#250: One of my favorite questions for finding clarity

Jay Clouse [00:00:13]:
Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. I had a coach once upon a time, and he told me that our greatest strengths are often our greatest weaknesses as well. And I think that applies to creators because we are so creative that we easily get inspired by new ideas. We've proven to ourselves time and time again that we can create something out of thin air. We can create something out of nothing. And so when we have a new idea that we get excited about, it can be really, really seductive. It can be really tempting to dive all in on that idea, which creates this challenge, which is basically, if I have a bunch of ideas, how do I choose where I should be allocating my time and my resources and my own attention at any given time? And even once I've chosen some ideas, how do I then prioritize which ones I take on in what order? Sequencing is a challenge as well.

Jay Clouse [00:01:11]:
The core problem here is that if you don't know your destination, it is impossible to get directions. It's impossible to ask someone else for directions. It's impossible to build your own directions. There's this really great saying that basically says, you can get to where you're going just by following the length of your headlights. There's some wisdom to that. You don't have to see the entire road to get to a place. But it's really hard to know what direction to drive, what direction to shine your headlights if you don't have a sense of where you are headed. And this is equally problematic whether you're excited by new ideas or you're just feeling totally lost and uninspired.

Jay Clouse [00:01:49]:
And I've had seasons of both. I've had seasons where I am really excited about all the options, the potential, the things I could be doing and I've had seasons where I'm just totally uninspired as well and it's like, does anything matter? What should I be doing? Does it matter if I do that or not? In either case, what is missing is a clear destination that we are headed for. So, just this past week, I was speaking with a member of the lab. We were doing one of our VIP calls and the question was, I have option A or B, which one should I do? And I asked this person, I said, well, just imagine it's three years in the future. Everything went as well as it possibly could have. What does that look like? Let's start there. And you can pick your time horizon. It could be a year from now, it could be three years from now, five years from now, ten years from now.

Jay Clouse [00:02:38]:
I often go back and listen to this episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, or at least as part of an episode from the Tim Ferriss Show. It was published in January of twenty seventeen. The episode is titled How to Design a Life with Debbie Millman. Debbie Millman is a legend in the design space. She has a podcast called Design Matters and she has this thing she calls her ten year exercise and I really really like this. This is something that she teaches to college students And I'll actually just clip the audio from that episode and put it here for you to listen to by yourself. But it's important to note she's going to reference somebody named Milton. And she's talking about Milton Glaser, one of the most celebrated graphic designers in history.

Tim Ferriss [00:03:19]:
Milton taught this summer intensive, I think, for about forty or fifty years, and he used to say that it was one of the most important things that he did. He's not teaching it anymore. He, had us do an exercise in that class where we had to envision the life that we could have if we pursued everything that we wanted with the certainty that whatever it is that we wanted, we would succeed. And I I wrote an essay in February and no. I'm sorry. February. It was supposed to be a five year plan. And, he asked us to dream big and not to edit and said that it had a bit of a magical quality that he experienced with his students over and over, so to be careful what we wished for.

Debbie Millman [00:04:12]:
And I created this essay with these long ranging, far fetched goals that I can tell you now, twelve years later, have almost all come true. It is spooky. Spooky. And so that's an exercise I do now with my students.

Jay Clouse [00:04:29]:
Okay. So in a second, I'm actually going to go back to that same episode, the Tim Ferriss Show. Again, I don't own this content. I am simply sharing the quotes from this episode that I think are really important. But I'm gonna share the next clip, which is Debbie describing the exercise that she gives her students. And I want you to take this and I want you to consider it on your own. I've done this. I actually looked it up.

Jay Clouse [00:04:48]:
I had to go back to my old note taking tool in Evernote. And I read my ten year plan from April of twenty seventeen, which is when I quit my last major job. And a lot of that came true too. It feels deeply personal, so I'm not going to share it here on the show, but a lot of it came true. There were certainly some aspects that did not come true, but I love this exercise because what it really does well, hold on. Let me let me just share first what the exercise is. So back to Debbie.

Tim Ferriss [00:05:20]:
Do you have any parameters for people at home who might want to try this or recommendations, ways to start? Is it blitz, or is it pros and full

Debbie Millman [00:05:31]:
No. It's So it's old paragraphs. Yeah.

Tim Ferriss [00:05:33]:
Any any recommendations for people who would like to give this a stab?

Debbie Millman [00:05:37]:
So let's say it is winter twenty twenty seven. What does your life look like? What are you doing? Where are you living? Who are you living with? Do you have pets? What kind of house are you in? Is it an apartment? Are you in the city? Are you in the country? What are your what does your furniture look like? What is your bed like? What are your sheets like? What kind of clothes do you wear? What kind of hair do you have? Tell me about your pets. Tell me about your significant other. Do you have children? Do you have a car? Do you have a boat? Do you have talk about your career. What do you want? What are you reading? What are you making? What excites you? What is your health like? And right this day, this one day, ten years from now, so one day in the winter of twenty twenty seven, what does your whole day look like? Start from the minute you wake up, brush your teeth, have your coffee or tea, all the way through till when you tuck yourself in at night. What is that day like for you? Dream big. Dream without any fear. Write it all down.

Debbie Millman [00:06:48]:
You don't have to share it with anyone other than yourself. Put your whole heart into it, and write like there's no tomorrow. Write like your life depends on it because it does. And then read it once a year.

Jay Clouse [00:07:07]:
Okay. So, obviously, Debbie's talking about winter of twenty twenty seven because, again, this episode is from 2017. We're sitting here in early twenty twenty five. If you wanted to do a ten year plan, now we're talking about 2035. Now I also understand the pushback that maybe ten years is a long time, and that feels like too much. Maybe it's kind of scary. I know when I initially did my ten year plan, I wasn't in a relationship. Obviously, didn't have any kids.

Jay Clouse [00:07:36]:
I was just starting this new leg of my life. And so, yeah, the path diverged a little bit, but there were some major truisms in that writing or things that became truisms. And I'm making this episode because I'm about to redo my ten year plan. I love this exercise. I love the specificity of writing just a day in the life ten years from now. But again, if this feels like ten years is too long, do five years. Do three years. Now after a really quick break.

Jay Clouse [00:08:05]:
I'll go back to the conversation I was having with a member of the lab and show you how you can apply this to your life and business this week. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. To go back to the conversation I was having with a member in the community. The reason I asked this question is when we have these options in front of us, it is hard to know what to pick because what is quote unquote right? What is correct? Well, right and wrong, correct and incorrect. These things only exist in relation to a specific goal. If you don't know what your goal is, if you don't know where you are heading, what the direction that you're moving towards, if you don't know what that direction is, then you can't pick the right option. But when you do say, okay, if we have options a and b in front of us, let's pause, put those to the side, let's project three years in the future, five years in the future.

Jay Clouse [00:09:03]:
What is this business three years from now or five years from now if everything goes as well as it could? And that's the operative statement here. If everything goes as well as it could, because that grants you permission. It grants you permission to think big, to believe in yourself, and to say it is possible. If everything went as well as it could, here's what I would be doing. Here's what the business would be doing. Here's what my day would look like. And when we think about that, when we set the explicit destination, when we set the explicit goal of where we are headed, suddenly the near term, right now, A or B decisions make a lot more sense. There's context.

Jay Clouse [00:09:46]:
We know what this is adding up to. That is the key when we actually have context for what this is adding up to, because everything we do today stacks up to the greater whole of the story of this business, of the story of your life. All of this is stacking into a greater whole. And if you don't know what the whole is that you're trying to create, then it's hard to make sense of the ingredients, the little pieces, the steps that we're taking right now. And what I find is a lot of times, the time horizons people are operating on, creators are operating on, are very short term. It's, I gotta pay the bills next month, or we wanna have this much in revenue generated this quarter or this year. And when the goal is a revenue goal of this year, that is completely missing the context of the greater destination or the whole because, okay, you hit that goal, the year turns over, what next? And it's back to some sort of arbitrary revenue or metric goal for this year. But for what? What are we doing here? Are we building a bigger business? Are we reaching revenue goals that we can invest in this project so that we can really put a flag in the ground and be known for this thing over here? Like, what what is the context? I think you find, and I've seen this in my own story, I've seen this in other creators that financial success is incredible.

Jay Clouse [00:11:12]:
It's amazing. But once you've started to hit some of these goals, it loses a lot of meaning and you start to question, well, what next? What am I doing

Debbie Millman [00:11:23]:
this for? What what am I actually doing?

Jay Clouse [00:11:23]:
Because financial success on its own just isn't inspiring. It's not all that fulfilling when your needs are met and, you know, you're adding on top of that creature comforts. The financial stuff is just not sufficient to keep you motivated and moving forward. And it's at that point when people go from, well, I've been struggling, struggling, struggling for a long time financially. Now that is no longer true. And now I'm struggling from a place of purpose. What is it that I'm actually doing here? That's when you realize you had this lack of longer term planning, longer term vision. And when you have the longer term vision, it doesn't mean that the immediate term is less challenging, especially if you're in this place of, well, actually, I am in that place of I need to pay rent next month.

Jay Clouse [00:12:13]:
I need to pay these bills. When you have near term financial obligations that are stressful, Maybe what I'm talking about here feels a little bit like a luxury, but I'm telling you, expanding your time horizon will really help you to reach higher heights faster. It seems counterintuitive, but when you don't have a long term perspective and you don't know where you're going, you're kind of at risk of wasting time right now because everything compounds. Everything you do today has an impact on what you do tomorrow, has an impact on what happens next month. You know, everything you're doing right now has the opportunity for a compounding effect down the road. And if you're doing activities today that are extremely short term oriented and will not have any type of compounding enduring value to you or the business a month from now, three months from now, six months from now, there's a huge opportunity cost here because you could be doing things that do have compounding benefit down the road. But you only know that if you are thinking longer term. Everything you should be doing right now should be a part of a greater whole, a part of a greater vision.

Jay Clouse [00:13:27]:
You need to have a destination. I also think about a conversation I had with Brian Harris a few years back. It was Episode 121 of this show. Brian works with a lot of coaches. He is a coach and he had identified that for people to make consistent progress, they need two things, a plan that they believe in and specific action steps that are connected to that plan. And every time I find myself feeling stuck or restless or directionless, It's typically because I either don't have a plan or I've lost belief in the plan that I had and it requires a revision or at least a revisiting of the plan. And I find a lot of creators in this place of it's not really a plan here. It's I'm getting better at making content that quote unquote works, gets views, gets whatever, but I don't have much of a plan.

Jay Clouse [00:14:20]:
And that's what I wanna encourage you to take some time this week to sit down, really put some time into do the Debbie Millman ten year exercise or five year exercise. Think about that day in your life five years from now and then say, okay, what is it that I'm trying to build? Where am I going? What is the greater whole that the work I'm doing today is a part of? That's what I really want you to think about and to put a fine point on it. This episode is titled One of My Favorite Questions for Finding Clarity. The question I would ask yourself is, what if everything goes as well as it could? What if everything happens the way that I want it to? What if I was able to realize all of my goals? What if everything was as good as it could be? What does that mean for what I'm doing today? And am I even happy with that outcome? A lot of times, you might find yourself in this position where you have an idea, but you haven't thought through it. What if that goes as well as it could? Think about a piece of short form content. Think about a reel that you make or a TikTok. If that TikTok were to go mega viral, which is the outcome you would hope for on most content platforms, Then what? Is that a good outcome? Sometimes the answer to that is no. Sometimes that piece of content going mega viral will pull in the wrong audience, will pull in more attention than you actually want, will pull in a new future that isn't actually the future that you're trying to optimize for.

Jay Clouse [00:15:56]:
So anything that you do, I think, should ask yourself, what if this went as well as it could possibly go? What does that mean for the work I'm doing today? And am I happy about that future outcome? That's a question I would have you ponder this week. Do a little bit planning. Think longer term. And you can do multiple time horizons. You could say, here's what I wanna have happen by the end of the year. Here's what I wanna have happen by the end of three years, five years, ten years. But I really love Debbie's exercise of a day in your life ten years from now. Ten years gives you enough distance to think really big.

Jay Clouse [00:16:28]:
And I think that is something that I know I could do more of is think really, really big. Give myself permission to dream even bigger and say, let's take the long ten year time horizon. What does my life look like? You'll be surprised by how doing that exercise will have an unconscious guiding effect on your subconscious decision making because you'll start to understand how if this is my destination, the actions I take today need to have alignment with it. And do they? Does this choice, this option, this opportunity, does it align with that long term vision that I painted for myself? And whether you realize it consciously or subconsciously, having that destination will help you make those decisions. And this is kind of a weird shorter episode. If you liked it, let me know. Leave a comment down below if you're here on Spotify. Otherwise, tweet at me at Jay Klaus or tag me on Instagram at Jay Klaus.

Jay Clouse [00:17:22]:
We'd love to hear from you. We're still looking for more ratings and reviews on the podcast. We never get tired of those to help the show grow. I hope you're having a great week and I'll talk to you next Tuesday.