Do Less, Achieve More: A No-Nonsense Guide to Goal-Setting

1. Introduction to the Do Less, Achieve More Methodology: I believe most goal-setting methodologies ignore how our brain actually works. In fact, all the talk about hustle and discipline is assigned that those people are working against their natural psychology, not with it. And there is a way to leverage that psychology to make performance and goal achievement a lot more painless and free of all the guilt and the shame. And that's what I want to show you in this course. Hey, I'm Joe Morris. I'm a former military instructor, Iraq war veteran, freelancer and web developer. And what's it? Much of what I'll be showing you in this course, I picked up while in the military being a part of high performing teams under extreme adversity. And an interesting thing happens when you're in that kind of environment. All the systems and frameworks, all the nonsense and the non-essential. It tends to fade away and you get down to what really matters when it comes to performance. And I've taken all that and I've distilled it down into a methodology that I call do less, achieve more. Now some of the things you're gonna learn inside this course, how to take your goals and turn them into realistic habits that you can actually establish how to squeeze more efficiency out of your day without all the shame and all of the guilt that typically goes along with that. How to develop realistic daily rituals that leads naturally to your goals. What I referred to as the goal killer, than it's really the number one thing that you must avoid in order to achieve at a high level, the right and the wrong way to include your family and friends in your goal achieving journey. How to use the power of what's called kaizen to continue to grow once you've met your goals and a whole lot more, you don't need any prior experience with goal-setting systems or methods. In fact, it's probably better if you don't have any of that. And what you'll learn can be applied to your business relationships, health, whatever area of your life you want to improve. You can use the methodology to help you get there. Now, fair warning, if you're looking for overly complex and complicated or a class on how to make better to-do list. And this class isn't going to be for you. But if you're tired of setting goals and never achieving them, and you want to get to the root of y and solve it. And you're tired of people just screaming, hustle and discipline at you all the time, then this class will be for you. So if you're ready, let's go ahead and get started. 2. First Things First: So the first thing I want to do here is just sort of get on the same page because my assumption is, is that you're coming into this wanting to dramatically change your life. You're not wanting to nip around the edges or get a 10 percent change here or there. You want dramatic increases in your health, your wealth, relationships, confidence, that sort of thing. So again, my assumption is that you're looking for big change in your life, not just small little tweaks here and there. And the thing about that is, is big, long-lasting change does not come from setting goals, in my opinion and my experience. It comes from changing habits. Because it's about daily practices that naturally lead to goal achievement. It's not about gutting it out or sucking it up or any of that stuff that often just ultimately you regress back to where you started. Effortless goal achievement comes from changing habits and there's some, there's some real biological reasons why that is. So. One of the things that happens when as we form habits and perform behaviors is actual physical neural pathways form in our brains. So there's this physical component to all of this. We think of it as purely mental, but there's a physical component to all of this that's based around our behavior and our habits. And the number of dendrites increases the more a behavior is performed, which is ultimately say that to say that that's physical pathway actually becomes stronger. So again, I don't want to get too technical into sort of brain physiology, but the point is, is that it's not just a mental thing that you can immediately change. And there's no there's no baggage. There's nothing to get in your way. You have an actual fissile Cocoa component to this that you have to overcome? Well, this is from psychology, psychologists, dan, where essentially says when brain cells communicate frequently the connection between them and lengthens and the messages that travels the same pathway in the brain over and over begin to transmit faster and faster. And with enough repetition, those behaviors become automatic. So reading, driving, riding a bike, those are all examples of complicated behaviors, those things all if you actually tried to focus on all of doing all the things that you need to do in order to do those, perform those activities. They're a little complicated. They're low complex. That's why people struggle with them at first. But your brain very quickly automates them. And you're able to do them without thinking about them. Because you have these physical neural pathways that form. This is why you sometimes find yourself mindlessly driving somewhere that you always go. We needed attended on going somewhere else. I actually had this happen to me about ten years ago, I went back to my hometown I hadn't lived in for I haven't lived in since I was in high school for over 20 years now. But I was driving down a road that I had driven a 100 times before on my way to school. And next thing I know I was sitting out front of the high school that I used to attend. My intent was to go somewhere completely different. And that's because my brain had automated that that pathway, that that route so much. I just didn't even think about it and ended up back at the school. That's why that happens is because you have a physical neural pathway that forms at your brain. The other thing to keep in mind with that is, if you look at that scenario, I hadn't been back to school, hadn't been down that road for close to a decade. Yet. As soon as I got back into that scenario, into that context, that pathway kicked in. And so what that shows you is that the pathways never really go away. There's still always sort of there. And so that's something to keep in mind when it comes to how you're gonna go about goal setting and changing habits. So you don't change habits then by eliminating the old pathway, you change habits by creating a new one. And what that means is you don't, you can't really, you don't simply focus on eliminating a bad habit. You have to replace it with something else. If you don't have something to replace it, it's very difficult to just stop doing something. And again, the scenario that I outline, which I'm sure you've experienced in a number of different ways, sort of illustrates that, that that pathway never actually went away. I just was replaced by new ones because I didn't live there anymore. The moment I got put back in that context, it kicked right back in like I'd never left. So again, you can't just simply focus on eliminating something. You have to replace it with something else. And this can take up to three to six months for this to happen. So it's not necessarily an easy, simple thing for you to be able to do. In any case, everything that you're going to learn in this course is about replacing bad habits with new better habits. And most importantly, a way of doing it that is more likely to be successful. Because you're not just relying on willpower. It's not about just getting it out or sucking it up. It's about working with the psychology of your brain to help you create new habits, not working against that psychology. So again, before we get into this, I just wanted to start with first things first, wanted to get on the same page and kind of give you an introduction of what we're going to be doing here. This is probably going to be a little bit different than the other goal-setting course you may have taken. It's not about making lists. It's not about, it's not about any of the typical things that you're going to find in your typical goal-setting course. This is about understanding how your mind works and creating goals, and really engaging in that achievement in a way that maybe you've never thought about it before. So with that said, let's go ahead and jump in. 3. Turn Your Goals Into Habits: Step number 1 then in this process and I'm going to walk you through is turning your goals and habits. So as I said, big dramatic change does not come from setting goals, that comes from changing your habits. And the way to think about it as goals are intellectual, habits are operational. And what do I mean by that? Well, goals are something that you imagine in your mind. There's something that you play out and you think of in your mind. Habits are the things that you actually do on a day in, day out basis. And there's, those two things are very, very different. A lot of people, the way that we operate is we have an intellectual value system, operational value system. So intellectually we value all of these things for us. What our values are. It is our intellectual values that we would, we would lay out. However, many of us have an operational value system that is in opposition to our intellectual value system. So we say we value our health, but we don't eat very well. We don't go to the gym. You know, we do all of these things that undermine our health. As an example, let's say in everybody. But you can probably find things in your life where you have something that you value intellectually. But if you actually are honest about it, you're not operationally, you're not honoring that value. And so a lot of what we're really doing here is just bringing those two things into alignment. We're bringing our intellectual values and our operational values into alignment. And of course, habits are the thing that you have to actually do WHO in order to reach your goal. So they're the things that really ultimately matter because they're the thing, they're the things that are going to get you the, the actual result. And of course, a well-formed habit will then lead naturally to achieving your initial goals, the goals that you initially set for yourself, and then far beyond that. So it's really the habit that matters, not the goal, because once the habit is established, it becomes hard to stop. It becomes an actual physical pathway that just like the old habit that we're trying to replace. So it becomes just as addictive or it becomes just as automatic as that old, old habit that we may have had that was leading us to do bad things operationally. What we replaced that with a positive habit, a habit that leads us to our goals. That habit has the same characteristics, is something that we become sort of addicted to. So ultimately it's, again, it's habits, not goals that you focus on. So what we're gonna do then in this lesson is we're gonna take our goals and we're going to turn them into habits. That's the first step in changing the way that you think about your goal setting and how you go about achieving the things that you want in your life is, is not this, not as big a focus on goals, taking the focus off goals and really putting the focus on habits. So what we're looking at here is a worksheet that I've put together that's going to help you to facilitate that process of changing your goals into habits. And so it's really pretty simple. Over here on the left you have a column for your goals. And then over here you have a column for your habits. You have this little y area here that we'll talk about here in just a minute. And essentially you're going to go through here and you're gonna fill this out and you're going to simply take all the goals that you may have said. You may already have these established if you know if it's New Year's resolution or it's just a goal that you set for yourself. You may have several goals that you've already set. So you're gonna go ahead and write those in. And then we're going to talk about how you change those in to habits. So I've created an example over here, and we'll just kinda run through this. So let's say that the goal is to lose 20 pounds. So the first thing that we need to talk about is the characteristics of the goals that you've set as much as possible. You want the goals that you set for yourself to be measurable and specific. And the reason that is is because you want to have, you want to have a, an, a, the ability to achieve the goal, to actually have an endpoint and have a finite goal that you can achieve. Because it's important that you get that positive feedback of actually accomplishing the goal. It's hard to do that if, if the goals are open-ended. Now in some cases, in some scenarios, you're not always going to be able to do that. Not every goal is going to be able to be measurable and specific and that's fine, but as much as possible you want to make them measurable and specific so you can track your progress. You can know that you're meeting the goals that you've set for yourself. And if you lose 20 pounds, let's say in this case, then you can always up the goal. And now say I want to lose another 20 error to a total of 40 or whatever it is. You can always, you can always up those goals once you achieve them. Okay, so that's the very first thing. Make them measurable and specific. And then the next thing that you want to look at is you want to always keep a connection to the why. Why do I have this goal? Because that deeper why is really where your motivation comes from? That's the motivation for the goal. Why do you want to lose 20 pounds? Well. It might be that you're trying to create better overall health so that you live longer so they can be around for your kids. That frankly was a goal of the reason I started getting into fitness. Back into fitness, I guess a couple of years ago and really starting to take care of my health. That was the big reason for me. I want to be around when my kids are my age now. And in order for me to do that, I'm going to have to live a long time. And so the way I was living at that time, that wasn't going to happen. And so I set some goals for myself to get more healthy. And a big reason why was for me to be around for my kids. It could be feeling better. That's certainly something I enjoyed more energy, how you look, whatever it is for you, you really want to connect to that. Why? Because that y is what's going to motivate you. Particularly in the times when you're maybe not feeling like getting up and go into the gym or jumping on your computer and doing some work or whatever it is. That deeper why is gonna sort of view, if you remember that, why you always have it at the forefront of your mind, then it's gonna kinda remind you of why you're doing this in the first place and help you to get back on the horse. And i've I've had to do that several times. There have been moments in middle my pursuit of better health where I've had days where I didn't want to get up and do it and getting back and connect. Thinking about my kids and thinking about them being alone. Well, without me, it 30 years old or 40 years old or whatever it is, that scares me. I don't like that feeling. And so that's enough to get me, You know what? I might be tired right now, but I'm getting up and go into the gym because I'm gonna, I'm gonna be here for them or I'm not going to eat this thing that I want to eat because I wanna make sure I'm around for my kids. So again, that's the why you want to make sure and include it here. It's something I think often gets overlooked. When we're goal-setting. We just sort of assume that we know what those y's are. But I think it's important to make it explicit so that you see constantly in your face and a day in and day out basis and that helps keep you motivated. Okay, so once you have those two things, measurable and specific goals, you have your y written down over here, you're, you're wise, there could be multiple Ys here. Now it's a matter of coming over here and laying out what habits are going to lead you to that goal. Now this is where you can sort of dig into what most people do when it comes to goal setting is digging into the plan, the big plan that we have. And so it might be you're going to exercise six days a week. It might be eating a keto diet, drinking six glasses of water per day, getting eight hours of sleep per night. This could be two things. It could be ten things. It doesn't really matter. It's just all the things that you're going to actually do in order to achieve the goal. Now, the one thing that I want you to do here, the one caveat is I don't want you to think about this in Oh, I'm going to grind myself down for six weeks or two months or six months or whatever it is. In order to achieve this goal, I want you to think about it more of what's a daily habit, something that I could do on a daily basis for the rest of my life. Something that I'm just going to do forever from now on that will slowly move me towards the goal that I'm after. So maybe I don't lose 20 pounds in three days. But if I continue to do this now, these three or four things, I'm probably going to lose 20 pounds over the next six months or the next year. And then I'll continue to to, to keep that weight off or continue to lose more until I get to some sort of target weight. Because I've established a habit that I can do on a day in, day out basis. So when you're thinking about these habits, that's what I want you to think of. And so I've got some more examples down here. Now growing your business and you can see some of the things that you might do. Deepening your relationship with your spouse, increasing your social media following becoming a more productive crater. Again, it's all about just taking these goals. These are goals that I have and coming over here and not necessarily making a plan, but changing them into life-long habits that will naturally lead you towards that goal. And so you're gonna get this worksheet with the class that's going to be in the resources section. So you can go ahead and just download this worksheet and you'll have this working copy over here. You can edit it like this. You can print it off however you want to use it, but this will allow you to then complete this first step where you turn your goals into habits. So I encourage you to go ahead and do that. I would say stop now and go ahead and do that because the rest of what we do is going to be based off of this foundation. 4. Develop a Daily Ritual: Step number two then in this process is to establish a daily ritual. Or you might even think of it as rituals. Because ultimately, the idea behind this is that consistency wins, as I've been saying, it's not about grinding yourself to oblivion for a few weeks, hoping to get a whole bunch of results in very little time. That's the road to burn out and giving it a giving up. That's what I see. So many people tried to do that, sort of leads them astray. It's really, it's really typical around New Year's, New Year's resolutions. People be these really elaborate, aggressive plans for going back to the gym or their business or work, or their their, their home life, whatever it is. They make these really aggressive plans because they have all of this motivation from New Year's that people tend to get. But then when you get into the middle of January or the end of January and you're having to actually grind out and do this, it becomes a lot more difficult. So again, it's not about grinding yourself into oblivion. It's about a consistent daily practice that leads naturally to the goals that you've set for yourself. And there's a right and a wrong way to do it. And that, to me, that's really the value of what I'm going to share with you here is, is helping you to uncover or sharing with you a right way to do this because they're very much, is a right and a wrong way to, to create this daily ritual and engage in the habits that we're, we're trying to change here based around sort of the psychology of how the mind actually works. Okay, again, that's what we're really working in line with here. We're trying to work with our psychology, work with how our brain works, not against it, not trying to force it into a box that's going to lead you down, again, the road to burn out. And so the idea here is that your brain doesn't really distinguish between the difference between 20 push-ups or 400 push-ups when it comes to habit formation, it, It's really the simple act of performing the behavior in some way because you're getting up and exercising. If that's something that you haven't been doing, that activity is something that is new to you. And so it's sort of a new pathway that you're trying to form. And the brain, it does, it doesn't like 20 push-ups as much as it doesn't like 400 push-ups. Okay. So it, it, it, it doesn't distinguish all that much between the two. The difference is, is that the mistake most people make is they, they sort of overwhelm themselves. They make the actual execution hard, right? Doing 400 pushups is actually a lot harder. And so physically it overwhelmed you. It makes you tired because you're doing this really, you're trying to put forth this really massive effort to do something. And so the actual execution becomes actually hard, not just, Oh, you're forming a new habit and your brain is fighting against, you know, it's actually hard to do the thing that you're trying to do. And so changing the habits hard enough, you don't want to make it harder on yourself. And so the way you want to do is the easier that you make the thing, the habit when you're initially trying to form it, the easier it is to become consistent. And it's consistent. See, that creates the habit, not killing yourself. So you can create a habit with just 20 push-ups a day. Probably a lot easier then you're going to be able to I know a lot easier than you'd be able to do it with 400 push-ups because the foreigner pushes is actually hard. That's actually going to physically where you out and become difficult for you to do or 50 or a 100. And so again, to establish a habit, you don't need to kill yourself. You just need to perform the activity at sort of a minimal level. And so that leads us to the question that you should be asking, which is, what is the least that I can do to establish the habit? Now I know that sounds very counter-intuitive. Everybody wants to be aggressive and Ron, hard charging and hardcore and all that. And that's sort of the typical vibe that you get with this sort of stuff. But it just makes it harder as, as we've established here. So, and instead, what you wanna do is you want to think of what is the least that I can do to establish habits, sort of need to make. You need to pass a minimum threshold. And if you did one push up, That's probably not going to be enough to establish the habit. And so you want to push yourself a little bit, get out, get your, your, your body out of its comfort zone or get your mind out of his comfort zone a little bit to where you're having to form these new pathways and establish this new habit. But you really want to think about what's the least that you have to do in order to do that? And so the reason I've been mentioning pushups is because couple years back when I want to change my health, That's what I did. I started out just doing 20 push-ups today. It was really, really easy for me to do 20 push ups a day. And so that's what I started out doing. It was the least that I could do to get some exercise, get my breath, go on a little bit. And actually, you know, I got sore a little bit and all that to get the whole whole thing in place. But it was kind of the minimum that I could do that was really, really easy physically for me to do. Those 20 push-ups a day. That eventually became what that transformed into was me driving in an hour round trip to a gym, working out in the gym for 90 minutes. And then while I was in there pushing myself to the Mad Max each workout, still what I do today, I don't actually have the hour round trip anymore, but I still have our 60 to 90 minute workout. And every time I'm in there I'm pushing myself to the absolute max. So 20 push-ups became this really hardcore, this really aggressive habit that I now have. But that's not how it started out. I got to the, so I got to the hard-core version, but that's not where I started. So you want to start slow and you want to let the habit grow because it will the habit will grow. The thing that you want to let Dr, it is you want to let your natural desire driving, not what you think you should be doing, Okay, that's it. Thinking about why should you should be doing this and I should be doing that. That's what's going through your mind. You're going down the wrong path. Instead. You just let your, let your natural desire, your natural ambition to drive you. And so as I worked out, I felt a natural desire to do more. My ambition to do more grew sort of on its own. And I just sort of went with that. Now, when you do this, you're probably gonna go overboard, right? As your ambition grows, you're going to get more and more ambitious. I got very ambitious. My initial goal I was doing I was doing the whole thing. I was doing squats, bench press, doing heavy lifts. I'm 40 years old. I have bad joints from playing football and being in the military for 11 years. So I was lifting heavy weight, bench in over 315 pounds and was pushing towards them actually got up to around squatting around 500 pounds, you know. So it's not the most weight in the world, but it's a decent amount of weight to be putting on my old body. And so I got really aggressive with it. I want really overboard with it. Now, what I would recommend is just sort of go with it. Because you want to find kind of you want to to find out where your limit is? When I got up to those weights and stuff might joint started getting really sore and he started getting a little bit of back pain. So there were indicators that I was sort of getting to my limit given my age. Okay. And so then I was able to sort of dial that back. But if you don't push yourself clear out there, then it's hard to find your sweet spot. It's hard to dial it back. Now, obviously, if we're talking about something physical like exercise, you need to talk with a doctor. I'm not a doctor. I'm not I'm not telling you to just go out there and kill yourself in a weight room or whatever. But this could be working out. This could be in your business, this could be in your relationships. One of the sort of push yourself to the max. Within reason, don't hurt yourself, but within reason so that you can find that sweet spot. You'd probably start out doing too little like I did with 20 push-ups. You'll end up doing too much. Then eventually you're sort of find your groove. And that's really the key with habit formation, is you need to find that groove where you're, you're, you're doing quite a bit, right? You're, you're, you're stressing yourself. You're not stressing yourself so much that you're going to burn out. That's really the key here. I've done my stuff back a little bit, you know, like I said, I went from doing nothing to squatting nearly 500 pounds. I was doing Olympic lifts. I've doing hang cleaned at 1, which is just crazy for me to think about given my age. And like I said, it was hard on my joints so eventually doubt it back. I don't do squats anymore. I do leg press. I do lower weights with more reps. Right? And all that works better for my body and my joints in particular, my elbows are especially bad because I got hit so many times on my elbows playing football that they're really beat up. At my left ankle. I injured my left ankle, my back. I injured when I was in the military, my back when I was in Iraq and then my ankle. Just another time I was in the military. So I I have to work with and that works perfect for my body and my goals. But I had to go all in and I had to go through all of that a little bit for me to figure all of that out. So that's what I recommend you do is this when it comes to kinda figuring out and finding your groove when it comes to your goals. And then you'll just eventually settle in for the long haul. And that's really the idea here because when you find that groove, it will become addictive. It's enough to stress you. It's enough to push you to challenge you so that you grow. But it's not so much that it becomes so overwhelming that you get burned out and you'll start to miss it. If I don't lift on a day for whatever reason if I'm sick or or traveling or whatever. And when I when I miss a day of working, how I miss it, It's a habit now that I have that I'm addicted to. And so that's sort of when, you know, when the habit is really established and that habit established in that way, that's going to bring you more value than all the goal-setting gimmicks and tricks and all the lists and install this app and this piece of software and this concept in all of those things. Ultimately what it comes back to, it's sunny, it's not willpower is on cutting. It's about establishing habits. So all the grunting it out and all that stuff. This a habit. In that way. It's going to have more value than all of those things combined. So again, it's about habits. That's really it. That's where the magic is at. And like I said, the big counter-intuitive key to all of it is starting out by doing as little as you possibly can, not doing as much as you possibly can, that one little switch. And how you do things. That really is the big, the big key. And so I want you to really understand that no, it's near motivated. It's easy to want to go overboard and really dig in and go hardcore. And you've got all this energy, but you have to think about the reality of the day-to-day implementation. Implementation. Don't think about day one. To think about day six or day 13, or D 19, right? Those that random Tuesday in January when it's cold out and you don't want to go to the gym or do you wake up in the morning and you're tired, you had a long night, even sleep very well. Your neck kinda hurts. You got a little bit of a headache. Are you going to be able to do the 20 push-ups? Probably. Are going to be able to do the 400 push-ups? Probably not. And so as little as possible to establish the habit to the point where you get addicted at it, addicted to it, and then let it grow from there. That's, that's the key to all of this. 5. Integrate Accountability: Step number three then is about establishing accountability, putting some accountability parameters in place because no matter how much willpower you have out disciplined you are how much you follow. What I show you about keeping things small and in establishing habits and all of that stuff. There's going to be days no matter what you do when you don't feel like doing it. And accountability, having something outside of yourself in place in order to help you with that is going to go a long way with that. And so the first thing that I want to talk about is rationalizations. Because rationalizations are essentially the, the goal setting or the goal killer, the habit killer. Okay, rash. The number one thing that you're going to have to deal with is rationalizations, okay, so rule number one, when it comes to being accountable and establishing accountability, no rationalization. Now let me define what I mean by rationalization. Rationalization is a story that you tell yourself to make a failure, okay, in order to avoid the pain of that failure. Now, that definition is important because you're smart. You're brain is smart and your brain will find ways to tell you stories and find ways to make things okay in your head. And if you're not really disciplined about how you define rationalizations and being no nonsense about UR, rationalizing. And you're not going to allow it. Your brain can find all sorts of creative ways to undermine your goal setting. So again, it's important because anything you say to yourself to make a failure, okay? Is a rationalization, no matter how reasonable or clever sounding it might be. Okay, so when you wake up in the morning, you said I'm going to get up at 05:00 AM and I'm gonna go to the gym and you wake up and let's say you're a day nine and you wake up, you're a little tired, your little sore, and you're like, your mind says, You know what? This is, day nine, I've been doing good so far. I'll just miss this one day and then I'll get back to it. Now. That's actually reasonable, right? You had been grinding for eight days. You are you are tired and it very likely that you could miss that day and then go onto the next day. So it's a perfectly reasonable thing. It's not like it's complete nonsense or anything like that. It's still a rationalization. It's still something that's causing you to naught, to not do the thing that you said you were gonna do. Okay? So it it, it's still a rationalization no matter how reasonable it might sound or how clever it might be. And that's important for you to understand. Because again, these rationalizations, they tend to, they tend to fester, they tend to grow. If you let one work, then another one kicks in and another one and another one. Next thing you know, you you skipped Day 9 and 10, and 11 and 12, and now it's six months later and you haven't been to the dam or you haven't done the stuff you're going to do for your business or your relationships are with your kid or whatever. So it's really, really important that you are aware of and see these rationalizations when they come up and don't let them undermined your progress. Because it's really hard to get anywhere as long as you keep rationalizing. Rationalizing as I've, as I've said here. And ultimately what they're trying to do, what an rationalization does is it's a way of making the failure, okay, in your head, It's justifying that that failure, the failure to do what you said you were gonna do, what you told yourself you're gonna do, You're justifying it. And now the pain of that failure goes away. The problem with that is that you need that pain. You need that pain to motivate you. You need that pain to help keep you disciplined. And so if you rationalize, rationalize it away, then it's not there anymore to motivate you. It's not there anymore to help you. So you need to just let that paint sit if you miss a day, don't make it okay. I'm not saying you're never going to miss a day. You probably are. Okay. But don't make it okay in your head. Let it be painful. Let it be wrong, let it be bad. In your head. Let that happen and let yourself feel that. Because it's that pain that's gonna get you back on track that next day. And keep day missing day nine from turning into day 10, day 11, day 12, day 13. Okay? So again, don't rationalize. Rationalize, will sit with the pain. If you do fail on a day for whatever reason, don't try to find a way to make it. Okay. Just say I'm not going today because I'm lazy. I'm I'm not gonna do it. Just feel it, okay, you need that pain to motivate you. Alright, rule number 2 then is when we're talking about accountability here is we want to talk about allies, not friends, and it's not necessarily not friends. But you really need to have most people need more allies in their lives. So again, to define these things, friends are people who pat you on the back. They tell you everything's gonna be okay, right? They're there to console you. They help you to rationalize. They'll come up with rationalizations for you. And ultimately they see and accept you for who you are, okay, that's what a friend does. Allies, on the other hand, they kick you in the butt and they tell you to get back to work. They call you on your BS rationalizations. They see you for who you could be and they hold you to that standard. So typically when we think of allies, we might think of someone like a teacher or a parent, or a coach, but you can have friends that are allies as well. If you, if you understand the difference between the two and the type of people that make good allies and then how to use each one when it comes to your life in general, but also specifically when it comes to reaching the goals that you set for yourself. Okay? Now, the thing with this is you need both. You need both in your life. You need people to be there to console you and tell you everything's gonna be okay. You need that in your life at times. But most people, all they have as friends and they really don't have any allies. They don't have people around them that are there to see them for who they could be and hold them to that standard, kick them in the butt when they need it, and continually pushed them. A lot of people don't have that. And so really the focus here is on getting yourself more out, getting more allies in your life to help you with your goal-setting because they can be really good. Accountability partners, quote unquote, to help you down the path that you're on. And when it comes to goals, you obviously you need more allies more than you need friends. Friends are helpful at certain points, but you really need allies more than you do friends. So you want to find people who will hold you accountable. And the way to look at these people as people who you might view currently as negative. Or they're people who are to give you a hard time and you sort of don't like it. It's sort of a noise. You these persons always negative with me or they're always there was busted my chops. Those are people who are good candidates for being allies. Once you know how to use them, once you know how to use those people in your life, right? That's not the person that you're going to go to for a pick me up. You're not going to go to the negative person to, to, to have them Console you and tell you everything is going to be okay and give you rationalizations for this and that help you to justify your behavior in this net. You're not going to go to an ally for that. You're going to go to a friend for that. If that's what you need at that particular moment. And you go to a friend, someone that you know is going to give you that. But you also need people who are, they're then going to be like, Okay, stop making excuses. Get back on the horse, get back, nil, go on, get back in the gym, get back to your business, get back whatever. You need those people as well. So you need to know how to use both friends and allies. You want to use allies when you need someone to tell you the truth, don't use them to console you. Because if you pick the right person for it, it's not really going to be their thing anyway. Consoling isn't going to be what they do. They're going to be type person that always is telling you, quit making excuses and that sort of thing. And so they're making naturally good accountability partners. Now for me, I use my little brother. My little brother's not necessarily a negative person and he kinda can play the role of both a little bit. He, he's not necessarily as the super bust your chops type, but him and I are competitive. And so we work out together. And the accountability is kind of built in because I know that if I tried to skip know where i'm I'm I'm not going as hard and a workout or whatever. He's ago bus my chops about it, using any crap about it. And I don't want that I don't want to hear it. So it keeps me constantly, constantly motivated. I have someone that I need, I have to be accountable to because they're doing it with me. And so it works pretty well for me. And of course, he's also my little brother, so I have to be him at everything, of course. And so that keeps me motivated, not just to show up, but then when I'm there to push myself to the max, you know, push harder and harder and my workouts, especially when he starts to catch me in certain left because I always have to win, I always have to beat him. And so he's constantly pushing me. The more heat grows that propels my growth. And that's really the value of having an ally like that. Is that your growth, each one of your guises growth. It fuels the other one, me being ahead of him, that fuels him catch me. He wants to be able to talk smack me about meal out, lifting me in this lifter, that lift. And I don't wanna I don't want him to. And so we constantly are competing and pushing each other and frankly, just most people, they simply try harder when someone is watching. That's why a lot of people who maybe go to freelance or, or, or that sort of thing. They, they have a hard time at first because they're used to having a boss over top of them watching them, telling them what to do and when they don't have that, they're not sure, they're not exactly sure what to do. So again, having an Allied there to do that, it just simply tends to work better. So what you wanna do is you want to constantly create a group of people that you keep around you, you want to have a good mix of friends and allies. Again, you don't just wanna go all allies are all friends. All you have around US, people bussed near chops. You're going to get overwhelmed. And you're going to want someone to be able to talk to you that you can vent to and they're going to console you in that sort of thing. But at the same time, if all you have as friends, then those people aren't gonna hold you accountable. And it's going to be easy for you to slip on what you're doing. And they're going to be 0. It's okay, No big deal, blah, blah, blah. So you want to have a good mix of both around. You. Understand what each is four and when to use them as we've talked about. And then design natural accountability, both in performing the act, but also in how well and how hard you performed as I talked about the competition with my little brother. This alone, getting your allies right. This can help you to achieve all by itself, just having accountability, someone there to watch and hold you accountable, and having allies that alone can help you to achieve more of your goals just again on its own. So it's something to integrate into the process on top of everything else that we're doing here to really stack all of the cards in your favor to make it as likely as possible that you're actually going to achieve these goals. So that's what we're doing here. We're, we're just pushing everything in your favor. Stacking cards all in your favor to give you the maximum opportunity, that maximum chance to actually achieve the goals that you've set for yourself. 6. Upgrade to Maximum Efficiency: Step 4 then in this process is upgrading how we get from the 20 push-ups to the 90 minute workout and sort of a process for doing that. To me, upgrading is, is really the butterfly, butterfly effect of achievement. If you're not familiar with that term, it's the idea that small changes can lead to massive results. A butterfly flapping its wings in the Gulf coast can lead to a tsunami in the Pacific or something like that. That's sort of the basic idea behind this. It's kind of a phenomenon, a known phenomenon that's out there Anyway. Upgrading is sort of the butterfly effect of goal achievement. And if you think about it, if the key, if we've talked about all this time, the key being consistency. And your focus is on daily practice and daily rituals. Imagine if you make an upgrade to that daily practice, that gives you an extra 1% increase in results of that, that daily practice. Well that 1% times 365 days equals over the course of a year, a 365% improvement. So it's a small change to two, maybe your practice. But it can lead to massive improvements over the long haul, over the course of a year and beyond that. And that's a massive ROI in any scenario, any investor would tell you that that is a massive ROI. So that's the idea behind what we're trying to do here. And so once your, your habits are established, then you really, your main thing is to focus on making minor tweaks to your daily practice and turning that into that, that really becomes your highest leverage activity. And again, the idea here is that the first thing you have to do is get the habit established, okay? You have to do that first. You don't want to start upgrading to quickly. Because then you can start to create this really overwhelming daily practice that you're not ready for yet. You don't have the habit firmly established. So step one is doing as little as possible to get the step, the habit established. Once that's in place, though, once you're at 60, 90 days and you're missing when you're not doing in your ambition is really pushing you to want to do more. Then that's when you can start focusing on upgrading. And that really becomes your main focus because the habit is established, it's automated, you're just doing, having to think about it. So how do you find then the small increases, these little 1% increases that can lead to these huge gains. Well, there's three main categories, really, for me, this, this comes from, a lot of this experience comes from having actually worked in a window factory that where we did a lot of this where it was really process-oriented. And we had to focus on sort of the day in, day out tweaking of processes in order to make them better. Because if you really look at a habit, what it ultimately is, is a process. It's a set of set of steps that you're performing in a particular order. And so it can be broken down just like any other process. And so the three main categories here are, in that world we would call it the process. But here we're referring to it as the ritual. So the ritual, technology and people, those are really the three main ways. There are other ways That's not the only thing, but those are three main categories where you can start to look for tweets that can increase the value that you get from your habits. So the first place to look then is the daily ritual, their daily practice. It's self looking at it. So as I said when I was elite wee lad, I was a line manager at a window factory. And the factory practice a concept called kaizen, which stands for essentially continuous improvement. So the big idea behind it, it came from, it came from Japan. The idea originated in Japan and a lot of the factories over there became very highly efficient. And so then American factories started going over there to try and figure out what they were doing. And essentially what they were doing was this practice called kaizen, which stood for continuous improvement. And it sort of stood in contrast to innovation. America was very innovation-driven, coming up with new innovations that led to huge increases in results. Whereas the Japanese auto factories, they really focused on continuous improvement instead of big changes and big breakthroughs, they would just make their processes better and better and better little by little every single day. And so the American flag factories sort of took both of those things and put them together. To try and get the best of both worlds. And so again, when I was there, I learned what I spent a lot of time and to read a couple of books on Kaizen and really the whole focus as a line manager, this is what you were doing. You were practicing kaizen on a day in day out basis. And so what that looked like for me was I was constantly looking at my line, trying to find all the smallest little inefficiencies that I could add a second or two here in the process of putting a window or door together. Because if you can find, go through your line of fine ten seconds in the process of putting o, let's say a window together. Well, that might not seem like a lot, but if you're doing a 100 windows that day, then you've now found yourself a 1000 seconds or 1000 seconds. What is that? That's probably 30 minutes. So you've got yourself another one. I'm not quite 30, maybe 20 minutes, roughly 1520 minutes. Well, in 1520 minutes, you might be able to crank out four or 5610 more windows. So you've now added capability to your line that you didn't have by finding the small little inefficiencies. And so that was really the idea use we're looking for the things that we're slowing down the process or creating quality and safety issues that you could fix, developing solutions to them. That's what a line manager did. That's what I spent my days doing, was looking for those things. And so you ultimately want to do the same with your daily rituals. You're going to be doing these things on a day in and day out basis. And you're going to find little inefficiencies. And really the big thing is, is especially at first those inefficiencies are going to be obvious. The big thing is to not ignore them, to not overlook them, to not think that they don't matter. They do. And if you can find solutions to them, then you can get some massive results from making little tweaks to your, to your daily rituals. So most of the time the rituals when I'm first setting up a ritual, they start out pretty messy because I'm just, I'm just trying to get something in place. Like I said, 20 push-ups though, there wasn't a whole lot to it. The push-ups maybe the first day aren't the greatest form. Maybe I stopped halfway through, et cetera, is pretty messy. And they're always a little messy to start because I'm trying to just figure out something out. And I always operate off the least I can do, principal, like I said, what's the least I can do to establish this habit? But once that's in place, then that's where the real work begins. I look to improve the processes. Okay. And depending on what it is, you may be able to automate some part of it. You may build, outsource some part of it. Maybe you can rework the steps, put them in a different order in order to make it more efficient. Or maybe you can rework your home or your office space. Maybe you can rework how you do things on your computer, whatever it is you're looking at the process itself to find little inefficiencies that you can correct and come up with solutions for that are going to help you to be more efficient and get more of the result that you're after in less time. So let's just say you're doing social media and you're going out there and, you know, you're going to comment on 50, you know, you're gonna comment on the posts per day on Instagram. All right, that's a technique that I teach for freelancing. So maybe that's what you're gonna do in the first day you do it, you just go over to Instagram and maybe you're doing it on your phone and you're opening each 11 at a time and then leave me a comment. And then you realize, Oh, I can open this on my computer. And so you do it on your computer so you're able to type faster. So that's an improvement. Now you're typing on your keyboard and that's a little bit faster. And the next day you realize, oh, let me open each one of these in a new tab so I can just comment and go to the next one and the next one and the next one and just close tabs. I'm not having to kind of go back and forth. That makes you a little bit more efficient. And then maybe eventually you'd enough results. You can automate and outsource that to someone and teach them how you did it. And that makes you even more efficient, et cetera. So that's the idea behind this, is just finding ways to get more efficient, to get better at the processes that you're engaging in in order to get the results that you're after. The habits that you're creating, finding ways to make them more efficient and get more results out of them. So I give you one example here, a couple of examples. Dual monitors. Again, these, some of these things are really simple. I have through my freelance career when my career is sort of doing this whole working from home online business thing. I I've had three monitors. I've had dual monitors. I have had one monitor. I went back to one monitor for a long time, probably the last three or four years simply because, you know, I just for me, it was just simpler. I was really on the simplicity kick. And so that's what I, that's what I did. But, you know, as I started getting back into creating more and more courses, having dual monitors really helps because I can put Evernote on one side. I like to type out all my courses on Evernote first. So all the bullets that you see here in my courses actually put them in. In Evernote first. And then I transfer them over to the slide so I can get every node allows me to get my thoughts out really quickly, really fast. And so I'm not trying to think about how to design a slide and all of these things. I just get it out in Evernote. And then I have Evernote and one monitor I have. Then I have my slides and the other one. And I can then create this slide really quickly. So that's what I mean by dual monitors and the Evernote. It's a little tweak that I made, That's made me a lot more efficient when it comes to creating courses. My new house, we built a tiny house. My, my wife and I that we built we still own that, but then we have bought another house. Let's be a little bit bigger, has a finished basement, so I have my own office space down here. And so now I can record like this, you know, pretty much whenever I want. I don't have to work around in a tiny house. I always had to work around. And when I ask my wife and kids go outside or just to be quiet or that sort of thing, couldn't really do any recording when they were sleeping. I'm typically tend to be a night owl, so I like to do some on my work and my recording at night. My wife is an early bed early to rise, usually gone to bed around seven o'clock and getting up at like three in the morning. So it just it having the new house makes it a lot easier for me Bill to do what I need to do and without disturbing them. So again, those are all really simple tweaks, but those are things that you can look for when it comes to your habit, your process to get more efficient. So you're just looking at all of these different ways to try and find these sorts of things. The next place to look then, of course, is technology. So are there apps? Are there, is there software tools, equipment that can help you to be more efficient? And so this is one of my, sort of my pet peeves when it comes to a lot of things I see when it comes to goal setting and so forth. It really tends to focus around systems and apps and to facilitate those systems and software and that sort of thing. And I think that's putting the cart before the horse. You really need to have your process in place. And then you figure out the apps and the software and the tools and the equipment that can help you to be more efficient with that process, not o get an app and then let me use this, this, this, this process because that's the app that I'm using and I may not be may not fit me very well, may not fit when I'm trying to do very well on it becomes its own inefficiency. Okay? So again, that's really the way to use technology to help you get more of the result that you're after in line with the process that you've created for yourself with a habit that you've created for yourself to get more of that result with less time and less effort. As I sort of alluded to, it's usually combined with your ritual to create a more efficient overall process. So it usually will include some sort of tweak to your Rich Roll. Maybe you're going to outsource some part of it to an app or a piece of software, or you're going to use a particular piece of equipment. Now with this, I start out doing push ups and then sort of my middle ground before I started going to the gym was I bought bands and I started using bands and I did that for several months until I sort of maxed out what I could do with the bands. And then that's when I started looking for okay, I want to keep go on. So let me find a gym. And a gym was even a part of the soul whole upgrade process. One example. I sort of already explained it, but Evernote with my PPP course creation method, it's a course creation method that I use when I teach. That. That is based really heavily around the course outline and getting the course outline right. And that's really simple to do over and Evernote. And so that process, combined with that piece of technology helps for me to be way more efficient in my course creation process. So that's an example of how you would sort of combine the two. The thing here though is you want to be careful. Because one thing I've noticed is people tend to try and outsource efforts and willpower the sort of tried to outsource the whole thing to technology. And so there'll be like, Okay, I'll buy this new treadmill or I'll buy this peloton are all by this, this thing or that thing. And they, they put the focus outside of themselves and on a piece of equipment or a piece of technology or a piece of software, as opposed to where it needs to be, which is you actually not rationalizing, setting up habits, doing all the things that you need to do, being disciplined, et cetera. It's not about the technology and equipment, it's about you. So if your plan for changing your habits starts with buying something, you need to be aware, that's a bad sign, that's a sign that you're placing the emphasis outside of yourself. You need to establish your habits and your processes first and then find technology that fits with that. Once you already have an established not look for the something to buy first, right? That's a trap that a lot of people can fall into when it comes to. Goal-setting. And the last thing did then to look at is people and how they can be a part of this whole upgrading process. So improving your account, accountability partners, improving your allies. You know that that's one simple way that people, you can upgrade the people quote unquote, surrounding yourself with friends who are successful as you want to be. So it can be a little bit difficult to talk about what maybe you need. Maybe not, maybe not replacing your friends, but you're adding new friends or maybe there are some friends that you need to to remove from your life because they're bringing in way too much negativity or, or whatever it is to your life and replace them with someone who helps you to get further downlink goals toward the goals that you want to achieve, whatever it is. Just surrounding yourself with people who are doing the kind of things that you wanna do. Again, as an option Asana, you have to do that. But that's something for you to look at when it comes to the people part of this, it could be hiring an employee or a freelancer. It could be outsourcing work over on fiber, can be talking with your family to get them to accommodate the changes that you're trying to make better and what you need from them, and why you're doing it and explaining everything to them so that they're more supportive and they can accommodate you better and so forth. That's something I've had to do quite a bit when it comes to my freelance career because I work from home. Finding more people who inspire, motivate you and so on. A good example is my older brother and Joe Rogan. Now, at the time I'm recording this, Joe Rogan is a little bit controversial of a person. But this really isn't anything do with any of those like political takes or anything like that for my brother's more, I we were going on a long trip to see my parents and we're right in the same car together. And I had saved a bunch of podcasts from a bunch of different people. And Joe's was one of the ones that I'd saved and we listened to it and he really liked it. That particular episode was actually one of the probably not controversial ones. It was just with another MMA fighter and they were just kinda talking smack the whole time and he got a kick out of that. And so he started listened to the podcasts on a regular basis and start to get a introduces some of the people that are talking about fitness and health and business and some of the other things. And that got him inspired, that got him motivated. And that ultimately led to him making a big change in his life. He lost 60 pounds. You know, he he, he him and his wife actually lost a bunch of weight, sort of changed his life. It was in a lot of debt at the time, basically got rid of all of his debt. Now, started moved and started working. And we'll just kinda doing things he didn't really want to do career wise and moved and start doing more of what he wanted to do career wise and just made all these big changes to his life. And a lot of it was just having, you know, listening to these podcasts and people that inspired him and motivated and whether you agree with, with that being Joe Rogan or whatever it could be anybody. It was just people who inspired him, people who motivated him surrounding yourself with those sorts of people. So that's one example. And it could be, again, it could be someone online that doesn't even know. You could be people that you meet in person, it could be anybody. But just finding those sorts of people. So in sports you often hear coaches say that we're focused on the process and we're getting better every day. And if we do that, the results will take care of themselves. That's a common thing that you might hear. Well, that's essentially the idea of what we're doing here. We're not, we've turned our goals into habits. We're not focused on the goals anymore. We're focused on the habits, we're focused on the daily practice, we're focused on the upgrading and so on. We're focused on the process and just simply getting better every day. And if we do that, the results are going to take care of themselves. The pounds are going to come off. You know, the, the, the revenues going to increase, the followers on our social media are gonna go up whatever the goals are, they're going to improve if we just focus on the process and getting better every single day. So that's the big idea here. And you want to be careful getting to focused on results because results can mess with your head. Results are down. You might if you're trying to lose weight, your your weight can fluctuate multiple pounds per day just based off over water weight and water intake or the humidity in the air, how hot or cold it is. She might lose three pounds one day and then gain back to the next and get, get excited one day and be frustrated the next and so on. They can really mess with your head if that's all you're focused on and that's all you're paying attention to. So don't focus so much on the result. The result will take care of itself. What matters is the habits. Dig into the habit, dig into the daily practice. And the more you improve that the results are going to happen. And I feel like what I've given you here is a framework for you to be able to do that in a way that's likely to have success. That's the key here. By starting small and then just upgrading and improving from there, getting the habit established, and then letting it grow on its own. As opposed to trying to force yourself into doing all of this stuff, you know, jump, going from doing nothing to now your urine in 17 miles a day near doing a bunch of working out and you're doing you're doing a bunch of stuff with your business and you're playing for eight hours day with your kids on top of all of it. You're going to overwhelm yourself with doing that and it's not very likely to be successful. How many success stories have you heard where people just killed themselves and then it worked out. It's not, it doesn't, it's not that common, It's not that likely to happen. And so the big thing is to start small, let it grow and go from there. And I feel like I've given you a framework to be for you to be able to do that and stay focused on the process. And be able to eventually get to your goals and beyond those coals by focusing on consistency and daily practice. 7. Next Steps: So that'll do it for the course. I appreciate you taking the time to go through it. Hopefully you learn something that's going to help you with your goal setting. If you're looking for the habits worksheet that was mentioned in the course, you come under the projects and resources tab and you'll see it listed over here, at least on the desktop. It might be a little bit different on the mobile app, but this is, this is where you'll find it. Also, if you have a question or something, you can come over to the Discussions tab and leave that there. I'll be happy to answer that. If you wouldn't mind leaving me review, I'd appreciate that. And then if you go to the About tab here, you will see this Follow link here. If you want to get notified when I post new courses, just hit that follow link and you'll do that. I do post discussions from time to time as well that give more insight and so forth specifically around online business and freelancing typically, but also sort of goal-setting stuff. So anyway, if you want to, again, get access to all that and be notified when I post new courses, you can use this Follow link here. And then finally, if you'd like access to even more free freelancing and an online business and marketing training. And then you can head on over to my website, John Morris online.com. I currently have over nine hours of free training available inside of my mobile app. You just enter your information here and that'll give you the instructions for getting the app. It's not something that you're going to necessarily find on the App Store or anything like that. So you need to enter your information here in order to get access to it. And then once you do that, follow the instructions, you'll be given immediate access to all of the content right on your mobile device. So Android iPhone works on the iPad as well. So again, if you're interested in that, you can head on over to John Morris online.com. All right. Like I said, thanks again for taking the course and we'll see you in the next one.