Episode 191 with Jon Acuff
Make Your Best Moments the Rule, Not the Exception
SHOW NOTES:
Join us for a thought-provoking conversation with Jon Acuff as we explore the keys to unlocking your potential and finding hope in your everyday life. Discover how to architect your own destiny and transform your dreams into reality.
Purchase your copy of All it Takes is a Goal here >> https://amzn.to/48bnA4k
Find out more about Jon Acuff here >> https://jonacuff.com/
Listen to Jon's other appearances on the 1000 Hours Outside Podcast!
1KHO 111: How to Make it Past Quitter's Day | Jon Acuff, Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done >> https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-1000-hours-outside-podcast/id1448210728?i=1000593094687
1KHO 75: I Want My Family to Get the Best of Me, Not the Rest of Me | Jon Acuff, Author + Speaker >> https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-1000-hours-outside-podcast/id1448210728?i=1000579315329
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RELATED EPISODES:
1KHO 111: How to Make it Past Quitter's Day | Jon Acuff, Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done
1KHO 75: I Want My Family to Get the Best of Me, Not the Rest of Me | Jon Acuff, Author + Speaker
SHOW TRANSCRIPT:
191 JON ACUFF
Ginny Yurich Here we go. Another round here.
Jon Acuff Right. Let's do it. Let's do it. This is your time of year. Tune outdoors. This is your Super Bowl season, isn't it? Everybody's outside. They are. I love the posts of the progress. The progress pictures are super cool when they're coloring in the charts. Oh, my gosh.
Ginny Yurich It's awesome to see how you guys doing.
Jon Acuff We are great. We're about to take July off. We're going away for July, so.
Ginny Yurich Good for you.
Jon Acuff The whole office is closed. No work for a solid month. Let's go.
Ginny Yurich Oh, yeah. Well, you've been frontloading.
Jon Acuff Yeah.
Ginny Yurich Banking thing, Speaking thing. Yeah. It's like up to a million. I was like, How does it work?
Jon Acuff The big thing I'm thinking about is, like, how do I do my fifties and sixties? Well, I'm 47, so I got a period of time. So I'm like, All right, what is that? What can I learn? So that's what I'm thinking about.
Ginny Yurich Which is cool because you got a book coming out and you're still taking the month off. So good for you. Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And here again for the third time is Jon Acuff. Welcome.
Jon Acuff Welcome. Welcome. What's the what's the record? Is there like a fifth time guest that I'm trying to catch?
Ginny Yurich Three. Three is the top, but there's a couple that are tied for three, so we just got to get to four. And then you'll be the one out in front.
Jon Acuff It's not a contest, but kind of everything is sometimes in my life. So I'm trying to excel. I just enjoy three. Three feels great.
Ginny Yurich Before would be even better.
Jon Acuff I now four is more than three mathematically. I mean, that's just math. That's not me. Yeah.
Ginny Yurich I actually I'm rusty here, John. I haven't actually recorded a podcast in a month. We have been traveling the country and. Yeah, actually just got back from your neck of the woods. We were over in Gallatin for just a day, didn't overnight, grabbed a friend, brought him back for our son and did a little kayaking on the Caney Fork River, I think it's called.
Jon Acuff Oh yeah, sure. Yeah.
Ginny Yurich And it was super cool. So I just love coming down to Tennessee and congrats on a new book that is coming out here very soon. It called All It Takes is a Goal The three step plan to ditch regret and tap into your massive potential as fantastic book. I've actually read it twice already.
Jon Acuff You endorsed it?
Ginny Yurich I did.
Jon Acuff So even better. Even better. You were kind enough to say, Hey, you guys, you read this book. So thank you so much. I appreciate that.
Ginny Yurich It's a fantastic.
Jon Acuff Read. I appreciate that.
Ginny Yurich That one's launching soon. And this is book, while you have a bunch of bestsellers and this is book number nine, am I correct?
Jon Acuff Yeah. Number nine.
Ginny Yurich Book number nine. That's fantastic. And more to come.
Jon Acuff Yeah. Book ten is due in September, too. So the book comes out September 12th. The next book is due in September. So yeah, Wow. It's like anything else, if you figure out how to make it a craft, you are able to do it a lot of times. So my thing is, if you enjoy the thing, like keep doing the thing that's, you know.
Ginny Yurich Yeah.
Jon Acuff One hour outside, turns into 10 hours outside, turns into. I mean, it's the process everybody follows with something they have deep joy about. And I love writing books.
Ginny Yurich And if people are interested in the process, I listen to at least one podcast of yours where you talk about your process. You talked about it. I think it's sort of like layers, right? It was like you have this base layer which you said is sort of negative, and then you got to come in and put on the next one and then the next one. Yeah. So people are interested in that because a lot of people want to be authors. You hear about that a lot. People talk about wanting to write books and so you lay that out in one of your podcast episode. So something for people definitely to look back on. I got a lot out of that one.
Jon Acuff Yeah. For me, I think it is one of the most common goals that people say, I want to be an author because you, you definitely see people that want to make music, but less people say, Oh, I want to record an album. I've always wanted to record an album. I knew I needed to get into a studio with a full band like Less. People say that, but writing a book is one of those exciting but attainable goals that I think people do want to do. And so, yeah, I try to share as many things as I've learned in the last nine books about how to actually do that.
Ginny Yurich Wow. And it's interesting that you use the word attainable because I would guess that most people would say it's unattainable even though they have it as a dream of theirs.
Jon Acuff Yeah, I mean, that's that's kind of for me. The older I get, the more I realized that more things are attainable than I was told or thought or saw. And I think that's part of the the things I try to do is give people that belief that they can do it, that they can try this thing. And it's not that I have something special that other people don't have, that they can't write ten books or 20 books or whatever the number is. I look at it and go, A lot of it is just like putting in the time, right? Like a lot of it's the bravery to sit alone. Like, that's one of the hard things about writing to me is like you have to sit with your thoughts and sometimes the thoughts aren't nice or you, you know, the thoughts aren't there. And so I don't think it's magic. I think a lot of it is that kind of you put one foot in front of the other and then you look up and go, Wow, Over time it turned into something if I was faithful to it. So yeah, I do think it's attainable. I kind of try to live in that middle space where I don't like where people say, you can be anything you want to be like, I wasn't going to be in the NFL like I had. The joke I always do is in the history of the NBA, there's been ten people my height, like ten, and they all had crazy nicknames like Spud Webb, Muggsy Bogues, like the NBA probably was out of reach from birth, and that's okay. But I do think you can be the best version of you, and that is a really fun thing to be. Yeah. So the book started with me feeling like I didn't live up to my full potential in high school and college and even my twenties, and feeling the shame and regret about that and then going, What if I lived in it going forward? Could I figure that out? And then I did. The second thing that I always do, and I get curious about a problem I go to other people have this problem too, like Jenny. It's like you like I'm sure you're thrilled that the joy you found for being outside. You then said, I think this could help other people. Like that's when it becomes an act of service and that's when it gets really fun and really full. And you did that. And so then I said, I wonder if other people feel like they haven't lived up to their potential. So me and this professor did a study with 3000 people and 96% of people said no.
Ginny Yurich Unbelievable.
Jon Acuff Yeah, it's one of those things that you think you're the only one and then you realize everybody. And the stat that really hit me was 50% of people feel like 50% of their potential is untapped. And so the metaphor I use is that's like only opening half your Christmas presents every year. Like if you walked downstairs and there was a big pile and you only opened half and you even had friends and family members going, Hey, you can open those too, and you just don't like that would make for a happy marriage, a happy life, a happy career, a happy anything. So I think this book is a huge practical map to all the gifts you have and teaches you how to open them.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, I totally agree. And I think a part of it is fear a little bit, but then you give the steps to walk through that. And you even quoted Jay Hendrix in your book. Yeah, he wrote The Big Leap, which was an eye opening book for me about how sometimes we cap our potential. Oh yeah, we have this upper limiting thing. People should read it. The big leap about, okay, Hendrix, It's crazy.
Jon Acuff That book is probably in my top five of books. That changed my perspective on what I'm capable of. The War Bar by Steam Press Field. Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. There's a Handful The Dip by Seth Godin Bird by Bird by in Le Monde. There's a handful of books that I go that really shifted what I thought life was and who I could be. And that's definitely one of them. Mm hmm.
Ginny Yurich And Stephen Field is always endorsing your books, which is the coolest. He said, maybe in the War of Art, maybe a different one. But he said something like, Find out who you already are and become it. Yeah. Because he says the same thing. Like, No, you can't be a everything and anything. We kind of come how we are. And he talks about it in terms of kids like our kids come how they are, and there's nothing that you could do to change how they came. So find out who you are and become that and take the steps. And that's what your book does, is it helps people to do that. So you write that you are a goal nerd. Yeah, a goal nerd. When did you realize that?
Jon Acuff I flirted with it a little in my early thirties, but it really wasn't until the first time I kind of caught this sense that I could do more with my life was when I started my first blog. I actually no, it wasn't even my first blog. It was my third blog. I had a blog when I was like early twenties that went nowhere. And then I did. I sat on that for like eight years, and then I started a second one and then my third one started gaining a little traction and it was like I discovered that the harder I work, the more results I got. It was like I had discovered the sewing and reaping principle. Like I invented that. Like I was like, Well, if you plant corn corn growers, are you kidding me right now? Like, I felt like I had discovered that. So it was kind of like once I realized that I write about in the book, like I felt like I had seen Behind The Matrix and I was like, These are bullets. These are just lines of code, like I can do anything. And so that's where I really started to lean into it. So I always talk about like nobody wakes up one day and goes, I'm just going to be disciplined. I'm just going to have grit, I'm just going to have persistence. Like no one willingly leaves their comfort zone. That's one of the three zones I talk about in the book is comfort zone, potential zone of chaos. So they always go, What's on the outside is worth more than what's on the inside. I want that thing on the outside I'm willing to change. So what happened was I got this little sneak preview of like, Hey, there's some cool stuff over here. Hey, if you watch less TV and write more, guess what? Books develop. Like you get to build an audience, you get to help a lot of people. And I was like, for real? And so then I started to I didn't just wake up one day and go, I'm going to watch less TV because that's the wise discipline thing to do. I was like, Nah, do writing is more fun. Like this is Let's go. So I traded something that was a temporary pleasure and was a shallow pleasure for something that was a deeper pleasure. And once I did that, it was like I couldn't stop. And I asked my counselor about that. I was like, Why do I love girls so much? We had this conversation because every other thing in my life has kind of faded like I've had. You know, I played ping pong intensely and then I didn't I was really into this hobby and then I was like, I'm an all or nothing kind of guy. But goals have only gotten bigger, better, brighter. I've only gotten more into them. And he was like, Well, he said, the reason you're so into goals is you're not just like somebody who's experienced them. You're a witness to them. You've witnessed them in other people's lives. So now I'm a witness like I've seen in the same way you have. Wow. I reposted that the other day about the people coloring in their thousand hour chart like you're a witness. And once you've witnessed something, there's no going back. There's not a return like there's not a return to the old way. There's not The road is closed. You can't go back to now. The outdoors are dumb, like whatever, like you can't. And so in the same with me, where I get letters inviting me to people's graduations, they'll say, Hey, I read finish, and I ended up going back to college to my mom of four. And I'm so like, wow. So I get people's books sent to me or they're pictures of declared addicts. So I'm now a witness to what's possible so somebody can criticize the way I do. It's like I can doubt how I do it. What? Ever. But that's not big enough for me to stop because I'm a witness. Like at this point, it's too late like this. When somebody goes, you're working on your 10th book and I'm like, Yeah, and I'm already kind of got the 11th and I'm kind of figuring out it's because I'm a witness. So there's no stopping the goal. The goal train at this point.
Ginny Yurich Wow, that tore me up. Do you know, it's really a profound thing, I think, because I get sort of similar things where people will send me privately, they'll send me pictures of their kids playing, and it's not to repost, it's not a tag. Yeah, it's just, hey, this is what we did today. And I just think what a privilege to be that person for that person, the person that they send their daily picture to because they're so proud of it.
Jon Acuff You have no idea. You have no idea. Like so this and I won't say their name because it's a private story. But like two weeks ago at an event, somebody came up to me and said, A husband or wife. And they said, Hey, the wife said, This is my husband. He got into reading soundtracks and he started working out and he had some soundtracks that helped him work out and he lost a bunch of weight. And then three months ago, after a year of him working on better healthy soundtracks, we found out he had brain cancer and now he's using that to move forward in that journey. So he had a year to prep for doing hard things. And that's the stuff when you I think about writing or doing an Instagram account or podcast or whatever, it's like putting a note in a bottle and you don't know which show it's going to wash up on, but you know it won't wash up on any if you don't do it. Yeah. So you go, I'm putting this in. So like for me, when I see somebody's post, this happened this morning, a Portuguese version of one of my books. Unbelievable. Like I might never visit that city in Brazil. I might never meet that person in Brazil, but I put the note in the bottle, and then I get to sometimes see that story come to life, which is really fun.
Ginny Yurich And even all of the information that you don't know will land, because sometimes I'll put out maybe a podcast episode or a piece of information that you think, Oh yeah, this is man, this is mid-grade. And people respond. They'll say, Well, this was my favorite thing.
Jon Acuff Yeah, this is for me. People say, This is for me. And I'll go, Oh man, I thought that one. I thought I failed that. Yeah, yeah. But see, here's what, here's the way I look at that. People read what they need to read, like they interpret it to use in their own vocabulary, their own life experience. And so, like, it is a collaboration. So when you create something, you put it out. They collaborate with it. Because I've had people at events go, and I'm sure this happened to you too. Hey, that thing you said was meant for me. And I go, What thing did I say? And they'll tell me something I didn't say, Wow. Like they heard something I didn't say because they were remixing it while I was going. And so that also takes the pressure off. Yeah, because you can't wait till it's perfect to share it. Like, you have to. You have to share. I mean, I remember stuff that I've only had things go viral a handful of times, and often they were things that I was like, Yeah, it's post 140 out of 148 whatever. And then that was the one that went by and oh, like, I mean, but then like that happens to everybody. I remember Bon Jovi didn't want to put Lebanon a prayer on his album. He was like, I hate this song. And somebody talked him into it and it's their biggest song ever. So I think as a creator, you often can't see what the creation can do, but you still have to create it.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, you still keep going. So one of the things that really stuck out to me in this book, All it Takes is a goal because I really related to it was the issues that there are with long term goals. When I say long term goals, I'm talking about sort of the ones that when people are like, what's your plan in five years? Yeah, yeah. And I just got so much of that because I've always hated that question. Oh, yeah. So can you tell us about the flip that you did? You flipped from long term goals really to looking backwards. So can you tell us about that?
Jon Acuff Yeah. So I felt like a constant failure because people do ask that question. They go, What's your big, hairy, audacious goal? What's your life plan? Where do you want to be in 20 years? What's your wild dream? What's your vision? Board? And I would just get paralyzed. I would go, I don't know. I should I know, like, do you You already know where you're going in ten years. Like, I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm a failure. And so I hit what I would call this vision wall, this huge wall between me and my goal. And I think part of it is we've misinterpreted great books like Stephen Covey, Seven Habits in one of his principles. One of the habits is begin with the end in mind. And I think that's a great principle, but we've mutated it into unless you know the end, you can't begin. So we go until you know exactly where this business is going. In three years. You can't register an LLC until you've micro niched down to an exact customer. You can't. You're like, Oh my God, I don't know that now. So I was just stuck. And so I started to look to the past out of frustration initially where I couldn't dream forward. I felt paralyzed. And so I said, okay, what are the best moments I've experienced? Like if I went back through the last 10 to 20 years of my life, what are the best moments? And I was in the August the airport, which is a small airport, there's not a lot to do there. I just took out a piece of paper and a notebook like these. I love notebooks and I wrote down best moments on top of piece of paper, and I just started to write them down. And I did that over a period of. And that turned into a period of weeks. And I ended up with this 171 point list and doing it. Number one, it made me grateful. Like we always talk about the value of gratitude, but we don't talk about the action of gratitude enough. And so it made me really grateful because I remembered all these things I'd forgotten. Number two, it made me self-aware because if you tell your brain in your heart to look for things that are happy in the past, it starts to find them in the present to you start to in the moment you go, Oh, I'm add this to my list. Like this is the best moment. I'm in it like I always say. And then like the third thing is it made me present my definition of present as being nostalgic about a moment you're still in. So I would go, Oh, I don't have to reflect a week from now and to enjoy this moment. I'm enjoying it in the moment. And so it really showed me a lot about myself. It made me self-aware. It made me grateful. And then the crazy thing was I felt like I had kind of redeemed my past to inform my present and plan my future. So then I started to go, What does this list say about what I want to do in the future? Because when you do a list like this, your natural response is, I want more of this. Like, you'll find some things and you'll go, I used to love that. Why did I ever stop? Nobody made me stop. Like, why did I stop? Like, it's like a reunion. It becomes like this many reunion with yourself where you go, Oh, yeah. And so it it flips to Here's what I love, which is ways you're than going fantasize about the future. This is a history lesson. So you go here's what I loved. And then you go, I want more of this going forward. How do I start to do that? And that's where the book shifts into How do you build easy goals? How do you build middle goals? How do you build guaranteed goal? Like how do you climb what I call the goal the goal ladder? And so that's where it got really fun. But I think, yeah. Chapter two, The Best Moments list and then figuring out how to categorize them, I think is the the like one of the best personality tests. It teaches you who you really are, not who you think you should be, which is always where some tests kind of fall apart.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, I feel like it was kind of the crux of the book because if you don't know what you want your life to look like, how do you even know which cause to start on?
Jon Acuff How do you build the life? How do you build the life?
Ginny Yurich Right? And I really liked it because I've always hated that question. And I think part of it is because I look back and I like, Well, I could never have imagined this.
Jon Acuff No.
Ginny Yurich So I think that those ideas put you in a box.
Jon Acuff You have half a million Instagram followers, like there's no planet where you had a van. The thing I love, the joy I have, I have half a million Instagram followers.
Ginny Yurich People were like, That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard. That's exactly three years in a row.
Jon Acuff Yeah, exactly. And now it's like, seems so I love I love it because it seems so obvious. Like now you're at that stage of the idea where people like, Oh yeah, that's obvious. And you're like, Oh, it's obvious now. It wasn't obvious at the beginning.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, well then people, they come and they say, I wish I would have thought of that. And I'm like, No, you actually don't know.
Jon Acuff Yeah, I guess.
Ginny Yurich It was a rocky road there for a beginning, but it really isn't anything that I ever shared for the sake of Instagram or the sake of a challenge or anything like that. It's just what worked for our lives and continues to work for our lives. Even now we have teenagers. So I think that's what you are doing too, is you're just sharing what's worked for you and what has worked for you phenomenally well. Phenomenally well. 90 I mean, nine books, a New York Times bestselling author. I mean, you couldn't have imagined that either. And that's why I don't like that in the best moments. This is such a great place to start. You wrote, Could I figure out a way to make my best moments? The rule, not the exception. Could I build a life where I leaped from one best moment to the next? Could I do it on an ordinary Monday? So to me, that's the crux of this book, which is like, what are the things that make us come to life? And can we do more of them on a regular basis? And then I think from there, the path unfolds. You don't need to think five years down the road because hopefully it's way beyond what you could have imagined anyway.
Jon Acuff You already have the list. Like I kind of said, it's like getting a list of all your favorite, like all your favorite ingredients, so you know the meals you want to make. So imagine if, like, if I said to you, dream the best meals you could ever be like, Oh, my God. I don't know. But then if I said, Hey, make a list of your favorite flavors and ingredients and the meals you've had that blew your mind and were so special and you did that and go, Let's make more of these, you'd be like, Oh, do I have permission to do that? Like, I can actually. They don't have to happen accidentally. I can, you know, like it's kind of again, I love really I love that I've been on the show three times because we get to have like a different connection. So, like, in an outdoor sense, if you go, Man, that time we went camping. Like, it was it rained like the weather wasn't perfect and like, there was whatever. But we are all there together. And there were some accidental magic moments that happened. And I think, what if I could repeat those? Like, what if I could help create more of those? Like not wait for them, but go, Wow, When we don't have our phones together, we kind of fold in. To each other in a different way. What if we create moments where we don't have our phones again? Like, that's like kayaking. I think I told you that on an episode. Kayaking is difficult too. Like it's one of those where, like, getting there, planning it. Yeah. Strapping them to your car is not an easy activity. But we found we didn't have our phones and we were sitting next to each other on a slow river and it created conversation and it was worth it. And so then you go, Well, maybe we should own a trailer. What if we owned a trailer? We could do it more often. Okay, Like, and you just build them. And so you become the architect of your life, not just a visitor.
Ginny Yurich I love that. And so this book is about creating the foundation to do that, and it's unique for every person. And I love that all of your books really speak to that uniqueness. So you have a formula, you have some steps, but they work for anyone. They work for anyone, no matter what situation. And I know you run all these different types of classes and workshops and things and you see different types of people that come in that they want to be a hairstylist, they want to be an author, whatever it is that they want to do, this works for them. And so you talk about the goal ladder. So these three levels of goals easy, middle and guaranteed no guarantee. John how can you guarantee a goal?
Jon Acuff Well, like you, by the way, you guarantee goals. I mean, if you spend 1000 hours outside with your family, you are guaranteed to be closer to your family. Like, there is no way at the end of a year where you deliberately spend 1000 hours outside that you guys are further apart and like, that's impossible. Like, it's the same with me. Where if I spend 500 hours writing a book, there's a book at the end of that process, like, I can't guarantee how many don't sell. I don't have control over that. There's a million things we don't have control over in life. But there's also a lot we do have control over. And so the goal ladder is a pretty simple concept. So if you imagine one vertical one like vertical run is time and one is effort. So the higher I climb, the more time it takes, the more effort it takes. And the problem is, a lot of times we sit at the bottom of the ladder and we see the top, we see the thing we want and we try to jump forward. We try to leap for it. We go, I want to get in shape. So I'm going to go all out. I'm going to go to the gym every day for a solid month. Like, I'm going to write my entire book this weekend. I want to go for it. And that's why we have things like Yo yo diet, because we go from nothing to try to do it all the way. I mean, imagine if I said to you, Jenny, okay, you've got a 14 foot tall ladder and you need to get to the top and you have two options. You can climb each rung slowly, deliberately, safely, up to the top, or you can try to jump as high as you can and grab that top rung and then do the world's hardest pull up and climb up like you would go, I'm going to do that other way. Like that scene's that same. But we as a culture, we try to say like, No, you can do that. Go big or go home. Yeah, like you got it. Like, if your dream is big enough, it doesn't scare you. Like, what's fear is now a metric for, for my that's a terrible metric. Like, am I terrified of this thing that's going to make my life better? And so when you try an easy goal, you're then able to build some momentum and get to a middle goal. And then when you try the middle goal, you then able to get some momentum and get to the guaranteed goal and you climb the ladder in the best possible way versus, yeah, try an all or nothing and I'm an all or nothing person. It's something that I've, you know, anytime I write a book, it's usually because I had a problem first and then I made sure lots of other people had the problem. And then I went and figured out a solution for me and a lot of other people.
Ginny Yurich 96%.
Jon Acuff 96% is a lot of hands raised. And so then I go, Hey, this works. Let's try it all together. And you write about stories in the book. That's one of the biggest changes of my my writing career is I started to teach it before I put it in a book. So then I didn't have to hope it worked. I knew it worked. So if I teach a thousand people these ideas and I have a single mom go, Here's how I did it, and I have a retiree go, Here's how I did. I have a college student go, Here's how I did it. It's not just John's version of one idea. I hope you relate. This book has more than 40 real examples from real humans. One of my favorites is I think her name's Susan Robertson. She got her degree from taking classes and online lessons in the car ride or pickup line. Like, that's amazing. That's not my story. So I try to tell that as my story. It's fake, it's not real. But if I go, I know you don't think you have time and you don't have time, you're really busy. Susan thought that too, and it took a while. It wasn't instant, but she and a 15 minute car ride to pick a plan. She's reading half a half a page and she's working on a lesson and whatever. Over time, she got her degree. I bet you could do that, too. Like, don't take my word for it. Like it. Susan. Susan's killing it. Yeah. So that's what I like about the books I get to right now is that they're. They're community experience.
Ginny Yurich Right? Yeah, I include those stories. One of them was from a lady who did her chore chart. I thought this was so interesting because you talk a lot about make it a game. Yeah. Games make things easier to do when you don't want to do it. So one of the ladies, she had this chore game. I'm like, I'm doing this. I ain't doing this.
Jon Acuff Yeah, it's brilliant.
Ginny Yurich Where it was like, the chores are behind a post-it note. But then. There is one that might say you get to play video games for 15 minutes instead. So the kids are picking. I'm like, That's so exciting.
Jon Acuff Yeah. Becomes an element of surprise. It surprised and delighted the kids. And then it also added a third party to the conversation. So the chart is now part of the conversation where the chart gave you a, you know, you go into the dishwasher or do five push ups or you have to run around the house three times as fast as you can. So the kids are always going, I don't know what it's going to be, so let's go. It adds an element of surprise in your games. Do make hard things a lot easier, and there's so much science behind that that if you gamify a situation, your brain actually goes, okay, I'll try this, I'll try this.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. So that's one part of the book. So when we talk about these easy middle and guarantee goals, you break it down even into time commitment. So it's really important information for people to read because it just opened your eyes to better understand maybe why things are working for you, maybe why things aren't working for you. Because you talk about all the time that our calendars are not unlimited. And so I think sometimes a lot of us we have you know, they talk about you have like big eyes, you know, or like, you know, you put too much food on your plate because, you know, whatever that type of thing. So we're wide eyed with our lives and wide eyed with the amount of time we have. But it is limited and could lead to being discouraging. So can you talk about. Well, talk about our limited time.
Jon Acuff Yeah. So I like to say that time is one of the only honest metrics when somebody tells me, Hey, my family's important to me, my career is important to me, my health is important, We can just go to your calendar and figure out is it or is it not? And your calendar is going to tell the truth. Like if you never connect, your dream to your calendar is just stays a wish. But if you go, okay, this is important. And here's where the hour show that that's where things change. So what helped me, I did something called a time gap analysis and it was a simple exercise where I said, okay, I have 168 hours this week. I know that that's not a new number. That's been the number for 700 years. So I have 168 hours. How many of those have a name? How many of them do I already have a commitment to? And when I did it, I had 171 hours that already had a name out of 160. I was 3 hours short, which is a problem. So then I said, You know what? What if I do this over three quarters? So over the next three quarters of the year, this was in March when I initially did this next three quarters. What have I committed to? Personal commitments, work commitments. Now I added a 20% variable because I don't know, not every week goes exactly according to plan. So I said, you know what? In any given week there's about 20% surprises. So that's 32 hours where, oh, man, a kid popped in was like, Hey, do you want to throw the Frisbee? And like, you know how it is of a teenager asks you to do something, you usually drop everything, go right. That's a special like, Oh, they want to go get coffee. I was like, Oh, yes, you're everything else. Let's do it. So I did it for three quarters and I ended up more than 500 hours over committed 520 hours where I had overcommitted for the amount of time I had available, which means I was missing 13 weeks of work like I 13 weeks that were missing. And so it helped me because like all of a sudden I realize the reason I feel out of time is because I'm out of time. And I think there's a lot of parents that feel that way. And part of what happened, Jenny, this is kind of a unique time for us. In 2020, 2021, a lot of people had to pause their normal work because the pandemic like changed their normal work. So they had to pause a lot of things and do some new things. They had to pivot. We said there were 2000. I have to pivot what I'm doing. Pivot, pivot, pivot. So they added some new things. And now in 2023, the old things have come back. A lot of them have come back and we never let go of the new things. So now there's a lot of people with double jobs right now that don't even realize they have double jobs now because the old work from 2020 came back to the new work you picked up in 2020 and all of a sudden they feel overwhelmed. And so for me, I didn't feel overwhelmed in that moment. I felt informed. I went, Oh, wow, I'm really overcommitted. If I have 168 poker chips every week to play with my time, what do I want to do with it? Yeah, so you talk about global nerds. I started to get obsessed with time because I realized I need to like a phrase, a soundtrack that uses time as your most valuable resource, but it's also your most vulnerable. Like if you don't protect it, it can't protect itself. Time only knows how to flow. Time only knows how to flow. Like we have to be the protectors. I mean, you get that with 1000 hours outside. That's a time exercise, right? And so for me, I said, okay, if you're going to do an easy goal, try it for 1 to 7 days. Here's a time from just 1 to 7. Like that's very easy. You can do it quickly. It should only change like 2% of your week. You don't have to look for much time. When do a middle goal, you should be able to do it for like 30 days plus, and a guaranteed goal should take much longer than that. So I came up with some simple time frames. So even when I'm tempted to go, I want to do a big goal. I first break it into an easy goal and say, Let me try this for 1 to 7 days and see if it sticks a little bit, see if I like it, see if it's worth it, see if I want to invest in it. And then if it does, I go, I'm willing to try this for 30 to 60 to 90 days, like. Middle goal. And then if that works, I'm like, Man, I look up. I've been doing it for six months now. I'm getting towards guaranteed goal territory. I've actually committed to it. Versus is nearly impossible in January to commit to something that you've never tried like that. Like when you think about it, the idea of like, I've never done this. Like it'd be like if you went on one date and said, Let's date for the entire year, like today, like I just met you. I barely know you. Right? Let's date the entire year. That person should go. Whoa, whoa, hey, whoa. Like, maybe. Maybe we will, but I don't even know. Like, we just, like, if you. If you open the door of their house and said, I would like to propose we date the entire year, their go is January 1st. I don't know if I'm ready for the 12 months of dating. Like, let's see how this goes. And so that's how I think about time frames is what time do I really have and how long do I want to commit and let some momentum build versus overcommit and then it falls apart?
Ginny Yurich I think it's a pretty scary thing to do more. So just because it reminds you that your life is limited, it's a big reminder.
Jon Acuff We hate limits. We hate limits. We like I yeah, I hate them. But here's the thing. Like this is kind of the thing I think about, like data or time, like depending on how you look at it or reality, let's say reality because limits are part of reality. A reality can offend you or defend you. So here's what I mean by that. If I go so like it's offensive that I don't have more time, I'm offended at all. I've committed to I'm offended like, oh, I hate reality. I can fight it. You can fight reality all you want or it can defend you. I can say, okay, I don't know if I'm going to get this book done, but I have six months of me putting in the reality of the work and it defends me now. Like now you're good. That fear, You're good. You've got six months. It's like you're in motion. Like we're good, we're good. You have a habit now. You have motion like you're good. And so I think limits reality. I think all those things can either be offensive or you can use them for your benefit. That's a lot of my books. That's the switch I try to make. I go, This is an issue. What if it could work? For me? Overthinking is my problem. What if I can become my power? Wow. Limits are frustrating to me. I don't like them. What if I can take that back? Like flip that into? No, now, now it's something that I can use for my benefit, which is I you know, I have a limited amount of time. Where do I want to pour it? Why would I fight the limit, which is not good? The limits never going to lose. You're fighting like a casino. Yeah. You're not going to like. Imagine if you said my goal is to beat the casino. You're be like, Oh, I've got terrible news. That's not how casinos work. That's like fighting a limit or fighting reality. But if you say, I want to do more, the things that make me feel alive, that I feel called to do, like how do I do that? Then you get creative. Like Jenny. One of the things I'm doing right now is I made a list of things I feel called to do versus things I do because they make me feel important. Like that's not I don't want to do less of the things that like saying, Oh, I have a big team, makes me feel important. But is that what I was called to do? Like if I saying that at a dinner party makes me feel important and special and like, well-off and successful, but is that what I feel called to do? Let me examine that. But I wouldn't examine that until I face the limits of going, Oh, so there is some frustration there. I think we'd be dishonest if we said like, oh, like goals are it's always easy and super fun. Like, no, but it's worth it. The joy of what you get it on the other side is worth that work. Holy cow. It's worth it.
Ginny Yurich Yeah. And I think, like you said, with this sort of zoom life and COVID life, and even if someone listening is a parent, this is something that I struggle with is as the seasons change, the amount of time you have ebbs and flows. And I think if you're not intentional about how you use it, then you lose it. So it's an interesting part of the book just to sort of audit your time and like you said, see if you're overcommitted and what could you offload, what could you change? And then you think about your goals in terms of time to do I have 5 hours a week to throw at this. If not, maybe I need to start in a smaller place. I had a friend who joined in on one of your webinars at the beginning of the year. I did too. Those were so great. She still talks about all the time. One of the things she loves about the middle goals and you talk about is that you have just basically a bucket of ideas of ways that you can work on some of these middle goals because we don't always have the same amount of time and energy and commitment level. She love that. So could you talk about that just a little bit on this podcast then she'll be thrilled.
Jon Acuff Oh, yeah, sure. Well, I love the idea that I can move it forward in a lot of different ways because I'm a recovering perfectionist. So as a perfectionist, you go know for it to count, for it to be the thing, it has to be this exact thing and this amount of time. And this is the only way to operate. And that's really limited because then unless the circumstances are perfect, you can't do the thing. And so one of the phrases or soundtracks I use all the time is some beats, not some beats. None. Sometimes outside beats not. Yeah, some writing beats, not some exercise. Beats on some financial awareness beats none. And so what I like to do is come up with a list like 10 to 20 things that I know, regardless of how much time I have or how much energy I can move something forward to, right? I have to be high energy. I have to have some time. I'm like, It'd be hard for me to say, Jenny, I can jump into a book if I've only got 10 minutes. Like, no, it takes me a little time to get ready. But what I can do is say, okay, there is a research topic I need to look up. I can do that in 10 minutes. So if I have a ten free minutes and I go, Oh, I have a task to plug into that. Part of the reason I don't waste time is that when 15 minutes shows up, when 20 minute shows up, when somebody is late for an appointment, I go, Oh yeah, I got a small thing I can plug into there. I can do 30 minutes here, I can do 40 minutes here, and then I get to move it forward and then I get to be creative about it. And so the exercise is kind of if you have a goal, you're trying to do sit down and think for a couple of minutes and go, If I wanted to accomplish this goal, what are 10 to 20 actions I could do with this? And you can do that over time. You don't have to do it all at once. You can think through that over a couple of days and then think, okay, how much time do these cost, How much energy? Because say, I'm flying home on a plane and I'm exhausted. Maybe I'll watch a documentary on a subject I'm interested in. Like that takes very little brainpower. If I have a little more brainpower, maybe I'll listen to an audio book. If I have a little more brainpower, maybe I actually read the book. Because reading the book, I'm underlining it takes more. If I have a ton of brainpower, or maybe I write a little bit. So again, think about that goal ladder. Let's break it down to the goal. Add a little bit of time, a little bit of effort. If I feel like I only have a little bit, I want as many rungs on my ladder as possible. I don't want a big gap between the rungs. I want to make that ladder really fun and really simple to climb. So if I have 25 actions, I now have 25 rungs, I can go and I'm climbing my ladder right versus going. There's a huge gap and I have to have my favorite writing spot and my favorite coffee shop and my favorite time of day with my favorite music. And I have to sleep well the night before. Like, no, that's too conditions. That's too many conditions. I want to be able to do it a little bit at a time when a little bit of time is all I have.
Ginny Yurich Mm hmm. And you talk about that seconds matter, minutes matter. You can steal that time back. Yeah, well, you even talked about you could write a whole book in the amount of time it takes to wait for the plane to take off. Yet.
Jon Acuff On a plane? Yeah. Yeah. So that was kind of eye opening for me. I travel a lot as a speaker, and I. I just decided it on a whim. One day when I sat down on a plane, I was like, It feels like it takes a while From the moment I sit down or when we actually take off, I want to how much time it is. And because I'm a goal nerd, which we've talked about, I started timing that. So I timed dozens of times and I get I had a notebook and I write down the time and the average was about 31, 32 minutes. The longest was like an hour. The shortest was like 22 minutes. And I realized, Oh, wait a second, if I fly 100 times a year and it's 30 minutes every time, I just found 50 hours and I've flown for ten years, that's 500 hours. Like that's not a small amount of time.
Ginny Yurich Wow.
Jon Acuff And so then the big thing is you get deliberate about it. So I plan when I have the highest degree of clarity and energy and confidence. And so like when I plan on a Sunday afternoon and I'm rested and I'm good to go, I'm planning the week. I don't wait for the moment because in the moment I might be stressed. We just loaded a plane. What do I want to do? I got ten options. I can't choose which options, but if I go, Hey, okay, cool. We got two flights coming up. Here's what we're going to do. Here's the book we're going to read or here's the work we're going to like. We're going to write this little thing when we get on there. Then when I get on, it's like I've already got the assignment and I want the person who gave me the assignment was like super energetic and super detailed and super clear and like, maybe I'm a little tired when I sit down, but it's not. I don't have to choose. I remove the choice. I'd rather the smartest, brightest person choose. I just wanted to do the thing. And so that for me, finding that 30 minutes was game changing of where else is there time? And so and I started like my brother Will calls me when he runs and I was like, Oh, that's actually works Like he's I mean, he's able to hold the conversation. I was like, oh, to I'll call my dad when I run. Like, cool. And then I was like, Oh, whoa. When I drive to my haircut, I should do phone calls. Cool. Like it's 30 minutes or I'm just whatever like I should. So now with my assistant, I'm like, Hey, that's a you know, like I need to be at the computer taking notes for that call. So that's not that type or hey, this is just to catch up with a contact that I'm trying to maintain. Put them in right before the 30 minutes when I go to the haircut. Wow. And so then you start to all of a sudden you go, I got my whole calendar and if I just pay a little bit of attention, so like, when I work out, this is so nerdy. But I said I was gonna do this. I feel like third episode. We got to go all in first 15 minutes of my workout. I'm listening to like a sermon that I like. Second 15 Minutes is a motivational book. So like, I listen to Jim Brown this morning. Third is music. So I need the music to push me over the edge. I like at that point in the workout, I need to be like something angry, some rap song, whatever. Like that's like the Eminem section of the of the listening. But if I listen to 15 minutes a day of Jim Rohn and he. He's motivational, like guess who feels motivated? That's the thing, Jenny is like people don't practice motivation and then they're like, Why do I feel low? Well, like, if you didn't eat all day, at the end of the day, you wouldn't go so weird that I'm hungry. Like, it's So what could be the issue? What could be that you didn't eat all day? So for me, I'm a naturally negative person. I'm naturally cynical, I'm naturally pessimistic. So in order to fight that and to be positive, I have to practice that. Like, that takes the soundtrack. I say all the time is fear comes free. Hope takes work. You'll never have to look for. Fear, stress, insecurity, doubt. Hope. On the other hand, you'll have to look for those things. And so I you know, I've tried negativity as a life plan. I've tried positivity in the role. The results of positive is way better, way more fun. So I just practice positivity and I do it in the time moments I have. And then this is crazy. I end up feeling more positive the rest of the day because I listen. Not only did I get endorphins from working out, I also got Jim Rohn telling me like, You can do it. You got this, It's going to be great. It's good. Here are some things you can do, you know, And, and then like, here's one. This is this is just classic Jim Brown. He goes, Yeah, I feel stuck. Ask yourself three questions. Number one, what can I do? Number two, what can I read? Number three, who can I ask? And he said, Do them in that order because everybody wants to run, right? To who? Who can I ask? But if you go to that person, say, hey, I need help, they're going to say, well, what did you do? Have you tried reading anything? What have you? And if your answer is haven't done anything, that person's not going to want to help you like. But if I go like, wow, I have some agency, there's probably a couple of things I can do. Wow. I can. I have this thing called Google, which has so many answers, so many of my questions, like we ask our kids all the time, like, did you Google it? Because if your answer is no, go back. At least Google it. Like, figure out like. But if you go to somebody, an expert, a friend, a mentor and go, here's a five things I tried. Here's the five resources I looked at, I'm still super stuck. You got any feedback that person is going to go out of their way to go? I do. Here's like if somebody emails me and goes, Hey, I'm going through a job transition, can you tell me how to fix it? And I wrote a whole book called Do Over about Job. Like, I spent years writing an answer to that question and put it in a book. I'm like, Have you read Do over? And if they go, No, I go, Here's the link to do over. That's different. And so, like, I learned that in my morning workout because I double dipped, I got the benefit of the exercise. I got the benefit of Jim Rohn. Wow, That's the nerdy stuff I'm doing behind the scenes console.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, but it's not nerdy. It's real practical. And I think that's why people should follow. The podcast is the same name as a new book. All it Takes is a goal. And even just 15, 15, 15, is it harder for you to switch between the things are you when you're running? That's like a really stupid practical question, but I'm curious.
Jon Acuff No, no. I mean, for me, like if I have my phone, it's only hard. If I had my phone in like, a carrier, like, you know, like and I have to take it out and it's a hassle. But I have I have like this fanny pack that I really liked it. Super simple. And it cost me maybe 35 seconds of time to switch. Okay. And then I get to and I pause to watch as watch. I'm like, Hey, this isn't running time. A pause that. And then I'm like, okay, let's. And then if I'm working, if I'm doing a weight workout, I don't. It's just in between reps when I'm getting a latte or something. So no, it's actually yeah. And here's the other thing, Jenny. Here's where it's practical. People over run their first mile when they run a5k or they run a half marathon. It's very traditional, very common for somebody to overrun because of excitement. So the crowd's loud, there's a gun, there's a band usually playing and you overrun and you don't run your best race because you went up too fast at the beginning. So one of the music tricks is you do your first 15 minutes a slow, so punks, you do ambient music sound really chill, that eases you. And so a lot of runners will start their first couple of miles with something that's slow and goes, Hey, hey, hey, hey. Run your pace. Run the pace you already plan. There's no like, you don't need high energy music at the beginning. There's enough energy. You're intense, you're stressed. You got up early. If I drive, I go out. And so I love little things like that that help you perform better in the long run.
Ginny Yurich Right. And interesting because you've been doing relays. I remember you talked about having a goal for doing Rails on Instagram and they seem like they're always at the end of your run or they're somehow they're associated with your exercise.
Jon Acuff Yeah, yeah. So I do that because it stops my perfectionism. The reason I do the rails after I run is that I've got the endorphins, I've got a little bit of exercise confidence, I'm sweaty and the lighting is whatever it's going to be. If I try to do rails in my house, I start looking at angles. I do reshoots I'm worried about, was that the right word? Like how did that look? And so that's a simple tool that I've said. I struggle with perfectionism, so I still want to do Rails. What's the best way to do it? Well, I'm always really kind of excited and positive after a run. What if I just commit to after I run, I do a real time. All right, cool. Let's try that out and then that's an easy goal. So an example, I did that for a week and was like, Oh. Man I did for real this week. Like, that's usually more than I do like. All right, cool. Let's try that a second week. And then I did a second week, and then you look up and I've done a year of it, and I. And now it's more of a habit. Now I go, If I finish, I'm like, how do I. I now consider it like one of my last steps. I think in any little goal you do, you should have less steps. My wife, like when she cleans the kitchen at the end of the night for her, the kitchen is closed when the sink is clean, like there's no dishes. She's watching it. Like that's the sun. That's the sign. That's a final moment for her. Final moment for me is I do a refill. I bring my car back in the garage because I work out in my garage and we don't have like a workout room. And then I text a photo of the workout to my trainer and that means it's over. The gym is closed, everything. So I think that's one of those, especially if you're a go getter. I remember Andy Stanley said this. He said, Sometimes you'll run past the finish line, you'll run and be like, You'll just keep going. Like, because you're in mode, like I'm doing it and like the race is over, but you keep running past the finish line and that's how you burn out. So I need a sign. I need like three or four signs really, of like, Hey, the activity is done. It did the thing. So yeah, it could be I close the office down, I, you know, so that I don't keep going beyond the finish line because I'm looking for sustainable long term wins. That's what a guaranteed goal is, a sustainable long term win verses I put in the book, my youngest daughter said, Dad, you're either OCD or OCD. You either go all in or all out, and I want to live in the middle, which is the potential zone of making steady, joyful progress. So I need signs when goals have ended so that I can move on to something else.
Ginny Yurich That's really impactful. Because I think in a digital world that those signs are often not there. And I remember my mom even talking about, you know, in days gone by decades past, the kitchen would close, you would have dinner and it would get cleaned up and like, the kitchen's closed. It's closed till tomorrow. These different sort of physical signs that things are done and the work is done and you can transition to something else. There's a couple really interesting goals that you talked about in this book that I would love to bring up, just so that people can really get a sense that this is a book for if you want to start a business, this is a book for if you want to write a book, this is a book for if you want to enhance your life. It's also a book for the small things that maybe we're working on in our personality or we're wanting to enhance our personhood. So you talk about one of your goals. So interesting to me was overlooking offenses.
Jon Acuff Yeah, Yeah.
Ginny Yurich Can you tell us about that one?
Jon Acuff Yeah, totally. So I just found myself getting mad at things that didn't deserve anger. So I'll give you this is just a very real one. It's so silly, but and petty. But this is honest. So this podcast that I was going to be on sent an email, was like, Hey, here's the microphone you need. Like, they gave me all these instructions and I got offended by that because I was like, I have a podcast, I have a microphone, and like, I read that email, like they wrote it like Dear Idiot who's never used electronics, We know you're dumb and we know you have no idea about this world of pocket. Like I took offense at that and got frustrated and almost responded with something snarky, which would have hurt the relationship with the podcast. And so that's a classic example of me going, I don't think they meant I think that's probably a form letter like that. They didn't send it. They didn't say, Hey, create a special letter for Jon. They have one email they send out that says, Please wear headphones, all the stuff like. And so I had added so much to that. So that's an example of me like in that moment going, I'm going to overlook that because I don't think it was really even offensive. I think I added something to it. And so then I started to do that in other areas of my life where I'd go, I think I read into that email something I shouldn't have. I think when that person said that, they didn't really mean it that way. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. And I just for me, like I call it, all it takes is a goal because I think you can turn most parts of your life into a goal that you actually do something about. So if you find that, wow, I've got anger, I've got pettiness, I've got something I'm not proud of or excited about, it's hurting relationships. I want to do something about it. That's where I say, okay, well, how do I turn that into a goal? Another small one was, I want to encourage people. So I made a goal that I was going to encourage one person every day for a month. And usually it was a text. It wasn't like I did long thank you notes that were pages and pages. I created a list of people beforehand so that it was easy. I didn't want to have to guess every day like it's Tuesday. Have I talked to Brad? And then I would just send them a text that was authentic about something I thought they were great at. Yeah. So I would say a member, I think of artists, I think of you or Hey, you're just so well connected to relationships. You can really see that you pour into people. It's fun for me to watch on the outside. I get to learn or You're a great dad and the way you love your kids like me and it's inspiring to me. And that gave me a tangible, practical thing I could do versus just going, I want to have better relationships. Well, that you can't operate against. Like, that's so fuzzy, but. Encourage one person a day, what were the other goals? So that was one of them. Was there. Were there any other goals?
Ginny Yurich Yeah, I had that one written down. Those were the two big ones that I just wrote down about overlooking our and everyday texting to encourage someone. As you say, it cost you 60 seconds and 30 words. And I did think maybe it could cost you more because then it could sort of snowball into a longer conversation about something to go in my mind. Yeah, but I'm sure that that does happen.
Jon Acuff So it does happen occasionally. But here's something. So I'm looking at relationships. That's one of my big goals over the next period of time. And I'm trying to say yes more to relationships because I recently realized that new possibilities always start with people scramble and possibilities are always connected. And I'm an introvert and I have an automatic now, like when somebody asks me to do something automatic, automatic now. So this this will come out months later and the person might not hear I won't say their name, but so I'm going to a city that I don't often go to. And yesterday a person that I know in a city text and said, Hey, you got any time why you're in here and why are you here? And I automatically said, no. I said, No, I've got six commitments. I'm really busy. Like I got I got like I felt tense about it. And so then I slept on it for a day and I was like, Man, I'm not going to have any dinner plans in that city. Like, I know like, I like connecting with him, like he hosts events, like he's a fun guy. Like I've already met him before. It's not like super awkward. I was like, I'm just going to go to dinner with him. That's going to be like an hour, hour and a half. And I'm not going to overfill my time. Like, I have a friend who, when he goes to cities like Will post, Hey, I'm doing a coffee meet up at this like that. I don't that's not my personality. I'd rather spend time writing ideas and working on my stuff, but I was like, I'm going to go reach out to that. And then another one, another. A friend of mine was like, Hey, we do this. I went on this great retreat in Colorado with these 20 other leaders, and it was really encouraging. And I've been invited on a bunch of those, and I've always said no. And I'm like, You know what? I think I'm going to need to, like, face that and go try that and maybe I'll hate it. Maybe I will. But I have a sneaking suspicion.
Ginny Yurich When.
Jon Acuff Is it going to enjoy it and I can be challenged by it. It's in November.
Ginny Yurich Okay, I want another follow up.
Jon Acuff So I wrote the guy. I texted the guy and said, Hey, yeah. I said, I'm going, Hey, I said, You got any more spots on this? And of course we do it. I was like, All right, I'm girl. And so, like, that's the kind of stuff that I'm trying to practice because I think there's benefits there.
Ginny Yurich Those are the things you never regret. I had I talked to a guy named Dr. Mike Rucker. He talks about fun and he has a thing called the Memento Mori.
Jon Acuff Oh, that the coin.
Ginny Yurich It's like a physical object. Or for him, his brother died tragically, and so he kept his brother's last voicemail. And he said, that's his memento mori, that whenever he feels like saying no, he listens to that and remembers that time is short. And he goes, and you don't ever regret it. You don't regret those dinners. There's always good that comes out of it. It's it's kind of like you just you can't predict it. And so that's the problem. We're thinking, what are we going to do in five years? How is this thing going to go? You don't know. You just have to say yes and then know that in hindsight you're going to be like, those were some great moments and I'm really glad I did it. And you talk about community in this book, Accidental Community is over. The future is intentional. There's really wise parts in here about community that life has changed and naturally was woven into the fabric of society in decades past, and it no longer is now. We have to do it or we're isolated.
Jon Acuff Yeah, I heard a Professor Scott Galloway say this recently. The phrase bed rotting, that this younger generation is doing something called bed rotting where they work from their bed, they order food from their bed. They never leave their bed as the only piece of furniture they sit in. They don't leave the house. And there's this phrase about our we bed rotting as a society. And I thought, Oh my gosh, that is so for me it is that sense of how do I be deliberate about community, How do I be brave in community? How do I give back to community? But you're right. I rarely come home and go, you know what? That would have been more productive if I had been on Netflix by myself. I would have gotten more connections and more like, No, I always feel like. So yeah, I think Colorado is going to be amazing. So yeah, I'll definitely I'm sure I'll feel uncomfortable initially. Yeah. Yeah, totally.
Ginny Yurich I can't wait to hear about it. I want to talk about it after it's over. I'm introverted too, so I really actually related to the parts about speaking I thought was super interesting that actually really totally isn't introverted activity, even though people feel like you're super extroverted. So an interesting one. We have one minute. So one last thing that really stuck out to me was fuel, and that fear was your fuel, but you changed it to impact. Well, people can just read it. They got to read it. They're going have to read it. I thought that was a huge part of that. You and you know that your wife saying, look, this is great that you're doing these things, but you're being a jerk. So you got to figure it out, you know? So.
Jon Acuff Yeah. So the 62nd version of that is I was using chaos and stress and fear as a fuel to accomplish something. And there's a lot of people that get stuck there. They they say, you know, I'm going to I don't I want to be bigger than my family was or I want to I never want to be poor again or whatever it is. And they have this negative fuel as an energy and it works for a little while, but it eventually empties you out. So I had to kind of, over time, switch to find a different fuel that would actually fill me up. And the the metaphor is the space shuttle. The space shuttle eventually has to drop the rocket boosters because rocket boosters only have one speed. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go. They're not stable. They don't you can steer with them. And so with fuel, it's the same way. If anger is your only fuel, you're going to run over everybody in your life. You have to find a different fuel that's actually healthy. And so that's that's one of my favorite parts of the book, definitely, because it's one that helped me a lot.
Ginny Yurich Yeah, so much in here, all it takes is a goal, a three step plan to ditch regret and tap into your massive potential super cool thing with preorders. I should put this out before post end, right? Because preorder if people preorder it. Or maybe I'll just post about it online. If they preorder, they get the full audiobook. The full thing. That's incredible.
Jon Acuff Full audiobook for free. Yeah, whole book. I read it. I read it. Super fun. Yeah. You go to ATG ABC.com, you get all the bonuses. ATG ABC.com.
Ginny Yurich All right. It's awesome. Jon, Congrats. Book number nine. This is fantastic. And now I'm always curious what the book number ten. I'll see you soon.
Jon Acuff Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thanks, Ginny. Bye.
