Ep #18: How to Start Living as Your Intended Future Self Right Now

Welcome, welcome, welcome to this week’s episode, my friends.

Today, I want to talk about living right now because that’s what I’m doing. I told you on the podcast right before this one that my wife and my kids surprised me with the most amazing gift, which was some time for myself. My wife has made it a priority in the last couple of years. She leads by example, as she so often does in our lives in the 22 years that we’ve been married, that she went for the first time about two years ago on her own solo vacation and this was an amazing thing for her because she was gone for a whole week the first time and she came back from this yoga retreat, completely different person and we love going on vacation together. We love, especially, going to places where there’s lots of sun. Both of us like heat. She can, she can take even more heat than I can in so many different ways, but specifically from the sun, And we love being near the ocean and we’ve taken lots of trips like that together but she wanted to go and have an experience by herself and have some alone time, something that’s very healthy for relationships, but something that we hadn’t really made a priority ever. And so, as many times she does, she led by example. And she went first and she came back such a recharged and energized person in lots of different areas of her life as a parent, as the partner that works with me in the company, and that has great ideas and is the head of project management for our clients and our agency. And she just came back, recharged and ready to go but having that space, that intentional space for herself, so that she can evolve individually and that as partnership in business and in life and raising a family, she was able to come back a refreshed person that can give her energy that way as well.

And it’s so important to take that time, but I have been horrible at it. I mean, just really sucking air on that. I don’t know why I still have this fragmented part of my mind where I thought that I was being too selfish if I took time to go by myself because there’s so much stuff to get done in the business. I always have ideas. I want to be working on things, which can be a good thing if you’re entrepreneur, entrepreneur, right? You have a new idea, you want to pursue it right away. You have an idea, you have a thought, you’re on a walk, you want to start doing it right away. And that can be a really good thing, but it also can take away from the time that you need in order to recharge your batteries and allow yourself to have, like I talked about in the previous episode, that intentional whitespace. And I told you already how to create that in small moments in your schedule and to schedule for it on your calendar to make time to go for a walk to let your brain, that supercomputer that’s sitting on top of your shoulders, it’s not meant to just focus on tasks. That’s such a menial thing for that thing on top of your head to be doing. It’s good at coming up with amazing ideas and then you calendar it, and then you just execute it. But to create that space so that you can do that super thinking, and taking time and going away, this gift that I’ve been given by my wife and my kids, has been amazing.

I’ve only been gone for just over 48 hours and it’s really eye opening how much anxiety I had about being by myself, which you wouldn’t think would be something that would come up for me because I like my alone time in the morning. I get up very early in the morning before I start my nutrition and my workout routine and I value that alone time. For some reason traveling by myself and doing this was a muscle that I hadn’t worked in a while and I gotta tell you that after being uncomfortable for about a day, I settled into it. And I feel like I’m living right now, instead of in my head for what’s the thing I’m working on, what’s the thing I’m developing for the business? I’m in dad mode, I’m in partner mode in my regular routine, that taking myself out of this and being by myself, I haven’t been seeking out hanging out with other people, I haven’t felt the need to start conversations with other people, but really just sit by myself have my own thoughts have my own schedule. When I decide to do something, I do it. Maybe you don’t have kids yet, or just don’t have that kind of intentional space that you’ve created for your life. Maybe this is something that you, you have experienced. This is something, like I said, a muscle that I’ve let atrophy and so what I want to do is I would like to talk about how to create this for yourself, as I am learning how to do it.

So in this case, I kind of went on easy mode. I was the recipient of an amazing gift to be able to go and have this time, but I can tell you already, I’m already planning for my next one. I have had so many amazing ideas and I have kept myself from executing on them because I just want to be in ideation mode about thinking about what’s possible for my future self, for my family, for my business, for my clients, for the things that we’re developing, and I’m not taking action on any of them. I’m just using this time to think. And it really made me start thinking about what I want to talk about right now and the stepping stones of how to get there, which is living right now. So in my brain, and some of you might be entrepreneurs and things like this as well and as Americans, especially, we’ve been conditioned to think about: you earn vacation time. That, like, two weeks that you get a year, or eventually when you retire, you’ll, there’s all these things you’re going to do. But really, you can make space to live right now, to look at what you want for your future self. What is that, for me? It’s being able to go to sunny places like this on a beach whenever I want and to record a podcast like I’m recording for you right now, from wherever I am, and sharing what I’m learning with you, wherever I am, as I’m experiencing it. That is something that brings me joy and that’s something that I can see my future self-doing, that I want to do, and that’s my ideal life is doing that for you and with you. And as I’m learning as an entrepreneur, as I’m having failures, as I’m having wins, making sure that I am I’m being vulnerable. I’m sharing that with you as well, so that you can have an easier time and come along with the journey as well and grow your own business and do the things that you want to do in your professional in your personal life as well. And so in order to do that, I have to actually do it as well, which is live right now, not wait for that retirement, not wait for that permission of two weeks or when we have a planned vacation but to actually take time for myself go away and know that that’s part of it. That is part of the life that I’m designing, to record this podcast right now and be uncomfortable for the fact that I don’t have perfect lighting right now. I don’t have my professional setup with all of my toys and all the things that our team sets up for me so that I have them, but showing you that I’m showing up and I’m doing the work as I’m going in experiencing and making time and space for myself to enjoy the journey as I’m doing it so I’m not waiting to do it. I’m living that future self that future life in small increments.

Like, this might only be a small trip like this, but I’m going to plan for it multiple times per year now because I know that creating the space for me allows my supercomputer my brain to have honor interrupted thoughts and ideas and to be able to create what I want to be in the world, what I want for my business, what I want to be able to create for you, what I want to be able to have you create in your lives as well by being that example, by doing this. So here’s some things that helped me do this in my normal life as well and that help you to be able to do something like get on a plane and go somewhere else, and still be able to have that, that space to be productive. So a couple of things that help me to be able to make my calendar so that it is not packed with things, it’s packed with results I want to generate—and I only have two or three things every week that I know that I want to get done and that are going to be results. And I do this by creating that intentional space during the week, which we’ve already talked about before in a previous episode but to recap that, again, what you do is you make time on your calendar, when you are doing your calendar. I suggest doing it on Mondays, but you look at intentional blocks of time where you specifically go for a walk or you’re creating that intentional, creative space for your brain to just free associate and to chew on how to get the results that you want unencumbered by just meeting to meeting to meeting or task to task to task—the doing, So to create an intentional space, one of my favorite tools is called batching. Now, I did not create this term, this is actually something that Timothy Ferriss if any of you’re familiar with him. The Four Hour Workweek has a very famous podcast as well. He loves to do brain hacking, efficiency hacking, productivity hacking, and I read his book, The Four Hour Workweek years and years and years ago. I’ve reread it at least once in between when I first read it and now, and one of the key things I took out of that book is called batching and I still do it to this day. So batching is taking a task, something that usually pops up for you on a weekly, maybe even a daily basis and instead of doing it on that daily basis, batch a planned time, a block of time to do a repetitive task that could be done in increments every day to do it. Instead of doing it throughout the day, you do it once per day, or if it has to be done, once per day, or if it’s something that can be done twice a week instead of every day, you do that, and you batch the time. 30 minutes, an hour, whatever it takes to do that and it makes it so much more effective.

Let me give you an example. for instance, if you were checking your mail every day. A lot of us walk to the mailbox or open our door and grab the mail in the mailbox and we sort through it, figure out what’s a bill, figure out what’s another advertisement and another catalog whatever it is, or those fake out pieces of mail. I love those the ones that look like they could be a check from a client but or just one of those mortgage company fake outs that look, the window looks like it could have a check in it or it has those corners, that perforated corners you tear off on the sides and on the top but it’s almost always a trick and it’s just an advertisement for a low mortgage rate or something like that. I’m pretty sure some of you are familiar with this as well. So instead of taking the time, let’s say that that takes five minutes per day to do but it takes you away from or out of flow from doing something else so you can batch doing your mail twice a week, grab it out of the mailbox every day, that’s fine, but set it on a table and then twice a week you take five minutes, and you do all of the mail at once. Recycle the stuff that you’re not, there’s an important, open the stuff that you’re not sure if you throw away or not, that goes somewhere and then address the things that need to be addressed and that you will save time every week, which compounds by month, by quarter by year into time saved. So that’s one example. Think of how you could take that example of the mail and do something else, for instance, very literally email. How many of you check email constantly throughout the day? I mean, constantly. It probably takes up so much of your time that isn’t even on your calendar. I know that if I let myself do that, I’m constantly on email and I’m in a reactionary mode. I see something, I know it needs to be addressed or I know how to help that person and I want to start doing it right away and I let it pull me out of what I was doing before. I just, I know this about myself. And so what I do is I batch it. I do not open email first thing in the day. The reason I don’t do that is because, like I said, my brain wants to go ahead and wants to address it right away. So if I look at it, I know I’m going to address it. So I don’t let myself do it. I have my productivity block in the morning. It’s uninterrupted, and then I have email time that I specifically keep it to 15 minutes. It happens right before lunch and then at the end of the day at 4pm I have another 15 minutes so they address it, only high priority things, only things that absolutely needs to be addressed right then. It saves me so much time. Again, freeing up more time on my calendar, which allows me to not be constantly busy and feeling behind so that I have more intentional whitespace on my calendar.

And here’s the thing that I’ve really been working on lately—and it’s really helping me to be a much more balanced and more present person—is not filling up the space in between these work blocks, or creating the feeling for myself that because there is a space there that I need to fill it with more work. Otherwise, I’m being lazy. How many of you do that? How many of you were like me, you’re entrepreneurs, you’re professionals, you’re high performers and if you see a space somewhere, you think, “Oh, I could work. I could, I could throw some more work on there for that project that I want to get done. I’ll get it done even faster now?” But what it does is it creates a mentality of scarcity in you so that you’re constantly trying to pack your schedule, over pack it, and you get burnt out faster. And that’s the last thing that we need right now as entrepreneurs. We need more space for our brain, more space to be able to take trips like I’m doing right now, so that you can think about what you want to create and live the life that you want right now instead of waiting for that mythical two weeks that Americans give themselves. And all Europeans think we’re crazy because they intentionally take a lot more time, which is wonderful. And we should do that, too. But baby steps. I challenge you to think about: what is that trip that you’re putting off, what is that couple of days that you could take? Whether you’re getting on a plane, or just driving a town over, but some intentional, specific space that you can create for yourself, where you are living the kind of life that you want, right now, a small taste of it. Because I guarantee you, you’re gonna have a moment like I’m having right now, which is once you go and do it, you wonder why you waited so long to do it. And in my case, my wife gave me a kick in the ass. It, but it gets me because she knew that I needed that push over the cliff.

But I have to tell you that now that this has happened, this is a thing I do now. This is the thing that I’m going to continue to do. I’m going to make time to live the kind of life that I want and when you start doing it, guess what? Your brain just starts making it normal. It’s normalized now. This is the person that I want to be. I’m the person that gets on a plane and travels for two or three days by themselves that does this more often with my wife as well, and that goes, and that does this sort of thing and lives the life of my future self that I want right now where I get to talk to you right now, where I get to have revelations in the moment while I’m out and my brain has time to think and process and share with you and not be afraid that I don’t have the perfect lighting setup, that I’m not talking to you from my office, that I’m tethered to a specific place. That isn’t the life that I want to create. But that’s just my example. What are some of the examples of the life that you want to create? What do you want to do on a daily basis, a weekly basis? How often do you want to travel? What are the reasons that you are coming up with right now of why you’re not doing that thing that you want to do? And how could you do it in a small increment right now that makes it so that your brain sees it as something that’s possible and something that you can start moving towards and make bigger and bigger strides until you are living the life that you want to live, running your business the way that you want to run it without feeling burnt out, over scheduled and that you’re never gonna get to the place that you want to get?

I’m not perfect at this. In fact, this is just like I said: I needed a kick in the ass to do it from my wife. And I hope that there’s someone in your life that would do that to you as well, but you can be that person for yourself. So look for an opportunity, whether it’s some, you’re someone like me that loves traveling. But my brain loves to come up with excuses of why I don’t have time for that right now because that would be “irresponsible.” Do you have a version of that? Something that you’ve been waiting to do for some time, when that future self happens and all the stars align? What can you do right now that could make it a possibility, even if it’s a small step?

Alright, that’s it for now. Goodbye from Mexico. I’ll talk to you next week.