126. The Power of Constraints: Do Less, Achieve More

Episode Transcript

Verbs Boyer:
Blake, do you ever feel like, especially at the beginning of the year, that there’s a whole bag of the previous year’s stuff that you’re bringing on top of what you’re looking forward to in the new year?

Blake Stratton:
Yeah. That feeling where you kind of just… all the stuff, especially if you didn’t hit a specific goal but even if you did hit a goal, if it was about your everyday life, let’s say you had an income goal, well you probably still want to make an income this year, right? Just because you-

Verbs Boyer:
That’d be helpful.

Blake Stratton:
Maybe you came close last year or maybe you had exercise goals, you had all these other things or just life commitments.

Verbs Boyer:
Right.

Blake Stratton:
I think it’s the temptation sometimes is just to add on top of stuff, be like, oh, well let’s do it all again. Or let’s go even further or let’s add-

Verbs Boyer:
Sketch it out a little bit yeah.

Blake Stratton:
Five more goals or a bunch of more things on top of what I was already doing previously. And especially if you’re a high achieving personality, I think the temptation is that, hey, I’m just going to go, just go, just go.

Blake Stratton:
I’m going to two X. And then I’m going to two X, three X and five X, and I’m going to 10 X my whole life. And I think that obviously that’s admirable to an extent.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
But if things never slow down, if you’re always just adding, adding this mentality, that it will all just pay off if you just keep doing more and more and more, I think is a flawed mentality. And for me personally, I don’t know if you’ve been here Verbs, but my physical body will tell me when I’ve been operating by that mentality.

Verbs Boyer:
Absolutely.

Blake Stratton:
Because I get really sick or the first time I get a break or I allow myself to take a rest. It’s not even rejuvenating. It’s like all of a sudden I get sick with something. Or I remember one time I was like, just going, going, going, going, going. And then it was like my first breath I took, it felt like I had a break in my schedule and I ended up getting shingles and like that’s not a pleasant experience.

Verbs Boyer:
Wow.

Blake Stratton:
I don’t recommend that to anybody.

Verbs Boyer:
That doesn’t sound like a pleasant experience.

Blake Stratton:
No!

Verbs Boyer:
Shingles.

Blake Stratton:
But even if your body doesn’t break down, I think even mentally-

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
You can feel that our emotion … has that ever happened to you, Verbs?

Verbs Boyer:
The idea that you can tow both whatever you didn’t land in the previous year and the new year it’s going to exhaust you. Because you’re a finite being at some point, even though everything didn’t land the way you wanted it to, you have to have a plan out of that. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today is just how do you embrace these constraints and learn to live and work within them so that you can improve the experience. You can maximize your results and really just enjoy life more in the whole process. So we have three ways that you can leverage constraints to maximize your output for incredible results.

Verbs Boyer:
I totally missed my cue. Man. Sorry man. So there’s actually a cue there and I totally, by the time I realized what was happening, I missed it.

Nick Jaworski:
All right, here we go. We’re doing it again. Take two.

Verbs Boyer:
Here we go. Let’s do it. Take two. 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 am Verbs here with my man, Blake Stratton. Happy Monday to you, Blake. How’s it going?

Blake Stratton:
Happy Monday to you, Verbs. I’m kind of embarrassed. I totally, I was trying to get the claps right to that great intro groove we have, I didn’t quite get them right, but that’s why ladies and gentlemen, we have chosen strategically an audio medium to come to you so that you don’t have to see just how embarrassing-

Verbs Boyer:
Those visuals coming at you. Yes. The benefits of technology.

Blake Stratton:
You know what it is, Verbs? It’s an intentional constraint, isn’t it? You know, we could be that. I can’t tell you how many broadcasting companies. I mean, Nick, our producer, gets asked probably every week, right? Nick, it’s like NBC, ABC, all cable channels networks. Netflix has called, please put Focus on This all over the world. We want to turn it into a movie. Can we get the movie rights? And we just say, no, no, we’re here to do a podcast. We’re going to do an intentional constraint. So thanks for joining us again.

Verbs Boyer:
That was nice.

Blake Stratton:
You might hear we’ve actually … are under a constraint, even in the number of hosts. We’re missing one Courtney Baker, please don’t turn that dial ladies and gentlemen, it’s just Verbs and myself. And of course our producer, Nick here, but Courtney will be back with us soon.

Verbs Boyer:
She’s living it up right now.

Blake Stratton:
Yeah, she’s living it up. But here we are talking about really a perspective shift Verbs. I think for a lot of us, and I think culture can perpetuate this. If we want to have more experience, more, more greater emotional fulfillments, greater financial or career achievement, you name it. If we want to have more, we have to be doing more and more and more.

Verbs Boyer:
Right.

Blake Stratton:
That’s one perspective. The perspective we’re talking about today is what if we embraced constraints? Would it be possible to actually get a greater return from our efforts by embracing constraints rather than simply layering more and more things on our schedule? So that’s what we’re about. And we’ve got three constraints, I guess, for you to think about applying to your life.

Verbs Boyer:
Yep. And I think it’s important to mention too Blake, if anybody who’s listening may have been Michael Hyatt & Company followers, for a few years, four or more years, when it comes to constraints and setting goals for the new year, you might, I’ve noticed that our thinking on this based really on some of the science with goal achievement has shifted and adjusted. And I believe where we’ve landed at, where we are now is probably the best spot we’ve been at as far as the amount of goals that you would set per year or per quarter. And I think because of where we’re at now, starting to see some pretty cool success. So constraint number one is goals. Now this is important, because we’re saying two to three goals per quarter is probably going to give you the best results or at least the results that you’re looking for when it comes to goal achievement.

Blake Stratton:
The hardest time to set two to three goals, Verbs, is in January and February, that first quarter.

Verbs Boyer:
Why is that?

Blake Stratton:
Because …

Verbs Boyer:
I agree. So why is that?

Blake Stratton:
Well, we finish the previous year and whether we ended on a high or we ended on a low or somewhere in between we typically have a time to reflect, we have this fresh start effect that happens in our brains where it’s a new year and we start to examine different aspects of our lives, our different life domains. And when you pause and reflect and look at all your different life domains, most of us, we see areas that we do like to have improvement.

Verbs Boyer:
Right.

Blake Stratton:
And maybe we do a course like Your Best Year Ever, or something like that. And we go through this process, it’s like, man, I’m starting to get in rhythm of setting goals and I’m believing more in my possibilities. And before you know it, you’re like, and I want this goal and I’m going to run a marathon and I’m going to make a million dollars.

Blake Stratton:
And also I’m going to change my career and I’m going to start a blog and blog post probably twice a day on my YouTube channel. And I’m going to make 10 new friends every week. And it’s like, we start thinking in terms of idealism.

Verbs Boyer:
Sure.

Blake Stratton:
And all the things we want to do. And we end up overcrowding our schedule. And the irony is that the mentality of, I need to have more goals if I want to have greater change in my life is that the opposite is true. If you want greater change in your life, you should actually limit the amount of goals you have because more than three, you’re asking for being stretched too thin.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
And before you know, it, you’re not able to actually make much progress in any area. Right?

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah. And I was laughing when you said that because I did this exact thing at the beginning of this year while setting up and framing up my goals for, for 2022. And I got to that I was going through the course Your Best Year Ever. So I got into that exercise of, hey, what do you want the end of the year to look like? So I’m, jotting down just a bunch of ideas. Then when I got down to actually formulating my goals, it was like, man, I’m not going to be able to do all this stuff. If I’m set two to three per quarter and eight for the whole year, but it forced me to really examine, hey, is this really a goal, first of all, or is it just something, hey, I want to do something I want to accomplish.

Verbs Boyer:
Is it a project, but is it worthy of goal status? And if not, then let me go ahead and move that, remove that from the list and just focus on these actual goals. It’s really going to, move the ball down the field so to speak for 2022. Otherwise when you’re committing to all this stuff, you forget that there’s other areas of life that you also have to live and you have to take those things into account also. And not just professionally, but personally and what other relational, all the other domains that you want to just grow in for the year.

Blake Stratton:
Even if you have eight goals for the whole year, I think it’s tempting to just want to get started or just let’s do them all right now.

Verbs Boyer:
Sure.

Blake Stratton:
Because I’d love for all this to be different tomorrow. So although you can have more than two or three goals for through the course of the whole year, I think another constraint to practice is the practice of prioritization to say, what goal, if I were to accomplish it in the first quarter would make these other goals that I have easier to accomplish.

Verbs Boyer:
That’s good.

Blake Stratton:
So let’s say for instance, you’ve got some a habit goal to do your morning ritual starting at 6:00 AM every day. And you also have a goal to read 40 new books throughout the year. Well, you may find, hey, maybe I should focus first on establishing this habit of my morning ritual because if I nail that and that no longer takes any energy forethought, it’s just an automatic rhythm my life.

Blake Stratton:
Well now I’ve installed time. I’ve installed margin that I can leverage to reach these other goals, like reading more books. So that’s one example. But if you feel like, oh well you guys are just trying to sell me short and I know I can accomplish more. I think it’s highly, highly strategic because where you have greater focus, you have greater power. And so think in terms of constraint, but also that prioritization of how could I nail one or two or three goals this first quarter such that it makes these other goals I have a lot easier to manage and kind of be your own advocate, be on the team of your future success.

Verbs Boyer:
Nice. I like that. All right. So let’s move on to constraint. Number two, constraint. Number one was goals. Constraint. Number two is tasks. Task, and in particular, the daily big three.

Blake Stratton:
The daily big three. Now this is my personal workout plan. We’re referencing right? Where I just put 500 pounds on the squat rack. I just do three and then I’m good.

Verbs Boyer:
You’re good to go.

Blake Stratton:
No, let’s see daily big three. How do we want to talk about this Verbs? We talk about a big three all the time. We talked about two or three goals. This constraint, the daily big three is talking about our task list, right?

Verbs Boyer:
Correct.

Blake Stratton:
My guess is if you’re listening to this you’re doing a productivity podcast. You’ve probably tried to keep it to-do list. You probably keep it to-do list. Maybe you even use the planner that we sell to, to have your to-do list. And my guess is statistically, you probably have today, as you’re listening 15 to 20 different things that you feel like you’ve got to get done today on your task list.

Verbs Boyer:
They’re all important.

Blake Stratton:
And they all, they all feel important. They all need to get done. And maybe you’ve had this experience where you start the day with 15 things to do. You actually get a lot of those things done, maybe even all of them, but you still end your day with about 15 things to do, right? Because as our day goes on, it’s like, whack-a-mole right. You knock one thing down. Another thing crops up that you weren’t expecting to crop up. So Verbs talk about this. You’re someone that I know just looking over your shoulder and the projects that you’re working on, there’s always a lot to get done.

Verbs Boyer:
Sure.

Blake Stratton:
I’m really curious how you leverage this constraint on a daily basis.

Nick Jaworski:
Yeah. And I think it’s important to remember that these, these daily big three are our most high leverage items that we need to complete for the day and that most of the time, these should already be on your radar from if you’re through your weekly preview process, you kind of know, hey, this is coming down to pike for the week, and these are the going to be the important things that I need to accomplish each day that qualify themselves as a daily big three item. So I know for me, just in my rhythm of work and what I do, most of it is project based tasks that need to be accomplished because eventually I’m going to pass that on to someone else who needs it in a timeous manner as well. So for me, the daily big three is pretty easy to identify, even though there’s always a bunch of smaller tasks that might feed into that project.

Nick Jaworski:
But I know if I chase those things down, then I’m going to get distracted. It’s going to take up more time than I thought it would. But identifying the daily big three for me normally is pretty easy because a lot of my work is project based. So it’s easy to say, Hey, I can’t spend time kind of getting into the woods on these smaller tasks. What I normally will do is write those tasks down inside my planner, put a little box to it. I may get to those during that day after I’ve completed my daily big three, or I know that I’m at least setting up so I can push them tomorrow or a different day in the week where I know that I can actually knock those off the list. So that’s kind of how I avoid getting buried in those smaller tasks that end up taking a lot of time that you get to the end of the day and it’s so like, oh man, what did I do with the entire day? I have nothing really substantial to show for it that fed into my highest leverage work.

Blake Stratton:
Hmm. Yeah, that’s good. There’s definitely a stronger sense of control and visibility and power over your work day. Even if it is busy, let’s just look at productivity. So much of it is a mental game. It’s a stamina game of your mental and emotional capacity and endurance. I know that I’ve had days where I actually am very, very productive. I do a lot of different things, but I didn’t identify my daily big three. I end of my day mentally feeling just as chaotic or disjointed, separate as I did when I started, there’s still that feeling of am I doing enough? I can remember I’ve referenced it on this podcast a number of times, literally having sleepless nights or nights where I would wake up in the middle of the night and my head just starts, my brain just starts cooking with, oh wait, did I do that? Or I should probably do this tomorrow and your brain’s just always working, and that’s a recipe for burnout. If that’s how you’re living your life, is just running, running, running kind of an endless treadmill.

Blake Stratton:
Another thing that happens is you make a to-do list of 30 things every day. You just have a long to-do list. And every day you break a little promise to yourself every day you say, my word is not that strong because I wrote down 12 things. I only got done six, you feel bad. You feel guilty. You feel on maybe even a subconscious level, your integrity getting dinged. And yet you’ve probably had a really successful day.

Verbs Boyer:
Right?

Blake Stratton:
Right. You probably actually got stuff done, but you bring that energy to the next day and you go, gosh, when is this going to end? Rather than going to the next day feeling like, you know what, I got to win yesterday and I’m going to win again today.

Blake Stratton:
I’m telling you that compounds, that energy compounds over time to long term success or long term, I want to quit or I resent my work or you name it, right?

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
So that is, I think something I’d want you to catch if you’re listening and struggle to wrap your arms around this idea, setting a big three, think in terms of the long game, think in terms of defining a clear win for yourself. So you go, you know what? My two wins are going to happen. I’m going to identify what’s most important. I’m going to exercise my executive function, set those priorities. I’m going to check off those three things and say, you know what? Win, loser, draw. I got those three things done. I moved closer towards my biggest priorities. My biggest goals for the quarter. Maybe everything else is gravy. You’re going to sleep better at night. I promise you.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
And the next day you’re actually going to perform better than if you had gotten 12 things done, but were in chaos.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah. Constraint, number two was tasks in particular, your daily big three, moving on to constraint. Number three, Workday Startup/Shutdown Rituals, which you just alluded to in that last constraint.

Blake Stratton:
Mm. A Workday Startup and Shutdown Ritual. Let’s define what this is. Have you noticed, raise your hand if you’re driving in your car, listening to a podcast and raise your hand, it might look weird, but just do it-

Verbs Boyer:
Just do a pinky, just raise your pinky.

Blake Stratton:
Just do that. That pinky one. Like when someone lets you in, and you just give them the pinky, thank you. Before you’ve even gotten out of bed morning, you turn off your alarm on your phone and you see, you got an email and you just open your email or you put your kid down at night or something and you’re just on the couch. Maybe you’re watching a show or something. And, and you open up that email again, or you go, oh, right, I just have to do a couple more things and finalize this for tomorrow. If we’re not careful, our workday never really begins and never really ends. It just kind of always is the idea of this workday as it was 25 years ago, 30 years ago, it is kind of done because we don’t go to our office.

Blake Stratton:
I mean, even if you do have an office you go to, your office travels with you in your pocket. It’s your smartphone. You’re always reachable to some extent. And what this creates is a lack of healthy boundaries around work and your personal life. And over time, again, this theme of the long game, you will start burning out and you may not even notice it, but you will. I promise you be less effective during your day if you’re always on. Even if it’s at 5%, if you’re always on, you’re going to be slower and feel like, ah, I just need a break. So enter the workday startup and shut down ritual. Verbs, why don’t you tell the people what exactly that is and what it looks like maybe even in your own life.

Verbs Boyer:
Sure. Yeah and I Think it’s important to note also is not only would you be exhausted, but you’ll never actually be present in other areas of your life, because you’re always in work mode, because it’s just-

Blake Stratton:
That’s a great point.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah. You know, forever that open window of things that you can access at any point where you feel like you need to, but even as Blake mentioned, there’s probably things or there’s things that you already doing in the morning time in the evening time that you may not have necessarily identified as a ritual quite yet. And that’s what the benefit of this is, of this exercise is, is this constraint is identifying what you do already. This is set you up for your day to set you up for your work start-up moment, as well as your workday shutdown moments and your evening rituals. Let’s say, my end of my Workday is 5:00 PM. Then I know that I’m going to kick in to my workday shutdown around 4:30 PM. So I can start to taper down and get into that mentality of calling it quits at five o’clock. So I can go on with the rest of my day. And it’s my evening, whether it’s family time, whether it’s even more self care time, whatever it might be for you, it’s just important to identify that so you know what’s coming right from the start.

Blake Stratton:
Your workday startup and shutdown are an opportunity both mentally, emotionally, and practically to warm up, to get in the zone, so to speak and then to get out of the zone. So for me, what I’m looking to accomplish with my workday startup is getting kind of out of dad mode and out of that persona into, okay, I’m here to help our clients win at work and succeed at life. I might have to have some hard conversations with prospects today that have a lot of issues. Like I want to get into that head space,

Verbs Boyer:
Right.

Blake Stratton:
I also want to leverage the time to just accomplish some of those lower leverage, but important things as well. So for example, you mentioned checking email and checking slack. If you struggle with always being in slack and always being in email, the workday startup and shutdown is a great opportunity to get the bulk of that out of the way.

Verbs Boyer:
Right.

Blake Stratton:
Think of it as like a warm-up activity. You know, it’s probably not the most important thing you do, but it’s a little bit of life maintenance, a little bit of work administrative maintenance that occurs as well. When I do that, I am way more effective at work because I know what the plan is for the day. I know why I’m here. The first thing I do in my Workday Startup is kind of a … I look at a document that sort of connects me to my why at work.

Verbs Boyer:
Okay.

Blake Stratton:
I try to connect to that why every time I get into work so that it takes me there a little bit emotionally and then I can get excited and up for it.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah. Now is this is something you’ve written for yourself, that’s what it sounds like.

Blake Stratton:
It is, yeah. So I just created a document to sort of remind myself of, like, okay, who do I want to be at work? And why is this important? I want to connect those dots and setting the daily big three does that as well.

Verbs Boyer:
Sure.

Blake Stratton:
You’re connecting the dots from the big goal to today’s calendar in today’s workday. The same is true with the workday shutdown. Now I’m betting, there’s a lot of you out there that naturally do a workday startup. I used to do a lot of trainings for our team. I would go into to different companies. And I would say here, who here kind of has a routine when you sit down at your desk or, or you get started working? And almost every hand goes up. I said, okay, who here has a ritual that’s specifically to end your Workday?

Verbs Boyer:
Mm-hmm.

Blake Stratton:
Almost never do I see a hand get raised. And this is a powerful thing because when you get ahold of this, if you’ve got a significant other, they will notice, they will be like, whoa. When I first started to get a hold of this, the last thing that I would do in my workday shutdown was some kind of meditation or journal, some type of like, all right, it’s over work times over, I’m entering into husband, dad mode. And sometimes I’d feel guilty because that would take extra time. And if I’m already running late or things like that, I’d just, oh, I’m not going to do it. And I remember the first time or one of the first times I skipped it because I was running late. I came home and within five minutes my wife Elena said, hey, do you need to go do like a Workday shutdown or something?

Blake Stratton:
Because you’re off. You’re like not here. I mean-

Verbs Boyer:
Go fix that.

Blake Stratton:
Thanks for, thanks for being here. But like she said, I would rather have 30 minutes less with you and have you be fully here.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
Than for you to be here 30 minutes, an extra 30 minutes, but not really be here.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
You know, mentally or emotionally. So use that time to tie up loose ends practically, but also use it to sort of disengage and go, all right. Getting out of work mode, getting into personal life mode. That’s a challenge. That’s a challenge. Sometimes if you haven’t done it before,

Nick Jaworski:
Can I jump in here real quick and…

Blake Stratton:
Jump in Nick, the water’s warm.

Nick Jaworski:
I’m … if anyone knows anything about me through this show or other things that I’ve been on around the the virtual water cooler we’re at it’s that I deal with a lot of weird internal feelings. I’m a four Blake, you know this.

Blake Stratton:
All right. Did you bring your scuba gear today? Going deep?

Nick Jaworski:
I did. I did bring my scuba ear. Here you go.

Blake Stratton:
Ah! Blub blub blub. [crosstalk 00:26:36]

Nick Jaworski:
Going deep. So one of the ideas here that I think is interesting is that, and I got a 12 year old. We use the student planner and the idea of a routine and I know we’re talking about like workday startup routines, whatever the word routine feels bad, doesn’t feel great. And you sit there and you go, I need a new morning routine. That feels like I’m at work already. But there is something very sacred about internalizing the idea of what a ritual is. Like routine I feel like I’m George Jetson making Sprockets or whatever, but a ritual is like, I’m Obi-Wan Kenobi or I’m a Buddhist monk, right? And this is like a very important self connecting, family connecting, other connecting activity that I need to do and that I get to do. And I really think like I really consciously say ritual. And if I catch myself saying routine, one of my quarter one goals is to reestablish my morning ritual so that I just want people to think through that and go, it’s not like a punishment. Ugh. It’s not a chore. It’s like this opportunity to connect to something bigger.

Blake Stratton:
Yeah. I think you’re onto something because your mentality, even how you talk about something really makes a difference again in the long term. So if you associate a ritual, a routine or something as this work thing that in an ideal world you wouldn’t do at all.

Nick Jaworski:
Right.

Blake Stratton:
Then you’re asking for more resistance than needs to be there. And I think what you’re saying is, hey, just the connotation of a routine. I feel like, hey, it’s 6:00 AM. I’m not ready to work right now with this routine. Right. But associating it as a ritual for you, changes how that feels, how that lands on an emotional level, which then enables you to have more success with it in the long run.

Nick Jaworski:
Yeah. I feel more disciplined if I do a ritual. Like that’s something that disciplined people do because it’s important and they can, so I just, if that’s helpful for anybody, please let me know in the Facebook community.

Blake Stratton:
What I have told people when I would teach this stuff is I would ask, hey, does anyone have a morning ritual? And maybe half the room will raise their hand. And I don’t know why I do this. Cause I don’t like when speakers or teachers will do this, but it’s a little bit of a gotcha where I’ll say, actually you all have a morning ritual, whether you realize it or not. So much of our life happens by programming, by our, our subconscious mind is doing stuff. If we were consciously thinking, if everything, our conscious minds, the creative mind, our subconscious mind’s really the doing mind. And so much of what we do is done without even thinking about it. If we had to think about all of it, we’d like explode. It’s way too much. I have to breathe in, breathe out.

Blake Stratton:
We just, we wouldn’t be able to leave the room. So how I like to think of this, Nick, is kind of the concept of, oh, I am like you mentioned, oh, I want to be the type of person that’s disciplined, kind of associated it as like a identity thing along those same lines, I’m thinking, okay, I already have a ritual or I already am acting in a programmatic way, and my body’s designed that way. My brain’s designed that way to help take care of me and help me get what I want out of existence. Right? So how can I partner with my natural design and kind of be on my own team for that? Like kind of almost like I’m feeding the program a little bit. Does that make sense?

Nick Jaworski:
Yeah, you’re not inventing a new pattern. You’re doing the thing. You’re just editing in some way.

Blake Stratton:
Editing. Yes.

Verbs Boyer:
And identifying.

Blake Stratton:
And for some reason that feels easier, to feel like, oh, I got to do this whole new, it’s like, no, no, no. Let’s just make some edits to something that’s already happening rather than just letting this program run by default. Let me tinker with the program that’s running.

Nick Jaworski:
It’s interesting. I was thinking more like spiritual in some way. And now we ended up with computers.

Blake Stratton:
And I would totally … yeah.

Nick Jaworski:
But they both work!

Blake Stratton:
Yep. We’re just a bunch of spiritual computers over here.

Nick Jaworski:
Ooh. Let’s make that nineties album.

Blake Stratton:
Spiritual computers by Radiohead.

Verbs Boyer:
So the good news is you no longer have to experience diminishing returns by striving for more. You can truly maximize your output through the power of constraints by setting just two to three goals per quarter, selecting a daily big three and instituting workday startup and shut down rituals. Blake, you’re actually the only one I pose this question to actually, no, I think we should roll Nick into this question as well, but you have any final thoughts for our focus on these listeners today.

Blake Stratton:
Nick, what is your final thought?

Nick Jaworski:
You know, I think for me out of all of this, the talk about the conversation around what you got a little scuba, Blake, you didn’t say it, maybe you did, but the idea around daily big three and this idea of our to-do list and that there is this idea of you have a to-do list that never ends, that you provide a permission structure for yourself to not complete the tasks you write down. And this idea that we break promises to ourselves. And if my word to myself, isn’t meaningful, then I’ve sort of got a problem. That’s not what you say. That’s my take on that.

Nick Jaworski:
What does it mean to go, I have prioritized certain tasks and it feels good to finish those tasks, and just to do that for a few days and see the difference. It’s much more empowering. I have my very best friend. I remember he used to keep a to-do list on paper and then it transitioned into a computer list and I remember one time he showed me it was … he’s a teacher, it was hundreds of items long. And he like loved it. And I was like, this is insane. He’s like, I’m never going to finish it. I mean, he was able to like brute force his way through it, I cannot do that. And so the ability to every day to literally turn the figurative page or figuratively turn the literal page either way feels really good. And sometimes I find myself falling in the trap of, of just letting these to-do lists kind of grow. And so that’s something I’m also really focusing on is just being able to turn the page and know it’s all settled. So I would encourage other people to, to do that.

Verbs Boyer:
And with that, I think Nick should have the a hundred-dollar token for the word he just used permission structure. Very well done.

Nick Jaworski:
That’s the parent in me and the former teacher in me, but that’s talk about permission structure is a lot.

Verbs Boyer:
It sound like a teacher phrase for sure. Well, thank you for joining us on Focus on This. This is the most productive podcast on the internet. So share it with your friends and don’t forget. Join our full focus community right there on Facebook. We’ll be here next week with another great episode, but until then stay-

Blake Stratton:
Stay focused.