How to Prioritize

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Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to a best of edition of the Brendan show. These best of episodes feature training that I have done live, sometimes on online to tens of thousands of people or live on stage where I was speaking.

On some stages across the world.

Or these might be some of my monthly training programs and highlights of those that I do every single month with our monthly students. So I know you're gonna really enjoy these because these are a little bit more of a deep dive look at some of my training as a personal and professional development trainer. You know, I focus so much on helping you find that deeper level of motivation and start practicing some of those high performance habits. Well, you hear me talk about many of those concepts and in these special episodes here, these are my best of trainings only and exclusively right here on the Brendon show. So I hope you enjoyed them. Please note that as you hear me speak in many of these, you'll hear me reference something because sometimes I'll have been training live or on video or on stage or through a broadcast. So you might not be able to see something I'm suggesting or motioning to or maybe even drawing out on a flip chart or motioning towards on a presentation, but you'll get the gist of it. So make sure you bust out your journal. Take some good notes here because this is really valuable insights on the mindset or the strategy that you need to adopt in order to improve your life. And if you want to go and get more content like this, but much more deeper and have more of an interactive relationship with me in this type of training, make sure you join our high performance monthly training program. That's our monthly subscription program where I go live with you and our high performance students every single month and I train on a new topic or a new piece of research that we've created from the high performance institute and I train on that and then I do Q and A and actual live coaching, interactive coaching with people every single month. That's called high performance monthly and you can Access it at brendon.com monthly that's brendon.com monthly B-R-E-N-O-N.com monthly to get deeper dive training similar to this. So if you like this, you would love that training program. But without further ado, let's jump in right now to one of the Brendon shows, best of trainings.

We've got a big conversation today about competing interests. It's hard to hit high performance when you got 50 different things that are pulling at you. We've got a lot to cover today on competing interest because so many people struggle with this. I recently just spent some time with a private client who's in a holy heck of a mess because they've said yes to so many things, and they're all very, very important. The person feels a high obligation to do well in each of those areas. But the person took on too much, and I think we all can relate with that. I don't know how you're doing right now. You're either in a place where you're super busy or you're in a place where you're everything's cool and there's harmony, or you're in a hot mess, depending on where you're at. I think you're gonna find a lot valuable in this conversation today, because I asked this all the time, what happens when you've already chosen? Let's just say you're already there. You're in a place of competing interests and will always be in a place of competing interests our whole lives where, you know, sometimes you feel like you have to sacrifice your health for a short amount of time to get things done. Sometimes you feel like you have to sacrifice a relationship over here in terms of how much time you're spending with that person because you've got so much work over here. Or other times everything has to stop because you have to care for somebody. Other times, you know, your hobbies, get on the back burner for two or three years because building something, I'm sure you can relate with all of these things because it's just part of life. There's always going to be this juggle of moving parts. And what I like to do is just help you get to that point where you don't find yourself in overwhelm so often because of competing interests. Because the reality is very few of us can take on, you know, three, four, or five major things at once. And yet we all want to take on more of that. And we have to learn to say no more often. We have to learn to set boundaries more often. We have to choose better things more often. And if we're not doing those, we really do struggle. And I know you can relate with this. I've been there too, so I share this from that same personal journey as you're on. There's a lot to keep going and sometimes it's super hard. So how are you going to do better in dealing with competing interests? One of the mastery level things that I've learned to do in my life is this first piece and that is to remove the non essentials. To remove the non essentials. I really believe that if you just got good at this, this would be one of those needle moving strategies or skills, if you will, that helps everything else work better in high performance sort of parlance. We talk about this as a meta skill, as this skill. If you're good at this one, you're gonna be good at the rest of these things. Because this is where most people really struggle. They have so much of their day eaten up by non essential things. And what I mean by non essential things is not only is it functionally non essential, meaning you don't have to do it right, it's not serving any end, outcome or cause, but it's non essential because it doesn't bring you any joy or meaning. You know, the greatest single incident of my life outside of, you know, having my blessed, you know, relations with my family and friends is my car accident. Because at 19, it made me understand very clearly what were non essentials. For me, a non essential is anything that doesn't help me feel like I'm fully alive, I'm living my life or my calling or my truth. It's things that I know aren't important to my relationships at all. And they're things that doesn't matter in terms of matter make a difference. Doesn't make me feel a sense of pride or satisfaction or joy that I contributed them. I just got very clear of like what doesn't matter. Because you know, if you've ever been in a hospital bed, it's very clear what doesn't matter. You think all these things matter and you know, a lot of non essentials that people think matter stuff. As an example, you know, they spend all this time organizing, creating, buying, getting, categorizing, researching stuff. It's just being, doing one of the most non essential things in the world and that is being a browser. Don't be a browser. Because most of the time when we say competing interests, I'm going to assume from the start, from the get go, we're talking about real interests of yours, things that you are really passionate about, things that really matter to you. That's why it's hard to choose because these things are all important. But if you're trying to juggle in with all the important things, things are not important at all. They're going to do is they're going to eat away at your foundation of success, like termites at the foundation of a home like, little bites. The little, you know, 20 minutes or 15 minutes or five minutes that this person looks at these magazines that are just stuff that mean nothing to the person's life. They're not looking to shop, they're not looking to buy anything. They're just kind of, oh, wow, this thing showed up in my house, so I guess I have to look at it. That's called being a stupid consumer. It's like, oh, okay, I don't want. You gotta be more conscious than that. Just because someone puts something in front of you doesn't mean you look at it. So for those who are browsing all day long on Facebook like, I got nothing else to do. And then later on you complain, I'm so busy and overwhelmed. No, that's your problem. That's your inability to manage your time and your attention towards things that are essential to you. And that's what bothers me at this day and age, frankly, it's very difficult to be a compassionate coach right now because people say, I'm so busy and overwhelmed. What are you doing? They're looking at Facebook for 20, 30, 40 minutes a day. I'm like, what? That's because you're not managing your mind's addiction to the dopamine drop that comes every time you see something new. Because, right. This is a variety machine. And a variety machine that is just like a hamster connected, running on something for a food pellet. This is your food pellet for your brain today. And because it's fun, people spend 20, 30, 40 minutes an hour, two, three, four hours a day browsing. And then they have the gall to say, you don't understand how stressed I am. You don't understand how busy I am. No, what I understand is you've never mastered this meta skill of removing the non essentials. It's very, very important. What does not matter must not be on your plate. And you need to stop putting it there because what it's doing, again, I'm talking about competing interests. Please recognize the context. Here is if you got interest things that are important to you, and you're juggling in all those unimportant things, it's going to wreck you. All those little distraction pieces, they add up. The average American watches four hours of television a day. Now. Four hours of television is over a decade of their life. 24, 7 in front of the boob tube, doing nothing that is meaningful to them per se. It's cool to have escape. I don't mind escape. But make sure the escape is something that you feel is going to revitalize you in a real significant way. You know, it's like I tell a lot of people, they're like, well, I just, man, I'm really fried, man. I just need to watch an hour tv. I'm like, you know what, go take an hour of yoga. I'm really fried right now, man. I just, you know, I just, I'm going to do some other escapism, like a video game. I'm like, you know what, go meditate. Because there's going to be benefits to that yoga and the meditation benefits to that meditation that are going to multiply your later performance where there's going to be no benefit to blatant consumerism. And I think that's really important for people to understand today because they're getting lost in the digital stream. They're drowning in the digital stream and yet they're saying that they're so busy. They're really not. And so just identify the things that you can remove. And you know, for me, you know, I've just removed so many things that I used to think were important because so many times in my life, you know, I've lost somebody or I've been in a hospital bed or I've moved. I'm sure you've done it too, right? Do you remember that last time you moved and you got rid of so much stuff and you're like, I so don't need this. How freeing that was, getting rid of stuff. You know, if you haven't read like Essentialism, a book called Essentialism or the Life Changing Magic of Tidying up, read those two books, it will just help you get in a new mindset. Or even read like another book called Vagabonding. Read those three books just to get back in your mind, like, right, I need to get down to the core things in my life that are important. You know, one of the reasons the Zen masters were so Zen, because they weren't collecting lots of stuff, they weren't being distracted by lots of things. You know, you work with high level masters in any sport, they're not trying to do a thousand things, they're actually very minimalist. And I think that today becoming a little bit more focused on essentialism or minimalism I think will help serve you being able to manage the things that matter the most. I'm constantly, you know, evaluating what's non essential and I evaluate the non essentials based on a bigger picture of my purpose. And we're going to talk about some of the goals I have, but I Just kind of think about my life in a continual basis in terms of legacy, because I faced the end of my life so many times that I've had to say what really matters to how people remember me, what my real, what contributions really matter from me, you know, and getting rid of the things that aren't unique to you or won't really move the needle, the things that you're replaceable on. Let somebody else do it. Do the things that are essential to you, contributing your unique ability or your unique purpose or your unique joy. Focus more on those and learn to.

Say no to the rest.

A lot of people's overwhelm has nothing to do with the competing interests. It has to do with all the garbage in between that they throw in. And they don't realize they could easily get 10 hours a week back. I mean, think about that. If you got 10 hours a week back to focus on the essentials, you'd be a weapon. And that's how personally I've gotten so far in my life, is recognizing the non essentials. Number two is a big one. Now, let's assume you've got some competing interests that are real. Right now I've got three major projects and they're kind of pulling at me and I'm not doing anything necessarily well or, you know, I've got these projects, but they might hurt my health over here. Here's what's important about any project, any goal that you ever take on. Clarify your payoffs. Clarify your payoffs. So if you feel overwhelmed right now, what I'd love for you to do, just bust out a piece of paper, bust out a journal and draw a bunch of circles on that page to represent your competing interests, right? That could be like, you know, you take out a piece of paper and you draw a couple things here you might have, like. I'll give you an example here in a second. So, you know, I've got a book I'm working on right now. I'm always maintaining the blog and the YouTube show and the podcasts. I've got seminars coming up. I've got coaching. And these are a lot of things that really, if you think about it, these are actually all one interest. The interest is furthering my mission as an expert. See, these aren't the competing interests. These are all just strategies serving one interest, one page, right? A lot of people, they think that these things compete. These are all serving one thing. A competing interest would be now, like the kids right now, like the TV show now, like over here, a new opportunity with a Project or celebrity. It's like when everything starts stacking up now, it's a lot of competing interests. So what I'd like you to do is just draw out a bunch of circles of everything that you're doing, all the major projects. Then what I'd like you to do, can you grab any of those bubbles and put them all on one? And what you'll tend to find most people only have three to five interests. They think they have a lot going on. The reality is they end up lining up on one page. And now it's on one page. You go, oh, maybe I've got three or four of these pages, but I've finally grouped my interests. Most people have never grouped their interests of what they're working on. And so everything feels random and easily overwhelming.

But when you have it all on.

One, then you can say, oh, well, now I can schedule a little better. Because, look, let me now schedule my interests versus just each little bubble. I hope that makes sense. I'll get more to that in a moment. But in this point, what I'm trying to share is clarifying the payoffs. And what I'd like you to do is clarify what's the benefit of this thing? What's the benefit of that thing? What's the benefit of that? What's the benefit of that? A lot of the reasons it feels like we're juggling things at the same time is we think they all have to happen at once. And what I tell people is, what you need to do is identify which ones will give you the near term, the short term, and the long term payoffs. Okay, which will give you the quick wins and the long term wins. Which wins the battle. Which. Which wins the war. Right. Short versus long. So as you think about all of this, you should know the payoffs of every project you're working on. And I can't believe how many people don't know this. So they'll say, brendan, I'm working on a book. I'm like, okay, great. Tell me about the payoffs of this book. Now go. What do you mean? I said, well, you said, you're going to write a book. Yeah. What's the payoff? Well, you know, I'm going to reach millions of people with my book. And I go, you're gonna reach millions of people. Okay, well, let's assume that's true, but you're working on this book right now. Tell me what else? What are the other payoffs of the book? Well, I'll be an expert. And people call on Me, and I'll get consulting and I'll get coaching and I'll get seminars and I'll get all these payoffs from the book. And I'll say, okay, could you get those payoffs without the book? I mean, could you start a seminar without a book? I did. Could you start coaching without a book? I did. Could you start, you know, an online video or blog without it? Yes. Could you start an online course without the book? Yes. So the, the whole payoff that you.

Believe that the book was going to.

Give you, you could get just by doing the thing. Right now I'm thinking about the payoffs of my entire schedule every single week. And that's why my competing interests never feel like I'm getting crammed on them. It's because I'm like a, you know, master chess player every week thinking strategically, what's the payoff going to be on this? When is it? Is this really a now thing or a later thing? Is this a big enough payoff for me to focus on now or later? And so what you must do in order to make that happen is draw out all your major projects or interests that you're working on and really think about what's the payoff there. Let me give you another example. In a personal example, like relationship example. You know, there was a time when, you know, my wife and I were both building separate businesses and we were just like cranking and there was this huge opportunity, like a major, huge, huge, huge opportunity that came to me and it was like, wow, if I did this, the payoff would be amazing a couple months later, right? But we were so busy, we really needed time away, like a vacation. And so we said, we're gonna take the vacation. And that opportunity, I literally just removed it. And instead I just said, let's go on vacation. Because the payoff was the maintenance and the growth of my relationship, which is a bigger, longer term play than any opportunity. If you haven't studied end of life studies, they call them, meaning people who talk about, you know, what you regret or don't regret or remember or are proud of at the end of your life? What always the number one thing that comes towards the end is your relationships. Because who's standing around you as you are passing onto the next realm? Who do you love? Who will miss you? Who is going to carry on your legacy? You think about your relationships much more than these short term things. But people are always doing that. They're making the non essentials essential at the cost of their own health, which is their longevity. And their relationships, which is their ultimate legacy. So it doesn't make any sense. And so if you're not checking in on these things, what you end up doing is you end up saying yes to everything. You end up, you're just living your life without priority. And when you're doing that, that's happening. The reason people don't prioritize, they're not asking the payoff questions. They're not thinking about what's the value of this project, when will it pay off and what's the potential threat to the payoffs of these other things. My health, my relationships, my main mission.

All right, my friend, I hope that you enjoyed that best of episode. Was that inspiring? Were you fired up? Did you love it? If you did, make sure you do me a favor, go out on social media somewhere and share that episode. Just go out, post it somewhere, post yourself, listening to it. Make sure you hashtag thebrendonshow. Because when you do that, I can look you up and we can find you on Instagram and posting that on the social media. And sometimes we do all expense paid trips to people we find. We just randomly select people, we send them gifts, autograph books, swag, T shirts, all expense paid trips to some of my seminars. So make sure you let us know, share what you thought about this episode out there on the social media worlds and then we can find you and celebrate you. And also I would love to invite you to join us in our high performance monthly program. So just go to Brendan.com monthly. That's Brendan.com monthly. That's where we do deeper dive trainings like you just heard. But we do that every single month. And there's some live Q and A there and I do some giveaways and we give students in that monthly program tickets to my seminars and some extra special training on leadership. So make sure you check it out@Brendan.com monthly. I appreciate you being part of this community of so many people dedicated to finding that deeper drive of motivation and practicing high performance habits so they can become extraordinary in their careers. In your personal life, in your health, you can live an extraordinary quality of life. And sometimes you just need a little bit more training and a little bit more nudge, a little more energy, a little bit more drive and consistency. And I'm hoping that being part of this community with the Brendon show, I'm providing that to you in some way. So thank you, my friend, for listening. I look forward to seeing you or listening with you on the next episode of the B R e n d o n show.