The Good, Better, Best Framework: A Framework to Level Up Your Habits and Your Leadership

The best level that we're always trying to get to in everything is not just about finding the best thing to do, but instead also shifting the background of the things you do and why you do them. And you'll notice this starts to create kind of a cohesive pattern of what you do, why you do it, and weave together all of these things that you're becoming. Welcome to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. I'm Josh Negron, and this show's all about sharing lessons, ideas, and strategies that sharpen your thinking, Strengthen your habits and push you to grow beyond comfort zones. Let's dive in. Welcome back to the show. Today I'd like to cover my good, better, best framework. Now for high achievers and for recovering or current perfectionists, sometimes doing just something that's good feels like underachieving. We all want to do what's best, and yet sometimes best is the exact thing that can lead to paralysis, procrastination, and failing to follow through, especially We're gonna look at the framework from 2 separate angles. First, we're gonna use it as a hierarchy to evaluate your daily habits, what you are currently doing or what you'd like to do. And second, more in a professional context, in a way to evaluate your decision-making and your leadership decisions. So let's dive in. So why is it a challenge of doing something that's just good versus doing what's best? In other words, good sometimes feels like we're settling versus chasing after what we know is best. Why would you waste any effort doing anything less? And trust me, I hear you. But as I was preparing for this episode, I couldn't help but think of the tale of the tortoise and the hare. We all know the story and it's almost eye-rolling to bring it up at this point, but think about it for just a second. It sends a similar message that doing something daily, even if it's not the best thing, could very well potentially outpace something that is the best thing, but is not executed consistently. Now, I know this is already getting your mind stirring. Think about it from the fitness space. These examples are always, I feel like, the easiest. But if you're tweaking your diet and eating slightly better than you currently do, but implement that every single day, are you gonna see better results than someone who makes drastic changes once a week? Most likely. Or in the previous episodes, we discussed James Clear's classroom assignment example, where he talks about when students are split into 2 groups and one group has to do one perfect execution of whatever it is, and the other class gets multiple examples to do as many iterations as possible. It always ends up being that the half of the class that gets the most reps is the one that executes at the highest level. And this is the same idea. So I always say, I run into this often when people ask for fitness or nutrition advice. They want to go all in. They want to change absolutely everything. And I've seen it fail so many times. And so my message is always like, hey, chill out. Let's find the top 1, 2, maybe 3 things depending on your current discipline level. And let's introduce those in an intentional way to ensure your long-term success. Because at the end of the day, long-term longevity is what we're after, not just fads and a diet you're going to quit next week. So this is the same idea. It's about locking in mechanical security so that we have a foundation and a baseline to then build off of. The whole idea is to find something that you can do consistently, preferably daily, and then layer and optimize on top of that. So again, doing the best thing inconsistently is always going to be eventually outpaced by someone doing something good every single day. So just because an action is heavily optimized doesn't mean it's always the best fit for where you are right now. Again, we've talked about in previous episodes, some people have their professional life fully dialed in and they're realizing all of the successes, but on the personal side, their marriage may be in shambles and they may be 50 pounds overweight and they've got some work to do from a beginner level. They can be a CEO in the workplace, but they can absolutely be a beginner in other areas of their life. So you need to Have the humility to be able to look and to recognize where you are and what foundation that you already have, if any, and look to see what needs to be built. So for me personally, I remember, I want to say around 6 years ago is when gratitude really started making its impact on me from a lot of different directions. And I realized that yes, it was probably something that I needed to do on a daily basis. And most of the numbers that I heard was do 10 every single day. And at that time, I'll just be honest, it just was not something that I wanted to do. And so I thought to myself, is it better to continue to ignore this habit? And I didn't think that was a good idea. And so I decided, okay, what if I'm not willing to do 10? Let's be solution-focused on this. What am I willing to do? And that number was 3 gratitudes a day. And listen, it might sound lame to you, but it is legitimately what got me to do the habit. So I started 3 every single day about the last 24 hours. And initially, Always, it's pretty shallow and you might be just checking off a box. But over time, I grew to really enjoy finding things to be thankful for, even especially the days that were really hard. And I realized sometimes on the days that were particularly hard, it was actually a good exercise to find more than 3 things in that day to be thankful for. So I built that habit. I built that foundation over time. And honestly, because it was something that was so simple and so easy, I mean, 3 things every single day wasn't that hard. It could have been something that I could have rolled my eyes at and thought was really dumb because it wasn't really the best version of gratitudes, if you will. But on the other hand, I was doing them every single day. And over time, I built that foundation enough that I had plenty of days where I started doing more and more. And that led me to realizing that it was time to move on from good to maybe better. And you may ask yourself, how do I know when I'm ready to move on to the next phase of a habit? Or to build on top of my foundation? I mean, a lot of you guys are gonna be naturally iterating and seeing what you could change and adjust over time. So some of that's gonna be self-evident to you, but there is so much research around habits and you can hear all sorts of different theories. Like, is it 21 days to build a habit? 67, 62? I've even heard 93, which is 3 of the 21-day cycles. And while there's a lot of research that spans this exact question, there is a study from 2009 from University College London that found that the average day span to build a habit was 66 days. So my friend Glenn Lundy goes with 67 because that's when he says that on average, a habit is easier to do than to not do. And that area of lessened friction to allow you to do the habit is a really critical moment. And so if you really don't know when to move on to the next step, that could be a good rubric when you've been doing them for just a little over 2 months, then reflecting back over that habit. Is it one that you want to keep doing? Because sometimes habits aren't worth doing. Beyond a certain static point. So if it is something that you're willing to keep doing, is it something that you can shift or that you can grow like the gratitudes where I went from 3 to 10 and then to the full-blown 4G journal every single day now for many, many years? Now, when you've hung out in the better stage, you start to realize that this is something that you've been doing for a hot minute now, and you could start running into what I've called in previous episodes is evaluating your fuel source for that habit. Like I said before, I'm not entirely opposed to habits being fueled by what I call unclean sources, where you're doing a good thing for not the best reasons. Sometimes that's necessary to get a habit going, but eventually we want to get to a point where we've done the habit long enough to where it's more automatic than anything. You've gotten past that. It's, you know, like Glenn says, it's easier to do than to not do. You're not spending a ton of mental energy to execute on the habit to begin with. Once you get to that point, you can really start to dig into the habit itself, find out what's fueling that habit, why you're doing it, why you're passionate about it. Again, if it's, if it's something that you want to continue doing, if the answer is yes, then let's start looking at some of those fuel sources and asking ourselves if they're linked to things like performance, pride, ego, or even something as simple as the obsession with the streak itself. You know, you've had no zero days for 2 years. Awesome. What's it going to do to your mental state if you miss one day? If it's going to be Armageddon, we need to look at that. Because if you're that fragile, I'd like to ask you what fears or potential doubts might be attached to missing that one day. That's likely a thread that might be interesting to pull. Now, let me be clear. There are plenty of fuels that may not be the purest ones, but they can lead to doing great things. But at some point, it is worth some evaluation because at some point the fuel could render itself ineffective, or you're going to realize in order to get to the next level, you're going to want to dig to find a fuel that is way more purposeful than the ones you may have been using. Because a lot of times you'll realize that no matter how much effort you try to put in, sometimes getting from better to best is unrelated to effort entirely. This is where it may require something that's a deeper anchor, and that's where the word purpose really comes in. Like, what is your purpose? What is your mission? How does this tie into who you are? And that's where a lot of this mental work really can yield some powerful results. If you know who you are and what you've come from and what you overcome, Then you already have a lot of answers to those questions. If you don't, and those things are still a little unclear and foggy, then you may be stuck until you identify and clarify those things. And by the way, those things aren't always static throughout one's life. So if you did have them figured out at one point and you have major shifts or changes in your life, it's always good to take an inventory and see if anything's changed. If you're a person of faith, that's going to also involve your faith as well. For example, what is God trying to tell you? Are you open to that? Have you even stopped enough to ask the question? Now you may think, dude, not every habit ties that deeply into who I am and my identity. And I would say maybe, but maybe not. Because we've talked before about how much more powerful habits can be if you tie your identity to them. Things like, I'm the type of person that works out, right? Or I'm the type of person that doesn't eat or drink this. Or even I'm the type of person that no longer smokes. I'm not a smoker anymore. Those kinds of things. And those kinds of purposeful statements can completely supercharge a habit. And if If you spend any time with a therapist that asks you about your past and about your wounds and potential trauma that may have affected your unwanted behaviors or thought patterns, then you understand very clearly the inverse and how those things, those, those self-beliefs and that identity can feed negative things. In the same way, why wouldn't it be able to do that for positive things? You're just leveraging the inverse, and that can be a very, very powerful thing. So I would say the best level that we're always trying to get to in everything is not just about finding the best thing to do, but instead also shifting the background of the things you do and why you do them. And you'll notice this starts to create kind of a cohesive pattern of what you do, why you do it, and weave together all of these things that you're becoming. Now the fun unexpected thing of this framework is that it's not just effective at evaluating habits and the things that you want to do. It can also be a very effective shorthand in trying to evaluate decisions for yourself among others And if you share this rubric with others, it can help you make decisions in a boardroom and in collaborating with others on deciding what to do on certain things personally and professionally. So this can be a really awesome tool to filter decisions and guide conversations when you're trying to find solutions when it pertains to an idea, people, culture, and so much more. Because sometimes when you're working on something, someone can find a solution that works. And the impulse at that point is to go, all right, we just stated the problem, we brainstormed, we found a solution, let's go. But I will tell you, it's interesting when you can ask the question, okay, so good, better, best, is this the best option? That's an absolutely fun question. We've used it a lot in multiple contexts in my professional life, and it's been interesting to stir people's minds into thinking, into giving them an opportunity to challenge that idea or to give them another opportunity to voice an alternative that may be better. Or maybe even the best. But you won't know that if a good idea was stated, a significant portion of the room agrees that it's something that could solve the problem. Okay, we've got it. Why waste any more time? Everyone's time is valuable. Let's proceed. When instead you can ask the question, good, better, best, is this the best idea? Sometimes the answer is yes, in which case, let's move on. Takes seconds to ask the question. However, there have been plenty of times where the answer's been, well, Well, what about this? And it's a better idea. Sometimes so obvious, the person who said the original good idea is like, yep, that's what was so much better. Yeah, let's go with that. But even if it's something not that crystal clear, it still gives some great opportunities to continue thinking, to make sure that there isn't a better option that we just haven't dug for yet. And it's funny because in this context, you're kind of pushing to not settle, which is a little different than earlier when we talked about You're lowering the threshold of completion, obviously depending on where you're at. If you're needing to start the habit from scratch, then feeling like you're settling for good is not a bad thing. However, in this case, when you're using it for a decision-making rubric, I want to contextualize it slightly differently because in this case you're pushing for, can we put in a little bit more thought and a little bit more effort and close this loop and look at it, look at it from a slightly different facet and close this loop to see if maybe there is a better or best option out there so that we're not settling. And oftentimes in these kinds of decisions, you don't want to find the path of least resistance, especially with things like employees and culture. These types of things are so crucial. So if you're the type of person that listens to this kind of content, you're not going to want to settle or take the path of least resistance with stuff like this. And this rubric really helps you to ensure that you're not doing that. So this week, how do we apply this? How do we apply what we learned today? I'd like to challenge you in 3 ways to use this framework The first one is I want you to start a good habit. I want you to find something that you've been wanting to do and just haven't done yet, and I want you to take it to its simplest form. What is going to get you to finally execute it, especially if it's something that you've been waiting to do the perfect version of? Instead, what's a good version that you can just ship and you can start doing today? What's your equivalent of my 3 gratitudes that you can start right now? So hopefully something popped in your mind just now And let's figure out the purest form of that that you can start doing. Remember, you can always adjust, you can always add layers to it later, but what is that one thing that you can start doing today that you know you should that would have a really good impact on you moving forward? The second thing is I want you to take an inventory and audit an existing habit. So what's one that you have been doing for a hot minute, maybe beyond 67 days, and is it time to tweak it, to change it? What can you add? What can you take away? What can you do to refine the habit and make it better? And again, you can brainstorm that with just a pen and paper, with a good friend, or with AI. Just have a conversation. This is a habit that I'm doing. What are different ways that I can do the habit? How can I be more efficient? Ask me questions about how I do the habit so you can better understand and better answer the questions and better answer this idea. How do other people do it? If you're someone that doesn't like the mundane, you can be like, hey, I'm getting kind of bored of doing this. What are some other creative ways that I can do it to introduce some novelty into it and make it exciting again? All sorts of different things that you can do. So take an inventory of something you're currently doing and find out a way that you can refine it from good to better or better to best. And lastly, I'd like you to use the framework to filter one major decision this week, whether that be personal, professional, by yourself or with a team, and ask that question, good, better, best. Is this the best choice? Is this the best decision? Or are we doing the best thing? Some version of that question to make sure that you're not just taking the easy path, the easy decision, Before implementing your decision, taking that intentionality and focusing on it to make sure that there isn't something better out there for you or your team to do. Best of luck this week. I think this framework can be really helpful in helping you refine your life. And as always, thanks for listening to the Optimizing Beyond podcast. Remember, growth happens when you take action. So subscribe, share this with a friend, and most importantly, put what you learned into practice. Until next time, keep moving forward because daily anything changes everything.