Episode 419: Thinking Time - Back to Analog

Hey everyone, hope you're having a great end to the year as we begin to wrap up 2024 going into 2025. I want to share with you that's one, one of kind of the key results that I have for myself but also for the business going into next year and some of the things and changes that I've made over the last 3 3 to 6 months that I think have been incredibly beneficial. You don't need me to share with you how bombarded we all are with notifications, dings and pings, and just information that comes at us, whether it's in your social feeds, watching videos Anywhere we walk, there's advertisements everywhere. I'm actually on a walk right now, and there's just so much information coming at us. And so it begins to be difficult to protect our attention. I've heard— I think Hormozi has said— attention is the new oil. And you think about what the social media networks do, the way the algorithms are set, are there to try to keep us on platform. And unless you're a creator, keeping us on those platforms is a distraction from the things that ultimately we need to do to grow our businesses. So I never want to share things from the perspective of, if I have not done it myself. And so I've had it in the hopper, so to speak, for a while that I was going to do this episode called Back to Analog. And I'm going to share with you a couple of things that we're going to do for our Blueprint members in 2025, not giving away too much of it, but also some specific things, tangible things that I've been to do, been able to do for for myself that I think has really helped with creating some margin and creating just a little bit better mental space. Look, I love digital tools. I mean, I love Loom, I love Notion, I love, you know, Google Documents. I mean, I, I don't think I'm that techie, but other people may say I'm a little more techie than, than others. And I think they're incredible. I think they're incredible for when I'm on a walk like now. I can pull up a Notion page, take some notes on a podcast I may be listening to, etc. That said, for the last 3 to 6 months, I've gone back to more analog, truly writing down my to-do list, writing out my Sunday night planning. And I used to do that, as an example, in Notion, but now I've gone back to a paper journal. The journal I like— of course I like navy— but the journal I like is a Moleskine journal. You can pick those up at Barnes Noble. I think they're $30, $35 or so. And I like the soft-sided ones. I just, I don't know, I like the paper, I like the experience of it. And so I'll plan out Sunday night planning, uh, every week there. And then my daily to-do list, I love a product called Best Self. Best Self, it's, I think it's called the Self Journal. I don't know if that's probably the best name for it. Probably is to me, or feels like a, a daily and a weekly planner. But that's what I love to write out my to-dos, to think about my day. It has a couple really great prompts with, you know, what's my goal for the day, what would make today great, what am I grateful for, those sort of things. I love that aspect. And it gives me a chance to, to really reflect. It allows me to slow down because my— I'm writing. And I think the other thing is it just gets me off of a screen so much and allows me to just get more into the day versus immediately having a screen right in front of me and trying to plan out the day. I think it's— that's been helpful. Couple of the things that I've done is I was guilty that when I would be in between calls, that I immediately, uh, would have like a podcast. And it's not necessarily just the fact that it's podcast, but that it's a business podcast. Now, it's kind of ironic because given the fact that Above the Business is a podcast But I am more intentional with when I'm actually listening to a podcast. One particular area for me, and I picked this up at a Mastermind that I'm a part of, uh, someone shared that and I thought, you know what, I'm going to give that a try. And it's been great, is when I'm working out, only music, only music when I work out. That used to be a time that I would go to the gym, uh, go for a run, and I would be, uh, listening to a business podcast. I would just give yourself an opportunity to consider just using that time for music to, to allow the mind to not always have inputs. All the time. I was feeling like I had too many inputs coming at me, you know, Voxer messages, Slack voice messages coming in, WhatsApp messages coming through, and then you just add in emails and texts and YouTube videos and you add in just— there's just too, too much inputs, YouTube videos, business podcasts, etc. It just got to be too much. So those are a couple adjustments that I've been able to make, and I would encourage you to maybe look at, if you don't want to take too many of those extremes, how can you audit the things that are coming through, uh, capturing and grabbing your attention for this year as well? What are some areas that maybe you could go back to journaling and writing things out? So when I was doing, um, 2025 annual planning myself across the companies, uh, one of the areas that I pulled was also to start writing it down with pen and paper first and then transferring it to a document that can be shared. So I started on paper, then transferred it to a document. And I heard someone say, maybe you should do less digital in front of a screen, and it should be you and a friend on a walk and me and a pen. And there was something so simplistic about that that I took it and I ran with it. So thanks for being my friend on this walk. For me, it's a actually really beautiful sunny December day here in Alabama. Hope you've had an awesome 2024, and I look forward to serving you in the coming year in 2025. Thanks so much. Lead well and go be great.