386: Top Lessons I’ve Learned From Screwing Up Goal Setting For A Decade

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:00

Every single year, Alyssa and I, sit down to set our goals for the year. It's something that I've grown to look forward to every year. It's the time where we're being intentional about what our next year is going to look like. Usually we sit down sometime in November and take a first pass at it and decide what we want to do more of, what we want to do less of in our life. This year, we decided to do something different. We decided we'd let you in on part of the conversation, specifically, the parts about what went well, and what we want to do differently. On that note, here's the conversation with me and Alyssa.

Introduction 0:39

This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change, keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:03

So I appreciate you yet again, and coming on and being willing to have this conversation while we record it in front of an audience, not a live audience, but an audience nonetheless. And especially about something that is personal and integral part of our relationship. And I know that you and I, and just a little bit here, we're gonna get to do a debrief from 2020, about what's working and what we could do better on. And before we do that, though, I'm wondering if you could share a bit about what you remember about how we started setting goals in the first place. Because, to be blatantly transparent, we have not always done this well. Is that fair?

Alyssa Barlow 01:51

Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:52

Okay, what do you remember from how we started out setting goals?

Alyssa Barlow 01:59

I think, way back when, seems like a long time ago.

Scott Anthony Barlow 02:03

Forever ago.

Alyssa Barlow 02:05

When we started doing this, I think that we started doing it out of necessity, maybe a little bit of fear as well. Fear of the unknown of what was coming or what could come, if we didn't start making some plans and some goals. I think there are still some elements of that, that I feel, especially as the years go by, and our kids start to get older, which happens, as everyone said, rather quickly. Fear can be a powerful motivator in some ways. Yeah. Right. So, yeah, I think that that's, I think it started out of those types of things. And then once we got into it, we realized rather than the fear side of it, it was empowering. Yeah. And when we started that way, back when I think the major fear driver for us was all about finances, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Anthony Barlow 03:01

Is that fair to say? And that really was where our goal setting abilities, habits, practices, everything came out of that because we were, oh, my goodness, it feels... it really does feel like so long ago, has been quite a few years ago, I guess, approaching two decades now. Yeah, getting close to that, certainly over 15 years, where we were in a ton of debt. We had just purchased the house before everything went south on, in 2008. And we had a situation where like finances were not a fun topic for either of us. I remember, well, let's see, I remember quite a few fights. And shall we say, heated conversations. And what specifically for you, was it the fear of?

Alyssa Barlow 04:05

I think, fear of not knowing what would come next or could come next, not knowing when the money was coming in, or where it was going to really or if we had enough money to go out to the debts that we knew existed. And looking ahead at having children, because at that point, we didn't have children yet. But looking ahead at that, you know, how are we going to afford children? Because all you hear from everyone is how expensive they are...

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:38

They're so expensive.

Alyssa Barlow 04:40

And knowing that was something that both of us wanted, but not knowing how we could afford it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:48

Yeah. People also say things like, there's so much free advice out there, isn't there like children are so expensive, you got to prepare for it. And then, on the other hand, like children are silver rewarding like, you're never going to be like, it's all the conflicting advice, right? So I definitely was right there too. And then I think that's what drove it for both of us initially to really get involved in how do we set goals around creating a better life for ourselves. And it started out with finances. And it's progressed in many other areas of life too. And certainly now we integrate our work and our life. And just look at it pretty holistically as it relates to goals. However, many years later, we've now turned this into processes that we use on a regular basis. So that we can regularly achieve our goals. But we've come a really long way, back from that point in time. And the one of the funny things that, well, I say funny, but sometimes really horrific things in many different ways, is that when you're trying to set goals as a partner, or trying to set goals with partners, it's like a whole other skill set sometimes. It's not, well, you can do a great job of setting goals by yourself and achieving goals by yourself. But there's a whole other dynamic and element and set of skills that has to come into play, and a whole other set of challenges to when you're trying to do this with somebody that matters to you. And so I'm curious, what's something that you can think of that I did not do particularly well or have not over the years done particularly well, as a relates to setting goals. We've talked in the past about how, I'm the why person, and you're the how person, and I have a tendency to get really big ideas, especially as it relates to goals. And not always do a great job with making it easy for you to come on board. But so what's a time or a situation or an instance, what something that I haven't done particularly well?

Alyssa Barlow 07:04

I think for me, and part of it is me, as always, when you're working with somebody else, part of it is a personal struggle, and part of it is how somebody else approaches it or you internalize it. So like you said, like you're a big thinker. And I think a bit more linearly, I want to know, all the steps along the way, rather than just the end goal. And so I think that's something that over, you know, the last 15 or so years setting goals we've gotten better at, but I think it's still a challenge for both of us. Meet somewhere in the middle on the big end goal versus the small steps. Are always what's going to happen. Right. And you know, particularly when you think of finances, you like to think big in the future with really big numbers. And I tend to look at what the numbers currently are and what we could achieve with current numbers, rather than big end goal numbers or increasing numbers. And I tend to have, I don't know, fear is the right word. But I'm a bit self competitive. And so I don't like to set goals that I don't think are achievable, because then it turns into a negative thing instead of a positive thing, where you like to set goals, where you have to push yourself to get to them, so you can push yourself forward. So again, there's a balance there when you're trying to do that with somebody else.

Scott Anthony Barlow 08:34

I think something that I have appreciated quite a bit about you over the years, is that, that "how" element, even though sometimes it's been driven by fear, I know and we just talked about that. But I think the majority of it really is driven from your strengths. And having you on board, to balance out my crazy pie in the sky, like we can do absolutely anything. It helps bring it into a way and bring it down to earth enough to where we can actually figure out a way to achieve it. And you know, I was thinking about it this morning, too. I know, we're going to have a conversation here shortly about like, what's gone well this last year and how we've achieved our goals or haven't achieved our goals and what we could do better this upcoming year. But I think something that I've really appreciated about you is that having that balance with how you look at it, and having you always ask those questions about, okay, all right. And you've done a great job of learning to be patient with me over the years and say, "Okay, all right. How are we going to do that? What would you... what does that look like?" and asking those types of questions, that's something that's been, even though I haven't always liked it over the years, it's something that's been really helpful because, you know, as I look back, I was thinking about this and I actually, you know, I pulled out this, the sheet, you can hear the paper rattling around, you know, the sheet of paper that we wrote. And usually we'll put it on digital paper too on a Google doc or something else along those lines. But, you know, the actual sheet of paper that we wrote these last year's goals on. And then I was thinking about the past few years too, and we're not achieving every goal. But we're achieving the vast majority of them, almost all of them. Which is, it seems pretty crazy to me. That's pretty fun. And also interesting. So I don't think honestly, without you asking those questions, like, "okay, how could this look? Or what would that look like? Or, you know, how could this be possible? Or, I don't understand that. Tell me like how that could work?" I don't think that would have happened, quite honestly.

Alyssa Barlow 10:52

And I think too part of it is specifics. We know within our own life and within the business and anything else. That, if you just make general blanket goals, or like people say they have new year's resolutions or whatever, they're really generic. And if you stick with that broad, generic part, then you're pretty unlikely to achieve them, you have to be much more specific with what you are trying to accomplish in order to actually get there.

Scott Anthony Barlow 11:26

Yeah, I feel like that's a lesson that we keep learning over and over again, in many different ways, like we've had conversations, especially recently in the business, our team has, everyone on our team has been pushing each other to get more specific, which is really cool to see. Because we all know that, that helps. That level of, high level of specificity creates a different level of clarity, which then makes it easier to act upon whatever it is that we're trying to accomplish, whether it's a individual task, or whether it's something that's larger. But that, to your point, really, I think has contributed to what's worked over the years, I didn't even have that as a what's worked, and maybe we should shift our conversation into the, you know, what's worked and what hasn't worked portion here. But that's something that you're making me think of too, that we have done pretty well on. But I also wonder, what's the next level of that look like?

Alyssa Barlow 12:26

Right.

Scott Anthony Barlow 12:26

And how much more specific can we get? This is a conversation that I'm, I've been looking forward to, for a while, I love these types of conversations. But what is on your list?

Alyssa Barlow 12:38

Trying to remember back, it's been quite a year. But I think that there were a few goals this year that we had more visibility towards. And so I think that those are the goals that we seem to achieve easier, maybe easier is not the right word, but maybe we push harder towards them, because we have more visibility of them.

Scott Anthony Barlow 13:07

That's so funny, I have that on my list, too. I had it on the opposite way more towards the goals that we struggled to achieve. Because we had lack of visibility. So I can come back and talk about that site here. But tell me more about why you think the, like what made it visible, which ,you know, what are, tell me more about what you're talking about in terms of what made it easier from a visibility standpoint.

Alyssa Barlow 13:33

I just think when it is, when you have easier visibility to it, then there's that continuous feedback, I guess, to keep pushing towards it. You know, much like this wasn't one of our goals this year, but has been in the past, like either weight loss or something around physical fitness. And when you can see the small steps on the small increases towards whatever your goal is, then it's much easier to keep pushing towards your final end goal. Especially if it's a big, you know, far reaching goal. And I think one of those goals for us this year in particular was having a certain amount of money and savings. And a financial goal like that it's easy to continue checking your bank account and watching the money increase in your savings account. Where other things it's not quite as easy to visually continuously see that progress towards.

Scott Anthony Barlow 14:36

That's interesting. And I totally agree. I think that, on one hand to your point, we did a great job, particularly with our financial goals. I hadn't really thought about that in that way. But I guess, especially since we have so many different ways where we're looking at the finances, it's easy for us to keep those very visible. Because we're looking at the finances of the business, we're looking at the finances for personal and, you know, we've got apps that track that. And yeah, you're right. That's really interesting. And then, you know, I think another one too, it was a goal for me where I wanted to, during this year, go vegetarian for two weeks, just to see if I like it and see if it made any kind of difference in terms of energy, see if it made any difference, like, is it something that I wanted to dive deeper into, and it was easy for me to measure that, like, super easy it was, I basically, like picked the date on the calendar, where I wanted to start. And then plus I, you know, going vegetarian for each of those 14 days or not. And that was very, very easy to see, so it absolutely happened. And interestingly enough too, like learned that I don't like being vegetarian all the time. That's not something that is really truly right for me, and plenty of vegetarian friends. But it did expose me to a whole range of vegetarian products that I actually really like.

Alyssa Barlow 16:09

True.

Scott Anthony Barlow 16:09

That was interesting, in a side note. But yeah, okay, let me show you one of mine, then. This also a little bit has to do with visibility, as well. Something that you and I have done often on, over the years, was planning meeting, a weekly planning meeting. So way back when, when we were both like terrified about finances and everything, we did a weekly budget meeting, right, and then a monthly budget meeting where we were like setting the budget for the month and, you know, Dave Ramsey style, trying to lock it into the Debt Snowball all of those things, right. And then later on, as we incorporated that into our routines, it'd be... we realized that, hey, this is an avenue for us to communicate about things that we care about that we want to accomplish. And there was a period of time where it just like totally went away. You know, this was probably like 7, 8 years ago, I want to say, something like that. And we realized that, when we were missing it, we were not communicating as well as we could. So this year, I know we had conversations in past years about, hey, we really need to make sure that that happened, I thought we did a really amazing job, keeping that time available. And if we weren't going to be able to do it, because we normally do it on Friday afternoons, if we were going to be gone that Friday or on vacation or holiday or something, then we put it earlier in the week. And even if we couldn't do it fully, like we do it in the car on the way up. And we still made that a priority. And I think that that really helped us be on the same page. Something else that was really useful too is, at some point, during last year, we decided a specific agenda that we wanted to go through and put that in the calendar appointment so that when it got to the end of the week, and some weeks, we're like tired, right? It's like one o'clock on Friday. And we're like tired. And I don't know about you, but I'm like, I do not want to think through. So it'd be able to open up the agenda and say, oh, here's what we need to talk about. That was really, truly helpful. So my number one or my first item that I think we should keep doing this coming year, is continuing to make planning a priority, weekly planning a priority making the time for it. And then maybe even revisiting that agenda and saying, "hey, what could this evolve to? And how could this even be better?" But that helped us communicate pretty well with each other, both business and personal. And I think we just had less problems and challenges, everything flowed easier in many different ways than it has in past years where we made that a huge priority.

Alyssa Barlow 18:59

Yeah, I would agree.

Scott Anthony Barlow 19:01

What else is on your list that we did really well? The order that you want to keep doing this coming year.

Alyssa Barlow 19:09

I think, every year, I guess to continue improving it. I think we're getting better about talking about it earlier. So instead of it being, oh my gosh, it's new years, and we haven't thought about what we're gonna do for the year or what we want our goals to be like, every year, it seems like we start revisiting it more frequently. And looking ahead more frequently. And so I think that's something I would like to continue doing, I'm not saying that, you know, like June we need to start planning, although that would probably benefit us to start writing in June for the next year. But, you know, like, really this year, we've been talking about it for almost a month already now. We haven't actually sat down and done any of the planning yet, but just both of us having starting to get our minds wrapped around what we're looking for next year, thinking about what worked well this year and what didn't work well this year, so that we're better prepared, rather than waiting until January 1st to be like, "Huh, geez, I wonder what happened last year? And what should we do going forward?"

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:14

Yeah.

Alyssa Barlow 20:16

Because we have done that in years before. Like, we've been getting ready to go out for New Year's Eve and been like, "Huh, we don't have any plans for the next year. I guess we should do something about that."

Scott Anthony Barlow 20:26

Yes, totally. I think you're right. And that's something that honestly has even been more fun, because it gets me excited about the new year, gives me something to look forward to. And it makes it even more enjoyable, where anything is more effective, where we are planning it in smaller steps versus trying to do it all at once. I can't remember of this last year, the year before, one of the... maybe it's three years ago, I can't remember. But one of those years was that year were like, oh, somehow November has gone by we've kind of talked about it. But we did haven't actually sat down and made it formal. And then we tried to do everything on January 1st. And that is a fun tradition for me. I love sitting down on January 1st and talking about the upcoming year, it makes it really wonderful. But it was too overwhelming to try and tackle everything. All in that four hour time period that we had allotted.

Alyssa Barlow 21:26

And I think something, I don't know where this falls in there. But with you being a really big thinker, and me having to know the steps along the way, sometimes I feel bombarded with your, when like we just sort of like oh, it's January 1st, let's talk about our goals. And you have all these big, huge goals. And I'm like, wait a second...

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:47

Where did this come from?

Alyssa Barlow 21:48

I didn't think about any of that stuff, or I'm not prepared to think about how we're going to achieve that.

Scott Anthony Barlow 21:54

Yeah, that makes sense.

Alyssa Barlow 21:55

So for me having the preparation leading up to it, it also gives me time to warm up, I guess, if you want to some of those big goals, or to be able to process through some things myself. Not do dream killing. Right. Yes.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:11

Yeah, we're not gonna do that this year., just to be clear, like, yeah. Okay, that totally makes sense. So that's interesting, you know, I hadn't really connected that. So by us doing it in smaller chunks, then that actually helps with the overall process of bringing each other on board to what we really want in the upcoming year.

Alyssa Barlow 22:37

Right.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:38

Okay. All right.

Alyssa Barlow 22:39

Cuz I think a big part of setting goals with somebody else is one, there's an accountability partner there for your personal goals. But two, I mean, I could just say that I agree with the goals that you have set, but not really buy into it, and then it's much less likely that we're going to actually achieve them.

Scott Anthony Barlow 22:58

No, because I mean, same thing too like, if that's the case, then I'm not going to be as supportive to you throughout the year, and vice versa. Yeah, that totally makes sense. Okay. All right. Here's my, whoa, almost dropped my notepad of other things to keep doing here. Well, I guess this is a little bit the same type of thing I mentioned earlier, I really look forward to that meeting on January 1st, to finalize our goals and talk about what's important and decide what's most important for that year. I really like that time as a finalization point. So that actually, a little bit is about the same type of thing as what you brought up. So I want to keep doing that. But I like that being the finalization time versus the let's dump everything our time. Anything else that you have, that you want to keep doing this coming year that we don't want to forget or if that have worked well in the past and we don't want to lose sight of?

Alyssa Barlow 24:01

I mean, I think we've kind of alluded to it, but the, I guess we haven't specifically spoken to what helps me and we learned this very early on in goal setting, is having small chunks of achievement. And it goes back to the visibility and you know, the how pieces, but being able to see those small chunks achieved, then it helps me to keep going forward. So almost setting goals within our goals, which we generally do this also, I think could be something we go back to, you know, working towards being better. We do revisit them, but we don't necessarily revisit them on a schedule or revisit our entire goal list at one time. And so having those small chunks built in there where it's easy like our planning like not to forget, oh, hey, it's time to revisit our goals or it's the end of the Quarter, or the end of the month, because then it makes it easier to keep going forward, I feel like.

Scott Anthony Barlow 25:05

So that's interesting. I think one of the things that we could do then is integrate that into our planning meeting or weekly planning. And just make that a part portion of the agenda. That would be super easy, because it's already built into our schedule, we're already doing it. We already feel it's important. And then we can just make that a, this is something we do every week. Okay, let's check in how are we doing on this goal? How are we doing on this goal? Okay. What do we need to adjust in order to get on track.

Alyssa Barlow 25:36

And that's another I mean, it kind of goes without saying thing, like, if we don't put it on the calendar, then oftentimes, it doesn't happen, because we think about it. And then 80 million other things happen with the kids or the business or whatever else, and then we forget about it, and it's not on the calendar, so it takes it a while to come back to the front of our mind. One thing in particular, we had talked about, I don't remember if it was our goal this year or not, but we did it this year. So we put time on the calendar to take the kids to the bank every month, so that they could deposit their money. And if that wasn't on the calendar, like the end of the month goes by and we're like, "oh, huh, I guess we never took the kids to the bank to put their money in the bank." And so I think like you're saying, like adding that either to our planning agenda, or just attaching it to one of our planning appointments once a month, like going to the bank with the kids or whatever. So we have that visibility on the calendar every time.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:33

Yeah. And for context for, as you're listening to this, you know, when we say on the calendar, there's a whole bunch of things that that means to us. So that means that there's an agenda inside the appointment, that means that the any documents that we need are linked up inside the appointment, so that it's easy, all we have to do is click on the appointment and everything that we need is right there. Because otherwise, if it's difficult, then not going to do it. Just it's too... life is already too difficult to make out there things difficult. That I think is something that, I didn't mention that earlier, by the way. But that's definitely something that worked well for that planning meeting to allow it to continue to happen. I don't know if you remember, oh, my goodness, like three years ago, I remember us getting really irritated with each other, sitting in a cafe, in downtown Moses Lake, where we were trying to decide what to talk about and what was more important, and neither one of us wanted to budge on, which was the most important thing. And neither one of us wanted to make the decision. So having made that in advance, it makes the whole entire process a whole lot easier. I made that decision in advance and just having that be the agenda. You know, the last thing, you mentioned the small chunks of achievement. So the last thing I had is there are some things that are working really well for us to meet the vast majority of our goals. And I think there's a lot of things in there. But I think that the ones where we're consistently meeting are those where we're taking the time to break it down and revisit it more frequently. So we're doing a good job of that with some of the goals, we're not doing a good job of that with all the goals. But that is something that is working, we see it working, we see it when we're putting in time and action towards breaking it down, that is working. And it's allowing us to meet almost all the goals, which is cool, which is awesome. So I think we should keep doing that. What about the flip side? What for you, do you want to see happen differently? We've already talked a little bit about...

Alyssa Barlow 28:46

We talked a lot of it already? Because it come and goes.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:49

Yeah.

Alyssa Barlow 28:49

Together.

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:50

Absolutely.

Alyssa Barlow 28:51

I think for me, the biggest thing that I would like us to do differently as what we just talked about having visibility to all of the goals more frequently. And doing things like putting specific things on the calendar, where, you know, we're looking at those small achievement chunks or looking at what needs to be adjusted like, "Hey, we're not even close to meeting this goal. Like what does it need to be more specific? Is it not really a goal of ours anymore? How can we make this happen? Or do we just need to get rid of it and focus on a different goal that all of a sudden became a higher priority?" Or, you know, life changes. I mean, our goals change throughout the year. And there have been years where we got to the end of the year and like, yeah, why was that even a goal? Like that was not as important as so many other things. Well here's a great example. COVID, right. Yeah, for sure.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:42

As we were spending a lot more time at home and a lot less time traveling, which we both enjoy immensely traveling like we just got back from San Diego, a few days ago for our anniversary, but a lot of that went away.

Alyssa Barlow 29:56

Yeah, for sure.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:57

And then instead of , because we had down and putting a certain amount of money to plan for trips this year, and instead, we ended up diverting that, and making part of that house remodel, a higher goal and a higher priority. And we did that part of the way through the year. And we talked about that extensively. And we even, we did it. I think we did actually, by the way, a great job of breaking each of those pieces down too. I hadn't thought about that. But, you know, we spent a lot of time and effort breaking down the individual pieces and planning and figuring out how we were going to achieve that. And, no surprise, guess what happened? So the visibility's, the thing that I had on my number one too. A couple ways, I think we could do that one, we have the vision board. And it's been really fun to see how many items have come off of that vision board, as we have achieved them, accomplish them, done them, experienced them, whatever is appropriate for which one, you know, ranging from, we put a music room in our house, that's something we've talked about for many years, you know, we have like a piano and a son's drum set, and our other son's guitars and everything music related in that room, and a trip to Disneyland and other things like that, too. But I think we could leverage that board in a different way, and relate it to some of this year's goals.

Alyssa Barlow 31:28

Yeah, for sure.

Scott Anthony Barlow 31:29

Because we've got a lot of things on there that we really want to do over our lifetime. But I think it would be fun to revisit that for some of our goals for this year, too. And you can add to that, or even just like literally printing a list, and like tacking it to the bottom of the board. That would be an easy solution too, so that we can have more visibility more often. And then, of course, what we talked about earlier to where we just embed that into the agenda of our planning meeting, which is already... that's already built into our schedule.

Alyssa Barlow 32:02

Right.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:03

Yeah. Okay, here's something... this might fly in the face of everything else that we've talked about already, or that I might have said, but we are pretty consistently hitting or getting close to almost all of our goals each year for many years at this point. So the question that that makes me have is, should we be shooting higher? And I don't know the answer to that. But that's something I want to explore this year, as we're setting goals this year, like, are we shooting high enough? Because we're pretty consistently doing what we set out to do. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer than we anticipated, we're pretty much accomplishing everything that we are intending on accomplishing, in one way or another. So maybe we're not setting the bar high enough, resisting the urge to crack a, last name of bar low joke here. So I don't know the answer to that. But I think that that's something that we should explore. Because it's almost working too well, in one way or another, which is potentially an indicator to me that the bar might need to be higher.

Alyssa Barlow 33:24

Yeah. Or maybe we need to, maybe that in combination with looking at the types of goals we're setting or...

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:34

True.

Alyssa Barlow 33:35

Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:36

Here's the other thing that was on my list is, for example, we have a goal that I had personally put for myself this year, that I want to, never work on Sundays. And although I worked less on Sunday than I ever have, I think probably ever before in my entire lifetime, this year, still allowing some work to creep into Sundays. And it's hard because so much of our life is intertwined to work and all the other areas of our life are very, very, very intertwined. But also, I want to intentionally make time and space for you and our kids and some of the types of other activities that just don't have anything to do with work. And I want Sunday to be a day for that. And I think so that the piece that I wrote down, that I want to change is drawing lines, drawing hard lines has been really, really difficult, but very effective in places where we have done it. And that's an example of an area where I have not drawn the hard line. There was a time, I can't remember when it was, well, probably right as COVID was happening, right as the beginning stages of that back in March, were like, you know what, we've got all these projects, we have to massively shift. And we have to plan. And I think that's an example of a time where at work crept into into Sunday. Would it have been drastically different if it said, "Nope, just not gonna happen on Sunday?" I suspect not. So I think doing an even better job at drawing hard lines. Because when we have done that, when I've personally done that, it's worked very, very well. But I haven't done it with all the goals. So that was that was mine. Okay, one other question. We asked this in other places, too. But I thought it might be fun to ask this here in this conversation, if we could do anything different, this next year, whether it says is relating to goal setting, goal achieving or just life in general, you know, what's one thing that we could do that would make you happier? And I'll answer the same thing.

Alyssa Barlow 36:12

I think through this whole conversation, what keeps popping into my mind, kind of like what you were just talking about, like drawing those hard lines. I think for this next year, I would like to spend more purposeful time as a family and with our kids. And I mean, we work I feel like we work hard to spend purposeful time as a family and with kids. But I guess more frequently and with more, I don't know, spontaneity is maybe not the right word. But we do so many things that are planned and scheduled, which is great, because otherwise, like we said, time goes by, and we don't realize we haven't done it. But then also working towards, you know, like drawing that hard line on Sundays and making a purposeful day as a family even without a specific event planned.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:04

So that spontaneity can happen.

Alyssa Barlow 37:06

Right.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:07

Yeah. We are so planned. Sometimes we do an amazing job of planning, almost all the time. And consequently, I think sometimes we do a poor job of being spontaneous.

Alyssa Barlow 37:24

Yeah. Or just making it easier. Like just the other day we were talking about, you know, we went on vacation without the kids. And it was fantastic. It was great. But we could also do things like that with the kids that are easy. It doesn't have to be a big, elaborate scheme or plan or vacation. It could just be driving somewhere for a couple days during the week and working. So just making it easier on ourselves, I guess.

Scott Anthony Barlow 37:53

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm down for that. I think the other the other thing that I had, well, I totally agree with everything that you had said about for the family. I think that the thing that, coming back from San Diego and being able to spend time with you separately, that has made me feel so much more connected to you, when we spend time with the kids that it has, how shall I say it, it's allowed me to have more fun with the kids as well. I don't feel like there's a maximum amount to where I can like top out at feeling connected to you. So every single amount of time and investment to feel more connected to you has always allowed me to have more fun everyplace else. More fun at work, more fun with the kids, certainly more fun with you too. But it's something that I just continuously realize how important it is. And I think something that wasn't really a priority for me this last year, but I really want to make it a priority going into this year, is been able to do a better job of creating that connection. So you know, I think part of that might just be making date night a priority. And saying, look, we need to get two hours away a week or something like that, just with the intentional or purposeful ability to become more connected and to get away from the kids and whether that's date night or something else, I haven't figured out that part. I think that that's just as important as everything else that we've talked about. And I think I have in this last year undervalued it and I think part of it was because you know we were spending like without the kids going to school and other homeschool and with covid and everything else, then we're spending so much time together like more than we ever have before. But it's not the same type of time.

Alyssa Barlow 39:58

Yeah, no.

Scott Anthony Barlow 39:59

At all. So I think that's something that would make me happier, not just for our relationship, but for everything. All the way around.

Alyssa Barlow 40:10

And I think it goes to that same thing, like we need to make it easy, in order to...

Scott Anthony Barlow 40:15

Yeah, we're gonna make it easy.

Alyssa Barlow 40:16

Make it achievable.

Scott Anthony Barlow 40:17

Oh, I got ideas on that. Okay, so this is gonna sound totally nerdy, but I almost want to, like embed a set of questions into the appointment, the sound nerdy, yeah. For everybody listening, you're already used to this, but that we can just like pull up. And it's easy, it's available. It's like, I don't know, on our phone, or we just like pull out a list of questions or something, that way we have like, conversation starter topics or something. That way, if we're like coming off a frustrating day or something else, it's easy to like reset and have something to talk about that is outside the normal. That is new. That is spontaneous. And even though it's not technically spontaneous, feels spontaneous. That's just sort of an idea off the top of my head. But I think those are the types of things if we gave a little bit of thought too for the goals like that could last us all year long, right. And I've already just realized, like how important that is to me to get to spend those types of times with you and this last year, I don't think I did that much about it. So, more of that, that would make me happier.

Alyssa Barlow 40:34

Cool.

Scott Anthony Barlow 40:38

Cool.

Alyssa Barlow 40:50

That's good.

Scott Anthony Barlow 41:29

Thank you very, very much for, one, coming on the podcast. So here's a quick story. Every time we've ever had a list on the podcast, Josh and I have a conversation behind the scenes. Josh is our podcast manager and content manager. And he's the guy who makes all the podcasts sound the way they do and makes magic happen on the back end. And he's always like, "do you think Alyssa would be up for doing a podcast?" Like, "you should ask her, Josh." So he asked, you said "yes."

Alyssa Barlow 42:06

I did.

Scott Anthony Barlow 42:07

On this one. So thank you seriously, for one, being willing to have a kind of personal conversation with everybody listening to this. And thank you for listening, as well. Hopefully, this gave you some insights into how the types of things the nitty gritty like real life things that we do for our planning, in order to make everything else work. And I hope it was helpful, but thank you for being willing to share and thank you for sharing. Yeah. Any advice, parting advice that you want to give people who are just really getting into planning with a partner or spouse?

Alyssa Barlow 42:43

I don't know if I have any profound thoughts towards it. But...

Scott Anthony Barlow 42:47

Oh, you got. This is usually where she drops profound thoughts after this, by the way, that's usually the...

Alyssa Barlow 42:53

I guess, just to, if you're really just getting started to know that it's not a perfect process, and it's not easy, but it is worth it.

Scott Anthony Barlow 43:05

It is. I would say it's one of the hardest things that we've done.

Alyssa Barlow 43:08

For sure.

Scott Anthony Barlow 43:09

Getting good at this. And I still don't... I still feel like her amazing at it, far from perfect, by all means. I feel like it is I mean, literally every year it's improvement process. And it's hard. It's hard to make the time to have conversations like this, it's hard to, freakin hard to have to make it a priority to do things like planning throughout the week, like all that is super difficult, quite honestly. But I appreciate that. And I would encourage you to take the time to talk about goals, talk about these types of things with your partner, it's not easy, not even a little bit, it is worthwhile to your point. And it's helped us grow closer together, the process that we've developed over the years, we have, well actually, we've actually written this down, by the way, too. Funny story, we took this process, and we actually turned it into a course called "Aspire and Thrive." And it's something that you can do yourself, or you can do it with a partner. But this process, we recorded it for ourselves to get better and better at it. And it's completely changed our lives. So I now mentioned that we have literally turned this into a course. However, when we created it, we decided not to make it a priority, so you can't even find it on the website. Now we've decided to in our business focus on different pieces of how we help people with their careers and lives. But tell you what, if you're interested in it, though, and you're interested in getting access to it, the only way that you can get to it, the only way that you can purchase it is if we send you a actual back end link to be able to get to it because we pulled it off the website a while back. So if that's something you're interested in, and I would highly recommend it. It's literally everything that we use on a year by year basis. Email me, drop me an email personally, scott@happentoyourcareer.com put "Goals 2021" in the subject line. And that's all you have to do, you can just pause this, open your email now. And either me or my team will make sure that you get a direct link to be able to enroll and purchase and, as a bonus too, and we'll also make sure that if you're doing that, that we get you access for someone to gift for someone else, I should say that you can gift to either your partner or you can gift it to somebody else who needs it. So that way it's a gift that keeps on giving. And just email me scott@happentoyourcareer.com put "Goals 2021" in the subject line and start getting ahead this next year, especially if you have a partner and you want to set and achieve goals together. It will absolutely totally change your life. It's totally worth it. And you'll be surprised at what you can achieve together.