Isn’t it weird that we set our alarm to wake up but not to go to sleep? Isn’t sleep important? In fact, if we get enough sleep, we may not need to set our alarm. Also, it’ll help your sleep cycle if you reduce caffeine usage, drink water, etc. Know what else will help you… Continue reading Have a bedtime

Fear of Missing Out. It’s one of the reasons we stare at our phone so much. And it’s why we can’t say no when something is happening that we’re invited to, even if we should be doing something else. But here’s the thing: if you let fear of missing out determine what you do from… Continue reading FOMO

What’s your “screen time”? Many of us now get reports every Sunday morning telling us how much time we spent staring at our phone the previous week. And many of us cringe when we see the report because it becomes clear just how much time we’re wasting on social media, playing games, etc. You don’t… Continue reading Screen Time

One of the main ideas of “The One Thing” is that we can determine what our top priority should be by asking ourselves this question: what’s the one thing I can do right now such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary? It’s a great way to approach your to-do list.… Continue reading Make the Problem Go Away

Since time is money, and a lot of us trade time for money, it stands to reason that we could save a lot of time if we could make money quickly. And there are ways to do that. One way is by hopping from one company to the next to move up to positions with… Continue reading Want to Get Ahead? Take a Short Cut.

We hear in real estate that it’s about location, location, location. In most areas of life, it’s about timing, timing, timing.

All of this stuff sounds great in theory, but none of it does any good until you try to implement it. And once you do, you’ll find some techniques that work, some that don’t, and some that need to be modified to fit your specific situation.

Though you should try your best to capture all to-do items on a single list, that doesn’t mean you can’t use other tools from time to time. For instance, anytime my wife says “remind me to do X at Y time,” I immediately, in front of her, say “Alexa, remind me to do X at… Continue reading Other Tools

Another way to put your mind on auto-pilot is through the development of Habits. Habits allow us to do routine and sometimes mundane tasks without even thinking about them.

Just because something is on the calendar does not mean it’s set in stone. Consider some of the items on your calendar to be “penciled in” – that’s literally where the phrase comes from. They can always be replaced if a better opportunity or more important task arises. But it’s better to have something planned… Continue reading This or something better

If everything has a place, you don’t have to hunt for it. What do you lose most often? Your keys? Your glasses? Your checkbook? Well, then you should have a place for those things. My wife cleans the house—thoroughly—before the exterminator comes. If we have bugs, she doesn’t want him to think it’s because we’re… Continue reading A Place for Everything

Here’s a tip. If you’re having trouble sleeping because you can’t stop thinking about a problem that needs to be solved, and if using your “external hard drive” doesn’t do the trick, give yourself permission to think about the problem. Instead of trying to relax and clear your mind, you can spend a few minutes… Continue reading Dream About It

My wife sometimes accuses me of procrastinating when I’m doing something at the last minute, but I will explain to her that that was actually the time I had scheduled for the project. It wasn’t poor planning – it was the actual plan. Prior to that time, I had other priorities, and it would have… Continue reading Prioritizing

Here’s another way to use procrastination to your advantage: even if a task is important, sometimes the reason we put it off is because it will require a certain amount of energy or a certain amount of uninterrupted time so we can really focus on the task at hand. If you don’t currently have the… Continue reading Procrastination

When reviewing your to-do list, one task will stick out from the rest. It’s the one you lease want to do. Do it first. This is your subconscious mind’s way of helping you prioritize. It wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t important. Who knew procrastination could actually be a tool? When we start to procrastinate,… Continue reading What do you most dread?

I love New Year’s. It’s the ultimate new beginning, a time for a fresh start, a time to set new goals and get started right away. To me, it makes sense to start something big on a big day. Your birthday is also a good day to make new goals or launch new projects. Clearly,… Continue reading When should you start?

Give yourself deadlines. Don’t use these words, but write something similar: Deadlines are designed to help you inch closer to completing your book by giving yourself a writing habit. It also encourages you to work every day hitting both short-term and long-term goals.

It’s hard to organize everything. But it’s not hard to organize one thing. So pick one thing, do it, and then keep it organized. Maybe grab a drawer, bring it in the living room, and do it while you’re watching TV. My wife’s Grandma always did something while watching TV – sewing buttons on shirts,… Continue reading One bite at a time

My wife has insomnia, which basically means that I have insomnia. So I’m using that time to write this book. Much of it was written between 10pm and midnight while she’s staring at her phone and Jimmy Kimmel plays in the background. If you’re starting a side hustle, you need to find an hour a… Continue reading Find Windows of Time

Another football reference, but one we can all understand. Even if you cannot complete a task, you can make progress. A three-yard run isn’t much, but it’s 3% of a football field, 5% of the way to the endzone if you’re starting at the 20, and 30% of the way to a first down.

Once you’ve put a to-do list together and added time estimates to it, you should have a good idea of what can be completed quickly and what will take a little—or a lot—more time. This can be helpful because it will allow you to take advantage of small windows of time. If you’ve got five… Continue reading Two-Minute Drill

In the game of American Football, the main reason teams have to scramble to score points at the end of the game is because they either wasted or let their opponents kill so much time during the game. Both teams have the same 60 minutes to work with, but some are much better at clock… Continue reading It’s All About Clock Management

One other important point about problems. Sometimes, it’s good that they happened. Many people have an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. But when something does break, we have an opportunity not only to fix it but to actually make it better than it was before. That begs the question: Is “ain’t broke,… Continue reading View problems as opportunities

You’ve heard it before: we all have the same 24 hours in a day. 1,440 minutes. 86,400 seconds. The difference is how we spend that time. Of course, while it is technically true that we all have the same amount of time, not all of that time is our own—many of us work eight hours… Continue reading We all have the same amount of time

Your to-do list will continue to grow and your crystal ball will continue to fill up as you go. The initial data dump into your external hard drive will not be a comprehensive list. More ideas will flow out of your head as you start making plans and set out on your path toward financial… Continue reading A moving target

Your head is not the most efficient place to store ideas, lists, etc. Write everything down in your external hard drive, otherwise you’ll lose it. This includes all thoughts, notes, ideas, etc. It’s not only the to do items that occupy valuable mind space. We need to capture those ideas elsewhere so we can clear… Continue reading External Hard Drive

When you get your oil changed, a lot of places put a sticker in the top corner of your windshield saying when you should get your next oil changed. That’s because it’s better to have a reminder right there so you’ll see it when and where you can do something about it.

Make a list. Add times and required energy to each task.   Separate the items you intend to do on your to do list from the ones you’d like to do one of these days. For example, maybe you need a new roof, and you’d like to get that taken care of, but if you… Continue reading Your To-Do List

There are no surprises when you have a Crystal Ball. They say people cannot predict the future. But that’s not really true. Maybe we can’t predict everything about the future, which is actually good, because if we knew everything that was going to happen, life would be boring – it would be like skipping ahead… Continue reading Crystal Ball

Here’s a short-term idea for getting the house organized, but it’s a little dangerous. Dangerous because unless you complete all the steps, you risk having a really messy room on a long-term basis, but short-term this works great. In “Getting Things Done,” David Allen suggests putting everything in your in-box when putting together your to-do… Continue reading Getting Organized? Have an “In-Room” or “Island of Misfit Toys”