Shownotes
Have you ever come up with the ‘perfect plan’ you’re going to follow to finally take consistent action that gets real results, but then when the time comes, you feel frozen? Or maybe you still take action, but you’re not following the plan.
What if the plan is the problem? In today’s episode, I’m sharing about how to find the sweet spot of simplicity to help you keep momentum.
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Transcripts
Do you ever find yourself spending time preparing for a new habit
Speaker:or project and you've got this really exciting plan. You can actually
Speaker:picture how this plan is going to change everything. Or at
Speaker:least that's what I do all the time. I'll think to myself, okay,
Speaker:I finally figured it out. This time it's gonna be so good. But
Speaker:that is not actually what happens. Maybe this
Speaker:doesn't feel familiar to you, in which case teach me all your secrets because
Speaker:this is a trap that I have fallen into a number of times. I really
Speaker:going to share two examples of this and then tell
Speaker:you why I keep kind of stumbling into these mistakes and what I am
Speaker:actively trying to do now that I'm starting to see the
Speaker:pattern more and more and I'm starting to learn what actually works.
Speaker:So the first example is a personal one. This is at the start
Speaker:of 2024. So in January of 2024 I was in
Speaker:Argentina and been there a month. So we were just
Speaker:planning to return. I was missing home cooking and I spent a
Speaker:few mornings working on my trip, devising a very
Speaker:elaborate six week meal plan. And I am talking
Speaker:planned it to the point where I wouldn't waste groceries. I
Speaker:created these lists so that I had all these different recipes. I
Speaker:linked all of the ingredients and I had it
Speaker:mapped out so that if I was using celery in one recipe, I would have
Speaker:another so that I'm just not wasting any food. I was very proud of myself
Speaker:for this, but I was also very excited at the idea of, of coming
Speaker:home from a trip, being away for a month, having grocery lists,
Speaker:already made six different grocery lists and I would have all the different meals.
Speaker:And this was truly exciting. And I was picturing this very Zen,
Speaker:calm, well prepared version of myself with all of
Speaker:these meals. As you could probably imagine, that's not really what happened.
Speaker:I probably made it about two and a half weeks before things started to switch
Speaker:and change and it just, it kind of all fell apart.
Speaker:And I'll get into a little bit more about why after. But
Speaker:first I want to share my other example which is related to more professional
Speaker:around the fact that I carve out time every single Friday to
Speaker:do a weekly review. And a couple of years ago I put
Speaker:together what I thought was sort of the ultimate weekly review
Speaker:template. Now if you're not familiar, I use a tool called notion.
Speaker:And notion allows me to run a bunch of things in my business. So the,
Speaker:the advantage of this is I could set up this page that I could
Speaker:repeat each week. It was a Recurring template that I could use. And
Speaker:I could actually embed things like see my active projects, see
Speaker:all of my tasks, maybe if something's overdue or not. And I had this
Speaker:beautifully set up in all these collapsing tabs. Six different
Speaker:steps, made it pretty with colors so that it would be visually appealing.
Speaker:And then I proceeded to ignore most of it.
Speaker:Each Friday, I would start and I would get. Definitely do the first
Speaker:part. I would get into the second part, maybe open the third, and
Speaker:then just give up. I was not doing it. And not only was I
Speaker:not following this plan, I was also
Speaker:feeling bad about myself. So they were really great in theory,
Speaker:but both of them ended up not working. They did not
Speaker:last. And essentially what had happened is I had established a
Speaker:method, but I wasn't following it. I knew exactly what to do, and these
Speaker:were pretty comprehensive methods. I knew what
Speaker:to do, the skills to do it. I had the tools to be able to
Speaker:do it, and I knew when and where I was supposed to be doing it.
Speaker:So I had this complete method, but it's just. It was not
Speaker:working. And one of the problems was with the method itself.
Speaker:And that's what I want to talk about today, of what is going on when
Speaker:you have a really clear method and you're not following it. And. And
Speaker:it's not a mindset thing. It's not necessarily about the
Speaker:mode or that it doesn't suit you. In both these cases, it suited me. But
Speaker:what I wasn't factoring in was this relationship between
Speaker:my ability to do it and my motivation. And
Speaker:we're going to get into what is the relationship, and
Speaker:why are these kind of sophisticated or maybe
Speaker:comprehensive plans actually getting in the way? What was
Speaker:happening is I was expecting a very ambitious outcome
Speaker:designed for this ultimate version of myself
Speaker:that required more effort than I was necessarily
Speaker:willing to do on. On any given day. And the person I
Speaker:really like for this is BJ Fogg. If you're not familiar with
Speaker:BJ Fogg, so I've got the book here. It's usually on the shelf over my
Speaker:shoulder. So Tiny Habits. And BJ Fogg is
Speaker:someone who writes about behavior change, teaches about behavior change, and I
Speaker:really like his model where he explains the different components that need to be present
Speaker:in order to take action. And I do have a
Speaker:visual if you are here on the video recording, but if you're just listening audio,
Speaker:I'll have it in my show notes, so you can actually see what the visual
Speaker:looks like. But in essence, with his model, he's
Speaker:saying that in order to take a behavior, you need to have the
Speaker:appropriate level of motivation, the ability to do it. And also there needs to be
Speaker:some sort of prompt for you to do it. So let's start with the idea
Speaker:of motivation. You can vary on any given day or
Speaker:context and motivation. So your motivation can be high or your
Speaker:motivation can be low to take action. Then you also have
Speaker:ability. So you can have a high ability to do something, so it's really easy
Speaker:to do, or your ability to do it can be lower, so it's
Speaker:a little bit harder to do. So this can range from
Speaker:how much effort is this going to take? And so is the ability, is it
Speaker:harder or a little bit easier to do? And then he has what
Speaker:he calls an action line. So this action line, think of it as
Speaker:a threshold that in order for me to take action, so if I'm
Speaker:prompted to take action, am I going to do it? This depends
Speaker:on the level of motivation and the level of ability.
Speaker:When they meet over this threshold, then you'll do it.
Speaker:So, for example, if I am prompted to do something that actually
Speaker:does require some effort, so it's a little bit harder to do,
Speaker:and it's over here. So I'm just kind of drawing where
Speaker:it's a little bit harder to do. But I do have high motivation.
Speaker:If my motivation's high enough, I am over the threshold, and so
Speaker:it's going to happen. But that exact same task,
Speaker:it's the same effort, but on a day where I have lower motivation,
Speaker:I don't meet the threshold. So. So in other words, I don't have enough motivation
Speaker:for the effort that's required, so I don't do it.
Speaker:Now, what we could do, if you want to get over the threshold,
Speaker:you could potentially try to motivate yourself, so increase motivation.
Speaker:But I think we all know that's kind of tricky to do. So
Speaker:instead, what we should work on first is to make it easier
Speaker:to do. And this is where this idea of simplicity comes in, that if we
Speaker:can make something easier to do, we're more likely to do it even on
Speaker:days when we have really low motivation. Now, another
Speaker:way that you could think of this is that if something is difficult
Speaker:to do, you have a smaller sort of chance
Speaker:of crossing that threshold. But if you make something much
Speaker:easier to do, you sort of increase your odds that you're going to take
Speaker:action, that you're going to jump over this threshold and actually
Speaker:take action on the thing that you want to do. And so when you start
Speaker:to understand this relationship between your
Speaker:varying levels of motivation because they are not the same
Speaker:day to day. And then you also think about how much effort
Speaker:is required. This is where we get the likelihood of taking action.
Speaker:And this is why I really like BJ Fogg's model when it comes
Speaker:to having the combination. When you're prompted, do you have
Speaker:the right level of ability and motivation in order to
Speaker:take that action? So that the book Tiny Habits is
Speaker:all about making things a little bit easier. There are more parts to this,
Speaker:but that's a really important part of understanding what's going on. So when I look
Speaker:back at these two examples, it's very clear that I
Speaker:was expecting a really high level of effort.
Speaker:In other words, I needed to have high motivation in order to do it. So
Speaker:that that meal plan of mine, even though I did a lot of
Speaker:work up front, it still required that I would go follow the
Speaker:grocery list and then spend some time, usually on Sunday, prepping for
Speaker:the me. And then I would also have to spend time during the week. It
Speaker:turns out a lot of those meals were ambitious, meaning they took a lot
Speaker:more time in the kitchen. And if I had a tiring day,
Speaker:I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I didn't really have
Speaker:other options because of how sort of strict I laid this out. And then with
Speaker:this weekly review, it was made for this ultimate
Speaker:version of myself. And I just, I very rarely on
Speaker:a Friday, when it came time to do it, I. I wasn't doing it.
Speaker:And so ever since then, I've been really trying to
Speaker:embrace this idea. I call it the Simplicity principle, and it's
Speaker:inspired by Einstein. This whole idea is you want something as
Speaker:simple as possible, but no simpler. This
Speaker:really means stripping away a lot of the effort so that it's still
Speaker:effective. You're still going to make progress in the right direction,
Speaker:but you don't overload it with unnecessary
Speaker:parts that you are doing enough so that you're moving forward,
Speaker:but you are not making it so that a lot of effort and a
Speaker:lot of motivation are required. Now there is.
Speaker:There is a real thing which is being overly simple. If
Speaker:it's too simple, usually that means something is missing.
Speaker:So sometimes if it's too simple, you just might not have clarity. So you just
Speaker:don't actually know what to do next. So if I went to the grocery store
Speaker:and just decided, you know what, it's simple to just show up to the grocery
Speaker:store without a list and then just each night just decide what
Speaker:I'm going to have for dinner. Now most of us know that dreaded question
Speaker:of, so, what do you want to eat for dinner? Can
Speaker:just. It can just, like, steal the soul out of you.
Speaker:And if you don't know if you have the ingredients, that's just. It's too simple.
Speaker:So having some structure, but not nearly as ambitious was the middle
Speaker:zone that I needed to find. But the other is that sometimes if
Speaker:it's too simple, it might not even be effective. So let's take
Speaker:a separate example where you imagine a person who has been
Speaker:kind of dabbling on and off with jogging, and they want to
Speaker:have a regular jogging habit to become more
Speaker:cardiovascularly fit. And they decide,
Speaker:okay, I'm going to go three days a week and I've got my running shoes,
Speaker:and I'll just run outside, rain or shine. That is simple. But
Speaker:what does that person do when it's time to actually go out for their jog?
Speaker:If they don't know how long they're going? Maybe they don't know which route they're
Speaker:going on, maybe they don't know what speed they should be going. They're sort of
Speaker:just freewheeling it. And so there's a lack of clarity, but also
Speaker:there could be a lack of effectiveness because they don't really have
Speaker:any kind of plan. So even having just a really simple or
Speaker:fundamental plan can make a big difference. So we
Speaker:need to look at the plan and say, okay, I want it to be as
Speaker:simple as it can be, but not too simple. The other question
Speaker:that I really like to ask, which is similar, is this
Speaker:idea of what would it look like if it were easy?
Speaker:It still means that I am going to be making progress. I'm going to
Speaker:be moving forward in the direction I want to move. But what would it look
Speaker:like if it were easy? And sometimes just asking that question, reframing
Speaker:that way, we can typically come up with an answer. And that gets to the
Speaker:core of what are the things that I know I need to do? But when
Speaker:you ask what would be easy, you also picture yourself, what could I do? Even
Speaker:on a low motivation day, how do I sort of meet that threshold so
Speaker:that I'm going to regularly take action? Now there's a chance that you
Speaker:are thinking to yourself, okay, well, that sounds great, but does that mean that you
Speaker:should never create a plan that's a little bit more ambitious?
Speaker:Because I think sometimes those ambitious plans, they can give us a vision to aspire
Speaker:towards. But the way I think about it now is, is two approaches.
Speaker:One option is what I'm doing now with my weekly
Speaker:review Where I have a good, a better and a best, where
Speaker:good sort of good enough is low motivation day.
Speaker:Here's what you expect from yourself. Just fill out maybe these two
Speaker:sections. I've actually gone through and removed things that I was never doing that I
Speaker:was skipping. But I do have some options in there that I
Speaker:know I'm not going to do every week. But if I'm feeling motivated and I
Speaker:even started to update my template and I'm still a work in progress, so maybe
Speaker:that's something I can share with folks later, is, you know, are you feeling
Speaker:ambitious and a question mark? And then I have a section that I can open
Speaker:if I'm feeling a little bit more ambitious. So that's one option. Doing a good,
Speaker:better best where you are very realistic about your expectations and
Speaker:the fluctuation of your motivation. But the second is
Speaker:just start with good enough. The good enough
Speaker:principle. Just start with good enough and. And then you can always add later as
Speaker:needed. So it's sort of this idea of walk before you run. And that's
Speaker:actually what I'm doing with my current experiment. So last week
Speaker:I shared that my current experiment is around Instagram, that
Speaker:I am trying to show up more often, make content on there, regularly,
Speaker:share about my momentum formula and topics and concepts that I
Speaker:want to teach. And I shared about my goals last week. So this week I
Speaker:want to talk a little bit about the method because I have been reflecting on
Speaker:this question of what would it look like if this were easy?
Speaker:And that's where I came up with my current method. Now, as a
Speaker:recap for anyone who may have forgotten the
Speaker:method, I like to think of it in a few different ways, which is
Speaker:the method is what do you actually have to do, how do
Speaker:you do it? Meaning what skills do you need to be able to do something?
Speaker:When and where are you going to do it? That's the implementation, the when and
Speaker:where. And also what tools are you going to use? Now, when it comes
Speaker:to Instagram, my method, I'm trying to keep it as simple
Speaker:as possible, which is to as the what to do
Speaker:is create content every weekday. I am not doing it on
Speaker:weekends. I want to have some boundaries when it comes to making content.
Speaker:Focus mostly on reels where it's me talking to a camera
Speaker:because that's what I feel comfortable doing and I can make that quickly.
Speaker:I'll make a carousel if it makes sense, and then stories I can add
Speaker:in there. But really I'm pushing myself to put more into the
Speaker:feedback and that is mostly in the form of reels. The
Speaker:other part of my method is remembering to be
Speaker:camera ready enough. And that just means that I feel comfortable
Speaker:and confident enough that if I show up on camera, I feel
Speaker:good and I don't feel like, you know, I just rolled out of bed
Speaker:or whatnot. And I know for some people they can just show up no matter
Speaker:what. And I love that for them right now, it helps for me to
Speaker:feel a little bit camera ready. So that's just part of my method is to
Speaker:make sure that I feel presentable. The other is that I have actually
Speaker:blocked off. This is the when and where blocked off a one hour window in
Speaker:my afternoons. And I don't always need a full hour. Sometimes
Speaker:I can put something together quicker than that. But by just allocating and sort of
Speaker:expecting to hold that window once a day on the weekdays,
Speaker:that is the when and the where. And if you're
Speaker:thinking, why don't you batch content? That's a method. That is a
Speaker:method and it works for some people, but it doesn't really work well for
Speaker:me. And we'll get more into that next week when we talk a bit about
Speaker:mode and how I work best. But so far I have found just making kind
Speaker:of focusing on one piece of content if I feel inspired to make more than
Speaker:one, cool. But I am not expecting it for myself. The
Speaker:other thing I am trying to do, and this is related to the tools, is
Speaker:I'm just using. Let's go back to a main camera here for a
Speaker:second, is that I've got this. I'm just using my phone
Speaker:and it's on a little tripod that I can put on my desk.
Speaker:And I also have a little wireless
Speaker:microphone that I can clip. The idea here is not
Speaker:overproduced. Just have my wireless mic and my
Speaker:camera record on the phone. If I'm making a reel from
Speaker:scratch, if I want to have a clip from
Speaker:say a podcast episode, that I can export the
Speaker:clip and that I would use the tool DaVinci resolve. Cause that's what I do
Speaker:to trim my podcast. And while I have that open, I
Speaker:can actually just, I can just highlight a section of the
Speaker:video and just export that clip. Then I'll still
Speaker:use the Instagram app or the edits app to add
Speaker:in captions. So I'm just using the tools that Instagram
Speaker:provides to keep this as simple as possible. And
Speaker:then the other part is that when it comes to topic
Speaker:generation, as much as I love to plan in advance, I am also just trying
Speaker:to put in the reps and just show up regularly. So I'm not putting a
Speaker:lot of pressure that I have to follow some sort of content plan. Right now
Speaker:it's making content, talking about topics that are on my mind.
Speaker:What am I thinking about this week? Maybe what I'm having conversations with
Speaker:people about this week. And it also
Speaker:likely I'll talk a little bit about whatever my topic is for the
Speaker:podcast episode for that week. But I'm not pushing
Speaker:myself into some sort of elaborate 12 or 16
Speaker:week content plan where I talk about all these different topics. I'm
Speaker:really just trying to embrace putting in the reps. Now the one other thing
Speaker:that I'll say that it's, it's connected to the method, but it's a little bit
Speaker:adjacent is as I think about the skills required,
Speaker:I do want to learn things about Instagram. I want to learn
Speaker:the new features that have been released since I was
Speaker:actively on the app, which is four years ago. So things
Speaker:have changed. So I'm trying to learn those, how to use them. I am paying
Speaker:attention to other accounts that make content that resonates
Speaker:with me, whether it's the style of content, maybe how they teach, how
Speaker:they show up. So I am trying to look for inspiration and keep an eye
Speaker:on that. And then I'm also starting to pay attention to friction.
Speaker:So are there things in this method that slow me down?
Speaker:Are there things, are there ways that I am getting tripped up and
Speaker:I'm paying attention to that. If I can make an adjustment on the fly, great.
Speaker:If not, I'll sort of make a note of it so that I can keep
Speaker:looking at different ways to make my method a little bit more effective so that
Speaker:things will just flow. Because for the moment I'm just showing up,
Speaker:trying to show up consistently so that I can get the practice in.
Speaker:It's not going to be perfect. I mean, it never is. We all know this.
Speaker:But just embracing showing up, I think I mentioned this
Speaker:last week, or maybe I said it on my Instagram story, is that right now
Speaker:I actually appreciate that I'm doing this while I don't have a ton of
Speaker:views or reach because it's a great time to experiment.
Speaker:This is one of the benefits when you're new at something and you haven't necessarily
Speaker:spent a lot of time there, is that I don't have a massive
Speaker:audience on Instagram. And so it just allows me to feel more
Speaker:comfortable practicing something, putting it a reel that I was like, maybe this is so.
Speaker:So let's just try it. So I'm in a bit of that experimentation phase right
Speaker:now, and that's all part of how I'm approaching this. This
Speaker:what would it look like if it were easy? Is kind of that question I
Speaker:keep coming back to. The other thing is that
Speaker:I'm really interested if you're willing to share your own stories, if you
Speaker:have examples of when you have made something simpler
Speaker:and made you more likely to do it. I would love to be able to
Speaker:share some examples to everyone else on the podcast.
Speaker:Because when we hear different examples, I mean, I've shared my meal
Speaker:planning example, my weekly review example. I have many more. But I would like to
Speaker:hear from you too. Is there something you have made easier
Speaker:and so you just. You're doing it now and you can always get better and
Speaker:add on later. But I'd love to hear that so I can share so other
Speaker:people can feel inspired and maybe take some ideas from you. And
Speaker:one of the things I want to encourage you to do today is
Speaker:to take a look at maybe a habit or a
Speaker:project that you've been struggling with. Maybe you just haven't been consistent or
Speaker:you kind of started and stopped or stalled and just ask that question,
Speaker:what would it look like if this were easy? Make a few
Speaker:adjustments so that you can find and keep your momentum
Speaker:no matter what your level of motivation is that day.
