Archive – Becoming Better.

[BB Archive] Curing Excusitis with a Batting Average

How embarrassing. Nearly two months without a blog post, after setting an initial goal of two per week! Truthfully, I’ve been suffering from a case of excusitis (prounced excuse-itis) with respect to my blog. Excusitis is a wonderful anchor first coined by David J. Schwartz in his pivotal book, The Magic of Thinking Big – in short, it is a ‘mental disease’ where one constantly creates excuses for not taking time to complete a task or goal.

EXCUSITIS OCCURS NATURALLY – AND OFTEN!

The devious aspect of excusitis is that it can manifest in any task or goal over any period of time. The challenges of time management, energy management, momentum, and motivation stretch across each action in our daily lives. When we choose to prioritize our efforts according to these criteria, certain tasks will naturally fall to the bottom of the list (often for ‘good reasons’). This is where excusitis rears its ugly head!

Consistently placing a task or goal towards the bottom of our priority list may feel the right decision, but if we’re not evaluating that decision within the scope of the bigger picture, there’s a good chance that we’re suffering from excusitis without realizing it. Unfortunately, by very its nature it can never fully be eradicated from our habits – only managed through awareness!

MANAGING EXCUSITIS WITH A BATTING AVERAGE

Becoming better at identifying excusitis is the first step in controlling it; consistently reminding ourselves that it can occur at any time for any given task. To make it easier to remind ourselves that it exists, we need to introduce a new anchor to help us identify the disease: the Batting Average.

In baseball, a player’s batting average is the simple ratio of his hits divided by the number of his at-bats. For our purposes, Batting Average is the number of times we actually do what we say we’re going to do, divided by the number of opportunities we have to perform it. Put simply, how often are you acting according to what you commit to? If you feel your Batting Average for a task or goal is low, there’s a good chance excusitis has taken control (note that I said feel here – our Batting Average can be qualitative, based on personal judgement!).

Once we feel our Batting Average for a goal or task isn’t where we’d like it to be, we are empowered to find the root of our excusitis and overcome it through action. This creates a motivation to increase our Batting Average, eliminating excuses and creating momentum to bring us closer to our desires.

[BB Archive] Becoming Better at Money: High-Value Activities

When it comes to learning, “becoming better at money” is not something you find at the top of people’s list of interests. In being asked to investigate this skill, you may find yourself thinking: how can I become better with money when I don’t even have enough of it to make ends meet? For those who are living paycheck-to-paycheck or without significant savings, becoming better at money feels like a low-priority item; there’s no motivation to improve our knowledge of it (at least until we have more of it).

This blog is our chance to turn that mindset around; and let this post be the start of it. In our time together, I will be introducing simple and straightforward ideas to increase our income through becoming better at money. The first idea is deceptively easy, and can have you earning upwards of $720/hour on your first go-around! Sound ridiculous? Let’s look at a real-world example to see how it works:

NICK THE GREEK EARNS $720 AN HOUR

Our friend Nick the Greek heard that his wireless provider, “Big V Wireless,” is providing excellent promotional rates for new customers. In fact, the introductory rates ($68/month) are far better than what he’s currently paying ($83/month). Now, Nick happens to have an excellent business sense and knows that in any business, retaining a current customer is much easier (and less costly!) than creating a new one. With this in mind, he picks up his cell phone and calls up Big V’s Customer Service Line.

He knows that the customer service representative (CSR) who just answered is a human being; just a woman making some money in a job she may not particularly enjoy. Nick opens the call in a cheery voice, learning the CSR’s name (Denise), telling her how he enjoys Big V’s service and that the support he’s received in the past has been phenomenal. He then makes a joke about a competitor that gets Denise to laugh. Already Denise doesn’t consider this to be a normal support call – when you’re used to dealing with ignorant complaining customers all day, a pleasant and understanding voice can be a powerful pattern interrupt!

After talking for a while and asking a few key questions about his status as a customer, Nick asks Denise about the promotional rates. Denise, having received a strong emotional payment, is happy to create a way to keep Nick on as a customer, keep him satisfied, and save him some money in the meantime! After all, that’s her job – and everyone enjoys doing their job well. Nick receives the promotional rate, reduces his bill from $83 to $68 monthly, and graciously offers to fill out a short survey afterwards to give Denise a glowing review.

Total time invested? 15 minutes.

SO HOW DID NICK EARN $720 AN HOUR?

Certain math-savvy folks will see this immediately; for those that don’t, here’s the simple explanation:

Nick spent 15 minutes calling Big V Wireless.
In that 15 minutes, Nick saved $15/month on his bill.
Over the next year, Nick saves a total of $180 ($15*12 months)
Therefore, Nick saved $180 in 15 minutes of his time. Or,
Nick earned $720/hour for exactly 15 minutes. ($180*4, since 15 minutes is 1/4 hour)

THE PATTERN OF ‘HIGH-VALUE ACTIVITY’

This story is one concrete example of the pattern of a High-Value Activity: spending minimal time to create a massive wealth gain. In our example, Nick’s High-Value Activity ‘wage’ was $720/hour, which he earned for 15 minutes. You might say, “Sure, but how many times can he call Big V Wireless to reduce his bill?” – well, the answer is, as often as he wants and is reasonable! While there may be diminishing returns in the short-term, he could potentially do the same thing one year later, and further reduce his bill (in fact, he now does this on an annual basis with all of his recurring bills).

The High-Value Activity is an infinitely repeatable pattern that we must learn and master in our journey to becoming better at money. There are many, many situations in our lives where we can use this same pattern effectively – but until we know to look for these situations they will remain invisible. As with many of the patterns we’ll learn, step one is being aware that the pattern exists. The rest of the journey is creating opportunities to use it effectively. In a way, identifying and creating High-Value Activities becomes an art in itself – one that pays hugely both financially ($$) and emotionally (exhilaration at creating such a great deal out of nothing!).

Here are a few very real examples to help get you started thinking down this path:

When planning a vacation, you spend one hour thinking about then contacting close friends and family who may know someone near your destination. This person would be happy to let you crash at their place for a few nights, saving you hundreds in hotel fees, and knowing some great places around town to enjoy yourself!
When interviewing for a new position, you spend three hours watching YouTube videos on how to negotiate salary and how to politely and firmly request a signing bonus. You receive the signing bonus and an increased salary, netting well over $1000/hour for your time invested.
When shopping for a new car, you find the sub-community on www.reddit.com and take 15 minutes post a well-thought out question to the members of that subreddit. You receive multiple answers that help you make better purchasing decisions; finding a better version of the car for less price than you anticipated paying for it.

Please share your examples in the comments for others to try!

[BB Archive] You don’t suck at anything.

As we continue our journey at becoming better, we’re going to discover many new options for how we can approach life. Mastering these skills requires persistence, specifically in remembering to practice them. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to forget to practice when we feel like we’re not making progress. We experience this emotion frequently throughout our lives, and it doesn’t feel great. In fact, it often frustrates us to the point where we stop practicing completely.

In our frustration, we will think to ourselves (and sometimes even tell others!) “I suck at this” or “I’m bad at this.” If you can catch yourself falling into this trap, there is a very simple tactic we can use to feel better about sucking at something (side note: this tactic is part of an overall strategy of reframing, which we’ll discuss later on). Practicing this tactic is as simple as being aware of whether you’re feeling good or bad towards spending your time practicing a skill.

Put simply: when you’re feeling bad about not making progress and it’s affecting your mood and persistence, remind yourself: it’s not, “I’m bad at this” or “I suck at this;” it’s “jeez, I have so much more to learn about this!” While this may seem simple at first, I encourage you to try it at least once, and then see how you feel as you remember this absolute truth. You are not bad at anything, you just suck at it…and after all, “suckin’ at something is the first step to being sorta good at something!” Focus on learning, on becoming better, and the path to mastery will pave itself!

[BB Archive] Becoming Better through Directed Action

Take a moment to recall the first time you drove your car to a party at your friend’s new apartment. You were probably relying heavily on your smartphone’s GPS navigation, furiously concentrating on turn-by-turn directions to guide you to the right location. The second and third time you traveled there, though, maybe the drive was a little easier. Before long, you could navigate without directions. Now, you can split your drive time between texting & driving and thinking about what you’re going to have for lunch tomorrow, and Hey, you’re there before you know it!

Without even realizing it, you were becoming better. In this case, you are becoming better at the skill of traveling to your friend’s house. A skill can be any particular ability: driving to your friend’s house, learning to tie your shoe or to ride a bike, playing a musical instrument, or even watching your favorite show on Netflix! Becoming better, then, can be defined as increasing (either consciously or unconsciously) your expertise of a particular skill.

WAIT, HOW AM I BECOMING BETTER BY WATCHING NETFLIX?

For many of us, binging Netflix is a great way to spend a Friday night. Relaxing on the couch, immersing ourselves in our favorite shows, we’re there for great entertainment – learning the characters, plots, and steamy romances…pretty soon we’re experts about the entire series, and we just can’t wait for the next season! Once again, without realizing it, we’re becoming better…at being experts of a television show.

While being a House of Cards specialist may boost our social cred when we impress our friends at trivia night, that particular skill won’t land us that big promotion at work, find an exciting new career opportunity, or help us meet our perfect soulmate (unless they’re die-hard fans themselves, of course!) In order for us to get the most out of life, then, we must consider cultivating skills which directly help us to achieve our goals. Taking this idea one step further, we must choose to do this intentionally.

BECOMING BETTER THROUGH DIRECTED ACTION

Directed Action is simply choosing to become better at any skill that brings us closer to achieving our goals. For example, becoming financially independent (one of my personal goals) requires we become better at the skill of personal finance. Thus, listening to a podcast on how to balance our budget is an example of a Directed Action towards financial independence. The problem we often run into, however, is that we’re not entirely sure what skills we’ll need to develop in order to achieve our goals, or what actions to take That is what this blog is here to accomplish.

Together we will explore tools, references, thoughts, ideas, books, and stories aimed specifically at helping you succeed, no matter what your goals are. We will discuss and develop a broad range of skills which can help us in becoming better at whatever we choose to accomplish.

The first skill to acquire is Directed Action. Through this skill, we can accomplish anything we set out to do.

I’m grateful to be able to share this journey with you, and I hope you’ll come along for the ride.