Maintaining Focus
June 18th, 2008
The past couple weeks have been incredibly busy for me with the closing of our new house and the existing one coming close together there has been a lot of extra activities added to my plate. I’ve tried maintaining everything with a bit of grace and perseverance. I’ve found that whenever there’s a large project or many projects you simply have to break them down into smaller parts and take it a small part at a time.
Being that I’ve worked in project management for a while breaking down a project into manageable parts is necessary and it translates pretty much to every aspect of our lives. For example if you’re $40,000 in debt paying the whole thing off at once might seem like a huge undertaking. That by itself is enough to scare people into inactivity. But taking that same large number and breaking it down over say 3 years means its only $13,333 per year (or a little over $1,100 per month) which is still pretty daunting. Understanding this we can stretch the project over a longer period to make it more manageable, say within 5 years (about $667 per month).
Breaking down our goals and projects can make them more achievable but in my opinion it adds something additional that’s important, it adds focus. Each of the small pieces by themselves might not seem like a grand achievement but when you start adding them up they can very quickly make a huge difference. This is exactly what I’ve been doing preparing everything for the impending move and its been working wonders in helping me keep focused which we all know can be tough from time to time.
Posted in Commentary, Productivity | 1 Comment
Efficiency Through Batching
February 12th, 2008
Originally uploaded by mwri
We would all like to be more efficient and we can often see things in our lives that are simply not as cost or time effective as they could be. Productivity is directly tied to efficiency and this same productivity translates directly into dollars and cents. So what can we do in our crazy lives that will improves our efficiency? One of the tasks that I’ve learned through a bunch of business and productivity books is the art of batching.
What is Batching?
Batching is taking a task that is repetitive and frequent and doing it in one lump. The perfect example for this would be laundry; you can do a half load of laundry every day or collect all of your laundry and maybe do a couple loads at the end of the week. Those collected loads of laundry are batched. We’ve all got tasks that we do each and every day that don’t take a lot of time but they inevitably chew into our day (say email) rather than answering email for 10 minutes out of every hour pick two half hour slots during the day and answer email then.
What are the benefits of batching?
One of the main benefits of batching is that you can take advantage of volume discounts. A full laundry machine wastes less water, heat and detergent than two half loads. Although this is just one example it can be translated all over the place. Take for example writing for a blog; rather than wrack your brain each time you want to write a post you can batch by sitting down for a couple hours and jotting notes and rough drafts. You can compile more in an hour or two of concentration and focus than if you were to scramble every time you wanted to write.
A focused effort on something provides more results and productivity than a broken up parts. Say you spent 10 minutes a day looking through your mail; now what if you left that same pile of mail for a week and took care of everything within 30 minutes? The math is very simple the concentrated effort took you 30 minutes but the daily effort over the week was 50! You can save yourself a bunch of time for more enjoyable pursuits.
Personally I try to batch whatever I can, some things like mail, email, laundry, dishes and paying bills are very easy to batch. They save me time, money and effort. By batching you can spend less total time on rudimentary task that you normally do all the time and by doing so improve your overall efficiency.
Posted in Productivity | 1 Comment
Fears – What’s holding you back?
January 24th, 2008
I’ve been going through a rather rough spell lately and my confidence in myself has been a bit rattled. I know that I can accomplish a great many things but for some reason I’m not accomplishing anything worth talking about. In reality there is no reason that I shouldn’t be able to do the things I’ve been setting out to do. I’m not setting my goals so incredibly high that I cannot reach them. I can even see the route to accomplish my goals yet I’m not accomplishing anything. I’m sure many of the readers of this blog have encountered this before or might even be feeling the same way right now.
The biggest problem for me has always been financial and money drives a lot of things for me. Continued failure to achieve any form of success has been weighing on my mind lately. All of this got me thinking not necessarily about what I’m doing wrong or what I’m not doing but more to the underlying causes of the problem. I believe that the root of a lot of my problems and lack of success is a set of deep seeded fears.
I’m sure everyone can releate to not doing something because a fear gripped us. Look at smokers for example; fear holds many of them back from even attempting to quit when they very clearly understand that smoking is unhealthy, expensive and not very enjoyable. Fear of not being able to pay your bills I’m sure has many people up late at night in a cold sweat. The question that I came to was what fears are holding me back and why and I managed to come up with a couple ideas though I’m not certain I’ve reached a resolution in my mind yet. Regardless here are some fears that I see that are holding me back right now:
Fear of Failure: This is a fear that has gripped everyone at one time or another. No one wants to fail at what they’re doing regardless of what it is. Personally I’ve done fairly well for myself in life succeeding to some degree pretty much all of the time. Failing at something is not something I enjoy and I make sure that I put enough effort into something that I achieve some level of success. Fear of failure keeps me going at the office, it guides how much effort I put into tasks to make sure they succeed. Unfortunately it has also slowed me down on many occasions. I’ve had ideas that could potentially be viable businesses but I don’t start them because I’m afraid what might happen if they don’t succeed. Fear of failure has kept me in jobs I didn’t enjoy because I was afraid of what might happen if I left and didn’t succeed at another one. Bills need to be paid! Overall I think this fear is a healthy one to have as long as it does not turn into something that prevents you from doing something.
Fear of the Unknown: This is another fear that I’m sure most people have encountered at some point or another. We fear what we don’t know and don’t understand, it raises our heart rate and makes us uncomfortable. The reality is that often this fear is due to a lack of effort or worse simply an excuse. When I was younger I didn’t fear the unknown I tried to figure out what that unknown was so that I could get past it. Now not knowing what to do slows me down, I worry about it and I don’t accomplish what I need to. About a year and half ago I had the opportunity to buy a cottage and had the money to do so. Everything looked like it would be in order with one exception I needed a larger down payment because of the type of property it was. I was $5,000 short and I really didn’t know what options I had to get around it. I knew there had to be a way but I didn’t know what it was. This fear held me in check for a couple weeks where I could have been trying to find out from more knowledgeable people. The end result is I did find an option that would have worked; unfortunately it was too late and the deal ended up falling through. Now on a brighter note I ended up using that same money to buy my girlfriend at the time an engagement ring and we got married. In the end I am far happier for getting married than I would have ever been owning a cottage. But the fear of the unknown slowed me down and prevented me from succeeding.
Fear of Success: Recently I’ve been thinking that this is also a fear that grips me. I know that it sounds like a strange fear since why would you be afraid to succeed but I believe it’s a valid fear. For example if you want to start a business and think it will succeed you simply go out and do it. But what happens if you do? You might end up running around like mad trying to keep everything going (we’ve all seen this) or worse you might end up doing really well and not need to do anything. Either way the change in lifestyle is huge the goal is success but the fear of actually reaching that point is subtly sitting in the back of our minds. This fear is a bit harder to grasp for me since its much more subtle than the other two I mentioned. It also doesn’t make sense since there should be no reason to fear accomplishing something yet looking back at my past I think this fear is probably the biggest one I need to conquer. I have started a great many projects and tasks in my life and most of them have sat there unfinished because of this fear. The thought of ‘what happens if I actually do this?’ runs through the back of the mind.
Between the three fears I think I might have found a nice happy place where I don’t fail too often, don’t succeed too often and don’t do anything too unfamiliar. I have been in debt for most of my working life and I recognize this. I’ve managed to stop going further into debt but I also haven’t gotten out of debt. Working in technology I make a decent living and there is no reason why I should still be as far into debt as I am. I think that a lot of people find a nice rut that they’re comfortable with and just stay there for most of their lives. They find a happy medium where nothing too challenging happens and they just do the same things over and over again regardless of how pointless they might be. If you look at all of the people living from paycheck to paycheck and assessed their spending, income, and expenses you could very quickly find a way for them to stop the pointlessness and anxiety that this lifestyle brings with it.
I don’t think I’ve gotten to the bottom of this myself, there are more fears that guide my thoughts, emotions, and actions but acknowledging them and seeing what options exist to move past them is a starting point. There is a lot more I need to do to get past all of these fears but I know that I can. I’ll post more about my fears and what I’m going to do to change my situation and hopefully right myself over the next week or so.
Posted in Commentary, Productivity | 1 Comment
Knowing your Limits
December 17th, 2007
When someone asks me if I know my limits I fondly think back to math class in high school but when that thought fades it’s replaced by a fuzzy blob. I would like to think that I personally know my limits but there are so many that we can be talking about. In our hectic lives knowing where to draw the line is often more important than the things you’re trying to accomplish.
For those of you who have been following this blog for a while I have been rather absent in the past few months; posting irregularly and not reading other blogs very much. This has been on purpose. I know that I can keep the blog up and write regularly, it might cut into a few other things I’m doing, but I can do it. So the first question that comes to mind is why am I not writing? The answer is simple: I know my limits. If I were to keep going on too many things at once none of them would be done nearly as well if I were to concentrate on any of them. So when I was faced with the too many things to do at once I cut back on a few things including this blog. Thankfully I have managed to trim out and finish up some of those other time consuming tasks and I can go back to concentrating on this blog.
If you don’t know your limits and you keep taking on more tasks than you can conceivably finish you risk burning out and not accomplishing any of them. The perfect analogy for me when it comes to knowing your limits is the gym. If you haven’t gone for a while and have a good work out you will inevitably be sore the next day. Now if you were to keep going back day after day making the workout longer and harder you would in all likelihood hurt yourself. Taking on too much in every day life is not much different but rather than hurting yourself physically you end up mentally burnt out and tired.
Knowing where your limits lie allows you to not get burned out, overextended and just generally overworked. It also applies to your finances but this is something that a lot of people tend to forget and ignore. If people knew their limits with their money there would be a lot fewer people living from pay to pay. Knowing your limits allows you to reap the benefits to not taking on too much, not spending too much and in general being able to accomplish more. By doing less at once you can accomplish more.
If you do anything in excess it can very quickly become a bad thing even when it started out as a good thing. History is loaded with examples of this so I won’t go into details. There are many benefits to knowing where your limits are be they physical, mental, or financial.
Posted in Commentary, Productivity | 1 Comment
Would you invest in You, Inc.?
November 30th, 2007
Would you invest in You, Inc.?There was a very interesting post over at StevePavlina.com today about considering yourself to be self employed no matter what your situation is. I was quite impressed by the post since I had never actually thought about it that way. Yes with the right mindset it’s quite easy to think of yourself as self employed.
Would you invest in You, Inc.?
Being that I happen to like myself and I think I do a good job most of the time yes I would invest in Me, Inc. Heck I’d even hire myself. But the post did bring up some interesting ideas. How much time does the average employee spend ensuring that they are in a good position to move jobs or upgrade their skills? My guess is that the majority of the ‘corporate’ workforce is stuck in the situation where they simply wait and do what they are told. If the ‘training’ courses are not part of their yearly review they simply don’t happen. I know this is what I fall into from time to time.
The Finances of You, Inc.
Steve Pavlina’s post centered on the concept of ensuring that you are the best company to hire for the job and that by changing your outlook on work you can make yourself more competitive in the market. I agree with his thoughts but rather than would you simply invest in You, Inc. What would you say if you were an investor and needed to see the financials of You, Inc? Would you be impressed or horrified about how that particular business was being run?
Personally if I were to look at my personal finances from an investor’s point of view I don’t think I would invest in myself (at least not without good reasoning). First off I’m in debt with very little to show for it. Many companies are in debt but it’s to grow their business, increase sales, or even to purchase capital items. Debt by itself isn’t bad but the reason why its there might be. Another aspect for me as a potential investor would be the company’s cash flow. Again looking at myself as the example I would be hesitant to invest any money simply because my cash flow isn’t quite under control yet. Its considerably better than it was only a few months ago but that doesn’t make it quite right yet.
I really like the idea of looking at yourself through an entrepreneurial lens; it forces you to consider things that you might never look at otherwise. To top this off by looking at yourself objectively you can possibly realize that some items such as cash flow are really important and if you were a corporate entity then you would be overlooked by a great many investors.
Posted in Sites/Articles, Commentary, Productivity | 3 Comments
Lack of Motivation
October 23rd, 2007
I have been very unmotivated lately and it really shows in many places such as this blog. My time and energy have been consumed by a couple different things and the impact they’ve had to my motivation have been staggering. I used to have ideas for this blog popping up all over the place now it seems to have dried up. But I have been putting in an extra amount of energy into a side project idea lately, which I can see as being a creative drain. The good thing is that my lack of motivation hasn’t impacted working on this side project very much; I’m still extremely excited by it.
Unfortunately a lot of things around me have been impacted and it’s interesting to see how one aspect of your life impacts another. Lacking motivation could be coming from the office but it might be your hobbies that get impacted the most. When you’re overworked even though you’re busy you can see the motivation slowly ebb away and how the quality and level of work just trickles away as a result. The interconnectivity of everything no matter how much you compartmentalize it can be seen through motivation (at least to some extent).
Staying motivated can be a really big challenge sometime especially if the day-to-day grind is no longer something you love to do (or can tolerate any longer). I have been really busy at the office and I have been mentally drained for a while. In short I’m a bit burnt out. On the other side of the coin I have this little side project I’m working on which I’m working on and excited about and by itself it is keeping me motivated.
So how do I stay motivated?
In this particular case it’s actually my side project that is keeping me going. If it works out the way I hope it does then I won’t need to rely on my day-to-day job for all of the money coming in thus removing the day-to-day grind as required. I’m excited by the idea and the prospect that this brings and it illustrates how I keep the motivation flowing – rather than sit on my behind and moping about it I try to do something about the issues that are sitting on my mind. This isn’t always easy but having a goal however small gives you something to strive towards.
Another thing I try to do when I start feeling unmotivated is slowing down. I might be inadvertently overloading myself with too much of everything. Simplify everything in order to get some balance back into life. I limit commitments to really urgent ones and take some time for myself to relax and truly unwind. Taking on too much might be what’s inadvertently causing the problems.
Posted in Commentary, Productivity | 3 Comments
Are you TOO busy?
October 4th, 2007
A very simple question that very many people are simple unable to answer properly. They think they’re busy but they don’t see the fact that they may in fact be too busy. Personally I know I’m way too busy right now and the effects are starting to show in my psyche and ability to get things done. If you don’t think that can happen to you, think again. I always thought that I had a good ability to deal with a high volume of work and I still do but thinking this way means that you might take more and more work.
How can you tell you’re too busy?
I guess the important question if you think you might be too busy is not whether you are or you aren’t but how can you tell if you are. Realistically the answer to this question will change from person to person. But what I’ve noticed some indicators are that you might be too busy are: you see your workload and can’t figure out where to start, the small tasks keep getting in the way and you can’t get to the bigger items, your to do list is a mile long and items travel from one day to the next without being completed.
There are probably 101 more ways that you can tell that you’re too busy and I’m sure the majority of them would be right. The item that I’m dealing with isn’t necessarily the fact that I’m too busy but the impact that this is having on my psyche; when my workday is over I have no energy to really do anything and I find that distractions such as TV and going for drinks aren’t as relaxing as they used to be. The feeling of being wound so tight is ever present even though I’m not thinking about work.
The viciousness of being too busy is that not being able to sit down and finish a task at a time will delay and prolong every task that you need to do. The nagging feeling that you need to do more just hangs in the air and you try to work quicker rather than smarter.
What to do about it?
There will be times in our lives when we will simply be over busy; we will simply have too many things to do and not enough time to do them. How do you handle it? Again the answer to this question is both personal and case specific but there are a few items that seem to be universal in my mind:
- Delegate
- Limit your tasks
- Concentrate on a task till its complete
- Stop taking new tasks
- Don’t worry – it will just slow you down
The first one is easy; if there’s something that you can delegate to another person then do it. It doesn’t have to be a permanent thing; even a short reprieve can help you get caught up on the monster to do list. The second item takes practice, at least for me. Limit yourself to the number of major tasks that you’re trying to accomplish in one day. If you keep rewriting everything from the previous day on your to do list then it’ll be too daunting to finish in the day.
Which leads into the next point, when you’re working on something concentrate on it and finish it in one session rather than leaving it. The other thing to consider is by concentrating I mean don’t let interruptions get in the way; People think that a simple interruption (even a minute or two) isn’t a big deal when in reality the impact is it will take you a lot longer than those two minutes to you get back to where you were with the task.
The next item on my little list is the most obvious one for me. If you’re overloaded with work stop taking more! When someone asks if you can do something say no. If you’re in a position where you are told what to do push back and tell your boss that you’re already busy and you don’t want to sacrifice any of the tasks you’re working on including the new one. Most people appreciate this type of approach.
Finally don’t worry about it; if you’re overloaded with work worrying and getting stressed out about it will only take up time and make you less efficient. If you’re worried about a report you need to run at the office but you’re supposed to be in bed sleeping then you’re not getting enough rest. Remember you can only do so much.
Personal Finance Application
So what does this have to do with personal finance? Surprisingly a lot in my opinion, people treat their finances the same way they treat being overworked. When they need to spend money they go overboard and when the bills start piling up they don’t know where to start or what to do with them. I’ve been in this situation, not knowing what bill to pay first or how I would pay for all of them. This isn’t a good situation to be in since the impact is considerable.
The approach is very similar to being over busy. Step 1 – you have to stop the spending, Step 2 – a systematic approach to getting everything paid for however slowly. This maybe an oversimplification but realistically step 1 is really the solution and everything else is digging out of the hole you’ve dug yourself into.
Being overwhelmed by your finances or your work isn’t a good situation to be in because of the impact mentally. Some people are able to handle the stress but given time everyone will feel the effects. There is only so much time in the course of a day, you can’t create more time but you can use it wisely. The same goes for your finances you only make so much money, apply and use it wisely.
Posted in Productivity | 3 Comments
Lack of Motivation and getting it back
August 27th, 2007
Over the past few weeks I’ve suffered from a serious case of writers block. It wasn’t the variety of writer’s block that prevented me from writing entirely but it prevented me from writing really good quality posts. I’ve already indicated I don’t want to post up sub-standard posts and this is exactly the position I found myself in. So the net result was that I wasn’t writing very much. I’m still suffering from this writers block but it’s slowly starting to lift.
Along with the writer’s block I was completely mentally drained and lacking anything that resembled motivation. We all go through these periods of time where we find ourselves just slogging through the day to day of our lives in a bit of a haze. This was August for me. I have managed to eke out a little more get up and go out of myself but I’m not at the state I was at just after our honeymoon. I’m still a bit drained and I could use a vacation (which unfortunately isn’t going to happen just now). Unfortunately this lack of motivation translated into my personal finances as well; I didn’t write down all of my spending at the end of the day but just collected recpits which means the accuracy has gone down a bit.
Thankfully I did start pulling myself out of this funk, I recognized the fact that I was falling into a rut where I really didn’t want to be. I saw things that were just left unattended and not looked at for days where I would have simply just done them. So what did I do? Here are a few things I did:
- Came up with a 101 list
- Blocked my creative time at the office into chunks
- Kept my attitude in check
- Looked back at what my goals were
- Change up the routine
What the Hell is a 101 list?
Well a few years back I read a book on procrastination and in that book there was a great suggestion on keeping yourself busy, Come up with a list of 101 things that you need to do. The list is supposed to contain both the every day mundane items such as wash the dishes as well as those larger long term goals like visit Japan. I’ve modified this exercise slightly in that I keep it as a running list and I don’t stop at 101. When I’ve completed a task I cross it off the list and as things come up I keep adding them to the list. I’ve been keeping this list on my work laptop so I can access it most of the time and I’ve been trying to keep it update daily.
Blocking Creative time at the OfficeI’m not a creative person in the artistic sense, at least not at the office. But that doesn’t mean that my work isn’t creative. I come up with proposals and architectures to problems which is equally mentally draining in my opinion. So I’ve started blocking time to work on these items, there’s no point in attempting to work on something important with small tasks jumping in and disrupting you. This way I’ve tried to remove the stress of unfinished work.
Keeping your Attitude in Check
This is something that is always important, regardless of your current productivity levels and mood. There will be times when you aren’t really up for something or you don’t agree with what needs to be done. You have to keep your attitude in check or those items will weigh heavily on you stressing you out. Stress is not a good factor when you’re busy and mentally drained. Keeping your attitude in check and yourself upbeat will only help the situation.
Maintained Focus on Goals
Because I’ve been mentally drained and suffering from writers block I didn’t want to stop working on the things that have kept me going (especially on this site). If you’ve been coming here I’ve added a few things and made some minor modifications to the overall site. This isn’t the best use of my time but they are things that I’ve wanted to do for a while. Looking back at the things I wanted to accomplish reminds me what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do those things. It’s a form of motiviating myself. For example when I saw the pile of recipts in my wallet instead of waiting till I got home to put them into my tracking sheet I simply did it on the subway to work. This isn’t the time I normally did something like this but I knew that the evenings weren’t good for me lately.
Change up the Routine
I find that when I’m starting to get into a rut its because I’m doing the same things over and over and over again without any real reason why. Noticing these small routines that keeping me in the rut is a very easy thing that I can do to get out of the funk. If you take the same route to work each day, take a different one. If you eat the same meals at lunch change it up. Hell, take a day off even! Just changing things up can give you that extra perspective that you need.
Overall getting into a funk happens to all of us and we all know our ways out of them. Every person is different and every person will react differently to it. If you fall into a rut you have to recognize it for what it is and do the little things that will slowly get you out of if. You didn’t fall into the rut all at once and chances are you won’t fall back out at once either, the little things matter.
Posted in Commentary, Productivity | 2 Comments
Cashflow – Tracking your Money
July 30th, 2007
One of the hardest things for me to do since I started this blog and within the concept of keeping my finances under control has been to keep track of exactly where my money is going. Inevitably I forget about spending money or things like smokes, food, and even small snacks I get every now and then. Unfortunately to keep everything as accurate as possible you need to keep these items tracked. The reason all these small items are so crucial is the fact that all of these small insignificant amounts really add up quickly.
For example if you forget to include your bank fees and ATM fees it’ll add up. My monthly bank fees amount to about $12 which is a bit ridiculous, but that’s a completely different issue, and say I don’t include $10 in ATM fees every month this adds up to $22. Normally this $22 isn’t a great deal of money but over the course of a year these forgotten fees add up to $264! If you completely ignore this amount you can’t plan for it or worse still see this as a potential item to bring your cashflow in line.
As part of this months goals I wanted to get a good handle on tracking where every penny has gone and for the most part I’ve been successful. I’m sure there are a few items that inevitably got missed but it’s a lot more accurate than it has been in the past. Here are a few things I did this month to track my spending in minute detail:
- Ask for Receipts
- Update your spending/tracking sheet daily
- If there is no receipt write it down
- Go back through bank records to double check things like fees
The whole purpose of having this accurate accounting for where I spend my money is going to be important in the next day or two as I come up with my budget for next month. I used to calculate my budget on a pay-to-pay basis but I’m shifting to a monthly budgeting since a lot of bills are monthly and can be overlooked or forgotten at budget time otherwise. Once you have a couple months of detailed spending numbers you can really see trends in how you spend and what you can do to adjust your spending to be more in line with the money you have coming in.
Remember this might be a difficult task at first but it’s a habit that you need to get into at least initially. Why do I say initially? Very simply once this becomes a habit you’ll not even notice it and once you’ve started accounting for all of the really minor items your budgets will be more accurate. I still think you’ll need to track the details but if your spending is under control you can simply allot a certain amount per month for the minor things and be confident that’s where the money is going. It might take me a while to get to that point but cashflow is extremely important in your budgeting and unless you’re living way below your means every penny counts.
Technorati Tags: cashflow, tracking spending, budgeting
Posted in Budgeting and Planning, Monthly Planning, Productivity | 2 Comments
Quality – Doing it Right
July 25th, 2007
Most of us get up in the morning, shower, get dressed and go to the office to put in a day of work. The work we do is typically of decent quality sometimes of good quality but do we strive for great quality?
Yesterday I sat down at the computer and started writing a post; I got through a couple paragraphs and stopped. I looked at the screen and decided that the post was crap, the actual words and sentences were I’m sure perfectly fine but the overall effect was just a quick thrown together article. The quality of the post was not there for me so I stopped and just deleted it. It also got me thinking about a few things in the office and around the house.
Where is the quality?
Too often I see people throwing things together because they can and because they can get away with it. I’ve been guilty of it before and I’m sure a lot of readers have as well. Why does this happen? There’s a cost of mediocre quality in the time that it takes to fix the problems that become apparent and the actual dollars and cents of having to take a product or piece of work to that high level when its needed. Do you put in that extra effort to make what you do the best it can be?
Unfortunately there are times in life when we are overloaded and overworked and we simply don’t have the time to put in the effort to make something of quality. Sometimes you don’t need to have the highest level of quality… but there should be a minimum standard (high or good quality).
Not striving for that minimal high quality means to me that the person doesn’t take pride in what they do that they just don’t care enough. Too many people just slog through life expecting people to give them everything, the produce piss poor work and then complain that its not fair that “Bob got a promotion and he’s been here a year less than me”. Are you one of them? Do you just do the bare minimum?
I think most people fall somewhere in the middle where they do a decent job but not a good one. They provide a good enough job that they don’t hit the radar as someone who produces quality work, nor do they register as someone who does bad work. I think it’s sad that we allow ourselves to sit in this mediocre middle.
So how does this relate to a Personal Finance Blog?
Very simply and on a few fronts; many personal finance bloggers are very frugal and want to make sure that they get their money’s worth for every dollar they spend. This is quality; they demand that quality, as producers of content for this blog I want to make sure that I produce quality, I take pride in what I write or I wouldn’t delete a post. I’m still learning and growing in my writing and my knowledge so it doesn’t mean that I’m right or it’s high quality compared to experts (yet) but I strive for what I believe is quality and something I take pride in.
The second aspect where quality relates to personal finance is that it will be recognized and your value will go up. If you continuously produce high quality work you’re proud of financial compensation is likely to come. People don’t want to loose their star performers. It doesn’t always happen and some of the people reading this site will have ogres instead of bosses; but instilling that level of quality into everything you do will be recognized.
Technorati Tags: quality, pride, personal finance
Posted in Commentary, Productivity | 5 Comments
