The "to-don't" list

I'm sure there was more I was thinking of when it came to my wife deciding to wake up at 5 AM, which ultimately led to me waking up at 5 AM.  But my brain jumps around like a squirrel on crack, and today I'm just going to follow it.  My brain is on the "to-don't" list.

The "to-don't" list is much like the fabled "to-do" list.  I've come to conclude that the to-don't list is more important than the to-do list.  The to-do list creates a list of things that "need" to be done.  And those are generally well understood.  I should exercise more.  I should keep my check book balanced.  I should study for the next thing I'm going to take on. 

But the "to-don't" list is an unsung hero.  I heard about it in Jim Collins' book Good to Great.  Collins describes it as something more important than a "to-do" list because it is just as important to understand what you shouldn't do as to understand what you should do.  That sentence made absolutely no sense, so I'll explain. 

I have a tendency to have about a thousand ideas running through my head at any different time.  Those involve 3D world creation and architecture, programming, thoughts on robotics, learning Java, learning some version of Microsoft server software, and countless others.  The "to-don't" provides me clarity in what I should and shouldn't be doing.  Even though all those other things are fun little toys to play with, they aren't going to get me where I want to go if I performed them rigorously for the next ten years or so.  In other words, they are nice flights of fancy but they are JUST THAT: flights of fancy. 

Now learning or performing some of what I listed could potentially get me a different job with faster promotion and pay characteristics.  But at the moment, I'm going to give my effort towards my current job.  At the moment, I'm not betting the farm on my current job, but I am planning that to be my advancement. 

Secondly, I took that list of what I wanted to do and developed my "to-don't" list and turned it into a sequential "when" list.  The goal is to never stop learning and improving.  So right now I've got my reading list broken into two parts: practical application and theory. 

The theory portion of learning fits in the category of reading generic business books or IT related books like Time Management forSystem Administrators by Thomas a Limoncelli , the aforementioned Good to Great, or Stephen R. Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

My technical list includes a different but just as important variety of books.  Right now, I'm working on Cisco ICND part 1 and 2.  Afterwards, I'm probably going towards Cisco Voice, and then towards the MCTS 70-680 exam for Windows 7, and finally off towards learning Java. 

Let's face it: I work a technical job and technical information is what I need.  Especially when it comes to fixing stuff. 

Anyways, the "to-don't" list has clarified what I need to do to succeed.  In part, it's taking the vagueness and wanderlust out of my random ideas.  What good is random ideas if they don't come to some sort of fruition, anyways?

Lessons Learned part 2... reorganization

2) Reorganize your life around your goals.

This is the one that I have found to be the hardest.  To my wife, it was simple making a change.  Once she had her goals in place, she changed her day.  It was nothing more complex than waking up at 5 AM every weekday to go to the gym.  On the other hand, I'm a bit more ambitious and want quite a bit more.  I also saw my wife had a great idea, so I was simply going to follow suit.  For me, it provided a way to start learning and studying for the CCENT and eventually the CCNA. 

My life is rather hectic.  I used to wake up about 6:45 AM, slug back some coffee, wake up the kids, get dressed, and be out the door by 7:45 AM.  From around 8 AM to 6 or 7 PM was work, then supper and playing with the kids until 8 PM.  After that, I'd kick back and relax until 11:30 or 12 PM or so and go to bed.  And I'd get up and do it again. But I decided to change.  I spent too much of my time at home doing things that were counter-productive to what I wanted.  Sure, World of Warcraft is fun, but it costs me money and doesn't make me money.  Secondly, it's a giant time sink.  I don't know how much time I've wasted doing little or nothing. 

So instead, I rearranged my life around what I wanted to accomplish.  It's all based off a simplistic concept: learn more to earn more.  The whole idea is based off something I think Dave Ramsey said, "10 years from now you will be the same person making the same money except for the books you read and the people you meet."

So, the goal is to read more books.  My schedule has changed to something like this.  Wake up at 5 AM.  Read the Bible until 5:45.  Study work related stuff until 6:30.  Wake the kids up.  Head to work at 7:45.  Work from 8 AM until I get off between 5 and 7 PM.  Eat and play with kids until they go to bed at 8.  Relax until 9:30 PM.  Read until 10.  Go to bed no later than 10:30.  And that's Monday through Friday. 

Part of my job requires me to drive around a lot, so I spend my time listening to my own self-created audio books.  This is something new I've started trying.  Essentially, you take whatever material you want to learn and record it to an audio CD.  Throw the CD in the CD player on infinite repeat as I drive around all day. 

I'm expected quite a few things out of all of this.  I expect a much more stable and consistent mood.  Often, listening to the doom and gloom present on most radio stations is even to make us believe that our lives are going nuts just like the rest of the world.  Note to everyone:  Real Titans Don't Whine.  So I quit listening to reality as presented on the radio.  As a Christian, I should be doing that anyways.  If you want to succeed, quit listening to what the rest of the Chicken Little world says and spend some time understanding where you want to go. I think Dave Ramsey put it best...  "Throw a brick through your TV and get a clue about your own life."

I refuse to have my fate tied to Washington, or any other town.  I will succeed, or I will die trying.  There is no other option.  And I do have to credit Jim Collins Good to Great  for his Chicken Little analogy.  He said it much better than I could have. 

Lessons Learned part 1... Action and the Al Bundy Paradox

Last post, I talked about my wife coming to a monumental decision.  She made a mental leap and developed a mantra that lead to a breakthrough.  The mantra was "how badly do you want it?"

Now, I've developed several theories on all the stuff that happened.  I may be wrong, but this is what I have to take away from her experience. 

1) You can talk all you want, but action trumps all talk.

My wife spent a lot of time talking about losing weight.  She relived her old best weights and how she got there numerous times.  She talked about getting up and going running twice a day.  Doing that consistently for a summer resulted in success she had never seen before. And then she lost all motivation and gained everything back.

I kind of think of this as the Al Bundy paradox.  Al Bundy was head of household in the sitcom Married with Children.   During the show, he was a 40-something male, working at a women's shoe store.  Any chance he got, he would tell people about his glory days playing high school football.  Bundy scored four touchdowns in one football game.  And never did anything remarkable or memorable afterwards. 

No matter where you go, you run into Al Bundy.  He's usually found on barstools, meeting rooms, sports stadiums, or any place people gather.  No matter how great or successful you are, Bundy is over there telling everyone about his four touchdowns in one football game.  Or it could be this one deal he completed ten years ago.  Or it could be back when he was in the war.  Point being, Al Bundy did something great once, and spent the rest of his life talking about it. 

Action is the catalyst that takes Al Bundy from being a pathetic loser to a sweet heart success story.  But that is unlikely to happen.  Bundy requires something to push him over the edge from inaction in action.  With my wife, it was a forum post.  There's no telling what the push may be, but a push is necessary. 

Action is the catalyst that takes any person from story to hero.  There are plenty of people out there with good ideas, but most of them won't ever do anything more than dream about their ideas.  As Thomas Edison put it, "Most people don't recognize opportunity when it comes, because it's usually dressed in overalls and looks a lot like work." (http://thinkexist.com/quotation/most_people_don-t_recognize_opportunity_when_it/146553.html)  I don't care how good your idea is on paper.  Come talk to me about how wonderful your idea is once you've rearranged your life to make your idea work. 

Part 2 comes tomorrow.

How bad do you want it?

I was going to write something about the ups and downs of changing my habits, but my wife and I had a much better discussion.  We were driving to see our relatives and my wife discussed her reasoning behind changing her day to get up at 5 AM.  We'd talked about it before, but never in this detail.  For some reason, it never sunk in to me.  She has been struggling with her weight her entire life.  Lots of bad habits were instilled by people who didn't know the first thing about making a sustainable change in your life.  She jumped from fad diet to fad diet on a weekly basis for years.  Then she just gave up. 

After we got married, I encouraged her to continue her weight loss journey.  She made some progress, but not much.  A year or two went by.  Her dad died.  At that point, she had made some progress in losing weight, but not much.  Her dad told her she looked good, and to keep it up.  A good four or five months went by.  She decided it was time to do more about her weight.  She and I would go run out at a trail several times per week, but it was all dependent on when I got home from work.  That could be anywhere between 6 and 8 PM Monday through Friday.  We would go Saturday and Sunday, if I wasn't on call.  So the determination to do "something" resulted in action maybe 3 days a week at best.  That wasn't much in the way of leading towards her goal.

Then I got sick.  I worked myself into the ground after months of 10 plus hour days and my body rebelled.  I got a high fever, climbed into bed, and slept for almost 24 hours straight. 

I was home sick, and my wife wanted to go run.

But there was no way I was going.  And something in her mind broke, and she shot past her fear and went running without me.  I went back to work on Monday, rested and refreshed.  I got home from work about 6 PM, and my wife went running.  And this continued, but the same original problem returned.  I'd get home between 6 and 8 PM, every day, Monday through Friday.  So once again, she was back to the same problem. 

She wanted to lose weight, but running after I got home just wasn't the greatest time to do it.  It all became dependent on when I made it home from work.  Her mind spent some time trying to find a solution, and she got frustrated. 

She let out her frustration on a message board, and someone with a bit more experience ripped her a new one.  Everything for success was laid out at her feet, but she wouldn't do anything.  The question was laid at her feet: how badly do you want this?  Sure, she wanted to lose weight.  She was perfectly willing to gripe about how unfair her situation was, but she wasn't doing anything about it.  But how badly do you want this?  Are you willing to rearrange your life to accomplish your goals?  Are you willing to give up your sleep and your comforts? 

I might make it home after 6 or 8 PM every night, but I never left for work before 8 AM.  Okay, sometimes I do.  But it's very rare.  Our apartment complex gets a gym membership for a massively reduced rate.  The gym opens at 5 AM.  And the plan was born. 

My wife would start waking up at 5 AM, and spend time at the gym between 5 and 7 AM.  And she has.  So thirteen days later, the results are showing, slowly but steadily.  She has lost 4 pounds in those days.  In the end, it came down to: how badly do you want it?  She wanted it bad enough to rearrange her entire life towards the accomplishment of a goal.   

How bad do you want it?

Next time: my takeaways from her journey.  Both of us learned something.  And I was making just as many excuses as she was.  But that's next time.