Have you ever found yourself doing something mundane where your mind had time to wander and for a split second thought, Wait. This isn’t right. This is not how my life is supposed to be. What am I doing?

There’s a scene in Seinfeld where George and Jerry have this “who are we?” moment. It starts at 1:55 of the video below if you want to jump to it:

Their moment is a bit more light-hearted than most peoples’. Truthfully, I think all of us have felt like this at some point in our life, and it’s not a pleasant feeling at all, which is why we do our best to shove it down as much as possible. Far, far too many people spend the majority of their lives trying to avoid admitting to themselves the extent of the disparity between what their life is and what they wish it was. As Thoreau said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Side note: If this is not you (and it may very well not be), then this post is not for you. But be aware that most people are unwilling to admit that they fall into this category. Be honest with yourself.

This is the part of the post where I start talking about motivation and making your dreams come true and blah, blah, blah. You’ve heard it all before. At the end of the day, the only thing you can ask yourself is why not?

• Why not quit your job and travel the world?
• Why not go back to school to get that degree that you dreamed of?
• Why not allow yourself to be vulnerable and ask that crush out?
• Why not risk everything to start that business you’ve always dreamed of having?
• Why not be brave enough to share your art with others?

I can give the answers to every one of these, and they’re based on simple odds. The truth is that the odds are against you. You will probably fail. Traveling will likely not be as romantic as you think and the financial burden of not having a job will probably make it worse. That degree will probably not be as interesting or as helpful as you think. The crush will probably turn you down. The business you start will most likely fail. The sad reality is that your art is probably not very good and most people won’t like it. Most things that you try at, you will fail at. If not, you’re not stretching yourself very far.

But why not try? The truth about failure is that it hurts. Badly. But it also makes you realize something: it usually doesn’t hurt as bad as you thought it would. You can start another business, ask another crush out, paint another picture. All is not lost. And hopefully you learned a few things the last time around. If you never try, you know where you’ll be in a decade? Right where you are now. Right where you are now. Look back a year. Five years. Ten years. Did you think this would be it? Did you think your life would look like this?

Why not just do it? Right now.

Why not?

Note to my clients: if you read this, be aware that none of this affects any of your projects

Is it just me, or does productivity come in cycles? Sometimes I’ll go weeks at a time and absolutely tear it up, getting tons done on client work, personal projects, etc. I feel great, motivated, etc. Other times, I struggle to get anything done and never really get into the groove. Why is that? I mean, I do get stuff done, but it just feels like such a freaking chore and I have to force myself to power through. These cycles seem to last several weeks each, perhaps a bit longer. I have a few speculations that I’ve pulled from thin air on why this might occur:

Natural biological process
It might be that there’s some natural chemical process in the brain that makes some people more or less productive and that this process tends to be cyclical in nature. I feel like perhaps I’ve read something about this…if it’s true, I’m not sure how much I can do about it other than be aware of it and try to use it to my advantage? For the record, I think this is the most unlikely of the three scenarios.

Reflection of what I’m working on
Perhaps I’m just more excited at times about things that I’m working on because they’re more interesting. This one is hard to evaluate, because I’m not sure if I’m feeling unmotivated because of boring projects or if the projects seem boring because I’m feeling unmotivated.

Motivational momentum
I think is probably the most likely scenario. Basically, I think that certain people (myself included) swim better against the current. When things aren’t going well and I’ve got a lot of pressure (both external and internal) to get stuff done, I tend to build up a lot of motivational momentum and push hard to get things done. On the way up this hill of accomplishment, things are good, as I’m getting a lot done, keeping up with all my responsibilities, etc. It feels great. But as I accomplish more and more, that pressure and stress begins to dissipate, and so does some of the motivation. At this point, I begin to crest the top of the motivational hill and the old feelings of being unmotivated begin to return. Over the next few weeks, stuff begins to gradually pile up again and the pressure and stress begins to build. But until it hits a certain point, my motivation doesn’t seem to really kick in. Once it does, the cycle starts over.

This has been an issue my entire life and I’m just now getting to the point where I can deal with it more effectively. In college, I dealt with it by keeping my schedule absolutely slammed so there was virtually no room for error. I finished 75% of my bachelor’s degree in 17 months and graduated with a 3.9 GPA. I say this not to brag, but just to point out that I had virtually no room to slow down or slack off. This is highly effective, but it carries two huge price tags: risk and stress. The risk is that you’re juggling so much that if you drop one thing, it can all come crumbling down. The stress comes from the fact that you have no margin for error. These two things feed off each other, as the high risk stresses you out and the high stress increases the risk that you’ll make a mistake. Obviously, this is not a viable long-term solution.

The core problem here (for me, anyway) is relying too much on motivation, which is a fickle emotion. It can be incredibly useful, usually at the start of a venture, to kickstart your efforts and give you that critical early boost in the right direction. But if you rely too much on it, you’ll find that it never lasts long enough to get you where you need to go. The primary reason that people fail is because they give up, and I believe that the primary reason people give up is because they rely too much on motivation. The going gets rough and they find that the only fuel they really had was an emotion that’s now gone, so they just kind of let things die out.

Here’s what I’ve tried to do: replace motivation (emotion) with decision (habit). This is the primary reason that I do my seven daily habits. These habits were carefully chosen as things that I want to accomplish daily to get me closer to where I want to be, regardless of whether I feel like doing them or not.

That doesn’t mean that motivation has no place in productivity and self-improvement, but I think that you can’t rely too much on it. To the extent that motivation does play a role in my productivity, I’ve tried to replace external motivation with internal motivation, where I’m pushing myself harder rather than waiting for other people to pressure me. As an example, one of my daily habits is to look at my goal plan every single day. I also carefully track my goals from month to month, recording what percentage I accomplished, and preparing a new plan for the next thirty days. I also carefully track the amount of time that I work on various projects and initiatives in my life. I do all these things not because I have some weird fascination with data (at least not primarily so), but because by carefully tracking my productivity and advancement towards my goals, I am often motivated to push myself harder because I’m not moving as fast as I would like. The adage that “what gets measured gets managed” is true for the simple reason that when we’re confronted with the data about how we’re spending our time and the results of our efforts, we’re often encouraged and motivated to improve.

I’d love to hear what other people’s thoughts are. Have you experienced cyclical productivity? If so, how do you deal with it?

Look back over the last week, the last month, the last year, and ask yourself this question: did I accomplish what I thought I would? Am I happy about the progress I made during that time? Am I likely to accomplish what I think I will over the next week, month, or year?

Truthfully, I can’t say that I’m unhappy about the progress I made over the last year, but it’s definitely less than what I had hoped for. I tend to look forward a year and imagine that things will have changed much more than they have. I imagine that my progress towards various goals will be much more substantial, that my life will look more different than it inevitably does, that I’ll have changed more than I have. Why? Well, probably because I’m an optimist. But also because change is hard.

There’s nothing really profound in this post, just some lessons that I need to remind myself of on occasion. Earlier this evening, I was sitting at dinner, pondering some conversations I had today about opportunities in the real estate market. The real estate market has taken a beating, and right now is a fantastic time to buy if you can make the deals happen. But financing those deals is hard, lenders are wary, and cash is scarce. On top of that, the general feeling in the real estate market right now is one of fear and dejection. The vast majority of people (even experienced investors) would conclude that this is a good time to sit on the sidelines for a bit and wait for sanity to return. But I wonder if times like these separate the timid from the titans. I spent some time today on the phone with lenders and people who are out there doing deals, and I’m much, much further along than I was at the beginning of the day, though perhaps still a long way from doing any deals. But the thing I realized tonight is that lack of capital, connections, experience, etc, etc. are not what’s holding me back. The only thing holding me back is me. The only thing keeping me from diving in 100% and making something happen is my unwillingness to do so, for whatever reason. Sure, lack of capital, connections, experience or whatever else will slow me down and make it that much harder. But it definitely can be done. I just have to want it badly enough.

As I think about what’s truly and honestly holding me back, I’m reminded of a quote:

“After a lifetime of making money and observing better men and women than I fall by the wayside, I am convinced that fear of failing in the eyes of the world is the single biggest impediment to amassing wealth.”
-Felix Dennis

What’s holding you back?

My wife and I were out walking our puppies today, which is always an interesting experience because probably 50% of the people we pass want to stop and pet them and ask where we got them, etc. It’s generally an interesting experience, and a good opportunity for the dogs to get out and socialize with new people and other dogs.

Anyway, we were walking down the street and we happened upon a dapper-looking elderly gentleman standing on the steps of his Victorian home. He was sharply dressed in a yellow cardigan and appeared ready to enjoy an evening out. He remarked on the puppies and we struck up a conversation. Turns out, it was his 80th birthday today and he was off to a birthday celebration. I was a little surprised, as I would have pegged his age at something like 65 - 70. I wished him a happy birthday, to which he responded with a thank-you and a “perhaps you’ll get there someday, old boy.” Classic. He also urged me to ensure that I drank plenty of gin. We wished him farewell and continued down the street. Farther down the block, I turned around to watch him and he was just standing on the step, enjoying the cool breeze and the fading sunlight of the evening. He had about him the air of a man who has lived a full life and who is still enjoying every bit of it.

I generally don’t particularly enjoy being around the elderly, partly because I feel like I have little in common with them, but mostly because their lives just seem so depressing to me. But this gentleman seemed different. Even though I only met him for a brief moment, he made an impression on me. I hope that when I’m 80 years old, I’ll be as content and happy enjoying my life as he seemed to be.

Happy birthday, sir. Now I’m off to see about that gin.

If I can do it, anyone can. As most people who know me will attest, I’ve always had trouble getting up in the morning. I blame my family, which is packed with night owls.

In high school, I got suspended on more than one occasion for missing my first class of the day. You’d think that the Navy would have changed me, and it did, for awhile. I only got in trouble once or twice in the Navy for being late as a result of oversleeping. And in spite of my lack of discipline in this area, after I got out of the Navy, I managed to crank through three years of school in 18 months and maintain a 3.9 GPA. But I remember sitting in class on numerous occasions having been in bed sound asleep less than 20 minutes before that. After college, I managed to hold down a job in San Francisco for a year before I quit to start consulting and pursuing my own entrepreneurial pursuits.

You’d think that the unstructured life of a freelancer would be bad for someone who already has trouble getting up in the morning. Well, you’d be right. For a long time, I would work late, late into the night (like 2 - 4am) and then drag myself out of bed around noon. Super lame. The thing was, I hated doing it, but I always felt like I had more to do than I could afford to put off until the next day, so I had to do it before I went to bed.

For awhile, I was afraid I had some kind of sleeping disorder. But over the last four or five months, I’ve had a real breakthrough. The last few weeks notwithstanding (more on that later), I now get up regularly around 4:30am, and am often at my office by 5am. What’s more, I *love* this and don’t consider it to be much of a struggle. If you’re looking to make a similar change, here’s what I would recommend:

1. Practice getting up

Yes, you will feel stupid. But give Steve Pavlina’s awesome technique a try. It really helped me, especially in the beginning.

2. Consider your productivity curve

One of the biggest things I discovered is that I get 3-4x as much done between 5am and 9am as I do between 9pm and 1am. They’re both four hours, but my productivity is drastically different. For some people, it may make more sense to stay up late, as they’ll get more done. In that case, my recommendation would be to just embrace it. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reportedly sleeps from like 4am to 10am and he’s gotten quite a bit done over the last few years. Figure out what works for you.

3. Go to bed

You’d think this would be basic, right? Took me 25 years to figure it out, though. The thing is, when I started going to bed at 9pm or 10pm, I had to really force myself, because I had *so much* that needed to get done. But I knew that I would get more done the next morning than I would if I stayed up late working. And I did. And over time, I gradually managed to catch up, until I wasn’t so far behind and going to bed was a lot easier.

4. Have something to do with your time in the morning

Exercise, read, write, work, email, whatever. But don’t get up and sit around wondering why you’re up. It’ll just be harder to get up next time.

5. Stick with it

That first week or two was kind of rough, but as I kept getting up, it got easier and easier. Once you get into the routine and your body adjusts, you’ll find getting up much easier to do. Just don’t give up.

Where I am today

My wife and I got two puppies about a month ago, and they’ve completely ruined my routine I can only imagine what an infant would be like…kudos to you parents out there. Anyway, we’ve started to get back into a routine, and we’re trading off days so that I can get up early a few days a week and head into the office. It’s not quite the same level of productivity that I had before, but it’ll continue to get better.

For more on this topic, here’s a few posts from other blogs:

Steve Pavlina - How to Become an Early Riser

Steve Pavlina - How to Become an Early Riser - Part II

Zen Habits - How I Became an Early Riser

I want to be rich. There, I said it. Ever since I was a kid, I always knew that I would be wealthy one day, and I’ve been steadily moving in that direction ever since. I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way, learned a lot about myself, and spent a lot of time thinking about why I want to be wealthy. In particular, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about being rich in the context of my faith (I’m a Christian), and in the context of being a good steward of what I’m entrusted with. My good buddy Ben Rasmusen pointed me today to a blog post by John Reel about the lessons learned by getting rich and then losing it all. It got me thinking about this subject, so I’d thought I’d share eight reasons I want to be rich:

Support worthy causes

The way I see it, the more I have, the more I can give away. There are so many organizations and efforts in the world today that need money, and I’m excited to have the opportunity to contribute. I guess when I analyze the rest of the items on this list, many of them are more specific examples of this point.

Give my kids great opportunities

I have been blessed with two wonderful parents who taught me everything I need to know about the things that matter most in life: faith, family, marriage, integrity, etc. However, I don’t come from a wealthy family. My parents are smart people, but neither had the opportunity to go to college, nor did they have the resources to pay my way through college. Thanks to the Navy, I was able to attend a decent school, but I sometimes wonder how things might have turned out differently had I gone to MIT or Stanford out of high school, instead of enlisting in the Navy. I would have had trouble paying for it, and perhaps that’s part of the reason why I didn’t consider those schools to be options. I want my kids to have great opportunities without finances being what’s holding them back. I want to help them pay for school, buy a house, start a business, etc. There’s no guarantee that they’ll have success later, but the least I can do help them take the first step.

Give the underdog a chance

One of my friends just got a job at a company out here in San Francisco and he blogged about their values as a company. One of them is to “help outsiders and underdogs win”, and I can’t stress enough how much I believe in this. I have observed over the last few years that the maxim of “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is very true, at least out here. I’m incredibly grateful that someone at CNET saw my resume on Craigslist and emailed me to offer me a job as a product manager. I was just out of college, had pretty much no experience, no connections, nothing. They took a chance on me, and I hope they would say it was a good choice in the end. Money opens doors, and I hope to use any influence I have to hold the door open for other people who may not have the right background or connections. Someone gave me a chance, and it made all the difference.

Own my time

The most valuable resource that any of us have is time. We only get so much of it (and we don’t even know how much), and there’s only so much you can do to maximize the amount that you get. Even if you eat healthy, exercise, be careful, etc., you’re unlikely to live much longer than a century, at least under current life expectancy (this could change, though). The point is, I hate selling my time. I hate that there are things in life that I need and currently, the only way I can get them is by selling my time in exchange for money. Granted, since I’ve started freelancing, I sell my time for a lot more. And I’ve read about people who sell their time for hundreds or thousands of dollars per hour. But in my mind, that’s still slavery. It’s a much more palatable form of slavery, but slavery nonetheless.

My goal is to reach a point where I can live a comfortable life through passive income sources. I will never have to get a job, take a client, or borrow money unless I want to. I can spend my time pursuing the things in life that matter to me. And as a side note, I’m not entirely sure that kind of financial security can’t be considered happiness that money can buy. John agrees with me.

Explore the world

You know that saying about how the things you own end up owning you? Well, it’s true. If you want proof, just try moving frequently, ideally into gradually smaller and smaller places so you have to get rid of stuff. It’s so liberating to get rid of junk that you don’t need or even want anymore. My wife and I sold both our cars when we moved to San Francisco, and I’m so glad. Is it a pain sometimes? Yes. But aside from the financial benefits (which are huge), just the peace of mind of not having to worry about a car is amazing.

I say all that to say that what I’ve come to value more than stuff are experiences. Stuff doesn’t make you happy. My wife and I were blessed to be able to spend eleven weeks trekking around Asia earlier this year, and it was one of the most amazing, enriching experiences of my life. I think travel is one of those things that just fundamentally shifts your perception of the world the more you do it. I want the opportunity to live in some of the world’s greatest cities, explore the world’s cultures, and broaden my horizons by getting out there and seeing how the other six billion people live.

Create wealth for others

I read this fantastic essay about wealth the other day by Paul Graham, a noted angel investor who has funded dozens (or hundreds) of startups, mostly in the technology space. In the essay, he talks about how many people view the world’s wealth as something that’s fixed, and they accordingly view wealthy people as having taken more than their fair share. But entrepreneurs are not working in a zero-sum world. Entrepreneurs actually create wealth, and when they do, lots of other people get wealthy along the way, from the investors, to the employees, to even the customers. Think about how much richer our lives are thanks to the work of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and the Google guys. They’ve been rewarded with billions for the work they’ve done, but they’ve given the world a lot of wealth, too, both monetary and in terms of technological advances. I want to create wealth for others and help make their dreams come true.

Change the world

This brings me to the next point: entrepreneurs change the world. The innovations that they create make our lives richer in countless ways. I believe that the next few decades will foster in so much innovation that the last couple centuries will pale in comparison. In particular, I believe that advances in artificial intelligence / robotics, genetics, and nanotechnology will change the face of the world beyond recognition. I want to be a part of these paradigm shifts and wealth will give me the opportunity to fund great startups in these and other spaces, as well as start companies of my own.

Master myself

Finally, one of the best things about getting rich, I’ve heard, is not the destination, but the journey. Becoming a millionaire is something that most people can technically do, but statistically, few of them will. It’s just too hard. Controlling your finances, investing, starting a company, and other paths to wealth are all difficult and require a lot of personal growth and development for most people. One of the best lessons in John’s blog post is the first one: “I can get rich.” Once you’ve done it, it’s much easier to do it again, because you believe in yourself, and because you’ve mastered yourself, at least to some degree.

Conclusion

I’m not waiting until I’m “rich” to do any of these things. I believe that building wealth is a process. There aren’t shortcuts, per se, though there are methods to get there faster and smarter, but they usually require more risk, more dedication, and more time. Regardless of how I get there, I hope that if and when I do, I’m able to keep these things in perspective and be a good steward of what I’ve been blessed with. I’d love to hear your comments on the subject.

For the last week or so, I’ve been working on reviewing, streamlining, and unifying my goals across different areas of my life. I’m building a comprehensive goal plan for the next ten years, and I’m calling this effort Project Goalpost (cheesy, I know). One of my guiding principles that I’m employing while working through all these goals is to ensure that each goal is SMART, which is a useful mnemonic that says goals should be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Time-bound

I have found this device to be a useful one when devising my goal plans, as it helps avoid nebulous and ill-defined goals like “get into better shape” or “prepare for the future”. How would you have any idea when those things have been accomplished?

Currently, I’m dividing my goals into these different life areas:

• Personal
• Physical
• Financial
• Entrepreneurial
• Real Estate
• Spiritual

I’m doing pretty well with most of these, but it’s the Spiritual category that’s giving me the most trouble. I’m just not sure how to write specific, measurable goals for matters of the heart, especially for several years out.

For one thing, faith is about the journey, not really the destination, and much of that journey occurs in ways that don’t lend themselves to metrics. For example, it doesn’t really make sense to say that you want to be 35% closer to God, or have your prayer life be twice as good. The destination doesn’t really exist, either, as I don’t believe that Christians can ever really say that they’ve accomplished their mission as a Christian, at least not in this life.

Second, I’m not entirely sure that our faith is something that should get a category of its own. Shouldn’t our faith undergird all that we do, rather than being put into its own bullet-point list of todo items?

And why does this bother me at all? I guess because my goals should reflect a lot about who I am, but when you look at my list, it seems so shallow and materialistic, because a lot of my goals revolve around financial gain, real estate, and other items in that vein. Those things just lend themselves to measurement. But they aren’t what matter most in life, and I know that. What matters most in life are things like relationships, contentment, and faith, but can you really create SMART goals for those things? I have a few ideas I’ll explore in a future post, but I would love to know what you think.

In March 2007, I undertook an experiment where I chose five daily habits and did them every day for the entire month. My goal was to see what kind of impact they would have on my life. I got the idea from Steve Pavlina’s post about 30-day trials. My five goals were:

• Wake up at 5:30am
• Exercise for at least 25 mins
• Get all my inboxes to zero
• Clean up for 15 mins
• Pack lunch and prepare clothes before bed

I pushed very hard to accomplish these each day, and my track record was close to perfect by the end of the month. The result was incredible. Even though that was almost a year and a half ago, I can still remember it being one of the most productive, energetic, and positive periods of the last few years. And though I didn’t continue to do those five goals quite as religiously, the effects continued for several months. However, over the last year or so, I’ve let my daily habits slip. Around the beginning of this year, I put together another list of twelve daily habits, and I had some success with those, but it was just too much, especially all at once. So now I’ve got a new strategy. I’ve whittled my list down to just seven goals, which are:

• Read my Bible
• Morning pages
• Do a goal review
• Blog on one of the sites that I’m involved in
• Exercise
• Clean up for 15 mins
• Inboxes to zero

Is seven a lot? Yep. However, I’m more organized and disciplined now than I was back then, and I have three strategies that I’m using to ensure I stick to these:

1. Measure It - I’m a big fan of the saying that “what gets measured gets managed.” I believe strongly that you need to know how you’re doing to understand how you can improve. To that end, I’m using a program for the iPhone called GoalKeep. It’s based on an old trick that Jerry Seinfeld used to use where you get a big calendar and every day you accomplish your daily goal (writing jokes for him), you put a big checkmark there. After a few days, you’ve got a chain going, and you don’t want to break the chain. GoalKeep lets you simulate that same effect and keeps track of the length of your “chain.”
2. Ease into it - I’m not starting with all seven habits out of the box. Rather, I’m taking 2-3 weeks and gradually introducing them one by one. The only rule is that once I start the chain for a daily habit, I can’t stop it. Right now, I’m only doing two: blogging and exercise. I’ll add a couple more over the next week.
3. Stay accountable - Finally, I’m posting this here, and I’ll be asking a few people to keep me accountable in these areas.

Bonus daily habit: Getting up early. I used to get up every day at 9am or 10am (and occasionally I still do). I felt like I would never be one of those early morning people who get up at 5am or 6am every day, of their own accord. Keep in mind that I was in the Navy, so getting up at the butt-crack of dawn is nothing new, but I have always struggled to do it when no one was forcing me. However, over the last few months, something has changed. Until we got our puppies, I would get up every morning at 4:15am and be in my office working by 5am. Healthy? Well, that’s a topic for another day, but I *love* it. Now that we’ve had the puppies for a couple weeks and we’re starting to get into a routine, I’m working on getting back to that schedule, and I’m really excited. There is nothing like knocking out four or five hours of solid work before most people even get to their desk. I’ll write more about my transition from night owl to early riser later. My point is that this is a habit that used to be on every list, but it’s one that I feel like I have control over now, so I’m focusing on other things.

I’ll try and post progress updates on occasion for these goals if anyone is interested. Hey, I have to blog every day, so what else am I going to write about?

I’m trying to blog a fair amount these days, on RyanWaggoner.com, Bounteo.com, MightyBrand.com, and Appseta.com. When I first starting blogging seriously back in January or February of 2007, I wondered if I would run out of things to write about. At first, it was difficult. I would sit and write the first sentence or two of a post, erase it, try again, erase it, and repeat until I got bored and starting rummaging around digg. But as I stuck with it and blogged, I found that I had more and more ideas, and my posts flowed a lot easier. However, I’ve gotten rusty and fallen out of the blogging habit. Now that I’m trying to blog more, I’m finding it difficult to come up with things to write about. So to get things rolling again, I’m going to follow a three-part strategy that I find always helps me get going:

1. Feeds - Reading other bloggers and content sites out there is always good inspiration and a good way to keep your pulse on what’s happening on the Internet. Additionally, it gives you cool stuff to link to and tell your readers about. I’ve fallen a bit behind on my feeds lately, so I’m digging back in with gusto, searching for new blogs to read, and ditching the ones that aren’t inspiring me anymore.
2. Running - I used to run in the mornings, but lately I just haven’t been making time. When I run, I listen to music, but I also think a lot about the topics that I blog about. There’s something about just hitting the street and taking off on a 3 mile run up to the edge of the Bay and stopping to take in the view that gets my creative juices flowing. Pretty soon, I’m trying to remember all the awesome ideas I have until I can get back and write them down. Now that I have my iPhone, I can run with it and record my ideas on the go.
3. Blogging - Nothing helps grease the writing gears like actually writing. The best cure for writer’s block is to write anyway. It may not be good, but at least you’ll have written something. Over time, you’ll find that writer’s block happens less frequently, as your mind is prepared to write regardless of how you feel.

So there you have it. If you see that I’m not blogging much, please ask me why…I need the kick in the butt.

Geez…I have to get on here more often. The last few months have been crazy, and as usual, I’m juggling a lot of projects and ambitions. My latest projects are two eight-week-old beagle puppies that my wife and I recently acquired. They’re a handful, and the last two weeks have blurred by, but I think we’re finally starting to get into a routine with them, which is a relief. Hopefully I’ll be able to start getting up at 415am again and knocking stuff out.

One of the things that I’ve been meaning to do for the last six months or so is come up with a unified goal plan for my life. I’m a pretty ambitious person, sometimes too ambitious, and I’m an optimistic perfectionist with procrastination tendencies, which is to say that I have good ideas, turn them into HUGE ideas, decide they have to be perfect, put them off, and then get depressed because I’m not meeting my goals. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea. Anyway, over the last few years, I’ve learned a lot about myself and my own shortcomings and I’ve come up with a few systems that work well for me, when I’m disciplined enough to use them.

1. Goals - Having a solid path is crucial for me
2. GTD - Managing my time
3. Involving other people in my goals

Over the last year, I’ve adjusted to freelance work, but there’s a lot of things that have slipped a little over the past twelve months. It finally really hit me a couple weeks ago that it’s time to stop messing around. It’s time for me to get those things under control, and Project Goalpost is my code-named attempt to do that.

Project Goalpost is an effort to unify my goals from all different areas of my life, streamline them, align them with my current projects, devise a plan for goal review and habit building on a regular basis, request accountability, and incorporate a GTD workflow that includes these higher priorities.

Every six months or so, I put together a new list of goals, based on what’s going on in my life. This means that I have lots of lists of goals and priorities, spread throughout my life…in notebooks, on Google Docs, on my hard drive, in my email, etc. These goals are often in conflict, are rarely reviewed, and many are not SMART.

On top of that, my use of GTD has really fallen by the wayside over the last 6-8 months. The difference in utility from using GTD at 80% and using it at 100% is incredible…in order to be truly effective, you must use it constantly and consistently. I have not been, and thus most of the utility is wasted.

What I’ve decided to do is take the following actions:

1. Collect all my goals and lists of things I want to accomplish from all the various places they’re stashed
2. Consolidate, eliminate, and add any new goals to the list
3. Break the list into major categories (Personal, Physical, Real Estate, Career, etc) and time frames (short-, medium-, and long-term)
4. Ensure every goal is SMART
5. Ensure all categories have roughly the same amount of goals, to help ensure well-roundedness
6. Compile into a master document
7. Destroy or archive all source materials to avoid distraction
8. Add all initial steps towards goals to GTD system
9. Devise a schedule for goal review (daily for short-term, monthly for medium-term, every six months for long-term, etc)
10. Determine what projects have relevance to goals, and ditch the ones that don’t
11. Ask five or more people to review my list and help hold me accountable
12. Post my list here and ask my readers to keep me accountable

These are typically the kinds of things that I would do on my own, without telling anyone, but I need some accountability. I need someone to ask me how my goals are going, so I’m laying it all out there. With the possible exception of a few very personal goals, I’ll be posting the results of Project Goalpost hopefully within the next few days.