Approach Each Day with a Hero's Mindset

Everyone, my name is Matt and welcome to another episode of the Connect the Dots Podcast. I'm so happy to be sharing this new episode and this new way of thinking about productivity with you. Because one of the things that I'm so excited about when it comes to understanding how to best be productive, focused, content, ambitious, balancing all of those things in our lives, is to kind of see our productivity and our work through the lens of this, like, productivity power-ups that we can use. And I've mentioned this some before in other episodes, but I really want to bring it all together in this particular episode and time because I'm so, like, enamored with this this lens, this idea of putting our work in the context of like a personal hero's journey. And you may not think about that as something that's very normal. You may not think of your life as this thing that's like a heroic journey or epic thing that you're doing. You're like, I'm just kind of doing my thing. And heroism is for other people, is for special people. It's not for me. And I started thinking about this in a little bit different way because I'm reading a book called The Hero Within by Carol Pearson. And it's a great book. And just on page 7, she has this great line, and I'm paraphrasing a little bit here, but she says that it used to be that we thought of heroism as this thing that only special people did. And if you weren't, like, special, if you weren't a hero, then you kind of found your safe space in the world and just kind of stayed there. Because, you know, like, big epic journeys, that's for the heroes, that's not for me. And what we're seeing is that in the modern world, a lot of the safe spaces are gone. And so if we're not willing to step into our own hero's journey, then the journey, the quest, is going to come find us. And it's always better if you look at all of these, like, If you look at all these stories and all these metaphors that we have for heroes over time, it's usually better, but not often the case, but it's usually better if you step into your hero's journey instead of the quest coming knocking at your door as it does so often. Obi-Wan Kenobi finding Luke Skywalker, Gandalf coming and knocking on the door of Bilbo Baggins, and then Frodo Baggins in the Shire. These quests come and find us. So it's best that we not just prepare, but understand the things that we can use, the power-ups that we have available to us to take on this epic quest that is our lives and is our work. So that sets a really big stage for our conversation today. And I'm really excited to share this with you. I hope you can hear and see if you're watching this on YouTube, YouTube the excitement that I have about this particular topic and this particular framing around productivity. One of the ways that I started thinking about this even before I was reading that book by Pearson is one of my favorite games growing up, my favorite video games, was Super Mario 3. And I thought Super Mario 3 was so cool because it wasn't just that it was a game and it was fun and you fought the bad guys. And one of the things that I always remember really liking because it's really, you know, normal to like is the power-ups that Mario could get. You know, you could get the flower power and like shoot fireballs. I don't know, I don't know where that came from. You get a frog suit and like swim in the water really easily. You could have the raccoon suit which helped you fly. I totally don't understand that one at all. But there are all these different power-ups that you could gain, that you could find, that you could use throughout the different levels and worlds that would help you like, you know, take on the level, complete the world, beat the bad guy, conquer the boss at the end. I started thinking a lot about how our particular skills that we're learning as productive people really act as those power-ups for everything that we do on a day-to-day basis. You can go back and listen to the episode on the 10 productivity frameworks that changed my life, and all of those can be seen as like these power-ups that we can use to be really productive. Like, when we face each day or each week as a level, as a level to be conquered, to be fought, to be— I mean, you don't even have to use such aggressive language, but yeah, just a level that you need to complete. Like, when we look at goals or projects or things that we have to do, I think of those as like levels that I've entered into in the greater world of, say, like podcasting or video creation. How do I use the different productivity tools or power-ups that I've accumulated, that I've learned over the years to complete that level, to power up in that world, to do more things? And it was a really cool way of framing, and it just made me really excited and even more interested in this kind of productivity that we've been talking about, that I've been talking about online for years now. And so, when I think about what people have trouble with, when I'm like working with clients or just students who have gone— students or members that have gone through my courses and some of the programs that I've put together, one of the things that I commonly see that people have a lot of trouble with is that every single day you approach the day trying to do all of the productivity things. I know some of you listening to this, maybe all of you listening to this will understand, will like be nodding your heads or thinking about a time when you were like, okay, well, you know, all the productivity people, all the gurus, all the books that I've read tell me I got to have my morning routine and then I have to meditate and make sure you exercise and I got to journal and I got to track my habits and then I have to block my time and don't forget to track your time or is it tracking the time first so you can block it later and then I've got to make sure my goals are regimented and don't forget to make sure that I have like, what's my goal for the day? What are my 3 top tasks? Feeling a little overwhelmed right now, but we're going to keep going. And then make sure that you do a review so that you can do a better preview. And I mean, that's just some. Don't forget about taking notes. Make sure you take proper notes, not just like scribble notes, but then they have to be like notes on note cards and they have to be organized in a particular way. And don't forget to make sure that you're using Roam to use the double backlinks. That's not even the word. And Notion, and maybe there's some other things. And oh, by the way, away. Oh my gosh. And don't forget about all the blog posts you have to read, all the books, you know, the YouTube videos, the workshops that you have to attend. I mean, I'm a little overwhelmed. I have to take a deep breath just thinking about that. And I can understand if that is the situation that you're in and you're like, oh my gosh, there are so many things to do. When do I have time to do the work? I still have to do the work. I can't do all the things. I have to like still do stuff. I've got a family, I've got work, I've got my side hustle. Oh my, I, I can't tell you how much that resonates with me, how much I have been in that place. And something really cool that I'm realizing, that I'm trying to tell a lot of people, especially in like the courses and the memberships that I'm in, that I'm leading, is that you don't have to do all the productivity things every day. Lord forbid it. Because what's really cool to understand and come to an awareness and a realization of is that you don't have to do every productivity life hack thing every single day. What you should do is look at the day ahead, look at what you're trying to do, what is your goal, what is your quest, what is the challenge that's in front of you, whether it's a challenge that you're putting in front of yourself for personal growth or a challenge that someone else has put in front of you, intended or unintended, a good challenge or one that you are not excited about at all, but you still have to face. What is really fun and so— it's so relaxing to think about is that you don't have to do all the productivity things every day. You don't have to use every single power-up. You don't have to use every single tool every single day. You just have to use the tools that are appropriate, the power-ups that are appropriate for the challenge that you face this day, this week, or for this particular goal. Wow. I hope that when you hear that, you feel like so much better, that you feel more confident in going into the next day. So you're probably going to be— you're definitely going to be listening to this on a Monday. Well, it's going to be released on a Monday. So as you're starting the day, as you're starting this week, I want you to think about, "What do I face this week? What do I need to slay the dragon of procrastination?" as my friend Alante said in a recent call. "How do I, like, use the power-ups at my disposal in order to, you know, do the things that I need to do?" Knowing that I don't have to do all the things, I don't have to, like, follow all the routines, I don't have to fill out all the forms, I don't have to do all that stuff. I just have to use the power-ups that I have at my disposal to face the challenge that I have in front of me. So what are these kind of productivity power-ups, or the principles of productivity that we can use, like, as overarching, like, containers or pillars? So there are 5 that I have come up with that, like, I use on a very regular basis. Again, not everything every day. That'd be totally overwhelming. I have no time to do, like, the actual things. But there are 5, and they are time, action, ideas, tools, and inner confidence. So let me break each of those down a little bit. The time, you know, the time piece is things like time management, time tracking, time blocking, attention allocation, which are things that I've talked about like the 70/20/10 rule from Google and Jim Collins' 50/30/20 rule. And so any time, no pun intended, that you are looking to better manage or focus or organize the time that you have, you can look at this like, Productivity Principle of Time Management, and select which of these power-ups— time tracking, time blocking, or calendar blocking, attention allocation— which of these power-ups do you need to use to better get a handle on your time? If you know, if you're not really sure, like just for example, if you're not really sure where all your time is going, time tracking is a great one to deploy for a little while. If you just want to make sure that you are protecting and blocking time to do your most important things, then, you know, time blocking, calendar blocking. If you are looking at your time as a whole and wondering, am I spending enough time on the things that really matter? Well, things like the 70/20/10 rule and the 50/30/20 rule, those are great ones to deploy, to use. And I can go through each of those like main pillars or principles of productivity, you know, action, that is things like reviewing, previewing the week, goal setting with QMWD, all these different things. Idea management, things like note-taking or PARA from the Second Brain crew. And then, you know, tools, using things like a bullet journal, like Notion, like Roam, like any other kind of tool. There are tons, tons out there. And the last one, I won't, you know, I could spend like, and maybe at some point I will, I could spend an episode on each of these by themselves. But this piece of the more that you like set an intention to go into the day as like a powered-up productive person, as the hero of your own story and your own journey, you build this confidence, this inner creative and personal confidence that each time you go into the new day, you're like, okay, well, I've done this before. Hasn't maybe necessarily always worked the way that I want, but I've, like, been through a lot of the battles, you know, the daily, like, challenges. I've faced the dragon. I've gotten after it. And you know that this day, you know, for better or for worse, is not going to be much different, but you are more confident, you're more self-assured, and you've built more experience about which productivity power-ups, which tools you can use given the situation. All right? You just understand all of these things a lot better. And really what you're doing is you're assembling your productivity kit. I love this idea. I love this example. It's like you have like a personal inventory. Like if we go back to a video games metaphor, like, you know, there are all sorts of games where like you're, you know, you're going on your adventure. You're like on this particular level, you're trying to like make it through this particular world. And you know, you can bring up in a submenu just all of the tools, all of the different power-ups, all the weapons, you know, the food, whatever it is. You have this whole kit. And you're like, "What does the situation, the challenge, the enemy, the boss, the bad guy that I face right now, what can I select from my kit that is going to give me the greatest chance of success?" Oof. You know, you can do that with all these things that we're talking about. Because let's, you know, let's be honest. You know, when I went through that exhaustive list of like all the things that a productive person should do every single day, probably most of them you're very aware of. Like, this isn't a new thing for you. You've read books, you've watched, you know, you've watched YouTube videos, you've taken courses, you've listened to podcasts, you listen to audiobooks, you've attended conferences, you've done online summits, you've done all these things. But like, understanding that you have like this power-up kit that you have assembled and understanding when do I deploy deploy the right, the right power-up for the right time for the right situation. That is the thing that I want to help you with. That's the thing that I want you to better understand and get confident in so that you can, like, gain that experience, those, like, XP, those experience points, that as you go into a new level, a new world, a new day, a new week, a new job, you're like, okay, here's what I can do given the productivity power-ups that I have, the principles that I understand to be successful with this. And even if, you know, one of the nice things about like, you know, like another video game and kind of work metaphor or like side hustle metaphor is even though we certainly we don't want to fail, just like when you're playing a game, you don't want to die. But one of the things that's really cool about this is like a built-in hack that we have as people, especially when we're doing like this kind of work, is you pretty literally have like infinite respawn. You have like this infinite life code that's automatically like downloaded for you. So even if like a particular video doesn't work out, or this thing that you're doing didn't like come to fruition in the way that you hope, you know, respawn, new life, new video, new podcast, new blog post, new project, you know, new job, all these things you get to like have another crack at it. So, I hope that encourages you a lot. The other thing that I think is really cool with all of this is as you get more XP, as you get more experience points, as you like better understand the ways that you can deploy specific power-ups or these different tools like as you go into each day, week, month, each goal, each project, each new area or world that you are a part of, you start to see how these different power-ups can be combined together. I really like the scenes in The Lego Movie where— and yeah, I watch— I would watch— I do and have watched The Lego Movie all by myself, but I also have a 5-year-old who loves watching The Lego Movie, and so we've watched them several times. And my favorite scenes of The Lego Movie are when, like, the Master Builders assemble and just, like, from everywhere. They just start pulling out all these pieces and they like put together this new like mech suit or this new ship or this new speeder or this new thing that is custom built for the challenge they face, for like the big boss, for like whatever it is, for like sometimes the literal, you know, Lego dragon, for the Duplos, for the real fans out there. And they just assemble with all the different tools and all the different things they have. They assemble this custom design to fight the battle in front of them. And you will, as you gain experience and confidence, that inner confidence piece, you'll start to understand how you can combine different power-ups together to create this this master plan and this roadmap for how you're going to do the things that matter to you over time, or even just in the moment. And you'll also start to see like, okay, well, if I need to like better manage my time right now and be more on top of the tasks that I have, then I'm going to use a task manager app and I'm going to make sure that I'm tracking and blocking my time so I'm doing, doing the right things at the right time. You may only need to use like one or two at a time,. But then as you like progress, as you, as you progress, as you progress, as you make progress, then you'll start to also see like, holy cow, now I can turn this into like a specific goal or project. So now you start looking at it and saying like, okay, now how do I say like, this is what I want to have accomplished at the end of the quarter. And if I need to do that, so you start using the goal setting framework, you've added that on, you've You know, you've attached it to like your, to the like power-ups that you're already using. You're assembling, you're like master building the productivity framework that you need specific to that situation. And it's so flexible because, you know, different things are going to happen in your life. You're going to be a different person at 25 than you are at 30 or 35. Different things happen in your life. You get new jobs, you have kids, like all these different things happen.. And so the things that made you productive, the principles that you were able to rely on at one time, may not be able to, like, work for you at another time. But when you understand these principles, when you understand these elements, these frameworks, these methods of productivity, these power-ups that you can use at any given situation, then you're just like, hey, no problem. Let me look in my kit right here. This is the challenge in front of me. This is the This is the boss that I have to fight. This is the bad guy. This is the dragon that has to be slayed. What do I need to assemble at this moment and going forward in order to have the greatest chance of success? When that really started dawning on me, I was like, holy cow, this is so cool. Because this is something that anyone can do and it is, again, like a power-up suit. Suit, like your own Transformer of productivity that you can put together for any kind of situation that you face. And I just love this because when you are doing this, the big thing that you're doing— let's kind of tie all this back in— when you're doing this, you are stepping into the quest that you've been called into. You are accepting responsibility for your own heroic journey. You're not waiting for anyone else. You're not waiting for me. You're not waiting for anyone else to tell you what to do. You still have guides. I want to be, I aspire to be a guide for you that helps you, but you're still like, you're the hero. You're the woman, you're the man that is going to take this thing on. And when you can step into like that accept that responsibility for the hero that you can be, the hero that you're called to be, the journey that you are meant to go on, it is a game changer. I'm not even saying that in the video game sense, but it is a game changer for how you live your life. One of the things that I want to help empower you on and encourage you on and guide you on is that every hero, you know, has a kit. Every hero has like an inventory, a selection of tools, power-ups, things that they can use that give them confidence and help them along the journey. So that is, you know, that's what we're going to be talking about more this year. Because, you know, you probably know a lot of these things. You know, go back to the 10 Productivity Frameworks That Changed My Life. A lot of them are probably going to be familiar to you, but it's understanding and having the judgment, the experience, the expertise to know like where they are in your kit, how to assemble them, how to deploy them and combine them. Right place, right time, right situation. And the flexibility to change that in the future, to not get so stuck that you can be like, okay, well, new thing that I have, or a new like combination of things that I'm already familiar with. That's going to be the game changer for you. And so that's how you navigate your hero's journey. That's how you set out on your quest and continue on the quest that's going to last you the rest of your life. And I'm just so excited to share more of this with you. What I want to kind of leave you with— this is a little bit shorter episode, but I just got like so fired up and I was so dialed in. What I want to leave you with on this is I'm, you know, A lot of the content that I create is about like how to help you with this, but I also am running now a live program, a live course that runs 4 to 5 weeks. We just did round 1 at the beginning of 2021. It was a 4-week course, there were about 35 people that were, that joined in it, and it was just so amazing. And now I like have this vision for not just taking like the basic power of principles, but now expanding it into like, here's how you assemble your own kit, and here's how you make sure that you like know how to combine these productivity power-ups. So if you want to take the next step and, you know, not just read about it or watch a video, but if you want to work like directly with me and a bunch of other like productivity people who are really fired up and excited about making this like a part of their, you know, of their personal, of their personal journey, then make sure you just— the best way to do it is just you have the like 3keys.fyi and you'll— I'll tell you about it if you sign up for that. But the other way is if you just go to matt ragland.com/daily, then you're going to be hearing about it. I drop links and like heads ups about it and notifications and announcements about like when the next round is happening. And the next round is going to be starting in early April. So I don't actually, as I'm talking about this, I'm realizing that I don't have like a specific link for it to tell you right now. That's why go to mattrogland.com/daily to sign up for my daily emails. And that is going to be the best place for you to learn more about round 2 of the Productivity Power-Up, you know, kit assembly course. I don't even have like a great name for it yet. I'm working on it. But everything that I talked about, for the past, it looks like 25 minutes, is going to be focused on helping you better understand those productivity principles, have a really deep knowledge of them. So as you're assembling your productivity kit and you're facing the daily, weekly, monthly goal, project, job, family, you know, side hustle challenges, you can look at it and say, here is the tool that I need to deploy, here's the power-up that I need to use, here are the other power-ups that I need to combine in order to be successful, to have that experience, to like to build that expertise and confidence to take on each day and go into my own personal hero's journey. All right, everyone, sorry for those of you on the audio that just heard me clap, but thank you so much for listening to this episode of Connect the Dots. This is probably the most excited and the most fired up I've ever been on a podcast, so Please let me know. You can email me matt@mattragland.com. Give me a shout out. Just say hey on Twitter, Instagram @mattragland. Thank you so much for being a part of this show, of this community, and make sure you sign up for the daily emails, mattragland.com/daily. I will see you next week. And so excited. Oh man, there's— this is going to be a great year. Talk to you then. Bye.