The Habit Architect

THA S02 EP#14 - Reboot Your Compass: Defining What Really Matters

• Michael Cupps • Season 2 • Episode 14

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How do you decide what matters most when everything feels urgent? In this episode, producer Florencia Llosas flips the script and interviews host Michael Cupps about the foundation of effective habit building: your personal hierarchy of values.

Michael explains why most people fail at building habits because they skip the critical first step of defining their values. Not political talking points, but the deeply personal anchors that should guide every decision. They discuss identifying your real values, managing distractions and dopamine-driven behaviors, using the Time Bandit priority matrix, and why "tomorrow is more important than yesterday."

This conversation gives you the framework to stop reacting to life and start designing it with intention.

Visit timebandit.io for the app, training, and book.

This Show is sponsored by TimeBandit.io

Check out our Live Show Events here: The Habit Architect Live Show

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Michael Cupps:

Hello and welcome to the to Habit Architect. It's sponsored by Time Bandit, and I would urge you to go out and check out our Time Bandit bundle. The reason I'm urging you to do that so quickly right now in this episode is because Florencia and I are gonna talk about hierarchy of values, which is a primary principle in Time Bandit, but it should be a primary principle in your life because it's the way that you can anchor yourself and your actions. Two, what's really important? What is it that most matters to you? And so the hierarchy values is a great way of getting to it. And a lot of people throw values around as a statement, particularly politicians who are only using it to get your vote. But actually, values are something that is deeply personal to you. It's not at somebody else's value. It's what it, what's important to you. And using them correctly will help you get where you want to be. And we're looking forward to talking about that today. We'll bring Florencia on. Don't forget to go to time bandit.io and check out the bundle and then click through it. But excited about this opportunity. So Florencia, are you joining me? Hello?

Florencia Llosas:

Hi.

Michael Cupps:

So in this episode, I think you're gonna take the role of kind of interviewer and I'm gonna be the interviewee. Exactly. So you can ask questions of me, which is scary.

Florencia Llosas:

Is it? It should be.

Michael Cupps:

Be. No, not really. Not really.

Florencia Llosas:

No. It should be. It should be. You should be scared. No, just kidding.

Michael Cupps:

Alright, so we're gonna talk about values today.

Florencia Llosas:

Yes. I'm excited. I'm excited because last time we talked. It like rewired my brain a little bit. I am like, on a personal journey as well as helping you and helping others with your journeys. I'm actually on my personal journey as well. Yeah. So at one point I was like, you know what, let me actually. Purchase or do what I'm preaching. And I downloaded the Time Banded app, and I am like obviously a little bit biased because I get to, I get all the fun time banded stuff basically for free. But it's so useful. I just, it came to the point where I, it has so much stuff in it, but it gets to the point where I'm like, I don't, I'm not really sure how to use it. Got it. Or at least correctly. Yeah. So I was really excited about today's topic, which is the hierarchy of values because there is a sort of matrix inside of the app. And I was like, Hey, what how? Yeah. And I was like, you know what? Let's just have the master of building habits help us here. Yeah. Yes. I was going to say, first of all, what would you say? People say it's like the hardest thing to do right now because we are, especially my generation, I'm like, I'm in the middle of millennial and Gen Z generation and I sometimes just need that dopamine. I need that like TikTok. Scroll of doom moment in my life. It calms me down. But I often, because I produce all your shows, I often listen to you say oh, that noise is not good. You should avoid that. And I'm like, oh.

Michael Cupps:

Yeah. It's a good, it's a good question. It's hard to define generally, but let me just start with, you mentioned the matrix in the app and habits, so those are two different things. And when I was thinking about assembling these two items into a methodology, I didn't invent high habits or priorities. They were invented before I did you? No, I'm sure you did. And but what, when I think about the matrix, right? That's about prioritization. So what's important to you? And you can't define, you can't answer the question, what's important to you if you don't have your value set. So that's why the hierarchy of values to me is this overarching thing. It's not in the app, by the way. Maybe it should be, but it's not. What's in the app is how you practice it daily, right? How you put it into general use, right? So we're gonna talk more about values, but in a prioritization matrix, what you do is. When you have a list of things you wanna do, you look at the importance and the urgency of them, and you decide based on that, those importance and urgency, what you do now, what you do later, what you delegate to others, and what you stop doing. Now, to answer your question, so we'll get into values a little bit more in a minute, but to answer your specific question, how do you know what to do or not to do? So if that dopamine rush is something that you need. Then you need to figure out how to get it without disrupting everything else. So one of the biggest challenges I think your generation and my generation frankly have is distractions. And so distractions aren't necessarily bad because there's also good distractions, right? You're having lunch thinking about something and you see an old friend, right? That's a great distraction. So it's not that distractions themselves are bad, it's how you handle the distractions and how you manage distractions that repeatedly get into your. Psyche, right? So for a lot of people it's these things, right? It's their, they're, they go do scrolling, right? And they think they're just gonna go check their text message, but then they look at in Instagram and 45 minutes later they're, oh my gosh, I'm behind in what I was trying to do. So that's a bad distraction. So what you have to do with understanding those distractions is if you do need that jolt of. Caffeine or whatever it is that you've gotta get then get it. But make sure you have a boundary to it. So it so that Instagram look isn't for 45 minutes. It's for 10 minutes. If that's what you, what's good for you. So it I'm not suggesting it because if you deprive yourself of things that you want to do all the time, you're gonna become a very boring person. Find a way to balance those. And the quickest way to balance 'em is. Still allow yourself to do it in moderation.

Florencia Llosas:

Okay. And how does the hierarchy of values then come into play with all of this? Yes.

Michael Cupps:

What we're trying to do is navigate a complex world and do good and while we're here. Why that's important. I mentioned the matrix, which talks about important and urgency. So a lot of times when I talk to somebody about this stuff, they say how do I know what's really important?

Florencia Llosas:

Yeah.

Michael Cupps:

And so that's where your values come in, right? So important to you. It could have several dynamics to it. If it's if it's something that you aspire to be, you want to be a different person, or you want to fix, put yourself in a position to be act differently. Whether it's become more philanthropic or, help your family more, whatever it may be, you, those, you got to decide what those are important to you and when they are truly important to you. And we're gonna talk about how to dissect that. Then you know how to act and to honor that value. And that could be how you prioritize your day, how you, what habits you choose to use in order to achieve that. The easiest example, and it's not always the best one, but the easiest is something in sports, right? So if somebody decides they wanna run a marathon,

Florencia Llosas:

okay? So

Michael Cupps:

if they just say, I am gonna go run a marathon next year, that's it. What are they're not really living that, that value, right? So they may or may not get there. And I'm sure the world is littered with people that said, I'm gonna run a marathon and never did. The ones that do decide to make it important to them, it's their, it's a value to them, and then they start building their habits around it. They start prioritizing around it. So think about that as it might play out for a marathoner. You're gonna make time to go run. You're gonna make time to get sleep. You're gonna make time to do whatever needed physically to get your body ready to run a marathon. You're also gonna prioritize in a way that still allows you to be a parent of whatever your job is, et cetera, and still find time to do those ha habits that you have. So that value then becomes so important and you've exercised an ability to say, this is how I'm gonna live my life, to support that goal of running a marathon while not dropping everything else, right?

Florencia Llosas:

And so

Michael Cupps:

because that value becomes important to them, they figure out a way. To put it all in perspective. And when it's time to train, that's the most important thing at that time that they do. But when it's time to be with their kids, to work with their homework or whatever it may be, that's what they do. So they just figure out a better way of systemizing how you use your time.

Florencia Llosas:

Would you say what about people who are not really sure? Someone who wants to run a marathon, they know what they want to do. But what if you don't know what if you just are living your life day by day? Wake up. Go into work, do some work. Yeah. Come home and then that's that. And that's maybe why you're like, doom scrolling on TikTok or Instagram. Can the hierarchy of values or determining these values even can that help build something better?

Michael Cupps:

Absolutely. Because it, what you just described there is somebody. If I'm re hearing you right, is mindlessly just doing what they're told to do, right? They go to work, right? They pay their bills. They do that the same as cogging the machine. Yeah. Yeah. And so the challenge there is that they're not looking at what else they want, right? So if there's something else they want and they may not know what it is, so your short term value. And that could be a year, two years, or 10 years might be a pursuit of some interest, right? So let's say maybe they've always had an interest in painting, but they. They've never really tried it. So maybe what they do, if their value is painting, they figure out a way to build a few habits and prioritize that into their life. Whether it's once a week going to a gallery or maybe once a week taking a class online about how to paint or whatever it may be. They start working that in. So the pursuit is the value. And they may end up not liking painting at all, but they will have tried and they will have been able to say, okay, that's not really important to me, being a water skier might be at that point, whatever, and they, but that, but they valued it in a way that they pursue it to its end, where it becomes their lifelong passion or it they did it and it's great and they glad they did it, but they wanna move on to something else. And we've all done that, right? Sometimes we outgrow what's important to us, right? A marathoner can't run a marathon. I shouldn't say can't. Probably won't be running marathons while in their sixties, seventies, and eighties. Now, some people do, so God bless them. But the reality is, if you're a marathoner, there's probably somewhere in your life you're gonna transition into something else more important. The other thing that I would say is don't immerse yourself in it too much initially, right? Learn if you really want that. How? How many times have you seen somebody I and I. I won't say his name, but I used to mountain bike a lot and now I still like to bike. I just don't do the mountain part of it because I fell off of it. And, but oh, this particular person said when we had lunch and we talked about it and he's you know what, I wanna be a mountain biker too. And he went out and bought the most expensive bike, all the clothes, all the stuff. And then he got on the mountain and he hated it. And he just,

Florencia Llosas:

I feel I feel like that's such a, and I'm sorry this might get me canceled, but I feel like that's such an American thing to do here. People cannot afford to do that. If you wanna go mo mountain biking. There's, if you're in Enos Aires, just getting to the mountain part, it's gonna take a lot of money. So people start maybe just renting a city bike and going someplace far away and seeing if they like riding a bike for that long or if they get chafed and they hate it. So that's a very like. But also I understand the need to do that because I think that also purchasing the things to do the thing is also more fun than actually doing the activity sometimes. Yep. I remember, I, I used to work at a clothing store. Like in importer for sportswear and they gave me stuff for free and I would be like, yeah, give it to me and I'm gonna go to the gym. And you know what? I hate the gym. I never never once, but it is so fun to just dress up and there's also like this thing where you lie to yourself and you're like I'll look nice. Maybe this buying this will inspire me to do it. And what you're telling me is no, buying those things is not gonna inspire you to do it, but maybe building this hierarchy of value Yeah. Will tell you if you actually. Like it and then you can get the swag if that.

Michael Cupps:

Exactly. But I think you just said, I described a better approach as you rent the bike, go for a couple of trial runs before you dive in. And if you really love it, then all great, that becomes your, that's, that becomes part of your values. If it doesn't, it, it doesn't, and that's okay too. But I would love to see I'm sure this data is out there somewhere. I wonder how many. Treadmills are bought near New Year's resolution and we can just say in the US that become a close rack by March. That just people are on it Feb in January, maybe a little end of February, and then boom they're now, they hang their clothes on it when they're not using it, which is, the other thing that I was thinking of that I just remember is can we have different. Different values for different stages because I know that I have some values or some goals that I wanna achieve career wise, but also I don't want that to be my whole life. I want to achieve other things that are more like passion. So can I do can I integrate this things like career with building a routine and values for my career and also for my passion so that my career doesn't. Drive me crazy. Absolutely. If somebody told me they just had one value and that's it, I would be really sad for them and really try to talk them into something else because we are not one thing. We're you're a sister, you're a daughter. I, say I'm a son and I'm a father. There's all these things that we are, I'm also a business person. You're also a student. There's all these things that we have to do, so they absolutely can have more than one value, and you should I think. If you're really focusing on things, it's probably five is a number that's fits there that you can manage at one time. Now, that doesn't mean that one value won't fall off and a new one come up. That should be the way too, because what you value at 23 may not be what you value at 33 or at 43. So we need to make sure and understand they're

Florencia Llosas:

not fixed.

Michael Cupps:

Yeah, exactly. And and if you think about the importance of thinking about it and walking through the exercise, we will a little bit later. That treadmill that we'd said somebody bought that, that becomes a close wreck in March. Probably the value they thought they had is they want to get into shape or they wanna lose weight or they, it's very mi finite thing, but they didn't tie it into some of the other things that they want to do in their life. So the value that more like an action than a value. Exactly. It should be, maybe they wanted to get healthy. So they could be a better parent. So they could be there for, play with their kids or walk their dog or whatever it may be. But they didn't tie it to something. It was just one of those kind of things that somebody watched a TikTok and said, Hey, you should, jog three minutes a day or something on a treadmill. And so they, that's the way they went. And it's okay because at least they did something. But you need to think about why you're doing it. Is it gonna fit into your life pattern? If so, make sure that you accommodate that through your priorities. Okay. And so I think when we get into the worksheet, it'll kinda come become a little more clear. Actually, I was gonna tell you, let's get into this worksheet. I'm ready. Okay. Okay. First let me read now I think I'll read it later. But anyway, I was gonna show you. That in my journal, I love, first I write in the journal every day. This, I wanna say something that is, that for everyone who's listening, you are a man of so many, like nukes and crannies. Every time I talk to you, I'm like, what? Like right now you realize I fell off a mountain. What do you mean you fell off a mountain and then now you're like, I love journaling. Who are you like, oh. It's insane. Like the million of people you contain inside of you is just those sta astonishing to me, honestly. Like what? Thank you. I fell off a mountain. Sounds much more dramatic than it was. I avoided a kid and fell and broke my shoulder blade, but but it was in the, it was in the act of doing something like biking, but so anyway I have this journal and I journal, I try to journal every day and I also have my five. Hierarchy values written down here. And I laminated as if you can tell.

Florencia Llosas:

Yeah. Because

Michael Cupps:

it was just getting too, and I read it every day, even though I could probably cite 'em to you without reading them I make the mental practice of reading them every day because it just does something to your brain when you do that in my opinion. I have a question before you continue. Does it help when you're just starting out a habit to read the value, does that inspire you? I think it does me because when that habit is for me, mine is walk over five miles a day.

Florencia Llosas:

Yes.

Michael Cupps:

Some days I don't wanna walk five miles. Some days I don't wanna walk at all. And this morning when my dog, Oliver was looking at me like, let's go for a walk, and it's 30. Degrees outside. I'm like, huh. But understanding the value of the reason why I do that was two, one, he's part of my family and I, one of my values is more fam family time. The second is health, right? So those two reasons was a good reason to go out for that walk with Oliver, and I'm glad I did so would you say also that a fine reading the value and it doesn't inspire me, maybe I should rewrite it? You should rewrite it or evaluate if it's a value at all. So let's go into this this worksheet. You're telling me so much. Okay, let's do it. Let me share my screen. So there we go. Yes. All right, so this is in the training course that's out there, and you can download this. If somebody wants it, they can just drop me an email or something and I'll share it with them, because I think it's a crucial part. When somebody starts thinking about their habits, they start thinking about how they wanna prioritize, use their time. Think about it as you've got. A day tomorrow, a week, next week, whatever. How are you gonna spend that time? And the most important thing is to not look back and say, I didn't do anything I wanted to do. And now sometimes procrastination is there and we can talk about that. But the point of this exercise, and I did this on a sheet that you can download I'm gonna have to go to another, I'm probably not gonna be able to see this, but, I see you while I'm asking questions. If I want to go scroll down. So what I did is, so a lot of times when I get into an ho hierarchy values workshop, for example, I ask people, wait, what are, yeah, you do hierarchy of values workshops. Yeah, I have. Yeah, absolutely. I've done it. Contact cups for hierarchy of value workshops. Absolutely. These are fun. And now a lot of times they're, sometimes they're in work related modes, but other times they're in individual. People that part of a community type thing that they want to, oh, like you could do one for people who are trying to lose weight or like trying to stop smoking, oh, that's, oh, that's lovely. Oh, so sorry. There's a, I know, that I've followed Smart recovery for addiction, and this is a core tenet of that too, right? It's just absolutely important. Oh, I love that. Okay sorry I interrupted you. I just got excited. Another, no, that's okay. That's okay. The way that I start the pro process is to say, write down what whatever's important to you and don't. Limit yourself. Just start writing down. And usually what people say is health, wealth, you know their career and family. And they say those three things along with some other things. Maybe they music whatever. Should it be specific or should it be like very general? Nope. Nope. And I don't ever put any cap on this. Just write down as many as you want, however you wanna say them. Okay. Like a breakdown. The reason being is we're gonna go deeper into it step by step. And so they tend to write down 5, 10, 15 things, whatever's on their mind. And then that's great. And then what I do is say, okay, now out of everything you wrote down, pick your top five and you, and what you and I talk about. It doesn't have to be five, it can be three, it can be six, right? I'm not suggesting that five is a magic number. It's just a manageable number to think about these things. So

Florencia Llosas:

yeah. So

Michael Cupps:

if you think that, so now let's say you take health. Wealth and family, and we have those three things. The nice thing about those is those are good words, but they're nouns, right? They're just that, right? Health can be a verb, but it's really about the way that they use it typically is just this one word. So what do we wanna do next is go deeper, right? So you take your big list, you break it down into a smaller list, right? Okay, wait, let's try with one word. Let's try career. And then keep, and then do it career. That's also a noun and it's really big. So going deeper into that. Okay, So here you'd say career, right? Yes. And then we'd go down here and say, okay, now that you have your values and you have five of them, you rewrite 'em here. And by the way there's something, the reason I have you rewriting them is because it starts becoming part of you when you write things down. You probably know this from a studying perspective. Yes. So now you've got your five values and let's say careers here, right? Now, why does this matter to you? Why does your career matter to you? Oh man, this is so hard. I guess it's like you wanna do something worthwhile, but also that, can support you.

Florencia Llosas:

Yep. Does it have to be like,

Michael Cupps:

no. Is this a good one? Is it okay? Yeah, those are great. So the important thing about the why is it's really gotta matter to you, right?

Florencia Llosas:

Okay. So

Michael Cupps:

why does your career matter to you? So somebody else may tell you it's important to them to define who they are, leave a legacy, whatever, and what it doesn't matter. It's what's important to you. So what you said is you wanna do something worthwhile, which probably means giving back to some community of some kind, and you want it to be sustainable for yourself, right? Yes.

Florencia Llosas:

Correct.

Michael Cupps:

So that's great. So whenever you do your five values here, and then you start talking about what's mattered to you, and it is important that you define why. Because if it doesn't matter to you, if you find no why's, is it really a value you want? Maybe you were influenced by outside stimuli to think that was important and then that's, this is when you realize it's not Exactly. Exactly. And then the next step is you go in and you start and I've made it where you could use ai. Okay. But what we wanna do then is take a very in introspective look, and sometimes you may want to take this away after you'd find out your five values and you define the why. You may wanna separate from it for just a little bit, and then come back to it and understand how do we put this into action? How do we frame it in a way that you can practice and do it daily? Okay. Does this mean I have to make it into a habit? No, not always. It just means something that you want to, that you need that, that the value needs to be action oriented is the shortest way to say it. Okay. So it can be easily framed. So family, right? If somebody says, my family is my highest value what does that mean? Why is it important to you? Maybe important because time goes fast, kids grow up fast whatever. Now how do we put that in practice? And I'll read you, I'll read you how I did it for family, right?

Florencia Llosas:

Oh, yes.

Michael Cupps:

So prioritize family and community was my top priority. Okay. And it's make daily choices that allow quality time with family. Ensure flexibility to be present for important moments and activities with loved ones.

Florencia Llosas:

Oh, okay.

Michael Cupps:

What I've done there is I, it's not a really a habit. I don't have to check a box every day that says I spent time with family. What I said was, make daily choices that allows me to spend more time with family. So given a choice, do, and I don't drink, but if I were a drinker, do I stop off at the bar and say hi to my buddies, or do I go home and be with my family? You're making a choice, right? So a daily choice for me would be to skip the bar and go home and see my family. So the other thing on here is ensure flexibility. So when I, now, I don't know if you can see that, but my my son is texting me now. Was ensure flexibility. So when I know my grandson or my son or Unline or anybody has something coming up that's important, then I want to, I wanna make sure that I have the flexibility to do that. Now, having said that, I know that some circumstances don't allow some people to take off work, to do stuff, right? But my point is, make sure that you are designing your life to allow flexibility to. Make time for family. So that's what's important to me. It may not be important to everybody, but that's what it means. Okay. We always tend to think about the big moments being the most important, but what's really important is like making breakfast on a Saturday morning, together and just talking things like that. So there's there, it's that's what I just wanna do with that value of mind is make sure that. That I'm having those moments and scheduling the important ones and things like that. Does that make sense? There's no rules here. There's no hard rules. Okay. But to me, that breakfast with Catherine is part of why I'm making time and allowing flexibility, things like that. Oh, okay. All right. So how can how can the be help me? So I wrote a prompt a simple prompt here, right? So we went up here and we said career. You may wanna be a little more specific, but just go into Claude Open ai, whatever, whoever you use. And I have a value of career. We're cloud supporters. We like Claude. Yes, I like Claude too. Yeah, me too. Could you help me refine this into a statement about how I should live to support this value? It's open-ended, but what's gonna happen there at Florencia is that it's gonna give you some ideas, right? None of 'em will probably be spot on that you like or want. So think about it as you're trying on a new shirt, right? Yeah. That one kind of fits, it doesn't fit. You can go back and ask Claude again, say, Hey, that almost hit the bill point, but I want you to refine it a little more. And the only reason I suggest use Gen ai, you don't have to, you can do this yourself, but Gen AI might just give you more ideas about the action, right? It's more like inspiration than straight. Got it. And then once you get the ones you really settle on, write'em down and then that's your values. And I, like I did I wrote 'em down on my worksheet and then I put 'em on, I typed 'em out, and then I just, because I travel a lot and I don't, the paper was getting rigid. My, my values, I won't read the statements to you. It's prioritized family and community retirement readiness. So I'm a little older than you. As you, you may not have noticed. No,

Florencia Llosas:

you're intimate.

Michael Cupps:

I've got health and wellness. I've got embody. Authenticity is something that. That I probably wouldn't have done the rest of earlier in my life. And I wish I would have, but now I do. And the last is champion people-centric work. Aw. So those are my, actually you do that. You do that one, that last one a lot actually. I was thinking. I do. Yeah, you do. You do. And I think I'm doing better at the authenticity. I'm certainly doing better at health and wellness readiness for retirement and prioritizing family. I always wish I had more time with him, but I'm doing what I can to get the most, I wish I could speak my grandson more is what I wish, but that's not. That's not necessarily that's my priority. His family has other things, but also I think that if you asked your, what is it, daughter-in-law, she would be like yeah, just have him drops him off for days. But I do have a question because the name is hierarchy of values. So if I put number is number one the most important to me or is that No. No, it's not. It's not really. Now some people operate that way. Okay. The first thing on the list is most important if, but I don't, the, they're not really that I didn't rank 'em,

Florencia Llosas:

but if you are,

Michael Cupps:

if you're a ranker, rank 'em. Especially if you find that, think about a, if there's a single mom out there that is just. Doing everything she can just to keep things on the rail. Then I would say one, try to keep your hierarchy values to three and, instead of five, don't try to do too much, but sometimes they just have to have a, that number one priority. And a single mom, the number one priority may be that child, right? And that's okay. And then, you just and if that's the number one on their list, that's number one. I, but I don't think you have to rank 'em necessarily. Okay. And I do have another question. What if it's something, okay, what if it's something I really wanna do, but I hate doing it? Does that mean that the value is just not written correctly or is it I should put in number one? That should be your number one priority then if you, that's a good, that's a good question. And the number one thing that comes to my mind when you said that is. Let's say somebody wants to buy a house, right? Yes. And in order to do that, there's a lot of sacrifices that happen along the way, right?

Florencia Llosas:

Yes.

Michael Cupps:

You have to save a lot of money. You have to be responsible When your friends are going out or somebody's taking a vacation, you have to pass on that. So I think it should be. Even if you don't wanna do it, because it might give you the discipline to do it. Because if you write that statement in a way that says, I wanna provide for my family in a house of their own, that we can, that we can have a warm feeling every holiday season, whatever it may be. If that's your value, then it might give you a little more motivation to not spend that extra thing that all your buddies are doing or what have you. Okay. So I think the other one, so saving money is a big one. I think when it comes to things you don't wanna do, but you should do. And the other one is health.

Florencia Llosas:

Yeah,

Michael Cupps:

because it's really easy. I don't know about in Argentina, but in the US I think you can see it everywhere that people are very indulgent with themselves, right? They supersize their big max or whatever. I am proud to say I've not eaten at McDonald's and probably over 12 years. So when you think about health, right? Again, I think in mind Yep. In mind I start off with make choices that support a healthy mind and body. So that's the statement that I, so again, it what I like about that is it tells me daily. I'm making a choice for that value. And a choice could be driving past McDonald's and going on home and eating something healthy or whatever it may be. And so when you think about what you're talking about, putting a value on there that's hard. It's okay. But break it down in what those choices and those moments that you get to control over it. And then I, the last final question what if you are, so my sister and I think I've talked about her. All the time. She's my little baby. She has A-D-H-D-I think it's, yeah, A DHD. And so whenever she has to write something down, she just struggles. So I was thinking, can we build this hierarchy of value with pictures? Absolutely. That would help her. She's an artist too, so like maybe she That's a great idea. And she like she could make a board and she could look at it instead of having something and written it down. Is that something? Absolutely. I think that's a great idea. And I, and maybe when you think about, remember a while back there was a, this craze about vision boards.

Florencia Llosas:

Oh yeah.

Michael Cupps:

The same thing that's more goal oriented. But I think you're right. I actually, I've just started reading a book about how to learn. Foreign language. I think I mentioned this to you. Oh

Florencia Llosas:

yeah.

Michael Cupps:

Tried all the silly apps and none of them are sticking. But this book is talking about putting pictures associated with phrases so you remember them. And I think for values, it's a great idea. I, yeah. The one thing I, I. I put that worksheet together and it's a good way to instruct how to do this, but yes there's no rule book to it, right? Your values are, your values, whatever you choose to be that number one item. And then you put a why to it is all up to you. And then the action statement is just so you can live it, right? I love that. I love that. How do we translate this onto something that we can, that I can actually use on. The Time Bandit app. So I've made the worksheet, I have my five values or six or three or whatever. How do I translate this into actionable items? Yep. On my to-do list, or how do I use it to organize? Because my to-do list is infinite, but how do I actually use this? Yeah. So I don't know if this scenario applies to you. I know you're taking a class or you do some schoolwork, right?

Florencia Llosas:

Yes.

Michael Cupps:

Okay. So let's say that one of your values is to. Get the highest grade in the class or whatever. What maybe at this point

Florencia Llosas:

is passing at this point is passing, but okay, let's

Michael Cupps:

say you wanna make a B or better, and that's your value, and you have the Y and da.

Florencia Llosas:

Yeah.

Michael Cupps:

Somebody comes to you and you know you have a final on, let's say Friday. Somebody comes to you and says, Florencia, we'd love for you to have a picnic with us on Thursday afternoon, and now you've got your to-do list. You can have that picnic. And you have ranked the importance, but you have a final on Friday. So now you've got a choice. You've got five days or four days between now and that picnic, or I'm sorry, the final. So now you get to prioritize what you're gonna do with those four days in preparation for that value, which is get a B or better on the test, right? So now you're just gonna make choices so you can say, I can't join you on this picnic. I'm gonna schedule that for later because the urgency's not there, right? It's important to you to have picnic with your friends. But it's not urgent that you have it this Thursday. You could have it two Thursdays from now, right? So that's the schedule quadrant. If you think about that quadrant, yes, you're making a choice that says it's important to me, but I'm gonna schedule it for later. Now, if it's something that's important to you and it's urgent, like your grandmother's in town from somewhere else and she's only here on Tuesday and she wants to go to lunch with you she's not gonna be here Wednesday or next Tuesday 'cause she's from out of town. So that urgency just raised it up. So you're gonna prioritize. That, right? That it is important for you to have lunch with your grandmother and it's urgent because she's only here on Tuesday. So it just allows you to say, where are your priorities in here? So if that means you're having lunch with your grandmother on Tuesday, you might have to, move something else outta your schedule so you can prepare for that final. Does that make sense? So you're starting to categorize. The things that are coming at you, your to-do list, like you said, your infinite, you're starting to say, is this item important? Which matches your values? And then what's the urgency with it? Could I, so would you say that the best practice would be like ca get your values ready and then make a list of all the things you have to do and then look at both sheets, right? And say, okay, I'll match them. Does this match my values? Yes. Does this not? Okay. I'll dump this stays, and then I match it. Level of urgency. Yeah, so that's exactly what you do in the priority matrix. So you if on the app you can go in and enter a new task.

Florencia Llosas:

Yes. That

Michael Cupps:

task gives you an opportunity to say, is it important and is it urgent? And it, it automatically puts it in a category for you based on your answer

Florencia Llosas:

automatically. Love that

Michael Cupps:

it does, and based on your answers. So the point, important point there is that yes you can look at your values every day, or you should read your values every day, but over time, you're not gonna need to have the two lists in front of you and just say, that aligns with this value. You're gonna innately know it. And then it, then there's things that come into play and that why I put in the app that gives you the ability to assign a task with a list. Sometimes certain things like aspirational. Yes, they're very important, but they can be scheduled out there always. Because they're never urgent. They will become urgent at some point, but they don't necessarily, if you've got a boss selling you, you've gotta get this report done by Thursday that just may have to take urgency up the notch because that's what, pays the bills or what have you. But that's the idea of the Matrix, which I love is it sorts through it. And oh, by the way, the bottom left Qua Quadrant is delegate. And so delegate is a weird one, right? So some people say I don't have an assistant, so how can I delegate? In the world of ai, you may be able to delegate stuff off. In other time things, you may be delegating it off your list altogether, right? May just may not be important enough, right? So that's the one thing. So on the bottom two quadrants, it's unimportant. And then it has urgency. So sometimes your boss will say, I need you to schedule a meeting with so and that's urgent, but it's, it's not really high on your importance list. So you just delegate it off. And that's where scheduling tools and things like that might apply. And then things that aren't important or urgent, just stop doing. I think this is the one area that's difficult for all of us to stop doing. So we talked about doom scrolling earlier, so maybe you know something if you're TikTok and Instagram, maybe you only need one of them. So you stuck one or the other, or, yeah. Yeah. This is more like on the realm of there was a webinar you did a couple of weeks ago where you talk about breaking habits. So that could be a bad habit. Yeah. That

Florencia Llosas:

needs to break. So you have room. In your life to, to be focusing on your values and building habits that support your values.

Michael Cupps:

I think that's the important thing that we need to think about, that nothing happens overnight anyway. And two, we need to find our journey that fits for us fits for our lifestyle. You know that, and that's one we talk about that treadmill. They probably didn't think about all that was needed in that, number one, what did healthy mean to them? Number two, do they have time for it? Can they fit it in? Does it compete with other values? So you really want to think about those things before you just jump in and say, that's my value. So I wanna close up with something that is like your trademark at this point. You always ask people what they think about this phrase. Yep. And no one has ever asked you like, Hey, cops, what do you think about this phrase? And also as a producer who spends a lot of time talking to you, that came about of this phrase was literally just cops one day coming to me and saying I thought about this, or, I read this somewhere. I, and I love it. And I was like, okay. And I never asked you why or how it came to be. So now that I have this space, Yeah. I was talking to an old friend and. What struck me when I was talking to him is the things he kept referring to in yesterday, his past. And he was saying this happened and this and I didn't do this right. And I didn't, and there was so much regret in him when, and I heard it that I was thinking you know what? You really need to think about as tomorrow, not yesterday. And the reason being is if we anchor ourselves to things we've done in our past. And those are the things that we think of first. We're not setting ourselves up for tomorrow, right? So take somebody that's been maybe chronically unhealthy if all they think about the last time I tried that I failed, or the last time I did and all of their thoughts go to that negative perspective, how are they gonna be successful tomorrow? So what I would rather people do is think about what am I in control of today that will change what tomorrow looks like? Or will allow me to enjoy tomorrow even more and stop being anchored to what happened yesterday. It's okay to have memories, good memories, bad memories, all of that stuff. I'm not suggesting that we just block it out. I'm just saying don't let it be your anchor. Don't let it control the way that you act today. That will affect tomorrow. And I think it's a hard thing to think about because we're told that memories are good and memories are good, but they're not all good. They can hold you back in a really subversive way if you don't think about 'em. What is something that you're not gonna try today? Because you failed at it twice more, twice in the past. If it's really important to you, try again. Try it differently. Do whatever it is. Just try again. And I think that's what this means to me is it really came about when I was talking to that old friend and how. Fixated, they were on the decisions they made in 10 years ago, five years ago, 30 years ago, whatever it was. And I, what it looked like to me was the ki the guy was in jail.

Florencia Llosas:

He was blinded.

Michael Cupps:

Yeah. And that's no way to live. That's just no way to live now. That's childhood trauma. There's all kinds of things that are difficult, but that I just do think we can take a little ownership over today to, to get where we wanna be tomorrow. That's beautiful. It's build your future in your mind so it can happen. Yeah. And free yourself from what was holding you back too. I love that. That coupled with therapy. Yep. There you go. Love that wonders, I'd say. Exactly. Okay. So that's

Florencia Llosas:

great.

Michael Cupps:

Thanks Ev thanks everybody for watching and hopefully this was useful to drop a comment in LinkedIn or YouTube, wherever you're watching and subscribe, follow whatever you have to do in your podcast choice. So thank you. Yes. And if you want to know more about how to use these tools that CS has on time, bandit.io. Then just let us know. We're always reading and open to making more videos that explain how the different parts of the time Bandit would you say like universe work, I think, right? Sure, sure. Let's all take back our time. Let's be bandits. Yes. I love that. All right. Thank you Florencia for hosting today. I enjoyed it.

Florencia Llosas:

I love talking.

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Michael Cupps

Host
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Reem Metawei

Co-host