Speaker 1: Some of us have just not gotten to the place
Speaker 1: where we see the possibility that's right in front of
Speaker 1: us with these humans, if we otherwise love and care
Speaker 1: about That's the opportunity I want to want to present,
Speaker 1: like make that better. Welcome to the one you feed.
Speaker 1: Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think, ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Charlie Gilki, an author, speaker, and founder of
Speaker 1: Productive Flourishing, a website that helps creatives, leaders and entrepreneurs
Speaker 1: start finishing the stuff that matters. Charlie is routinely featured,
Speaker 1: showcased or highlighted in places like B n E, T, Time, Forbes,
Speaker 1: The Guardian, Life Hacker, and more. Today, Eric and Charlie
Speaker 1: discuss a host of topics, including his upcoming book. Hi Charlie,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Eric. I'm so delighted to be
Speaker 1: back and to be talking in this context. Yeah, last
Speaker 1: time we had you on it was a great conversation.
Speaker 1: I loved your book, but your and Eyes relationship was
Speaker 1: just sort of getting to know each other. We have
Speaker 1: since worked with you for a couple of years as
Speaker 1: sort of Jenny and Eye coach. I would say business coach,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't really get to the depth that we
Speaker 1: go to. So business slash mindset slash life coach, and
Speaker 1: that's been a wonderful relationship. And so when we were
Speaker 1: thinking about, like, okay, new year stuff, what are topics?
Speaker 1: You know, you just came to mind as somebody who
Speaker 1: with your book start finishing with all the work that
Speaker 1: you do that you know, I thought we could make
Speaker 1: a conversation that we really useful for people as they
Speaker 1: are thinking about kind of the rest of the y year.
Speaker 1: So here we are. Here we are, indeed, and so
Speaker 1: glad you thought of me. So we'll start, like we
Speaker 1: always do, with the parable. There's a grandparent who's talking
Speaker 1: with a grandchild and they say, in life, there are
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandchild stops and they think about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and they look up at their grandparents. They say, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandparents says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. There's a funny story here.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and fifteen, I wrote a post called
Speaker 1: which wolf will you feed? That is the parable? And
Speaker 1: then if you look down at the bottom, I was
Speaker 1: toking to toking with one of my teammates about it.
Speaker 1: It's like Eric Zimmer started a podcast on this right.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember that back in the day,
Speaker 1: but we go away, way back, and so two things
Speaker 1: pop up for me. A question that I will often
Speaker 1: ask myself when I'm in a situation uncertainty or maybe discomfort,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to other people, as I always
Speaker 1: go with, like, what's the most abundant possibility we can
Speaker 1: co create together? What is the most abundant possibility we
Speaker 1: can co create together? Because if we focus on that,
Speaker 1: it gets us out of zero sum games, it gets
Speaker 1: us out of feeding bad wolves of I win, you lose,
Speaker 1: or like it has to be manipulation, and it really
Speaker 1: gets us into a sense of that sort of partnership.
Speaker 1: And it's a way of actually guiding me to go
Speaker 1: to you know, the good wolf as it were, right it,
Speaker 1: and to go that way. And there's a second aspect
Speaker 1: where you know, I'm a motorcycle rider, and in motorcycle
Speaker 1: riding and in driving, there's a rule, right you always
Speaker 1: look where you want to go. You don't look at
Speaker 1: what you're trying to avoid, because that's the best way
Speaker 1: to crash into it, right, And so when you ride
Speaker 1: a motorcycle, you look through the curve. You look through
Speaker 1: the curve. And so for me, as I'm steering and
Speaker 1: navigating through life, even in those scenarios to where like
Speaker 1: I hear and feel the bad wolf as it were,
Speaker 1: right chopping, I'm always looking at the good Wolf and
Speaker 1: say how do I steer towards that? And I might
Speaker 1: get it wrong, I might make a dumb dis choice.
Speaker 1: But in my experience, even before the parable and just
Speaker 1: the way that I roll with things, I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't know that I have ever regretted steering towards the
Speaker 1: white Wolf. I've never regretted at least trying to build
Speaker 1: the most abundant possibility with other people. And so I
Speaker 1: just sort of like do her that way, and over
Speaker 1: enough decisions, over enough days of our lives and interactions,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things I think you end up
Speaker 1: in the place where you don't have to ask the
Speaker 1: question anymore. You're just always steering that direction, and so
Speaker 1: it's always useful to come back, and you know, when
Speaker 1: when I'm in those points where I do need to steer,
Speaker 1: it be like, oh, that's what I need to do.
Speaker 1: But that's a long answer for just saying that, Like,
Speaker 1: that's how I roll with the question and integrated and
Speaker 1: just use it on a day to day. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: And I am preparing to go surfing later in December
Speaker 1: with my son. I am so excited, and you know,
Speaker 1: I've been learning, you know, how do I learn more
Speaker 1: about surfing so when I get in the water, I
Speaker 1: can spend more time up on a wave. And that
Speaker 1: idea of looking where you want to go is so
Speaker 1: key there, you know. It's just that is a fundamental
Speaker 1: lesson of surfing. You've got to be looking where you
Speaker 1: want to go, and if you do that, your body
Speaker 1: fairly naturally will follow, you know. So I think that
Speaker 1: idea of you know, looking at where we want to go,
Speaker 1: and I think there's a bunch of ways you've been
Speaker 1: really helpful to us. But that's one is we've started
Speaker 1: to look more at where we want to go. Where
Speaker 1: I had a tendency to look a little bit, like
Speaker 1: you said, at the thing I don't want to hit,
Speaker 1: you know. So for me, a lot of the work
Speaker 1: has been around getting into more of I don't even
Speaker 1: like these words because they have echoes to me of
Speaker 1: things that I think are kind of new age, like
Speaker 1: the secret and stuff. But this idea of a of
Speaker 1: an abundance versus a scarcity mindset, Again, I don't love
Speaker 1: those phrases, but there really is something that has changed
Speaker 1: in me as I've looked more and more at what
Speaker 1: are the good things that are happening here in the business.
Speaker 1: What are the positive things that could be happening instead
Speaker 1: of going, well, it's gone well up till now, but
Speaker 1: surely we're gonna wreck this thing soon. I just remember
Speaker 1: a fundamental conversation where you're like, well, why don't you
Speaker 1: just assume that, since you've figured it out up till now,
Speaker 1: that there's no reason that's going to change. And I
Speaker 1: was like, wow, I guess given that I'm making up
Speaker 1: what's going to happen in the future anyway, we don't know,
Speaker 1: why not make it up in a way that turns
Speaker 1: out to be empowering versus a way that keeps me
Speaker 1: looking at the obstacles I don't want to hit Yeah,
Speaker 1: and thanks for putting that down, and I agree with you.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of words in the broader industry
Speaker 1: that we're in that I don't love, like I don't
Speaker 1: even really love business coaching, but it's what everybody knows, right,
Speaker 1: So I'm like, Okay, I'll do that. That's fine, right.
Speaker 1: Thought leader is another one of those that kind of
Speaker 1: makes me a market right, but manifestation and so it
Speaker 1: can take that vie. But really the insight is what
Speaker 1: we're talking about and so many of us don't allow
Speaker 1: ourselves space to dream about what's possible and where we
Speaker 1: can go, and so we just stay stuck in this
Speaker 1: world of what's the least bad thing that can happen
Speaker 1: to me right now? Right? And how do I avoid
Speaker 1: the least bad thing? And I'm like, how about we
Speaker 1: at least dream and say this is what life could
Speaker 1: look like and just settle with that it's possible first,
Speaker 1: and then that it's plausible. Right, there's a pathway to
Speaker 1: there that doesn't require as being aliens and you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't require hustle culture, it doesn't require burnout and
Speaker 1: maximum effort and all that sort of jazz. Like, we
Speaker 1: can go that direction and start finishing on the book
Speaker 1: that you reference Earlier. I talked about our head trash,
Speaker 1: and I talked about sort of the no win scenarios
Speaker 1: that we talked about, right, and when we admit this
Speaker 1: is possible, Two, there's a way for us to get
Speaker 1: there that lets us roll into the third question, which
Speaker 1: a lot of people will struggle with, Well, what's the
Speaker 1: story that's keeping me from seeing that what's possible and
Speaker 1: what can be actualized is in front of me? And
Speaker 1: that is actually where a lot of people get stuck. Right,
Speaker 1: So we did with that head trash sort of scenario.
Speaker 1: There's a fourth piece that you didn't sort of mentioned
Speaker 1: out there. It's like, Okay, now, once we've done all that,
Speaker 1: we have to do the hard inner work of prioritizing
Speaker 1: that that it's okay for us to have that abundance,
Speaker 1: that it's okay for us to live in that world.
Speaker 1: And for many many people, the idea of taking a
Speaker 1: month off and traveling when you've got a business and
Speaker 1: all those types of things, it's like, that's not something
Speaker 1: that someone like me does. And then it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's unpack that. Why Because if you fundamentally think that
Speaker 1: you don't deserve that, or that it's not possible or
Speaker 1: not relevant for you, you're going to keep creating this
Speaker 1: very thing. A burnout of frustration of not having meaning
Speaker 1: and work of not feeling fulfilled, not expressing yourself, not
Speaker 1: because you can't do it, because you're unwilling to permit
Speaker 1: yourself to do it. That's where a lot of the
Speaker 1: work comes from. Yeah, and that statement, I think this
Speaker 1: is where insights from certain things like self help. You know,
Speaker 1: the fundamental insight is there. Right, So when we say
Speaker 1: you don't permit yourself to do it. When I hear
Speaker 1: you say that, what I know you're saying is there's
Speaker 1: a whole lot of things to unpack underneath that. It's
Speaker 1: not a simple like, well, I give myself permission, right,
Speaker 1: Like this is not you know, just say the word
Speaker 1: and it will happen. Right. It is a way of
Speaker 1: orienting everything that we do. But I was thinking about
Speaker 1: something the other day, and I was thinking about will
Speaker 1: come up on nine years for this podcast in January,
Speaker 1: thank you. And if you had told me a decade
Speaker 1: ago that my life would look like it looks, I
Speaker 1: would not have had any frame of reference at all.
Speaker 1: I hadn't even thought of the podcast ten years ago, right,
Speaker 1: I was coming up on thinking about it. I interviewed
Speaker 1: a guy named Benjamin Hardy recently in his book is
Speaker 1: about Future Self, and it's really about imagining that your
Speaker 1: future self could be in a dramatically different place than
Speaker 1: it is, because we tend to assume that in a
Speaker 1: decade we're going to be fundamentally like we are today,
Speaker 1: and very often that is not at all true. And
Speaker 1: so the other thing that I think about is. I
Speaker 1: think I first met you probably at Camp Good Life
Speaker 1: that Jonathan ran, and that was the first time I
Speaker 1: allowed myself to say out loud and dream that I
Speaker 1: would be able to do the podcast as a full
Speaker 1: time thing. Up to that point, I just didn't see
Speaker 1: that that was a possibility. I mean, in my heart,
Speaker 1: I occasionally would allow myself to peek at it, but
Speaker 1: I wouldn't cope so far as to say, like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to make that happen. And that was the first
Speaker 1: time where I went, Okay, I'm gonna do this. And
Speaker 1: it still took me, I don't know, two years, three years,
Speaker 1: I don't know how long it took me after that
Speaker 1: moment to make it happen. But as soon as I
Speaker 1: knew that was what I wanted, then I could start
Speaker 1: to make plans towards that. I could start to say,
Speaker 1: all right, well what would it take for that to happen? Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, well now if I know that's where I
Speaker 1: want to get, if I know that's what it's going
Speaker 1: to take, and this is what so much of your
Speaker 1: work is really good at is and saying all right, now,
Speaker 1: let's start deconstructing that into what I need to do
Speaker 1: to get there. What are the things that are going
Speaker 1: to get in my way that are both internal my
Speaker 1: own obstacles, the way I think about the world, my
Speaker 1: limitations that they are external, the people around me, the
Speaker 1: structures I have in my life, all that different stuff.
Speaker 1: But I am more of a believer than I've ever
Speaker 1: been that you know, there are real possibilities for ourselves.
Speaker 1: But I agree with you, A big one is starting
Speaker 1: to even say this could be possible. And I may
Speaker 1: not know how to get there. I may not even
Speaker 1: be ready to say, like, by damn, I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: it there, but I can at least go that's where
Speaker 1: I want to be. Now, let me start to work
Speaker 1: with that a little bit more. Yeah, and the coach
Speaker 1: and me is gonna want to add two words to
Speaker 1: what you said, Yeah, this is what's possible. This is
Speaker 1: what's possible for me. Those two words for me become
Speaker 1: really powerful because oftentimes, you know, you're talking about podcasting,
Speaker 1: like you're listening to Jail to you, John lu Domas,
Speaker 1: You're listening to all those folks and they're talking about
Speaker 1: all these podcasting business like that's great, and people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's possible. But there are a smaller segment of those
Speaker 1: people that said, actually, that's possible for me, like me,
Speaker 1: this person now, not some other idealized version of myself,
Speaker 1: not some you know, it's great for John, it's great
Speaker 1: for Eric, it's great for Charlie, and you know, um,
Speaker 1: great for Terra and all all the people. Right for me, Okay,
Speaker 1: if it's possible for me and there are some levels
Speaker 1: that I can press to get there, thanks for unpacking
Speaker 1: the permission slash permit thing, because it's not at all
Speaker 1: like you just say it's gonna happen, then it happens.
Speaker 1: Not that's some serious horse shit. What Actually, it becomes
Speaker 1: an organizing principle for how you look at that? In
Speaker 1: my world, if your dream is not on your schedule,
Speaker 1: it's just an aspiration. And that's okay. Call it an aspiration.
Speaker 1: Don't call it a priority, right, don't call it a project,
Speaker 1: don't call it something you're working on. It's an aspiration.
Speaker 1: Cool cool coo coo coo cool. Right, But when you
Speaker 1: start talking about it as a priority or as a project,
Speaker 1: it has to live on your schedule. And I know
Speaker 1: that sounds super simplistic, but when you want to look
Speaker 1: at so many people. They come to me like I'm trying,
Speaker 1: I'm working on the thing, or I want to do
Speaker 1: a thing, and for me it becomes a prayer, simple
Speaker 1: like so where's it live on your schedule? And they're like, well,
Speaker 1: I've I've been thinking about doing It's like you've been
Speaker 1: doing that for years, okay, probably not thinking time. Where
Speaker 1: does this live on your schedule? And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: but see what happened was I can't do that because
Speaker 1: my job. And then this other person like okay, well
Speaker 1: you know I talked about this and start finishing where
Speaker 1: you know, projects, especially best work projects, these projects that
Speaker 1: are going to create your future self what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. Um, they really liked you out that only
Speaker 1: uniquely you can do. They're both mirrors and bridges. Okay,
Speaker 1: they're mirrors because they reflect your internal landscape, what you
Speaker 1: think about yourself, what you believe is possible, who you
Speaker 1: think you are, but they also mirror what's happening in
Speaker 1: your external world. So many people chanke like bite off
Speaker 1: the best work project. They'll go to the conference or
Speaker 1: listening to Ted talking maybe a podcast like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do the thing, and they decided to do the thing,
Speaker 1: and immediately they're confronted with their head trash and limiting beliefs,
Speaker 1: They're confronted with their competing priorities, are confronted with all
Speaker 1: these things, and then they look at their schedule like,
Speaker 1: how I can't do this new thing. I'm I was
Speaker 1: already overloaded with the old thing. How am I going
Speaker 1: to do the new thing? They're just mirrors, but they're
Speaker 1: bridges because they are the bridge towards your future self,
Speaker 1: that future work that you're going to do. And then
Speaker 1: the fun thing about it, you have to trust that
Speaker 1: it's fun. I know some people listen to its like
Speaker 1: Charlt that sounds terrible. The great thing is the bridge
Speaker 1: that you're building takes you further than you think you're
Speaker 1: going to go. You can't imagine when you really do
Speaker 1: this type of work where all it's going to go.
Speaker 1: You you just think it is gonna get me over
Speaker 1: this little river, But all of a sudden you keep building.
Speaker 1: And to your point, are you wake up one morning?
Speaker 1: I gonna do this A lot with clients, like you've
Speaker 1: been in conversations like let's roll back two years ago
Speaker 1: and let's examine what we're talking about now. Based upon
Speaker 1: what two years ago you would think about this, Like,
Speaker 1: they can't understand this conversation, right, because the best work
Speaker 1: project you've been building has led you here. Right. So
Speaker 1: I say all of this because when people start thinking
Speaker 1: about making a big or small change in their life,
Speaker 1: I think the first thing, aside from permission, like giving
Speaker 1: themselves doing it. It's like, okay, now it is just
Speaker 1: a matter of alignment. How are we gonna align the
Speaker 1: inner story with the outer story? How are we going
Speaker 1: to do this? How's it live on the schedule? I
Speaker 1: can go through a lot of that stuff, right, But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not at all about the permission, because if you
Speaker 1: give yourself permission and then you don't do the follow
Speaker 1: one bridge building work, probably haven't given yourself permission, right.
Speaker 1: You probably are still stuck in the like I'll get
Speaker 1: to it when I get there, or it's possible, but
Speaker 1: you haven't gotten to that it's possible for me, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to start building it. Last thing I'll say
Speaker 1: on this is when you really commit to the path,
Speaker 1: it's okay that it can take you longer to get
Speaker 1: there than you originally thought, at the same time that
Speaker 1: many people get there faster. Than they thought, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: would be able to get there. Yeah, And in many ways,
Speaker 1: the unrealistic version of me thought I would be where
Speaker 1: I'm at faster, or thought that if I wasn't there faster,
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to get there, right. That's the one
Speaker 1: I fall prey to very often, is like, well, if
Speaker 1: this thing really had any legs, right, it would have
Speaker 1: taken off by now. We would have been here by now,
Speaker 1: instead of realizing like that whole thing about it's such
Speaker 1: a cliche at this point that like overnight success is
Speaker 1: not overnight success. You know. I look at some people
Speaker 1: that I admire, and when I really start looking at
Speaker 1: like when did they start what they were doing, I'm like, oh, goodness,
Speaker 1: that they got a decade on me, right, Like they've
Speaker 1: got a decade on me doing some of that stuff.
Speaker 1: And it does take longer, but I'd love that idea
Speaker 1: of you know, the bridges go further than you think,
Speaker 1: because we are at a point we are doing well
Speaker 1: enough that we are starting to have a business that
Speaker 1: supports us and is giving us a little bit of
Speaker 1: the lifestyle that we want to have. And that's another
Speaker 1: really important thing that I think you have helped with
Speaker 1: has been us really orienting to For me, it's been
Speaker 1: getting away from that hustle culture mentality that more better,
Speaker 1: we need to be bigger, we need to do more,
Speaker 1: we need to make more money, and really asking in
Speaker 1: the context of my life, what do I want, then
Speaker 1: going you know what I want. I want to be
Speaker 1: able to take a month off. I've never been able
Speaker 1: to do anything. I've never had time in my life
Speaker 1: for that, and you know, thinking a, that's not possible,
Speaker 1: but be then going Okay, it is possible, and here's
Speaker 1: what the trade offs for that will be, because nothing
Speaker 1: is free. You know. It's been a very different orienting
Speaker 1: process towards not only what is possible, but what we want.
Speaker 1: And I love that you name very early on in
Speaker 1: start finishing and in the work you do, you name
Speaker 1: this competing priority thing, because that's real, right, Like, if
Speaker 1: my goal is to make as absolutely much revenue as
Speaker 1: we can make this year, that is a competing priority
Speaker 1: to taking a month off, perhaps, right. And so for
Speaker 1: me it's a matter of going, Okay, well, which of
Speaker 1: those things is more important? You know? And there are
Speaker 1: ways that we've seen into you've helped me see into,
Speaker 1: like well maybe not right, Maybe taking a month off
Speaker 1: is not a limiting factor you're making money. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: an enabling factor in a way that I never would
Speaker 1: have seen. Right, Like, I came back from a month off,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I am ready to interview some people.
Speaker 1: I am ready to do some podcasting, like in a
Speaker 1: way that I hadn't been in a couple of years.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't notice that I was burned out,
Speaker 1: but I think I was a little bit. And so
Speaker 1: I came back, and our growth since doing that has
Speaker 1: been really good, And some of that was just I
Speaker 1: feel like I came back with a new spirit that
Speaker 1: I never would have predicted. You know, I would have thought,
Speaker 1: I'll come back from a month off, things are going
Speaker 1: to be in shambles. I'm going to dread getting back
Speaker 1: to work. Yeah, I mean just all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1: And I just continue to sort of be amazed by
Speaker 1: how things continue to unfold, and so much of it,
Speaker 1: I think also is this thing that we talked about
Speaker 1: on this show all the time, and it's the heart
Speaker 1: of the Spiritual Habits program, which is little by little,
Speaker 1: a little becomes a lot. It's little by little, this
Speaker 1: thing has built and it's all these little activities that
Speaker 1: have been strung together over a long period of time
Speaker 1: that start to really create sort of these results that
Speaker 1: continue to grow in ways that are difficult to understand
Speaker 1: or predict. Yeah, I love that for so many different reasons.
Speaker 1: So this is true of any business scenario or career scenario.
Speaker 1: At a certain point, when you've been in the game
Speaker 1: long enough, Unfortunately for newcomers, you learn to sort of
Speaker 1: wait to see how many of the newcomers are going
Speaker 1: to stay in it past the bright shiny object aspect
Speaker 1: of it, right, Yeah, asked like whatever thing that bought
Speaker 1: them in that, you know, the month long or quarter long,
Speaker 1: You're you're gonna be like, come back to me in
Speaker 1: a year, right, come back to me in a year
Speaker 1: or two. Right. And I know, especially if you're a newcomer,
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, Charlie, that sucks because I really need
Speaker 1: people's attention now. Right. But fundamentally, what happens is there
Speaker 1: are a lot of people who just don't make the
Speaker 1: long term little by little gain and so not speaking
Speaker 1: for all folks have been around for a while, but
Speaker 1: there's some heartbreak that goes on. It's like, we can't
Speaker 1: invest in so many people to have of them fall
Speaker 1: off different ways of handling that, and I'm sure I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get some emails about that, but partially in your
Speaker 1: in your case, like nine years is a long time
Speaker 1: to be rocking a podcast. It's a long time. And
Speaker 1: so there's like an episode a week, you know, like
Speaker 1: we even when I'm not here for them, like episodes
Speaker 1: are coming out. Yeah, And so it becomes one of
Speaker 1: those things to where, like in any industry we're just
Speaker 1: talking about sort of a media primari industry, it's like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I've heard of Eric. Oh yeah, I've heard
Speaker 1: of it. Oh yeah, I've heard of that podcast. By
Speaker 1: the time you hear about it, you know, for a
Speaker 1: year or two, you're like, oh, that's a real thing
Speaker 1: at this point, right, it's not a starter project anymore.
Speaker 1: That's like a full on pro thing. So that works
Speaker 1: for everyone. And so when we start talking about you know,
Speaker 1: I mentioned projects earlier, and in start finishing, I'll talk
Speaker 1: about really sitting with the reality that a significant life changing,
Speaker 1: career changing project it's going to take you about five
Speaker 1: years to really see all the way through, right, And
Speaker 1: people are like that seems like a long time. It's
Speaker 1: like it's a short time. It's a short short time,
Speaker 1: and there's only so many of these that you can
Speaker 1: do at a time, turns out, right, And so when
Speaker 1: we look at that future self and are you able
Speaker 1: to commit to something that long. By the time you're
Speaker 1: in it two or three years and you're still trucking
Speaker 1: along and you're still doing that, you've developed enough sovereignty, talent, expertise,
Speaker 1: contacts and just overall momentum that you start to be
Speaker 1: able to do a lot, right. And so I think
Speaker 1: you know in your case, when you're talking about taking
Speaker 1: a month off, there's a way in which all of
Speaker 1: the possibilities that you end up creating, you're just not
Speaker 1: present too because you don't realize you've built them right there,
Speaker 1: like right in front of you, and um sometimes taking
Speaker 1: that step back and be like, wait a second, I've
Speaker 1: really built this great thing. And then you'll have the
Speaker 1: scenario that you had where you come back and not
Speaker 1: only is it you're fired up to do the podcast,
Speaker 1: but you're also fired up to do the new secret project. Right.
Speaker 1: I see a direct line between those two, right, And
Speaker 1: it's hard to say, hey, I need you to take
Speaker 1: a month off. So did you go, get recharged and
Speaker 1: come back with a secret project. And oftentimes that's exactly
Speaker 1: what happens. M M. My secret project is the Charlie
Speaker 1: Gilki Fan Club. I don't know if we've talked about
Speaker 1: that yet. It's gonna be launching in January. Now, Okay,
Speaker 1: you take bitcoin for that too, right, absolutely? Absolutely? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That thing about a five years for a life changing project.
Speaker 1: And now as I've been in it, and I feel like, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, it was about five years before the podcast
Speaker 1: truly changed my life on the external level. You know,
Speaker 1: it was about five years before I was able to
Speaker 1: do that as a full time thing. Right Now, there
Speaker 1: were good things happening way before that from it, right
Speaker 1: like the benefits it had to me, the people I
Speaker 1: was meeting, the conversations I was having. But for it
Speaker 1: to actually get to the point where it changed my
Speaker 1: life enough that it changed like what I got to
Speaker 1: do for a living, that took me five years. The
Speaker 1: really sobering things I was going back through your work
Speaker 1: was this idea of take the number eighty five, subtract
Speaker 1: your current age from that, which in my case is
Speaker 1: fifty two, which leads you to thirty three years. Divide
Speaker 1: that by five years per project, you go, Okay, I've
Speaker 1: got six and a half really big life changing projects
Speaker 1: to take on. That is a sobering thing. There are
Speaker 1: certain things that people talk about, like you only have
Speaker 1: four thousand weeks. I'm like, well, I've still got That's
Speaker 1: just too big a number to rationalize. But it reminds
Speaker 1: me of something else that has happened to me, which
Speaker 1: is you think about somebody that you care about but
Speaker 1: you don't see very often. Let's say you live on
Speaker 1: the other side of the country from your mother, and
Speaker 1: you're like, well, I see her twice a year, and
Speaker 1: you know she's probably got you know, let's say ten
Speaker 1: years at the outside means I might see my mom
Speaker 1: twenty more times in my life. That is a sobering thing.
Speaker 1: That cause is you to work on the competing priority thing, right,
Speaker 1: which is what it takes to do a life changing project.
Speaker 1: You have to go, oh, I've only got six of
Speaker 1: them left, assuming I'm still really firing on a lot
Speaker 1: of cylinders at five, which is definitely not the case
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. You know, I mean Jenny's mom.
Speaker 1: By seventies seven, you know, there was no more life
Speaker 1: changing projects, so For me, that was a really sobering
Speaker 1: thing to really think about what am I really going
Speaker 1: to work on? And I think that's another thing I've
Speaker 1: gotten a lot from the work with you, maybe more
Speaker 1: than anything else, is simply been what are you doing
Speaker 1: that is standing in the way of your important work?
Speaker 1: Back to that Benjamin Hardy interview, he quoted a guy
Speaker 1: named Robert Brault, who I actually don't know who that is,
Speaker 1: but he said, we are kept from our goals not
Speaker 1: by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal.
Speaker 1: And I was like, wow, that resonates, because very often
Speaker 1: I would take the clear path to the lesser goal
Speaker 1: because I can see my way there. It's not as hard,
Speaker 1: it's easy without realizing what I was sacrificing. Absolutely, And
Speaker 1: I know a lot of listeners right now are gonna
Speaker 1: want to like negotiate about that five years or how
Speaker 1: many projects cannot put into a time right, We're going
Speaker 1: to start doing some accounting that way. I get it.
Speaker 1: I get it. And maybe you're a superhero that can
Speaker 1: do a whole lot of different things at once. But
Speaker 1: for many people when they really look at that, because
Speaker 1: not only in my world are projects as sort of
Speaker 1: the career or business projects we're talking about, but that's
Speaker 1: also the work of your life as well, so those
Speaker 1: run parallel to that. So it's not so you might
Speaker 1: be like, oh, he's just talking about career projects. Nah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about that and just that, right, because
Speaker 1: taking care of kids and aging elders and pets and
Speaker 1: moving across country and all those things count as projects,
Speaker 1: right that you're doing in between. And I think people
Speaker 1: don't really think about that about why life it seems
Speaker 1: so full, It's like, well, part of it is the
Speaker 1: work of your lives. You're not counting as projects. I mean,
Speaker 1: that was a really big thing that when we started
Speaker 1: looking at for listeners. The reason I'm referencing this is
Speaker 1: not because I want to be self referential. I just
Speaker 1: think it's helpful to give actual, real life examples of
Speaker 1: this stuff, right, is that when we started looking in
Speaker 1: our life and we went, okay, well, Jenny runs the household, right,
Speaker 1: not that like she does everything. We have some division
Speaker 1: of labor, but when it comes to making sure that
Speaker 1: there are groceries in here, when it comes to making
Speaker 1: sure you know, she likes to cook, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of things that she does. That's a project. So to
Speaker 1: expect her work output to be equal to mine, it's
Speaker 1: not fair because that's a real project. And then we
Speaker 1: looked at her mom and said, Okay, her mom has Alzheimer's.
Speaker 1: That's a project that Jenny has on her plate. Do
Speaker 1: we wish it wasn't, of course, but given the way
Speaker 1: that we're going to step up to the plate on this,
Speaker 1: that's a project. And so again it allowed us to
Speaker 1: have this way of thinking about our lives holistically. That
Speaker 1: really worked. There's another line you have about many people
Speaker 1: end up with their days filled with projects they aren't counting.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a really big thing. It's a really
Speaker 1: important thing to get all that laid out so that
Speaker 1: we can be realistic about what else can go on
Speaker 1: the plate. You know what else am I able to do?
Speaker 1: You know? New Year's Resolutions are a classic time of
Speaker 1: the year for this, Right, I Am going to start
Speaker 1: working out for an hour and a half a day.
Speaker 1: Well maybe, but where's that time coming from? Like, we
Speaker 1: can't take that out and just go well, we tend
Speaker 1: to isolate things. Well, I can do that. I can
Speaker 1: do an hour and a half. That's not too hard. Well, no,
Speaker 1: it's not in a vacuum, it's not too hard in
Speaker 1: a life with a full time career and two children
Speaker 1: and an aging parent. Well, okay, now we need to
Speaker 1: really think about that. And a lot of times, what
Speaker 1: that does, in addition to allowing us to prioritize, I think,
Speaker 1: is allow us to stop feeling bad about ourselves all
Speaker 1: the time that like, I'm not accomplishing what I think
Speaker 1: I should be accomplishing because we're not taking into account
Speaker 1: all the stuff that happens in life and then making
Speaker 1: decisions do I want to continue to do that, and
Speaker 1: then realizing that when we do choose that I'm choosing
Speaker 1: my children. Good, great choice. Give yourself credit for that
Speaker 1: choice precisely. You know, so many people come to me
Speaker 1: at Productive Flourishing and they're like the priming that they
Speaker 1: get from just everywhere is I want to do more,
Speaker 1: more and more, bigger better. Right. It's a challenging marketing
Speaker 1: thing for us, to be honest, because on the one hand,
Speaker 1: we don't want to like say, yeah, we can help
Speaker 1: you do more, but the reality is starting with we're
Speaker 1: gonna make sure you're focusing on the really best and
Speaker 1: right things first, which for many people means doing and
Speaker 1: committing to fewer things because we start talking about you
Speaker 1: mentioned so thanks so much for loading up projects. So
Speaker 1: we have you know, at PF and then start finishing.
Speaker 1: We have what's called the five project rule, the long
Speaker 1: nerty way of saying it is no more than five
Speaker 1: active projects per time perspective. Easiest way to unpack that
Speaker 1: is the time perspective and time horizon does the work.
Speaker 1: So think about we're recording this in December, right, you
Speaker 1: might hear this in January, but whatever, right, So for December,
Speaker 1: looking at the area, because like, you've got no more
Speaker 1: than five active top of deck, top of mind projects
Speaker 1: per month, month size projects because most of us can
Speaker 1: kind of feel what a month's size project feels like
Speaker 1: a quarter and year gets kind of walky. But I'm saying,
Speaker 1: like when you look at the wonderful Jenny Gay like
Speaker 1: in what she's going through, I'm I'm like, she's grieving
Speaker 1: because she lost mom, you know all those things right,
Speaker 1: going on vacation, she's got the meditation training. Okay, so
Speaker 1: those are three projects that we've got right there, right,
Speaker 1: If anything are going on with the pups, right, given
Speaker 1: her role, that that becomes another thing, and she's got
Speaker 1: this sort of vacation it's location or she's in Lisbon
Speaker 1: right now, right when we're recording this, she is, yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: that that's a project. Left me at home with the dogs.
Speaker 1: Well now we know who let the dogs out? Anyways,
Speaker 1: about a lot of dogs out. And so like if
Speaker 1: Jenny were coming, or if you were coming and be like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's five projects, Like what else are you gonna put
Speaker 1: in that? And without getting into the game where we
Speaker 1: stuff and we stuff and we micro crunch and we
Speaker 1: make things so stressful that even as we're getting things done,
Speaker 1: we're so stressed out about it that we can't enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Like I've been working with another client who and I
Speaker 1: see this pattern a lot, so working with her on
Speaker 1: the intensity of her work. She's done a great job
Speaker 1: of minimizing the amount of work that she needs to
Speaker 1: do to power her life in her business, but she's
Speaker 1: made the work that she does in the pace she
Speaker 1: has to produce so stressful that she would rather work
Speaker 1: an extra day with less stress than to work the
Speaker 1: way that she's been working yet and so it ends
Speaker 1: up in this counter and to it a sort of
Speaker 1: thing where the main question for me a lot of
Speaker 1: times when it comes to people doing their best work
Speaker 1: and how they get it done, is how do we
Speaker 1: structure this in a way so that you can actually
Speaker 1: breathe and enjoy it as you're doing it. Because if
Speaker 1: it's always just about crunching it and getting it done
Speaker 1: and doing it in the mandi amountum amount of time
Speaker 1: and get the maximum reserves all those things that we
Speaker 1: hear at a certain point for many people, that becomes
Speaker 1: really really unsatisfying. Like think of like if you had
Speaker 1: your favorite dessert and then I'm like, great, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go make your favorite dessert for you, and I put
Speaker 1: it down in front of you and then pull out
Speaker 1: a stopwatch and say you've got fifteen seconds. Go enjoy it,
Speaker 1: maximize it, get it right. If you take five minutes,
Speaker 1: you're wasting time. It makes no freaking sense. We want
Speaker 1: a certain amount of savoring it when it comes to
Speaker 1: so many things that truly matter to our life. If
Speaker 1: I did the same thing with you and your son,
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, Eric, you're going surfing, Like, look, you
Speaker 1: don't need a whole lot of surfing time, you need
Speaker 1: like three hours. So what we're going to do is
Speaker 1: we're gonna get you there and that afternoon we're gonna
Speaker 1: have you surf from one to four. Wonder four, that's
Speaker 1: your window. We've got it optimized exactly for you. You're like, yeah, nah,
Speaker 1: that's not that's not really the vibe we're going for.
Speaker 1: It's not a surfer vibe, Charlie. I know it's not.
Speaker 1: It's why surfing is such an unlikely hobby for me,
Speaker 1: because surfers are so like, you know, good vibes only, man,
Speaker 1: that's a good energy for me to be absorbing. Look,
Speaker 1: it's the same way with with riding my motorcycle. Like
Speaker 1: I could look at Google Maps and it'll be like,
Speaker 1: this will take you three hours in a car, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, m that's gonna take me three hours and
Speaker 1: forty five minutes on the bike because I'm gonna stop.
Speaker 1: I want to get off and like all the things
Speaker 1: you have to do on a motorcycle. But I don't
Speaker 1: choose not to do it because it's gonna take me
Speaker 1: forty five minutes longer. Right, because the quality of the
Speaker 1: right itself, Like I don't want to get on the
Speaker 1: bike and be like, Okay, I can ride three miles
Speaker 1: faster than the speed limit. I can cut out a
Speaker 1: few stops. I can do all that, because not only
Speaker 1: would it compromise my enjoyment of the experience, it's also dangerous,
Speaker 1: right um. And so I've got two things going forward.
Speaker 1: And when so many people look at their work, I
Speaker 1: think we're talking directly to people who have a lot
Speaker 1: of autonomy and the work that they do and how
Speaker 1: they get it done right. So I want to be
Speaker 1: clear about that. If you work in an organization where
Speaker 1: they're tracked me down to the thirty seconds, that's a
Speaker 1: different context. Big love to you for that, right, I
Speaker 1: know you're going through a different thing than what we're
Speaker 1: talking about right now. We might come back to that
Speaker 1: in just a second. But for those who do have
Speaker 1: much more autonomy, which is really a lot of us,
Speaker 1: especially in the hybrid work world that we work in now,
Speaker 1: there's not so often that manager this like looking at
Speaker 1: your computer seeing what you're doing in that amount of time.
Speaker 1: What I've seen time and time again across our audience
Speaker 1: is that because we have made work so stressful, the
Speaker 1: doing work so stressful, we end up in these distractions
Speaker 1: and time wasters and filler stuff. Just to give ourselves
Speaker 1: a little bit of emotional reprieve that if work wasn't
Speaker 1: so stressful to start with, we wouldn't need that reprieve
Speaker 1: to begin with, so we don't end up on social
Speaker 1: media or email or whatever your thing is, right, And
Speaker 1: so I'm like, what if we say, you know what
Speaker 1: I talked a little bit about focus blocks earlier, ninety minutes,
Speaker 1: two hundred twenty minute blocks of time. What if we
Speaker 1: decide to get off the sort of clock time you
Speaker 1: haven't exactly an hour to work on things or whatever
Speaker 1: that is. And so you know what, I'm going to
Speaker 1: carve out my morning so that it's roughly ninety two
Speaker 1: blocks of time. And if i work seventy five minutes
Speaker 1: and I'm just kind of done because I've put in
Speaker 1: the hard yards and I need to walk the dogs,
Speaker 1: or I need to sort of get some coffee, allow
Speaker 1: for that, Allow that spaciousness, Allow for that, because what
Speaker 1: will end up happening is much like we were talking
Speaker 1: about about you with your trip, is you'll create enough
Speaker 1: space such that you come back or charge and able
Speaker 1: to really think about whatever problem you're going on, or
Speaker 1: have novel insights, or be able to like be a
Speaker 1: better human with the other teammates that you're with because
Speaker 1: you're not so compressed and snippy. All of those when
Speaker 1: taken as a habit, taken as a practice, when am
Speaker 1: I slide in the team habitute a little bit eric,
Speaker 1: but when taken as a practice, dramatically change the quality
Speaker 1: of your work in your day, every day, every day. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the winds can come. You can pat yourself on the back,
Speaker 1: you can do your victory laugh and all that kind
Speaker 1: of whatnot. But you're not just holding out through a
Speaker 1: slog of painful work for a win. You can go
Speaker 1: to work engaged, energized, expressing yourself feeling a sense of
Speaker 1: meaning and purpose while you're doing the work, which is
Speaker 1: a win no matter what happens. So let's orient this
Speaker 1: more towards people who have a little bit less autonomy.
Speaker 1: Let's not go so far as to be like you're
Speaker 1: working in a call center there monitoring every minute. Let's
Speaker 1: say the average white collar person who's got some degree
Speaker 1: of autonomy and their job, they also have a bunch
Speaker 1: of stupid meetings, They've got a lot of pressures on them.
Speaker 1: How does someone like that start to think about making
Speaker 1: the work experience less stressful because I think you're absolutely
Speaker 1: right in that for a lot of people, if we
Speaker 1: were to look at how our time is actually spent,
Speaker 1: we would see that a lot of it is with
Speaker 1: coping strategies that don't accomplish anything, you know, whether it's
Speaker 1: ESPN or it's solitaire, or its Facebook or Instagram or
Speaker 1: whatever your thing is. One of my favorite phrases ever
Speaker 1: is from this guy Tim Urban. I think you probably
Speaker 1: know who that is, who who wrote about procrastination. He
Speaker 1: called these things the dark playground, and that is my
Speaker 1: favorite phrase because that's exactly what they feel like. Right.
Speaker 1: You know you should be working, but instead you're on Instagram,
Speaker 1: which might be an enjoyable experience, but it's not that
Speaker 1: enjoyable because you know you should be working. So what
Speaker 1: are ways of taking the little bit of autonomy we
Speaker 1: have and starting to change our relationship to what we're
Speaker 1: doing so that maybe more of the time at work
Speaker 1: is spent on work, so that we free up time
Speaker 1: for more things that matter. Yeah, I love this question.
Speaker 1: It's one of the guiding principles of my next book,
Speaker 1: which is called Team Habits. And the chief difference between
Speaker 1: sort of the scenario we were just talking about when
Speaker 1: you're mostly an individual doing the work and you have
Speaker 1: a lot of autonomy and working in a team. Is
Speaker 1: that working in a team is my definition working with
Speaker 1: other humans, which means you end up with social overhead.
Speaker 1: You end up in negotiation, like if I block off
Speaker 1: my schedule, that might impact you Eric if we're co workers,
Speaker 1: because now I'm not available to you for different things.
Speaker 1: And so that's just part of working in teams as
Speaker 1: you end up with a social overhead. So given that
Speaker 1: there are two different acts of approach here, one is
Speaker 1: to really reclaimed the time, the open time that you
Speaker 1: do have and use that more purposefully. And most companies, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there's like the stated values of what's going on in
Speaker 1: the stated priorities, and then there's like the shadow values
Speaker 1: and priorities. There's like this other game that you've got
Speaker 1: to play right to be successful and really well aligned
Speaker 1: to organizations and really high performance ones. There's not so
Speaker 1: much of the shadow game, like it's just on the
Speaker 1: table people know how to win. So I come from
Speaker 1: a military background. It was an Army Joint Force Military
Speaker 1: Logistics coordinator. What I loved about working in the army
Speaker 1: is by and large, there wasn't a shadow game, right.
Speaker 1: You knew what it took to get to where you
Speaker 1: were trying to go, right, found out the hard way.
Speaker 1: The most of corporate America is not like that, right,
Speaker 1: So be conscious of that shadow game. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. If you're listening, you're working in an
Speaker 1: environment because you have to win that one, right more
Speaker 1: than anything else. But within the confines of that game,
Speaker 1: be thinking about, like, Okay, how do I ship the
Speaker 1: most valuable work that pushes my team forward? And there
Speaker 1: are going to be trade offs, right. You may not
Speaker 1: be able to fill out the TPS report. Right, There
Speaker 1: may be awkward conversations about the TPS report. And in
Speaker 1: most scenarios, if you're shipping the really important work, you'll
Speaker 1: get a pass, right, Like you're not gonna get fired, right,
Speaker 1: And in fact, you're probably going to end up with
Speaker 1: teammates that are gonna be able to cover for you
Speaker 1: for that over time, because the organization itself will value
Speaker 1: the high output, the high quality work that you're doing
Speaker 1: over the TPS report. I've started sending a couple of
Speaker 1: text messages after each podcast listener with pause sive reminders
Speaker 1: about what's discussed and invitations to apply the wisdom to
Speaker 1: your life. It's free, and listeners have told me that
Speaker 1: these texts really helped to pull them out of autopilot
Speaker 1: and reconnect them with what's important. When you get a
Speaker 1: text for me during your day to day life, it's
Speaker 1: one more thing that helps you further bridge that gap
Speaker 1: between what you know and what you do. Positive messages
Speaker 1: when you need them for me to you. So if
Speaker 1: you'd like to hear from me a few times a
Speaker 1: week via text, go to one you feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash text and sign up for free. I found this
Speaker 1: to be absolutely true in my life because probably the
Speaker 1: first number of years I was in software startup companies.
Speaker 1: It was kind of an all in kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But the last ten years I was in corporate America,
Speaker 1: you know, big corporations. I was primarily a consultant coming in,
Speaker 1: but for all intensive purposes I worked there. You know,
Speaker 1: I was project manager, product managers, that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: and all that time, the first five years of it,
Speaker 1: I was running a solar energy company, and the last
Speaker 1: five I was running a podcast. So I've got very
Speaker 1: serious about I don't have forty hours for that and
Speaker 1: forty hours for this. I don't have eighty hours on
Speaker 1: top of being a family person, right, So what I
Speaker 1: started to do is be like, what do I have
Speaker 1: to do to be successful in these jobs, these corporate jobs?
Speaker 1: What really really matters? And so I got really good
Speaker 1: at just narrowing down to what really matters. And what
Speaker 1: I found was that a it actually freed up time.
Speaker 1: But be to your point, like I was seen as
Speaker 1: a star. Now I didn't have quite so much of
Speaker 1: the I have to get promoted mindset, right, So it's
Speaker 1: not exactly a one to one comparison, although when I
Speaker 1: was at GAP, actually I was an employee. But that
Speaker 1: fundamental focus on what really matters here, what is this group, team, organization,
Speaker 1: division trying to do what it the end of the
Speaker 1: year will be like this was successful and ruthlessly focusing
Speaker 1: on that allowed me to get time to do the
Speaker 1: things I wanted to do and to actually be seen
Speaker 1: as successful. Now I wasn't necessarily maybe seen as always
Speaker 1: the most compliant, right, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: to your point, I got a lot of passes because
Speaker 1: our projects were succeeding, our products were coming out, the
Speaker 1: things that mattered were happening, and it's an uncomfortable process, right,
Speaker 1: It was an uncomfortable process to be like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: just not going to those meetings, you know, I'm going
Speaker 1: to decline them and see what happens. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say I'm sorry, I have a conflict. I'm going
Speaker 1: to not respond to emails that don't need me to respond.
Speaker 1: My whole career up to them had been like, I
Speaker 1: want them to know that I'm valuable, and I'll show
Speaker 1: that by responding to every email, being in every meeting.
Speaker 1: And I was misguided. I was misguided, you know. And
Speaker 1: so I say all that because I had this actual
Speaker 1: experience really happened right in the heart of kind of
Speaker 1: corporate American what we would normally think. And again, this
Speaker 1: isn't gonna work in every scenario and every place. Sometimes
Speaker 1: to your point, the shadow games are so bad. I
Speaker 1: found that the shadow games did start to fall away
Speaker 1: when you got done what was most important precisely. And look,
Speaker 1: I did this in the army, right, um, and if
Speaker 1: I could pull it off in the Army, that the
Speaker 1: very thing you're talking about and being like, look, I
Speaker 1: can't do all the things right. I did the math
Speaker 1: well before the other people did the math. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is literally impossible for me to win this game.
Speaker 1: All the things are not going to happen. However, I
Speaker 1: happen to know what my battalion commander wants, and I
Speaker 1: happen to know what my brigade commander wants, and I
Speaker 1: happen to know because I did the research, like what
Speaker 1: are the general like military general objectives and what are
Speaker 1: we trying to do? And I'm going to orient my company.
Speaker 1: When I was a commander, I'm going to orient my
Speaker 1: units to be the best at that thing. Right, whatever
Speaker 1: they said we were trying to do, let's do that.
Speaker 1: So when it came time for us to opt out
Speaker 1: of things or to not be president or to do
Speaker 1: something like that, I'd be like, hey, um, sir, so
Speaker 1: I'm sending a representative to do this. Right, they're going
Speaker 1: to take notes for us, but my unit is over
Speaker 1: here doing this other thing unless you have strong preferences
Speaker 1: to the otherwise, unless we are absolutely required to be there.
Speaker 1: And they'd be like, go ahead and do what you doing, captain.
Speaker 1: Because when it showed up, like I knew the game.
Speaker 1: I was an army officer, you get that, right, I
Speaker 1: knew the game where It was like, I want to
Speaker 1: be the person when it came time to give updates
Speaker 1: and status reports about my unit that talked to the
Speaker 1: least because I didn't have to talk a whole lot, right,
Speaker 1: whatever the metrics were, whatever, it was, here's where we are.
Speaker 1: Boom boom, boom boom. Good dog, captain next, that's what
Speaker 1: you wanted to hear, right. It reminds me of at
Speaker 1: one job. I was running the biggest software project in
Speaker 1: the entire organization. It was hundreds of millions of dollars project,
Speaker 1: and my boss almost never talked to me. And originally
Speaker 1: I was like, why is he not like what? Does
Speaker 1: he not like me? Does he like this is the
Speaker 1: biggest project under his purview? And what I realized after
Speaker 1: a little while was he wasn't talking to me because
Speaker 1: he didn't need to, right. He wasn't talking to me
Speaker 1: because I was giving him the information he needed and
Speaker 1: he knew that I had it under control and if
Speaker 1: I didn't, I would come to him, you know. Instead
Speaker 1: of suddenly feeling like I was left out, I just realized,
Speaker 1: like the complete lack of attention from him in my
Speaker 1: case turned out to be a real positive. Same here,
Speaker 1: Same here, and so that's that's just what we did.
Speaker 1: So what we have to put on here on deck, though,
Speaker 1: is you gotta ship. You have to hit those numbers.
Speaker 1: You have to hit whatever the things are, because you
Speaker 1: can't really beg off and be like, hey, I went
Speaker 1: off the meetings, I'm gonna do not gonna answer the
Speaker 1: email because I'm doing X by the end of time period,
Speaker 1: and then the end of time period comes and you
Speaker 1: haven't done X, because then it just feels like you're shirking. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: you have no leverage. Right, but if you if you
Speaker 1: can say, look, I'll use the military language, sir, I
Speaker 1: can attend that, or I can do this other thing
Speaker 1: that's really important to you. Yes, I can't do both.
Speaker 1: My default is going to be to do this thing.
Speaker 1: Do you agree. I found that to be the exact
Speaker 1: magic question too, was Okay, I have these two things
Speaker 1: that are back to our terms about competing priorities. When
Speaker 1: you have more autonomy, you have to solve this yourself.
Speaker 1: But in that environment, I was able to go, here's
Speaker 1: these two things, pick you know, which do you want
Speaker 1: the focus on? And that was tremendously empowering, you know,
Speaker 1: to just sort of constantly. My dog Beans is rolling
Speaker 1: around like a lunatic behind me, and I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: coming through the microphone Christopher. Sorry, um Beans. He has
Speaker 1: made a ninth inning comeback and I think is going
Speaker 1: to play some extra innings anyway. She's back there rolling around,
Speaker 1: which is always a sign that she's she's doing well
Speaker 1: when she's acting silly like that. But it was interesting
Speaker 1: because things like status reports and such we often see
Speaker 1: as such a negative and I actually found them to
Speaker 1: be really positive for me when I use them, right,
Speaker 1: you know, because I could go and I could say,
Speaker 1: here are the five things. Are these the five most
Speaker 1: important things? Are they okay? Good? Then I know and
Speaker 1: I can focus. And asking the people who were above
Speaker 1: me to make priority decisions was a really empowering thing
Speaker 1: because I think what happens in a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: and I do this, I tell like people on my
Speaker 1: team now, and I told people on my team then.
Speaker 1: I don't have a very good brain for how much
Speaker 1: I'm putting on your plate. Like I just have a
Speaker 1: tendency to be like this needs done, This needs done, Nicole. This,
Speaker 1: Nicole that Nicole, that right, you need to tell me
Speaker 1: when we are exceeding your capacity. I don't know your capacity.
Speaker 1: I'm not keeping track of your capacity. And so when
Speaker 1: I was able to do that up to my superiors
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, I need some help sorting out because
Speaker 1: we've got nine things here and there's time for five.
Speaker 1: Help me pick, you know, in a respectful not a
Speaker 1: rebellious way, but a very respectful like, I want to
Speaker 1: make sure that I've got your back, So what's most important?
Speaker 1: That unlocked a lot for me in the corporate world,
Speaker 1: because then I was able to go, okay, good, I've
Speaker 1: got to pass on these other four things. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think these days because self managed work has evolved
Speaker 1: because of where we are, I would I would add
Speaker 1: a slight tweak of saying rather than I can't do
Speaker 1: these and which like say something along the lines of,
Speaker 1: I think these are the five most important because do
Speaker 1: you agree or not? Yeah? Right? Am I correct about that?
Speaker 1: And if they're like, you're correct, okay, because it shows
Speaker 1: that you've done that work of actually doing their job
Speaker 1: of translating it for them and you're not just like
Speaker 1: too many things pick for me and here's what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do, right, And so one last thing I guess
Speaker 1: on this. Well, when we work in teams and we're
Speaker 1: talking about that individual side of things, we're still on
Speaker 1: the individual wack by the way, Right, it's just understand
Speaker 1: thing that you write your own performance report, whatever the
Speaker 1: form is, whatever the performance schema is, figure that out preemptively, right,
Speaker 1: what you're going to be like doing and like what
Speaker 1: your win thing looks like, and use that as a gauge.
Speaker 1: Because if you walk in and have done some of
Speaker 1: his work and walk into your boss or manager and
Speaker 1: be like, okay, performance review time. Here's what I've done
Speaker 1: over the last six months. Right, Here are some of
Speaker 1: the things I know I need to work on because
Speaker 1: we've talked about them. Right, here's my plan of action
Speaker 1: for doing that. You have a very short performance conversation, right,
Speaker 1: unless you're just wildly misreading things. And if you are
Speaker 1: misreading things, you need to know that sooner rather than later. Right,
Speaker 1: And so just that would be the other thing I
Speaker 1: would want to say, is much like to tie into
Speaker 1: the conversation about dreaming and putting out where you want
Speaker 1: to be going is here in your very performance evol
Speaker 1: where like six months from now, what do you want
Speaker 1: your manager or your boss to be praising you on
Speaker 1: put it on there. What projects have you done? What
Speaker 1: what KPI is, whatever your corporate language is. What have
Speaker 1: you done? Is it sells, is it customer service? Whatever,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, right, and then make that the organizing principle
Speaker 1: for how you make decisions. Right, Because in a weekly
Speaker 1: like hey, new project, because your bosses be bosses, right,
Speaker 1: new project, You're like, okay, well, I was going there
Speaker 1: is this new project adding to my scope of responsibilities
Speaker 1: that I need to update, which is fine. You might
Speaker 1: be getting one of those shadow promotions, right or is
Speaker 1: it a distraction that's going to keep you from doing
Speaker 1: some of those things that you might need to tell
Speaker 1: you boss, like hey, hey, hey, like I can do that,
Speaker 1: but these things here, I think you want done more
Speaker 1: at least in all of our other conversations, Am I
Speaker 1: the right person to take on this and compromise some
Speaker 1: of these? You have a lot of different conversations, but
Speaker 1: you get those conversations when you're doing the co creative
Speaker 1: work of like driving your work towards that Ye. So
Speaker 1: much of this I think comes back to the core
Speaker 1: idea of being proactive versus reactive, right, Like to do
Speaker 1: any of what we're talking about, take some time of planning,
Speaker 1: of thinking, of looking at competing priorities. You list sort
Speaker 1: of five challenges that get in the way of this, right,
Speaker 1: and these all happen right in an alignment here, right, Like,
Speaker 1: what are my competing priorities? What is my head trash
Speaker 1: the beliefs that are holding me back? You know, do
Speaker 1: I not have a realistic plan? Right? If I don't
Speaker 1: have a plan, then I'm just working But to what
Speaker 1: and how? You know? Too few resources? And then finally
Speaker 1: the last one is you know, sort of poor team
Speaker 1: alignment that you've talked about. And again those may not
Speaker 1: all apply in your environment, but I think more of
Speaker 1: them do than we often think, right, team alignment, all
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff I've been able to. I won't say,
Speaker 1: overcome a bad boss, but create a team environment that
Speaker 1: is better than the leadership we're getting. Absolutely. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a saying in organization development and recruiting and sort
Speaker 1: of workforce management that people don't leave bad companies, they
Speaker 1: leave bad bosses, right and so um over on the
Speaker 1: team side of things. So when I say team, I
Speaker 1: mean the four to eight people you work with like
Speaker 1: day in, day out, Like most teams are actually decomposed
Speaker 1: about that size, not the like we're the development team
Speaker 1: that's got sixty people, Like, no, that's an a work
Speaker 1: like that's a that's a group. Your team, in your
Speaker 1: team of four to eight people. Turns out, you have
Speaker 1: an incredible amount of autonomy, or not autonomy, you have
Speaker 1: an incredible amount of rapport and influence and conversations. It's
Speaker 1: not like some other rando over there. It's like Eric,
Speaker 1: you like mess with Eric all day, right, You're trading stuff,
Speaker 1: You're getting to get to the coffee like you're you're batting. Like.
Speaker 1: It's not like asking Eric like hey, Eric, um, can
Speaker 1: you cover for me at the meeting and take notes
Speaker 1: and sort of you know here, here's where my status
Speaker 1: update is, like I really need to focus on this
Speaker 1: and I'm struggling and I can't go to that meeting.
Speaker 1: I could be like, yeah, I could probably do that, right,
Speaker 1: I'll cover for you next time. Okay, Well, that team
Speaker 1: habit of being able to cover for each other becomes
Speaker 1: a way in which you can all start to unpack
Speaker 1: and be like, wait a second, if we can all
Speaker 1: like give each other updates and someone else can carry
Speaker 1: the message, can we like, I don't know, have a
Speaker 1: Google doc where we just put our thates on and
Speaker 1: maybe we don't as a team have that meeting to
Speaker 1: where we sit around for an hour telling each other
Speaker 1: stuff that we could read. And I'm not a verse
Speaker 1: to meetings. I'm not that guy of just like meeting,
Speaker 1: get out of them. But I think when we're more
Speaker 1: purposeful and we operate as a team and we create
Speaker 1: team habits. Now, the difference between an individual and a
Speaker 1: team habit, there's a nuance here, and a few individuals
Speaker 1: on a team doing a habit does not make it
Speaker 1: a team habit, right, It makes a few individuals doing
Speaker 1: an individual habit. When the team as a whole moves
Speaker 1: and operates in a certain way and that's just how
Speaker 1: the team rolls, then you have a team habit. This
Speaker 1: is where a lot of the magic unlocks because they
Speaker 1: are a bad team. Have its that exists, such as
Speaker 1: one that's a pet peeve for me and let's get
Speaker 1: rid of a lot of people. Is the idea that
Speaker 1: if your calendar is open, you're immediately available for a meeting. Okay,
Speaker 1: coo coo, coo coo cool. Well that means Tuesday night
Speaker 1: you go home from work and you're like, great, I
Speaker 1: gotta plan tomorrow. I'm gonna get stuff done because I
Speaker 1: gotta open schedule. The next morning, a teammate sees that
Speaker 1: you have an open schedule and they're like, oh, I
Speaker 1: need to talk to Eric. And then another teammate see that,
Speaker 1: and you show up to work. You had a plan.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden you have two meetings, and that
Speaker 1: work that you could have done different things with this
Speaker 1: now evaporated into meetings. Right. The funny thing about team
Speaker 1: habits is they are oftentimes implicit and unconscious agreements we
Speaker 1: make with each other and we just sort of do
Speaker 1: them like any habit. And like when I went I'm
Speaker 1: out talking in the field to people, I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: did you choose the whole open schedule equals you can
Speaker 1: schedule a meeting thing? And they're like ah, And then
Speaker 1: you go down the list. No one agreed to this.
Speaker 1: So I get the opportunity to talk to executives like, hey,
Speaker 1: so this is going on. Did you all agree with
Speaker 1: us and make this edict? And I'm like, now we
Speaker 1: hate it too, And I'm like, the entire organization hates this,
Speaker 1: and none of y'all have thought to change this. What's
Speaker 1: it gonna take here? But that's the beauty. In the
Speaker 1: team of four to eight people, you don't have to
Speaker 1: have higher ups approve this. You can come up with
Speaker 1: novel ways to solve some of these problems. Take the
Speaker 1: CC thread from hell. Y'all know what I'm talking about, right.
Speaker 1: You don't know who to send it to, So you
Speaker 1: have some messages and you send it to everybody, and
Speaker 1: then everybody sends it to everybody, and then you spend
Speaker 1: most of your days reading CC threads where you're not
Speaker 1: sure if you need to pay attention, but you know
Speaker 1: that you can't be left out? Right, how much of
Speaker 1: our time goes for that? Right? We could as a
Speaker 1: small team decide, you know what, today is Eric's day?
Speaker 1: He covers the CC threats. His job is to read
Speaker 1: the CC threads and let us know if there's actually
Speaker 1: something relevant in that jam, right, and if so, to
Speaker 1: let us know and sort of like speak on our beat. Hey,
Speaker 1: my team is doing X, Y and Z. Why don't
Speaker 1: you know about it? He can be the liaison for
Speaker 1: the CC threat today. Maybe Charlie does it tomorrow. That
Speaker 1: gives the entire team four to eight people like only
Speaker 1: one person has to read this thread to figure out
Speaker 1: what's going on. The seven other of you can get
Speaker 1: to work right. It's an easily available solution. We just
Speaker 1: don't think because of the unconscious way team habits work.
Speaker 1: We don't think of a way to get out of
Speaker 1: that situation. So a lot of what I'm talking about
Speaker 1: on there, not to not to go too much into that,
Speaker 1: but you ask the question of how do we, when
Speaker 1: we work in corporate America, get better about this? Is
Speaker 1: one start thinking about, like, how are we as a
Speaker 1: collective going to solve some of these problems and make
Speaker 1: them so habituated that like we know how to respond
Speaker 1: to certain things. But we're going to get out of
Speaker 1: the idea that we need management and senior leaders to
Speaker 1: figure this out for us. Because it turns out, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say what you all know, change management programs have
Speaker 1: an abysmal success rates when they come up from the
Speaker 1: top down. Between two thirds and three quarters of change
Speaker 1: management projects don't work. They fail. So when's the last
Speaker 1: time from high up someone's created a policy that has
Speaker 1: actually made your life better? I know, a sound perhaps
Speaker 1: political on this one, don't mean to right, but in
Speaker 1: our small groups of four to eight people, we have
Speaker 1: an incredible amount of thing. And here's the thing, much
Speaker 1: like what we were talking about on the start finishing
Speaker 1: an individual side, when your small team takes better care
Speaker 1: of each other, builds that trust and belonging, does better work.
Speaker 1: You know, if you work with these people eighty five
Speaker 1: percent of the time I've spent the majority of your
Speaker 1: time working with the people, your work life has just
Speaker 1: gotten better, significantly, right, significantly better. And all it took
Speaker 1: was a few of you coming together and deciding here's
Speaker 1: how we're going to try some things together. Because it
Speaker 1: turns out if your team wins in the same way
Speaker 1: that you as an individual win. If your team wins,
Speaker 1: they get a lot of say about what they get
Speaker 1: to opt in and out of right, they get the
Speaker 1: cold light when it comes to like, oh well we
Speaker 1: can't really put that team on it because they're really
Speaker 1: working on these really important things and they got it
Speaker 1: going on, so let's not mess with them. Or you
Speaker 1: get the high priority projects where you get additional resources
Speaker 1: to get behind it right because they know you're gonna
Speaker 1: get it done. You get a lot of the perks
Speaker 1: when your team wins. Right. So when as a team,
Speaker 1: which means create team habits. I'm as excited about that
Speaker 1: because most of us spend the majority of our waking
Speaker 1: lives working in teams. Let's be real, Yeah, if we
Speaker 1: can make our day to day interactions with our team
Speaker 1: these people like, I don't know, it breaks my heart
Speaker 1: to some way because I'll talk to people and they
Speaker 1: were like, I don't know, Charlie. Like, as an individual,
Speaker 1: I love or really dig the people that I work with,
Speaker 1: but I hate working with them. And I'm like, we
Speaker 1: can fix that. That is such an easy thing to fix, right.
Speaker 1: Some of us just have to stand up and feed
Speaker 1: the wolf of being better as a team, creating better
Speaker 1: team habits, and thinking what's it going to take for
Speaker 1: us to not show up and have the same setbacks
Speaker 1: day and day out. We talked about proactivity. The thing
Speaker 1: about being proactive versus reactive is being proactive takes courage.
Speaker 1: You might pick wrong, you might spend three months or
Speaker 1: six months working on the wrong damn thing, leaning the
Speaker 1: ladder against the wrong wall. It's much easier if someone
Speaker 1: comes to you and says, here's the ladder, there's the wall,
Speaker 1: leaning against it, like I need it done by the
Speaker 1: end of the day, but having that courage with your
Speaker 1: team and as an individual to really say, here's where
Speaker 1: we're trying to go, let's organize ourselves to get there.
Speaker 1: It makes such a dramatic difference because you don't end
Speaker 1: up in this place of resignation and quiet quitting and
Speaker 1: what happens in the workplace when we disengage, we disengage again. Partially,
Speaker 1: it can be bad cultures and bad bosses. I get that,
Speaker 1: but I've done this work long enough to know that
Speaker 1: some of us have just not gotten to the place
Speaker 1: where we see the possibility that's right in front of
Speaker 1: us with these humans if we otherwise love and care
Speaker 1: about that's the opportunity I wanna want to present, like
Speaker 1: make that better. Yeah, I'm so excited to learn about
Speaker 1: the book. And my team now is a very small team.
Speaker 1: But it was one of the things I loved and
Speaker 1: I miss about the work I used to do, and
Speaker 1: I think it was why I was successful to the
Speaker 1: extent I was in the career that I was was
Speaker 1: I somehow had some knack an intuitive sense that the
Speaker 1: team that small eight to tend people right around me,
Speaker 1: that I could influence that, and that if I did
Speaker 1: it would have outsized results, you know, and that that
Speaker 1: group really working well together and caring for and caring
Speaker 1: about each other was a great protective against a lot
Speaker 1: of the other b s that's floating around. And so
Speaker 1: I think what you're on is an incredibly important and
Speaker 1: valuable piece of work. Appreciate that. Yeah, I'm a team guy,
Speaker 1: you know this. I think when we're in a team
Speaker 1: where we have great performance and great belonging, it's just
Speaker 1: one of the most sublime human experiences. M It is
Speaker 1: so hard to be and I miss being the Army
Speaker 1: because again, I'm not moving so many different people and
Speaker 1: just seeing organizations are and seeing like all the things
Speaker 1: play out. Right, Um, I have wonderful clients, so I
Speaker 1: get to see it on that side of things. And
Speaker 1: so that's where I want us to remember. Just like
Speaker 1: with start Finishing, the whole point of Start Finishing is
Speaker 1: helping people get on a pathway to do that work
Speaker 1: that makes their work sublime and makes the experience of
Speaker 1: doing it sublime and just really mundanely magical. I think
Speaker 1: the same thing can be applied in teams, and I'm
Speaker 1: really excited right um to do that and actually team
Speaker 1: habits came because as I was talking about start finishing
Speaker 1: enough managers and teammates to be like, how do we
Speaker 1: apply this to the team, because that sounds like a
Speaker 1: good idea, Charlie, how do we get more focus blocks?
Speaker 1: Like we see it? How do we do it? And
Speaker 1: I'm like, so you mean to tell me, as your
Speaker 1: little squad over here, each of you can't carve out
Speaker 1: three minute blocks of time to really do deep work
Speaker 1: Like that's impossible for all of you and for most
Speaker 1: of them, like they kind of squirm and then give
Speaker 1: me the evil eye. And then finally you'd start to
Speaker 1: see someone be like, yeah, we can probably do that, right, Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's our possibility for change. Well, Charlie, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on. It's always a pleasure to talk
Speaker 1: to you in any capacity, and I'm just happy to
Speaker 1: have had you on. Thanks for having me and listeners like, um,
Speaker 1: I know we had a ranging conversation here, but when
Speaker 1: this airs, we have been going through a few years
Speaker 1: of pandemic stuff and disruption, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: uncertainty in the air. I just hope that in the
Speaker 1: midst of all of it, you sort of point your
Speaker 1: attention and your heart and your dreams to where you
Speaker 1: really want to go, and use that as an organizing
Speaker 1: principle for how you set your goals in the new
Speaker 1: year and look at your schedule and not just being
Speaker 1: a place to where you're accepting the givens that are
Speaker 1: right in front of you, because if you do that,
Speaker 1: you're going to keep getting what you're getting. Awesome. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thanks so much. If what you just heard was helpful
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