The Sunday before last, at about 7ish in the morning, my wife gave birth to (fraternal) twin boys. Willem and Winston join two year old Von to form a healthy all-boy family. My wife is now soundly outnumbered by us four dudes.

So, life has changed dramatically for our previously small family. We have blasted through the two kid ceiling to join the ranks of those who lead more vigorous lives simply by virtue of having to chase more offspring around.

During the two week self wife-imposed paternity leave I’ve been on, I’ve had a chance to reflect on what it is that I’m doing with my time and how I could better serve my family and, I’m not trying to be cheesey here, all of Creation.

In the weeks preceding the birth of the twins I moved my office back home. Even though she was mobile up until the morning she gave birth, she wasn’t exactly what you’d call spry. I wanted to be available to help her if necessary. (Chasing a two year old around in that condition can be a challenge at best.) Being back home and re-learning to work effectively in this environment has been good. Actually, thanks to the Pomodoro Technique, I’ve had some of my most productive days in years.

But what has been most excellent has been the chance to reconnect with my wife and son and just be in proximity to them throughout the day. That in turn has challenged me to start optimizing how I spend my work time. I’ve realized that, although I enjoy work and entrepreneuring things, I want and need to serve my family by being present in their lives and being an compassionate CEO of my family. There’s also so much need surrounding us every day. It’s just way to easy to have our “everyday” blinders on and breeze past it. I want to start being a better (and hopefully more selfless) friend and minister to those around me.

Here’s what I’ve already started to change.

Some of this stuff may be remedial to you but this is probably the first time I’ve earnestly practiced it.

• Plan my work and track how I perform. Wash, Rinse, Repeat: I’m not lazy, I just haven’t historically been good at focusing on important work. The Pomodoro Technique is the first time management system that really makes sense to me and is working.
• Focus on the good opportunities I have today. Stop wasting time wasting time: It’s soooo easy to get caught up in work for work’s sake. I’m talking about stuff that could easily be done away with or outsourced. Bookkeeping, hardware/server management, aimless net surfing – among things that should not occupy much of your time.
  In my opinion, the only work worth doing is the work that is adding a ton of value to the growth of your and your customer’s business/life. Interpret that for your own situation.
• Work fewer hours: It turns out that you can accomplish a lot more in fewer hours if you’re focused. Thank you once again Pomodoro Technique.

We’ll see how all this goes. My mother-in-law has been an AMAZING help by being here full-time since the boys were born. That all comes to an end soon and I’ll be sleeping even less while my wife will have one less set of hands available to her during the day.

I think I’m going to start sharing some of the things I work on during the day with you from here on out. Why not? I’ll start with my involvement in Rocketship in my next post.

Do you budget or need a budget? I’ve found that I spend way more than necessary and often experience cash flow problems if I don’t practice some basic financial planning. The issues with budgeting are twofold:

1. Based on what you’re going to earn in a given period, what are your expenses/investments and how are you going to allocate your money wisely and..
2. when you plan have you considered the time of month that you’ll need your money to meet your obligations? This is called cash flow.

There are a ton of budgeting programs available today for free or small fee but I’ve found myself time and time again referring back to my tried and true Excel budgeting tools. This version of my budgeting tool is the one I use for managing my personal and business financial projections. It’s especially useful if you get income from multiple sources.

If you are interested in getting a copy for yourself visit my blog post at RateState.com to learn more or view the YouTube.com video below to see how it works and download a copy for yourself by clicking on the link below.

Download the Zero-Based budgeting with Business Budget spreadsheet here

photo credit: liquidnight

Something to seriously consider: If you find yourself not working productively – don’t do any work at all!

A rudderless speedboat at full throttle

It’s very easy to begin your day or week with a mental list of all the important things you want to accomplish; some of this work may should even qualify as contributing mightily to your actual success. But what happens if you don’t document your planned work and then conform to some sort of schedule to do the work? You’re like a speedboat without a rudder. You dash to and fro in the oceans of information and diversion called the internet without focus and end up being far less productive than planned.

Doing things that look like work is not a good replacement for actually accomplishing meaningful things. Have you ever heard yourself saying, “Arrgh! I’m sooooo busy!” when you’re really just being…well…busy?

There’s no deeper feeling of satisfaction planning an important and meaningful piece of work and then making a focused effort that leads to its completion. Conversely, knowing you need to get stuff done and then consistently frittering away your time feels like you’ve just kicked your best friend in the balls and cussed out your mom – you feel pretty lame.

Medicine for your troubled mind

So here’s an idea that serves as a kind of reset button for your work life: If you find yourself aimlessly working on mostly unimportant work, stop working and do something totally different and unrelated. Your productive work time will then contrast sharply with your unproductive work time.  And if you do something non-work related you’ll convert what would have been time wasted into time well spent. The hope is that you’ll serve a mild rejuvenating penance while clearing out the jumbled up backlog of unorganized and unprioritized tasks in your head.

There are three steps to the “No productivity = No work” experience:

1. Get away from your work – Run, don’t walk away from your computer/office/desk/shop/sewing machine/backhoe.

2. Do something unrelated to work – This is how you’re being “disciplined” by yourself into not making the same mistake twice!

• Go for a brisk walk around the block.
• Go home early and play with your kids.
• Visit a bookstore and read random magazines about random subjects to expand your knowledge.
• Watch an art film that’ll make you think.
• Pray.
• Exercise vigorously.
• Journal.

3. Plan your work for one hour per week – No hard science here, just basic planning advice. One hour of planning per week should give you a pretty solid outline of what’s important to do and when to do it. Try to group your niggling little tasks into bigger blocks of time.

Sure, your spouse may wonder what the heck you’re doing home at 11:45 am on a Monday but it’ll be better than wasting your time. (In my humble opinion.)

If you’re looking for some more on this subject read my post “How to plan your work quickly” from last August.

Thoughts or insights? Share them in the comments below.

photo credit: 3rdmartini

It’s very easy to spend a large percentage of your time working on projects that aren’t very important. It’s very difficult, but rewarding, to work on only the projects that add a lot of value to your life.

Not very important: Surfing the internet in lieu of getting something done. Answering emails/providing support for old clients who are no longer paying you. “Organizing” things (folders, directories, bookshelves) during normally productive hours. Facebook/MySpace/YouTube for pleasure. Unscheduled goofing off, and anything that isn’t an investment in worthwhile projects. (add your list here)

Important: Planning and reverse engineering your income/revenue for the next six months. Learning what you need to know to be successful and then practicing it until your good at it. Making sales calls. Writing content for your paying customers to read on your company blog. Finding places to advertise and then actually buying the advertising to grow your business. Focusing on one thing at a time. Ruthlessly pruning your activities to include only important stuff.

Etc., etc., etc…

I’m a very busy person. I’m a husband, father, and friend. I’m starting businesses, consulting with clients and advising business beginners – but I find that a lot of the work I do, when evaluated for how much “value” it contributes to my life, is a waste of time.

To be sure, I’m enjoying myself most of the time; I love hanging out with people, helping others succeed, and having fun learning new things and just goofing off. But if I don’t focus on what adds the most value to my life when I’m working then I’ll end with less time and resources to take care of my family, help others and enjoy life.

How do you manage your time to include mostly important things?

The most recent copy of Wired magazine has an article called Chaos Theory. It’s essentially a review of Nicholas Carr’s new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, due on June 7th. Here’s what I learned from reading this article…The Internet is shattering our ability to focus. It’s making us shallower thinkers and dimishing our intelligence.

The author cites a study where experienced internet users were scanned by an MRI along side internet noobs while doing basic internet tasks. The experienced user’s prefrontal cortexes, the part of the brain associated with problem-solving and decision making,  were alive with activity while the other group of first time surfers resembled a city in blackout.

The evidence suggested that the brains of the frequent Internet users had developed distinctive neural pathways because of their Internet use. At first glance there was much rejoicing, “Yeehah! The Internet is making us smarter through increased brain activity. We’re all turning into geniuses!” But as scientist began to study the effects of this neural rewiring some disturbing facts began to reveal themselves.

Here’s a excerpt that jumped out to me:

…Already, though, there is much we know or can surmise-and the news is quite disturbing. Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, and educators point to the same conclusion: When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain.

What are the implications of this? From what I can tell, if we are to accept Mr. Carr’s hypothesis, we are dumbing ourselves down by muting our ability to develop true intelligence; the ability to store data in our long term memory and recall it at will, when necessary. We are instead relying ever more on the Internet mind as our trusted source for answers instead of storing data on our “local hard drives”. Is this us moving our brains to the cloud?

I’ve reserved a copy of The Shallows. I want to learn more about what the Internet may be doing to my already focus-shattered brain.

I am very bad at focusing on things that matter. When it comes to completing a difficult task that requires focused effort I tend to auto-distract myself in a million different ways. I really hate this about myself but I take some perverse comfort in knowing that this is an epidemic problem.

It seems to be an altruism that anything worth doing is going to be difficult. The activities that create success in anything – business, music, friendship – do not tend to be simple. In short, it’s typically not the “low hanging fruit” that fills the plate. I find that when faced with a large problem that will require my brain’s maximum computing power I will downshift into a seemingly “important” task to find relief. In this way unimportant tasks are like crack to a junkie who’s trying to get sober.

Honestly, I can’t believe how easy it is for me to lose my focus and be distracted. It’s laughable. Yet I observe others around me struggling even more with how they conduct their lives of attention. So I’m reading a book that (haha) caught my attention – It’s called Rapt by Winifred Gallagher. Here’s an excerpt from my reading this morning:

WHATEVER YOUR TEMPERAMENT, living the focused life is not about trying to feel happy all the time, which would be both futile and grotesque. Rather, it’s about treating your mind as you would a private garden and being as careful as possible about what you introduce and allow to grow there. Your ability to function comfortably in a a dirty, germy world is just one illustration of your powerful capacity to put mind over matter and control your experience by shifting your focus from counterproductive to adpative thoughts and feelings. Rapt page 53

Of course, being able to focus your attention has benefits beyond being more successful in work. It can contribute to greater happiness in relationships and a greater sense of personal well-being.

If you’re like me and you can be best described as an attention scattered schizoid then you should pick up a copy of Rapt.

photo credit: Christine & Eric

If you want to be good at something, practice it until you’re good at it.*

Haha! Isn’t that hilarious? But it’s true. Here’s a conversation I’ve had too many times to count…

“Hey Mark. I want to start my own business.”

“Really? That’s awesome! You know what I think of that! It’s the best way to financial prosperity – Kapow! And now let’s do a dance of celebration!”

“Yeah,  yeah. Anyways, I’m kind of stuck. How do I start?”

“Well, what do you want to do? Do you have a product or service you want to sell? A unique idea that you’re not sure how to capitalize on?”

“You see, that’s the thing. I want to sell X but I don’t know how to do it!!”

“Ok. Totally. But why don’t you start by looking at where you want to go with X and then reverse engineer your success?”

“What do you mean ‘reverse engineer’ my success?”

“What I mean is, what’s your goal? Define what that successful business would look like and then deconstruct the steps it’d take to achieve it. Figure out what you need to know that you don’t know yet and then learn those things as you take those steps.”

“Yeah…I should go back to business school I guess. Get an MBA or something. Then I could start.”

And from there the excuses for not starting pour in. And they’re all very credible excuses at first glance. I’ve had many versions of the above conversation ranging from  “I just can’t learn how to use this program therefore I can’t do X therefore I’m a failure.” to “I need to get my sub chapter S Delaware LLC set up with my iron clad operating agreement in place before I can get started.”

You don’t have to have a degree, pedigree, trust fund, bank loan, bank account, advisor, mentor, board of directors, letter from your mom or have “The Secret” memorized to get started down the path towards success. What you do need is a determination to learn and practice. All of the other stuff will happen as it needs to happen.

*I realize this whole post is an over simplification of a process that has a thousand sub-components but it’s the truest thing I’ve ever written.

photo credit: Amy Rachel Photography

“Beware of shifting interests!” the wizened old businessman told me as he waggled his gnarled finger at me. “Beware of making changes too quickly, of throwing in the towel before it’s time! But most of all, beware of the siren’s call of new and exciting opportunities that will cause you to neglect what’s just about to reward you!”

O.K., so it wasn’t a wizened old business man. It was a combination of learning from my mistakes and some good counsel from some successful people.

If you don’t focus and see existing opportunities through you’ll never succeed.

I have been hurt by my “shifting interests” many  times in the past. Sure, there are things I’ve started that were never worth the limited time or money I invested in them. Things that had no real market or significant chance of success. But often, I’ve pursued an opportunity until I hit my first real roadblocks – and then given up and moved on to what I considered greener pastures or what was more exciting at that moment in time.

As I’ve matured as a entreprenuer I’ve come to realize this tendency and have pushed through to success in various ventures. This is a huge key to success in business but you’ve got recognize a few key things:

• Any opportunity worth pursuing will become difficult and demoralizing at some point. This is one of the greatest indicators that you’re on the right track – if it was super easy everyone would be doing it.
• Understand the size of your plate. Most of us have an unrealistic idea of how much we can handle at one time. Instead of a large plate with our tasks spread out nicely we end up with a leaning Tower Of Pisa like stack of tasks.
• Learn how to distinguish good ideas from bad ones. In a nutshell: If there’s no market, room for profit, or distribution model you’re out of luck. i.e. Candy coated ten penny nails or DIY dentistry. (As silly as these examples are, there are thousands of businesses starting up this very instant that don’t have a hope of any real success because their missing a basic but critical components of good business.)
• If you’re going to throw a few ideas or ventures against the wall to see what sticks make sure you have a incremental benchmarks to gauge future success. i.e. We’re going to offer this widget/service/book to the public in this limited fashion and create at least five sales then revaluate.) Don’t give up until you have a success/fail moment with those benchmarks.

It’s obviously important to have ideas worth pursuing to begin with – and any entrepreneurial personal soon realizes that good ideas are readily available – but once you have some lined up don’t sabotage your future success by falling prey to shifting interests. Be successful through hard work and the practice of seeing things through to some sort of measured conclusion.

How do you handle the siren’s call of new and exciting opportunities? Or, are you a die-hard unitasker who sees every opportunity to completion?

I start my day with the best of intentions. I know what matters to my bottom line, what I need to delegate, and what I want to accomplish. I’m locked, loaded and ready to go!

I march into my office eager to get started on all my predefined and important work and then…A fuzzy haze washes over me. I find myself staring with unfocused eyes at my computer screen and all that focus has just flown out the window. What happened?!

Even though I know what I need to do – my to do list is evidence of this – I often suffer from some sort of productivity paralysis. It’s a fantastic disappointment to me to look back on my day/week and see what I have not done. Things that should have been reasonably completed within the hours I allot to work.

There’s a deeper significance to my lack of productivity. Time I could be spending with my family and friends is instead filled with make-up work. Being productive in my work is a passion I’m cultivating. I simply don’t want to be defined by the amount of work I do. I’d rather be defined as someone who chooses the right things to do that make a huge difference to the bottom line.

Via LifeHacker.com I found a great article entitled “An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day” by Peter Bregman that gives me hope. I’m going to read and re-read this article a few times and try implementing it this week.

Yesterday started with the best of intentions. I walked into my office in the morning with a vague sense of what I wanted to accomplish. Then I sat down, turned on my computer, and checked my email. Two hours later, after fighting several fires, solving other people’s problems, and dealing with whatever happened to be thrown at me through my computer and phone, I could hardly remember what I had set out to accomplish when I first turned on my computer. I’d been ambushed. And I know better.

Even though I’ll probably always struggle with scheduling out my work throughout the day it really makes sense. I’m going to work on whipping my planning and resulting work into shape.

Let me know how you plan and stay productive in the comments below.

Full Article by Peter Bregman here. (via LifeHacker )