Defeating Distraction and Why “To-Do” Lists are Dangerous with Nir Eyal

Brandon: Hey, before we started the show, I wanted to give you some cool news about a chance that you may have to appear on the BiggerPockets podcast on a bonus. Ask me anything episode. Really. So here’s the deal, you know, we think at BiggerPockets, we think real estate investing is amazing. It’s like the best thing since sliced bread.

I don’t know who came up with that phrase, but it’s awesome. Right? And I’ve heard from thousands of people who tell me that it’s changed their lives for the better, just like it’s changed mine. Now, if you agree with that, I’ve got a really. Easy way for you to share the good news of the bigger pockets, real estate podcast with people in your network.

And you might just win a chance to be on this show. So here’s how to do it. Go to biggerpockets.com/share that’s biggerpockets.com/s H a R E a. You’re going to get a link there that you can share with people, you know, and if 10 of those people check out the show, then you. Are entered in for a chance to appear right here with me and David on a bonus Q and a episode of the BiggerPockets podcast, besides then all your friends get to see the power of real estate investing as well.

And who knows, maybe somebody will do a deal with you someday. All right, well thank you. And enjoy the show. This is the BiggerPockets podcast show for 19.

Nir: Does anybody need to buy a relationship book to tell us that, Hey, if you want to have better relationships with your friends, your family, your children, you have to be fully present with them.

We know this, the question is not. That why we don’t know what to do. We all know what to do. The question is how do we get out of our own way? How do we stop getting distracted?

David: You’re listening to BiggerPockets radio,

Nir: simplifying real estate for investors, large

Brandon: and small.

Nir: If you’re here looking to learn about

David: real estate investing

Brandon: without all the hype

David: you’re in the right

Nir: place,

David: stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have

Brandon: benefited from biggerpockets.com.

David: Your home for real estate investing.

Brandon: Online what’s going on. Everyone. It’s Brandon Turner host of the bigger pockets podcast here with my co-host and crime. Mr. David Green, David Green. How’s it going, man? What’s uh, what’s the shaken in Northern California right now.

David: Well, we don’t have any fires. We did just get good.

We went backwards as far as everything has to shut down. So that’s a little bit of a bummer, but it’s okay because we got a breath of fresh air. We got to go out and eat at restaurants for a little bit of time. So overall things are going very good. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time planning for 2021, uh, like time-blocking time where I come up with the goals that I want to hit for 2021.

Cause that’s really important. And today’s guest talked a lot about that. Very thing. Math

Brandon: definitely did. And speaking of a restaurants go and being able to go out to restaurants and bars, a monkey pod here in Maui opens in. Uh, 40 minutes ago for the first time in almost a years. And for those who don’t meet, that is my favorite restaurant on the planet.

Uh, it is unbelievable. So as soon as I hang up from this call, I’m going to Monkeypod with my beautiful wife. So let’s get to today’s show because there are things that are important and this show is honestly, one of them. This is one of my favorite interviews I’ve ever done. I know I say that a lot. Uh, but this is so you’ll hear my excitement.

Like, as we talk through this stuff, because this is like everything I’ve been talking about for months and months and months now, uh, about like identity and managing our time and being distracted, our guests today, I’m going to probably butchers even by practice, like 20 times, but near that’s the first name near, uh, near IUL.

Uh, so he’s an author. He’s a, uh, Know, he’s written a couple of amazing books. We’ll talk about those in the show today. Uh, he’s a tech entrepreneur all around wicked smart guy. He taught, taught at Stanford and we just honored to have him on the show today, talking about, uh, things like distraction, things like how to keep focused, how to set the right goals, how to plan your schedule, why things like to-do lists are a horrible idea.

What matters more than intensity in trying to invest in real estate. Uh, we talked about a lot of this stuff. Uh, It really, really valuable stuff today. So you guys make sure you listened to the whole interview, but before we get to the show, let’s get to today’s. All right. So today’s quick tip is we are announcing a challenge here on the bigger pockets podcast and David and I are going to challenge you to do something we’re going to call it the take time to think, uh, the 40 challenge take time to think.

And here’s all it is. You’re going to understand why we’re challenging you to this later in today’s show, but this is the challenge. Whatever day you were listening to the song. I don’t care if you’re listening to some of the day it comes out or a couple of days later, or a year later, I don’t care. We want you to take two hours this week, right now.

Go to your schedule, calendar, your Google calendar, whatever you use and schedule two hours. Where you’re going to unplug no phone, uh, no music. And you’re going to just think, grab a pad and paper. And you’re gonna think about your business, your life, the next year, what your goals are, what you value in life.

I want you to say two hours and then David and I are going to report. We’re going to make a post on our Instagram this week. Mine is at beardy Brandon. David’s at David Green, 24. And here’s what I want you to do. We want you to go on that thread and comment. What you got out of your two hours, uh, to thank your take time to think challenge.

So and Dan explain. All right, David, take time to think challenge. Yeah, it’s

David: really important. What we want everybody to understand is there’s often things that are kind of floating around in the back of your head that are the right move for you in life. Your subconscious, trying to speak to you, and we get so caught up with gotta do this, gotta do that.

Gotta keep everything so busy because it feels productive that you miss out on what could be right in front of your face. So Brandon and I do this regularly. We want you to experience it too. Don’t confuse busy-ness for productivity. Take some time to think, to see what rises up from the surface of your mind.

And then you usually have a more clear head when it comes to prioritizing what you should be doing. And what’s going to get you where you want to go.

Brandon: There it is. So it’s the take time to think challenge. You can look for hashtag take time to think challenge. You’ll find more information about that there.

David: Hey, Brandon, for the people that we pick, what are they going to win?

Brandon: Yeah. Okay. So we’re going to pick three people each three from my Instagram three from your Instagram. And, uh, we’re just gonna pick people who left us a comment on that. Uh, Instagram posts and those three people each, so six total are going to win any three books they want from the BiggerPockets store.

So we’ve got a whole lot of books. They’re going to win any three books from the store. And with that said, let’s get to today’s show sponsors. You know what vacation rentals can be a super profitable niche of real estate investing. But with that additional income comes at Tohn, more management will, rather than advertising and cleaning a rental.

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Turnkey with their vacation rental investments by visiting TK, vr.com/join that’s TK. Write this down. TK vr.com/join. All right. And I guess we’re printed. Ready to jump into the show. Now, keep in mind. This show is not specifically real estate related. Remember we do the weekend episode, which is more about mindset and productivity and success.

However, we are relating all this stuff back to real estate investors, especially during the out-tro of today’s show. So after we hang up from near. David. And I are going to unpack for a few minutes about some things that real estate investors can use from today’s show to grow their business and to become more successful as a real estate investor.

So make sure you listen to all the way through to the end and then the outro where David and I will unpack this a little bit more without further ado. Let’s get to our interview. All right, near welcome to the bigger pockets podcast, man. It is awesome to have you here.

Nir: Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Brandon: Awesome. So let’s, let’s jump into this. Uh, I want to know, let’s start with this before. I mean, you’ve written a couple of books, uh, and you’re, you’re well known for these books, but before it became an author, man, what, what’s your background? What’s your story? Just kind of give our audience, if you could. I just a little bit of who you are before be near the author.

Nir: Sure. Yeah. So let’s see. So, uh, I started a couple of tech companies. Uh, the first was in the solar energy business back in 2003. Uh, sold that a couple of years later, uh, after I climbed on too many reus installing solar, uh, that was my first guy in the business that got me off the ground. We professionalize this or this, um, uh, company before solar city and companies that ended up going public with this business model.

But we’ve got a great opportunity. You’ve got bought out by a private equity firm. Uh, and then decided to go to business school and applying to one school. And thankfully got in, uh, went to, to Stanford graduate school of business, uh, started another tech company. And, uh, after that company was acquired, I had some time on my hands and wanted to figure out like, you know, what I wanted to do next.

And I had this. Conviction that the future of business would rely upon habits. That if you could be the kind of company that figures out, how to get people to engage with you, because they want to not because they have to out of habit, not because of constant pings and dings, uh, then you would have a huge competitive advantage.

And I looked for. Hey, where’s the book on how to build habit forming products. And I couldn’t find one. So I started researching and writing about this field about this consumer psychology behind habit, forming products. And then that led into a teaching role at Stanford, uh, at the graduate school of business.

And then I moved over and taught many years at the Hasso Plattner Institute of design at, at Stanford. And, uh, then ended up publishing my book, hooked how to build habit forming products, which was based on that research and those years of teaching. And then most recently, five years later, uh, recently I published another book called in distractible, how to control your attention and choose your life, which tackles the other side of the story of hooked is about how do we build good habits in our life.

Uh, then in distractible is about how do we break the bad habits? How do we focus on what is really important to us in our business, in our life? How do we make sure that we can truly control our attention and therefore control

Brandon: our life? That’s awesome. Um, so it’s interesting your books kind of cover both sides.

Cause the first one is almost like here’s how to, if you’re a business, how to distract people, is that, is that a misconception of that?

Nir: Not to distract how to build habits with people. So you don’t, you don’t wanna necessarily distract them a distraction. Is that makes sense? Yeah, but you do habits with them.

Brandon: Okay. Agreed. A hundred percent. I feel like half of our conversations at BiggerPockets is like, how do we, how do we get our users to. You know, to do the good habits that we want them to do. Right. How do we get people to take the right kind of action? And so I suppose then it’s really not, it’s not the opposite.

It’s really the same thing is how do we stay focused or at least not distracted. Uh, so we can do those accomp, those, those things that matter most.

Nir: Exactly. It’s about having that together and eating it too. Right. Then I think we can get the best out of technology without letting it get the best of us.

Brandon: Yeah. And that’s where I really want to, I would love to focus. Today’s talk is on this idea of being in distractible. Uh, but before I get there real quick, just because you brought it up about the idea of that had the habit forming and the, not just the pings and dings, and you said that remind me of that.

What’s the Netflix thing that’s really big right now. The social dilemma. Is that what it’s called? Like yeah. Yeah. W w I w I’m assuming you’ve seen, or at least, you know of it,

Nir: I’ve seen it. And I was interviewed for it actually I’m in the closing credits. Unfortunately, they didn’t use my three hours of interview, uh, because I contradicted their narrative.

The movie had a very specific agenda, by the way. I don’t know what your question was, but

Brandon: I’m going to go.

David: Yeah, that’s what I want to know.

Brandon: That’s what I wanted to know. I want to know. What did you think? I mean, I hate it. Okay. Well, I’ll come. I’ll come.

Nir: Well, I’ll tell you what, let me start with the good first, right?

I’ll give you a feedback sandwich, which is that, uh, the good part was that it raises awareness, uh, about what’s going on. The bad part is it’s the equivalent of calling jaws, a documentary about sharks. You know, it was gloom and doom and fear and, uh, addiction and hijacking your brain with no solutions.

And I think that that is not only inaccurate, it’s dangerous. And look, I know every one of the tricks that these tech companies use to get you hooked. I wrote the book hooked. I know all everything they do. Uh, and I will tell you that the techniques are good. They’re not that good. This isn’t, this isn’t mind control people.

Aren’t puppets on a string. And what I really. Hated about the movie was that they didn’t tell us anything about what you can do about it. And the sad reality is for the movie maker is to happy reality for us is that it’s actually not that hard, that there’s so much we can do right now to put these technologies in, in their place, as much as they talk about the, these algorithms and the computers pointed at your brain and how it’s hijacking you.

And it’s addictive. It’s almost like, do you, do you ever see that movie, Indiana Jones? Well, I’m sure you did right. As a kid, right? You knew that. Yeah. Amazing movie. Remember when the Indiana goes out to the bizarre and there’s this guy all in black and he has two swords and he started yelling.  the office fancy stuff with a sword.

And it’s very scary. It’s exactly what’s happening right now in terms of the depiction of social media with these films. Oh my God. These tech firms, they have computers, they have algorithms. I got so scary. And then what is Indiana Jones? Do?

Brandon: Right. What does he do?

Nir: He looks at the guy exactly. Gun with one shot, bang shoots him.

And that’s exactly what is happening with us. We are Indiana Jones. Right? How about the bang is turn off your stupid notification settings people, right? How hard is that? That’s not the only solution, but it’s one of many solutions. And guess what? Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey. The F the, the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook, they can’t do anything about that.

Right? They can’t reach back into your phone and turn them back on. So as opposed to telling people why they’re powerless, why they’re addicted, why it’s hijacking their brains, which is nothing but disempowering, victimization, garbage, let’s tell people what they can do about it. Are we going to hold our breath and wait for the politicians and the tech companies to fix this for us?

Or can we do something about it right now? And I believe we absolutely can.

Brandon: No dude, that’s such a good point about the victimization. Like, Hey, I’m, you know, I can’t help it. Um, I, you know, I’m, I’m a victim, I’m a addicted because of the, you know, big, smart algorithm. That’s making me use my phone on Tik TOK, 19 hours a day, scrolling like that.

It just, it makes us, you don’t solve the problem. If you just think that it’s like, you know, extreme ownership is one of my favorite books by Jocko Willink. And it’s all about like take ownership of the problem. Like. You don’t have to wait on somebody else to do it for you. That’s phenomenal.

Nir: Yeah. There’s a lot of problems in our life, right?

There’s lots of things that can go wrong. This happens to me. One problem. It’s actually not that tough to solve. And that’s why I wrote in distractible. I wanted to give people exactly the steps that we have to take. And let me tell you, it’s not just about our technology. Right. We like to blame the latest distraction, right?

Every generation says, Oh, this, you know, today it’s social media. Before that it was the television. When I was a kid, it was rap music and heavy metal, but all it was rotting kids’ brains. We’re going to turn them all into Satanists. Uh, and before that it was the radio. Before that it was the novel before that it was the written word.

Socrates 2,500 years ago, talked about how this terrible new technology. Of writing things down and was going to in feeble men’s minds, people have always said this about every new technology and you know what some people do get victimized by this technology because they believe they are powerless.

They believe there’s nothing they can do. So they don’t even try. It’s called learned helplessness, whereas the real. Victors are the ones that say, look, I’m going to take the best parts of this technology. I’m going to use it to enhance my life. And I’m going to put it in its place. I’m going to use it in a way that serves me as opposed to me serving it.

Brandon: Yeah. That’s, that’s amazing. Hey, Y you know, to commit to writing a book on a subject, you’ve gotta be pretty like. Into, I mean, I’ve written books, David’s written books. Like it’s an, it’s a haul, you know, it’s a lot of work. So why in distractible? I mean, what, what in your background, what in your, your, your, I mean, I’m assuming it wasn’t just a Saturday morning, you woke up one day.

You’re like, yeah. I think distraction is a good thing to write about, like what got you into that? So for

Nir: me, you know, I write my books when I have a struggle in my own life that I don’t have an answer to. So for me, it was really about, uh, the fact that I kept getting distracted. Uh, and there was one particular incident, uh, about five years ago.

That really helped me reassess my relationship with distraction. I was with my daughter one afternoon and we had this beautiful day plan, just some daddy daughter time. And we had this activity book of things that. Dads and daughters could do together, uh, you know, do a Sudoku puzzle, uh, origami, you know, all these like different little activities.

And one of the activities was to ask each other this question, if you could have any superpower, what superpower would you want? And I remember that question verbatim, but I can’t tell you what my daughter said, because in that moment, I was distracted. I was looking at my phone and doing something. I don’t even know what, and by the time I looked up for my device, my daughter was gone.

She left the room to go play with some toy outside. And I realized that I had blown this perfect daddy-daughter moment. And so that’s really where I decided that I had to reconsider my own relationship with distraction, because if I’m really honest with you, it wasn’t just with my daughter. It would happen when I would sit down at my desk at work and say, okay, I’m going to focus on that big project.

I’m not going to procrastinate anymore. Here I go. I’m going to get to work, but let me just check email for a few more minutes and do everything. But that thing I said I was going to do, Oh, I got to make those sales calls. Now I’ll do that a little later. Let me do other stuff for a little bit. Uh, it would happen when I would say, Oh, I’m going to get in shape.

Right? I’m good. Today. I’m going to eat right today. I’m going to go to the gym and I wouldn’t. And so what I realized is that the superpower I would most want would be the power to be in distractible to simply follow through on everything I said I was going to do because today, you know, the problem is no longer that we don’t know what to do.

Who doesn’t basically know how to get in shape. Do we really need to buy a diet book to tell us to eat right. And exercise? Does anybody not know that chocolate cake is not as healthy for you as you know, a helpful salad? We know that why don’t we do it? Does anybody not know that too? Be better at your job.

You have to do the work, especially the hard stuff that other people don’t want to do. Do we need to buy a management book to tell us that? No, there’s no secret. Do the work. Does anybody need to buy a relationship book to tell us that, Hey, if you want to have better relationships with your friends, your family, your children, you have to be fully present with them.

We know this, the question is not that why we don’t know what to do. We all know what to do. The question is how do we get out of our own way? How do we stop getting distracted? And so that’s really what I wanted to focus on. And I didn’t find a comprehensive guide to how to do that, because this is really, I think the skill of the century, because if you think the world is distracting now, Just wait a few years, you know, technology is becoming more pervasive, more persuasive.

The world is becoming only a more distracting place. And so I really think that the world is bifurcating into two kinds of people, people who say to themselves, look. My time and my attention is mine. I decide how I will control my time and my attention and my life and people who let their time and attention be manipulated by others.

And so I wanted to make sure that that, that I was in distractible and that I raised my daughter to be in distractible.

Brandon: That really is a super power. I mean, I think, yeah, if there, if there’s anybody listening to the show right now, if you could just completely like focus. Uh, beyond, you know, on one track when you want it to be every single time and it may be impossible to do every time.

We’re not going to be perfect, but like, I don’t think there’s anybody out there listening to this right now that doesn’t think, man, my life would be so different. Like everything like I could accomplish so many more things, a related story to yours. It’s funny. I got a four-year-old daughter, her name’s Rosie and.

Hour ago, we’re sitting in the living room and I’m on my phone. Right. Like scrolling through something or doing something. And my wife’s in the room as well. And they’re talking, my wife and my daughter are talking and then they say something and said, and my daughter says, daddy, is that okay, daddy? Is that okay, daddy?

Is that okay? And I said, yeah, honey, no problem. And then I looked up and I realized, and she’s squealing. And my wife looks at me and goes, okay. And I go, I have no idea what you just asked me. And I was like, wait, What did I disagree too? And she said, uh, Rosie just asked if she’d get her ears pierced today.

I’m like, Oh, Oh, this is, this is a longer conversation we didn’t have, but now I admitted to it. So distraction. So, okay. So if that’s the problem, if it’s distraction, like is, is the, is that the problem? And then like your book basically goes into some of the solutions for that. I mean, what is, what is the problem we’re getting at here?

Is it. Is it the technology, it’s not the technology, right? It’s something else. You said

Nir: technology. No, it’s much deeper than, than the technology. And I think that, that, that surface level analysis that people like to, you know, lazy out and just say, Oh, it’s the technology that’s, what’s causing all my problems.

It’s, it’s a, it’s a very lazy solution. And let me tell you, that’s actually what I did first. Right? I thought. That technology was the problem. So, you know what I did, I got rid of my iPhone and I bought a flip phone, like one of these things that we used to use in the nineties, you know, with no apps, no internet connection.

And then I got myself a word processor. I bought it off of eBay, you know, like leftover from 1992. I got it from some library that was, that was closing. And it had no internet connection. All you could do is type on it. And I thought, okay, great. I got rid of all the fancy new technology I got rid of the internet.

I got rid of the apps. And I thought, okay, that’s it. I won’t get distracted anymore. Cause that’s what the problem is. Right. No, because as soon as I would sit down to do my work, I would say, Oh, you know what? There’s that book, uh, on the bookshelf that I’ve been meaning to finish it up or, Oh my desk, you know, I really should tidy up my desk work.

Oh my goodness. Look at the trash. I need to take out the trash. And I would keep getting distracted by one thing or another, because distraction is nothing new. It’s been around forever. Play-Doh talked about it 2,500 years ago. He called it a Krassi have the tendency to do things against our better interests.

So it’s nothing new. So the first place to start to understand how do we get out of our own way? How do we become in distractible is to start by understanding what is this term mean? What is the word distraction even about? And so the best way to understand what distraction is, is to understand what distraction is not.

I thought I understood, but I didn’t that the opposite of distraction. If you ask most people, they’ll say, okay, what is the opposite of distraction? They’ll say the opposite of distraction is focus, right? Isn’t that the opposite of distraction, not really opposite of distraction is not focused. The opposite of distraction.

If you look at the origin of the word is traction that traction and distraction both come from the same Latin root , which means to pull. And you’ll notice that both words end in the same six letters, ACTE, Iowa, and that spells action. So traction by definition is any action that pulls you towards what you say.

You’re going to do things that you do with intent things that help you live out your values and help you become the kind of person you want to become. The opposite of traction is of course, dis traction. Distraction is any action that pulls you away from what you plan to do further away from your values, further away from becoming the kind of person you want to become.

So this is a lot more than just workplace. This is super important. Here’s why for two reasons, number one, anything can become a distraction. Okay. My daily routine, before I embarked on this line of research. I would sit down at my desk and I’d say, okay, here we go. I’ve got this big project to do. I’ve got these sales calls to make.

I got this, you know, things that I’ve been procrastinating on that I’ve been putting off. That’s it. I’m going to get them done. Here I go. I’m going to get started nothing’s in my way. No more procrastination right now. No more, but first let me check some email. Right. Let me just do those things on my to-do list real quick.

That are easy to do. Let me just check a few of them off because that’s work-related right. Isn’t email kind of a work-related task. I’m being productive, right? Yeah. Well, What I didn’t realize is that I was allowing myself to succumb to the most dangerous form of distraction. That kind of distraction that tricks us into prioritizing the urgent and the easy stuff at the expense of the important work.

Because even though email is a work related task, even though that’s something I got to do sometime today, it’s not what I plan to do with my time. Therefore, it is a distraction and it’s a much more dangerous form of distraction than playing video games. Because if I was playing video games at my desk at work well, that’s pretty obviously a distraction.

It’s a kind of distraction that tricks you, right? Oh, I’m just checking email. That’s important. Right? Well, if it’s keeping you from doing the thing, you know, you need to do. It’s a distraction and it’s even more dangerous. So that’s point number one, anything can be a distraction, even if it’s work related.

The second point is that anything can be traction. So I am not one of these chicken, little tech critics that says, Oh my God, all technology is bad. Video games, bad. Social media is bad. It’s addicting. You it’s hijacking your brain rubbish. Any of this stuff is fine. You want to watch a Netflix movie? Great.

Do you want to play video games? Awesome. Whatever it is you want to do is fine. As long as it’s on your schedule and according to your values, not the tech companies. So, if you want time to scroll social media, do it. I’m not going to tell people not to do that stuff. Who says that, you know, playing a video game is somehow morally inferior than watching a football game.

There’s no difference if that’s what you want to do with your time on your schedule, do it, but make that time. That’s how you turn distraction into traction. You put time on your calendar for those things. Okay. So now we have traction. Mean, we have distraction right now. The question is what prompts us to take these actions?

We have two types of triggers. We have what we call external triggers, things that are outside environment, the pings, the dings, the rings, anything in our outside environment that can lead us towards traction or distraction. And that’s what people tend to blame. Right? We tend to blame all these things outside of us.

Sure. But that is not the leading cause of distraction. Okay. And this is a really important point. The number one cause of distraction is not what is happening outside of us, but rather what is happening inside of us, we call these internal triggers. The number one reason we get distracted by far is not because of our technology.

It’s not because of our kids. It’s not because of our boss. It’s not because of the stuff outside of us. It’s because of our inability to deal with uncomfortable sensations. These are called internal triggers, boredom. Loneliness fatigue, fearfulness, uncertainty, anxiety, stress. This is why we get distracted because we are looking for an escape from emotional discomfort.

So whether it’s too much news, too much booze, too much food, too much football, too much Facebook, we will always find an escape from reality. If we don’t know how to deal with these uncomfortable emotional States, which means that time management. Is pain management. Let me say this again. Time management, his pain management, none of the guru’s tips and tricks.

None of the time management BS you’ve learned will work. If we don’t start by mastering our internal triggers. So that’s step number one to becoming in distractible is mastering internal triggers. And it’s not that hard there’s stuff that everybody can do. We don’t have to go see a psychiatrist. We can do use these techniques in our day-to-day life to understand what is driving us to distraction and doing something about it.

The second step now we’re just going to work around these four points. The second step is to make time for traction. The third step is to hack back the external triggers. And then finally, the fourth step is to prevent distraction with pacts. This is how we become indestructible. All right.

Brandon: So I want to, I want to break these four things down.

I think this is a, this is, this is awesome by the way. And I love that you’re talking about the difference between, you know, distraction and traction. Cause, and I might be miss misunderstanding this, but I think this is what you’re saying is like traction is like you’re in intentions, like what you want to do, what your life’s about, or at least what you’re at your, your activities about it.

Is that a good way of looking at that? Yeah. Anything

Nir: that’s on your calendar? No simple as that. So when you want to know somebody’s values. Don’t listen to what’s coming out of their mouth, right? People can tell you all kinds of values. Oh, I value my kids. I value my health. I value this. I value that I don’t care.

Show me what’s on your calendar and what’s in your checkbook. That’s your values. So what you put on your calendar, this is how we turn our values into time. That’s what, that’s what traction is because here’s the thing. You can’t call something a distraction. Unless, you know what it distracted you from?

Think about that. People say, Oh, I w I got so distracted today. Did you see what happened on Twitter? And president Trump said this, and the news is this. And my kids wanted that. And my boss wanted this. I didn’t get anything done. Right. I got distracted. But then you say, wait a minute, what did you plan to do?

Not what was on your to-do list, but what was on your calendar? What did you schedule to do at that time? And then they’d look at you funny and they say, Oh, um, Nothing. There’s nothing on my calendar. Just blank, white space. So you can’t call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from, which is why we have to plan our day.

And so I teach people exactly how to do this technique that we call timeboxing that has been studied. And literally thousands of peer reviewed studies, it’s called making an implementation intention, just a fancy way of saying, planning out what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. But it turns out to be an incredibly effective technique.

And is the only way to know the difference between traction, what is on your calendar, what you plan to do according to your values and everything else is a distraction.

Brandon: Yeah,

David: that’s a really good,

Brandon: I once heard this story. Um, you probably heard it as well. I don’t even know if it never actually happened, but they basically said it to the study of like this people who want to lose weight and they wanted to work out during the week and they divide them into three chunks.

Right. The first chunk said, okay, go work out second group. They said, go work out. And here’s some motivation, you know, read this pamphlet. And the third group, they said, when are you going to work out? And what time, you know, like what day and what time and where I think it was right. And it was like 300% increase of that group that just said when and where, like I’m gonna work at the gym.

On Tuesday at 5:00 PM. It was like, yeah, three times. Right.

Nir: Yeah. It’s, it’s so true. It’s, it’s so true. And it’s so basic and yet almost nobody does it. I know we keep to-do lists. Right. And I hate to do lists. I rally against to-do lists. Not that writing stuff down is a bad thing. Getting stuff out of your brain is a great idea.

The problem is. People run their life on a, to do list and they’ll do the easy stuff. They’ll do the fun stuff, but they won’t do the stuff that really matters the important stuff. Right. That gets procrastinated day after day, week after week because they say, Oh yeah, sometimes a day, I’ll go to the gym sometime today.

I’ll start on that novel. Sometime today I’ll make my phone calls for, to, to call my sales leads. And it doesn’t happen because it doesn’t have a place on your schedule.

Brandon: That’s so good, man. I got this, we have this journal, you know, there’s a lot of success based journals out there and stuff. But I have one that I, that I put together a few years ago, we sell it on bigger pockets.

But on there I have a spot. You write down like your three goals that you want to do. And then part of it says, uh, if the weekly, like the weekly plan, it says w what day and what time you’re going to work on this thing. And then what is that? The smallest next task. I call it the most important next step.

It’s like, I have this theory, right? Everything in life, everything, no matter what, I mean, brain surgery, you could call it, you go flying to, you know, go to Mars, build a rocket. Everything is made up by like five minute tasks. And they’re usually not very complicated. Send an email, pick up the phone, you know, analyze this property.

If you’re in real estate. Call this real estate agent, whatever. They’re like, they’re like five minutes simple tests. The problem is we don’t ever identify what they are and we don’t put them on our calendar. So then we just go and check our Facebook instead. So it’s like that simple act. Like I feel like changed my life and obviously, you know, it’s exactly what you’re preaching here today.

Nir: Normally, I would actually push it just one step further. Not only say what you are going to work on, but not measuring yourself based on the output. I think where a lot of people get stuck is that they say, okay, I’m going to analyze this property. Let’s say, okay. And you know, the worst is just to put, leave it in your head.

That’s that’s you’re never going to get it done if you just leave it in your head. Okay. Then the next level is I’m going to write it down. I’m going to put on my to-do list. Okay. That’s great. That’s a little bit better. The next level is to say no, no, no. I’m actually going to put this on my calendar.

Okay. Analyze property on my calendar Tuesday at two o’clock. No, there’s one more level. There’s one more level of, of efficiency that we find the people who do this step are even more efficient. It’s not just about completing the task. You know, many people, they measure themselves based on did they, what they finished.

Right. This is the, to-do what I call the tyranny of the to-do list. The problem is that we have what we call a planning fallacy in psychology. We know that people are horrible at knowing how long something will take them to finish. Right? This is the planning fallacy. On average, we think something will take us a third, as long as it actually does.

Tends to take you three times longer to finish a task than you predicted. Well, so the

Brandon: remodeled the

David: house. Yeah. That’s so true.

Nir: Oh my God. Yeah.

David: Have you ever seen a contractor come back and be like good news? It was way cheaper than what I actually thought. It’s always, this is the best case scenario it could ever possibly be.

And then, yeah,

Nir: exactly. Three times more expensive and thinks three times longer. We need to acknowledge that fact and stop measuring ourselves based on output. And this is why the to-do list methodology is so dangerous because what you’re doing, if you have a long to-do list of a hundred things, you didn’t get done day in and day out, you are reinforcing a self-image of someone who doesn’t do what they say.

They’re going to do someone who doesn’t live with personal integrity. Another day went by and I still didn’t do that thing. I said I was going to do loser. And that mentality starts to take a toll over time. We start believing this. We start believing, Oh, I just have a short attention span. Oh, I’m not very good with time management.

Oh, I’m not very good with details. We start believing this BS and that, of course, then we start and for me to that belief. So instead what’s the alternative, the highest level of personal productivity is found with people who don’t plan the output. They plan the input super important point. Right. So if you say like, uh, let’s make this concrete.

Okay. So if you go to a Baker, okay. And you say, Hey, I need you to make me 10 loaves of bread. Okay. He’s going to say, all right, I need yeast. I need flour. I need sugar. I need salt. I need all the input to make the output. Right. But what’s our input. As, as people who are, you know, in real estate knowledge workers, what’s our input.

Two things, time and attention. That’s our flour, sugar, yeast. We need time and attention, but we don’t plan that stuff. We just expect it to appear. And many times it won’t because we haven’t, we don’t have those key ingredients to make what we want. So that means don’t measure yourself based on, did I finish, rather measure yourself on one thing and that is, did I do what I said I was going to do for as long as I said, I would, without distraction.

Let me say that again. Did I work on what I said I would work on for as long as I said I would without distraction. So if it’s analyze this property, don’t put, finish analyzing the property, say to yourself, work on analyzing this property for 30 minutes. But I’m going to do that without distraction. And that’s how I’m going to measure myself.

So maybe I won’t finish in 30 minutes. That’s okay. That’s okay. But now I begin to learn how long different tasks take me. And what you will find is that people who use that technique of planning, the input, not the output, they are actually more productive. They finish more of the output than the people who just keep stuff on it to do less than to expect themselves to check it off, uh, all day long.

David: You know, I noticed this applies in a lot of other areas of life. Like when I go to the gym, I noticed there’s a lot of people that will say, all right, I’m going to do three sets of 10, and then they do it and they check the box and they say, okay, I’m done. But what if you had another two sets in you that you could have got a better workout, but you let yourself off the hook because you said, okay, I got what I wanted done as opposed to the mentality, I think is better, which is if I get done with three sets of 10 and I have something left, go until you can’t go anymore.

Keep like push yourself to get the very most that you can get. And Brandon, I actually echo a lot of these concepts on webinars that we do for bigger pockets that we’re talking to new investors and trying to help them understand that there are certain things that you have to do to be successful. For instance, investing in real estate like writing offers is a huge, huge piece of being successful.

It’s very easy to get caught up. Um, asking yourself the question of, what am I going to do if a toilet drips and think about that for four hours, they got, you know, closer to your goal, but it, Brandon will say, you need to write this many offers a week. And I think this would be a good thing to start adding in there.

You need to set aside this much time a day with a specific purpose of analyzing properties. You need to set aside this much time a day for the purpose of talking about which offers you’re going to get written to. Is that in line with what you’re describing?

Nir: Totally. Totally. So the idea here is that constraints make us better, which is a very counterintuitive insights that people think, Oh, I want my, you know, my ultimate goal is to have freedom throughout my day.

That’s where, you know, if I just didn’t have these burdens. On my life, then I would be successful. Oh, I would be a successful real estate agent. But you see the thing is I got these kids, I got my day job. I got all these burdens. I got all this stuff, keeping me from doing what I need to do to be successful.

But in fact, I would argue it’s the constraints that make you more successful. But if you ask an artist, what’s the hardest part of painting a, a portrait. It’s the blank canvas. Right. If you ask an author, I know this from personal experience, what’s the hardest part of writing it’s the blank page is when we don’t have some kind of constraints.

So the problem with being outcome-driven output driven and saying, okay, I need to make this many phone calls per day. Is that there is no constraint there. This is what’s wrong with the to-do list methodology of, of running your life with the to-do list. It’s endless. I can add things that I need to do.

Incidentally, right. There’s no, there’s no end to it to do list, which is why most people have to do lists that go on and on and on, but they never finish. And then they get into this pattern of, you know, going from one day to the next and the next recycling, the same unfinished tasks. And that’s what we’ve talked about, how toxic that is for our self image.

Whereas when you add a constraint of time, There’s only 24 hours in a day. I don’t care if you’re Jeff Bezos or bill Gates, doesn’t matter how much money you have. You still have the same 24 hours in a day. That is a constraint we all must deal with. So it forces you to prioritize the hardest part about being successful in business.

Is learning the skill of prioritization. You know, I’ve made many, uh, angel investments I’ve invested in over 25 companies over the year three unicorns. And let me tell you what I always look for in a CEO is the ability to prioritize that is the only job of a CEO. That is the only job of a, of a solo entrepreneur is to prioritize, but you cannot prioritize unless you have a constraint.

So when you say to yourself, look, here’s how many working hours I have in a day. Because I want to spend time with my kids. Right? I want to have breakfast with my kids. I wanna have dinner with my kids because I want to go to the gym because I want to do all these other things. I forced you to turn your values into time by making time for traction on your calendar so that you can realistically assess, Hey, what do I want to do with my time?

As opposed to, Oh, I just want to do everything. That’s impossible. If you say you want to do everything at the end of the day, you’ll have done nothing.

Brandon: Yeah,

David: that’s really good.

Brandon: Hey, let’s take a quick break from this episode. We’ll continue in just a moment, but first let’s hear a word from our sponsors.

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And then that’s the gist of it. Anyone add on that,

Nir: turning your values into time. So this is a, this is a really important point. So what are values, values? People think they know what values are. I didn’t really know that. And this is another word I thought I knew the definition of, but I didn’t values are defined as attributes of the person you want to become.

Attributes of the person you want to become. So what I give people are these three concentric circles that we have to ask ourselves, how would the person I want to become, spend their time? Right? So there’s three life domains starting with you. So that’s where you first start. If you can’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of your business.

You can’t take care of other people. So ask yourself. What are the attributes of the person I want to become when it comes to taking care of myself, right? How would the person that I want to become, take care of themselves? What would they value? Do you value physical health? Is that important to you? And by the way, I’m not saying you should, but whatever your values are, put that on your calendar.

If exercise is important, is it on your calendar? If prayer is important, if meditation is important, if Hey, playing video games is important to you. Great. Put it on your calendar first. Okay. The next part. Your relationship, that’s the next life domain. And so part of the reason that we have a loneliness epidemic in this country, primarily among men, by the way, is that we don’t have the time set aside for the important people in our life.

Right? And this really strikes men more than others. We know that loneliness is as dangerous to our health as smoking and obesity because our fathers and grandfathers. Had regular things on their schedule. They had the bowling league, they had the Kiwanis club, they had the church, a group. And what we’ve seen over time, the past several generations, and this is nothing new that Facebook didn’t do this.

This is something that’s been happening since the 1990s people attend fewer and fewer of these organized schedule events with friends. And so we just let our relationships get whatever scraps of time or leftover. And that’s a mistake. So, whether it’s with your friends, your family, your kids, your spouse, hold that time on their schedule, on your schedule for them.

And then finally, the last domain is what we call the work domain. And this is where work gets separated into two types of work. We have what we call reactive work and reflective work. Okay. Reactive work is the time spent reacting to stuff, racking, a phone calls, text messages, Slack notifications, emails, that’s reactive work.

And most people, especially in real estate spend most of their time in that zone, just reacting to stuff all day long and they spend no time doing what we call reflective work, reflective work is the planning, the strategizing, the thinking, the making sure that you’re running in the right direction, as opposed to just running real fast in the wrong direction.

If you want a huge competitive advantage over other people in your industry. Make time to think, you know why? Because nobody else is doing it. Nobody else is doing it.

Brandon: I love that. You said that. Cause I just implemented that like a month ago. So I’ve got a real estate fund, like a company and we buy, you know, big real estate stuff.

And uh, I have like a, uh, integrator who’s like the guy that like runs most of my businesses and his Walker and I basically. Said, I’m going to take two hours. And I thought of scheduling it on my time every week. It’s only two to start with. I want to bump that up, but I literally wrote thinking time on my calendar.

And then I told my guy Walker, I was like, I know you’re reacting. Like he’s busy as we’re going a hundred hours a week. He’s got twins at home. I’m like, I know this is a hard thing for me to ask, but you’ve got to start at least two hours a week. You got to have that time that I want you to be alone without a cell phone with a pad and paper somewhere in nature or somewhere in a coffee shop.

And just think, and he’s like, I don’t know if I got the time I’m like, that is the thing, like, that’s what, that’s what you get like we have to do as leaders of business or, or people who want to achieve great things in life.

Nir: Amen. I mean, that is so important because again, you know, if we don’t do that, we’ll run real fast in the wrong direction.

And so that’s what we want to prevent. So what I say is I don’t really care how much time you make, but make that time, put it on your calendar and protect it. And you say, Oh, I’m so busy. I have this, I have that. Okay. What if one of your childhood heroes. Called you up and said, Hey, I want to have lunch with you.

Okay. Uh, I don’t know a political hero sports here. I think of you’re the person you would most like to have lunch with and they called you and said, Hey, I really want to sit down with you and talk with you. Would you make that time? Of course you would. And so what about yourself, the most important person in your world?

Do you make time for yourself to have a meeting, to check in, to see me? Hey. Am I living the life I want in my business and my personal life. Am I headed in the right direction? You have to make that time. Or frankly, somebody is going to make that time for you. Somebody is going to plan your day for you.

Brandon: Yeah, that’s such a good point. I had a friend one time looked at my calendar. I was just complaining to him about how I was so busy and blah, blah, blah. And he looked at my calendar and said, that’s cause Brandon, you’re scheduling your distractions. You’re not scheduling your life, your intentions. Right.

And he’s like, and I’m like, what do you mean? And that’s what he’s like, look at your calendar. Like, why don’t you have a date scheduled on your calendar? Why don’t you have time with your kid on your calendar? Why don’t you have this and that like. Oh, that’s because I’m trying to fit them in everywhere else, but it’s like the rock analogy.

We’ve all heard. I’m sure you put the big stones in the jar and then the pebbles fit around it. It’s like schedule the things like this is what you’re saying, right? The value, the things that you value or the kind of person you want to become, the identity that you want to become, you schedule those things.

Yeah. I love

Nir: the metaphor I like to use is this, this is particularly apt for the real estate industry. It’s the residual benefactor, right? So when a company goes belly up, The residual benefactor is whoever receives whatever scraps are left over. Right? So like after the debt holders have been paid, the equity holders, whatever little scraps are left for the residual benefactor.

And that’s what we make our relationships into. I mean, my wife told me this, my wife and I met in an economics class in college and she turned to me one day. She was like, look with all the important stuff you have in your life. I get whatever’s left over. That’s not fair. Right. And so we have to make time for those relationships in our life, by putting time for them in our calendar.

David: So good.

Brandon: And I’ve been dominating this whole thing, David, anything you want to jump in before we, uh, move?

David: Yeah, I would say when it comes to someone’s goals, how do they know what’s a good exercise? They can go through to figure out what their things should be, that they should be calendaring.

Nir: Yeah. So I’ll give you a link for the show notes where I built a tool.

You don’t have to buy the book. I mean, the book has a much more thorough explanation, but I also built an online tool. The idea here. Is, instead of focusing on the goals, we want to focus on our values. We want to focus on the input, not the output. And so the way we want to do this here, just to be very clear is by, by literally putting that time in our schedule, I meet with so many people who do, Oh, I made a vision board, or I’m going to make a five-year plan, or let’s talk about the regrets of the dying and all this stuff.

That’s like someday instead, why don’t we just talk about tomorrow? Right. Let’s just talk about how we’re the person you want to become. You want to spend their time tomorrow. If you can just do that exercise. And I’ll give you a link in the show notes for, for, uh, for my blog, where I give people exactly a tool, I built a tool online it’s totally free.

You don’t have to sign up for anything to show you exactly how to do this, but that time boxing exercise is really the most important first place to start because, you know, accomplishing your goals. Is the by-product of doing the work. And I think a lot of people don’t, I realize that they, they think, okay, I I’m just going to write down my goal and it’s going to come to me.

Like, just say, it’s going to happen. It’s going to, no, you have to do the work. It’s just like, love. It’s just like friendship. You can’t go out there and demand. Hey, someone, I need you to fall in love with me. I need you to be my friend. No. How do you earn love? How do you earned respect? How do you earn friendship?

You put effort into it, right? You do the work and then love friendship, wealth, all these things accrue to you.

David: Yeah, that’s really good.

Brandon: That’s really good. And I think that’s a good question. Something I’ve been posing to people more often lately, and I’d love that you brought it up today is like defining new who it is you want to be.

What is that identity you want to step into? Who is that person you want to become? Like, and then ask yourself the question. What would they do? Like, like if you want to become a multimillionaire. Okay. What does a multimillionaire do every day? Like, that’s a really like simple question. And if you don’t know, go find a multimillionaire and ask them.

I mean, there there’s. Uh, a fair number of them. I did a poll it’s on my Instagram. 22% of my audience are millionaires like of my, of my followers on Instagram. And obviously I skew a wealthier audience, but it means that they’re, they’re the people listening to this podcast. If 20, some percent of these people are multimillionaires, you can find them around the bigger pockets community.

You go to conferences, whatever, find out what they do every day. But my guess is deep down, you know, what they do every day, you know what they value. That’s that’s

Nir: what they do a really, really important point. Uh, because I talked about this in a few places in the book, around the research around why behavior change, necessitates identity change, and it’s going to help us or hurt us.

That you know, by people thinking they have a certain identity, I can really hurt them. I mean, how many of us walk around saying to ourselves? Oh, I’m so easily distracted. I have an addictive personality. Uh, I, I have a short attention span. We tell ourselves an identity that, of course we conform to.

Brandon: I’m not a morning person, right?

Nir: I’m not a morning person. Oh, I just, you know, I, that’s just, not me. I can’t, I’m not into entails. I’m bad at math. We bombard ourselves with these self image that really does hurt us. And so one, we need to disavow that, that self image that doesn’t hurt, that doesn’t serve us. Uh, but then also we can adopt a new self image that does serve us.

And so this is why the book is titled in distractible, in distract. It’s a made up word. I made it up and in distractible is supposed to sound like indestructible. It’s supposed to sound like a superpower so we can begin calling ourselves. Even if you haven’t read the book. It’s okay. Today, if you’ve heard this podcast this far, you can call yourself in distractible.

You are the kind of person who strives to do what they say. They’re going to do the kind of person who lives with personal integrity, who is as honest with themselves as they are with others. You are indestructable. Man.

Brandon: That’s so good. That’s such a good point. Yeah. The identity that we give ourselves, like it’s almost like the actions we do help form the identity, but then the identity also seems to form the actions we do in this cycle.

That just ruined. I mean, when I was younger, just to give a quick example of this, I, I had no problem talking on the phone to people. I had no problem whatsoever, but somewhere in my twenties, I started saying, I don’t like the phone. I don’t like talking on the phone to people. And I started believing that more and more.

And today I’m like, Terrified of the phone. I would have terrified the wrong word. I just, I hate phone calls. I don’t do them. And the more I tell myself this, the more I don’t do them. So then the more I get reinforced in that, but that’s just an identity I created for myself and I can create another one.

Nir: And this is why by, by the way, I’m bringing the conversation full circle back to the social dilemma movie. Uh, and why I think it’s so dangerous. Because the popular narrative right now is technology is hijacking your brain. You are addicted, your kids are, you know, there’s nothing they can do because the algorithms are controlling them.

So what do people do? Nothing. They think, well, it’s out of my control. I can’t offend you. Right. I’m bad on the phone. Why should I even practice and get better? There’s it’s hopeless. And so we have to fight against this. This is not true. We should not believe these self stereotypes that sabotage us and rather rewrite the narratives of our identity that serve us.

David: That’s such a good point right there. It’s not so important. What people feel about the documentary, the social dilemma, because as you mentioned, there were some very good points made in there. It was great for raising awareness. It’s the overall danger. That’s very latent and easy to miss that. The minute you say that things happening.

And so I can’t help it. You have now. The apps, the opposite of empowered yourself. You’ve disempowered yourself to where you’re not going to make changes. You’re not going to take the actions that would be required to get there. Brendan. And I say all the time real estate investing is not rocket science.

We are not that smart. And we’ve done really well with it. It’s about taking action. It’s kind of like going, you know, working out, you don’t have to be really smart to work out, but it’s a pain in the butt to do it all the time. If you don’t make it a habit, if you don’t see it as part of your identity, I am fit.

I am an athlete. I value health. It’s very hard to make yourself go to the gym. So that’s what I love about what you’re saying is that you are making it difficult to continue to tell yourself the excuses that will stop yourself from making the choices that will give you the life

Nir: you want. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, one of my life mantras that I repeat to myself every single morning is consistency over intensity. Consistency over intensity. You know, we, in our culture, we prize intensity, right? Oh, new year’s resolution. I’m going to go to the gym. I’m going to lose 20 pounds. I’m going to know, you know, it’s all about intensity, but that’s not where real results come from.

Right. You can’t. You can’t, you can’t make a baby by, by having nine women pregnant for a month each right. Things take time.

Brandon: You have to, with that analogy

David: about a density,

Brandon: can’t make a baby. But anyway, yeah,

David: that’s a great point. I think it all the time and I, my personality tends to value intensity more than.

I think I’m going to go in there and outwork everybody, but then you go to the gym once a month and it doesn’t do any good. You’re just super sore. The next day. You never really got any stronger that, that consistency is so much more important. And really once you develop consistency, then intensity can actually play a role, right?

Once you’re consistently going to the gym and your body can handle it, then you can really push yourself and get a better workout. And you try to do that in the beginning and all you do is hurt yourself. So that’s a great mantra.

Nir: It’s the same thing with adopting the techniques in my book. Like I do not want people to adopt everything I say all at once, take small steps, right?

Because as you said with the, the analog with working out is, is perfect that you said that, you know, if you’re the kind of person who works at once a month, not only are you crazy sore, what tends to happen it happened is called moral licensing. Moral licensing is when I’m good in one area of my life. So I can be bad in the other.

So what do most people do when they say, and then you use resolution, Oh, I’m going to go to the gym every day. I’m going to work really, really hard. They go out of the gym and the first thing they grab on their way out is that John  sugar. Right. And say, Oh, I deserve it. I worked so hard. And of course they set themselves back.

It’s the same thing with working hard, right? Oh, I worked so hard that I’m in now. I’m going to take a break. Now I’m going to ease up and you’re not training your ability to get stronger and stronger over time. Whether that’s in business relationships, working out the same exact analog and the same thing with becoming in distractible, uh, which is why I don’t condone people going cold Turkey or digital detoxes or throwing your kids X-Box, uh, into the trash.

It doesn’t work that way. Right. We have to make these small changes consistently over time.

Brandon: That’s awesome, man. Well, of course we want to recommend everyone can pick up a copy of the book and distractible, where, where can they get the book? I’m assuming everywhere, Amazon, et cetera.

Nir: Yeah, it’s it’s available.

Wherever books are sold. There’s also an audible edition for that. Those of you who like to listen to audio books, uh, if you go to my blog, I will recommend there’s the free supplemental workbook. And you can actually get it, whether you buy the book or not, we actually couldn’t fit it into the final edition of the book.

It’s a free 80 page workbook. It’s helpful whether you get the book or not. And that’s at my blog in the blog is near and far.com near a spelling. My first name. So it’s NIR and far.com.

David: That’s awesome. Awesome news near. Is that the best place for people if they want to find out more about you or connect, is that blog your, your recommended source?

Nir: Yeah. Yeah. It’s [email protected].

Brandon: All right, man. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I’m uh, I’m just in love with this interview and everything we’ve talked about today. This is like, this is my jam right here.

David: So

Brandon: I think that if people just like listened to this a couple of times, like, so every area of their life improves when you can be in distractable.

Nir: So thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. It’s a lot of fun.

Brandon: All right. That was the interview with near IOL. Uh, I hope I’m not butchering his last name cause he tried to even coach me through that several times before, before we set a recorded and

David: I still probably wouldn’t be your first time.

My

Brandon: friend would not be my first time. So a fantastic episode, like I knew it would be because I love that stuff. I think that’s so valuable and something I wish I would’ve learned 15 years ago. I mean, 50 years ago, I guess I was not born, but 15 years ago. When I was just a wee lad, it would have improved so many areas of my life for the last few years, because I am easily distractable.

And so, yeah. Super cool. What’d you think, and then you want to pull out and digest on it a little bit. Exactly

David: what we like to talk about on the weekend show. This is okay. You know what to do. Let’s talk about how you can make yourself do it better. Yeah, I like that. He took a different stance on the social dilemma than we tend to hear from most people because the documentary brought up a lot of good points, but then there’s also something to be said, For not taking personal responsibility when it comes to things that distract you.

And I really want everyone to understand. I think that was near his point was to say, Hey, you don’t have to see yourself as a victim of everything in the world is distracting me. It’s not my fault. We can reframe our identity, make different choices and put ourselves in a position where we focus on what’s most important.

What I want to ask you, Brandon, as someone who for years has helped new investors getting started, what are some of the things that you think new investors should be? Timeboxing to make sure that they get done to help them meet their goals?

Brandon: That’s such a good question. All right. Uh, we talked about on the webinars all the time, but I’ll just repeat it here.

If you don’t have on your calendar right now, time to analyze deals, like, what are you, what are you doing? Like, what are you really doing? Like, I mean, this that’s the game that’s like saying you want to lose weight. You don’t have on your calendar, you working out or eating healthy. Like, I guess you want to eat unhealthy on your calendar, but like, you wouldn’t have a plan for eating healthy, right?

Like you need to put on your calendar time to analyze deals. Consistently making an offer, right? Attending open houses, driving for deals, get your car and drive around. And I love that he phrased it about consistency over intensity. Like you don’t need, I spend four hours or five hours a day or eight hours a day.

Invest in real estate. I honestly, any, anybody can be build a successful real estate portfolio in under 15 minutes a day. That’s all it takes. If you are just consistent everyday moving the ball down the field a little bit more. You can do anything. So the little things are it’s. They take time to journal every morning.

Please write down what your goals are, write down what your most important next step is on your goal. Uh, take a couple minutes to analyze a deal, make one phone call every day where you call somebody like a real estate agent or another investor in your market. Just that one little thing. If you consistently do that, read a book, listen to a webinar replay, listen to a podcast.

Those are the inputs that NIR was talking about today that we should be judging ourselves on. Not the output is only getting the deals accepted today. Well, that’s fine. Did you do all the inputs that you needed to do to be able to get those happening? Long-term what do you think?

David: You know, it reminds, reminds me of the lead measure.

Verse lag measure points that we’ve made before that look focusing on an output is like focusing on a result. That’s a lag measure. Uh, say the example that we give is, well, what did I weigh today? Checking yourself on the scale. By the time you are measuring an output, it’s too late. You didn’t do anything about it.

Whereas focusing on the input, which is, did I work out? What did I eat as much more important? So you’re, you’re literally just being intentional about the things that are going to get you, what you want. If it’s losing weight, it’s your diet. You would say, I’m eating this today and I’m eating it at this time.

And you’re making sure that it goes that way as opposed to waiting until after you’ve made the choices and then measuring what your result was. And that’s what successful people do in business. We call these KPIs key performance indicators and business consultants are constantly saying, what do you have to do to get whatever your goal is?

If you’re a real estate agent, it would be how many people did you talk to today about buying or selling a house? That’s your KPI. If you weren’t doing that, you were just busy. You weren’t getting anywhere for real estate investors. It’s analyzing deals and writing offers. If you start and you’re consistently doing that, you find yourself with plenty of stuff to keep you busy later.

Uh, and that’s just where I want everyone to understand. This can be so much more simple than how it feels. It’s focusing on those key performance indicators, those inputs that are going to get you what you want and making sure that you get those things done every single day. Yeah,

Brandon: that’s so good. Hey, last point.

I want to bring up that. I just thought it was so good to talk on it. We could do a whole show just on this sometime. And that’s the idea of identity I’m like, and I wish we would have dove in it more. We just didn’t have the time to go everywhere I wanted to today, but he mentioned that like the things we do, like the integrity we have with ourselves, like the way our self image, like if you are somebody who.

It turns the alarm clock off every morning, even though it goes in and then go back to sleep again, you are telling yourself that you are right. If you tell yourself you’re gonna go to the gym tomorrow, and then you don’t go, you are telling yourself, and you’re reinforcing this idea that you are a liar.

You are establishing an identity with yourself that you are a liar. And therefore that carries over to the other areas of your life. So if you say I don’t, I’m not a morning person, that’s an identity. You’re, you’re giving yourself. If you tell yourself, you know, I’m big bone that’s identity, you’re giving yourself giving.

You’re like trying to. The excuse off yourself, try to put the ownership on something else rather than taking responsibility for things like your own success. And so, uh, I just wanted to give like that in everyone’s mind to start thinking about what identity are you giving yourself? Uh, and if like you can say, I am giving myself the identity of a successful real estate investor.

Great. Then we do what he said. Ask yourself, what would that person do? And then start doing those actions. And even though you might not have that identity yet, you can at least say that same identity. I am pursuing. So I’m going to pursue the activity that, that identity pursues, and therefore, I will eventually become that identity because my actions define my identity and my identity reinforces my actions.

Does that make sense? Am I explaining that? Well, David, why did it get so powerful?

David: What you made me start thinking about is how we notice every time in. Uh, a real estate investor actually gets their first property. They never stop at one. They always keep going. And I bet you, it has something to do with this fact that an identity shift, a property, you say, I am an investor that you take the actions to get the second and the third and the fourth so much easier.

And it just really rolls. Yes. And before that, it’s okay. I’m not a real estate investor. I’m scared of all these things. I don’t know what to do, but once you get the property, even if it’s not a great deal, like we’ve said before, your next, your next properties almost always are. So that identity shift would be a great place to start.

If you’re not having the success, you want be honest with yourself. Do you see yourself as who you want to be?

Brandon: Yeah, it’s so good. So maybe this year, when people are doing their goal planning sessions, they shouldn’t even know goals are good in terms of, I want to buy this many properties or whatever, but maybe you should have an identity goal in there and a goal that says not just what I want to do, but who you want to be.

Right. So I want to be somebody who analyzes deals every day. I want to be somebody. Who regularly talks with real estate investors every single day as part of my day-to-day life. Like those are identity type topics, you know, a year ago I said, you know, I could have said, I want to lose weight, but I really want to lose weight because I don’t want to get muscle.

I don’t really have a, it’s harder to find that. So I said, my goal was like, I want to be somebody who works out. I said this a few weeks ago on the show, but I’ll say it again. Now. I want to be someone who works out daily. Like, that’s an identity I’m trying to adapt. Is I just, Oh yeah. I just, that’s part of my life.

I work out and there’s guys that I know in my life who, that’s just what they do. It’s not about looking good or, you know, or, or losing a certain amount of pounds. It’s just, it’s an identity who they are for. Decades of their life. They work out every day. It’s just part of it. They have an exercise every day.

I want to be that person. Uh, and so that’s the identity that I’m pursuing right now. We’re one of many, right? Uh, so again, ask yourself, what identity do you want to adopt over this next year? And maybe set that up.

David: Might be something to spend your time to think challenged. Thinking about, there you go.

There you go. Take the time to think challenge.

Brandon: Yeah, the 14th, the TTT challenge, uh, hashtag take time to think challenge, uh, on Instagram. Make sure if you want to enter that. Uh, did I say what you’re going to win? I don’t even think I said that in the intro, what person could win, uh, by doing so you actually get to win any.

So we’re going to pick, um, six total winners. Dave is going to pick three on his Instagram. I’m gonna pick three on mine. All you have to do is go to our Instagram right now. Beardy Brandon or, uh, or David Green, 24, I should say, after you do the take time to think challenge. Do those two hours, we’re going to take two hours to go think and just process your life, think of what you want and all that.

And then let us know what came out of those two hours in that thread on the post. You’ll know what the post is. Cause it’s going to say take time to think challenge, big words, right on the Instagram posts. So, uh, let us know. We’re going to pick three winners from each of us. So six total winners and the winner gets to pick any three BiggerPockets books and we’re going to send them to you in the mail.

So it doesn’t matter. What about 25 books or something like that? You can pick any three. And we’ll send them to you. That is the take time to think challenge

David: right on.

Brandon: All right. Well, with that said, let’s get out of here. David. You want to take us out?

David: Thank you very much. This is David Greene for Brandon.

Take time to think Turner the five T’s signing off. You’re listening to BiggerPockets radio

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