In this special guest episode, I am joined by Rick Heyland, who is a published author, public speaker, podcast host and professional coach. He has been consulting for almost 35 years to help people businesses improve their performance. He is the founder of Continuous Improvement 4 Life, a consulting practice dedicated to help people and organizations find purpose and live with purpose to achieve extraordinary results.
Rick and I share similar passions in uncovering the secret formula to be both happy and productive. He conducted a fascinating survey of almost 1500 people spanning over 4 countries to pinpoint the common denominators of the happiest and the most productive people. He then took the results and wrote his book Live Your Purpose, a step-by-step guide to setting up and managing your best life.
In our chat we uncover what he found from his survey plus all of his years working in this field trying to uncover what do the happiest people have in common? We also discuss how to find your purpose if you are currently struggling to discover what that is, plus he shares key insights from his book, why small simple practices are so key, the power of acceptance, and lots more.
This one is jam packed with value, I promise you that!
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WHAT YOU WILL DISCOVER
Why those living with purpose are 32% happier
The 3 habits of the happiest and most productive people
How to overcome challenges by going back to basics
The powerful benefits of daily planning
FEATURED ON THE SHOW
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Jennifer:
Alright, hello, hello. Welcome to the Happy Productive podcast. My name is Jennifer Dawn. I’m a business coach and founder of the Best Planner Ever. If you’re ready to start winning big and business in life, guess what you’re in the right place. The Happy Productive podcast is your go-to resource for learning how to bring awareness and clarity, some determination, some mental toughness, all those wonderful things into your daily productivity so that you can knock your goals like right out of the park, and start setting yourself apart from the pack and succeeding on a whole new level.
I am so excited today, you guys, because my guest is Rick Heyland, and he has been consulting and helping people for over 31 years, all different people, all different sized businesses all to help improve their performance. And he specializes in helping leaders identify their personal and business performance gaps, so that they can improve their performance. And I welcome Rick, we’re so happy to have you here today.
Rick:
Jennifer, thank you so much for having me. We’re so aligned to everything you’re doing. The thought of being happy AND productive together is exactly what we should be striving for. So thanks for all the work you do.
Jennifer:
Oh, thank you so much. You know, it’s funny, because when you put like happy out there, sometimes people don’t really understand the power of it. And I think sometimes when you’re in a place where you’re not happy, you think, Oh, you know, I don’t want to just be like happy go lucky, my head in the clouds, I’m not paying attention to anything. And that’s really not what we’re talking about at all, like, there is so much power in the choice to be happy.
And for me, it has been a choice. And I’d love to hear from you. Like, do you feel like happiness is a choice?
Rick:
Yeah, cuz, you know, we were speaking offline for a minute. And it’s so amazing, you know, after 30 a while, it’s actually been 30, almost 35 years consulting, in big business, small, medium size, all sorts. And, you know, I specialized in productivity improvement consulting. And so you run a lot across a lot of people around the world in many different industries and many different companies. And you can find a lot of successful, productive, and non happy people.
Jennifer:
Yeah.
Rick:
And so yeah, my passion like yours is to find what is the secret formula, if you will, and it absolutely does start with a choice to be both successful, productive, happy, or some people say efficient and effective. So yeah, that is absolutely my passion, like it is yours, like how can we? What’s the how’s in order to do both? Because it’s not just good enough to do one or the other. But how can we do both?
Jennifer:
Yeah, I agree. So completely, and tell me a little bit about your survey. Because when I read this, I thought it was so fascinating that you surveyed a bunch of people and found out, I won’t spoil it, why don’t you share, tell us about your survey. And what you found out with that?
Rick:
Yeah, thank you. That was a lot of fun. And I commissioned a survey and it was just 1400 people which is actually closer to 1500. Now, but in 4 countries, it was actually Australia, the EU, while the UK and greater UK, and the United States and Canada. And basically what I was trying to do, I was writing a book called Live Your Purpose, a step-by-step guide to setting up and managing your best life.
And before I publish that book, which I did last October, I wanted to kind of pinpoint, and ratify my own experiences, and get some empirical data. And both levers of the survey were both around happiness, and productivity. So that’s why you know, you and I are so aligned. So I was trying to really pinpoint the common denominators, if you will, the characteristics of you will, of the happy and productive.
And so you know, one of the interesting questions, and I asked a question around purpose, and I didn’t say in that purpose question, have you got it written down or whatever? I just say, Do you live with purpose? And then I cross correlated, the ones that said yes, with the ones that had the highest levels of happiness in the happiness question. And those with purpose were 32% higher in happiness. And so it just really drove kind of the central thesis of the first part of my book is that we actually are more happy and productive when we live with purpose.
Jennifer:
I love that so much that that the purpose just on its own is 32% higher for the people who are happy, like that is a really significant difference, versus those who are not living with purpose. And so if you’re living with purpose, and I feel like I live with purpose, like I get up every day, I know who I want to help. I know what I want to do, and it’s a beautiful thing.
But that’s was not always the case, like I’ve spent, I can look back and have years of my life where my purpose was just to like, get the work done, or my purpose was to make enough money so that, you know, I could I could make payroll and still afford to buy groceries for me and the kids. Like I wasn’t really thinking of anything more lofty than that other than just, you know, survival and getting through the day.
And so if you’re in a situation where you don’t feel like you have purpose, or maybe you’ve tried to think about this, but you’re frustrated, because you just don’t know, like, I don’t know what my purpose should be. I would love you to speak to that, like, what do you do to help these high performers if they’re struggling to discover what their purpose is?
Rick:
Yeah, that’s a really good question. And I’ve answered it 2 ways. And the one may be the first one may be more Eastern philosophy. But it’s so important for the happiness factor for us to find purpose in every day, right? Not just when we, you know, hit the home run at work, or get a brand new car or a brand new house, or you know, whatever events and relationships, whatever it might be. But the happiest people find purpose in everyday, in the small things.
And I can talk about the habits of the happiest people as well in a second here from that survey. But to the larger question of purpose, which I also love. Chapter 4 in my book is dedicated to how to develop your purpose, it is so important, as we talked about to do that, but so many people get caught and anxious about coming up with the perfect purpose statement or my perfect purpose.
And so my, my purpose in writing chapter 4 of my book is to help people get through the how, and through that anxiety of, you know, hope I don’t get this wrong, or do I have to get this perfect? Or what is my purpose? And so I came up with over the years that both through my own experience as a 26 year old, so over 30 years ago, writing my own purpose statement, and really articulated what I call a triple 7 process.
So 7 questions, that takes 7 hours over 7 days. You know, you’ll see some people say it takes 5 minutes, you’ll see some people take, it takes a lifetime. So what I’ve tried to get is that balance between reflection, so a week, and also some urgency in the brain to say, you know what, I can do this. And it’s not that big a thing. I could ask myself and contemplate and meditate around these 7 questions over 7 days, and articulate first of all, a draft statement that I can ruminate on, think about and come up and really kind of define my purpose. Does that make sense Jennifer, does that answer your question?
Jennifer:
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I love that you’ve put a structure to it to where for 7 days, I can ask myself one question and spend an hour on that question. And, you know, if you’re listening to this, and you’re tempted to think, oh, an hour a day, for 7 days, I don’t have time like that it’s your life, okay, it’s your life, if you don’t have an hour a day for 7 days to think about your purpose, you’re probably going to be missing the mark for years, years and years. So I love that you boiled that down into a process that you can follow? And are the seven questions in your book.
Rick:
Yeah, it’s in chapter 4. And by the way, a lot of people have sent emails and feedback and said, it hasn’t taken me 7 hours. But I do like the fact that, you know, I’m, I’m rethinking about it each day, for a half an hour, 45 minutes, whatever it be. And then by the end of it, I’m getting more comfortable with a draft statement that I can really, you know, kind of ponder and think about and may, you might tweak it in a few months. But basically, you’ll come up with your straw man and have some very meaningful values and statements that really are, you know, articulate, you know, greater purpose for you.
Jennifer:
I love it. And so for the people who go through and they spend the time and they do the work on this exercise, on average, like what do you what do they report after they’ve gotten clear on their purpose,
Rick:
Greater clarity, greater happiness, greater efficiency, greater sense of values. So you know, I’ll give you one example. Somebody was struggling with a relationship with their father, some tension, they’re an adult with an older adult, you know, the father and, and it wasn’t anything major. But they looked back on their purpose statement to see how they wanted to react, that kind of crucial conversation that a) they wanted to have the crucial conversation and b) that they wanted to respond with values. Another example as a boss, you know, how many how much tension sometimes do we have at work with your boss and, and to be able to respond to a bonus being held back or whatever it might have been based on your values articulated in your purpose.
So it’s not just in my case, it helped me find my job. But it’s so much bigger than that it can help you really know how you want to respond to your kids, your relationships, your work. So there’s so many. In fact, you know, there’s lots of research in chapter 3 of my book, I articulate all the health studies that have been done on people who live longer, they have less health challenges and less hospital stay. And there’s really over the last 10 years that the medical journals and the psychological journals are piling up over the power of purpose and all the health benefits to actually having and living with purpose.
Jennifer:
Oh, I love this so much. It almost sounds like your purpose statement, we tie a lot of that into what we call a vision statement. And we use that in our daily planner. But the idea is to read with it, read it every day, and to align with it so that it’s fresh in your mind. So when you do have a challenge that pops up, it’s really easy to come back and say, wait a second, who do I want to be in this situation, because one of the things you said was bringing that purpose into your day to day, every single day.
And guys, guess what life’s gonna throw you curveballs. Like there’s just no way you can’t sit and visualize enough and have a life where you never get a curveball, it just isn’t going to happen. But when you get the curveball and you can look at it as an opportunity for growth and an opportunity to practice, you know, being who you want to be. And living your purpose. Like, that’s where the joy is, like, truly, there’s so much joy to be found there.
Rick:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I see you have a wonderful journal on your website. And it looked really good. I’ve also just launched what I call a CI journal or Continuous Improvement journal. And the first page in there is the purpose statement, right? And then the second page, like you believe in is your goals. And then you go on to your, your daily and weekly habits. But yeah, just to remind yourself of what my purpose is, that helps you both plan and react.
Because as you said, Jennifer, I mean life. It’s not like you get your purpose, and you set your goals. And then it’s, you know, Disney ending, right? There is a lot of work and skills necessary to respond with purpose. And that’s actually, there’s 3 parts to the book that live your purpose. 1 is around the purpose statement. 2 it’s something you believe in is articulating and how to set goals based on that purpose, and then the 3rd part, and that’s really my journey over the last 10 years that I’ve learned, I’m more of a novice.
And then as I mentioned, I started with purpose and goals in my 20s. But then what’s the skills to respond when things don’t go perfectly, when you have setbacks at work, or at home. And like so many of us do. And so in that part of the book, I talk about gratitude and the importance of that practice in your life, and that there’s a page in my journal for that every day in your life.
Focus the mind on what you have, versus what you don’t have, how important is that, right? And then there’s a chapter on meditation and mindfulness. And then the last chapter in that section is really around acceptance, how do I accept what’s happened, and move on with purpose, so connecting it back to the purpose.
So yeah, it’s one continuous improvement that takes a lot of skills to be happy and productive, and to live with purpose. But those are, you know, essentially, some of the things that we talked about in the book.
Jennifer:
I love it so much. And I love that you mentioned the skill, because I find that when I work with clients, sometimes if they’re not just naturally optimistic, or naturally grateful, you know, and some people I think, do tend to have personalities that tend to lean a little more one way or another. And if you’re a person who tends to lean more towards, you know, being a little more pessimistic, or finding all the problems or the challenges and things like that, I think I’ve noticed in my work with clients, like those kinds of clients, it’s harder for them to kind of tap into the gratitude.
If you tell a happy, optimistic person to practice gratitude, they’ll be like, fine, or I already do you know, it’s not, it’s not that much of a challenge. But when you tell somebody who’s in a really rough patch, or you know, going through a really hard time or naturally kind of tends to lean more towards the problem side of life. You tell them to do this, I’ve noticed it’s a harder thing for them to kind of move past or to get into the habit of. So when you work with people who are not naturally this way, how do you help kind of help them bridge the gap or get over that hurdle?
Rick:
That’s a great question. And always going back to your purpose is one way to answer that question. But I live in the very case study you just cited, I live that in my own house. My wife is a natural, happy, optimistic, grateful person. And I am a problem solver and see the gaps and see what’s missing. And so it’s been an incredible marriage that way and I’ve been able to learn but she naturally does this and her mother in law. Her mother, my mother in law does this naturally and so.
But I don’t, and many people don’t. And so the actual practice of you know, every day listing your blessings, what you’re grateful for little things, big thing doesn’t matter relationship things, work things, list them all, it just is such a quick habit to get your mindset is focused on a more positive direction so that you can really handle your challenges. It’s not pollyanna, it doesn’t mean there’s not problems in your life or get gaps to solve. It just gets you in that mindset so that you can get at those problems in a productive way.
Jennifer:
Oh, I love that. And it’s right, it’s a skill, it comes back to that skill of flipping our mindset directing the mind instead of just letting it kind of run loose on problem, problem, problem problem. In our household, similar, I’m kind of naturally happy, I’ll walk into a room and go, Oh, I can make it work, my husband will walk into the room and go, let me tell you the 10 reasons why this won’t work. And it’s like, wait a second.
So it’s kind of a nice balance between us too. Because like if I need him to critically look at something and find the problems in it, because sometimes I just won’t see the problems, because I’ll just be like, oh, I can just make it work. And when I need that critical mindset, like he’s the one I give stuff to him, like, go look at this and tell me what’s wrong with it. And he can always find things, which is awesome.
But it’s that balance between the two. And it’s about developing the skill of okay, great, maybe some of us are really good at finding the problem. But we’re not always so good at solving the problem. But that’s where I think the skill comes in of being able to direct the mind in a way that’s positive, to solve the problem so that you don’t get lost in the problem.
Rick:
Yeah, you know, this that that reminds me of in the survey that you asked about what we we asked the question, I asked the question happiness, and particularly in the happiness side, what are the practices or skills or rituals, or habits of the most happy people and so I only looked at that upper band of those people that enjoyed. This is themselves answering the question, the highest levels of happiness. And there were 3 skills or 3 habits that they highlighted. And I think you’ll identify with these 3 but I tried to correlate a whole bunch of other things. I believe these were the 3 that ranked the highest for the most happy people.
And 1 was exercise, they had regular exercise and by the way, it was just walking. Most of them, you know, some of us enjoy biking and running and different things. It’s whatever it might be, but most exciting, but it was regular exercise, kind of 3-5x a week. That was habit number 1 or skill number 1 to get themselves happy and productive.
And the 2nd one was this love this one daily planning, right? So love that when you ask, you know, whether they use your planner, or my planner, or, you know, whatever planner I just asked, asked, and they said daily planning, and I loved it. And I didn’t ask them whether they prioritize or not some of those skills that you and I might believe in, but daily planning the fact that they have a plan for each day to help them get motivated based on their goals and purpose. And, and I love that one.
And the 3rd one was also very interesting. They do regular service or random acts of kindness. So that’s their mindset, if you will, that’s their skill that they’re regularly involved in. It might be, you know, it might be making lunch for your family, or it might be opening the door, it might be, you know, all these small things. It didn’t have to be a big major nonprofit, or it could have been right.
But those 3 practices have very high correlation to the happiest and most productive.
Jennifer:
Wow, that is really fascinating. It’s not a prize. But it’s very fascinating and I believe that all 3 of those things when you’re exercising your self care, so what are we doing, we’re taking care of ourselves first, we can be in a good place to show up and serve others. And then when your mindset is in a place of service, all of these things and daily planning to like setting your intention for how you know taking your power or how you want your day to go.
All of those line you up and to be in a better emotional state. They just do. You’re not feeling like a victim to your circumstance. Taking your power, you’re setting your intention for what you want your day to go. And of course, I think that’s just going to be a natural way to almost make happiness more inevitable. Like it’s just going to be the byproduct of when you do these things, you’re going to be more happy as a result.
Rick:
Yeah, yeah. And if you look at kind of the intentionality or the principles behind those 3 practices in the happy, it’s that they are intentional, right they have intentionality in their life and whether that be you know, a written purpose statement and goal statement. But they have intentionality. So they wake up each day with intentionality of, you know, exercise and giving or serving or kindness, and, and planning the day to be productive based on some framework, you know, intention in life. And, boy, if you can build those practices in, you can be both highly productive and happy.
Jennifer:
I love this so much. And so tell me what happens when you come across a person who, maybe they’re going through something really traumatic. They’re going through, or maybe suffered a death in the family. Something that I remember, there was a time in my life where my husband was in a job transition. And so I was supporting the whole family. This was several years ago. And it was really hard on me, like my revenues went down in my business I was so emotionally, this was a really emotionally charged time.
So if you’re going through something like this, something big something major, and you kind of like, don’t feel like yourself. In a situation like this, how do you step in? How do you like, get past some of this? Like, what would you recommend and just, you know, a tip or two, if you’re going through, we have listeners out there who may be going through something rough, and they’re like, hey, their friend, Rick, this all sounds great. But, you know, I just went through this, I’m going through this, I just can’t get my act together. Like what would you say is something that somebody could do to kind of help them into some of this so they could see the results of it?
Rick:
Jennifer, this is such an important topic, you know, because we’re broaching on the topic of mental health and mindset, and, and keeping in sometimes, when you’re, you know, 4 feet under, it’s really hard to do some of the things we’re talking about today. So I always encourage people depending on their level of mental health, or to get professional guidance, medical health, professional counseling, help.
So given that that’s not my expertise, but if people really need that, please use those, you know, resources. But if it’s just one of those things, that you’re having a bad day or a bad week, or there’s been in we have, interestingly enough, had a few neighbors lose loved ones recently, children, which is even, you know, sadder.
So you know, one of the principles is just go back to basics, build some basic and I have a wonderful my youngest daughter just had a brand new baby boy and you know, no sleep, the whole thing, you know that that just kind of completely set them back and back to basics, build simple, practical practices, routines in your everyday life, to help you get back up to the space where you need.
And that might be you know, simple spiritual practice, emotional practice, mental practice, physical practice, as we talked about. Just build some of those basic simple routines into your life so that you feel your motivation increasing, or your mindset or your health, mental health, if you will. But start with very small things. And it might be, you know, waking up 15 minutes earlier and meditating for 10 minutes, that might be all you can handle right now, to get yourself quiet and still, and really focused and centered and ready to attack the discouragement that you’re feeling from past events.
So that’s what my basic advice would be: get help if you need it, professional help, medical help. But start with very simple practices in your life walking 10 minutes meditation 10 minutes, see if you can start there. There’s an interesting oh, my goodness, this reminds me of one of my favorite authors. It’s basically by small things, great things will come to pass the Kaizen way by Dr. Bob Mauer. It’s just a small little book. Google had it. It’s one of its top 100.
And I’ve had him on my podcast, and I quote him in my book, and but his study, and this is I think this gets to the root of your question, Jennifer. So he did, he was a medical practitioner, and then he went into kind of teaching in hospitals. And so as the interns or the medical people that were in training would have clients come in to them, it would be the second doctor or the training person, and time after time after time, they would prescribe things, you know.
For example, the one he cites in the podcast in my book in his book is a lady that was super stressed, single mother, 2 kids, kids were in school, all the things that come with being a single mother, teenagers, she was overweight, hyper hypertension, just lots of health concerns starting to show up. And she had come in a couple times and they’d given her some advice, start exercising, bla bla do this, do that, start eating better, whatever, and nothing was changing.
She was a bit of a bit of a funk as they describe it, and so one time Dr. Mauer said to her, he’d just gone through Kaizen training and by small steps, great things will come to pass. And he said, let’s can’t remember her actual name. But she said, they said to her, do you watch TV at night after the kids go to bed? Yeah, I do that to kind of unplug and unwind. Okay, what about during one commercial, I want you to come back next week, same time, same channel. But during one commercial at night, when you’re watching your favorite show, I want you just to walk in place, or do jumping jacks for the length of that 3 minute, 4 minute commercial, whatever it was. Can you do that?
Yeah, I’ll do that. So she did that for 7 days. And it was simple, small enough, didn’t scare the brain. It got her on some new activity, and so you know, where the story is going, right? So she’d make it and then it was every 2 weeks. And they added, Well, how about during every commercial of your favorite show for the 2nd week? Can you stand in place or do jumping jacks. So long story short, she got into an exercise, practice lost 20 pounds, or potential went down, etc, etc. But it all started from a place of starting with building very small, simple practices in your life, and then go from there.
Jennifer:
I love this. So so much, it’s so true. Getting back to basics. Guys, this goes for wherever you might be eating things pretty good, and you’re up leveling, but you’re finding that, hey, I’m really overwhelmed, because taking on so many more things. Or if you’re going through something really difficult, and you’re finding, you know, trouble getting through the day, it is the same advice and it applies.
Getting back to those basics, I love it so much. And the small steps, we talked about this with a dial. So when we talk about things like, you know, exercise or eating right, or doing whatever we need to do each day, kind of like in files, as you’re going to be able to dial it up, and that’s great. And some days you’re gonna have to dial it back down. And that’s okay. Don’t turn it off, you know, keep taking those small steps.
And, you know, one other thing I want to add to that was something that you mentioned about acceptance earlier on, you know, no matter where you are, what you’re going through, sometimes just taking a few moments to practice acceptance, this is where I’m at. And it’s okay, I don’t have to beat myself up, I don’t have to feel bad about it, don’t waste the energy, like energy to beat herself up. And suppose like, Wait a second, instead of going to align with in practice acceptance. That doesn’t mean I can’t change, that doesn’t mean I can’t do something different. But just being okay with this is where I’m at today can also be a huge power move. I can feel okay about where we’re at, and then take those small steps that will eventually lead to greater things.
Rick:
Oh, you are absolutely right. And you know,now we’re talking about high performers. The people that are hitting home runs and so many of their lives, but those still get a little overwhelmed from time to time, because they’re trying to do it all. They’re trying to juggle it all. And they’re, they’re having success in so many areas of their lives. And these, these principles of small steps and acceptance work for them as well and are very much needed.
Let’s say meditation practice. So many of the high performers that I deal with, do you get overwhelmed and they start comparing themselves versus the neighbor or the other guy or gal, you know, so. And so this idea of acceptance and this idea of, you know, meditation or slowing down to break through, right, and so oh, you know, Rick, I can’t start meditation. You know, it just takes too long. I can never be, you know, a Buddhist, I could never be a monk, I could never have a 30 day retreat. Neither can I start.
How about you start with 10 minutes and I can’t do 10 minutes. Okay? Do this for me. On your Apple watch every morning when you start. Take 10 big in breaths for 4 seconds and 10 breaths for 4 seconds, and reset yourself. And how about after a stressful meeting? You do the same thing? Can you do that? 10 times? Oh yeah, I could do that. How about on the way home from work?
While we used to travel on the way home from your office, wherever your office is? Take 10 breaths, deep breaths. reset your emotional, physical mental mindset to go to the next chapter at night or next favorite next responsibilities that you have. So again, start small, accept, work on these areas, even as a high performer so that you can be a sustainable high performer because you and I both know people that can hit it for years and they work their brains to death and they just are not a sustainable continuous improvement model.
Yeah, what we’re after is 50 years of highly productive, right, not 4.
Jennifer:
That’s right.
Rick:
So even high performers need some of these practices and need to start with small steps of accepting where we’re on building some of these small practices in their life so they can, can be sustainable high performance
Jennifer:
Yeah, I love that so much. And teaching guides can be whatever you make it. You know, sure you can go sit on a mountain with monks. If that works for you fantastic. In my life that doesn’t work in the morning, my “meditation” was I placed this beautiful music that I love really softly. And literally in my mind for 10 minutes, I just thought the words peace, love, trust, patience, and surrender, like, those are my words, and I just went through those words for 10 minutes to set myself in a good place, right?
Patience – don’t get so crazy trying to control everything. Trust – trust the universe has your back. Surrender – let it all go. It doesn’t mean don’t show up, it means you know, let go of anything I’m holding on to energetically so that I can show up and be my best space. And I don’t know, there’s probably somebody out there who does a guided meditation around those concepts, but I just make it what I need for that particular day.
And you can do this with meditation, it doesn’t have to be crazy, you know, sitting on a rock for an hour by the ocean, although you can sit on a rock for an hour by the ocean, go for it. That sounds beautiful. It just makes it be whatever you need it to be for that day, and that works.
Rick:
Yeah, there’s such power in those simple intentions, rituals to start your day. My 2 words today have lately been love and acceptance that I can show up for myself, my family, my extended family and my people and my circle of influence with love and acceptance while I’m trying to be super productive and accomplish things. And so yeah, those small rituals that we do, can lead to big long term sustainable success.
Jennifer:
I love that so much. All right, Rick Heyland, let me hear one productivity tip that you have used that has changed the way that you work.
Rick:
Okay, well, I’ve talked about a few of them. But the one the superpower that I’ve held back that I’m willing to share with you now Jennifer is weekly planning. Thirty minutes on a Sunday night or a Monday morning, looking at all the different roles and goals in your life and planning to be intentional, you know, in my relationships. What urgent or non urgent important activity am I going to try to accomplish this week? In my financial, what activity? If I did, is it a living will that I haven’t had time to get to. What is the financial planning, you know, whatever and each one of those categories, that I can be intentional to make a difference.
Because when the week starts, it’s just going to be a blur, mostly high, you know, highly productive, people got full calendars, that’s never been the problem. The problem is being super intentional to advance in each one of those important categories in your life, spiritual, physical health, financial relationships, etc. And if we can do that with weekly planning. And so what I do on a Sunday night or Monday morning is just write out those goal areas, remind myself in my journal, and then build I do a review of last week and some of the things I accomplished in those areas.
And I feel great about it and not pat myself on the back and use that as energy and motivation to continue. And then identify and encourage people to what are the practices next week that are super important, but not necessarily urgent, that if you really plan into your week that you are intentional about what help you have a great week. And so there’s the secret, there’s the productivity tip you planning as a superpower.
Jennifer:
Oh, I love that so much. This is why you and I are in alignment with each other because I have a very similar practice. And you guys it has so much power, sit down even all the time, and get really clear on who I want to be, how I want to show up, how do I want my life to look like now what action am I going to take this week actually make it happen? So I love that so much. All right, Rick, share where everybody can find you.
Rick:
Sure, yeah, just go to my website ci4life.org, www.ci, the number 4 life.org and you’ll see some of the things we’ve talked about today, the book, this journal, the coaching. I just put out a course crushing the goals for small business where I did 10 videos, to help really businesses between kind of 1-30 people that group that’s really been head hit hard with COVID how to crush your goals, how to improve your performance 20%.
And so and actually Jennifer I got it on super discounted rate right now $59 so that people can just grab it, use it. All the ideas that I consulted with for years and big business now you ‘ve simplified it and put it down to what small businesses can do. And also just there’s also a spot there that if you’ve listened to this podcast with Jennifer and supporting her. I’ll send you a free audible copy of the book Live Your Purpose, step-by-step guide to living your best life. So that’s for the listeners today.
Jennifer:
Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much. All right, you guys,CI4Life where you can find if you’re interested in any of our stuff, you can visit bestplannerever.com or jenniferdawncoaching.com. Thank you so much, Rick for being here today. I hope everyone enjoyed all this fantastic content. And that’s it out there and have a Happy Productive day.
Rick:
Thank you, Jennifer.
Jennifer:
Thanks.