Full Transcript: MOTM #554: No Time Wasted: Stop Worrying About Wasting Your Time

[Transcript starts at 1:48]

What up, my podcast people. Thank you for joining me for yet another episode of, you already know, in my favorite podcast. So before we talk about having the discipline to commit, and I'm actually really excited about this episode, uh, got to announce the winners. They've already been contacted because by the time this episode airs, it will be Thursday, uh, the.

Uh, giveaway ended or the doors closed for it last Thursday. They were contacted on Monday and yeah, number one, I guess I'd say thank you to all of you who entered. Like I said, you're not going to be spammed. I didn't take your email addresses and add them to anything on your phone numbers and add them to anything.

It was literally just to have everything in one. Thank you to all of you who gave it a shot, entered, uh, some of the nicest messages too, it's just what a time to be alive folks, like you can run a business when it's, you know, a very successful business and you can have direct contact with your customers.

Maybe I should do an episode about this. Just, you know, I think that as things are commonly understood, perhaps as it relates to success running a business, it almost seems like the more successful you are, the more. Expected you are to be removed or the more removed you are expected to be from your, your, your people, and.

That doesn't have to be the case. We live in an amazing time. You can stay directly connected to people and you can maintain connection and relationships, whatever you want them to look like, and have tremendous success. If you want to scale things and, you know, have a huge team and huge numbers of us, that's awesome.

You can do that. And if you don't. You don't have to. It was really cool to me to be able to have direct connection, direct connection, uh, to the people. So just thank you for entering us. Thank you for being so dope and so supportive. So I picked three winners, actually, I was going to pick two, but this is also one of the beautiful things of running your own business and running giveaways however you want.

You can choose. And I was like, you know what, I want to do three. So the winners, uh, for the, I don't even know what to call it. The review giveaway, the podcast review giveaway, uh, were Gabrielle Lesnett, Bethany Hanson, and Stephanie Hine. They've already been contacted. Like I said, I didn't put anything on social media or anything like that.

Cause I wanted to run this exclusively through the podcast and through texting. Uh, and yeah. Just, just, thank you. It was, it was awesome. So maybe I'll do, maybe I'll do an episode about giveaways at some point. Very meta. Uh, do a giveaway and then do an episode of giveaways. We'll, we'll see. Uh, but let's talk about the actual episode.

I'll talk about the topic for today's episode, which is having the discipline to commit to one thing. And I was actually very specific in choosing the words for this title. Uh, because even though there's, if I was to say having the courage to commit to one thing, that alliteration is nice, right? Having the courage to commit to one thing.

But I intentionally did not want to use a word that kind of instills, sparks, reminds us of. Fear and kind of gives people a subconscious or inherent reason to not do the thing. It's like, it's scary. Like, even if people don't even think it's scary, if I say having the courage to commit to one thing, they are going to internalize this commitment as being scary.

And it doesn't have to be a, uh, you know, it can be, but it doesn't have to be. So specifically and strategically chose the title to be having the discipline. To commit to one thing. Now I've spoken perhaps ad nauseum about the value of niching down and that is focusing on one thing and saying this is the problem that I solve.

All right, because like I said, but like I said before, I believe niching is more about the problem you solve than who you solve it for. If there is a specific group that you solve it for, cool, but typically it's you solving this problem, and that will inherently exclude or include certain people, uh, certain demographics.

But, in thinking about this, This discipline to commit to one thing, uh, I think this extends or, yeah, it can be applied to pretty much anything. Uh, that's what we're going to talk about today. And yes, I will of course, bring it back to business. But when I see this and why I think people consider it a fear is that I think people are afraid of wasting time, which is why they don't want to commit.

To one thing. And I'm going to say right off the bat, I don't, I'm not talking about marriage here. I think that people could be like, Oh, you want to say, I'm not talking about marriage here. Uh, I don't, I don't, I don't have the brainpower right now to link things or, you know, tie them in. And I think there's like, it's like, it's a messy thing there.

So I, when I think when we hear commitment, we think like relationships right away. I am talking about pretty much everything else in life, but let's not talk about relationships right now. Um, hopefully Ashley's not listening to this. No, I'm just kidding. Uh, but I think that there is a fear of not so much necessarily failure, but a fear of wasting time.

I think people are, you know, inherently understand that time is finite. Right. And so they're like, I don't want to commit to this thing. And then I've wasted however many years. I think that's also why people stick with things, perhaps on the flip side of this. When they are objectively shitty because they're like, I don't want all this time that I have spent to be for nothing, right?

I heard a quote once I read a quote once, uh, you know, don't stick with something simply because of the time don't Don't stick with a mistake Right simply because of the time you spent making it and I was like that's actually very good But I do believe that there is a large underpinning, undertone, overarching theme here of fear of wasting time.

And so I sat with that and I could easily be like, you know, well, just don't be scared of that or be scared, but do it anyway. And I don't think that's as helpful as taking something like fear, which is an experience and an emotion and turning it into something. tangible and tactical. I'll give you an action step here.

So if you were to strip it down and say, yeah, you know what? I have the fear of committing to one thing because I'm fearful that I'm going to waste time. I'm going to do this thing for a year and it's not going to work out. Like, I don't think people are as scared of failure as they are of wasting time.

And so like, if I commit to this thing and then I fail, it doesn't work. I've lost. So we're going to go into that, this, how we view things. But what I would say is an actionable step to that or an actual response, action oriented response to that would be cultivating the ability to focus on what you've gained.

And thus being able to consider it or view it as time well spent. So instead of viewing this as wasted time, right? Something happens, you spend a week doing something, a year doing something. Instead of viewing it as wasted time, I would encourage you, and we'll move forward with this, to cultivate, grow, gain the ability.

I don't want to say gain, to work on the ability to focus on what you have accomplished, to focus on what you have gained. And therefore More easily being able to view it this time period as time well spent, and I believe that this ties into, uh, the fact that we as humans, I actually did a post about this recently, we as humans are hugely loss averse.

We mourn our losses and repeat our losses in our head. Far more than we celebrate our wins. I actually did a post about this last week as well. And it said developing the ability to celebrate your wins. More than you mourn, your losses will change your life. And this is a skill. As I said, developing that ability.

Some people, I think it's perhaps a bit more innate, but you know, what we focus on magnifies, amplifies, grows. We start to see it everywhere. And so if you consciously make a, if you, let me back that up. If you make a concerted effort to celebrate. Every single win that you have, you will start seeing far more wins in your life.

Yes, this, this takes skill, this takes practice, this takes time, and you're going to have to actually likely in the beginning start to sit down and actually identify things as a win that perhaps you wouldn't before. Things that you simply overlooked and you just kind of take. For granted for me, you know, it's having a palm tree right outside of my window.

That's fucking amazing. And I will celebrate that. That's awesome that I have that there. When you are able to do this more readily, more frequently, more easily, you will see these winds come more. Often, and that will help you develop, cultivate this skill to celebrate your wins more than you mourn your losses.

Because focusing on the loss is inherent. I think it's, I think it's instinctual, instinctive. I don't know what the word is. All right. As humans, I think we do that as kind of a survival mechanism. And then we just apply it to everything. So if something bad happens, something hurts you, you want to remember that so that it doesn't happen again.

Keep yourself alive. We've always said it. I haven't talked about the nervous system in a long time, but the nervous system is always seeking safety, right? The nervous system is queen, and she's always seeking safety. As such, we want to remember the bad things because they move us closer to death. So, as a species, we tend to focus more heavily on those.

But if you can flip that, And it doesn't mean you're going to die, right? Cause we're not in this like constant, you know, survival of the fittest and evolution is happening right now. And like, we're competing for all these resources. Like we're not, yes. Some people are in a, you know, worse situations, but there's a good chance if you listen to this podcast, that's not the life that you're living.

You're not like, you know, in the jungle and like fucking trying to stay alive. You're, you're driving somewhere. So if we are able to focus more on our wins and celebrate them more, it doesn't mean we're not going to have losses. It means that they won't stop us dead in our tracks and prevent us from doing other things the way that they used to.

And therefore, The potential or the possibility of a loss will not stop us the same way. It will not have the same impact it did before, but you have to train that ability. So ultimately I do believe that, uh, people have a difficult time commit, committing to one action, focusing on one thing at a time, because.

Not necessarily they're scared of failing, but they're scared of wasting time, right? They're scared of what that failure means. It means I've wasted this time. I'm not gonna say be scared, but do it anyway. I'm gonna say let's grow, cultivate the ability to celebrate our wins and focus more on our wins and be less affected by our losses and this will allow us to look back on that time that we just spent and view it as time well spent.

I actually talked about this. Uh, it's going to drop episode three 11. So that'll be the episode that comes out on Monday. Uh, so three 11 with Brian Boorstein, that's going to be out on July 19th. And I talk about this with him, uh, in terms of training, because I, I really see, I've done it myself where people are afraid to commit.

To one type of training methodology and focus on it. They're like, I want to be lean and I also want to gain muscle, but I also want to like not lose my engine all at once. And it's like, but you, but you can't do that. And people are scared to focus. I know I've in the past kind of been scared to focus on one thing because you're like, suppose it doesn't work.

And I just lost all this time. And I've lost all, so lost those gains. Instead of viewing it, you know, going into like a scientist and being like, all right, I'm dedicating this much time. And what happens at the end is I will have more information and that is a win. And so I asked Brian about that. Cause he's really just, so he's, he's a self scientist, right?

He's always end of one. He's doing things and trying up, you know, different things with his own training cycles and such. The episode is really good. So I encourage you to listen to it. Uh, but I was like, how do you, you know, not get worried about that? Cause I think he mentioned it on his podcast with Aaron Straker, uh, where, you know, worried about committing to this, this new program.

And then like, You don't get the results you want and you've wasted that time. And I was like, fine, how do you get around that? Cause he never really brought that up ever. I haven't seen him speak about that in his, in his stuff. And he said that he goes into it and he's trying things that he think will, that he thinks will work.

And I was like, that is actually very logical. And I like that. So he's very much taking control of the situation, putting in the work beforehand, putting in the research beforehand, and then saying, I think this will work. I think this will have, you know, it will lead to the outcome I want. And now I'm going to have the discipline to stay committed to this thing.

I was like, that, that's. Pretty, pretty phenomenal. Uh, I actually, you know, I get some practice on this, this practice with this, this morning. You folks know I play volleyball all the time and I'm still so much in that very, very beginner phase. And it's awesome. It can be frustrating as fuck, uh, but it's also awesome.

And so when I go and play, uh, and it's just like, we play six matches, it's four of us. And so you just rotate through and play six matches. It's like two hours or so. And I will pick one thing to focus on for that day. Uh, I'll tell my partner, whoever it is, and I'm like, this is what I am focused on. And it's very tempting to be like, I'm going to focus on this and this thing, right?

Like, I'm going to focus on passing forward and to the net, and I'm also going to focus on getting my net side foot forward when I am setting. It's really tempting to do that. Cause you're like, there's so many opportunities, but we already know when you chase all the rabbits, you go home hungry.

Absolutely. The best thing to do is to pick one of those things. The best thing that I can do is pick one of those things, just one. And that is all that I'm going to focus on. I'm going to commit. I said that funny. I'm going to commit. I'm going to commit to that one thing. That's all I'm going to focus on for that time period.

And then I have to go back to what I said earlier, and I have to actually, you know, debrief. And think solely about the, did I do this one thing? Because it's going to be so easy. And it is so easy to focus on all the other things that went wrong because we are so loss averse, right? Those are the things that stick out.

And it's actually really helpful for me. I film a lot of the times in my practice because you'll leave and be like, fuck, that was just terrible. And then you watch the film again. You're like, that wasn't that bad actually, because we are so inherently loss averse that that's what sticks out in our mind.

Like, I don't want to do that again. All right, whether it's, uh, loss averse in terms of like, you don't want to die, uh, or losing friends, losing that match, because losing the match means that, you know, you've let people down. It's, it's all tied into the same thing. So, what needs to happen, and what I do, and I, I, I get practice in this multiple times a week, is pick one thing to focus on, and that one thing that I'm focusing on, I'm also focusing on, Debriefing that, you know, um, studying that, looking at the results of that at the end, because you can't focus on one thing and then be like, I'm going to now at the end of this, think about how well I did at the other things.

Cause you didn't focus on those things. So if my whole goal was focus on passing forward and then everything's done. I can't be like, man, we lost all the games. Like I didn't have any kills. Like I was just feeling, you know, a step behind with everything. That can't be the first thing that I look at. I need to look at the thing that I committed.

To focusing on. I get it easier said than done, but I truly do believe that this is something and doing this is something that will, can literally change your life. So if we tie this into business, and I actually, yes, I think I did a post on this last week as well. Uh, let me pull it up on my phone. And I said with that, if you create something new every time you launch, because your launch, let me start again, if you create something new every time you launch, because your last launch didn't go well.

It's in quotations there. Well, cause that's subjective. You confuse your audience, give yourself more work, and will never be able to collect enough data points to know what actually works and what doesn't. Pick one thing and give it time. This is exactly what we're talking about in this whole episode.

Having the discipline to commit to one thing. You gotta be a scientist with this, stick with it. So the thing that pops in my head is be a scientist, not a day trader. Not that there's anything wrong if you listen to this or a day trader, that's fine. Do what you do. But when it comes to seeing success, we have to be able to stick with one thing and stick with it long enough to be able to collect enough data points to actually say, did this thing work?

Did this not work? And why? That is the big thing there. Cause you can just be like, Oh, it didn't work, but why? And until you have enough data points. You likely won't know. So I think the next logical question is, well, how long do I stick with it? And you already know me, I wanna be like, as long as it fucking takes.

But, this is where you have to debrief. I really like that word, I've been using it all episode. This is what you need to debrief after, you know, every outing, whatever, you know, every trial, whatever it is. Every test, every experiment that you run. So if we're looking specifically at, you know, I kind of want to say it's about volleyball first, if I'm looking at volleyball and I'm like, okay, I'm just committing to passing it forward.

And then at the end of it, I think back and I'm like, I didn't really do that. Well, and maybe if I actually recorded it, so I have objective data and I go and look and I'm like, that wasn't that good. I can see why. Is it that my platform was shit? Is that my feet were moving the whole time? Is that my spine angle was shit?

And then I can go and fix that and be like, all right, you know what? The next time I'm going to focus on this component of it. I may have to break it down a little bit more so that I can have that, that overall outcome, right? This is the same thing for business and in this case for launches. So it's like, how long do I stick with this?

As long as it takes, but you need to debrief each time. And it is easier to debrief if you have like a specific set thing. In this case, that's why I used launches. So if you have like a new service, you're, you're rolling out something like that. You got to say, why didn't this work? Why didn't I sell anything?

Why didn't I hit my goal? Was the goal too high? Uh, why didn't people buy this thing? I think there's kind of like five or so reasons why people don't buy, but you need to break that down and say, why do I think it's that people didn't buy? And if you go a little bit deeper with that, cause some people will be like, ah, it just wasn't enough time.

Okay. But enough time for what? Go deeper with this debrief. Is it that you don't have the trust yet? Is it that they didn't know about it? Is it that they just didn't want this thing and you haven't been listening to your audience really well? If it's about, okay, this isn't have this, don't trust me yet.

It hasn't been enough time. I'm very new. Okay, then we know that the time moving forward now, before your next launch, you need to just be building trust and doing all the things, focusing on the things that build trust. This kind of becomes a little bit meta. It circles back to the original point of focusing on one thing.

One of the things we see in that, uh, when, when people move online, especially and things aren't working and they'd be like, I've been doing this for a year. And I go and look at their stuff. And I'm like, you've been all over the place for a year. You've been doing something for a year, but you haven't been doing this.

You've been kind of like, you did a post about that thing and then you did a post about this thing over here and then you did a post about that. And then you did a post about pelvic floor PT and then you did a post about pediatric PT and then you did a post about ortho. And then, what the fuck is this over here?

You did like a motivational thing. It's all over the place. Jill, my girl Jill Phipp, she has this, this, this is a brilliant, uh, It's not an exercise, but she draws it on the whiteboard, I'm like imagining it right now, but We were at, we were at, um, Legacy live event she was demonstrating and she doesn't, from all my movement people out there, she doesn't have very much external rotation at her shoulder.

Uh, either of them. There's nothing to do with dislocating it, just either of them. She doesn't have a ton of external rotation. And so when she goes to throw, you know, she gets that like pushing motion. And so she was talking about, If you want to break through a wall and if the wall of trust with your audience, you want to be throwing all those arrows into one solid spot, one, you know, specific spot.

And so she was doing the throwing motion. I'm doing it right now. You can't see it. If this was a vlog, perhaps it'd be funnier, but in my mind, it's very funny. And she's talking about how when you come into the online space and you're like, I'm talking about mindset and nutrition and being a mom and going to the gym and dieting and, you know, exercise and all this stuff and like the road trip and blogging.

This is so many directions and you're throwing so many arrows. They're definitely never going to break through that, that trust barrier with your audience. You got to take them in one direction, break through the wall with one thing, break through the trust barrier with one thing. Having the discipline, cause that's what it all comes down to.

Do you have the discipline to stick with one thing? Do you have the discipline? To commit to one thing. And then it's not even so much about seeing if it works. It's about making it work. I think there's a lot of hope marketing that goes on out there. And you kind of do something like, I hope it works.

Control the controllable. I stick with one thing, get results from it, debrief it. And then you don't, you know, build a completely new thing, you iterate. It's not about building a completely new service or product or anything like that. It's about taking what you learned from this version of it and making it better, addressing the holes.

And typically one at a time, because like we said before, when you chase all the rabbits, you go home hungry. I'm looking at the time, looking at the whiteboard. I think we're going to wrap it up here. Uh, but. Did I say the things I wanted to say? I mean, I think that you folks know, you know, how passionate I am about this.

And especially when it comes to, to niching down, which I know can be one of the hardest things for people. And I, I'll say a little bit of a tactical thing. For those of you with two audiences, for those of you with two things you're interested in, and you're trying to do something on social media, pick.

One. I had a text messaging, uh, exchange before this call and the person was like, you know, I, I feel stuck with Instagram. I don't know if I want to speak to, uh, you know, potential customers or if I want to speak to other, to, I don't know if I, I don't know if I want to speak to potential customers or if I want to speak to new grad physical therapists.

And I'm like, pick one. Literally, the answer, the solution, is very simple. Pick one. I understand that it's, if you strip it all away, break it down, it comes down to, I'm scared I'm gonna waste time. I'm scared this might not work and I will have wasted my time. So let's flip that and make sure that you don't waste your time.

Make sure you succeed is part of that. But make sure you don't waste your time by learning how to view things like a scientist and understanding that during that time period you will gain information. Yes, it's, you know, equivalent to, is it bang Franklin or whatever? I learned all the ways of the, how not to make this thing.

I don't know. But either way, you're going to learn, gain. Information that is not a loss. That is how I would recommend we handle this fear is with tangible, tactical, active, actionable steps of focusing on celebrating the good things every single day, focused on celebrating the positive things every single day, focused on actually seeing, cause that's going to make you therefore focused on seeing the positive things every day, which will make you that much more loss, that much.

That much more less loss averse. That is a weird sentence that will make you that much less loss averse. We're going to go with that because I think you know what I'm saying, right? But the whole concept here is that if we're focusing more on our wins, focusing more on the positive things, we will inherently see more of those things, which means that the fear of potentially failing will become less.

Why? Because we simply don't have time for it because you're seeing too many positive things. You're too focused on positive things. Your mindset and your mind, your brain is just inherently instinctively now tuned into, okay, yes, that, that might happen. That bad thing might happen, but also this good thing might happen.

And we're going to focus on that. You can absolutely train that. It is a skill. All right. Oh, they've got an alarm going off in the background. I think that is my sign to wrap it up. Have the discipline, my friends, to commit to one thing. It is a skill. We're stripping it down. And we're saying this comes from that fear of wasting time.

And we're going to confront that fear and work through that fear with actionable, tangible, tactical steps of learning how to focus on our gains, focusing on the positive side of things so that we can view the time that we've spent as time well spent. We're able to take the positive from it, take the lessons from it.

These lessons apply to business, volleyball, all the things we stepped away from relationships right now, but all the other things, and yes, I understand this is not easy to do, but if you have goals, you have things that you want, this is what I recommend. All right, I do believe that is it. Again, thank you so much for answering the giveaway.

It was really cool to have contact and be able to communicate rather with you folks directly, because it is so, you know, one sided with the podcast. So thank you. I've been, I've been receiving, I'm having a tough time with words today. I've been receiving a ton of really great feedback about the, the past couple of episodes, uh, and thank you.

I'm enjoying the direction we're heading. Uh, and it's great to hear from you that, that the episodes are resonating and they're landing, uh, and that you're enjoying them. So thank you for that. All right, officially wrapping it up until next time, friends, Maestro out.

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