- [Amy As Narrator] Good morning, Good Life friends,
you're lookin' a little lost.
- I don't know what to do.
- [Amy As Narrator] Well, that's strange,
because it was only a couple weeks back
that we talked about how to stay focused
and get things done.
In this insanely popular video,
I shared a brainstorm and writing practice
for defining your desires
and mapping out what to do to make them happen.
Within this practice,
I introduced a concept to understand necessary tasks better,
called Proactive versus Reactive Tasks,
and this really gets to the heart of how to figure out
what to do when you don't know what to do.
But now that I think about it,
I think this part of the video was
well, confusing.
- Oops.
- [Amy As Narrator] No problem.
Let's continue the conversation.
- I cannot say this enough times.
Thank you for the amazing positive feedback
on this last video.
It not only fills my heart that it was so adored
for figuring out what the heck you're doing with your life
and how to stay focused
and actually get important things done,
but the follow-up questions
about the proactive and reactive section,
it just is making me so much better about how I teach.
So, that's really why I wanted to make this video today.
I had mentioned it in the comments,
and you guys loved the idea of a follow-up video,
so here we are.
But if you're just encountering this video
and did not see the original,
it might feel a little Part Two-ish.
Everything on this page
we went over in detail in that first video.
If you have not seen it, highly recommend it,
it was a crowd favorite.
We're gonna go into details about
what the difference between proactive and reactive tasks are
because I very poorly explained it,
and it's going to help you get a much better understanding
of where these tasks are going to go
when you start prioritizing them.
And again, much more on prioritizing in that other video,
so I will link to it,
if you wanna start there and come back.
But for those of you,
all of you who watched the first one
and wanna nail this down, we're about to do it right now.
Click the like button
because we have a great follow up idea today.
Okay, so we're starting with a fresh spread here.
We need a new idea, we need a new approach.
We need to start clean.
And I just figured it would be a really good idea,
instead of having three desires, which we talked about,
maybe you come up with three that are your top three.
Let's just nail down one.
And what does it look like
to go through a prioritization process
and task discovery process for just one goal?
For the sake of example, today,
I want the desire to be kind of a big project
because the big projects are the ones
that we tend to have the hardest time
approaching and starting at all,
and we're gonna find a lot more proactive
and reactive stuff because of that.
So let's say that your big project is that
you wanna write a book.
That's a big one.
There's a lotta stuff involved there.
There's no way we're gonna come up with every task,
but if you're just getting started,
all we gotta do is come up with those baby steps.
Let's give ourselves a deadline of one year from today.
Probably gonna take longer than that,
but for the sake of example,
we always gotta give ourselves a deadline.
We know what our desire is, we know what our deadline is,
and so we just need to go through
this brain dump process of the things
that are going to actually help us achieve the goal.
So many great follow up questions about this
in the comments.
Rosemary asked, "I'm trying to do the brain dump part.
"I still don't understand reactive.
"I just wrote a lot of proactive stuff.
"And the reactive,
"does that mean that I can put these things out
"to other people, delegate them,
"and have other people help me do it?
"It's just a little bit confusing."
So, if you remember from prioritizing,
there's a whole delegation section,
but there may be tasks that are both proactive and reactive
that could be delegatable, okay.
And again, go back into that previous video
to go deeper on prioritization,
and I'll give examples here.
Rosemary, no,
something under reactive doesn't necessarily mean
it's going to get delegated.
As a matter of fact,
I think there could be a higher likelihood
that something under reactive is something
that likely you will be the best person to handle.
So, let's get into it.
When you're writing a book,
what's the first thing you think of?
I wanna write a book, so proactive task,
something that directly affects the success of the goal,
would be to write.
We gotta write some words.
We gotta put 'em down.
You can hand write them, you can type them.
You can voice to text them.
You can write however you want, but actually,
writing is a very important part of this process.
That's proactive.
Every time you put a word down, it contributes to the cause.
Whether you have actual aspirations to write a book or not,
'cause I have written three, and it is a lot, it is a lot,
I just want you to sit with the information right now
that you need to write.
How do you envision yourself doing that?
Think about that process.
What is bubbling up in your mind in this moment
that would prevent you from doing that,
from starting it, from staying focused on it,
from completing it,
from continuing to show up
every single time it's time to write?
Let's just call them complaints, okay?
What are your first complaints?
What are your first excuses?
What are your first obstacles that come to mind
when you look at a proactive task?
I'm gonna allow you to think about that
because we can't just be positive Pollys all the time.
I'm gonna let you think about that
because it's a proactive thing for you
to anticipate the tough things
that are going to approach you.
And what is difficult
is when you look at a whole plan
that you have made for yourself
and you see a list of proactive tasks.
"I listened to Amy, I know my desires.
"I have my deadline.
"I know what I have to do,
"and I'm lookin' at this list,
"and it doesn't look like me.
"It doesn't look like my life.
"I can't rectify this in my mind."
If we want to be the person we are becoming,
we need to work on the things
that we feel the most resistance with.
So while we have a lot of things
that will make for great progress,
there are probably some other things
that will make us get closer to making those happen.
That is what reactive is.
So in the case of I just need to sit down and write,
what would prevent me from writing
is that I have my daughter home with me all the time,
and it's very, very hard to write when I am also caretaking.
So caretaking is the first excuse
that's coming into my mind.
Oh, must not be the time for me to write a book
because I'm caretaking.
I believe in seasons,
but is there a solution here?
If it's being presented as a problem and an excuse,
what can we do to potentially solve it?
So a reactive task would be
get help with Bianca.
Okay, that's for me.
What else would prevent me from writing?
Well, I don't have a dedicated office.
I've got people comin' in and outta my house.
I've got a two bedroom apartment.
I might be able to sit at the kitchen and write,
but unless I have significant boundaries in place,
people are gonna keep bugging me.
I'm not gonna be able to focus.
The TV's gonna be on.
Okay, well, it sounds like having a focused environment
isn't automatic for you.
So if that were the case for me,
what would the reactive task be?
Research private office rentals.
If you're the type that needs
to write in a very vibey place,
then you might say research Airbnb rentals
or beach rentals or cabin rentals
or ask someone if you can borrow their vacation home.
That's a reactive task.
You need to accomplish something
that is going to help you combat
the excuse that you may have.
I know a lot of people in the business space
who are not natural writers.
They've got a lot up here, but they're not great at writing.
They're mostly communicators by voice in some way,
and they can share ideas.
Well, maybe their problem with writing
is that they're just not going
to be able to do it effectively,
so a reactive task would be
to hire a writer for those people.
Some of them may feel proactive,
but if it is directly tied to a real problem that you have
with approaching this very aggressive and ambitious list,
it falls under that reactive task.
And then,
you're gonna go through the prioritization process.
I don't know that proactive and reactive
is going to be required for most people,
but when I was thinking about how to stay focused
and get things done,
I wanted to be really honest with you
about why most of us don't start.
And the reason we don't start is
because we have a lot of reasons not to.
And all of these obstacles are stopping me from this,
so why even bother?
Well, maybe your starting point isn't what you think it is.
If you really feel there are ducks you need to get in a row
before you can sit down and type some words on the computer,
then write them down.
If you realize, okay, I could hire a sitter.
I could also use the two minute rule
and write whenever Bianca is sleeping.
I could promise to myself that I will write for two minutes.
Let's write it down.
Write for two minutes during nap
because that would be a reactive task.
That would be me challenging
that I actually need to hire childcare
in order to get words down on paper.
Do I need a writer,
or am I making excuses that I'm not a writer
'cause I don't know that I'm not a writer,
I've never tried?
You need to look these excuses in the face.
Look them in the face by writing what the solutions would be
and figure out if they're a real thing.
And if they end up in the delete compartment,
they're not a real thing.
We get to delete them.
And if you remember, I forgot to write them here,
so it's probably not very helpful, but again,
I said deep dive on prioritization in the previous video.
A delete item is not urgent.
It's also not important
because now you've actually taken the time
to assess whether that's the case.
But if hiring a writer or if finding a place
to borrow, rent, or visit temporarily
is something you need to get your writing done.
And again, this list is much longer than this.
We're just trying to keep it simple so I can clarify this,
then it's going to end up in a different compartment.
But you might find that the I wanna make progress right now
is urgent and important,
write for two minutes every nap time.
And the long-term help is something we can work on
in that frame of thinking,
and you can assess the other ones as you go
because you're actually trying to figure it out.
And when you get to this step,
you see what you can do right now.
Stay focused and just get things done,
and I really think this is all encompassing
for so many things,
and that's why I titled this video what I did.
Usually, we actually do know what to do,
we just have a lot of reasons why we don't.
No one's gonna hold your hand.
Does that need to be a part of this equation?
But at least going through this exercise and saying,
"I know what needs to get done to actually achieve a goal,
"and I will discover more steps in that process
"as I work on them."
Hiring an editor, reaching out to a publisher,
figuring out how to work Amazon
so that you can self-publish,
finding a designer, da, da, da.
It's gonna grow and grow and grow and grow,
and more reasons why it's hard
are gonna grow and grow and grow.
And so the more ambitious you are about making sure you know
what productive reactive tasks
that are solutions to the problem could be,
the more likely you're having
an honest conversation with yourself
that you actually intend to achieve your goal.
Don't look at this list and say, "Who am I to do this?"
Look at this list
and see all of the ways
that you can decide to change your life,
so that you can do anything you possibly can think of
to write down and plan to do.
Thank you so much for being here.
If you enjoyed the video, please click the like button,
let YouTube know.
It also indicates to me that we're still on the right track.
Unbelievably great feedback on that last video,
so thank you for letting me know how we could make it better
by making this one.
And if you know someone who enjoyed that episode as well,
make sure you grab the link below
to text them the link to this video,
so they know that we took a little bit of a deeper dive.
That's all for today.
Thank you so much for tuning in, I appreciate it.
As always, remember, subscribe for good vibes,
kiss the ones you love,
and go after the life you want, cheers.