February 7, 2023
Perry
Well, welcome to the Potential Leader Lab podcast. Episode number five. I'm your host, Perry Maughmer, and I'm very glad you decided to tune in. Now, I want to take a minute because this is an interesting process for me, because I'm actually experiencing the Explore, experiment, evolve cycle as I do each episode of this podcast and you get to listen in and experience it right along with me. There's nothing inherently good or bad, but it does mean if you're seeking continuity and predictability, you will most likely be solely sorely disappointed. I have been blessed with some great feedback and I'm processing it all as I go forward to see what works and what doesn't. So please keep it coming. I can't promise I'll make changes based on all of it, but I do appreciate it immensely. There is a caveat, and that means if you give it to me in real life, I might not appear to enjoy it because I'm not naturally good at listening to others ideas. But I am working on that as well. If you do find the podcast interesting, please take a few minutes and give it a review as that makes it easier for other folks to find it as well. And you can always recommend it if you believe that others might benefit from listening as well. So in this episode, we'll be exploring time, focus, energy, intent and attention. Now, not necessarily in that order.
00:01:13
This whole concept and the genesis of this stems from my more or less contempt for time management. So I wanted to explore some other concepts that might yield a better result and assist us all in our evolution. So as always, I want to start off with several quotes. The first one is from Charles Buxton. And he said, You will never have time for anything. If you want time, you must make it. Now, Lao Tzu said time is a creative thing to say. I don't have time is to say I don't want to. And that's one that I wholeheartedly believe in and one that I used to tell my kids all the time when they would tell me they were going to try to do something, I'd say, Just tell me now you're not going to do it. Because telling me you're going to try to do it is essentially telling me you're not going to do it. And then finally, this one from William Carlos Williams. And this is a real kind of thinker. Time is a storm in which we are all lost. Now. So again, today's topic is time versus focus, energy, attention and intent. So I'm going to talk about each of those concepts. The first one I'm going to cover relatively briefly is time. And the reason it's brief is because it's made up and it's also relative because of each person's perception of the passage of time can be quite different.
00:02:31
And it is literally made up. We made it up as human beings. And Abhijit, NASCAR, he's an author. He had the following quote, which I think is really interesting. Time is basically an illusion created by the mind to aid in our sense of temporal presence in the vast ocean of space without the neurons to create a virtual perception of the past in the future. Based on all of our experiences, there is no actual existence of the past and the future. All that there is the present. So when you really think about this. We live in the present, but the past and the future are constructs that our mind creates in order to make it okay with us to exist. So when you think of time management, so when you think of I'm going to plan my time, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. What you're really saying is I'm spending time thinking about the future and I'm wasting the present. And so one of the reasons that one of the main reasons I don't like time management is that we don't we can't make it up like we can't create more time. Time passes as it passes. And I think we're much better off if we turn our attention, no pun intended, to attention, focus, energy and intent. And so the first one I want to cover and talk about is really intent.
00:03:56
Now, intent. The reason I start with that is because intent is fundamental to both attention and focus. Before you can give anything your focus or attention, you need to actually commit to it. Otherwise, what you're doing or whatever you're doing is more out of habit. And when something is done habitually, it usually lacks attention and focus. So the reason I start with intent is we have to have intent in order to direct our attention and our focus. Now, intent is also unique in the sense that it typically occurs before the event takes place. It involves prior mental activities such as planning and preparing. When you have the intent to do something, it means you are prepared ahead of time to give it your all. So again, it's not habitual, it's not something I'm just doing. It's something that in advance I've created a focus in my mind that I'm going to do something. And that I want to get some result out of it. All right. So attention. So there's basically four types of attention. There is sustained, divided, selected and alternating. So. So sustained is like playing a video game. So, for instance, if we're going to play a video game, we're going to sustain our attention over time. So we're going to pay attention to it. Divided is something like I'm talking on the phone while I'm watching TV, so I'm doing two things at once simultaneously because unfortunately, doing things like talking on the phone and driving is also something that would be divided.
00:05:28
Attention. Now, selected attention is if I'm in a crowded room with a bunch of people, but I'm paying attention to one person. So I selected to pay attention to that one person amidst all the other things that are going on around me. And then finally alternating. So so this would be the easiest example would be I am reading a recipe and then I'm cooking. So so I'm alternating back and forth between the two things. So I'll go to, I'll read something and then I'll go do something. So I'm alternating back and forth, which is a little different than divided when I'm actually doing two things at the same time. So now we've talked about intent and we've talked about attention. And now we'll talk a little bit about focus. So focus. Is really they're kind of there nowadays. They talk about two different types, and that's either top down or bottom up. So the top down is voluntary. The top down is the executive part of our brain saying to us, we're going to pay attention to this, like we're going to focus on this thing in front of us. We're going to command our focus to do this versus bottom up, which is more stimulus driven, which could be your phone rings, your notifications, ding, something is responding.
00:06:45
You're being more responsive to things going on around you. And so the difference between those two things, obviously, is, one, we're we're commanding, we're in charge of and the other we're not. And one of the arguments they make typically with technology in today's world is that a lot of it is bottom up driven. We're being we're stimulus driven. So we're checking things, we're hearing notifications, our phones going off, our emails going off. And that is what's commanding our focus. And we're shifting to those things instead of having a more kind of top down voluntary approach where we're commanding our focus to go where we want it. Now, I want to do I want to talk a little bit about focus in attention, because they're not the same thing and they may seem like they're one and the same, but they're very different. So if you think about this, focus is an elevated version of attention. So attention is a wider field and then focuses will narrow down to the thing that we want to focus on. Correct. So attention is we're paying attention. We're paying attention, as the saying goes, to a wider field. But then focus is we'll narrow that down as we go. So so there is a difference between the two things. Now we're going to talk a little bit about energy. So there's four areas, I'll call them, where we get energy. And that's our body, our emotions, our mind and our spirit.
00:08:16
So we'll start with the body physical energy. So these are the things you hear about nutrition, exercise, sleep, renewal during the day. So the basic things that we do for ourselves, what are we eating? Are we exercising? How much are we resting and resting both in the course of our sleep at night and then also during the day? How are we renewing our energy throughout the day? Now, I will tell you, I work with a lot of leaders and by and large, they're not very good at this. They're not very good at taking care of themselves. In fact. I routinely hear from CEOs and executive leaders, they, on a monthly basis discuss their challenges around what I'll say is, quote unquote, taking care of themselves. And that seems to come up quite frequently as I'm getting all of my work done, but I'm not taking care of myself. And that might be my sleep patterns off. I was traveling for business and I wasn't exercising and I wasn't eating correctly or I was out with clients, so I was drinking more than I should, any number of things. But it's interesting because when you talk to somebody about how things are going with their business, how things are going personally, how things are going with their health, more than likely the business is going well because they're focused on it back to focus and attention.
00:09:34
They're paying attention to it. And then their personal stuff goes pretty well and then their health is usually the lowest score. And that's because simply back to focus and attention, they're not putting enough attention and focus on it. And I always go back to the kind of analogy of if you get on a plane. Now the flight attendant is going to say, if we experience a drop in cabin pressure, an oxygen mask will drop. And the first thing that you're supposed to do if you're traveling with someone who needs help is put your mask on first. You're supposed to take care of yourself first before you can take care of other people. And so the saying I tell them is you can't pour from an empty cup. And as a leader, there's lots of demands on your time. There's lots of things that other people need from you. And in order to provide those things to them, you have to have enough energy to do that. And that means you do have to take care of yourself. And to that extent, there's got to be a little selfishness involved in this. And I mean that in a very good way, because if you're not taking care of yourself and your body, you're not going to have the energy. To do what you need to do as a leader. If you think about this, we don't.
00:10:49
If our car runs out of gas, we don't. Will our car forward? We don't tell it. Just try harder. We put fuel in the tank. And so we have to be very cognizant for ourselves of where how do we get that fuel. And it's different for everyone. You know, you're eating and exercise and sleep habits are going to be different and down to how do you energize yourself during the day because you're going to have to flex in and out of different things that you're doing, which will require energy from you. So how are you doing that during the course of the day? How are you building yourself back up? Now from an emotional side. Right. So the quality of our emotional energy is changed by the stories that we tell ourselves about the events that are occurring in our lives. And I want to share three different lenses that we could look through in order to change that story, which will give us more emotional energy because our emotional energy gets challenged when the stories go negative. And quite honestly, our brain is going to go negative, far easier than it's going to go positive. If you have an experience during the day with somebody, your brain is going to make up the story as to why that person behaved the way they behaved. It's not going to be your reality, but it is going to be your reality.
00:12:03
And one of my more interesting and favorite quotes is I ask people if you're the voice in your head was your friend. How long would you stay friends with them? And the answer is not a not a very long time, because that voice in our head is usually not defaulting to the positive. It's not telling us all the reasons that this event could have been could have happened and could have a positive spin. We always typically go negative and negative, sucks energy out of the equation. So here are three different lenses that you could look through. One is the reverse lens. So the question there becomes what would the other person in this conflict say? And in what ways might that be true? So it's really just looking at it from the other point of view. What might the other person say about what just happened and how might that be true? We're not judging. We're not trying to figure out if it is true or not. We're simply saying, could it be true? To give us an alternative to what the story that our brain is creating for us. So the second one is called the Long Lens. And this one, you ask the question, how will I most likely view this situation in six months? Another way to look at this is there's a five by five rule that I don't know if you know about that, but that's basically if you come across an issue, think about for a moment and say, will it matter or not matter in five years? If it doesn't matter in five years, don't spend more than 5 minutes worrying about it.
00:13:34
Now, again, as we sit here and talk, these are all easy to listen to. And intellectually we're like, Oh yeah, this makes perfect sense. I mean, why wouldn't we do that? But the reality is, when you have an interaction with your spouse or your kids or friends or coworkers or boss or whoever picks somebody's client and it doesn't go well, we typically don't take the time to manage that emotional energy. And the final one is a wide lens. And that is, regardless of the outcome of the issue, how do I grow and learn from it? So. So then we move our focus and attention away from judging the actual event to saying, Hey, this is what happened. I'm just going to roll with that story. So what do I learn from it? How do I decide what I can take away from it that can help me as opposed to focusing on, well, let's call it rumination around what I did incorrectly or what I did wrong, or what that person did to me. All right. So, again, three lenses we can look at to change the quality of our emotional energy and basically by changing the stories we tell ourselves.
00:14:41
So the reverse lens, the long lens and the wide lens. So now we'll talk a little bit about the mind and how we focus our energy. So so there we need. It really becomes more like deep work. So if we think about this as the power of ritual and if we look at anything around deep work and about doing things that are going to take a lot of attention and focus. Things like setting a location, duration, structure, requirements, understanding that we have to build some ritual around the work that we do. That's going to require a lot of our brain. It's going to require a lot of, let's say, cognitive heavy lifting. And if that's the case, and we're going to focus that energy from our brain, we need to make sure that we figured out, do I need a specific location? How long am I going to do it for? What's the structure? What are the requirements down to, you know, do I need certain beverages to drink? Do I need software access? Do I need certain music playing? Just think through and try these things out because you're going to find out that when you lock in and you put yourself in the environment in order to do the work, the work becomes easier to do. That kind of heavy lifting is hard to do on the spur of the moment and just anywhere.
00:15:58
All right. And so finally, then, we're going to talk a little bit about the human spirit. Right. So we get energy from these four areas, one being the body, the emotions, the mind and the human spirit. So the energy of meaning and purpose, that's really what we're talking about. With our spirit and access this energy, we're going to need clear priorities and establish some accompanying rituals in basically three categories. So the three categories are doing what you do best and enjoy most at work. So again, just thinking about am I spending the majority of my time doing what I do best and also doing things that I enjoy? Am I consciously allocating time and energy to the areas of my life, like work, family, health and service to others that I deem most important? Am I able to spend my time in all of those areas of my life that I consider to be important? Am I not shorting one for the other? Am I spending all my time at work and I don't have enough time for my family or my health, as we talked about earlier? And then finally, living your core values in your daily behaviors. Now, there's a certain assumption here that we've clarified those so that we can actually communicate them to other people. All right. So again, doing what you do best and enjoy most, allocating your time and energy to the areas of your life that you deem most important and then living your core values in your daily behaviors.
00:17:21
It's interesting to think, but doing those things can actually give you energy. They'll make you more energized, although you're doing more work. You don't seem to notice as much because you're energized by doing it. And there's a lot of similarity here with Daniel Pink's book, Motivation or Drive. I'm sorry, the name of the book is Drive, and he actually talks about motivation and he comes up with he accesses a lot of data points and he talks about a study that says essentially. Science will tell us that what motivates us is autonomy, mastery and purpose. And we can kind of align these with the things I just told you about. So autonomy is I get to choose what I do at some point during the day. I have some say over my daily activities. Again, go back to I'm consciously allocating time and energy to areas of my life that I deem important. So that's autonomy. Doing what I do best and enjoy most. That's mastery. So I'm getting better at what I do. I'm able to choose and focus on what I do best and what I like to do. And then finally, purpose. I'm connecting to something bigger than myself, and that goes back to core values because typically if we look at the things that we value most in life, and again, if you think about Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, he talked about self-actualization being at the top of the pyramid and later in his life he actually changed that and said self transcendence is actually what the top of the pyramid should be represented by.
00:18:51
So it isn't self actualization where we're focused on our best self. It's it's actually. Do we transcend ourselves? Do we move beyond us for the good of other people? And that can be typically when we're talking about core values, that's kind of where we settle in. There are always things that are bigger than us, so you can think about it in the context of the things I gave you and also in Daniel Pink's context of autonomy, mastery and purpose. So now we're going to talk a little bit about intent. So we've talked about we've talked about energy. We talked about attention. And I want to talk a little bit more about intent. And so we're either going to consciously or unconsciously design our lives. If you think about it, we're either going to live I'm going to use the word in two meanings on purpose or not, and on purpose being two different things. One is intentionally so. We're making decisions and doing it on purpose, and the second is on purpose. Back to our core values. We're doing it for a purpose. So if we don't do it consciously, it's being done unconsciously.
00:20:00
We're just letting habit take over. It's kind of like that saying that nowadays, if you don't know what the product is, you're the product. You know, if you're looking at an ad and you can't figure out what they're selling, it's you they're selling to, right? You are the product. Now we have a little difference between again, I just did a podcast on this one a couple of episodes ago about goals, so I want to clarify the difference between intent and goals. And if you listen to that, not I'm not a huge fan of goals. If we think about intent and goal, there's some subtle differences and those are the following. So with intent, we have let's think of we're cultivating intent and in goals were achieving intent is a pull activity. Goals are a push activity. So in goals we're pushing towards something with intent. We've created an environment where we're pulling ourselves forward because of the intent that we want. Intense, responsive goals are active, intent is flexible, goals are rigid, intent is more flow based. Goals are control based. Intent adapts. There's a correctness associated with goals, and then goals are limited and intent is limit less in the formula is intent and then action and then outcome. Now, intention is really critical because in a volatile, uncertain and complex and ambiguous world VUCA, it requires that we might need to adapt our actions in order to achieve the outcomes, but we have to stay true to the intent.
00:21:40
So if you look at those three things intention, action, outcome. Outcome you can look at as the goal, right? You could associate that with a goal. It's something that we're trying to achieve, but we're starting with a clear intention. And the reason that I think that's important is because our focus is on the I'll say on the left side of that equation, if you're writing these things on a page, because my intent is most important, because my actions can become flexible to achieve my outcome, but I'm always staying true to my intent, because if I focus too much on the right side of the page, if I'm focused on, we'll call it the goal or the outcome that's going to prescribe certain actions. And my intent could get lost, which is my whole argument around goals, because as we look at a goal and the goal, we're not moving close enough towards it. We tend to make decisions on actions that may or may not align with our intention because again, we've shifted to the right side of the page instead of the left side, if I'm always clear about my intention. I can always I can always be kind of react. I can be reactionary and I can be adaptive in my actions to achieve my outcomes.
00:22:56
But my the thing that I'm going to weight most heavily is my intention. And you're going to see this in a little bit. We're going to talk a little bit about commander's intent from a leadership perspective, and you'll see how this plays out. Now, another way to think about intent is this thought about being a reporter versus an author. Because reporters report statements of fact, there's no feeling or participation on our part. And in essence, from a reporter standpoint, life is just happening around us and there's nothing we can do about it. We're just reporting back what's happening. So we're almost like a bystander. We're just watching things happen and we have no power over them. We're just reporting on them. Right. Versus if my if my intent go back to intent is to be an author. I'm in command. Write that authors are positive. They speak in the present tense and they take advantage of the skills they have and resources around them. So if I'm going to become an author, I'm going to articulate my dreams. I'm going to I'm going to say what I want. I'm going to overrun or destroy my excuses. I'm going to keep my promises to other people in myself if I believe I'm in control. Now, if you look at this differently, if you look at there's some psychology around this and it's an internal versus an external locus of control, So reporters are an external locus of control.
00:24:21
So if I have an external locus of control, my belief is the world is happening to me. People are acting upon me and I have limited power to react. So you're going to hear people with an external locus of control say things like that person did this to me or this happened and there was nothing I could do. Or they said this and it made me mad or I wasn't given this opportunity. You're going to hear things like that from people with an external locus of control now versus if someone's an author of their life, they're going to have more of an internal locus of control. And that means I could be in the same situation, the same things are happening around me. But when it does, my point of view is, okay, now what can I do to still achieve the thing I want? How do I take this and move forward? Not how do I simply take this and then this is all that I have. So again, I've got an internal locus of control. I believe that I can positively impact my environment. I believe I'm I wouldn't say I'm 100% in charge. But I'm but I have an input and I have impact. I'm not going to say I'm not going to make this up. Like we can control our destiny and create what we want.
00:25:37
I don't know that we can do that, but we certainly can have a positive interaction with our environment in order to move things forward as opposed to thinking that everything is acting upon us. So a little bit ago, I talked about commander's intent. And so this is big in the military. And the commander's intent describes the desired end state. It's an expression of the purpose of the operation and must be understood to echelons below the issuing commander. So it's the single unifying focus for all the subordinate elements. It's not a summary of the concept of the operation. Its purpose is to focus subordinates on the desired end state. Again, think about this. I'm trying to give people an idea of the intent of what we're trying to do so that they are free to make decisions and react. Because we all know that, especially if we use the military analogy. And, you know, there's two ways to say this. One is the official way is no plan survives contact with survives first contact with the enemy. The second and more colorful way is Mike Tyson's version, which is everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Right. And so what commander's intent relies on is saying, okay, I'm going to talk to people and make sure they understand why we're doing this and what we're trying to accomplish. So that there's an ability for them to be flexible and adaptive to the situation they find themselves in.
00:27:07
This translates directly to any thing we do in life, especially if we're in any kind of leadership role and we're talking to large groups of people. We don't want to dictate exactly how things need to be done every step along the way. And the reason that usually that's an exercise in futility is that the assumption there is that the external world is predictable. And that we have told somebody, here's what's going to happen in the external world. So all you have to do is step one. Step two, Step three. Step four. Step five. I'm not certain about your life, but typically that doesn't happen in mine. And so it's very much it's very important that as a leader, we're letting people know what our intent is, being able to summarize what we hope to achieve. And being flexible in the way that we do it. Because that's going to allow some people if you go back to motivation, I'm going to tie this back to Daniel Pink. He talked about autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy is one of those things. I don't know anybody that's within listening distance of my voice here who wants to show up at a job every day and just follow a set of instructions and do one through 30 and then go home. We all strive for some level of we can call it control, but it's autonomy.
00:28:37
It's about having it's about being a human and being able to make decisions on what's best for us in the organization. Now, the way to be able to do that is to understand the intent of the leader. I can tell you that a lot of times we don't take the time to clarify even for ourselves what our intent is. Therefore, if we're not clear, how can we expect others to be clear? Then how do we expect them when they face uncertainty or things in the environment that don't go as planned? How do we hold them accountable for making decisions at that point? Let me rephrase. How do we hold them accountable for making good decisions? When they don't have. Good information. They don't have complete information. They were told do step one through ten. They weren't told why and they weren't told what the ultimate goal was. They were just told complete steps one through ten. So after step seven, when things go awry, how are they supposed to know? What are we doing to set them up for success, to set our organizations up for success? If we're not taking the time to clarify our intent. What do we want to happen? What is our vision of the future? When William Bridges has a great change model and it's called the William Bridges Change model, it didn't really go out. It didn't really get creative on the naming of it.
00:30:09
He's just stayed simple. And what he says is when we're talking about change communication, there are four P's. And that is purpose, picture, plan and part. So there's a couple that are really important. All of them are. We usually take care of a couple of them pretty easily. We take care of the plan. Right? But purpose commander's intent. Why are we doing this? What is it we're hoping to achieve? And then picture. Have we painted a picture for them so they understand what it looks like? How do we call it done? How do we win? How do we call it successful? What's that picture look like? The plan. Usually we take care of that. We focus a lot of energy on the plan. Steps one through 30. Step one sub. Step one, sub. Step two, whatever that might be. And then finally, part. Am I explaining to that person why they're important to the process, why I need them, why the plan doesn't work without them? Not just because they fill a seat, but because of the inherent value that they as a human being, add to us as a team. Purpose picture plan in part. And purpose aligns with intent. What are we trying to achieve? Why is it important? So the commander's intent includes three pieces expanded purpose, key tasks and end state. Right. Expanded purposes. The description of the operations purpose beyond the why of the mission statement.
00:31:44
Again. I'm telling them why, but I'm also talking about purpose, Right? The expanded description of the purpose beyond the why and then key tasks. So letting everybody know what they need to do. And finally, the end state a description of the desired future conditions that represent success. Have I told him what Dunn looks like? Because it's amazing. And I think it was Peyton and I'm going to butcher the quote, but essentially never tell people exactly what to do. Just tell them what you want to achieve and you'll be amazed with their creativity. Right. Because if I'm telling people the end state, if I give people a description of the desired future conditions that represents success, if I show them what done looks like, if I show them what a win looks like. Isn't that empowering them to take charge when they need to? That's really what leaders do. They paint that picture. Again, think about that. A description of the desired future conditions that represent success. If you can do that for a project, for a for your year, you know, we're talking about we're just a month or two by the time you hear this will be in February. You know we're a month or two into the year. Have we done that? Did we give them a description of the desired future conditions that represent success? So that they know.
00:33:09
And by the way, if they changed at some point, did we tell them? Did we make sure that everybody in the organization understands or did we think it was just going to be by telepathy and osmosis that everybody will they should know. That's not true. They don't know unless you tell them. And you as a leader, your responsibility is to be clear. That's what the. There's a great quote by Ron Heifetz, who's a he's a a professor at Harvard, I think still, he said attention is the. Currency of leadership. Attention is the currency of leadership. Well, why would he say that? That's pretty simple, right? Imagine the difference between a flashlight and a laser. They're both beams of light ones, just really focused. So as a leader, if I'm able to focus attention. If I can provide clarity for people about what's important, I'm also providing clarity about what's not important. I'm enabling people to make decisions. I'm empowering people to say no. Because great companies, very successful companies say no for more than they say yes. Take that as an individual as well. What do you say no to? If I'm clear on my intent and I know what I want my attention and then even more narrow my focus to be on. I also know by default what I don't want it to be on. So I can say no to many more things. And that enables me to stay focused.
00:35:01
Know, enables me to stay focused. Saying yes is easy. It's also dangerous. Well, now what? How will we evolve from all of this? Well, for me, the order would look something like number one energy. We've got to take care of the energy. How am I taking care of myself? How are you taking care of yourself? It has to take precedence and it has to be intentional. You have to have it written down. Do you have a written plan for your energy, for your health? Do you know how much sleep you need? Do you know what the diet is that you need to to have to have enough energy, your exercise, all of those things, whatever those things are for you from a physical standpoint, from an emotional standpoint, from a spiritual standpoint, and from your brain and your mind, how are you managing your energy? Where is it written down? If it is not written down, it doesn't count. Just remember that and it can't be an afterthought. It has to come first. That's why I put it on here first. Now after that, the second thing is my intent. What are my intentions? Intention focuses attention, which leads to focus. Intention focuses attention, which leads to focus. That's the descending order intention. Attention focus. But I have to start with intention. And again, the most important question when it comes to that is what do you say no to? And then on the focus side, be more top down, not bottom up.
00:36:39
Think about all the things that command your attention during the day and focus and don't allow them to be usurped. Don't allow notifications and don't don't allow minor things. There's a great quote that don't let the truth, don't let the trivial mini overtake the vital few. Don't don't let the trivial mini get in the way of the vital few. And for me, I believe that's all about forcing functions. And a forcing function is described as a catalyst that changes your default behavior in the future by aligning your short term incentives with your long term goals. So I create forcing functions for myself. You know, they do some really great things. They change our future default. They create a timeline to track progress, and they give last minute bursts of motivation when you know, you have to get something done. One of the best examples I can give and I'm sure I don't know if it's true or not, but they used to say that Thomas Edison, when he had an idea for a new invention, the first thing he would do would be to plan a press conference at some point in the future and then communicate that to everybody. He would say, okay, on this date, nine months from now, I'm going to announce my new invention. That, my friends, is a forcing function.
00:37:56
Because he better have something to say on that date or he's going to look pretty foolish. And so think about how can you create forcing functions for yourself. You know, things like deadlines ex externalisation, don't you? Again, it's got to be written down and shared. You can't just have it in your head, right? None of this works if you're just keeping it all inside, because that leads to accountability. Do you have some money in your life you can be accountable to? You know, are you putting people around you that'll hold you accountable? Constraints are a powerful thing and they lead to great motivation. You know, resources are not we don't have unlimited resources. So constraints are actually a very good thing. They they they help us. They force us to be creative. Right. So think about that from the standpoint of when you talk about your focus, how can you come up with forcing functions? That will help you get where you want to go. All right. So we're going to close with three quotes. The first one is by Kristen Armstrong. We either live with intention or exist by default. We either live by intention or exist by default. I don't know anybody out there that wants to exist by default. The second one is from Ralph Marston. Your destiny is to fulfill those things upon which you focus most intently. So choose to keep your focus on that which is truly magnificent, beautiful, uplifting and joyful.
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Your life is always moving toward something. Just think about that middle sentence. So choose to keep your focus on that, which is truly magnificent, beautiful, uplifting and joyful. And the final one is from Alexander Graham Bell. Concentrate all of your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought into focus. So thank you again for joining me. And remember that your evolution is a choice and one that you have the opportunity to make many times each day. Until next time, continue to explore, experiment, and evolve because the world needs and deserves better leadership. The world needs your contribution. And remember, if it were easy, everyone would do it. It's not and most won't. And that's why we need the commitment of those relentless few willing to become the leader they were always meant to be. And I'll leave you with this thought from Mahatma Gandhi. We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change toward him? This is a divine mystery, Supreme, a wonderful thing. It is. And a source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do. Take care and I'll talk to you next time we're in the lab.
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