Welcome to the end of the first week in January, the week where more New Year’s resolutions are broken than any other. According a study conducted in 2002, 25% of New Year’s resolutions are broken in the first week alone. The good news is that the very act of resolving to do something increases the likelihood of succes – that same study found that, after 6 months, those who set resolution were 10 times more likely to stick to their resolution than the non setters (46% versus 4%). That’s great news for many of my friends, who have publicly committed on their blogs to New Year’s resolution and goals. Over and over I see many of the same themes:
- New Year’s resolutions to get in shape
- New Year’s resolutions to eat better
- New Year’s resolutions to give up smoking
I have no doubt many of them will be successful. I’ve already discussed the importance of writing down goals, and absolutely believe that increases the likelihood of success. Having the support and social pressure from friends is another kick in the right direction. There’s one thing that has been missing from the discussions I’ve seen online however - how to balance these new resolutions with our prior commitments.
“The Pareto principle … states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.” (Pareto principle, Wikipedia)
If you’re trying to streamline your work-day and boost your income, you might have come across authors telling you “facts” like these:
- 20% of your clients pay 80% of your income.
- 20% of your output produces 80% of your income.
- 20% of your time produces 80% of your income.
Whenever you see the Pareto principle cited, ask yourself “Is this true?” I’d argue that, in many cases, it just isn’t. In my freelance work, I’ve often not seen the Pareto principle upheld: I’ll give you the figures for each of these three claims in turn, so you can see how the clients/output/time to income ratio works for me.
Following the theme of time-management in previous posts about paying myself first with my time, saving 10 hours a week by outsourcing my cooking, and my experiment outsourcing via virtual assistants, I’ve been wondering whether some of the things I do to save money are really just wasting my time. Specifically, I wondered about waiting in long lines for cheaper gas.
I wondered though – if the lines are longer, is it worth it for how much I’m saving, or am I just wasting my time?
For the past couple months I have been noting how much longer it takes to fill up my tank at a cheaper gas station, and I decided to run the numbers and show you my results.
Each week I put aside money for my savings, investments and other expenses before spending any of it. If there is not enough to pay the bills, I cut down on excess spending on extraneous things, but I always put aside money for my long term investments before anything else.
To make sure I put my money where it needs to be, I pay myself first.
If you can pay yourself first with your money – why not with your time? Three weeks ago, I began doing exactly that. Read on to find out about my new experiment about altering my life schedule by waking up early, and focusing on personal goals in the morning.
When you first discovered that great website of Cat Pictures, you thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. You immediately signed up for the newsletter, and for the first couple weeks you loved it! You’d check your email, notice the shiny new newsletter in your inbox and shriek like a little girl seeing Clay Aiken for the first time.
Fast forward 3 months later, and the novelty has worn off. The cat pictures all look the same to you, and yet – you still get that newsletter in your inbox. Instead of unsubscribing though, you delete it.
Why? Why do we continuously allow junk email into our lives we never read, and not opt-out of it? In this article I’ll show why we do what we do, and my trick for simply and effectively breaking free of self inflicted junk email.
What is metawork? Metawork, executed properly, is work done to make sure you can effectively do your work.
Sometimes we THINK we’re working, when really all we’re doing is preparing for work we intend to do someday – work we may never get around to doing. Learning better ways of doing different tasks, testing out different software or tools to do those tasks – but not doing those tasks themselves
Are you guilty of using metawork as an excuse to avoid real work?
