Fast Forward

Hi, guys. My name is Donny Rouse and you are listening to the podcast One Life Fast Forward. Do you spend your days kind of wondering where the time has gone? You get to the end of the day and you're like, alright, well, what is it that I accomplished? You feel fragmented, you feel like you're unproductive. You feel like you don't even know where you are in your own life because there's so many things going on. If that is you, then this podcast or this episode is for you. This one is called Fast Forward, and it's Fast Forward for a reason. Because when we are able to put focused energy, focus effort, and we know exactly the things that we're aiming towards, then we can move towards them faster and we could hit that mark with greater accuracy, greater speed. I was on the phone with a friend of mine and we were just kind of catching up and he. We were talking about just like where we were, like, how things were going in our lives with our businesses, with our personal lives. And he was saying how he has all these things that he wants to do, but yet sometimes he feels a little bit fragmented, like he doesn't make. He's all these tasks that are up in the air, but he's not making any progress towards them. Hearing this, I shared with him a story from my own life. That's something that had happened recently where I just kind of started becoming a little bit more aware of, of the focus energy. And I told him this. I said, well, last week was one of the best weeks for my business in the sense that I brought on four new stores, I was sampling in different places, introducing my product to people, and it felt really, really good. It was one of the biggest strides I'd made in my business in a while. I said, what was the reason for that? I told them the reason that I had made these giant strides was because the entire week was focused on one thing. The entire week was focused on the coffee business, on getting people to try getting new customers. And as a result of having this very, very narrow focus, I was able to get momentum. I was able to make strides forward prior to that. I mean, I have other projects. I have a lot of projects in the year and sometimes I'm not even sure where I am in those projects. So as a result of that, it's kind of like, all right, well, I know I have to do something over here, but I'm not really sure what that is. How do you expect to make any kind of progress if you don't know where you are with regard to where you're trying to go. So I mentioned that to him and I said, listen, focus your energies on one thing, right? Pick something, follow through with it until the completion. And it's not to say that you can't do. You can't have other goals, other things that you're trying to work towards, but you have to create a system in which to say, okay, well, this is what I want and this is what I'm gonna go after. I'm gonna put this focus energy, maybe it's a day, maybe you're doing that one day and you're focusing the energy from that one day towards this one task or this one outcome. And then the next day you're focusing on something else while it's still fragmented. The fact that you're putting that one day, you're putting focus energy in that one day you'll gonna start making progress. There's a process that helps you kind of like visualize what. It's actually not really that process. It literally is just writing something on a spreadsheet or a piece of paper. Because we have a lot of things that are going on in our lives, right? Our lives are complex. We are complex because we want different things. We want to feel experiences, we want to feel fulfilled, we want to grow, we want all these things. But where does all this go on for most people? Where do they store all this stuff? Most of it's stored in their head. And that is a lousy place to store it because your mind is trying to figure out all these things. And on top of that, you're trying to create this, like, this list of all the things going on in your life that you need to move forward on, it's not gonna happen. Your mind is not really organized like that, right? But if you put it on paper, and this is what I wanna encourage you guys to do. And this is. I mean, this will actually be a pretty short podcast, but so the entire thing is about getting momentum in your life. And momentum is going to come from one knowing what it is you're going after, knowing what are those buckets that you're trying to achieve? And then secondly, giving focus energy towards those items. And doesn't necessarily have to be like, you know, like one entire week towards that one item where you're literally blocking out the rest of your life because you're aiming towards that one thing because that kind of leads to an imbalance in life. But saying, okay, well, this is what I'm going towards. I know the action items that I need to hit in order to achieve that outcome. And I'm going to focus on knocking each one out in order so this way I can get that outcome. And that's how you're going to get momentum. So the assignment is this, right? So write down, take a piece of paper out. I want you to just write down what are the big blocks in your life? The buckets, right? And these buckets could be projects, These buckets could be experiences you want to have. So maybe you wanted to bring a new product to market. Maybe you're trying to book that trip to Italy. These buckets are the things that require other action items in order for them to be completed, right? So just very simply write those down. It could be planning, you know, an anniversary party for your parents, planning a birthday for your friend. All these things. Put it on a piece of paper. Once you have that, under each, I want you to write down a list. So if you have them, you have them going across the top. Under each, I want you to write down all the action items that are necessary in order for this thing to come to completion. Give you a minute. And after you've done that, the next step I want you to do is to say, what are the ranking between each of them? Like, all right, so you wrote down all these tasks. What is the syntax? What has to happen first in order for the next item to happen, right? So if you were building a house, you wouldn't say, okay, well, first I'm going to get all the lumber and the drywall, and then I'm going to get the concrete to pour the base. You wouldn't do that because you need the base first, right? You need to have someone come survey the property. You need to dig the foundation. You need to then lay the foundation, right? So there's an order in which things have to happen. So when you order that, you are able to say, okay, well, what has to get done next? And you're able to go through it faster at a more rapid pace, because you know the steps that need to be taken in order. And the very last thing is to start knocking out that list for each item. So if you have like four different buckets, right, four projects, and you have them all lined out in terms of all the tasks that have to happen in order to get those completion. Now the only thing left to do is start tackling those. And while, you know, it's. It's not logical really to say, okay, well, I'm going to focus on this one thing for this entire week, because then you're leaving other parts of your life out. But rather I want to say, okay, well I'm going to commit to blocking chunks of time, maybe two hours a day or if you know, if two hours enough, maybe it's one hour, three days a week towards knocking out certain items and keep working down that list and what you'll see just by having the visual of all those things you have to get done that you'll actually start to make it momentum, you'll start to knock them out quicker and just because it'll be self gratifying because you actually are looking at the list and you're crossing things off. So the saying goes, if you're in your head, you're dead. That is with everything, right? If you're in your head, you're not responding in the outside world. If you're in your head, you can't remember all these things. By putting them on paper, having some of the reference, you're able to knock those things out, you're able to get them done faster. So that is it for you guys today. Hope you enjoyed this post. God bless and I will see you again next week.