Focus On This Podcast

168. How to Stay Grounded This Holiday Season

Audio

Overview

While the holiday season is wonderful, it can also disrupt all of the routines and rituals you’ve spent all year developing. With more family, more events, more time with friends, more gifts, more meals, there’s seemingly not enough time to devote to pursuing your quarterly and annual goals. When there’s so much “more” happening in our lives, it’s important to look for strategies of “less” to help you be both peaceful and productive.

In this episode, Courtney, Verbs, and Blake share one strategy to help you stay grounded this holiday season. Also, Courtney speaks with Michael Hyatt’s executive assistant (and all-around productive person), Jim Kelly, about some of his favorite hacks.

Here’s the list of apps Jim uses every morning as part of his Morning Ritual:

To view this episode on YouTube, visit https://youtu.be/AFmzPPlzXEg

To get help simplifying your rituals, visit www.fullfocusplanner.com/downloads and look for the Build Your Ritual Kit.

Lastly, make sure to visit the Full Focus Planner Community on Facebook. It’s what all of the cool kids are doing. (Seriously. There are a lot of very helpful planner users that are available to offer support and guidance.) https://www.facebook.com/groups/ffpthinktank

Episode Transcript

Courtney Baker:
Hey guys, today on this episode we’re going to be talking about your rituals, specifically in the month of December when it is crazy. So if you’re needing to jot down a ritual specifically for this month, you can download a free workbook to do that at fullfocusplanner.com/downloads. You’re going to be looking for the Build Your Own Ritual Kit.
I don’t know if there’s anything that says you’ve gone into middle age when you are basically trying to get all of your December things done in October, but that’s where I’m at, friends. The kids’ pajamas, the lights for the house, all of that got ordered in October this year. That’s how we’re rolling because of what we’re talking about today. It’s too much to be done in the month of December, and so one of the ways I chose to tackle it was, “Well, we’re just going to pretend it’s holiday season for three months and try to spread this thing out a little bit.”

Verbs Boyer:
That’s the way to go. You stretch it out, start earlier, and then you get to enjoy the holiday season longer. It might have an intense period toward the end, but at least you enjoy the other two months.

Courtney Baker:
Everybody, this is really important what I’m about to say. Nick, this is probably what you’re about to bring at. You have to have basically a no buy December. Like, B-U-Y. No buying in December. Because what happens is, if you start buying all the things in October, you never actually stop, and then you just spend astronomically more on gifts than you would have. And so you’ve got to be like, “Okay, I’m going to get everything done by December 1st,” and then December is like, “I’m not buying any gifts.” You got to shut the door. Otherwise, your children are going to wake up. They’re going to be like, “This is the greatest Christmas of all time because my parents have been buying gifts for six months,” and never put the lights on.

Verbs Boyer:
Or you forget the gifts you bought and they’re still in the closet Christmas morning.

Courtney Baker:
True.

Nick Jaworski:
I am Team Christmas Starts After Thanksgiving Dinner, hard. We don’t roll into Christmas. We don’t. But you get Thanksgiving, and then once dinner is over, it’s like, Charlie Brown’s on television. The tree might even go up on Thanksgiving night, maybe usually Black Friday. I did make the mistake of buying a fake tree thinking it was more environmentally sound because that’s what I thought. But it turns out, fun fact, it is not. But at this point, if I don’t use it, then I’ve really wasted it. So now I’ve got to use it for awhile. I actually like fake trees. I know that’s controversial. So Blake, I am a Black Friday tree person. What about you?

Blake Stratton:
I would say that the Venn diagram of people who are rigid about when Christmas starts and also don’t buy real trees, I think that you’re in a small little niche there. I think that’s this little micro niche, where it’s like-

Nick Jaworski:
It is interesting, I guess.

Blake Stratton:
… “Christmas is about this time, and this is the way.” But yeah, whatever. Just throw some crap up there. Just fake, it’s fine. Sorry, your fake tree’s not crap. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying, am I saying that I’m better than you because I only get real trees? Yes, of course. But that’s not the point of this podcast episode. No, I’m just kidding, Nick. Actually, just to be honest, I’m the least productive person on the internet right now apparently, because I’ve never done any Christmas things before Thanksgiving. Not because I feel vigilant about it, but because y’all are just way more together and forward thinking. I think I need to add that to my quarterly preview next October apparently, and just do it alongside Courtney. I’ve done actually a fourth quarter quarterly preview, I’m remembering now alongside Courtney. She had all her goals for the following year already scripted, and it was 15 minutes into October.
I have a lot to learn from you guys, and maybe you can help me learn in this episode. And yes, audience, you’re correct, I’m transitioning here. This episode’s all about how busy, how kind of nutty this holiday season can be. And I’ve got a lot to learn from these folks here, because what they’ve done is made some arrangements so that it’s a little bit more manageable. But even in the midst of that, there’s a lot. There’s a lot more happening in our lives with the holiday season, with kids being off school, with gatherings, with buying, with parties, with just work. You’re in the fourth quarter. There’s a lot there and it can feel overwhelming, which is of course the exact opposite of what this season should be about, right? We should be in this place of, “Ah, wow, I feel grateful, I feel connected to the people around me, and connected to the communities I’m a part of,” and all of that. So I’m excited to dig in to this topic today is all I’m saying.

Verbs Boyer:
Welcome to another great 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 all.

Courtney Baker:
Happy Monday. You didn’t say your thing, Blake, and I feel like we can’t start until you do it. The cult following will not have it.

Blake Stratton:
My thing?

Courtney Baker:
Yeah, you always say, “Happy Monday unto you.”

Blake Stratton:
Oh, I do?

Courtney Baker:
That’s…

Verbs Boyer:
That’s the morning blessing, the Monday blessing.

Blake Stratton:
Oh yeah. It’s like this. Well, happy Monday unto you, Verbs, and also unto you, Courtney, and also unto you and yours, Nick. And a happy Monday unto me. A happy Monday unto everyone.

Nick Jaworski:
Now it’s ruined.

Blake Stratton:
I was trying to do a tiny Tim, some kind of connection there. Whatever.

Nick Jaworski:
Seasonal.

Courtney Baker:
We have already talked just quickly about some strategies that we’re all employing to try to make December work better in our lives. But today we want to give you a single strategy that you can try to hopefully simplify the holiday season. And that strategy is to just simplify your rituals. We actually do advise people to do this a lot of times when they travel a lot. If you travel for work, or maybe you have a work trip once a quarter or something like that, you may want to have a separate set of rituals for travel days or days when you’re at a hotel. What would those look like? This is the same kind of strategy, basically having a second set of rituals during the holiday season. Have either of you ever deployed this or tried this strategy?

Blake Stratton:
Absolutely, absolutely. It’s from a lot of experience of just tossing the ritual. A great example is the workday shutdown. Oh, I have this special thing tonight, or this week’s busier because, or we are in the fourth quarter, so I need to put in a little extra time at the office, and then, whoop, out the window goes that routine, that ritual. It may not catch up to me the very next day, and maybe not the day after that, but a few days of missing that ritual that I had installed to regulate my work and my life and my mental emotional states, things get wonky, and then I get crabby, and then people go, “Hey, Scrooge, what gives?” And then I say, “Bah humbug,” I get into character. It’s this whole thing. I have to dress different. So yes is the short answer. I’ve learned to experiment with this, Courtney, but only by hitting my head against the wall a lot of times, just kind of with a all or nothing mentality about a ritual.

Verbs Boyer:
Yeah, I think this is one of those instances where you can either crush the rock or allow the rock to crush you, especially with the business of the last month of the year, as Blake mentioned. There’s just something that has to give, something has to be amended, shortened. But it’s also to keep in mind, what is going to be the most essential things that have to stay, that can’t go anywhere, and figuring out how to adjust from there. Because going into the holiday season thinking that everything can be the same length or amount of time that you would normally do it, I think we’re kind of setting ourselves up for a hard fall, no pun.

Courtney Baker:
Well, and I think the key here really is just to be honest with what your constraints are. Look at what is on the table, what you’re going to need to do, what you’re going to need to accomplish. Maybe you haven’t done all of your shopping in October. Maybe you’re going to have to buy a lot of gifts and that’s going to take some time out tackling going to the malls. Do people still go to malls? Great question. It may be that you’re going to have to, like Blake said, you’re going to have to be at the office later than you normally are, or you’ve just got a lot of events at night and you’re not going to be able to do your normal nighttime ritual the way that you normally would.
So once you’ve kind of established, “Hey, what are the actual constraints that I’m going to have this month?” Once you have that, you can just ask yourself, “What can I cut?” And this is somewhere you have permission, you have my permission, to be brutal here, and really ask, “What is the bare minimum, what is absolutely essential for getting the results that I want with the constraints that I have?”

Blake Stratton:
So for example, if you have a morning ritual, and ideally you are getting up at a certain time, you’re reading, you’re doing some yoga or that sort of thing. My morning ritual ideally is about 90 minutes. I love the mornings. It’s that time where everyone else is quiet or asleep. And so that’s really important to me. And yet in this season, one question that I would ask is, “Okay, if I only had 20 minutes, 15 minutes, or 30 minutes, what is the version of this? What would I cut? What would I do if I only had that much time?” Because there will be mornings where you probably do only have that much time. And then temptation, I don’t know if you guys have done this, when I look at the clock and I go, “Oh, I have this extra thing,” or, “This changed,” rather than using the limited amount of time I have, I can actually squander it. Which seems backwards, but my thinking, maybe, it’s that all or nothing mentality.
So I think if in advance you can go, “Okay, what would be the 20 minute version of this?” where you look at the elements of your ritual. You can do this with morning ritual, really any ritual. But you look at what are these activities and the time with the activities actually represent. What’s the need that they’re meeting? And then see, “Okay, how can I replace that?” Either in a different way, like, “I do this once a week instead of every day” type of thing. Or the morning ritual, maybe part of it is, “Hey, I do this. I go to the gym because that’s my time to exercise.” Well, going to and from the gym, that’s going to take a total of 20, 25 minutes depending on where your gym is at, and then you do the whole thing. Like, okay, could we change this workout regimen or have a version of that, that say, “I don’t have very much time,” where you simply just go for a jog around your block and the whole thing takes 10 minutes instead of the whole thing taking 45 minutes.

Courtney Baker:
I think that’s such a great example of normally the default would be like, “I just can’t move my body in the morning. I can’t work out period.” But probably what you’re actually trying to accomplish is, “I need to move my body in the morning.” Like, I know I feel great when I do, and there’s a scaled down version that still accomplishes, again, maybe not the ideal, but still doesn’t just completely throw that out the window.

Blake Stratton:
Or similarly with the workday startup ritual, maybe there’s a certain level of organization or a certain level of things you do in your workday startup or workday shutdown that really cue you up for an ideal day or to end your day ideally. And I would look at what you currently have written in your ritual and just write down, “The reason I’m doing this is because.” If you’re having trouble just automatically thinking it, just write it out. “Oh, I’m doing this because X.” And then ask yourself, “Well, if time were limited and I had to still do that, what could I cut? What could I shrink down? Or what could I batch into a totally different time of the day or the week?” So making it a weekly activity versus every day or something like that. Get creative with it.
It’s going to be helpful to do this ahead of time. I think maybe the biggest benefit you guys have, and I’m preaching to myself here because as I admitted earlier, this is something that I struggle with. I think what I really struggle with is there’s a domino effect of feeling like my day is running me rather than I’m running my day, to use Verbs’ analogy of, “You can crush the rock or let it crush you.” Is just by the mentality or the emotions of, “My life is so busy and I’m just trying to keep up,” that has a domino effect on every other part of your day, and an effect of your productivity and your creativity and your overall effectiveness at everything you’re trying to do at work, or even in your personal life.
I think the power of simplifying your rituals is yes, you will get to take care of yourself and take care of things in a more effective manner, but the bigger leverage is probably at the emotional level of that sense of, “Yes, things are busier than normal, but I have a plan, I’m still in charge.” And there’s going to be a positive domino effect in other areas of your life because of that choice.

Courtney Baker:
So I have Jim Kelly here today who I think is just a pro when it comes to all things full focus and a really creative mind when it comes to creative ways to solve problems, look at things differently, find hacks along the way in our productivity, one of the most productive people I know. And so I’m excited to have him kind of share some of his hacks and I think we’re going to kind of talk through some of these together and do a live on air thinking session about some of these hacks. So Jim, welcome to the show.

Jim Kelly:
Courtney, thank you for having me, I appreciate it. I’m excited. This is one of my favorite topics to talk about, just hacks and optimizing life. We don’t do it anymore between the executive assistants on our team, but we used to share a win, what are we winning for the past week, what’s a struggle that we’ve had for the past week, and what’s one hack. That was my favorite part of the sharing that we did each week, because I would try to come up with a new hack. This gets my juices flowing, so I’m excited about this.

Courtney Baker:
I love it. So how many hacks do you have, Jim?

Jim Kelly:
I have a lot. I think I narrowed it down to 10, so we’ll get through as many as we can.

Courtney Baker:
Can we do this like Jay Leno style, Top 10? All of a sudden I’m having a moment. Like, wasn’t-

Blake Stratton:
That’s David Letterman.

Courtney Baker:
… Jay Leno Top 10? Okay, I am so sorry to all my fellow elder millennials and Gen Xers. David Letterman Top 10 style, and we start with number 10.

Jim Kelly:
Well, I’ll start with, if we could do it not David Letterman style. The first few that I have are more contexts. I’m going to give you some more contexts behind it.

Courtney Baker:
Oh, okay, yes.

Jim Kelly:
And then I could do rapid fire. So we could do Brené Brown kind of. Like, start out with the juice, and then she does rapid fire at jthe end of all of her podcasts.

Courtney Baker:
Okay. Okay. I like it. Okay.

Jim Kelly:
So the first one, part of my startup ritual in the morning is that I have all of my apps arranged in a morning ritual folder. I’ll just name these apps, and these are the apps that I use to wake up in the morning. So the first one is Othership. It’s a breathwork app. It’s amazing. It’s the best breathwork app that I found out there. So it’s Othership.
Then I go into, I’ve been using this new app, it’s called Glorify. It’s kind of like a Bible app. I’ve also used YouVersion in the past. And then I have Aura, A-U-R-A. That’s a meditation kind of cognitive behavioral therapy type of app that I listen to. The Tapping Solution, which is like a emotional freedom technique. It’s kind of woo woo, but it’s amazing in terms of getting energy up or down. It could relax you. I strongly encourage people to check it out if they’ve never heard of tapping. It’s amazing.
I read my eulogy. I have my kind of life plan eulogy, so I read that. And then I do my journal, and I use day one for that. I answer three questions: what am I grateful for today? What’s my big three for the day? And how can I love Suzanne, Grayson, and Harper today? So I answer those three questions.
That’s how I have it arranged as a folder on my iPhone. It takes the guesswork out of what I’m going to do in the morning and it gets me started. It primes me to be my best self throughout the day, so then I could jump into whatever I need to do, whether it’s taking care of the kids or workout. So that’s a small hack that I’ve used.

Courtney Baker:
I love that idea, and I feel like people in the Full Focus community are going to love that one. Yeah, I would just add there, some things that I thought of when you were saying that is, yeah, if you work out, if you have a certain app that you’re using to work out with. If you do some kind of morning ritual timer where you started and it goes, you could put that in your folder. I love this idea. Really great hack, Jim.

Nick Jaworski:
Jim, how long does it take to do all of that?

Jim Kelly:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I told my wife these hacks the other day, and she was like, “That sounds really intense.” She’s like, “That’s like six apps.” So I mean, it might not work for everyone. So that takes me like 35 minutes. So that takes me like 35 minutes.

Nick Jaworski:
Where do you do this?

Jim Kelly:
I do it actually in my bed. I’ve gone back and forth. We have two little ones, three and one. So I get up before the kids, I usually get up at 5:15, I have a tall glass of water, and then I do this. And from 5:15 to around 5:50 or so I do this. Then the kids get up. Daylight savings time is messing with them, so they’re getting up around 6:00 AM. Hang out with them for two hours, and then at 8:00 AM I’ll work out. But I’ve done it where I work out before the kids wake up and then I do this kind of routine. Because this really gets me in the right mindset, the right head game. Whereas I work out and that gets me in the right head space as well, but it’s just two different things I’m trying to engage in before I start my work day.

Courtney Baker:
Jim, I would like to, on behalf of all the listening audience that is thinking what I’m thinking right now, which is your mental fortitude to be able to sit in a bed at 5:15 in the morning and not go back to sleep is… Because I would like to raise my hand that I would be like, one meditation in and be like, “That was awesome. I’m going back to sleep.” Actually it would probably put me to sleep.

Jim Kelly:
Yeah, I’ve never fallen asleep. There was one day that I was about to fall asleep, but then I came to it. But my wife, Suzanne, is the same way. She said, “How do you get back in bed after being asleep and then doing the meditation and stuff?” I’m like, “No.” I’m a morning person and I know how beneficial it is to me if I have that set up for the day, so it’s motivational for me to do it.

Courtney Baker:
Well Jim, we are two hacks in, super rich hacks. We were going to shoot for 10. I think the solution here is we’re just going to have to have you back.

Jim Kelly:
Sounds great.

Courtney Baker:
Why don’t you give us one more quick one, and then let’s get you scheduled back to come join us again.

Jim Kelly:
Sounds great. All right, this last one will be quick. It’s a plugin for those that use Gmail or Outlook, and it’s called Boomerang for Gmail or Boomerang for Outlook. Five years ago, six years ago, I remember Boomerang as kind of the send later app that you could use, or the plugin that you could use, or the extension that you could use. The one thing that they’ve added that I love about it is that you could pause the inbox. So if you want to work within your email, but you don’t want emails coming in while you’re working within the email, you could actually pause the email. Then it goes to the separate folder that you don’t see until you unpause it, and then you could work for the emails that have come in. This is so beneficial for those that get easily distracted by incoming emails and work within your email. You could pause your email. So boomerang for Gmail or Boomerang for Outlook is a huge hack that I use.

Courtney Baker:
I love that idea. I think we talk about the never ending to-do list a lot, but the never ending email list is probably also applicable. It just keeps coming in as fast as you can actually get some things done. And I would think, especially people that, not just our own, but if you work with somebody else’s email, it’s like double that. It gives you a little bit a sense of accomplishment if you can pause it and actually see that inbox, maybe even get to zero.

Jim Kelly:
Exactly.

Courtney Baker:
And then-

Jim Kelly:
Then it comes in.

Courtney Baker:
… it refresh the new sets of emails. That’s awesome. Jim, it was so great to have you today. Thanks for coming and sharing your hacks. You have such a great mind for thinking about these things, and really creative new ways to increase productivity. So thank you, and we’ll see you in a few weeks again.

Jim Kelly:
Sounds great. Thank you for having me, Courtney.

Courtney Baker:
If we say it on the podcast, you have to do it.

Jim Kelly:
Okay.

Courtney Baker:
All right, thanks Jim.

Verbs Boyer:
So now that the holidays are upon us, today would be a great day to take a few minutes and look at your morning and evening rituals and think about how you can simplify those so they can serve you best during this holiday season.

Courtney Baker:
If you want to take some time to write those out and kind of simplify your rituals, we have a free download for you. You can do that at fullfocusplanner.com/downloads. You’re going to look for the Build Your Own Ritual Kit. That’s going to allow you to kind of draft out what your rituals could look like during the month of December.

Verbs Boyer:
Thanks for joining us 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 over in the Full Focus Planner community on Facebook. We’ll be back next Monday with another great, almost said message. Another great message for you. We’ll be back next Monday with another great episode. Until then, stay focused.

Verbs Boyer:
Stay focused.

Blake Stratton:
Stay focused.

Verbs Boyer:
Hey, wait for us.

Courtney Baker:
Yay.

Nick Jaworski:
That’s what I thought, too.

Blake Stratton:
Until then, stay focused. All right?

Courtney Baker:
I just knew-

Verbs Boyer:
She was like, “Let me get this [inaudible 00:25:36] done.”

Blake Stratton:
Stay flipping focused.