Stephen Collar

speaker

310 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2025 last heard Jan 2025

Stephen Collar’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Home Service Expert Podcast · Achieving 500% Productivity Through Flow States · 10 Jan 2025 podcast

And so it's always 4% to 5% at a time. In fact, if you try to go 10% or 20%, you're actually going to stall out because it's too much anxiety, too much cortisol, too much norepinephrine, and you're going to block performance. And when I say block performance, let me give you the example. So I'm going to get a little neurogeeky technical here.

But my favorite structure in the brain is the anterior cingulate cortex. Why? Because it chooses. When we make decisions, are we going to make the logical, linear, tried, true, safe, secure decision, or are we going to do something creative and interesting? And it makes this decision based on how much fear you have. So if you've got too much fear, your brain starts to limit your options.

We all know this. The extreme example is fight or flight, right? You're really freaked out. So your brain says, oh, no, no, no. Three options. You can flee, you can freeze, or you can fight. That's all you can do. What we don't realize is that all fear does that. Your brain goes, oh, I'm scared. Give me something that worked last time.

let me give you the conservative choice give me right so as entrepreneurs i'm a big fan of what branson said and we wrote about this is you definitely want to protect the downside i think you want to find ways to protect the downside but as entrepreneurs you're looking for the creative interesting solution that keeps you sort of ahead and if too much fear It completely blocks that.

So you get really logical, you get really linear. And I always tell, I think as a hiring practice, I always tell my team, remember, we're hiring two people. You're hiring the person when everything is going well and they're in a good mood. And you're hiring the person when they're terrified. and scared.

Usually, if you want to come work with me, we're going to put you through a fairly rigorous test trial period. And in that trial period, I'm going to overload you. I'm going to scare you a little bit. And it's not that I need you to succeed. I don't give a shit if you can pull the task off or not pull the task off. How do you respond? How are you when you're scared? Because

The employees who totally shut down and get really, really selfish and really logical, which is most people when they're scared, I don't want to work with them. Those are not my people. That's not helpful because the things I do for a living, we move really, really, really fast, and there are high consequences.

You roll the dice a lot, and when you're writing books and you're doing things in public, there's consequences. You know what I mean? We're playing with a lot of ammo and resources. We're training the best of the best of the best of the best of the best. And like they're playing with live ammo, right? Also like their lives are live.

I always remind them, but like there are lives at the other end of this conversation.

Yeah, let's talk about how to set a clear goals list, okay? You said, we started this conversation with what are the flow, where do you start? One more flow in your life, where do you start? We've actually covered two thirds of my answer. Complete concentration. So like I always start with distraction management, start with the simple stuff.

The only thing I, caveat, if you're burned out and most of us are burned out, start by sort of calming your nervous system down, getting sleeping, right? Start there. Then the next thing, complete concentration is how you sort of prep the space for, oh, I'm going to go in here. This is my focus time. The challenge skills balance is how you attack your project, right? I always like to automate.

So I'll give you an example. I'm a fairly, things have to be pretty straightforward and simple for me. So when I say a clear goals, I said, I start my day writing, right? So my first day is write my, whatever book I'm writing. If I'm starting the book, it's right. 500 to 600 words, because that's 4%.

So, and the reason as a writer is in the way I write, usually about 350, 400 words, you have to transition between ideas. Go from idea one to idea two. That's the hardest thing for a writer. That's the most complicated thing. So I can write 350 words in my sleep, but at around 350, I got to transition you out of that paragraph into a new set of ideas, into whatever. That's hard.

That's going to catch me. It's going to take some elbow grease. If I'm in the middle of the book and I know more of what I'm doing, I write 700 to 800 words a day, maybe a thousand. And at the end of the book, I know what the fuck I'm doing. So it's 1500 words a day. So when it says, you know, first list of my thing, clear goals list is write the new novel. It's goals are clear.

So when you say clear goals, the reason the point is not a daily to do list. And why do we call it a clear goals list? Clarity is what matters. It's a focus game. You're playing a focus game with your brain. What should your brain pay attention to now? What should you pay attention to next? That's why clarity matters. The goal matters a lot less than the clarity.

So I usually, it's like 500 words that leave readers feeling excited. So clarity, did this come as the outcome? No, you don't want to focus on outcome. You want to focus on process, sort of. Well, 500 words is an outcome, but it's not, I'm going to write 500 words that get me on the New York Times bestseller list.

I just want to write 500 words that maybe make my reader feel curious or scared or empathetic or whatever. That's my clear goals list. It's sort of this much done and this feeling to the reader. That's all I need. So now we've talked about what a clear goal is.

I said before, if you can, start your workday in accordance with your circadian rhythms because it's hard to fight against your own physiology. Start with your hardest task. So your first thing is your biggest win. And remember that energy and willpower diminish over time. So you want to go in order from the hardest sort of the easiest. This is the most important thing, Tommy, do a trial period.

Spend like two to three weeks and ask yourself, how many things can I do in a day and still be excellent at all of them? Because what you don't want to do is put more shit in your clear goals list than you can actually accomplish and be a great. If you want to be a peak performer, set yourself up to win.

If you know in an average day, based on what you do for a living, you can get eight to 10 things done. That's your clear goals list. Now, two caveats here. First one. If it takes energy, it goes on the list. That's the point. You have a limited energy budget.

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