Humans have fickle hearts. Our desires can swing wildly from one moment to the next. In fact, just preparing to write this podcast, I was having a hard time finding the motivation to even get started. So, what do you do when you have goals to work towards on days that you just aren’t feeling it? This week on the Content Machine podcast, we’re talking about how having a process can help you build discipline even when the motivation just isn’t there.
An artist, Elizabeth King, once said, “Process saves us from the poverty of our intentions.”
I love this quote because it’s so very true in human life. As humans, our fickle desires can sometimes lead us to forget the intentions we had when we were thinking clearly, thinking more positively, or maybe even thinking with a bigger picture in mind. We might be eating dinner the night before and decide that tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow I will start doing X, or I will accomplish Y. But when tomorrow comes, our hearts have swung around, and our intentions are no longer set on doing X or Y. It doesn’t make you a loser, it makes you a human.
But I think this is what Elizabeth King meant when she said the phrase, “Poverty of our intentions.”
The poverty is fought by discipline. Discipline is capitalized on by a process and a plan. Being able to make a plan is somewhat easy. Sticking to and executing that plan, that’s where the magic is. Having a process around important things in our lives can give us the ability to be successful in those activities, even if our intentions or motivations have taken a dip in that moment. Look, if I was able to make a plan the night before and execute that plan perfectly the next day, every day, I would have conquered the world by now. But to be honest, it’s just not realistic. That being said, here are a few things I’ve found that can help us fight off the poverty of our intentions. Set yourself up to win by being a student of yourself. Pay attention to the triggers that prevent you from following through on a plan. You may notice on nights that you get less sleep or days that you don’t have a plan written out that you are more likely to make the easier choice instead of the right choice.
In my life, I have found that a successful tomorrow starts the day before. I plan the next day out working towards getting good sleep and going to bed on time. These things give me a much more solid start for the next day. I also know that if I don’t go on a run in the mornings, I’m going to be about 70% of my potential self the rest of the day. The same holds true for my phone. If I start looking at social media too early in the morning, it can be a huge distraction throughout the rest of the day. All of these things are things I have noticed about myself over time and then work to build processes around them to help me to be more and more successful.
I also believe in reminders. Reminders to do things. These can be notes on the wall or perhaps in a more modern sense, your phone’s reminders app giving you notifications to do things. Reminders help me to be more successful. Whether that reminder is to plan out the next day or a reminder to go for a run, reminders help us remember what our intentions were. I even have reminders to take out the trash each week. Each night, I write out what my morning looks like and time blocks. The time from 4:15 to 8:00 is planned out to a T. The difference in results between when I do this and when I don’t is significant.
Related to reminders are checklists. Checklists are crucial to success of any repeatable task. I pull some of my thought processes on this from the book checklist Manifesto by Atoll Monde. You can listen to one of our earlier podcasts about that. Our agency has worked to document all of our repeatable processes, everything from the steps to make sure we are naming a new business successfully, or did we do all the steps to launch a new website successfully? Checklists are wonderful because our brains are prone to forgetting things that are routine. One thing I’d encourage you to think about is how to realign yourself when you get out of process. If you have gotten out of process because your intentions have sabotaged you, do you have a mental model on how to reset? Do you have a process to reset your intentions? I usually allow my brain to take a short break like a timed break. Then I return to the problem by outlining step by step what needs to happen, like step one, make a list. Step two, next item, so on and so forth.
I also find music helps me be successful. Usually focus style music like the deep focus, low fi beats, or Middle Earth lo-fi playlists on Spotify.
Learning to overcome your intentions with a process will change your world for a better.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the podcast. As always, if you enjoyed it or found it helpful, please leave a comment or shoot us an email. If you have time this week, we’d love to hear back from you. Let us know, do you have any processes in place in your life? What are the steps you take to get back on track when you get derailed?
