How TOP CEOs handle their schedule. It's not how you think.

TUNE IN TO LEARN: 
Can trading rigidity for flexibility truly lead to personal and businness success?
   
Have we overhyped grittiness over an open mind and the need to quit the right things? 
 
Discover how to remain adaptable, agile, flexible and open to change while maintaining focus on your North Star.
A rare skill one must master.

Should one stick to their schedule? Follow through on each prior commitment? Even when things around you change? 
 
When is it good to quit and when it's time to stick with it?  
 
This episode offers a deep dive into the delicate balance between steadfastness and openness that can drive growth in a rapidly changing world. 
 
Whether you're a business owner or someone striving for personal growth, this episode will equip you with the mindset and strategies to make great decisions, shaping lasting success in the time of change...

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Hi guys, and welcome back to another episode of your Brain's Coach podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your Brain's Coach and it is my job here and my pleasure to bring to share with you. Help you apply all the most effective fun nerdy brain-body tools so you could take better control of your thoughts, of your emotions and, most importantly, actions you take daily, so you could create the life experience that you absolutely love living. You know, folks, there is this saying that your life is going to be what's on your calendar, or your calendar. Show me your calendar, I'm going to show you your future. And there is so much truth to that. How we spend our time is what we create more of in our life, literally, and that's what shapes our future. It's very, very simple. It has nothing to do with some manifestation magic. It's as simple as well. If you work on something, it will improve, it will grow, just like a plant. You have a plant, you put water, you put nutrients, you set up all the conditions. It will grow. You put in more energy, effort, focus attention into something. It will grow and improve and develop. So your schedule it's one of the most important things you need to pay attention to and, what's also really important, to constantly be questioning it, be redesigning it. Be questioning it, be redesigning it. You know New Year resolutions and plans and strategies are amazing. To shape the path to your future, like if you don't know where you're going, you know any path will lead you there. You need to have a North Star Like where is it all going? What am I optimizing for? Where is it all going? What am I optimizing for? But first of all, that North Star can change from time to time. I find it very calming that I have something constant that hasn't really changed for two decades of my life. I know what's the vision of the future that I want to contribute to, of my life. I know what's the vision of the future that I want to contribute to and the rest can be super, super flexible but that one North Star contributing to a version of the world where more people use their full potential that's what my life is all about. How am I going to do that? With services, apps, my coaching so far, for 15 years it's been coaching, but down the road, I don't know, maybe there is a better way for me to serve the same purpose and I'm okay with that Today, folks, it's about flexibility, the other side of success, meaning the first side.

Speaker 1 3:13

You need to be rigid about putting in the work consistently. If you have a vision of being in top health and fitness shape of your life and you're super solid about that you need to be rigid about investing into that vision with your choices, making aligned choices, so you arrive into this destination. And then, hey, maybe that vision will at some point change and you decide that your top shape is now different. But you got to be rigid about making a majority of your choices, investing into your long-term goal, if that goal still makes sense. But then flexibility part comes in, like, what is the best way to get me there? Maybe it's like example, has nothing to do with, like some scientific strategies. Let's say it's running and you decide to put on your schedule a lot of running, but then you learn that long distance running isn't actually the best way to get to your goals, but sprinting is.

Speaker 1 4:18

So now you can change and adapt because of new information and you can reschedule things. Or, for example, you thought that this diet, like keto low-carb diet, is the diet. But then you learned and I actually this is a true story. But then you learn that's actually not what keto is. It's not what made my health work and actually then it made it worse. Actually, what made it work is better quality foods. So now, instead of having this rigidity about not eating a gram more of carb, that is on my plan instead of that I'm like no, actually eating fruit, eating vegetables, eating beans, eating all these amazing whole foods, carbohydrate sources. That actually works even better, I feel better and I get better results. So I adjust what I do, but the goal is still the same, and also what fitness and health also is flexible for me. But let's get back to idea of balance, of rigidity and flexibility, and so the same applies to your schedule.

Speaker 1 5:25

You know what I find was holding me back for so long and what holds a lot of companies back, a lot of leaders back, especially successful leaders. They find a strategy that works for them, that worked for them to get them where they are now, and they just keep doing that. Even though they are stuck on the same level, even though the world has changed and there is a better way to achieve their next level, they still keep doing the same thing. Because, guess what, our brain's tendency is to keep doing what worked. But our brain is a little bit stubborn in that way that it doesn't always take into account right away because change is hard the fact that, well, we've changed, the world changed and the way we get to the next level also probably has to change. And again, it's a new environment. Next level is not the same level. You know, there is book good to great, or also a phrase what got you here won't get you there. We got to be adjust and in our era where everything in changing and at accelerated pace, we need to change our schedule at an accelerated pace. Now again, I'm not talking about here flexibility, about wishy-washy, going with the flow and some emotion, because it's hard and it's challenging and we just want to take it easy even though it doesn't really lead to where we want to go. I'm not talking about that flexibility. I'm talking about flexibility.

Speaker 1 7:12

What happened this week? So I put my plan in my calendar on Sunday, but then on Monday I had a couple of meetings and one of those meetings ended up in a project and I needed to do the work right away. So I'm like, okay, let me look at this other stuff that I planned for Monday and Tuesday. That actually doesn't make sense, because what just happened leads me toward my goal faster and has a much better return on investment of my time. So I readjusted my schedule. Or then, the next day, what happened? I started chatting with a lot of potential customers and I planned a certain lead generation or starting conversation strategy. But then one conversation went really well and it reminded me of a few other conversations that went similarly and I thought to myself huh, that may be a much better strategy of getting new clients and finding people who I can work with, who I can serve with what I have to offer. I'm like huh, let me actually adjust what I wanted to do for the rest of the week and let me try this strategy instead. Let me double down on what I found to be working and I'm doing that right now and I'm getting a lot more replies now that it's becoming hard to even manage them. So I need to again readjust my schedule and figure out a strategy how to manage it better and also re-evaluate my schedule. Well, if this is working, let me try it for another week or so, and if that manifests in decrease in sales that's what I care about in decrease in signed up on customers, then let me redo my scheduling again so I could dedicate more time to this until it makes sense.

Speaker 1 8:53

I was listening to also Leila Hormozy. She is, I think, 30, maybe 32, and she's very young and in the past decade she built herself into an amazing CEO and in the past decade, she built herself into an amazing CEO. She manages a portfolio of companies that have multi-million dollar revenues. She is a great CEO from everything that you can learn about her, and she made a video and she was talking about how she constantly, every single day, sometimes several times per day, re-evaluates what's on her schedule. What she tries doesn't work, doesn't move her towards the ultimate goal or the constraining factor. Like you know, our business is not growing because of X, so let us redistribute resources so we could address that, because if we remove the obstacle, the business will grow and everything else will go easier. So she constantly revalues Okay, this meeting did it go well? Did it not go well? Should I do more of this, less of this? What is it leading towards? And so the same for me.

Speaker 1 10:05

I revaluate my schedule several times per day, basically every meeting, every event I go to, and it's quite a recent occurrence, to be honest. So I used to be a lot more rigid, and the less rigid I am in my idea of how success should come into my life, the better results I'm starting to get in all areas, whether that's health, relationships, fitness or financial and growing my business. So in the next year, I'm 100% sure I'm going to be on a completely different level, speaking with you for more experience. But what I'm noticing and learning from more successful people people more successful in all areas than I am what I'm noticing is they are very flexible and that I should model that and be a lot less rigid and a lot more flexible about again every meeting, every event, every conversation, everything that happens.

Speaker 1 11:03

I now schedule the time, usually like five minutes, but I just jot down on a piece of paper in a note app and I make sure to get back to it and capture the most essential elements. So I jot down okay, based on this information, based on what just happened, how can I readjust what I'm doing so I get my 80-20, the 20% of things that give me 80% of results right? This kind of person should I meet? More of these people, less of those people? Is it the person I need to interact for want to interact, for any specific person. Every time I spend, I schedule in this couple of minutes of reflection time and you wouldn't believe how much difference it started to make.

Speaker 1 11:50

If I know that, okay, this is a great event for startup founders, but none of those startup founders actually are ready to invest themselves into the service that I offer to startups, then why would I go to those events? Like, yeah, it's cool to meet like-minded people, but most of them get into the event, get out, and you don't even get to learn a money or to invest into mindset training, into stress management, training into communication skills, training into failure and setbacks handling and all of this stuff. They actually have the capacity to invest in that and that's where I should be networking, where most of those people are, and that's how I also get to access to more founders much, much easier, because one person can lead you to like 30 or 50 founders and it's going to be an ongoing gig, right. So always re-evaluating what I'm doing and how, and again, it's not even a weekly thing or a monthly or half a year. No, it's a thing that you do every day, several times per day, and again, especially in the age when everything's starting to change so rapidly.

Speaker 1 13:30

That is not a luxury, that is a necessity. That is not a luxury, that is a necessity, and that's why I understand the purpose of strategic planning. But only if that strategic planning in itself has a built-in process for re-evaluation of the tools and steps that we choose to actually get to the most essential outcomes. And then also, obviously, there has to be a time. Well, if COVID hits or something drastic happens, we need to rapidly reevaluate. But obviously the pandemic is one of a kind story, but there are so many other things that can be affecting your business and you need to be readjusting your strategy based on that.

Speaker 1 14:11

And if you're not a business, you're building your career. The same is true here Work with how reality is right now and what life is showing you right now, versus living in the imaginary land of your brain and doing things just because you decided it's a good idea. Well, did you get any confirmation from life? And if you did not, then might not be that great of an idea. If you're interested in making anything in the world happen and hey, you might say, well, you are just one person. If it's a big organization, that doesn't really work that well.

Speaker 1 14:46

Or maybe I have a team of people, et cetera, et cetera. But I, for example, got certified on a goal setting system used till this day, from the very beginning till this day, at Google. And guess what? What I learned, based on their actual playbook, is Google is very flexible. They give a lot of autonomy to the teams locally, what they also do locally, what they also do every week. They re-evaluate what brings results and based on that, they change strategy. Obviously, a more long-term strategy, like we want to be a place that brings to people all the available information in a structured way, and so it's available to everyone. And we are building a world where data information available equally to everyone. So that's like overarching vision. But the rest of the things, how they get there have you seen how many tools Google has? Have you seen? Do you remember how many things they try? There's always something new popping in this, this, and then it goes away because it doesn't really work. They are super flexible and it's one of the biggest, if not the biggest, companies out there Super, super flexible companies out there, super, super flexible. So flexibility is the king of the game to success, especially in the fast-changing world where we all need to adapt as our schedules need to.

Speaker 1 16:29

So what's the takeaway from today's podcast? Well, the takeaway is do more reflection after each meeting, after each milestone of the project, at the end of each day, definitely at the end of which week, like what's working, what's not working, what are you tracking, what are you not tracking? What do you need to start tracking If your things are not moving forward and I'm telling this to myself, it's also a note to myself if the things are not moving where they need to be moving, obviously patience also has to be there. Some things take time. In coaching with my clients, we're like well, we'll give this two weeks of trial, doing it consistently, and if we don't see the result that we want to see, we need to adjust. So the same here.

Speaker 1 17:18

Some period of time is necessary for different things. It's going to be different, but whenever you do something, reevaluate, take a couple of minutes. Did it work? Did it not work? What could have done better? How can I redesign my schedule?

Speaker 1 17:32

Don't be one of the people who's like I've scheduled this meeting all my week and then something or somebody comes into your life and you feel that that might be the opportunity of a lifetime and you tell them let's meet up next month. Are you kidding me? You just missed something that could have transformed your life. Now how do you know if that's the opportunity? That's where you also need to spend time on presence, being mindful, being self-aware, having clarity about where you want to go and why, what kind of people you want to work with, who you want to be friends with, who do you want to be mentors, your mentors, what kind of relationship do you want to have? All of that, when you have clarity about that, when you practice mindfulness tools, when you become deeply self-aware, that's when you feel like this I should prioritize and also create time and space in your calendar.

Speaker 1 18:33

Do not try to make yourself as busy as possible. You cannot pour more in already overflooding cup. You need to create space first before the things that are meant to be in your schedule are going to be there. It's like finding a partner for a lifetime. You kind of got to be single first, creating the space and time for that person to come into your life. And on that note, guys, have an awesome midweek or whenever you happen to be catching this podcast episode.

Speaker 1 19:13

Stay tuned for the recovery episodes, not just sleep. No, we're not talking about sleep here at all. We're talking about thoughts. We're talking about growth mindset. We're talking about nutrition that creates the brain that makes the best decisions, that is creative learning fast. We're talking about all of that and how that is ultimately why so many business owners cannot out-delegate themselves out of business. So stay tuned for that and don't forget to please, guys, share, share, share this podcast with more people, because the more of us know this information and use it, the better world we create faster. So be part of the change. I'm making this podcast, doing my part, so please do share. It will mean a world, not just to me, but the people who will benefit from it as well. So stay tuned, stay awesome, stay flexible.