Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Completing your yearly goals

Tags

Consistency, December!, End of Year Eval, Holiday Season, motivation, Serving Others, Setting New Goals, Weekly Schedule

Well, we are in the last month of the year. It went by quickly didn’t it?

This is the month to grind it out before we hit the holiday weeks. When the holiday week hits, the family will be coming, you’ll be doing last-minute holiday shopping, and it will preclude anything you want to finish. So dig in now, at the early part of the month and knock down any of the goals you have left. It’s not too late.

Between Christmas and New Year’s is the perfect time to take a tally of what you set out to do this year, where you missed the mark, and plan accordingly for the new year. There are a few goals I missed, not due to a lack of effort, but they reached a little too far. This year, I’ll use that data and set more realistic goals that I can achieve by the end of next year. They’ll still stretch me, but won’t be so far off in the distance that it will be impossible to accomplish.

One of the greatest learnings I have discovered this year is consistently showing up. I started the year with a goal of reading 48 books, at last count, I am at 60+ for the year and still going. I also finished the rough draft of my non-fiction book on technical recruiting and began work on my fiction story. These would not have been possible, had I not done something every day to move the needle forward.

What goals did you set? Did you accomplish them? Did you fall short like I did? If you fell short, how will you goal yourself in that area next year? I’m really curious to hear from others on this topic. Feel free to respond in the comments below. Ok, here’s my weekly schedule!

This week:

• Work on Story Beats for my Fiction book daily
• Exercise daily (see my workout routine for the week of Dec 1, 2019)
• Read 1 hour daily
• Meditate daily
• Complete 1 session for each of the 5 classes I’m taking daily
• Clear the circles on my Apple Watch Daily
• Hang out at my local coffee shops or a restaurant daily
• Read my Bible Daily
• Do a random act of kindness while I’m out running errands daily
• Help my wife with her Master’s Degree work daily
• Have some fun daily (Netflix, Xbox, NFL Football, or Disney+) daily
• Log my food in MyFitnessPal daily

Well, that’s it for now, folks! I hope each of you are looking forward to the holidays like I am. I realize there are some in my audience who dread the holidays and my heart goes out to you. You know what I’ve found? When you’re down, volunteer. Go to an animal shelter, an orphanage, hospice, or some other charitable organization and pitch in. It’s a great time to do this, and it is also a way to focus on something else. I have always found that giving and serving others is a great way to cheer up.

Have a great Monday, all!

Until next time…

Dave

 

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Getting Started

Tags

Baseline, Goals, habits, improvement, Mark Twain, Planning for 2020, Stretch Goals, Tracking

” The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” – Mark Twain

Courtesy: Brainy Quotes

We are getting close to that time of year when we begin looking ahead to the new year. What did we do? Did we achieve what we set out to do? Did we give up on some things?

Take the month of December and think about 3 or 4 things you want to do next year. I would recommend setting a goal physically (health), intellectually (learning), social (improving/establishing relationships), and spiritual (if you follow a religious path).

When you select a goal, be realistic, set milestones you believe you’ll hit every 90 days, and track your results digitally or on paper. I’ll let you know how I did this year before the end of 2019 and will share my goals for 2020.

Goals don’t have to be crazy. Maybe you’d like to read more. Good! Set a goal to read 12 books this year. Physical goals could be about nutrition, losing weight, exercising more consistently or something along these lines. Intellectually, you could set out to learn something (instrument, language, computer programing, digital art making, etc.). Socially, you could join a local meetup, a book club, volunteer for charity work, or spend more time with your family and friends. If you are religious, set yourself a religious goal. Maybe you could volunteer more or read/study more, or get more consistent with the practices your religion asks of you.

The key is to start and start early. The best place to start is to find out where you are right now, then set some goals that will stretch you in the areas you want to grow in. I picked these four areas, but you may have more to choose from. It’s up to you. Take some time doing this, write out your plans, set dates and times when you look to be at a certain level and you’ll do well.

Well, that’s it for now. Here’s my week:

Before I get started, this is a holiday week for Americans. I have family coming in on Wednesday to celebrate Thanksgiving at my home. These days will be mandatory do nothing days to hang out with my sister and family.

Mon-Tue (Work); Wed-Thu – off for Thanksgiving; Fri-Sun (Work)

• Exercise daily
• Meditate daily
• Work on my Fiction Book daily
• Blog daily
• Take my classes daily
• Code daily
• Journal daily
• Socialize in the community daily
• Read my bible and religious study daily
• Have some fun daily

Have a great week, everyone.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Do Not Stop

Tags

Consistency, Continuous Improvement, Elastic Habits, habits, motivation, rituals, Stephen Guise

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”

Confucius

Here we are! I like this quote because it aligns perfectly with a book I’m reading, called Elastic Habits by Stephen Guise. His new book describes how to have flexible habits so that on days that suck, you do the bare minimum to continue your streak, medium level habits for normal days when you are motivated to get something done, and elite level for those days that you are wired to crush the day. He also provides alternative tasks that augment your goals. Let’s say you want to get in the habit of exercising every day.

You could pick weight exercises, cardio exercises, and perhaps a sport like swimming, basketball, or tennis. On a bad day, you do a pushup, walk for a minute, or knock a few balls around on the court. For your medium-level you could do 20 pushups, or a 20-minute run, or play a set of tennis with a friend. For elite-level you could do 100 pushups, run for 45 minutes, or swim 10 laps in the pool. This lateral as well as multiple levels of your habits, provide you with maximal choice and the ability to elevate or deflate your daily accomplishments based on your mood, time available or energy available.

If you are interested, you can pick up a copy on Amazon. Elastic Habits on Amazon.

I am not an affiliate, just a HUGE fan of Stephen’s work. The book will run you 7.99 and is only available in e-book form.

The advice provided by Confucius aligns perfectly with this book, because Stephen provides you a mechanism to always take one step forward with all of your habits. I can’t recommend this book enough!

Here’s my week:

• Get an advertisement in the Jeffersonian for my book discussion on Dreams
• Get copyright message on Poster for book discussion on Dreams
• Help my wife study for a teacher’s certification test daily
• Exercise daily (see workout routine)
• Eat a vegetarian breakfast (altered from my workout routine for breakfast instead of lunch) daily
• Meditate daily
• Take online classes daily
• Blog daily
• Work on my fiction book daily (outlining, story beats, character development, world creation, etc.)
• Read a chapter daily
• Post quotes daily
• Share an article daily
• Eat out for lunch daily

Well, that’s it for this week folks. I hope all of you achieve your goals and have fun while you are doing it. Living a life with healthy habits is a wonderful thing. This new book, Elastic Habits, will show you how to do it with no chance of failure.

Have a GREAT week, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

 

 

 

 

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Act as if

Tags

Achievement, Act as if, Faith, Goals, Keep going, motivation, Optimism

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

Helen Keller

How many of your friends talk about doing this or that, but never quite get around to it? I used to do that all the time, many years ago. What did I discover? I discovered that we have to act as if. We have to act as if we have the skills, knowledge, and ability to achieve whatever goals you set for yourself. At a minimum, this will at least help you move forward. You can only fail at something if you quit. It’s just that simple.

So dream. Dream big. Then, set your sails for that destination.

Here’s my week:

Build an annotated bibliography

Reduce my topic of focus down to a research question

Read daily

Write daily

Learn daily

Spiritual Exercise/Meditate daily

Exercise daily

I hope all of you have a terrific week! You’ve got this!

Until next time…

Dave

 

 

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday -Here We Go!!

Tags

Achievement, Consistency, Dreading Monday, Drive, Goals, habits, motivation, rituals, Routines

It’s time to grind folks!

Are you one of those folks who dreads Monday? I think it’s pretty common across all cultures. For those of us that work Monday – Friday, the weekend is our relax, binge-watch, and laze-around time. Then we have to get up on Monday and head to work.

Since retirement, I’ve tried to keep a Monday-Friday schedule. Last week I tried an experiment of not having a real weekend. In other words, I kept my daily schedule consistent across 7 days. I still have a blow-off day on Sunday called “my do nothing day”, but this last week I continued to plug away at all the things I schedule for myself daily.  What did I discover? My Monday wasn’t that bad when I consistently kept doing what I normally do during the Monday-Friday workweek.

For me, consistency is the key to accomplishing what I have set out to do. This consistency is what keeps me going. I love to habitualize everything. I find comfort in the consistency of my schedule and the automation of daily tasks and routines. The key, however, is I love everything I am doing.

When I retired I knew I would still want to be active. I didn’t want to fall into the trap of binge-watching videos, playing video games 12 hours a day, and all the rest. I wanted to finally do what I have always wanted to do–focus on exercise, learning, writing, reading, meditating, and coding. Subsequently, this is my day. I love what I do. Since I love what I do, I am no longer “working”. It is a great place to be.

For those of you that are still doing the 9-5, find aspects of your job that you love. Then, carry some of these things into the weekend with you. Instead of piling up all the personal things you have to do during the weekend, spread them out through the week. Clean as you go, do your laundry in batches, prep all of your meals on Saturday or Sunday. What you’ll find is your weekend will slowly begin to blend in with your workweek and each day will be more consistent.

I started doing this in my final years in professional recruiting. I used to do something work-related each weekend day. Maybe I would source for candidates and begin building out call logs for my work week. Maybe I would do some research into some company or new technology hitting the market place. I could even knock out some social networking. I thought that if I make everyday the same, there will be no more “Monday dread” because there would be no separation from my work day and my weekend.

Give this a try. You may be like me. You may enjoy the consistency of your day and thrive on it. I know I do. I just feel good when I can knock out little chuncks of my goals each day. I wake up each day knowing what I am going to do and it never changes. This consistency is my life line. I’ll stop here.

Here’s my schedule for the week:

• Work on my book daily
• Work on my blog daily
• Learn daily
• Journal daily
• Meditate/Spiritual Exercise daily
• Exercise daily (See my Workout Routine Posting today)
• Eat less than 2500 calories daily
• Read daily
• Get out of the house and interact with the public daily

Ok, folks. Get out there and crush your goals and have a great week ahead!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Who Do You Want To Be?

Tags

Achievement, Attack!, Get at it, Goals, Grind it out, motivation, Plans, Push, Strive, Succeed

I hope you enjoy this video. I like to watch these on Monday morning or Sunday evening to get me pumped for the weekend. You can do this with motivational videos like this one on YouTube, a quote, or a great song! Whatever works for you, you should use. We all need a pump up now and then and I use videos, quotes, anything I can find that gives me an edge to the beginning of the week.

 

Here’s my schedule for the week:

• Read daily (currently at 61 books for the year) (Mental)
• Learn something new daily (taking 5 courses across many platforms) (Mental)
• Write daily (on track to finish a rough draft of my recruiting book by end-of-year, daily journaling) (mental, spiritual)
• Exercise daily (see workout routine) (physical)
• Meditate Daily (I am using Headspace) (spiritual)
• Blog Daily (social)
• Code daily (48% through the Computer Science Path on Codecademy) (mental)
• Track my success daily (EVO planner, MyFitnessPal, Apple Health on my Apple Watch, Toodledo) (mental, physical, social, spiritual)
• Share articles on social media, here, and help my wife with her teaching credential prep (Social)

Get out there and crush it this week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – The Journey is More Important than the Destination

Tags

Achievements, Consistency, Goals, motivation, rituals, Systems, The Journey

What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

Zig Ziglar

I have always been motivated by goals and achievements. In the last few years, I have evolved. After reading books like Mini-Habits and Atomic Habits, I am now more focused on the systems that support achievement. These systems or rituals are more important in my opinion.

For example, I set a goal in the Goodreads’ reading challenge to 48 books this year. I achieved and moved beyond this goal last month. How? By reading 1 chapter a day. That’s it. Simple, right? My system of reading 1 chapter a day helped me hit my goal, which occurred without even thinking about it. If they system supports your goal, you’ll achieve it. You cannot do anything else but succeed.

 

Systems or rituals can be used to achieve all of your goals. If you select the right things to do, you’ll achieve your goals unconsciously. It’s just that simple. It’s the rituals and systems that are more important because they build habits or patterns in your daily life that should be beneficial. Reading, writing, exercise, meditation, connecting with friends and family, are all important and beneficial things. Create systems that allow you to touch the things that are important to you every day and your life will be rich and fulfilling. On to my weekly schedule.

Weekly Schedule:

• Read a chapter daily
• Write a section of my book daily
• Code daily
• Meditate daily
• Blog daily
• Exercise daily
• Spend time with friends and family daily
• Run a monthly book discussion (today)

I’ve also started a habit of getting out and about daily. This could be a meal at a restaurant, visiting a library, or setting down at a coffee shop. I also go to the gym and run errands. I try to interact with different people each time I go out. It’s great fun!

Happy Monday! I hope all of you have a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – What to do When You Are Unmotivated

Tags

Do What you Can, Getting Started, Habit Formation, Minimalize, motivation, My Weekly Routine

We all have those days. The days we don’t want to get out of bed, tempted to call out sick, and binge-watch Netflix all day. The same follows for anything you are trying to accomplish. You lose the drive and excitement that caused you to start your journey. How do you do what you need to do when you just lack the motivation or willpower to follow through?

Minimize it. Obviously, going to the gym and hitting one machine and calling it a day is not great, but it is if you are unmotivated. It is better to do something than do nothing. You can apply this to anything in your day. Simple look at the task and minimize it, so you can get it done today and check it off of your list. If you are reading a chapter a day and you are in one of those moods, read a page. If you are working on that book or paper for class, write a paragraph and call it a day. You can do this with most anything you are trying to turn into a habit. The key to habit formation is to do something that you have agreed with yourself you would do. So do it, just don’t put as much effort into it on days like the one I have described. Minimize it, shrink it down, just take a baby-step.

The odds are good you’ll do more than you thought you could just by getting started. If you only knock out a little, you’ll still get it off of your list and feel good that you didn’t bail on yourself. Try this out the next time you are in this funk state. OK. Onward to this week!

 

Weekly agenda:

• daily planning
• daily meditation
• daily writing (Blog and Book Writing)
• exercise 3 x per day (one at gym, two at home, Mon-Fri)
• daily coding, reading, and learning
• gratitude and Dream Journaling daily
• daily review
• weekly review

I hope all of you have a terrific week! I am ready to roll!

Until next time…

Dave

 

 

 

 

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Building Habits and Rituals

Tags

Behavior Chains, Ciotti, Consistency, habits, macro goals, micro quotas, motivation, rituals

Today’s Monday Motivation article: 5 Scientific Ways to Build Habits that Stick (Ciotti, 2013), provides some great advice on how to form habits. To check it out, click the link below under the Reference header. These are the 5 ways:

1. Make “micro quotas” and “macro goals”
2. Create behavior chains
3. Eliminate excessive options
4. Process plan (but don’t fantasize)
5. Eliminate “ah-screw-its”

One of the best of his ideas is the use of micro quotas and macro goals. What does this mean? It means we set big goals and then create small actions that we can execute every day that will build into these big goals. The best example that I’ve implemented is writing a book. The book is the macro goal. The micro quota is writing a section of my book each day. Your micro quota may involve writing to a set time limit, like 20 minutes each day or a specific word count, like 500 words per day.

I have done a few things to improve my productivity. I have purchased an EVO planner (see https://projectevo.org/). This is a cool planner that has a digital component. You scan your days and weeks, after you’ve reviewed your performance for the day. It also features a free test to determine what your brain type is. Mine is The Alchemist. I have to say it is pretty accurate.  Check it out. This may be a good solution for you to try out.

I have also become quite proficient with my daily rituals and decided to triple my efforts by creating what are called mini-days. I run through 3 mini-days each day, starting tomorrow. Each day will involve something related to the mental, physical, spiritual, and social components of my life. I found that I have become so efficient that I need to add more activities to my day to fill it. Bonus all around!

Here’s my agenda for the week:

• Exercise daily
• Meditate daily
• Learn something new daily
• Get out and socialize daily by eating out, working at a coffee shop, or writing at a library
• Read my Bible daily
• Write one section of my book daily
• Code daily

 

Here’s another suggestion for you if you would like an easier time of automating your to-dos. Use a task app. I use Toodledo (see https://www.toodledo.com/tasks/index.php). I set all of my tasks that are part of my daily ritual to repeat daily. As I complete them, they move to the next day. You can use other apps too. Wunderlist and ToDoist are also good.

 

Well, that’s it for today! Have a great Monday!!

Until next time…

Dave

Reference

Ciotti, G. (2013). 5 scientific ways to build habits that stick. Retrieved from: https://99u.adobe.com/articles/17123/5-scientific-ways-to-build-habits-that-stick

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Reading Motivation Articles

Tags

Flipboard, Google News, Life Hacks, Monday, motivation, Motivation Articles, Pocket

Happy Monday! I wanted to write briefly about articles you can read about motivation that could help you find a new way of doing things. If you’re like me, you don’t like being an automaton. You like shaking things up from time-to-time. If this describes you, high-five! You and I are in alignment.

What are some good sources for articles on motivation? I use two. The first is FlipBoard. It is an app you can download to your phone, and it is a website. It is free. You simply create an account, select some preferences, and you’re off to the races. The second is Pocket. Pocket is free, and it collects articles from all around the web. It doesn’t categorize like FlipBoard, but it does allow you to save articles you enjoy, so you can return to them later. Both FlipBoard and Pocket also allow you to share great articles with your social networks.

Here’s an article I found that provided some great ideas for improving your productivity for the week. It is titled: 5 Tips for a More Productive Work Week. It took me less than a minute to find. Here are the main tenets of the article.

1.  Make a Morning Routine That Guides You
2.  Save Up Your Busywork
3.  Lean on a Tomato for Motivation
4.  Take Meetings During Your Slump Time
5.  Throw Out Any Productivity Tip That Doesn’t Work for You

I do most of the things suggested by this article already. You may not do these things already and may be interested in adapting some things to your schedule. This is why I read about motivation, productivity, and efficiency articles each week. It is because I never know when the next great idea will be shared by someone that I can introduce into my unique workflow.

I am always looking for the next hack or improvement I can add to my daily workflow. Try Flipboard or Pocket. You won’t be disappointed. Here are the links for both of these services:

https://flipboard.com/

https://app.getpocket.com/

I have used both of these article sources for years. I highly recommend them. Sometimes I get lucky and find a great article in the news. I use Google News. You may like your local paper or Apple News or some other news service. Whichever one you use, scan through it and see if there is anything interesting to you. You never know!

Here is my schedule for the week:

Monday – Sunday

• Blog Post Daily
• Write Section of my Book Daily
• Exercise Daily
• Spiritual Exercise/Meditation Daily
• Read a Chapter of a book Daily
• Study with my Wife for Her Teaching Credential Daily
• Coding Course Daily
• NLP Course Daily
• Writing Course Daily
• Watch Netflix, Amazon Video, or Vudu (entertainment) Daily
• Play an Xbox, iPhone, or PC game (entertainment) Daily

I wish all of you a terrific Monday!

The article I read is below. Click on the link if you are interested in reading it.

Until next time…

Dave

Reference

Duffy, J. (2019). 5 tips for a more productive work week. Retrieved from: https://www.pcmag.com/article/370875/5-tips-for-a-more-productive-work-week