196. “It’s not just me!”: We Answer Your Questions

All right. I’m here, of course, with Blake and Verbs. And you two, I thought it had been a while since we’d done this, I thought that it would be a good time to do a good old-fashioned advice episode. Are you ready for that? Are you ready to put your thinking caps on and help out the people?

I’m ready for you to give me all the advice you have, Nick. Absolutely.

No, no.

I need a lot of help.

You do not want that from me. Just need to stress that. These are questions directly from the Full Focus Planner community. You may have even answered some of them, Blake, already. Maybe not. I don’t know. I didn’t-

Oh, from the Facebook group?

Blake is in there.

So we’re going to take those, these are real planner users and we’re going to answer them in this show today.

Welcome to another episode of Focus On This, the most productive podcast on the internet so you can banish distractions, get the right things done, and finally start loving Mondays. I’m Verbs here with Mr. Blake Stratton. Happy Monday.

Happy Monday to you, Verbs.

I’m here too.

Oh, wait.

Excellent as always.

Is that Nick?

Wait, look over there. Who was that?

The world famous-

I thought I heard something.

Nick, the podcast producer here with us today also. Well, happy Monday to you also, Nick.

Happy Monday.

Podcast monster.

That’s right. That’s correct. To shout out to somebody on the Facebook community who liked my interview on this show a couple weeks ago, so thank you. I just saw that this morning. So makes an old man feel pretty good. I don’t know why I said that that way. But today, we’re answering questions directly from the community. We got big brains here. Let’s not waste any more time.

I’m massaging my brain. Getting warming up.

You’re supposed to do here. They say you’re supposed to do right here. That’s where it helps.

Right under the eyes? Is this where your brains are?

Supposedly, yeah.

Mine are [inaudible 00:01:53] here.

It helps your blood flow.

Okay, while you guys do that, rub under your eyes. This is from Kathy. She writes, “I am a new Full Focus user.” Welcome.

Welcome, Kathy.

“I am having trouble getting in the morning. I wake up at 5:00 AM usually, and I sit in my chair and journal, pray, drink coffee. My goal with my morning routine is to get out of the chair at 5:30 AM and change into my workout clothes. But I’m having problems keeping that promise to myself. I often procrastinate and next thing I know it is 7:00 AM and I haven’t started my workout. Then I end up skipping it or whatever. Any tips or troubleshooting?”

So just to recap, she’s getting up and she’s getting in that chair, but then she can’t get out of the chair. How can we help Kathy?

What do you think, Verbs?

My first initial thought might be, maybe she’s possibly not giving herself enough time inside that morning ritual. If 30 minutes is 30 minutes for journaling… What is she doing? Coffee, journal and pray?

Yep.

That may not be enough time. Maybe if you extended to 5:45 to where you can feel yourself giving yourself enough time to do all three of those things, maybe you’ll feel more finished by the 5:40 mark and then that could help you move on to the next segment, hopping into those workout clothes and hitting that workout. That’s just my initial thought. I don’t know what your thought is, Blake.

I had a similar thought, which is, there’s something that, Kathy, you’re getting from that time in the morning and maybe there’s a perception that you’re not going to get that from a workout. And so the first thing I would do is just to be honest and assess if it’s a spiritual need, if it’s a need for solitude, a need to process thinking or feelings… You guys know, I like to process feelings… You may actually need more time and that’s okay. But let’s say for instance, the important thing is, and I wonder if this is the driver behind the question, is she’s wanting to work out more. She’s wanting to develop that as a routine. And so we’ve positioned working out as this thing that has to happen at a certain time, and if it doesn’t happen by that time, it’s just not going to happen, which I can relate to.

So an experiment you might want to try is, if the enjoyment or reward of having coffee, let’s say, or having the time to journal or to pray or whatever, that part of the morning routine is strong, I don’t know your situation, Kathy, if you have to drive to a gym, if you’re just doing a workout at home, but maybe you’re up at five, you step outside your house, try to let some of the sunrise into your eyes or something like that. And then, you just drink some water and then start doing whatever workout or get into your workout clothes first thing right from then and kind of flip these two so that you’re doing that, the thing that you have greater resistance towards first. Knowing that, “Hey, when this workout’s done, it’s cozy time. It’s cozy God time with coffee. The thing that I really enjoy.”

That could actually help for a while. I tried to do meditation time or prayer time first thing. Turned into sleep a little bit longer time because I’d be like, “All right, ugh.” But if I started going outside first thing, I started doing a little, to call it a workout would be excessive, but a little movement, a little stretching, that sort of thing, waking up my body and then going into some of that personal thinking time. It actually enhanced that thinking, praying spiritual time as well. So maybe give that a shot.

And just to pat Kathy on the back, of all the things to find yourself getting lost in, I do want to say that this is pretty high on the list of things-

Exactly.

To go like, “I’m journaling and praying and just enjoying myself so much that I can’t do other stuff.” It’s not like you’re watching Netflix all morning and didn’t get to the gym. So this is a good problem to have.

And that could be part of it is, until she finds that rhythm of a workout pattern consistently, I know sometimes the thought is, “Well, if I don’t do this first, because I want this to be the best part of my day.” Doing the prayer and meditation part, the devotional part, sometimes it’s the thought of, “If I put something else ahead of that, then if I lose anything, I’ll lose that spiritual discipline part of it.” So again, I think it’s Kathy just interviewing herself, assessing herself, and seeing what could work. But I like Blake’s idea as far as, at least when you get up, get your workout clothes on because you’re already setting yourself up to transition and it’s not an extra step. It’s just to flow into it. So…

All right, so now our next question comes from Carolina. “Starting using my second planner.” Congratulations. “In my first one, I just wanted to use it and only did weekly previews. I got a new job, so didn’t set the annual or quarterly goals until I knew what my life would look like with the change. But now I’m ready to add it in and I am dealing with too many habit goals. So should I turn some of those into achievement goals? And some of the longer term achievement goals like work revenue, debt payoff, et cetera, have a due date, but really take habits to get there. So how do I dwindle it down to focus on just three things at a time? Or should I not worry about the annual goals at this point and just look at the quarter so I don’t feel as overwhelmed?”

Aha, aha. No, I think her last sentence may be one of the ingredients to her solution. Yes.

I want to say, the reason I picked this out is that question around, “My achievement goals are really habit goals. So how do I structure this so I don’t have just three habit goals?” I thought was an interesting question.

I was going to say, I think one of her last line of her question, maybe part of the solution is, instead of on quarter… So she’s on the second planner, which should mean she’s on her second quarter of using a planner, and then going straight to the weekly previews, which is a good place to start, in my opinion. We always call it the secret sauce here. But I think, instead of focusing on those 12 months, just boil it down to what do I need to accomplish for that quarter? Figuring out what those achievement goals are, and then develop those milestones to help get to that achievement goal, which may look like the habit goal. But Blake, I know you deal with this quite often on a business level, so interested to hear your input on that too.

The good news is it sounds like you have an awareness of what actions will be necessary to achieve, if it’s a dollar figure, if it’s some sort of reality that you’re going after that we’d form into an achievement goal. That’s actually great. To me, the value of an achievement goal is, I know what the outcome is that I want, but I’m not sure how to get there. I’m still figuring it out. I’ve maybe never gone this big before, or I’ve never gone in this direction before, or I’m trying something different, but I know the outcome is this. I’m not married to the path. In fact, I’m open to learning about the path as I go. That, to me, is when I leverage achievement goals. But if I know that I’m really trying to develop a certain lifestyle, or if I know that the way to get this achievement goal is really to be doing these habits every day, the previous question was about exercise. So maybe you have an achievement goal to feel healthier, to be healthier.

The specifics of it are less important. You just know you want to be healthier. Okay, great, I have a goal, right? I’m going to work out a little bit every morning or whatever it is. So to me, I don’t personally see any problem If you have clarity, energy, excitement, the SMARTER framework in play, I don’t see any problem stacking the quarter with a few habit goals that you’re really dialed in on and focused on. I don’t think you need to have an achievement goal because of some kind of diversity. All goals are about you creating a reality that you love to live in that you feel proud of, excited about. So I wouldn’t give too much, I guess worry about that, Carolina I would go with, “Hey, I have clarity on what it takes to get there.” Lean into it. Lean into it, and develop those habits.

I know that Michael is prone to talk about the idea of installing habits and I think that there is some element that he says that you don’t want to install too much at once. But to your point, Blake, if I’m hearing you correctly, if you’ve got the goal structured and if you’re excited about it, it seems like there would be no reason to just go.

That’s what I was going to add as well, is just make it a good practice of running through that SMARTER acronym to make sure that even the habit goal is fitting nicely into there, because it may not be something that you want to raise to the level of a goal necessarily if it falls short in those smarter framework areas.

All right. This next question comes from Ala, and this is actually specifically to Blake who asked-

Oh my.

On episode 123, think back real quick.

Okay, hang on… Got it.

Here you go. Go back to this. Get it going.

On the podcast you mentioned-

I had to massage my face before this one, Nick. Sorry.

“You mentioned an app on your phone that automatically plays your guided workday startup out loud. What app is this? I would love to set my wake up alarm to prerecorded affirmations.”

Okay, great. I think she may actually be referencing two different apps that I’ve mentioned.

But are they both in episode 123?

Well, I’ll say it sounds like she’s wanting to… So there’s two different things. There’s what’s happening in my startup or my morning ritual, what are those steps? And then there’s, am I listening to affirmations? And so, I know that in episode 123… I was definitely talking about at least listening to affirmations that I had prerecorded. So I use an app to listen to podcasts that, I’m going to go ahead and say it, it is definitively the best podcast listening app.

Oh, okay, now I get You got my attention now.

I’m saying it. I’ve said it. You know? The haters are going to cancel me probably for this. No, I’m just kidding. No one cares about podcast apps.

I do.

I use an app called Pocket Casts. So I have an iPhone. I think they have an Android app as well, but Pocket Casts, I pay for the premium, which is $1.50 a month. But one of the many excellent features of Pocket Casts is that you can import your own files and listen to them with the same level of ease and control that you would listen to any podcast, which is quite a bit in this app. So I like it for that reason. And so I just recorded myself. When I first did this, I just talked into my iPhone and then I shared that file. I hit the little share button, sent it to Pocket Casts, boom, there it was. So that’s what I use for that. The app that maybe connected to that is one we’ve mentioned on here called Routinery. Just like the word routine, R-Y. And I don’t use this every day.

I use this typically at the beginning of the quarters or whenever I’ve recently changed or adjusted my workday shut down or startup or morning ritual. And I use it until those steps are baked in and I don’t think about them anymore. But it’s simply, it’s exactly what it sounds. You type in the different activities you want your routine, your estimated time for those, you hit play. It’ll send you a little reminder, “Hey, it’s time to do your workday startup. You hit play and it guides you through so that you do all the steps that you had wanted to do.”

All right. This next question comes from Jessica. She asks, “What are some ideas for what to do with old planners? I started using the planner in 2018 and have collected quite a few.” That’s what? 20 planners? “I thought about, tearing the annual goal sheets out to keep and reflect on and recycling the rest of the books. Any other ideas?”

That’s very cool.

That is a cool idea. I’m open to hear whatever the advice is on this one as well. What do we do with those planners from yesteryear?

I have a stack of old planners in my closet right now.

I like that idea of taking the annual goals out of it. I think that’s really cool. I wish that I had done something like that with my old planners. Most of my journaling is done in digital format. So that’s the form of posterity and remembrance that I have of how I’ve journeyed. If y’all have listened to this for a little while, you know my story, even with the planner it was hard because it’s paper and I don’t like having a lot of paper around, but I still use this because it’s so valuable, increasingly so for my brain. When I’m done with the planner, I’m not helping anybody.

I’m not helping the environment. I’m not helping myself. I wish podcast community share in the community what you do, but honestly, I just toss mine. So I like the idea of doing something more creative with it. The annual goal specifically. I guess, because to me, I didn’t even think about that. I just thought of, I don’t need to know what I did the day of, “Oh, we recorded Podcast 123 that Thursday.” I just am like, “Oh, no, it’s done.” Lessons that I’ve learned in the weekly preview, I tend to store digitally. I try to record those things. So there’s not a lot of utility in keeping my old to-do lists. But remembering what your old goals were and then what you were in pursuit of, I like that a lot.

I think that the annual goal tear out is brilliant.

That’s big.

You make some kind of collage. Honestly, again, this is showing my cards in terms of, I don’t like to keep a lot of physical paper or that type of thing around, partly because I’m afraid of losing… If it’s valuable to me, I want to make an infinite number of cloud stored copies. At the very least, I would scan, take pictures, bring in to digital format what you want to keep from your planner and keep it in a notes app or something like that. The annual goals, I’m already thinking, I think, well, I want to do this. I use Notion for all of my digital reference material, coaching notes, things like that. I think I’m going to take a cue from this and maybe… Well, I guess most of them are in the trash, but I have got a couple of old ones that-

[inaudible 00:18:15] at the moment.

I want. So think, I’m like, “I want to go back through and scan those in.” So I have an old annual goals section where I could just kind scan through. That’d be cool.

Now, this actually is a tip from the community that I thought was really interesting and is connecting to this very nicely. Michael said that he just switched to the loose leaf version of the planner, and it’s great. “I get to scan my pages and send to my virtual assistant. A huge plus.” So it is right there.

That’s cool.

If you’ve got the loose leaf, you pop it open, you got your goal pages, you can just run it auto through the feeder of the scanner.

Boom.

And you’re done.

All right. Let’s do one more question. You guys have been very helpful. Remember, you should be in the Full Focus Planner community just to talk to other… There’s all kinds of answers from other planner users to these questions that are there, and wonderful.

Genuinely smarter answers than many that I’ve given you today. I can confirm that.

And create.

Well, this last question is from Jonathan. He writes, “Hey folks, I’m curious for some of your thoughts here. How do you approach a quarter when you’re basically halfway through and life throws all of your quarterly goals in the air? Do you do a full reset at that point? How have you handled it?”

Well, a lot of people don’t know this, but if you flip to the back of your planner, towards the end, you get some added notes, pages and an index. And right there behind the index is an eject button where you hit the button and then you just completely fly out of the quarter. And hopefully you land softly somewhere with-

With a parachute.

Less stress than where you found yourself.

The planner turns into your parachute. You hold onto the cover.

It does.

You just glide down.

A lot of people are very mad at me. They’re like, “Oh, there’s a feature I don’t know about.” And now they’re just upset. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

I felt that. I was like, “What’s he going to say?”

You’ve been Blaked.

“Is he making a rolling quarters joke that’s upfront, but it’s not there anymore?”

So first and foremost, Jonathan, you are in very good company. Welcome to life. I can confirm, Verbs, Nick, this has happened to you guys, right?

Absolutely.

You start your quarter, “Oh, here’s my goals, here’s my things.” And then life just completely turns upside down. Plans change, things happen. It’s very, very common. So before even figuring out the how or what to do next, know that you haven’t done anything wrong. It’s not a sign that you can’t hit your goals or design life in a way that you want to go. And I would even argue… I find this belief to be empowering… That life is happening for us. It’s not just happening to us as a thing we have to resist or force or change or bend in order to try to eke out something close to what we want. But rather, things will happen, and even if we can’t see it right now, it can actually benefit us in amazing ways if we perceive it that way. So first and foremost, have a good cry. Feel your feelings, and then we can get to work. So Verbs, any thoughts for what Jonathan… How we could look at his goals now?

I think that’s a great question. Similar to what we would advise in the span of a year, about six months in, you kind of hit that messy middle. And like Blake was saying, it’s important to just take a moment. Maybe there’s some things that are salvageable. Maybe there’s some things that just need to be postponed. Maybe there’s some things that need to be abandoned altogether for this time or this season in life. But if you’re able to take a moment, step away from just the overwhelming feeling of just life hitting you at a different speed right now, but just take a moment. Again, whatever you need to do, if it’s a good cry, if it’s sitting down with a friend and just saying, “Hey, here’s what I got. I need an extra set of eyes and an extra heart to examine what I was looking to accomplish before these things began.” And just figure out where you’re at. There is no shame in having to postpone something. There’s no shame in having to abandon some things that you feel are abandonable. Abamidible?

Abominable.

Just terrible things.

They’re snowmen, so you can step away from those snowmen. But just a real genuine, authentic self reflection on what’s possible in this moment. And then how can I make the best of it going forward? The thing that we probably are tempted to do is, because we have all those goals that we’re feeling, we have to step away from in the middle of the quarter, is to abandon the actual planner. When in reality, that could actually be a thing to help you get back on track as you move forward and once you reassess where everything is.

You may want to consider, with each goal that you wrote down that’s now feels like it’s unachievable or difficult or changed, if you spent time in the goal detail pages, return to that and dive deeper into the why. Why did I set this goal? What was I hoping for? Who was I hoping to become? What is the reality that I’m really driving towards? Why is that so important to me? And then you can ask yourself, “How is the changing landscape of my life right now, how could that continue to serve those ends?” Not the end of the specific goal, but the why that was driving it. So for instance, you have a financial goal, but then you lose your job. You get let go. Okay, great. “Well, now this is all in the air and I don’t have the planned income, and this is going to be so different.”

Well, the why behind the financial goal was maybe, “I wanted to be able to have more time with my family and not worry so much about bills.” Or something like that. Well, how could losing this job actually be preparing you or serving you towards those same ends? So that I think is a good thought exercise when you consider, “How do I maybe want to reshape my goals or let go of my goals?” Or at the very least, take heart in the midst of unexpected circumstances. But in terms of the planner and the system, the goals are tools there to serve you. If they are not serving you anymore, change them. Get rid of them, revise them. It doesn’t matter if it’s two weeks into the quarter or one week left in the year, they’re there to serve you. So by all means, return to the why and then reformat your goals from there.

And last thing I’ll tag on that is just remembering that question that I feel is so important. Even when we’re thinking about our goals, whether it’s in the beginning of the year, midway through the year, is what of these goals that I set will help me become who I want to become by the end of the quarter, by the end of the year? Whatever that looks like for you. But which goals going to help me become who I saw myself being by the end of this timeframe? And the other stuff, it could be abandoned if it’s a financial goal, or you can look at it in a different way and reimagine it. But what goals that are attached to who you want to become going forward, and is there still leeway there for you to tackle those?

All right. Well, thank you so much, Verbs and Blake. This was, of course, always fun. It makes me feel good to know that I’m not the only one who has questions about how to use the planner. I know what I’m going to do with these old planners now. That’s very exciting. I’m going to burn them out back. That’s the takeaway from this. That’s what we’re doing. I’m going to cut out the goal planner.

Plan a bonfire.

I’m going to just-

Fire pit.

Have a ritual out back.

Full Focus fire pit.

If you want to have answers to your own questions-

Full Focus fire.

There’s an April 1st joke. If you want to have answers your own questions, then definitely join the Full Focus planner community on Facebook and talk to all kinds of cool people, including Blake and Verbs. And that’s it. Verbs, can we wrap this up?

Thank you for listening to another episode of Focus On This.

This is the most productive podcast on the internet, says all the people I paid $20 to tell me that.

You should not spend your money on that, Blake.

It helps me.

But it’s not a good use-

It helps me.

Okay. Okay.

It’s in my recorded affirmations in the morning. It is Verbs, the most productive podcast on the internet.

So join us next week when we’ll be back with another great episode. But until then-

Stay focused.

Stay focused.