Hello,
everyone. Welcome to the new episode of No Office Podcast. Today, we'll talk about
New Year's resolutions, goals, tips and tricks, how to do the new year,
new me thing, how to make it your best year ever, and how to not stress about it.
and what we have learned over the years, how we did manage to make our years the
best ever. Hello, Magda. Hello, welcome to the 56th episode,
Time Flies. Oh, yes, it does. And this is 2025,
happy new year. Yeah, happy new year, new year. Let's see,
let's see, is it really the best time for bringing changes and doing all those New
Year's resolutions. Is January, January 1st or the first half of January,
a good time? According to me and my research, on one hand,
it's good because it has this ritualistic element. And it gives you some,
you know, like, okay, new year, new me, let's start, many people do this.
So maybe it can work. But on the other hand, first or fifth of January is the
same day as any other day. So really, it's best to introduce changes and to follow
the moment. When I feel that I really need something or when I feel that I miss
something or when I find out something and then say, "Yes, I want to follow it,"
then it's good to do this because your changes and your motivation and then the
persistence of doing something is best when you do it when you are totally ready,
when the thing is totally yours, and when you fill this goal or this project with
your whole self. That's what I think. All right. I kind of agree,
but not really, because sometimes you just need a nudge. And for me, action
motivates action. So anyway, happy new year, Mike St Pierre, who's also a listener
right now. So Mike, have a great one. And yeah, the thing is,
people like the closure of one year, and then, you know, the beginning of the new
year. Also, after the, you know, gluttony, and lots of food of Christmas,
and it's good to start a new it's good to, you know, get back. And I think it's
good to close something a chapter a year and then start a new one.
And this is how I've always approached this. And I haven't been stressing about it
much, but I do like, I enjoy the closure of the year and I enjoy,
well, yes, I do enjoy also planning of the new year and like kind of aspiring to
a better me, to a better year, to better things. - So this is this kind of ritual
for you? Oh, completely. Yes. I always basically the whole January for me is kind
of this month of reflection and preparing for the new year. Also, in the meantime,
I do have to do things I have to do, like I have to record this podcast and I
have to, you know, be the CEO of Nozbe and also get us ready for our 18th
celebration of Nozbe in the next month. So I do have to work on the normal things
but I do enjoy reflecting on and closing the last year and preparing the new year.
I think maybe it depends on the type of person you are or like personality or your
construct psychological construction because I don't know from my experience I see
that my approach like we're following and going
when you really feel something and when you find something and then you fall in
love with it, it works better for me. But that's probably how I am. It's difficult
for me to sit down, imagine, plan, do everything theoretically and really focus and
go deep inside myself. I'm going to work on it. I'm going to share it with you
later on. But for example, last year, I said to myself that,
wow, I'm getting older, but I still would like to have one more degree and
experience again, being a student. And I just went on the internet.
I found the uni that I was interested in.
It's not far from my home. And then I found the, you know, like the profile and
just signed up. And now I'm doing that. And I'm doing great. And I'm a very good
student. So it worked for me this way, not planning. Okay, next year, I'm going to
do my extra degree. No, I just, it was a spur of a moment.
Now you're a student, like back, you know, like, you just, like, young again.
Yes, it's great. And good day, Robert. Also, here's among listeners today.
So, um, yeah, for, for, I remember one of the authors of, of, of,
one of the best selling authors, he said, I don't remember who it was, but I
remember his quote that he always, He only writes when he's inspired. Luckily,
the inspiration strikes every day at 9 a .m. (both laughing) Which means basically he
has a routine to write. And for him, just the act of writing inspires him to write
better. And I am kind of the same way. That's why, for example, I am this kind of
person that I prefer in the morning to do smaller tasks,
to get going, to give some feedback, to do smaller things, so that when I'm warmed
up, then I can tackle the big rocks, the big, I can eat the big frog in the
middle of the day when I'm warmed up, when I'm ready for more action. And it's the
same thing with the New Year's resolutions and New Year planning and New Year
reflection. I prefer to do this whole process of closing out the last year so that
I can see what I should focus on next year, what I should drop and how I should
act.
Everyone prefers a different way, but it's good when it works for you. The second
point I wanted to touch in some theory and there are different words like
resolutions, goals, changes, projects. I think like resolutions,
it's a little bit aggressive word and it indicates that there's maybe some...
We are imposing something on ourselves. With resolutions, we try to satisfy this part
of self, like the super ego is something that is the image of ourselves that is
created by by the external world world. So I think like resolutions associate to me
to doing something that's expected from us, or that maybe we are guilty into,
or that we are just, you know, like this to quiet the nagging voice of conscious,
something from the outside. But when I think of a change or improvement or even
growth, it sounds better. - I also like presently the word iteration,
which means like it's a new version iteration. Like, you know, like with Nozbe, we
have new version coming to our customers every week or every other week. So every,
or every two weeks, there is an iteration. There's always a better version, always
improved version. - Yeah, okay, like the next step. - Exactly, so it's like, not new
year, new me, it's more like new year improved me.
And I think we should all focus on improving ourselves really for ourselves. Like as
you said, we shouldn't look at others and what others are expecting of us, but what
we are expecting of us. It's like when you, I mean, I like sports as you know, I
like triathlons and but I'm an amateur triathlete I'm not gonna be a world champion
or a Olympic champion anymore too late. I'm sorry for that but not too late to do
the sports and You always compete with yourself basically So when you're amateur like
the idea is that you compete with yourself You can't you try to be better at doing
something and also when you're a true amateur sports person, you try to have more
fun each time. It's like, you know, you try to enjoy it more. It's like with me
playing tennis, you know, and I started a few years back. Now I'm good enough so
that people who have played their entire life, tennis, they, when they play me, they
still win, but they really have to sweat to get it. So, um, and I enjoy it.
I enjoy playing against them. I enjoy being challenged and I, challenge. And I'm
just having fun. And this is, for me, the, you know, the improved version.
Yeah, I think we have, we all have enough of duties and commitment. So it's not
worth making your plans or goals another duty. It should be kind of fun and
something pleasant. Also, something I discovered about myself is that I am not that
competitive, I think. You know, I think that's why it's good. That's why it's good.
I'm not the CEO of a big Fortune 500 company 'cause then I would have to be
really competitive. And by being a CEO of a small company,
I like to, you know, do what I do. I like enjoying what I do. I also, I'm an
achiever, so I like to achieve
I see many, many, many, many of my friends who are just much more competitive when
we play tennis or we ride bikes or whatever they are like, and I'm like, you have
the distance. Yes.
Also, like another idea of getting these New Year's things, goals, changes,
resolutions is I think Mark Manson, he follows this idea. It's not goal.
It's not a project, it's theme. So every year has a theme for them,
like, I don't know, like a theme of something. It's also a nice approach because
then you can also engage other people to follow this theme and work on something
related to this topic or theme with you. I think it's more like less, less
pressure, less stress, maybe if you go for a theme. Yeah,
I mean, I have seen that approach and some people like having a theme for a year
like a new theme, or I remember Chris Brogan, there's something like, you know,
three words for next year. So like these three words are the theme for them, you
know. Okay, so he thinks up words. Yeah, three words, three distinct words, like,
for example, let's say, love, commitment, improvement, let's say, right. And then this
is what it but it's like his guiding force, like these three words. - Okay, so it's
nothing concrete. It's more like abstract words. - As you said, it's like a theme.
It's like also a theme building thing, you know? Like these three words construct
like the most important, you know, again, the theme for next year. So some people
do that. And I have tried, I think a few years back, do that as well. But in the
end, for me, that the theme, I don't know, not structured enough.
No, no, no. I prefer to have like more, you know, more projects,
tasks and comments approach, more projects, more goals, something like that. But also,
as we mentioned, not to stress about it, so like the journey is the ultimate
destination. So like the improved version of me, you know, even if I don't achieve
some goal, if I have moved forward, it's already for me, I win.
- Okay, now I was thinking, which resolutions or goals
we usually don't manage to implement. And when I was thinking about it,
I found out that they are mostly the staff that is not aligned with ourselves.
It's not ours. It's not aligned with our values or something that we are really
into, that we don't have thrills when we think of it. That might be this, because
if we take something from outside, as we said before, something that is imposed on
us or something that we think we should do, then the motivation and the whole
psychological aspect of introducing this change can be really like weekend.
So I think that if something is really mine, it will be much easier to implement
and to introduce and to work on and to make effort on. I'm going to say something
very deep right now. So watch out. Know yourself.
So really, you have to know yourself, really. And sometimes it's always like people
say, don't do what I say,
do what I do, right? So look at your actions. That's why we'll go to the next
step now, the review of last year. It's so important to me. It's important to me
to review last year because then, only then, I see what I've really done,
why some things I haven't achieved well, why some things I did do or which things
were fun and which were not. Because this way, you can know yourself and you can,
you know, your actions speak louder than words. And, and, you know, you can keep
telling yourself, I want to do this, you know, I want to, I don't know, run a
marathon on while you hate running you know or I should do this I should run a
marathon you know it's like my favorite part is like I'm 42 so 42 is 42 kilometers
of marathon I have to do a marathon today this year you know I'm not 42 I'm 45
but like you know people who are 42 do very often do that you know they associate
this number and now that's me I have to run marathon this year then no you don't
have to do anything mark the really Not especially with your knee, you shouldn't,
but this is the thing. People are forcing themselves to do something because,
you know, and then they see that they're not doing it, that they're reluctant to do
it, or they avoid doing something. And then that's why it's really important to know
yourself, to really, you know, reflect on last year. Yeah, and the worst idea is to
take that project that we couldn't tackle last year and automatically put it on this
year's list. This is like 100 % failure because you didn't even reflect on why you
didn't start working on it, why you avoided this topic. Apparently there must have
been something that stopped you and if you don't reflect and just move it to your
this year's list, surely you will just suffer and you will be disappointed with
yourself. So don't do it if you have projects that you didn't manage to start even
or you started but you were really relaxed with it, then it's worth going into this
project or goal and finding out why. Isn't it yours?
What was wrong with it? - Completely. No, that's why, you know, it's okay not to
copy paste something. It's okay to decide, okay, I haven't accomplished that last
year and I'm not gonna, I'm out. I'm like, you know,
the more I'm right now, you know, middle -aged man, I start to understand that one
of the freedoms that we have, and you know, one of our values in Nozbe's freedom,
is that you can always walk away. So if somebody wants to insult you, you can just
walk away. I'm not gonna take it like bye bye. And also, with the tasks,
you know, you impose something on yourself, you wanted to do something, it didn't
happen.
Decide again, like, you can be honest with yourself, be honest with yourself and
decide again, Do I really want to do it? You know, it's like it's like with
With Marie Kondo and Joy No Joy, right? Does it bring you joy? That's not bring
you joy like or like if you if I were to choose it again today with all
everything I know would I choose it again? You know, would I want to do this this
again? Would I want to accomplish this again? Or maybe I want to do something else
And also, in the same aspect, is the question of trade-offs. If you want to do
different things, more things, or if you're curious about something else, well,
something has to go. There are trade-offs. So that's why I give you all,
our listeners, I give you all my blessing to just abandon things from last year.
Like, you're OK. You're going to be fine. And that's why, for example, in Nozbe, in
the app, I remember, we insisted that we, in the new Nozbe, we introduced the action
to abandon a task. Yeah, not complete, not delete, but just abandon.
No, abandoned. Like, it's, you know, it's abandoned. Like, you know, you don't want
to do it. It's fine. It's registered in the system. There was an attempt. But for
some reason, we decided to abandon it and we're done. If you want to get back to
it, you can find it. Yeah, maybe one day you can come back to this, but you don't
have to. Exactly. You can find it in brilliant Nozbe search. You can find this old
task and maybe pick it up again. But for now, you're abandoning it and it's done.
Yeah, if you forced yourself to do things that are not aligned with you and that
you are not into, then you will be just disappointed and you will waste a lot of
time and a lot of energy for instead of putting it somewhere when when it could
work so yeah don't don't don't be afraid to abandon things to change things if you
already have a plan then as a time goes don't be afraid to modify it be elastic
you don't your plan doesn't have to be so hermetic and so concrete, you can also
always change the direction a little bit. Yeah, like, I'm not a goal person,
as I said, I'm more into directions.
And if one direction isn't so perfect, then I can go left or go right a little
bit, or have a plan B or plan C, just not to be disappointed that this is what
I'm really afraid of, that if I don't do something, then I will be disappointed and
my self -esteem will go down. So, yeah, I think this is the good approach and to
be okay with it. - Yeah,
completely.
So, The way I review last year, you can see my early reviews.
I publish them transparently on my website at https://michael.team/year

So you can go there to see all my early reviews. I've done that for the last, I
don't know, 10 or more years. And when I start, I start with the calendar actually.
I reviewed the calendar from last year, like all the events that happened, everything
that happened. And I write down how I felt about it, or if I had a new idea or
what I felt about it. So this is kind of my reflecting on last year. Also, to
remind myself how many people-- - But these are like work events or your personal
events? - The whole calendar, the whole me, the whole me.
And I love it, 'cause it's like I go through all the events. Also, If I go
through a month and I haven't read my journal from that month because I saw journal
as you know, I had a journaling up shortcut. So I also read the journal entries
from that month. And then this way I go month by month and have my notes based on
that. And this way, I get kind of,
I have the whole year in a nutshell really. So this is what I do. I reflect on
that. And also, I look at my statistics and some of the stats, like how many
kilometers I did on the cycle, on the bicycle, on how much running did I do or
all that stuff. So I review also my stats. Also, I check my business stats and
stuff.
But as I mentioned, I mentioned. The statistics more or less I know because I'm
reviewing them basically every week when I do my weekly review, but it's good to
just go back to read about your whole year to just again think about the themes
that happened, things that happened and how you felt and how I felt,
what I did, what I didn't do.
But And also appreciate the year that I've had, even though, for example, last year
was pretty tough for me, but in the end, it worked out pretty fine and I'm really
happy about it. But again, the ups and downs, this is how our journey goes.
And do you use this method with the circle of life, that you have a circle and
every piece of this circle is an aspect of your life, like personal personal life,
work, development, money, family, friends, or something like this,
or you don't have this method? Not really. I have certain roles.
I have a role of being the CEO of this company. I have a role of being a father
and a husband. I have a role of sports person.
Okay, so what you sit down and you and you analyze yourself. Yeah, what I did in
these roles, you know. Also, I like traveling, so as a traveler, I also see, you
know, where I went, you know, what I saw. And also, you know,
also, I decided this year to publish, for example, how many books I read. I have a
spoiler, not many, 14, but still 14 books. And also as a reader,
I also do that and check how many books I wanna read next year, what I wanna read
and all that stuff. So these roles come naturally, I mean, just naturally come out
of my calendar and out of my, and I know that some people are like analyzing these
roles more, like should I be more dad, like what I can do better as a dad or
better as the CEO and everything. And I think I kind of do a similar thing in
that sense that I really always reflect on that. Like, have I done enough or have
I done enough for a good job in this role? Or is there something, is there
something I should do better or I would like to do better in that role?
I'm jealous that you can keep this structure and follow this year,
new year review, no, past year review, so nicely.
I have problems with sitting down and devoting quite a lot of time to reflecting on
myself on how can I improve or what did I wrong, what I did well.
Probably that will be one of my goals or directions this year to be able to spend
more time on improving myself theoretically, on reflecting, on thinking.
Also, I think writing will help me a lot because probably writing on some topics
would, I don't know, maybe make me to go even deeper and to reflect more
thoroughly. But I remember like I'm experimenting and I use different methods every
year, practically. But I really like this, the idea with this circle of life thing,
because then you have these aspects, and you can reflect on how you did in those
aspects roles, I think it's really something similar. And then you choose several
aspects on which you would like to focus the most in the new year.
And you set yourself some goals or some directions specifically in those aspects.
I think it's a nice structure and nice help, a good help when you don't know how
to start and you are not like myself, a project person, goal person, and someone
who notes down progress, statistics and stuff. I'm more of a doer.
So it's hard for me to sit down and reflect and analyze a lot.
But this method, it's really useful and helpful.
Yeah, so what what else, what else you do to summarize your year and be able to
set goals or directions for the new year? I mean, you know, I also did something
very cool this year with my family is that we have have sat down and we sat down
and we went through our photos from last year. And I like doing that and I
encourage everyone to do that, like, like have an evening, you know, instead of a
movie night, like have a photo night, you know, and just go through the photos
because we take so many pictures now, like the little pictures are free,
so you just take pictures or everything. So, so it's great to do that. And what we
do additionally, which I really recommend is later, we choose our best photos.
And from these best photos, we choose the 12 photos that will go into our calendar
for next year. And we order online like a printed calendar,
a wall calendar with our 12 favorite photos. And it's glorious.
Like we love this calendar. It's on our fridge in our kitchen. And we always like,
you know, we see this picture like for the whole month, you know, the picture of
us being somewhere or doing something cool, something nice.
we try to choose, you know, different places, we try to choose different people
we're with, you know, sometimes it's the whole family, sometimes it's the family with
some other people, with, you know, with a bigger family or with friends, or
sometimes it's not the entire family, but, you know, some of us with some, you
know, it depends. But we just try to choose the 12 coolest photos, which is really
hard.
But, you like, I mean, you know, again, it's for you. Like, there's no stress about
it later or not a word is like, so I really encourage to do that.
Everyone and people who come to our house when they see the calendar, because again,
it's in the kitchen, it's on the fridge. And they're like, ah, this is so cool.
This is so nice. And but yeah, but we do it completely for ourselves. It's, it's
always fun. So again, one of this is also a part of me reflecting last year,
especially, you know, seeing the travels we've done, you know, the things we've done
together as a family or as me. I mean, you know, it's great. So another tip for
you. Yeah, my daughter has like every year she receives an album like that from her
grandma. So like every year she has the photos of print it out.
Because it's true, you are totally right. Like, before, when we were supposed to
develop and print out the photos, you had those albums. And then when there was a
boring family meeting, and there was no topic to discuss, then you said, Oh, maybe
we can watch photos. And then there was this album that was placed on the table,
and everyone was watching. And it was kind of physical. And now, when you have your
photos all the time with you and you can take a look on Facebook or Instagram,
that this magic disappeared. But with the physical album, so like diaries like that
with your photos and histories printed out, it's cool. Another tip or a game or,
I don't know, a game is what I did because, Okay,
after your yearly review, you are supposed to plan. And how do you usually plan?
When you are a person like Michael, like a structured person, goal person, then what
you do is probably you visual, visualize yourself in five years, or you can see
your like long term goals, probably easily. In my case, I don't know,
probably it's, I don't know, it stems from my psychological problems or uncertainty
or anxiety, but I can't. I can't be brave enough to imagine myself in what I could
be in 10 years. So I can't do those goals,
long -term goals. I don't dare to do this. But what I did with my family lately is
we said, okay, let's take a piece of paper and let's think we are totally rich.
We have unlimited resources, unlimited money, unlimited power, unlimited everything and
just list the things that you would like, that you would like to do, that you
would like to own, that you would like to be and just write them down. Don't
worry, be crazy, let as you fly and just, and I did it.
And then after reading this list several times, I said that,
like, I saw that some of those points, those crazy points could really be those
long term goals, because I dared to, to do something like to be to visualize,
visualize myself somewhere. So for people shy or disturbed like me,
this is a great game. And to prepare yourself for setting goals or setting the
directions for the new year. - I think it's a great idea. I think an idea where
you can ask your family, like, what would you want to do if the resources,
if the money was not an issue? Like, what would you want to do? What would you
want to see, who would you want to meet? Like, my eight year old, she would like
to go to LA and meet all the YouTubers that she likes. So yeah,
so that's what she would want to do. But anyway, this is really cool. This is what
I do, for example, because one of my planning is that after after January,
like, at the end of January, beginning of February, I take my wife on a date
weekend, where we just go two of us to plan our year, which basically means we
review our plans. By that time, I would have done the yearly planning for myself.
And this way, we can talk about it. I can talk about my plans and she can talk
about her plans. And the best part about this is that when you start asking
questions like why this, why that, like you start discovering that even the person
that you know so well has some hidden ideas or some hidden wants or needs that she
or he didn't express before. Or they grew to some new level.
Yes, exactly. So this way you discover new things and and and I remember like you
know one year it was my wife wanted to learn French so it was like we talked
about it and I was I was curious about why she would want to do that and then
you know what was her motivation behind it so anyway it was it's always fun to to
ask about it so I think this kind of thing you know that whatever you like you
whatever you want to do Tell me, and let's listen and let's talk about it,
because as you said, some of the crazy ideas can be done, you know, can be
implemented. So maybe they're not that expensive when you think about it or we do
it, do them a little bit differently. So it's good to, you know, to let our
fantasy fly away. Just the crazy idea can be a tip, something that You can reshape
to something more realistic, but that is totally yours and that is aligned with your
Your dreams or your plans or your yourself completely another Rule that we should
follow is being honest with ourselves and going deep Into reflection out of
reflection. So if you want to change something in your life, you need to get to
know yourself better and reach your hidden subconscious intentions or internal
conflicts, because very often it is like that. I think there is a blog post on it
in English as well, written by a psychotherapist,
that if you want to introduce a change in your life, you have to expect that there
will be a conflict of at least two forces fighting with each other.
And usually we are aware of one of those things, because this is something that we
can see because we are aware of that. But there is something hidden, very often
there is something hidden that won't let us to proceed with the change or with the
direction that we took. So it's very important to, Yes, some people go to
psychotherapy, but if someone is good in autoreflection, they can just deal with that
problem themselves and find what is stopping them from doing something or what is it
that stops you or slows you down in certain things? My friend and mentor Michael
Hyatt, he has this course, "Your Best Year Ever" and a book, "Your Best Year Ever",
which I really
you know, one of the steps to making the yearly, you know, reflection is to find
your limiting beliefs. Because sometimes you have these limiting beliefs that hold you
down, that hold you, you know, like, I will never be able to do this, or I will
never be, you know, good enough in this, or I will never achieve that. And of
course, like as I mentioned, I will never be a professional tennis player. That's
true. But it doesn't, true, but it doesn't stop me from enjoying tennis, right?
So it's, you know, find the limiting beliefs and see what you do, what you can do.
And that's why it's important to realize that there are things that are holding you
back which are only in your head. Mm -hmm, that's true. Okay,
Now, we have five ideas, or maybe we should do some small break.
Yeah, let's take a break with our sponsor. And our sponsor, of course, is Nozbe,
our favorite application, which is great for projects, tasks, and for goals,
for setting up goals. And here, Robert is saying that his strategy is to favorite
projects that he would like to focus for a month,
we'll get back to his ideas, to Robert's ideas after the break. And let's see who
can say something good about our application. - Some sort of project management
software that can help me have a set of really trusted services.
- JJ Robertson, I'm on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I am a holistic health coach focusing
on weight loss and fat loss. And I've used Nozbe every day, my personal life,
and in my business life. So Nozbe really helped me out with organizing my life and
keeping me focused. And in the past, I've, with different businesses, I've used
everything Trello, Asana, you know, all the major getting organized things.
And I've always come back to Nozbe from my own personal use whenever I had a
chance. I've always introduced Nozbe to different businesses because it just works.
It just works. Nozbe just works.
We've been doing this for the last 18 years almost. So we're about to celebrate
18th anniversary of Nozbe. So there must be something to it. There must be more
Roberts out there.
J .J. Robertson. - And really, Nozbe is really a practical goal for working with our
goals and directions. It's really easy to create a project. And then if you already
have ideas and steps that you think that you should take, then list those steps as
tasks. Then you can give some tasks priority, Some not then you can set some dates,
but you don't have to you can obviously set recurrence because when you want to
bring up some red ritual or or a change will probably have to repeat things
persistently so yeah recurrent every week every day every two.
Every every second Thursday, whatever you wish, Then it's really nice to create a
task that will encourage you to follow the progress. Yes, so maybe every week when
you do your weekly review, or every month if you don't want to be so intense with
that, create a task, check the progress. Then you can go back to your goals,
see how you are doing, maybe there's something you want to change, adjust, maybe you
want to abandon something, maybe you want, I don't know, you know, to be a little
bit less intense or maybe to intensify something, it's really worth to have a tool,
a little helper, a virtual assistant that will help you out with your goals and
with your, with the changes that you want to introduce. Exactly. And this is,
- Exactly, and this is why in the end, like after all this reflection, everything I
do then create projects for the things I wanna achieve in the next year.
- Okay, so when you plan your year, please first,
don't rise the bar too high. Start with achievable know,
don't be too harsh with yourself. Start small. And then you will be able to go
further if you can. But if you start with something really, really complicated,
you'll be demotivated. And there is a big chance that you will fail.
Because if you, I don't know, if you say, okay, I will be doing this every day,
while you are not able to do this once a week, then it's 100 % failure.
Oh man, I have so many friends, especially again, getting back to sports. I have so
many friends who are like overdoing it, like somebody is barely running and they
already set the goal to do a marathon, right? So it's like, it's too much. One And
he decided to, you know, be more fit. So he signed up for CrossFit.
And he started doing CrossFit four times a week. And I'm like, man,
this is not sustainable. No, no, it's fine. Four times a week, I'm going to be
strong. And of course, after like, you know, three, four weeks it was done. Like he
was exhausted and it wasn't sustainable. - He didn't have time for anything else.
- Exactly, Exactly. And I remember, so to give you an idea, I remember when I
started running back in 2012, so like many years ago, I started running. I started
running because my neighbor who was a runner or like more advanced runner than me,
he asked me if I wanted to run with him. So we decided to run and I think I
told the story on the podcast already. We decided to run every Wednesday at 9 o
'clock. So every Wednesday, just once a week, once, once, once a week, every
Wednesday at nine o 'clock. So whatever the weather was or whatever happened in my
life, I had to make sure that every Wednesday at nine o 'clock, I was ready to run
because, you know, he was like, we agreed on this, right? So it was just once a
week. So just think about it, that after this run, I felt great. Like I was making
progress, I was running, it was great. And then If I happened to have a moment and
some, you know, inspiration to run on Friday, it was like a bonus. It was like,
whoa, I did two runs this week. I'm great. Like, you know, I wasn't,
you know, this, just this once, like this once, running once a week was a very low
bar. But, you know, try running once a week. You know, the consistency already helps
you achieve a bigger consistency later. And again, you have to imagine how it felt
to do any other run. It was like, it felt like a bonus. It felt like I won the
life, you know? It felt so great to be able to do one additional run or maybe
sometimes in some weeks I did two additional runs. It was like, wow, I'm an
overachiever right now, you know? So really setting, you know, setting this bar lower
is not setting yourself up for failure. It's setting yourself up to be able to
succeed and to jump higher later. Yeah, iterations as you said at the beginning.
Yes, iteration, exactly. The second point I would like to mention is that we need
to remember that good habits are like they give less satisfaction at the beginning.
They are not so cool. And so, you know, like here and now it's cool.
No, but yeah, they give you a lot. But in the long term, bad habits are tricky.
They usually give us satisfaction here and now. That's why we get into them.
But then in long term, they are counter productive or against our health or against
us so let's let's remember about it Yeah,
the basic idea is like when you have sweets like you eat sweets. It's it's
fantastic. The sweets are so good But yeah, then your body is not really responding
to them very well But if you have to go to the gym, you know, it's annoying you
have to go there But in the long you're going to be fit. So it's great. Yeah. So
yeah, and the world now is like this, the culture, everything is like this,
that it offers us immediate gratification. We really are not able to be patient and
to wait for this gratification. So we should try, remember about it, to have it in
our mind that bad habits are tricky. And they, This is a trap. Don't go that way.
Third point is kind of similar to our first point. Let's not plan for too many
changes at once. If we decide to learn French,
then have Brazilian bodox, and then get to know new programming language,
and, I don't know, run a marathon, then we will probably fail because it's too
much. We are not superheroes. We can focus on one thing. Yeah, probably your
favorite book, Essentialism, would confirm that. But yeah, let's start with one.
And once this habit, this ritual, this change will become a little bit automatic for
us, we will do it more like easily, then we can start with the second part or the
second item. I mean, our friend of the podcast, Derek Severs,
he wrote somewhere that if you want to be a master in something, you need a decade
of practicing it. But if you stuck up the decades, you can be master in, you know,
five, six, seven things, you know, if you live long enough. Because we as humans,
you know, overestimate what we can do in a year, but underestimate what we can do
in a decade. But I think it's a good reminder that also throughout the year,
if you have these five, six, seven goals that you want to do, maybe, just like
Robert here suggested, you prepare these projects, prepare tasks there in Nozbe,
but then you favor it right now, the projects that you want to focus on this
month. And then these are the ones that you see every day and then you focus on
these ones. And then once you get the hang of it, once you have the habits in
place and once everything is working there, or maybe once you have achieved some of
the things, then you add another one, you know, later down the lane. Like it's 12
months, man. Like the year is long. So I think people make this mistake of rushing
in and trying to do like all these goals, like, you know, Chuck Norris, like how
many goals do you want to do? All of them.
So don't be like Chuck Norris and try to do them one by one, you know. And don't
focus on effort and on this discipline and sacrifices that are supposed to lead you
to your goal.
Instead, it's better to create a system that will make it easier to reach the goal
or get a tool that will make your goal more accessible or get a skill set,
get some knowledge that will make the goal more easier and faster to achieve.
Right? Completely. Like I mentioned, I think on this podcast already that When I set
a goal to run a certain number of kilometers in a year, I looked at my calendar
and I realized, okay, for example, when I bring my daughter to this practice and I
have to wait for her, in the meantime, I can just go for a run. And then I come
back from the run, she has done the practice, we can go home. So if I do this
twice a week, this means I will have run that that many kilometers.
Now, we do something really special and I'm really proud of it. On Tuesdays,
I bring my youngest to a gymnastics practice with my middle daughter and with the
middle daughter, we run together. And yesterday, both of my daughters were very tired
after school because it was their first day of school after the holidays and
everything. And they didn't want to go. And I said, no, no, no girls.
We do sports. This is what we do. And we have planned this. In our calendar, on
Tuesdays, we do this. And I promise you, you will feel great about it. And of
course, they didn't believe me. But we went out. First,
the little one, she didn't really want to go of the gymnastics class. She was
begging me not to go. But then she went. And then with the middle one, she didn't
feel like running. So in the beginning, we started walking. And then after a walk,
she was like, Oh, daddy, actually, I can run now. So we started running, you know,
and it was fun. And then we came back to pick up the little one from the
gymnastics practice. And she was like, Daddy, it was so cool. And I was like, Yeah,
you see, like, because the, you know, the best drug ever, the endorphins after you
have done sport, they come later, you know, you have to earn them. So, and I,
the only regret is that I haven't recorded her, you know, to have a video of her
saying, I didn't want to go, but I went and it was great because then I can show
this, I would be able to show this video to her like in the future when she is
like not up to speed. But that's the thing. These, you You know, this way we have
a structure and this way we can do this together. And we have also this kind of
social support, we all do this. Like we depend on each other. Like we have to, I
have to bring one to the practice and we have to do the running with the other
one. Yeah, so I mentioned that we can get a tool that would make it easier.
Recently, I wanted to read more and I found an application where you have e -books
and audio books in one app. And then I,
let's say I was reading an e -book and then I got tired or okay, I went to sleep.
And then in the morning when I was walking my dog, I wanted to continue, but
obviously you shouldn't be reading books while walking. So then I just opened the
app And I said, listen, and the app asks me, do you want to continue when you
finished reading last night? And I said, I just said yes. And it adjusts the moment
of the book when I stopped reading. So I didn't know the tool like that.
And I was so excited about it. And thanks to that, I read like many, many,
many books last year. So, a tool, a simple tool. Yeah,
completely. Like, we always say that, you know, the idea is to lower the buyer of
entry. So you have to prepare a system that makes, as Greg McKeown would say,
execution a fortless. Like, it's what to do to improve the situation so that next
time when you do it, it's easier for you. Like, this you. The same we do here
with this podcast. We have talked about it that we have a template for a project
for this podcast and we have these tasks and we keep iterating on the template. We
keep changing the template after basically each recording to make sure that it's even
easier for us. It's really effortless for us to create a new episode, to plan the
new episode, to record the episode. I just came up with some improvements for our
video guy Paweł, what we can do later in post -production, so we keep improving,
iterating as I mentioned, but also we keep making it easier on ourselves to be able
to deliver a quality podcast for all of you, while not, you know, stressing about
it and not thinking, oh, now I have to do all this and all that, before I even
record the podcast, you know, Because actually the recording of podcasts is the most
fun, but all the tasks that you have to do before that and after that, they are
like so many things. So we keep trying to streamline this. And I think in
everything you're doing, like in the habits you create, you begin to work on these
systems, like it's the same. You know, if you have your running shoes ready for
you, it will be easier for you to run. If your bike is always ready,
you will be cycling more.
But if your bike is in the basement hidden behind something, you're like,
"I have to take out my bike now." So, you will just give up before you even
start. Okay,
So what? I think we said everything that we planned. Completely. And again,
having these systems and iterating on these systems will help you achieve your goals
this year. Don't stress about it. Not only achieve, but also enjoy the process. Yes,
because I think sometimes it's better to enjoy the process and just doing and
striving than to be happy with the defect.
- And remember, like the journey is the ultimate destination. Like it's, the journey
is the thing, you know? Again, I can't stress enough. I'm so grateful that for the
last 18 years, almost,
I have been doing this, I have been doing Nozbe, I have been helping others get
organized. And it's still fun for me. It's still exciting for me. And this way,
I think we are doing it better. We're doing it, like it's, you know,
joy is really important. So, and get, and as I mentioned, getting to know yourself.
So really, do I encourage you to reflect on past year and prepare this year a
little bit. We in Nozbe, we on Fridays, On Fridays, we have our free day where we
do the weekly review and focus on personal development. In January, I will focus on
Fridays to complete my yearly review, to be able to publish it on my blog,
but also for myself, again, to get to know me better in the next year. Yeah,
so thank you guys. Treat yourself fairly and well, let go, don't be afraid to
abandon things, appreciate the effort and enjoy the process. And yeah,
just we hope that 2025 will be great for you.
Have a great one. Thank you for being an amazing listener of the NoOffice podcast.
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