General

I came across an interesting tip for being more productive in my learning schedule this week.

The tip was to add working out to your learning schedule.

As someone that’s really been interested in fitness for a long time, I know the benefits of doing this.

But admittedly, I let it fall to the wayside way too often.

When my morning routine was completely focused around working out… I felt great much more often.

As I wake up today feeling less than stellar, I’m reminded how I need to figure out how to make this part of my routine. Even if it’s not the morning. It needs to be there.

So maybe it’s going for a walk at lunch… or using some special piece of equipment I’ve purchased over the years.

The key is the time needs to get allocated to some kind of exercise. And it needs to be regular.

The follow-up tip for exercise was how often.

And the most counter-intuitive tip related to that? If you struggle with exercising at all. Make it a 7 day a week habit.

What? I hear you saying… I can’t do it one day, but you want seven?!

But Self… Think about it. You gave yourself days off and ‘I’ll make it up tomorrow instead’ became a valid excuse.

Seven days a week doesn’t offer that. Now we’re not hitting the gym for an hour a day in this schedule.

We’re building tiny habits. So maybe we go for a 15 minute walk during lunch… every day. Maybe your weekends start with that walk instead, since your schedule is much less predictable on the weekend.

The key is to schedule it and make it happen.

Keep it small and do it. Grow the habit, don’t try to become an expert all at once.

Yesterday I came across a pretty simple system that I’m going to start applying to my daily routines.

The goal is to improve my productivity so I’m able to spend more time with my wife and family but still get a crazy amount of my personal goals accomplished.

It’s called Daily Weekly Goals. I came across it from Scott Young and in many ways I was already doing a form of this. Or at least doing it sporatically.

Long story short, plan out the goals you have for the week. Then each night pick the goals you’re going to accomplish the next day.

This works perfectly with my schedule at the moment because I work first thing in the morning and I finish my day before I go to bed with an hour of work. So as I wind down that last hour, I’m planning out the next day.

Enough of the hard teaching for the day.

Today I’m tackling some training on Big Ideas. This concept often gets touted as the key to successful promotions, so I want to get better in this area.

To do that, I’m going to review some material and spend much more time coming up with ideas.

Time to get to work. Until tomorrow.

To date this blog has largely been a journal for me…

It’s been a tool to keep me writing and keep me honest, regardless of how many people see it. I’m at least putting it out there so people could check.

But overall, it’s being a disservice to anyone that might stumble by.

You see there’s two primary goals I have with writing every day.

One is to become a better writer who’s writing is good enough to be in-demand in the financial space.

The second is to learn more about the financial space for my own future. I know there’s a million blogs on personal finance out there. But for me, writing promotes understanding.

Having discussions and forcing myself to make connections between finances and stories buries those lessons deeper into my psyche.

Coincidentally, the second does help the first in many ways… just as the first can help the second.

However, the audiences are different.

The audience to write in the financial space is two-fold. The market itself is financial publishers looking for more resources so they can put out more, high quality content.

True, you need to understand their customer demographic as well. Which is where having a blog or something along that line comes into play. It can help build my experience writing to the same audience.

This is just something I’ve been pondering today. I suspect this blog will need to morph into one or the other of those choices and a new website will need to be created for the other.

Maybe over the next few days I’ll start exploring the different problems of each audience. It’s time I start really getting familiar with both.

It’s true.

My morning routine got really thrown off with the loss of power overnight and into my normal start.

Thanks Hurricane Sally!

But… habits are habits.

So here I am punching keys on a keyboard.

It got me thinking about habits again. It’s not my area of expertise. But you can start small with anything.

Here’s a few tips that effectively got me writing today even when I didn’t feel like it:

1. I left my browser opened with the new post ready to go. Hello blinking cursor!
2. I put my laptop beside my bed so I could grab it as soon as I got up and hit the ground running.
3. I made sure the kitchen table was cleared off and clean…. Last night.
4. I’ve been posting regularly and I didn’t want to break the chain.

Super simple things that allowed me to create a post today instead of blowing it off.

Individually, each task isn’t a big to-do. I also didn’t start doing all of them at once.

I’m sure if you catch me in another few weeks my routine may have changed slightly because it’s something I constantly try to improve.

I want to minimize the effort and resistance that comes with that flashing cursor turning into words on a screen.

When I struggle, it tends to be because I’ve got to do one thing or another to prepare to do what I really should be doing.

It’s just a form of procrastination… To combat it, I use proactivation. (Hmm. I may have just made up a word. Score one for morning creativity.)

The whole idea though is I can create a lot of forward momentum towards a task if I’m proactively clearing the path for its completion.

So here I am pushing 300 words in a post where I almost debated with myself about not doing it.

I get a lot done by building these small incremental habits. They’re the compound interest of productivity.

What are some habits you have adopted that have really changed your life? Leave a comment below… or just email me. ([email protected]) I’d love to hear from you.

I’m late to the Robinhood game, admittedly.

I’m only just starting to explore the app and invest anything through it.

As I’m learning about Influence in Robert Cialdini’s book, I can see some strong elements within the app.

1. It makes it possible to be an investor.

It’s a free app available on the app store. The setup process and connecting to your bank is all pretty smooth.

But the real key here is that people want to be investors? Why?

Because investors are making their money work for them. The label investor doesn’t necessarily mean you made money. That’s obviously the goal. But not everyone is successful.

However, the app lets you easily adopt this identity. There’s no calling up a broker or financial advisor. You just unlock your phone and invest through the app.

In Influence, Cialdini even provided an example of someone who just filled out a petition being more likely to adopt the identify of someone that identified with the cause.

So Robinhood knocking down the barriers and getting you to interact (often daily or hourly) as an investor has a huge impact on your mindset.

2. It makes it easy to think of yourself as an investor.

The other factor I’ll touch on today is consistency. Since Robinhood is an app, you can check it often.

In a 2019 article, Asurion reported that Americans check their phone 96 times a day. Or an average of about every 10 minutes.

Robinhood capitalizes on this because you are already in your phone. It’s quick and easy to check your investments. Which reinforces your mindset that you are an investor.

And the cycle continues.

Overall, I think these changes are positive. I believe it should be up to people to invest for their future and not rely on the government to do it all for you.

From that perspective, I think Robinhood brings an ease of access that can have a positive impact on the world.

Finally, take care that you don’t let investing turn you into nothing more than a gambler. Unless that’s your goal. Then more power to you.