What Really Motivates You: Finding the Stuff That Makes Your Goals Effortless.

chris — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:50:03 +0000

Effortless.

That’s an idea, isn’t it? What if everything you wanted could be had effortlessly? What if it wasn’t a struggle to…figure out how to lose weight, to be nice to your kids, make money or write that novel?

The key is not to try harder, to work more, and to struggle more fervently against resistance and distraction. Engagement and effort is a big deal, it helps a lot.

But really–truly–what matters in reality is none of that. It’s finding out what you’d really run through walls for. If you’re trying to use a false motivator to try to get after, it’s never gonna work. I don’t care about ‘being healthy for my kids,’ in any real way. I do care about ‘being a sexy bastard.’

So when I used ‘being healthy for Jack’ or ‘setting a good example,’ I would flail around relosing and gaining the same 12 pounds cyclically. All the time. I trended down in 2008, but not by much. Now? Being a sexy bastard matters. It’s a Real Goal instead of a goal I think I should have. So it’s easy as hell to pass up the cheeseburgers, and get on the goddamn eliptical. I’m losing a solid 4# a week, week in and week out. I’ll hit my long term goal in March or April of next year. And…it’s exciting. I feel WAY better than I have, more alive. More ready to go to war, to battle.

It’s takes no mental energy because I’ve learned what it is that I really want. Not what society thinks I should want, but what I do want. Big difference. Seismic.

So–think about it–what really motivates you? Not “what do you think you should be motivated by,” but “what are you motivated by.” Don’t be embarrassed about it, don’t minimize it, embrace it…let it be your muse and use it as long as you can. It’s a lot more ‘noble’ to be motivated by the health and wellness part of life than it is to want to be a head turning seductive and sexy bastard.

But I’m not noble. I will do my duty and honor my commitments, but I’m unable to care about what I ‘should’ care about. However, what I ‘should’ care about will benefit from me being better, stronger faster.

I gotta know: what truly motivates you?

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Big Damn Goal Post. Part 2, a Budget

chris — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:21:35 +0000

In my last post, I talked about establishing what my expenses were and having an income goal.

The income goal comes from what matters to me–it’s not some arbitrary number. Let’s think about a budget and some debt service/debt retirement:

It’s not natural for me to do a few things: be organized, do a budget. I’ve had to build all sorts of things to do both. GTD works–my version (of which I’m off the wagon currently, and climbing on). But, I need to really know what I’m doing with my dough. See, I’ve pulled myself far out of a deep hole with well-over-six-figures in unsecured debt. Now, I’ve got to get the rest of the way out so I’m able to take another title shot and eff it up again.

I’m organizing a budget, and the first thing I’m going to do is try to establish my minimum ‘burn rate,’ or the number that exists WITHOUT regard to debt service. A car payment can be put off for some months without consequence. Not so much a rent payment (folks, because I wanted to knock out my debt, I radically downsized a while ago. The plan is working, and when our tiny place is clean, it’s fun, and we’re radically decluttering and making each of our possessions fight to stay owned by us.)

The goal is to know–first–what I’m spending. No clue. No clue at all. I know I’m wasting a bunch of money that we can stop wasting.

Rent Payment    $800
Gas Bill    $120
Electric Bill    $140
Internet    $36
Verizon Cell Phone    $133
Health Insurance    $240
Food:    $420
Car Insurance    $40
Health Club    $32
Gas:    $200
Total: $2146

Now–I can prbably get the food down a little bit, if I had to, and if I was real disciplined about it, but that’s been close lately. Let’s gross that up for taxes–assuming I’ll have a tax rate at this level of 35%, and we’re at $2897, * 12 = $34,765 gone before anything else happens. That’s pretty low, and that’s promising.

Most freelance budgets don’t account for taxes. I’m using 35% to make up for state and federal taxes up to $100k, and 45% on income earned after that. Arbitrary to a point but it gives me some cushion. I’ll get a lot of offsets, but I have to pay both sides of the effing payroll tax.

Now, I still have a car payment of $204, and student loan payments of about $175. I also owe about $650/month to repay my “let’s stay out of jail” loans from 2005-2007. The car payment is really nothing. My student loans went berserk when I was faced with going to jail or letting ‘em go. Easy choice, kids, easy friggin choice.

So, my debt service is looking at $1029. That’s 50% of my budget, really. Ouch. Still, manageable. So, let’s gross that up again:

$1389.

Add this to $2897, and we have: $4286/month. $51,432/year. $989 per week.

This doesn’t include a lot of ‘misc’ things currently, like doctor copays and car maintenance. So, let’s gross this thing up yet again, by 25% to cover those things that I missed. Let’s then bring this up to $1236/week. ~$64k a year. That’s simple enough to hit. ~$247/work day for everything, including debt service.

That’s seriously thinking small, but it is a number I know I can do, and easily. The next step is to take the number and subtract 8 weeks vacation (three weeks to move, five weeks for the rest of the year). 52- 8 = 44. = $1454, which brings me close to $300/day.

Remember, kids, this is without ‘savings.’ Debt reduction or debt service is savings. I need to build my cash position to about $15-18k in new money quickly so I have maximum operational flexibility. That won’t be that hard.

I can fine tune this as I go along, as MINT is helping me do that (though the annoyance with MINT is that they don’t letcha put other bills that a bank doesn’t know about into the account–so they can make sure the information is really, really accurate.). We’re also tentatively planning a move to Portland, OR, which is more and more likely to happen as time passes, and that move will cost $4500 bucks. Still, the budget is what it is, requiring that I earn $989 per week, minimum. That’s not that rough, as I’ve certainly been averaging more than that lately. I have some business expenses which break down as follows:

Basecamp: $25/month
HEAP: $9/month
Aweber: $20/month
Hosting: $25/month (i see this getting to be higher next year).
Misc. Software: $35/month. (buying say, photoshop elements)
E-Junkie- $5/month.
Skype: $3/month.

Those are reasonably trivial expenses. Some (Internet/Verizon) have some household overlap–and can be addressed however we want to.

Edit: The actual budget raised a little bit: it trends up to a $69,000 cash need before savings. I added some prescription copays, etc, to it so when the sidebar shows up, please realize that there are some differences. I might circle back to this, but I have a hard target for my income.

All managable.

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What *Really* Motivates You: Finding the Stuff That Makes Your Goals Effortless.

Big Damn Goal Post. Part 2, a Budget

What Really Motivates You: Finding the Stuff That Makes Your Goals Effortless.