How to Prioritize Your Life

Brendon Burchard introduces the 30 day punt: defer non-urgent projects for a month to cut stress and get clear on what actually matters. A simple way to stop overcommitting and focus on what's in front of you.
Don't feel guilty about prioritizing your life. Write it down. Don't feel guilty about prioritizing your life, every area of your life. If that means you need to take this project and throw it into January, put it into February, calm down. That's okay. Why are you hating yourself that you can't do everything by the end of the year? Why are you hating yourself that you're not doing a million other things? Aren't you already stressed and overwhelmed enough? Stop hating on yourself. Be honest with yourself and just say, yeah, this little sucker. It's my 30 day punt. Brendan taught me that in 30 days, if I'm not going to significantly start it, I'm going to punt it into next year. I'm going to give you the biggest gift. And this is what I call the 30 day punt. The 30 day punt. And here's what it means this time of year. If you've never trained with me before, it means I would love for you to get honest with yourself about all the projects you said you were going to do this year. Just write them all down right now in your notes or in your journal in the Growth Day app. Write down all the projects that you want to do this year. I'll give you a second. Go ahead, grab a piece of paper if you need to write down everything that you said you're going to do this year and be okay with the fact to do the 30 day punt. Here's what I mean. The 30 day punt. I looked at all those projects I said I was going to do this year and I'll give you my specific example. I was going to start a book this year, I should say another book this quarter. I was going to start a new book and I am looking at that right now and I'm going to do a 30 day pun on it. Here's what that means. If in the next 30 days I'm not significantly going to start that project, I'm going to punt that project to January, meaning I'm giving you full allowance to put off the projects you're not going to start. Because if you're honest, you know, November, December, we all get really busy. We're all pushing hard, we're all trying to make magic happen. And you're probably going to spend November, December, completing the projects that you already started that were significant. You're going to wrap up the quarter, you're going to finish those final sales calls, you're going to push that final promotion through, you're going to do those things with the family or those trips for, for the holidays, November and December, you're probably already going to be pretty full completing those things. So I say if there's a major project you're not yet going to, if you're honest with yourself, start in the next 30 days, just be honest and go, I'm not going to do it this year. I'm going to put it over into January to revisit it and I'm going to have any guilt about it. A lot of times in people's productive lives, the reason they don't have more momentum is they're holding all of this guilt and shame about the things they know they should be doing that if they just had the care, the tenderness, the self awareness to say, I'm really not going to do that, I'm going to put it over here and not be guilty about it. Emotional energy comes back in. It's the things we are dogging at ourselves about, making fun of ourselves about getting down on ourselves about. That has a lot of emotional weight and it's unconscious. See, what people don't know is how often their brain goes, I should be.
Doing this, I should be doing this, I should be doing this, I should be doing this, I should be doing this.
The brain is always saying that, I.
Should be doing this, I should be doing it.
And the more your brain is like.
I should be doing this, I should be doing this, I should be doing this.
The more you start discouraging yourself, the more that that statement disempowers you, the more that that statement robs you of confidence. And so what I'd love for you to think about is, oh, maybe there's things I'm beating myself up on that I just need to be honest. I'm not going to take it on this year, I'm going to put it into next year, revisit it into next year and not have any guilt. That's just straight up genuine prioritization. Don't feel guilty about prioritizing your life. Write it down. Don't feel guilty about prioritizing your life, every area of your life. If that means you need to take this project and throw it into January, put it into February, calm down, that's okay. Why are you hating yourself that you can't do everything by the end of the year? Why are you hating yourself that you're not doing a million other things? Aren't you already stressed and overwhelmed enough? Stop hating on yourself. Be honest with yourself and just say, yeah, this little sucker, it's my 30 day punt. Brendan. Taught me that in 30 days, if I'm not going to significantly start it, I'm going to punt it into next year. Now doesn't mean I'm telling you to quit. It doesn't mean I'm not saying you can't do lots in the next 90 days. We'll give you tons of ideas here, but I hope that this helps you. I hope that this helps you. I think it's so critical that we just get honest with ourselves. There's like four or five major marketing campaigns I'd love to start this year. They're not going to happen. It's going to overwhelm me. Over, overwhelm the team, overwhelm our platform. Just not going to do it. We'll do it next year because when you understand that you're going to play the long game, you stop operating every day in stress, hurry and anxiety. I'm going on, on this point, but one of the simplest practices I do is the 30 day punt. If I'm not significantly going to start it in the next 30 days, I'm just honest with it now. I've used the example, because we're at the end of the year that you know, if you're not going to start it in the next 30 days, you could punt it to January, February, next year. Some of you, I know that's not appropriate. Depending on what you're doing or what your job is, maybe you just go, I'm going to punt it till after Thanksgiving or I'm going to punt it till December. I'm going to punt it till this specific date. But you know what, just give yourself the gift, open up your calendar or go into your Growth Day app and open up your plan. Write down the thing, set a date, set that date and when you hit save, you feel the freedom of now it's scheduled, it's scheduled in the future. You don't have to think about it until then. I've got literally over 100 items in my plan that are scheduled for the future. I don't even think about. They have no. I'm so present right here with you right now. I don't even think about those things. Those things are going to come when I get to them. They're scheduled. They're in the plan right there in the Growth Day app. It will remind me. There it is. Okay, time to deal with this. Great. Until then, I don't even think about it. And that's how you create the freedom of mind to be present in the moment, the freedom of mind to notice the things around you to be grateful for them. The freedom of mind to do your work today with excellence, not weighted down by all those things you didn't do or that are coming up. And so it's just parking lot items. Great. I'm going to parking lot this thing. I'm going to put this into the future. I'm going to punt it and schedule it into the future. I promise you it will lighten up your load over this next 90 days and you'll feel so much better. You'd be like that 30 day punt thing. Brendan, thank you so much. Sa.










