1) Minimize

The first tip is probably the most important.  You just can’t do everything in life.  When you try to do too many different things and get spread too thin, this is the single biggest threat to becoming a quitter.  Instead, focus on what you really want to spend your time doing and minimize out everything else.  For example, I was signed up for several survey-taking websites.  I had made decent money over the years taking surveys, but I figured out that it took up considerable time to complete the surveys and took time away from what I really wanted to be doing with this blog and other online ventures.  I chose to quit the surveys so I could finish more items that i really wanted.

• Quit what you don’t really want or need so you can focus on finishing the important things.

2) Commit

Once you have cleared away the extraneous items and tasks, look at what you have left.  If you really are passionate about something then take the time to reflect on why you want to accomplish that project and imagine what it will feel like to complete it.  Make a commitment to the task and make a conscious commitment to finishing the task.

• Knowing why you are doing something – and having a vision of what it will feel like to complete it – can help you make it to the end.

3) Serialize

Now that you have committed to a small selection of items, put each part of the task in an order and do the steps one at a time.  One huge risk of being a quitter is taking a shotgun approach and doing a little here and a little there.  You can’t tell how much progress you are making and it isn’t clear what to do next.  If you know exactly what comes next, it makes it easier to overcome that inertia and jump back in when you have time.

• Do things one step at a time to get to the finish.

4) Organize

Having good organizational skills will help you immensely when it comes to finishing projects.  Keep all your supplies or equipment organized and in good shape.  Being organized will help you to track how far along in the project you are so you can clearly know what is left to accomplish.  Also, when everything is well-organized you will find that you want to keep going and it will be easier to pick up where you left off.

• Clarity will help you see where you are in the process and make it easier and more enjoyable to keep going.

5) Segment

This is somewhat in opposition to #1, Minimize.  You can’t completely minimize and only have a single thing to work on, so segment your life into different areas.  Then when you have a specific area, it is much easier to apply all the rest of the rules to a specific segment.  For example, I had a ton of books I wanted to read and I had about 4 different books that I started and never finished.  I segmented “book reading” and got my act together.  Then in this narow space, I was able to apply the other tips much easier.  First, I made a commitment to set aside time for reading and finish everything I had started.  Then, I serialized reading them by putting my books in a stack right on my nightstand and read only the top one.  I also organized my reading by setting up an account at goodreads.com to track the books I had read, were currently reading, and planned to read.

• Divide and conquer: apply all the other tips to each segment of your life.

Logan Challenge

I challenge you today to start with #5 and segment areas of your life.  Then find one segment – an important one, or maybe a small simple area to get you moving – and then apply the tips to that area.

Good luck, and make sure to give me feedback if this was helpful or if you have your own suggestions.

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1) Set Goals

if you don’t have goals for yourself, then there is no way to judge if you are doing good or not.  It is much too easy to let things go without having the focus that a goal gives you.  What ever you decide on for a goal, it should be something tangible and it helps immensely to write them down or document them somehow.  Having a goal of “lose weight” is no good.  A goal of “lose 15 pounds” is better, and “lose 15 pounds in the next 6 months” is even better.  Make sure you quantify your goals, put them in writing, and set a time limit if you can.

2) Do it for Yourself

While doing things to please other people, or for some outside motivation can work sometimes, the only way to truly create good habits is to do it for yourself.  You need to own the task and make it fully yours.  Don’t work on losing weight because your partner wants you to; if you really and truly want to lose weight make it your task.  This gives you not only ownership and power, but it also takes away an easy scapegoat.  By being responsible to yourself you take away the possibility of blaming someone else if you fail.  If you don’t really want it for yourself, then maybe it isn’t right and you should rethink what you are doing.  You can always revisit your ideas in the future if you come to truly want to do it for yourself.

3) Be Consistent

This is really the nature of habits.  Make it habitual and create a rhythm and pattern.  Figure out a weekly schedule for exercise and stick with it.  This also applies to building on your successes, or consistently improving.  If you haven’t exercised in a while, it is much better to start slow and consistently build on that.  If you get out and run one time a week, do that for a month and then add a second day so you are running twice a week.  Be consistent about what you are doing and about building on your habits.

4) Make Your Good Habits Easy

Now this tip is more accurately “make your good habits as easy as possible” because what ever you are working on probably isn’t easy. So do what you can to make your activity as easy as possible. For example, find the best time of day for you to exercise.  If you can get up early and exercise – and it leaves you feeling good all day – then do that.  On the flip side, if you find yourself eating in front of the TV at night, change that routine and maybe exercise in the evening.  Also, try to string things together.  My gym is close to my kid’s school, so when I bring them to school I go dressed to exercise and work out on the way back.  Find simple things that you can change to make the habits easier.

5) Remind yourself Why

When you are in the middle of another set of crunches and you really don’t want to continue, it is hard to see the forest of why you are doing this.  Take time to reflect and continually renew why you are doing what you are working so hard on.  This can be reflecting back on the goals (you did set up goals, right?!), or reflecting on why you made this commitment to yourself.  Whether it is for a healthier, slimmer body, or feeling better about the way you look, it is vitally important to remind yourself why.

Do these tips apply to your situation?  Got a tip yourself or an interesting way you applied these?  Be sure and let me know.

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Reduce!

Start getting rid of stuff.  Go through everything you own and either sell it, donate it, reuse it, or trash it.  If you haven’t used something in a year, the chances are pretty good that you don’t need it.  There are always exceptions to this.  I find it hard to part with books, for example.  Even if I haven’t read a book in a year, I still keep some of them.  Make exceptions for a small number of things – what ever works for you.  Do not make exceptions for everything though!  Find bigger things to get rid of too – getting rid of lots of little things is beneficial, but getting rid of large items that you just don’t need will really make a difference.  When we got a big HDTV, We got rid of our huge entertainment center and the TV sits on a small table.  Even though the TV is bigger we have so much more space in our living room and it feels like a more comfortable room now.

Don’t Pay For Clutter

There is no excuse for having a paid storage area that is just clutter.  The same goes for a house that is too big for you.  Take the opportunity to get rid of your clutter and stop paying for a storage area, or even downsize to a smaller house to save money.

Start Small

Yes, it can be overwhelming when you start to go through all of your stuff.  Pick one room or even one part of one room and start somewhere!  Once you get the hang of it and see the positive impact it will be easier to keep going and going.  Make sure you don’t get stuck and stay small though.  Keep going and work your way through your house, garage, or where ever your clutter is.

Keep It Up

Once you have gone through all of your stuff and reduced it, you aren’t done.  Make a lifestyle paradigm shift and continue to periodically purge your stuff.  Yes, maybe that survived the last purge, but do you really still need it?  Continually go through your stuff and reduce your clutter.

Logan Challenge

Now it is your turn.  I challenge you to go through at least one room and reduce your clutter.  Post your results, tips, or feedback here.

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Notebooks

I keep a notebook for each component of my life.  I currently have three: one for work, one for personal, and one for this blog and other entrepreneurial ideas.  I prefer spiral bound notebooks or composition books over the legal pad style notebooks.  Since I never tear out pages and just keep working my way through them, flipping over pages from a legal pad makes them unwieldy and hard to flip through them back and forth.

Take a sharpie and write your name, the topic, and the start date on the front cover of the notebook.  Now get going taking notes!

Specialize

I want to really stress the importance of keeping the notebooks separate.  I originally started with one notebook and wrote down work and personal information.  I found it was that much harder to locate information when everything was jumbled together.

Don’t be afraid to start new notebooks for new things. When we moved across the country, I started a separate notebook just for the move. This was always by my side and had all my information in one place. I had information for the actual move – moving company, plane info, car transport, plus things like canceling the old utilities and starting up the new ones. This was essential during the move and I referred to this one for a long time after the move.  Also, when we moved again I had a great template for replicating a lot of the details.

Write Down Everything

Every time I talk to someone on the phone I write it down in the appropriate notebook.  Always get the person’s name and always write the date in the margin.  This has helped me so many times that I want to stress it again – write down the name of the person you talked to.  Then months later when there is a problem, you can flip back and say something like “I talked to Mary on February 12 and she said she would reverse that charge”.

Write Something

Even if you aren’t doing anything spectacular or don’t have any todo items to write down, try to write down something as often as you can. This helps to give a frame of reference when you are looking back through the pages. If you are trying to find a particular note it helps to have other things written down which happened at a similar time.

I have gotten in the habit of starting my day off by writing the date in both my personal and work notebooks. I then write up a list of todo items that I want to accomplish that day, if I have any.

Take Them Everywhere

Get in the habit of taking them back and forth to work or wherever you go. I always pack them into my laptop bag with my laptop so I have them at work or at home.  It is very frustrating to not have your notebook when you need it. I also keep the last archived notebooks in by laptop bag too.  Once you find yourself not referring to older notebooks, then safely archive them somewhere at home.

Check Boxes

This is a really handy tip that I do automatically now.  If you write down a todo item in your notebook, make an empty square in the margin on the left.  When you finish the todo item, check it off!  Now you can easily scan the page and see what you have done and what you still need to do.  As a variation, you can draw one line of the “X” when you start working on it and then write the next line of the “X” upon completion.

Use Them As Reference

When you fill a notebook, write the end date on the front cover and save it! I now have years worth of notebooks for reference and can flip back to discover exact dates and names of people that I talked to previously.  If you find yourself coming back to particular information, stick a post-it at that location for quick reference next time, or copy the information to your current notebook.

Thoughts?

Your first todo is to give me feedback! Do you already do anything like this? Is this helpful? Do you have a better system? Please post a comment or email me. I’d be especially interested if you have a great software based solution that you use.

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I hadn’t updated this blog in a while and it was a little daunting to think about all the things I wanted to acomplish.  I have a list of topics I’m waiting to get down on the site and also a ton of ideas in my head for the site design.  Before beginning I took a few minutes and cleaned up my home office and now I feel like I can go all night!

This is a great starting point for my future topic of reducing your possesions to live a simpler life.  I’ll link to it from here once I get it written.

Also, this is a great place to introduce a new concept that I call Logan Challenges.  These will be simple things that I challenge you to do.  Post a comment about what you did and the results.  So here is your first Logan Challenge – clean up the space you are working in right now!

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