2009 January (2)

Monthly Archives: January 2009

New Blogging Schedule…

Posted by Grant on January 19, 2009 – 6:49 am

Filed under Blogs

This week I will be starting a new blogging schedule for my writing here. I’m trying to plan my posts a little further out and have some consistency to what I’m writing. I know there is a balance of adults reading this as well as students I’ve met from events I speak at, so the writing will be aimed at both audiences.

Here is the blogging schedule I will try to follow…

Monday – Thought for the Week
Tuesday – Current Events
Wednesday – Time Management/Organization
Thursday – Money
Friday – In Case You’re Bored This Weekend… (new books, websites, or resources you can check out)

I’m going to try and post just Monday through Friday, so that my weekends will consistently be off. Of course if other things come up, you may have some days with multiple posts. And I always like to post some thoughts and updates from some of my travels.

So thanks for checking out the blog and reading it…or skimming it. If you’ve got other subjects or topics you would like me to write about, just email me at grant@grantbaldwin.com.

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What Are You Waiting For?

Posted by Grant on January 19, 2009 – 4:52 am

Filed under Thinking Out Loud...

Have you ever noticed that the timing is almost never right for significant moments in life?

When is the best time to start a business? Get married? Have kids? Take a risk?

There is never a good time to _______.

I wrote in a recent post that I am training to run a half marathon as one of my goals for 2009. I figured this wasn’t something you just show up for on race day and just do. I assumed it would require a little homework on my part to make sure I knew what I was doing.

So I googled around and found some resources about running and training. But after reading a few pieces here and there, it came time to put the book down and just do it.

The idea is this…I didn’t wait to start running until I finished reading a book on running.

If you wait to start something until you have all the answers, you’ll never start.

The timing is never going to be just right.

The stars won’t ever be perfectly aligned.

The music won’t start playing to cue you that it’s your moment.

At some point…you just have to start running.

What have you been putting off that you need to start?

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Here’s What Works For Me…Resources

Posted by Grant on January 18, 2009 – 3:08 am

Filed under Personal, Thinking Out Loud...

In this series, I will be walking through tools, systems, and routines that work for me in various areas of my life.

To wrap up this series, I wanted to share with you some websites/magazines/resources I use or read on a regular basis. Here are some websites I use on a regular basis…
– Bloglines – I read about 40 different blogs, so this collects them all for me.
– Google – how could you not use Google on a daily basis?
– Analytics – this is a free tool from Google I use to collect stats and traffic info from my website
– Feedburner – this is another free tool I use to see how many subscribers read my blog.
– Constant Contact - use to send my monthly e-newsletter or mass emails
– Twitter – this is the premiere micro blogging tool. Follow me here.
– Facebook - social networking at it’s finest. My profile is here.
– EZ Texting – I use this for text messaging at events I speak at.
– PollDaddy – I like surveys and polls and this site is free.
– Craigslist – I use this all the time to sell stuff and buy stuff. I won’t ever pay retail again.
– Evernote – New, free tool I just started using to collect info from online and sync with my computer.
– YouVersion – Great Bible reading tool…I use for the 1 year reading plan.

There are several magazines I subscribe to, because (1) magazine subscriptions are really cheap, and (2) they have some of the latest ideas whereas books can go out of date before they even hit the shelves. Here are the magazines I subscribe to:
– Inc. - great small business magazine
– Fast Company – another great small business magazine
– Wired – I like technology and gadgets and this is a great magazine for that.
– Entrepreneur - I don’t think Entrepreneur is as good as Inc. or Fast Company, but it’s still solid.
– ESPN – I had Sports Illustrated for a few years but I haven’t enjoyed it much lately, so I switched to ESPN.
– SmartMoney – I’m not looking for major investment tips and strategies but articles about personal finance.
– Young Money – I just subscribed to this, so I haven’t actually received my first issue. I’ll let you know when I get it…
– Kiplinger’s Personal Finance – Haven’t received it yet…
– Money – Just ordered this one as well…
– Seventeen – Don’t judge me. I work with teenagers. Like…totally…for sure…

What resources do you use on a regular basis?

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Here’s What Works For Me…Finances

Posted by Grant on January 17, 2009 – 3:53 am

Filed under Money & Finances, Personal, Thinking Out Loud...

In this series, I will be walking through tools, systems, and routines that work for me in various areas of my life.

If you know much about me, you know I’m a huge proponent of paying attention to your money instead of sticking your head in the sand and hoping your money takes care of itself. So today, I’ll share some specific things we do when handling our money.

Stick To A Budget – Creating a budget is step one for taking care of your money. Every month, we create a new budget within Excel for that month’s income and expenses. Even if it looks exactly the same as the previous month, we make a new budget for THAT month.

Pay Cash – We use an envelope system (see below) to pay cash for several of our monthly expenses. After we create our monthly budget, we take out cash for the month for certain categories such as restaurants, clothing, gas, groceries, etc. We put this cash in separate envelopes for each category, so when we need to purchase something that falls within one of those categories, we use the cash from that specific envelope. This limits your spending and helps you stick with your budget.

Have An Emergency Fund – We have an emergency fund set up that is used only for emergencies…thus the name. Brilliant isn’t it? Having this set aside where we don’t touch it gives us a buffer so that regardless of what the economy is doing or if we’re having a good or bad month for the business, we know we have some breathing room.

As for the tools to carry these things out, I use a couple of resources:

Microsoft Money – I have used Microsoft Money for a while now and like that I’m able to track both our personal and business finances there, but still keep them separate. My only snag right now is that this is obviously a PC program, and so I’m having to currently run it on my Mac using a program called Parallels. So far I haven’t found a simple and functional Mac money program that has what I need. So for now, we’ll keep using Microsoft Money.
Banks – We use Commerce Bank for all of our day to day finances. We have a checking account for our personal finances, a business checking account, and a savings account that we use. We also pay all of our bills online through their free bill pay service. Most local banks (Commerce included) have horrible interest rates for saving accounts, so we keep some money in an HSBC Direct account. There are several online savings accounts you should look into that pay 2.5% or more. Here are a few: FNBO Direct, E-Trade, Dollar Savings Direct, or ING. Within HSBC we have 3 savings accounts: our emergency fund, tax savings (money set aside for our quarterly tax payments), and a miscellaneous savings fund which we use when saving for major expenses such as a vacation or a new car.
Microsoft Excel – I use various spreadsheets within Excel to track different aspects of our business finances and also create our monthly personal budget on Excel.
Envelope System – Because we pay cash for so many of our expenses, we have a simple little envelope system we picked up from Wal-Mart that works just fine. We label each folder and put the cash in there for the month.
Turbo Tax – I’m a huge fan of Turbo Tax and have done our taxes through them for several years now. In fact, I’m essentially already done with this years’ taxes but am just waiting for all the 1099s and paperwork to come in! Read more of my love for Turbo Tax here.

Tomorrow, I’ll wrap up this series and talk more about resources that I use on a regular basis including magazines and websites.

What tips can you share for how you organize your finances?

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Here’s What Works For Me…Tasks

Posted by Grant on January 16, 2009 – 3:39 am

Filed under Thinking Out Loud...

In this series, I will be walking through tools, systems, and routines that work for me in various areas of my life.

The challenge with tasks is that we are often times drawn to items that fall within one of these categories:
- Tasks we’re good at
- Tasks that are easy
- Tasks that take little time to complete
- Tasks we enjoy doing

The problem as we all know is that not every task that we have to get done falls into one of these categories. There are plenty of tasks that fall into the categories of “boring,” “takes forever,” “I don’t want to do this,” or “I’m going to suck at this.” But unfortunately these tasks need to get done as well.

So here are a couple of idea I try to use as well as some tools that help me accomplish this…

Separate the Urgent from the Important – If you’ve read any of Stephen Covey’s material (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), then you may have heard of this concept. The idea is that we are often drawn to the things that are urgent but not necessarily important. Each day, I look over my task list and try to determine what are the 3 most important items on that list. If I could only get 3 things accomplished today, which 3 would they be? Sometimes they fit the criteria above that make them easy to do but other times, they are lame and dull tasks but yet critically important.
Ask Yourself Tough Questions – As you’re going throughout your day, ask yourself questions like “Is this really what you should be doing right now?” “What’s the worst thing that could happen if you don’t get this done today?” “Why are you doing this?” Asking yourself these evaluating questions from time to time keeps yourself focused.
Create A Plan – I talked about this yesterday as it relates to how I set up my calendar, but once I schedule out my day (not minute-by-minute, but just a general idea of the day), I also plan when I will work on certain tasks. The tasks that you work on should match up with when you’re at your best for doing that task.

In order to carry this out, I use a couple of different tools. In addition to using Mail and iCal on Mac, I also have started using a program called Things. This is a super user-friendly program that makes it easy to focus on the most important items and carry out your plan. The program follows a lot of what is taught in the book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen (which I highly recommend as it relates to this subject). Unfortunately, Things is only a Mac program, but prior to my conversion, I used Outlook 2007 and the to do list within that program which worked well. I also use a program called Jott, which I have discussed here. Finally, I always keep a notepad and pen by my computer (and by my bed at night), so I can scribble down notes, thoughts, or to do list items.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk more about money and how we handle our day-to-day finances.

What tips can you share for how you organize your tasks and get things done?

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Here’s What Works For Me…Calendar

Posted by Grant on January 15, 2009 – 2:26 am

Filed under Personal, Thinking Out Loud...

In this series, I will be walking through tools, systems, and routines that work for me in various areas of my life.

You ever have that nagging sense that you are supposed to be somewhere right now but you have no idea where? Or that you forgot about a meeting or an appointment you had?

If you don’t have some system for keeping track of your schedule, that nagging voice is always going to be there (which by the way, you should really talk to someone about the voices in your head…)

There are basically two forms of keeping a calendar and both work: Old School and New School. Old school is going to be your traditional pen and paper while new school is going to be some form of digital calendar. Personally, I use the digital/new school method.

I keep my calendar within iCal on Mac (I’m a former Outlook geek for PC users) and it works great. I also keep my calendar synced to my phone, so that I always have my schedule with me. Here are a few ideas that work for me and my calendar (it sounds like we have a deep relationship)…

Use colors – The kid inside all of us likes to play with colors, and so that’s what I do with my calendar. I color code everything, so I can always get a sense of where my time is going. I have 8 different categories I use, each with it’s own color: Business Task, Holiday, Birthday/Anniversary, Travel, Speaking Engagement, Held Speaking Date, Family/Personal, and Miscellaneous. I could probably have a lot more, but this is what works for me. So every time I add anything to my calendar, I add a color to it. Let the inner kid out.
Fast forward for reminders – While they are not necessarily appointments, I often put reminder notes in my calendar. For example, if I talk with someone about a speaking event and they want me to follow up with them in 3 months, I will add an appointment to my calendar 3 months down the road to call that person back. You could use this to keep track of assignments or other projects that are due several months from now that you still need to keep on your radar.
Stick to a schedule but with flexibility – I have a generic set schedule that I try to stick to every day but still have flexibility to it. It isn’t timed to the minute, but it keeps me focused on what I’m trying to do that day. Here’s a quick look at my schedule I try to stick to…

- 6.30am – Wake Up

- 7.00am – Devotions

- 7.30am – Plan day/review calendar

- 8.00am – Tasks/projects

- 9.00am – Check email

- 11.00am – Writing (new blog posts/books/talks)

- Noon – Check email

- 12.30pm – Lunch (break)

- 1.00pm – Tasks/Projects

- 2.30pm – Read blogs

- 3.00pm – Check email

- 4.00pm – Shut it down

- Afternoon/Evening – Exercise/Family Time/Read Books

Again, I don’t stick to this to the minute every day but it keeps me on track. I also take several minutes throughout the day to help my wife with our girls and to just goof off with them.

Know when you’re at your best – I’m learning more and more about myself and when I am most productive in various areas. I’ve found that I’m most creative and energized in the morning before lunch. After lunch, I start to lose focus and the ADD kicks in. So because of this, I try to schedule all my writing and more complex/lengthier projects in the morning when I’m sharpest. After lunch is when I schedule things like returning emails and phone calls, making reservations, and other simple tasks that don’t require a lot of thought but rather just executing the task.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk more about task management and getting things done.

What tips can you share for how you organize your calendar?

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Here’s What Works For Me…Email

Posted by Grant on January 14, 2009 – 2:51 am

Filed under Personal, Thinking Out Loud...

In this series, I will be walking through tools, systems, and routines that work for me in various areas of my life.

One area that I’m always working at to tweak and improve is how I organize my life. I work for myself and work from the house, so if I don’t keep myself organized, things begin to fall apart.

Whether you own your own business, are a stay-at-home parent, an average teenager, or a college student with a full load of classes and a part time job, you have to stay organized. A key part of any good organization system is EMAIL. So today, I’ll share some ideas regarding email organization and what works for me:

Keep your inbox empty – I started this a few years ago, and while it was a huge challenge initially, it’s been well worth it. Having an empty inbox helps my mind to not become overwhelmed or stressed by the volume of emails. I don’t have to stress about whether I responded to one or applied an action that was needed…if there is an email in my inbox, it just means I haven’t dealt with that yet. But as much as possible, I try to keep my inbox empty.
Use sorting folders – In order to keep my inbox empty, I have about 60 email folders set up within my email program. Personally, I use Mail within Mac, but I used to do this in Outlook for PC as well. Basically I have a folder for any and every type of subject and after I’ve dealt with an email, I put it into the correct folder so if I do need to refer back to it later, it’s there.
Set times for checking email – This is one I’ve just started and have to work at, but I’m trying to check email only 3 times each day. I’m a recovering email-aholic who needed to check and respond to email all day, everyday. In order to maintain some sense of balance, that system won’t work. I’ve set things up where I check email at 9am, noon, and 3pm and that’s it. At some point, I may drop down to 2 times each day, but for now 3 will work.
Turn off auto send/receive – My former email system was to just to have auto send/receive on all day and simply deal with email as it came in. The challenge was I could never focus on the task at hand because that stupid ding would go off every few minutes alerting me that a new email had arrived. And like Pavlov’s dog, I felt the need to open the inbox and check the email every time I heard the ding. So now the auto send/receive button has disabled.
Don’t let email control your life – Far too many people are addicted to email. We have the need to please others, so we have the need to respond to peoples’ emails at the moment that it arrives. I’m trying to learn to just let it sit there. It will be there tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk more about how I organize my calendar..

What tips can you share for how you organize email?

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Here’s What Works For Me…

Posted by Grant on January 13, 2009 – 3:43 am

Filed under Personal, Thinking Out Loud...

I’m someone who is always looking for ways to improve on what I do in my daily life. I’m not just talking about in my professional life, but in my personal life as well.

I find one of the best ways to do this is by learning from others.

So I ask people a lot of questions to figure out how they do what they do to see if something that is working for them might just work for me. So I ask about habits they have, routines they use, tools that work, books they read, shows they watch, and on and on the list goes. I’m sure that sounds like some creepy voyeur who is looking to stalk your every waking moment, but that’s not the case!

With that in mind, I wanted to start a series of things that work for me. Here are a few categories I’m planning to write about…

Organization (email, calendar, tools, etc)
Daily/Weekly Schedules
Money (budgeting, banking, cash, etc)
Books/Magazines (what I read and would recommend)
Websites

Not that you’re deeply engaged with my life, but what else would you like to see covered?

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Introducing Small Changes To Your Life

Posted by Grant on January 10, 2009 – 7:17 am

Filed under Personal, Thinking Out Loud...

I mentioned at the end of my last post (Personal Goals for 2009) that another goal I’m working on for this year will be through a concept called CHANGES.

The idea is to make small, incremental changes that will improve the quality of my life. You’ve heard the expression: “How do you eat an elephant?” One bite at a time.

How do you improve the quality of your life? One change at a time.

So I took this concept and made a list of changes that I believe would improve the quality of life. To be fair, I was partially inspired by a blog devoted to this idea called 99 Changes and the website 43 Things, which is basically a goal setting community. I also just came across the new site Stickk.com, which is along the same lines as well but with a twist…interesting concept.

Nonetheless, I wanted to think of simple things I’ve been meaning to do or should do that will improve or enhance my life. Some of these are changes, others are experiences, and some are just things I’ve been putting off that need to get done. In addition, some of these are one time occurrences and others may involve a month or more of developing a new habit or learning a new skill.

The idea for me is to continue to develop this list on an ongoing basis and work to complete 3-4 of them each month. I may even occasionally post here on my blog what changes I’m working on and how progress is coming along.

So without further delay, here is the list I’ve come up with for 2009…

Get a physical at the Dr’s office – It’s pretty rare that I get sick, so I couldn’t tell you the last time I went to the doctor (knock on wood). I’m planning on running a half marathon this year, so I better make sure I’m healthy.
Organize digital photos (back up files) – I’m sure like most people, we’ve got a few thousand digital pictures we’ve accumulated over the years. A lot of them need to be better organized, several of them could stand to be deleted, and I’d like all of them to be backed up somewhere.
Organize my closet – My closet My portion of the closet (notice I didn’t say half) could be touched up a bit. I’ve got plenty of things I don’t wear anymore that could be given away.
Develop a workout system/routine – I’ve got a training schedule for preparing for some of the races I’ll run this year, but I just want something consistent so there is purpose behind my workouts.
Cook a fancy 3 course meal for Sheila – Ultimately, I’d like to learn how to cook really well, but I didn’t put “learn to cook” on my list, because that would seem to be more of a lifelong learning process. So we’ll start with a nice meal and let Sheila reap the benefits…
Go on a road trip with no predetermined destination – Why not?
Have a backyard camping trip with my girls – This will need to be on a night where sleep doesn’t sound appealing…
Play in the rain with my daughters – Again…why not?
Make a bucket list – I’ve wanted to do this for a while, so it made sense to add to this list.
Learn to solve a Rubik’s cube – Enough people have these that it would be fun to grab one at random and just knock it out. My brother can do this. I’m jealous.
Get my passport – You would think with all my travels that I’d have this, but I’ve just never taken the time to get it.
Make a will – My wife and I have talked about this numerous times and actually have the materials to do it ourselves, but just need to sit down and do it.
Eat something I would never normally try – You only live once. Hopefully whatever the food would be won’t kill me though.
Make a movie starring my family – I’m looking for a reason to play with iMovie on my new Mac, plus this would be a great memory for the family.
Skydive – This was the only one my wife wasn’t a fan of when I read the list to her. I’ll keep trying to convince her otherwise.
Take vitamins – I used to do this pretty consistently but lately just haven’t.
Wake up earlier – Because I don’t have a “job” to get to, I don’t have a really consistent wake up time. Thankfully, I have two small children who help with this.
Send more notes (thank you notes, encouragement, birthday) – I write a decent amount of thank you notes, but handwritten notes are extremely valuable to people, so I want to do more of this.
Drink more water – My wife questioned this one because she said, “You drink more water than anyone I know.” But there’s always room for more water. Unless, my body decides it doesn’t need anymore and then I’ll just…well…you know what happens.
Learn to speed read – I read a lot, so it probably wouldn’t hurt to pick up the pace.

What would you add to the list?

What would you put on YOUR list?

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My Goals for 2009 – Part 4

Posted by Grant on January 9, 2009 – 4:17 am

Filed under Personal, Thinking Out Loud...

Welcome back for Part 4 of the series “My Goals for 2009.” In case you’re just joining us, you can check out Part 1 on the importance of setting goals, Part 2 on how to set goals or Part 3 on my business goals for 2009.

I first started writing down my goals in December, 2007 for the upcoming year and at the time, I only wrote down goals for my speaking business. It was my first year of business as a speaker, so I really took the time to think through and plan my business out for the year. But part way through the year, I started wondering why I didn’t take the time to set goals for my own personal life. It would seem like creating goals for my personal life would be just as important, if not more important than goals for my business.

So this year when I created my professional goals, I also took the time to create my personal ones. I mentioned in yesterday’s post regarding my business goals for 2009 that I create broad categories that help me to better structure my thinking and goal setting. Here are the categories for my personal goals: Physical, Financial, Family, & Personal. Here’s a further explanation for what goes in those categories…

Physical – For most of us, we have the mental goal or New Year’s resolution to exercise more, eat less, and blah, blah, blah, blah. But unfortunately, that typically lasts up until about yesterday when you chowed down on leftover Christmas candy. When it comes to my health, I feel like I need to have something to be working at, so I’m not just doing it for the sake of doing it. So for me, I’ve made it a goal to run a 5k race, 10k race, and a half marathon. The idea for me is that in order to run any of these races, you HAVE to be in shape! You can’t just show up on race day and pull something like this off. So this gives me something to plan, prepare and train for. I’ve been reviewing training schedules as well as upcoming races and have plans to run my 5k in March, an 8k in April, a 10k in October, and a half marathon in November.
Financial – Often times when people think of financial goals, they think simply of earning more money. But that’s not always the case (although I’ll take more money if you want to give me more!). While I do have a goal of how much I want us to make this year (which unfortunately I won’t be sharing , I also have financial goals to upgrade my wife’s van and pay cash for it. Purchase a different house, which we are in the process of selling ours right now. I want to give away at least 10% of our income, and also have $15,000 in savings for an emergency fund.
Family – Having family goals is critically important as well so I have set goals to take a 5 night vacation with our family (probably a beach trip this summer) plus a 3 night vacation with just Sheila, which we actually already have booked. We will be going to Maui in February for our anniversary! Tying back into the financial side of things, we will of course pay cash for any vacation we take. In addition, I want to make sure I have a date night every week with Sheila, so that she still likes me. And I want to start taking my oldest daughter Sydnee (who will be 3 in April) on more dad/daughter dates.
Personal – I guess this is somewhat of the catch-all for other goals I didn’t create a category for! Here’s the breakdown of those:

Take 2 full days off every week – this will typically be the weekend, but there are a lot of weekends when I’m traveling, so it will be two other days during those weeks. This is a difficult one for me because I love what I get to do and because I work from the house, I really have to work to keep my home life separated from my business.
Take 20 full vacation days – this of course does not include the 2 days a week that I’m off, but rather I equate this to 4 weeks of vacation time in a typical job setting.
Develop a better daily and weekly routine/system – I consider myself a fairly organized and disciplined person, but there are always areas for improvement. Because I work for myself and work from the house, I have to continually work at developing a system to get things done and make things happen.
Read 30 books for the year – I usually read between 30-50 books a year, so this will be a continuation of what I already try to do. I’ve heard it said before that the average millionaire reads a non-fiction book every month. If I want to be in their shoes someday, then I need to pay attention to what they do.
Read through the Bible – This is more of a spiritual discipline and a great way to start my day. On a side note, I’m reading through the Message translation this year.

Another personal goal that I will be talking about further tomorrow is an idea I’m creatively calling “CHANGES.” Come back tomorrow for more info on it…

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