Welcome to The Chris LoCurto Show, where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.
Welcome to the show, folks. I hope you're having a fabulous day wherever you are today.
We are talking about. And yes, by the way, you are probably hearing a very stuffy version of me right now. I have been battling some congestion. So, you know, show must go on, right?
If you're listening to this and it's in the final stretch of the year, then you are probably carrying a lot. There are a lot of loose ends.
There are deadlines, probably family plans, probably a decent level of fatigue for a bunch of us, and the pressure to finish strong, if you will, while your body and mind are asking for rest. That is something that plagues a lot of us.
Right? You might be in this phase of just. I just need a little bit of rest because I've been cramming this end of the year busyness in, and I'm one of those people.
Maybe a lot of you don't experience this. Maybe a lot of you. Your fiscal year ends differently. Whatever. For me, I close out three businesses financially, that is at the end of every year and working on trying to get as many things done as I possibly can.
You know, tax advantages, everything that I. I can. End of the year celebrations. You know, what does all of this look like? Well, for somebody like me, it can be pretty stressful.
It could be pretty crazy. It may be the same exact thing for you. You may be feeling like you're just tired. So this episode is intentionally short. I'm not gonna do a. Well, I'm saying this right now.
We'll see how long this goes. No heavy teaching, just kind of a leadership reset of something that I've been leading my group through. And. And you're gonna hear more about this for me in the future.
But this is something that I'm wanting to just put this out there today to help you to make a quick reset. We'll get into more of this stuff next year. We'll dive into more of this stuff and get, you know, put together an even bigger process for you.
Clarity Matters More Than Hustle (00:02:21)
But for right now, I want you to focus on clarity matters more than hustle. Okay? We're all hustling. We're all trying to get things done.
But one of the biggest problems that we can experience right now or one of the biggest traps that leaders fall into at the end of the season is confusing activity with progress.
Let me say that again. One of the biggest traps leaders fall into right now and throughout the year is confusing activity with progress.
We can all look very busy. We could all be incredibly busy. You know, your lists get longer, your days get fuller of stuff. But the most important things you should be focusing on might not be moving.
They might not actually be getting movement. If you're following what we teach on how to close out your day and Killing the Leadership Crazy Cycle, well, then one of the most important things is to prioritize.
What does that look like? So that you don't go home with a bunch of stuff in your head that you got to try and figure out and send yourself emails and texts and all that kind of stuff.
You're able to walk in the door tomorrow and just knock stuff out. But what if the things you're prioritizing aren't moving the top important things that you should be moving?
You know, what if we are doing a ton, but we're realizing there's no real meaningful changes?
What you have to understand is being busy doesn't mean that you're leading or doing well. Progress comes from moving the right things, not more things. Let me say that again.
Progress comes from moving the right things, not more things. So as you take a look right now, here's what I want you to do. I want you to sit down, take some time on this, making this a short episode.
There you go. You're going to find more time. At the end of this episode, I want you to sit down and I want you to list out, not just prior to hear what I'm saying here.
List out the top things that must get movement before the end of the year. What are the most important things you've got to move out on right now, before the end of the year?
Well, Chris, isn't that what I'm doing? I'm doing 40,000 things a day. Just because you're doing a ton of tasks doesn't mean that you're getting the most important things that need to get moved, moved.
And if you don't prioritize them and they don't get worked on, then eventually those important things will become a crisis. So let me kind of clarify what this means. Not everything on your list moves the most important things.
Well, how do you know? Because we all have those things that feel urgent to us that we are knocking out only to find out that they weren't as important as other things that we needed to get done right.
What are the top five things that if they don't move, they create bigger problems later. They don't have to take your entire day they don't have to be something you spend 100% of your time on.
They just have to become something that you spend consistent focus time on so that they actually move.
Example (00:05:53)
So let me give you an example of something that just, you know, one of the things that we're doing up at the Ridge, our goal is to continue to build this place where we can move the bulk of our business up here.
We've got Next-Level Lives and StratPlans going on up here, but we want to get our retreats up here, we want to get more events up here, all that kind of fun stuff.
But one of the things that we are having to do is finish one building that we started so that we can take another building and convert it. So it's a process.
I won't go into all the crazy details, I promise. This would be a short podcast, but here's the deal. The second building that will be converted right now, since I'm waiting on the other building, it's not as much of a priority in my mind.
But when I remove the thought of it just being a priority in a list of priorities and I start asking myself the question, what all does that building affect when it is being moved or it's not being moved?
Then it changes everything because that building not getting done holds everything else back on us getting our business fully moved up here. It holds everything back on us getting events up here.
It holds everything back on certain leadership things we want to implement down the road. So there is a lot waiting for that building to get converted.
Well, but that building can't get converted to the other ones done. Sure, true, absolutely. But what if everything picked up and went lightning speed on the other building?
I know anybody who's ever done construction before is going, that'll never happen. You don't know, it could.
The point that I'm making and using this as an example is that I have more important things that I could be doing to get the building that we're going to convert moving so that when it's ready, we're already there, we're prepared, we're ready, it's plug and play, we go.
But if I do what people tend to always do, and I've always been one of these people too, and that's just, well, wait until it's a really a priority and then get it done well, then who knows how many things I'm going to have stacked on my plate?
Then who knows how easy or difficult it's going to be to get the rest of the pieces of that building that need to be in place for us to convert it to get in place. Nobody knows.
Well, God knows, but that's it. So instead, if I don't recognize this one building that's affecting so many different things in our future, it is a priority to me right now and I might not be giving it the attention that it deserves.
That's what I'm talking about. Do I have things to get done today? Yeah, I have a list. I've got stuff to do. Is everything on that list more important than moving that building forward? Nope.
Spending some focus time on that building, getting answers, is actually pretty darn important. Why? Because it is something I need to move forward to get to where we want to be in the time frame we want to be there.
Otherwise, by not making it a higher priority than it currently is, I'm delaying things in the future. I'm hoping that this is making sense. Right.
The decision is, what am I going to move forward today on purpose? What are the top things that need movement? We've got programs that we're going to launch, we got products that we're putting together, we've got events that are coming up.
We have a whole lot of stuff that's coming our way.
And for us, we have to ask the question, what are the most important things to move today and tomorrow and the next day? And the next day?
What time percentage should you give? (00:10:03)
So what I'm saying is what percentage of time should you be using to move your most important things forward and the rest of the time to knock out the rest of your to do list? So I'm not saying take 100 of your time today and move something forward.
I'm saying give it focus time. What percentage of time should you give it? Should it be 20%? Should it be 50? Should it be 100%? I don't know.
How important is the thing you're trying to move forward? Figure out that percentage and then that thing or those things, the top five things. Prioritize those every single day. When you close out your day, this is what I'm going to focus on tomorrow.
I'm going to put this amount of percentage of time or amount of time towards moving that thing. I'm going to put this percentage of time towards moving that thing and so on and so forth.
Now is this for everybody? It might not be. You might have folks on your team that are very task focused and they are paid to be task focused admin folks. And for them it's what's the greatest priorities on the tasks?
Get those tasks done, knock those things out Maybe they're not moving bigger things forward. Maybe they're not moving bigger projects. Maybe they're not moving, you know, other things that.
That outweigh the daily tasks. So this may just be for a lot of leaders, a lot of business owners, a lot of project coordinators and so on. Right?
So it might not be for 100% of the people on your team, but there's a good percentage of people that need to start to understand this.
Right. So here's some questions that I want you to be very specific about right now. What are the top things that actually need to move before this year ends?
Also, what am I spending time on that feels productive but isn't truly important? As well as what would it look like to show myself some grace and still lead well in the process?
Because those things need to be done doesn't mean that I go all ballistic and beat myself up to get those things done.
Do the best you possibly can. Change their priority. Assign focus time to them. Make sure that you're giving it the focus that it needs. Things you need to realize is end of year leadership isn't about doing more.
It's about choosing better. You don't need to finish everything. You don't even need to fix everything. You just need clarity and the courage to focus on what matters most. Lead well this week.
Rest when you need to, and trust that small, intentional movement beats frantic effort every single time. Well, that's all the time I'm going to give myself for today.
As always, take this information. Change your leadership, change your business, change your life. And join us on the next episode.
