The Art of Manliness - #573： Why You Don't Finish What You Start (And What to Do About It)

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast how well did you

00:00:12.140 do in completing projects last year i'm not just talking about work projects but also personal

00:00:15.940 projects surrounding family fitness or hobbies if you didn't accomplish much as you'd like last

00:00:20.340 year then maybe you need to change your mindset and tactics in the new year my guest today has

00:00:24.240 written a guide to making those changes his name is charlie gilke he's a former army officer with

00:00:28.280 a phd philosophy we spent over a decade studying productivity writing about it on his website

00:00:32.460 productive flourishing and coaching clients and what he's learned he's got a new book out now as

00:00:36.240 well called start finishing how to go from idea to done charlie and i begin our conversation going

00:00:40.700 through the most common roadblocks that prevent people from completing their projects including

00:00:44.140 following other people's priorities and dealing with what he calls head trash we then discuss how

00:00:48.680 we waste a lot of time doing what charlie calls thrashing and what we can do to overcome it we

00:00:52.280 then dig into why you sometimes have to quit things to move forward how to create effective goals and

00:00:56.640 why it's crucial to know which of the three levels success you're aiming for we also talk about how

00:01:00.640 to do what charlie calls momentum planning and the importance of creating focus blocks in your

00:01:04.560 schedule after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is start finishing

00:01:08.800 charlie gilke welcome to the show brett thanks so much for having me i've been looking forward to

00:01:25.120 this interview for a long time well we were talking before the we started the show the the

00:01:29.740 to record that i've been following your website productive flourishing like way back when it's

00:01:34.960 like 2008 i think you started it and i remember you i started seeing these like free planners percolate

00:01:40.360 where you could fill in bubbles and i was like this looks cool and now this blog you started has

00:01:45.000 turned into this company where you basically you help creative types entrepreneurs leaders be more

00:01:51.340 productive and get more stuff done and you got a new book out sort of distilling all this stuff you've

00:01:56.740 been talking about and writing about for the past 11 years books called start finishing how to go from

00:02:02.980 idea to done so when in your work with entrepreneurs business leaders creative types what have you found

00:02:11.140 are the biggest roadblocks that you see over and over again that prevent people from taking an idea that

00:02:17.400 they have from start to finish i'm glad we're starting here but i wanted to start actually by

00:02:22.020 rolling it back a little bit because sure you know i do teach a lot about productivity and the first

00:02:26.240 thing we think about with productivity since the way that the conversation has gone it's about doing

00:02:30.740 more and getting more stuff done but the reality is brett i actually help my clients do like fewer

00:02:36.960 things but just the more important things i think part of the frustration that so many of us have

00:02:42.640 is that it seems like we're doing a lot but when we look back over the month or the quarter of the

00:02:48.420 year it doesn't feel like we did the things that mattered most and so a few things are more

00:02:52.800 exasperating than knowing like man i've been out on the field i've been like checking the list i've been

00:02:57.920 watching you know all the stuff's going on i've been doing the meetings and yet that thing i put on the

00:03:04.540 board that i wanted to do i'm no further along than i was two months ago so really what i end up

00:03:10.820 focusing on is like you know what like we don't need to really work on doing more that's not getting

00:03:18.060 us where we're trying to go we need to work on doing more or fewer of the things that matter most

00:03:22.540 and i know that sounds better when i say it that way but it's really about being more thoughtful and

00:03:26.600 intentional and having better priorities around those things that you want to see done and that

00:03:32.220 you want to be celebrating at the end of the year the end of a you know decade well and so go ahead

00:03:38.280 obviously that makes sense like the first thing that's probably a roadblock is just people have

00:03:42.020 other wrong priorities that prevent them from getting started on the stuff that really matters

00:03:47.200 yeah well you know i'm tricky about saying wrong priorities i call them competing priorities

00:03:52.080 because there are some competing there's some priorities we have that are clearly ours and then

00:03:57.460 there are some priorities we have that are essentially other people's priorities and sometimes we can't

00:04:02.480 really clearly distinguish between the two and even when it's just our own competing

00:04:07.640 priorities um you know the classic sort of i want creative freedom versus i want a secure paycheck

00:04:14.920 comes up a lot you know when it comes to entrepreneurs and creative types because there seems to be this

00:04:19.940 tension between the two um but we can think you know more generally and and i want to pause here because

00:04:25.220 really start finishing and it's a productivity book yes but more broadly speaking it's a book about changing

00:04:33.060 your life because um to go from your current state of your life to some future better version or your

00:04:39.720 best version of yourself like there's a big gap there for a lot of people and you've bridged that gap

00:04:45.020 through completed projects through finished projects and if you're not doing the types of projects that are

00:04:51.340 going to build that better future for yourself you're going to stay stuck um and so and i want to say that

00:04:57.480 because as we unfold this conversation more i'm going to be talking about weaving the work of our

00:05:02.340 lives into our schedule and prioritizing that just as much as we do you know the economic work or or

00:05:09.380 you know the life of our work and i think that's one of the challenges to go to it right is that so many

00:05:15.520 of us have these competing priorities and so many of us can feel that that resentment or exasperation or

00:05:21.540 regret because when we sit down to say you know these are the things these are the ways i'm going

00:05:27.900 to spend my day what happens is our economic work gets prioritized it gets scheduled it gets thought

00:05:34.680 about and unfortunately the work of our lives gets you know the afterthoughts or maybe gets

00:05:40.940 like squeezed in the cracks that are left over from the economic work and so what we end up being is

00:05:47.840 you know if we do that too long we become these husks of people that go to work we punch the clock

00:05:54.520 we do the commute we do the meetings we do all the work but then when we look we're fundamentally

00:05:58.280 not fulfilled because we're not doing the work of our lives so competing priorities is one of the first

00:06:05.000 places i will generally go when people are telling me that they're not doing what they what matters most

00:06:09.420 to them and so you know just working through those competing priorities and are these your priorities

00:06:14.300 priorities or are there sometimes um on our own priorities we have really powerful priorities that

00:06:23.580 we don't acknowledge so i'll take parenting i'm not a parent myself but many parents say and understand

00:06:29.760 and act out the fact that kids take a lot of time and care and a lot of energy and a lot of your life

00:06:37.320 when you are raising children we know that and yet when we set new year's resolutions

00:06:43.160 when we set big plans for ourselves a lot of times we don't think about the amount of

00:06:50.120 temporal weight emotional weight logistical weight that having kids can have and that's going to sit

00:06:56.960 on our availability to do other things and so you know um that's just one of those where i know a lot

00:07:02.700 of people can on the one hand really be really say truthfully like their kids and their family are the

00:07:08.980 number one priority but when it comes time to how they think about what they're going to do

00:07:14.220 with their month or what they're going to do with a quarter or what they're going to do with their year

00:07:18.380 they forget how much weight that's going to take up and they over plan on top of that very weighty

00:07:23.400 that very important thing and i'm just going to pause here and then move on i just want to remind

00:07:27.260 folks that being a great parent being a great family member being a great member of your community

00:07:32.820 is being productive right i hate i hate the conversation of i can be productive or i can be

00:07:39.420 with my family i think we need to readdress our priorities there so i know i've been hitting on

00:07:45.780 this one quite a bit brett but that's really one of the first places i'd hit the second one would be

00:07:49.060 head trash and head trash is just the amalgam of self-defeating stories we tell ourselves some of the

00:07:55.560 cultural bs that will pick up some of the ways we see the world that they don't have to be that way 0.97

00:08:01.400 but the thing about head trash is it doesn't have to be true of the world for it to work on us so

00:08:08.620 i'm a writer and you know even though i've spent the last couple of decades of writing like i can

00:08:14.860 occasionally have that thought because you know creatives are insecure folks a lot of times i'm like

00:08:19.060 man i'm a terrible writer what am i doing i should just go like get a normal job quit this writing

00:08:23.940 stuff and so on so forth now the reality is i'm either a good writer or i'm good enough to keep 0.94

00:08:29.880 doing it and keep getting paid to do it right but that head trash if i were to let it take hold can

00:08:37.640 actually determine what steps i might take it might determine what goals i might set it might determine

00:08:43.360 what projects i might do even though it's false right and so if you had that teacher in third grade

00:08:50.240 that told you you were terrible at math and that you'd never be anything and you hung on to that

00:08:54.640 yes it sounds overly psychological or like a like a cliche but the reality is if you hold on to that

00:09:01.440 belief and you let it guide your actions you'll end up playing that script out even though it's not

00:09:09.240 actually true of you and so those two things tend to account for a lot of the reasons why people get

00:09:15.980 stuck and they're not filling that gap and finishing those projects and you know the last thing i'll say

00:09:20.780 is if we start talking about the work that we need to do with other people the other major challenge is

00:09:25.900 poor team alignment and by that not just your work team but your life team as well a lot of times our

00:09:32.800 teams are not aligned because we haven't told the team where we want to go and why we want to go there

00:09:40.120 and you know it's just frustrating thing that we despite evidence to the contrary we keep expecting

00:09:47.200 people to be mind readers and understand where we want to go and what help we need and how our

00:09:53.240 priorities line up and that doesn't happen and in lieu of us being clear about the direction we want our

00:09:59.260 life to go it's more likely that we're going to be in a tug of war with other people who may otherwise

00:10:04.420 if brought into alignment be very powerful forces of change force well i think it's interesting that

00:10:11.220 the the problems you laid out that you see over and over again they're not so much like tactical

00:10:16.640 problems like people aren't planning incorrectly they might be doing things that can help them along

00:10:21.020 but it's like it's a mindset problem and you have to deal with that stuff first before you get to the

00:10:25.980 more tactical here's how i plan my day out sort of thing absolutely because you know planning your day

00:10:30.940 i think people mistake it and think that it's a cerebral problem but it's really an emotional

00:10:35.740 problem because it's not hard conceptually to plan out your day it's really hard when you know that day

00:10:43.520 comes to maintain your boundaries to say the right yeses to say the no's where you need to and if you

00:10:49.700 don't have this foundational layer of priority setting and value setting it's easy for those plans just to

00:10:58.040 crumble by what seems to be urgent and what seemed well what is urgent and what seems to be important

00:11:03.520 that's right in front of us when you know the reality is we unfortunately have bought into the

00:11:12.300 tyranny of the urgent some a lot of times through our devices through our smartphones through email and

00:11:18.620 things like that and we end up thinking that everything that is an herb be acting i'll say we don't think it

00:11:26.180 will end up acting as if a lot of the urgent stuff is the important stuff and we end up in this whirlwind

00:11:31.880 of you know incoming text and social media and email and whatever and like that rocking chair that you

00:11:38.860 know um is got a lot of motion but no progress we end up in that swirl so long and it becomes easier

00:11:46.240 to get out of that whirlwind it becomes easier to get out of that tyranny of the urgent when you can

00:11:53.280 just look at something and say you know what that's really not important to me or that's gonna suck

00:12:00.260 to not be able to do that and i might have to face some consequences for it but this thing over here

00:12:07.420 is more important to us and think about it this way brett i think the challenge that we have with

00:12:14.640 doing the projects that matter quick sidebar project to me is anything that takes time energy

00:12:19.760 and attention to complete which means not just your economic projects it also counts the projects

00:12:24.860 of your life so closets of doom getting married you know moving across the sea you know moving across

00:12:30.300 the nation um finally getting your kids off the couch and on the college or to the first you know

00:12:35.060 career or at least out of your house all of those things count as projects so there are times in our

00:12:40.260 life when and true urgency and importance comes up like you know i'll go back to the parenting things

00:12:46.760 when the school calls and your kid is sick you don't think about like everything that's on your list

00:12:53.860 to do stuff to do today you don't you know we don't have to do some big conceptual matrix of what we're

00:12:59.100 doing we go pick our kids up and we take care of them when your partner is sick or in a car accident

00:13:04.200 or if you're you know parents or elders are aging and you're taking care of them there are very clear

00:13:10.220 priorities like that where we don't seem to have nearly as much of the head trash around it and

00:13:21.160 our priorities become super clear the thing about these life-changing projects that i keep referring

00:13:27.780 to these projects that take our time energy and attention is that a lot of times they're not of the

00:13:33.120 type that we have permission to do them right or we have some clear manifest to do them so we have to

00:13:39.980 claim that space to be able to do them and i think that's when a lot of the head trash will start to

00:13:44.800 pop up and that's where we get competing priorities because the head trash will pop up because you know

00:13:48.380 let's say it's writing a book starting a business starting a non-profit creating a hobby farm getting

00:13:52.840 married whatever right that's when we have those many existential crises like am i the right person is this

00:13:59.320 the right time do i have what it takes what if i fail and that's where that stuff comes up and

00:14:04.520 unfortunately we have somehow encoded the belief that or at least the working principle that if it's

00:14:12.100 hard that we shouldn't do it and if we're not certain about it then we shouldn't do it when the

00:14:18.200 fact of the matter is a lot of times that emotional flailing i call it thrashing that when we thrash it's

00:14:24.720 because something matters to us we don't thrash about doing the trash or about taking out the trash

00:14:30.700 or doing laundry changing the dishes doing errands like there's a lot of things we don't get that

00:14:36.100 involved in we either do them or we don't do it we might be frustrated by them but it's not that sort

00:14:41.140 of existential who am i am i the right person am i good enough someone else is doing it we only do those

00:14:48.500 when it comes to projects that really really matter to us and that's one of the insights that i want to

00:14:54.260 get across to people because i want us to be running towards those things that are difficult i want us

00:15:00.740 to be running towards those things that make us uncomfortable rather than staying over here on the

00:15:06.920 shallow shores of the comfort and the low-hanging fruit and then just checking the box and getting

00:15:11.920 something else done because we know what that gets us and we don't like where it takes us so you

00:15:17.080 mentioned thrashing behaviors what are some examples of thrashing behaviors you see in people you work

00:15:21.920 with quote-unquote research you know when you ask them about something you're like oh well i've been

00:15:27.500 researching that for like two or three months now there's a certain amount of research that we all

00:15:31.400 need to do but you know in any of these sort of best work projects which is what i call these life

00:15:35.980 changing projects there's always going to be this gap between the amount of information available

00:15:41.300 and the amount of information that you know would really help you make the decision and there's always

00:15:47.900 that leap and so what people try to do is try to make that gap so small that they're you know taking

00:15:54.260 that certainty there procrastination for a lot of people is thrashing and just avoiding it now the

00:15:59.400 funny thing about that is or i find it really interesting is we don't really procrastinate and

00:16:05.540 we don't really need an accountability system and we don't really need accountability buddies to eat

00:16:09.620 ice cream right if it's in front of us or whatever your dessert is if it's in front of us we'll eat it

00:16:15.300 and there's an insight there because we typically typically don't procrastinate from things that

00:16:22.520 we either really enjoy to do or that we manifestly know are tied to something that truly matter to us

00:16:29.420 now i'll say typically because we will procrastinate when it comes to you know ideas and when it comes to

00:16:36.940 some of these really impactful ideas because that's mostly head trash and that's mostly us trying to get

00:16:42.200 ready to be ready to get ready if that makes any sense like it's like oh yeah i gotta work up to it

00:16:48.180 and then once i'm working i can work up to it then i can do it and we spend so much time working up to

00:16:51.900 it that if we just started doing it and figured it out on the fly we'd be better off so procrastination

00:16:56.780 can be one i have a buddy really successful buddy and i have to call him on him we're in a mastermind

00:17:01.880 group and i know that he's thrashing when he starts setting up a bunch of interviews with people and

00:17:10.460 conversations and meetings with people about a project that he already knows how to do and because

00:17:15.620 we've talked about and he knows how to do it but he's still in this sort of i'm going to talk to a bunch

00:17:20.600 of people i'm going to see the lay of the field so and so forth but i know him well enough to know that he's going

00:17:25.760 to do it his own way and not much of that information is actually going to be useful for him

00:17:30.600 whatsoever and so you know he can spend six to nine months just in conversations with folks and kind of

00:17:37.940 fishing and dabbling where if he just spent that nine months like making the first steps on his own

00:17:42.500 he would be that much further along sometimes shopping could be a way that people do it so i guess

00:17:47.840 one way to see thrashing is like some of us are some of us have our own ways of productive

00:17:52.180 procrastination other of us know and and most people brett when i talk to them as as their coach

00:17:58.500 and i say like so when you're scared of a project and you're thrashing what do you do they can tell

00:18:03.500 me what they do right they know they're doing it and so that's how i'll just spot them like hey i

00:18:08.020 noticed that you're doing that thing there and you're like oh crap call and so those are some of

00:18:12.260 the ways and you know most of the time people know what thrashing looks like for them yeah that makes

00:18:18.860 sense i i know my thrashing i've done the research i do the research thing like i'll just keep

00:18:23.720 researching researching like oh wait i gotta stop this and just start i gotta do one i gotta start

00:18:28.000 taking action on this and once i start taking action things start solving themselves yeah the army

00:18:33.900 calls it gathering intelligence through action which will we would say in in the entrepreneurial

00:18:39.540 or creative spaces do stuff and see what happens simple as that well so let's go back to this idea

00:18:45.700 of competing priorities as you said this is one of the first places you start with clients you look

00:18:51.740 at their competing priorities and try to help them figure out the stuff they can eliminate

00:18:55.160 the projects they can eliminate from their lives they can focus on the things that that really matter

00:19:00.760 to them um so how do you how do you go about that like what questions do you ask to help them figure

00:19:06.600 out those that answer that question like what should you eliminate from your life because that's hard to do

00:19:11.480 because i think a lot of people when they say i'm gonna stop this project they think well i'm

00:19:15.340 quitting quitting is for losers i don't want to do that so they just keep doing it so how do you walk

00:19:20.180 a client through that yeah so a little bit of setup there so these best work projects again i'm going

00:19:26.500 to go back to bridging that gap so i need to you know we talked a little bit about that but there's

00:19:30.920 this other thing that we have to remember is that this is the concept of displacement that anything you

00:19:35.580 do displaces or prevents you from doing a near infinity of other things that you might have done with

00:19:41.640 that same time energy and attention so it turns out that a lot of people are doing projects that

00:19:50.020 would have built the type of life they wanted to have two years ago but they've moved on and it you

00:19:55.800 know something is different now and the project is not taking them fundamentally into this best or

00:20:01.300 into this better future that they want to live in and so if that's one of those scenarios the very best

00:20:07.720 thing that you can do is drop that project midstream and yes i know quitting is for losers and things

00:20:11.880 like that but think about it if it's going to take you the next three months to complete that project

00:20:16.880 but that project does not take you where you want to go one you've spent three months on that project but

00:20:24.080 two more importantly you've displayed that project has displaced another project that could have taken you

00:20:30.720 there right and so one of the reasons we end up getting so overloaded and i don't use overwhelm much

00:20:38.680 like when i'm working with clients and people in my community like we get to say overwhelmed like

00:20:43.360 you know two or three times but then after that point i switch it i say look here's why we're not

00:20:48.520 talking about overwhelmed we're only overwhelmed when we're overloaded right overwhelm is an emotion i love

00:20:55.180 understanding our emotions and being there but we you know the only way we get out of that emotion is if we

00:21:00.160 change the load and so you know if we just replace that overwhelmed with overloaded then we can start

00:21:07.380 to say okay how do i pull my load down and one of the ways you pull your load down is again looking at

00:21:12.540 those projects one of the things you can do is look at those projects that yes you committed to

00:21:16.100 yes you may have spent a certain amount of time doing it yes you may have spent a bunch of money

00:21:20.140 you may have you know said you were going to do it and so on so forth but fundamentally if that project

00:21:25.620 is not taking you where you want to go you need to let it go because it's it's displacing something

00:21:30.660 else but usually what what this looks like bread is just asking folks like let's imagine it's the end

00:21:37.000 of the year you know let's say it's 12 months from now and we're celebrating you know we're meeting up

00:21:40.440 for drinks and i'm like you know what are what are three to five things that you want to be celebrating

00:21:44.360 and then most people know they know sort of the things that they would like to celebrate

00:21:48.760 and then of that three to five ask like what's the one that would make the most difference that

00:21:55.320 would be the most compelling that would change your life the most like there are different ways of

00:21:58.900 asking that question and a lot of people that one gets trickier another way that i'll say that

00:22:04.140 is let's imagine you know all these plans that you have for yourself especially at the life level as

00:22:10.140 opposed to the project level let's imagine that there were you know that small handful of things that

00:22:16.600 you want to do which one hurts the most if i were to say you know i'm going to take that project from

00:22:24.720 you and you'll never be able to do it for the rest of your life it's just done never ever that one

00:22:30.820 tends to wake people up in a lot of ways because once us you know they can kind of see me grabbing

00:22:35.020 for it like like no not that one right then you can sort of start triaging and start feeling which

00:22:39.540 ones have the most weight and that pain is super important because at the end of the day emotion

00:22:44.040 drives action that's what we forget right we think our brains drive action but not so much

00:22:49.200 it's actually emotion um and so tying to those things that like you most want to do can be super

00:22:56.220 important by just noticing that pain that wince that that uh you know i was given a presentation for

00:23:01.240 this book and one of my friends who is also a client he had said you know charlie i thought i was

00:23:08.540 done with writing books he's written two three books now he's like but then when we did that

00:23:13.660 exercise and you started talking about taking some potential projects away from me i felt a visceral

00:23:20.680 pain when you grabbed for this next book concept that i was that i kind of been toying with and so i'm

00:23:26.720 writing that book now and that's you know that's one way that we can really sort through and figure that

00:23:33.840 out another way of doing that would be just having people think more clearly about which of the

00:23:41.640 projects and goals tie to who they most want to be versus who they think they should be you know it

00:23:48.400 doesn't take very long as a coach before you realize how disastrous of a word should can be because

00:23:54.100 people should all over themselves all day and so just about any time that i see someone like say

00:24:01.420 there's something that they should be doing it's um i mean it's like 90 sure that it's coming from

00:24:08.520 some external source because that's not the language that we use when it's our own stuff we

00:24:13.220 use i want to do i get to do i'm looking forward to it we use a much more positive language but when

00:24:19.560 it's an external priority and when it's some something that they you know believe is important

00:24:25.360 to them because of other people's belief systems and things like that we'll almost always use should

00:24:29.160 there and so that's a tell that that's a potential project that might be able to go if we can't find

00:24:36.040 the internal alignment between that project and their own priorities so those are a few ways i

00:24:40.980 would work through that we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors and now back

00:24:45.020 to the show no that's great so this is all very high level stuff you're trying to get aware of your

00:24:50.400 competing priorities and eliminating the ones that that don't really call to you right or even using that

00:24:55.840 loss aversion and like which one would hurt if you took it away then you're also getting aware of

00:25:00.400 the head trash you've been telling yourself the story you've been telling yourself and that this

00:25:05.480 is like really important stuff because a lot of times people overlook this and they go right to 0.97

00:25:09.200 like i said the tactical but once you've taken care of this stuff and i'm sure this is something

00:25:12.920 that's not like one and done you're constantly working through this stuff the entire time but once

00:25:17.860 you've got a good idea of you know what are your most like your best work projects you want to do

00:25:21.800 that's when you start getting more brass tacks and you start off the first thing you got to do you

00:25:26.860 got to start planning and the first part of a plan is establishing a goal and i think everyone's heard

00:25:31.820 about goals and they've set goals for themselves but most people still set goals that aren't very

00:25:35.920 effective how do most people construct goals and what's the better way to do that so it's more

00:25:40.800 concrete yeah i think people can get super confused about well part of it is just unclear goals and so

00:25:49.500 you know we talk about the smart framework which you know there's a more corporate version there's

00:25:53.700 one that i use in the book which is specific meaningful actionable relevant and trackable

00:25:59.160 and first off is just knowing where you're trying to go and what that looks like and one of the things

00:26:06.860 that i think people don't do a good enough job of is when it comes to that realistic one

00:26:12.540 or that realistic component of trying to think about like where they currently are and where

00:26:19.800 they're trying to go and the amount of effort that they're going to put behind that change

00:26:24.060 and so you know in the book i kind of shift the conversation towards thinking about three levels of

00:26:29.300 success so they're small moderate and epic and if you're not a millennial you can say extreme it's cool

00:26:34.960 right um and those three different levels of success as a gauge for thinking through

00:26:40.500 where you want this project to go and what you want this final outcome to look like

00:26:44.520 and the reason i i started doing that is i actually fell into that one backwards from my coaching work

00:26:49.420 because i noticed that people were starting with a very black white version so it's like you either

00:26:55.380 succeed or you fail right and that was it i was like well there are like layers here there are like

00:27:01.780 you know degrees of success and degrees of failure and once we started talking about more degrees of

00:27:07.480 success and really being realistic about what we can do then it's really helped people change things

00:27:12.000 because for instance i think what we often do is a lot of people want say an epic success but

00:27:20.900 they're not willing to put in the epic effort it takes to get there okay and when we think more

00:27:28.640 clearly and cogently about this and say you know what i want to do this thing i'm okay with it being a

00:27:35.540 a small success because it's more important that i do it and that you know that's the amount of effort

00:27:40.840 that i could put behind it that i don't do it and so i think that sort of go big go home mentality

00:27:48.620 has crept into the way we plan and way we set goals so that we don't see that you know what like

00:27:55.300 i don't have to so let's say you have a fitness goal right you don't have to go from

00:28:00.680 sitting on the couch to running a marathon right small successes might be you know what i'm going

00:28:06.200 to go from sitting on a couch to going to the gym twice a week and i'm okay with that because that

00:28:11.180 fits in with my broader goals i'm you know going to be healthy that way i don't need to be a marathon

00:28:15.040 runner i don't need to be a gym rat i don't need to go that far on sort of the business side of things

00:28:20.100 especially for creative entrepreneurs and small business and micro business owners you know i think

00:28:25.040 too many people are not comfortable with saying you know what the goal of this business is to provide

00:28:31.840 a healthy living income for me that's all i wanted to do that's all it's set up to do it doesn't need

00:28:38.180 to be a 10 million dollar business it doesn't need to be much bigger than that and where this comes up

00:28:43.540 is when we go back to those competing priorities if you set the difficulty level up you know to moderate

00:28:51.020 and epic across all places of your life you're going to be stretched super thin and so dialing

00:28:56.600 it down and say you know what with this project i'm looking for a small success i'm looking for

00:29:00.760 moderate success looking for an epic success and i'm going to modulate or i'm going to apply the

00:29:08.240 amount of effort relevant to that level of goal setting as opposed to putting in a small amount of

00:29:14.860 effort and expecting extreme or epic results and the last thing i'll say here is while you're thinking

00:29:23.160 about goal setting is if you can do it by yourself without the help of other people it's at best a

00:29:31.220 moderate success it's probably a small success but at best it's a moderate success you only get epic

00:29:36.640 success when you recruit other people and when you bring in other people and shift the conversation

00:29:42.180 from personal productivity and personal effectiveness to community effectiveness that's the

00:29:46.780 only way you get epic results and so you know a lot of people like i'm busting my butt and i'm you 0.58

00:29:51.420 know i'm going after this big goal but they you see that they haven't really built a team around them

00:29:56.140 built an alliance around them odds are they're either not going to meet their goal or they're going

00:30:02.260 to do so at such a high cost and it's going to take them so long that um it's really not going to

00:30:10.420 work out for them in a way and last thing i'll say about this whole epic epic goal and bringing

00:30:16.540 people into it is if it truly matters to you as one of the super important goal it turns out it's

00:30:21.660 really it's much simpler to build a team around that and to build your life around that but you can

00:30:29.320 only do that something on something that truly truly matters to you and last thing i'll say here

00:30:34.460 is don't try to do everything epic like choose one thing at a time to to go that that hard at

00:30:40.380 and be comfortable with the other things that might need to be at small and moderate success and i

00:30:45.020 originally got this from my good friend michael bungay stanier who in his book do more great work

00:30:49.620 talked about acceptable mediocrity and the basic insight that he had then is like and he was talking

00:30:55.700 about largely people working in corporate america is there are plenty of things in your job that you can

00:31:01.180 be acceptably mediocre and you won't get fired and so if you really want to do more great work

00:31:05.960 to use his language and you know i'm sort of piggybacking and saying if you really want to start

00:31:09.460 finishing things that matter most find those areas of your life where good enough is good enough and

00:31:15.400 reallocate that emotional energy that time that attention and that money towards the projects that

00:31:25.840 really really do matter to you that you're willing to put that additional heft behind

00:31:30.080 i think that's a that was a really great insight the about the small mediocre and epic successes

00:31:34.860 in the book because yeah i think a lot of people i think a lot of times not oftentimes not a lot of

00:31:39.700 times but oftentimes uh people set epic goals because they think they should like they should want

00:31:45.900 a company that grows fast and gets vc funding and whatever and but when they actually try to do it they

00:31:51.260 don't like it but they keep doing it because they think well i should be doing this what you do when you

00:31:55.220 start a business when they could be like you know what i'm gonna have a moderately successful business

00:31:59.080 provide me a good living for my family and that's that's great i i enjoy that yeah i enjoy that and

00:32:05.900 that lets me like actually enjoy the fruit of the labor with my family right and that lets me be

00:32:14.560 this multifaceted person that can have hobbies right and they can do all these other things because

00:32:19.520 i'm not all consumed by this one thing so i absolutely think it's right that's where a lot of the

00:32:23.600 shit came comes in right and if someone has like i'm not the guy that questions people's goals and

00:32:30.660 or excuse me questions their values and priorities if someone said like charlie i want to build a 20 0.95

00:32:35.280 million dollar company that's what i want to do like okay well let's figure out why so i know

00:32:39.580 where this ties into things but if it turns out that that's really their jam then that's what we're

00:32:44.600 going to go about building anything else is not going to be that like they're they're going to

00:32:48.540 rebel and self-sabotage on anything that's not directed towards that however a lot of times when

00:32:55.460 you really get down and talk to people about why things matter to them you realize that there are

00:32:59.440 many other ways for them to reach where they're trying to go so you got your project you got your

00:33:03.780 goal and you talk about in the book you know of course you're not gonna you're gonna want to break

00:33:07.680 this down into chunks right you can't just be like i'm gonna get married well there's a lot to you know

00:33:12.960 do to get married or put on a wedding and i think people naturally know what those those chunks are

00:33:18.500 like you know but and then you can plan on a monthly and a weekly and a quarterly basis

00:33:22.760 and you go through that in the book but one thing i found really powerful and this is something you've

00:33:26.840 been talking about since way back in 2008 when i first discovered productive flourishing this idea

00:33:32.580 of momentum planning and daily and weekly planning what does that look like for people and you know

00:33:38.760 and does it have to be really complicated and how can this help people move forward with their

00:33:43.060 their goals they set out for these different projects they have for themselves yeah so momentum

00:33:47.120 planning thanks for that brett momentum planning is just the continual process of using the different

00:33:53.620 scopes or the different time perspectives to trigger the amount of planning that's relevant for that

00:33:59.900 amount of time now that's very abstract so let me break it down this way when it's a new month

00:34:04.960 you do your monthly plan when it's a new week you look at your monthly plan and your monthly plan

00:34:10.720 guides what your week should look like when you do your day your week should guide what the day should

00:34:15.580 look like and so on and the hard part of it is the original setup because it's a different way of

00:34:21.920 thinking about it it combines another powerful planning framework that i have called the five projects

00:34:27.840 rule which is the long way of saying that there's no more than five active projects per time

00:34:32.420 perspective and so per time perspective is just that's meaning that i think most of us intuitively

00:34:38.160 know the difference between a week-sized project and a month-sized project we intuitively know the

00:34:43.800 difference between a month-sized project and a quarter-sized project we intuitively know the

00:34:48.160 difference between a quarter-sized project and a year-sized project and that can be really helpful for us

00:34:53.580 because where we often get super stuck with planning and prioritization is we're spanning over too many

00:35:01.920 different time perspectives and so we're you know and it can get very tactical here i know most of our

00:35:07.180 conversation here today brett's been been fairly higher level but it comes down to like i can look

00:35:12.160 at someone's to-do list and the way they write their action their action items and know how clearly

00:35:19.800 they think about time because you'll see things you'll see two three items that are like week-sized

00:35:24.840 projects and then you'll see like two tasks on there and then you'll see like a year-sized project

00:35:30.280 that's not chunked down all on the same list and that makes our brains go haywire because it's trying

00:35:36.360 to think about the size of it's the it's the analog of trying to think about the size of an ant the size

00:35:41.940 of a basketball and the size of america at the same time our brains just can't do it right and so

00:35:48.680 what momentum planning does is it helps us stay constrained to the time perspective and say you know

00:35:55.480 what this week i've got five projects that i'm going to work on this week five of my active projects

00:36:00.540 this week what are my months what are how do those relate to my five month size projects can i chunk

00:36:06.840 it down so and so forth now it gets pretty quick because once you've done the homework or once you've

00:36:14.800 done the work of setting up what you want your say quarter to look like or your month to look like

00:36:19.720 any planning any time perspective under that super easy to plan right especially if you use the five

00:36:24.720 projects rule and you also don't have to say be thinking about your month size plan and getting

00:36:30.640 into the nitty-gritty of what you're going to do each day that that doesn't that makes no sense right

00:36:35.340 that would be like planning every bathroom stop on a trip from california to you know new york you

00:36:42.780 don't really need to do that right so what it typically comes down to is once people get set up

00:36:49.720 doing it it takes them about two hours a week when they start using things like the 10-15 split 10-15

00:36:56.180 split is you spend 15 minutes at the end of your day reviewing what you've done and reviewing what

00:37:03.480 you need to do and setting up what you need to do the next day and then you spend 10 minutes the next

00:37:08.240 morning looking over that plan making sure nothing shifted and doing doing again so when you do it

00:37:14.840 frequently enough it's about like anything else you do that you've habituated yourself to do super

00:37:20.280 simple doesn't take as much time and it's way better than trying to figure out via email what

00:37:25.840 you should do for the day which is unfortunately many people's default is wake up look at email email

00:37:30.260 determines what they should do but think about that that means that usually someone else's agenda

00:37:35.220 has anchored your day before you've even thought about what your agenda is for the day

00:37:41.320 and that's one of those ways we end up upside down in this priority and productivity game

00:37:45.580 is that we spend so much time chasing other people's priorities and then figuring out you know

00:37:51.180 at three o'clock in the day like wait a second i had these other things that i wanted to do today

00:37:55.720 but your time's all up so it's just really momentum planning is just really that process of giving us

00:38:02.800 the grace of not being great at planning and not being great at what seeing at seeing what's coming

00:38:11.820 down the pipe and developing a daily process of adjusting for that and getting ever better and

00:38:20.780 you know when reality changes to change your plan no i love that because i think a lot of people have

00:38:25.380 this idea that planning is going to take a lot of time but it doesn't have to once you i mean when you

00:38:29.440 first start doing it to skill you have to develop it'll take you a little bit longer but once you

00:38:33.560 do on a regular basis you can get it done really fast yeah i mean you can get it done really fast

00:38:38.880 and the thing about it is is when it comes time to any of these new habits new ways of working what i

00:38:45.680 always remind people is like the first thing we're going to find is we're going to find fat that we can

00:38:50.920 trim from your current schedule we're just going to find stuff to steal from right and so sometimes

00:38:55.620 people like oh like 30 minutes a day i can't do it and yet if you were to look at their like

00:39:01.200 their time logs you'd see that they spent 75 minutes on social media and it's like well you

00:39:06.900 have the time you're just using it differently right and so so what was that it's a paraphrase

00:39:12.520 of henry ford's like i get ahead in the time people waste right and so we just look for those times and

00:39:17.780 so that's what i would want to ask like you know when it comes to some of these other projects like

00:39:21.500 developing a meditation practice or mindfulness practice people are like oh like how am i going

00:39:25.700 to find 20 minutes a day a lot of us can find 20 minutes a day turns out now there are some people

00:39:31.240 like if you've got you know a special needs family and you're the you're the primary caregiver and it's

00:39:38.580 just literally you have to be on you know on vigilance all the time then yeah i get that it may be

00:39:45.180 really really hard and so there are outliers through this but most of us we can find 30 minutes

00:39:51.400 an hour a day that we can steal from something else and so what happens here and we kind of we

00:39:57.120 didn't talk about it earlier so i'm gonna say this like a lot of folks have what i call creative

00:40:01.640 constipation which is they've taken in so many ideas they've taken in so much inspiration they've

00:40:05.880 taken in so many things that they want to do and they're not moving on them that at a certain point

00:40:11.240 it gets toxic on them right it starts backing up they start getting frustrated and we've all seen

00:40:15.900 people who are creative creatively constipated and i think many of us have been creatively

00:40:20.260 constipated in our point in our life and the reason i wanted to throw that in at this point

00:40:27.060 in the conversation is when we start talking about some of these changes that you need to make it's

00:40:31.960 always what i'm going to ask is would you rather be moving the projects that are going to change your

00:40:38.560 life and make you feel better or keep doing what you're doing that's got you creatively constipated

00:40:43.520 because that's your default all right so if you want to get out of that yeah maybe we find and we

00:40:50.880 still 15 30 minutes from somewhere else but you know what that 15 30 minutes that you're spending it

00:40:54.620 on on whatever you're currently spending is making you unhappy it's not taking you where you want to go

00:41:00.740 so losing that isn't an actual pain it may feel like it in the in the moment because we are creatures of

00:41:07.680 habit and creatures the way we want to keep doing what we keep doing i get that but the payoff from

00:41:15.080 finishing some of these best work projects is so high that it's worth it and if you can still you

00:41:21.620 know 30 minutes a day you know from you know this week so it kind of be one of those challenges

00:41:27.540 every day find 30 minutes that you can steal some time from and apply it to a best work project and

00:41:35.000 again it doesn't have to be a work project could be getting in shape playing guitar playing video

00:41:38.640 games so that's your jam don't care right what i don't care what it is it's just that it fires you

00:41:42.560 up and it makes you come alive do that this week maintain it try to find another 30 minutes next week

00:41:49.140 right so that you're stealing an hour a day you reclaimed an hour every day the next week find

00:41:54.340 another 30 minutes you're going to reach a point to where you know you can't find an additional

00:41:58.000 you know it's hard to find six hours of fat in our schedules every day but you know i've been doing

00:42:04.120 this over a decade brett a lot of folks can find two and a half three hours a day pretty easily

00:42:08.480 no i agree and i think something the other beauty of the the daily momentum planning is that it keeps

00:42:13.400 you honest it keeps you doing things instead of just i think one thing another way people thrash

00:42:18.420 is planning there's like well i just got to keep planning i'm going to plan do my weekly plan do my

00:42:22.300 monthly plan but the daily planning you see right there if you've moved forward with the project at

00:42:27.480 all if you've taken action and i think that keeps you from that thrash that planning thrashing that

00:42:31.920 sometimes people do yeah absolutely and the thing about it is it doesn't take long right and in the

00:42:36.580 way because you know it also ties in block planning so block planning is just the ideas rather than

00:42:40.820 using normal calendar planning of like eight to nine is rethinking your schedule and thinking okay

00:42:46.420 there are certain types of blocks or certain types of energy blocks throughout today i have four

00:42:50.140 different kinds but it turns out that focus blocks which are 90 to 120 minute blocks of time where you

00:42:55.840 can focus on a particular project it becomes super easy when you're doing your momentum planner because if

00:43:00.960 there are no focus blocks on a day you're not going to move one of those projects forward you're just

00:43:05.480 not there's no time right if you look over your week and you're doing your weekly momentum planning

00:43:10.300 and you see like wait a second i've got these three projects but because i'm going to be on vacation i'm

00:43:16.380 going to be traveling i'm going to be doing these other things i've only got two focus blocks

00:43:20.400 okay well you know from the get-go that one of those projects is going to lose right which one is going

00:43:27.600 to lose and you can be more intentional about that from the beginning i want us to pull

00:43:30.580 some of this pain and some of this frustration to the beginning of our days weeks or projects as it were

00:43:38.620 rather than getting to the getting to friday or getting to sunday or getting to some terminal point

00:43:44.380 and looking back and feeling like there's something wrong with you or you're uniquely defective

00:43:49.380 or you can't get your craft together i was like no you just didn't have time right you had three focus

00:43:54.740 blocks that week that was the limiting factor for what you were going to do did you use them well

00:44:00.440 did you not did you use them on the things that matter most and if you can say at the end of the

00:44:04.140 week look man i had those three focus blocks i put them on the project that really meant the most to

00:44:12.680 me it was the most meaningful it was going to be the one that set me up as the one that i was willing

00:44:17.060 to go to bat for no matter what else happens at the end of the week you did great right you did you

00:44:22.680 used what you had to the best of your ability i would rather start that way than kid ourselves

00:44:28.200 and make the normal bs daily schedule that has like you know the 17 things we want to do

00:44:34.760 and then the 32 tasks we have to do in the four meetings and then get to the end of the day and

00:44:40.160 wonder why you didn't get anything done well you got stuff done but your day looked like swiss cheese

00:44:46.460 right you you're not you're never going to make that much progress on those projects because

00:44:52.580 again focus blocks are the fuel for your best work projects right you are never going to make

00:44:57.060 progress on that unless you recalibrated how that day looked and made the space for it and made the

00:45:03.020 boundaries for it so i know i'm on a bit of a rant here but brad i feel you because i i'm on a rant

00:45:08.460 here because it's actually so much of this book comes from wanting people to be more compassionate

00:45:14.880 with themselves and wanting people to find more peace because the way that we're working is not

00:45:24.600 working for so many of us and i have conversations with people every day where they're upset they're

00:45:30.900 overwhelmed they're regretful and just exasperated and just finally being able to say you know what

00:45:38.320 you get five projects this week i know it's really hard to accept right now but it's better than putting

00:45:48.400 17 on for this week and being so in the whirlwind that you get two done and then you feel bad about

00:45:56.860 it i'd rather us get three four done knock it out call that great week and do that week over week

00:46:02.900 over week because brett that's where that that life-changing stuff happens it's not these sprints

00:46:09.180 that we want to go on it's not those weekends where you really crank down it's can you show up

00:46:15.520 and keep the work going week after week after week because weeks become months months becomes quarters

00:46:22.560 and most people once they start mastering being able to shape and weave quarters together that's where

00:46:30.060 they really get some momentum going because you know when you look at a lot of the projects you

00:46:34.740 want to do whether it's getting married the one you used earlier writing books or starting businesses

00:46:38.420 starting non-profits doing substantial community work they're at least quarter-sized projects but they're

00:46:46.040 usually much longer than that so you got to learn to weave those together and it starts with seeing how

00:46:53.260 your days and weeks are rolling and flowing together well charlie this has been a great

00:46:59.680 conversation where can people go to learn more about the book in your work if you want to learn

00:47:03.780 more about the book you go to start finishing book.com again that's start finishing book.com all one word

00:47:09.400 and if you want to see the greater body of work you go to productive flourishing.com i mean that's

00:47:14.860 where everything lives and you got those pdf planners there yeah you can go to productive

00:47:19.800 flourishing.com forward slash free dash planners but if you go to productive flourishing it's in

00:47:24.640 the nav bar yeah they're all free you don't have to sign up don't i mean i would love your email

00:47:28.480 address i love you to become part of the community but you know you can just get them and use them

00:47:32.620 learn from the i don't know we're up to 2500 blog posts and articles on pf at this point so there's a

00:47:39.500 lot there to learn and there's also every month we have our monthly momentum call which is a no-cost

00:47:45.660 q a community jam session where other people jump on and talk about the project they're doing and

00:47:50.900 get some free coaching so yeah if you're interested in those and you want to start bridging that gap

00:47:55.820 between where you are and that life you most want to live check out start finishing book.com

00:48:01.840 all right charlie gilke thanks for your time it's been a pleasure thanks so much brett

00:48:04.700 my guest day was charlie gilke he's the author of the book start finishing it's available on amazon.com

00:48:10.120 and bookstores everywhere you also find out more information about his work at his website

00:48:13.540 productiveflourishing.com you can download some free momentum planners there pretty cool i used

00:48:18.360 them back in law school over 10 years ago and you also check out our show notes at

00:48:21.700 awm.is productive flourishing where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:48:26.040 well that wraps up another edition of the awm podcast check out our website at

00:48:36.900 artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles we've written over the

00:48:41.300 years also check out our online platform the strenuous life it's a platform that helps you

00:48:45.260 put into action all the things we've been writing about and talking about on aom for the past 10

00:48:48.780 years strenuouslife.co make sure you get your email on our waiting list for our next enrollment

00:48:52.720 in april and if you'd like to enjoy ad free episodes of the awm podcast you can do so on

00:48:56.540 stitcher premium head over to stitcher premium right now sign up use code manliness for a free

00:49:00.460 month trial once you're signed up download the stitcher app on android ios and you start enjoying

00:49:04.180 ad free episodes of the art of manliness podcast and finally if you got something out of the show i'd

00:49:08.340 appreciate you take one minute to give us review on apple podcast or stitcher helps that a lot if

00:49:12.240 you've done that already thank you please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member

00:49:15.800 who you think will get something out of it as always thank you for the continued support and

00:49:18.840 until next time this is brett mckay reminding you not only listen to the awm podcast but put what you've

00:49:22.740 heard into action

The Art of Manliness - January 06, 2020

#573： Why You Don't Finish What You Start (And What to Do About It)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript