Focus On This Podcast

72. Crash Course: Master the Key to Goal Progress

Audio

Overview

You love the way the Full Focus Planner simplifies your life, but if you’re honest, you’re not using it as a goal achievement tool. There are too many demands vying for your attention to think about goals. You want to use your planner to its full potential—but where should you start?

In Part II of our miniseries on our top planner tools, we’re diving into the Goal Detail Page. This simple tool can help you leverage the power of goal achievement to create the life you’ve always wanted. Featuring insight from special guest Marissa Hyatt, this episode will empower you to start getting the most from your planner every quarter. 

In this episode, you’ll discover—

  • Why clarity leads to progress
  • The key to staying motivated
  • How seeing your goals leads to action
  • A free tool for keeping your goals visible
  • The #1 way to overcome procrastination

Related Episodes

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’m Verbs, here with a special guest and, of course, Blake Stratton.

Blake: Wait. I’m not the special guest?

Verbs: Buddy, you’re here all the time.

Blake: Am I less special in your eyes, Verbs?

Verbs: No, you’re still special.

Blake: Do you just take me for granted?

Verbs: You’re still special, but we do actually have a special guest in the house. I’ll let you go ahead and introduce who that special guest is.

Blake: Absolutely. She’s objectively more special. I can acknowledge that. Her name is Marissa Hyatt, ladies and gentlemen. You probably already know who she is because she is the director of marketing for Full Focus. In other words, if it has Full Focus in the title…the planner…even things that don’t have Full Focus in the title… If you’re in the Compass community, for instance, you’ve probably seen her on Facebook Live. You’ve probably interacted with her on Instagram. She is amazing.

We are so excited to have you here, Marissa. You bring such a unique insight because you spend so much time with folks out there doing this stuff. They’re using Full Focus Planners. They’re setting goals, getting the right stuff done, working on all that. You’re there on the front lines, and we thought we’d have you here today to show us what’s what.

Marissa: Yes. Well, thanks, Blake. I’m super excited. I absolutely love what I get to do and love interacting with all of you, our listeners, our Full Focus users, on a daily basis through social media, through our Facebook communities. I’m super excited to get to talk with you guys today more about goals.

Verbs: Welcome, Marissa. We’re glad to have you as well. We are continuing our miniseries on our top tools of the planner. Last week, we jumped into the Daily Big 3, and now we’re turning to the Goal Detail pages. Help us understand… This is 101. Again, it’s a new year. We should start a hashtag: #newyearnewplanner instead of #newyearnewyou. It’s a new year. A lot of people are wondering the best way to jump in. We’re starting off with the Goal Detail page. Help us understand what that is and why it’s so important.

Marissa: Goal Detail page. It is one of the most important parts of our planner. It’s at the very beginning of your Full Focus Planner, so it’s right after your Annual Goals page. This is a place where you’re going to write your SMARTER goals and really get connected to the specifics of that goal, why that goal is important to achieve, things like your key motivations, and then also how you’re going to celebrate, which is one of the most fun parts and one of the most motivating parts of achieving our goals.

You also talk about our domains, those 10 life domains. We categorize each of our goals into those. And a place to make our next steps, which we’re going to dive into in a little bit. So, our Full Focus Planner is a goal achievement tool, and unless you’re using it to set and pursue your goals, you’re not getting it to its full value.

Verbs: Big statement.

Marissa: So, that is our Goal Detail pages.

Blake: Marissa, you looked me in the eyes when you said that, as if you knew… When I started using the planner, I actually didn’t use the Goal Detail pages at all. I was just using the Big 3. I did my Weekly Preview. I felt pretty good about myself when I pulled out the Ideal Week, but I was reluctant, I think, to use the goal pages. I don’t know why. I guess because life just sort of feels like it’s always going, and I have to just… The planner, I think, for a lot of folks, ends up being “Well, this is my to-do list.”

So, I wonder if that would be a place to start. I think there are probably people listening who are brand new to the planner. Maybe someone gave it to them. It’s the brand-new year. Some people are listening because they heard about this podcast, and they were like, “Who’s this guy Verbs? He’s blowing up on Twitter. Who’s this Courtney Baker?” And then they hear me, and they’re like, “Wait. Is this the right podcast?”

So, to zoom out and give context to the new listeners, someone who maybe is thinking about getting the Full Focus Planner, I think it would be interesting to talk about goals… Maybe you can share this, Marissa or Verbs. What changed when you shifted from just a task management to actually having goals and why the planner as a tool, specifically, you think cues people up who may be new to this sort of thing. Does that make sense?

Marissa: Yes. Gosh, this is so good. Spoiler alert. If you couldn’t tell from my last name, my dad is Michael Hyatt, who is the creator of our Full Focus Planner and our Full Focus System. I was actually pretty reluctant to use the planner at first. It’s kind of weird to say that now as our director of marketing, but it’s true. When he came out with it and shared it with our family, I started… He had kind of introduced it to us, and I was just not super excited about it. It felt too official for me.

Eventually, I started using it. I saw massive benefits from using the Daily Pages, like you said, which is what we recommend to all of our customers. Start with the Daily Pages. Don’t overwhelm yourself with the entire system. Start with the Daily Pages, and incrementally you can add in those other items, like our Weekly Preview and Ideal Week and eventually goals. It wasn’t until last year, 2020 of all years, that I decided to go fully into our system.

I had actually gone through our Your Best Year Ever course before, had set goals, and never achieved them. Maybe I achieved one or two throughout the year but didn’t really implement the full system until last year. Of all of the years to decide to really go after my goals, 2020 was the year. A lot of those goals I had to revise and change up throughout the year, but I accomplished more last year than any year prior. It was so amazing and hugely in part to the Full Focus Planner, the Full Focus System.

So, these Goal Detail pages are key, because if you don’t get connected with your why and what’s at stake, which we’ll talk about more in a bit, then there’s not a lot of internal motivation to get these goals done. Rather than what I like to call “shoulding” all over yourselves… Have you guys heard that? I had goals I thought I should accomplish, so many different things I put on my goal list that I thought I should, should, should.

I was “shoulding” all over myself, and that is why I was not accomplishing those goals. It wasn’t until I figured out goals I really was passionate about, was excited about, and used that SMARTER framework that I got going, and it was a game changer for the entire system. Everything flows from that point in our Full Focus System.

Blake: Somewhere out there a single tear is falling down Michael Hyatt’s cheek in pride.

Marissa: Yes. Well, the good news is I’ve really come a long way, and now I’m probably one of his best students, but at the beginning I was not at all.

Verbs: Blake, I think it’s important also… It sounds like it’s semantics with some of the things that Marissa is saying as far as goal achievement versus goal setting. I concur as well. When I first purchased the Full Focus Planner prior to coming on staff here at Michael Hyatt & Company, I was confused by… I thought it was a planner. I just wanted to write stuff that I had to do down in a book and then refer to that as I needed to. It wasn’t until realizing, “Oh, this is a whole complete system” to where I could maximize on the value of the planner that things really started to make sense.

So, while we do encourage people, once you pick up a planner, start with the Daily Pages… This is the benefit of our listeners listening to this right now in January. As you’ve set your goals, you’re set up and postured to get the best value out of this planner because you can pull from your goals into your quarter and into your week and into your day. Again, it sounds like semantics, but we want to get you from goal setting and take you into goal achieving by starting off with these Goal Detail pages.

Blake: Yeah. If you’re new to the Full Focus System, this is a great place to begin, even if all you’ve ever tried is a Big 3 or maybe if you’ve tried to set goals before, like Marissa, and you’ve had lackluster results. What we want to do in this episode is kick-start this journey of going deeper with your goals. Marissa has four advantages of diving into those Goal Detail pages to share with us, so let’s dive in.

Marissa: The first advantage is clarity. When you’re creating goals using the SMARTER framework, it causes you to get crystal clear about what you’re setting out to accomplish. You might have some kind of a goal… Let’s say a fitness goal. That’s a really common thing that most of us are doing. If you’re not crystal clear about the specifics, the ins and outs of that goal, it’s going to be a lot harder to achieve that goal, and that’s what we’re about here: goal achievement.

If you’re unfamiliar with the SMARTER framework, it’s an acronym for creating goals. You’ve probably heard of the SMART framework. This is the SMARTER framework. These goals are specific, so you know what to do. You know exactly what you’re trying to set out to do. They are measurable, so you know when you have succeeded. They’re actionable, so you can actually take steps to achieve it. They are risky. This is probably a new one you haven’t heard before, and this is so you have to innovate and become better to accomplish that goal.

They’re also time-bound, so you have a deadline. We know if we don’t have a deadline we’re most likely not going to hit that goal. Or if you’re trying to create a habit, this is going to include that habit rhythm, the frequency. It should be exciting. This is also really, really important to goal achievement so that you stay motivated and achieve that goal. Then it should be relevant, so it’s feasible in your current life stage and alongside your other goals. Blake, do you want to give us an example of what a SMARTER goal might look like or sound like?

Blake: Sure. [crickets] Oh, you meant right now. Right. We’re recording a podcast. Okay, great.

Marissa: Now would be good.

Blake: Let’s say, for instance, you find yourself in a career shift right now and you want to land an awesome new gig. Maybe your SMARTER goal for Quarter 1 is “Apply for 40 new jobs by February 20.” Or if you’re trying to build an exercise habit, you may say, “I want to run 3 miles around my neighborhood every morning at 7:30 a.m., starting on January 18 and going through March 30.”

Marissa: I love that because it’s super crystal clear what we’re trying to accomplish. We know when we’ve accomplished it or if we don’t. We know the metrics that are going to get us there. There’s so much included in that SMARTER goal framework.

Blake: I want to add something here, Marissa, because from someone who was kind of ground level and then tried to move up when they had time… Like, I start with my to-do list, and then maybe I think about my week or my month, and maybe I set a goal, but I always used to operate from just going from one thing to the next, to the next, and just kind of running life. I think one of the biggest advantages within this clarity advantage is the clarity that… Like, that point exciting you hit on. It’s not in the traditional SMART framework.

For me, this is huge, because when I started to do this and I got ahold of, “Wait a second. What am I actually really excited about…?” All of a sudden, you put on the scuba gear and you end up going deep on to what you really care about, what you want your life to be about. It can dramatically change how your daily life looks with the Full Focus System, because you can build a bridge from that.

Taking the time to actually get that clarity is something you’ll almost never have time for. I always used to operate like, “I’m going to try to get all this stuff done, and then maybe I can think big,” and whatever, but what I found was I never had that time. Taking time to get this clarity in the Goal Detail pages is so huge, because it’s like a magnet that pulls you into the future that you actually want.

Marissa: The other thing I just want to mention is if maybe this is your first time setting goals or if you’re not really familiar with the SMARTER framework, we have an amazing goal setting and goal achievement course as a company called Your Best Year Ever. I would highly encourage everyone listening to go take that course. I actually go through this every year.

Very similarly to the planner, I was pretty reluctant to go through that system. Every year that I go through it, I’m beyond grateful that I do, that I take that half a day to go through it, because it sets me up for success throughout the entire year. This year it was incredibly important, especially coming off a year like 2020, to get recentered and set myself up for success for 2021. So, if you’re interested in going through Your Best Year Ever, you can go to bestyearever.me.

Verbs: I’ll say this, too, Marissa. I think going through that course will help you become a ninja at the SMARTER framework. It may seem like a tedious task to do at first to consider every single step of this SMARTER framework, but if you can do this, you will find there’s actually liberty within the constraints of fitting this into the SMARTER framework.

It’s almost like… I have younger kids. Pre-pandemic, when you went bowling, you had the option of putting the bumpers up so the ball wouldn’t fall into the gutter, but you knew you were aiming for the pins. This is like setting up the bumpers with the SMARTER framework and aiming for the pins with the most momentum you have. So, thanks for mentioning that.

Blake: Just to clarify, Verbs, the bumpers are just for children.

Verbs: Well, that’s what I tell myself. If they happen to get left up on my turn, I just use them.

Blake: Okay. That explains why people were… I mean, it was my birthday and I just didn’t want to be embarrassed. All right. Let’s move on to the second advantage, Marissa.

Marissa: The second advantage is motivation. This is so important as we’re looking at goal achievement. Our Goal Detail pages definitely help give us that motivation. My mom, Gail Hyatt, always likes to say, “People lose their way when they lose their why.” I love that quote so much.

Verbs: That needs to be on a tee shirt.

Marissa: She is pretty wise. I just have to say it. So, knowing why you started will keep you motivated during the messy middle. That messy middle usually happens in the middle of our goal achievement when we feel like we’re too far in to stop, but we’re not far in enough that we feel like we have what it takes to go to the actual end. When we are connected to our why, and when we are continually connecting to our why, that’s going to give us the motivation to push through.

So, you have to ask yourself “Why?” several times to peel back the layer. Blake, this is like putting on that scuba gear and going deep, continually going deeper and deeper. One of the things I love to do when I’m creating my goals… This is all on your Goal Detail page in your Full Focus Planner. We’re talking about the section that is titled Key Motivations. One of the things I like to do is ask myself, “What is at stake if I don’t achieve this goal?” Usually, whatever is at stake will help me get motivated.

For instance, one of my goals this quarter is to complete a specific exercise program I have. It’s a nine-week program, and it’s pretty intense. It’s hard-core. When I look at what’s at stake if I don’t finish those nine weeks, if I don’t do those workouts every day, I am realizing that what’s at stake is my emotional sanity. As we know, in this year, this past year, exercise is so helpful for keeping us sane, keeping us emotionally level. If I’m not working out on a daily basis, my emotional sanity is the first thing to go out the door. Blake, what is your best advice to somebody who is trying to discover the why behind their goals?

Blake: It’s interesting when you were asking through “What’s the cost if I don’t do this?” That’s exactly what I do when I’m on a sales call with somebody if they’re thinking about joining one of our coaching programs or training. That’s kind of what you’re doing with your motivation: you’re selling yourself a little bit on why this is so valuable.

Another question I’ve brought up in our trainings when people are thinking about hitting a goal is to consider the consequences of hitting the goal. You just brought up, “Here are the consequences if this isn’t achieved,” but when I say consequences, I mean the multiple layers. Let’s say you have an income goal. It’s like, “If I hit this goal, then I’ll make more money than I did last year” or “I’ll double my income,” or whatever.

Then what I would ask is, “So then what? What does that mean? Oh, well, that means we could pay off all this debt we have. Okay. What would that mean? Well, that would mean I would probably be a lot less stressed and wouldn’t just think about money all the time. Okay. What would that mean? Well, then I would probably be more available emotionally for more important things.” You just kind of go down the list.

I’ve done this with people before, and it’s a beautiful thing. You know you’ve scuba-dived deep enough, Marissa, when you start tearing up a little bit. You get a little choked up. I joke, but it’s actually for real. If a goal doesn’t move you right now, it’s not going to move you when it gets inconvenient.

Marissa: Gosh, that’s so true.

Blake: So take time to go deep with the details.

Verbs: So, it’s important to know why you started, because once you do you can revisit these reasons often, which brings us to the third advantage: visibility. Tell us about that one, guys.

Marissa: This is my favorite advantage to these Goal Detail pages. If you’re not looking at your goals on a regular basis, you’re going to forget about them. We do not have a superhuman memory, that we write these down on January 1, or whatever date we write them down, and then throughout the year we’re just going to remember our goals off the top of our head. We have to be looking at our goals frequently in order to get those creativity sparks going, so we know what our next steps are, so we’re reconnected to that why.

The Goal Detail pages are the perfect convenient place to do that. It’s literally the biggest difference between a resolution and a goal. We hear all the time that people set these grand resolutions at the beginning of the year and they fail two weeks in or something. It’s crazy how quickly people fail on their resolutions. It’s because they don’t remember them. They’re not keeping them top of mind. They don’t have a system to act on those on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. So, visibility is massive to our success.

Verbs: I think it would also be interesting to note that if you find yourself not wanting to see the goals you set at the beginning of the year because you know you’ll dread it, that could be an indicator that you need to go back and revise that goal a little bit and kind of run back through that SMARTER framework to make sure you are still excited about what it means and what it will take to accomplish that goal.

Marissa: Yeah. Your goals should be risky, but they shouldn’t be daunting. I think that’s really key. When you look back at these goals, you should be excited. This should fire you up. Like, “Yes! I am ready to go crush whatever to-do I have to execute on in order to make some progress on these goals.”

Blake: There’s something you said where the difference between a goal and a resolution is, a lot of times, we just forget about resolutions. It’s interesting, because I think if you ask somebody, “What was your resolution?” intellectually they could probably tell you, but it’s almost… I think this principle of visibility is a little bit like recognizing that so much of what we do… I can’t remember what the stat is, but so much of what we do as people is programmed. Our subconscious is kind of doing things. I moved my hand just then. I didn’t think, “Move hand up.” You’re just doing most of your tasks by programming.

Visibility is essentially helping you reprogram. If you set a goal that’s outside of your normal mode of operation, it’s going to take some reprogramming. I think that’s the power of visibility: it cooperates with your brain so that it’s… Like you said, when you look at it, you imagine what it’s going to be like. You remember the why. You think about a creative next step toward it, and you don’t have to force yourself. All you have to do is put it in front of your face, and your brain fills in the blanks.

Marissa: Yes. I think that’s the importance of the Goal Detail pages. The truth is you could write this down in a notebook…write your goal down, write why it’s important to you, and flip through that on a daily basis. But when you have it next to your Daily Pages where you’re writing your Daily Big 3 and you’re going through your Weekly Preview, all of those things are… You’re determining what your Daily Big 3 are, what your Weekly Big 3 are, based on referencing those goals.

One of the things I do is I encourage our customers and our communities, and I do this myself, to review your goals at a high level on a daily basis. I do this in two ways. The first thing I do as part of my morning ritual… I use our Full Focus Journal every day, and at the beginning of our new Full Focus Journal, we have a place for you to write all of your annual goals. Under each of those goals we have a place for you to write why that goal is important. You’re essentially writing your key motivations there.

Every day, before I get to my page in my journal where I’m going to write out all the things, I go back and reference those goals before I do anything. It’s one of the first things I do in the morning. I get up, work out, and then look at my goals. Then I’m journaling and reflecting on whatever is going on in my life or the ups and downs of that goal I’m trying to achieve, what’s working, what’s not…all that kind of stuff.

Then, once I start my workday startup ritual, I’m going and setting my Daily Big 3, but before I do that, I flip to the front of my planner to my Annual Goal page. That’s kind of a high leverage. It’s just those goals. Basically, before I even start my day, I’ve looked at my goals two different times, so I’m crystal clear on what those goals are.

Then, on a weekly basis, as I go through my Weekly Preview, that’s when I’m looking at those Goal Detail pages. That’s when I’m looking back at all of those different sections…those key motivations, those next steps, which we’re going to talk about in a minute. I might check off some of those next steps if I have achieved them or I might add a couple more. I might update my streak tracker, or whatever.

I’m doing that on a weekly basis that’s a little bit more in depth. It’s something I probably don’t have the time for on a daily basis but on a Sunday afternoon I have the time for. Then, on a quarterly basis, obviously, I’m really diving into those goals and going deeper. That’s when I might revise things and update those key motivations.

Blake: Can I ask you a follow-up question to that, Marissa? Because that’s awesome. For someone who’s listening right now and it took all they had to just think of the right goal and write it down, and they’re like, “Wow, that’s an amazing ritual routine,” can you give that person the carrot? What does that look like? What does it feel like?

How do your workdays, especially nowadays…? Our company is primarily remote, basically all the time remote. How has instilling that habit…? Because it sounds like you’ve got it really dialed in. What have been some differences, I guess, in your calendar, in your day-to-day? Is it something you tangibly notice or do you just sort of look up and go, “Wow! I’m actually making a lot of progress”? Can you describe the aftereffects of that visibility habit?

Marissa: You know, it’s something I started and kind of wasn’t sure what the actual result would be, but I knew I needed to do it. What I find is the most important benefit of keeping your goals incredibly visible is it’s constantly getting your wheels turning.

We’ve actually created a really great tool that’s free for you guys to download. You can put your goals in. You can type them in. It’s an editable PDF. You can print them out, and it’s a beautiful sheet with all of your goals. You can also just print it out and handwrite those goals if you wish. I’ll give you the place to go get this in just a second.

I printed out this goal sheet, and I actually have this up in three places in my house. I have it on my refrigerator door, so every time I go into the kitchen I see it. I have it in my bathroom next to my sink, so in the morning when I’m getting ready or in the evening when I’m washing my face I’m seeing my goals. Then I have it on my bulletin board in my home office.

Every time I’m looking at those throughout the day periodically… I might not even stop to actually read it, but every time my eyes go in that direction, it immediately gets my wheels turning, like, “What’s the next thing I can do?” or “Oh yeah. I totally forgot to follow up about that project,” or whatever it might be. That’s, to me, the best benefit.

Otherwise, if you don’t have visibility on a daily basis or even on an hourly basis, so to speak, it’s just out of sight, out of mind. But if it’s right in front of you all the time, your brain is going to figure out how to accomplish that. It’s always going to be looking for the next step to achieve that goal. That’s the best benefit I can say.

In case you’re wanting to make this really pretty and hang this up in your office or in your bathroom like I did, you can go to focusonthispodcast.com/printables, and there we will have our annual goal sheet for you to print off. It’s an editable PDF, so you can make it pretty, and even if you have horrible handwriting, you can do that.

Verbs: The fourth advantage is momentum. You spoke a little bit about that in the last advantage, Marissa, but what else can you talk to us about in regard to momentum?

Marissa: If we don’t know where we’re going, it’s really easy to procrastinate. One of the things a lot of us do when we’re setting goals is we set this great goal, we have all the best intentions, but we don’t get going on it. We feel that sense of “This is kind of daunting, and I’m not sure what to do next,” and we kind of get paralyzed, and then we procrastinate. Or we’re afraid of failing so we procrastinate and procrastinate. It’s so important to not only get clear on what your goal is but what those next steps are.

We have this in the Goal Detail pages, a section for next steps. One of the things my dad always teaches in relation to goal setting and your next steps is your goal should be in your discomfort zone. It should make you feel a little bit nervous, a little bit excited, get those feelings going, like, “Can I really do this?” But your next steps should always be inside your comfort zone. These should be no-brainers, super easy.

Literally, one of my next steps for one of my work-related goals is to set up a meeting with our marketing manager, and that’s the only next step I had, because in that meeting, I’ll determine what the next steps are. That’s like the easiest thing. It wasn’t even to have the meeting. It was literally to schedule the meeting with her. It can be that easy. I know that seems like “Does that count as a next step?” Yes, it does, because you’re making forward progress to your goal.

So, your goals should be in your discomfort zone and your next steps should be in your comfort zone. When you guys are setting your goals, how many next steps…? Obviously, I just said one of my goals I only had one next step. How many next steps do you guys try to add for each of your goals? Do you try to go the whole…? I think we have seven spaces, or something, for next steps. Do you guys try to fill all of those in? Do you rank them? Do you just do a few?

Blake: For me, the point of the next steps is less about how many I do. I don’t know if there’s an exact number, but it is, to borrow a phrase you used earlier, about getting the wheels turning and about making progress. So, I never use that section as a planning tool. I use it as a kick-starting tool. It’s not, “Oh, here’s phase one, phase two…” It’s literally like what you said. It’s just “What’s going to get me moving?”

Honestly, a lot of times, my next step for some of these goals where I don’t know how I’m going to get there is steps related to how I can make that easier or how I can get clarity on the first phase of it. Maybe it’s like, “I’m going to spend 15 minutes riffing on ideas, journaling” or “I already know somebody who has hit that goal. I’m going to call them and see if they’ll have coffee with me.”

Marissa: Ooh, that’s good. I like that one. What about you, Verbs?

Verbs: I’m thinking about this goal I recently set to where literally it was one next step. I think, generally, I go between one and three. But for me, getting a professional planning day once a quarter, which meant my next step was just finding a location to do it, and that was going to be enough, like Blake said, to get momentum going so I can at least get that in place and maximize on that time.

Marissa: Like I was saying earlier, if you’re keeping your goals top of mind, visible, if you’re reviewing them daily in your planner or if you have those goal sheets printed out and put up around your office or around your house, put in your car, or somewhere… You could even save it on your phone. That’s constantly going to remind you “What else could I do? What’s the next thing I can do?” That, to me, is the key in this whole system: if you’re constantly immersing yourself in the system. On a daily basis, you’re looking at your goals. You’re always asking yourself, “What’s that next step I can take toward achieving them?”

Verbs: And, important to note, if you want to know how to decide your next steps, there’s an episode from two weeks ago. It’s a great place to start. It’s Episode 70 entitled Turn Your Goals Into Action.

Blake: Yeah. I said a lot of smart stuff in that episode, so definitely go back and relisten.

Verbs: All right. The good news is if you want to create goals that actually work and make progress toward achieving them, you need to leverage the power of the Goal Detail page. With it you’ll have the clarity, motivation, visibility, and momentum you need to turn your best intentions into reality. Blake, Marissa, give us any final thoughts you may have for our Focus on This listeners.

Blake: All right. Give us some secret Gail or Michael Hyatt trivia. That’s what everyone wants to know, Marissa.

Marissa: Well, I don’t know if this is really trivia, but my mom… Gosh, it sounds horrible, because my dad created this whole thing, so you would think the best students would be all of us. Like, we obviously would all use the planner every single day and we’re the experts on goals and all the things. The truth is he created this system I don’t know how many years ago, but all of us, maybe except Megan, were so reluctant to the whole system. It just felt like, “Oh, we’ve got to do this. We should do this. We should create goals. We should be using the system. We should be using the planner.”

If there was anybody who was the most resistant it was my mom. She self-admittedly will say that she was super reluctant and was like, “Don’t tell me what to do.” We’re kind of similar in that. “Don’t tell me what to do.” That’s kind of how it felt. But I think, like me, when we both saw the power of the system and what was possible and that your goals really should be personally exciting to you, they should be personally motivating to you… It is really amazing.

I have an affirmation I listen to every morning that I recorded. It’s kind of like the vision for my life. One of the things I say to myself in that is “I am creating the future I want by the choices I make today.” That is the epitome of this whole thing. If you’re looking at your goals on a daily basis and you’re asking yourself, “What can I do today to move toward those goals?” you’re literally creating your future. So, I just want to encourage everybody. 2020 was a heck of a year. It was so hard, but this is a new year. You get to take back that control. One of the best ways you can do that is by using the Goal Detail pages in your Full Focus Planner.

Verbs: New year, new planner.

Marissa: Boom!

Blake: Yeah! I’m fired up.

Verbs: Special thanks to Marissa Hyatt, director of marketing for the Full Focus brand. It was great to have you on the episode today. This is the most productive podcast on the Internet, so please share it with your friends. Remember to use #focusonthispodcast.

Blake: And we’ll be here next week with another great episode. Marissa, this is the part we all say, “Stay focused.” So, until then…

All: Stay focused!

Marissa: Thanks, guys.