Goals

Hmmmpph, I didn’t finish a major part of my March 2011 goals….doing my taxes.

It really doesn’t take that long, it’s just I haven’t done it (I must start having someone do these for me).  So that task has been ported over to April 2011.

I also want to finish those taxes before April 11th because I’ll be going home for a wedding which I’ll be playing guitar at (and I need to practice with my brother beforehand).

So with that, here are the April 2011 goals which sit on my desk:

Not really that big of a work load on the goals end….although this month will DEFINITELY be busy with other stuff.

Will update shortly.

Well BOOYAH to the February 2011 goals.  The new March 2011 goals are out:

Let’s re-cap:

1.) House Of Rave product selling on NevBlog.
This is the product I’m making that I talked about here.  The videos are all recorded, and now I’m editing, uploading, formatting, setting up etc etc for it’s finalization.  I must say I’m pretty proud of it and think people will really enjoy them and learn a lot!

2.) HoR updates from Mitch advice.  Implement and document.
I really really enjoyed this series from Mitchell Harper of Interspire:
You can see it here.  I think it would be beneficial for ANY business to follow this advice (it’s a great watch).

3.) Taxes finish. <– Least excited about.
This one is just a taaaddd self-explanatory.

4.) At least 30 minutes a day practicing bass scales.
Unlike taxes, this one is actually fun! …and I’m doing it for a reason.  A very very close friend is getting married, and in most Indian weddings people do dances and other things during the wedding (or one of the 75 million events that precede it).  Instead of a dance, me and my brother are going to play a jazz set during the final wedding reception before people go into the main ballroom!

Basically we’ll be playing “wallpaper music” which is just background music.  However there’s an interesting problem….I kind of suck at the guitar!

Fortunately my brother is excellent, so he can pick up my slack.  With this in mind it makes sense I “back him up” on the guitar or bass….and if we’re playing jazz, a bass guitar would sound great.   So I brought my old bass guitar from high school to Austin and have started practicing “jazz walking” scales.

The bass is much easier than guitar since there’s only 4 strings and you generally just pluck one note at a time….so I’m picking it up quick.

The hardest part is getting my left hand strengthened enough and my right hand (I use to pick with) accustomed enough to playing for a full 30 or 45 minutes.    Therefore I’ll be practicing jamming to random songs using my scales for about 30 minutes per day.

Perhaps I’ll record a few things and post them soon!

A new month, so new goals…

Got my January 2011 goals completed.  I’m liking having only a very small amount of goals for the month.

I think anything more than three (maybe four) is too much for my little brain to handle.

Here’s the February 2011 Goals:

GOAL: Complete HoR Product:

One of the most-asked questions I get (over email and in person) is how a drop-shipping business like HouseOfRave works.  People are always perplexed that I can own a rave company, yet never have been to a rave.

For a very select few people, I can take the time to personally show them how everything works.  We’ll sometimes speak for HOURS about how customer service is done, how I update the site, how traffic comes to the site, how promotions work, where I get the products, how I started it etc etc etc….and “going to a rave” NEVER comes up.

So for this goal I’m going to digitally give a behind-the-scenes full tour of HoR, how it was created and exactly how it runs.

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GOAL: Every week 2 HoR improvements documented:

A big improvement in customer service over the holidays helped make running House Of Rave relatively simple.  However I wasn’t focused on other improvements during that time.  This month I want to ensure that other improvements start being made again….even if they’re tiny.

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GOAL: 5 days a week wake up at 7am:

I’m a lazy bum who works from a home office, plus it usually doesn’t matter ONE BIT when I do my work (for example, do anyone care if I wrote this blog post at 10am or 10pm?)..

…naturally my sleep cycles get a little wonky.  However the last month or two I’ve actually been doing something completely uncharacteristic of myself…waking up at 7am.

I swear to you….this simple lifehack has accounted for more of my productivity over the last two months than ANYTHING else…BY FAR.

For example, as I’m typing these words it’s 7:45am.  I woke up precisely at 7am, hopped out of bed and sat my butt down and started working.  I NEVER “start working” immediately…however at 7am there’s really no brain function of mine fully up yet, so I don’t get distracted.  I simply look at the very first thing on my to-do list…AND DO IT!  Then I finish it, and to avoid just plain falling back asleep, I do the next one.   Before I know it, it’s noon and I’ve done 5 hours of solid work….which is often nearly my entire to-do list.

I am allowed to fall back asleep whenever I want to.  If I sleep at 2am and wake up at 7am, I only got 5 hours of sleep. I’ll generally work till noon or so, take an hour nap, then wake up and do whatever (more work, gym, errands etc).  This seems to be my optimal amount of sleep.  From doing this for about 2 months now (although not consistently everyday, I am almost totally convinced 8 hours of sleep is too much for me (presuming I take one nap).  It makes me MORE groggy to sleep a lot (isn’t it weird how that works) ??

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If I don’t….

A nice negative consequence always ensures my goals will be completed.  If I don’t get my February 2011 Goals completed by Feb 28th (damn leap year…) 2011, then I will NOT attend the massive SXSW conference which I’m pretty excited for.

A new year, and time for new goals.  I’m not 100% what my goals for the whole YEAR will be, but I can show you my current January 2011 goals which sit on my desk:

Something I’ve found VERY interesting is the amount of time it takes to form a habit is NOT one month.

This means all my goals or experiments which I try for one month generally don’t stick.  During my six-pack experiment I realized one month was great, but I should keep eating well for at least 3 or 4 months.  When it was officially over, I have since kept up that eating habit as a LIFESTYLE instead of a temporary diet.  Even through holiday seasons such as Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year I still ate extraordinarily well (seriously, call Adam at MyBodyTutor if you’re serious about implementing this change).  This was because of the sheer length of time I implemented the “experiment”.

So my first goal this month is great HouseOfRave.com customer service with a focus on further reducing it (I reduced it by over 50% last month..DURING THE FREAKIN HOLIDAY SHOPPING RUSH)!

…even on my December 2010 goals this customer service goal was a major component.  I’ve seen the great results from it, so I want this to become a habit and focus, and therefore I plan to have this goal around for about 3 months.

The next two I can’t openly discuss on this blog.  Well…I CAN…but I don’t want to, even though it’s really interesting :-)

One of my November 2010 Goals was to:

Every morning when I wake up I should do four laps back and forth in my apartment walking on my hands.

I should also then do 2 minutes of still handstands.

Why handstands?  I have no idea.  I’ve just been practicing them lately and knew some consistent work on them would improve my capabilities rapidly.

So I did these two exercises every day with the exception of 2 or 3 days when I was sick.  However after only a week of doing this, I was easily able to steadily hold a handstand for over a full minute!

Here’s some quick video proof:

My favorite trick is walking on my hands and then “sitting” down in a chair….does this have ANY hope of a practical use in the future?  NOT A CHANCE! But it’s kind of fun :-)

November 2010 goals have been knocked out of the way.  Time to move on!

In that month I did happen to turn 28 years old, so I will be changing the tagline of this site to “28” instead of “27”.

So here are the new updated December 2010 Goals that will sit on my desk this month:

I could only think of three things this month I really wanted to focus on:

1. Reduce customer service needs for House OF Rave.
   I already have many quick implementations to do this.  I will be keeping a list of every action I have to take for customers, and group them into categories.  It should be pretty clear in about one week what people are contacting me about the most.  Then take simple steps to avoid that problem from happening, or automate the process to handle the problem.  Currently I spend about 30 minutes to an hour each day handling these issues (although keep in mind this is a busier season than most).
2. Use this blog like Twitter.
   I like the idea of Twitter, but I lose the ability to look at my archives to get a glimpse of what I was doing if I post all my updates there.  I’m posting those updates not necessarily for the world to see, but for ME!  So I want them on my own blog.  So I’m working out some bugs in the iPhone WordPress app that for some reason won’t let me post pictures to NevBlog from my phone.  Hopefully this will also encourage me to write more.
3. CWPC content every week.
   You won’t figure out what it stands for, so don’t try Googling it.

As for the NEGATIVE ramification for not finishing goals this month, the stipulation is I give two bums in Austin 24 packs of beer as Christmas presents. It kind of reminds me of my Homeless Drinking Experiment and Results….except I don’t want to encourage it.

Well, here’s to a productive Holiday season 2010!  ::clink::