279. Fall Reset: How to Recalibrate for Q4

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Marissa: I don’t know about you guys, but I have been seeing more pumpkin spice, everything. I literally saw pumpkin spice, cottage cheese,

[00:00:08] Joel: not a good idea

[00:00:09] Marissa: at Whole Foods the other day, and I wanted to gag. I am not a big pumpkin spice fan, but it’s everywhere. It’s that time of year, you’re probably feeling like your calendars are bursting at the seams.

[00:00:22] That is true for me. And the holiday season is looming, and I think they’re literally putting out Christmas decorations at this point, which it’s like, can we just make it to the next one before we jump into Christmas? But alas, here we are. So. Most people either push harder at this time of year or they give up entirely.

[00:00:46] What if you could treat this time of year as a reset and actually finish this year? Strong And same.

[00:01:00] Welcome to Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the internet. I’m Marissa Hyatt.

[00:01:06] Joel: And I’m Joel Miller.

[00:01:07] Marissa: This is where we remind you of something you already know. It’s not about getting more things done, it’s about getting the right things done,

[00:01:14] Joel: both at work and in life. And today we’re talking about how to recalibrate for Q4.

[00:01:21] This is what we’re thinking of as a reset for fall.

[00:01:24] Marissa: Hallelujah.

[00:01:26] Joel: I know, right? I mean, we haven’t even gotten there yet and it’s already hallelujah because we know what’s coming. What’s coming is. Insanity Winter. Exactly. You could be working in retail, you might be working in engineering, you might be in healthcare, you might be in tech, you might be in any number of different sectors, and every one of those sectors reports, this is like the full court press.

[00:01:51] This is the time of year where most of this stuff happens. Yeah, yeah. I was looking at one statistic that said one out of every $9 that is spent on federal contracts. Is spent in the last week of December.

[00:02:06] Speaker 3: Wow.

[00:02:07] Joel: There’s reasons for that that have to do with like, you gotta spend an entire budget in order to get the same budget the next year and so on.

[00:02:13] But of course, that’s a proxy for people working like mad because if you have to spend that much money at the end, that doesn’t just mean like. I don’t know. You hit a button and it goes away. It’s like, no, there’s like work that happens with that and that means that

[00:02:26] Marissa: those are decisions,

[00:02:28] Joel: right? So everybody is hustling that last week and of course back it up.

[00:02:31] All of us are doing that all Q4.

[00:02:33] Marissa: Well, it’s really true. I personally probably am spending most of my money in December as well. So that’s also true personally. But it is really this. Crazy experience that we go into at the end of the year, and it feels like, you know, for the first three quarters of the year, I’m like, all right, we’re gonna have a more sane Q4 than last year.

[00:02:55] We’re gonna make sure we aren’t burning out, we’re gonna keep our priorities front and center and all these things. And yet, somehow, inevitably we just end up back here. It’s like. Honestly.

[00:03:06] Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:07] Marissa: How do we stop the train from going off the tracks? And I feel like what we’re gonna be talking about today is actually gonna help us effectively do that.

[00:03:16] Versus just hoping that we actually do that or that it somehow just falls into place, which is what most of us end up thinking that is gonna just somehow miraculously happen.

[00:03:27] Joel: I always think of it like Godfather three when Michael Corleone, he’s busy figuring out how to extricate himself from the mob and run a legitimate business, and he’s sitting there in his kitchen in distress because it’s all falling apart.

[00:03:41] And he says, they keep pulling me back in. That’s what happens in Q4

[00:03:46] Marissa: I. True confession, have never seen any of the godfathers, Joel.

[00:03:51] Joel: Oh, that needs to be rectified.

[00:03:52] Marissa: That’s my homework this week is to go watch the Godfather. Is it one, two, and three?

[00:03:57] Joel: You can live without seeing three. Yeah, but it’s a nice close to it, but it’s the least.

[00:04:02] Great of the movies.

[00:04:04] Marissa: Well, I would suspect that those people are not getting the double win. Is that fair to say?

[00:04:12] Joel: No, they’re getting both barrels, but not the double win.

[00:04:17] Marissa: Oh, it’s good. That’s really good. Well, that’ll be my homework and maybe yours as well, if you haven’t seen The Godfather, but I think that this is really true during this time of year. It really is just absolute peak burnout, peak stress. Peak panic and all of us are feeling, so how does this translate to.

[00:04:35] Our double win, winning at work and succeeding at life.

[00:04:38] Joel: Well, I think it’s worth saying that we are all about the double win, winning at work and succeeding at life. And Q4 represents a unique threat to both. Hmm. Because not only on the work side is there more to do usually and more activity. It’s like.

[00:04:54] It’s the end of the year. You gotta close out projects. It’s the end of the year. You’ve got to get ready for the next year. So if you think about like when does strategic planning happen? I mean it’s like it’s in Q4 or like maybe the beginning of, or the end of Q3 and there’s like this need to get the budget finished for the next year all the same time.

[00:05:11] You’re busy actually just trying to close out all the plans of the current year. So you’re kind of living in two years at once. You’re cramming all of that in there, and then on top of that, your personal life is like that too, because you’ve got. Halloween, you’ve got Thanksgiving, you’ve got Christmas, and you know, you may even have birthdays.

[00:05:28] And on top of that, for a bunch of us, there’s all this stuff happening and family coming in and out of town, or you are leaving to go out of town. There’s just so many possibilities for things to go off the rails, not only at work, but also personally. Well,

[00:05:44] Marissa: and not to mention, this is a time of year when most people are getting sick, which we know.

[00:05:50] Completely dera everything in your life. I mean, it not only derails work because you often have to take out time from work, but it also derails everything because your kids are now homesick and now you’re getting sick and now you feel horrible, and so you just have no energy to actually accomplish the 97 things that.

[00:06:09] Are trying to get done on your task list this time of year, which is just a recipe for exhaustion and defeat and

[00:06:19] Joel: yeah,

[00:06:19] Marissa: just laying in bed all day.

[00:06:21] Joel: Exactly. But now that we’ve given everybody hives just thinking about this. What do we think? What are we gonna do about this?

[00:06:27] Marissa: Well, I feel like this is where we need to have an alternative, where something comes into play, where we’re able to have more harmony between our work and our life.

[00:06:38] Mm-hmm. And I am so excited to share. These six practices of flourishing. Joel, I want you to give us a quick little rundown of these, because I think that this is so helpful and there’s a couple that I think we need to focus in on for today’s episode, but one of the things that we have been talking a lot about at Full Focus is.

[00:07:02] The concept, obviously, of the double win, but going deeper into that, what does that really mean to win at work and succeed at life? Is it just not sacrificing your personal life? Well, I think the truth is at this day and age, that’s not enough anymore. We wanna really be. Flourishing in both areas of our life, our work life, and our personal life.

[00:07:24] I love that these six practices are such a guiding way for us to think about our everyday lives. They’re not overwhelming. It’s not 10 more things that you need to add to, or six more things that you need to add to your to-do list. But these are kind of guiding practices to help us consider are we truly flourishing or are we floundering?

[00:07:41] And I think for most of us in Q4, we feel like we’re constantly floundering.

[00:07:47] Speaker 3: Yeah,

[00:07:47] Marissa: walk us through what these six practices are and which ones we really wanna highlight as it relates to going into these kind of, these end of the year months.

[00:07:56] Joel: The six are to tend to yourself. You need to connect with others, prioritize that kind of connection with others.

[00:08:03] Yeah, do work that matters. A lot of times that’s easy for people in the sense that that’s the thing that’s on their plate, big and fat every day. So that is there. However, sometimes the work that we’re doing doesn’t matter. So like it’s, it’s really is important to kind of rightsize that in our lives.

[00:08:20] Whatever the work is, no matter how great it is, it can be draining. And that means we need to prioritize recreation. Beyond that, we need to connect with nature. We need to get into nature. We are incarnation creatures made of flesh and blood. And the sun goes up every day. The sun goes down every day.

[00:08:38] There’s wind outside or heat or whatever. And that expression, touch grass. There’s a reason why that resonates, and we all know intuitively when somebody’s off their hinges and you say, go touch grass. There’s something grounding about just being outside get into reality.

[00:08:54] Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:54] Joel: And so it’s not just a metaphor, it’s reality.

[00:08:57] And then ultimately we need to remember that we are in this picture kind of small. We need to connect to the sacred. We need to connect to something transcendent larger than us people of faith. I mean, that’s really simply like walking with God or something like that. But the idea that. We are doing this alone is almost defeating from the beginning.

[00:09:19] The idea that we have this outsized role to play in the world is self-defeating. Also, we have to remember our place, and so these practices give us the grounding that we need in order to do well, regardless of what’s happening in our calendars, regardless of what’s happening on the day to day.

[00:09:35] Marissa: Well, and I think this is so important this time of year because this is where we get so swept up in everything that is trying to grab at our attention grab at our calendars, our time.

[00:09:46] It’s really easy to lose focus on these specific areas of our lives, and I would say that a lot of us are, you know, potentially at this time of year connecting with others. For instance, we may be going to holiday parties or that kind of thing, but how are we connecting with people? Is it in a stressful environment or is it something like going on a walk with a friend where you can tend to yourself, connect with others and engage with nature all in one go.

[00:10:14] Right. You could even say that’s prioritizing recreation. At the same time, there’s ways that we can engage with these six practices that doesn’t have to look like six separate tasks on your list, right. Each day you could have one thing that encompasses all of these principles and practices, which I love.

[00:10:34] As we think about the first one, which is tending to yourself, this is really important. This time of year I talked about how everybody seems to be getting sick at this time of year. We kind of all have this collective mentality of let’s just wait till January 1st to get our health or our self-care, or whatever you wanna call it, in order our wellness in order.

[00:10:55] What I love is that we don’t actually have to do this in a dramatic, drastic way, right? We can do to ourselves on a daily basis that isn’t something incredibly overwhelming or a huge thing that we need to engage with. This can look like baking in time into your calendar to rest.

[00:11:13] Joel: Yep.

[00:11:14] Marissa: That could be as simple as that.

[00:11:16] Resting is just as important. As going to that holiday party or meeting that end of the month deadline or end of the year deadline. And if we bake that in at the forefront, we have so much more stamina that we can keep going versus. You know, having that crash landing that so many us of us have at the end of December

[00:11:38] Joel: on that idea of waiting until some future date to do it.

[00:11:42] I think sometimes we blow up the significance or blow up how big the job is gonna be to get ourself in order or something like that. And therefore we procrastinate it. ’cause it just feels like too much to handle right now. It’s like always the wrong attitude. The right attitude is especially about something like that.

[00:12:01] The job is only as big as you decide it is. Yeah. You can determine to do something small and doing something small right now is way better than holding off until some future date to do the big thing that you’re actually also not gonna do. So it makes way more sense to just say, start small. Start with something simple.

[00:12:19] Reclaim some part of your life that you can say, yeah, I’m doing this for myself. And by doing that for yourself, you’re gonna create more resources internally to manage all the other stuff.

[00:12:31] Marissa: I’ll give a example of this in my own personal life I have for the summer and Q3, you know, early months I was really struggling with tending to myself, prioritizing my health.

[00:12:43] Mm-hmm. Working out on a consistent basis and. I had this kind of aha moment where I realized I had this belief that I worked out better or stronger in the afternoons, and so usually, mm-hmm. That was my ritual. It was like I got done with work and I would go work out, and that’s just not working for me at this.

[00:13:06] Time of year. Right? The time of my life. Things are too crazy. I have get done with work and I’ve got other things at the end of the day that I’ve gotta

[00:13:13] Speaker 3: Yep.

[00:13:14] Marissa: Tend to, whether that’s hanging out with friends or some appointment or whatnot. And so I just decided, what if I experimented for a period of time of putting my workouts first thing in the morning?

[00:13:25] And if, if you know me, yeah. You know, I don’t like waking up and having to hit the ground running. I like a slower morning. And so I’ve actually baked in. More time into my morning now, so I’m getting up even earlier than I technically need to to bake in that sense of rest. And then I go workout. And rather than doing an hour long workout, which probably would be ideal, I’m doing a 30 minute workout.

[00:13:47] Mm-hmm. Because that’s what working for me at this time of year. Mm-hmm. And in this phase of my life. So this doesn’t have to be an all or nothing mentality that if I can’t work out in the afternoon, if I can’t do the hour long workout. You know, I just need to forget about it until January when I can kind of hit the reset button on my life.

[00:14:06] I can do that today, right? In a more subtle way, but that really sets me up for success. And so my challenge to those of you guys who are listening is to ask yourself, how could you tend to yourself now, literally today or tomorrow, that doesn’t require an overhaul of your life or your day to day? What is something that you can do to tend to yourself at this time of year that feels doable, that feels restorative, that feels loving to who you are?

[00:14:34] Joel: You know, Megan sometimes has this comparison where she says, basically people are not comparing the right things.

[00:14:40] Speaker 3: Hmm.

[00:14:41] Joel: And. The easy comparison is 30 minutes is not as good as an hour. Therefore, I, I really need to be working out an hour. Right. But what’s actually happening is it’s like exercise or not exercising.

[00:14:52] And so by choosing the 30 minutes, you’re actually far further down the road than you would be, than if, if you were trying to hold out for the ideal scenario where you could do the one hour.

[00:15:02] Speaker 3: Yep.

[00:15:02] Joel: So it’s like if we get the right comparison, it’s easier to make a better decision and. What you just laid out is a great example of that, but that, that also goes for other areas like recreation or connecting with others.

[00:15:15] It would be really easy to come up with some ideal state of what it looked like to connect with friends or family or whatever, and then say, well, I can’t do that, so I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna do anything. And the reality is. What if you just, like you said, scheduled a walk with a friend? What if you just had, you know, you threw in a, a lunch during the week in which you invited somebody to come with you, you know?

[00:15:35] Right. And those are easy. Those are like low lift, and yet they will leave us feeling more resourceful at the end of the day. And that’s what we need.

[00:15:44] Marissa: This reminds me of, my mom has always said to us growing up, don’t let the best be the enemy of the good.

[00:15:51] Speaker 3: Mm.

[00:15:51] Marissa: Growing up. That used to drive me crazy when she would say that, and now.

[00:15:56] I think it’s more true than ever so often we only are willing to do what’s best and so therefore we sacrifice doing something good. If we just said, actually, I’m gonna prioritize what’s good, and if the best happens, awesome, but I’m not shooting for that. I’m shooting for what’s good, right? So even for me, on the days when I feel like I actually don’t even have time to do the 30 minutes, I actually will press play and say, I’m just committing to 10 minutes.

[00:16:23] And the truth. Mm-hmm. Almost always end up finishing the workout, but that gives me a sense of accomplishment, a sense of momentum. I’m not just having this black and white thinking all or nothing, but I’m able to make steady progress over time and I think. This time of year specifically, it’s very easy for us to fall into that black or white thinking.

[00:16:42] And I think what’s beautiful with these practices of flourishing is we can engage in them in subtle, very meaningful ways, and it doesn’t have to be the whole overhaul of our life. So you can hit the reset button. It just doesn’t have to be as drastic as we may think it has to be.

[00:17:01] Joel: Yeah. I walk every other week with a friend.

[00:17:04] At least that’s what’s on the calendar. It doesn’t always happen. He travels. I’ve got appointments, you know, whatever goes on. We’re not able to always do that, but by having it on the calendar every other week, we never have to decide are we gonna do this? It’s like, it’s there. We’ve just decided we’re gonna do it.

[00:17:19] And then the real question is. Is it gonna happen this week or not? Based on, you know, some other intervening thing. And that happens from time to time. And so we just work around it. But I look forward to those walks every time. They’re fantastic. And I walk into Friday morning after that walk feeling great.

[00:17:35] Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:36] Joel: And all it was was, you know, walking around the park, just shooting the breeze, talking about life books, you know, whatever’s on our minds. And if I could have that experience. Every week I would do it, but I can’t. So I have it every other week, give or take a few times where it doesn’t work out. And yet that is way better than not doing it at all because I somehow can’t figure out how to get the perfect schedule figured out.

[00:18:01] Marissa: I think that’s so beautiful and yeah, I mean it would be phenomenal if you guys could make that work somehow on a weekly basis, but I like that that or your travel schedules or busy schedules, right, or whatever, you’re not allowing that to hinder actually continuing to stay true to that commitment. Even when life gets crazy, you’re still able to say, okay, we may not hit it this time, but in a couple weeks we know that we’re actually both in town.

[00:18:26] We can still make it happen. Yep. And that’s something to look forward to. It’s something to anticipate. And then it is really something that restores you beyond just moving your body by yourself.

[00:18:35] Joel: GK Chesterton said something similar to what your mom, Gail says, which is, if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.

[00:18:43] Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:43] Joel: And I think about that all the time because. We do want to do things excellently, but we’re not in the position to do it, or we don’t have the skills to do it or whatever. That doesn’t mean that you can like cop out and not do it.

[00:18:55] Speaker 3: Yeah.

[00:18:55] Joel: It’s better to do it and do it poorly than it is to not do it at all.

[00:18:59] And so I think that we end up getting the benefit of just saying, you know what? I’m human. I kind of recognize the limitations of my creatureliness in this moment. I’m just gonna go do the thing and it’s not gonna be perfect or whatever, but I’m gonna get the benefit out of it. And that’s all you need.

[00:19:15] Marissa: It’s really true. I love that. And it makes me think about when I was learning to bake sourdough bread. Mm-hmm.

[00:19:22] Speaker 3: And

[00:19:23] Marissa: I became fascinated with it. I was never a baker before, but it was something that I just. I wanted to go all in on, and I was scared that I would start and I would fail. And the truth is, I did, I started and failed.

[00:19:36] I tried to make a starter about five times. Mm-hmm. I finally got it right. I don’t know why I didn’t just ask somebody. I guess this was in like 2018, so not many people were baking sourdough at that point, but it, it was something that even though I was doing it. Badly. I was learning. Yes, I was able to engage in something real with my hands and I had never, I, I actually don’t know that I had ever baked a loaf of bread.

[00:19:59] Prior to diving into sourdough, which if you know anything about sourdough, it’s like the most complex, challenging way of making bread. And it was so fascinating to me and it, it slowed me down. It enabled me to get present, and I think this is a really good strategy as we think about resetting at this time.

[00:20:19] Mm-hmm. One of the best strategies that we can do is to create more margin for presence in our lives. So that could look like for you, Joel, being with your friend and walking and being present together. For me, that often looks like baking bread or something that is, that is really requiring all of my attention and.

[00:20:39] We really need to build this margin in to create that margin in our lives, even if it’s just a window on the weekend or a window in the evenings or the mornings, but where we create that so we can be more present to our everyday lives and what’s directly in front of us.

[00:20:56] Joel: Totally. I mean, I think that’s a fantastic strategy.

[00:20:58] Another one that I would recommend is resetting your expectations on your goals for the quarter. You know the term, I think that sometimes gets used for this feeling of. What happens in the fall is calendar compression. Mm-hmm. And you wanna like decompress your calendar and if, if you’re gonna decompress your calendar, that’s gonna look like reassessing the things that you’ve decided you’re gonna do.

[00:21:22] Maybe you don’t have to go to every one of these parties. Maybe that goal that you’ve set to do that is self-imposed. Maybe you just. Punt that to Q1 of next year or whatever. There’s, there’s no reason why we have to say yes to everything, even if we have said yes to everything, which I think may come up in a minute.

[00:21:43] Marissa: You said something that I think is important to call out, which is that these are self-imposed. Commitments or goals that we’re often creating ourselves. And I talk a lot with our coaching clients about this idea of you’ve gotta create a playbook that you can win in.

[00:22:01] Joel: Yeah, totally. So

[00:22:02] Marissa: often we create these grandiose plans for our lives and we’re actually setting ourselves up to fail.

[00:22:09] Right. And I think what is. Again, we can easily fall into this trap of all or nothing, black and white, or it has to happen on January 1st, or it’s not gonna happen at all. And my challenge is when you think about your goals, and if they feel daunting, they feel overwhelming, it feels like there’s no way in the world I’m gonna be able to accomplish this with everything else on my calendar.

[00:22:29] Is there a version of that that you could do now that isn’t so all encompassing, but that you can still make steady progress at for the next? Totally, and we still have two and a half months of this year. And what if you could make incremental progress slow but steady progress? How much further ahead are you gonna be on January one and maybe at that point.

[00:22:51] Because you’ve created that sense of momentum, you’re gonna have more energy and more excitement to really hit the ground running at that point. Versus coming in, you know, with that crash landing of I’m right so exhausted and now, now I don’t even know if I have the energy for this, or I’m gonna try and go hard for two weeks.

[00:23:10] And then burnout.

[00:23:10] Joel: That is kind of the alternative. So if we go back to that whole, get the right comparison thing,

[00:23:15] Marissa: right,

[00:23:16] Joel: getting it all done probably does not actually look like getting it all done. The real comparison is you get 75% of it done and you feel awful.

[00:23:24] Speaker 3: Yeah.

[00:23:25] Joel: And that’s like not great. And if you know that, that’s truly what’s gonna happen, you can do something different.

[00:23:31] ’cause again, you have agency, you can do what you want to do In these situations,

[00:23:36] Marissa: we’re all adults running our own lives.

[00:23:38] Joel: Right. Yeah. You get to say no.

[00:23:40] Marissa: Well, I think that this is such an important strategy too, which is to use this concept of the not this year list, and mm-hmm. It doesn’t have to mean that we say we’re gonna take this entire thing and punt it to next year.

[00:23:54] That can obviously happen and, and that can be a great strategy, but it can also be, I’m gonna take part of this and punt it to next year. I’m not gonna worry about this this year. But here’s the part that I do wanna remain committed to, or the part that I do wanna still follow through with at this time of year.

[00:24:11] Joel: We just did this in our own business, the two of us yesterday on the phone. Yeah,

[00:24:14] Marissa: we did. We had a, A product, that little teaser is gonna be coming out in Q1 that we’re super excited about. We originally had it slotted for next month, and we realized, hey, actually this is competing with the other priorities that we have.

[00:24:29] We have some other exciting products launching. And we wanna be able to give this all the time and attention it deserves. And so rather than saying, Hey, we’re gonna do it this year, we’ve decided to put that on the not this year list.

[00:24:57] All right. We’ve got a question that we asked our community, you guys, and what’s the number one challenge you face in Q4? So before we jump in. Joel, what is the number one challenge that you face in Q4?

[00:25:11] Joel: Well, this year it’s gonna be rather particular, so I’ll just mention this. I have a book coming out November 19.

[00:25:17] Marissa: Shameless

[00:25:17] Joel: plug. Shameless plug, right? I have a book coming out November 19, and I know what it takes to launch a book, and I’m sitting there thinking already like I’ve got all of this promotion I’m working on, and yet I also have. My work and my family and everything else. And so I’m busy right now planning around all of that to make sure that I can make it happen.

[00:25:37] But I know that I have this rather large elephant that just got deposited on my front lawn that I have to figure out, you know, where to send him.

[00:25:43] Marissa: Yeah. I like that. It’s a himn. That’s great.

[00:25:46] Joel: Yeah. Well, I mean, anything that big and dopey has gotta be ahy. Yeah.

[00:25:49] Marissa: It’s gotta be. Yeah. Well, I think that that’s first of all very exciting and also a real challenge Before we jump into our responses here.

[00:26:00] Because this is a shameless plug, but I’m your, I’m your sister-in-law and I get to do these things. So where can people find out about your book,

[00:26:07] Joel: Amazon or any other online retailer? Just pull up the Idea Machine by Joel j Miller. I don’t know that that middle initial matters all that much, but it’s in there and, uh, the book is called The Idea Machine, and it’s about the technology of the book.

[00:26:21] So amazing. You know, I’m surrounded by books. I love books, and it just occurred to me one day that the book is a rather important technology all by itself. And if we understood that, we would understand a whole lot more.

[00:26:31] Marissa: Well, and if you’re a book lover, make sure to follow Joel on Substack as well. He’s got an amazing, uh, newsletter he sends each week that you will definitely wanna clue into if you are a book lover.

[00:26:42] Joel: What about yours? What’s your Q4 challenge? Get off the

[00:26:45] Marissa: hook. I thought no, get off the hook. I would say that my number one challenge in Q4.

[00:26:52] Speaker 3: Mm.

[00:26:53] Marissa: I am an extrovert through and through, and it feels like the clock is continuing to tick and. I wanna make sure that I can cram it as many things as possible because I don’t want to end the year feeling like, well, I missed out on that, or I didn’t go to that thing, or Everybody ended up having fun on this, and I didn’t go do that because I was busy over here.

[00:27:19] And so I often fall into the trap of fomo, which is the fear of missing out in case you haven’t heard the term. Yeah. That’s always a real challenge for me. I would say in my life. It’s something that I, I definitely struggle with and I have to be really mindful, and I think this is where the power of focus really comes in, because if I’m clear on what my priorities are for this quarter or this month or this week, for that matter, it enables me to not feel like I’m missing out because I know mm-hmm.

[00:27:47] I’m taking time for the things that really I care about, the things that I’m committed to. But that is definitely the biggest challenge for me at this. There’s all kinds of fun social things and you know, different crafts or things to bake or you name it like whatever it is, or we’ve gotta hit our goals.

[00:28:05] And so I’m excited and I’m pushing for that and I don’t wanna miss out to all my extroverts out there. I feel you. This is a real problem. And. I think the, uh, the system that we’ve outlined is definitely helpful to combat that.

[00:28:20] Joel: Tell me how you would combat that. Like let’s say I come to you with an invite and you’ve got 14 other ones already, and.

[00:28:31] You know, like what do you do? I mean, my party’s not gonna be as fun as those other 14. I can already tell you that. But let’s just say that it was like, how do you deal with the fomo?

[00:28:39] Marissa: I mean, first and foremost, I’ve gotta get clear on what I’m committing to, what, what I care about in my life right now. And usually that’s.

[00:28:49] Just a few things. That’s not like a big, long list of things, but it’s a few things. And so for me, first of all, I always try to go back to what are those commitments and priorities. Yeah. And so practically speaking, you know, I’m setting that at the beginning of the quarter and then I’m reviewing that every single week and making sure that my weekly schedule is in alignment with that.

[00:29:14] So. If you guys have been around, you know what I’m talking about, which is the weekly preview and the weekly big three. We’re gonna be talking about that more in depth in an upcoming episode. But I think that tool, that strategy has dramatically helped me feel confident saying no to things that otherwise I would feel like I’m missing out on because I know.

[00:29:35] Maybe they’re not in alignment with what I’m committing to that week, or I can have a confident yes, because I know it is, it does fall into what I care about, what my priorities are, what I want to prioritize in my daily life. So it’s hard. I’m gonna be honest. I wanna go, I wanna go to those parties, or I wanna engage in those things.

[00:29:55] And yet asking that filtering question of, is this in alignment with my current commitments and priorities, I think has really changed the game for me.

[00:30:04] Joel: So that quarterly big three, the weekly big three, those two things together give you a filter Yes. For what you’re gonna say yes to.

[00:30:11] Marissa: Absolutely. And I notice that when I don’t have those things, or I don’t do my weekly preview.

[00:30:17] It’s like pure mayhem. It just like all goes out the window and I can’t be trusted.

[00:30:22] Joel: Yeah, totally. I recognize that feeling.

[00:30:25] Marissa: Okay, so let’s hear from Claire. ’cause I think that what her challenge is is something that is very relatable. So she says, mm-hmm This is Claire Dwyer, so thanks for sharing. She said, I’ve said yes to things that are fast approaching and I wish weren’t on my calendar.

[00:30:41] They sounded good six months ago. And probably after two cups of strong coffee. But I’m noticing that I need to take care of my future tired self and recognize what I’ll probably end up regretting.

[00:30:55] Joel: Yeah. Our past selves have no respect for our present selves, let alone our future selves. And they are really good at kicking us in the shin and.

[00:31:05] Just like having zero interest in our wellbeing. I don’t know why that is.

[00:31:09] Marissa: I don’t know why that’s true, but that is either, but it’s very true. And yeah, I think a lot of us feel like that where we, you know, come up to a deadline, we come up to an event or a commitment that we’ve made to somebody and we’re like, why did I ever commit to this in the first place?

[00:31:25] Yeah. So before we go any further, I would say the biggest strategy right now is look through your calendar for the rest of the year. Now is the time to get out of those commitments if it doesn’t align with what you are hoping to create in this season. And so rather than waiting until the day before or the day of to try to figure out some, you know, great excuse to get out, you can simply say no now, so that you don’t have to say later.

[00:31:51] Is

[00:31:51] Joel: that possible? Yeah. Like people can say no. Tell me how do you do that?

[00:31:54] Marissa: First of all, we hear all the time. People say no is a complete sentence. I buy that to a degree, but I don’t think it’s practical. I think most of us do not feel, uh, confident just saying no. So I think a couple things to do with this is when you’re.

[00:32:09] You know, if this is especially something that you’ve already committed to but you’re trying to get out of, first of all, explain what’s going on with yourself. Be real. Yeah. Be honest with whatever. Hey, I’m feeling really overwhelmed with the commitments that I’ve made and I need to prioritize. You know, I’ve gotta make some tough decisions.

[00:32:27] And for whatever reason, you know, this thing is kind of on the cut list, the things that have got to go. I think it’s important to say to the other person who you are essentially kind of rejecting that you say, you either provide an alternative to that or you simply say, mm-hmm. Hey, I know that I previously committed to this, and it’s important to me to be a person of my word.

[00:32:50] And so if it really matters to you or if it would make a huge difference for us to follow through with this, I’m still willing to do that. However. Here is my preferred outcome that I’m looking for. Either you get that entirely or, um, honestly, Joel, I literally did this on a date or to, to a guy about a date the other day.

[00:33:08] This Wow. Like a, supposed to be a third date. And I wasn’t feeling good about it. Uh, I was mm-hmm. Like this was, you know, this guy was not in alignment with me. Great guy. It’s just like not, I didn’t wanna continue to pursue it. So I basically said like, Hey, here’s why I am looking to get out. However, I’ve already committed to this, and so I’m totally willing to like go and see what happens.

[00:33:31] He actually handled it very well. I was grateful. It felt very vulnerable and semi too honest, you know, to share. But I think it was, it was a helpful lesson to me that I don’t have to just. Continue moving on with something because at one point in time I said yes to it. Yeah, it’s okay to change our minds at any point in time.

[00:33:50] We just have to be honest and real and and graceful about it. We don’t need to be jerks and be like, no, I’m not coming to that thing. We wanna be honest. And also understanding, uh, and empathetic to the other person on the other side.

[00:34:04] Joel: This works, you know, in a work env, uh, environment too, in a work context where let’s say you’ve.

[00:34:09] Agreed to a particular deadline, or you’ve agreed to a, to completing a project of some kind, and you need to, you need to reassess that. You go back to the other party, you honor what you committed to, and at the same time. It’s an at will world. You can renegotiate totally and you kind of have to be on your own side and renegotiate in full, you know, respect and honor of the person that you’ve committed to, but recognizing that if you approach it that way, they will have respect for you also, and may very well let you off the hook.

[00:34:41] Totally. Which is what you need.

[00:34:42] Marissa: And I think most times actually people do. Yeah, which is, which was shocking. Every time like there, I always expect that people are like, no, we have to do this thing. And yet the truth is more times than not, people are so willing to meet you where they are because in some weird way, I think it gives them permission to do the same in other areas of their life.

[00:35:01] Yeah,

[00:35:01] Joel: it totally does. It

[00:35:02] Marissa: gives them the courage to say, oh wait, I actually don’t wanna do this other thing that’s on my calendar later this week, and so maybe I can model after this. And pro tip, if you are really struggling with how to say no. Take your issue to chat GPT. I’ve done this a thousand times.

[00:35:18] I present the problem, I present my rationale for trying to get out of it, and I ask it to craft me something that is generous and honors the commitment and yet still tries to get me to the outcome that I’m looking for. And it is so incredibly helpful, especially if you’re like a recovering people pleaser like a lot of us are.

[00:35:37] Joel: Yeah, so then your future self, your present self can go back to your past self and say, not today.

[00:35:44] Marissa: Not today, not today. Safety. Yeah. Just before we wrap up, I wanna recommend a, an amazing tool that we have that most of you guys will have and be familiar with, which is our quarterly preview. Now we know we’re a couple weeks into Q4.

[00:36:00] But if you haven’t done this yet, this is the time. It’s not too late. It’s not like that ship has hailed and you have to wait now until the end of December to do this. You are able to do this now for the rest of the year, so grab your full focus planner. If you’ve got one, create some kind of space on your calendar to do this.

[00:36:19] I would recommend a couple hours to walk through this process. It’s an incredibly helpful way to get clear on what you want your outcomes to be by the end of this year, at December 31st. 2025. What do you wanna be able to say is true of your life and that you were able to commit to over the last couple of months?

[00:36:40] So do your quarterly preview. It will dramatically help you. Hit that reset button and it gives you a framework to be able to do that.

[00:36:47] Joel: Totally. You know, I think a about that, it’s kind of like you open the drunk drawer of your life, you take everything out, put it on the counter, and then now you can finally decide what to get rid of, how to resort it, how to put things back, and it’ll take you a little bit of time, but you’ll have so much.

[00:37:02] Peace. That harmony that you talked about. Yeah. Like that’s how you bring harmony to it.

[00:37:06] Marissa: Yes.

[00:37:06] Joel: And then you close the drawer and you’re ready.

[00:37:08] Marissa: There’s nothing better than like a junk drawer that you get organized. It is,

[00:37:14] Speaker 3: yeah.

[00:37:14] Marissa: Satisfying. You wanna like pull that drawer out multiple times every time you walk by it just so you can see your, your beautiful Yeah.

[00:37:20] That you did. And um, and I feel like it’s the time for us to do that with our lives. So I like that and

[00:37:26] Joel: totally

[00:37:29] Marissa: well, like we talked about, you know, finishing this year strong doesn’t mean you have to finish frantic. You can slow down, you can reset, and you really can end the year with both results, like phenomenal results in your work life, in your personal life and joy.

[00:37:48] You don’t have to have a crash landing at the end of this year.

[00:37:56] Thanks for joining us on Focus On This,

[00:37:59] Joel: the Most productive podcast on the internet. Please share it with your friends and be sure to subscribe and join us at Focus on this podcast.com so you can join the conversation.

[00:38:08] Marissa: And we’re gonna be back next week with an awesome episode, talking about winning Monday and how it actually doesn’t start on Monday.

[00:38:18] So we’ll be talking about that on Monday.

[00:38:21] Joel: Until then. Stay focused, focused.