Crafting Your Ideal Career
5 Steps to Professional Success

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #572: Crafting Your Ideal Career: 5 Steps to Professional Success

Jeff Sanders
Are you ready to take your career to the next level?

Well, great.

Let's make that happen.

This is the 5 AM Miracle, episode number 572: Crafting Your Ideal Career: 5 Steps to Professional Success.

Good morning and welcome to The 5 AM Miracle!

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

My goal is to help you balance. 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 slash speaking.

Now, in the episode this week, I will share five lessons to help you grow your career, both for today and far into the future.

Let's get to it.

Just a few weeks ago, I gave a speech to a group of young professionals here in Nashville when they came in for a conference.

And after I gave this speech, I was thinking, wait a minute, this content is perfect for the podcast.

And so what I'm going to do this week is a little bit different.

I'm actually going to give my speech with the slides and all, except that you can't see the slides.

So I'm going to modify what I'm doing here so that you don't need to see them.

And I'm going to present, in essence, what I gave to these young professionals in the sense of steps to help you build your ideal career.

I really want to emphasize the fact that I have spent decades tinkering with my own. own ideas on what an ideal career could look like, which you'll hear a bit of that story in just a minute.

But I have thought about this stuff a lot.

And I've thought about it mostly because I have struggled with my own ideal career.

And anyone who has struggled with anything will spend a lot of time thinking about it, a lot of time digging into it.

And so hopefully my story will resonate with you and you'll be able to take away some nuggets of success and potential, and of course, action steps to go do things that make a big difference in your career.

And so I'm going to go through this now, slides and all, without you being able to see them.

I hope this works.

We'll see.

Any feedback is appreciated.

You can email me anytime, jeffat jeffsanders.com.

But let's get this thing started.

This is crafting your ideal career, five steps to professional success.

And yes, I am Jeff Sanders.

I'm a host of a podcast called The 5 a.m.

Miracle.

You may have heard of it.

It's this one.

And I have been podcasting now for over 11 years.

I am a public speaker and productivity coach, trainer, author of numerous books.

And what I'm going to do here in the next, we'll call it 30 to 40 minutes, is talk about careers and do my very best to help you develop your ideal career.

My goal for the presentation is to help you dig through these five. steps and really tap into the actionable content that will drive you forward, whether you're just getting started in your career or whether or not you've been around for a few decades trying to optimize your career and take it to the next level or possibly make a massive career pivot into a whole new direction.

Either way, the content that's built into this presentation is actionable.

And at the end, if you'd like to email me, jeff at jeffsanders.com, I would be happy to answer your questions about your career, about productivity, healthy habits, personal developments, or any of the things I discuss here on this podcast.

Now, as I go through this content, I want you to think about your goals.

What is your ideal career?

Where do you see yourself in 5, 10, 15 years?

And I asked that question specifically because, and you'll hear this in the talk, I don't actually believe that a long-term plan is effective.

I'll go into more detail in that in a minute.

But for now, I will say that having a grand vision is powerful.

And to understand the general direction you're heading will make a massive difference in what it is you pursue with these specifics behind that.

So once again, as I go through these action steps, really be thinking about what is your ideal career and where do you see yourself going forward?

Let's kick this off with step number one, adopt personal growth.

If you know me and you know this podcast well, you know that I love personal development.

I have raved about it since day one of this show and I will continue to do so for the rest of my entire life.

Personal growth is one of the most phenomenal ways to tap into your own potential.

And one question I've asked myself as I have really dug deeper into my own growth is, why do I care so much?

Why does it really matter?

And the only answer that I can give is back from the beginning, the origin story for me about what made the biggest difference.

So let's go back to when I was in college.

I have a degree in theater and psychology, and essentially I pursued two areas of interest.

I love theater.

I've done that for my entire life.

And psychology, I pursued because I found it to be a fascinating topic when I I was taking classes in college.

And so I majored in these two topics wanting to dig into what could I learn more about?

How could I tap into my interests?

I'm a millennial.

And so I was told growing up that my passion was going to be the foundation for my career.

Well, as it turns out, that was a bit of a misnomer.

The idea that pursuing your passion will lead to your future success, there are some flaws in that argument.

And I experienced that firsthand.

And so one thing I will say to that is my degrees that I chose to major in, theater and psychology, were passions.

They were interests.

But there was no career plan behind them.

There was no tie into what will I do with this college degree.

So I got lucky.

At the time, my girlfriend then slash fiancé Tessa, who is now my wife, got into graduate school in Boston.

And so I chose to tag along with her.

And so the two of us moved to Boston together from Missouri and, you know, going into the big city for the first time in our lives.

And I needed a job right away.

She was in school, but I was unemployed.

And so desperately, I looked around, where do I go?

What do I do?

And the answer right away was, hey, there's this door to door sales job that's hiring.

I'll take that one because they will take anybody, literally.

And so I said yes to a job that I do nothing about but thought, hey, I'm young, I'm spry.

I'll figure it out.

Well, as it turns out, it was terrible.

In fact, it was the worst job of my entire life that is still true to this day.

And I really can't picture a worse job than this one.

If you've ever done door to door sales, you know what I'm talking about.

The rejection, the face to face being told no, being yelled at, being literally chased out of a business.

I mean, it was rough.

The good news behind all of this is that my boss at the time was obsessed with John Maxwell.

Now, John Maxwell is a very famous author and speaker.

I think he's authored more than 50 books at this point, and he's just an incredibly prolific content creator and leader.

And there was a book that he wrote called Your Roadmap for Success, that it was my first personal growth book.

I didn't really want to read it, but my boss told me I had to, so I did.

And it changed my entire life overnight.

It's hard to express exactly how strong this pivot was for me.

Now, from that perspective, though, I will say that the book itself is fine.

It's not fantastic.

It's a good book, but it's not the kind of book I'm telling you to read.

I mentioned it here because it was a very important book for me in that moment.

I went from someone who only read because I was told to in school to someone who voluntarily wanted to pick up a book and go read it for fun.

I was never that guy.

I had never had any intention of reading.

It was just a thing that I was forced to do.

But then all of a sudden, it became a thing I was desperate to do because I learned what personal development was, an opportunity to pursue yourself, self-awareness, skills, interests, possibilities, potential.

It was everything that I could possibly imagine.

And I saw someone for the first time my life doing something that I could picture myself, doing as a career.

I literally saw John Maxwell as an author and speaker and thought to myself, wait a minute, you could be an author and a speaker as your job?

That sounds amazing.

I want to do that.

And it was the first time in my life that I connected the dots between where I was and where I could be.

And that to me is what a career is all about, the connection between what you believe of yourself today to be true and what you truly believe is possible for yourself tomorrow.

And that then making that big leap forward to step into that potential.

And John Maxwell's book basically argued that was possible for me.

And I believed it.

And so that became my future.

Now, as it turns out, I was not yet really centered on my best skills or interests.

And I was still trying to figure out who is Jeff Sanders.

And as part of my journey to answer those questions, I started blogging.

And the name of my blog was graduated and clueless.

Because that's how I felt.

That was my life story at that point.

And so I decided to not only blog about it, but also turn that blog into my first self-published book.

That at the time, and still as today, called Graduated and Clueless Guidebook for a passionate, purposeful, and profitable life after college.

The funny thing here is that this book has been read by a total of six people.

I didn't sell any copies.

Nobody actually cared about it.

But I didn't write the book for other people.

I wrote this book for me.

I wanted to figure out who is Jeff Sanders.

What am I doing here?

Why do I exist?

How can I be of value in the marketplace?

What is the connection between me and the rest of the world?

So this was a personal endeavor that I just happened to put on the internet, which is a lot of fun by itself as a project, but it really was very beneficial for me to get these thoughts out of my head and onto paper and craft together something that I could. could potentially sell, but really was just trying to embody where I was at the time.

And so at that point, I then made a pivot into what I called my personal growth experiments.

So looking back at it now, my entire decade of my 20s was nothing more than a series of experiments.

I was testing career ideas.

I tested out running marathons.

I changed my diet radically, became a vegan, and then a raw vegan, and then all kinds of other stuff in the middle of all that.

And I really viewed every bit of my 20s as an opportunity to test my potential.

Now, to go back to the marathon example for a second, one thing that I did after my wife and I moved to Boston was to really double down on running and endurance running as one of my best first experiments.

And my very first marathon was run in Providence, Rhode Island, just south of Boston.

And it was the first time my life that I proved to myself I could do something super difficult that I did not previously believe was possible.

So prior to that, graduating college was my first big life achievement that I was very proud of.

But I always thought I could do it.

It was never a question of could I or not.

I just needed to go through the motions and do it.

But a marathon was a totally different beast.

I had never envisioned myself doing that.

And so to find myself a few years later crossing that first finish line was absolutely life-changing.

And the whole process of training for a marathon of you do five miles and then 10 and then 15 and then 20.

At every interval in that stage, I kept asking the question, can I do more?

If I just ran 12 miles today, could I do 15 next week?

I just ran 20 miles.

Could I do 24?

Every single time that I reached a new milestone, it just begs. the question, what's next?

How far could this go?

How much potential do I have?

And that, to me, was an embodiment.

The marathon was an embodiment of my growth at the time.

And I wanted more of that.

And one thing that I learned not only from the physicality of marathon training and the experimentation of testing careers and odd jobs was this realization, this kind of happenstance, that I found Albert Einstein's quote, in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

And I have leveraged that phrase every single day for decades.

And it has been the driving force behind my seeking of opportunities.

My acknowledgement, there's a problem, there's a hurdle, is a difficulty, and then my leaping forward into the next horizon because I can see opportunity because I am looking for it.

What I love about this quote is the aspirational nature of saying, yes, you can.

Yes, there are. are opportunities here.

Yes, you can figure out what those are and make it happen, but you have to lean in and do it.

And so for me to see that there is this thing, there is this opportunity, I may be struggling, there may be obstacles, but I can do something about that.

That's empowering.

That's incredibly empowering.

And so to me, that's what the experimentation provides is a chance to test those waters and go seek out opportunities.

Now, to piggyback on that concept of in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity, I also believe that clarity begins in chaos, that the answers we seek come directly from the mess of our lives.

You know, one thing I've thought of recently as a father of two and a business owner and a homeowner and a husband and all these different titles I have for myself is that my life day to day is very busy.

It's messy.

It's chaotic.

And one question I had for myself a few years ago when my daughters were very young was, you know, when things slow down, will I be able to actually pinpoint my next direction?

Will I be able to have that clarity I'm looking for when things aren't as messy?

Well, a few years passed and I realized, Jeff, you're still waiting for that calm moment.

It's not coming.

The chaos, the mess, the insanity, it's here to stay.

That's going to be the default.

And so if I am seeking answers and clarity and direction, it's going to come in the middle of my messy life.

It's not going to come on some mythical future date when things are nice and pleasant.

That day just isn't in my horizon, not for a while at least.

Now, if we bounce back a second to my mid-20s, one of my very first day jobs was to work in a career college here in Nashville, and that college is now bankrupt and gone forever, and that's a whole other story.

But one of the jobs I had while I was there was as a school's registrar, which essentially is a glorified admin.

I was in charge of all the paperwork, all the school student data, just all kinds of numbers and charts and file cabinets.

And it was a big hot mess, at least initially.

But this is where my story takes another major pivot.

So yes, marathony taught me a lot about pushing hard and going to the next level physically.

But this job, this particular employment opportunity, was one of challenging me on a level I had never been challenged on before, which was to really, truly learn how to be productive, how to be organized, how to be efficient, how to stick to deadlines at a level I had never had to before.

Somehow I got through four years of college of two degrees and didn't have the skills I needed for this job, but the job forced me to learn how to do these things.

And so I went from someone with a big messy desk and all kinds of chaos to just a few months later having clean, simple systems.

Beautifully organized desks and file cabinets and structures and routines and habits.

It was an incredible transformation.

And it taught me not only am I good at this, but I also really enjoy it.

And by it, I mean being productive.

I discovered a skill set and an interest I did not know I had. and this to me embodied what personal growth is all about, what professional growth is all about, is self-discovery and then doubling down on your strengths.

In this process, I read a lot of books.

My 20s were just filled with reading lots of personal growth books.

And one of my absolute favorites to this day is Earl Nightingale's The Strangest Secret.

Now, Earl Nightingale is a very famous, basically, broadcaster, radio broadcaster from the 1940s, 50s, He basically is the modern day founder of personal development.

And Earl Nightingale's strangest secret recording at the time that became a book later had this very strong message, one that is iconic today, which is that you become what you think about most of the time.

Your thoughts determine your actions, which determine your habits, which determine your results.

Everything about you is true today, both positive and negative. because of your thoughts.

Now, yes, we have the circumstances around us we don't control.

That's part of life as well.

But ultimately, the core of who we are becoming today really originates with our thoughts.

And this book and recording have challenged me for years to think about different things, to become a new person to change my habits and ultimately my results because I'm changing my inputs, I'm changing my habits, my actions, my routines, everything about me is changing. but my thoughts are the core of all of it.

And so for your first action step to identify and really craft your ideal career, using step one of adopting personal growth, we're going to adopt a daily reading habit.

Of all the habits that have changed my life and changed my career more than anything else, it is reading every day.

I'll challenge you to read for just 20 minutes a day and try to focus that reading on nonfiction books.

Fiction is separate.

Non-fiction books that are based on your growth, personal growth, professional growth, learning a new skill, learning something new about yourself or the world around you, really 20 minutes a day to tap into what is possible for you.

That can change your life faster you can possibly imagine.

All right.

Step number two to identify and craft your ideal career is to model after others.

This is a cheat code.

This is the secret of all secrets, which is that copying other people is the fast track to success.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel.

I know that I want to, but I'm telling you, you don't have to and you probably shouldn't try because you're just going to get exhausted.

It's just going to waste a lot of time.

The faster path is modeling.

Now, let's use this podcast.

It's a pretty good example. 11, 12 years ago, when I first sat down to design this show, the very first thing, thing that I did was not write out what this show could be.

The first thing that I did was to find other podcasts that I thought were the best at the time, and I reverse engineered those to figure out what are they doing well?

Why is this show popular?

What do I love about this podcast that I can include in my own show?

And one of the main shows I modeled after was Michael Hyatt's This Is Your Life podcast, which does not exist today, unfortunately, but it was a phenomenal podcast back in the day.

I wish he brought it back, but it's a podcast that I knew was a gold star for me.

It was a gold standard of, if I model after this, I'll get the results that I want for my show.

So I simply reverse engineered everything about his podcast, almost to the point of it being word for word, and then use that as a template to design my first few episodes.

And so if you listen to my first episodes one through five, one through ten, they're actually structured in a very similar way. to Michael Hyatt's podcast as it was back then.

And then I very slowly, week by week, began to customize and craft out how my show could be radically different and better and customized for me.

And so that's where the 5A miracle came from was really my own experience and ideas, but modeled after the templates from others.

This is the fast track to success.

You take what you already have and you combine that with the model where someone else has already found success, and you simply merge those two together and let that run the show.

Another great example of modeling is Dean Carnazis.

I've had Dean in this podcast as a guest before, and he is a phenomenal guy who has run incredible marathons, ultra-marathons, all over the world, all seven continents, he set world records.

He is an amazing guy.

Well, one thing I learned from Dean was the obviousness of how to run.

He really showed me, if you. you want to run far, if you want to run fast, here's a template for how to do so.

And so back in the very beginning of my marathon career was to mimic phenomenal runners.

And Dean was one of my absolute go-to guys.

And to this day, he is still one of my idols in running.

And that's what it takes sometimes to tap into your own potential is not to figure it out Go see what the experts are doing.

Do what they do.

And you get the same results.

And it's going to happen faster than you could. possibly imagine.

A third example, and this is someone I've discussed in this podcast multiple times, is David Gaggins.

He is a world famous discipline fanatic.

His life story is bonkers.

And one thing that David Gagins has absolutely shown me is that if you want discipline, if you want execution, if you want to guarantee results, if you want to guarantee, you will not have excuses.

Do what David Gagins is doing.

He is extreme at every possible level, and you probably shouldn't model everything he's doing because he is risky.

But what he's doing is overcoming challenges that nobody else would even attempt to take on.

I love that.

I love having someone carve out that path and say, if you want to go this direction, you can.

It's going to be hard.

It's going to be really difficult sometimes, but you absolutely can do it.

And that type of example, that kind of modeling is absolutely life-changing.

So some of the biggest benefits you'll see with modeling and mentorship and apprenticeship would be avoiding the biggest mistakes you otherwise would probably make yourself.

You can shorten your learning curve, which is, of course, a massive speed enhancement.

But really the biggest benefit that I love the most is adopting the most effective habits and mindset.

Being able to think like those who are successful will make you successful.

Once again, you become what you think about most of the time.

So think about success in the areas you want to grow and adopt those most effective habits and mindset of the pros you're modeling after.

And you yourself will become one of those pros one day.

Now, along those same lines is an amazing book called The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papazan.

I've had Jay in this podcast as well.

And the book, The One Thing, argues that there is one thing in most areas of life that when you do it, everything else can be easier or even unnecessary.

And the world of careers, I've asked this question to myself many times.

What's the one thing in the world of careers that would make everything else easier or unnecessary?

And the answer is modeling.

It's cheating.

It's going after the fastest path to success, which means finding a path that's already been carved out and you just following the footstep. steps.

But that's it.

That's the answer.

So if you're looking for the secret, that's it.

You just got to find someone who's doing great work and you yourself go do that same great work.

So the obvious action step for number two is to find a mentor or a model in your life.

Now, I'll be the first to tell you you do not need these models or mentors to be face to face.

You can use authors and podcasters and YouTubers and content creators.

You can use the internet, use the power of the world we have today to tap into life lessons from others and shorten your own learning curve and find success faster.

So if you want to find someone face to face, go for it, but you don't have to.

All right.

Step number three is optimize your habits.

This podcast has been about habits since day one.

And one of the key through lines of this show that especially has been true for the last probably six, seven years is the health aspect. the tagline for this podcast is healthy productivity for high achievers.

And I truly believe that tremendous health is your ticket to unleashing your best work.

That the healthier you are, the more potential you have to do amazing work.

And the opposite is also true.

If you don't have your health, you have no potential for success.

Health is the first and most important component.

And it's the most overlooked.

It's the one we desperately need and yet we ignore it.

I ask the question to myself all the time, how can I guarantee the results that I want?

What is the ticket to me being able to guarantee that I'm going to achieve this goal, cross this finish line, make it happen?

And the only answer that comes back again and again are my habits.

What I do every day defines that potential, which means I have to be able to show up every day, which means I need to be healthy every day.

That's the ticket to this. that's the underlying foundational through line to everything is healthy awesomeness that comes from you.

Now, to help make that possible is, the 5 a.m. miracle.

That's right.

So this podcast and the concept behind it really came from my mid-20s.

So at the time I had a full-time job, a side business that I'm now doing full-time, a marathon that I was trying to train for, you know, regular life is also happening.

A busy, busy time for me.

But one question I had was, how do I guarantee that I have time for all these things?

Is it even possible?

And the only real answer that I had was to wake up at 5 a.m. and go for a run.

You know, prior to that, I had stressful mornings.

I would wake up late.

I would show up to work haphazard.

It just didn't feel fantastic for me to begin my day.

And so I thought, let's just flip this script.

Let's try an early morning, try a run, train for my marathon then, and see what happens.

On day one, it changed my life.

Absolutely fundamentally shifted my perspective that I could do a lot with my mornings.

Even a simple short run was radically powerful for my day.

And that set the tone for the rest of the day.

And all my habits and all my routines, everything was based off of this decision, this intentional decision to go to bed early, wake up early, and do something powerful.

So for me, morning routines were the foundation for all. all the other success I had planned for the rest of the day.

That is where everything starts.

And my initial goal was to connect the dots, to align my daily habits with the goals I had for my life.

As a good example of that, my early morning run was connected to the marathon I was training for.

So it wasn't just a random run.

I'm not just working out for fun.

I'm working out for a race.

That's a big difference between some random healthy habits versus a habit that's targeted, that's intentional, that's tied to something bigger than just that one action.

This is where the power comes from.

It's not just an early morning.

It's not just choosing some random habit.

It's doing something that means something to you.

And seeing how it stacks up over time and compounds into more success.

That connection alone can be enough to drag you out of bed at 5 a.m. and do something you care about.

You know, the best routines are intentional.

They are oriented around your goals.

But most importantly, they are repeatable.

Your habits are only habits because you can do them over and over again.

All that to say is that your habits can't be too aggressive.

They have to be repeatable, sustainable.

They have to last a long time.

And so if you are overly aggressive on day one and then you're too tired on day two to continue, the habit was too strong.

Back it up, do something easier.

But once that's in place, you have a repeatable, sustainable rhythm for all of this, that's when the compounding effect over time will truly kick in.

Now, related to all of this is this concept that I cannot establish. which is that if you are too busy to work out, you are too busy.

Now, you could change the word workout to self-care.

If you are too busy to take care of yourself, you are too busy.

This is the underlying foundation of healthy productivity for high achievers.

We need to take care of ourselves.

Because if we don't, the opposite will happen to us, which is a story I've told in this podcast before is my story of burnout. of panic attacks, of trips to the emergency room, because I thought that I was having an actual heart attack.

And I was in my early 30s.

I should never be experiencing that in my early 30s, but I did.

Now, I'm now 40 years old, so I'm almost a decade removed from this, and yet I'm still the same guy.

I still those same tendencies to want to push hard and do the things I love and do them all the time, but that's not going to work long term.

My own habits have to be sustainable and repeatable and healthy and balanced because if not, I will burn myself out again.

I don't want that to happen to you.

I want you to have the best habits.

That means ones you can do again and again day after day and achieve the success you're after.

Now, one of the best ways to guarantee that this will be true for you that you will avoid the burnout and have the success is a personal optimization plan, which is very simply a list of, your best habits, the things that make you truly thrive.

You know, on my list, it's things like spend time outdoors, go for a hike, go for a run, a drink clean water and drink a lot of it, like really have the fundamentals in place because when those are in place, I feel great.

And when they're not, I don't.

That's it.

It's so simple and yet we don't do these things.

And so the challenge is to do the things we know are effective and then you yourself can be optimized.

Now, there's a phenomenal book that I want everyone to read, of course, is Atomic Habits.

It is the book that underpins habits in today's world.

James Clear has been on my podcast numerous times, and this book is not only wildly popular, it's also extremely good.

I read this book three, four times now, and so if you want to learn more about habits and really dive into the science behind them and have them be effective and actionable, atomic habits is the book to read.

Now, the action step for this one, of course, is to optimize your daily routine.

My personal preference is a 5 a.m.

Miracle morning routine is your primary objective, but really the goal here is to make sure your habits are locked in, your core, healthy habits that make you your best you so that you can do your best work.

That's the whole point of all of this.

Step number four is to acquire new skills.

If there was anything that would help you stay, from your colleagues, from those in your profession, for you to be the absolute best you can be in your career.

It's going to be based on skills, not passions.

You know, I said before that as a millennial, I was taught that passion is the thing.

And I have lived through the opposite of that.

I have lived through a world where skills trump passion.

There's a phenomenal book from Cal Newport called So Good They Can't Ignore You, Why Skills Trump Passion and the quest for work you live. love.

This is just so true.

Skills are it.

Skills not only set you apart, but also when you get good at something, you enjoy it.

And the more things you're good at, the more enjoyment you have about being good at those things.

And then you can offer more value, get paid more for it, have more success.

It just, it all stacks up.

It all adds together.

And it's all based on you having something to offer, of being great at something, being so good, they can't ignore you.

Now, my personal take on in terms of skills you could have in your career, is that one skill stands out over all the others.

And it's the skill of focus.

Focus is the most important skill in this century.

It is the thing that we don't do.

It is the thing we desperately need the most of.

There's an amazing quotation from an author named Marty Rubin, who says that distraction is nine-tenths of consciousness.

And it's so true, right?

Distraction is everywhere. all we ever think about is well wait a minute squirrel oh there's that thing oh facebook oh you know that's that's all we ever do we've trained ourselves to just ping pong around a thousand different directions but what if we didn't do that what if distraction was not the norm what if it was a side thing that we occasionally did and focus instead was our primary objective stephen pressfield is an amazing author of many books and one of them is the war of art and in that book he argues that we We are fighting the resistance.

And the resistance is nothing more than that force that says, I don't want to do my work today.

I'm going to go look at my phone instead.

I'm going to go for a walk just to avoid answering that email.

We all know this.

We have that tendency to run away, to procrastinate, to ignore, to not engage.

Stephen Presfield argues that that's what our biggest challenge is as creators, as artists, as craftsmen. we are fighting this resistance.

And when we fight, we can win.

And you win by sitting your butt in the chair and doing the work.

That's at the core of all of this.

We need to just confront and embrace these things, to look at our fears in the face and just say yes to them anyway.

Have the courage to step in and do the thing.

One of the best things you can do in this challenge for focus is to strive for deep work.

Cal Newport also has a book called Deep Work.

And one of the biggest concepts that he's arguing for here is that we are striving for quality.

We really want to have not just quantity and boxes checked, but actually getting something of real depth that you cannot get if you're just ping ponging around a thousand directions.

So to achieve that deep work, my argument is you need a focus block of time, a 100% distraction-free focus block.

My F-bots are my absolute most fantastic part of my day.

I do them all the time.

I'm in one right now to do this episode of this podcast.

With focus blocks, you can, yes, block distractions, but you also get more done in the focus blocks.

You improve the quality of your work, and for me, the best part is how good you feel afterwards.

Oh, it's fantastic.

To feel so accomplished at the end of a focus block, that's the intention.

So if you want to feel that more often, go pursue these things more often.

This will work for you.

Focus blocks work.

They are amazing.

One of the key things about productivity in general is that we tend to focus on activity, on busyness, on long to-do lists, and we miss the obviousness that true productivity is accomplishing just a few things.

But those few things matter the most.

They are numbers one and two and three in our list, not seven, eight, nine, and ten.

10.

Those are easier.

They're faster wins.

They're fun, but they're not important.

One, two, and three.

Those are important.

And that's the intention.

You know, one of the best ways to filter out what to work on or not to is to use Greg McEwen's quote.

If it's not a clear yes, it's a clear no.

You know, Greg McEwen has written amazing books like essentialism and effortless.

And one of these core arguments that he has is that we need to figure out what to say yes to.

And the more important part, what to say no to.

So if it's not a clear yes, if you're not all in, just walk away and go find the thing you truly care about because that's where all the energy is going to be.

That's where your best self will show up.

Now for the fourth action step, we want to master the skill of focus.

Of all the skills you could have to bolster your career, your productivity, your potential, learn how to focus.

This is a skill you can practice and master.

And as you do so, you will see tremendous results from this.

I promise you.

It works because focus is the best skill you could possibly master.

Okay, now for our fifth and final step, I would like you to set ambitious goals.

Now, let's go back to Dean Karnazas for a second.

Dean's first book, my favorite book from him, called Ultramarathon Man, is a book about running ultramarathons.

So the practicality of it is based in how to run what it looks like to run a long distance.

And that's amazing.

However, the biggest takeaway that I got has nothing to do with running.

Dean makes this phenomenal case for setting ambitious goals, for dreaming, for imagining what's possible for you far beyond what you've ever done before.

And this could apply to any area of life, personal, professional, running marathons, knocking out an amazing career. career goal, everything becomes possible if you first believe it is possible.

And I love the aspirational nature of this book.

And it's just truly phenomenal to be able to say, I can do so much more.

What if I had a more ambitious goal?

What if I said yes to the Mount Everest of my career?

What would happen?

What would be made possible by having that vision be part of my life?

Having said all of that, long-term planning or the specific details behind it is actually wildly ineffective.

And I'll give a really good example of this.

The CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, he graduated from Duke University with his MBA, and 25 years later was invited back to Duke to be interviewed, and they wanted to ask him about his 25-year career plan that he made as part of his MBA program, specifically asking, Tim, did you actually plan to become the CEO of Apple?

And Tim's answer was phenomenal.

It was, you know, I made this career plan.

And for about 12 to 18 months, it was sort of accurate.

And after that, totally useless.

I don't know how to express this to you, but Tim Cook is at the top of the business world, right?

He is the CEO of one of the world's biggest companies.

And so if your goal is to strive for something, let's say even part way up that ladder, why would we set long-term career goals when someone like Tim could not have imagined himself there?

But the better answer that Tim actually gave later on was that he was able to pivot.

He was able to navigate the world of his career as things happened.

He saw opportunities and he sees them.

He began to look around for what is possible for where I am now, not where might I be in two or three decades.

But really, look, what is happening in my life right now?

long-term planning does not provide the sense of urgency that it needs.

You tend to have a very slow start and if you get to a finish, it's pretty chaotic.

It's also nearly impossible to predict the future especially long-term, and so we end up planning way too big or usually way too small.

And so it doesn't work.

What's the answer?

Well, the answer is the quarter system.

The quarter system is your chance to go from the start line to the finish line in 90 days or less.

Most of my goals today are about 30 to 45 days, so even less than the 90, because I tend to want to focus in the here and now as best I can.

With a shorter horizon, you will have a healthy sense of urgency.

You will have a strong start and a strong finish.

It's way easier to predict the future, and yes, you will accomplish more than ever.

Your productivity will skyrocket when your whole life is truly focused on what's happening now and you dominate the now.

That's going to be more effective than just kind of hoping things work out in two or three decades.

You've got to do the thing today.

So the action step for this last piece to set ambitious goals is to clarify your next one.

What is your next ambitious goal that you're going to commit to and achieve in 90 days or less?

That becomes the focus.

Everything in your life orientes in that direction.

So to recap, your ideal career is based on five steps, adopting personal growth, modeling after others, optimizing your habits, acquiring new skills, and setting ambitious goals.

These five steps can and will add up to your ideal career.

I promise you this stuff works, I have lived it, and I'm living it actively as we speak to develop my next phase of my own career.

Now, of course, you want to learn more.

You can email me, jeff at jeffsanders.com.

If you would like me to give a similar talk to you or your company, I would love to talk to you as well.

Jeffsanders.com slash speaking.

It's a great place to go to learn more about my speaking engagements.

And of course, thank you for being here today.

This was a nice virtual presentation.

We're doing a podcast here, but this is a lot of fun.

And the future, I could do more of these.

We'll see.

So, of course, email me with any questions about this, feedback, comments.

I'd love to hear it.

But hopefully this was helpful for you in your career.

I would love to see you making a big step forward.

I would love to know that your own ambitious goals are going to be challenged and pursued and acted upon because of what was discussed here today.

And for that action step this week.

Embrace personal and professional growth.

Of all the steps I outlined today, today, your embrace of personal development is by far the most important and the most impactful.

So begin a daily reading habit today.

Make personal growth synonymous with your approach to every goal you pursue from here on out.

Now, of course, subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app, or become a VIP member of the 5 a.m.

Miracle community by getting the premium ad-free version with exclusive bonus episodes at 5am Miracle Premium. com.

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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