[00:00:00.310]

Three, two, one, mark. Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Buck Stops Here Business Podcast. I’m your host, David Maples, and today I’m doing the second of a three-part series on goal setting. If you missed the previous episode, it was about how to look at goal setting and frameworks, or as we like to call it, is goal setting is BS.

 

[00:00:23.510]

We don’t really believe it’s necessarily BS, but we think a lot of how you are told or pitched on goal setting can be and is often and many times. This episode is actually going to be a little different. This episode is about what types of goals to set. So, we’re going to be looking at more of the framework for the previous episode. So, if you haven’t seen it or heard it, it might be worth looking at that first. If not, we’ll just dive in here.

 

[00:00:46.660]

So, we’re going to be talking about a lot of the different kind of frameworks that people set up. And then the last one we’re going to be talking about is how to actually go about setting kind of my variant of SMART goals, which I’m sure out there you’ve seen SMART goals or you’ve read the contrary blogs about what SMART goals are and what they are not. Basically, we think that SMART goals are a good framework for setting them. And as we always say on The Buck Stops Here, your mileage might vary depending on what type of goals that you decide to set in your life, what domains you do with it, and what framework. I think no matter what, using a framework that you commit to and that you believe in and that you will actually do is the best way to do it.

 

[00:01:31.380]

We say this all the time at The Buck Stops Here. What is the best application? What’s the best software to use? What’s the best- the one you’ll actually use. Because at the end of the day, if you don’t do it, there’s no results and it really doesn’t matter.

 

[00:01:44.810]

Back to this. So, what we’re talking about today is kind of what goals should you set? Because a lot of people have ti- So, everybody’s got problems, generally, with one of these things. They either have problems with goal setting. They don’t do it.

 

[00:01:57.520]

We even talked in the last episode about how few people set goals and how less actually achieve them. And, what our thing about in this is that goal setting works. If you do it, if you write it down, and you share it with other people, there’s a whole bunch of things you can do. You’re much more likely to achieve things in your life and feel better off and better positioned at the end of whatever set timeframe you have. Some people have trouble with that because they don’t believe in it at all, so they don’t do it.

 

[00:02:23.150]

The first episode is kind of designed to kind of dispel the mythos or talk about why a lot of that’s BS. Remember, do what works for you. No one else is living your life, so don’t let them dictate how you go about setting your goals. If you need that, then ask for it. But if you don’t need that, then chart your own course.

 

[00:02:40.470]

This one is more about like, how do I choose what goals to set? And then the last one is, people are like, “Okay, I’ve got the goals I want to set. How do I execute these goals? How do I put that into practice?” So, that’s what the third part is going to be about very shortly.

 

[00:02:52.130]

So, this one is about the different things you’re going to set. Now, I’m going to go through the different quadrants and kind of explain them. And I’m a big believer in Punnett squares. If you haven’t seen them or heard of them before, it’s kind of like, remember in elementary and middle school, you learn phenotypes? Like, if you put these two pea plants together, do you end up with a pea plant that’s taller and has better leaves, et cetera?

 

[00:03:15.710]

Punnett squares are basically four set boxes. You’ve been introduced to them before, you’ve seen them somewhere in your life, and that’s kind of the thing. It turns out, it’s a pretty easy way to kind of put things in boxes and to help kind of break them down. And it’s not overly complex because that’s the thing.

 

[00:03:33.800]

Complexity is the enemy of action. You make a plan that’s too complex, you put too many different things you have to do into it, you won’t do it. And so for me, I’m a big believer in, kind of, life’s a buffet. Pick the stuff you like, eat it if you like it. If you don’t, don’t put it on your plate.

 

[00:03:52.560]

That’s kind of how I believe about most things in life. Okay? It doesn’t mean you have to do anything. It may not be a popular belief, but I don’t care. It seems to work for me and for all the people I consult with and things like that.

 

[00:04:04.190]

Okay, first thing we’re talking about is the difference between short, medium and long-term goal planning. Because I think what people set at the beginning of the year, kind of, New Year’s happens and you get excited and you go do things, most of those goals are, kind of, short-term goals. Short-term goals are, generally, things you’re going to achieve in 90 days. It could be six months. And remember, these horizons can be different for you.

 

[00:04:29.120]

It depends on what you’re overall looking at and kind of what your overall aim is. And then you kind of have mid-term goals and then kind of long-term goals. I believe that long-term goals should never be longer than about five years. Now, this is one of those few things in the podcast I’ll say, this is my rule.

 

[00:04:48.440]

I use it. It doesn’t work for you, throw it out. But, I find that in most people’s lives, they can kind of divide their lives like a book, into different chapters. You know? How long did I spend in high school, and how long did I spend in college, and how long did I spend in my first career or job?

 

[00:05:05.080]

And then how long before I bought the house, or had kids, or got married? And what I found for most people is that things kind of break down into kind of five year bookends. College and higher education for most people is five years. If you decide to be a doctor, it’s 15. But hey, to each their own.

 

[00:05:22.440]

The point about it is that everything kind of breaks down and kind of that thing. So, for most people, I think setting long-term goals, 20-year goals, ten-year goals, you have to realize that your goals and your plans will change. And it’s really hard to project into the future more than about five years. You can put some kind of wish list things, but I don’t think you should build big, comprehensive plans about how you’re going to achieve them. Because if you build out a ten-year or 15-year plan, sounds great. Something major in your life is going to hijack that or change it. It could be a pandemic. Just something you didn’t see on your horizon is definitely going to change those things and change how these things get acted upon.

 

[00:06:08.220]

So, I think you’re going to waste an awful lot of time putting those things. And, at the end of the day, I think most people out there want to make sure that their time is well spent. So, if it takes an incredible amount of time- And a five-year, ten-year, 30-year plan, those are incredibly long plans. Even people who get a mortgage, you could arguably- the average mortgage- most people sign a 30-year mortgage note. Most people don’t keep their mortgage for 30 years.

 

[00:06:35.020]

They’re going to move in five years, they’re going to sell that house, they’re going to do something else. They’re going to change careers or jobs, they’re going to get married. Their grandparents are elderly and sick, and you have to move back to a mountaintop in Tennessee, and take care of them. Who knows?

 

[00:06:48.810]

But I think you have to realize that these things will change in your life. The one thing that will be constant in your life is change. So, short-term goals, I think for most people, 30, 90 days, you could do six months and you could even say year goals are short-term goals. Anything longer than a year kind of moves into that medium quadrant. The medium quadrant is kind of things that are two, possibly three, year goals.

 

[00:07:13.380]

Anything beyond three years, I’m going to say, is a long term goal. Anything. And long-term goals, if you want to spend time on them, I think you kind of just kind of sketch them out. So you say, I want to become a lawyer. And depending on if you’re outside the U.S., or inside the U.S., you have to commit to going to law school. That’s three years, most places you go, and then you have to take the Bar, and you have to get a job in practice.

 

[00:07:39.390]

You could say, “My long-term goal,” – most people wouldn’t think about that. They’d say it’s a short-term goal – “My long term goal is to get a job at a top ten firm in the United States.” And then you, kind of, reverse engineer your way back to that, right?

 

[00:07:52.700]

You’d say, “Okay, so my medium term goal in three years – David, kind, of said that. That’s a medium term goal – is to graduate law school. And, if I want to get a job with a top ten law firm, I need to make sure that I actually have really good grades while in law school, because that’s going to matter a lot. And, kind of, from there it’s going to be like; Okay, so what are my short term goals? My short term goals are figuring out how do I ace this class this semester?”

 

[00:08:22.860]

That’s just an example, okay? Another long term goal might be to have a kid. For most people- I mean, look, maybe if you’ve got all this stuff in place, but if you’re not in a relationship or anything like that right now, you probably have to procreate with another human. So, you probably need to find someone else who’s going to sign up to either have the child or help you have the child.

 

[00:08:46.260]

So, you got to realize whatever this goal is. And it sounds weird, but it turns out that family planning and goal planning like that, you do better in most cases if you have set up how you’re going to pay and do these things. A lot of things happen by accident, by whoops. But most people can better prepare for whatever that activity is and becoming a parent if they can plan for it.

 

[00:09:06.880]

I’m not saying it always works, and I’m not saying you have to do that, but if it works for you, then that’s what you want to do with it. So, that’s kind of your breaking in your frameworks. I think everybody should have some short, medium and long-term goals. But, just like the other, you shouldn’t have 30 long-term goals. You probably need five.

 

[00:09:24.370]

Again, remember, it’s about change. Three goals, something like that. And then kind of you go from there and it’s kind of like a multiplier by third. If you’ve got three long-term goals, then you probably need nine or ten medium-term goals, and you might have 30 short-term goals, okay? Now, does that mean you need to plan about all of them?

 

[00:09:40.560]

Nah, man. If I told you, you got to go out and plan out and framework out ten short-term goals that you’re going to do in the next 90 days, you’re going be like, “Man, that’s a ton of stuff.” For most people, you want to start somewhere you can handle that, right? You want to start with three to five kind of goals that you’re going to activity and do things like that.

 

[00:09:57.340]

And, the big thing about it is, you’re making- you have to figure out what kind of changes you’re making. Because there are immediate goals, which are acquiring a thing or an asset, like a monetary thing, like buying a house, but buying a house is not a lifestyle change. And lifestyle changes are where things happen. So, what I want to talk about first is kind of the time management quadrant version of goal setting.

 

[00:10:22.930]

This is, kind of, a- Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, talked about this before. And you guys, the Punnett square thing I talked about earlier, is what you need about this. So, you’ve got four main categories. You have things that are important and urgent, you got things that are important and not urgent, things that are not urgent and important, and things that are not urgent and not important.

 

[00:10:45.500]

So, the first thing you should think about is at the top of this Punnett square, you have importance, right? Things that are important and urgent are necessities. Some people would call them fires. They are crises and emergencies, okay?

 

[00:10:59.350]

This is like, somebody has to go to the hospital, automatically. Okay? Something that happens in your life. These are fires. You do not want to live in a crisis quadrant your entire life. By the way, I do think it’s useful to, kind of, figure out where are these quadrants you, kind of, spend a lot of your time.

 

[00:11:16.040]

If you spend a lot of time in the crisis and emergency quadrant, I guarantee you’re doing something wrong with your planning and management of your life on a day-to-day basis. Absolutely doing something wrong. Because you are currently responding from crisis to crisis. Now, you have friends like this.

 

[00:11:32.800]

I guarantee you. You absolutely – I’m looking at you right now – you have friends who live in this quadrant, and their entire life is a dumpster fire.

 

[00:11:43.130]

They live in this world. Some people like it. If you live in the crisis quadrant, that’s a lot of drama in your life. It’s probably a lot of sadness, a lot of depression, and you feel like you’re not getting anywhere. If you live your life in crisis, your life will be a dumpster fire.

 

[00:12:05.450]

I think I want that on a shirt. The Buck Stops Here says, “Don’t live your life like a dumpster fire.” Don’t do that, okay? The next quadrant I want to talk about is the- I’m actually going to go down on the quadrant. This is the not important quadrant, but yet urgent. The not important and urgent quadrant.

 

[00:12:25.190]

So, I’m just going down from the urgent quadrant. The things that are important, the crises, right? Remember, you don’t want to live there.

 

[00:12:30.240]

You want to be responding to things occasionally, but you’ll find your life is much more balanced if you don’t live there. The one below it I want to talk to you is- This is what I call the deception quadrant. It’s the not important quadrant, yet it’s always urgent.

 

[00:12:44.450]

If you live your life in this quadrant, you are deceiving yourself. Because you’re applying time and energy to something that is urgent, that is not important. Now, what is an example of something that’s not important and urgent? Most a lot of parents are working at home, so your child is actually currently banging on the door because they want a popsicle, or they want something.

 

[00:13:09.120]

They want something now, and you’ve got to deal with that, right? That is not important. It’s not important. It might be important to your three-year-old, but it’s not important to you. Is it urgent?

 

[00:13:19.210]

Yeah, they’re bugging the heck out of you, and you can’t get work done, right? So, you have to do that, right? But if you live your life in this quadrant and you find yourself telling your friends, like, “I can’t get anything done, I got all these things happening,” and your friends look at you and say, “Yeah, none of those things sound important. Like, none of those things sound important, like, at all.” And yet you spend a lot of time dealing with those things.

 

[00:13:41.540]

You are deceiving yourself, my friend. You are deceiving yourself. You should not be spending time in this quadrant, okay? And the next one I want to go to is I’m going to go along the not important quadrant again. I’m going to get to what I think is the most important quadrant in a second. You’ll see how this is working. Not important and not urgent. These are time wasters. It’s not urgent. It’s not important.

 

[00:14:05.810]

This is trash. You should not be spending your time taking out garbage. You shouldn’t be doing that. It’s not on fire. It’s just not important.

 

[00:14:17.190]

And it’s not urgent. It’s something that’s really just something you should not be- “Oh, I got to plan for my anniversary.” Is that important? Well, if your anniversary is a year away, unless it’s something massive, it’s not urgent, and it’s not important right now.

 

[00:14:34.190]

It’s just not. You are wasting your time doing something. You find a lot of people who live their lives in a mode of procrastination who live in this quadrant. These people generally do not achieve any of the things they ever want if you live in this quadrant. Now, the quadrant that’s healthy to live in- Now, by the way, crises, obviously that first quadrant, the dumpster fire quadrant, does happen.

 

[00:15:00.060]

But if you find that life is being foisted upon- There are some people who are very, very unlucky. There’s also some people who win the lottery. I’m very sorry if you’re the person who’s been struck by lightning four times. You do exist. But, the odds are I’m not talking to you.

 

[00:15:13.590]

Even right now, no matter how many people are listening to my podcast, the odds are I’m not talking to that single person who’s been struck by lightning four times. Probably no lottery winners listening to my podcast either. Okay? So, it’s just rare, and it’s important on The Buck Stops Here to accept that you have responsibility for your own life, and accept that- Are you in those quadrants or not? So, where I want you to spend your time when you’re focusing on things is, kind of, in this important and not urgent quadrant. Because this quadrant is the quality quadrant. This quadrant would be the platinum or the diamond quadrant if I were to give it an assignment.

 

[00:15:48.350]

It is about prevention, planning, and improvement. This is where crafting your life the way you want it to work lives, and this is where you need to be spending your time. Why am I bringing this time management quadrant up? Because I believe that this quadrant is very, very important. And when you talk about setting goals in your life, I think it’s useful as an exercise to write things down in this quadrant.

 

[00:16:12.390]

Things that came up last year. What was the thing, right? Figure out what quadrant you want to live in. You’re going to be better off setting up goals for planning and success if you live in, kind of, this quality quadrant. In this important and not urgent quadrant. There will be crises in your life. There are. One of the philosophies is that there’s a 1,000 great joys and 1,000 great sorrows to every life experiences.

 

[00:16:36.170]

We all go through a lot of the same things. Remember, at the end of the day, that if you live in those quadrants- I mean, this is the place where you take control of your life and do things. Because, ultimately, planning and goal setting is about control, and most of us want to have a very high degree of control of our lives. So, I think it’s a useful exercise to, kind of, look at this time management crisis matrix quadrant, whatever you want to call it. I think it’s important for people to look at that thing.

 

[00:17:04.360]

Now, figuring out, kind of- I’m going to go through some of the other things and you can figure out, kind of, where to put your goals. And then we will talk about what works for you, okay? In the last podcast episode, we talked about figuring out, kind of, the three things or four things that you really want to focus on. They’re probably top of mind. By the way, most of you guys when goal setting, kind of, know what you need to spend your time on.

 

[00:17:24.340]

But if you don’t, I think it’s a good idea to brainstorm on these things and then there’s, kind of, some good things on this, and then I can help you figure out how to get quick wins out of these things. So, there’s a couple of different things. So, one of the quadrants that some people put there, the classic one is, kind of, mind, body, spirit, emotion. So, kind of, you put these in four quadrants and you just put stuff.

 

[00:17:47.970]

So, what’s good for your mental well-being? What’s good for your physical well-being? What’s good for your spiritual well-being? What’s kind of for your emotional well-being? And what you’re, kind of, looking for, for most people, is a life that’s in balance. You know?

 

[00:18:00.410]

One of these quadrants is probably deficient in your life. Now, mental is mind, body is physical. As the body goes- if you don’t have, people have said as an axiom, if you don’t have your health, you have nothing. If you do not pay attention to your physical form, you will rot. You’re currently decaying.

 

[00:18:22.090]

You are on the long, slow, and execrable path to an icy grave. Think about that. If your body- if everything else in your life is working, but you’re not taking care of yourself, you need to take care of yourself. If you’re not achieving things, mentally, in your life, but your body and your spirit and your emotions are fine, you probably want to sharpen the soul a little bit. Work on that mental capital, because that’s one thing that won’t abandon you, for most of us in our daily lives. Spiritual; some people- I don’t care if you’re the world’s biggest atheist. There is a balance in centering yourself.

 

[00:19:08.070]

You know, doing yoga or having time to yourself, whatever the spiritual is. And the thing about emotional, a lot of people call this self-care. That’s important, too. I think you need to write down some things in your life, like, say, what do you have in these quadrants in your life? Figure out if one of these are deficient.

 

[00:19:22.450]

This is a good quadrant to work from, if you’re looking at, “What should I be doing?” It’s a good, “Hey, what should I do?” And then you can write some things in here, like mental, like sharpen the saw, figure out something you want to do. And then we’ll talk next time about how to set it up and make it realistic, right?

 

[00:19:36.980]

You may not become fluent in Spanish by the end of the year, but maybe you can become conversational. Or, maybe, you just need to know 30 words so you can travel to somewhere in Mexico. A lot of the people speak English there, ya know? But, at the same time, you can figure out what pieces of this you want. The next one I’m going to go through is, kind of, the, “Do you want it? Do you have it?” matrix.

 

[00:19:58.510]

Okay, this is another matrix. It is, “Do you want it?” on one quadrant. So, it’s yes, no.

 

[00:20:03.620]

And, “Do you have it?” Yes. No. This is the achieve, preserve, avoid, eliminate matrix. So, one way you can do goal setting is you can stop doing something. That’s the other part of it.

 

[00:20:14.270]

If you’re doing something in your life that’s destructive, you can stop doing it. If you have bad relationships you’re in, you can get rid of those. So, when you put things in this quadrant; do you want it? Do you have it? No.

 

[00:20:25.370]

But you want it? Yes. So, if that’s a yes, but you don’t yet have it, that’s the achievement quadrant. You want to put in there stuff you want; relationships, things, people, places, stuff you want to go. A lot of these are going to be physical things, right? But they could be mental things.

 

[00:20:40.740]

Do you want to do that? You can look in your other quadrants for the areas deficient and say, “Hey, I am not balanced in my life. I never go to my kids soccer games, ever. Football, for those of you outside the U.S. Who are watching this.

 

[00:20:53.880]

So, here’s the thing, if you’re missing those activities of your child and you want to do them, then your life is out of balance. Then that’s something you want in your life, but you don’t have it. It’s something you want to achieve.

 

[00:21:05.250]

Put things in this quadrant. Then you’ve got things, “You want it?” Yes. And, “You got it?” Yes. Like your relationship.

 

[00:21:11.710]

I have a really great relationship with my wife. Was it always great? No. Is it great now?

 

[00:21:18.070]

Yes. But preserving it, things you want to preserve, require work. If it’s a house you’ve bought, and it’s amazing and you love it, you have to do work and upkeep on it to make it still nice. “Do you want it?” No.

 

[00:21:34.410]

“Do you have it?” No. These are things to avoid, okay? For most people, you don’t put anything in this quadrant, right? No, I don’t want this.

 

[00:21:41.230]

No, I don’t have it. Avoid. You just have that as one of the quadrants. And the last one is the “spring cleaning quadrant,” as I like to call it. “Do you want it?”

 

[00:21:48.320]

No. “Do I have it?” Yes. These are things you need to eliminate. If you have a toxic relationship, if you have a bad job, if you have a bad bank you’re dealing with, if you’ve got a relationship with money, things in your life or something else, you need to put them in a raft and set them off to sea. Let them go.

 

[00:22:12.030]

They are not building joy in your life, so you want to eliminate those things. And that is a type of goal setting, as well. You can get rid of these things. If there are things you don’t want, if you live in a cluttered house, downsize them. Go watch some Marie Kondo videos, et cetera.

 

[00:22:28.270]

And, whatever you want to do on that, there are ways to do this. And then the last quadrant I want to talk about right now is the “Effort to Impact Quadrant.” And this is, kind of, like, this Punnett square is set up with “High Effort” on the left-hand side of it. On the bottom-hand side, you’ve got, Impact; low to high. Okay?

 

[00:22:47.270]

So, high effort, low impact. These are thankless tasks. If you find yourself, setting things that are high effort and won’t change anything in your life. These are thankless tasks. These are not worth the effort.

 

[00:22:59.040]

Get rid of them. If you have a goal in there, it’s like, “I’d really like to do this thing.” Right? And you’re like, what kind of impact would it have on your life? Setting and achieving goals takes time. It takes effort.

 

[00:23:10.930]

It takes energy. It can take money, and you either have time or money you’re spending on your life. For most people, it’s going to require a lot of time. By the way, if you have the money and it can short circuit the time on the goals, always exchange money for time, and if you have the ability to do it. Because you can make more money, but you can’t- and you can sometimes buy yourself time. Okay?

 

[00:23:33.670]

So, there’s actually ways to do that that actually change what you’re trying to do. So, look and see if there’s ways you can buy yourself more time. You can’t actually make more time. And, by the way, it’s kind of a myth.

 

[00:23:46.650]

You really can’t do any of that stuff. You just have to find a way to reposition things. So, kind of, from there, thankless tasks, not worth the effort. High effort, high impact.

 

[00:23:56.250]

Man, that sounds like where I should spend time; high effort, high impact. It’s going to take a lot of energy to do these things. Should you do these? These are major projects.

 

[00:24:06.870]

You don’t want to have too many of these as your goal setting. So, when you build all your goals out, you’ve got to figure out what kind of time and energy you have because that’s your human capital you’re spending. It’s going to be a challenge for you. Totally going to be a challenge. So, how do we deal with that?

 

[00:24:24.150]

Good question. These major projects, you want to focus on only a couple of them at a time. Because they take so much- they’ve had huge impacts in your life, no doubt, but they take a lot of energy. The next one is the low impact, low effort quadrant. So, low effort, low impact. These are, kind of, fill-in jobs. Only really focus on these if they, kind of, have a tactical impact over time in your life.

 

[00:24:50.800]

Because if you’re going to do these things, they’re low effort, but they’re also low impact, you, kind of, want to fill these in. You want to, kind of, “Yeah, I got time to do this thing.” Right? So, these are the kind of household things that don’t make a major difference in your life. For example, repainting the house.

 

[00:25:05.270]

That would be one for me. House is painted. It looks nice. Does it need to be repainted? No.

 

[00:25:12.570]

Would we maybe like to repaint it, and do some colors? Sure. But, it’s- actually, I don’t know how low impact that is, but let’s just say hypothetically, let’s just say it’s painting a room or painting a wall. It’s one wall.

 

[00:25:26.350]

It’s not a huge amount of effort. It’ll take part of a Saturday, and it’s going to be low impact. I don’t need to be scheduling that when I have other important things I need to be working on. Just, there’s no reason for it. And the last one is kind of that low effort, high impact. These are things that don’t take a ton of energy, but they really change your life.

 

[00:25:47.070]

So, what is an example of, kind of, a low effort, high impact? Changing your relationship with your alarm clock in the morning. Getting out of bed and not hitting the snooze button. Putting the alarm clock across the room, so you can’t turn it off. Literally setting a single time and regulating your sleep schedule in some way is something that’s not- for most people, it’s kind of low effort. It’s not incredibly hard to do, but it can make a big impact in their life. So, that could be one of those- these are what I call the quick wins categories. Okay? So, these are goals that may not require the whole framework of goal setting, and you could put a whole bunch of these things in there.

 

[00:26:29.740]

And, if you did these little things as you went along this year, you’d find yourself in much better company and a much better location next year. So, to, kind of, bring all these threads together. So, I went over a lot of stuff in this episode. First of all, kind of, figure out where in your life, which matrix are you, kind of, living in right now?

 

[00:26:51.960]

Am I living in that time-quality matrix? You know, urgent-important, urgent-not important, important-not urgent. That’s where you want to live.

 

[00:27:00.320]

Figure out where you’re, kind of, living, and analyze some stuff in your life. Don’t have a midlife crisis about it, for God’s sake. But, do take a look at that and say, “Okay, where am I spending my time?” If I’m spending my time in that quality quadrant, where I’m dealing with things that are important but not urgent, you’re doing great, and that’s where you can really do some goal setting.

 

[00:27:21.540]

For you, goal setting- the next podcast is really, you need to be doing this. You are built to set goals. If you’re finding yourself in one of the other quadrants, see, kind of, like, what we can do and what could change on that. And, for you, what you might find is maybe before you even get the goal setting, maybe the next one you want to go to is that kind of achieve, preserve, avoid, eliminate matrix.

 

[00:27:41.630]

Look at that one and say, “Okay, cool. If I’m living my life in crisis, are there relationships that are causing my life in crisis?” I have a friend of mine, she has a group of friends and they meet every week, and she told me once, she said, “Gosh, you think my life is screwed up? Their lives are so much more screwed up than mine.”

 

[00:27:58.410]

And I didn’t say anything, and all I could think was, “Gosh, you need to eliminate those friendships because they sound like they’re toxic time sinks and emotional drains.” Because this lady lives her life in crisis, and I don’t really know why. But the fact is most people look at her and say, “Gosh, her life is a dumpster fire.” And it’s tough, right? Friend of mine, she chose a few years ago to start making some changes on that and eliminating things. I didn’t say anything about it. And her life is better.

 

[00:28:37.200]

And she told me once about a year ago, she said, “You know, my life is doing so much better now. Do you know why?” And I was like, “No.” She’s like, “I finally got rid of those things in my life that were dragging me down.” Excellent.

 

[00:28:51.290]

That’s what you want. So, do that. So, figure out- if you find out you’re living in one of those matrices and you want to live somewhere else, see what you can do to move those things out. And for a lot of people, the easiest part of that is eliminating some of these things that are probably dragging them down, that are not working for them. The next thing, once you’ve done that, is, kind of, figure out what you want to do.

 

[00:29:11.180]

Do you want to focus on – I touched on this a little bit- you know, kind of, the career matrix is, kind of, the personal well-being, career success, healthy relationships or giving back. Kind of, that’s one matrix you can just put stuff in if you want to quantify things that way. For most people, they’re going to break things up in, kind of, the mind, body, spirit and self-care matrix. So, just put things in those categories.

 

[00:29:35.260]

Put three to five things in each one of those categories. If you want to do the career matrix instead, you can. It’s personal well-being, career success, healthy relationships, and giving back. It’s a different way of doing the same kind of thing. So, what you have there, personal well-being, kind of, involves mind and body, and it’s, kind of, all those together. And then career success is part of it.

 

[00:29:59.010]

It’s not a bad thing to put them in both and see, kind of, where you end up with the most things. It doesn’t hurt, but you want to look and see, kind of, what those things do. Figure out where those things belong and where you want to put them. Put stuff in those categories. And then I think it’s useful to, after that, kind of, figure out, okay, you’re going to do these things.

 

[00:30:16.060]

Which ones are the high effort, low impact, where you’re really looking for things, or the things that are low effort and high impact? And you pick a couple of the high effort, high impact things. Don’t do things that are high effort and low impact. Don’t waste time on those. Those are just time wasters. And the low effort, low impact things probably shouldn’t be things you’re setting goals about. You, kind of, put a wish listing of those. That’s kind of your to-do list, right?

 

[00:30:40.980]

You fill those things in around the other projects as you have time, and some of those things may never get done, and that’s okay. That’s okay. But what you really want to do is look at the low effort, high impact goals, and do that. So, the three takeaways from this episode are figure out, kind of, what some short, medium, and long-term goals and things you want. To, kind of, take your life and take the things you’re doing and, kind of, break things down into the matrices and figure out, you know, which quadrant you’re living in. Do you have time for these things? Can you go through the achieve, preserve, avoid, eliminate matrix, and eliminate some of those things, so you can live more in that quality quadrant of important, not urgent things?

 

[00:31:25.860]

That’s where you get to plan and really create the life you want. And then as, kind of, the last step, put things into either, kind of, the career success matrix or that mind, body, spirit, self-care matrix. Put three to five things in there, and then analyze those goals over which ones are going to have the lowest effort but the highest impact in your life. At the end of the day, probably coming up with, at least to start, three to five short-term goals, and then we’ll put them into the matrix in the next- how are you going to achieve each one of these? How do you break down the individual goals and achieve them?

 

[00:32:00.320]

That’s the next episode. Put those in there and see, kind of, what’s going to work for you. You know, what’s going to work and really, kind of, crush those goals as you figure out what you’re going to work on. But once you analyze and figure out what’s important to you, what do you really want to go after? What do you want? Then you can really, kind of, create the life that not only you want, but that you also deserve. Because everyone, no matter where you are, deserves a rich, rewarding, fulfilling life. So, that’s it for this episode of The Buck Stops Here Business Podcast.

 

[00:32:36.120]

I know this is a lot about self-improvement, but you find out that as you improve your own personal life, you will improve your business. If you take better care of yourself, your relationships, your business, and everything else in your life will improve. That is a guarantee, no charge to you. If you liked this podcast, please subscribe to it. You can find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or any other good places podcasts are shown.

 

[00:33:01.470]

We also have a video online. If you’re not currently watching this online, you can go online, you can like and subscribe, see it on YouTube. And you can also see some of the imagery we’ve done. We put into this episode all of those, kind of, visual Punnett squares, so you can see those things as we’re talking about them.

 

[00:33:19.490]

With that, do good work, be well, and we’ll see you next time.