focus

Initial Photos and Thoughts From My First Live Event

Yesterday we hosted our very first Live workshop for The Focus Course!

We had 32 people here in Kansas City and I led them all through the Focus Course. It was so much fun! And I am so tired!

I’ll be writing quite a bit more about the event in the weeks to come, but I wanted to share a few initial thoughts from my perspective.

For starters, the whole event went just about perfectly! (Thank you Isaac and Joanna!!)

This was our first live event of this scale and polish. It was the content of the Focus Course combined with a live presentation of my whole ethos behind Delight is in the Details. A lot of group training events like this are rich in content but poor in delightful little details. I wanted to do things a bit differently, and seeing it all come together it was clearly worth the effort.

And speaking of the content…

It was so incredible for me to work in person with people and witness as the dots connected and light bulbs went off for them as we all went through The Focus Course. It was amazing to watch people “get it”… From getting their life vision figured out, to finally understanding how habits and scheduling can help them live a better life. Or getting a breakthrough in goal setting, or understating the value of margin. All throughout the day people were getting these little moments of revelation, and it was an honor to be a part of that process and to see it happen in person.

This morning I woke up, and I wrote this in my journal:

“If it is true that health in one area of your life brings about greater health in the other areas… and if it is true that when we align our values with our calendar we can reach our greatest potential with the most joy in the process… and if it is true that we have a finite amount of mental energy within any given day and we need help to keep our life on track…. if those things are true, then therein lies the power of a focused life. Because a focused life enables those things.”

This event was life changing. Can’t wait for the next one!

Initial Photos and Thoughts From My First Live Event

On the Necessity of Rest and Relaxation

Greg McKeown, from his book, Essentialism:

If you believe being overly busy and overextended is evidence of productivity, then you probably believe that creating space to explore, think, and reflect should be kept to a minimum. Yet these very activities are the antidote to the nonessential busyness that infects so many of us. Rather than trivial diversions, they are critical to distinguishing what is actually a trivial diversion from what is truly essential.

On the Necessity of Rest and Relaxation

A Review of the Clear Habit Journal

Clear Habit Journal

A few days ago I received my pre-ordered copy of the new Clear Habit Journal.

This notebook is a collaboration between some good friends of mine: Joey and Adam at Baron Fig and James Clear.

I have used a Baron Fig notebook just about every single day for the past five years — it’s a central tool in my Hybrid Productivity Method.

So needless to say, I was wildly excited to check out this new notebook. I may or may not have completely geeked out last Saturday when my copy arrived.

The design of this new notebook is absolutely fantastic! I love the feel, the colors, the type, the layout, the gold foil stamp on the front. Everything about this notebook just screams quality and attention to detail.

What I also love about the Habit Journal is how simple it is. For me, as a hard and fast notebook user, the Clear Habit Journal is exactly the right mix of useful templates with open, blank pages.

In the front of the Journal is an “Index” spread followed by a “daily log” section where you write down one line per day.

The Index is where you build your own table of contents as you go, writing down any important sections and the page number(s) they’re on. I do this in all my journals, so it’s great to have it pre-templated already.

The One Line Per Day section is absolutely brilliant. You choose your own writing prompt, and then have one line to answer that prompt each day. There are 31 lines per page, and 12 pages. So you get a section of your journal that has an easy-to-read summary of your entire year.

Clear Habit Journal

Your daily prompt can be whatever you want it to be. For January my prompt is “Highlight of the Day”. But you could do anything. Such as your Most Important Task, or Something You’re Grateful For, or Something You Learned, etc.

In the back of the Journal are two more sections. A “Habit Tracker” and a “Toolkit” section.

The Habit Tracker is nice and simple. You simply write down the habit / routine that you are workin on and then you check the box that corresponds with the day of the month.

Having clarity about your goals for the year is critical. And then tracking your progress on your goals is what turns them into reality.

As I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, there are two new routines I’m focusing on this year: more time reading and learning and more time writing and editing. So I have my normal routines that I already track, which include my workouts and personal prayer times, and now I also am tracking time spent reading, writing, and editing.

Clear Habit Journal

Then there is the Toolkit section which has some ideas and instructions for how to use the 167 dot-grid pages that comprise the bulk of the journal.

James wrote out several suggestions for how to make better decisions, how to think more clearly, how to prioritize things, how to be productive, how to log your workouts and/or your diet, etc.

One of the pages is on how to make smarter decisions by writing out your prediction, the decision, and then reviewing it again at a later date. That is a brand-new approach for me and look forward to implementing it.

There are other helpful little details as well. Every page is numbered, there is a pocket in the very back cover, there are two bookmark ribbons, and the Habit Tracking pages are perforated so you can remove them if you want.

All in all, the Clear Habit Journal is a great mix of helpful templates and then blank space. It’s useful and adaptable. And it fits exactly how I do and want to use a notebook. I really love this notebook.

But… (and this is a very big but)

There is one — ahem — large problem: The size of notebook itself.

My singular frustration is that the Journal comes in only one size: the normal-sized, “Flagship” Baron Fig.

I have used many of this sized notebooks over the years. And so I know from my years of experience that this sized Baron Fig will last me about 6-9 months at most. However, the way that the Clear Habit Journal is set up, you would ideally use it for a full year because it has 12 months worth of daily prompts in the front and 12 months worth of habit tracking in the back.

In early 2017 I began using the new “jumbo” size Baron Fig and I absolutely love it. Not only do I love the largest pages because they give more room to write and draw and just spread out my ideas. The bigger size pages also make it so that a Jumbo notebook lasts me more than a full year.

I decided to throw my gripe out the window, and began using the Clear Habit Journal for a few days. But I just couldn’t do it. I kept thinking about how once August got here I’d be out of the dot-grid pages and would have to start a new notebook, and my year’s worth of one-line prompts and habit tracking would have to either be migrated or split up.

But then, also, the smaller pages just felt too crowded. I really missed the extra real estate to let my writing and ideas breath and spread out.

So, alas, I ended up switching back to my Jumbo size notebook. But I brought with me some of the ideas and design elements from the Clear Habit Journal (thanks, James!) and I am incorporating those elements into my own notebook to improve the way I use the jumbo Baron Fig.

Basically what I’m doing is combining the daily prompts and the habit tracker into a single spread that looks like this:

Bullet Journal Daily Habit Tracking

Thanks to the larger size of the Jumbo Baron Fig, I have space to fit the “one line per day” prompt and also track up to 5 or 6 daily habits… all in one spot. I reserved 12 pages toward the front of my Jumbo Baron Fig notebook to accommodate a page like this for each of the 12 months of the year.

Clear Habit Journal

One huge advantage of a notebook like the Clear Habit Journal is that a lot of the template design work is done for you. This can save a lot of time and mental energy. (I, for instance, spent about 90 minutes last night manually creating the new index page, monthly habit tracking page, and hand writing in the page numbers for my Jumbo notebook.)

I am sad that I won’t be using the Clear Habit Journal, because it is such an excellent product. But at the end of the day the size turned out to be a deal breaker for me.

But I am probably more the exception here. I know that there are many people who prefer Baron Fig’s traditionally-sized flagship notebooks. And then I heartily recommend the Clear Habit Journal. It’s fantastic. And if they ever make this notebook in the Jumbo size then I’ll be the first in line to get one.

If you want to order a notebook from the folks at Baron Fig, use this link.

A Review of the Clear Habit Journal

Regret vs Celebration

You’re probably very aware of just how challenging it is to try and keep up with multiple areas of your life all at the same time. Between your relationships, health, finances, work, hobbies, and personal time … how do you get it all done?

The truth is you can’t. Or at least, you can’t get it all done at the same time.

I love how David Allen says that you can do anything you want but you can’t do everything you want. And that is an extremely liberating mindset.

It is all too easy to feel regret over not having gotten everything done during a certain timeframe. (Such as at the end of a calendar year.)

But depending on what it is you’re feeling regret over, perhaps you should turn that regret into celebration instead.

Now, if someone had taken a significant amount of their time and squandered it on something that didn’t even matter to them, then, well, yes, I would regret that as well. That is a regret in having neglected to do something awesome by do something lesser-than instead.

But perhaps you’ve had to compromise something good so that you could do something great. Perhaps you didn’t get your book idea written last year because your free time was spent focusing on your family or your health…

You probably had several great things you wanted to do, but had to pick just a few of them. If so, then consider thinking of it from a place of celebration.

Instead of feeling regret over what you didn’t do, celebrate what you did do.

Regret vs Celebration

Save the Date: January 23  →

So, this is some pretty exciting news from Blanc Media HQ…

In January we are putting on our first-ever LIVE event.

As in… an actual event-event. Right here in Kansas City.

The kind of event where you show up, get a fancy name badge, and have a chair to sit in.

The kind of event where I cater the best BBQ you’ve ever had (no hyperbole; just check out Q39 on Yelp).

The kind of event where you can meet me, my team, and about 40 other awesome folks.

But most importantly, this is the kind of event where you are guaranteed to walk away with fresh focus regarding your time and energy.

This is the kind of event that will help get more intentional about how you pursue the things that are meaningful to you even in the face of so many other urgent issues.

This is the kind of event where you re-align, set goals, and get clarity for how to accomplish them.

The Focus Course LIVE is for you if…

  • You could use some margin and some breathing room in your life.

  • You said “yes” to a few too many opportunities this past year and you want to get better at setting boundaries and saying “no” (in a nice way, of course).

  • You have a big life transition ahead of you and you need clarity and a chance to reflect.
  • You want to ensure that your work doesn’t drown out your personal life and other areas of responsibility and interest.

The Focus Course is my flagship productivity and goal-setting training. We’ve had thousands of people go through the online version of the course over the past 3.5 years. Now we are doing an in-person workshop, led by yours truly.

It’s going to be fantastic! I really would love it if you could join us!

Here’s the link to check it out and learn more:

thefocuscourse.com/live

Save the Date: January 23

How and when do I carve out time to read distraction free?

September and October have been good to us readers this year. I have a pile of brand-new books that I can’t wait to dive into.

Yesterday I tweeted about how if you’re also diving into a new book (or 5) then you might be interested in how to build your own, alternate index of notes and ideas. Having your own index is, to me, a game-changing strategy for reading and studying any non-fiction book. (See also: My approach to learning and taking action.)

In response to my above tweet, I was asked how and when I’m able to carve out time to read.

Well, the way to make time for reading is the same way you make time for anything else. You pick a time (schedule it) and then you show up.

  • I wake up an hour before my kids in order to make time for my workout and to read.
  • After the kids go to bed and I have tidied up the house, I try to read for at least 15 minutes before doing anything like watching a show or working on other projects.
  • Before going to bed I read for 20 – 30 minutes. This is usually fiction (if I read non-fiction business or finance books, then my brain gets going and I can’t wind down for sleep).
  • Saturday and Sunday afternoons we (usually) have quiet time during my youngest son’s nap. While my older two are doing their quiet activity, I will usually read for a bit.

To be candid, I don’t read nearly as much as I’d like to. And I have two things I want to adjust in my daily rhythm to make more time for reading and studying. One of them is to switch to audio books rather than podcasts when I’m driving in the car. The other is to make more space for reading at the start of my work day and in the afternoon. I’d like to at least double the amount of time I spend reading each day.

However… right now I am focused primarily on a new workout routine (which is something I hope to write about soon), and I have about three more weeks to go before I feel that my new workout habits will begin to settle in and become easier to follow through with.

I try to only focus on one big area of change in my life at a time. And since I’m focusing on my health right now, I’m not worried about changing my reading habits just yet. I will wait until I’ve hit a stride with my new workout routine and thus can give my energy to focus on building a new reading routine.

How and when do I carve out time to read distraction free?

How to Make Sense of Things When You Feel Overwhelmed

Have you ever looked up the dictionary definition of “overwhelm”? It’s pretty intense, actually.

  • bury or drown beneath a huge mass
  • defeat completely
  • give too much of a thing to someone

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, then perhaps you feel as though you have been given too much. In fact, you’ve been given so much that you’re to the point of feeling buried and drown beneath a huge mass of stuff — from urgent issues, undone tasks, incoming requests of your time and energy, and more. And as a result you feel overpowered and defeated.

When you’re overwhelmed with too many priorities, it can feel impossible to find the time you need to get everything done.

Even worse is when everything is important.

How can you possibly put aside 99% of your responsibilities for a few hours in order to focus on just one thing?

I don’t know about you, but I used to feel guilty at neglecting all the other important things I wasn’t doing, when I would try to focus on at least one thing that was important.

It’s nonsensical that you can work on everything all at the same time. But who says we humans are rational, sensical people?

How to Make Sense of Things When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed

Do this. Make a note or a list or just mentally take inventory of the following:

  • What urgent issues do you have right now?
  • What areas of responsibility are you managing?
  • What projects are you working on?
  • What things do you feel that you should be doing but you’re not?

Now, take that list and put each item into the proper box from this matrix:

  • Box 1: Things you enjoy that ONLY YOU can do
  • Box 2: Things you enjoy that ANYBODY could do
  • Box 3: Things you dislike that ANYBODY could do
  • Box 4: Things you dislike that ONLY YOU can do

Now, looking at those boxes, how does it make you feel?

For reference, here’s what my matrix looks like (for the sake of brevity I focused only on high-level areas of responsibility and the tasks that fall under those domains):

Looking back at your own matrix, consider this:

  • The items in boxes 1 and 4 are things which you must choose to take personal ownership of and prioritize into your life.

  • What things are in Box 2? It’s awesome that these are things which you love, but make sure they’re not keeping you from the things in Box 1.

  • What things are in Box 3? These need to go! Delegate them to someone else. Get assistance, learn how to automate the process of that work, ask your boss if you can be relieved of those duties, etc.

Looking again at my matrix above, let me share a few insights.

You’ll see that I put writing and project management in Box 2. The truth is, my job within my company as a writer, designer, and project manager is totally replaceable. Even though those activities are critical to what we do, I could train someone else to do that work.

But what’s NOT replaceable within the company is my leadership as the owner. My taste, values, and vision for the work we do are unique.

Therefore, if the work I’m doing in Box 2 begins to interfere with my responsibilities in Box 1, then guess what? Time to make a change.

I love looking at the things in my life that ONLY I can do, and nobody else can do for me.

  • Only I can be a husband to my wife.
  • Only I can be a father to my kids.
  • Only I can take care of my health by eating well and staying active.
  • Only I can lead my business in the direction I want it to go.
  • Only I can take responsibility of my personal development through reading, learning, and living a focused life.

It’s liberating to know exactly what I’m in charge of.

When you’re feeling buried under a mass of so much stuff, it can feel as if you’re responsible for everything in the whole world.

But it can be liberating when you step back and get clarity about the things that ONLY YOU can do.

How to use this to design your ideal schedule:

Get instant access to our deep-dive training on this framework, along with how we use it to develop your ideal schedule. Included free inside the Focus Accelerator.

How to Make Sense of Things When You Feel Overwhelmed

Giving Up Control at Work

Earlier this year I became aware that, in my business, though I was focused on things that were important, I was too focused on things that were not essential for ME to be doing.

It’s not that I was working too many hours. I am pretty focused with my work time. The issue is that I was taking on too much control; I wasn’t delegating or trusting enough.

As a result, it was eroding the mental and emotional margin in my work life. It was also holding back the creativity of my own team because I wasn’t giving them as much autonomy as they deserved.

In his his awesome book, Essentialism, Greg McKeown writes:

Many capable people are kept from getting to the next level of contribution because they can’t let go of the belief that everything is important.

I think I was pretty good at knowing what was and was not important. But, as I said, I was doing things that I should have delegated instead.

And so, about 4 months ago I began intentionally focusing on ways to let go of things in my life and business that are are non-essential so I can more diligently focus on what is most important for me.

My process for focus was an odd one, and it’s something that I felt embarrassed to talk about in public.

But what I did was this: I cut my work week in half. I limited my working hours to only 20 per week — roughly 4 hours per day.

By giving myself half the normal amount of time to get my work done, I was forced to do the things that only I could do. Everything else had to be delegated or else eliminated.

The results so far from this focused time have been great. I’m experiencing a calmer work life with less stress and anxiety. I’ve spent more time with my family and in personal development. I’ve delegated more to my team, and as a result we’re even seeing an increase in our creative output and business profits.

Giving Up Control at Work

My Number One Productivity Tip

“What’s your number one productivity tip, Shawn?”

I get asked this question all the time. And I have a somewhat bizarre answer. When people first hear it they give me a weird look. And then as I explain it, everything clicks.

The tip is this:

Tonight, before you go to bed, set out your clothes for tomorrow.

See? I can already tell that you’re thinking to yourself: What? Shawn has lost it.

Here’s why this matters:

  1. You’re helping your future self.
  2. You’re setting an easy goal that you can win at (which helps you to win when you set harder goals).
  3. You’re learning how to plan ahead and keep your word to yourself.

Who would have thought there would be SO MANY NUANCES to something as dorky as setting out tomorrow’s underwear?

This idea of helping my future self and following through on my own commitments is something I use all over my life. Not least of which is my weekly review.

(If you’ve been through our best-selling productivity course then you are already familiar with how and why I do my daily and weekly planning. So I won’t go into all the details here.)

A Brief Overview of What My Weekly Review Looks Like

On Sunday afternoons, I sit down for about an hour to review my past week and to plan for my upcoming week. The two apps I use for this are Things and Day One.

The times of my life when I am most productive and relaxed can pretty much be exactly correlated with the times of my life I have maintained this habit.

By taking time to review the past week and plan the next one, it helps me spend my entire week better. And not just with work-related stuff — it helps immensely with personal and family life as well.

What I do is I review the past week’s wins and losses, and make notes of all the highlights and lowlights of the week. As I mentioned, I do this for my work and my personal life. I look through my Baron Fig notebook and also my Things Logbook to glance briefly at all the tasks and goals I accomplished (or didn’t). I also jot down any events or memories or parenting fails.

This retrospective takes a total of about 15 or 20 minutes.

Then I take just a few minutes to review what big goals I’m focused on right now (which are always crystal clear, thanks to our focused, 8-week work cycles). This helps me stay on track with what is most important and to ensure I’m focused on the next steps I need to take.

With that done, I then take another 15 or 20 minutes to plan my upcoming week. I write down the week’s 3 Most Important Goals, along with any other miscellany that I want to see happen. (Again, I go into all of this is a LOT of nerdy detail in All the Things.)

Why A Weekly Review?

It’s not easy to coach yourself. Part of moving from Unconscious Incompetence to (un)conscious competence requires feedback loops. Having a coach or mentor can help with this, but so too can it help to keep short accounts with yourself to track and monitor your progress.

In short, this habit helps me stay creative, productive, and focused.

Just like setting out tomorrow’s socks, the weekly review and planning time is a way for me to help my future self. With my plan in place it means that for the whole rest of the week all I have left to do is follow through with the plan. And that makes things so much easier!

As my friend, James Clear, says, highly focused people limit their options. If you commit to nothing, you’ll be distracted by everything.
Moreover, with the weekly retrospective, I am capturing the “smaller” moments in life — things that don’t really seem like a big deal right now, but often times are a big deal in aggregate especially when looking back.

This is critical to skill development, personal development, and more.

If you’re interested in getting a more detailed look at how I use Day One, as well as my full checklist of all the weekly (and monthly) review questions I work through, check out our brand new course: Day One in Depth.

My Number One Productivity Tip

Thoughts After One Year of Focused, 8-Week Work Cycles

At the beginning of 2017, my company started experimenting with an 8-week work cycle.

The cycle looks like this:

(You can read all about the what and why in this detailed article here if you want.)

We are just now wrapping up our first work cycle of 2018. Today — Friday, March 2nd — is the last day of our Sabbatical week, and this coming Monday we will kick off next Focused Work Cycle.

After more than a year of doing this — we’ve done 7 or 8 of them now — I wanted to share a few brief thoughts on the the advantages I’ve found in having a focused, six-week work cycle project followed by time to review and prepare, and then time to rest.

Working in Monk Mode is Awesome

For our 6-week, Focused Work Cycles I usually have just one main project that I am focusing on. Last cycle it was All the Things. And that’s why we were able to go from idea to launched in just 5 weeks.

Having one primary project to focus on allows me to go heads down and work for hours a day without distraction. I call this “Monk Mode”.

When you’re in Monk Mode then all sorts of things become inspiration and ideas for the work. You can keep the whole project in “RAM” in your brain and that makes it much easier to connect ideas.

The result is that projects get done faster and the overall end-result is of a higher caliber.

Not to mention the fact that it means the work is just more fun. Most days I am “finding flow” and seeing regular, tangible progress. The value of this fruit alone cannot be overemphasized.

You Probably Don’t Need as Much Time as You Think You Need

I’ve tried working a 4×10 schedule (where you do 10 hours per day, 4 days a week and then take a 3-day weekend). And while I loved the 3-day weekend, I found that I was less productive overall. Those additional 2 hours per day were usually not very productive for me because I was tired.

I have found that it is much easier to compress 8 weeks worth of work into 6 or 7 weeks than it is to compress 5 days of work into 4 days.

We still work a normal 40-hour work week. But by being focused and intentional with our work (see below), we are simply not wasting time. We are working with intention in order to be done on time.

When I first learned about these types of focused work cycles from Jason Fried, he said that work will take as long as you give it. If you give a project six months then it will take six months; give it six weeks and it will take six weeks.

Resting and Recovering Should Not Be Optional

It used to be that I took time off when I had the time. But I never had the time. There was always more work to be done.

Now, we schedule in our break week to make it mandatory time off. And thus I am actually able to let my mind and emotions recover from the work. Recovery time is critical for sustaining high performance (and even improving performance) without burning out or injuring yourself.

Focus Only on Wildly Important

When you’ve got just 6 weeks to work on something, you are somewhat forced to pick something that will have the highest impact and the lowest effort.

And then, when other ideas come around in the middle of a work cycle, you simply don’t have time to give in to them. And this is liberating. I know of so many places where there is no limit to the amount of active projects a team can have. (I have one good friend who currently is managing 25 active client projects for his company.)

By setting boundaries around what we are currently focusing on and working on, we are able to say no to new ideas while we are currently in the midst of active projects.

As my friend, James Clear, says, highly focused people (and companies) limit their options.

Highly focused people do not leave their options open. They make choices. If you commit to nothing, you’ll be distracted by everything.

The great irony of this is that by limiting your options and remaining focused until you master a skill, you actually expand your options in the long run. Life-changing optionality is a byproduct of providing great value, which can only be achieved through focus.

You can read more about the what and why behind our 8-week work cycles here. And you can also read my notes from the Basecamp workshop I went to where a lot of these ideas came from.

Thoughts After One Year of Focused, 8-Week Work Cycles

The Difference Between a Goal and a Project

The former you want to do; the latter you have to do.

Goals move your life in the direction you want. Projects keep things afloat today.

Don’t automate or delegate your goals. Treasure them. Enjoy them. Accomplish them at all costs.

Projects….? Well, go for it however possible. Delegate. Get them done quickly. Move on. Don’t let them linger and stink up the place and get in your way.

The Difference Between a Goal and a Project

The Full Focus Planner  →

Speaking of notebooks, if you like the idea of using an analog notebook but you do not like the idea of filling in all the details on your own, you should definitely check out Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner.

In my office I’ve got one each of the Freedom Journal, Mastery Journal, Best Self Journal, Passion Planner, and a Cultivate What Matters planner.

Of all of these, I think the the Full Focus Planner is the best one. Though I don’t use it personally — I prefer the blank pages of my Baron Fig — the Full Focus planner emphasizes the things that matter most for managing your day and doing the things that matter. I basically follow a very similar structure in my own notebook, but I fill it in myself.

The Full Focus Planner

Matt Ragland’s Minimalist Bullet Journal for Productivity

A few weeks ago my friend, Matt Ragland, posted this video showcasing how he uses his notebook for planning out his day, week, and month.

There are two things I like about this video. For one, Matt’s journal is not a picturesque scrapbook. While I love the gorgeous lettering and sketches that so many people do with their notebooks, for me, I need something more basic and pragmatic.

Secondly, and most importantly, I found many really interesting ideas in here. Particularly, I love how Matt maps out his week with 10 time blocks of 4 hours each (see below and at the 08:29 mark in the video). These time blocks help him gauge if he is spending too much time in one are (such as meetings) and not enough time in another area (such as reading).

Matt Ragland Minimalist Bullet Journal for Productivity

If you’ve never taken a week to track how you are spending your time, you should try it. If you dare.
* * *

Anyway, speaking of notebooks, it’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the Baron Fig Confidant notebook. I’ve been using one to plan my day for almost four years now, and I have some thoughts on the analog planning approach that I want to share about, particularly as it relates to the seeming tediousness of it.

In the next few weeks you can expect me to dive in to the nerdy details of how I use my notebook to take action and keep moving forward.

Matt Ragland’s Minimalist Bullet Journal for Productivity

The Law of Diminishing Intent

This is a principle that Jim Rohn taught. It goes like this:

The longer you wait to take action, the less likely you are to take action.

Meaning, when you get clarity about something because of a lightbulb moment when in the shower, or you get advice from someone that just makes sense, that’s when you have the most energy to take action.

Thus, whatever it is, you should take action as quickly as possible. Immediately if possible. Why? Because, over time, your intention and motivation for taking action will diminish.

Michael Hyatt, whom I first learned this from, says to “never leave the scene of clarity without taking action.”

For the sake of taking action, the best thing you can do is act now. If, for some reason, you cannot act now, make a note to yourself about what you need to do and then follow your own advice as soon as possible.

Many folks, for whatever reason, are prone to waiting. Why? What purpose does it serve to sit on it?

Often we delay because of fear or doubt. In his book, The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan Holiday writes:

Life can be frustrating. Oftentimes we know wha our problems are. We may even know what to do about them. But we fear that taking action is too risky, that we don’t have the experience or that it’s not how we pictured it or because it’s too expensive, because it’s too soon, because we think something better might come along, because it might now work.

And you know what happens as a result? Nothing. We do nothing.

Choosing not to move forward has the same result as being stuck, unable to move forward at all.

Holiday continues to say that courage, at its most basic level, is really just taking action.

Once you are clear on what needs to be done, there is no advantage in procrastination. Take action and move on.

The Law of Diminishing Intent