Honesty Equals Productivity

Hey there, productivity enthusiasts!

Today, I'm thrilled to dive into a topic that's near and dear to my heart: the incredible power of honesty in supercharging your productivity. As a high-performance coach, I've seen firsthand how honesty serves as the secret sauce for unlocking your full potential and achieving your goals with gusto.

Let's kick things off by rewiring our mindset about productivity. Sure, we often associate it with fancy calendars, meticulous planning, and endless to-do lists. While these tools are undoubtedly helpful, there's a game-changer lurking beneath the surface: honesty.

Picture this: honesty isn't just about telling the truth—it's about being real with yourself in every aspect of your life. From your well-being to your relationships and your work, honesty lays the groundwork for meaningful progress and fulfillment.

1. Honesty Starts with Self-Care: 

First up, let's talk about your well-being. Are you giving yourself the love and care you deserve? Whether it's physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, being honest about your self-care routine sets the stage for peak performance. Take a moment to assess: are you nourishing your body, tending to your emotions, and nurturing your spirit? Honesty here means acknowledging areas for improvement and taking proactive steps to prioritize your well-being.

2. Authentic Connections Fuel Productivity:

Next on the agenda: relationships. These precious bonds can make or break your productivity journey. Honesty in relationships means having those tough conversations, setting healthy boundaries, and fostering genuine connections. Whether it's with your spouse, your family, or your colleagues, being real about your needs and expectations cultivates a supportive environment where everyone can thrive.

3. Aligning Work with Purpose:

Last but not least, let's talk about your work or business endeavors. Are you truly passionate about what you're doing? Honesty in your professional life means evaluating whether your efforts align with your values and aspirations. If your work doesn't light a fire in your soul, it's time to reassess and realign. Remember, life's too short to spend time on pursuits that don't bring you joy and fulfillment.

In a nutshell, embracing honesty as your productivity ally empowers you to live your best life. It's about being authentic, intentional, and unapologetically you in everything you do. So, let's raise a toast to honesty—the unsung hero of productivity—and embark on a journey of growth, success, and fulfillment together!

[00:00:00] Today's topic is around and the way I've put it is honesty equals productivity. And, and I want you to make that, this connection, because it's probably one of the most powerful connections you can make to being effective and productive. Usually when we think of productivity, we think of like block times and calendar systems and plans and all that stuff, all that stuff necessary, but one of them, and this is, this is why we've done all these exercises in the past few months is that the most important exercise in being effective.

Productive towards, uh, towards the path that really matters to you is an exercise in honesty. And we'll go through what are some of those areas.

So, um, what do I mean by honesty equals productivity? Well. Um, What this means is that the only way to be effective and productive is to be honest about a few areas in our life. And I'll, I'll just cite three major areas, um, and [00:01:00] I put them in big buckets around that.

So you understand it and I'll go into it a little bit. The first one is your well being. And by well being, I mean your physical, mental, emotional, spiritual well being or your health. However you want to call it. Or physical, mental, emotional, spiritual energy. Whatever you want to call it. Uh, or you can call it growth.

Uh, or your growth in those areas. And these are tied into other things too, but what that means is that what it, when I say honest, how honest are you about how you take care of yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and all these areas. And, and when I also, when I say being honest with yourself, when you're looking at your day to day life, your behavior, do you see yourself actually taking care of yourself in these areas or are they being put off?

And that will give you the data you need to understand how important it is for you and are you [00:02:00] actually growing in these areas. So what would that look like? Physical growth, what that would look like is you're actually taking care of yourself and we can all improve in this area. This doesn't mean that you're perfect or any of that stuff, none of us are.

But what that means is that you're physically taking care of yourself. Emotionally, you're You're, you're not, you're well regulated. You're not all over the place when it comes to your emotions. You know how to deal with other people's emotions, or you have an awareness around that, or you have enough tools to be able to do that.

And your spiritual wellbeing, you're connected to either your sense of purpose or your faith or both, um, and your mental wellbeing is you have the stamina to deal with things and you're actually. Taking care of these areas. So when I say that being honest means is that you're actually surveying your week to week life and you actually look at your behavior and actions.

They feel aligned with what you want, what you see yourself to be. This is why we do a lot of the [00:03:00] vision work and look towards like what would an ideal version of you do that ideal version of you take care of. Themselves. So think of for I know for Greg, you have an ideal version of you where you're healthy, strong and all that stuff.

So this recent scenario might have been a very difficult situation for you to deal with internally. But it also might have brought up a lot of feelings and decisions around how am I actually really being honest? Or was this in my control? Or was this outside my control? And what part of it is In my control and whatever you're honest with, that's the thing you're going to be effective.

And that's the thing that you're going to be taking action in. Um, and the second area would be your relationships. This is an area that's the most, uh, It's connected to our emotions and sometimes our spiritual well being, but our relationships are the thing that, that decide the quality of our relation and our life generally.

So think about your relationships with the closest people around you, [00:04:00] your, your, um, your spouse, your children, your business partners, your family, your friends, uh, extended family, friends. These are the relationships that determine the quality of your life. Now, when I say being honest in those areas, determine productivity or effectiveness and effectiveness and being productive in relationships means that you're actually, um, growing within those relationships.

That doesn't mean you have it perfect or you have everything figured out. That means that you're actually growing and you're, Improving the quality of relationships because you can tell with human beings as soon as the quality of relationship increases, the quality of life increases and your progress also increases to this.

Why, when you look at data around this stuff, people who are in good relationships, they tend to have success and progress long term. People who don't they're effective on the success side on the financial side and other things too So, uh when you're [00:05:00] looking at your relationships think about your relationship with your spouse How honest are you there?

Are there things that you're you need to deal with for you to grow? Are there things that you're avoiding that's stopping you from growing whether that's a difficult conversation to have that's a plan to create That's a vision to create that's things that you want to do But you kind of avoid it or you don't want to share it because you don't yet have the tools to communicate And which means that if you don't have the tools to communicate, you need to learn those tools.

If you don't know how to create that common vision together, you need to understand how to do that or get support to do that. If you don't know how to communicate with your business partners, you need to find a way to do that. There are times where you might need support. You might need to bring an external person forward or you need to learn a better system, whatever that looks like.

So when you're honest with relationships, you deal with difficult situations, which means that difficult conversations that need to be had, difficult situations that need to be faced, boundaries that are needed [00:06:00] to create. For example, when it comes to your extended family and friends, do you have clear boundaries in there?

Which means that are you, Are you consistently communicating that this is what my values are around? These are the things that I'm working around. Or you're getting stuck in everybody else's things that they're doing. That doesn't mean you're disconnected from them or you don't support your family and friends.

But are they clear about what matters to you and do you communicate that consistently? And are they respecting those boundaries? Um, and the only way for you to do that is to be honest. Am I actually doing that? And that requires you to actually look at that area and be honest with yourself. And that's difficult to do for most human beings.

And that's why an exercise in honesty will lead you towards being effective and productive in your life, which means that you're saying no to things that don't matter to you. You're having conversations that's blocking you right now that, that are not helping you move forward. You're building a plan with those that matter around you.

And all those things. [00:07:00] And the last one is honesty when it comes to your work, business, the things that you spend a lot of time on. And that could be your contribution, could be part of that, or it could mean you can put it in a fourth category if you want. But this is an important piece. This is something I realized a few years ago.

About a decade or so ago, when I was doing other things, I asked myself, and this was my exercise in honesty, was, What, what really matters to me in the day to day life, how much of my time, where is my time going? So my time was going to, uh, part of it, if I wanted to take care of myself and have the energy that I wanted and I wanted to be in a better shape, I wanted to dedicate a part of it to myself and to my well being.

The other part of my life was going to my family, uh, uh, my kids, my wife. And then my extended, uh, relationships, my, my extended family, friends, my business partners in those areas. So that's the rest of the time. [00:08:00] The last portion of the time was the work that I did. And when I, when you do the calculation around your work, you'll, you'll find out how much of your life is your work.

And by work, I mean the thing that you're doing either to sustain your family, but also the work that you're doing to grow, uh, whether you're building a business or investment path or whatever, which means that you need to be honest with yourself as to what. Matters to you in the work that you're doing.

But does the work, the every day when you're sitting down for six hours, five hours, eight hours, 10 hours, 12 hours for some people, 16 hours work that you're doing, does that actually matter to you? Does that take you closer to building the life that you want? Does that feel aligned with you internally? Is this what you see yourself doing long term?

If yes, then great. Keep doing that. If no, then there are decisions to be made. Either the decision is to know I can't do this anymore. Okay. Or the decision is to transition out. That [00:09:00] means that you're building a plan to transition out of what doesn't matter to you. And you will find, by the way, these are the conversation you will need to have with your business partners and other people around you too.

What, how are they thinking about their life? What, what do they value the most? Do they value their relationships? And what would that mean? Do they value their wellbeing? What would that mean? How does that affect your relationship with them? Do they value their business? Are they looking at a short term or long term?

And I usually, for example, for me, if I, whether it's a client, a collaborator, a business partner, if I don't see myself working with this person for 10 years, I don't, I don't work with them. It's like a good rule of thumb. And that doesn't mean I will work with them for 10 years, but if I don't feel aligned enough to work with them for the next 10 years, I don't even move that relationship forward.

Because here's the thing, relationships take a lot of energy to build. It takes a lot of energy to build, whether it's work relationship or personal [00:10:00] relationships. If you're not, if you're not dedicated to them long term, it's probably not the right thing for you. If you're not building a network together, it's probably not the right thing.

Now, does that mean that you, every relationship has to be that way? That's a personal choice for me. It is. I rather build longer term relationship than short term, because I know that it takes a lot of energy. So, um, ultimately, you're going to have to ask in your day to day life, wherever your energy is going, whether it's in your well being and your relationships or in your work, is that worth it for you long term?

In your progress, and does that affect your quality of life positively or negatively and not positive or not negative? And the only person who can answer those things about each piece of that is you. Nobody else knows what you feel inside. Nobody else knows when you're going through a long day or a long week.

Nobody else can do your work unless you start [00:11:00] hiring people and doing other things. But in even in that case, you'll have to make the decision to hire these people. Uh, you'll have to make the decision to build these systems. Uh, same thing with your relationships. And this is why one of the areas what, that I don't have a lot of judgment around is when people, um, get separated and, and, and their relationship with their spouse or something.

Because nobody else knows what they're going through in their relationship. Nobody else knows the struggle they might be going through. Nobody else knows what's happening on the outside. Everybody looks great. Great. Because that's, we try to show people that we're doing good, but internally there's a lot of challenge.

Same thing when people are going through depression, same thing when people are going through a lot of other struggles. You, none of us know what they're going through internally. So what I would encourage everybody to do is go through each part of those areas, your growth, wellbeing, your relationships, and your business, and look at how fulfilled are you in each of these [00:12:00] areas?

How much does it matter? Um, what do you need to face? What do you need to be honest about is the honesty around? I need to take care of myself because my health is declining is honestly around. I, I, my physical health is declining. In the last example, I, I I'm emotionally overloaded, but I'm kind of powering through, do I need support here?

Do I need better tools? Do I need some kind of support? I feel spiritually this void. I'm doing all this stuff I should be grateful for, but I don't feel a sense of purpose. I don't feel my faith. I don't feel a connection to anything that requires you to take action there. That's an exercise in honesty.

Same thing with your relationship. If you're struggling with your spouse, if you're struggling with your kids, if you're struggling with your business partners, and you've spent a number of time trying it on your own, and you're not having [00:13:00] success, then there's a question of, do I need support there? Or if you haven't taken action to address it, do I need to address it when it comes to your work?

You've been at your W two or and you're running business or multiple businesses. You're looking at all of them. None of them are moving forward. Maybe the question is, what do you need to focus on? And it's not a matter of how many of these you move forward, which one can you focus on right now? You can build all of them, but you probably can't build all of them together.