Welcome to Mind-Bending Leadership (The Seth Campbell Podcast). I’m your host, Seth Campbell, and my mission is to equip you with real world tactics that improve your leadership skills, build your wealth, cause you to leave a multigenerational impact on the world. Today’s episode number seven is going to be what we call the quarterly reset. And I’ll tell you again, like many of these topics on Mind Bending Leadership, I do have a little bit of a roadmap. I have a plan. I’ve got a long list of things to cover inside of this podcast. And yet every once in a while, and this week is a big one, conversations start to happen inside of my organizations that become so clear, so common that it’s a real thing that’s out there that a lot of people are dealing with and struggling with or working through. And I know at that moment, like this is a conversation that must happen. It needs to happen. And whenever that does happen, I’ll usually pivot and make sure I dive into that because it’s obviously very relevant to what’s happening. And this week is exactly that. I had a different conversation to have this week. And yet in the past, probably 10 to 14 days, there’s this conversation that keeps happening.
And it sounds different, yet it’s really the same thing. And we had it a little bit with one of our leadership teams on Tuesday. And I’m going to share deeper with a bigger audience because it’s clear to me that this is a big thing a lot of people are dealing with out there right now. And I want to dive into it. And it’s called the quarterly reset. That’s what I call it. And essentially it’s this. So I’ll paint a picture of the pain and you tell me if you’re going through it or experiencing it at some level or another, and then this will be your episode, and it’s going to be very tactical. It’s going to be less mindset, more tactical. So you’re going to want to take a lot of notes on it and probably replay this. And I’m going to teach you a habit that I’ve learned and developed over time that’s really helped me be effective on this quarterly reset. So here’s the pain and what I recognized years ago as my world got bigger or as I got busier, the creep happened. And the creep I think we all deal with where things start to creep into our calendar.
Things start to creep into our rhythms. Things start to creep into our schedules. You’re a parent and you sign up for another karate class. And before you know it, it’s creeped in. You are a business leader or you’re on a team inside of your organization and like, okay, we’re going to ramp up this thing and we need to add on a meeting or we’re going to extend this meeting. We’re going to insert another Tuesday meeting, but it never goes away. It creeps in and our yesses start to compound. Maybe I can help out this person. We can do this. Maybe we’ll start to do this. And before you know it, what I recognized in my life, there’s this kind of moment, and it happens almost every 90 days or so, which is why I just insert a quarterly reset into my calendar. I’ve done this for years now. There’s this moment where I feel like everybody else or the rest of the world controls my time more than I control my time. I’m steering the ship, and there’s this moment where I don’t know that I’m really steering the ship anymore. I’m like just reacting and responding and surviving and living.
And in those moments prioritization no longer is under my control or heavily influenced. And that, for me, becomes a real issue. And it becomes the moment where results degrade, focus degrades, and things happen. I think right now, in particular, the reason why this has become so prevalent, more than I’ve ever seen, by the way, with the people that I work with from every level in every walk of life probably has to do with the pandemic and where we’re at in time. The world for a lot of folks has started to open back up. Not everybody yet, but a lot of places are opened back up. And we’ve had this 12, 18, 24 months depends on where your situation and your location of forced change in how we live and how we have our habits for everybody. If there was a period of time where your entire rhythm probably got wiped out or disrupted, and as pieces have come back together first, maybe in business yet remote work, things like that, some pieces probably made their way back in and then yet many other pieces didn’t. Like if you’ve got the kids at karate, maybe there wasn’t that for a while.
Things like that. Now, as the world is starting to open back up, vacations are starting to happen. Travel industry booming. More and more organizations going back to offices. You just see the ingredients falling back into place. I think probably what we’re experiencing is what I’ve experienced for many years on a mass scale. And creep didn’t just creep in. It was just so disrupted. We find ourselves now as the world is moving faster again, man, I don’t know where I’m keeping up. And half my week feels like I’m just holding on for the ride. The other half, I think I’m in front of things. Maybe I’m not. And more and more people are getting exhausted that I reckon closer to burnout. Even though we’re not yet at full speed, more and more people feel out of control. I just noticed in the past two weeks there’s this overwhelming scream for help on reorienting or getting back on track, getting reorganized. The diet is coming back. We’re going to get the covid weight… Whatever it is, it’s almost like New Year’s resolutions times 1000. So I have this practice, and it’s called the quarterly reset. And I wanted to share it.
For some of you, it will be something you’ve heard before, and I trust that you’ll hear it differently. And I’ll say it differently. And for some of you, this is going to be hopefully something you can implement today and work on right now. And it will make a tremendous difference for you. So I’m going to jump right into it. Now, one thing I want to put an asterisk and a caveat on, I have a bigger process. I call it the purpose filled life model. And I’m not going to teach that right here. It is very detailed. It goes from setting your life’s mission all the way down to what do I do the next 15 minutes and everything in between? This is one component in the middle of that. So I’m just going to just Preframe it that this is one component in the middle of it. You don’t need the other components to do this. It’s grab and go, and I want to just frame out the fact that there are some assumptions you may hear in my language that has to do with you already having goals. There are some assumptions I’ll make inside of that, things like that that we would normally do.
And if you don’t, that’s fine. You can still do this exercise. And I think what you’ll get is very beneficial for you. The Quarterly reset. Like I said, I do this on the calendar about every quarter. You may choose to do this once a year, may choose to do it every month. I don’t know. You got to find your rhythm on that. Here’s the first thing. Step one is you pause and this is the whole thing is going to be do it in a weekend, go get a hotel room. I don’t know, get away for a little bit and have your calendar or schedule and some notebook paper or whatever you write on distraction free, hopefully. And take yourself through this series of exercises I’m going to take you through. The very first piece is you look at your goals, and when I say that, lean towards your long term goals, these would be the things that are not the things that are on fire right now. That’s part of getting out of the creep that has creeped into your calendar. Think in terms of those things that typically Steven Covey. I’ll quote him a lot inside of this.
One of the great leaders and authors that’s no longer with us, author of Seven Habits, Highly Effective People. And inside of that, he came out with probably what I would call maybe the greatest time management system that has hit our generation. And it was called First Things First. It’s come under different names over time. Franklin Covey, Planner, maybe you’ve heard of now there are some concepts inside of there. It would be great read for anybody that gets into it. And he has these quadrants of time management. And when I say your goals, if you know that language, it would be called Quadrant two. And it’s something you can go Google Stephen Covey, Quadrant two, time management, and I’ll give you the synopsis. It would be things that we would label as important, not urgent, important, not urgent. And a lot of those things, there would be relationships, it would be health exercise. It’s the kinds of things that I really know I should be doing that. But I could skip today until it’s not urgent, until one day, then it’s super urgent or it could be too late. That’s the downside to those things. So when I say think about your goals, pause.
Step one. What are my goals this year? What are my goals in the next five years? What are my goals in the next three years? What are some of my goals in the next 90 days? Those things that are very important. Not urgent, the ones I probably keep skipping and just start to think about that for a second. And if you don’t have it, it’s fine. Just start to think about it. That’s just a thought exercise first. This is not a goal setting exercise yet. It’s a thought exercise. Just get yourself in the zone. Important, not urgent. What are those things that I really who I’d like to become and like to work on? And I could skip it today if I want to. And I probably have been more than I’d like to. Now we’re going to start writing things down. The next step is going to be list out your roles in life. So what are some of your roles? And this is where you’re going to start writing. I’ll give you for me, for example, husband is a role, father is a role, son is a role, brother, because I have a sister, that’s a role business owner for me, I write down this business, list them out.
Maybe you have salesperson, maybe you might have two jobs, you might have two vocations, you might have one job. Yet you wear two or three different hats. Write those down. What are the different roles you have in life? Wealth builder or personal, financial person? Because we all have that as a role that we’d like to be intentional about. And so write those down. What are the different roles you have in life? Just list them all. Now I want to give you a special category, and this goes right to the top of your role list. And Stephen Covey refers to sharpen the saw. It’s actually the 7th habit, sharpen the saw. And he says that we have these four key paradigms. All of us, our four key parts of our life, internal and in your mind binding leadership journey. Remember, all leadership. We tend to think that has to do with the people that follow us, and it does definitely have to do with that. Yet all leadership begins with self leadership. All leadership begins with self leadership. And no leadership externally can long term exceed the internal development that we’re doing. No leadership externally can long term exceed the internal development we’re doing.
Therefore, all leadership begins with self leadership. And what he would paradigm at Sharpen the Saw is physical, mental, spiritual and social/emotional. That’s one. And I’ll actually read you how he opens. This is right out of seven habits, highly effective people habit seven how he sets up Sharpen the Saw. And it’s really based off the famous Abraham Lincoln quote of Give me 6 hours of chopped down a tree and I’ll spend the first hour sharpening axe. So he says, this is how the chapter opens. Suppose you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to solve down a tree. What are you doing? You ask. Can’t you come? The impatient reply, I’m sawing down this tree. You look exhausted. You exclaim. How long have you been at it? Over 5 hours. He returns and I’m beat. This is hard work. Why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw you inquire. I’m sure it would go a lot faster. I don’t have time to sharpen the saw. The man says empathetically, I’m too busy sawing. And that sets up this idea that most of us live on. So if you’re feeling towards that burnout, you must recognize man, I’m too busy driving to stop and get gas.
And that becomes part of the trap of the creep that happens. It’s such an important exercise to do for yourself and for the people that you lead all around you, at least quarterly in my book. And what are the Sharpen the Saw? So physical, mental, spiritual, social/emotional. All of us have that as roles. Write that down, write down the other roles in your life. That’s step two. Now let’s go to step three, next to each one of those roles. Let’s start to write down again what Stephen Covey would refer to as the big rocks. Maybe you’ve heard that over the years. And it came again from that same seven habit, highly effective people. And there’s a famous video out there of when he taught it. It’s funny, it’s back in the 70s or 80s I think. But the people with the big hair and stuff, it’s really funny to watch the grainy video. And you may even see people do this exercise and say, okay, it’s got this big jar and some big rocks, some medium rocks, some little pebbles, and some sand and some water. And I was like, okay, fit everything in.
And if you know how it goes, then you realize there’s only one way to actually fit everything in. And it would be put the big rocks in the jar first. So you put the giant rocks in the jar first, then you pour in. You put the medium sized rocks in on top of those. Then you pour in the pebbles and they fill in the gaps. Then you can pour in the sand and it really fills in all the gaps. Then you can actually dump in the entire picture of water and it fills through the sand and everything fits. However, if you put the sand in and then you put the pebbles and then you wouldn’t ever be able to fit the big rocks. They don’t fit. And the life’s lesson there is put the most important things in first and everything else will fill in around it. Same thing goes for our calendar. So inside of each one of these roles, we have big rocks. We have these things that matter more. And those tend to be back to what I said at the beginning, the very important yet not so urgent. So let’s give some examples of what big rocks could be in those four sharpen the saw categories.
So let’s talk about physical. The big rocks we know inside of physical tend to be the big three of the physical category, exercise, nutrition, and sleep. Wouldn’t you agree that those are the big rocks? So in other words, I could do everything else I want, and if I fail to do those big rocks, it’s probably not going to work physically. It’s not going to work long-term. Even inside of those three, there’s actually one that matters more than the other two. And science would back that it’s sleep. In other words, my exercise, nutrition can be on point. And yet, if I don’t get enough sleep, my body will still hold on to the extra fat. My body still won’t work the way it needs to. So I must. If I’m putting the big rocks in the jar first, I would actually put sleep as priority one, followed by the other two. Then maybe I don’t even write anything else down. Maybe I just work on that. So that’s an example of what you’re going to write down next. And here’s my rule, Seth’s rule on these writing on the big rocks, man, do not put more than three.
And I prefer just one, because the other stuff is going to fill in no matter what the whirlwind is here, creep is waiting right outside that door, and that’s inescapable our goal is can I just get these big rocks in first and allow the other stuff to fill around that after? and this is about the next 90 days isn’t about your whole life. So you don’t even have to tackle all three unless you already got one or two of those down. But if you’re at zero, if your physical health is shot right now and it’s time, take sleep right now for the next quarter, or maybe you take on two, depending on how many other roles you’re going to choose to tackle this quarter. So now you’re going to write these big rocks down. Mental. I’ll give you some ideas. I’ll list out some for you. Grab and go on these big four of Sharpen the Saw on mental. These are like backed by research on mental. Actually, here’s one that a lot of people get. On Mental, you don’t, the goal is not to turn the mind off. So say I’m mentally burnt out.
The goal is not to give the mind rest. Science would prove that you actually want to apply thinking towards something else, another challenge or another thing. So you do not want to turn the mind off. What you want to do is don’t rest the mind. Give it something else. So that would be like podcasts, things that will inspire the mind, other books or take online courses, things like that stimulate the mind with something else. And if it’s something else that’s semi related to your main stuff, that helps too. But if applied learning and challenge and puzzle building or solving or inspirational stories of other people that have overcome those things that you struggle with right now, put the mind to work towards stimulus, not towards rest. On Spiritual. My big two on spiritual. I believe spiritual is a relationship. And what are the keys to great relationships? Communication should be the top of the list. Communication is two ways, talking and listening. So for my book, a spiritual is relationship with our creator. My form of talking is prayer. My form of listening is reading for me, I’m a Christian, so it’s reading the Bible that’s listening
And prayer is listening too. So it’s studying listening. So maybe it’s prayer for you. Maybe it’s studying or reading, whatever your beliefs are. Maybe it’s journaling about your purpose. Not just journaling, but journaling about this existence. This existential thing, your purpose. And nature many times can be a great spiritual connectivity for people. Maybe you have a Church or a synagogue or a religious organization that you can start attending. Fasting for many people is not only a physical one, yet a spiritual one fasting from food or something else for a period of time. Now on social/emotional. If we’re going to talk about social, lunch with a friend that many times is the good little reset that helps us. Joining sports teams, writing gratitude letters. Not just gratitude Journal for yourself, but like writing a gratitude message or text or letter to family members or other people. Many times will socially recharge you. Maybe a big rock is going to be I’m going to send a gratitude text message every single day to my spouse or to a different person that’s close to me every day. On the emotional side could be meditating, deep breathing. Studying resilience, Ironically enough, is a great way to increase emotional strength.
You’re hitting the mental and the emotional at the same time because you’re studying something that increases your mental fortitude. So those are some examples of what you would write as big rocks. And remember, you’re not going to pick all of them. You may not pick more than one definitely don’t do more than two or three. One is really a good number. And then go and write down what are the big rocks in the next 90 days for those other categories for husband or for wife or spouse, girlfriend, whatever it is. Maybe it’s date nights, maybe it’s pray together, father like I write down dates for my kids. Any of those now here’s. So you go across now when you get to your work, your vocation, you want to write down a real tangible number. We do need to hit metrics. We do need to hit goals. So as a business owner or a salesperson, it would be hit X, add X number of clients. It would be add X number of dollars in business. It’s a building. It’s a higher level goal. Do not put down something that has to do with managing the current whatever is on fire.
That’s not what this exercise is about. Because this is about like focus on that a little bit less actually. It’s not about managing your current business. It’s not about managing the current people. If you’re short on people, then your goal actually has probably to do with a number of interviews you’re going to do hiring clarity you make around that next hire you need. This is a growth additional thing on your business. It’s not even read or study that’s going to be in sharpening the stuff. It’s going to be X number moves to Y, where this number of staff moves to this number of staff. It’s got to be a tangible measurable growth. And it’s the thing that you need to do that’s vital that you could skip another week until you can’t. That’s the one to write down. So put those down. Wealth building or personal financial. There’s all kinds of big rocks depending on where you are in your journey. It could be learning something. It could be opening a bank account, it could be taking action on something. Finding a deal and investment depends on where you are in your journey. Move that ball forward on the thing that again, you would love to do.
And yet you could skip it, but you probably shouldn’t until you can’t. So now that you write down your roles, now we’re going to do a filtering. The next step is go cross out the things that are okay for you not to focus on roles entire roles for the next 90 days. So for example, I could cross out brother for the next 90 days. Or maybe I cross out son and it’s not like that’s not important. It’s just not something that I’m going to apply energy towards for the next 90 days. Maybe the last year I’ve skipped social so much that it’s time to get out of the house and be a little bit more social and less towards the family. I know that sounds crazy, yet it’s putting things into perspective. And remember, it’s about 90 days. So filter down, cross out the roles that you’re not really going to focus on in the next 90 days and be at peace with that. Now the next step is your own internal thing, and maybe you’ve got to start experimenting here. Maybe you already know, and I call it know your patterns. Ask yourself these questions like start to think.
Even right now as you’re hearing this, what are some of my patterns? I’ll give you examples of what some of mine are so you can maybe relate to it. I do better if I group the same subject matter together. In other words, if I’m going to have consulting calls with business owners, my brain works better if I stay in that Lane that day, whereas other people, they’re the opposite. They need to keep switching. I can do that for about an hour. Then I need to change subjects. So figure out what your patterns are. Figure out what your patterns are for morning and afternoon. I know people whose energy goes up in the afternoon because they work out during lunch or things like that. For me, anything that involves extreme listening, because that drains some of my energy is listening. Interviewing. I’ve got to do those in the morning. I can’t do interviewing as effective. I can’t do it. I can’t do it as effective. After 1:00 in the afternoon, listening drains me. In the afternoon, my energy goes down. My field of interviewing degrades after one. So if I have interviewing on there, I’m going to put that in the beginning.
Think about the appointments you have now, the people maybe you have now that add energy to your drain. Energy to you. You may not be able to do back to back energy drainers. You might want to get rid of them altogether. You may need to put an energy drainer than an energy booster. Just start to think about your patterns really quick. Now we start to move towards the final steps and write out your new week. And here’s the most. Hold your breath. This is amazing/This is terrifying. I want you to start with a blank slate. I want you to literally look at your calendar as if none of those appointments are there. If you have a digital calendar I use, I actually go create a blank one. If you have a paper calendar, flip the page to a blank one and start with no appointments. But my kids have karate this day, and we have this company meeting this day. Start without it. Delete it all mentally, physically delete it all for now. And instead of trying to, because this is part of the key. This is a key piece of the quarterly reset.
Do not approach this trying to fix your current schedule. That’s not what this is about. This is establishing a new it’s a reset, not an adjustment. So erase your calendar, start from scratch, and then rebuild it. Start with everything not existing, and then put in the sharpen the saw pieces first. Maybe you actually need to put in all those pieces about when you’re going to sleep, when you’re going to exercise. It depends on how close of a routine you have that if you’re already really good at sleep, maybe you don’t need to put it in the calendar. It’s fine. But put in the big rocks. Now you’re taking your role list and your big rocks and you’re going to plan your rhythms. Now, we’re not actually doing specific goals or appointments. Maybe yet. This is designing rhythms. So I’ll give you an example. Maybe you have Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Monday could be review day, and you’re going to do all those things like that, like reviewing numbers, looking at this, or having those conversations, follow up. Tuesday could be all your appointment setting or appointment doing. Wednesday could be business one day. Thursday could be my learning day because I was trying to turn that back up, try to give you my social day, and maybe you operate in day rhythms, or maybe you’re the opposite of that.
You got to mix it up. So Monday might be learning in the morning, business in the middle, social in the bottom part of my day, and Tuesday is learning in the morning, business in the middle. And maybe your day is broken up that way. Put your rhythms in place now based on those big rocks of those different roles, and start to lay out what conversations you’re going to have, what people you’re going to be meeting with, and then figure out what kinds of things that currently exist in your calendar. There are meetings, there’s appointments, there’s obligations. There are yesses. That might be strangling you. Figure out which ones really need to go back on. And here’s my extra little tidbit exercise I do on that is I will look at those and I’ll write daily, weekly, monthly. I’ll list out everything, including these big rocks and these rolls. So in other words, there will be a weekly meeting almost every single time that I’ve established as a business owner that really doesn’t need to be weekly. And I say that my people are like, Hallelujah. Finally, he realizes we don’t need to talk with us every week.
And that’s fine. I’m looking for less. I’m looking to shave stuff off. That’s part of the primary goal of the quarterly reset. I want to do the least amount frequently as possible if it’s needed. So I’ll go through and maybe on the husband’s big rock date night as weekly, praying together as daily. I’ll put a D next to that. Maybe my kids date night is going to be monthly for them, like once per month. So I’ll put M maybe this meeting, I can move it from weekly to biweekly. Shoot, maybe I can move that meeting all the way going. Maybe I can move it from weekly to once a month. We don’t need to be talking about it every single week, I’m going to try and parse down as much as I possibly can based on the frequency that’s needed. And I’m going to try to make this thing as clean and as efficient as possible and as focused on the big rocks as possible. And I’m simply going to have rhythms. And then what’s going to happen is every week on Sunday night, I’m going to take my goals for that week, and I’m going to drop them in those rhythms.
So, for example, if Thursday is the day that I work on technology, then something’s come up and we got to have a meeting about this technology piece of this thing, or somebody wants to meet and talk about a new piece of technology. I just know I’m going to drop them in Thursday. And what if today is Wednesday and tomorrow’s okay, that’s fine. They got to wait a whole other week. I’m not going to let the creep happen because of urgency. I’m going to say, okay, two Thursdays from now, I’ve got time from ten to 10:45 A.m.. Take it or leave it. So now I’m going to work inside those rhythms, have some breathing room, have some peace around that. Here’s a final little tidbit when you get into this time blocking. And there’s a lot of people that have different methods of time blocking. I shared with my team last week or this week earlier that Bill Gates is famous for being one of those rare individuals that time blocks everything, like brush your teeth at 09:15 A.m. To brush your hair at 09:17 A.m.. It’s a little weird. Most people, however, again, back by research, you do not want to time block more than 40, 60% of your day.
We tend to think do it all because remember, back to the big rocks, big rocks in the jar. Other stuff has to fit around it. If you try to fill the jar, you literally will not have space for the big rocks. That’s the point. So your big rocks probably only take 20 or 30% of your day if you really were honest with yourself about it. So you want to have less time blocks, more important time blocks. And I think when you do that, you’ll actually hold them better. A lot of people who even get to a level of time blocking then have a new struggle of I struggle keeping my time blocks. And I’ll say, let me look at your calendar. And what I see is a ton of time blocks. And I say, okay, when you see that many time blocks, they’re all equally important, and they’re not really equally important. If you only had two on there, you probably would make sure they both happen. Two the whole week, three today, two today. You probably make sure they happen. So less is more, less quantity, higher quality, less quantity, higher importance. Big rocks first, everything was falling around it as the week hits you and as it comes.
So that’s a whole exercise. And like I said, you can already tell this fits into a bigger model that I do follow. Yet, this is grab and go enough. If you go back to the beginning, listen this again. Walk yourself, press pause. Walk yourself through this exercise. Even if you think you got it, listen to it and walk yourself through it. The key moment needs to be deleting the current calendar. And if you’re staying with my boss won’t allow that. Okay, that’s cool. Adjust around that. Don’t go get yourself fired. Yet, be realistic or go make a case. Hey, Mr. or Mrs. Boss, if I hit all my goals and I went to every other meeting, would that be okay with you? If not, that’s cool. Find other things to parse down. Find other things to parse down and stack your life and rhythms. And by the way, you’ll start saying yes to a whole bunch of stuff. And 69 days from now, the creep will have taken over your life again, most likely. And you’ll want to do this all over again. And I believe that when you do this exercise, you’ll experience what I’ve experienced, which is really getting back on track and really making rapid movement, rapid advancement on some very major things.
In a very short amount of time, you’ll start to realize how fast your life can move forward in certain results across all these categories. Like how do you possibly have all these businesses and all those kids and all this success? And this is how it’s because I only do a couple of things in all those different categories instead of a whole bunch of stuff just in the business category, that’s not as important. And the quarterly reset is a key to making that happen. So I hope that helps you today. Would charge you with the homework of doing this exercise, finding out what it is that your patterns are really identifying your roles and your big rocks and start to experiment with some new rhythms in your life. And I would love to hear in our Mind Bending Leadership Insiders Facebook group the success that you’ve had from doing this exercise. So with that, I will leave you and have a fantastic week, everybody. Thank you. So I will open it up to the crowd really quick. And like I said, some of you have heard this before, maybe just heard it again. As you go through this, you have this lesson almost didn’t do it because I know some of you already heard it.
I was like, however, it’s one of those ones sometimes we have to hear multiple times anyway, and the rest of the world needs to hear it, too. So what goes through your head as you do this? Or maybe you did this exercise. For those of you that have already been through it, you did it in the last few days. What would you share? I think everybody can take themselves off mute now. Questions, comments, AHAs, thoughts, I heard it differently. That’s what I struggle with.
I’m thinking about people who say later in life, I wish I would have been more present. I wish I’d been more of a family person. I wish whatever that kind of non work sort of activities. How do you balance not seem, I don’t know, seem like an A hole because you’re so laser focused and it’s my plan. Or I can’t divert maybe in times when I need to divert or there’s something relational or something that’s not in that productivity quote, unquote sort of related. I guess the question is how do you stay somewhat rigid towards those goals that you want and yet flexible enough to put in the middle of a quarter or in the middle of how do you know when to do that?
Yeah, that’s a great question. I don’t know if there’s a perfect answer to that. Let’s talk about the first half of that is let’s assume that you’re presented with the opportunity to go off track, and it’s one that you actually think you shouldn’t. How do you do that without being an A hole? Step one would be teach everybody that’s around you, which is one of the reasons why you hear me repeating it a bunch, because I’m probably going to be called an A hole. But you and others and the cheat code is like teaching this everybody around you ahead of time because they’re like, oh, he’s doing that. That’s cool. He’s showing it, he’s modeling it so you get a little bit of a pass by that. So that’s like actually a really easy thing to do. And then I think most of those things, it becomes a matter of delivery. And I’m a fan of yes, how, which some of you heard before, which is yes, we can have that conversation here’s how two weeks from now and 90% of things they’ll solve by then, or here’s how. Because there is space. It’s not only the big rocks, it’s big rocks first.
So there is space in the calendar. It just may be slower than what those folks are used to. And then I think that the final piece of that is at some level, when you surround yourself with people who are somewhat like minded or can appreciate that. That’s why it’s easier if you do this training, because I think 100% of people are like, oh this is good for me. Also, it’s very applicable at some level, even if they haven’t necessarily had the training, they at least appreciate. You can say and you can do it very nicely. The delivery is great, you’re extremely important. And I have time for this next Thursday. Do you think we can cover it then? And my schedule allows it next Thursday. And then to your other question, remember most of even what I said. As far as the other side of your question, let’s assume it is something that you do want to pivot towards and you put like productivity versus relational. Remember, most of what I said is actually pretty relational. So if you lean heavy productivity, you may have missed the key roles early on or what Quadrant two is, which is usually important on urgent tends to actually be more relational, more working on yourself, more working with others.
So that might present itself as an opportunity to understand what your real big rocks are a little bit more across the bound. And then here I’ll even take a slight step further. And this is like from learning lessons. Let’s give a real example. Let’s say it’s marriage or a key relationship. You may have big rock being date night. Spouse may be calling for I want uninterrupted conversation. I want you to put the freaking phone down and talk to me every night. That actually could be an indicator that you have the wrong big rock. And so you got to be very careful on relational big rocks to have an assumption that you picked the right one. You do essentially want to figure out the big rock, by definition, is what is the one thing I can do that has the biggest impact? The 80/20 rule. And we may think that’s date night because some books said that our spouse may say, I’ll trade a date night for you putting the phone down and looking in the eyes and talking to me for 20 minutes. And by the way, that’s cheaper and shorter than date night too.
So in my book, that would be a win. That’s because I’m cheap and like to burn minutes. So pay attention to what are the big levers like five minutes of playing with one of your kids 101 may actually impact them more than, oh, I’m going to teach them or take them to a baseball game. You just don’t know. It depends on your kid.
Is there a sense that you gain more responsibility than life and you’re growing, whether it’s wealth or responsibility, that you become more in the big rocks in all areas and less in the non big rocks? Is there a state where you’re only in big rocks?
It’s a profound question you’re asking because the answer is actually a little bit chicken and the egg. You won’t have a big life unless you do that. So this precedes having a big life once I have it, that’s actually a thing that people get stuck in. Once I have a big life, then I’ll focus on big rocks. Once I have more people around me, leverage, then I’ll focus on the important. Once I have money, then I’ll buy an investment property. No, you get money by buying an investment property. You get your big rocks by hiring leverage when you don’t think you can. Once I have X, then I’ll do Y. It’s actually the opposite. Until you flip to big rocks, you won’t have a big life. The trick is staying there. Good question.
Since we’re not, oh we are recording.
Yeah.
Were you going to ask something you shouldn’t ask? No, it just made me think if I saw this it’s hard to see but this is Elon and what’s his name?
Brandon Richard Brenton.
It’s in an investment group and it says to have billions of dollars and have those cabinets what’s the point? It’s a joke because it’s golden. They have golden cabinets in the back. Yeah, it looks like these guys are in a house.
Google where Elon lives.
Yeah, I heard and then you’re like, oh, that’s actually a big rock in action because who cares I’m going to put my mental energy towards that or building Rockets. No, not cabinets.
All right. Anybody else thoughts? Please go and do this exercise and teach others around you for goodness sake this sets up we’ll do more on time management. We’ll go deeper into it. This will set up a lot of the other stuff. It’s going to make it easier for all of us. Anybody else questions? Comments thoughts? Anybody else done this started to play around with it going once going twice all right have an awesome week. Thanks, everybody. Bye.
