Design Test Improve

In this episode, we discuss how creating rules can help you simplify your day-to-day so you can take back control, stay consistent with your efforts, and excel in different areas of your life.

Call-To-Action

Answer the following questions:

• What areas in your life are you falling short and would you like to improve?
• Experiment with setting different constraints or guidelines in those areas to take back control?
• If you notice something you tried improved your life in that area, try to create a rule for it that you start to live by.

Tools Mentioned

• KSafe (Tool for locking your phone away)

In this episode, we focus on how celebrating the small wins in your daily life can help you train your brain to create a compound effect over time that will help you achieve your goals.

Call To Action

• For the next 7 days, celebrate all the small wins in your life
  • After you complete a habit you are trying to establish, celebrate that you did it. Actually feel the celebration win.
  • At the end of the day, reflect on the small steps toward progress you made in your day. Recommend writing it in a journal or digital document.
• See how you feel at the end of the week.
  • How did your week go?
  • Do you feel more positive and/or motivated overall?

Tools and Content Mentioned

• Previous Podcast Episode 
  • Ep 19: Important Factors To Consider In A Career Position, Besides Money
• App 
  • Notion
  • Calm
• Video 
  • How Celebrating Small Wins Can Help Form Lasting Habit
  • Tim Ferriss: The Jar of Awesome & Celebrating Small Wins
  • Celebrate the Small Wins
  • Tom Hanks: “This Too Shall Pass”
• Course 
  • The Science of Well Being (Coursera)

In this episode, we talk about how to find the right balance between thinking about the past, present, and future. We discuss some of the positives and negative consequences of thinking about the past and future and share some personal experiences we’ve gone through regarding this topic.

Call To Action

• Next time you’re feeling depressed or anxious, determine if it’s because you’re thinking too much about the past or future, if so remind yourself to anchor yourself to the present.
• One method you can use to anchor yourself to the present moment is by using the box breathing method.

In this episode, we discuss the common struggle of anxiety in the workplace. We talk about how anxiety has impacted our lives in regards to our career, share some recent examples, and tactics we use to help reduce anxiety to help us perform optimally.

Content / Tools Mentioned

• Previous Episode: Episode 34 – Build An Edge in Your Career Through Talent Stacking
• App: Calm
• App: Headspace
• YouTube: This too shall pass

Call-To-Action

Next time anxiety at work comes up try some of the following steps to potentially help reduce it:

• Challenge your perspective on it
  • Ask yourself is this going to matter in 5 years
  • Remind yourself that “this too shall pass”
  • Ask yourself why are you worrying about something in the future you don’t know is going to happen for sure? Instead, why don’t you just focus on what is in your control and wait for that event to happen?
  • Think of previous challenging events you overcame
• Take action
  • Meditate (minimum 10 minutes a day)
  • Exercise
  • Surround yourself with nature
  • Get enough sleep
  • Talk with friends/family/therapist/mentor (support group)

In this episode, we discuss the concept of talent stacking and how it can help you grow exponentially in your career and personal life. We cover what talent stacking is, the benefits of it, and advice on how to identify what skills to potentially add to your talent stack to gain an edge in your career roadmap.

Content / Tools Mentioned

• Book: Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World 
• Book: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth & Happiness
• Podcast Episode: Become the Most Valuable Member in Your Company by Applying the T-Shape Model
• YouTube: Alex Hormozi

Call-To-Action

Reflect on the kind of profession, side hustles, hobbies, and lifestyle you want to develop

• Determine what skills you would need to have in order to reach that goal
• Start or Continue developing the skills you identified that will help you reach your goal
• When you hit a constraint, ask yourself, "What skill do I need to learn to break through this barrier?" –– that's the next skill to add to your stack

Some talents we believe everyone should add to their stack are:

• Productivity
• Communication
• Personal Finance
• Emotional Intelligence
• Some resources: Udemy.com, Skillshare.com, YouTube.com
• Reminder: This is an ongoing journey that takes time

In this episode, we share our thoughts on how to use your smartphone as a tool rather than a distraction. We discuss the impact we believe smartphones have had on our society, our personal relationship with them, and we share some tactics you can use to help you minimize your smartphone's negative influences in your daily life.

Tools & Content Mentioned:

• Video – How to Turn Your Phone Screen Grey
• Book – Digital Minimalism
• App  – Freedom
• App – Forest
• App – Flora
• Product – KSafe

Call-To-Action

• Reflect on your current relationship with your smartphone:
  • How much time are you spending on your phone? Are you comfortable with the amount of screen time you see?
  • What apps are taking up most of your time?
  • What could you be doing with that time instead?
  • Are you comfortable being alone with your thoughts? Or do you notice you have a need to be constantly connected / distracted?
• After you reflect on some of the negative influences your smartphone has on you, start to incorporate tactics to reduce these negative influences:
  • Turn off most notifications from your phone except what you think is useful
  • Set up your phone layout to help you not get sucked into going on your phone
    • Hide social media apps (if you have them on your phone) in folders, or consider deleting apps you waste a lot of time on.
• Create rules for yourself when it comes to using your phone
  • Example: When starting a working/studying session I will put my phone out of sight
• Set up focus modes to further control what notifications you get during the day

This episode is on applying the "daily highlight" principle to help you focus on what is the most important thing for the day instead of being overwhelmed by a long list of to-dos. This idea came from the book Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky.

Content / Tools Mentioned

• Book: Deep Work by Cal Newport
• Book: Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
• Book: Make Time
• Previous Podcast Mentioned: The Importance of Striving For A Productive Life
• Previous Episode Mentioned: Structuring weeks For Progress On Goals

Call-To-Action

• At the beginning of your day, before writing down a whole bunch of tasks you want to get done, ask yourself “What’s the ONE thing I can get done today that will make today a productive day?”
• A framework from Make Time that can help you pinpoint a “highlight task” uses three different criteria: 
  • Satisfaction – A task that would feel satisfying if you completed it, like going to the gym
  • Urgency – A project that has a deadline coming up
  • Joy – A task that is more fun, like going out with friends for dinner
• Once you have your daily highlight, schedule a time in your calendar for when you plan on getting it done

In this episode, we discuss how sometimes the biggest hurdle to accomplishing a goal is the “start”. We talk about some personal examples and our advice on how we overcame the starting hurdle and how you can too.

Content Mentioned

• Blog Post Mentioned – The Mistake Smart People Make: Being In Motion vs. Taking Action

Call-To-Action

1. List out the goals you want to accomplish on paper to get them out of your mind.
2. Once you’ve written them down, vet them to see if they’re actually something you WANT to do.
3. If what you want to do requires a big upfront investment, try to find ways to start small to prove the concept first before investing more into your goal.
4. Once you’re confident in your list of goals, list out the first small steps you can take to build momentum and confidence.
5. Go in with the expectation that things won’t be perfect, and that’s okay... you’ll learn as you go.

In this episode, we discuss the negative impacts the overuse of social media has on our lives and advice on how to control it instead of it controlling you.

Resources Mentioned

Books

• Ten Arguments For Deleting Social Media Right Now
• Digital Minimalism

Apps

• Freedom

Browser Extension

• Focus (For Youtube) - Safari
• DF YouTube - Chrome
• Kill News Feed - Chrome

Physical Tools

• Remarkable

Video

• TEDx Talk - Bailey Parnell

Previous Mentioned Podcast Episode

• Episode 9: How to Handle & Prevent Burnout

Call To Action

Challenge yourself to go 7-days without using social media

1. Identify what you’ll be doing during these 7-days when you’ll be off of social media

• Start a project
• Read a book
• Do a hobby

2. Make a mental note if you realize yourself feeling calmer, happier, more present, etc.

3. At the end of those 7-days, if you decide to go back on social media, put systems in place to prevent you from overconsuming like before.

• App Blockers
• Turn off notifications
• Do Not Disturb during certain hours
• Clean up your newsfeed so you only see positive content –– unfollow news, politics, influencers, etc.

In today's episode, we discuss how toxic environments can pollute your life. We will also be discussing how to identify if you are in a toxic environment, how to get out of it, and the benefits of surrounding yourself with positivity.

Call-To-Action

1. First, figure out what you want to achieve in life.
2. Vet your current environment – the people around you and the content you consume – and ask yourself, “Are these environments bringing happiness and/or in congruence with my goals in life?”
3. If not, then try to create a plan to distance yourself from these toxic environments.