Do you ever wonder how others make success look simple and requires little energy? In this episode, Jimmy shares strategies that help him maintain greater efficiency in his day and attain greater results in his company.
Episode Keys:
- What the Three R’s can do to empower you for a great day – everyday!
- How to use rituals in life to “automate” certain activities you must accomplish everyday of your life.
- Why routines are critical to achieving greater success in your professional and personal life.
- When to measure results that will move the needle on accomplishing your BHAGs!
- Maximizing your probability for accomplishment by focusing on The Four “Ifs”.
Podcast Transcript
This is Live a Life By Design. I’m your host, Jimmy Williams, bringing you those powerfully positive messages to start your week today. You know, we call ’em our Monday morning moments of motivation for a reason. We hope that these episodes bring you some insight, some thought, maybe even tickle a little bit of your creativity in your mind so that you can go out and live life on a bigger, better, and bolder lifestyle than you previously had. My co-host, Lori Few, has been able to join us here in the last few weeks as she’s began her career at, at a local school, and she’s in administrative offices and been very busy getting school started. She’ll be back with us here in just a few weeks. But she wants you to know that life is being lived to its fullest, and not a lot of sleep being you know, being experienced, I think.
But hey, I wanna tell you this too. We have some big changes coming to this podcast in the next month. We are looking at some big, big changes in terms of format and some other issues challenges that we’ve faced and so forth that I think is gonna make this more helpful. It’s gonna make it more informative, and I do believe that, again, will help stir you with the greatest motivation to move life forward by your own terms. So, stay tuned. If you’re facing some challenges today on your motivation, you’re feeling those dog days of summer, right? If you’re feeling those, go to our Live a Life By Design community page on Facebook and just list there, what are some of the challenges you’re having, and we will address those in future episodes to help you become a more streamlined in your way of acting, thinking, and taking action so that you can become what you wish and not simply become what you are.
Now, if you’re happy where life has you, hey, that’s fantastic, but I think you’ll want to move forward in life and grow after you hear today’s episode. That’s a little bit of a teaser. I will tell you, we have had a busy, busy summer. We’re in the middle of August. We got football season coming up. You’re gonna hear me get pretty excited here in a couple of weeks. I am a humongous football fan, especially NCAA in high school, and I tell you, I, I’m just geared up. Now, I will say though, this first few games in September are terribly hot in our great state of Oklahoma, but it is something I thoroughly enjoy. So today I wanna share with you a few, just a few moments of what I use in my life to help take away some of the labor of thought and implement more of an automated system of accomplishing things.
I call these the three Rs. Yes, you know, the old school adage of reading, writing, and arithmetic, if you drop the A off, right, this is something a little different than that. In this episode, I’m gonna share with you my three Rs and how I utilize those three Rs to continue moving forward in my life. Now, sometimes we move forward at a faster pace than others. The key here is to just keep moving forward, to keep accomplishing no matter how little or how much, just keep accomplishing that growth in your life. So these three Rs are rituals, routines, and results. And the purposes for continuing to develop and utilize these is to reap high performance with the least amount of effort and energy.
You know, to, to round out this episode, I’m gonna share a few other thoughts toward the end. But for now, let’s focus on those three R’s and how they’re utilized and how you can help yourself gain a leg up on the competition, greater value in the marketplace, and as well, higher self-esteem for you to meet your bigger, better, and bolder self in the future. So let’s take the first one, rituals. Now that sounds a little bit scary, but it’s not. So in the rituals I’m referring, I have to start my morning right out of bed, bright and early 5, 5 30, right? In that timeline, I have rituals that I call my startup rituals, okay? I start up, the day I get going, I have everything written down, how long it should take. I do lay out some things in my shutting down ritual I’m gonna share with you in just a minute to make my startup ritual work even more effectively.
But my startup ritual takes that opportunity of my day to really get things moving with my body, energize my brain, but it doesn’t task me with a lot of unnecessary thought. Now, you’ve seen some of the greatest minds of our time on video news, you know, wherever you see ’em on social media. And one of them is a gentleman by the name of Steve Jobs. When Steve was alive, he always wore the same outfit and he wore the same type of shirt. It’s kind of a mock turtleneck, but it was black. And he wore jeans and he wore these types of I won’t call ’em slippers, but more like sandals. And this was one of the richest men in the United States, and he wore the same clothing. Another more recent very wealthy entrepreneur was Mark Zuckerberg. If you’ll notice him, he uses his wardrobe in a very slightly adapted manner.
He typically wears pair of jeans, tennis shoes, and a hoodie. So he wears a hoodie every day. And unless he’s gonna be in front of someone important, like he was congress recently for some questioning on a committee, he wore a suit then obviously. But my point I’m making is these people don’t wanna think about what do I have to wear? What color does it have to be? How do I match the suit and tie what’s the pocket square I need to look? They don’t worry and start their day with such, such friction in the day. They wanna start the day running. And so they utilize these rituals in their life to help repeat those same things necessary to get a great start to the day every day. And so I have a startup ritual, you’re gonna laugh. The first thing outta bed that I do, I literally clap my hands and say to myself, and this sounds a little wild, this is the greatest day of my life.
And I say that every morning. My wife now 36 years of marriage next month can do it with me now, synchronized. She won’t do it with a smile, folks. She doesn’t get up that early. But my point I’m making is, it is part of that ritual. The next step I do is drink about eight to 10 ounces of room temperature water. I don’t drink ice, cold water. I like room temperature, water first thing in the morning to kind of engage the kidneys, get things going in the stomach, get the whole body moving and processing because I’ve been lying down right for seven to eight hours. And so you kind of dehydrate this way, you rehydrate first thing in the morning, you know, the next step I do is then I go into the master bath and I prepare for my day. You know, the shower, brush the teeth, floss the teeth, yes, floss.
It’s important. Do those habits, those small habits and the bigger ones are taken care of, right? And then take the shower. The clothes that I wear for that day are genuinely placed out to be put on the night before my workout bag is put together the night before. We’ll get into that here in just a moment on our shutdown ritual. But the key here is, is these things are written down so I don’t have to think about them. The towel and washcloth in the shower you know, the shoes are laid out underneath the clothes I’m gonna wear. It is incredibly easy and takes this very few minutes the night before to have a great startup to my day. Now, when I get to the office, I have another ritual, okay? And that ritual basically says how I begin my morning at work. I call this my kickoff ritual.
Yeah, I told you I’m a football fan, so I named some of these things uniquely, but kickoff ritual, my kickoff ritual says what I do as soon as I get to the office. Now here’s the beauty of this. If you’re like me and you’re fortunate to have an executive assistant, this person can help you with some of those kickoff rituals and have them ready for you when you arrive. You just simply need to ask for their assistance, educate them how you like those, these particular items delivered in what order, and it will then shorten the amount of time you spend on your kickoff rituals. Now my day’s begun properly and I am off to the races. Well then I have a winding down ritual at the end of my day, how I’m going to finish things, close out different software applications, make notes to myself for the next day. I do then pick out my big three, the task I need to perform the next day. That’ll move the needle on progress. I list those down in my full focus planner for the next day. The reason I do that is it gives me continuity from one day to the next.
And then I’m at home enjoying time with my family at dinner. I love to read of the evenings. So for don’t watch a whole lot of TV of just mind-numbing things. We’ll watch documentaries once in a while or a great movie with my wife. But I do enjoy just having a good time of reading and quiet. And then as I get ready for bed, you guessed it, I’ve got another ritual and I call it my shutdown ritual. Just like you do that computer at the end of the workday, right? I have a process I follow in shutting down my mind, my body, my spirit for the day. I want to get to that comfort zone of where I can lie down and sleep peacefully and get that vital rest that we all need. These four rituals now have been performed in so long of a period of time.
It is literally to me all habit. I don’t have to think which leg I put in the pants first. It’s just a habit. Been doing that for so long. I don’t have to start. Where, where am I gonna start? Start with my teeth. Which quadrant am I gonna brush first? Doesn’t matter. I start in the same spot every morning and every night in my rituals, it does not matter what clothing I’m gonna wear because I’ve already picked them out the night before. So these are the things that I always do that make me less friction to start the day. So I start the day with more energy. I start the day with more thought. I don’t labor my mind in thinking on small things. I wanna think about the big things that really move the needle. Now those are my rituals. Let’s talk a little bit about my routines.
So I have certain routines at the office. Those routines basically are this. We have processing of different items that I go through my routines of how I have set up my process for meeting with clients. I have routines for producing reports. I have routines for our investment committee to determine how we invest our clients’ money. I have routines for don’t laugh how we order our lunch for our in-office meetings. I have routines for my travel, I have routines for every action you could imagine. And I share those with my team. Now the difference between that in a ritual is I may not do some of those routines every day, but my team is trained in these routines and I know what to expect to keep those routines at their highest quality. And so that is something that’s vital to you. Operating again, without having to give so much thought to every action you’d perform.
Routines are critical to my efficient use of time during the day. For example, one of my routines is I don’t check email all day long. This is something that I think is mind-numbing and draining. I don’t even check it first thing when I get to the office. And the reason I don’t is because it will take your mind off your vital big three that you need to get done that day. So I’ll check my email sometime around about 11:00 AM Then I am able to take a few minutes, return some phone calls before lunch, get some of these vital things done. Now, I will tell you a trick to this email control. You’ve heard me say it on previous episodes. My assistant helps filter my emails for me. And recently in the last few months, we’ve implemented a new app that’s called Sane Box. That sane box helps us sort automatically similar to the rules you’d have if you’re using certain email packages.
This same box has saved probably a six to eight hours a week just on sorting emails. We get so many of those emails. And to be frank with you, most of those are not even worth the time to read, right? But it still takes time for you to go through and you have to look at their validity. So that’s why I use my executive assistant a lot in that particular routine. That last one though, they’re last of the R. So you got rituals, you got routines, results. If you’re not tracking those critical results that you need to really determine success in whatever field you function or at home even, you know, I track things at home. What am I doing in my home life as a result to determine if we’re making progress as a family? It’s critical to me that I followed just certain things.
I call ’em my five dials. It’s like if you were on an airplane and you’re now in the cockpit, what are you gonna watch that’s vital to you not crashing that airplane, right? You’re looking, look at that altimeter. You’re gonna look at wind speed. You’re gonna make certain where the horizon is, right? You’re gonna also determine, hey, how much fuel have we got in this plane? You’re gonna look at these vital dials. You’re not gonna look at everything on the dash ’cause you can’t. You’ve got to focus on the primary task, keeping the plane in the air safely. So I look at these five dials in my own life, personal and professional, and that’s where I focus my energy, time, and effort to make certain that things are on the right pathway to reach the goals I desire. This type of approach works wonderfully if you stay focused and put it into repetition in your life so it becomes ingrained and utilize your team to help you with some of those routines that’ll help you become even more efficient at what you need to accomplish. I want to continue this discussion in another little bit different concept.
One thing I love about Jim Rohn is he had such a great thought process about everything he published. He had such a great philosophy of life and he talked a lot about he, he developed that philosophy from his mentor, Mr. Shoaff. But Mr. Shoaff died rather young. And you know, Mr. Rohn’s said he got the basic foundations of what he need for that philosophy in the five years that he had spent with Mr. Shoaff. So I wanna share with you what he calls the four what ifs to make life worthwhile. And these four, what ifs are those things that help you live a life that’s inspirational, rewarding, and fulfilling for you? And it’s critical that you follow these four ifs to make this happen. And so let’s talk a little bit about these four ifs for a few months. First, life is worthwhile. If you learn, it is critical to success that you continually learn how to create greater value, expand your mindset and motivate yourself to become more knowledgeable about life.
It is also critical that if you wish to capture most of life’s benefits, you must be learned enough in the areas of life to know how to use those benefits. Second, life is worthwhile if you try to become more, you know, valued in life is one thing with knowledge, but to not try to use that knowledge is malpractice, in my opinion. You must take your learning and try to grow your skills. You will gain greater satisfaction in life and you’ll become more valuable to the marketplace. Now if you say, well, I can never do that, guess what? You’re not trying. Life will not be worthwhile. You’ve already missed out on one of the four ifs. So the second if is, if you try it, doesn’t mean you always succeed. But trying is far better than recognizing failure for lack of trying. You know, it’s like Michael Jordan said, and I’ll paraphrase. He only considered himself a failure when he didn’t try to do something on the court. Now, he missed some game-winning shots during his career. He missed a bunch of them, but he talks like it wasn’t failure unless he didn’t take the shot.
Third, life is worthwhile if you stay, finish the job, finish the book, finish the project. You must stay long enough in the task book or project to see it through. It is not a worthwhile venture for you to simply start something now, move on to something next week, start it, start something the next week, and then the next week, and never finish any of your particular projects. You’ve got nothing of value to add to your net worth, but a bunch of unfinished projects, it’s critical. You stay at the task. Now, that’s hard to do for some of us. Some of us see that shining object or we have that fluttery movement we see from our corner of our eye and it takes us away from our immediate task. You know, I call this the squirrel syndrome. Too many of us are focused on something all, all of a sudden the movement, we go squirrel, and then we turn our head.
This is what causes the most problem for us in life. It distracts us from that. That’s most important. The fourth and final, if is life is worthwhile if you care. Caring is a unique human experience that is vital, powerful, all-encompassing and far-reaching. According to Rohn’s book, leading An Inspired Life. This is the four ifs, and they will help you in life from a philosophical and practical standpoint, only if you abide by them. So if you learn, if you try, if you stay, and if you care about life, you will be a bigger, better, and bolder you in the future. Thank you for joining me this week on Live a Life By Design. I only hope that some of this sinks in you. Comment on our Facebook page at Live a Life By Design Community, and let us know what are some of your rituals, routines, some of your concerns that you need to overcome, some of your particular results that you’d like to see and aren’t tracking at the present time this week. Document your rituals, routines, and determine what results you must track to make significant progress in your life. Let’s face it, we only have one life to live. So let’s live that life by design.
