Hold My Feet to the Fire!

The road to self-fulfillment and success at times looks more like a shell-shocked third world path in the middle of monsoon season than a modern super-highway. It ain’t supposed to be easy, and sometimes it feels as if God, the universe, and Osama Bin Laden were all conspiring against us. How many nights have you thought “God, it would be so much easier to turn on the idiot box and veg out than…(put your plan here).” When the initial thrill of a new venture wears off and complacency sets in, that’s when good habits take over and become our auto-pilot to the Promised Land. Aristotle said “we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Well actually he said it in Greek so it looked something more like this

All Greek to me!

I recently posted an entry at eHow on “How to Get Into the Habits of Success” and it deals with the how to of developing successful habits but not all the sexy, philosophical reasons as to what successful habits are and why we need to get our collected derrieres in gear and use our positive habits to kick butt and get things done! So take a look at the post and then lets start talking about all the effective hacks that we use to develop and keep world beating habits.

Remove Distractions - Once, while I was serving in the Peace Corps in Guatemala I had a buddy that was studying for his LSAT exams (to get into law school) at the same time I was studying for the CPA exam. Previously I had ribbed him a little on watching Spanish soap operas instead of studying and, one day when he arrived in town, I asked him about how his television was doing. “I had to get rid of it,” he replied, “it was the Devil!” As he said those last words I swear his eyes rolled back into his head (which spun around several times) and he hissed in a way that reminded me of that song about the Devil in Georgia or something like that. All right, maybe I don’t swear it, but it was some pretty intense stuff at the time. The point is, this guy went on to ace the LSAT’s, get a scholarship to one of America’s most prestigious law schools and has now graduated and is halfway along in his plan to conquer the universe. Why, because he was ready to take extreme actions to remove any obstacles that may have diverted him from his true calling, future Supreme Court justice.

Unwavering Focus - “Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn’t look up. Well, maybe once.” The preceding quotation was brought to you by the great Isaac Asimov. We’ve all heard of the expression “in the zone,” when you are so concentrated on the task at hand that there are no distractions, the clock stops ticking and the rest of the world just melts away. Sometimes, when I’m writing late at night and the kid’s in bed I get in the zone and the hours fly by until I remember I have to work in the morning and that I’d better drag my sorry butt to bed. Sometimes, but not every time and it almost never starts that way. Usually, I’m tired and there’s a great soccer match on the telly that I’m missing and I can’t remember any of the great ideas that came to me earlier in the day when my computer wasn’t handy. Sound familiar? Focus at the task at hand is not something that just happens, it is a habit like any other that has to be cultivated, nurtured, and coaxed along until it’s fully grown and it sweeps us up and carries us along with it.

Labor of Love – I’ve already posted about my dad and his unrelenting obsession of all things zoological to the very border of institutionalization. For Dad, the zoo was a labor of love, his pride in his achievements in such a public domain was a huge rush for him and its addiction had him striving to ever greater heights. Focus on your plan for success becomes so powerful that the end (making a living) becomes, at times, subordinate to the means (whatever we are doing to achieve our success). If we don’t love what we do, the Earl Wells of the world will always be out there; hungrier, more determined, and absolutely in love with what they do no matter what they are making. How’s a guy going to compete with that?

All right, enough of my mumblygunk, now I want to hear from you! Do you have a point that you’d like to add? What about a great motivational story on developing good habits? Please share!

During an economic depression there is a great deal of wringing of hands, beating of breasts, and soulful lamentations.  This is cool, but it doesn’t get anything done.  That’s why I decided to title my first eHow post “How to thrive during the current economic depression.” While the article is a tongue in cheek list of three things to do to take advantage of the depression the basic point is very salient; don’t let the air of negativity and, well, depression get you off track from implementing your plan to realize your dreams.  Many great opportunities arise during a depression and, if you have an economic plan in place and are following it, you, the positive thinker, will find that silver lining.
Keep the destination in mind at all times
Lewis and Clark didn’t cross the great plains and the Rocky Mountains only to get to the Cascades and say “forget it, this is too hard, let’s just go somewhere else!”  No, their destination was the Pacific Ocean and they would cross whatever river or valley and climb whatever mountain it took to achieve that aim.  We all have obstacles thrown in our paths and are forced to rewrite plans, that’s part of the adventure of it all!  When you chart your course and set sail make sure that you stay the course.
Have a Plan
The best plans for people with goals and ambition are simple, automatic, and efficient in that they don’t distract you or take up precious time that you need to fill your dreams.  Have a job?  Simple, 10% of your wages are direct deposited into a savings account, 10% are direct deposited into your four-o-something plan where they are invested in an index or target fund, and the rest is gravy.  Want to do more and that?  My wife and I save much more but we still have the automatic plan in place.
What if you’re self-employed?  Then it truly is more difficult because many self-employed people or business owners experience huge variation in their incomes and are funding their own benefits.  Well, you could plot the standard deviation of your monthly income and then develop a cool and complex formula as far as how much cash you’ll need, or you could follow the same rule as for the wage-earners above only factor in 50 to 100% more in savings.  It’s a basic rule of finance, the higher the risk for a certain outcome than the higher the reward needs to be.  Only in this case you are offsetting your more risky income by keeping a higher cash reserve.  Also, for the love of all that is holy, please diversify!  In my job, in the current economic climate, I get so many clients that say “if I lose my business I lose everything” and, of course, by then it’s way too late.
Make like an Eagle Scout and be prepared
If your plan is in place and quietly accumulating you savings, then you are already a long way toward being prepared.  But what about being prepared in a strategic an emotional way?  If you lose your day job or your biggest client dumps you tomorrow at 8:15 do you know what you’ll be doing at 9:00?  Be prepared to make that switch; know what costs can be cut and plans that can be put on hold and what else can be done to make up for lost income.  This isn’t something to obsess over but rather more like those candles and emergency numbers you keep in a drawer, they give you peace of mind and, in the event of an emergency, sense of purpose.

One of the most debilitating obstacles obstructing any new enterprise is what is the next step.  Even with the services of my (library) book, ProBlogger, I have a bewildering amount of tasks that all face seemingly immediate attention.  Alas, I am but one, and so some prioritization is required. Continue reading Taking the first step