125. Mastermind It: 4 Ways to Win with Friends

Episode Transcript

Verbs Boyer:
All right guys. So we’ve said this before on the podcast, but it’s important for folks to know, especially at the beginning of the year, that it is critical that you do not try to make this journey alone. I know a lot of people who might be new at goal frameworking tend to feel a little bit isolated. They feel like they might be the only ones in their circles that are really trying to pursue these goal achievement or certain goals this year. But have either one of you either been at that point to where you just kind of felt stuck because you didn’t –

Courtney Baker:
Sorry. I’m already laughing because I just remembered when I started, like really, it was, I was riding Peloton and I kept like, talking about these rides and my goals, like nobody cared, like nobody cares about your Peloton rides.

Verbs Boyer:
It’s like, [crosstalk 00:00:53] “Hey, okay. Ride along, ride along.”

Blake Stratton:
Tell me more [crosstalk 00:00:57] tell me more about the TV screen you looked at.

Courtney Baker:
I mean, don’t you want to hear about Matt Wilpers, my favorite coach? No, you don’t.

Blake Stratton:
You’re laughing on the outside. Are you crying on the inside because you felt alone?

Courtney Baker:
No, I listen. This is for real. I did, when I started doing this, I was like, nobody really cares about these like awesome achievements of having, but then I found a community of other people that were as invested and crazy about it as I was. And then it was like, they do care about that really hard ride that we all rode. And they’re like, “Yes, that last five minutes was terrible.” But like, nobody else in the world would, it was like, I had to find those people. But until then, it’s just like, you’re that annoying person that nobody really wants to talk to you.

Verbs Boyer:
But Blake. So what about you? Have you ever got to the point where you just felt alone in this whole pursuit of –

Blake Stratton:
Yeah, but [crosstalk 00:01:52] that was only for my first 34 years of life. So not that much. I almost always would pursue things alone, taking that route. And last year I was really intentional to meet with a couple people and it wasn’t even super formal, but especially in the first quarter I felt like it was massive because I didn’t know what I was missing. I always sort of just, it wasn’t like, “Oh, should I work with someone on my goal? Or should I not?” I didn’t even have that, my personality type, like I just didn’t even have that conversation. Like I would share stuff with my wife obviously, and we’d have goals that we collaborate on, but I didn’t know what I was missing. What I recognized was working with somebody else gives you so much more clarity, not even working with somebody else, just talking out loud and connecting on your goal with someone else gives you so much more clarity.

Blake Stratton:
I liken it to when I was 15 years old and I went to the eye doctor and they say, “Hey Blake, you need glasses.” And I got contact lenses. And I remember my mom was driving the car and I was rolling along and I was like, “Wait a second, you can like read the street signs, like before you’ve already kind of passed the?” That’s what it’s like, bringing someone in and processing your goals is like, you didn’t know what you didn’t know. You didn’t know that you had poor vision until you get that clarity.

Verbs Boyer:
So today we’re going to talk about how having companions for four activities can influence your journey toward a successful outcome.

Verbs Boyer:
Welcome to another episode of Focus On This, the most productive podcast on the internet. So you can banish distractions, get the right stuff done. And finally start loving Mondays. I’m Verbs here with Courtney Baker and Blake Stratton. Happy Monday to you both.

Blake Stratton:
Happy Monday to you Verbs and also unto you Courtney, a happy Monday.

Verbs Boyer:
Thank you.

Courtney Baker:
Happy Monday.

Verbs Boyer:
So guys, if we can get into it and start talking about these activities that people can engage with, with others, just to get better outcomes and really an overall better experience in their goal achievement journey, what would be the first activity?

Blake Stratton:
The first activity is the weekly preview. And if you’re like me, this may come as a surprise because I just default to, of course, it’s in my planner, it’s in my little notebook. Of course I’m doing it by myself. All these questions are for me, but it’s actually really helpful to engage with this with another person. I first ventured out into doing this, one of our teammates here at Michael Hyatt & Company said, “Oh, every week, my wife and I, we go out to lunch and we do our weekly preview. And it’s really helpful to just sort of cover the bases of all our logistics and understand where the other person is at.” And so that was kind of my first foray into that. And then I know we have people who are in our community who have found a lot of help just connecting with other full focus planner users doing this, but there’s a lot of benefits to, I don’t know. The scary part was the vulnerability of like, oh, well here was this or I did this, but there’s a lot of benefits to doing a weekly preview with somebody else. Have you guys ever done this?

Courtney Baker:
Yes. I have done this. And I do think it’s really helpful. I think there is certainly, if you, it’s probably with a spouse or a partner or there’s like a logistical thing that’s really helpful with the weekly preview, but I think there’s also another side of this coin that is doing it with another person that’s going to help you examine your thinking about your work. The weekly preview again, if we look at it as like, it’s really the most productive thing I do every week, it’s the time that I set aside to really think about my work, that’s productivity. And so if I allow somebody into that journey with me that is, allowed to, when I share like what worked or what didn’t work or what my wins were, that’s able to kind of say, “Oh, well you said this thing. It sounds like you’re thinking about it this way.” It can totally give me a new perspective on my week, on how I’m doing and processing the past and moving forward. And I think that’s a different side of the coin that is really powerful.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah. I think that’s right Courtney. I actually have never thought about that side of the coin, because most of the time it is more like a informational, informative session that I may do with my wife as she does hers as well. But yeah, just inviting somebody in to process along with you. So you can kind of get outside of your own thinking is crucial as well.

Blake Stratton:
I’d encourage you if you’ve never done the weekly preview with somebody else, give it a shot, maybe try it as an experiment, but then put it on the calendar for both of you. And you’ll end up with a more consistent rhythm, especially if you’ve struggled to do your own weekly preview thoroughly or complete it, doing it with somebody else with help.

Blake Stratton:
The second activity is an ideal week review, an ideal week review. This is something personally, I don’t know if I’ve done this outside of just my wife looking at my ideal week and sort of hashing it out with me, but Courtney, I’m wondering if you have experience with this because I know that you’ve worked with assistants and that sort of thing. And you lead a team, how does someone open themselves up, I guess, to a review of their ideal week? Or what does that even look like?

Courtney Baker:
Yeah, I mean, I’ve done this, most commonly with my assistant and it has always been part of our quarterly preview process and it’s always been really great. One, it just kind of puts us on the same page. It also really equips them to have the context they need with scheduling. And to me, it’s like hard to be successful, especially when you’re running somebody else’s calendar. If you have no idea what you’re shooting for, like how am I supposed to be successful at this? So I highly recommend this if you work with an assistant, but I’ve also done this in another context that was helpful as well, at the time when I did this with my assistant, but then after I kind of mapped it out, I showed it to the person that was my boss at the time.

Courtney Baker:
And we kind of overlaid both of ours together and looked at those in combination. And that was a really helpful exercise as well. Obviously there are times where your boss, if they’re ideal, if they have an ideal week, there may be things on their ideal week that conflict with yours. And so you kind of need to bring those into alignment. So that wasn’t necessarily getting into like the nitty gritty of like every hour, but we did it separately and then came together to kind of look at them cohesively also great practice because I noticed things in his weekly preview that I was like, “Oh, I didn’t even think about that thing. I can’t believe. Yeah, I should allocate time for that.” I think that would be really helpful.

Blake Stratton:
What sharing your ideal week can do, whether it’s in the work context or even in the personal context is again, coming back to this, bring deeper clarity to what needs to happen for you to achieve what you’re trying to achieve.

Blake Stratton:
An outsider’s perspective, the advantage they have is emotional distance from all the activities, as well as distance from your perception of your past. And so, “Oh, well I’ve got to do this here. And I can’t really change this, or I don’t know how I’m supposed to have time to do X, Y and Z thing.” A person can help you, like the game of Tetris kind of fit those pieces together. It can be someone you work with, if you’re like me, it could be your spouse potentially, but even just a friend to be like, “Hey, this is sort of something I’m trying to do here.” They will naturally just ask questions like, “Oh, well, why are you doing this here? Or why does this have to be here? What if you moved it around here?” You’ll get that outside perspective, which will give you clarity and allow you to try on something different as you’re trying to put together your ideal week.

Courtney Baker:
So this past year we rolled out our Full Focus Planner Certification program. And so we now have all of these certified pros that I think would be incredible if you’re like, “Yes, I would love this. I would love to have some that’s outside of this to just look at it without all of the perceptions, all the files, all the thinking that I bring to this.” Reaching out to those people would be really great. We have a directory on our site on fullfocus.co that you can see all of our Full Focus Planner, certified pros, and you can work with one of them. I recently did this, specifically for the ideal week. One of our clients, who is also just very good friend, talking about her ideal week. And I was able to ask some questions because I’m an outsider and don’t see all the things she sees that I think were really helpful for her. And I think this is something that, I’m really excited about having certified pros now to help individuals in context like these.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah. And I think if anything what’s very helpful is they help you see beyond your blind spots to make sure you’re being accurate and realistic with the time or the timeframes that you’re noting down for an ideal week. Even though, it may not go exactly the way that you’ve laid it down or mapped it out, but having somebody else just speaking to, “Hey, you know what, you may be allotting too much time for this activity or not enough time here for rest and self care and those sorts of things.” And they’ll be able to give you that perspective when it’s something that you might have missed as you built it out.

Blake Stratton:
All right, let’s move on to the third activity. We’ve talked about doing a weekly preview with somebody, we’ve talked about having another person review our ideal week and help us out there. Let’s talk about accountability, goal accountability. That’s the third activity, now accountability, I don’t know how that word lands with you, Courtney and Verbs, but perhaps for you listening, it feels sort of like a heavy word, accountability. I sort of have a connotation of accountability of, “Hey,” maybe you’re in trouble type of thing. “It’s time to hold you accountable for what you’ve done.”

Verbs Boyer:
You’re about to be in trouble.

Blake Stratton:
That’s my accountability character. So,

Verbs Boyer:
Who is that by the way?

Blake Stratton:
My name is Darvin Shmarvin. I couldn’t think of one actual name. So,

Verbs Boyer:
My name is Blake’s dad.

Blake Stratton:
My name is Daddy Issues.

Blake Stratton:
So accountability, even if it does feel like a heavy thing, it really doesn’t need to. My perspective on accountability has changed over the years to accountability is that person who’s slapping me on the wrist when I’m not doing the right thing or a good job to accountability means I’ve shared with someone who I desire to become or I’ve connected with someone who believes in my potential. And when they see opportunity for me to be stepping into that potential, they can let me know. They can let me know when I’m shrinking backward into the habits or the activities or the lack of activities that are taking me down a path that I’ve told them, I don’t want to go down. They’re there to help me stay on the path that they believe I can can walk as well as I’ve expressed that desire. So that’s maybe a little wordy way to express that. But I think that’s key to –

Verbs Boyer:
That’s good.

Blake Stratton:
It starts, I guess, maybe with just sharing your goal with another person that can believe in it when you’re struggling to believe in it.

Verbs Boyer:
And that they’ve agreed to be invested in it with you and not just, let me pick a person and tell them, but “Hey,” have that conversation, “Will you walk this journey with me?” So it’s not, it’s the accountability person also, isn’t the person that you’ve invited in and then time goes by and now you have to meet with this person. You have to give the report on what you’ve missed and how you’ve failed. But like you mentioned Blake, that person is invested in encouraging you along the way, asking you write questions, reminding of you, of your motivations, behind what you’re doing and help you keep your momentum going forward.

Blake Stratton:
Last year, my wife and I had some financial goals and we hired this person and we actually paid a monthly fee. So that’s just the way that we structured it. And I really liked that structure because that auto debit from my account, I was like, “Ooh, right, Hey, are we doing what we’re supposed to be doing here because we’re paying for it.” And that was sort of some built in accountability as well as to connect even with that person to hold us accountable. And I felt like that was great because he heard what we wanted. He heard why we wanted it and those types of things. And I would come to him sometimes with my head, just like, “I didn’t do what I said I was going to do.”

Blake Stratton:
But this person was actually great at highlighting the progress that I had made and comparing it to my starting point. “Oh, Blake, like, do you recognize you had a lot of wins. Sure. We need to talk about X, Y, and Z thing where you veered off course.” But I think that’s something to look for in an accountability partner is in the real world I’ve personally sometimes struggled with, “Hey, I’m just going to ask my buddy, and maybe we’ll meet for coffee every now and then.” I think that’s good and I’ve enjoyed that from a relational standpoint, but if you want to get serious, I think it’s okay to pay for accountability too, with dollars. That’s sort of, you Verbs use the word investment. Like if you hire someone, guess what they’re invested in your success. So if you go that route, that’s worked out really well for me, is to just pay someone. It doesn’t have to be a ton of money, but just hire someone to who can hear you. That’s not struggling with the same issues that you are, that can hold you accountable and keep you on the path.

Verbs Boyer:
What’s your Venmo Blake, for this?

Blake Stratton:
Yeah, I’ll get that out to everyone. And I’ll hold you accountable. I’ll just send you a text, every week, that says good job, except for the stuff where it wasn’t a good job, you know what I’m talking about. And then I’ll bill you.

Courtney Baker:
I mean, I think this is a really helpful, listen, my personality type when it comes to accountability, anything public, like, it is such a force within me to like, not fail publicly, that this totally works for my personality. If you’re listening and you are with me, you know who you are. So it is a very powerful tool in your arsenal. And so I think wielding it wisely and knowing the power of it, I think, especially when it comes to our goals, it’s like, if we think of this time next year and thinking through like, well, what would it look like if I did accomplish the goals that I’ve set out for, like, wow, that would be really amazing. Then finding that type of accountability to help you get there, I mean, that’s hands down worth it. Like, whatever that takes, even if it is a really good friend that you’re asking to help you or there’s somebody that you’re working with to help you on these goals. Yeah. I found it very important.

Courtney Baker:
I said I wasn’t going to talk about Peloton anymore, but one last thing. I mean, my Peloton group, we do five rides per week. And guys, I will not miss one of my rides because I know that I’m going to be the one person that doesn’t, so we don’t hit platinum and we got to have platinum y’all okay? –

Verbs Boyer:
Hey, you got to hit platinum, okay?

Courtney Baker:
We have to hit platinum. I mean, guys, y’all listen. This is how intense this is. I think there’s 73 people in our group right now. There’s like thousands and thousands. There’s all these teams, our team, every single person hit 100% of their rides. 73 people. You don’t want to be the one person that keeps a group of 73 people from hitting their rides. And so that is a, if I was just riding the Peloton by myself, just choosing rides, whenever I felt like doing it, I would never feel like doing it. But that accountability, it works. Again, not everybody’s personality type is like mine, but for my personality type it 100% works.

Blake Stratton:
Activity, the fourth. Focus sessions, focus sessions. So what we mean by a focus session is simply connecting with another person to spend intentional time focusing. Focusing on a specific project, on a specific task, as a means to boost your productivity. If you struggle with distractions, notifications from your phone, veering off into, down an email pit, a focus session is a great idea. All you have to do is text a friend or a coworker. I mean, this happens a lot. I feel like in Slack, people are jumping in there going, “Hey, who wants to have a focus session at X time?” And you can meet up in person, at a coffee shop if you want or you could just, I know we’ve had people do this where we just open Zoom, as everyone’s just kind of working and it’s like, all right, guys, here’s the deal, head down, working, in focus for just the next hour. Let’s just see how much we can accomplish here [crosstalk 00:21:27] do you do this with your Peloton group?

Courtney Baker:
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when we open up, usually everybody shares what they’re working on, so that at the end of the session, they can share how far they got towards that. So there’s even that extra accountability of like, it’s distraction free time spent doing the thing that you said, because again, it’s kind of taking activity three into play as well as it’s giving a little bit of accountability to like knock out what you said you were going to do.

Blake Stratton:
And much like a Peloton session, don’t start one of these and go, “Hey, we’re going to do this for three hours, head down, no distractions.” People won’t be able to do that. Don’t, you could keep this short, you could even start with 30 minutes if you want, but probably not more than what an hour would you say, if you’ve never done this before?

Verbs Boyer:
I mean, it seems like an hour’s been a good time to at least get people started, get some accomplishment done. Let’s say if you have a goal of writing so many words this month and you want to have an hour where you just put your head down to get it done during that time, you can use that 60 minutes to get it done. Or if you felt like, “Hey, I can go for another session for another 60 minutes,” you can just do back to back. So those things that you really want, intense parameters and focus just to get, if it’s a goal you have attached to some sort of habit, habit goal, then these focus sessions are really made for those really made for that kind of activity.

Courtney Baker:
I will say, I feel like we should give a shout out to Focusmate. They’re great platform that does this for you where they just pair you –

Verbs Boyer:
Or Nick. Nick is the one that introduced us.

Nick Jaworski:
Guys, [crosstalk 00:23:11] I use Focusmate. It’s now all the time. All the time. I have something like maybe 500 sessions on there or whatever. And maybe once or twice a day when I’m feeling like I can’t get stuff done or dragging, I’ll look at my big three and go, “I got to get this done.” Focusmate, to the rescue. So focusmate.com, go.

Blake Stratton:
Forward slash Nick for your affiliate code.

Nick Jaworski:
Yeah. Or you can just Venmo me for the referral.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. It’s a great platform. If it seems like an easier way to go than trying to like coordinate with, especially if you work alone or in really small teams, it’s a great platform and for this specifically.

Blake Stratton:
I like this idea. I don’t honestly do this last activity very much. I’ve never used Focusmate for instance, but what I noticed that I want to do this year, and I don’t know if it’s because of COVID or just because my personality and like being separate, whatever, but sometimes doing the work of your goal can just feel like a grind and I want to have more fun. And I think that fun is actually a good boost for productivity, a good boost for longevity and consistency is like associating doing the right things with enjoyment. And I think this would make it more fun, right? Because you’re not, you’re sharing the journey. Even if you’re on separate journeys from the people you’re doing your focus session with in terms of what you’re working on, you’re sharing the journey. And I think maybe that’s a theme for the whole topic here today is that when we get out of just isolated mode, not only is it just harder, tougher sledding to go by yourself, less clarity, all that stuff, it’s actually more fun, it makes the ride more enjoyable and probably makes success more enjoyable.

Blake Stratton:
I mean, I can only imagine the ecstasy, the utter delight that Courtney will have when her Peloton team reaches platinum status. I mean, we may not see her on the podcast again. She may just be like, “Well, riding off into the sunset,” so much joy and gladness in your heart, is that right Courtney, you expect that, is it more fun?

Courtney Baker:
1000 percent. Again, well, it goes all the way back to like, normal people don’t care about that hard ride that I was on. And so being able to talk to people that do, like that is more fun. It makes it all more enjoyable. And I mean to that end, like it’s building in so many parts of life that make anything more enjoyable. I mean, I think connection with other people is kind of the foundation for an enjoyable life. And so yeah, I think any way that we can do that is positive.

Verbs Boyer:
So the good news is you don’t have to feel alone or isolated on your journey to being more productive and reaching your goals. You can go further with your weekly preview, your ideal week, your goals and in your ability to focus by having friends on the journey with you. Courtney, Blake, any final thoughts for our Focus on This listeners?

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. I just wanted to again, give a shout out to our Full Focus Planner, certified pros. I think they can help with so many of the things that we talked about today. And so if you’re interested in becoming one yourself or finding a pro to work with you on really the items that we talked about today, you can check that out, becoming one or finding a certified pro in our directory at fullfocus.co. Again, I’m really excited about this new group of resources we have.

Verbs Boyer:
Thanks for joining us on Focus on This. This is the most productive podcast on the internet. So share it with your friends and do not forget to join the Full Focus Planner community right there on Facebook. We’ll be here next week with another great episode, but until then [crosstalk 00:27:16] stay focused.