Welcome back. I appreciate you joining me and letting me invade your earphones for another episode. And today I'm really excited and we're going to dive right in because I want to share with you one of the most practical, useful tools to enhance productivity.

It's one that I use every single day. It's incredibly simple and it helps [00:01:00] me get more done in less time. And I think it will help you too. But first a question, are you like millions of people and like myself at times, especially in the past, one of those people that feels like you're moving forward, doing things all day, just putting out fires, trying to stay afloat, keep moving forward.

And at the end of the day, you feel exhausted, you feel spent, but you don't really feel like you got a lot done. You still feel like tomorrow there's another massive mountain to climb. And that's entirely relatable. Many, many, many of us feel that way. And that's because when we feel like we have a whole lot of things to do, one of the biggest mistakes that we make is we start making to do lists.

We start writing things down, jotting things down, whether it's on our phone reminders or notes, we have a physical piece of paper. We make lists of everything that we need to get done. And [00:02:00] that actually sets us up for failure because it's entirely incompatible with the way that our brains work. Our brains can't conceptualize.

to do list in the parameters of what's important, what is the most significant, what will move the needle forward towards our vision and our goals and make the most meaningful impact at any given moment. And what tends to happen is when we start to write things down, especially when we're making something like a to do list is we get really task happy.

We will start with the most important things. Which are almost always the most daunting things, the scariest things. The things that we're kind of not really looking forward to doing. And then we don't really like the way our to do list looks. Because it's got a lot of big, scary, nasty things at the top.

And so we'll add to it. We'll add some less scary things. And we'll add some stuff we maybe don't need [00:03:00] to get done right away, but it'd be nice if we could knock it out. And then we add some really basic stuff that we know we're going to do anyway. And then we end up with this really long list of things to do.

And that occupies our time. And we wake up every morning and we have this massive list of things that we need to get done, and where do we organically start? We will take the past of least resistance most of the time. And that's not a bad thing. It's an incredibly human thing. It's incredibly understandable, it's incredibly organic way in which to act.

It's the same type of instinctual mechanism. That has protected us for millions and millions of years as human beings and allow us to thrive as a species is the avoidance of scary, difficult, dangerous, risky things. It's how we've been able to thrive as a species, even though we're comparably weak physically to a lot of other animals and species out there, we've had to protect ourselves from [00:04:00] risks from however many years we've been here on this earth.

And our brains are still wired that way. We are risk avoidant by nature. And so when we have a lot of big, scary, nasty things at the top of our list, we'll continue to add to that list. It's less scary, less nasty, easier, more palatable things. And then we'll wake up in the morning. And when we've got a big list of things to do.

We will naturally start knocking out the less scary ones, and that's how we get in this whirlwind every day of activity of business of getting things done when really all we're practicing is creative avoidance Those big, scary, nasty things tend to stay there. They tend to stay at the top of the list.

Or, and both sides can be true, we'll make this big list with the big, scary, nasty things at the top. Relatively important, more palatable things in the middle. And because our brains are [00:05:00] wired to just continue to add more things to the list so that the big scary nasty things start to seem further and further away and less and less scary and less and less risky, we'll have a whole bunch of less meaningful things down at the bottom that we'll probably never do in the first place.

The like other 5 percent of life that just needs to get done, but it's okay if it doesn't happen for a while. We'll have that stuff. At the bottom of the list in the background. And so what will happen is we'll wake up every morning and we'll start knocking out as many of the middle ground, more palatable things that don't necessarily move the ball down field towards our goals or our vision, but they make us feel like we're moving forward.

And then what will happen at the end of the day is we still have a big, scary, nasty top of the list and a really noisy bottom of the list of just like. Annoying tasks and crap we need to get done. I have to renew my passport at some point. And that's how our little thing on our phone reminders [00:06:00] ends up with a whole bunch of overdue things that keep pinging your phone over and over every single day.

Don't forget to do this. Don't forget to do this. And they oscillate between big, scary, nasty things, and really annoying stuff that we don't feel like doing. And all the palatable stuff in the middle that we've knocked out. Doesn't necessarily move us forward. Our brain does a really, really, really poor job of synthesizing how our daily actions And the things that we take action on move us closer or further towards our goals.

We have to really deeply consciously think about that when we make our lists of things to do. When we start making to do lists, our brain will organically gravitate. towards the most meaningful thing we can do that doesn't cause us too much pain. It will gravitate away from the super minute things that are just annoying tasks that we have to do, but we don't feel like doing and [00:07:00] won't really move the needle forward.

And it'll gravitate away from the big, scary, nasty things that could potentially be life changing for us. But they're risky and they're scary and we don't feel like doing them and our brain will gravitate to the more task oriented Palatable things that we need to do that will keep us right in our comfort zone and make us feel like we're being productive But then we'll do that Day after day after day and we'll look back in three months or six months or six years And be frustrated that we're no closer to our goals, even though we feel like we've been putting in a lot of work.

And that's because our brain cannot prioritize on its own, the most meaningful things that we can be doing to work closer towards our vision. And so we have to do that for ourselves. 

That's why I love this tool. Once you recognize that your brain on its own is not going to put you in the best position to succeed [00:08:00] and your to do list is actually a to don't list or a too scary list. You can take action. You can put simple mechanisms and tools in place to essentially keep the most meaningful things on your radar, unavoidable and watch the progress that you make as you start to tackle the truly meaningful action items on your list every single day and watch how you actually move closer So let's talk about this super simple tool and how I execute and use it every single day.

Uh, first things first, got to give credit where it's due. I first discovered this tool in a book called 18 Minutes by Peter Bregman years ago. I will admit, I actually had no idea who Peter Bregman was until I read that book. It was a treasure. So if you, have not had a chance. Please go pick up a copy of 18 minutes by Peter Bregman.

He is a really, really high level business consultant, very practical speaker, gives a lot of great guidance that is [00:09:00] actionable, and I think it's a phenomenal short read and it's given me one of the most meaningful tools that I execute every day in my life. So this is what it looks like. This tool is called the six squares or at least that's what I call it.

The six squares. So if you're listening and not watching at home, this is literally what the tool looks like. This is one of my pages with my six squares. This is actually from July 23rd of this year. It's literally a one page sheet of paper with six different squares on it. I keep mine on a Word document.

in my computer and I update it pretty much every night, every business night where we have to go to the office the next day. It's six different squares that correlate to six different areas of my life in which I know I'm going to have meaningful actions to take every single day. So of those six squares, Five of them are really important [00:10:00] goal oriented areas of my life.

And then because this is such a practical tool, the sixth square is called the other 5 percent that's where in my daily list of things to do, I categorize all that stuff that I just have to get done. I have to go grocery shopping. I have to get my oil change. Unfortunately, those are things that need to be done.

Life doesn't wait. Um, But they're not moving me closer to my goals. Also, if I don't get them done, then I won't eat. My car will break down. This is a really practical tool because it accounts for all the stuff that really doesn't bring us a lot of value or meaning, but as a necessity for us to keep moving forward in life, 

I try very hard. I'm actually very, very insistent on not being a serial goal setter. I set my goals once a year. They correlate with my larger vision for where I want to be in my life financially, relationship wise, spiritually, and the purpose that I have in this [00:11:00] world and the meaning that I want to bring to it.

I have an overarching vision that I've spent a lot of time on. Really thinking deeply about and refining and my yearly goals correlate to where I want to find myself on that journey year after year. It's a way to break down my life's vision into practical chunks that I can execute on in 365 day intervals.

And so I would recommend and I try very hard. Not to be a serial goal setter. I don't revisit my goals every quarter. I don't reset my goals when things aren't going my way. I have a practical mechanism that I execute on with my wife, usually every December to set our goals and to take time to very meaningfully think about our life's vision, where we want to go and what we need to accomplish over the next year to get there.

And then I don't change it unless something radically inspires me to go down a different path, my goals will stay the same for the year. And I think this is an incredibly important thing to have [00:12:00] really hammered out before you start utilizing tools like the six squares, because what you put in those five other squares, your goals for the year, if they're constantly changing, then the action items that you ascribe to those things are going to constantly change as well.

And then you're going to head In all sorts of different directions without really going too far down each path to find real purpose and have a real effect in your life. So as you come up with your five squares, I want to make mine very clear. I have three different businesses that I contribute to that I either run or that I'm a contributing part of.

And so I have three different squares that correlate to business goals. So I have in every one of those different businesses, we have a yearly goal. That ascribes to our overall vision for the company. So 365 days from now, we want to be this much closer to our end game for the [00:13:00] business, whatever that looks like.

So I have a yearly goal for each one of those three businesses. I also have yearly goals for where I want to be with my relationships, where I want to be with my marriage, my friendships, my relationships with my family. And I have incredibly meaningful goals for each one of those. For example, my parents are getting older now.

I have very meaningful goals as to how I would love to spend their remaining years here on this earth, how I would love to spend that time with them. The things I want to accomplish, the things I want to learn from them, the things I want to experience with them. Those are very meaningful goals to me in my relationships.

I have the same thing with my marriage and some of my closest friendships. So I have those goals in my fourth square. And then I have my personal goals in my fifth square and oftentimes those will relate to my health, my fitness, how I treat my body, something personally that I want to accomplish. My wife is [00:14:00] Mexican and one of my goals has been for the longest time and I have continued to let it get sidetracked so I will be open about where I fall short on my goals at times.

One of my longest running goals has been to become fluent in Spanish so I can communicate better with her family. And I can communicate better with her and maybe I can talk crap about people behind their backs in Spanish and me and my wife can have all sorts of inside jokes and lots of fun. I have not moved as close to that goal in the last year as I would have liked.

I have it on my list as one of the most meaningful goals in my personal life. And I haven't done a good enough job of tackling the daily action steps to get myself there. To date, I have not. I can understand about 95 percent of what the people in Spanish are saying around me. Uh, I have trouble responding if I don't slow down and really think hard about my words.

And so I'm not conversationally fluent yet. I'm still working on it. It is my fifth square. The sixth square is the other 5 percent stuff that [00:15:00] just needs to get knocked out every single day. So before you use this tool, I want you to think very deeply about the meaningful goals in your life. And it doesn't necessarily need to be five squares plus the 5%.

You may only have four squares on your sheet. You may have more. I would be very practical about this, And I would advise that you have no more than eight squares. If you spread yourself too thin, it's incredibly difficult to accomplish that many meaningful things on a year over year basis.

And so I would really challenge you to dial in your purposeful goals and make sure that there's really no more than eight squares maximum. I feel comfortable with six. I have three wonderful businesses that I care very deeply about. I have relationships that are incredibly important to me, and I have my personal goals, which I prioritize as well.

And that feels very comfortable for me. Once you have [00:16:00] your five goals, your six squares, here's how the tool works. Every day, In the evening time, I will write down what I know are the most meaningful things that I need to do right now for every single one of those five squares.

And as you gain familiarity with this, it's going to become pretty easy to know what the most meaningful things are for you to move yourself forward in each one of those areas. I would venture to guess that you probably already know if you're just starting out on a really meaningful goal, something that you find a lot of purpose in, you're probably not terribly confused about what the first big step is.

It might be scary. It might be a little daunting, but it's probably not confusing. And so I don't want you to get hung up on the I'm not sure aspect of this as you gain more familiarity with your mission, your goals and what you're trying to accomplish each day. This process is going to become very [00:17:00] easy as far as putting down the action steps that you need to take.

What are the most meaningful, most important things that you need to do? So this should take you no more than about 15 minutes a day as you get really good at it, it should take you no more than about five minutes a day. And that's because you're constantly living this experience or constantly synthesizing and moving forward and realizing what is the next most practical step on the way to accomplishing your goals.

And so, Every night you're going to go in and just simply put what are the most meaningful things that I need to take action on right now in each one of those squares. My word document is very simple. I have the actual goal written down at the top of each square and then beneath that goal every day I will put in the action steps that I need to do the following day to move myself closer to that goal.

And some days by the way. You're going to have the same action steps over and over and over. [00:18:00] Consistency is what moves you forward, what drives you forward, what creates mastery in your world. So don't get discouraged by the idea that life isn't one endless series of exciting new actionable things every single day.

If I want to become fluid in Spanish, I really only have one action step every day and that's to have Conversations in Spanish and have my Spanish lessons every day. It barely ever changes It's just whether or not I knock it out the next day. You're gonna have a lot of repeatable steps and that's okay

what's really beautiful about this tool, really powerful is the way in which it automates keeping the most important, meaningful things, the meaningful action steps right in front of you at any given time.

And the way that it does that is with a very simple set of rules. I would say not even set of rules, really just one rule. And if you're disciplined around it, and if you are honest with yourself, And you stick to this rule, this will become the [00:19:00] most powerful tool for your productivity that I think you could implement right now.

It's called the three day rule. The three day rule is very simple. Every day you're going to check off, or you're going to mark off, or you're going to cross out all of the action items you've taken as you've taken them. Now I have a whole different thought process around crossing offers, checking off and priming and all that type of stuff.

There's really interesting conversations around that, but for now, I don't care how you do it. You're keeping track of all the things that you've knocked out each day. And as you do that, you're going to abide by a very simple rule. If something stays on your list for more than three days, one of two things will get it off the list.

You either need to take action on it right away. It needs to be the first thing you do the next day, or you need to erase it from the list completely because it wasn't important enough for you to do and the allotted amount of time. See, you're not going to [00:20:00] get everything done every day. It's impossible.

Life is going to happen. Things are going to come up or some days you're just going to have a whole lot to do and things are going to take longer than you thought they would. You're not going to get to everything. And so what happens is when you go and you create your next list for the next day, you're going to leave the things on there that you didn't get done the day before.

And if you abide by this simple rule and something stays on your list for one day, two days, three days, The only thing that you have to abide by is taking action or deciding not to take action on the fourth day for that action step. So the big, scary, nasty things that used to end up at the top of the to do list, they become unavoidable because by the third day, your avoidance will be staring you right in the face.

You'll know I haven't crossed this off for three days. And if I truly find meaning and purpose in my [00:21:00] goals and my vision, I have no choice but to make this big, scary, nasty thing the first thing that I do tomorrow. And then it's just about being honest with yourself. Are you really as committed to your goals as you say you are, or will you find a way to deprioritize that thing once again and let another day go by?

My gut is. That you won't, if you use this tool, my gut is that this will make those big, scary, nasty things so unavoidable that you'll take action and you'll realize they weren't so big, scary, or nasty at all. They were amazing growth opportunities for you. Or something will sit there for three days and you realize by the fourth day the reason I haven't done this is because it's not as important as I thought it was.

Someone else can probably do that for me. Maybe instead of me doing this I need to pick up the phone or shoot off an email and ask someone else to take care of this for me. [00:22:00] Maybe I need to pay somebody else to do this because they're better at it than I am and I need that leverage in my world. Maybe by the fourth day.

I've realized this is probably something that should have never been on my list because it's not actually moving me closer to my goals. And that's the only rule around the six squares is that if you are still on the list by the fourth day, you have to get off there one way or another, either by going straight through it or getting it out of the way completely.

And if you could be honest with yourself and not deprioritize the big, scary, nasty things, this tool. Can be incredibly impactful in your world, and that's as simple as it is. You have six squares. One is just stuff for life. The other five are truly meaningful goals, things you want to accomplish in your world.

And if you take five minutes a day to categorize the action steps for each one of those goals and [00:23:00] abide by a simple three day rule, on taking action or not taking action on the things that you've put on that list. You'll be amazed when you look back in three months, six months, or even those six years and realize how much closer you are towards manifesting that purposeful vision that you have for your life.

So try this, get a word document, put six squares on it. Think very deeply about your goals. If you haven't already don't change them, don't become a serial goal center, at least unless something incredibly inspirational happens in your life. And then try these action steps every day, spend five minutes putting the to do list together for each square, allow yourself to follow the three day rule, which will drive you towards the most meaningful action you can in your world.

and see how it affects your productivity. I would love to hear how this tool works for you. It has been incredibly effective for me, and I think it will for you as well. So drop a comment, reach out to me, [00:24:00] drop me a line. Let me know how this has affected you in your world.

Thank you again for listening to another episode of Brian Force for good. I hope this has been helpful and impactful in your life. We'll see you next time.