Keeping it Going

I've finally slowed down at work so I can have a more normal schedule. I had a couple of training sessions today, one of them on filing Form 3115 with the IRS to make a change in accounting method (very exciting, let me tell you). Funny enough was that I was pretty much busy all day, but didn't work on much of the tasks for work I wrote into My Daily Director. That's the way things go. A lot of interuptions at work today, I guess. What I did was take the tasks I didn't get to today and wrote them in My Daily Director into my time slots tomorrow.

I was going to play softball tonight as my workout, but the game was rained out so I did a cardio workout at home instead. I've read the Bible and after this post, I'm going to pray and hit the shower before going to sleep. Not much happened today for me, I just kept things moving towards my goals for this week. Things should get a little more exciting later in the week as I may take a vacation day on Thursday. That will give me an opportunity to rest from work, and to get a lot of things accomplished at home - like finishing my tax return.

Keith

Starting Out This Week

In my last post, I said that I would post everyday this week about using My Daily Director. Before launching into how the day went I should share what my First Things are for this week:

Spiritual - Read Bible & Pray Daily
Family - Play with kids & have a date with my wife
Personal Development - Read the book Like a Tree by Mitchell Tolle
Financial - Work on weekly budget, open up a savings account & finish my tax return
Physical - Workout 6 Days
Social - Dinner at In-laws & softball games

For today, the Tasks to Do consisted of working out, reading my Bible & praying, playing with my daughters and posting on this blog. My business tasks today involved getting the last of the March 15 deadline tax extensions & estimates mailed out, finishing up a property tax rendition, working on some Canadian returns that are due Wednesday and interviewing a candidate for an open position.

So how did I do? I was able to clear out the due date calendar at work for today's due date. We mailed out the property tax rendition, I had many phone calls with one of our accountants in Canada and I ended the day at work with the interview. After getting home, I spent a little time with my two daughters before dinner and worked out right after the meal. Then I put my 5 yr old to bed, took a shower and had a quiet time of Bible reading and prayer. All in all, today was a good, productive day. It has been a good start to meeting my goals for this week.

Keith

Crisis Management

In the last few weeks, I have discovered what can happen when you aren't doing much of the directing in your life. As a result you end up in "Crisis Management" where you move on from crisis to crisis figuring out how to take care of each one on the fly. When one crisis is handled, you turn your attention to the next crisis that pops up and handle that one. The problem is you don't seem to get anywhere or make any progress except to the next crisis.

That's how my work has been going on for the past couple of weeks. It's also the reason I have not posted on the blog in a while. Everything seems to be a fire drill up at work. When I take care of one project, there seems to be another that has to be worked on right away. The phone keeps ringing with more requests for my time and my efforts. Perhaps I've been the one being managed instead of me doing the managing.

When I look at the words "It's Your Life. Direct It!" I realize how important that really is. I've been experience life directing me recently and the end result is exhausting. Not only that, but when I let life direct me, it doesn't move me closer to my goals and my dreams. So this week, the emphasis is on taking back the director's chair of my life and moving myself in the direction of the goals for my 90-day plan. This week I'm going to post everyday and update how well I was able to follow the daily plan in My Daily Director.

Does anyone else feel as if they are in crisis management mode? If so, how do you handle it?

Keith

Being a Manager

At the beginning of this year, I was promoted at work to a manager. It was one of my goals when I started there and what I thought would take me two years ended up taking me about a year. So here I am in my 3rd month as a manager in a large corporation.

So how do I like it so far? Well, I currently share supervising duties with another manager and we supervise a staff of 5 people. I end up spending the majority of my time in meetings, interviewing candidates for an open position, training and helping out the staff, and finally letting all my regular work pile up on my desk as I get more projects added to my plate. For example, tomorrow I have a 9:00 meeting which should last for an hour and a half, then I have interviews at 11:00, 2:30 & 4:00. In effect, I have 6 hours tomorrow to get in 9 hours of work, which includes reviewing the staff's work and spending time answering their questions, etc.

Why talk about this? Well not long ago, I received a newsletter from My Daily Director about life being like a river and if I fight, float or navigate. While I'd love to say I navigate the waters of my life, it is clear that at work I tend to float and get bounced all over the place. One of the purposes of using My Daily Director is to help navigate my 90-day plan. I like the way the planner has a section on priorities before filling in all the time slots. It allows me to plan out what are the real priorities in my life - the things I should spend 80% of my time on. Because I have so many different things to do at work, I have to be able to prioritize my projects. I just don't have enough time in the day to get all of it done. Thank goodness for the business priorities section of the planner.

In my first post, I wrote how one of my goals for the 90-day plan was to be more productive at work. How can that be measured? There are severals ways, but one of them is how long it takes me to clear my desk of the projects I have. Another is whether I can get most of my work done without having to put in overtime. In next week's post, I'll update how well I did this week clearing the projects from my desk.

Keith

Healthier Lifestyle

One of the goals in my 90-day plan is to develop a healthier lifestyle through nutrition and exercise. The steps to achieve this goal are to get into the habit of exercising regularly and also to focus on proper nutrition. This will help me lose the 15 lbs I'd like to lose in 90 days. That averages out to losing a little over a pound a week. So far I'm on track as I'm 3 weeks into the plan and I've lost 3 lbs.

Proper nutrition is a key aspect of my plan. A couple of weeks ago, one of my goals was to finish reading the book Ultrametabolism by Dr. Mark Hyman. This book is important to my plan as it serves as the foundation for the nutritional lifestyle I'm looking to attain. It's a great book because Dr. Hyman spends the first half explaining how nutrition, both good and bad, affects our bodies down to a chemical and cellular level. He goes into a lot of detail about the myths of dieting and how the different "diets" out there are not the best things for us nutritionally. Our bodies need fats, carbohydrates and calories, but we need the right kinds. The 2nd part of the book focuses on a plan to get off of foods that are harmful to us and start eating whole foods that provide the right kind of nutrients and to jump start our metabolism. The end result is not a diet, but a lifestyle of eating good foods with weight loss down to the optimum weight for our frames.


Not only am I exercising during the 90 days, I'm also making serious changes to the foods that I eat. No longer am I eating out for lunch at work on a regular basis. I bring breakfast, healthy snacks, and lunch to work. I try to eat 5 times daily to keep my metabolism working. Lifting weights is also a good way to speed up the metabolism. Does all this mean that I won't indulge in the mocha chocolate cheesecake my wife is making for my birthday this week? Seeing that it takes her about 9 hours to make, I can't just let all her hard work go to waste.

This week, my goals are to workout 6 days, have a devotion all 7 days, finish our tax return and trim some of the trees in the yard. I've gotten my strength back after being sick and so it's time to get serious about exercise. Below I've posted the Daily Director pages for this week. Since I have a long commute to work, I've been catching up in the car on all the sermons from church that I've missed since my 4 month old daughter was born. I've got a lot of projects from work listed out that need to get taken care of. If anyone wonders what I mean by Review 3/15 items, that is all of the extensions and estimated tax payments my staff have prepared that I need to review that are due by March 15.

Keith

Interruptions

Let's talk about interruptions - the unplanned events that tend to pop up in our lives. They definitely happen and can have an impact on weekly goals and a 90-day plan. Some interruptions are important things that need to be taken care of. There is space in My Daily Director to write these important interruptions down and find a place for them. The beauty of having "white space" in our time is that we can fit these interruptions into our schedules. However, I want to stress that not all interruptions are important. Some things that pop up only serve to distract us from our goals and keep us from being the true owner of our time. That is, if we allow them. We don't have to take care of every interruption that comes our way. If we did, we would be too busy directing interruptions instead of directing our lives to maximize our goals and purpose.

So why am I talking about interruptions? Last week I had a pretty huge one in the form of getting sick and running a fever for 5 days in a row. Not fun and it pretty much derailed me from my weekly goals. I ended up staying home most of the week and missing the training for work. I was only able to work out 2 times instead of 6. I didn't make it to church so I definitely didn't take my brother and I was even bad about daily quiet times.

I did reach some of my goals so it wasn't a total failure. I ended up losing 2 lbs (one good thing about being sick) and I finished reading Ultrametabolism. I also decided to work on my tax return (one of my 90-day plan goals) when I felt good enough to sit up and finished 75% of that.

Before Monday, I'll post about my nutrition plan and also post the My Daily Director pages for the week.

Keith

Filling it all in

One week into my 90-day plan, and I've already learned some valuable lessons. I'd love to say that I started out like gang busters and followed the plan to the letter, but that's not how it went in reality. I basically stumbled out of the gate and didn't use My Daily Director enough.


See, I had a plan, determined the steps to succeed, had a tool to keep me on task and didn't fully utilize the tool - My Daily Director. One of the first lessons I learned is to give myself grace. I may have started out slowly, but this is a 90-day marathon, and I have 83 days to pick up the pace and meet my goals.



What I love about My Daily Director is it allows me to organize my plan and write down the most important steps in the First Things and Business Priorities section. These are the things that I need to focus most of my attention on for the week. For example, under Physical, I've got exercising 6 days this next week. Under Family, I'm headed out of town to my parents house for the weekend, and I've planned a date night with my wife for Valentine's. As far as work goes, this week is unusual in that I have training/continuing education Monday through Friday, and I won't be in the office at all.



Once the First Things are written down, next comes the Tasks to Do or Delegate section for every day of the week. Here is what my Monday looks like:

• Quiet time (devotion)
• Work out
• Training for work
• Discuss Canadian taxes (for work)
• Check work email from home
• Listen to MP3 of a sermon from church
• Play with the kids

Now it's time to allocate the tasks among the time that I have in the day. For me, I typically leave for work at 6:15 a.m. due to my long commute and do not get home in the evening until about 6:30 p.m. Fridays, I do get to leave the office by noon. Literally half of my 24 hour days are spent at work or driving to and from work.


One of my concerns with my 90-day plan is how I am going to fit in all the necessary steps to achieve my goals. My crazy solution is to start my typical day at 5:00 a.m. We'll see how that goes. I'm not sure how I'm going to get enough sleep, but I don't see much of a choice right now.


I've posted the pages for this week from My Daily Director to show how I filled everything out. My goals for this week:

• Have a daily devotion all 7 days
• Work out 6 days
• Finish the book Ultrametabolism by Dr. Mark Hyman
• Take my brother and his fiance to church with us
• Lose 2 lbs despite Valentine's Day goodies

Next post, I'll update how I did on my goals for this week and talk a little bit about the book I'm reading and how it applies to my 90-day plan.


Keith

A Word from Bill

Well everyone, I am excited about what is happening here at the offices of My Daily Director. We are hearing about all the positive results users are experiencing when they use the planner. As simple as we believe it is to use we know some struggle with getting really organized. We want everyone to have the best experience and satisfaction from their investment. I want as many as possible to participate in this blog and give feedback on this “real life” event.
Keith is ready to go and start us off with his daily entries and how he uses the planner to make it happen in his world. I hope to hear from a lot of people on this blog but my most important goals is to have everyone share in the benefit of seeing how it can really make the life better. This is our mission, to help thousands of people become the lead in their own epic by living a life by design.

Let’s all take an interest, watch what is happening, share our thoughts and enjoy this journey.

Bill

Lights, Camera ... Action!

Have you ever found yourself saying that you are "sick and tired of being sick and tired?" Perhaps you get out of the shower in the morning, look into the mirror and think to yourself, "what in the world happened to me these last few years?" If you've come to a point where you know that the direction you're moving in isn't exactly what you pictured for yourself, then we have some things in common.

Recently I decided that it was time to admit to myself that not only did I need some changes in my life, but that I actually needed to put a plan together to make the changes. THEN TAKE ACTION!

So that's what I've done. I've put together some goals I want to accomplish in the next 90 days, and then put together a plan to achieve those goals. Where does My Daily Director come in to the equation? Well, My Daily Director is the tool I'm using to organize the plan and direct the steps.

Here are the goals I'm planning on achieving in the next 90 days:

• Be more productive & efficient at work (I'll discuss how to measure success in a later post)
• Create a closer relationship with God through developing a daily devotion
• Develop a healthier lifestyle through exercise & nutrition including losing 15 lbs
• Organize the family finances into a software program and file my tax return by April 15th (no extension)
• Read 3 books on personal development and finish the one I've started

Since the plan is for 90 days only, my goals are all short term by design, but the idea is for them to have a long term impact. Over the next 90 days I hope to develop good habits that jump start permanent lifestyle changes. Of course one of those habits will be filling in the pages of My Daily Director on a regular basis - that would be the point of this blog so I at least better do that.

In the next post I'll talk about my experience fitting everything into the Daily Director pages for this week.

Keith