I Know Exactly What To Do... So Why Don't I Do It?

Welcome back. 20 episodes today. This has been uh an amazing journey. If you're new, I'm Dean Jackson.

I've been journaling almost every day for 30 years. And this is what I know so far. We're going through my journals. One of the things I talked about yesterday was the basic structure of my weeks or my schedule.

And I I look at it as playing a zone roughly worked around Dan Sullivan's entrepreneurial time system of free days, focus days, and buffer days. And I place my weekly schedule to maximize all the the you know the lifestyle things that I uh that I want. And when I look at the uh when I look at the things that I'm struggling with, let's call it that, because I'm struck by the same conversations that I was having 30 years ago are some of the same conversations with myself that I'm having today. And as I look at that zone structure of uh you know that I I count it as zone one of the perfect day is starts at 10:00 the night before and that's getting ready and having an amazing sleep.

And I think all of that sets up what's going to happen in the day. And I'm firing on all cylinders on on zone one. Uh Brian Johnson talks about the idea of being a professional sleeper and I think that I'm doing a really good job of that as you know sleep crowns and uh all the way around my my bio-ythm is firing on all cylinders. Then that second zone that I mentioned yesterday of my focus zone, I've done a really good job of clearing the decks where I have nothing in the mornings to stop me from doing the the creative work and my, you know, highest value of creating and writing and thinking.

But the thing I struggle with the most is actually getting myself to choose the thing to do. My afternoons, if I take that the third zone of, you know, from 1:00 till 6:00 on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, those are the most efficient times because everything that I'm doing is synchronous. It's scheduled. it involves another person and I never miss.

I'm very reliable like if we have an appointment on the calendar if I um you know uh Joe Polish and I did yesterday a live I love marketing podcast and I had it in my calendar from 1:00 till 2:30 and I never missed those. I'm 100% reliable. I'm 100% present and focused. And the big struggle that I see myself trying to work through on in my journals here is how do I get myself to do without any expectation the thing that I know is the most important or valuable thing when there's no consequence for it is how do I be proactive in doing the things that I know are going to have the longest term uh results.

And I don't know what the answer is yet. But as I look at it, I try and gify things. So I've set up the structure. I mentioned that, you know, one of the zones, the targets.

I don't know why my ADHD brain loves to have like a a deadline or a a now thing, but I'm in that car and ready to go at 8:00. We never miss that, right? And sometimes it's there's rushing and things to get to the point to get in the car at the last minute. So, I'm I'm there and then I just press the button and Tesla takes me to where?

To here to Honeycomb where I have breakfast every day. Uh so, it's very uh routine. And now, uh, we've been every day flipping on the camera at 8:59 or 9:00, uh, to record these videos. So, it's synchronous.

It's scheduled. Is my friend Taki Moore call says that, you know, he's got the same kind of ADHD I have, but everything he gets done is because he's got a date with a dude. and he says, you know, he works out because he's got a date with a dude that meets him and does the uh workouts and he shoots his videos because he's got a date with a dude that shows up and is there. And I've got a date with a dude every morning, Josh here, who's recording these videos.

And I wonder, would I be able to or how could I pull this off without the involvement of of other people? And maybe that's the secret, right? is maybe I've stumbled on that that it requires other people. I I I play these mental games with myself and I heard about something years ago where entertainers uh will own their production companies or whatever and they'll studios will enter into a contract with somebody's production company and they'll enter what they call a FSO contract for services of Jim Carrey or for services of Adam Sandler, meaning that we're entering into this contract with the company, but it's for the services of this person to show up on set and do what we need them to to do.

And I really, it's kind of a paradox because the thing I crave is the freedom to not have to do anything. That's why I put so much emphasis on setting up my schedule to to optimize for that freedom. But the things that actually get done in my life are with constriction. You know that there are other people and there's other expectations of it.

And so I often think of playing, you know, this game with myself of how if I could I joke about and you almost need like a conservatorship of something I need to be under new management that I don't mind. My brain loves to do whatever we put in front of it. But what I really struggle with is how to choose the thing. So Dan Sullivan and I do a podcast every week we call Welcome to Cloudlandia and every week we just have great conversations.

And >> one of the things that we've been um experimenting with came from a conversation with our mutual friend and strategic coach member Leor Weinstein. And Leor is an amazing uh entrepreneur and he was on a trip with some families and uh they were, you know, around the campfire one night talking about the conversation came up that people were saying everything they're doing they're just doing to prepare their kids for the future. And Leor said something that was interesting. He said, "I don't know how to prepare my kids for a future that we can't see what's going to happen.

It's uncertain. Nobody knows what's coming. And what I focus on is making sure they have a better past." And it sounds so crazy and simple, but the reality is that all of these things, everything that we do is really the culmination of what we did yesterday.

Dan's actually really embraced this 200 something days now in a row of waking up and thinking about, you know, how can I make today a better uh yesterday, tomorrow? It's kind of a word uh game, but when you really think about this thing, you the only time you can did something is today. like you're you're looking at it that if at the end of the day I've been playing this uh game of instead of asking what would I like to do today is what would I like to did today if you're thinking Dan wakes up the question is what what could I do today that would be a great tomorrow to wake up to and having had that done and I don't know maybe it's semantics and maybe it's a a way of thinking about it. But I look at it that, you know, life's moving at the speed of reality.

We only get the 60 minutes per hour, but there the only thing that I could have done um I could have done anything in these last 10 minutes, but the only way that tomorrow is going to this is going to be a better yesterday is that I actually recorded these 10 minutes. they got entered on the permanent record. And it's a very uh it's an interesting way to think about it. I I've been telling Dan that if we think about the opportunity, all we have is a,000 minutes today to spend.

That's our daily uh allowance of of time. And if I look at it, I spend a lot of time on not doing anything that goes on the permanent record. And that's a really that that's kind of the way that I I think about it. My the one of the mindsets that I've been playing with is if I think about like being a contestant on Supermarket Sweep, you know how the shelves are lined with everything.

If I think about that as all the possible ideas that I could I could choose from, all the things that I could in choose to work and invest my time on. And in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm standing on the sidelines just kind of like looking down. Well, maybe I could go over there and get some of that or maybe I could go down makes sense to go get all the all the fillets and ribe eyes and put those in my thing. that might be the most valuable thing.

U but the reality is if I think about it like the only things I get to keep are the things that I put in my basket, you know, and so going and taking them off the shelf is taking the time allocating the time to actually do the the things. So that's my, you know, to be continued on that because that's been the 30-year focus. That's the one thing that I maybe haven't been able to uh figure out, but it's the biggest um work in progress and maybe awareness builds it own momentum. If you got any uh advice or you struggle with the same things or you've got any uh tips for me, maybe leave a comment.

Show me what uh tell me what you do. If if you even struggle with the same thing. I often wonder if maybe I'm the only one wired like this, but every time I kind of put out something like this, I find there's a lot of people that share the same thing. So that's what I got for today.