The Critical Thing I’ve Been Missing – Money Measurement

I have been sloppy with money measurement. I’ll explain why after I let Dan Kennedy explain why this failing is so fatal:

Clipped – 15:37 to 17:47

“Most chequebook ledgers just track the balance. That’s probably what yours tells you.

“Every time I look at my chequebook, there’s a constant tracking of where I am in relationship to the amount of cash I want to have on hand by the end of the year.

“Total cash assets.

“So there’s a continual list that I’m continually updating of what’s in this account, what’s in that account, what’s sitting over hear in this, what’s sitting over here in that, what’s due to me, and what that total is in relationship to what the total’s supposed to be on December 31st.

“So I’m down “X” dollars. How much ground have I made up in the last 30 days? Where am I in ratio?

“You could go through [my ledger]… if you went back enough years you could see the progression against the first million, you could see the progression against the second million, you could see the progression against the third million, you could see the sudden disappearance, you could see the progression again.

“I track that daily. I want to know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars I am away from the number I’m supposed to hit by the end of the year, and I want to know if I’m making up ground, or if I’m not making up ground. Do I need to make up ground, or can I coast?…

“The more ways you measure, the more frequently you measure… any athletic coach will tell you, and most athletes will tell you, absent any other changes, measurement improves performance. Absent any other changes. No change in diet, no change in conditioning, no change in training, no change in anything. Measure the performance more, performance improves. Well, we’re dealing with performance here – our own.”

There is a lot of guilt wrapped up in money for a lot of us. I know it’s true for me.

My guilt not only prevents me from asking for money (“taking money from others“), it also prevents me from even looking at it all that often. For me, it’s a chore, and so I go weeks sometimes without looking at my numbers.

Elsewhere in this “Wealth Attraction” seminar of Dan’s (in part 1), he talks about guilt and money. He says that you’ve got to get over the “queasiness” about taking money from someone else. What he doesn’t say (because so few people know), is how to get over that guilt, other than simply struggling your way through it.

As I’ve said a few times in this blog, the only lasting way I’ve found of releasing yourself from negative emotions like these is not to force your way through them, ignore them, or try to argue logically against them. The only way is to let them go. You need to surrender them, and then back up that surrendering with an action that reinforces the new, positive attitude.

There are other conditioning methods you can do, like having pots of money lying around the home, and Dan talks about that. However, such positive programming works best if the new “code” is being written in a fresh, blank “text file”.

It’s time I start and end each day by measuring my money, and my progress towards specific money goals. And every time I sit down to do it, I’ll take a moment to notice the feelings that it triggers, accept them, and let them go.

Dan Kennedy, Cynically Admitting That Generosity Comes Back to You

Dan Kennedy on Wealth Attraction.

Of anyone I’ve ever heard talk about money and success, Dan’s the one that made me re-consider the “metaphysical” woo-woo side of wealth creation the most.

He’s jaded, cynical, in short the last person you’d expect to say that giving money away seems to make it come back to you in some kind of karmic way.

Start by creating a Wealth Account & a Giving Account:

Clipped at 00:41:34 to 01:06:58

I wonder, how can we “handle the cheques” in this day and age? I heard once of a guy making his Paypal notification for incoming money sound like a cash register. Kinda like this…

Something Rare & Valuable

The best way to build up career capital (and thus have the leverage to be a truly successful “lifestyle designer”), you need to master a rare and valuable skill.

That’s the Craftsman’s mentality. Not, “What can this career bring to me,” but, “What can I bring to this career?” (quote from Cal)

My choice for “rare and valuable” is copywriting.

A few years ago I studied a few sales letters, worked a bit for a startup, but I did not master it. I just got okay at it.

I’ve had enough of trying to be quick, of being impatient. I’m ready to earn minimal amounts for the next 10 years if necessary, if that’s what it takes to be truly world-class.

At 34:26 in TMBA #381, Cal Newport stresses that you must relentlessly develop the skill. “Not just doing it a lot, but training like you’re LeBron James.”

I’m ready.

The Craftsman Mentality

“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.”
– Chuck Close

A recent episode of the Tropical MBA left a big impact on me.

If you’re not that satisfied with your career so far, or if you know your “value-produced” (true productivity) could be better, it’s a must-listen.

“Creative production at the professional level is very fulfilling but it’s craftsmanship… Focus as hard as you can. Wrack up the hours. Repeat. Good things come out of it.”
– Cal Newport

The conversation is with Cal Newport, a professor of advanced distributed algorithms, and a thought-leader in how to get more out of your work, both in terms of the value it creates for the world and in the satisfaction in creates for you.

At 25:22, Cal digs into the second (of two) primary assumption behind “follow your passion” advice:

“…it depends on this assumption that if you really like something and then you do that for your work, it will transfer over and you’ll really like your work.

It’s one of these syllogisms that kinda makes sense when you hear it, but we don’t have a lot of evidence that that’s true, either.

Professional satisfaction is a pretty complicated thing, and there’s a lot of research on it. What you don’t find in that research is any sort of emphasis on a match of the work to a pre-existing interest as being a really important factor as to whether or not you find work interesting.”

We’ve all heard of the amateur something-or-other who starts making money from their hobby, gets excited and does it full time, and find that it completely kills their passion for the thing.

A knee-jerk reaction for many of us is to say that “money corrupts things that are otherwise pure!”

But in fact, the more likely reason is:

“…what makes you love your work is very different from what makes you love a topic from a personal or a hobby point of view.”

That’s the key…right there…to understanding how we can love our work.

It’s the knowledge that love for our work comes from a different place entirely than love for our interests.

What makes us love our work is mostly this:

• How good we are at it
• Knowledge of the impact it’s having in the world

And probably some other things besides.

It’s been on my reading list for a while – I think it’s time I finally whip out So Good They Can’t Ignore You, Cal’s book on approaching work like a craftsman.

Here’s Derek Sivers’ rave review of the book.

Surrendered Goal Setting

“The mechanism of surrender is a tool only. You can use it to remove the obstacles to making a million dollars, or you can use it to remove the obstacles to the development of spiritual awareness.”

 Dr David Hawkins, Letting Go, Page 315

 

I’ve started the goal setting practice outlined in Letting Go.

By no means is it a book “on success”. Rather, it’s a book on how to deal with your emotions. That’s why the chapter about the negative effects of desire seemed a strange place to include a goal setting practice.

Although we are constantly told that wanting something bad enough is the key to its attainment, remember that most people who dispense advice are successful first, probably due to uncounscious processes, and they then backwards-rationalise why they are successful.

So… just because something is said a lot, doesn’t make it true.

For me, simply “wanting something bad enough” hasn’t worked.

The Letting Go process of goal setting is a little different, and very counterintuitive:

1. Write down the thing you want in extreme detail.
2. Every time you think of it, let go of the desire to have it.
3. Keep reminding yourself of it and hold it in mind.

 

The theory: 

• Holding something in mind makes it more likely to come about.
• Desire blocks its attainment.

 

The thing you want is already yours for the asking. There’s no such thing as “worthiness”, therefore you are already as worthy as anyone will ever be of anything you can dream of.

The energy of desire tells you otherwise. It tells you it’s not already yours, that in this moment (and the next, and the next, and for as long as you don’t surrender it) the object of your desire is beyond your reach.

Think of the business man who desperately needs a negotiation to go his way. Now think of his opponent who could take it or leave it. Who is more likely to get it?

Think of two young men who both want the same woman. One is desperate for her affection. The other has chosen her and calmly loves her, giving affection without demanding it in return. Which is more likely to win her over (all else being equal)?

It’s not to say it’s bad to want things. If you wanted nothing, then nothing would be on your goal list, after all.

No, it’s the energy of desire that weakens us. It’s the energy of cravingness, neediness, and desperation.

 

The goals you write down to let go are not things you must want more.

They are things you have chosen.

And if you have chosen them, the only thing left to do is to remove all emotional blockages and resistance to their attainment.

Feelings can be dealt with.

This daily blog business is not always easy. Sometimes, you feel there’s nothing you have to say.

But that’s just a feeling.

The truth is, I’ve learned how to tap and evoke emotions that I was previously bottling up and pushing down. Once they’re exposed, they can be dismantled.

I haven’t flown into a rage (other than once, when I was alone), or broke down crying (I’ve only squeezed out a few tears here and there). For the most part, when you choose to work through your own emotions, you can control them. I’m tapping into a vast well of negativity that has hidden itself from me until now. Since I’m choosing to bring it up, I have my hand on the faucet. It’s not pouring through a broken pipe, like it would in a typical “outburst”.

Why bother?

I seek a transformation… which is not yet forthcoming.

I had a few pleasant experiences:

• Some fleeting moments of supreme bliss.
• A feeling of despair and confusion be replaced overnight by effortless clarity.
• The surrendering of desire to indulge in distractions that would normally tempt me.

Enough things to convince me that this is worth it.

Enough to convince me I’m on to something.

But a “transformation”…

…such a change will only come when I am ready to let go of that which feeds my petty, “small” self, and let go of the resistance to my greater, “higher” self – something we all have within.

You wouldn’t think that would be so hard, but it is… for me, at least.

On Tuesday, when I had my hand on the faucet, allowing all the feels to come to the surface, I had a very strong reaction to the idea of being my “greater self”. It was surprising to see. I have a blockage to it. It’s not rational, or logical, but it makes sense. It’s there because that’s how humans work, deep down. We block ourselves to things. We choose “smaller” behaviour, and “smaller” lives and then convince ourselves it’s only happening to us.

To let go of my resistance to my small self will mean letting go of all the payoffs I get from remaining where I am – some large, some subtle, some secret, others obvious.

Letting go of your negativity means letting go of all the things you like about it. And there is a surprising amount that you like about it, believe me.

But the benefits to doing so…… are truly exciting.

I’ve used the techniques I’ve learned to make a depression last only one day, instead of God knows how long.

I’ve proven to myself that feelings can be dealt with.

I keep getting deeper. It’s logical that I can deal with this large, deep inner resistance to success, too.

The challenge in refusing to give in to despair, doubt, skepticism, which are all doing their best to derail me.

 

Despair, hopelessness, and doubt are all just feelings, though.

And feelings can be dealt with.

Dvorak Update: 55 wpm

That’s not an average, I will admit, but I did hit 55wpm the other day.

Two months ago I switched from the Qwerty keyboard layout to the Dvorak layout (not named for the letters on the top row, btw – named after the inventor, ).

Here’s what my progress has looked like:

Bare in mind: The second half is not as smooth as it looks. I just stopped taking data points every day.

Regardless, the trend is clear, and common. With almost everything, you make fast progress at first, and then you reach a plateau.

If it becames an “OK Plateau“, you may never leave it!

55wpm is solidly above average (~40)… but I don’t want to be mearly above average! My old Qwerty speed was 85wpm at a push, so my Dvorak goal is at least that. I’ll aim for 100.

I’ve been treating progress as a given, but maybe that was an error. I’ll start practicing dail again, like I did when I first switched.

I have no doubt that I can learn to type faster with Dvorak than I could with Qwerty. It’s so much more comfortable to type with the layout. It would stand to reason that it can be faster.

(I use Typing-Speed-Test.aoeu.eu to test my typing speed and Typing Club to practice.)

1% Improvements (Get Off The Rollercoaster)

An entrepreneur who makes millions, loses millions, and then makes millions again makes for a good story.

But how reliable is this headline-grabbing model for producing success.

Combining patience with consistent action (and an emotional resilience to boredom) may not be fun to read about, but it’s a much surer path to excellence.

William Deming proved this principle by helping entire nations to pull themselves out of the Great Depression, and Dave Brailsford proved that it works on a personal level, too.

Deming & The Kaizan Approach

William Deming was a statastician that brought his talents to the world of manufacturing. His models focused on gradual improvement of quality over time, as well as (oddly) putting your people first. He took note of commonalities among the most successful companies, validated his observations with statistical analysis, and then tested them in the real world.

After WW2, America didn’t want to hear it. The rest of the world was brought to its knees, so competing in the global market wasn’t hard. Also, the commercial philosophy of the time was quantity, not quality.

Japan, however, had been bombed back into the dark ages, and readilly welcomed Deming’s ideas to help them rebuild.

Deming’s methods improved quality over time. They made improvement inevitable, which meant an organisation that followed them closely would eventually dominate.

He worked in the automotive industry mainly. In Japanese car factories during this time, any line-worker was expected to, at any time, walk off the factory line, pull an engineer into a meeting, and show him how they might make a tiny improvement to the car design. It didn’t matter if the change would save only 1 second of production time. Any improvement that anyone noticed had to be considered.

 

If the movie The Last Samurai contained even a shred of cultural accuracy, I imagine this idea fell on fertile ground. Japanese culture seems to have valued quality and excellence in craftmanship for a long time, as well as humility. To point your ambitions towards the perfection of your craft and nothing more was seen as a noble way to live.

As I think we’re all aware, Japanese cars became market-dominating. Only then did America invite Deming back, where he was involved in a few other massive successes, such as the Ford Escort.

The name given to the approach Deming championed is Kaizen, which simply means “improvement”.

Deming’s “Continuous Improvement Cycle” is made of 4 steps:

1. Plan – Write down what you’ll do and what you’ll expect.
2. Do – Implement the plan, nothing less, and nothing more.
3. Check – Did the plan work? Do you see your expected improvements?
4. Act – Use the results to inform your next actions.

This cycle is to be repeated forever, and domination is virtually guaranteed.

Dave Brailsford’s 1% Path to Excellence

In 2010, Brailsford was tasked with producing a British winner of the Tour de France – somthing that had never happened before. (Thanks to James Clear for writing about this story).

He believed his team could win by following what he called the “aggregation of marginal gains.”

He and his team looked for 1% improvements in absolutely everything, even the type of pillow the cyclists used that could offer better sleep.

Brailsford believed that by following this philosophy, one of his cyclists could win the race in 5 years time. He was wrong. Bradly Wiggins won the Tour de France just 3 years later.

Get Off The Rollarcoaster of “Radical” Self-Improvement

In the article on Kaizen by The Art of Manliness, we learn that “radical innovation became the watchword in American business,” during the time leading up to Japan overtaking them in the automotive market, just 30 years after starting from scratch.

Radical innovation. That sounds familiar. It sounds almost…disruptive.

Radical or disruptive innovation is powerful when it works, but that doesn’t mean it can be relied upon. Be aware that this is what our culture glorifies (particularly if you’re into entrepreneurship or tech these days), and that doesn’t make it true.

When it comes to our carreers, our companies, and our lives, taking the Kaizen approach is the surest way to reach excellence. It takes patience, humility, commitment, and host of other “boring” traits. That’s one reason why it’s such a competitive advantage!

“Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment.” 
— Stephen Covey

“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens — and when it happens, it lasts.”
—John Wooden

“Little strokes fell great oaks.”
–Benjamin Franklin

 

Mastering a Skillset: Copywriting

A while ago I mentioned Mike Dillard’s excellent advice for starting entrepreneurs.

Here’s the clip again. Pay attention to what Mike says about copywriting:

“Learning how to sell through the written word…is literally the golden ticket…”
– Mike Dillard

I remember Dan Kennedy (the big daddy of copywriting) saying that being an excellent copywriter is like having a super power. You can sit down and write yourself a new yacht.

BUT…he stressed…don’t underestimate how difficult it is to be an excellent copywriter.

It is not an easy skill. It takes years of dedication. It takes the mindset that Mike Dillard spoke of in the clip above:

“When I say master a skillset, I really mean master it. Don’t watch five videos on YouTube and think that you’ve got this whole thing figured out. It’s going to take you 2-3 years to do that. …Go unbelievably deep, to where you could literally write the next book on the subject matter and have it be the biggest source of authority in that industry.”
– Mike Dillard

That reminds me on this gorgeous quote from Beethoven:

“Do not only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets…”
― Ludwig van Beethoven

This brings us to how to learn copywriting, and learn it ferociously.

I heard a long time ago some advice from John McIntyre on how to get “mad skillz” at copywriting:
Copy out successful sales letters for an hour every day. 

He got it from Gary Halbert, (an old-time copywriting legend).

Apparently Ramit Sethi got his skillz (which are decidedly mad, btw) with the same practice.

In The Foundation, Dane Maxwell and Andy Drish gave a similar prescription, with the added step of deconstructing the sales letters. You copy it out word-for-word, then you break it down into bullet points. Then you re-construct it from the bullet-points, and compare it to the original.

…Maybe I’m getting mixed up…that sounded more like how a teenaged Benjamin Franklin taught himself how to write well excellently.

My Syllabus

I picked up this practice a number of years ago.

It helped me land an interesting job as a copywriter for Triathlon Research, a brand run by James Cook Media.

The busyness of the job took over, and squeezed out the practice. I figured I was practicing it at work anyway, I wanted to have more time for other things. Looking back, that was a bad call. I hadn’t mastered it yet. The practice must never end until you master it, and then, it’s time to practice some more.

I’m going to pick it up again today, only this time, I’ll do the deconstruction steps too.

I want to force myself into the secrets of copywriting.

My syllabus will be simple, starting with everything Gary Halbert suggests, and evolving from there.

I feel like I allowed myself to get side-tracked before I had the chance to truly master this skillset – the most valuable skillset on Earth that plays to my natural talents – copywriting.

The Power List – Make Growth Inevitable

Don’t worry about the future.

Just win today.

That’s the message of the MFCEO #107: Win The Day.

Andy Frisella’s podcast can easily make you feel like a little girly-boy by the shear weight of their grit, so it would seem. But in this episode, they do a great job of bringing all that mindset stuff into a single daily commitment.

The commitment to win the day.

The Power List

5 critical tasks that move you one step closer to your goals.

“It’s about 5 times a day doing something that makes you a little bit uncomfortable.”

When you cross off all of them, you put a W on the page.

You’ve just won the day.

If you fail to do them all, you put an L on the page.

You’ve just lost the day.

If, at the end of the week, you have more Ws than Ls, you’ve won the week!

When something on the list becomes habit, stop adding it to the list and replace it with something else. Otherwise, you won’t grow any further.

The Visualisation

To visualise well you have to imagine every single detail of a particular scene that would show up in your ideal future “successful” life.

It is very hard to imaging a scene in tremendous detail. If your brain doesn’t hurt a little bit, you’re doing it wrong.

It’s cheesy, but Andy swears by it. If that blue-collar, bearded, potty-mouthed hard-arse says visualisation works, it probably works!

The Mindset

You don’t have to believe in yourself yet. That’s the beauty of it. All you need to do is to win the day. Use a goal (that you don’t have to believe you’ll attain) to inform what goes on the list. Then just do the list, and the feeling of winning the day will be what you play for. It doesn’t matter that you see no results at first.

You’ll start to enjoy the feeling of winning.

Then you’ll feel like a winner.

Then you’ll actually win.

My Experience With the Power-List

I’ve been using the Power List this week, and I love it. I’ve won the week, and I’ve made such progress that when I tried to recall something that happened last Monday, I thought it had happened two weeks ago.

I don’t do the visualisations yet, but I will next week.

What I’ve Learned So Far

1) 5 uncomfortable tasks are too many for one area of life.

5 tasks are too many to have in just one field. I dedicated the whole list to work, and that was really tough. Many people (including a baller who was on that very same episode), use a list of three. These are high-performers. Take the hint. It takes time, and you can only do a few things every day that are not easy, or at least relegated to “auto-pilot” in our brains.

So if you’re doing the 5-task list, spread them out across your life. Do some for health, some for business, some for family, spirituality, whatever needs attention.

2) It’s fine (/necessary) to have non-scary habitual type tasks there

This isn’t a list of the day’s business tasks. That’s how I handled it. Some of the lists can be, in fact should be, things that will be on the list many days in a row.

Andy used to have “Read 10 pages” on his list for a while, because he was out of the habit of reading.

They don’t all have to be cold calls! (Although some probably should be).

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The Power List will not make you Superman tomorrow.

It will simply move the needle forward.

Keep it up for a year, and your life will not possibly look the same.