There are only two months left until 2009!

On January 1st you’re going to be making resolutions to make more money, lose more weight, learn new things, and knock your goals out of the park.

Just like you did last year.

And the year before.

Give yourself the gift of a head-start on your 2009 resolutions (or finish your 2008 resolutions - it’s not too late!) by committing to kick ass for 30 days starting November 1.

Why You Should Set Audacious November Goals

Most goal-setting advice tells you to “start small.” Well, that’s for lazy people.

Consider two scenarios for someone who wants to get healthier over the next month:

Scenario A:

What You Plan to Do: Walk three times a week for 20 minutes and make no changes to your eating habits.

What You Actually Do: Walk three times a week for 20 minutes and make no changes to your eating habits.

Result: Four hours of walking and zero days of healthy eating in 30 days.

Scenario B:

What You Plan to Do: Complete the Couch to 5K Running Plan in half the time (jogging six times a week instead of three) and stick to a pre-planned meal plan of 1,400 calories a day.

What You Actually Do: You only end up running four times a week, and three days a week you exceed your calorie allowance by going out to eat.

Result: Eight hours of jogging and 16 days of healthy eating in 30 days.

Technically, the person in Scenario A “succeeded” and the person in Scenario B “failed” - but which result would you rather have?

Suggested Audacious Goals for November

(Definitely choose more than one!)

• Complete NaNoWriMo
• Complete the Couch to 5K Running Program in half the time
• Complete the first 2/3 of the One Hundred Pushups Challenge (which is technically six weeks long)
• Earn $5,000 extra dollars
• Build or redo an entire website
• Start a new blog and populate it with posts through January 31, 2009
• Launch a new business
• Read “Atlas Shrugged” or “Wealth of Nations”

How to Plan for Success

The focus of this blog (and my entire professional career) is to show people how being more organized leads to more freedom. And what could be more freeing than improving your life?

Here’s a very simple way to dip your toe in the waters of organizational freedom:

(NOTE: Read through these instructions once first before starting. You can save time by typing some of this information first, and then hand-writing on the resulting cards. Yes, there are a thousand different ways to approach making these cards, but we’re going for drop-dead simplicity here.)

1. Get 30 blank index cards (ideally 4×6) - in a pinch, you can use 15 sheets of blank printer paper (cut in half to make 30 pieces).
2. Each card will be used for one day in November. Write the date at the top of each card (November 1 - November 30).
3. On each card, write a keyword for each of your goals with a blank space next to it.
4. Now, working backwards from November 30, break each of your goals down into 30 days of action steps, and fill in as much of your 30 cards as you can.

• If your goal is to complete NaNoWriMo (and write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days), you’d need to write 1,667 words each day - so on each card, you’d have a task to “Write 1,667 words of my novel.”
• If your goal is to complete the 100 Pushups Challenge, you’d put “Try fatigue test” on November 1. In this case, it’s all you can fill in for certain until you know which category you fall under. HINT: Add an additional task on November 1, 7, 14, and 21 to “fill in following week’s pushups” - even though you don’t know the exact numbers this far in advance, you’ll be sure to remember to add them once you do.
• If your goal is to complete the Couch to 5K Running Program, you’d use their chart and fill in your running requirements on each day. It’s part of the program to take rest days, so you can cross it off on those cards.

5. Now the ONLY thing you have to remember each day is to look at, and complete, your card. I suggest leaving them on your nightstand and carrying the day’s card in your pocket so it’s always on your mind.

Here’s a sample card:

I’m in! How Do I Signup?

There’s not much of a signup process at the moment (although if there’s enough interest, I’ll see about making something more formal for December!).

For now, leave your goals in the comments (or write a blog post and send me the link), and I will hound you on Twitter and/or via email to check on your progress!

I’m Not Sure I Can Do It Alone - I Need More Help to Get Organized

That’s my specialty! You can hire me for a flat rate of $150 to help you customize a system that’s a lot more specific than what’s above. (For example, there are better ways to keep track of a healthy mealplan than this!) Shoot me an email at marina (at) typeas (dot) com with your list of goals, and we’ll kick some ass together!

What Happens December 1st?

First, we celebrate our November accomplishments!

Then, we’ll start a new challenge - building on your progress from November, or tackling entirely different goals.

We all aspire to Inbox Zero, but few of us actually stay there.

Here’s how I consistently maintain an empty inbox without ever declaring bankruptcy:

Get Your Own Domain Name, Already

If you don’t have your own domain name, you’re welcome to join us in the 21st century anytime. It’s just plain unprofessional to have a gmail.com (or, worse, yahoo.com!) email address.

You can pick up a domain for under $8/year at GoDaddy. Check RetailMeNot for the latest discount codes.

Pipe All Your POP accounts Through GMail

Am I thrilled to hand over yet another aspect of my life to The Google? No. Am I going to waste hours of my life in Thunderbird or (shudder) Outlook only to discover that my web host is handing over my mailing list activity to the Feds anyway? No.

(When you send mail from your POP account using the free edition of GMail, your @gmail address will be listed in the email headers. You can avoid this minor inconvenience by paying $50/year for Google Apps Premier Edition, but we don’t recommend it.)

Customize Your Email Addresses

Forget using yourname@yourdomain.com for everything. Instead, use the domain or company name of the site you’re giving your email address to.

For example:

• For Upcoming.org notices, your email would be upcoming@yourdomain.com
• For Bank of America, your email would be boa@yourdomain.com
• For Oprah.com, your email would be oprah@yourdomain.com

…and so on.

This is not only a fantastic way to filter your email, it’s also a great way to find out who is selling your email address without your permission and stop that unwanted spam in its tracks.

The simplest way to do this is to just set your main POP account as a “catch-all.” Your mail host can help you with this if you need it. This means you’ll get all email sent to anything@yourdomain.com.

However, having a catch-all leaves you open to getting lots of erroneous spam mail. If that bothers you, you can set each new email address up as an “alias” to your regular POP account. A less-effective compromise would be to make some generic aliases like shopping@yourdomain.com and using that for related email communications.

Install the Greasemonkey Gmail Macro script (for Firefox)

You can get it here.

Learn Your Gmail Shortcuts

Between Gmail itself and the Gmail Macro script, there’s little you can’t do in a couple keystrokes.

Force yourself to use the keyboard shortcuts for each task in Gmail, and within a few days, they’ll all be second nature and you’ll be zooming through your Inbox in no time!

Make Gmail Do All the Work

There are lots of things you don’t need to see in your inbox at all. Use your Gmail filters (under “Settings”) to automatically label these emails and Skip the Inbox.

This is where the above custom email strategy works out well. Instead of having to know what email certain notices are coming from, you already know - and can filter based on - what email it’s going to.

For example:

• Set all routine messages from sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr to bacn and Skip the Inbox.
• Set all Google News Alerts and newsletter subscriptions to To Read and Skip the Inbox.
• Set all messages from active mailing lists to [Mailing List Name] and Skip the Inbox.
• Set all ads from shopping sites like Nordstrom and Lush to Shopping and Skip the Inbox.

For every email that arrives in your Inbox, ask yourself: Will I see an email like this again? Is there a filter I could set that would save me a step next time?

You’ll want to tweak your rules to best suit your needs. For example, I want Twitter direct message notifications to hit my inbox, but all other notifications from Twitter to be labeled as bacn.

Use Your Labels to Zip Through Your Inbox

Here’s what I do:

Starred items are those requiring some action on my part.

Keyboard shortcut: osy (o to open the email, s to star it, y to archive it.)

I have a label called '@WAITINGON'. If I'm waiting for a reply on something, I'll label either the email or my response.

Keyboard shortcut: ol@y (o to open the email, l to label it, @ to find my @WAITINGON label, y to archive.)

In other words, it takes me no more than four keystrokes to deal with ANY email effectively.

Check in with Yourself

Every night, I go through my starred items and my @WAITINGON label to update my Next Actions and Waiting On lists. This ensures nothing falls through the cracks. As for the email that skipped the inbox, I get to that when (and if) I have the time.

 

If this doesn’t work for your workflow, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment or drop me an email describing what you need done differently so I can see if I can help!