Investing in Your Future

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Thanks for taking the time to visit! Chris

I’m on Holiday at the moment so I have for you an article by Lifestyle Project contributor Tom Church. Please bear with me for comment approval whilst I’m away. Enjoy!

Image by Oude School on Flickr via Creative Commons

“Learn the past, watch the present, and create the future.”

Looking out my bedroom window this morning, through the crisp sunlight, I noticed that the first of my garden trees had begun to shed its’ leaves. ‘Already?’ I thought. Recalling in my half-asleep brain the month, I gasped silently. 2008 was nearly over. It seems only yesterday that I was laughing uncontrollably at the dinner table with my family at Christmas. Surely it hadn’t already been 4 months since I finished school for good?

I began rattling my brains for a solution. There had to be some sort of time delusion going on, what had I done with all this time? Bit by bit, I began piecing together my year: the parties, the exams, the girl friend, the holidays, the jobs, the random events, the ups and the downs. And where did all this leave me standing? In the same room I woke up to in January.

After this mind boggling brain storm, I went downstairs to recover with a hearty breakfast. Whilst eating, I thought about how this year measured up in comparison with previous years. Surprisingly, I could not accurately conclude whether this year was better or worse than the years before, simply because they all seemed exactly the same.

This provoked some panic within me, especially as I began working out the percentage of my expected life I had already lived. It had gone too quickly for my liking, and I was shocked. I looked around me at the interior of my parent’s house where I live. All of this stuff was theirs. How on earth did they manage to acquire so much (rubbish) in the small difference between our ages?

Until today, I had always assumed that these sort of things just happen. You study, you get a job, you earn, you get married, you buy a house, you have kids, you die. Yet, as I have just discovered, this isn’t quite the case. With the economic crisis, I have found it incredibly difficult to find a job recently (well, it took me 2 weeks), and now I have one, I don’t really want it. By gaining a job, I am simply ticking off the next thing in my life check list. Next, get married. With every tick, I am becoming closer to death.

What would happen if I did the opposite? Un-learn, leave my job, spend money, become single, travel around, use protection, live. It sounds extremely appealing. At least it did to me at first.

Whilst in the gym today, I picked up a magazine for the first time entitled Psychology. I’d never read in the gym before, but this took my fancy after having read a blog post, Simple Ways To Increase Your Attractiveness which explains that learning the basics of Psychology will increase your attractiveness.

Within this magazine, there was an article about being honest with yourself and living in the present. There was a golden line (not literally) which initiated a huge thought explosion inside my head, it read, “Imagine that you’re fifty. What have you achieved with your life? Compare this to your present.”

And that’s exactly what I did. It was then that I realised material possessions were not the greatest component of my future happiness (although my vision did include myself looking out through the window of a penthouse apartment). I had a wife, a kid, a fire, a comfortable home, a view of the city and a sunset.

Comparing this to my present life, I sighed, concluding that I had none of these things. It seems that my ‘opposite-life-list’ of being single and spending money won’t lead me to my desired dream of when I am 50 years of age.

My vision showed that I wanted comfort when I was older, secure surroundings for myself and my family. It included a nice place with a view over the city, accurately representing my love of city life and the buzz of people. This means that I have to begin to invest in my life. I hate to think of living and dying alone, it scares me. Online dating sites show that the life check of ‘get married’, just doesn’t happen automatically. You have to work hard to find someone you can share love with.

Now that I have realised this (and hopefully you have too), I can start taking an active role in investing for my future life. This doesn’t mean putting huge amounts of cash into a high-interest bank account, although I would love to if I could. I am starting simple by developing an ‘investment attribute’ within my characteristics. Investing into projects that have long term benefits, for example, exercising every day or eating healthily, will develop a greater level of wisdom and foresight.

These returns should aid me in turning my dream into reality. For now, despite no sleep in the last 38 hours, I am going out to show my appreciation to my friends one last time before they go to University. Who knows, maybe one day, one of them will return this appreciation and save my life.

This article was written by Lifestyle Project contributor Tom Church of The Life of Change blog. Click here to subscribe to his blog. You can also find Tom on Twitter.

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I hope you enjoyed my post. I’d love to hear your comments below or get a Digg or Stumble!

Also be sure to check out my other blog Lists for Life.

A Guide to Using SWOT Analysis to Achieve your Goals

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Image by Josef Stuefer on Flickr via Creative Commons

“Our inner strengths, experiences, and truths cannot be lost, destroyed, or taken away. Every person has an inborn worth and can contribute to the human community. We all can treat one another with dignity and respect, provide opportunities to grow toward our fullest lives and help one another discover and develop our unique gifts. We each deserve this and we all can extend it to others.”

You may or may not have heard of S.W.O.T. analysis. If you haven’t heard of it then I hope this post will explain what it is, how to do it and when you should use it. For those of you who do know what it is, I hope it provides a useful refresher and encourages you to use it and add it to your arsenal of techniques for personal effectiveness. For those of you who do use it regularly, well done, make yourself a cup of tea and go and watch family guy.

S.W.O.T. analysis is a technique which gets you to look at the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of any given situation. I think that you can use it in any scenario, but especially in ones that leave you wondering which way to go on a decision, deciding whether to spend more time (your most precious resource) on something or in goal setting. SWOT is simple and easy to remember.

You can apply SWOT analysis to any number of situations. Sometimes it will be a quick exercise to aid decisions, other times it can be a more in depth look in to a major life decision.

How to use the SWOT Analysis Technique

I think that in order to be effective you should know your own S.W.O.T.  You already know this subconsciously, but spending time focusing on thinking about it and committing it to paper gives deeper thoughts and understanding to your life (and you’re Lifestyle Project).

Starting by taking a piece of A4 paper (I find paper is best for this type of thing as it is free flowing and non-liner. You can always type it up later or put it in to some fancy mind mapping software if you want to.) Spilt the paper in to quadrants and title each one with Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats respectively. Now enter under each heading those items that come to mind in that area for your life. List your strengths; maybe you have good interpersonal skills and are great at presenting for example. Weaknesses; maybe you lack authority or are unskilled in a certain area. What personal opportunities does your life present you with? perhaps you have a friend going on a trek on the Inca Trail and they want you to come with them? That’s a great opportunity that you have which others may not. What about Threats? Maybe you have an overstretched mortgage or a massive credit card debt.

Using your SWOT

Here’s where the SWOT analysis technique comes into its own. It is what you do with your SWOT that is the differentiator between the normal person and the motivated, effective person who wants to improve. Most people will be able to do a SWOT analysis in most situations at a high level. Make yours deeper. Make it is as open, honest and deep as possible you are doing it for yourself and your own development. As will is done subjectively by you it is important to be as honest with yourself as possible to get the most benefit out of the situation. It is often beneficial to discuss your situation with other people that can offer you constructive views.

Acting on your SWOT

So now you’ve done your SWOT, you need to look at each area in turn. This is where you think about the results of the SWOT and what actions you need to give yourself for personal development.

Here’s a checklist to help with this bit:

Strengths

• Are they positive?
• Are you using these to their full potential?
• As they are strengths, can and are they being used to overcome your weaknesses?
• How can you use this strength to its full potential

Weaknesses

• Why is this weakness for you?
• What are/could/should you be doing to overcome this?
• What can you do to minimise the impact of this weakness?

Opportunities

• Are you making the most of these?
• If not making the most of these, why not?
• How can you maximise the benefit of these?

Threats

• What can you do to minimise the impact of these?
• Can you eliminate them?
• What strengths or opportunities can you use to overcome these?
• Is a weakness creating these?

It is how you act on your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats that will help you to achieve your goals.

I would recommend you do a personal SWOT and spend the time to review, and improve on it. Write down key actions you can do to improve your personal SWOT and stick a date in the diary to review it and your progress against the actions you set out for yourself. Review the actions in 1, 3 and 6 months time.

Other (external links):

Think about your Life Goals | Zen Habits

Benjamin Franklin’s Goals

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Thanks for reading.

I hope you enjoyed my post. I’d love to hear your comments below or get a Digg or Stumble!

My leaving work routine

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Here’s a post about productivity.

By Mrs. Maze, Flickr via Creative Commons

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. Bruce Lee

I try to have leaving work routine so that I can go home and have a clear mind and switch off from work. I think that this is a very important part of productivity. By having a leaving work routine, in conjunction with your GTD and other systems, you shouldn’t find yourself waking up in the middle of the night and wondering if you send that email or phoned that person back.

I have a calendar entry called Daily Review and it appears at 4pm daily (unsurprisingly). This is serves two pruposes 1) to remind me to do my leaving work routine and 2) remind me it’s time to go.

Here’s what I try to do as part of my daily review:

1) Review what I have done today – just a couple of minutes look at the items ticked off on my list also shows you what you haven’t done and is high priority. This then enables you to…

2) Get my Inbox to Zero (or as close as I can – I try not to make my self a slave to this). This means that everything that I need to do should be captured on my to-do list.

3) Set my MITs (Most Important Things) to do the next day. For more about this I’ll let Leo over at ZenHabits explain here.

4) Tidy my desk. When I am not working from home I have a minimal ‘mobile office’ consisting of a meeting book, notebook, pad (for capture of tasks and putting my MITs for the day on), scrap paper, USB stick and Pens. At the end of the day I put it all in a plastic pouch and slip it into my laptop bag. Keeps everything together and not loose in my bag.

5) Get out of there and do something good!

10 Reasons why I’m Sticking with Sandy

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I’ve tried quite a few apps RTM, Gcal, every todo list, every calendar sync etc but I find myself getting bored or trying the next one. However, I’m sticking with Sandy. I was trying the think of the reasons for this.

1. Sandy just works
2. It’s cool to have a PA
3. Sandy has accessible developers who welcome your ideas (I feel part of the evolution of Sandy)
4. I live (too much) in email – so Sandy is always there for me to contact easily
5. Did I mention it’s cool to have a PA
6. Sandy (as an application) is simple – let me qualify this comment – OK sometime is gets frustrating if you get the commands a bit wrong but that is part of the fun.
7. I can see Sandy growing and becoming used by more than just those clued up on wed 2.0
8. Sandy is constantly getting new features.
9. Sandy is different and unique. I think I’ve tried lots of todo list applications because there are so many alternatives. There is not really an alternative.
10. Sandy is fun

NO I am not on commission. I just think credit where credit is due. Sandy is free and I am very grateful. Sandy is by no means the perfect application and that is why I suggest new ideas all the time. But that is part of the fun!

Book Review: The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss

I finished reading the 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss last night. I enjoyed reading the book and it has left me with plenty to do and think about. I finished the book in only a few days which is rare for me and shows (for me anyway) a) how easy to read it and b) how interesting and valuable I found the content.

Broadly speaking, the first half of the book (although not prescriptively) focuses on productivity. On reading the book you see that Ferriss is very consistent in his message with the key notes, talks and clips there are on YouTube. He looks at the 80/20 principle (Pareto Efficiency – 20% of input produces 80% of output) and Parkinson’s Law (the theory that tasks will expand to fill the time allowed). Ferriss’s style and explanations make the subject matter clear, it is easy to apply and is concise though not basic. Much of the items discussed in this part of the book (and you will have heard some of the principles) make you think “Yes, you are right – why aren’t I doing that now!” There are similarities in some of his points with Covey’s 7 Habits – such as beginning with the end in mind.

The rest of the book broadly deals with creating more time for yourself. Ferris is known for making people aware of the concept of ‘Personal Outsourcing’. [You will see from my other posts that this is an area I am currently experimenting with and I found out about this fascinating area of lifestyle management through Ferriss's blog and other sources quoting his approach.]

There is a useful but moderately mind-blowing section on ‘income automation’. It all sounds so easy and yet so hard at the same time. I think this is the section I will re-read to get a grip of (not because I didn’t understand it, but because I want to use it). Ferriss also reveals the business model he has used for this; fascinating for a past Business Student such as myself, but by no means a boring text book explanation. Whether I will be able to do this myself remains to be seen, but I am certainly not going to knock the approach until I’ve tried it.
The ‘mini-retirement’ ideas are truly inspiring. However, the steps to release yourself from your current job, though well argued and valid, are made to seem easier than I believe they would be for many people. Without giving too much away here, I could work at home more as I am able to create that flexibility in my job but I have an operation and service level role that would very quickly expose me if I was doing it secretly from the other side of the world. However, Ferris does argue his points well, and his direct but not dismissive approach outlines the common pitfalls, excuses etc. A constant message throughout the book is that we are all accountable to rules that ultimately we are able to control ourselves.
There are a number of life lessons and observations that again are well conveyed. I particularly like the brief note on ‘Decluttering’ which again, far from being prescriptive, is well justified and suitably concise.
The narrative style of Ferriss is direct but rather than Ferriss saying “Do this or you are stupid” his concepts make you think “Why am I being stupid and not doing this”. The book is well written using plenty of case studies, examples and quotes to get the clear message across.

In conclusion, Ferris has an interesting perspective on areas of our lives that have a major impact on our lifestyles. Whilst you may not apply all of concepts to the letter, you can easily select those elements that will bring you the most benefit in your personal lifestyle. Remember that you are the master of your own destiny and this book offers you suggestions and tools to help – ultimately their application is up to you.
As a final note I’d like to address the title “The 4-Hour Work Week”. Ferris did market research to work out the title for his book that would sell the most copies. A 4-Hour work week is a very attractive goal, but perhaps an more extreme example or goal for most people.

Highly Recommended.