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Habits & the Future: Making 2026 Your Most Abundant Year Yet

Episode 54 · 24 December 2025 · 55 min

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Habits vs Goals: Making 2026 Your Most Abundant Year Yet

Habits vs goals: which one actually changes your year? Randy Lorensen and Dr. John Oberg make the case for daily systems over New Year's resolutions, after a fast-moving Abundance Briefing on AI, medical breakthroughs and energy.

Hosts Randy Lorensen and Dr. John Oberg dive deep into the intersecting worlds of AI breakthroughs, medical advances, energy innovation, and how to use the power of habits and goal-setting to create a better 2026.

We kick things off by unpacking OpenAI's jaw-dropping $830 billion valuation and what it signals for the future of artificial intelligence. From there, the conversation travels through cutting-edge medical breakthroughs—like a potential cure for type 1 diabetes, GLP-1’s impact on kidney health, and AI-assisted IVF—before landing on one of the most timely and actionable topics of all: how to form habits that last.

Dr. John and Randy offer practical advice on how to start small, align your habits with your values, and shift from overwhelming New Year’s resolutions to achievable daily systems. They cover everything from VO2 max and fitness goals to journaling, relationship check-ins, and even trash in the Pacific Ocean—and what a 16-year-old did to start solving it.

Whether you're overwhelmed by AI, looking to reclaim your focus, or ready to build meaningful habits in the new year, this episode offers insight, inspiration, and practical tools to take with you into 2026.

How to Build Habits That Stick, Start-Stop-Continue, and the OpenAI Valuation

What you'll discover:

  • What OpenAI's $830 billion valuation signals, and the AI picks-and-shovels play
  • Medical headlines: stem cells for Type 1 diabetes, GLP-1s and kidney damage, and AI against cervical cancer
  • Fusion, China's energy push, Dyson swarms, and why AI literacy is the new computer literacy
  • Habits vs goals: why resolutions fail, and John's abandoned Spanish goal
  • How to build habits that stick across fitness, relationships, finances, faith and learning
  • Start, stop, continue, "feeding the animals vs. building the barn", and the story of Boyan Slat

This episode is for educational purposes only and isn't medical advice.

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Welcome: Randy and John (Anthony is off with family)
  • [00:49] OpenAI's $830B valuation and why it matters
  • [02:14] The AI investment boom: Tesla, Nvidia, and picks & shovels
  • [04:50] Meta's new AI video model & the rise of synthetic content
  • [06:58] Breakthrough in Type 1 diabetes treatment using stem cells
  • [08:35] Can GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic reverse kidney damage?
  • [09:46] The end of cervical cancer: AI and HPV vaccine advances
  • [10:26] Fusion energy, China's energy dominance & what's next
  • [15:16] Dyson swarms and humanity's long-term energy vision
  • [17:08] Is AI destroying jobs? Or creating new ones?
  • [18:48] AI literacy: why it's the new computer literacy
  • [22:14] Break: Premium Cabinets business opportunity
  • [22:48] Goal-setting vs. habits: why resolutions fail
  • [24:06] Dr. John's abandoned Spanish goal & how to course correct
  • [26:51] How to build habits aligned with your priorities
  • [27:16] Coaching yourself with AI and setting daily intentions
  • [34:14] Good vs bad habits and how to build sustainable change
  • [37:34] Relationship habits that deepen connection
  • [39:56] Systems for fun, finance, spiritual life, and learning
  • [41:12] Start, stop, continue: reviewing your habits annually
  • [43:01] The power of morning routines and daily focus
  • [44:25] "Feeding the animals vs. building the barn" explained
  • [46:53] Old sayings, microplastics, and the story of Boyan Slat
  • [52:50] Final takeaways: simplify, focus, and move in the right direction

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About the hosts

This is a hosts-only episode with Randy Lorensen and Dr. John Oberg (Anthony Marino isn't on this one). Host bios are on the host pages linked below.

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Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It comes from the episode recording and has speaker labels and time markers, which line up with the published audio. It hasn't been proofread, so expect some errors in names and terms.

Randy Lorensen [00:10]: listeners, welcome to this week's episode of Tales of Abundance. Thank you for joining us as always. I am here with Dr. John. Anthony is off with family this week, but good day, John. How are we doing today? Doing good. I'm excited about this. So we're gonna...

Dr. John Oberg [00:23]: I'm good, how are you doing?

Randy Lorensen [00:27]: Later on, we're going to get into New Year's goals, but more habits, I think. And but we'll let listeners take that where they want. And, you know, creating some good habits, you know, for the New Year. But before that, let's jump into our abundance briefing. You know, the first thing we were going to mention is you brought up the open AI race. You want to tell people what that is a little bit?

Dr. John Oberg [00:49]: Yeah, I mean, looks like opening I just raised $100 billion on an $830 billion valuation, means I don't even know what you call it. Like, is it a Pegacorn? If it's a Pegasus and a unicorn and you have a trillion dollar valuation in your startup, I don't know what that looks like, but $830 billion valuation. that's someone's doing something well.

Randy Lorensen [01:10]: Yeah, it's and by the way, pre revenue or not sorry, not pre revenue, pre profit. This is this is a company that's losing money. I mean, they're really raising money because their run rate is so high and they're losing so much money, right? But they're trying that's how important they think it is to win this race. So that's I mean.

Dr. John Oberg [01:27]: I think Amazon did the same thing, right? Where they were not profitable for a very long time. not profitable, I mean, I don't know what that looks like from a cashflow perspective. But at end of the day, mean, a lot of people must believe in you if you get $100 billion in investment with $830 billion valuation. pretty good deal.

Randy Lorensen [01:47]: Yeah, it's, you know, we do have this, what do you call it? Survivors bias or whatever. Like we talk about Amazon, but how many other companies tried that and it didn't work, right? How many, you know, is that the strategy or is that, you know, the, the unicorn that happened to work? And I think right now it's somebody's going to win the unicorn thing and be a multi-trillion dollar company. Right. And the other thing that comes to mind.

Dr. John Oberg [01:58]: Sure, yeah.

Randy Lorensen [02:14]: I heard a financial analyst talking about how the AI play is kind of hard to play right now. And he was saying like Nvidia is the only ones really making money. And there's that, but that's, you know, the picks and shovels route. And what he was saying is really the only other way to play AI right now that's before these, you know, money raising was by Tesla. Cause really Tesla is, you know, is really an AI company and robotics company where they're going. So I, My guess is if it's that hard to play it, and I hadn't really thought about this because most of my excess wealth goes into Bitcoin, but yeah, mean, people are chomping at the bit to throw money at this.

Dr. John Oberg [02:56]: I just asked Jim and I while we were here how many trillion dollar companies exist in the world today and the answer is 12. Not including OpenAI, but there are 12 trillion dollar companies out of the entire world of companies.

Randy Lorensen [03:08]: By the way, if we really wonder how much inflation we have, that should tell you because before COVID, do you know how many we had? It rhymes with Hero, right? We had none. And now we have these companies that are worth, you know, I...

Dr. John Oberg [03:16]: I have no idea. I'm guessing zero. Yeah, none. Yeah. Yeah. But just think about the $830 billion valuation for a minute. If it were to double in valuation, it puts it in the top nine companies in the world. If it to triple in valuation, now you're in the top six. If it were to quadruple in valuation, you're in the top five. And if it's 5X, you're in the top three. So depending on what you're betting on, it's just, I mean, not my world, I don't live in that world, but the investment bankers have put that deal together. Hats off to them. Like don't know if it's a good deal or a bad deal, but like how cool to be to work on a deal like that at least.

Randy Lorensen [04:00]: Yeah. All right. So very cool. So lots of money going into AI. see how this plays out.

Dr. John Oberg [04:06]: This is one company, right? It's not to mention all the other companies. It's funny, I'm looking at the top 12. Nvidia, AI. Apple, AI. Microsoft, AI. Alphabet, Google, AI. Amazon, AI. Top five companies, all AI something at the...

Randy Lorensen [04:09]: Right. yeah, mean there's Hold on, you're an Apple user. you trying to say Siri is AI?

Dr. John Oberg [04:27]: Well, mean, they're certainly investing in AI.

Randy Lorensen [04:30]: All right, I'm just go just had to take a shot. Okay. All right.

Dr. John Oberg [04:32]: There's this Apple intelligence, And then my wife, not to be confused with my wife who has Amber intelligence. Yeah, yeah. Hey, hey.

Randy Lorensen [04:39]: All right, there we go. All right, another dad joke. So moving on to one of the other trillion dollar companies, Metta. What can you tell listeners about the new video model?

Dr. John Oberg [04:50]: Well, I think they said they just are releasing some new AI that's going to come out and be better at producing video and digital pictures. I think this is, to me, this is the of the cool thing because we're such a visual society that when we have AI that can start producing video, I think there's a lot of danger to that, by the way, the deep fakes and all that stuff. But there's also some cool stuff that we'll be able to do with education and in medicine. I just think there's a lot of really cool things that unlocks. I also recognize that when you are creating video of something, whether it's a natural video or an animated video, whatever the case may be, how much data that takes and consumes. I recognize some of the difficulties with that, but it's cool to see that company like Metta is putting money forward into, think the project is called Mango, which I appreciate. So Nano Banana over on Gemini's side and then Mango. I'm just curious who's going to get into like vegetables instead of fruits to start naming over there.

Randy Lorensen [05:48]: boy. Alright, another dad joke. There we go.

Dr. John Oberg [05:50]: I'm telling you, the dad jokes are how we transition, Randy. I know how to get you off a topic. If I want to move you along, I just tell you a really bad joke.

Randy Lorensen [05:56]: There we go. All right. So National Geographic just highlighted nine major breakthroughs from 2025, right? And I know a lot of people are expecting more next year. A couple of these are right. I'm not going to read all nine of them. don't want to, but one of them I think is interesting. Needle-free allergy rescue for kids instead of them having to take like an EpiPen and you know, things like that. So having a needle-free rescue. It just says giant leaps in regenerative medicine. anyway, so basically what that is, is we're moving closer and closer to regrowing human tissues. Here's one near and dear to your heart. A cure for type one diabetes is close. The breakthrough new stem cell therapies such as VX-880 are successfully restoring insulin production in patients. In clinical trials, patients who previously relied on daily insulin injections began producing their own insulin after receiving infusions of lab-grown pancreatic islet cells or however you say that. You want to, I mean, have you dug into this? Or I mean, this is right in your wheelhouse.

Dr. John Oberg [06:58]: Eyelid Cells, yeah. Eyelid Cells, yeah. It's super cool. Well, we focus really on type 2 and I think one of the big misconceptions for people is that type 1 and type 2 are really similar, but they're almost exactly the opposite. Type 1, you stop producing insulin. Type 2, you're producing too much insulin. have insulin resistance. That's the real problem. So insulin is really important for people with type 1 diabetes. so that's amazing, right? So the number of people with type 1 diabetes is a much smaller number than it is with type 2 diabetes, but it is an insulin dependent condition in almost every case. And so at the end of the day, that's amazing. You know, think we're seeing some people that have, know, juvenile onset is pretty typical for type one. We are seeing some cases of adults that are, you know, becoming type one. And so this is really good news. I think it's really good news because it's not just great for what's happening with insulin. There's some other things that happened where they're talking about using CRISPR for like very hyper individualized therapies. think that's super cool. Like if we can keep going down that direction, you you and I have had lots of conversations around diet and exercise and diagnostics. We've even talked about some of those in this show. I'm a fan of like anything we can do to get more personalized diagnostics, more personalized therapy. I think we're gonna do a lot to move medicine forward in a really great way.

Randy Lorensen [08:19]: All right, the fifth one is reversing kidney damage. And basically they're talking about the GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic being able to not only what they're being used for weight loss, but they can actually reverse kidney damage. So I know that's also in your wheelhouse. Do you have any comments there?

Dr. John Oberg [08:35]: Yeah, I haven't seen that research. I'm super interested to see that research and what we're doing to kind of regenerate with stem cells. And I don't know that the GLP-1 will do it itself. Sometimes the body can heal itself if you give it enough space to kind of do that. So I'm super hopeful that we're finding answers that we can actually not just take diabetes into what NIH is now calling remission, but we can also then help people, you know, restore the damage that's been done. with hyperglycemia. So that one's pretty exciting. Again, I haven't seen the studies yet, but really excited about that.

Randy Lorensen [09:11]: Alright, and real quickly, we got AI assisted IVF babies. I don't even want to unpack that because that could go anyway or dystopian and whatever, but it's interesting. And the last one on the list, number nine, I'll skip a couple, but is the end of cervical cancer and the breakthrough through a combination of widespread HPV vaccination and new screening technologies, health organizations declared that cervical cancer is on the brink of being the first non-communicable disease to be eliminated as a public health problem. So.

Dr. John Oberg [09:46]: Yeah, mean, yeah, I mean, I think we're seeing a lot of the investments over a long period of time start to come to fruition. And so my hope is that with using the use of kind of not just generative AI, but, know, predictive AI and all the other ways that we use compute power, like finding ways to move advanced advances in medicine faster, you know, into, into reality. And so let's, you know, I crossed my fingers and like, here's hoping, right? Like let's let's keep moving these and let's make them affordable. I think it's one thing to have the answers, it's another thing to have the answers and make them affordable for people. We can talk about that as a whole separate probably topic.

Randy Lorensen [10:26]: Agreed. All right. Let's move on to fusion without the dad joke this time. So fusion energy and we've talked about energy. This is probably more my wheelhouse, right? Like I think this is a major threat to America. think this is a, if you go throughout history as...

Dr. John Oberg [10:37]: Yeah

Randy Lorensen [10:44]: energy has expanded, so has the quality of life, right? We went from humans to burning wood was more productive, right? Then coal was more efficient and humanity grew. even though coal had, you know, it had all the pollution and everything, but we started growing. And then, you know, it's just going to next levels to now we're at a nuclear level and everything in between humanity, we have become richer. And if you look at the places in the world that are really poor, they don't have access to energy. Well, this AI race is going like their growth. mean, they're talking about like 100X and things that We need an ungodly amount of energy for that. Well, we talked about on a previous episode, China has basic from 20 or 25 years ago, they were behind us in energy production. Now they're basically triple, almost exactly three XRs. They opened up several nuclear reactors this year. I think I read the other day. That fact-checked me on this, but I believe it was they have 29 other plants that are under construction currently with more coming and they got more of everything, right? And so anyway, the good news of this, cause this isn't important. This is really important for us to win, but The US Department of Energy just launched an office of fusion to help push the industry from labs to scale. And the World Economic Forum, I'm not the biggest fan of them, but is now openly talking about fusion hitting national grids in the 2030s. And a lot because they think AI is going to help solve. the problem and take us over the fusion and just solve some of the world's hardest physics problems have never been solved. And then there's major reports that are just framing fusion as no longer just a physics experiment, but a viable path to abundant energy with a decade. So I don't know. keep hearing. How long have we been hearing about fusion, John?

Dr. John Oberg [12:45]: Yeah, a long time and I think there was an alleged breakthrough a couple of years, three, four, five years ago whenever it was. Was that a real thing? I haven't tracked that very closely. that real breakthrough?

Randy Lorensen [12:54]: I think a lot of times these breakthroughs, do it at a temperature that they can't sustain or some, they're do, you know, it's a step in the right direction, right? It's part of the scientific process. It's part of learning what works, what doesn't work. But I think a lot of times they're, some of these breakthroughs, it's like, okay, now we're one step closer, but there's still these other list of problems to solve. That's my takeaway from not being deep in this area, but it's exciting to me, right? If we have fusion,

Dr. John Oberg [13:18]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [13:24]: know, again, anything we can do to win the energy race right now is good for America, but it's good for humanity, right? And all the other things that we can solve there.

Dr. John Oberg [13:36]: So here's the data from Gemini. I have not fact-checked Gemini, but right now your number of triple the energy is about, it's about double and a half. So 2.5 times the amount of energy and growing. And we have 94 nuclear operational reactors in the U.S. today. China has 58. And so with those 58, they're two and half x where we are, they have 30 under construction. So they're gonna be adding 50 % more, which would put them at almost, let's see, almost three times, three, three and a half times the energy output. So, so right on the money.

Randy Lorensen [14:16]: Yeah, they're growing super fast and they're growing super fast in solar and some other areas too. So they're actually shrinking their coal output. They're still using coal, but they're actually shrinking it. anyway, all right. Let's so the next one.

Dr. John Oberg [14:32]: Interesting per capita usage in the US as Gemini popped up was about 12,000 kilowatts hours per year and about half that in China, about 6,000 kilowatt hours per year in China. just one more piece of data for you.

Randy Lorensen [14:46]: Well, that's that much more that goes to factories and production and everything else, right? We're somewhere now between where we are in a Dyson swarm or we have, you know, mean, that might be hundreds or thousands of years in this. I don't know. It's a concept that I think started out in sci-fi, but now it's become part of physics is that at some point the sun produces something like 99.99 % of all the energy, right?

Dr. John Oberg [15:00]: I don't know what a Dyson Swarm is, but.

Randy Lorensen [15:16]: in our system and they're talking about building something around the sun to capture 100 % of that, right? Like basically being able to produce something that actually we capture. We go from whatever little microscopic percentage of the sun's energy that we can get now to capturing all of it, which again, that might be thousands of years in the future. I don't know, but that's the end goal they're moving towards. So, you know.

Dr. John Oberg [15:40]: some Star Trek stuff there.

Randy Lorensen [15:42]: Yeah, and at that point you have energy to do some pretty extraordinary things, obviously. All right, let's go to our last topic in the abundance briefing, AI and work. So one of the questions we've asked a lot is, is AI destroying jobs? What are kids going to do in the future? What happens if you're graduating? And I know this is a concern, but a couple of things. Open AI, now again, you got to remember the source. They're obviously motivated to sell this because of their new valuation, but 75 % of workers using AI say it improves speed and quality. I would ask who the other 25 % are, but anyway, and heavy users are saving up to 10 hours a week. And I heard something the other day that the jobs that are AI related, there's actually job growth. in those areas and job is the job cuts are coming in things that are actually not tied to AI right now. And the World Economic Forum again, I can't believe I'm referencing them twice in one deal here, but it says their projection is that AI will displace 92 million jobs, but that it'll create 170 million. So that's a net positive of about 80 million jobs. And I don't know what that timeframe is or, you know, whatever, but Thoughts?

Dr. John Oberg [17:08]: Yeah, think, you know, the thing we lose in all, and I don't think, directionally, that seems right to me. I think that, you know, the saying has become, it's not that AI will replace jobs, it's that people who use AI will replace people who don't use AI in their jobs. And I think there is some truth to that. When you say like, hey, it's going to create this many new jobs, you know, people have to get comfortable with the idea of re-skilling. And I think the choices are to be really great at something where computers aren't a part of the job minute by minute, or... become great at using a computer. don't know what jobs computers aren't getting used minute by minute. Like I was talking to somebody who worked in heavy equipment in the ag industry and they're thinking about AI like really seriously. And so, you know, even, even landscaping, Randy, where I joked with you a few months ago, maybe they're like, Hey, I think that being a landscaper for residential landscaping is going to be like really safe for awhile. And you're like, no, no, these robots are coming. And I was like, maybe after 10 years or something, but next five, six years, you're fine. You're like, I think it's coming faster. And so you've often been really like saying it's going to happen, but sooner than later. And often it's been later than sooner. I think in this particular case, it might be much sooner than either one of us thought with some of these humanoid robots that are kind of being deployed. You know, we've really got to think through like. What does that mean for how not just the technology jobs of the world exist, but how do the non-technology jobs need to incorporate technology? And so I'm viewing AI, you know, like being similar to the way that people have computer use. Like, you know, do you use, you know, a personal computer was a question, you know, 25 years ago. Now the question might be how well do you use AI?

Randy Lorensen [18:48]: Yeah, it's all it's becoming almost or maybe even a requirement for most jobs, in my opinion, or, either are or will be soon. you know, like humanity has always there used to be 99 % of Americans or whatever worked on the farm. And now those jobs went away. Farming has become much more efficient. And that allows people to be doctors, engineers, or ditch diggers, whatever else, right. But I mean, and everything in between.

Dr. John Oberg [18:56]: Yeah. Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [19:18]: or industry.

Dr. John Oberg [19:18]: And it really blows me away, like even... Sorry, go ahead.

Randy Lorensen [19:21]: No, I'm just gonna say it frees up human intelligence to work on bigger problems.

Dr. John Oberg [19:26]: Yeah, I've even heard stories, again, not my world, so I don't know a ton, but I've heard fighter pilots aren't just gonna be fighter flying their own plane, they're gonna have a team of drones around each fighter plane. again, whether that's true or not doesn't matter. The idea that one person is controlling a series of AIs or robots or whatever, I think that is some type of future that's headed our direction for probably most roles.

Randy Lorensen [19:52]: Yeah, I heard Palmer Lucky on an interview and his company has created and what they do is with each of these planes they've got like five mini planes or drones that the pilot can control. So if there's an enemy that there's something they want to scout instead of them having to fly up there and say put themselves potentially at danger. they can send one or five of these and have them go do it. And then if the drone or, you know, the mini plane plane gets shut down and they're pretty much AI controlled right now.

Dr. John Oberg [20:25]: Yeah, I mean, I think it's gonna create a lot of opportunities for people to become exceptional at problem solving. And so the challenge for people entering into the workforce is learning how to problem solve and getting the experience. So that's something that people need to be thoughtful about. And I think just in general, people are gonna have to be, the best problem solvers, I think, are going to have the most opportunity. I'm not sure if that's really different than years past though.

Randy Lorensen [20:50]: Yeah, I think there's opportunity in the world like there's never been in history, right? Like the number of kids almost that go, they're just young and they start a unicorn, billion dollar company, seems like just, it's not even news anymore when they do it. But. On the other side, you look at that, that's not the experience of 99.99%. So on one hand, there's this massive opportunity because of technology. But on the other hand, most people either don't know how or aren't motivated or whatever to or confident enough whatever to participate in it.

Dr. John Oberg [21:26]: Yeah, and I still find that AI is really good for me when I'm in areas of expertise where I really understand something, but it can very easily lead me astray in areas where I don't. And so that's why I'm careful when I'm fact checking you on these energy stats, for example. I don't know, I just, want to make sure that I'm, I don't, I'd have to go fact check that to really, really know, but it's, for me, it's directional.

Randy Lorensen [21:48]: For whatever it's worth, I saw a chart on the weekend that was almost exactly triple, like that's how much they've grown. So it could just be the timing, but it could be the chart I looked at is wrong. That's a possibility as well. All right, listeners, we will be back with our main topic. We're gonna talk about New Year's goals, goal setting, New Year's resolutions, but really we're gonna dive into habits when we come back from the break.

Dr. John Oberg [22:01]: Sure, yeah, yeah, of course.

Randy Lorensen [22:48]: Listeners, welcome back as I'm still here with John. And if you haven't downloaded, subscribed, told your friends, go do that now or just, you know, spread the good word. We would appreciate it. And the holiday cheer. John, we're going to talk about we're going to talk about goal setting and habits a little bit. New Year's resolutions, because it's that time of year. Right. And people have been doing this for, I don't know, as long as I can remember. But we're going to dive into habits after that more. So Let's talk a little bit and a couple weeks ago we did a year-end planning so we went into some of this then but just give people an overview on New Year's resolutions, habits, goals, setting this time of year. It's very common.

Dr. John Oberg [23:31]: I think today one of the things we might dive into is like, why is it that news resolutions fail so badly? you have had news resolutions, you started off the year with all the greatest intent, and then at some point throughout the year, usually the joke that people tell about is like joining a gym, and if you go to the gym in January, it's full, and you go in April, and it's not. Have you done that before? Have you set resolutions that...

Randy Lorensen [23:49]: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, we all have, right? And sometimes it's because I was too lazy and I didn't make it happen. And sometimes it was because I set the wrong goal, right? And I just wasn't motivated to work on it.

Dr. John Oberg [24:06]: I think sometimes we set too big a goal too, right? sometimes we just stretch ourselves too far. Like I want to become fluent in Spanish. That was the one you called me on a few years ago, because I put it on my New Year's resolution two or three years in row and I hadn't actually moved toward it. And then one year I put, I'm going to spend 20 hours learning Spanish and I hadn't even done that. And then the next year you're like, hey man, if you can't even spend 20 hours on it during a year, can we either get serious about it or take it off your list? And so I really thought about it I took it off my list. And that's not because I don't want to learn Spanish, but there's other things I want to do more. And so at some point in my life that remains on my bucket list, but until I can get really serious about the habit of doing it, I just, I was trying to get real with myself about that. And so.

Randy Lorensen [24:48]: I bet you could give AI, you could schedule a daily task to have AI give you like a five minute lesson every day that I bet would accept. Again, I'm not encouraging you to put it back on the list, but I bet it would be easier now than ever before.

Dr. John Oberg [25:02]: But I think that's, I totally agree with that by the way. I think that's true, would be. And I don't know if that's the most important takeaway for people. I think that people need to have a different, everyone needs a different set of tools about how they're gonna be setting objectives for themselves. And for some people it's like goal setting and that's the right answer. For other people it's like a goal is too rigid and they just need to have kind of a direction. And so I know people that like, they'll pick like one or two or three words for the year. And those are their words. You you were talking to Ryan, our producer before the show, and he's like, he has annual themes. And I think that whatever works for the person, if it's setting a goal, that's like a hardcore, like data-driven goal, amazing. I do that some years for some things. For other people, it's like, if I just want to be directional about it, I think that's fine too, as long as we're checking in and moving toward it on a regular basis. And so that's... That's kind of where I landed with this, journal that I put together for myself and I've given it out to tons of my clients over the years was like, you can have an annual goal or an annual objective, but at end of the day, I have a monthly like, here's what I'm trying to get done this month. And then every day, what am I doing to move toward that? And I want it to be focused and not too much stuff. And my list usually starts with like 20 or 30 things from my bucket list, but I've got to really whittle it down to like, what's the number one most important thing this year? My fitness is a great example of that. Fitness was in my top five for a number of years and I gained weight and I lost fitness over a period of years while fitness was one of my top five. Finally I got to a point where was like, is ridiculous. It's gotta be my number one thing and it became my number one thing. My habits supporting that changed and I started spending my time, my energy, my money on the thing that I said was most important to me because if you're not spending your time, your energy, your money on the thing that's most important to you, maybe it's not most important to you.

Randy Lorensen [26:51]: Yeah, I relate much more to the directional, right? I used to set very specific goals. I used to have a plan and I just, I have become more, moving in this direction or here's the thing. In fact, I have started doing, I do most of my goal setting on a daily basis, which is a big change from what I did 30 years ago, right? But now,

Dr. John Oberg [26:56]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [27:16]: I might set weekly goals, like here's the one big thing I want to accomplish, but I have a daily conversation. I told you, I built an AI clone of myself and one of it's, I've got different personas within the clone for different things, but one of them is as a coach. And I told it how I wanted to be coached. And so every day it starts out with, here's a suggestion. I tweak it a little bit and I say, here's, you know, the one to three things that I am going to do today for sure. And then I usually have stuff that if I get done with that, I can go.

Dr. John Oberg [27:46]: But you know, you know, directionally where you want to go, right? Like that's the key, right? It's like, you've told it. Maybe you don't know what city you want to be in, but you know, you want to go Northwest or, know, that's.

Randy Lorensen [27:52]: Yes. Yeah, you know this about me. Listeners may not understand as well. My brain works a little different than a lot of people's too, right? That I think of things in a 30,000 foot view and I start, I connect a lot of dots really quickly and I start with where I want to go. And then for me, now it's like, okay, where do I got to go? What's the next milestone? What do I have to do today to get that done? Right?

Dr. John Oberg [28:20]: That's exactly right. think that's, that's, that's, you're doing goal setting. You're just picking the goal to be ones you're going to accomplish more effectively. And I think that's the right approach is, you know,

Randy Lorensen [28:31]: Yeah, well, I don't know. The other thing worked for me 30 years ago, right? Like really having a plan and, know, like I don't create a business plan for a business anymore, but 30 years ago, I'd have these really detailed business plans. And even though I probably never read it again, the fact of creating it locked it into me. And I was like, okay, now I, like I needed that and now I don't. So I think that's gonna work for me.

Dr. John Oberg [28:56]: I think there's whatever way you take kind of the where you want to be for delayed gratification and break it down into steps. Like because what you're describing both ways, both with a business plan and with just a broad direction, either one of those things gets you to kind of work it backwards. I think the danger is in not working it backwards. So saying you want to be Northwest, but then walking Southeast, like that's where people bump into problems. And it's like, you're just, not going to get where you want to go if you're not taking the right steps to get there.

Randy Lorensen [29:21]: Agreed.

Dr. John Oberg [29:26]: But I do think it can be overwhelming for people to kind of figure out like what exact thing I wrote down some goals back in, I remember writing them down in 1995, I wrote down some very specific goals and I lost the piece of paper for a long time. And then I came back and I had like a 10 year goal that I accomplished at the 11th year that I'd forgotten I'd even written it down. I think the brain works that way sometimes. so anyway, at end of the day, think there's lots of goal setting methodologies, pick one. I think the smart,

Randy Lorensen [29:47]: Yeah.

Dr. John Oberg [29:55]: acronym of something specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable, and time-bound, I do think those things are important. I do think that smaller is easier to bite off than larger. And I do think that knowing directionally where you want to go so that you can move steps in that direction is generally important. And I think changing the tool to work for you is really healthy. And so use the tool that works for you in that moment.

Randy Lorensen [30:20]: Yeah, I, you know, I'm arguing both sides of this, but I think that where I'm at now is probably healthier for more people just because the world we live in in 25, just about 26, in 2026, things are moving so fast, right? And I'm just thinking about a lot of the things I'm working on. I could set a one year goal, but the fact is, I cannot predict what's happening with AI, robotics, automation, and a lot of the things that where I'm spending a fair amount of my time right now that I don't know what ChatGPT or Grok or Gemini or some company I've never heard of is going to create. And I think it's harder to plan a year. And that's got a little bit scary to be honest.

Dr. John Oberg [31:09]: Maybe that's true, so let's just break that down for a minute. So let's just kind of go into the five F's for a second. Like for fun this year, like I might just make a checklist of things I want to do for fun. For my family, might make like, here are my intentions. Like for me, it's my intention to spend time with my family in very specific ways. Like cool, that's an intention, not a goal. By the way, if you have goals that involve other people, it's probably pretty important to agree with those people that they're on the same page, otherwise it becomes really difficult to hit those goals, right? So then we start to get into things like finance. Okay, well, finance, if I know I want to save a certain amount of money, well, I need to earn a certain amount of money. Okay, I think that's kind of the easy math to do maybe. Then we get into the personal part of personal development and how we're going to move forward in an AI world. And that's where I think if it's like, I don't know where I'm going to be in a year, that can overwhelm someone to the point of being just paralyzed. And so maybe it's like, look, for the next three days, I'm going to learn how to use Gemini. For the next three days, I'm going to learn how to use NanaBanana. For the next three days, I'm going to whatever, learn about vibe coding, like whatever that looks like. I just think that if you can get those smaller goals, or it's like, I'm just going to build a skill set. And here's what I tell people is like, do things that open as many doors as you want to have open and try not to do things that close doors unintentionally that you don't want to close, right?

Randy Lorensen [32:34]: Yeah. Yeah. Well, when you were talking about the different things there with vibe coding and AI and stuff, it made me think of what you mentioned with Ryan earlier about having themes, right? The theme might be AI or I am going to become AI competent or comfortable or whatever it means to that person. And then you break it down into specific daily, weekly tasks, whatever, or whatever works for people.

Dr. John Oberg [32:58]: Well, for me, I'll give you one really clear example. I definitely want to be doing things in the last 10 years of my life that require me to be very active. And so I've also got athletic onset asthma and I need to figure out like, okay, what does that mean? And so one of the things I'm curious about now that I need to talk to my doctors about is like VO2 max and my aerobic capacity. And what do we know about that today? And so the goal for me is not to be like, at my perfect VO2 max for when I'm 85, my goal is to be like doing the things I need to be doing today to make that part of my world better.

Randy Lorensen [33:36]: Okay, all right.

Dr. John Oberg [33:37]: Yeah, so it's just like what are the little things that I want to do or avoid?

Randy Lorensen [33:41]: So you're getting into habits now, right? We talked about habits. So let's talk about that, right? Because if whether we have a specific goal, I'm going to do blank, or we have a direction or a theme or whatever you want to talk about it, it doesn't matter if we don't take action, right? I mean, we got to do something. So that's where the daily tasks, but talk about habits a little bit, John, and how, you know, what habits, why are they important? And then... What habits have you found useful?

Dr. John Oberg [34:14]: mean, some habits are important. Some habits are probably bad for us too, right? So I think we could argue that we all have some bad habits also. And so I think the way that I look at, like there's projects I want to get done in my life, and those are things I'm going to do and do them once. And I work toward them with like a, I don't really have project plans in my life, but it's kind of, you know, it's like, Hey, here are the things I need to do to get there. I, you know, milestones, whatever. But habits are things like my health related habits, where I just want to have a long-term sustainable behavior. that I think is something that's going to be good for me, drinking water, for example. know, learning Spanish might be a habit that I want to pick up because I want to get into like full immersion Spanish. what are those habits? I don't mean for, for me, I think that there's a limited number of habits you can change at a given time. So trying to change too many at once can be tough. So I try to make really small changes and encourage other people to make really small changes. that are long-term sustainable, like things you want to do for the long-term.

Randy Lorensen [35:16]: So for example, it's been what a year or two years ago now, you started working out with a X days a week, right? And that's a habit that you've developed and a good habit that's moving you toward where you want to go, right?

Dr. John Oberg [35:31]: That's right. Yeah, but it's not so rigid that like the other day I got home, my plane was delayed for an hour. I didn't get to bed till almost 1 a.m. I had a really important meeting at 9 a.m. And so I felt free to cancel on that session. Whereas, you know, if it was like must hit, you know, X number of training sessions this year cannot cancel. Like that may not have been good for me, right? So I give myself a little bit of freedom to like, you know, say no, because my There are other health things I need to be doing like sleeping, for example.

Randy Lorensen [36:01]: Right, your habit, how many days a week do you work out with Sud trainer?

Dr. John Oberg [36:06]: Typically three, and now I'm adding days of working out without the trainer in addition to that to kind of increase my aerobic capacity.

Randy Lorensen [36:13]: Right. So you've got a habit of working out three days a week, right? Which historically that's what I've done, right? Three to five days. I mean, I'm now I forced myself to go at least once a week. I try and get there too. I've just been busy enough and I've made it less of a priority, right? So that's a concern, but I do more jumping on a trampoline while I'm working and stuff like that now. So to try and offset it.

Dr. John Oberg [36:17]: Yep. When doing things with other people, right? Like that's the thing that makes it easier. you know, it's like, if I had to do this podcasting thing on my own without you here, it probably wouldn't get done. With the two of us here, it gets done, you know, when it needs to get done. And so I think having community is a really important part of that. And so when I, when I put this journal together, I was mentioning to you, I asked a lot of people who are using it, like, what is it about this process that is important to you? And they said, it gives me focus. It gives me accountability. It gives me a sense of community and I get to learn about new things. And it was pretty consistent across everyone who was using it. Those are the four things they got out of kind of reconnecting with their habits, their goals, their community on a regular basis. so those four things are important for us as humans, focus, accountability, community, and learning.

Randy Lorensen [37:24]: I what other habit? You've got a lot of good habits, right? So I'm not saying you don't have bad ones, right? But give me some other good ones you have. What's a good habit?

Dr. John Oberg [37:34]: I think, so for relationships, think my wife and I, check in every day. And so we have a time where we sit down and it's not anything formal. It's not like we have a meeting every day, but we check in. Like one of the things I'm very interested in is how did your day go today? And she tells me about her day. And then I'm very interested about what do you have on the schedule for tomorrow? Like what's your day gonna be like tomorrow? And she has the same curiosity about my day. And so I find those are easy ways to get really connected. And so I think that's been a really really good habit for us relationally. I think with my kids, you know, I've got two kids are out of the house and one kid still at home and so for the older kids that same kind of like curiosity without being smothering for them. So it's not daily for them, but it is I'm very curious about their life and I want to understand more about how they think and how they're processing information. Not so that I can parent them. as much as I can just have a relationship with them where they can feel comfortable coming to me. So I think I have some relationship habits that I think have been, that have served me really, really well. So I'm just trying to walk through us, the family stuff. On the fitness stuff, we talk about physical fitness. On the mental fitness, I try to always do something to be learning. obviously getting my doctorate later in life was one. I just joined a group here in town called EO that is about learning. There's a lot about community and learning, so relationships and learning in that community. So that'll give me some structure for that, both professionally and personally, which I'm really happy about. And then I've got, on the fun side, I have some things we do for fun, both large and small. So travel is a large scheduled thing we do with the family every year. And then small fun things, I just have some habits about how I have fun with friends and then with my kids. you know, my wife and so that's, I think that's all just becomes part of my kind of week to week stuff to do. Finance, I try to make my habits automatic, like so that I don't have to actually do anything. So like my savings, I have an automatic savings plan and I try to set things up so that I can not get in the way of being financially successful as much as possible. Let's see, so that's fitness. Oh, spiritually, I think I've got some habits around how I pray that work for me. I have some triggers that trigger me, you know, so that I'm praying more than just an hour on Sunday when I'm in church. And so that just became a real clear instance of like habit stacking, which is where you take one habit and attach it to an existing habit. And so I kind of do that, some habit stacking. that's fitness, family, finance and professional, fun. Which one am I forgetting? Friends. With friends, I would say this is a place that I need some more work on. I used to have that kind of was Sunday, fun day kind of baked into my week every week. And when the pandemic hit that kind of went to back. And so I've got to like, my wife and I are trying to do some things to get that habit of friendship, re-instilled back into our regular rhythm. But that's one that really fell down in the pandemic that we've identified that we want to really re retool that in kind of a new world to kind of be more deliberate about how we spend time with friends and not again, not highly structured, but just making sure it doesn't fall off the radar. It's just too easy in today's busy life to make that just

Randy Lorensen [40:53]: Yeah.

Dr. John Oberg [40:56]: to not to let that slip. Yeah. Yep.

Randy Lorensen [40:56]: We've become terrible at it. Just terrible at it. So, I mean, just talking about me and Julie, like we're, I don't know, you just used to be a lot better at it and seems like now it just never, it always gets pushed off or, we can do that tomorrow or next week.

Dr. John Oberg [41:12]: Well, then in the next week, what I'll do is I'll go through the five F's and I'll write down like what habits I want to keep doing that I've been doing, what habits I want to stop doing and then what habits I want to change and then what habits. it's like start, stop, keep, continue. What do want to start? What I want to stop? What do I want to continue? What do I want to change? And there'll be a pretty long list. And what I'll do is I'll just like scratch it out. I'll, I'll make sure that I don't have, right. Oh, like it it won't be too many. just, I'll try to make fewer changes. that are really important to me and the rest of them I'll just put into a parking lot for next year.

Randy Lorensen [41:43]: Well, and a few takeaway things about habits for me is I think it's important that we think about what daily habits do we do, right? I think that's the one, and some of those might be something as simple as brushing our teeth, right? Or flossing or, you know, a zillion things that we do on a daily process. It could be just getting up and making a cup of coffee in the morning. So we have daily habits and then we have weekly, right? We might have a weekly staff meeting or whatever else we do weekly. For me now, it's more like I go to the gym weekly. Then quarterly, there's quarterly planning meetings, there's annual. We have things at different things. I had a conversation with Anthony last week and I was like, are all the kids coming? The grandkids? He's like, yes, they're all gonna be there. He's like, they have no choice. I'm like, what do mean? He's like. It's mandatory like for Christmas. It's just we've told him it's mandatory. You have to be there. This is their happy time and their important time and you know his whole family gets along great so they they come in from all over the country and they're there and they've got another family thing that they do with an extended family once a year right and that's so they've got annual habits that keep them. You know in the loop.

Dr. John Oberg [42:38]: Yeah, yeah. I think those traditions are great too, right? Every family gets to kind of create their own traditions. Some people carry them forward from generation to generation. Some create new ones. I think that's great.

Randy Lorensen [43:01]: Yeah. So again, it can be daily and it can be simple, brushing your teeth, right? Or it could be big, right? mean, journaling. mean, I don't care what it is that people are doing, but what is that? And I think the other thing that's really helped me as I was thinking about this is anything that I don't want to do or that's hard or that I'm, I might just, you know, follow something shiny or more interesting. I need to have habits first thing in the morning to get me going in the right track. Right. So like I mentioned, I check in with my clone coach and set something. I do that. You know, I get up, I have my coffee, I take the feed the dog. We hang out, you know, outside a little bit, et cetera. And then when I sit down to work or stand to work, The first thing I do is what am I going to accomplish today, right? If I wait till three o'clock, that's just not effective.

Dr. John Oberg [43:55]: Get that. Yeah, that's a pretty consistent theme that I've heard from people that like, you know, I'll get more done before 10 a.m. on Monday than most people get done all week. People that have like a really good list. And I'm the same way, by the way, if I work it out early in the morning and get it done, it's really straightforward. If I wait until later in the day, there's probably people out there who are the opposite and nothing wrong with that. But I do find that for the people that I talk to, very common to try to knock out their three things they want to get done in a day before they get interrupted by the day.

Randy Lorensen [44:25]: Yeah. By the way, I'm also a big believer. If you just pick one thing to get done every day, you are going to beat 99 % of the people out there. Right? I mean, you just, most people go through the whole week. Your term is feeding the animals, not building the barn. Right? And they just go through the whole week feeding the animals and never do anything else. They never plow the field, build the barn or whatever else.

Dr. John Oberg [44:35]: think that's right. Well, we should talk about that for a minute so that people who know what that is. it's like, you live on a farm, and of course you live on a farm, I've never lived on a farm, so you've got to clean me up here where it doesn't work. But the animals have to get fed every day. If you don't feed the animals every day, then the animals die. And so that's the work that you have to do. It's the constant work. And if you just feed the animals and you don't build the barn, you don't expand the farm, then you're not growing in maybe a way that you want to be. And so building the barn is that work that we do that It's not urgent, right, but it's important. Assuming that building the barn is your goal, like that's the analogy, right? So spending time to spend an hour or two a day on building, but you can't only focus on building the barn because if you only build the barn, you stop feeding the animals and the animals all die, you've got to start all over. So it's really balancing the tactical day-to-day execution of life with the strategic important one to grow and learning how to balance those things is really, really important because if all you do is feed the animals, you never build barn. If all you do is build the barn, the animals die, you gotta start all over. it's learning how to balance those couple of things. And usually it's less barn building, more feeding the animals is usually the right type of combination.

Randy Lorensen [45:57]: Yeah, it's, you know, and the other thing I think, I think a lot of people that I witness, especially entrepreneurs and small business owners, I think a lot of them get caught up in putting out fires, right? And they spend, yeah, but there is a lot of time where they're putting out the fires and sometimes it's, hey, let's create better systems and processes so we don't have so many damn fires would be a much better use of that time.

Dr. John Oberg [46:11]: That's feeding the animals, Yeah, and you have to figure out like if the fence keeps breaking in the same spot, maybe the goal is not to fix the fence. Maybe the goal is to move the fence post over or whatever you have to do. maybe, you know, that, you know, Randy, I didn't learn until very late in life. Like let's say the last five years, someone used to say a stitch in time saves nine. I didn't know what that meant. And I learned that when people had just one or two garments in their closet, you could stitch a small hole with one stitch. Or if you waited later, it would take nine stitches to stitch a much bigger hole.

Randy Lorensen [46:53]: I'd never heard that. I'm fascinated, by the way, by a lot of these sayings and where they come from. find really interesting. could maybe even do, I got ideas of how to do an episode on that that might be kind of fun, actually.

Dr. John Oberg [46:59]: Yeah. Yeah, now we just toss clothes away. It's like give them away and buy new ones. And it's like, we don't think about stitching our clothing or, yeah.

Randy Lorensen [47:10]: Yeah. Well, and that's, know, I used to think of that as like, boy, it's sad. We're so wasteful now. But, you know, now I think in more tales of abundance theme, right? Like that is the world we live in that, you know, once upon a time when people had clothing, I mean, that was a treasured, you know, that's one of the basic human needs. And people, you know, you had it and you wore it and it was, you couldn't afford to just be buying new clothes all the time. Now people buy clothes, hardly wear them, throw them away, give them to the Salvation Army or something else.

Dr. John Oberg [47:47]: I do have a little bit of worry about the trash that it causes. don't, it's not my issue, but yeah.

Randy Lorensen [47:52]: I mean, you're not wrong. I that trash patch out in the middle of the Pacific, I forget how big it is, but I'm pretty sure it's bigger than Texas. And if you've ever driven across Texas, Texas is a damn big state. Right? So, and there's a trash patch. I know I went and I was in Costa Rica. This is not that trash patch, but you know, I was in Costa Rica and we went 25 miles out deep sea fishing one time. This is years ago.

Dr. John Oberg [48:05]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [48:20]: And there was a massive, we basically started fishing next to this trash patch. It almost was like those were lily pads that the fish were under or something. I mean, that thing was big, right? Like, I mean, I don't know what it was. I mean, it wasn't Texas, but I remember seeing that little tiny thing that was, you I don't know, it probably like an acre or something, right? I mean, or two acres or maybe even five acres. I don't know. Anyway.

Dr. John Oberg [48:30]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [48:48]: That's nothing compared to Texas, but yeah, that is a problem.

Dr. John Oberg [48:50]: Yeah. Well, there are people, think about that. There are people that have goals in their life to go clean all that stuff up. And that's a massive, so it's back to habits. Like that's a massive goal that is like seemingly unreachable, like an intractable problem. But when you kind of break it down, break it down, break it down, break it down, break it down, break it down, like it's like, what can I do today? Like what's the one thing that I, it's almost like having a big ball of twine. And like, if you can find the end of that ball of twine and just undo it one little bit at a time, you know, problems that seem impossible become a little bit more possible. And so if the habit seems overwhelming, it's like just break it down to something smaller, something smaller, something smaller until it's so ridiculously easy. It's something you can do. And I think, you know, any movement in the right direction is better than overwhelming, overwhelm that leads to no movement, right?

Randy Lorensen [49:36]: Yeah, I love that concept, John. mean, that's kind of back to when we had Dustin on the episode talking about, you know, healthy eating, you know, his concept of move to the right. And that's kind of you're talking about, Like just you don't have to, think, yeah, I do think a lot of people get overwhelmed.

Dr. John Oberg [49:55]: Well, that's even even the journal that I have can be overwhelming for people including myself at times and so it's like just do something less than like just do something like just just move in the direction you want to move right until you can find the next habit and then build that habit and then figure out the next one later but try you know trying to like lose all your weight at once or be in perfect shape all at once or run a marathon all at once or that's how you get hurt right and whether it's hurt by quitting or hurt by physically hurting yourself like I think just you know Offering yourself a lot of grace to move in a good direction. That's a that's a thing to do

Randy Lorensen [50:29]: Yeah. So by the way, the kid I'm talking you mentioned the cleaning up the oceans or whatever and all the trash. We talked about this before, but I couldn't remember his name, but there was a Dutch kid that he started this when he was 16 years old. Boyan Slat. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. My Dutch isn't very good, but Boyan Slat started at 16 and they're cleaning up. now have a 1.5 miles. that funnels plastics and they're there they put it in that big patch that's out you know in the pacific and you know their goal is to remove 90 percent of floating ocean plastic by 2040 which is pretty cool and by the way

Dr. John Oberg [51:13]: That's amazing. And you think about all the microplastics that are getting into our bloodstream and into our brain all that, that's just good for society, right? And hopefully they can find ways to recycle that and use that for something useful.

Randy Lorensen [51:25]: Yeah, and one of the really cool things there is I heard an interview where they were talking about this kid and what he was doing. So he got some people on board and he raised, I don't know, I want to say a couple million. Like it was enough to matter, but not, you know, the billions we're talking about from OpenAI earlier or anything like that. So he raised this money, but he also didn't want to ever raise money again. So he's made this whole thing sustainable when they collect all this plastic, they take it, they recycle it and they turn it into products that you can then buy, right? Whether they're sunglasses or reusable cups or whatever, right? So now that it's a, has turned it, what started as a charity is in essence of business doing charitable work, which is just a really cool admiral, you know. Attaboy.

Dr. John Oberg [52:17]: And then we got to move upstream, it's like solve the problem and figure out what caused the problem and move upstream hopefully and we'll just keep going. So I love that he's doing that in a capitalistic way too. I don't know much about the story, it sounds, know, I'm sure we'll get comments that some part of it's not awesome. So granted, I'm sure there's something imperfect about it, but directionally, I love that someone's trying to clean things up, make it sustainable using capitalism. Like that sounds like a pretty good direction.

Randy Lorensen [52:43]: Yeah, I love it. Let's put a bow on this thing, John. What else? What have you got? Some final takeaways for listeners?

Dr. John Oberg [52:50]: I mean, you need a dad joke to wrap this thing up or what do we know? That's probably not a great way. I don't know if I have a great one. think, you know, maybe just we, I'll let you know, like, so some of the things I'm working on this year, Andy, like I'm going to continue to work on my habits with those five F's to the family, all the things. And so you can kind of hold me accountable, right? And so then I've got some trips we're taking. I've got some fun stuff we're doing. But for me, this year is really about trying to simplify and get some.

Randy Lorensen [52:53]: please, please, everybody's waiting for baited breath.

Dr. John Oberg [53:18]: get less projects on my plate by the end of next year, which I think is that you've never heard me say that before. that we'll see if 2026 I can actually end 2026 with a little bit less to do than I 2025 with.

Randy Lorensen [53:34]: Oh, I laugh John, it's out of love. you know, this reminds me of John and I were having a conversation, it might have been in a meeting, I don't know, and he was talking about how much time he was gonna have once he was done getting his doctorate, right? He was working on his doctorate and he had to have all this time commitment and all of a sudden that time was coming on. And I laughed at him much like I did now. And because his...

Dr. John Oberg [53:57]: true. That happened.

Randy Lorensen [53:58]: I was like, you're just going to fill it with other stuff. And I think now you're busier than you were then, or at least as busy. So I wish you luck. I'm going to laugh at you because I don't know what else to do.

Dr. John Oberg [54:04]: Yeah. That's done with the listeners has done with love though. I know how Randy's sending it like he really does care. I get that

Randy Lorensen [54:16]: Right, I just, and if you want to open that up, then I'm 100 % on board. I hope you succeed. And I've been burned before, so. Hello.

Dr. John Oberg [54:29]: How about you, what's one thing you're gonna do end of 2026?

Randy Lorensen [54:33]: Sorry, say the whole thing again. One thing I'm gonna what? In 2026?

Dr. John Oberg [54:36]: And end of 2026, what's different for you at the end of 2026?

Randy Lorensen [54:40]: that we have spun off off of our main business. This new business is spun off and that it's, you know, we're able to comfortably pivot by the end of 2026. That's the big thing. So I'm working on that on daily basis.

Dr. John Oberg [54:51]: Yeah, that's great. I love that. Well, we'll check in. We'll check in here publicly for everyone and talk about how it's going.

Randy Lorensen [54:58]: Yeah. All right. Listeners, if you're still here, you obviously like us, download, tell your friends, tell your neighbors, give us a thumbs up. You can go to the website, talesofabundance.com. I hope everybody has a happy holidays, whatever that is, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, whatever it is that you celebrate and a happy new year.