Sheldon Mills:
Welcome to habit masters. I'm Sheldon. I'm Jeff, and today we have a special guest, Richie Norton. And if you haven't heard of him, I'm excited for you. . He is a bestselling author. He's actually just finished a book. Anti Time Management , Serial Entrepreneur. He's a coach millionaires, billionaires. He was gracious enough to come on our podcast and what he has to share will blow your mind. IN a good way and in an agitating way.
Like he actually describes because it's different, you know? It's like expanding it.
Jeff Corrigan: Well, for me, the book itself and then him coming on the show, it kind of broke some of the beliefs that I had about time management and productivity. And so it, it really does like. Break your mind a little bit so that you can rebuild it in a way that's better.
So listen up. It's going to be amazing. Welcome to the show. Thanks. Super
Richie Norton: excited to be here, . It's gonna be a lot of
Jeff Corrigan: fun. We've had some pre-conversation, but yes, we're ready to go here. Really though, Richie, like, as I've been studying your book and and I've watched you on Instagram for a while now, Right? I see like a lot of your posts and things.
So I'm not a stranger to kind of the concepts that you're throwing out there, but at the same time, I feel like now having it all in one book and exploring this antit management idea in depth, it's giving me a little bit of anxiety in the sense that like, I want it so bad, But I'm having a struggle, like putting it together.
Right. , So tell us in your life, how have you put some of this together? I know you've probably explained some of this in your books, in your blogs and things, but for our audience who may not know who you are, give us a little bit of background. I know you guys have been through some serious struggles. My wife watches your wife's Instagram.
Like Natalie, I know she's done a lot of this stuff too, but mm-hmm. . Yeah. Tell us. Cool. Yeah, give us a little background there.
Richie Norton: You know, the way I talk about goals, habits, and strengths. I know you guys are are habit masters here, but, but the way I talk about goals, habits, and strengths is, is, is sacrilegious.
Like, I, I am people, Look, look at what I'm saying. Go. Why would he say that? That's so rude. Like, we've built everything on these words, you know, And I'm like, , there's a, a goal and a habit and a strength is a tool. It is a tool, Yeah. That leads to end , or to an expansion, but we've made goals, habits, and strengths ends unto themselves.
So people get forever habiting and never inhabiting. They're forever goal setting and never achieving the job of the goal. What's the job of the goal? They're forever focusing on their strengths and they hate doing what they like because they've been doing it for so long. If that wasn't true, there would be no career transitions.
Like, so when you, when you move beyond goals, habits and strengths, you can choose better goals, habits, and strengths to help you get to where you want to go. But I didn't always think this way, you know, And I can explain what that means, what that looks like, but as you know, like from my, my books, and, but for those who are, who are just finding out, you know what we're talking about for the first time, my my brother-in-law passed away and asleep at the age of 21.
Hmm. And it was totally unexpected. We don't even know today why when that happens. You just suddenly get a totally new perspective on life. Hmm. And, you know, his life was short. And just because, you know, that's cliche doesn't make it any less true. Mm-hmm. and in America, we've been taught that we're gonna live till we're at least 65, because at 65 is when we actually get to finally start living.
Mm-hmm. , you know, and you know, my, my mom just turned 65 and I congratulated her that she finally gets to start her life now. You know what I mean? Like , I was like, why are we lying to ourselves? You know? It's just cause we've bought into the lie that corporations have given us for a long time. Yeah. Side note, this whole idea started with railroads and keeping us there for a long time and corporations and government tying it together with taxes.
And here we are, you know, a hundred, 200 years later going, Yeah, that's the way life is. Life was never that way. That didn't, that, first of all, we didn't live that long. . And, and, and second of all, like no one ever said, That was the way less supposed to be until re recently in history. You know? So the idea is not, it's not bad to save your money, it's just bad to save your dreams.
And people put those two things together, money and dreaming the same thing, that that's not true. Money and dreams are not the same things. Why are there millionaires that are sad? It's not true. , they'll just stop thinking that way, you know? I love that. And so a few years later, my wife and I had our fourth son and we named him Gavin after my brother-in-law's name was Gavin.
And he got this cough and, you know, the doctor said that we were helicopter parents, you know, We're like, What? This is our fourth time man. Like, like just, you know, , he has like cough, you know, like, no, he is gonna be fine. And but over time it turned out that it was serious. They finally checked for something called pertussis which I thought was a, just something I've heard of in the, the, the past, you know?
But it was also also his whooping cough. Yeah. And it was just too much on his little body. And I remember in the hospital when they were taking out all these wires, all these tubes that were just kind of keeping his little body alive. And, and a nurse came in and said, You guys just stay the night.
And I'm like, Mm, what are you talking about? We always stay the night. And it was just her gentle way of saying he, he wasn't gonna make it, you know? Yeah. And I remember I held him for a second hand on to my wife. She's on a rocking chair. I'm on my knees with my hand on his little chest, feeling those last beats of his little heart.
We sing lo lo byes, and he slipped away and. When that happened, you know, it's your worst nightmare as a parent. You can't protect your own child. You know what I mean? And, and what people don't realize is, or don't think about when someone passes away, especially a baby, is you have to leave the hospital empty handed.
You do not have your child in your arms anymore. And my wife couldn't leave the room. I couldn't leave the room. And a nurse came in, a different nurse I believe, and she said can I, can I rock him? And that was again a nice a nice way to help us. I guess leave the hospital room and you know, and we go on and, and you see our, his older brothers who are all at different ages, they're always super young and they're all understanding in different ways.
You know, like, where, where is Gavin? You know, that's one question. Not, not just like, is he in heaven? Like, where is he right now? You know, like all the questions and feelings. And we've just had to deal with that. And, you know, I learned that grief griefs a beast and it's a grief is a tunnel, not a cave.
It's something you, you go through, you know, for, for a long time. And it's not that it goes away, like people say, Move on, you're not moving on. Like, it becomes a part of you. It's like, it's like moving forward. Like you still have those memories, you know? And yeah. So we try to assign positive meeting to those things.
I'm gonna keep going through this real quick just so that everyone understands, like, My wife and I started saying, Why can't we just, and we always had these values, but why can't we just be together and live our lives? You know? And why do we have to go to work, you know, and spend, you know, 80% of our time working in 20% or less.
Yeah. With the people we love that we're working for, you know, And you realize we don't work for work's sake, we work for something else. And you know, we ended up going on these big long road trips hanging out with our family and just trying to be together. And it created what's called a forcing function where we had to figure out how to work in a way that allowed us to not be necessarily tied to an office or tied to a location.
We also had to figure out a way , to do these things we really wanted to do without money. Cause we didn't have any, we had to figure out how to make money as we went, which was cool. You know? If you can make money on the road, why not? It's, it's the same as making it at home. You know what I mean?
Yeah. If you can, but you're living this different lifestyle and you're together. Anyways, a few years later we my, my wife met this wonderful woman at church one day and she, we'd never seen her before and she had these little twins and my wife was helping her out cuz they were bouncing around, you know, as, as babies do.
They were one. And this woman asked my wife if, if we could watch her kids cuz she's learned how to, she just got a job at night. I'm like, well, of course. So there was actually a seven year old girl, a one year old twin's, a boy and a girl, and we babysat them and she never came back.
Jeff Corrigan: She just London there.
Yep. Yep.
Richie Norton: Wow. And it was a very interesting situation that was unexpected. And you know, after about several days go by almost a week more or less, and Child Protective Services knocks on our door. And, you know, we didn't know anything was going on at the time, but I guess at, at some point they were following the mom, you know, like things were happening.
It is what it is. Right, Right. And so maybe the mom is, you know, obviously doing the best she can. You know, we have, we have the, all, all the, the best feelings for all involved. And I won't get into the details, but CPS says that they're gonna take the kids. And we said, Where are they gonna go?
Said no one can take three kids. It's too many at one time. Mm-hmm. . And they said They're probably gonna sleep in. They said they're gonna sleep in their office, you know? And I was like, What? We'll take 'em. , my wife's at the same time, we'll take 'em. They said, Well, you're not foster parents. You can't.
And we're like, Well, what can we do? And they said, Well, maybe because the mom put them in your care. We can call it kinship placement. Mm-hmm. . So we went from three kids to four kids, to three kids to six kids, basically, overnight.
But you didn't know, did you know this lady?
No. Okay. It was like the same day we met her.
Wow. So all this stuff happens, and I tell these things for a reason. You know, we had them for two years. We, we wanted to adopt them. They ended up going back to bio mom, which was wonderful for her, and also very scary for other reasons. And we hope they're doing well. And I, I, I'll tell you like, it's a different pain.
It's a different pain. Having someone die and knowing there's a finality to it, and in our faith that we'll see 'em again. But if there's a, there's a different pain to knowing someone you love is out there. Yeah, you have no idea where they are and you don't know if they're okay. That's a living, an actual living nightmare for us.
You know, it's, wow, that would, it's crazy. , I'm gonna tell you two more things and I'll get into more of like what you're asking, but it's all contextual because all these things I say, whether or not you've experienced this or someone else has, or whatever they're experiencing, it all relates. Cause pain is pain, right?
It fills the whole room. Like it, like, it's just every tiny little piece of it affects our entire lives. And so we have to remember, again, I'll say, I think I said this earlier, but you have to assign positive meaning to the terrible things that are happening. Because in that sense you can try and find like that north star.
You can try and find like a way to move forward and my wife and I, we decided we're gonna take. We're back down, down to three kids. We're gonna go on this one way trip to New York and just figure things out and be together. Now we're not running away from things that are happening when you, if anyone who's put their kids in the car just little kids, like just for half hour drive to the grocery store.
Yeah. We've done that , like it could get pretty wild, really fast. So we're actually, you know, when we go on these long road trips, like, or whatever we huddle up our family a lot of the stuff that maybe we would try and talk about, or it might be an awkward situation, they kind of come out naturally as you're together, you know?
Mm-hmm. , that's kinda one of the things we found about spending a lot of time together. But on our way to the airport, my wife stopped being able, it was really weird, like to say words. She started forgetting our names and, and it turned out she had a stroke and she lost her memory. Took her to the hospital.
Wow. She, she got it back. You know, we, she was brave. She still wanted to go on this road trip. She was actually gonna go ahead before we were gonna go, and then we were gonna meet up with her in New York and then drive around the country. And I'm like, Okay, we're gonna go home. We're gonna relax, you know, we're gonna take it easy.
She's like, No way, if I don't get on that plane, you, I'm never getting out of bed again. I'm like, All right. So I give us a little note or , if I forget my name, call this number, , you know, And then I'm like, Oh, wait, dang. She forgets her name. She's gonna forget to give him a card. So I'd be like, , this
is a problem.
What was it?
Jeff Corrigan: Yeah, but attempted solution.
Richie Norton: I tried, you know, I tried, but we ended up on the road, you know, for six months, it's almost seven months. New York to San Diego, just crisscrossing, not knowing where we're gonna spend the night. And we figured out how to make money on the road. And we you know, went down to Mexico, went out to Canada, you know, came back to Hawaii.
All this. Then my son gets hit by a car crossing the street and he was hurt so bad, he should be unrecognizable, you know, But he's okay. You know, we, we, these things just happen. And at one point I thought, Does God hate me? You know, like, what's going on? And I realized these things are only strung together through me.
They're not necessarily happening like, like a cause and effect, you know? And I thought, you know, just love God unconditionally. Cause we're always blaming daddy in the sky. Our faith goes up and down based on situations. Like that's not faith. You know, like, the greatest miracle of faith in my opinion is, is having faithful when there is no miracle.
Yeah. What could be greater faith than that? That's a great you of putting . I love it. I love, it's so good. And so anyways, I, I tell you this because when I look at and all these people that, I love and respect in the author world and, and self-help and entrepreneurship. . I think that's really cool.
You can make money. I've made money. I've helped a lot of people make money. Why? Mm-hmm. , Because we've been told that you have to do it this way. There's 10 steps, and on the 11th step you get to live your life . And you go, Why is that a thing? It's only a thing because in kindergarten and your teacher said, You get the green jelly bean.
At the end of the day, if you're good, And it had nothing to do with the, with the green jelly bean or the dream or the incentive that was about control. It was 100% about control. It had nothing to do with education. And that's where time management comes in. As we open up our calendar, as we start figuring out our time, and if you go back to the history of time management, you learn that.
Time manage has nothing to do with your personal, like development. It's actually the opposite. Time management was specifically designed by Frederick Winslow Taylor to measure every drop of blood, sweat, and tears of workers to squeeze every bit of life out of them every second and every day that they can.
Yeah. So when we go into time management, you're like, Wow, this is,
Jeff Corrigan: Because back then they probably didn't even live past 65. Right? They were,
It's, I mean, I mean,
Richie Norton: some people did. Some people didn't. Right? So you bring it all together to anti time management and whether we should have goals, habits, and strengths.
And you go, What's the goal of the goal? You know, a goal from experience is a task. Mm-hmm. a goal, outside experience is growth. Of course, you don't know what you're doing. That's the whole point. But if you can work from the dream instead of endlessly toward it, Yeah. Then you can build a life, you can be a proud of.
It's like baking a cake without sugar. You can't expect it to be sweet. So we build our values in from the start and they grow with us.
Jeff Corrigan: Yeah. And you broke, so I love it. And you kind of broke my brain because like you said, and I realized why, right? Because I've been thinking about this for over a week now, just being like, why can't I quite grasp this?
Like, why is it hard for me to cuz most of the other books or tools in my life, I kind of just like, Oh yeah, this rhymes with this other book or this, you know, if this connects really well with this concept. And I, and I'm like, I really love these concepts because it's what I want. But then at the same time I'm, my brain is like fighting against me a little bit to say like, Yeah, but how?
Right. And I finally have come, I've been thinking and processing and studying and trying to figure out like . How can I make this real in my life, right? How can I make, put the goal, take it from the end of the timeline, like you suggest in your book and put it to the here and now? I'm like, Oh, I love that.
Because like you said in the book, or maybe it was on a podcast you did with Greg McEwen, but I was like, Wow, you, you, you talked about in five years from now, two years from now or whatever, whenever we set these goals, this end result we're looking for in the future, we may not even want that thing in two to five years.
Won't using your words now, rephrasing your words, but Yeah. Uh, So yeah, guys, I'm not this smart. I just stole it from Richie, but I, I but seriously, I, I finally feel like, and what you just said makes tons of sense in that it's like, I feel like all we, our whole lives we've been taught that here's the 10 steps you have to take to get to X.
And, but what you're saying, or at least in some ways, you're saying, Wait, what if you just eliminate. Nine of those steps. Right. That's boom. That's right. And here's my, cause, my final work from the final cause, rather than saying, Oh, I have to complete Y before I get to X And like, no, why don't we just
skip Y and go to X.
Richie Norton: That's right. Well and , you actually, identified exactly what it is, like the fact that you said, what if I has eliminated the nine or 10 steps, you know, to get to the 10th or the 11th, whatever that was, is the answer. Nobody thinks that way. They feel like they have to do these things, which means if they don't ask the question, they'll never get a different answer.
You have to ask a better question to get a better answer. It's essential. So instead of thinking I have to do this, then this instead of if then thinking, think algebraically, how can I, what can, who can do this thing to make this thing happen by next Tuesday? How can we create this situation? To, without this terrible thing I'm worried about happening, you know what I mean?
By this date, it doesn't mean you have the answer, but it creates space in your mind. Hmm. I think the, the number one leadership skill, the number one leadership competency of the next decade century really is discernment. You know, we got IBM saying it's creativity. Several years later they're saying it's data, and now all of a sudden we have people being creative on bad data.
And you're like, this is a disaster. You know what I mean? Like, like what is going on right now? And you know, but when you get like leaders in there that like, think, assimilate all the different situations and look at like, things from Multidimensionally, and then they make it based on what they actually want and what they think the market wants.
Oh, then we start seeing like the magic happen. You know, And that's why we need to treat our lives. But one of the reasons it's hard to like, Think this way and to talk about anti time management. And I distill it down to the idea of like, stop managing time. Start prioritizing your attention. Cause you can get really real about that.
But it, cuz most of the books we read do not are, are non holistic. They do not bring in the family and personal stuff. They do not. Mm-hmm. , they're specific. That's a great, They're specific and there's very, very few that bring in the family. But even when they do, they still say work first, family second.
Even though they say family first, they, they operate the opposite every time. Look at it, it's, it's bizarre.
Jeff Corrigan: No, you're a hundred percent right.
Richie Norton: You know what I mean? So, so, so when you start flipping it around, you do, why am I working? What's the job of the goal? Let make it super real. Time is elusive. It doesn't make any sense.
Right. You're like, it's abstract. Mm-hmm. . But it's like this. If someone says, I wanna be healthy, I can't wait to be healthy and start trying to be. In 10 years, Oh man, I just can't wait until my employer gives me those two weeks, 10 years from now that I can finally start being healthy. That's what we're doing with our time.
If you want more time later, you have to have more time now facts because you cement a system that disallows or allows you to work in a certain way. Hmm. So when you sacrifice what you love for success, you get neither. How you spend your time is how you show your love.
If you wanna be healthy later, you be healthy. Now, if you want more time later, you find how to operate with time. Now. Now, cuz 10 years from now when you retired, guess what? You never learned how to live and so you get. I know cause I've interviewed hundreds of people that are in retirement and they tell me this.
And so it's totally possible. It's just a different way of thinking. It's totally a learned skill. .
Jeff Corrigan: I love it so much. I do. I'm and I'm so glad to have you here because I'm just like, I gotta like, I need to get Richie to coach me on this man, figure this out, . So this is just my secret way of getting you to coach me, I guess.
I don't know.
Richie Norton: That's what I think that's what podcasts are for. We're all coaching each other here. It's great. .
No, it's awesome.
Sheldon Mills: So , Yeah, I was gonna say like loving this, but Aristotle's final cost. Can you talk a little bit more about that concept? I think that'll be kind of revolutionary for a lot of people.
Richie Norton: Okay, so Aristotle has four causes. And these four causes go something like this, The last one being final cause, right? Which creates a final result. And so the four causes go something like this. You need materials to make something happen. You need the form, the design, whatever it's gonna be.
You need an agent or something that puts it together, a person or a situation that makes it work. And then you finally have the final result or the final cause that creates the result. Basically, an acorn becomes an oak tree, but people plant sunflower seeds, which are wonderful flowers or, or weeds or whatever they are.
Jeff Corrigan: they grow like weeds.
Richie Norton: expecting to get an oak tree. They do this their entire life. Yeah. And that's the the saddest part. There's nothing wrong. You're happy with your life, you're happy these things happen, but you didn't get what you intended. I don't think we ever really get exactly what we intended. You know, life changes, things happen, you know it, it is what it is.
The biggest problem, people say, Well what's the hardest thing on this? And my hardest thing for me, what makes me actually like actually sad inside is people lying to themselves because they've been lied too. And also maybe it wasn't like a harsh, I'm lying to, I think it was maybe in the past, but now it's more like, Oh, this is just the way it is.
Yeah. It, this is not the way it is. Yeah. This is the way you chose it to be. So we are like, they say that fish discover water last time management is water. Every single piece of our life, everything from this microphone I'm using to this computer, you know, thing that we're doing right here, to the people listening to it was a factor of time management.
Someone decided how, when, where, what supply chain, everything totally designed around when and where things would happen, what resources, how, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We don't even realize how engulfed we are in this thing. But when you pop your head up and you go, Oh my gosh, then you can stop being controlled by it.
Because time management, by the way, side note, Cause I know people who listen to this love the word management. They're obsessed and they also go, Oh no, but it's better to be a leader. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Got it, got it, got it, got. We got it. We got it, we got it, we got it. Ok, got it. But they don't understand is where the word management comes from.
Like management specifically means control. So it's not, You can't control time. It's who controls your time. Yeah. That is time management. Who controls your time, Anti time management. You control your time. Now you can bounce back and forth. The thing is you to decide and know when it's happening.
That's essential, right? Yeah. The word management . It, it, I don't know. Nobody studies this stuff, but I, but, but I do. So, so the word manage management sizes stuff. Nobody, nobody studies this stuff. Oh, studies, Yes. God. But sizes would work too, I guess. , nobody sizes this up. But I do like the word management.
It's man mono. It's hands, it's to control with your hands. That's what this word means. And it comes from training horses and cattle. That's where the word manger comes from. It's only one letter away. Manger and manager. This is, I'm not making this up. No one talks about it, but it's real. No, it's how you, you control cattle with a manger.
Mm-hmm. , you control the people with feed. You can come here, you'll get this much money, you can go there, you'll get this. That's what, that's the job of a manager to treat us like cows. This is real. This is not made up you. No, no, no. But jobs, they're so good. They develop people maybe on the side. Nobody here is here to develop you as a person.
They're here to make money, otherwise they'd never let you go. When things got hard. We know this is true. Now what about my strengths? And you go strengths tests. Were designed to keep you where you are. If you're good at laying bricks, you're gonna keep laying bricks. Why would I give you another job? HR now has an actual reason to not let you move up sideways or any way you want to go officially on the books.
Like so personality tests, you're fixed. So it's like what Now? I don't think these tests were designed specifically for this, but I think managers have manipulated them to do what they do. Herd heard people, . That's the job. Like cattle. That is the job, you know? No, but my job's great. Stay there forever. I hope you love it.
Cuz that's the thing is I'm not giving my values or pressing them on other people. I'm seeing whatever your values are, anti time management will help you live them. So people that wanna work more, they'll never work or be more productive than using the principles like anti time management. So with bringing it back to final cause, the idea is this, If you were to build the table, this is what academics look at it like.
You would need wood, you need a design, you need a person to put it together. You have a table and then you go, Well, what's the job of the table? Well, if it's like to have a family heirloom, cool, but if it was to have like a, a fun experience or dinner with some people visiting in town, well you could have done Uber Eats and you could have gone to the restaurant next door.
So this is like a metaphor if you're spending your whole life building a table, but the purpose of the table was to be fulfilled with something else, you wasted your whole life on something that was non-essential. Yeah. And when you realize that, when you realize you can live from the experience and not toward the experience.
I worked in venture capital for a long time and, and I still do but in different ways. I worked with a VC firm. Now I do more coaching, consulting type of work. But when I explain this to VCs and I go ask your people, ask your founders what they would do when the company finally sells.
This is a scary question because no one wants 'em to think about that, but that's why they started the business in the first place. They didn't do it to start to change the world. I promise you. They did not start the business to change the world. They're, they're full of crap. Like half of that is true, right?
They did it just making money. Otherwise they wouldn't be approaching a vc. The VC wants out. You know what I mean? So when you ask them that, that's a great point. , you're more likely to keep the founders being successful because they remove themselves as a bottleneck. When they say, I'm gonna live from the dream, what would I do when it's sold?
Do that, build the business around. That idea changes every single way that you operate and makes magic.
Jeff Corrigan: So I love this concept. So I wanna know, Where does the rubber meet the road here for, for someone like me, Right. Or Sheldon. Sheldon you were just saying like, okay, I've got six kids, I'm a bishop, I'm work, working full time, like all these things, right? In our life, we've got faith, we've got school, we got families, we've got all these things that are taking up time. But like you said, Richie, I, I really do, like, I want the vision to come first.
And so for me, I, I look at it and say, Okay, how have you. Implemented this in your world. I know you have, right? You're writing about it, you're traveling, you're living this lifestyle, and maybe you've already talked about this, but give us a little more of your like, day to day, how does, how does the Richie Day go?
How does this work
in your life?
Richie Norton: Okay, hold on, hold on. There are several questions there. I'm getting way out here, but I like it. I like it. Like it's a good, it is a good conversation. But let me describe it this, this way. It's just, let me jump to the lesson learned. Okay? Try it.
That's it. You don't have to like flip your whole life upside down. Like I'm writing this book. I've been working on this anti management book for, I don't know, seven years. Hey, I wasn't trying to write it fast. I wanted to write. Well, you know, Yeah. If I wanted to write it fast. Yeah. You, you, you write an ebook and you publish it tomorrow.
You I could do that. Anybody could do that. Right. So, but while I was writing it, and especially in the last two years, when you're getting super serious and, you know, getting it all and you have the publisher involved and all that kind of stuff, this is a response, Okay.
Every, instead of being unnecessarily like designing the system, cause you want to kind of create an environment, but every time a, a kid would come and say, Hey dad, can you take me to my friend's house? Or Dad, can we go surfing together? Or, Hey, can we go on this trip? Because I wanted to have integrity with the book I was writing.
I would stop even if I was in the middle of like the greatest brain thought idea ever. You know, I'm in flow, you know, people love that word. You know, I'm like, I'm like just going for it, you know? Stop everything. Do it now. People go, That's such a simple example. Yeah. Most people don't stop what they're doing.
They keep scrolling on their phone and they keep working head down. Mom, can you hear me? Nope. No response. So why I, I'm not perfect at this, but I became conscious of it and, you know, what happened? I was like, Well, what's gonna happen? What's gonna happen if I stop working to actually, you know, do these things, you know, to actually, the things that I'm working for in the first place, Nothing bad happened.
Zero, nothing. If anything, it helped me think about it for a little longer, you know, whatever later, and, and get through it and, and figure it out when you start putting your priorities first, cuz priority means prior. Mm-hmm. , it means to precede and proceed. But since kindergarten we have been taught put the priority at the end of the timeline.
So we have to rescue the dream from the end of the timeline and put it first. When you do, you're forced to think and work more creatively in a way that supports it. So I call it the castle and the moat strategy. So you do the thing that you really wanna do first, or you create the castle. You live the dream first and you create strategic and economic moats around it, Meaning a way to work to support it.
But but to answer your question like this, it is a different way of thinking. A responsible person will still get things done. No, no one is more productive than a procrastinator with an impending deadline.
no one
Jeff Corrigan: That's like words to the . You're preaching the choir here
Richie Norton: and so, so you use it to your advantage.
So, but here's the thing. I know someone listen to is like, but I have this and I have this and I have this. So we could, we could, at a personal coaching level, cuz coaching is the highest level of help training vanilla. Mm-hmm. consulting, eh, kind of a group thing. Coaching is personal. Yeah. And it's egoless because the person being helped, the people that see the results of this person, they have no idea there was someone behind him whispering in their ear.
You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. . So it's very egoless. Okay. Yeah. But, And it's all love. It's all love. It's all love. I learned this a lot from the Marshall Goldsmith people. Like it's all love man. Yeah. And if someone doesn't care, you can't help them. They, they don't care. So, you know what I mean? You gotta work with people that care.
So where I'm going with this is you could get super granular or maybe I can answer your questions too about exactly what you're looking for and we can, we can work through that, tell people what that looks like. But, but lemme say it this way, you're already doing exactly what you want. Like, you, you literally chose to take that calling.
You chose to have this many kids. You chose to go to that school. You worked for 10 or 20 years at school and your regular job and your apprenticeship and your internship and whatever thing you did, not getting paid to do the very thing you're doing right now. So when people go like, go like, Oh yeah, why, why is my life this way?
It's like, are you, are you joking me? Like, are you serious right now? Okay. But I, but I wanna, you know, but I still wanna do everything I'm doing. Yeah. And have what I really, really worked for. Ah, that's a better question. . That's a way better question. So then we have to own the consequence that we chose.
And if it's possible, it's possible. It's not. It's not. And then face it, right? So then there's little things you can do. But lemme say it this way, If for example, right now one of you decided you were any doesn't, I don't care anyone listening to this, you're like, I can't, I can't, I can't just stop worrying about how, for a second, everyone stops at how, How is a terrible first question.
Maybe the worst question you could ask. Mm-hmm. . You stop creativity at how, Right? So, but if you were literally right now to go, I'm gonna take three months, quote unquote off you, you would figure out a way to get stuff done before and after. You just would. And you go, That's too long. Okay, well you've done it for two weeks.
You've been doing it for two weeks your whole life. Yeah. So the timeline, people get frustrated with timing. How come I don't have as much as someone else? How come this and that? It's actually a timing question cuz you might later or you might not. It depends. All I'm saying is the principle is when you act from what you want, you will find new ways to operate.
Jeff Corrigan: I love it.
Sheldon Mills: , I was gonna say
big calls that acting from your future self, not trying to act to become, you know, . So yeah,
Richie Norton: AB absolutely you have to act, You know, in the book too, I talk about showing up as there's a whole framework in there.
We literally haven't even talked about it. Right. We've been talking about the principles around them, but we, I, I call, you know, if, if you say this is classic, classic like NLP type stuff, but like when you, when you say, I will you forever will one, one day. Yeah. When you say I am, you start showing up as that person like.
If I will stop doing this, then maybe one day I will. If I am a person that doesn't do that, then I won't do it. Mm-hmm. you go. If you say, I will start running, it's very different than saying, I am a runner. I have running shoes on and I'm outside. .
Yes. It's different.
Jeff Corrigan: Very different. Yeah. Well, actually, this brings to mind, and, and it's funny because you're talking about all this, and I, I think the thing that really stuck out to me this week was I realized I've done this in my life a lot of times.
Right? Yeah. You have. And I just didn't realize I was doing, It's, and we've been talking about that for years now with Habit Masters. Were like, all these tools we're sharing with you guys, it's stuff you do all the time. Yeah. It's just, you haven't ever said, Oh, I'm gonna consciously choose to do this.
And Yes. One example for my own life is, you know, we, we moved into a new house eight years ago. Great area and loved it. And we didn't have our basement finished. And so for years we were like, Okay, well we will finish the basement, you know, we'll finish the basement. We'll finish the basement. We didn't give it a hard deadline or anything until 2019.
I was just like, I told my wife, my wife's name's Michelle. I said, Michelle, it's time I'm gonna finish the basement. Right? And instead of, I will, I just said, Let's do this thing. Right? . And, and I, I knew because for years I was like, Oh, maybe I should learn how to do this or learn it. And I, I stopped asking how, like you said, and just said, I'm going to do this.
And within a month I had secured the funds and just said, All right, we're gonna do this. And I, Hmm, hired somebody else to finish the basement for me, and it was done in three months. There you go, . There you go.
There you go. There you go. And that, that's, I mean, I was, The dream is here.
Richie Norton: No, no, you're right.
It's not, We don't think about it a lot. But when I started like interviewing, quote unquote successful people and realized they, they weren't doing this, They were successful in one area and not maybe their family life, to be honest. I started realizing those that were successful in their family life, whether they, whether they did this or not, they were certain principles.
But when I started putting them all together and realize you could actually start from a different point and you to realize you don't have to do it yourself. Like you can get the same result by hiring someone like you did or much better . So, so, yeah. So the, the book has a, a new language, you know, it's a different, You can, cause now you can now identify it because there's this new language around it and architect doesn't build buildings.
Mm-hmm. , an architect does not build buildings. Right. An architect doesn't build buildings, they draw them, you know, and a, a general contractor. , all my favorite general contractor friends out there all making millions of dollars, , they won't even freaking pick up a hammer . So it's like, Come on. What are we talking about?
Like, there's so many ways to do work. Why are you choosing to do it the way you're doing it? Mm, yeah. And does it have to be done that way still? Could you delegate? Could you eliminate? You know, could you, could you outsource? At the end of the day, the framework goes something like this purpose, which is not like the woo woo purpose.
I like, I get it super specific, like to you personally, professionally with the people you love play and you create the situation. Again, I called it a north star that allows you to make decisions. Will this thing bring me closer or further away from this identity, this person I want to be? Because I really believe that it's not a lesson learned until it's a behavior changed.
Hmm, that's great. This is essential to understand. That's awesome. And then once you have the actual purpose, which can change, these are purposes, then you have priorities. And priorities are first. And through those priorities you can create a project. So you had, you know, your basement project and it got done.
And once you have your project, then you can figure out expert sourcing, work syncing, project, stacking, all these little terms that, that are super effective that I talk about in the book. And then you create payments. A way to get paid that is an alignment with the way you work. You can still get paid first.
It's just that the payment needs to be the way you get paid. It has to be an alignment with the lifestyle you wanna lead. The reason this is important is cuz if someone says, I wanna make money, as soon as they decide they're moving to New York, their lifestyle has instantly become New York lifestyle.
I'm not saying that's good or it's expensive. Right. I'm not, I'm not saying Yeah. And I'm saying it's, I'm not saying it's good or bad, I say, where you live defines so much of your lifestyle. Mm-hmm. Like 99%. No, I have my life online and I travel. Cool. Great. So, but like the thing is like if you wanna be a fly fisherman in, in Montana mm-hmm.
and you are gonna go work for 20 years on Wall Street and then become a fly fisherman. Oh, you decided that when you could have just become a fly fisherman in Montana, probably made the same amount of money doing something similar or something totally different from the start. You just could have. So when people start thinking of that way, it changes everything.
Cuz you gotta remember how you work. The way you're paid dictates more of, of your lifestyle than anything else. More than even how much money you make. You have to make a certain amount of money. Right. But, but if I have a, if I'm having a hard time in relationships, still go to work. If you're unhealthy, you go to work, it never ends.
You want to go on a trip, but you gotta go to work. , you go to work how you are paid. In other words, how you work dictates more about your lifestyle than the way you live, than how much money you make. So if you can change the way you operate, you can actually become hyper productive. I call it prism productivity, where you can get more done in less time by working a different way and living the life of your dreams.
That's anti time management, and it totally works.
Jeff Corrigan: Yeah. And I've just been waking up to this. I love all of this so much, and I've been waking up. It's like a paradigm shift, right? And I love what, I love those, I'm like and like you said, but it's not a lesson learned until behavior's changed. And so right now I'm like, Okay, I'm, I'm getting the lesson, but I haven't learned it until I start implementing it.
And I, and here's what I've been doing just for , for anybody listening, right? It's like a couple of things that I've been able to like take from this as I've been like, really? And I've been trying too hard, honestly, to figure out. How to make this real in my life because I feel like I have pieces of it.
It's like just sitting there ready for me to mold. And like you said, I'm a 100% believer and I talked to my kids this the other day that the moment you take ownership is the moment that you have control right. Of your life. Right? It's like, I gotta own everything in my life. Like you just said, like, I chose this wherever.
If I'm spending 10 hours a day at work, I chose that. If I'm, you know, whatever that, whatever that is, once you own it, then you can change it and, and until, and if you don't, if you won't take ownership of it, That's where so many people sit is in this and hear me here I am like broadcasting this onto other people.
But what I've seen it seems like is most people sit in a victim mentality and wish for the world to change when in reality their first step should be, I gotta take ownership of what I got and then I have the ability to change it. It's like, yes, okay. Like, and so what I've been doing is.
At work, I've been working one of the chapters in your book. I can't remember which one was talking into the, kind of like, made me realize, I was like, That's me. At work it's like I'm sitting here longer than I should scrolling through email or whatever crap that makes you look busy. and Exactly. And thinking to myself, I could have left at 2:00 PM today cuz I got the major stuff done. Yes. Early in the day. So thank you first of all for just waking me up to something I've, that's so obvious now, Right.
It seems so clear to me that it's like, Oh, I gotta just, why am I working more hours than I should. And if I am working these hours, why am I not doing this stuff? Yes. I want to do so.
Richie Norton: It's true. It's true. Sorry. No, I, No, no, it's so true. And we, again, we can get super specific and I can answer your specific questions about what you're trying to make happen because it's it is situational, you know what I mean?
Like, if you're saying that the dream looks like living somewhere for two months out of the year, or if you're saying it looks like this or that, then we change the tactics, We change the goals, habits, and strengths to get there. People switch one habit for a different habit that still never get them what they want.
Why would you do that? And then people do like task switching where it's choosing like a lower task cuz it's easier and they can become more perfect at it than working on the thing that's actually gonna work. That's, that's, that's, that's the perfectionist, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. . So like, you keep going, going, going.
But ultimately is a visual, like a full calendar is an empty life. Full calendar is an empty life. You have no flexibility, you have no autonomy. , you have no ability, Agility. No, you have. You have no availability. Oh, but I chose my calendar like that. Exactly. If that's not the calendar you like, you've now identified step one,
Because? Because an empty calendar doesn't mean you're not productive. An empty calendar means it's been handled. That's called leadership. Leaders get things handled without doing it themselves unless they choose to do it themselves. But then it's a choice and you have to do it and know you're doing it because you like want to, or quote unquote have to not because you're just doing it cuz you wanna like show that you're gonna sacrifice yourself for everybody else.
That's not leadership. That's called just doing it yourself. It's called diy. It's literally called DIY
I love it.
Jeff Corrigan: Thank you so much for joining. That was awesome. Yes, it was. Thank you Richie. We are just glad that you got to be here for that conversation because we hope it was beneficial to you as it was for us.
I felt like it was just a coaching session for me. . Sorry, Sheldon usually Shelldon get a coaching session. Now it's me. .
Sheldon Mills: I hope this broke your mind a little bit, right? Jeff and I were saying how , our lives have kind of been leading up to this message to be able to hear it now.
And I honestly think I'm gonna live some, some dreams now and I'm gonna figure out the, how after the fact cuz really, you build the castle and then the moat, right?
Absolutely. It's good.
Jeff Corrigan: I love all the concepts and we are going to make it a first priority to live our dreams now.
Cause we are always talking to you guys about living your best life now and this is one of the key elements of that and it just helps you think about it in a new and better way. So, If you need to go back and listen to this multiple times, please do. We'll have a part two coming up soon to finish things off with our conversation even more gets into specifics with me and what things I want to do and have like a little personal coaching mentorship there,
So if you like this episode, please share it with a friend and we're trying to get to a hundred reviews on Apple Podcasts. Go and review us there. We'd love to hear your feedback and honestly, we'll send you a free Kindle book if you email us a picture of your review. On top of that, we have a course out and it's awesome guys.
I think you're really gonna like it. And to be honest with you, we are wanting as many people to go through it as possible because the tools that are in there have been fundamental in helping us create great habits and live our dreams and we want you to go through it. So if you're listening to this podcast little secret, you can email us at [email protected] and we'll send you a free link
So have a great day and we'll get you on the next episode. It's time to start living your best life
