Marissa Hyatt and Ken Freire are back in action for the new year! In this episode, they share their go-to strategy for reducing stress and achieving your goals with ease: the Daily Big 3. Learn how this simple yet effective system keeps you focused, eliminates overwhelm, and sets you up for success—all without burning out.
Key Takeaways
- Consistency Builds Results. Big wins come from daily, intentional actions.
- The Hidden Productivity Trap. One of the sneakiest obstacles to productivity? Your long task list.
- Energy Matters More Than Time. Notice how you feel to decide what you’ll do—and when.
- Aim for Manageable, Not Perfect. Don’t plan for an ideal day, because we live in an unideal world.
- Embrace the Unideal. Even the best plans can derail when unexpected challenges arise—and that’s okay.
Resources
Watch on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/q4Frx6Xa3YU
This episode was produced by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound
Creators & Guests
Host
Ken Freire
From the Big Apple to Middle Tennessee, Ken Freire is the Director of Memberships at Full Focus and the co-host of the Focus on This podcast. Ken has been in ministry for 15 years. He has always been passionate about leading and developing individuals to see their God-given potential and purpose in life. He loves speaking, coaching, and scaling companies. He’s been married for 12 years and is the father of four energetic little kids. In his spare time, he loves to read books on theology, leadership, and spiritual development. He also loves Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Host
Marissa Hyatt
Born and raised south of Nashville, Marissa is the Chief Marketing Officer at Full Focus. She is super passionate about helping people get outside their comfort zones, find their own power, and achieve their dreams. In her free time, she enjoys cooking for friends, baking sourdough bread, and hiking. She geeks out on natural wellness, skincare, personal growth, gardening, and traveling.
What is Focus on This?
Start loving Mondays! Marissa & Ken give you practical tips and proven strategies for increasing your focus so you can be more productive than ever before. Based on the proven Full Focus method used in the Full Focus Planner™, they'll help you banish distractions and get the right stuff done so you can start loving Mondays again. They also speak with guests and listeners who share their own productivity tips to help you make the most of every day. It's the most productive podcast on the internet!
[00:00:00] Ken: Hey, the boys are back in town. Wait, no, the team is back in town. Happy New Year, Marissa. Happy
[00:00:06] Marissa: New Year. And the boys, uh, are not back. It is us, and we are fully back in action.
[00:00:13] Ken: Together, partners in crime.
[00:00:15] Marissa: I want to say a full month, Ken, since we've both been here at the same time. Obviously, everybody knows.
[00:00:22] You know, the holiday season is crazy, we think it would be easy for us to actually get together in the same space and record episodes. And it's honestly been pretty challenging.
[00:00:31] Ken: It was probably one of the most challenging seasons to try to coordinate our schedules to make this happen. Because just both of our paths were just going all over the place with holidays and work schedule and we're like, we have to make it possible in January.
[00:00:44] So here we are. We're finally here.
[00:00:46] Marissa: And it's been a stressful season and a crazy season and I'm excited that we're both back today and we're actually talking about a strategy to help you guys live less stressed, which I feel like after the holidays, after the new [00:01:00] year, we all need less stress in our lives.
[00:01:03] And so I'm excited to share that strategy today.
[00:01:06] Ken: 100%. And especially when it comes to you trying to achieve all your goals, do your normal activities and do it in such a way that you're like, how do I not feel overwhelmed?
[00:01:15] Yes.
[00:01:15] Ken: Let's jump into it.
[00:01:21] Welcome to another episode of Focus on This, the most productive podcast on the internet, so you can banish distractions, get the right stuff done, and finally start loving Mondays. I'm Ken Freire, and I'm here with Marissa Hayek. Things
[00:01:37] Marissa: back together. Yes.
[00:01:39] Ken: It's been way too long. And you know, it's funny is that during our pre interview or pre recordings, um, Marissa and I typically catch up for like a few minutes, but because we haven't been together for such a long time, it was like, Hey, here's what happened in the last month in our lives.
[00:01:52] So it's been fun hearing the updates.
[00:01:54] Marissa: A lot has happened. And I'm sure that all of you listening feel that too, that. You know, over the last month, [00:02:00] it has been wild with holidays and wrapping up work and getting back into work and setting your goals and getting, you know, acclimated to 2025. I cannot believe it is a new year.
[00:02:12] We're already a couple of weeks in, which is so exciting. And what's exciting is that we all have these goals. What's kind of like not exciting is that a lot of people by this point have already bailed because Of one reason, they're already feeling overwhelmed. And so maybe if you're listening today, that's you, that you feel overwhelmed already, you set these beautiful goals at the beginning of the year, and you're just like, Oh my gosh, how do I even do this?
[00:02:40] Life started happening again. The urgent came up, there's a lot of distractions. And when we have way too much going on, we just don't do our best work.
[00:02:50] Ken: And there's a simple process. to change this. We don't have to make it more complex. And I think that's what happens is that we think let's find the most complicated, [00:03:00] sophisticated system, and it actually ends up hurting us in the long run.
[00:03:03] So Marissa, let's talk about the steps that we use to help people the best strategy for living a less stressed life. What's step number one?
[00:03:14] Marissa: Well, our strategy is something that a lot of you listening are going to be familiar with. And before I jump in and share what it is, you may think, gosh, this is basic.
[00:03:23] Like we don't need to review this. We already know this. And I want to encourage you if you do know what I end up talking about and you're like, oh yeah, I've been around the block for, you know, several years. I know what's going on with this. Just trust me that you need to hear this today, even with me, you know, and Ken, I know this is true for you too.
[00:03:43] Sometimes we have to go back to the basics and we have to refresh our memory on these really fundamental simple steps Because those are the things that actually move us forward towards achieving our goals And so the strategy that is really gonna help you guys live [00:04:00] less stress and help you actually achieve your goals this year It's not to be overlooked.
[00:04:04] So don't just tune out as soon as we start talking about it So without further ado the strategy that we're talking about is the daily big Three, and this is something that if you are a full focus planner user, you know this very well. And even if you aren't or you use a different system or something like that, you know, the daily big three, all this is are the three most important tasks.
[00:04:29] That you set out to accomplish on any given day. I like to think of this as like if I got nothing else done today What are the three things that I have to get done in order for it to be a successful day? So these are the things that move the needle They should include both your personal and professional, you know Ken, we have our very vibrant full focus planner community and we get tons of great questions within that community You And one of the questions I see [00:05:00] over and over and over again is people trying to cheat the system and say, okay, can we have a daily big three for our personal life and our work life?
[00:05:09] And the answer is no, you need to have just one daily big three. This is not a daily big six. This is a daily big three. And ultimately what you want is to define what success looks like to you at the end of the day. So when you get done with today, what are three things that when you look back that you know, hey, it was successful because I got those three things done today.
[00:05:33] Ken: You know, what's fascinating is something you mentioned that I don't want people to miss is that you said, what are the three things that you need to feel successful? For today, when it comes to your goals, I think what ends up happening is most people just use the planner as a task list. So they take the daily big three and they're like, Oh, this is just my task list.
[00:05:51] What's the most important thing? It's like, no, no, to accomplish your goals, like how you move forward. I literally was just on a call right before this with a guy interested in our double one [00:06:00] coaching program. And he's like, Oh, I'm good at planning. I'm good at goal setting. And he's giving me the spiel.
[00:06:05] And I said, okay, cool. How well did you accomplish your goals last year? He said, ah, I didn't hit all of them. I'm like, did you hit your most important ones? No, I'm like, why not? He's like, well, I tried using the planner, but I don't really use it because it's simple. I know what my tasks are for the day. And I said, that's your problem.
[00:06:21] You said it's a task. It's not a task. It's the goals that you need to accomplish that day to get closer to your goals or your accomplishments.
[00:06:29] Marissa: It really is true. And I think this is where a lot of people go wrong is they just think of these as like any other task that they need to accomplish in the day.
[00:06:38] And my encouragement is to ask yourself the question, Not only what are the three most important things that I must get done for today to be a success, but also making sure that at least one of your daily big three ties back to your goals. And, you know, here at full focus, we have our three by three system, which is essentially you have [00:07:00] three goals for the quarter.
[00:07:01] Then you chunk that down into three goals. three objectives each week that tie back to those goals and then three daily priorities that tie back to those weekly objectives. So as you're thinking about your daily big three, ideally, you've already set your weekly big three where you know, okay, these are the objectives that I need to accomplish this week.
[00:07:22] And you're tying your daily big three back to those. So it's not just about what do I need to get done today? You know, that's kind of run of the mill, normal stuff that I have to get done. But what are the things that are going to make progress on my goals today? And so for instance, today, two of the things on my daily big three, one of them is to run our sales report and share that with our team because that's directly related to our goal and my job as chief marketing officer.
[00:07:50] Um, And the other thing is that I have a workout on there because one of my goals this quarter is to get back into my routine of working out. I kind of fell off in Q4 of [00:08:00] last year with the craziness and busyness and I'm ready to get back into that. And so my goal is a habit goal related to working out.
[00:08:07] And so you will see working out as a daily big three for me for pretty much this entire quarter until I achieved that habit goal.
[00:08:15] Ken: Yeah, I love it. So, so when you think about Marissa, the goals that you have. And we think about the Daily Big Three, why does that matter? You know, we talked about what it is, but for those people who are like, I get it, I get it, but why does focusing on just the Daily Big Three matter so much?
[00:08:31] Marissa: You know, if you're just thinking, okay, I've got this amazing goal, and I'm just gonna go do it. That's not a strategy. You know, we need a strategy. And so, first of all, this is a strategy to help you make incremental progress on those big items on those goals. So consistency in those small things over time adds up to big results.
[00:08:53] So, like I said, you're going to see working out as one of my daily big three, pretty much for the entire [00:09:00] quarter, because I know if I can do that every single day, that's going to lead to not only accomplishing my goal, but that's Major results, right? If I achieve that which my goal is five times a week then boom, you know in three months time I'm gonna be Far ahead i'm gonna have pretty major results like right now frankly I mean, I haven't worked out in a few months and so i'm getting back in the routine I can't even do a pushup right now without being on my knees.
[00:09:27] And previously, I mean, I was doing 15 plus, you know, with no problem. And now I'm like having to start over. But I know by the end of this quarter, I'll be back up to that because consistency over time leads to big results. The other thing is that if you think about it, if you complete three daily priorities, this is really, really amazing.
[00:09:48] So listen up to this. If you just focused on three tasks every single day. Ideally that, you know, one or two of those are tied back to your goals every single day. By the end of the year, that [00:10:00] is well over a thousand high value activities.
[00:10:04] Ken: That's a lot.
[00:10:06] Marissa: Like think about that. If you just focus on three things.
[00:10:09] Like nothing else, you don't try to accomplish 10, 15, 20 things on your to do list every, every single day. You just did three things. That's a thousand, over a thousand high value actions throughout the year. I mean, that is really exciting to think about the progress that you're going to make on each of these goals that you've just set.
[00:10:30] Where are you going to be by the end of this day if you just do three things?
[00:10:34] Ken: Yeah. I find it so fascinating because. Sometimes we can feel like, Oh, we didn't get enough done. But for those of you who have used the planner, you know this, that if you just start looking at your, your planner from the last quarter and start seeing all the daily actions that you've completed, and then you look at your daily wins, you're like, I've done so much this quarter and that's huge.
[00:10:56] And that's why it matters because then now you can celebrate that. And you can [00:11:00] actually be like, I've done what I've said I was going to do. And you feel like an integrative person at that point.
[00:11:06] Marissa: It's really true.
[00:11:08] Ken: But the other, the other thing that I would say is that why it matters is that it forces you to focus.
[00:11:13] I think what ends up happening with all of us is that we have too many options on the table and too many goals that we want. So instead of trying to do everything, you focus on the right things. And that's what is really important on the daily big three. You're not saying, Hey, I'm going to do six, right?
[00:11:31] The three personal and three professional. No, no, you are narrowing it down to here's the three. And what that actually does is that it helps eliminate stress and we know what it, when looks like. And you've set a manageable goal, right? When you've done that, how much it eliminates all the other stressors and overwhelm that you have, because quite frankly, Marissa, you know, that's like when we have too many things on our plate, that's when we feel like we got to go on overdrive.
[00:11:58] And when we go on [00:12:00] overdrive, that's when the stress comes. And if we keep doing that for a long term, that's where the burnout happens. But the way to guard against that. Overwork is just saying no to a lot of things and focusing on the daily victory.
[00:12:12] Marissa: You know This is one of the things that I see with a lot of our community inside of the full focus planner community on facebook I see a lot of people struggling to manage their task list And we this last fall came out with our wellness version of our full focus planner full focus wellness planner Which I am loving and using It is so, so helpful to me, especially in light of wellness goals.
[00:12:37] But one of the things that I've seen a few people kind of critique as they're, people are loving it and they're thrilled, but one of the things I've seen a couple of times is it's great, except they've shortened the task list. Because we made room for some other items on the page and it's not enough space for me with all the tasks that I have on my list.
[00:12:58] And my response to that every [00:13:00] single time is your task list is too long. If you are not, and I'm going to hold this up. So if you're watching the video, you can see this, but if you're listening, you're I'm just holding up my, my planner and right here I have the other task list. And there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 spaces for you to add in other tasks beyond your daily big three each day.
[00:13:24] Frankly, if you have more than 13 major tasks that you're trying to accomplish a day, you are setting yourself up for failure. That's going to lead to, like you said, burnout, stress, exhaustion, discouragement. You know, those days when I have that just so filled out and I feel like I need more space. When I go back and look at those pages in my planner, the truth is.
[00:13:50] I didn't get to about half of those. We're overly ambitious. There's not enough time. There's not enough energy. There's not enough focus in the day for [00:14:00] us to accomplish all those things. That's why the daily big three is so incredibly important because it makes you channel your focus and ask that question.
[00:14:08] What are the three things that I must get done today? If nothing else happened, what are the three things? And ultimately, if you can accomplish those and go after those, you're going to be way more successful. Then you can go tackle the rest of your list. You're hopefully going to have some good momentum under you.
[00:14:25] You know, Hey, I've got the three most important things done for the day. Now I can move on to whatever else I want. Anything else is gravy.
[00:14:34] Ken: And that, and that's where that other task list is great, right? Because it's gravy things, but you don't feel the pressure of having to do all those things.
[00:14:40] Uh,
[00:14:40] Ken: cause I've used it sometimes as just a placeholder.
[00:14:42] You know, we're in a meeting and you're like, Hey, do this. I'm like, Oh yeah, cool. You know, I put that in, but I know I'm like at the end of the day, these daily big three are more important than that task. Right.
[00:14:51] Marissa: And how good do you feel when you accomplish those daily big three? You know, you're like, yes.
[00:14:56] Okay. I've already won the day. You know, this happened to me yesterday. I [00:15:00] accomplished my daily big three. It's probably about 1 p. m. that I had finally accomplished all three. And gosh, that felt so good to like get that little dopamine hit. You know, you check it off, you feel it. you feel like you've got momentum and you know, I did what I set out to do today.
[00:15:17] Like you're talking about that kind of internal integrity, you know, with myself, like I, I set out to do this, I committed to do this and I did it. And that feels so good. It feels like a win. And I'm able to continue to move forward.
[00:15:43] Let's go into kind of the last section here on how to set our, Daily Big Three. So Ken, do you want to walk in? Absolutely. So
[00:15:51] Ken: we talked about what it is, why it matters, and then we're going to talk about how to set it. So the first thing that you want to do is ask yourself What can I do today [00:16:00] that will add the most value?
[00:16:03] It might be personally. So this might be related to your, your personal goal, which usually at least one of the daily big three needs to be goal related and needs to be on there. Okay. So this might be appointments. rejuvenation, household tasks, special projects that you might be doing, right? Like you want to make sure you said it exactly like what Marissa was was saying for hers.
[00:16:23] Working out is going to be there for the quarter, right? And she might even go specifically like today. I'm going to work out on upper body or lower body, right? Like you want to get specific to that or right? That's personal. It might be professional. So like what's an important meeting presentation or tasks that you need to keep moving the ball forward?
[00:16:43] So
[00:16:43] Marissa: Kim, can I ask you what your daily big three is today? My
[00:16:47] Ken: daily big three is that I have about like seven follow up calls for the double one coaching program. So like, if you look at my calendar, I am literally just back to back calls today.
[00:16:57] Marissa: Daily big one. I have
[00:16:58] Ken: a daily big one today. So, [00:17:00] and that happens every once in a while that your, your schedule is so packed because of other priorities that you just have one daily big one.
[00:17:07] But for me, I actually hadn't, you know, Two, the first one was actually working out. So I did that today at six in the morning and that's always. a masterful feat that I got out of bed.
[00:17:17] Marissa: I'm always impressed that you do it. Kudos
[00:17:20] Ken: to my wife because she's always like calling me and she's like, get out of bed, go out, get dressed.
[00:17:25] I'm like, okay, yes. So that was my first one. But then my second one is all the calls. That I have an objective and a goal that I'm trying to hit. There's a little competition we're doing with the team this week, and I'm trying to get ahead. That's my goal today. So, yeah. So making sure that you have a goal, an important meeting or progress.
[00:17:42] The other thing is just keep progress on a project, right? That you want to make sure you're moving forward. Now, when you think about how to manage these, you want to make sure you're setting a manageable finish line. So this should actually happen for a typical day, not an ideal day. [00:18:00] What you want to think about is taking into account constraints.
[00:18:02] Like for example, you might have some meetings, uh, in your calendar or being underslept or interrupted. So if you look at my calendar today, literally booked from 6 a. m. till 9 p. m. today. Okay. Okay. So I don't have like any ancillary fun goals that I'm doing today because I was just like, I don't have time.
[00:18:22] 9pm hits. I'm going to close my laptop and then I'm going to go hang out with my wife for an hour and go to bed. Like that's a win. That's success for me. But many times what ends up happening is most people just think about ideals. Like they're like, Oh, I got seven hours in the day. Like, no, you probably don't.
[00:18:39] You maybe have three or four.
[00:18:41] Marissa: The other thing with that is we may have. but our focus, our energy may change throughout the day. So if you didn't sleep very well last night, you know, that's something to consider too. One of the things that I hear a lot from our coaching clients on our calls that I lead, they'll ask me, cause I, I lead a [00:19:00] call each week with them where we walk through our weekly preview.
[00:19:03] We kind of dive into that and, We're really talking about how to implement whatever they've learned that week into the coming week. And one of the questions that I find that continues to come up is should I set my daily big three? For every day at the beginning of the week. Like when I go through the weekly preview process, I've set my weekly big three.
[00:19:25] Should I go ahead and go set out on my daily pages, all of my weekly or my daily big three for the entire week? And the answer is always absolutely not. First of all, You don't have a crystal ball where you're going to know exactly how every single day is going to play out. Secondly, you don't know how your energy is going to be or what other priorities come up throughout the week.
[00:19:48] So I always like to leave room for that. You may have one day where you were crazy productive and you're able to knock out more than you expected. And you may have the opposite happen where you have a [00:20:00] day where you are struggling and you only hit one of your daily big three. And so those other two, you need to move to the next day.
[00:20:06] So allow yourself some space and some freedom to flex here. And like you're saying, Ken, don't try to just live in the ideal world. We're not going for ideal. We're going for manageable and, you know, something that we can actually make progress on. So I would not recommend setting your daily big three for the entire week.
[00:20:26] Go ahead and do that each day. Personally, I do this in my morning or my, um, workday startup ritual. So every morning when I get ready for work, I'm starting to look at email calendar for the day, all those things. That's when I personally set my daily big three. I know other people who said it at the end of the day prior.
[00:20:46] In their workday shutdown ritual, they may set it for the next day. But like I said, I like to leave a little room for some flex. And so I always set it at the beginning of the day.
[00:20:55] Ken: I typically do it either at the end of the workday or at the end of the evening, because [00:21:00] when I'm looking at personal professional, but I'll give you a great example when we were talking about the typical time and, and, and why this is important yesterday.
[00:21:08] I had a plan of doing one of my personal daily big threes in the evening time because it was a personal project that I was working on. But then, uh, Marissa, I told you a story about my daughter, right? My daughter got sick and that just kind of took my whole evening. I had to clean up a whole mess in the bathroom.
[00:21:25] I'm not going to give you guys the details because it's a Monday morning. But I just lost a whole evening having to clean everything up and I didn't get that daily big three done. But when I look at, like I was doing a review of all of it, I just noticed, I was like, wow, I just put way too much on my plate to try to pull this off.
[00:21:41] So that's how, when I was doing my daily big three for today, you know, and I did, I was doing it last night and I was like, my daily big three is just get through my calendar. I can't fit anything. I know it. I'm already. stack to the rim. So give yourself the breathing space to make sure that like you have time and [00:22:00] energy to be able to execute on your daily victory.
[00:22:04] Marissa: Well, I think that the biggest thing I just want to kind of share with all of you is sometimes the most simple strategies are the most effective. You know, we, we tend to overcomplicate and make things way more complex than they need to be. which ends up biting us in the end. You know, we're not able to make progress on the things that really matter to us.
[00:22:26] So as you're thinking about all these goals that you've just set out for 2025, you're picking two to three of those to focus on in Q1. Then all you're doing is you're looking at your weekly big three, ideally. But if not, even if you're not even doing that part, even if you're, you don't have a full focus on Q1, planner, you're doing this in a notebook or in a notes app or something like that.
[00:22:47] Just pick three things today to move forward, to make progress on your goals. That's all you have to do. What are the three most important things that matter today to make progress on your goals? [00:23:00] It doesn't have to be complicated. It doesn't have to be super time consuming. Um, just something to continue to move the needle.
[00:23:06] And like we said, by the end of the year, if that's all you do, you're going to have over a thousand actions that will be full, that will be massive progress. towards those goals, which is really incredibly exciting. Like just think about the end of 2025, if you have over a thousand actions towards your goals or, or that are meaningful and powerful, how much farther ahead you're going to be at the end of this year, which is so exciting.
[00:23:34] Ken: I mean, I'm even thinking about Marissa for you. If say for the whole year, you decided I'm going to work out every day, or you give yourself some buffer time. Uh, right. But like by the end of the year, you could have over 300. Workouts in you know, that's giving you some time some some days off and stuff.
[00:23:51] That's huge. Imagine 300 workouts That's a big deal.
[00:23:54] Marissa: That is a huge huge deal and very exciting. I think that needs to be my goal Yeah, personal [00:24:00] new record. I'm here for it.
[00:24:01] Ken: Let's go. That's what I'm here for just to inspire you for new goals every single day We're back All right Let's wrap this episode up because we've already given you guys enough content and you need to go start focusing on your daily All
[00:24:21] Marissa: right. Well, thanks for joining us on focus on this.
[00:24:24] Ken: This is the most productive podcast on the internet. So please share it with your friends and be sure to join the full focus planner community on Facebook. So you can benefit from the creativity and encouragement of people chasing big goals, just like you.
[00:24:37] Marissa: We'll be here next week with another great episode.
[00:24:40] Ken: Until then stay focused.