184. Know Your Enemy: Defeating Your Productivity Obstacles

Maybe it’s your phone, maybe it’s a coworker, maybe it is those delicious Justin’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups in the fridge. Whatever it is, we all have obstacles to our personal productivity. Courtney and Verbs, you two obviously don’t. I should say most of us do, I know you two just fly through without even a speed bump on the road, flying towards your goals.

Not true.

Mortals like myself, we can fall victim to these things. I thought it’d be great to talk through. We talk so much about our goals, our formations, staying motivated. But let’s acknowledge that we are going to hit some bumps in the road, there are going to be things that are barriers. In acknowledging this, I think this is why you should listen to this episode, is just by acknowledging, hey, these things are happening or they happen on a recurring basis, we can start to plan ahead and think through ways we can proactively come at these obstacles. Does that sound good to you all?

Sounds great.

Fantastic.

All right, so we’ve got 47 steps here today, we’ll walk through, so cancel your other plans. What’s that? Our producer has said, we’ve actually trimmed this down to just two. Look at that, we’re already saving you time and giving you back hours in your day. How about that for the most productive podcast on the internet?

Let’s go.

We’ve got two steps to making headway on whatever your productivity barriers are. Believe it or not, it’s going to be more simple than you think.

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 Courtney Baker and Blake Stratton. Happy Monday to you all.

Happy Monday.

Happy Monday unto you, sir.

All right, so we’re talking about personal barriers to productivity today. Where do we start in this whole conversation about even overcoming those personal barriers?

It’s funny, as I was preparing for today, and I was thinking about what are my personal barriers. Because, guys, this is something that you’re always going to be working on. I don’t think that there’s ever a moment where the narwhals and unicorns come to commend you for arriving at the productivity.

Wait, time out. Narwhals, as previously established, because I learned this last year, are real.

They’re real. Yes.

Don’t lump narwhals and unicorns together because this is exactly what I did before.

Wait, are you saying that unicorns are not real?

Don’t you dare tell my daughter that, Nick, don’t you dare brick her spirit.

Keep that information close to you.

That’s fair, I’m sorry.

Yes. Listen, narwhals and unicorns in my household, they’re friends, they are in the same community, and they have the same magical powers. But I don’t think they’re going to come crown you when you’ve arrived at the summit of productivity. As I was thinking about things that I run into, I realized that actually the first step is also something that is a barrier to my productivity. Why don’t I go ahead and tell you? The first step is to diagnose the problem. As Verbs and Blake laugh at me. When I was thinking about this, I thought I think sometimes that is my barrier. Now, I am very good at this when it comes to my professional side of my life, it just seems like it comes more naturally. But when I look at everything happening in my personal life, sometimes I let the friction around problems just sit because I’m like, “That’s what it is.”

Even though Nick and I talk a lot about dishwashers, and laundry, and resetting for the day, there’s still areas where there’s friction that I rarely stop and say, “Hey, is there a problem here? Is this a problem area? Is this an area that I could actually take action on?” Which, to me, is the whole premise of this idea is actually knowing the enemy. Knowing how to combat the obstacle, how to be more productive. Anyways, first step, diagnose the problem. Again, it’s really impossible to get any better at your productivity without knowing the area that could use some extra thought, some extra intention around your productivity. Obviously, I gave my example of maybe areas at home where it’s like there’s just always friction around the nighttime getting everyone to bed, but I’m kind of prone to just be like, “That’s how it is.”

Maybe for you, that you struggle to start your day because you’re overwhelmed with identifying how to get started. What’s actually the first thing that you should go after? Or it might be that you get overwhelmed and you pull out your phone and it’s just like, “Hey, I’m just going to check out for a while.” These are different types of barriers to your productivity. I’m just curious for you two, where are your personal version of that? Maybe your not downfall, that feels too extreme.

It’s too final.

But what are maybe your danger zones, areas that if they’re going to be obstacles to your productivity, they usually lie here for you?

I think for me, I’ll jump in real quick, is when I am identifying my priorities for the day on the big three, I know what those are, jot them down. Where I can get lost and off track and distracted is when you have that task list at the bottom. Some of those pertain to the big three in some way, shape, or form. But once I start listing those down and I’m realizing this is only going to take two minutes to do that, I’ll just jot that down real quick. I can do this real quick before I start doing that.

Before I know it, I have a task list that I’ve created in the moment on that day of two, three minute things I could do, which end up taking me all the way off track and I don’t end up getting to the big three or the big two that I’ve established for the day, like I wanted to. I get distracted by all the little tidbits and tasks that really don’t all the way contribute to what I wanted to accomplish for the day. But that often serves as a barrier because I could definitely push some of those off to another day or later in the week, but-

Well, it’s interesting. It’s almost sometimes those things are so easy that they’re almost like you’re doing the easy work so you don’t have to do the more important-

Exactly.

… the harder sometimes work of your daily big three. That’s really interesting.

Cotton candy tasks, they seem substantial, but you do it and it just dissolves in your mouth.

That’s actually a good word because there is… Obviously, we know checking off things gives you a little endorphin kick. It’s like, “If I could just spend my time doing these little things that feel easier, rather than the work that I’ve already said is more important.”

Right. Blake, what about you?

I think you’re touching on something that’s important with this step of diagnosis, which is identifying what you can see above the surface, I’m not getting to my big three. For me, it’s I’ve identified I’ve spent too much time consuming on my phone instead of producing with my phone or my technology. But identifying what’s beneath the surface, what’s happening behind that, that’s usually, if not always where the problem actually lies. That can take some reflections and dialogue. For me, I started noticing I’d be reaching for the phone, consuming more than I ought to be, social media, that sort of thing. Above the surface, it’s just like, “I’m addicted to my phone or I’m using my phone too much, I need to stop that.” But when you start looking at what’s behind that, that’s where change can happen. At least for me, the sort of bad feeling or shame associated with that lack of productivity can be dispelled a little bit.

I noticed a trend, a habit trigger. We talk about habit triggers in the positive sense. For me, the habit trigger of reaching for my phone was I’m about to do something outside of my comfort zone. I’m about to do something meaningful in my business or in my workday, this is the part of my workday where change is going to happen and I’ll open myself up to failure. It’s subconscious, but I was reaching for staying the same, or reaching for a comfort zone, or reaching for avoiding that possibility for meaningful failure. If that makes sense?

Hm-mm.

Not to get too deep on you guys, but that acknowledgement of this is that problem is that I have a fear of failure problem actually is maybe driving that is really powerful. Because now, when I want to reach for my phone, I go, “I’m about to do something meaningful, I’m growing right now. This is the moment, this is where it happens,” and it sort of flips it on its head a little bit for me. Taking that time to diagnose I think is very powerful.

Blake, I think that might be your mic drop moment for the day. That was a whole webinar session right there, just that little tidbit.

It was, I said I would save people time today. Unfortunately I haven’t, I’ve used up too much.

That was gold. Step one, that was diagnosing the problem. Step two is make a plan. Do you have any thoughts around this one, Courtney, that you’d like to… It doesn’t have to be a webinar workshop, mic drop moment, but just [inaudible 00:10:47].

I mean, the pressure is on.

I know, it is.

Well, I think once we have an idea of we have a diagnosis, that is so much of the work. Then when we’re making a plan, there are really some helpful phrases that we can equip ourselves with. One is just to use if then. For example, Blake, in your situation, it could be if I find myself trying to escape the meaningful work out of a sense of failure, then… Fill in the rest of that statement. For me, it might be if I continue to find friction with process, then I will take the time to think intentionally about how to solve it. Again, a really simple if then, sometimes just thinking intentionally about what the problem is can yield some really helpful results and just kind of automate in the future when you get there. Another helpful phrase is, the reality is… Fill in the blank. I will blank.

An example might be, the reality is I’m unproductive during mornings, so I will block my high-leverage work for the afternoons. Another example might be, the reality is I consistently underestimate the time required to complete timelines. Man, I feel like this is probably when our audience listening is like, “Yes, I am there.” I will always give an end date two days later than I think I need. Again, just thinking about these and writing them down, write your if then and the reality is, so I will sentences do that in your planer. Make the time, that’s really the message of today and today’s tip to help you overcome your personal barriers to productivity. Hey, guys, I have Gary Smith here with us today who’s a Full Focus Planner certified pro. He’s going to help give us some inside tips and tricks from his working with clients and different people that he is advising. Gary, first of all, welcome to the show.

It’s great to be with you, Courtney. I’m really looking forward to our conversation.

That’s awesome. Well, let’s get out of the gate because, Nick, our producer all the time, he’s like, “You know what people want to hear about? They want the tips, they want the tricks.” Just right out of the gate, Gary, I would love for you to share some of your favorite tips and tricks when you’re thinking about utilizing the Full Focus Planner?

Well, you know what? It’s interesting, Courtney, because I tend to be a very much back to basics kind of guy. Because in both the business consulting and the life coaching and stuff that I do, so much of the time when people fail, probably 90% of the time, it’s because they’re not getting back to the basics. The tips that I tend to use are things like use the planner the way it was designed. So much of the time, I think we just want to jump in and we want to start tweaking the process and things like that. When people do that, at least the clients that I work with, when they try to do that, what happens is they either wind up diluting the planner, in which case it’s ineffective, or they wind up over complicating it, which makes it unproductive.

I think that’s the first tip is use the planner, especially if you’re new to the Full Focus Planner. Commit to working with it for at least three months before you start making any tweaks to it because there is a process there and the process works if you work the process. The second tip that I have is, and this is something I think a lot of people, I’ve seen it on the Facebook page and everything, a lot of people struggle with consistency. You have to get consistent, you need to be using your planner day in and day out seven days a week. The other thing I tell my clients is when they’re starting out is don’t jump from one thing to another, commit to taking the planner and using it for an entire year.

Because what I have found that happens in that process is you’re writing stuff down in your planner, you’re getting concepts and ideas and tasks and things like that. The more you do that, the more it tends to transfer to your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is a great analytical tool, it will go through and it will marinate on stuff. The interesting thing is is that when the ideas come out, they don’t just go to your planner, it goes from your head to your heart. When you get it in your heart, that’s where, for me, the magic of the Full Focus Planner really comes into play. Because we really not only get absolute clarity on what it is that we need to do, but we also get a much deeper level of understanding of why we’re doing it in the first place. Once you understand that why, that becomes the launchpad for your success.

Wow, that’s really profound and on so many different levels. I do think there is a tendency of to try all the new things. You might hear somebody talking about bullet journaling or somebody is releasing this certain type of planner. It’s interesting, I get the appeal of the new, of yeah, I’m going to try the new things. But without having that longer span of time of really letting a system develop in your own habits and rituals, that you’re really not getting the most out of it. If you think about in business, if we were to just constantly be changing all of our operating systems, everybody would look at that and say, “That’s a really poor decision.” But for ourselves, we kind of do that. We’re like, “Yeah. I’ll try this for a little while and see how that works.” Obviously, you’re not going to get great results that way, so I love that tip.

The interesting thing is is in business, we used to have what we call the flavor of the month club. Management would come out with a great idea and says, “All right, we’re going to put this program in place.” It lasts for maybe two or three months, and then it goes by the wayside and it gets replaced by whatever the next greatest thing is. My attitude is back to the basics, guys. The system works if you work the system and you really don’t need to make a lot of tweaks to things. I’ve been using the Full Focus Planner since it was first introduced. I’ve been using it for a lot of years. It’s the foundation of my life. I often joke that if I hadn’t been married to my high school sweetheart for 47 years, I’d probably be sleeping with my planner.

That is amazing. I feel like maybe… I don’t know if tattoos is the right way, but we’re getting to the point now. I’m trying to remember who, was it Disney? At some point there was, Nick, I feel like you would remember this, some brand, they paid people money if they were willing to get a tattoo of the logo on them.

It seems like something Disney actively would not do, actually.

Maybe it was Harley Davidson, I don’t know.

I’ll look it up.

It’s so funny, now that so many people really are using the planner, it’s such a core foundational… Certainly for me, it’s the idea of trying to do my work without the planner, I honestly have a hard time understanding how I would go about that. What would I actually be doing? How would I organize myself effectively? I know for sure going back to my early twenties of just opening my inbox and seeing what people needed from me was not a recipe for success.

That’s absolutely true. You’re right, after you use it for a while, it becomes such a habit [inaudible 00:19:30] way that you can’t think of doing things any other way. The thing I love about it is that I can plan stuff months and years in advance, whether it’s a calendar event or a task that needs to be done. It’s a set it and forget it. It’ll pop up when I need it, and so I don’t need to clutter my mind with a lot of stuff that I’m trying to remember. Because I don’t know about you, Courtney, but my mind is a horrible storage device.

100%. I absolutely have too many things on my plate to try to remember all of those things. Being able to automate a place and feel like I can trust it is certainly something that’s helped me sleep better at night, has given me the opportunity to change gears at the end of the day and be fully present with the people that are important to me. I think that has certainly been the tool that has helped me, that feeling of I think I’ve forgotten something is a terrible feeling.

It really is, especially when you’re sitting there saying, “Okay, I forgot something and I can’t remember for the life of me what it was.” That’s one of the things that I like is that one of the reasons I sleep well at night is because before I go to bed at night, I plan my next day. I know exactly what I have to do, so when I wake up in the morning, it’s not like, “Gee, what am I going to do today?” It’s like I already know, all I have to do is open the planner, it’s there, I know what I need to do. Doing the daily review and then the weekly reviews are very, very powerful to help keep on track with the things that we really have defined that are the most important for us to achieve.

I’m just curious, based on your expertise and experience with the planner, what you would say to someone who maybe doesn’t think of themselves as a planner. They’re like, “I’ve just never been really great at organizing my day. I don’t know that this would work for me.” I’m just curious, what you would say to someone in that space?

I would say that depending on your personality, there are some people who really struggle with that. But there’s an old saying that tells us, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” It’s really not an option, it’s something that you have to learn to do. The other thing that I run into quite often is that people who are in an environment, say you’re a doctor in an emergency room or something like that, and when you hit the door in the morning, you have no idea what’s waiting for you. They sort of take the attitude of, well, the planner’s not going to work for me because my day is so inconsistent. I said, “Yes, but you can manage the portion of your day that is consistent, start there.” Then as you use it more and more, you’ll get those creative ideas that will come up to say, “Well, I can tweak this a little bit and I can do this that will help me.” Because the goal is that constant and never-ending improvement.

Yes. That’s a great word, and even changing their mindset a little bit of being like, “My day is so unpredictable.” It’s really maybe even more about how do I set myself up to be successful for the unknown that’s going to be coming? How do I prepare and set up the rest of the day so that I’m at my very best performance in my whatever role it is for you?

I think a lot of that has to do with how we view our day, because I think our tendency is to have 25 tasks on any given day. Yet, we know starting out of the shoot, there’s no way we’re going to get all of that done. What I have tried to do over the years is I block schedule my day, so I block in first of all any meetings or phone calls or anything like that, that I know I’m committed to doing. Then I only take about half of the remaining time that I have left and book that for actually working on projects and tasks that I have to complete. Because I know invariably, I’m going to get a phone call from one of my kids saying, “Dad, my computer’s broken, I need help.” Something is going to come up. I plan that slack into my day to be able to compensate for that and still have a reasonably good chance of getting the stuff done that I wanted to get done today.

Okay, wait. Wait a minute, I know we want to talk about important things, but you’re telling me that your children call you when they’re having computer problems?

I’m the geek. What can I say?

That’s amazing. Wow.

I’m an engineer by trade, so I’m into all of the technical stuff. I mean, if I could turn the camera around and show you what’s on the desk in front of me, you would be blown away.

I know I did this kind of in reverse order, Gary, because again, Nick is like, “People want to hear the tips.” But I do want to give you a chance to share a little bit about what you do and how you started using the Full Focus Planner?

I’ve been a planner since day one. I started out my career as a project engineer. Being organized and having project plans and sort of driving things by the number and staying organized has, I think, always been a part of the way that I have thought. I’ve used a number of different products over the years to help me do that. But Michael has been one of my favorites over the years, I’ve read a lot of his stuff. I just love the way he thinks, and I love the heart that he brings and the why, the purpose behind what he and Megan are doing with the business. When the Full Focus Planner first came out, it’s like, “I got to try this.” Getting into it, I realized that it combined all of the elements that were missing in so many of the other planners.

Really starting at a very, very high, the 30,000-foot level of what are your goals and why are these things important to you? Then breaking it down step by step by step, to a point where I know what I have to do today, right now, in order to achieve a goal that may be three years out. Having that level of organization, and that’s what I work with my clients on, it’s developing that discipline and breaking it down to getting very, very granular with things. There’s one young fellow who I coached a couple of years ago, and he was the most disorganized mess anybody would ever see. I mean, literally, if you went into his office, there were post-it notes and papers all over the place. He spent more time looking for things than he did actually doing stuff.

It’s like, “I know it’s here somewhere.” I said, “Let’s get all of this stuff together and take getting things done approach. Let’s put it through the funnel and pull it out and either act on it or get it into the planner so that when you’re going to do it. That way it’s captured, it’s all in one book. You’ve got it right there, it’ll pop up when you need it.” After he had done that for about three months, he came back to me and he says, “Holy crap, I can’t believe how much that has changed my life.” He said, “I actually get to go home from work early at night because my day is done.” It’s like, “That’s what organization does for you.”

That is amazing and I don’t feel like it’s out of the reach by any means to say that it really can change your life. I’m so thankful for people like you that are out there teaching people how to use the system, how it can be implemented in their lives and help them get better at it. If you’re listening and thinking, I know it’s a planner, it shouldn’t be that hard. It’s not hard, but it is a system. It is like an operating system that you’re applying to your life. Getting somebody to help you get where you want to go faster is really helpful.

There are lots of Full Focus Planner certified pros out there to help you, people like Gary. If you’re interested in working with one, make sure that you check out our directory at fullfocus.co/directory and search for earners. You can also find a lot of our Full Focus Planner certified pros in the Full Focus community on Facebook. Just reach out to any of them, like Gary and say, “Hey, I’d love to talk to you about learning more or applying this in my context.” Well, Gary, thank you so much for joining us, it’s been wonderful to have you with us today.

Thank you guys so much for having me, it’s been a real blessing. I enjoy these kinds of conversations, so God bless you, keep moving the company forward.

Thanks, Gary, I appreciate it.

Today’s tip to level up your focus is to take time during your workday to identify your personal productivity obstacle and complete one of the fill in the blank statements. If, then, and the reality is, so I will… Thanks for joining us on Focus On This.

This is the most productive podcast on the internet, so share it with your friends. Don’t forget to join us over in the Full Focus Planner community on Facebook. We’ll be back next Monday with another great episode. Until then, stay focused.

Stay focused.

Stay focused.