3X Plus Plan: Finding Your Flow
with a Strategic and Sustainable Rhythm

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #559: 3X Plus Plan: Finding Your Flow with a Strategic and Sustainable Rhythm

Jeff Sanders
Most people have a general idea of what a great and productive week looks like.

But what if you had a clear vision and specific numbers to back it up?

This is the 5am Miracle, Episode #559, The 3x+ Plan, Finding Your Flow With A Strategic And Sustainable Rhythm.

Good morning and welcome to the 5am Miracle.

I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful, lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer specializing in delivering high-energy, interactive, and action-oriented presentations and workshops focused on productivity, wellness, and personal and professional growth.

If you want to learn more, head over to jeffsanders.com/speaking.

In the episode this week, I'll break down what my new 3x+ plan is and why you need one, why tracking your progress is actually not enough to see results, and how to build in the necessary flexibility that your calendar is begging for you to ensure your plan can withstand the unpredictability of normal life.

Let's get to it.

So over the last few years, I have really dialed in the most important areas of focus for my life in total and those two primary areas are health and wealth, or the way I phrase it usually, sales and trails.

So sales and trails is my personal mantra to remind me what I want to focus on each and every week.

So that includes sales in my business to build wealth and trails as in trail time for exercise to improve my health.

However, I have struggled to spend as much time in either area that would result in achieving the goals that I've set for both myself personally with my health as well as for my business.

The problem was not the goals themselves, but instead was my approach to my calendar that prevented me from staying focused on what mattered most while strategically delaying just about everything else.

In other words, once you know what you want, in this case health and wealth or sales and trails, you can prioritize these things and put them on your calendar, but there has to be a point in life where you say, "I know what matters and I know that I have said yes to a lot of things.

How does it all get done?

How do I approach the fact that I know what I care about?

I know what needs to happen and yet there are so many inputs and distractions and ideas and everything sounds important.

Everything sounds like it belongs on my calendar and on my to-do list.

How do I choose?

How do I know what to give my time, attention and resources to?

And once I know what matters, then the most important question pops up.

How do I guarantee those things get done first and everything else will happen secondarily or never at all?

This is a major, major challenge.

In fact, I would argue it is the challenge with time management.

The first question of knowing what matters most and so I personally chose for my life health and wealth as being the primary categories.

And so for you, the same question remains.

What is your top priority or maybe top two priorities?

And then number two, how do you guarantee you always give yourself the time and attention these areas need to make real significant progress?

And number three, how do you not do everything else in your life because those things will ultimately be distractions for what these primary things are.

You know, recently I heard a great audio book on time management that I'll probably talk more about here on this podcast soon, but one of the stories that the author told is Warren Buffett's very famous 5/25 rule, which essentially is to have 25 goals in your career or in your life.

You pick the top five and then you avoid the rest until the top five are either achieved or you just stay focused on those top five indefinitely with the intention of being that the other 20 on that list would just be distractions from those top five.

You see a theme here.

There are priorities that matter and your time and attention should go towards those things and everything else is a distraction until the primary objectives are met.

The episode this week is going to outline my new 3x plus plan, which will directly address the issue I just discussed.

But before we get there, I want to go through a few of the common problems with traditional approaches to both goals and scheduling time to work on your goals.

Because I think if we have a foundation of understanding what these common problems are, we can then so much more clearly see the direction to move in and why my new plan is going to hopefully address most, if not all of these issues.

So the first major problem that I tend to see most often is that you commit to everything with no discernible priority anywhere.

In other words, you have too many goals and none of them matter.

On this podcast, I have episodes committed to this entire concept, but I have one from many years ago that asked the question, how many number ones are on your to-do list?

That's the issue.

If everything is number one, none of them are.

And this is not only the number one issue I'm going to discuss right now, I think it's the number one issue that all of us face when we experience overwhelm.

Because the definition of overwhelm is just trying to do way too much, way too fast, not enough time.

You can't slow it down.

You can't breathe.

The feeling, the emotional tension that overwhelm presents simply comes from trying to do too much.

That's it.

And so when you are committing to doing everything with no discernible priorities, you are basically saying all the things on my list need to happen and they all need to happen right now.

That's a recipe for a breakdown, a complete burnout.

It's not going to last.

And I say that kind of jokingly, but I have been through that.

I have burned myself out.

I have pushed too hard.

I very frequently experience this kind of emotion where either I want to do a lot or I feel very compelled to do a lot or else dot, dot, dot list all the consequences, all the accountability, all the problems that may take place because you didn't do everything.

The first and best thing to consider here is that that's not going to happen.

The consequences you are imagining for the most part will not play out the way you think they're going to.

That fear that's talking there, the fear of the unknown, fear of the consequence is almost always overblown.

So we can calm down a little bit and really focus on the idea that the priorities matter, that there is a list that means something, that there is one number one goal and everything else is going to wait until that one thing is completed.

Staying centered in that is going to give you a lot of peace, a lot of focus for what to do next.

Problem number two, you fill every spec of your calendar with something to do and no free space anywhere.

In other words, it's too rigid and too productive.

Yes, that's a thing, too productive.

My second book, The Free Time Formula, directly addresses this issue, which is our tendency to want to overschedule, to overplan, which by the way, causes that overwhelm I just discussed.

If you want to pause the overwhelm going forward or prevent it completely, the solution is a calendar with free space and a lot of it, a lot more than you think you need because in that moment when the free space shows up, it's not free anymore.

More things have shown up.

There's emails in your inbox, there's new to-dos to accomplish, new ideas to pursue.

You will fill that time with something.

It's a guarantee.

The question is just simply, how do you structure your calendar so the things that matter most are there and the free space is also there to be a catch-all for those things that show up?

This is a balancing act.

There's no direct answer to this besides knowing yourself, knowing your obligations, responsibilities and goals and developing a calendar over time that aligns to both your top priorities and the necessity, necessity for free space.

Third big problem, you start strong but you flame out quickly.

Basically that means you're too short-sighted and I say that for the perspective of someone who loves to "bounce out of bed with enthusiasm."

I love the idea of a high-energy lifestyle.

I love the idea of being able to start strong with a project, to jump into a new goal, to really feel that sense of enthusiasm that comes from something being new.

But you can't give that same sense of explosive energy to everything, every day, all day long, indefinitely.

When I was in college, at the end of every semester, we had finals week, which is basically where you take a bunch of tests, you turn in a bunch of your big projects and everything culminates to one big moment.

And in that seven to 10-day period where you are doing everything that seems to matter in your whole life at that point, you are working 24/7, putting in all the effort you possibly can to get the best possible grade in the class.

At least that was my approach.

It was a very intense week with lots of pressure and this really high bar to hit.

And when I went through these experiences where I would pull all-nighters, where I would really challenge myself to do my very best for this short window, two things happened.

The first is that I actually did execute at the level I thought that I could.

I would get great grades in my classes.

I would turn in the work that was high quality.

It worked.

My effort to do all-nighters and pushing myself 24/7 got the result I wanted.

However, it was not sustainable.

It was designed intentionally to be short-term.

It was designed on purpose to be, "I can give a ton of effort really fast with a lot of intensity right now, but then I'm going to need a break.

I'm going to need some rest and some sleep.

And if I don't get that, there is no way that this can continue."

And so when you imagine your life as a long-term life, decades of living to come, you can't live like that every week.

Not every week can be finals week.

You can't start strong, stay strong, finish strong, and always be strong.

That's not going to exist long-term.

You're just going to burn yourself out.

That's all that's going to happen.

And so when you imagine the kind of life that you want to live, I would imagine the life you're envisioning is not overwhelm, high stress, extraordinary intensity 24/7.

So the goal here is to have a longer-term vision, one that sees the future playing out in a way that is sustainable.

That's going to be your keyword.

Productive, yes.

Sustainable, of course.

Fourth big problem.

You schedule time for your goals, but not the location.

In other words, you are way too distracted by your environment, which I actually just discussed in a lot of detail two weeks ago, an episode called dedicated space episode number five, five, seven.

So if you want more about that one, I have a whole episode devoted to your environment and your location for your goals.

But briefly, what I will say about that here is that our intention is to be intentional about the goal setting and achieving process.

And yes, that means what the goal is.

It also means when the goal is worked on.

But most importantly, the location is going to determine your distractions, your focus, your ability and willingness to do the work.

And so if you really want to have a long-term vision for your life that adds up to productivity and effectiveness and awesomeness, that's going to absolutely include the location of where the work gets done.

And the fifth and final major problem that I'll discuss this week is that you schedule time for big goals, but not the tiny details or manageable next actions that will actually get you moving.

In other words, you're too grandiose in your daily planning.

Phrase another way, you miss the opportunity to snowball yourself into bigger objectives being accomplished because you don't start small enough.

Big goals are achieved in tiny little increments.

You know, one of the big pieces people tend to miss about big goals is they're not big at all.

Anything big is just a bunch of tiny things mushed together.

That's all that it actually is.

As if you have a monumentous goal you want to achieve at any given time, you're only doing the next right action, the next tiny objective.

And so if you look at a current goal, you have a current project to work on or an objective you have to meet, and you think to yourself, Ooh, I feel a sense of fear and overwhelm.

The mountain is too high to climb.

This goal is too big to tackle.

The problem is not the goal.

The problem is not the size of the goal either.

The problem is the goal is not broken down into tiny enough objectives that you can see the next most effortless step to take.

That's the goal is to get ourselves into the effortless next action that actually then will propel us forward to do all the work that adds up to the bigger goal longterm.

So those are five major problems that I see with goals and time management and our approach to goals in general.

So now the question becomes, well, what do we do?

And I gave a few solutions here to a few of these perspectives, but I think there's a better way to approach all of this, a better, newer plan that can allow us to actually get the work done, to have rhythm, to have a longterm vision, to have sustainable progress.

All of that is possible with my new three X plus plan.

This is my approach to hitting rhythmic goals while staying true to your overall focus on your projects.

It's a simple way for you to find your weekly flow with strategy and sustainability with a rhythm you can rely on.

That's a pretty big promise.

So I'm painting this as a pretty amazing plan.

The reality is, is what I'm talking about is actually extraordinarily simple and it relies on some very fundamental foundational principles of basic time management.

If you've heard this podcast for a long time, one thing you will notice as a through line of all the episodes is that at the end of the day, the advice that I give is designed to be simple on purpose.

It is foundational.

It is fundamental.

It's not complicated.

It's not designed to be confusing.

Everything that I teach here is designed to be actionable, which means it has to be simple.

It has to be easy.

You have to be able to step into it without a ton of discipline or effort because if that's not true, you're not going to do it.

And I know that because I won't either because people don't do hard things.

We do easy things.

We do actionable things we can envision ourselves doing.

And that's the point of this.

So the term three X plus plan came about from my recent shift and how I schedule my time every week.

And I chose this specific name I'll describe in a second to embody the vision that I have for the rhythm that I want on the goals I have set for myself.

So let's go back to my health and wealth perspective, my sales and trails idea.

I had this vision for myself of doing a lot more sales in my business, a lot more time running the trails here in the parks in Nashville.

And I was asking myself, well, how do I guarantee time for my two major priorities?

How do I ensure that not just the time of day is nailed down, not just the location where the work is getting done, not just the goals themselves with these specific next actions to take.

All that is great and all that is helpful, but I had a problem.

Even though those things were nailed down, the work wasn't getting done to the level that I expected of myself.

In other words, I would do a weekly review and look back at the progress and say, wait a minute, I didn't actually achieve the goals I wanted.

I kind of did.

I sort of got progress, but I missed some objectives.

I didn't show up when I should have.

Something is missing.

What do I do?

And so I designed a new rhythm for me to establish some basic parameters, some boundaries around my time to say, here's a minimum and here's a maximum.

Here's the intention that I want to hit with each of these major objectives.

Nothing more.

It's a simplistic rhythmic perspective.

Let me get a lot more specific on what the 3x plus plan actually includes.

Number one, you'll choose two or three major weekly objectives, usually one business and one personal.

So with my example, that could be sales and trails.

For yours, it could be one major career goal and one major personal objective you have as well.

Once you have those two established, those two become your primary focal points, not just for the week at hand, but probably for this next season of your life, the next couple of months, most likely.

If you've read my book, the 5 a.m.

Miracle, you have heard about the quarter system, which is a focus on the next 90 days.

And typically the way that I tend to operate as I'll choose usually one major objective.

So in this case, one business and one personal, and that will dictate the next season of my life.

So generally the next 30, 60, or 90 days where I'm going to do nothing but focus on those two objectives, that simplicity for your life will prevent overwhelm and it will allow you to know what matters and give yourself over to it.

So the first step in the 3x plus plan is simplicity and it is the discipline to make the decision on what you're going to do, which by default means everything else is on hold.

The second step in the 3x plus plan is to set a weekly rhythm based on the number of FBOTs or focus blocks of time.

On this podcast, I've discussed focus blocks of time a ton, but essentially what they are is a defined time for a focus with a start time and a stop time and the middle of that, let's call it 90 minute block.

You're going to focus on one major objective and get it done.

So your weekly rhythm is basically a calendar with FBOTs that are preset Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you know, nine to 1030 and 1030 to noon, like that kind of example of here are the focus blocks of time and they're preset on your calendar for the next seven days.

So in the world of business, it's common to use KPIs or key performance indicators.

These are essentially measurements that help you track your progress towards a goal.

From my perspective, my FBOTs are my KPIs.

In other words, it's a good example of this.

Every week I have my goals for the week on my whiteboard in my home office and as the week progresses, I will give a little tally next to each goal and the tally represents a focus block of time.

So what I'm tracking is, did I make progress towards this objective?

Did I work on it?

Yes or no.

A simple example there could be, I want to work out five times this week.

Well, if I do one workout, that workout is a focus block of time.

By default, I'm doing one thing for that block and that's a workout.

Once that workout is complete on my weekly whiteboard, I will then write down a little tally next to my five workout goal.

That's all you're going for.

You want to pre-establish how many focus blocks of time that you think you want to hit for any goal you're after.

And then as you accomplish those focus blocks, you give a little tally, which is a really nice way to acknowledge your progress.

And then of course, if you finish that goal for the week, you can cross it off your list and feel good about that as well.

The intention here is to view your time through the lens of focus blocks as opposed to just kind of general to-dos or a random list of items.

Thinking through your life with that lens of focus changes the way you perceive your goals.

It changes the way you perceive how your time is utilized because the intention is focus.

The intention is to block distractions, but more importantly, it's to define your priority, to know what it is you're after, and then you craft a life that guarantees that success.

It is incredibly powerful to view your time through that lens because it will by default mean you're focused more often, which means you're getting more stuff done more often, which means you're more likely to accomplish your goals and to make amazing progress.

That's what this is about.

The 3x Plus plan, yes, it establishes a couple of major objectives, but it also says, and here's how they're going to happen.

On the calendar, with focus, with location, with execution, it is built in.

Now, as an example for more of these kind of focus blocks and why I chose this 3x title.

Let's use sales and trails as a good example.

If my goal is to have more time for sales in my business, what I will do for the week coming up, generally speaking, is to say for this week, I want three sales blocks.

On my weekly calendar, it will show the goal for this week, sales 3x.

And then as I complete each of those focus blocks of time, I get a little tally for each of those three until all three are done, and then I cross it off.

The same thing will apply for any goal you're after, any personal fitness goal, work goal, you name it.

The question is, how many focus blocks of time do you want to commit to?

Now, the 3x was chosen for me, not arbitrarily.

It's more based on this idea of rhythm.

So in a given week, if I can guarantee I work on something at least three times in a large, significant block, I'm going to make great progress.

Now some goals like exercise, I want to do more than three.

I'll want five, six, or even seven goals for that week.

My business goals are a little bit less, but the length of time is also longer.

So it won't be a one hour block.

It'll be three or four hours per block.

So there is by default a ton of subjectivity here.

You get the flexibility to choose how all of this plays out for you and how this is customized for your goals and your lifestyle.

But the intention is clear.

We want to know upfront how much time will be committed to these priorities.

And then we pre-establish what our intention is.

And then we monitor that progress as the week goes.

And then when the review happens at the end of the week, and you look back at last week, what you hopefully will see is my objective was three focus blocks.

And look at that.

I got all three done.

Versus, well, I had three as the goal and I did zero or one.

And then you can ask yourself, well, why was that the case?

And how do we change that for next week?

This is the growth opportunity.

This is how this will establish a goal up front and then allow you to make the necessary pivots to improve as time goes on.

Now let me address the plus in the 3X plus plan.

What I tend to do with these goals is establish 3X as the default status.

So I want to have three sales blocks and three workouts or whatever the case may be for your goals.

But three is where I start.

My plus represents the one area that is the primary.

Because in any given week, I'm not going for perfect balance.

This is a major conversation in time management that does not get enough attention, which is that true success or true progress does not occur through balance.

I wish it did.

The goal of this entire 3X plus plan is on paper to establish a rhythmic balance.

Yes.

However, the plus is there for a reason.

And the plus represents that one area matters more.

One of these objectives is the most important and therefore it deserves more of your attention.

And so for that objective, let's use once again, sales and trails.

Let's imagine that I want to do three workouts this week, but five sales blocks.

What I have done there is I have pre-established that one thing matters more than the other.

One thing will get my primary attention and the other will get my secondary attention.

Both will be monitored.

Both will have progress be made towards them, but only one truly matters most.

This level of intentionality on priorities is necessary.

The imbalance that will then take place is also the imbalance that will result in major progress towards your goals.

So don't think about your life in terms of everything has to be perfectly equally weighted.

That's number one, just not going to happen.

But number two, actual success comes when things are not balanced for a little while, but over time, if this pendulum swings back and forth between the two biggest and most important objectives, they both will get done over a longer time period.

So once again, that quarter system, your goal is for the next 30, 60, or 90 days, think of it in that term.

As if I focus with one major priority this week, next week it can shift and then we can go back and forth as the weeks progress.

That's the general philosophy here.

The general flow is to establish a primary, but we have a secondary or maybe a tertiary priority in mind as well.

All right, the third step in the 3x plus plan is to schedule your focus blocks of time on your calendar with plenty of flex time around each block.

So back to this idea of having free space on your calendar.

The other component here is that your focus blocks of time will be your most important priority for any given day, but there will have to be time around those focus blocks for flexibility, time to answer emails or take a break or do other smaller tasks.

Real life will still exist around these focus blocks, but you're going to have to have your calendar preset with a lot of white space around what matters most.

Another perspective here is Stephen Covey's big rocks philosophy.

That's a very famous example of how to schedule time and these focus blocks of time are big rocks and then your smaller pebbles and sand will then fill in around your calendar in the other timeframes you have available.

But the intention upfront is big rocks, big focus blocks of time.

First flex time.

Second, and then the fourth and final step for the 3x plus plan is to record your progress throughout the week.

Of course, leveraging your whiteboard or digital tool you'd like to use to record your progress review at the end of every week and then improve for next week.

So let's back this up for just a second.

Who needs this?

Who needs a 3x plus plan?

Who is this beneficial for?

It's a great question because I don't think everyone needs this plan.

I think there are certain and specific scenarios where a rhythm like this will be most helpful.

So who needs this?

First of all, anyone who is not making consistent progress towards their goals.

I think the biggest benefit for this plan is consistency.

It's not just focus.

It's not just focus blocks of time.

It's not just a rhythm, but it is a consistent rhythm.

It's this idea that this is a lifestyle.

It's a long-term vision for each and every week can be predictable, at least to a certain degree.

And that level of consistency is where progress shows up.

I would love to say you can make a ton of progress in one big effort, like a finals week, example.

We all know that's doomed for failure.

That's doomed for overwhelm and burnout.

Once again, the goal here is a long-term vision.

So if you need a consistent rhythm, this is for you.

Number two, anyone who is easily distracted throughout the week with fires to put out or lesser important projects that seem to bump time for the most important projects, this is for you.

If you are distracted endlessly and you feel the sense of, "Wow, I was really busy, but the things that mattered most kept getting put off.

I kept procrastinating.

I kept finding excuses not to do what mattered most, and I just feel like I'm losing control of my time."

Believe me, I'm talking from experience here.

This is my life in a lot of ways.

That's why I made this program for me, first of all.

I made it for Jeff Sanders, but I think you can use this too.

If you find yourself distracted, you find yourself not doing the priorities, you're going to need a 3x plus plan to establish those priorities and guarantee time and location for them.

So this is going to be essential for you.

And number three, who needs this?

Anyone who needs to shake things up.

If your schedule just isn't working.

If your rhythm doesn't exist.

If you are in need of a restart, a redo, just a chance to have a fresh beginning.

This could be helpful.

I always find the new perspective on my time leads to innovations and breakthroughs and epiphanies and aha moments.

And even if you don't adopt a 3x plus plan, which you do not have to, you can still find plenty of things to benefit your calendar, your time, and your priorities.

So who needs a 3x plus plan?

Honestly, probably everyone, but really it's people who are struggling, who want a new plan, a new focus, and a new way to see how their priorities play out in the real world.

All right, now we're going to shift gears just slightly to answer the question that I addressed at the top of the show, which is why tracking your progress may not be enough to actually see results.

One of the things that 3x plus plan really focuses on are those little tallies on your whiteboard, right?

The progress that you're making towards your goals.

What I have seen is that tracking your progress does not necessarily equate to the progress you think that it does.

In other words, you could have a tally represent basically anything.

You could do a very tiny amount of work and consider that progress.

You could do a significant amount of work and consider that progress.

One of the people that I've talked to in this podcast many times is Ted Rice, who is a personal trainer and one of the phrases that he threw at me years ago was in the world of exercise that soreness, or you work out, you feel sore the next day, soreness is not progress.

Progress is progress.

The point that he was making is that we tend to think of progress in the wrong terms.

We might think, "Well, I worked out hard at the gym yesterday and I'm sore today.

That must mean that I did the right stuff."

Maybe, it could, but the real question is what's the actual progress you're going for?

Is it to have more strength?

Is it to lose weight?

Is it to run a marathon?

When we're asking the question, "Did I make progress?"

we need to be specific.

What is it that you're actually after?

The activities that keep you busy in pursuit of these goals could be beneficial or they could just be busy work.

It's extremely important to be specific about what activities or actions you're going to take directly lead you towards your goals.

Everything else is going to be a distraction.

Everything else is going to give you endorphins and you feel good, you check the box, but by definition that is productive but not effective.

You are busy but you're going nowhere.

We don't want that.

That's not the intention.

We need a plan that pushes us towards the goals and as a direct of manner as possible.

When you track your progress, the intention here is to track legitimate, absolute progress and not a facade, not a fantasy, but real life.

The second major challenge with tracking progress is that it does not necessarily include minimums or maximums.

One of the goals of the 3X+ plan is to set a number that represents a guarantee.

That 3X or 3 times for me personally represents both a minimum and a maximum.

This is a really important point.

In my world, I tend to be very all in on projects.

Let's imagine I'm all in on exercise and fitness.

I'll tell myself I'm going to work out four times this week and then I work out seven and then I do two a day workouts and then all of a sudden I'm doing exercise stuff all the time and it takes over my life.

Well, that could be a good thing if I have a very short term vision for exercise or it could be very destructive to the balance of my life because I spent too much time in a certain area and not enough in others.

The opposite is also true.

If I say to myself I want to work out five times this week and I worked out zero times this week, well then I underperformed and I didn't hit the minimum that I had set for myself.

When I am laying out my plan for the 3X+ plan, I'm asking myself what number represents both a minimum and a maximum.

Which number will guarantee progress but also stop me from going too far?

Both of these boundaries matter.

We need to be able to guarantee a certain amount of progress but then stop ourselves before we overdo it.

And so you're going to be one kind of person or another in most cases.

You're either going to be an overachiever, the high achievers who just want to keep going or you're going to be the kind of person who just avoids something altogether or maybe you're both depending on the kind of project that it is.

That's where I fall into play.

Some things I avoid, some things I double down on too hard.

So our goal is to have an overall totality of rhythm where the number represents a minimum and a maximum and then we hit that rhythm every week.

And the third and final major issue that we see with tracking progress is that it does not usually represent sustainable progress over time.

If your goal is to track progress, it needs to be repeatable progress you can track over time.

It's not just a fluke, it's not just a weird random awesome week, but it's the kind of week you could see yourself doing again and again.

I really put a lot of emphasis on my, not just the 5am miracle concept of what do you do at 5am, but the very important foundational elements of you'd better have slept before that 5am alarm went off.

And if you didn't get quality sleep last night, your 5am miracle should be sleeping in because you're going to need more rest.

And I say that because one thing we tend to forget about with sustainability is this idea that every choice we make has an impact on every other choice.

So if I stay up late, it's going to impact tomorrow morning.

If I work too hard on one goal, it's going to impact a lack of progress on another.

Everything impacts everything else.

And so our choices matter a great deal.

And for these rhythms to be sustainable and repeatable, we have to understand the weight of our decisions and make sure that every choice is intentional, at least to a certain degree, obviously with flexibility that we are human and make mistakes, but also to the degree that our time is important and our choices matter.

And we don't want to undervalue our time.

Like I love time management to the large degree because of that intentional focus to say that because I value my time, I'm going to be more intentional with every choice that I make as often as I can until I'm just too tired to make more choices and then I pass out.

That's the general flow that I have.

But I think it's extremely important to acknowledge the value of time itself and the value of the repeatable nature of our choices.

So if we go to bed on time, we wake up on time, we feel well rested, we have the energy to go tackle our goals today.

That's the goal.

That is a miracle in and of itself.

To get great sleep might be your miracle.

And that might be what adds up to your ability to tackle a new three X plus plan or any rhythm you want to tackle.

So that's it.

That's the new three X plus plan.

I hope what I explained here makes sense.

I hope you see the actionable potential for what this is.

The most important part of this plan is intentionality as everything always is here on this show.

The point is to take your life seriously, take your time management seriously and make decisions that align to the life you want to live.

If having a new rhythm is helpful, then adopt a system like this one or customize it to make it your own.

The customization part will happen by default, but start with a framework that's going to allow you to see what's possible.

Of course, I want to hear about your thoughts on this new plan.

Email me, Jeff@jeffsanders.com.

If you adopt a plan like this or have done one like this already, I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

And I really mean that because this is fairly new to me in this perspective of how to view rhythm and habits and progress over time.

And so if this is working for you, if you see potential here, I want to hear about it.

Once again, Jeff@jeffsanders.com.

Hey, for the action step this week, of course, go create your three X plus plan.

Now, what does your ideal weekly rhythm actually look like?

Which specific habits do you want to repeat?

Which major priority do you want to double down on?

Your three X plus plan can address these questions and more as you identify what you want a phenomenal week to actually look like in real life.

So outline your plan today and see what amazing progress you can make this week.

Of course, subscribe to this podcast and your favorite podcast app or become a VIP member of the 5am Miracle community by getting the premium ad free version with exclusive bonus episodes at 5ammiraclepremium.com.

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

Until next time, you have the power to change your life and all that fun begins bright and early. 5ammiracle.com.

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