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. 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 how in life there are diminishing returns. This is a valuable thing I learned in my microeconomics class. It made me realize that you can’t keep doing the same thing forever and expect the same results. Eventually, that thing you do will stop working or you can’t handle the thing.
The example I got in school was workers in a pizzeria. One hired worker can make 20 pizzas an hour, and two workers can make 45 pizzas an hour, but three workers can make 50 pizzas an hour. And four workers can make 55 pizzas an hour. The reason why the number gets smaller is because more workers in the same facility can’t move around freely and they might have to wait to make pizzas. So as a business owner, you have to look at your costs and see what your making to identify what is the ideal amount of workers you should hire.
The same thing applies to your life. For me, I know that when I read the tenth book on something, I’m getting less value than the second book I read on a subject because the tenth book is just repeating a lot of the same stuff. So I’m wasting my time reading the same material. It might be a good refresher book but most likely it won’t be. It really depends on what’s going on in your life. You might get one really good insight from that book, but sometimes you can have too much information.
For me at my previous jobs, I had way too many clients than I could handle and I couldn’t give them the amount of service I wanted, so now doing my own thing, I much more aware of the tasks and I clients I’m taking on. I realize that not every task that I do is worth it or valuable for me to do.
I’m in an MBA right now and I feel like I’m just checking a box. It’s not worth the money but I am meeting some cool folks. So I’m not really putting a lot of effort into my MBA and since I’m not paying for it, I’m choosing to spend my valuable time on my Grow With Joe Business and learning Spanish. I feel this is going to have more of an impact on me and my future.
The diminishing returns are a lot more drastic on certain things and you need to know where you should be spending your time. Don’t waste a day or a week on something that is not giving you the value you desire because you’re never going to get that time back. You can think of an apple tree with too many flowers. If there are too many flowers on the tree than not enough energy is going to each apple, and what is going to happen is that you’ll end up with a lot of small mediocre apples. But if you prune the tree, then you’ll get bigger apples that will be sweeter.
That’s what happens when you try to do too much of one thing, you will just end up with mediocre results and that is not enough for this world. You need to be great. And in order to be great, you need to know how to make better decisions for yourself. If you can do this, then you’ll be in good company. Having this wisdom will help you make better decisions which will help you get the life that you desire so you don’t have to go through life being miserable and wondering what your life could have been.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, understand that life is filled with diminishing returns. That tenth meeting on the same subject is going to be less effective than the 1st meeting. That tenth hour of watching television is going to be less beneficial than the first hour. It’s okay to work and to rest, but don’t do too much of both. It’s a balance and you just need to have the wisdom to know how much time you should be spending on both items. I can’t work forever and I can’t play forever either, but realizing that there are diminishing returns helps me understand how I should be spending my time. The better I can spend my time, the more likely I will reach my goals and enjoy my life. And you should strive for this too.
So in your journal, ask yourself, are you doing too much of one thing? This can be at home or work? Are you getting too much information before making a decision on something? Do you need to cut something from your life? Just take a look at your life and see if you’re doing too much of something. Once you remove it from your life, you’ll realize that you were carrying around a heavy stone that really wasn’t helping you out. It’s important to take an audit of your life and you can do this by analyzing all the tasks that you do on a quarterly basis. Then from there you can put them into four categories, do, delegate, delete, or defer. If you need help with this, just e-mail me at [email protected] and we can set-up a discovery call.
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
If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode and hit the subscribe button as well.
The greatest compliment you can give me is to share this episode with someone else.
Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
