Focused - 62: The Year End Audit

Episode Date: December 11, 2018

David and Mike do a year end audit of their own Free Agency to figure out where they spent their time and money. They talk about fixing broken systems, when to try something new, and make a big announcement about the future of the show.

David Sparks and Mike Schmitz spent their careers working for the establishment. Now, they've had enough. They've rebelled against the status quo and are now seeking success on their terms. They are free agents. Welcome back to Free Agents, a podcast about being an independent worker in a digital age. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. How's it going today, David? Doing great, Mike. How are you today? I'm doing well. I'm excited to get back on the mic and talk about Free Agents things with you.

It seems like it's been forever, but that's because last episode was a bit of a doozy. We shared some pretty major stuff. And this episode, we're going to be following up with a lot of the stuff we talked about there, talking about some year-end planning. We've got some great follow-up from people regarding the morning routines, and I can't wait to get started. Yeah, me too.

But first, Mike, we have an announcement. Starting in January, Free Agents is getting a new name and a little bit of a new format. The show is going to start being called Focused. And we're going to be talking a bit more about productivity. I mean, all the free agent stuff kind of follows along with that. But we've been looking at our audience and talking to people in the audience and found out that a lot of you are enjoying the show, but not free agents and no intention of being a free agent. And we decided let's bring the show kind of more in tune

with who's actually listening. Yeah, exactly. That was a really interesting thing that I got when I dug into the forums after I joined you on here, David, is that there's a lot of people who really enjoy the content that free agents talks about, but they don't consider themselves a free agent. And so we'll still talk about some of the free agent stuff and a lot of the things that you do need to get a handle on when it comes to productivity. I mean, a lot of the stuff that comes with surviving free agency has to do with true productivity, not just doing things more efficiently, but doing the right things at the right time. But we wanted to make sure that we're able to meet people where they're

at and also maybe reach a few more people who look at the free agent's name and say, well, that's not me. I'm not going to be that. So they don't give the show a shot. Yeah. And I really like the idea of the name Focused because that's the intent of the show. We're not here to really teach you to crank more widgets. We're really trying to think about helping you focus on what's truly important. Mike and I, our friendship really stems back to a lot of talk about productivity and what I would call big picture productivity stuff, not the little picture stuff. And we were kicking around the idea, actually, of even doing a show about something like Focused when Jason decided to leave. And that's why it made sense to bring Mike in to this show.

One of the many reasons. But now that Mike's no longer with Asian efficiency, it seems like it's just easier to do this show here now. And like Mike was saying, the more time we spend with the audience, the more time we realize there are a lot of people listening to the show that just are not free agents. We're not trying to chase you away if you're a free

agent. I think a lot of this content is going to continue to be helpful for you, but we are going to get a little broader. That allows us to bring in guests with a little more experience on some subjects that we wouldn't have otherwise. And it allows us to kind of design the show a little bit broader on productivity and what I would like to think of as high-end productivity talk. Yeah. So it's interesting because we had Mike Vardy on, I think that was episode 60. And in the course of the conversation, I flat out asked him, have we reached peak productivity? Is there so much talk about productivity that this market's going to dry up? And he said something I thought was really profound. He said that he thought we had reached peak life hack, which I totally agree with.

There's so much stuff out there that's going to tell you this is how you gain back an hour a day, but the big gains for a lot of people and free agents fall into this category too. It's not just doing things more efficiently. It's doing the right things. How do you make sure that what you're selecting to work on is going to move you in the right direction? And then, so that's one part of focus, which I really like. And then the other part is once you say, this is the activity that I want to do, blocking out all of the clutter, all of the distractions, all of the things that are trying to steal your attention away from the thing that matters the most. And so, focused is going to probably be a little bit different than a lot of the, quote unquote, productivity podcasts that are

out there because we all know what we're supposed to do. And if all we did was implement what we already know, we'd be a lot better off than we currently are. But the truth is that everybody struggles with this. You make mistakes, you fall down. And really the value is being able to recognize what you did wrong, fix it for next time, get back up and try again. And that's a theme that's going to carry over from free agents for sure. Yeah, there's going to be lots of fellow travelers. In addition to Mike and myself, I think even though I love to talk about this stuff and read about it, I'm one of the worst practitioners and we'll talk about that and where we face our challenges. In addition, we're going to continue to have shows focused on single topics and shows with guests. So we're

going to have a lot of people come in and talk to you about it. You don't need to do anything to subscribe. It's just going to be the free agents feed. So come January, you're going to see new artwork for the focus show instead of free agents showing up in your feed. It's going to be focused. So when you see the new podcast show up, don't get surprised. It's just us under a new name and the plan for the next couple shows. As we close out free agents,

we've got pretty much a regular show plan for today. We want to focus on year and planning. And then the next show we're going to kind of, we've got a big question in the forums about being a free agent and dealing with depression, which I think is very worth spending time on. So we're going to cover that in two weeks. And we're also going to kind of just give some closing thoughts to free agency in general. I've been at it near nearly four years

now and talk to a lot of people. And we just thought we'd kind of finish that topic right before we start the new year with the new show. And we're very excited. Yeah, definitely. Speaking of the new year, one of the things that always amazes me at the beginning of the year is how excited everybody is about goal setting, especially when it comes to physical exercise. I think that's one of the most common New Year's resolutions people make is I'm going to get in shape. And I've seen it because I go to the gym and at the beginning of January, it's hard to find a machine for you to use. And then three weeks later, you have no problem. The gym is empty. Yeah. So that's something that's always the visual has always kind of stuck with me. And

I want to help people set goals this year that are actually going to stick and also are going to be the right goals talking about focus. So one of the things that I want to mention is I'm going to be hosting a goal setting workshop on Saturday, January 5th. Right now, the time is going to be 12 p.m. Central time. There'll be a link in the show notes if you want to sign up for it. It's going to be completely free. And basically, I just want to help point people in the right direction for this coming year. I think that this is a really important topic. And if we just understood a little bit why when we traditionally set goals, they don't work and then made a few modifications

that we put ourselves in a position to be more successful. So I want to help free agents, listeners, and everybody else who's interested in setting goals this year and hitting them. That's going to be a free one hour workshop that I'm going to host. I got free stuff too. That gift draft field guide is still out there. I'm now getting emails from readers or I guess watchers of that field guide that are telling me that they have wrapped a gift using my techniques and their significant others are notably impressed. So impress your spouse. That's all I'm saying. I have to admit, I watched the gift wrap field guide. I shared it with my wife. Didn't tell her anything about it. Her first comment was something along the lines of, oh my gosh, I can't believe you did this.

And then she looked at it and she's like, that is amazing. I can't wait to try this. That's what I like. Another happy customer. So anyway, go over to learn.maxbarkey. Get yourself, it's free. The gift wrap field guide. It's like 15 minutes, but it's just kind of a fun holiday thing.

But impress somebody with a nicely wrapped gift. All right. So the big topic for today is the year in audit. Here we are in December. We've got to the end of the year. If you're a free agent or thinking about a free agent, I always think December is a great time to start doing year-end planning. And I don't think January is the right time. I think December is the right time. Usually December is a slow right time. Usually, December is a slow month. If you have client-based services, a lot of times they're off doing things. So it's a great time to kind of retool and replan. And I really like the idea of hitting the ground running in January.

That's one of the reasons why we did the show rebranding effective in January. I just want to start the new year with this new thing. And I feel like the stuff we're going to talk about today is going to take a little bit of time. So in my recommendation, you should be trying to do something like this in December. So on January 1st, when you return to your work, your free agency, you've got everything you need in place. So the beginning of the year in planning for me, I think, really comes down to starting by taking a close look at what's happened in the past 12 months. You know, the end of the year is a great time to take a look at how things went, where they went right and where they went wrong to give you some guidance as you go forward. Yeah. I really like this idea of doing the audit, I think is how you put it in the show notes and auditing the different areas of your life. You

gave people some homework last time. You said, look at where you spent your money and look at where you spent your time. And I think that that's a great approach. And doing it in December is a critical piece because if you're going to start implementing the things, you have to understand the clear picture before you can make the changes that you want to make. And I think that's one of the mistakes that a lot of people make when it comes to goal setting is maybe they'll just get to January and say, oh, I should have looked at that stuff, but this is where I am now. I'm just going to pick something and see if it works. And a lot of times that's going to fail. So before you get to January 1st, do take an honest look at where did you do things well, you know, what, and then

reproduce those as much as you can. And where did you maybe not hit the mark and cut some of those things out? I know I've done that, not sharing any specifics, but one of the things that I've kind of decided throughout this year and kind of got blown up when I found myself in the arena, as we talked about last episode, but one of the things that was costing me money was client work. So by doing an audit like this, I've identified that that specifically is something that I don't really want to do anymore. And then once I cut that out, I can put something else that's better in there. But until you make that tough choice, you won't be able to do that. Well, I always think it's like we always talk about when you're measuring your time,

your estimates of how much time you spend on things is never accurate. That's why you need something like the timing, the occasional show sponsor that measures your time for you and gets your reports back. I feel like it's also true with your money, unless you're watching very carefully. Not only do you not realize where you're spending your money, you probably don't realize where you're making your money. And one of the things I like to do, because I have two things, I have the Max Barkeep video and publishing stuff, because I have two things, you know, I have the Max Barkey video and publishing stuff, and I have the legal practice. I like to keep real close track of where I make money between those two, you know, does one make significantly more than the other? It's a necessary part of the equation. I mean, at the end of the year, I look at, you know, how much did I make on this or that

business? And how much time did I spend on it? And you can often learn a lot with those two pieces of information. Yeah. An interesting approach that really impacted me when it came to the time specifically, because I'd heard about it in the financial arena, is this whole idea of giving every dollar a job and then applying that to your time, giving every hour a job. So if you don't budget, the basic philosophy is that whatever you don't budget gets wasted. Okay, well, you can use your information during your audits. And if you do use something like timing, it's pretty clear because it runs automatically and it gives you the honest look of how you spent your time. But

you could go back through your bank records and see all of the $5 Starbucks lattes that you bought too and realize that those weren't actually helping you achieve your financial goals. So looking back is the first piece. But then once you have that information, what do you do with it? That's where you can make the small adjustments and say, you know, I'm going to do something else instead of going to Starbucks every day. And I'm going to save five bucks a day and I'm going to take those five dollars and I'm going to budget them and set them aside for this thing over here. But I think that's a really powerful idea when applied to your time as well. I've got this thing in my course.

I had my first coaching call today with somebody and we talked about like planning your perfect week and how you've got 168 hours in a week. And for the average person, it's really not a matter of not having enough time as you're trying to carve out the time to achieve your goals, whether they be personal or professional. It's really allocating your resources correctly and not getting yourself in

a three-hour time block where you could have been doing something. And when I say doing something, I'm not necessarily meaning like be more productive. Your intentional use of your time blocking when planning your perfect week could be that I'm going to take three hours and i am going to watch netflix or i am going to play video games breath of the wild whatever uh but being intentional about how you spend those like that helps you it creates it in a sense more time for you um same thing with the with the money aspect i love how you can't say video games without saying breath of the Wild at the same time. It's true. It's true. Well, for me specifically, because that's the one that can be a time suck.

Yeah. It's so huge, and you can spend so many hours just walking around the world there. But yeah, you could use something else. You could use civilization if you want. I got to get back to Breath of the Wild. I'm going to do that. But the other point I'd like to make on this whole idea about time and money is also, it's just, I think the end of the year is a great time to look at, you know, what are the more profitable endeavors? For me, looking at, like, I track with

my clients, not only the time that I bill to my clients, but the time I spend on them in general, because there's a lot of things I can do that are non-billable. So I don't charge them for it, but it still takes my time. And sometimes if it's a high maintenance client, that can add up to quite a bit. And maybe that's one of your bigger clients, so you just deal with it and you don't think about it. But then you get to the end of the year and you look at it and you realize that the number of hours you spent for the dollars doesn't really make sense for you. And even if they are a relatively big client, maybe if you replace them with four clients that didn't require so much non-billable time, you'd actually be net ahead. And that's the kind of stuff you don't know until you look at the data. And look at, you know,

so look at it at the end of the year. How much did I make from these various endeavors? How much time did I spend on them? And look at them carefully. Write them down on a piece of paper, make a spreadsheet, do whatever you need to do and to run those calculations. Because if you have in your head going into January a good idea of what type of work do I get the most bang for my buck and what type of work do I get the least, that can really help you going forward. Yeah, and you need both sides of that in order to really understand that complete picture. You can't just look at how much you made

from let's just say clients or projects because a lot of times, I know I've done this, where you estimate a client project and it's gonna be this much and then it ends up being five times bigger than you thought it was. And now what was a lucrative project is now something that is costing you money because of how much time you've got to put into it. But if you don't look at the time aspect of that, and you just looked at the bank records, you could say, well, most of my money came from these things.

But you have to understand really the value of that project per hour that you put into it. Well, it's like, for example, when I do that math, I do okay on these videos that I make and sell. I would do better if I spent all that time being a lawyer. But I really get a lot of satisfaction out of making these videos. And I enjoy it. And it does help pay the bills, you know? I mean,

it's not a, it's not something I do for free, but it's also not something that's going to pay for the Hawaiian condo, you know? Yeah. But the, but that's okay too, because I have that information and I make big boy decisions,

but, but the end of the year is a great time to go through and, and make those kinds of decisions. I, I'm not trying to say it comes down to, you know, what makes you the most dollars per hour, because the reason you're a free agent is not necessarily to do that. But you do need that information. Because what's shocking is when you have something that you don't get a lot of satisfaction and joy out, and you find out that despite your belief to the contrary, it doesn't even pay you that many dollars per hour,

you know. So it's the worst of per hour, you know? So it's the worst of both worlds, you know? And that's the thing you get from this year in audit. So please do that. And we've got forums. You don't need to share your details. But, you know, if you've got techniques you've used or information you learned or wisdom you've obtained by doing this, let us know and share it with the rest of the community. Now, another thing I would recommend you do with this year end audit is do a check in on the things. And we've done individual shows on all three of these topics, insurance, accounting and legal. But I think the end of the year is a great time to call up your insurance broker and say, OK, let me know this is what I'm

doing. Let me know if I'm insured. Maybe know, maybe next year I'm planning to expand to do some other new business. What do I need to do to make sure I have insurance? You know, call up the accountant. You know, what can I do next year to make your job easier? Because if there's maybe some small changes you can make, you can save yourself money on accounting fees or, you know, get more accurate tax accounting and, you know, just make your life easier. And same thing with your lawyer. Call your lawyer. Say, what do we need to do? I do a lot of minutes for my clients' corporations at the end of the year. Maybe some of my clients decide they want to update their service contract. Often that

happens at the end of the year. So just think about those kinds of nuts and bolts, business foundational basics for your free agency, and just get those cleaned up in December. So once again, you hit the ground running in January. Yeah, the accounting thing specifically, I'll just share from my experience. So other free agents listeners don't have to make the same mistake. But you do want to make sure that that stuff is accurate. I've had a couple situations in the past where I ended up, through the course of the year, making more money than I had estimated. But especially the first year when I went from being on the company payroll to doing my own taxes, all of a sudden you get to tax time and you owe a bunch of money that you weren't planning on paying. That's a tough spot to be in. So if you know that stuff is coming, it's a lot easier to overcome those hurdles. Yeah. And like I said, this is just a great time. Maybe you don't have an accountant or you don't have a legal professional if you've got a corporation. And this is a good time of year to say, let's just get those problems

solved now. I just think it's a great time to do that stuff. And then now comes the dessert, you know, where we talked about all the vegetables, the fun part about the year. And because you're a free agent, you're also in control of the workflows of the company. And this is a great time to think about, you know, what could we do better next year? Maybe you need to buy another computer to do something. Maybe you need to upgrade your scanner. Maybe you need to, you know, think about hiring an assistant or, you know, finding some software solution. But this is a great time to think through those problems. Yeah. And I like the heading you used here is the systems, because I think approaching

the different tools that you use, hardware, software, whatever, through a systems thinking mindset will show you the areas where you can tweak things for the better and help you not just fall prey to shiny new object syndrome. Let's just talk about task managers specifically. I think task managers or project management tools, if you're using, if you're a free agent that works with other teams, they both have the same approach where you think that new task manager, new project management tool is going to solve all of the problems that are holding your projects back. So what do you do? You move everything from your trusted system into the shiny new thing and you try it for a couple of weeks and you realize it doesn't have this feature, whatever, can't repeat tasks. And now you've got to put everything back. And what happens? You've lost a couple of weeks worth of time. But when you apply systems thinking to it, you can recognize the problems that currently exist in the way that you do things right now. And then you can fill those things. And when it makes it makes it a lot easier to judge whether switching from this app to that tool or whatever, it makes it a lot easier to judge whether that thing is going to be worth it because you recognize what specific pain point it's going to solve. Systems thinking, I mean, there's a bunch of different ways that you can think about

this. One of my favorites is this think like a geek concept where you can continue to do things at the way you've been doing them, but the geek is going to at some point try to figure out a way to make this task that keeps coming up more repeatable, more automated, or they're going to delegate it somewhere. With a geek specifically in the example, maybe it's creating a script or something. TextExpander is a great example of this. Things that you type over and over and over again, you can create a TextExpander snippet easily. You don't need to have any coding knowledge. You just type a couple of keystrokes and then bam, there's your email that you write 20 times a day and it saves you hours of time over time. But that think like a

geek mindset, at one point, you're going to get frustrated with the fact that you keep doing these things over and over again. And we've talked about like the three times rule. That's kind of the sweet spot, I think, for a lot of these problems that you would see in your systems. And then think through, okay, so how can I automate this? And when you do do that, when you sit down to automate something or figure out a more efficient way to do it, or switch things over to the new tool, whatever, it is going to take more effort up front. But it's okay, because you know that this is going to happen over and over and over again. And so this is going to pay off in the long run. So I think this idea of doing this

just at the end of the year is really powerful. And if you set aside the time to play with your systems and to figure things out, you don't have to feel bad about trying out these new things. The problem is that when you are constantly trying out new systems and new tools and new apps, and all you're doing is fiddling instead of actually doing the work. Yeah, I don't think I want to go far enough to say you don't do systems changes throughout the year. I think that's one of the agility of a free agent allows you to do that. But I do think the year end is a great time

to look back on where were the bottlenecks and consider the real big changes. Like maybe you want to switch your billing system. You know, switching your billing system at the end of the year is a great idea because for the next year, for your financial records and everything, everything is just with one system. Switching your billing system at the end of the year is a great idea because for the next year, for your financial records and everything, everything is just with one system. And customers and clients, I think, are often used to those kinds of changes taking place at the beginning of the year. One of the things I've done in the last few months is I've signed up for a Basecamp

account, and I'm trying to move some of my legal transactional stuff into Basecamp. For a variety of reasons, I think it makes really good sense for my clients, but I haven't done a real big push on it with the clients. And I don't want to force them into it if they're not interested. But I've decided that January is when I'm going to be sending all that stuff out with kind of some tutorials and explanations of why I'm doing that. But I'm building all the pieces of that in December. So that all rolls out in January. That's the kind of stuff I'm

thinking about. Yeah, exactly. You can go deeper during this time and figure stuff out so that it's not, you don't have to make a bunch of errors as you roll out Basecamp. Oh, I should have sent these emails or created these tutorials because you've set aside the time to really unpack what is required to make this a smooth process because it's not just you it's going to be everybody that you work with as well yeah and and it is a great time to do that and it's okay you might make some mistakes it's all right but but i feel like as the as a as a free agent this is your unique time to to pull this stuff off. And you can do it so much faster.

I mean, maybe, you know, like we heard on the tech side, because Mike and I do a lot of tech stuff, people are talking about the iPad. And maybe you think, man, I'd really like to incorporate the iPad into my work. December is a great time to say, okay, well, I bought some new hardware. What are the pieces of my work where this would make sense? And what are the software tools i need to install and set up so in january this just becomes part of the workflow and um that's the kind of stuff i'm talking about in the the dessert portion of our meal right but yeah i guess for me it's dessert maybe for some people it isn't but yeah i i do like having those systems in place and

and um you know, over on the automators roads and I've been talking a lot about Zapier and that's the same thing with the client onboarding process. I'm really focusing in December and getting that all figured out through automation and Zapier before we hit January. So just to give you a couple of examples of things I'm doing. So that's the fun part. Then I guess the last piece of all this is you take all that data and then combine it with your heart. And then you start thinking about big picture planning. And I think that December is a great time to start thinking about that. You know, what is, what's your big goals for the next year? You know, what's the general direction

you want to point that battleship that is your sole proprietorship or your free agency? And having some direction or idea for a course change before you hit January really helps a lot. Yeah, definitely. And the big picture planning thing, a lot of this, I feel, comes back to the intrinsic motivation to do things. So all of the audits that we talked about, those can kind of help you see what went well, what didn't go well, what could have gone better. But in essence, it's kind of like the three questions that we talked about in the value of your time episode that I mentioned from the personal retreat thing. You know, what should I start doing?

What should I stop doing? What should I keep doing? And then armed with that information, you go into the big picture planning and you think about what are the goals that you want to set. I've actually got a course that I'm just about finished with for the personal retreat handbook. And it gets into some of the nitty gritty details of this. And I've also worked with a couple people on this. And one of the things that I think really makes this work is this whole idea of the wheel of life, which we've kind of talked around in this episode. You know, we talked about the value of your doing the audit on how you spend your time and the money that you make. And you made the comment,

David, how it's really not just about the number of dollars that you can make. It's really about what you enjoy doing and stuff like that too. Well, the wheel of life is kind of checking in on the different areas of your life and career and work and financial. These might all be areas on your own personal wheel of life, but it's okay to say this thing that I'm going to do, wheel of life. But it's okay to say this thing that I'm going to do, it's not super financially lucrative, but it scratches the itch for me in fun and recreation or tech or whatever other categories that you're going to do. But that's really the thing when it comes to the big picture planning that I think helps these things stick. Get past the three weeks and the gym is empty, the New Year's resolution fails,

is understanding that the things that I am selecting to do, they're not just goals that I'm going to hit and be quote unquote successful, but they are tied to my happiness. If I do these things in this area, I will be happier in this particular area. And the wheel of life just kind of crystallizes for me. I love this exercise where you rate from zero to 10, your current state of happiness in the different areas. And again, I've got like a PDF worksheet, which is in the course and all. We can put a link in the show notes

and there'll be a discount for free agents listeners there too. We'll also talk about this in the goal setting workshop. This isn't a new idea. It's just my implementation of it where I named the areas. But once you do that, it becomes pretty clear where you need to direct your efforts. And then when you set goals in those areas where you can see specifically how it's going to create future happiness for you, my experience, it's a lot easier to follow through on those. That makes total sense.

experience, it's a lot easier to follow through on those. That makes total sense. And honestly, that's some of the stuff we're going to cover with this show's transition over to being called focused is we want to get at that stuff, you know, so you're working at the things that truly make you happy and give you your best life. Yeah, exactly. And then the other piece to this, the heading here is big picture planning, is to think further and to think bigger. Another exercise or a step in that personal retreat course is this, like, what do you, what does your life look like five years from now? And you're right, we're going to dig into some of this stuff deeper in future episodes, but I just want to throw it out there because I was talking to somebody today and they had a little bit of trouble picturing what it looked like in five years. They went through the 12-week year book

and they understand, I need the vision, but how do I actually get that? So one of the things that was helpful for me, big picture planning, just paint a picture in your mind, what does it look like five years from now if you are going to be successful? What kind of house do you live in? What kind of car do you drive? If you don't want to focus on the things, like what do your relationships look like? What is your relationship with your wife or husband look like? What is the relationship with your kids look like? What do you do all day? What do you do with your friends? What are your social relationships like? And having a picture of, a vivid picture, a detailed picture of what that future looks like, that makes it a lot easier

to show up every day and take consistent action. Yeah, agreed. And even to a lesser extent, you know, in your December planning for your free agency, you kind of have to have the same ideas about where is this going to be going for you? You know, where do you want to, I even feel like on the year level, it really helps me like um in this past year i'm i am has been the most satisfying for me since i went out on my own because i have manually um dialed down some of the legal stuff you know i've lowered my income in one section and i've increased it on the other section and i'm more the things i'm doing on both legal and max markey are more in line with the things

i want to do as a member of this world and this you know with my life and uh and i feel like the stuff that i didn't want to be doing is less and less a part of my life this year than ever before and the only reason that's true is because last year, and frankly, over the last couple of years, I've been going through the pain and suffering involved with forcing that change. And I don't feel like I'm done as I'm doing my review this December. I see a whole lot of places where I can make improvement, and I'd like to be even further down that road when I think about this next December. But I can tell you this stuff works. It's definitely worked for me. Yeah, that's an important point there too, is you can look at your situation and you can get frustrated about, well, I should be further than I am right now.

Yeah, I felt that way for years. I was doing that to myself for years. Yeah, that's not going to help you though. You can get frustrated about the way things didn't work or you can figure out what are the changes that you can make, which will improve things going forward. And in my experience, I'm a different stage of life than you are, David. So I can't speak directly to that particular feeling. But one of the things that's really driving for me is I don't want to get to that point and feel like I've wasted my life or I didn't do that thing that I knew I was supposed to do. I don't want to have any regrets when I get to the end. And regardless of where you are on your journey, whether you are 35, 55, 75, just out of college, 18, you know, having that perspective where you're not looking back and being frustrated

with the lack of progress that you've made, but looking forward and figuring out what are the things that I can do every day to get where I want to go. That's kind of a different perspective, but it can totally change how you view your current situation as well. So it's kind of the difference between the gap and the gain, which I think we've mentioned on here, but it's an idea from Dan Sullivan where you can look back at where you were and or where you are now and where you wanted to be by now and get frustrated that you're not there yet. Or you can look back at where you are now and where you wanted to be by now and get frustrated that you're not there yet. Or you can look back at where you started and the progress that you made. You can say, I'm moving in the right direction. With a few modifications, I'll get there even faster.

That's what you want to do. Would you say that's a focused perspective? I would. Definitely. All right. Let's take a break here and thank our sponsor for this episode which is freshbooks and we're talking a lot about doing the time audit everyone likes to save time but it's especially important when you're a freelancer and our friends at freshbooks can save you a lot of time up to 192 hours with their super simple cloud accounting software for freelancers. By simplifying tasks like invoicing, tracking expenses, and getting paid online, FreshBooks has drastically reduced the time it takes for over 10 million people to deal with their paperwork. I love FreshBooks. I use it all the time because of a couple things. Number one,

when you email a client an invoice, FreshBooks can show you whether they've seen it. That puts an end to the guessing games, the back and forth. Also, FreshBooks will automate late payment reminders, so you don't have to follow up with people. You can spend less time chasing those payments and more time working your magic. Now, if you're listening to this and you're not using FreshBooks yet, now is the time to try it. FreshBooks is offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial for listeners of this show. No credit card required. All you have to do is go to freshbooks.com slash freeagents, one word, and enter freeagents, two words, in the how did you hear about us section. Once again, that's freshbooks.com slash freeagents one word and enter code freeagents two words in

the how did you hear about us section. We thank FreshBooks for their support of this show and RelayFM. Lots of great feedback this month. Yeah, too much to actually fit into one episode, but there was quite a bit of feedback based on the morning routine topic that we covered in episode 61. So I wanted to check in with a couple of these. There's a couple of cool ideas here. First, we've got a comment here from Chris Upchurch. He says, I really liked the discussion of morning routines since we were invited to share a mind look something like this. Number one, get up. Number two, exercise. Number three, shower. Number four, breakfast. Number five, leave for work. And he says, and this just

validates the point, you know, yes, I'm still working for the man every day. That's okay, Chris. We're glad that you're a listener. My problem is not that I don't do these things. It's other extraneous things infiltrating my morning activities. Email, diddling around on the internet, including talk.macpowerusers.com and other distractions. That's never wrong. Just listen to Chris. That's okay. Yep, yep. That's the one exception you can make. Sometimes turns a routine

I should easily be able to get through in less than two hours into more than three. In order to get a good start to the day, I need to be more disciplined at keeping those distracting activities out. So there's a couple things in here which I think are really good. Number one is recognizing the fact

that there are certain things that will make this take longer. And then number two would be now that you've recognized those things, that's where you can put in the guardrails or the safeguards to make sure that you don't spend time on those things. Well, the interesting point about Chris's note is if you look at his list of things he does, none of them involve being on the Internet. But the things that are getting in his way, email and the forums, are on the Internet. So at some point, the Internet is breaching Chris's system here. So I think there's a couple of ways to approach this.

Number one is you could say, well, look, the morning routine does involve the Internet. And I think there's nothing wrong with that. You know, it's like, you know, for the longest time, for years, I would get up and as soon as I got out of bed, first thing I did grab that stupid phone. And, you know, and I, I wouldn't even make myself a piece of toast or something without, you know, dialing into the phone. And, and a long time ago, I decided, you know, what if I just left. And, and a long time ago, I decided, you know, what if I just left the phone on the charger in the morning, I have an Apple Watch, it tracks my steps, I, you know, I'm good. And getting through a bunch of my morning routine

without even checking my my mobile device, I think really helps me. But there's another side of this, though, too, if Chris is going to the work for the man, and maybe he's on a firewall there, and he gets some enjoyment in his morning from checking the email from family or going on talk.mac power users um then acknowledge it put some time in your morning routine for that but but but give it like mike would say guardrails you know say i'm going to spend 15 minutes on this or you know set a set amount of time set a timer time or sit down, do as much as you need. But just, you know, acknowledge it and do it. But don't let it infiltrate the entire system.

Yeah, exactly. So one of the things that I've done to eliminate this temptation altogether is removed email off of my phone and also social media at this point. So even Twitter and Instagram are not an option for me if I were to grab my phone first thing in the morning, which I do because I have as part of my morning routine, daily Bible reading. And I use an app for that because we've got a group Bible plan with some of the guys at my church. So to eliminate the temptations as I'm going to have my phone in my hands of me going and checking email and getting frustrated by something that I have to deal with at the office, or just looking

on Twitter or Instagram and being distracted by what everybody's complaining about in the world today. Like I eliminate all that negativity just simply by not having it as an option. So that would be one approach. But like you said, if it's a positive thing, going back to those questions, what should I start doing? What should I stop doing? What should I keep doing? If it's something that you want to keep doing,

then build that into your daily routine and be okay with spending 15 minutes, a half hour, whatever on macpowerusers.com and contributing in the forums. That's another completely valid approach where it's a problem is when it's not something that you want to be doing and it consistently infiltrates your daily routine. That's where you need to figure out, okay, so what do I need to do to make sure that I'm able to do the things that I really want to do? It's all about the intentionality

behind the actions. Yeah. One of the things I learned reading through the forum is I really want to do. It's all about the intentionality behind the actions. Yeah. One of the things I learned reading through the forum is I'm really fortunate at this point of my life because my kids are grown enough that that's barely a consideration. Occasionally, I need to drive my daughter to school, but she drives now. So quite often she drives herself to school. But it's just really simple. And reading some of the listeners like Jabba has three morning routines. One is pre-kids getting up routine. Then there's the getting the kids ready for school. And then there's the after drop-off routine. I mean, Jabba's got to have three routines built around the kids. And I know, you know, during that season of your life, you just have to deal with that. But I feel like I've got one up on you guys because my kids have grown enough. I don't have

to do that. True, true. Yeah. The thing I find interesting about this topic is the differentiations between the different routines. So there's a very clear point where we've transitioned now from one routine to another. And I think taking the time to recognize where those logical breaks are makes it a lot easier to execute on these things. Okay, so we've got the pre-kids getting up routine, which maybe that's kind of what we were talking about in the last episode when we were talking about our morning routines. talking about in the last episode when we were talking about our morning routines. Okay, so if you've got things that you wanted to do before your kids got up in this particular case, talking to Java situation, and you only get through a couple of them, being able to say,

well, that's it for this. Now we're going to go do this other thing. It's almost like you're able to close the book or close the chapter on that previous routine and you don't have to waste any time beating yourself up about the fact that you didn't get to do all the things on your routine because there's something else that is, in this case, maybe demanding your attention. But I think that's a healthy perspective too, where you're looking forward to the next thing that you're going to do and not just frustrated because you weren't able to do the things that you wanted to do at the beginning of the day. I know I've been there where you have this plan that you're going to get all this stuff done and the morning starts off poorly. And by

noon, you're looking back at the morning and how unproductive you were. And for me, it can completely zap the motivation to do anything the rest of the day. And every time that happens, I get so frustrated with myself because like, yeah, you had a bad morning. So what? Hit the reset button and have a good afternoon. Don't let it affect the entire day. That's so true. I mean, just being able, in my mind, I always, I don't know where I learned the phrase, but I learned the phrase, turn the page. Whenever something goes badly, you got to turn the page. Sometimes as a lawyer, I have a phone call and a very frustrating situation. In the law, there's people that are unhappy quite often.

And I hang up the phone call, I make my notes, and then I just turn the page. I almost visualize in my head, and that really helps me. That being said, I didn't hear much in the forums about this. And we even talked about this a little bit on Mac Power Users. But I really like my system that I've kind of evolved to. the forums about this and we even talked about this a little bit on mac power users uh but the um i really like my system that i've kind of evolved to and once again this is because i work at home most days but getting up at six and putting in a couple solid hours on substantive projects before i even deal with email or deal with the you know the exercise and the meditation all the rest

of the the quote-unquote morning routine but getting a couple hours of solid work in before you start anything else, man, that, that has been such a great thing for me every day that I managed to do that. I feel like, um, I feel like I'm almost got one up on the universe for the rest of the day. Cheat codes. Yeah, exactly. cheat codes yeah exactly nice uh last one here in the list is sean cowdrey who makes a very fair point he took you to task mike yeah do drinking water going to the bathroom and taking a shower really count as a morning routine my kids do that without thinking it seems rather silly and i i agree uh and this is a very important distinction, I think, here. And maybe when we were going through it in the episode, I just was walking through verbally, thinking out loud, what does

my morning look like? What's everything that I do? And I do think that when it comes to identifying the things that you want to include in your morning routine, if I were to write that down, I would not have going to the bathroom and taking a shower because those are things that I'm going to naturally do just like Sean's kids. But for me specifically, the drinking water, I think this one is kind of interesting as an example because it could go either way. I, in the past, have not drank enough water and that's led to some not serious health things, but number one, decreased energy. So it does have a very real impact on my productivity. And so that's something that I wanted to add intentionally and make a part of my routine, not just having a drink of water, but drinking a certain amount of water every single day before I really start my day. And so I think that's something that maybe if you do that naturally, you wake up, you're really thirsty and you naturally drink 24 ounces of water. Maybe that's something you don't need to add to your morning routine. Really identify the things that you need the reminders to follow

through on when it comes to actually putting these into like an app or a system. And there's a lot of different habit tracker apps that are out there. We're toying around with one, which might be kind of fun for the new podcast, but we'll give you some details on that in a little bit. Um, but yeah, don't just put a whole bunch of things on there that you don't really need to have on your list. Yeah. I do think though, like addressing things that you know, or you aspirationally want to, uh, find yourself doing more often in the routine is a great way to get yourself there. Like, I, I have the last three or four months, I've been doing this thing where every morning, when I finished my initial burst of work, I write down one sentence of something I'm thankful for. It's I call it the am thanks, I do one in the PM two, but the am thanks, I think is the one that

gets me rolling. And it's like, so I get up, I do my burst of work, I do the am thanks i think is the one that gets me rolling and it's like so i get up i do my burst of work i do the am thanks i have i write that down in my routine list uh but i don't write down taking a shower later because i'm used to taking a shower i don't write even i don't even write down that i meditate every morning after a shower because i'm i've got that in ingrained in the system but this am thanks is something is new to me and when i first started doing i was even tracking that i was doing it every day but now it's starting to be a thing that I think of, I just do, which is part of the system. And maybe in another couple months, it won't even be mentioned in any of the routine stuff, but it's just going to be something that I do every day.

And you try this stuff out aspirationally maybe, and some of it works and some of it doesn't. But if you've got a routine system, that's a great place to kind of plug and play with those types of things. Yep, exactly. And then also the whole point of the morning routine, I would argue, is that it makes the rest of your day easier. So number one, like we talked about in the last episode, it could be things that are going to check the right boxes for you, the things that maybe are important but not urgent, or maybe they're just things that you want to do. You want to crank out a couple hours of work, like you said, David, before you really get into your day. But the other major benefit, which we didn't really

touch on in this episode, is that if you can automate a bunch of this stuff, if you internalize these things like taking a shower or in your case meditation, these things that maybe at one point were aspirational but now you do them on autopilot, it reduces the number of decisions that you have to make especially at the beginning of the day and it conserves your willpower. Now we're going to dive into that topic deeper in another episode, but I did want to kind of tease that and call it out because the morning routine can help you overcome decision fatigue later in the day. And I think one more point I would make just to kind of, I've heard that's a great point, Mike, but another thing, even when something kind of falls off the

list that it just becomes something you naturally do, you still need to account for it time-wise. There's still a block of time in my day that's an hour long, which gives me enough time to exercise, shower, and do the morning meditation. And I don't really write down what's going to happen in that hour, but I do have to have that hour accounted for or I'm going to fall apart. Yeah, definitely. Actually, related point to that. So the hour that you're going to delegate for this stuff, ideally, you can just say, here's the time now that I have the time. I'm going to follow through and do the things that I really need to do. Depending on where you're at in terms of is this aspirational or is this part of who I am, that will determine how much rigidity you have to add to that particular routine. But ideally, you want to make it as simple as it can be.

So going back to Sean's original point, do you need to have drinking water, going to the bathroom, taking a shower on your routine? Maybe, maybe not. It kind of depends. Your system should be as simple as it needs to be, but no simpler. It should be enough to get you moving in the right direction, but not too much where you're working on the tracking of the things instead of just doing the things. You want it to get you moving and then get out of the way. All right. Well, I think that was a lot to cover on morning routines. Yep. Yep. But it was great to see everybody post their morning routines. And so I want to just throw it out there again. You know, if there are people who want some inspiration or want to share their own, definitely check out the free agents forums. Yeah. And as we get into the

focused show, this is the kind of stuff we're going to be covering. And it's a moving target. I mean, the routine that Mike and I have now, we're not going to have in two or three months and neither will you. I mean, all this stuff evolves over time. Yep.

So anyway, that's it for episode 62 of the free agents. Thanks for listening. Keep an eye on your, your podcast catcher of choice because the show artwork and name is going to be changing in January. If you have feedback, head over to talk.macpowerusers.com. We've got a separate sub-forum there for free agents. It's an excellent forum. Lots of smart people in there, as you can see from the discussion today. We are the free

agents. I am David Sparks. You can find me on Twitter at Max Parkey on the internet at maxparkey.com. Mike is at bobbleheadjoe on Twitter. And which website should people go to for you, Mike? They can go to mikeschmitz.me. It's got links to all my projects, including the faith-based productivity stuff. You can find the free agents over at relay.fm slash free agents. Thank you for our sponsor FreshBooks today for supporting the show and we'll see you all in two weeks. Thank you.