51. 4 Long-term Benefits of the Full Focus System

Episode Transcript

Verbs: 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. I am Verbs, here with host Courtney and, once again, round two, sans Blake. Courtney, where’s he at this time?

Courtney: You know, I’m still sticking with scuba diving. That’s what I’m going to go with.

Verbs: Technically, he is scuba diving. He’s fishing in a sort of way.

Courtney: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, wherever Blake goes, it happens. It’s just natural. It’s just part of who he is. But yeah, he is doing a training today on the Full Focus Planner for different companies, so you and I are holding down the fort, just like last week. I wonder if Blake will listen just to see “Okay, what’s it like when it’s just Verbs and Courtney?” Maybe we should come up with a test, secretly try to ask some questions to see.

Verbs: Yeah. He’ll listen. He was like, “Hey, I want to see how these guys do without me.”

Courtney: Yeah. I feel a review coming on from “Blake2005” for Verbs and Courtney.

Nick: I’m just going to pop in here. If Blake is listening, he should say the word pineapple on the next show. Just say it. Nobody tweet at him. Nobody go on Instagram. Let’s just see if the next recording session he says it.

Courtney: I love that. That’s better than a test. If he says pineapple in the next episode, we’ll know whether or not he listened to Verbs and me carry the show.

Verbs: All right. So, I know there are folks out there who have been using the planner, but they’re still kind of stuck on first base. They love the daily pages, but they’re really not sure about implementing the complete Full Focus System. Have you ever run across anybody like that?

Courtney: Well, I don’t think that is abnormal. We tell people, “Hey, you don’t have to do everything out of the gate. Start with the daily pages and setting a Daily Big 3, and then add on the Weekly Preview and go from there.” But I totally see how it could be easy to get stuck there. You know, Verbs, last week we talked about distractions, and this week it seems like you have your own distraction right out the window.

Verbs: Courtney, I’m highly distracted. Today is lawn-care day, so there’s a guy with a blower right by my window. So, listeners, please forgive any extra background blowing noise you may hear.

Courtney: Speaking of tests, this will be a test of Verbs and how well he’s able to focus while that’s going on.

Verbs: I’m here. It’s a happy Monday, so let’s roll with it.

Courtney: That’s right. I think people might get stuck there because they honestly just don’t know if they have time for the other things or they love the Big 3 and they love maybe even the goal detail pages, but they’re just not sure if it’s going to pay off if they add some of the other things.

Verbs: Just recently I had a conversation… My family and I were at an event for our kids’ school, and I was talking to one of the dads who was familiar with Michael Hyatt & Company, and he actually owned a Full Focus Planner and expressed what we just stated. He was like, “Hey, I don’t really know where to start. I’m trying to start off with these daily pages, but I don’t really grasp the full concept yet.”

I was able to break down a few recommendations for him as far as where to start and how to go from there, but then he even ended the conversation with saying… He was like, “Hey, if I get this down… I know I could be doing so much better in my business and better with my time if I can just stick to it, commit to it, and really work the system the way it’s set up.”

Courtney: I think the really amazing thing people don’t quite get is that there are a lot of long-term benefits to the system. As much as we want you all to have productive days, and those daily pages are so great and really powerful, but the real magic is when you’re able to go from productive days to thinking about the kind of life you want to live.

We talk about how at Michael Hyatt & Company our motto and mission is for people to win at work and succeed at life. We want people to be productive so they are able to do that, to win at work and succeed at life. So, today, I really hope we’re able to help you break out of that “Should I invest more time into the system? Should I break out of just the daily pages or just certain components?” and really feel the confidence that you’re using the resources the best way possible.

Verbs: We have four ways this system benefits not just your workday but, actually, your entire life. The first benefit is higher levels of trust in every relationship. Right now, you’re probably overcommitted, if you were honest with yourself, and that means you’re tired a lot, you’re double booked a lot, so you end up flaking a lot, because you’re only one person, there are only so many hours to your day, and you cannot do it all.

Courtney: For everybody who’s listening who’s already all in, you can probably think back to your early days of using the Full Focus Planner or even before that. I wish everybody who was kind of pondering this question could talk to somebody who has made that transition. Getting fully on board with this system really ups your credibility. You start committing to things and feeling confident in that commitment rather than, like, “I’ll try” or having to cancel on a bunch of stuff.

You start making deadlines. People know when you’re in a meeting and you say, “Yes, I’m going to deliver X, Y, Z” that you, indeed, are going to deliver those things. That trickles over into your family life. It makes it where you’re more present at home with your family, your friends, whoever you do life with. You’re more present, and you finish the things you start.

Verbs: Absolutely. Again, there’s no shame, just grace. You’re not a flake. You’re just flying through a fog of commitments, of deadlines, of aspirations, but this will help get you out of that fog.

Courtney: Again, the first benefit is higher levels of trust in every relationship. The second benefit is it moves you from self-discipline to self-automation. Probably everybody listening is cringing at that word self-discipline. Ultimately, you will never feel like you have enough of it. It feels pretty rotten, actually.

Verbs: Yeah, it does. I’m going to pull a Blake moment right here. I’m going to refer to an 80s film. Growing up, you watched The Karate Kid, the first movie, and you realized, “Unless this kid gets it together, he is not going to beat this other guy at the competition.” What we saw was a level of self-discipline to try to execute all of these things. So, you see those kinds of moments in movies. “Self-discipline. That’s what I’m missing to get where I really want to go so I get the W.” But like you said, that’s not actually the case.

The big news is that self-discipline is actually overrated. Brain scientists say it’s only good for short bursts. That’s why Ralph Macchio could only do it for that one movie until The Karate Kid Part II came out. Short bursts. To force yourself to remember or focus takes way too much brain power, literally, because you’re forcing yourself. What to do is actually automate your life. This system is built on habits. It’s built on rituals that require zero thought, so many things in your life become “set it and forget it.”

Courtney: Honestly, it’s a lot what we talked about last week with willpower. We even closed the episode talking about how people probably look at these people who seem to have such great productivity and have so many things set well, where they’re able to function at a really high capacity, as having great willpower or self-discipline, but they don’t. It’s that they have really strong habits and rituals. Just like what we said last week, you can be one of those people.

Again, the first benefit is higher levels of trust in every relationship. The second benefit is it moves you from self-discipline to self-automation. The third benefit is improved well-being.

Verbs: Right. Because right now you’re probably feeling like crap a lot.

Courtney: I feel like that should be the tagline to 2020…”2020: you probably feel like crap a lot.”

Verbs: Yeah. I mean, you work a lot, so you’re fatigued, and then, obviously, we have these different dynamics to the work we’re doing now with how the world is. You might stress-eat, so you feel groggy and lethargic, and you don’t have time to work out or spend time with friends or even get to friends in our setup currently. You can’t even do the hobbies you would normally look to do. There’s a ton of research on this, and it all says the same thing. Here it is: shorting yourself on sleep, nutrition, exercise, and relationships is bad for you. Period.

Courtney: A lot of times people will ask, “What makes this planner different than any other kind of planner?” It’s almost hard for me to explain. I’m like, “I don’t think you understand. That calendar thing you bought at Target is just a piece of paper with a date on the top of it.” The Full Focus System is truly a system that addresses your whole self. It’s not just about getting tasks done. It’s not just like, “Okay. Let’s write down everything you need to do,” because we all have felt that never-ending to-do list, and that doesn’t feel good either. Nobody wants that.

It’s more about having a full and balanced life. That’s why, when we set goals in the Full Focus Planner, we do it for all of your life domains. We’ve talked on this show about how important it is for not all of your goals to be work goals. It’s important that you have goals that are spiritual, financial, relational. I feel like that’s what really separates the Full Focus System from any other system out there.

Verbs: I absolutely agree. Each component actually is connected to the other that brings about the fullness of what you need it to be for your entire life. So that’s good. It’s important to stop thinking about the Full Focus System as strictly a time management solution or just a way to get more done. It’s actually both, but it’s more than that. It’s about making your whole life better.

Courtney: That is so wise and so true. I love that. Stop thinking about it as a time management solution or a way to get more done. It’s really both. That is so true.

Verbs: The first benefit was higher levels of trust in every relationship. The second benefit is it moves you from self-discipline to self-automation. The third benefit is improved well-being. Now we’re talking about the fourth benefit: a snowball effect of positive change.

Courtney: Okay. Verbs, I’m going to get on a soapbox for a second. A lot of people out there do not consider themselves to be a leader. Especially in this country, in the United States, we kind of have associated being a leader with a certain position on a hierarchy in the corporate world, and it’s like you have to hit that to be a leader. Now, I will say, if you were a child who played sports, sometimes this gets instilled earlier, like team captains and different ways, but I feel like culturally we kind of have this warped sense of what a leader is. I need everybody who’s listening to listen. Really easy.

Verbs: This is about to be good what you’re about to say. I feel it already.

Courtney: Everybody is a leader. You are a leader. As a coworker, as a parent, as a friend, as a sibling, literally whatever relationship, unless we can find somebody who has no relationships in the world, which I don’t think we can, you have an effect on other people, and that is what leading is. When you are always late or tired or overcommitted and stressed, it affects all of those people, because you are leading in some way or another.

Verbs: I think the good news is the reverse is also true. When you feel better, you make others feel better. This system actually improves many areas of your life. There’s spillover into everything else. Other people are influenced by your example of your balance of focus and overall calm. If somebody has a peaceful demeanor and they walk into a room, I think everybody else feels that. It kind of puts them at ease as well. Those sorts of things happen when you lead in that sort of sense. You’ll see this ripple effect throughout every context of your life.

Courtney: We’ve said this before, but even in our work environment… And everybody at Michael Hyatt & Company uses the Full Focus Planner. When people seem to be overwhelmed or just struggling, one of the first questions we ask is, “Have you been doing your workday shutdown?” I’m telling you, 98 percent of the time they’re like, “No. It’s just been so crazy I haven’t been able to do that.” Other people are able to see that. They’re able to see, and it does have a ripple effect.

So, if you’re struggling with “Oh, I’m just not sure if I want to do these other parts of the system,” don’t do it for yourself. Sometimes we will do things for other people. If you can flip that in your head, like, “You know what? I’m going to do this for my friends, my coworkers, my family,” that might be the catalyst you need to really take it on.

Verbs: I like that. I think that also speaks to the fact that you can never underestimate what you bring to an environment or you bring to the table or you just bring to your household. People need you operating at your best. You need you operating and functioning at your best, not just for yourself but for the benefit of the people around you, because they’ll also be able to grow and, again, as we talked about, benefit from the spillover in your life.

Now, if you’ve started using the Full Focus System but wonder if it’s worth the energy to fully commit, just remember these four benefits we talked about today:

1. Higher levels of trust in every relationship.
2. Move from self-discipline to self-automation.
3. Improved well-being.
4. A snowball effect of positive change.

You can gain confidence, knowing you’re using your resources in the best way possible, and you’ll gain that momentum in areas of your life you weren’t even thinking about when you started the system at first. So, Courtney, do you have any extra final thoughts before we close this out?

Courtney: All I can think about right now, Verbs, is whether or not Blake next week is going to say pineapple.

Verbs: I think he will.

Courtney: Don’t tweet him, y’all. Don’t DM him. Don’t have pity on Blake. We’re going to find out next week if the magic word happens.

Verbs: Thank you for joining us on Focus on This.

Courtney: This is the most productive podcast on the Internet, so please share it with your friends and use #focusonthispodcast.

Verbs: We’ll be back next week, joined by Blake Stratton himself. Until then…

Courtney & Verbs: Stay focused.