Ep 43: Full Focus Planner: A Creative's Guide to Goal Achievement
(featuring Blake Behr)
SUMMARY
Discover how the Full Focus Planner system can transform your creative practice from scattered to structured. Host Dustin Pead and special guest Blake Behr, CEO of Ridgeline Electrical, dive deep into this powerful planning tool that's helping creative professionals actually achieve their annual goals. Perfect for artists, designers, and creative entrepreneurs looking to maintain creative freedom while implementing strategic planning.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
⚡️ The Weekly Preview ritual increases goal achievement by up to 50% - it's not just about planning, but maintaining an emotional connection to your goals.
⚡️ Using physical planning tools creates stronger neural connections than digital alternatives, making goal tracking and achievement more likely.
⚡️ The planner's goal detail sheets help maintain balance across different life areas while keeping long-term objectives visible daily.
⚡️ Future success is created in the present - intentional planning and review sessions are investments in your future self.
NOTABLE QUOTES
💬 "Future you is not created in the future. It's created in the present. You can't invest in future you in the future. It can only be done right now." - Blake Behr
💬 "If you don't do some kind of review preview to your next week, you're 50% less likely to get anything done." - Blake Behr
💬 "I'm probably going to hit between seven and eight of those ten goals this year... if you would have told me at the beginning of the year that I would hit 70-80% of my goals, I'd say you're crazy." - Dustin Pead
EPISODE RESOURCES
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TRANSCRIPT
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Creativity Made Easy podcast. I'm your host, Dustin Pead, creative coach and consultant. I'm so very excited for a very special episode with you today as we close out the month of November about how full focus can change the game. I have a special guest with us today. It's going to be great.
"I just want to fight people, man. I just want to fight people after I hear that song. I just feel like, go, let's do it. Who took my gum? Let's go. Who took my gum? Wait, everyone, hang on. Who took my gum?"
All right, the guy that's here that's so obsessed with who took his gum, my good friend, business partner Blake Bear. You've seen him on the show before. If you watch us on the Culture Based podcast, you've seen him there as well. Blake is the founder and CEO of Ridgeline Electrical Industries and co-founder of The Culture Base, also co-host of the Culture Based podcast with me. Look at us here, different backgrounds, different colors. That's about it.
But today, I asked Blake to join me, because we're going to talk about this thing called the Full Focus planner, which we are great nerds of and we nerd out on it together regularly. I want to get into that because I feel like for a lot of creative people, as I've been having a lot of conversations with creative people, they kind of see me walking around with this little notebook and they hear me say different things that are a part of the Full Focus planner. And they're like, "Oh, what's that about? Well, what do you got going on over there?"
It's super intriguing to them because most creative people are super unorganized and kind of spur of the moment type of people, not great planners historically, right? And so we have an opportunity to really kind of talk about that and there's been a few converts already into the fold.
I just want to say right up front, Michael Hyatt and Full Focus, they have no idea that we're recording this. Hopefully this doesn't get shut down from them. I'm fully expecting to get a thank you card in the mail from them from this, just because like I said, we're not in any way related. We're not certified Full Focus pros, you know, because everybody has their certifications now. None of that. We're just loyal users. And it's kind of changed the game for us, hence the title, how Full Focus can change the game.
A couple of things to remind you of before we get going here. My job here in this podcast and all the content that I'm pushing out is to help creative people know themselves, their process and their team so that they can create greater things together. Would love for you to subscribe on any audio podcast platform you might be listening to this on. Leave a five-star review that really helps. If you're watching on YouTube, thanks so much for watching. We release this content every single Thursday and would really love for you to like, subscribe, ring the bell, super helpful.
If you want to follow along, you can see here on YouTube, my Instagram, Facebook, YouTube handle, all that stuff at DustinPead, P-E-A-D, or you can go to DustinPead.com and sign up for a free consultation where anything that I'm talking about in any of these episodes, even the Full Focus planner, if you're like, "How can I do this?" I would love to chat with you about that.
So today, like I said, we're going to be talking about this Full Focus planner. Full Focus is kind of an idea book business from a guy, a leader named Michael Hyatt. He was the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing. They started Full Focus because they believe everyone deserves to win at work and succeed at life. Their mission is to make it nearly impossible for people not to get the double win.
Now this whole double win terminology from them is kind of new to me. I'm not 100% what's going on there, but do you know anything about this, the double win thing?
"I'm guessing it has to do with intrinsic, extrinsic wins. Like the extrinsic of hitting the goal, the intrinsic of the value that it brings. That's my guess."
Because a lot of their goal setting stuff is very similar. I mean, I dig that. Let's just pretend that's what it means. That's exactly right because that was a lot of syllables.
Blake introduced me into Full Focus probably earlier this year. He's talked about it with me for a while now. But earlier this year, I had my transition out of full-time local church ministry into this coaching and consulting thing. And Blake and I have been working on the Culture Base together and things like that. And I'm always looking to kind of improve my organizational skills and improve my planning.
I'm a huge planner. I love goal setting and goals, honestly, have always been super difficult for me, really easy to come up with. I think everybody can be like, "Oh yeah, I can just come up with goals like crazy," but it's hard to stick with them. You know, if we're lucky, if we get to March and we even remember what the goals were, much less have made any traction on them at all.
That was probably the most intriguing part of this whole thing for me. But Blake, why don't you just share with us how you came to know or discover this whole Full Focus planner and how it entered your world?
"Yeah, so it started from me seven or eight years ago, which the planner hasn't been around that long, but maybe it has, I don't know. But the thing that actually connected me was Michael Hyatt's - I think this is my 10th year doing one of his programs called Five Days to Your Best Year Ever."
"Yeah, which I just started. I'm in day three right now. I'm doing it on five days this week."
"Oh awesome. Very cool. Yeah, I'm loving it. My favorite week. I am actually waiting till next week, which in lifetime is Thanksgiving week. And I always wait for that week to kind of start it up."
"So anyway, it's fantastic. Helped me start my business. It just helps compartmentalize the way you think about things and then goal plan and set that up. I love it."
"Do they still sell that anymore? Yes, Best Year Ever? Okay. Yes, the program you mean? I feel like they took a hiatus at one point. I don't know if the program is there, but I do know as of our recording, we're recording this on Wednesday, November 15th, yesterday, Tuesday, November 14th, he just came out with an updated and revised version of the book."
"Oh cool. But I know somebody who may or may not be also on this podcast sent me the video content for that whole deal and so that's what I'm working through."
"Cool. And then I'm getting sued. Awesome. Real quick, I said may or may not be - you gave your way."
"So anyway, I still I'm still saying it was you. I will say though this is a cool bonus that I just found on Michael Hyatt's podcast which I think is called Lead to Win. Is that right?"
"So what his podcast is called - I don't know. Just look at Michael Hyatt. He's got a couple of different podcasts, but his main podcast that he does with his daughter - Hyatt Miller is her last name. Anyway, they just released this week. They're releasing every day this week on that podcast, him reading a chapter of the updated and revised. So it's basically like a free audiobook."
"For the updated and revised. So what I've been doing is been doing the Best Year Everything during the day for that particular day. And then later in that evening, I've been listening to the chapter on this podcast for his updated and revised version, which I just bought the old book. And then a week later, they were like, 'Hey, we're coming out with a new one.' And I was like, 'Well, now I got them all, I guess.'"
"Yeah. He's a great author. He wrote another book called Platform that I highly suggest that's really about knowing your platform, knowing how to build platform. Really good one. And which we're kind of going off on some tangents here. But at the end of the day, that's what tripped me into this is I started doing a bunch of this. And what I noticed was I just didn't have a good planner. Like, how do you take all of this information? How do you have good reviews? How do you go through this process and not have a place to keep it all?"
"And so I mean, I started creating different like pages that I would print out every day that tried to capture a lot of this. I even went to a printer here in town, a local printer downtown Indy and was like, here's what I'm looking for. And they gave me this hard bound book and it cost a ton to make because I'm making like one to five of them. And we used to do that with the day notes or the day sheets. They were the day sheets from Story Brand."
"Ben Arment. Exactly. So I created a rendition of that with a lot of the Full Focus concepts. And then I was on the phone one day talking to a buddy of mine, Omer. And he was - I was like, 'Man, I am just like, I just finished getting this done. And it's been working great. But there's still some gaps.' And he said, 'Oh, did you hear Hyatt just came out with another one? He just came out with a planner.' And I was like, 'Shut up.' And then it was like right when I was starting my company. So it was like perfect timing for me to get people my stuff where it is."
"I mean, it's so funny the things you remember. But like I remember where I was when I heard that. Like you know what I mean? It's like, do you remember Pearl Harbor? In shop. I remember where I was when I found out that Michael Hyatt came out with a planner."
"I was outside of a storage facility that we were operating some of our logistics through. And so it was so funny. I remember stopping be like 'shut up' and I ran and jumped and ordered it right there."
"But here's my like why - because I know a lot of people who are just like, 'Oh, just do it online. Do everything online. Like it's easier.' I'm a very tangible person. Like I need things in my hand to work through. And I need, and maybe even more than this, I need something that tells me create this mindset and lifestyle. That's what I need."
"And the thing, it's like, I used to have a Fitbit. And when I had my Fitbit, I would run all the time. I was healthy. It was working out a lot. And I was like, man, this is great. Then I was like, oh, I'll get the Apple watch. It does all this stuff and I'll be able to get other stuff. The problem is, is when you look in an Apple watch, you think of not be healthy. You just think of do, like get stuff done, go here. Like it's telling you what to do. When I look at a Fitbit, I think be healthy, right?"
"Same thing with having a planner that is in my hands that when I have it, like even if I ever was to go something more technical or tech driven, it would need to be something that had a mindset lifestyle behind it. Right? Not like a, like, I don't think I could do a like an iPad, I don't think I could do it. Because an iPad is a lot of - I've tried."
"So it's, that's why I love it. I love that it's set up in a quarter by quarter basis, because it excites you about your next one. And you're not carrying a Bible around. I mean, look at this thing. It's hefty as it is for a quarter. But it's just the right amount of hefty."
"The thing is, this thing goes with me everywhere. When I hear people like, 'Oh, I struggle with having a planner because I'm not always at my desk or I'm not always in these places.' And I always just straight up tell them, I go, 'Well, I just carry it everywhere.' Like, they know me, my wife and my planner. Like, it's just there. It's weird."
"And it's like, I haven't gone that far yet. Yeah, I haven't gone that far yet, but I do hear your voice often. I'll see it sitting on my desk or the table. Cause even if I walk upstairs for a little while, I'll take it. I'll take it with me. And I, and then I'm getting ready to leave to go somewhere. And I think, do I need to bring this with me or not? And I always hear Blake go, 'I take it with me everywhere.' And I go, 'All right, fine.' I'll take it. And I take it. And I'm always glad I did because something happens or I need to jot it down in there or something like that. But yeah, I haven't, I haven't gone as far to take it on a date."
"Offline, I would love to hear your strategy for convincing your wife that it's okay for you to take your planner on the date."
"But let's not get on the table. I mean like I'll bring it in the car. It sits with me there kind of thing."
"Okay, okay good. I thought you meant like it's the two of you a couple glasses of wine and Michael Hyatt's Full Focus planner."
"I'm like '73 Merlot, what do you think?'"
"I love that. Well, yes, like I said, Blake introduced me to this earlier this year, going all the way back to, you know, when Blake and I met and we started creating things together, you know, we were using these day sheets from Ben Arment and the Story conference. And he's since kind of sold all that stuff to Harris the Third and he's doing a great job with it. But we've always kind of looked for a system to help us with that."
"I love what you said Blake about, it gives you a mindset perspective. It's not just another tool. It's a mindset. Because that's really how this has changed the game for me. And my initial thoughts were I've been an Asana person for a long, long time and use project management system software of Asana for a really, really long time, ever since I've known Blake, I've probably been on Asana and I still use it. It's still really great."
"But the tangible aspect of having the things written down in front of me is a big deal. I was just listening to a podcast recently where they were talking about journaling and how much you know, we all know like psychologically proven that if you write something down, it sticks in your head more than if you type something out. It's just the way it's just the way our brains work."
"And so using that to our advantage, you know, we use that and we go, okay, well, I'm going to write this down. My initial thoughts on the Full Focus planner, it can be a lot. And we'll talk about that here towards the second half of our episode where it kind of breaks down some things for you every week. It can be a little bit overwhelming."
"And even my wife from afar has since I've started doing this, she's been kind of like, I want to do it seems like it's really helpful. Also seems like a lot. And I'm like, it is it is a commitment. And so I've committed for me a year to going through it. I'm like, I'm gonna buy four of these, I'm gonna do it four times."
"And after honestly, I got not even halfway through the first quarter before I was like, this is it. This is what I've been missing because the biggest takeaway for me - and I want to kind of hear from you too, like what the biggest impact has been for you. But for me, the biggest impact has been I've always had these goals, but never been able to do anything with it. And now I have goals in front of me every single week. And even more so like we'll talk about here in a second. I have them in front of me every single day."
"And so that's really changed the game for me to be - and I might not hit - I have 10 goals this year and he'll tell you not to go past 10 even in the book, there's only a space enough for 10 of them. I have 10 goals this year and some life things have happened. I'm probably going only going to hit between seven and eight of those goals. But if you would have told me at the beginning of the year that I would hit, you know, seven, 70% 80% of my goals for this year, I'd be like, you're crazy. Because by March, I'm not even remember what they are. But it's just been a great, every time someone asked me what do you get out of it? I'm like, I know it sounds cliche, but it's focus. It's focused."
"Yeah, that's good. I think one thing I would say before I kind of jump into that is it doesn't mean you don't put other things around you like Asana or like your Google calendar. I think the mindset is the Full Focus planner is not supplemental to those things, those things are supplemental to the planner. The planner for me is the fuel.
And it is the motivation and it is the connection to staying with your goals. So many people get so far from their goals because they lose connection to their goals. I love the Full Focus planner because weekly I am re-establishing my connection to that goal. And even in like an emotional way, right? Okay, so it is so important to have emotional and intrinsic motivation to hit your goals.
Otherwise, when you get into the rough aspect of your goals, you will just drop them. It's so easy. This is why the majority of people never make it past January or February with their goals is because life sets in and it's not easy and you've got to be able to have something that's deeper than I just want it, you know, you gotta have something deeper.
So for me, the biggest impact this has had on my life has been the ability to take vision to action. And it is just being able as a visionary to have all this stuff in your head. When it stays there, it gets muddy. When it stays there, it feels impossible. Every day that goes by that it stays up in my head, it feels almost more impossible until I give it some tangibility. I don't think that's a word, but I'm gonna say it gives us some tangible aspect to where even putting it down on paper now has given me this feel of, okay, now, I've seen in the past that when I put things down on paper, they become reality.
And so the biggest impact it's had is, I mean, I went from running somebody else's company for them and taking a massive leap out on our own and being a one income household to now having a company with 50 plus people and we're serving a ton of people, there's tons of impact to say that vision turned into something. And it's not like very beginning vision turned into it. It's been this iterative vision or this evolving vision that constantly continues to change.
And I know that it doesn't matter so much because I've got something that's going to be able to help me bring all that together and to continue going back to say, okay, now I'm touching base with this again. And I'm not sure that's part of the goal. Now I think it's evolved. I think it's more emergent to be like this.
And so it's having something that allows me to do that and to go back and to look at things. Like I love books, I love libraries. I'm more of an audio book person, but I love the view of books. Like even in the background, having books up, I just love it. But I'm also the nerd who's been doing this for six, seven years. So I've got a couple of these things laying around to where they only had one version of this.
Now they have like a ton of different ones, right? There was only - and they've continued to evolve themselves and I love that. But I literally have a bookshelf that is just lined with these things. And I love it though, because I can go back and be like, what was Blake thinking four years ago? What was Blake thinking about his company about how we were going to run this aspect?
And there is - there's even parts in the journal or in the planner that have empty sections for you to journal, essentially. And I don't, this isn't my journal, but there are times that I'm like, you know what, I kind of want to give future me a perspective. Like, here's what I'm thinking. And just being able to do that, especially in the weekly aspect where like they have a weekly review section, that's been super helpful to kind of sweep back through."
"Yeah, for sure. I know we talked for a second about the about Asana and or any other project software. I just want to kind of give people an insight real quick because one of the things we're going to talk about here in a second is the weekly preview portion of the planner. And the part of that weekly preview is for you to assess review any task management software that you use. So even the book itself is built to bring all of that other content in.
So I do some consulting with some other organizations. And so I have other Asana workspaces for those organizations. But when I'm doing my weekly preview, I pull up those things. And so I work those things into the Full Focus planner. If there's something that's expected of me or something that I said that I was going to do, I will pull that into my planner on my weekly preview.
Before we jump into the weekly previews and the rhythms and the startups and the shutdowns and all that stuff, do you modify or add anything to the planner? I know there's a whole Facebook community out there for the Full Focus planner, and they will always come up with different mods and different things that they've added and different hacks that they've used for, this is better, do it this way, this is not as great, don't do it that way. And I know I've picked up some of those from them. I picked some of those up from you. Do you have any of those?"
"Absolutely. Everyone's brain works differently. There is no one brain that works the same way. So to think that there's only one way to plan, I think 10 year ago, me would have said, because I had success in it, I would have been like, this is the only way to do it. This is the only way. This is it. And not realizing that like there's - I've never been diagnosed as ADD, but I clearly have those little tips that I'm like, here, here.
And so creating something within that planner that helps grab and grab that stuff quickly and helps moderate some of that jumping around kind of thing is so helpful. And so when you create your own stuff in it, and you don't feel like you have to be some purist in every right, you're going to come out with really neat stuff.
I mean, even like I daily want to have the aspect of putting vision on my planner. So visually here, like in the sides over here on the left-hand side of a day, I always go through, I write vision and I write to do as a high level, like things that I need to capture and grasp. That's not something that is necessarily there on the planner.
I also on the far left hand side number every task and then in the time area, I put the number I don't write out tasks in my time slots, where I've seen a bunch of people write out what the task is they're going to do in that time slot."
"Yeah, it seems like a lot of effort to me."
"That I just - it's just a map key for you at that point. Exactly. You know, they've added a lot of things that early on I was actually doing daily wins and even like keeping check marks for things. And like as far as like progress bars and I was adding that kind of stuff in myself and then they came out with it. I was like, this is glorious.
But one of the bigger ones that I've done probably within the last year and a half to two years is I will add a post-it that jumps from day to day. And that post-it is more like my vision items. So the stuff in the front of the book that talks about like all your goals and stuff, I label those goals, like if you had 10 goals, they're one through 10.
So each of these to-dos then has a number referencing that goal. As you're going through a goal or a year and you have 10 goals, you know that my one goal always is associated with this. My two goals always associated with this. And so the reason I like having this right here is that I don't have to rewrite everything the next day. I just pull it off and go to the next day."
"So that's been one aspect that I don't even know how you would ever create that in an analog version. So it's like, yeah, post-it notes are kind of the only way you can do it."
"Yep. Exactly. So to me, that's been super helpful kind of adding that in."
"Yeah. I've, I've, I took that hack from Blake as well. And so I have my post-it note on every day one through 10, the number associates with the goal, which the goals by the way, are the very first page in the book is a place for your annual goals. And even every quarter you're rewriting these annual goals. One, and you number them one through 10. There's a place in there of like, what quarter am I going to complete or start it? Or when does it do? You can use it however you want really.
But yeah, the sticky note has been probably the biggest hack for me. I also do the, for the most part, we'll just write the number of the task in there. If it's a meeting, I'll write the person's name on that column for the meeting. Just so I know, oh, at two o'clock, I'm with Larissa at one o'clock, I'm with Blake or, you know, that kind of stuff. So that's really helpful.
All right, let's get into before we get too long in this episode, just kind of how to how this how this week and a day looks like in the life of the Full Focus planner. So at the very beginning of your week, which their weeks run Monday through Sunday, Sunday is the last day of the week. Monday is the first day of the week is typically most of us start our work week on Mondays don't start our work week on Sundays for the most part.
And so what they have for you after the Sunday page is they have this thing called the weekly preview. Now on the left side, there is it's really more of a weekly review than it is a preview. Right. The left side is more about like 'Hey, the big three that you said you were gonna accomplish this week, remember last week when you did this thing and you said, I'm gonna accomplish these big, these are the big three things that I'm gonna focus on this week. What percentage of each of those did you get done?'
And so you can kind of start to see like, oh, is my focus shifting from what I told it was gonna be even a week ago, or do I need to refocus that back on? It's what didn't work, what worked and what didn't work, and why and why not? I love those. I love that section. What the question what will what will you continue to do and what will you change? Love that question. Writing writing that down gets you an opportunity to to really kind of commit to that change or commit to the new habit that maybe you've picked up over the last week or two.
After action review is up at the top list three to five of your biggest wins from the week I'm really not great. At the bottom of every daily spread, there's a place for your daily win. I'm really not great at doing that. I need to get better at putting that in there. But at the end of the week, I am really good at looking back over my pages and go, 'Wow, look at all that I accomplished.' And I'll write down the three or fig really big things that I was actually able to get done.
But then when we look on the right side of that, then we're getting into the weekly preview, which we've got a goal review section in there. We've got streak tracker is one of the things. So like some of your goals, maybe habit oriented goals, like I want to, I want to develop this new habit. Like for me, one of my goals this year was to release content weekly, at least one day a week every, every week of the year.
So release weekly content for 52 weeks would be one of was one of my goals this year. And so I'm able to look back and look on this weekly spread every week, I'm able to look back and go, 'Yeah, I did that here, here, here, here, here.' So at least as long as I get one check mark on that list and I've come, then I've hit that goal for that week onto the next week.
Rejuvenation is probably one of my favorite parts of the weekly preview. What are you gonna do intentionally to sleep, eat, move, connect, or relax a little bit better this week is what it says. And then you schedule that out in your daily pages super great. One of my favorite things to do, which we'll talk about Workday Shutdown here in a minute is to do the Peloton. I'll do a Peloton ride, a short Peloton ride at the end of my day for Workday Shutdown.
But then there's weekly overview for your events, your projects, your tasks, any other commitments, and then you end your weekly preview with the weekly big three, which we talked about a minute ago. But Blake, can you just kind of what is weekly big three versus like a daily big three?"
"Yeah, weekly, I mean, weekly big three breaks down your daily big threes, right? Like if you know, we're wanting to get to a certain point on a project, then I could go, 'Hey, we want to be at ready to launch this product by this date.' And so in this week, I want to get to whatever 50% done is let's get 50% to there, then my daily threes are, what is my, like, am I focusing on that every day or does that take like know, a backseat to the reality of that should be a top three.
So if that get to 50% has 12 tasks to it, then I need to put those 12 tasks in my big three, you know, like, so I think that's kind of the difference. The weekly preview though, I'm going to get pretty bold in saying this. Let's go. The weekly preview. If you don't do some kind of review preview to your next week, I think you are 50% less likely to get anything done."
"I totally agree."
"But I think you know how there's so many people who say, hey, if you write down your goal, your X amount percent more likely to have make it happen. I agree that that's real because if you don't write it down, you don't give a darn, right? Like that's it. Okay. That's permission to play. But for those who write it down and like actually put thought to it for their plans, if you review have a weekly review cadence, man, I would almost guarantee a 50% more likeliness that you'll hit your goals."
"Yes, the quarters I've had that were trash were quarters that I didn't do my reviews well. And you start learning about yourself those seasons that cause you the stress and the overwhelm that you're like, man, I just don't have time for that right now. Yeah, okay. But you either need to give yourself grace during those seasons, or you need to suck it up, buttercup and get moving. Like, go do those, those reviews, because they are crucial. And it's an investment into your future, right? Like future you is not created in the future. It's created in the present, okay?
Like you can't invest in future you in the future. It can only be done right now. So if future you is going to be created, it needs to be done intentionally. And that needs to be done once a week of really getting back to your goals and getting back to why you're doing any of this. And you don't have to make, like people make this sound like it needs to be four hours. It doesn't. I really aim for no more than an hour. If it takes more, it's because I want it to. But outside of that, it doesn't need to.
And so my weekly preview, I personally create my, my, I know they do Monday to Friday or to Sunday as their week, my, my week is Sunday to Saturday, because I have a hard rest on Saturdays. I won't do things. So my Sunday startup, it's great, because I don't have my occupational work that I need to be focusing on, I get to focus on vision.
And so starting the week on a Sunday and getting in my start is just the weekly preview. I don't have to put in eight hours to have a good impactful day. I need to put in a little bit of time of planning out the rest of the week. So that's where I'm doing a task sweep of anything that I missed. I can go back through all my notes and did I miss something? Do I have, you know, something coming up that I forgot to put on in an area that I can capture all that, okay, now I'm sweeping back through every page from the last week.
Then I'm also looking at my goals. What goals did I not focus on very well. And now maybe it wasn't a top three. And that's why I didn't get focused on but it gets bumped up if it's important."
"Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah, the weekly preview is is the most powerful part of the Full Focus planner if you asked me. There is things on at the top corner of every daily page, our daily spread, there are these four little check boxes up there that say morning ritual, workday startup ritual, workday shutdown ritual, and evening ritual.
And we could spend probably entire episodes on all four of these, but just real quickly, there's a portion at the beginning of every planner where you can basically draw out your ideal week and you can also write out your ideal kind of morning. I say rhythms than rituals just because rituals to me are less or less flexible and rhythms.
My morning and evening rhythms for the most part change quarterly, they change seasonally, depending on what's going on in my life. And so it's a rhythm for me. So my morning and evening rhythms, you know, I can list out the beginning of each quarter. All right, this is what this is what they're going to look like this quarter. It's normal stupid stuff, like I'm going to get a walk in in the morning, I'm going to pick out my clothes before I go to bed for the next day. Like it's things like that, right.
And then the workday startup and the workday shutdown, not everybody uses these I use one stronger than the other I use the workday startup for much stronger than my workday shutdown. Pretty much my workday shutdown right now was one final check of emails, slack notifications, things like that. And then I'm cleaning off my desk, I do a full clean of like any junk that's left on there so that when I get started the next day, I don't have to worry about that.
And then I'm hopping on the Peloton for 10, 15 minutes. And it's just a way to kind of final clear my head before I have to go back into family mode. I've left work mode, especially if you're listening to this or watching and you don't have a commute, your commute is from one part of the house to the other part of the house. You know what I mean? So like doing some type of a workday shutdown here is good because then you're not entering into family time or family mode in the evenings with all of the stuff kind of kind of left lingering over."
"But I just kind of future you that's why that's it the workday shutdown is serving future you."
"Yes. It lets you see if you're going to cut corners and have a rough morning, or you're going to serve future you and set yourself up for success."
"Yeah, so just overall, Blake, I know we're running long on time here. Is there anything in the morning, morning, evening, workday startup, workday shutdown that has you found particularly helpful in the seasonal life?"
"Honestly, just having the checklist helps the accomplishment aspect. You know how they talk about - Yeah, exactly. Just that that feeling and the dopamine release is so important. But the - I don't remember what Colonel said it that the most important thing you can do every day is make your bed.
And I'm up very, very early, where I don't have that ability to be the one who makes the bed because my wife's still sleeping in the bed. And so like to get up and do that and get that sense of accomplishment, I have to get other ways. And so when I go downstairs to my basement and start my morning routine and start going through my time of prayer and silence, my time of meditation, my workout time and start going through all that flow and go into the day, just that checkoff - it like, it's like putting Febreze on the clean room, right? Like, it just like, feels good.
And I'm not saying that it just me like, it gives you that sense of like, this is great. I've accomplished it. And so having that ability has been helpful. So I think more than anything, it's important to quarterly do it, like to look at your, hey, what does this thing - Yeah, morning ritual look like, because you're right, it does change. And you don't want to be like, well, it's been the way it always has. Man life, life changes. So just having the checks marks is the best part for me."
"Yeah. Well, I want to honor your time and the time that of people that are watching and listening as well. But thank you so much, Blake, for being a part of this today and just nerding out with me for a little bit about the Full Focus plan. I know we nerd out about it all the time. So we just figured, why not let everybody else nerd out with with us on it."
"So both of us go for it. Sorry. Yeah, because we didn't really talk about this. And I think it's important. Go the very beginning of the planner has goal sheets and like those goal sheets when filled out well, that's part of my weekly preview. So good. And like, I will go back to those because you can build out what does done look like you can build out all the items of the tasks that are like, hey, these are the milestone markers to get to this goal. Here's my end date. Is it a spiritual goal? Is it a family goal? Is it a whatever those sheets are probably one of the most valuable parts of this journal when used well, because what you can also see when you fill out those things and check the categorical type of goal it is, you can see where you're unbalanced, right?
Where is the imbalance at that I'm not focusing on areas that are important to me in Word, but maybe not important to me, you know, in action. And so it's a good place to re-associate yourself. So that part is probably one of the most important parts if you're actually trying to hit goals."
"Yeah, totally agree. I'm glad you brought us back to that point. One of my favorite parts of those goal detail sheets in the beginning of the book is celebration portion. Just decide. Go ahead and decide now what you're going to do when you when you hit this goal. The assumptions of nature of that statement and then also to be able to tell yourself like, oh, I'm not only after this because I want to hit this goal. But at the end of it, like one of my goals is like, hey, at the end, when I hit this goal, I'm going to take a getaway trip with Sarah. Like we're going to go get one of those getaway cabins that we really like to stay at. And that's just going to be our reward for this. And so having those types of things are, I just think huge. So good call."
"Way to end the episode strong. Thanks everybody for listening. If you're interested in the Full Focus planner, you can check out again, we're not endorsed. We don't get any kickback on it. So there's no, I'm not going to give you a special link where I get kicked back on it or anything like that. Just go to fullfocus.co. You can click around the store there and you can see all the different types of varieties of the planters they have. Where they used to just have one now they have many. And so yeah, take it, use it. If you have any questions, hit either one of us up. I'm sure we'd love to nerd out with you and talk to you about how to best use that. But until next time, we'll talk to you on Creativity Made Easy."