Welcome to Episode #63 of The Planner Podcast – the #1 secret to getting results.
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I was reminded of a quote from James Clear recently: “It’s hard to build momentum if you’re dividing your attention”.
This has come up time and time again this week for me, my students and the digital product 1:1 clients I coach.
And I resisted the very thought of this for so long. It felt stifling to restrict my ideas and activities – and doing everything worked well for me. Until it didn’t!
Listen in to hear about how simplification and focusing your attention can actually lead to MORE results and more freedom.
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Transcript for the #1 Secret to Getting Results.
[00:00:00] Hi, this is Mim Jenkinson and you’re listening to The Planner Podcast.
Hi, lovely and welcome back. A quick one today, I saw a quote and I thought of you all, I thought of myself. I thought of so many people who I’ve been speaking with lately, and it’s from James Clear, and the quote is, it’s hard to build momentum if you are dividing your attention, and it just got me. So many of the conversations I’ve been having with others, with my coaching clients, with my students, with my business friends, and in the mirror with myself have been all about this recently.
We know all the quotes about, we only have so many hours in the day. We know that quote about we all have the same hours as Beyonce. We’ve all got feelings about that, that quote. But I am coming back time and time and time again. To the fact that we can focus on so many different things, but we can’t necessarily expect to gain momentum and to get results at the [00:01:00] speed that we want, or with the ease that we want, or in the way that we want by the time that we want all of those different things, and for a long time.
Oh my goodness. I really resisted this. I resisted it so much. I resisted anyone who said you couldn’t multitask. Well, I resisted anyone who said, you can’t have everything. I resisted anyone who said you shouldn’t act on all of your ideas. Like the whole thing just felt so stifling to me and, and such a theft of my freedom because, I’m a creative person.
I have loads of ideas. We all do, don’t we? And I want to act on them all. And sometimes I have the time and the capacity and the energy and the effort to be able to act on them all. So my thinking has always been, so why not? Why? Why wouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I do that? Why shouldn’t I do the things that I want to do?
Most of you know that seven and a half years ago I was diagnosed with cancer. All is well now, thankfully. But that really, solidified more that life is so short and I want [00:02:00] to do the things that I want to do. So that really added fuel to the fire of nothing’s going to hold me back. I’m going to act on everything.
But that said, and the reason that I wanted to share this today, At the end of the day, I, I’ve been really looking at the facts and the data of what is actually what is actually happening com compared to the goals that I’ve set myself. So when I think about my long-term goals, even the goals I’ve set myself at the end of the year for this year.
When I think about the things that I really want to happen with me personally, health-wise, business-wise for the family, all kinds of different things that are so important to me. And I’ve been thinking am I making progress? Am I at the place that I want to be? And the answer to some of those things has been no.
No, you’re not there yet. Maybe I haven’t even started some things yet. There were things that I, and I’m sure you’re the same we’re only in the end of April right now, and goodness meand there’s still a big chunk of the year left to to achieve the things that we want to achieve.
But I’ve been getting much more [00:03:00] focused on what am I, what am I doing, or how am I being in a way that I’m not helping myself? And I’ve found. I’m, I am trying to do too much, and I do believe in that quote, you can have everything, but not at the same time. I am. I’ve really come to know that one for myself personally over the past few years, and I also realize that there are ways to create freedom.
With fewer things. There are ways to create a feeling of abundance and I can do everything that I want, but within, I guess, some more constraints and boundaries, and it doesn’t seem to make sense, I know to say those things and it can, I guess it can be a bit counterintuitive to think this way, but the way that I think about this is the same way that I talk to people about using a planner and creating a planning routine.
When they think that those things are going to take too much time or give them too many restrictions and not give them the, the freedom that they’re looking for. But I [00:04:00] say this so many times every single week, I plan for freedom. I use my planner. I have created a really fun but fast planning routine that creates future freedom.
So I know that every time I. Make my to-do lists. I’ll plan out my days for the next week or the next month, whatever it is I’m planning for. I’m planning for future freedom, and that’s a big difference between just planning to do things or to get things done, or to check off boxes or to plan for future freedom.
And it can be as simple as planning white space and having time in my planner Next. To do nothing, to just think about those ideas, to rest, to walk, to, to do anything, anything at all. Or it could be that I’m planning for a certain project or event or appointment or a set of to do items that I need to do, and I’m planning for those in a way that I can get them done faster or more efficiently in some way.
So that then again, I’ve got more time for freedom later, and this is where I’m coming back to the quote by James. Clear. [00:05:00] It’s hard to build momentum if you are dividing your attention. And how does that sit with you? What does it make you feel? Can you think about all of the things? It could be a few things.
It could be multiple things that you have been focusing your attention on in the past. Week in the past, 24 hours in the past month, year, whatever works for you. And how far do you think you’re gaining momentum with those things? And would it be easier if you had less things to focus on? Now, of course, there are so many things that are competing for our attention.
I’m a busy mom of two and one businesses. I have. Health restraints and constraints that I need to work within. But at the same time, I’m very blessed in that I do receive a lot of support and, and I do have free time. And I’m very aware that that wasn’t always the case for me. It really wasn’t. And it definitely isn’t always the case for you.
And there are some things that we can’t change. We, I don’t believe we have all the hours in the day that Beyonce has because I don’t believe we have all [00:06:00] the free hours in the day that. Possibly has not judging Beyonce, no idea what her planner looks like. I’d love her to show me. I’d love to see her planner.
So I know that we all have different amounts of time and, and different support levels. Some people have none at all. When you think about the hours that you have had this week that you could choose where you spent those hours not the things that you can’t get out of, but the things that you can choose.
Do you feel that your attention is being divided? Do you feel that you could simplify things? I’m having a huge audit right now of my life and business and, all kinds of different, even people, all kinds of things to see where I’ve been splitting my attention and how I can make some changes to simplify things so that I am focusing my attention in fewer places.
But gaining momentum more so. So I’ll give you an example about this and this example is for business, but however you can look at this in exactly the same way, because it’s a simple example. You can think about this in the same way for anything that you are [00:07:00] working towards right now. So I was on a coaching call with my, digital product.
Group coaching clients this week, and we were talking about business and how I roughly spend my time in with my business, and this is how I spend my time to be able to create content, but also grow the business with marketing, advertising, promotion, all of that fun stuff too. So, Typically in the week, when I think about how I spend the time that I have working on the business, around 20%, maybe 10 to 20% of that is content creation and maybe 70, 80, 90%.
The rest really is based on growth, so it’s marketing activities. I mean, it could include creating some content for that book, marketing, promotion, advertising, sales. Growing, growing the business, getting my products out there, talking to prospective students and members and clients, getting to know my audience.
Just all of that. So I think that that’s something that I have definitely worked out over time works for [00:08:00] me, and I know from speaking to many other people in business and the successful ones, it seems to be how. They’re spending their business hours too. So for example, if I were spending 90% of my time just creating content, or yeah, just creating content or creating something that wasn’t focused on growth, then I’d certainly see very easily why my business wasn’t growing.
But anyway, so if you think about that, let’s think about 80% of my time every week is focused on marketing. My. How about if I was focused on marketing eight different products? That means that 10% of my 100% of hours that I have every week, 10% is going to each of those products when it comes to marketing.
So can you see immediately how slow that growth would probably be compared to if I had 40, 50, or even 80% of my time focused on marketing? Only one product. Now for a long time, like I said in the beginning, I really resisted this, focus that so many successful people that I follow have of [00:09:00] keeping things simple.
Focus on one thing. Alex Homos talks all the time about focusing on helping one particular kind of person with one product and through one marketing channel. He’s not the first person that I’ve heard that from, but I think it just really, the way that he described it really struck a chord with me lately and that.
Alongside James Clear, who, if you haven’t read his phenomenal book Atomic Habits yet, you must, I will link it in the show notes. It really just drives home to me. That’s the same for me, and I feel so much freer when I do simplify things. So I want, I wanted to pass this on to you in case any of this has has resonated with you.
When you think about the things that you’re not making momentum with and when you think about all of the different things and all of the different places and people that you’re focusing your attention on. Is there anything that you could change to simplify things, to delegate things, to put some things on the shelf until later so that you are simplifying where your attention is going, and therefore [00:10:00] the results will be that you’ll gain more momentum with that thing or those fewer things.
So let me know. Send me a dm. I’d love you to DM me at Paper Planner Club on Instagram, and I would love you to let me know if this has resonated with you and if there’s any areas that you realize now in your life, business, whatever it is that you might pop on the shelf for now, and the fewer things that you could focus on.
I’d love to hear from you. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this episode and I can’t wait to see you in the next.
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