Encore Episode: F*ck Time Management: The New Productivity Blueprint for Trial Attorneys

Let’s get one thing straight: Time isn’t your problem.

You don’t need another planner, color-coded calendar, or “productivity hack.”

What do you NEED? 

A complete rewire of how you think about time — and yourself.

In this episode, I’m calling bullshit on the time management cult and sharing what actually works when you’re ready to stop living in overwhelm and start creating the life you actually want.

If you’ve ever said, “I just need to get through this day/week/month,” this episode is for you.

Listen now 🎧

Xo,
Sari

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“There is nothing wrong with you, and if you don’t believe me, I’m going to prove it in this very moment. Because the belief that you’re broken—and that you constantly need fixing—is what’s truly messing with you. I want you to stop that today. I’m going to show you how. It’s crucial to realize our brains love to tell us we’re damaged, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. You already have what you need; it’s just about unlocking it. The moment you accept you’re not broken, everything changes.”

sari de la motte

ENCORE EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

All right, so here's what we're going to be covering: the three Ws that are holding you back. Yes, you might be surprised by what those things are. We're also going to talk about why your brain is an ally and an asshole. It is, it is. And we're going to talk about the one thing that you need to have your best life ever.

All right, so let me open up my notes here and make sure that I'm covering everything I want to cover. Let's talk about what you usually do in January. If you're anything like me in the past, this is what we've done: we've overindulged for a month, and so January 1 rolls around, and we think this is some magical time. Suddenly, we're having to rein it all in. Now comes the crazy schedules and the diets and all the things: sober January.

By the way, there's nothing wrong with wanting to make change in your life. I want to be really clear here. From Hostage to Hero, we are all about creating change in your life. We want to be the best version of ourselves and have the best life possible, but the way that we go about this is really screwed up, and we're going to talk about why that is today.

When it comes to time management in January, we think, “Okay, this year I’m finally going to get organized for once.” And here's what I want to point out as to why we do that. Let me see here. Let me go back. You think something's wrong with you. If we really strip it down to its basic gist, you think something's wrong with you. This is where the constant cycle of self-help and self-improvement and all of the things comes from—this belief that there is something wrong with you.

So I want to start out today's webinar and say there is nothing wrong with you, and if you don't believe me, I'm going to prove it in today's webinar. All right? I'm going to prove to you that there's nothing wrong with you, because this belief that there's something wrong with you and that you constantly need to be fixing yourself is totally fucking with you. I want you to stop that now, today. I'm going to show you how to do that today.

It's funny, I was working with a client yesterday, and this particular client has this belief that he can never focus, and there's something wrong with him, and all the things that we all talk about. I said, “I'm going to push back on this belief that you can never focus, because when it comes to trial and trial prep, for example—that's just where you love to play. Do you have problems focusing there?”

And he said, “No, I am just on it for weeks when I prepare for trial, and when I'm in trial, I'm totally focused.” I said, “So this is some bullshit message that your saboteur has you believing—that you're not focused. What if you just are not good at organizing? Where did you get the idea,” and I'm asking you this too, “that it somehow means we all have to be organized or we all have to be good at the same things? Maybe organization isn't your thing. Maybe you like to focus where you like to focus, and you don't have to be focused everywhere at all times.”

He came into the session saying, “I'm just bored. I'm bored.” And I'm like, “Well, let's talk about it. What's going on?” “Well, I had to sit in this two-hour meeting.” I'm like, “Why are you sitting in a two-hour meeting?” “Well, that's what an owner of a law firm does.” I'm like, “They don't have to. You get to decide that shit. Of course you're bored. Stop being in the two-hour meetings. We're going to talk about where you have some choice here.”

But the point is that we get all these messages of what our life should look like and all the things we should be focused on, and we should be doing everything perfectly. It's just not possible, and it's definitely going to screw with you. So let's look at, first off, why you want to be better at time management. Because we all want to be better at time management, but I don't know that we actually recognize why that is, right? We tend to think, “Well, it's because I want to stop feeling overwhelmed all the time,” or, “It's because I finally want to write the book that I've been putting off for years,” or, “It's because I finally want to start training for the marathon or see my kids more.”

And here's what I want you to think about: none of those things that I mentioned—and you probably have all kinds of other reasons why you want to manage your time—have anything to do with time management. Not really. Let me say that again. All of the things that I just mentioned, plus the things you can think of, why you want to manage your time, really don't have anything to do with time management. Here's what it has to do with: this belief that time is just for doing things. Time isn't just for doing things. It's not just to get things done. But when you think that way, it's going to cause you all sorts of problems.

Let me ask you this question: are you enjoying your life? Just gut check right now—are you enjoying your life? Now, when I ask you that question, if you say “No” or “Kind of,” it's probably due to one of these things. You're thinking things like, “I just need to get through today or this week or this month or this year.” This is a common one with me. See which one resonates with you. You're a symptom of time dysfunction, because most people have a dysfunctional relationship with time, which is the actual problem, not the amount of time.

So, “I just need to get through this day or this week or this month.” If you've said that before or you're saying that now, when I say, “Do you enjoy your life?” this is probably one of the things you're thinking. Or you'll think things like, “I have to work hard now so I can enjoy life later.” So you might be thinking, “I have to do things that I don't want to do.” Let me just put some of this into context for you, and stay with me because you're not going to believe the things that I'm about to tell you.

The first thing is, if you do not have a life right now that you want to jump out of bed in the morning to get to because it is so damn exciting and fun, time isn't your problem. If you are waiting to enjoy life later, later is never guaranteed, and time is not your problem. It just isn't. Because here's the thing: when we are waiting, nothing is guaranteed. I am a perfect example of that. I was just going along in my life, and those of you who are new to me are probably wondering why my hair looks the way that it does. On New Year's Eve last year—not 2021, but 2020—I got a diagnosis of breast cancer. And not just breast cancer, stage three breast cancer. There's only four stages. And a few months later, I got another diagnosis of thyroid cancer. Literally had no idea that I would be here today with you.

I know if you're like me, you've all heard those stories of people who've gone through the things that I've gone through, and they've said, “Live life now. Don't wait.” And you're like, “Yeah, yeah,” and you go on with your life, because I did. I totally did. But if I can be a voice of reason, waiting is not going to get you where you want to go. We're going to talk more about that in a minute. And here's the one that I think is going to blow your brain apart: you do not have to do anything you don't want to do. You can live a life of total and complete want to. I do. My husband does.

Now, right now your saboteur is having something to say about that. And if you're new to me, we talk a lot about the saboteur around here. The saboteur is a voice, or a collection of voices—many people have more than one—of things you've learned or heard or hardwired, which we're going to talk about in a minute, into your life to keep you safe. So the saboteur does not want you to change, and so your saboteur tells you shit constantly to keep you in this position where you don't change anything, because change is scary. Again, we're going to talk about that in depth in just a minute. And so your saboteur has a lot to say about this: “Everybody has things that they have to do. You can't live a life of just want to. Want to is selfish.”

Going back to my client that I was working with yesterday, I was like, “You need to be doing the things you want to do.” And the first thing that came up was, “That's selfish. Why should I be able to do the things I want to do when the people working underneath me are going to do the things I'm telling them to do?” I'm like, “Because you own the business. Because you put in 40 years. Because you're the owner. You're the one taking on the financial responsibility. You get to do whatever the fuck you want to do.” And so do you. Absolutely, you do.

All right, so the reason management doesn't work is because time isn't your problem. Time isn't your problem. When we think about time, we think of the word “enough”: we don't have enough time, and we have too much to do. So we don't have enough of something, and too many things to do, and we try to bring those two things together. That's why so many of you are buying the time management programs and the books, and in January you're trying the new things, and then you're beating yourself up about three weeks later when it doesn't work. You keep trying to focus on time when time is not the problem.

Just like in From Hostage to Hero, we think jurors are the problem—they're the reason why we're not getting the verdicts—when jurors are not the problem. We keep focusing on them as our enemy, and we keep focusing on time as our enemy. But time is not our problem. It's this dysfunctional relationship we have with time, and really, more so, this dysfunctional relationship we have with ourselves. Because here's the truth: you cannot manage time. Time just keeps ticking along, doing its thing, waiting to be filled. We all have the same amount of it. You can't manage that. What you need to manage is yourself.

Now, I do not mean what you think I mean, because most of you hear, “I just need to manage myself,” and you go back into that space of, “There's something wrong with me. Yep, I know, I'm lazy. I need to work harder. That's the problem.” Hell to the fucking no. That is not what I'm talking about when I talk about managing yourself. We're going to talk about that in depth in just a minute, but let me give you the three Ws of what's holding you back.

The first one is want. The number one reason why you're struggling in your life with time is because you don't know what you want, or you don't think you can have it. Oftentimes people always say, or when I'm talking about coaching, the scariest question to ask in coaching is “What do you want?” because people freak the hell out when I ask them that. I'm not kidding you. When I ask that, it's almost always the first question in my first session with clients: “What do you want?” They have a visceral reaction for one of these two reasons that I just said. One, because they've never thought about it—really, they haven't. If you could have anything you wanted, what would it be? And two, if they have thought about it, they're like, “I can't have that. There's just no way I can have that.” So your inability to want and to believe you can have what you want is a huge piece of what's holding you back.

The second thing that's holding you back is this idea of waiting, meaning you know what you want, but you're waiting. You're thinking, “I can have that later if I work hard now.” I just recorded a podcast that's coming out Friday, which is all about the H2H creed—what are the things that we believe here at H2H, Hostage to Hero, particularly in the crew, that we are working to rewire our brains around? One of the things in the creed, when we're talking about wanting and waiting, is that we are believing we can have the life that we want right now, and we are opting out of hustle culture.

Hustle culture is the belief that things have to be hard, that you have to totally break your back doing all the things now so you can enjoy it later. Well, again, let me remind you: later is never, ever guaranteed, and I'm going to really question and push back on hard work. Because when we talk about values, a lot of people will come in and say, “Hard work is one of my values,” and I'll push back on that. Most of my clients have been practicing 20 or 30 years, and I'd agree that probably when you start as a baby lawyer, there's a lot of hard work that has to go into that. The problem is that after you've been doing it 10, 20, 30 years, you still have the same habits of “I come in early, I leave late, I work 80 hours,” when you don't fucking need to.

In fact, I have a podcast episode—Christie will drop it in both here and Facebook and the webinar—on how you need to constrain down to 40 hours a week. Not only is it possible, but it's essential. Again, your brain's going to have something to say about that. We're going to talk about your brain in just a minute, because when you constrain down to 40 hours a week, you get really focused really fast. But when you allow yourself to work 60, 70, 80 hours a week, what you're saying is, “I'll do it on the weekends, I’ll do it in the evenings, I'll do all the things, because I know that I'm just allowing that time.” But if I said you only had 40 hours, and you're going to lose your law license if you work beyond that, you'd have to make some decisions real quick.

So this idea of waiting—that your life needs to be shit now so it can be awesome later—is just ass-backwards. Oh my God. Stop. Just stop. Don't wait. You can have what you want, and you can have it now. I'm going to talk about how in just a minute.

The third W that's holding you back is that maybe you know what you want, and you don't want to wait, but you aren't willing to do the things that are required to have the life that you want. Meaning, “Okay, I want to work 40 hours a week, I don't want to work more than that, and I really just want to be in litigation. I just want to take deps and go to trial and do trial prep. But I can't do that because I have to do the client intakes and I have to do the discovery and I have to write the motions and I have to do the briefing and all the things.”

And there's that word “have to” again. What I'm going to say to you is no, you fucking don't. You have to be willing to say no to a lot of shit to say yes to what you want and to not have to wait to have the life you want. But most of y'all are not willing to do that. And here's the thing: when you think time management is the problem, you're going to continually blame time. You're going to say, “See? I can't have the life that I want because I don't have enough time.” It's just like what I talk about in the book, where when you are so convinced that there is a technique or a method out there that can actually win trial, you continually go around and you go to the CLEs and you buy all the books, and you're just looking for the technique, looking for the technique, looking for the technique, and every time one thing doesn't work, you drop that and you go look for another. You know what that does? It allows you to never look at what is actually going on, right? It never makes you focus on you, because you can say, “Well, it was the technique. I tried the brutal honesty—it didn't work. I tried rules of the road—it didn't work. I tried From Hostage to Hero—it didn't work,” and you just keep going. It's a great distraction that your saboteur has you going in, going, “Listen, you'll find it. Just keep swirling. You don't have to do any of that work at looking at yourself and what's holding you back. Just keep swirling. Just keep doing that. That's fine.”

Same thing with time management. When you keep thinking that time is the problem, you're never going to look at what's actually the problem, which is you—not that you're a problem. That's not what I mean. You're not broken, but you are not willing to say no to a hell of a lot more things than you think you need to in order to say yes to what you actually should be doing.

I want you to take a minute—because I'm going to run to the restroom because coffee—and I want you to think: which one of these three, just take out your notebook, take out your journal, is what's holding me back? Is it that you don't know what you want or you don't think you can have it? Is it that you're waiting and you're succumbing to hustle culture, and you're like, “Okay, my life's shit now, but it'll be better later”? Or are you not willing to actually say no to the things? I'll be right back.

“Look Away” by Chicago. That's hilarious. Okay. Now, why do you think you can't have what you want? Why are you waiting? And why are you unwilling? Well, it all comes down to your asshole brain. Yeah, your brain is the problem here, not you. So let's talk about your brain, because I love talking about brain science.

Your brain is both an ally and an asshole. It's an asshole in that the amygdala, that back part of the brain, is the emotional or reactionary brain. That's the oldest part of the brain back here near the brainstem, and that's our habit brain. But then we have the ally part of our brain, which is the prefrontal cortex, the newest part of the brain. That's our thinking and rational brain.

Here's what you need to understand about your brain: your brain is wired to keep you safe. That is its number one job—to make sure you stay alive. That was super helpful way back when there were saber-toothed tigers and all the things, but now it's not as helpful, because it continuously sees things as dangerous and scary, and so then it tells you not to do them, for example. So you say, “I want to change something.” Brain: “Change is scary. Let's just keep doing what we've been doing all along. You're probably going to fail.” That's what your brain does. And so then you go back to your old ways, and you beat yourself up, you stay stuck, and then we think the problem is us, when it's really our brain. There is nothing wrong with you. I'm going to say that again. Your brain is literally wired to keep things the same. That's why it tells you you can't have what you want. That's why it tells you you need to wait. That's why it tells you don't say no to people because they're going to get upset—it's your brain. It's how it's wired. It's wired for danger, it's wired for scarcity, it's wired to be efficient most of all. The prefrontal cortex is the most energy-sucking part of the brain. It takes a lot of energy to use it, so when you are tired and you're hungry—and maybe you started the diet—your habit brain is going to come in and do its thing.

Because here's what you have to understand: the way your brain is wired is through neural pathways, and the more we use a particular neural pathway, the slicker and faster it gets. The brain loves that because it's quick and can just do what it needs to do. But when you're creating a new neural pathway—which you can do, by the way, and that's why the brain is awesome and your ally, because you can rewire it—it’s like waist-high grass. You have to stomp down and keep walking over that until you get an ingrained pattern in that new neural pathway, which takes practice.

So that prefrontal cortex is there to help, but it's so easy to go back to the hardwired brain—not to mention it's not just habits you've hardwired in; you are born with hardwired patterns, mainly the patterns to keep you safe and not do anything that can put you in harm, which is change things.

Let me just pause this part in the program and say, can we all just give ourselves a big, huge fucking break instead of doing the stupid shit we do every January, which is “I'm going to change my whole life in one day?” It doesn't happen. Then we beat ourselves up, rinse and repeat. We are wired to stay the same. The brain is efficient. We are wired to do the things we've always done. We are wired to not change. So let's just give ourselves a break. You are working against your brain wiring when you're trying to do something new. That's what I really want you to get when we're talking about brain wiring.

Now, you overcome your brain wiring by creating new neural pathways. As I said, that is harder to do; it takes the prefrontal cortex, it takes practice. But here's what I really want you to get about this: it's not about creating new neural pathways so you get more shit done, okay? Remember, time isn't just for doing things. It's about creating new neural pathways to create a life that you love and a life of your dreams. Because here's the thing about the brain: the brain doesn't want to change, but it certainly doesn't want to change to do more shit you don't want to do. Why would it do that? It's like, “Oh, we're already overwhelmed and overburdened. Oh, you want me to be more overwhelmed and overburdened?” No, it's not going to do that. It's not going to want to do that. Why are y'all clamoring to do shit you don't want to do? That's why you're buying the books and doing the things: “How can I get more shoved into my life and be efficient about it?” I'm going to suggest you're going about this the entirely wrong way. Let's stop doing the things we don't want to do.

When you stop doing things you do not want to do, you no longer have a time management problem. I should have put that on a slide. Let me say it again: when you stop doing things you don't want to do, you no longer have a time management problem. Why? Because now you're focused on what you are uniquely suited to do and what you love.

That really brings me to what we're handling in the crew right now. This whole Q1 in the H2H crew is about your zone of genius. There are really four zones. If you've never heard this concept before, it's by Gay Hendricks in his book The Big Leap, and it's a fantastic concept. I did a podcast on it—I've actually done two on it. Here's the basic gist: your zone of incompetence is things that you are not good at doing, right? You're just not good at them. Your zone of competence are things that you're good at, but anybody else could do them too—there's nothing special about you doing them. Your zone of excellence is where you are really good. But your zone of genius are the things you do that you are uniquely suited to do and that you love, which means that the most dangerous zone is the zone of excellence. This is where most of you get stuck, because most of you, having been through law school and gotten where you are today, are really good at a lot of things. So your zone of excellence—you keep playing in that zone because you're really good, and it's a comfort zone. That is your comfort zone right there. Nobody likes being in incompetence, because that's uncomfortable, and zone of competence is neither here nor there. The two uncomfortable zones are zone of incompetence and zone of genius. Why? Because it takes a big leap to get into your zone of genius and start saying no to things you're really good at doing, to say yes to the things you are awesome at and are uniquely suited to do.

Let me give you an example. I am really good at corporate training. I am hilarious, as you might have imagined. I tell the jokes, I have the stories, it's super practical. I have this training called Cats and Dogs that I did for years, and people still talk about it to this day. That is in my zone of excellence. I'm really good at it. You know what my zone of genius is? Working with y’all—not just lawyers, but plaintiff lawyers, not just plaintiff lawyers, but plaintiff lawyers that go to trial, and not just plaintiff lawyers that go to trial, but those who are willing to look at the mindset aspect. I'm super narrow. And when I'm in that space, my zone of genius in that space is to take super complex things and make them simple, or super ethereal concepts and make them really practical. That's where I'm really, really good.

Now notice how narrow that is, which means that when people would call for corporate training—which they did for years, not so much anymore—I had to say no, and I was like, “But the money...” But that is what allowed me to have the success that I have now, because when I started playing in my zone of genius about 70 percent of the time (probably more now around 80 or 90), that is when the evidence showed up. See, this is what we think. We think, “I've got to have the evidence first, and then I can make the leap into my zone of genius.” That's not how it works. You have to leap into your zone of genius and then get the evidence that that was the right decision. That's true of everything.

In fact, I'm going to do a podcast on this because somebody posted in the Facebook group a quote that I just freaking loved, and I'm going to do a podcast on it, which is “Ready is a decision, not a feeling.” Write that down. That's a good one, isn't it? “Ready is a decision, not a feeling.” When you really want to start living the life of your dreams, you have to make some tough decisions. You have to say no to some things. So many of you, for example, are not loving your lives—and I know this because I coach you, and we talk about it in the H2H crew—because you have so many cases. The reason you have so many cases is because money, right? You're like, “I’ve got to have all these cases so that I can be settling them and make sure the money's coming in so I don't have to shut the doors, and I can make payroll.” I get it; I've been there, not as a lawyer, but as a business owner.

But what would happen if your gift was litigation, for example, and you said, “I'm going to take ten big cases a year,” and you put all your time and energy into those cases, and you went and you won the eight-figure verdicts that they all deserved? You would be happier, your clients would be happier, and you would probably make more money than you've ever seen in your life. But because you're in your zone of excellence—"It's really easy to settle things and I'm really good at this and I'm really good at that”—you keep telling yourself these stories. I'm not saying that your genius is going to trial—I'm assuming it is because you're here and I speak to a very select group of people—but just ask yourself that question: where am I playing in my zone of excellence?

In fact, take a moment right now. Take a piece of paper and write these four zones. I want you to put some things just in your current life. What are you doing right now that you should not be doing at all, that you are bad at? You just need to stop and hire it out—that's your zone of incompetence. Then what are some things that you're good at, but other people could do them as well? That would be your zone of competence. Write some things there. And here's the danger zone: what are the things you're really good at? I was with a client, and I'm like, “Okay, what are you really good at?” He's like, “Depositions.” I'm like, “Okay, is that in your zone of excellence or zone of genius?” He's like, “I don’t know.” I said, “Do you love doing depositions? Does it feel like time just flies?” He's like, “Oh hell no.” I'm like, “Not in your zone of genius. You're really good at it, but you don’t love it.”

A client yesterday loves depositions. Totally a sweet spot for him. Great—that’s in his zone of genius. Now again, your brain is going to have all kinds of things to say. I'm noticing Amy's comment in here: “I keep telling myself that I can't afford to hire staff.” Amy and everyone else, you cannot afford not to hire staff. Let me tell you this: I have never, ever done anything in my business when I could afford it—all the things that I did, I could not afford. All of them: first office space, first assistant, first raises that I gave to people. Right now we're going to double our team this year; I don't have money sitting in the bank for that. You have to—again, you have to act, and then you get evidence. Act, and then evidence. We keep waiting for evidence before we act. You have to act first.

I cannot stress this enough. You've got to believe—this is my word, “leap,” for the year. You've got to believe that when you leap, that evidence is going to meet you, because it fucking will. It will. The universe, God, whatever, rises up when action happens. In fact, we're going to be talking about hiring staff in this quarter. So if you're not in the crew, we open next week, and you'll have access to not only the Zone of Genius training that I did in January, but the Zone of Genius training I'm doing in February and March, plus the last two years of trainings we've had in the crew. A lot of people don't do that—they're like, “When you join, you get that,” you get everything. You get everything.

One of the things we're going to be talking about is when you hire people, because I know this is a big deal for so many of you, you hire them to produce results for you. Instead of me thinking, because we're going to be hiring a marketing person, “Can we afford a marketing person?” I think, “The results the marketing person is going to be required to produce is this much revenue coming in the door. Therefore, I can totally hire a marketing person, because they're going to get these results for me.”

So if you hire somebody, Amy or whoever else, you say, “These are the results this person's going to get for me, and then I'm going to bring in these other results.” Kevin and I are thinking of hiring a household manager 20 hours a week to grocery shop, prep dinner, run some laundry, run some errands. Of course, my saboteur stuff comes up like, “Oh my God, it's so bougie,” but you know what that's going to allow me to do? It's going to allow me to be in my zone of genius making a shit ton of money, because I'll not have to worry about some of that stuff.

Can I afford a household manager? I have no idea—probably not. I'm going to hire them anyway, because I know that when I do, the evidence is going to show up. That's how I've always operated—it's never failed me, not once.

All right, what's your zone of genius? This is again where the two things come together, where these are things that I'm uniquely suited to do, not just depositions, but I'm really good at depositions because of what I do in there, or I'm really good at cross-exam because I have this art that I do. Or I'm really good at teaching. It's what you're really uniquely suited to do, and you love doing it. That's where your zone of genius happens. That's where this really gets good.

So what's your zone of genius? That's what I want you asking yourself, because you need to commit to spending 70 percent of your time or more in your zone of genius. I fully believe that that is what you were meant to do—really live into your gifts.

Now, here's the problem, and Gay Hendricks talks about this in his book. It’s wonderful; get the book if you don't already have it. We have a limited tolerance for feeling good. One of the reasons you don't make your leap is because when we make a leap into a newer revenue bracket, or we're making more money than we've ever made before, or we have a brand-new relationship, or we just bought a brand-new house—whatever it is—we will do something to sabotage ourselves. This, again, is your brain being an asshole, because your brain sees that as change. Even if it's good change, your brain sees it as change, and that's uncomfortable, and it doesn't know how to be in that space. So it creates this problem where we fuck it up.

We just bought our dream house—I'm in it right now. It's nearly 5,000 square feet, five bedrooms, an office, a bathroom the size of Christie's apartment because she told me that when she came over. It's our dream house. So we're here two or three months, and Kevin's down—he's got his own room, you should see it: movie posters, his drum set is in there, and all of his records. He ordered a big 65-inch TV with two Pottery Barn leather chairs, and he's putting the TV in the wall. Hits a pipe, water goes everywhere, completely floods our basement.

Am I thinking Kevin was thinking, “I don't deserve this”? No, but underneath, he'd hit his upper limit. And we all do this on some level. If I were to ask you right now, what is the amount of money that you can't even conceive of making, there's your upper limit. That's your upper limit. We all have an upper limit problem. We need to practice feeling good, which is the opposite of what most of us do in January, is it not? We make ourselves feel bad, so of course we don't change, because we don't ever let ourselves be in that space.

It's the same concept of when I talk about how to own your number at trial—you've got to get so comfortable with that number, or you'll never be able to communicate it to jurors. It's like in the dram shop case I talk about all the time, a $100 million ask. All week as we were preparing that case, it was “You look like a hundred million bucks,” “It’s a hundred million degrees outside.” We just kept saying “a hundred million,” “a hundred million,” “a hundred million.” Why? We wanted to get so comfortable with that.

You've got to get so comfortable with living the life of your dreams. If not, your brain's going to come in and sabotage it. It's going to go, “See? You shouldn't have done this, because now so-and-so is upset in your office that you gave them this thing that you used to do. See? Now you took on all this debt—boy, that's really not going to work out.” You've got to practice wanting and being willing to have it now, even just in your brain.

You see how all of this has nothing to do with time? Otherwise, we're just shuffling things around. We're just shuffling paper on a desk when we're dealing with time. If you don't get this part right—when you get clear on what you want and what your zone of genius is, and you're aware that as you start moving there, you're going to have this upper limit problem—then we can start talking about how you want to manage your time. But otherwise, it's just moving pieces around on a chessboard. Pointless. Not going to do anything for you.

Now, here's the big kicker for all of this: you have to understand that self-compassion is the key to everything. In Friday's podcast, I talk about one of the other things that we say quite a bit in From Hostage to Hero, one of our creeds: we are going to love ourselves to better lives. What is the fuel that you are using to create change in your life? For most of you, it's not love. For most of you, it's doubt, it's beating yourself up, it's hate, it's fear, right?

I just talked to my coach. I said, “Okay, I really want to get healthy this year, and I'm just having trouble, and I know all this stuff—I'm a mindset coach—what's going on?” You know what we found? My fuel for getting healthy this year was fear. Why? “I gotta get healthy. I gotta stop drinking, gotta stop eating the red meat.” Why? “Because the cancer is going to come back.” Nobody wants to operate from that place. I need to change that fuel to, “My God, my body's been through so much this last year. I want to love it back to health, gently and with self-compassion.”

This is where a lot of you tune out, because you have this weird belief that if you're not beating yourself up, you're not going to get where you want to go. I'm telling you that the brain science does not support that at all. Think about it: when your brain is wired to keep you safe, if you yourself are beating yourself up—meaning you're making a hostile environment in your own head—it's going to stay there. But if you instead make the inside of your head a safe place to be, the brain calms down. It's no longer in danger, because now we don't need the money, now we don't need the verdict, now we don't need the accolades, now we don't need the compliments. We create our own safety. We've got our own back. We're going to love ourselves to better lives.

So when I get on the scale this morning and it's higher instead of lower, I don't go, “What the fuck, what are you doing?” I go, “We're going to get there. We're going to figure this out. We've got this.” That's how I talk to myself now. I never used to talk to myself that way. And you know what? I believe that's what made the cancer go away. I believe that's what's going to keep the cancer away. I told a client this the other day. I said, “There are plenty of people in the world that are not going to like me. I'm not going to be one of them.” I refuse to be one of them. And I invite you to have the same thing in your life. You’ve got to love yourself if you want to change.

Right now, if you want to change anything in your life, you're not going to get there—brain science—by beating yourself up. You're not going to get there by playing it safe. You're not going to get there by waiting for some evidence before you act. See, and that's right there—listen carefully, those of you who are still here, which is most of you—that is the problem. Because what it takes to have an extraordinary life is a huge fucking risk for the brain. When you decide to start saying no to shit and moving into your zone of genius, your brain is going to freak out. That's why most people don't live the lives of their dreams: because it takes incredible brain management to be able to do the things to have an extraordinary life.

That's why we focus so much on rewiring your brain and brain management in the crew. Do you learn trial skills? Yes, absolutely you do, but those trial skills are not going to do anything for you if you do not know how to manage your brain, because right there, what I just said, is what's totally key to this whole process. Trial lawyering takes risks. That's why we talk about brain management there too. To be an excellent trial lawyer and rise on the floor like Randi McGinn, or take the big leaps like Rick Friedman, you've got to manage your brain. If not, you're not going to do those things, because your brain's going to keep trying to pull you down and keep you safe. And that's why time management—fuck that. You’ve got to do this first.

So here we are, going to love ourselves to better lives. It doesn't have to be hard. You don't have to succumb to hustle culture. You can have a life that you love right now. I am testament to that. If this is the last year of my life—I'm telling you, February 4 is my last infusion. I had to have infusions, I had chemo for six rounds. I had two surgeries—well, four including my foot and gallbladder. I had 25 rounds of radiation, five days in a row for five weeks. And I've had targeted treatment now for a full year. So February 4 is my last. Then I'm going to get my port out on February 9. I'm going to get a little emotional here. On February 9 I won't have protection, I won't have medicine. I'll just be out there floating, and it could come back. And I had stage three, and I'm at a little bit higher percentage. But you know what? Knowing that, I'm going to live now. And I want you to live now. Don't wait.

God, let me be the voice of reason. Don't wait. If you don't love your life now, you have no idea what's coming down the pike. I hope you don't get a cancer diagnosis. I hope you don't get in a horrible car crash. But man, life just has so many weird things that happen. So fuck time management. Love your life now. Do the things now. And we are here to help. I hope you get that. This isn't about selling you anything. Everything that I create is to help you. You are my people. I say this all the time, whether you're a paying member of the crew or you just listen to my podcast—you guys are the loves of my life, outside my family. You're the loves of my life. You allow me to do my zone of genius work, and for that, I love you and I adore you.

So here's what I'm going to tell you: there's nothing wrong with you. Believe it. It's your brain, and you can overcome your brain, and all success comes with rewiring your brain. Now, if you want more of this, I'm going to give you two things to think about. We do have the brand-new Life By Design course, and in that course, the first entire module is about figuring out what you want and your love of life. That's the whole first module. Then we talk about how to manage your time. Yes, that's the big joke today. I tell you how to do it with months, days, years, and it's all based on putting you first, what you love first, your vacation time in first, all the things. But all of that is pointless without designing a life from the inside out.

So you can go to fromhostagetohero.com and buy the Life By Design course, but don't do it. And here's why I don't want you to do it: because it's free if you join the crew, which opens next week. If you want to join the crew, you get to do that next week, and this is in your bonus. Whenever I make something, I'm going to be making a Trial Dialogue course this year—we upload it for the crew, and they have it for free. We charge everybody else for it. There's only one thing we will never charge for outside, that you only have access to in the crew, and that's the whole From Hostage to Hero course. If y’all love the book, back in the membership there is a whole 36-module course on how to do most of the things in the book.

If you're like, “Crew's not for me,” then fine, go buy Life By Design. But if you are really wanting to change your life—and people are like, “I don't know, I don't have any trials”—listen, you don't need to have a trial. This is a coaching and consulting program. If you want a community that's going to have your back… if you're here and you're in the crew, start posting about how much you love the crew. But if you are wanting support to change your brain in all aspects of your life, the crew is the place to do it. We only open four times a year, and next week is only a three-day open—very small.

Now here's the other thing I want you to know about the crew: we are going to jump the price quite a bit in April, because we have been under-selling it for about a year and a half now. So I've basically been selling a Mercedes for the cost of a Corolla all this time. Not only that, we're going to be adding live jurors, so you'll have access to a mock jury every month. You want to come in and run something through with the crew in front of a mock jury? We're going to have that for you. We're adding Ladies Lounge this month, so there's a whole women's-only group in there that's meeting. There are at least three crew events every week—you can't possibly do them all—not to mention thousands of hours of video on the back end of me working with people, teaching, and the course. This is the lowest price it will ever be again; it will never be 397 a month again, ever. When we open in April, it's 597 a month.

Now here's the other thing: if you join, you're going to get the book if you don't already have it—you'll get it for free—and you can quit at any time. So if you're like, “This is bullshit, I hate you,” great, you don't have to stay. There's no long-term commitment. Now we are offering an annual membership that gets you a month free, so if you buy that, of course you'll have to be in for a year. But otherwise, you can come in and check it out. It is the best group in the world. These people are awesome that are in there.

So here's when we open: next week, the 26th through the 28th. Go to fromhostagetohero.com, get on the waitlist, and you'll get an email when it opens. Let me stop my share now, and I'm going to show you one other thing, which is the Life By Design table of content. So if you decide that you're not going to do that, or you are going to join the crew and you'll get this later, here's what the Life By Design course covers:

Module one talks about your time dysfunction, a lot more in depth than I went through today. You get a whole values thing. How do you figure out your dream, your life purpose? It's awesome in there, and how to build that dream. Module two, we start getting you ready to prep. We do the time map—oh my God, the time map. I love time maps. Then module three is all about how to actually get it down on paper and digital, and I walk you through the whole thing. Again, you can purchase that right now at fromhostagetohero.com. If you're planning to join the crew or if you're in the crew—crew members, please stop buying it because you get it for free and we have to keep refunding you and you keep buying it. You will get it for free along with anything else I ever, ever make. We always upload that to the crew for free.

So at this time, what questions do you have? What questions do you have? If you're in the Facebook platform, you can post them there, and Christie will grab them. If you're here in the webinar, please put them in the Q&A. I can see them a little bit easier there. But I hope this hit the way I wanted it to hit, which is: stop waiting, man. Have your life now. Once you get that clear, we've got a course to help you figure it out and put it on paper. That is the big thing you need to have first.

I'm here for questions about... so is that correct, Life By Design is available at no additional cost to current crew members? Yes, so it's 397 to buy it, but it's 497 to join the crew, so even if you were just in the crew for a month, you'd get all the stuff in the crew plus you'd have access to that course. Now when you leave, your access is gone. Crew members, if you don't see it in your bonus courses, talk to Christie. She's got it back there. Thank you that my hair looks like fire, appreciate that.

What else? What questions do you have about the crew, about the course, about time management? Everyone always asks me about my Post-it notes. That's really what started this. I use Post-it notes and a big paper planner to do my yearly planning, and there's a reason for that. I go into all of that in the Life By Design course. We talk about the Post-its that so many of you have heard me talk about. So if you want to know what the hell I'm doing with Post-its—and people love the Post-its, they're like, “Oh my God, this is revolutionary for planning”—get the course if you want to know about the Post-its.

What else? Q&A, okay, I see some in here. All right. “Is Life By Design part of the crew?” Yes, so that is in your bonus courses there. When you join the crew, you will have access to a couple of things. You will have access to our membership portal, and in the portal is all of the previous trainings. You're going to get the Zone of Genius training, you're going to get the Trial Dialogue training, you're going to get Saboteur, Inner Leader, Courtroom Leader, there's so many things we've done in the crew, Resonant Conversations. You can go, it's like Netflix of me. It would take you years to get through all the information in there, all the recordings that we've done, all the voir dire circles, all the things. You'll also then have access to our private Facebook group, and then in your bonus courses you will have the Life By Design course. Also within that portal is the From Hostage to Hero course—you get two courses just showing up right now, and I'll keep adding. Eventually we'll have eight, nine, ten courses in there.

In addition, on the 20th of every month, we announce seats are open. We call them “hot seats.” You can join a voir dire circle and be a hot seater where I work with you on voir dire, you can join nonverbal coaching where I work with you on opening, you can join a crew case workshop where I work with you on part of your case. We have Coach June who's doing Opening Learning Labs—if you want to learn my method, you come in with a case and he'll walk you through it. Coach June also does Voir Dire Learning Labs if you want to learn my process for voir dire—he’s going to walk you through it. Now we've got Coach Cydia who has Ladies Hour, Ladies Lounge, where you just talk about what it's like to be a lady lawyer—it’s going to be awesome. And we're bringing in a brand-new coach, Coach Jody, who probably will be taking another case workshop, as that is a very popular thing in our crew.

That, in addition to live training every month, we have guest webinars—Randi McGinn, David Ball, Keith Mitnik. We have so much fun back there. Oh my God.

Okay, so hopefully I answered that. Keep the questions coming.

All right, so “What is the most important first step to take to be productive and efficient?” Well, know why you're being productive and efficient. I can tell you, and you could even right now go buy the course and learn how to get all the things on paper, but if you look at all the things that you have on paper and you don't want to do any of them, that's the problem. So the first step is “Why am I doing the things on my list in the first place?” We walk you through that. It's one of the pieces in the Life By Design course. You put together a whole to-do list—we teach you how to get rid of your to-do list, by the way—and then you have to go down that whole list and go, “What things on this list are have-tos?” And then, when you identify the have-tos, you don't get to do them anymore. You have to delete them or delegate them. And then you're just left with the want-tos, and then you start planning those.

So the very first important step is figuring out what you want to be spending your time on. That's where we live our life—how we spend our time is how we live our life. So if you are constantly doing things that you don't want to do, stop that. That's the number one thing. Once you have that in place, then we can start playing. And when we teach you the time map in the Life By Design course, the first thing I have you put in is all the things you want to be doing. Then you're left with this little open spot—I walk you through on my computer what mine looks like—and I go, “This is what's left for work, this little bit.” By the way, I only work 32 hours a week, 32 hours, and I make more money than I've ever made in my life. Now, it's not because I make more money that I can work 32 hours a week, it's that until I said “I'm only working 32 hours a week,” I started making more money. Why? Because I had to get real focused real fast and in my zone of genius, and once I did that, boom, my business took off.

Have you ever wished you knew what the jury was thinking? Well, grab a pen and paper because I’m about to give you instant access to a free training I created for plaintiff trial attorneys. It’s called Three Powerful Strategies to Help You Read a Juror's Mind, and it will help you understand what the jury is thinking so you can feel confident and trust yourself in the courtroom. 

Ready? Head to sariswears.com/jury and enjoy!