Design Test Improve

In today's episode, we discuss taking action can bring clarity to your daily life in order to help you make progress towards your goals and prevent you from falling into the hamster wheel of thinking and planning.


Call To Action

• Think of that one idea, project, or goal you’ve been wanting to accomplish and ask yourself, “What is one simple next step I can do today to start progressing towards this goal?” – Now GO DO THAT STEP!
  
  
• As you continue to go down that path, things will become clearer and you’ll start to realize one of three things: 
  
  
  1. You’ll confirm to yourself that your idea was right and you’ll continue on the path
  2. You’ll potentially run into roadblocks you didn’t expect and adjust your plan (most likely)
  3. You’ll scrap the idea because you realize it won’t work, but at least now you’ve cleared your head of that idea and have more mental room for the next idea to execute on 
• The learnings you get from this initiative will be lessons that will help you make better decisions on your future ideas.

Tools & Content Mentioned

• Podcast Episode: Motivation Starts After You Take Action
• Video: Finding Clarity Through Action | Marie Forleo
• Planner: Full Focus Planner

In this episode, we discuss why you should consider spending more time alone in order to help improve your well-being. We talk about the importance of periods of self-isolation, what to do during it, the benefits we have experienced, and our recommendations on how to get started.

Call To Action

• Block out time this week to spend time alone to reflect. Minimum 1 hour.
• During your time block, reflect on your current life situations. Some questions you may want to ask yourself.
  • How am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way?
  • What vision do I have for my future?
  • What do I want to learn?
  • What do I want to get better at?
  • What is important to me?
  • Who are the people that I find myself surrounded with? Are they bringing joy and positive value to my life?
  • What is my favorite forms of exercise?
  • Give your mind space to just think about whatever comes up.
• Create consistent time blocks (if possible) to spend alone each week to:
  • think
  • work on personal projects
  • learning
  • other activities you find fulfilling

Tools & Content Mentioned

• Podcast: Chris Williams hinge podcast
• Book: The Codling of the American Mind
• Book: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
• Service: Focusmate
• Course: Learning How To Learn
• Tool: kSafe
• Book: Daily Stoic
• Book: Meditations
• Book: Letters from a stoic

In this episode, we discuss how to craft an identity that you aspire to be and leverage that identity as a reference point to help you make your better day-to-day decisions.

Call To Action

In a document, write out the identity of the person you truly want to be.

Not just the things he or she has like money, success, etc. –– but instead…

1. How do they carry themselves in the world? Confidence, Assertiveness, etc.
2. How do they present themselves physically?
3. What habits have they adopted?
4. What are their priorities in life?
5. What are their principles and value that they will never compromise over?

Those questions are more important because they are the inputs of life that will help you achieve outcomes of success.

Once you have that document, now you’ll have a written identity script for yourself. And when tough decisions are made, you can look back to this document and ask yourself, “What would this person do?”

This document will take you a long time to create, but once you’ve dug deep into who you truly want to become, save the document and read it every morning to remind yourself of the identity you have to adopt in order to achieve your goals in life.

Tools / Content Mentioned

• Morning Formula Document
• Identity-Based Decision Making
• Book: Psycho Cybernetics
• Book: Maybe It’s You

In this episode we discuss how to optimize your environment by creating systems that are designed to foster self-discipline, instead of relying solely on your own willpower.

Call-To-Action

• Assess what you have control over in your current environment
• What are bad habits that are causing a negative impact in your life that you know you can change, but requires discipline?
• How can you create systems to help foster positive habits, without having to rely on willpower?

Tools & Content Mentioned

• App: Freedom
• App:Alarmy
• Tool: kSafe
• Tool: Sunrise Simulation Alarm (There are other options)
• Service: Focusmate
• Previous Episode: Ep 6 – Structuring Weeks For Progress & Goals
• Previous Episode: Ep 42: Motivation Starts After You Start Working

In this episode, we discuss how you can utilize self-reflection exercises as a way to help coach yourself to overcome obstacles, accomplish your goals, and become a better overall version of yourself.

Call To Action

• Set aside 15mins to an hour to truly reflect on your life
• To make the session more productive, come up with a list of questions that help you during this self-reflection session: 
  • What are some great things that happened to me this past week?
  • What was the main struggle you faced this week, and how would you advise someone dealing with the same struggle?
  • What are two things you learned about yourself this past week?
  • One decision you could have made this last week to make your life better or move ahead faster?
  • What worked really well this past week and why?
• The goal is to make this a consistent habit, so try to start off by scheduling at least one day of the week where you have a self-reflection session, and then increase from there if you feel the need.

Content & Tools Mentioned

• App: Day One
• Product: kSafe
• Service: Focusmate
• Service: Betterhelp
• App: Freedom App
• Podcast Episode: Living an easy life may make you feel unhappy
• Search: Emotional Wheel

In this episode, we discuss the S-Curve of Growth framework and how it can be used as a compass on your career journey. We share personal experiences on how the S-Curve has helped us reflect on our careers in order to determine when it is time to apply to jobs, ask for promotions, and new opportunities for career growth.

Website: http://designtestimprove.com/

Call To Action

• First, you have to evaluate where you’re at today in regards to the S-Curve 
  • The base is the starting point – starting a position with a lot of potential to learn
  • The slope up is the growth section – in a current position where you’re being challenged and gaining tons of experience
  • The top is mastery/stagnation – mastered your position and no longer feel challenged
• If you’re at the base or slope, keep going and try to learn as much as you can… milk that as much as possible!
• If you’re at the top and feel like you’re stagnating, how can you be proactive and create a new challenge for yourself? 
  • Ask for a promotion – ex: IC —> Manager
  • Change departments or projects – ex: Client Marketing —> Brand Marketing
  • Change jobs – Sometimes you outgrow a company and need a new one with bigger challenges

Tools & Content Mentioned

• Article: Why your high-performing employees may be slowly disengaging from work
• Article: Shaping individual development along the S-curve
• Podcast: Ep 34: Build An Edge in Your Career Through Talent Stacking
• Podcast: Ep 39: How to Leverage Stress to Boost Performance
• Books Mentioned on Management 
  • Good to Great
  • Built To Last
  • High Output Management

In this episode, we discuss how waiting for motivation in order to take action is a trap and why you should instead take action first in order to become motivated.

Call To Action

• When you find yourself feeling unmotivated, control your environment so it promotes action 
  • Put away phone and other distractions
  • Set a timer for 25 - 50 minutes
  • Create accountability
  • Take action

Content Mentioned

• Book 
  • The Motivation Myth by Jeff Haden
• Tools/Apps 
  • kSafe
  • Freedom
  • Flora
  • Forest
  • Strava
  • Focusmate
• Video 
  • Why Motivation is a Myth
  • The Most Successful Person in the World | Jeff Haden | TEDxPaloAlto
  • How to Get Motivated and Stay Motivated
• Previous Podcast Episode 
  • Attention Diet

In this episode we discuss how living a life of least resistance and pleasure-seeking may ultimately leave you with a difficult and unfulfilled life.  It's an episode that was inspired by the famous quote by Jerzy Gregorek which goes “Easy Choices, Hard Life. Hard Choices, Easy Life.”

Call-To-Action

• Reflect on the kind of life you would like to have. 
  • Saved X amount of money saved in my emergency fund
  • Weight X amount of pounds
• Reflect on how these things may make your life easier in the long run.
• Think of the daily decisions you make each day and determine what you should answer in order to get closer to that vision of the kind of life you would like to have or maintain
• Figure out ways to make hard decisions easier to make

Content / Tools Mentioned

• Video 
  • TED Talk - Tim Ferriss
• Product 
  • kSafe

In this episode, we discuss the importance of cultivating a healthy attention diet that promotes higher quality entertainment/education as opposed to an unhealthy attention diet that mindlessly wastes our time and energy. We share what a healthy vs an unhealthy attention diet looks like and tips on how you can start cultivating a healthy one for yourself.

Call To Action

1. Reflect on what sources of information are pulling your attention?
2. Vet the sources to see if this is bringing value to your life or if it is just a mindless distraction
3. Remove or limit the mindless distractions so they don’t pull your attention?
   1. Delete social media or only follow people/pages that bring value to your life
   2. Phone notifications
   3. Limit websites using software tools like Freedom
   4. Your cellphone (place out of sight when working/studying)
4. Find high-quality sources of information/entertainment to bring into your life
   1. Podcasts, Books, Articles from someone you enjoy reading from, Documentaries, Movies

Content / Tools Mentioned

• Books 
  • The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck
  • Models: Attract Women Through Honesty
  • Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
  • Can’t Hurt Me
• Podcast/Videos 
  • Tom Segura Talks (Mark Manson)
  • Mark Manson (Attention Diet)
• Tools/Services 
  • kSafe
  • Morning Brew
  • Freedom

In this episode we discuss the Yerkes-Dodson Law bell curve, which shows how stress can either boost or reduce your performance at work. We share personal examples of times in our career when we fell in different areas on the bell curve and we also share advice on how to manage your stress so you can leverage it to boost your performance.

Call To Action

Answer the following questions:

1. Where do you feel you are on the bell curve?
2. Why do you feel you are at that point in the bell curve?
3. What can you do to move closer to the optimal performance area (if not already in that area)?

Content Mentioned

• The Bell Curve For Optimal Performance
• Previous podcast episode - Imposter Syndrome