Tim Brian Brady

You Don’t Have Time to Not Workout

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.

Can’t Seem to Get Enough Done in a Week?

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.

A Focus on Focus

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.

Are You Motivated to be Happy?

I spent a few years in Colorado before pot was legal. I’m sure the usage has increased since it became legal… But I knew a lot of people who smoked.

From my core group of friends, there wasn’t much pressure to smoke. But I always found it somewhat amusing how much acquaintances would put the peer pressure on you to try it. Especially when they found out I never had.

To this day, I still haven’t… But not because I have any moral stance on it. I always just kinda thought that life’s too short to dull the senses. And at that point, to each their own. If you’re not hurting someone else, I couldn’t care less if you smoke weed.

This got me thinking about other motivations I have for doing things though. Where does the desire come from?

I’d love to sit here and say I’m always intrinsically motivated and I seek no validation from outside… But I’m human.

But it’s another thing I think should show up on your habits radar. One thing that’s helped me over time shift my motivation was studying the Stoics.

Sure I don’t buy into everything they were talking about, but Stoicism is some useful philosophy.

From a motivation perspective, Stoicism talks about focusing on what you can control.

So when you’re constantly worried about what other people think… or how they look… and you keep measuring yourself against others… you’re playing a losing game. You have no control over what they do.

The whole “Keeping up with the Joneses” was very un-Stoic from that perspective. People weren’t ending up happier as a result of this unspoken competition to keep up with their neighbors.

Now it’s Tik-Tok or Facebook or Instagram. I plan to watch the Social Dilemma today that came out recently on Netflix. I strongly suspect it’s going to touch on many of these points.

Back to motivation though. Being externally motivated is like playing a shell game. You watch and watch and eventually you pick, hoping that you’re right. Maybe the magician called life lets you win a few times before they eventually walk away with all your happiness.

Again, I know it’s Sunday but I’m not preaching. This post was as much to myself as anyone. I’m going to try to be more conscious of my motivations in different situations.

One parting tip that I came across in the book Influence by Robert Cialdini…

Name it when you see it.

In his chapter on consistency, one of his strategies to combat the subconscious pull of consistency that often get’s used in marketing is to call it out when it happens.

Sounds like a good thing to write in your journal too.

Alright. Until tomorrow.

The Danger of “More” Goals

If you’ve read many other posts, you’ll pretty quickly realize I like to read.

But sometimes reading, for me, is nothing but procrastination.

When I get uncomfortable with the next step I need to take, I’ll grab a book and read.

On the surface, this might seem like a pretty sweet coping mechanism. I mean I’m not binging ice cream…

But the reality is, it’s just an escape to me. In many ways, it’s not much different than booting up the computer and playing video games all day if I don’t get anything else out of it.

So recently, I’ve tried to tweak my schedule a bit more. Oddly enough the copywriting challenge I’m putting myself through – it’s still going… but it’s morphed a bit – has been freeing more than limiting on my time.

Let me explain…

Before I created a plan with deadlines each week… I would try to allocate “more time” to learning how to write copy.

The problem with “more” anything regarding goals is that it’s super easy to hit… but never satisfying.

I could read about one extra tip. Not even apply it and I would still know “more” than I did a minute ago.

Did I feel like I was better? Or getting closer to skilled?

Not even close. So then I would try harder… and get no closer.

Enter this challenge.

I have a definite output. Definite targets to hit each week. Something I can check a box on.

The craziest part about this.

Last night, I spent an hour after work putting some more time into the challenge and I was able to hang out with my wife the rest of the evening.

Before this, I might be putzing around all evening trying to do “more”.

Today, for example. I’ve set aside 5 hours to dedicate to writing. I’ll be reading and hand copying promos.

And I will have spent 20 hours towards specific checklist items.

So this afternoon I’ll be able to hang out with my wife.

And tomorrow. A day off.

It’s going to be nice to take the time off without the guilt of feeling like I should have done “more”.