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Monthly Method Podcast is a show for solopreneurs, creators, and artists who have a burning desire to launch a project. The project your best life depends on.
Your host, Polina Bee, is a certified SCRUM master. She brings a proven record of launching successful projects, both professional and personal.
You will hear about tested techniques that lead to calm, consistency and results.
Subscribe to turn your idea into reality one month at a time.
Have you ever wondered why people choose to pay for a gym membership in this day and age? You can say it's a waste of money. There are more free workouts on YouTube than a person can do in a lifetime. Even if they work out daily. Remember how the experts said that the brick and mortar fitness industry will never recover from the pandemic because people will realize that they can work out from home, right?
From where I'm sitting, The germs are back to normal. So what does it tell us about our goals in general? Nowadays, there is more information than ever about any goal that we might set for ourselves. And it's free and it's good information. You can use it and get results. We are more educated and informed than ever, yet it seems to have very little impact on the quality of our lives.
Take any area, health, finances, relationships. We know so much. I would argue we know too much at this point. Too smart for our own sake. Forgoing doing the basics because they're not sophisticated enough. Too simple. Can't be that easy. But listen, the person doing the basics We'll outperform anyone knowing the secret, but not applying it.
So shopping for the next best piece of information, be it the next self help book or the next YouTube video on how to set your New Year's resolutions and goals, I'm gonna cut it. Instead, we should be figuring out how to finally do the things we already know we should be doing. And that brings me back to my initial question.
Why do people still choose? to pay for a gym membership. They can work out from home for free anytime they want. It's so convenient. I promise this gym comparison is leading somewhere. I just like to use practical examples when explaining bigger concepts. So stick with me for a second. So people pay for a gym membership or a fitness studio membership because this places provide an environment and the right incentives.
So, um, I'm going to share with you a few tips for actually working out. First of all, you don't need to think. You just show up on time for a fitness class or your training session. You know those questions, should I work on my legs or my back today? If it's a leg day, what exercises should I do and in which order and with what weights?
And am I doing it properly or should I check my form? And guess what? I don't have to think about it. I just need to show up at 6pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays for my group fitness class. That's it. All the thinking is done by my trainer for me. I don't have to think about any of that. And that sure simplifies things.
And that makes me more likely to go and work out because I don't have to. Do all this pre thinking ahead of time. The negative incentives for missing class you sign up for force you to go to the class or the training session. Even if you don't feel like going, I mean the fact that I'll be losing 20 to 25 if I don't go to the class sure makes me more likely to go.
Even if I don't feel like going, yes, it'll quietly complain and whine about this whole situation. But I'll go and I'll have a good workout and I'll be proud of myself by the end of that workout. When you try to work out from home, you don't have this negative incentive. There is nothing pushing you to work out when you don't feel like it.
In the gym, the environment is carefully designed for a single purpose of working out. There are no couches, no TV with your favorite show. You don't have to tidy up the entire room before you can do your lunges and push ups because it's filled with kids toys. You simply don't see toys and unnecessary items in a gym.
And the place is always tidy. Tidy. If it's a good gym. When I go to the gym, I always think to myself, well, at least this is the one place I don't have to tidy up and it makes me really happy. Also, when you see other people working out around you, It makes it easier to work out yourself. Again, even if you don't feel like working out, it's really awkward to sit down and do nothing in the gym.
There's also this external accountability that you feel towards your trainer, especially if you have a personal trainer, but even if it's a group class, And you've been going with a certain consistency. People expect to see you there, and they ask about you if you don't go. So, there is this nice accountability that you feel towards that group of people.
So, going into the next year, don't try to achieve your goals on the sheer willpower. Using this gym metaphor, join the gym. Don't fool yourself and try to work out from home if it hasn't worked in the past. Join that type of environment that will make doing the right activity easier. Stop playing life on hard mode.
Simplify things for yourself. Want to read more books? Join a local reading club that meets in person. They'll do all the hard things. So you can simply focus on the activity you want to do and there will also be that system, that accountability part that will make you read that book even when you don't feel like reading it.
Want to run a marathon? Join a running club, join an existing system that will nudge you to do the desired activity even when you don't feel like doing it. If you have creative or business goals for the next year that require a lot of focused work on your computer, it might be hard to find such a club.
I know because as a solopreneur, I've been trying to find such clubs for the longest time, but I couldn't. So I decided to build one and I called it the Calm Ambition. My journey of creating this club started with a simple question. Why is achieving personal goals so hard. We can get through school with outstanding results.
We can finish impressive projects at work when working for somebody else. Yet when it comes to our own goals, our own projects, maybe our own new businesses where we are just a team of one, it's not working as smoothly as before. And that's because we are trying to do it alone. When we were in school, when we were employed by somebody else, we were a part of the bigger system and the system helped us in many ways to show up and do the work, the required work, difficult, stressful, ambitious work.
Even when we didn't feel like doing it, the system was helping us. So I wanted the Calm Ambition Club to become that system that you can voluntarily plug into and use the benefits of a larger system for your individual projects and goals. So the Calm Ambition Club provides you with the proven system for achieving your goals.
That's the Agile inspired method that I've been talking about on this channel, my blog for the last four years. The clap will help you establish the rhythm of working and resting so that you can do it for years to come. We don't want to run into any burnouts if we want to establish that high level of consistency we all want in our work.
We need reminding more than we need new information. So different examples, different use cases, different life stories will help you keep the mindset in check to show up and do the things that you want to do on a daily basis. Of course, there will be a power of external accountability that you can use in the times when you don't feel like it.
I will be forming small groups of four for daily standups. Those people will be there to serve as a little nudge to actually go and do something each day so that you have something to write back home about. This group and myself will be there in case you're struggling and need a little pick me up. And there will be scheduled calls and activities for which you don't have to prepare anything.
You just show up on time and we do everything live. On the call, all the agile rituals, all the sprint plannings and retrospectives. All you have to worry about is making it to the call. And if you can't make it, the recording will be there. I want to design a place and environment in which we are more likely to actually do the things we want to do.
I'm inviting you to become a founding member, meaning you're going to be the first cohort of people. When you join. I'll, I'll help you to set up your backlog so that you can start emptying your mind and prioritizing the things that you want to work on in your first sprint. We'll have a fixed sprint schedule.
We'll do three weeks of sprinting, one week off, and we do it for the entire year. We'll have a live sprint planning session. Every sprint. We'll plan our sprints together on that call. You can ask me any questions you have, but by the end of that call you should have a very good sprint plan with all the definitions I've done and everything ready to start day one of your sprint.
Throughout the sprint you'll be a part of a small tight knit community of four, only four people, and that's where you'll do your daily stand up. And the first few sprints, I'll be a part of every group as well. Then my favorite part is that we have two live working sessions per week. So planning your spring goals is one thing, but actually showing up and doing them is another thing.
I decided to set up two working sessions per week where we do deep work on our goals life together. We follow the same method that I've learned when being in grad school. They also had this weekly writing session and I'll use the same techniques there. So make sure you come because you'll be impressed how much you can get done during those group deep work sessions.
Again, it's very hard to do nothing when everyone around you is so focused and working. Then we have a live So I'm going to be talking about the spring for perspective. Every sprint, again, I'll guide you through everything. You're in the call. You don't have to prepare anything. Just show up for the call and we'll do everything together.
Then there will be a cool off week after every sprint so that you can rest, recharge and start thinking about your next sprint. And also inside that club, there will be regular messages from me with Fresh content that is not available on any of my free platforms. And those messages will be very relevant to you because we'll be at the same point in our sprint.
So I'll be going through the same things, the same problems, the same struggles, the same excuses, the same limitations as you are. And I think it's so much more powerful and more relatable. when you hear someone going through the same thing. But the only difference is that I've been doing it for the last 10 years.
So I probably know how to navigate some of these issues and I can share some tips and tricks with you. And you can also share some tips and tricks with me and with everybody else in the community. So if you're interested in applying Agile philosophy to your own projects and goals, if you've been watching my channel, reading my blog, And this ideas resonate with you.
This will be a perfect structured environment in which I will hold your hand and actually guide you in real time through this process, through all the rituals, how they're done in, in which cadence, and we do it all together. So I invite you to do this with me. If you have big goals, but you've been struggling with consistency, so you go through this motion of hustle, hustle, hustle, then you burn out for three months, and then you try to recover and all of that.
And of course it affects. Your performance when you can be consistent if you're tried of this yo yo cycling This is a chance to build a more sustainable Personal productivity system if you're simply just sick and tired of the hustle culture of all the rah rah rah motivational gurus and want to find something more sensible without letting go of your ambition or your big goals.
If somewhere deep inside, you think that it is possible to achieve those goals without being so loud, without being so pushy and without sacrifice and everything, I want to invite you and try to prove to you that it is possible. And that's how you do it. If you try to do it alone, but you couldn't run it as an experiment, what will happen if I stop trying to do it alone and plug into a system and environment?
Where other people are doing something similar. Maybe things will be different this time around. If you're ready to finally do the things that you've been putting off, a big dream of yours, maybe an experiment, if you wanted to try something and see how it goes, I want to invite you to become a founding member of the Calm Ambition Club.
Right now, all the members that join are the founding members. Meaning that you will help me build this community into the best version it can be. Right now, yes, it is built with my ideas in place, but I want it to be also an agile product that we are building together. What works? What doesn't? What can be improved?
I'm very excited about this community because I am that solopreneur who've been doing things on her own for a many, many years. And I know how hard it is. And I've tried over the years to find that community where other people who are working in the teams of one can get together and keep each other accountable, inspire each other, be, create examples of things that are possible, even if you're a team of one.
So I'm not only building it for you, but I'm also building it for myself. What we are trying to build is a place. where we're more likely to actually do the things we want to do. Not talk about it, not plan it, not read about it, not research it. Do, do the hard things that will eventually lead to the outcomes that we want.
We start in January. So if you want to start your year differently with something you've never done before, Because hey, if you want to have different results, you need to do different things. Uh, we start in January. Our first goal is on January 2nd, uh, but the last day to join is January 4th. I'm looking forward to seeing you inside.
If you're watching this video at some point later in the year, check the link in the description for the most up to date information on the club. And when you can. Enrolled? I look forward to seeing you inside the Common Vision Club. Cheers!