152. Coach Yourself to Goal Success with Two Questions

Episode Transcript

Verbs Boyer:
So Courtney, posing a question to you. We hear a lot nowadays, especially on social media, everybody has a coaching program and really stresses the importance of coaching, like how do you level up your business? How do you level up your own personal life, etc., etc. But the question I want to ask you is, is it possible to coach ourselves? And if so, what does that even mean, or what does that even look like?

Courtney Baker:
Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting question. Obviously, we believe in coaching. Again, it’s not that you always have to have a coach; it’s just that outside coaches can usually get you there faster. But when it comes to coaching yourself, I think we’re always doing that. We always have this inner dialogue going. And it’s really, how do you harness that? How do you equip yourself to be able to objectively look at things, challenge your thinking, and produce good results from that inner dialogue?

Courtney Baker:
So I’m really excited today, because we’re going to give you some really helpful tools on that. And this may be a new concept, even just thinking about the idea that you’re coaching yourself. And so I’m excited to dive into this. This hasn’t been something we’ve really talked about before on Focus on This, which is why I’m really excited to have a special guest with us today, Verbs.

Verbs Boyer:
And, oh yeah, Blake’s back.

Blake Stratton:
Oh, yeah, so special. Yes. Thank you, Courtney.

Verbs Boyer:
Welcome back, Blake. Happy Monday to you.

Courtney Baker:
We need a little special theme song when Blake is here.

Nick Jaworski:
Blake, if you record it, I will put it in.

Courtney Baker:
A little like Top Gun.

Blake Stratton:
Well, Nick, you’ll have to find something that works with this dance move, okay?

Nick Jaworski:
Okay.

Blake Stratton:
All right, can you do that?

Courtney Baker:
And what’s amazing…

Nick Jaworski:
If you’re watching the video, it all made sense.

Verbs Boyer:
Yikes. It all made sense.

Nick Jaworski:
If you’re watching. Just listening to the podcast, it just sounds like rustling clothes.

Courtney Baker:
I honestly feel like I’m with the people just listening on audio because you were moving so fast I honestly couldn’t see much of anything. It was just a blur. So I’m not sure you’re missing anything.

Verbs Boyer:
It was all a blur. So Blake’s back, and we’ll be talking about two questions that you can use to help coach yourself towards goal success, and we’ll have another question from the community coming up.

Verbs Boyer:
Welcome to another episode of Focus on This. This is 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 B to the B, to the B, B, B, B, Blake Stratton. Happy Monday to you guys.

Courtney Baker:
Happy Monday.

Blake Stratton:
Yes, happy Monday to you. It’s good to be back. It’s good to be with y’all. Verbs, you’re looking fresh as always. Courtney, just in executive mode, just directing, driving profits and whatnot over there. It’s clear you’re getting a lot done. It’s good to be back here and… Oh. Yeah, I think that’s everybody here. Great to see all you guys. Just kidding, Nick. I see you too. You’re looking dapper as always.

Verbs Boyer:
Two questions that you can use to coach yourself, which is an interesting concept because a lot of times I think the conversation is around getting into coaching. Whether it’s one-to-one coaching, whether it’s group coaching, it’s almost like there’s an underlying assumption that you’re having troubles doing it on your own so you need to implement or bring in some more reinforcement. So these questions are going to be very important, I think, to help clarify or bring more clarity around what it could actually look in coaching yourself. So question number one you can ask yourself is, what worked and what didn’t? What worked and what didn’t? These sound kind of familiar already, Courtney.

Courtney Baker:
They do sound familiar. And for everybody that’s in their car, they’re all saying, “That’s actually two questions, Verbs,” just let’s acknowledge the obvious here.

Verbs Boyer:
This is like in school when you had to do reading comprehension work and they had like two or three questions in one question, and you knew that this was going to take at least 10 minutes for me to write all this out.

Courtney Baker:
And you had to…

Verbs Boyer:
So it’s that kind of a feeling right now with that question.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah. So this question sounds familiar, like Verbs mentioned, because it is built into the Full Focus Planner. These two questions are really questions to help you reflect. I may be the only one here, but I am so future oriented, always 10 steps ahead in my mind, that if I’m not intentional about this question, I just keep going. I’m on to the next checkbox, the next Daily Big Three, and I will not step back to kind of take the time to objectively ask this question.

Verbs Boyer:
Wait, so Courtney, question. When you don’t ask yourself these two questions, what do you immediately jump to, like how do you go into the future?

Courtney Baker:
Oh, it is so scary. No, I’m just kidding. No, I mean, I think when I don’t take the time to ask this question, I’m not learning from the past. And I think what’s so valuable here, it’s as objective as possible. Obviously, we are thinking. There’s emotions built into our thinking, and so sometimes it’s hard to really separate those things and try to objectively say, “Okay, what worked? What didn’t work?” But these questions help at least try to access that as best we can. And so for me, if I don’t do this, I’m not using the past for my learning in the future to be able to apply it, to improve, to grow. And so I instead just keep plowing ahead, essentially doing the same thing and hoping that I get better results. Because I do want to continue to grow, I want to continue to get better. But most likely without taking time to reflect, I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to get those results.

Blake Stratton:
Yeah. Another reason I this question is it creates some distance emotionally from what could have been a great week or a bad week. If things go really well for us last week, we’re like, “Hey, everything’s great. I’m just going to carry forward and plunge forward to the next thing.” Or if things go bad, we can go, “Oh, I stink. I’m terrible,” or, “My team’s terrible,” or, “I’m stuck.” And in both cases, our emotions can, like you said, Courtney, cause us to miss out on an opportunity to leverage the lessons that our life is trying to teach us, trying to equip us so that we can achieve what we want to achieve. I think it’s especially true if you’ve had a bad week, probably between those two, to just be like, “I stink.” But instead of asking the question, “Why do things never work out for me? And why do I stink so much at what I’m trying to do?” Super emotional. This, “What worked? What didn’t?” allows you to step back almost as an observer.

Blake Stratton:
When I’m working with my coaching clients, I tell them to kind of put their accountant hat on. When an accountant is looking at sales numbers, they’re not tempted to, “Oh, I should get on the phone right now and start to fix all the problems,” and, “Why was I failing?” They’re just looking at, what are the numbers? What were the activities done? And you’re just acknowledging what’s working and what’s not working with an emotional distance that allows you to think more objectively, like a coach.

Courtney Baker:
Blake, I’m curious because I feel you probably land on the other extreme from me, where you do to like process the past. Is that fair? Do you to like process the past? You’re more naturally bent to kind of process the past. Is that really the power that you find… Because I think it’s interesting to look at it from kind of two different personality types of like, hey, this the same question can be powerful for a wide variety of people.

Blake Stratton:
Yeah. To me, I’m naturally going to be… My personality type is… It’s easy for me to not just reflect on the past, but to get stuck in the past or to become defined by my past. And if I’m defined by my past or my results, then I can only do as good as what I’ve already done, and it’s hard to then hit the next level, which is why questions like this are helpful because it takes me out of sort of the emotions of that spot.

Blake Stratton:
But I think for people that struggle with reflecting, because… And it could be a personality type, it could be because they’re afraid of what’s down there in the deep well of feelings, I don’t want to find out something’s going to come bite me, right? This is helpful for them too, because, oh, here’s a simple question. It’s not too deep, but it’s deep enough that we can get some value. And it really leads us into this next question as well, which is, hey, now that we’ve accounted for something, we can start… And this is where your brain, I’m sure, kicks into gear, Courtney, we can start taking the next step. So I’ll let you lead with this next question.

Courtney Baker:
So question number two, right in my wheelhouse, is what will you continue or change? If you use the Full Focus Planner, this is built into the Weekly Preview as that question about, what will you keep, improve, start, and stop? Same kind of question, just broken down even easier. This question really is about planning. Especially if you’re not five steps ahead at all times, it really helps you take what you learned in question one and then apply it.

Courtney Baker:
If we just stop at question one but don’t figure out, okay, how do I apply that into the future? We really aren’t coaching ourselves, we’re just kind of assessing. There’s no application to that learning. So this question really is about, how do we change our future behavior? These two, again, super simple questions work so well in tandem together.

Verbs Boyer:
I think one thing that I’m getting from this conversation is that if we fail to ask ourself these two questions, if we’re not looking back on what worked, what didn’t, and if we’re not asking ourselves what needs to continue or what needs to change, then, like we were talking about early, we can be so futuristic that we just rush into the next thing. And we’re really setting ourselves up to just figure out how to pivot in the middle of the thing versus taking stock and take the proper assessment at the beginning of going into the goal process, or going into the sprint, or the project, or what have you. Which then, you’re going to end up taking probably that same amount of time to either adjust and pivot in the middle that you could almost lift out of that process and then shuttle it back to the beginning by posing these two questions. That way we’re a little bit more prepared going in, stepping into that process.

Blake Stratton:
So let’s just give it a real life example. How about that?

Courtney Baker:
Yeah.

Blake Stratton:
I’ll pull a page from my own book, my own Weekly Preview. Actually, I was going to give an example, maybe I should actually look at last week here. Let me crack open my old Full Focus Planner here. [inaudible 00:12:03]. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Here’s a real life example of putting these two questions to work. I’m pulling this straight from a recent Weekly Preview that I did thinking about what was working and what wasn’t working. And one thing that I had written was not working was that I was reacting a lot to deadlines. Can you guys hear that three-year-old tantrum that’s happening above me?

Nick Jaworski:
Yeah. I was-

Blake Stratton:
It’s not a construction site.

Verbs Boyer:
Go ahead, go ahead, keep going.

Blake Stratton:
That’s an actual person.

Verbs Boyer:
We love the children.

Blake Stratton:
That’s a person up there with emotions.

Nick Jaworski:
Pure id.

Blake Stratton:
She’s expressing the emotions, which is appropriate. Then we’re going to ask, “Okay, what worked and what didn’t work about drinking the milk from the gray cup.”

Courtney Baker:
Exactly.

Verbs Boyer:
to you.

Blake Stratton:
You really wanted the pink cup. I got it. Okay. So what we’ll change is we will never buy another thing that’s not the color pink. I think that’s what we need.

Blake Stratton:
That’s a real life example.

Courtney Baker:
Exactly.

Blake Stratton:
Okay. So let me give you a real life example. I’m pulling this straight from a Weekly Preview, okay? This is hot off the press and I’ve deciphered the hieroglyphics that is my handwriting to bring this to you as an example. So thinking about what worked and what didn’t work in my week, as I was reflecting, I like to look at my calendar, look at the previous days, and just assess, oh yeah, what was working?

Blake Stratton:
I noticed I was rushing and reacting a lot more than I feel comfortable doing, and there were a couple of project deadlines that got missed or that I… Since I’m doing my own business, I kind of set some of my own deadlines. And so some of those, it’s like, “Oh, I’ll push that back. I’ll push that back,” and I realized that there was a rattle, essentially. The rattle meaning my systems aren’t really working.

Blake Stratton:
That’s not working for me to not have a system to actually think through all my different new work project categories that I’m trying to learn and adjust to. And so what I want to start doing, and this sort of led me down a path is, okay, I am due to start templatizing some of my processes and start upgrading… For me, I wrote down, “I need to actually improve or upgrade my project management system.” Because up until this point, I’m a few months in now to figuring out doing my own business, I had a project management system that worked when it was just me and it was kind of small; and now our things are growing, that no longer is meeting that need. And so I simply said, “Okay, I need to set up this specific software to actually handle these projects more like an actual business,” and so that’s kind of the big improve point.

Blake Stratton:
Now, that’s not even a task, but what I do after that is then I say, “Okay, great. So what does that look like for this week? Does that need to show up in this week’s Weekly Big Three, or is that just a task, or do I need to calendar something?” So as I go through a Weekly Preview process, I use these two questions as a launch point to look at the context of the rest of my week and then develop a strategy to implement that change.

Courtney Baker:
What I love about that is I think it’s so easy, especially when you get in that place where it feels like I’ve got too many things that aren’t getting done to just try to use hustle to accommodate, to try to fix it with hustle, when it’s like, no, actually what I need to do is step back and essentially coach myself through this rather than just using brute force.

Courtney Baker:
And I think culturally what we say is, “Okay, just work more. Work harder. Work faster,” when it’s like, no, we want to… What we’re all about on this podcast is how to equip you all to work smarter, to take the time with questions like this, using the Weekly Preview to coach yourself and make smart decisions so that you go into the week not just like, “Okay, I’m just really going to have to buckle down. It’s going to be a late week. I got to get this stuff that rattles, got to stop and fix it.” Create a plan to make it where all your weeks work the way that you want them to work. So I love that example, it’s such a good one.

Verbs Boyer:
Hey, guys, just to take a moment, we’re talking about these two questions that you can use to help coach yourself toward goal progress. Now, the two questions we’ve posed is to ask yourself question number one, what worked, what didn’t? And then there’s a question number two, what do you continue to do, and what do you change?

Verbs Boyer:
Now, in that process, most of the work lies in, what are you going to do going forward? And Courtney, I know that you have something that will help us all just think through that process, that we can actually document it to make sure the changes that we want to implement have the best chance of taking place.

Courtney Baker:
Yeah, this is a tool… We haven’t really talked about this tool very much on the podcast, but it’s one of my absolute favorite resources that we offer. I have personally been using this for years, and it is our Vision Caster Desk Tool. It’s a brand new tool that we have that really just helps you kind of think through what you’re trying to achieve, why it’s important. It kind of walks you through the steps. It’s fantastic because it is in a spiral bound version. You can tear it off and hand it to a teammate, you can delegate it to someone else, you can just keep it for yourself and figure out kind of a project plan from it. But it really helps you take this coaching and put it into action. So if you’re interested in that tool, again, we don’t talk about it a whole lot here on the podcast, but one of my absolute favorites, you can find it at FullFocusPlanner.com.

Verbs Boyer:
So Nick, you promised us a question from the community. Please, sir, pose away.

Nick Jaworski:
Okay, well this is a question from Mark. And again, if you’re not a part of the Full Focus Planner community, what are you doing? That’s where the people are. That’s where the cool people are.

Verbs Boyer:
What is life?

Nick Jaworski:
So this is from Mark. I chose this specifically, partially because Blake is here today. Do any of you have a musical goal, as in learning how to play an instrument? If you do, I’d be very interested to know what your steps are, what your habits practices are, how are you doing the scheduling and time management with learning to play, what your actual goal is, and what your way to celebrate it will be when you reach it. I’m trying to learn to play the ukulele proficiently enough to play three specific songs that I really like and to be able to sit down and, quote, “jam” with other people who are playing, and that has been a goal for more than two years. I have not gotten anywhere near it yet, so any other aspiring musicians here, please share your plans and methods to get beyond simply aspiring. Thank you. And that’s from Mark.

Courtney Baker:
All right, I got this, y’all. I knew this question was for me, so let me take it. Actually, just kidding. I’ll be over here reading a book. Let me know when y’all get done.

Verbs Boyer:
Wait. But Courtney, no, I think you do have something. Because it sounds like the way Mark is structured, the goal may not be working for him currently, but I would think you have some input as far as maybe milestones that he can set since he said he’s had this goal for about two years. So are there some milestones that he can set in place, maybe before we get into his musical question?

Courtney Baker:
Mm-hmm. Thank you, Verbs, that was so kind of you. You’re like, “No. You know what, Courtney? You have value to bring to this question about music.”

Verbs Boyer:
I saw you heading for the door so I was like, wait, before you go…

Courtney Baker:
Did he actually… So he just says he’s had a goal, he didn’t actually give us his actual goal, like written out goal.

Verbs Boyer:
Well, he did state…

Nick Jaworski:
Yeah, it says, “… Trying to learn to play the ukulele proficiently enough to play three specific songs that I really like and to be able to sit down and jam with other people who are playing, so that’s been a goal for more than two years.”

Courtney Baker:
This is a really good… Actually, you could use this episode to break this down. I mean, you just take these two questions… Because I feel before you even get into milestones, you have to say, “What has worked with learning the ukulele, and what hasn’t worked?” And then, “What do you need to continue or change?”

Courtney Baker:
Because it could be like, “What hasn’t worked is I keep just trying to do this myself, and what I need to change is I need to get a coach to help me with the ukulele. I need to get an outside person to help me.” I mean, there’s a 1,000 different versions of that. So I think this question lines up with what we talked about today really well, before you even get into creating milestones. I would be so curious to know what he’s done so far.

Blake Stratton:
Since he’s had this ambition for a couple of years, I would say you’re safe to make this smaller. My guess is you don’t want to learn how to play three songs so that you can play three songs, you want to learn how to play three songs because you see that as a means to an end of, “Hey, I’m a competent ukulele player, a ukulelist?” Ukuleleist? Ukuleleist, that sounds right, that sounds right, yep.

Verbs Boyer:
Ukuleleist.

Courtney Baker:
Listen, if we’ve got two musicians and a band director on this podcast episode right now, we can’t figure out the correct way to say it, it doesn’t exist, okay?

Verbs Boyer:
It’s a loaded question, a loaded question.

Courtney Baker:
So we can call whatever we want.

Blake Stratton:
It’s clear that he is after becoming a better player, which means if we can set a goal that’s going to move you towards that reality, that’s a win. So what comes to my mind is just if you’ve fallen short by trying to… Usually, we try to just… If we’re biting off more than we can chew, just simply set a goal to say, “Great. I want to learn this song by this day.” Meaning, “I can play this song in real time along with the recording by such and such day,” that’s how I would define it. And then your brain can get to work. What’s the highest leverage way to do that? And Courtney already gave you a great idea, Mark, which is find somebody else who already knows how to play it. Ask around for some lessons, or at the very least find someone to hold you accountable to say, “Hey, what have you done?”

Courtney Baker:
Well, that’s exactly what I was going to say. What would work for me… And again, I have zero musical talent. But if I had scheduled it, if I was like, “Okay, I’m going to give myself this quarter… My goal is to learn this one song,” I’m going to schedule a time for my family or friends to come over and I’m going to play this song for them. It would totally work. I can’t handle not being able to follow through on performing that, that it would drive… It would give me all the extra focus and determination I need. I think everybody kind of knows, “Okay, these are the things that will work for me, that will give me that focus I need,” so I would encourage you to leverage those as well.

Verbs Boyer:
All right, so today’s tip to level up your focus. Pick one goal that you’re working towards, then take 10 minutes to sit down with a blank sheet of paper and answer these questions that we posed today. What worked, what didn’t? Question number two, what will you continue, and what will you change?

Verbs Boyer:
So give yourself a good amount of time to just pause, reflect on those a little bit, that way you can set yourself up for goal success. Thank you for joining us today on Focus on This.

Courtney Baker:
This is the most productive podcast on the internet, so share it with your friends and don’t forget to join us in our Full Focus Planner community on Facebook.

Blake Stratton:
So great to be with y’all again. Let’s do this again, let’s do it again soon. But until then, stay focused.

Verbs Boyer:
Stay focused.

Courtney Baker:
Stay focused. That was really delayed. I got distracted by my jazz fingers.