Goal Setting and Yearly Planning for Success with Farmer Yosef Camire (FSFS163)

FSFS163_YosefCamire

Diego: [00:00:00] The end of January is almost here and winter will soon be over. That means production will begin and the farm season will be on. What are you doing right now in the off-season to set goals for the farming season? Today, I'm talking to Yosef Camire of Ahavah farm who does a lot of goal setting this time of year and really all year stay tuned to find out why he does it and how he does it coming up.

Welcome to farm small farm smart. I'm your host, Diego DIEGO. Today's episode of Farm Small, Farm Smart is brought to you by Paper Pot Co. It's a company that I own, full disclosure, and our goal at paper podcast is to make your job on the farm easier.

We want to take some of the time consuming, body-battering labor, like bending over transplanting and make it easier and faster. And we want to do that by substituting labor for technology, the brute force approach versus a more elegant approach. That's why people look to buy the paper pot transplanter. It takes a task like transplanting, where a normal worker might spend 30 to 60 minutes transplanting a bed and it allows that worker to transplant a full bed of transplants in about 10 minutes, all without bending over.

A lot faster and a lot easier. If you want to learn more about paper pot technology, be sure to check us out at PaperPot.co. We've just added a whole bunch of new videos to the site, showing you how to use the paper pot system. So if you're at all curious about the system or you've been thinking about getting it, check out those videos at PaperPot.co.

For today's episode I�m talking to farmer Joseph Camire of Ahavah Farm. Joseph's a farmer in Colorado who does a four-season CSA. He's also a father. He runs a-nonprofit. He's an overall busy guy.

And being a follower of Yosef and Ahavah farm, I reached out and asked him, how do you do everything that you do? What's the key to it. One of the keys to execution is proper planning and goal setting. That's what this episode is all about goal setting. So you can get done what you want to do in what you need to do in a timely and efficient manner. And hopefully. Surprise yourself with the results by doing more than you ever thought you could. Let's jump right into it in school setting with Yosef cam Meyer of Ahavah farm.

Diego: [00:02:45] So Yosef you and I were emailing back and forth about planning and doing an episode on planning. And I think it's a really critical one given the time of year when this episode is going to air, it's going to air in January of 2019. This is the time of year when I think a lot of people should be thinking about organizing things while they're probably not as busy as they would be on the farm in June. And in one of the emails you sent me, you said, this, �planning is my lifeblood. I have five young, homeschooled children. I run a $300,000 a year business and I run a nonprofit and I'm a landlord. I�m also going to school. In addition to this, I have to take care of myself, have a life go to the gym. Scheduling and planning is key to survival.�

What are some of the challenges that you face day to day of trying to balance all this out?

Yosef Camire: [00:03:33] Just that, balancing it, the days aren't long enough and there's not enough time and everybody, a lot of people talk about like discipline, there's so many like motivational books, videos, audio, podcasts, whatever I talk about, like discipline, and it's super important to have discipline, but when you do the appropriate amount of planning, it, it removes that necessity to be so disciplined because you're disciplined on paper and you go, okay, I'm just going to follow this schedule. This is what I'm going to do. And, I think it makes discipline much easier for me.

And it keeps distraction away, right? Like when you plan things out, you know what your next task is, and you don't have to run around like a chicken with your head cut off going, Okay, what's next? What's next? What's next. You've already, you've already spent the quarter of the month of the week, the day planning and you're ready to go.

I wake up in the morning. I, look over my weekly schedule. I do my daily schedule and then I'm, and then I just, I hit the road and I, or hit the field. And that's just how my day goes and I'm able to get just a ton done a lot more than the average person. And I think that really speaks to, a lot of our success is really just my planning and I was talking to, I talked to my employees about this and stuff and, my job at this point in our, in my career in running this farm is really the planning.

That's my biggest part of my job. As a farmer, as a father, we're also starting another business. I didn't mention that in the email. There's a lot going on in my life and the only, and people say to me all the time, how do you do it all? How do you do it all? And it's not really that hard. If you can cut out the distractions, it's not that I'm like hyper disciplined. It's just that I'm hyper planner. And I've just made a promise to myself to stick to that schedule. Yeah.

Diego: [00:05:29] Were you always this way or did this arrive out of necessity? Necessity? Was it necessity because, you felt like you were drowning.

Yosef Camire: [00:05:40] So there's a, an expression that I came up with. And I don't know if they'll really relate well over the phone, but I feel like my life is like a rollercoaster and you're going down downhill 60 miles per hour, and you're flying and you're holding on to that little bar that goes on your waist.

And like in the video games above you, it's like all these, you think of Sonic the hedgehog or whatever, and he keeps on jumping up and grabbing all these, these stars, thing, things, and these coins or whatever. And I feel like that's kind of me. I'm like, I keep on reaching up for all these opportunities and there's so much stuff coming my way and things that are really important to me and I want to do them.

But I felt like I was, I kept on stretching and grabbing these opportunities and I was like flying out of my seat. And, any moment I was just going to. Just fly out my seat and collapse. And that absolute necessity, because I didn't want to give up certain things. There's so many things like our nonprofit is so valuable to me as the community and so many people, I can't give that up.

The farm, the family, all these things are just really high priorities for me. And the only way to fit them in is to plan, plan, plan, plan. And so it was definitely evolving over time. There's some great teachers that I've, allowed myself to be under and consume their information. And I was like Brendon Burchard and some other people, but essentially it has to do with your context and how you want to plan, but.

I'll see what my background is an engineer. And so my life has been pretty busy my whole life, and I've done a lot of things in my life, a lot of success stories and stuff like that. But this farm is definitely the hardest thing, most complex thing that I've ever done. And it takes just an enormous amount of planning to do a community-supported agriculture program.

And we do it for four seasons. So it's all year. And it's in the winter, it's in the spring, it's in the fall. So different temperatures, all that stuff, different crops, different dates to maturity, a lot of, a lot of scheduling it's really, really, really hard. and then you have employees on top of that and you have the family on top of that, and everything works together, but, if I didn't have that planning. I don't think any of it. I think all of it would implode.

Diego: [00:07:50] Oh, I'm with you. I think this is the problem. A lot of individuals struggle with is they collect activities that they do in life or that they want to do. And they end up with this huge bag of activities and they don't know what activity to take out of the bag at any given time.

And it just leads to stress because they start neglecting. The things that are important to them. And, in your case that could be the nonprofit, it could be kids, it could be self care. And the whole idea of planning, how I look at it is it's a system and it's a lifestyle, so much of the industry, and this is what sells books.

This is why it's this way is buy this planner, write things down this way, do it. And then that'll solve all your problems, but that's I look at that as an end piece of the full step and a large part of it just comes down to not having as many activities, period, to try and put on your calendar. And that's something I've had to do throughout the years is really cut back and prioritize what's important.

When you look at what's important for you, you have five kids. That's a lot of kids. I have three and I feel like three is a lot to manage a lot of parents who are farmers struggle and business owners struggle. Like how has it been for you being a dad and running a business? How do you balance it? And do you feel like you have been as good of a dad as you can be?

Yosef Camire: [00:09:20] That's my number one priority, right? You hit on something really big, and that is priorities. You're never going to succeed at everything you want to do in life.

We all have 25, 50, a hundred things that, wow, that'd be really cool to do. But you have to focus on the five, And that's what I've done with my life. And it's really helped. I pray and I read every single day, I remind myself of what those priorities are and journaling is a really big one for me.

So I'm able to, I get up in the morning, I read my priorities. I also have a personal mission statement that I read every day and that keeps me really grounded and it keeps me focused and it turns out that running marathons, just I've done a few. I've always wanted to do more. It's just not that important to me.

It's cool. It'd be great to do some more, but it's just not that important to me. So I just I put that aside. Yeah. Maybe in five, 10, 15 years. I might come to that again. But yeah, by doing the journaling and prioritizing, I'm able to focus on those things that really matter.

Diego: [00:10:26] I think it's really hard for people to say no. Like they love the idea of picking up new stuff, but I think this whole idea of ruthlessly saying no limiting what you do is extremely important.

Yosef Camire: [00:10:40] I think it's okay to like fit things in. I fit things in all the time and it's okay to take a break once in a while. You need that. I think it's important.

We all need a break from the daily grind, and that crazy amount of focus. In fact, I'm going out of the country for an entire month next month when this airs and. I'm scared to do so, but I know deep down that it's one of the most important things I can do, is remove myself. I'm not gonna be completely removed, but I'll be able to, I'm still focusing on a couple of my major priorities, right? That's my faith and my family and my health. I'm still going to be exercising and things like that, but I'm going to take a break from the business. I'm going to take a break from the nonprofit a little bit.

I'll still check in once in a while, but I'm not going to be grinding it out all the time. So what am I going to do? I'm going to focus on a couple of other things. I'm going to, I'll enjoy time with friends and family and have, and do some travel and see some sites and that's important having a life is important.

I think if you focus too much, if you get burned out, so I'm not trying to be all, it's not black and white here. But generally speaking, you want to focus on those five top priorities and really get good at them. That's the whole saying about the Jack of all trades, right?

Jack of all trades master of none. And so you can get through life that way and you can have a decent life. It just depends on what you want, and you want to be the most successful you that you can be. For me, I think, Hey, life is short. I want to be the absolute best Yosef that I can be. I want my farm to be the best form that it can be.

I want my family and my kids to be the best family and be as close and as loving and whatever as can be. And so I choose those things. And so those are my priorities and that's what I personally have to focus on.

Diego: [00:12:28] I think this idea of prioritization is huge. When a lot of people think about planning, they think about a rigid calendar.

How do you account for the unpredictable, the wildcards, the fires that come up, the things that don't happen, that you can't schedule in because you can't predict what's going to happen when they're going to show up.

Yosef Camire: [00:12:47] I build a lot of things into my schedule that are really flexible. I don't perceive them as being flexible in the day to day operations, but I allow them to be flexible.

There's always fires. But here's the thing like, if you don't schedule, if you don't plan your day to day, because most of us, it's 90% of the time it's pretty stable. And then you have that 10% of the time that's not stable for most of us. Some people are living a very unstable life and that's a different conversation. But, I think that I get so much done. Through my planning and prioritization that if there's a sick day or there is instability, it's more flexible, right?

I don't feel like I'm always trying to catch up. I don't. And I think that's a lot of, you hear about, farmers a lot is, I think, I don't know how the saying goes, but it's the, to-do list is never done with a farm and that is true. But most farmers, I think that at least that I've spoken to are always chasing their tails.

They're just, they're running around duct taping, zip-tying, everything. And they don't, they perceive to not have time. And so when the instability actually comes, that's when the business fails, right? That's when everything falls apart. For me, by keeping 90% of my life completely stable, and routine, and I don't mean that in a boring way routine, but sticking to that schedule and getting stuff done, I'm able to get way, way, way more done.

And not have to have those. Oh my gosh, there's some instability the whole, and then I freaked out. So instead of doing that, I'd rather spend 90% of my time planned and 10% of my time taking care of those issues without having that worry.

Diego: [00:14:35] Yeah. So the farmers they'd have the, to do list that never ends they're chasing their tails. What do you think they're doing wrong? And how do you avoid that problem? Because it doesn't sound like you have the, to-do list that never ends, or maybe you have the, to do list that never ends, but it's on the schedule and there's a plan to at least knock them off.

Yosef Camire: [00:14:53] I don't want to say people are doing anything wrong, it's just a matter of just reorganizing their life. I think it's Tony Robbins who said that people underestimate. They overestimate what they can do in a day, but they underestimate what they can do in a year. I think people get analysis paralysis, and I think people put things off and that's�

How much you can do in a year is just incredible if you're consistently scheduling, if you're consistent. For instance, if you have a big goal, let's say you want to write a book now that's a goal for me. It's not one of my top five. I'm not going to spend the majority of my time on it, but I fit it into my schedule.

You write for 30 minutes a week, do something every week towards that goal. And I'm imagine over a course of a year, that's what, 52 weeks times, how many hours did that on all 26 hours, 26 hours of writing? Gosh, you almost have a whole book done. Whereas most people. I think they say, Oh, I don't have time for that.

I have time for that. Cause they want to do it all. They want to do four hours a day and they have this dream of, okay, I have this goal and I need to spend four hours a day doing that. And they never do right. They put it off and they put it off and they put it off and they put it off until they quote unquote have time.

But you're never going to have time. There's always going to be something. And so just by planning and being consistent. You're able to knock those things off and you're going to get so much more done in the course of a year than you'd ever imagined doing. So what's 30 minutes a week. It's not much, but at the end of the year, 26 hours, does that make sense?

Diego: [00:16:33] It does. I love that quote. One thing I try and do every year around this time, late in the year is write down all the big accomplishments that I got done in the previous 12 months. And it's often, like you look at that list. And you step back and you say, wow, Oh my God, it does a few things. One, it puts it in your face. Stuff was done. You are making progress.

Because sometimes in the grind you can lose track of where you are. You forget what you did in January in December. And you feel like, Oh, December has been a sludge that hard trudge. I'm not making any forward progress here. And then you look at where you started and it forces you to say, Look at who I am. Look at what I'm getting done. This is good. This is progress. And it really motivates you for the next year.

When you look back at your year that was, when you have your priorities, how do you think about what you did to reevaluate the important things or say Hey, am I making progress on those? Do I feel good about where things are at?

Yosef Camire: [00:17:37] So I'm not a yearly person. I'm more of a regular. I do that on a regular basis. A lot of people we tend to accomplish something and then we just move right on to the next task. And I have a problem with that, too. So it's part of my journaling, right?

I've got this great journal and it just fits. It allows me to look back over my month and, journaling has been a huge thing for me. It only takes an extra 10 minutes a day to do, but, it allows me that to celebrate those victories. And to see wow, okay, what, not all is lost.

I've actually accomplished a lot this month and it's okay if I'm slow here or whatever, And I think a lot of times we feel like we just can't catch up. There's so much to do that. We don't ever stop. To celebrate those victories and look at what we have accomplished. And if you do that on a regular basis, it's a constant reminder, a constant motivator. It encourages you to just go, Hey, this is what I can do. Over the course of this amount of time, let's go for it.

That you look at the year ahead, you don't realize that you can do that much. But when you, like you said, when you look back at what you did in the past year, you're like, Oh my gosh, the sky's the limit, and I think that's a great point, Diego. I think it's really important to do.

Diego: [00:18:54] Can you talk a little bit on a macro sense of what does your week look like in your month? Look say it's January one. How is the lifestyle of how you organize, going to play out?

Yosef Camire: [00:19:09] I mean it starts with basically goals, right? Farmers in general, at least myself are always looking six, eight, 12 months down the road. And so I plan out like my whole year, the big picture things. And then what I do is I actually take all of those things and I put them down on paper and I go, okay, you know what, the CSA season for the summer doesn't start til June.

So I go, okay, what needs to be done by June? And I write those down and then I'll do the same thing for the summer and then the fall or whatever. And when the summer and fall lists. I keep them, but I put them away. I don't look at them. I only look at the thing, the short term goals. It keeps me on track.

And then once I'm done with those, then I break out that next, that next list. And that just keeps me going, short term to short term to short term with the long term. Or midterm goals, in my head and it just works out really well that way. So I do that like the beginning of the year or whatever, and it's not really, I don't do a January 1st thing, but I'm constantly doing that cause we are 365 and I don't really have, those kinds of seasons, like a lot of farmers do. And so I just do that. And then every month I reevaluate and then every week I evaluate and then every day. And so that just works out really well for me. And, people can do different systems, whatever works out for you.

Diego: [00:20:32] When you set your goals for the year, are you filtering at all? In other words, are you saying, okay, these are realistic goals that I want to accomplish, or you just fill in that list up with the realists plus above and beyond, and then you'll pair it down later. I'm trying to give people some idea of how they might want to think about goal setting. You can throw a bunch of ideas down, or you can really filter yourself when you are putting those ideas down to make it doable versus just some sort of dream list.

Yosef Camire: [00:21:10] I'd definitely be realistic. It's like running a marathon, right? all I want to run a marathon next month, you haven't even run a 5K yet. It just doesn't make sense. So I'll look at like the biggest goal, of where I want to be in 12 months. Or where I think I could be. And then I break it down and I'm like, okay, could we do that?

And that's how I break down the smaller goals. So let's say I, I want to expand my farm to 500 CSA members. I go, is it feasible? I have to create this field and I have to put in this greenhouse and has to do this and I have to do that.

Can I do that by the end of the year? If not, then maybe we should move it to the next year. again, it's looking at history of what we can realistically do and, being an experienced farmer, I know, what I can accomplish and what I can't accomplish because I have those years past where I've done X amount. No, it's definitely realistic. I don't, I'm not going to be steadfast farm by the end of next year. You know what I mean? I'm going to be out of the farm, but I'm going to be one step closer to Conor�Or to JM or whatever, it's not realistic to say I want jams for him by the end of the year.

What can I accomplish and what can I accomplish per month? And again, it's like that book 30 minutes a week, a little bit here, a little bit there, work it into my schedule, but to make it happen. And what, if it doesn't happen, that's okay. I'll tell you what, Diego, I've never had that happen. And it's not because I like force it or anything like that. It's just, it's that quote again, you overestimate what you can do in a day, but underestimate what you can do in a year and set the bar medium high, knocked it out one day at a time and you'll get there.

Diego: [00:22:48] So you set those long-term goals at the beginning of the year. I think a lot of people do that and then that sheet goes away and it never gets revisited. You talked about breaking the long-term goal into medium term goals. What process do you have in place to check in with those long-term goals? To help make sure that you're doing just what you said. You're going to do you're little bit each week to work towards that long-term goal.

Is that a once a week thing where you're checking into the long-term goal and saying, what am I doing this week? Or what do I need to do this week to make this a reality by sometime in the future?

Yosef Camire: [00:23:29] Yeah, like I said, I have my mission statement and like my main priorities that I read every single morning and that's to remind me, I also have a value statement that I read every morning to keep me on focus.

But then every month, there's a, in my journal, there's a review. And in that, during that time, I work in the opportunity to look back at what have I done this year, this month, this quarter, whatever. And what do I have left to do? And sometimes I find actually this isn't sometimes always. I always find that I finish my short-term goals quicker than I anticipated.

And so what do I do then I look at, okay, what's next? I just take that other sheet out for the next section of goals and I'll start working on those and bringing those forward. And then by the end of the year, I ended up doing way more than what my original goals were, I knocked them out and then I go, okay, what's next?

Let's do it because I'm not one of those people that just likes to be, set it up. It becomes a more, I want to, I want it to grow. I want to grow and grow because I, complacency is just, that to me is death. So yeah, I find that I'm actually constantly ahead of schedule and that's probably because I'm realistic in my goals.

But I think if you look at my, my goals, if anybody were to look at my sheet, that I have rarely with me, it's long and it's overwhelming and people go, how the heck are you going to do that? And I'm like, I've broken down each one and I think I can do it. And I ended up doing that and way more.

And throughout the year too, I'm also seeing things like, as my employees increase their competency and stuff. I see that, Sarah's really good at attention to detail. So she's going to be our food safety officer. I'm going to delegate that to her. And so that opens up more space for me. It's, every month I look at that, but things for, I might have to push something back.

Diego: [00:25:30] I think breaking those big goals down is really key because the devil is in the details. If you create a list of long-term goals, it's one thing to do that I am in a way it's meaningless. It gives you somewhere to walk towards is your North star, but it's a little bit hollow. And if you take those goals and you start breaking them down into pieces, then you can vary quickly start to say, okay, this list of long-term goals as either too full or not full enough. Because once you break down those goals into processes, you can say, okay, all this has to happen in March for five goals.

We can't do all that in March. So one of these goals has to be bottom priority. It gets off the list. Similarly, if you break it down and you realize, all five of these sound daunting as a whole, but when you break them down into steps, we're still going to have a lot of bandwidth available. We can add something else in and maybe that's time off. Maybe that's a vacation. Maybe that's another goal. It doesn't all have to be more work. But I think definitely goal setting goes beyond, this is where I want to be in 12 months. There's a lot of layers to that. You're talking about those layers and checking in on them to make sure that they happen.

Yosef Camire: [00:26:51] Sure. And they change that. And that's why review them constantly is sometimes I realize, Hey, you know what? Maybe my values changed a little bit. Maybe that's not important to me. Or I learned something or there's a better opportunity. For instance, our nonprofit, was going in one direction and we had our long-term goals and we had a meeting last month and right in the middle of meeting a light went off in my head and I went, hold on, wait. We're going in the wrong direction. And so we're actually shifting.

And so those goals can change and that's okay for the goal is to change, for instance, and not talking about the changing, but, breaking those goals down. One of the things on the list for example, is our micro greenhouse.

So I want to build the micro greenhouse, put that on the list. That's one of my goals. When do I need to have it done by, I don't know, January 1st. Great. So then, in that quarter or in that timeframe when I need to have it done, I have that listed, and so then I'll prioritize those goals and I'll say, okay, is the micro greenhouse more important than, the coop house over there that I want to build?

Or what's the highest party. I'll knock those out, but then I'll break those down. And that's where my daily and weekly plan comes in. And I go, okay, this week, I want to knock out. The micro green house or whatever, and okay. On Monday I'm going to spend three hours like putting the door and I make them really small because that allows for, it's putting out fires that allows for that instability.

And so I will, Monday morning, I'll put in the door, And Oh, By golly, it only took me two hours and there's no fires. So then I'll go, okay, what was I going to do tomorrow? Tomorrow? I have put the roof up. Okay. get started on the roof today. I finished early and I don't have any fires. And then tomorrow when I was supposed to do the roof, Oh, there's all of a sudden, there's a fire I have to put out and I don't feel so bad about it because I'm already had, so keeping those goals small, realistic, consistent, and knocking them out and constantly like pushing yourself to add more.

Now that I've done it in two hours, I don't just go play on Facebook. That's important, because you want to build that, how that into your schedule too, my dad always said, don't put it off till tomorrow, what you can do today. And so I've lived by that also.

And if I can do it today and I have the health to do it today and I have the time to do it today, why not do it today? And I'll get in and I'll get ahead. Get ahead of the game. So I can spend time with my family tomorrow when the roof's already done. And I was supposed to do the roof tomorrow. You know what I mean?

Diego: [00:29:27] No, I love the approach and this is an episode I selfishly wanted to do because it's an area that I need to improve in. And there's a couple of things you've gone over that I really want to implement next year and longer-term goal planning is one of them. I'm very organized near-term in the day to day.

Like managing my week and the week ahead. But where I struggle is saying, I'd never have sat down and say in January, this is where I want to be in December. It's been figuring it out as I go. And. It's worked, but I think it definitely can be better. So I want to improve that. The other thing that you've talked about in this one is, your top priorities and beyond being a good husband beyond being a good dad.

There's a lot of stuff that kind of lingers on the fringe. And instead of being like a wall of priorities, I have this blob of priority surrounding those. And it's certain times other things are priorities and other things aren't, and then it drifts around and it's caused a lot of stress in my life. So I really want to do a good job this year setting priorities.

The main ones that are really important beyond being a good dad beyond being a good husband and line that stuff out and put a plan in place because I can just tell you firsthand, like it's been stressful in the past not doing that. And I also want to take on this long-term goal approach because I want to see this process, play out, see what I can do. And I feel like I made a point in life where, okay. Now a lot of stuff's figured out, I have a clear path to the future. Let's design that future in a way that is going to work for me and those priorities.

Yosef Camire: [00:31:21] Yeah. I think that's huge. One thing that is really important that I think definitely needs to be mentioned is it doesn't matter how much planning you've put into place if you don't follow the plan. I talked about discipline. And how planning took that discipline out of that equation or helps you be more disciplined or however you want to look at it semantics.

If you don't follow that plan, it's meaningless. I think that's really important to do. What I do is, and I sent this to you in the email is after I break down all of those goals and the week and the day, every single, so I have a full week sheet. I have months, I have all these, I have an engineer's brain, so I'm like really XL, hyper. And so what I do is I have these weekly sheets that I plan on Sunday and I just, wake up early. I planned it all out.

They are fluid there's room there for instance, I put in like reading. It's so important to me to continue to learn. And I think that's part of my job. And so I'll put that on there. And then every morning I'll look at my, just what I have to do today. And I'll wrote it down on a piece of paper, like just a scrap piece of paper, and I'll carry that with me and I'll put my journal, I'll put my schedule, I'll put all that stuff away. I'll leave it in the office. I won't even look at it for the rest of the day, unless there's a reason to, and then I just carry the scrap piece of paper one, two three, four, five items, whatever, in order, as the highest priorities of the day.

And then I don't get distracted, there's no stress. And I always under-schedule myself. And I think that's one of the big keys to our success, to my success, to my not losing my brain or losing my mind is, under-scheduling and then over-accomplishing or over-succeeding because if you over schedule and you don't get that whole list done, there's, where's the reward?

There is no reward. There's actually, there's Ted talks and things like this, that talk about dopamine, whenever you cross off that list. I think Simon Sinek talks about dopamine where he actually like he has a to do list and if he does something extra, he'll write it down on the list and then we'll cross it off because.

It gives like this endorphin rush, this dopamine rush to your brain that basically gives you a reward. Hey, look at me. I finished my to do-list and. Gosh, when I get to the point, I'm like, Hey, I only got two things left. I'm like, woo. This is awesome. And I get so encouraged and so motivated to finish my list.

And then I'm like pumped for the next day. Whereas if I over-schedule, which I've done in the past and we all do it right over schedule and I don't get that list on, then I'm stressed. Then I'm like, crap. I didn't get my whole list done. And the reality of it. Probably didn't need to, push it off tomorrow, but it creates the opposite of the dopamine and endorphin rush and causes stress and cortisol and tight muscles and unhappiness.

And then you're not free to be with your family. You're not free to enjoy your employees or to enjoy your members and customers. And so I finished that list and I'm like, I'm good. I ain't got nothing to do. This is fantastic. So I want him to work more or do I want to go spend time with my family or whatever? That's really important to me.

Diego: [00:34:44] It's huge. I always tell people, what do you want to do? Have a 10 thing to do list and end the day with five things done and five things not done, or start the day with a three item to do list and get five things done, same amount done, and you just feel so much better.

One thing that you said, I think is critical as you're right. Any plan is a waste unless you have the discipline. And I think part of creating the right plan yeah is the brute forcing it, like at some point you're just going to have to do it whether you want to do it or not.

But I think another part is creating a plan that works for you in your lifestyle. So really take some time to think about how all the parts of your life operate. And create a plan that fits that versus trying to create some perfect plan on paper and then force it again, say lifestyle that is going to clash with that plan. if you have to homeschool your kids or take your kids to school, you got to schedule work around that.

Yosef Camire: [00:35:45] Dave Ramsey. He's a financial guy over in, Tennessee's got a radio show and all the stuff from books. And he says that, in order to create that budget, you need to monitor it for three months. You need to like, hold the receipts, figure out exactly what you're spending, for those three months before you can actually set up the budget, because if you set up a budget, like you said, a perfect budget, and then you can't meet it where it's struggling, then it's then you won't do it.

And that's the problem with diet, right? We set up this like perfect parameter. Okay. I'm only going to eat, 2001 calories a day and you go to 2002 calories and you like, you just. You're so demotivated and, and it's not possible to do it. So you have to be realistic. You have to know yourself, you have to build in free time. You have to build in buffers.

So for me, one of the buffers is reading. if I get to that point where it's time to re feed and there's a fire to put out that's okay. Because as important as reading is, it's not as important that fire and I'm okay with that. And but if there's no fires, then you don't right.

I'm going to sit down, I'm going to spend an hour and I'm going to read them. I tell him, Hey guys, I'm going to go spend an hour in the office. I'm going to learn. And I'm building on those buffers and building an effort. And also like the way that I schedule there's a lot of time in the day. You've got to incorporate rests. I think a lot of people go, okay, I'm just going to work from six in the morning till 10 o'clock at night. And that's just crazy. You can do it one day, two days, three days a week, two weeks, you're going to burn out. And so you have got to be okay. You've got to be okay with going slow to go fast.

And that three item and getting five done versus, getting five done and having five left. It's critical. Knowing yourself, knowing what you can actually accomplish super important and building in those buffers building in that free time, because part of your job as a farmer, you have to have that time to go talk to your employees.

You have to have that time to talk to your members and you don't want to be stressed out all the time because it's already a stress. Full job you have in the weather. You have the customers, you have the pests, you have the diseases you have�eugh. It's a very stressful job. Why add more stress to your life by having these, unrealistic expectations?

Diego: [00:38:14] people that want to get organized next year, where's the first place to start, or one thing that they can do without overwhelming them.

Because I think that can be a problem. Somebody goes from no organization to super-organized and that sounds like a recipe for disaster. Where would you advise somebody starts? If they're just a mess right now, they feel stressed. They don't have a system. What's one thing they could do to make a huge impact?

Yosef Camire: [00:38:41] Journaling. Honestly, I think journaling is one of the. For me, it's only 10 minutes a day. And in fact, I actually tell my employees, Hey, you know what? If you need to spend 20, I'll pay you. I will pay you 20 minutes a day to go and go in the office and go journal, go think through your day, think through your week. I think that's super important because you're able to put things down on paper.

You're able to be quiet and get through your thoughts. And create those and start to develop those growth goals. And you start to develop those habits of doing it every single day. And then you can add on, one thing or two things or three things. But for me personally, journaling has been, it's just been one of the best things I've ever done for myself.

Diego: [00:39:29] I'm aware of what that is, but for people that aren't, can you go a little bit more in depth in terms of when are you doing it and what's involved?

Yosef Camire: [00:39:38] What you do is you create a set of questions for yourself. What are the questions that you want to ask yourself for today? Let me just give you an example.

So I actually have. A journal. It's called the high-performance planner. It's by Brendon Burchard and there's a morning mindset. And then there's an evening journal. And in the morning you fill up, basically it just has some questions. One thing I can get excited about today is, and then you write that down.

Here's another one. Someone I could talk with a note diff or sign of appreciation is, that's not really related to farming, but that's a question and you can put that down. If that's not something in your context or something that interests you, then change the question. But come up with the parameter of questions that you should like a barometer, right?

hat would make you feel successful today or what would make you feel successful any day? Like generally and write those questions down that you should ask yourself. And then answer them every day and then every night, and then you want to review. So in the evening it says, a moment that I really appreciate it today was a situation or task I handled.

today was something I realized or learned today was, I could have made today better if I. those are some of the questions, in the morning and there was another one bold action I could take today is, like doing something that's outside of your comfort zone. Or the big projects I have to keep in mind today that I want to take on, even if I can't act towards them.

So it's just, you have to set up, that's how I do it. I set up a parameter of questions that I think are important to me, of who I want to be, what I want to do. What would make me feel accomplished? And then I answered those questions. And then while I'm doing that, I plan out my day. And I think of, how those questions, can relate to my whole process, to my farm, to my employees, to my family, to those priorities that we talked about earlier.

Diego: [00:41:24] Brendan Burchard, his planner. Do you like it enough to recommend that to people?

Yosef Camire: [00:41:28] I do. I really do. It's an easy starting place to, for me, it's more than a starting place for me. it's something that, I just I've really owned and it's helped me so much, because, it changes every day and then you can go back and it's a whole journal, you can go back and look at them. And then at the end of the day, there's a morning and evening. So the evening basically, if it forces you to look at your day and say, Hey, what's, today's successful day. If it was, why was it, if it wasn't, why not? And that helps you to process the information and process whether, like maybe I wouldn't, why wasn't a successful day?

It wasn't a successful day because I went to bed too late last night. I didn't get up early enough to go to the gym this morning. Or if I did, I was rushed. I didn't get a full workout. And then it trickled down throughout the rest of the day and you know what, that's really a bad habit so let's nip that in the bud. So it allows you to look at your day and say, why was I not successful? And what can I do better? And you can build you build on that. And I think by doing that, I've noticed in myself by doing that every day, every morning, first of all, it really starts off my day.

I'm able to process my day and say, if one of the questions in there is who, someone who needs me on my, A-game today is, and I'm just looking at one it's a CSA members. Cause, they, A-game today is CSA day. I'm going to go there and I'm going to be positive. I'm going to be energetic. I'm going to remember people's names. I'm going to be excited about them and ask them how their week was. And then I go into the situation with that mentality and it rocks my world. It really is an awesome. Awesome tool.

Journaling, whether you buy Brendon Burchard's the high-performance planner, or you do Stephen Covey's thing, or there's a lot of stuff out there, or you can create your own. And for a long time, I created my own set of questions. These are important to me and I did them and you can see the growth happen every single day. You have some bad days, you can see over a pattern of a month or whatever, a lot of growth and success just from doing that journaling

Diego: [00:43:38] High-Performance Planner by Brendan Burchard one resource, people can check out the main piece of advice I'd have hearing that, is find a planner, a system, a book that resonates with you and go with that.

I think trying to take in too much can just be overwhelming. And if you just find the one that you like, the one that resonates and the one that you can execute, that's the best system, no matter who originated it, who made it, go with that. Because that's better than nothing.

Yosef Camire: [00:44:13] Yeah. And even if it's not the most perfect system, basically the idea is to reflect. And to grow and even if it's not a perfect system, it's like you said, it's better than nothing. And I think it's really important that people do that we need to reflect on our lives. We need to reflect on what we're doing, where we're wasting time and put those tools into place for our daily life and for our success of our family and our farms and our businesses and whatever it is.

Diego: [00:44:39] I love the idea of it. And I want to thank you for coming on to share everything that you're doing. To plan out your farm. I have a farm and the rest of your life for people that want to follow along with what you're doing on the farm. Where's the best place to go?

Yosef Camire: [00:44:54] Probably Instagram and Facebook. Just look up Ahavah Farm. It's AHAVAH farm, and you can go to AhavahFarm.com. You can follow us on Instagram, Facebook

Diego: [00:45:07] there, you have it. Yosef mire of a hobby farm. If you want to follow along with everything that Yosef is doing on his farm in Colorado, be sure to check them out on Instagram. There's a link to that below in this one. Just scroll down on your phone, where all the words are, and you'll see a link.

And if you want to follow along with everything that we're doing it, Paper Pot Co. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at PaperPot.Co. There, you can leave comments regarding posts that I make on episodes like this. Or share your story with us. If you're using our equipment, be sure to tag us, I love to share with other farmers are doing and give other farms exposure.

And we're always looking for new, innovative ways to use the product or different crops that people are trying and having success with or failing it. We want to hear about all that. So check us out on Instagram at paper podcast, and be sure to tag us with any of your posts. That's all for this one.

Thanks for listening. Next week, I'll be back with another small-scale farmer making a go of it until then. Be nice. Be thankful and do the work.