419: Defeating Distraction and Why “To-Do” Lists are Dangerous with Nir Eyal

This is The BiggerPockets podcast show. 4:19.

Does anybody need to buy a relationship book to tell us that? Hey, if you want to have better relationships with your friends, your family, your children, you have to be fully present with them. We know this. The question is not that why? We don't know what to do. We all know what to do. The question is, how do we get out of our own way? How do we stop getting distracted?

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What's going on, everyone? It's Brandon Turner, host of the BiggerPockets podcast, here with my co host in crime, Mr. David Green. David Green, how's it going, man? What's. What's shaking in Northern California right now?

Well, we don't have any fires. We did just get. We went backwards as far as everything has to shut down. So that's a little bit of a bummer. But it's okay because we got a breath of fresh air. We got to go out and eat at restaurants for a little bit of time. So overall, things are going very good. I've been spending quite a bit of time planning for 2021, like, time blocking time, where I come up with the goals that I want to hit for 2021, because that's really important. And today's guest talked a lot about that very thing.

Yes, definitely did. And speaking of restaurants, being able to go out to restaurants and bars, Monkey Pod here in Maui opens in 40 minutes ago for the first time in almost a year. And for those who know me, that is my favorite restaurant on the planet. It is unbelievable. So as soon as I hang up from this call, I'm going to Monkey Pod with my beautiful wife. So let's get to today's show because there are things that are important, and this show is honestly one of them. This is one of my favorite interviews I've ever done. I know I say that a lot, but this is so you'll hear my excitement, like, as we talk through this stuff, because this is, like, everything I've been talking about for months and months and months now about, like, identity and managing our time and being distracted. Our guest today, I'm gonna probably butcher his name, and I practice like, 20 times. But Nir, that's the first name. Near. Near Ayol. So he's an author. He's a, you know, he's written a couple amazing books. We'll talk about those on the show today. Uh, he's a tech entrepreneur all around. Wicked smart guy, taught at Stanford. Uh, and we're just honored to have him on the show today. Talking about things like distraction, things like how to keep focused, how to set the right goals, how to plan your schedule, why things like to do lists are a horrible idea. What matters more than intensity in trying to invest in real estate? Uh, we talk about a lot of this stuff, really, really valuable stuff today. So you guys make sure you listen to the whole interview. But before we get to the show, let's get to today's quick tip. All right, so today's quick tip is we are announcing a challenge here on the BiggerPockets podcast. David and I are going to challenge you to do something. We're going to call it the Take Time to think, the 4T challenge. Take time to Think. And here's all it is. You're going to understand why we're challenging you to this later in today's show. But this is a challenge. Whatever day you are listening to this on, I don't care if you're listening to this on the day it comes out or a couple days later or a year later. I don't care. We want you to take two hours this week right now. Go to your schedule, calendar, your Google calendar, whatever you use, and schedule two hours where you're gonna unplug. No phone, no music, and you're gonna just think, grab a pad and paper, and you're gonna think about your business, your life the next year, what your goals are, what you value in life. I want you to take two hours, and then David and I are gonna report. We're gonna make a post on our Instagram this week. Mine is at BeardyBrandon, David's at David Green 24. And here's what you do. We want you to go on that thread and comment what you got out of your two hours to thank your take Time to Think challenge.

So.

And that explain it. All right, David, the Take Time to Think challenge.

Yeah, it's really important. What we want everybody to understand is there's often things that are kind of floating around in the back of your head that are the right move for you in life. Your subconscious trying to speak to you. And we get so caught up with, gotta do this, gotta do that, gotta keep everything so busy because it feels Productive that you miss out on what could be right in front of your face. So Brandon and I do this regularly. We want you to experience it too. Don't confuse busyness for productivity. Take some time to think, see what rises up from the surface of your mind, and then you usually have a more clear head when it comes to prioritizing what you should be doing and what's gonna get you where you wanna go.

There it is. So it's the Take time to think challenge. You can look for. Hashtag take time to think challenge. You'll find more information about that there.

Hey, Brandon, for the people that we pick, what are they gonna win?

Yeah. Okay, so we're gonna pick three people each. Three from my Instagram, three from your Instagram. And we're just gonna pick people who, you know, left us a comment on that Instagram post. And those three people each, so six total, are gonna win any three books they want from the bigger pockets. So we got a whole lot of books. They're going to win any three books from the store.

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Guess we're pretty ready to jump into the show now. Keep in mind, this show is not specifically real estate related. Remember, we do the weekend episode, which is more about mindset and productivity and success. However, we are relating all this stuff back to real estate investors, especially during the outro of today's show. So after we hang up from near, David and I are going to unpack for a few minutes about some things that real estate investors can use from today's show to grow their business and to become more successful as a real estate investor. So make sure you listen all the way through to the end. And then the outro where David and I will unpack this a little bit more. Without further ado, let's get to our interview.

All right, near. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Man, it is awesome to have you here.

Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Awesome. So let's. Let's jump into this. I want to know. Let's start with this before. I mean, you've written a couple of books and you're well known for these books, but before becoming an author, I mean, what. What's your background? What's your story? Just kind of give our audience, if you could, just a little bit of who you are before being near the author.

Sure. Yeah. So let's see. So I started a couple of tech companies. The first was in the solar energy business back in 2003. Sold that a Couple years later, after I climbed on too many roofs installing solar, that was my first kind of business that got me off the ground. We professionalized this company before SolarCity and companies that ended up going public with this business model. But we got a great opportunity, got bought out by a private equity firm and then decided to go to business school and applied to one school and thankfully got in, went to Stanford Graduate School of Business, started another tech company, and after that company was acquired, I had some time on my hands and wanted to figure out, like, you know, what I wanted to do next. And I.

Had this conviction that the future of business would rely upon habits. That if you could be the kind of company that figures out how to get people to engage with you because they want to, not because they have to out of habit, not because of constant pings and dings, then you would have a huge competitive advantage. And I looked for, hey, where's a book on how to build habit forming products? And I couldn't find one. So I started researching and writing about this field, about this consumer psychology behind habit forming products. And then that led into a teaching role at Stanford at the Graduate School of Business. And then I moved over and taught many years at the HACCP Platinum Institute of Design at Stanford and then ended up publishing my book, how to Build Habit Forming Products, which was based on that research and those years of teaching. And then most recently, five years later, recently I published another book called how to Control youl Attention and choose youe Life, which tackles the other side of the story. If Hooked is about how do we build good habits in our life, then Indistractable is about how do we break the bad habits? How do we focus on what is really important to us in our business, in our life? How do we make sure that we can truly control our attention and therefore control our life?

That's awesome. So it's interesting your books kind of COVID both sides because the first one's almost like, here's how to. If you're a business, how to distract people. Is that a misconception of that?

Not distract. How to build Habits with people. So you don't.

Okay.

You don't want to necessarily distract them. Distraction is that makes sense. Yeah. But you do good habits with them.

Okay, agreed, 100%. I feel like half of our conversations at bigger pockets is like, how do we. How do we get our users to, you know, to do the good habits that we want them to do?

Right?

How do we get people to take the right kind of action? And so I suppose Then it's really not. It's not the opposite. It's really the same thing is how do we stay focused or at least not distracted so we can do those accomplishments, those things that matter most. Is that right?

Exactly. It's about having. Eating it too. Right. That I think we can get the best out of technology without letting it get the best of us.

Yeah.

And that's where I really want to. I would love to focus. Today's talk is on this idea of being indistractable. But before I get there real quick, just because you brought it up about the idea that the habit forming and not just the pings and dings and you said that it reminded me of that. What's the Netflix thing that's really big right now. The social dilemma. Is that what it's called? Like. Yeah. I'm assuming you've seen or at least you know that I've seen it and.

I was interviewed for it. Actually, I'm in the closing credits. Unfortunately, they didn't use my three hours of interview because I contradicted their narrative.

Okay.

The movie had a very specific agenda, by the way. I don't know what your question was, but I'm going to go.

Yeah, that's what I want to know. That's what I wanted to know. I know. What did you think? I mean, I hated agenda.

I hated it.

Okay, I'll come. I'll come.

Well, I'll tell you what. Let me start with the good first. Right. I'll give you a feedback sandwich, which is that the good part was that it raises awareness about what's going on. The bad part is it's the equivalent of calling Jaws a documentary about sharks. You know, it was gloom and doom and fear and addiction and hijacking your brain with no solutions. And I think that that is not only inaccurate, it's dangerous. And look, I know every one of the tricks that these tech companies use to get you hooked. I wrote the book Hooked. I know everything they do. And I will tell you that the techniques are good. They're not that good. This isn't mind control. People aren't puppets on a string. And what I really hated about the movie was that they didn't tell us anything about what you can do about it. And the sad reality is, for the movie makers, happy reality for us is that it's actually not that hard that there's so much we can do right now to put these technologies in their place. As much as they talk about these algorithms and the computers pointed at your brain and how it's hijacking you and it's addictive. It's almost like. Did you ever see that movie Indiana Jones, where I'm sure you did, right, as a kid, right? You knew this?

Yeah, yeah.

Amazing movie. Remember when Indiana goes out to the Bazaar and there's this guy all in black and he has two swords and.

He starts doing his.

Like, he starts doing all this fancy stuff with the swords, and it's very scary. Yeah, it's exactly what's happening right now in terms of the depiction of social media with these films. Oh, my God, these tech firms, they have computers, they have algorithms. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, so scary. And then what does Indiana Jones do?

Right?

What does he do?

Pull the gun.

He looks at the guy, pulls out.

His gun and shoots him.

Exactly. He takes out his gun with one shot. Bang. Shoots him. And that's exactly what is happening with us. We are Indiana Jones. Right? How about the bang is. Turn off your stupid notification settings, people. Right? How hard is that? Right? That's not the only solution, but it's one of many solutions. And guess what? Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook, they can't do anything about that, right? They can't reach back into your phone and turn them back on. So as opposed to telling people why they're powerless, why they're addicted, why it's hijacking their brains, which is nothing but disempowering victimization garbage, let's tell people what they can do about it. Are we gonna hold our breath and wait for the politicians and the tech companies to fix this for us, or can we do something about it right now? And I believe we absolutely can.

No, dude, that's such a good point about the victimization. Like, hey, you know, I can't help it. I'm. You know, I'm. I'm a victim. I'm addicted because of the, you know, big smart algorithm that's making me use my phone on TikTok 19 hours a day, scrolling like. Yeah, it just. It makes it so you don't solve the problem if you just think that it's like, you know, Extreme Ownership is one of my favorite books by Jocko Willink, and it's all about, like, take ownership of the problem. Like, you don't have to wait on somebody else to do it for you. That's right. Phenomenal.

You know, there's a lot of problems in our life, right? There's lots of things that can go wrong. This happens to be one problem. It's actually not that tough to solve. And that's why I wrote Indistractable. I wanted to give people exactly the steps that we have to take. And let me tell you, it's not just about our technology. We like to blame the latest distraction. Right? Every generation says, oh, this, you know, today it's social media. Before that it was the television. When I was a kid, it was rap music and heavy metal. Oh, it was rotting kids brains. We're gonna turn them all into satanists. And before that it was the radio. Before that it was the novel. Before that it was the written words. Socrates 2500 years ago talked about how this terrible new technology of writing things down was going to enfeeble men's minds. So people have always said this about every new technology. And you know what? Some people do get victimized by this technology because they believe they are powerless. They believe there's nothing they can do, so they don't even try. It's called learned helplessness. Whereas the real victors are the ones that say, look, I'm going to take the best parts of this technology. I'm going to use it to enhance my life and, and I'm going to put it in its place. I'm going to use it in a way that serves me as opposed to me serving it.

Yeah, that's. That's amazing. Why? You know, to commit to writing a book on a subject, you got to be pretty, like into. I mean, I've written books, David's written books. Like, it's a, it's a haul, you know, it's a lot of work. So why indistractable? I mean, what in your background, what in your, your, your. I said, it wasn't just Saturday morning. You woke up one day, you're like, yeah, I think distraction is a good thing to write about. Like, what got you into that?

So for me, I write my books when I have a struggle in my own life that I don't have an answer to. So for me, it was really about the fact that I kept getting distracted. And there was one particular incident about five years ago that really helped me reassess my relationship with distraction. I was with my daughter one afternoon and we had this beautiful day planned. Just some daddy daughter time. And we had this activity book of things that dads and daughters could do together. You know, do a sudoku puzzle, an origami, you know, all these, like different little activities. And one of the activities was to ask each other this question. If you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want? And I remember that question verbatim. But I can't tell you what my daughter said, because in that moment, I was distracted. I was looking at my phone and doing something. I don't even know what. And by the time I looked up from my device, my daughter was gone. She'd left the room to go play with some toy outside. And I realized that I had blown this perfect daddy daughter moment. And so that's really where I decided that I had to reconsider my own relationship with distraction. Because if I'm really honest with you, it wasn't just with my daughter. It would happen when I would sit down at my desk at work and say, okay, I'm going to focus on that big project. I'm not going to procrastinate anymore. Here I go. I'm going to get to work, but let me just check email for a few more minutes. Do everything but that thing I said I was going to do. Oh, I got to make those sales calls. Nah, I'll do that a little later. Let me do other stuff for a little bit. It would happen when I would say, oh, I'm going to get in shape right today. I'm going to eat right today. I'm going to go to the gym. And I wouldn't. And so what I realized is that the superpower I would most want would be the power to be indistractable, to simply follow through on everything I said I was going to do. Because today, you know, the problem is no longer that we don't know what to do. Who doesn't basically know how to get in shape? Do we really need to buy a diet book to tell us to eat right and exercise? Does anybody not know that chocolate cake is not as healthy for you as a healthful salad? We know that. Why don't we do it? Does anybody not know that to be better at your job, you have to do the work, especially the hard stuff that other people don't want to do. Do we need to buy a management book to tell us that? No, there's no secret. Do the work. Does anybody need to buy a relationship book to tell us that? Hey, if you want to have better relationships with your friends, your family, your children, you have to be fully present with them. We know this. The question is not that why we don't know what to do. We all know what to do. The question is, how do we get out of our own way? How do we stop getting distracted? And so that's really what I wanted to focus on. And I didn't find a comprehensive guide to how to do that because this is really, I think, the skill of the century. Because if you think the world is distracting now.

Just wait a few years. You know, technology is becoming more pervasive, more persuasive. The world is becoming only a more distracting place. And so I really think that the world is bifurcating into two kinds of people. People who say to themselves, look, my time and my attention is mine. I decide how I will control my time and my attention and my life. And, and people who let their time and attention be manipulated by others. And so I wanted to make sure that, that, that I was indistractable and that I raised my daughter to be indistractable as well.

That really is a superpower. I mean, I think, yeah, if there, if, if there's anybody listening to the show right now, if you could just completely like focus, be on, you know, on one track when you want it to be every single time. And it may be impossible to do every time you, we're not going to be perfect, but like, I don't think there's anybody out there listening to this right now that doesn't think, man, my life would be so different. Like everything, like I could accomplish so many more things. A related story to yours. It's funny, I got a four year old daughter, her name's Rosie. And hour ago we're sitting in the living room and I'm on my phone, right, like scrolling through something or doing something, and my wife's in the room as well and they're talking, my wife and my daughter are talking. And then they say something and said, and my daughter says, daddy, is that okay? Daddy, is that okay? Daddy, is that okay? And I said, yeah honey, no problem. And then I looked up and I realized, and she's squealing. And then my wife looks at me and goes, okay. And I, I go, I have no idea what she just asked me. And I was like, wait, what did.

I just agree to?

And she said, Rosie just asked if she could get her ears pierced today. And I'm like, oh, oh, this is a, this is a longer conversation we did have. But you know, now I, I admitted to it. So distraction. So, okay, so if that's the problem, if is is distraction, like is, is the, is that the problem? And then like your book basically goes into some of the solutions for that. I mean, what is, what is the problem we're getting at here? Is it, is it the technology? It's not the technology, right? It's something else.

You said it's not just the technology. No, it's much deeper than the technology. And I think that that. That surface level analysis that people like to, you know, lazy out and just say, oh, it's a technology. That's what's causing all my problems. It's. It's a. It's a very lazy solution. And let me tell you, that's actually what I did first. Right. I thought that technology was the problem. So you know what I did? I got rid of my iPhone and I bought a flip phone, like one of these things that we used to use in the 90s, you know, with no apps, no Internet connection. And then I got myself a word processor. I bought it off of ebay, you know, like leftover from 1992. I got it from some library that was closing, and it had no Internet connection. All you could do is type on it. And I thought, okay, great. I got rid of all the fancy new technology. I got rid of the Internet. I got rid of the apps. And I thought, okay, that's it. I won't get distracted anymore. Because that's what the problem is, right? No, because as soon as I would sit down to do my work, I would say, oh, you know what? There's that book on the bookshelf that I've been meaning to finish up. Or, oh, my desk. You know, I really should tidy up my desk. Or, oh, my goodness, look at the trash. I need to take out the trash. And I would keep getting distracted by one thing or another, because distraction is nothing new. It's been around forever. Plato talked about it 2,500 years ago. He called it Akrasia, the tendency to do things against our better interest. So it's nothing new. So the first place to start to understand how do we get out of our own way, how do we become indistractable? Is to start by understanding. What does this term mean? What is the word distraction even about? And so the best way to understand what distraction is is to understand what distraction is not. I thought I understood, but I didn't. That the opposite of distraction. If you ask most people, they'll say, okay, what is the opposite of distraction? They'll say, the opposite of distraction is focus. Right. Isn't that the opposite of distraction? Not really.

I think so.

The opposite of distraction is not focus. The opposite of distraction, if you look at the origin of the word, is traction. That traction and distraction both come from the same Latin root trajare, which means to pull. And you'll notice that both words end in the same six letters, A, C, T, I, O, N. That spells action. So traction, by definition is any action that pulls you towards what you say you're going to do. Things that you do with intent, things that help you live out your values and help you become the kind of person you want to become. The opposite of traction is, of course, distraction. Distraction is any action that pulls you away from what you plan to do, further away from your values, further away from becoming the kind of person you want to become. So this is a lot more than just wordplay. This is super important. Here's why. For two reasons. Number one, anything can become a distraction. Okay, my daily routine before I embarked on this line of research, I would sit down at my desk and I'd say, okay, here I go. I've got this big project to do. I've got these sales calls to make. I've got this, you know, things that I've been procrastinating on that I've been putting off. That's it. I'm gonna get them done. Here I go. I'm gonna get started. Nothing's in my way. No more procrastination right now. No more distraction.

But first, let me check some email, right? Let me just do those things on my to do list real quick that are easy to do. Let me just check a few of them off, because that's work related, right? Isn't email kind of a work related task? I'm being productive, right?

Yeah.

Well, what I didn't realize is that I was allowing myself to succumb to the most dangerous form of distraction, the kind of distraction that tricks us into prioritizing the urgent and the easy stuff at the expense of the important work. Because even though email is a work related task, even though that's something I gotta do sometime today, it's not what I plan to do with my time. Therefore, it is a distraction. And it's a much more dangerous form of distraction than playing video games. Because if I was playing video games at my desk at work, well, that's pretty obviously a distraction. It's the kind of distraction that tricks you, right? Oh, I'm just checking email. That's important, right? Well, if it's keeping you from doing the thing you know you need to do, it's a distraction. It's even more dangerous. So that's point number one. Anything can be a distraction, even if it's work related. The second point is that anything can be traction. So I am not one of these chicken little tech critics that says, oh my God, all Technology is bad. Video games, bad. Social media is bad. It's addicting you. It's hijacking your brain. Rubbish. Any of this stuff is fine. You want to watch a Netflix movie, great. Do you want to play video games? Awesome. Whatever it is you want to do is fine as long as it's on your schedule and according to your values, not the tech companies. So if you want time to scroll social media, do it. I'm not going to tell people not to do that stuff. Who says that, you know, playing a video game is somehow morally inferior than watching a football game? There's no difference. If that's what you want to do with your time on your schedule, do it. But make that time. That's how you turn distraction into traction. You put time on your calendar for those things. Okay? So now we have traction and we have distraction. Right now the question is, what prompts us to take these actions? We have two types of triggers. We have what we call external triggers, things in our outside environment, the pings, the dings, the rings. Anything in our outside environment that can lead us towards traction or distraction. And that's what people tend to blame, right? We tend to blame all these things outside of us, but that is not the leading cause of distraction. Okay? And this is a really important point. The number one cause of distraction is not what is happening outside of us, but rather what is happening inside of us. We call these internal triggers. The number one reason we get distracted, by far, is not because of our technology. It's not because of our kids, it's not because of our boss. It's not because of the stuff outside of us. It's because of our inability to deal with uncomfortable sensations. These are called internal triggers. Boredom, loneliness, fatigue, fearfulness, uncertainty, anxiety, stress. This is why we get distracted, because we are looking for an escape from emotional discomfort. So whether it's too much news, too much booze, too much food, too much football, too much Facebook, we will always find an escape from reality. And if we don't know how to deal with these uncomfortable emotional states, which means that time management is pain management. Let me say this again. Time management is pain management. None of the guru's tips and tricks, none of the time management BS you've learned will work if we don't start by mastering our internal triggers. So that's step number one to becoming indistractable is mastering internal triggers. And it's not that hard. There's stuff that everybody can do. We don't have to go see a psychiatrist. We can do use these techniques in our day to day life to understand what is driving us to distraction and doing something about it. The second step, now we're just going to work around these four points. The second step is to make time for traction. The third step is to hack back the external triggers. And then finally the fourth step is to prevent distraction with packs. This is how we become indistractable.

All right, so I want to, I want to break these four things down. I think this is a, this is, this is awesome, by the way. And I love that you're talking about the difference between, you know, distraction and traction because I might be misunderstanding this, but I think this is what you're saying is like traction is like your intentions, like what you want to do, what your life's about, or at least what your, your activity is about. Is that, is that a good way of looking at that?

Yeah, anything that's on your calendar. Simple as that. So when you want to know somebody's values, don't listen to what's coming out of their mouth. Right? People can tell you all kinds of values. Oh, I value my kids, I value my health, I value this, I value, I don't care. Show me what's on your calendar and what's in your checkbook. That's your values. So what you put on your calendar, this is how we turn our values into time. That's what traction is. Because here's the thing, you can't call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. Think about that. People say, oh, I got so distracted today. Did you see what happened on Twitter? And President Trump said this and the news is this, and my kids wanted that and my boss wanted this. I didn't get it anything done right. I got distracted. But then you say, wait a minute, what did you plan to do? Not what was on your to do list, but what was on your calendar. What did you schedule to do at that time? And then they look at you funny and they say, oh.

Nothing, there's nothing on my calendar. Just blank white space.

So you can't call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from. Which is why we have to plan our day. And so I teach people exactly how to do this technique that we call time boxing that has been studied in literally thousands of peer reviewed studies. It's called making an implementation intention. Just a fancy way of saying planning out what you're going to do and when you're going to do it. But it turns out to be an incredibly effective technique and is the only way to know the difference between traction, what is on your calendar, what you plan to do according to your values, and everything else is a distraction.

Yeah, that's really good. I once heard this story, you probably heard it as well. I don't even know if it ever actually happened. But they basically said they did a study of like this, people who wanted to lose weight, they wanted to work out during the week. And they divided into three chunks, right? The first chunks that okay, go work out. Second group they said, go work out. And here's some motivation, you know, read this pamphlet. In the third group they said, when are you going to work out and what time? You know, like what day and what time and where I think it was right? And it was like 300% increase of that group that just said when and where. Like I'm going to work at the gym on Tuesday at 5:00pm it was like three times, right?

Yeah, it's so true. It's so true and it's so basic and yet almost nobody does it.

We keep to do lists, right? And I hate to do lists. I rally against to do lists. Not that writing stuff down is a bad thing. Getting stuff out of your brain is a great idea. The problem is people run their life on a to do list. And they'll do the easy stuff, they'll do the fun stuff, but they won't do the stuff that really matters. The important stuff, right? That gets procrastinated day after day, week after week. Because they say, oh yeah, sometime today I'll go to the gym. Sometime today I'll start on that novel. Sometime today I'll make my phone calls for to call my sales leads and doesn't happen because it doesn't have a place on your schedule.

That's so good, man. I got, we have this journal, you know, there's a lot of success based journals out there and stuff. But I have one that I, that I put together a few years ago. We sell it on biggerpockets, but on there I have a spot. You write down like your three goals that you want to do. And then part of it says at the weekly, like the weekly plan, it says what day and what time you're going to work on this thing. And then what is that smallest next task? I call it the most important next step. It's like I have this theory, right? Everything in life, pretty much everything, no matter what. I mean, brain surgery, you could call it, you go flying, you know, go to Mars, build a rocket. Everything is made up by like 5 minute tasks and they're usually not very complicated. Send an email, pick up the phone, you know, analyze this property. If you're in real estate, call this real estate agent, whatever. They're like five minute simple tests. The problem is we don't ever identify what they are and we don't put them on our calendar. So then we just go and check our Facebook instead. So it's like that simple act like I feel like changed my life and obviously, you know, it's exactly what you're preaching here today.

Totally. I would actually push it just one step further. Not only saying what you are going to work on, but not measuring yourself based on the output. I think where a lot of people get stuck is that they say, okay, I'm going to analyze this property. Let's say, okay, and you know, the worst is just to put, leave it in your head. You're never going to get it done if you just leave it in your head. Okay, then the next level is I'm going to write it down, I'm going to put on my to do list. Okay, that's great. That's a little bit better. The next level is to say, no, no, I'm actually going to put this on my calendar. Okay, analyze property on my calendar. Tuesday at 2 o'. Clock. There's one more level. There's one more level of efficiency that we find. The people who do this step are even more efficient. It's not just about completing the task. You know, many people, they measure themselves based on what they finished, right? This is the to do, what I call the tyranny of the to do list. The problem is that we have what we call a planning fallacy. In psychology. We know that people are horrible at knowing how long something will take them to finish. Right? This is the planning fallacy. On average, we think something will take us a third as long as it actually does. Tends to take you three times longer to finish a task than you predict it will.

So those who have ever like remodeled a house. Yeah, that's so true.

Oh my God. Yeah, exactly.

Same with the budget. Have you ever seen a contractor come back and be like, good news, it was way cheaper than what I actually thought. It's always, this is the best case scenario it could ever possibly be.

And then exactly three times more expensive and takes three times longer. We need to acknowledge that fact and stop measuring ourself based on output. And this is why the to do list methodology is so dangerous. Because what you're doing, if you have a long to do list of a hundred things you didn't get done day in and day out. You are reinforcing a self image of someone who doesn't do what they say they're going to do. Someone who doesn't live with personal integrity. Another day went by and I still didn't do that thing I said I was going to do. Loser. And that mentality starts to take a toll over time. We start believing this, we start believing, oh, I just have a short attention span. Oh, I'm not very good with time management. Oh, I'm not very good with details. We start believing this BS and that of course, then we start conforming to that belief. So instead, what's the alternative? The highest level of personal productivity is found with people who don't plan the output, they plan the input. Super important point, right? So if you say, like, let's make this concrete, okay? So if you go to a baker, okay, and you say, hey, I need you to make me 10 loaves of bread, okay, he's going to say, all right, I need yeast, I need flour, I need sugar, I need salt, I need all the input to make the output. Right? But what's our input? As people who are in real estate, knowledge workers, what's our input? Two things, time and attention. That's our flour, sugar, yeast, we need time and attention. But we don't plan that stuff. We just expect it to appear and many times it won't because we don't have those key ingredients to make what we want. So that means don't measure yourself based on did I finish? Rather measure yourself on one thing. And that is, did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said I would without distraction? Let me say that again. Did I work on what I said I would work on for as long as I said I would without distraction. So if it's analyze this property, don't put, finish analyzing the property. Say to yourself, work on analyzing this property for 30 minutes. But I'm going to do that without distraction. And that's how I'm going to measure myself. So maybe I won't finish in 30 minutes. That's okay, that's okay. But now I begin to learn how long different tasks take me. And what you will find is that people who use that technique of planning the input, not the output, they are actually more productive. They finish more of the output than the people who just keep stuff on a to do list and expect themselves to check it off all day long.

You know, I noticed this applies in a lot of other areas of life. Like, when I go to the gym, I notice there's a lot of people that will say, all right, I'm going to do three sets of 10. And then they do it, and they check the box and they say, okay, I'm done. But what if you had another two sets in you that you could have got a better workout, but you let yourself off the hook because you said, okay, I got what I wanted done, as opposed to the mentality I think is better, which is, if I get done with three sets of 10 and I have something left, go until you can't go anymore, like, push yourself to get the very most that you can get. And Brandon and I actually echo a lot of these concepts on webinars that we do for bigger pockets, that we're talking to new investors and trying to help them understand that there are certain things that you have to do to be successful. For instance, investing in real estate, like writing offers, is a huge, huge piece of being successful. It's very easy to get caught up asking yourself the question of, what am I gonna do if a toilet drips? And think about that for four hours. That got you no closer to your goal. But Brandon will say, you need to write this many offers a week. And I think this would be a good thing to start adding in there. You need to set aside this much time a day with a specific purpose of analyzing properties. You need to set aside this much time a day for the purpose of talking about which offers you're going to get written. Is that in line with what you're describing?

Totally. Totally. So the idea here is that constraints make us better, which is a very counterintuitive insight that people think, oh, I want my. You know, my ultimate goal is to have freedom throughout my day. That's where, you know, if I just didn't have these burdens on my life, then I would be successful. Oh, I would be a successful real estate agent. But you see, the thing is, I got these kids, I got my day job, I got all these burdens, I got all this stuff keeping me from doing what I need to do to be successful. But in fact, I would argue it's the constraints that make you more successful. That if you ask an artist, what's the hardest part of painting a portrait, it's the blank canvas. Right. If you ask an author, I know this from personal experience. What's the hardest part of writing? It's the blank page. It's when we don't have some kind of constraints. So the problem with being outcome driven, output driven, and saying, okay, I need to make this many phone calls per day is that there is no constraint there. This is what's wrong with the to do list methodology of running your life with the to do list. It's endless. I can add things that I need to do infinitely, right? There's no end to a to do list, which is why most people have to do lists that go on and on and on, that they never finish. And then they get into this pattern of, you know, going from one day to the next to the next, recycling the same unfinished tasks. And that's. We talked about how toxic that is for our self image. Whereas when you add a constraint of time, there's only 24 hours in a day. I don't care if you're Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, doesn't matter how much money you have, you still have the same 24 hours in a day. That is a constraint we all must deal with. So it forces you to prioritize. The hardest part about being successful in business is learning the skill of prioritization. You know, I've made many angel investments. I've invested in over 25 companies over the year. Three unicorns. And let me tell you, what I always look for in a CEO is the ability to prioritize. That is the only job of a CEO. That is the only job of a solo entrepreneur is to prioritize. But you cannot prioritize unless you have a constraint. So when you say to yourself, look, here's how many working hours I have in a day because I want to spend time with my kids, right? I want to have breakfast with my kids. I want to have dinner with my kids because I want to go to the gym, because I want to do all these other things. I force you to turn your values into time by making time for traction on your calendar so that you can realistically assess, hey, what do I want to do with my time? As opposed to, oh, I just want to do everything, that's impossible. If you say you want to do everything, at the end of the day, you'll have done nothing.

Yeah, that's really good.

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So do you do you recommend like, I mean let's talk time. Boxing, I mean, is that. I think I know what basically we're talking about here, but it's putting things on your calendar so that they make sure they get done and then that's the gist of it. Anything you want to add on that?

Sure. It's about turning your values into time. So this is a really important point. So what are values? Values. People think they know what values are. I didn't really know that. And this is another word I thought I knew the definition of, but I didn't. Values are defined as attributes of the person you want to become. Attributes of the person you want to become. So what I give people are these three concentric circles that we have to ask ourselves, how would the person I want to become spend their time? Right. So there's three life domains, starting with you. So that's where you first start. If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of your business. You can't take care of other people. So ask yourself, what are the attributes of the person I want to become when it comes to taking care of myself? Right. How would the person I want to become take care of themselves? What would they value? Do you value physical health? Is that important to you? And by the way, I'm not saying you should, but whatever your values are, put that on your calendar. If exercise is important, is it on your calendar? If prayer is important, if meditation is important, if, hey, playing video games is important to you, great. Put it on your calendar first. Ok. The next part, your relationships, that's the next life domain. So part of the reason that we have a loneliness epidemic in this country, primarily among men, by the way, is that we don't have the time set aside for the important people in our life. Right? And this really strikes men more than others. We know that loneliness is as dangerous to our health as smoking and obesity because our fathers and grandfathers had regular things on their schedule. They had the bowling league, they had the Kiwanis club, they had the church group. And what we've seen over time, the past several generations, and this is nothing new. Facebook didn't do this. This is something that's been happening since the 1990s. People attend fewer and fewer of these organized schedule events with friends. And so we just let our relationships get whatever scraps of time are left over. And that's a mistake. So whether it's with your friends, your family, your kids, your spouse, hold that time on their schedule, on your schedule for them. And then finally, the last domain is what we call the work domain. And this is where work gets separated into two types of work. We have what we call reactive work and reflective work. Okay. Reactive work is the time spent reacting to stuff. Reacting to phone calls, text messages, Slack notifications, emails. That's reactive work. And most people, especially in real estate, spend most of their time in that zone just reacting to stuff all day long, and they spend no time doing what we call reflective work. Reflective work is the planning, the strategizing, the thinking, the making sure that you're running in the right direction as opposed to just running real fast in the wrong direction. If you want a huge competitive advantage over other people in your industry, make time to think. You know why? Because nobody else is doing it. Nobody else is doing it.

I love that you said that, because I just implemented that, like, a month ago. So I've got a real estate fund, like, a company. We buy, you know, big real estate stuff. And I have, like, a integrator who's, like, the guy that, like, runs most of my business. His name's Walker. And I basically said, I'm gonna take two hours. And I started scheduling it on my time every week. It's only two to start with. I want to bump that up, But I literally wrote thinking time on my calendar. And then I told my. My guy, Walker. I was like, I know you're reacting like, he's busy. He's working 100 hours a week. He's got twins at home. And I was like, I know this is a hard thing for me to ask, but you've got to start at least two hours a week. You got to have that time that I want you to be alone without a cell phone with a pad and paper, somewhere in nature or somewhere in a coffee shop, and just think. And he's like, I don't know if I got the time. I'm like, that is the thing. Like, that's what. That's what you got. Like, we have to do as leaders of business or people who, yeah, want to achieve great things in life.

Amen. I mean, that is so important, because, again, you know, if we don't do that, we'll run real fast in the wrong direction. And so that's what we want to prevent. So what I say is, I don't really care how much time you make, but make that time. Put it on your calendar and protect it. And you say, oh, I'm so busy. I have this, I have that.

Okay.

What if one of your childhood heroes called you up and said, hey, I want to have lunch with you? Okay, I don't know, a political hero, a sports hero. Think of the person you would most like to have lunch with. And they called you and said, hey, I really want to sit down with you and talk with you. Would you make that time? Of course you would. And so what about yourself, the most important person in your world? Do you make time for yourself to have a meeting, to check in, to see me? Am I living the life I want in my business and my personal life? Am I headed in the right direction? You have to make that time. Or frankly, somebody's going to make that time for you. Somebody's going to plan your day for you.

Yeah, that's such a good point. I had a friend one time looked at my calendar, I was just complaining to him about how so busy and blah, blah, blah. And he looked at my calendar and said, that's because, Brandon, you're scheduling your distractions. You're not scheduling your life, your intentions.

Right.

He's like. And I'm like, what do you mean? And that's what he's like, look at your calendar. Like, why don't you have a date scheduled on your calendar? Why don't you have time with your kid on your calendar? Why don't you have this and that? Like, oh, that's because I'm trying to fit them in everywhere else. But it's like the rock analogy we've all heard. I'm sure you put the big stones in the jar and then you pebbles fit around it. It's like, schedule the things. Like what you're saying, right? The value. The things that you value or the kind of person you want to become, the identity that you want to become, you schedule those things. Yeah, I love that.

The metaphor I like to use is, this is particularly apt for the real estate industry. It's the residual benefactor, right? So when a company goes belly up, the residual benefactor is whoever receives whatever scraps are left over, right? So like, after the debt holders have been paid, the equity holders, whatever little scraps are left for the residual benefactor. And that's what we make our relationships into. I mean, my wife told me this. My wife and I met in an economics class in college, and she turned to me one day and she's like, look, with all the important stuff you have in your life, I get whatever's left over. That's not fair. Right. And so we have to make time for those relationships in our life by putting time for them in our calendar.

Yeah, that's so good. I know. I've Been dominating this whole thing. David, anything you want to jump in before we move?

Yeah, I would say when it comes to someone's goals, how do they know what's a good exercise they can go through to figure out what their things should be that they should be calendaring?

Yeah. So I'll give you a link for the show notes where I built a tool. You don't have to buy the book. I mean, the book has a much more thorough explanation. But I also built an online tool. The idea here is instead of focusing on the goals, we want to focus on our values. We want to focus on the input, not the output. And so the way we want to do this here, just to be very clear, is by literally putting that time in our schedule. I meet with so many people who tell me, oh, I made a vision board or I'm going to make a five year plan, or let's talk about the regrets of the dying and all this stuff that's like going to happen someday. Instead, why don't we just talk about tomorrow? Right? Let's just talk about how would the person you want to become want to spend their time tomorrow? If you can just do that exercise and I'll give you a link in the show notes for my blog where I give people exactly a tool. I built a tool online. It's totally free. You don't have to sign up for anything to show you exactly how to do this. But that timeboxing exercise is really the most important first place to start. Because, you know, accomplishing your goals is the byproduct of doing the work. And I think a lot of people don't realize that. They think, okay, I'm just gonna write down my goal and it's gonna come to me, like, just say it's gonna happen. It's gonna. No, you have to do the work. It's just like love. It's just like friendship. You can't go out there and demand, hey, someone, I need you to fall in love with me. I need you to be my friend. No. How do you earn love? How do you earn respect? How do you earn friendship? You put effort into it, right? You do the work and then love, friendship, wealth, all these things accrue to you.

Yeah, that's really good. That's really good. And I think that's a good question. Something I've been posing to people more often lately, and I love that you brought it up today, is defining who it is you want to be. What is that identity you want to step into? Who is that person you want to become like, and then ask yourself the question, what would they do? Like, like if you want to become a multimillionaire. Okay, what does a multimillionaire do every day? Like, that's a really like simple question. And if you don't know, go find a multi millionaire and ask them. I mean there, there's a fair number of them. I did a poll recently on my Instagram, 22% of my audience are millionaires, like of my, of my followers on Instagram. And obviously I skew a wealthier audience. But it means that they're, they're the people listening to this podcast. If 20 something percent of these people are multimillionaires, you can find them around the BiggerPockets community. Go to conferences, whatever, find out what they do every day. But my guess is deep down you know what they do every day. You know what they value.

That's what they do.

Yeah, but you.

A really, really important point because I talk about this in a few places in the book around the research around why behavior change necessitates identity change.

Yes.

And this can help us or hurt us. That you know, by people thinking they have a certain identity that can really hurt them. I mean, how many of us walk around saying to ourselves, oh, I'm so easily distracted. I have an addictive personality, I have a short attention span. We tell ourselves an identity that of course we conform to.

I'm not a morning person. Right.

I'm not a morning person. Great example. Oh, I just, you know, that's just not me. I can't, I'm not into details. I'm bad at math. We bombard ourselves with these self image that really does hurt us. And so one, we need to disavow that, that self image that doesn't hurt, that doesn't serve us. But then also we can adopt a new self image that does serve us. And so this is why the book is titled Indistractible. Indistract. It's a made up word. I made it up. And indestructible is supposed to sound like indestructible. It's supposed to sound like a superpower so we can begin calling ourselves. Even if you haven't read the book, it's okay. Today, if you've heard this podcast this far, you can call yourself indistractable. You are the kind of person who strives to do what they say they're going to do. The kind of person who lives with personal integrity, who is as honest with themselves as they are with Others. You are indistractable.

Man, that's so good. That's such a good point. Yeah. The identity that we give ourselves, like, it's almost like the actions we do help form the identity, but then the identity also seems to form the actions we do in this cycle that just reinforce it. I mean, when I was younger, just give a quick example of this. I, I had no problem talking on the phone to people. I had no problem whatsoever. But somewhere in my twenties, I started saying, I don't like the phone. I don't like talking on the phone to people. And I started believing that more and more. And today I'm like, terrified of the phone. I don't know. Terrified's the wrong word. I just, I hate phone calls. I don't do them. And the more I tell myself this, the more I don't do them. So then the more I get reinforced in that. But that's just an identity I created for myself, and I can create another one.

And this is why, by the way, I'm bringing the conversation full circle back to the Social Dilemma movie and why I think it's so dangerous. Because the popular narrative right now is technology's hijacking your brain. You are addicted. Your kids are, you know, there's nothing they can do because the algorithms are controlling them. So what do people do? Nothing. They think, well, it's out of my control. I can't affect your. I'm bad on the phone. Why should I even practice and get better? There's, it's hopeless. And so we have to fight against this. This is not true. We should not believe these self stereotypes that sabotage us and rather rewrite the narratives of our identity that serve us.

That's such a good point right there. It's not so important what people feel about the documentary, the Social Dilemma, because as you mentioned, there were some very good points made in there. It was great for raising awareness. It's the overall danger that's very latent and easy to miss, that the minute you say that thing's happening. And so I can't help it, you have now the apps, the opposite of empowered yourself. You've disempowered yourself to where you're not going to make changes, you're not going to take the actions that would be required to get there. Brandon and I say all the time, real estate investing is not rocket science. We are not that smart. And we've done really well with it. It's about taking action. It's kind of like going, you know, working out. You don't have to be really smart to work out, but it's a pain in the butt to do it all the time. If you don't make it a habit, if you don't see it as part of your identity. I am fit, I am an athlete, I value health. It's very hard to make yourself go to the gym. So that's what I love about what you're saying, is that you are making it difficult to continue to tell yourself the excuses that will stop yourself from making the choices that will give you the life you want.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of my life mantras that I repeat to myself every single morning is consistency over intensity. Consistency over intensity. You know, we, in our culture, we prize intensity, right? Oh, New Year's resolution, I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to lose £20. I'm going to. You know, it's all about intensity. But that's not where real results come from, right? You can't make a baby by having nine women pregnant for a month each. Right. Things take time. You have to.

I thought you were to go somewhere else with that analogy about intensity. You can't make a baby.

But anyway, yeah, that's a great point. I think it all the time and I. My personality tends to value intensity more than consistency. I think I'm gonna go in there and outwork everybody. But then you go to the gym once a month and it doesn't do any good. You're just super sore the next day. You never really got any stronger that. That consistency is so much more important. And really, once you develop consistency, then intensity can actually play a role.

Right.

Once you're consistently going to the gym and your body can handle it, then you can really push yourself and get a better workout. You try to do that in the beginning and all you do is hurt yourself. Totally. That's a great mantra.

It's the same thing with adopting the techniques in my book. I do not want people to adopt everything I say all at once. Take small steps, right? Because as you said, the analog with working out is perfect. That you said that if you're the kind of person who works out once a month, not only are you crazy sore, what tends to happen is called moral licensing. Moral licensing is when I'm good in one area of my life so I can be bad in the other. So what do most people do when they say in their New Year's resolution, oh, I'm going to go to the gym every day, I'm going to work really, really hard they go out of the gym and the first thing they grab on their way out is that Jamba Juice. I earned it with 60 grams of sugar. Right. And oh, I deserve it. I work so hard. And of course they set themselves back. It's the same thing with working hard, right? Oh, I work so hard now I'm going to take a break now. I'm going to ease up. And you're not training your ability to get stronger and stronger over time, whether that's in business relationships working out. It's the same exact analog and the same thing with becoming indistractable, which is why I don't condone people going cold turkey or digital detoxes or throwing your kids Xbox into the trash. Doesn't work that way. Right? We have to make these small changes consistently over time.

That's awesome, man. Well, of course we want to recommend everyone who pick up a copy of the book. Indistractible. Where can they get the book? I'm assuming everywhere. Amazon, et cetera.

Yeah, it's available wherever books are sold. There's also an Audible edition for those of you who like to listen to audiobooks. If you go to my blog, I will recommend there's the free, free supplemental workbook and you can actually get it whether you buy the book or not. We actually couldn't fit it into the final edition of the book. It's a free 80 page workbook. It's helpful whether you get the book or not. And that's at my blog. The blog is near and far dot com. Near is spelled like my first name, so it's N I r&far.com.

That'S awesome.

Awesome news, Nir. Is that the best place for people if they want to find out more about you or connect? Is that blog your recommended source?

Yeah, yeah, it's all@nearandfar.com.

All right, man. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm just in love with this interview and everything we talked about today. This is my jam right here. So I think that if people just listen to this a couple times.

Every area of their life improves when you can be indistractable. So thank you.

Oh, I appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. It was a lot of fun.

All right, that was the interview with Nir Eyal. I hope I'm not butchering his last name because he tried to even coach me through that several times before, before we started recording and I still probably butchered.

Wouldn't be your first time, my friend.

It would not be my first Time. So fantastic episode. Like I knew it would be because I love that stuff. I think that's so valuable and something I wish I would have learned 15 years ago. I mean, 50 years ago, I guess I was not born, but 15 years ago when I was just a wee lad, it would have improved so many areas of my life over the last few years because I am easily distractible. And so, yeah, super cool. What do you think? Anything you want to pull out and digest on a little bit.

It's exactly what we like to talk about on the weekend show. Just this is. Okay, you know what to do. Let's talk about how you can make yourself do it better. I like that he took a different stance on the social dilemma than we tend to hear from most people because the documentary brought up a lot of good points. But then there's also something to be said for not taking personal responsibility when it comes to things that distract you. And I really want everyone to understand. I think that was Near's point was to say, hey, you don't have to see yourself as a victim of everything in the world distracting me. It's not my fault. We can, you know, reframe our identity, make different choices and put ourselves in a position where we focus on what's most important. What I want to ask you, Brandon, as someone who for years has helped new investors getting started, what are some of the things that you think new investors should be time boxing to make sure that they get done to help them meet their goals?

That's such a good question. All right. We talk about the webinars all the time, but I'll just repeat it here. I mean, if you don't have on your calendar right now time to analyze deals. Like, what are you. What are you doing? Like, what are you really doing? Like, I mean, this, that's the game. It's like saying you want to lose weight you don't have on your calendar. You, you know, working out or eating healthy. Like, I guess you want to be eating healthy on your calendar, but, like, you wouldn't have a plan for eating healthy, right? Like, you need to put on your calendar time to analyze deals. Consistently making an offer, right? Attending open houses, driving for deals, get in your car and drive around. And I love that he phrased it about consistency over intensity. Like, you don't need to spend four hours or five hours a day or eight hours a day. Invest in real estate. I honestly believe any. Anybody can be build a successful real estate portfolio in under 15 minutes a day. That's all it Takes. If you were just consistent every day, moving the ball down the field a little bit more, you could do anything. And so the little things are, it's. They take time to journal every morning, at least write down what your goals are. Write down what your most important next step is on your goal. Take a couple minutes to analyze a deal. Make one phone call every day where you call somebody like a real estate agent or another investor in your market. Just that one little thing. If you consistently do that, read a book, listen to a webinar, replay, listen to a podcast. Those are the inputs that NIR was talking about today that we should be judging ourselves on, not the output is, I didn't get any deals accepted today. Well, that's fine. Did you do all the inputs that you needed to do to be able to get those happening long term? What do you think?

You know, it reminds me of the lead measure versus lag measure points that we've made before, that focusing on an output is like focusing on a result. That's a lag measure. Say the example that we give is, well, what did I weigh today? Checking yourself on the scale, by the time you are measuring an output, it's too late. You didn't do anything about it. Whereas focusing on the input, which is, did I work out? What did I eat? Is much more important. So you'reyou're literally just being intentional about the things that are gonna get you what you want. If it's losing weight, it's your diet. You would say, I'm eating this today and I'm eating it at this time. And you're making sure that it goes that way as opposed to waiting till after you've made the choices and then measuring what your result was. And that's what successful people do. In business, we call these KPIs key performance indicators. And business consultants are constantly saying, what do you have to do to get whatever your goal is? If you're a real estate agent, it would be, how many people did you talk to today about buying or selling a house? That's your KPI. If you weren't doing that, you were just busy. You weren't getting anywhere. For real estate investors, it's analyzing deals and writing offers. If you start and you're consistently doing that, you find yourself with plenty of stuff to keep you busy later. And that's just where I want everyone to understand. This can be so much more simple than how it feels. It's focusing on those key performance indicators, those inputs that are gonna get you what you want and Making sure that you get those things done every single day.

Yeah, that's so good. Hey, last point I wanna bring up that I just thought was so good to talk on. We could do a whole show just on this sometime. And that's the idea of identity. I'm like, and I wish we would've dove in it more. We just, you know, didn't have the time to go everywhere I wanted to today, but he mentioned that, like the things we do, like the integrity we have with ourselves, like the way our self image, like if you are somebody who turns the alarm clock off every morning, even though it goes in and then go back to sleep again, you are telling yourself that you are a liar, right? If you tell yourself you're gonna go to the gym tomorrow and then you don't go, you are telling yourself and you're reinforcing this idea that you are a liar. You are establishing an identity with yourself that you are a liar. And therefore that carries over to the other areas of your life. So if you say, I don't, I'm not a morning person, that's an identity you're. You're giving yourself. If you tell yourself, you know, I'm Big Bone, that's identity you're giving yourself. Giving your, like trying to take the excuse off yourself, try to put the ownership on something else rather than taking responsibility for things like your own success. And so I just wanted to give like that into everyone's mind to start thinking about what identity are you giving yourself? And if like you can say, I am giving myself the identity of a successful real estate investor, great, then we do what he said. Ask yourself, what would that person do? And then start doing those actions. And even though you might not have that identity yet, you can at least say, that's the identity I am pursuing. So I'm going to pursue the activities that that identity pursues. And therefore I will eventually become that identity because my actions define my identity and my identity reinforces my actions. Does that make sense? Am I explaining that well, David? Yeah, I think that's so powerful.

What you made me start thinking about is how we notice every time in a real estate investor actually gets their first property, they never stop at one, they always keep going. And I bet you it has something to do with this fact that it's an identity shift, a property. You say, I am an investor now you take the actions to get the second and the third and the fourth so much easier. And it just really rolls. Yes. Before that it's, I'm not a Real estate investor. I'm scared of all these things. I don't know what to do. But once you get the property, even if it's not a great deal, like we've said before, your next, your next properties almost always are. So that identity shift would be a great place to start. If you're not having the success you want, be honest with yourself. Do you see yourself as who you want to be?

Yeah, it's so good. So maybe this year when people are doing their goal planning sessions, they shouldn't. You know, goals are good in terms of I want to buy this many properties or whatever, but maybe you should have an identity goal in there and a goal that says not just what I want to do, but who you want to be. Right. So I want to be somebody who analyzes deals every day. I want to be somebody who regularly talks with real estate investors every single day. It's part of my day to day life. Like those are identity type topics. You know, a year ago I said, you know, I could have said I want to lose weight, but I don't really want to lose weight. I guess I don't want to get muscle. I don't really have a. It's hard to define that. So I said my goal was like, I want to be somebody who works out. I said this a few weeks ago on the show, but I'll say it again now. I want to be someone who works out daily. Like that's an identity. I'm trying to adapt is. I just. Oh yeah, I just. That's part of my life. I work out and there's guys that I know in my life who, that's just what they do. It's not about looking good or, you know, or, or losing a certain amount of pounds. It's just, it's an identity. Who they are for decades of their life. They work out every day. It's just part of. They have an exercise every day. I want to be that person. And so that's the identity that I'm pursuing right now. Or one of many. Right. So again, ask yourself, what identity do you want to adopt over this next year? And maybe set that as a goal.

Might be something to spend your time to think challenge thinking about.

There you go. There you go.

Take time to think challenge.

Yeah, the 4T, the TTT challenge hashtag. Take time to think challenge on Instagram. Make sure if you want to enter that. Did I say what you're going to win? I don't even think I said that in the intro. What person could win by doing so, you actually get to win any. So we're going to pick six total winners. David's going to pick three on his Instagram, I'm going to pick three on mine. All you have to do is go to our Instagram right now. Beardy Brandon or. Or David Green, 24, I should say, after you do the Take Time to Think challenge. Do those two hours. We're going to take two hours to go think and just process your life. Think what you want and all that. And then let us know what came out of those two hours in that thread on the post. You'll know what the post is because it's going to say take Time to Think challenge, Big words right on the Instagram post. So let us know. We're going to pick three winners from each of us. So six total winners. And the winner gets to pick any three Bigger Pockets books, and we're going to send them to you in the mail. So it doesn't matter. We've got 25 books or something like that. You can pick any three and we'll send them to you. That is the Take Time to Think challenge.

Right on.

All right, well, with that said, let's get out of here. David, you want to take us out?

Thank you very much. This is David Green for Brandon. Take Time to Think Turner the five T's signing off.

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Thank you all for listening to the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, Copywriting is by Calico, content and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.biggerpockets.com. the content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk, so use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. Biggerpockets LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.