In today’s episode, we discuss how essential it is to focus your time on the stuff that matters. If you don’t, then you’re just wasting your time.
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 that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
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.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about the importance of knowing what is important and what isn’t important. One of the worst things in the world is to work on something for decades just to find out that it was the wrong thing to work on.
This happens with careers all the time. Someone works in a job because it feels comfortable, and they are not too sure what the next move should be so they just continue doing the same thing. Then comes a day where they realize they hate where they are in life but now they are 50 years old. In terms of finding your new job, it’s going to be way harder. To start a new business is going to be tougher. Everything is going to be harder.
If you know what is important and not important, then you won’t waste valuable time doing things that don’t matter. This is what today’s lesson is all about. Not wasting time on the not important stuff. There are plenty of things that I thought were important that I think are that important anymore.
In your 20s, you will probably spend a lot of time on stuff that wasn’t important, but maybe we just need to get it out of our system so we can move on. I thought it was important that I become a personal trainer and then I found out that it wasn’t important for me. I learned a lot of great lessons that help me with maintaining good physical health now but I know I didn’t want to do it for my entire life. Being a personal trainer is a tough business because the hours are not that good and acquiring clients can be tough.
Knowing who to hang around and who not to hang around is also important since you’re the average of the five people you hang around the most. If your goal is to be more family orientated, then you should hang around family more. If your goal is to become a better person, then hang around people who’ve been in business or want to get into the business.
To know what is important and not important, you have to know yourself first. Know your values, your goals, your principles, likes, dislikes, and what you’re good at doing. Once you have a pretty good concept about these things, then you will know what is important and what isn’t important.
To know these things, you need to learn and have experiences. All the podcasts that I’ve listened to, books I’ve read, and life experiences I’ve had, has shaped me into the person I am today. Once I read a book like the Feeling Good Handbook and learned about the cogitative distortions that people have, it made me more self-conscience about my deficiencies as a person and then I started to work on them.
There are few things that can change your life like a good book or podcast. When I read a book like Random Families, which is a book about a low-income Puerto Rican Family in New York City, that just change the way I looked at family dynamics. Then I read books like Freakonomics which taught me that there can be a hidden side to statistics and the story we tell our self. Then I am able to use this information to update my life so I know what is important.
Right now I’m taking an MBA course and me grateful that I’m not paying the tuition on it because for two 11 week classes, my tuition is $9700. The crazy thing is that I took these classes before in my undergrad and I’m just learning the same material. I’m just going to an MBA for the network and to use up my GI Bill before it expires. Before you buy a $90k graduate degree, just make sure it’s really important to you and it’s worth it. Otherwise, you’re going to have $850/mo student loan payments for the next ten years.
It’s just a mistake to work on stuff that is not important. It uses up valuable resources like time and money. So it’s important to do your research before you make too big of commitments. You can get your feet wet to see if you like something but if you don’t like it, then get out as soon as possible. We re not born with all the answers, so you will make some mistakes on working on things that are not important, but give up your life doing those unimportant things.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, know what is important and not important to work on in your life. Today’s lesson is also kind of similar to the serenity prayer. “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Just focus on what you can do as a person and have the courage to go through that action and ignore the things that don’t matter. And hopefully, you have the wisdom to know the difference between the two. This is really all we can do as people and it should be our goal to work on things that are important to us. Just don’t be fooled into thinking that your important work is actually for someone else and not ourselves. This can happen too and is just as fatal.
So in your journal, ask yourself, what are the important things that you should be working on today and this week. Do you have the courage to work on those important things? I know it’s uncomfortable for me to do these podcasts but I know I need to do them to spread these important messages. So what can do you do to get more courage? Do an improv class? Go see a coach? Go to a therapist? Read a book? Do your research and start living your life.
Thanks for listening today! 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.
I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at [email protected]
I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
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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.
*Music outro
