 Hello everyone. Welcome to an episode of Change Podcast. Today I'm so excited about the guests and the topic we're going to talk about. I've invited Erin Faulkner. She is the editor-in-chief and co-owner of Pick the Brain, which Forbes named one of the top 100 most influential sites for women. It's an online blog with amazing tips to use your brain better. She's also the author of How to Get Shit Done, why women need to stop doing everything so they can achieve anything. She's won many awards for her work in empowering women and also for her work in digital entrepreneurship. So I've invited Erin on this show to talk about setting goals and how to achieve them. Boy, do I need to hear this topic. Hello, Erin. Hello. It's good to connect with you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm so excited to talk about this because I feel so many people need help setting goals and achieving goals. What do you think? It's true. It's a big one. It's a necessary one. So the first question I have is, why should we even set goals? Yeah. Yeah. So here's the thing. I think most of us by nature have kind of dreams and vague ideas of where we want to go. And the truth is without a road map in any part of our lives, it's really hard to just kind of fly by the seat of your pants and get there and end up landing where you want to be. But A, also, why would you want to give up that control and hope that you land somewhere? The more responsibility you take for your actions in your life, the more power you have and the more traction for success you have. And so goal setting is part of that responsibility and owning your path as opposed to letting the path kind of happen to you. And yeah, so goals are the road map to get you where you want to go. So then our goals really achievable because I know for me too and probably a lot of people, we get kind of stuck in resisting making goals because I've made them before, but they never come true. So I don't want to disappoint myself. How can you change goals from being something that's real in my life versus just a pipe dream that sounds great? Yeah. Well, the thing is, is in my experience, probably 80% of the people that write goals think that writing the goal therefore accomplishes the goal. That just simply writing out is like, it's like, it's not a manifestation session, right? You're creating, it's not like I will write this on paper and it will come true. That's the first step, right? But actually, let's just rewind a little bit back. That isn't the first step. The first step and where I see the biggest mistake in goal setting is that people are setting the wrong goals. They're setting goals for themselves that they think they, of where they think they should be going or where, what's the next logical step in my career kind of goals? And these are the kind of goals that are not personal. They are not attached to you. They do not come from deep within you. And so until you've really sat down with yourself and said, forget where I should go. Where do I really want to go? Right? As soon as you have that connection to yourself and the goal, you've already, you're already so much farther ahead than just like it's January 1st, it's New Year's resolutions time and I'm going to scribble some shit on a piece of paper and hope it comes true. You know what I mean? So the first thing is really you got to start setting the right goals that are aligned with who you really are, what your moral compass is and where you in a thoughtful way really want to go. Once you've figured that out, then, as I said, it's not just about writing the goal down. It's about putting an action plan around every single part of that goal. You've got to blueprint it out. You can't build a house being like I want a two-story house and then just slap some stuff together. You've got to say, well, what's the electricity going to be like? What's the plumbing? What's the structure? What, you know, blah, blah, blah. So without that, what happens? The house collapses and it's the exact same thing with goals. You've got to put the structure in place. So you brought up a really good point that people make goals that seem like the next best logical step in my life and that we should draw from what we truly want, where we want our lives to go. But I think especially a lot of young people these days, we don't know what we want. So we set these goals that like, oh, I want to be rich, you know? But then that's like you said, building a house with no real plan. Like, okay, how are you? Like, why and how? So for those people, like, how can I like get in tune with what I really want? How did you find it? Okay, well, first of all, there's two things. I came down to Los Angeles. I'm Canadian. I came down to Los Angeles and I wanted to, and this is my goal, I wanted to quote unquote make it in Hollywood. Okay. For everybody out there listening, that is not a goal. Okay. That is a weird vague dream that has nothing to do with the goal. Goals are really specific. Okay. And achievable. There's no make it in Hollywood. I want to be rich. What does that mean? What will somebody you can't nobody in the world can even decide on what rich is right because one man's rich is another man's poor. And so these kind of vague things, you can never get your sink, your teeth into them, cook yourself into them. There's nothing there. They're like floating with the clouds, right? So you got to be really, really specific about what you want. When I moved down here to make it in Hollywood, seven years later, I got my ass handed to me. I was broke. I had no money. I had no car. My house was being foreclosed on. My visa was up. I mean, you can't operate floating up here. You got to ground it way down here, starting with yourself, grounding it with yourself. So so that that's the number one thing is you got to be really specific about what you want to be and what you want to achieve. And then what I like to do is say like, let's just be an example. It's October 11th right now. Next October 11th, if it was October 11, 2020, and we arrived and I had been a year and I said, I look back and said, God, this has been the best year ever. I can't believe it. What would that look like? What would need to happen for you realistically for you to say, wow, that year counted. I made that year count. So you start with what you paint that picture, right? And then you got to start working backwards. Okay. X, Y, and Z happened. How could I get to X, Y, and Z? Well, you can't just jump from wearing that now at X, Y, and Z. Well, I would need, okay, in order for X to happen, I would need to see one and two. If I made one and two happen, I could probably get to X. Okay. How can I make one happen? All right. Then you start drawing down. You start putting timelines around it. So I call those kind of like the micro goals to get to the major goal. All this sounds kind of nerdy and redundant and like an eye roll. But when you start blueprinting it out, you start mapping it out, it actually becomes pretty exciting. And all of a sudden, that excitement is very motivating. So that thing that you talked about at the beginning where it's like, I write this down and they never come through. Well, it's because you lack a motivation. They're the wrong goals and you haven't really got the attention to do any work around them. So you lack motivation around them. When you start blueprinting out these kind of micro goals, and also it's not just micro goals that you can get to the next step. Every time you achieve one of those micro goals, it's also a victory. And those small victories, that cumulatively builds motivation upon motivation on motivation. And that's what you need to keep this stuff going. So you've got to create a course for yourself where you're having victories along the way. That's not knock out of the park for run homers, but you made it to first base. Great. Amazing. Now I just got to get to second. Amazing. But you can't get to all those bases unless you've got a plan. Otherwise you're running up in the stands like an idiot. You don't know where you're going. So that's the first part. The second part that you talked about was how can you really tell what you want? And this is really where the work as I see it comes in, right? Because especially in today's age, there's so much chaos. There's so much noise. You're scrolling through a million feeds, social feeds, can't concentrate, got a million things going on, which really means you've got nothing going on. And that leads to burnout and energy depletion, frustration, and all of those things are goal killers, right? So the first thing is you got to slow it way down, right? Way down. I mean, take it down as far as you think you can take it and double it, right? You got to allow the mind some peace and quiet because the answers will come from you. Everybody has the answers. Everybody. It's just how are you going to access them? You cannot access them in chaos. You cannot access them living in the world of what you should be doing or living around other people's living and die by other people's expectations of you, right? You got to let all that stuff go. You got to find a way to get some calm. For me, that's meditation. That's not necessarily for everybody. But you got to make a promise to yourself. Your first goal should be, I'm going to carve out 20 minutes a day. Let's start with 15. I'm going to carve out 15 minutes a day. And I'm either going to take a walk or I'm going to learn how to meditate. There are a lot of great apps. Or I'm going, you got to find whatever it is, okay? To just be silent in your mind. And it doesn't happen or you got to work on it. But I promise you, if you do that, the answers start to come. The answers start to come. And that is the only way you can do that. You're not going to, you can't math problem this and come up with the solution, right? The solution is in here. You got to find it. And that kind of sounds woo-woo, but trust me. It's the only way. And it's the only way in general, forget goals. You're going to stay sane because it's just, life is just speeding up so fast. It's up to you to slow yourself down. And, you know, have you ever heard that thing like, or that's, it's not really a saying, but somebody says a good idea. You go, God, that's a great, how did you think of that? And they said, I was in the shower. Just can't do it. Wash my hair. Hit me. What do you think happens there? Because it's the two minutes in the day that person had, where all they're thinking about is warm water splashing on them and suds it. They're not thinking about, I got to make this call. You know, there's something when that warm water hits you, you just kind of, and the idea comes. The exact same thing is true about discovering what you really want. And then the goal setting, as long as you've got a little bit of technique around it, which is very simple, that part's actually easy. Just take the little discipline. The first part is what you got to spend the work on. Yeah. And, you know, I love what you said about that quiet mental space because, you know, J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, she's been scrambling her whole life to write these books. But, you know, she said in an interview that the idea of Harry Potter came down to her in a train ride. When she was just sitting still, looking out the window, it came to her, she said. That's exactly what I'm talking about. Every single person, it may not be Harry Potter, but every single person has what is necessary for your life there. It's only about finding the moments of calm when your brain can just go, comes out. Just go, do this. Okay. You just got to be open to it, right? You got to be open to hear that. You can't do that on an Instagram feed, scrolling, or typing an email while on the phone, watching a video. That is the antithesis of you drowning that voice, right? So, yeah. So I want to go back to what you mentioned about, you know, let's say it's October 11, 2020. I want to live this kind of life to make me be like, this was my best year yet. So yes, we set one year goals or some people even set five year goals, 10 year goals. For these longer term goals, you mentioned we had to hit first base, I could base third base to make sure we get that home run. But you know, there's people who get stuck in, I can't even make it to first base. It's like disappointment after disappointment. I feel like I'm trying, doing my best. And so because of these disappointments and frustrations, I get burnt out and I just give up. How can we stay motivated and focused for longer term goals? Right. So I would go back to the first thing. If you are really putting, if you've got a plan in place and you're really putting a genuine real effort in, okay, that this is an assumption in this equation, then I would say to you, I'm not sure that you have the right goal. Because if you're really putting all the work in, right? And you put a bit of a plan around it and you're still fighting to have the motivation or to find the first or second small victory, that would be a red flag to me. Unless there are some great outside forces at play, you know, like you got a new boss and she hates you, you know, or, and so you're kind of like, oh, I just got through throwing a curveball there. So but like, let's not put an outlier in the situation. Let's just say you're trying to get this done, you're struggling, you got a plan in place, it's not working, it's not working. I honestly would say I feel like there's a good chance you might have the wrong goal. So my first thing would be to go back and say, okay, is this the goal I want? Or do I want to, you know, maybe accounting is for me, you know, like, you know, maybe I'm maybe I'm in the entire wrong job, which is like kind of feels like a big ouch moment, but better you decide that now. Right. One of the funny things to me is like we go to university, like, let's just say a more traditional path, we go to university. I graduated university. Well, first of all, I decide what major I'm going to do when I'm, when I was 18. I graduated when I was, I graduated a little earlier, I graduated when I was 20. And I decided at 20, what I was going to do for the rest of my life. Never checked in again. This is why at 40 people are having midlife crises, because the 20 year old, they decided to listen to a 20 year old about what to do with the rest of their lives. You know, so we got to be constantly checking in with ourselves. And, you know, people are very scared to do that because after, for example, you do a four year degree studying something, you're like, well, I better like this. You know, and it's like, you don't dare want to challenge that this, you know, you maybe you're a different person at 23 than you were at 20. You know, so these kind of checking in with yourself is so crucial because it's, it could be hard, you know, if you go, shit, I just got that law degree. Oh yeah. Right. That's an extreme example. But well, are you going to double down and be like, see it 60 when I have a total mount down, you know, or are you going to course correct and say, well, let me practice law for a bit, but I'm going to take a night course here and see, maybe I like this or maybe I'm going to volunteer once a day, once, sorry, once a week or once a month doing something in this world. Maybe, you know, it's, you've only got one life. So it's really incumbent upon you to keep checking in with yourself, pivot and course correct. So back to your thing about goals. If you're really putting in the work on a goal and you're really struggling, you're not having a good time with it at all. If you're kind of like, ah, I got to get this thing done. Well, that's kind of a red flag, right? Like if you can't get motive, if you can't get a bit of excitement, even though there could be a lot of hard work and not every step of your goal setting plan is going to be like skipping through daisies, like or slow motion crossing a finish line in the marathon, it's going to be monotonous. It's going to be irritating at times that's life. But if it's like anything more than that, where it just feels so laborious and irritating to be doing or you just can't get traction, I don't know. I think it might be time for a pivot. That's what I would say. Or you're doing it for the wrong reasons, you know, like, oh, this is my goal because, you know, I think this is what I want, but actually deep down inside what I'm motivated by is the fact that I want my parents to love me. I want my friends. Exactly. I want to make money to look good. Yes, exactly. So you got, what's the motivation for me wanting this goal? That's a good way to, that's a good way to preface it. Yeah. Why do I want this? The litmus test. Yeah. Is this goal good? Do I want this because I can drive a flashy car? Do I want this so my mom can say to her friend at church on Sunday, ooh, so-and-so is, my daughter is just made, you know, VP or whatever. It's like, is that why you want to do it? Because those are not good reasons. Right. So when people get very ambitious and we try to instill many goals at the same time, you know, you can have a relationship goal, you can have a work goal. There's many categories we can make goals for, not just one big life goal. Let's say you do have like a relationship goal, you have a job goal, you have a family goal, you have a friend's goal. How do you manage many goals at the same time? Yeah. I actually have a chapter of this on my book. And so my recommendation is to have at any one time three goals and spread them over the main life buckets. So career relationships personal. So that could be you are working on something to do with your job, very specific. You are working on a relationship, let's say with your mom. Let's say, you know, that's just something that you've really wanted to make better, you know, and then you've got a personal goal. Let's say you want to lose weight. Let's say you want to learn how to do pottery. Let's say you, you know, something that ups your personal stock, your purse that really fills your personal well, right? Now, of course, at different points in life, let's say you're in your late 20s, I'm talking traditional timelines here, but let's say you're in your late 20s, early 30s, and you're really career driven. Maybe you're going to have two in the career, right? And one in the personal. Maybe you're early 30s and you're thinking of having a family. Well, you don't have a boyfriend or a girlfriend and you don't have any kids. Okay, well, they're probably going to be two in the, in the relationships and one in the career. You know, you start, it's like a puzzle. You start moving the things around for where you're at. This is why it's so important to constantly be checking in, right? So I would not have more than three goals, big goals. It's just impossible to do the work that's needed. If you've got seven goals, big goals, no, no, then you haven't done the work. You haven't really drilled down, again, to where you want to go. It's kind of like throwing as much spaghetti up against the wall and hoping some of it sticks. That's a terrible life plan. You got to take risks, you got to double down, you got to own it, you got to be willing to be wrong, get back up and it create a new goal, right? Don't be like, but do a little bit of this and a little bit of this, you then you're doing a lot of nothing. Okay, that's where a lot of frustration comes in. And fatigue, because you've got so many things going. But as I said, you really don't have anything going because you're not willing to make a commitment to the big kind of three things, two or three things that really matter. Now, so that's number one. But what's really important is this, and I talked about this in the book there. So people are very, very unaware in general, even successful people of how they are actually spending their time. In the book, I have a seven day time challenge. And basically, it's simple. You wake up on Monday morning and from Monday morning until Sunday afternoon, you write down almost literally everything you're doing, get up 705, take a shower, 720, make a cock, you know, like really micro, okay? You do that for the entire day. You do that for seven days. You have that on one side, you got that sheet on one side. The other side, you've carved out your three big goals that we talked about. Okay, can be two, can four, whatever, but just let's just say the three big goals. Then you look at those three big goals. And you look at how you're spending your time. And I guarantee you your job is going to drop because 80% of what you're spending your time doing has nothing to do with those three goals. Nothing. In fact, you're spending probably 80% of your time moving the goals of other people forward. Okay. So as soon as you get hip to that, right, you can start making major changes around your schedule. So does this move one of these three needles forward? No, it's gone. Or its priority is way less. And I would say that about 80% of your day should be spent moving those three goals together forward. And 20% of it is doing life's bullshit and doing some stuff at work that you don't really want to do, but you definitely do have to do it. You know what I mean? It's just kind of part of, again, no jobs perfect, right? Once you start doing that, you will have freed up so much time, literally and mentally, that having three big goals is you got you actually have a lot of time for that. And you got a lot of energy for it. What you can't do is have many goals, three goals, but spend 80% of your time not working on that will never work. Mathematically, right? It just you can't that won't work. Not enough hours in the day. You wouldn't even want more hours. You'd be so tired. You did the life expectancy would be like 41. You know what I mean? Like there's no so you got to get how real about how you are actually spending your time, what you actually want, and then make those two lists make sense, right? So and again, there's a little bit of upfront lifting, heavy lifting to kind of get to figure out where you're at and what you're doing. But once you figure it out, it's pretty much a walk in the park. It's the figuring, it's the awareness, the self-awareness, the self-evaluation, the really getting down to like, what do I want? How am I spending my time? What do I want? How am I spending my time? Big divide and you've got to make that divide shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter until you're like completely aligned. I love it. I love it. I can totally even see in my life just like listening to you how the gap is wider than it should be. Yeah. And one of the big parts of this is, so there's what you're doing in your life, but there's also who you're spending your time with, how you're spending your time with people. And unfortunately, a lot of us, you know, my whole thing is you treat, you teach people how to treat you in relationships, right? So we all know we've got those friends that call in the middle of a work day. They've got another crisis. They're calling. They need your advice desperately. And you go, God, why does this person keep calling me on that work? You know why they keep calling you? Because you keep answering. So you got to start training those people. I don't take calls in the middle of the day. I don't take calls Friday at nine o'clock if I'm exhausted. I will speak to you on, you know, I mean, I won't get into a specific example, but you got to start training these relationships to work for you, right? Otherwise, they're energy depleters. If you get a phone call in the middle of the day, and I have a litmus test, if I get a phone call in the middle of the day, and I see a name come up on the call display, and I go, that's a red flag. What is, who is this person to you? Who is this person in your life? Why are they still there? Can we get this to a place where I don't go, or is this relationship just run its course? And that doesn't mean you go through your Rolodex and just ask people out. That's not what I'm talking about. It's much more nuanced than that. But don't just be aware, right? And then there are the people that call you and you see their name on your phone and you go, oh, I got to take this. You're dying to talk to them because they fill up your coffers. They give you energy, right? You need to be encouraging that type of stuff and discouraging the eye roll calls, right? But you can't do that if you're not aware. And all of this stuff goes into goals, right? Because when you're taking the phone call that you roll the eyes with, you're not working towards one of those big three goals. You're now a crisis counseling center all of a sudden in the middle of the day, right? Well, that just took you off your goal. So that's just like an example of how we throw time away without even thinking about it. That's great. So Erin, you mentioned your book a couple times. So how can the audience get connected with you? Whether it's by book, do you have coaching sessions, anything? If they feel motivated from this podcast and they want to learn more from you, how can they get connected? So my blog is PickTheBrain.com. On social, all social, I'm either at Pick the Brain or at Erin Falconer. Through my website, I do have coaching. You just, you can hit the coaching tab. And then my book is available on Amazon or anywhere you buy books, Barnes & Noble, wherever. And just a reminder for the audience, her book is called How to Get Shit Done, Why Women Need to Stop Doing Everything So They Can Achieve Anything. Sounds awesome. I think I'm going to go pick up that book on Amazon. I feel very inspired by today's podcast. Please do. Do you have any last words, Erin, for our audience before we close? No, just thank you for listening and hit me up on social if you have any other questions. Yes. Thank you so much for joining us, Erin. And thank you so much to our audience who tuned in to goal setting and achieving them. I hope that through this podcast, you clarified so many issues. Why maybe, why am I not achieving this goal? Why am I so frustrated? Maybe this broke some obstacles for you so you can really start achieving. Maybe we'll come back October 11, 2020. And then be like, Erin, was that your best year ever? Sounds like a date. Yes. Okay. Thank you everyone so much. And thank you, Erin. Thank you. Bye.