WINS - S1E2

Most people are not actually managing their day; they are surviving it.

In this first official episode of No Random Wins, Nate Jomaa breaks down why so many professionals stay stuck in reaction mode, constantly answering messages, putting out fires, and confusing busyness with progress.

This episode introduces the WINS Framework, a simple structure for building more intentional, productive days:

W: What matters
I: Intentional blocks
N: No-reactive work
S: Scheduled review

If your days feel scattered, overloaded, or hijacked by everyone else’s priorities, this episode gives you a practical way to take back control without becoming rigid, robotic, or impossible to reach.

Because better days are not random.

They are designed.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Welcome to No Random Wins. This is our first official episode because the last one I posted was more of an introduction. It was like, here's who I am, here's what we're doing, kind of episode. So today we are getting to work. And I want to start with something I think a lot of people in business can relate to, and that is mismanagement of your day. Most people probably would agree that they do a poor job of managing their day. They wake up, check their phone, reply to some text messages, check their email. Maybe there's a client issue, depending on when they woke up, maybe they're taking a call that they didn't expect. And if you do this all day long, it's this weird cycle of repeating. And the next thing you know, it's the end of the day. And a lot of us would say that we had a busy day, but what were we busy doing? I can tell you that on days that that's happened to me, I feel like I didn't actually move the business forward. And that's what I call crisis mode. You didn't really get anything done, and crisis mode can become a little sneaky because sometimes you do feel productive. Sometimes you do feel like you move the needle, you know, you push business forward, but that's not always the case. In fact, it's rarely the case. But if you look back at it, you're answering some things, you're solving problems, you're maybe available, you're helping people. But if every day feels like that, if every day feels like a fire drill, then it's not necessarily a fire problem. It's more of a structure problem. So that's what I want to talk about today. Because as I've said, as you've heard, wins are not random. You know, the name of this show is No Random Wins. Wins are built with intention. And so that's what brings me to our framework. And that's really what I've built this entire podcast, this series, and this show on. And that framework is called wins. W-I-N-S. So W is what matters. I is intentional blocks. N is no reactive work. And then S is Scheduled Review. So let's break that down a little bit. W, what matters. Before you schedule your day, you have to decide what actually matters. That sounds easy and it is pretty easy in theory, but a lot of people don't put the work in, they skip it. They start their day by reacting to whatever is the loudest, whether that's an email, a text, a problem, or a person. You know, what is loud is not what's most important. So before you start your day, you have to ask yourself, what are one to three things that I could do today to make today a win? Not 20 things. You don't have to list 20 things. You you want to list just a few things. And why is that? Because it just adds to the clutter if you have too many, right? If you have a list of 15 or 20 things, that's too much. So you have to actually decide what moves your business forward. So for a salesperson, that could be following up. I talked about this in our introductory episode. I think a lot of people are just not good at following up or following through. So for a leader, that could mean that you have a coaching conversation with somebody. If you're a business owner or somebody that's in a management role of some type, maybe it's recruiting, maybe it's something to do with relationship building, maybe it's structuring content, recording content, having a good client experience, or maybe it's just reviewing numbers. Maybe those analytics, those KPIs, that's what's going to move the business forward. The point though is that if you don't define the win, the chaos going on all around you is what will define it for you. And chaos has terrible judgment. So let's move on to the letter I, intentional blocks. If you've been in business or you've ever worked at a corporate office, I'm sure you've heard at somebody at some point tell you that in business you have to time block. You have to schedule time. And there's more to it than just that, though. When you're time blocking, you have to make sure that those blocks are intentional. It's what you're focused on, even if it's just a block with yourself. So let me give you a couple of examples. If you look at my calendar any given day, you'll see that there are prospecting blocks. I have follow-up blocks, I have content blocks, I have client update blocks, I have recruiting blocks, I have team development blocks. So whatever it is that matters the most in your business, block time for that. And then you have to honor those blocks that you set for yourself as if they're appointments you set for yourself with somebody else. If you set an appointment with a client, for example, you won't just push that client appointment aside. You'll honor that appointment because you want to meet with that client. Maybe you're trying to close a sale with that person, or maybe you need feedback from that client on something that you're working on. So you have to respect your own time as well. If you schedule time with yourself, be there with yourself. Whatever matters most in your business, block time for that. I'll put it this way: unintentional or unscheduled priorities usually become good intentions. And good intentions are not a business plan. They're just that. They're good intentions. The goal for this is not perfection. The goal is to protect your time so that you're focused on what matters the most. And so you don't want that noise to come in and interfere with things. You know, it could be as simple as saying, like, hey, from 9 to 10, I'm going to be making prospecting calls. Uh, from 10 to 10:30, I'm going to be doing some follow-ups. From 11 to 12, I'm going to be working on a report that I've been putting off because, as we'll talk about later, I'm sure sometimes we find things to occupy our time because we don't want to work on the things that we should be working on. And then maybe book in there from 12 to 12:30 or from 12 to 1, you're on lunch. Because that's important too. You have to have lunch. You have to eat throughout the day. That's what gives our brains fuel. But the entire thing with blocking and the entire thing with being intentional is that it's it's simple, but it also becomes a very powerful tool because now your day has lanes, right? And when your day has lanes, you tend to stop swerving into the traffic that's driving in the same direction as you in the lane next to you, right? So our next letter is N. No reactive work. This is the hardest one for most people because we live in a reactive state of mind. A lot of people do. So non-reactive work doesn't mean that you ignore people, it just means that you stop being responsive. So you can be proactive or you can be reactive. And in my life, in my personal life, in my business life, I try to be as proactive as much as possible. So what does non-reactive work mean? Well, it doesn't mean that you become one of these people that says, hey, your emergency doesn't align with my calendar. Nobody likes that person. And you know deep down that you don't want to be that person at the end of the day. So no reactive work simply means that you stop letting every notification choose what you do next because everything starts to feel urgent when you do that. And when everything is urgent, nothing is urgent. And your day has absolutely zero structure to it. So some things are urgent, some things are important, and some things are super loud and they're not important and they're not urgent. You have to decide what those things are. So an example could be a live uh client issue that may need your attention right now, or it could be a team member that you're coaching that feels stuck and they just really need your help. Or it could be a deal with a deadline that you have to stop working on what you're doing and give it your attention briefly. But don't live in dealing with that for a long period of time. But getting back to those interruptions, every email, every group text, every random notification you get on your phone, every random, hey, I just have a quick question for you. Every little digital squirrel that goes running across your desk throughout the day does not deserve instant access to you and your best energy. And that's where we really have to be honest with ourselves because sometimes crisis mode is not happening to us. No, in fact, sometimes we're creating it by checking our emails, by looking at Facebook notifications, by looking at that easy task that we want to work on rather than working on something that's hard that should have our attention. So we welcome that task as an interruption. But that's not a reactive approach. When we're structured, it pulls us back into ownership. And setting up windows of time for this reaction is really the best thing for you to do. So you find certain times where you check your messages and you handle certain admin activities at certain times. And then you respond to non-important things as well in some of those batches. You don't let your whole day become this open door buffet where everybody else gets to go in and plow through the tables, and then by the time you get up there, you're left with the scraps. That's not what you want. That's not leadership, and that's really exhausting. If you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. So letter S is going to be our scheduled review. This is the last part of the Wins framework, and it's really where you turn your activity into progress. At the end of every day, take five minutes and ask yourself, what did I do today that mattered? Where did I lose control of my day? What pulled me into reaction mode? What did I avoid? What worked? What didn't work, and what needs to change tomorrow? That's it. You just ask yourself those questions. Did I do what mattered? Where did I lose control of the day? What pulled me into reaction mode? What did I avoid? And what worked? Five minutes. No dramatic journal entries required. You can just pull out a paper and pen and write these things down. It's just an honest review with yourself because if you don't review your days, you're going to keep repeating the same patterns over and over, and the same chaos is going to leak in day in and day out. So a scheduled review helps you catch those leaks. Maybe you'll find your mornings get hijacked because you allow certain things to interrupt your day. Maybe you take too many unscheduled calls throughout the day. Maybe you keep putting important work off until later in the day when you're worn down a little bit. Maybe you keep saying yes to too many things. You can start saying no sometimes. Like no is an answer. Sometimes you need to say, hey, send me the details and I'll review it during the admin block that I have. I'll say that again because I think that that often gets missed as well. Send me the details and I'll review it during my admin block. That's not rude. It's showing that you have responsibilities and that you respect your time. And if you respect your time, you're telling others to respect your time as well. And it's how you stay helpful without handing your entire day over to other people. So here's the challenge for you as you start a new week. Before Monday morning, or Monday morning, but preferably before Monday morning, write down your wins. That's the whole play. It's not more complicated than that. So try that going into Monday, and you'll see it takes a little bit of work. And the hard part is protecting it once you've built it out. But when the world starts knocking, when you have those interruptions, those calls, emails, texts that are coming in, do your best to fight them off and don't beat yourself up if it gets in your way a little bit. But you have to recognize it. That's part of the step recognizing and taking a step back and resetting. Because if everything is treated like a crisis, nothing gets led well. All right, that is it for this week. I'm Nate Joma. Go get intentional.