0:00:00 - 0:00:21 But the book, Joy on purpose. It's been out for a little while now and I got word from someone who has been struggling to know where to start. It's kind of overwhelming. He says, well, um that may or may not be your experience, but if it is or if it's close to yours, I'd like to give some, some words 0:00:21 - 0:00:41 of counsel here to encourage you. And it look, it's nothing but good news folks. It's nothing but good news, the beauty of this system, the life plan system that I lay out in the book, which if you haven't read, I, I hope you do Joy on purpose. It's on Amazon. You can get a free PDF at upward thought.org 0:00:40 - 0:01:02 if you'd like if you prefer to check it out there first. Um The beauty of the system is, it's infinitely extensible and it's infinitely reducible. So it's like a line that goes on forever in another direction. And there are reasons for that that are beyond the scope of this. But the point is if you're 0:01:01 - 0:01:23 overwhelmed with anything in life, the path through that is to find a way to chop up the problem. So you, you can get an immense amount of wisdom out of the Rocky movies. And in Rocky four, there's a scene where Rocky's going up against the Russian and one of his coaches is shouting chop him down, rock 0:01:22 - 0:01:44 , chop him down like a giant tree. You know, you gotta chop this thing into pieces to get mythical. Here. The, the, well, there are many names for this serpent of chaos figure in myth and what you'll find is in the stories there. It doesn't matter where it comes from. There's this common thread of chopping 0:01:43 - 0:02:02 that snake up. It's a snake that eats its own tail. It's an infinite loop. It's something that goes on forever and ever. And that the issue is that humans, we can't deal in infinity. So when you're overwhelmed and it doesn't matter that that might seem so airy and ethereal to talk about something like 0:02:02 - 0:02:21 the snake of chaos. It doesn't matter what we're talking about in life. Like maybe your car keeps breaking down and everything seems wrong. And it's, it's a very specific thing. It's your car that's overwhelming. You will chop up the snake. You have to find a way to chop up the problem into smaller pieces 0:02:20 - 0:02:46 because what everything comes down to the purpose of it all is to inform what you will do next. And we're gonna come back to this theme. It's a central theme. The purpose of it all is to figure out what you will do next and to find sufficient reasons to do it. That's it. What you do right now is the 0:02:46 - 0:03:11 only thing that you can actually choose. You can think about an awful lot from the future and you can think about an awful lot from the past, but you can only act right now. So, the purpose of all of it is to figure out what to do and why to do it. That's it. So you have to chop down big infinite problems 0:03:10 - 0:03:31 . OK? So if you rejoin on purpose and that's your big infinite problem, as you say, well, you've laid out this life plan idea exceptionally well, Rob, I mean, tremendously well, but I don't even know where to start. I mean, I'm thinking in my head to do what you lay out in the book. I have to sit and 0:03:31 - 0:03:51 write, you know, a 50 page life plan. And I, I mean, I don't even know if I've even written a half a page before. Well, you missed the part in the book that talks about chopping this down and that's what I'm gonna help you with by hitting it orthogonal from a different direction here. You just got to 0:03:51 - 0:04:08 chop it down. There's a really practical way to do that and I don't wanna get prescriptive, but I'm, I'm just gonna show you a specific example here if you hang on and, uh give me the time to talk about this. There, there are only a few slides here. So, um I actually already talked about this, what's 0:04:08 - 0:04:29 on this slide, but everything, the purpose of everything is, is what you do today and why you do it. That's it. That's the purpose of the life plan. The, the point is that life flows no matter what your life, it's like sand flowing through the hourglass and there's nothing you can do to slow it down 0:04:28 - 0:04:44 . There are things you can do to speed it up, which is really you, you can throw the hourglass on the floor and shatter it and end it all. But there's nothing you can do to slow it down. It's gonna flow no matter what. So the question is, what are you getting in exchange for the sand flowing through 0:04:44 - 0:05:06 ? And that's the rub that makes all the difference. That explains all the difference that there is between any two people is what they do with the sand as it's flowing by. You can't slow time down. You can only choose what you're gonna do with it. And that time is today, it's always right now. And so 0:05:06 - 0:05:27 what the life plan does is it gives you a machine a process whereby you can more intelligently select what you're going to do right now. And also one that gives you the maximum meaning or the, the strongest motivation for the thing that you choose. And so now all of a sudden you can do things that are 0:05:26 - 0:05:44 much more valuable in the long term than if you weren't thinking about it intentionally and you can have much greater strength and endurance in doing it. Even if the thing really stinks that you have to do right now, even if it's something you really, excuse me, you really don't want to do, you can still 0:05:44 - 0:06:10 do it. You have the power. It's kind of like a he man sword, right? So, become the master of your universe. The beauty of this is that as I mentioned, it's, it's infinitely reducible. Why is that? Well, there are two chunks to the life plan. One is planning and one is execution. This is broken down in 0:06:10 - 0:06:37 the book. Execution can't be partial. I mean, you, you, you got to do the thing, you can't do it halfway, but planning planning can be as partial as you'd like. Now, ideally, it will be the best that could possibly be planned, right? That'll be perfect. However, it's a process to learn how to do this 0:06:37 - 0:06:54 . I mean, you don't jump on a bike for the first time in your life and go compete in the Tour de France, right? You gotta slap those training wheels on there. And the point is if you're not having fun, if it's overwhelming, you're probably not gonna keep doing it. You'll never get to the point where 0:06:54 - 0:07:18 you can ride a bike. I know a person who is an adult and then some and she still doesn't know how to drive because she got spooked when she was learning and she never tried again. So, chop that snake down into the bite size piece and eat it up. You can make your life plan as brief as you can handle right 0:07:18 - 0:07:37 now. And that's exactly what you should do because here's the magic. If you put a tiny, little bit of effort into this, you're still gonna get something out of it and whatever effort you put into creating and living a life plan. I promise you, you will get more out of it than you put in. It's like a 0:07:37 - 0:08:01 magic machine. Everything is better on the other side. So the more you get at this and it doesn't matter how small you start, the more you get at it, the more you'll get out of it. So here's my prescribed advice. So feel free to modify this way you choose. But this is just slapping this down. If, if 0:08:01 - 0:08:22 you've got no clue how to begin, here's how to begin. OK. Step number one, choose a segment of your life. So you see how we're chopping down. Oh my, I gotta write a plan for my whole life. My goodness. I need to take 10 years off of work and get 50 reams of paper and bang this thing out. No, just pick 0:08:22 - 0:08:45 a segment. Now, what are some segments of life and you can and can and should think about how, what yours are in your life. But for me, maybe home life work, maybe I've got a side project going whatever, pick something and then, and we're gonna, I'm gonna show you a specific example from my own life 0:08:44 - 0:09:07 here. And so hang on for that and then step two is choose two time frames. There's a reason for this, but the first time frame is gonna be short how short you decide, man, it could be a day, it could be a week, it could be a month. You pick, don't do longer than a month though, ok? And then pick a long 0:09:07 - 0:09:26 term. Now, what's that long term gonna be again? You pick it, it could be your whole life. It could be like this is what where I wanna be when I die, ok? It could be a decade which for some of you that's even longer than sorry, you gotta, you know, life's so serious. Sometimes you got to joke about the 0:09:26 - 0:09:51 serious things. It could be a year but I wouldn't make it shorter than a year. Ok? So long term time frame and a short term time frame. Why are we doing that? Well, I'll tell you, it turns out that there's massive power to setting this time frame even if you do nothing else except set goals for a time 0:09:51 - 0:10:09 frame, which is where we're going next. Just the act of thinking about where you want to be under the constraint of a certain time frame. I promise you, you are going to think and act differently, you're going to because now you have an orientation. It's like pulling out your compass when you're hiking 0:10:08 - 0:10:31 and just glancing at it for a minute, you now have more of a frame of reference than you did before. And it's absolutely going to change how you think, feel and act and it's gonna make it much easier for you to think, feel and act, uh more reconciled to what you feel is actually important. OK? Now, what 0:10:31 - 0:10:50 you do when you pick a short and a long term time frame, what you're doing is you're setting the, basically the left and right bounds and then you're gonna work your way in towards the middle over time over time, not right now, but you're gonna fill that in later. It's like if you're playing, I don't 0:10:50 - 0:11:08 know how many video games are like this anymore, but there was a, there was a game called Starcraft. It was really popular uh like 20 years ago or something. And in that game, there was a map and you had to explore the map and you couldn't really see what was in the middle. You kind of knew where you 0:11:08 - 0:11:24 were headed and you definitely knew where you were starting, but the middle was, was covered, you couldn't see it, but once you explored it, then you could see it. So obviously your plans would take form the more of the map that you explored, the more detail you'd have and the more you could strategize 0:11:24 - 0:11:49 , right. So it's exactly like that. You start at the beginning, you can see the greatest amount of detail for what applies for today. You look way ahead into the future and then over time you work out the middle, um the working out the middle, see the book, read the book for that in this presentation 0:11:48 - 0:12:08 . We're just talking about how to get this kicked off tiny baby step. OK? The first tiny baby step. So now you've got two time frames. And what I'd like you to do is think about two, you'll only need two. If you get more, that's fine. But again, if you're overwhelmed, you wanna chop down the snake, not 0:12:08 - 0:12:30 make it longer choose two goals for each time frame. So in the book, I talk about goals, I won't rehash that here. There's a whole chapter on it. You could read that chapter for the short short term and only for the short short term, I want you to enumerate tasks that you believe will accomplish your 0:12:30 - 0:12:54 goals. So you got two goals for each of those two goals, make a list of what you need to do to be the most confident that that thing is going to be accomplished. Got it. Now, you've got a list of tasks you wanna sort them in priority order, meaning put the thing that makes the greatest difference first 0:12:53 - 0:13:14 . Now, obviously there might be pre prerequisite things or time, um time, limited things. OK? Fine, fine tune. It put things in the order they need to be. But your priority is to get the biggest things done first. That means that any other thing that you have to do to complete the biggest thing becomes 0:13:14 - 0:13:32 the highest priority, right? Obviously, again, this is spelled out clearly in the book, but I just, this is a helper to get you going. OK? So before we move on, you might be thinking, wait, wait, wait, but we didn't set any tasks for the long term. That's right. So what's the point of thinking about 0:13:32 - 0:13:59 the long term and setting goals, like I said before, just the act of thinking about where you want to be in that long term time frame at setting goals to measure that will affect how you think and act. Now later as you flesh out the middle, you should absolutely set tasks, I should say enumerate tasks 0:13:59 - 0:14:24 . So, so discover and, and design the tasks that you believe will get you there, but we're chopping the snake down. OK? This is all very much like working out or eating, right? You start as small as you need to, to keep going. But the point is that, that as you do it, you'll absolutely accumulate a mountain 0:14:23 - 0:14:40 of reasons to keep going. You're going to experience the benefits and that will motivate you to do even more the other thing is like riding a bike, those training wheels, eventually you'll be able to take them off and you might fall down, skid your knees a couple of times. But you're gonna learn. And 0:14:40 - 0:14:58 here's the thing about riding a bike is once, you know how to do it, you don't have to think about it anymore. What, what began is this very complicated, even stressful, intense task that had to be really intentional and occupied tons of your brain and you could really get hurt. It becomes the most natural 0:14:58 - 0:15:17 thing in the world and you never have to think about it again. That's how the life plan is over time. It becomes that right. So it has to be intense and explicit at first. But all that fades away, the more you put into it over time. All right. So now I'm gonna give you a specific example for my own life 0:15:17 - 0:15:40 . So let's say I'm looking out across my life and I say, well, I need to segment this. So I'm gonna choose outdoor yard tasks. I have a lot of those for various reasons. Ok. So what are my goals? My goals are reduce time and hoses for water. Uh We are in a position where well, where we live, it, it really 0:15:39 - 0:15:57 doesn't rain enough to have anything. So we have tons and tons of garden hoses. We have to lug them all across our five acres to water things and it's really, really annoying and the hoses get left out and invariably they get run over or cut up by a lawn mower or something. And it's just a huge waste 0:15:57 - 0:16:16 of time and money. So, we'd like to get to the point where we can water most of the trees by turning a dial manual water timer. Ok. And then for everything that, that can't be done that way, we want to have closer access to the water. So we don't need these mile long hoses to lug across the property 0:16:15 - 0:16:35 . Ok. So our goal is to be able to reach everything with a manual water timer and anything that can't be reached with that to be able to reach it with just one hose, you can measure that goal. It's specific, I will know absolutely if we get there or not. And the benefit of that descriptive goal is now 0:16:35 - 0:16:56 , I can specifically enumerate what I believe will accomplish it. It, if you get a good goal, it's gonna basically tell you how to accomplish it. Ok. It'll be very powerful in helping you design that plant. Ok. Another thing is we got some baby turkeys in the spring and they're big enough that they need 0:16:55 - 0:17:12 a place to live. So they're in their little confinement to keep them safe, uh, and keep them in the right temperature and everything while they're really young. And now they're getting into adolescence and they need a place to live. And then I also need to refill the, the firewood stores. We, we burn 0:17:12 - 0:17:37 wood and so I need, I have places and I have a set quantity that I need to make sure we're good for each winter. All right. So those are my goals. So, so now what are the tasks? And I actually, I organized this into week by week because um that's a good way for me to think about the prioritization. Now 0:17:36 - 0:17:59 , as soon as the, the start whistle blows and I start going through these things, they're going to change in terms of when I get them done based on circumstances that are beyond my control and based on new information and that's OK. Right. Whenever something like that shifts, you have to adjust along 0:17:59 - 0:18:15 with it, that's fine. Now, uh before we get into this, you might say this is because this is the last slide you might say, well, where's your long term goal? Yeah, I didn't bother with that. I just want to focus on the short term one. OK. I wanna keep this presentation short. I think you can figure that 0:18:15 - 0:18:39 out for yourself. OK? It, but it's they're gonna be big things like I want my family to be successful, people with their own family. Yeah, I want them to be happy and have their own family. OK? Cool. Right. Things like that. OK. So um the way I organized this was in terms of urgency, which this is one 0:18:39 - 0:18:59 reason I like this example is basically what's gonna die first. That's, that's how I, I sorted. This is like, what dies first right now I put the, the firewood at the end because we've got quite a bit of time before it's gonna get cold. And so that's the last priority. Ok, great. I just need to get that 0:18:59 - 0:19:20 done before it gets cold. All right. Um And then the, the last, the second to last priority is to get the water lines for the west and northwest spots that have got picked out. Why are those second to last? Uh, because they would provide the least benefit for this year. We've, we've actually already 0:19:19 - 0:19:42 taken care of some problems over there. And, uh, e even if we have to do it the old way with lugging out the hoses, that's not as big of a deal as long as we get everything else done. Ok. Now, um, I'm gonna flip to talking about the first in line. It's a collection of things that all involve the same 0:19:41 - 0:20:04 stretch of property. It's the, the, the eastern fence line of our property because all three of these water lines are gonna run down that fence line. And now, um, I have to sort of reveal some, uh, some details here. Most of these tasks are actually already done. But I did this, I, I made this list a 0:20:04 - 0:20:21 couple of weeks ago and I'm in, in the process of checking these things off and that's relevant because I'm gonna give you the details of some shifts that happened. So you can see this in real time how it looks. But uh when I was looking over the list of all things that I began to sort it, I said, well 0:20:20 - 0:20:37 , I've got a bunch of trees. We had some atrociously hot, dry weather for weeks and I said these trees are gonna die if I don't get this drip line going. So that became priority number one. And as I looked over that, I said, well, these three lines would be stronger if I zip tied them together because 0:20:36 - 0:20:56 it's just black poly pipe. So I thought, well, if I just take a little extra work, I can economize with scale and zip tie these things down the line and put in little um little pegs in the ground and zip tie them to that for stability. So no one kicks these things out of the way because they're drip 0:20:55 - 0:21:15 line. So I don't want them to move off the plant. And so I knocked all this out over a week or two. And that's the other thing is that your initial estimations for how long these things are gonna take are very likely to be wrong. That's ok. The most important thing is the, is the priority and the the 0:21:15 - 0:21:33 duration of the task starts to matter when it affects the priority. Like maybe something is a high priority if you can get that thing done in two days. But if it took two months, you'd have to put it lower down the list. Ok. But in the middle it's sort of more of a gray area. It probably doesn't matter 0:21:32 - 0:21:53 how specific you, uh, uh, how accurate you are on the time estimate. Right. So, anyway, the second collection of priorities, uh, consisted of a line of bushes that I could more easily water by hand. So they were a lower priority than the long stretch of trees that took a lot more time to do. You see 0:21:52 - 0:22:14 how that works? Because you, you should always be operating for greater future efficiency. Every single time you lock in greater efficiency, it cascades benefit through time. It's just, it's, it's like interest that keeps paying. So, uh just yesterday, actually, we did a mulch day and I went out with 0:22:14 - 0:22:33 my three oldest boys and there's a wood mill not too far away. Um, that unfortunately is closing this year. That has a deal that if you're local, they'll let you have as much mulch as you want for free. You just have to shovel it, which is ridiculous. It takes tons of time, but it's still a really good 0:22:33 - 0:22:56 deal. So we use, we use little Boy power and got that dump trailer filled up a couple of times. Ok. Um So why were my boys able to work, you know, to shovel mulch for six hours straight? Well, because it's not the first time they've done hard work. Right. We put them to work here and at first it's brutal 0:22:55 - 0:23:14 . It seems like an utter waste of time to get little kids to learn how to work, to teach them how to do things, not just working hard but, uh, learning actual skills. Like how do you hammer a nail or whatever. Um, but it's a beautiful thing when you hand your son a chicken and say you need to butcher 0:23:13 - 0:23:30 this thing. And he says, ok, and he goes and takes care of it. You don't have to watch, you know, he can handle it, right. So those residuals they pay off and, and uh, we're not just talking about kids, but all through life, you should think about what kind of investments you can make for greater future 0:23:30 - 0:23:50 efficiency. Um, and again, this an example is great for that because if we spend, I don't know, 12 hours watering all of our trees on a go, it might be 20 for all the trees we planted on our property. And there are reasons for this. But if it takes 20 hours, then I can reduce that down to walking outside 0:23:50 - 0:24:15 and turning a dial. That's an enormous time savings, right? It's an enormous time savings. There's also ways that you could save money. You know, I've talked in other materials about buying freezers and uh using a freezer to navigate, um, differences in meat prices. And so you can take advantage of sales 0:24:15 - 0:24:35 and fill your freezer or you can find a, a farmer and buy half a cow and, and it might be half the price of the store meat. Right. So those, those efficiencies, they, they pay out when you, when you do the calculations and choose wisely. All right. So I think I've gone through this and of course, the 0:24:35 - 0:25:00 turkeys need a place to live. Right. So, what actually ended up happening? Uh Almost all of these things are done as of today. Um So what ended up happening was the firewood ended up moving up to about here in the priority list. Why? Because a friend of mine very graciously not only offered but insisted 0:24:59 - 0:25:24 to help me get firewood. And so there were, he had a specific time, he needed to do that uh because of his work situation. And so we accommodated that is the least we could do. And so we got firewood about here in the priority order. OK. And, and that ended up being great because having one extra man 0:25:23 - 0:25:49 , uh who's a hard working dude, ended up making that go a lot faster. And so even though it wasn't the highest absolute priority, it was wise to do it when we did because it took a lot less time and a lot less likelihood of getting injured. So, uh because it's hard work anyway, that that's, that's your 0:25:49 - 0:26:14 specific example. So are summer yard tasks an enormous piece of my life. Well, in terms of the work that goes into it, yes. In terms of the sort of pie chart of everything. No, it's a, it's kind of a small slice but it's intricate and there's a lot going on and just setting the goals and enumerating 0:26:13 - 0:26:34 the tasks and prioritizing them. I never have to wonder what the next thing is and you know what the magic trick of this is. I have this long list, which I've actually vastly simplified this for the example. There's a lot more going on outside. But these are the main things. Here's the beauty. I am never 0:26:33 - 0:26:55 ever stressed out about what I need to do outside because I know what I need to do. I know why I need to do it. I need know when it needs to be done by. And here's the kicker. I know that if I'm doing my best to get the top thing done, I'm doing my best for all of it. That is beautiful. So the rest of 0:26:55 - 0:27:11 it just melts out of my mind. It's on the list. I don't have to worry about it. The only thing I have to worry about is the highest priority thing that's not done yet. And so when I've got a free minute, I look at that and I say, can I move this forward right now? And if the answer is no, because say 0:27:11 - 0:27:28 I have to go work on mulch for six hours and I'm not up to it for whatever reason. Maybe I don't have six hours or maybe I just, it's at the end of the day, I don't have the energy left the strength and nutrients to tackle something that takes six hours of physical labor. Well, then I look down the list 0:27:27 - 0:27:46 and I say, ok, but I know all the other important things. Can I go knock out something like what else needs to be done on the turkey coop? Ok. I can go prime a window frame, you know, I can go do that. That'll take me 10 minutes. And it's funny because in practice when you do this, it sounds like so 0:27:45 - 0:28:05 much, so much thinking about things, so much work, so many extra things, it's none of those things. It's the opposite of all those things. This is absolutely the easiest way to live. You get so much out of so little and the benefits just keep rolling in. Like, what would a life be where you're never 0:28:05 - 0:28:25 stressed out, ever? Ever? I cannot tell you the last time I was stressed out. Actually, I can, the only time I can remember being stressed out in like the last five plus years. And if any of you know anything about me, like every day of my life would probably stress you out the last time. And the only 0:28:25 - 0:28:42 time I can remember being stressed in the last five years is when I had to castrate baby pigs for the first time. And that was just like a little, the, the needle just moved a tiny bit off of zero. Just boop. That's it because I didn't want to hurt pigs. Right. And I, I wasn't 100% sure of what I was 0:28:42 - 0:29:08 doing because you can only learn so much from videos on that. Right. But within five seconds that was gone too. And we were good to go. So imagine a life where only castrating pigs stresses you out. It too can be yours. All right. I hope this helps. Um Please don't be stressed out about applying uh joy 0:29:08 - 0:29:28 on purpose. That's the opposite of the intent. If you get stuck, reach out to me. My email is upward thought at gmail. I'm very happy to help in any way that I can. And uh what you have to remember is that if you're hung up on something, someone else is too. And so it's not a waste of time for you to 0:29:28 - 0:29:47 raise the question because it, it helps me make materials like this and you know, we, we could even have um, well, whatever. So the conversations we have, they, they help other people too, so don't hesitate. And uh I wish you success as you apply those things.