Paying Someone To Call Me Everyday

Welcome to the Anturas newsletter, where I share my thoughts, learnings, and failures to help you think, learn, and grow. If you enjoy it, please feel free to forward along to friends.

Quote I Loved: 

"What sets highly actualized people apart from those who never live inspired lives is that they do those things that less developed people don't like doing - even though they might not like doing them either" - The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma

Things I Am Thinking About:

I'm making a slight change to the Anturas newsletter. Instead of writing to the audience, you, I am going to write to myself. This will be my journal and I'll share it publicly. This means the content will be similar, but the perspective will be different. Why make the change if the content will be similar? When I first starting writing the newsletter I loved how it gave me an opportunity to write down my thoughts and solidify learnings. As the newsletter continues to grow, I'm finding I've shifted to writing for the reader, which has made it become a task. I want to get back to why I started the newsletter, to journal on my experiences, solidify my learnings, reinforce my journal habit and help people along the way. So here goes…

When have I been most success at making a change? I think it was right after reading Marshall Goldsmith's book, Triggers. There was one part of that book that really hit me, daily questions. Marshall hires someone to call him every day and ask him questions he wrote and write down his responses. That sounded crazy to me at first, but the more I read the more he convinced me of the value. Marshall has over 30 active questions that he answers every day. Active means it starts with "did I do my best to ___." By making them active questions, they become 100% in his control.

When he consistently asks himself these questions it pushes him forward in these areas and highlights what is actually important to him. If he states that improving his relationship with his partner or going to the gym every day is a priority to him, yet each day, and each week, he does not make an effort to do that, than two things happens: 1) he gets so sick and tired of failing himself that he starts doing it, or 2) he realizes it's not actually a priority and he shifts to something else.

I bought in and gave it a try and wow, it worked. The first week there was a bunch of 2s, 3s, and 4s on the sheet. Ouch. I wasn't living up to what I said were my priorities. As an overachiever, that was unacceptable so I started aiming for 8s, 9s, and 10s. I did this week over week for a couple months and I started making massive strides in all the areas I had questions for. Then I stopped. Why did I stop? I don't know. Life got busy, and the time it took to do the 2 minute rundown was deprioritized. I also think putting a mirror in front of my face every day was hard.

I want to get back to these questions, so I'm going to take a page out of Marshall's playbook and hire someone. Yes, I'm going to hire someone to call me every day and ask me questions I tell them to. I just posted a position on Upwork, here we go…

Questions I'm Asking Myself: 

How do I help people remain consistent? How can I help them every day without being there in person?

Favorite Photo From the Week: One thing I love about Whitefish Mountain is that it looks into Glacier National Park! Most of the time you would have no idea because the clouds sit right on the mountain, but when the conditions are just right, the views are incredible. 

Till next week, be kind, be curious and work hard. 

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