Podcast Ep 64 | Why You Need a Quarterly Reset

Why you need a quar­ter­ly reset

This week we’re dis­cussing a sim­ple tool that you can use to reset quar­ter­ly across three key areas: work, self and life.

This work­sheet helps you unpack all of the stuff that’s hap­pen­ing in your life and enables you to rank the most impor­tant priorities.

This process will help you reflect on what’s work­ing — and what is not. Con­se­quent­ly, allow­ing you fig­ure out how much ener­gy to allo­cate to each of the three areas for the next quarter.

Down­load the quar­ter­ly reset work­sheet here 

EPISODE TRAN­SCRIPT

Please note that this episode was tran­scribed using an AI appli­ca­tion and may not be 100% gram­mat­i­cal­ly cor­rect – but it will still allow you to scan the episode for key content.

Brad Giles 05:05

Today, we are talk­ing about why you need a quar­ter­ly reset. So it’s com­ing up for the end of June, and the mid­dle of the year and these kinds of events in the cal­en­dar or tran­si­tion peri­ods in the cal­en­dar, get you to think about a reset. And you actu­al­ly wrote about this in your book, Kevin. So we’re going to talk a lit­tle bit about that today. Why you need a quar­ter­ly reset.

Kevin Lawrence 05:38

Yeah. And in many ways, just like cel­e­brat­ing, you get to think about all the good things that are going on and enjoy that. Some­times when not-so-good things hap­pen. You get a chance to reflect and we lost them very sad­ly. Think last week, you know, a guy Jer­ry Jag­ger’s name, who was a part of the race track remem­bers, I’ve called area 27. young guy passed away. And, you know, kind of shocked all of us in the com­mu­ni­ty. And, you know, it gets you to the ones when some­one that does­n’t, when some­one that you real­ly like or care about pass­es away, it makes you think, as well. So those there’s, there’s life events that cause reflec­tion. But we don’t want to rely on those. We don’t want to we don’t need any more of those than that. It was a I was just I want to say that. By the way. Just a note about your shoul­der what Jer­ry, Jer­ry was an amaz­ing guy. Every time I saw the guy, he was smil­ing and hap­py and inter­est­ing, as peo­ple are post­ing stuff on Face­book and oth­er places. Every­one says the same damn thing. nicest guy ever, always smil­ing and hap­py. And it was awe­some. I was, you know, he left a lega­cy. I don’t know if he knows that he left, unfor­tu­nate­ly. But that’s what a great way to be remem­bered. Right? Just Yeah. That peo­ple loved being around. That was sad. But the point is, is that we have those events and it makes you con­tem­plate but ide­al­ly, we build a rhythm or a dis­ci­pline into our con­tem­plat­ing and what mat­ters most. And we nor­mal­ly do in com­pa­nies, we have goals. And some com­pa­nies only run annu­al goals, which I’m not a big fan of. Nei­ther are you need quar­ter­ly because you have basi­cal­ly it’s more fre­quent account­abil­i­ty, and then reset­ting points. Yeah, so Oh,

Brad Giles 07:20

I am Yeah, so I’ve, I’ve been doing quar­ter­ly plan­ning for lit­er­al­ly decades. And I remem­ber one per­son in par­tic­u­lar, he said, it feels like it’s time to come back togeth­er. And this was like a week before our quar­ter­ly, there’s actu­al­ly there is some­thing inside of us, that aligns us with a quar­ter now my very unpro­fes­sion­al the­o­ry is it’s, it’s to do with the rhythm of the sea­sons. Okay. So we can go through a sum­mer for long enough, before we see the tran­si­tion into what we would call autumn, before 90 days, we would see the tran­si­tion into win­ter. And these 90 day cycles are real­ly quite deeply built into us. And there­fore when we trans­late that into busi­ness, it feels like it’s time for a change, it feels like it’s time to move on and to have a reset into the next sea­son. I’ve a few times in my life, I’ve spent the sum­mer in Aus­tralia, and then sent spent some or a large part of the sum­mer in the North­ern Hemi­sphere. And it just feels like it feels like it’s a bit much. So I think inter­est­ing. Yeah, my the­o­ry is that it’s, it’s some­thing that is, you know, a part of us as humans, that lasts 90 days that we you know, we need to change after 90 days or reset

Kevin Lawrence 08:57

that because things kind of get frag­ment­ed and frayed, you want to bring it back togeth­er. And for me, I think about it is, you know, as my kids were younger, I think it was the sea­son of school,

Brad Giles 09:06

right? There’s

Kevin Lawrence 09:07

the there’s the sum­mer peri­od, there’s back to school in Sep­tem­ber, there’s a restart in Jan­u­ary, there’s the restart after spring break, you know, sim­i­lar type of rhythms, the point of it is hav­ing that that dis­ci­pline. So you know, what we real­ly rec­om­mend, and it’s not rock­et sci­ence is that you do it your­self. Ide­al­ly, you do it with your part­ner in life. Or you could do it with your team, or your coach or advi­sor or some­body. But you do some work with­in you get some­one to help you lock it in. So for exam­ple, tomor­row morn­ing, I’m meet­ing with my coach, I work with myself. And I’m going to go through this process and get it locked in because that’s, you know, that’s the time that we have. And then I’ve got the team com­pa­ny ver­sion lat­er in the day. And then the com­pa­ny ver­sion, you know, we often get peo­ple to set goals, no one around and some goals around life and around self. Not just work. But not all com­pa­nies that we rec­om­mend it but not all com­pa­nies do. But the point of it is there’s a deep ver­sion you would do for your­self to con­tem­plate and then there’s prob­a­bly a lat­er ver­sion of the work and self stuff that you might do sor­ry, the life and self stuff you might do with your team at work. So I think the start­ing point is just in your oxy­gen aspers we break it down between work self and life, right work is your career or, or mon­ey and invest­ments, right stuff that gen­er­ates cash and ide­al­ly enjoy­ment, because you’re con­nect­ed to a pur­pose. And self is about you and being hap­py, strong and healthy. You per­son­al­ly just being your best, nor­mal­ly the most neglect­ed one for a lot of peo­ple. And then your life, your fam­i­ly, friends and your com­mu­ni­ty that can be if you’re doing you know, you know, char­i­ty work, and obvi­ous­ly your your your fam­i­ly, but just reflect­ing and break­ing it down. So you just don’t look over all because it’s too messy and kind of lumped together.

Brad Giles 10:51

Yeah, you’ve got to be able to divid­ed into these areas, it’s fair to say that in our brain, every­thing is mashed togeth­er. But by seg­ment­ing it, it means that we don’t, we don’t revert to what we may intu­itive­ly go to, which is we may peo­ple like you and I, Kevin would prob­a­bly intu­itive­ly go to work. But yes, you would sac­ri­fice the self or you would sac­ri­fice oth­er areas. So being able to seg­ment and focus around dif­fer­ent areas, and you cor­rect­ly kind of attribute it to three sep­a­rate areas, I think is real­ly, real­ly impor­tant. And gives us the oppor­tu­ni­ty to, to not end up in this dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion where I know, like the two of us have been in our lives where we’re like, every­thing’s going real­ly well in one area, but not so good in anoth­er area, or I’m get­ting burned out over there because of some­thing else that I’m doing.

Kevin Lawrence 11:52

Yes. And it’s like the three plates that you’re con­stant­ly spin­ning for three hula hoops, that you’re con­stant­ly that you got going, or the three knives or jug­gling what­ev­er metaphor you want to use, you know, work self in life, and if any one of them is in a bad place, it affects the oth­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly self, but if life is not good or neglect­ed, and the idea is to keep remind­ing your­self, of what’s most impor­tant, and mak­ing sure you set goals in all three areas, not just at work, which is kind of nat­ur­al for peo­ple is to have goals for work only.

Brad Giles 12:25

Could you just clar­i­fy, because I’ve read your book, and I’m a big fan, but could you just clar­i­fy, please, for the lis­ten­ers? What do you mean by works often life what is your def­i­n­i­tions there.

Kevin Lawrence 12:37

So again, work­ing I think I cov­ered a lit­tle bit ear­li­er, but it’s work is it’s about your job, your career, or your com­pa­ny. And it’s basi­cal­ly and, and, and mon­ey or invest­ments. So things that gen­er­ate cash for you. Right, because you know, you might man­age a bunch of invest­ments, but that would be your work, it’s the things that gen­er­ate cash and And ide­al­ly, self is you just you as a indi­vid­ual being strong, resilient and hap­py. And then like fam­i­ly, friends and com­mu­ni­ty, that’s your, but it’s sep­a­rat­ing your­self from your life, because they get blend­ed togeth­er. But in your life can require a lot of ener­gy, and you can give none to your­self, and then you kind of deplete the whole sys­tem. And that’s the whole thing. If you don’t con­sis­tent­ly increase and build your own ener­gy and your own ener­gy reserves, you don’t have as much to give. And the idea is to mas­ter con­scious self­ish­ness, which is where you take exceed­ing­ly good care of your­self. So you can per­form and do what you want at work, and have enough ener­gy and gas in the tank to still live a great life and be a great influ­ence in your life. Yeah,

Brad Giles 13:47

that’s the idea. And so this quar­ter­ly reset, what we’re say­ing is con­sid­ered work self life, and going through these dif­fer­ent areas. So this is a tool from your book.

Kevin Lawrence 13:58

Yep. And I’ll just flash it on screen for those that are watch­ing you. And you can go to YouTube. And I should prob­a­bly put the link to this in the notes. But there’s the def­i­n­i­tions across the top and we’ll just walk through there’s some reflec­tion ques­tions. We’ll walk through those. And then the sec­ond page, there’s, there’s where you lay out. Okay, how am I going to do the next quar­ter bet­ter in terms of works off and life?

Brad Giles 14:22

Very good. So the first one, gonna walk us through them the first

Kevin Lawrence 14:28

one biggest achieve­ments, but break­ing down under might be some over­lap. And that’s okay, but what were your biggest achieve­ments? Let’s start with the good stuff. Let’s start with the stuff you feel good about and proud about and where you won. Because the whole idea is to be able to have more things that do work out and or feel good, but you achieve it or you end up feel­ing good about it or proud about it, man. So it’s not rock­et sci­ence. So what were your biggest achieve­ments in those three areas

Brad Giles 14:56

and this is some­thing that we do it annu­al, annu­al and quar­ter­ly Plan­ning as well, we look back and we say, where do we win? Where do we lose? It’s kind of like the score­board for the last peri­od. just reflect­ing on that before we move on.

Kevin Lawrence 15:12

Yeah, exact­ly. It’s not rock­et sci­ence. Yeah. And then the sec­ond thing is, is, you know, what were the biggest chal­lenges or dis­ap­point­ments, right? Like, what, what did­n’t work or did­n’t get done? Like, you know what? And you’re acknowl­edg­ing this stuff, and then look­ing at it, and then you can sort of go in some way. Why? Like, what was the deal there? Why was that? And there’s, there’s learn­ing that comes from that. And whether it’s about recal­i­brat­ing your goals, or what not to do next time, what­ev­er it hap­pens to be, but you know, what, you know, where Did­n’t you win?

Brad Giles 15:44

Yeah, and there’s always some way and that’s okay. You know, I think it was Bill Gates that said, suc­cess is a lousy teacher. Exact­ly. And so the dis­ap­point­ments, the fail­ures, that’s the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn and grow and, and acknowl­edg­ing that think­ing about that

Kevin Lawrence 16:04

is impor­tant. It is. So next is pas­sion ratios. And when I look at, it’s like, if we have 100 units of our best ener­gy every week, how do we allo­cate our best ener­gy, not just our time, because, look, you know, I remem­ber times when I would use up and be cooked from work, I could show up and spend time with my kids. But they were get­ting, you know, a C grade qual­i­ty, they weren’t get­ting the a grade, Kevin, they were get­ting what was left­over, and there was not much left in the tank or when I was jet lagged. So it’s about your best ener­gy and how much of it you ded­i­cate. And there may or may not be a rela­tion­ship of time on this, but you know, how much your ener­gy Did you invest each quar­ter your best ener­gy and work self in life. And then in hind­sight, hind­sight, always eas­i­er, you know, what would have been ide­al? Like, you know, if you, you know, if you did 80 to work and 10 to self intend to life, you know, maybe you go well, you know, tru­ly, prob­a­bly 65 to work, you know, 15 to self and 22 life, right? I’m mak­ing up num­bers. Yeah, yeah, but it or, or maybe it was per­fect, but it’s, it helps you to recal­i­brate your loca­tion. And this is where a lot of us get messed up. And the mag­ic, and then we talk about this a lot with exec­u­tives is, is to still be able to ded­i­cate a lot of time and ener­gy to work, and have more time and more ener­gy some­how. And by free­ing up unpro­duc­tive stuff, which we’ll talk about in a future episode. But you know, to be able to still have so ded­i­cat­ed lot to work and a lot to life and a lot to your­self, you get a clear band­width out of the sys­tem we’ll talk about later,

Brad Giles 17:44

you got to clear band­width out of the sys­tem. And a great anal­o­gy that some­one said to me, many, many years ago is think about an Olympic swim­mer, they just glide through the water, there’s very lit­tle splash, and then going at such a fast pace. Where­as when I swim, it’s more like ques­tion of is the per­son drown­ing? is a per­son mov­ing? And what kind of a stroke? Is that? Are they doing any type of stroke? Or is it more splash­ing? Now? lets you know I can swim sev­er­al kilo­me­ters in laps, so there’s a bit of face­tious­ness in that, but yeah, the point that I make is in as a metaphor in terms of our work by dis­till­ing the time or or or putting a con­straint on the time, it forces us to be more effective.

Kevin Lawrence 18:39

Yep, it does. That’s the idea. And then the final thing is, is what do you need to start or stop doing to be on track for your annu­al goals? because ide­al­ly, you’re recal­i­brat­ing back to what you want­ed to achieve this year, which would be in the oth­er doc­u­ment called the mas­ter plan, where you have your long term goals. And then and then right down to your annu­al so just recal­i­brate with what you’ve decid­ed you want to do this year is a reflec­tion. So I’ll throw the page back up on screen for those that want to see it. Pret­ty straight­for­ward. So achieve­ments, chal­lenges or dis­ap­point­ments, pas­sion ratios, what did you invest? What would have been ide­al so you can kind of prep your think­ing for next quar­ter? And then what do you have to start or stop doing to deliv­er on your annu­al goals?

Brad Giles 19:19

And so for each of those ques­tions you’ve just men­tioned for clar­i­ty, you need to answer three points your work your­self. The oth­er one I can’t remem­ber your life. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. So so your biggest dis­ap­point­ments, your answer­ing three ques­tions if you have the video? Yeah,

Kevin Lawrence 19:38

exact­ly. There’s a call. It’s just three columns. Yeah, a bunch of ques­tions going across three columns. Great way to describe it. So that is the okay. I’ve done a bit now you can think about oth­er things. But that is a basic reflec­tion. And you go back and look at your goals and then very sim­ply throw us back on screen again for a sec­ond. You’re try­ing to fill these top two box­es, which is for work, self and life how, what is those pas­sion ratios? How much of your best pas­sion? Do you? What are your pas­sion, your best ener­gy? Do you want to allo­cate this quar­ter? You know, for me, I’m com­ing into sum­mer, where I take a bunch of time off. So there’s much more for self and life com­ing up in this com­ing quar­ter for me. And then your num­ber one and only your num­ber one project or goal in each area, one for work, one for self, and one for life. And then I’m below there’s a spot for oth­er projects, right, oth­er things that you might want to do. But the idea is, what’s the num­ber one that must be deliv­ered no mat­ter what? bless it, par­don me?

Brad Giles 20:44

No prob­lem. And so that, so that’s real­ly think­ing, What’s the most it’s a pri­or­i­ti­za­tion exer­cise. And it’s a pri­or­i­ti­za­tion tool that should become a habit or is good to become a habit. And that’s why we’re say­ing now at the end of June, because if you could go through that sim­ple tool, it’s prob­a­bly going to sig­nif­i­cant­ly pos­i­tive­ly impact your next quar­ter. Ken, can you just tell us about toads? Quickly?

Kevin Lawrence 21:17

Yes. And there’s a whole chap­ter on it in the book, it’s loose ends. And there’s a whole sto­ry you can read in a book, I will not do it right now. But it’s basi­cal­ly irri­tat­ing lit­tle things that you try to ignore, but they haven’t got done. And they dis­tract you. And they bur­den you. And so it’s basi­cal­ly lin­ger­ing things that may have a low finan­cial val­ue, but they have a men­tal drain on you. So for exam­ple, I worked with a guy in the auto­mo­tive busi­ness, his name was art. And every day after work, he was a mechan­ic, he would come over to the air pump and he would pump up the air in his tire. I’m like, art, you know, I you got a flat tire. Why don’t you fix it? He goes, it’s only flat on the bot­tom. Like, and he was like he laughed, he put the earnest irony went on. And on the point of it is he spent a lot of ener­gy putting air into the tire every sin­gle day and maybe think­ing about it, or maybe he did­n’t care. I don’t know. But it puts a men­tal toll on you and wastes ener­gy. And some­times it’ll be like updat­ing a will or return­ing a book or say­ing thank you. Oh, shoot, I got­ta send a thank you one sec­ond here. I’m just I’m remem­ber­ing it as I’m speak­ing. I got to thank some peo­ple from stuff this week­end. But it’s these things that weigh on your mind. And you keep think­ing about it. And you’re just not get­ting to it. Because there’s an inter­nal ten­sion in it. And your spir­it is fried when you get them done.

Brad Giles 22:53

Yeah, yeah. Okay. And then,

Kevin Lawrence 22:57

and then we have a habit to start hav­ing to stop if you were going to do that. And then final­ly, the last piece is what are you okay, this is great to have some goals for the quar­ter. How are you gonna? What are you going to do about it this week to get a jump start­ed? And to get it going? Like, what are some lit­tle steps you can take to get the ball rolling?

Brad Giles 23:13

Yeah, 92% of plans fail due to poor exe­cu­tion. So it’s good to have the plan. But then you got to start act­ing on it. And so then what can you do in the next week to get some­thing moving?

Kevin Lawrence 23:25

Exact­ly. And it’s very straight­for­ward. So the essences in three dif­fer­ent columns for work self in life reflect, hey, what went well? What did­n’t? How to allo­cate my ener­gy? How would allo­cate it dif­fer­ent­ly? What do I got to start or stop doing to hit my annu­al goals? Nice. Okay. Now let’s what’s the thing that mat­ters most next quar­ter, and ide­al­ly get­ting that num­ber one in each, and to be able to do it with­in the ener­gy you’ve allo­cat­ed to that cat­e­go­ry. And if you say that you’re going to run an Iron Man, and learn to gui­tar and take 14 weeks off, and there’s only 13 weeks of the quar­ter and, and the Iron Man is going to take 10 hours a week and a gui­tar is going to take four and a half three kids, it’s like you got to real­ly think about Any­way, you know, you’re gonna need 90% of your ener­gy if that was your goal. Yeah. But if you got to ded­i­cate 90 to work, you just, it’s just a it’s a test to make sure you’re set­ting it up, right. Yeah, set­ting your­self up to win and make progress.

Brad Giles 24:30

Very good. So as it’s your book, do you want to give us a sum­ma­ry of these key points again, in terms of reset?

Kevin Lawrence 24:37

Yeah, exact­ly. So num­ber one, very straight­for­ward, you know, is the essence you got to reflect on how you did per­son­al­ly, pro­fes­sion­al­ly and in your life. And you should­n’t be look­ing at all three because that’s the only way you win. The only way you win in the world is if you achieve in all of those areas sus­tain­ably. reflec­tion on the achieve­ments, chal­lenges or dis­ap­point­ments, ener­gy allo­ca­tion, how to do what we do. bet­ter start or stop to hit your annu­al goals? And then going for­ward, how much ener­gy Do you allo­cate each of those three cat­e­gories works off in life. sin­gle most impor­tant thing in each and ide­al­ly stop there. That’s the high lev­el of what you need. You might have a cou­ple of oth­er things you want to do in each and then totes clear up the loose ends get the stuff that you’ve been pro­cras­ti­nat­ing and putting off just get it out of the way. And then Okay, what are a whole bunch of lit­tle steps we can take this week, real­ly straight­for­ward. The key, you got to carve out half an hour to do the process that’s real­ly about it. And ide­al­ly with some sort of a thought part­ner. That’s what I recommend.

Brad Giles 25:41

Awe­some. Okay. Good, quick, impact­ful episode. Hope­ful­ly, iden­ti­fy­ing it’s time to reset. It’s the end of the quar­ter. Here’s a sim­ple tool that you can use. Okay, do you want to take us out Kevin? Yeah. Thanks

Kevin Lawrence 25:56

for lis­ten­ing, every­one. This has been the growth whis­pers pod­cast with Brad Giles and Kevin Lawrence. I’m Kevin. My part­ner. Here’s Brad. For the video ver­sion. Go to youtube​.com search the growth whis­pers for Brad evo­lu­tion. part​ners​.com​.au and for myself, Lawrence and co​.com. Have a great week.