Episode 27
#027 - 2021 is 10% Over Already
Today, February 8, 2021 is 10% over... already. It seems like we are still talking about how bad 2020 was, and - in the blink of an eye - our runway for achieving our best work in 2021 is 10% gone.
In today's episode, we check in on our 2021 goals, talk about what distracts us from meeting our goals and provide some guidance on what to do about it. It's clear we are all still recovering from a bad year, so give yourself some grace, take a step back, assess where you are and where you want to be, and move forward in that direction.
If you want some resources to help with this, we recommended the following:
- Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
- Deep Work by Cal Newport
- Indistractable by Nir Eyal
Thanks for joining us today and don't forget to hit the subscribe button or reach out at [email protected].
Transcript
Igor Geyfman 0:00
I have a special reserve just for the sort of occasions.
Robert Greiner 0:08
Did you say you have a special Red Bull reserve?
Igor Geyfman 0:11
I do have a special Red Bull reserve.
Robert Greiner 0:13
Excellent
Igor Geyfman 0:13
For emergencies only
Robert Greiner 0:15
emergencies. What's the emergency today?
Igor Geyfman 0:17
I feel like a little migraine coming on. So I'm gonna blast it with some caffeine.
Robert Greiner 0:21
Every time I see Redbull I think about the office. When Ryan becomes everyone's boss and Creed and Michael are worried that they're going to fire everyone like over a certain age. So Creed dies his hair black and comes and asks Ryan if they could put red bull in the vending machines.
Igor Geyfman 0:43
He nothing says youth like Red Bull.
Robert Greiner 0:46
Yeah, keeps you young. I guess. I do have a friend who's pretty fit guy and drank a lot of drinks a lot of monster and had something like went to the hospital or went to the doctor because he's having like weird heart feelings. And I was thinking, Oh my gosh, it's got to be these drinks, man.
Charles Knight 1:01
It has to be Yeah.
Robert Greiner 1:03
And people are always saying, Oh, you know, it's it's just got a bunch of vitamins in it. And it's vitamin B 12. And, and stuff that are super healthy. And I was thinking I don't think that's true.
Charles Knight 1:13
Yes. And it's got a bunch of other
Igor Geyfman 1:15
Yeah, if your pounding back monsters,
Robert Greiner 1:17
like daily, like one at lunch, you know, one in the morning on the way, you know, that kind of thing.
Igor Geyfman 1:22
He does the monster zero in the White can.
Robert Greiner 1:25
It's not supposed to be better.
Igor Geyfman 1:26
It's his favorite drink. It's just calorie free.
Robert Greiner 1:29
Okay. Big news day trades worse for you.
Charles Knight 1:32
Monster I thought to I don't remember that right now. I haven't talked to him this year as he will talk to him. Is he doing? Yeah,
Robert Greiner 1:38
it's doing good.
Igor Geyfman 1:39
The nerd subculture really loves energy drinks. I mean, from back in the day, like jolt Cola, Bawls, b-a-w-l-s
Robert Greiner 1:49
I remember that used to be able to buy it. Buy the case at Fry's Electronics. That's right.
Igor Geyfman 1:54
You bought you buy your graphics card, your eight megabyte graphics card.
Robert Greiner 1:58
So you can send a LAN party.
Unknown Speaker 2:00
Yeah. Oh, man. Does your employer times he did y'all remember lan parties?
Igor Geyfman 2:05
Yeah.
Charles Knight 2:05
Did y'all ever do.
Robert Greiner 2:06
I have a little like kit. So it can handle situation on on the on the tower, and a big like, plastic bin with all the surge protectors and networking and cables and stuff that you would need. So I was like, bring that in and it's a party.
Igor Geyfman 2:24
What I remember about lan parties is the odor. It was by far the worst part of the lan parties.
Robert Greiner 2:30
man, you're making it sound much worse than it was.
Charles Knight 2:36
I can remember I've never been to a lan party. They had them. And I just remember they happened in college, like in the gesture dormitory at the University of Texas at Austin. And I'd walked by like those people doing like, oh, man,
Igor Geyfman 2:50
you smell it before you see it.
Charles Knight 2:52
Well, but here's the thing. The gesture dormitory. I mean, I love it. It had its own odor and permeated everything so it probably covered up the whatever. Lan Lan party small
Igor Geyfman 3:03
Yeah, Unreal Tournament. quake. Yeah. early days of Counter Strike, not Counter Strike go. Those those are sort of the go tos. And then it's slowly transition into World of Warcraft.
Robert Greiner 3:18
And then you didn't need to be in the same room. That's right anymore. Yeah. And then the lan parties died. Now we're together alone. That's right. Just like now prepared us for the pandemic. You start to record podcasts together to I think
Thanks World of Warcraft.
e're releasing it in the year:Igor Geyfman 3:45
we've wasted that 10% Robert,
Robert Greiner 3:47
still talking about how much:Igor Geyfman 4:10
There's a lot of distraction. Several weeks ago, there's a bare chested man with a Viking helmet in charge of our US Capitol this week,
Robert Greiner 4:19
radicals that were related to
Igor Geyfman 4:22
Well, I'm just saying Reddit has turned on Wall Street. And so there's just there's a lot of distractions. I hadn't planned any of those things, but they are distracting from getting stuff done right because you're being bombarded with pretty sensational things.
Robert Greiner 4:37
But then once you distracted when people leave the royal family or when there's a Super Bowl like there's always some kind of global event capturing our time and attention distracting us yeah, is this year really isn't any different. I mean, that the severity of you know, you can say things like we've never had something like x done before but is it really does it That really impact your ability over the last, you know, 36 days or whatever to meet your goals to move your goals forward.
Igor Geyfman 5:08
Well, Robert, when you put it that way, I'm not gonna say no,
Robert Greiner 5:11
it's not it's not a different pre migraine, not much more
Igor Geyfman 5:15
often it's not any different, Robert?
Charles Knight 5:17
Oh, I don't know, there is a spectacle.
Robert Greiner 5:19
There's a, there's a massive train wreck constantly outside your window. And it's really easy to go over to the window and watch the fire burn. Okay, yeah, I see what you're saying there.
Charles Knight 5:29
y talk about being distracted:Robert Greiner 6:57
ill one from a long time ago,:I like that plan. Do you mind if we dig in a little bit on distraction? Just Just for a little more?
I would like to it distracts from
Igor Geyfman 9:51
completing our agenda today.
Robert Greiner 9:52
Yeah, no,
Igor Geyfman 9:54
perfect. Just a couple of things. And this is, this is something that Charles's comment about those texts that we recommend it made me think of, and you may want to think of these things on a spectrum or some sort of polarity. You know, the text that I recommended were really old. And they're useful because they withstood the test of time. And if you think about the other end of the spectrum, as far as what we're consuming, it's tweets, current news, like that sort of stuff. And so, you know, a lot of that stuff is like waste of material, because it won't stand the test of time. Right? It's, it's fleeting, and probably generally won't teach you anything is meaningless, and for the most part is there to distract you, and to, you know, make media companies money, if I'm being quite cynical about it. On the other hand, though, maybe I'll recommend another book called Indistractible by Nir Eyal. So I'm big fan, big fan of near. He's, you know, he's written some hits. The first book that I read from, from Nir was Hooked. And in fact Hooked is is, uh, you know, one of the premises behind some of the things that we discuss on social media, and so on, right. And so it makes sense that he would have a follow up book called Indistractible, but there is like an evolutionary benefit to distraction. And, you know, it doesn't exist, because it's just bad. At one point, I guess distraction was there to help alert us to danger. You know, being keenly aware of even slight changes in our environment was important for us to be able to react to those changes, because a lot of times those changes had mortal effects. but also those distractions, create opportunities, it's in the same way that sometimes attention deficit disorder is good, because it allows you to create more dots, you know, make more connections, think more, in more novel ways. So I think the secret is controlling your distractibility by being being in control when you want to allow yourself to be distracted, and to allow extra stimulus in and when you don't want to allow distractions and because you need to focus and you need to make material progress on, on the goals that you've set for yourself and your team.
Robert Greiner:Yeah, for me, and I've seen recommendations around this, but I think a lot of that has to do with deleting things out of your life or or making it a little bit harder to engage in distracting behaviors. So there's there are these infinity pool apps, right? Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, tik tok, they just constantly bombard you with content and never runs out. And so it's just an infinite pool infinity pool of distraction.
Igor Geyfman:Is that from Calvin Court stuff, Robert
Diggital minimalism. Yep. And so you have a couple of options there. One, you know, for if we're talking, this is an episode about meeting your goals, the most optimal way to meet your goals is to delete all of the Infinity pools. I don't know how realistic that is, really. But if you have a tablet and a phone, maybe you take it off your phone, you leave it on your tablet, and you use you try to use that during a certain time in the day, or at least if you're in a meeting at work or something, you're not just popping out your phone, scrolling it, that kind of thing. And so I think there are optimizations or tweaks you can make to really help ramp down total hours distracted per year. And maybe in this case, it would be helpful to do the math, right, we talked about in vitality measuring what you eat. If you take a step back, and you're like, Oh my gosh, like I had no idea I consumed so much. Maybe I can make some adjustments. And these things I don't even like I don't even like them. I just did it on autopilot. Maybe there's sort of a distraction math you could do where you check your phone when you wake up right before you go to bed. you browse a bunch of stuff at lunch before you know it. And you could check if you have an iPhone, there's screentime built in. Maybe check on your last week on how many infinity pool apps, how many hours you spent on those, you can make up work weeks, every year, if you reduced or eliminated those apps.
Charles Knight:I I love it. I've done kind of a little audit before around how much screen time I use per app, either on my phone or on the computer and it was pretty enlightening.
Robert Greiner:Do you remember specific?
Charles Knight:I don't know. Because I had already done a pretty good job of trying to shut things like I'm not on social media. So it's that that was the biggest thing that pulled What did you call it infinity pool? Or? What?
Robert Greiner:Yeah, have you seen an you know that the infinity pool like that architectural? Like if someone has like their by the ocean? And it looks like the pool just goes into the ocean forever? Yeah. So it's like that that analogy applied to distracting apps because some of them just like you never run out of content.
Charles Knight:There's the interplay between the human and the technology. Is that really what's what's happening here. And I remember hearing somebody say on a podcast, something really beautiful. It's like transformational technology, when it's first adopted, tends to exploit human vulnerability. before it ends up, doing really great things for humanity. And I think that really applies here. I think technology is exploiting this human vulnerability and weakness of being easily distracted, the distraction is not, it is not the phone, or the little Ding, or the little icon, updating, it is all in our mind. And that's where one of the reasons why I'm, I'm a fan of meditation, because you see, you get to see so clearly how, within the span of a single breath, you get distracted dozens of times in the span of a minute. And so often, we just don't realize it. But you know, we're on autopilot.
Robert Greiner:If you're extending that analogy, though, if you're the lab rat, trying to meditate, social media, they have so much these companies have so much data now that on aggregate, they know how to poke your brain the right way to force a distraction. So I do think, in the same way, the like tools help provide leverage for a task, the ability for other external forces to distract us has the leverage of our best and brightest minds building the most advanced technology on the planet. And so we are at much more of a disadvantage now, because we have not caught up just to your point, eons and eons ago, right, you're still just as easily distractible, we haven't changed that much. But the technology curve has made it much easier to distract this, hey, just real quick, I looked up. So review 40 two.com says in 2017, the average person spends 135 minutes a day on social media, that's 2.25 hours, that's 821 hours per year. Now, if that's half wrong, maybe that's way too much, two hours, that's still 400 hours per year, that's what 10 weeks that you could get back. If you cut your social media usage in half, you've saved five work weeks, like think of what you could get done, you know, five work week, because it's 10%, roughly of your year. Right. So the distraction piece, Igor, that you talked about at the beginning that comes into play, like there's a lot of your runway gets eroded away. And not only the time you spend being distracted by these infinity pool apps or whatever, Charles, to your point, it doesn't have to be technology, any distraction, and then the context switching cost it takes to get back on doing something productive. So I mean, it could be even be much worse than the 2.25 hours a day, if you find yourself switching and stuff like that. And that was a few years ago, right? Four years ago, I have to believe that at this social media trend was increasing year over year up to 2017. That seems like it's an obvious conclusion that has continued to happen until now. So it's probably even worse. But even if I'm half wrong, or review 42 is half wrong, and you cut your social media usage in half. That's a lot of time you can make up every year,
Charles Knight:what is what is your biggest infinity pool, like source of distraction? I'll go first, if that's okay, if we can talk about that, because I'm not on social media. And yet, I still feel that pull, and it is email, like I even turn off all new email notifications on Gmail and outlook, because those are the ones I use. And, and, and so I think it even goes beyond social media, because I don't have it. And yet, oftentimes, the first thing I do when I wake up while I'm drinking coffee is I look at my emails. And, you know, I don't feel like it's unhealthy. But I also don't feel like that's super productive. And so, to me, it's like I'm constantly having to unsubscribe from newsletters that I don't really read anymore, or that I don't really find value anymore. There's this constant pruning of like sources of inputs that are around me, that I have to really be mindful of otherwise, yeah, it just becomes this never ending onslaught. And I am very vigorous and aggressive with unsubscribing, from emails to this day, I still get emails where it's like, Where the heck did this come from? Like, I don't remember signing up for this. Yeah. And so. So there's, it is a constant flow and stream of distractions that, that I actively try to manage. And I feel like, at times, I'm winning, and then I feel like at times, I'm losing, I'll tell you the interesting thing. If I don't have a lot of emails, I'm like, oh, maybe I should go subscribe to some new newsletters. Maybe I need to consume more. And so I guess now that I've talked through it, probably my infinity pool is this, this belief that I need to and I want to consume information
Robert Greiner:that's so interesting. You spent a very intentional amount of energy and effort deleting social media out of your life. You have recreated that in your email inbox, through newsletters, and then your equivalent of pulling down to refresh is going and subscribing to your newsletter. That's interesting.
Charles Knight:It's really not those newsletters. It's not really social media, it's my mind. It's like my craving for, whoo, I want to read up on smart cities, or I want to read up on what this person is writing, because their blog is really interesting. It's like it's this need to consume for whatever reason, that that triggers the behavior for more and more and more and more and more, right, as opposed to, you know what I'm okay. Like, I'm okay with what I have that that's, I think, for me, at the core of what, you know, the mind is the infinity pool. So like, I feel like I need more information. And I don't think I really do
Robert Greiner:for me, the distractions have evolved over the years, which I guess makes sense. High school, college, early career was definitely video games, first person shooters, online games, those kind of things, whatever evolved from lan parties, like we were discussing earlier. Now, I think I am in a similar vein, as you Charles, it's kind of like the the Reddit, I've been obsessed with this GameStop thing happening, reading about the strings that are being pulled behind the scenes, and what is Reddit say about it? What's on Wall Street Journal, you know, those kind of things. So all sort of like over consume on a topic. And just kind of refresh throughout the day. And I'll find myself getting distracted. Like, oh, man, I wonder, I wonder what GameStop is doing right now. You know, same thing when slack was out, or whatever you sort of like get, you get really, this gravitational pull towards whatever global event is happening, like Igor mentioned earlier, I would say is my distraction now. And then YouTube, I like podcasts and stuff, I prefer to sort of watch at times. And then that can, you can, you know, you want to learn something about audio engineering, or chess or whatever. And then the little recommendations in the side, like that same person played chess with someone famous. And then you click that, and now it's their talk show. And you very quickly get into these sensationalist things. But you're slowly led there. And if you if you're not careful, you know, you, you went to YouTube to learn something for free. And then all of a sudden, you know, you're in some, you know, weird, weird angle of the internet,
Charles Knight:there is a way to mindfully consume social media, and videos, and newsletters like that. That's, I think that is
Robert Greiner:why I disagree on the social media. But videos and newsletters. Yeah, I think. And Tristan Harris has a documentary, the Social Dilemma around this, the algorithms that these companies are building have gotten stronger than our weaknesses. We worry about the singularity, right, which I'm personally not a believer in when automated intelligence, computer intelligence gets stronger than our strengths, then we have to kind of wonder what's going to happen to us as humans. I don't know about all that. But they've certainly gotten stronger than our weaknesses. So they know how to poke us the right way. If they show you something blue Charles, that will have a different effect than if they show me the same feed with something red. And it's all just a law of large numbers game. I think you're playing with fire, the more you engage with with some of these more nefarious social media companies that their whole business model is basically built on keeping your eyes distracted on their platform.
Charles Knight:Yeah, I bet that's why i don't i don't have social media on my phone. Because the I don't think I'm strong enough to resist that. I was looking up some stats. completely unrelated. We weren't talking about this. But there's a maybe like a billion viewers of YouTube a year, something like that, like a billion different people that watch YouTube videos. And I pay for YouTube premium. So I don't see ads. I don't know if y'all pay for that or not. But yeah. And I was curious, though, what percentage of the population would pay for that, right? To get rid of advertisements, 1% and 1%, only 1%. I already paid for youtube music. It's like 10 bucks a month or something like that. So I can play songs for the kids. YouTube premium was like three extra dollars a month. And it got rid of those ads. And I know people who make three times as much as I do, who refuse to pay that. And they continue to subject themselves to advertisements. And that's just baffling to me. I wish there was a paid version of Facebook, right? Where you can not get the algorithm treatment, and you can just get what you want. But that, but that's not their business model. Right. To your point. That's why would they do that?
Robert Greiner:Right? That that's actually a big recommendation of the group that's talking about some of the dangers of social media. And it's not really regulated. So you know, Saturday morning, cartoons used to be a thing. It was illegal for TV stations to play certain types of commercials during that time because they knew that kids were watching. There's no such regulation to go And prohibit social media companies from advertising to teenage girls at 2am capitalizing on loneliness and depression. So basically monetizing those emotions with nothing to control it. And so yeah, it's it's pretty nefarious and that again, you're up at 2am looking at YouTube or Facebook or Twitter or Tick Tock you're not getting making any kind of progress towards your goals and you're diminishing your ability to, to do that tomorrow. What about yours? What's so distracting in your life? Now that we've gone down this distraction, rabbit hole, thank you.
Igor Geyfman:YouTube is is basically unwatchable. With the advertising. I sometimes I'll go over to like my family's house or whatever, and they'll have their YouTube on, and they don't pay for YouTube premium. And I, I basically just want to leave absolutely one, okay,
Charles Knight:that that's gonna be an anomaly then right? If only 1% of the viewers watch it, all three of us?
Robert Greiner:Well, it depends, we mostly go to YouTube, at least our original intention when we enter the platform is to learn something. So you want to see like, free tutorials or whatever, you can learn a lot for free on YouTube, which is great, like, that's a great service. But I think if you're just going to watch music videos, or be entertained and watch fail videos, that kind of thing. Or if you're a kid, like right, your parents probably might not want to pay for it. I think in those kind of situations, most people probably don't. And then you're even doubled your distraction.
Igor Geyfman:My infinity pool has really changed in the pandemic, pre pandemic, my infinity pool, I use an app called pocket, which helps you save articles and stuff like that from the web. And for several years, I would get a letter from pocket where they would say, hey, you're like in the top 1% or top 5% of our readers, like as far as words saved. And you know, that was probably indicative of a problem. Because that's my infinity pool. Like I would go to the Discover page. And I would just read articles. A lot of times as I read that article, there's interesting related articles that are linked, that are not even on the pocket platform, and I dive into those. And then I'd be like, Oh, I don't understand this particular phenomenon. I'm going to Wikipedia that. And so maybe it's not an infinity pool, but it's like a rabbit hole. And so that was pre pandemic, that was the worst.
Robert Greiner:We all have the same information consumption entertainment problem that just Charles uses his inbox. Like I use Reddit. Yeah, you use pocket. It's the same problem, same thing.
Igor Geyfman:And during the pandemic, it's been YouTube. And Robert, it did start as I go to YouTube to learn things. But that is no longer the case. I now watch, you know, like reaction videos. I like the expanse TV show. And so there's people who react to the episodes and they talk about, they do like an analysis of the episode. There was a time during the pandemic where I was just watching this guy from, I think he was from Tennessee, or Kentucky or something like that. But he would just cut wood. Like he would cut down trees. And then he would process the trees into planks. And I would watch him.
Robert Greiner:That's a really satisfying. they would watch someone like deep and enthralled in the left. Yeah, like, it sounds silly. But I know what you're talking about. It's like really interesting, especially if you know nothing about that stuff.
Igor Geyfman:very strange way YouTube has become my go to infinity pool, just like you to just like,
Robert Greiner:guide someone to recurse out of this distraction around distractions like I think we've really gone into and I think it's helpful to it's like, nobody's immune, like, we're all humans, these things have us beat, the best thing you can do is limit your exposure or delete, especially the one whatever the one app is that really kind of crushes your productivity, maybe just start there. Cal Newport has a great book, we just mentioned him digital minimalism. He also has another great one, deep work. Those two sort of make the case from a productivity standpoint, how to manage those things in your life. And so definitely would recommend going in those directions, or what was the book he recommended yellow indestructible by Nir Eyal.
Charles Knight:And I would highly recommend, look at meditation to strengthen your focus and, and indistractibility.
Robert Greiner:Yeah,
that's the muscle that the book teaches you the mindset. The practice like that, building the muscle to be able to do it, not just to learn about it. Yes. So there you go. I mean, there's a there's a recommendation in there for everybody. So pivoting a little bit where 10% through the year, or y'all 10% through your goals. Have you have you gotten 10% progress made on your goals that you've set for the year?
Charles Knight:You know, I'm just asking myself, do I feel like I've made good progress against goals in 30 days, 30 days or so. And my, my general feeling is positive to that. And so I would say, yes, but I also I don't, I don't know if I consciously did this or not, I deliberately left January open, because I knew it would be crazy coming back from the holidays, and it certainly has been. And in February, my calendar is already set up to be even more focused on my goals. And so I'm actually really excited about that, because I've had way more distractions because I didn't, I wasn't intentional about blocking my time, in January. But I know in February, I have time blocked off to focus on goals. And man, I'm ready to go. So I'm, this is probably the best that I've ever been in terms of focused on goals in my entire life. And so this, this is certainly an anomaly. Certainly an anomaly. I'm not this, I'm not always this good. But I'm feeling really good about my goals.
Robert Greiner:I feel better about my goals this year than I feel like I deserve to. Because Charles and you know this, we had a couple of things workwise fall into our laps early in the year, and had that not happened, I probably I know I would not be feeling as good as I am right now. I don't think I'm 10% through. I haven't put enough intentionality in January, around meeting those goals. But I have responded to things that went my way. And so for 2021 is off to a pretty good start because of that. And when I think about one of the recommendations I want to make out of this is on your calendar right now, pause the episode, if you have to open it up. And in December of this year, block out some time to plan for 2022 because things tend to fill in around your calendar. But if something's already on there, you have much less likely of a chance to get stepped on. So blocked, blocked, maybe double the time you think you need on two different weeks. And that way you can go in the end of 2021, you have time built out, you can start to plan 2022 and hit the ground running in January. And you're going to really like start, you get a head start on the race and two weeks in, you're on Mile Marker number two, and everyone else is still kind of hanging out drinking hot chocolate by the start line. Right. And so that that's kind of one really practical thing. We've talked about a lot of books and ideas and thoughts, but go block that time right now. And I think you'll you'll be in a good spot at the beginning of 2022 to say, hey, when 2022 is 10% over February 8, or whatever day it is, you'll feel really good about where you're at. I think that's a good start.
Charles Knight:Can I take that one step further, Robert? I love it. Because that yes, I have that like annually on my Google Calendar. I block a whole week, week between Christmas and New Year's per year in review and goal setting. The other thing that I do is I set quarterly reviews for myself. So it is a four days throughout the year. It is on a work day. So this is not something that you do on the weekend, like take time off and reassess like your goals and your progress in the prior quarter look ahead to the next quarter. Those two things, I think it's what I've been putting in place over the past few years, which is probably why I'm so focused with my goals right now.
Robert Greiner:And what you've done is you've created an idea of a waypoint, right, you're on a journey, which is a year long. If you're flying in a plane, if you're sailing on a boat, driving in a car, point A to point B, you're never on target, you're never 100% on track, you're always drifting. And so this allows you to take a take a beat, reassess. We talked about the portfolio view of life and perma V, there's, there's always something that's lagging behind and something that you're doing really good at that's just human nature gives you a chance to sort of readjust, we did that together on this podcast when we did the perma v series. And I tell you what, like my my exercise went way up, I was just looking at my app that closed my exercise ring in January of last times. And in December to zero, like it might have been to, like on accident. That's because we had these conversations. And you know, for me, we talked about distractions, YouTube, things like that I get on the treadmill, put a weighted vest on, and just watch something mindless to be entertained for a little bit. And that works for me, my wife, Diana, she likes to go on long runs and just kind of clear her mind. That's what's good for her. Whatever works. Closing the ring, though was what was important for me and my goal was to do it every day didn't meet that goal, but sure as heck a lot better than than it was last year. And so I think the sort of waypoints and adjustments however you do them really help in the long term. And I'll share one quote really quick from my favorite chef Gordon Ramsay. He said this on Hell's Kitchen a lot. That's not how you start. It's how you finish. The year is 10% over. The good news is you have 90%. Left, it's probably a really good time right now to take a step back, create one of those waypoints. You don't have to wait until the end of the quarter, determine what's important, make some adjustments, we have a bunch of podcasts for that, you can just go back and look at our perma v series and take a few steps forward. And it won't be perfect. But again, it's how you end. And so I think you you saw a lot of a lot of time and space to meet your 2021 goals, but your run, your runway is 10% shorter. And so you got to pick up the pace if your behind where you want to be.
Igor Geyfman:Robert, would you say if you don't listen to those podcasts, you're highly unlikely to meet goals this year.
Robert Greiner:I would love to but no, you might you might be worse off if you listen to the data supported either way. So we certainly appreciate it.
Igor Geyfman:Yes,
please like and subscribe. And leave comments below.
Robert Greiner:Yes, reach out anytime. [email protected].
Charles Knight:The waypoints thing I really like Robert. because inevitably we will fall off track, we will more than drift, we will just crash and burn. And when when I have done that, in the past, it's always been really hard to start again. And so these quarterly waypoints. For me, it's a time to kind of interrupt that pattern. Whether I'm working really hard and being successful towards a goal, or I haven't made any progress over the past two and a half months, I can take that time to reevaluate where I've been where I want to go and begin a new. And so I love that I did waypoints thanks for that.
Robert Greiner:Awesome, I wish I came up with it. But I got that advice from a guy named Dan, I really, really, really admire who will probably never listen to this. But Dan, if you're listening, Thank you, appreciate you, man,
Igor Geyfman:I would say that I'm behind. If we're 10% through the year, I would say I'm only about 5% into the goal. But I also think that's a good thing, knowing myself, because I tend to have two modalities that I work in. And it kind of relates to the Gordon Ramsay quote that Robert, shared, if I start super hot, I tend to fizzle out and not finish. But if I ramp into it consistently, I tend to have an acceleration slope. And so it makes sense for me to be slightly behind. At the beginning, eventually, there'll be a break even point. And so for me, I think it's good that I'm actually behind. And not everybody works that way. Obviously, some people have more of a constant performance. So people really like to start super energetic because that, that gets them a leg up, and that encourages them, and they get it done. But knowing myself, I, I feel pretty good, I wouldn't feel good. If I hadn't started. If I was at zero instead of 5%, then something would be wrong. And I'd have to really evaluate what's going on. But the slow ramp for me, probably a good sign,
Robert Greiner:man, you've hit on something. So key around knowing yourself. So in the past, I mean, Robert, five years ago, might have just called bs on that and said, You're just making excuses for not being far enough along in your goals. I think though, it's really helpful to know how you're wired, and your tendencies. You know, in golf, I hit a fade. So when I hit the ball, it kind of goes to the right, whether I wanted to or not. And so I should just say more to the left, because there's nothing like, I don't really know how I can fix that at this point in my life, like I've tried. And so you got to aim in the correct way. I think you know, you knowing that about yourself, you can bake that intentionally into your plan. And if it's intentional, then that's great. If you if you delude yourself into thinking you won't, it'll be different this time. Or you don't know that about yourself that can cause problems down the road. If you're on a diet, maybe eating a piece of cheesecake is okay. As long as it's intentional. I think for you. That's really insightful. That's a good thing to know about yourself. And that will help exponentially increase the probability that you'll be successful in your goals.
Igor Geyfman:It's from like a lifetime of introspection. And only lately have I started to understand myself in a way that's helpful to me. I think a lot of previous years, I would be surprised if I didn't meet my goals. I'd be like, oh, what happened? But as I, as I look back, I started to understand and see patterns. And so that's, that's where we're at
Robert Greiner:any closing thoughts, we gave a lot of resources, went deep on distraction, got distracted on distraction, which I love. There are things you can do to make incremental progress. You can't, you're not going to be perfect, you're not going to be able to get where you're you need to go in one major step. It's just a bunch of little decisions that start today. And so I think this is a good time to think about a waypoint. Hopefully some of these resources materials we've recommended are helpful and we're going to start next week with a brand new series. So any closing thoughts for either of you guys?
Charles Knight:suggestion to people is that if you fail in your goals in the first 10%, or throughout the year, whatever, just give yourself a break. Like Don't, don't beat yourself up about it. That's, that's, that's about the worst thing that you can do. You know, because it's, yeah, I'm not gonna share all my goals this year, I know it. And that's, that's okay, I'm gonna design my goals in a way to stretch me. And I know that that means I may and will likely fail, just to just no judgement. It's just use it as a learning experience. If you fail, fall off the bandwagon. Think about how you can adjust your system like Igor to plan better for your tendencies. And try again next year. These are lifelong pursuits that we've had to kind of know ourselves and build plans that in systems that work to help us accomplish things. And they're all very different. Like I've got these quarterly waypoints. Roberts got these year end reviews, Igor is going to outpace us all in q2, and q3, and this beautiful man, it's a uniquely personal thing.
Robert Greiner:Couldn't agree more,
especially after a really tough year for sure.
Igor Geyfman:There's an inscription at the Oracle of Delphi, and it says, Know thyself, and Nothing's more important than that. So that's where I leave our listeners. It's also in the matrix.
Robert Greiner:There's a new Matrix coming out Matrix 4
Did you see that?
Igor Geyfman:matrix? You know, it's supposed to release last year? It was to come out like summer 2020.
Robert Greiner:Oh, really?
So I'm late. I'm late to the game just like always.
Igor Geyfman:Thanks COVID.
Robert Greiner:Yeah. There's a nice Space Jam coming out as well with LeBron James. excited about seeing that with the kids. Yeah, I guess maybe I'll have to show him like the first one.
Igor Geyfman:And then we can we do a reaction video for some of these films?
Robert Greiner:Yeah.
Igor Geyfman:All right. We're on.
Robert Greiner:That's just another way to not meet your goals. There you go. All right. Well, hey, it was really great seeing you today. It's crazy. The years 10% over. That's crazy, right? I feel like we just said Happy New Year to each other. Yeah.
Igor Geyfman:Thanks for hanging out guys. This is great.
Robert Greiner:enjoyed as always, have a great weekend. That's it for today. Thanks for joining. And don't forget to follow us on Twitter @wannagrabcoffee or drop us a line at [email protected]
