Create a Growth Schedule - a Growth Group with Drew Bridewell

Foreign. All right, let's go. Let's go, peoples. Hey, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. I'm just gonna let people in, start rolling in, and then we'll get the show on the road. Hey, Candice, Marcy, Marlene, Karen, Alita, let's go. Good morning. Whoo. All right. Just gonna let people roll in. You know, it's that we got plenty of time today. We got a full hour of this growth group. Cannot wait to meet y'. All. And also just kind of talk about building schedules and systems. Oh, my gosh. One of the biggest things that we can do every single day. Let's go. To add some value. So I'm just letting people in, and I'm sure I'll just be letting people in. And just as a quick orientation as people start rolling in to remember that you got notes on the right sidebar. If this is your first growth group, you also have notes in the agenda as well. And you can also leave this page while staying inside the app and go to your journal. You can go different places if you want to be able to. To, you know, just to swim around your priorities, your plans, your goals, the things that you're doing inside the app while you're listening here. It's totally cool if you want to do that. I'm just really pumped to have y' all here. Hey, Marlene. Hey, Kim. How's everybody's week going? Just gonna wait like a couple, like maybe another minute and just kind of get the show rolling. Foreign so today is pretty cool too. Just as we kind of get people in. We had a release today, so if you maybe do a hard refresh on the app or if you go into the. To the native app, you will see some new. Some new updates. Like, for example, one of the. One of the. Like, this is so simple, but it's something new to the app. Right now we have a new share little share icon on. On the Daily Fire. So you can share the Daily Fire, but also there's going to be, like, sharing and other capabilities in the app that you'll see. And then we also did a lot of improvement on the overall, like, performance of growth groups, which is always a really, really good thing. Oh, got to get some more people in here admitting people. Alright, cool. So we get people in. And you know what? People are just gonna keep joining, which is the beauty of this. And I'll put my. My little waiting room to the side just so I can see people. All right, cool. So first off, oh, man. People keep joining, so I gotta keep getting people at it here. All right, you know what I'll do. You know what I would love? Could I get a volunteer to help me let people in? I could just make you a co host. Does anybody want to volunteer? All right, thanks, Aleta. You're. We'll make you a co host and you don't have to have your video on. It's totally fine if you don't want to. But what we're going to do if some people start keep coming in, just click on them and make them attendee or you know, if people do want to end up getting, getting on the screen and like actually being able to speak, just raise your hand and we'll get you added up here. There's no like no pressure to do that at all. Today is going to be just really focused around building schedules and systems. Now I have a little bit of an outline that I'm going to follow, kind of a structure to follow. And then I'm also going to be sharing my screen and walking you through how I think about this and how I think about schedules and how I think about the value that these can actually bring. And my goal for today, so my goal for today is to give you a little bit more increase in awareness of how you can look at scheduling and also how you can use the app to help complement your schedules, how to complement your plans and how to complement the systems that you're using every single day, but you might not be aware that you're using it every day and how to increase your velocity, increase your productivity and your overall wellness along the side. So the first thing that I like think we should start off just to kind of get the ball rolling is let's like take, take a second to reflect a little bit and think about what's holding us back right now from mastering our schedule and building harmonious rhythms in our day to day operations. So what does that, what does that even, like, mean? Like, okay, we all have schedules. Maybe we don't have schedules. That might be problem number one. But what are the things right now? And you can put it inside the chat, like what are the things that are liter blocking you from advancing and getting the things that you really want done done? Let's just go ahead and put them in the chat right now. And I have a couple like prepared, so I will. Let's see. Consistency is one, I'm going to say like a lack of vision is one that I tend to kind of hear a lot from the people that I work with. And just as a heads up for everybody in this call, like, I'm Drew Bridewell. I'm head of product and design here at Growthday. I've been with Growthday for the last few years since it was built and created and founded. And also in my history, my history in product design and product development is I've really focused a lot of my second half of my career all in performance management, in learning and development tools, building products and services that just really just help people grow and learn. I was over at LinkedIn with was@lynda.com, i was at Facebook working performance management. And now, lucky, I get to work here at Growth Day and just help make Growth Day a more performant tool, more of a place to be able to learn, grow, and develop yourself. So that's my little backstory while you guys were all writing your thing. So I say, ignoring my notifications, a lack of time, lack of focus, distractions and focus, accountability. Right? All these things make total sense. I'm going to put in, like, four more here. Like, lack of purpose, lack of clarity, lack of plans, lack of focus and accountability is this great one. So first off, like, even though we have these obstacles, even though we have these kind of hurdles that kind of will derail us from the schedules and the things that we're trying to do, we have to rise above these blockers, right? And how do we rise above these blockers is we just have incredible, incredible intention about what it is that we really want. I'm gonna. I'm gonna break down how I. How I actually do this, and I'm doing it pretty heavy, heavily right now because we're planning out the entire Q1, Q2 of next year for Growth Day. But I also still, like, you know, I got goals, I got dreams, I got ambitions, I got things that I do outside of work. And for me, it's incredibly important to have a holistic. A holistic view of your entire life and looking at goals across your projects. Like, which maybe is at work or your family life. Goals across your personal life. Like, well, personal. I want to get super strong. I want to fit. I'm running a turkey trot next week. And, you know, I just. Like, the last couple weeks, I was. I was feeling very well. I had the flu and I had a cold. And so I'm bouncing back with my fitness. So I have a personal goal to go do some running. Another example is for goals is we have, like, passion goals. Like, my passion is to travel more or to explore new things. And then I have also, like, career goals, like, things that I want to do in my, like, long term, my career to build a legacy and the things that I do now, I say all those things because oftentimes with the lack of vision, accountability, maybe even necessity, if you go back to like, the high performance habits, you think about, like, well, what are the things that are like, really slowing me down my schedule? And then how do you start working your way backwards, which we call backwards planning, and making sure that you have a really clear picture of what it is that you want, what it is you desire, and what it is you really need to advance. And what was the first one like as far as goals? Uh, Teresa, is that your, like, if you can rephrase your question. Okay, the first goal. So I'm going to show you. I'm just going to actually show you a diagram and we'll walk through this. So just you can take notes and you can take screenshots or whatever you want to do, but there's going to be three big tips out of the all this thing that I'm walking through. And again, you can literally, we can talk through these things. I can bring you up on, on as a speaker and you can ask me any questions about this. And. But there's three big things that we're going to focus on. One is like increasing our intentionality because building schedules and systems is a way for you to like, move and get into your flow every single week, every single, every single month throughout the entire year. So we do that through setting reminders and creating affirmations which we can do inside the app, inside of reminders, and I'll show you how to do that. The other thing is we got to create rituals, routines, systems and habits. Luckily, this app is created around the high performance habits. So if you're going in and doing daily life scores in the session, those are tied to the high performance habits. There are six high performance habits. There's 10 questions inside of the life score assessments. But if you're going through and taking that assessment every single day, it's going to help you at least connect to some of the habits that you can start forming to kind of, you know, get you back on track. And then the third thing that we want to do with as far as big tips for scheduling today is we want to give ourselves grace, be patient with our advancements, but also think about the things that we're moving forward as advancements. And I'm going to show you what exactly I'm talking about with that. I'm going to share my screen and I'm going to open up. Have you all heard of the tool Figma? Has anybody ever heard of Figma? Anybody know Figma? No. It's okay. I'm going to give you a tour. So there's no. And I'm actually like, I am recording my screen just so we can have this as a. If anybody needs like to rewatch it or something. It's totally cool too. All right, so I'm going in to Figma. Let me know, let me know if you can see my screen. And I'm also going to bring my bar over to my other monitor so I can still see y'. All. Alright, do you all see this? Cool, cool, cool. It looks like you can. Okay, perfect. Okay. And again, please feel free to ask as many questions as we go through this because again, we're trying to think about how we're doing scheduling throughout the year. And you know, Brendan has a really great course or a really great practice on this, but I've taken that and then applied it and kind of applied another like, facet of like making sure it's a holistic view because oftentimes we can get these frameworks and get these things that we can look at and try to create better schedules. But if we're not really taking a look at like what we need individually, then we can run into problems. So awesome. Great. Monica. Yeah, you should definitely check it out. Okay, so the first thing is like thinking about, like, how do you spend your time in your schedules? Now? The first thing that I want you to really connect to is thinking about your passions and ambitions. The way you spend your time in your daily operations is a reflection of like, what you care about, what you value, what's important to you. So I want you to think about right now like, okay, well, in the notes section you could be like, well, what are my current passions and ambitions? You could just even write down passions and ambitions so you can go back and like really think about these things. When you are going through and building schedules, when you are going in and building your plans, like, are you connecting to your passions and ambitions regularly or even like on a daily basis? Because these things will bring you joy, these things will bring you excitement, these things will motivate you. So we want to be connected to those things. So hopefully that makes sense. Alright, the second thing is around the role and responsibilities that we have and that we currently operate in inside of our life or inside of our career, inside of our. If you're a parent, if you're a leader in your team, if you're a manager, what is your role and responsibility right now? I think this is one of those really super clear things when, if you're talking about like, well, accountability is a really challenging thing. Well, accountability goes both ways, right? Your manager is trying to have you be accountable for the things and the responsibilities that you have. But also, you got to be responsible and have accountability for your family. And you got to be. You got to be accountable for your family, get kids to school, make the food, do the laundry, do all the things, right? But we got to have a schedule so that we're not just flailing our arms and going all sorts of different directions in a non meaningful, impactful way. So that's another really important thing that we need to consider. So is this making sense so far? So we got passions, ambitions, role and responsibilities. The other thing that we need to consider before we even jump into building a plan is we need to consider where do we need to learn and where do we want to grow? Like, what are we doing to learn and what are we doing to grow? And you know, this month is so special at Growth Day because we're talking about how to learn faster. But the biggest important thing is before you can even learn faster, you got to know what you want to learn and why it's important. How it affects your role and your responsibilities, how it connects to your passions and ambitions. Because you don't want to be working and striving and just going so hard on the things that really don't really light you up and don't really get you excited. So I want to encourage you to just tap into these three things first. But then what we're going to do is we're going to build a schedule. So how do we build a schedule? This is something that I like to do, and I'm doing the big one right now for the entire year. But then it will start to merge and change and evolve. Because up until this, up until the last two months, every month I would just do a monthly plan and I would prepare for that month or two, like pretty much a month or two in advance. And we already have like roadmap and all the things that we're building inside of Growth Day, but I also have, like, other things that I'm building outside of Growth Day. And I have to be super on point with what it is I'm doing. So the first thing that I start with up here in the top left, you can see awareness. What does that even mean? What does awareness even mean? So the first thing that I do with Awareness before I even start scheduling. So this is like intentional mindset planning. Before I even get to the scheduling part and before I even start creating that, I need to think about what are the opportunities in front of me right now. I have awareness and I have intention with what my role and responsibility is, what I'm passionate about, and what are the things and areas that I need to learn about. So I already know those things. But what I really need to know is I need to know my opportunities. I need to reconnect to the purpose. Because sometimes it's okay. Sometimes purpose changes and when purpose changes, we have to be congruent with those changes and it's okay if they change from month to month. You have a different purpose. You're human, you can change your direction at any point in time. But it's about like knowing how to connect to that purpose and be like, you know what, I'm a product designer, I'm a coach, I'm a business owner, I'm a world class parent. Like, whatever it is, like, you gotta have that purpose and connection to it. The third thing we need to understand is like, okay, well we know our roles and responsibilities. What are our priorities? What are our priorities across our life? What are our priorities across our career? What are our priorities across the things that we're learning? What are the priorities across, you know, the things that you need to do every single day. Got to have connection to the priorities and know how to go find them and how to break them down. The last three are around like kind of your identity and getting your mindset right. So like, how do you identify as like, essentially like, who are you and how do you want to show up in the world? Like, identify as a passionate, creative, enthusiastic person. Like, that's who I am. I am. You know, I look at these words, you can get, you can get actually like reminders set inside the app so you can go to the reminder section and get reminded of like who you are just by setting a reminder, putting in the three, two or three words about who you are. And then you can get reminded about that every single day. Because those daily affirmations are a way for you to keep that motivation up. They're also a way for you to connect with who you are. Because sometimes, you know, we got all these distractions hitting us from left and right. And I just want to encourage you to be able to understand, like who you are. It's going to help you in your pursuits. The same thing with interactions. Interactions is thinking about, like, how do I want to Interact with other people. And when I show up, I want to be supportive, I want to be guiding, I want to be a positive role model. How do you want to interact in your schedule throughout the days, throughout the weeks, throughout the months? Like, what do you want to do? How do you want to interact with people? And then the last one here is like just thinking about what success looks like for all the things that you do, from a meeting to a new system that you create to a new schedule that you're going to set up. You know, maybe after this call, get ready for 2023. What does success really look like? What does it look like for your projects? What does it look like for your personal life? What is success? And just getting really clear and journaling about each of these things can be able to be able to a way for you to really know what you want, what you desire. And we haven't even gotten into planning yet. You know, this is mindset training before you actually get there. But it's essential and critical. Now when I was talking about the goals, goals are something that are going to help guide and give you direction. Now for all these goals like passion project, career and personal goals, I think it's so important to be able to tap into your holistic self and not just like, you know, career, career goals. And I think when I was earlier in my career, I would just focus on just those things. But I really want to have a well rounded way. It is not a pre built template in figma, but I can export a PNG for you and drop it in, drop it in the community so you can see it or I can just DM it to you, no problem. But the goals for this is like I want to be holistic, I want to be holistic, I want to be well rounded. So thinking about like, what are, you know, the two or three passion goals that I have, like I want to paint more, I want to do, I want to be more creative. I want to go on these like, you know, backpacking trips or I want to do some rock climbing. What are the passion projects do you have? Maybe you're a woodworker and you want to do more woodworking, you know, personal goals. I take personal goals as more like something that you're working on internally and your physic or maybe it's your physical or something you're working on like. Or I want to become a better communicator, I want to be a better collaborator. You know, what are you doing with that? Because once you know, like where there's areas, then you can start having a congruent, like, pairing for, like, things that maybe you have a passion goal and a project goal at work and they can somehow collide. And if they can collide, then you can be working towards multiple initiatives at the same time. This is like what I call like, building in a harmonious way. Like, you're not just thinking about one single track. You're thinking about all the tracks that are important to you. Then when you start going to plan, you could be like, oh, well, I know that two other of my friends are also going through the same project and same passion goal. And I can work on that simultaneously get support, but I can also be working on my initiatives and the things that I want to do and the things that I care about. Super critical to kind of having a strategic roadmap and a strategic plan. The other thing that you need to think about is your advancements. And advancements are a way that you're going to start breaking down actual, like, rocks and the actual things that you're going to be doing. So let me unfold this real quick. And obviously like there is in the year, because it's just the way things kind of work. You have the ability to do quarterly planning. Now, I tend to look at this as blocks because I work in product and I have to think about these different blocks of things that we can release in certain time periods. But I also like this because it allows me to compartmentalize the big giant things that I want to do and the big giant areas of focus that are most important to me. Because me going into the plan tool inside of grow day and just creating like one, one plan and then having a long list of the things I need to do, it doesn't necessarily help me advance and execute and strive in the way that I want to strive. I want to, like, be prolific with my output. I want to be. I want to be so. I want to be so dialed into the things that I'm doing and the. In the. What's like, in all the energy that's behind the things that I'm doing. And they're all congruent with what the team needs to be doing where I can have a true master plan. Now for me, like, okay, well, there's three. Three months and a quarter. It's as easy as thinking about like, well, what does the big year look like? Okay, great. It looks like this. Journaling about that. Okay, how am I going to break this out into four quarters? How am I going to break those four quarters into Three really successful, impactful months. And then where would I start with this? Now this might be kind of like this thing where like, oh, my gosh, this is so much to think about. You could even just like literally think about one block to start. And if you do start with just one block here, let me come up. So even if you were just to focus here, that would be completely fine. This would be a great place to start. And then you could even just even say, forget about that. If you haven't ever even done any planning, you can just start with Q1 month one. This month, my main priorities and my main goals is to just get more proactive about writing out my four goals or, you know, whatever it is. Like just literally writing out and putting it in the block, then writing out your top three priorities for that month, right? Then coming in and getting super granular. Like, okay, well, month one, January, I got five things that I really need to do. Like, five things, super important five things. So maybe this is like, you know, something with family and I'm super visual person. So I'm just going to like, kind of just work with me here. And if anybody wants to ask any questions, please feel free to let me know. But, like, let's just say, like one of my big rocks is improving family. I'm going to also have a team projects. I'm going to have projects that I'm working on. And obviously I'm not going to expose all the. All the growth day projects that I'm working on, but I have a lot of those projects. And then, you know, that might be like, let's just say project A, project B, project C. Hope this is kind of making sense as we break these things down. So now that I see these things, like, this is just one tiny little rock inside this month. Now as you get more comfortable and more confident with the things that you're executing and you have systems in place, then you can start unpacking when you're going to do this, because like Brendan says, it's not about just like, if you don't have a schedule for the times that you're going to be learning and you don't have it, like actually booked into your calendar and you don't have it actually blocked in your spaces, then it's very unlikely that you're actually going to do it, then you're kind of flailing and you're not really open to actually jumping in and dialing in on doing what matters most. So I want you to really think about, like, if you zoomed out and zoomed back in. What would be the things that you would focus on? Well, and I could even take some of these things and I could space them out, like if there's, if this was a whole entire rock that needed my attention, or if I'm just like in a manager role for like these project A, B and C, and I'm just focused on guiding those things. So they're not going to be giant initiatives that I'm going to run, but I'm going to be more of a mentor or leader for those specific things. There's so many examples of how you can slice this up, but this is just another way for you to break it down. But if, for all of those things, right. We still want to be able to maintain all the big six during this process. And we want to be able to understand, like, well, what goals do we have out of this process? And then we also need to know, like, the theme, the month, or like, you know, what's the initiative, something that you can actually sink your teeth into or plant stake in the sand and say, like, this month's about this. And when you create these themes, it also allows you to build a little bit momentum because if you're managing people or if you're managing a team or even your family, having themes for like, what this, this, this month is all about can help people remember, like, the actual purpose behind what it is that you're actually doing. And then as you go, I'll start building out the different channels of all the different opportunities that we'll do across the entire year. And you know what, it's completely okay that this might change and this might get reconfigured, but the key for me is to really get a good grasp of everything that's possible and everything where I could go. And, and I just want to encourage you to start thinking about your opportunities and thinking about, like, well, how do you dive out and break in and go really deep into some of these things so that you can achieve more and you can actually do it in a harmonious way. But what does it even mean to be in a harmonious way? Well, let's dive into this another level. So out of all these things that we would be doing and filling in and like, filling in these rocks and filling in these initiatives across the ward aboard, we still need to be able to go in every single month and measure how we're doing, measure the progress, measure how we're, you know, and that can happen in your life scores when you go in and do like, A weekly review. Like, did you accomplish the things that you were wanting to accomplish in that first month? And remember, like the month has four, four weeks, right? So those four weeks you could have like, you know, two to three things that you do every single month or every single week. Sorry. And as long as you're like building up on that momentum, then you're taking these things and you're pulling them over and you're doing it in the next month, and you're doing it in the next month. But we gotta create that consistent system to be able to do that. And but sometimes too you're like, well, what do I need to plan? What do I need to put in there? These are some questions that I typically ask myself. You know, where I'm at. And based on the intention that I'm trying to bring, you can design and create your own intention blocks for the things that you're trying to think and consider before you even go into the month. So, for example, I will be thinking about like systems that need my focus, projects that need more, better flow, people that need feedback or guidance on things, new connections that need to be made. Right. Each one of these is a spur of a potential project and a potential opportunity to be able to go in and start tackling and doing something that is adding value to, you know, like I was saying, with my project passion, career and purpose goals, I also am still consistently connecting to all the opportunities, the purpose, priorities, how I want to show up through these events, how I want to interact with other people, and, and I have a clear vision and a clear idea of what success is going to look like. Same thing with outcomes that I need to focus on. When I'm scheduling and I'm doing these projects, I still need to be thinking about what the outcomes and what success is going to look like when I finish those things, or when the team finishes those things, or what is going to be next up in the process. The other thing that we need to consider is like the new initiatives that I want to explore or test. This might be like new things that new hobbies or new things that you want to try in your life, in your career, new ideas that you want to build momentum around, people you need to ask for feedback, new projects you want to start, then plan or start. There's all these questions and these are just really important prompts that you can ask yourself when you're doing some planning and when you're setting yourself up for that process. Inside of that also, there is the schedule, the block times, the rituals, routines, the Habits that you need to create while you're thinking about all these things. Things. So what does it look like to create rituals, routines, and as habits? Well, obviously there is. Obviously there's seven days in the week. Right, we all understand. Yeah, exactly. Kenneth. This is exactly like a parking lot for a lot of thoughts. And you can ask yourselves many different questions. You can put a lot of your different prompts inside of this. But the whole value of doing this is creating awareness and intention around the things that you're actually spending time doing. Now, if you don't ever. If you were never to think about, like, the things that you were doing, then when you come in here, let me just make this a different color so you can see this. And I'm going to turn off. Just unplug my AirPods here. So if you're coming in and you're kind of circling back and going through each of these different prompts, and then you're jumping back in, like, well, which intentions do I want to bring into this month? And which ones do I want to leave out? Because this is too much, like, you have that ability to tweak these things and to reevaluate when you're scheduling, planning, and doing blocks. But the reason why this is such a simple little graphic. But I still like, it comes back to those intentions that I want to have when I'm scheduling and I'm setting myself up during the week. So, like, in the beginning of the week, I really like to think about my priorities. I like to think about the intention that I want to bring. I like to think about the purpose and the joy of, like, oh, am I doing things that are bringing joy to my life? Am I doing things that are helping me expand my horizon? Like, I have dedication. I want to have practice. I want to have outcomes, successful outcomes. And. And then I want to be able to benchmark, evaluate, and measure what's going on every single. Every single, like, month. Because if I'm not, like, thinking about or evaluating what's going on, then I might be going down the wrong path. And when I'm scheduling and building systems, I want to build this process into the flow, into the work, into the project planning, so that I have the ability to course correct on the dime. Like, when I need to course correct. Yeah. And. And then finishing that into Saturday and Sunday. It's about playing, adventuring and planning back to planning. And then I do this same thing over again. Another way to look at it when you go into your planning is thinking about, like, let's just Say you have one project that is really important to you and that you want to make a schedule around that one project inside that one project. If you were to break down that project into, you know, 10 phases or 10 letters or whatever it is, you can come in and do this rock exercise where you're breaking down this one specific project and like what is the most important thing? Where are we going to start and then where are we going to end up? You know, with the J. And if you can get into a habit of just like thinking about the start and the end of a project that you have, then you can do backwards planning, which is essentially starting with the outcome and then working your way back of how you're actually going to break it down to get to that desired outcome. We do this all the time in product and design because we often have to make things that don't even exist. You know, we're creating things in the product experience that you know, literally do not exist. And we have to think about the interactions, we have to think about the strivers, needs, like all of your needs and desires and wants and make sure that we are looking at all the different potential opportunities to make that experience amazing. So, you know, we start with the end game in mind and we start about like what does success look like for this? And then we'll work our way backwards and for all of these projects. As a leader and as like just a high performance coach, I'm often training and teaching my customers and my clients to think about the purpose and why, the needs and the problems they're trying to solve. What are the goals, what are the priorities, what is the design and the craftsmanship of what it is you're creating. Now even if you're not a product designer, you're in a completely different discipline. You have the ability to think about the quality of your output, the quality of your communication, the quality of how you execute the things that you do. And it's same thing goes into if you're in business or even if you're human, you have to collaborate and communicate and execute things. Collaboration, communication and execution of things. These are things that will really help your flow. And then the same thing goes, we got to make sure we're evaluating, measuring success and we got to make sure that we're bringing joy in the things we do or else like why we do it. These are two also visuals. When I think about like now obviously I'm in product and design and people development and you know, I often am going back and forth between people and processes Well, a lot of schedules really break down when, when there are, you know, when you have 10 people of like 10 different people, a lot of different ideas, a lot of different concepts, so many different plans and ways that people get something done, like the processes, but then you have all these different people that you need to engage with. Now this graphic's purpose is to help you think about all of those things in a harmonious way so that you're not just siloing yourself from. You know, it's just my plans, it's just my schedule. Like if you're working with other people and teams, you can build one schedule that's congruent with all of those people's initiatives and then be blocking time and schedule so that you can actually like get those things done, have those weekly check ins, have those daily standups and be able to work yourself towards improving in success. And then this other, you know, especially with the whole growth ability of having the, this whole month be about learning faster. Well, for me, learning faster is having a really good creative learning loop and I call it the growth loop. And the growth loop allows you to reflect, to train, to learn, and to take action and then do it in a harmonious way. So these top four actions outside of the figure eight are the ingredients that you can do inside of the Growth day app. So you can reflect with the journal and also with life scores so you know, like where you're currently at. And then you can also take action with planning and setting your priorities inside the plan tool. You can also go through and have these learning experiences to work on your personal development. But also if you're like, if you're in the like masterclass, if you're into like other learning programs, that's great too because you can still schedule and plan these things and go learn them and then be able to, you know, mark it off your list. And these are the things that you're trying to do. Same thing with like, you know, the training, the practicing, the playing, these are all ingredients that, you know, these are the things that are non negotiable for me every single week, the things that I'm going to tap into. And this again is a system. This is an example of a system. This was a system. And this is a system, you know, having awareness of your surroundings and what it is that you're doing and then building a way for you to actually execute the things that matter most to you. That is building a system. And you gotta be aware of the systems and the things that you do and to top it off and then we can open it up for questions. Cause we have plenty of time here. The other things that I want you to consider is if you work in product like, you would be thinking about your other product ecosystems that you support or you're interacted with. But the key here is to learn and to know your environment. For example, if you're in a environment where you only have certain quiet time in your house or other places. Oh, okay. Welcome, Kelly. All good? So when you're thinking about the environment that you're in, the environment can have a dramatic effect on how well you move things, what your velocity is. So even though this is like kind of design related or product related, I want you to think about, like what is your environment that you have to do the work that matters to you most? Do you have quiet time? Is it morning, is it in the evening? When do you actually get things done? And then you also want to understand the people ecosystem that you work with. So let's just say you interact with four or five people to help you execute your schedule every single week. Or you have even a bigger team, could be 50 people, 100 people, whatever. Think about those people and what their needs, desires and ambitions are. Because when you're going through and you're doing your planning and, and if you know what your team's goals and challenges and opportunities are as well, like these things over here, then what you can do is get in alignment with how you all move forward together. And as you work with teams and you collaborate, this is a really great way to increase the velocity and the speed of how you get things done. What up? Okay, cool. So let's keep moving. So this other graphic when I was just talking about like for all the milestones that you're trying to create, what are the labels in the box? Oh, product. These two. Michelle, are you talking about these two things here? Michelle? Oh, yes. Okay, so this is environment. Environment. So thinking about when we were, when we're looking at all of these different things, what I was talking about was the environment that we're in has a dramatic effect on how swiftly and smooth that you can execute things. So, so I have a product ecosystem because I'm in product development design. So I'm building tech products. And you know, we're working at growth day. So I'm building like a product ecosystem. And then I also have a people ecosystem that's always working in my mind as well. So all the people that I need to support or the people that are gonna help me advance the things that I need to advance. I need to understand their needs, their desires, their ambitions and the things that they're doing then. The recipe for building a system is really thinking about your Monday through Sunday schedule. And the best way to do this is to literally start out, get a piece of paper and write out what your recurring meetings are every single week. Start there. Don't try to do too much right off the gate. Map out. When I say map out, I mean just write down Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. What are the recurring sessions that you absolutely have to have every single week to do it, to do what you want to do. Then after you have that, then you can start thinking about like the morning, the midday and evening. When are you going to actually get stuff done? Right? The when then is so important. So when am I going to look at my priorities and start engaging in my rituals, routines and start integrating the things that I'm doing or the things that I want to do. I call Monday my Monday motivation. Then in Tuesday I start to build momentum around the things that I set off with my team. And this is going to be different for everybody. But the key is to get really aware and intentional about how you're actually spending your time. Then when we come in to Tuesday, we're like, oh, Tuesdays for me is like a training and execution day. These are the top things that I'm going to do on those days. I'm going to be learning and growing and doing the things and, and I even have like little like examples here. So I'd encourage you to take a screenshot of this and think about how you would design yours. And then you go through, and then you refine this over time based on how well you're doing and how well you're flowing and what your, you know, your kind of, your chemistry and how it feels when you go through your weeks. And the whole key is to find your flow. And there's a really good book out there called Flow. I would definitely encourage you to check that out. Alright, cool. Then the last part, right, we already showed you that. But I'm going to circle back here and then I'm going to come on video. Come off. Oh, here we go. Sorry. All right, so last thing with all me showing you all this, right, we have schedules and we have plans. Schedules are the ways that we can create recurring activities to help us move things forward. The plans are going to include the giant milestones, the giant things that are going to help advance us. You can all do that inside of Growth Day. The second thing Is we really got to consider our flow and our systems. The flow and the systems are important because this is what's going to help you maintain. Maintain the energy and the motivation and the way that you're actually going to make sure that you knock out m One month, one. It's going to be amazing. I'm going to do all these things. Got to get in flow. I'm not going to be, like, getting pulled and pushed every different direction. I'm going to have boundaries. I'm going to say set boundaries. Because I have a schedule. People know when they can reach out to me. People know when I'm gonna be doing certain amounts of work. And then I have these systems in place that are gonna help me get reminded inside the Growth Day app. They're gonna help me have plans that I'm gonna follow to build better routines. And it's all gonna be connected to my mission and my purpose, like, what it is that I'm doing. And then that, to me, is like scheduling a very holistic view of what you're gonna do every single month. So if I'm gonna stop sharing my. I'm gonna stop sharing figma for a second. I'm gonna come back to y', all, and I want to bring y' all up on the stage. Like, is anybody right now? Like, I don't know where to start. I don't know where to begin, and I'd love to just talk to you about it. Lack of control of my day. Well, Kenneth, if you don't mind me, just, like, elaborate on that. So the. If you feel like you have a lack of control of your day or this. Kenneth, if you want to come up on stage, we could talk about this. But I think, like, oftentimes, like, when I was first starting in planning and, well, actually didn't even know how to plan, I would just take on what all the other people around me were saying that I needed to do. And it started I felt like I didn't have control over my destiny and over the things that I wanted to achieve and the things that I want to do, I just got really good at being super, like, super fast at creating and getting really good at the skills that were going to help me be a successful product designer. But once I tapped into, like, taking ownership over my schedule and taking ownership over the systems that are behind the scenes that nobody ever sees, but these are the things that help keep me sane, help keep me focused, and help keep me intentional with how I want to show up, then my whole life completely changed. From that moment on, because then I was like, I wasn't just helping myself. I was helping the teams that I was working on. I was helping become a better leader. I was helping be able to accomplish way more than whatever set out for. So if you don't feel like you have control, control over your day, the first question I would ask back to you is, why? Why do you think you don't have control over it? Is your nine. Is your eight to five or your nine to five already booked and scheduled? Is it like that every Monday through Sunday? You know, where are the things that you do have control over and what are the things you don't have control over? And you can start working backwards and starting to really plan out your days, weeks, and your months. So I'd love to tap into that a little bit more if anybody has any other question questions about it. And then also just thinking about, like, how do you do this inside of the Growth Day app? Let me just actually, y' all can follow me in the experience. So I'm gonna head over to the plan tool. Actually, let me just share my screen. It's fine. I'll share inside the product. But does anybody want to come up and talk about and put. Put themselves on the stage and literally talk about some of the challenges that you're facing with this? Okay, so Stacy had said, here, let me go over to the plan. Actually, not sure. I know that there's a plan section of projects and tasks. Is there a place to keep track of habits and routines outside the journal section? I'd like to get more granular in a routine tracking rather than keeping in the bucket, like, energy. Okay, great question. So the first thing I want you to do, Stacy, is go over to the plan tool, and if everybody wants to also follow, head over there. And then it looks like. Yeah, let me bring you up, Kenneth. All right. While Kenneth is coming up to stage, like, inside the plan tool, Stacy, there is a plethora of different ways to look at this. Like, I could literally, you know, create a plan around, you know, what I would typically do, you know, if I'm creating it for, let's just say, December plan, I can set a due date, and I actually want to have this done. I want to have this done before December. I want to have, like, my intention and everything planned out before that. I also maybe want to get a reminder a week before at 8am about this plan, and I can come in, create this plan, and then begin filling this in. But obviously, like, starting with a blank canvas can be Kind of challenging. So where I like to start is thinking about. And I've said this and I've done this before in another growth group is like, I want to first, like, kind of think through what are the things I'm maintaining in December, what are the things I'm advancing, and what are the new starts, like, new things that I need to kick off. And then I would just do, like, a, like, kind of a deep dive into, like. Well, I'd write out all the things that I'm thinking about, all the things that I'm trying to plan, things that I'm trying to do. And then after I come up with that list, be like, you know, if it's this A, I could come in and add a whole nother level to this. So sorry. Let me see what's going on here. So I could click this little arrow on the side and it would open up sidebar. But right now it feels like it's not. Maybe it's because I'm in a growth group. It'll come up. But while it's doing that, I'm going to hold for a second. Kenneth, do you want to. Do you want to share your thoughts or questions? I'd love to hear from you, buddy. Yeah, I can hear you. Cool.

I was trying to figure out the settings on the microphone. I was like, I don't know which one.

You sound great, man. You got it.

Awesome.

Yeah.

I think my biggest issue is just my starting my own path as trying to build a business and all that. I kind of just fly by the seat in my pants most days, and I'm. I have these things of goals that I want to reach and kind of like some steps I want to take. But at the same time, I am retired military. I still see a lot of medical appointments for taking care of whatever issues I have when I was active duty, and those tend to get in my way. And I feel kind of flustered at times when I start looking at all the things I want to accomplish. It's like, oh, wait, and now I gotta pause and schedule this middle appointment. And part of me wants to neglect them and stop doing it. But then I might as well have never got out of the military.

But. Right.

But, yeah. So I guess I just conflicted on how do I really just get a hold of that and stop, you know, I guess have more intent.

Mind my day. Yeah. I mean, I think, like, even if I was. If I was like, to work with you, I would. I would first, like, want to go back to just one a giving Yourself, Grace, because, you know, things happen with our bodies and sometimes we need to take off. Like I was like, even just being sick the last couple weeks and I was like, I haven't been sick in like three years. So I was like, I couldn't move, I couldn't do the things I wanted to do, but my mind was still going like a million miles a second. I wanted to do the things that I wanted to do, but I just couldn't physically do it. And I think that that's, that's a part where, you know, you, you still can operate and think about like the plan, like the, the systems that you're gonna need to have long term sustained growth. And it's not just about like, oh, I have to, I have to, I'm building this new business. I have to do everything right away. I have to do everything like this, this time. And I know there's probably a sense of urgency that you have because you're starting a new business, you want it to be successful. There's like a recession right now. It's like, you gotta go, go, go, go, go. But I think like stabilizing and you just starting to learn, okay, which days of the week am I gonna be most prolific and I'm gonna be most productive? What are those days of the week? How can I really make sure that I'm getting two to three hour, two to at least two to three three hour windows every single week. So if it's Monday through Friday that you work, or Monday through Sunday that you work, like, when are the two to three hour blocks that you're gonna have where you have zero distractions, everything goes away and then you can actually do the, do the things that you need to do the most important things. And if you're starting a business right, then there's like, you know, what's the most important thing that you like, what's your offer? And all these other things that you're gonna be creating. And Brendan's got some really great training on that, but you gotta really get clear on when you're gonna be integrating your actual, like the things where you're gonna have time to do the work. So where are you currently at with like, do you have like a clear idea or clear when you actually can do this stuff?

I mean, I guess take it back and start doing it anytime, but I'm, I'm kind of honing in on that brand identity right now. I'd probably say that I have a better picture of, you know, that problem I solved here in the Next couple of weeks, just because of the exercise I'm going through, but I'm up. You know, Another question popped in my head with this process is, like, how do you handle the unexpected? Or pivots in your system if you were to have, like, a family emergency or, you know, some of those random things while adjusting to a new environment? Like, I'm not just home, I'm working from home. But sometimes it feels like I'm just home. Like, oh, look at that mess over there, you know, and there goes something shiny. And you'll chase that.

Yeah. And this comes back to that accountability that was being messaged earlier when we first started the session. Like, that's one of the challenges with schedules is like, oh, I need that accountability. And I think, well, how do you get more accountability? Is got to create more of a necessity around, like, a. More of a. The need behind the things that you're actually trying to do. So that's why you got to go back to, like, what's your North Star? What's your big dream? What's your big plan? And why is it so important to you? If it's like, because you want to, you know, it could be. It could be anything, buddy. Like, whatever is, like, the core primary reason why this is so important to you. You have to reconnect to that every single morning, every single night. That way when you wake up the next day and, you know, you get, like, all these other distractions and things, you can stay focused, like, oh, I'm not going to do the laundry right now. Right now it's time to get it done. It's time to do the primary core actions that are going to help me move the actual needle this week. And then, oh, you know, things are going to come up with family, and you're going to have, like, you know, all of us have, you know, losses that we have in our families and things, and those curveballs are going to hit us. You know, they could hit us every single month in different ways. But then it's like knowing that you still have a system in place, like a schedule of blocked times for you to go and do the things. Then you know that when you're. When you're done with this, you know, family emergency or this thing, then you can slide right back into the system that you already created. But when you don't have a schedule and you don't have those blocks, times of when you're actually learning or when you're executing or when you're advancing things, then you can get into a A problem where you don't know where to kind of start again because you never had something that was keeping you in a flow, in rhythm. And you know, that's, that's like in design. That's why we have like design systems and that's why we have, you know, programs and development life cycles so that when somebody's out, like, we can keep moving through the entire workflows of what it is that we're creating. And you know, it's like you can fill in the gaps. And I think the same thing about how we, how we block out our calendars and how we schedule things. We still have to be able to go back in and find those, the systems. Like that one graphic that I had where all the Monday through Sunday and thinking about like how you actually flow throughout that week, you got to have a really clear idea of when those days are. So like Thursdays and Fridays for me are like big training days. So I know that if I'm like on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, it's like advancing the product, advancing the product in so many different ways. And then on Thursdays and Fridays, I know that I'm training and then I'm recording and I'm doing editing and I'm doing other things that are just fall into that place. So you gotta start learning what your moments are to be able to really advance things forward. And you might just need to be able to like, you know, write out those, what your next things are for this month and then coming in here and actually like setting reminders for it. And that's how you can create better habits in the tool, like just setting reminders and, and then using the journal to be able to reflect like morning and evening, like how you're actually progressing. And that's going to help increase your awareness so you know actually what you want and how you're moving through things and then you can get a little bit more support. But it is a big, a big challenge when you got all sorts of distractions. But you got to bring it back to necessity. Like, why do you really want to do what you want to do? And that should be the thing that motivates you and fires you up every single morning.

I think this is a great place. Definitely interested in using this tool. And I've been writing down a list of all my like, tasks on an ideal day, right? This is the things that or ideal week. And here's the things I'm expecting for myself, here's the things for the family, and try to see how I can merge them all together. And then the tough part, I know is gonna be challenging, but is just incorporating those habits because, yeah, it could be. It's easy to get overwhelmed.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm interested to go through this process.

It'd be exciting.

Right on, right on. Like a simple way also to like, for everybody that's still on the call, like, to think about, like, if you were to simplify, like, I know that I showed you a pretty advanced way of scheduling, but if, if you're, if you're trying to even like break it down even smaller, it would be like, well, what are the, what are the, like the six or seven things that I have to do to do every day? Like, what are the things I want to do every day? Like, for me, it's like these, these like questions, like just knowing what my top priorities are of the day, writing them out on a, you know, quick little post it, or just having them really clear my mind, thinking about the people or persons that I need to reach out to, you know, what is my mindset to actually win the day. I use the daily fire to really kind of set the tone for me. And you know, I get to work with Brandon, but I also like love his coaching. He's got great coaching and he gives you the daily fire in the mornings. And then that's another way to kind of recalibrate, make sure that I'm focused on what it, what it is that matters most. I'm getting a little learning and then I like to connect to great. Some gratitude on like what I'm grateful for. And then throughout the day, I know that there's going to be at least one time where I need to do some like, meditation, I need to do some reflection. I'm going to work on my fitness and then I'm going to integrate all those other things that I was doing with my routines with my team. The rituals that I'm going to do that I know are going to set me up for success every week. And then I'm going to practice high performance habits, which is just like, you know, clarity, building energy, having necessity, building influence, building courage and building in productivity in my life. And those are just the things that are going to help me stay well rounded. But then it's like, you know, going in and getting super clear like, like what I was doing for November, where I know the things that I'm maintaining, I know the things that I'm advancing. Like, for example, we're doing a lot of work on, on the existing product and existing tools but you can come back through here. This was like an old example, and I don't know if it's too small on the screen, but like, even just thinking about like, like the things that I'm maintaining, I want to maintain healthy work workout habits and cooking routines. I want to have a weekly growth group sessions with all of you shrivers every week. I want to really make sure that my team's rituals or routines to like, do design reviews, product reviews, usability testing, feedback, all those things are dialed in and ready to go. And the same thing, Kenneth, if you're in your business and you're thinking about like, what are the things in my business that I'm have to do every single week? If you're an influencer, then you have to start building in your content rhythm. You have to really start thinking about your schedules for when you're shooting or recording or teaching or whatever it is that you do. Or if you're. It's just like you start thinking about the things that are going to have to happen every single week and start building systems around those things. That way you're not having to keep track of every single little minute task. You're able to focus on the bigger challenges, the bigger problems. And then these systems that you integrate into your life are going to help you like, go and flow, get really fast, be very efficient, be very productive. And that's something that, you know, you just got to give yourself grace and patience to learn to adapt. And you know, with your background in the military to you probably have like a way of like, you probably super motivated to get it done. So it's just about like kind of fine tuning your systems and your schedules so it serves you and you're not working for it, it's working for you. So I really want to encourage everybody is like, make sure your schedule is working for you and you're not working and chasing things. You don't want to feel like you're chasing things things. Thank you so much for attending this session. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day and I will see you in the next one.