In this episode, we discuss the importance of just planning out the next month or 12 months of your life, instead of the next five years.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons on how to grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually so you can have better careers, better relationships, and better personal finances.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how in life, you don’t need to know everything before you get started, you just have to be one chapter ahead in most cases to be successful in your endeavors. I got this lesson from Frank Abagnale, whose story was turned into the movie called “Catch Me If You Can” with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. If you don’t know about Frank Abagnale, he was a con artist that had many different careers that he wasn’t qualified for. He was a pilot, a college professor, a lawyer, and many different careers before he was caught for check fraud.
When he was a college professor, he just knew that he had to be one chapter ahead of the students. If he was able to do this, was able to teach the students what he just learned and the students didn’t know any better. The same lesson can be applied to your life. You can spend all your time just accumulating information but if you do this, then you won’t have any time to implement what you learned in your life, which in my opinion is much more valuable. You need some information to get started, but you don’t need to have all of it. You just need to be one chapter ahead of everyone else or of your old self.
If you’re going into a meeting, you don’t need to have all of the information, you just need to know a little bit more than your counterpart. This will make it seem like you know what you’re talking about but if something comes up that you don’t know, you can always say, I’m not familiar with that and that you will research. Then you actually go to research the topic and give that person the information. Unless it is something super simple that you should of know, then you should be fine. You should know what questions will be asking, so you will need to spend some time thinking about that but there is always going to be a point where you won’t know the question that comes up.
But if live by the motto of just being one chapter ahead, this can take you very far in life. Most people don’t spend the time researching things because they are too busy doing other stuff, so they are seeking an expert who is one chapter ahead. This will require some planning on your part. Plus you don’t want to plan out 20 chapters ahead because when you make a plan, god laughs since things always change in the future. You should have a general idea of where you want to go in how you want your story to end but don’t marry to the idea that things have to fit exactly into how your plan out your 20 chapters. Just take life one chapter at a time.
I had no clue that my life would be where it is right now. I’ve taken a lot of detours but I’m satisfied with my life. I started my adult life in the marines, and now I started my own virtual financial planning business that I will be operating from Latin America next year so I can earn US dollars but spend my money in pesos and learn Spanish at the same time. My life is totally different than how I planned it out but I was never married to the idea that my life should go exactly like I had it planned out initially.
What I do with my overall goals is that I just plan out my next 12 months and I take the general path if I do this thing, will I become a better person six months from now and am I a better person now than I was six months ago? As long as I’m progressing as a person, then that is all I can ask for myself as a person. Right now I’m focused on getting virtual financial planning and development coaching clients, plus I’m starting an online MBA at Syracuse in October, and I’m moving to Latin America. All of those things will help get a better future and I’m just taking my life 12 months at a time. That is the macro stuff that I have to be one chapter ahead in.
In the micro, I have to be one chapter ahead with my current clients, my day to day activities with my business and school, and as I plan out my trip to Latin America. In a relationship, you should be one chapter ahead but saying hey let’s go out on this date, or to have one hour a week to see how everything is going. This will ensure that you’re growing together instead of growing apart.
The same thing with your personal finances. Just plan out what you need to do over the next month and see if you’re on track. This doesn’t require much time, probably any more than an hour a month, but this planning will ensure that you will have what you will need by the time you reach retirement.
If you’re trying to get into a new workout routine, there is no need to plan out the next 20 workouts, just plan out the next workout and see how that goes. If it doesn’t work out, then you didn’t waste all this time. It is better to get started and finish one workout, then plan out the perfect workout that didn’t get done.
I’m not a big fan of five-year plans, because they rarely happen and you can waste a lot of time. Just focus on the things that will make you better as a person in the next month, and let life show you where you need to go. If you read, workout, learn how to do your job better, build up relationships, and become a little bit stronger financially over the next month, and you consistently do this over the next 12 months, you’ll be so much better as a person than if you planned out your 12 months and didn’t do anything on the list. I love the unpredictability of life because it exposes me to new opportunities and life would be too boring if I saw the same thing over and over again. That’s me but it has given me good life so far.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, you just need to be one chapter ahead in life to become successful. You only have 24 hours in a day and only one person. So you don’t have time to plan out your next ten years of your life because most likely your life will change. If you’re in New York and you need to drive to California, you’re not going to get to California in 24 hours, so just take it one day at a time and see where you go. Then the next day, see where you need to go next. You might need to take a detour, but you have a general idea that you need to head west. Do this with your life, and you will live a life with fewer regrets.
To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
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