The Power of Results-Focused Living

I think becoming results focused really begins not with what's the task or what's the deadline, but what's the vision you have for your life? What level of abundance do you really want for you and your family? What is it you really want to contribute? What kind of impact or difference do you want to make in other people's lives? And how do you want that to be in terms of a direct output? Like, I decided, you know what, I want most of my actions each day to lead to impact. I want most of my actions each day to make a difference. You've got your mojo going for this week, and if you don't yet, it's time to get in the game. It's time to get in the game. I remember realizing one year of my life that it would often be Wednesday or Thursday before I felt like I had my stride in the week. I don't know why. It just felt like, you know, Monday was catching up with lots of people or the team or organizing myself. And maybe Tuesday, you know, I'd start kind of like organizing things to get ready to get to work, and I'd do maybe one or two tasks. And then it was like Wednesday, late night, I was feeling like, okay, you know, I'm ready to rumble. Here we go. And I never realized until maybe my late twenties how poisonous that was to my progress. And it happened so simply because I was not yet results focused. The topic of today, I didn't realize that I was wasting so much time thinking, doing things, you know, moving towards things. I didn't have really a clear objective or clear outcomes for each day. I wasn't the type of person who naturally, you know, got growth day, jumped into there, smashed the plan, navigation, opened up the plan, you know, wrote out my goal, set a deadline, created subtasks. I wasn't that guy. I was like, no, no, I'm the creative. You know, I'm just. I'm going to flow with it. It's going to come to me, and it's going to be awesome. I wasn't results focused, and it was taking me two to three extra days to do what I should have been able to do in a day. If I got clear, if I set the tasks and the deadlines, and if I got to work faster. I think becoming results focused really begins not with what's the task or what's the deadline, but what's the vision you have for your life? What level of abundance do you really want for you and your family? What is it you really want to contribute? What kind of impact or difference do you want to make in other people's lives? And how do you want that to be in terms of a direct output? I decided, you know what? I want most of my actions each day to lead to impact. I want most of my actions each day to make a difference. Why? Because life is short. My vision for life is recognizing that it's incredibly short. So I got to get to work. I got to make things happen. Not because I have some deficiency mindset like, oh, gosh, I have to prove my worth. No, because I feel compelled. I feel a calling. I feel a sense of fulfillment when I am doing what I'm put on this planet to do. And that is to help others. It's to help other people achieve their dreams or their goals faster. It's to help them find a greater sense of aliveness or connection or meaning. It's to live, love and matter. And that big vision helps me remember each day. You know what? Today counts, baby. Let's move forward. Some people always get this confused with, oh, Brendan. He's a productivity guy. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm the high performance guy. So some people are very productive in their output, but what they're creating doesn't align with the impact they're trying to make. They're very busy with their busy work, but they're not doing their life's work. And so I realized I need to make a whole scale change in how I manage my life. I had to really understand that I couldn't blow away a Monday and a Tuesday. Because, you know, if you do that, that's eight days a month, which is an entire work week. You lost an entire work week by getting into the week slow. So I had to start that hard, disciplined, personal development work of sitting down on a Sunday, planning out my week, thinking through what my Friday finishers would be, scheduling block time, like literally going to my calendar, blocking time that would take on major projects, major initiatives, the hard creative work, making sure that that was getting done. And the administrative or the team calls or anything else revolved all the way around that work so that I could make sure that my output was prolific. If you read high performance habits, the good news is you can find out that productivity does not mean burnout. If you read the chapter on productivity, in fact, you'll discover a whole new way of thinking. It's game changing. Those simple practices changed my life. And the good news is they're not just simple practices, they're enjoyable practices. Because I don't want you to Become results focused so you can burn out. I want to become results focused so you become effective and fulfilled. Fulfilled with what you were doing. Because think about it, don't I feel better about my life when Mondays and Tuesdays weren't totally random and actually contributed something? Now I have to share that I was the person who lived under the banner of creative. I was like, I'm the artist. Don't impose your block time, your boxes around me of time when I have to do things. And then I actually decided to study successful people in my category and it turned out they were very deliberate. It's that old famous saying from writers that inspiration luckily shows up every morning at 7:00am at the desk. You don't wait for inspiration. You get in motion. Opening up the door for that creative muse to even enter. But you have to open up that door every day by getting to work. By being in motion is where the muse shows up. Not some random hopeful, once in a while epiphany in a shower. It's daily diligence doing your work that ultimately gets a more creative flow going. Your brain is noodling on a little bit more, the gate is opening a little bit more. The better ideas come. But even if you don't believe that, it's that famous story. If you ever been to one of our seminars I've told for years on the stage, always gets like, the biggest laugh of the weekend is when I kind of play out a Persona of like a yoga instructor. And nothing against yoga instructors, by the way, I love, love yoga, but I play out this yoga creative who is saying that they don't want to be, you know, boxed in by all this discipline. And the discipline is, you know, not what life is about and how awful discipline is. And. Well, first, if you know anything about yoga, that really doesn't make any sense because yoga is a discipline of the mind, first and foremost. But second, what I tease out in the seminar is how one day the undisciplined yoga creative says, but I don't have time to go on any more yoga retreats. I don't have time anymore to enjoy yoga. I don't have time to go. And the person realizes that by not having discipline, there's no more time. What's beautiful about when you have discipline, that's what creates more free time. People are always stunned in my life over the last 15 years, especially in my industry, like, how does Brendan have all these mornings free? How does he have this lifestyle where he hasn't burned out in 15 years doing something that Creatives usually burn out in a year. What's the difference? It's like, well, by being so results focused and organized in the major blocks of the day that matter for work, it opens up more free time over time. And that's the difference people don't understand like you being more organized. Discipline of results focused in the short term actually opens up more time in the long term. And that's how you can have more vacation time without the guilt. Because by the time you got to vacation time, you achieved what you needed to to be able to go on vacation. People never quite get this because they don't try and they have confirmation bias. They say, no, no, no, I don't believe that works. So they don't try. If you don't believe it, you can't achieve it. You have to shift your mindset that maybe at this stage of my life, if I went into results focused on at a higher level, things could really change for me. And again, the good news is, if you've read high performance habits, it doesn't mean falling out of balance. In fact, it means aligning more to harmony. And so if you haven't read high performance habits, pick it up. You'll learn about block time, you'll learn about taking breaks, you'll learn about how to refresh yourself. You learn about what percentage of your week should be focused on the needle movers. I think you'll be fascinated to be in that personal development journey to learn about how to be even more effective. Because every day is a great day to grow. You're already winning this week. You might not know it yet, you might not feel like it with all those emails. You still have to get to all those tasks you still have for the kids, all that work that piles on and all the things you still have to do just this week, let alone this next month and the rest of this year. But you're already winning. How do I know? Because you're hearing my voice. You have made the choice again and again and again and again to touch the rim of your full potential by listening to personal development. It says, I have made a choice today to favor my self improvement. I've made a choice today to put something in my ears that will recondition my brain a little bit here for some positivity, for some good thinking, for a good future. I've made a choice today to prioritize my mental health or my vision for my future or my ability to get ahead or my ability to simply learn a new idea, a new skill, a new habit. It is by engaging in our own personal development more consistently that Suddenly all these AHAs start appearing throughout the day, that suddenly we start appreciating good behavior. We start noticing when things go well. I always tell people so many people are truly successful, but they just don't notice or see any of it. Why not? Because they're oblivious. It's because they're not conditioning themselves to see the good, the positive, the optimism, the possibilities. Why? Because if you don't engage in personal development, your mind doesn't know all of the things that are available to it. You don't realize that so much of personal development is teaching you how to interpret things, how to hold back and be observant to the moment, to the issues at hand. You don't realize sometimes that just by listening to personal development, you're gaining greater self awareness. So in the moment you're less reactive and that you're also more strategic. So good for you today for touching the helm of personal development. The needle movers are the big blocks of things that actually moves me strategically towards my desired result. Right? It means am I focusing on the things that really matter but also move the needle of progress forward? Am I focusing on the things that if I pour my attention here, it's like a bigger lever towards impact because all of us, you know, by midweek, we're down in, you know, down in the details. You know, I can really be someone who gets lost midweek into writing code or reviewing code. I can be somebody who's building new pages. I can be somebody who's, you know, architecting all these, you know, notes about messaging, about my next upcoming episodes, about, you know, notes on team and family and just I can be doing lots of things, but I have to have the wherewithal to pull my head up and go, wait, okay, I'm super busy here. Am I working on things that are going to move the needle for me, my life, my brand, my companies forward? Am I doing what matters most? Not just the things that are needed today or driven by people's false deadlines. I need this. I need this. I need this. Can I get a quick call? Can you do this? Can you do this? Can you this? Because what everyone, most people are doing in their lives and probably most of your team or most, most of the people you work with in their lives who haven't read high performance habits, let's just say that they tend to focus on the impulsive need or the day's need and they're losing sight of prioritizing your time and their time based on a six month or a one year timeline. And so Wednesdays I challenge myself. Lift your head up, Brendan. Are you focusing on the needle movers? Make sure that those things are getting accomplished, buddy. Give your time and attention to the things that really matter and will make the difference. Yes, you can do this thing over here that might make a 1% difference, but this thing over here will make a 5% difference. Lean towards a 5% difference. That's how I strategically reset. See, strategy is so important. You know, if you think about playing chess, anytime someone goes, your opponent goes and, and now it's your turn. You can move any piece mostly. And so if you can move any piece, it would seem like, oh, I'll just move a piece just to go. But professional chess players, they don't move a piece just to go because they want to go get some more cheez its they instead say, hmm, what's going to be? Not just the move now, but if I make this move now, it benefits me six moves from now. That looking into the future and addressing and thinking about our moves now is so critical. I know how easy it is to take that random call, meet that random request, somebody needs something on your team or in your life and suddenly you're pulled away from your projects. But you must learn to discern what you need to focus on today. And you must be willing to do the hard things of setting the boundary and saying, sorry, can't do that today, sorry, that can't happen today. And that might be offensive or hurtful to other people because they are marching to their own agenda. But another book recommendation, if you haven't read it, is the motivation manifesto and declaration. One is to reclaim your life's agenda because people will throw false deadlines at you and false urgencies and immediate needs that really don't need to be done. I would like to ask the question of what's the real deadline? Not the preference, not do you need this now? But what's the real deadline here? And the real deadline I have to teach people a real deadline is when, if this doesn't get addressed, the house burns down, the thing crumbles. It's the last urgent moment before total ruin and disaster. Everything before that moment is called a preference, not a priority. And so teaching the people around you how to also strategically think so that you're not just meeting whims and preferences, but you're actually making strategic plays. It's been a long term success practice of everyone who I coach. So I coach startup founders, literally billionaire unicorn founders. I coach people who are in the Olympics. I coach people who have achieved the highest levels from athleticism to business to just personal happiness and life satisfaction. And I can tell you that one of the most important things is helping them recalibrate their life to a strategic mindset to focus on what matters I can share in my life that every time I get more strategic my abundance grows both in terms of my mental health and in the outcomes of my life. So for today's just celebration of you, I want to thank you for touching the helm of personal development. Once again. We are making self improvement a way of life. Every day. Do your journal, take one extra action to even look at your calendar day and wipe out the things that aren't strategic or moving the needle. Every action follows by another action of personal development. That's where momentum comes in. Thank you for being here with us and making self improvement a way of life. Every day is a great day to grow and you did that today.