Ep 197 | Planning for Your Greatest Year Ever - Part 2 of 2

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it. Today is part 2 of our 2-part series on reviewing our past year and planning our next year. So reviewing 2023 and planning for 2024. Now, if you haven't listened to part 1 yet, yet yesterday's episode, be sure to go back to it and review, review it first. Today's episode will make a heck of a lot more sense. Yesterday we assessed how we performed in 2023 in a variety of areas within our life, and today we're going to leverage what we, what we discussed or what we discovered and plan for the steps we want to take in 2024 to improve in each one of these respective areas. So here's what we're going to do today. Pull out that sheet where you wrote down your answers from, from yesterday. And starting with the very first account, the very first account was health. And I asked you in health to grade yourself from 1 to 10. Can't use a 7. Grade yourself where you are in terms of your health. 10 being the absolute healthiest version of yourself, the healthiest you've ever been. 1 being the polar opposite of that. Where do you rate yourself? I want you to take that score and I want you to determine what you would like that score to be, how you would like it to improve in 2024. Now I need you at a minimum to bump that grade by at least 2 points. Okay? So if you were a 4 in health, at a minimum, I want you to set the bar at getting to a 6 in health in 2024. So you're a 4, bump it to a 6. Now, if you want to 4 bump it to an 8 or even a 7, you can use a 7 in this one. If you want to bump it 3 or 4 points or even 5 points, by all means, they're your goals. I just want you to at least make it a 2-point jump. Okay? So health, if you're a 4, bump it to a 6 or more. I want you then to ask yourself, okay, this, this question. If we were having this conversation, you and me, if we were having this conversation one year from today, because we probably are going to have this conversation one year from today, and we were looking back over the past year, what has happened in your health for you to feel amazing about your progress? Okay, let me ask that question again. If you and I were talking about your health one year from today, so we've got to picture ourself here sitting in the future. If you and I were sitting talking about your health one year from today, and we were looking back over the past year, what has to have happened in your health for you to feel amazing about your progress? Put that down. Now that you've done that, I want you to outline or describe succinctly an action step that you must take in Q1, in the first quarter of 2024, based on the answer that you just put down to that question. As well as the score jump from, in this case, in the example, 4 to 6. What are— what's an action step you must take in the first quarter of 2024? So let's, let's do an example here, right? I'm using health and I say my health was a 4 and I want to bump it to a 6. And I answer the following question: if I was having this conversation one year from today and I was looking back over the past year, What has to have happened in my health for me to feel amazing about my progress? My answer would be in this example that 4 out of 7 days every week, I ate a pretty healthy, clean diet. If I was looking back over, over my year and roughly 60% of the time I was eating a pretty clean diet, I would be pretty damn excited about the progress I made. Now, this is assuming I'm a 4, and if I'm a 4 in this example, odds are I am not consistently eating all that well. Okay, it's just the reality. I don't want to necessarily say, hey, 7 days a week, I'm going to eat perfectly. That's a hell of a jump. It's an unfair jump. But I think eating 3 or 4 days a week in a, in a healthy way is really, really solid progress. So that's how I'd answer the question. Now, what might my Q1 action item be? What would be the action step I could take in the first quarter to not just go from 4 to 6 or start the path from 4 to 6, but also honor the statement I just made, which was, you know, eating clean 4 out of 7 days a week? Well, my Q1 action item, I'm going to make it a two-part. I'm going to determine the clean diet I'd like to follow. And I'm going to enlist support. So my action item for Q1, I'm going to determine the diet I'm going to follow, and then I'm going to enlist support. And what that means by enlist support for me in this example is I'm either going to get a coach or an accountability partner or somebody that's alongside me on this journey so that I have not just guidance, but also some degree of accountability. Okay. So my action item, determine my eating plan and bring in some support. My mission, what would, what would be really, really amazing progress? 4 out of 7 days a week. And my score jump, 4 to 6. Now I want you to run through that exact exercise for all of your other areas that we described yesterday. So in your key family relationships, your, your partner or spouse, your kids, your parents, your siblings, whoever it may be. What would it take to jump at least 2, you know, scores? So whatever you're at, add 2 or more, and then ask yourself the question: in this relationship, what would have to happen if we're sitting here 1 year from today? What would have to happen over the course of that year in this relationship for me to feel amazing about my progress? And then based on that, what would be the action step in Q1? So do that for your key relationships, do that for your wealth, and do that for your job/career. And then from there, there was a number of optional accounts. If you remember from yesterday, social circle, spirituality, recreation/hobbies, personal growth and self-development, and experiences with travel, or whatever else you add there, go through the same exercise. The objective here, okay, is to use the data from last year, you know, how did we rate ourselves and what were we proudest of, Use that data and then chart a course for 2024. You know, progress though, no days off is all about just making little steps to progress every single day. And these small steps, they stack, they create habits. But these accomplishments, these small accomplishments every single day lead to something explosive, lead to something much bigger and grander. Over the course of time. So if I'm sitting at a 4 in any one of these areas and I want to get to a 7, I'm going to determine what would make me happy with my progress, and I'm going to determine a Q1 action item to start that momentum and start chipping away over the next 365 days. This annual planning process, you know, the reconciliation from the previous year and the forecasting of where I want to go in the next year is something that I do every single year. And it gives me, it gives me a vision, right? It gives me a vision in terms of where I want to go, what do I want to accomplish, what my mission happens to be. And I'll tell you one great idea, one thing that I've done to amplify this even further. I believe that the key to success with respect to a plan like this is awareness. In other words, it's got to be a living, breathing document. What I do is I jot all of this information down on a sheet of paper, and then I use that sheet of paper as my bookmark for the books I'm going to read throughout 2024. So every time I open up that book at night, my bookmark is in fact my annual plan. And I'm not studying that plan every night, but I'm glancing at it. And when I glance at it, I remind myself, Oh, I've got to take action around that. Or, oh, I said I wanted to go from a 6 to a 9. I've got to, you know, I've got to, I've got to ramp it up. Or, oh, I'm on pace or whatever it may be. It's just an awareness thing. We all know, you know, that reticular activator gets, gets going. And I'll tell you, like for health, when this is in your face at night, when you, when you're just thinking about it, it impacts your health decisions the next day. If relationships, you know, is one of your accounts and you see it at night, Maybe you make a slightly different decision the next day. Social circle, spirituality, whatever it may be, just seeing these things prompts us to take different action steps. So I encourage you to go back to part 1 if you have not done so yet. I encourage you to play all out and go through this part 2. You will have a comprehensive document that, that reconciles the previous year, provides a foundation from which you jump off and build in the next year. I assure you there will be value had in doing this exercise, or your money back. That's all I have for you today, the No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.