Focused - 94: Journaling with Matt Ragland

Episode Date: March 3, 2020

Matt Ragland explains how he uses his paper bullet journal to stay focused.

Welcome to Focused, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks and joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hello, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? It is going well, my friend. My voice sounds a little weird today. I'm not really sure why, but hopefully I'm not getting sick. But we do have a guest today, and I'm really happy to welcome to the show, Matt Ragland. Hey, Mike. Hey, David. It's great to have you all.

Or great to be on the show. Well, it's my pleasure to be welcome the show, Matt Ragland. Hey, Mike. Hey, David. It's great to have y'all, or great to be on the show. I'm really excited to be on the show. Now, Matt is a YouTuber. He used to be with ConvertKit. I believe you're with Podia now, Matt. Is that right? That's correct. Yes. And he does a vlog over at YouTube, and we'll put the link in, but he's YouTube Matt Ragland, and you'll find him there. Matt does a lot of journaling, and we talk put the link in, but he's YouTube Matt Ragland and you'll find him there. Matt does a lot of journaling and we talk about journaling off and on on the show.

I thought it'd be really great to have someone on the show that really dives deep on it. And I'll tell you, I discovered you, Matt, like a year ago. And the reason I did was I like to do a little bit

of journaling myself. I thought, well, let me see what people are doing on YouTube. And I realized that apparently all of the world's great artists have gone to journaling. I know. Isn't it incredible? Yeah. They do this lettering and they do their month layout. And it looks like it was done by an artist. And I look at it and I'm like, that is not me. I don't want to spend all this time. And then I found this guy, Matt Ragland, and he scribbles and scrawls in his books. Sometimes he holds it up in shows where he got the dates wrong. He crosses them out and does them over

again. And I'm like, this is my people right here, you know? But you still get a lot out of it. I think the point of journaling to me is not to make something that's going to, you know, be archival quality in 300 years. I think it's something that helps. It's going to, you know, be archival quality in 300 years. I think it's something that helps. It's a tool and you use it as a tool. And I just really like that. So welcome to the show. Thanks. Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. And it is a way that I am differentiated, a little unique in the bullet journal community, the planner community. And so, yeah, I'm glad that resonated with you. That's awesome. I think it resonates with most of us, honestly.

I mean, I don't need to spend like three weeks learning how to letter to make my monthly layout. I just need to make a monthly layout. And you get that. I will say, though, that I think, Matt, you do have at least more artistic ability than I do. I remember I saw you present at Craft and Commerce last year and you had a bunch of doodles that you had drawn in your presentation and they looked really good. And I still looking at your videos, I agree. Like I like the fact that you are making mistakes in the video and it makes it appear more real. It's not this real pristine, perfect thing that you're trying to create. It's really the planning that's the effort behind that that is of value.

But I will throw out that they do look really good still. Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that. I went through one of the things that I tried on YouTube before I got into bullet journaling a lot was this thing called sketch notes, which is kind of like, I would maybe call them like high quality doodles. And so there's, I can do a little bit of it. But yeah, all the lettering and all of Yeah, just I they look amazing, whether you're on whether you're looking at it on Instagram or YouTube. And it does whether you're good at it or not. And it just it just. And I don't have time blocked out for that, which I know we're

going to talk about some too. Yeah. Yeah. Mike Grody was a guest on the show a while back, and he illustrated one of my books. Oh, yeah. He's the godfather. He's great. And his whole point is you don't need to make them super fancy. But I would also agree with Mike that even though you don't make them super fancy, the layouts you use are very practical and good ideas. And I think that if you just want to start journaling, not get hung up on having the perfect typography or way you're going to write the date across the top. I just want to get into actually journaling. Matt's layouts are excellent. Okay. So enough of this gushing for Matt, we want to talk about, um, you're a geek, you worked for technology companies. What's up with this paper and these books and these pens that you're using all the time? How'd you get into this? Yeah, that's a great question. I've liked pen and paper. You know, ever since I was young,

I can remember like keeping lists and notes and having notebooks for a really long time. Because I definitely grew up with technology, but I also grew up kind of in like kind of a semi sweet spot of like, I didn't have my first cell phone till I was in college. You know, we didn't have the like the internet came into my house, you know, kind of around late middle school into high school. And so a lot of like, I mean, yeah, I didn't like with apps and everything that just didn't that didn't exist until I was like in my mid my mid 20s. And so I ha I did have some habits and like comfort around using pen and paper. And even though I went away from that for a little bit, maybe like a couple of years, because like,

you know, just kind of got caught up in the rush of apps and everything and like, Oh, this is gonna be perfect. It's just in my pocket the whole time. That's that's really easy for me. But I realized I'd say three or four, three or four years ago, maybe a little more that the phone was really serving to be a distraction device for me when it came to when it came to note taking and a lot of the productivity that I do, because it was like, I've just realized it's so easy for me to get distracted on my phone, or even like to an extent on, on the computer. Like it will be often that maybe I log on to Twitter to like, literally post something and forget it almost immediately upon getting getting to the site. And so using pen and paper for me, and then you know, a notebook is a way that I like it's the it's the purest form of single tasking to me. And all I need to do is focus on what's on the page

in front of me. And so that is where I do pretty much all of my all of my planning, all of my to-do lists, all of my brainstorming is done on paper. Now, there are some systems which we can talk about later where I'm thinking about like, how do I do like some long-term project and product planning that is undeniably better in a doc that you can save and kind of iterate on? But the first mile of my productivity is pretty much all done on paper. So how did you, you have an affinity for pen and paper, but how did you get into the bullet journaling? You mentioned that you kind of

came to edit from sketchnotes. But what was that journey like? journey like? Yes, I've been I've been bullet journaling, I would say since 2013 2014. And I learned about it, kind of like, I think I learned about it around the time that Ryder Carroll, who's the creator of the bullet journal method, as it were, started started sharing on his on his blog, and then on on Twitter, some also about like, he's like, hey, here's kind of this method that I have in a notebook that just helps me keep track of everything. And I don't have to like go search through a bunch of different apps or make sure I always have this with me. It's just pen, paper, it's focused, it's there. I did also hear about it. I know another person that I heard about it from is Mike, Mike Rohde. And he had done a post, he did a guest post, I think, on the Bullet Journal site. And so those

two things kind of working in conjunction with each other was where I started to hear about Bullet Journaling. And it just made sense to me. And I connected with it really quickly as as a method and as a practice. And I've been I've been keeping it up ever since there are different ways I have made it my own, which I think is which I think is really important. It just people are listening to this one of one of the things I try and reiterate on my channel a lot is, you know, no matter what you see, and this goes for more than bullet journaling, but when you see something that interests you, and you want to get more involved with whether it's bullet journaling, or sketchnotes, or, you know, anything that you want to do, let's even say

podcasting, you see something, it's helpful to follow a framework early on, because that helps like set the map for you to get started. But as quickly as you can start to make the iterations and the adjustments that fit your own like life and curiosity better and you'll be able to stay with it a lot longer and it'll be just more fun for you. I like that. So what specific things have you done to kind of make it your own? And was there like a pivotal thing where or a moment when you were following the system that Ryder Carroll laid out where you just said, no, this doesn't work for me. I'm going to try this thing instead that really made it click for you? Yeah, there are a couple of things. One is that as much as I like having my main bullet journal and kind of that like classic A5 style notebook,

Leuchtturm, I think is the official bullet journal recommendation. And then I use Baron Fig journals a lot too. I don't, you know, I don't carry that around a whole lot. You know, that doesn't, doesn't fit into a pocket. I don't always have a backpack with me. And so one of the things that I do carry around constantly is a little field notes notebook. And I just actually put a video up about this. But that allows me to do like just some basic lists and capture. And so I do use kind of those two in conjunction with each other. If I know I'm going to be like out and about, I'll just like migrate and transfer tasks or notes from field notes into the bullet journal and vice versa. So that was one adjustment that I made pretty quickly. But the biggest one in terms of like layout and structure of the bullet journal that I changed is just the the nature of my of my work the past five years at ConvertKit and now at

Podia is that I have a you know I have a I have an agenda I have I have meetings that I have to keep and I always found the like meeting layout weekly weekly layout structure in bullet journal in the bullet journal method to be profoundly uh just either can not just confusing but kind of unusable because it's like oh you know make i can't even remember what it is but i think the indicator was like make a circle or a square or a triangle or some some shade to indicate that you have a meeting but it would just be jammed in with like all the other tasks so it'd be like you know take the kids to school, reply to these emails, spend an hour on, you know, this, this creative project that you have. And then, oh yeah, you have a meeting at 11 and it just kind of got squeezed in there. And I found, I just, I couldn't track my meetings

very well that way. And so what I, what I ended up doing was now instead of just having what the bullet journal method recommends, essentially, is you just have an on basically an ongoing list. And when you finish one day, you make a couple of notes. And it's like, okay, next, you know, take a couple of, you know, metaphorical line breaks, and then move on to the next day. I couldn't do that. And so what I ended up doing is basically on a single like two page spread, I just cut those pages in half or, you know, grid those pages off. And then each, each half page results in a day. And at the top of the day, at the top of the half, I put all of my agenda items like meetings or things that have a time dedicated to them. And

then the rest of that little space is just for other like tasks or notes. Some people need a whole page, some people need two pages that but after doing this for four or five years, that's what I found is usually a good enough amount of space for me. But that was my biggest departure from the normal bullet journal method was having basically gridded out daily sections that I could more easily organize both my meetings and my to-do items. There's something I found from journaling, and I use some of the methods I've learned from you, I've got my own stuff too, but the thing I find that's interesting about it is that the pen is slower than the brain. And that's a good thing because it actually forces me to slow the brain down a little bit when I'm doing the journal-y type work.

Slower than the brain but mightier than the keyboard. Yeah. And it's just such an interesting concept because I've always been somebody very interested in productivity. I use TextExpander for my snippets and I do all this stuff to speed up things like text creation. And it was such a foreign concept for me,

but I started doing it a couple of years ago because everybody was talking about it. I'm like, well, let me try it. And I get all these strange benefits from it that I never really expected. Do you find that as well in your, your usage? I do. And I find that it really helps clarify my thinking, as you were saying, not just the focus aspect that we talked about earlier, but the ability to really think about what you're writing down. Now, you know, kind of classic brainstorm or mind map style. If my mind is really racing on an idea, then I'll maybe quickly make a bullet list of what

what I want to make sure that I make sure that I don't forget and then kind of expand upon it from there. But it's absolutely like it's it's almost it's like a form of therapy to me. And I will say that I make a slight distinction between like bullet journaling as a productivity practice, which is essentially what I use it for. And then maybe more like classic journaling or almost like diary keeping, I do both. And the latter for me is more of that, it's like mental health therapy, like just kind of thinking

through problems, issues, like what's on my mind, like kind of the brain dump of this is what's going on today. This is what I'm frustrated with. This is what I'm really excited about. That is more of a free form journaling that to me is kind of like a separate, separate but maybe related practice of the bullet journal. But just in case anyone is maybe not making that connection, because sometimes it can be a little confusing if I don't give some context to it. But that is the big thing for me, like whether I'm bullet journal, like bullet journaling for focus on these are the things that I need to make sure that I'm like doing in my work and in my life

today. And then, uh, kind of separate, usually end of day journaling where I'm just like, basically it's like, uh, I can never remember the right, the right term, but like Dumbledore and Harry Potter, where he was like pulling the thoughts out of his head and like putting them into the bowl. I'm like, uh, that's, that's what journaling is like for me at the end of the day. I'm just kind of like, okay, well, that's out of the head. Now I gotta, I can go to bed. That's an excellent point because I'll tell you having been on my kind of journey with this a few years is that I get a tremendous benefit from the journaling part. And I tend to use digital tools for much of the kind of traditional bullet journal stuff. I don't build journals much, but boy, does that end of the day journal. For me,

it's like a bookmark to a meditation session in the morning. You do those two things and it's like, okay, you've got a good idea. And the pensive is the perfect analogy for it because it gives you an idea to take things out, take a look at them, mix them up, even separate yourself a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. And what I tell like people that I like people that I teach through either through YouTube or some of the courses that I have that one of the big takeaways I always tell is like when you're doing this, when you're doing the journaling or the like weekly review, look at it not as so we have a tendency a lot of times to, you know, look back as a judge on ourselves and be like, okay, great, you did this fine or good, but this was not good. And you should feel bad. And I always encourage people like when you're doing

that either daily or weekly review through journaling is think about it and like being just an observer, like an unbiased observer of like, okay, well, this is something that I wanted to do. I didn't get to it or I did get to it. Like this was just a thing that happened. And like you said, detaching yourself from the process and from the moment and almost from yourself makes for, I find, really healthy journaling. And again, kind of like you said, putting that bookmark and closing the book on the day, sometimes very literally. And just because it takes longer for your pen to get the words out, especially if you write as slowly as I do, the brain contributes more than it normally would. And you find things that

you don't think. Like if I sat down and typed out the same information or if I dictated it, I'm not sure I would get to the same places. Yeah. And I find, you know, just, I find that when, when I do journal that I just feel, I feel much better. I feel calmer days and weeks where I maybe have gotten out of the habit a little bit. I'll often find that like for, you know, I just, I have a little bit higher stress level. Like my anxiety gets up a little bit, I'll often find that like for, you know, I just, I have a little bit higher stress level. Like my anxiety gets up a little bit and like, ah, you know what? You haven't, you haven't been journaling. Like you haven't been doing, doing that thing. And when I get back into it for even just a few days, then like I can, I can literally feel like kind of the,

the calm ease back in, even if what's going on is still pretty busy. Like I just, I feel like I have a little bit better handle on it. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Indeed. When you start your hiring process, you might have a few questions like, are you going to get good applicants to choose from? How can you narrow down by education or experience? And how will you know that you've made the right hire? Indeed is there to help. They have millions of great candidates that use Indeed every day to find their next opportunity. So you can post a job in minutes and use screener questions to help you quickly create your short list of applicants who are a perfect fit for your

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Terms, conditions, and exclusions apply, and it's only valid through March 31st, 2020. Our thanks to Indeed for their support of this show and all of Relay FM. back and review those entries after the fact and kind of related does this happen it kind of sounds like this feeds your your bullet journaling as well so does this happen in the same notebook or do you have separate places for these i have a separate notebook for that kind of daily journaling just because it would get to be like i said i tend to keep a pretty structured bullet journal at this point with kind of sectioning off those areas for the daily for the daily spread. And so that is happening in a different journal. And it does kind of feed into each other. Now, another thing just on like bullet journal, say like organization and threading is I, I name and number all of my bullet journals so that if there is

something maybe, and sorry, journals in general, basically any notebook that I have has a name or at least like a date, some kind of title that I can reference so that if I am, say, going through something in a day in my bullet journal, and I want to make a note about it, or I know I want to expand about it in my evening journal session, then I'll basically put in like name of the journal and page number into, into the bullet journal. So I know if I, if I am going back and reviewing it, which I, uh, probably don't do as often as, as I would like, but I do go back and review things, especially like if I'm trying to make better decisions or I have something coming up that I need, like just some information on or like, what were you thinking about this particular topic or issue? When it

was happening, it makes it pretty easy for me to thread and reference between those two. And then I'll do the same in the daily journal is I'll write down, you know, it was this bullet journal on this page that you were making this connection. Do you foresee, well, I guess, how many journals do you have? Because you say you've been doing this for a couple of years now. And is there any, this for a couple of years now. And is there any, do you think that you will ever move on from this system? Or do you foresee like a problem as you collect a whole bunch of journals, being able to go back and find things later? How are you kind of planning for the future with this system? Yeah, it's a great question. And to be honest, it's still one that I'm wrestling with. I haven't particularly learned how to make it anti-fragile at this point. But I would say in a year, usually I have at least two, if not three journals or notebooks going at the same time. And for the, like I said, those three different things, I have the productivity bullet journal, which is most like almost, almost primarily for work and like side hustle related tasks. And then I have the daily journal,

which is usually like a pocket size. So it's a little bit easier to tote around if I need to. And then a field notes. And so I have those, I have those three. So I would say in, in the span of a year, I probably go through two bullet journals, two journal journals, and then six-ish field notes, notebooks. And so, yeah, it's definitely adding up. And I have probably 20 to 30 definitely in the office right now. It's something that I want to keep, obviously. And I kind of think of them almost as like this, the reason one of the reasons I started daily journaling, and even the vlog, before I like kind of pivoted into nearly full time bullet journal videos, is that I have to I have two two boys and I want to leave some kind of a

record for them. I write and journal in such a way that I feel like I'm very honest and the kind of things that I would feel comfortable with them reading. I know one of the biggest pushbacks I get on journaling, like daily journaling, feelings journaling, if you will, is like, well, is privacy and like, well, what if someone reads this? And I normally push back and say like, well, if you really don't want anybody to read it, then, you know, burn it or like get rid of it somehow or write it. Or I think that is a good use for a digital journal. But I do want to keep a record for, for my boys and for myself also. And I, I don't know what what the future holds and what,

you know, anything is going to be like and, and having having this for myself and for people that I care about, specifically from the from the daily journaling is something that just feels good to me. Now, I just have to figure out a way to keep them in relatively good condition. One thing that I've thought about is Ryan Holiday famously kind of writes and organizes all of his books on like stacks on stacks of index cards before he actually gets to like the, the writing phase. And he still uses those cards to organize his chapters and topics. And so he'll say, and I think I've seen him post pictures of this somewhere in his officer garage. He just has boxes on boxes of like, these are my books. Like this big box is the obstacle is the way and this big box is

conspiracy. And there's something about that, like, when I see I was like, it's more than just like, oh, that would be cool, but I'm probably not going to do it. Like, it'll be the first step for me will be something like that. It's like, this is this year, you know, as I continue to do more with, with teaching, you know, hopefully books and something down the road, then, you know, having, yeah, just having that kind of actual physical filing system, as much as things are going online, and will, you know, inexorably continue to do, just having something like, I don't know, just still feel still feels good to me about that. You know, it's, it's interesting, because you're talking about journaling for your children. And I think

that that can be a hindrance. Like when I do write my journal, there is a part of me that's aware that someday they may read them. But I'm trying to write for my own therapy, if that makes sense. My father died when i was still in school relatively young was a long time ago and i would give anything to have some of his inner thoughts you know and uh so maybe that someday that would be of use to them but who knows right uh i do think that though if you're going to journal you should really journal for yourself that's just kind of my take on it but but it really yeah i absolutely agree yeah it is it is but it the problem is if you let it filter filter your thoughts like well i don't i want to write this so they learn this lesson from me no you're you're actually working for me at least i'm working on myself more than

anything else um and i do think that though, that it's interesting as people who all work in the digital sphere, all three of us make digital products that have no existence in the real world. There is something very satisfying about going to analog tools once in a while and looking at a pile of books on the shelf that you wrote. Yep. I like the idea of an analog legacy. I agree. You got to journal for yourself first. I don't think that would be a temptation or hindrance for me, but hearing you describe it where you have these things which contain your thoughts, I can see that being of value once you're no longer around. You know, I kind of

wish I had that sort of stuff from my grandparents. They were, they passed away before I was really old enough to understand the value and the wisdom of the knowledge that they had. And I kind of think about that every once in a while. Like, I wish I could ask them what they thought about X, you know, and how life has changed. And I think that would be really cool. Oh, wait till it's your dad, man. It's even worse. It's even worse. Yeah. And I just want to clarify, because you both make really good points, is I think that when I journal for myself, like when I journal in a day-to-day basis, that's for me.

But one of the, I just kind of have that with the boys in the back of my mind. And it's something that if maybe I don't, if I'm kind of off, if I'm out of practice with journaling, which does happen, or I just don't feel like doing it a particular day, then it's something it's just a little extra thing to keep me to keep me going and keep me keep me motivated. Because yeah, it's the same thing. And I absolutely agree with you. I think part of the reason I want to do it in these books too is to leave a legacy for them because I wish I had one for my own father. And I just wonder if my day one file is ever going to be discovered if I get hit by a bus.

Exactly. I was thinking about that too. You can print off the books from day one, but unless you do that and it's sitting on your shelf, is anybody going to go look at those things? I've seen that with photographs. My parents have books of photos that when we're over there, we'll thumb through, but we'll never take the time to comb through the thousands that we have in the photos app on our phone. Yeah. Yeah. And the way to, one of the other ways, like just with journaling, and I'll stop about it is this particular piece is I be being a bit of a writer and a creator myself is that if I was to, if I was to specifically think of as like, what are the life lessons that I want to leave for my children,

then that would become really intimidating for me to like, sit down and be like, okay, become really intimidating for me to like sit down and be like, okay, lesson one, make sure you do or don't do this, then that would take me a long time to get through. And I may never make the progress on it that I wish I would. But if I'm just going through it as like a journal, and this is what I'm thinking about, and this is what I'm dealing with, not only do I think that most likely that's going to be more accessible for the boys, but it's also going to be easier for me to do on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, it's going to be so much more useful for them to see how you solve your problems, not the wisdom from the mount. Yeah, I agree. Well, let's get a little more into the weeds on the bullet journaling side of this stuff.

I'm sorry I went into the hippie land of journaling. That's my fault. I don't mind being there. But just you have got some great ideas for bullet journaling that I think really helps a lot of folks. And maybe we should start by talking a little bit about, you know, like you said, you're using it under fire every day. that you're using it under fire every day, the evolution and creation of your daily spread. Yeah, every day, I referenced it a little bit, is every day now I have this basically half a page that I look at. And on most days I'll have three or four agenda items. And for me, that is places that I have to be

or things that I have to do at four agenda items. And for me, that is like places that I have to be or things that I have to do at a specific time. And then I'm really trying to get into like the three or four things that I have to accomplish that day that are going to make the day a win. Yeah. So there might be smaller things that just kind of come up and I knock those out pretty quick. Those don't always make it into the bullet journal. So that is the daily spread. And I'm going to pull back a little bit because what I'll also do is at the beginning of the week, I create a one-page kind of weekly goals, weekly objectives. And I'll say for my work at Podia, for the things that I'm doing for the YouTube channel,

and for the things that we have going on at home, what are the two or three objectives that I want to accomplish this week? What's going to make this week great? And so I'll put that on the first page of like my, the first page of the week. I'll say, okay, so for, you know, February, whatever it was, you know, 20, 21st, 22nd to the 28th, this is what I want to try and do. And, you know, I'm looking at it right now. It's like, okay, we need to take care of this email campaign for Podia. I need to plan a membership program. And, you know, for my YouTube channel, it'll be creating a, you know, going over survey results and then also looking at it and saying like, okay, what do I need to do to make sure the video goes out this week? And so things like that. And what that will then do is I'll look at the week ahead in those sections, those half page sections and be like, okay, here are the things that I have.

Here's the space. Here's the space that I want to, that I have available to work on these things. When, what kind of, what kind of tasks and where do they go in the week? And so I'll really look at the week ahead, either Sunday evening or first thing Monday morning before I get into any meetings or anything and just look at like, okay, what do I want the weekly plan to be? What are the objectives? What are the tasks associated with those objectives? And then how do I plan out my week from there? So it is, like I said, and this was something that I kind of came to over the years, it's a little bit more structured than maybe the traditional bullet journal method. But it's something that I found worked really well for me. And I can kind of zoom out

on that even further, but that is the consistent practice for me, a weekly preview, looking at the objectives that I have and the tasks that comprise them, filling those into the different days, doing just the ongoing like daily tasks that I have meetings. And then at the end of the week, usually Friday, sometimes Saturday, I'll do a review. And like I said, not looking at it as a judge, but as an observer, be like, okay, well, Monday, Matt thought he could accomplish this. And how did Monday Matt do? You know, what was the result for Matt on Friday as I'm reviewing this on his behalf, of course, and kind of creating that little bit of cycle for myself. Cause then I can be like,

okay, well I went pretty hard this week. I didn't do all the things. So maybe I need to tone it down a little bit, or maybe I was a little too, maybe, you know, just observing. I only tried to do like a couple of things, but I could actually do like three or four. I could probably do several things. And so now I can look at the next week and say, okay, well, let's try and pile it on a little bit more. Let's try and crank up the volume and see what we can get to. You know, I have, I have to laugh. Mike, it seems like almost every guest we have on the show that actually like gets work done and ships products starts with let's look at the week and make a rational list of things i can do i mean it seems like everybody gets to that point through different means and everybody has different tools and everything but it is it i love the fact that that's just such a

common theme among people that like to really actually get their work done i agree and uh i have a related question to that because as you're talking about what you're able to get done and kind of grading yourself on how you did, how do you measure at the beginning of the week what you are going to attempt to do? Is there any sort of indication as to how big you think this task is going to be? Or do you just kind of feel it out and whatever feels right, that's what you put. And then at the end of the week, you'll look at it and take a mental note. Oh, I guess, you know, that task instead of two hours, that's one hour for next week. Right. Yeah, it definitely is the latter at first of kind of feeling out a task like I'll and, and this is your question, Mike, is a really common one with like viewers and students

in the courses and on the channel is like, okay, well, you know, I have this goal or I have this task. How do I know how long it's gonna take? And I say, I don't know how long it's gonna take you either. Let's just go ahead and get started with it. And yeah, that can be kind of frustrating at the beginning. And it is not kind of, it is very frustrating at the beginning, and it can continue to be frustrating.

But I find that, you know, with a lot of things, the more that you try and consistently start and get as far as you can on the work, you get better at estimating the time and also like looking and saying like, okay, well, I thought this was, you know, a single task, but actually it's probably more like two or three kind of smaller tasks. And then you can look at it and say like, okay, well, like say, say, say a blog post or even a, any, even a YouTube video, probably a better example for me. It might be one thing to say like, okay, well, I got to get a YouTube video out this week and it's going to take me five or six hours to do that, which like over time, I've kind of understood that's about what it is for me. But at the beginning of that, I would just say like, okay,

well, let's do a YouTube video. And I would maybe, you know, get to it at the end, but it might have taken me eight or 10 hours initially. But I'm also looking and saying, okay, well, I can actually now kind of deconstruct this into a bunch of different, like smaller, smaller parts, which is another, obviously really common, like task and project management step, because it's, you know, it's outlining the video, and then it's, you know, kind of setting up the shots, and then it's actually filming, and then it's editing, and then it's, you know, title, description, thumbnail, tags, all of those things. So now I've also realized that they're like for a YouTube video, they're really like three or four

kind of sub prime primary subtasks to the overall goal or milestone of creating that video. And I can look at it now and say, Okay, well, I can probably chunk in the shooting and editing at these two times. And the title tag thumbnail are all going to be at this time. And I can, yeah, I can figure that out a little bit easier. But I do think like, if you're, if you're not used to doing this, then the best thing is just to dive in and get as far as you can in the time that you have, in and get as far as you can in the time that you have, which goes to like a lot of times what we think about when it comes to like goal or task accomplishment. I think of it in these two like pretty simple like systems. One is you can work on a task, like you can make your goal that completion of the task, like in this example, it's say, you're just finishing

that YouTube video. So I'm going to keep working on the YouTube video until I'm done, no matter how long it takes. Another way, and usually something like writing, or maybe, maybe even YouTube video is a little bit easier with this is you can also say like, okay, if I'm looking at instead with a time based system, then I'm just going to write as many words as I can within an hour. And that's going to be like, maybe I want to write 1000, but I only got to 500. Well, that's okay. Because the actual like goal or objective for me was to just, it was just to be at the screen for an hour, no matter how far along I got. So those are a few different ways of thinking about it. I think early on,

when you're getting into like, you're trying to figure out how much time it takes you to do something, just giving yourself a time block to work on it and be like, okay, well, I was able to get this far. Maybe I got a little more distracted than I thought I was going to do, but I was able to get this far. Maybe I can do a little more the next time, but I should probably think about where I can find another hour in my week to knock this out. There's so much to unpack there. And I think that the beginner mistake when it comes to task management is, because I've seen people do this, where they set up their OmniFocus, they have all their tasks, and they put time estimates on everything. Then they try to work based off the time estimates that they set. And obviously it doesn't go according to plan.

And then they quickly give up trying to estimate how long something's going to take. So there's obviously a time tracking element to this where how you think you're spending your time may not actually be how you are spending your time. You mentioned the time in front of the screen. Even that, I would say that there's a difference between time spent in front of the screen and time spent when you are running something like Freedom where you're blocking all the distractions or you physically can't open your Twitter app where you think you're just checking it for a minute, but you end up being there for 15 minutes of your hour-long writing block.

And ultimately, the big thing, I think, and we've talked about this on the show quite a bit, David and I, you and I both kind of do this, I think, is that time blocking. That seems to be the sweet spot for me where it almost doesn't matter what the size of the thing I'm going to try to do is. I'm just going to put it on a list and I'm going to carve out the time to work on it and I'm going to make as much progress as I can, like you said. And then from there, you can look back at the end of the week and say, how did I do? How did to work on it and i'm going to make as much progress as i can like you said and then uh from there you can look back at the end of the week and say how did i do how did monday matt do monday mike do but uh just having the the intention set and then doing the thing not worrying about

the ultimate outcome almost creating the habit of the the practice that's going to produce the work is more important than setting the goal of the finished YouTube project or the published article or podcast, whatever. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, James Clear talks a lot about this. And the first person that I actually heard it from is this systems, not goals thinking was from Scott Adams, who is creator of the Dilbert comic strips. And, you know, he talked about this a lot as you just set up a system for yourself. So whether that is and like fitness, writing fitness really lends itself to this kind of thinking also of saying, like, okay, well, I have this time blocked to go to the gym, go for a run, whatever it is.

And if you're looking at it from a time blocked system, then like, okay, well, I'm going to go out and I'm going to run for 30 minutes, no matter how far I get. Now, if you just sit down and look at your phone now, like that would kind of be the equivalent of like, uh, looking at, looking at Twitter when you're supposed to be writing. But if you just, you know, if you just go out and you do it for 30 minutes, you walk some, you run some, that's fine. But you can also think of it on the kind of flip flip side of like, I'm going to go out and run three miles no matter how long it takes. And that would be an example of the task system. And looking at it from that outcome, rather than saying you want to like achieve a particular like end goal, that I found

is really useful. Something that I do use the bullet journal for just to tie it back in is that I'll look at it and say like, okay, you know, what's the objective? What is the time or task that I need to block out? And this is usually a little more useful. This kind of thinking is usually a little more useful for me in terms of like my quarterly goal setting and saying like, I want to create a new course this quarter. What are the milestones I have to hit each month to make sure that I'm on track? Then what are the weekly deliverables that I need to have? And then what's the system that I need to set up on a daily or like every other day basis that helps me get to that end

result? Yep. What's the habit I got to create, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. So just by nature of showing up and doing the thing and the time or the task that I've given myself to do it, I'm very likely going to like achieve some, some variation of the end result. Yep. So important to call out here, I think, and then we can, we can move on from this if you want, David, but the thing you are measuring is whether you followed through with the intention that you set aside for that time. It is not a quality judgment on the end result. Right, yeah.

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credit card required. And when you sign up, use the code FOCUSED, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, at checkout to get an awesome 30% off your first purchase. Thanks to Peenium from SolarWinds for their support of Focused and RelayFM. I'm also curious with your bullet journal system, how do you handle developing and capturing ideas? So you've mentioned the bullet journals, kind of the productivity piece where you do a little planning. And I know you've got the field notes where you're probably capturing things. You've got the journal where you freeform at the end of the day. But if you have something that you just want to develop further, where and how does that happen?

Yeah, so this is where the digital and the analog start to mesh for me because I will usually do some kind of like initial outline slash brainstorming in any one of those, usually not the daily journal notebook, that's just for the daily journaling. But whether it's field notes, or whether it's, I do have like an ideas slash notes collection for the bullet journal people out there, a collection at the end of my bullet journal, where I just kind of put in these kind of ideas and early like early sparks of, of things that I could do. And then usually I am if something has legs, then I'm or I just have some energy around it, then I will usually not usually I'll migrate that into notion, which is my kind of overall productivity app of choice,

at least for my personal work and idea generation development. And that's where I'll start to build it out some more. So that's where I could start to, you know, like categorize different to-do lists or say, you know, use almost like Scrum or, you know, Kanban style boards to say, you know, this is, this is, uh, hasn't been worked on yet. This is in progress. This is completed. These are the different things that I have to do. It also allows for more obviously for for editing for collaboration, if needed, and just for gathering different like different types of content or media types that I might need in order to like fully realize the idea. Yeah, Notion is a really powerful app. I am interested in the Kanban stuff. What does that look like for you? I messed around with that when I was trying to create a

publishing schedule for myself. And I've had experience with Scrum. You mentioned Scrum too, and I kind of set that up with like the story points and everything. But how do you use it for, for that? What does that look like for your system? It looks a lot like you would see like for a Trello board, uh, for people that are, you know, familiar with that, but I use it for both courses and for YouTube videos. So I'll just use the YouTube video, uh, you know, example now, cause it's a little, it's a little higher of mine for me, but I will have like a list of general video ideas that are in one column. And that's basically, that's just the idea column. And then I'll have a filming, editing and completed, uh, piece. And then like you said,

from the story points now also like'll also like, clarify saying I'm not incredibly familiar with it. But I do have like, I normally have for YouTube, and I'm starting to really build this out more in 2020. I try and focus on a particular theme of either productivity or bullet journaling each quarter. And so the first quarter of 2020 is really focusing on the basics with a bullet journal. And I've been going through a series on that, that I have a few more videos in. I've done them on time tracking, goal setting. And so I'll, I'll still look at it kind of, and then I'll, so I'll kind of link together and try and carry that, that thread of the story and the theme

throughout all of the videos. And so I just have different columns and I just drag them across. So when something moves from the idea board over into the filming, then filming into editing and then editing into published or shipped, that's the way I'll kind of navigate through it. And it's very similar for courses as well. Like I might just have something that's in the outline stage and then it's in the writing or filming stage

and then same thing editing. And it's like, okay, this is completed. So you talked a little bit earlier about time blocks and I'll admit time blocking is my kink, but you did a video a couple of years ago, I believe, where you had the 10 block in your journal. And I know that was a very popular video and I think it's just a great idea.

Could you explain how that works? Yeah, of course. So I've been doing time blocking, I think the way that most people think of it for a really long time, which is essentially to me, like looking at it and saying like, okay, I'm going to spend two hours on email today. That seems like a lot, but sometimes it is. I'm going to spend two hours on email. I'm going to spend two hours on this creative project. And so you're going to look at

it just kind of like fitting these blocks of your day together. I do really like that because when I'm doing time blocking really well, it allows me to be more present with the thing that I'm doing at that time because I know I have enough time blocked out for other things. The genesis of the 10 blocks video that you're referencing is that I felt like my time blocking was completely out of whack. And specifically with the work that I was doing at ConvertKit at the time. And so the, the idea of the, the 10 blocks came from, okay, if I separate, if I kind of chunk my week into these four hour blocks, and if you're working a, you know, normal ish 40 hour week, then you're going to have 10 four hour blocks.

And it came from like, some some really healthy conversations I was having with my manager and director at ConvertKit at the time, because we were both like, well, I guess maybe I was feeling a little more overwhelmed thing like, okay, we've got all these things to do. And like, are we spending time on the right things? And are we making sure that, you know, kind of the, even like the Eisenhower matrix, like, are we giving too much time to like high urgency, low importance tasks? And what do those look like? So we were kind of looking at it and saying like, okay, here are the, I was looking at it and saying like, here are the primary projects and responsibilities that I have at ConvertKit, and I have 40 hours to complete them. And so if we're saying that I need to like

shift some of my responsibilities, or more of my time into something like I think at the time I was working on customer acquisition and migrations. And so if I need to spend more time on that, because that takes up a lot of time, then maybe I can spend as much time on like, ongoing customer support. And when I did, so I did time tracking and time blocking, and realize that, even though this goes back to other things that we talked about, just with like task management, I realized that, whereas I would have thought and did say like, oh, well, you know, I only spend an hour to a day on customer support. It turned out that I was spending a lot more time than that, about double that time. And so we were looking for ways like, okay, if you're going to

spend a minimum of four hours on this particular project, how can we make sure that you're spending, say, four or five of your 10 four hour blocks each week on customer acquisition and migrations? And maybe that means you can't be in as many meetings. Maybe that means you can't spend as much time on support. Maybe that means like some of the future projects that you might be outlining and getting started, maybe those have to wait. And so it's really a way of looking at the kind of big picture projects and blocks that you have on a weekly basis and saying like, okay, if I need to spend say four hours on something to really get get into the groove with it, like maybe spend half a day on it, not necessarily all at once, then where do those, what needs to go away so that I can make time for the things that are in that kind of important, urgent, or just like

the important tasks that are going to make the biggest progress for me and for the business. So I hope that makes sense. No, it does. Because I think one of the things that time blocking can do, I hope that makes sense. hits, and then see how much you can get done with the other time. And I thought the genius of your 10 blocks was the intentionality of it to say, okay, at the beginning of the week, I got 40 hours, I got these four blocks, or these 10 blocks of four hours, what are the things that are going to be these be used for? And I think it just creates this forward thinking intentionality, just like you were talking earlier about when you plan your week, I think it can be an excellent tool for people who get to the end of the week and say, what just happened? You know? Right. I think it's also a great tool for people who maybe are in a

work situation where they don't get to call the shots on how they spend their time. And they feel frustrated with all of the additional things that they get asked to do, just start tracking your time and say, okay, well, I'm doing eight hours doing this low leverage task. What do you, can I stop doing this in order to do this other thing that you're asking me to do? Right. And that was, that was what really, Mike, that's a great point because it's, that's what really kicked it off for me at ConvertKit. And I'll clarify to say, like, I had a great manager. I had a really good working environment there, which was the reason that I was able to kind of put this together and say, like, okay, well, the highest leverage thing that I can do is make sure that these, you know, high impact customers have a great first experience at ConvertKit. And that takes up a lot of time.

And so I can't be in as many meetings as I am, like Like I'm, I can't be as many meetings as I am. I can't be like answering support tickets as much as I am for like, you know, just kind of general everyday questions. I need to be able to dedicate more time to this if you want me to do it really well, because I don't want to get to the end of the quarter and be like, Hey, what happened with this? Like, well, you know, I was trying to do, you know, I didn't want to, you know, point the finger at my manager either and be like, well, you know, you asked me to do all this stuff.

And whereas I could take more of a proactive approach and say, look, these are the high leverage things. This is what I want to make sure I get done. So we were able to work on that together. And he's basically saying to me like, okay, well, you probably need to spend five or six blocks, five or six of these blocks on migrations and acquisition, and whatever else you can get done. And it basically came out to, as you were saying, David, like spend an hour a day working on support, and however many tickets you can get through. Great. Thank you. That's it. Move on.

Well, I think the time blocking thing is awesome. If you are listening to this and you don't understand it, we'll put a link in for that specific video. It's just a great approach to this stuff. I think it can really help. Let's talk a little bit about we've been dancing around time tracking the whole episode. Most nerds do time tracking digitally, but you do it with analog tools. I do. So that is one of the main uses of the Field Notes notebook for me, so that I can just keep it in my pocket. And for me, because I'm not tracking, I'm tracking my time to raise my awareness of the things that I'm doing. And, you know, sometimes by, you know, sometimes not doing, unfortunately, but it allows me to just see that really quickly.

Because I'm not, I'm not tracking time necessarily to report it back to anyone. Like I don't have to do that. I did have to do that in, in a past role. And that was one of the tipping points for me being like, okay, well, maybe I'll just do a little bit of this myself. Because the way that I do time tracking is not like on a minute to minute basis of saying like, okay, you know, what's the exact thing that I'm doing from 715 to 725 unloading the dishwasher. And what I'll do instead is I'll just kind of look at it in 15, maybe 30 minute blocks of time that kind of lowers, lowers the amount of time that I have to like really be doing, or like checking in and tracking the time. But I'm just thinking about like in those 15 to 30 minute chunks, what is the main thing that I was doing that I was concentrating on that I was spending time on. And so like,

if we are like, say, say it's family time, I'm not saying from like 615 to 645, we're having dinner. And then from 645 to seven o'clock, we're trying to get the boys up for bath. I'm not doing it like that. It will probably just be more like six to seven is dinner time, like food and dinner time. And then seven to seven to eight is just like bath or family time. So it's at a really, it's at a really high level of just thinking about like, what is the main thing that I was doing? And trying to focus on making sure that I'm using those chunks of time really well. Now, I can also look at it, like say, like all of those things before sounded really nice, but I could also look at it like earlier today. I have

a lot that I have to do today. But then as I was tracking my time, I just kind of like, perked up in the middle of kind of being lost on the internet and be like, well, I thought I was supposed to be like outlining, outlining a course today in this 30 minute block, like I'd in, in this preview that I had, but I'd actually started, I'd gone down the rabbit hole of looking at fancy mechanical pens. And so now I have to kind of write in my time tracking. I could either write just waste or I could write pen research with sounds better than it was because I was just, I was, yeah. But or I could write pin research, which sounds better than it was. But when it comes down to it, I was distracted. And this is where time tracking to me is more of a reactive, kind of reflective process that when done best, I'm using it in conjunction with

the daily preview that I have, that time block that I have. But yeah, for me, time tracking is not a minute by minute, like super OCD thing. It's more of a reflective process of looking back and saying like, Okay, well, you know, you you intended to do this thing, your intention was to write this outline, so you can make more progress on a course. But instead, you were doing pen research for 30 minutes when you have you of all people have no need for another pen. And so that's where I can look at and be like, okay, well, as I'm doing a review at the end of the day, or the end of the week, I can look back and say like, okay, all those times you feel like you don't have enough time, look back and let's find these like two or two, three, four or five chunks of 30 ish minutes, where you didn't do the thing that you're intending to

do. And you know, we all, I'll, you know, couch that a little bit by saying, you know, we all need mental breaks. And there's nothing wrong with researching pins. And there's no nothing inherently wrong with that. But even to tie that into proactive time blocking, I have, I try now to even like schedule some of my distraction time being like, okay, yeah, I have a little time right here. And if I really want to get another pin, I can look at it then. I remember you talking about scheduling your distractions at, at crafting commerce. I thought that was a really interesting idea. And, uh, you also mentioned at crafting commerce, I thought that was a really interesting idea. And you also mentioned that crafting commerce, I think you maybe were talking about the Pomodoro method, but you mentioned you

use the time timer. Is that still a tool that you use? I do. I have a little one right on my desk right now. And so it can definitely be used in collaboration with the Pomodoro technique. And I will often do that. But yeah, it's something that we've started to use a lot as a family with like two young boys. My four year old doesn't have a concept of time necessarily. Like he understands now what like minutes and hours are. But if I said like, you know, he has no idea what the difference between like 10 and 20 minutes are like in reality. And so like we flip on the time timer and it's like, okay, we have 20 minutes to watch or you need to read for 20 minutes. Um, yep. But, and I use that for, and now I use it for myself

as well. I'll say, you know, I'll just, I'll try and get rid of some of the tools and I'll often do it at the beginning of the day with, uh, with my initial like preview and bullet journaling is I'll put my phone away. I won't be in the same room as my computer. Uh, but I'll just do it at the beginning of the day with my initial preview and bullet journaling. I'll put my phone away. I won't be in the same room as my computer. But I'll just put that time timer on and get to it. Well, that has transformed my family. And I have you to thank for that. Because we have five kids at home and four boys who are 12, 10, 8, and 6 who all love

video games. Yeah. So video game, managing video game time was very stressful up until the time timer. We were limiting it to 30 minutes a day. But my wife is the one who homeschools them. And I wasn't the one managing it. And it was super stressful on her because she's giving them, okay, you got five minutes, you got to wrap up.

You know, and they're always trying to extend it and we had a family we had a family meeting yeah exactly so we had a family meeting we're like okay this isn't working we got to fix this what do you guys think is fair and we uh we said we don't want to have to manage this at all we got the time timer okay when this is when this goes off basically you're done and actually you have to we have it set so you have to wrap up before the timer goes off if you're still playing while the timer goes off you have lost it for the next day but we asked them like what do you think is fair and they said an hour a day i'm like okay well we'll try it but we can't manage this and so it's been a win-win for everybody because they get to play more video games. We don't have to manage it. And it was pretty much overnight.

Like they have, it's just sitting below the TV and it's been great because they can manage themselves. And fundamentally, we believe that this is training them to manage their time as they become older. It's going to be more and more important. I mean, you talked about time tracking being the kind of thing that you had to do at one point for somebody else and now you don't. I would argue that the reason you don't have to do it for somebody else now

is because you learned to do it the right way and you can do it yourself and you don't have to have somebody managing you. A couple points there. Number one is a parenting tip of focused podcasts is timers and children. I mean, my kids are grown now, but even when they were little, I realized that the oven timer was like magic. If I would tell them you have 10 minutes and I would watch my watch and I would exactly 10 minutes say your time's up, they inherently would not believe me. But if I would put the oven timer on,

like the oven timer buzzer was like the voice of God to them. It was like, okay, it's up. Time's up. That's it. They never contested it. And even when they were very little, that was a trick. Second thing, going back to what you said about keeping yourself honest and your time tracking with your daily plan, a little trick I've been doing as an experiment for the last six months or so, and it's been working out really well for me is I write down on a page, the hours, like I'll just write five through like 11, or five through 23, you know, using a 24 hour clock. And so the night

before I actually put the blocks in what I'm going to be spending my time on the day, I know what my plan is for the next day. And then as the day goes by, so that those numbers are down the middle of the page, on the left side is the plan, on the right side is what happens. And it's very interesting. First of all, when I started doing it, first started doing it, there was a part of me that wanted to lie to myself, that wanted to say, no, that happened. No, it didn't. You know, you got to sit and be honest with yourself and fill it in as you go through the day. But at the end of the week, it's such a great resource to have, you know, right there in front of your face, the plan versus the execution. And there are some days where a client thing comes up and the whole day gets set on its side and you

write that in and you say, okay, well, that's life you know when you have clients that happens and then there are other days where you you will see like oh i played video games for two hours i doubled mike's kids limit that day when i was supposed to be working on something that was important and so so it's a great uh way to kind of keep yourself in check yeah i totally agree yeah you would have lost it at my house, David. I would have lost it for a day. I mean, but you know, I don't want to mess around with the Schmitz family rules. I don't want to get in trouble. No.

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When you decide to sign up, use the offer code focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D, to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain, and to show your support for this show. Once again, that's squarespace.com slash focused, and the code focused to get 10% off your first purchase. We thank Squarespace for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. RelayFM. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. Something else you talk about, Matt, is this idea of progress over perfection. And I think we kind of talked about how that applies to time tracking, but how does that apply to your creative process and your work as well?

It's something that has become a mantra for me because Ira Glass talks about this. He has a great monologue about it. The reason that you get into creative work is because you have good taste or you think that you have good taste. But the thing that you want to make doesn't match the ideal that you have in your head. ideal that you have in your head. And so to me, telling myself, you know, make progress over trying to be perfect is my way of acting on that every day. And with every video, there are always things that I want to try or to make a little bit better or spend a little more time on, or I would like to make them just a little different almost every single time. But the idea of just

continually putting the content out there and seeing how people respond to it does help me see like little different ways that, that I can, that I can be better, but it just, it lets people know that I'm, you know, I'm committed that I'm around, that I'm here, I'm here to make stuff. That's going to be helpful for you. And if I wanted everything to like be perfect, then maybe, you know, maybe I would have put out like, you know, a dozen videos instead of over a hundred at this point. Um, but that's something, like I said, it's something to remember, to remember every day, even like, Hey, just right now, like for example, I started doing a couple more videos this year where I'm out and about a little bit kind of like classic man about town vlog style. And a few people like several people said in the videos like, hey, you know, this this keeps up the pace of the video a little bit more. I like how you interject different scenes. I really like it. Keep it up. keep it up. And so now there's a piece of me that's like, Oh, well now I got to get out and about a lot more and I got to do more. And that takes more editing time. And it would be easy for

me at this point to be like, well, that's, that's the new, like a little bit more perfect way of doing a video. So they, they all have to be that way now. And I will like, I know, I know that that's a thing that resonated with people. So I'm going to, I'm going to implement it as much as I can. But if it means that a video that is for the most part ready, except for like some of these like about town scenes, but that might take me another week or two to really get the way that I would quote unquote, like it, then I'm just going to ship the video and I'm going to try it. I'm going to try again next time. And so that's, that's the way, like specifically for the YouTube channel that I like, I practice that. It occurs to me, you mentioned that, uh, you've shipped 12 videos in, or you, if you would have had this perfection mindset, you would have shipped 12

instead of a hundred. But I would also argue that the quality of the 12th video would not be where the quality is after you shipped the hundredth video either. Because you learn a lot from just going through the process. I remember hearing Dan Sullivan talk about this concept of the gap versus the gain, which fascinates me as it pertains to progress over perfection, where we tend to visualize the ideal, where we think we should be. And as you were talking about the standard that we hold against ourselves, and then when we try to create something, we realize it's not as good as the standard we had in our heads, that can be discouraging. So if you have this ideal of what you think the thing should look like or where

you should be, and you compare it to what the thing should look like or where you should be, and you compare it to what you are able to produce or where you are at now, you can measure that gap and you can get discouraged because, oh man, I'm not as good as somebody else is doing this stuff. Or by this point, I thought I would have X. But the more valuable thing is to look at the journey that you've come from when you shipped that first video and say, this is my 100th video and it's better in this way, that way, and the other way. And you can see from where you started to where you are now, you've got the growth just from going through the process, from developing those habits, from shipping consistently.

And that can be encouraging as opposed to discouraging because you can see the growth that's happening and it propels you to keep going. Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's, wasn't there, I think there was a study of photography students, I think it was. And, you know, one group was told like, go out, you have, you know, a month to take the perfect picture. So go out there and take the perfect picture.

And then everyone else, they said like, just go out there and try and take as many pictures as you can. You're judged based on the volume of the pictures that you take instead of like the quality as it were. And then when they presented the photographs for like judgment or grading to like, uh, you know, a panel at the end of the month, all of the top rated photos were from students who were just told, take as many pictures as you can. Interesting. So Matt, I mean, it's very impressive the volume and quality of videos you produce. And I know you've got jobs in addition to that,

and you do consulting and do all this stuff. I'm guessing once in a while you do fall off the horse. What causes you to fall off and how do you climb back on? Yeah, this is something I do plan on talking some more about because yeah, full disclosure, I probably haven't daily journaled in like three or four weeks at this point, the way that I like to. I'll occasionally sit down and just, as Hemingway says, I'll just occasionally sit down and like bleed onto the page of whatever's like going on in my head. But in terms of a consistent practice, it hasn't been there as much as I've wanted it to be. And the way that I get back into it a good way, say from like a journaling perspective, and you can play this out for any kind of like habit or practice that you

want to restart is for journaling, I just try and write one line per day. And I know, uh, our mutual friend Sean Blanc has talked about this, but just the one line journal, uh, just to kind of build, build those reps and that momentum back up. And you can think of it very similar for anything else that you want to do. Like there was a stretch last, like kind of late summer of 2019, where it had been a few weeks since I posted a YouTube video. And I was feeling kind of, you know, feeling kind of bad about it and feeling like out of practice and feeling like I had lost some momentum. And I was like, well, you know, what am I supposed to talk about now?

But what I did was I was like, okay, well, I'm just, I have, I have a topic in my head. I can go through the comments or the emails that I get from people and pick out something that I know I have an answer to and, uh, use it, use that as inspiration. And this, I'm basically just going to record a five to seven minute monologue slash response, uh, to that person. I'm not going to do any overhead shots or any like journaling in it. I'm just going to say like, hey, this is a problem that this is a problem or an issue, a challenge that I've noticed in the community. And here's what I think about it. And I just posted that as a video. And both of those things have proven really useful to me as like forcing functions to kind of get back on the wagon is to try and start small and be consistent with it.

So I did that little video series for like three or four weeks while I just kind of got back into a rhythm and then just kind of kept going from there. And momentum means so much with this stuff. Yeah, absolutely. And momentum means so much with this stuff. Yep, absolutely. And to put that placeholder momentum, I love the idea of saying, well, I'm going to write one sentence. And if you're listening, you're saying, well, that's silly. That's not really a journal.

But it is. And it's momentum. And you'll sit down to write one sentence and you'll find yourself writing three pages. Right. Yep, exactly. Yeah, just get started. Yeah, exactly. Matt Ragland, thanks so much for coming on the Focus podcast. Like I said, I am a fan. I like the stuff you're making. I think it's such a great contribution. It lets all of us think we can get into bullet journaling or just journaling

in general without having to get an art degree, and I really appreciate that. But also, I think just the thoughtfulness that you bring to it and the kind of the motivations you have are great. Now, you've got a bunch of stuff going on over your website, like I believe is a 25 hour day still running? 25 hour days is currently closed. But if you just go, probably the best place to go is just my just my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Matt Ragland. And you'll find links there. There's also mattragland.com, which I'm in the process of moving that site from WordPress over to ghost. But I do have I do have a 25 hour days like

starter sessions course that's available too. So if you go to if you go to 25 hour days you'll see a couple of links to to those things but the big things for me uh definitely definitely youtube and then the website yeah well check it out gang there's lots of great information here if you like the focus podcast you're gonna like matt uh we are the focus podcast you can find us over at relay.fm. If you have any thoughts on the show, go ahead and weigh in on the forums over at talk.macpowerusers.com. We've got our own little wing there. And thank you to our sponsors today,

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