Synergy is the name of the game when it comes to intentional living. After people do all the mentoring questions, the next best step is to create your personal master list. YOUR list. Of all the things in life that you said were important to you. All the stuff that actually mattered. I have people take their master list and compare it to their current budget and schedule. This alone can be eye-opening. (If you are on my email list, you can get access to my resource library that has everything you need to get started for free!)
But synergy is where the fun really starts. You find ways to pull in seemingly unrelated areas of your life, goals and values into one or two activities that move everything forward. It creates an exponential amount of progress.
Example 1:
One of the incredible people I mentor is Audra who has started writing over at The 7800.
Here is a small sampling of the list of things she was hoping to see happen this year when we started mentoring (shared with her permission)
- Keep house more consistently tidy
- Eat healthier
- Declutter 7800 things
- Create a few sources of extra income
- Test living in less space
- Plan out more, bigger travel
- Test out Airbnb
- Write/create more
Her starting goal list was probably close to 300 things. I think we pared it down to 100. Sometimes when we step into early retirement there is a temptation to do ALL the things. I also made sure she created a Quit List with equal gusto.
How much we care about a goal is often measured by what we are willing to quit to make the goal happen. It’s like upping your bet in a poker game, the things you give up are the poker chips you push into the center of the table.
What synergy looks like:
- She started decluttering a room that she could rent on Airbnb.
- After beginning to document the 7800 things was going to declutter, she started to write about that over the The7800.
- They were able to dedicate that space their home to Airbnb use which helped force them into making living just in the space left.
- Audra always tidied up the house before an Airbnb guest.
- She started making healthy breakfast options for the Airbnb guest and extra for her family.
- Testing Airbnb with one room gave more confidence and motivation to expand the Airbnb offer to a rental unit or their whole home to fund bigger trips and create more income in the next few years.
- Writing about the 7800 things she is decluttering will open up more opportunities for future income options.
None of these things are directly related. By having clarity on the goals she found a way to do one thing and make progress on a lot of goals.
Create More Progress with Synergy
It takes too much time and energy to make a tremendous amount of progress if we work each goal in isolation. It’s no wonder people don’t make as much progress as they are hoping. It’s too hard.
Plate spinning
Have you ever watched someone spin plates? 10 plates on sticks with frantic effort keeping them all in the air spinning. Each plate spinning in isolation. It’s tiring. And let’s be honest, you end up dropping a few plates.
Anti-Multi Tasking
Synergy is the anit muti-taking solution. It’s not trying to spin more and more plates. Running yourself ragged and dropping plates. Synergy takes the focus items from your Master List and picks 5 or 10 to really make a significant progress on. You use all the extra time, energy and money you created from your Quit List. So instead of spinning 5-10 plates, we put all those items on 3 plates.
Single-Tasking with Muli-Purpose
Do one thing. One thing that gives you progress in 5 areas. One plate spinning that moves you forward in a few different goals.
#50scoopsummer
I dubbed 2018 my year of connection. I wanted more time with people.
I’ll let you in on a little secret, just in case you haven’t heard. Having 5 kids under 10 is a little busy. Or insanely busy depending on the day.
It’s HARD to spend time with anyone that doesn’t live in my house.
But CONNECTION wasn’t my only goal for 2018. Actually, I had LOTS of them.
How to accomplish LOTS of goals and raise 5 little humans. Hum…that’s the challenge. Not more spinning plates and not more multi-tasking.
Single-tasking with Multi-Purpose.
Here are a few of my 2018 goals:
- More time with friends and family
- Better profession connections
- Get out and enjoy summer
- Exercise outside of the gym more
- Good conversations
- Create more content on YouTube
- More FUN!
Enter 1 plate. #50scoopsummer. I plan to enjoy 50 scoops of ice cream (which I LOVE) July-Sept with friends, online creators, family or interesting people. We will hang out outdoors, walk, have a great conversation, and maybe record something for video content. And just have fun.
Instead of trying to do all those things in isolation, I’m doing one thing to make progress on all those goals.
Synergy gives you more progress without overwhelming your time and energy. After you create your Master List, the next best step is to do a think through your Quit List. That will free up even more time, energy and money. Then find a few action items that will move you forward in a number of your goals.
When you join my amazing email community, I have a whole bundle of free resources to get you started. No money needed, just a little time and energy.
For Conversation: What’s your favorite multi-purpose activity?
raising 5 little ones sounds hard but rewarding. i can’t say i can relate but i respect. we started selling our accumulated stuff last fall for synergistic reasons. 1. we had too much stuff (esp, sentimental and no heirs). 2. we could use the dough as we lost an income. 3. i thought of air bnb but knew we could never do it with the clutter in our house. 4. mrs. me now had the time to do the bulk of the packing and shipping in semi-retirement. all 4 of those things improved but we haven’t rented out place yet. like many things, we don’t “need” to do it but i want the option. i hope you’re having lots of ice cream.
It takes SO much work to go through everything and especially if you are selling some of it off. We were able to rent our house out during our 10-week trip because we had gotten rid of so much stuff. That paid for half the trip! Plus we didn’t have to hire a house sitter. =) Lots of unexpected benefits. =)
I need to have a re-look at my quit list. I just got back from 2 weeks climbing in Colorado and the recovery has been hell. And I’m semi-retired!! It shouldn’t be this way. I’m not going to stop going on climbing trips so I’ll have to see how I can expand the quit list. Thanks for the reminder
I have a love/hate relationship with my Quit list. I know it’s super effective but then like a little kid I have days where I whine, “But I just want ALL of it.” I’m tempted to go into denial and try to pack more in. “Oh, what’s the harm?” But it just dilutes the things I really do want to make progress on.
I often get synergy and focus confused, mostly because in my life when I focus on what’s important the other items seem to (often) fall into place. Thanks for the reminder of continuing to find synergies and not be afraid to implement the quit list.
Glad it helped. I think of synergy like the tornado that picks everything thing around it up. It’s gathering unrelated items together to make the whole stronger. In that analogy, I suppose focus is where you put your tornado. =)
Cooking with my kiddos is one of my favorite multipurpose activity. I love to cook so it’s fun for me. It allows me to have one on one quality time with a kiddo while making memories and the kid is learning a valuable skill. My 12 year old is pretty independent in the kitchen and will often contribute to cooking meals or baking. Cooking at home also helps the budget!
At each meal we have a “dinner helper” and it’s the most coveted position in the house. They just love that one on one time and getting to do grown-up things.
Cooking is my favorite multi purpose activity. Putting some love into creating something yummy, balancing the flavors, adding little extras for more color, texture and nutrition. It’s so rewarding to be craving a certain type of meal and go into the kitchen and make exactly what I was longing for. –Even better when a loved one participates and we share that creative process and the delicious conclusion.
I love super functional hobbies or passions. That’s how I feel about gardening. I love the dirt and the plant and watering. I love being outside. I love spending time in my yard and watching it all grow. Cool bonus, it gives us yummy food!
Great post, Jillian. As a mom of 8 and now grandmother of 6 (+1 on the way), I totally relate to this and your quit list. It doesn’t scare me that kids don’t bathe everyday – nor adults for that matter.
A lot of what I’ve done has been kind of intuitive about what I needed to do and focus on in the moment (limited activities for the kids, limited toys, quitting my full time job 10 years ago).
I love the idea of a master list. Sounds like some brain-dumping is in order for me, so I create a master list, look for synergies and be even more intentional.
Thanks.
Once we get that vision really clear it becomes a tremendous filter for how we should spend our time, money and energy.