Today, I was doing employee interviews where I actually talked to my employees about how they’re doing in the business. What I have them do is fill out kind of a long form where they’re doing checkboxes. Am I doing very good, good, or needs improvement, or not necessary in this particular category for many lists that are on there, and then I have a lot of questions. Of course, if you listen to any of these daily growth hacks, you could probably imagine I go way beyond just business to really know what’s going on in my staff and my team’s lives.
What came up in this last interview that I had was really a lack of focus and a lack of determination or timing. This person was procrastinating to the last minute to get things done, and kudos to them for being honest. They were honest with their boss and open with me about the idea that they were actually always waiting until the last minute and sometimes even forgetting to check which task had certain due dates on them.
As we started having this conversation, what came up was they were actually doing this in other areas of their lives, as well. How many times do we forget to go to the grocery store for our loved one or different things that we just need to do on a daily basis, or have you been like me where you made a list of, “Hey, if I get these things done on a regular, consistent basis, my relationship is gonna go through the roof, my body’s gonna go through the roof, my mind’s gonna go just where I want it to go. It’s gonna expand in ways that you’ve never probably even imagined.”
What about your business? Oh, my gosh. Are there certain things that you need to do on a daily basis, maybe a weekly basis, that if you did consistently, would just grow your business exponentially? Well, I know, for me, this is certainly true, and these are in all areas. I’m going to be, admit that I’m kind of a typical guy, so what I’ve had to do is actually set reminders in my project management software for even areas of my relationships. This is where I recommended this particular to do, and it’s exactly what I do, is I actually use a project management software system for my life.
If you’re in the Author of Your Own Story group, especially if you’re in Author of Your Own Story University, we actually have a systemized process that we use extremely successfully where you can actually project manage your story. What it allows you to do is really make sure you’re getting those little things done, hitting those singles to drive runs in, so to speak, in your life and allowing you to become more of the Author of Your Own Story.
Oftentimes, we have these unconscious roadblocks that are holding us back, and what we want to do is identify those. Once we’ve identified those, what do we need to do to take that to the next level and create a habit? Of course, you’ve got discipline. Discipline is one of those buzzwords that goes around a lot, and you’re hearing it a lot right now in the business and personal development industries. I’m hearing it on podcasts and people speaking when I attend seminars, but my experience is discipline people are disciplined, and there’s the rest of us, and what do the rest of us do? Well, we create habits, and we create habits and systems of checks and balances that allow us to become disciplined.
What I did many, many years ago is I got a project management software system, and I made a list of those things that I need to do regularly. One of them is check in with my wife. Sounds brainless. Of course, you just check in with your wife, Doug, but it wasn’t for me. I would forget. I would get caught up in the day to day, growing my businesses, spending time with her, but I forgot to say certain things. I forgot to check in with her in the way that meant something to her, speak her language. What I did is I put that on my project management system. Give my wife a compliment and tell her I love her each day.
Every day, when I go into my project management system, I have my list of tasks. One of them is to give my wife a compliment, and each time I do, she looks so surprised and it really takes her back because I know that speaks to her love language, and once I figured that out, it’s just something I do. This is not my natural love language, so I need a reminder, and it’s become a habit. It has become something that I don’t need to be reminded of any more, but at the beginning, honestly, I did. I’m certainly not perfect, and that’s what led me on this quest of personal development and business development was to get better.
Just like you, there are certain things that you’re probably forgetting in the areas of your mind, body, soul, relationships, and business. What are those little things you’re forgetting? What are those little things that really move the needle in those areas? Maybe for your mind, it’s simply reading an hour a day and maybe it’s just not on the top of your mind because you’re not a big reader, and many of us aren’t, but maybe that’s for you, so maybe you need to set a reminder to check off.
Something else you want to look at with a project management software is what areas, what are those tasks that are weeks or months overdue that you’re just not getting to? Then you can ask yourself why. I can’t get into the nuts and bolts on exactly how I set this up here because these daily growth hacks are meant to be short and to the point, but if you’re in the Author of Your Own Story University, we go through this in depth to actually lay out your story and your plan so you can get around this. Of course, you could do this with your own. You can use Teamwork. You can use Asana. You can use Basecamp. There’s tons of project management software out there. The important thing is that you actually start it, fill out your tasks, your dailies, your weeklies, your monthlies, your quarterlies, those little things that you get to do.
For my employee, one of them checked daily the project management. Have it notify you. Have it send it to your phone and email you. Number two for him was actually set focus goals. I wanted him to get feedback from the rest of the team on a monthly basis, so what I had him do, set a monthly reminder on your project management software to ask for feedback from the rest of the team. This wasn’t something that occurred to him naturally. It wasn’t something he would naturally do or probably felt comfortable doing, but now it’s a task. Now it’s a task that goal-oriented people are going to see, they’re going to go, “Shoot, this is something I need to do. Check it off.”
Again, if you see it going to the red or the overdue, what you want to do is ask yourself, “Why am I avoiding doing this? Why am I not doing these things?” Could be working out for you. Why are you not working out? Why has it been two weeks? What is the fear behind it? It’s not knowledge. You know how to work out. Maybe you don’t do it as well or you don’t know how to do a clean and jerk or whatever, but you know how to put on shoes and go for a run or walk, so there are things like that, and if you do have limiting factors, like don’t have a facility to go to, well, those are things you can solve, so really the key here is adding these items to your project management.
Here’s what I want you to do right now. Grab your journal. Write out your Five to Thrive, your mind, your body, your soul, your relationships, and your business, and what I want you to list are the two things that, if you do them consistently, would actually move the needle towards your goals, to you becoming the Author of Your Own Story. Once you’ve done that, now you’ve got to find a way to keep yourself accountable. A project management software system is an easy way of doing it, and many have free trials above and beyond just one project. You can usually have two to five. You can actually have Five to Thrive. You can have categories for all of these or you can use your life as one particular project, and that’s how I started off when I was doing it.
What I want you to do then is set the dates and times those are due. Are they due every Monday? Are they due every day? Are they due monthly? I want you to monitor how you’re doing with this project management. How are you actually staying on top of it, and which items are you letting fall by the wayside? Then what I want you to do, once you’ve got that, set in your project management software one month from today, one month to come back to it and actually revisit this and see which items are in red. Which items have you let go by the wayside?
Then the next part of your journaling activity is to actually sit down and figure out why because once you figure out why, you can start reprogramming your brain, the software inside, that allows you to take it to the next level, finding out what those barriers are, those unconscious barriers that prevent us from actually doing those things we know we should be doing. Finding those out and creating systems of overcoming those is a key step to becoming the Author of Your Own Story.
That’s it for me today. Go over to AuthorofYourOwnStory.com. Get on our email list right now. That’s the only way you’re going to get tips, tricks, and insights delivered right to your inbox, as well as insights. We just interviewed Chris Tarzan Clemens. It’s only going to be up live for two days. After that, it’s only going to be accessible to the Author of Your Own Story University members in its entirety. We will give you a chunk of it, but in its entirety will only be there. Chris shares his secrets to his success and what allowed him to truly live life on his own terms.
If you’re not on the email list, you’re just not going to know about it and you’re not going to get it and, even worse, you’re not going to be able to attend, and these little nuggets of information from people that have been going through this will help you, again, take time and compress it, take five years of Chris’ mistakes and compress those and allow you to leapfrog that, and that’s what I want for you. I don’t want you to go through the hardships that many of us have done to become the authors of our own story, and I want you to take it to the next level, so get on that email address. Email list, excuse me, right now.
Of course, share this with a loved one. This is a great tip. Find out what they think about it. I would love for you to have that conversation. I don’t get anything out of these other than sharing little tips with you. I hope you can share it with other people and grow conversations that matter. That’s it for me. Go out and be the Author of Your Own Story.
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