#117: The 21 Questions I’m Asking Myself This Week

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Hey there. Thank you for joining me for episode 117 of the High Income Business Writing Podcast. My name is Ed Gandia and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to take their writing businesses to the six figure level or the part time equivalent. As a quick reminder, you can find detailed show notes for this episode by going to b2b launcher.com Episode 117 man, this is my favorite time of the year. Not just because of the usual things, you know, the holiday cheer, the parties, the time together as a family, but also because of the opportunity to look back at the year. This is to me, a great time to pause and reflect, to take stock of where I am, where my business is, where I am personally, what went right, what didn't go the way I expected, why things didn't go as expected, or at least try to analyze why. And this process used to be somewhat of a straightforward process. I used to, at this time of year, just kind of look at my goals, identify what I had accomplished, what I didn't accomplish, and then I'd kind of rush through a planning and goal setting session for the following year. And I will admit that by the time I got to that session, I had already given my goals for the next year a lot of thought. So there was a lot of tension built in. So I'd spend maybe a morning putting kind of a plan together, which feels a little rushed, but I did have a really good idea of what I wanted to do in many different areas of my life. But over the past couple of years I have gone much deeper than that. I now spend more time reading, journaling, studying, reflecting, and trying to get away from my environment as often as I can for at least an afternoon or even a day here or there. If I can get away for a whole week, that's always ideal. And I found that this really helps. So rather than trying to kind of rush through everything and try to nail down some sort of plan in one morning or some sort of fast track goal setting session, I find that I am more productive and I can do a much better job for myself if I really take the time to just kind of look at different things and really think about my life. So this year I'm doing something that I've started before, but very informally, and that is I'm giving myself a series of prompts to guide this effort and these Prompts are in the way of very specific questions that I'm going to ask myself, which will require me to focus my thinking and my reflection. So I recently spent some time developing these questions, and as I thought of more questions that I wanted to ask myself, I added to this list and then is I was wrapping up my final list. It was really cool. Tim Ferriss from the Tim Ferriss Podcast published a podcast episode where he detailed 17 questions that have had a huge impact on his life. And I found a few of his questions very relevant. For me, they were fascinating questions. Some of them I never even thought of asking myself before. So I incorporated some of them or some version of those questions into this list. And what I did is after a few days of just kind of letting all this brew, I came back to the list of questions and I did some trimming, some editing, some organizing, and I ended up with 21 questions, 21 questions that I'm using already this month to basically prompt me to journal. These are journal prompts that I'm going to be using just to kind of answer the questions, think about what I'm writing, think about these questions at a deeper level, and just see what I uncover. So I've already started the process, and as I answer these questions, I'm quickly seeing how helpful this process can be. So that got me thinking, well, if it's been helpful so far for me, it might be helpful for you, too. So what I'd like to do in this episode is something a little different. I'm going to share these questions with you, and I think you'll find most of these questions to be fairly straightforward. So I'm not going to spend a ton of time discussing each question or why I chose it. But where appropriate, I'll give you some. Some context and some. Some commentary, a little bit of background as to why I am diving into that question or why it made the list of finalists. So let's get to it, starting with question number one. What am I most proud of this year? What am I most proud of this year? This doesn't have to be a tangible goal. I would say that in the past it would have easily been a tangible goal for me. But these days, this is really looking at the question a little bit more broadly. So looking at things that happened or developed in the process of going after, maybe some big goals or in the process of working hard or just stumbling into something, Jim Rohn has a quote that I've always loved. He says the biggest benefit, and I'm paraphrasing here, by the way. But the biggest benefit of reaching a goal is, is not the attainment of the goal itself. The biggest benefit is what you become in pursuit of that goal. So one of the things that I'm really proud of this year that is just wasn't really part of a master plan was the team we've been able to build here at High Income Business Writing. So this team has grown. Our team here has grown up to seven of us this year, that includes myself. And we're really starting to gel as a team. And I got to give all the credit to this to Crystal Coleman, who runs operations here. She's put this team together. She works daily, weekly with the team and she's done an amazing job of just kind of managing all the moving parts and not just assembling an amazing team, but making sure we all work together well and that everyone's doing work they enjoy doing. Another thing I'm really proud of this year is the number of success stories that have come out from graduates of my coaching programs. This has been the first year. Well, I always get unsolicited emails from people who graduated saying, hey, things are going really well. I just wanted to tell you about this amazing thing that happened. But this year there was a significant uptick in those emails that were coming in. And it just, they. I can't tell you how happy they make me and how proud I am of these folks because, you know, it's. They did it. I guided them, I led them, I gave them some shortcuts, tip strategies. I, you know, showed them the way, but they had to do it. And they, they persevered, they worked through obstacles, they pushed through, and I'm just incredibly proud of them and I'm just in awe of what these folks have done. So one more thing that I'm proud of this year and I've continued to add to that list. I won't bore you with the rest, but I think it's a really good question. Maybe the first one you should start with, what am I most proud of this year? Second question. What are the most important lessons I've learned this year? That's another question I think requires some, some deep thought and reflection. You know, it's not what happened, what went right, what didn't go well. It's really what, what are the lessons when you look at everything good and bad. And you know, I, I mentioned at the beginning of the episode that I love the holiday cheer and I'm very mindful of the fact that this is not a Great time of year for everybody. You know, a lot of you listening may have had a very difficult year personally, professionally, and it's, you know, I respect that and I'm trying to be sensitive to that, but this is a great time of year to kind of think about that and, you know, what, what happened and if you've maybe stepped away from the pain, maybe revisiting that, certainly no therapist, but sometimes going back to that and looking at it from a different angle now that a little bit time has passed and you can look at it a little differently. I'm not saying look at it positively, but just looking at it a little differently can certainly help. I know it's helped me in the past. Sometimes in the middle of the pain, it's just too difficult to look at all the different facets of a situation. So I think this is the good and bad stuff. What are the most important lessons I've learned this year? Next question. What goals do did I meet? It's pretty straightforward. You know, have you set some goals out for yourself a year ago? Which ones have you met? Now that question is followed by what goals did I not reach? And as a follow up question to that, what stood in my way? So I didn't want to say why, because this is not about being guilty or feeling guilty. It's hey, okay, well, what, what got in your way? What do you feel got in the way of you achieving that? Whether it was yourself, other factors, just, you know, be honest with yourself. So what did I meet? What goals did I meet? What goals did I not reach? And then what stood in my way? And again, that second part of the question, that follow up question requires honesty. Where am I feeling stuck? Kind of related to the last question. You know, as you think about where you're having frustration, where you feel like you're not making progress, where is that nagging feeling coming from? You know, what is that nagging feeling? Where is it coming from? Why is it showing up? So why am I feeling stuck? Why does this keep coming up? Why do I have such a hard time doing this or getting past this thing or getting myself to do something or to stop doing something? Next question. What part did fear play in all this? What part did fear play in all this? This one's a tough for me because I think of fear very literally in most cases. And I'm starting to realize that many times fear shows up in my life in other forms. We did a great episode with Coach Jenny, episode 116, which I encourage you to check out if you haven't yet, or if you did, but you kind of glossed through it, go back to that, you know. Coach Jenny identified four different flavors of fear. And I quickly realized as I was listening to her in the interview that many times fear doesn't show up in the standard flavor for me, you know. So she described, I shouldn't. I. I don't know enough. I don't wanna. In some others. So sometimes for me, I think it's some of the other variations that I don't immediately recognize as fear. But if I look a little deeper, there is fear behind my inability or lack of motivation or just kind of a break. I tend to step on the brake thinking I'm doing it because it's a smart thing to do. But if I'm honest with myself, I think many times it's really fear. It's a version of fear that I'm not recognizing is fear. But here I am, I'm trying to keep one foot on the accelerator while my left foot is on the brake. And I think that left foot, many times is a version of fear. Next question. When I think about a typical workday, which activities do I look forward to the most and which activities do I dread? This is not a new question for me, but I'm revisiting because a lot of my work has changed this year, and I'm trying to do an even better job of paying attention to work that drains me, work that makes me happy, work that I can't wait to get into, work that I can't stand. Just two weeks ago, I was trying to document an internal process here that we could use, that I could publish and my team could learn from, and I could delegate this particular activity to somebody else. It was painful. I spent a couple of hours on something that would have probably taken somebody else 30 minutes, and I'm still not done with it. So I quickly realized, you know, I thought I was actually pretty good at documenting processes, but maybe I'm not. I don't know if it's this particular type of process, but I think if I. If I'm honest with myself, that is not a strength of mine. I can help lead that discussion. I can help someone, I can provide guidance for someone. But the detail involved in documenting a step by step process with many different moving parts, not me, I found it was draining me bad. So pay attention to those things. You know, there's no shame in the fact that maybe this is something that you thought or you should or you feel like you should enjoy or should be part of what you do every week, every day, but you're not enjoying it at all. And if you're not, ask yourself, you know, why? What is it about that activity? So really, this is all about trying to identify what you're really good at, what you enjoy, and what you don't enjoy. Next question. What would I spend my time on if I was forced to spend only two hours a week on my business? So what would I spend my time on if I was forced to spend only two hours per week on my business? So this particular question came from that Tim Ferriss episode I referenced a little earlier. And he explains that this is a ridiculous question, but that's actually the point. By exaggerating the constraints, this question forces you to think differently. You know, my first reaction when I, when I heard him say it was, obviously, you don't understand my business. There's just no way I could spend two hours a week. I wouldn't have a business. That's okay. It's actually meant to be a ridiculous question. So, seriously, and this is one I haven't touched yet, I started thinking about it, and immediately some really cool things started to pop up that I didn't think would pop up. So if you were forced to spend only two hours a week on your business, what would you do? This is an interesting one and one I've asked myself before, but I think it's one that's important to ask yourself frequently. What would I do if I inherited $50 million today? As a follow up to that, what would I work on? What would I try? What would I do differently in every role or facet of my life? So what would I do if I inherited $50 million today? So in other words, suddenly you wake up, money is just not even an issue anymore. Okay, so you name your figure, whatever it would be. Okay, great. What would you work on? Let's say after you got your travel out of the way, you know, you bought your dream house, you know, the, the car you've always wanted, whatever. I mean, whatever floats your boat. After you're done with that, what would you work on? You know, what things would you go after? What would you try? And what would you do differently in every aspect of your life? And again, don't just focus on work and leisure. Think about all your roles, all your areas of life as a parent, as a friend, as a community member, every possible role. How would the financial security issue change all of that? Next question. What? One big project or initiative, if deployed properly, would have a massive impact on my business? Next year. So initially I had worded this question as what three big projects? I just thought, well, let's. Three is a nice number. But then I realized that three is not constraining enough. So in the spirit of the previous question, in the previous couple of questions, actually, what would I do if I had to choose one project, one initiative? Okay. And I'm not talking about client projects. You know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about internal things to your business or in your, even your personal life. But what one big project or initiative, if deployed properly, would have a massive impact on my business next year. And again, I think you can ask this about your personal life as well. Next, where or on what am I spending a disproportionately large amount of time and energy considering the impact or ROI I'm getting in return. So it's kind of a wordy question. Here's where I'm going with that. What are you doing? A lot of that, when you consider the impact that action or that effort is giving you, is might not be worth it. It's completely skewed. So for me, I think the answer to that question, and I haven't yet, I'm going to have to do some analysis of my day planner, my weekly calendar. Just, just really think about this stuff because it's not something I give much thought to, but I know I'm spending time and energy on tasks and activities that I should be either reducing, delegating to somebody else or just eliminating altogether. What I'm looking for, though, is not just, you know, those occasional things. I'm talking about patterns. I'm talking about things that, man, I'm spending quite a bit of time on this every month or every week, and I choose to do it. But you know, when I, if I'm honest with myself, that's not an 80, 20 thing. You know, that's not part of the 20% of my time, energy and resources that are yielding me the 80% of the results. So I need to be honest with myself and I need to analyze it first and just see what turns up. I already have some ideas, but I really want to give that some more thought. What were my top two or three worries this year? And looking back, how productive was this worrying? Obviously, some degree of worrying can be helpful. I mean, if we didn't worry about anything, we would die, right? We would take no precautions. So I think some degree of worrying can, can certainly help you keep, keep you on track. But I wonder how much of it is completely unnecessary and I would venture to say that it's probably most, most worrying is probably completely unnecessary and does us no good. And I wonder, gosh, what will I think at the end of my life, you know, when I look back at all the time I spent worrying, you know, will I be, will I have regret? And if I had to answer that today, I'd probably say yes, I will probably have some regret there. There's a wonderful quote from the book the Alchemist. If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise. If bad things are, and you know in advance, you will suffer greatly before they even occur. So the lesson there is worrying just makes you suffer twice. You know, you suffer, but when you worry about the consequences, when you worry about what's coming and then you suffer again if and when they do happen, and even in situations when you can't change the outcome, let's face it, worrying is not going to do you any good. So it's better to live your life to the fullest, to live in the present as best as you can and not worry as much. Because worrying, it's isn't really not going to buy you anything. It's not going to change outcomes in many cases and it's only going to make you a miserable person. That is not me preaching, folks. That is a note to self. This is something that I struggle with. I think I naturally worry. Those of you who do it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It seems like, gosh, if we could have a transcript of the thoughts that go through our heads on a daily basis and we could highlight the worrying, it would be, you know, 80% highlight, it seems like. But it is something that I need to start addressing and I think a good first step is by addressing the top two or three worries for the year. If I could summarize them, that's going to take some reflection. Then what are they? I think if I can identify them, I can deal with them little by little. Next question. What if I slow down my work pace dramatically for a week? Or for those of you who have the opposite problem, where you need to get motivated to get back to the pace that you know will give you the results you want. What have you picked up your pay significantly for a week? I think this was a version of one of Tim Ferriss questions and I just think I reworked it a little bit. But until about four years ago I had no idea that I had a type A personality. And the reason I didn't know that is I guess I really didn't study Too well in my psychology class in college because I thought type A refer to how extroverted you were. So I thought type A was extroverted. Type B was introverted. And I for a long time thought that I was introverted. And then I realized I'm somewhere in the middle. So I thought, well, I'm neither type A nor type B. I'm embarrassed to say that until recently I didn't know the difference. And now I realize that Type A is not about extrovert versus introvert. Type A is about just having an achievement mindset. Four years ago I started working one on one with a business coach and I realized how driven I am. I'm a classic enneagram3, which is called the Achiever. And that means I can run full tilt for a while. I have a tremendous amount of stamina and energy, especially for my work. I can produce an incredible amount of quality work very, very quickly. To me it's a normal pace. For a lot of other people I thought that was normal, but for many other people it's not. So I am definitely very much Type A. So the question going back to that or the experiment in my mind, I often believe then I need X number of hours, let's say next week to get my work done. And quite often again, that's a pretty hectic pace when you look at it objectively. For me it's not. To me it's normal. So the question here is what would happen if I forced myself to insert some significant constraints into next week that forced me to take, let's say a 40 hour work week just to put a number to it and forced me to take it down to 20 hours. What would happen? And I started noodling over on this the other day. And what I realized was there have been times in my life where I had to, you know, go out, there was an emergency, you know, somebody was sick, something happened, I had to leave town, I had to stop working for a few days and go take care of some personal stuff. And it's amazing, probably when the week started I thought I was, you know, I needed every single hour that week to get done what I needed to get done. And suddenly my world got turned upside down or things changed and I wasn't able to put in but half that time and it all worked out anyway. I can't remember of an instance when something big happened that prevented me from working that week or for a couple of weeks in my world fell apart or my business crumbled. Hasn't happened yet, thank goodness. So it's just a thought experiment. You know, what. What if I slowed down? What if I just for kicks next week, said, you know what? Half of that stuff, not going to do it. What would I do? How would I handle that? Next question. How did I spend my free time this year? And what other leisure activities do I wish I would have spent more time on? So what could I spend less time on in order to make room for the things I want to do more of? I mean, that's really what it boils down to. But I do. I do need to do an analysis of, you know, what did I do during my free time this past year? What was the quality of that free time? You know, what. What should I have done more of, looking back, you know, what would have liked to do more of, less of? How good was I taking advantage of that free time? Another question. How well did I take care of my body this past year? And I have a tough confession to make. I did not do a good job of this in 2016. I started off great, had some great habits in place, doing very, very well, and one thing led to another. I cannot explain it. I think we've all been there. Looking back, I don't know where. How it started. It wasn't a sudden thing. It was a very gradual thing, which is a scary thing about this stuff. And second half of the year, not good. So that is going to be a big area of focus for me starting this year. How well did I feed my mind in my soul? So by soul, I'm talking about my spirit. So how well did I take care of my soul, my spirit, and, of course, my mind that I learned that I take time to feed both of these. There are some things I did right. There's some things I should have maybe done more of. There's some things I want to do more of and less of. It depends. I did start meditating much more regularly as part of my morning routine this year. I'm very proud of that. But I need to think about how I could take this up a notch OR2 in 2017. You know, my mind, my soul, some of that are many facets to this, the. That I want to explore, and that's gonna take a little bit of thinking. You know, this is not one of those areas where I can put a very specific goal to it. I'm gonna have to work around that and find a way that I can put some measurable elements in place to make sure I stay on track and it doesn't end up being kind Of a fluffy thing that just never gets accomplished, which personal relationships need improvement in my life. And I can certainly think of a few. So that's something I'm going to be journaling on for sure. Whom do I need to forgive? That's another question. You know, I'm an easygoing guy. I like to think of myself as someone who holds no grudges. But I'm going to force myself to be very honest with that question. Because when I'm starting to realize that there are different levels of grudges and ill feelings, and I can already tell that there are a few people I'm going to list here. I think when I traditionally looked at that question, whom do I need to forgive? In my mind it was, you know, who do I hate? Who can I not stand? And just, I could never think of anyone. But there are different levels of that, and I need to take a closer look at that and identify some folks whom I need to certainly forgive along that same question. What do I need to let go of? You know, my type A personality is very evident when things don't go my way. And I hate that. I hate that because honestly, I just want to be chill about things. I want to be okay with whatever situation I'm faced with. I really yearn for that kind of Zen like state. I got some good friends who are so good about that, and it just. Nothing phases them where things that are nowhere near what these people are facing just send me off a deep end. Um, so I have to do some reflection here in the next week or two about things that I'm holding on to that are not serving me. Most are relatively small, but, man, if you could again get a transcript of my thoughts. You think? They're all I think of. So an important question to ask myself. What do I need to let go of? What do I need to stop doing? Is the next question. What do I need to stop doing? So here I'm talking about habits, behaviors, activities, or practices that add little or nothing to my life. It's a question that I have not yet addressed. But there is something that I immediately identified when I was putting together this list of questions. Near the top of that list is going to be to delete the Facebook app on my phone and just spend less time on Facebook. Look, I'm going to look at digital diets, time away from my phone. It just, you know, as I look back, one of the earlier questions was about leisure time. I'm afraid to try to guess how much time I've spent on my phone this year, if I added it all up. In fact, that should probably be part of the question. What would that number look at? Like, what would that number look like? It's probably not hard to figure out. You know, um, if you just did a day and then multiplied that by 365, it would be a scary number. And then you ask yourself, you know, what could I have done with that time? And granted it's, it's a thought experiment in a way because these are little chunks here and there. So many times you can't put them together into, for instance, one week. But I think there's something there because many times you can put some of those little pockets together. So I'm going to be looking very closely at things that I need to stop doing in 2017. Next question. How could I be nicer and kinder to myself this coming year? You know, as a, again, Type A personality enneagram 3. The provider in my family, the hero, so to speak. Although I'm certainly no hero. My wife wears the cape. She really deserves all the credit. She is the hero. I find that I often think of myself last. You know, I feel this duty to provide, to just be the dad, the husband. And I don't think I am very nice or kind to myself very often. So I need to take a closer look at that and identify what I could do to be a nicer person to myself. Final question. This is really an umbrella question because a lot of the questions that I've already listed are going to touch this particular question or vice versa. This question is going to touch many of the things that I've already addressed. What five habits do I want to develop in 2017? What five habits? I want to identify five specific habits I wanted to develop in 2017. And then a follow up question to that is, what mini habit could I start with for each one? So what micro habit that would be so easy in my mind to develop could I use as a starter to develop the bigger habit in each of these five areas? This one is big, this one is so big. Everything, everything, everything is habits. You know, I've learned that if you want to change something big, the way to do it is to work on developing the habit that will enable that, not on trying to attain the goal. You know, it's. In almost every situation there's a habit element to it. You know, if you're trying to achieve something, there are habits you have to develop. And sometimes, you know, just focusing on the goal itself and obsessing on reverse engineering how you're going to get there. There is some, some benefit to that, but I find that many times is working every day slowly on the actions, the execution. That's really going to get you to that goal. I'm going to revisit the amazing book the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and I want to start reading the newsletters that the amazing James Clear sends out about once a week. I believe it's once a week or at least every other week. James clear.com check it out. He writes about habit development. That's his sole focus. And he's got some amazing content, very, very practical stuff. And I will admit that I don't read it very often, but I have all of his newsletters from 2016 in one folder. I'm going to start going through that as part of this effort. So that's it. These are the 21 questions that I'm already working through that I will continue to work through over the next couple of weeks. And frankly, that's plenty. There's a lot there. Although knowing myself, I'm sure I'm going to come up with a few other follow up questions to start getting deeper and deeper into this process. But I encourage you to noodle on some of these questions over the holidays and you know, in the first couple of weeks of the year, don't, don't feel like, you know, gosh, you have to have all this done by January 1st. I certainly am not. I see myself continuing to unpack some of this actually through most of January. Use these questions as journal starters. I think it's probably the best way that you can get the benefit you're going to need to get out of them. I think you're going to be surprised by what you'll uncover if you actually take the time to write out. At least, you know, let's say half a page to one page as an answer to each one of these questions. It's amazing how much is stored in your head and you think, well, I'm kind of thinking about the answer. But until you get it down on paper, you won't know what's really there. In the end, you have the answers, the answers are there. You need to get them down on paper. So this is the last podcast episode of the year. I'll be back next Friday with a best of blog post. But in the meantime, I wanted to thank you for all your support over the past year. I appreciate, appreciate all the comments you've sent, all the questions, the feedback, and I truly appreciate your support and your sharing of my message here at High Income Business Writing. You're sharing of these ideas with your friends and colleagues. I have some really cool stuff planned for you next year that's still developing, and I can't wait to help you build a better freelance business in 2017. Happy holidays and I wish you a happy, peaceful and prosperous New Year.

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