Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Tracking

Tags

Achievement, Adjusting, calendars, Goals, K.M. Allan, measurable, Measuring, Progress, todo apps, Tracking

I’m huge on tracking my work and results. One of the motivating things about tracking the books you read, the blog posts you’ve put up, the exercises you do, is that these things are measurable. I try to set my goals this way, because I can track and measure my progress. Tracking your results, particularly if they are goal-oriented, is key to achieving anything.

If you want to lose weight, you have to track what you’re eating and what you’re doing for exercise. There is no other way. At least we haven’t figured out one. Ever notice how many weight-loss apps, food tracking apps, and all the rest are out there? It’s because you have to track things to see how you are doing. Make sense?

So today, as you move through your week, take a moment to see what you are measuring and what you are not. It is likely that the things you are not measuring are goals you have set for yourself that can’t be measured–a big no no, if you are trying to improve yourself. This is why I use SMART goals when I set my goals for the year. The M stands for measurable. There is no other way to pursue a meaningful goal. You have to have the capability of measuring it, and YOU have to decide what measures you are looking at. Let’s say you have a goal of reading so many books a year. Easy. Write down that goal and check off a number each time you finish a book. If you want to lose weight, the same thing applies–weigh yourself once a week, and track what you are eating and how much exercise you are doing. Easy-peasy.

The key is selecting goals and determining how you are going to track and measure them from the get-go. If you can easily determine your progress on something, you’ve done it right. If not, you’ll have to tweak your goals so you really know what you are shooting for. One of my goals if blog followers. This is easy to track, because WordPress tells you every day who has followed your blog and how many followers you have. This goal is trackable. The key difference is WordPress does the tracking for you.

I hope this makes sense, folks. Measurable goals are the way to go. It is the only way to truly know where you are making progress or not. When you identify a goal that is not moving or making progress, you can either put more effort into it, or decide to put that goal on hold for a bit. Perhaps you’re no longer motivated by that goal, or perhaps it requires an effort that you just do not want to commit to. The key to all this is to set a measurable goal, track your progress, and adjust your efforts based on your tracking.

One of my friends, K.M. Allan, uses a whiteboard to track all of her writing goals for the week. This is a great system! I am more digital, but the process is the same. You have so many things to do, and you have to have a plan and a way to track your progress. In K.M.’s case, it is merely a way to cross off things as she goes. Then she can reassess herself on the weekend and reset for the upcoming week. So simple—yet so effective. Bravo!

Have a great week, folks.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Planning

Tags

Achievement, failure, measurement, off track, on track, Plan, Planning, Success, troubleshooting

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

Jim Rohn

I believe that planning is more important than the goal itself. Obviously, we have to have goals, if we want to accomplish anything in a systematic and organized way. The real question for me is how will we achieve what we set out to do? We can only do this by putting together a plan.

Plans can be simple or very complex. It all depends on the goals you want to accomplish. A goal of simply going to the gym would be less complex than writing a novel, for example. The key to planning is realizing what you need to do and then coming up with an order of operations to achieve what you want.

One of my goals each year is to read 60 books. This works out to 5 books a month or about 1,25 books each week. Do I get this detailed? No. I just keep reading continuously throughout the year, reading multiple books simultaneously, and knock them off of my list in Goodreads. I monitor my progress, but my plan is pretty simple. Read an hour a day, a minimum, and you’ll get there. So far, so good. As you can see, the plan is pretty simple. It has also delivered consistently over two years.

Diet and exercise can be more complex. You have to monitor what you eat, monitor the supplements you are taking, and track the exercises you are doing, the weights you are lifting, water intake, sleep schedule, etc. This one is more complex than reading books. You have to put a bit of work and planning to ensure you hit all of the checkmarks required for achieving your goals, whether it be weight loss, improved cardiovascular capability, or strength gains.

I also set goals for myself when I play video games. My current favorite is Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War. I am currently playing the Zombies part of the game and each day I set out goals that I want to accomplish. Do I want to earn a particular camouflage for this weapon, clear out a particular reticle for a sight, or do I want to earn so many crystals? I realize you may not understand what I’m talking about, but you can set goals for literally anything you want to. I like setting goals for daily activities, because it makes it more of a game to me, and keeps my motivation up when I achieve a milestone of sorts for all of my goals. It also makes it easy to measure and assess that I’m on track with a goal or not.

Plan folks. If you have a plan you can adjust it as you go, particularly if it isn’t working. Without a plan, you really don’t have any ability to gauge what you are doing or measure where you are. Both add difficulty and frustration to everything you will try to achieve. When this is added in, it is highly likely you will quit, because you aren’t seeing the success you need and you don’t know how to troubleshoot what you are doing to get something done. Make sense?

Have a great Monday, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Here we go!

Tags

Achievement, Categories, Consistency, Goals, Plans, processes, rituals

Hopefully, you’ve put together your goals for the year and have plans, processes, and rituals in place to guarantee your success. What if you haven’t done that yet? No worries. Start simple, if this is all new to you.

I like to pick goals within categories like physical, mental, spiritual, and social.

Physical – lose 10 pounds by year’s end

Mental – read 12 books by year’s end

Spiritual – meditate once a day for 10 minutes

Social – post uplifting quotes and materials to social media 1 x weekly

These are just examples, but easy to do. One thing I’ve learned about consistent small actions every day is that they build into big things. When I started this process for myself a few years ago, I could have never predicted I would read 60 books in a year. This is what happens when you read a little each day. Now 60 books is no issue. This works for anything you aspire to. Pick some goal, and chop away at it a little bit each day. You’ll be there in no time.

Now get at it! The year’s young. Get your goals in place, put together the daily things you need to do to hit your milestones, and get at it. It’s not too late to set yourself up for success in 2021.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – It’s a New Year

Tags

Achievement, Determination, Goals, Innovation, Learning, lockdowns, motivation, New Year, persistance

I’m back after a nice vacation toward the end of December. I hope all of you had a pleasant time during the holiday season. We had a little get together with my sister and her boyfriend. The meals were terrific.

It’s that time again to list out my goals for the year. Here we go:

Physical

Exercise daily

Learning

Finish Masters in Sociology

Learn Excel

Learn Marketing

Learn Statistics and various diagrams

Learn Digital Advertising

Learn Python

Learn Graphic Design

Financial

Add 1200.00 to my savings by year’s end

Pay off dental bill by year’s end

Spiritual

Finish 12 ECK discourses

Run 9 Book Discussions

Run 1 Sound of Soul event

Develop 1 Digital Report to be used by me for Vahana reports each month

Learn about Facebook advertising and test it in the Thumb area by year’s end

Spiritual Exercise 2x 365 days

Gratitude Journal 365 days

Read Bible 365 days

Reading

Read 60 books in 2021

Writing

Build followers to 1100 by year’s end

Finish and Post 250 Blog Posts

Follow 200 new Blogs this year

Begin a new non-fiction book (fiction writing is on hold for the time being)

Social

Write 52 letters to my wife

Post poetry and Quotes  365 times this year

Interact and make friends playing Call of Duty

Hobbies (Call of Duty Gaming)

Diamond out Submachine guns

Diamond out shotguns

Diamond out launchers

Diamond out knife

Diamond out Sniper Rifles

Diamond out Pistols

Learn Combined Arms Maps

This is my list of goals for the year. Note: I have planned no face-to-face or location goals at all, since it is highly likely intermittent lockdowns will continue, particularly as the COVID virus mutates. There is already a new strain in the US.

Get at it, folks! It’s a new year. You’ll see some new content types this year on my blog. I like changing up this blog from time to time because it makes it interesting for me and I would like to find more ways to entertain and serve you in 2021. We’ll see how it goes.

Have a great year all!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Overcoming Obstacles with Contingency Plans

Tags

Accomplishment, Achievement, Dedication, Discipline, Drive, Monday, motivation

Whenever you embark on a new goal or strive to achieve something you’ve set up for yourself, you will run into obstacles. Obstacles, like my gym closing in the middle of last week, after COVID came raging back and caused a lot of open places to close again.

How do you overcome them? Well, sometimes you have to put a contingency plan in place. A contingency plan is something you put in place in case something you planned to accomplish is disrupted. My contingency plan is using exercise bands and a supine bicycle or stair stepping to replace my gym workout.

There are many examples I could give for obstacles and overcoming them. Let’s say you are working on a book and your laptop or desktop crashes. If you save your work in the cloud, you have nothing to worry about. Always plan for the worst and develop a contingency plan to handle the unexpected.

So there you go. My way of overcoming obstacles. Always plan for the worst and have a go-to plan waiting to be initiated if that worst thing happens.

Have a great Monday, folks!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday – Love Yourself

Tags

Achievement, Goals, habits, Love Yourself, self-affirmation, self-care, Self-love, Spiritual

Don’t forget to love yourself.

Soren Kierkegaard

So many of us beat the living crap out of ourselves. I know I used to. I still do today, but less frequently. I typically get down on myself when I feel like I’m just “going through the motions” and not really putting my entire self into a project.

This happened recently.

I love an automated or ritualized day. I have the same recurring tasks each day and knock them down one by one. Blogging is one of them. I also read, code, learn, journal, interact on social media, exercise, and perform my daily spiritual tasks. It really works for me, but alas, these rituals drift from purposeful self-improvement to automaton-like actions very easily.

As I tackled this feeling, I realized that I should probably take my advice. There will be days where we just don’t feel the motivation and drive we normally do. We’re human. Can I say each workout I do in the gym is 100%? Heck no. This same phenomenon applies to everything else we do. So, I realized that I need to give myself a break.

This is self-love. This is taking care of yourself. This is giving yourself a break. Who wants to live with a micromanager and tyrant? I sure don’t. So, I closed my eyes a few days ago and pretended I was staring at my 7-year-old self. I told myself that you are OK. You will screw up. You’re still an honorable person. You will be lazy some days. On those days, continue to work, but take it a little easy. The days where you’re raring to get at it will be there too. Enjoy those days as well. The days you don’t feel it, enjoy them too and give yourself a break. Just keep doing your daily tasks and you’ll be fine.

That was all it took for me. What things do you do for yourself to recapture the passion you have for your daily tasks/goals? If you have some other ideas, post them in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – 2020 Goals – Here We Go!

Tags

Accomplishment, Achievement, Attack!, Consistency, Goal Setting, New Year, Push Yourself, You Got This

Drum roll, please…

As promised, here are my goals for 2020.

My 2020 Goals:

• Reduce Weight to 200 lbs by year’s end (weigh-in weekly)
• 365 gym visits
• Finish Rough Draft of my first Novel
• Complete 12 Online Courses this year
• Complete Computer Science Path on Codecademy this year
• Save 1200.00 by year’s end
• Finish Yearly Religious Discourse
• Run 12 book discussions
• Read 60 books this year
• Take a personal vacation once per quarter exploring a new town each time
• Visit the library 52 times this year
• Follow 200 new blogs this year
• Attain 800 followers by year’s end
• Track goals

It will be a great year! I can’t wait to knock this stuff out. Consistency is key. Just doing a little each day can produce huge results.

What are you goals for 2020? I suggest you set a few and make them public like I do. It adds a little more pressure, and it is great how people cheer you on throughout the year once they find out what you’re trying to do.

Send me your list if you’d like or send me a link to your annual goals you post on your blog.

I wish everyone a terrific 2020, filled with love, accomplishment, good health, and success. Let’s Go!!!

Until next time…

Dave

 

 

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Practical Work

Tags

Achievement, creativity, Embrace Fear, Fail often, Fail Quickly, Failure = Learning, Fear, Goals, The Wilds, Your Comfort Zone

“The cycle of creative action begins with a concept we carry in our minds of what we wish to do. The next step is to outline on paper some plan of how to accomplish this. The final step is action in carrying out the plan.” – Harold Klemp – The Language of Soul

Stephen Covey discusses the first and second creation in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He discusses this while covering the second habit: Begin with the End in Mind. The first creation is what we visualize in our mind. It is the pictures, sounds, feelings, and smells of our end product. This end product could be a goal, a destination, or a situation. The second creation is when we breathe life into the first creation by taking all the actions necessary to make our vision a reality.

If you examine Harold Klemp’s process, it is simple. Visualize. Plan. Act. If this were so simple, why do so many people fail to accomplish their goals? My guess is that they can visualize a better life, but ignore the planning and acting parts of this equation.

What’s the reason? Why do people dream about things to do, achieve, or accomplish, yet fail to do anything about these dreams? FEAR.

We fear trying new things. We fear failing. We fear we aren’t good enough. We fear we lack the skills, time, or money. We fear what our social network will think. We are so fearful of these things we continue to dream and hunger for change, but just don’t get around to it. We are so comfortable with our current situations that we prefer this comfort zone, rather than those scary “wilds” outside that comfort zone. These wilds are so scary we just can’t step into them to pursue something that could transform our lives for the better.

How do we overcome this? First, your desire has to be stronger than the fear that is holding you back. When your desire is stronger than fear, you’ll act. Second, your current circumstances are no longer comfortable. Here, your discomfort outweighs the fear you have of the wilds.

You are the only person who can make a decision to act. You are the only person that can risk venturing into the wilds to find your personal pot of gold.

One thing you can do, if you are still hesitant is to take small steps into the wild. If you have a good visual of what you want, start with a brainstorming session. Don’t commit to anything, just begin exploring what you would have to do if you ever got around to doing something. This is the first step. Once you begin brainstorming and thinking about potential solutions, the wilds will be less intimidating. They will be less scary because your brainstorming session will begin to show you what actions you could take to get where you are going. In other words, the wilds become more familiar because you are starting to chart a map through the wilds to your vision or goal (plan).

Once you have brainstormed, you can begin to evaluate and organize these steps into an action plan. Then all you have to do is the act. This action is like sticking your toes in the cold water. Commit to taking one action on your list. Once you’ve done this, take another, and another. Before you know it, you’ll be closer to your goal and those scary wilds will be less intimidating. You are acting and getting closer to your destination.

Eliminate fear by taking small steps. Brainstorm, plan, take small actions. You will bring that dream into reality. The first time you explore the wilds, it will be uncomfortable, but the more you do it, even if they are small excursions, the more this discomfort will dissipate. The territory you thought was scary is not so bad. In fact, it is less dangerous than the predictable, boring, and complacent comfort zone you now occupy.

The people that attain their dreams are not better than you. They just took a leap of faith before you did. They have failed more than you have been comfortable with. They have failed so many times, failure no longer has a hold on them. They’ve figured out what everyone figures out. Failure is part of the growth process. You’ll never learn or do something new without screwing up. So enjoy failure. Enjoy the process. Every time you fail you learn something–you learn what doesn’t work.

I hope you have a terrific Wednesday!

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