What's on Your Bookshelf?
“What’s On Your Bookshelf” is a personal and professional growth podcast exploring the intersections of passion, potential, and purpose - featuring multi-certified coach and leadership development consultant Denise R. Russo alongside Sam Powell, Zach Elliott, Tom Schweizer, Dennis LaRue, and Michelle King.
What's on Your Bookshelf?
117-The Obstacle Is The Way: Part 2-Episode 3; Follow the Process and Do your Job
We delve deep into the concept of "following the process" from Ryan Holiday's book The Obstacle Is the Way, exploring how Nick Saban's coaching philosophy offers valuable lessons for life and leadership.
• Process-oriented thinking keeps us in the present moment rather than fixating on end goals
• Creating systems provides a relaxing framework that reduces decision fatigue
• Figures like Obama, Zuckerberg and Jobs simplified their wardrobes to preserve mental energy
• Effective personal systems must be realistic and accommodate life's inevitable messiness
• Accountability partners can help maintain discipline when implementing new processes
• The formula for success is simple: hard work, honesty, and helping others
• What matters is doing the right thing in this moment, not worrying about the whole journey
Join us next week as we discuss "What's Right Is What Works" and how doing the right thing helps us transform obstacles into opportunities.
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Welcome to what's on your Bookshelf a life and leadership podcast where we live out loud the pages of the books that are on our shelves, with your host, denise Russo, and Sam Powell. Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of what's on your Bookshelf. This is a life and leadership podcast where we are living out loud the pages of the books that are on our bookshelves. The book that we're going through right now is called the Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday. My name is Denise Russo. I'm here with my friend and co-host, sam Powell, and today we're going to take some action. Looking forward to doing that with you today, sam. How are you? I'm good.
Speaker 2:I'm good, yes, definitely ready to get in the game here and talk about following the process and doing your job and doing it right. And you know I'm so excited about this Follow the process because I am a process person for sure. I'm a systems person to the max. So I am very excited to jump in here, and the first story is a sports story, so I'm like just triple in love with this section.
Speaker 1:All right. Well then, why don't you kick us off? Because I was excited for this for you as well.
Speaker 2:Awesome. So this section starts off about talking about Nick Saban. This section starts off about talking about Nick Saban, who is one of the best football, college football coaches of all time he coached at the University of Alabama. At this point he now is retired from that life and does a lot of you know, like hosting on air and that commentating and that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2:But this really talks about how the thing really responsible for his success and you're talking like years of sustained successful programs and they call it the process, right and it's about not trying to follow the way that the author phrases it here. The way Ryan Holiday says is it's not about following the prize, trying to, about following the prize trying to get to the win, it's about following the process itself and that's the way to really ensure sort of like a long, long-term, repeatable success. And anybody who's followed Nick Saban's career knows that just, it was an impressive, impressive run at the University of Alabama where his team just won year after year after year and it all has to do with the process that he had his teams follow, had his coaches follow, over and over and over again. That was able to kind of recreate that success year over year.
Speaker 1:I love the story as well. I'm from the University of Florida, so big competitors to Alabama. But watching his success over the many years is a lesson for any team in any division and really in any sport to see how a coach looks at the bigger picture but also helps the players to stay in the moment. So a process has a lot of pieces and the main takeaway I got from this, when he was talking about following the process, was that you may know what you want the end game to be. You want to win. But he also made a point to the players to say to them don't think about the end of the game. You need to stay focused on where you are right now. You need to stay in the moment because there's going to be a lot of chaos that ensues from the time that the first second clicks on the clock until the buzzer ends at the end of that game.
Speaker 1:So he says you've got a lot of difficult things to do and this process talks about that. You can get caught up in the obstacles and be paralyzed by the things that you might think are going to happen. That may or may not actually happen. But if you don't focus on that, start with the pieces of the process and just do what you need to do right now, like when you're a baby, I imagine, like you have obviously the baby at home. She's not thinking about what it's going to be like to go start running down the street. She's not even, probably even focusing exactly yet on how to crawl perfectly, but one thing at a time in her little brain she's thinking about how do I focus on just what I need right now, which is probably my mommy?
Speaker 2:Yes, it's always her mommy. Yeah, and that's it. And it says Saban's process is exclusively this, existing in the present, taking it one step at a time, not getting distracted by anything else, and I think that. And holiday goes on later to say that the process is relaxing, and I don't think that people think of processes that way. But that's exactly how I think of systems is it's this safe, soft space to sit in.
Speaker 2:It takes that decision fatigue out of life, like that's the thing that's so exhausting. Like I always love the thing where people say that the most exhausting thing in a marriage is figuring out what's out for what's for dinner every night. Right, it's that looking at each other, going what are we going to do? I don't want to decide. I don't want to decide because you're deciding at six o'clock in the evening after a long day with still more things to do and all the situation, and it's just decision fatigue. I don't want to be the one to make this call.
Speaker 2:But if you do something like setting up a system of meal planning, it's like on Tuesday we do this and on Wednesday we do this Then there's just like relaxation and kind of peace in that of oh, the decisions taken out of my hands. I just focus on the process. I focus on the thing that we've set up before and it guides me through in a way that it's like, okay, I don't have to worry about what obstacle comes up. It's like I already decided, like it was pre decided here, so I just follow along with the prescribed path and I'm going to get through it. Right, the obstacle is not going to be a distraction for me.
Speaker 1:I like what you're saying about the whole decision fatigue piece, because I remember years ago there was something like President Obama was saying that he wears the same shirt every day not the same shirt, but the same kind of shirt because it's one less decision he had to make. And then, I think Mark Zuckerberg later, from Facebook, came out and said the same thing that he just wears the same outfit because it's one less thing he has to bother himself with thinking about yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I've heard that advice too of like simplify your closet down to basic stuff that can all mix and match, because then you don't really have to decide, unless you have those couple of pieces for, like, a night out on the town or whatever.
Speaker 2:But for the most part it's like I wear. But you know, it's the same thing with Steve Jobs, right, he wore his black turtleneck every single day and didn't like, right, I was like I don't have time to deal with those decisions. So, because I'm going to focus all my energy on the decisions that really matter, right, and it's just following the process. And you know, like holiday says the process is relaxing and like I completely agree with that, which is why I'm such a huge systems person is okay, if we want to get somewhere, then let's just follow the path to get there, follow the yellow brick road, and we will land in Oz. And, yes, we might come across a scarecrow and a you know, a lion and all that stuff, but like it doesn't matter, we just deal with that and get back on the path and then, you know, move forward and that's. It's that simple when you've got some solid processes in place.
Speaker 1:I agree with you. When my kids are in middle school so you think about the transition you take as a young person. When you're between 12 and 14-ish years old, there's a lot of changes going on in your little body and I can recall that when both kids moved into middle school, the school system made a decision that they had to wear kind of like a uniform, in a way Like they had to wear this of like a uniform, in a way like they had to wear this. They could pick from three colors of these polo shirts and they had to be polo shirts. So the girls were upset, but then and they could only wear, uh, shorts, slacks or skirts and they had to be a khaki or something like that.
Speaker 1:You know, and I think the ultimate idea was that because some kids that were, let's say, didn't have the privilege of being able to afford clothing were having the stress of competing against kids who might be more financially privileged. There was also the idea that some kids, whose bodies were changing, were wearing clothing that was likely inappropriate for them to be wearing in middle school. It was just to simplify the process of getting kids there for the purpose. Their purpose was to learn, and there were parents, I can recall, that were so mad about the fact that we had to now have these quote unquote uniforms, which you could have bought literally at Goodwill or Walmart or Target or Amazon or wherever. It's not like you had to have it from some expensive vendor, but it was just the idea that it now disrupted the quote-unquote process that the parent had in order to simplify something that actually made a whole lot more sense.
Speaker 1:And so fast forward. Now both of my kids are in college and two of vincent has three roommates. Two of the roommates are. I don't even know if these kids ever eat, because they don't have a fridge, they don't have a microwave, they don't have anything in the kitchen area.
Speaker 1:Like Vincent's dorm has a little kitchen area, except for my boy, because so Vincent takes over the entire kitchen. He's got like a milk frother and something to make a smoothie, and the air fryer and a toaster. Like he's got every little gadget, which is my fault. It's my fault, he has all the things. And so one day I was like, well, of the three other kids, do any of them use your stuff? And he said, well, one kid does and he's from another country, so he couldn't bring stuff on a plane. So, mommy, I'm obligated to have the stuff.
Speaker 1:The other two kids are on a meal plan, so they're just like. We know that our process is. We have a little card, we know we could go to the restaurant and get whatever we want and we don't have the clutter in our room. So Vincent was getting mad. The other day there was like a cup in the sink from another kid or there was something just messy, and he was so upset at this other person because it was disrupting his environment. And how often at work do we kind of take our focus off of ourself because we're disrupted in our environment from somebody else, because we've set in our way but our way might not be the way of the other person at work yeah, and I think that's life right.
Speaker 2:Life is that messy all the time. Things are coming in, stuff's happening all the time and I think that that's where that idea of like the process being reluctant, the system being that like soft place to land, is because the chaos can happen and we get off track and we deal with it and then we hop right back into the system. Like I think about this. I've got I don't know, probably four or five years ago when we were in our corporate lives, I developed this like weekly to-do system. I think if you wanted to try out a task, email, whatever system, like I've tried it. I've talked to people. I've set up meetings just to ask people how they stayed on top of stuff. You always seem to respond quickly and always seem to know what you're doing. Please tell me what you do Like I've explored them all because I was desperately seeking something to try to like manage the amount of stuff that was coming at me. I mean, some of it was. There was just too much stuff coming at me. But I found this like weekly to-do tracker that is a written out thing, because I realized through everything, like if it was a to do list, I needed it to be not one of the windows hidden on my computer. I needed it to be something in front of me. But I like have refined the system over the years and I use it all the time, and so it doesn't matter. What I found is that it doesn't matter. Now what distraction happens, what crazy things happen If I end up pregnant and sick for nine months, if I have a baby, if I take a few months off, if I come back, if I lose my job and switch to doing my own thing, like this process has like stayed true and it's so great because it doesn't matter. The chaos that comes in my life, the thing that happens, the fact that I get thrown off or or hey, I didn't even touch the system this week because it was just that chaotic Doesn't matter. I can come right back to it because I know exactly how it works. I know that it works for me. It's refined, it's used.
Speaker 2:I've practiced it very messy for years and years and years, but now it's something that I just settle into, so like I'm not going to lose a task If there's something I need to do. I've got it pretty well figured out. Did I have to like add in an extra thing now that I've got this like young baby at home life, like, yep, definitely. Now I've got a to-do list on my phone that I like transfer over to my system when I need to, and I can capture it when I'm stuck with a baby on my lap for you know, two hours with a nap or something.
Speaker 2:But it's this place to come back to, this thing to come back to, and I think that that's that's the thing we often miss about systems is we try to design them so perfectly and then focus on the end result, like it's got to get me somewhere, it's got to be, you know, the prize, the win at the end, when in reality, you should be focusing on the system and making it really realistic. To the fact that your roommate's going to come in and throw a cup in the sink, to the fact that somebody's going to come be messy in your space, life is going to be messy in your space. You just come back and focus on the system.
Speaker 1:All right, I gotta get this set back up and now I'm ready to go from here I'm interested in you talking a little bit more about this, and I know we're going to probably not get to the next chapter.
Speaker 2:I think we'll do our best, that's okay, so he.
Speaker 1:So the author, says something interesting that I wonder if you agree or disagree with. So he says the process is about finishing finishing games, finishing workouts, finishing film sessions, finishing drives, finishing, blah, blah, blah, finishing finishing the smallest task you have right in front of you and finishing it well. So I'm curious what you thought about that, cause it almost sounded like he started by saying the finish line, but it sounds like now that you get to the end of the paragraph, he was talking about the finish line of each task. That gets you to the next one. That gets you to the next one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's about that. It's like. It's more like to me. I think I think of that more as like committing all the way through, like I'm not going to abandon the system part way through because something comes up or some obstacle hops in my way, like I'm committed to seeing the system all the way through, see it through to the end and finishing it regardless. Like and I think that that's where we like half create something.
Speaker 2:We have come up with an idea and we start it. We're like, okay, well, I could do this on Mondays and this on Tuesdays, and blah, blah, blah, blah. By the time Thursday comes around, you're like, nah, this isn't working, or oh, this obstacle popped up or whatever, and so by Friday, I've abandoned it. Right, instead of saying no, I'm going to see it all the way through every time, and then, if it's a repeatable thing, I'm going to do it again and again and again and just iterate. Right, we had talked about iteration previously. Like, right, it's just about committing to the follow through. I think, committing to the whole, you know, the whole motion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think for me, sam, I struggle, yeah, if things are not time bound. That probably comes from ADHD, because of the part where the author talks about when it comes to actions, disorder and distraction are death, and for me it's very easy for me to become distracted. It's easy for me also to have disorder, even though the disorder is a dysfunction, and so we've often talked about for I don't know how many episodes that one of my favorite books is about the life-changing magic of just tidying up your space and how that clearing of space gives you clarity. And every time I've rearranged my furniture in my house I think I tell you, because it's almost like I have an epiphany of. So I actually did it.
Speaker 1:The other day Again, I rearranged the furniture in my bedroom and I had like the most peaceful week of sleep, simply just by changing the order of the way things were, because I was getting used to having things one way. But I knew, if I changed it just a little bit differently, that maybe the thing that was nagging at me or bothering me about what I had in front of me would make a difference. And it might seem so obvious, but when you can focus on things in life that matter the most to you, which for me peace is what matters the most to me but yet I had an. I had an environment that was not giving me peace at the time of day when your body needs it the most, and so in that case, I just needed to lock in and and just do something about it, because I knew that the finish line would give me what it was I was looking for. But you get distracted, right Because you get. You get just trapped in the day-to-day doldrum of your job or the day-to-day doldrum of your tasks, and you forget that there's something really bigger and easier out there, and I think that for me, that all started to change when I got accountability and you call it accountability buddies, which I absolutely love, and I think that if you are someone who has a hard time in being able to follow a process and getting results from it, maybe a way to do that is to find someone you can entrust that in into talking with, whether it's a coach or even whether it's a friend.
Speaker 1:There was a time I think I mentioned this on an episode, maybe a couple years ago a mutual friend of ours, yours and mine we used to schedule time on the calendar to fold our laundry. And that was our one-on-one together, where we weren't talking about work, we weren't talking about process, we weren't talking about the business. We used that lunch break, if you will, because we knew that if we didn't have each other on the phone, it would be easy just to go dump the clothes on a chair or leave them in the dryer and take them out when you're ready for it, and it was a way for us to stay on top of something. And you know what? That person didn't really care if my socks were folded and, and I didn't really care how she hung up her shirts in her closet, but because I was there for her and she was there for me, that simple task seemed almost fun and it was done because there was accountability on the other side of the phone while we were working through it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And I think that I think you're like dead on a really important point of systems. Systems have to serve the goal. They have to serve you as an individual, like if your brain is sparkly and you need it to work in a different way, then you just have to take all that into effect.
Speaker 2:And that's where, like I think, experimenting and trying and see like it took me years to figure out like a thing that worked for me to keep myself like organized with work, tasks and on top of everything but it was me like trying and failing and messing up and trying setting up something and doing whatever, and I had to find the thing that triggered all those like reward centers in my brain for the way I work right, the way that works for me.
Speaker 2:Very specifically, and take into account the fact that, like I am going to get distracted, I am going to go on a random tangent and then look up and it'll be two hours later and all I've done is like I don't know half created a t-shirt for my son's baseball team. Like these things happen. I'm going to accept that that's who I am, but I know how to get right back on track because the system works for me Right, and so I think that that's really you know. He says at the end of this section of like replace fear with the process, depend on it, lean on it, trust in it, and he says the process is about doing the right things right now. And I think that that's it is what's the right thing right now.
Speaker 1:And if you can kind of predetermine that for yourself via a process, it just makes it easier and more peaceful and more less decision fatigue to just move forward. I think this part of the chapter really is about, in summary, just do something, and just you just can't settle and don't stay stuck and just take a step. Now the next chapter, though, talks about how it isn't just about taking a haphazard step, it's about doing your job and doing it right. And so in this next part of the chapter or this next part of the book it's the next chapter, but he talks about how, no matter what it is in your life, your objective is one simple thing to do the thing and to do it well, because in this moment in time, whether it's the job you have right now or the title you have in your relationships right now, to do that with your 100 best percent self. Now things will change in life. But if you can go to sleep every night and I think there was a quote, forgive me because I'm not gonna remember who said it, it was somebody famous but, like when the day is done, there will be a lot of blunders and absurdities that happen throughout the day. But just be done with it, go to sleep, wake up the next day and and start again.
Speaker 1:But the point in that was if you can lay down at night and say I did my best today.
Speaker 1:You may not have been able to do everything today, but if you could say I did my best in the moments that I had, how much better would it be.
Speaker 1:And it got me thinking about this project that I'm working on for this one client, sam, where I'm watching a group of consultants and then I'm also watching a group of people that are full-time employees and what I'm noticing is that the consultants are getting more productivity and tasks completed than the people that are there full-time.
Speaker 1:And I started being curious about it and it made me recognize that the people who have a time-bound responsibility and who are being paid for their time not that people that are full time aren't also being paid for their time but there's almost a different mentality of the people that are like I have to account for every moment and I have to make every of those moments count the best, versus people that are like well, I get paid on Friday and my goals are annual goals, not a weekly or daily goal. It goes back to what you were saying in the last chapter, which is, if you take one step at a time and make that one step or that one goal, you're very best. Won't that intrinsically lead the next one to be starting off even better?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and yeah, I think you're, you're right. When we put a little pressure on on this situation, we, I think, like naturally kind of step into more of a doing the right thing right now with like a sense of urgency. And this whole section about doing the right thing, like the, the story that is sort of at the beginning of this is talking about like even it doesn't matter what the job. If your job is sweeping the floor, you're going to do the very best job at sweeping the floor, and if your job is coordinating 1000s of people, you're going to do the very best job. So it doesn't matter what your job is, what the task is, it's you show up and you do your very, very best.
Speaker 2:And it reminded me of when I was doing all the Maxwell training a few years ago and one of the calls I was in with one of the mentor mentors was somebody had asked the question of like oh my gosh, what happens if I create a mastermind? I have people like nobody signs up for it, and so it's just me and one other person in the room and it's supposed to be like a group of people. Like you know it's exchanging ideas and thoughts and things like that. Like what do I do? Do I cancel? And he goes no, you give the best mastermind you possibly can to that one person.
Speaker 2:It's going to be you and them having that conversation, but it's going to be the best experience they've ever had, right, and it's like and I think about that all the time is like, when I step into something, especially something like maybe a little intimidating or a little scary, it's like what if no one shows up? And I have been in there I was in the room this week when nobody showed up Like I've been there plenty of times in my life, but it doesn't matter Whoever shows up, even if it's just the recording for somebody else to watch later. I'm going to do the very best job that I can possibly do. I'm going to do the right thing all the time, because I think that that, like you said, that rightness sort of compounds If I do the right thing now, then I do the right thing the next time and the next time and the next time and the next time.
Speaker 1:As we close out this episode for today. In summary, the author says it simply like this everything you do matters. It matters to others, it matters to yourself, and so he gives a formula that I'll end with today, which is, he said. The formula is simple it's hard work, honesty and helping others as best we can. So if you just got those three things right, it seems like life would be a lot more simple, and so, as we go into the next section, here we're still in the point of getting action from our perceptions.
Speaker 1:The world is asking you what is your purpose in life? He ends the chapter by asking that question, and the answer is not going to come from someone else. It has to come from inside yourself. And if you do these things try hard, be honest and help others that's all you're really asked to do in life. So next week we're going to talk about what's right is what works. So if you do the right thing, that thing is going to be what works, and it's going to be what else also helps you circumvent or see that obstacle as the opportunity in your life. Anything else we should leave the listeners with today, sam.
Speaker 2:I love the line he says at the very end that says the whole isn't certain, only the instances are. And I think that it's that reminder of like take the little right steps, follow the little right process and it'll get you to the whole eventually.
Speaker 1:It will, it will. It's so good to be with you. As always, friends, thanks for joining us today. My name is Denise Russo and, on behalf of my friend, sam Powell, this has been another episode of what's On your Bookshelf.