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Category Archives: Finances
4 Steps To Getting More Accomplished In Your Day
Have you ever wondered why some people get so much more done than others in a day? 
There are a lot of reasons. Some people are naturally gifted at this skill of prioritizing their time. Others have learned how to be more effective with their daily tasks.
Here are some things that you can do everyday to get more done each day.
1. Take care of yourself first
- Exercise for at least 20 – 30 minutes per day. Exercise is one of the key factors in giving you the more energy. Many people work out first thing in the morning to start the day alert and ready to go. Some people like to work out during lunch to give them energy for the rest of the day.
- Sleep 7 – 9 hours. Sleep is key to being productive. The most productive people get 7 – 9 hours of sleep per night. Test this to see what works best for you. There are those that brag about how little sleep they get. Sure you can do this for periods of time, but eventually they are going to get sick or suffer burnout symptoms.
- Power naps. Many highly productive people take naps during the day to stay fresh. These are 10 -20 minute power naps. This will be dependent on your work environment. Some large companies actually have nap areas or rooms. If you can’t do this at work, you may want to experiment with it on weekends.
- Eat Well. Eat protein in the morning and as the day goes on add carbohydrates. Your food consumption will depend on how many calories you burn during the day. Don’t have a huge carbohydrate load at lunch time. This will leave you feeling sluggish the rest of the day.
- Stay Hydrated. Drink plenty of water during the day.
2. Plan the day.
- Take time in the morning or evening before to plan your day. At the end of your work day or in the morning before you get started, plan your work day and list out what you want to accomplish for the day.
- Rank you list. Rank the things you want to get done during the day from most important to least important.
- Schedule harder tasks first when fresh. Take your list and take the hardest task and get it done first. As they say “eat the frog” first thing. Then take the next most important thing you have to do that day and do it.
- Take Scheduled Breaks. Schedule breaks into your day. You should take a 5 – 10 minute break every 30 – 40 minutes.
- Get away from the office for a break. Take 30 – 60 minutes to get away and have a break away from the office between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. depending on what works best for your schedule and work cycles. If nothing else just go for a walk to get some exercise and fresh air.
3. Stay focused
- Use a timer. Use a timer to remind you to take breaks. Most cell phones have timers on them.
- Turn off email and instant message reminders. The pop ups are distracting and will make you want to go off task and answer them.
- Do not answer the phone and emails when you get them. Do not start the day by answering email. Block time increments of 15 – 30 minutes in the morning and afternoon to answer emails and your phone.
- One time as many emails as possible. Trash the ones you just read and don’t need. Set an offline folder for the ones you can read later. Take action and return the ones that are important. Delegate emails that can be answered by another team member.
- Block Time for Social Media. Block 20 – 30 minutes to read social media and do posts.
- Take Scheduled Breaks every 30 – 45 minutes. Use your timer to not miss these.
- Keep a notebook and pen by you to prevent yourself from multi-tasking. As you get ideas or things you want to do jot them down so you can do them later.
4. Delegate
- Determine the value of your time. Take your annual pay and divide it by 2080. This will give you your hourly value based on a 40 hour work week. When you are going to do a task determine if it is worth it for you to do the task or to delegate it.
- Delegate the tasks to an assistant or team member that can do the task for you. If you are fortunate enough to have someone you can delegate to then make sure you are using that person’s skills effectively. Delegation can be hard because many highly efficient people usually like control. Delegation to a qualified team member will help you to get more done during the day. The sooner you learn that the sooner you will become more productive.
- Hire a virtual assistant. In today’s world of technology many people that are self employed are using virtual assistants to help them be more productive.
Be Great!
How to Improve Your Self-Discipline
Self-discipline is defined as the ability to make yourself do things that should be done. It can also be stopping yourself from doing things you don’t want to do. Becoming more self-disciplined is key to attaining the results you desire in any area of your life.
Practice self-discipline with small things. Examples of this would be to skip desert even though you love desert. Another would be that you dislike green beans, but you eat them anyway. Deny yourself little things so you can form yourself to deny yourself large things.
Break Projects into Tasks. It is easier to be disciplined to smaller tasks than large projects. It is all about breaking things down to the simple.
Schedule the tasks in a calendar. For example, if you are going to go to the gym 3 times a week put those days and times into whatever calendar system you use.
Be accountable. Find an accountability partner. Have someone that you are accountable to for the discipline you are trying to achieve.
Reward yourself for maintaining discipline. When you have done a great job on maintaining a discipline take time to celebrate your success.
If you fail to maintain your discipline start over. Nobody is perfect and self-discipline is a process. If you fail then get back up and start again.
Be Great!
How to Reach Your Resolutions
Sticking to your resolutions and reaching them can be difficult. There are reasons that you set the resolution. You resolved to change. How do you attain the change?
To live life intentionally you have to form great habits. It takes discipline and courage to make changes and to instill great habits.
The first question to ask yourself: is the resolution you set something you really want to attain? How badly do you desire to achieve the results? To make constructive change you have to want to change. If you determine the resolution is not something you really want drop it and come up with things you are determined to change.
A habit, as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is a usual way of behaving: something that a person does often in a regular and repeated way. It takes anywhere from 18 days to 254 days to form a habit according to a study by Phillippa Lally published in the European Journal of Psychology, October 2010.
To form great habits you have to break down activities in to steps. Then you have determine what activities you need to do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
Getting fit and losing weight seem to be popular resolutions. The resolution may be to join a fitness center. The goal might be to lose 15 pounds. The process would be to set up the steps and determine by what date or timeline you are going to get the activity completed.
4 Stages to Attaining a Resolution
- Plan Your Steps With Target Dates
- Set Short-Term and Long Term Goals With Target Dates
- Measure Your Progress
- Reward Yourself
For example:
Step 1: Pick out 3 fitness centers to visit. Complete by 2/1, Visit Center 1 by 2/5, Center 2 by 2/7, Center 3 by 2/9
Step 3: Join fitness center of choice by 2/11
Step 4: Meet with a personal trainer to set up a workout program centered on your weight loss goals by 2/12
Step 5: Meet with nutritionist to set up a meal plan to meet your weight loss goal by 2/15
Step 6: Set targets to attain
Step 7: Put your workout days and workout times in your calendar
Step 8: Set short term goals with your trainer and nutritionist
Step 9: Take your measurements on a scheduled basis
Step 10: Celebrate when you reach a target
One of the things that is extremely valuable in keeping your resolution and hitting your goals is to create accountability. In this example if you hired a personal trainer and set weekly meetings with your nutritionist to track your progress you have created accountability. On top of that you would be paying for each of these services so if you do not show up for the workout you still have to pay.
Some of your habits might include showing up for your workout on the scheduled date and time for 60 days. Meet weekly with your nutritionist for 60 days. Take weight and body measurements weekly. Do a fitness test on a monthly basis. Shop for your food on a weekly basis.
Just a side note, if your goal is to lose weight I am personally more in favor of body measurements and body fat measurement rather than the scale. The key is not how much you weigh, but how you look. If you like the way you look, the weight does not matter. If you do prefer to use a scale, Wednesday mornings tend to be a good day to weigh yourself.
If this is one of your resolutions the first month is going to be the hardest. If you have not worked out for a while you are going to be very sore for a few weeks. That is why the fitness centers are not as crowded in February as they were in January. Many people have great intentions, but they don’t succeed because they don’t stick it out long enough to create the habit.
Set short term goals on the way to your long term goal and reward yourself. For example, you set a long-term goal to lose 3 inches on your waistline. You have an interim goal to lose 1 inch on your waist by 2/28. You hit the goal by the target date. Celebrate and reward yourself with your favorite meal or dessert.
The first 90 days are the hardest of starting anything new. Stay the course for at least 90 days. You will be on your way to creating great habits and reaching your resolutions.
Be Great!
How to Set and Attain Your Goals
A year from now you will either look back and see what you accomplished or you are going to look back and wish you had done what I am going show you. Goal setting can be done at any time during the year, but most people tend to set them on a calendar year.
Every person that has ever accomplished anything significant has used some form of goal setting. I am going to show you a system I have used and shared for years. It is very simple system, and the best part is it’s free.
Setting Goals
Step 1: Take the 6 F’s, Faith, Family, Fitness, Finances, Friends and Fun and list them on a sheet of paper or in a document on your computer or pad.
Step 2: In each of the categories list all the things you want to accomplish in each category over the next 12 months.
Step 3: Put a date that you want to accomplish the goal next to each.
Step 4: Determine what steps you need to take to accomplish the goal. List out the daily, weekly, monthly things you need to do to accomplish the goal and write them below the goal.
Step 5: Put your goals in the order of importance to you on your commitment card
Step 6: Visualize your goals often as if they have already been accomplished. If you study professional athletes, you will soon learn how powerful visualization is. The best of the best see themselves performing at optimal levels and winning their competitions before the event occurs.
Step 7: Review your goals everyday. Keep them in front of you.
You should do a monthly review of your goals to check your progress. Over the years when I have done this, I have found there are goals I had hit early, ones I was not close to and others that did not motivate me anymore. If this happens to you, here are some options. You can adjust the goal by increasing or decreasing it, or you can decide to eliminate it altogether.
Another important thing to do is to celebrate when you achieve a goal. It does not have to be something elaborate, it can be as simple as going out to eat or enjoying a good bottle of wine.
I use a Commitment Card to record my goals. The card is simply a 3 x 5 index card. Making multiple copies of your Commitment Card will allow you to access it more easily.
Commitment Cards also make great stocking stuffers at Christmas. I have given them to my kids for years. It is fun to watch your children set goals and watch them attain them.
If you like to use technology, there are many systems that can be used. You can use Goals on Track which uses the SMART method to set goals, Nozbe which is a task based system or you can store your Commitment Card in Evernote. Evernote is one of my favorite tools because it syncs amongst all my devices, and I always have my information available.
Keep your Commitment Cards. It is fun to look back over years past and see all that you have accomplished and all the things you still want to accomplish.
“Happy is the man who sets a goal and is willing to pay the price to reach it.” – Unknown
Be Great!
How to Create a Personal Development Plan
Every year it is a good idea to take a look at what you want to learn, skills you want to develop and areas that you want to improve in the coming year. Now is a great time to start your personal development plan for next year.
I recommend looking at the 6 F’s, Faith, Family, Fitness, Finances, Friends and Fun to determine some areas you want to develop in the coming year. Schedule a half day to set up your Personal Growth Plan for next year.
Questions to Consider
- What are the skills you want to develop next year?
- What do you want to learn next year?
- What areas of your work do you want to improve next year?
- What areas in your personal life do you want to improve next year?
- How do you want to improve your fitness and health?
- What do you want to improve or learn in your faith life?
- What do you want to learn financially?
- What do you want to improve on relationships with your spouse, friends, coworkers or significant other?
- Is there a hobby or interest you want to learn for fun?
For each of these questions the next step is to do some research.
- What books do I need to read?
- What workshops or seminars do I need to attend?
- What Podcasts do I need to subscribe or listen to?
- What websites are available to help?
- What courses do I need to take?
- What webinars do I need to attend?
This may involve doing some research online to discover tools, books, resources, websites and podcasts that can help you achieve your personal development plan.
Next Steps
- Break this all down in to manageable timelines to achieve. An example would be a reading plan. You have a book that is 300 pages. If you read 10 pages per day for 30 days you will complete the book. This is a way to break down the task into managable bites.
- Schedule the activities in your calendar
- Set goals around your development plan with dates of completion.
I hope this helps you to grow and achieve new skills, learn new things and grow in your life over the next 12 months.
Be Great!
Tips on How to Allocate Your Paycheck
The best rule I have for allocating your paycheck is the 70-10-10-10 rule. I came up with this rule years ago after reading the excellent book The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. This book is a classic fable that gives the timeless rules for money management.
There are several other great resources: Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and Money Master the Game:7 Simple steps to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins.
The 70-10-10-10 Rule
- The first 10% goes in a charity account. The funds in this account are disbursed at 5% to your church and the other 5% goes to charities that you are passionate about. I have found over the years that if you follow this rule you will get back much more than you give.
- 70% goes for living expenses. Use these funds to pay your monthly living expenses. Pay credit cards off monthly and strive to keep your debt minimal.
- 10% goes to savings and investment. The first step is to have 3 months of living expenses saved in a money market account or savings account. Max out your 401k. Any additional funds should be invested as you and your financial planner see fit based on your risk.
- 10% goes to investing in yourself and/or business. These are funds to invest in your learning and education. These funds are for books, workshops, seminars and business retreats. They can also be used for side businesses.
A good plan is to meet with a financial advisor to help you to meet your financial goals. A good financial advisor can help you with wealth strategies, insurance strategies and tax strategies to help you to maximize your financial future. You should meet with your planner at least annually to discuss strategies and update your plan.
Be Great!
How to Put Discipline in Your Life
We all want to do so many things in our lives, but we are limited by time. How we schedule our day and discipline ourselves has a big impact on whether we accomplish what we set out to do each day.
Self discipline is hard and is something you can train yourself to get better at. Much of it is sticking to your plan and not letting others or your own self talk convince you to not get done what you want to get accomplished.
6 Areas to Commit Time and Create More Discipline
- Faith – Commit time to prayer and go to church. Set aside time each day to pray. How many minutes/hours would you like to pray each day? I have found early mornings and night time work best for me. Figure out your best prayer time. Don’t skip church because you want to sleep in or have other things to do on Sunday. Plan on which mass or service you attend each week.
- Fitness – Commit time to workout. How many times per week do you want to workout? How long do you want your workouts to be? What kind of workouts do you want to do? Start with an easy workout just a few minutes per day and work your way up to longer and harder workouts.
- Friends – Commit to spending time with friends. How often do you want to spend time with friends? Who do you want to spend time with? Set a goal of how many times per week or month you want to spend with your friends.
- Finances – Commit time to working on your finances. The easiest thing to do is set your monthly bills on autopay. Set up your investments with monthly deductions. Most employers offer a 401k plan. This is an easy way to set aside monies for retirement and comes out of your pay pretax. Review your investment statements monthly. Set up a quarterly and an annual review with a financial planner.
- Family – Commit time to your spouse and children. Plan to spend time with your family each day. Have family dinners. Have date time or date moments with your spouse. Take time to talk to your kids and play with them.
- Fun – Commit time to doing something fun. Get vacation and fun time planned and put in your calendar. Where would you like to go on vacation? What weekend trips would you like to go on? What fun things have you not done in a while that you would like to do?
After answering these questions for each category pull out your calendar. Block time in your calendar for each of these 6 areas. Tell your spouse or a friend what you have scheduled and what your goals are. You will have a greater chance of hitting them if you have accountability to someone other than yourself.
Be Great!
How To Put More Simplicity In To Your Life
7 Ways to Simplify Your Life
We all have a lot of stuff. We have so much stuff that there is over 2.35 billion square feet of self storage units in the United States. We have closets full of clothes we have not worn for years. We have multiple email accounts with hundreds or even thousands of emails. We have desks that have stacks of stuff on them. We have multiple calendars filled with appointments. Here are 7 ways to simplify all of this.
7 Ways to Simplify your Life
- Clean Your Closet
- Schedule a Saturday morning to clean your closet
- Take all the clothes and shoes you have not worn in the last year and give them away to one of your favorite charities
- Clean Your Email
- Set up an offline folder for your unread email
- Set rules for email to go to an offline folder automatically.
- Reduce the number of emails you get in a day by unsubscribing as you receive solicitation emails
- Delete your trash
- Take action on email
- Read and take action when you read the email
- Move unwanted emails to trash
- Move emails you want to keep to your offline folder for unread email or to Evernote to read later
- Set up an offline folder for your unread email
- Clean Your Desk
- Keep your desktop clean
- Focus on one thing at a time
- Purchase a simple organization system. A tray or box for working on, need to delegate, need to file and need to shred.
- Clean Out Your Cell Phone
- Delete all the apps you have not used in the last 60 days
- Get Rid of Your Storage Unit
- Sell everything you don’t need or give it to charity
- Bring everything else home and save yourself the storage cost
- Evernote
- Get Evernote to go paperless
- Invest in a Scansnap scanner or use the one with your printer to scan to Evernote
- Calendar
- Use a calendar system
- Use separate work and home calendars if that works better for you
- Schedule fun things in to your calendar
Be Great!
How to Create a Plan for Your Life
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Do you have a plan for your life? Is it in electronic or print form?
I teach a plan for life using of the 6 f’s: Faith, Family, Fitness, Finances, Friends and Fun. I am going to give you a format that you can use to put a plan together for your life.
There are two distinct paths I have watched people take over the years. The first path is to build your life around your career/business and the other path is to build your career/business around your life.
The first path, building your life around your career/business, usually leads to a bad ending. It often leads to burnout, health issues, a drinking or drug problem and often unfortunately divorce. This is avoidable if you choose the path of building your career/business around your life. I am going to show you how.
The first thing to do is consider how you would like to be remembered for by your wife, kids, friends and family. Make a list of what is most important to you and how you would like your wife and kids remember you.
What is the main thing that you are striving to be remembered for in your life? Write your life purpose statement from this.
Now take each of the 6 categories (Faith, Family, Fitness, Finances, Friends and Fun) and put a number on each of these based on the importance to you in your life, with 1 being highest and 6 being lowest. This is your values hierarchy.
Take each of the 6 categories using the format provided and put them in the order you choose. The next thing to do is to take each individual category and write down what this category would look like to you in a “perfect” world. Do this for all 6 categories. Here is a working document.
Now take your first category and write all the activities on a daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis that are needed to reach your vision statement in that category. Do this for all your categories. Here is a sample for a family category.
Many people like to take the 6 F’s and break them down into subcategories. For example on the family account many people like to breakdown into categories like Marriage, Children or Grandchildren and Relatives. You can create activities for each of the subcategories if you choose to make your plan for life like this.
This is your plan so you can make it any way that you want. A plan for life is not something you can do in an hour or two. This is something that you need to schedule a whole day to go someplace offsite like a park, a lake or a place you like to think. It is also a great document to share with your spouse since you are living life together.
This is one of the most important documents that you can ever put together. Some of your life plan is in concrete, but much of it is in sand and changes as you go through different stages in your life. You want to review this document and make changes on a quarterly basis.
Pick a day every week to read your Plan for Your Life. Put it in your calendar to make sure it happens.