tell me about your childhood and oh let's talk about that thing because that's going to be creating some, you know, some white noise in your mind that we need you to be able to be focused and try and get into a flow state when you're searching for that kid on the second floor and it's blacked out. If we're focusing on mental performance, we're also addressing our struggles. So, you know, what we should be talking about is how can we forge elite firefighters? And then if you're in that conversation, now you're back to the work week. Well, how do you work your firefighter? Well, how the hell are you supposed to have a high performing firefighter when they haven't slept for 48 hours? You know what I mean? So now you're immediately- Or 12 years. Exactly. And then it's glaring. Or 15 years, right? Yeah. So going back to your football example, imagine the NFL, if there was no real strength and conditioning program, no sports psychology program, and before every single game, maybe they'd slept three, maybe four nights of that week. It'd be an absolute shit show and no one will watch it. But they don't, you know, lives don't depend on them. We're the same exact thing. The only profession that's really the Swiss Army knife for first responders from fire to EMS, to extrication, to rope rescue, to water rescue. And we are given the least amount of rest and recovery, no real strength and conditioning. And then no, you know, zero access to high level mental health counseling So when you lay it all out to these people that in this case you know are working with these high performers they don even know where to start They had no idea just how broken it was So there an example for you You just gave me the idea from my book It's going to be called Shifting the Mindset from Survival to Optimization. But really, right? Like all we try to do is how can we get our members to survive, not optimize, not thrive, not provide the greatest amount of service or like the highest level of service. It's how can we get them just to survive, to do just enough that they can retire, you know, and then the next day we don't care about them. Right. Like, you know, and, and I don't think that's the mindset of the, of the chief or administration in some cases, but that's, what's happening. I mean, you summarize it perfectly, right? When you go to other coaches and, you know, I worked with pro athletes before I got in the fire service and they were already focusing on sleep 20 years ago. But now look at, you look at an NFL game, guess how many mattress commercials there are? Cause they get it right. You said like the night before a game, you know, now they're focusing on all those different things. You know, it's you, you say you Forrest Gump, all this stuff for me. This is why I love talking to You're like, hey, you make it so understandable for us as a profession. And, you know, and we dug into some some deep stuff. We didn't even dig into the books and the show. Just give me a little give me a little teaser. You're trying to get the books that you wrote, which are a lot about mental health and some of the things that we talked about into a show, into an actual like TV show. Give me a little little snippet of that. so the first book i wrote was five years ago now so that would be four years into the podcast and between my own you know journey in the fire service my own wellness journey like overcoming a you know very very near career ending back injury with movement no surgery no meds things like that and like there's so much to impart this on the podcast but you know by that time it was hundreds and hundreds of episodes so i was like well how can i use story which is you know what makes the podcast successful. Everyone that comes on, no matter what they're on for is telling their story still. So it wasn't a biography, but I just took stories of my life, mainly my career. And then in each chapter, the takeaway, you know, went into, you know, overcoming pain, you know, mental health, addiction, you know, fitness, you know, obesity, et cetera, et cetera. And then, but the second time I was like, well, I really want to actually create a story now. So I wrote just over a year ago now, kinder, which is the story of a American firefighter paramedic. And when you meet him, he's already starting to struggle. And there's a kind of downward spiral. And then he begins his growth journey. But then woven into that, he starts learning about his father and his grandfather. And then you start to see the generational trauma story being told. Because again, prevention, you know, everyone has some stuff in their life. Some people have a huge amount of stuff in their life. But once you can see it and you realize that you were a victim to whatever upbringing that you had, and it was out of your hands at the time, and you can work through it, that becomes resilience. That does become strength then. And then that's how you stop dominoes falling on your children and your grandchildren. So amazing, but now it's still in paper format. I've got the audio book that I narrated and it's on Kindle, but I mean, it's still, you have to read or listen. So the next thing was like, well, where is the most powerful medium? It's the screen. That's it. And I always joke, but I mean, if Backdraft 2 can get made, then anything can get made. Or Caddyshack 3 or whatever it is. I mean, there's some horrible things out there, but right? What better way to tell the story? Because I think we talk a lot off camera about, I think And everybody can relate to that fire to, you know, to that story in some manner, somewhere along that path. And, you know, having then resources, then this goes into like what you would do with the show is then having resources to deal with those things as you start to discover them like, you know, like the story, right? I mean, brilliant idea. you know yeah um but that does tie back into the passion that you have is because when you're optimized and not in this survival mode you can actually step back take a big picture and recover right and that's kind of what you have done through your journey and so for for those that are listening you know we talked about a lot of the advantages of the 2472 if you could just summarize are the ones that that you know what really grabbed you that i think we don't think about. You know, I mean, we tried to hit all of them, but you know, for you, there's obviously stuff that you see that, that has motivated you all these years. And by the way, thank you for doing that, man. I, I, I appreciate it. Cause I, I believe, you know, we're going to be doing this interview 10 years from now and everybody's going to be almost on the schedule. And it's, it's from a lot of the work that you did. So, um, that's why it's an honor to have you on the program to call your friends. So for those that aren't sold yet, let's summarize it and sell them, Bo. I would put it this way. There's no question whatsoever that this is a thing. And I've had so many people, if you go to the 2472 tab, you'll see the Army's sleep specialists, the Navy's, the Air Force, sports, psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists. Not a single person has said anything other than, my God, 24 is pushing it. And then because we have stations when we have beds, I think 24 is doable, but there's a, um, a Swedish study that showed that, yeah, you need at least 72 hours between every shift. So yeah, you've got the one-on, one-off, one-on, and then whatever it is, five-off, whatever, but that you're still decaying on that second one. So it's about you. Yes. But it's also back to our conversation with performance. It's about them. And this is what makes me laugh with those guys that, you know, grow a mustache and make their helmet all dirty. And then, you know, talk about it's for them. It's like, yeah, Well, if it is for them, why aren't you fighting for a work week that thrives performance? You just keep, you know, doing a door prop in your shorts and then telling you it's for them. But that's not changing anything. If you really care about this job and you want to be the best firefighter you can be, then you need to be fighting tooth and nail for this work week that will allow you to be at a, you know, a true high performer. And you have more time than to do classes and training and work on your fitness and work on your relationships so that when you come to work, you're not, you know, there's not a typhoon in your head. And so, you know, to the chess beaters, this is this is for you as well. Like if you really care about this job and all you talk about is halogens and smooth boards and you're missing the point completely. You know, you I mean, you know, a marathon runner has got the best shoes in the world, but if they haven't slept, they're not going to win the marathon. It's about the human being and not the tool. So it really is a moral courage conversation. You've got to shed this, oh, I want to look this way as a firefighter. I want to appear this way to my crew, Instagram, whatever. And you've got to look at A, who's the most important people in your life. And for a lot of us, it's our family. Family. The young and single. Yeah. And so this is for them. The ultimate currency isn't that overtime. It's not dollars and cents. It's time with your family. Because I can tell you, if you get pulled into that and you're doing all these overtimes, mandatory, voluntary, whatever, and you're not seeing your kids and then you turn around and they're 18 and they've left, all the money in the world isn't going to get that back. Not to mention, God forbid, that you get cancer or dementia or something like that. So performance, longevity, community, healthy relationships. I mean, there is no downside to this. Look at the 2472 tab, the myths about, oh, I'll have to take a pay cut and all this stuff. It's all rubbish. these departments that are doing it. And I'll quote one of my friends from Gainesville. He said, if they went back to the 2448, we would all leave. That's how much it's changed their lives. So I can't, you know, undersell it enough. I mean, it is the solution that then leads to so many other solutions. Change the start time, integrate, you know, telehealth into your 911 so that you stop going to those non-emergent calls you should never been going to. That saves your department money too. So now you're running less calls, more time for training, putting in punitive fitness standards, because this is a physical job and how dare you oppose those standards. But if you're being worked into the ground eight hours a week, how can we hold you to a standard at the moment? That's not fair. So you weave that in, you grandfather, you know, not grandfather, but you introduce it, you know, over a year, year and a half to give everyone a chance to get to this point where they should have always been. And now you've got an even healthier, a happier fire department. And now the mental health side is so much better. And then if I really want to carry on my soapbox, then we open the doors to what needs to be talked about on the addiction and the mental health side and allow access to MDMA-assisted psychotherapy and psilocybin and ibogaine and these tools that are healing, you know, Naval Special Warfare and some of these other groups that you can access, by the way, the 343 Fund, the SIREN Project, those are sending first responders for incredible mental health solutions if that's the right fit for them. So there are so many solutions, but we have to shed this. It's tough to just keep fighting through and doing the way we're doing it because you are not as good of a firefighter as you would be if you fought for the things that actually matter. Yeah. It's just stop surviving and start thriving. We have to because that's what it's all about. And then ultimately, I mean, you hit it again. You always talk in ways that I understand, brother. It's about who we serve and it's about being the best we can be for them and then coming home to our families and being the best we can be for our families right but i i think we are the zombie apocalypse you know fire service right because we're all walking around and sleep deprived and you know we have to stop shaking our heads and saying well this is because the generation before us did this they also didn't go to as many calls like that statistically we know that and so we have to really start to make these changes and, and, and you're paving the way to do that, brother. So I, I truly appreciate our conversation. We will leave the links for the 2472 info, your podcast, the book, and we'll bring you back again for sure, brother, and just keep doing what you're doing. And I'm happy to help. And again, it was an honor to have you here. And, you know, for those listening, please, if you have questions, I can relay them on to James, or you can reach him via his website at jamesgearing.com. You can also email me at better every shift at fire rescue one.com. Please share this episode. We need to have these conversations at the firehouse, transfer them to admin and start making some damn action. So we stop surviving and start thriving in the fire service, just like James Gearing and myself are pushing for. So with that, thanks for listening to everybody. And as, as we send off any last words of motivation, my brother? Be brave. That's it. You know, you told that, oh, they'll never go for it. This will never happen. You know, that's not what you would do at an extrication when someone was bleeding to death. That's not what you would do, you know, when there's someone stuck in a second floor bedroom, you would find the courage, you know, and you would make it work. You'd figure it out. And the solutions to so many of our problems are there. So the ultimate tragedy is we keep losing people because we don't fix the things that we have solutions for. I love it. You know, we try to send everybody with some things that they can learn, that they can do, and that they can share. And I'm going to add to that, be brave enough to share and continue sharing. So thanks for listening, everybody. Till next time, Zam is out. you