Working On Me

It strikes me that there are only eight ways to get rich. Any one or more of these has the capacity to make you wealthy:

1. Inherit from or marry a rich person
2. Steal, commit fraud or some other crime
3. Gamble
4. Entertain or exploit some other personal skill or talent
5. Own a business or represent other talented people
6. Buy and sell goods or services at a profit
7. Invest
8. Limit your spending

The more of these you do, the better your chance of establishing wealth. Very few of them are free from moral issues, but that's something you'll have to work through for yourself.

In my post about goals or dreams, I suggested that you should make your goals public by talking to people about them. To supplement your face-to-face discussions, why not publish your goals in a blog?

You can then try to maintain an on-line record of what you do to get nearer to achieving the goals, what works, what doesn't, and encourage people to contribute their own ideas.

When you have written down your goals, what do you do then? If you do nothing, then the chances are that these goals will never be more than dreams. If you want to attain them, there are some things you need to do, such as:

• Put them up on a wall where you can see them every day. Now and then, move them around so that your brain doesn't just edit them out through over-familiarity.
• Print them on a bookmark that you use in your planner or some other book you open regularly.
• Talk to people about them – either all of them or just one goal per person.
• See if you can become a 'goal buddy' with someone who also has written goals.
• Try and have one conversation every week that's about one or more of your goals.

Constantly challenge yourself (and your goal buddy!) with questions like:

• What have I done this week that gets me nearer these goals?
• What can I do in just ten minutes to progress one of my goals?
• If I spent a whole day working towards just this one goal, what could I achieve?

I am a natural procrastinator. Often, I won't undertake a task until it is very nearly too late. This isn't usually because of a lack of time or a lack of skill, but a lack of will. Of course, leaving everything to the last moment can be a disastrous way to operate, so I have to curb my natural tendencies as much as I can.

The best way I have found to tackle procrastination is to lie to myself. I first came across the technique in the writing of Mark Forster and it capitalises on the comparative ease with which we can fool our unconscious minds.

You need to say to yourself that you are not going to actually do the job you're putting off, but rather that you are just going to prepare to do it, or start it by taking some very trivial action, and then stopping.

Here are some examples:

• I'm not going to call the customer, but I will look up the number and make a note of it.
• I'm not going to write that article, but I'll just brainstorm to identify the main content and ideas.
• I'm not going to clear the spare room, but I will find some bin bags and boxes that will help me.

The idea is all about creeating momentum. I often find that once I've finished the minor task, I just carry on into the major one. Even if I don't, I have genuinely accomplished something and made the job just a little bit smaller anyway.

I am fascinated with the idea of externalising the thought process. I've written about it in several guises here in the blog over the last year, and it seemed appropriate to look at them all together as my hundredth blog post.

Thought happens very quickly, much more quickly than speech, for instance. This is why the mind can wander when we're listening to someone speak; we can process information mentally far more quickly than the typical speed at which a person speaks. But this speed is at a cost. Often before we have fully explored an idea, we have moved on to something else. Worse, even a great idea can be quickly lost of we don't find some way of recording it before it is washed away in the tide of our relentlessly changing thought stream.

The answer is to force the thinking to slow down, to eternalise it. One way to do this is to 'think aloud'. People often say they do their best, clearest thinking when they are talking to someone else. Reducing the thought to the speed of speaking makes us think more deeply and with more care, even when we're talking quite quickly. This is surely one of the reasons why psychoanalysis and counselling are believed to be so worthwhile; when you externalise your thinking, you improve its quality.

I've looked at a number of ways of externalising your thinking in my blog, such as the brainstorm session for one, problem solving with a journal and writing daily goals. All three of these techniques work so well because they slow down and externalise the thought process, and the benefits of this are enormous.

Right now, as an exercise, grab a piece of paper or open a new text file or word processing document. Write at the top an open question you've been wondering about. It needs to be incapable of a yes or no answer. Words like "why" or "how" are good ways to start your question and what follows can be about your work, your relationships, goals or just about anything.

Once you've written the question, start writing some possible answers. Don't force it, and feel free to write around the subject and go off at tangents, but keep coming back to the question itself. I promise you will make real progress far greater than if you had simply continued to ponder the question in your head.

Many professional bodies encourage members to keep a learning log to track their continuing professional development. I've kept one for years and it's repaid the effort many times over.

A learning log is simply a chronological record of what you learn. I set mine out as a table, with these headings:

This last column is one that people often omit, but in my experience it is vital in ensuring that what I learn actually makes a difference in my work or life; by identifying when and how I will apply the learning, I make sure it doesn't just remain theoretical.

My logs go back to 1996 and I review them regularly to make sure I continue to apply all the great things I've learned.

We often hear of people 'going the extra mile'. This means that they make sure they apply extra effort at the end of a job to ensure the best possible outcome. This is a very worthy aim, but often there isn't time to go the extra mile. But usually there's plenty of time to go an extra metre, to do just that little bit more to improve the outcome. Going the extra metre rather than the extra mile takes little effort and is more sustainable as a habit.

One way you can acquire the habit is to ask at the end of every task, "What one thing could I do to make this better?"

Do you have a 'filing pile'? Is there a piece of kitchen worksurface where you put the dishes when you've taken them out of the dishwasher before you then go an deposit them in a cupboard (or just leave some or all of them where they are for a while)?

Inspired in part by David Allen's Getting Things Done principles, I've been trying a new discipline. Once I've picked something up, I determine to put it down only in the right place. That means instead of putting a paper on the filing pile, I file it immediately. Rather than just dumping the clean washing basket on our bed, I empty it, put the clothes away and return the basket to its home. These are all actions I'll have to take eventually, and procrastinating by putting things down in the wrong place - doing half a job, if you like - actually costs me more time in the long run.