(upbeat music) - All right, thanks Shane. All right, how are we doing here? How many total questions we're gonna try to do today? - We have two more questions, two or three more questions depending on what you're feeling. - All right, well, let's do one more and then we might check in with our sponsors and do another.

- Okay, so the next question is from, it's about lifestyle planning and there's some struggles to stay disciplined. So we'll hear what it says. - Hi Cal, this is Ina and besides being a homemaker, I learn languages autonomously and I have my own language school. My question has to do with rituals and motivation.

I have done life-centric career planning as you recommend and truly believe that at least for the current season of my life, I have chosen adequate goals towards the future I desire. Nevertheless, I find that some days I really do struggle to stay disciplined and to show up in the morning and get to work.

Thinking back on advice you've given on this podcast, there are at least two ways I can approach this. One is to automate the process with a specific when, what, where and how so that I can let the power of habit take control and the other is to seek a variety of awe-inspiring places to keep my brain interested and to jog my memory about why this work is important in the first place.

Which of these options would you suggest for someone who still has to periodically drag herself to her desk? - That's a good question, Ina. So I think there's a few things that are relevant here and you hit on some of them. So my answer is gonna overlap pretty strongly with what you were just saying.

Automation is key and automation can mean multiple different things in this context. So as you hinted, automation could just mean this is when, where and how I do this work. So I don't even have to think about it, I get back from the gym and then we have a desk put aside for bills.

And that is when I do it, right after the gym on Wednesdays and that's when I do the bills. And you know what? I always collect the bills from the mail and put them in a two process sorter on that desk so I know where they are. And you know what?

I have stamps there and the envelopes there so it's real easy to do. There is an actual boost you get from organization where you say I built out a system for this. It's kind of fun to execute a system and see everything was here and it works really well and then you're more likely to actually do the work.

So you have that type of automation. The other type of automation is literally automating it. You're not gonna have someone else do this. Especially when it comes to work, household admin work. I think Laura Vanderkam has a good book about this, "162 Hours" and she's a big advocate for this of to the extent that you can afford it, this is where you should be putting a lot of your money is towards automating stuff in the house, getting household admin off of your plate.

You have someone who does laundry, someone who does your yard work, the handyman who comes once a month and you have this list that grows and he just takes it and does those things around the house. And her point, which I think is a good one, is that is a super high return investment in money.

And what happens instead is people often say, well, I technically could do these things so I'd rather spend that money on, you know, something more fleeting or superficial. And it's actually what it got a lot more return in your life just to take those things off your plate. So literal automation, I think, is a priority to the extent that you could do it.

The second thing to do here is reduction. So just taking things off your plate. Sometimes when you're not able to get started on things it's because you're overloaded, there's too much, your mind is exhausted, it knows it's not sustainable. So I'm not gonna do this, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna help on that committee.

This is a bridge too far with like my exercise routine, whatever it is, reduction. So when your load is reasonable, it's easier to execute because you're playing with your wiring here. Your brain is very good at the things important, let's set a plan, let's execute that plan, let's feel really good because we got the plan done.

If you overload that part of your brain, it short circuits and you lose all of that evolutionarily optimized inducements to actually do the daily work that's important. We are wired to do daily stuff that's important for the survival of us and our families, right? So let's take advantage of those mechanisms, but you can't take advantage of those mechanisms if there's 75 things on your list.

And then clarity would be my final suggestion and that is something you touched on before. Here's my vision, lifestyle-centric career planning, where we wanna be in five years, where we wanna be in 10 years, where we wanna be later this year. This is how everything fits in, these type of more mundane chores, we've really automated and structured and there's these other things I'm doing that's really fulfilling and we're saving up to do this.

You have this vision that this is all a part of that, you mentioned that as being important, you are right that that is important. You are building towards a vision that you believe in and think is important. You're working backwards from that positive goal, it's very important to keep things moving.

So if you have kids, for example, there's a couple natural milestones to think about. There's a sort of young kid period, which is sort of a survival mode. There's a steady state period where you have grammar school aged kids and what you want life to be like there, time with them, the role of work, where you live, really thinking through what that experience is like, you have a really clear vision for, okay, when does the last kid leave the house?

These are the changes that are happening then, I think it's a great time to have a more substantial change to your lifestyle. So you have these very clear visions that you're working backwards from, that you're working towards with your day-to-day efforts. And that, again, you're very right to point that out.

So automate, reduce, clarify. Do those three things, that's what's needed to keep making progress in a disciplined fashion on the stuff that's annoying, but has to get done. That's how you avoid just being paralyzed by exhaustion and indecision and lack of motivation. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)