Small Steps that Lead to Quick Wins and Big Victories

Rob:

(00:14):  Hello friends. I don’t know about you, but too often, the first word that comes out of my mouth, when somebody asks me to help them to do something with them or for them, I say, you know, I don’t have enough time. I just don’t have enough time. And sometimes you do, you just say it reflexively because the truth is sometimes the hardest part about taking on new tasks and responsibilities about moving forward in your business life in your personal life is taking the time to get started because you do have time. You just have to choose the right time to get started. And we’re gonna talk about that during today’s podcast. Hello folks. This is, is Rob brown of the truest fan podcast. Welcome to episode number eight. It is great to be with you, as you may recall, if you’ve been listening to the podcast, I’ve been taking time to kind of go through the key lessons, the key steps in, in what I call the truest fan effect.

(01:25):  They’re the eight steps that if you work on them consistently leads you to the point that you are regularly a truest fan of yourself. You’re a truest fan for people around you. You enjoy serving them, realize that we have a God who is our Truet fan, and only asks that we be a truest fan to him in routine in return. And that sounds like big stuff. And it is, but it’s just like when somebody asks you, can you help me with this? And you say, I don’t have time. That’s probably not what you really mean. What you really mean is please help me find a way to get started. Yes, I wanna help you. But first I need to have a way to get started. What’s that first step? What can I do so that I can feel like I’m making progress and just not weighing myself down with another priority with another distraction, because certainly we all have too many of those.

(02:33):  Well, what I’d like to do today is to walk you through some examples of small steps. Sometimes I call them quick wins. Things that you can do to get a process started, that if you do it consistently begins to get you results faster than you thought was possible. That allows you to do that new thing, to help somebody else out or start that new project. But, but also gives you assurance that if you keep doing it, you’ll get better at it. And, and a lot of other things will change. So here’s some examples. So and I’m gonna start kind of walking through a typical day because when I’m working with some of my clients as a coach one of the things that we’re doing is we’re analyzing their day. Like where are you spending your time? And they wanna say, you know, well, let’s start it when I get to the office.

(03:29):  Well, I wanna start before you get to the office. I wanna start before you get outta bed. In fact, I wanna suggest that one quick win one small step that most of us can take that may seem a little painful at first, but is certainly worthwhile is just getting up 10 minutes earlier than you normally do. And I’m not saying, you know, do something crazy, like starting a 5:00 AM routine. Although I know that does help a lot of people for some of us who maybe don’t feel the need or, or see the, the complete purpose behind getting up a couple of hours earlier than we normally do. What if you just said, I’m gonna get up 10 minutes earlier each day. And during that first 10 minutes, I am not going to turn on my devices. I’m simp going to go and get a glass of water or brush my teeth.

(04:24):  And during that time of quiet and silence, where you are setting the tone for the day, you just use that 10 minutes to be calm. Not to worry about your to-do list, not to worry about what’s gonna come in minute 11, but just give yourself 10 minutes of quiet to start today. I know when I do that and I try to do this every day, that my days are better on those days. And the more days in a row that I put together with that routine, the more it builds, the more compound it’s a small step that can lead to a big result of clarity and focus and really being in a position to do the most important things that I need to do each day. How about you? Could you get up 10 minutes earlier? Let’s stay in the morning routine. Let’s stay in the time before you get to the office.

(05:21):  You know, I’m of the age now that all of my children have left home, so I don’t have any small kids running around and there are a lot of days. I wish that I did. And if you do, and while you do, what, if you made sure that in the morning before you get too busy, after you’ve had that 10 minutes of quiet, what if you just had breakfast with your family breakfast with your children, eat a bowl of fruit loops and just have some conversation, talk with them about what’s important in their day. Think about the way that that can help them, but also bounces back to you because you’re in the moment you’re not rushing. You’re giving the day time to get going, and it might not be breakfast. Maybe it’s dropping them off at school. I’m, I’m probably gonna tell more stories about myself.

(06:19):  I’m in this section that I normally might like, but I can just remember those days. I mean, it was a long time ago where I, where I was able to take my daughters to school. They were great days. I couldn’t do it that often. Oh. But, but gosh, I love to do it. I love to do it again. Think about how different your day could be. Okay. Now you’re at the office. And the first thing that you may tend to do is check your email, right? You just wanna check your email, see what kind of messages have come in early in the morning or overnight. And that’s fine. And I’ll talk a little bit more about checking messages and email in a second, but after you sit down, what I would suggest you do, the very first thing you do is spend 10 or 15 minutes planning out your day.

(07:12):  I don’t have time to go into it now, but I have a routine that I call the 4d framing routine, where I look at those things on my to-do list and decide what needs, what I can delete, what I can delegate what I can delay and then what really needs to be done today. A quick way of doing some quick planning to make sure that my day is this order is it can possibly be. And there are a lot of ways to do that. But 15 minutes of planning, when you first hit your office first, sit down at your desk. That’s another example of a quick win of a simple routine that when you build on it day in and day out helps you become more productive because you are focusing on those things that are most important to you.

(08:07):  Are you ready to discover your true purpose, live with impact and build an ever greater legacy. Then you need to make time for what truly matters most. Go to truest fan.com/challenge to begin the free truest fan seven day quick start. Okay. Let’s skip the rest of the morning and go to the middle of the day. What I know from reading several different research reports and studies is that too many of us lose the quality of the time that we’re spending at what we’re working on in the afternoon, because we don’t take a real break between what we were doing in the morning and what we were doing in the afternoon. Maybe we do go off for lunch, but it’s busy. It’s rush. Maybe we’re eating at our desks, but maybe just maybe if you took another 10 minutes in the middle of the day with no devices before you get to work in earnest and do something that interrupts the pattern of that day, maybe it’s taking a walk. And the only thing you have going on in your earbuds is just some quiet, simple, enjoyable music that helps you get focused.

(09:26):  Maybe it’s taking the time to say a prayer and just letting God know how much you appreciate all that’s going on in your world. And thank him for people in your lives life who is making a difference to you. But, but what about that? Again, it’s another example of something that we all can do that can give us some quick wins. But also because we’re doing it repeatedly, it’s a small step that leads to big results to be being more focused in the afternoon, afternoon, afternoon. And you probably get home from work a little bit early because by taking the time to focus in the afternoon, maybe the same way you do in the morning, the day’s not gonna drag on you’ll know what your priorities are, and you’ll have the time and the energy G to focus on them. One of my favorite quick wins is what I call your email hour.

(10:25):  And maybe for some of you, it’s two half hour periods of time or two, one hour periods of time. It, it really depends on, on your business and the way that it flows through the, the emails or the other that you receive messages. But too many of us have our email and our messaging systems on all the time. And we’re constantly responding to them. But I know that when I have a client and I talk with him or her about implementing an email hour or, or a time where they’re gonna and calls and emails each day, maybe just before lunch, and then just before you leave in the evening, they get more done. And if they work the system out, right, they don’t miss anything or anybody. In fact, they’re more efficient. It gives them hours back in their day. In fact, I’ve got a great story.

(11:16):   I was talking for with a client last week who told me about this great idea Matt, you know who you are, who told me about this great idea that he had for blocking off two half hour periods of time in his day to deal with his emails. And he’d been doing it for a week and it was awesome. And he got the idea from somebody that wasn’t me. But then as he was explained to me what he was doing, he goes, you know, Rob, I think you told me about that a few years ago. And I had, but I’m not one to tell people I told you. So, even though I told him so right, Matt, anyway, it’s important. It can save a ton of time. What can you do to put like tasks together in email and returning messages, returning phone calls is one of those things that you can do.

(12:09):  It’s a, it’s a small, simple thing that when you do it each day can literally save you hours in your week. Some of you may be trying to grow your business, or you’re trying to do something to raise money for a cause that you volunteer for. And you say, you know, I just don’t have time to do it. I don’t have time to, to re out to people and have those conversations that I need to have. And I don’t have time to put that big marketing campaign into place. Let me suggest that if you carved out about 10 minutes a day to send four personalized messages to people you believe could help you either put you in contact people who could do business with you or could help you raise money for that cause, and just do some networking, but just do it in little chunks, four messages here every day, 10 minutes a day, that can be another small step that leads to big results.

(13:10):  And sometimes you get quick wins because those first people that you put on your list to do that networking with have been sitting in the back of your mind and they can do something to help you. They just need to know that you need that help, that you want them to reach out to you again, another simple routine. And then the last thing I’ll mention you. What about in the E evening or before you go to bed, you’ve been busy all day. You’ve gotten a lot of stuff done and you just wanna relax and settle in. So you have a good night’s sleep. So it’s easier to get up that 10 minutes earlier the next day. Well, I would suggest that you end the day the same way you started without those screens in front of you without that, that cell phone or that iPad in front of you.

(14:02):  Just, just turn it off. It it’ll be there in the morning when you wake up, but take 10 minutes, 15 minutes, maybe, maybe half an hour. I, I don’t know what the right amount of time is for you to line down, but don’t just do it by accident plan for it. I hope you can tell by the things that I’m describing to you today that this isn’t rocket science, but it is common sense. It is the reality of ways to deal with the busyness and the distractions of the world. We have that we’ve live in today, that we can do these small things, these simple things that will give us some quick wins and set us up for bigger and bigger successes over time, because we are taking control of our days by implementing simple success habit, simple routines that can make a big difference in our lives.

(14:56):  And maybe you can’t do all of these at one time. It’s probably best not to try to do all of them at one time. But whether it’s that getting up 10 minutes early, having breakfast with your kids, doing that daily P planning. When you get to the office, taking a midday, break, planning out your email hour, planning out some time to send some messages to do some networking or that break that you take at the end of the day before you sleep, pick one of those things and try it out for the next week, try it out and see what kind of results you get. Make it a habit, make it a routine. And if you begin to see some results from that, that will be great. Encouragement to try another one and try another one. And I promise you, then it’ll be easier when somebody comes to you and says, Hey, I need your help with this. You can say, yes, I can help you because I have time because I have better control over the way that I schedule my priorities. That’s a big part of being a truest fan, making sure that you have time for what matters the most. I hope this helps. Thanks for listening. Remember as always, I am your truest fan take care.

Take care.

Rob Brown