🚧 Are you fed up with a lack of progress?

The 5-minute weekly newsletter for married fathers.

Good evening, my brothas.

Gum has gotten mintier lately, have you noticed?

-Collier

_QUOTE
“The best periods of my life always came after a period of getting absolutely fed up with the lack of progress I was making.” Dan Koe

Can anyone else relate? 🙋‍♂️

The seasons where I have felt most empowered to live a life worthy of the calling of husband and father have come right after a stint of getting overly complacent in my circumstances.

The result of those times were some very difficult look-yourself-in-the-mirror moments of intense self-reflection and auditing of my lack of awareness, discipline and drive.

According to Koe, discipline is about getting clear on what you want, not forcing yourself to do things you don't.

Most people are trapped in a chaotic cloud of thoughts, emotions, tasks and events.

They get so distracted they lose any vision they had for the future.

Koe’s formula for self-discipline:

• Become fed up with where you are

• Get clear on what you want

• Create a plan to get there

• Remove every single distraction

• Take the smallest step

• Fail until you are okay with failure

Discipline is the byproduct of clarity, not force.

(Source: @thedankoe)

_WISDOM
Don’t fall victim to the planning fallacy.

New projects (or ideas) spark a great deal of excitement and optimism, and when imagining reaching the end goal, people aren’t usually pessimistic about them.

If they were, they probably wouldn’t be planning the project in the first place, right?

When a team (or an individual/husband and wife/family) starts to plan a project, they might be thinking about the magnificently beneficial impact that the endeavor will have.

But they may be paying less attention to the negative aspects such as cost, risk, time or failures on similar tasks from the past.

While this might sound like a made-up scenario that doesn’t apply to you or people in general, it isn’t.

This is a well-known and scientifically studied phenomenon—it’s called the planning fallacy.

The planning fallacy is a cognitive bias that describes people’s tendency to underestimate the amount of time, costs, and risks of future actions while overestimating the benefits of those actions.

It has been shown to impact individuals as well as organizations and can lead to sub-optimal decision-making.

Takeaway: anything in our lives, whether with our marriage, kids or our own growth, should consider the planning fallacy and how it might negatively impact our ability to achieve the life we want.

(Source: Monday.com blog post “The dangers of the planning fallacy and how to overcome it.”)

_ACTION
Use the 1-3-1 framework to be a better problem solver and decision-maker.

It is pretty simple and goes like this:

• Take 1 specific challenge you are facing

• Come up with 3 viable options that you have considered and researched

• Decide on 1 specific recommendation you feel best suits the situation and present that to whomever it is you are working with (boss, wife, kids, friends)

What I love about this framework is that it puts the responsibility back on you to be proactive and get ahead of the problem and possible solutions.

This can be applied at your job, in your marriage and also with your family to help you make better decisions and problem-solve.

If you are anything like me, making decisions can be difficult and stressful, but taking a step back and attacking it with this method could help take the guesswork or anxiety out of the process.

(Source: Dan Martell)

That’s it and that’s all, folks!

You read. We listen. Let us know what you think by simply replying to this email. Your feedback is greatly valued!

Receive this from a friend? Subscribe here.