Tag Archives: self development

What would an extra thousand dollar’s a month do for you?

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My mentor asked me this question over a decade ago.

What would you be able to do with an extra $1000 dollars a month?

At the time, I thought, I could pay off my student loans quicker, my car note quicker, I could increase my savings rate.

The question was a powerful one, because up until that time, I am not sure I thought of earning an extra money outside my normal W2 paycheck job.

I bought my first investment property at age 26. A duplex. When I tallied everything up at the end of the year. It probably created an extra $200-$300 a month. So I had that in place. But keep in mind I owned this well before my mentor asked my this question.

Fast forward a few years and I was pondering the question:

My best friend had a connection to Worlds Finest Chocolate. Yes. The candy bar company. We all either sold these candy bars or were asked to buy one at some point in your life. Until the health nuts took over the school system, but I digress.

Your school would sell these chocolate bars for a dollar a piece to fund raise. And the buyer also got that nice little couple on the back of the wrapper. So it was a great deal.

I worked full time, so selling this fund raising opportunity posed some challenges. However, I ended up finding a lil niche within daycares. I didn’t even know daycares did fundraising. I don’t have kids, but hearing how much parents pay, I would have assumed they wouldn’t have to fund raise. I did this for a little while and made some extra money.

Then my best friend and I started a business. To make a long story short. We operated the business for over seven years. It never really took off, but it provided a few extra hundred dollars on average over those seven years.

Another thing I did was I started pursuing some certifications through a training company. I figured the certifications would allow me to train and earn extra income. It eventually did, and actually became a full-time career, but it started off very part-time with no money, and ultimately provided a full-time income.

Lastly and most importantly, I bought my first investment property at 26. I unfortunately didn’t buy another one until about six years later. And then I bought another one, then another one, and well, I think you see where this is going.

That extra $1000 dollars a month my mentor challenged me with over a decade ago, now has become 15 times that. And it is all because of real estate.

Here is the lesson. I don’t want you to miss it. Its not only about the extra $1000 a month. More importantly, it is your commitment to the extra $1000 a month. You have to be willing to make the commitment to it and do whatever it takes to earn it.

To your success and your future.

Why average sucks

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When was the last time you looked up the definition of a word?
If you are like most people, probably not very often.
You either don’t read much, which means you don’t get exposed to a new words very often or you just ignore the word you don’t know.
I have made it a habit to not only look up words I don’t know the definitions of, but I also look up words I assume I know for sure.

It may sound silly to do, but I will tell you there have been many occasions where I looked up a word that I thought I knew for sure, but found that I was a little off exactly.

The word average isn’t one of those words I thought I knew and learned that I didn’t know.

Instead though, what I learned was there isn’t really anything good about being average.

Read some of the words in the definitions below.  Is that what you want?

  • having qualities that are seen as typical of a particular person or thing.
  • mediocre; not very good.
  • a typical amount, rate, degree, etc.; norm.
  • number expressing the central or typical value in a set of data, in particular the mode, median, or (most commonly) the mean, which is calculated by dividing the sum of the values in the set by their number.
  • an amount, standard, level, or rate regarded as usual or ordinary.
  • constituting the result obtained by adding together several quantities and then dividing this total by the number of quantities.
  • of the usual or ordinary standard, level, or quantity.
Three ways to stop being average:
1. To get out of the class of average you first have to stop comparing yourself to everyone else.  That’s the hard reality.  There is a lot of average out there.

2. Realize that it is going to take so much more effort and most likely time to accomplish a goal that you have. Sometimes you can increase the frequency you do things which can decrease the amount of time.  But regardless it is going to take a lot more of everything to accomplish your goals. Unless they are too easy.
3.  Nobody is going to do it for you. It’s up to you.  The calvary is not showing up.  You have to do the work.  It’s on you.Be great today!

To your success and your future.

Three things that I learned that was a total lie

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As a kid growing up I am sure I was told by much smarter people, grown ups, of things that I should do or shouldn’t do.  And I didn’t listen.  Because I was young and dumb.  But the older I get the more I realize that those grown-ups knew more because of their experiences.  And nothing can replace experience to teach us lessons.

With all of those lessons that I may have missed along the way, I did pick up a few lessons that I did listen to that were completely wrong.  And these people didn’t intentionally lie to me.  It wasn’t their fault.  But I learned them, and as I have gotten older I now realize they didn’t know what the heck they were talking about.

Money isn’t as important as you think. 

If I had a dollar for every time someone said this to me, I wouldn’t have to worry about money.  I am sure it was told to me as a child at times as well.  But more importantly, and more critical, was the fact that money wasn’t discussed.  Look, I know my parents did all they can.  I didn’t go without food, water, shelter, and clothing.  And I know for a fact that my parents did whatever they could to provide us with everything they could.  I had a great childhood.

I also know that there were people around me that were better off.  Their parents had better paying jobs.  Which meant that they got the newer and nicer things. Kids are smart enough to look around and see the reality of situations, but instead of them only seeing the realities of the situation, I think parents can use that as a motivator to encourage their kids to understand the realities of the situation better by explaining to them the realities of the situation.

My parents didn’t talk about money which meant we didn’t think about money.  At an early age, I knew that money was important, because when I had it, I felt better, and I could go and buy all the damn candy I wanted.  And for me to be able to do that I had to have money.

I can remember poor person after poor person telling me that money wasn’t everything.  There are more important things in life. But just as I learned as a kid and I know it to be more true as an adult, money is necessary for everything.  I need money just to leave my house.  Gas is expensive, food is expensive, dry cleaning is expensive.  Everything requires money.  Not only do you need it to live, but if you have any desire to help other people, you will need money as well.  Never tell anybody that money isn’t that important, because it is.

Formal education is the most important education:

Do good in school, pick a great high school, and be sure to go to college.  I don’t want to discount any of these things.  We all need to understand the basics of which education teaches and provides.  I think most people get this.  Where it goes wrong though, is to only focus on this.

I never had a teacher, parent, counselor, etc. tell me that skills are more important than education.  Skills that I can use in the marketplace that can help me get what I want from the marketplace.

Here are just a few skills, that should be taught, instead of hoping students get them through the process of pursuing a formal education.

Skills such as influencing other people, selling their ideas, being a leader, communicating with tact and candor, taking initiative, problem solving, critical thinking, how to get attention for the things you want, marketing, etc.

Yes, you get some of these skills through the process of a regular classroom, but there wasn’t any course on how to get attention (marketing) in the marketplace.  And if there was, the people teaching the course, my teachers, didn’t know how to exactly do it themselves.  They were reading it to you out of a textbook, which meant their examples were weak and not very compelling.

Yes, a level of formal education is important, but skill development is what is even more important.  Children should learn how to make money, manage money, talk to people, take initiative, take risks, problem solve, etc. These are the skills that are more important.

Seek security:  

Everything I learned by watching everyone in my life was all about security. Find a good paying job with benefits. Go to college and get a good education so you can have opportunities.  Save your money. Don’t get noticed, stay under the radar. Do what you have to do.

Not once did I learn that everything in life that is worthwhile will be just out of reach of my comfort zone and my willingness to expand that zone is what will allow me to get whatever it is that I wanted.

Nobody taught me to seek discomfort.  To seek challenges.  To challenge myself to learn new skills and to be entrepreneurial.

Again, it wasn’t anybody’s fault that I learned these things.  This is what the people I was around the most were taught, and this is what was taught by everyone they knew.  We really are a product of our environment.

As the great Charlie “Tremendous” Jones says: “You will be the same person you are today, five years from now, except for the books your read and the people you meet.”

As a child growing up, I didn’t read very many books outside the ones I had to read.  And I only met people who were in my circle of friends and family.

My suggestion to parents is to look for unique ways to challenge your children and get them experiences with what they will eventually be exposed to in the marketplace.  Teach them the skills that will help them get ahead and stay ahead.

To your success and your future.

Three things I did to pay off my third rental property

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As of this writing I have written well over a thousand articles on a wide range of topics.  A topic that I haven’t written about is real estate.  And it is probably one of my favorite topics on the planet.

I bought my first rental property in 2006 at the age of 26.  It was a duplex that I owned up until I moved to Florida in 2015.

My attraction to real estate started when I was young and it is something I have loved ever since.

As of this writing I own five single family residences.  Four of the five are paid off. Two of the five are condos that I paid cash for when I bought them, so I never had mortgages on them.

Over the years I have listened to many so called experts.  I say so called experts, because I am sure they are all successful in whatever they have done and accumulated.  However, they all had different processes they used to get there.

Some of them used a lot of debt to have success, some used minimal debt, and some used no debt to accumulate the wealth and experiences they have in the area of real estate.

I have always been a fence rider on the topic of debt when it comes to real estate.  I innately hate debt. When I became debt free other than the mortgages I had on rental properties and the house I lived in.  I said I would never have debt again.  And I haven’t.

The topic of debt in real estate is something I go back and forth on though.  I am not sure I have a clear opinion one way or the other on it as of today. However, I did make a commitment to myself that I would pay off the other three houses that I did have mortgages on though.

This morning I looked in my journal to see when I made the goal to get the third rental property paid off. The first date I wrote in this journal is 10/19/2018.  Today is 7/1/20.  I assume it may have been in there before.  However, lets just assume that was the first date I wrote that goal down.

On 1/31/2020 we paid off the third mortgage. Since then we have paid off a fourth and could pay off the fifth, but I am having that whole internal discussion on whether to pay it off or use the money we have saved to buy more.  This is another topic for another day.

How did we pay off that third mortgage?  What did we do?

  1. I wrote the goal down everyday:  As I mentioned, I can look in my journal and tell you when I started writing that goal down.  I wrote it down for close to two years almost everyday, until I accomplished the goal. This one thing is first for a reason.  To achieve what it is you want to achieve you have to remind yourself daily that this is what you want to achieve.
  2. Everything extra went towards it. As I mentioned I struggle in the area of whether to have debt or leverage debt when it comes to real estate.  There is one person who is clear on this topic though.  That is Dave Ramsey.    He is a firm believer in no debt on anything.  He has a proven method for people to get out of debt and has helped millions of people do it. One of the things he talks about is the snowball effect.

    The snowball effect is if you take a ball of snow and you roll it down ahill.  As it makes it way down the hill it gets bigger and bigger as it accumulates more snow around it.

    Also, the momentum of the snowball picks up as it makes it way down the hill.  He uses this method when it comes to paying off debt.  Which is to take all extra money and apply it to your smallest debt and pay it off first. He believes, and he is right, that the momentum that a person creates when they are able to pay off something quickly provides them the momentum they need to keep them going to pay off other debts.

    I used this method for paying off this mortgage.  I took all extra money we made and applied it to this mortgage.  It allowed us to pay it off in seven years from the time we took the loan out.

  3. Stay committed no matter what: From the time I made this commitment until we accomplished it, a lot had changed.  I started two different companies, we moved twice, and my income was wildly unpredictable.  During these kind of times most people throw their goals out the door and say they will come back to them when things are more secure. I did not.  I stayed committed.  I kept committing to that goal everyday.

I am a novice when it comes to real estate investing  However, it is something I am committed to and will continue to get better at.  My hope is you find this information to be helpful in your journey.

To your success and your future.

 

Show up

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Success in life really comes down to these two words:  Show up.  

There is nothing magical or hard about it.  When you show up good things will eventually happen.

When you show up you are keeping the commitment that you made to yourself.  This one thing alone is just as important as the showing up part.  Once you quit lying to yourself, you can take control over everything in your life.

Humans suck at commitments.  We don’t like to make them to ourselves and we definitely don’t like to make them to there people and be held accountable to them.  When we commit we are putting ourselves out there. We are taking the chance that we could fail.  Humans don’t like failure and we will avoid it all cost. Because of this we don’t go “all in” on commitments.

Work is a commitment that you keep because there is an incentive tied to it.   I am not talking about these commitments.  These are the easy ones.  I am talking about the commitments that you don’t have to make.  And you definitely don’t have to keep them. These are the hard ones and these are the ones that will impact your life the most positively.

When people aren’t getting the results they want.  When they are not accomplishing their goals.

It comes down to their lack of commitment to them.  If you haven’t fully committed, you won’t show up.

Take inventory of your life today and ask yourself the simple question.

Are you showing up to the things you said were important to you? If the answer is no.  Then I would challenge you to ask yourself how committed you really are to the thing.

My mentor said it best.  “action follows commitment.”  You won’t take action until you are committed.

To your success and your future.

 

 

 

You’re Going To Miss Me When I’m Gone

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I have spent the last 73 days (based on my calculations) tracking the lockdown, quarantine, shelter in place, or whatever you want to call it.

By tracking, I mean I have written a few notes down in my journal.  Nothing too elaborate.  But just some general notes to remind me of the sentiment of what I was feeling and what was going on in the climate and culture as a whole.

Overall I believe this situation was a totally oversold and overhyped by the media, who are dealers in “fear” and basically created the situation and the politics were forced to follow suit.  But I digress, this is not the point of my writings today.

This past Saturday May, 23, the gym I attend opened for the first time in the last 73 plus days. As I walked in, I was more than enthusiastic. I was so glad to be back in there and was grateful for the opportunity.  Before the lockdown, I never resented the gym, but I don’t think I always appreciated it the way I should have.

This morning the gym at our high rise building opened for the first time in 73 plus days. It was so great to walk in there, even with a lot of restrictions, and have the opportunity to get a workout in and use the equipment.

Over the last few weeks, we have now been able to actually go back into restaurants for the first time. If I am honest, I kind of liked the fact that during the lockdown we saved ourselves a lot of money by only being able to do takeout.  Mainly the savings being not spending money on alcohol while dining in.

However, being back around people, the energy in the restaurants, and supporting people to have jobs that can contribute to the economy as a whole is even better.

On Monday, my wife and I randomly went to the mall. Walking around the mall again, which is not something we did very often pre-shutdown, it was still nice to have the opportunity to do it again.

As I am sitting here typing this post, I am in my favorite coffee shop drinking my mocha.  This is something I have done for years.  I usually spend the first hour of the day in here.  During the lockdown, I was unable to sit in the coffee shop, but was thankful that they were open and I was able to get it to go.

I say all of these things really as a reminder to myself that some of the small things we take for granted can easily be taken from us.  For the most part we never think about it when we have them.

Brooks and Dunn one of the great country ban duos of all time, have a song titled “You’re going to miss me when I’m gone.”  The song was a great hit for a a lot of reasons, but one of them being that it is so true.  We typically don’t miss something until it is gone.  Which is why we must appreciate it when we have it.

I am not perfect by any stretch and I am sure I will forget at times.  However, I am going to do what I can to remind myself to appreciate the little things I mentioned here, but more importantly, the bigger things in life as well.

 

142 days of motivation!

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Writing my goals down has been a deliberate action that I have taken the last eight years.  When I look at my spreadsheet from 2010, I laugh because I wasn’t very good at it.  My goals were small, they weren’t very specific, and there also wasn’t very many of them.

Fast forward to today, and I look at my goal sheet and it looks more like a ten-year strategic plan for a very successful and large organization.  And as good as I am in the area of strategic goal setting and accomplishing the goals I have set for myself, there is always room for improvement.

A couple of years ago my mentor challenged me to write down my goals every single day.  Yes.  Every day.  He writes them down in the morning and again at night.  I don’t do this, although maybe I should.

So around a year and a half ago or so, I started doing this.  I started writing down my top ten to fifteen goals I have in my life every single day. These goals could be one year, two-year, or even ten-year goals.

These goals are not the strategic document that I write down at the end of the year for the following year.  That document is much more comprehensive and very specific.  I do write down the ten to fifteen overarching bigger goals that I want to accomplish in my life though. The big things.

By doing this I have learned that I am much more motivated to stay motivated and accomplish the goals.  I am reminded every single morning that I must do this, or take this action or that action, because if I am going to accomplish the goal, that is what is required.

I have learned that although I had a very good goal setting and goal accomplishing process that I could be even better than I was.

One of the big goals that my wife and I had in 2018 was to buy her a new car with cash.  Not a brand new car, but something a few years old.  And since we both like really nice cars, I knew this would be an expensive endeavor.  When we sat down at the end of 2017 and the start of 2018, we wrote this goal down as something we were going to do in 2018.

We didn’t know when we would do it in 2018, there wasn’t an exact date.  It really came down to when we chose to do it, and when it made sense based off our income flow of the business.

Here is one thing though, I didn’t want to use our money to buy the car.  I wanted to use someone else’s money.  Which required me to get up every single day and make sales calls, follow-up with clients, and find new clients so we could get the money to buy the car.

From the time I first wrote down the goal on 12/7/2017 to 4/28/2018, it was exactly 142 days.   I wrote the goal down for 142 days just like this:

“We paid cash for a brand new car this year.”

If I am honest, I will tell you that I started off writing down the goal as:

“We paid cash for a brand new Lexus this year.”

But my wife decided that she did not want a Lexus.  Probably because I have one.  So the goal changed over the 142 days to just a car. Because we didn’t know exactly what she wanted until the day we bought it.  As you can see by the picture I didn’t get what I originally wrote down.

I tell you my story not to brag but to encourage you to set goals.  You must write down your goals for your life. This is required.  Whether or not you choose to write them down every day is up to you, even though I would highly suggest you do. Especially the bigger goals and even the more immediate goals you are going after.

As an executive coach and trainer I work with companies and individuals to help them accomplish their companies goals and their personal goals.  If you are interested in learning my system let’s have a conversation.  Hit me up at bwillett555@gmail.com

To your success and your future.

 

 

 

 

 

Why closing these Gap’s are vital to your life and success.

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If you had to sum up life it could really be summed up in one sentence.

You spend most of your life trying to close the GAPs in the most important areas of your life.

The GAP between what you might be asking.  The GAP between you and everything you want out of your life and want in your life.

So what is a GAP?  Lets get a definition for this first.

A GAP is described as a break in continuity.  I also like the definition of an, unfilled space or interval.

So where are some GAPS in your life?

Here is a quick list of GAPS that may or may not pertain to you?  This list is by no means final and is up to each person to create their own.

A Success GAP:  The GAP between the expectations you have of yourself and where you currently are today.

The Health GAP: The GAP between your current health situation and the health situation you would like to have.

The Relationship Gap:  This could be a lot of different relationships in your life such as: with your wife, your boss, your children, your parents, your neighbor, etc.  The GAP between where your relationship is today and where you would like that relationship to be.

The Confidence GAP:  Where you stand today with your confidence in your own abilities and skills in an area of importance to you versus you pursuing that of which eludes you.

The Communication GAP: Most likely this GAP exists in a variety of different ways in your life. It could be the lack of communication from your boss, the lack of communication you and your spouse may have, and may more areas of your life that are important.

The Income GAP:  This is the GAP in between your current financial status and the status you want to have.

So how do we close the GAP?  That is really all we can seek to do.

Like everything in life.  The first thing you have to do is become aware that it exists.  In this case, you have a GAP in one of the above described areas, or another area in your life. Once you identify the GAP.  Then you can seek the information to help you close the GAP.

Lets use the Health GAP as an example.  What is the GAP? What is the current situation for you and secondly, what is the desired situation you want.

I’ll use myself as an example.  I have a GAP in between where I am today and where I would like to be ten months from now at age 40.  At age 40, I seek to be in the best shape of my life.  Which would require me to be at 195, my blood pressure being at 120/75, my BMI at 15-20, and have all of the major health tests conducted and show that I am a healthy forty year old man.  I would even love it if they said I was better than average.  I don’t want to be just average.

So where is the GAP?  I currently weight about 200 or so.  My BMI is closer to 24, my blood pressure is usually around the 120/80-83 mark.  And I haven’t had all of the major tests a forty-year old should get yet.  Although I know the surface level GAP’s of where I am and where I want to be, I have to go to the doctor to get all of the necessary facts to totally see the entire picture.

Once the GAP is identified, I can now learn and create an action plan to close the GAP.

For you to close any GAP in your life, you first have to go through the process of determining that a GAP exists.  The GAP is the space between where you are and where you want to be.

After the you identify the GAP, the big question becomes how bad do you want to close the GAP?  What is the intensity of your desire to make this GAP smaller and smaller.

This GAP will exist as long as you want it to exist.

Now here is the GAP Closer.  Now that you have identified the GAP, and your desire to close the GAP is strong. What do you do?

You go and get the knowledge and education you are missing to close the GAP.  Now the chances are you may already have some of the knowledge and education, but you just aren’t applying it.  That is another blog for another day. But for you to close the GAP in anything you have to apply the necessary knowledge and education you already know, or go out and find the right information and knowledge and then apply it.

This is the only way to close the GAP.  Once you start this process, you can speed the process up, or you can take forever to close the GAP.  It is up to you.

The key to closing a GAP in any area of you life, is identifying you have a GAP.  Once you do this, you then have to identify your motive and desire to close this GAP. After that, you either must apply what you already know, or go out and get the information so you can apply it to closing the GAP.

Life is really a big GAP that you are costly managing and seeking to close.  If you don’t have any GAP’s in your life, then my guess is you don’t have any goals or dreams, which is probably the reason you don’t have any GAPs.

If you want to start closing some GAPS in your life, then reach out to me.  I coach leaders, sales people, and individuals who want to close the GAPs in their life.  I have found that without some help and accountability, closing GAP’s can be very difficult.  Everybody needs someone to push them to accomplish the things in their life that require them to change something in their life.

How big are the GAPs in your life?  How bad do you want close them?  The only way to closing the GAP is getting the knowledge and education you are missing, and then having someone hold you accountable to applying it.

To your success and you future.

 

 

How I set a goal to find my wife.

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I talk to lots of people all of the time that tell me they are just not getting what they want in their life.  It could be a certain career, better children, more money, investments, relationships, health and fitness, etc.  You name it and I have heard it. I have been there myself many times.

About five years ago, I was one of those people who said I need to find a partner/woman who I want to spend the rest of my life with.  Someone who is aligned with the way I think, we want the same things in life, business, and everything else.

I challenged myself with this question:  “Am I the person, the person I am looking for is looking for?”

That is a big question isn’t it?  It required me to take a deep look at everything I was doing in my life at the time.  It challenged me to ask myself what do I need to change to find the person that I want in my life.

At the time I was thinking about this ideal person and ideal wife.  I had been in a long-term relationship off and on that was just never going to go anywhere.  We have all had one of those relationships.  There is nothing wrong with you, and as much as you may agree or disagree, there wasn’t anything wrong with the other person.

If the relationship you are in or was in, is just really jacked up, than shame on you.  Don’t be stupid.  But most of the time, relationships aren’t that jacked up.  If it is, get the heck out of it.  Mine wasn’t. It was just two people who had fun together, but were on two different pages in life and other things.

So I asked myself the question “Am I the person the person I am looking for, is looking for?”  I then got out of the current situation that I was in.  Then the next step was to put together a list of what it was that I wanted in a person.

This is the process for all change to occur in our life.  This is the process to setting goals, changing behaviors, and getting what you want out of life. You ask yourself the questions.

Where am I?  Is this where I want to be?  If the answer is no.  You get out of that situation, if it is a situation that you have to get out of it to move things forward.

And then you ask yourself the final question before you get to work finding it.  Which is “What do I want?”

I asked myself “What do I want?”  I am not going to give you my full list here, but if you have attended one of my workshops or seminars, then you have heard the list, or you can attend and get the list.

But here are a couple of things:

  • Goal Oriented
  • Doesn’t blame others for their problems
  • No Kids
  • Career Minded
  • No debt or very little debt
  • Certain income level
  • A good heart
  • Spiritual

I got even more specific in my list creation than what I have shared here, but you get the point.  You could say black hair, no hair, height, weight, etc.  Its your damn list and your life.  Put whatever list you want.  Whatever you do, don’t ever settle for less. Settle for more.

Now you can’t find out all of this stuff on one date or two dates, it takes some time. But here is the deal though.  If you actually go through the process of creating a list and doing the work in advance of what it is you want and don’t want, then you will know it when you see it.  That is the value of the list.

If you haven’t found the person you want yet, it is because you don’t know what you are looking for.  That is how goals work.  You have to set them in advance, because that is how you will know when you see the opportunity or in this case, the person, when you see it.

My wife sometimes reads my stuff and sometimes doesn’t have the time, so just in case she reads this.  My guess is she will since her title is in the subject line.  I am going to make sure I add this.

I got everything on my list and then some.  I settled for more.  She is amazing and beautiful and I definitely won.

I want you to win as well. I challenge you to go through this process.  Visualize the person you want, make the list, and then you will find it.  Until you do this you will never get what you want or deserve.

To your success and your future.

 

 

 

How many Thursdays do you have left in your life?

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I don’t know about you, but no matter what I do, it seems like I always use more time to do something than I should use.  This is not a new phenomenon.  Actually if you look it up there is actual supposed law for this belief.  Called Parkinson’s Law.

Cyril Northcote Parkinson, actually wrote about this law in a humorist essay he published in the British publication, “The Economist” in 1955.  Parkinson was actually referencing the fact, and the math to support his belief on how bureaucracies expand over time.  Long story short, he was talking primarily about how officials in government seeks to grow subordinates over time, and as they grow the staff, the work increases, but the results do not increase.  Because the bureaucracy creates more work for itself.  But I digress. Go here and read about it yourself.

In my world, Parkinson’s Law manifests in certain projects that I want to complete.  The best example of this I can give is the one I am working on this week. I have to give a keynote presentation next Friday.  I have delivered several presentations that are similar to the one I am giving, but I have to change this one up for the audience more than normal. This week has been a light week for me, which has provided me a lot of time to work on this presentation.

I started on Monday, and I am 75% complete.  But I should be 100% complete and not have to look at it again until next week.  But I know I have until next week to do it.  Well, really Monday or so.  And because I know this, I haven’t completed it yet.

I have always tried to do whatever I can to get the most out of my time, but I still find myself, like in the above example, using more time than I should.

I recently was listening to a book where the author asked me “How many Wednesdays do you have left in your life?”  Well, I had never thought about the question like that before. I never thought about how many Wednesdays an average person lives, or any other day for that matter.

After hearing this question I thought about it, and like most of us would do, and maybe you are doing it now.  I started doing some math.  The math I will do today is on how many Thursdays I have left, obviously I hope I have more, but lets just play the averages.

I am 39 years old. My dad died when he was 60 (ugh), not sure how that plays in.  One of my grandfathers lived until 86 and the other lived until 83.  However, this plays in, I don’t know, but it gives me some benchmarks.

So how many Thursdays do I have left?

  • If I make it to 60 = Currently week 15 of my 39th year, 1,077 Thursdays left.
  • If I make it to the average for males in the United States: 78: 2,013 Thursdays left.
  • Average of my two grandfathers 83+86=169/2=84.5, 2,325 Thursdays left.

If you think about life experiences how many times do you really do certain things.  For example:  How many Super Bowl parties do you really attend.  Lets just say you started going to Super Bowl Parties when you were 18.  Then you if you just use an average life span, (78), you could have only attended 60 Super Bowl parties throughout your life.  It seems like a lot, but when you look at it like this it makes it seem really small in my mind. Not sure how you think about it.

Now that I got you thinking.  Well me too.  I am trying to create a stronger sense of urgency in everything I do.  Look, I consider myself, to be very disciplined, very focused, and very consistent in just about everything I do.  But even I have a room for improvement.

This little exercise challenged me to think about how many days I really have to do what I want to do, and need to do.  When you are a kid, you think you will live forever.  And then as an adult you are too busy to think about living forever. Then you wake up one day and realize you have been out of high school for 20 years.

I have accomplished a lot.  I don’t know if it is more or less than I thought I would accomplish, because I never really thought that much about it.  However, as I am sitting here today in Naples, Florida where I have lived for the last two years, typing this blog, and now that I think about what it is I am achieving and accomplishing, I can honestly say I have accomplished a lot.

However, I know I am capable of so much more, and you are as well. We just have to quit falling victim to Parkinson’s Law and create the urgency to do whatever it takes to start and  finish things quicker.

To your success and your future.