859. Be more productive & present with 5 skills & 5 habits.

In this episode, I break down the concept of living with purpose through five daily habits and five essential life skills that will help you stay ready for anything (RFA). It's about being productive without sacrificing the present moment. Here’s what I cover:

How do I integrate my five daily habits—working out, writing, reading, sharing, and setting expectations—to bring energy and focus to my day?
- Why the five C’s (Communication, Curiosity, Creativity, Continuous Learning, and Productive Confrontation) are the life skills you need to master.
- The importance of setting expectations daily to avoid coasting and live up to your full potential.
- How do you grade yourself on these skills to constantly improve and stay on track?
- Why is selling not just a profession but a life skill that will make you effective in all areas of life?
- How confronting procrastination and hesitation leads to a sense of accomplishment and forward movement.
- The six-pack of wealth: how to grow mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, relationally, and financially.

Tune in as I share my journey of balancing productivity and presence, and how you can start applying these practices in your own life today.

Transcript

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All right. 3, 2, 1. Let's get it. Welcome to another episode of what's your problem? The podcast. I'm your host Marsh Buice and today's topic five skills. Five habits. And in my reflection this morning. I wrote that. I don't want to live my life. Staring at a stopwatch. or envisioning a stopwatch. So focused on time. That I forget to enjoy the moment. Always just jumping from one moment to the next. Hurrying to get to the next leg. Of my daily race. I don't want to live on a stopwatch. But I do want to live my life. Through a process. Practicing five habits. While developing. Five lifetime skills and I call these lifetime skills. And those skills to practice in all areas of your life. Communication, curiosity, creativity. Continuous learning and action and productive confrontation. What I affectionately called the five CS. because they all start with the letter C. These are skills that I learned. In sales. But in reflection. When I was trying to put my life back together. in my, in my lowest moment in life. The only thing I was winning in was sales. And so I said, what skills have made me successful in sales? Uh, communication, curiosity, creativity, continuous learning, and action, productive confrontation. You got to confront to be able to sell. Is everybody says they're just shopping. So, what are those skills? So I had to identify those five skills. And I said, man, that's crazy. Those are the same skills that I can apply in my life too. And so I took those skills. And applied them. To get myself out of some desperate situations. And get my life back on track. So I'm learning that it's possible for me to be present. In the moment. Soaking in everything that's around me. While at the same time being productive, it's not either, or it's both. And. And I want to share these with you because it's a reminder for me too. There are five habits. That I use every single day. The first one is working out. I like to work out every day. You don't have to work out every day, but you do have to stay active and moving. Every day. All right. The gym for me is kind of my meditation area. It's kind of the way I kind of get away from things. It's a way for me to, to clock a win. And so I like doing that. I don't have to, but I like to do that. strength training is necessary as I get older. And so I incorporate that. Do I have to go every day? No. But I do like that. But at least you got to get some sort of movement. Stay active. So for me, a symbol. Is to log 12,000 steps. The 12,000 steps is just. It's arbitrary. You can do 8,000. If you're not very active right now, build it to 10 bills to 12. You. You know, I've had thoughts of building it to 15. But I don't, again, I don't want to get so far. I've got to get my 15,000 steps in. So the 12 is kind of the in-between 10,000 is kind of the minimum. 15 is kind of aggressive. So it kind of settled for 12. Again, that's just a number I picked. And so 12,000 steps is a pretty active day. So working out. Is a daily habit for me. The second one is writing. writing literally saved my life. i challenge you to write one page every day. The one page per day. It's just kind of a mind hack for me. And so I say, bro, you can't just write one page. I mean, one page on legal page. That's all you gotta do. You can't write one. You can't come up with something. And so it's kind of minhag for me. Where I sit down and say, look, I'm pressed for time. If I said 500 words or 750 words, some people say that, but then. I think you get back into this. Numbers game. And you're so focused on the number. That you're really not. Enjoying. The process and I think your process should be enjoyable. I think it should be a sense of satisfied satisfaction. I think it should be something that stretches you. But also, I think you should enjoy it. If the enjoyment is just like. Man. I got it in. So the one page per day, there are days that I only do one page. But most days it's a couple of pages, but this is a chance for you to unspool your thoughts. This is the only time that you're alone with yourself. Or maybe it's something that you're just expressing your creativity. So there could be some critical thinking or some creative thinking. Either way. It's the only time that you're with yourself. So write at least one page. And what's great about writing. Is. The, the mechanism of doing that versus typing, typing, you're going to self sensor., recording is good to lay the tracks down. I do that, but also like to come behind and unpack those thoughts, kind of the recording part is kind of the shorthand for me. The writing part is the long form where actually unpack. The initial thoughts and I recorded those thoughts. So I, so I wouldn't forget about them. So writing one page every single day., the third habit. That's important for me. Is to read. 10 to 20 minutes of reading. Sometimes I like to take a random book and read just that one chapter. It's about 15 minutes. I'm not a fast reader. And I try to read it and then I sometimes write that and interpret what I read sometimes interpret what it means to me. That really helps me. And I've shared many times on this podcast, something that I just wrote. So sometimes I'll do the random reading. And lately I'm working through one book. And I'm just not really in that season. There's different seasons. Sometimes I'll bounce around and random books. And then sometimes I just want to dig in on one book and right now I'm reading. Uh, gay Hendricks is book. Conscious living. And I really like it. And so I'll probably anchor on that boat for about a week. Once I'm tired of it, then I just go onto something else. But reading is super important. Reading can be also done through the ears. So if it's something that at least that you're learning something, don't go to shorts. Don't go to tik toks That's kind of occupying your time. You're not really investing in that. You need some investing and whether you like to read through the ears and you listen to audio book. Or maybe some long form of a podcast. What's your problems? Good one. Or maybe it's a YouTube video. A masterclass, whatever. I like to read because this actually strengthens my focus muscles. Sometimes they get a little add, I get a little skizzed out I'm always jumping around. When I find I kind of get a little erratic like that. Then it's a way for me to just like slow the slow the world down. Sometimes, man, we just, we, we fill our days with a bunch of busy-ness. And we're just kind of worn out mentally. And the reason being is because you've got all these track changes that you're doing all throughout the day. So that reading is, is that aspect of it. The fourth habit that I like to practice every single day is share, share something of value. This is what this is a lot of times on my Instagram stories, I'll write something and then I'll share what I just wrote that sometimes comes out of the podcast. And what I'm sharing with you right now is something that is shared on my Instagram story this morning, kind of the rough draft while I was walking while I was thinking these things out. The fifth one is shaped my expectations. I used to call it, design it, design my day, design, what I'm going to wear, design what I'm going to eat, but I think more so it's shaping my expectation and you're living either up or down to your expectations. If you have no expectations for the day, then you're living down to your expectations. You're just a paper bag in the wind. You're just kind of wandering alone, but you got no clear direction when you set the expectation, man, you set the bar and so then you strive. To hit that bar. So what are your expectations for the day? Just a couple of things. Doesn't have to be anything. Elaborate. And then also shape the expectations that align with your life. These are those habits that keep me aligned. I'm not a big goal oriented person. Oh, I've got to be, you know, here in five years, I don't really look at it so much like that. Some people that works great for them, for me. I am a fly by the seat of your pants, kind of guy that has worked very well on sales. I do have to zoom it out a little bit, but it's more so working a process that's in alignment with the direction that I want to go. So those are habits you can, you can use these habits if they work for you I would just say, just put in a few things, at least write, read, and work out. Just those three things there. If you're not ready to share something, then you don't have to. I believe everybody's a, bad-ass at something everybody's an expert at something share what's worked for you. Don't just read something and then, you know, tell us what we should do yet. You haven't applied it to your own life. Read something, go , live it, apply it over and over again. And then man, tell us all about the results. That's what, that's what the world needs, man. And the world needs to hear from you. But if you're not ready for that, you can write it out in a, in a quote, you can write it out in a, in a, in a blog, whatever works for you, man, you could put it into a song doesn't matter, whatever works for you. And that's expressing the creativity that I'll talk about in a minute. So that's the, that's the five habits that are really, that are really like, so I can be productive. And get some things done that keep me humming along throughout the day. But I'm not so chained to this process that I can't pick up my head. And that's, what's important. These things have to be aligned yet flexible as well. Now there are five skills, lifetime skills that you need. I learned them in sales. Sales is a profession selling. There's a life skill. And the five skills. That make you effective. In sales are the same five skills that's going to keep you. Effective and progressive in life. These skills I've implied, these skills. But I've never really sat down and kind of. Gave myself a grade on these kind of use it as a reflecting moment. So what I'm going to start doing that I want to share with you. Is. Given myself a grade, one to five on each one of these skills on how I did the day. It's not right or wrong. It's more so of an awareness. The first one is communication. I would give myself at the end of the day, Or in the morning. Recapping yesterday, this, this might be the time that you want to give yourself some, some thinking time, some writing time. So if you don't want to write something for a podcast, Then this would be that. One-on-one time for you, this critical thinking. And so you look at it and say, okay, communication. How well did I communicate today on a scale from one to five, five being the best one being not so good again, it's not to beat yourself up. It's to bring an awareness into everything that you're doing. So the communication side of it, how well did I communicate? Yesterday. I give myself probably. Uh, three, three and a half. Because I say. At first I said a three. Because I have a new manager that I've been working with all week and yesterday was a Saturday. And so we'd been working together all week. And so I was more so focused on what my daily task was. I didn't train as much as I did during the week. So I kind of left her to kind of do things on her own. I really should have checked in a little bit more. I do believe in autonomy. I do believe in people figuring things out. And so she had enough to figure things out, but I should have during the day not been so busy that it didn't check in it. Should've checked in a little bit more. Okay. But I give myself a three and a half because when I went to the gym yesterday morning, A buddy of mine was in there. And so instead of me popping the ear buds in that I've done so many times before, because I didn't feel like talking to anybody. I left a year buds out. And I stayed on task. I got my workout in, he got his workout in. But we talked at the same time we caught up. So that's why I give myself three and a half. And you can just grade yourself on each one of these categories. Curiosity. Some questions to ask yourself is, what statements that I turned into questions? Instead of just me railing out my opinion, saying something's not going to work. Could I turn it into a question? Well, tell me more about that. How would you do it? Just to just a general thing. So instead of me, you'd be amazed how many statements you make versus how many questions that you ask. And so what grade would I give myself one to five on practicing curiosity? What did I learn above and beyond what I thought already knew. So sometimes you kind of get, you know, you're talking to somebody and they say, this is what I do for a living your like. What is that? Like I was talking to a firefighter today and he was telling me about how the drop program works. He's eligible for retirement, he's in his 25th year, he's eligible for full retirement at 33 and he gets in the drop program too. So it's. Um, so he gives 30 years and then he explained the drop instead of me just saying, oh, okay. That's cool. I said, well, what, what is the drop mean? And so he told me about that that's curiosity. Simple stuff. I, you know, I'm not in the drop program, I'm in the car business. Okay. But it's interesting. It's good to know and is something above and beyond. What I thought I already knew. I knew the. Kind of the concept of drop. I didn't really know what it meant. The third one is creativity. When you lacked resources, where you resourceful, did you use what you already had? I could whine and complain and ask for more things and wait for more things or can use what already have. Right. Some of your most desperate moments you've already done. This you've practiced creativity. Nobody was there to help you out. You were on the side of the road, whatever, and you got creative. You figure things out, right. That's creativity. But sometimes man, We wait for these crises to kick in before we get creative. Sometimes man, it's just kind of putting those walls. In your day. So instead of saying, well, I mean, if I had this know, what do you have? How can you make it work? I started this podcast. on creativity. I didn't have sound equipment. I didn't have a computer. I had a cell phone. Luckily I paid my bill. So I started in my closet with a notepad and a cell phone and a free app. The anchor app that Spotify now owns. And I started a podcast. Boom. Okay. It was all free. Start with free work toward what you need, earn what you want. You don't need a whole bunch of stuff. You need to put the reps in. You need experience, you need repetitions. And then. You can level up from there. The fourth one is continuous learning. What specifically did I learn today and how did I apply it? In my daily reading, I like to walk around the parking lot because the gym I go to is in the parking lot of a grocery store. So it's a huge parking lot and it's super early in the morning. So nobody's out there so I can walk the entire light. With my Kindle and read, but what's cool., is I like the Kindle because I can push play. And it reads to me while I look at the words so I can lift my head up, absorb it, think about it. Walk. Listen to it. I'm warming up for the gym. And I'm also absorbing some knowledge, boom that's habit stacking. And then the game becomes, what did I learn that could be part of your writing. Where you interpret what you learned in that 15, 20 minutes. R it could be something that triggers another thought. If you don't have time to write it right then and there captured in your voice memo app, get to it later. And the fifth one is grade yourself. One to five. How well did I confront today? Confrontation has such a bad rap. It's not a bad thing at all. It's productive confrontation. Most of the confrontation that you're going to have is confronting with yourself. Those those times where you're kind of your ego steps in is, is you're gonna look stupid. If you do this, people are gonna laugh at you or it's not gonna work. So we like, oh, I'm not quite ready yet. No, just that's the confrontation side. You just push yourself to go do it. And do it right then and there. It's the hesitations. What? Mel Robbins has that five second rule. I love the five second rule. Great book. And basically what it is, is count from five to one once you get to one, you go, there's no more thinking about it. And so that five seconds give yourself five seconds and then boom. So it's these points of hesitation. These, these governors that we put in our life, in the moment, it doesn't seem like much. And you're like, ah, no big deal, no big deals end up big deals because things just layer on top of one another. And so this confrontation side of it is where you confront yourself and you're like, come on, man. Get this done. If there's something that you're procrastinating, confront that and say, look, this is, I just did it yesterday. I'm like, oh, you know, it's Saturday. There's some things I got to do. I just do it all Monday. And I said, look. How much time do you want to give to this? I don't want to give any, okay. Well, How long will it take you? It'll take you an hour. Okay. How much time do you want to give out of that hour? I don't know. I'll give you 15 minutes, set your timer for 15 minutes. Get as far as you can, what happens a lot of times is you get past that inertia that don't want to do you get things humming along then. You're kind of in this groove. And then when the timer goes off, you like, look another 10 minutes and I'm done. And then you have no carry over to the next day. Cool thing. That's confrontation. And then sometimes the confrontation is you got to have some conversations with somebody. You gotta have some. Some difficult eeky conversations, just get it out of the way. It's amazing, man. A lot of the stress that you have in life is because you're just kind of layering this procrastination on top of another thing. And so I'm going to get around to it. So we just build these things up, just get it out of the way, get it on the table, address it. It may not be all solved right then and there, but at least it's out for discussion itself. Okay. You know, I have a five minute rule that I've gotten away from. So I need to reapply that this is why I share these things because there. I get off track. And so if something takes five minutes, get it done instead of saying, oh, well, I'll load the dishwasher. You know, later on. I know, will it take less than five minutes? Yeah, probably take, like, to even like making my coffee for the next morning, dude. It takes like two minutes. So that way when I wake up in the morning, I'm filling up a cup of coffee. Hook the dogs up on the leash. We're going walking instead of making the coffee. But you know, there's all these extra steps in the morning. I'm already behind the eight ball. It's little stuff like this, man that just, we just get it out of the way. Those are the things that I'm talking about itself. See what I just told you. It's simple. It's productive. And it's flexible. So you can have both things. You could be productive, you can keep things super simple. And it's flexible. I'm not so rigid that I'm sorry. I can't talk right now. I've got to get, you know, I'm on a stop clock here. Sometimes it's sometimes I think we, we either don't do anything at all. And just say, oh, well, I'm just going to kind of go with the flow. Are, were too rigid. And then we just start prophesied to people that ever buy. You got 10 minutes to get this done and there's, nobody can come to. Sometimes man. I think we're just a little too. And dude, I'm preaching to the choir. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to the gym because, and I had this time period. It is important. My time is limited, but I don't have to be a Dick and not communicate with anybody either. So be a little flexible man. And so I could get the workout in and then still catch up now for somebody that don't like, I will pop the ear buds in. And good to go from there. So, like I said, It's simple. It's productive. It's flexible. And it's a good little grade mark for you. Did I exercise the five skills? That keep me RFA ready for anything. Communication curiosity, creativity, continuous learning and action, productive confrontation. I don't know everything, but I'm more equipped and I don't have to wait for a disaster. All of a sudden scramble. And start trying to get these skills together. No, it's just, this is just something that you'll, you'll never master it, but you can practice the mastery side of it. So it's the five skills that keep me RFA exercising those five skills and then practicing the five habits. These five habits. We'll make me wealthy. They're guaranteed wealth and I'm not talking about dollar bills. Y'all I'm talking about a six pack of wealth. Mentally. Physically. Emotionally spiritually. Financially relationally. You know, there's no sense in having a bunch of money, but you're an asshole to everybody. Nobody wants to be around you. Well that ain't gonna get you very far either. So it's a six pack of wealth. And when I had that six pack man, just like, I want to physically have the six pack. I want to have a six pack in all areas. And so practicing these five habits. And exercising these five skills. Makes me happy. And remember happiness is not a destination. It's a direction. All right. Thanks for sharing. Today's episode of this episode meant something to you. Please subscribe and also leave a rating and review this helps get the word out. Also share this episode with someone else. Somebody needs to hear this besides you help spread this. These are not meant for just you and me. These episodes are meant to spread the love. All right. As always, let's get outta here. Keep it simple. Keep it moving. Never settle. State tough peace.