12 Strategies to End the Year with a Bang
Your Final Bucket List Countdown

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #603: 12 Strategies to End the Year with a Bang: Your Final Bucket List Countdown

Jeff Sanders
Good morning and welcome to The 5 AM Miracle, episode number 603: 12 Strategies to End the Year with a Bang: Your Final Bucket List Countdown.

I am Jeff Sanders, and you have reached the podcast that is dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer, and to learn more about that, head over to jeffsanders.com slash speaking.

Now, in the episode this week, I'll break down 12 strategies you can use now to end your year strong and wrap up those bucket list goals from last January.

Let's get to it.

So let's just jump right in with number one on this list.

I love the idea of ending the year strong.

And in order for that to be true, the very first step is to make a list of what you would love to achieve before the next January 1st.

So let's imagine that you were here a year ago and you made a list of here are my goals for the new year.

And January 1st rolled around and what did you do?

Probably had a lot of energy actually and probably began to work aggressively on one or two of those goals and really saw a lot of progress.

But then what tends to happen?

It's now the middle of January or the end of that single first month.

And your progress has waned.

You've gotten tired.

You've bitten off more than you can chew.

And you realize there is no way you're going to be able to maintain this pace for 12 solid months.

And so the goals kind of fade a little bit and February shows up, but your progress is not that great.

And by the time March rolls around, you've basically stopped.

and the goals themselves really are going nowhere.

And it's not until now.

Middle of November, you're nearing the end of the year and you realize, wait a minute,

I had these goals from a long time ago that I was really passionate about.

But I didn't do enough.

In fact, I am far from finishing.

What do you do?

How do you find yourself in a position where you can end the year saying those big goals I had set could actually be fully accomplished, absolutely.

finished, or at the very least, you have made significant progress on them

and can then finalize them in the next new year.

All that to say, I have given this kind of rant before in this podcast about

how much I do not like New Year's resolutions.

I find that entire concept to be silly and usually counterproductive.

I'm going to go ahead and repeat that rant right now, in case you've missed it before,

mostly because it will set the stage for the rest of this conversation.

Now, let's imagine that you are a high achiever.

You have goals you want to achieve that are significant to you, to your business, your career,

and you decide to arbitrarily draw a line in the sand on the first of the year.

Why would you do that?

You do it because society tells you this is a good time for new goals, but means nothing.

There's no tangible difference between December 31st and January 1st.

first besides a little digit that changes on the calendar.

Usually, especially in Nashville, in that time of the year, the weather is really

crappy.

It's not a really great time to feel inspired.

In fact, if anything, my kids are out of school.

I'm very busy with them or holiday plans still that are wrapping up.

And it's just a terrible time to actually start something of significance.

I find that time of the year to be some of the laziest, most useless times of the

year for me.

But it's very little that I actually get done on the end of December, early January timeframe.

And so I've never found January 1st to be inspiring at all.

I do get the idea that the calendar year is a nice little bucket to put things into.

But the one thing I know to be true about goal achievements, the one thing that is undeniable,

is that you work on things when the emotion is at its peak.

You don't do things because they're logical.

Nobody does. We do them because they are emotional, because we care, because there's a reason to have this momentum to go do something.

Now, having said that, there could be emotion and momentum for you at the top of the year.

Maybe you have some sort of a new gym membership you're going to join again and then quit later on.

Or maybe there's a group that's now formed and they're going to kick off some brand new adventure at the top of the year.

and you join a group that has emotion and momentum.

If that's the case, you could ride that wave for a while.

But just like everyone else's goals at the top of the year, that emotion will fade.

And it will not last very long, and you will need a better system to rely upon.

What I have found to be the most effective goal achievement strategy for leveraging emotion is to tap into your own self-awareness of where you are right now.

Who cares about January 1st or March 8th?

or June 2nd, the date don't matter.

What matters is where you are and what you are excited to pursue now.

And so this very first step that I wrote down here for you to make a list of what you would love to achieve before the first of the year.

The word love is very important because what that means is that you are tied to it emotionally.

You are making a list of things that would be meaningful and significant to you.

and because of that, you are much more likely to have that momentum be built up to go pursue it.

Now, let's also go with the angle of the fact that if it's close to the new year for you at the time you're here in this episode,

and you say, well, I want to get these things done before this certain date.

Well, what is that?

That's urgency.

That's a sense of, I have to move quickly because there's a deadline.

There's a boundary in place that is forcing me to take action that previously was so full.

far away that I did not have the motivation to do the work.

This is why I despise New Year's resolutions.

Twelve months is far too long of a time frame.

We cannot estimate the entire year.

We cannot think about what is possible over the next 12 months.

Too many random things are going to happen to throw off your goals.

What you can control is you in the moment.

You today right now saying, I care about this today.

I'm going to take action on this right now and build systems to help me take the

action even when I don't care, even when the emotion has faded.

For most of us, the motivation follows the action.

We have to actually do work to then feel the emotion because of that and build

the momentum to take the next action.

All that to say, if you sit around waiting to be inspired, waiting for motivation,

you're going to wait a long time.

And in fact, you may wait until the deadline of you.

approaches, and then your motivation is now stress. It's now overwhelmed with the fact

that you're behind schedule. That's a terrible reason to do things. You don't want to

approach something that matters from a sense of stress. Yes, it is effective in many

cases, and that can make a lot of arguments to why that is technically a strategy to choose.

But it's not the first one to choose. It's not your best option. Your best option comes from

pursuing goals you're emotionally passionate about, and the time frame means nothing.

Because you're so into it, you want to see amazing progress and you want to move

as fast as possible naturally without this force of a deadline looming over your

head and making you stress out and lose sleep because of it.

Let me pause here.

I'm getting really rancy today.

Sorry about that.

But one thing that I've seen in myself in the last couple of months is I have been incredibly

passionate about this personal finance journey I've been on, all these new investments

that I've been making and restructuring of all of our accounts for our family

and for my business.

And one thing that I have seen in this last season is that I have not been this

emotionally charged about investments or money in my entire life.

There is absolutely something that has shifted and I really care right now.

I do not know if I will care this much in the future, but I know that I do.

now. So strike while the iron is hot. This is the time to make those moves.

And the other projects that I had put on my calendar for this season of the year,

I have postponed because I don't have the energy for those things. I don't have

the momentum or the passion for those right now. I probably will down the road,

but that's not true in the moment. What's true in the moment is that I care about this

particular project, so I'm going to put as much energy as I can into it, get a lot of

progress towards that goal? And then as the energy fades, which inevitably it will,

I will then pivot to the next area that I then care a lot about. That's what seasons are.

That's what focus looks like on a grander scale beyond just a single day's work.

This is the kind of lifestyle, this project-based lifestyle, that leads to tremendous

growth over time, where your life is very unbalanced, right? You're not doing all the things well.

You're doing one thing super well and everything else is kind of ignored.

But that process leads to tremendous growth that otherwise would not be possible.

And all that to say, this inspiration that I had to work on personal finance.

The original kind of nugget for that started last April over seven months ago.

And when that little nugget came into my brain, that little spark of an idea, I took action then.

Well, the middle of April is not January 1st.

Like, why did I not have this idea at the top of the year?

Ten years ago when I should have cared a lot more about investing back then.

Well, the simple answer is that epiphany's happen when they happen.

Inspiration strikes when it strikes.

And I'm not interested about the date on the calendar.

I'm interested in having more creative breakthroughs.

I'm interested and passionate about getting more passion.

And so my entire lifestyle, the way that I work and the way that I pursue new ideas,

is all based on that concept that I want to live a life where epiphanies can show up all the time.

Why not?

Why wait for one season of the year, one moment on the calendar to actually then fake that you care about whatever it is?

You're going to start and then quit two weeks later like most people do most of the time.

I don't want to see you in that position ever again if you've been there yourself, right?

I knew very early on that January 1st was not.

a good fit for me, so I abandoned that idea a long time ago. But a lot of people

still give it way too much credit. And it doesn't work. The problem here is that

it backfires gloriously because when these new ideas inevitably fail within a few

weeks in most cases, those goals, those personal missions become regrets. They become

these awful things that you then can never get back into because you failed. It didn't

work. So now what are you going to do? You're going to try again in the middle of

July? Probably not. You might just wait until the next January 1st to be

re-inspired again. I just, I find the whole thing to be silly and so nonsensical.

I think the absolute best approach to project management, to goal achievement,

is to in some way create a lifestyle where personal growth is at the foundation.

So you are reading, you are engaging in new conferences and mental.

and activities where you are learning a lot all the time.

And because of this new knowledge and this flow of ideas, you get inspiration

all the time.

And therefore, you can build a life where you are pursuing these things you

care about whenever it happens to be the right time for that.

It's a very long-winded answer for what is the first step of this process, Jeff.

But you see my point.

I can go on longer, but I'm going to belay this thing to death.

Number one in this list this week is to make a list.

We want to find out what do you want to achieve before January 1st?

And because we're already here, yes, we will leverage the fact that urgency is part of this process and take advantage of

the fact that that could actually cause you to take action you otherwise would not

take. So for the sake of arguments, let's imagine that you have a few weeks

left before the end of the year or the few weeks left before the end of the

quarter, wherever you happen to be listening to that episode in the future.

And you say, well, I want to be able to get this stuff done now. Well, what is this

stuff? The first step is to brainstorm a large list of ideas of all the things you

would love to achieve, all the things that are possible.

for you. And this process can be kind of a free-form brainstorming to just let yourself go, let yourself explore all the possibilities of things you would love to see happen, knowing full well, you will not have time for 95% of them. But at least we'll start with a good brainstorming session.

We then flow to step number two. This is where we make some decisions and prioritize this list based on urgency and importance. Now, urgency, you know,

Yes, in the sense that January 1st is coming soon, but more importantly,

which of the ideas on this list really do need to happen now?

Like which ideas if you postpone them would cause consequences or problems for you?

We want to push those things to the top of the list.

Things you have not done in the past that you should have done a long time ago,

like investing or something like that, where you want to be able to say,

I'm going to force this thing forward and do it now.

Now, of course, this list is highly subjective, but it's necessary to make the proper cuts to be able to say, of this list of 25 goals I just wrote down, I'm going to choose the top four or five that I think are the most urgent, the most important that if I could commit my time to, this would really change the game for me.

This is a very helpful process to go through periodically. I tend to do this once a quarter, let's say, for my business and personal goals.

but usually I tend to do this at the end of a season or end of a project, and I'm considering the next big move.

So whatever works best for you to brainstorm and make this awesome list and then prioritize it, leverage that time to be able to say you've identified what you think matters most in this particular season.

That then takes us to step number three, where you create a document or let's say a Google Doc is a good example, and outline the steps required to complete the first.

first and most important goal on this list. There is something significant that

has shifted in the way that I pursue projects in the last four or five years.

And that big move that was made was all based on my transition from Evernote years

ago to making Google Docs in the Google Drive system my primary organizational structure

for everything that I do. I mean, as a simple example, I am looking at a Google Doc right now

for the script of the episode this week, like I do every single week.

I use Google Docs for everything.

And I think it's a really great platform to use to record your best ideas

and to outline the steps required to work on them.

Now, of course, you can use any system you want,

whether it is Evernote, though I don't like it anymore,

or Notion or any kind of a task management system you want to use,

you find what's best for you.

But the key here is to have a place to outline all of the steps

required to do this first project.

I have found this process of outlining possible steps to be one of the most

encouraging things that I do.

Because let's use the resolutions as a good example of this.

Imagine you have a New Year's goal of weight loss.

And every January 1st, you try to lose weight, but it fails.

Well, imagine you change your approach to that instead of the usual things that I would

try and do, I'm going to take this a little more seriously, have some more structure

around it and have this Google Doc, let's say, where I write down my goal is to

lose 20 pounds. But they can get very specific on here is exactly what I will do

step by step to see this through. The process to brainstorm the project itself

is one of the best steps you can take because when you do this, you get new ideas.

You will get more creative breakthroughs. You will see the path forward to connect the dots

from where you are to where you want to be.

And this is the kicker.

This is the strategy that can change your perspective and your emotion behind the goal.

Because as soon as you can see a path forward and you know there are steps you can take,

well, then all of a sudden you're not going to be nearly as regretful or negative about the possible process.

You'll have creativity and you'll have hope and you'll have this energy and this drive that will come from.

This is possible.

Here are the steps I can take.

Yes, I can do those.

So let's go schedule them and go do them.

It is such a transformational process to say,

here is a goal that I was considering,

versus here is a project list with specific steps one by one to take me from A to Z.

That is a night and day difference.

Because one of them is just a fluffy idea and the other is a well thought through project

with action steps and deadlines and resources and all the pieces you would need.

to take you to that finish line.

If you have been struggling with a goal, go through this process.

Yes, of course, brainstorm ideas, pick your goal.

But once you've chosen it, take that goal very seriously by documenting all the

steps required to do it.

This will be a stress reliever for you.

This will take a lot of the pressure off because you'll see a lot of possible things

you can do.

And that is empowering because now you have the potential to take steps.

forward that otherwise you may have made excuses about. You may have said, well,

here's why I can't, as opposed to here's why I can. And here's how I can.

This is a great process to go through.

Step number four. Now that you've chosen your goal and you've outlined the steps,

we need to free up some space. And so your next goal is to cancel every single

optional activity on your calendar. And yes, that includes holiday.

parties. I know. I'm sorry. They're a lot of fun, but if you have a goal you

care about or multiple goals you cared about, especially goals you procrastinated on

for almost a year and didn't work on, when will you be serious about it? If not now,

then when? This is the time. So yes, clear your calendar, cancel things,

including anything that is optional so you can literally commit yourself to this

in the very most direct sense possible. A lot of people,

struggle here. And they struggle here for one simple reason that they view everything

as required. They view every activity, every meeting, every party, every task,

as number one most important must happen. But that's not true. Of all the things you

could pursue, so many of them never have to happen, never at all, let alone being

required. And so the big kind of mental shift that has to take place here is to

knowledge how optional everything in your life actually is. And I mean everything.

But in my second book, the free time formula, I make this statement right at the top of

the book where I say that all time is free time. People don't like that.

And it really hits a nerve because we have this immediate knee-jerk reaction to say,

well, no, that's not possible. I have to go to work. I have to take my kids to school.

I have to X, Y, Z. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear all that. And also, all time is free

time and every single activity is optional, that is all still true.

And to fully embrace that, to take that on, gives you the power to then say,

here is where my time will be committed.

Here are the things I will say yes to that I chose, and here are the things I will say no to because I also chose that.

The autonomy of choice here is so powerful.

So to cancel every optional activity is to take on that responsibility.

responsibility that your time is your own, that you fully own it, and you are the one

making the decision for every single thing that you ultimately say yes to.

If you have done this process, well, you will have plenty of free time on your

calendar to then work on this goal that you claim is so important or did claim

last January and we're not trying to get back to it.

So, once you have done this, then step four is complete, your calendar is beautifully

clear, we can then move on to step five to now schedule recurring blocks of time

on your calendar to actually work on that goal as often as possible.

This could be as often as five to seven days per week.

Now, the project that I have been really kind of passionate about recently with

investing has really taken off for me in terms of not just how much time in

total I spend on it, but the consistency of the fact that I work on it literally seven days

a week. I get ideas for it all the time. And so I keep tweaking. I keep adjusting.

I keep finding new ways to enhance the data that I'm looking at. Every single

day, this just keeps pinging my brain. And so, yes, I schedule focus blocks of time

to work on it, but I really don't even have to. Because I'm just so into it, I just

naturally spend any free time that I have on that project. And the repetition here makes a huge

difference. And when you're able to say, like, I really care about this thing,

it can take over your life. And you find yourself working on it just in every

free moment that shows up. And so, yes, scheduling recurring blocks of time is

very powerful and extremely effective if you have a difficult time with focus.

But the opposite is also true, which is that if you really care about it,

you won't even have to schedule time because you will naturally fill all of your time

with effort towards this goal.

This to me is the biggest benefits of the momentum that is built up

and the emotional side of caring about the goal.

Because people who care about their goals will just work on them.

Simple example, if you care about exercise, you're not going to question going to the gym.

You're going to go all the time.

If you care about a healthy diet, you're not going to question it.

You're going to buy healthy food and you're going to eat it.

It just is natural. It flows in this beautiful way. But then if the office is the case for you where you are struggling with something, it's a real difficult challenge, then you will have to have discipline and boundaries and schedule blocks of time. You'll have to build in a structure that guarantees success because you otherwise would not do that work, because the emotion is not there. And this is kind of the rub for most of us of trying to figure out where is the energy.

And if we don't have that passion for something, but we need results there,

we have to go build structures to ensure the work gets done whether we care about it or not.

I did an episode in the podcast recently about that exact topic, and it's just such an important one because so much of life is filled with stuff we don't want to do, but we have to.

And so the question there becomes, how do you structure your life in such a way, you're going to do it anyway?

And I think the best way to tackle any goal, especially one that's the current

focus for your season, is daily repetition.

It is not giving yourself the chance to take a break very often.

Breaks are important.

But in terms of the consistency and repetition and the return to form and getting enough

at-bats at this work, you have to get back to it.

You have to be in it frequently.

And so from my perspective, it makes complete sense to say, let's build a life where

petition is baked in, where consistency is there all the time, and scheduling recurring

blocks of time on your calendar is a natural fit, because that's what's required

to get the project done.

Step number six.

You're now going to schedule time.

for self-care. I just mentioned taking breaks, and now we're going to take that

step a little more seriously and actually balance out your work hours throughout

this process. If you are the kind of person like me who you get really passionate

about things, you tend to be very imbalanced. You will focus a lot of energy on one thing,

and the rest will just kind of be ignored. Sometimes that's highly effective,

but oftentimes there are consequences to those decisions, which is part of this process.

but self-care can't be one of them.

And this is a big challenge for me personally,

where I have for years had a real difficulty with caring about personal health or my business.

I tend to do one really well and the other just falls to pieces.

And so being able to do both simultaneously has always been kind of a balancing challenge for me.

So I understand that balance can be difficult.

And the question here becomes, what is that current number one goal your world?

working on? And do you have guaranteed time for self-care seven days a week?

And when I say that, I mean great sleep, stress reduction, decompression, exercise,

meditation, yoga, essentially downtime that rejuvenates you.

Down time that says when I am not working, I am preparing myself for the next work

session by giving myself everything I need to then take a pause and ramp

back up again with higher energy for that next season, that next session,

that next day.

Self-care, yes, it's about kind of having that opportunity to pause, but really in

this context, self-care is about making sure you don't burn yourself out and that

the work can still be done the next day because what you did today was sustainable,

even aggressively sustainable.

And this could be a difficult challenge too.

Plenty of us have sustainable lifestyles,

but the progress is very low.

If your intention is to ramp up the work,

you will have to find a different balance here

to make sure self-care is part of it,

but not going to take over the whole thing.

All right, step number seven.

You're now going to write down

all possible distractions or delays

that may hold you back and prevent progress on your goal.

you probably know a lot of distractions you already have for most of your goals.

However, there are definitely scenarios where you have distractions, delays, bottlenecks,

obstacles that you're actually unaware of.

Let's say that you are trying to lose weight yet again this new year and you've

tried every year and it's just failed over and over again.

There's a good chance you know your common distractions, your common challenges with weight loss.

But there are likely other things you just don't know.

You've never truly acknowledged, wait a minute.

Yesterday was a good day, but today wasn't.

What was the difference?

Like, really be honest with yourself.

Like, what made yesterday great but today difficult?

And write this down.

The important part here is the self-awareness in the moment of what pulls you away from your goal.

This is why food journals are really powerful with weight loss, not because you need to write down all the things you

eat, but because when you do, your self-awareness increases dramatically.

And so the intention in this process is to make sure your self-awareness

is at the highest it could possibly be for these distractions.

Because once you acknowledge them, you know what they are, and you really are

accurate that this is the thing that stopped me in my tracks.

You then have the power to block that distraction.

You have the power to prevent delays and bottlenecks and issues.

and then that smooths the path to make sure you can then move forward a lot faster

with fewer tangents and fewer delays.

Every single goal has obstacles and bottlenecks.

Nothing is going to be fluid and simple.

But you can make it a lot easier by being aware of where the challenges are

and to actually write them down and make a plan to address them.

This step is so powerful because so many of us just make assumptions here.

We skip this step.

We just say, nah, I'm not going to actually take it that seriously.

But this is why I have this whole focus on focus blocks of time here on this podcast,

and I rant so often about the FBot checklist, which are all the specifics that you have to go through to start a focus block of time.

And that checklist is nothing but blocking distractions.

So that when the focus block of time begins, not only has the time started, but the focus part has started.

and the focus part means you're doing one thing.

You're not doing 75 other things instead.

And so that's the case with the bigger picture nature of your goal and whatever

it is you're pursuing.

You're going to have 75 other things you could be doing, but your mission is to stay

singularly focused on the one thing you came to do.

So being intentional about this process will absolutely save you a lot of heartache

and the possibility of failure and then repeating the goal.

again next year. Step number eight. You're now going to write down the most effective

productivity strategies that you want to use to achieve this goal. I can talk to you for

the next 12 hours about productivity strategies because that's all this podcast is,

but for the sake of argument, let's imagine that you have heard this podcast before

at least somewhat, and you have an idea of at least a few strategies you'd like to try.

That could include focus blocks of time. It could include inbox zero.

or your own 5 a.m. Miracle Wake Up Call. Whatever the case is, you have to

customize the strategies that are most effective for the goal that you're using.

If you're going to write a novel, you're going to need time alone to write.

If you're going to lose weight, you might need strategies like hiring an accountability

partner or a coach or joining a gym. It's going to vary significantly based upon

the goal you're working on. But the key here is to acknowledge which strategies you think

are the most effective for your goal.

You may want to read a book or listen to a podcast about that topic just to make

sure you've nailed down what you think is the best.

But the key here, the one I think is the most distracting, is trying to do too much.

In the world productivity, you have endless options to be more effective.

And the best thing you can do is not try to be that effective.

Don't try to do it all because you'll just drive yourself crazy learning about more

ways to be productive, which is entirely what I do for a living. Don't do that.

Instead, spend your time in execution of the goal, not an execution of finding the

next strategy you might be able to use in the future. Don't get lost in the

minutia. Really keep yourself, laser it in on what matters most and literally

forget the rest. Because the most effective thing you can do is take one step forward

directly towards your goal.

Everything else could be a waste of time.

Step number nine.

You now want to schedule, if you like this idea, a reward for yourself.

I am not reward focused.

So this step for me is a bit precarious because it doesn't really directly impact me.

But I know that some people operate differently.

Rewards are very finicky because some people, myself included, get rewarded by simply

the goal. Me crossing my own invisible finish line gives me a sense of joy and

pride and confidence to continue. I don't need a medal. I don't need a trophy. I don't

need to go out to dinner or go on a vacation. But you might. And if those things are

meaningful to you and they inspire you and really symbolically acknowledge the progress

you've made, that do not skip this step. I think it's incredibly important to acknowledge

what resonates with you and causes more growth and more progress.

And if you are able to say yes to those things more often and say, actually,

I do want a trophy.

Like, I'm going to go make one for myself and order it.

That's awesome.

And if that's what's going to allow you to then push forward to get more trophies,

then line your wall with trophies, right?

Go out there and achieve great things and acknowledge that achievement in a way that

means something to you.

I think it's incredibly powerful, once again, to know.

know yourself and to build a structure in a system that doubles down on your

strengths and specifically, once again, your emotional momentum to move forward.

And if that momentum flows through a metal around your neck or flowers and chocolates,

knock yourself out.

Those things are great.

Step number 10.

In the exact opposite angle, you now want to call a friend or hire a coach to act

is your accountability partner in case you're not making progress.

Not everything is a win.

Not everything is going to be a joyful forward moving progress.

And so what I have found to be true in this scenario is that accountability can

be either extremely effective or a distraction itself.

And so the tricky part here is to find accountability that once again speaks to you.

Years ago on this podcast, I had lots of conversations about accountability partners because I had one at the time.

I worked at this amazing guy named Matt Frazier who runs no meetathlete.com.

And Matt and I worked together on a weekly basis for a couple of years.

And we would check in on goals that we had with each other.

And we were really striving for individual growth, but through the lens of accountability with each other.

And it was wildly effective for a season.

And then after that season was over, the time.

two of us realize it's not really as effective for us anymore, and so we stop that

process. But that's the key thing, acknowledging what is effective now and doing that.

And if it no longer is, then you stop. And that's okay too. What I tend to find

me the most helpful is knowing what keeps your feet to the fire, knowing what keeps

you moving forward. Some people are self-driven and they don't need an external source.

Other people need someone else to really give them the kick in the butt to do the work.

Whatever the case is for you, get that structure in place.

You've heard this from me a thousand times on this episode.

Customize your structure, know yourself, and if accountability matters, guarantee it as part of your process.

Step number 11.

You're now going to make a list of the learning materials that will teach you more about your goal and that, of course, act as motivated.

motivation to achieve it. So we began this whole conversation about personal growth and

about reading books and watching YouTube videos and hiring coaches, but I think it's really

important in the pursuit of any goal to have a very comprehensive list of here

the best sources where I can learn from, the kinds of YouTube channels or authors

I want to learn from, or courses I want to enroll in, and to be specific on where

you want to learn next. Because once again, your creative breakthroughs are

going to come from the ideas from other people. And whatever goal you're trying to

achieve will have to start with education, have education in the middle, finish with

more education, the learning process never stops. And the more you're able to

bake that into how you operate on a consistent daily basis, the more you're going

to have that consistent drip, drip, drip of new ideas and inspiration to stay

on top of your game. Motivation is very fleeting. And so we have to have to have to be

to refill that resource all the time with new inspiration.

And if you're stagnating right now, if you feel like you've hit a rut and you

want to break away from that, go read a great book, go watch an awesome YouTube

video, go give yourself that external source to move you forward.

This podcast could act as that for you as well, but find something that says,

this is the kick in the butt that I need to learn more and do more and get this

goal accomplished.

which brings us to the 12th and final step.

If for some bizarre reason you actually succeed and you achieve your goal early,

you can start this entire process over again with a new goal,

or of course use that list of goals for the next new year and start that process right now.

All that to say is that everything that I just outlined is the goal achievement process

regardless of when you begin this process in the calendar year,

whether it happens to be January 1st or the few weeks that lead up to it,

or it's the middle of April like it was for me on my last big project.

You are looking for a system that you can reliably use all the time year-round,

regardless of what your focus is.

And these steps are the structure for that process.

This is the flow.

This is what allows for goal achievement.

So if you're looking for that kick in the butt from the new year,

you are looking for that next inspiration.

Start with this process.

Go through this list step by step and guarantee yourself some success.

Because it is possible.

Whatever you're trying to do, any goal, whether it's weight loss, business building, financial challenges, relationship challenges, inspirational new opportunities that you want to dive into.

Everything is possible if you do the work and put together this kind of a flow.

It's exciting.

It's a lot of fun to make progress.

I love goal achievements and I get re-inspired all the time when I see myself making breakthroughs,

which is where all of this passion of mind comes from to inspire you to hopefully have that same experience.

So if you have questions about this process or you want to dig into more details and want to pick my brain about it,

go ahead and email me, jeff at jeffsanders.com.

I would love to talk to you about that because I love the stuff.

It's a lot of fun.

And for the action step this week.

Identify the one thing you want to achieve before the year ends.

Of course, 12 strategies are great to get ideas, but the one you do is the only one that actually matters.

So pick your strategy and then backwards plan your calendar from January 1st until today and get to it.

And while you're added, of course, subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app, or go to 5am miracle premium.com for the VIP ad-free experience.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5 a.m. Miracle podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life, and all that fun begins bright and early.

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