DxT

Resolutions, Systems, and What Counts as Failure (#20)

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Achieving goals is hard. Every New Year, and sometimes throughout the year, we all set out to be better, make an impact, lose weight, get swole, etc... Yet, every time, we seem to fall short.In this episode, we talk about new years resolutions, systems to achieve goals, what counts as a failure, and the tools and mindsets they use to keep track and crush the year.

Show Notes:

Why New Years Resolutions End in Failure

https://www.businessinsider.com/new-years-resolutions-failure-advice-jonathan-alpert-2018-12

"If you struggle to keep your New Year's resolution, one expert says you might not be setting the right kind of goal."



Shelby Interview Episode

https://www.deadxtomorrow.com/post/shelby-flores

Great episode with information about how our favorite Life Coach sets goals and crushes them.


Systems for Goals

https://jamesclear.com/goal-setting

This is how both of us work towards goals. A truly life-changing series of articles.

The Next Step Quote

Way Of Kings via Amazon

“To love the journey is to accept no such end. I have found, through painful experience, that the most important step a person can take is always the next one.” -Dalinar, a la Brandon Sanderson


Never Be Ashamed of Your Side Hustle

https://dragonflyave.com/why-you-shouldnt-be-ashamed-of-your-side-hustle/

"So you’re still running a side hustle, great! Be proud of yourself! You are doing what you need to do to follow your dreams and bring them to life."

Breath by James Nestor

https://amzn.to/2XJ5JOR This is the book that Andrew recently read and based his mindfulness/breathing goal off of.

10 Minute Bible Podcast

https://www.thetmbh.com/podcast

"...we pick a book of the Bible and then break it down one part at a time every weekday morning."

Happiness is a Journey, Not a Destination

https://www.happiness.com/magazine/personal-growth/happiness-journey-not-destination-ways-to-enjoy-ride/

"Instead of striving for happiness through end goals or objects, try cultivating day-to-day well-being. Because, as Calvin Holbrook explains, science shows that happiness really is a journey and not a destination."


Synergizing Goals

https://medium.com/better-humans/synergy-how-to-achieve-your-goals-in-half-the-time-67eea64ebec6

We spoke of stacking, or synergizing, your goals so you can accomplish more with less. Here's a deeper look.

Fitness Addendum/Help On New Year Fitness Goals

We hit fitness as a topic pretty hard. Not just here, but in the book (oh yeah, here's a link to the book), but also in other episodes. The apps we spoke of for fitness goals are also included in the link below.Andrew built out a really simple google doc based on what he's taking and doing. It may not work for you. Heck, it may not work for him in the end. But, it's a great starting point if you're curious about such things.

-Bare Bones Fitness DOC-

Episode Transcript

Andrew: [00:00:20] Hey guys, welcome back to dead by tomorrow. It is 2021 and Daniel and I have been hurt at work on the audio book. So sorry for the delay between episodes with the holidays and all of that jazz. It's taken up a little bit of our time. So this episode, we're going to be talking about new year's resolutions.

And I know we missed the Mark A. Little bit by January 1st, but. Hopefully you'll have kind of settled into a rhythm by now, and we can hope you make the most out of the rest of the year. Now that that kind of energy we have at the turn of the year has gone and we can kind of focus on what really needs to happen now.

Daniel: [00:00:54] All right, Andrew, we're now 10 days into the new year. So I feel like at this point, a lot of people have probably already failed or maybe even given up on some of their resolutions. So where do you find yourself in that camp? Are there any you've already dropped? Are there some that you're still excited about?

What are some of your resolutions.

Andrew: [00:01:14] I have as usual, far too many, but I wouldn't say I've necessarily failed at any of them yet because I'm still working at them. But I am trying to work on getting a mindfulness practice going every morning where I spend 10, 15 minutes breathing and working on my breath work and mindfulness.

And it's because of this book called breath by, I think his name is James Nestor. that with a little program I'm running, it just. It hit me that I really wanted to work on breathing deeply breathing more properly and meditating on a more regular basis. And I'm probably 50 50 right now. I'm getting my daily stuff.

And so, Oh, I, in terms of a school failure rate, like I would have failed the test, but this is a, a year long kind of process. So I think, yeah, I'm still on the right path I haven't given up is I guess the better answer. But

What about you? Is there anything that you

Daniel: [00:02:07] Oh no, no, no, you can't turn it to me yet. You're still in the hot seat. I'm going to ask you a couple questions here and just based on some of, what I looked into as far as who keeps resolutions and who does that, I'll try to do a little sooth saying and tell you if you're going to actually achieve your resolution or not.

Andrew: [00:02:23] Okay. Okay. Let's hear it.

Daniel: [00:02:25] All right. So you said mindfulness breathing Is that really the main goal you want to focus on? And could you just state back to me, what your goal is in that?

Andrew: [00:02:35] Ooh, that's a tough question. So it's not my main goal. That is just one of my many, I guess, in terms of main goals, you know, I want to finish the second book that I'm working on. There's a number of other stuff. We won't go down that list until maybe later, but on the breath work and the mindfulness, that is a daily goal I have that I want to be working on or I'm planning on working on.

Daniel: [00:02:55] does it boil down to, being more mindful each day or is there more to it?

Andrew: [00:03:00] So specifically it is. Taking in 10 or taking 10 minutes to take in deep, mindful breaths every day. So that's, that's the goal that the end goal is hopefully to be more mindful, cause I used the systems from that book, but the goal is a daily practice of being mindful by using breath work.

Daniel: [00:03:22] Okay. Cool. Just to clarify that book. That's a atomic habits.

Andrew: [00:03:25] I think it was atomic habits. Yeah. pretty sure he referenced it in atomic habits, which is funny. We really need to talk to him about a sponsorship here.

Daniel: [00:03:32] Him, him being James clear.

Andrew: [00:03:34] Yeah. James clear. Hey James, if you're listening, I swear. We know who you are. No, I picked it up probably in like 2014 or 15.

I was bored at work and. Yeah, you might've been involved. Maybe you sent it to me. I don't know, but it was long before the book came out. It was while he was still running a blog. I'm pretty sure. And it was just this idea that you break down your goals for the year into these systems and you build in systems that help you achieve the goal without actually focusing on the goal.

So we'll link to it. Okay.

Daniel: [00:04:03] Cool. All right. So 10 minutes of a mindful breathing and focus each day is what you're going for. And when it comes to that goal that you have what kind of inspired that? Like, why are you wanting to do this thing?

Andrew: [00:04:21] there was a sort of say convergence of events that made me want to focus both on mindfulness and breathing. I mean, you obviously know a lot of different people that know me know that I've been working on the mindfulness thing for a couple of years now, and I just I'll hit it for a little while and then it kind of slips away because I lose the mindfulness and the focus and it comes back around.

But in this instance, in particular, back in December early December, I had picked up a book that was called breath. And this book is really interesting. I'm not a doctor, so I don't know how accurate it is, but this guy's argument is the way we breathe has this huge, drastic impact on how we function like physically and mentally.

We are affected by the way we breathe and you can extend your lifespan. You can extend your health. You'll get sick less often. You're stronger. There's physiological changes to your body based on how you're breathing. Like all these different things, You know, It sounds like one of those voodoo magic potion things.

But anyways, I started this book. I was like, this is really interesting. I really like it. When that happened. I put the book to the side for a second because I was like, all right, this is kind of heavy. I need to take time to process some of this information and kind of start thinking about it. But the holidays are coming up and all the things that you kind of use to avoid doing intensive focused kind of work too.

Be distracted with like busy work. So that's going on. And then at the same time, this program that I've been doing for the past few months comes up and it's goal for January was breathwork and in mindfulness. And I was like, wow, those two go hand in hand, this book and this mindfulness practice, those go hand in hand, they both match goals that I'm trying to accomplish in the long-term.

I was like, I've got to do this. I really didn't get it started in December. And I was just doing the motion, not the action where I was like, Oh, maybe I should do it in the mornings or maybe the evenings. How can I do it? What do I need to do all that kind of stuff? And finally, I just brought it together as like, all right, January ones here.

This is a great time to start working on this because. It's here. I liked it. Maybe likes the wrong word, but that's what caused me to start actually doing it was, it was something I'd wanted to do for the past month. And I hadn't made the effort to build it into my daily practice.

Daniel: [00:06:28] Gotcha. All right. And then last question, and then I'll tell you how you scored and why I think it's score that way. So when it comes to this goal that you have of really being more mindful of focusing on your breath, what would you say is the end date and what would you say sort of indicate success on that?

Is it. The end of the year, like the end of 20, 21, or, what do you have in mind there?

Andrew: [00:06:52] I don't have an end date in mind for it, to me this breathing and mindfulness is hopefully something that gets absorbed into my daily process. Uh, I'm going to check in and make sure I'm doing it on a quarterly basis. And. You know, Whenever the end of the year comes, I'll do my yearly review and I'll see if that matched up.

You know, if I get to December 20, 21, I'm like, Oh, it's been six months since I was meditating that what I consider a failure of this, but. The hope and the goal is I get to December 20, 21 and I look back and be like, Oh, that goal I had to do this every day has now become a habit. And it is part of what I do.

And sure. There's going to be plenty of days that I just don't hit it, but that's a real goal is to integrate it into a daily life. That is not just for the year. It's hopefully going to be a really long. I don't know, process is a part of me until death do me part

Daniel: [00:07:46] Cool. Well, fair enough. I would say based on how you answered there's a pretty. Decent chance that you should see some success when it comes to that goal. And so I'm, I'm basing that on some information I, I picked up from a guy named Jonathan Albert. he's a psychotherapist and.

He talked through three of the top reasons that he's found people just don't stick with resolutions. And so the very first one is that they tend to not be very specific. So think I want to lose weight or I want to get more fit. And that is my resolution. That's tough to really see through because you don't really have any key performance indicators, KPIs.

You don't really have any specific objectives. Uh You don't really have an action plan to make that happen. It's just, I'd like to do this thing that I wasn't doing before. And by saying, I want to do it. It may magically happen. It sounds like you have a specific time frame in mind. Like you want to hit 10 minutes. It sounds like you've thought about the time of day that you want to do that. Ultimately you're trying to make that more so into a habit kind of building systems around it.

So I would say you're doing pretty good on the specific side of things. And then the second big item he talks about is. Goals not being framed positively. So think about having a resolution or a goal to not eat junk food or to not sit on the couch and watch a lot of TV and the problem with a goal like that is every time you think about your goal, you are inherently thinking about the thing that you don't want to do.

Which makes you want to do it. So if you would have a goal of saying, I want to be less distracted or something along that line, I would have challenged you to maybe frame it a little bit more positively, but it sounds like you're focused on the breadth and the mindfulness and the beneficial, positive thing.

So kudos to you there more, more points to you. And then. The last one is resolutions tend to not be about us or, what we're hoping to achieve. And it's more an external, factor. So having a goal of, I don't know, wanting to have a, this is silly, but I've heard girls specifically wanting to get the Kardashian look and.

If that's truly what you desire and that's not any external factor thing, you know, that may be fine. But if that's a goal that's influenced by society, it's influenced by others. If you have friends or a boyfriend or whatever that are putting that expectation on you, again, it's just not very likely that you're going to stick with that goal.

And so it sounds like this breath fullness, this mindfulness, it's not a fad thing you're chasing. It's not, uh, something that is being influenced. From the outside is something where you see this benefit, you desire to gain that. And it's truly a resolution about you. So good job. I think you're, you're on the path to success.

Andrew: [00:10:37] well, Thank you.

so I've, I'm cheating a little bit because not because I knew where you're going with this, which this was very interesting it's because those rules you're talking about are how I build out my goals now. And cause I'm, I'm really, really goal driven. And I love focusing on goals that is generally kind of how my day to day goes is working towards goals.

So after years of this, cause I mean, this has been a. Ten-year thing of doing every January 1st, and we talked about when we were in Shelby's episode, where we have, Hey, here's your goal for the year or goals more specifically, and you break them into categories and you get really systemic with it.

That's part of those systems. You're building, hopefully at least through trial and error where I've gotten to where you don't build those negative habits, because that doesn't do you any good? You don't pick these nebulous things that aren't achievable. Like. I want to be rich like that. Doesn't help. You need to determine how much money do I need to make whenever you want to be rich.

What is your goal there? Like what's the, what's the dollar amount? How much does that make a quarterly amount? And what do you need to be doing on a day-to-day basis to reach those quarterly goals? And then reach that yearly end goal, which would be, let's say a hundred thousand dollars extra in the bank.

So the topics you're talking about, where you don't. Make it nebulous. You make it positive. And you uh, what was the third one? I didn't know how you said that.

Oh, external factors controlled by external. So those external factors, that's the way to put it, not relying on external factors. All of these things make it where you have controllable, specific timelines and ideas on how to accomplish it. And then. This was not something that you brought up, but this is why I do this as well. Is it gets really intimidating.

Let's say the Kardashians idea of wanting to look like a Kardashian, just I'm going to leave it at that really upsets me and we'll drop it. But the goal there that maybe would be more reasonable as I want to look more fit. Okay, so you want to look more fit, but you've got to determine what that means.

Do you need a certain body fat percentage? Do you need a certain, weight that you're trying to hit or, what is your, so let's say, Hey, I want to be treaded and I need a 10% body fat. Okay, cool. Now we can break body fat into a training program and a diet program. You can start getting the tools.

And then instead of being focused on like, I'm not at 10% yet. So I'm failing my goal. You're like, all right, am I every day making this effort? Am I eating healthy every day? Am I going to the gym three times a week? And you're able to make these really small bite sized stepping stones that takes you out of the mindset of being focused on this big, possibly in your mind unachievable goal that discourages you.

So I don't know if that came up in the article you're reading, but that's also a really big thing with doing the daily stuff or the monthly stuff versus a. By January one, I want to be a hundred thousand dollars richer. That is a really big, scary number for a lot of people. And like, you know, I, I don't think I could do that anyways, but if I broke it down to, I want to make an additional a hundred thousand dollars and here are the ways I can do it.

And he focused on those little things. You have a really specific non nebulous positive, and you focus go, you're not waiting for somebody to give you a hundred thousand dollars or you fail. you can't really save up to a hundred thousand dollars unless you have some insane spending habits.

You can't say I have to save that. You have to earn it. That's a positive versus a negative. You break it down. I need to make an extra $10,000 a month or $8,500 per month. Those are things that you can focus on and actually break down into achievable stuff.

Daniel: [00:14:06] Yeah. The key with resolutions and goals is very often it's more of a marathon approach than a sprint approach, because a lot of the things that we're hoping to. Calm or th that we're hoping to achieve. We're overcoming in many cases, years and years of choices and decisions that probably moved us in a different direction.

And so we can't expect to undo all of that or to backtrack on all of that, in a single month or even a single year. And in a lot of cases, if we go back to thinking about fitness, if. You've spent 25 years of your life. Not really thinking about what you're eating and not really being focused on exercise.

Don't expect that after one year of being really locked in and focused, you're going to all the sudden achieve a pretty tough fitness school. And that's another thing of. Just being careful about comparison and going back into, you know, not getting too caught up in those external factors is if somebody next to you has this goal of having 10% body fat, but for the most part, they've made decent decisions throughout their entire life have a different genetic makeup or whatever it is, they might be able to achieve that.

And it may not have even been that hard of a goal for them to achieve, versus if you're in a different spot because of what your background is or any of that. And you have that goal and you don't achieve it, but you worked really hard and got closer again, just don't beat yourself up, recognize it's a journey.

And if you made progress towards the goal, That's a good thing and more focused on the progress made. And if you, or able to build some better systems, built some better habits that are going to ultimately get you towards that goal. As opposed to saying, I didn't get this at the end of this year, I failed.

Andrew: [00:15:51] Yeah, my response, when you asked, Oh, are there any goals that you failed at? I'm like well, that's not really a thing I can determine because I can't fail. At these goals until the end of the year, and then it's going to be a, did I make enough movement forward?

or did I not try? And it's not like an actually getting there. It's the effort getting there. And maybe my, my system was broken, but if I had attempted the system to me, that success on a resolution versus actually achieving it, you know? okay. Uh, One from last year, let's talk about 2020 And then we might jump to 20, 21 again, my lower body strength was really bad and sorry to hit this fitness, dead horse so much, but I was doing my yearly review like I do at the end of December. And I pulled out my little whiteboard that I had an eye goals on. And there's a couple that I miss.

Like body fat was one of mine that I wanted to hit and I missed that one by a mile. But one of the other goals I had was I want to be able to squat 135 pounds again. And I didn't even think about 135 pounds. After that, like I wrote the goal down and then I didn't think about it for a year, but what I did throughout that year was I did a whole lot of leg strengthening.

I did stretching almost every day. I did these long walks. I built up to hitting the leg press. I started squatting again. I ran into an injury that kind of set the clock back again, and I just kept going and I was careful focused on recovery every day, focused on strength, training and everything like that.

And you hit December. You know, Mid December and I was able to hit a really deep 225 pounds squat. I blew the 135 pounds out of the water. But if you looked in December, I couldn't squat body weight because my knee was so jacked up and my muscles were all messed up. it would've been crazy to think about squatting that much weight, but.

As uh, you know, I like to work in Sanderson quotes. The most important step is the next one. And I just kept taking next step after next step. I know a lot of people have credit card debt, You could either say, okay, I want to save money and I want to get rid of this, but that doesn't give you anything. But if you look at it, On a 20, 21 breakdown, like, all right, cool.

I have $5,000 that I want to pay down over the year. All right. That breaks down to whatever that is per month. I can't do 5,000 divided by 12. So I'll let you guys do the math. So you break down to what that amount is every month. And then I'm going to go with $500 a month because that's an easy number for me.

I know that's not $5,000 after a year. So you need to get $500 a month pay down. So instead of focusing on the negative side of it, you say, all right, cool. What can I do every day to get to the end of the month where I have an extra $500 to work on credit card debt. You have a couple options. You can go earn more money with Uber or some kind of sidekick.

You can save money, you could downsize your apartment. Maybe you've been kind of living it up and go, Hey, maybe when my lease is up, I'm going to go find somewhere that's $200 a month cheaper and you move there. And now you're looking at an additional $200. So you don't have to make up $300 a month. You look at your daily habits and go, okay, I'm going out to eat and I'm spending all this extra money on going out to eat.

I could cook at home. It helps on my fitness goal. And it's going to save me another $200 a month. And you just find little things like that. And you work at chipping away every single day. Like, Hey, did I not go out to eat today? Did I make my food at home? Great. Did I do whatever it was that you need that you're spending extra money on or doing. To make extra money. You take those little things, you build them up. And at the end of the year, about $5,000, that seemed really big is really nothing. You've taken care of it. And you didn't even notice

Daniel: [00:19:14] that's where I think the whole dead by tomorrow mindset is so important. Making sure that we're finding ways to start working towards our goals right now, because these really big goals, whether it is getting rid of a lot of credit card debt or getting into a certain income level, getting a certain level of fitness, reading certain number of books, whatever it might be, those goals get a lot easier.

If you can expand your timeline and how long you've been working on it, you suddenly. Don't have to make such drastic changes instead. It's about starting that right now. And then having more time to work on it. something that comes up for me every now and then is I've been playing ultimate Frisbee for a while.

I've gotten okay at throwing it. I've talked about this at times in the podcast. And sometimes people ask like, how did you learn

to make that throw or whatever it is. And I just say well, I I've been blown around with this for the past. I don't know how many years now, like 12 years, 13, 14 years, something like that.

There hasn't been a break there hasn't been a time where I wasn't going out and playing and throwing and things like that. So I'm saying like, yeah, I mean, you could spend five hours a day throwing and practicing and you could get pretty good, pretty quick. That's possible. But what it looks like for me was just years and years of doing something that I loved and ultimately I've gotten a lot better at it because of it.

And you can really apply that to just about anything.

Andrew: [00:20:45] I don't think there's something you can apply that to.

Daniel: [00:20:48] Yeah. You just, you do yourself a lot of favors by starting, whatever it is. Do you hope to achieve now in giving yourself more time to chip away at it?

Andrew: [00:20:57] Yeah. And it is so fulfilling for people who haven't tried this method, or you probably haven't, you didn't even realize you were doing it, walking that journey focusing in and actually doing it. It might be hard. It might be really hard. But that's okay. You feel so much better when you walk that path.

Then when, you know, it's a passing to walk and you don't walk it, you want to be better at Frisbee and you know how to get there because you've talked to Daniel or it's, whatever. You're like, Hey, I would like to make more money. And then at the end of the year like, I didn't make more money because you didn't do it.

You know, It you know that there were ways there that you didn't. Go for, and you didn't pursue. And that hurts like emotionally, but if you walk the path, it feels so much better. You feel great afterwards. It really is a rewarding experience. Not just having resolutions, but pursuing progress like that.

Being able to finish the day and say, Hey, I'm a little bit better than I was yesterday. It feels great. Even if it doesn't add up to anything maybe you set your goal too small. Like some of these people, like I want to lose five pounds this year and you're like, really? That's a poop, bro. What are you doing?

So sometimes the goals are too small and I get that. Like you. That's not going to be fulfilling. And when you set a really good resolution, like I want to learn a language or I want to make a bunch more money or be more fit, whatever it is. And you start narrowing down exactly what it is and you start pursuing it.

There are very few things that make a person as happy as pursuing a resume period.

On that fulfillment, I'm going to, I'm going to really beat the sin. I actually read something recently and I will try and find it there on the show notes for evidence, but they were talking about happiness in this article and they're trying to figure out what actually makes a person happy.

And that was one of the big indicators of happiness. Was somebody working towards a goal? And that process of working towards something brought way more happiness than having a bunch of money. We're doing all these really cool things the effort of moving forward towards something is what made people happy.

I think it also had something to do with like vacations. That's why people. Are really excited about going on vacation, but actually getting to the vacation and doing it. Usually doesn't bring as much happiness as the anticipation of it. And it's because the process of planning for something like that, where you're, you're booking hotels, you're saving up money, you're moving all the parts around and making everything work.

So you can have that vacation is actually a more fulfilling thing. For us as humans, this isn't like, Hey, this is an American thing. Or this is like the white boys down the street. Only feel this, this is across the board, across the world. The process of pursuing something is almost always more enjoyable and brings more happiness than the actual achievement of it.

Daniel: [00:23:37] Yeah. And that's where I think. Looking at your process and just reflecting on that is important. Like you said earlier, I think having small goals, that's not really the way to go, have some big goals, whatever that might be, but you break it down into smaller actions. Like that's, That's where you get smaller, more granular is how you're doing it day by day, week by week, month by month.

And then as you are building that system, Find one that works for you where you enjoy the process of chasing this big resolution. So if you have a fitness goal, you're like, okay well, I don't know all the fit people. I know they just go run a lot, but you hate running. That's setting yourself up for failure. Take some time to think about. There are a ton of ways to achieve a big picture goal of being more fit that can be weightlifting, that can be playing sports that can be walking your dog, that could be getting into, kickboxing. There's so many different things.

And so finding a system that actually works for you is important. If we're talking about finances, you can be somebody that's super frugal. Saves a lot of money, but if that is just really hard for you and, I'm not saying avoid hard things, but if you just continually fail when it comes to, okay well, I have to pay, pay down credit card debt.

So I have to spend less money. Maybe that's not the path. Maybe the path really is more to pursue a side hustle. And if that's something you love, Then change up the system and to finding something that actually works for you.


Andrew: [00:25:14] Dude. I am so glad you brought that up. That's one of my biggest things whenever I do talk. Cause I love talking to friends about their goals. Like new year's comes around and I'm like, yes, I get to talk to people about things that motivate me and motivate them. And it's just less. Available to talk about throughout the year, but more people are open to talking about this.

And one of the things that not going to say drives me nuts, but that really discourages me and I scratch my head at is someone will have like a reading goal. I want to read more books this year, and then they go about it the wrong way. Talk to your friends, do some research online. If you have a goal, find the smart, efficient way to achieve it.

If you're looking to lose body fat. Combination of diet and weightlifting. And a little bit of cardio is the way to go. You can go deeper. Maybe that's, that's hard. You get that. That's what you need to do, but you go get, The RP diet app, you go get a meal plan, you go buy a meal, prep service. Then you add on a lifting app like I'm using J fit app.

And I love it. It gives me an entire program records. Everything shows me everything. I'm not having pen and paper. It, I don't have to come up with the workouts. It is like a personal trainer. My pocket audible is a great way to listen to a bunch of books. If you're having trouble reading a bunch of books in a year, you start looking at 15 minute drives every day.

You're going to start knocking out books every week. And these people who have trouble reading books, that's the way to go. If you can't set aside the time in the day to read, get an audio book. And I had a competence as the same thing. So looking for the ways that you can efficiently accomplish your task.

That's where a lot of success comes from and just talking to people and trying to figure out the stuff that's not in your head because you haven't been doing this is a really good start to figuring out how to actually get where you're wanting to go.


Okay, Daniel. Before, Before we sign off on what is hopefully going to be a shorter episode for everybody we'll save. We'll see what happens. What are some of your main goals for this year and what are you doing to accomplish them?

Daniel: [00:27:17] It's kind of funny. I actually started to, to put together some of the smaller things that I want to do, and I'm taking more of a month by month approach to the year. So I've got some things that I'm trying to work on for January. And then at the end of January, I'll be able to look back, see how it goes.

See if I'm going to continue that into February, if I want to add or subtract anything. And so I started doing that before I thought about overall, what am I. Hoping to achieve or build to by the end of this year. And so, as I thought about the things that I'm working on in January, it comes down to realistically being less selfish and more intentional with my time.

So for January. One of my goals is to go out and walk my dog or run my dog every single day. And then in the process of that give myself a chance to listen to this podcast called the 10 minute Bible hour. It's super interesting. This guy goes into kind of a lot of the history and is going very methodically through the book of Matthew and just talking about a whole lot of context that I wouldn't otherwise get.

I have time after times that I really need to walk Jake more. I need to get out and do this morning to have a little bit more of a quiet time. And I just end up filling my time up with other things that I selfishly want to do. that's one of my goals. And then my other goal for January is to really it's to cut down how much time I'm spending playing video games that I can spend that time doing other things like walking, Jake.

And so I have a goal of only logging on playing. If I'm playing with a friend. Because my big justification for that source of entertainment is it builds up relationships. And so I'm not sacrificing the relationship side of things, but I'm also freeing up a lot of time to pursue these other things. And so I just went about it with more of a mindset of, okay, I don't want this negative play video games less as a goal because of what we talked about.

Instead it's play video games only with friends. So, Those are my two things I'm working on right now for January and then February. I'll see how that went. See if I want to continue building that habit because that's, what I really want to do is build a habit of walking Jake every day and just being more intentional with my screen time.

And then I'll see if there's other things I can add to that in February with this overall mindset of being a little less selfish and a little bit more intentional with my time.

Andrew: [00:29:39] That's awesome. And that is, that brings up something really cool to add on is synergizing your goals. If you. Want to listen, let's say you've got fitness books and money on the table. That's a lot of people I've talked to. They want to get in better shape. They want to make or save more money and they want to read more books walking a couple miles while listening to a book.

And then making your own meals at home, saves you money, get you better nutrition and get you in shape while you're listening to a book. Like it is that synergy. You start really knocking stuff out and it's easy to do every day. So that's great, Daniel. Okay.

Daniel: [00:30:18] Yeah. Yeah. I'll well, we'll see how it goes.

Andrew: [00:30:21] Yeah. We'll update everybody in February. How everything's going.

Daniel: [00:30:23] Yeah. Sounds good.

Andrew: [00:30:25] Well,

Guys, we're going to cut this one short for you. So hopefully you can really bite into this and digest it and enjoy it. We're going to throw a lot of information in the show notes. So even if you don't normally check out the show notes, we're going to add a lot of links to the tools that Daniel and I use for our goals throughout the year, and kind of the processes we go down.

And if you want to check it out and try and emulate or. Make your own thing out of it or show us where we're wrong. Go check them out. We'll try and have the best kind of template for you on how we think you should do it. And hopefully it helps you guys, if not, sorry. We're still happy to chat and see what's going on with you.

If you do need to talk to us about your goals. So that's all we've got for today. Thank you for checking out dead by tomorrow. Don't forget to share with some friends of yours and we look forward to connecting with you next time.