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My mind is everywhere. I want to do this but I need to do this or I want to do this but what if I’m wasting my time with this, maybe I should do this, or maybe I should do both at the same time?

Never really concentrating on one thing long enough to see it to fruition.

Recently, I was concentrating on affirmations and finding out what worked for me and what didn’t. Then I got interested in eating healthy. Then it was exercising. Then it was using the law of attraction more effectively. Then it was de-cluttering my house and keeping it that way. Then it was “maybe I should try to go on a vegetarian diet for a month?” Then I thought maybe I should buy organic meat and try that before going on a vegetarian diet. Then I thought about how I can work fewer hours at work and still get paid the same. Then I thought more about gossiping at work and how I am getting involved again. Then I thought about doing some more 30 day experiments. Then I thought about over 4,000 email messages that are in my yahoo account that I should clean out. And this is not all, that’s just what I can think of right now.

In the end I ended up doing a lot of things in bits and pieces but nothing to full completion.

So, you can see that I did not do anything effectively.

This is the multi-tasking world, with multi-tasking mentality! At work, you should be able to respond to your emails, converse with your colleagues/boss, work on your project and update the reporting sheets all at the same time.

I started looking around at people who were achieving enormous results in a very short period of time and every single one of them had one thing in common. They were all focusing on that particular item with all of their energy.

So…. what would happen if I started doing that? hmm…

I’ve done a lot of 30 day experiments but since I feel like there is so much I want to do, taking a whole month for just one item seems like a long time. It’s not really because time is passing anyways and a month is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Also, a month can easily pass by just in all this confusion. Instead of getting confused, I could have done some one thing for that month. If I started to just do things that I want to or would love to do, I would learn a lot more about myself whether I failed or succeeded.

I have trained myself to be disciplined whenever I need to be. I don’t doubt that I can concentrate on one thing for a whole month for example. It’s just deciding which one thing to concentrate on. It’s more in my mind than anything else.

Still I have to look out for myself and work with myself so instead I will devise some 7 day experiments. I will totally focus on one item for 7 days.

That means not even browsing the internet for other stuff. Totally excluding, even going to forums or websites that are not directly related to my goal of the week. Let’s see what happens!

Ivy Lee’s system

In one of his books Napoleon Hill tells a story about Ivy Lee who was working with Charles Schwab, the head of Bethlehem Steel. Ivy Lee is considered the father of modern public relations.

Charles Schawb told Lee that the biggest problem he had was making his managers more effective – helping them better utilize their time. Lee provided a system to Schwab and told Schwab to first try the system out for a while and then pay him whatever Schwab thought the idea was worth.

This is basically what Ivy Lee told Charles Schwab:

1. List the six most important things you have to do tomorrow
2. Number them in order of importance/priority
3. Take the paper out tomorrow morning – start with 1 and stay with it until it is completed
4. Only then go to 2 and repeat until the end of day. If you don’t finish all six you probably wouldn’t have finished them using any other system anyway

In a short while after trying this system out, Schwab sent Ivy Lee a cheque for $25,000. Now this was in 1920s so you can imagine what that amount is today. This shows you what Schwab thought of Lee’s idea and Napoleon Hill gave it to us for free!

There are literally thousands of time management books, tapes, videos, seminars out there but so often we get caught up in designing really complex systems that we lose track of the basics. If Charles Schwab thought so highly of this basic system, and if this simple system helped people at that level, surely it can help us!

Focus on one thing until it’s done! I am going to devise some experiments for myself and find out what can be achieved in one week!

Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything. It has been an exciting few months. In the beginning I couldn’t post anything because of some problems at my hosting company. Even after everything was fixed and up to speed, I didn’t post anything because I had lost the momentum and was involved in a lot of other things on the side.

I will write about my past few months shortly…

In the last post I discussed the importance of keeping track of our time.  So, yesterday I kept track of how I spent my time.

7  – woke up

7-7:45  – get ready for work, breakfast etc

7:45-8:30 – commute to work; listened to “Ask and it is given” audio book by Esther and Jerry Hicks on the way to work on my ipod

8:30- 4:20 – work

4:20-5 – commute back to work; read a mystery novel

5-6 – dinner and watched a little bit of tv

6-7 – browsing the internet; nothing productive though

7-9:30 – researched about beliefs (my future blog post); read quite a few articles and watched some videos, listened to some podcasts

9:30-10 – shower, ironed clothes for morning etc

10-10:45 – sorted out my receipts, wrote down my expenses for the day in my notebook, read the mystery novel some more, had peppermint tea

10:45 – 11 – lights off went to bed, did my visualization and probably fell asleep by 11:15 pm or so

So, that’s how I spent my time yesterday!

“Time is more valuable than money.  You can get more money but you can not get more time.” – Jim Rohn

One of the smartest things you can do from financing point is to monitor where every single penny is going to.  Monitor your finances, expenses and earnings.  Once you know how much money is coming in and how much is going out and where it’s going out, you are in a better position to design your financial plan.

We all know how much time is coming in.  It’s 24 hours in a day.  All across the world, no matter who you are or how rich or how poor you are, everyone has 24 hours in a day.   At the end of the day we all know that we’ve spent all those 24 hours.  There is no savings here, once the time has gone, it’s gone forever.

Where are you spending your time?

Majority of the people around the world have jobs so let’s say around 10 hours a day are spent on the job.  Now that includes the job itself and commuting.  If you are sleeping around 8 hours a day, you are still left with 6 hours.  Out of those 6 hours let’s take out 2 hours for eating, getting ready for work, showering etc.  Now we’re left with those 4 hours.   What are you doing with those 4 hours?  Are you spending that time watching television?  Are you doing another activity that you enjoy?  Do you have a hobby?  Do you have another job? Do you volunteer?

I am going to start monitoring where my time’s being spent. I still have tomorrow off as a holiday so I will start monitoring my time on tuesday.  This will be a great eye opener.  At the end of the day it always feels like another day has gone by and nothing has been achieved.

This way I can find out exactly what I am doing with my time and make some changes accordingly.