294. Want to Succeed? Stop Thinking About Your Goal

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Marissa: Well, guys, it’s officially happened. Are you ready for this? This is the episode where we tell you to stop paying attention to your goals. Yeah, you heard that right? Stop paying attention to your goals. Okay. No, this is not an early April Fools joke. Yes, we’re serious. Just wait. This episode is gonna be really good.

[00:00:30] Welcome to Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the internet. I’m Marissa Hyatt.

[00:00:36] Joel: And I’m Joel Miller.

[00:00:37] Marissa: And this is where we remind you of. Something you already know. It’s not about getting more things done, it’s about getting the right things done,

[00:00:46] Joel: both at work and in life. And today we’re talking about why the best way to reach your goals.

[00:00:54] However, counterintuitively, this might strike you. Is just to stop focusing on them.

[00:00:59] Marissa: Yeah. Wait, what? I feel like somebody has spun us around and we’re kind of like, we don’t know where we are or what direction we’re pointing in or what’s happening, but we really are talking about this to stop. Thinking and focusing on your goals, super counterintuitive.

[00:01:17] Joel: Let’s set this up just by talking about what a goal is, right? You know, you want to have change in your life. You want to bring about something new. You’ve got this inspiring vision. You set a goal that’s clear. You’ve made it specific. It’s real enough that you can see it. You can almost feel like what it would be like to accomplish it.

[00:01:37] You connect really deeply with what’s at stake. And then here we come saying just, yeah, okay. Forget about it. Okay. But maybe I should explain a little bit, a little bit more here. Imagine you’re an athlete. If you started staring at the scoreboard the entire game, you’re just gonna psych yourself out. You know, you might find yourself at the half and you’re behind X number of points.

[00:02:02] You go into the half, you get psyched up, you come back out, and then you get hit again, and it’s like utterly demoralizing. And if your eyes were on that scoreboard the whole time, you would never be able to rally in the third and fourth quarters, right?

[00:02:16] Marissa: Yeah.

[00:02:16] Joel: Once you start understanding that the game is not the score, it creates a completely different environment for what you do.

[00:02:26] And athletes know this because they don’t get fixated on the scoreboard. They get fixated on the next play. They get fixated on the next thing they’re gonna do. Like when you line up, my son Moses plays football. When you line up, you’re not worried about what the score is at that moment. You’re worried about the play that you are supposed to do, where the quarterback is gonna be, what you, the running back are gonna be doing.

[00:02:50] You know, all of those kinds of very nitty gritty down on the field questions, not. Up on a board someplace at a site.

[00:02:59] Marissa: This is so counterintuitive, but when you talk about it in the context of sports, it actually makes so much sense. You’re exactly right, that if these athletes were looking at the scoreboard constantly, I mean, you’re like quitting before you’re even getting back on the field, right?

[00:03:17] ’cause there’s times when it looks really bad. But we’ve all seen that game where the team is down up until the last quarter and all of a sudden they bring out a brilliant play and boom, there they are winning the game.

[00:03:33] Joel: Yeah, and it’s not because they were staring at the scoreboard. Exactly. It was because they were focusing on the next play.

[00:03:39] Marissa: And if they had, they wouldn’t have probably said, we’re gonna think creatively and think of another play. We’re out. We feel discouraged, we feel defeated. You know, we are defeated. Look at the scoreboard,

[00:03:50] Joel: right?

[00:03:50] Marissa: And I love this because it puts us back into the driver’s seat. In so many ways, and this is really true, when we set goals.

[00:03:58] You know, we tend to imagine this ideal future. I am definitely a proponent of this. Uh, my number one strength on Clifton StrengthsFinder is futuristic. Totally. So I’m always, and living inside of the future, it’s not a bad thing. Obviously. We need to feel inspired and be inspired. We need to have hope, right?

[00:04:18] For something more, for something bigger, for a better future. Like that is such an a critical ingredient to our success. But there is a danger in that. Because it can hurt our ability to actually be able to be present

[00:04:33] Joel: mm-hmm.

[00:04:33] Marissa: Is really where life is actually happening. That’s where our next action actually matters.

[00:04:40] Right. Right. The next thing we do matters right here in the present, and if we’re only focusing on that big, bright future, which may be exciting, may be defeating depending on where we’re we’re looking at it from. It can feel challenging and frustrating and discouraging, and it’s important that we stay in that present moment where we actually have agency.

[00:05:00] Joel: Totally. It’s really important to stop focusing on the goal and get really focused on the process that you are using to achieve the goal. That’s kind of the big idea behind this whole conversation because ultimately. What we’re talking about here is what you can actually do versus what you obsess on.

[00:05:20] And if you’re obsessed on this distant thing that you have no fundamental control over the outcome, that’s gonna be self-defeating. If instead you focus on what you can do right now, you have. A lot of control over that. You have, as you said, agency over that. And this matters because when we think about goals, we’re not setting goals that are easy to begin with.

[00:05:42] We’re usually setting goals that are risky, so they’re far outside of our comfort zone. There are things we haven’t done before. They’re really challenging, and that’s a setup to fail if you’re focused on the wrong thing.

[00:05:54] Marissa: Totally well, and that risk factor is actually a critical ingredient. If you’re somebody who has been around our world for a while, you likely know our smarter goal framework, and one of those RS is for risky.

[00:06:07] Your goals should be risky, and that’s because risky. Gets us excited.

[00:06:12] Joel: Right.

[00:06:13] Marissa: Right. It really helps get us going, get us outta bed in the morning. But if our eyes are always, you know, on that mountain that we’re trying to climb, it’s gonna seem impossible.

[00:06:25] Joel: Right. Like, you’re never getting there.

[00:06:26] Marissa: Yeah. And, and you know this, if you’ve gone on a hike, which I’m a hiker, I love this, that it feels like there’s also this weird vision thing that happens.

[00:06:34] I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced it still. Mm-hmm. Where when you’re on a hike. You, you start to kind of zoom out, it’s like there’s this weird warped view that happens where it actually makes everything kind of appear farther away than it actually is. And so that can be really deceiving if you’re always thinking about what’s on the horizon, that, you know, long-term play, it can actually distort the reality of what’s going on.

[00:07:00] Joel: Yeah.

[00:07:00] Marissa: And the truth is, if you do that on a hike, and if you’ve ever tried to do this. You literally trip and fall.

[00:07:07] Joel: I was just gonna say, the problem is the peak is way over there. Meanwhile, there’s a little stone in front of your foot. Yes. Or a root. And you’re gonna go like sprawling out on the trail.

[00:07:17] Marissa: Yeah.

[00:07:17] And it happens. Uh, this is like, you know, the worst and best part of hiking is you wanna look up, you wanna see the view. And yet inevitably when you do that, you trip and fall. Right. Every single time. Whether it’s a limb that’s there, or a root or whatever, a stone, it doesn’t matter. It always happens. And so when we’re focusing so much on the goal itself, it can really cause us to stop actually making progress.

[00:07:41] Joel: Yeah. I like this analogy because I think it actually is dead on when we. Actually hike, right? You choose the mountain you’re gonna climb or the, you know, the trail you’re going on, you keep putting one foot in front of the other and then every now and then you stop like at a scenic place and kind of take it in.

[00:08:00] You look back I, on how far you come. Maybe you pull out your topo map and you decide where you’re going next and how far it’s gonna take and all that kind of stuff. There are these moments where you pause and get focused on the goal, but for the most part, you’re looking at what’s in front of your feet because you don’t wanna.

[00:08:17] Fall. Right. And that’s what goal pursuit is exactly. Like if you’re doing it well, you’re focused on the goal you want to tackle at the beginning, but then you keep focused on the next right thing. You shift that like distant view down to what’s close to you, what you can do now, and then every now and then you look back and see how far you’ve come and you adjust your course if necessary, and all those kinds of stuff.

[00:08:40] But like the goal itself is daunting. It’s big. We chose it because it’s daunting and big, and we’re really only able to focus on the thing in front of us. And so that’s what we ought to focus on.

[00:08:51] Marissa: Well, and if, if you are somebody who’s gone on a hike. Especially a multi mile hike, you know that there’s points along the experience where you literally can’t see the peak,

[00:09:02] Joel: right?

[00:09:02] Marissa: Whether it’s because you’re climbing up, you know, a weird craggy area, and so you literally can’t see over that until you get over it, right? Or, um, you’re going around a turn or you’re in the thick of the, the forest. And I think that is partially by design. And when we think about our goals, there’s going to be points when we naturally lose that focus in a positive sense because we have to get laser locked on the next thing that we’re supposed to do, whether it’s that craggy climb or going through that forest or those trees.

[00:09:35] And when we think about our goals, it’s true. We need to make sure that we’re keeping that end result in mind at points, but not the entire time. So when we feel overwhelmed by our goals, it’s true that we’re more likely to procrastinate or we let life take over. But when we’re focused on the rhythm, on the next right thing, we make steady progress without even thinking about it.

[00:10:02] It just seems to happen, right? When we’re focused on where are my feet now, what’s the next step I need to take? And. Boom, you’re starting to make progress and before you know it, you’re a mile in or two miles into that hike.

[00:10:14] Joel: And what that means fundamentally is that we get to kind of reframe what the process of goal achievement looks like instead of success being the goal.

[00:10:24] It’s like excellence in the execution. It’s doing the things well that are gonna get us to the goal. That’s where we get the satisfaction. And you know, we basically know this is true. Research shows that people who are happiest in goal pursuit are those who are in the middle of the process as they’re achieving the goal.

[00:10:42] Like once you achieve the goal that is fleeting, the success that you feel from achieving it is kind of like it’s over. And then you, you know, you have to hurry up and hop back on the treadmill and set another goal. But there’s a lot of satisfaction. There’s a lot of. Good vibes when you’re in the middle of pursuing something that you find meaningful, and that means that we just need to get focused on like how do you do that part of it?

[00:11:06] Well, how do you do that part of it excellently so that you can kind of take pride in the work that you’re doing so you can have joy in the work that you’re doing and all the things that are gonna lead up. To the completion of the goal, but at the same time are actually the most rewarding part of the goal.

[00:11:21] Marissa: For those of you listening, think for a second about a goal that you’ve accomplished maybe in the last year, and maybe you felt really proud of when you accomplished it, but that moment of pride of satisfaction, that probably waned pretty quickly, right? Yeah. Like before you knew it, you were onto the next thing.

[00:11:41] When you look back at the goal, likely what you remember is not achieving it. It’s the process.

[00:11:46] Joel: Right?

[00:11:48] Marissa: A hundred percent. It’s the day in and day out. The overcoming the challenges, the problem solving, growing the muscle, you know? Right. So that was what you probably remember about that experience? Not necessarily just the, oh, I checked it off my list, whether it was paying off some kind of debt.

[00:12:06] Yeah, that man, that felt so good, but what did you learn in the process? Or maybe it was a health related goal where you were, maybe it was running a marathon or working with a personal trainer or something to that degree. What felt good about that was not necessarily that end point, but it was the training part of it, right.

[00:12:23] That felt really, really satisfying or a work related goal. Where it felt impossible, but you and your team band together and you strategized and you came up with really creative solutions. And gosh, that felt good to get that one. You know, that first win and then that second win, and then obviously it felt good to accomplish the goal, but then what happens after, right?

[00:12:43] Like you have just another goal on the other side of that goal,

[00:12:47] Joel: right?

[00:12:48] Marissa: The process repeats itself. So I think that acknowledging this fact that. Progress is way more satisfying than the success itself,

[00:12:57] Joel: right? Totally.

[00:12:58] Marissa: We need to slow down and even when it’s hard, even when it’s challenging, even when it’s frustrating, that’s really where we’re being carved into a better person.

[00:13:09] And when we look back, we’re gonna go man. That was the part that was the most important. That was the most changing to who I became in the process.

[00:13:17] Joel: Exactly. Ultimately, what that means is it’s not about the success of reaching the goal. In a sense, it’s not even about the progress that we make. It’s really about living in alignment with who we hope to be, right?

[00:13:30] I mean, the goals that we set reflect the kind of character that we want to be in the world, the kind of person we want to be. The only place we get to actually work on that alignment between where we want to go, what we want to be, and the person we are is in the now. And so that’s kind of the win.

[00:13:48] Marissa: Well, it’s really about.

[00:13:49] Our character showing up day in and day out, not quitting on ourselves. I mean, I think that that breeds confidence in us. It’s why our maturity is something that we can feel proud of and that breeds more of it rather than just when we hit the lottery, we, we strike luck, right? Like that’s like, okay, great, that’s fine and good.

[00:14:13] That doesn’t really have any kind of longevity to it. But when we’re shaping who we are. That does, that has massive longevity. We, we gain wisdom in the process and that serves us in the next goal that we’re trying to pursue. So, you know, we always say here that goals are really about who you become. It’s less about what you’re actually trying to achieve, the goal itself.

[00:14:37] And it’s really about who you’re trying to become. And when your focus shifts from what am I achieving to who am I becoming, that’s really where that real transformation happens.

[00:14:47] Joel: Yeah. Plus you’re gonna get better results. Go back to the sports analogy. If you really are just glued to the scoreboard, you’re not focused on what you’re gonna do, you’re not focused on excellent execution of the next play, whatever that happens to be for you, you’re not gonna play well.

[00:15:04] Marissa: Yeah,

[00:15:05] Joel: it’s like gonna be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Uh, if, if you’re behind on the score and all you do is focus on the score, ’cause you have no effect over the score except for the next play.

[00:15:15] Marissa: Right.

[00:15:15] Joel: And that’s exactly how we need to think. And when we do, what we find is that we do in fact get better results when we stay present instead of, you know, obsessing over whether or not we’re on track or not.

[00:15:26] When we keep taking the next step instead of getting fixated on how far we still have to go.

[00:15:31] Marissa: Yeah.

[00:15:32] Joel: When we do that. We actually make the progress that we’re hoping to make and we won’t make the progress we’re hoping to make if we get our eyes on the wrong thing.

[00:15:41] Marissa: This is really important and frankly challenging.

[00:15:43] I think for a lot of us who are high performers. We have a high sense of responsibility. You know, we have a high level of excellence of what we believe that we’re capable of, what we believe others should be capable of, or life should be capable of. Right? And I’m working with a new health coach, which has been amazing.

[00:16:02] It’s only been, you know, a week and a half or something like that. And I’m loving it. And he has me focusing on a few daily things, really small kind of actions that I’m doing every single day. And I have a tracker that I created that I have on my fridge, and it says, the goal is to have more spaces filled in than not, not.

[00:16:23] Joel: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:24] Marissa: So I’m not looking for perfection here. And I think that it’s easy to look at that. To feel like, oh my gosh, you know, I’m not making progress because I had a couple days, I’ve had a weird little virus. Uh, for the last 48 hours I had a fever. I barely, any of those are checked and marked done because I have had no energy to do those things.

[00:16:45] But that’s not the point When I look at it, when I zoom out, there’s more spaces checked in than are not checked in. And I exactly thing here, when we focus on what can I do today? That’s when we’re really able to move the needle, and that’s when it really matters. That’s when we really are able to make forward progress and this is how we stay encouraged.

[00:17:06] This is how we keep that momentum going. You know, we stay focused and flexible. I think that’s a big thing. You know, when life hits us. We don’t get caught up in that and say, well throw it all away. We are practicing flexibility and we say, okay, today wasn’t that great. It’s all right. What’s the next thing?

[00:17:23] It’s the same way you go back to that hiking analogy. There’s parts of that hike that are more challenging than others. There actually isn’t, in that case, an option to quit. Right. You can’t just say, well this next, you know, ascend looks too challenging for me, so I’m just not gonna do it.

[00:17:39] Joel: I mean, I suppose you could pull out your phone and hope you have enough bars and call for our helicopter.

[00:17:44] Yeah. But they don’t really appreciate that.

[00:17:46] Marissa: No. So like that’s the alternative. And so what do you do? You say, okay, I’m gonna go for it. It’s gonna look imperfect. It’s gonna be challenging. I’m gonna be exhausted. I may hurt myself. I may be sweaty and disgusting on the other side of this. But I’m gonna, I’m just gonna stay on it.

[00:18:00] Joel: And what that ultimately adds up to is resilience.

[00:18:03] Marissa: Yes.

[00:18:04] Joel: Consistency, results, which is what we’re after here. And not only that, but. You’re gonna enjoy the journey more and you’re probably gonna enjoy the destination more.

[00:18:13] Marissa: Well, and it gives you confidence. And I love that aspect because when you do that really challenging part of that hike, or when you’re working on a goal and you didn’t give up, you stayed with it.

[00:18:24] Even in those moments when life threw you a thousand curve balls, what happens on the other side? That other challenge pops up and you go, I just did that. I got it. Yeah, I have in me so I can do this next one. Right. And it gives us confidence to keep moving forward. And I think this is so overlooked in goal achievement that we forget that flexibility is one of the most important aspects.

[00:18:48] You know, we get so tied to this is a way it’s supposed to be done, or I didn’t have this in my plan and we are so quick to give it all up. And yet, if we stay the course, if we stay focused on again, what is the next step I need to take? You’ll be so shocked at how far you can actually go when you do that.

[00:19:19] Joel: This idea of flexibility is also important because if we’re honest with ourselves, goals change over time. Yeah. And they need to sometimes, you know, like when you set a goal, like say it’s the beginning of the year and you’re kind of imagining this big thing you want to do, once you get into it, you may find that you need to adjust.

[00:19:38] Dramatically, and you may even find that the goal itself doesn’t make sense. That actually something that was truer and better and more meaningful emerges out of that activity that you’re doing. And then you’re like, oh, that’s really what I’m after. So like. You could imagine that you set a goal at the beginning of the year.

[00:19:55] You wanna lose some weight. Actually, it turns out that as you started working on it, the real breakthrough was that you were working with a personal trainer and you revised the goal to be working with your personal trainer instead, like maybe the working out is actually more meaningful than the goal of losing weight.

[00:20:12] Marissa: Can I share a real world example of this that just happened to me?

[00:20:17] Joel: Absolutely.

[00:20:17] Marissa: So I hired this health coach, which just happens to be your personal trainer. He’s a friend of mine. It’s,

[00:20:23] Joel: we’re only not giving out his name right now because we don’t want his full attention to be completely occupied by every other human that would love to work with him,

[00:20:32] Marissa: for sure.

[00:20:33] When I hired him a couple of weeks ago, my goal was body recomposition, meaning I wanted to be able to gain muscle and lose weight simultaneously, which. Ever tried to do that by yourself? It’s very challenging.

[00:20:46] Joel: It’s challenging when you’re trying to do it with somebody else too.

[00:20:48] Marissa: Exactly. There’s a lot of nuance to it that isn’t just like, oh, I need to cut calories, because you’re trying to grow that muscle simultaneously.

[00:20:56] Right. So there’s, it’s kind of like two competing priorities, but you can do it, but you, you typically need help working with somebody. And so that’s what I initially hired him for was that, and I was struggling being consistent in my workouts. Life had just been challenging over the last several months and just kind of had derailed my progress and I feel like I couldn’t get back into a great routine.

[00:21:18] So that’s what I hired him with. That was my goal in hiring him. I was super excited about it. And in our first session, or actually our discovery call, he. Identified to me that that was not the most important thing for me to focus on right now. It was actually nervous system regulation.

[00:21:35] Joel: Hmm.

[00:21:36] Marissa: And he identified that nervous system regulation is likely why I haven’t been able to keep a consistent working out routine.

[00:21:44] Interesting. It was like my body was in protest to the very thing I was trying to get it to do.

[00:21:49] Joel: Right.

[00:21:49] Marissa: So what he has me doing is very counterintuitive to me, which is to slow down. Before we speed up. So for the next 30 days, he has me doing very counterintuitive things. I met with him two days ago and I was sharing several things that I felt like were wins, and he was like, great, you know, you’re doing awesome, but you’re still so laser locked in on these specific metrics, and I want you slowing down and asking to this point.

[00:22:18] What do I need right now? Right? What is my nervous system need right now? Not did I hit my step goal and did I get my workout in, but like what does my nervous system need right now? Which is so counterintuitive, but therefore my goal changed.

[00:22:30] Joel: Right?

[00:22:30] Marissa: And I think the truth is, you know, we’ve talked about this concept of a domino goal.

[00:22:36] A goal that you do first so that it makes everything else easier or unnecessary. And I think that this nervous system regulation goal is actually something that will help the body composition be easier once we go through this 30, 60, whatever it ends up being. I think it’s gonna make that goal much more easier to attain.

[00:22:56] Joel: Yeah. And you find out that was actually maybe even more meaningful, right?

[00:23:01] Marissa: Way more meaningful

[00:23:02] Joel: you can imagine. As a couple, you set a date night goal, right? But it turns out that. Setting aside that time was meaningful. But what you actually wanted to do, and you find this out through the process of discovery, of just trying to pursue this goal, is you instead started this new shared hobby together and that was way more meaningful and that becomes the goal.

[00:23:24] Or you wanna like get off your phone and so you have some kind of like goal about using some technology to block your access to the phone or whatever, but what you actually find out that you love. Is the replacement activity that you adopted, like say reading novels or something like that, and that becomes the new goal and the replacement activity in that case completely like supersedes the original goal.

[00:23:49] Marissa: Well, I think that this just further proves the point that goal achievement is really a self-discovery process.

[00:23:55] Joel: Yeah.

[00:23:56] Marissa: And what we often think is the end destination. Turns out is actually not the in destination that we,

[00:24:02] Joel: we grow in the process and learn things in that next step, in all those next steps, new things come up and we’re like, oh, this is actually what I want to do.

[00:24:11] And so it’s like, not that peak I’m going for. It’s this other peak over here that I’m going for.

[00:24:17] Marissa: And you don’t know that until you start, right. You don’t know that until you start taking action. Until you’re, you know, a mile into the hike, so to speak, and then you see, wait, there’s a way better path that goes over here that looks way more interesting.

[00:24:30] I’m gonna try that instead.

[00:24:32] Joel: Totally. I mean, ultimately you gain clarity as you start moving, but if you’re so focused on the goal. You’re never gonna actually make the progress that you need to make to even discover those things about what you really want.

[00:24:44] Marissa: Yeah. Practically speaking, how do we apply this?

[00:24:48] I think that this is sounds great. It makes sense actually. Initially it feels very counterintuitive and now that we’ve gotten into it, it’s like, oh yeah, this actually makes sense. So how do we practically apply this into our goal achievement process?

[00:25:02] Joel: I mean, I think it comes down to just four things, and I’ll just rattle these off and then we can talk about them.

[00:25:08] The first thing is, yeah, set the goal. You gotta have the thing that you’re shooting for. Identify what’s gonna help you build momentum towards that goal, like identify your next steps, but then put the goal behind you and start focusing on those next steps. Focus on the process that you’re gonna be following.

[00:25:26] Some of those processes are gonna be. Linear steps, they’re gonna be things that you do like sequentially. Other things are gonna be like true process things like habits that you want to install that will enable you to make it there. You could imagine that in a work environment or a health environment or any kind of environment, there’s these linear steps and then there’s also like these recurring steps that we take.

[00:25:47] And then just keep doing them. Use your weekly big three and your daily big three as your actual focus. Don’t focus on the goal so much as what is the weekly big three that I have set for myself that’s connected back to that goal? What does that tell me my action needs to be this week? What does the daily big three tell me my action needs to be today?

[00:26:06] And stay focused on that. That’s where you actually have the agency. That’s where you have the ability to make stuff happen. That’s what you ought to be focused on.

[00:26:15] Marissa: I think it’s. Oddly more simple than we realize to do this. Yeah, and I think for most of us, we forget this last step of incorporating this into our daily rhythm.

[00:26:28] We think about the goal, it’s like, great, I wanna do this thing. I wanna accomplish that. Rank this marker. And we go, great. That’s awesome. But we’re not actually asking the question, what is the next right thing,

[00:26:39] Joel: right?

[00:26:40] Marissa: Today

[00:26:41] Joel: you actually have to do it.

[00:26:43] Marissa: You have to do it.

[00:26:43] Joel: And the only way to do it is to take that big, lofty thing that you’re shooting for and break it down to the smallest actionable step, and then take the step.

[00:26:51] Marissa: And the beautiful thing is in this process, in the full focus planner. Specifically in the weekly preview, we give you those moments where you can slow down on your hike and gaze out and look at mm-hmm. You, because we have you go back and review your goals as part of that weekly preview process. So every single week you’re gonna get that viewpoint.

[00:27:10] Remind yourself of, okay, where are we trying to head? But then you take the next step, you identify what do I need to do this week to make progress, or what do I need to do today to make progress on this goal?

[00:27:21] Joel: Yeah.

[00:27:21] Marissa: And having that combination of that occasional, so it’s not on a, every single day, you’re looking at that goal, but on that occasional viewpoint of going, okay, now I remind myself what the goal is, but on that continual, that that consistent point of taking action.

[00:27:40] You’re gonna be able to make much faster progress than if you just drill in, for instance, that goal on a constant daily basis,

[00:27:48] Joel: right?

[00:27:48] Marissa: I think you get locked in in a way that isn’t helpful and you may get discouraged because you’re not farther ahead than you hoped, and all the reasons that we shared previously,

[00:27:57] Joel: like just to come back to it for a second because it’s so important.

[00:28:01] You lose your flexibility.

[00:28:03] Marissa: Yeah.

[00:28:03] Joel: When you’re fixated on something, you can’t be responsive to other stuff and life is coming at you point blank every day and you know there’s gonna be the moment when you have the virus, there’s gonna be the moment when you have, you know, disruptions with your kids’ lives and all kinds of stuff.

[00:28:20] The cash flow is not right in the business. You know, the vendor didn’t deliver on time. Whatever it is, there’s gonna be these, these, these disruptions and we need to stay flexible so that we can respond in real time to the things that are setting us back so that we can continue to make progress.

[00:28:35] Marissa: Yeah, we’ve gotta stay committed to the goal, but really.

[00:28:40] Laser locked on the process, right? I think that’s what matters more than the goal itself, and I think if we can hold that goal loosely, understanding what that goal represents, the type of person we’re trying to become, or what that goal symbolizes in our life, that’s really what matters. How we get there.

[00:28:59] Is up for discussion. Yeah. Um, we know there’s multiple trailhead that go to the top of the mountain, right? And some of them are more challenging, some of ’em are easier. Some take short amount of time, some take longer, but there’s multiple trails, right? That’s the point. And so if we can stay focused on, great, we’re trying to get to the top, but how we get there is up for discussion.

[00:29:21] And we get to ask that question on a daily basis. What is the next right thing for me to do? That’s really where the rubber meets the road, you know, where we’re able to really make that forward progress.

[00:29:32] Joel: Right. The rubber sole of the hiking boot, as it were.

[00:29:35] Marissa: As it were, yes.

[00:29:36] Joel: As it were. Okay. I mean, we just talked in, in general about the application, but like walk us through, what does that look like today?

[00:29:43] You’re gonna open up your planner and do what?

[00:29:46] Marissa: So hopefully after you listen to this episode. Depending on where you are. If you’re in your car, maybe you don’t do this, but go ahead and stop what you’re doing and ask the question, what is the next right step for me to make progress on my goal? So whatever that goal is that you’re trying to achieve right now, maybe you have one, maybe you have two.

[00:30:04] Hopefully you don’t have more than three that you’re focusing on right now, but ask, what is the next right step for me to make progress? And then writing it down. On your daily big three inside of your full focus planner. And if for some reason you stumbled upon this podcast, you don’t have a full focus planner yet, you can do this on a notepad or on a Post-It note.

[00:30:25] It doesn’t have to specifically be inside of your full focus planner, but what is something that you can do right now to make progress on that goal and then literally go do it. Make sure you have time blocked on your calendar or space on your calendar to actually go execute whatever you just laid out as the next thing.

[00:30:42] I think this is where a lot of people miss the mark. Yep. They set their daily big three, they think it sounds great and then they forget. They’re in meetings literally all day.

[00:30:52] Joel: Right. They can’t get to it. ’cause there literally isn’t time to get to it.

[00:30:55] Marissa: Yeah. And maybe the truth is one of those meetings is the next right step.

[00:30:59] Maybe that meeting is gonna unlock something and is related to that goal and that’s important. So make sure that you reflect this, not only like go do it, but make sure you actually have space and time to actually this on your calendar.

[00:31:12] Joel: Marissa. Any final thoughts?

[00:31:16] Marissa: Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately we’re talking about two things that I love pretty much the same, which is hiking and goal achievement.

[00:31:24] I love both. They both really shape us into a better person. Mm-hmm. A better suit, because we’re able to overcome challenges in the process. They invite a creative way of thinking, not because. Of just the nature of it. But because of the challenges, because we’re having to look down at our feet, you know, there may be a branch, a stone, a root, a snake.

[00:31:49] It could be a million things, right? And that forces a certain level of thinking that if we’re just always looking at the end point, we’re missing.

[00:31:59] Joel: Right.

[00:31:59] Marissa: And so my encouragement to you is to slow down, to stop focusing so far ahead and really slow down and get in the present moment. As my mom often says, look at your feet.

[00:32:12] Like, where are you right now?

[00:32:14] Joel: It’s a great line.

[00:32:15] Marissa: And what do you want to do out of that place, right? So no matter where you are in this moment as it relates to that goal, what is the next thing for you to do? And trust us that if you continue to do that. You will end up getting to that goal or even a better place.

[00:32:37] Joel: Thanks for joining us for Focus On This.

[00:32:40] Marissa: This is the most productive podcast on the internet, so please share it with your friends and be sure to subscribe wherever you listen or at focus on this podcast.com.

[00:32:50] Joel: We’ll be here next week where we’re going to talk about what drives distraction and what you can do about it.

[00:32:58] Marissa: Well, until then, stay.

[00:32:59] Joel: Stay focused.