Why Plans Fail, and What To Do Instead | Midyear Reset Pt 2

Share your midlife reinvention story with us HERE https://stephanie197.typeform.com/to/BOdLYgvb. You have a plan for how to succeed in the second half of the year, how to “get back on track.” And a plan, it turns out, is the most sophisticated way to actually stand still while feeling like you're moving. This is Part 2 of a special two-part midyear series on Good Life Project. In Part 1, Jonathan led a different kind of honest check-in, setting down the scorecard version of taking stock and actually looking at the one part of life that has been running quietly low. This episode is the moving part. It’s about taking action and building momentum, without waiting for a plan. In this episode, you'll explore: Why plans fail, and why the reason is not the one you've been told. The flaw isn't you. It's how plans are built. The difference between a plan and a move, and why only one of them has ever actually changed a life. Seven elements that make a move more likely to survive a bad week, including Peter Gollwitzer's research on implementation intentions. The four traps that turn a move back into a plan, and how to recognize them before they happen. Why the middle of the year is one of the most powerful fresh start landmarks available, and almost nobody uses it. A five-step sequence you'll work through before this episode ends, leaving with a specific move already made, not planned. This episode is for anyone who has spent the first half of this year meaning to do something and hasn't yet. Not because you lacked motivation, but because you were waiting for the right conditions that were never going to arrive. They don't have to. You just have to make one move. Episode Transcript https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/jonathan-fields-midyear-momentum-fresh-start-intention-to-action If you LOVED this episode, you can find the 1-page worksheet HERE. https://www.goodlifeproject.com/ws2026/ Next week, I'm sitting down with an old friend, Jessica Ortner, to explore something that most people have never tried, that looks a little ridiculous at first, and that turns out to have a surprisingly serious body of research behind it. It's called tapping. We're not going to sell it, and we're not going to dismiss it. We're going to give it a genuinely honest look: what the science does and doesn't support, who it's actually for, and then Jessica is going to guide me through a real session, live, on the episode that you can follow along with in real time. Be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it. Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the Wheel https://jonathanfields.substack.com/aboutVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sponsors/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jonathan Fields?

  So all too often, a plan is really just a really organized way of not starting anything yet. We treat the plan as proof that we're serious. Most of the time, it's the thing standing between us and the only part that was ever going to matter, which is just starting. We are, almost all of us, far better at planning our lives than at living them. And at the halfway mark of a year, that gap is about to get very visible. So here's where we're going today. I'm going to tell you how I finally got something that I love back into my life and the deeply unglamorous thing that actually made it stick. I'm going

• 0:41Jonathan Fields?

  to make the case for why a move beats a plan every single time, and why the middle of the year of all moments is secretly the best time to make one. And then you and I, we're going to make a move together before this episode is even over. Not plan it, but actually make it. And one quick thing, especially if you're new here, this is actually part two of a special two-part summer reset series. And last time in part one, we explored a very different way to take in an honest look, to take stock at the halfway mark of the year, and really name the one part of your life that's been running low. And it was a very different way of thinking about how the first half of the year might unfold.

• 1:26Jonathan Fields?

  And today, we do the moving part. It's action time. So if you've caught part one, this is where the payoff comes. If you didn't, you can start right here and lose nothing, and maybe circle back to part one after this for a little bit of fuller context. So excited to share this one with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. And we'll get right into it right after this short break.

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• 3:05Jonathan Fields?

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• 3:50Jonathan Fields?

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• 4:06Jonathan Fields?

  So I want to start with a little bit of a confession and then the slightly embarrassing story of what I did about it. If you were here last time, you know that somewhere in a genuinely good and ridiculously busy year, I let something that I love fall just right out of my life, making things with my hands. And I said near the end of that first episode that if I wanted it back, I was gonna have to need structure, not enthusiasm, because I had already proven that enthusiasm does not survive a busy season, at least not for me and for most people I know. And I was in the middle of an extremely, extremely abundant season. Now, here's what I actually did about it. For a while, the artist and maker Jones

• 4:47Jonathan Fields?

  and me has been finding an outlet in something called relief printing, or more specifically, this thing called woodblock printing. It's kind of like you make a design and then literally hand carve it into wood, and then you use that as the printing plate to press prints off of it. It's just, it's so analog and so physical and so cool. I absolutely suck at it right now, but I also absolutely love it. And I had this built-in rhythm that I didn't really have to think about. I'd signed up for a class, I'd been doing it alongside someone I love, and it was honestly one of my favorite things in the world, the two of us just kind of making a mess on a Wednesday morning together. And when you're doing something

• 5:28Jonathan Fields?

  that you genuinely enjoy with someone you genuinely enjoy being around, the showing up, it just, it kind of takes care of itself, right? You both just turn up because the other one's there and you get to do something kind of cool and you do it together. And that's what I was doing. And then life happened, as it does. That easy, shared rhythm, it was gone, and the showing up was suddenly entirely mine to carry, alone, just me and my good intentions, alone in a room. And we have long established on this very show in some detail that my good intentions have roughly the staying power of a gym membership

• 6:08Jonathan Fields?

  purchased on September 2nd. They're sincere, they're heartfelt, and they're gone by the end of the month. It just becomes so easy to rationalize, you know, doing a thousand other things that seem to be just much more important, at least in the moment. So this time I caught myself doing this. And here's what I, a person who literally studies spending your time well for a living, instinctively reach for first, a plan. And I am very, very good at plans. I could plan the triumphant return of making things with my hands so thoroughly,

• 6:49Jonathan Fields?

  with phases and a supply list and a mood board and a tentative timeline for becoming the kind of person who makes things, that I would never, not once, actually carve a single block. The plan would be beautiful, the plan would be maybe even color-coded, the plan would sit there, fully admired, while I made absolutely nothing with my hands. So at some point, I stopped planning the comeback. And instead, I did three small, distinctly unglamorous things. First, I set up a maker space. And I want to be honest about how humble this is.

• 7:34Jonathan Fields?

  It's a corner, a table, a little room around it. It's actually a pretty broken down old, single-car garage that's so tiny and slender, you can't even park a car in it anymore. A place where the work could live. And crucially, I set it up so that, so that I never again had to spend the first 40 minutes just getting ready before I could actually begin. What I've learned is that the setup tax is where most of my making used to go to die. So the second thing I did, I bought my own supplies, you know, the tools, the blocks, the inks. And then I did the part that actually mattered, which was put them out, you know, in reach,

• 8:16Jonathan Fields?

  ready, so that the distance between wanting to make something and making something went from about 40 minutes of digging through closets and drawers to about four feet and four seconds. And I've actually, interestingly enough, I've, I've found the same thing with musical instruments. I play guitar really badly. Again, I love to play guitar. I've actually made a guitar. But when my guitar is in a case, in its closet, I will never play guitar. If I hang it on the rack on my wall, I'll pick it up all the time and just play. Similar concept. So let's talk about that third thing that I did. The one that really carried it. I re-enrolled in class. I signed up for a new season of printing class.

• 8:58Jonathan Fields?

  A standing time on the calendar in a specific building with other actual humans in the room and a start date. And I had already paid for this, which means somebody would notice if I didn't show up. Which I'll admit is one of the single most reliable productivity systems ever invented. And also slightly humiliating. And humiliation is precisely what makes it work when you don't show up. And you're like, I made a commitment and I'm not honoring it. And you know it and other people know it. Maybe that's just me. Here's what surprised me once all of this was in place. I didn't have to talk myself into it anymore. That was the whole difference right there.

• 9:39Jonathan Fields?

  There was no more nightly debate about whether tonight was finally the night I get back to making things with my hands. The table was there, the tools were out. You know, the day would come and I would go because that was just when I went to class. And then I would have it available to me in my, sort of like rundown garage maker space. Anytime I wanted to just open the door and walk into it. The decision had been made once in advance. And then it stopped being a decision at all. And it turns out that when you're not spending all your energy deciding, you actually have some leftover for the actual doing. So I started looking forward to it. I got a little better at it also slowly.

• 10:22Jonathan Fields?

  The way you only ever get better at the things that you actually do and not the things you quote, "plan to do." And the part of me that had felt kind of flat for, you know, like a good stretch of that year, it started without any announcement, really, to come back to life. None of that came from wanting it more. All of it came from building a place for the wanting to land. And I'll tell you, there's a specific kind of joy in pulling a print and seeing the thing that you carved show up on the paper, a little bit off, a lot imperfect, entirely yours, that no amount of crossing things off a list in a plan has ever once

• 11:05Jonathan Fields?

  given me. And I'd kind of forgotten that feeling existed. I planned for a while to someday go looking for it again. And what actually brought it back was a designated day, a table, and a class that I'd already paid for. And here's the thing that I want you to notice, because it's the whole episode hiding inside a story about woodblock printing. Not one of those three things is a plan. A plan is, I'm going to make more things this year. These are something else that I'm talking about. A place where the work actually lives. Tools already out, a standing appointment with a start date and witnesses.

• 11:48Jonathan Fields?

  They aren't intentions, they're moves. And the making came back genuinely. It's part of my life again, in a way that hasn't been in quite a while. And it didn't come back because I finally just wanted it badly enough or planned around it. That's the part I really want to land here. I had wanted it badly the entire time. I know this is so important to me. Wanting it was never the missing piece. It came back because I stopped relying on the wanting. And I built, I built a shape the making could live inside, even on the days the wanting didn't show up. And what I'd been missing, it wasn't willpower,

• 12:28Jonathan Fields?

  it was architecture. And it turns out, that's the actual secret of the second half of a year. The second half of almost anything. So let me give you the idea underneath it, because once you have it, you'll start seeing it everywhere.

• 12:48Jonathan Fields?

  There's a word for the thing I kept reaching for, a word for the thing that actually worked. And getting the difference between them is the most useful thing that I can hand you today. The thing I kept reaching for is a plan. The thing that worked is a move. A plan, a plan is a process about the future. It lives in your head, it's about later, and it depends secretly on a future version of you showing up more rested, more motivated, and less busy than you are right now. A move, on the other hand, is an action in the present.

• 13:28Jonathan Fields?

  It, it lives out in the world, it's about today, and it needs exactly one thing. Present you once. Here's the trouble with the promise. Every plan you have ever made was a promise made by a person who doesn't have to keep it. Let me repeat that. Every plan you have ever made was a promise made by a person who doesn't have to keep it. What does that even mean? So the you who plans on Sunday night is not actually the you who has to execute that on a Thursday morning, or next week, or next month.

• 14:08Jonathan Fields?

  And those two people, if we're really honest, have a famously strained working relationship. The you that makes the plan now and the future you that actually has to implement it. Right? Sunday plan making you is an idealist with a clean calendar and a glass of wine and maybe not, not nearly as much stress or complexity in your life as you really do have, or you will have. Right? Thursday you, or next week you, or next month you, it's the one who actually has to live inside Sunday you's confident little decisions. You're like, the move skips that whole problem. It doesn't ask future you for anything. It happens now while you're the one in the room. And to be fair,

• 14:52Jonathan Fields?

  I'm not telling you plans are useless. A plan is a perfectly good thing to have once you're already moving. The way that a map is genuinely a lot more useful once you've actually left the house. I have built a lot of plans. I built entire processes around how to develop and build plans, but they have their place. The trouble is when a map becomes a substitute for leaving the house. We draw the map, we admire the map, you know, we refine the map, we tell our friends about the map, and we never once put our shoes on. The plan becomes a very sophisticated way

• 15:32Jonathan Fields?

  of standing still while we feel like we're getting somewhere. And if you were with me last time, this is exactly where the two halves of the year meet. The last episode, the whole job was just to look, to really get honest and see, okay, where do we want to focus right now? To put down this scorecard and take on a stock and name one part of your life that had been running low while you weren't watching in the first half of the year. That was the looking part, right? You do not act on what you named by designing a strategy for it. You act on it with one move. And today, today is the moving part. And, you know,

• 16:15Jonathan Fields?

  I suspect you already know the difference in your own body, even if you've never put these two words to it. Think of something that you've been genuinely kind of meaning to do, something that's been sitting on your list for months, maybe years. Notice that you almost certainly have a plan for it. I bet you do, a pretty good one even. What you don't have, very likely, is a move. You know what you do. You just never specified the next small physical thing that you do and when and where. And that gap between the plan that you have and the move that you don't is where most of our undone lives live. I'm going to say that one more time.

• 16:57Jonathan Fields?

  The gap between the plan you have and the move you don't is where most of our undone lives live. A plan is a promise about a future you don't control. A move is a thing you do today, now. And today is the only place anything has ever actually changed. So Let's maybe sit with why plans fail because the reason is not the one that you've been told and the reason lets you off a hook that you've probably been hanging on for years. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Hey, so we'd love to share more midlife reinvention stories on the podcast, like the recent one from Saribad, who after decades in her career, then being pushed out as she

• 17:41Jonathan Fields?

  neared 60, launched Oldster Magazine to an incredible reception that even led to a book deal. We love inspiring stories that show how change is not only possible, but often incredible at any age. And it's not just about work, it's about relationships, location, health, and more. So if you've got a reinvention story you'd love to share, just tap on the link in the show notes and give us a quick summary. And who knows, you might just end up on the podcast. Excited to be inspired by your stories. Good Life Project is supported by Kachava. So I used to think being salty was reserved for bad moods and pretzels, but lately I have come to realize that a little salty edge actually makes life and especially dessert

• 18:25Jonathan Fields?

  way more interesting. Any pastry chef will tell you that a pinch of salt isn't there to ruin the party, it's there to make the sweet parts just really shine, which is exactly what Kachava pulled off with their new salted caramel. First sip, I actually laughed, it's that good, rich caramel, a little salty edge, and none of the sugary drawbacks. And it's still the Kachava that I count on. Two scoops for complete nutrition with plant-based protein, fiber, greens, and so much more. No artificial flavors, colors, or sweeteners, no fillers, no nonsense, which if you're feeling a little salty yourself is kind of the point. Embrace your salty side. Go to kachava.com and use the code GOODLIFE for 15% off your order. That's kachava, K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com, code GOODLIFE.

• 19:13Jonathan Fields?

  Good Life Project is sponsored by Sequencing. So in midlife, we start noticing some of the things our parents carried and how they're showing up in their health and their lives and wondering what we're carrying too. Sequencing.com can help. According to Sequencing, most popular DNA tests read about a tenth of 1% of your DNA. Sequencing.com reads all 3.2 billion positions and screens for genetic variants linked to over 15,000 diseases, conditions, and traits. That can mean catching inherited risks early and understanding how certain medications may affect you so you can talk it through with your doctor. Just swab your cheek, mail it back, and their CLIA-certified, CAP-accredited US lab handles the rest. Clinical grade, not novelty grade.

• 19:56Jonathan Fields?

  Your DNA doesn't change, but what we know about it does. So they keep reanalyzing your genome against new research for as long as you remember. And they never sell or share your data, ever. Right now, sequencing.com is offering our listeners up to 10% off your full genome test plus free shipping. Go to sequencing.com and use the promo code GOODLIFE for 10% off. That's sequencing.com promo code GOODLIFE. That's S-E-Q-U-E-N-C-I-N-G.com promo code GOODLIFE. Good Life Project is sponsored by Bombas. So there's this moment every fall here in Boulder. The morning air is crisp, the light goes golden against the mountains, and something in you just wants to slow down, like soft layers and long walks and a warm mug and a good book.

• 20:41Jonathan Fields?

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• 21:26Jonathan Fields?

  So head over to Bombas.com/GoodLife and use the code GOODLIFE for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash Good Life, code GOODLIFE at checkout.

• 21:39Jonathan Fields?

  You've probably been told that your plans fail because you lack discipline in some way, shape or form. I want to retire that idea. Plans fail because of how they're built. A plan asks future you to be a better, fresher, less interrupted person than present you. And future you is not a better person. They're not a less busy person. They're not a less interrupted, less stressed person. Future you is just present you on a later day, a day that will have its own flat tire and its own sick kid and its own three things that caught fire before lunch. We plan as though the future is a calm, well-lit room that will like one day walk into rested and ready with nothing else going on.

• 22:23Jonathan Fields?

  It is not that room. The future is just another ordinary, slightly chaotic day. And we keep mailing it our hardest assignments as if it'll have more space than today does. It won't. It never does. The best day to begin almost anything was never going to be some pristine future Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. It was always going to be a slightly inconvenient today. So we talked last time about how badly we predict the future, the way we consistently underestimate what things will take, even when we have a lifetime of evidence that we always underestimate. A plan is built entirely out of those predictions.

• 23:08Jonathan Fields?

  So inherits every bit of their optimism and not one bit of their accuracy. You're not failing the plan. The plan was a fantasy in a spreadsheet and your person on any given Monday. So a move, it has none of that fragility because it doesn't predict anything. It doesn't need tomorrow to cooperate. It

• 23:34Jonathan Fields?

  It just changes your actual state right now by a little bit. And it has a second property that genuinely surprises most people. A move changes who you are faster than any amount of deciding ever will. We have this backwards, right? We think that we have to become a maker, or become a runner, or become a writer, and then we'll, quote, "do the thing." It actually runs the other way. You make one ugly print, you write one bad line, you walk around your block and you discover you've become, without ever announcing it to yourself, a person who makes things and does things and starts to inhabit the identity. The identity, though, it doesn't come first and produce the action.

• 24:19Jonathan Fields?

  The action comes first and hands you the identity, without ceremony, almost as an afterthought. You cannot, you cannot think your way into a new way of living. You can only act your way into it, one small move at a time. You see it everywhere, once you start looking. Nobody decides to become a runner and then becomes one through the sheer power of decision. They go for one slow, undignified shuffle around the block, and then another, and another, and somewhere in there, with no ceremony or celebration at all, they catch themselves saying the words, you know, when somebody asks them at a coffee shop, "I'm a runner."

• 25:03Jonathan Fields?

  And kind of being faintly surprised that it's true. Same with the person who writes, same with the person who finally starts calling their friends back, same with the parent who becomes genuinely present in their kids' lives. None of them decided their way there. Every one of them moved their way there, one unremarkable rep at a time.

• 25:26Jonathan Fields?

  And unlike a plan, a move compounds. A plan just sits there as a static promise, kind of losing value by the day, like a treadmill becoming a place to hang clothes. Not that I've ever hung clothes on a treadmill. Okay, maybe I have. A move you actually made, it changes the conditions for the next move. Right? So my, my work table now, my, my maker table is set up. So the second print is easier than the first and the tenth is easier than the second. Moves build the ramp they roll down, which is why the first rep is both the hardest one you'll ever do and the most important. Right?

• 26:07Jonathan Fields?

  You're not only doing the thing that one time, you're lowering the price of every single time that you'll do it after. The first sentence is often agony. The 200th is just another sentence. But the only road to the 200th, it runs straight through the first. And there is no plan clever enough to skip that step on your own behalf. Somebody still has to write the bad first sentence. And that somebody is always not future you on a perfect day, but present you today in the here and now. And here's why the middle of the year of all the unglamorous moments is actually a

• 26:51Jonathan Fields?

  great time to make a move. There's a body of research from Kitty Milkman, who's actually been a guest on this show, along with her colleagues, Heng Shenjai and Jason Rees, on something they call the fresh start effect. What they found is that we are measurably more willing to begin something at what they call a temporal landmark, a new month, a birthday, the start of a season, the first of a year. These moments draw a clean line between the old self who didn't and a new self who just might. And we get a real usable burst of motivation from standing on that line. Now here's the trap that we've built around that, though.

• 27:31Jonathan Fields?

  We've been trained to treat exactly one of those landmarks, January 1st, as the quote, official starting line for our lives and, and all that we want to change and to happen in our lives and to treat the entire rest of the year as the long sigh between resolutions. And

• 27:53Jonathan Fields?

  If you're only allowed to begin in the first week of January and you miss it, you kind of just wait, you know, like, oh, I guess I missed my window. It'll be next year's thing. But the midpoint of a year is one of the most powerful fresh start landmarks there is, and almost nobody uses it. So you are not behind. Let me say that again. You are not behind. You're standing on a starting line that most people just walk straight past because they're saving themselves for a January that is six months away. And honestly, just way overrated. Think about how weird that is. We let one arbitrary day on the calendar hold the entire monopoly on beginning.

• 28:34Jonathan Fields?

  And then we spend the other 364 days feeling either ahead of it or behind it. But there's nothing magic about January 1st, except that we all agree to treat it as magic. You know, any given day in July works exactly as well. Especially because the midpoint of a year actually does mark something important. And the start of next month works. Your next birthday works. This episode, if you want it to, it works. The line is whenever you decide to draw it, and you can draw it today, right? You don't need more discipline. You need a smaller starting line. And you happen, right now, to be standing on one. Okay.

• 29:19Jonathan Fields?

  So this is the part you can actually use. Let's get practical, right? Let's get concrete and maybe a little bit bossy about it. What makes a move an actual move? You want to understand, like, what is this move thing, right? So what makes a move a move and just not a plan wearing a move's clothes? In my experience and in some interesting, compelling research, the good ones share a handful of traits. So here are those traits. You won't need every one for every move, but the more of them that you have for any given move, I've found, the more it tends to survive a bad week. And the bad weeks are often the whole test. So first element of a move. It's small enough to be unskippable.

• 30:04Jonathan Fields?

  The single most common reason a move dies is that it was secretly too big from the start. So the fix is to make it almost insultingly small. So not workout, but just put on your workout shoes. Not write the book, open the document and write one bad sentence. Not rebuild my social life, but send a single text. The test is simple. It has to be so small that the I'm too tired or too busy or too stressed excuse does not apply because you could do it on your worst day, mid cold, low on sleep, with a toddler touch your leg. If you couldn't do it on your worst day, it isn't a move yet.

• 30:49Jonathan Fields?

  It's a plan, kind of in smaller font. And I know how that lands. Insultingly small feels kind of like cheating, right? Like it couldn't possibly count for anything. But the small move was never meant to be the final destination. It's the doorway. Almost nobody puts on the shoes and then just stands there. You put on the shoes and most days you find yourself going for the walk. And the days you don't, well, you still put on the shoes and that counts because you stayed a person who shows up. The small version's only job is to be impossible to skip. Impressive is not on its job description. So a second element of a move, it's concrete.

• 31:34Jonathan Fields?

  A when, a where, and a what. This is where the research really earns its keep. Peter Goldthizer, psychologist who studied follow through for decades, found that the biggest predictor of whether people actually do the thing, it isn't how motivated they feel. It's whether they decided in advance exactly when and where they do it. He calls it implementation intention, which is kind of a very serious fancy name for a very simple sentence. When this happens, I will do that there. After I pour my morning coffee, I will write one sentence at the kitchen table. The vague version, I'll write more. It just loses the specific version every single time. And by a margin, that would embarrass the vague version if it ever bothered to show up and find out.

• 32:20Jonathan Fields?

  So my woodblock printing class is an implementation intention with a parking lot outside, which also helps. You know, so every Monday now at 5:30 in the evening in that building. That is how I frame it. I never have to decide. The deciding is already done, which means there's nothing left to talk myself out of. And notice what spares you because it's bigger than it sounds. Every time the move is vague, you have to decide fresh every single day whether and when to do it. And deciding is expensive. It burns the very energy that you needed for the thing itself.

• 33:02Jonathan Fields?

  A move with a fixed when and where is pre-decided. So you show up with your whole tank still full. You're not spending your willpower getting to the desk. You're spending it on the work once you're sitting there. Third element of a move.

• 33:20Jonathan Fields?

  It's repeatable. So, and, and pretty much in the same form and shape. A move that you have to reinvent every time often isn't really a move. It's a fresh negotiation with yourself and you'll probably lose about half of those negotiations. At least I do, usually the important ones especially. The power is often in the sameness, the repeatability. Same small thing, same time, same place. Boring is not a bug here. Boring is the entire point. Boring is what survives a bad week. That brings us to the fourth element of a move. It's anchored. So you hang the move on something that you already do, that's, that's already solid in

• 34:05Jonathan Fields?

  your day, an existing routine or a fixed point. So it borrows that thing's kind of repeatability and stability instead of needing its own. After the coffee, you do the thing. Before the school run, you do the thing. You know, like Wednesday morning at four, you do the thing. You're not trying to erect a new pillar in your life. You're hanging one small hook on a wall that's already standing. And the best anchors are the things that you already do without fail. You already pour the coffee. You already brush your teeth. I hope you already brushed your teeth. You already drop into the car seat and sigh. You know, like bolt

• 34:45Jonathan Fields?

  the new small thing to one of those and it gets to ride on a routine that's already unbreakable instead of trying to build a brand new one from nothing in the middle of an already full hectic, stressed out, busy, complicated life. Fifth potential element of a move. It's aimed at the bucket that you named, right? If you were here in our last episode, one of the things I asked you to do was name the part of your life that's actually running low. And again, you can go back after this and do that. That's fine. You don't have to have done it before listening or watching. It's right. We point the move straight at that gap. If it's your connection bucket, the move is, you know, a standing

• 35:29Jonathan Fields?

  text to one specific person, not a fuzzy intention to be a quote, better friend. If it's your like mind and body and your vitality bucket, it's the shoes on the door, you know, or shoes by the door tonight, not a 12 month gym contract that you'll be funding out of guilt by like two months in. Don't aim the move at the bucket that's already full. Aim it at the leakiest one or the lowest one. And if you missed last time, here's your 30 second version, no homework required. There are three parts of a life that a scorecard tends to miss completely. Your mind and body, we call that your vitality bucket, your relationships.

• 36:09Jonathan Fields?

  And we call that your connection bucket. And the sense that what you do actually matters, we call it your contribution bucket. One of the three is usually running lower than the others. And here's the cool part, it's usually not the one that you've been pouring all your attention into. That low one, the one you've been ignoring is exactly where the move belongs. And that brings us to the sixth potential element of a move. This one's a little bit of a bonus worth hunting for. The best moves often they pay into two good life buckets at once, not just one. So my woodblock printing, it fills my vitality bucket, my mind and body clears my head like almost nothing else.

• 36:50Jonathan Fields?

  And it fills my sense of contribution, my contribution bucket, because I'm making a real thing that matters to me that I can touch and feel and share. And maybe even at some point inspire joy in others when they interact with it. Right? So I call those moves sort of like a two bucket refill. If you can find a single move that pays into two parts of your life at the same time, especially ones that are running kind of low. It's worth twice the effort to protect because you're getting two refills, two repairs for one rep. A walk with a friend is often two buckets, your vitality bucket, your moving, your mind and body, and your connection bucket in a single outing. Cooking a real dinner with someone you love, probably two buckets too, connection and contribution and creativity.

• 37:34Jonathan Fields?

  Coaching your kid's team on a good day. All three at once potentially, right? Connection, contribution, vitality. You don't have to find one of these, the plain, single bucket moves are more than good enough. But if a two for one happens to be sitting there available, take it. It's the most efficient way to refill that you'll ever make. And now seven, seventh element of a strong move. Scafflet it from the outside. This is the one that I learned the hard way over the years and was reminded of this year. Once that easy kind of shared rhythm with somebody else was no longer there, the structure had to come from somewhere. And the somewhere turned out to be me.

• 38:18Jonathan Fields?

  And a class. So I built it on purpose. The class is structured that I can't easily wriggle out of because other people are in the room. I've committed to it. I've made statements that said I'm doing it and I already paid for it. So wherever you can, put your move somewhere that doesn't run on your own willpower. A class, a standing date, a person who's expecting you, a small deposit you'd hate to waste because willpower is a terrible building material. It's strong on the afternoon you buy and it is gone by the next morning. So outsource the structure to almost anything more reliable than your own good intentions, which is to say, almost anything at all. Tell a friend, you'll text them the second it's done so that somebody's

• 39:03Jonathan Fields?

  expecting the text, you know, put real money down on the class, kind of money you'd be annoyed to waste. Schedule, schedule the standing call so that bailing means letting someone down, actually a human being and not just yourself, because let's be honest with each other. We let ourselves down constantly and have gotten very unfortunately comfortable with it. And I'm raising my own hand here. The more of the move that you can move out of your own head and into the world where other people and your own calendar can hold it for you, the more of it survives the week that tries to take it from you. So a plan asks you who you're going to be next year. A

• 39:43Jonathan Fields?

  move asks what you'll do in the next few minutes. Only one of those questions has ever actually changed a life. Now, before we wrap this, I think I also need to talk about the traps.

• 40:00Jonathan Fields?

  And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

• 40:05Jonathan Fields?

  This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Ah, fall, that cozy season where we swap the swimwear for sweaters and sunnies for scars. But before the Halloween decorations are put away or Thanksgiving table has been set. There's already holly jolly music playing in the grocery store, reminding you that the year is coming to a close. Time to kick end of year into high gear. When you use Apple Card with Apple Pay, you earn 2% daily cash back on all purchases, including food, decorations, gifts, and more. Get a head start on your end of year purchases. Apply for your Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone today and start using it right away with Apple Pay. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA,

• 40:50Jonathan Fields?

  Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com. Good Life Project is sponsored by TinCan. So if you grew up in the 70s or 80s, you probably still remember your best friend's phone number and stretching the kitchen phone cord around the corner for privacy. Our executive producer, Lindsay, wanted that same freedom for her kids, eight and 10. So in January, she got them a TinCan. Now, friends call the house to chat, make plans, and check in without borrowing her phone. They even keep a handwritten phone book next to it. I kind of love that. TinCan is the new school way for kids to talk with their friends. It's a secure landline that lets them call all their favorite people, but with parental controls to keep them protected. No screens, no algorithms, no texting,

• 41:35Jonathan Fields?

  just a phone being a phone. Kids can only call or be called by people on your approved list. Calls to other TinCans and 911 are always free. And there's even an answering machine for messages that are, I'm told gloriously ridiculous. Go to tincan.com/goodlife to get $10 off your first order, exclusive for our listeners. That's tincan.com/goodlife for $10 off. And when you use our link, you're supporting our show. Tincan.com/goodlife.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com/bank. Capital One, N.A., Member FDIC.

• 42:41Jonathan Fields?

  We've got to name the traps because a move can revert into a plan the moment that you stop watching. And there tend to be these four ways that it happens. And knowing them is most of the defense, to be honest. The first trap is that it's secretly too big. We covered the fix, but the trap is sneaky because a too-big move feels kind of more virtuous, more real, more legitimate. One bad sentence, it feels insultingly small. An hour of focused writing every morning feels serious and admirable and like, you know, the sort of thing a quote, "real writer" would commit to. And the serious, admirable one is precisely the one you'll have abandoned

• 43:24Jonathan Fields?

  by the next week, or the next day, or even today, at which point you'll conclude you're not a real writer anymore. Choosing the insultingly small one, the insulting one is, it's the one that it still stands next week, next month, maybe even next year, right? I have a bit of a private rule for this now. Whenever a move feels appropriately ambitious, the kind of thing I'd be a little proud to tell someone about, I ask myself, what would it look like if I cut it in half? And then usually I cut it in half again. The version of that finally feels almost too easy to bother with. That's the one with a real chance

• 44:06Jonathan Fields?

  of surviving. Pride is a terrible guide here. Pride wants the impressive plan. Pride is never the one who has to get up on the dark, cold Wednesday morning and actually do the thing. The second trap that we can fall into in allowing a move to become something else is waiting for motivation. It's this belief that you'll make the move once you feel like it. Here's the hard truth. You will rarely ever feel like it. And that's not a judgment call. It's just human nature. You don't need to. Motivation is not the fuel that gets you up off the couch. Motivation is the thing that ambles in a few minutes after you've already started, kind of slightly at wrath, having completely missed the beginning.

• 44:51Jonathan Fields?

  Action comes first. The feeling follows the action. We have the order backwards. And the backwardness... Has cost most of us years, to be honest. So stop waiting to feel ready. Ready is not the thing that arrives on its own and taps you on the shoulder. Ready shows up after you've already begun slightly out of breath to take the credit. The move is built precisely so that you don't have to feel like it. You just do the small thing, the shoes, the sentence, the one text, and you let the feeling come find you at its own hazy pace.

• 45:31Jonathan Fields?

  The third potential trap here is the trap of feeling like you need a system first. This is the most sophisticated form of procrastination available to intelligent people. And I say that as a deeply experienced practitioner of this trap. You do not need the app, the planner, the perfect morning routine, or the right notebook. I have personally bought the right notebook on at least four, honestly, probably closer to 10 separate occasions, each time genuinely convinced that this finally was the missing piece. The notebooks are gorgeous. I had them from different countries. They're also, every single one of them, completely blank.

• 46:16Jonathan Fields?

  The system is not the move. Buying the system is just planning now with the receipt. And the genuinely dangerous part is that it feels exactly like progress, like action. You research, you compare, you optimize, you spent real money and real care, and you can feel the productivity just kind of humming in your veins. And you have, of course, made and done nothing. Because getting ready to do the thing is not the thing. And your beautiful new system or tool knows it, and it is probably judging you a little from the shelf. And the fourth trap here is kind of the most lethal of all, which is all or nothing thinking.

• 47:00Jonathan Fields?

  I'll repeat it again, all or nothing thinking. You make the move four days running. You missed day five, and some old, deep, judgy voice, probably not your voice. It might be from when you were a kid, right? It declares that you have failed. You've broken it. The streak is dead, so you may as well just quit. But miss rep is not a failure. Missed rep is just another day. The only thing that turns one missed rep into a broken streak and then total inaction is the story you tell yourself about it. So here's the whole rule, and it's kind of a pretty important one. Miss once, just make the next one.

• 47:45Jonathan Fields?

  And do everything you can to never miss twice. Right? You will miss days. Everyone misses days. The people who keep the move are not the ones who never ever miss. You know, I've been meditating for over 15 years right now, pretty much every day. But I gotta tell you, one or two days a year does not happen. I wake up at 2:00 AM to catch a flight or I'm like sick as a dog. And if I basically said after that, ah, I guess I'm not a meditator anymore. The whole thing's over. I wouldn't have the stunning benefit of having this practice in my life. So I do my best to just do the slightest, smallest version of it that day. And if I can, and the next day, whatever the slightest, smallest version of it, to slowly just say, no, that is still my identity. This is still the thing that I do.

• 48:31Jonathan Fields?

  Right? So the people who keep the move are not the ones who never miss. They're the ones who refuse to miss twice in a row. And let me say something kind of gentle here, because this trap is usually built out of an old horror story that we tell ourselves. The one that whispers, if I can't do it perfectly, I failed. So I may as well not bother at all. That story has robbed you of more good things in your life, more relationships, more activities, more experiences than any shortage of time ever has. The move is the antidote to it, because a move is too small to fail at. And one missed move is far too small to mean anything about who you are.

• 49:16Jonathan Fields?

  You missed a walk. You are not, it turns out, a disappointment to the entire concept of walking. You just walk tomorrow. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice can be the beginning of a new pattern. So guard the rep after the missed one even more fiercely than any other one. All right, so this is the part that I promised you at the top. We are going to make one move together, right? Right now, not a plan, one move, right? If you're driving or walking or holding a sleeping baby, just maybe think it through with me and then we can lock down the actual move the second that you're able to.

• 50:01Jonathan Fields?

  If you're somewhere, you can actually pause and do something even better. So here we go. Five simple steps. Step one, the bucket. Bring back the part of your life that's been running kind of low. If you were here last time, you already named it. If you weren't, just quickly answer it now intuitively. Vitality, connection, or contribution. Just do it quickly. Is your mind and body, your energy and health and aliveness, is that where you feel like you're taking the hit? Is it your relationships, your sense of being genuinely known? Or is it the feeling that what you do with your days actually isn't really giving you a whole lot of meaning or purpose? Which one is lowest right now? Don't agonize over it. Just the first one that jumped to mind is almost always the honest answer. And you can always redo this with different moves in the future. Just pick one for right now.

• 50:46Jonathan Fields?

  Go with it. And if more than one bucket feels low, that's completely normal. Most of us are actually running a deficit in at least two of them at any given time. But we just wanted to keep it simple. We just want to pick exactly one today. Just one. The entire power of this is in its narrowness, its focus. You can come back to others. Today, we move on one. Okay, got it? Great. Step two, shrink it. Now we find the move and the only rule is that it has to be almost too small, like embarrassingly small, not the impressive version, the version you could do on your worst day. If your bucket is mind and body, it's not exercise four times this week.

• 51:30Jonathan Fields?

  It's maybe a 10 minute walk after lunch or stroll or the running shoes set by the door tonight before I go to bed. If it's relationships, it's not see my friends more. It's one text to one specific person today that says something realer than we should catch up. You know, maybe if it's the work or contribution bucket that it feels like it really needs some love. It's not find my purpose. It's five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes on the thing that's actually yours, where you know it gives you energy and gives you a sense of curiosity, right? Before the inbox gets in your hands in the morning.

• 52:09Jonathan Fields?

  Pick the smallest, real thing, smaller than feels, in a weird way respectable. And I mean it about too small. Whatever just occurred to you, it's probably still a little too big because we can't help ourselves. So cut it down until a small voice in your head says, that's hardly even worth doing. That voice is wrong and that is exactly the right size. Good. Now.

• 52:36Jonathan Fields?

  Step three. Give it a when and a where. This is the goal, which is part, right? The implementation intentions and it's not optional because this is the step that does the heavy lifting. Say it as a sentence. When this, I will that, there. After I drop the kids at school, I will walk for 10 minutes around the block. Tuesday at seven, I will sit at the kitchen table and write one sentence. Say it out loud if you can, after you write it, because saying it out loud, it makes it suddenly feel real and a little bit more binding. And tie the when to something that already happened. So you're not trying to summon it out of thin air. So it's like after the coffee, after the school drop off, after the moment you sit down at your desk,

• 53:22Jonathan Fields?

  hang it on a part of the day that's going to arrive, whether you think about it or not. And a move with a when and a where is a move. A move without one is a wish.

• 53:37Jonathan Fields?

  Step four, scaffold it. If there's any way to do this, ask yourself, how do I make this not depend on my own willpower, which we have agreed is unreliable by the next moment you try and access it, right? Can you tell one person you're doing it? So someone's watching, can you put it in the calendar right now with an alert that goes off at the actual time? Can you set the thing out tonight? So tomorrow, you physically trip over it on the way to coffee. Borrow structure from anywhere that you possibly can. You are not cheating. You're building a wall that holds and you don't need all of these, right? Even one of them roughly, I'd say probably doubles your odds of the move actually happening.

• 54:21Jonathan Fields?

  So pick whichever ones you could set up in the next 60 seconds and set it up. And step five, which is where you actually seal this and you've got two ways to do it. Either one counts completely. Option one, if you can, make the first step right now, literally like put me on pause, okay? Genuinely, pause, then go ahead, send the text, put on the shoes, stand outside for two minutes, write the one ugly sentence, do the smallest possible version of the thing this second, because the moment you've done it once, it's no longer a plan, it's a thing you do and you will have crossed the only line that actually

• 55:03Jonathan Fields?

  matters, the one between thinking about it and actually having begun. And I want to gently push you towards that option one, the doing it now, if there is any way at all, because there's a version of this where you nod along, agree it's all very sensible, feel a warm little glow of intention and then drive home and let the day close over it like water, right? I have been that person a hundred times and I will be again. The glow of having understood something is not the same as having done it and it fades a great deal faster. So if the move is something you can actually begin in the next 60 or 120 seconds, begin it, right?

• 55:45Jonathan Fields?

  Let the rest of the episode be the soundtrack to your first rep. Here's option two, if right now genuinely just isn't the moment, and sometimes it isn't, right? Schedule it concretely before you do anything else, before you let this episode end and the day swallow it, open the Put in the when and the where we just built, set the alert. Not soon, not this week, a day and a time. Both of these count. The only thing that does not count, the only thing is I'll remember. You will not remember. None of us remembers. That's not a character flaw. It's just how the machinery, you know, like works in a busy life, which is exactly why we put it somewhere other than just in our heads.

• 56:30Jonathan Fields?

  So that's it. That's the move. Notice what it didn't require. It didn't require a plan. It didn't require you to become a different person first or live in a different life. It required about 90 seconds and a decision to stop circling the runway and actually finally land the thing, do the thing. And if some part of you is whispering that this is just too small to matter, that a 10 minute walk or one sentence or one text cannot possibly add up to a different life, I understand the doubt. I have felt it and I'm telling you plainly. That is wrong. It is not the size of the move that does the work.

• 57:13Jonathan Fields?

  It's the fact that it repeats. Small and repeated beats big and abandoned every single time. Anyone has ever measured it. Right? The walk you actually take is worth infinitely more than the marathon you're forever planning. You are now one rep, one move into the second half of your year. That is further than most people will get all summer, if not all year. So here's where I'll leave you with both halves of this series now in your hands. Last time we looked, we put down the scorecard. We took an honest stock and kind of named the part of life that had been running low while we weren't watching.

• 57:58Jonathan Fields?

  That was the honest, often invisible work of seeing more clearly. This time we moved, right? We took that one honest thing and turned it into something small and repeatable that you can actually do, starting today. And the thread running through both, the thing that I most want you to keep is this. A good life in the second half of a year, or the second half of anything, is not built out of plans. It's built out of moves, small ones, repeated ones. Point it at the parts of your life that actually matter to you. The plan was never the thing. The plan was the procrastination we dressed up to look responsible.

• 58:39Jonathan Fields?

  You were never short on ambition, and you weren't short on insight either. What was missing was permission to begin from exactly where you are in the middle of the year, a little tired, a little behind on the bright January version of yourself, you'd half forgotten you promised, and to start anyway, small today from here. Because here's the truth about the middle, and it's the thing I most want you to carry out of these two episodes. The middle is not a waiting room for some cleaner, better rested version of your life that begins in January. The middle is the life. It's where nearly all of it actually happens.

• 59:20Jonathan Fields?

  And the only way through it that doesn't end in yet another year of sincere, heartfelt, completely unkept intentions is to stop planning the life that you'll live later and make one small move inside the life you're already living now. And if the last time you looked honestly and decided with open eyes that you'd carry a particular cost for this season because it genuinely matters to you, that still holds, right? A move isn't a betrayal of that choice. A move is just one small refill that kind of keeps a chosen hard season survivable. Even then, especially then, you get to make one.

• 1:00:02Jonathan Fields?

  So there is no part three to this series that is just you and a move and the day you choose to make it, which I hope, I really hope, is today. So go ahead and make the move, and then make it again. Miss one and make the next one. If possible, never miss twice. That isn't a plan, that is a life, getting fuller and more alive, one small rep, one small move at a time. So thanks so much for joining me in this two-part summer reboot series. And if this series has awakened something in you, it'd mean the world to me if you take just a few seconds to share it with a friend who could maybe use a gentle mid-year

• 1:00:43Jonathan Fields?

  reset too, or maybe give us a thumbs up or a review wherever you're engaging with this podcast. And hey, before you go, next week, I am sitting down with an old friend, Jessica Ortner, to explore something that most people have never tried, that looks a little bit ridiculous at first to me, and that turns out to have a surprisingly serious body of research behind it. It's called tapping. And we're not going to sell it, and we're not going to dismiss it. We're going to give it a genuinely honest look at what the science does and doesn't support, who it actually is for. And then Jessica is going to actually guide me and you through a real session live on the episode that you can follow along with in real time. So be sure to follow Good Life Project wherever you get your podcasts

• 1:01:26Jonathan Fields?

  so you don't miss it. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help by Troy Young. Chris Carter crafted our theme music. And if you haven't already, go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss a conversation. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com/bank. Capital One, N A, Member FDIC.

• 1:02:30Speaker 04

  This podcast is brought to you by Thomson Reuters. The best don't just do their work, they change what's possible. Cases won, audits completed, jobs saved. Behind every one of those moments is a professional who needed to get it right, and did. Thomson Reuters builds the technology that sharpens insights, speeds up decision making, and powers the outcomes that matter. So when professionals act, the impact is felt by everyone. Be a change maker. Visit tr.com/changemakers.