Bankruptcy to Millionaire

Building self discipline is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

Skating by. Do as little as possible to get the job done. Cutting corners. Easily Distracted.

These used to describe me perfectly. The still do alot of the time. But I have a great ambition to break these. And MUST break them and soon. I must FORCE myself to do the things I do not want to do to become successful. Breaking these habits and character traits is tough, but not impossible.

I feel improvement everyday. I’m getting to sleep earlier, giving myself more energy in the day time to be productive, and less time wasted at night on late night useless TV. I’m improving the amount of work I’m getting done everyday. And I’m keeping this blog up to date (not everyday quite yet, but still often).

I still find myself mindlessly surfing at times on information on blogging. And then with the magic of the internet and Wikipedia, I’m all of a sudden studying the chemistry behind converting switch grass to a viable source of fuel for the world. When really, I should be getting productive profit making work accomplished.

This week I broke a couple promises I made to myself. I did not read for the full hour everyday, I instead watched an extra episode of Prison Break season 2 Box Set.

And I did not even make it out for a full day of cold calling for the advertising agency.

THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE TO ME. I MUST SET NEW STANDARDS.

In an effort to bring about change in myself I’ve taken a few extra steps. The first thing, I’ve arranged to have a meeting every Saturday evening with my boss, and owner of Creative Image Advertising (conveniently also my father) to discuss exactly what is expected of me to accomplish in the coming week. We will discuss exactly which days I will be calling. Who I will be calling. And other projects I should begin and finish work on.

This will help me gain a little more traction at work, and keep me on task a little better.

I’ve also MAPPED OUT MY ENTIRE WEEK. My time management skills they… well they SUCK. At times I’m so easily distracted I may get lost for several hours in something completely pointless. So I spent about an hour today developing exactly how and where I am going to spend my time.

I then printed out a work book and the put a comb binding on it. My worksheet looks similar to:

Then at the begging of each day I look at the list of goals I’ve set for the week, and pick the (up to) three most important to accomplish Today. Those will be my Major Accomplishments.

Then a bit of relaxation with TV Time, or personal time. Whether that’s going to the bar, or sitting on my ass watching TV, that’s my zone at veg time.

I’ll follow that up with my B2M Book Club reading (Still on Think and Grow Rich). Then I’ll pop in Halo 3 or Brush up on some web surfing studying and see what’s going on in the blogosphere. Finally, my daily dose of the Daily Show, then off to bed.

This helps me realize where my time is not only spent. But wasted. Once I put this together, I realized where my time is being wasted when I could be enjoying being productive instead of lazy.

The Big Lesson

Nobody is ever perfect. And I don’t expect to stick to this 100%, 100% of the time. But it will help me realize where my time SHOULD be being spent.

And not only that. I realize where my weakness is, and I’m making a valiant attempt to reconcile it, and adapt to it to find a system that WORKS FOR ME. No two peoples minds work exactly the same. So find the holes in your productivity, and figure out the best way to plug them with a system that works for you. Don’t just ignore them. Or worse accept them.