Escaping the Drift - The Weekly Drop: The Journey to Sustainable Change - Escaping the Drift with John Gafford

Summary

Escaping the Drift - The Weekly Drop: The Journey to Sustainable Change

Host: John Gafford
Release Date: January 2, 2025

In the inaugural episode of the new year’s edition of "Escaping the Drift," host John Gafford delves into a topic that resonates with many: the elusive nature of New Year’s resolutions. Titled "The Weekly Drop: The Journey to Sustainable Change," this episode dissects the common pitfalls that prevent individuals from achieving their resolutions and offers actionable strategies to foster sustainable success.

1. Understanding Why Resolutions Fail

John begins by addressing a ubiquitous scenario familiar to many: the overcrowded gyms on January 1st that soon empty by mid-February. He questions, “Why does it go so quick from February to nobody being there?” (02:15).

a. Lack of Effective Systems

Drawing inspiration from James Clear’s acclaimed book, Atomic Habits, John emphasizes that "motivation is not enough" (05:30). He likens motivation to a shower—something necessary daily but insufficient for long-term habit formation. Without robust systems to support their goals, individuals are likely to falter when motivation wanes.

b. Poor Goal Setting

John expresses his disdain for the term "goal," advocating for "objectives" instead. He states, “I hate the word goal... I don’t call the things that I want to accomplish 'goals,' I call them 'objectives,' because that's something I'm going to achieve” (12:45). He underscores the importance of SMART objectives—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound—and illustrates this with the example of setting a precise health objective: "I’m going to lose 10 pounds by [specific date]" (16:20).

c. Lack of Perseverance

John highlights that many give up too easily, citing real-life struggles and losses that underscore the necessity of perseverance. He recommends Grit by Angela Duckworth, emphasizing that "perseverance and passion in what you're doing is super important" (23:10).

d. All-or-Nothing Mindset

Referencing Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, John warns against the all-or-nothing approach. He criticizes rigid programs like 75 Hard, arguing that such extremes often lead to failure. Instead, he advocates for incremental improvements and manageable changes, stating, “If you’re like, I’m not going to eat any sugar at all... you’re completely screwed” (31:50).

e. Procrastination and Instant Gratification

In today’s age of instant gratification, John points out that procrastination is a major barrier to achieving long-term goals. He shares a personal anecdote about advising his son to “embrace the suck” and lean into challenging tasks, reinforcing the idea that “nothing is going to be accomplished” without facing and overcoming hardships (39:25).

2. Strategies for Achieving Sustainable Change

Building on the identified reasons for failure, John outlines five strategies to enhance the likelihood of successfully meeting New Year’s resolutions.

a. Build Effective Systems

Instead of relying solely on motivation, John advocates for creating systems that support desired outcomes. He offers a practical tool—a free business planning course available through his website. This one-page system isn’t limited to business planning; it can be adapted for personal goals such as weight loss or skill acquisition (09:00).

b. Set SMART Objectives

John reiterates the importance of setting SMART objectives to provide clarity and structure. By specifying what exactly needs to be achieved and within what timeframe, individuals can create a clear roadmap for success. For instance, rather than vaguely aiming to "get healthy," setting a measurable objective like "lose 10 pounds by March 31st" provides a tangible target (18:00).

c. Cultivate Perseverance and Grit

Perseverance is crucial for overcoming obstacles and maintaining progress. John encourages listeners to develop grit by focusing on their vision and the underlying reasons for their objectives. He shares his personal motivation for staying healthy: “Being in the best health possible has nothing to do with vanity... it has to do with the fact of being there for as long as I can for my family” (25:15).

d. Focus on Incremental Changes and Systems Over Outcomes

John advises shifting focus from end results to the systems that drive those results. For example, in business, concentrating on setting appointments rather than closing deals can lead to significant progress over time. By prioritizing actionable metrics, individuals can ensure continuous movement toward their objectives (34:05).

e. Embrace Hardness and Overcome Procrastination

To combat procrastination, John stresses the importance of embracing challenges and taking immediate action. He references Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way, advocating for a mindset that views obstacles as opportunities for growth. “Without being able to lean into what makes things hard, nothing is going to be accomplished” (42:00).

3. Practical Tools and Resources

Throughout the episode, John emphasizes the availability of resources to aid in goal achievement:

Free Business Planning Course: Accessible via the link in his bio or website, this course provides a structured approach to planning and executing objectives.
Book Recommendations:
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- Grit by Angela Duckworth
- The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday

These resources complement the strategies discussed, offering deeper insights and frameworks for sustainable change.

4. Conclusion and Encouragement

John concludes the episode with words of gratitude and encouragement, expressing excitement for the upcoming year’s guests and content. He reinforces the message that “you can accomplish anything you set your mind to, but you've got to set your mind a direction that makes sense” (50:30). He urges listeners to take proactive steps by utilizing the free planning course and adopting the discussed strategies to escape the drift and achieve meaningful success.

Notable Quotes:

“Motivation is like a shower. It's something you require every single day.” (05:30)
“I hate the word goal... I don’t call the things that I want to accomplish 'goals,' I call them 'objectives.'” (12:45)
“Just give me the one win. That's all I care about.” (20:10)
“There’s nothing, there’s no such thing as a bad one” when focusing on appointments in business. (34:10)
“Without being able to lean into what makes things hard, nothing is going to be accomplished.” (42:00)

Resources Mentioned:

Free Business Planning Course: www.EscapingtheDrift.com
Books:
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- Grit by Angela Duckworth
- The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday

Final Thoughts:

"Escaping the Drift - The Weekly Drop: The Journey to Sustainable Change" serves as a comprehensive guide for anyone feeling stagnant in their personal or professional lives. John Gafford adeptly combines personal anecdotes, expert references, and practical advice to provide listeners with the tools necessary to break free from unproductive patterns and achieve lasting success. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, athlete, or someone seeking personal growth, this episode offers valuable insights to help you set clear objectives, build effective systems, and maintain the perseverance needed to realize your aspirations.

Transcript

A (0:01)

Every team, every topic, everywhere. This is believe from the podcast that gets you from where you are to where you want to be, escaping the drift. This is the Weekly Drop with John Gafford. No matter what platform you're watching or listening to us on, make sure you, like, subscribe and comment. And now the Drop. And back again, back again for another episode of the Drop, man, which is my little solo pod brought to you by the same podcast you listen to every week that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. Today is going to be the first show of the new year. This will actually be coming out on Thursday. I'm streaming it for the first time live as we do this on Instagram, which is kind of cool. But today, what we're going to talk about is the five reasons. The reason why most people don't accomplish their New Year's resolutions, man. Why people fall down when they make these resolutions and they don't get to what they're going to do. And I'm going to give you five things that you can do to have a lot of success in that with what you do. And we all know the story, man. January 1st. Tomorrow, if you go to the gym, there's going to be 9 million people sitting in the damn gym. It's going to be impossible to get to a machine. But by mid February, everybody's going to be gone. And why is that? Why does it, why does it go so quick from February in February to nobody being there? Why does that happen so fast? And if you read this book, this is one of my favorite books, it's called Atomic Habits. I love this book. And then it James Clear talks about motivation is not enough. You know, motivation is like a shower. It's something you require every single day. And if you're just depending on motivation to get you through to where your habits need to be, you're going to have a problem. What you have got to do is you've got to. Instead of relying on the motivation of I want to get better, you have to set up systems that will support that end goal. And one of the things I'm going to give you when we're done today is if you're watching me on Instagram or you're listening to this or watching this on the gram, or you catch it later. If you go to the link in my bio, the very first thing you're going to see is a free business planning course that I'm going to give you. And it's not just about business planning. You can Literally use that one page system, the system that I use to plan anything in life. You can use it to plan, you know, how to lose weight, you can lose it. To start a new skill, to start a new business, to do whatever you want to get better at the job that you currently have. And it's free to get, you can go right in there and grab it. But you're going to see how a lot of the stuff that's in that one page business plan, that course that I'm giving you for free, you're going to see how a lot of that stuff translates back into everyday use by building good systems and understanding what it is. And if you look at atomic habits, when it's talking about not having the right idea or having good enough systems, it's because you don't set your goals right. You know, I hate the word goal. I've always said that I hate the word goal. And the reason I hate it is because, you know, look at football, right? We're coming to the playoffs right now. And at the beginning of the year, every single one of those, those, those coaches for those football teams, those pro football teams, they asked them at the opening press conference, coach, what's your goal for the season? And they all said the same thing, my goal is to reach the Super Bowl. They, they knew at that opening press conference their quarterback sucks. They knew they don't have a good defensive player. They just knew it, but yet they still come out firing saying, my goal is to win the Super Bowl. So for me, I don't even call the things that I want to accomplish. I don't call them goals, I call them objectives, because that's something I'm going to achieve. I just make a decision, a conscious decision to achieve this. So when you're setting goals or objectives, they should be smart, which means they should be specific. They should be measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. How often, I think the last part of that is probably the most important thing. Give yourself a time frame. Because how often, dude, do you do these things where you have, you know, you just, you just have a never ending amount of time to get something done and it takes every second of it. If you have teenagers, this is the way of the world. If I give my kids 30 minutes to clean their rooms, their rooms are clean in 30 minutes. If I give my teenagers all day to clean their rooms, their rooms are cleaned at 11:59pm one minute before the day goes in the next. So making sure that you have those measurable goals are so important. For example, if you have a goal, let's talk about getting healthy. Because what everybody wants to do is lose some weight in the new year, right? Let's talk about that. So if you set a goal is my goal is to get healthy. Well, that's not measurable because what is healthy? What does that mean? A smart goal would be my goal is to lose or my objective is I'm going to lose 10 pounds by this date. I'm going to weigh 10 pounds less than I am now. And then using that information, you can go into ChatGPT or anywhere else and you can come up with an exact plan based on your bmi, your age, your caloric intake, how much output you put, and all of those things, and you can come up with an exact system of what you need to do to get you there's. Now, I'm also a firm believer of coming up with multiple routes to get to the same place. And when you look at the, like I said, the one page business plan that I gave you in my link, when you look at that or if you're listening to this on a podcast, just go to thejohngaffer.com and it's the first one. But when I do this, every single one of my objectives, which is which? My strategies to reach my objectives, each one of them individually, I always go with three. I come up with three different strategies to get to the objective I want. Now, each one of them as a standalone idea, could get you where you want to be, each one of those things. But I figure if I do all three of them, then now I can absolutely hit what I want to want to hit. I'm kind of guaranteed to three exit. And if one of those things falls flat or one of those things goes awry, now I can absolutely get to where I want to be. So for example, if my goal or my objective was to lose weight, one of those would obviously be my. My diet. So rather than say I want to eat healthy, which is bullshit, I would say by this date, I'm going to research exactly the caloric intake I need, exactly the macros that I need. And you can get this anywhere online. I would set a goal to every Sunday, I'm going to meal prep. There's nothing you can do to help you eat healthier than by preparing all of your meals for the weekend. One day, just make the sacrifice and make the commitment that on that Sunday you're going to do that. So there's my health strategy, there's my eating strategy. Right now, obviously to lose weight, I also have to have some sort of physical exercise. So then I would have my physical exercise where I would say I'm going to work out Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, I'm going to walk 10,000 steps a day every single day. And I would have measurable things that record, that correlate back to days that are going to get stuff done. Because again, things have got to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. You know, the next mistake that I see a lot of people make and why they're not achieving their goals is simply because they throw the towel in, man. They give up. Things are hard. Oh, it's hard, it's inconvenient, man. It's so much easier just to sit on the couch and do nothing. Why would I want to work hard? Why would I want to do that? And if you struggle with perseverance, if that's something that you have an issue with, then I highly recommend you check out the book Grit by Angela Duckworth where it talks about having perseverance and passion in what you're doing is super important. And when I talk about, again, back to the one page business plan that I'm giving you guys, when I talk about that stuff, the very first thing that we talk about in that plan is your vision, is understanding why you're trying to do this. If you say, I want to lose weight, the idea of you doing that is pretty slim. You know, unfortunately, I've had several of my good friends pass away in the last month, give or take. I know that seems crazy, but it's true. When you reach a certain age, that kind of shit just happens. And, you know, for me, being in the best health possible has nothing to do with vanity anymore. It has to do with the fact of being there for as long as I can for my family. So if I was writing a vision statement that was regarding an objective of losing weight, it would be based on, on my daughter's 40th, you know, 32nd birthday. Whatever it is, I'm walking her down the aisle at her wedding. When I'm 75 years old, I'm playing actively in the yard with my grandchildren because I want to project myself to a specific point in the future out in time, a specific place out there. And I want to draw a picture that means something to me, doesn't have to mean anything to anybody else, but I want to create a visual of my vision of why I'm trying to get to where I am now. This vision, what it's designed to do is to get your ass in the gym is to make one more phone call. It's to do that one extra thing that going to get you to persevere when things get tough to have that conversation with yourself that I just going to get one win today. I just got to get one win. That's all I got to get. As long as I get one win, that's all I care about. Just give me the one win. If I can get that, I'm chalking it up as a win. You know, the next thing reason that people fall into a trap is because they go the all or nothing things are either working or they're not. And the Power of Habit by Charles Dung. He highlights the need to anchor new habits to existing routines and focus on small manageable changes built at a time. For example, this is why I got to tell you, I'm not a huge fan. I have a lot of friends that have done it, but I'm not a huge fan of 75 hard because I think there's so much failure in that. I think there's so much. It's, it's such a shock to the system. People like, no, it's good. It's mental strength. Look, I get it, dude, I get it. But don't set yourself up for failure. Maybe set yourself up for incremental improvement instead of all or nothing. Because if you're like, I'm not going to eat any sugar at all, if that's what you're, if that's what you're saying, I'm eating no sugar. Well, then the first time you eat an Oreo, you just blew everything you're doing. Now you're completely screwed. And you've got two choices, which you can either start over, get back in the game, or do what most people do and stop going to the gym in February. So having and focusing on systems and not outcomes, again, that is the key to a lot of this stuff. To avoid those last two things. Focus on the systems, not the outcomes. If you focus on, if you're trying to improve your business and your business is making contacts, I, you know, in real estate I tell people all the time, the number one thing I focus on when I coach people, when I train people in real estate is you focus on appointments. Not deals, not escrows, not closings, not open house. Focus on appointments. If you focus on nothing else other than that one thing, that metric will move the needle for you so much because there's nothing, there's no such thing as a bad one. On one appointment with anybody. It's just not. So find the metric that's going to move the needle for the most, for whatever you're trying to achieve, and focus on that. You know, the next thing I would say is people don't focus on incremental success. They just look for the big thing. I want to lose 45 pounds and they're not going to be happy until they hit 45 pounds. I want to make $250,000, and they're not going to see success until they do. It is so important to measure those incremental things as you go along, those incremental moments of success in whatever objective you're trying to hit, that you've got to take a second and understand those daily wins. Moving that boulder one inch a day will eventually get that thing rolling down a hill. But you've got to be. You got to be willing to celebrate that one inch as much as the. As the end of the line. And the last thing, and I would say reasons why people fail to hit their stuff is definitely procrastination. I mean, this is probably in this day and age of instant gratification, of everything's right now, of I can just literally sit on the couch and watch the, you know, the wealth of entertainment that's ever been on planet Earth in the palm of my hand. Man, it is easy to put off what's hard. And I had this conversation yesterday with my son. You know, we were talking about something that he's struggling with here at work that he's having a hard time with. There is a lot of rejection in that. There's a lot of rejection in what we were talking about. And I said, man, the great is in the hard. You got to embrace the suck. You got to lean into the stuff that's hard. And for that, you know, I would say, again, I've said it many times on my podcast. For me, the greatest book and the first thing anybody should ever read is the Obstacles the Way by Ryan Holiday. I love that book. I think without being able to lean into what makes things hard is what makes them great, nothing is going to be accomplished. So, again, I hope you take that advice for the new year. Man, I wish all of you guys, it's been a great year here for the podcast. We've had some unbelievable guests over the last year. Got some unbelievable guests already booked for the new year. The guests just seem to be getting bigger and bigger and bigger and more important. I can't believe some of the people that say yes to this thing. I'm so grateful for each and every one of you for listening to us. And again, if you're trying to plan anything, jump in there and grab that planning course. I put it up there for you guys. There's no charge. There's no. There's no add ons. There's no anything else. Just grab it. Just grab it and do it. So as we head into the new year, just remember, man, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to, but you've got to set your mind a direction that makes sense. We'll see you next time. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escaping the drift.com you can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five star review. Give us a share. Do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.