Next Level University

#1442 - How To Feel Accomplished Even When You Don't Get Everything Done

• Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

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Do you find yourself overwhelmed with an ever-growing to-do list? Are you constantly battling high expectations and struggling to feel accomplished? In this episode, hosts Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros talk about practical strategies for productivity and prioritization. Productivity isn't about perfection but progress. They discuss how striving for consistent 70% days is far more beneficial than reaching 100% daily. They talk about managing high standards, setting realistic goals, and the importance of self-awareness. They also discuss the influence of peer standards and the delicate balance of pushing oneself while allowing time for rest. This conversation is packed with valuable insights to help you navigate the complexities of productivity, prioritize effectively, and finally feel a sense of accomplishment even when things are left undone.

Links mentioned:
Book a FREE Breakthrough Session with Alan -  https://bit.ly/3Wr6clL
Next Level 5 To Thrive (free course) - ​​https://bit.ly/3xffver   


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Alan: https://www.instagram.com/alazaros88/

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Show notes:
[2:45] In reality, you will not get everything done
[4:19] Productivity systems
[12:01] You don't need to complete 100% each day
[16:19] Tim credits Alan's guidance and the Next Level Business Solutions for the transformative impact on his business
[17:05] Productivity standards
[22:19] Optimal stopping problem
[28:09] Outro

Send a text to Kevin and Alan!

Kevin Palmieri:

Next level nation. Welcome back to another episode of next level university, where we help you level up your life, your love, your health and your wealth. We hope you enjoyed our latest episode. It was Sunday's episode number 1,441. Here's why you don't want to get lucky. If the recipe involves luck, it's very hard to replicate that today. For episode number 1,442 happy Monday how to feel accomplished even when you don't get everything done.

Kevin Palmieri:

Alan and I went through my to-do list last week, two weeks ago, something like that and Alan said hey, man, how are you doing with your to-do list? Are you still using one? And I said Um, depends on what you define using there. What do you mean by that? I am keeping one. I am. I'm not really using one. I Kind of do the same thing every day and then I try to do the most important stuff that comes up, and a Lot of this stuff just gets pushed to the side till later. And he said well, how do you decide what stuff to do on your to-do list? And I said, honestly, usually you ping me and you say, hey, kev, so this needs to change Whatever it is, and then I change it. Usually that's the way I do it. I've been really trying to focus on just a few things, and a lot of that's been because Alan has helped me figure out what the most important few things are. But I know a lot of people you might Start your day and say, okay, I have 26 things I'm gonna get done today and if I don't get all of them done, I'm not productive, I'm not making progress, I'm gonna feel like crap, I'm not gonna feel like I Accomplish anything. The goal in today's episode is to help you figure out what are the most important things and how to Overcome that fear, because in reality, you're never gonna get it all done.

Kevin Palmieri:

Tara and I went to Vermont, as I've mentioned many times this week, and we have someone who comes in watches the kiddies, so we can. We know this person knows pets, they love animals. We don't have to worry about it. They do an amazing job, amazing job, and we want a clean house when someone's coming over. We don't want the bathroom to be a mess, the office to be a mess, whatever it may be, because this is where that the guest room is in the office, and we had this whiteboard.

Kevin Palmieri:

It was four days leading up to us going away and we got to the final night before we're leaving and Tara and I said, alright, we're not getting all this done. Like, what are the most important things, the stuff that we won't feel bad about not getting done? Let's get rid of that stuff. So I Don't know what a good example. One of the examples was we were gonna put the couch cover on. We have a cover for a couch that the coach that we put on when people come over sometimes and I was like, babe, let's just can it. It's gonna take me 25 minutes to get this thing together. We could use that time For something else. And she said, yeah, you're right, let's just can it. I didn't feel bad about that at all because I knew it wasn't one of the highest priorities anyway. Again, a different example than being productive when it comes to your meaningful goals, but I thought an example that we could connect to this episode nonetheless.

Alan Lazaros:

Well, it's the same concept, yeah. So I told kev prior to this episode I wanted to talk a little bit high level about productivity. Emilia and I. Every Sunday, we have this big whiteboard in our home, and when we first got together, emilia is the highest achiever that I've ever personally met, and so she has a lot of optimism for how much we can get done in a day, and so we would write this huge, long list Kev's playing with his hair right now. So we would write out this huge list of everything we want to accomplish on a Sunday, and this is when we first started living together, and after a couple weekends I just started saying, sweetheart, I don't want to go to bed feeling like a loser every Sunday and again, that's probably an extreme version of it, but I don't want to feel like we're losing every Sunday. We got more done this Sunday than any Sunday I've ever had in my entire life, and we still are only 60% of the way. So we have a new system and every single Sunday we do this. We draw a triangle on the board and there's two triangles within it.

Alan Lazaros:

If you've ever seen the logo for the Wii, you'll know what I'm talking about. It's it's a pyramid with two triangles in it and then there's like a diamond at the top. There's the two mes and then the Wii. So our business is called the Wii. It's it's a relationship analogy. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So you have the masculine and the feminine and then you have the Wii, which is a diamond at the top. So we do that and we have three things are allowed in each section. So there's three sections of this pyramid and three things are allowed in each. So three things that I'm going to get done on Sunday grocery, shopping, some house project and back office work. Okay, she has three things. She wants to order food. I already said that, but you know my point and then there's three things we're going to do together Every Sunday, three things. One of them is usually like hang her TV in her office or hang a plant or go on an adventure. So we try to do weekend adventures and usually one of the three things on the Wii section is some sort of an outdoor adventure, especially in the summer.

Alan Lazaros:

So at very most assuming, emilia and I are the most productive, most successful we've ever been on a Sunday, we would get nine things done. Usually we only get like seven, but we give ourselves the permission in advance to be imperfect, and so there's a couple of things I want to say here. The first one is this fairy tale, candy land idea that you're going to go to bed feeling accomplished. I am convinced that if you have high goals, you're never really going to get it all done. There's no such thing at. That's why a lot of the most successful people in the personal development industry they all talk about this one idea where they have and I'm rolling my eyes a little bit because it's a little bit overused and it's not even real fully, and I've also caught some people in saying this and then not doing it they always say they take out a flashcard and they write the top three things that they want to do that day, and as long as they get those three done, they're accomplished.

Alan Lazaros:

First of all, the people who say that they're doing more than three things. Second of all, the people who say that I've caught them, some of them, not actually doing it, and I think that what's more likely true is that they're very reactive most of the day with a bunch of things that they get done, but there's three things that they proactively, intentionally do so, whether it's one or it's three, or it's five or it's seven. There's little pebbles, there's big rocks, there's a whole bunch of productivity stuff out there. There's eat that frog. And if you've never studied productivity you're not going to recognize a lot of what I'm saying. But if you have, there's a lot of a rabbit hole, and here's I want to make it simple for everybody. Here's what Kevin and I do.

Alan Lazaros:

Kevin and I have a back burner. It's a rolling to-do list that never gets any smaller. It just grows and grows and grows, and every now and then him and I sit down and we say you know what, let's, can that, let's, can that, let's, can that? The most recent story that Kevin's talking about, he actually had two different back burners on two different platforms and we just canned both lists. Kill them both with fire. I think we kept like six items in the combined list. So I think both lists combined probably had 15 things each. That's 30 things. We ended up canning everything except for like six things. Some of them it was like oh, you did that, cool, didn't realize you did that. Some of them are like honestly, that's not important anymore. And then some of them are like, keep that one on there, okay. So I always have a back burner.

Alan Lazaros:

The back burner is when you're going throughout your day and you realize, oh crap, I didn't grocery shop. Let me put that on the back burner grocery shop. And then once a day you just look at the back burner and then you pick your top three. So I have two lists at all times, just two, and they're technically the same list One is the back burner. It's just there for a reminder. It's nothing more than a reminder. Don't let it drain you. Don't let yourself feel like a failure. This is like answer email from XYZ from two months ago. It can be anything, anything on there.

Alan Lazaros:

Then there's the list that's important, and the list that's important is what I call top three MITs. Mit stands for most important task. All you do is, the moment you do one of the MITs, all you do is go to your back burner and pick the most important one to put on your top three MIT. It's that simple. So whenever you think of some little task or some little to do that you want to get done because we all have great ideas all the time throw it on your back burner and whenever you finish one of your MITs, you take one from the back burner and move it up and that's it. That's, that's it.

Alan Lazaros:

And as long as you're getting at least one of your top three MIT is done per day, amongst all the other things you're doing as a mother or as a father, or as a husband or a wife, or as an intimate partner, as a household keeper, as a business owner, or as a podcast or speaker, whatever it is what I will tell you and we talked about this in the first episode of the week, where we talked about how health, wealth and love are full time jobs and when you're trying to do all three and be one in 1000 and all three, that's one in a billion. And if you wanted to even be one out of 100 and all three, that's the math works out to one in a million. 100 times 100 times 100 is one in a million. So you're never going to feel accomplished fully. You're never going to feel done. There is no such thing. But what you can feel is that you're getting the most important things done, and if you focus on progress over perfection, you're going to feel a million times better.

Alan Lazaros:

Because the very last thing I'll say here, kev, is I've had clients ask me how do you not feel like such a failure all the time? We have 23 departments. We have a 16 person team. I coach 25 people. There's 47 podcasts that our company produces. How do we do it? That's not including group coaching. That's not including being a cat dad and a dog dad and and running a household. That's not including being a great intimate partner. That's not including being in shape. How do you not feel like a failure all the time? The first answer is I feel like a failure a lot of the time, and I don't think that that's uncommon for anyone who is shooting high and stretching. And the second answer is I never get it all done. I never will. That's a fairytale, but I do a pretty good job of making sure the most important things get done.

Kevin Palmieri:

One of the best quotes ever that we had from a guest was when Laurier Harder said consistent 70% days are better than his body 100s, 100% that's. I really do think that's helped me where I'll say, well, I really would like to get all of this done, but I got blank, blank and blank. That's really. Those are really important things. I I've kind of been between you and I when it comes to this. I've kind of been the guy who takes a day to just like do something, like the taxes or whatever. When we were redesigning thumbnails, I spent the day doing that because I am okay with getting one big thing done for the day. I don't. I don't know, I think you and I are wired differently when it comes to that, because I don't I mean, I definitely don't finish the day saying, wow, I feel super accomplished, but I don't really ever feel like I didn't accomplish a lot, like, even today, we'll get. We get six episodes done today. We didn't get everything we wanted to get done, but we had six. Really, how will you feel?

Alan Lazaros:

Let's share that, because I think sharing both ends of this is important, and I think every listener is on your end or mine a little bit when it comes to this. I very rarely feel accomplished it's, but that doesn't mean I'm not accomplishing a lot.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, I'm going to feel like we got well, you said. You said, hey, can you do you mine staying a little bit late, and I said I can. I promised her and I would do something for her tonight. So I'm willing to say that if we got seven episodes done and I didn't get what I told her I was going to get done, I'd feel less accomplished. Definitely Because I went into and I said I said, baby, my word, I will do this tomorrow. So that's that's why I'm so heavy on that. I'll feel really good that we had really powerful episodes. I feel like you and I had some really Powerful business meetings earlier. I caught up on sleep. I got some extra sleep today. I didn't go to the gym, I took the day off from the gym.

Alan Lazaros:

I Feel good.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, I feel like it was a very Positive, productive day and we got a lot accomplished. I learned a lot. No, it's a. It was a very productive day, probably the most productive day of the week I have In this bucket now. I didn't talk to another human being other than you and Taren all day, which is great. I love that. I'm a big fan of that. So, yeah, it's different. It's very productive in a different way, and we got almost everything we had accomplished done today. So, yeah, I don't know, maybe I'm just maybe I let myself off easier.

Kevin Palmieri:

I don't know.

Alan Lazaros:

I don't think that's a bad thing. I think that it's important because I've been on the end where I Felt so low Because I'm losing and everything, and that can be very detrimental to my self-esteem, yeah, and I've been really low at times with that, and I think that there's there's something to break through here on, which is I don't think it's bad that you feel accomplished. I think that's important and I actually think that that can be really productive for you and it's like okay, well, if that's the case, then why don't you also want to feel accomplished? I don't not want to feel accomplished. I think that I have different standards and I'm this what I'll share and I hopefully the listeners take something from this.

Alan Lazaros:

Emilia is the first person that that I've met who who feels less accomplished than I do. We can have like a rock star Sunday where we accomplish an insane amount and she'll still feel Not. It's not like she's self-deprecating, it's not like she's beating herself up. It's more just kind of like okay, cool, awesome, she just has higher standards than I do is the best way that I can describe it. And so, at the end of the day, it all comes down to how much you believe you should quote unquote be accomplishing in a day, and you're either Over-expecting or under-expecting at all times. So, kev, you went in today with a certain expectation. Maybe you expected us to get five done. We got six, so you are pleasantly surprised. That's great. I go in expecting higher of myself, and so I'm let down more often. I Think that both can be detrimental. If you're too far on the extremes, hmm, I you Do thoughts.

Kevin Palmieri:

One a Lot of the standards we have are your standards, more than I anyway, because you're you're the one who's charting the past. So I think a lot of times I'm beyond what I Would have been anyway. Yeah, I was doing this by myself. I wouldn't be doing seven episodes.

Alan Lazaros:

Definitely not no. God, no, no way. So this is beyond in Many ways what you believed would be that's a part of it.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, the other part of it is I know we could have got seven done if we did things a little bit differently. So it's not the end of the world. It's not like we were not capable of it. Things just didn't Happen the way they needed to. To get seven done, yeah, not that we're not capable. So I think that's part of it too Is like yeah, it's just, we spent a lot of time master mining before I Was late.

Alan Lazaros:

You're 70 minutes late again, but I also factor that in, because, yeah, it's not a hard. No, no, I can be on time to meetings when I need to be.

Kevin Palmieri:

It's and the 17 minutes is not gonna make or break because we're gonna Again all that's. That's all. It's all circumstance stuff. But yeah, in my mind it's like if we really wanted to get seven done, we would. That's, how do we if we had to?

Alan Lazaros:

can I ask you, this is not a me versus Kevin thing. I don't want it to come off that way. I want to try to Extract some value from Kevin's brain for a second here.

Kevin Palmieri:

Good luck I know that you.

Alan Lazaros:

I Would say that most people think the way I operate is probably not optimal for my self-esteem. I Want you to unpack for our listeners the benefits of the way you do it versus me, because I don't think my way is better. I don't. I think my way is better for me. Hmm and I actually have come to realize it would be worse For you. Do you know me?

Kevin Palmieri:

when you say the way, the way, what do you? Can you just define the way? It's not like I'm, yeah, it's not. I want to define your way.

Alan Lazaros:

Yeah, it's not like I'm unfulfilled. I'm going to be fulfilled with what we did today. I'm going to be grateful that we did a good job. It's it's not like I'm wildly disappointed and I think I'm a massive failure. It's it's it's more kind of like I'll be a little less satisfied than Kevin tonight. I'm not going to, you know, I don't go to bed like, oh, I crushed today. Do you know what I mean?

Kevin Palmieri:

Will you be frustrated, you kind?

Alan Lazaros:

of will.

Kevin Palmieri:

I don't think about it. When I'm done recording, I'm done, I don't. I'm not going to think about it really yeah, for me that never shuts off. I can turn it off.

Alan Lazaros:

Okay, I can turn it off, but I also think that, because I'm never shutting it off, I do think there's benefits to I would agree to that.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, so I would love your take on this.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, your level of the level of accomplishment, the level of feedback you give yourself, the level of disappointment or excitement, I think is directly connected to the level of belief and the level of awareness and the level of standards. Your belief in yourself and what you're capable of is definitely higher than me. Your awareness of what you're capable of is definitely higher than me, for sure, and your standards in the way you approach things is definitely higher than me. It makes sense. So I'm always probably closer to my own standards than you are.

Alan Lazaros:

To mine. Yeah, yeah, which, which I think is the lesson I'm grateful. If you are lower than your own standards, you're going to be frustrated. If you're past your own standards, you're going to feel amazing. That's okay. You can either lower the standard or perform better, and I think that there are times when you should be doing both, and I think that's an episode in and of itself. But the higher your goals are, the higher you believe in yourself, the higher your goals will be.

Alan Lazaros:

The higher your goals are, the higher the standards you'll have to set, and the higher the standards you set, the more frustrating it will be behind the scenes, and not in a bad way. It's to the episode we just did. That frustration can be turned into innovation, because if Kevin goes to bed tonight happy as a pig in poop and I'm sitting there innovating, figuring out how to make sure I'm we get all seven done every Monday, we're going to be better for it, and that's not the case, by the way, when it comes to the podcast, kevin actually has higher standards. You have higher standards than I do for audio quality. That's why you're the one saying can you back up from the mic? And it's not till later that I realized when I'm listening oh okay, so my mouth noises and nose whistle are really, are really affecting the show. But I also your standards are higher in certain things, and so you get frustrated more in those things, and I think that there's a lesson in that for all of us.

Alan Lazaros:

What are your standards, and are you exceeding them or not? Because I had to say Emilia, sweetheart, I don't want to feel like a failure every Sunday. Sunday is the one day that I really want to R&R and I would like you to please lower your standards, at least for me. You don't have to lower them for you, but lower them for us.

Alan Lazaros:

Let's not, let's not try to conquer the world every Sunday. Let's let's do nine things well and let's move forward. And I think there's an optimal stopping problem. It's Goldilocks, you know. It's either too hot or too cold, or it's too big or too small. And I do believe that leaders hold higher standards and I think it can be really hard to be in their presence and you don't want them to lower their standards. I don't want Emilia to get worse because of me, but I also don't want to feel bad when I take a little extra time on a Sunday, and so hopefully that can be a vulnerable conversation for anyone listening with with themselves, or with their partner, or with their friends, or with their business partners or whatever.

Kevin Palmieri:

It's very hard because, to your point, it's very personal. It depends, because you can always. Maybe you're the person who, no matter how you could get everything done and more, and you're not satisfied. I don't know, is that optimal? I don't know. That's up to you. Maybe you're on the other end where you're so good at convincing yourself well, I didn't do anything today, but I do feel accomplished. I don't know if that's serving you either it's not that side's dangerous, yeah yeah, well, I think both sides are dangerous.

Kevin Palmieri:

Yeah, that's true, right, both sides are dangerous, yeah. But I don't know which one is more dangerous.

Alan Lazaros:

That would be a very interesting conversation because I would love to do an episode on that. Yeah, yeah.

Kevin Palmieri:

But that's why these episodes are so challenging. Because, yeah, Alan and I are different. I think we're on opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to this, but it doesn't mean my way is right, it doesn't mean Alan's way is right. It means what's right for you and what are you trending towards? How are you? Are you trending towards being okay with doing less but more meaningful stuff? Are you okay? Or are you on the other end, where you're figuring out how to do meaningful stuff in the first place? Really, it's a very personal thing. All of these drive to five things are where you could be on either end. You could be close to the middle. This is where self-awareness is an extra, extra superpower.

Alan Lazaros:

And it all depends on your goals. But the last thing I promise Kev we talked about how, for a whole afternoon, kevin did a front flip into the snow drinking a protein shake on the last episode and back then, if he was satisfied after that day, we'd be in some serious trouble. But that's only predicated on the goals that we have for next level university and for the impact we wanna have. And so it all depends. And if anyone wants help on this this is my favorite subject is productivity, personal development, professional development I love this stuff so much. So if anyone wants help with figuring out because you're one of the most productive people I've ever met, genuinely but I also know that you are capable of more, but you don't necessarily want what comes with that, which is more responsibility.

Kevin Palmieri:

And.

Alan Lazaros:

I worked a 12 hour day yesterday, on a Sunday, and I know that you don't wanna do that every Sunday, and that's okay. You don't have to wanna do that every Sunday. I actually do wanna do that, and so it all depends on your goals, it depends on your uniqueness, it depends on a lot of things. We'll do an episode at some point. Be good.

Kevin Palmieri:

For sure. If you are listening and you are looking for help with productivity right now, I think as of today, I track 23 habits. All of those habits were created by Alan. The system with which I track them was created by Alan and he has helped me get to the point where I'm capable of and figuring out what to shift and all of that happy jazz. If you're looking for help with productivity, alan is your guy.

Kevin Palmieri:

So if you are looking to book that free 30 minute call again, it's free. It's free 30 minutes. There's no strings attached. It's not a sales call. You can come and say, hey, I've been struggling to get X amount done. I wanna get more done. What would you suggest? I'm sure Alan will have a framework or a triad for you because he loves his pyramids and his triangles. So if you have been interested in that, if you've been afraid, whatever it is, I am the best testimonial humanly possible for how Alan can help you. And it's free. I've paid with dealing with him behind the scenes for the last six years. So I mean, I haven't paid money, but I've paid with blood, sweat and tears. You will not have to do that. His link will be in the show notes.

Alan Lazaros:

And Kev at the beginning. I'll never forget it. He came to me he said brother, I need to make some more money, I need to get some clients. This is back before we were combined in our finances and he tracked five habits. So if 23 habits seems insane and intimidating, it's supposed to. It's supposed to.

Alan Lazaros:

No one starts at 23. I don't recommend that for anybody. So if you're scared or intimidated by any of this, it's not like that. We're gonna start you off small. If you've never lifted weights before, I'm not gonna have you squatting 500 pounds. So I hope that you booked the call and I look forward to meeting you. If you wanna dive deeper into productivity, into clarity, consistency, commitment, confidence some of the fundamentals that got us to where we are we have a free course on the website. The link will be in the show notes and it's a deeper dive than the podcast because there's a worksheet and it's more of a workshop type of thing. An online course is just a little bit of a deeper dive into the fundamentals and you're gonna self reflect and you're gonna dig a little bit deeper into yourself than maybe on the podcast.

Kevin Palmieri:

Tomorrow for episode number 1,443, happy Tuesday tomorrow. Six things that will set you apart from 99% of people. If you track habits and you are doing check-ins with your partner or gratitudes for yourself, you are probably making more progress than you actually realize. So we're gonna go through six things that you can do tomorrow or, yeah, tomorrow, because the episode drops tomorrow. That is gonna set you apart from most people. Again, was it in this episode or the previous episode, the biggest difference between who you are today and who you want to be eventually is your habits. If you can do these six habits, you will be a different version of you in the future. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you that NLU. We learn of fans. We have family. We'll talk to you all tomorrow. Stay productive next time on Nation.

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Alan Lazaros

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Kevin Palmieri

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