ATG 298 | Is There Money Involved? The Prioritization Question That Cuts Through the Noise

0:00If you read my new book, you'll never procrastinate again. I should know, I waited 34 years before I finally wrote my first one. When I discovered what's inside these pages, I wrote 11 more. You see, we procrastinators have a storehouse of creativity and energy we haven't tapped into. You're sitting on a gold mine right now. And the system to unlock it doesn't require a crushing amount of willpower. Life is already preset to hard. Why would we use a system that makes it harder? You need something that works on the days you have zero willpower? Just as well as it does on the days you're at 100%. Because procrastination is the most expensive fear. The price tag is your life. And every day you wait to begin, you're stealing from your future self. My new book, Procrastination Proof, is available now. And it gives you four simple permissions to beat procrastination for good. Pick up your copy today at johnacuff.com slash proof or wherever you buy books.

1:03Hey, everyone. And welcome to the all it takes is a gold podcast. I've spent the last 15 years, 15 years, helping more than a million people achieve everything from their smallest first step. I'm talking that very first step to their wildest dreams. Is he building a remarkable life is simple? It actually is. Here's here's how it works. Great thoughts turn into great actions, great actions turn into great results. Essentially what you think becomes what you do, what you do becomes what you get. That's what we explore on this podcast. I'm your host johnacuff and today I want to make a guest about you. I have a guest that I'd like to make here. Here's my guest. You have too much to do right now. Your to do list is a little bit a little bit out of control. There's a there's a sense of overwhelm that you see when you look at everything you need

2:04to do or want to do or have to do. How do I know because everybody feels that way right now? Very rarely do I meet somebody that says, yeah, I'm just not very busy. I don't have enough going on, especially when school starts again. Life is peaceful and easy. I don't know what the issue is. No, that's never what people tell me. In fact, they tell me the opposite. They've got too much going on. So in this series, we're doing four episodes around this topic. We're talking about how do you prioritize? How do you manage a massive to do list, a massive desire list in a way that gives you both peace and performance? Sounds a little impossible, right? It's not. All we're talking about is four questions. There are four simple questions that help you filter your to-do list in a way that allows you to actually get it done and have fun doing it. So last week, we talked about the first one. If you haven't heard that episode, by all means, go back and listen to that one. I think that every podcast you're like, so imagine that people immediately stop what

3:08they're doing and go back to the episode. But even if you don't go back and listen to that episode, you're going to get a lot out of today's because they're standalone. The four questions certainly work together, but they're also standalone. The question we're going to talk about today is very, very simple. It's only got four words. Are you ready? Here's the question I want you to ask the things on your to-do list. Is there money involved? Is there money involved? Now, money won't make you happy. Money won't by happiness. But it does fix a lot of problems, and that's a type of happiness. I've had no money in some money, and some money did fix a lot of problems. If you have no money, every problem is complicated. Every problem is big and cascades. I talked to somebody the other day who said, being poor was too expensive for me. And she said, if I had one situation go wrong with my car, it impacted my job because now I couldn't get to work.

4:10If that happened, then I couldn't buy groceries, and then it was cascading. So a good question to ask at the beginning of this is, is there money involved? Because it'll help you clarify your decision making. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to give you a really easy way to clarify which things you should do and when you should do them. The fun thing about money is it's not emotional. It's not fuzzy. It's not squirrely. It's just math. I like to ask questions like this. Will it cost me more if I don't accomplish this action this week? So as I look at my list, okay, if I don't do this this week, will it cost me more? For example, if I need to get a new PowerPoint slide that created, so I'm a public speaker, I do about 50 to 60 events all over the world every year, if I wait on getting the slides turned around, will that cost me more if I have to do it? Last minute and pay kind of a rush fee to the designer.

5:12It will. I now have a financial incentive, a very obvious financial incentive to do that task this week because she will rightfully so go, hey, it's kind of last second, it's last minute. Same with printing anything. If you need to print anything, you know that experience. If you wait to the last minute in certain parts of your life on certain tasks, it will be more expensive. So that's kind of a sub question I like to ask. Will it cost me more if I don't accomplish this action this week? Another sub question I like to ask is, will I waste money if I don't do this? Will I waste money if I don't take this action this week, this timeframe? For example, maybe you've got a gym that charges per lesson. So you've already prepaid for a certain number of training sessions. And if you skip out on one of those training sessions, say you don't go Thursday, you don't get that money back. So you'd put a little star next to that task.

6:13That's what we're doing with these questions. We're trying to put stars next to the task so that the end of this four part series, it's very easy to go, oh my gosh, this task has seven stars. This other one has zero. Why is it even on the list? If it got zero stars, why am I even stressed about it? But if you paid for a gym membership that charges per lesson or per training session and you don't go, you should put a star next to that one because you'll waste money if you don't do it this week. Another sub question I'll ask is, will I earn more if I do this now? Will I earn more if I do this now? I suppose this question might apply more to entrepreneurs or folks with side hustles, but even if you're a full-time job working guy or gal for a large corporation, I'd ask this question. Think about it this way. If you're a manager told you, these are your three priorities for this quarter. Here's what we're going to be measuring you against. Here's what we're going to talk about when we do an annual review.

7:14Guess which priorities will help you get a promotion. Guess which are tied to financial incentive. Those three priorities. Those are three things that you should bump to the top of your list. You should put a little star next to those. I think about that a lot when I speak. After I speak in an event, there's probably a day or two where I really need to take some action, meaning I need to follow up with people who have asked me about coming to their event and I learned a lesson. If you're in sales at all, this is a valuable lesson. It took me five to ten years to figure out. It took so long. I used to stand in the lobby after an event. Say I spoke somewhere for an hour to a company or a conference and there were 3,000 people there. I'd go to the lobby and maybe sign some books. People would come up and go, hey, we'd love to bring you to our event. We want to have you come to our company. I used to give them my business card and say, sure, I'd love to come to your event or I'd give them my contact info with a QR code.

8:17What I realized over time is that when I do that, I've just given them a job. I've just given them a task. I'm hoping they follow up with me. I just assigned them a job and that's the wrong direction. I'm the CEO of follow-up. It's my job. I've got the most skin in the game of follow-up. So now I go, sure, let me get your email address. I'll follow up with you. I own that task. If I follow up within the first 24 hours, it's even better because they've just seen what I do. They've just had a great moment that day, that 24-hour segment, matters more than a week later. There's times where if you go, will I earn more if I do this now? Or will I move this forward faster if I do this now? It's a really simple technique. Again, it just clarifies the money involved. There is financial reward. There is financial incentive around this. What if you said to me, okay, John? I love the questions, but I want a formula.

9:17I've got 10 things on my to-do list. I want a formula that makes it easier for me to pick the right thing. Great. I'll give you a formula. I got no problem with a formula. I call it the 147 technique. 147. Just take out your to-do list, number one through ten, and then do items one, four, and seven first. Why should you do items one, four, and seven? How can I possibly know that those are the most important in your life this week? Well, because motion beats perfection. Motion beats perfection. So many of us waste so much time prioritizing our to-do list instead of actually working on them. Part of the reason this happens is that when you pick something to work on a broken soundtrack, we talk about soundtracks a lot on this podcast. A repetitive thought will immediately pipe up and say, oh, you picked this one? This is actually the wrong thing to work on, right? I hate this for you, but this is the wrong thing. There's something more important you should be working on. I can't believe you picked this one. Everyone in the world would have picked the other thing.

10:18Are you sure you know what you're doing? And then you'll be tempted to jump to the other thing. You'll be like, oh, maybe I did pick the wrong thing. So you switch. You switch to something under your to-do list, but you know what's going to happen now? Your broken soundtrack says, oh, you know what? You know what? On second thought? This is wrong, too. This one's wrong, too. This is not the perfect thing to work on. There's actually a different task you should focus on. So you jump again and guess what happens? This is going to blow your mind. Guess what happens? It's the wrong task again. You keep jumping and jumping and jumping and jumping. Why? Because your broken soundtrack will never tell you that you're working on the perfect task. Because there is no perfect task. There are definitely tasks that are more important than others. That's why we're doing the star exercise. That's why we're asking these questions. You're asking something small, but that is important to your manager. Crushing something small, but it has long-term consequences. It's more important than something else.

11:19But there isn't a perfect task. So if the star approach doesn't work for you, try the one for seven. This method is especially helpful if you're dealing with a bunch of fun, personal goals. Like maybe your list right now is number one, I want to start a business. Number two, I want to write a book. Number three, I want to launch a podcast. Number four, I want to lose weight. Number five, I want to learn a new language. I want to learn Japanese. Number six, I want to read more. Number seven, I want to save money. Awesome. Those are big goals. Each one of them could fill all your free time. Don't pick one for seven. Pick one for or seven. Pick one of them and work on it for a month. For 30 days, just 30 days. Single month. Try to write a book. Throw all your free hours at that goal. Give it the end of the 30 days, you hated the experience. You didn't make any progress and you don't want to continue. Well, cool. Pick a different goal from your list. You'll be even better at the next goal because you learned about yourself during the last

12:19goal. That's what's fun. Every goal educates you for the next goal. If you pay attention, every goal is teaching you, okay, here's how you do goals. You'll be even better at the next one because of the last one. Most people will sit with the list of goals they have, especially personal goals, for 30 days trying to pick the perfect one instead of picking one and getting 30 days of experience. Don't be most people. So two things from this episode. It feels a little silly to summarize a 12-minute episode. I mean, how? And I always wonder, like, do people put this on 2X? They're very short episodes. Two things. Is there money involved? Look at your massive to-do list. Filter some of the priorities by asking that question. Is there money involved? Put a star by the ones that do involve a financial impact. And number two, try the 147 technique. Where if you have 10 things, just go, okay, I'm going all in. If you've got a smaller list, just do the one technique. Pick one thing and work on it for a period of time. Your to-do list doesn't have to be overwhelming.

13:21With the right tools and right techniques, you can actually learn to enjoy this massive amount of things that you have to do. That's question number two. We'll jump into question number three next week, and you are going to love that one. In the meantime, we'll put all the links in the show notes as always. Thank you for writing reviews. The reviews you write are super encouraging. Please make sure you like, subscribe, or follow whatever the kids are saying these days. I'll see you next week. And remember, all it takes is a goal.