Category: Productivity

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Business Content Creation Entrepreneurship Podcasts Productivity

10 Creative-Entrepreneurship Podcasts That You Should Be Listening To

Whether you’re investing in a serious side hustle, playing with a personal passion project, or building a small business, turn your commute into a daily motivation seminar by tuning in to these fantastic podcasts. Here are ten shows that I’ve come to know and love:

  1. Entrepreneurs on Fire. John Lee Dumas is the consummate host, interviewer, and teacher as he interviews business leaders and entrepreneurs on a daily basis. With a polished delivery, great sense of humour, and applicable strategies, every episode brings valuable insights and encouragement. JLD offers a host of free resources through his website and posts a new 20-minute episode every day.
  2. The Gary Vee Audio Experience. This guy comes with a serious language warning, but nobody matches Gary Vaynerchuk for sheer drive, intensity, and motivation. Extolling the virtues of patience, gratitude, and the still-underrated power of internet platforms, Gary reminds his audience that there has never been a better time in human history to build a scalable business and thrive. Length and style of content varies widely, from random 8-minute raw conversations to 50-minute conference addresses. New content is posted daily.
  3. The Fizzle Show. With weekly episodes coming out every Tuesday, hosts Chase Reeves, Corbett Barr, and Steph Crowder bring common sense perspectives and advice to the matters of building a successful side hustle or small business. Reeves brings the energy and humour, Crowder chips in with thoughtful perspectives, and Barr brings authoritative insights born from years of start-up experience. Listen to this trio for long and you can’t help but love them.
  4. The Tim Ferriss Show. Although not strictly limited to creative-entrepreneurship themes, no top ten list in this space would be complete without mentioning the Tim Ferriss Show. Tim is still one of the world’s top podcasters, publishing wide-ranging weekly interview content that consistently touches on business and entrepreneurship. Although I’ve learned to skip through the first five minutes of ads, Tim has a methodical interview style, speaks well, and draws applicable conclusions with legendary finesse.
  5. Growth Everywhere. Host Eric Siu runs a slightly less polished version of Entrepreneurs on Fire. He keeps his interview show moving quickly, and guests share about the highs and lows of building successful companies — mostly in the tech sector. New episodes are posted daily.
  6. The Brendan Show. Brendon Burchard spins nothing but positive energy healing, and self-improvement. With a mix of positive rants, excerpts from High Performance Habits, and clips from speaking events, this author and speaker brings fresh perspective and energy to every stage of business and creative activity. While parts of his content might strike some as fluffy, I like his brand of practical, forward-thinking optimism.
  7. The Smart Passive Income Podcast. Pat Flynn is another friendly voice in the same space and style as John Lee Dumas and Eric Siu. As the title suggests, his focus is on the strategies necessary to build passive online revenue streams through blogs, ebooks, online courses, and other forms of scalable content. New podcast episodes appear weekly.
  8. The Brian Buffini Show. With 45-minute episodes released weekly, Brian and Dermot Buffini offer a mix of high-profile interviews and well-prepared content related to building a successful business. As Brian Buffini likes to remind his audience, his personal story includes going from a young immigrant $200,000 in medical debt to building the largest real estate coaching company in the world. Like Gary Vee, this immigrant to America says there’s never been a better time to build a business.
  9. The Blog Millionaire. Host Brandon Gaille delivers short, well-prepared and smoothly delivered content related to building a successful blog. Tips are right to the point and extremely practical: search engine optimization, how to build great headlines, and how to assemble great content efficiently. Gaille also shares honestly about the struggles he’s encountered in his business and personal life, and how he’s overcome them to build a blog with over 1M unique visitors per month.
  10. Side Hustle School. Chris Guillebeau delivers daily stories of side hustle successes — passion projects that cash flow positively and grow to become significant sources of revenue. What this podcast lacks in exciting delivery it makes up for in the tales of people who are finding innovative ways to earn money doing things they love to do.

If you listen to junk radio during your daily commute as I did for many years, try changing things up. Trade the sports news and crappy radio commercials for the kind of quality content that will expand your perspective and give legs to your dreams. If you’re new to podcasting, start exploring the Podcast app (in iOS) or download the Podcast Addict app (in Android) to get started. If you’ve been sitting on a creative dream for a while, it’s time to get started.

Categories
Goal Setting Goals Productivity Self-Actualization Wellness

You Hate New Year’s Resolutions Because You’re Doing Them Wrong

There’s one part of SMART goals that still doesn’t get enough love.

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“80% of New Year’s resolutions fail by February.”

“Only 8% of New Year’s resolutions are successful.”

Like me, you’ve heard these depressing and oft-repeated statistics. Quite possibly, you’ve joined the ranks of the intellectually enlightened who scoff at the naivete of annual resolution-making rituals and pragmatically embrace their deficiencies instead.

And then there are some among us whose hatred of New Year’s resolutions seems almost visceral. The mere mention of resolutions is enough to produce a scowl of disgust and a healthy rant to boot.

Why all the hate?

I believe the main reason is that at one time or another, these cynics tried setting resolutions themselves. Lose weight. Work out more. Save more money. Spend more time with family. Be a better human being.

At the outset of these resolutions, there was hope. There was optimism. There was the promise of real and lasting change. Often, the resolutions were announced with fervent passion and great fanfare to family and friends.

And then inevitably, the resolutions failed. Old habits crept back in. Resolve weakened. And before they knew it, the ways of December had returned.

Disappointment, humiliation, and frustration followed. So, like a jilted lover, these resolution-makers vowed “Never again.” Never again will I set myself up for such personal disappointment or public humiliation. Never again will I waste time with this foolishness.

I can’t fail if I don’t attempt, goes the subconscious logic. It’s a form of emotional self-defense. It’s what Carol Dweck calls the fixed mindset, when we allow the fear of failure to prevent growth.

I have good news for these doubters, however. The good news is that New Year’s Resolutions can and do work. You only hate them because you’re doing them wrong.

“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” — Zig Ziglar

A quick note on semantics. If you’re a resolution hater, try replacing resolutions with goals. For some, resolutions are more easily associated with the sorts of vague, nebulous platitudes that inevitably end in failure, while goals align better with targeted, specific growth or change.

Now that we’re clear on language, we need to address the most underrated and yet most powerful part of goal-setting: numbers.

You’ve likely heard of SMART goals, so let’s begin there. You’ve heard that effective goals must be:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Realistic & Relevant
  • Time Limited

It’s a fantastic formula, and I do believe each piece of that formula is critical. Yet there’s one bullet that — based on personal experience — dwarfs the other four in importance.

Measurable is EVERYTHING.

If your goal doesn’t have a number in it, it’s worthless. If you have no way to quantify your goal or check for success at the end of your timeline, you are literally wasting brainpower even thinking about it.

I believe this needs to be shouted from the rooftops. Stop wasting your time setting goals — any goals — that don’t contain numbers.

Instead, set goals that are measurable, quantifiable, empirical. Start obsessing about data. Track your life in every area that’s important to you.

To show you what I mean and how I’m applying this, here are some of my measurable goals for 2018:

  • Financial: Reduce the amount owing on our HELOC by 25%. (End of February: +10%.)
  • Marital: Complete 36 ‘State of the Union’ update discussions with my wife in 2018. (End of February: 6/36.)
  • Paternal: Complete 12 monthly stepdad summits. (End of February: 2/12.)
  • Physical: Complete 45 push-ups in one set. (End of February: 35.) Earn a time of under 50 minutes in a 10 kilometer run on April 22nd. (Result to come.) Work out at Anytime Fitness 156 times. (End of February: 26/156.) Run a total of 156 km. (End of February: 9.8/156 km.) Record less than 120/80 BP. (End of February: 125/86 was best reading.)
  • Professional: Complete year 1 of MEdL degree. (End of February: 7/12 months completed.)
  • Self-Improvement: Finish reading 12 books. (End of February: 1/12.) Purge 52 items of clothing. (End of February: 8/52.) Complete 52 bedtime journal entries. (End of February: 25/52.) Write and publish 52 blog posts. (End of February: 6/52.)
  • Social: Complete 10 father-son conference calls. (End of February: 2/10.)

I lay out all of these goals and more in a spreadsheet, and now check these goals more often than I have in five years of following the practice. They keep me grounded, focused, and motivated. I press on in each of these areas partly because I can see progress. I feel momentum. I see reasons to be encouraged.

Think back to some of the classic New Year’s resolutions we’ve all set for ourselves in the past. Lose weight. Get in better shape. Save more money. Spend more time with family. Be a better human being.

Those goals have little chance of success because they’re difficult to track. You’re not going to stay motivated to make better choices for 365 days based on eat healthier. But you ARE going to stay motivated so long as you can measure and track incremental progress.

So start journaling everything. Obsess with data. Take five minutes each morning and update your life’s activity in all the areas that matter. And I promise that you’ll see results like you’ve never seen before.

There’s no time like the present to stop hating resolutions. Embrace goal-setting with all you’re worth. And if you care about success, make them measurable.

Categories
Goals Morning Productivity Routines

7 Keys to Winning the Morning

I’ve never been much of a morning person.

I like the snooze button. For most of my existence, I’ve chosen to hurry through morning routines, cut corners on lunch prep, and eat a small snack on the run rather than wake up 30 minutes earlier.

Of course this pattern of behaviour defies common sense. It lowers quality of life. It adds unnecessary stress. But I lived this way for many years — presumably to make the most of those midnight hours and squeeze every last waking moment of productivity or amusement out of my evenings.

I’m just a night owl, I used to tell myself. This is how I’m wired.

It was in the late spring of 2017 that my thinking on morning routines finally started to evolve. Maybe it was my commute, the demands of parenting, or the growing awareness of the cognitive dissonance between the life I wanted and the life I was choosing. I wasn’t exercising consistently. I wasn’t reading or writing the way I wanted to. I often felt behind and stressed by work demands. When mornings begin with running around and a general lack of intentionality, the day tends to follow suit.

In short, my core values and life goals were suffering from a poor rhythm of life. Ultimately, the weight of my shortcomings ground into me the inescapable truth that something significant needed to change.

So it was that after years of subconscious dialogue, the radical prospect of reshaping my mornings finally became reality. In the end, it took an inspiring colleague’s example and some compelling Medium articles to get me to the tipping point. But once I was in, I was in.

I’ve set my alarm for 4:30 a.m. for just about every weekday morning since. And I seriously love what it does for me.

Of course when I tell people I wake up at 4:30 a.m. on weekdays, I often get the sort of look that considers my sanity an open question. Yes, it’s a bit extreme for most people. But I’m thoroughly sold. And I think if you give it a chance, you might just be sold as well.

You’ve heard this one before: Win the morning, win the day. Call it cliche, but it resonates powerfully with my experience. By 7:30 a.m. I’m now accomplishing a whole lot of goodness that has me feeling productive, settled, and prepared for the day. That wasn’t the case in the past.

What follows is my now-typical weekday morning before I’ve left my home for work. No, I never sat down to neurotically scheme the timeline that follows. But without watching the clock obsessively, this is reliably the way my morning unfolds:

4:30 wake up, get dressed for gym
4:35 stretching
4:40 organize office, file docs, review mail
4:45 drive to Starbucks
4:55 review goals for the day, journal
5:00 review and respond to email
5:15 evaluate assignments, plan lessons
5:45 creative writing
6:05 work out at Anytime Fitness
6:30 return home, wake up boys
6:35 make fruit smoothies, listen to scripture or inspirational content
6:45 empty dishwasher, clean sink/counter
6:50 make lunch
6:55 make bed
7:00 shower, shave, dress, sort laundry

With a start like this, this day is already well on its way to a win. All of those healthy routines and productive activities are finished — done by the same time that in past years I was just rolling out of bed to begin my normal harried scramble.

Not only am I now getting stuff done, I’m building the sorts of consistent daily routines (taking a few minutes to organize my office, sorting a few items of laundry, etc.) that prevent clutter from creeping into my world and into my brain. I’m identifying goals for the day. I’m thinking creatively. I’m working out. I’m doing so many of the things that I want to be about. And it all happens before 7:30.

It’s been an awesome experience. Now that it’s been in place for over half a year, I feel safe in saying this is going to be a permanent life change.

Clearly, there’s a price to be paid for waking up at 4:30 each weekday morning. After months of functioning this way, I’ve learned a few things about what is required to make early mornings happen. Here are 7 keys that define my formula for success.

  1. 6+ Hours of Sleep. Let’s start with the obvious. In order for me to wake up at 4:30 a.m. for five days straight, I need to be asleep by 10:30 at the latest each night. My goal is actually to be in bed with the lights out by 9:30, but six hours of sleep per night is manageable. What I have found, however, is that if I cheat on the six hour minimum for consecutive evenings, waking up early becomes very difficult indeed, and my health starts to suffer.
  2. Smarter Evenings. Since our two middle schoolers aren’t always in bed before 8:45 p.m., I only have 30–45 minutes to finish the day well and start winding down for bed. That makes the 8:45–9:30 window crucial. Ideally, it consists of turning off my phone and parking it in my office for the night, cranking out a few push-ups, showering and brushing teeth, completing my 10-minute journal, doing some reading, and connecting with my wife. Again, it’s not about watching the clock obsessively. But it is about treating this window like the precious commodity that it is.
  3. No Netflix on Weeknights. This little detail is basically covered in the previous point, but it’s such a significant sacrifice that it deserves its own item. I’ve made a few digressions on this one — like the time my wife decided to watch Saving Capitalism (I still think she was baiting me). But in general, spending 30–120 minutes watching a screen will basically guarantee a sleep-in the next morning. So I try to avoid it. Save the couch time for the weekends.
  4. No Snooze Button. To get up at this time, there’s no room for hesitation or an internal debate when the alarm sounds. I would lose that conversation and cave in every time. Instead, I quickly roll out, get to my feet, and leave the bedroom in one motion. By the time I get down the stairs to our main floor, glimmers of consciousness are starting to appear.
  5. Leave the House. After spending a few minutes in my office, I actually get in my car and drive to a Starbucks just two minutes away. This is the critical step, because it deals a death blow to any lingering temptation to go back to sleep. By heading off-campus, I’m burning my boats. There’s no sleeping at Starbucks with a fresh coffee on the table. The day is on and that is all. Twyla Tharp makes this point well in The Creative Habit.
  6. Recharge on the Weekends. To sustain five straight nights of 6–7 hours of sleep, I’ve found it’s essential to recharge on the weekends. If I can get 8+ hours of sleep on Friday and Saturday nights, I’m fully revitalized and feeling ready for another five days of 4:30 a.m. wake-ups. Or, if 8–9 hours of sleep doesn’t happen on one of those evenings, I might take a Sunday afternoon nap. The goal here is to make sure I’m not carrying any fatigue into a new week. A full recharge is essential.
  7. Go Public. Let others know of your morning commitment. As I put this audacious new habit into place last year, I quickly realized the power of accountability. By telling close friends and family of my morning routine, I was giving myself a powerful motivator to keep it up. There’s a certain satisfaction in being able to tell people that months after announcing a new resolution, you are in fact sticking to it. Harness that sense of personal pride and dignity by letting others know of your plans and then following through.

Am I a morning person? Frankly, I still don’t think so. But I’m pleased to say that I’ve finally put together the pieces necessary to win my mornings, and I’m seeing incredible benefits across all areas of my life. If your inner dialogue is prompting you to try something similar, there’s no time like the present to make the change.

If you’re in the process of making a similar shift in your mornings, I’d love to hear about your experience. Share your fails, tips, and tricks in the comments below.

Categories
Connect Time Goals Growth Mindset Productivity

My 2017 Goals in Review

2017 is breathing its last, and as it comes to a close I look back on the goals I set for this year. Goals that were met and surpassed encourage and motivate me to aim higher in 2018. Goals that were left unmet give me cause to evaluate my habits, decisions, and personal routines in order to determine where things went awry and where I can grow further in the coming year.

At the end of the post I also reflect on some of the biggest highlights that fell completely outside of my goal-setting and made 2017 a memorable year.

Financial

✓ Goal: Earn at least $1,200 in supplementary (side hustle) income. This goal was easily achieved by selling collectibles and currency coins on eBay. I expect this to continue through 2018.

✘ Goal: Sell 365+ items online. Even though I listed as many as 10 items in a single day, the average of one listed item per day was just too difficult to sustain this year. I’ll be downgrading or eliminating this goal entirely in 2018.

✘ Goal: Reduce HELOC balance by $300/month or $3,600. My wife and I have held a balance on our HELOC ever since buying our home in 2015. Unfortunately, our balance on this account went the wrong direction this year. The biggest culprits were new hardware tools, three weeks of summer camps for the boys, a week for us at a luxury resort in Vernon, a family weekend in Whistler, a new hot water tank, a semester’s worth of tuition for my Master’s degree, and flights for the family to Winnipeg at Christmas. Some of these expenditures were justified but many were not. The good news on this front is that we’ve successfully tightened our budget for the last four months of 2017 and actually saved more than we earned during that period. I’m confident we can do a lot better in 2018, even though I’ll be paying out another $6,000 in tuition.

Marital

✓ Goal: Make weekly Connect Times happen more consistently. We were able to turn this around well in the last few months of 2017 by conducting our weekly ‘Connect Time’ meetings on Saturday mornings instead of trying to pull them off in the evenings. Reviewing all of our budget areas and comparing calendars for the week ahead really helped keep us on the same page and helped us manage our money more efficiently.

✘ Goal: Plan at least one memorable date per month. I’m sad to say that this didn’t happen. Thankfully, Date Nights did happen regularly, but typically we made it up as we went. I can do better here, but it will require scheduling some planning time into my week.

Paternal

✓ Goal: Read with the boys before bed on a weekly basis. This has gone really well. I’m currently reading to both boys on Tuesday evenings: The Hobbit with Michael and This Present Darkness with Joshua.

✓ Goal: Continue monthly stepdad-stepson meetings. Our monthly dinners at Tim Hortons continued faithfully. Topics included school, friendships, finances, goals, plans, purity, and gaming. I started keeping a journal of notes from these meetings.

✓ Goal: Find more connecting points with the boys. This goal is difficult to quantify, but I think I achieved it. One fun development is that the boys are finally old enough now to handle watching more interesting movies with me. We’re also mutual fans of a growing number of YouTube channels, and we plan to do some vlogging together in 2018.

✘ Goal: Make a baby. Good news here: it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Physical

✓ Goal: Complete 12+ reps of 135 lbs. on the bench press at our annual July 1st fitness challenge. I completed 13.

✓ Goal: Bring weight down from 192 lbs. to 180. By fasting completely from chips, fries, and sugary drinks from spring break forward, I actually saw 179 on the scale one day this fall. As of this writing my weight is back in the low 180s.

✓ Goal: Work out 104+ times in 2017. I broke 104 recorded workouts, most of them taking place at Anytime Fitness locations.

✘ Goal: Do 42 pushups in one set. My max this year was 35. Two shoulder dislocations in March didn’t help, but that’s no excuse. To elevate this number further, I think I need to start doing push-ups before bed every day.

✘ Goal: Complete the Vancouver Sun Run in <50 minutes. I didn’t run it at all, thanks largely to two shoulder dislocations the month before.

✘ Goal: Reduce meat intake by 14% or more with Meatless Mondays. This started well in the first months of the year but eventually fell by the wayside. I’d like to try to get back on it in 2018.

✘ Goal: Run 3+ km an average of once/week. I only ran more than 3 km a total of six times in 2017. This has got to improve in 2018. Running at 8:00 a.m. on Sundays is the key. Clearly I’m conflicted when it comes to running.

Professional

 ✓ Goal: Begin a M. Ed. program or other certification. I began a MEdL program at VIU which is going very well.

✓ Goal: Record at least 1+ set of assessments per day during the school year. At the time of this writing, I’ve managed to record an average of at least one set of class assessments per day through the last three months of 2017.

Self-Improvement

 ✓ Goal: Write and publish 12+ blog posts. As of mid-December I had published 18 and counting. I’m dreaming big in terms of how and where to grow my writing in 2018.

✓ Goal: Discard at least one item of clothing per week. I’ve surpassed this one, but the scary thing is that it hardly feels like I’ve made a dent.

 ✓ Goal: Read 3,650+ book pages. This turned out to be a difficult goal to quantify and track, but I think I’ve achieved it. I purchased a Kindle in the fall, and it’s become a go-to before bed on a daily basis. My Master’s program has certainly pushed me in this regard.

Social/Relational

✓ Goal: Go on at least one double date per month. We’ve easily surpassed this, and it’s been great.

✓ Goal: Visit the Cavey families in Winnipeg. After three years away, we made our first family trip to Winnipeg as a married couple in December.

✓ Goal: Connect with neighbours over a meal. In mid-December we finally went on a double date with our next door neighbours. It was great to get to know them and share life stories. It turns out we have a lot in common.

Spiritual

✓ Goal: Read through the New Testament 2x, Psalms 2x, and Proverbs 12x. I was able to follow these reading plans pretty consistently by listening to the audio tracks on these reading plans using the YouVersion app each morning.

✓ Goal: Complete the Freedom Session course. This was a long course, but some valuable healing and introspection took place along the way.

✘ Goal: Complete 12+ prayer journal entries. These are page-long reflections that I write out as prayers and meditations on the state of my life. As of December 18, I had only completed eight on the year.

Home Projects

✓ Goal: Clean vinyl siding on the exterior of our house. We bought a telescopic wand/brush at the home show just for this purpose. It happened.

✓ Goal: Paint the back patio. This was done over 2-3 hot days in the summer. The colour is a bit lighter than I wanted, but our patio looks cleaner, brighter, and better-maintained than it did before.

Other Victories to Celebrate from 2017

✫ No phone at bedtime. For a range of reasons, I decided to ban my phone from the bedroom at bedtimes, leaving it on our main floor. It’s been a great experience. I now read more, engage more with my wife, and go to sleep sooner. What started as a 2-week experiment has become a permanent lifestyle change. See my Medium post about my decision to ban my phone from the bedroom.

✫ A successful change to the diet. Concerned over my rising weight and blood pressure, in the spring I decided to completely fast from my three worst vices: chips, fries, and sugary drinks. I’ve managed to keep to those rules pretty strictly and lost 12 bad pounds in the process.

✫ A new morning routine. In the spring I decided to start waking up at 4:30 a.m. every workday morning. Although there have been times where exhaustion, stress, or poor health has taken me off this routine, I’ve managed to keep it pretty consistently for the balance of the calendar year. My morning hour spent at Starbucks gives me amazing creativity and productivity, and this routine also ensures I get 20-30 minutes in at Anytime Fitness before returning home around 6:35 a.m. to officially start preparing for the day. I hope this will remain a life habit.

✫ A bedtime journal. I started doing some handwritten journaling and reflecting before bed, using the Tim Ferriss 5-minute journal as a guide. Although I’ve only used it about a dozen times, it gives me a starting point for 2018. Eventually I would like this to become an every-night ritual. It’s so good for the mind and spirit.

 ✫ A new canoe. Our family got an amazing deal on a good canoe, and we enjoyed some quality canoe adventures at Widgeon Creek and English Bay. Watching the Celebration of Light fireworks display from nearby on the ocean surface was an awesome experience.

✫ Three days of paddleboarding. While the boys were away at a camp on Vancouver Island, my wife and I spent days paddleboarding at Ambleside Beach, Alouette Lake, and the Burrard Inlet. My favourite experience was paddling down the Indian Arm, exploring islands together and enjoying a still day on the ocean.

 ✫ Best hike ever. In August I hiked Panorama Ridge in Garibaldi Provincial Park (near Whistler, BC), producing some of the most beautiful views of any hike I’ve ever done.

✫ The ISTE conference in San Antonio, TX. At the end of June, I and two colleagues were privileged to spend about six days in San Antonio at the largest education technology conference in the world. It was an awesome experience and I hope to visit the conference again some time.

✫ Books completed in 2017:

  1. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Carol Dweck)
  2. The Tech-Wise Family (Andy Crouch)
  3. The Reason You Walk (Wab Kinew)
  4. Cold, Hard Truth (Kevin O’Leary)
  5. Classroom Management in the Digital Age: Effective Practices for Technology-Rich Learning Spaces (Heather Dowd)
Categories
Productivity Time

168 Hours: I Have the Time

Right now I’m 90 pages into a book by Laura Vanderkam called 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. This book has profoundly challenged me to use my time more wisely and efficiently – among other things, to focus my time more squarely on passions and core competencies instead of drudgeries and activities that don’t advance my core values and objectives.

So far in 168 Hours, one of Vanderkam’s best observations is the idea that “Oh, I don’t have time for that” is almost never true. Laura points out that if your basement suddenly flooded, you would instantly find the 5-10 hours necessary to do what it took to restore order to your home and repair the damage. You’d just have to. Other things in your schedule would simply have to shove over and make room.

On the flip side, if someone asked you if you had 5-10 hours this week to start training for a 10K run or begin learning a new language, you might drop the “I don’t have time” line. But that wouldn’t be exactly true. What would be true is that these proposed activities wouldn’t figure high enough on your priority list – your actual priority list – to make the cut for your week.

At a later date, I look forward to posting a full report of gems and highlights from the book. I think she’s fantastic. But for today, I’m going to apply what I’ve read so far by setting some personal short-term goals. Because this is the first post in what I hope will become a helpful online journal of sorts, I have no following and therefore no audience. So the accountability (and potential embarrassment) factors will be quite low.

Today is my first official day of a two-week spring break. I have ten weekdays at my disposal: five spent at home with family, and five with my wife and boys at work and school. I will consider these ten days a success if all or most of the following objectives are met within each day:

  1. Familial: Spend at least one hour of quality family time (ie. one common activity, no screens involved, not including meals).
  2. Financial: List 1+ item on eBay.
  3. Marital: Connect meaningfully with my wife in some way (conversation, gift, note, activity, etc.).
  4. Professional: Evaluate and record marks for two class assignments.
  5. Professional: Take one step (however small) towards furthering my education.
  6. Organizational: File 1+ item in my office. Leave the office generally more ordered than it was the day before.
  7. Physical: Complete a full exercise routine (despite recently dislocating my shoulder).
  8. Personal: Read 10+ pages of nonfiction.
  9. Spiritual: Complete an assigned portion of Bible reading, write a short journal entry in response, and spend some time in prayer.
  10. Spiritual: Write one blog post.

I may come back to this post and record my results. But in any case, completion of these ten goals will represent hours very well spent, produce a high amount of satisfaction, and advance my life values and objectives. Here’s to some good intentions.