815. Simplifying Success: Quick Habits for Lasting Change

All right. 3, 2, 1. Let's get it. Welcome to another episode of what's your problem. The podcast where we explore solutions to three universal problems. Adversity uncertainty and complacency and those solutions we embody on every episode, all start with the letter C communication, curiosity, creativity, continuous learning, and action and productive confrontation. So, if you find yourself that you're in this rut things aren't really happening for you, chances are you're not doing one more. Are all of the five CS you're not communicating. W with yourself and also with others, you're not curious. You're, you're living in statement and no longer asking questions. You're not creative. You're bitching about the resources that you lack instead of becoming resourceful, using what you already have. You've stopped learning. You think you're a know it all instead of a know at all. And then you're not confronting. You're not only things the bullshit with yourself, but you're not confronting others as well. I'm so happy that you're back here with me. My. My name is Marsh Buice If you have not met me before, it is very nice to meet you. And today, man, we're going to talk about. Quickly habits. And it came from my random reading this morning. Of chip and Dan Heath book. Switch. What I do every morning is, I just stare at the shelf and say, Hey, what is it I want to read today? I set my timer for 15 minutes. I find a chapter that most resonates with me and I pull that out and I read that one chapter. You don't have to power through this one book. And just thug it all the way through. Uh, because what happens sometimes, man, you just kind of run out of steam, then you force yourself to finish, but you don't remember that second half that you even read anyway. So why not just pick one chapter, read that one chapter that jumps out at you from the table of contents. And then here's, what's powerful because it's bite-size 15 minutes or so. Then when the timer goes off, literally I set my timer when the timer goes off. Then I whip out my legal pad, which is the result of what I have today. And I write about. What that chapter meant to me. And it's important that you just don't right. Word for words, you may have to put some of that stuff that really stands out at you. You want to write that word for word, but what does it mean to you? See when it means something to you and you can unpack that thought this is why writing is so much more important than typing typing. You're going to, self sensor. Writing. You're going long form. That means you have to pick up the pen. You have to think about it. You have to go back to the book and stare at it and you got to go back and forth, back and forth. Well, what happens is, is you unpack. Those thoughts so then what I do is I set my timer for 20 minutes. And I write quote unquote, one page. The one page is the psychological trick that I have for myself. I say, Hey man, if you're not feeling it today, just fill up one page. It's all you gotta do. And very few times, is it ever one page fortunately, today, man, it's only. It's only two pages today. Sometimes, man, I just get to rolling on the thing, but this one's a short and sweet. Episode about developing some habits, man, we, we just make things. Super complex. We do. And I'm going to chapter 10 is what I read in chip. And Dan, Heath's book "Switch," how to change things when things are hard, boy, that subtitle really speaks to it all. And it really got me to thinking man. We really make things super, super difficult because of the complexity. We make things way too complex. We live in this fictitious land of this is where the resourceful versus resources. This is where the creativity comes in the place, because the creativity we lose that creativity because we bitch and say, well, I don't have five hours before work. I got to get the kids up. I work two jobs. You don't understand, you know, we get into this narrative like that. And instead of just being creative and saying how much time can I budget for. That will align with my higher future self it's. It's really that simple. Life is simple. It's not easy, but it's simple. And so the simplicity of it all, which is what I bang the drum about all the time. There's a process, a three to five step process. I work a six step process. And the reason why it's six steps is because I have a podcast. So I have that sixth. Thing in there, but I would tell you work three to five. That way it's on one hand, it's easy to rail out. It's important that you don't have 15 processes because you're going to get overwhelmed. The wheels are going to come wobbling off, and then you're going to revert back to your old self. So chip and Dan Heath, write how do you create a habit? That supports. The change that you're trying to make. How do you create a habit that supports. The change that you're trying to make. There's two things. It's only two things. That's why I say. We make things way too complex. So, how do you, how do you create a habit? That supports the change that you're trying to make. Number one. The habit needs to advance the mission. Number two. The habit needs to be easy to embrace. That's it. The habit needs to advance the mission. Making steps making progress. And the habit needs to be easy to embrace. So, this is where you got to ask yourself, which parts of the chaos. To my day can I tame? And the way that you tame this thing. Is by working. a process, they call it a checklist, which we'll get to here in just a second. But you got to understand man habits. are behavioral autopilot. And the habits that you create are either intentional or unintentional. The point. Of the what's your problem podcast is to build in intentional habits and get away from these unintentional. Tendencies. It's where you sleep. Walk the habits, your wake. You're intentional. The. Tendencies, because that's how I like to look at them. Habits are productive. Tendencies are destructive. So I like to look at them. That way. And so when we go into this sleepwalk and mode, Is when we've just fallen into these tendencies and we just doing things without thinking, and we're procrastinating. Same. We're going to start. Monday, we're going to start the first of the month. We're going to start at the first of the quarter. We're going to start when this happens. It's all this, if then bullshit. And we just never start at all. So if you just. Look at habits where number one, it advances the mission. What's my mission. I want to get in better shape. I want to feel better about myself. I want to make more money. And if you'd get in better shape, you're going to make more money. Studies show that. But anyway, that's a whole nother episode. And the second thing is. It needs to be easy enough for me to embrace challenging. But easy to embrace. If it's too hard, man, you're just going to fucking quit the thing anyway. Back to the book. The way to. Advance the mission. And make it easy to embrace. And create good habits. Just a few. That advance the mission. And it's easy to embrace. I don't have to give it a whole lot of thought. Is to work, a process, they call it a checklist. I jumped for joy when I turned a few pages over and they say the way to do this. Is you create a checklist? I'm like, hallelujah. That's what I bang the drum about all the time, because working a three to five step process, it's going to keep you awake. It's going to prevent you from negotiating with yourself. Cause let me tell you something. When you get into negotiation, should I should not. You're going to lose every time. Because your comfort. And complacency. And past. It's going to fuck you up and it's going to win every single time. So put a three to five step process in there. Prevents the negotiations. I just go to the next thing. It also reduces overconfidence. And eliminates blind spot. Boom. The habits should reduce. Friction to your day, the friction that you have in the days, because you're given too much cognitive load, too much thought to what you got to do. And you're spending these resources that could be applied to something else because you're trying to figure out what you're going to eat. You're trying to figure out what you're gonna wear. What time do you get up? Can I go to the gym? How can I work this right now? I mean, you get into all this stuff, man. I'm laughing because we all do this. And we, we just, we just we're. So this is why you're mentally drained. And this is why you're physically drained. It's not really. No shade, man. It's not that you're doing too much. It's that you're not efficient. And what the fuck it is that you're doing. I'm not that disciplined dude. I just work a process. It looks like I'm disciplined. But really I'm not, I just work a process. All I gotta do is check the box. The beautiful thing about a process. It eliminates the dread and provides direction. The dread is, oh God, a right. Oh, uh, you know, I got to save more... Oh, I gotta get, I gotta start working out. I mean, all of this. All this stuff, man. The things that we dread. Versus the process. These little micro steps that I do every single day. That bring me in alignment with my future self. It just gives me direction. And they're so small. That I just go to the next thing. And the process. Advances the mission. It brings me in alignment. And it's easy enough to embrace. Beautiful thing is I check the box. I don't have to negotiate win the decision check the box, go to the next thing. Boom, boom, boom. Now let's game-ify this a little bit. You put in a five step process, you give yourself a point, whatever it is, if you want to do two points. Whatever, if you want to. Put them all differently. If you want to wake up at a set time, that's one point. If you want to work out, that gives you three points. I don't care how you do it. Let's but for simplicity, sakes cause I can't add, add like that in my head. Let's just give them all one point. So if you have a five-step process and each one is a point, that means you get five points at the end of the day. If you check all the boxes by the end of the week, tally it with me now. Is 35 points. So what if you gamified this. And you put it in there. And at the end of the week, you tally it up. And you get a 35. Boom. Got it. That's what's going to keep you consistent. And that's what, when you, when you get into this, should I should not. You just say, oh man, I got, I got to hit these 35 points and maybe throw a bonus thing in there. Double workout for the day or something like that. That gives you three extra points, whatever. And see how much you can bonus whatever. Get creative with this stuff, man. Have fun. You don't have to dread through your day. And just knuckle dragon. No. Process gives you some direction, make it fun for yourself. And rock out and then what's going to happen is people are going to see your process. See that you're not all skinned and frizzed out. And say, bro. How are you doing this? And then you can teach it to others. That's why I lay the tracks. On the what's your problem podcast. Is because I want you to take what I, what has worked for me. And I want you to work it for yourself. And cultivate that, where it works for you and you share it with other people too, man. Life is simple. It's not always easy, but we can make it simple by working to process. The process focuses on next, instead of all. It's the all's man that suck us down. We've got. I do owe this to lose all this weight. No. All I got to do is next five steps today, this is why I say lay the brick. Just lay the brick at one brick. You lay that one brick down win the decision. Then lay the next brick as perfectly as possible. That's all you got to do when the decision go to the next decision. I laugh, man, because it took me 50 years to fucking figure this out. And I hope it takes you 20 minutes. To hear what I'm saying. And applied as soon as we get off, man, don't go to the next podcast. I don't jump into the next book. Don't. Just go about your day. You better write down just three to five steps. Here's what my process is. I'll wake up at, a set time. I read 15 minutes of random reading. Do I read books cover to cover? Yes. That's later in the day, my primers to the day. Is 15 minutes of reading. I write one page. Sometimes it's what I just read about and I interpret it. Other times I go to my voice memo app and I listened to other recorded thoughts that I had throughout the day. Ideas, aha, moments, conversations, some other passage that I read from some other book, found it on X, Twitter, whatever the hell you want to call it. And I record that. I capture those thoughts and the emotions, and then unpack those when I have time in the morning. So I said 20, 30 minutes aside to write one page. Oftentimes it's more. Then I go work out. As soon as I lock this mic up, man. I'm going to go bust a sweat. My fifth step on my process is to share everybody's an expert at something, man. Let me tell you something. And what's really good about this is, is when you can share you're coaching other people, you don't have to be at a certain point. To start coaching other people. What has worked for you share that everybody's an expert at something, some of your experts at mechanics. Is that a word at being mechanics? Some of you are expert at parenting, some of your experts at five minute meal preps, whatever. Some of you are great. look great. See you on Instagram and you're built. And you get the most done in the efficient manner and working out fucking share that, man, what works for you? Everybody wants something a little more simple, and that's what we all need to do is bring some simplicity here. And then the last one is I design. I designed my day. I know exactly what I'm going to wear today. I know exactly what I'm going to eat today. And also. Affirm. The direction that I'm going. That's it. That's my six steps. And oftentimes I'm done. Before I even. Even go to work. Nine o'clock I'm done. And then I, you know, I I've already won the day. Doesn't matter how it doesn't matter which direction the day goes. And no matter what pops up, I've already won the day, because everything that it did. Brings me in alignment with my future self. When you put a process in man it's, it's like creating a budget. It's a success budget for yourself. Just a few things. Done every single day repeatedly. Are gonna bring me success. As simple as that, dude, you could just not buy another book. You could not attend another seminar. You could not get advice from anybody else on social media. What are a few steps that. I can do every day repeatedly that advances the mission. It's easy enough to embrace. All I got to do is when the decision go to the next thing, check the box, tally the scores up at the end of the week. And boom, if I do that, At every single day. I'm not. W wired and worn out. I know exactly what I'm getting up and doing every day. It advances the mission. And Jesus, am I going to be proud of who I'm going to be? Cause you kept commitments to yourself. You got some adversity that's going to pop up. But the beautiful thing is, when. The adversity or the uncertainty comes about. or complacency tries to sit in. You say, Nope, I got to get to this next box. I got to get to box number three today. You get to box number three up. Sorry. I know you want to lay up just box number four. It's just right there. It's just right there. I just let me get the box for, and you can lose up. So you start playing these fucking mind games. But Lisa and get to that. And he's like, oh, I'm only one. I'm only one away from winning the day. Ah, might. As well, just get that out of the way. Boom. Got the box. Bro. That's all you got to do that, is it stop? The tape. But I have a little bit more. All right, we're going to three to five step process. Number one. It's going to keep you from sleepwalking. You fall asleep. In life, man. Man you fall into. These tendencies is like a monoxide gas. You don't smell it. But it, boy it'll make you pass out and then you fat broke. Out of shape. And alone. I don't want that for you. Number two. Three to five step process puts your fucking process in man. It's going to eliminate the negotiations with yourself. You do not want to get into negotiations where you, so dude, even when you get to your ideal weight, Are your ideal bank account. Keep the process, keep the process, which brings me to my third point. It reduces working a three to five step process every day. Hell. Or high water. Living high are run over. In life three to five step process reduces overconfidence is just so key. You start getting some success. You think that you've arrived? You're overconfident. You stop working the process. And now you're all of the sudden, see you skip a day. It's no big deal. But see once isnt a moment it's a mindset. You can fuck yourself up to work in a process every single day, sticking to that. It reduces the overconfident. I got this. I don't mean only that. No. Do you, let me tell you something. When I was playing college ball. Football. The first thing we did every single day as an. Offensive lineman. I was 2 85. Back then. The first thing I did as an offensive lineman is our coach would check our stance. He wanted to make sure that our footwork was there, that we were in position. Because if you're not in position, if your feet aren't set correctly, You're already beat, no matter how strong you are, you're beat. And so the biggest thing, the thing that he coached on coach Freeman talked about all the time. Was, or your feet. In position. To be able to. Beat the defender. That's what you have to look at this. This is what a process does. It's your foot work to your day and puts you in position. To win your life back. And the last thing. Beautiful thing. About a process. It reduces the blind spots. Because you just work in a checklist. That's all. I just checked the box and reduces the. Blind spots, the blind spots come in. When you break away from your process and you think you have it all down, pat. Because you're overconfident, but here's the other thing. Sometimes you have zero confidence. And so you lack confidence. And that's what creates the blind spots because what do you do when you lack confidence? You get desperate and you're swinging for the fences, but when you work a process, Process, regardless of what the circumstances that you're facing right now, we're. Regardless of what the results are right now. You get mowed over in life. Stay to the process. Three to five Steps every single day do copy mine, man. I'm telling you, I, it was worked for me. And that. Has saved my life. And I'm telling you. You and I are going to bro hug one day and you'd be like, bro, I was listened to you back then. And damn it. Look at you now. Mark my words. Mark my words. It's coming. I don't have to worry about it when it's going to happen. Six steps. I do. Wake up at it said time. Read 15 minutes every day. write Workout share my expertise. And design my day. Boom done. Success. So when we get off this. I don't need to say it, but I'm going to say it anyway. What are your three to five steps that you're going to put in right now? The minute you turn this off. Three to five steps and I will tell you another thing, go to Canva. It's free. And create a little art work get fancy with it. And put those. Three. The five steps that process put your process down. But it created a little cute little box. And staple it pin it to your social media page, wherever you hang out, pin it there. So that way, not only do you have to look at it, but others have to look at it too. And they say, Hey. Is it, is he doing that? I'm gonna do it too. I'm going to pin it my my six step process. I'm a pin it to my profile. And it's going to be there. That way, if you see me out of line, you're like, Ooh, But he ain't working as process. All right. So when you create that for your social media, I want you to tag me in it. So that way, man, I can give you. Props. You getting after it. You let me tell you something. These episodes I do. they're not for you. You. they're for me, these are what keep me accountable. These are what keeps me in alignment. These are the things that keep me from negotiating with myself. And let the wheels spin off and letting the adversity and uncertainty creeping and the complacency lay up. Nope. Not doing it. Not today, Satan. Not for you either. All right, let's get out of here. Keep it simple. Keep it moving. Never settle. State. Tough. Thanks for sharing this episode with someone who needs it peace