174. What Can I Do Today to Advance My Goal?

Episode Transcript

Nick Jaworski:
Okay Blake. It is the second week of January, we’ve done our best year evers, we’ve done our planning, we’ve got these goals. I’m feeling really good about this situation, but I have no idea what comes next. I mean, I do, from my experience, it’s a lot of gnashing of teeth and panic. But if you’re like that at all, I guess the question is we need help. What do we do next to make sure that past versions of us get what they want out of this upcoming year?

Blake Stratton:
Absolutely. Nick, this is when you go back to the basics, to the fundamentals, this is a common thing we see-

Nick Jaworski:
So like phonics?

Blake Stratton:
Yep, exactly-

Nick Jaworski:
So I got to learn how to read?

Blake Stratton:
Yep. You want to get back to, how do I read? What is this? In sports, the players that we admire for their amazing feats of greatness are just about always the ones that are willing to continually do the repetitive work of mastering the fundamentals. And there’s no better time to just go over the basics, the essentials, of the Full Focus System than the beginning of the year. Like you said, you got a clean slate, new year, new goals. It’s a new you, Nick. You’re looking fresh. It’s great.
So today that’s what we’re going to talk about. We’re going to talk about really the first pillar of the Full Focus System, which is something we call the daily big three. The daily big three. This is an essential part of just getting started on advancing towards your goals. And as the name implies, it comes in handy every single day.

Nick Jaworski:
If you’re a new planner user, let’s say you got one for New Year’s or Christmas or whatever, this is a great place to start for all of y’all.

Blake Stratton:
Absolutely. So in this episode, we’re just going to answer three questions about the daily big three. First of all, what is it? Why does it work? And how do you set a daily big three?
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. My name is Blake Stratton, I’m here with Courtney Baker and Verbs, oh wait, no I’m not.

Nick Jaworski:
You’re not.

Blake Stratton:
They’re playing hooky today. But that’s okay, you’re in good hands. Don’t turn that dial ladies and gentlemen, I’m here with my good friend and our producer Nick Jaworski. How are you Nick?

Nick Jaworski:
I’m doing well Blake. It’s weird to be officially on the show. I tend to just insert myself as I feel is necessary and now suddenly that I have to talk I’m concerned I’ll have nothing to say. So let’s just see what happens.

Blake Stratton:
Yeah, let’s see. I’m just going to watch you for a moment just see what you give me here. Do it. No, I’m just kidding.
Nick, the people love you. They love when you talk. You are the voice of the people in many ways. You ask great questions. Help us unpack this. So we’ve actually got three questions today. We’re talking about this concept of the daily big three. But before we dive in, Nick, tell me, when did you first hear this concept of the daily big three? Or maybe when did you first try it out?

Nick Jaworski:
Well, I was actually just about to talk about this, we’re on the same brain right here. Everybody, this is going to go great. Same brain.

Blake Stratton:
Oh yeah.

Nick Jaworski:
I told the story before on the podcast, but I do think it’s the start of a new year so I will quickly recap this. I was hired by this company to help with podcasting years ago. And back then we used to go in person to do these recordings. This is before we had focus on this, I would sit in a room with Michael Hyatt and Megan Hyatt Miller and they would talk about planners and leadership and organization and productivity. And it took two years before I realized that the planner could also be for me, because they would talk about it and I’d go, well, yeah, Michael Hyatt, he’s got a planner, but it took a long time.
So they gave me a planner and I brought it home and it sat on a shelf for three months and then it moved to my desk one day and it just sat next to me. And then I like leafed through it and then put it down and then one day it made it to my bedside table. This took like six months and I’m not kidding, for real. Just to go, I can have it, I can be safe with this. And then eventually I opened the thing and I think it’s took someone saying to me like, Nick, just do your daily big three. Just start with that. You don’t need to do the rest of it. You just pick three things you have to do today. And that’s what allowed me to go in a few weeks of that, then I was doing a weekly preview and now here we are two plus years later doing this. So that’s my relationship to it. It is the easiest thing to start with, which is great because it’s also the most powerful thing, perhaps.

Blake Stratton:
I agree. And we should start just by defining what we’re talking about because maybe you are brand new. You heard me say Full Focus System, what even is that? I’m trying to be more productive this year, I found this podcast. You’re in the right place. All we’re talking about here is how do we do the right things? Productivity is not about just getting more things done and hustling harder and how can you fit more to-dos into your day? It’s about how can I actually accomplish more with less? How can I be so dialed into the high leverage things that move me towards the life and the work and the experiences that I want? And that’s what this daily big three allows you to do, is to find that leverage.
So the daily big three is simply this three important tasks for you to complete today. What are the three most important things that you could do today? This is your to-do list. Most of us have about 15, maybe even 20 things on our to-do list. And you go, Blake, this isn’t going to work for me. But the practice of the daily big three is to say not all tasks are created equal. There are some that are higher leverage, there’s something called the Pareto Principle, maybe you’ve heard of this Nick, that or the 80-20 principle. The 80-20 rule says 20% of the effort’s going to deliver 80% of the results. And this daily big three is that 20%. You’re identifying, okay, what is going to be the highest leverage things that if I get this done today is a success. Super powerful to define success with three things rather than an endless to-do list.
The mental shift, the mental reward you get it, I mean try it today, you will experience a different night’s sleep. That’s what happened to me. So that’s what we’re talking about with the daily big three. That’s the first question.
Question two is, why does it work? Why does it work? Why do you think this works?

Nick Jaworski:
Well, it’s clarifying. I had a friend, my best friend in college, we’re still friends. Not had, we’re still friends. But I remember when he started teaching, he had a to-do list he kept in like his Gmail, like a tab, and he was so proud of how long it was. He was really like, look at how many things I have to do and I’m never going to finish it. This is literally how he phrased it. I was just going, I would die. There’s no way I could wake up to a list that was 100 tasks long and was going to be longer by the time I went to bed. That’s not a way to live your life.
So the great thing about three things is that as long as you’re designing them well, you can get three things done today. And that feels really nice and so you can build off of that momentum.

Blake Stratton:
Imagine if you were supposed to get to a certain destination. Let’s say you had, I don’t know, a dentist appointment or something, Nick and I just said, all right, just go. And you just said great, and you just started running as fast as you could in a direction. You’re like, I think it’s west. I think it’s on the west side, I’m just going to start going in that direction. You just decided to pick up and run because it takes an extra second to find your keys, to locate your car, to plug in directions on the GPS that’s going to tell you where there’s an accident on the highway and whatever and you can go there. It’s actually going to take more time to do that in the front end. Meanwhile, if you had just took off running, you’re going harder and faster and whatever, but we know of course you’re going to be exhausted and it’s going to take longer.

Nick Jaworski:
I’m not making it.

Blake Stratton:
The daily big three works in a similar way. Which is, you are slowing down, you’re placing a limitation on yourself really, but it’s because you are wanting to go faster, you’re wanting to get there efficiently. You’re asking yourself, which of these million tasks I have are the highest leverage? What’s most important? And when you can identify what that is, you will reach your goal faster and with greater ease. Guess what? Tomorrow’s another day you’re going to have to do stuff. You will come into the day not as exhausted as you would be if you just had an all out sprint, which means you’re going to be more consistent. If you’ve tried goal setting or resolutions before, you know consistency is key. So that’s another reason why this is so powerful.

Nick Jaworski:
Sometimes you got to lose time to gain time.

Blake Stratton:
Wise words, put that on a quote in the planner.

Nick Jaworski:
Do it.

Blake Stratton:
Michael, if you’re listening, I’m sure he’s the one that adds all this stuff [inaudible 00:10:22]-

Nick Jaworski:
We’re very aggressively saying this. Do it, put it in there.

Blake Stratton:
Do it right now. Frame it on your wall.
You know what the daily big three is, hopefully we’ve convinced you that this does work and you understand why. Now the question is Nick, how do you set them? Because as we just said, most of us have a long, long to-do list. How do you actually trim that down, especially if it feels like, well, I got to get all this done. What difference does it make if I choose three things? How do I even do that?

Nick Jaworski:
Well, it’s interesting because we’re talking to two different types of planner users or just people with goals or not. So I’m going to just quickly talk about somebody who’s brand new to the system just because it’s the simplest way, which is that let’s say it’s Monday evening, it’s tonight, and you’re going, I’m going to do it tomorrow. I’m going to use my planner, I’m going to crack it open, I’m going to get started. You really could literally just start with three tasks that are important tomorrow and just to get used to how that feels to recognize your priorities. I have a stamp that I bought, I’ve talked about this in the podcast before. I write my three tasks down and when I finish them, I get to get a cha-ching sound and it feels so good. So you could just do that this week. You do it tonight, you check them all off tomorrow and then you just keep going. And then eventually the goal here, of course, is to feed into larger goals that you’ve set for yourself, which I’ll leave for you, dear Blake, to describe.

Blake Stratton:
No, I mean that’s pretty good. That’s pretty good.

Nick Jaworski:
Oh, we’re done.

Blake Stratton:
Yeah. Well, it hasn’t really changed even for me as I’ve been setting daily big threes for years now. Still similar questions where I don’t try to just think of a big three from nothing. Usually I have an existing list. So I start with just, okay, what’s on my plate? What’s on my mind? For me, I reference a digital task manager. I still use a digital task manager despite using the physical planner because it’s a storehouse really, of all these tasks. I’m looking at my calendar, I’m looking at my tasks and based on what I’ve got scheduled for the day and all those, these tasks and what my goals even are, I can ask a few questions. One is, of these tasks if nothing else got done today what absolutely has to get done? It has to get done or something important to me is going to break.
Another question you can ask is, looking at your goal, what can you do today that would move you one step closer to that goal? And this is an important question too, Nick, because your goals are not going to complete themselves. You set a goal, and the reason you set that goal is because the natural momentum of your life probably wasn’t leading you towards that goal. In other words, we set a goal to extend ourselves or to grow beyond our current rhythms of life, the current way things have been going, which means you have to be intentional about doing tasks that are going to lead to that goal. You can’t just, in other words, respond to everything that’s urgent or anything that somebody else says you’ve got to do. You have to at some point say, no, I’ve got to do something. Just one thing today that’s going to move me a little bit closer to my goal.

Nick Jaworski:
I can tell you this though, that when writing your big three, your daily big three, it is important to start with a verb. This is something actually with my child who’s 13 now, that when we’ve been using a student planner or a variation on it for a while, this is something that we actually work on a lot. He’ll go like homework, that’s his default answer. He’ll go homework. And you go, what does that mean? You’re going to look at it, you’re going to do it, you’re going to review it. What are all those things? It really provides not just clarity, but comfort to know when you’ve completed a task by starting with a verb, otherwise it becomes very ephemeral and sort of un-completable.

Blake Stratton:
That’s a wise thing. So this is why it’s great to return to the fundamentals is for that reason is I’ve worked with clients before that have used the planner for a year and I say, hey, what’s your daily big three today? And what they wrote was three categories. Budgeting, meetings, it’s like, okay, that’s just categories of things that you’re doing, doesn’t quite count. You’re missing out on the benefits. It’s not about doing it right or doing it the Full Focus way or blah, blah, blah. It’s about the benefit of the big three is clarity. What do I actually have to do that’s going to be the important next steps towards my goals? The other benefit is peace of mind and relief in a sense of progress, which is key. That was the biggest shift for me when I started using the planner, was not that I had this radical jump in productivity, it’s that I started being more present in the things I was doing and I started sleeping better. I started enjoying my work more because I actually got to experience those positive benefits of completing things because I was aware of what was actually happening.
So don’t miss out on the benefits of this. Take an extra second to clarify exactly what it is you’re going to do. This is a single task you’re identifying. Start it with a verb, complete such and such thing or spend 30 minutes walking on the treadmill or whatever it is. Be as clear as you can and that’ll serve you well as you set your daily big three.

Blake Stratton:
So today’s tip to level up your focus, spend a few minutes reflecting on this question. What prevents you from setting and completing your daily big three? What is it and how could you overcome that obstacle?

Nick Jaworski:
Now, we had our Best Year Ever live event on January 6th, it is now the 9th. And so it doesn’t mean that you’ve missed out on the opportunity to set some goals. In fact, the first time I did Best Year Ever it was not live. In fact, in some ways, depending on what you’re up to, having a taped version of that experience is great. You still have to set time to do the course, but you get to pause when you need to. If you need a little more time. It’s great. So you can go to FullFocus.co/goalsetting, get a recorded version of that live event, get the feedback from the community that was there, and have the time to set those goals for the year. Just because it’s January 9th doesn’t mean that you still can’t set your goals. You don’t need to wait one year to start living the life that you want to live. So Full Focus.co/goalsetting.

Blake Stratton:
All right, everybody, thank you for joining us on Focus On This.

Nick Jaworski:
And you know what, even with just Blake and I, this is still the most productive podcast on the internet somehow. So share it with your friends. And do not forget, I cannot stress this enough, there are so many smart people in the Full Focus Planner community, maybe Blake’s one of them. Maybe. Not saying.

Blake Stratton:
I might be.

Nick Jaworski:
But, they’re around there to help you out-

Blake Stratton:
You’ll have to come in and see.

Nick Jaworski:
It’s sort of incredible the amount of smart, productive, caring people that are there. So you should go on Facebook and join that community. We will be back next Monday. I mean, some of us will be, hopefully Verbs and Courtney are back. Please. We’ll be back[inaudible 00:31:26]

Blake Stratton:
If not, it’s just going to be you Nick. It’ll just be you just talking to yourself.

Nick Jaworski:
Yeah, I’ll be here just crying. But we’ll be back next Monday with another great episode. Until then, stay focused.

Blake Stratton:
Stay focused.