I haven’t had a vacation in over a year and a half. And I’m feeling it.
I’ll be back in a few weeks. Check back from time to time whereas I’ll probably be writing about my experiences. Travelling makes me do that. 
Number three on my list of Self Help books that actually helped me would be “The Four Hour Work Week”.
While the book may be chucked full of great information, only a few items actually stuck with me.
This is cool.
Keeping my life in Quadrant 2, everything was getting taken care of except those unforeseen emergencies which life throws at you. But some tasks are about as fun as watching paint dry. Those tasks, Tim argues, can be assigned to a personal assistant. I did one better: I completely automated them.
The results are incredible. No longer am I spending time taking care of bills each month. Everything is automated.
A side benefit to this was discovering I could cut down on the amount of paperwork coming to me. I hate paperwork. My accounts are now all tracked electronically, thus eliminating the time needed to file paperwork.
I had never heard of eLance.com or Guru.com until I read his book. Suddenly assigning out these little tasks that I had no idea how to do made sense. You could pay via credit card and have people carrying out these designs.
Suddenly I realized I could spend more time managing my business rather than doing all the technical aspects of it. Those technical duties suck up a lot of time simply because I’m not great at it.
This has created a great pool of resources that I can now draw on and get results within a matter of days. Granted, most of my resources are located on the other side of the world. But that’s ok: I use that to my advantage.
The second self-help book I read which had an impact on my life was
Even though this book existed for many moons, I never bothered to read it until my mentor verbally flogged me about it. Then I read it.
Two concepts of this book reached me.
Concept 1: Save 10% of your income, no matter what that income might be.
Yes, I also understand this tidbit of wisdom has been around for the longest time. But it wasn’t until I read the book that I decided to truly act on it.
Before, my concept was to always have 3 months worth of living expenses saved up. Now I just wanted to continually expand that number. But it was hard to try and figure out how to cut 10% and stick it into a savings account when rents are coming in, paying mortgages, receiving paychecks . . . and that is when I figured out the Bread Crumb savings plan. It’s still going strong, by the by. A few months back, I increased the amount going into my money-market accounts.
Concept 2: Lady Fortune favors those who take advantage of opportunities.
Sure some lucky person could win the lottery or inherit a large, wealthy estate. For the other ninety-nine percent of us who achieved their personal desires and dreams did so by actively pursuing those ambitions. I’m not talking about researching something to death but rather making something happen.
The more you are actively working on your dreams, the more opportunities will present themselves.
This is one of those undeniable truths I’ve discovered, since changing my direction all those years ago.
Browsing around Barnes and Noble, I couldn’t help but to stop and stare at the ten of thousands of self-help books littering the shelves. It is simply amazing about how you can find any self-improvement book on nearly any topic. “How to deal with the loss of an old cat” or “You too can count to ten”.
It started my brain a-whirring to the many self help books I’ve read over the years. To be honest, only a few had a real impact on my life. By using the word “impact”, I’m talking about a real measurable influence and something which I incorporated into my daily life. Forget the “feel good” books. That buzz is only temporary.
I’m going to outline over the next few days those books which have had a real, measurable impact on my life. It won’t be a book review, but rather what tidbit I pulled and implemented into my life.
From the 90’s, this was probably one of the first self-help books I ever read. The seven habits, clearly outlined in the book, all revolved around making people more effective. Out of the seven, one impacted me directly.
Habit 3: Put first things first
Many moons ago, my level of “proactive” stopped at those items I was truly interested in. For example: having a nice dinner. Other items, like paying bills or filing taxes, always took a back seat. The bill would arrive and I’d be neck-deep in studying for an exam. I knew I had a few weeks to pay the bill and even if I was late, the electricity would not be shut off until the third notice. Before I knew it, the shut off notice would arrive and then I’d have to hustle to the electric company to pay it.
The author generated this chart (Slide 28) that shows the different quadrants people live their lives. There are four quadrants, broken up by “Urgent” and “Non-Urgent” and then divided by “Important” and “Non-Important”. These four categories create four areas where all tasks fall.
Simply explained, Urgent-Important items require immediate attention and induce the highest levels of stress. Non-Urgent, Non-Important activities are pure time wasters, like watching television.
When the author showed that tasks can move from one quadrant to another, due to lack of activity, then something just clicked. Like paying the electric bill. When it first arrives, it’s classified as Important but Non-Urgent (Quadrant 2). As bill sits there, gathering dust, it moves from Quadrant 2 into Quadrant 1. The shut off notice arrives and I’m scrambling to pay it. And the author was right: stress level was quite high.
Seeing these tasks and how they move in these quadrants really got my head screwed on straight. Suddenly I could see that truly effective people focus on Important/Non-Urgent tasks. By dealing with these in a timely manner, they don’t have a chance to become Important/Urgent items which induce stress and take valuable time to correct.
This last week has been rather hectic. I’m gearing up for a vacation (a much needed one) and I had a few loose ends to take care of.
The new version of our software is taking longer than anyone had anticipated. But this is good. I’m really testing the durability of the software this time out. I already told the programmers that I wouldn’t tolerate any crashes. If I make the application crash, I return it and have them fix it. Slowly but surely the duration of someone using the software is growing.
This is important to me simply because my vision is someone sitting in a Starbucks, spending an afternoon using this new program. Right now, the average user of Version 1.0 uses the program for 45 minutes at a stretch. I want to at least be able to use the software for that long of time without it crashing. If the program is continually crashing, this disrupts the work and frustrates the user.
At the end of the day: quality trumps speediness. We’ll still be the first software to encompass all that we do. But if the program doesn’t work very well, what’s the point? The damage is done.
