How to Setup a Home Office for Maximum Productivity

I’ve been working from home for over a decade now. Over the course of time, I’ve done a number of things to make my workplace ideal for my own productivity. What follows are the many things that I’ve done, some of which have stuck, some which haven’t (but might be suitable for others). While there are a few conventional things covered here, I think you’ll be surprised to find some stuff that no one else is talking about.

Note that while I’m talking about a home office specifically, pretty much everything can apply to any office or space you work from.

Home Office Desk Setup — Forgive the bad lighting, it’s much better in person. Below I’ll describe many of the things going on here.

Desktop Computer

I know more and more people are strictly using laptops, tablets and even phones for their work. That’s fine if you’re on the move. But if you have a stable place, as a home office kind of assumes, then I’d recommend using a desktop computer. Your call whether you want a PC, Mac or other option. (I’m one of those unusual people that prefers a PC.)

Or, if you use a laptop, at least getting some external options which could include a monitor, mouse and keyboards. But if you use all three of these you might as well have gotten a desktop in the first place!

In general, you’re going to pay less for more computing power and features than you would on a laptop.

Right now, it’s about time I replace my desktop as it’s starting to run slowly and crash more often. It’s been a solid run of over 10 years. That’s impressive by computer standards. I’ve looked around a bit but haven’t made any decisions.

Monitor

One of the most important aspects is your monitor. This is your visual workspace. Depending on what you’re doing you may want to have multiple windows open to do side by side work.

Previously, I had dual monitors. However, for some reason, certain files wouldn’t work in the second monitor which was aggravating. Then I saw a friend that simply had a single, but very big, monitor. I moved to that and haven’t looked back. My current monitor is 26 inches. And one other tip. The top of the monitor should be at the level of your head. This helps fight against “text neck” as you don’t need to look down, but can keep your head in a neutral alignment.

(This goes beyond home office setup, but with this, you’ll want to learn the keyboard shortcuts that allow you to move windows around to half screen, full screen, etc. rather than having to drag the windows around by mouse. Extremely useful.)

Computer monitor — Along with a new dekstop computer I am contemplating getting a new bigger monitor like this 32 inch curved screen.

Stand Up Desk

I sat on my ass for eight plus hours a day for years. At some point when the stand up desk trend began, I realized my half hour or so workout each day, didn’t make up for being sedentary the rest of the time. So I got a stand up desk and haven’t looked back since.

Specifically, I purchased a TrekDesk. It’s a bit expensive compared to most, but does give a big workspace. I know others that have even built their own.

Of course, just standing still in one place for a long time is just another form of being sedantary, with different, but still existing, side effects to it. That brings me to my next point…

Treadmill/Wobble Board

For a few years I had a treadmill desk. I used this off and on for a bit. Then it was much more off. After not actually turning the treadmill on for over a year I decided it was time for that to go.

But I still wanted to move more. Enter the wobble board. While you could easily make one of these for yourself, I bought the Uplift E7 Motion Board. This bit of movement and shifting of position allows me to be less sedentary while standing. I really like it.

Fairly expensive for what it is…but it also should last forever.

Nature

I’m reminded of one study that found that hospital patients recovered faster when they had a window that had a tree outside of it, rather than a window looking at a brick wall. (source) Nature is good for us in many ways we’ve completely forgotten about (and that science is only beginning to explore once again).

As you can see in the picture at the top of this post, my computer and desk is right next to two windows that look outside to nature. If you do not have this option at this time, a picture of nature could still give some benefit.

Essential Oils

Here is where another aspect of nature enters into your home office. Research around what is called “forest bathing” shows that it is the phytoncides, or essential oils, of trees and plants that help lower stress, make for better thinking and much more that occured when walking in nature, versus walking in a city.

While you should absolutely go for walks in nature, you can bring a piece of this indoors by using essential oils in a diffusor. Previously I used a unit called a nebulizer, but recently I upgraded to a larger unit that has a 6 hour run cycle. The thing is, I would turn on the smaller unit in the morning but then forget about it the rest of the day after it stopped running. Now I can load it once, when I start my day in the office, and it’ll continue to run throughout. I mix up the different essential oils I use. Recently I even distilled my own douglas fir.

essential oil diffusor — This runs in my office the whole time I’m in there.

Air Quality

There are other things you can do improve your air quality besides essential oils. Studies show that air quality leads to improved productivity, sometimes amazingly so. Having plants in your offer. Having an air purifier. These are all worthwhile steps.

One study looked at office workers and the air quality in different buildings. They found: “It has now been shown beyond reasonable doubt that poor indoor air quality in buildings can decrease productivity in addition to causing visitors to express dissatisfaction. The size of the effect on most aspects of office work performance appears to be as high as 6–9%. (source)

Music

I play music while I work. Mostly metal and hard rock as that is my genre of choice, but I do mix it up from time to time. This is another reason to have a desktop; higher quality speakers.

One practice that I have found particularly useful for writing is to use the same album…or even the same track on loop. There is something about the repetitive nature that helps me and many others get into the flow zone easier. If I put on headphones while doing this it further drives me into the zone as I don’t hear my fingers typing or other ambient noise.

Dedicated Space

Ideally, you want your home office to be just for that, working. When I started my business I didn’t have the luxury of a space for my home office, so it was in my bedroom, but as I became more successful this became a must.

A dedicated space, even an isolated space, keeps you anchored to being productive (assuming your productive when you use it). This helps to make the container for work. When I’m in my office I’m working. When I’m outside of my office, I’m not working…at least not in the same manner, as there are different types of work.

Anchored Space

Besides the dedicated location there are other ways you can use anchors in your space. As covered before I read a lot. My home office is also where all my books are located. Having all the books in there helps me by being a sign and symbol of my accumulated knowledge and wisdom. Plus, I can easily go and reference any of these books that I might need for my work as frequently happens.

Over the years I’ve used plenty of other things like pictures and quotes that are aspirational. There’s been vision boards and stats I’m tracking on white boards that I would look at each day. Not doing any of that currently, but it was useful in the past.

Tinctures

You’ll notice on the left side of my desk in the top picture that a number of tincture bottles are there. I love herbal tinctures because they’re easy to take (compared to powders, and even capsules in my opinion). The right tincture can help sharpen the mind or reduce stress in the moment. Thus, having them on hand helps support whatever you need in that moment for work. More information on tinctures at Lost Empire Herbs.

That is how I’ve setup my home office for maximum productivity. While I’m sure I could focus in on some finer details, that definitely is the broad strokes. Feel free to share what you do in your office in the comments below.

YOUR Wealth Generation Plan

This is another chapter in The Money System That Never Fails and finishes one of the most important parts of the book, your wealth generation plan. This section covers how to make it your own.

Remember, this is YOUR Wealth Generation Plan. Make it your own. While I provide my template and how I do it, change it up as you see fit. As long as you’re positively working on each of the four areas, to a lesser or bigger degree, then you will move in the direction you want to go.

The point of this plan is that you’re paying attention and working to optimize each area. Depending on where you are currently with your money, you have stronger and weaker areas. You also have areas where more can be done, and areas where you have less.

If you don’t make much income, and your expenses are high, then investing is not the most important thing for you to focus on now. Instead, it will be income and expenses. If you have a good income, and expenses are fine, then how you work with your savings and investing becomes much more important. Put your attention, action steps and goals there.

In a way, there is kind of a progression through this:

Expenses
Savings
Investing

Note that I do not include Income on this progression. That’s because it is the accelerator, regardless of everything else. Some people make tons of money and spend all of it and more. That’s the star athlete that lives big because of the million-dollar contract, but doesn’t have any money management skills.

Thus, the first step is to make sure that your expenses do not outstrip your income. This typically means cutting your expenses, as that is easier to do than earning more money (at least in most cases).

Once your expenses are under control, you start focusing on savings. Build up your savings. The best thing to do when you get a raise, or start making more income from anything else, is to not spend more, which is the natural human reaction. Instead, start saving more. Bump up your percentages or automatic investing.

After you’ve saved for some time, and start to have some real money, then you can start learning more about and participating in investing. There really isn’t any point in focusing on investing until you have thousands of dollars to do so.

With me personally, my expenses are managed well enough. I’m always tweaking the savings amount, working to move them higher and higher. Now that I achieved my big goal of buying a house, in addition to paying that off, I will work even more on the investing area, while still seeking optimization in all
others.

As such, this also means that all books about money tend to cover one or more of these areas. Besides what you’re reading now, I haven’t found many that talk about all of them, at least not with this same kind of clarity.

Where you are at will determine what you should additionally study. In consumer debt? Something like Dave Ramsey, where he talks about cutting out the lattes might be appropriate. Looking to grow your investing? That same book is likely not going to be so useful.

Wealth Generation Plan Review

I like to do this monthly. Other people, who aren’t quite as hands on with their finances, might be fine to just do it once a quarter. At some point, I’ll probably switch to that, but currently, I like to review it monthly, even if I don’t make any changes.

Reviewing your wealth plan means reading through it and doing the following:

Updating your strategies as needed
Crossing off To-Do’s and adding more, or changing as necessary
Crossing off Goals and adding more, or changing as necessary
Updating savings percentages and automatic saving/investing amounts
Updating any other details that need updated

If you do this, it means you’re constantly updating what you’re doing. Hopefully, you’re learning along the way, including from any financial mistakes, and thus you’ll get better over time. This plan is not a set-in- stone document, but something to evolve along with you. Over time it will be what gets you to wealth, hence the name.

In NLP, one of the maxims is that “There is no failure, only feedback.”

That’s why I call this The Money System that Never Fails. It’s not that you won’t make mistakes along the way. Or that you won’t learn new better things that can make this work better. It’s just that you follow the plan, and adapt the plan along the way.

Ultimately, it is this framework for a plan, covering the four major areas of money, that is why it is a
system that won’t fail. The only way for it to fail to work, is for you to fail to work with it.

For more The Money System That Never Fails is now available in paperback and Kindle at Amazon.

If you missed the first chapters you can view them here:

Defense – Savings & Expenses

This is another chapter in The Money System That Never Fails and continues one of the most important parts of the book, your wealth generation plan. This section covers the “defensive side” of the financial equation, with savings and expenses.

Savings

My savings strategy is as follows:

Save weekly for all savings accounts typically done on Saturdays. Savings in investments are done
automatically.

Pretty simple. Here is where you’ll determine which accounts you’ll save to: business (if applicable) and personal. Here is where you write in the percentages you’re using. There are sections for both the manual as well as the automatic savings. Alter this as you see fit.

Write any action steps you need. In the beginning, this will include setting up the accounts you need to use.

Write any savings goals you have. This may include getting up to a certain percentage of savings. This may include specific numbers in specific accounts.

Money System - Income minus Savings

Expenses

Here, my strategy is simple:

Work to minimize expenses and track monthly totals to keep an eye on them.

If you want to use a budget, here you can detail that. For instance, $XXX is used for food per month.
While I have budgeted in times past, I haven’t found that all that useful. What I have found is that as long as I track my expenses and make sure they’re not getting out of control, I don’t have to look at them except once a month.

Specifically, I use one credit card for each business, and one personally. I pay off the bill in full each
month. If ever I am unable to do that, then I take a closer look. When I had issues earlier, I wouldn’t use credit cards at all. More to be covered on expenses later.

As before, write any action items or goals you have in this area. This can include making specific
purchases you’d like to make.

This is the proper place to include charitable donations as well since they are a financial expense, even if they give you non-financial returns.

This is also the place to cover your tax strategy, as taxes tend to be one of the biggest expenses for most people.

For more The Money System That Never Fails is now available in paperback and Kindle at Amazon.

If you missed the first chapters you can view them here:

How to Compare Yourself to Others

Comparing…it’s something that we all naturally do, pretty much all of the time. We compare one thing to another.

We also tend to compare ourselves to others. Unfortunately, doing so can lead you to anxieties, depression, manic behavior and all kinds of other things.

But it can also be hugely useful. It all depends in HOW you do it. What follows are some of my thoughts on the do’s and don’ts of comparison.

Comparing Babies

(Everyone will say you shouldn’t do this, but it’s human nature, so my guess is that everyone does it anyway.)

Recently, my wife and I were having a discussion about our baby, Elka. I’d been telling everyone how easy it’s been. She, on the other hand, has been having a rougher time. Obviously, there are some differences in what we’re each doing, her being the mother, the only one that can feed the baby.

AND, I think another part of it, that determined our differing outlooks, was in how we were using our comparison abilities.

In prepping for parenthood, I was asking every other parent I know about it. And I heard some horror stories, especially around the idea of sleepless nights. I really value my sleep, typically getting between eight or nine hours per night. (Part of the reason I need more than the average is because of the strength training I do. I know this because when I travel or lay off the training for other reasons I can function just as well without as much sleep.)

So, I was mentally prepared for that. I imagined having a child who would cry all throughout the night. And I tried to be ready for that.

As it turns out, that is not the case. She sleeps quite well. In fact, we’ve had a few nights where she has slept straight through, eight hours!

Any time there are difficulties, I compare her to what it *could* be. And I am grateful that it’s not.

In short, I compare reality against a much worse possibility, and feel better about how things are.

Onto, a different aspect, and one were I felt my wife was using comparison in a poor way.

Not everything is smooth sailing with Elka. She likes to be held or carried pretty much all of the time, except when she is sleeping at night. In fact, as I’m writing this to you right now, I’m wearing her in the Ergo. And, chances are, if I set her down she would wake up and start crying.

This proves tricky at times. And my wife was comparing her to some of her friends’ babies who could sit or lay by themselves for over an hour at a time.

In short, she was comparing reality against a much better possibility, and feeling worse about how things are.

In my mind, when there are things you can’t control, you should always be comparing against things that are worse. It’s a good recipe for staying positive. There is always a worse possibility…and that can be a good thing.

Financial Comparisons

Let’s switch gears and talk about money, something that we people can’t seem but to help compare ourselves to others in. Again, we shouldn’t do so, but we all do anyway.

I have millionaire friends. And I have friends that don’t make much at all. Plus, everything in between.

I have a really close friend my age that started up in business years after I did. He accelerated past me and sometimes I feel like I’m playing catch up. I have noticed when the thoughts and feelings come up of “Keeping up with the Joneses.”

Overall, that’s not a big issue. I keep it in check, realizing in many ways I don’t want what the Joneses have. But even here, it can be used positively.

Comparison can be used for motivation. Look at someone doing better than you, compare yourself, and then move in that direction.

Comparison can also be used to destroy your motivation. I can look at Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, or many other billionaires and think, I will never make that kind of money. So, what’s the use?

The difference from the previous case is that I can certainly exert a bigger degree of control in the outcome. So then it becomes about selecting the right outcome, based on comparison and if that helps you to make it happen.

Comparing Self to Self

Instead of comparing yourself to others, in many cases you will be comparing your self to your self. That is your past and future selves.

But this area too can be fraught with danger.

Compare where you are now to where you want to be in the future and you’ll always feel like you’re catching up…because you are. Your future self can always be richer, happier, healthier, etc.

This is a great recipe for dissatisfaction.

But that doesn’t mean that’s all it’s for. The simple act of goal setting really is comparing yourself now to that future self. This can be motivating too. It depends on how you feel about it.

And we can also turn to the past. Assuming you’re moving in the right direction, to feel good about yourself compare yourself now to where you were in the past. And you may find “You’ve come a long way, baby!”

But this can also be used to feel crappy about yourself. Look at something you use to have but no longer do. Maybe it’s your looks or your health. Again, more dissatisfaction, or motivation depending on how you do it.

Final Thoughts

This is a subject that is seldom talked about, but as it came into the forefront of my mind I had to write about it to clarify my thoughts.

Understand that comparing is one way that we use our mind, which in turn can radically alter our feelings. Thus, it’s worth taking an inside look at.

One thing I know, is that my future self will be even more effective at comparing for all the right reasons. 😉

Hopefully, you find these few ideas about comparison useful.

Offense – Income & Investments

This is another chapter in The Money System That Never Fails and continues one of the most important parts of the book, your wealth generation plan. This section covers the “offensive side” of the financial equation, with income and investments.

Income

In this section, and the ones to follow you’ll want to briefly write out your strategy in regarding that area. So, we start with your Income Strategy. How is it you’ll work on growing your income? For instance, for this year mine was:

Work on growing income daily through my main and side sources. A specific focus on building my salaries and distributions through businesses.

Write down all your sources of income. There may be only one, a paycheck, and that is fine.

There are a couple of ways you can look at this. One of the early books about money I read was Robert Allen’s Multiple Streams of Income. This idea is that you should have lots of money coming in from different sources.

On the flip side, there can be a drawback to scattering your focus. If you have just one much larger income stream, an income river if you will, it can be better than lots of trickling streams.

Adapt the template as you see fit. Include your main personal income stream(s). Write down any side streams you may have available to you. This can include selling stuff at garage sales, on eBay, or a moonlighting job you do. (Years back whenever I needed extra cash, I would unload various info-products and other goods on eBay.)

If you’re in business for yourself, include those income streams too. The distinction between this is what puts income into the business’s pocket, versus your own. If you’re not familiar with this distinction (and I wasn’t for many years), that will be covered more later.

Next, you have the To-Do section. Are there certain next action steps you should do to increase your income? This could include asking for a raise, or setting up a side hustle. What new streams of income might you be able to add? Lots of options abound.

Lastly, here you can go into more detailed goals, specifically about your income. More me, this involved increasing my salary from each business, as well as to setup a new business income stream (as an entrepreneur, I like to set up new things).

Investments

Remember, start off with your strategy. Here is an example of mine with investments:

I invest primarily for cash flow. My primary investments are my businesses, as that is where I can see awesome returns. But what is covered below is those hands free investments and storehouses of value. Buy a house before I start focusing more on investing. For each thing, figure out my Entrance and Exit Strategies, as well as any Risk Tolerance that must be figured in.

Remember earlier where I mentioned the difference between passive and active investments? Once again, passive investments don’t generate income. They may appreciate in value (or depreciate), and can then be sold, but they’re not actually building your income.

Meanwhile, an active investment does generate income. This could be a business that pays returns,
dividend stocks, bonds, even a savings account (however small that return is). It is really the active
investing part, or as I mention investing for cash flow, that gets investments put on the offense side of the money game.

Here, you will list out both active and passive investments you have. With the active investments, you can write the rate of return they generate. Write in how much of your income is transferred into these accounts, or whether they come from specific savings accounts.

And as before, write out any action steps and goals you have in this area.

For more The Money System That Never Fails is now available in paperback and Kindle at Amazon.

If you missed the first chapters you can view them here:

The Ivy Lee Method

The Ivy Lee Method is a simple, yet effective half-million dollar productivity method.

Ivy Lee (1877–1934) was an American publicity expert and worked as a consultant for a number of businesses. One of those was for Charles Schwab, then president of Bethlehem Steel Corporation.

Ivy Lee

In 1918, Schwab consulted with Lee in order to become more productive. In The Unseen Power, historian Scott M. Cutlip stated that Schwab was obsessed with efficiency. Thomas Edison himself called Schwab a “master hustler”.

The story, which from my research was first popularized by Earl Nightingale, goes like this:

Schwab: “Show me a way to get more things done.”

Lee: “Give me 15 minutes with each of your executives”

Schwab: “How much will it cost me?”

Lee: “Nothing. Unless it works. After three months, you can send me a check for whatever you feel it’s worth to you.”

Then during those 15 minutes with each executive, Lee laid out the following five step method:

At the end of each working day, write down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow. Do not write down more than six tasks.
Prioritize those six items in order of their true importance.
When you arrive tomorrow, concentrate only on the first task. Work until the first task is finished before moving on to the second task.
Approach the rest of your list in the same way. Don’t worry if you’ve only finished one or two by the end of the day; the others can wait. If you can’t finish them all by this method, you could not have finished them with any other method.
Repeat this process every working day.

It’s simple right? Well, Schwab and his team starting using this method. It worked well, very well.

Schwab send a check of $25,000 to Lee. In today’s dollars that would be more than $400,000!

Do you think it would be worthy of you to follow a nearly half million dollar productivity method?

I do and that’s why I’ve been using this method, with the following tweaks, every work day for the past several years.

Essentially, this is Eat that Frog, followed by Eating the Frog, five more times in order. If you’ve finished your top priority for the day, then it makes sense to then tackle your next top priority.

I do this to the best of my ability, though I can’t same I am flawless about putting it into practice. One thing that does get in the way is scheduled time slots. I write these on my list, but I’m not going to put off a ten o’clock appointment just because I haven’t finished my priority list.

Typically, I use only five items as I find that is a more realistic number. And I’m actually aiming to bring that down to four or three items instead.

Lastly, I do this first thing in the morning, as part of my meditation and journalling routine, rather than the night before.

As you can see, something very simple can also be very effective.

Your Wealth Generation Plan

This is another chapter in The Money System That Never Fails and starts up one of the most important parts of the book, your wealth generation plan. This “living” document was what turned around my finances for good.

I don’t remember who I got this from specifically, or if it even was from anyone in particular. It may have been from reading the 30+ books, and I came up with this idea myself. If you’re making a road trip, you better have a plan on how to get there. Sure, GPS is prevalent these days, but you still need a destination. Similarly, a good business will have a solid business plan, whether or not it is in the standard business plan.

And so it is to be with your money. The Wealth Generation Plan is your plan of action to cover each of the four areas of money: income, savings, expenses, and investments. It covers goals, action items, savings percentages, guidelines and more.

You can find a template for this here.

If you don’t want to use the template, then open up a word processor document and title it Wealth
Generation Plan. Under that write Last Updated: Today’s Date.

Creating a vision of your wealth is an important step. This topic will be covered in detail in an upcoming course, using what I call The Fractal Time Binding System (working title). For now, as you are writing your wealth plan, envision where you’ll be one year from now regarding wealth and money. Write out a paragraph or so that describes what you do with your money and how you feel about it.

For example, here was my vision for 2017:

My wealth has accelerated with ease. I continue to work and tweak my plan and with it in action. I generate more money and expend about the same (though more to charity). Mostly, I save lots and grow my investments, and so the cycle repeats. My skills in each of these areas has grown as the figures grow bigger too. I run my businesses with better accounting and both the business and personal books show it. Funds shifted in order to put a down payment on a house, yet the numbers caught up and exceeded those.

I do this exercise around the end of the year, in December, to get ready for the upcoming year. It’s far from a New Year Resolution, but instead a lengthy and far more effective process. Still, you can do it at any time. If you do engage in something like that around the New Year and right now it’s June, go ahead and create your vision and goals for the rest of the year.

Now that we have a vision, what are your goals? Would you like to have a certain net worth? Get out of debt? Save a certain percentage of your income? Make a certain amount passively off of investments? While these and similar questions may be covered in the vision, I see a goal as something more specific that you can say is achieved or not achieved. (There is also a net worth calculating spreadsheet inside the templates.)

You’ll notice that my vision is more feeling based. Although there is talk of bigger numbers, it is devoid of any real specifics. When it comes to goals they must be specific. Without giving you specific numbers, here were my main financial goals in 2017:

Buy a House
$XXXXXX Net Worth
Personal Income baseline of $YYYYY/month
Regularly save 50% of income
Make $ZZZZ off of passive investments

(Note: I tend to be aggressive in my goal setting. I realize I do this, and often fall short, but it keeps me moving in the right direction. At the time of writing this (in December of 2017) I have hit two of these goals.)

While it can be fun to imagine having a million dollars cash a year from now, if you’re under a pile of debt now, making minimum wage, please be a bit more realistic with your expectations. You want your vision and your goals to be motivating and drive action, not demotivating, fanciful dreams.

Write down three to six goals having to do with money. You might think about each of the four categories. What is your goal for your income? What is your goal for your expenses? What is your goal for your savings? What is your goal for your investing?

The vision and the main goals is the first page of your Wealth Generation Plan. At a quick glance, you can see everything. Then, on the following pages, we go into more detail about each of the four areas of money. Each one of these is then contained on one page.

For more The Money System That Never Fails is now available in paperback and Kindle at Amazon.

If you missed the first chapters you can view them here:

Eat That Frog

I am going to do a series on Personal Productivity. This applies to work, but to things outside of work as well. Right now, I have 24 topics outlined. By the time I finish it’ll likely be 50.

I have studied this topic for many years. Why? Because, being an entrepreneur, especially early on where I was doing everything, meant that the more productive I could be, the better results I would get. Even as I advance in my entrepreneurial endeavors, the same is true, though how I aim my productivity has changed. (More on that later.)

You can set goals in all sorts of areas of life. Being productive in working towards them is ultimately what allows you to hit them.

So, in this series, we start with one of the simplest, yet most effective methods. It is to Eat That Frog.

Eat That Frog

This concept, and the name for it, comes from the late, great Brian Tracy, who wrote a book by the same name.

It’s a short book, one I’ve read a couple of times, and likely will read a few more times in the future too. Well worth reading.

From the first page of the preface, Brian grabbed me. He talked about the to-do list and how this will never get done.

“There is never enough time to do everything you have to do…The fact is that you are never going to get caught up. You will never get on top of your tasks…No matter how many personal productivity techniques you master, there will always be more to do than you can ever accomplish in the time you have available to you.”

This hit me like a ton of bricks. Previously, I was always playing catchup just trying to get it all done. Now, I realized this was a pointless endeavor.

Ideas come at a mile a minute (especially when you train yourself to come up with lots of ideas). Thus, adding new things to your to-do list happens much faster than checking them off, even if you are optimally personally productive.

The idea of eating that frog, is that if you HAD to eat a frog, the best way to do it would be to just get it done. No hemming or hawing, thinking, worrying, stressing about the fact that you had to do it. Not outlining and planning different ways you could do it. Not consulting your friends, or posting about it on Facebook. Instead, you just eat the frog, finish it off and then you are done with it.

(This presupposes that eating a frog is a bad thing, that it wouldn’t taste good, or whatever. But that’s another topic we’ll cover later.)

Chances are you’re not having to literally eat frogs. But the frog is the metaphor for the thing that is important and valuable to you. Generally, it is not an urgent task.

So many people start their days checking their email or hopping on social media. These are not frogs.

Instead it is best to start your day with a routine that sets you up for success the rest of the day. That is why I meditate and journal first thing in the morning, typically followed by working out.

When I start my workday I tackle my priority, my frog first. Ideally, I do this until it is done, before moving onto anything else.

Take toady for example (I misspelled that on accident, but isn’t that awesome considering the topic)…I had to film some Youtube videos for Lost Empire Herbs. I had meant to get this done days before but things got in my way, so it was my frog today. I got it done. Then I moved onto a couple other activities before finally writing this post for you.

Sometimes you can’t possibly finish a thing in one go, like writing a book. In this case you may just block off one or two hours or so and that is your frog. Or maybe it’s a chapter so you do have a done point.

This is very much in line with the Ivy Lee Method which I’ll be covering next time…

Automatic vs. Manual Savings

We continue in The Money System That Never Fails with how to maximize your savings, one of the most crucial elements of the overall system.

The Money System That Never Fails is now available in paperback and Kindle at Amazon.

If you missed the first chapters you can view them here:

Should you be manually making these savings transfers? Yes, and let me tell you why. You want to get into the habit of it. What you put your focus on tends to grow. Therefore, paying attention to your savings accounts by adding money to them each week, you’ll watch them and begin to feel awesome about what you are doing with your money.

Because generating wealth, of which this is the foundation of, is fun to me, my weekly savings transfer is something I look forward to doing.

Being in business for myself, how much money I made did change, sometimes dramatically from week to week, I had to do this manually. But even if you get a paycheck, I would still recommend doing it manually too.

In fact, when I came out of that frustrating period of where I was determined to figure money out, I
transferred money into my savings, according to percentages, every single day! Why? Because it was about the habit, and the energy of seeing the money grow. I don’t remember how long I did this, before I felt like I got what I could out of the process, and it was just became a burden on my time. Then I switched to just once a week, and have been doing so ever since. The routine was firmly established, and now I look forward to doing it every week.

That being said, there is a time and a place for automatic savings too. In some of my investment
accounts, like I mentioned with Bitcoin, but also my stock account, I have a set amount, like $100, that gets transferred each month. No percentage here, but a flat amount. This is a little bit different. From income, it is going to investments, not savings, and, although the line can be blurry between these, that is the key difference.

For some people, doing it automatically may be the better option, as out of sight, out of mind. I don’t agree with that, because you shouldn’t be blind about your money, but if it works better for you go for it.

The Deep Dive

When it comes to learning something, or building a habit, starting small and just being consistent with it is a great way to go.

Just the other day I read about someone building the habit of exercise by starting so small their first step was to just put out workout clothes…not even put them on. The latter was the second step.

That’s all well and good. Certainly, a time and a place for that.

Then there is also the Deep Dive.

deep dive

This is a similar tool, but one on the opposite side of the spectrum. And one that has served me very well over time.

The Deep Dive is when you dive deeply into some subject, topic or practice. The deep dive could be a day, a weekend, a week, a month. Hell, it could even be a theme for a whole year. It takes many forms, so I’ll give you a few different examples.

As I discuss in The Money System that Never Fails, it was a deep dive in reading somewhere between 20 and 30 money books that things turned around for me financially, and I got off the constant struggle treadmill. Mind you, this wasn’t just study, but also involved building a Wealth Plan and starting with immediate action. Read a bit more about that story in the Introduction here.

Over the course of writing my upcoming book Powered By Nature I did a deep dive on various books about health, nature and connection to it. This was described in the posts about the 72 books I read last year.

Just recently, I signed up for Perry Marshall’s New Renaissance membership. He has a monthly newsletter of which the back copies are available. In the six weeks since I signed up I have read four years of this material. Why? Because the business (and life) wisdom is deep there. Not only that, but I just saw Perry at a one day event in San Francisco and will be attending a 3-day event of his in a couple months.

A weekend seminar or conference can certainly be a deep dive. I could count on probably one hundred pairs of hands how many of those I have attended as well as put on.

Back when I was conducting NLP trainings my partner and I would choose a specific topic, such as the Milton Model or Reframing or Sleight of Mouth. For the month or two leading up to that workshop it was reading and practicing, followed by teaching. Then onto the next topic. In this manner, especially because we had to teach it, our skills grew tremendously.

Thinking ahead there are some things I would like to do a deep dive on at some point.

So far, my piano practicing has been the little bits of practice here and there. It’s slowly moving me along. AND I know a deep dive could take me much further.

Ultimately, I think the combination of the tortoise and the hare approach, the small consistent practice and the deep dive, leads to the best results.

What area of your life could use a deep dive?