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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm going to introduce you to the pre-mortem technique one simple trick to avoid failing at your most important projects today I have another very practical episode for you and this one is on the topic of the pre-mortem this is a simple project management technique which is the opposite of a post mortem and you've probably heard of a post mortem before especially if you're in business or you've done any kind of project development work so what this basically is the post mortem is that after a project is complete after you launch a service or a product the people who worked on it come back together sit in a room and ask themselves a couple of important questions they ask themselves okay what did do we what did we do right and what did we do wrong and the point of it is that you learn from your mistakes so that the next project that you go and work on you can then learn these lessons and apply them what the pre-mortem is is sort of like the post mortem except rather than doing at the end of the project you do it before you even begun the project that might sound a little weird how can you do a post mortem before you even started the project well it's a really brilliant strategy that I want to share with you I'm going to give you a lot of examples for how this works but before we get into that let me just remind you that this fits into the larger picture of strategic thinking I hope that as you go forward in your life whether you're working on relationships business your health your spirituality your personal development whatever that you're applying strategic thinking to it remember how I told you about strategic thinking in my strategic thinking episode that was a very important episode and I'm going to shoot more episodes in the future to show you how to apply strategic thinking well this episode here is one example of that it's a specific methodology that you can use to make sure that you are thinking strategically about the most important initiatives in your life and when I talk about projects I don't just mean work projects I mean all the things you want to accomplish in your life the personal stuff too that qualifies as being a project or an endeavor and I'll go into more depth about all the different areas of application of this technique applied this techniques this technique in areas in my life where you would normally think that this kind of technique couldn't apply to you would think like only oh this only applies to people who are like in a corporation working on some big project no this applies to everyone and it's going to be useful for you even if you don't have your own business but especially if you do or if you're thinking about starting your own business or if you're trying to start up your life purpose talk about a major project your life purpose so let's talk about how the pre-mortem works it's very simple basically what you do is you select one project or endeavor as we're defining it here whatever that might be for you maybe you want to lose 50 pounds of weight maybe you want to get a great marriage maybe you want to start a new business maybe you want to find your life purpose maybe you want to get enlightened whatever so you pick that as your project or as your endeavor now what you do before you even begun the project is you imagine to yourself that your project has failed spectacularly so you imagine your marriage crumbles you imagine your enlightenment doesn't work you imagine that your business goes into bankruptcy and so forth you imagine that rather than losing 50 pounds you gain 50 pounds right you imagine a spectacular failure and now what you do after you take a few minutes to visualize it in a realistic manner then what you do is you list every cause of failure that you can foresee and here is where you have to be forward-looking and at the same time realistic you want to imagine realistic causes of failure not just some paranoid fantasies right and then what you do is you make sure that you include any subtle psychological causes of failure not just external ones so a lot of times we get caught up in worrying about like how the economy is going to be bad and how someone's going to screw me over or steal something from me like all these external causes of failure and usually what we ignore is the most obvious causes of failure which are your personal weaknesses your personal neuroses your own idiosyncrasies and the way in which you self interfere and self-sabotage so you want to make sure you include and brainstorm all the possible psychological causes of failure be very specific about that and then once you have your list of failures maybe you're going to have ten or twenty items on this list for your one project then what you do is you prioritize reorganize the bulleted list so that the greatest most threatening and most likely causes a failure at the top and the least likely ones are at the very bottom and that once you've got this list that's a really sobering eye-opening perspective into what your project is going to require to succeed you're going to have to overcome all those obstacles and so what you do now is you brainstorm a list of solutions for each item on this list especially the top three on the list which are your greatest threats and you brainstorm specific and realistic solutions to each one of those and then you're done that's the pre-mortem and you do all of this before you even get started so for example if you want to lose weight you set that as your object as your endeavor and then you list all the reasons why you would fail to lose weight and then at the end of the day you come up with solutions to address all those points of failure see how it works pretty simple right so let's take you through an example of how this might look and the example that I want to use is starting a new business so let's say you want to start your new business now what do you do you imagine you visualize okay I started my business and then a year or two down the road it is destroyed in catastrophe something very catastrophic has happened and it failed why did this happen let me visualize and imagine the possible likely causes so here's a random list of examples that I would come up with maybe it would be something like the economy goes into recession and I didn't plan for that so I don't have enough cash flow coming in don't have enough cash reserve and so I'm not able to have enough operating capital and so I have to go bankrupt that might be one reason another might be that a competitor of mine in the same field releases the same product I was going to release but earlier beats me to the punch another might be paralysis by analysis now this here is an internal flaw an internal cause of failure so maybe I have this tendency to read too many business books and so I'm spending all this time you know dozens of hours doing research reading all these books taking all these courses going to all these seminars but then I get so paralyzed I don't know what to do I don't know how to take the next step so I don't even get activated to build my business and because of that I fail that would be a very astute subtle psychological observation about myself is noticing that I hey I tend to get into paralysis by analysis and that can really damage my project success another point of failure might be that I'm loose with my tax expenses because I'm so stingy again this is another subtle psychological observation about myself maybe I recognize that I'm stingy with money so I try to get the maximum tax expenses that I can and that leads to an IRS audit because I'm loose with my expenses and then that creates problems for me and leads to the shutting down of my business or maybe I just psych myself out maybe I talk about building a business with my friends and my family I keep talking about and talking about it and talking about it and having all these dreams but then the end of the day my vision is just so big and so grand I'm not able to take any action and I just psych myself out and I quit I get depressed by all the work I have to do this again is another very subtle psychological inner cause of failure that most people never think about when they begin a project usually if people think about causes of failure for starting a project it's usually only the most obvious external stuff they never think that their own psychology could undermine them and lead to failure and you know what most people when they fail at anything whether it's losing weight or becoming a Olympic athlete or becoming a famous musician or following their life purpose or you know whatever it's because of their psychology not because of external obstacles here's another example of how that might work maybe I'm really artistic so I start my business and I'm really into the art of my business and so I start to create my work my product I'm going to put out there for my business but I guess so artistic with it that I ignore the needs of my customers I put my own aesthetics first the needs of my customers second and when I do that I have no customers and then the business fails and I'm shocked how could the business fail well it's because I was too worried about satisfying my own artistic tastes rather than trying to get my help trying to help my customers get something valuable in their lives another very subtle psychological um cause of failure right because it's my clinginess to needing my own artistic needs to be satisfied that led to this failure or maybe I have creative differences with my business partner or maybe I just get bored with the business because you know it usually takes a couple years to get a business rolling maybe I just get bored with it the idea is not appealing enough to me to stick it out for a couple of years and so I just quit because of boredom or maybe because I have this psychological need for financial security and so when I go and I work on this business for a year but then the business in a year usually doesn't bring it back a lot of money yet so I find myself kind of going deeper and deeper into the hole but then I find myself unable to stomach the debt that I'm going into or the lack of money that I'm getting and I know that I can get a nine-to-five job that gets six figures or something out there in the regular world so I'm very tempted to just go back and just take my old nine-to-five job back and because of that I quit my business or maybe I'm a problem in that I just can't motivate myself I can't discipline myself every single day I wake up late I go to bed late because I party and drink and schmooze around with women and so I end up slacking off on my business and don't do enough work fast enough and therefore it fails or maybe I get sucked into a relationship with a woman and maybe I accidentally impregnate her and we have a child together and now all the sudden we have a you know I have I have to marry her and I have to have a child with her and I have to have a whole family and that takes up a lot of time a lot of energy a lot of focus goes into that and so that distracts me from my business and my business collapses or maybe I lose all the data for my business which is stored on a server and the server crashes them because I fail to anticipate that it might crash I didn't back it up properly and so I lose all my most important data in my business collapses or maybe I just worked so damn hard I'm so excited about my business I've worked at it 80 hours a week for two years and then by the end of that even though the business hardly become successful I just burn out and I can't sustain it and I just have to quit or maybe I get distracted by the money maybe my business becomes successful after a few years the money starts coming in and I lose focus of the fundamentals I forget about why I started the business in the first place I start chasing money start chasing success and eventually that leads to the downfall of my business maybe I get distracted by a new shiny business idea because hey you know I love new business ideas and I'm a visionary type of person and so like yeah right now today this is the best business idea I've got but next week I'll have an even better one and then next month I'll have it even better one and then two years from now I'll have an even better one and so I just keep jumping from one to the next to the next and I know that's a tendency of mine so that could be a real serious cause of failure or maybe I just get demoralized and I quit because I've been working on this business for like six months and then six months in some bad news in my industry comes out some problem happens with my customers maybe I lose some of my most important clients for whatever reason and then I'm just so demoralized that I can't persevere past that and I quit the way I have with certain things in the past that tends to be maybe a tendency of mine or maybe I lack the technical skills like I have a good business idea I know what to do I have a great vision and I start working on it but I fail to anticipate the fact that my technical skills are lacking maybe I don't have the right writing skills I don't have the right speaking skills I don't have the right programming skills or the right artistic skills or whatever and that is something that I would need to educate myself on and to cultivate but because I fail to anticipate it then later on it comes back to bite me in the ass or maybe I lose sight of my big vision as I'm working on my business you know I'm working with people around me people have different opinions they have different visions I have the big vision but their visions compete with mine and because I'm so bad at handling confrontations and I'm so bad at assessing other people's visions communicating with them but still holding on and insisting on my own vision that basically I got wrapped up in their stuff end up choosing a smaller vision going after smaller stuff and I lose track of my big vision and because of that my business ultimately fails so that would be an example to all these all these examples that I gave you are what your list should look like maybe 10 maybe 20 items and then when you have all these items you want to prioritize them and really introspect and ask yourself okay if this business failed what would be the number one reason why it would fail and you take a look at this whole listing you're like man I don't know that's hard hard to anticipate but you know one thing I really know about myself is in the past I just keep getting distracted by shiny new business ideas and I know that I get bored really easily I lose focus very easily I don't stick with anything that's been my number one psychological weakness in the past and so you anticipate that ah yeah that's probably going to be the thing that that ruins it if anything ruins it it's probably going to be that and then you go on to number two find your number two cause and then go on to number three fighter number three cause see make sure that you really isolate those subtle psychological factors those personal inner demons and weaknesses that you have and how those will specifically manifest into tanking your business in this case and then what you want to do is you want to go through and try to brainstorm some possible solutions for each one of these causes of failure so you know what could I do so that I don't get distracted by a shiny new business idea or what could I do so that I don't get sucked into a relationship and accidentally impregnate some woman that I wasn't intending to and now I have to start a family what I didn't want to wasn't ready for it or you know what could I do so that I don't work so hard that I burn out and quit or what can I do to address my financial insecurity fears and my lack of tolerance for financial insecurity what could I do to prevent myself from psyching myself out and here you want to come up with realistic practical solutions for each one of those and that of course is going to be different for every one of you so I can't really supply you with all those answers so that's it and then your pre-mortem is done now let me talk about the different areas of application of this pre-mortem you might think it's only applicable to business but actually no of course this is excellent if you want to start a business but it's also excellent if for example you're quitting your job and you're moving on you know I see a lot of people thinking about how oh I'm going to quit my job and go do something wonderful with my life uh that can really get you into trouble failure to plan that out realistically if you're going to be quitting your job which probably supports you and pays your bills you want to really make sure that you pre-mortem that and anticipate all the causes of failure that will happen there if you quit your job you really think that one through right a lot of people don't think that one through and they end up screwing themselves over also you can apply this to your entire career whatever career you're in if you're a doctor if you're an architect if you're a lawyer if you're an engineer if you're a program if you're a designer if you're an artist if you're a celebrity if you're an actor if you're a writer or whatever you are take your entire career which will probably span 3040 years and apply a pre-mortem to it and ask yourself okay if my entire career fails why would that happen what would be the cheap causes of that especially the psychological ones man that could save your career right there if you do that and how many people actually do that on their career very few very few people are that forward-looking they usually only face the problem once it's already too late once the problem is already there in their lap how about your life purpose have you taken my life purpose course I hope you did could really transform your life you have it go check it out but if you are on track with the life purpose course and maybe you found your life purpose or you have a hint of what it might be and now you're working on it right well how about applying this pre-mortem technique to your life purpose imagine if your life purpose failed spectacularly why would that be the case what would be the leading causes of it that could make or break whether you achieve or fail to achieve your life purpose right there are you in school or in college well you could apply this pre-mortem technique to your next year in college for example or you could apply to your entire college career maybe you're going to spend four years earning a degree well apply the preborn to it ask yourself okay if my time in college fails spectacularly why would that be the case and then list all the reasons why that can make the difference between you getting into a great graduate school or failing out of college are you trying to lose weight that would be an excellent place to apply this pre-mortem technique sit down and really ask yourself what are the psychological causes of failure for me not losing the weight and you probably have experience with this already because you probably try to lose weight a lot of times and you're in the past in your life and you failed so you probably are already familiar with common psychological causes of failure so make sure you bring all those up into your awareness and really plan it out and have realistic solutions for each one of those psychological causes your entire life you could apply the pre-mortem to so if you don't have a specific project that you're working on how about your entire life let's take your entire life from this point on till you're dead and ask okay if my entire life fails spectacularly why would that be what would be the chief causes of that and especially what would be those subtle psychological influences my own personal weaknesses that led to that and then what kind of solution is going to come up with think about how valuable that might be how about enlightenment you trying to become enlightened are you a real hardcore student of spirituality well how about we take that as your endeavor as your project and now we ask okay if you fail if your enlightenment failed spectacularly how would that happen what would that look like why did it happen how did you cause it and come up with solutions or maybe you're trying to learn a new hobby like playing the guitar or weightlifting or playing a new sport you can apply the pre-mortem to that how about relationships our marriage are you trying to get into a great relationship are trying to learn dating are trying to learn attraction are you trying to get your dream girlfriend boyfriend and then marry them and start to raise kids with them that is a huge monster of a project right there if you want that to succeed you better plan ahead you better think of all the different psychological obstacles you have that will sabotage you in that endeavor and I guarantee you got at least a handful of those so take a look are you traveling abroad I noticed some people especially young folks who tend to watch my content maybe they finish high school and then they want to go off and spend a year traveling through Europe or through Asia or go somewhere they haven't been you know that kind of thing that kind of bohemian lifestyle that's good that can be a really great way to learn about yourself to discover yourself to find your life purpose maybe that's a great idea for you but do a pre-mortem on it ask yourself if I spend a year traveling abroad and that fails spectacularly what are the chief causes how did I caused it what are some solutions to that and lastly you can do this for your entire next upcoming year 2017 is tomorrow or if you're watching this it's today so 2017 is here it's a new year what do you want to accomplish in 2017 what will it look like if 2017 is a failure for you what would it look like for you to waste all of 2017 the way maybe you did with 2016 or 2015 or the last five or 10 years your life and anticipate the causes of failure you probably have a lot of experience of wasting prior years in your life so you can easily anticipate what the psychological causes will be and as you anticipate them and you bring up to your awareness you can clearly see the obstacles which helps your mind to then create creative solutions for them and to not get blindsided by them personally in my own life I've used this pre-mortem technique for losing weight excessively for changing where I live successfully for example when I moved from Dallas to Las Vegas where I currently live that was a big transition for me in my life it wasn't just a physical relocation it was a sort of a new starting point for me and that was important for me I used a pre-mortem on that to make sure that I didn't waste my opportunity and also when starting actualised org I did a pre-mortem that was very important I actually sat down I anticipated all the causes that would have led to my failure and that was very important because if I didn't do that then actualized other work probably wouldn't be where it is today so that just gives you some idea of how you can apply this technique I hope you can see the versatility of it now what I've got for you is I've got the assignment here's your action step I want you to select one project or endeavor in your life just one for now and then spend 30 to 60 minutes doing a full pre-mortem on it using the worksheet that I have for you to download it's free worksheet so just click down on the link below the video and you will find the worksheet and it'll guide you through all the questions and all the steps for doing this pre-mortem and after you finish that pre-mortem this is the most important part I want you to get a sense for how it feels to be strategic I think that most people miss this when I talk about strategic thinking there's a certain feeling to it when you're being strategic in your life it feels like you're really being forward-thinking you're being proactive you're anticipating obstacles it's like you're playing a strategy game and you're really allocating your resources properly to make sure that you're thinking 10 moves ahead so you don't paint yourself into a corner I want you to get a feeling for what it feels like to live your life strategically now you got to be careful here because you can take the whole strategic thinking thing too far where you're overanalyzing every little move in your life and you're being overly logical and not intuitive but that's not proper strategic thinking so teacher thinking is highly intuitive thinking it's both intuitive and logical at the same time it takes into account the big picture but also the little nitty gritty concrete details that are involved with realizing any big picture or dream that you have right so don't think the strategic thinking just being means being super Machiavellian and very logical about everything no not at all it always starts with big-picture intuitive thinking but then also realizing that to get anything done in this world you have to be practical you have to anticipate technical details that will [ __ ] up your realization of this dream and that's what it takes you got to be able to operate on the big picture level and also on the little picture level right so I want you to get a feel for that and that's it happy new year happy 2017 I'm signing off make sure you do the worksheet and do the assignment please click the like button for me share this episode with a friend post your comments down below and come sign up to actualize that run right here this is a newsletter my website there's resources here for free that you can find you can also find my life purpose course you can find the forum where I have some great resources and people contribute a lot of cool resources to the forum that you can access for free but the reason you want to stick with me with actualize that org keep watching the content is because those folks who do stick with me they will prosper in ways that are hard for them to even foresee that's what will happen if you just watch one new video every single week you do the assignments I give you lots of assignments I try to make the stuff very practical very accessible and you just keep doing that over and over and over and over again for a year for two years for three years stuff will start to shift for you you will start to see the world and do in new and different ways and new possibilities will open up for you that you've never imagined possible you'll have a much bigger vision of your life of what you can do with your life of what's it possible to do you will have much better understanding of all the obstacles that have prevented you from realizing your dreams in the past and they will no longer seem like giant mountains that are impassable but you will actually have practical techniques and all the know how to circumvent all those obstacles and go out there and create the kind of life that you want and all that it takes is just steady learning of these concepts of these techniques working on them a little bit each week right this is one of the most important habits you could put into place is learning how to develop yourself how to grow yourself in the proper ways because this is the stuff you were not taught in school this is the stuff you were not taught by your parents they didn't teach you this in church um they didn't teach you this at work very few people know about this stuff so you're really lucky to have come across this resource ah mostly free remorse the content I release is free it's a mostly free content resource so make sure that you don't discount the opportunity here the opportunity here for you is huge and the only real cost is your time and your interest in it if you're interested in this material just stick with it and trust the process and just see what it does for you in a couple of years it can transform your entire life you