TTM #29 THE FREEDOM PLAN
Times are urgent, we must slow down and plan first. Your life does not just happen to you, you don't just live it as if it were already pre-programmed and you are the one walking through it and you just see what comes up. You get to actually plan it. You get to look at the map. You get to decide where you want to go. You get to decide how you're going to get there. You get to decide how often you want to stop, how far you want to go, and when to finish. You get to plan all of it.
A lot of us understand that intellectually. We like the idea that we happen to live and that our life does not happen to us. But just because we understand it intellectually, doesn't mean that we actually do it. The first step is we have to make a decision about what we want to do with our life. If you are the one responsible for planning your life, you have to make a decision to do that. So that's one big decision that you take responsibility for. And then once you've made that decision, you have to make many many, many little decisions within that big decision to actually do it. Sometimes we make that big decision, but we don't make all of those little decisions. We don't set those goals for ourselves. And if we do, we do it without a plan of execution. We tell ourselves we don't know how to do something or we don't know when we'll do it, we tell ourselves that we don't have time. So all the desire and all of those dreams go unanswered. We give up on ourselves before we've even started.
So doing the process of setting goals on a big level for your life and then yearly and quarterly and monthly and weekly and daily is the recipe for the life you dream about. You cannot get the life you dream about if you don't plan how to get there, and then go get there. Think about one thing that you want in your life. Wouldn't it be great if you get it? Think about that thing. What is your plan for getting it? Do you have a plan? You know whether you will get it or not because of how specific your plan is. And if you've put it on your calendar, because in order for you to have scheduled it, you had to believe in it first because you wouldn't go through the work of planning something if you wouldn't believe it's possible. Planning something to the level that you need in order to execute it is not a very exciting process. It requires you to slow down to think about the steps and strategies, obstacles, and solutions.
So how do we plan? You write down your outcome, and the results you want. You break it down into manageable parts. Then you write down all the obstacles you anticipate that might be in the way of achieving that result. You turn all those obstacles into your to-do items. You put all those to-do items and order of execution and then you put them on your calendar, then you follow a calendar and execute those steps and then you achieve the results that you wanted. If you put it in your calendar, you don't have to think about the steps during the day. You just look at the calendar on the day and take care of whatever it is you need to do. So that's what planning can do for you. You don't need to rethink and make decisions in the moment.
A lot of times we don't make a decision about what to do and how to do it because we think we're not sure and we think we need more time to decide. Go back to Episode 22 On the topic of making decisions.
Give yourself the gift of making a decision. So you can plan and move forward. Indecision is comfortable but does not produce any result. You need to plan things in your life. You don't just let your life happen to you. So you end up living the exact life that you have planned and that you want. I plan in time when I work, I plan in time when I rest, I plan in time to be in nature and go to the museum and I plan in time to be still in quiet. So I don't have to constantly be making those decisions during the day in the moment. What am I going to do today? What am I going to do tomorrow? What am I going to eat? What am I going to do next? When am I going to get this done?
Some of you might think I don't like this structure. It feels so constrained. I don't like always having something on the schedule. It is because you are not doing it right. You're not scheduling in the things that you love and the space that you need in between your activities and you're not planning your day so you can really look forward to it. If you think about what would be a perfect day, how would I plan it? Then you do that and it will include everything you want to accomplish in your life. It will include everything that you want to experience in your day and in your week. And it will make you so much more deliberate in how you spend your time.
You have so much power over your time. And yet you let the time dictate when you're going to do what instead of utilising it. Think about your own life. Where are you planning deliberately and taking good care of making sure you accomplish that end result? And where do you have no plan? Think about the areas in your life where you need to plan. Where are you being careless with your time by not planning what you want to do with it? Do not confuse having no plan with being free. It is the opposite. Planning your life is what gives you freedom because you do it on purpose. Freedom is something that you give yourself.
Let's talk about planning and time. Time is relative. The way we experience time is dependent on how we think about it. It's not something we experience directly as fact. Sometimes time seems to go fast and sometimes it seems to go slow. Our brain resists planning, we resist making decisions ahead of time, we resist thinking about what we are going to do. We have this sense that being able to react, being able to be spontaneous, being able to not have plans is somehow a more free life. The opposite is true. The more you plan, the more free you will be, the more you plan the more you will be able to deliver yourself the results you want. You'll be able to create the exact life you want. You'll be able to enjoy your free time without guilt. You'll be able to produce so much more. You will feel so much more in control of your life. The reason why we don't want to plan, the reason why we don't want to think ahead is because we have a hard time with our follow through. If we don't make any plans, then we can’t set ourselves up for disappointment. It goes back to our relationship with ourselves, honouring commitments to ourselves, having our own backs.
When you start running your life as if you are the most important person to respect and love in your life, that shows up in every other area of your life.
So many times when we are trying to honour our own plans, we are in conflict with our survival brain. Our survival brain is well intended. It's trying to keep us alive, but it also pulls us back. It tells us ‘Oh that doesn't matter. Go eat, go rest. Go hide. Go be afraid. That's how we will stay protected and safe and comfortable.’ It pulls us off of the deliberate planning that we do. And as humans, this is one of our superpowers, our ability to plan something, to follow through on a plan and then to be consistent with creation. That is not something that most animals are able to do at all, deliberately planning our future. We literally have to overcome the part of our brain that is in survival mode in order to evolve ourselves, in order to create something in our future and follow through on it. One of the superpowers that we are able to do in our life because we are human is we can create time. Have you ever had a thought that you've lost time by not planning and you could have done it much more efficient if you have had planned? Well, you can do the opposite. You can make time by planning. When you plan something like ‘I'm going to work on this thing for an hour. And then you honour that plan, you have used the time so efficiently that you then give yourself an hour of time to rest or do something else. Many times when we don't plan, it takes way longer to do the same thing because we haven't thought of it ahead of time. Therefore we will lose time. So plan your time. Make sure you include time off, and time to relax and time to play and time to be spontaneous. Go back to Episode 6 to find more tools on how to create more time.
Honouring your plan is the next most important thing. Having a plan that you don't honour isn't useful. How do you honour your plan? You make it mandatory for yourself. Make a plan, put it on your calendar, do it no matter how you feel. The truth is when you make a plan today for tomorrow, tomorrow you for sure are not going to want to do what is on your plan. On the day of doing it you want to respond to how you feel in the moment. How you usually feel in the moment is your survival brain dictating to you to procrastinate, dictating not to do something. You just have to plan on that, to plan that you will not want to do it when you look at your calendar and you will have to do it anyway. In that moment, you won't feel like it. You'll want to procrastinate. You'll want to change it, do not ever do that to yourself. Ever. It is not negotiable. If every time you want to do something from your prefrontal cortex, from your vision of your life, and you don't do it, you just keep spinning in the life that you currently have. If you make plans and you follow through on those plans, you get better at overcoming that survival brain. The survival brain will be always with us. It's always telling us to stay comfortable, hide, and exert the least amount of effort. We get better at managing it when we step out, make a plan and follow through on that plan. If you plan your day for tomorrow, make sure you plan some free time. Make sure you plan some time to enjoy, follow through on that exact plan that you told yourself you would do, wake up at the exact time you said you were going to wake up and do the work that you promised yourself you would do no matter what, especially if you don't feel like it.
Let's talk about productivity and procrastination. Procrastination is putting off something because we are either afraid or we are feeling lazy or we are feeling overwhelmed. We are feeling some emotion that's preventing us from creating something. Whenever you hear yourself say ‘I don't feel like it.’ Remember that is normal. But it's also not a good enough reason to not do something. You will not always and in fact most of the time when you're evolving into the next version of yourself, you will not feel like it. Evolving is uncomfortable. Discomfort is the currency to your dreams. You will feel the opposite of feeling like doing it. That's when you know that you must move forward. That's why having time sheduled to do it and knowing that it's not negotiable is the best way to follow through on those things. If you're constantly only doing what you feel like doing you're going to be moving backward. We have survived to the point where that motivational triad is no longer serving us. In fact, it's preventing us from evolving. What got us here can't get us to the next level. We actually have to reverse the motivational triad to evolve beyond survival, which means we have to pursue discomfort, which means our brain will be scared. We need to be willing to experience emotional pain. It's not being forced on us as much as 1000s of years ago. So we have to open ourselves up to it and we have to be willing to exert more energy, not the kind of energy where we are stressed out. But the kind of energy where we are allowing that energy to flow through us and produce the work we are meant to produce in the world.
Sometimes we feel like our inspired work should feel like flow all the time. It does sometimes and we want it to feel that way all of the time. The more emotional management and the more emotional responsibility we have, the less we will procrastinate. The more we realise that we are the ones creating our emotions, the less we'll use them as an excuse not to create something. Check out episode 28 on creating emotions on purpose.
When there is no reason for finishing something, procrastination often leads to incompletion. When there is no accountability, when no one is demanding it, when you're doing something creative, when you're working on your projects, when you're painting, writing books and blogs, when you're recording podcasts and nobody is reading, watching or listening or paying attention. Whatever it is you're doing procrastinating completing, not offering value to the world. Many times it doesn't even get done in the last minute because there's no pressure to get it done. If there is no pressure to get it done, and if that's the only way you get things done, if there is that last minute pressure, then you end up with a lot of incompletes in your life.
How do I know how long something will take? What is counterintuitive is that the faster you work, the less effort it actually takes to complete a project. Asking yourself to work as fast as possible removes all options for distractions, delay, questioning, and time wasting. It also eliminates the option of perfectionism. You can't work as fast as possible and have the luxury of making something perfect. Many people think working fast is stressful. But when you do it you will realise that working fast doesn't have room for stress. It requires a steady and relaxed focus. This is why a lot of people think they do better when they wait till the last minute because they don't have the time to be distracted. They do not give themselves that options, so they're able to work more productively. So why not do that ahead of time? You schedule time and decide ‘I have to get this done within this timeframe.’ It doesn't have to be done perfectly, but it has to be done. You have to create a result within this timeframe. When I'm preparing a podcast and I give myself a certain amount of time to get it done, there is no room for daydreaming, for being distracted. It is very powerful. I give myself three hours to prepare a podcast. I give myself an hour to record a podcast. I give myself two hours to edit it. done. This is how long it's gonna take. You create this short timeframe and insist that you work within it to get your work done.
Think about all the things you have accomplished in your life. How wonderful that is to be on the receiving end of your own productivity. The definition of productivity is the effectiveness of productive effort measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input. Basically, how many units you are producing. The definition of productivity does not refer to how much or how long you work, it does not refer to how busy you are. And it does not refer to how stressed you are. How many hours you work is not relevant. It's not about how many hours you work, it's about what you produce. So if you have to get the same amount of work done in a shorter amount of time, you're going to have to be more productive and the way to be more productive is to manage your mind. There is so much time that we waste thinking and stressing and worrying and confusing ourselves.
When we plan and put things on our calendar. Sometimes we have the feeling of ‘Well, I don't know how long this will take.’ And that is the wrong question, because it will take as long as you give yourself to get it done. If you give yourself two years to write a book, it will take you two years. If you give yourself two months to write a book, it will take you two months. The book written over two years should be better. Not necessarily. It's maybe the exact same number of hours just spread over a long period of time. That may or may not make the book better. So instead of saying ‘I don't know how long this will take me and then watching yourself work at the rate that you will feel like working, you have to turn it around. You have to say ‘I have two hours to get this done.’ It's just like when you're in school, you have two hours to complete the exam. This is how long it is gonna take you to complete the exam. You have two weeks to complete a project. So you know it will take you two weeks. If you would have two months, it will take you two months to complete the same project. Productivity is only measured by what you produce. What is the end result?
When you buy a product at the store, it doesn't say ‘We worked on this yoga mat for three months.’ You actually don't care, you care about the product. You really don't care how long it took. You don't care how hard they worked on it. You don't care how long they researched before producing it. You don't care how much stress was involved. You just want to know how great the product is. All you care about is the end product. That's what productivity is about. It's about production. It's about producing something.
There is a huge mental shift when you stop thinking about things in terms of your effort or the amount of stress or the amount of time you put into something and you start focusing on your productivity and what you've actually produced. You want to be very productive. You don't want to just be putting in a lot of effort. You don't want to just be stressed. You don't want to just be busy. When we are highly productive, we don't have to work as many hours, we will feel more refreshed, and we will feel energised by what we produce. When you're producing content, when you're producing results in your life that's motivating and creates that momentum and is energising. If all you're doing is putting a lot of effort and stress and busy time in and you're not producing anything, you're not being productive, that effort and energy will make you tired. So it doesn't matter how long you have been at something, it doesn't matter how much energy you have put into something, what matters is how much you've actually produced and what your results are. That determines your productivity.
When you're working on being more productive, it's very important that you don't create a to-do list that has you spend time doing something, that is not useful. You don't want to just spend activity time if you're trying to create a result. Be focused on what you're going to produce, not just on spending that time. When you're calendaring your time to produce something, you need to have a result when you're done, not just time spent. When you put something on ypu calendar, for example, I need to create a podcast. I need to get it prepared, recorded and edited. And I'm giving myself specific timeframes to do it. How long does it take to record a podcast? I know exactly how long is going to take me. It's going to take me exactly as long as I give myself to get it done. It takes me a week to prepare, record and edit a podcast. I decided ahead of time and this is how long it takes me. If I had decided to record one episode a month, it would take me a month to do the same amount of work. When you give yourself a short amount of time to produce a result, it's much more energising and enjoyable and productive. You do not indulge in stress, you do not indulge in confusion. You do not check social media. You do not have time to do any of that. You're very focused.
Some people might say ‘I like to be more spontaneous. I like to flow. I like to let myself be creative.’ The thing is, when we rely on our brain, it's going to seek comfort and pleasure and avoid pain all the time. But when we give ourselves a timeframe, our alertness goes up, our focus goes up and our productivity goes up. You can plan time to be spontaneous. You can plan time to flow, you can plan time to be creative. So here are the best emotions that you need to generate in order to be productive. Go back to Episode 28 On the topic of generating emotions on purpose.
So you want to feel efficient, that's minimal wasted effort. Most wasted effort comes from allowing yourself to indulge in worry and confusion and indecision. You want to feel focused, you're paying particular attention to one thing, and you're super constrained on it. And you want to feel clear, focused and clear on the solution.
Here are some action steps that make productivity easier. Number one - plan, plan before you take action. Starting faster doesn't get it done faster if you don't have a plan. Make sure you have a very specific plan. What are the exact steps that are going to get you to the results that you want? If there's a part of you that feels like you don't know how to do something, then the plan includes finding out how to do it and the timeframe for doing that. The second thing is you have to give yourself a time limit. There is no room for perfectionism. You cannot produce at a high level if you want to be a perfectionist. Perfectionism is for scared people. Perfectionism means that it has to be perfect. So no one can judge you, so no one can reject you. So no one can point out something that you did wrong. If you want to live in a world of perfectionism, you're going to live in a world of non-productivity. You need to be willing to put your drafts out into the world. That is where the most productivity will come from. Give yourself a time limit to produce the result and then honour it no matter what. Just like school and exams. When you give yourself a time limit and you know that you will honour the time limit, meaning your work will be done at the end of the time limit and that's what you will put out into the world, you will become much more efficient. Done is better than perfect. It doesn't matter how much time you have, it matters how much you produce within that time. When you follow this process, when you plan ahead of time, when you give yourself a time limit, when you stop perfecting, your productivity will be so much better.
And here's why productivity is important. Everything you produce is not going to be a win. So if you're not producing, you're probably not having a lot of wins. A lot of production is going to end in what we would call failure. But that's okay. Because the more you are producing the more you fail, but also the more you win.
What is it that you want to be creating in your life? What is it you want to be producing in your life? It may seem boring to plan. It is the exact opposite. It is the most exciting, life-changing thing you can do in your life. This is changing your relationship with yourself and your word. Do the work that you promised yourself you would do no matter what, especially if you don't feel like it.
In the next episode, I will go through the exact steps of how to plan and schedule and follow through. Talk to you then!
