The Art Is Not In Making Money But Keeping It

There is always room for improvement, you know - it’s the biggest room in the house - Louise Liber.
Top 8 Life Hacks aims to improve different life areas such as - health, finance, relationships and self.

Life Hack #3 : Keep Track Of Your Money (Finance)

Huh ! Where did all my money go ?

If you have had this experience even once, you know why keeping track of money is important. And if you haven’t had this experience, trust me, you don’t want to have one

• Why To Track Money

  Tracking money will help you find out where you stand right now. It will give you a black and white picture of how much are you earning, how much are you spending, how are you spending money etc.

  The first few months of tracking money were eye openers for us (me & hubby). We both are dedicated money trackers since the feedback it provides is so powerful. Every month, as we try to find more ways to save money, it is this data which gives us a clear picture of how effective our strategy was. It also gives an early warning if we slip up somewhere.

• Where To Track Money

  • Paper-Pen

    The most basic route of course is paper-pen. List your incoming money on one page and outgoing money on other. The objective is that both totals should match at end of every month. For detailed recordings, ledgers can be used, or paper for each category can be used.

  • Excel

    We use an excel sheet to track everything. The only reason being my hubby can do magic with excel. We record all transactions in detail - what was purchased and where, which category it fits into, which date, credit card or cash, which credit card etc. With help of all this data and using excels sort, filter and formula, we can play with data and find out whatever we want. It’s equivalent to having a software which can generate customized reports as required.

  • Financial Tools
    There are lot of online and offline financial tools (free and paid) available. Following are some links where you can find more about them :
    • Top 21 List Of Financial Software And Application For Efficient Money Management
    • top 25 Web 2.0 Apps for Money, Finance, and Investment
    • Massive Personal Finance Resource List

• How To Track Money

  Forming the habit to record each and every transaction is a bit difficult. Following are three things which helped us a lot :

  • Collect Reciepts

    This ensures that they don’t get lost or forgotten. Depending upon your convenience, you can have one or multiple receipt collectors placed at important places in the house - one in each room or at a central place, in a box or envelope or drawer … whatever works.

  • Record Cash Transactions Immediately

    Sometimes, we don’t get receipts for cash transactions. We tried to remember such transactions and jot them down at night - but there were times we forgot. Later, we tried keeping a small piece of paper and pen handy at all times - but didn’t work out - was too inconvenient. Now we simply add such transactions in mobile under notes section. And delete them after entering into the excel sheet at night.

  • Keep A Fixed Time / Day

    It gets really painful to do all data entry at end of a month. Having a set time every day or a set day every week (whichever works for you) helps a lot. It also ensures that we don’t forget recording transactions - which happened often when we had begun with tracking money.

What is your motivation to track money? And how do you do so? Share in comments.

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Begin What You Want To Do Now. We Have Only This Moment, Sparkling Like A Star In Our Hand - and Melting Like A Snowflake - Marie Beyon Ray

Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning and focused effort - Paul J Meyer. Top 8 Productivity Hacks will help you become productive (as is obvious). It consists of some tips, tricks and ideas to make you more efficient.

Productivity Hack #3 - Manage Your To-Do List

Almost all of us maintain our to-do lists in one form or other. Listing down every task frees mind of worry. It allows mind to focus on now with the confidence that no task will be forgotten.

• To Do List Is Not A Wish List

  To-do list enthusiasts often forget that a to-do list is to take down tasks which you have to do and not those which you wish to do. Turning a to-do list into a wish list makes list too huge and impractical to manage. The list becomes so overwhelming that it starts getting ignored. It is essential to classify items as tasks or wishes before entering them into to-do list.

• Separate To-Do List For Each Category

  I find having a separate to-do list for different categories very efficient. I have lists for household, study/research, blogging, general etc. This makes it easy for me to simply pick up a list and start working on it. I don’t have to scan for items which I can do - since they are already categorized.

• Keep To-Do List Accessible

  I keep each to-do list at a convenient place (based on it’s category) along with a pen for ease of use. One mega benefit of keeping lists at accessible places is that there is no reason to postpone adding items to the list for later. This ensures that I don’t forget adding any items to the list. This also helps to avoid creating multiple lists for a single category.

• Finish What You Start

  A half finished item creates no impact on the to-do list. You obviously can’t half check it or half cancel it. To shorten your to-do list, finish what you start. One main reason to finish off what you start is that if you don’t come back to it later, the time and energy that you have put in so far has all gone waste. Nothing can be more unproductive than that!

• Block A Day For To-Do List

  For those who have a huge to-do list which by it’s sheer size becomes a demotivator, block a day to finish off everything on your to-do list. There is nothing which moves me forward faster than having one dedicated day for canceling items on my list. Don’t forget to reward yourself every time you finish your to-do list.

How do you manage your to-do list? Do share in comments.

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You Have A Very Powerful Mind, That Can Make Anything Happen, If You Keep Yourself Centered - Wayne Dyer

‘People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing - that’s why we recommend it daily. - Zig Ziglar’. Top 8 Motivation Hacks will help you to get motivated and stay motivated. A daily dose of either of these will enable you to stay on track with your goals and achieve them.

Motivation Hack #3: Motivation Busters

Being motivated takes work. We all know that. We work on ourselves to find real reason and cost, we set goals and create milestones, we find our prize and set eye on it, we leave no motivation technique alone simply to get motivated and stay motivated.

However, what we are forgetting is that all of this could go in vain if we don’t take care of motivation busters. Motivation busters are sometimes so powerful that all motivation techniques give up against them. Motivation busters are states of body and mind. Two motivation busters that affect us all -

• Being Stressed

  Agreed, some amount of stress is good in life - it works as a motivator and helps us get things done. But, when we start taking too much stress, it starts affecting us negatively.

  All of us react to stress differently - some freeze and can’t think, some panic and keep thinking in circles, some try to hide and avoid stress producing topics totally … in each case, the common thread is that stress successfully de-motivates us from doing what is required. It affects our capacity to do any kind of productive work, it steals us of our desire to work towards our goals.

  Following are some links on staying stress free -

  • Use Mind Power To Be Stress Free
  • Fun Activities To Refresh & Re-energize
  • Using Power Of Questions To Deal With Stress

• Being Unhealthy

  An unfit body will not support you; it will weaken your motivation. You can be a motivated person in spite of having an unhealthy body, but that will require tremendous amount of inner strength and resolve. You will have to work more hard to keep yourself motivated when your body doesn’t support you. There are lot of ways to get unhealthy -

  • Overwork your body, not supply it with adequate rest
  • Eat too much or too little, eat wrong foods
  • Lack of exercise
  • Inadequate sleep

  We all know what is required to stay healthy - eat, sleep, work and rest. The key however is to acknowledge that we need to start practicing healthy habits from now and not wait for some project to get over - because projects get replaced by projects; there is never a perfect time to start with these.

What are the other un-resourceful states of your body and mind? Sadness? Anger? Laziness? How do you deal with them and ensure that you stay with your goals? Do share in comments.

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Assumptions Are The Termites Of Relationships. - Henry Winkler

There is always room for improvement, you know - it’s the biggest room in the house - Louise Liber.
Top 8 Life Hacks aims to improve different life areas such as - health, finance, relationships and self.

Life Hack #2 : Create A Common Vocabulary (Relationships)

How can it be that two people who speak the same language, interpret it differently?

When sentences like ‘You don’t understand me‘, ‘This is not what I meant‘ start getting regularly used, relationships begin to get difficult, increasingly frustrating actually. It is difficult to digest that what seems like a crystal clear, obvious message to you, could mean something else to your partner.

One way to ensure that your partner gets exactly what you are saying is by creating a common vocabulary. Have a key set of words, phrases and sentences which mean the same thing to both of you (please don’t assume they mean same, talk it out). You can create a common vocabulary by :

• Reading Books

  Any kind of book you pick up will introduce and elaborate certain ideas. Because there is an explanation of each idea used in the book, when both of you read and understand these ideas, you start developing a common set of vocabulary - i.e. you have words and ideas which mean same to both of you.

  It is best if both of you read the book and then discuss it with each other - it enhances your understanding of the concepts and is fun as well. But if, one of you is not keen on reading much, the other can always read and share ideas from the book - they still would mean the same to both of you.

  Two books whose ideas we (me and my partner) use frequently are - Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus - John Gray and Awaken the Giant Within - Anthony Robbins

• Taking A Relationship/Personal Development Course

  The logic to take a course is same as reading books - they will introduce words and ideas which will mean the same to both of you. Taking a course in relationship or personal development area will help you to work on yourself / your relationship as well.

  My partner and I are both quite interested in personal growth. Together we have done three courses from Landmark Education and a 10 Day Vipassana Meditation Course. Each of these courses have impacted our lives tremendously and given us a whole new realm of ideas and key words which have now become a part of our common vocabulary.

• Decoding Hints

  Of course, you can do the same thing by yourself as well. The best place to look for areas where you could create some common vocabulary is where you give hints - that is, where you say something and expect your partner to follow your line of thinking and understand what is it exactly that you want.

  For instance, what does it mean when you say you are tired? Literally, it just means that you are tired, you are sharing how you are feeling with your partner. But by some reasoning of yours, this could also mean - I expect you to help me with household chores today since I am tired, I need some quite time and am not in mood to talk since I am tired. “I am tired” can mean a lot of things to lot of people.

  An even better example - what do you expect your partner to do when you say “I am feeling sad”? For some, this means give me some space, I need to be alone to sort through my feelings. For some this could mean, please sit with me and talk to me, I need a hug.

While all examples that I have used are of couples, the same logic could be applied to all kinds of relationship - parents, siblings, friends etc. It will always work.

What do you use to remove the guessing out of your communication? How do you ensure that your partner gets what you are saying?

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Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives - Anthony Robbins

Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning and focused effort - Paul J Meyer. Top 8 Productivity Hacks will help you become productive (as is obvious). It consists of some tips, tricks and ideas to make you more efficient.

Productivity Hack #2 - Know Your Target

One way to never miss an aim is to shoot first and create a target later where-ever the arrow lands.

Unfortunately, that is not how real life works. To hit the target, we need to know the target. No matter how much we practice on our aim and our shot, without knowing the target, we cannot hit a bulls-eye.

Ditto when it comes to productivity. To know your target means to -

• Know What’s Important In Your Life

  It doesn’t make sense to work hard and improve yourself in some area which doesn’t matter to you.
  You can increase productivity by gaining clarity on what is important to you and what is not.

  As you focus more on your priority list, you start producing results in areas that matter. You put all your efforts in the right place. In addition to that, by knowing what is important to you and focusing on it, you begin eliminating any time you spend on what is not important.

  Sit back for a minute and think what would it take for you to believe you have had a great life. Write out your answer and align your life as per your answer.

• Know What’s Important Right Now

  Lack of clarity and focus are the biggest contributors to being unproductive.

  I don’t know whether this happens to you or not, but this used to happen to me often - I would find myself wasting time doing unnecessary things for hours without even realizing that I am doing so.

  To set this right, before starting any work, I simply tell myself what am I doing - for instance, writing an article, researching on xyz subject, etc. This helps me stay focused on the task in hand.

  I often repeat the exercise after every hour or so. If I have drifted off to doing something else, I can catch myself and start working in the right direction. Over a period of time, the ability to stay focused increases and these hourly reminders though helpful, are not needed.

• Know Which Productivity Tip Is Beneficial To You

  If you search for productivity in Google, you will find more than 86 million results. Not to mention, the staggering amount of books on productivity that are available. It is impossible to apply each and every tip and try out all applications which claim to increase your productivity.

  Hence, first, pick an area where you would like to increase your productivity. And focus on tips available in that area. Try out tips which make sense and will give maximum results. Stay put with those which work for you. If the tips or productivity application doesn’t work for you, scrap it. Not all tips will apply to you.

How do you pick up areas to apply productivity tips to? And how do you select which productivity tip to apply? Do share in comments.

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Be Miserable. Or Motivate Yourself. Whatever Has To Be Done, It’s Always Your Choice - Wayne Dyer

‘People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing - that’s why we recommend it daily. - Zig Ziglar’. Top 8 Motivation Hacks will help you to get motivated and stay motivated. A daily dose of either of these will enable you to stay on track with your goals and achieve them.

Motivation Hack #2: Keep Your Eye On The Prize

Ok, so you sat down with your huge goal and made a plan on how to achieve it. You get your checklist and read - set mini goals - done, set milestones - done, list out some ways to celebrate - done.

You are pumped up, excited and highly motivated. You are all set to start working on the first task on your list. And you look at the first task …

Ew! It’s exercising for an hour or cleaning your messy room or sorting piles of clothes to organize them better. You hate exercising, you don’t know what to start with in your room, sorting through so many clothes gives you a headache. Poof! all motivation gone.

So, what now?

• Accept The Fact, You Cannot Avoid The Task

  It’s amazing how much time we can spend looking for ways to avoid doing something we don’t like; no matter how important that task is. We scour internet for hours, talk to people, buy books (hopefully read them) and yet keep looking, for that magic answer where we might get things done easily - without the hard work.

  What’s even more amazing is what happens if for once we stop fighting and accept that what has to be done, has to be done. Had we invested the same energy & time on the task that we have been avoiding, it could have been finished by now and we would have been way ahead on our path to achieving the goal. Once we admit there are no work arounds, we might be able to work on the not
  so good tasks on our list and happily check them off as done.

  We don’t really have to develop a liking for the task. We just need to get it done. Often, over a period of time, we get creative and find ways to enjoy the journey if not the process. And even if we don’t, it’s ok - no one likes taking bitter medicines - but if you have to take them, then you take them.

• Keep The Big Picture In Mind

  As you already know, breaking our goal into smaller achievable goals/tasks is a great way to take pressure off. We don’t need to focus on achieving the huge goal, we simply need to focus on what needs to be done now. Unfortunately, when we focus only on small tasks, the big picture often gets forgotten. And without the big picture, chances of getting de-motivated are high.

  This means, in spite of creating mini goals, working on our resistance and doing things we don’t like, we can get de-motivated because we are working on mini goals and doing things we don’t like! The reasons why we got motivated could become the reasons for our de-motivation as well if we forget about why we are doing all that in the first place.

  Never, ever forget the big picture, never forget the reason why you are doing all the work. Exercising today for an hour - naah! that’s not motivating; reducing n pounds by end of year is. Cleaning the messy room is not motivating - having a house which is spick-spack clean - always ready for guests is.

• Define What Is The Prize

  If you look at the title of the hack, it’s “Keep Your Eye On The Prize” and not “Keep Your Eye On The Goal”. There is a reason why it’s titled this way. And it’s not because prize is a catchy word. (Well … ok, not “just” because it is catchy ;))

  A prize is something you get after you achieve the target, after you finish what’s required.

  What is the prize that you get on accomplishing the goal? Prize is not what you treat yourself with for achieving the goal or any kind of celebration for that matter. Prize is how is achieving the goal going to change your life for better?

  Aim to lose weight? How will your life change after that? Close your eyes for a minute and live your life n pounds light. How do you feel? How do you live? How does this affect your life, your confidence, your relationships, your career, your health, your happiness … examine each aspect of your life in detail, and more importantly, live it. What you feel right now is what your prize is. That is what you want, not just your goal (of losing n pounds).

  Keep that picture of the life after goal in mind, keep that feeling alive to find the inner drive to jump all the way to your prize.

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Water Is The Most Neglected Nutrient In Your Diet But One Of The Most Vital - Kelly Barton

There is always room for improvement, you know - it’s the biggest room in the house - Louise Liber.
Top 8 Life Hacks aims to improve different life areas such as - health, finance, relationships and self.

Life Hack #1 : Drink Adequate Quantity Of Water (Health)

How do you know when to drink water?

If you answered when you get thirsty, you couldn’t be more wrong. If you are thirsty, you are already dehydrated. To ensure that you don’t get dehydrated, you should keep drinking water at regular intervals.

Why Drink Water

Water is known as a true miracle worker. Benefits of drinking adequate amount of water are -

• For Body
  • De-toxifies your body
  • Relieves constipation
  • Helps maintain blood pressure
  • Reduces chances of getting kidney stones
• For Productivity
  • Improves mental and physical performance
  • Boosts your energy levels
  • Relieves some headaches
  • Releases stress
• For Weight Loss
  • Prevents water retention
  • Increases your metabolism rate
  • Decreases fat deposits
  • Is a natural appetite suppressant
• For Beauty
  • Improves skin
  • Has anti-aging qualities
  • Help reduce zits/pimples on face
  • Makes your skin clean and clear

How Much Water Do You Need

• 8*8 Rule
  • As per the 8*8 you should drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water everyday - that’s 2 quarts - 1.8 liters.
• Calculate By Weight
  • Divide your weight (in pounds) by 2 to get number of ounces you need to drink everyday. Or divide your weight (in kg) by 30 to get number of liters your need to drink everyday.
• Other Factors
  • There are other factors to consider as well - exercise, environment, consumption of dehydrating drinks, illness like flu, vomit or diarrhea etc. If you are losing water in any of above mentioned ways, then you should be having more water to match water lost. There are certain illness types for which reducing water consumption is required. It’s best to go by what doctor says when ill.

How To Drink Adequate Water

• Tips On How To Drink More Water -
  • Keep water within reach - “always”
  • Set up fixed time to drink water using reminders
  • Discard or make difficult to access all options you use in place of water when thirsty - soda, candy, beverages etc
  • Keep track of how much water you drink
  • Drink water first thing in the morning
  • Get into a habit of drinking water - in the morning, on reaching office, before leaving house etc
  • Eat water rich foods
  • Add a dash of lemon or honey for flavor
  • Drink a full glass always (rather than taking sips)

Do you drink enough water? How do you ensure you meet your daily water needs? Share in comments.

A Good Laugh And A Long Sleep Are The Best Cures In The Doctor’s Book. - Irish Proverb

Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning and focused effort - Paul J Meyer. Top 8 Productivity Hacks will help you become productive (as is obvious). It consists of some tips, tricks and ideas to make you more efficient.

Productivity Hack #1 : Plan Your Sleeping Pattern

A lot has been said about becoming an early riser. While I do agree that waking up early has it’s own benefits, it is not mandatory to do so. As long as we sleep for required amount of hours, our body and mind will function well.

• How Many Hours Of Sleep Do You Need:

  An adult normally needs 7-8 hours of sleep everyday. I used to believe that I needed 5. For a long period of time I functioned sleeping only for 5 hours. The rest, somehow got managed by over sleeping on weekends once in a while.

  If you fall under same category as me, you might be truly sleep deprived. In order to find out how much sleep you need, try sleeping and waking everyday without an alarm. You will be surprised to find that you sleep for 10+ hours everyday if you aren’t using the alarm. This will continue till all your sleep debt gets over. And then, you will notice that your sleeping hours will automatically be 7-8 hours. You don’t need an alarm to wake up.

  With all the commitments we have, waking up without alarm is difficult. Hence, for those of you who have morning commitments, the only way to test this is by sleeping early everyday and setting alarm as a last minute resort.

  The easiest way to find out whether you are sleeping for adequate hours is to observe how do you feel after sleep. If you are feeling tired and sleepy, then you still need to sleep.

• My Experiments With Sleeping Patterns:

  Out of curiosity, I tested out varied sleeping patterns this year. I tried becoming an early riser, late sleeper, all nighter etc. I found that getting into a sleep pattern is difficult. However, once the sleep pattern is formed, it absolutely made no difference when I slept and when I woke up as long as I completed my 8 hours of sleep (an hour here and there because we don’t need exact 8 hours sleep everyday).

  I haven’t tried either sleeping pattern for years to know if there are any advantages/disadvantages in the long term. But I do know that in short term, it really doesn’t matter what your sleep pattern is as long as it is fixed.

  What matters is that you have a constant sleep pattern. This is so that your body can set its internal clock accordingly. Sleeping at the same time everyday will help your body to adjust and function well.

• What Is The Ideal Sleep Pattern:

  As I experimented with varied sleep patterns, I noticed that in some cases my productivity peaked and in others, it went down. Basically, whenever I woke up very early or stayed awake late, my productivity was higher. This is because I like to work in large chunks of time together. I find myself more productive when I can sit at a task and work on it for hours. The more interruptions I have, the less productive I get. And hence, early morning period or the late night period suits me.

  Whenever I woke up sometime after 9, my day simply went away in household chores. Even if I did get some time in between for other work, I didn’t want to work on it since I knew I will have to get up again by the time I get in flow.

  One more point to consider is whether you can use all your waking hours productively. For a long time, I stopped working after sunset to spend time with self, family and friends. This works well when I go to sleep within a few hours. However, if I am following a late rising pattern then this would leave very few working hours.

• How To Form A Sleep Pattern:

  I have written at length on ‘How To Become An Early Sleeper‘. The concepts mentioned there, will work for any kind of sleep pattern that you want to form.

  Apart from that technique, what one can also do is start moving one hour closer towards the ideal waking/sleeping time. Once you get comfortable waking/sleeping one hour early/late, repeat - till you reach the desired time. This way you can form your desired sleeping pattern comfortably.

  I am pursuing this method right now to start getting up early. One huge advantage with this method is that your body doesn’t fight much - since there are no drastic changes in sleep timings. This method however, takes a lot of time since we have to go step by step.

• When You Can’t Help Sleeping Irregularly:

  In spite of everything you know about benefits of having good and constant sleep time, there will times when you simply can’t help having irregular sleep patterns. Your job is such, you have a kid at home, you have to travel too much etc. In these times, two things can help -

  1. Take Power Naps
  2. Meditate

What is your experience of forming a sleep pattern? Are there any tips you can share? Share in comments.

First, have a definite, clear practical idea; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end. - Aristotle

‘People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing - that’s why we recommend it daily. - Zig Ziglar’. Top 8 Motivation Hacks will help you to get motivated and stay motivated. A daily dose of either of these will enable you to stay on track with your goals and achieve them.

Motivation Hack #1: Set & Celebrate Milestones

A huge goal or a long term goal can appear quite overwhelming when seen as one unit. They make it seem as if success is far away - not even within visible range. And when our days are filled with long hours of toiling without any kind of achievement in sight, it gets difficult to stay motivated. For tough times like these -

• Create Mini Goals

  Break your mega goal into a set of mini goals. A mini goal should seem easy to achieve. You will notice, when the same goal is seen as a stream of small connecting goals, it suddenly seems achievable. Success then does not seem impossible.

  Creating mini goals make you think through the plan to achieve your goal well. This helps in creating a detailed plan. If there is anything that you had missed considering earlier, the process of creating mini goals will bring those into focus. Creating mini goals brings clarity to your action plan.

• Set Milestones

  Within the stream of mini goals, set a milestone after some mini goals. For instance, If you have 20 mini goals, your milestone can be at every fifth mini goal.

  Setting milestones help us highlight places in our stream of mini goals where we should step back and evaluate progress, learn from success and hardships, and fine tune the action plan accordingly.

• Celebrate Milestones

  Once you reach a milestone, celebrate. One reason to create milestone is that on reaching them you know you have progressed, you know you have succeeded in achieving a part of your goal. And every success is a cause for celebration.

  Don’t wait till you complete your entire goal to celebrate. Celebrate in between - with every small victory. These smaller celebrations will push you forward and keep you energized to move towards your goals. Too much of celebration might leave no time to work towards your goals. Hence celebrate on reaching milestones and not mini goals.

You Are The Author Of Your Biography - Robin Sharma

I don’t like new year resolutions. They have never worked for me. However, I like the idea of reviewing life annually and setting goals for the next year. In a way, subtly we are giving life direction, we are taking time to pause, reflect and figure out what we really want from life, what’s important. Of course, this doesn’t have to be at the end of the year always. We can have new year resolutions anytime of the year - as long as we follow up annually (i.e. on a yearly basis).

Why New Year Resolutions Don’t Work

I finally figured out why new year resolutions don’t work (at least for me).

• Failure To Plan, Commit Or Take Action.

  • Plan
    Working in a haphazard manner, without taking time to formulate a plan on how to achieve each goal, will rarely work. Sooner or later, we need to see facts for what they are and make some kind of plan - even if it is as small as ‘I will ____ for 30 mins everyday’. If we leave doing the required activities to chance, as our work and commitments increase, plans are forgotten or take a back seat.
  • Commit
    Making some kind of lasting change requires a phenomenal commitment from our side. A commitment to stay on path even when the going gets tough. A commitment to keep working on the plan, improvising it with feedback which our actions give us. A commitment to never give up in all kind of scenarios - even when we want to give up.
  • Take Action
    I know I don’t need to write much about taking action. Without action, the first two become meaningless. Planning and commitment make no sense if they are not followed by action. Action is the biggest divide between people who achieve their goals and who don’t.

• Differentiating One Time Goals With Life Time Goals.

  How we define our goals often play a huge role in how they turn out in the end. For instance, I have tried a lot of times to lose weight. And succeeded a lot of times as well. The frustration is, that what I achieve after one year of healthy diet and exercise soon goes away and I again fall in the range of pleasantly chubby to fat.

  This is not agreeable with me. After the amount of work, motivation, exercise, diet, controlling cravings etc goes into this one goal, it better stay for long term (preferably lifetime). The reason why this does not happen is that I define my goals incorrectly. And my life turns out in the manner I define my goals.

  The way I define goal is - I want to fit into an old pair of jeans or lose xxx weight. This is a one time goal. I fit into that pair of jeans, mission accomplished. Doesn’t matter what happens later on.

  What I want is - I want to weigh xxx and stay at that weight (or weight range) for lifetime. I want to “always” fit into that pair of old jeans. This is a lifetime goal.

  As is obvious, the requirements drastically change when I define my goals as one time or lifetime. And with changing requirements, so do the required plans, commitments and actions.

2009 Goals

Keeping in mind this new found knowledge, I plan my goals for next year a little differently. I am segregating my goals in two areas - one time goals and lifetime goals.

• One Time Goals

  • Read One Book A Week

    Read a minimum of 52 books this year. At least one book every week. My reading interests fall into personal development, management, spiritual, (auto) biography and fiction category. I want to read at least 2 of each kind. For the rest, either will do; based on what interests me.

    Reading is not difficult for me. I read at a good speed. And reading is one of my favorite hobbies. The reason to list this specifically is because with increasing work load, I find myself reading infrequently. This will ensure I take out time every week (probably every day) to read a little.

  • Lose 30 Pounds

    New year resolution would be incomplete without a mention of losing weight. I want to lose these 30 pounds without any kind of crazy dieting (this has been my criteria every time I try to lose weight. No crazy diets, no starving self). And yes, I still have a couple of old jeans and kurtis I want to fit into.

  • Learn A New Dance Style With Partner

    As I looked into the relationship area, I couldn’t pick up one thing I wanted to improve. Spending time, communication, having fun, talking about finance, doing household stuff together … everything got a tick mark and each activity scored 100%. I couldn’t pick up anything to improve.

    So I simply picked up a fun activity to do together. Learning a new dance should be a lot of fun - something to create memories.

  • One Adventure - To Face Fear

    I want to do one crazy activity this year - could be going for a roller coaster ride (I fear roller coasters) or sky dive or perhaps something else - something new, adventurous which I usually wouldn’t do or haven’t done till now.

  • Master 2 Cuisines

    Being as fond of food that I am, I would love to learn 2 cuisines this year. Last year, my learning curve on learning new recipes was steep. But with time, it reached a plateau. Attempting to master 2 cuisines will bring focus back to cooking, make it challenging and enjoyable. I would be learning Punjabi (North Indian) and Indian Chinese.

• Life Time Goals

  Lifetime goals are goals which I would like to stay with forever - make goals my habits basically - a permanent part of me and my life.

  • Get Passionate About Exercise

    One reason why I gain back all the weight is that I stop exercising after reaching the goal. I figured that if I get passionate about exercising in any form, then I will stick to it for lifelong. If I enjoy exercising, the probability that I will stick to it becomes high - everything turns in my favour. So this year, my goal is to experiment different types of exercises for a couple of months and find ways to make each of them enjoyable. Doing different forms of exercises will keep the newness alive, I will not get bored and by end of year, I will have learned n ways of exercising. I can then form my own ideal exercise strategy for life.

  • Save & Invest
    I love money and everything to do with it - be it saving money, earning money or investing money. I live a simple life, don’t spend lot of money on ‘things’ and always think twice before spending a dime. Year before last, I also had a great time learning about investing in equity, mutual funds, gold, government schemes etc.

    This years plan is to find creative ways to save money without creating a substantial impact on my life and start investing again (2008 was a no-investing year because of the way financial markets were. We focussed on paying off debts instead.).

  • Meditate

    Meditation is quite beneficial in a lot of ways. I meditate only when I need one of the benefits of meditation - increased focus, peace, connect within, as a stress-buster etc. I would like to start meditating everyday for at least 15 minutes.

  • A Habit To Stay In Touch

    As easy as this one sounds, it is a high priority item on my list. I haven’t ever needed to consciously stay in touch with those important because they are always around - there is no need to specifically attempt to stay in touch - it naturally happens.

    However, now that my friends are all over the world, and I have moved quite far off from my family and friends in India (me in US), this has become a requisite.

Create A Foundation

Along with these one time and lifetime goals, I have charted out my plans for this blog as well. In addition to these, there are two more blogs which are work-in-progress right now. I would be launching one in the first quarter and the second one in second quarter of 2009.

I usually don’t pick up so many life changing activities in a year. 2009 will be interesting because I will be doing so.

It would be crazy on my part if I don’t plan out and just start with everything. The biggest challenge would be to increase productivity, manage time well and stay motivated. Getting things in an automated mode would benefit me largely.

Keeping that in mind, my focus for the month of November and December would be on finding ways to motivate myself, get productive and get automated. November and December will turn out to be hack-full months for you as well since I would be writing about the hacks over here to keep you updated.

Plan For November & December - 2 Hack-Full Months


• Every Monday Motivation Hacks
• Every Wednesday Productivity Hacks
• Every Friday Life Hacks (Hacks for different life areas)

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