Well I figured I better provide an update to the back on track experiment seeing as time passes even if I’m not doing so great on my goals …

The trick is to be either more stubborn, or more stupid (depending on how you look at it) … I could quite easily call this experiment a failure, but I prefer to try and learn from my mistakes and keep failing forward … it’s that whole ready fire aim attitude I have…

More Debt, Less Paying work, missing Guitar practices, have only picked up 1 song so far (and should have picked up 4 by now), meditating daily (thats working for me), have been out on the bike, but not enough yet (lack of funds can damper the biking), still smoking.

So what to do?

Well let’s see what I’m not doing right and see if I can correct it mid flight rather then crashing the plane and starting over …

The great ones say (the great ones being Andrew Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Jack Canfield, Eckhart Tolle, Etc… ) They all say that I need to know what my chief aim and purpose in life is, I should write down my goals in a clear and concise manner, that I need to read aloud twice daily this statement of desire and I need to use my power of visualization to see things the way I want them to be as if I have already achieved them.

Considering that part of my ideal happens to be displayed as Tony Stark’s lifestyle, I would say thats a pretty tall order to fill … But I like a good challenge.
So I’m going to have another crack at this… Because I didn’t really do things the way that ALL of the great successful people say that I should, and the point is to listen to what the successful people say right? What do I have to loose from writing it down and reading it aloud everyday? People already think I’m nuts…

Ok,
I’m going to start out with discovering my chief aim and purpose in life. Because thats just so simple for everyone (lmao). Then I’m going to write out my goals in a way that I can repeat them to myself (aloud) daily and I’m going to take 10 min after my meditation time to bone up on my visualization …

Thats the plan …

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Hmm, Lets try that again shall we?

Well, as Craig pointed out in a comment on my last real post, we managed to reduce our electricity consumption by 15% during earth hour… Thats a positive thing.

I have spent the past few days reviewing the positive and negative effects in my life. I managed to remove myself from a situation recently that was negatively affecting myself more then I wanted to admit, and I’m actually quite proud that I removed myself from the situation rather then become sucked in and consumed by it (a past trend). Unfortunately, not everyone involved in this particular situation understands that, and rather then give me the benefit of the doubt, I got additional negativity… But such is life I guess.

At any rate, I’m going to try again to get the ball moving on the blogging …

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Well that didn’t work either, I need to cut myself less slack I think … dinner was yumminess tho

Still working on things, Steve pointed out today that when a project reaches that point where its just degrading to work on its time to get it off the plate… So i;m working late tonight trying to get a handle on the creeping feature-itus, makes me feel dirty to code, project I have on my plate. I’m hoping that a bit of triage time will make the actionable items and next steps clearer. Naturally though, because I want to get back to daily blogs, I figured before i inundate my brain with strange project requests I would type out a blog.

For those that have not yet discovered the world of Drop Box I suggest you go and check it out. http://www.getdropbox.com It’s secure file sharing across the Inter-web that supports versioning, and i’ve been using it for awhile with clients, its simple enough for them to put files in that ‘special’ folder so that I can get files to, or from them easily enough and if they make changes or delete something by mistake I can still get it back. if you want to be nice to me, follow this link to sign up (i get extra free space for the referral). https://www.getdropbox.com/referrals/NTQ4NDEzOQ

Not quite 300 words today, but its a post, and with useful content too. Enjoy your dreams while I dig through a mess and try to make it better.

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Step one: steal underpants …
Step two:
Step three: PROFITS!

No, no, not that step three … although I DO like ‘profits’

Step 3: When you fail, know forgiveness for yourself.

Failure is a requirement in life I think. So long as you’re willing to look at why you failed and learn something from it it can be one of the most positive experiences in the process of attainment of a goal.

So fail fast, fail often. Then pick yourself up, dust yourself off and try again….

I’ve failed at making a daily post on my blog here, w00t!!!
Why? well I think that in part it’s because my desire to blog daily wasn’t strong enough to actually do it daily and keep it up. The desire dwindled as I had more things that required my attention added to my plate.

Thing is *I DO* want to blog daily, but not having the time to write about my day scheduled into a daily routine made it really easy to skip out on, and even though I have this overdue item in my GTD tool staring at me constantly (Write daily blog), its not getting me to get it done … So clearly the GTD stuff is also failing for me. Even though I am getting a lot of things done faster and with better accuracy, having overdue ‘stuff’ that doesn’t provide a sense of urgency doesn’t make them get done any faster.

What I need to do now is the following … (this is how you salvage the failure and turn it into a victory)
1. Not dwell on the failure, it happened, accept it.
2. Decide if you want to try again (in my case the answer is YES)
3. Make a change in the way you were doing the failure. (you would be amazed at how many people never do this)
4. Take the first (or next) step and get moving.

So, because I don’t want to fail again at this. I will try setting aside some time every day (about an hour) to get the posts done. I like the idea of blogging about yesterday where I can provide hindsight, and I know from journal writing that only the important events of the day stick after a sleep… So I will aim for the AM to do this (like now). That should also give me that warm fuzzy feeling I get from knowing that I have accomplished something early in the day which usually motivates me to get more done.
See that? potential to take a failure and not only turn it around, but to make it a productive part of my day and help accomplish even more towards my goals.

Have an uber awesome and fantastic day everyone

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I figured it was time to get an update in here on the Back on Track Experiment…

Thinks are definitely moving in a forward momentum, not yet at the ‘take on a life of their own’ kinda momentum but thats coming. I can feel it. I have slacked in places, and kept my nose to the grindstone in other places, but I’m not satisfied yet with the amount of effort I have been putting in. This is A LOT of effort to keep on top of things… Some of the things in my life have totally slipped, and I’m trying to keep them afloat but haven’t managed to get them all straightened out yet.

The GTD stuff is helping but I’m not as proficient in it as I need to be, and a few times I have caught myself just changing the due date of an over due item … now thats better then forgetting about it forever, but still not getting it done. So I need to work on that Still … My Guitar playing has severally suffered in the past bit I really need to get a day of the week set up with my buddy Jeff to practice … Monday or Tuesday nights would work best.

I need to get a daily schedule running I think, something that will allow me the time to keep on top of the things I need to get done. My sleeping has been retarded lately and I need to get that under control… I think in part its the time of the year and I just don;t want to wake up… I should really start the polyphasic switch soon .. That will give me the ‘time’ i’m after.

Comments, Thoughts, Feedback … Always welcome.

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This week should be a short workweek because of the holiday yesterday … Family Day! … But somehow this week has managed to turn into a longer week then normal, I have a scheduling conflict that requires me to be in Oshawa Today and I usually only work Wed, Thurs, Fri in an office environment (stability, regular pay, etc..) this leaves me Sat, Sun, Mon, Tues to do the freelance stuff on my plate which you would think is more then enough time, but it never is…

The original plan was to work 3 days in an office / part time gig and 3 days on freelance leaving me one day to NOT work. It hasn’t panned out this way yet. But I’m still trying. I know that I’m pretty blessed in the sense that I can get away with working a nine to five grind only three days a week, but I did have to sacrifice a fair bit to accomplish it. (about 50%) of the income I could normally make in a week doing freelance. In the end though the stability is more important then the money because with just freelance you can end up going weeks or months with no work which translates to no pay.

Unfortunately though the flip side of that is the ability for scheduling in appointment in just two of the normal weekdays, I don’t have myself set up yet so that things move fluidly. Which is the criteria that I have marked to call this method of working successful. When I manage to have a few months of continuos work for the freelance and the regular working side and I don;t have to work until 1am or Saturdays, then I will be able to say that this is a good way to work. Until then I’ll hold my judgments.

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