Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
Welcome back to Success with Srini. Today on the podcast, I want to share with you the ultimate secret, the ultimate, if there is one like that, well, before I go and share this secret with you, which by the way will help you to create success in any aspect of your life doesn’t matter, you’re looking for a job, you’re trying to make an investment. Maybe you want to start a business soon. Or maybe you’re dealing with a family situation, whatever it is, everywhere, regardless of the situation, this is going to create success for you.
Now, before I go and explain what this is all about, I’ll tell you where this is coming from. Recently, this past weekend, I was at a concert. And I was speaking to a lot of people. And at one point in time, I got into a long conversation with the gentleman in the hallway. And he asked me a question. He said, Really, what’s the ultimate secret? And I said, Listen, when I started my journey, I was reading a lot of books, I was listening to a lot of people. And even though I was doing a lot of stuff, I was engaged. But then I was looking for that one thing, that one amazing, secret, or the ultimate secret or the greatest secret, whatever it is. And I’ll tell you, I couldn’t find any. I don’t have any ultimate secret to anything. Every individual, whoever I spoke to, had their own secret, I’ll tell you my secret if you want to know. But I don’t claim this to be the ultimate secret. So this is what I told this gentleman in the hallway, I want to share it with you. The ultimate secret is that you write down everything that’s happening in your life. You write down everything, anything that’s happening in your life.
So if you have listened to some earlier podcasts that have been done here, I talked about goal setting in multiple podcasts, episodes at the start of the year, talking about goal setting, different kinds of goals, emotional, physical, mental, spiritual, financial, and social, all those goals I talked about very early on, as a part of this podcast. Now, that should be in place, your goals should be in place, and they should be at this point written down somewhere. Now that those goals are in place, there is something else you have to do on a daily basis. And that is tracking your activity to match those goals. So every day, you wake up, and you do the activity, whatever the activity is, and then you write down how the time was used and how you used your effort, your energy, and the time for that given day. Now, again, a little bit earlier on this podcast, I talked about to-do lists. So before I start the day, I have a to-do list. And the to-do list has everything clearly called out some strategic some tactical stuff, like things that I have to do anyway. And things that are operational, for example, I have to cook I have to clean, I have to give medicines to my dad, whatever it is those activities are all called out in my to-do list. Those are operational things.
Obviously, the podcast, this podcast is also a line item. This is the to-do daily to-do. So this is operational stuff. But then there are some creative things that I need to do on a daily basis. For example, I need to send an email, I need to do a webinar or I need to do a seminar, whatever it is, I have to plan for those. There is a line item there on my to-do list. But then there’s also maybe 30 minutes or 60 minutes of time allocated for the activity. So at the beginning of the day, before the night before the new day, I have a to-do list. And then on the day, I follow the to-do list, and I get the things done as many as I can. At the end of the day, I write down everything that I accomplished and everything I did not and I’d write a narrative at the end of the day saying this is my new learning. These are some mistakes I made these are something that I could have improved but I did not today. So I measure so let’s say one of the to-do items was to go hike.
And at the end of the day, I know exactly how much I liked the amount of time the amount of distance the number of calories I burned. My heart rate when I was going up and coming down and whatever my heart, the lowest and when I started the highest I touched my heart rate, all of that I have data. The beauty of all this is some of the activities are tracked by sensors on our body, like My watch, my smartwatch tracks, all my calorie burn some activities, I need to track, for example, the input of my calories, I have to track all that. But then the point is, at the end of the day, I write down everything. And now what I do is over a period of a long time, maybe across 20 days, or 30 days later, like two, three weeks later, I know exactly where I started, I know exactly where I have, I am at that point in time. So I know the delta I know, you know, the way I progressed. So if I have a to-do item of going to the gym, and I do not go to the gym, it’s there already. It’s Clear, it’s there, and then in the write-up. So I have these journals that I write, and I should have done this earlier. And this could have accelerated my growth, not talking about success, but growth in general, in a much bigger way, in a much faster way, in a much deeper way, than, me doing it now at this part of my time.
So if you study all the successful people, you will see that, obviously, they all read a lot, they all many other things they do. But then there’s also something about ultra-successful people, which is that they write. So that’s the secret is anything that you are trying to achieve today, I want you to start writing, as you’re making progress. Now as you’re writing, you start to see, it’s very difficult to report your own activity to your own self because you are the boss. Because you can’t lie to yourself. When you write, you can lie to yourself, and you tell yourself Self things. So if I would tell myself, everything I’ve done today, up till this point, there could be some discrepancies. But when you sit down and write and you’re writing and you’re starting looking into the data, you can’t lie. You know, it’s something about writing, you cannot.
Now, at this point, you might be thinking, what are the different tools? What kind of a journal do I need to buy to write, it doesn’t matter. The medium doesn’t matter as such. So I use an app on my iPhone to track my day to day activities the app is called to do. So go look it up. I think the To-Do app is also available on Android too. So it’s there. So the medium doesn’t matter. How long should you write? How short should you write? Doesn’t matter write as comfortable as you are, but be honest to yourself. Now writing part is also on a schedule. So the night at the end of the day, I write down maybe four or five or seven lines. But then that part is also scheduled right before I go to bed, I write down everything that I’ve done for the day. Now, is it possible that some days you do not you cannot write and you’re busy or traveling? All that is fine, it’s okay. Don’t make missing? Right writing the journal is a habit. Don’t make don’t turn that into a habit. But as long as you are keeping up, you’re keeping a record of everything that you’re doing on a daily basis. Occasionally, one or two days you miss, that’s okay. But then you got to stay honest about the process.
Now, two things it does. One is it tells you immediately the modifications you have to make tomorrow. And the day after gives you it gives you a graph, makes things that you can change. So that means your reaction time drastically goes down towards achieving any goal. So it’s not like you are working towards a goal. And at the last minute, you figured out that you’re lacking 20 different things. In this kind of approach you don’t, you will not lack 20 different things because you’re catching the problem at the near end, not the forehand. So this is the secret. This is the ultimate secret. There isn’t an ultimate secret. In fact, there isn’t. There is no, there is no secret to anything. And this whole thing around. I know the ultimate secret and there is this greatest secret ever found. There isn’t this is life. It has its own flow.
Now, I did share this with other people too in the past. And people ask this question I got this question also, is who should read the journal? Not? My father wrote journals. And I have never read those journals. I don’t know why he was writing. He wrote it for 25 years. And I have all the journals around and I never read those journals because I don’t know what I’m going to encounter there. And I don’t know how I don’t want to change my opinion on anything. So I have not read the journals, honestly. And that might be some history there. There should be some references to things that I can discover, and all that’s all fine, which I’ve done also. But then this is a journal that you write for yourself. You’re going to read it and you probably are going to destroy it. So this is for you, by you, and will go away with you. So keep it private, keep it secure, and privacy and security. These are definitions that are only meaningful to you. Okay, I can’t define what privacy is and what security is for you. So it’s your own definition of yours. So that’s all. Hopefully, this is helpful. Hopefully, this helps. Hopefully, you can see where I’m coming from. Do this. Do it for about maybe 20 days or 30 days before it becomes a habit. And then you let me know how your life has changed.
That’s all for now on this podcast. We’re going to catch up with the podcast tomorrow I’ll have a new concept, a new idea. Maybe a question from you. I’ll be answering. So wherever you are, be safe. I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. Bye now.