January 20, 2025 • 25 mins
Unlock the secrets to achieving your goals with clarity and precision as I, Mark Mason, guide you through the common pitfalls of goal-setting and how to rise above them. Ever wondered why your goals feel out of reach? Discover how the Align framework can transform vague ambitions into clear, actionable plans. Broadcasting from a chilly studio in Dallas, I promise you'll learn how to set specific, measurable, and time-bound 90-day goals that keep you focused and driven. Together, we'll explore why understanding the deeper motivations behind your goals, like shedding pounds, is crucial for success and how accountability partners and habits can be your best allies in this journey.
Step into a world where setbacks are not failures but invaluable lessons, with stories of perseverance like that of Thomas Edison to inspire you. Celebrate every small victory as we explore the power of momentum in achieving your dreams. Plus, get excited for the upcoming Align Productivity course, available for free during its launch, designed to help you document and enhance your productivity journey. By sharing my insights and enthusiasm as a solo entrepreneur, I aim to make a lasting impact on your life, turning knowledge and passion into tangible results. Join me, and let's create a positive difference together.
Resolutions off the rails? You’re not alone. But there’s still time to turn things around. The ALIGN Productivity Challenge is a proven system to help you achieve your goals in just 90 days—no fluff, no overwhelm. Head to AlignProductivity.com and start your comeback today.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Episode 271.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Late Night Internet Marketing.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
In this episode of the Late Night Internet
Marketing Podcast, we're goingto talk about the seven reasons
people fail with their goals andhow the Align framework the
very framework we talked aboutin Episode 270, can save you
from certain disaster.
All this and more on the LateNight Internet Marketing Podcast
.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
The Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast and
now broadcasting late at nightfrom a little studio in the big
state of Texas, your host, markMason.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Hey, hey, hey.
How's everyone doing?
I am your host, mark Mason,coming to you from the chilly
little studio in Dallas.
We got into the low 20s lastnight.
The wind chill was even lowerthan that and, as I've mentioned
many times in Texas, that'spretty cold for us.
So I'm hunkered down here in thestudio and we are talking this
(01:09):
week about ways to avoid failingat your 2025 goals, and the
best way to do that is tounderstand the most common
things that cause people to fail.
I've got seven of them for youtoday and, as a bonus, we're
going to talk about how theAlign framework that I presented
(01:33):
last week actually prevents youfrom making these seven deadly
goal mistakes.
And, just as a recap, in caseyou missed episode 270 or you
slept since last week and youdon't remember Align Framework,
it's the letters in a linestanding for assessing your
vision, which really meansreflecting on your aspirations
(01:55):
and understanding your why, andthen listing your steps to
achieve those goals, breakingthem down into 90-day milestones
followed by weekly milestonesso that you get a clear roadmap.
The I is for initiating actions, taking purposeful daily
actions using the 3-2-1 dailycheck system that we talked
(02:18):
about last week, gauging yourprogress, holding yourself
accountable and tracking results, using the powerful technique
of weekly reviews and makingadjustments to your plans as
needed.
Fundamental and sustainable,celebrating wins and building
resilience so that you can makeprogress each and every day,
(02:48):
moving towards those big goalsthat you set when you were
assessing your vision.
So that's what we talked aboutlast week.
Now, this week, what we're goingto be talking about is the
seven things that people, themistakes they make and I see
this year after year that causethem to fail to achieve their
(03:09):
goals.
I've got seven of them for youhere and we'll talk about how
these common mistakes happen andhow the Align framework
prevents them from happening.
So the first mistake and we'vetalked about this many times in
the past is that people setvague, unrealistic or too far in
(03:30):
the distance goals.
Their goals aren't good,they're not well set, and the
most common thing I see is thegoals are just super vague get
fit.
Or I want to make more money,and it doesn't specifically set
exactly what's going to happen,or the expectations aren't
realistic I want to be amillionaire by next year when
(03:53):
I'm starting out with nothing,that sort of thing.
So we solve this in the Alignframework, in the letter A, when
we assess the vision and wetalk about this idea of
visualizing what we want to beable to say in a year and then
chunking that down into specific, measurable, achievable,
(04:15):
relevant and time-bound 90-daygoals.
We talked last week about howit's really important that you
narrow your focus down to what'sgoing to happen in 90 days,
because anytime we're talkingabout something that's a year or
more away, while that's greatfor dreaming, it's not so great
for doing.
So we really want to use theleverage of the ideas that are
(04:40):
presented in the 12-weekyearbook, which is one of my
very favorite books, and we wantto make that a 90-day goal that
we can achieve, and the promiseof that approach is that you
can do in 90 days which isthings that take most people a
year or more to accomplish.
An example would be we have agoal that's like get fit, and
(05:02):
that's not a very good goal.
We can transform that goal intoworkout four times a week for
30 minutes each day each weekfor the next three months so
that I can achieve a goal weightof 212 pounds or whatever,
something like that.
So we want to get very specificso we know exactly what we need
(05:24):
to be doing and we can measureour progress against that goal.
So that's the first failuremode that I see is that the
goals aren't really veryspecific.
And a bonus there is when wehave those specific goals, those
well thought out goals.
Let's write them down and putthem out there where we can see
them, whether it's on ourcomputer or taped to our monitor
(05:46):
or on the bathroom mirror.
So every day we're reinforcingthose ideas.
I think the second step isrelated to this.
We don't break the goals downinto manageable steps.
We have goals like start abusiness and create revenue and
maybe it's very specific start anew business that has $100,000
(06:08):
worth of revenue by the end ofthe year.
We want to break that down intomanageable steps.
What do I need to do thisquarter?
We talked about this in thelast step, but really, what are
the main steps that I want, weekby week, to accomplish?
I mean, maybe the very firstthing I need to do is lay out a
credible plan, and in the firstweek I'm going to have a plan,
(06:32):
and in the second week I'm goingto build my online presence or
I'm going to build the productthat I'm going to be selling.
Whatever, it is the mistakethat I see over and over and
over again is that steps don'tget broken down into manageable
steps.
Now, with the Align framework,the L in Align stands for
(06:54):
listing steps, so we want tocreate that clear roadmap, and
sometimes this is just as simpleas opening up something like
Apple notes and writing down thelogical steps.
And you know, sometimes wedon't know exactly how to do the
steps.
We know we need to put a coursein a course platform, but we've
(07:15):
never done that before and wedon't know how to do it.
That's okay, you'll figurethose things out.
That's the purpose.
When you get to the week whereyou need to be loading your
videos into the course platformfor the very first time ever,
you're going to be able tofigure that out.
You'll get on YouTube andfigure out what you need to do,
so we don't need to worry aboutthe fact that we don't know
(07:36):
exactly how to do something Inthis step.
We want to figure out what thesteps are, what the what is in
this sort of actionable set ofsteps, and so that's really
important, and I see this allthe time, and this is something
that the Align frameworkaddresses directly.
(07:58):
The third thing I'll say is thatwe don't take consistent daily
action, and this is somethingthat the reason that this is
highlighted in the Alignframework is that a lack of
daily structure causesprocrastination and inconsistent
progress, and that has happenedto me.
(08:19):
So this Align framework issomething that over years, I've
developed for myself and workedon with other people that I've
coached.
Because of these things that Isee, and the way that Align
solves this consistent dailyaction is that it asks you the
night before every day to pickthree critical tasks for the
(08:41):
next day that will advance yourweekly goals.
Have two habits that reinforcethis progress.
So maybe that's a nightlyreview, maybe it's the habit of
planning in the morning, maybeit's the habit of doing one deep
work session over lunch.
I don't know what your habitsare going to be, but identify
(09:04):
two of your weekly habits thatyou're going to nail down that
day and make sure get done, andthen schedule one deep work
session for focus effort againstone of those critical tasks
that day.
This means put it on yourcalendar, treat it like a
doctor's appointment or anairplane ticket or something
that you really can't move, andgo ahead and do that during that
(09:26):
time.
Those deep work sessions arecritical.
They allow you to get into flowstate and you might be amazed
at how much work you can getdone if you shut out all other
distractions and work on asingle focused task for an hour.
And the habit that can supportthis is to spend 10 minutes
(09:46):
organizing your workspace eachday prior to the deep work
session, so the clutter is goneand you can get started going.
The fourth thing that I see ispeople don't hold themselves
accountable by tracking theirprogress.
Fourth thing that I see ispeople don't hold themselves
accountable by tracking theirprogress.
You know we do what we measure,what gets measured gets managed
(10:09):
and what gets managed gets done.
And if you don't monitor yourprogress, it's super easy for
you to drift off course or losemotivation.
Align solves this with the G inthe word align.
It allows you to gauge yourprogress by incorporating weekly
reviews to track yourachievements.
You can track them more often,but I find personally that if
(10:29):
you are, if you're looking intothe details of your progress
daily or hourly, like you'rechecking your blog posts
downloads every hour, that'sjust a distraction.
I think the optimum situationis for you to check the things
that you're measuring in yourprogress weekly.
Be honest about it, know thescore and act accordingly.
(10:52):
And if you need to adjust yourplans to add in an extra deep
work session next week to catchup, you do that and that keeps
you on target because you knowthe score, you know where you
are.
This isn't a time when you'regauging your progress to beat
yourself up.
Rather, it's a time to behonest with yourself about
what's really going on in yourlife, because life happens Life
(11:14):
happens to me, it happens to youand taking care of making the
adjustments that you need tomake to get where you want to
get.
I use a Sunday evening reviewprocess to assess my weekly
milestones and then I pivot thenext week and I'll be honest
with you.
Every Sunday it seems likethere's something that I was
hoping to get done that I don'texactly get done this week, and
(11:37):
that's okay.
We'll prioritize it next weekif that's appropriate.
Sometimes on a Sunday eveningI'll say you know what I'm not
satisfied with that.
I'm going to do it right nowand that's just like an extra
bonus.
That happens to me sometimes onSunday nights.
It's super helpful.
So the fifth thing that happensto people is they sort of lose
(11:59):
motivation during this year-longgoal-setting process or even in
the 90 days, and that's almostalways because they never were
really clear on why they weredoing the thing that they were
doing.
And that's why, in the Aportion of a line, when I'm
talking about assessing yourvision, I talk about focusing
(12:22):
and uncovering the compellingwhy behind your goals.
You know, in my engineeringlife I work a lot in the quality
space, and when things fail, wealways want to find out why
they fail, so that we can put inplace an irreversible
corrective action to prevent itfrom ever happening again.
(12:44):
It's one thing if you have somekind of failure.
It's another thing if you havethe same failure over and over
again.
So corrective action is areally important idea in
engineering.
The challenge is whether or notyou're actually correcting the
true root cause of a problem,and one of the ways that we get
at these root causes is what wecall the 5-Y method.
(13:07):
Now, this 5-Y method could be awhole podcast, but applied in
this context, when you'reassessing your vision, you
should ask yourself why you wantto do something more than once,
and the rule of thumb we use inengineering is five times.
I want to lose weight.
Well, why do you want to loseweight.
(13:29):
Well, I want to lose weightbecause I want to look better.
Well, why do you want to lookbetter?
Well, because I don't like theway I feel when people look at
me.
I'm embarrassed when peoplelook at me.
That's why I want to lookbetter because it's embarrassing
the way I look now.
Well, why are you embarrassed?
(13:50):
Well, I'm deeply insecure aboutthe way I look because when I
was a kid, I was picked on.
Well, why didn't you like beingpicked on?
Well, it made me feel reallybad.
And so the real reason that Iwant to lose weight is because
being overweight makes me feelreally bad.
When I get in touch with thattrue root cause, that helps me
(14:14):
remember why I need to go aheadand get up and go to the gym and
I can leverage that true deepfeeling, that true root cause,
against the problem of not beingmotivated to go to the gym.
So make sure you understandyour why and that will help you
keep your motivation.
As a bonus there, you can alsohelp with your motivation by
(14:37):
having some kind ofaccountability partner.
Lately my wife has been helpingme.
We plan our weeks together andwe review the previous week
together and I talk about howshe's doing in her photography
business with her and she talksabout how I'm doing in my online
business with me.
That's very powerful because Idon't want my wife to see me as
(15:01):
a guy who doesn't get his stuffdone, and so that's a little
extra motivation to me because Idon't want to be that guy, so I
want to get my stuff done so Ican claim victory when I meet
with my wife every Sunday.
So the sixth thing here is thatwe ignore the power of habits.
(15:22):
You know, a lot has beenwritten in this space over the
last several years, and habitsare a really powerful tool that
you can leverage to achievegoals.
If you focus just on the goalwithout building supportive
habits, that can lead to burnoutor a lack of motivation or
failure.
A line solves it by adding thatin in there Nurturing habits,
(15:46):
which helps you to sustainroutines, using habit stacking
and triggers and other thingsthat are well covered in the
book Atomic Habits.
For example, you might pairyour morning coffee with 10
minutes of daily planning, and Iactually do that.
I actually go, and I God DaveRamsey would hate me for this I
(16:08):
actually go to Starbucks, get acup of coffee and plan my day
every morning.
I do my time blocking in themorning and so forth, and I just
love that, sitting theretalking, you know, drinking my
normal coffee.
I know the barista.
I'm sitting there doing myplanning.
I do that every day during theweek and, yes, I probably should
(16:30):
be putting that money in a RothIRA or in my 401k or something.
I know this, but I like mycoffee.
Item seven and the last tip fortoday is and I think this is a
big one, it's one that I learnedyears ago as a manager in a
Fortune 500 company A bigfailure that we see is people
(16:53):
don't celebrate their wins andthey don't see setbacks as
learning opportunities.
So you know, if you don'tcelebrate your wins, you're just
missing out on an opportunityto build momentum and confidence
.
Even if it's a small win.
You figured out a small thingin some software or you checked
(17:15):
off all the items on your listyou should celebrate those out
loud or whatever's important toyou, whatever things you can
think of that are fun for you.
You should attach those tosuccesses that you have as a way
to build more momentum,reinforce the right behaviors
and so forth, and you shouldalso have the grace to
(17:38):
understand that when you have asetback, that's actually what we
call learning.
It's not failure.
Failure is what happens.
If you quit and you're done andyou decide not to go on.
That's failure.
But if you make a mistake oryou can't figure something out,
that's actually just youlearning.
That's what learning feels like, and everyone knows the story
(18:00):
of Thomas Edison tries athousand different materials for
a light bulb before he figuresout that tungsten in a vacuum is
the way to go.
And you know, if he had quitI'd really have trouble filming
this podcast because it would bedark, so probably I'd go
outside and use the sunshine.
But you get the idea.
We need to understand that.
(18:21):
We need to celebrate our winsand take it easy on ourselves
when we fail, because thatfailure is really learning.
So celebrate your milestoneswith something that you might
not otherwise do and learn fromyour failures.
For example, if you have amarketing campaign that doesn't
work, now you know what doesn'twork.
Refine your messaging andfigure out what does your
(18:49):
messaging and figure out whatdoes.
So I'd love to hear from youFeedback at
LateNightInternetMarketingcom.
What's a mistake that you'vemade that isn't covered here?
What's the eighth mistake thatyou think I should have covered
that I didn't Tell me.
If this helps you, I'd love tohear from you.
I answer each and every emailmessage and head on over to each
(19:11):
and every email message andhead on over to
alignproductivitycom.
The Align Productivity courseis coming out soon.
It should be out in the monthof January and it will be free,
at least initially, to listenersof this podcast.
So go over there, sign up, geton the waiting list and as soon
as I am finished filming thevideos, you'll be in and you can
enjoy that for free.
(19:31):
That's the only time it'll everbe free here is during this
launch period, and free just forthe listeners of the podcast
and people that are on the latenight internet marketing
newsletter, which, incidentally,is a fantastic thing for you to
do as well.
Just head on over tolatenightimcom forward slash
(19:54):
news to join that newsletter.
So great.
So next week we're going to beback for episode 272.
I have something special foryou in episode 272.
I have something special foryou in episode 272.
I'm going to tell you about allthe life lessons that I've
personally learned from ZigZiglar.
(20:15):
I think you're really going toenjoy that.
I've got a story to tell youabout how I learned about Zig,
and that was 40 years ago that Ilearned about Zig Ziglar, and
I'll tell you how that happenedand all the things that I've
carried with me for 40 yearsthat have influenced the way I
(20:35):
live my life and I get thingsdone in my online business.
Until next time, I hope youhave an amazing week.
I hope you take the time toplan your week and get some
great things done using thisAlign framework that we've
talked about in the last twoepisodes, and until next week, I
wish you all the best and ciao,you've been listening to the
(21:02):
Late Night Internet MarketingPodcast.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Be sure to visit LNIMpodcastcom today to leave
feedback for Mark, downloadspecial bonus content, access
the show notes and more.
See you there.
Until then, go and make somegreat progress on your internet
business one night at a time.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
I have really enjoyed taking the time to really fully
document all of the stuff thatI've worked on over the years to
improve my own personalproductivity.
This is really fun.
This is one of the really greatthings about creating content,
(21:55):
about having a platform with apodcast like this, about having
the ability to create courseslike Align Productivity to help
people.
It's because you can take thethings you've accumulated or
that you're passionate about orthat you care about.
You can bundle them togetherand you can put them out there
in the world and see the impactthat people have or that those
(22:18):
things have on people, and Ithink that's one of the unique
things that you can get frombeing a solo entrepreneur or
from being someone who is outthere running an online business
trying to make the world abetter place.
At least, that's what I'm tryingto do and it's one of my whys.
(22:39):
So when I talk in the Alignframework about knowing your why
, when I go to do things, one ofmy whys is almost always
helping people, and I hope thispodcast helps you, and if it
does help you, that makes mesmile.
So, and if this podcast hashelped you, that makes me really
(23:07):
happy and it really makes mesmile.
So thanks to you for making mesmile.
Have an amazing day, ciao.
Episode 271.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Late Night Internet Marketing.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
In this episode of the Late Night Internet
Marketing Podcast, we're goingto talk about the seven reasons
people fail with their goals andhow the Align framework the
very framework we talked aboutin Episode 270, can save you
from certain disaster.
All this and more on the LateNight Internet Marketing Podcast
.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
The Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast and
now broadcasting late at nightfrom a little studio in the big
state of Texas, your host, markMason.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Hey, hey, hey.
How's everyone doing?
I am your host, mark Mason,coming to you from the chilly
little studio in Dallas.
We got into the low 20s lastnight.
The wind chill was even lowerthan that and, as I've mentioned
many times in Texas, that'spretty cold for us.
So I'm hunkered down here in thestudio and we are talking this
(01:09):
week about ways to avoid failingat your 2025 goals, and the
best way to do that is tounderstand the most common
things that cause people to fail.
I've got seven of them for youtoday and, as a bonus, we're
going to talk about how theAlign framework that I presented
(01:33):
last week actually prevents youfrom making these seven deadly
goal mistakes.
And, just as a recap, in caseyou missed episode 270 or you
slept since last week and youdon't remember Align Framework,
it's the letters in a linestanding for assessing your
vision, which really meansreflecting on your aspirations
(01:55):
and understanding your why, andthen listing your steps to
achieve those goals, breakingthem down into 90-day milestones
followed by weekly milestonesso that you get a clear roadmap.
The I is for initiating actions, taking purposeful daily
actions using the 3-2-1 dailycheck system that we talked
(02:18):
about last week, gauging yourprogress, holding yourself
accountable and tracking results, using the powerful technique
of weekly reviews and makingadjustments to your plans as
needed.
Fundamental and sustainable,celebrating wins and building
resilience so that you can makeprogress each and every day,
(02:48):
moving towards those big goalsthat you set when you were
assessing your vision.
So that's what we talked aboutlast week.
Now, this week, what we're goingto be talking about is the
seven things that people, themistakes they make and I see
this year after year that causethem to fail to achieve their
(03:09):
goals.
I've got seven of them for youhere and we'll talk about how
these common mistakes happen andhow the Align framework
prevents them from happening.
So the first mistake and we'vetalked about this many times in
the past is that people setvague, unrealistic or too far in
(03:30):
the distance goals.
Their goals aren't good,they're not well set, and the
most common thing I see is thegoals are just super vague get
fit.
Or I want to make more money,and it doesn't specifically set
exactly what's going to happen,or the expectations aren't
realistic I want to be amillionaire by next year when
(03:53):
I'm starting out with nothing,that sort of thing.
So we solve this in the Alignframework, in the letter A, when
we assess the vision and wetalk about this idea of
visualizing what we want to beable to say in a year and then
chunking that down into specific, measurable, achievable,
(04:15):
relevant and time-bound 90-daygoals.
We talked last week about howit's really important that you
narrow your focus down to what'sgoing to happen in 90 days,
because anytime we're talkingabout something that's a year or
more away, while that's greatfor dreaming, it's not so great
for doing.
So we really want to use theleverage of the ideas that are
(04:40):
presented in the 12-weekyearbook, which is one of my
very favorite books, and we wantto make that a 90-day goal that
we can achieve, and the promiseof that approach is that you
can do in 90 days which isthings that take most people a
year or more to accomplish.
An example would be we have agoal that's like get fit, and
(05:02):
that's not a very good goal.
We can transform that goal intoworkout four times a week for
30 minutes each day each weekfor the next three months so
that I can achieve a goal weightof 212 pounds or whatever,
something like that.
So we want to get very specificso we know exactly what we need
(05:24):
to be doing and we can measureour progress against that goal.
So that's the first failuremode that I see is that the
goals aren't really veryspecific.
And a bonus there is when wehave those specific goals, those
well thought out goals.
Let's write them down and putthem out there where we can see
them, whether it's on ourcomputer or taped to our monitor
(05:46):
or on the bathroom mirror.
So every day we're reinforcingthose ideas.
I think the second step isrelated to this.
We don't break the goals downinto manageable steps.
We have goals like start abusiness and create revenue and
maybe it's very specific start anew business that has $100,000
(06:08):
worth of revenue by the end ofthe year.
We want to break that down intomanageable steps.
What do I need to do thisquarter?
We talked about this in thelast step, but really, what are
the main steps that I want, weekby week, to accomplish?
I mean, maybe the very firstthing I need to do is lay out a
credible plan, and in the firstweek I'm going to have a plan,
(06:32):
and in the second week I'm goingto build my online presence or
I'm going to build the productthat I'm going to be selling.
Whatever, it is the mistakethat I see over and over and
over again is that steps don'tget broken down into manageable
steps.
Now, with the Align framework,the L in Align stands for
(06:54):
listing steps, so we want tocreate that clear roadmap, and
sometimes this is just as simpleas opening up something like
Apple notes and writing down thelogical steps.
And you know, sometimes wedon't know exactly how to do the
steps.
We know we need to put a coursein a course platform, but we've
(07:15):
never done that before and wedon't know how to do it.
That's okay, you'll figurethose things out.
That's the purpose.
When you get to the week whereyou need to be loading your
videos into the course platformfor the very first time ever,
you're going to be able tofigure that out.
You'll get on YouTube andfigure out what you need to do,
so we don't need to worry aboutthe fact that we don't know
(07:36):
exactly how to do something Inthis step.
We want to figure out what thesteps are, what the what is in
this sort of actionable set ofsteps, and so that's really
important, and I see this allthe time, and this is something
that the Align frameworkaddresses directly.
(07:58):
The third thing I'll say is thatwe don't take consistent daily
action, and this is somethingthat the reason that this is
highlighted in the Alignframework is that a lack of
daily structure causesprocrastination and inconsistent
progress, and that has happenedto me.
(08:19):
So this Align framework issomething that over years, I've
developed for myself and workedon with other people that I've
coached.
Because of these things that Isee, and the way that Align
solves this consistent dailyaction is that it asks you the
night before every day to pickthree critical tasks for the
(08:41):
next day that will advance yourweekly goals.
Have two habits that reinforcethis progress.
So maybe that's a nightlyreview, maybe it's the habit of
planning in the morning, maybeit's the habit of doing one deep
work session over lunch.
I don't know what your habitsare going to be, but identify
(09:04):
two of your weekly habits thatyou're going to nail down that
day and make sure get done, andthen schedule one deep work
session for focus effort againstone of those critical tasks
that day.
This means put it on yourcalendar, treat it like a
doctor's appointment or anairplane ticket or something
that you really can't move, andgo ahead and do that during that
(09:26):
time.
Those deep work sessions arecritical.
They allow you to get into flowstate and you might be amazed
at how much work you can getdone if you shut out all other
distractions and work on asingle focused task for an hour.
And the habit that can supportthis is to spend 10 minutes
(09:46):
organizing your workspace eachday prior to the deep work
session, so the clutter is goneand you can get started going.
The fourth thing that I see ispeople don't hold themselves
accountable by tracking theirprogress.
Fourth thing that I see ispeople don't hold themselves
accountable by tracking theirprogress.
You know we do what we measure,what gets measured gets managed
(10:09):
and what gets managed gets done.
And if you don't monitor yourprogress, it's super easy for
you to drift off course or losemotivation.
Align solves this with the G inthe word align.
It allows you to gauge yourprogress by incorporating weekly
reviews to track yourachievements.
You can track them more often,but I find personally that if
(10:29):
you are, if you're looking intothe details of your progress
daily or hourly, like you'rechecking your blog posts
downloads every hour, that'sjust a distraction.
I think the optimum situationis for you to check the things
that you're measuring in yourprogress weekly.
Be honest about it, know thescore and act accordingly.
(10:52):
And if you need to adjust yourplans to add in an extra deep
work session next week to catchup, you do that and that keeps
you on target because you knowthe score, you know where you
are.
This isn't a time when you'regauging your progress to beat
yourself up.
Rather, it's a time to behonest with yourself about
what's really going on in yourlife, because life happens Life
(11:14):
happens to me, it happens to youand taking care of making the
adjustments that you need tomake to get where you want to
get.
I use a Sunday evening reviewprocess to assess my weekly
milestones and then I pivot thenext week and I'll be honest
with you.
Every Sunday it seems likethere's something that I was
hoping to get done that I don'texactly get done this week, and
(11:37):
that's okay.
We'll prioritize it next weekif that's appropriate.
Sometimes on a Sunday eveningI'll say you know what I'm not
satisfied with that.
I'm going to do it right nowand that's just like an extra
bonus.
That happens to me sometimes onSunday nights.
It's super helpful.
So the fifth thing that happensto people is they sort of lose
(11:59):
motivation during this year-longgoal-setting process or even in
the 90 days, and that's almostalways because they never were
really clear on why they weredoing the thing that they were
doing.
And that's why, in the Aportion of a line, when I'm
talking about assessing yourvision, I talk about focusing
(12:22):
and uncovering the compellingwhy behind your goals.
You know, in my engineeringlife I work a lot in the quality
space, and when things fail, wealways want to find out why
they fail, so that we can put inplace an irreversible
corrective action to prevent itfrom ever happening again.
(12:44):
It's one thing if you have somekind of failure.
It's another thing if you havethe same failure over and over
again.
So corrective action is areally important idea in
engineering.
The challenge is whether or notyou're actually correcting the
true root cause of a problem,and one of the ways that we get
at these root causes is what wecall the 5-Y method.
(13:07):
Now, this 5-Y method could be awhole podcast, but applied in
this context, when you'reassessing your vision, you
should ask yourself why you wantto do something more than once,
and the rule of thumb we use inengineering is five times.
I want to lose weight.
Well, why do you want to loseweight.
(13:29):
Well, I want to lose weightbecause I want to look better.
Well, why do you want to lookbetter?
Well, because I don't like theway I feel when people look at
me.
I'm embarrassed when peoplelook at me.
That's why I want to lookbetter because it's embarrassing
the way I look now.
Well, why are you embarrassed?
(13:50):
Well, I'm deeply insecure aboutthe way I look because when I
was a kid, I was picked on.
Well, why didn't you like beingpicked on?
Well, it made me feel reallybad.
And so the real reason that Iwant to lose weight is because
being overweight makes me feelreally bad.
When I get in touch with thattrue root cause, that helps me
(14:14):
remember why I need to go aheadand get up and go to the gym and
I can leverage that true deepfeeling, that true root cause,
against the problem of not beingmotivated to go to the gym.
So make sure you understandyour why and that will help you
keep your motivation.
As a bonus there, you can alsohelp with your motivation by
(14:37):
having some kind ofaccountability partner.
Lately my wife has been helpingme.
We plan our weeks together andwe review the previous week
together and I talk about howshe's doing in her photography
business with her and she talksabout how I'm doing in my online
business with me.
That's very powerful because Idon't want my wife to see me as
(15:01):
a guy who doesn't get his stuffdone, and so that's a little
extra motivation to me because Idon't want to be that guy, so I
want to get my stuff done so Ican claim victory when I meet
with my wife every Sunday.
So the sixth thing here is thatwe ignore the power of habits.
(15:22):
You know, a lot has beenwritten in this space over the
last several years, and habitsare a really powerful tool that
you can leverage to achievegoals.
If you focus just on the goalwithout building supportive
habits, that can lead to burnoutor a lack of motivation or
failure.
A line solves it by adding thatin in there Nurturing habits,
(15:46):
which helps you to sustainroutines, using habit stacking
and triggers and other thingsthat are well covered in the
book Atomic Habits.
For example, you might pairyour morning coffee with 10
minutes of daily planning, and Iactually do that.
I actually go, and I God DaveRamsey would hate me for this I
(16:08):
actually go to Starbucks, get acup of coffee and plan my day
every morning.
I do my time blocking in themorning and so forth, and I just
love that, sitting theretalking, you know, drinking my
normal coffee.
I know the barista.
I'm sitting there doing myplanning.
I do that every day during theweek and, yes, I probably should
(16:30):
be putting that money in a RothIRA or in my 401k or something.
I know this, but I like mycoffee.
Item seven and the last tip fortoday is and I think this is a
big one, it's one that I learnedyears ago as a manager in a
Fortune 500 company A bigfailure that we see is people
(16:53):
don't celebrate their wins andthey don't see setbacks as
learning opportunities.
So you know, if you don'tcelebrate your wins, you're just
missing out on an opportunityto build momentum and confidence
.
Even if it's a small win.
You figured out a small thingin some software or you checked
(17:15):
off all the items on your listyou should celebrate those out
loud or whatever's important toyou, whatever things you can
think of that are fun for you.
You should attach those tosuccesses that you have as a way
to build more momentum,reinforce the right behaviors
and so forth, and you shouldalso have the grace to
(17:38):
understand that when you have asetback, that's actually what we
call learning.
It's not failure.
Failure is what happens.
If you quit and you're done andyou decide not to go on.
That's failure.
But if you make a mistake oryou can't figure something out,
that's actually just youlearning.
That's what learning feels like, and everyone knows the story
(18:00):
of Thomas Edison tries athousand different materials for
a light bulb before he figuresout that tungsten in a vacuum is
the way to go.
And you know, if he had quitI'd really have trouble filming
this podcast because it would bedark, so probably I'd go
outside and use the sunshine.
But you get the idea.
We need to understand that.
(18:21):
We need to celebrate our winsand take it easy on ourselves
when we fail, because thatfailure is really learning.
So celebrate your milestoneswith something that you might
not otherwise do and learn fromyour failures.
For example, if you have amarketing campaign that doesn't
work, now you know what doesn'twork.
Refine your messaging andfigure out what does your
(18:49):
messaging and figure out whatdoes.
So I'd love to hear from youFeedback at
LateNightInternetMarketingcom.
What's a mistake that you'vemade that isn't covered here?
What's the eighth mistake thatyou think I should have covered
that I didn't Tell me.
If this helps you, I'd love tohear from you.
I answer each and every emailmessage and head on over to each
(19:11):
and every email message andhead on over to
alignproductivitycom.
The Align Productivity courseis coming out soon.
It should be out in the monthof January and it will be free,
at least initially, to listenersof this podcast.
So go over there, sign up, geton the waiting list and as soon
as I am finished filming thevideos, you'll be in and you can
enjoy that for free.
(19:31):
That's the only time it'll everbe free here is during this
launch period, and free just forthe listeners of the podcast
and people that are on the latenight internet marketing
newsletter, which, incidentally,is a fantastic thing for you to
do as well.
Just head on over tolatenightimcom forward slash
(19:54):
news to join that newsletter.
So great.
So next week we're going to beback for episode 272.
I have something special foryou in episode 272.
I have something special foryou in episode 272.
I'm going to tell you about allthe life lessons that I've
personally learned from ZigZiglar.
(20:15):
I think you're really going toenjoy that.
I've got a story to tell youabout how I learned about Zig,
and that was 40 years ago that Ilearned about Zig Ziglar, and
I'll tell you how that happenedand all the things that I've
carried with me for 40 yearsthat have influenced the way I
(20:35):
live my life and I get thingsdone in my online business.
Until next time, I hope youhave an amazing week.
I hope you take the time toplan your week and get some
great things done using thisAlign framework that we've
talked about in the last twoepisodes, and until next week, I
wish you all the best and ciao,you've been listening to the
(21:02):
Late Night Internet MarketingPodcast.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Be sure to visit LNIMpodcastcom today to leave
feedback for Mark, downloadspecial bonus content, access
the show notes and more.
See you there.
Until then, go and make somegreat progress on your internet
business one night at a time.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
I have really enjoyed taking the time to really fully
document all of the stuff thatI've worked on over the years to
improve my own personalproductivity.
This is really fun.
This is one of the really greatthings about creating content,
(21:55):
about having a platform with apodcast like this, about having
the ability to create courseslike Align Productivity to help
people.
It's because you can take thethings you've accumulated or
that you're passionate about orthat you care about.
You can bundle them togetherand you can put them out there
in the world and see the impactthat people have or that those
(22:18):
things have on people, and Ithink that's one of the unique
things that you can get frombeing a solo entrepreneur or
from being someone who is outthere running an online business
trying to make the world abetter place.
At least, that's what I'm tryingto do and it's one of my whys.
(22:39):
So when I talk in the Alignframework about knowing your why
, when I go to do things, one ofmy whys is almost always
helping people, and I hope thispodcast helps you, and if it
does help you, that makes mesmile.
So, and if this podcast hashelped you, that makes me really
(23:07):
happy and it really makes mesmile.
So thanks to you for making mesmile.
Have an amazing day, ciao.
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