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Transcript

Never confuse motion with progress · The Daily Reset Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to The Daily Reset.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Laurel Quinn, former CEO, coach and recovering fineaholic.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Every day, a few minutes to reset how you think,
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: live and work so you spend your energy on what actually matters.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let's reset.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: The busiest day that went nowhere.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever had a day where you never stopped and at the end of it,
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: you couldn't name one thing that actually moved your life forward?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: You answered every email.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: You went to every meeting.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: You sorted the lunches, the laundry, the group chat.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: You were exhausted.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing that mattered most, the one you'd be meaning to start for months,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: didn't get a minute.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's today's reset.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Never confuse motion with progress.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: I used to think self-discipline meant pushing harder, getting more done,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: having enough willpower to force myself through everything.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I see it differently now.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes self-discipline is saying no.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's closing the laptop.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's doing the uncomfortable thing
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  SPEAKER_00: that will move your life forward instead of the easy thing
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: that makes you feel productive for an afternoon.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I did the easy thing for years.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: I was very, very busy.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Busy is a wonderful place to hide. Urgent shouts.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Important whispers.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the problem with most of our days.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: The urgent things shout. They flash red. They ping.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: They come with someone else's deadline attached.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: The important things whisper. Your health.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Your relationships.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: The business idea.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: The conversation you keep putting off.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: None of them ever send you a reminder.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: You may know the idea often credited to President Eisenhower.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sort your tasks by whether they're urgent and whether they're important.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: The trap is that we spend our days on the urgent ones, whether or not they matter,
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: and the important but not urgent ones wait.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then they wait some more.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And slowly, without ever deciding to,
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: we build a whole life around what was urgent rather than what mattered.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: So ask yourself, what is important in my life right now that isn't urgent
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: and keeps getting pushed to next week?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Hold on to whatever came up.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: We'll come back to it.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Where your time really goes.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: The writer Annie Dillard put it simply, how we spend our days is, of course,
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: how we spend our lives.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Your calendar is a very honest document.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't show what you value.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: It shows what you actually do.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if you looked at last week's calendar as if it belonged to a stranger,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: what would you think that person cared about?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Try this today.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Look back at the last seven days, not what was planned, what actually happened.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Notice three things.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: First, where your time went.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Second, where your energy went because an hour of real focus and an hour
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: of half listening on a call are not the same hour.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Third, where your attention went because you can be at the dinner table and still be
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: in your inbox.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: If someone read your last week, would they know what matters to you?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: No judgment, it's just information.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: You can't change a week you won't look at.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Define what progress means.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Motion feels like progress because it's visible.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Ticked boxes, full inbox, then empty inbox.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Progress is quieter and it's personal.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to decide what it means for you.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a tool I love from a book called The Four Disciplines of Execution.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: It talks about lag measures and lead measures.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: A lag measure is the outcome, the weight, the revenue, the savings, the finished book.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: By the time you see it, it's already happened.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: You can't change it directly.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: A lead measure is the small action that drives the outcome.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: The walks, the sales calls, the money moved on payday, the words written each morning.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: You can control those today.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us track the outcome and feel bad about it.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Progress comes from tracking the action.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So think back to your vision, your 10 year Tuesday if you did that last episode.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: What's one outcome you want this year?
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  SPEAKER_00: And what's the small repeatable action that would drive it?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: That action is your progress.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Everything else is motion, the work you avoid.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now the uncomfortable part.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: The work you avoid is often the work that would actually change your life.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: The writer Steven Pressfield calls the force behind this resistance.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's that pull you feel the moment you sit down to do the thing that matters.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly the fridge needs cleaning.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly you must reply to that email.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the more something matters to you, the stronger the pull seems to get.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what helped me.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Resistance isn't a sign you're lazy or that it's the wrong thing to do.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Often it's a sign you're close to something important.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: The trick is to make the first step smaller than the resistance.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Not write the business plan.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Open the document and write one sentence.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Not get fit.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Put your trainers by the door.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not have the conversation.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Send the message asking when they're free.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: What's the thing you've been avoiding?
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  SPEAKER_00: And what's a first step so small it would feel almost silly not to do it?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Stop starting.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Start finishing.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: One more pattern because so many capable women I work with have it.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're brilliant at starting.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: New course, new plan, new planner, new idea at 11 at night.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Starting feels like energy, but a desk full of half-finished things isn't freedom.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a quiet, constant wait.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Every open loop takes up a little space in your head.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Finishing gives that space back.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So this week, before you start anything new, look at what's already open.
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  SPEAKER_00: Pick one thing that's 90% done and finish it.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Then decide honestly which of the others you're going to finish
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: and which you're going to let go of on purpose.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Letting go on purpose counts as finishing.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: One progress action first.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Here's your reset for today and if you can for the next seven days.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Choose one progress action, just one.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: The lead measure, the avoided first step, or the nearly finished thing,
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: and do it first, before the email, before the news,
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: before the day gets loud and someone else's urgent takes over.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: It might only take 10 minutes.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: 10 minutes of progress beats 10 hours of motion.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, ask yourself one question.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Did I move my life forward today, or did I just move?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to go deeper, workbook two.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Never confuse motion with progress, walks you through this over a week,
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: your time and energy audit, your lead measures, the work you avoid,
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: and seven days of progress first.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: This has been The Daily Reset, and Loral Quinn spend today on what matters,
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: because your day creates your life.