Tag: Life Hack

  • The Power of Task Stacking

    In this episode, we discuss how to get more done in our day through task stacking.

    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.
    In today’s episode, we are going to talk about how to get more done in our day through task stacking. In this new economy that we have, it’s going to be ideas and executing on those ideas that will help us get the life that we desire. If you don’t know, data is now worth more than oil.
    There is a lot of information out in the world, but it is going to require a different mindset that can put all the pieces together like a puzzle. To help me get these new ideas in my head, I use a technique called task stacking.
    Task stacking works when you pair a shallow thinking task with a deep-thinking task. Pretty much every morning I go for a 45 walk, and while I go for my walk, I’m listening to one of my podcasts. And if I come across an idea that will help me or someone else, what I do is go to my Evernote App and I write down the idea in my blog post notebook where I keep all my future ideas.
    Walking is a shallow thinking task because I can pretty much do it on autopilot. I don’t really require me to think too hard, which allows me to really focus on the podcast. Then I grab a cup of coffee and enjoy my coffee while I listen to my podcast. When I clean or doing laundry, then I listen to a podcast. Both tasks don’t require my full attention and I can pay attention to the podcast.
    When I go to an appointment and need to wait, then I pull up my Kindle app and start reading a book. I’m going to be waiting anyway and might as well take advantage of that time and it’s better than scrolling on social media.
    The way I use task tasking is by leveraging my time where I can get two benefits at once. And since this new economy needs ideas, then I need to consume information that will give me ideas. All my ideas that I’ve come up with have come from consuming new podcast episodes and books.
    If I can figure out a way to do something faster or help me generate more business, I need to have that thing in my life. I also don’t like to do laundry anyways and if I pair it with podcasts, then I’m going to do my laundry. It really just takes one new idea or insight to change your life. When I was at my last financial planning firm, I would listen to podcasts while I drove to my appointments. One of the podcasts that I listen to was the Financial Advisor Success Podcast with Michael Kitces and that podcast gave me insights on how to start a new firm.
    Another task stacking that I enjoy is going on for walks with people. This way I’m exercising and I get to catch-up with that person. So when you’re doing something, ask yourself if you can pair it with something else to make your life better like listening to music while writing.
    One thing you don’t want to do with task tasking is pair a deep thinking task with a shallow thinking task. Listening to a podcast while I do my school work does not work for me because I can’t concentrate properly on both tasks. Do this is like driving a car with a flat tire, you’re still moving but you’re not going as fast as you can while using more energy. So look at your life and see how you can multiply the value through task stacking
    And that’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, task stacking is when you pair a shallow thinking task like walking or doing chores with a deep-thinking task like talking to someone, reading a book, or listening to a podcast. This way you’re getting new insights and ideas on how to improve your life. Data is going to be very valuable in this new economy that we’re in, and we need to make sure we have the creativity to manage it. You have to be able to see connections between two or more variables so that you make things more efficient or developed under-valued assets. Plus it opens up your mind to new possibilities and can make you more empathetic. We don’t learn everything we need to learn by kindergarten, we have to be life learners and hopefully, this is the reason why you listen to this podcast.
    If you would like to get the journal questions for today’s episode, you can sign-up for my monthly journaling subscription newsletter, where you get daily journal questions Monday through Friday, and as a bonus, you will also get my time management course and my personal development cheat sheet. You can get all this for $13/mo, which is less than the cost of an audible subscription and it’s less work to gain more wisdom. You can get this offer at growwithjoe.me/journal
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my Audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
    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 on Instagram, Twitter, 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 way to support this show is to share it with someone else.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.

    Additional Resources

    Get my personal development book for free

    Take my personal development quiz

    Schedule a discover call for one-on-one coaching

  • Find The Bottlenecks In Your Life

    In this episode, we discuss the power of removing inconveniences from our life. 

    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.
    In today’s episode, we are going to talk about the need to find bottlenecks in our lives. Did you know that if you want to double your profits in a business, you don’t need to improve one area by 100%, you just need to improve seven different areas by 10%. And to make something 10% better is a lot easier to do than to make something 100% better. The law of diminishing returns is one of the reasons why going for 100% better is a lot harder to do than to go for 10% better.
    By having a dual monitor, it can increase your productivity by 20 to 30 percent. And this is a lot. If a task takes ten minutes on your computer with one monitor, then let’s say you improve productivity by 30 percent so now that tasks take seven minutes, in one hour you can save 18 minutes, which is enough to do almost two additional tasks in one hour. Then in one workday, you can do 15 more tasks in a day and that is 75 more tasks in five days.
    So as you can see, small changes can make a huge difference in the long run. I’ve been traveling from place to place as a digital nomad and I’m staying put for a while because of covid, and I just bought another monitor on Facebook Marketplace and my productivity has increased tremendously. I have to copy and paste things from different tabs at times or do a search on one application and then put that information in another application.
    I also used to use the trackpad on my laptop and when I got a wireless mouse, my productivity has increased tremendously. Another trick is to increase the mouse pointing speed to the maximum. Everything takes a learning curve but once you get past it, then you can see real gains.
    Say if you only need to do 50 tasks instead of 75 for the week, you can use that time for something else that can make you more valuable as a person. Sometimes the bottlenecks are people that you interact with. So you need to use proper communication and strategy to lead people out of the bottlenecks. A bottleneck can also be a parent and you just have let go of wanting their approval. Once this happens then you can start living your best life.
    If you see a bottleneck, don’t accept it, try to figure out a way to remove it. Sometimes the technology isn’t there, but it’s with people, then raise your skills. Or hire someone who can do that thing for your life. The key thing is that the longer that a bottleneck last in your life, the more dissatisfaction you’re going to deal with.
    And that’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, find the bottlenecks in your life and remove them. And you don’t have to remove them completely, just try to improve them by 10 percent at first. If you can remove a bottleneck completely, then go ahead and do that. And realize that many of the bottlenecks are going to be with yourself. Head trash that tells us negative thoughts can prevent us from being our best lives. It can also be your skills. If you type at 45 words per minute, then you should raise your skills up to 70 words per minute. This will save you a lot of time. The goal of life is not to work 24 hours a day, the goal is to finish our work and then spend our time on things that give us joy. Do this and life will be great.
    If you would like to get the journal questions for today’s episode, you can sign-up for my monthly journaling subscription newsletter, where you get daily journal questions Monday through Friday, and as a bonus, you will also get my time management course and my personal development cheat sheet. You can get all this for $13/mo, which is less than the cost of an audible subscription and it’s less work to gain more wisdom. You can get this offer at growwithjoe.me/journal
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my Audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
    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 on Instagram, Twitter, 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 way to support this show is to share it with someone else.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

    Additional Resources

    Get my personal development book for free

    Take my personal development quiz

    Schedule a discover call for one-on-one coaching

  • Don’t Have too Many People In The Kitchen

    In this episode, we discuss the law of diminishing returns and how it applies to our lives.

    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.
    In today’s episode, we are going to talk about the law of diminishing returns and how it applies to our lives. My first degree was in Public Health and I thought I wanted to get into Health Care Administration. So my advisor in college told me to go take an economics course because it would help me become a better health care administrator. And once I took that class, I fell in love with economics. If you don’t really know what economics is, it’s the study of scarcity and how resources are allocated.
    In my first class, I took microeconomics which is about supply and demand, and how you derive those supply and demand curves. When we were discussing supply, the teacher said that it’s basically a cost curve. The more you produce something, the more costs associated with producing an additional product.
    When I explain this to my financial planning clients, I tell them that producing a million apples is going to be more expensive than producing a thousand apples because with a million apples you have to buy more farmland, hire more workers, buy a bigger processing facility, buy more fertilizer, and other costs associated with making more apples. This is where the law of diminishing returns comes in. On an acre of land, there is an optimal amount of apple trees that need to be planted. If you try to plant too many trees in one acre, then too many trees are competing for a limited amount of resources and each tree is going to produce mediocre apples.
    In college, we applied this concept to making pizzas. One pizza maker can make 25 pizzas in an hour, and two pizza makers can make 60 pizzas in two hours so 30 pizzas apiece, then if you add three pizza makers to the same size kitchen, then only 72 pizzas can be made, or only 24 pizzas per person. This is because the more pizza makers you add to the same size kitchen, then there are waiting times. One pizza maker might be waiting for the topping station or the oven to open up.
    So when this happens, there need to be trade-offs. Do you buy more equipment? If you do this, will the costs be worth it? Do you only three pizza makers and sacrifice efficiency? There needs to be a careful analysis of what’s going on. You just can’t do more of something and continue to receive the same benefit from the beginning, there are going to be diminishing returns.
    So if we look at our lives, we can be doing too much of something. We can do too much work, we can have too much leisure. We can be really good at something at work but the fifth hour of doing that thing is probably not that valuable. Buy more gifts for your family is probably not a good strategy for building strong family bonds, it requires other things like quality time, acts of service, and compliments. It’s the mixture of the four that is going to create the strongest bond.
    Throwing more money at a problem without any thought is usually not a good strategy because there is going to be a lot of waste. This is not the case in every single scenario but it’s a good rule of thumb. So if you’ve been working for 14 hours straight and still not progressing in life, then it probably means that you need to switch something up. May only do four hours of that thing and then do something else. I don’t know what the right combination is, but that’s where experimenting comes in. So experiment with your life and don’t get caught up in the law of diminishing returns.
    And that’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, don’t have too many people in the kitchen. It’s going to make you less effective and it’s going to cost more money for fewer results. This is known as the law of diminishing returns. We can’t just keep adding stuff to something and expect better results. If you had 25 pizza makers in one kitchen and only two ovens, then there is going to be a lot of idle times. 22 of those pizza makers needs to either find a different kitchen or different career, because if not, then the business is going to go bankrupt anyway because its costs are exceeding its revenue. This can apply to other parts of someone’s life. Going to school for 20 years is probably going to teach you a lot of things, but there is going to come to a point where you have to put your knowledge to use or else you’re going to have a lot of student loan debt. Life is about perfect economy, not doing too much, but also not doing too little. Once you find perfect economy for yourself, then life will be good.
    If you would like to get the journal questions for today’s episode, you can sign-up for my monthly journaling subscription newsletter, where you get daily journal questions Monday through Friday, and as a bonus, you will also get my time management course and my personal development cheat sheet. You can get all this for $13/mo, which is less than the cost of an audible subscription and it’s less work to gain more wisdom. You can get this offer at growwithjoe.me/journal
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my Audiobook “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and you can download it right there.
    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 on Instagram, Twitter, 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 way to support this show is to share it with someone else.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

    Additional Resources

    Get my personal development book for free

    Take my personal development quiz

    Schedule a discover call for one-on-one coaching

  • The Amish Hour

    In this episode, we discuss the power of doing the Amish Hour to help you get better sleep.

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    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 trying the Amish Hour. I’m a big believer that we should sleep more. When I was in college, I never spent an all-nighter trying to prepare for another exam. I just made sure I wasn’t waiting until the last minute to do study. I absolutely hate missing out on sleep and I try to make it up or move around my schedule so that I can make sure I’m getting my 8 hours of sleep a night. Sleep is important because it helps your body recover and it clears the brain plaque from your brain so you decrease the chance of getting Alzheimer’s disease.
    I know I feel my best when I’m fully rested and I have my stuff planned out. One thing that can help you get enough sleep is to take advantage of the Amish hour. The Amish hour is when you have no electronics for an hour before you sleep. This is good because it reduces your exposure to blue light. You want to limit your exposure to blue light at night because it disrupts your melatonin production which is a hormone that helps you go to sleep.
    So here are a couple of tips to get rid of the blue light out of your life. One good tip is to buy a router that shuts off the internet to your devices at a certain time. If you have an alarm system that is connected to your wifi, it can still be active while your smartphone and television are not connected. For your television, you can buy a power outlet with a timer on it that shuts off at a certain time. So if you want to sleep at 10 pm, have all the distracting electronics shut off at 9 pm. This way, you can begin your Amish hour. Say there is a show you want to watch after 9 pm. There are plenty of streaming options or watch the clips on Youtube the next day while you’re getting ready.
    Then after while of knowing that your wifi will shut off, it will make you more disciplined with your activities. Instead of messing around on the internet, you can focus more on that important stuff. If the night is a slacking off night, then at least you know you lived within your parameters for slacking off and didn’t go overboard with it.
    Plus if you’re missing those things, are you really missing out on those things? If you have a family, and you’re only time to relax is after 9 pm, then try to find another way to relax. I think most people go to television or their Smartphone because it’s so easy but a book or a crossword puzzle could suffice. You can also draw or color if that helps. Find something where you can take your mind to the business of the world. Or I guess you can wake up an hour before everyone else and get your relaxing time before then. It all depends on your situation but here are some tips to help you move in the right direction.
    Plus when you find your Amish hour routine, it helps your body get into a sleep mode. If you work and sleep in your bedroom, then that can send mix signals to your brain that it’s actually time to stay up. So it’s wise to remove all electronics from your bedroom. If you need your phone in case of an emergency, then I would suggest put it as far as away as you can, so you can’t grab it and put it on do not disturb mode, where people can call with an absolute emergency. I would also recommend that you invest in an alarm clock with a light that gets brighter as it gets closer to your alarm. This will represent the sun and can help you wake up faster.
    As people, we do a lot of things automatically. I think it’s 90% of our day is done out of habit. So if you think you have a lot of free will, you probably don’t. The way you eat and live is based a lot on your habits. So if you get in the habit of having a bed routine, then this can help with your sleep.
    As a business owner, I have a lot of ideas in my head about what I need to do. So I recommend you get a journal where you can write down your ideas. I find that when I write down my ideas then at least it is written down and I won’t forget about them later on.
    Also when you’re doing your Amish hour, you can brush and floss your teeth and do whatever hygiene stuff you need to do before you go to bed.
    To do this requires discipline and to have the right systems in place. If you have trouble turning off the television or turning off your phone, then create a system that removes vices from your environment at a certain time. Sheer discipline is really hard, but leveraged discipline is what successful people do and that comes with having the right systems in place. Plus discipline gives you freedom. If you can have the discipline to get a full 8 hours of sleep, that means your brain the next day will be operating at a 100% versus 86% with someone who got seven hours of sleep. So at work, if you’re operating at 100%, you’ll be more creative and you will have more perseverance at work on tough tasks, so you’ll accomplish more. Operating at 86% is a B and you have to remember that A players are 32 times more effective than B players. So if you want to have a good life, be an A player but to be an A player you need to do things that will make you an A player and following the Amish Hour is just one of many tips that you need to implement to become an A player.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, to get a better night’s sleep, try the Amish hour where you remove electronics from your environment an hour before you go to bed. If you keep up this routine, then you’ll be able to sleep better hopefully and become more productive as a person. People need to sleep more and it should be prioritized at all costs.
    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 friday@growwithjoe.me
    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.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

  • A Missed Mistake, Lowers The Standard

    In this episode, we discuss the importance of not lowing your standards. 

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    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 a missed mistake lowers the standard. This is a quote from General Ann Dunwoody, the first female four-star general. I was in the Marines for seven years, and I think one of the most valuable lessons that I learned that I needed to have higher standards for myself. That’s how you become the best in the world. When you start missing mistakes, that is when you lower the standard.
    In the Marines, it was common for other Marines to call out other Marines for not doing something correctly like having your hands in your pockets or walking while on your cellphone. Those were things that built discipline, which then made you more of a professional.
    I know I wasn’t perfect in calling out other Marines for not following protocol because you don’t want to be seen as jerk or I guess I didn’t care that much, but this is a slippery slope, once you let things go by the first time, it just makes doing the right thing harder the next time around. Then comes a point where things are not at the level they need to be at to work correctly.
    This doesn’t just happen in the Marines, it happens with your relationships, at work, with your workouts, your career, and basically everything. When you start letting things pass by, your just weakening the foundation and you’ll just become miserable because things are not going your way.
    If you’re in a relationship and something is bothering you and you don’t say anything, then you’re just going to cause a bigger problem down the road. It’s like a weed, that has grown too big and now is killing all the other plants surrounding it. If you pull those weeds when they’re small, it’s more manageable because the roots are not that developed. When weeds get too big, it means the roots have gotten bigger and if you just cut off the top of a weed, it will just grow back because the roots are there and it is just a lot more work to remove them.
    So you have to look at the life you want and see what type of standard do you want to have in your life. I would recommend that you have higher standards for yourself and your environment because that is how you’re going to get a good life.
    Your standards are constantly going to be attacked but the only person that is responsible for your standards is yourself. Don’t expect someone else to have the same standards for yourself because most likely they don’t. So you have to ensure you have the discipline to maintain those high standards. It’s hard and uncomfortable for me to tell someone that needs to be changed because I don’t want to be seen as a nag but it is necessary for me to reach the goals that I have in front of me.
    I only have one life to live, so I want to make sure I’m doing things that will help me live my best life and having high standards will do that. If I cheat on my workouts, then I’m not going to get as strong as I need to. If I take it easy on a client, then they won’t be able to become the best version of themselves and society will be a little weaker. If I take it easy on my relationships, then I won’t be able to have a close enough relationship with those around me.
    If all of these things happen, then the world won’t be a great place to live in the future. As I said, it is exhausting at times to keep up these higher standards but it is required. If someone is not keeping up high standards around you, then it might be necessary to remove that thing or person from your life. Some people just won’t change and if you constantly have to remind someone to do something, you can either live with it or remove it from your life. The choice is yours but you probably know which decision you have to make.
    I had to remove some people from my life because it was too exhausting for me to be around them or their behaviors were starting to affect my behaviors and I didn’t like that, so I decided to slowly separate myself from those people. You can’t save the whole, but you can save a slice of it so focus your energy on the slice that you can save. You’re only one person and can’t do everything.
    If you do make a mistake, then don’t beat yourself up, just don’t make the same mistake twice in a row. We all fail, especially me, but I just try to build the self-awareness that I made a mistake and these are the steps that I’m going to do to overcome that mistake in the future. Do this enough and you’ll be on your way to raising your standards and living that good life.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, a missed mistake lowers the standard so make sure you correct mistakes as fast as possible in your life. If you let your environment become a place of low standards, you have to realize that your environment will start to overtake you. So make sure you either change your environment or remove yourself from it but if you can correct mistakes as they happen, that will be better. It will build up your discipline and help others out as well. So make sure you do the right thing today and live up to your high standards.
    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 friday@growwithjoe.me
    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.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

  • The Standard Pace Is For Chumps

    In this episode, we discuss the importance of doing tasks faster than the standard pace so you can have more time to spend on the things that actually matter. 

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    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, the standard pace is for chumps. Life is short, so if you can do something faster than the standard pace and it fits within your goals, then do something faster than the standard pace. You should gulp on life, not sip on it.
    One of my goals was to join the Marines and go to school at the same time so I could finish my bachelor’s degree faster. This meant going to school after work and it was exhausting at times but now in my 30s, I’m so glad that I did it because I’m about to get an MBA from Syracuse University and I don’t have to pay for it because I still have my GI Bill to pay for everything. This is going to save me $50k, plus I get $900 a month for living expenses and $1000 a year for books. While I know a lot other of my Marine friends used up all of their GI Bill on their first bachelor’s, I was able to get two bachelor’s and MBA paid for with minimal student loan debt like $2000 because the GI Bill didn’t pay for all of my study abroad expenses in Mexico one semester.
    I tried to take as many classes as I could while I was in and it set me up for so much success in the future. I also do this with my learning and work now. I try to go faster than most people, so I get more work done. If you can get your bachelor’s done in 2 years versus four years, this can give you an opportunity to get out to the workforce faster, then make more money, and work on things that can help you get you closer to your life goals. College is just a stepping stone for your future goals. I didn’t take the traditional route to college and some people might say that I missed out on the college experience but I don’t think it doesn’t matter to my overall goal of starting my own virtual financial planning experience. I might have missed out on some things but I feel like I made up for it by doing other things with my life. Going into the military gave me a perspective on life that I wouldn’t trade for anything else.
    Overall though, if I can consume information fast, then I will take that path. When it comes to listening to a podcast or watching videos online, I always listening to them at double speed because it saves so much time. You have to realize that people speak between 100 and 150 words per minute but the human mind can comprehend up to 500 words per minute. So if you listen to something on double speed, you can consume the information in half the time. When I listen to a podcast like the Tim Ferriss Show, those episodes can be two hours long. So if I can listen to two episodes at the same time, then I got the information twice as fast. If I get an idea, I can still put it into Evernote and still listen to the podcast at the same time.
    It took a while to build up to this level and I’m a pro at it because I’ve been living my life this way for the past five years. So if you do too much at once you can drown. So build yourself up. I didn’t start listening to podcasts at double speed, I started at 1.25 times faster. Once I was good there, then I moved up to 1.5 times faster, and so on until I got to 2 times faster. The app I use to listen to a podcast can go up to 2.25% faster, but depending on the quality of the podcast, it can be too fast because it just sounds jumbled.
    If you’re trying to study more, and you’re used to taking two classes, don’t jump into the next semester taking five classes. It could be too overwhelming and you might flunk all your classes and then you’re in bigger trouble. But the idea is that you should train yourself to go faster than the standard pace. You’ll get more done in less time so that you can take that extra time to enjoy more of life. If I can drop my study time from ten hours a week to five hours a week, that will give me time to spend on other things in life like exploring the world and spending time with friends and family.
    Time is the most valuable resource that we have on this planet, which is non-renewable and we shouldn’t treat it like it is worthless. One of my goals is to read 36 books a year because that is the average number a CEO reads a year so I also like to speed read so I can finish my books faster. The Amazon Kindle Apps has this great feature called word runner that helps you speed read. Definitely go check out. There is also another app that helps you read pdfs faster by using the same technique as word runner, where you’re shown one word at a time and you can control how fast or slow you see the next word. So you can put down if you want to read at 150 words per minute or up to 1000 words per minute. Use technology to help you get things done faster.
    You can also use technology and others to help you finish your tasks faster. I recently got calendaly which helps me schedule meetings faster. It can be annoying to play phone tag with someone to schedule a meeting. Now I just send a link to someone who can view my calendar and decide what fit’s within their schedule. The standard pace is for chumps.
    I hired someone on Fiverr to work on my website recently. What would have taken me all week to do the work, took him a day? Now I have all this time to work on revenue-producing activities. If you can delegate a low-value task for yourself to someone else, that will help you go faster in life. If you can learn how to delegate and supervise low-value tasks for yourself, then this will save you the most time in life. You can’t do everything, so give up some tasks to others.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, the standard pace is for chumps. Life is too short to take your time on certain tasks. If you’re spending time with family and friends, or enjoy your hobby, just make sure your present for that moment because you’ll never get that time back. So be ruthless in the areas that don’t really matter and indulgent in the areas that matter. Do this and you’ll live a long life.
    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 friday@growwithjoe.me
    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.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

  • How To Recover From Downfalls Faster

    In this episode, we discuss ways to recover from setbacks faster in life by having financial, social, and human capital as your buffer. 

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    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 to recover from downfalls faster. We are all going to have setbacks and downfalls in our life and the best thing we can figure out what to do is how to recover from the setback or downfall as fast a possible.
    I saw the best way to recover from downfalls and setbacks is to have a buffer to absorb some of the shocks and to have a buffer means having human capital, financial capital, and social capital.
    I went through a divorce two years ago and if it wasn’t for me working on myself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, I wouldn’t have bounced back as fast as I did.
    What really helped me was that I was studying the stoic philosophy and in the stoic philosophy they talk about things you can control and things you can’t control and that you have love fate that comes your way because it was supposed to happen.
    When my ex-wife asked for a divorce, I was devastated for about a week but then I started thinking about my future and how I could recover. I just told myself, this is what it is and this what I can do to become a better person in the future. I read some books about relationships and I read the Nelson Mandela biography and that book helped me out because Mandela’s first wife left him because she couldn’t handle him being a lawyer who wanted to end the apartheid in South Africa. What if Mandela listened to his wife and stopped focusing on trying to end the apartheid, where would South Africa be now?
    That book gave me the emotional and mental strength to keep going. This is why I write in a journal what I learned from my reading, I also write what I am grateful for, what is the uncomfortable thing that I’m going to do for the day, and how am I feeling for the day. This helps me have self-awareness and helps me recover from downfalls faster. I’m building up my human capital up that I can use when times get tough.
    You also need to have financial capital. If your car breaks down, then you need to have money to fix it and by having an emergency fund available, you can pay off that expense with ease. If you get into a car accident, then you want to make sure you have insurance to pay for that expense. If you need help getting financial capital, start working on your human capital so you can get a job that pays a meaningful wage.
    You also need to have social capital. When I told my friend that I was getting a divorce, he immediately said that I could move in with him and I appreciate him forever for that. So you want to make sure you have relationships that can help you out when times get tough and you should do the same when your friends need help out as well.
    Like I said in a previous podcast, self-sufficiency is the road to poverty and we need to have people to help us out when times get tough. I’m also super grateful for my parents who have helped me out when times get tough as well.
    I wish I could pay back my parents for what they provided me in life but I’ll do it one day.
    So by having human, social, and financial capital built up, you create a buffer that can absorb the shock of a downfall. You’re going to fall but you’re not going to hit rock bottom. Since you’re not going to hit rock bottom, you can recover faster.
    In investing, a goal is to maximize your downside protection because if you lose 50% of your portfolio, you don’t need a 50% to get back where you started, you need a 100% return to get back where you started. So you have to do more work to get back where you started. So the recovery is always going to take longer than the growth. Since this is the case, we should do things now that are going to minimize our downfalls and that is going to come from working ourselves.
    Another great place to start is to read Amy Morin’s book “13 things mentally strong people don’t do.” This is a great book that describes everything you do when times get tough like don’t waste time feeling sorry for yourself, don’t give away your power, don’t focus on things you can’t control, don’t worry about pleasing everyone, and much more lessons that will help you get through the tough times. Your mind is going to determine what path you take with you receive that setback. Are you going to roll with the punches or are you just going to lie down and take the punches without getting away from the situation?
    Life is going to be tough at times and we just need to work on ourselves and build up our capital to handle those tough times. I know something in the future is going to set me back, and I just need to be prepared for it. I should expect it since on average every 90 days, I’m going to receive some type of setback. I got sick in Aug with tonsillitis and I was down for a week. I even had to go to the emergency room to get pus drained from my neck. I was miserable for two weeks but I’m better now. I’m back on my grind but I made sure to take my rest to make sure that I made a full recovery. Since I work for myself, I was able to take the time off from work so I could really focus on my recovery. I think this is super important because not enough people take the time for a full recovery and it will just harm them down the road. I strive for control over my life because when I want to do something, I want to do something and that will only come from having capital.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, to recover the fastest way possible from a downfall, what you need to do is build up your human, social, and financial capital when you’re in the growth phase in your life because there will come a time where you will have a setback and is that setback going to be for five minutes or is it going to take you a year to recover. Being in the bust cycle is not very fun and if you can minimize those downsides, you will live a good life and one with a lot of growth.
    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 friday@growwithjoe.me
    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.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

  • Treat Life Like A Crossword Puzzle

    In this episode, we discuss how you need to use the clues around you to help become the person you are meant to be.

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    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 we need to treat life like a crossword puzzle. I think crossword puzzles are the perfect metaphor for life. You get a bunch of vague clues and your goal is to solve all of them. In order to solve one clue, you have to solve two to five other clues. If you haven’t done a crossword, the way you should solve it is that you should just focus on one area at a time. Once you exhausted that area, then move on to the next area. Keep doing this until you solve the puzzle.
    When I do crossword puzzles, there are times where I can’t figure out the answer and then I step away from the problem for a while, then when I come back to it, I’m able to solve the problem. If you can’t solve the problem, you take a look at the answer, and then you learn how to do better the next time around.
    Like I said this is the perfect metaphor for life and this is how I treat my life. There are so many things that I need to figure out when I’m running this Grow With Joe Business. I have things I have to do with my website, how to pay taxes, financial planning questions that need to be solved, blog to be written, marketing plans that need to be done, and all this other stuff that I need to work on or delegate to other people.
    A lot of this stuff I didn’t really know how to do but I just start with one thing at a time and go from there. Right now, I’m trying to figure out how to use these different marketing systems to help me with my business. I usually just start with some YouTube Video searches or blog posts, look for an answer and then I try to figure out how to solve my problem.
    A lot of the times when I’m working on something, I have to step away from it, go for a walk, think, and then when I come back to the problem, I’m in a better state of mind and I’m able to solve the problem. I get a lot of joy from this because I feel like I’m getting better and I treat it like a game. Every time I solve a problem, I feel like I’m leveling up as a person and becoming more capable of solving harder problems in the future.
    So whatever you’re trying to accomplish in life, I think it would be wise to treat that goal like a crossword puzzle. Try to find clues to help you reach your goal, and then use those clues to help you solve your problem. If you’re trying to lose weight, it’s much more complex than going to the gym and eating right. You’re going to have to take a look at your habits, your environment, your relationships, your mindset, and other things to help you reach your goal of becoming healthier. This is why I like to read a bunch of different books because they might provide me with a clue that I wasn’t aware of that will help me solve my life’s problem.
    The idea is that you will never solve your life’s crossword puzzle. You will do something you will find out that there are 2-5 other things that need to be solved. Just keep solving the clues and I think you will live a very fulfilling life. I started my life in Oregon, and once I graduated from high school, I went into the Marines, after the Marines, I went to college, after college, I kept learning and trying new experiences. Then I worked at the White House as an intern, worked as a personal trainer, worked at the Pentagon, worked as a financial advisor, wrote my own book. Now I’m running my own financial planning firm and about finish books two and three. I’m just trying to see how much I can challenge myself like a persona and see what I can accomplish.
    I want to enter the grave as close to empty as possible and that is going to require me to go out there and start solving clues. You don’t have to solve the clues, but if you don’t you find out what you’re missing out in the world. I remember moving from Oregon to DC and being blown away in terms of what I thought I could accomplish. This was in 2011 when the economy was still bad and finding a job was hard, so I and my ex-partner moved to DC to get better opportunities but I didn’t realize what was available until I moved to DC. The perceived ceiling for success increased by 100 ft because of the new ideas and people I was surrounded by. I could have stayed in Oregon but I guess I’m an explorer by heart and I’m just trying to see what is out there in the world.
    But when I moved to DC, I just started to take things piece by piece by meeting new people, going to different events, and just learning. I just focused on one thing at a time and I just got a clearer picture of my life’s crossword puzzle. I’m currently working on another piece of my puzzle by building up Grow With Joe, and once I solve this piece, I’ll be able to move to another piece. I’m excited about what the future has to bring but I can’t get frustrated when things don’t work out, I just have to take a break, go learn somethings, or reach out to someone to help me out. I just got to keep doing this day in and day out because what else am I supposed to with my life than to work on my life’s crossword puzzle.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, treat your life like a crossword puzzle. Look for clues and just work on one section at a time. All you can do is all you can do, just make sure you’re doing all that you can do.
    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 friday@growwithjoe.me
    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.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

  • Never And Always Are Meaningless Words

    In this episode, we discuss how the words never and always are meaningless words and how they can harm you as a person when they are used.

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    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 never and always are meaningless words. If you ever her the worlds always or never in a conversation or in writing, your BS detector should go off because always and never are meaningless. They are either used as words to attack you or they are words used by someone who has been defeated.
    Let’s start with the attack version. In conversation, someone might say you always do this or you never do this. This is a cognitive distortion that reinforces negative emotions or thinking to help the person feel better about themselves. If you’re in a relationship and the person says you never take out the trash, it’s really a plead from the other person that says that I’m feeling overwhelmed by the trash and I want you to take it out. Instead of saying it that way, the person said it in a way that attacks the other person. To make them feel like they are not adequate for not taking out the trash. This then can make the other person want to put up a wall for defense and will just shut themselves off.
    I remember being in a relationship with someone who would use always or never statements, which were not true. There would be times that I would do the thing and times I wouldn’t, but it makes the situation seem that I’m always doing the wrong thing or that I’m never doing the right thing which is not the case. It might not be to the preference of the other person but it wasn’t communicated in the right way. So when I hear never or always, I’m always skeptical because I know they are meaningless words.
    If a restaurant says that they always do this one thing with their cooking, I can’t just accept that claim because always means forever and forever isn’t always forever. Same with never. So by realizing that these words can cause damage, I know what to look for in a conversation. You might even say that you will love someone forever but a lot of marriages end up in divorce. Things change and we as people just have to decide what do we want to deal with as people. That old thing might not be needed anymore.
    The other way that never and always is meaningless is when it comes from a place of defeat. In sports, we might say that this team will always beat us until the day comes when that doesn’t happen. Or it can come from internally we say that we could never do something. Just like the Confucius quote, he who says he can, and he who says he can’t, are usually both right. If you say you can’t do something, or something will always be like this, so why try, you already accepted a position of being powerless. When you give up your power, then you already lost.
    I don’t like to use words like never or always in my vocabulary for that exact reason. Instead, I like to ask myself, what if? What if this happened, what would then happen? I thought I could never speak in front of a crowd of people or write a book, but then I started having a growth mindset and started to ask myself, what if. I sucked at the beginning at a lot of different things but I will never get past those things I use never or always statements that will keep me down as a person.
    There have also been countless examples in history where people thought things would never happen or that they would always stay the same, and then something happened and it changed the way we see the world forever. Things might not change overnight but they can change with time and persistence. I know that I can’t accept hearing always or never because they are meaningless. Once you remove these barriers from your life, then that’s when you can start living. I think life is about exploring to see what you can accomplish and you can only do that if you don’t put a barrier on your performance.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, remember that always and never are meaningless words. By knowing this you can take advantage of a situation. If people are coming from a position of defeat, then you can work in the background until you get your breakthrough. If it’s coming from a position someone attacking, you can just remind yourself that the other person is just trying to make themselves comfortable with their negative emotions or thinking by putting the blame on something else than the root cause. Understand this lesson and you will make it far in life.
    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 friday@growwithjoe.me
    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.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

  • If You’re Not Investing, You’re Already Are

    In this episode, we discuss the importance of investing for your future both financially and personally. 

    [podcast src=”https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/11168213/theme/custom/height/90/custom-color/38b6ff/thumbnail/yes/direction/forward/render-playlist/no” width=”100%” height=”90″ scrolling=”no” class=”podcast-class” frameborder=”0″ placement=”top” use_download_link=”” download_link_text=”” primary_content_url=”https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/growwithjoe/Episode_93_-_If_Youre_not_investing_youre_already_are.mp3″ theme=”custom” custom_color=”38b6ff” libsyn_item_id=”11168213″ /]

    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 financial planning with self-development coaching for Latino professionals.
    In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about the need to invest in your future. If you’re not currently investing in your future, I got news for you. You’re already investing, but your outcome is probably one that you don’t want. If you spend all of your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, not putting money away towards your retirement, then the retirement will be one that only has social security and that is not going to fully replenish your salary.
    The same thing could be said with your self-development if you spend all of your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s not investing in your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual self, then you’re also going to have a bleak future. This is something that you won’t see until the future and it will come by so slowly that you won’t notice the danger until it’s right in front of you and then it will be too late.
    All it takes is one heart attack or back injury, where you can’t go back to work, and since you didn’t save up or invest in yourself, you will get whatever you get by the government and other social programs. It might be enough but most likely it won’t be enough. I’m glad there is a safety net for folks but if you want to have more control over your situation then you need to take control over your personal development and your finances.
    In order to get on long term care provided by the government, what needs to happen is that you need to get on Medicaid and to get on Medicaid, you need to exhaust all of your resources. You might even have to sell your home to get care, there are a lot of rules for Medicaid so it is best that you seek a professional like myself to help with these questions and to help you prepare for this type of future.
    If you’re in your 20s, 30s, and 40s, you still have time to prepare for these events. As a financial planner, I hate to see folks in their 50s and 60s worried about retirement because I know the type of stress they are going through. This is a big reason why I started Grow With Joe, to make sure the future generation knows the things that should know about money so they don’t become stuck. It causes a lot of stress. I was in one relationship and her family was not prepared financially for a lot of things and it just caused a lot of stress and family bickering. So I want to tell people it is important to invest in themselves and for their retirement so that they don’t become stuck in life and stressed out.
    So when you don’t invest in yourself and your retirement, you made a choice not to. You might not be aware of your choices, but a choice was still made. I invest in myself by working out, reading books, listening to business podcasts, building up my network of friends, and putting away money for my future. I know the type of future that I want, and I’m going to go out and create it. By not doing all of these things, you’re going to get an outcome that involves not investing.
    That type of outcome is not a very bright one. You might be stressed out, your health might be deteriorating, you might be struggling with money and other stuff that is not very good. I have seen what happens when people don’t invest themselves, and it is not an outcome that I want for myself, and I use it as motivation to work on things that will give me a brighter future. I’m trying to take control of the situation instead of being passive about it and seeing what the world will give me instead of creating the future I want.
    I’m very future-orientated and I like to plan things out. I don’t like to leave things up to chance because I know that the best way to get what I want, is to be intentional about the process and to follow that process. If you want to have a nice house, a great family, and a great career, you have to follow the process. There are a lot of different processes that you can choose from, but you just need to get started. I’m trying to start my own business and it is so difficult and lonely at times but I know I need to make these investments now so that when I’m older and have less energy, I will have the assets to help me live my life.
    When you’re making your choices for what you do for your day, you can do things that will give a low return on your investment or things that will give you a high return on your investment. Spending an hour to clear out your e-mail box, is a low-value activity, checking your stats can be a low-value activity if you don’t use that information to get better. Building a course, writing a blog post, creating a video, reaching out to advocates, and sending thank you notes are activities that have a high return on your investment.
    It is much harder to do those things but they will give you the return on the investment required to give you the life you want. So when you go through your day, ask yourself, by doing this activity, will it give me the future that I want. You should spend 3-4 hours a day on these activities. Then you spend 3-4 hours on administrative and managing stuff, 8 hours sleeping, and 2-3 hours for yourself, and 2-3 hours for friends and family. It doesn’t have to be exactly like this, but it’s a good starting point. You just have to make sure that you have the right balance that will give you the future that you want.
    I know the future I want, and I’m doing activities today at age 33 that will help me get the future that I want. Do you know?
    Thanks for listening to today’s episode, to summarize it, if you’re not investing for your retirement and in yourself, you’re already are, and your return on investment is very low and probably won’t be enough for the future you want. So start taking control of your future by choosing activities that will give you a higher rate of return. Success is guaranteed but it is a much better path than taking a passive approach. If you need help in helping you navigate your future, just go to growwithjoe.me/schedule to set up a meeting with me.
    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 friday@growwithjoe.me
    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.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro