[Transcript starts at 1:20]
Hello, hello, hello, fam. And welcome back to another episode of My Favorite Podcast. Today, I'm answering a question that I received in my DMs from a girl, Haley. And I'm pretty excited about this one. I had to sit with it for a few minutes.
It's kind of like a reverse question and I was like, wait a minute. And I'm pretty stoked to share this one with you. So if I take it back a step and we listen to the story around the story, if you slide into my DMs, if you text me with questions, there's a good chance I'll do an episode on it. It's a great way to share with others, especially when it gets me thinking.
So I love hearing from you folks. Thank you for all you, Oh, yeah. Thank you to all of you for all of the messages and everything that you send. Um, I would love to hear from more of you. I would love it. And I, I really enjoyed the connection. You know, I say it all the time and I'll say it some more.
Podcasting is so unidirectional. It's so one sided and I'm like, I would love to hear more. So slide into the DMs at the movement maestro. Text me. What is my number? Uh, 310 737 2345, and let's chat. Don't call me or I'll call the police. Okay, so, uh, I'm just gonna read the question directly, and then we'll hop on into it, alright?
So, Haley asked, I'd be interested in your opinion on how you keep a disciplined This is an all uppercase there. Disciplined routine for your hobbies in relation to the shit that needs to get done. A fitting in learning to play volleyball no matter what, while also being your own badass boss, which of course takes a lot of dedicated time.
Have you come up with a system or tools to make sure that you do not quote unquote flake on the priorities you want to do that make you happier, but aren't directly related to your business? when you have work priorities that you could easily convince yourself to do instead. And then she said, asking for a friend.
Just kidding. I am most definitely the friend. So this is kind of a reverse question. And the question is usually, you know, people asking, how do you stick to your, you know, work stuff? How do you stick this up? You know, you have to get done. And this is asking that, but it's how do you stick to the outside stuff, the hobbies, the stuff that enriches your life and makes you happier.
But. This is, you know, isn't necessarily bringing in money, uh, isn't necessarily, you know, your job per se. And I think this is a great question. So I have a few things written down on, on the board here, and I'm going to try and make it, uh, cohesive and obviously coherent. So I think if, I think ultimately what we need to do is look at things retrospectively.
And. Understand that, or try to dissect it, I should say, and understand and accept what our actions are saying. If you're doing something, and now I stole this from my girl Jill, who got it from somewhere else, I don't know where, but action expresses priority, right? We're going to do the things that we have as top priority.
And I believe that we need to accept the fact that if we're not doing something, it means that it's not a priority for us. And that may be a really hard pill to swallow when we're like, but I want to be doing these sort of things, but my friend, you are not. So these other things that you're doing are your priority because you are doing them.
Now, I got asked, uh, in one of the comment sections of a post, you know, what do I consider freedom to be? And was that it? No. What do I consider success to be? I answered, look at me, what do I consider success to be? And for me, that would be. Having time, freedom, time and financial freedom, be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want.
And I'm largely there with the kind of, you know, time I can do things on my own schedule and working on the money piece there. Uh, and I think that's, that's largely the goal. When you get to a point where you're like, I can be doing anything that I want and I'm keeping doing this. And I, then I am doing the things that I want to be doing, right?
I don't work for somebody else. I'm out of my own schedule. I'm doing the things that I want to be doing, that I choosing to be doing. And if you're in that position, then we really need to take a look and audit our actions and understand that action expresses priority. And the things that we are doing are the things that we want to be doing and that we have put at top priority.
As such, I think the next step with that is to accept it. And so if you find yourself flaking on fun stuff, it means that it's not a priority. To you and that you don't value it as much. And I feel like this is probably, you know, it sounds kind of harsh coming out, but to me, if you flake on it, it's not a priority, right?
The things we do are the things that we prioritize, the things that we value the most. So that means that we have two options that we can do after that. And we can take a step back and say, I mean, reevaluate our values. What do I actually value? Am I acting in accordance? With that. And the second option being that we can simply accept our actions and the outcomes and being like, yeah, this thing is more important and, you know, maybe you actually just enjoy it.
Right. So if you find yourself like, yeah, you know, I have this thing that I could be doing, that's really fun. Um, or I could do work stuff. Sounds pretty dope to me if you're in a place where you're like, I'm going to do work stuff and instead of this other thing. And that means that the work stuff is a priority to you and ideally something that you value.
And we should probably just accept that and celebrate that. The fact that we're like, yeah, I'm choosing to do this work thing instead of this other thing. And then move forward instead of having this like, you know, internal struggle and going back and forth and just being like, yeah, I chose to do this because this thing is, is fun.
If the issue is that you're like, actually this shit. doesn't light me up. I think that's kind of where I get a little confused with the question when, and I kind of, you know, sat with this and I was like, I don't understand. Like, you just do it. Because the last part of her, her, The question is, right, uh, where is it here?
Have you come up with a system or tools to make sure that you do not flake on the priorities you want to do that make you happier that aren't directly related to your business when you could have, when you have work priorities that you could easily convince yourself to do instead? So, um, Um, to me, I'm like, I don't ever convince myself to do anything.
I'm choosing what I want to be doing. And she's using priorities, plural. Uh, and I did an episode about, and I read it in, I think the one thing that we need to not make that word plural and it should just be singular. Uh, I believe I took that from the, again, from the book, the one thing and how originally the word was not plural.
It was just one singular priority. And this is the thing that you are focusing on and you're committed to it and you chose to do it. And, you know, that, that is it. So I think that I got a little bit of dissonance within the question, cause I'm going to like, but if you're choosing to do this, there's not a matter of convincing yourself.
Anything you're choosing it. And if you're choosing it and you trust yourself, you've established your values in such beforehand, and you're in a place where you have the freedom to be choosing what you want to be doing, then you just move forward. And then we retrospectively, uh, audit our actions and say, okay, my actions express my priority.
This is what I want to be doing. And we accept that. There's no like back and forth, uh, but for those of you that are looking for, let's say that, you know, the two options that I, that I gave you would that one, you could assess or two, you could accept. Right, we do these things and then we're like, wait a minute, I flaked on this thing.
What do I do next? Okay, well, to me that, it says a lot. It tells me kind of it's not actually a priority, but let's say that you're like, no, but I want to be doing this thing. How do I stick to it? Okay, well, we have two options. One, accept. And we said we're not going to accept, two is we're going to assess, right?
We're going to question this thing. First question is then, is this thing actually important to you? Your actions are telling me that it's not. And I'm not one to really champion the struggle, especially internal struggles, which I think are a choice where we're like doing one thing, but saying we want something else.
Your actions express your priority. But if you're still on this and you're like, no, but I know I want to do this thing. I'm not convinced, but if this is you, then, uh, I'm going to refer you back to my batching schedule. Batching schedule? What? My batching episode. Courtney, if you could link that in the show notes, that'd be amazing.
I'm going to refer you back to my batching episode. I think it's episode 278, something like that. Uh, where I talked about that, you know, 278, batch your time to get more done. And what I would recommend doing then is you schedule the time for your good stuff, for your important stuff first. Uh, in that episode, I speak about scheduling your fun time first, and then everything else fills in around it.
Uh, I saw like a, A video or something like that on an Instagram once, and it was a, it was a explanation of something and how, if you want to fit all these things into a jar, right, because time is finite, if you wanted to fit all these things into the jar, and the jar is representing like the time you have, your bandwidth, things like that, and it was like, you know, big rocks and little rocks and sand, I don't know, water, things like that, but the whole thing was that you have to put the big rocks in first, and then you can put sand and such.
And the water in second, and it'll fill in around it. And the, the big rocks represent the important things to you. So I recommend scheduling those things. First, the things that you say are the most important, whether it's the fun time, uh, the work time, and then the rest of stuff fills in around it. As for keeping promises, this is something again, that I'm just like, if it's important to you, you keep the promise and you do it.
I can't imagine just being like, Oh, I'm flaking on volleyball. Yeah. Literally, it's beyond my comprehension because this is so important. It's so important to me. It is a priority. I did, uh, skip practice on, on Wednesday, but I picked up and did more stuff on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, because on Wednesday I was speaking for EXOS.
Uh, and so, you know, that at that point was the priority and we accept it. It's not, I didn't flake on it. I wasn't like, Oh, I'm just like, not going to do it. No, I, when things matter. You do them. I think that's kind of the whole, you know, theme of this show, the death of this show, this episode, right? The discipline of happiness.
When something truly matters to you, you do it. There's no, you know, flaking or going back and forth. When you trust yourself, when you have that self confidence, you do it. You do the things that are important, right? When you're showing up for yourself, if you continue to struggle with all of these things and you continue to struggle with showing up for yourself.
And I'm going to do an episode about struggle because I think that's a choice. Uh, but when you continue to really have a difficult time with that, then I think when you take it back and take it a step deeper and say, why don't you have the self confidence, the self trust to show up for yourself.
Yourself and stick to things that you're telling me are so important Because if they are important you're going to If they're not as important, I think that it's important, if they're not as important, I think that it's important to accept the outcome of our decisions and say, you know what, I told myself that I'm going to, I want to work and do this, uh, instead.
If you truly believe, and if you tell me that it's different, I believe you. If you believe, you're like, no, I just need to, to work on building this habit, or, you know, I'm, I have more self trust and more self confidence, and I need to, to work on sticking, you know, setting boundaries for myself and actually sticking to them, uh, then that is what I would say to do first, you know, tactically is batch your time.
And then you're doing specific things on specific days and you put, you block out time to be doing. The fun things first, or the important things first. I, like I said, in that, in the batching episode, I have time that might, you know, my days for Cloudera client facing Tuesday and Thursday, and that's what gets done, that is the priority that day.
I don't, I don't try to squeeze in volleyball or anything like that, because if I was, that means I'd have to, you know, shirk, you know, responsibility for, for work, and that expresses the fact that like, okay, well, that means it's not a priority. That's not the truth. All right. So if it's a priority, you will stick.
So tactically, then I batch the days, Tuesday, Thursday, I'm client facing. Uh, Wednesday mornings, I have volleyball. Saturday mornings, I have volleyball Sunday. I go for my walks with Ashley, right? So you schedule these things first and then you allow the other things. To fill in around it. And I think that, you know, a great solution for, you know, when you have multiple things that you are trying to prioritize, you give each day, each thing, excuse me, its own time to be the priority.
You can't have multiple, multiple priorities at once. You have one thing that you're like, this is the top priority. So then make sure that that time is devoted to that. All right. So I hope I'm not talking super circularly here, but I think the question in and of itself kind of got me a little bit because it was kind of like, how do you stick to things?
What's, you know, what skills do you have? What tools do you have for sticking to things that make you happy? And I was like, You just do them, uh, but, you know, trying to put myself into Haley's shoes and, and really kind of dissect that question and sit with that and provide you with some tangible steps. I would say that you have two options.
You can accept it and be like, no, this is the thing that I want to be doing. I chose to do it. Or if you're like, ah, but I'm trying to be better at this. Okay. Then we assess it. We audit it. All right, we see, okay, do I actually want to be doing this? Is this actually my goal? Is this thing actually important to me?
Really ask yourself that question, then answer it. And if it is, then batch your time. I believe in batching your days. And from there you can go and just batch your hours. Put the fun stuff first, put the important stuff first, the stuff that you're trying to stick to, and then stick to it. The number one person that you need to uphold promises to is to yourself.
I don't have any, you know, hacks or tactics for sticking to this thing. If you write it down and you make a schedule and you don't stick to it, it means it's not a priority. And let me go back to what I said before, which is where you can either accept it, look at it retrospectively and be like, Hey, action expresses priority.
And I keep flaking onto this thing. Maybe it's not that much of a priority for me and maybe we can accept that and just kind of give ourselves a little bit of a break there and do the thing that is actually making us happy. If it's not, if we have our two options, we accept or we assess and we assess and we're like, no, this is actually not true.
I want to be doing this, this thing. It does matter to me. Then we can batch and you need to simply have the discipline to stick to that time frame that you. Set. I do not think that it goes any deeper than that. I don't think that there's any, you know, more dissecting that we need to be doing. You accept it, or you change it.
It's as simple as that. I'm looking at my whiteboard. I'm looking at the time, and I do believe that I'm gonna end it there. I got no asks for you or anything like that. You folks have been great. I got nothing else to share with you. I got nothing, uh, nothing coming up. Just a little talk about the discipline of happiness.
As always, endlessly, endlessly, endlessly appreciative for every single one of you. Until next time, friends, and actually a special shout out to Haley for that question. All right. Now the official outro. Until next time, friends, Maestro out.
MOTM #278: Batch Your Time To Get More Done
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