In this episode of “Be Better Tomorrow,” Jason Fisher delves into the concept of “busy procrastination,” a phenomenon where individuals engage in less important tasks under the guise of being productive, thus avoiding the more impactful actions that could drive them towards their goals. He contrasts this with traditional views of procrastination, highlighting the deceptive nature of busy work that feels productive but doesn’t contribute significantly to goal achievement. Jason discusses strategies to overcome busy procrastination, emphasizing the importance of prioritizing tasks that deliver the most value and utilizing tools like the Eisenhower Quadrant to distinguish between urgent and important tasks. He also touches on psychological aspects, suggesting that avoidance of discomfort and fear of failure often underlie this form of procrastination. By focusing on actions that align with one’s goals and embracing the discomfort of challenging tasks, individuals can better manage their priorities and make meaningful progress in their personal and professional lives.

Check out a previous episodes on time management:5: Randy Fisher – Making The Most of Your Time and Goals

Overcoming Busy Procrastination: A Guide to True Productivity

In the fast-paced world we live in, being “busy” has become a badge of honor. However, not all forms of busyness lead to productivity. The phenomenon of “busy procrastination” encapsulates this paradox, where individuals fill their time with lesser tasks, avoiding the ones that truly matter. This article delves into understanding busy procrastination and provides strategies to combat it, ensuring that your busyness translates into meaningful progress.

Understanding Busy Procrastination

Busy procrastination is the act of filling one’s schedule with tasks that, while seemingly urgent, do not significantly contribute to one’s overarching goals. It’s a form of avoidance where the easier, less impactful tasks are prioritized over the challenging, yet valuable ones. This behavior often stems from a desire to avoid discomfort or fear of failure associated with more significant tasks.

Recognizing the Signs

• Focusing on Minor Tasks: You prioritize small, easy tasks over more significant, impactful ones.
• Feeling Productive, but Not Progressive: Despite a full to-do list, you’re not making progress towards your main goals.
• Avoidance of Challenging Tasks: There’s a tendency to shy away from tasks that are outside your comfort zone.

Strategies to Overcome Busy Procrastination

1. Prioritize Value-Driven Tasks: Identify the tasks that contribute most significantly to your goals. Utilize the 80/20 rule (Pareto Principle) to focus on actions that offer the most value.
2. Embrace Discomfort: Recognize that growth and progress often come from stepping out of your comfort zone. The tasks you avoid are likely the ones that will drive the most significant growth.
3. Use the Eisenhower Quadrant: Categorize your tasks into four quadrants based on urgency and importance. Focus on tasks that are important but not necessarily urgent to ensure that you’re working on your goals.
4. Set Clear Goals and Break Them Down: Define your main objectives and break them down into smaller, manageable tasks. This helps to avoid feeling overwhelmed and ensures that each action contributes to your larger goal.
5. Implement Systems Over Goals: Develop systems and habits that naturally lead to achieving your goals. For example, if writing a book is a goal, establish a daily writing habit.
6. Seek Accountability: Share your goals with someone who can hold you accountable. Regular check-ins can motivate you to focus on the tasks that matter.
7. Reflect and Adjust: Regularly review your tasks and progress. Be honest about what’s working and what’s not, and be willing to adjust your approach.

Conclusion

Busy procrastination is a subtle but pervasive barrier to achieving our goals. By understanding its mechanisms and implementing strategies to focus on what truly matters, we can transform our busyness into a productive force that propels us forward. Remember, true productivity isn’t about how much you do, but about the significance of what you accomplish.

Transcript

If you’re joining us for the first time, I just want to let you know this show is about getting better every day. It’s about how to be better tomorrow than you are today, hence the name, Be Better Tomorrow. I’m not super clever, I’m just really accurate. If you’re the kind of person who’s looking to improve, looking to start something new, looking to make a change in your life, then this show will have something for you. I ask that you listen to a few episodes to get a feel for it. Send me feedback if you want. I’m always open to hear from people about what I’m doing well, what I’m not doing well. You can send an email to me at jason at bebettertomorrow.com.

One listener from the first show did exactly that. I’m going to go ahead and read it to you.

Hey Jason, love the latest Be Better Tomorrow episode on setting new year’s goals. Your story about battling depression and adjusting during COVID hit close to home. I think it did for all of us, but I’m glad it could be of help to you. I’m curious about something you mentioned, finding the right balance between ambitious goals and real life stuff that can slow us down. Any tips for setting goals that are big, but not so big they end up being just another source of stress? Thanks for keeping it real on the podcast, can’t wait to hear your thoughts. Cheers, Bill.

Hey Bill, thanks for writing in. If you’re worried about balancing goals that are too big that they might be stressful with actually making a difference, I’m going to suggest you focus more on the small things and the systems than the goals. James Clear talks about it in his book, Atomic Habits. The winning and losing teams have the same goal in mind. It’s not the goal that makes the difference, although I think they’re important. You have to know where you’re going to make a plan on how to get there, but if you don’t have good systems in place, if you’re not creating habits that will drive towards that goal, you’re probably going to fail.

What I suggest is finding small habits that you can build that will compound over time so that you start to identify as the person you want to be and you start making small changes to drive you to your goal. Let me make that clear.

I’m trying to relaunch my podcast, obviously, that’s what you’re listening to. I can have a goal of releasing X number of podcasts in a year, and I do, and I can have a goal of having so many listeners subscribed, and I do, but having those goals isn’t nearly as important as creating a system that will drive me to be successful. So I have to create a plan for what I’m going to do week by week that’s going to help me create content and it’s going to help me produce and it’s going to help me promote. All of those things in the system I create will drive me towards that goal.

So if you were a coach, you wanted to coach a championship team, yes, you’re going to have a goal, win the championship, go to the Super Bowl, whatever it is, but what’s more important and what drives you there, because a lot of the teams have the same goals, what makes the difference between the losing teams and the winning teams is the systems they put in place in order to succeed. Your recruiting, your practices, how you watch games, how you take care of the physical training of your team, it’s those individual pieces that make up the system that will make the difference between winning or losing. And it’s the habits that you’re going to build and the systems you’re going to create for yourself that’s going to help you reach your goal.

So if you’re worried about making this big goal that’s going to stress you out, don’t. Make a small goal and start changing your identity that way. I don’t know what your goal is, you weren’t specific, so I’ve given a few ideas, but one more that’s pretty common this time of year is getting in shape. If your goal is to get in shape in some way, whether it’s lose weight, build muscle, eat more healthily, then start small with those things. Pick one thing. You’re going to not snack after dinner time, and you’re not a person who snacks. You start to make that change and wait 10 days. Why 10 days? Because my buddy said 10 days is a good number to change. I don’t know if there’s any psychological significance to it, but it’s better, I think, than every week. So do it every 10 days. Hey, 10 days, you go not eating at night? Well then, maybe you’re going to do full intermittent fasting. So now from dinner time until 15 or 16 hours from then, you don’t eat again. Now you’ve started to build this system in place that’s going to help you do things that are more healthy. Now you’re going to go to the gym. You’re going to go to the gym. Pick once a week. Pick a time where it’s going to be convenient for you. Do it on the way home from work if you commute. Do it at your lunch hour if you need a break in the middle of the day, but do it one thing at a time. Maybe you’re just getting out and taking a walk. Maybe you live in a climate where that’s possible. It’s not possible here in Ohio a lot of days. But start making those small commitments, those small habits that will make the change that will eventually get you to the goal you want to get to. That’s a much easier way to accomplish it than trying to set up a huge goal that may feel overwhelming. And even if you do have a large goal, you still have to break it down in incremental steps that will build the system to help you get there.

Bill, thanks so much for your letter. I hope this was helpful. And if not, send another one in. I’ll try to answer it more effectively. All right. So this week I wanted to talk about a concept I’ve been studying that I know I’m impacted by. I know other people who are impacted by it. So hopefully this is something that helps you as well. And it’s busy procrastination. Now this sounds like something different if you’ve never heard the concept before. If you’ve heard it, you probably… If you’ve heard it before, then you know what I’m talking about. Just listen along and have a good time and nod your head because you’re in the know and other people aren’t.

A lot of times we think of procrastination as being lazy, you know, playing video games and you ought to be doing your chores or watching TV instead of tackling the task. A lot of us, however, procrastinate in a different way. We procrastinate by keeping ourselves busy. We’re doing the things that are less important to our overall task and goal, but we can feel more accomplished by working on them. Let me explain. Instead of sitting down and recording this podcast, instead of making plans for scripting and doing the work of the work to help to put out a podcast, I’ve been doing a lot of work on the development side of how I’m going to produce a podcast using Python and OpenAI and playing with AI tools that will help me edit more effectively and things like that. They’re fun, but they’re not the work that’s really going to get me towards my goal. So you’ve probably heard of the Pareto Principle or the 80-20 rule where 80% of your value is derived from 20% of your actions or 20% of the people do 80% of the work. What we end up doing when we busy procrastinate is spending all of our time in that 80% of work that only delivers 20% of value. What we need to do is understand what are the actions that we can take that will deliver the 80% of the value and focus on those things. What are those things that only you can do? What are those things that really drive value from what you’re trying to accomplish?

Maybe you spend a lot of time cleaning your house when your goal is to be more physically fit because you don’t want to go to the gym and you can’t go to the gym until you do the dishes because you don’t want to come home to dirty dishes, right? Not saying dishes shouldn’t be done, but maybe they don’t fit in the area of your goal like you think they do. So leave the dishes for a second or reward yourself with a trip to the gym. Hopefully you consider that a reward. If not, keep going. It’ll eventually feel like a reward.

In the research I’ve done on this, it seems to be that what we’re doing psychologically is trying to avoid discomfort. There’s something about the actions we need to take that make us fear taking them. There’s a great quote, and I’m blanking on who it’s from. I should probably look this up and maybe I’ll put it in the show notes, but that which we fear is what we are truly called to do. That that we fear is what we’re truly called to do. Now I’m not talking about a great, deep, massive calling, but the thing that you’re putting off, the thing that you’re struggling with, the thing you don’t want to do. Maybe it’s because it’s hard, right? Going to the gym if you’re not used to it is hard. Maybe it’s because you don’t want to find out your baby is ugly. That’s what I’m dealing with. I fear failure in my creative endeavors. I’m worried that someone’s going to write in a letter to me that says my podcast sucks. I’m not helpful. Who am I to be talking about these things? I don’t have a degree. Just a coach that’s been doing this for a lot of years. So why would anyone listen to me? That’s the kind of stuff that plays in my head. It makes me not want to press publish and put myself out there, but my motto this year is prolific is better than perfect. I want to put content out. I want to get better at it, and I think we’ll get better by actually doing the work.

You may have heard me talk about Toastmasters. It’s an organization I’ve been a part of for a lot of years. It’s where people come to learn how to be better public speakers, and I have seen so many times people come in, they try once, they’re not great, they get too nervous, and they leave. Most things you don’t get better at by reading about, you don’t get better at by thinking about, or even doing them in your house by yourself. You get better by getting in front of people and performing, and then getting good feedback. That’s the secret to Toastmasters is you’re never going to part. Each time you speak, you are given a particular evaluator who evaluates your performance at your skill level. They compare you to you as much as possible, and they let you know where you can improve, and then you come back and you hit it again, and you hit it again, and you hit it again until you’re improving and you’re getting better. That’s kind of the theme of this show, how we improve and get better.

If you deal with busy procrastination, what are you supposed to do about it? Let’s get back to the topic at hand. There’s a few things you can do. One is evaluate all the work that you’re doing. I use the Eisenhower Quadrant. If you’re not familiar with it, I’ll share it in the show notes. It’s just a quadrant, and on one axis it’s important and unimportant, and on the other axis it’s urgent and not urgent, so that quadrant one isimportant and urgent. Quadrant two is important but not urgent. Three is not important and urgent, and number four is not important and not urgent, so number four you just ignore completely as far as I’m concerned. Number one are things like fire drills, figuratively speaking. Your parents call, you’ve got to answer the phone, maybe your kid has to be dropped off at school. They’re things that are urgent and they’re also important, so you have to get them done. You want to have as few things in that quadrant as possible, and where you want to spend your time is in quadrant two. It’s in those areas that are important but not urgent. That’s where you’re spending your time thinking and developing and planning ahead and getting things done. So I try to eliminate the quadrant one issues, the things that are urgent and important, at least isolate myself away from them for a period of time so that I can concentrate on the things that I find in the quadrant two that are urgent, or sorry, not urgent but important, like writing for the podcast, like sitting down and recording the podcast, like doing all the work on the back end of the website that has to be done for the podcast to work. All these things that are the focus of the effort that I’m pushing toward when it comes to my health. I’m getting to the gym. I go first thing in the morning because I believe, and I think Brian Tracy coined the phrase in swallowing the frog, obviously not literally, but if you swallow a frog first thing in the morning, the rest of your day is great from there. So the first thing I do in the morning, I get up, my daughter and I go to the gym and we lift. Well, I lift and then I get on cardio for 30 minutes and I try to get in shape. But I do that first thing in the morning when I’m not going to be distracted by something.

So listen, check yourself. If you’re not meeting your goals and you feel like you don’t have enough time, busyness is almost like a badge of honor in our culture, but it’s really wasting time in a lot of cases. What are things that you don’t have to do? What are things that you could delegate to kids, to spouses, to a virtual assistant if you’ve got the money? There’s people out there looking for stuff. There’s TaskRabbit and websites that will help you do these things. What can you learn how to automate with AI? I love chat GPT for stuff that I can outsource to. I’ve had it kick off and write documents for me from the beginning so then I can go through and proof it and really tweak it and get it where I need it to be. I’m using it now, like I said, to edit the podcast, to write summaries for me, that sort of thing. Just playing around with it, trying to understand how it can be useful, how it can save me time. I’ll be honest, right now it might be wasting me more time than saving, but eventually I’m hoping to get to the point where I’ve got code written that does a lot of the podcast production work that’s going to save me time in the long run. And then maybe that becomes a business that I can sell to other people, who knows? But if you’re suffering from not enough time to accomplish your goals, try the quadrant. Lay out what you’re doing and where things fit and see if you can eliminate some of those items in four and then do the things in one so they’re out of your way so you can spend all your time in two. Now, what do you do with three? Three are the things that are urgent but not important. So sometimes that’s your boss calling. They don’t really have anything that’s going to make your day better, but you have to take your boss’s call. So it’s that kind of stuff that kind of comes in and it can be a drag, but it’s urgent. It’s something that’s pressing on your time. Again, I try to get rid of as many of those things as possible, but I know it’s not always possible depending on your situation. What about you? What do you do to deal with the busyness of the day? How do we focus in so we can accomplish our goals? I’d love to hear what you have to say. I’d love to hear your stories of success in that. And if you have questions, I’d love to try to direct those as well, like I did with Bill’s questions at the beginning of the episode. Anyway, you can get a hold of me any way you want. Everything’s sourced at BeBetterTomorrow.com. You can find this podcast where all great podcasts are, Spotify, iTunes on the RSS feed if you know how to use it, Stitcher, I don’t know, I keep it published wherever what’s ever accurate. Depending on when you’re listening to this, all those things may be gone. It’s hard to tell because things are changing so fast. But until next time, I hope you’ll find something in this show that will help you be better tomorrow.

Be Better Tomorrow is released under a Creative Commons 3.0 share-alike attribution license, which means you can use this show or clips of it for anything you like as long as you give us credit and you aren’t doing it for commercial purposes. The news that you’re hearing now is by Kevin MacLeod of IncomTech, also released under a Creative Commons share-alike license. All the information about this show and others can be found at BeBetterTomorrow.com. And I hope, as always, you’ll find something to help you be better tomorrow.

The post Busy Procrastination: The Sneaky Distraction appeared first on Be Better Tomorrow.

Welcome to the Be Better Tomorrow podcast with your host, Jason Fisher. This show is all about personal and professional development, and Jason started it years ago with the desire to help people improve. He shares his own journey of learning and teaching, and encourages listeners to be more intentional about life while embracing change. Jason reminds us that starting always sucks, but it’s important to just start and identify ourselves as the person we want to be. He shares his own experience with health and diet changes, and encourages listeners to do the same in whatever area they want to improve. If you’re interested in coaching with Jason, you can email him at jason@bebettertomorrow.com. So join the Be Better Tomorrow community and start your journey towards improvement. Remember, if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. So let’s go far together and be better tomorrow.

If you haven’t done so already check out our previous show:

Achieving Your Goals.

Transcript:Hey everybody, welcome to the Be Better Tomorrow podcast. I’m your host Jason Fisher. This podcast is about personal and professional development. Now what does that mean? That’s a great question. I’m trying to figure that out. So I started this podcast years ago with the desire to help people improve. Making myself the target audience and trying to figure out what exactly I needed to hear, what I needed to study.

Because I’m the kind of person that learns best by learning to teach and then teaching people. Right now, I feel like what I need is to remember that starting always sucks. I’m going to assume that you’re somebody out there who wants to do something new, wants to try something new, wants to improve, wants to change who you are and how you do things in some way, shape, or form. You want to be more intentional about life. You want to do something differently. Great, you’re in the right place. You’re amongst your people.

But here’s the thing, when you start to do those things, you’re going to suck. Whatever it is you’re trying to do, when you first start, unless you’re some sort of weird prodigy, I think Jordan Peterson said it best, he said, when you start something, you’re the fool. The fool always precedes the master. And if you’re not willing to be the fool, you’ll never be the master.

So this podcast and probably the first 10 or 15 of these are probably going to be my foolish podcasts. They’re going to be the ones where I just get started, get back into the rhythm of things. I realized, you know, I used to be the person who talked to myself a lot, a lot, you know, before we all had headphones in our pockets and entertainment at our fingertips. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time by myself because there was just not a lot of kids near me. My block was an older block. My parents were older. And so I spent a lot of time by myself running around, being crazy, making up stories, talking out loud to myself.

I have found that since I have headphones and sit at a computer all the time, I don’t do that anymore. I don’t talk out loud to myself. I don’t even think my inner monologue is going by myself. I’m consuming a lot. And so I just need to get back into the practice of talking, back into the practice of talking to myself or to you, my listeners, about what we want to do.

And what I want to do right now is encourage you, whatever it is you’re starting to do, whether it’s a new creative adventure, whether it’s picking up a new skill at work, whether it is learning how to behave differently than you have in the past, you’re going to fail and you’re going to suck until you don’t. You’ve got to start things before you’re ready to start them because we’ll always sit and think, well, I’m not quite ready yet. I need to learn a little bit more. If only I could do this a few more times, then I’ll be ready. It’s all nonsense. It really is. We won’t start in that case. Now there might be a few people out there that will, but for the most part, our pride and our ego are protecting us from humiliation and it wants to hold us back and it’s doing its job. But its job is not to help us improve. Its job is to protect us from change. It’s the conservative side of the house. Let’s just hold back. Let’s hold on to what we are, be who we are, do what we’re good at, show off. Let’s not embarrass ourselves. Nobody wants to be a fool.

I don’t want to put this podcast out there and have somebody listen to it and go, man, he didn’t say anything worthwhile because maybe I’m not talking to you. Maybe you’re not my audience, but I am talking to a group of people who for a while have wanted to change, have wanted to do something different and just haven’t gotten around to doing it.

So here’s what I’m going to tell you, start, just start, figure out what it is you want to do and learn how to be intentional about it. Whether that’s setting a reminder on your phone, making checklists. I’ve got a great daily checklist that I put together. It’s out on Etsy. You can find it through my website, BeBetterTomorrow.com, where daily you’re just breaking down the tasks that you’re trying to accomplish into the daily steps you need to take and pushing to do those things every day. There are apps like Habitica that I’ve talked about that’ll get you doing those things until they become a habit, but just start, start identifying yourself as the thing you want to be because identity starts to build confidence and changes the way you pursue action.

So right now I’m trying to get my health in order. Now I’m not a big diet guy. I’m fairly skinny by nature, but I started to become skinny fat. Like the snake that just ate a mouse. So skinny everywhere except for my belly. No good definition. And I realized I’d crept up to the most I’d ever weighed. And so I just decided that was it. I was going to change some things. Now, fortunately, this was in the middle of summer. I got a new mountain bike and started going out a lot more often. I was walking three miles every morning. It was easy to do, but I started identifying myself as a person who does these things. I’m a mountain biker. Am I good? No. Am I in shape? Do I feel like I’m going to die every time I climb a hill? Yes. Am I probably getting made fun of? In fact, yes, I had one guy make fun of my bike because I had an old Cannondale. It’s like 15 years old, barely has a front suspension. I mean, this bike is crap. Then I realized there’s actually a thing called down biking, and I could have just told him that’s what I was doing, where you actually ride older, crappier bikes to get better exercise. But that’s beside the point. But I started, and I started identifying myself that way. I’m a person who goes and rides. I’m a person who loves to ride. I’m a person who does this. And I just changed my mindset about it. It wasn’t working out. It was fun. I’m setting times. I’m getting out there by myself. I’m leaving the headphones behind so that my inner monologue can have a chance to stretch. No, unfortunately now it’s in the middle of January, and we just got to have a cold snap of zero digits. Sorry, single digits, not mountain biking right now. I would freeze to death. And so I’ve gotten away from all that other stuff.

But what I’m identifying myself as now is somebody who doesn’t eat garbage. I’m going to eat healthy. That’s who I am. It’s not a diet. It’s not even a lifestyle change. It’s an identity shift that internally, that’s the kind of person I am. So when I turn things down, I’m not saying, well, I can’t do that, whereas there’s some sort of restriction on me. It’s an internal locus of control, meaning I’m taking control of what I do and what I think. And I’m able to say, well, I just don’t do that. I don’t eat that stuff. I’m not the kind of person who does that. Now, I wouldn’t say necessarily I’m not the kind of person who does that, because that puts some sort of guilt on the other person. You’re about to start a fight. But I can say, I just don’t do that. It’s not an option. It’s not a sometimes. I just don’t do it. It’s not what I do. Just like I don’t smoke. That’s never been a temptation for me, like a bag of chips. But I don’t smoke, because that’s not what I do. And it’s going to suck, and you’re going to fail. My daughter had a birthday, and there was cake, and I had some. And then my wife made this great dessert for a date night for us, and I had some. And every day, I’m going to get back up and do it again. I’m going to be intentional until that identity sticks, and that becomes who I am.

So whatever it is you want to do, whatever it is you want to improve, whatever it is you want to do differently, start identifying as that, and start doing it. It’s the only way to get moving. Take that first step. Otherwise, you can’t be upset with the results that you didn’t get with the work that you didn’t do. You can only be upset with your results because you’re doing work to get you exactly where you’re ending up.

So pursuing this Be Better Tomorrow as part of my coaching program, I’ve been studying coaching in various ways, confidence coaching, life coaching, if you will, just trying to learn how to help people be better at what they do. If you’d be interested in having me coach you, I’d be glad to hear from you. You can email me at jason at bebettertomorrow.com. We can do an introductory session, see if this is something that would work to help you out. In the meantime, if you wouldn’t mind, share, subscribe to this podcast, leave me a comment, shoot me a message, do whatever you can do to encourage, and I’ll do my best to encourage you as well, because the only way that we get better is with a group. If you want to go fast, you go alone, but if you want to go far, you go together. And so I’m asking you to help me, I’m seeing what I can do to help you, and if nothing else, I hope you’ll find something in this message that will help you be better tomorrow.

Be Better Tomorrow is released under a Creative Commons 3.0 share-alike attribution license, which means you can use this show or clips of it for anything you like as long as you give us credit and you aren’t doing it for commercial purposes. The music you’re hearing now is by Kevin MacLeod of Incomtech, also released under a Creative Commons share-alike license. All the information about this show and others can be found at BeBetterTomorrow.com, and I hope, as always, you’ll find something to help you be better tomorrow.

The post Embracing Change: Getting Started Sucks, so Just Do It Already appeared first on Be Better Tomorrow.

The Be Better Tomorrow podcast is a relaunched show hosted by Jason Fisher, who took a break due to personal struggles and the effects of the pandemic. Now, he is back with a mission to help listeners be better professionally and personally. In each episode, Jason discusses setting and achieving goals, the power of positive self-talk, and ways to become your future self now. He also offers one-on-one coaching and a digital checklist to help listeners stay on track with their goals. Whether you’re looking for motivation or practical tips, the Be Better Tomorrow podcast has something to help you improve and be better tomorrow.

Outline of the “Be Better Tomorrow” Podcast Episode:

1. Introduction:
   • Relaunch of the podcast after a hiatus.
   • Host’s experience with depression and recovery.
   • Focus on personal and professional improvement
2. New Year’s Resolutions and Goals:
   • Discussion of the fresh start phenomenon.
   • The low success rate of New Year’s resolutions.
   • Importance of setting realistic and detailed goals.
3. Adjusting Goals and Building Identity:
   • The challenge of overambitious goals.
   • Importance of smaller, consistent goals.
   • The role of identity in achieving goals.
   • Strategies for positive self-talk and self-identity improvement.
4. Future Self Concept:
   • Dr. Ben Hardy’s concept of the future self.
   • Making decisions that benefit the future self.
   • The importance of envisioning a larger future.
5. Offers and Resources:
   • Personal coaching services.
   • Digital checklist for goal setting on the website.
6. Conclusion:
   • Encouragement to share the podcast.
   • Licensing and credit information.

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The post Achieving Your Goals: Overcoming Setbacks and Building a Better Identity appeared first on Be Better Tomorrow.

This is the Be Better Tomorrow podcast, hosted by Jason Fisher. After a hiatus due to depression, the podcast is back with a new focus on bite-sized, action-oriented ideas for personal and professional growth. Jason, who has experience coaching others, will cover topics such as communication, artificial intelligence, mindfulness, leadership, emotional intelligence, and personal growth. This is a great resource for those looking to improve their lives and get inspired to make positive changes. The podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts and Jason welcomes feedback and suggestions for future episodes.

Transcript:

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Be Better Tomorrow podcast. I’m your host, Jason Fisher. You know, for the three or four of you that are still subscribed to this podcast and catching this in your podcatcher, great. I’m so thankful that you’re here. I was gone for about two and a half, three years, and I wrote it up on the blog. You can read about it there. But short answer is depression just messed me up, as it did a lot of us coming out of COVID or in COVID. I didn’t even realize it was a problem until I was kind of coming out of it. And then I looked back and went, oh, my gosh, I let so many things go. Just let things get ruined in my life that I never should have. So this is a relaunch of this podcast, something I’ve enjoyed doing, something I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to. It’s going to be a slight change. I’m not going to do as many interview episodes as I’d done previously. I still would love to interview some great people if I find them, but that’s not going to be the crux of what I’m working on. What I will be working on is bite-sized, action-oriented ideas that you can apply to your life so that you can be better tomorrow than you are today. That’s personally and professionally. I’ve coached a lot of people over the years on various aspects of life, not only professionally and personal. I’ve helped many people over the years accomplish their goals professionally and personally. That’s what I want to do with you. Maybe you can’t afford a coach. If you can, give me a call. But if you can’t, this is still a way for you to get inspired to do something different so you can be better tomorrow. Things I have lined up right now are interpersonal communications, which is always a passion of mine. Uses of artificial intelligence to make you more productive, just because that’s a passion project I’m working on right now. Concepts around mindfulness and well-being, developing your leadership skills, emotional intelligence, and personal growth. Just anything I love and am passionate about. Trying to bring that information to you, my listeners, so that you can get something useful out of this podcast. That is what we’ll be looking at. If that sounds interesting to you, subscribe to this podcast or stay subscribed if you already are. If you have any insight, things you’d love to hear about, you can reach me at Jason at BeBetterTomorrow.com. Otherwise, this podcast is available everywhere great podcasts are found. Please go ahead and subscribe. Let us know what you’re thinking. Let us know how we’re doing.

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Every year millions of people set new year goals. This show is about just that. How do you set goals that will succeed. How do you set realistic goals? You do it SMART.

What are SMART Goals?

Goals that are:SpecificMeasurableAttainableRealisticTimebound

Want some other tips and ideas to make your goal successful?Check out this article from ways-to-set-goals-that-actually-make-you-succeed.html">CNBC.

Here is our last New Year show

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Selective attention means our brains can only take in so much data and we tend to ignore things we won’t find important at the moment.

Attention.jpg?resize=566%2C377&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-836" width="566" height="377">Your brain may not always be paying attention to the right thing.

This is why you can hear your name in a crowded room. It is why you start to see the car you just bought everywhere you go.

The question is can you train your brain to pay attention to what you want to pay attention to?

The meinhof-phenomenon.htm">Baader-Meinhof phenomenon occurs when the thing you’ve just noticed, experienced, or been told about suddenly crops up constantly. Like when you hear a new word for the first time, or when you see your new car everywhere.

This also happens when you learn something new and then see it as a solution to every problem. Your brain wants to apply new solutions to every problem.

Your thoughts become actions, your actions habits, your habits become character, and your character becomes destiny.

You can change your destiny by changing your thoughts and words which change your actions.

Your brain will always have selective attention, but you can use it to your advantage if you are aware of it and willing to put in some work.

Looking for more ways to understand how to control how your brain works to use it to your advantage?

Check out these shows:How to have better conversationsPower of perspective with Rachel DK Finney

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For those of us who have spent the last nine months working from home, I think we are starting to find disadvantages all over. If we don’t act intentionally to fix these things we can continue to suffer without really thinking about it.

photo-4066041.jpeg?resize=200%2C300&ssl=1" alt="photo of woman lying on bed working from home" class="wp-image-824">Photo by Elijah O’Donnell on Pexels.com

Missing “Me Time”

One of the strangest things I found in my research for this show was an article saying people are missing their daily commutes. People aren’t really missing being stuck in traffic but they are missing that buffer between work and personal lives. They are missing the “Me Time” they had in their car on the train.You can continue this process by adding some downtime to your routine. Don’t book yourself from meeting to meeting to home but put time on your calendar to unwind and think about your day.

Chit-chat and hallway conversations

A big item I have found it hard to replicate is the social interaction of a pre-lockdown world. As an extravert, I really miss just talking to people. For whatever reason, our lizard brains want to get right to work on zoom calls and when we are done we get right off.

We don’t just run into co-workers in the hallway or on the way to get coffee unless we work with our roommates. We can help this a little by not jumping right into business when we get on the line. Ask simple personal questions, ask about what we should be watching during lockdown whatever you can think of to get the conversation rolling.

Zoom Fatigue

I mentioned this in my previous show about working from home. Sitting on Zoom calls every day can be draining. Zoom fatigue is a real thing.

People feel like they have to be there on time so they don’t take enough time for themselves with back to back meetings. Schedule your meetings for 25 or 50 minutes so you and everyone else have time between meetings for bio breaks, which should include some desk yoga to keep you healthy.

Get outside while you can and take a walk, even if it is cold, the cold air will invigorate you and make you appreciate you office when you get back.

Less than ideal environments

Many of us are working on kitchen chairs, at kitchen tables or in converted closets. These environments aren’t the best for our health. Take some of that money you have been saving from your commute bill and spend it on some upgraded equipment. Get a standing desk, or a monitor stand, ergonomic keyboard and mouse or a great chair so you can be comfortable. The only person who will be disapointed is your chiropractor.

What are the things you miss about going to work?

How are you dealing with it? Tell me in the comments.

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edited-1024x682.jpg?resize=1024%2C682&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-814">Rachel DK Finney – the Power of Perspective

URL: columbushumane.org

FB: /ColumbusHumane

Instagram: /ColumbusHumane

Linkedin:

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/rachel-d-k-finney-cawa-b43b9023/

The Power of Perspective

This month we talk The Power of Perspective with Rachel D.K. Finney. Rachel is a Certified Animal Welfare Administrator with 17 years of experience in animal sheltering and 21 years of experience in nonprofit management.  Finney has degrees in nonprofit management, psychology, political science, and sociology from Indiana University. 

She began working in animal welfare as the Executive Director of the Union County Humane Society in Marysville, OH and serves as the CEO at Columbus Humane, formerly the Capital Area Humane Society in Columbus, Ohio.   Before her animal welfare career began, Finney served in leadership roles at Junior Achievement of Central Ohio and with the Children’s Organ Transplant Association. 

In 2015, Finney was recognized as Small Nonprofit CEO of the Year by Columbus CEO magazine and in 2013, she was recognized as one of the youngest ever “Forty Under 40” award winners. Finney is a regular guest lecturer for nonprofit management, human resources and veterinary students at The Ohio State University and frequently delivers motivational and leadership keynotes and workshops on “The Power of Perspective.” 

Rachel describes herself as an “Advantage-ist,” or one who finds the advantages in difficult experiences.  She operates under the philosophy that we should “never be afraid to do the right thing.” She shares her home with her husband, 2 children, 3 dogs, 1 cat and 1 fish.

Columbus Humane is the lead law enforcement agency for investigation of animal cruelty, abuse and neglect in Franklin County and operates a traditional animal shelter serving 8,000 pets+ as well as partners with a domestic violence shelter to house and care for pets on-site with their human family members.  

In this show we talk a lot about the power of perspective to change your attitude and life. If we only focus on the negative aspects of trauma, which is valid, we can miss out on a great deal of growth and appreciation.

Checkout our last show with Positive Foundry if you missed it. You will love it.

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Laura Cooke and Chris Cooke

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PositiveFoundryURL: http://www.positivefoundry.com/ FB: https://www.facebook.com/PositiveFoundry/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/positivefoundry/

This month’s guests are an amazing team working hard to help people flourish with the power of positive psychology.

In their own words:Our paths are unique but our journey is the same. We believe in a better, healthier, and more engaged society. When we improve the overall wellbeing of each employee, we help organizations thrive and create a better world.

We have spent thousands of hours bringing together the best research behind human motivation, positive psychology, neuroscience, and energy management into a program for individuals and organizations who are ready to thrive.

We believe companies that flourish, in today’s marketplace create value not just in financial terms, but in human terms.  They enhance the lives of their employees and their families, their customers, their owners, the communities within which they operate, and the world at large.

Some of our conversation topics:

The difference between a scarcity and abundance mindset:

A scarcity mindset is the belief that there will never be enough, resulting in feelings of fear, stress, and anxiety.

On the other hand, an abundance mindset flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth and security. It’s grounded in the belief that there is more than enough for everyone.

The Observation bias where we see the things we want to see or that we are trained to see in our own world.

One of my favorite topics active constructive responding which I first learned from Positive Foundry. It relates back to how to listen more effectively and how to engage in a conversation and not just steal it for yourself.

We talked about the loneliness epidemic in America and how it is increased with the lock downs that are in place. We even came up with a quick game to help us all feel less alone #hallwaytag.

And for all Ohio Teachers, they have offered a mindfulness program just for you…https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/OHTeachers2020

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Shannon Lee is the author of Servant Leader Mindset, creator of the SLAPcast podcast, coach and trainer and serves as the Executive Director of Relā. Her career includes roles in education, sales, marketing and leadership development. She brought all those skills and experiences to Relā in 2014, helping the organization relaunch into what it is today. Relā is a nonprofit helping professionals reduce frustration and increase fulfillment through the application of servant leadership mindsets. Through transformational workshops, coaching, intensive development programs and events, Relā helps professionals overcome barriers to fulfillment at work and beyond.

Shannon resides in Columbus, OH with her husband,  Kristofer and together they have three children: Jaren (24), Kaylee (22) and Nia (21). You can find her on all the socials here:

Twitter: @shanlee337URL: www.relaleadership.orgLinked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannonmlee/Facebook: RelaLeadershipInsta: @relaleadership

Leadership is constantly changing and Shannon litterally wrote the book on Servant Leadership.

• In our conversation, we talked about the Curse of Knowledge we have discussed previously on this show
• Micromanagement and why it isn’t always what you think it is and how to avoid it
• How COVID-19 is impacting businesses

If you enjoyed this show you will also like

Jason Blackhurst – Servant Leadership

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