Brian Johnson explains how small wins build momentum toward big goals, using the metaphor of chaining playground rings and a BYU trading story that went from a toothpick to something valuable. Harvard research shows people feel best when making progress, so identify your goal and take the tiniest next action that counts.
Foreign.
Hi, this is Brian.
Welcome back to another micro class. This one's on small wins. It's inspired by smart cuts by Shane Snow. So this is a smart cut hack.
Or tip, one of the nine that.
Shane talks about in the book Small Wins. If we want to have smart cuts in our lives that help us more efficiently achieve what we want to achieve, we need to create a series of small wins. We need to create progress in our lives. He uses a couple of metaphors which.
Are really, really helpful.
First, imagine you at a playground, right?
There's you at a playground and there's.
Some of those Olympic rings. You know what I'm talking about, right? And you want to go from one side to the other. Well, what's the key component to, to doing that? You hop on one and then you swing and you get another one. And you go to another one, you go another one. Now what you need to do is create momentum. You want to create small wins and keep the momentum going, AKA progress, to get to the other side. If you stop at this ring, you're going to have a hard time getting it going again unless you create some more momentum, right? So he references research out of Harvard Business School where they profiled a bunch of people and tracked them during the day. And what they found was people feel best when they're making progress. And it actually didn't matter whether it was huge progress or small progress, it was just the idea of making progress. So we wanna make progress in pursuit of our goals. Small wins. Here's another story he uses to capture the point. He talks about students at BYU can't drink there, so they come up with other fun games, right? And one of the things they do is they get a bunch of people together.
They don't go to the playground, they.
Come over here and they start the night with a little toothpick. And they play a game called Bigger or Better. They go to a house and they say, hey, we have a toothpick. We'd love to trade with you. Do you have anything that's bigger or better than a toothpick? Now a lot of people shut the.
Door on them and say, what?
What are you talking about? But they keep on going. They use feedback as just neutral data, right? Which we're going to talk about next. And they go to a house until they find someone who's willing to make a trade for something bigger or better. So they get this toothpick becomes a stick of gum, right? And then that stick of gum, maybe it becomes a pack of post it notes. Shane tells us, and then that pack of post it notes might become a magazine.
Right?
Now they've got a magazine and you keep on doing that. And he says 12 to 14 times later on some nights, you might wind up with a TV or a set of golf clubs. There's a set of golf clubs, right? That's nuts. You start with a toothpick, pack of gum, post it note magazine. You keep on trading it up 12 to 14 cycles and you wind up with a TV or a set of golf clubs. But if you started going to a house and saying, hey, I want a TV or a set of golf clubs, never would get there. What we want to do is create small wins. Just get a little bit bigger or a little bit better. It's that 4% principle we talk about a lot, right? The rise of Superman. So to make it super practical, what's your inspiring goal? What's your number one goal that's firing you up these days? And what's the tiniest little thing you can do right now to create progress in pursuit of that goal? Think of the toothpick going to the gum, going to the post it note going to the magazine, right? Bigger or better. Leverage that over time and you do some extraordinary things. And I'll tell you what, if this is all you did strategically was to keep your big important goal in mind and then to ask yourself, what tiny thing can I do to move in the direction of that goal? If that's all you did motivationally, you'd achieve extraordinary things. So there you go, small wins, big. Let's create them. Create the momentum, get across these little Olympic rings and make progress in pursuit of our highest potential. Hope you enjoyed.
Look forward to sharing more soon. Have another awesome day. Hey guys, this is Brian. A lot of people don't know what I do beyond these YouTube videos I put up, so I thought I'd give you a quick tour of our membership platform. Thousands of people have joined us already. 10 bucks a month get access to a ton of stuff that's in addition to what I put up on YouTube for free. So the basic idea is you just watched a micro class. Hope you enjoyed that. I share. I just started doing these micro classes, but I Now share over 50 of these per month. We've shared dozens so far and it's basically a quick class on my absolute favorite stuff across the different domains of optimal living. 2 to 3 maybe 5 minute little micro classes on how to optimize your life. In addition to that, you get access to every single one of our philosophers Notes. We now have over 250 philosopher's notes on some really, really good books. A lot of them in each one of them. You're familiar with the PNTV videos if you've watched many of those. But we also have people PDFs and MP3s of our Philosopher's notes. So here's. Let's take a look at what a PDF looks like. This is an example of a Philosopher's note. It's a six page PDF where I basically share some of my favorite thoughts, riff on it, talk about how other teachers say the same things, and give you a nice playful kick in the butt to go out and apply the wisdom that is a philosopher's Note. I record that as an MP3 that you can download as well. And 250 of those, I produce 10 of those at least per month that I share with you in addition to the micro classes. And then you also get access to all of our old classes. We have the five day immersion reboot habits 101, confidence 101, getting stuff done 101, meditation 101 and then future classes including relationships 101, energy 101, purpose 101, biz, 101, goals 101, etc. So there you go. Really blessed to have some extraordinary support and I will share with you where you go to sign up. I'll put a link to this, but basically cruise on over here, you can sign up. And this is the kind of response we've gotten so far from our members. It's pretty neat. I've made more positive changes in my life. My brief membership only 3 months so far than I did through years of counseling. Yes. Brian Johnson, rock star. Thank you very much. That's very kind of you. And I'm making huge strides in optimizing my life as a result of your philosopher's notes and optimal living classes. I spend $19 a month on my gym membership to take care of my body. A mere $10 a month on an optimal living membership is the biggest value invest investment I've ever made in my emotional, mental and spiritual health. Thank you for the incredible work you're doing to inspire us to be rock stars in our own lives. Unbelievably inspiring and humbling. In 24 hours we received hundreds of extraordinary notes from members around the world. So there you go. That's a quick look at what we're up to. $10 a month. Hope to astonish you. There you go.
