In 23 work days, earning $56,000 is just $2434 per day; Stretched to the US Average 229 work days, that would be $557k. (There are of course diminishing returns). Anyway, moving along: I’m going to track personal metrics in two categories:
- Daily Checklist Items
- Positive numbers
- Activity Numbers
Checklist items are stuff like “morning pages” (did you do them, yes, yes I did today). Affirmations, prayers, working out, expressing gratitude (every single day I’m sending a hand written thank you to someone).
The money is the easy part–relative to other areas of managing your life, money is both easy and trivial. As a Real Estate agent, I always knew I was at most, 30 focused days away from $15,000 in income. That attitude bred complacency in me, but it was also very true. Any time I wanted to get after it, I could call some strangers and get them into a house. Money is the easiest part of life. It’s low hanging fruit on the success/fulfillment totem. It’s necessary, as oxygen is necessary to survive, but the point of life is not–and never will be–money. (That doesn’t mean money is evil. That doesn’t mean that it’s OK to not strive. It just means that it’s not gonna bring fulfillment.)
That said–my mission statement is more or less the raison d’ete for me. I want to love, live, learn, be a credible steward of what I’m grateful to have been blessed with. Being high minded puts a target on you–if I’m a jackass, people say, “ah, Chris, but I thought you were a Christian…shame on you.”
I invite that accountability.
Moving along, then. I think we all know the formula for good days–and a good life. Exercise, being in gratitude, learning, loving and being loved. In the morning, it’s important to get mentally ready..I have intended to do this stuff for years and years, and I’ve done it for brief spurts (2004, namely, was a time that I had my head in the game for a long time, had a great year.
Still–life is largely about numbers. It’s not just about numbers, other stuff really matters, but you can break most of it down into ‘utils’ for those of us with economics degrees. Anyway (checklists will fill your reader, so i’m using a More tag for just the second time in the 6 month history of this blog…
Daily Checklist Items: Beginning of Day
- 5a Wakeup:
- Vitamin|Water|
- Morning Pages
- Breathe X 10 (HT/Hello, My name is Scott)
- Affirmations
- Read Mission Statement
- Write Goals Down (90 Days)
- Write 10 Gratitude Down
- Prayer List:
- Devotional/Bible
- Check In W/Accountability Partner(s)
- Create a list of 30 things or more.
- Write down 1-3 daily objectives to do.
- Comment on 15 blogs
- Hit Gym by 7:30
- Exercise Plan
- Office/Work by 9:15.
- Prospect
End of Day:
- 4×4 Card
- Clothing laid out for next day
- Food Planned Out + Prepped
- Family Meeting W/Heather
- GTD!
- Play W/Jack
- 20 Minutes Clean/Organize
- Numbers posted
- Last Hour Offline
- Bed by 11*
Those things can easily be tracked in a Google Spreadsheet–and a simple cut and paste option to the named range can put them on my /dashboard. The dashboard can chnnge, but I can use <i frames> to box in everything that I want.
Positive Numbers
I’m using ‘positive’ as opposed to ‘normative,’ here, i.e. the way things are vs. the way I want them. There will be normative goals (i.e. have 25k in the checking account–weigh less than 170#) in addition to straight up numbers.
So what i’ll be tracking:
Money Stuff:
- Debt (and what it is/who it is)
- Net Worth
- Checking Account Balance
- Debt Paid In 30 Days
- YTD Income
- QTD Income
- Paypal balance (ah, microsoft. you auto-corrected to papal balance)
- Adsense Balance (I’m going to monetize this blog, and set up keyword sniping blogs)
- Given to Church
- Given to Charity
Again, money is the easiest to track; it is what it is. It doesn’t ‘feel’ a certain way. It just is what it is. And it’s an entry in a book.
Personal Development Stuff
- Weight (Ah, fun)
- Contacts in Database (Heap: Rocks)
- Days On Track in a Row (not an inventory goal)
All of that can easily be tracked on a “highest/lowest” basis.
Activity Numbers (to add to the pile)
- Cardio Minutes
- Pages Read (not an accurate barometer: extracting knowledge is more imoprtant than gross pages read)
- Books finished
- Blog posts written
- Net Contacts added (I want a list of 800-1200 quality people that know like and trust me)
I can then chunk out what I’m trying to do and stick it all in an iframe on a dashboard. This will be a fun little project.
More to come as is always the case.
I’ve got it half done the /dashboard.
Now to the gym.
****NOTICE TO ANYONE FOLLOWING ME: THE NEW DEADLINE STARTING MONDAY IS 7:30 AM**************
* I want to get to bed by 10-1030, but 11 is a must.
{ 0 comments… add one now }