Ryder Carroll's 5-4-3-2-1 Framework for Realistic Productivity [Interview]

It's really easy to run your business on autopilot because you have checklists. And that's one thing I like about this. Again, to come back to like having to recreate my checklist is that it's— there's just enough friction for me to have to recommit to the actions that I write down.

Okay, special treat today. You already saw a little bit of the preview of it, but I had the opportunity to interview Ryder Carroll, Creator of the Bullet Journal. You know what I'm talking about. Anyone here on this channel loves it, uses it. And the way that I got to talk to him is I'm a part of a new company. I started a new company called Hey Creator, and I'll tell you more about it in videos to come. But one of the things that we did, and probably a good number of you attended, was we did a Hey Creator online summit in January. Ryder was one of the speakers. Bullet Journal was one of our sponsors. And so I got to work and, uh, like talk to Ryder for a good bit before, during, after. And this is one of my favorite clips from the interview, so I hope that you like it. I'm gonna just let you go on it and then we'll come back and we'll talk about a little bit once it's over.

One thing that I wanted to ask you about that I thought, like, from a goal, vision, intention standpoint, has been really really helpful for me to stay aligned with what matters to me is the 5-4-3-2-1 exercise. And it's basically a way of breaking down long-term, midterm, and short-term goals. So can you tell us about like what that, what that practice is like?

Yeah, if you're anything like me, like you, you're, you're very excited. Like life is full of infinite possibilities. The problem, of course, is that there's a very finite timeline in which to realize these possibilities, right? So anything may be possible, but not everything. And for me, what was really helpful is actually think about all the things that I want to do on a timeline, everything. So one, one of the exercises that we do inside the Bullet Journal Method is have people write down everything they want to do from, you know, what they want to do today to like life goals, all of that just at once, a big mess, and then start to map it onto 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, which I have adjusted since then a little bit. So you have 5 years, you have 4 quarters, right? And then 3 months, 2 weeks, 1 day.

Okay.

So you just like give the things you want to do some time context, chronological context. And it can be really eye-opening when you realize like, oh wow, like I want to do 10 things that are going to take me 5 years. And then you have to get very real with the fact that you will not be able to do everything that you want to do. That's a really sobering and important and incredibly practical thing to embrace. You know, and the more studies come out about this, it's just like people try to optimize, get more and more stuff done, but the more they work on, the less they're actually present with everything that they do. So the idea is actually to remove as much as possible to be able to be fully present with the things that actually matter to you and realizing that these things take time and then realizing that the next step here is to figure out where you're going to take time. So keep— these 20 things are going to take 5 years, these 20 things are going to take 1 year. Like, all of a sudden I have 99 years worth of things I have to do. What's that going to look like? So once you get that all straight, um, I'd like to just— I'd like to divide this between personal and professional. So you fill in all your tasks into this chart, and then you pick one from each and then you don't get to do anything else until those things are finished, right? And, or you decide to leave it behind, which is something that we encourage a lot in Bullet Journal, is to let things go.

I want to interrupt real quick because you should be a part of BuJo U. That is the exclusive Bullet Journal community. I think it's 4,000 people, maybe more, that are active and sharing their layouts and talking about the things that we're discussing with Ryder here in this video. So the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, we're about to talk about the kind of the challenge, the annoyance, but the good kind of frustration that comes from writing down the same task over and over again of asking yourself, why am I doing the things that I'm doing? There's a whole community of people that are doing this work together as a part of BuJo U. You can find links to join the community and start the course in the description below.

And also, like, another thing that this reminded me of is that Warren Buffett had told a story. It's called his two-list strategy. And he had like one of his like associates or managers. He's like, hey, make a list of your top 25 like goals or priorities. I was like, okay, makes that list of 25. He's like, all right, now I need you to identify the top 5. These are the things that are most important. So he's like, okay, So I've got— and then, you know, the not Buffett is like, okay, so I've got these 5 things, but I've also got these other 20 things that I can like kind of work on on the side. And Buffett's always like, no, so you have your priority list, which is the 5, and then those other 20 are the avoid at all costs list because you're giving yourself so much more mental overhead thinking like, well, maybe stars align in the way that I hope I'll be able to do all these things and like thinking about and coming to an understanding of the reality of like time constraints, priorities, what we like really want to put our mark on, like having, having that understanding and like courage to, to an extent that's come up a few times today in, in our conversation that you at some point have to be brave enough to say, this is what I'm going to like focus my attention on. Doesn't mean you can't leave it behind at some, some point. I'm glad you, I'm glad you brought that up. But being able to say like, hey, this is what I need to focus on, will give you a lot more power, confidence, and direction.

Oliver Burkeman talks about this as well, like clearing the decks. We can spend our entire lives ready to like do the work. I love the way that he puts that, and I find myself often in that place where I'm like, well, if I do these 10 things, then I can finally sit down and write. And this year, for example, like, I just took an ax to my calendar. It's like, no, no more small things. Like, it doesn't happen. If it doesn't get done, it doesn't get done. We make less money, we make less money. If I want to create, if I want to work on things that are meaningful to me, that comes with real sacrifices. And those sacrifices are not a bunch of like, oh, that sounds fun. It's a bunch of things that I would really, really work on.

That's the tough part. It's like, these aren't like, ah, you know, of course it's it's easy to be like, oh well, that's kind of okay. I don't mind leaving behind something that's okay. It's the leaving behind of the thing that is exciting that is really difficult. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up that, um, Oliver, uh, Burkeman's work. His 4,000 Weeks was one of my favorite, uh, books of the last couple of years. It's like a very, very— the most sobering productivity book that I've ever read. Which is like why I really also really enjoyed it.

The BuJo U community runs on Mighty Networks, and Mighty Networks is the best community platform that you can find on the internet. It powers BuJo U. It also powers Lauren Daigle's Crew Pass community. She's a musician here in Nashville. It also powers Yoga with Adriene, which is my wife's favorite yoga YouTube channel. And then I also saw that, uh, Mel Robbins runs, uh, her community on Mighty as well. So a ton of great people, incredible creators, authors, musicians trust Mighty Networks to run their community. So just check out the link in the description below. You'll be able to see everything that you get, everything that you can do if you're gathering a group of like-minded people together.

What kind of prompt questions do you use when you're journaling? Uh, in your— when you're writing in your bullet journal?

And I often ask myself questions in my journaling practice, like, what could I do better next time? Or what would this look like if it were easy? Which is, you know, a borrowed question for sure. One question that I ask myself often is, is this in my control? Which is a really powerful forcing function because sometimes I write things down that just aren't in my control, and then it helps me shift the way that I write it down or frame this action or focus on— get very clear on what I can actually control and do that thing. So those are a couple. I also ask myself regular questions about things to get rid of, which are: is it vital? You know, is this something that's actually vital to my life?? And sometimes the answer is no. And so I ask myself the second question is like, does it matter? Does it matter to me or somebody I love? That's a little bit more of a great question because I think that we often task ourselves with a bunch of things that we were excited about at one point in our life, uh, and then we just don't revisit it anymore. We don't think about it again, and it keeps on showing up in our to-do lists and we never really check in with that. How does it make you feel? Do you still want to learn French? You know, do you still want to hit this amount of subscribers? Do you still X, Y, and Z? And the answer most of the time is no. Like, young Ryder was— yeah, Ryder was really excited about this thing a week, a month, a year ago, but no longer. So I get rid of that stuff. Yeah. Another thing that I ask myself is like, is this optional?

Right.

A lot of times, just because something can be done doesn't mean that it needs to be done. And often, especially if you run your own business, you can get trapped in infinite busywork. And it's not always clear until you slow down. It's like, wait a second, this just doesn't need to be done. I really don't need to optimize this Notion page. I really don't need to set up yet another meeting. It's just— I can do it. It will take time from everyone, but it's really easy to run your business on autopilot. Because you have checklists. And that's one thing I like about this. Again, to come back to like having to recreate my checklist is that it's, there's just enough friction for me to have to recommit to the actions that I write down.

Two things really stood out to me in this particular part of the conversation with Ryder. And the first one is sometimes the sad realization that you can't do all the things that you want to do. If you add it up, the time that you estimate that things will take, be like, I can't do this in a lifetime. And probably the hardest thing about that is not that you have to say no to things that are just okay. It's not hard to say no to things that are okay. What's hard is to say no to things that are good so that you can pursue something great, especially if the thing that is great is harder and it takes longer. That's really challenging, but it's part of the intention and the focus and the clarity that bullet journaling provides is that, you know, we talked about this right at the end. When you're having to write down the same thing day after day after day, this is something that you really only get with pen and paper because like if you don't check something off in your reminders app or like you have a to-do box in Notion, it just kind of stays there and it's easy to forget about. But if you're really like doing the Bullet Journal practice of writing down, hey, it's day 4, it's day 5, it's day 10 of writing that daggum thing down that I'm not doing. Oof. That, that opens up a lot more questions that you have to ask yourself. Oh, like why, why am I not doing this? Is it not as important? As I thought? Did I want it to be more important than it is? Am I scared to do it for some, for some reason? I don't know. But it's those kind of questions that get asked when you're recommitting yourself to the task day after day. I'm gonna have more clips like this from Ryder. We talked for over an hour, and we still kind of chat from time to time. So I'm going to be bringing him in for some more stuff on the channel, which is, which is really cool and exciting because obviously the Bullet Journal has been a huge part of this channel. So to have like some, you know, intermittent conversations or clips from Ryder is, is really, really cool. Also, again, highly recommend that you check out BuJo U, their community. And if you want to set up a community for your own work, then I highly recommend you check out Mighty Networks. Thanks so much for watching this video and I'll see you next time.