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