713: It's Time For Our Annual Calendar Audit | Set Yourself Up For Success In The New Year! AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast The Rachel Hollis Podcast

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Episode: 713: It's Time For Our Annual Calendar Audit | Set Yourself Up For Success In The New Year!

Author: Three Percent Chance
Duration: 00:42:04

Episode Shownotes

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or wherever books are sold!In this episode of the Rachel Hollis podcast, Rachel passionately revisits one of the most significant and popular practices she has shared over the years: the annual calendar audit. Rachel explains the transformative power of auditing your past year's activities to gain clarity on what worked, what didn't, and how to plan effectively for the future.00:00 Introduction and Overview00:31 The Importance of Calendar Audits03:08 Personal Experience with Calendar Audits09:17 Steps to Conduct a Calendar Audit21:21 Reflecting on the Audit Results28:40 Implementing Changes for the New Year41:01 Final Thoughts and EncouragementSign up for Rachel’s weekly email: https://msrachelhollis.com/insider/Call the podcast hotline and leave a voicemail! Call (737) 400-4626Watch the podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RachelHollisMotivation/videosFollow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MsRachelHollis To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices.

Full Transcript

00:00:01 Speaker_00
Hi guys, it's Rach. Welcome to another episode of the Rachel Hollis Podcast.

00:00:07 Speaker_00
And one of my favorite conversations of the entire year, one of our most popular episodes of the entire year, one of our most popular YouTube videos of the entire year, it's the annual calendar audit. I love it.

00:00:24 Speaker_00
I love it so much because I have been doing this practice for almost a decade and it is so helpful for me that I keep talking about it, keep resharing, keep spreading the word that auditing your year, like auditing the year you just had, is one of the most helpful things you can do.

00:00:48 Speaker_00
in the time period between Christmas and New Year's. Like honestly you can do it at any point in time, but I find that if I take half a day, yes it's a lot, but if I take half a day in this week between Christmas and New Year's, I am able to

00:01:07 Speaker_00
really get clarity on what worked, what didn't work, and what I want to build and manifest for the year ahead. So we are bringing back one of our most popular conversations with the annual calendar audit and I hope that you take a deep dive.

00:01:22 Speaker_00
I hope it makes your heart explode and you get all sorts of ideas and you realize all the things that you wasted time and money and energy on in 2024 so that you can start your 2025 really strong. I love this conversation. I love you guys.

00:01:38 Speaker_00
I hope it's helpful. This is the annual calendar audit. Hi, I'm Rachel, and in this show, we talk about everything. Life and work, health and healing, relationships with others and with ourself. These are stories for the seekers.

00:02:00 Speaker_00
These are conversations for the curious. This is the Rachel Hollis podcast. This episode is the annual calendar audit.

00:02:16 Speaker_00
For a planning nerd, for an entrepreneur, for a dreamer, for someone who's chasing goals, for someone who is ending 2023 feeling like, man, I tried so freaking hard this year and I don't have as much to show for my efforts as I wanted.

00:02:32 Speaker_00
Whatever you're into, if you are the kind of nerd like me who wants to figure out how to do life better, who wants to figure out how to produce at an easier flow and without quite so much, you know, salmon swimming upstream, if you are someone who likes to understand the why, why is this not working?

00:02:57 Speaker_00
Because at some point in your journey you've begun to clue into the fact that if we can understand why, then we can find a solution to get to a better how. I started doing calendar audits, oh my gosh.

00:03:13 Speaker_00
Ten years ago, somewhere between five and ten years ago, I started doing calendar audits because I read John Maxwell's book. Which book? Choose one. They're all fantastic.

00:03:25 Speaker_00
But I want to say it's quintessential John Maxwell talking about leadership when he walks the reader through his process at the end of every year to audit the calendar of the previous year.

00:03:39 Speaker_00
And I remember reading that and just geeking out, thinking it was such a cool idea. I really wanted to try it. I basically wanted to be John Maxwell when I grew up. So I was like, oh, I'm going to try this.

00:03:51 Speaker_00
But it is most effective at the end of the year. Now, certainly, you could review the last 12 months at any given moment, but I wanted to do it exactly like him.

00:04:00 Speaker_00
So the next year, between Christmas and New Year's, I decided to try this for the first time. And what I got out of the experience fundamentally changed everything about my business.

00:04:16 Speaker_00
Now, this is really powerful for any of you who are working on personal goals as well, but I have to say, for those of you who are building your career or building a business, this kind of clarity is a game changer because

00:04:33 Speaker_00
so often we're busy working in the business that we don't have time to work on the business.

00:04:40 Speaker_00
If we were looking at this from a personal standpoint, I would say that so often you are consumed by all the things that you need to get done, by your responsibilities, by your children, your family, your parents,

00:04:55 Speaker_00
You want to show up for your friends. You want to do a good job. With everything that you're involved in and you get so busy working in your life that you never work on your life. Working on your life is you taking a step back. It's about reflection.

00:05:13 Speaker_00
I just did a whole conversation about this with the Start Today community. And if you are not in the Start Today community, should totally sign up for the email.

00:05:22 Speaker_00
Every single Wednesday we send out ideas for people who are working on, they're working on something, they're working on a goal.

00:05:28 Speaker_00
It can be personal or professional, but all of the content within the Start Today community is aimed at helping and supporting people who are working towards something.

00:05:38 Speaker_00
So, all of that to say, I did a podcast episode and then wrote an email about this concept of reflection, of looking on – in that instance, it was the past four weeks, and it was asking yourself some questions about the past four weeks that would help you make the next four weeks better than the past four weeks.

00:05:59 Speaker_00
If you're not signed up for that email, by the way, check the show notes or the description of this video and you can find an easy place to sign up. You can be completely motivated. You can be surrounded by incredible people. You can be smart.

00:06:16 Speaker_00
You can be hardworking. You can be all of the things, but if you just keep rushing forward, doing your best, moving with your whole heart, you know, making split decisions in them. Okay. What, what feels right now? And let me try this now.

00:06:31 Speaker_00
What feels right over here. And you keep just pushing forward, pushing forward, but you're never looking back. It's impossible for you to actually know what's working.

00:06:42 Speaker_00
It took me so long in business to understand the importance of data, understand what subject line actually got people to open the email, understand which product the audience really loved and which product they didn't.

00:06:59 Speaker_00
See, the funny thing about a show like this one and the work that I do is y'all are here for it all.

00:07:06 Speaker_00
across the board, no matter what we do, no matter what celebrity we have on the show, no matter what the topic is, you guys just show up regardless of what I am talking about. It's the coolest thing in the world. You're here for it all.

00:07:20 Speaker_00
But I think of the work I do here on the show as educational and also entertainment. I don't need to drill down to the nuance of understanding our titling choices on the show or understanding how to tweak it in a way that makes you love it more.

00:07:37 Speaker_00
I just think if we put our hearts into it and we create great content for you, you're going to have a good time, we're going to have a good time making it, and what a joy that we get to do this work.

00:07:47 Speaker_00
But if I was trying to sell shoes or if I had a small bakery or if I was trying to get healthy in my personal life, if I was trying to work on my relationship, and all I did was just keep putting effort, effort, effort in without any knowledge to back it up, it ends up being a waste of energy.

00:08:11 Speaker_00
It doesn't mean that you won't see results. Of course you will see results. But you will only see results insofar as the knowledge that you currently have. You're making guesses.

00:08:24 Speaker_00
So if you just keep pushing, but don't actually glance over your shoulder to sift through what worked and what didn't,

00:08:33 Speaker_00
Then you're pouring gasoline on everything as opposed to pouring gasoline on the exact fire that's burning the hottest that can get you the best results. That's the intention in a calendar audit. It's not a waste of time. It's not spinning your wheels.

00:08:51 Speaker_00
It's not New Year nebulous. This is really cute. I'll put it on my Instagram, but it's not actually helping me. That is a waste of time.

00:09:00 Speaker_00
A calendar audit is you being conscious, some of you for the very first time ever, how much wasted energy you put out in the last 12 months. Because that's what I discovered the very first time I did this.

00:09:18 Speaker_00
Today I would love to walk you through the process of doing a calendar audit, and then I would love to challenge you to do your own calendar audit and I am putting out this piece of content earlier than I normally do.

00:09:30 Speaker_00
I normally run this episode between Christmas Day and New Year's because I feel like then it's available to you and you can jump into the first week of the year and you can really hit the ground running.

00:09:42 Speaker_00
But what I've realized about myself this year is that I actually start thinking of my new year and the word that I want to choose and who I want to be and how I want to show up in 24. I'm already thinking about it right now.

00:09:55 Speaker_00
For those of you who are doing the last 90 days challenge with me, you probably get it, right?

00:10:00 Speaker_00
Like if you're already feeling good and you're working towards something and you're making strides, you don't want to wait until January 1st to really start planning. And if you want to plan well, you've got to review well.

00:10:15 Speaker_00
So that's what this is about. All right. You're like, we get it. Tell us how. And for what it's worth, for those of you who have listened to the calendar audit episode with me before, maybe even done a calendar audit, this is brand new.

00:10:30 Speaker_00
So I'm hoping that I'm going to bring maybe some different perspective than you've heard before. But even if you have a good idea, I think it's worth listening to this and seeing if maybe there's something that you didn't catch the very first time.

00:10:45 Speaker_00
I ended up making this piece of content because at the time that I made my first episode, this is so ridiculous what I'm about to say, but John Maxwell was a very incredible mentor and friend to me. And he did a ton of interviews.

00:11:02 Speaker_00
He's had, you know, so many keynotes over the years. There's so much footage of the amazing content that he's done. And I was hyper aware that I was speaking to an audience that maybe hadn't read his books before.

00:11:16 Speaker_00
So I got the blessing to put this thought out in the world and it resonated so much with you guys that I really wanted to bring it again.

00:11:25 Speaker_00
But I always, always, always want to say that if you want to understand the magic that is John Maxwell, you'll go read his work because it's incredible. That being said, let's jump in.

00:11:37 Speaker_00
Now, y'all can do this any way you want, but I'm going to tell you that in my opinion, the most successful way to do this practice is to set aside half a day, four hours. I know that your schedule is intense. I know that finding four hours

00:11:57 Speaker_00
in your life feels impossible, but I also know this is a game changer. And yes, you can do it faster, but I feel like for your very first time, you really want the opportunity to reflect. And you don't want to be in a rush.

00:12:16 Speaker_00
So if you can, set aside as much time as you possibly can. And maybe you don't need all four hours, but I do remember the first year I did this, that's how long it took.

00:12:29 Speaker_00
I'm trying to figure out back in the day how I pulled this off for the first time, but I honestly think that I did it with a babysitter there.

00:12:37 Speaker_00
I honestly think I called a babysitter, I got my mom to come, and I really set it up so that I could go and knock this out. If you're lucky enough to have Maybe you'll be in a space for the holidays that's different than your home.

00:12:56 Speaker_00
Maybe you'll have some extra help with the kids. Maybe you have a workday where you've got childcare if you need it, and you can get off a little bit early. And then maybe someone else can keep the kids a little bit late.

00:13:08 Speaker_00
But really fight for the time in your schedule to dive into this.

00:13:13 Speaker_00
When I did it for the first time, I don't remember where I went, but I am positive that there were four things involved in the process, and I'm going to give them to you in case you want to copy and do the exact same thing that I did.

00:13:27 Speaker_00
The first is caffeine. Now, some of you are, you've elevated to the next level. You're very close to ascending to nirvana. You don't need the caffeine. I love that for you, but not for me. I love coffee. It's my favorite thing.

00:13:43 Speaker_00
And it is such a fun ritual in my life. For something like this, I literally cannot imagine taking it on without like a whole coffee moment. So I'm positive that coffee was involved. Maybe it was in a cute coffee shop. Maybe it was something like that.

00:14:00 Speaker_00
But either way, there was caffeine. The second thing that there was in the beginning and still is today is a quiet location where I am able to focus.

00:14:11 Speaker_00
I have tried this in years past because I had so much fun doing it that I wanted to do it with friends or I remember one year I did it with my partner at the time. It doesn't work. You shouldn't do a calendar audit with other people around.

00:14:23 Speaker_00
This is between you and you, okay? And you don't want to be distracted by conversation. You don't want to be distracted by a server or like you don't want to go to a restaurant.

00:14:32 Speaker_00
You don't want to go anywhere that sort of pulls you out of the focus and flow state that you're in. But you do want to find a location where you can have the time and space to do this.

00:14:43 Speaker_00
Oh, I remember years ago actually when we were in Glendale that I would go to the office while we were closed for the holidays. I'm like totally remembering this now. I would go to the office while we were closed for the holidays.

00:14:58 Speaker_00
Nobody was there, so the office was empty. And that's where I'd do my audit. The third thing that you're gonna need is a journal, a notebook, some place to write this down.

00:15:09 Speaker_00
You can write this, you can write your work, you can do your work in whatever notebook you already have, in whatever journal you already have, in whatever piece of paper you already have.

00:15:19 Speaker_00
The only thing that I really, really believe in this process is that you should actually write it down, not type it out. We already look at screens too much. We're sucked into the computer.

00:15:30 Speaker_00
A very solid chance that you're going to get distracted by something on your phone or your computer if you do it that way. So I really would suggest that you go old school, piece of paper and a pen, and you review the year.

00:15:43 Speaker_00
The fourth and final thing that you need for a calendar audit is your calendar from the last year. I use Google Calendar so every appointment that I have for the last year, years, forever and ever is in my Google Calendar.

00:16:00 Speaker_00
And this is everything like my editorial calendar, my podcast calendar, my personal calendar, my kids calendar, they're all in there.

00:16:10 Speaker_00
It's one of the reasons that I started using a digital calendar, literally just so that I could do this process at the end of the year.

00:16:17 Speaker_00
Because when I did it for the first year, I only had about half of my appointments in it, and none of my personal appointments were in there. So I couldn't remember the personal stuff that I had done, which is just as important as the business stuff.

00:16:30 Speaker_00
So hopefully you've got a calendar that you can use. But even if you don't, I actually had a thought today. I'm like, what if someone listening to this does not have any calendar of their last year? Use the pictures on your phone and sort them by month.

00:16:44 Speaker_00
Starting January 2023, go look at the pictures on your phone and at least get an idea of what you were doing, what you were up to during each month of the year.

00:16:53 Speaker_00
It is not going to be as robust as those of us who have 17 color-coded calendars, but it's better than nothing, and it will at least get you started. So those are the four things you need to do a calendar audit.

00:17:06 Speaker_00
Now let me tell you how to do the annual calendar audit. The concept of this is very simple, but not very easily accomplished. That's why we need so many hours.

00:17:20 Speaker_00
To do an audit, you're going to go back to January 1st of the previous year, and you are going to review every single day of every single week of the year.

00:17:33 Speaker_00
And when I say you're going to review the day, you're going to start in the morning and look at how that day broke down. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday. What did you do during that day?

00:17:49 Speaker_00
And whatever that appointment is, personal, business, taking your kid to the doctor, doesn't matter. What I want you to do is grab your journal, and on one page, you're going to put the header, worth it. Worth it. Totally worth it.

00:18:06 Speaker_00
Fantastic use of my time. Loved it. Paid off in the end. Spectacular ROI. You can call this whatever you want.

00:18:15 Speaker_00
But essentially, this page is reserved for any appointment that you had in the previous 12 months that when you think about it, you are so glad you did it. You're glad that you committed that time. You're glad that you committed that money.

00:18:29 Speaker_00
You're glad that you worked on that project. Page one is worth it. Slam dunk, knock it out of the park, killed it. Page two is the opposite. It's a waste of time. This was a waste of energy. This was a dead end. This was a waste of money.

00:18:49 Speaker_00
This was me tilting at windmills. This was me getting distracted. Be very honest with yourself.

00:18:58 Speaker_00
And if you see an appointment that you're like, oh, that's when I was meeting with that witch doctor because I thought that I was going to put it, you know, that's where it's going. It's going on page two.

00:19:08 Speaker_00
If you're like, oh, that's when I thought that we should stop selling flowers and start selling

00:19:15 Speaker_00
fruitcakes and then I spent all that money on the fruitcakes and I had to have those custom boxes made and then the fruitcake business fell flat and I lost $10,000.

00:19:25 Speaker_00
All that, all of that is going to go on your not worth it, waste of time, waste of energy. All of it's going to go there. The last page, and this is not something that John had in his original calendar audit.

00:19:39 Speaker_00
I added it because I feel like it's really, really important and honestly,

00:19:44 Speaker_00
He's a beautiful human being, but he's older, and I don't know that this is a conversation they were having in his generation, but very much is happening in our generation, which is self-care.

00:19:55 Speaker_00
Any time on your calendar where you have an appointment where you were taking care of yourself,

00:20:01 Speaker_00
where you were doing something just for fun, where you were going out with your girlfriends, maybe you got to have a massage, maybe you got a pedicure, maybe you went horseback riding, maybe you did the roller derby, you had a date night with your girlfriend, anything that falls under like, this is me,

00:20:22 Speaker_00
living a better life, really choosing to live well, not just work hard, that's going to go on page three and you can title that whatever you want it to be. And I'd love to just real quick say if so far this seems interesting and you know

00:20:38 Speaker_00
someone else that you think needs to do a calendar audit, like your partner, or the other kids at work, or the other people at school, you think that this episode would be helpful to them, wait till the end. You don't have to trust me yet.

00:20:50 Speaker_00
Let's get to the end. If you feel like this was a great episode, would you consider sharing it? Send it to a friend, send it to a family member, put it on your social media, but get the word out about this practice because it really is a game changer.

00:21:03 Speaker_00
Okay, we've got our three pages. worth it, waste of time, and self-care. Now let us begin. You're going to go through every single appointment in your calendar for every single day of every single month.

00:21:21 Speaker_00
And if this is your first time doing a calendar audit, I would like to Just take a flying shot at what you might encounter on your first calendar audit, because it's what I encountered on my first calendar audit, and it was so depressing.

00:21:40 Speaker_00
The very first time I did this, I had an entire page filled with waste of time, waste of energy, waste of money. I had like two things that were worth it,

00:21:56 Speaker_00
And I had nothing, and I mean nothing, on my calendar that year where I was loving on myself, taking care of myself.

00:22:06 Speaker_00
And the reason that I added that in for the second year was that when I got to the end of this practice and I just felt honestly so disappointed.

00:22:19 Speaker_00
I was so disappointed with the year because I was looking at my calendar and realizing that it was filled with things that were wasting my time and wasting my money and wasting my energy and not aligned with the person that I wanted to be.

00:22:36 Speaker_00
And not only that, but I had nothing to show for it. It was probably the fifth, sixth, seventh year in a row as an entrepreneur that I got to the end of the year and felt like I had worked my butt off, but I had nothing to show for it.

00:22:54 Speaker_00
I was nowhere closer to my revenue goals. I was nowhere closer to the person I wanted to be. My health wasn't great.

00:23:02 Speaker_00
So not only did I do all this stuff and I'm facing the fact that I have wasted essentially a year of time, but not only that, the story that I kept telling myself throughout that year was like, I'm working so hard. I'm working so hard.

00:23:19 Speaker_00
I don't have time to get a massage. I don't have time to go to dinner with my friends. I don't have time to treat myself to a coffee. I told myself over and over, I don't have time. I'm working so hard. I don't have time.

00:23:31 Speaker_00
And when I looked at a page filled with time wasters, filled with things that depleted me, that didn't help my business, that didn't help me, and were the reason that I couldn't do anything to take care of myself, I was devastated.

00:23:46 Speaker_00
I was so devastated. And more than wasting money and time that would have been better placed in my business, I was discouraged just because I was like, this year sucked. It was so overwhelming, it was so hard, it was never fun.

00:24:04 Speaker_00
So when I laid out my calendar for the new year, which is what we're gonna talk about in a minute, when I laid out my calendar for the new year, I started with programming self-care. I started with programming date nights.

00:24:18 Speaker_00
I started by programming dinners with my friends.

00:24:21 Speaker_00
And when I did it, I didn't even know what those dinners would be or what friend was going out with me, but I was like, my God, could I not once a month challenge myself to go to dinner with a friend and just have a nice evening?

00:24:34 Speaker_00
Once a month, I can do that. But if I'm not intentional about making space for that right now, I'll get to the end of another year and not have lived a life that's the kind of life I want to live.

00:24:47 Speaker_00
So that's actually when I started making sure that living well was a part of my calendar planning. And it began with me putting those spots into my calendar and labeling them yellow.

00:25:04 Speaker_00
I'm going to get back to that in a minute, but I want you to remember the yellow brackets in my calendar were the self-care. You go through your whole calendar, you start making a list.

00:25:14 Speaker_00
Some of the questions that I've gotten in the past when I do this episode are people like, well, how do I know if it was some things like

00:25:22 Speaker_00
sort of feel like they are worth it because I had a good time, but then I definitely wasted a lot of money and it really didn't do anything for my business. So how do I know if it goes into worth it or waste of time?

00:25:36 Speaker_00
The only one who can answer that is you. And the only way you can answer it is by knowing what your values are. So your value for this next year could be that you want to have more fun, that you want to laugh more, that you want to have a good time.

00:25:51 Speaker_00
Maybe you're like, man, the last decade I've worked my butt off or last year was so freaking hard. I really just want to be more creative this year. First, you have to know your values and your values may not align with mine.

00:26:05 Speaker_00
And our individual values can change and should change year over year based on what the priorities are. So if something is worth it, it's about being worth it to you. Like, I do a big holiday party every year.

00:26:20 Speaker_00
And I just had one this last weekend, and it was so fun. And I'm sure that there are many of you who would be like, that is way over the top. That is an unnecessary amount of party for the people who were there. Like, you could have done something.

00:26:34 Speaker_00
So yeah, but that's my value. It's literally one of my favorite things to do is throw a fabulous party for the people I work with, for my friends, for my family, that at the end of the year, we celebrate a really hard year. And I did it. And I loved it.

00:26:51 Speaker_00
And I am positive that many of you would have been like, this is ridiculous. And that's OK, because we don't have the same values.

00:26:57 Speaker_00
I would put my holiday party as a big old yellow, as a 100% self-care, having fun, aligned with my values, whereas you might put that holiday party as a waste of time or money or energy.

00:27:13 Speaker_00
So that's the beauty of this, is knowing who you wanna be, and I hope you know who you wanna be. If you don't, go listen to episode zero of the Start Today podcast.

00:27:24 Speaker_00
Do my guided meditation and visualization and let's figure out who the heck you wanna be. But knowing who you wanna be helps you figure out whether or not you're making the right choices to align with that vision.

00:27:36 Speaker_00
So let's say you've done all of your calendar and you've got your three pages. The first thing I'd like you to do is just kind of sit with what you've written down there.

00:27:46 Speaker_00
I remember very distinctly the first year really sitting with like, holy crap, I've wasted a lot this year. And at first, like I told you guys, I felt really disappointed. But honestly, the more I sat with it, the more I felt empowered.

00:28:04 Speaker_00
Because as much as it is a punch, in the boob to discover that you are the problem, there's also mad power in that. Because if you are the problem, you are also the solution. If you've messed this life up, you're also the only one who could fix it.

00:28:23 Speaker_00
That's amazing. So once I had that switch, like once I could see that perspective, okay, great. Well, now I know when I get to the end of this calendar audit next year, I don't want a page filled with wasted time and energy.

00:28:40 Speaker_00
This was actually an incredible gut check for me the whole next year. Because every time someone would be like, can I pick your brain over coffee? Do you want to invest in this Ponzi scheme? Do you want to do this? Do you want to?

00:28:53 Speaker_00
I was able to slow down and go, wait, wait, wait. Is this a waste of time, money, or energy? Or is this actually going to get me closer to the goals that I have and the values that are instilled in my life?

00:29:05 Speaker_00
It was so much easier to say no to things because you have to remember that a yes to someone else's ask is a no to your agenda. Typically, if you are saying yes to something that someone else is asking you to do, it's a no to your time.

00:29:27 Speaker_00
to the thing you wanted to do, to the book you wanted to write, to the time you wanted to spend with your daughter. So we have to get really crystal clear on what we will say yes and no to.

00:29:37 Speaker_00
And this practice of like looking at all of the waste inside of all of our yeses that should have been nos is a really great catalyst for empowering yourself to say no the next time.

00:29:54 Speaker_00
Now that you've done all that, if this is your first time ever, maybe you only have one or two like I did, but if you've done calendar audits before, I hope that you have a page filled with worth it. Awesome. Incredible use of my time.

00:30:11 Speaker_00
So glad that I did this thing. Here's the brilliant twist. Here's where we bring in some strategy. I want you to look at the things that were worth it, and I want you to now break them apart further using the 80-20 principle.

00:30:31 Speaker_00
I hope you guys are familiar with Pareto's principle. If you're not, look it up. It is fascinating to behold, but it is a very, very old concept.

00:30:45 Speaker_00
that our time, our effort, our production, our energy, our revenue, our resources, all of these things can be summed up with 80-20. That 80% of the results that we get in our life are the consequence of only 20% of our actions.

00:31:08 Speaker_00
80% of their revenue only came from 20% of their customers, or 80% of their revenue only came from 20% of their product. Athletes experienced 80% of their results based on 20% of their actions.

00:31:25 Speaker_00
Again and again, we can find Pareto's principle play out through so many parts of our life. And I guarantee if you look at your life, If you look at the great results that you've gotten, right?

00:31:36 Speaker_00
Let's say you've made strides in your health this year, or you saw an increase in your business, or you got promoted at work, or you're really feeling more connected and more in love with your husband than ever before.

00:31:49 Speaker_00
If you really boil it down, often we find it's not all of the things that we're doing. It's a handful of things that we're doing out of all of the things, but we think

00:32:02 Speaker_00
I'm gonna put in all this effort and all of this effort is going to get me all of these results. But the actual truth is, it's only 20% of the effort you're making that's getting you an 80% return. Why does that matter?

00:32:18 Speaker_00
Because if you really figured out what the 20% is, and you really invested more time, energy, effort into the 20% in this new year, your entire life will be in a new stratosphere by the time you do this again. Think about this.

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Think about, pick any area of your life that's working. What's something in your life that is working really well? And then can you define, out of all the things I'm doing, what are the actual actions that are giving me the best results?

00:33:02 Speaker_00
Once you define that, you're like, OK, well, what if I go all in on that thing? It's so easy to get distracted by the next shiny, bright object. But let's go to entrepreneurs for a second.

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For those of you who could look in right now, you can open your Shopify and look at your products. Or you probably don't even need to open Shopify and look at the products, because you can tell me.

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Say it out loud, right now, wherever you are, what is the one product that sells more than any other in your store? Exactly.

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So if that one product is the thing that sells more than any other in your store, why are you branching off and selling candles when you're a hack company? Now, look, I get it. We want to do what we can to increase our cart value.

00:33:48 Speaker_00
And it's awesome at checkout if you can add some things to the mix. I'm not saying that you don't follow the practices of your industry.

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But I am saying that every single thing you add into your life, your routine, your relationship, your business, every single one, if it's not the 20%, it's a distraction.

00:34:10 Speaker_00
It's not like you can just magically, right, snap your fingers and all of a sudden you have all this stuff. This is a fantastic example. Start today. New journal's coming out. I have worked on this new journal for at least nine months.

00:34:22 Speaker_00
It's taken forever. And it's taken forever because I was so bonkers about wanting it to be exactly right. And to be honest, I already, I'm like, ooh, I think that maybe I want to change. Maybe we change the paperweight.

00:34:36 Speaker_00
Like I'm already, I'm still tweaking over this one single product. And I get excited. I see other stuff and I'm like, oh, oh, I love what they're doing there. And I love that. And I literally, I'm like, oh, I could go, maybe I go to like the gift show.

00:34:51 Speaker_00
And if you know, you know, I'm like, I'll go to the gift show. And maybe there's like some cute things that I feel really passionate about and like beautifully sourced and from the right places.

00:34:58 Speaker_00
And I could bring them into the, and I, but what I know to be true is that every single thing that I do, Every appointment I take, every bit of research I do on my computer, every trip, every single thing I bring into my orbit has a cost.

00:35:20 Speaker_00
And at the very least, that cost is time and attention. And I only have so much of it. At the very least, it's time and attention. Sometimes it's also money too. So if I want something to be great,

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the next book, this episode, the journal, my relationship, the conversation I'm having with my kid. If I want any of that to be great, then I've gotta be lasered in on what can make that great.

00:35:56 Speaker_00
And we don't get greatness in one area by adding a bunch of crap to it. We get greatness by removing things that are not supposed to be there. You've heard me say this, I'm sure, a million times, because I've referenced it so much this year.

00:36:14 Speaker_00
But I love that story about the statue of David, when Michelangelo is carving the statue of David. And if you've ever seen it, it's just, it's absolutely stunning. And the story of the statue of David is so incredible.

00:36:28 Speaker_00
If you don't know this, there's this massive, I shouldn't even say slab, it was like a mountain of marble, like thousands and thousands of pounds. And it's in this churchyard.

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And they bring in an artist to do the statue of David because they were doing famous biblical heroes. And I want to say David was maybe the third one up for grabs. Someone tries it, they're like, this marble sucks. can't do it, keeps sitting there.

00:36:54 Speaker_00
Someone else comes in, they start working on it, chipping away. Many more years go by. I want to say Michelangelo was the third person. Don't hold me to that. But he absolutely was not prepared in any way. He's not the Michelangelo that you know.

00:37:09 Speaker_00
He had not done the Sistine Chapel. He was an up-and-coming artist. And that is the only reason that he got to work on this massively expensive piece of marble, is nobody else wanted to touch it, and it had been rotting away in a churchyard forever.

00:37:25 Speaker_00
And he spends many years and he creates this masterpiece. And if you've ever seen it in person, you actually can't really believe that someone was able to make a subject of stone look so fluid and silky and human-like. It's fascinating.

00:37:44 Speaker_00
And all of that to say that they ask Michelangelo at some point, how on earth did you do this? How did you make David? out of this hunk of marble. And he said, I just removed everything that wasn't David. This is it. This is the key.

00:38:08 Speaker_00
Because if you have an experience like I had, where I look at this page filled with time wasters, You will fight to remove everything that is not your David.

00:38:21 Speaker_00
And if you remove everything that is not your David, what you are left with is a list of things that do feel like they were worth your time and energy.

00:38:30 Speaker_00
And amongst that list, somewhere in there are the one or two or three actions that you did over and over and over that had the most positive outcome in your life.

00:38:41 Speaker_00
And if we can do those two things, if we can remove the distractions and double down on what is working. Y'all, it can change everything. So the last thing that I'm gonna suggest you do is build the new calendar, but build it around the 20%.

00:39:00 Speaker_00
And that could be 20% that gave you more joy. That could be 20% that gave you more revenue. That could be 20% that gave you the best health of your life. But you build the calendar out of the life you want to have.

00:39:15 Speaker_00
Not the yes to other people's agenda, but the calendar you want to have. How do you wanna lay these things out? How do you wanna do this? How do you wanna build your week for success? What does a perfect day look like to you?

00:39:29 Speaker_00
What does a perfect week look like to you? Have you ever mapped that out? Go into a Google Calendar right now, open up an entire week, not just a day, an entire week, and lay out a week.

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With every single moment of your day, from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed, plan it all out. If you want two hours in the morning to write on your book and have your morning routine, put that in there.

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If you want 45 minutes for a workout, get that in. If you want to meet a girlfriend for coffee later, map it in the calendar. If you've got to do work between these hours, that goes in there too.

00:40:05 Speaker_00
Evening time, making dinner for the kids, bath and bedtime and all of it, you practicing some self-care, all of that goes into the calendar. Lay out the perfect week. Do you even know what that looks like to you?

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Because what's funny is when we start to actually map it out, we get a sense of how precious our time is.

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If you want to accomplish XYZ by the end of this week, you have to be really cutthroat with what gets to stay in the calendar and what has to go.

00:40:36 Speaker_00
And then you get to ask yourself a fantastic question, which is, is this aligned with who I want to be in the new year? Or is this the ghost of Christmas past?

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Is this the ghost of someone I used to be, but I am no longer this person and I've got to work to free myself from these commitments and saying yes to things I don't actually want to do? The calendar audit is king.

00:41:04 Speaker_00
It is a hugely important practice in my life for a very long time. And if you've never done one before, I would love to encourage you to try. Maybe it takes you four hours. Maybe it only takes you 30 minutes.

00:41:18 Speaker_00
But at the very least, you end this practice with a better idea of not just where you want to go, but what you need to do to get you there. I hope that this episode was helpful for y'all.

00:41:31 Speaker_00
I hope you got all the things that you needed out of it and that you will use it to do some good stuff in the new year. I'll be back soon with more conversation. But until then, as always, I love you guys, and I'm rooting for you.