Productivity: How to Achieve Goals with a Positive Mindset

1. Introduction: Hi friends, welcome to productivity, how to get things done with a successful mindset. In this class I'm going to show you how to properly goal set and how to get more done in less time without the overwhelm. If you're someone who constantly feels like there's not enough time in the day or you don't know what to work on next. Don't worry because I'm going to share a framework and system with you that you can start using right away to meet your productivity. If you're ready to hustle without burnout, then let's go ahead and get started. 2. Overview: Class, this course is going to be some serious talks. Seventy percent of the course will be focused on teaching the psychology behind how we can achieve our goals, and then the other 30 percent of the class, I'm going to show you how we take all of that head knowledge, best practices, and show you a framework you can use to consolidate all of your thinking into your own personalized plan that you can use throughout the rest of the year. This framework will certainly give you a good foundation you can customize for yourself. Sounds good? I'll also be sharing my book list at the end of the class to reference all of the theories that I've been teaching this class. If you are ready, it's time to reveal the truth about productivity. 3. Creating a Positive Mindset: So the reality is that you can't get good at something unless you're willing to accept that you're most likely at first going to be really bad at it. So likewise, you won't start something if you're too busy thinking about how you're going to fail. So if have you ever heard of like a self-fulfilling prophecy? If you believe that you're going to fail, you'll more likely fail. And if you believe that you're going to succeed, you're more likely succeed. In fact, scientists have studied that belief is actually a crucial factor in determining if someone is going to be successful in achieving their goals. So trainers understand this because they actually use mind remapping and positive visualization as a means to train Olympic athletes. So it's a pretty big deal. So the very first step in learning how to be productive is to develop the right mindset and here's the secret key to being productive has nothing to do with talent. You can have talent and you may be creative, but that doesn't mean that you're actually creating. So productivity is the execution of your talents and ideas and doing something with them. In other words, achieving goals is actually a skill. A skill that can be learned, applied, and mastered, and that's great news because it means that you have total control. So let's take Michael Jordan for example. We all know Michael Jordan as the crazy successful athlete that he is and we could attribute this, you know, to like his talent or his physical stature. But Michael Jordan wasn't a natural athlete. In fact, he was cut from his high school varsity team, wasn't recruited by the college he wanted to play for, and wasn't drafted by the first two NBA teams that could have chosen him. So instead, Michael Jordan was a hardworking athlete. So from the book Mindset, The New Psychology of Success, it says that, "Even at the height of his success and fame, Michael Jordan's dogged practice remained legendary. He was called a genius who constantly wants to upgrade his genius." So for Michael Jordan, success stemmed from his mind, and this is just as true for you and me because achieving goals is 80 percent mental and 20 percent strategic. So there are a million ways to be creative, because creativity is just another word for problem-solving and anyone can get good at problem solving, because true problem-solving really happens when you're able to set aside ego and focus on what needs to be done. That's really the key to unlocking your greatest potential. So you can't say things like, we all have a creative breakthrough when I'm in the mood to have a creative breakthrough be creative or I can't be successful photographer because I don't have the latest camera or equipment or whatever it is, because really those are just excuses that we really tell ourselves and it gives us permission to opt out of doing the work and that's what we have to be doing. So yeah, you may not know how to start a business or how to take great wedding pictures or whatever it is that you actually want to do, but it doesn't really matter because you do know that you can figure it out because you're willing to show up and do the work when no one else will, and that's because you've really giving yourself permission to try. Because the more often you find yourself succeeding or figuring out solutions, the more confidence you're going to build in your ability to figure things out no matter if you don't know how to do it in the first place. Now that you know the secret, but there really is no secret, sorry, I know it's going to let down, let's break down how to achieve your goals. 4. Creating Good Habits: Simply put achieving your goals happens when you consistently practice good habits. It's actually very simple, but it's not easy to do. All of us have habits, things that we do all the time without even thinking about it because they've become so automatic and engrained in us. In fact, we practice hundreds of habits a day. Turning on the TV after work is a habit. How you make or don't make your bed like me for years, I was terrible at doing that. How you respond to your spouse. How you play with your kids, and on and on and on. It's really these habits that are pivotal in either helping us achieve or deter us from achieving our goals. We need to understand what creates our habits and what we can actually do about it, so let's go ahead and break it down. Every single habit has three parts to it, a cue, a routine, and a reward. A cue is a signal to the brain to start your routine or your habit, and the reward is what satisfies your cravings. The very first step in achieving your goals, is to identify your habits, your current habits, what you're doing right now. We do that by practicing self-awareness. Let's take a personal inventory. Let's say I noticed that every day I find myself shopping at Target because who doesn't love Target? So what's my cue? Is it that I saw an ad? Is it that I feel bored or that I feel lonely? A cue can be a thought, or a feeling, or even a visual trigger. A cue is a signal that you're creating something. T satisfy the cue, you do the routine, which is go to Target to get the reward, the feeling of buying something new or doing something fun. Do that every day, and before you know it, you are now a Target shopaholic, it's seriously a real thing. But until you know what the cue means or what your body is telling you it needs, you don't know how to satisfy it. Was it really that you wanted to buy something? Or was it instead that you needed a distraction or just wanted to be around people? It's when we understand the cue or the need that we then are in a position of power, so we can choose to change the routine. One of the most common errors that humans make, is for some reason we try to change the cue, but that doesn't work because you can't change your thoughts by thinking about your thoughts. You're basically wasting your energy. A good metaphor is to think of yourself as a plant. When a plant is dying or when it has a need, we don't ignore it, or yell at it, or shame it, or tell it that it's not dying. You can't convince yourself to not have any because that's the reality, it's happening. Instead, we need to figure out what the plant needs to help it grow again. Does it need more sun, water or more fertilizer? Then we just answer that question in the right way. Going back to the Target idea, instead of shopping and spending money, I can choose to call a friend, or go outside, or read a book, or, take a break from working on my project. I'm not changing the cue. I'm not changing the reward. I'm only focusing on changing the routine. It's changing these routines that help us become more productive and understand how we're spending our time and why we're spending our time, the way that we are. 5. How Our Brains Work: Why are these cravings so powerful? Why the heck am I shopping at Target when I need to be working on my business or training for a marathon? It's really because the human brain is only interested in two things, how to survive and how to thrive. That's basically right. We're no different than the cavemen before us. Literally, our brain's main task and objective is to keep us alive. What does that mean? It basically means that of all the information that you absorb, your brain is only interested in three things. Well, how to provide for yourself, relationships, how to attract a mate, procreate and connect to others, and survival like food and sleep. If the information you are absorbing does not relate to any one of these things, your brain does not care because it's trying to reserve as much energy as possible to keeping you alive. That's why we don't read, we scan or we have selected hearing because the brain is always taking on shortcuts to only take in the most important information. How does this relate to achieving our goals? Well, it has everything to do with it because you have a limited amount of energy every day and you have to decide how you're going to spend that energy. In other words, you have to learn to prioritize what's most important to you and how to say this little word called no. Balance is a myth. The ideal balance is, I'll put an equal amounts of effort in all areas of my life and I'll experienced equal outcomes, but that's a total fallacy. Instead, life is a lot more like spinning plates. As the plate spinner, your goal is to keep all the plates moving. Some plates are moving faster than others and other plates are simply maintaining their speed. But think of these plates as the areas of your life. There may be a plate that needs to be sped up or a plate that needs to slow down. You may have plates that are nicely maintaining because of good habits that you already have. But the rule is you can't spin every plate at a maximum speed, at least not for very long without experiencing burnout. You need to choose which of the plates you're going to give more energy too and these can change at anytime. The goal then isn't balance, instead its harmony. You need to have both stretch goals and daily smaller goals to help maintain your optimal energy levels. Energy is super important because it's what feeds our willpower, our motivation, and our critical thinking in order to solve our problems. Willpower, just like creativity, is also a muscle, which means that it can get fatigued. Likewise, if you plan activities to replenish your energy, like taking a nap or meditating every day. Then, you're really feeling yourself fueled, moving you closer to achieving your goals. 6. Life Assessment: You need to ask yourself in this exact moment, when I look at my life, How much energy do I have? Am I burning the candle at both ends? Are my plates dropping? Is the sustainable? How fast am I spinning my plates right now? Well, to help answer those questions, there's this really great free resource at this URL. It gives you an overall life score. It'll measure how well you're doing in every area of your life. This is great because it gives you like an honest reflection of how you're feeling. Just take 10 minutes to do the assessment and just pause on how you're doing. 7. Create your Life Vision: It's necessary to know where you're at. But the bigger and more important question to ask yourself is, where do I want to be, and is what I'm currently doing in my life going to get me there? In this section you're going to create your life vision, and this is actually a ton of fun. What your life would look like if you could wave your magic wand and get everything that you wanted, rock hard abs, or be debt free, or own a cab firm. Using the same categories from the life score assessment, write down what your dream life would look like in every one of those areas, and describe it in every detail. What does your house look like? What does your job look like? Are you working on the beach? Are you in an office? Do you have a family? What do you do for fun? What do you physically look like? Are you happy? Imagine your life in every detail and just brain dump it. You can do it on paper, you can do it in Excel, it really doesn't matter. But the key is to give yourself permission to think big, and listen to your gut and what your body is trying to tell you. Because I can promise you that the minute you start this exercise, your brain is going to kick in and start telling you things like, "That idea is stupid and your life will never look like that." "Remember when you tried that before and you totally failed." These thought mean that the brain is actually doing its job. It's trying to protect us from anything that threatens our normal routines, but go ahead and just ignore it. Just tell your brain, "Thanks for the thought, but I'm going to take it from here." The reason why we create this life vision is because one, it's a clue to you of what you really want deep down. Two, it creates the motivation you need when things get hard, because really effort without vision is just drudgery. You have to know your why. In fact, for this year, I created this vision board as a symbol to remind me of why I'm doing what I'm doing. Every time I look at this, I remember the excitement I felt when I set these goals, and how I know that they'll be worth every ounce of struggle I've had to get me there. Feel free to have fun and create mood boards or do whatever will help you remember your why. Some people write it down on a separate sheet of paper, and then read that to themselves when they feel discouraged. For example, I work out because I want to have enough energy to create the life that I want to live. Or because I want to be able to play with my kids and be present in their lives, or I want to live my life to the fullest, or whatever it is that's going to motivate you to keep working at your goals. 8. Create your Goals: The second step in goal setting is to identify what habits you will need to create or have in order to have success. In order to do that, we need to prioritize and set specific goals from everything that you've just written down. Dreams are not goals, but you've probably written down a combination of both. What's the difference between a goal and a dream? It's simply this. A vision without effort is daydreaming. Ever heard anyone say, I want to be a millionaire. The desire to be something in this example, rich is the dream. But the goal is always the answer to this question. What needs to happen in order for me to be or do link? In other words, the goal is the doing, not the destination and the dream is the being. Or to frame this and what we just learned about habits the dream is the reward and the goal is to routine. That's why a properly written goal is something that's smart, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Because it's really those elements that actually make up the routine. There are actually two types of goals, an achievement goal and a habit goal. Both of these types of goals or dependent on one another. An achievement goal is usually one event or a milestone. Let's take the example of losing weight. Maybe I said that I wanted to be healthy. I write down the goal of I will lose 30 pounds by October 2018. Here I have action, my measurable and my time sensitive due date. Awesome. I have just written down a milestone goal. But how do I actually? 9. Achieving Multiple Goals at Once: This process is also what allows you to achieve multiple goals at once. By breaking it down step by step like this, you can really start to see when a project enters an active phase or a waiting phase. For example, if you are waiting to get back like a quote from a vendor or hear back from someone else and you can't move forward with that project until that task is complete, you can then shift your attention to another project that you can make progress on right away. The key is knowing when to shift focus is clearly knowing where you are at in each step of each process, and that's why we break down goals as specifically as we do. Let me also clarify that this method is not the same as multitasking. I'm not doing two things at the same time. My attention isn't divided. I'm not sitting at my computer writing this course and simultaneously working on a paper or another. It's very important to work on one project at one time because making serious headway also gives you a sense of momentum and accomplishment. But let me warn you that it always takes longer than you think it will, and so you want to include extra buffer times when you are putting together your schedule. As you get good at scheduling and managing your projects, one of the natural benefits is that you will become a time efficiency master. When you start to get good at managing your time, your life will change and your overwhelm will naturally go down because your brain will spend less time trying to figure out how are you going to fit it all in, because you will know exactly how long something will take you. Learning to manage your time actually gives yourself freedom, which causes less stress which inspires more creativity. 10. Embrace the Suckiness: Usually about this time one or two reactions can start to happen. That's because doing this exercise really forces us to go from a state of daydreaming to reality because we have to acknowledge the gap. The gap between where we are and where we want to be. Most importantly, the effort it's going to take us to get there, but that's the point because I know this is cheesy, but like if you don't run your life, your life will totally run you. Either you feel pumped, totally motivated on board, or you're feeling completely overwhelmed and discouraged, so if that's the case, just keep adjusting and testing your lists. Maybe eating healthy isn't working because there's actually a genetic issue going on that you don't know about. We don't always know all of our circumstances, but I'm here to tell you about whatever you're feeling it's normal and completely okay and part of the process. Some days you're going to be like, "Yeah, I'm killing it" and the next day you might be in a ball of tears feeling like things will never end, it'll never change. But just remember that this is exercise and it's a process, so be patient with yourself and acknowledge your emotions and let them be fuel to moving you closer towards achieving your goals. Remember that discomfort is a sign of progress, our brain is always going to try to keep us in what's familiar, but really it's the only way to make progress. The best way someone explains to me was, "I'm not any less scared than the next person, I just learned to put my fears behind me like a family of ducks, they still follow me, but they don't leave me." How do we put the ducks behind us? How do we follow through if the goal feels totally overwhelming and daunting? The secret is in the role model, the cue and the reward. 11. The Successful Role Model: So how the heck did I motivate myself to pay off $45,000 in debt when I didn't even know how that would feel or even how to do it. The answer is, I found people who were debt free and living a life that I wanted. The key learned here was to become successful with money, I needed to model and learn from someone who was successful with money. Luke Skywalker didn't learn how to be a Jedi learning from a storm trooper. If you're trying to start a business and you don't know what you're doing, don't take advice from Joe Shlomo who's never owned or started a business, only take advice from experts or people who know what they're doing or have already proven themselves because you don't need to waste energy reinventing the wheel. You just need to surround yourself with like-minded people and put systems in place. I know that seems like roses, such obvious advice, but the desire to please family and friends who are skeptical or even are critical can be a real deterrent to our competence, so just ignore the chatter. Gaining knowledge however, isn't enough to create a good habits. So we also need to master the doing. To master the doing, we need to create our own queues and rewards. 12. Create your Cues: If you remember from earlier, a cue is a signal for you to help remind you of your routine. Essentially, it's a trigger. You can set your own daily cues that can help remind you of the routines that you're going to want to be implementing. The most successful cues are usually those that remind us physically, that help us use our body and muscle memory. I'm talking about something other than like a phone or an e-mail notification, those can be helpful, but creating a physical world of cues has proven to be more effective in achieving our goals. For example, if you need to work out for that day, you can set out your workout clothes or gym bag by the door so you can easily grab it on your way out. There's tons of different examples that you can do, but the idea is that you really have the power to keep yourself in check and protect you from yourself. Everyone is going to have different cues that they respond to. By creating cues is really fun, and it can be super motivating. For example, my sister has a picture in her wall that she flips to know when not to spend and when to treat yourself. That's a cue to set in motion her spending routine. You can control your intentional cues, but you can't really control every cue that shows up because we are emotional beings. There's going to be time where you're just going to have emotions bubble up, so you need to prepare yourself for that moment of temptation and have a game plan ready. Because remember, we don't change the cues, we just changed the routine. Because our old habits never really go away. But as you build new habits, the brain actually carves out new neurological pathways over your old ones, and the desire to practice old habits dims over time. Really, the key to abstaining from practicing old habits is getting what we call the reward. 13. Treat Yo'self: Rewards are nothing more than the consequence of any given choice, no matter if it's positive or negative. For example, the numbing feeling after an alcoholic drink is considered a reward or the high of buying a new outfit. Part of the challenge is that our bodies want things that aren't good for us. Especially if you've programmed them in that way. I'm always going to want a sleeve of Oreos until I start eating healthier for a long time. Then you have that one Oreo and then suddenly feel like you're going to puke everywhere. I think everyone once had that. But this is why it's such a steep learning curve when we're first learning our new habits because we're essentially reprogramming our brains and our minds. To help change our routines, we use positive reinforcement with the right kind of rewards. Rewards can be a feeling of accomplishment, a feeling of pride about getting something done, or a feeling of satisfaction when you start to see all of your hard work paying off. It's absolutely critical that you reward yourself properly because the habit will only become a routine if the reward is more addictive than your old one. You have to learn to crave the healthy food, not the Oreos. I actually learned his concept my very first year of college before reading this formal theory in the book, The Making of Habits. I went to college during summer. Anytime I completed an assignment, I would reward myself with the coolest things. I'd be like, okay, I'm going to write this paper and then once I'm doing that, I'm going to go chimp or on cliff jumping. Something awesome. Do you think I was motivated to write that paper? Heck yes. I wanted to be out in the sun. I don't want to be writing the paper, but because I created a feeling of excitement before I did something that I was dreading, even the act of writing the paper became enjoyable in and of itself. Then I did that over and over again the entire semester. How do you think Rose felt that summer? Well she was crazy happy. She was tan and she was in shape because she's going outside all the time. She got awesome grades and she felt she could do anything all because of consistently practicing this reward system. Another important reason for rewards is because it helps fight procrastination. People misunderstand procrastination as in competence or being lazy or having a bad work ethic. But Mel Robbins and her book, The 5 Second Rule, explains that what we're avoiding isn't the task, but rather the stress that we're associating with the task. In other words, our brain is trying to protect this by warning us how difficult a new task will be. Procrastination then, is really nothing else but a survival mechanism. But really, avoidance actually requires more energy than the energy it takes to just do the task. It's beginning, that's the hardest part because your brain has had a chance to dream up worst-case scenario. But once you've repeatedly practiced pushing through that mental barrier, it becomes more and more familiar. You will now get used to telling your brain, I'm scared, this isn't fun, and I'm going to do it anyways. It's simple but not easy. Don't just reward yourself only when you reach your final goal, but give yourself daily, weekly, and monthly rewards. Part of fighting burnout is not waiting until you get burnt out. I like to take every single year and break it down into four three month periods. This helps motivate me because I get to see my milestones and the momentum I'm gaining throughout the entire year. I'll show you how I've set this up in my software later. This way I can remind myself of everything that I've done and not just how much I have left to do. When I feel discouraged, I can look back and say, "Hey, okay, in these last three months, I met this milestone, I paid off my credit cards and then the next three months I'm going to pay off my car" and so on. No one said you need to kill yourself over your goals and grunting through it. You can grind your way until all the unhappiness that energy is sucked out of your life and you're absolutely miserable. Or you become in to critical mode, which is a terrifying place to be. Or you can get creative about how you reward yourself along the way and actually learn to enjoy the process. Especially if you know a goal is going to take you a long time because you can't make time move any faster. You may as well just buckle up and enjoy the ride. But your rewards don't need to be huge and they don't even need to cost a ton of money. But if you know a task is going to take a lot of energy, then you might want to plan a bigger reward, like a trip to Europe or something. Something that you really, really enjoy. But rewards can be something as simple as going for a walk. But the key is that they need to be intentional. It's this act of making decisions with intention that gives you the feeling of satisfaction. If you pay your bills on time, you can take yourself out for like a 1$ ice cream cone. That 1$ ice cream cone will feel just as rewarding as if you had bought a ten gallon bucket of ice cream. Maybe you challenge yourself to like a no spend week and you research free activities to do around your town. Like free admission to museums or local festivals. You could play twice for a night, but these moments of fun will help curb whatever stress your feeling about how hard your goal is. Whatever you decide to do, make sure to schedule time and money to reward yourself and celebrate the progress that you're making, all working towards your goals. 14. Holding Yourself Accountable: One of the most effective routines to implement is a night routine. Every night I bullet journal. How well I did that day at accomplishing my goals? If I didn't do so well, why I didn't do so well? What I could do better tomorrow? This means that I know exactly what I'm going to do before I even wake up in the morning the next day. I don't have to waste energy or time thinking, what am I going to do today? I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing from the minute I wake up until the minute I go to bed all because of my neat night routine. In fact, I realized after doing this for so long that I was asking that same key question over and over again that we use when building our goals. What needs to happen tomorrow in order for me to be a successful? I would play the day in my head from beginning to end over and over again until I had my routine memorized. The effect was I woke up motivated. This journal became my accountability record, a way to report on what progress I was making. This accountability really needs to happen daily. Maybe you tell your friends or family what you're trying to accomplish and ask how they can help you. This journal didn't just hold me accountable, but it was also a reminder to me of my why every night. Every time I journaled, I'd write down over and over again. I love being debt free. I would visually picture myself succeeding and what that would feel like to owe nada to anyone else. Visualization is a technique used by high-performing athletes, I mentioned this earlier, all the time to help them remain calm under pressure when it comes time to catch the ball on the end zone or score the winning touchdown. It really is your body's way of preparing you or practicing something that you haven't yet experienced. This is also why we dream. It's another way that the mind protects the body. The visualization of succeeding creates a belief in you that then shifts from, this isn't something that might happen to, or it's going to happen. In essence, you're training your subconscious. Even if you have a minor slip-up, which you will because nobody's perfect and we all make mistakes. You know to jump back on that horse as quickly as possible and it's no big deal because you know, you're going to see it through. The other tip is to stop planning to plan. Guess what? Planning to plan is just another form of procrastination. You don't need to micromanage yourself and say, okay, I have to write down before brushing my teeth so I can cross it off. That's just fear dogging. Just move yourself to the bathroom and brush your teeth. 15. The Truth About Failure: My advice is, even when you have your armor protected plan, remember that a plan is never concrete, it's a living and reading tool that you can pivot when life throws curve balls at you or when you need to make adjustments. Maybe something isn't working, but there comes a point where you have to evaluate, is this getting me where I want to go? So you adjust your plan until you find what works for you. Maybe there's more learning that needs to be involved. Maybe you don't have the right team set in place, or it could be a million different factors, but you'll need to problem-solve and be flexible. That doesn't mean that you aren't following the plan at all, aren't seeing success, and then blame the plan for the reason why you're not seeing success. You got to do the work, but the purpose of the plan isn't to control life, it's to change you. Creating, achieving goals, and knowing that you have the power to bring your vision to fruition is one of the most satisfying joys you can ever experience, and that joy in itself is addicting. But what happens if you fail? What happens if you don't reach your goal and it's a defeating blow? Truly Oprah said it best because no one can out speak Oprah, but she said, "There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction." You'll be happy to know that if you're failing, that means that you're actually doing. I can promise you that every failure that you experience will at one point in your life become more valuable than your success. Failure can be life's greatest teachers and I'm talking from personal experience. So embrace failure as a means of learning because if you don't try, that means that you're guaranteed that you'll never succeed. Give yourself the chance because you'll never know. Seth Godin said this best. He said, "We live in a day where it's more risky to not take risks than it is to take risks." It's never too late. Vera Wang became a designer when she was 40 years old. I didn't even know that, 40 years old and Vera Wang becomes this international star. Samuel L. Jackson, he didn't get an award-winning role until he was 43, and there are countless other stories. So if you have self-doubt, and you need help talking yourself through, consider writing down positive affirmations every day. Like you deserve happiness, you have a gift that only you can share with the world. There are plenty of apps like ThinkUp, I love this one, that you can use to listen to every day to remind yourself of who you are and why you're doing what you're doing, and why it's so worth it. 16. How to Fight Burnout: Remember if there's no plate spinner, then there's no plates. Your body, your health, and self-care is your tool for creating everything in your life. That's why your health needs to be prioridad número uno. You need to constantly be checking with yourself to read your gauges. When people burn on all cylinders for too long, things spiral out of control and then, the plates begin to drop. This is when burn out happens. Your brain releases huge amounts of Cortisol, which is a hormone that really helps regulate your mood, your fear, and your anxiety. But if this hormone is released for way too long, you can get addicted to stress. Yeah. Do you know of someone loves the fact that their life is stressful and wears it like a badge of honor? Or someone who's like a procrastinator? "I used to be one really bad", but just like love the rush of getting something done and attributes their creative genius to performing under pressure. All of these scenarios really indicate that the brain is functioning in a fight or flight state when you're at that critical mode. If you're at the point of complete overwhelm, where you're going and you fill you are about to have a nervous breakdown, it's really time to start over, get the plates back on the pole and get your health in order. You can't put a plate back on the pole and spin it fast again right away. You have to first build momentum and to build momentum, you have to start slow. In goal setting, that means you have to go back to the basics and create those daily and weekly small wins. But don't confuse small as insignificant. The truth is actually the exact opposite. Small wins are a huge determining factor for how people achieve their larger goals. In fact, scientists have argued that there's such things as keystone habits, meaning you don't have to change everything in your life that's not perfect. You just need to focus on perfecting one habit that will then have a positive ripple effect on all of your other habits. For example, if I keep the commitment of working out regularly, I may naturally also start eating healthier or drinking more water or taking the stairs. I may start wanting to keep a food log of everything that I eat. The reason why this works in theory is because it has to do with the amount of energy you have to expend. If it takes a lot of energy to work out which it does, chances are you're not going to want to sabotage all that hard work that you just did. Because that would be painful because then you would experience a loss and we actually fear losses more than we do gaining gains. So, instead of undoing what you just did, you start to protect that investment that you just made. The truth is that large goals and amazing achievements happen from the culmination of tiny successes. Gratitude is another effective method that has been statistically proven in helping people achieve their goals. It can be easy to look at where you want to go and feel frustrated with where you are now. By practicing gratitude in the smallest things, you start becoming more present minded. It distracts you from, not obsessing over how bright your life will be when you achieve your goal. Instead you focus on the here and now and what you have to be happy about. Goal setting and future planning was never meant to be an escape from reality. But some people do just that and that's what really causes compulsion. This idea of my life will be better when. "fill-in-the-blank. " I'm married when I have my dream job, when I lose 30 pounds, whatever it is. Even if that may be true to some degree, this thinking is more dangerous than it is helpful. It actually causes us to go into reactionary and fearful state that can either cause anxiety or apathy. That's because what we're really telling ourselves is, you can't or don't have control to improve your situation as it currently is. You have to wait for external circumstances to change, which really puts you in a one down position, a state of helplessness. Because you're essentially giving away your power. So, please don't ask life for permission to go after what you want. Ask instead for forgiveness. It's better to choose a direction and go than never go at all. I'm not saying that your circumstances aren't challenging. I get it, life is hard. But what I'm saying is that instead of focusing on what you don't have, take a look at what you do and look at what you can control and believe that you have everything within you right now to create change. Even if it's only one thing. You can do that by practicing gratitude. You'll start to see how your life means something now, even in the smallest ways and that belief can begin to grow within you and really helps create a sense of peace. 17. Putting it all together with TodoIst: Now that I am finished being on my soapbox, I appreciate it is time for your class project. It's time to put together all of your goals into a manageable system. I use the task management software called Todoist, I love it, it's free and this helps me remember what I'm supposed to be working on every day. You can use a plain old calendar or plain if you wanted, doesn't matter as long as it does the job of queuing you on what you're supposed to be doing. Let's go ahead and dive in and start creating our actual goals. Okay guys, we have finally made it to Todoist. I love this software. I've been using this for about eight years now. I love it because it's really functional and it's free. I'm going to go ahead and log in to my personal account here, so you're actually going to see my actual dashboard and what it looks like when I'm actually goal planning. I'm going to warn you that it's actually messy right now because I've been heads down in the last few days. This is a daily thing to be re-changing, hashing, prioritizing, and making sure that it's most up-to-date. When you get into the console, we haven't used it before, basically you have your inbox, which is like all of your tasks that aren't assigned to any specific project. You can add anything that you want, like feed the cat. Great And I can schedule a time that I want it maybe I say I want to be today, and you can even prioritize it. I'm going to show you how I have set up this system and how I prefer to use it. But the basic idea is we break it down by tasks and then we add them to a project over here on the left hand side. Now, when I first started using Todoist, it looked very much like this. It was like here's project by project and it's just going to dump all of these tasks. I'd sign them to a date and I prioritize them but it quickly felt very overwhelming. I would just scroll and scroll and be like, how am I going to get all this done and it felt just cumbersome. Instead I came up with a different system. We talked about our recurring routines and our daily habitual goals. I've broken these out by the different areas of our life. I've included, like here's the milestone goal that I want to accomplish for example, for my physical loss was 30 pounds by October. Great. Then I break it down even after that. Here's my exercising, here are my workout days. I scheduled them if it's recurring, I decided that Saturdays, Mondays and Thursdays and Fridays are the days that I want to work out every week, so four times a week. I'd go in here and then I'd schedule a recurring every Saturday. What happens is if I press this, it will just jump to the next Saturday and so on and so on. This is fantastic because what happens is when I go into my next seven days, if it's a Saturday, it will show up on my calendar. Like here you go Rose. Here's your workout day. It's like here free today for example, it says workout. That's fantastic. That's what I do and I decided to prioritize my recurring routines in red. The idea is that these are like things that are non-negotiable and it's a cue to me when I'm looking at my daily schedule, I really need to do these things. These are the most priority and then everything after that is a less priority. I put them in orange or white. That's how I like to do it. Because again, we talked about our health, so that's a good habit to get in the practice off. It's also my recurring routines. Then what I have is my brain dump. Basically this idea is your brain, it's tiring to try to remember all other things. I just have things like an idea dump list, whenever I have an idea, I don't care if it's stupid or dumb or it's brilliant, it doesn't matter. I just dump it here immediately the minute I hear it. Same thing for books to read. I had this goal where I want to read a book a week. People are always recommending to me what books I should read, and so I love it because I just come to this list and then I'll say, great, this is someone that someone suggested to me that I read. I'll include the link in my Todoist and then I'll go back and buy it. Now it's, great, well I have all these things, but what do you do with them? This is where the monthly calendar comes in. I break out my years by every single month. This is great because really what it does is it has allowed me to get a glance of how busy I am month by month and day by day. I feel like that gives me a good overall arching view of how busy I am. You can see like August is pretty full. I have 24 things that are going on, and then it twist it out a little bit because I haven't planned as much, but what I've for me personally, I've bucketed a couple things that are monthly goals for me. We add books to read once a month, so I know that I need four books in here. You can see that I'm short one. What I do is I come back to my book list and I say, awesome, I want to read this one. Then all just move that. My eyes are going crazy on me as I quit. I just lost my place. Books to read, so I will take it from my list that I've dumped and then I'll move it into that month and I start to fill it out. This is great because I can do this all at once. I need another book here for October, I'll take this one and I'll dump it here. November, do I have, I need to add that project, so you can see I start to fill it out. Another goal that I have is that every week I take myself out on a creative artist week. The whole idea is just to inspire myself on things that I like to do and I'd have to do it by myself. That's the rule. I can come up with things like, I want to go street fair by myself and I'll put that in my schedule. Now, you can do this with a hubby or a partner, it doesn't matter, but this is just how I do it. I mean, I do have other dates as well. I'll just put that out there, thumb on bare earth, you guys. But I'll have a Friday date nights and I want to have at least four here. I can start to see that I'm a little jumbled, so this needs to be cleared up. Here are my rewards, I decided that I'm going to treat myself two movies. I put down the show's times, I know what [inaudible] I'm going to, and then I can keep track there. That's really, fun to something like four, here's my skill share. In August, my goal is to launch this course today may not happen, but that's okay because if I want to reschedule, I can just go back to more and re-schedule it another couple of days out. What I love about this is people always ask me, "Rose, how do you get all of this stuff done?" It really is because I'm keeping myself accountable with this system because you can clearly see how busy I am day-to-day and when you start to break it down, you realize how much free time you have. Look at Sunday, I have so much time on Sunday. I could totally move stuff here if I needed to. Monday is looking a little crazy, maybe I went a little overboard with my sharpening skills. That's another goal that I have for myself is I'm constantly learning tutorial or things that I want to do and I love this because you can paste the link inside the project task and it'll take you right to what you need to learn. Anytime I'm learning from somebody and they say, hey, you should check up this tutorial I just copy the link, and then that's recorded forever. Then I can always come back here and adjust it if I need to. Like, wow, this is way too much. I'm going to put this here in this month and then I'm going to break it down that way. This is great because you start to get in the habit of realizing like what projects you want to be working on. One thing I've realized lately for myself is that I want to do more service. That's a new monthly goal I'm trying to add is doing a service project a month or maybe two. This is also great for your interior design students that have had. If you guys are doing on a house remodel, I have dumped here everything that I want to do in my house for every single room. I realized this is really overwhelming, so if I wanted to take a whole kitchen remodel and move that to one month, I could I could say, in December of this year, I'm going to just do it. Here we go. Here's the kitchen remodel or instead, if it's like, I don't have enough money to do all this at one time, just go ahead and month by month, break it down. Here I have kitchen remodel, because I've put it there, I can just move a couple of tasks there, and October maybe I wanted the stink, and November, I can just add the project below and say kitchen remodel. I can add from this list again down here, this dump, anything that I want to add. Since we're doing the kitchen remodel well, I'm doing the wrong to ask, but that's okay, you get the idea. Then I can add it to there. This is really helps you break it down month by month, day by day, and helps you prioritize what you want to be working on. I love it because it's super flexible. This also at the top will keep track of your productivity points. You can go ahead and you can set goals for yourself. Like maybe you want to accomplish two goals a day or something, or three goals a day. Well, I just set myself up for one. That's really what I do. I say if I'm doing one thing a day, I'm happy. Then this will give you a reminder. It'll give you a little congratulations whenever you set that. This is the basis of Todoist. It's very simple, very easy, you could even add labels if you wanted. I don't think I have the premium, but I've never really needed it. I didn't really feel like it was really that helpful. It just feels like it's getting too much into the weeds where it doesn't really have [inaudible] my opinion or return on investment. It just feels like it's wasting more time, but you can certainly upgrade to the premier and get the labels. There's also filters that you want to use, but because I've broken it out the way that I have personally, I feel like those filters are basically self-explanatory here. That's how I decided to do it. If you'd copy this or you can do it however you feel is best. But I hope that you loved this program or at least consider another program that's similar or basically has the same functionality. Good luck. I hope you guys really enjoy using Todoist. 18. Conclusion: Class, you are ready to rock it. I hope this class has been helpful and I wish you the best of luck in achieving your happiness truly. I promise good things are ahead. Please leave a review and if you want to read more about the research behind these theories again, you can check on my reading list below.