#249: Your 2021 Goal: Do Your Best With What You’ve Got

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. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. Just a quick reminder that you can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com Episode 2 49. Those notes include a summary of our discussion as well as any links to resources I mention during the show. I love, love, love this time of year. It's a great time to just pull back, take a break, reflect on the year that's just passed. And it's also a great time to look at the year ahead, especially the next 90 days, and just think about what you want to accomplish, what new habits you want to start, what kind of person you want to become, and so forth. But what do you do when you're in the middle of a once in a lifetime pandemic that's completely upended our way of life, our support systems, society as a whole, and possibly even our health or that of our loved ones? Does it even make sense to look back at a year filled with so much pain and chaos, such a dumpster fire of a year? And does it make sense to set goals and make plans for the year or even the quarter ahead? I mean, I don't know about you, I just feel like we don't even know what next week will look like, let alone next June. And there's been no moment in my life that I can think of where things have been just kind of so up in the air. I mean, it's starting to become more normal. I guess I'm getting a little bit more used to it. But for someone who is a planner like myself, this is difficult. It's very difficult to just kind of look ahead and make plans with some certainty. So look, these are all great questions and concerns and that's what I'd like to address in this episode. I feel like we need to just kind of talk about the elephant in the room and figure out, okay, what do we do here? How do we think about the year ahead? How do we plan? How do we set goals? Do we even set goals now? Look, before I get started, I just want to let you know that I don't pretend to have all the answers here. My hope is that we could just start a discussion here that you maybe give you some food for thought. I'm in the middle of this quandary just as much as you are. I think I'm just a fellow traveler in this crazy journey. I certainly am not immune to a lot of the fears and just kind of wild emotion and swings, emotional swings that have come from this year that we're just wrapping up. In fact, I should even mention that I have strong opinions about much of what's been happening and what lies ahead. But what's strange is that my opinions continue to evolve over time. I can't think of any other time in my life when I've kind of go back and forth on how I feel about some of these things. Everything is changing so fast. I consider myself to be kind of a deep thinker and I think I have a knack for seeing many sides to what's been happening out there because I like taking in information from multiple sources. I think that's a very healthy thing. I love hearing all the voices, all the sides of a story, all the different arguments, different analyses from different people with wide ranging perspective. I wish more people would do that. I'm not saying that, oh, I'm so great that I do this. I just. I naturally like to do that. And sometimes it's not easy and it's painful, especially when I feel like I've made up my mind on something and I still feel like I need to listen to a dissenting voice just to make sure to kind of do a self check and make sure that I'm not missing a big important part of the argument. The thing is though, while I see this approach as healthy, as a citizen of my country and the world and humanity, it also creates stress because I don't always take a firm side on an issue or decision. Like I said, I might do it, but then I change my mind the next week. Not with everything, but certainly with some issues and opinions with other issues. I've taken a very firm stance after much reading and thinking. And the challenge for me is that I have to be careful what I say because at least here in the States, we've become so polarized as a country, which is frankly so unnecessary. But it is what it is. We're so divided and everyone is just on the edge and what you say can easily be misconstrued. So I debated about what I should bring into this discussion, what I should come clean with. And I will say this. I'm going to be as open as I can in this episode. I want to be very frank with you. I want to be transparent, authentic I think it's important to do that, especially when it comes to how you deal with what's happening right now and the uncertainty of 2021. And it's important that you see that. Look, I don't have all this stuff figured out. I mean, I never do. First of all, in this year, more than ever, I really don't. Now, context matters, okay? And some of my suggestions need the right context for them to make sense. And I also feel it's important for you to know where my thoughts and beliefs and concerns and opinions are coming from. So if you understand how I feel right now as I'm recording this, my hope is that you'll understand my reasoning and my logic behind what I'll be sharing with you in this episode. Now, having said that, I want to be clear about something. I'm not interested in getting into an argument or discussion about this stuff. In fact, I've pretty much left Facebook. I deleted my Twitter account this year, only on Facebook, for a few of the groups that I belong to. I'm not contributing. I've opted out of pretty much all discussions out there. I feel that it's just toxic, at least most of what I was seeing. So please don't send me an email chastising me for what I say here. I left out this key point. Or you think that I'm. I don't know, that I'm unclear about something or uneducated about a topic. I'm not going to reply to those kinds of emails. I just feel like I owe you some background on my thinking, my explanations, and what I'm going to suggest you do to make next year the best year it can possibly be for you. So over the past few years, I've come to understand the importance of looking back before looking ahead. Okay, so let's start with how to kind of think about next year. And it really starts by looking back, not just going straight into 2021 or the first quarter of next year. For a long time, I was too anxious to look forward at the quarter and year ahead and just start making plans. I did that for as long as I can remember. But I've learned that if you don't stop to take inventory of the quarter or the year that's just gone by or that's about to wrap up, you're missing out on a critical element to setting the right goals and making effective plans for yourself and for your business. So as painful as it might feel like, it's important to look at the year that just went by. And I Strongly recommend you start there. I also suggest doing this exercise on a quarterly basis. I found that quarterly works better. Okay. The details or emotions are fresher. It's so much also easier to look ahead just 90 days rather than a whole year. And I've also found that you become much more realistic with your planning and the goals you set when you approach it on a quarterly basis than when you approach it as a year plan, as an annual plan for a long, long time. And by the way, I'm a natural optimist, but I think many of us, when we set goals, or even if you're not truly an optimist, we're way too optimistic. We're way too optimistic about what we can accomplish over a 12 month period. And I find that future Ed, I give way too much credit to future Ed and I just dump all these goals on future Ed. It's like, oh, future Ed's going to be able to handle all these things when future Ed is just really me. I know that sounds silly, but when you think about it, that's how we treat ourselves. That's how we put these burdens on our future selves believing that the future Ed is going to be 10 times better than the current ED. And maybe you will have that kind of year, but realistically, you're going to be incrementally better, not 10 times better by the end of the year. So I found that just looking at things, looking ahead 90 days and planning one quarter at a time and then looking back 90 days as you're doing that as part of this exercise is much more effective. Okay, so how can you look back at 2020? I mean, of course you can kind of randomly pick thoughts and events, but it's useful to have a bit of a structure. And for me, I need some journal prompts. I like to just kind of do brain dumps. I like to just kind of pour my thoughts onto the page. I resist sometimes because I feel like I don't need to do that. I want to kind of skip through all that and just kind of jump to the exciting stuff. But every single time I ask myself good questions and I just start writing, good stuff comes out. Maybe not for every single question that I ask myself, but at least half of them I would say, so let me give you some journal prompts that will help you kind of get the important stuff to rise to the surface as you're looking back at the year or the quarter that's just passed, what went well this year. And by the way, you can substitute year for quarter. Okay, what are the most important lessons I learned is I look back at the year or at the quarter, what am I most proud of? What were my biggest challenges? How did I try to address those challenges? Now, quick side note, be easy on yourself here, okay? This is not about making yourself feel guilt or shame. You're just taking stock, okay? So try to detach yourself emotionally from your answer. If I could call myself on the phone this time last year and I had only two minutes to say something to my December 2019 self, what would I tell him or her? And what advice would I give myself? Okay, so, interesting concept, right? It's a thought exercise. You're calling yourself a year in the past. You got two minutes to give yourself advice, okay? It's a gift. And let's just assume you don't have to convince your past self that it's really you. Okay? So you can skip through all that. What would you say to yourself a year ago? So spend a good time on. A good amount of time on these questions, okay? Don't rush again. Just kind of let the thoughts pour out on the page and just see what comes up for you. You don't have to answer every single question. My suggestion would be to, you know, use the ones that resonate with you, the ones that speak to you. So that's the past. That's looking back at the last quarter, which is what I would recommend, or the past year. And you can see that it's. Sometimes it's difficult. This is why I like doing a quarterly. It's difficult to think of the whole year, especially a year like this year. I mean, I don't even remember what I did last week, you know, let alone in January or. Well, I remember March very clearly, but it's. It's a big part of the year is a blur. All right, so let's move into now, the present, taking stock of the present situation. Because. Because even after looking back, you don't want to jump right into setting goals and planning for 2021. You want to take stock of where you are currently here. Again, you want to go easy on yourself. In a year like 2020, it's very easy to look back at what's happened, take stock of where you are right now, and start feeling really bad about yourself and your progress in your business and your personal life. Okay? I say this from experience, so this is where I'm going to go on a bit of a preamble, but I hope you'll stay with me even if you disagree with some of My reasoning. Okay, I just want to again, just open up and just kind of give you an idea of where I am right now as I'm starting this process and why I'm having to just kind of deal with all this and just process all these emotions. And in order to really not only take stock, but to get really clear and start identifying things in my life and emotions that need some work that I need to manage wrangle better. I want you to know that most of humanity is experiencing some degree of pain and loss right now. I mean, you know that. Let's just start with that. So if you feel that way, you're not alone. And if you are, it's totally normal and okay to feel this way. I know I am. And sometimes I feel weird that, oh my God, why am I in such an emotional rollercoaster? Totally normal, totally fine. There's an excellent article that was published this past summer titled your search capacity is depleted, it's why you feel awful. And I'm linking to it in the show notes and I would encourage you to take a look at it. It's very, very good. I don't agree with every single thing she says. There's some tones in there that I didn't really care for, but there's some really good stuff in there. And it helped me kind of better understand why I'm going through what I've been going through this year. The author explains that when the pandemic hit in March here in at least in the US and I know in lots of different parts of the world, March was kind of ground zero. Most of us started tapping into what she refers to as surge capacity in order to operate day to day. And I'll quote from the article here. She says surge capacity is a collection of adaptive systems, mental and physical, that humans draw on for short term survival in acutely stressful situations such as natural disasters. But natural disasters occur over a short period, even if recovery is long. Pandemics are different. The disaster itself stretches out indefinitely, end quote. Then she goes on to say, and I quote again, when it's depleted, it has to be renewed. What happens when you struggle to renew it? What happens is, when you struggle to renew it because the emergency phase has now become chronic, what do you do? And that's a lose quote. But yeah, that's a great point. So when it's depleted, it has to be renewed. But what do you do when you struggle to renew it because the emergency phase has now become chronic? I mean, there's like no end to this it feels like maybe many times. How do you adjust to a situation that continues to change and evolve weekly when the new normal is indefinite? Uncertainty. The author also introduces a very interesting concept, something called ambiguous loss. Something I've never even heard of before. But it's any loss that's unclear and lacks resolution. In the case of the current situation were in, we're talking about a loss of a way of life, of the ability to meet with friends, family and loved ones, of being able to celebrate the holidays together, or to have our kids going to school in person. The loss of losing our freedoms to eat at a restaurant or take your laptop to a coffee shop to work on a writing project or to go to the beach. So the loss is not the death of a loved one, but. But it's still very much a loss, a major loss. And the interesting thing is that when you experience an ambiguous loss, you still go through the same experiences as the loss of a loved one. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. So that concept really resonated with me from the article because I felt all those things this year. And frankly, I have to admit that I've experienced a lot of anger. And here's where I just want to be honest and vulnerable with you. I'm angry and I've been angry because people are dying. People who went into 2020 having no idea that this would be their last year on this planet and they wouldn't even be around for Christmas. I'm angry at the deep seated racism that still exists in this country. This year has shown us that it's a reality and something we really have to own and deal with head on. It's always been a reality, but it's become so much more visible to all of us this year. But also anger at the fact that we're not looking at the problem like I feel we should. You ever been in a situation where you feel like you have a really strong viewpoint or argument or a logic that nobody is thinking of it that way and it's so clear to you and you're thinking, why isn't anybody talking about it this way? That's how I feel about it. I strongly feel that this goes way beyond an issue of science. And please pardon me, pardon the editorial, I'm just trying to give you an idea of where my head's been at. This is really an issue about choices and trade offs. And it angers me that we continue to obsess over the science argument when frankly, not even the scientists truly know what's going on. Now bear with me here. My point is that there are studies that point to one solution and just as many studies that contradict those solutions and offer a different perspective. So who's right? I don't know. But it angers me that we're not having an honest and balanced discussion about that, that the narrative is so myopic and overly simplistic. Because at the end of the day, this really in my mind is a discussion about trade offs. For example, what's the long term impact? Just bear with me, okay, this is what I mean by trade offs. What's the long term impact of people losing their jobs and their businesses going under? What's the impact of parents not being able to work because their kids are home doing online school? What's the impact of millions of single moms who have to leave their kids home alone every day, young kids because there's no school and the moms have to go to work to provide for their kids, for their family? What's the impact of low income inner city kids falling so behind on school that they may never catch up? There's plenty of evidence showing that online school is failing low income kids in a massive way. What's the impact of imposing ever increasing demands on our public school teachers who are already overloaded with unrealistic expectations going into this pandemic? What's the impact of the income inequality that this pandemic is creating? Income inequality is already a huge problem, but this fiasco is making it much, much worse. What's the impact of people not getting their cancer screening or their important health checks that could save their lives because they're afraid to leave the house or let alone set foot in the clinic? That was happening for many months. It's gotten better, but it was happening for many months this year. What's the impact of mortgaging our kids future with trillions and trillions in additional national debt here in the US that they'll never be able to get us out of? What's the impact of broken and severed relationships, of increased lack of trust in our leaders? And just as important in science and scientists, what's the impact of the chronic depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse? It comes when life as we know it has been completely disrupted and we keep going in and out of a lockdown? Again, it angers me that the narrative, at least in the United States, doesn't include these important variables. They get mentioned in passing every once in a while, but that's about it. So these are all important questions that I feel are not being Asked seriously, what's the answer? Look, I'll admit that getting stuck in anger is not healthy. It has not been good for me, okay? So that's why I wanted to open up about, you know, out of all those feelings, I've gotten stuck. Or I keep going back to anger. And I've realized that moving into acceptance as best as we can is a good start, and I'm working on that. I'm being very intentional about moving on because the anger has not served me. Now, with that, here are some good journal prompts to help you take stock of your current situation. What's going well in my business right now? Where am I feeling stuck in my business? How can I start making some progress in those areas? Who could help me do that? Who could help me make that progress? Does the idea of ambiguous loss resonate with me? If so, which grief stage am I having trouble with? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, or acceptance? What small steps could I start taking to better deal with this loss with the understanding that it's not a race and I can only do what I can do right now? Again, this anger thing is. I have to admit that I'm angry at things that I can't control. I have no control over those things. I can't change it. I can't change the pandemic. I can't change what our leaders are doing. And because I'm dealing with an ambiguous loss, which by its nature means that it's unclear and lacks resolution, I need to focus more on the things that I can control. And that's what I'm working toward. I can control my emotions, I can control how I react to events and information and what I decide to do about obstacles in front of me. The inputs, right? The things that I'm consuming, the information I'm consuming. This is a big reason why I've largely left social media. It was not helping. I've also decided to expect less of myself as a high achiever. That's very difficult. I don't give up easily, and my nature is to just go, go, go. Not because I have something to prove, but because I'm just wired to go after new goals that excite me. That's my motivation. It's like, oh, that sounds so exciting. I want to do that. I want to achieve that. I want to get there. The process, by the way, for me, many times the journey is what's exciting. It's not so much the outcome, but I've come to the realization that my surge capacity has been depleted this year and that's not healthy because I have no emotional margin. I know that. I accept that and I've started to work on this. So for me it means more and better self care, more time for myself, which is something I discovered I gave up this year and that's not good. I, you know, that time for my me time, more time in nature, more time away from work, more quality one on one time with my wife and my kids. It means giving myself time to just be. To grieve this ambiguous loss, to just sit there and relax and give myself a mental and emotional break. It means working on new creative projects. So this is an area that I feel needs special attention in 2021. It's something I've ignored in 2020 for the most part and I want to get back into right away. And I'm going to get back into. It's an important part of self care and it's something I'm excited about. So I want to get back into drawing. And at work I'm working on some new exciting initiatives and projects that require a great degree of creative problem solving and that excites me. I love solving problems creatively and it's important that I get back into that is I need means taking better care of my health in the way of more sleep, better nutrition, more consistent mindfulness meditation. I think I'm doing pretty good with the exercise this year. That's one thing that I didn't let go of. But those other areas are still a work in progress. And continuing my work on setting and upholding boundaries has definitely been an area of improvement, but something I need to continue to work on. It means accepting my limitations, accepting that I have only so much time and emotional energy in the tank and I can't keep pushing it to the max. I need to build and maintain those emotional reserves. No one can operate at their best when they're dealing with all this BS at once, and I'm certainly no exception. It also means working on my most important relationships, which has been an important focus for me this year. I'm proud of that. I've done well, but I want to continue to do even better. So looking ahead at 2020, you can probably see why it's important to have all this rich context in front of you before you even start thinking about goals for the following quarter and the following year. Especially this year, you have to take stock before you do anything else. You have to look more deeply at what's happened and what's happening in your life right now. Without that, your future plans will likely be hollow and lack meaning. I'm still going through this process myself as I record this episode. Again, as I mentioned, this is I'm taking some time off and I'm making it a point to work on these things. But I can tell you two things that I'm doing a bit differently in 2021 in terms of approach, the approach that I'm taking. First, I'm going to be way more focused on developing habits and systems than anything else. I'll still identify outcomes I want to achieve. Doing so is going to give me clarity and focus, so that's important. But rather than obsessing over how I'm tracking and progressing toward each outcome, I'm going to be way more focused on identifying the habits and systems and practices that I need to consistently deploy in the things that are basically going to increase the probability that I'll achieve those outcomes. So I'm going to be focused on the process and the discipline and the daily habits rather than the outcome, and obsessing over the outcome all the time and just making sure that I'm being consistent in developing those habits and deploying those systems and practices. I've done this before, but this time I'm going to double down on habit development and create a much greater focus around that. Second, I'm going to be much more focused this coming year on who instead of how. After reading the excellent book who, not how by dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy, I'm more convinced than ever that I need to focus on finding the people who can help me achieve specific goals rather than focusing on how I can personally accomplish them. Which is very much the do it yourself approach that most of us have been taught and we follow religiously, kind of figuring out the how and working on the how. Well, you can find a who who already knows the how. That's a lot cheaper, better, more efficient, easier, and allows you to focus on what you do best. And I'm going to do all this in all areas of my life, not just in my business. So let's talk about some journal prompts that you can use to now look ahead into the first quarter or all of 2021. If I could visit the future and look at my life one year from today, what would need to have happened this past year in order for me to feel happy with my results in this area or these areas? What one big project or initiative, if deployed properly, would have a massive impact on my business next year? What if I had a family or health emergency, could only work two hours a day for the next few months? How would I spend that time? Now, that's definitely a thought exercise. This is not something that hopefully will happen to you, but it's a it's a great way to get clear on what you would do in the case of an extreme situation. It really helps you clarify values and priorities how could I be nicer to myself this coming year? What three habits would change my life in 2021? How can I make each of those three habits more obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying? And those, by the way, are James Clear's Four Laws of Habit Development from his amazing book Atomic Habits. Who can help me achieve each of these goals or outcomes faster and with less stress? What simple action could I take today to kickstart that habit again? All these prompts are listed in the show notes for this episode, so make sure to take a look at those. If you're somewhere we can't take this stuff down, and I encourage you to give each some thought and just let everything kind of pour out on the page. To say that these are difficult times. Again, it's an understatement, right? That's why now more than ever, it's so important to take a more thoughtful and comprehensive approach to your planning. Don't just set goals. Take a broader approach by looking back at 2020 and looking at where you are now and asking yourself the tough questions. Doing so will give you the context and perspective you'll need to set goals that are truly meaningful and realistic. Above all, go easy on yourself. Remember that there's a good chance your search capacity is either very low or completely depleted, which means you're entering 2021 with very little emotional margin, so take that into account. Go easy. Be forgiving of yourself. Be mindful of any I should talk. Be mindful of false guilt, and just trust that all you can do is your very best and whatever comes from that will be good. I hope you have a wonderful new year and a happy, healthy and prosperous 2021.

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