#049 Keystone Actions

You may have heard of the concept of Keystone Habits. But what is a Keystone Action?

In this episode I share:

• What is a keystone action?
• Why keystone actions are important
• How can you use keystone actions to achieve greater flow, particularly when you are overwhelmed with possibility and ideas

Keystone actions is based off the idea of Keystone Habits which Charles Duhigg speaks about in his book The Power of Habit. 

Transcript

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Kate 0:10

Hey folks. I'm your host, Kate McCready, integrative business leadership and human potential coach meets mindful strategist for humans, uplifting people and planet. Welcome to the Leading Beings podcast, a show about elevating and expanding your awareness, potential and leadership for meaningful impact conscious success and a work-life or business in flow.

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Join me and some incredible guests for inspiration, ideas, tips, strategies, and stories to help you grow and evolve yourself and your mission. So you can make your unique, positive difference in work and life from the inside out. Whether you're leading a team, a business, a community and organization, a cause, or simply yourself, tune in as we explore what it means to be and become a Leading Being. Hello folks. And welcome to 2023. It is so exciting to be in the new year. Fresh. Shiny. All the good things and I don't know about you, but at this time of year, I often find myself wanting to do all the things there's so much that I am excited about and the year feels so full of possibility that, yeah, it's kind of almost a bit overwhelming. The overwhelm of potential and possibility. So today I wanted to talk a little bit about a technique that you can use to really focus yourself and get yourself into greater flow in terms of where you focus your attention when you're at this exciting time of the year. Or you can use this at any time. Of course. Before I get into that though. I'd just like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which I work and live the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. I'd also like to acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded and this wasn't always will be Aboriginal land. So. When you're in this state and you've got all these things that you want to do, and it's all exciting. And you're full of ideas. I don't know about you. I'm an ideas person. I always have more that I could do than I have time to do. Uh, And a concept that's really helped me and some of my clients as this idea of keystone actions or Keystone projects. So, what do I mean by a Keystone action or a Keystone project? So you may have heard of the concept of a Keystone habit. This was created by Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit. And the idea is with a Keystone habit, is that it's a habit or a thing that you do as part of your routine. That if you do that one thing, everything else flows better and falls out more easily. So let's say for example, your Keystone habit might be exercise and you know that when you exercise, you come home and you naturally want to eat better and you sleep better and it helps everything else work better. And all your other routines and habits and rituals fall into place. So, the idea of a Keystone action or a Keystone project is very similar. So if you come to a time of planning or, you know, timeline right now, the start of the year when you've got all these things ahead of you that you want to do. What I recommend is laying all of them out and having a look at them and looking at where the dependencies lie within the different actions and things that you want to do. What you'll often find is that there is a kind of a natural order to things. Not necessarily everything, but somewhere in amongst all the things that you want to do, there will be something that if you do that thing, all the other things will run more smoothly. Naturally work better. Make more sense. So I'll give you an example of this. So at the start of the year, I sat down and I, uh, revamped my goals using my mindful goals framework. I say revamped my goals because the goals that I set tend to be distal goals. They're longer. Uh, more overarching fuzzy goals, which then have smaller actions that lie underneath them. So these goals take longer to work towards over time. So rather than setting new goals every year, I look at some new goals in some cases, but also I look at the goals that I have Can I actually tweak those goals and adapt those goals to be more relevant to where I am right now? So anyway, I did that at the start of the year. And, um, I ended up with all these different things. And one of the clearest things that came out of that process was that there was a goal in there which was around being more clear on my business direction. Uh, for a while, I've had some questions around that. Um, having had a baby just over a year ago, like that kind of threw a lot of that up in the effort for me and had me questioning a number of things. So yeah, there was this thing around gaining clarity. There were a bunch of other goals related to business related to life. Um, but when I looked at all of those goals side by side, what was very obvious was that gaining that clarity of direction was key to all of the other goals. I could not move forward confidently with goals that had things to do with sharing thought leadership and making an impact and a number of other things until I actually had that clarity of direction. So for me, when I was looking at all the fun projects and bits and bobs and things I wanted to do. Over the next year, over the next weeks even. What I was really clear about was the fact that, that action, that gaining clarity was the thing that I needed to focus on the most. Because if I were to focus on something else, without that clarity, what I could actually end up doing is going off in the wrong direction or putting work into something that may not be relevant later down the track. So I'm actually putting my focus on the wrong things. And that's when we ended up wasting our time when we ended up wasting our energy. And when we've got a multitude of things that we want to do, we don't want to send ourselves off down the wrong track. So, if you want to do this for yourself, It's not a scientific process. Uh, it's something that I recommend doing with something that you can maybe move around, like post-it notes or a digital mind map or something like that. And just look at the flow of actions. What precedes something which precedes something which precedes something else? What do you need to do first in order for all the other actions and all the other projects to flow more naturally? Now not everything's necessarily going to be connected. And you might need to make some decisions around what is the highest priority. And it might be that there isn't a direct connection, but there's an indirect connection. So let's say for example, that you're feeling really sluggish and not fully well after a very festive festive season. Uh, and you know, that that is meaning that you're not at your best when you sit down at your desk or when you're playing with your kids and you have goals that are linked to, you know, being a better parent or increasing your business profitability. But it might be that focusing on the thing that's about your wellness and getting you in the shape or the physical state or the mental state in order to support your full potential to move some of those other things forward. That might be the place that you start. That might be the Keystone action. And what I suggest is putting the majority of your time and energy into that Keystone action or project. And it's not to say that you can't work on other things. You might still want to move some things forward. You might do other bits and bobs and things. You might go, okay, well, I can do this much of this activity without having that other thing done yet. So I'm going to do that. Just to keep things interesting, because I don't know about you, but I can get a bit bored when I just to focus on the one thing, even though I know what's good for me. But yeah, if you put a majority of your focus into that Keystone action or project. And so you're making sure you're working on that a little bit every day, even if you're fitting everything else in around it. I really believe that helps us move forward with greater ease, with greater flow, with the things that we want to do, because it kind of clears the path for the things that need to happen to happen. So that's it for today, just a short little episode, because I'm still technically kind of on holidays. And the weather is too nice at the moment to be spending too long podcasting. Um, it is a glorious day here in Melbourne. If it's wintery where you are, I'm sorry. But we've had a rubbish summer. So got to make the most of this beautiful weather while it's around. Uh, so I hope that was helpful. Let me know, do you have a Keystone action or a Keystone project that's really going to help you move things forward with greater ease and flow at the start of the year? Uh, let me know, send me an email. Hit me up on Instagram or LinkedIn. However you like to get in touch. And that's it for today, folks. And I will see you in the next episode. Bye.