Goal Setting Is Hard. Can’t I live Without It?

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Today’s podcast is an inspiration that I derived from a conversation I had with a friend of mine last night. So I’m talking to this friend for the first time in nearly two and a half years, he calls me up from India. And he tells me something which totally catches me by surprise, which is that he had been listening to the podcast ever since I meditate daily podcast, starting the first of January this year. And he also tells me that he is also watching the videos of the podcast on YouTube. And he appreciates what I do, which is nice of him. But he points out something which actually is the source of today’s podcast episode, which is he’s unhappy that I’m focusing a lot on goal setting and goals. He says, “You know, you say, to write down the tasks the night before and get up early in the morning and start working to accomplish them and all, I somehow have difficulty in comprehending this. Now I wake up late, I sleep late. And I have a set pattern for my living. And I don’t see myself doing this. But I keep on hearing and listening to you. And I’m having a conflict in my mind, should I do what Srini is saying or should I keep on moving with my life because my life is awesome.”

So the reason why I’m recording this now is that I want him to listen because I already spoke to him. I told him what I have to tell him. But then the way this podcast will sound is different than the way I was speaking to him. So here’s what I told him. I said, “Listen, in order to have a dynamic living, all of us want to be dynamic in our existence, we want to have, you know, incredible life, all of us. And we cannot have an incredible life unless we are constantly setting goals and fulfilling them.” I kept on saying this on all my radio shows. And I keep on I think on this podcast also multiple times I talked about this. So all of us want dynamic living, we see people who are dynamic, we look at them, and we are impressed by them. And we are inspired by them. How come they have this life? Well, turns out that they all have goals that they have set. And they work towards achieving the goals on a daily basis on a consistent basis. So I was trying to convey this point time, I said, “Listen, if you start looking into the core human needs, depending upon who you listen to.” Some philosophers say there are three core human needs some say 5, 6, 7. But they all agree on the basic idea of core human needs, which is we have some physiological needs like you want water, we want air, want oxygen, and we want like whatever. And once we have those, then we move to the next stage, which is we want predictability in our life, which is we want safety wants security.

So you leave the house, you go somewhere when you come back, you want to be assured that your house is there, you can come back and open the door and come inside. And even if you leave the house and go somewhere, you need to be sure that wherever you’re going, you’re going to a safe place and nothing happens to you. So minute predictability in our living. And then we need love and belonging. We need self-esteem, pride, all that, and then self-actualization. So these are some of the things that we all need. Now, in order to get all this, some of them are given by society on their own. But then anybody in everybody can have all these things. And the only common denominator that connects all these things, is your desire to pursue them. And you cannot pursue them without setting goals. So you want power, you got to set goals.

If you want to achieve something, you can’t be hopeful, because hope doesn’t create results. Hope has to be translated into a plan and plan is again has to be translated into goals. And then that plan has to be worked upon through actions. And that’s how we achieve. You want happiness, wealth, you know, success, all that. You need to set goals. By default, nothing happens. So this was the point I was driving. Now, if you set the goals, right, you don’t need to work. You don’t need to think about them. And most of the time the goals themselves, do things for you. You do not have to work goals we work for you. And goals inherently have to have power in their mind. And we talked about this multiple times on this podcast. So how do you then get these things in place? Well, you don’t have to do anything. The goals will do the heavy lifting. All you have to do is just flow with whatever you’re trying to achieve. You are in the flow you flow and he just couldn’t get this concept. So here is how I explained it to him and I’m making an attempt to explain this on the podcast now here. See, whatever we have in life, we have created everything with our minds. And the mind is the fundamental element in all achievement, anything that you have or anything that you plan on having in life, but you think about it, you don’t think about it, the mind is a basic core functional necessity.

Now, the mind cannot focus on the achievement or cannot move you towards the achievement, or cannot make you work towards the achievement unless it has clear objectives. Unless things are clear to it, it cannot work. So, all we have to do is tell the mind to focus our attention on whatever we are trying to achieve. We are focusing our attention, we are telling the mind to focus. And we are telling the mind to become attentive to the thing that we want to achieve. focusing attention is nothing but setting goals. You do that by setting goals. My question to you is this. I don’t know how you achieve your goals. But I want you to question Where is your attention? At this point in time in your life? Where are you focused? Or are you just spending time without understanding the consequences? This was the conversation with my friend. And here’s the good news from this, he got it. He got it. He said he got it. But I did not feel I don’t think he got it. So I told him, I’m gonna record the podcast. And I’m going to publish this. And that is why I recorded this podcast.

Hopefully, this is helpful. My idea is that I want your attention to focus on things that you want to achieve. And for that goals are necessary. And that you need to plan your goals ahead in time you need to have daily goals, you have to have weekly goals, you have to have monthly goals. And as you start setting these goals and you start working towards them. See once you set a goal, the body moves the mind moves because the objective is very clear. And as you are moving, you will start to experience the flow and just start to experience the flow. That in itself is called dynamic living. If you are not setting goals, and you are just spending time away, that means somebody else is benefiting from your inactivity. That means you’re fulfilling somebody else’s goals.

Okay, my time is up. Hopefully, this podcast is helpful. And I just took the conversation just recorded this hopefully it’s helpful. If it is do me a favor, let me know. And the number two of this podcast is 888-818-0404. Call me text me leave me a message and if you have a question for me, I will respond to your question in my voice using your voice and publish that as a podcast. I think I said it right. Okay, that’s all for now. Take care, bye.

100 Tasks in 1 Day Challenge | How to Get Things Done

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If you believe in peak performance, you take personal accountability, you believe in growth, then today’s podcast episode is for you. I believe. Regardless of whether you are a subscriber or you’re a first-time listener, you’re watching this on YouTube, maybe YouTube suggested this video to you, doesn’t matter, I think you are a success-minded individual. And you care for all these tasks while you are here. So stay with me over the next 10 minutes, I promise you, this podcast episode or this video is going to change your life.

Early on at the beginning of this year, I talked about my morning routine and why it’s important to wake up early in the morning and why it’s important that you get the minimum tasks, that’s the scheduled tasks that you have in your mind prior to that day, needs to be done as early as possible, preferably in the first hour itself. And I talked about this extensively. I did multiple podcast episodes. And again, on a later podcast. In that series, I talked about how it’s important that you at least get three things done in the day if you can get three things done. The whole day, it’s a day well spent. That was my message. But then after I was done, I knew something was missing. And I was thinking, well, 24 hours, you’re awake 16 hours, only do three things, only to 10 things. So I went back, and I started experimenting with something in the last six weeks, I did a little bit, you know the same more of the same model. But then a little bit of a different frame a different approach said, I’m going to do at least 10 tasks in the first two hours of waking up. So I wake up at 430 before the sun hits the skies, or the sunlight comes through the window into my house by 630. So I need to get at least 10 things done. And I was successful for a few days, which was good. And then I said I’m going to change something here, I’m going to do 20 tasks. But I will do it under one hour or one hour at the most. So I kind of cut down the duration. But I increased the effort. That’s what I did. And I did that for a few days, I was successful.

And I started gathering data, I started seeing how I was doing. What was interesting is I was able to move fluidly across all the tasks without any hindrance. Now before I go and explain this principle, let me define what a task is. A task, in my mind, is a chore, a duty, or a job that I can do under five minutes. And I should be able to do without edits, I should be able to do without repeats, I should be able to do without any debates, I should be able to do without any emotional thinking, I need to get it done, I’ll get it done. So that’s the definition of a task in my mind, as I’m executing. Then I did something different. And this is what triggered today’s podcast episode, which as I said, I’m gonna take the hour limitation out completely. I don’t want to do 15 minutes of work and then take a 10-minute break. Do it for two hours, do it for one hour, and see as many tasks, how many tasks I’m doing, and all that I said, I’m going to take all that out. And I’m going to do I go practically as far as possible and at least set myself to complete 100 tasks. And I want to measure myself, literally line by line by line. I’m going to document all the tasks and I’m going to go through them one by one by one till I hit 100. And I’ll see how much time I will take to do it. Here is an interesting observation.

I was able to complete 100 tasks in under four and a half hours. And I was able to do it may be the first time I did I thought it was a false positive. But I kept on repeating. And I kept on trying and I kept on succeeding. And I did that for about seven days. And today is the seventh day and I’m recording this podcast. So I think it’s real I think it’s true. And I’m not saying I’m not going to slack. I’m not saying I can continue this performance forever. But at least I think I have enough data to come on record this podcast and share this data with you. The reason why I’m doing this is that I want you to try this. I want you to see if you can wake up early or whatever time you wake up, but then try to see if you can document and accomplish as many tasks as possible, preferably closer to a three-digit number like 100 and measure yourself. Now, here is an interesting observation and multiple observations along the way. One key observation in this is, that the more the pressure, the better the performance. So for some reason, the more pressure I started putting on myself, the higher was my performance.

Now, I’m not saying that the equation is not going to break at some point, eventually, we run out of ideas, we run out of energy, and all that that is true. But then that was the biggest takeaway from this. I also found out something else in these five minutes is what I had in my mind. But the majority of the things that I thought would take me 1015 20 minutes, because to begin with, I was having difficulty identifying 100 tasks. So I have to sit down an hour the night before and write down all the tasks that I want to accomplish the next day. And I had to come up with 100 tasks. And I had to start early. And I want to accomplish that as soon as possible. So I was setting these limitations on myself, and setting myself up for failure. Interestingly,, each time I came up almost close to that 100 Number, almost, maybe one or two times have a shot, but almost 100. So you take the average. Yeah, it’s 99 point something. So here is the second big takeaway, which is the majority of the tasks were less than five minutes. Because I choose not to engage emotionally interesting. So if I’m running on a treadmill, I want to go run for 10 minutes, but I want to run those 10 minutes where, at the end of 10 minutes, I’m sweating. I don’t want to spend an hour on the treadmill, and then don’t sweat and don’t feel the high when I’m done. You see you I hope you see where I’m going with this.

So 100 tasks are done consistently, each task done more, more or less efficiently, but then in a minimal time. And then at the end of all this, I have a heightened sense of self-esteem. It’s amazing. I’m not questioning whether this task is in the kitchen this task is in the garage this task is in my business or this task is this podcast num I’m getting things done. And getting things done is an important thing. That’s all I want you to try this, I want you to experiment with this. And I want you to share with me your observations at least start with the 10 tasks early in the morning, see how you do, and start to keep increasing that number. And it doesn’t matter what the definition of a task is for you. But make sure that it is not a project, make sure it takes a lot of time, a lot of thinking a lot of debating all that. So if you get into that mode, then it becomes difficult. You can’t accomplish much and you keep on exerting your energy without results. It’s not a worthy thing to do.

Okay, that’s all for now, wherever you are, be safe. Hopefully, this is helpful. If it is, leave me a comment if you’re watching this as a YouTube video on YouTube. And if you’re listening to this as a podcast on your podcasting app, this should be a place where you can write a comment. You have a question for me. 888-818-0404 is the number where you can call can text. Leave me a message. And I promise you if you have a question for me that you know is going to help you and the wider audience of this podcast. I’m going to do my best to answer your question on this podcast. That’s all for now. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

Why Can’t We All Just Get Along? The Roots of Religious Wars

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On the podcast today, I’m answering a question that a friend of mine asked me this morning. We were meeting up over coffee, we were chatting, and suddenly he asks me this question. He says, she will do you think as humans we are going, countries are fighting. There are wars happening. Big wars, small wars, there is religious intolerance happening. As communities, we are falling apart, the rich-poor divide is now COVID happened, and we haven’t properly recovered from it. We have schools, shooting in schools, and all kinds of things happening. Where are we heading with all this? This is my take when these kinds of global questions are asked. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer the questions. I can share my opinion. But I don’t think I have the answer. Because I don’t think like that. I think every time I listen to a question, I take it to the most elemental level, which is the individuals in that equation. So I started answering the question with a disclaimer. But as we were going into it, we ran out of time. And we had to, you know, he had his staff to take care of my stuff. So we left the conversation in the middle. Then I called him back I said, Listen, if it’s okay with you, why don’t you call my podcast line? And ask this question, so that I can play the question and answer it. Because I’ll have some time I’ll do some research. I’ll have my thoughts in place, I’ll align myself. And I can answer this question with a wider audience in my mind. So he was kind enough to call in and let’s go to the question.

“Hi Srini, this is Gopireddy. Thanks for a quick good chat earlier in the day at a coffee place. But I think both of us had our work cut out for the day and God disrupted our conversation and in the discussion and in what you are sharing. I got a good idea about what you’re sharing and where it’s going, I would like a larger audience in your podcasts to benefit from this discussion. My point of view was that, globally, a lot of complexities and tension in the aid and religious intolerance on flimsy grounds like there are tensions among countries among regions. Within the religion outside of the religion, and in different ethnic groups. So which way you can divide and then how is the fight that is what is happening globally? I keep worrying about like, is this, the 1980s 90s I grew up with, that was a peaceful herd comparatively. Even though the raw there are some heavy clashes that happened that used to be in the pre-social media time so that we just used to get some headlines rather than getting a minute-by-minute description of that. So anyway, coming back to the topic, I would like you to enumerate and elaborate on these. So the larger audience of your podcasts, we get the benefit. And also, it will be a good reference point for me to kind of listen to your detailed explanation on this point. Thank you in advance. Bye.”

That Sri Gopireddy of channelrealestate.com, Sri Gopireddy runs a Real Estate Talk Show on Bolly 2.3. FM, where I have my radio talk show too. And just meeting and talking about real estate investments with him is a whole different level altogether an incredible thinker and solutionist and has deep insights into how to invest and where to invest. And master negotiator. He considers that I could answer this question that you know that in itself, I take that as a pure blessing for myself. Again, as I said a little earlier, I don’t see myself qualified, but I am tempted, and here are my thoughts on this. Yes, it is. And yes, a lot of this is inflated in the media. And a lot of things are being pushed through our throat, which otherwise we don’t need to. And depending upon who has the power and the media can really amplify whatever they want to amplify. All That Is. Now my point to him was that specifically from a religious standpoint, we are one religion. Doesn’t matter how you identify yourself or how I identify myself, we have different identities, but we are one religion, and that’s how we all started. We started from one religion, and that religion, in fact, is still one which is humanity, we are all humans. And as humans, we have some core basic things that are common between us. It doesn’t matter what beliefs and values you have, what beliefs and values I have, it doesn’t matter. But the basics are the same. So we are humans, humanity is your religion.

Now, it’s not appropriate for me to come and say that my father, and my mother, are superior to your father and your mother. I can say my father is superior, I can say my mother is superior, my brother, my sister also beat my wife, my children, Mike gets everybody who I have, and who I have an association with our superior. But I can’t question your associations. I can’t question your interactions, I can’t put down yours. By putting mine up. That’s not knowing what we know, today, the amount of knowledge and wisdom we have, the amount of awareness we have. It just doesn’t make sense. So eventually, it’s one religion, eventually, it’s one spirituality, eventually, we’re all one, this is the truth. And in fact, even today, we are all one. Now, there is an imbalance, there is a value imbalance. And there is an expectation mismatch. And that is there not at a country level, not at a religious level, but it’s also there inside our house. See, no two siblings are same different belief systems born to the same parents have different values have different beliefs and are completely different. How come two Brothers, two sisters, maybe a brother, maybe a sister, maybe several of them, all born to the same parents have different identities, different understandings, and different frames, through which they see life, even though the source is the same, interesting. So because there is value imbalance, and because there is an expectation mismatch within the house, the discrimination exists inside the house, forget about discrimination outside, it’s there.

So as we are as individuals, we, you need to use our own voice, we need to understand, you know, I’m born, I’m aware, I acquired some knowledge. I have some skills, I have talents I exist in, in this community in this humanity, and here I am, for a limited amount of time and my time is finite. It’s a lease, if you seriously think about it, hate just a finite amount of time you have I have, and what’s the point where I need to amplify myself and I need to put you down just doesn’t make sense, doesn’t make sense. There are dysfunctions in you that are dysfunctional, send me I’m not perfect, and I’m not expecting that anybody’s perfect either. So there are imperfections everywhere. And my job is to accept the deficiencies because I am by birth, deficient. By birth, as a human, there are so many things, I lack, and we all lack. So we are united through our deficiencies, not necessarily united through our efficiencies, amazing. Now, we are educated, we are coexisting, I may not be sharing the house that you are in today. But the land that connects your house to my house is common, the air is common. The water is common. I mean, things that are common. All this has been talked about and talked about by multiple philosophers, nothing new, I’m sharing here, or at least I will not share anything new with my friend. But because there exists some sharing, we share some, the premise here is we need to also have an equal amount of understanding that is proportionate to the sharing. So my understanding has to be proportional to what I’m sharing with you, I cannot impose on you and say that I have a bigger share in this you have a smaller share. So my understanding is better than your understanding. I don’t think that’s possible. Eventually, this is where this is going to go. And this was a point I was making. Eventually, we are all going to become one religion. You know whether you like it or you dislike it and that religion’s definition is humanity. Very simple. Yes, there is going to be a lot of peace war, peace war, all those permutation combinations play out in the sequences will play out but it’s going to become one humanity.

Now, this is going to become one. There was some element of humor here. If as per Musk, and as per some people who spend their time understanding the cosmos. If somebody from the cosmos appears today, then it’s very natural, that all of us will have to unite, we have to, and there are movies made on this concept. And there is some truth to this, just because there is nobody here, or at least we don’t see them, or they’re not challenging us, we tend to behave as if we are not well mannered, and we are not disciplined, and the discipline, the manners, all those things will come in, if there is somebody from outside who is going to challenge us. And there are different theories that have now been put forward by people saying that could happen at any point in time. So forget about all that. But just for a moment, just build our understanding based on shared values. That was my In conclusion, no, as a humanity, we are not heading towards any eventuality. We are not every time there has been water that has been pieced, that will be peace, and there will be war, the economies have gone down, they have come up, there will be solutions found to all the challenges that are happening just a matter of time. So as much as we are on the path of destruction, equally or better, we are on the path of construction. So there are new things happening, there are new technologies being invented, and there are new things being discovered. And all good things are also equally happening. But that’s not there in the media as much we are being led through fear.

And as an individual, my message to you is that you strengthen your values, strengthen your beliefs, build your shared understandings, give room for others, operate, and express themselves. And you become a little realistic with your expectations as an individual, and it has to be solved inside before it can be solved outside. So you can’t take a solution to at a level where it is solving issues between countries if you fundamentally cannot solve the problem inside the house. So I hope I answered the question. You say you have to speak your voice, you need to build awareness, and awareness demands that you make a series of choices, some choices are going to be in favor seminar be in favor of your core belief system. But then you have to move forward, you can’t regress back and you got to listen to your own voice. You’ve got to speak your own voice. And sometimes the voices that have been given to us by others are not real. They’re not true. In fact, I did multiple podcasts talking about this. Some of the programming early programming as a child was given to us and we have taken the programming may not be right. I’m not saying all of his all of it is incorrect. But a lot of it is indeed questionable. So you decide to be honest, to tell the truth. And doesn’t matter. Even if you become unpopular. And you need to have a willingness to solve, than to disrupt. That’s the big one, you got to have the willingness to solve them to disrupt. Okay, that’s all those are my thoughts. I could go on.

Actually, one last thing I want to add, you know, you need to have the willingness to see other people at their best. That’s just one value, just that one value, that one shift. You need to have the willingness to see other people at their best when you do that. All the other things, they just disappeared, they just go away. Okay, now I’m done. Hopefully, I answered the question again. Thanks to Sri Gopireddy for asking this question and making me think through this. And if you found value in watching this on YouTube. If it is then just like this video, and subscribe to the channel. If you’re listening to this on the podcast. By all means, leave me a comment. Let me know if you heard this and you think somebody else will benefit from this, please, by all means, do share. And if you have a question for me, you can also call at 888-818-0404 and leave me a message and I will take your question as a voice drop and answer that on this podcast. That’s all for now. Wherever you are, be safe and I will catch up with you tomorrow.

Bye now.