Latest / The Action Catalyst / REMASTERED: Living Forward with a Life Plan, with Michael Hyatt (Planning, Productivity, Motivation, Vision)

Transcript

REMASTERED: Living Forward with a Life Plan, with Michael Hyatt (Planning, Productivity, Motivation, Vision) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:00
  Host: Michael Hyatt is the guest on today's show. And He is the
• 0:18
  former CEO of Thomas Nelson publishing. So Michael, welcome
• 0:37
  to the show.
• 0:41
  Michael Hyatt: Hey, thanks. Great to be on with you.
• 0:43
  Host: So tell me like, what exactly is this concept of life plan?
• 0:47
  Michael Hyatt: Yeah. So a life plan is basically a brief
• 0:50
  written document, you know, not one of those big documents that
• 0:53
  some of us prepare to the corporate world, that, you know,
• 0:56
  we took three days or four days in an off site retreat, to
• 1:00
  create and then we put it on the shelf and never looked at it
• 1:02
  again, you know, this is a very brief document, eight to 15
• 1:05
  pages. It covers every aspect of your life. And we talk about
• 1:09
  where you want to be in all the major areas of your life. And
• 1:12
  it's a document that you'll tweak and adjust as you go
• 1:15
  through the seasons of your life. But the basic design is to
• 1:18
  get the 30,000 foot view of your life, so that you don't end up
• 1:23
  at a destination you didn't choose. And people do that all
• 1:25
  the time. You know, they end up getting through their midlife
• 1:29
  and they find that their health is not what they wanted, or
• 1:32
  their marriage isn't what they had signed up for, or their
• 1:34
  career is just stalled out. But the way to avoid that is to be
• 1:38
  intentional. And I don't know of a better way to be intentional
• 1:41
  than to create a life plan. It's like anything else. You got to
• 1:43
  plan for it if you're gonna get a different
• 1:45
  Host: Yeah. And you, you you use this phrase, you call it the drift.
• 1:50
  Michael Hyatt: Yeah, I love this concept. And it really came from
• 1:52
  an experience that my wife Gail and I had when we've been
• 1:54
  married 10 years, we decided to go on a vacation to celebrate
• 1:58
  our 10 year anniversary. Only problem was we didn't have that
• 2:00
  much money. But we took all of our airline miles and we went to
• 2:03
  Hawaii. When we got there. We ended up money for the hotel and
• 2:06
  a rental car, but not a lot of money for entertainment. But we
• 2:09
  found out that the hotel was offering free snorkeling
• 2:12
  lessons. And they were going to teach us in the swimming pool
• 2:15
  and they were going to take us out onto the reef. So we did
• 2:17
  that. And when we got out into the reef, I mean, our heads
• 2:20
  exploded. We could not believe how amazing that was. So we
• 2:24
  discovered that we could rent snorkeling gear for $10 for the
• 2:28
  entire week, we thought oh my gosh, this is unbelievable. So
• 2:32
  the next morning after those snorkeling lessons, we went to
• 2:35
  the lagoon that was adjacent to the hotel, okay, and we paddled
• 2:38
  out into the water. And it was like swimming in an aquarium.
• 2:41
  All these multicolored fish and the seaweed was swaying and
• 2:45
  reflecting the sunlight. And we were totally captivated, totally
• 2:48
  distracted. 45 minutes later, we look up into our horror, we'd
• 2:54
  been caught in a riptide and we were way out to see the hotel
• 2:58
  look like a toy in the distance. And so Gale pulled her it up.
• 3:03
  And she screamed, fortunately, we were still together, we had a
• 3:05
  boogie board, which was also a blessing. She said, What are we
• 3:08
  going to do? And I said, we're going to swim like crazy for the
• 3:11
  shore. And so it took us like an hour to get back, we collapsed.
• 3:16
  But that became for us a central metaphor for how most people
• 3:20
  live. They just drift through life, they don't wake up in the
• 3:24
  morning and say, You know what, I think sometime in my middle
• 3:27
  life, I want to have a heart attack, you know, I'm gonna
• 3:29
  gradually get overweight, until I just have a health breakdown
• 3:32
  and a health crisis. Or they don't start out after they leave
• 3:35
  their wedding and say, you know, I want to grow gradually apart.
• 3:38
  Until we end up in separation or divorce. Or in my career, I
• 3:42
  think I'll just hop out and get stuck, you know, in about five
• 3:45
  years and never progress any further. People drift to those
• 3:49
  destinations. It's what happens when we get distracted. It's
• 3:52
  what happens when we don't have a plan. And we're just drifting
• 3:56
  through life. And here's the thing, no one ever drifted to a
• 4:00
  destination, they would have chosen.
• 4:01
  Host: Have you always had a life plan?
• 4:05
  Michael Hyatt: No, so here's what happened. Um, like a lot of
• 4:08
  people, I had a plan for my work. But the truth is, life is
• 4:11
  a lot more than work. And I want to win at work, but I want to
• 4:15
  succeed at life. But initially, I was highly driven in my work,
• 4:18
  and I was very successful in my work. But in about the year
• 4:21
  2000, I had taken over one of the divisions at Thomas Nelson
• 4:25
  Publishers, we had 14 divisions at the time, the Division I
• 4:28
  became the general manager of was dead last in every single
• 4:31
  metric. So yeah, sales growth, return on investment, return on
• 4:35
  assets, all those things were just upside down. So the CEO
• 4:38
  said to me, he said, Okay, how long is it going to take you to
• 4:41
  turn this division around? profitable? I just picked the
• 4:44
  number out of the air. I didn't know I'd said three years. He
• 4:48
  said, Okay, you got it. So I went back to my team I shared
• 4:51
  with him what I thought we needed to do. Everybody started,
• 4:54
  you know, working together, but we were on the road constantly.
• 4:58
  We went from number 14 to number one in 18 months. That's why I
• 5:01
  ended up as the CEO. But here's the problem. It came at a cost.
• 5:05
  Because I was on the road all the time, I wasn't paying
• 5:08
  attention to what I was eating, I wasn't working out like I
• 5:11
  should. I felt like I was drifting apart from Gail and my
• 5:14
  relationship with her. Other members of my team, were doing
• 5:17
  it. And I finally went to John Maxwell, who was one of my
• 5:20
  authors that I was publishing at Thomas Nelson, and he'd become a
• 5:24
  good friend, and a mentor. And I said, John, I don't think this
• 5:28
  story is going to end well. If I continue drifting, like I'm
• 5:31
  drifting. I've gotta have something, I gotta I gotta
• 5:34
  figure this out, because it's not sustainable. And he said to
• 5:37
  me, I want to introduce you to Daniel Harkavy, who's the CEO of
• 5:41
  building champions, which is a coaching company. And he said, I
• 5:44
  think you should talk to him. So I hired Dale as my executive
• 5:47
  coach. First thing that Daniel did with me is he said, buddy,
• 5:51
  let's create a life plan, because I get that you have a
• 5:54
  plan for your career, but it's not working so well with the
• 5:57
  rest of your life. And we need to plan for those other domains
• 6:00
  of your life. And so we did that. And we took, I took an
• 6:04
  entire day. And that's what we asked for in the book as people
• 6:07
  give us a day. And we created this life plan, I created this
• 6:10
  life plan, ran it by Daniel, and I've had one ever since. And
• 6:14
  it's been major, probably the most major thing in my life, to
• 6:17
  help me not only win at work, but to succeed at life.
• 6:20
  Host: So did you and Gail, like, do this together?
• 6:23
  Michael Hyatt: Gail and I have been married for 30, almost 38
• 6:26
  years. And we have five daughters are all grown now all
• 6:29
  of them are very successful in their own right. But yeah, it
• 6:32
  was really when they were in their teenage years that I
• 6:34
  finally decided that I needed to get this life plan together. But
• 6:38
  it made all the difference. I know till and where I would have
• 6:41
  ended up in my personal life. If I had not gotten the life plan
• 6:44
  and gotten the vision for what was possible in my marriage. And
• 6:47
  in my parenting in my health and every other domain.
• 6:50
  Host: You know, some people still kind of think about their
• 6:53
  lives in like the second segmented compartments, do you
• 6:55
  think that they are really segmented? Or are? Are they all
• 6:58
  connected? And it really is this holistic view? or kind of like,
• 7:01
  What's your thought on that?
• 7:03
  Michael Hyatt: It's holistic. I mean, we for the sake of
• 7:05
  abstraction, for the sake of focusing on him, we divide them
• 7:08
  up. But the truth is, all these things are interrelated. So for
• 7:11
  example, I worked for guy one time, who was going through a
• 7:14
  divorce. And it was brutal. It was very contested, it was very,
• 7:17
  a lot of anger, a lot of frustration, a lot of
• 7:20
  resentment, the guy was totally unavailable at work, this was my
• 7:23
  boss, he would come in at about 10. In the morning, he was
• 7:26
  completely sidetracked by what was going on with his divorce,
• 7:29
  his head was not in the game, he was not engaged. And that went
• 7:32
  on for about a year. So these different areas affect
• 7:35
  everything else, if you have a health crisis, you know, you
• 7:38
  have a heart attack, it's going to have an impact on your
• 7:40
  family, it's going to have an impact on your work, it's going
• 7:44
  to have an impact on your friendships. So you can you can
• 7:46
  separate them for the purpose of planning. But they show up
• 7:49
  together as a seamless whole part of my life plan is to make
• 7:52
  sure that I get enough sleep. Why? Because sleep is directly
• 7:55
  related to your ability to focus. But that's why you know,
• 7:58
  sometimes you get up and you're tired, and you're trying to read
• 8:02
  something in the morning, and you have to read the same page
• 8:05
  three or four times, because you're tired. You know, you
• 8:08
  didn't get enough sleep out. On the other hand, you know, I
• 8:11
  think sometimes when I get to the end of the day, and I'm
• 8:13
  trying to do a complex project, and Gale will say to me, You
• 8:16
  know what, why don't you just go to bed? Because you're like, 10
• 8:20
  times better in the morning. Why? Because I'm rested.
• 8:22
  Host: So how do you create a life plan? So tell us about how.
• 8:26
  Michael Hyatt: It's pretty simple, but the life plan is
• 8:29
  basically the answer to three incredibly important, powerful
• 8:32
  questions. Okay. Okay. So I'm gonna give these to you. Yeah.
• 8:35
  Okay. So the first question is, how do you want to be
• 8:38
  remembered? Now, kind of the myth of our society, is that
• 8:42
  you're going to live forever, you know, we conveniently put
• 8:45
  six sick people out of our line of vision, people that are
• 8:48
  dying, you know, we put those out of our field of vision, you
• 8:52
  know, because we act like we're gonna live forever. But the
• 8:55
  truth is, we're all gonna die. And Steve Jobs said that this
• 8:58
  was faster. He said this two years before he died, almost
• 9:01
  prophetically. He said that facing death was the single most
• 9:05
  important tool he had for making life's most important decisions.
• 9:08
  And that was at a commencement address at Stanford University.
• 9:12
  And it's true. So one of the things that we do in this
• 9:15
  section of the book and answer to this question is we have you
• 9:18
  imagine that you're a guest at your own funeral. So just
• 9:21
  imagine on the front row, there's your family, all the
• 9:24
  people that are living now imagine if you were to die an
• 9:28
  untimely death today. And on the front row are all the people
• 9:31
  that you love the most. Directly behind them are the people that
• 9:35
  you work with and your friends and your neighbors and the
• 9:38
  people you go to church with? What would they be saying about
• 9:41
  you? If they were asked to give a eulogy we hear and we have you
• 9:45
  write that out? Write your eulogy. And for most people,
• 9:48
  there's going to be a gap. They're gonna go, Ah, I need
• 9:51
  more time. You know, because what my kids are probably going
• 9:54
  to say is I work too much, or what um, They're having dinner
• 9:58
  with them. I'm on my cell phone, and I'm entering email, and I'm
• 10:01
  not paying attention to them, or I need more time to get in shape
• 10:05
  or whatever it is. But here's the good news. You're not dead
• 10:08
  yet. Right? So there's still time. So then we have you create
• 10:12
  a series of legacy statements. And this is, this is one of my
• 10:15
  favorite things to do. So you're not dead yet. And we have you
• 10:18
  and we give you a little formula. So you know, for
• 10:21
  example, I say, I want Gail to remember. And then, you know,
• 10:25
  it's things like that I take long walks with her in the
• 10:28
  evening, that we sit and watch the sunset, that I'm her best
• 10:31
  friend. So we create these legacy statements. Because
• 10:34
  here's the reality, all of us are going to leave a legacy.
• 10:37
  Sometimes we think that's, you know, Margaret Thatcher will
• 10:41
  have a legacy or Winston Churchill had a legacy. Or
• 10:43
  Theodore Roosevelt had a legacy. But all of us will leave a
• 10:47
  legacy. The only question is, is it going to be good? Or is it
• 10:50
  going to be bad? And you and I can engineer those memories that
• 10:54
  the things that people talk about when we ultimately pass?
• 10:57
  We can engineer those conversations beginning today?
• 11:00
  And that's, that's the first question, how do you want to be
• 11:03
  remembered. So this is my one for Gail. I said, I want Gail to
• 11:07
  remember how I loved her, understood her, pursued her and
• 11:10
  helped her accomplish her dreams. I want her to remember
• 11:13
  specific times that we shared together times, we laughed,
• 11:16
  times, we cried, times, we spent discussing things that were
• 11:20
  important to both of us, the times, we just held one another
• 11:23
  and watch the sunset, or here's one for how I want my
• 11:26
  colleagues, the people that work with me, my company, I say are
• 11:29
  one of my colleagues to remember my servant leadership, my
• 11:33
  integrity, my humility, and my commitment to having fun, I want
• 11:36
  them to remember how much they learned and grew as a result of
• 11:40
  knowing me. Most of all, I want them to remember how I stood for
• 11:43
  the greatness in them, and empower them to accomplish more
• 11:46
  than they ever thought possible. So I do one of those for each
• 11:50
  major category of my life. And the second question is, what is
• 11:53
  important to you? Now you probably know what's important
• 11:57
  to your spouse, you know, what's important to your boss, you
• 12:00
  know, what's important to your customers? You know, we all know
• 12:03
  what's important to other people, but this is a question
• 12:07
  about you what's important to you. Because if we don't know
• 12:10
  what our own priorities are, that it's gonna be very
• 12:13
  difficult to order our life in a way that gets us what we want to
• 12:16
  get. So we have you identified the major categories of your
• 12:20
  life, and it's going to be different depending on the
• 12:23
  season of life you're in, like, once you guys have kids, that's
• 12:26
  gonna be a completely different game than the one you're playing
• 12:30
  now. And your priorities will shift, you know, your your
• 12:33
  priorities can shift if you've got a new business, you know,
• 12:36
  all of us that have been through that certainly understand that.
• 12:40
  But you know, for me, for example, you know, and by the
• 12:43
  way, once we identify the different categories, and we
• 12:46
  asked you to rank them, so for me, you know, it's God first,
• 12:49
  it's me next. And you know why? It's like, when the flight
• 12:53
  attendant comes out, does the little thing before you take
• 12:56
  off, they say, put the face mask, you know, the oxygen mask
• 12:59
  on yourself first, before you attempt to help somebody else.
• 13:02
  If you don't take care of yourself, you're not going to be
• 13:06
  of much use to anybody else. So the purpose is not being
• 13:09
  selfish, the purpose is to be of service. So I got to take care
• 13:12
  of me to be of service to somebody else. So to get that,
• 13:15
  that list down, and I tell you another quick story. During the
• 13:19
  recession, when I was the CEO of Thomas Nelson, I took a much
• 13:22
  needed vacation after you know, months of hand to hand combat
• 13:26
  slugging it out, the recession Board gave me the approval guild
• 13:29
  I took off for Denver on a Friday afternoon, we changed
• 13:32
  planes in Dallas, I made the mistake of checking my email,
• 13:36
  there was a message for the Chairman of my board said, Hey,
• 13:39
  change your plans. We need to come in and talk about an issue
• 13:42
  on Monday. And I need you to come back. And I said, I showed
• 13:46
  it to Gail, her heart sank, my heart sank we'd had all this
• 13:49
  plan. So I made a really hard decision. And it was scary. But
• 13:52
  my priorities gave me the courage to make the right
• 13:55
  decision in the face of that. I wrote him back and I said, I'm
• 13:59
  sorry, I won't be there. My staff will be queued up to help
• 14:02
  you. But I'm going on this vacation, because I need it for
• 14:05
  the rest. And I need it for my relationship with Gail. And
• 14:08
  those two priorities. And I didn't say this part, those two
• 14:12
  priorities come ahead of you. And, and then I turned off my
• 14:15
  email. Now, here's the funny thing. I got back to the office.
• 14:18
  I asked my CFO, I said, What was that meeting about? He said,
• 14:22
  Look at totally could have been handled by email. It was a non
• 14:25
  event. And I almost scuttled my vacation for what was going to
• 14:29
  be a non event, but because I had a list of priorities, and I
• 14:32
  knew what came first, second, third and fourth, and I knew for
• 14:36
  me at that time work was about number five on my list. It it
• 14:39
  became a clear decision for me. It gave me clarity, and courage.
• 14:43
  Host: I love that and that is unique. So well. You're not
• 14:46
  going to get the third answer here. So what is next for
• 14:49
  Michael Hyatt?
• 14:50
  Michael Hyatt: I always want to make and I got this idea from
• 14:52
  Dan Sullivan. But I always want to make my future bigger than my
• 14:55
  past. So I have a 25 year plan, because I think it's important
• 14:59
  to constantly be creating value constant It'll be stretching and
• 15:02
  growing. To me happiness comes not in attaining anything. It
• 15:05
  comes in the pursuit of the stuff that's important to me and
• 15:09
  the stuff I feel called to pursue. So it's, it's feeling
• 15:12
  like I'm growing, feel like I'm progressing. And for me, it's
• 15:15
  really right now at this period of my life, it's about building
• 15:18
  my team and pouring into their lives. So I've got a small team
• 15:21
  of about 15 people, and they're my top priority. I just want to
• 15:25
  build into their lives and make them great.
• 15:27
  Host: Michael, I just want to say thank you for who you are
• 15:30
  and what you do and just for the countless number of people that
• 15:35
  you inspire every day.
• 15:36
  Michael Hyatt: Thanks, great to be with you.