#124： Self-Discipline & Personal Effectiveness With Rory Vaden
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, Brett McKay sits down with Rory Vaden, author of the books, "Take the Stairs" and "Procrastinated on Purpose," to discuss the importance of self-discipline, procrastination, and how to better manage your time.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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We all know that self-discipline is a necessary trait if we want to achieve our goals and
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What are some tactics that you can do to actually instill self-discipline within yourself?
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And besides that, besides the self-discipline part, there's another aspect to being successful
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and achieving our goals that we have for ourselves.
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It's managing our time in an effective manner so that we get the most out of it.
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And the problem is, in our modern world, we have so many things vying for our attention.
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First, we have the internet on our smartphones, on our desktops that are just, there's so
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many things there that can just distract us from work, from our family.
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But then you have work, then you have family, then you have commitments to church or maybe
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a community organization that are all competing for your attention and for your time.
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How do we manage all these things in a way that we get the most bang for our buck and
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Well, our guest today has written two books on these topics.
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His name is Rory Vaden, and he's the author of Take the Stairs, and the other one is Procrastinated
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Rory started out his career as a salesman, and now he is a consultant and coach for salesmen
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and as well as organizations that are sales-focused.
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His job is to help people be more effective salespeople.
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Anyways, the principles that he teaches to his clients are applicable to any person who is
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So, anyways, today on the podcast, Rory and I discussed self-discipline, having this sort
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We're not going to take the escalator, and then we're going to talk about how we can procrastinate
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on purpose and what that means to better manage our time.
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So, I think you're really going to like this podcast.
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A lot of great practical takeaways that you can use right away after you're done listening.
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So, without further ado, let's talk to Mr. Rory Vaden.
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So, you're a business consultant, successful salesman, and you've also written books about
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productivity, motivation, how to just live a more full life.
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And your first book, I love the title of it because it really encapsulates sort of the
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It's called Take the Stairs, and it's about self-discipline.
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And you make the common sense argument that if you want to be successful in life, you
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just have to keep doing the things that will bring you success, even if you don't feel like
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And I think most people, they get this, they know that on an intellectual level, but we
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have such a hard time putting it into practice.
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Well, you know, there's lots of reasons why, but one reason is actually rooted in neuroscience.
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You know, our brain, we, you know, the dopamine drug that is inside of our brain, we get these
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little hits of dopamine whenever we do something in the short term, right?
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And so, what feels good in the short term is something that we are kind of drawn to biologically.
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But the thing is, our biology was never prepared, never prepared us for success, it prepared
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And so, when you understand that, it's like breaking free of that and working the brain
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But the front part of your brain, the frontal lobes is kind of referred to as the human brain.
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That's kind of the one for logic and thinking and rationale, and that is the one that has
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And like the paradox principle in Take the Stairs is easy short-term choices lead to difficult
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Meanwhile, difficult short-term choices lead to easy long-term consequences.
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So, it's this great paradox that only a few people understand, but ultra-performers have
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realized that procrastination and indulgence are like these creditors that charge us interest.
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They make us feel good now, it's easy in the short term, but it's what creates the more
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So, contrary to what people think, Take the Stairs is not about making life as hard as possible,
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It's about making life as easy as possible, but it's based on sort of the unpopular premise
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that creating the easy life comes from doing the hardest parts of things as soon as possible.
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I mean, there's been all these studies that people know they need to save for retirement,
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Because retirement's going to come, but then they don't save.
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Is it just because the future is so amorphous and not concrete that it makes it hard to play
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I think a lot of times when people come to us and they say, hey, I really struggle with
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self-discipline in this area or that area, what we almost always find is it's not that
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they struggle as much from a lack of discipline as they do from a lack of vision.
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The amount of our endurance is directly proportionate to the clarity of our vision.
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So, if we have a crystal clear picture of what we want in the long run, then that creates
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a naturally strong connection to how the sacrifices we're asking ourselves to make today forward
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us towards a future that we care about, which thereby creates this context for action to
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take place, and our discipline engages almost automatically.
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But if we don't have that clear vision, or if we don't spend much time thinking about it,
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which most people don't, most people suck at vision.
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And we were taught as kids not to be dreamers, like get your head out of the clouds and think
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And yet, the most successful people in the world, at least in the business realm and in
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the athletic realm and really, I mean, the entertainment realm too, they have such a clear
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vision and they spend so much time thinking about it.
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They see it so vividly in their mind that it's like the vision pulls them through all the crap
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Whereas, absent that long-term vision, you're simply governed by your emotional impulses of what
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feels good right now because you're biologically, like you're set up that way.
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So, I mean, yeah, there's that verse in the Bible, I think it's Proverbs, right?
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Is it just a matter of sitting down, journaling, writing, thinking about it, talking about it
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with a mastermind group or your friends or your wife?
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And what do you, how do you fashion that vision?
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Well, you know, we recently did like a little blog mini-series on these seven realizations
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And one of the most common characteristics that we found with wealthy people is that they
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fall asleep every night thinking in very vivid detail about what they want in the future.
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And that is something that I started doing a couple years ago, and it's made a huge difference
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because the more you can see it, the more likely you are to work towards it.
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Now, some people call it the law of attraction as kind of this cosmic force, and, you know,
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maybe part of it is that, but I kind of tend to believe it's less of that, and it's more
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just about you're creating this context by which making sacrifices make sense, and you
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start paying, you're paying attention and you're open-minded to things that you would
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not have been open-minded to in the absence of that vision.
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But from a tactical standpoint, a little technique that we do, and we take all our coaching clients
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That's really our core business, so we work a lot with salespeople.
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But we have them go through this exercise called VAST, V-A-S-T.
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And one of the things, again, coming down to neuroscience is understanding that the brain thinks in pictures,
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and things that are more vividly experienced in our mind are more likely to become true in reality.
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So when I say ice cream cone, most people see an image of an ice cream cone.
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Well, when we think of vision, a lot of us talk about vision abstract, and companies are some of the worst at this.
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You say, our vision is to be the best in the world at whatever.
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Well, that's kind of a crappy vision from an inspiring perspective, from a motivational perspective,
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because what is more motivating is a picture, is to say, imagine a picture of our company headquarters
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inside of whatever, Forbes magazine, being written up for the most enriching customer experience
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And there's cases, features on us, and everywhere you go, people recognize the logo on your business card,
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So V-A-S-T, the V stands for visual, the A stands for auditory, the S stands for smell,
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So when you think of your vision, don't think of it in some obscure term,
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like, I want to do this amazing thing, think about in your mind, what can you see,
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what can you hear in that moment that it came true, what can you smell, and what can you touch?
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And when you think that vivid, that in as much vivid detail,
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your mind really can't differentiate between what is real and what is not real.
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I mean, it's why nightmares wake us up, because they feel so real,
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because your mind doesn't really dictate, and you have these emotional responses based on it.
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And I think it really is important to get that basic, because most of us just don't do it.
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But the bigger thing is, be willing to do it, and spend time thinking about it.
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Awesome. So we've talked sort of like big picture, playing the long game,
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And I know what gets a lot of people down is they know what the stuff they need to do to be successful,
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How do you, you make the case that you should fall in love with the daily grind.
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Yeah. So this is, that's actually something that one of our very first coaching clients,
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his name is Chad Goldwasser, and he was the number one Keller Williams real estate agent
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And he said that that was one of his philosophies, was falling in love with the daily grind.
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But it ties in well to one of our principles that we embrace at Southwestern,
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which is a lot of times people, let's say they retake the stairs and they come up and they say,
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okay, Rory, so let's say I start doing all the things you're talking about, right?
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Like, let's say I do start taking the stairs and metaphorically speaking,
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I'm doing the things that are making the sacrifices.
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I'm paying the price and how long do I have to do that for?
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And the truth is that we never get to stop doing them.
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Now, that doesn't mean life is going to be miserable.
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It doesn't mean that life is going to be one great big giant trip to the gym or that
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you're only going to eat foliage for the rest of your life.
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But it does mean learning to embrace this concept that we call the rent axiom.
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And the rent axiom says that success is never owned.
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And at first, sometimes that strikes people as bad news because it's like, oh, no.
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But it's really the most empowering truth of all of the take the stairs principles because
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when you embrace this idea that I'm not going on a diet, I'm not going on a 90-day workout
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program, you embrace the idea that these changes and these choices that I'm making in my life
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Then what happens is you stop wasting time looking for the shortcut.
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You stop believing in this fantasy land that you're going to somehow win the lottery or
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discover a magic pill or come up with some business idea that just goes viral.
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And you let go of all that junk and you just get focused on doing the things that you know
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And what happens, again, it's such a crazy paradox because it seems like this take the stairs,
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all of this stuff we're talking about seems like it would be so hard.
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But what really happens is it's as hard today as it will ever be.
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And every day moving forward, it gets easier versus the other way around.
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It always just keeps getting harder and harder because you keep making these indulgent choices.
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And like I said before, ultra performers realize that procrastination and indulgence are nothing
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Meanwhile, ultra performers realize you're always going to pay a price.
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And that's the thing that we have to come to grips with.
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We either pay the price now, today, or we will pay it later with interest.
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But most of us are trying to go through life trying to circumvent paying the price.
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We're trying to be successful without putting in the work.
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We want to believe in all the daydreams of the overnight success or the online viral explosion
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I mean, when you sit down with any ultra performer, which is the top 1% of their industry, that's
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It's always the story of doing the things they know they should be doing, even when they
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So there's a lot of talk on the internet, for example, right?
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You see all these memes, motivational things about following your passion and being passionate
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But in my experience, it doesn't seem like I can get passionate about something, but then
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But then I'll start working on something, even if I don't feel like it.
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And then 30, 45 minutes later, I'm like, I'm pretty excited about what I'm working on.
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So does passion come before work or is passion sort of the result of just doing good work?
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Nobody has ever asked me this question, not in a public interview.
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And I really do love the question because I see the same thing as you.
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And there is a, it's kind of a natural symbiotic relationship in some ways between passion and
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But I agree with you that the memes that are out there are very, they're very underserving
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to people because, and look, as we talk about the art of manliness, right?
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To me, being a man means you do what you have to do until you earn the right to do what you
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You do what you have to do until you earn the right to do what you want to do.
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And it's like, if you have kids or if you're starting a business or if you're married, like
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if you have, if you have any sort of responsibility or obligation in your life, like you need to
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I mean, you, you, you have other things that matter.
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And those, I mean, being a man means you're, you're the protector, you're the provider, your
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Now, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be passionate.
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And I do believe in the statement, if you love what you do, it will feel less like you
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But I think most people who complain about not being passionate, the reason they're not
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passionate is because they're mediocre at what they're doing.
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We, we, we basically call it the crush it test for how to know when you should sort of change
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And so people say, well, you know, I'm thinking about quitting my job and I want to just go
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And, you know, I want to be online or I want to, you know, do a, do a side business or whatever.
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I mean, we teach people how to do that and we also love employees and it's, it's not
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And so the question I always ask people and the litmus test is, have you crushed it where
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Have you, are you excellent at what you're doing?
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Because if you have not laid it all on the line and you have not been fully committed and
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you've not done everything in your power to be successful, then you don't really know
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what your current opportunity affords you because you're being mediocre.
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So your first step needs to be to crush it where you're at.
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Otherwise, you're just going to bounce from passionate, uh, pursuit, you know, passionate
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You're just like this, you know, blowing in the wind.
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And the reality is nothing ever makes you passionate because you didn't put in the work to be successful.
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So crush it where you're at, get to the top, um, cause it's like, you know, when you're
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climbing a mountain, the view at the top looks and feels a whole lot different than the view
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when you're climbing up the side of the mountain.
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So climb to the top of the mountain and then decide, is this really giving me what I want?
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But most people who use that passion argument, it's because they're mediocre at what they're
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And then they're kind of, they're giving themselves the payoff of saying, well, it's just not my passion.
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So, uh, you, let's say you, you, people realize what they need to do.
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They know the things they, they have to do, but there's still something that's keeping them from
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just committing to it and like getting going on it.
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So you have this, what do you call the buy-in principle?
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Um, what are some things can people can do to buy into their commitment they want to make
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Um, yeah, so the buy-in principle simply stated is this, that the more we have invested into
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something, the less likely we are to let it fail.
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The more we have invested into something, the less likely we are to let it fail.
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Um, and it's easy to understand that intellectually, but it's very hard to live by that pragmatically.
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So when, cause what the buy-in principle suggests is that if we make a commitment to do something
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and then it becomes difficult to follow through, that we should actually increase our investment.
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We should spend more time, more money, more prayer, more effort, more focus, more resources
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Well, in the escalator world that we live in, it's almost the exact opposite of that.
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We keep them as long as they're convenient to do so, but the moment it becomes inconvenient
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to keep that commitment, we typically start questioning that commitment and we start convincing
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ourselves that maybe it's because I'm just, there's another passion I should be pursuing.
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And that is, um, you know, really, really dangerous because we start, we start thinking that success
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is a matter of our circumstances and really success is a matter of our choices.
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And that's why you have some people who go from average performance to average performance
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and to average, and they're constantly changing jobs and careers.
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Um, and it's, it's because it's a mental thing.
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So in terms of how do you, how do you overcome that?
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Well, there's a very practical, um, sort of strategy, which is you increase your, your level
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of commitment and thereby the likelihood of your success by intentionally creating the
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question, how, so that you don't accidentally relent to the question should most people.
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We, when, when it becomes challenging to follow through on a commitment, we, we say, you know
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Maybe this isn't, you know, the right place or, you know, should I do this now?
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Uh, and their whole life becomes about that question.
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Should, should, should, should, should, should.
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And if you're not careful, Brett, you become what I like to call a should head.
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Um, and so you, you, you gotta be aware of should.
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Well, the ultra performers, it's not that they know all the answers, but they ask themselves
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The pivot point is when you think you're shifting from, should I do this?
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Or is it possible to simply asking the question, how can I pull this off?
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And instead of asking should, asking how, I'm like trying to find a solution to your problem.
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But another thing I've done, I've applied the buy-in principle of my own life.
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And you can actually put money on the line for like goals you want to accomplish.
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So it's, what's ingenious about it is you have, you set up an accountability partner
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and you can, if you don't fulfill your goal, uh, you lose your money and you can make it
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even like more, uh, make it hurt more by having the money go to some organization that is against
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So if you are a diehard Republican, you can have the money go to the democratic national
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committee, or if you're, um, pro abortion, you have to go to an anti-abortion.
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And I've, I've done that in my, a few times when I've had like these big projects where
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I haven't wanted, I just wasn't committed to it.
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And once I've had that money on the line, I was like, it hurt.
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Like knowing that I was going to lose that money, like no matter what, I was going to
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So that was another thing I've done in my own life to sort of.
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The more you have invested into something, you know, and there it's not just money,
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One of our, uh, one of our coaching clients, we just, they just sent this out on the email.
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Um, she is an, a, I think, I think she's a huge Auburn fan.
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So she lives in Alabama and she's a diehard Auburn fan.
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Well, she set up a referral contest, her and her coach.
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And if she didn't get a certain number of referrals, she has to wear Alabama, uh, clothing
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gear and talk about how much she loves Alabama for like a week.
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And so that's just those little kind of, um, consequences, those, those play a big factor.
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And, and coming back to the earlier question, you asked like your story there about using
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I think Brett is a, it makes the future more real.
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It, and so that, that, that helps with that long-term perspective.
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So a principle you talk about in your book, Take the Stairs, which resonated with me.
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I think it's important for particularly younger people to understand and comprehend is this
00:27:08.880
Well, you know, one of the things we have done is really studied, um, time management and
00:27:14.820
we've really challenged and we've gone out to ultra performers and we've taken this list
00:27:19.120
of cliches you hear about time management and just said, Hey, do you buy in?
00:27:23.760
Is this a, do you actually believe this, this, this statement?
00:27:27.200
Like, do you operate your life or your business by it?
00:27:29.100
And we have found that emphatically almost always they do not.
00:27:35.760
In fact, that's what the new procrastinating on purpose book, that's why we wrote it was
00:27:39.440
to sort of dispel all of these myths about productivity.
00:27:42.580
And one of them, I mean, one of the most common things you hear is people talk about work-life
00:27:47.580
Well, so we go out and we ask these, these ultra performers, we now call them multipliers.
00:27:53.140
That's the term we use in the, in the, the, the new book, which is a subtitle is, uh, by
00:27:59.700
Um, but anyways, the, they, they kind of, they said balance is basically a complete joke
00:28:06.660
that they have never embraced that idea of work-life balance because, and if you think
00:28:12.560
about it now that I've asked them and kind of, we've gone through these interview processes,
00:28:17.420
balance is really a horrible metaphor for how to spend your time because the word balance
00:28:22.000
by definition means equal force and opposite directions.
00:28:26.060
So it sort of implies the idea that being balanced in our time would be spending equal time on
00:28:33.660
The part that's crazy about that is that if you sleep something like eight hours a day
00:28:37.380
and you work something like eight hours a day, then to be, the only way you could be
00:28:41.840
balanced would be to do one other task and you'd have to do that other task eight hours
00:28:50.860
Um, and you know, multipliers have realized also that success is not related to the amount
00:28:58.220
It's not related to the volume of tasks that you complete success is simply related to the
00:29:03.800
significance of those tasks and what, uh, and, and namely the results that are achieved.
00:29:09.180
And you can, you can achieve results in certain areas of your life with less time working out
00:29:15.340
You don't have to work out eight hours every day to be in great health.
00:29:18.600
If you work out 30 minutes every single day, you're going to find that it's going to, for
00:29:22.760
most people, that's going to make a massive change.
00:29:25.260
And so what ultra performers do is they actually said it was the opposite.
00:29:30.320
They said, rather than trying to create balance, they, they intentionally create imbalance.
00:29:36.220
They imbalance their life for a short predefined season, uh, which we, we refer to as a harvest
00:29:43.560
season because it reflects much more the attitude of like a, a farmer during harvest.
00:29:49.800
The farmer during harvest, you know, they work 16, 18 hours a day because the
00:29:55.240
the harvest is when the harvest is, and they have to harvest their crop and that's going
00:30:02.500
And that is much more reflective of how life works.
00:30:06.760
And so the idea is to imbalance your life for a short predefined season and leverage the
00:30:12.040
power of focus and intensity to create a desired result.
00:30:16.340
And then once you've create, once you've created that result, it's much easier to sustain that
00:30:25.480
And, and, you know, just a kind of a personal story for me, I used to be 45 pounds heavier
00:30:35.020
And when I first started on this whole journey of, of self-discipline, I made this resolution
00:30:40.260
that I was going to stop drinking alcohol forever, that I was going to stop eating dessert forever.
00:30:48.200
I was going to work out every single day forever until I got to my desired goal, my desired weight.
00:30:59.280
And I hit that, you know, eight months after I started, I lost 45 pounds.
00:31:04.540
And ever since then, it's like, yeah, I have, I have a couple of drinks.
00:31:13.040
I work out a few times a week or I work out just, you know, a little bit every day.
00:31:20.680
So I'm not in a harvest season that relates to my physical stuff right now, because I already
00:31:30.380
I love that idea of like seasons in your life, because I get a lot of letters from,
00:31:34.540
readers, they're young guys in their twenties and they just feel like they're frustrated
00:31:41.180
And they're like, then they don't have the success that they, they think they should have
00:31:45.480
And usually it means like they want a house or they want, you know, you know, the typical
00:31:52.300
And I always have to tell them like, man, that's going to, that's going to take a while.
00:31:55.340
Like you're, you're in a different stage in your life where you have to focus on different
00:31:58.600
things and sort of create a foundation so you can get to those, those things.
00:32:03.200
You know, and yeah, I just, I think that analogy of seasons to your life is really helpful
00:32:11.960
And then when you move in, when you get married and you have kids, like you're going to move
00:32:16.180
Like right now, you know, you're not going to have as much fun as you did when you were
00:32:20.300
in your early twenties and single and footloose and fancy free.
00:32:25.500
That's just, you're in a new season, you approach it that way.
00:32:28.160
And then the kids will eventually move out and you'll have more time to yourself again.
00:32:38.980
I'm, I'm, I'm glad that it resonates because, and, and, you know, really, I mean, sometimes
00:32:43.440
I think people say that they go, well, you know, I was just not going to be fun.
00:32:50.080
The reality is when you do this right and you embrace these philosophies, it's just
00:32:57.020
Um, and what, what used to be fun was getting bottle service at the club.
00:33:04.500
Uh, and then at some point it might become fun is being able to spend time with your kids
00:33:09.600
in the middle of the day and having the freedom to be able to do that because you work so hard.
00:33:15.100
I mean, when I was in my twenties, I worked so hard.
00:33:18.540
And the reason why was because I wanted to work then because I said, you know what, one
00:33:23.920
And when I have kids, I don't want work to be the driving force in my life.
00:33:27.840
Um, so I wanted, I was working harder now because of, to, to, to create an opportunity
00:33:37.300
Again, a lot of this ties back to that sort of longer term thinking.
00:33:42.000
So your, uh, your second book, um, was, it's called Procrastinate on Purpose.
00:33:46.700
And you say in the beginning of this book that it's actually this, you should have wrote,
00:33:50.720
written this book first, sort of the prequel to Take the Stairs.
00:33:56.220
You know, honestly, Brett, I didn't even realize that it was the prequel until I was, you know,
00:34:03.060
we had done all the research and I was writing and I'm at the very end of the book and it
00:34:06.120
dawns on me that this is the prequel because what Take the Stairs is about, Take the Stairs
00:34:11.740
is all about the psychology of overcoming procrastination, how, you know, increasing your
00:34:17.700
self-discipline and how to do the things you know you should be doing, even when you don't
00:34:24.400
What Procrastinate on Purpose is about is what to do with everything else so that you can get
00:34:32.020
In other words, how do you know what the thing is that only you can do that you must do and
00:34:38.200
it must be done now, even if you don't feel like it.
00:34:41.100
And that is what the focus funnel, which is kind of the core framework of POP, Procrastinate
00:34:46.720
Um, so the POP book is really, um, what to do with everything else so that you can, you
00:34:55.120
know, boil it down to figure out the thing that only you can do.
00:34:59.800
So, I mean, I think you've already hit on this a little bit, but, you know, you start
00:35:03.460
off the book talking about the way most people approach time management just doesn't work.
00:35:07.820
And I guess the way most people try to approach time management is balance for starters, right?
00:35:12.820
Like, I'm going to have eight hours of this, I'm going to do eight hours of family time,
00:35:17.000
Um, but then you also say that a common way that people try to manage their time is prioritization.
00:35:27.440
So we talk about the, the, the history of time management theory and how as a body of
00:35:35.680
And it was really, originally it was sort of one dimensional.
00:35:39.740
It was managing your time by trying to do things faster, which made sense because that was
00:35:44.520
sort of the, the paradigm of the day was on the heels of manufacturing era and, you
00:35:49.240
know, cars, a Model T Ford and all that sort of stuff.
00:35:51.780
Um, and then in the late eighties, prioritizing your time emerged as the new paradigm.
00:35:59.140
And I, I give a lot of credit to the late, great Dr.
00:36:02.920
Stephen Covey because he created, you know, he, he popularized this thing called the time
00:36:07.800
management matrix where the Y axis is importance and the X axis is urgency.
00:36:12.940
Covey did was he gave us for the first time ever, like a scoring system and, and taught
00:36:22.700
Um, and based on these two calculations, importance and urgency, you could, you could basically wait
00:36:35.500
Well, for the last 25 years, we've thrown around that word, prioritizing your time.
00:36:40.100
Like it's the end all be all the time management theory.
00:36:44.800
I mean, prioritizing is a valuable skill, but there is a massive limitation to prioritizing
00:36:51.900
And that is, there is nothing about prioritizing that creates more time.
00:36:57.180
All prioritizing does is take item number seven on your to-do list and it bumps it up to number
00:37:02.680
one, but there's nothing inherently about that, that creates more time.
00:37:07.640
It also does nothing to help you accomplish the other items that are still remaining on
00:37:12.860
So it's a valuable skill to be able to focus first on what matters most, but it doesn't
00:37:23.460
It's borrowing time from one activity to spend on another.
00:37:26.280
Rightfully so, but it still doesn't help me with the remaining items.
00:37:30.940
And so when you're operating in those two paradigms, it's like the only option you have is to run
00:37:38.560
So it's like we can work longer hours or we can move faster during the day or to try to
00:37:46.100
And you're constantly juggling a hundred different balls in the air.
00:37:49.740
And so, and that really describes, I think, how most of our coaching clients initially feel
00:37:55.360
about their schedule when we're working with them.
00:37:58.400
It's like, and we have met some of the most efficient people on the planet.
00:38:02.140
We've met some of the best prioritizers on the planet, but really it's like all, all we
00:38:07.480
are is a bunch of insanely fast juggling hamsters sprinting towards this inevitable crash landing
00:38:13.700
because you can only do things so fast, which is very well evidenced by the fact that we all carry
00:38:18.960
around miniature computers in our pocket, are working longer hours than ever before.
00:38:23.160
We have more technology and yet we're still never caught up and we have more calendars and
00:38:34.140
And so that's the limit, that's the limit, the limit, uh, limitation of prioritizing.
00:38:40.020
And that was the problem we really wanted to solve with pop.
00:38:43.660
So you add in another line into that matrix and it's significance is I guess significance
00:38:51.120
a way of figuring out like playing the long game.
00:38:55.120
Is it, is it putting your, your actions in a, in a perspective of a longer frame of time
00:39:05.460
I think if, uh, you know, coming back to that matrix, if the y-axis is importance, which is
00:39:13.040
And the x-axis is urgency, which is how soon does something matter?
00:39:27.360
And the significance calculation changes everything because it takes that two-dimensional model
00:39:34.960
Um, it takes a square and makes it into a cube.
00:39:37.660
And we have said that's the, that is now era three thinking is using the significance calculation
00:39:44.300
And the big distinction here is, look, let's say absent the significance calculation, we inadvertently
00:39:53.260
overweight the urgency calculation, meaning that, well, here's a myth.
00:40:02.120
People say there's nothing you can do to create more time.
00:40:04.360
Time is the one thing that you can never, you know, get more of.
00:40:08.420
Well, it is true inside of the, the, the paradigm and the construct of one day that you cannot
00:40:16.480
We all have the same 24 hours, 1440 minutes, 86,400 seconds, but that's exactly the problem.
00:40:23.920
Most people only think inside of the paradigm of one day.
00:40:27.120
And when you are only thinking on, in terms of one day, you immediately always go to urgency.
00:40:34.540
You're, you're sucked into putting out fires, dealing with whatever is latest and loudest,
00:40:38.860
and you feel pressured to work longer hours and constantly cram everything in because you
00:40:45.960
Well, when you make the significance calculation, it changes everything.
00:40:50.040
Because when you start thinking not just about today, but tomorrow and the next day and the
00:40:54.620
next day and the next day, you start to realize that there are some things that you can do today
00:41:02.480
You can do things now that make tomorrow easier.
00:41:04.920
You can do things, you can set things up in a certain way today that will give you more
00:41:11.040
And so that brings us to the premise of the second book.
00:41:15.620
And so in one sentence, and if you've, if you've been sleeping, wake up, like you don't
00:41:20.640
This is with the whole, the whole concept is built around this one sentence.
00:41:24.800
And that is the way that you multiply time is by giving yourself the emotional permission
00:41:31.020
to spend time on things today that create more time tomorrow.
00:41:45.240
Is it helping you weed out the stuff that you want to vocal, weed out the stuff that
00:41:57.240
So yeah, you know, the significance calculation, the concept of multiplying time, that's kind
00:42:03.160
of the philosophical part of the pop discussion.
00:42:07.540
The practical part really happens with the focus funnel.
00:42:10.720
So the focus funnel was our attempt to codify the thought process that ultra performers go
00:42:16.280
through whenever they are making a decision about how to spend their time and what to spend
00:42:22.520
And so if you picture a funnel at the top part, the wide entry point, if you have all of your
00:42:27.780
tasks and emails and meetings and all that stuff coming in the focus funnel, then the
00:42:36.660
And we can go through these in more detail if you want.
00:42:38.740
But if you can't eliminate it, then that task drops down to the middle of the funnel, which
00:42:46.700
If you can't automate that task, then it drops down to the bottom of the funnel, which
00:42:52.520
And you say, that's the permission of imperfect.
00:42:58.400
Now, if you can't eliminate, automate, or delegate the task, then that task falls out the bottom
00:43:05.460
At that point, there is one key remaining question.
00:43:08.740
And that question is, must this task be done now, or can it wait until later?
00:43:14.200
If the task must be done now, then that's concentrate.
00:43:20.460
It's all about protecting your focus, eliminating distractions, doing the things you know you should
00:43:26.740
That is kind of where the pop book ends and the take the stairs book picks up.
00:43:32.260
But if the answer to the question, can this wait until later, is yes, then that is where
00:43:38.040
we're inviting you and encouraging you and challenging you to not eliminate, automate,
00:43:44.600
delegate, or concentrate, but to procrastinate on purpose.
00:43:55.020
Now, when you procrastinate on an activity on purpose, you're not going to procrastinate
00:43:59.740
But what you're going to do is pop that activity back to the top of the focus funnel, at which
00:44:05.380
point it's going to enter into this holding pattern where it sort of cycles through the
00:44:11.900
And then what happens is ultimately, or eventually, one of the other four strategies, eliminate,
00:44:19.240
automate, delegate, or concentrate, will be executed upon that task.
00:44:23.220
Because either, if the answer to the question, can this wait until later, is always yes, you
00:44:28.720
eventually develop the confidence to do what you should have done in the first place, which
00:44:33.620
Or you figure out a way to automate it, or someone rises to the call of leadership and
00:44:38.940
Or you end up having to do it because the answer to can this wait until later shifts from yes,
00:44:46.960
You know it's your next most significant priority.
00:44:49.180
Where do you think, or what permission do you think most people have trouble with?
00:45:00.700
It's all of them, and it's different for every person.
00:45:03.260
And that's, I think, one thing that's great about the focus funnel is it's intentionally,
00:45:08.340
it's designed to be real dynamic and allow to be very fluid that you can apply it perpetually
00:45:15.660
on any second of every day because we live in this world of perpetual reprioritization
00:45:21.860
where there are, based on what comes into our inbox or what we see on Twitter or what
00:45:26.400
we read online, our priorities can shift in a second, and then a second later they shift
00:45:34.660
So a lot of people struggle with, a lot of people struggle with all of them.
00:45:39.560
Eliminate is probably the one that I think almost everybody struggles with.
00:45:50.100
And eliminate is the one, Brett, where we have by far the widest swath of opportunity,
00:45:59.820
Because if we eliminate something today, we create more time tomorrow.
00:46:05.580
By saying no to something today that we would be doing tomorrow, we have multiplied our time
00:46:09.980
because now tomorrow we have space, we have margin where we would have been doing something.
00:46:14.520
Well, for me, I have a hard time saying no to people.
00:46:26.040
And so what ends up happening is I kind of go through life without ever trying to say no.
00:46:30.340
Well, one of the multipliers basically set me straight and he was like, Rory, that's stupid.
00:46:37.220
It's impossible to go through life without ever saying no.
00:46:40.520
You have to realize that anytime you say yes to one thing, you are simultaneously saying
00:46:50.020
And that was a big deal because I started to realize that for me, if I am not consciously
00:46:56.660
saying no to the things that do not matter, then I find that I almost always end up unconsciously
00:47:05.400
And inside of that realization, I then develop the first permission, which is the permission
00:47:10.860
to ignore and the permission to say no to the things that don't matter so I can say yes
00:47:17.880
And most of our inbox is like we could just go through and just delete and eliminate.
00:47:22.460
And there's things on our calendar that we could just stop doing and we don't owe anybody
00:47:26.600
an explanation, but we have a hard time emotionally doing that, which is another one of the big
00:47:32.000
misconceptions is that most of us think of time management.
00:47:34.760
It's always logical, tips and tricks, tools and technology, calendars and checklists.
00:47:39.160
But time management today is no longer logical.
00:47:43.180
So do you have any advice on managing the emotions of saying no?
00:47:48.660
Do you have scripts that people can use who have a hard time doing that?
00:47:53.000
I mean, what can they do to take the sting off?
00:47:55.200
Besides understanding that if they say yes or saying no to something else, but once they
00:48:02.880
I would just say you ask yourself, if I do this activity, what will I have to say no to?
00:48:09.560
Or what will I end up saying no to by saying yes to this?
00:48:19.380
The other thing to realize is you can say no and still be nice.
00:48:27.280
And if you become an expert at nicely saying no, it's like you can say no and you can still
00:48:35.260
And maybe you have to turn down someone's request.
00:48:37.920
Like, you know, we get a lot of requests to go speaking and, you know, my speaking fee
00:48:45.980
And a lot of times people will request and maybe they don't have my speaking fee.
00:48:50.720
And it's such a bummer because it's like, man, you know, here's somebody reaching out
00:48:57.100
But it's just like at this point in the career, I can't say yes to being doing that
00:49:02.760
because then it's pulling me away from the other things that I'm doing.
00:49:08.820
And so what we figured out is we said, well, we learned this from somebody is that we will
00:49:15.000
send anybody that we have to say no to, we will often send them like a little gift package
00:49:19.940
of just little books and video courses and things like that.
00:49:28.080
Or what we learned to do is now we do like virtual keynotes.
00:49:33.080
Like, so we'll do it via webinar, like where they can see my face and I'll present live
00:49:39.260
But instead of having to get on a plane and travel and go do that, I'm able to do it from
00:49:44.500
So it really is less time out of, out of my, you know, entire schedule.
00:49:49.620
You know, something else that helps me, I love those ideas.
00:49:53.060
Something else that helps me when I have to say no to someone is to remind myself that when
00:49:57.440
I ask someone, like if they could do something, I'm always expecting no for an answer.
00:50:02.100
Like I, I'm not, you know, it's like when I ask, I'm not expecting them to say yes.
00:50:09.940
And so it's just like, I imagine the other person when I, when someone's asking me to do
00:50:14.880
something or asking a favor, they're asking with the idea that, well, he could say no too.
00:50:20.240
You know, it's like, I don't get that upset when people say no to me.
00:50:28.760
I've never thought about that, but it's like, sometimes it's harder for the person saying
00:50:35.740
And we make it, we make it a big deal to, but I feel the same way.
00:50:39.940
It's like, if I'm reaching out to somebody who is a favor, it's like, you know, I, I know
00:50:46.200
is a possibility and it's, it's, it's not a bad thing.
00:50:55.080
Um, we could probably keep talking forever, but I'm going to, I'm going to let you go.
00:50:58.420
Um, but where could, before we go, where can people learn more about your work?
00:51:02.160
I would say, I honestly, I would say the best thing you could do is invest one hour.
00:51:12.860
Um, and if you, if you just go to procrastinate on purpose.com, you can register and watch this
00:51:19.100
free one hour training where I walk you through the whole focus funnel.
00:51:22.800
We talk about the relationship to take the stairs.
00:51:25.360
You can really kind of get your hands around it.
00:51:27.320
And I promise if you invest that one hour with me, you will get thousands of hours back as
00:51:33.500
a result of the shift that happens in your thinking.
00:51:36.600
Um, and then from there, there's links to my blog and podcast and, you know, all my Twitter
00:51:41.440
and all my other stuff, but just go to procrastinate on purpose.com.
00:51:47.260
Well, Rory Vaden, thank you so much for your time.
00:51:57.160
And, uh, the last thing I would just leave everybody with is, you know, remember no matter
00:52:00.580
who you are, no matter who you were yesterday for all of us, success is never owned.
00:52:06.300
It's only rented and the rent is due every day.
00:52:12.360
He's the author of the book procrastinated on purpose, as well as take the stairs for
00:52:16.200
more information about his work, check out Rory Vaden.com.
00:52:19.300
And for those free tools, uh, that he talked about and procrastinate on purpose, go to procrastinate
00:52:28.380
Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips
00:52:33.100
Make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com.
00:52:36.180
And if you enjoy the show and you feel like you're getting something out of it, I'd really
00:52:38.900
appreciate it if you give us a review on iTunes, Stitcher, whatever it is used to listen
00:52:42.240
on the podcast that will help get the word out about the show.
00:52:46.560
And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.