Archive for January, 2006
Okay admit it - statistically speaking - you have credit card debt.
The average American household carries $8562 in credit card debt! A lot of people who carry credit card debt are also only making the minimum payment towards their balance. If you carry the statistical average balance, and make the average minimum payment, and never charge another dime; it would take you almost four and a half years to pay off your balance.
I’m no different; I have credit card debt that I’m carrying too. Thankfully, I’m not carrying the average $8562 in debt, but I’m carrying more than zero which means I’m not being financially efficient.
All along I’ve given myself credit for paying over my minimum balance and making some progress towards paying off my debt. I took the approach of spreading my payments around and covering each card with about an equal payment each month. But I will still unhappy with how long I had projected it would take me to pay off the last of my balances. I wanted to find a better way to handle getting rid of my credit card debt.
I found an interesting method in David Bach’s book The Automatic Millionaire. He calls it the “DOLP” or Dead On Last Payment plan; it’s very simple to put into place.
1) First, you create a “DOLP” number for each of the credit cards on which you are carrying a balance. To figure out that card’s DOLP number divide the balance by the monthly minimum payment. If you have a Visa card with a balance of $2300 and a minimum payment of $50, its DOLP number would be 2300 / 50 = 46.
Get DOLP numbers for all the cards with a balance. You can use Excel to make a nice and neat list, plus Excel can handle all of your calculations for you.
2) Once you have all of your DOLP numbers, rank and list them from lowest to highest. Enter this information into Excel or write it on a piece of paper. For example:
3) Next pay the card with the lowest DOLP number first, while making minimum payments on your other cards. If you normally spend $250 per month on credit card payments, in the example above you would pay the minimum monthly payments to Capital One, Discover, and Earl’s Bank - $95 in total - and you would apply the balance of your $250 towards your card with the lowest DOLP number (in this case $155 per month to Citi).
4) When the last payment has been made to a card you cancel it. If you feel like you just can’t cancel the card, freeze it into a block of ice and make it almost impossible to get to it.
Now drop down to your card with the next lowest DOLP number and apply the balance to that card. In the example above you would now be paying $170 each month to Capital One while paying the minimum monthly payment to Discover and Earl’s Bank.
5) As you pay off your balances, you drop all of the money (less the minimum payments) you spend each month to settle your debt down to the next card. You’ll be paying them off faster.
When I first read this I thought it was an interesting idea, but I didn’t know if it was a better way to manage my money than my way - spreading my money all around. So I turned back to Excel to crunch some numbers.
I calculated that if I follow the DOLP plan, I can accelerate paying off my credit cards by more than six months. This is because some of my lower balance cards with a lower DOLP number have higher interest rates. So I’ll be paying those off faster and paying less money overall in interest charges.
If you do use Excel to calculate all of these numbers; here is a handy formula to know. It will calculate for you the number of payments you have left for a given balance, interest rate and monthly payment.
The formula is: =NPER(A/12, B, -C)
For each of the values, A, B and C:
A = Annual Interest rate (APR). The formula divides this number by 12 to get your monthly rate.
B = The amount of your monthly payment.
C = The principal balance. We make this number negative so we will end up with a positive number as the result.
Once you have an Excel spreadsheet setup with this formula you can use it for “what if” scenarios. You can adjust your payment and see how it affects the time required to repay your account. You can adjust your interest rate to see how it will affect the time required to repay your account (call your credit card and ask if they will lower your interest rate, many will just with a phone call).
You can also use it for goal setting. You can set a goal to have an account paid of in a certain number of months and using this Excel spreadsheet you can adjust your monthly payment until you achieve a number that will let you reach you goal.
In the example above, if my goal were - in six months - to pay off a balance of $3822 at 14.99% annual interest, I would need to make a monthly payment of $665.
If you’re carrying credit card debt it’s time to “DOLP” it out of existence! It’s easy to calculate your debt’s DOLP number and put together a plan to knock it out.
Remember, a little “DOLP” will do ya!
January 31st, 2006
Sure, you’re one bad, goal-setting, success-wielding, achievement-oriented mutha’ - but after you’ve conquered a goal and basked in the glow of success what do you do?
Do you keep an achievement cheat-sheet? Do you keep your “success resume” up to date on a regular basis? If you’re like most people, I’m willing to wager that answer will be, “no.”
It’s easy to get into the habit of setting and achieving goals - that’s the first part of the recipe of success. Accurately recording your achievements when they’re fresh in your mind is the second part of the recipe of success.
It’s easy to let your accomplishments slip by after you’ve enjoyed that “I did it!” moment; when asked what you accomplished last year or the year before you have to spend precious time creating your list, remembering the details, the impact and the results. This isn’t an efficient way to spend your time!
I admit I used to be this way. I’ve been “into” goal setting and personal achievement for a long time, but I never kept my success resume up to date. When I owned my own company, a resume and corporate overview was often one of the first things clients would ask for as we started a relationship.
Every time a client asked for this I had to dust off my last copy, review it, add to it any personal or business accomplishments and then present it to my client. Depending on how long it had been since I last used my success resume, it could take a not insignificant amount of time to get it up to date.
When I sold my business I kicked around as a “consultant” for a while before finally deciding I should get a “real job.” I was in for a shock; I hadn’t bothered to update my resume in a long time - about two years - and pulling it together turned into an all day affair! After this, I decided I needed to keep a current accomplishment cheat-sheet and keep my resume updated much more frequently.
Here’s the process I used to get everything under control:
1) Choose your tools
You will need either a nice notebook or journal that you can dedicate to recording your achievements, or a computer with a word processing application. I prefer the computer for this because I can generally type much faster than I can write.
2) Layout the document
Create a document and name it something creative like “2006 Accomplishments”. Then add four pages and at the top of each page write, Q1 2006, Q2 2006, Q3 2006, Q4 2006. You’re going to track your accomplishments by quarter.
3) Play catch up
If you’re just starting this process the chances are good you’ve not started a new year fresh and ready to go (unless you’re reading this article in January, and then you are starting a new year fresh and ready to go). Spend time outlining all of your major accomplishments for the year so far. At this point just a sentence is good, but get them all captured and try to allocate them to the quarter in which they were accomplished.
4) Stay current
Once you’ve started your accomplishment list you have to stay current; review it and update it (if needed) at least monthly. The entire point is to capture your accomplishments in only a few minutes, while the details are still fresh in your mind. If you stay on top of recording your accomplishments as they happen it will only take you moments to record them. This will save you much time compared to an end-of-year review, plus you’ll be able to capture much more detail and specific fact and figures without having to dig back through your records come December (or worse, the next year!).
5) Update your resume quarterly
You have a list of accomplishments and you’re staying current and keeping your list updated. Now you need to sit down at the beginning of each quarter and translate your accomplishments into your resume. Make sure that the responsibilities you have listed on your resume match your responsibilities on your achievement cheat-sheet. Drop from your resume projects with less impressive outcomes for projects with more impressive outcomes. This is your chance to really make yourself shine.
Once I followed the five steps above I realized that I spent less overall time tending my resume, and I didn’t have that “panicky” feeling of knowing it wasn’t in tip-top shape when asked for it. I knew it was no more than three months out of date, and it had been recently updated with my most impressive and high-impact accomplishments.
You don’ t need to write pages and pages for each accomplishment; you simply need to distill the major elements from the accomplishment down into a sentence or two, with pertinent facts and figures. You want to create expanded bullet points which will eventually make it to your resume or your annual review if you work for a company.
Here is a sample from my 2005 major accomplishment file:
1) Negotiated the purchase of a 16kVA APC Symmetra LX UPS (extended run version) for $10,450 (down from $15,700).
2) Designed company ID badge & created specification for the data and format of company’s ID program to be C-TPAT compliant. Resulting badges & ideas were adopted by US Customs & Border Patrol as recommended guidelines for small businesses looking to certify & comply with C-TPAT requirements.
3) Worked with web design and e-commerce company to implement a new e-commerce engine for company’s online sales. The company’s online sales (Jan – July) were $#.# million and the new e-commerce enabled site was negotiated for $#,### including custom pricing functionality to handle unique per-customer, per-product pricing requirements. R.O.I. on project was calculated at 4.2 weeks based on the company’s YTD (Jan – July) online sales.
4) Read 28 books in 2005 including 16 directly related to self improvement, success or development (goal was 3 books on development per quarter). Books were: January: Split Second, Leadership 101, Attitude 101, As a Man Thinketh, The Doomsday Conspiracy. February: Steal This Book, Babylon Rising, Goal Setting 101. March: Man’s Search for Meaning, Made in America, My Story. April: The Fountainhead. May: The Taking. June: How to Become CEO, It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be, The Fred Factor, Getting Things Done. July: Speaker For The Dead, Xenocide. August: Shadow of the Giant, 1776, Children of the Mind, The Time Trap, Managing for Dummies, How to Talk to Anyone (92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships). November: Rich Dad’s Before You Quit Your Job. December: 101 Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions, 301 Management Ideas, Ready for Anything.
I have also found that keeping a written record of accomplishments is an excellent tool to justify requests for raises or bonus programs if you work for an employer. In our modern society we’re only usually as good as our last project - the “what-have-you-done-for-me-lately?” factor. It’s easy for employers to conveniently “forget” about important achievements and contributions, but it’s very difficult to argue with facts and figures.
If you keep your achievement cheat-sheet up to date, you’ll be armed when you ask for a raise or a bonus. You can layout exactly what your accomplishments have been, and you’ll have ammunition that your employer likely will not.
If you’ve also kept your resume up to date you’ll be ready to move on if your requests for a deserved raise fall on deaf ears time and time again.
If you’re self-employed, keeping an achievement cheat-sheet and keeping your professional or company resume up to date is vital too. These days clients are asking to see more and more detailed information from the vendors they use. If you have a professional resume ready-to-go it will give you a definite advantage over your competitors in your market-space.
I urge you to start today; spend the time to get your achievement cheat-sheet caught up and then spend the (minimal) on-going time to keep it current. The rewards will be well worth it!
January 29th, 2006
Scott Ginsberg of “HELLO…my name is Scott” has a free eBook available titled, “66 Priceless Pieces of Business Advice I Couldn’t Live Without.” One of his pieces of advice is, “Give value first.”
I think this is one of the most overlooked, but vital pieces of advice out there. How often have you heard someone complain they’re not paid enough or they didn’t receive a large enough raise?
I don’t know about you, but I hear things like this from people all the time.
Every time I hear someone say they’re not paid enough money for a job I want to ask them what value they’re providing. I’ve found there is usually a correlation between the value someone provides and their compensation; and most people are completely oblivious to this correlation.
On which side of the chart do you fall? The relationship of value-to-income is not a straight 1-to-1 ratio like most people think. There are a few reasons for this:
- value can be a vaguely defined quantity in a relationship
- most people want to see proof of value before they’ll determine (and pay) a price
- intangible factors can affect the worth of your value
Usually the relationship - when plotted on a graph - is a logarithmic curve. When you’re first starting to offer value, you have a lower income (or return on your value).
Once you’ve proven yourself, your product, your service - whatever you need to prove - your income rises. As you provide more and more value, the amount of income relative to your value will increase logarithmically.
This means you will eventually get to a point where your income and value are maximized. Whether we work for someone else or are self-employed, this point of maximum value and maximum income is where we all want to get in our professional lives.
But the “gotcha” of a logarithmic relationship is that when you’re first starting out you have to put more effort and energy into one axis of the relationship to generate output on the other. You have to initially provide more value from which you receive less income.
If your first effort is to maximize your income, you had better have the perfect value proposition. It’s not impossible to do, but it’s extremely difficult.
If you change your perspective just a little and focus not on your result (the income), but on your effort (the value) something special starts to happen; you will notice that the relationships around you are built better, on my solid foundations. You will notice that you care more about providing a better quality product for your customer. You will become input-focused rather than output-focused.
You will be building value first and trusting that income will follow. If you take this approach to life and your business relationships (and even personal relationships) you’ll always come out ahead because income will eventually greatly reward value.
Remember the saying; “if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door.” The path doesn’t get beaten to your door because you’ve cornered the market on mouse catching, but rather because you’ve provided great value to people in the form of a better trap.
If you’re like most people, at this point you might be asking yourself, “If I provide all this value up front aren’t I taking a risk on the payback?”
Yes you are. But all of life involves some risk. The proposition is this; prove yourself first and be rewarded. It’s very possible you’ll run into someone who wants to take advantage of you. When this happens you have to learn to quickly trust your gut when starting to deal with someone in a new relationship.
And remember, value is a two-way street; if you’re giving but never getting, you’re free to change the relationship!
When you commit yourself to providing value first, you’ll be more likely to create “win-win” solutions in your relationships. Keep this advice close to your heart, put it in practice everyday and you’ll soon see returns on your value that you never predicted!
January 27th, 2006
I’m very happy to announce a new resource here on SuccessMinders - our own development and achievement newsletter. It’s full of information and encouragement to help you set goals, get motivated, build positive habits, grow your productivity and help you find your ultimate goal in life.
If you like the content here at SuccessMinders, please consider signing up (you can do so in the section “Newsletter” at the right).
It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s FREE and my promise to you is that I will never share or sell your information, it will be kept strictly confidential. You can un-subscribe any any time, right from the newsletter, with no hassles.
If you’re looking to add an on-line newsletter or mailing list service to your own web site, I suggest you check out Lumasis.com and ask Jamie about his new service, EZQuickList. He’s a dear friend of mine and will provide you with an excellent service at a great price.
January 26th, 2006
Don’t review your goals on a regular basis? If so, don’t expect to achieve them.
Most people - once they actually get started - enjoy the process of goal setting. When done properly it’s fun, self-reinforcing, and allows you to dream big. The hardest thing is get people started actually writing their goals, but once they’ve started - watch out! - most people can fill pages and pages with goals.
And that’s super, it really is, but how many of you write out wonderfully detailed and thought out goals - goals so real you can taste and feel and see them - and then stick them in a drawer, never to see the light of day again?
Can I get a show of hands? Yep, I’m raising my hand too; I’ve been guilty of spending time on the “fun” part of goal setting (the actual “setting” of goals) and then skimping on the regular review of my goals.
And you know what? I find I don’t usually achieve those goals, or if I do it’s at a level much lower than it should be. So why do we do this to ourselves?
Our brains are amazing works of biology and engineering. When we ask our brain for an idea it’s like that take-a-number dispenser at the license branch, always ready to spit one out. Our brain is also muscle-like; the more we use it the stronger it gets. As we strengthen our imagination, we get stronger and stronger ideas.
So when we set goals our brain has a grand time. It revels in the good feelings that really visualizing our dreams, wants, and achievements create. When you visualize a goal using NLP (think, Tony Robbins) you are flooding your brain with signals that it likes. You are literally creating a reality in your brain that it doesn’t know isn’t real…yet.
But once your goals are written that sense of excitement and pleasure passes. It may last a day or a week, but eventually it passes. This is why you see 5,000 people in the gym on January 1st, but by the 7th the gym is empty again. That sense of excitement, motivation, and action has become routine and our brain is off to find something else to give it those pleasurable feelings again.
It’s difficult to keep a goal in your mind and keep it vivid enough to continually build this sense of excitement every day. This is why a written goal is so important.
You spend the time and energy creating a goal and you capture it while you’re brain is energized and excited. Once the goal is captured, there isn’t any room for improvisation when you come back to the goal at a later date. You’ve done all the hard work and now you can immediately put your brain back into that excited state by reviewing and re-visualizing your goal.
It’s this review process that keeps your brain (and yourself) stimulated and excited. It should consist of a daily review of your goals. Actually, it should be a several-times-a-day review of your goals.
Some people advocate reading your goals every morning when you get up, and again every night before you go to bed. I don’t have the discipline to do that - I’m not a morning person and by bedtime I’m ready to hit the sack. So here are some easy ways that I make sure I keep my goals available for daily review:
1) Keep your goals with you always.
One thing I find very helpful is to keep my key goals with me - I write them on a blank business card and keep it in my wallet. I see them as I put cash or receipts in my wallet - usually at least two or three times a day. The trick here is not to hide the card down in a credit-card slot - make it so you can’t miss it when you’re in the main part of your wallet.
2) Keep your goals present in your environment.
I have a cork-board that - when I’m sitting at my desk - fills my field of vision when I look to the right. I keep a single 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper with my goals tacked up so it’s the first thing I see on the board. I find that I look at this all day long.
3) Keep your goals present where you can’t possibly miss them during the course of a day.
I’ve also been known to write my goals on “Post-It” notes and stick them to the bathroom mirror. I see them every morning when I get ready for the day and every night when I get ready for bed. I’ve found that putting material goals on the bathroom mirror is helpful; I write a blurb on a “Post-It” note and clip a small picture from a catalog or magazine and add it. The image is usually more powerful than the words when I’m getting ready for work - and I can visualize my goals while relaxing in a hot shower. Now that’s a powerful way to reinforce your goals, the pleasure of a hot shower beating down on your while you get yourself excited and motivated by mentally reviewing and re-visualizing your goals!
4) Keep reminders in interesting and unusual places to shake up your patterns.
Finally I have written at the top of my white-board on my office at work; “Have you reviewed your goals today?” in bright, blue marker. Every time I look up to see who has come into my office I see my white-board. Every time I look to the left I see it. I’ve got myself covered if I look to the left or to the right!
As you begin to regularly review your goals a curious thing will start to happen; your perspective of your goals and yourself will change. You’ll start to notice that working on your goals just seems to happen; you find time to squeeze in a little more effort here and there.
It isn’t magic, it’s the power of you. You’ve given a command to your brain, you’ve made it “real” as far as your brain knows, and you’re regularly reviewing your goal. Your brain can’t help but make progress on your goal, it’s what it does.
As you start to achieve your goals and set new goals, you’ll naturally start to raise the bar on your new goals. You will experience growth!
After you go through this cycle a few times, the regular review of your goals will start to become a habit and it will be easier to remember to do (and actually do). As you grow and develop, you’ll find that your goal setting and goal review process becomes a feedback loop. This feedback loop creates even more growth and development.
Your growth and potential are only limited by yourself and your imagination…and the constant review of your goals that brings you constant growth of yourself!
January 25th, 2006
Are you a high-wage earner and a big spender? Do you have a “consume” lifestyle? Do you have a lot of material high-status symbols?
If you answered yes to these questions you might be an under-accumulator of wealth (a U.A.W.) and not a prodigious-accumulator of wealth (a P.A.W.). So how do you know if you’re a P.A.W. or a U.A.W., and if you find yourself in the U.A.W. group what can you do about it?
These are questions posed and answered in the book “The Millionaire Next Door” by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko.
To answer this question for yourself - “Am I a U.A.W. or a P.A.W.?” - here is a simple rule of thumb you can use:
- Write down your total pre-tax income, including any investment dividends or assets that produce income.
- Take this number and multiply it by your age.
- Take the total and divide it by 10.
For example; a 41 year old executive who earns $103,000 would end up with an answer of “41 x 103,000 = 4,223,000 / 10 = 422,300″
This number is roughly what your net-worth should be for your age and income. We should expect our executive to have a net-worth of roughly $422,300.00. If our executive’s net-worth was significantly less than this number, he would be a U.A.W. - an under-accumulator of wealth. If our executive’s net-worth was more than double this number, he would be a P.A.W. - a prodigious-accumulator or wealth.
How do you measure up?
I must admit that I was shocked when I ran the numbers for myself - I knew I wouldn’t call myself “financially independent,” but I wouldn’t have figured that I would be as far below the target to be on my way to financial independence as I was.
Stanley and Danko define financial independence as the ability to live on ones wealth - our net-worth - for ten or more years.
I suspect that we all want financial independence - it’s many people’s “ultimate life goal”, but most of us don’t plan for and work towards this end. The authors argue that the biggest culprit that prevents people from achieving their goal of financial independence is living a high-consumption lifestyle.
I know I certainly do! I’m a “stuff” freak - I love my gadgets and electronic gizmos. My wife and I enjoy a very comfortable lifestyle that includes almost any consumer item within reason. We eat at restaurants quite often. We’re living the high-consumption lifestyle and are not on track to achieve financial independence without making some changes to the way we work, earn, save and build wealth.
The keys to achieving financial independence are four-fold:
1) Live on less than you earn. The majority of individuals with a net-worth of over a million dollars save and invest - on average - 15% of their pre-tax income. This requires giving up some of a consumption-based lifestyle for one of saving and investing.
2) Budget, budget, budget. About 83% of millionaire households create a budget for their income and expenses, conversely only about 16% of non-millionaire households create a budget.
3) Invest in what you know. Everyone is knowledgeable about specific subject matter; take advantage of this knowledge when looking for investments!
4) Seek professional advice. Realize when you’re not the most qualified to create an action plan to achieve your goals. Millionaires seek out professional help from tax accountants, CPAs, and financial planners far more than non-millionaires.
None of these keys is new or sensational information; you and I already know this! But seeing all of the steps laid out and presented in “The Millionaire Next Door” is very helpful. It breaks the problem of “how do I get started and what do I do?” down into manageable chunks; this helps prevent the getting-overwhelmed-factor.
I know that as I move down the list I can put a check mark in the “I don’t do that” column next to each of the four keys above. Just like many people, when my income increases, my spending increases. I was living comfortably on a lesser amount prior to my income increasing, so why didn’t the increase go directly into investments and savings? The mentality of a U.A.W. is to consume more as his means go up; this is the habit that needs to be broken.
“The Millionaire Next Door” will help you change your thinking about high net-worth individuals as well as give some good advice to help you change your habits. It’s shaken me up and forced me to look at how I earn and how I consume.
In addition, “The Millionaire Next Door” is filled with insightful and interesting information about high net-worth individuals. Did you know that the average millionaire spent an average of $267 on his watch and less than $600 on his most expensive suit?
Did you know that the average millionaire is more likely to hold a Sears or J.C. Penny credit card than an American Express card?
Did you know that 80% of all individuals with a net-worth of one million or more dollars built their wealth in a single generation? Only 20% of millionaires received their money through inheritance.
I highly recommend you pickup this book and spend time reading it. It’s well written, and refreshing because it doesn’t promise you “riches in 3 easy steps.” It’s good, solid advice.
January 23rd, 2006
There is a quote I like that says, “Perfect is the enemy of good.”
I often find myself falling into the trap of trying to make a plan “perfect,” often when it’s good enough. In the pursuit of perfection tomorrow, it’s easy to miss out on opportunities available today.
I am a plan maker. I love to script out a project, layout action items and milestones, and create exquisite plans that exist on neatly hand-written pages. For me the planning process and working for perfection it seductive.
And while I’m busy chasing the beast named “perfection,” my contemporaries that know “good” is what is needed are moving ahead of me.
Do you let your desire for perfection create immobility in your life? Do you wonder why you can never seem to get a thing “perfect” or why you’re never 100% happy with a project? If so, you might also be suffering from the affliction that is perfectionism.
I’m going to tell you why you should strive to be merely “good” instead.
As a perfectionist, let me first tell you that I sympathize with the pain you’ll feel when you make sure your work is “good” and not “perfect.” It’s tough to let go and cast off the shackles of being a perfectionist.
But here’s something you should know; while you’re trying to be perfect, your competition is busy beating you to market with products and services that are good enough (sometimes even great), but never perfect.
Something that I’ve come to learn is that no matter how many hours I pour into my proposals, no matter how many expertly crafted charts I include, no matter how many perfectly worded and phrased arguments I make, no matter how many pages I write to show mastery of my subject - others very rarely care beyond what information is relevant to them. Decisions will likely come down to a face-to-face meeting anyway.
About six months ago I crafted a proposal for a new technical service I believed my company could employ to great benefit. The R.O.I. and cash analysis was a little tricky to understand, so I wanted to make sure the proposal was perfect to help our senior executive team understand all the ways the project could benefit the company. I spent two weeks writing the proposal and a third week editing and re-writing.
I left copies with the relevant members of our senior management team and I waited anxiously for their reply. After a month ticked by with no reply, I started talking to the senior executives, asking them what they thought of the proposal.
Several were able to poke holes in my “perfect” plan that they wanted to see addressed, and our key decisions makers were far to busy to do more than skim over my proposal. They wanted a sit-down meeting anyway.
When I sat down with our key senior executives and outlined my thoughts - a process that was far from “perfect” and took only 30 minutes - they said, “Why are we sitting here talking? Let’s do it!”
In my pursuit of perfection I let two months slip past me with no action that benefited the company taking place on this project. I had planned myself to death!
When a recent project appeared on my radar screen, I typed up an executive summary and passed it around with a hand-written post-it note that read, “I think we should sit down and talk about this.” I was able to get that project reviewed and approved in a week.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t create plans and you shouldn’t do things consciously and with care - you should. I’m saying you should know that a mediocre plan with action taken will beat a perfect plan every time, because there is no such thing as a perfect plan.
So how much is too much planning? That is a tricky thing to define. You want a good plan - even a great plan - without tipping over that edge towards trying to create a perfect plan. For me, there are a few tell-tale signs I’m slipping into my perfectionist habits - I suspect some will ring true for you too, and that you’ll have your own signs to add. I now try to notice when I’m acting on these behaviours and correct myself:
1) I can’t get something “just right.”
Usually I will be stuck on an aspect of something and I’ll revise it and not be happy; I’ll revise it again and not be happy. If I don’t notice myself doing this, I’ll keep doing it over and over again. When I do catch myself doing this, I put that work away for a few hours or a few days and I’ll come back to it once. If I still can’t get it right, it’s very likely “good enough.”
2) I’m getting long winded.
I never seem to have a problem filling pages and pages when I write a proposal. I am a very detail oriented person, and I have a tendency to want to fill my proposals with details. I try to employ what I call the page-to-title ratio; I limit the number of pages in my proposals to the same number of letters in an executive’s title (CEO, CFO, etc.).
This helps me force myself to be succinct, plus it keeps our senior executives happy because they are already inundated with informaiton. I’ve fount nothing makes a CFO crankier than handing them a thirty-page proposal. If he wants more detail, he’ll ask for it.
3) I lose sight of why I’m working on something.
If after working for a period of time I realize that I’ve lost sight of the end goal or I’ve lost perspective on why I’m working on something, then I’ve probably let myself get buried trying to make it “perfect.” When this happens it’s usually a good indicator that my perfectionism is starting to emerge. Always keep your end goal in mind!
With all I’ve said about the evils of perfectionism, is there any place for it? I think there is, but only when you (and you alone) control and dictate the results. If I’m trying to photograph a flower, I may spend hours getting the image I create to be a perfect match to the image in my mind. I don’t depend on photography to pay my bills, I’m creating my own vision of perfection for myself.
For the vast majority of the things you do, you’ll find that “good” or “great” is far better than “perfect.” You can take action on a good plan today. You can take action on a great plan today. If you look for a perfect plan, you’ll always be waiting to take action.
January 21st, 2006
Are you comfortable? Can you go through your day on auto-pilot, not having to think to deeply or work to hard? Does your job seem routine, with only minor issues popping up now and again? Do you sometimes feel a little stagnant?
Everyone gets stuck in a comfort zone now and again. It’s easy to do, and it’s comfortable. We let our routines and habits become our masters. We show up at work, “zombie” through the day, and return home to spend another night the same way as the night before.
I’m not saying that any of this is bad mind you. When you’re life is going well and the status quo doesn’t seem to be all that bad, it’s easy to get trapped by daily routine in a good way. We don’t look at our job or our life and say, “Man, things could be so much better…” We look at our job and our life and say, “Man, I’m doing pretty good right now.”
Getting stuck in a comfort zone is an impediment to personal and professional growth. If you’re comfortable, you’re probably not striving quite as hard (or maybe at all) to get to that next level. You’re probably not raising the bar higher and higher because things feel pretty good right where they are.
So why should you care about breaking out of your comfort zone, and why is it so critical you do?
Success and achievement often comes from failure and being told you can’t do something. It takes energy, motivation and action to create these successes. When you’re down and out it’s a lot easier to build up massive energy and gather massive action and put it to bear on building yourself back up.
No one wants to be at the bottom; people naturally want to excel and grow and make themselves and their lives better. When a failure has set you back or an obstacle has been placed in your way it’s a challenge to build the action necessary to build yourself to that next level.
Once you’ve built yourself up a few level though, you’ll find that things are getting better. Life isn’t quite so hard, maybe not as much of a challenge. You’ve proven yourself by overcoming the obstacle that was put in your way. You start to get comfortable, and once that happens your growth and development slows to a crawl.
So if you want to take your life to the next level you have to be prepared to step outside of your comfort zone. You have to be willing to demand more for yourself, and you have to be willing to undertake tasks that may be difficult to start growing again.
There are three reasons you must break out of your comfort zone:
1) You’re not growing
If you want to grow and develop you have to keep yourself challenged.
When you’re completely comfortable with your job or your life or your relationship - with whatever in your life is totally comfortable - you won’t be growing.
It’s very difficult for us to be in a state of non-motion. When we humans aren’t growing up, we’re slipping down. Sometimes this can spur a burst of activity to get back to your comfort zone if you slip below it too much, but rarely will you bust above your comfort zone without conscious effort and action.
2) You’re not learning
Every time I’ve forced myself outside of my comfort zone I’ve learned something very interesting and useful. It’s true, I might learn what doesn’t work, but I’m still learning.
Life is one big learning opportunity. Every outcome, every success, every failure, everything has something we can learn from. If you’re comfortable and maintaining the status quo, I suspect you’re not learning anything terribly useful.
When you step outside of your comfort zone you will end up learning, and you’ll keep yourself in a state where you continue to learn as your circumstances and situation are continually changing.
3) You’re not leading and inspiring
While you’re busy pulling yourself up something interesting happens; when you move up and perform at a new level there will be people at the level you just left who are looking for leadership and inspiration to help them build themselves up as well.
No matter how high you develop your skills and talents, and no matter what exceptional achievements you have, there will always be other people that will look to you as a leader and as inspiration for achieving and growing their own abilities and successes.
Being a leader and inspiring other people is part of the job requirement when you use your unique talents to grow your life in a positive and fulfilling direction. It’s part and parcel of every development and achievement minded person’s journey.
As you achieve and succeed and develop your own life, you will eventually begin to feel a powerful desire to help others.
Once you’re comfortable it can be intimidating to step out of that zone. You have to have the perseverance and desire to take action even when your brain is telling you, “Hey, no need to change! Things are going pretty good right now, just relax and enjoy!” Once you take charge of yourself and generate the motivation and action to take the first step and move outside of your comfort zone you’ll find that it gets easier each time.
I recently decided that I needed to go back to school and get a degree. I have done pretty well for myself without a college degree, but it’s something I wanted to achieve. Having not been in school for over ten years, I can safely say that walking in to the class room last week was definitely stepping outside of my comfort zone.
As the professor was presenting the information on the syllabus I kept thinking to myself, “Are you nuts? You’ll have homework! You haven’t done homework in ten year! You won’t have any free time, you’ll have to study, you’ll have tests! What were you thinking?”
After being in classes for two weeks now I have committed myself to my goal and I’ve grown a little in the process.
Deciding to write this web site was a step outside of my comfort zone. I’ve opened myself up to public scrutiny and possible taunting and ridicule. I’ve created a site where I have to create a stream of fresh content on a regular basis, in addition to fulfilling the responsibilities I have in my professional and personal life.
But I believe that more people will find the articles on this web site information, useful and (hopefully) entertaining. I believe that I’ll help other people by providing them ideas and tools they can use to build themselves up. Again, now that I’ve moved outside of my comfort zone I feel I’ve grown and improved myself a little more.
All you have to do is keep finding comfort zones you have and making a conscious decision to step out of them. When you do you’ll feel it, but the reward and the personal growth is well worth it!
January 19th, 2006
When faced with a tough choices how do you progress and finally make a decision? Some decisions are simple to analyze while others create stress and agony for us while we ponder “what to do.”
There are books about making decisions in an instant, and when pushed into a tough spot most people go with their gut feeling.
Most of the time they’re right.
I’m a huge fan of the quiz-show Jeopardy. Often I’ll be watching - playing along at home - and when an “answer” is revealed I’ll blurt out a “question” (usually the first thing that comes to mind). Often I’ll think to myself, “No, that can’t be right…” and I’ll change my answer before the correct “question” is revealed.
Almost every time I revise my “question” to the “answer” I find I’m wrong. When I trust my gut and go with the first thing my brain called up I find I have a much higher occurrence of being correct.
I’m not right 100% of the time, no one is, but by making a snap decision - and trusting my gut and years of reading trivia to allow my brain to instantly call up the right “question” - I find that I’m right often enough to amaze my wife with the number of “answers” I “question” correctly.
If you’re the kind of person who loves (or hates) to agonize over a decision, researching and endless thinking about options and outcomes, you’ll spend a lot of time deciding and not much time acting. And it’s often the action that makes us successful in our ventures.
I have a friend who never seems to plan things out much, he really flies by the seat of his pants. He trusts his gut and is quick to make a decision - faster than just about anyone else I know. For all of his quick decision making and lack of planning and analyzing he’s remarkably successful.
He’s not successful because he’s only making the right decisions, he’s successful because he’s making a ton of decisions and quickly moving past the bad decisions. What he lacks in detailed planning he makes up for in sheer, massive action!
If you’re not making “gut” decisions because the very idea sounds intimidating the good news is that quick, “gut” decisions can be learned. I used to agonize over restaurant menus; I never knew what I wanted, I would waffle back and forth between several items and I always had to tell the server that I needed another few minutes.
One day I read a book on achievement and it said that Major League baseball hall of fame hitters only connect 3 out of every 10 times they’re at bat and that’s enough to put them in the hall of fame. They make snap decisions on when to swing and they recover quickly from their mistakes. That really sunk in with me - I needed to learn to make quicker decisions. So I started at restaurants.
The next time my wife and I were at a restaurant I started my learning process. I didn’t open the menu and I didn’t think about the options available to me. When the waiter came up to take our order I asked, “What sounds good to you tonight?” They were a little surprised and then said they were planning on getting the salmon. I said, “Gee, that does sound good. I’ll take that.” I didn’t really think it sounded good - I’m more of a steak man myself - but I wanted to force myself to make quick decisions.
It turns out that it was indeed a good meal. I’ve ordered it several times since and it’s one of my non-beef favorites.
So I slowly started making quick decisions at restaurants - trusting my gut and usually walking away full and happy. Slowly I noticed that I started feeling okay while making quick decisions on other, smaller aspects of my life; next came my career and work life and then those small decisions became a little bigger and a little bigger.
Now I feel comfortable trusting my gut in many situations. I’m not crazy - if I think a decision will significantly impact my life I will give it the time and research it’s due to make sure it’s a good decision. But for everything else I try to just reach down inside, do a gut check, and make a decision trusting that I’ll be right more often than I’ll be wrong.
Here are some additional tips to help you ease into trusting your gut when you make decisions. You don’t need to write pages and pages of detail, just enough so you can review your notes later - when you’re distanced from the decision - and see what the results were:
* When you are faced with a decision write down what you’re thinking and feeling. Be as objective as possible!
* Write down the pros of making the decision.
* Write down the cons of not making the decision.
* Write down how you will feel if you make the decision, and what you believe the impact on your life or career will be.
* Write down how you will feel if you don’t make the decision, and what you believe the impact on your life or career will be.
* Write down your “gut” decision.
* Write down your “analyzed” decision.
* Write down the decision you actually make.
After sufficient time has passed - maybe weeks, maybe months - and you’re feeling like you’re reasonable distanced from the decision pull out your notes and review them.
What was the outcome of your decision? How did it ultimately impact your life? Was your “gut” decision right - or if you didn’t make the gut decision do you believe it would have been the better decision?
Hopefully you’ll see that more often than not you’re gut feeling is correct when making a decision. You just have to learn to trust yourself and your abilities; and you have to learn that it’s okay to make decisions quickly because that gives you more chances to put action into your life.
When you have a lot of action you’ll find you make a lot more progress and achieve a lot more than you thought possible!
January 17th, 2006
Recently I was talking with my wife about this web site; asking her thoughts about it. She told me that she thought the articles were good, but she didn’t see anywhere on the site where I mentioned her. Why wasn’t she one of my passions?
I have to admit I was taken aback - how could my wife think she wasn’t one of my passions? Of course she is - she’s supported me through every half-baked, half-cocked or hair-brained scheme I’ve undertaken since we’ve been together. I thought she should just know she’s one of my passions.
But when I started to reflect on it a little more, and really reviewed my site with an eye towards her feelings, I realized that I haven’t really said anything about her or my passion and love for her.
Even thought I thought it was a given, I hadn’t said it. I wasn’t providing enough support myself to the people that let me be successful. Without her support, encouragement and help I wouldn’t be half as successful as I am today. When I think I can’t achieve something, or I’m not as good as I want to be, she’s there, supporting me, encouraging me and making sure she sets me straight when I get too negative.
How often have you done this - taken the people who are your support system for granted? It’s easy to do, and once you start letting these relationships erode, you’re doomed to wander down the path to failure! So how do you keep the relationships in your success support system in tip-top shape?
Not taking a person for granted sounds easy in theory; making sure you never do it in practice is a little more difficult. As people live and work and share close relationships it’s easy to slip into a routine where the status quo and the rigors of daily life keep us focused more on our own needs and wants than on those of others around us.
How you keep focused on them and not yourself isn’t difficult; there isn’t any magic formula or 5-step “secret program.” In the words of a famous advertising campaign; you “just do it.”
Every day do the following for the people that support your success:
- Encourage them
- Challenge them
- Excite them
- Congratulate them
- Help them
- Praise them
- Love them
- Teach them
- Learn from them
- Support them
The easy part is the “doing.” The hard part is keeping your passion for them forefront every day!
I’ll admit for myself that it’s a struggle sometimes. At the end of a long week I have been known to think of myself first and my wife second. I’m ready to relax and unwind and be left alone. But it’s my wife’s support, encouragement and help that gets me through the week in the first place!
Like everything else you can make a habit out of keeping yourself aware of your need to support those that support you. After our conversation I took a small card and wrote, “I keep my wife first in my mind; I support, excite, challenge, help, love, teach, learn from and encourage her every day!”
I keep this card in my wallet and I look at it each morning when I put my wallet in my pants and each night when I take my wallet out of my pants. It’s a constant reminder to not take her for granted, and with time the behaviors will become a habit.
How many people in your life would benefit if you created a card (and habit) like this for yourself?
January 15th, 2006
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