Ep. 57 How We Get More Done + Stay Motivated

How We Get More Done + Stay Motivated

When trying to grow your business how do you find the time to eat well, work out, hang out with your kids, read, and all the other things on your to-do list?

Torie Mathis and her cohost Sean talk about how they get ALL THE THINGS done, how to create new habits that stick, and how to keep up momentum when motivation fades.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 57

Torie: [00:00:00] So don’t wait for this like, magic to happen. Like you have to set it in place so that the magic can happen. Yep. Yep.

Hey, Hey. Welcome to Smart AF I am your host Torie Mathis. We have got a great show for you today, so let’s get started. Hey guys, what’s up? It’s Torie Mathis. Welcome to the show. I’m here. With the guy, Sean Mathis what’s up? 

Sean: [00:00:31] Hey hey! 

Torie: [00:00:32] So we are pretty good at getting a ton of shit done. People always wonder about Sean Mathis. How did he get it all done? 

Sean: [00:00:43] Yeah, you just kind of one foot in front of the other. 

Torie: [00:00:48] There’s more to it than that. You guys, that’s not the whole video. Don’t worry. 

Sean: [00:00:52] You just gotta do it. 

Torie: [00:00:53] This is why Sean’s not driving. 

Sean: [00:00:56] I’ll tell you the main thing for me is convenience. It’s gotta be easy. You create that routine and then yeah. Convenient to have that routine. And then it becomes cemented in, it just becomes part of what we do. Like go into the gym, you know, it, we made it part of the routine. It’s relatively convenient to go there. So it’s not like we’re going completely out of our way to do something like that. But then now we’ve done it so often that it’s. Weird. If we miss a day or we can’t go, as I find myself, I don’t go Wednesdays. And I find myself wanting to go Wednesday. 

Torie: [00:01:38] Sometimes part of what we did was that we attached it to something that we have to do. Like the kids have to go to school. They have to get up at the same time. They have to leave every day. So five days a week, we have this exact schedule that we have no control over. We don’t get to decide when the kids go to school. So we get up, we put our gym clothes on like we never put something else on every single day we put our gym clothes on. Why? Because once the kids are gone like we drive drop Riley up at school, we go straight to the gym. Every single day. So Wednesday.

Sean: [00:02:15] If we’re not wearing gym clothes, because we didn’t go to the gym that day, we are wearing gym clothes because we either have gone or are planning ongoing. 

Torie: [00:02:25] So by like taking that thing that you want to do and attaching it to something that you have to do, like you have no choice to, like, I think that’s a really good way of making sure that like stuff gets done, you know, whatever it is. Yeah. What other things are like that, that you could attach to something convenient. I of like, if people want to read, like, read the exact same time, like before you, you know, when you get into bed, like there’s a book they’re like, do it the first, like 20 minutes or whatever. 

Sean: [00:02:54] There’s like a, like maybe not the internet, like what you’re doing is the fun part. But once you. Once you’re there it’s worth doing. And so kind of seeing the light at the tunnel per se. So like, I feel it’s sometimes hard for me to get motivated to drive an hour to the museum, but like 99% of the time when I’m there, like it’s so worth being, it only takes that one person to come in there. And make it worse, my two hour round trip commute to the museum. And so like, it may, it may be hard to find the motivation to, to physically go and do it. But because I know the odds of it, like the reaping the benefits of it, once I do it, It makes it easy to just continue to do it and where I don’t have to go on a daily basis, but if we have nothing else going on. Okay. Kind of like just being able to be there and interact with people because of, you know, the response that I get from it and it makes it better. 

Torie: [00:04:08] Well, and I was talking about the reading. Like a lot of people want to read more you because you’re commuting already. You just get audiobooks. And so rather than listening to crap radio or the same songs over and over again, how many books have you read in the last.

Sean: [00:04:22] I struggled with sitting and doing nothing. So. It’s difficult for me to sit there and read long enough to get through anything that’s worth reading being in the car for two hours, I can knock some stuff out, which is so. 

Torie: [00:04:39] There’s never, there’s never an excuse for not like, if you don’t want to read, because I think even if it’s just listening to it, like. It just opens up for so much stuff. Whether like, especially if you’re a business owner, I think it’s super important. But even if it’s like investing, like how many books have I read about like making money and, and, you know doing things with your money and becoming a millionaire and all these types of things like, so anybody can read stuff about that or stuff about health or stuff about travel, right.

Sean: [00:05:06] Biographies or the book would be that thing. You know, and it’s a big hardback book. I mean, I don’t know how long it would take me to read something like that. Audio you got like 60 hours worth of reading. But it’s, I mean, it’s super neat. Like I like it. 

Torie: [00:05:25] But if you are already driving or you’re already working out or you’re already mowing the lawn, whatever it is like you can easily. Put a book in your head. I know when I used to listen to audiobooks, I listen to them at like two times or one and a half times. That way when I was working out or whatever I was doing, I was able to get a little bit more done. And once you start to like some, some topics, like you can’t do that, like I, there were a few things that are like not easy reading.

And so I would have to listen to it on one, but some stuff that’s a little bit easier. Like you just listened to it a little bit faster. You can get through it a little bit more. So even if you just have a little bit of time, you can get through books pretty quick by just adding it in with those other things. That’s a good way of getting all kinds of stuff done. 

Sean: [00:06:10] I think another thing is that we’re not really ever afraid. I think a lot of people are afraid to do that. Whether it takes them out of their comfort zone or whatever the case may be. It’s,   really easy apparently for people to talk themselves out of stuff. And Yeah, make it so that, that they, they just, they don’t do it. 

Torie: [00:06:31] When I was, I had to be in like high school or something. I learned that the chemicals in your brain are the exact same, whether you’re anxious and scared to do something, then if you’re excited to do something. So I learned to do whatever that feeling was.

I always went for excitement rather towards fear or anxiety. And no matter what it was, I was really good at reframing. You don’t actually have to feel different. You just have to reframe it in your head. I remember when I joined the army, it was scary. You’re nervous. I’m like, no, I’m excited. I am excited to do it. No, I could have decided to be scared. It’s the same feelings, but now, like I always am really good at reframing, whatever it is to let’s be excited, like what’s going to happen. What’s new what’s. 

Sean: [00:07:16] I wasn’t specifically excited about going to basic training, but I knew it was a step in a long set of stairs that I wanted to take. So, you know, thinking of a bigger picture, you know, it was not necessarily that I was excited about that specifically because I was young. I was 17. I knew that I had to do that to get to the next level and then the next level, and there there’s a progression of things that needed to happen that, you know, I guess in a way I was excited that I was getting to knock that one out, even though like actually doing it, wasn’t exciting, but being able to accomplish it and move on to the next thing was exciting. 

Torie: [00:07:54] That was my next thing. Didn’t you join? See if you want to get shit done too. 

Sean: [00:08:01] Yeah. I talked a shit ton of people into, by grade, into joining the military. I went with one of my best friends who actually went through basic and all of our techniques, schools, technical school, we did it all together. Another one of my friends, he wound up missing the cut. And so he went later and then a couple of others wound up going either to a different branch or then they wound up going to the same branch. But again, did it, after that we did it. And, and all that was,  I did a lot of research and I was like, well, shit, I’m getting school paid for and getting all this experience. Why don’t you guys do it as well? And they’re like, okay. 

Torie: [00:08:40] But that’s a good way to, if you want to do anything, like find people that want to do the same thing that you want to do. I did 75 hard and the reason I found out about it was a friend and client of mine. Told me, they were doing it and he was already going to do it with somebody else. Instead of the three of us all, you know, went through it all. So it was easy to stay motivated. Cause you didn’t want to let the other people down. 

Sean: [00:09:02] Why wouldn’t you do it? Like what, what would be the reason that you’d be like no inconvenience. It wasn’t winter. Winter, I could totally see why wouldn’t you do it?

Torie: [00:09:12] Cause it’s cold. 

Sean: [00:09:14] Winter’s coming. 

Torie: [00:09:15] Seventy-five hard, two workouts a day, and one of them has to be outside and they’re both 45 minute workouts. So yeah, if it’s really cold. 

Sean: [00:09:23] Yeah. I dunno, rain check that. I’ll join you next summer. 

Torie: [00:09:29] The spring when it’s nice, but you know, getting somebody else to do it is, is a really good way to keep it. You’re self motivated. 

Sean: [00:09:37] There’s a reason why it’s called the buddy system. 

Torie: [00:09:39] That the system works. So another thing that works for me is committing whether you commit a time or you commit your money like we go to the gym, we go to the gym, very religiously. We are super good at doing it. And, and one way, I think that helped us to get into the groove of getting it is I did a personal training class and I ended up really liking my personal trainer and started doing classes that he takes.

So I do a personal training session once a week. And then the other times I go to the gym. I go to this class that people like, it’s a small, very small group class. So I am committed to go there. People expect me to be there. And so I think that really helped us get a good groove. Cause we, we went before and like, we go like two days and then we go three days and then we go two days.

Like it wasn’t exact, but because like I have these exact times I need to be there. Like that put us at the gym four days a week and it, you know, then we hooked it to the kids going to school and it just made it that like, it’s a non-negotiable now we’ve made it. It’s a commitment. Now I have friends that I go there with as a buddy system, too, both of us are going and, you know, so we have all these different ways that we’ve made it, that it’s just, what’s good and happened. We put our gym clothes on, we put, you know, everything goes on first thing in the morning, no matter what. And it just, it happens. 

Sean: [00:11:03] To prove that it works. Like how many times has it been a weekend? And we’re like, we should go to the gym, but there’s nothing that says we have to, it’s not built in. And is that something that we do on the weekends, even though let’s say it’s Sunday and the weather’s not great. And there isn’t a whole lot else that we have to do. It’s really hard to actually find ourselves in the gym on one of those, those off days? 

Torie: [00:11:28] No, because it’s, it’s so ingrained into those other times. It is, it’s a non-negotiable and you can make anything like that. A non-negotiable as long as you like set up how you want these things to do, whether it’s like eating well, could be the exact same thing.

You set yourself up for eating well, just like us putting on our gym clothes. You want to buy good food? Like, don’t buy the shit. Cause if you buy the shit, you’re going to keep the crap. So set yourself up the buddy system, you know, there’s different things that you can do, whatever it is to make sure that it happens.

Yeah. And I like that the whole committing yourself to something. Once you commit something out there, I see people all the time say if you want to have something big, like go on social media and say that you’re going to do. Because then you put yourself out there that you’re going to do it. And we’re the type of people. Like we don’t say shit unless we are a hundred percent sure that we’re going to do with the record. Yeah, exactly. 

Sean: [00:12:20] Finding the record I turned around and posted on social media and like it got feedback immediately. And then it was like, well, now, now there’s no turning back. 

Torie: [00:12:32] Speed for things like that is really, really important. If you want to do something like do whatever you can to get it started, because once you it’s starting as the hard part, like what’d you get going? Like you can keep that going usually. But getting started sometimes is really the hardest time. So once Sean decided that he was going to do the world record, you filled out the paperwork with Guinness super fast, like super fast.

You guys like within. I was in hours within hours and posted on social media that he was doing it. Like everybody, like we’re doing it without anything in place, because otherwise, you start to think, well, should I do it? Well, what if I did it this way? 

Sean: [00:13:12] Yeah. I would have talked myself out of it. If we would have thought through everything, there’s no way we would have done it. 

Torie: [00:13:18] But there’s a level of things that would be like that, that you can overthink. What’s the worst that’s going to happen? Like, just get going, go in that direction to stop thinking about it. Even with the military. Like, are you scared of you’re scared? No, like I made the decision that this is what I’m going to do. I am excited because this is what I’m going to do. Why would I be scared about it? I wouldn’t be nervous. Why would I want to change my mind? I am doing this. 

Sean: [00:13:43] It’s okay to fail again like just do it. And if it doesn’t work out, either move on or try again. But I mean, the end result is that you did do it. I mean, at least you had tried, which is more than what most people can say on things.

Even the fact that we’ve worked together and our entrepreneurs, like how many other people and couples wish they could say the same thing and they probably could do it. I mean, they probably do much better than us, but they never will. I mean, even this podcast and watching on YouTube, however, you’re listening to this, the chances are you may have, you know, wanting to do the same thing. But the difference is either you either have one and it’s great. And you’re good, and you’re better than us, which congratulations, or you just, you, you haven’t, you haven’t really committed to doing it yet. And there’s nothing that says that you can’t go out there and do it produce 50 episodes. No, it’s okay.

If nobody, nobody really listens to it at first. It gives you plenty of time to practice. It does take it from us. Like the more you do it, the better and easier it gets. But don’t let the fear of not being perfect right out the gate. Stop you from doing it or not knowing fully how to do it. If you don’t know how a phone works and how YouTube works and don’t let that stop. You start at step one and go through it. 

Torie: [00:15:19] Everybody had to start. Nobody knew how to do any of this stuff. At first, all of this stuff had to be figured out by somebody. Now. He said like, somebody else figured it out. Like the steps are there, go Google it. And you can figure it out. Like you can see the steps that you need to take to, for you to do it as well. Somebody probably already figured this out, which makes it a lot easier. There’s clues already out there on what to do. Right. And I think one thing about motivation and about getting things done. If you have been wanting to get something done for a really long time and you can’t get it done, you got to start to say like, are you sure you really want to do it?

There’s a lot of times that we say we want to do something and maybe we’re saying it because we think we should do it. Or we think we’re supposed to do it, or we think it will be good for somebody else, but we really don’t want to do it. And so if you find all these things, I find these things sometimes on my to-do list, there’ll be like, I have like how I work, my, my list of things.

I always have a running list of just like projects that I need to work on. And then I pull out my things for the day that are the important things that I need to do that. Right. And I’ll find like, if whatever, I don’t cross off through the week, then when I go to the next week, I write those in. And sometimes there’ll be something on there and it’ll be there for like, and I have to like, why is this still here?

Why have I not done it? And I have to really ask myself, like, obviously I wrote it down because I think I should do it for some reason. But what is the real reason that it’s not getting done? Like, is it too hard? Should it not be me doing it? Do I have something else going on? Is it something that just, I shouldn’t do at all?

And so if you have these things that you’ve been wanting to do, and you’re just not doing them, like look at the root of like, what’s really going on. And figure out what that thing is that’s making you not do it because maybe there’s something else going on that you need to figure out, you know, just because somebody else thinks you should do something doesn’t mean you should do it.

Sean: [00:17:21] Get excited about whatever it is that needs to be done. If you can’t get excited about it, is it something that needs to be done? 

Torie: [00:17:28] I mean, it’s not the right thing. That’s okay. Maybe, you know, do. It doesn’t have to be whatever that is. Sure. Yeah. You can get motivated on whatever it is you want to do, get things done.

The thing is though motivation is not a like because they’re like to get motivated. Like they think it’s going to be like this all encompassing, willing, want to do it, and that’s not necessarily what’s going to happen. It’s not like you’re looking for this magical pill. That’s going to make you super excited to do every single thing you’re going to do.

So I think, do you know what I mean? Like, I think there are some people are looking for this fake thing that they’re going to wake up and they’re gonna be like, today is the day, because today I am motivated. It’s like, you just got to one step in front of the other and get it started. Just like us being motivated to go to the gym.

It’s because we put all these things in place that now it just seems like it’s a part of our life like that. We’re motivated because it’s. Who we are now? Not that we woke up one morning and we’re like, oh my gosh, I am so motivated to go to the gym four days a week. So don’t wait for this like, magic to happen.

Like you have to set it in place so that the magic can happen. Yup. Yup. So if you liked this episode, that’s awesome. super motivated, Rita like this episode, if you liked this episode, subscribe and give us alike, and we will see you the next time.

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