That, literally, is a snapshot of my goal-pursuits for September 2010.
W is for walking every day for 30 minutes, a little over a mile, with Cathleen, Shyly, Odysseus and Ophelia. I sneered at walking before we started doing it, thinking it nothing compared to a hard half-hour on my mountain bike. But wrestling with 150 pounds of Shyly and Odysseus makes a work-out out of a walk. Ophelia is only 60 pounds, but she’s so puppyish and impulsive that she gives Cathleen and even better work-out.
The X is for weight-lifting, also 30 minutes a day. I’m doing this at around 6:20 in the morning — up at 6, then just enough time to deal with the overnight email as I hydrate and put two Tylenol into my bloodstream. Free weights work best when you are pushing yourself to the outer limits of your endurance. I do 30 repetitions each of ten exercises, all upper-body for now. The last four or five reps of each exercise are right on the verge of being agony. I literally feel as if my bones are not just going to break but to snap with a resounding crack. But like hitting your head against the wall, it feels so good when you stop.
S is for software, and you would not believe how easy it has been, this past month, for me to put in at least 30 minutes a day on our web sites. I started the month with a great idea that gradually destroyed the SplendorQuest server. While that train wreck was progressing, I built another set of cool tools that is generating huge quantities of new content — and a huge number of click throughs. But by the time that got cooking, I had created a monster on our dedicated file server, so I got to finish the month moving us into four new homes. The last three domains of that effort will be done today and tomorrow. Meanwhile, I know how to rebuild the first monster project on its own new home in such a way that it will be sleek and fast and — one may hope — trouble-free. And I undertook quite a few smaller chores, too, and discovered a great many more still to be done.
F is for fast food — following Scott Cowan’s lead, not eating any food from a drive-through window. This was insanely easy, no challenge at all. I ate a little better than I normally do, but no going through the drive-through only made a difference to me in the sense that it was kind of inconvenient. I eat on the road, and there’s no escaping that, I don’t think. Yesterday morning, to celebrate the advent of October, I drove through McDonald’s for two Egg McMuffins and a large orange juice. O, the decadence!
A is for appointments, and that was where I let September down. Almost all of my own money work is with buyers, so if I don’t show, I don’t sell. I’m thinking that I’m going to have to count engenu-style previewing as an appointment, though. I put two houses into escrow this week, even though I haven’t seen one of the buyers for more than a week, while the other is a Canadian I may never meet. The other notion is simply to count Opened and Closed escrows — and to aim for at least one each every business day.
Here’s an interesting fact: I started the month weighing in at 238 pounds, and I finished weighing 239. What happened, though, is that I moved a lot of weight around — fifteen tons or more a day on the weight bench and at least two inches off my waist. I’m still wider around my gut than I am around my chest, but that’s a fast-changing stat. If I keep throwing my weights around, I will add more and more lean muscle mass, which in turn will increase my base metabolism — the amount of calories I burn every day. I really like lifting weights, despite the pain, and I like the way I feel when I start the day exercising hard. My expectation is that I will experience still more waist-reduction in October.
Which brings me to this, the next calendar. This is what I think I want for this month:
W for walking. It’s good for all of us.
X for exercise. I want to add some lower-body stuff, squats and lunges.
S for software. I may push this to an hour a day. What I think I want, on top of regular maintenance and new software, is to devote some attention each day to one of our sites, considered by itself, thus to fine tune each site as often as twice a month.
I want to continue to track appointments with an A, counting any selling activity, belly-to-belly or not, as an appointment. To that I want to add a C for new contracts, an O for opened escrows and a $ for closed escrows.
Finally, I really want to make more time for the guitar, so I’m going to put an acoustic by my desk and see how many G’s I can record for October.
Yesterday was the first day of the month and also the first day of the fourth quarter. I wanted to talk about this a couple of days ago, but I’ve been wall-to-wall. But there’s a lot of red on that calendar, and not a heartbreaking amount of black. This is a doable praxis, and I now have proof of that fact.
So here’s my question for you: What are your goals for October, and what is your plan for achieving them?
Scott Cowan says:
Greg-
I too made it the month without food through a window. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Now for 2 months in a row! This month I am also adding 30 minutes of walking to my calendar.
Since I have committed to prospecting 6 or more hours a day and I have not been building a big chain of successes with that project it is back to the drawing board and October is a new month with a lot of opportunities to prospect and build my business. I have a lot of cool things happening this month and I will be sharing them on my blog if anyone cares to follow along.
Here’s to the chain! and making our goals one day at a time!
October 2, 2010 — 4:15 pm