Transcription
I heard something the other day that the average is people make it to January 13th before they quit. 13 days of discipline is the average after you hype yourself up and get ready. Is 13 days the average before you quit? So what happens? What happens?
The number one thing, if you want to achieve your goals, you got to take that cloud, that idea that you have, and you got to formulate that thing, and you got to write it down. You got to write it down. What are you going to do? What is your goal? What are you trying to achieve?
Now, I'll tell you for me, the way I am, if I want to do something, it just like doesn't go out of my brain. When I have something in my mind that I want to get done, it just is in there. I think about it all the time. But sometimes, even me, the smaller steps of the thing that you got to do, if you don't write them down, they're not going to happen.
Writing things down like that. If you think about human evolution, the ability to write things down has to be one of the main propellants of our race as humans to create and evolve and get to where we are. If you don't write things down, they're not happening.
You know the whole like SMART thing when it comes to goals? There's a there's an acronym that's very common. People talk about you make your goals SMART, and it stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound, meaning you have this much time to get it done. Yeah. And there's a reason that that acronym exists because it's telling you to write down the goal, indoctrinate it, codify it, quantify it. This is what I'm going to do. This is what I am going to do. That's step number one. That's failure number one.
Failure number one is people don't write down exactly what it is they are trying to do. Failure number one. Failure number two is they don't come up with any kind of plan. You know what it is you're trying to, you know where it is you're trying to go, but you don't know how to get there. What you have to figure out what tactical moves you are going to make in order to reach your achievement, your strategic goal. And I'm going to go ahead and say, get out a piece of paper again and write these things down. What am I going to do tomorrow specifically so I can move towards this goal?
Don't try and do everything at once. You need to take smaller steps. You need to move in an incremental way to achieve anything worthwhile. Whether it's writing a book, whether it's getting better at jiu-jitsu, whether it's getting stronger, whether it's getting better at guitar, the way to do it isn't by cramming for the test. Matter of fact, you can't really cram for a test in a lot of these things. Like, you can't, I can't spend a week with you and now you're going to be good to go at jiu-jitsu. Like, no, it doesn't work that way.
Can it be good to do a sprint sometimes in a specific skill set? Yep. I've done that before. I love doing that actually. I'm going to, oh, I got four days where I don't have to do anything. Cool. I'm going to train four or five hours a day. You just, you'll feel some improvement for sure. Guitar, same thing. Health and fitness. Yeah, it's a little harder. Yeah, it is because how much can you actually work out? Well, you can work out 24 hours a day. Done it. Yeah, but it's less about the workout, more about the recovery from the workout, right?
Bottom line is all these things, incremental steps. You need to make incremental steps. So, you've come up with your goal, and then you need to figure out what it is. What's the plan to get you where you want to go? And then you need to write that plan down. By the way, you need to write down what you're going to do. Otherwise, it's just a cloud. This is the anti-cloud podcast. It's just saying or thinking, "I might do this tomorrow" is worthless. It's really worthless. Saying, "I'm going to do this tomorrow," that's a thing. Yeah, that's a legit thing. Writing down, "I will do this tomorrow." That's where it's at. That's where progress gets made.
So keep that in mind. You wrote down your strategic goal. You're going to review that on a daily basis. You're going to actually, when you review that at night, you're going to say, "Okay, you know what? Here's what I'm going to do tomorrow to actually make this happen." So you come up with a plan, and then you have to execute the freaking plan. Execute, execute, execute. People don't do what they're supposed to do. And that's the number three reason they fail to execute. They procrastinate.
And here's the thing about procrastination. What I realized about was thinking about procrastination. If procrastination was truly just like doing it five minutes from now, it wouldn't be that big of a deal, would it? Yeah. Would it? No. It wouldn't be a big deal. We wouldn't even talk about procrastination. Yeah. We wouldn't even talk about procrastination if it just meant I'm going to do it in five minutes. Mhm. Hey, I need an extra five minutes before I execute on this thing.
Here's the thing with procrastination. Procrastination, what procrastination really means is I'm never freaking going to do it. That's what it really means. Mhm. Now, listen. Is there some forms of procrastination where you just procrastinate four or five different things at the same time, and you eventually can't do three of them? That's the same thing. You're procrastinating the things that you should be doing for something that you marginally don't mind doing as much. It's ridiculous.
You let, you and I have talked about this, letting the window close. The jiu-jitsu window, right? You have the jiu-jitsu window. Hey, everyone's training at 10:00 on Saturday. Hey, it's open mat. We're going to go train at 10 o'clock. But then at 8, you know, you're like, "Well, I got to do this little thing and well, now it's 9:40 and I could get ready, but by the time I get ready and I'm driving down there, it's already going to be." And you let the window close. Now you're not going. You let the window close.
So, what you have to do is you have to tell yourself, "Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Don't wait. Don't hesitate. Listen to what I'm saying. Do it now. Do it now. Execute. Execute. Execute." When you hear the words execute, execute, execute, there's no turning back. You go. That's what you're doing. That's what you have to do. If you wait, when you wait, you negotiate. When you wait, you negotiate. Now you're in a losing, you're in a losing situation.
That brings us to the number four reason, lack of motivation. Now listen, obviously we don't count on motivation. Motivation is a feeling. We count on discipline. But I want to talk about the root of the word motivation, which is motive, which is why are you doing what you're doing? That's why I talked about when you write down what your goal is, you write down what your mission is, you have to dive into why you're doing this because that is what's going to give you the motive to accomplish the goal. This is what you're going to have to fall back on when it's not obvious to your lizard brain why you're doing what you're doing. Because your lizard brain's like, "I'd rather just sleep more." Your lizard brain says, "Oh, it's easier just to not do that thing." I'd rather, it's easier to scroll Instagram, so I'll just keep doing that. Your lizard brain just wants to do the easiest, simplest thing that's most gratifying in the moment.
So, you have to figure out what your motive is. And you got to remind your lizard brain and slap it upside the head and say, "The reason why I'm doing this is because one day I'm going to own my own house," or "The reason why I'm doing this is because one day I'm going to get promoted," or "Because I'm going to be in good shape," or "I'm going to win this jiu-jitsu competition," or "I'm going to be able to play guitar better," or "I'm going to write a book." All those things, those long-term, your lizard brain doesn't give any about that at all. It doesn't literally doesn't care at all. Your lizard brain is not like, "Oh, great. I'm going to win a jiu-jitsu competition in four months." It does not care. Doesn't care at all. It just wants to scroll. It just wants to scroll Instagram and eat a donut.
So, you lose sight of the long term. Look, how long does it take to save up a down payment to buy a house? Five years. Five years. How long does it take to prepare to run a marathon? Six months. How long did it take to get your black belt in jiu-jitsu? 10 years, something like that. So, so let me ask you this. Does today really matter? Does today, I mean, is one day really matter? Cuz you're literally saying like, you're good. Doesn't really matter. It's so far away. Mhm. You know, I just missed one day of training. Like it's no big deal. I'd rather sleep. And you're going to rationalize and all that stuff.
Number five on my list, and that is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What do I mean by that? I missed a day of training. The hell with it. Oh, I know. And maybe it's not a day, but maybe it's a week, maybe it's two weeks. Oh, I hurt my ankle and to hell with it. Or I didn't get the bonus I was supposed to get at work, or I didn't get the raise, now it's going to take so much longer. So, to hell with it, I'm never going to be able to buy a house. The hell with it. Or I lost my mind and I ate eight donuts. Echo Charles, it happens. I ate eight donuts and forget trying to be in shape. I'm just. And maybe it's not that. Maybe it's, I would think it, I would hope it takes a little bit more to nudge someone where they feel like they just can't get it done. Yeah. Like maybe you got sick, and then while you were home for four days, you just, you know, ordered a bunch of pizza and you were just all ate like crap and you didn't work out, and now you're feeling better, but you're like, the hell with it. My goals are trashed. Yeah.
I'll tell you when it happens is when other important things kind of emerge, and then you're like, you know what? Forget my whole goal because I want to focus on this other stuff. So, and it doesn't have to be important stuff either. So, you know how like, let's say, okay, I want to get in shape. I want to lose 15 lbs and I have this like certain lifting goal, whatever. And then maybe you got a business trip, maybe you got a short vacation, maybe your kids get sick or something like this, and you could find the time to do all this stuff and still achieve your goal. You totally could. But it becomes more comfortable and convenient to just really immerse yourself in the vacation, or really focus on bringing the kids, and then really unwinding when you get home, you know, kind of a thing because of the stress or whatever, you know. So it basically, your attention and your commitment gets essentially divided, and now certain other things compete for that focus, for that attention. We're going to get to distractions, which is what you're talking about. Yeah, for sure. Which is, which is some of the things that can lead to throwing out the baby with the bathwater, right?
My point in this is if you fall off the path, get back on it. Yeah. That's that's like such a simple concept. Yeah. Like, hey, I was gone for a couple weeks. No jiu-jitsu for a couple weeks, right? It's real easy because now it's Saturday, Saturday morning. Mhm. I haven't trained in whatever it was, nine days or something. It's real easy to be like, well, you know, one more day and should really like get back, you know, I should give my body it's a minute to, you know, whatever you're saying. Oh, yeah. It's just lies.
Well, yeah. The reason I said what I said is because I literally did that before where I'd be like, "Okay, I want to like when I go home to Hawaii, I'll be like, 'Okay, I'm going to make this commitment to like not slack off. Like, I'm going to make it to the gym every day. I'm going to do all this stuff.'" And it gets hard. Certain days it gets hard, but all it takes is like an extra 10 minutes of planning or a little adjustment or whatever, but it's yet another mental like effort you have to do in a time. You let the window close. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so, so it's like, yeah. And meanwhile, the whole family's there. So it's like, all right, let me just let go this whole idea of staying in shape rather than, okay, hey, look, maybe today was hard. We didn't make it to the gym today. We'll be like, "Okay, let's do like a makeup workout at night or something like that. You don't need the gym. Let's do a makeup workout." Like, try to do what you can, kind of a thing. But I throw the baby out with the bathwater being like, "Ah, it's not, it's way less realistic." And you throw the whole campaign out the window. Now, I don't even think about going to the gym anymore. I just focus on going to the beach. You see what I'm.
There's another thing that can jam you up here, which is when if you say, "Well, you know, I can just, I'll get back on the path tomorrow." And that becomes the, you know, that becomes four tomorrows, five tomorrows, seven tomorrows. Uh. I was talking to Joe Moss. Yeah. Hell yeah. He goes to confession once a week. And you would maybe in your mind you're like, well, you just do whatever you want. Then you just go to confession and be like, well, you know, I did this wrong, this wrong, this wrong, this wrong. Okay. Well, you know, Jesus saves and you're good. Yeah. You know, Jesus forgives, you're good. That could be your attitude. But what he's like, that's not the attitude. The attitude is actually it keeps him in line because he knows he's got to go face to face with a priest once a week and tell him all of his transgressions that he committed. Yeah. And so he doesn't want to do that.
So you, as a person, you have to do confession with yourself, right? You have to admit that you sinned. You have to admit that you fell. You have to own your own transgressions and connect them to how they negatively impacted your strategic goals. Once again, we're going back to our strategic goals. Because if all we do, if we're able to just say, well, you know, I fell off the path yesterday. I might, you know what? I'm not going to get back on it tomorrow. Maybe the day after that. And you just start adding these things up and you don't ever put yourself in check. You don't ever come face to face and look in the mirror and admit your transgressions and say, "No, I'm really screwing this up right now." If you don't do that, you're throwing, you'll end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater, which is a, which is a major problem.