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Glenn Mattson
Welcome back to the Building Blocks of Success. Today, we're gonna be talking about thinking things through. Now, that may seem like an easy topic to do and seem so nonchalant about just getting it done. But how many times when we have a task to do, we have an activity that needs to get accomplished, that we look at this thing and next thing, you know, we find ourselves wasting a good 20 30% of our time, going back and getting additional materials, additional tools and additional resources because we didn't prepare.
Glenn Mattson
What you'll find is, is that many different resources will tell you the average person wastes about 22 to 32% of their time, because they're not prepared on doing a task. So when they have to go back and get either a new tool or process or, you know, a competency or something they need to learn, they have to go back and either find it, get it and then get their mind back into the game typically takes an average of 12 minutes. If they have something that's right handy to them, and they break their task and they go over and they have to get something different and they go back in and that something different they had to get was relatively easy to get it still impacts them by three to three and a half minutes to get their mojo back. So having the ability not to think things through is really important. Now, we're talking about thinking things through from a large project at work right? Massive elephant that has all these moving parts, all the way down to something as easy as I have a meeting coming up, how do I make sure I'm prepared for it?
Glenn Mattson
All these critical thinking skills, believe it or not, are developed early on when we're children. So having the capacity to sit back, think things through, unemotionally, and look at the tasks, the things that you need to bring with you from a logical mindset, without any emotion involved in it is something that we have to practice. As again, many of us we also get distracted. I mean, I've seen how many times you've done this, you've gotten up from the den, you go into the kitchen to do something and as you're going into the kitchen, you see something in the hallway, so you go do what's in the hallway, then you get into the kitchen, you see three other things that need to be done in the kitchen, you do those things, and quite honestly, most of us forget why we're in the kitchen. Or when we get into the kitchen, we finally get to the task. But it's the fifth thing that we did on the way there when it was only the first thing on our to do list.
Glenn Mattson
So we have to take a look at how we can get this done and how to effectively do that. So when we look at critical thinking with thinking things through, let's walk through a couple of things that we need to do.
Glenn Mattson
The first piece that you need to understand is what is the end result. I know this sounds so foolish, but you have to really spend time on what's the end result. Is the end result, for instance, you're looking at a wall that you have to take down the wallpaper and you have to take off the glue and then you're gonna have to prime the wall and get it prepared to paint it then you're gonna have to paint it? You have to literally sit through each piece. So if you want a room that you're walking in and it has wallpaper in it, and you want the end result to look like it's painted and looks gorgeous. You have to have clarity on what you want the end game to look like. You have to have clarity on exactly what it looks like how it feels, the vibe, everything. You need clarity on that. Thinking things through is reverse delegation. So you got to get to the end result. Now, the next question you ask is what are the tools that I need to have to accomplish that objective? What are the tools I need?
Glenn Mattson
Now tools are things that you take to utilize in a task to make it easier. That's a pen, piece of paper, could be a scraper could be a tarp. Those are tools. So what are the tools that you need? And remember, you got to be super detailed. So if you're gonna say, well, I gotta take the wallpaper off. Okay, so how are you gonna take the wallpaper off? How are you going to scratch the wallpaper? What are you going to spray on it to undo the glue? Are you gonna take the glue off? Are you going to take all the glue off? So you have to walk through and say, okay, do I need a scraper? Do I need a sponge, do I need a bucket to do that? Do I need something on the floor?
Glenn Mattson
So as you walk through, not just the end result. But as you do your reverse delegation and reverse playback of what that looks like and you start going through this big elephant, the end result, and you breaking it down. As you're breaking it down. You're asking yourself, okay, what are the tools I need to have to accomplish that task?
Glenn Mattson
Third thing. What are the documents? What are the add ons? What are the supporting documentation of needs, need be, what do I need to have? Maybe that's directions on how to use it, maybe that's a hand up you need to have, some kind of documentation to show what you're outlining for somebody.
Glenn Mattson
So first is end result. Next is you step by step in terms of details of what it looks like the sequential steps, same mindset of taking a large project and breaking it down to four or five bite sized pieces. So for instance, taking the same example we're talking about with a bathroom and taking down your wallpaper, if people even still have that now, but if you're gonna take down the wallpaper, that's one stage, preparing the walls, the second stage. Painting, it's the third stage. So even in this one task, we can break it down to three subsets. So you do each of those subsets, what are the tools we need, what are the documentations that we need? Third thing you have to ask yourself is what skills do we need to have? So if you've never taken down wallpaper, then you need to figure out how to take down wallpaper. So what are the skills you need to have? Then you have to ask yourself, where am I in those skills ready? So you can learn what you need to do to get the task done.
Glenn Mattson
With that's going to help you out what background knowledge you need to have, what do you need to learn before you do the task? There's nothing worse than getting yourself prepared to do something and then you have all everything laid out to do with and you'll find that your skill set or your competencies really low, and you gotta go into YouTube for three hours to figure it out.
Glenn Mattson
So as we start to sit down and figure out your task, again, end result, what are the large rocks that need to be done in between? So you take a large piece and you break it down in bite sized pieces. What are the tools I need to have? What are the documents I need to have? What are the skills I need to have? And then in the background is what are those missing? So that'll help you break it down. In essence, you need to ask yourself, the who, the what, the where, the when, the why, and the how.
Glenn Mattson
So by looking things through, we do a couple of things. One, we are trying to take our emotions out of the process. Taking our emotions out of the process is we're leaving our child in the car and we're trying to do this task purely adult, like we don't want to bring the critical parent in there either. They just sit there and stir the pot and cause problems.
Glenn Mattson
So we can think it through purely adult, it will make it easier. Remember, freedom comes from discipline, so have the discipline to prepare correctly. And that will give you freedom to do the activity with less stress.
Glenn Mattson
You know I remember; I have brothers and when we have a task to do our father and maybe it was different in your family, but my family, we never paid anyone to do anything. My father's mindset is, is that they can figure it out, I have four boys, we're gonna figure this out. I'm pretty sure between my dad and my grandfather, they've done pretty much everything. And which in turn means that we did everything. So it was interesting to sit down, it didn't make a difference with the task was.
Glenn Mattson
I remember my father would sit us down. Historically, it would be in the driveway or in the garage. And he would first say is okay, this is what we're doing today. We're like, alright, then we weren't really paying attention. And he would say it again, this is what we're going to be doing today. It could be anything from cutting down a tree, to moving wood, putting on a new roof, to anything that needed to be done, right. These are just daily chores and tasks that we all remember we did. We always had one or two large projects that are always in play when I was a kid. So we would sit there, he would share with us what the task is. We would all have to think in our brains, really be quiet, not act like a five-year-old or a 10 year old or a 15 year old. But think about the task and he would ask us to walk through with baby steps. What are the things that we need to bring with us to do this job?
Glenn Mattson
And anything you yelled out for the most part or, when you're, you know, seven or eight, you're not saying in a logical order, you're just yelling stuff out. Alright, so for instance, we're gonna go chop some wood today, what do we need? You know, someone yells out a chainsaw. Well, that's genius. Great idea. Well, you need a mall, right? Great. What else? So it's when you get down to the details is where the devil is, we've all heard that. So, big rock stuff, the big things that we need, are going to come relatively easy, but really think things through to find out the details. There's nothing worse than driving someplace to clean out a field of trees and you forgot to bring the file to sharpen the blades. Or you didn't bring enough oil with you, or you didn't bring the right screwdriver with you so that you could actually deal with some of the issues. So you have to think things through.
Glenn Mattson
We would always sit there, and he'd ask, okay, what else? What else? And we would make a list. At the end, my father would say, okay, this is what you're saying that we need. And he would do quite honestly, active listening, give it back to us. And as he gave it back to us, in his genius, right? He would ask us questions on the ones that we forgot.
Glenn Mattson
He would say things like, Okay, that's great. So we can bring the chain saws there. We have two of them, three malls. Yep, we have this, we have this. Gotcha. So if we're going to be up there and cutting wood for six or seven hours, do you think our chains are going to get a little dull?
Glenn Mattson
And we'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, what do we need to make sure that the chains are sharp? We'd yell out a sharpener! Right. So my father knew what the answers were, but instead of just giving us a list of what to get, right, like a go to our grocery store, you got these six things, you got these five things, let's separate and conquer. That's not what we did on Saturdays. We would make the list together, and we would have to go get all those things.
Glenn Mattson
But he would have us walk through it, we would pull everything out, we would lay it all down on the floor. And he would say again, what are we missing? Do we have everything? And when you finally have everything, we'd get to work, and we wouldn't miss a beat.
Glenn Mattson
So here we are. 30 years later, 50 years later, I look at a task, what are the things I say to myself? Just the same things that were taught when I was a kid. Think it through, sit down, don't get emotional, don't react, especially if it's negative, take a deep breath, what do I need? What are the things I need to do to get to the end result? What are the two or three subsets of this? Break this elephant down to small pieces. What do I need to accomplish to get there? Accomplish those things. What are the tools I need to have? Besides my tools, what documentation do I need to have? What knowledge do I need to have? What skills do I need to have? Then you have to be really honest with yourself and check taking a diagnostic of how well you are in those areas.
Glenn Mattson
And then you're prepared.
Glenn Mattson
Have the ability to slow yourself down and think things through. Quite honestly, having a to do list is one of the best ways of doing that. You slow yourself down, you write down what the end result is, in one or two sentences. What are the two or three large rocks or bases, first base, second base, third base, do you have to get to so you can finally get to home plate. Break that elephant into pieces. To accomplish each of those pieces, what are the things you need to have? What are the things you need to own? What are the things you need to bring with you?
Glenn Mattson
What happens unfortunately, for many of us, is we kind of go through this life. And we have like really two systems in our brain, which is one is impressions and feelings and intentions. And the other is just generally thinking of things that we have to get done. And that uses low energy and when it uses low energy. What starts to happen is is that we start thinking about things and doing things with almost zero effort. We're on autopilot.
Glenn Mattson
And it's very normal in our lives. Someone says hey, can you do this? Yeah, no problem. I'll get it done. And you start the task and you're on autopilot. You haven't sat back and thought through what you have to do. Think through the, either the skills or the documents you need before you take action. Don't actually take action and then adapt as you're taking it. You're gonna have enough of that in life later. But man, it is so much easier to take the pressure off of you, to make either immediate action or make the wrong action is to step back, analyze it, look at the big picture, break it down to small sized pieces, and then ask yourself what do you need?
Glenn Mattson
I mean, look, if we look at painters, granted, they do this in the middle of the activity, I'd like you to do it before, but even painters will paint, they sit back, they let it dry for a day or two. They look at their large paintings. Or they may paint a little bit, sit back, and they look at and say, okay, that's not exactly the color tone I was looking for. That looks pretty good, it's not what I was hoping for, or that man that looks really, really nice different than I would have sought my head and they could move on forward.
Glenn Mattson
But having the ability to sit back and be curious, be humble. Take a moment to take a deep breath. And thinking things through, even when you know the answer will still make you effective by a 30% increase. So we're not talking about a little bit of stuff. So start these things easy. Go to the grocery store, think things through on a Saturday morning. Well, if you're going to the grocery store and you also need to get your oil changed, are you gonna get your oil change while you're getting the groceries? Think things through.
Glenn Mattson
So we have to make sure we have everything. When's the last time you went in an airplane like oh my god, I forgot this, or I forgot that? You didn't think it through.
Glenn Mattson
So take a look at all the things that you have to do when I travel, for instance, there's lots of stuff, I have to make sure that we have our small details, when you do a presentation. You got to have the thumb drive, you gotta have it backed up, you got to have your PowerPoint printed out, you got to make sure that you have your mouse so you can move it forward. In terms of your presentation. So there's all these small things that you need to make sure that you constantly have. And the more you do it, the more you know what that list looks like. But that comes from experience.
Glenn Mattson
So without experience, make sure you have the ability to improve your thinking skills to turn on that part of your brain versus you're not on autopilot. Start thinking like an adult and less like a child that's emotional. Ask yourself what's the task at hand? What do I need to do? When do I need to get it done by? How do I need to do it? What is it going to look like? What tools do I need to have to get that done? Look at the various sources of things that you're going to need to do that process. So you have to think it through. So take a moment. Something as easy as brushing your teeth, bringing the kids to school, going grocery shopping, taking care of the lawn out in the backyard, sitting down replacing the screen door, doesn't make a difference. Think it through. Think of all the things that you need to do that you're gonna need to have before you get started. Work on the small stuff so when it comes to the big stuff, it's really easy, because you're going to find when you actually start breaking things down and thinking things through, they're not as bad as they are.
Glenn Mattson
Here's your building blocks of success. Take it, take a look at it. Think it through. Use it to make yourself better moving forward.
Glenn Mattson
This is the Building Blocks of Success with Glenn Mattson.
S2E9 with Glenn Mattson: Momentum, Thoughts and Habits
S2E1 with Glenn Mattson: Basics of Behavior and Goal Setting