I juggled last night at Bryant Park. Did some club passing with Joe and we did pretty well, a woman who is 49. Talked with Alice, Iggy. Asked Jeff if he wanted to pass but he said "no." Worked on 5 balls, 4 balls, clubs. I juggled clubs around 180 tosses. Taught 2 kids but they were impatient and couldn't do it. There was another guy who was learning that I tried to help and some uncoordinated guy who needs to practice.
Weight
Still struggling to get below 160. I did it once but I'm wondering if it was a scale issue. Weighed myself a number of times yesterday and got many different numbers, but I'll use 161.4 here is my latest chart.
Goals
My goals continue to elude me. I'm trying to come up with goals for August 2017 and for the year 2017. I do have a book http://MyGoals.87sc.com.
I was shocked at the number of sheets I had on goals in time-monitor.
Goals at work
Actions to goals
Three Goals Three Tasks
Action to goal
Year by Year Goals
Daily Goals
Goal Analysis
Monthly Goals2
Commitment not Goal
Goal Sheet - Zig Ziglar
Health goal of the month
Goal Qs
10 Life Goals
Goal Analysis2
Goals at home and work
Monthly Goals
Goals
Goal Questions
Book to Goal
PURGE of Goals
This needs to be organized better.
It might be time to really work on STS (Smart Task Selection). I found a way to track my location via an IP address at http://ipinfo.io.
Twitter
I'm getting more people liking my stuff on twitter. I've changed my name on twitter to Al Berg from Alec Berg. as to not be mistaken for the writer by the same name from Seinfeld.
This week at work I've started completing the automation of my software to create PowerPoint slides. This is pretty cool, that I can set a command and have it run on a server in Excel. Though some work is still needed as it's not good at say asking "Are you alive?" and getting back a response, yet. Also, the process can get busy running something. Also, I have to deal with msgbox's and how to handle errors that occur.
I didn't get it to run my data verification process. Have also started on the idea of having a process that help do manual and automated tasks.
Most tasks have components of both automation and manual steps. I'm trying to find a way to better manage this process. For example, the data verification will run on two files looking for issues with the data. If it finds them a person must look at the data and create an event that will allow the automated process to continue.
I recently finished my mid-year review and I don't think I'm doing as well as I'd like. My new boss has pointed out that I'm the only one that knows VBA more than once. This is definately a risk I need to mitigate.
One way to mitigate this is to make the process so easy and useful that the value of VBA skills is seen as useful.
Books/Writing
I continue to work on books but this has stagnated a little bit. I need to do some more proof reading and then getting the book to Kindle. I'm not sure I like the way I write as it's missing something. The books are all available for free on-line write now. If you go to http://w2fo.com/showlist2.asp?parent=49304.
I also need to work on my book covers.
Books I'm Reading
I'm reading a book called The Like Switch that well I like. I've also downloaded too many free books from Kindle.
Time Tracking
This once and always is a problem I'd like to solve as I have to track and enter my time at work. I'd like to be able to answer some very basic question on how I spent my time and analyze if it was spent wisely.
My Excel Diet continues to falter. I made a mistake and bought chocolate from Trader Joes that is lower carbs than most. That's good and it's delicious, but I don't have the will power to not eat it. So I can't buy it.
I walked 7.8 miles or 17,143 steps according to WalkLogger which is a great Adroid app.
Though I've walked this walk so much I'm not burning the calories I use to.
Goals for May 2016
I'm having trouble figuring out what my goals should be for the month. I did hear a book on tape that came up randomly on my iPod from Zig Ziglar on goals.
What can Excel do
Book for son going to college
Lower Blood sugar
Excel Course Ideas
Excel and gambling
Reduce death risk
Dr. appt plan
Clean garage
Figure out my goals and focus
Blood Sugar Higher than Usual
My blood sugar has been higher than usual for past few weeks and I'm. Today I upped my dose of Metformin to 1000 mg. I did take a Risedronate pill today so maybe that had an effect.
5 Hour Energy Shot
Diarrhea
MicroStrategy Better Today
I've been trying to learn MicroStrategy software and today I made some more progress than before. I've been focused on some of their confusing terminology which might just be Data Warehouse terms but I'm not positive.
One Second Ahead
I started reading the book One Second Ahead which has a 4.9 rating from 20 reviews on Amazon.com. I picked a chapter on Goals to read and was unimpressed by it.
This turns out to be something I call an Overhyped Bias. This is where you expect something to be great like this book and it doesn't live up to my expectation which makes my opinion of it worse than if I wasn't given the expectation.
This often happens with a movie, video or story when someone says how great it is. This makes it difficult to meet your expectations.
Interview Prep
Today I was supposed to interview someone and spent almost an hour preparing only to find out that he took a job somewhere else.
Tim Ferriss Dog Picture
Today I was telling my wife that Tim Ferriss' dog looks a lot like ours so I searched for "Tim Ferriss Dog Picture" and the following came up. The funny thing was that a picture of my dog cam up but not his.
Work hurts weekend
Yesterday I spent multiple hours running and making sure reports ran at work. Wasted most of my weekend.
Gym
I went to gym thanks to my to-do list. I hadn't gone for over a week. My rule is to drive to the gym which is easy. Once I'm there it's usually easy to workout.
Data Usage
Today during my walk I listened to a James Altucher podcast with Peter Theil. I thought it was very good but it kept disconnecting maybe 5 times. Also used a lot of data from my cell plan. I have to make sure to download them through wifi and then listen.
It's a cold rainy day in Long Island. The weather seems cooler this year than usual. It's 49 degrees.
Allergies
Today is May 1st and this is usually the first day of my allergy season. I don't know why but I just sneezed 3 times as I wrote this sentence. I'm reminded of my dad's unusual sneeze where he would say eee-ha, eee-ha, eee-ha when he sneezed.
Last night my eyes were itching. I've never been officially diagnosed with an allergy but I call it "Rose fever." I usually have itchy eyes, scratchy throat and sneezing.
Coincidences
I've been noticing some weird coincidences recently and trying to document them. I don't believe they mean anything as it's kind of like the birthday problem. This is where if you have 23 people in a room the odds are > 50% that two people will have the same birthday (month & day).
I'll post a spreadsheet that demonstrates this phenomenon.
Sardines
My wife was asking me about sardines which I recently had a bad batch of the fish. That instant I noticed a book on my shelf and I pulled it off the shelf and turned to a random page and the following heading from the book Diabetes without Drugs.
HOW TO GET MORE COQ10 AND UBIQUINONE IN YOUR DIET
Dietary sources in descending order include sardines, ...
Weird Shoes
I started noticing people wearing these weird shoes in New York City. They remind me of the shoes worn by Herman Munster.
Book I didn't buy
I went to Barnes and Noble last night and was looking for the book
Smarter, Better, Faster by Charles Duhigg. I heard a great podcast from James Altucher that I thought was very good and worth listening to. I didn't buy the book because it was $28.00 which isn't a good price point. I would have paid $15.00 but I could get this from the library or Amazon.com or wait until the book is released in soft cover.
Excel Diet
I've weighed myself everyday in the morning for about 4 years. The only time I haven't was when I was on vacation or forgot. Today I didn't feel like taking off my clothes to do this.
The Scott Adams book I bought because I liked him on a James Altucher podcast. I bought How Google Works because it was $7.98 and looked interesting. I bought Do you Talk Funny because it had 5 star rating on Amazon and the Brilliant Memory Box was cheap at $9.95 and had nice packaging.
Lawn
I spent a few hours thatching, seeding, watering, mowing and pulling weeds from my lawn. The sprinkler broke just as I was about to water it. I should take before and after pictures.
I like doing the lawn even pulling weeds one at a time.
While I was doing the lawn I was listening to a Sam Harris podcast on him reading his book The End of Faith. I placed my phone in a dangerous place on the lip of a recycling can. It kept falling off into the grass and nothing happened. But then it fell into the street and my beautiful phone has a cracked screen. The reason I put it there was I was wearing shorts without pockets.
This teaches me 2 new lessons:
Be careful with fragile items and don't put them were they could fall
Wear clothes that has pockets
Hitting Baseballs
My son and I went to the baseball field in our town to hit fungo baseballs out of the park. It's only a 200 foot fence and I couldn't get the ball out unless I moved 10 feet ahead of home plate. I think the bat was too heavy for me.
I hit 3 balls out and one ball must have gone 400 ft. as a women handed it back to me and said "wow you hit that all the way to the tennis courts, that was some shot."
Goals for May
It's May and my April goal didn't come to fruition. Why? My goal was to write a small book on Excel/VBA. I think the task didn't interest me enough. I did work a little on creating software to create a mailing list so when the book was finished I could ask the people on the list to buy the book. This technique I learned from James Altucher's podcast with Steve Scott.
I'm not sure what my May 2016 goal is but today's goal is to figure it out.
Annoyances
I'm annoyed with Blogger, I can't use a shortcut to change the heading. Maybe I'll write some code to do this. I have all the components.
At work a plastic container I keep my coffee in disappeared. The only thing I can think of is that the cleaning woman threw it out for some reason. This item is very cheap and I can bring one in from home, but I think the anger is from not knowing what happened. I just have to let it go.
I've learned from Sam Harris' book Waking Up to think of how ridiculous to hold on to this anger when I can easily replace the item.
In this blog post I address a number of topics that will help you succeed in life.
This will help you.
Three most important Questions
There are three questions that I've been trying to answer:
What to do now?
Where to store information?
How did I spend my time?
What to do now?
Is the difference between wealthy and poor people, successful and unsuccessful, happy and sad that the wealthy, successful and happy, correctly answer this question and take action on the answer?
Where to store information?
There is so much information I need to retain. Especially how I've solved a problem or an answer to a question. Google is great for data on the internet but what if the answer isn't on Google? Then there are all the blogs, podcasts, books that have great information.
How did I spend my time?
This question can answer the question "What did I do yesterday, last week, month or year?" Tracking how time is spent is very difficult. It's been something that I've been working on for year in one form or another.
If you want to be super productive you have to know the answer to this question. Recently I've been tracking this and I'm amazed at how much time I don't spend on my computer at work.
Monthly Goals
As March comes to an end I'm thinking about my monthly goals. I halfheartedly went after my goal of deciding what to focus on. I have come up with a list of > 100 items and have split the list into 2 groups the top half and the bottom half. I used some Excel code I have to make it easier.
I've also started rating the top 1/2 on 3 criteria
$ecurity
Longevity
Fun
This got a little boring after 25 items so I started blogging again.
I've created a list but I am having fun just blogging.
For April 2016 I want to focus on I2$ (Idea to Money). How to go from an idea to making money on it or moving on to next idea.
Do you have monthly goals you're working towards?
Lost Wallet
I was on train and had my headphones on due to a noisy person. As I was leaving someone pointed to the floor and there my wallet was sitting.
Holy shit, I was lucky this guy was nice. I always try to get a persons stuff back to them if I see they dropped or left something behind. It makes me think of a new habit to create.
Check if I have my phone, wallet and keys before leaving anywhere. I have gotten into the habit of looking after I get up.
Haircut
I have an unusual skill. I can cut my own hair. I often get compliments on my haircut. But recently Evan at work didn't believe that I could do this. I've been doing this for almost 20 years. I use to hate getting a haircut. It never came out good.
You need a good location. I use my small bathroom, You need a good pair of scissors, electric beard trimmer, brush and mirror.
The steps are:
Take a shower
Don't dry your hair
Remove all things from bathroom that you don't want to get hair on
Taking hair in brush or in hand cut it short sections at a time
Brush hair in back straight down
Using hand held mirror and a wall mirror cut across the back
Using hand grasp hair and cut evenly around head
Using beard/hair trimmer,remove hairs that are sloppy
Use a hair dryer to dry and style your hair
Using a broom and dust pan clean up the stray hairs
Clean up and you're done
Now if I screwed this up I can always go to a barber and get it fixed. My main rule here is if the risk is low and it can be fixed if you screw up then take a shot.
Blogging
I've started blogging and I like it. The main suggestion came from Jeffery Gitomer who wrote the Red book of Sales. He states that the number one thing that's helped him in his career is writing.
Music
The song "Need your Love' by Cheap Trick came up at work and a few other of their songs Auf Weidersen and I Want you to Want Me. They're a great group and their older albums are better. Some other of my favorites are at Alec Berg's Favorite Songs
Productivity tip
You can use auto-correct in Microsoft Word to type faster and fix common mistakes you might make. For example I've been typing the word MicroStrategy and added an auto-correct of "ms". Use this for words or even phrase that you use.
New Habit
Document things in one place so you'll find the answer when you're looking for some information. I currently have a problem in that I document information I need in too many places that makes it hard to find. I currently store this information in:
Wiki
Word documents
Memory
I have a "How Too" sheet with my to-do list in Excel and I'm tracking:
date
Subject
Question
Answer
So if I need to find and answer I've solved I'll look here.
Pain in the ass shoulder
I need to do some research into prolotherapy. This was introduced to me by +Tim Ferriss and reinforced from a co-worker Robert. He said that he had wrist pain for a while but it went away after getting prolotherapy.
The other day I also had an excruciating pain on my nose from my glasses. It was so bad I spent a lot of time concocting methods to keep the glasses from resting on my nose. Eventually the pain went away.
Time Tracking
I continue to make progress with my time tracking software. I've cleaned up a few problems and the latest issue is the code is pausing and not tracking the window I'm using. Some issues are already coming to surface with the time I'm not at my computer or not using it for > 30 seconds. It surprising to me how much time I don't spend on the computer. I need to track this to get a better handle on it. .
I also came up with an idea on how to better track questions and answers. While working I often run into questions that I've already answered but didn't document the answer. I'm thinking about a way to better tell system that I have a question and tracking how long it takes, what I did and what lessons can I learn from the solution.
I want to better track how much time I'm spending with this blog post and see if I can get the time down because it's taking more than the Tim Ferriss suggested 5 minutes
Car Salesperson Asks for a 10
I just bought a car and the Salesperson's biggest concern was to give her a 10 on a questionnaire I'm supposed to receive. She said that anything under a 10 is considered a failing grade. Three years when I leased my previous Honda the salesperson gave me a similar request.
Should I Ask for Recognition?
Today I helped a person in London with a problem she was having with some software I worked on. I couldn't tell from her description in the email what the problem was so we did a screen share. If your company is a Microsoft customer their Communicator product is very good seeing someone's screen and diagnosing the problem. You could talk to me for hours and I might not understand what your problem is but show me and I'll get it in 5 minutes.
There are other companies that support this type of functionality:
Microsoft Windows - Remote Desktop
Join.me
Webex.com
GotoMyPc.com
All allow you to view someone else's desktop. So I quickly resolved the woman's problem. The software is pretty interesting system that uses Python, Excel/VBA and JIRA to create an Agile dashboard to manage scrums and the backlog.
The user was very thankful for the help. At my company we have an internal website that allows you to give someone an award for helping you. I was very temped to ask her to give me one. It basically thanks you and sends your boss a copy. But I chickened out.
I had a thought that I should include a link in my signature.
"If my service was above your expectations please feel free to thank me via xxx.company.com"
What's your thought on this issue?
Why the Need to be Clean?
"Cleanliness is next to godliness"
Why do I and others have this need to declutter and be clean and neat. People run that gamut from clean freaks to complete slobs.
One thing about cleanliness is it doesn't fit into my 3 goal categories of Longevity, $uccess and Fun.
I feel good when things are clean and bad when they're messy.
Yet I have a brother who is a complete slob. He must throw his garbage on the floor instead of a garbage pail. Maybe it's related to Longevity as clutter can bring:
Mold
Bugs
Mice
Smells
It may also be related to Fun as why do people want to keep their new car clean and shiny? To send a message that you have resources.
Diversity at Work
At work, all they talk about is diversity. If anything at my office there aren't enough Americans. They're either Indian, Chinese or Russian. It seems we should always be hiring based on merit and never on age, sexual orientation, etc. If diversity means to get all opinions, then I'm for that.
There are obviously fewer women in technology than men, but I wouldn't want to hire one over a more qualified man. There are fewer blacks than whites but let's hire based qualifications and not on disversifications.
Don't Quit
I played chess yesterday with my oldest son. I use to be pretty pretty pretty good at it. I was best player on my public school's chess team.
My son is very smart and has been playing and practicing much more than I.
We played and very early on I lost my Queen for a Rook. I was thinking of quitting but played on. I wound up winning the game. The lesson I got is once again, "Don't Quit!"
Neighbor's son Kicks my Son
My 19 year old son was outside talking to my neighbors 5 year old and I see the boy kick at my son. This angered me as a few days prior he was trying to kick my dog.
I attribute this behavior to a lack of discipline from the parents. +Cesar Millan the "dog whisperer" sums it up the best with his "No rules, boundaries or limitations" quote about teaching dogs. Children are the same. I hate it when I'm on the train and a parent lets their kids do whatever they want.
New Neighbor doesn't have Blinds
The house behind mine has been empty for a couple of years. We
just got new neighbors and they don’t have blinds on their windows so I can see
right into their house. It’s annoying for me but at least I have a house to be
annoyed. Thanks Sam Harris for your Waking Up book.
I took a flying lesson and flew a small plane. Flying a plane is fun but the thing that most people don't realize is that when you're flying, it feels like your driving on a road and the turbulence feels like a bumpy road. The plane is very stable when flying and this experience helped my overcome my fear.
Ice Hockey
Last night I may have played ice hockey for the last time. I scored 3 goals and felt good. But since I've been diagnosed with osteoporosis I've been afraid to play. I love playing the sport but the dangers outweigh the fun. It was a very light turnout at Midnight Hockey in Ice works rink where the Islanders use to practice. I guess this goes against my "Don't Quit" advice above.
69Laws.com
I have the website 69Laws.com and thought the tag line should be
69Laws.com because 70 are too many and 68 are too few.
Free Yankee Tickets
My company was giving away free Yankees tickets for games in April. I really didn't want them as I know how cold it can be in April during a baseball game. I also ran into a frustrating time trying to get the tickets. System kept timing out. I couldn't press the final submit button. I think it was because I didn't check the box that I accepted the terms and conditions.
Transcribing a podcast
I've developed some software to help with transcribing a podcast but I realized that it's a poor use of my time to do this. It's much better for me to summarize the podcast with the most important information and then add tasks to my to-do list.
MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy is a company that makess a software product used by business to do reporting applications. I just started with the software and am not crazy about it. It's very un-intuitive. I'm sure in a few weeks it will make perfect sense. My company has a group that supports this software. I'm trying to get up to speed quickly so someone in our support group sends 1500 pages of documents to read through.
Thank you for your help
For some reason I always notice whether people thank me when I help them out. These words aren't optional.
Sorry is also useful to let someone know you made a mistake. I bumped into someone leaving our kitchen at work and we both said "Sorry."
James Altucher Podcast
I just finished listening to James' podcast with Steve Scott who writes Kindle books. Very interesting content. Highly recommended if you're a writer.
Boss makes me change unused code
I'm not sure that any boss wouldn't be annoying but my boss made me do unnecessary work. I was tempted to tell him "NO." I can't think of anything I hate more than wasting my precious time.
New Car
My new car (Honda CRV) is now 4 days old. I have 10,000 mile per year lease and I've used Excel to help manage the mileage. With the following sheet I can enter the miles column and it will show me how I'm doing on my lease. The column to the right is the formula or data in column B.
A
B
2
Date of purchase
3/28/2016
3/28/2016
3
Return
3/28/2019
3/28/2019
4
Days Left
1095
=B3-B2
5
today
4/2/2016 0:00
=INT(NOW())
6
Days elapsed
5
=B5-B2
7
Miles
100
100
8
Avg per day
20.00
=B7/B6
9
Estimated
21,900
=B8*B4
10
Per Year at this rate
7,300.00
=B9/3
11
Miles left
29900
=30000-B7
12
days left
1090
=B4-B6
13
Avg per day
27.43
=B11/B12
Anger
I'm working on reducing my anger. Sam Harris has helped the most. I like his book Waking Up and his self guided meditation is very good.
I get angry about the stupidest things. I was talking to my android phone and the word "comma" kept becoming "China." Once I said to the phone "Tim Ferriss is the Dos Equis Guy" in a tweet and the phone generated "Tim Ferriss does techie guys."
The dirty floor in bathroom, piss on the toilet seat also set me off.
I'm just trying to not get so upset about these insignificant things. Though I'd love to catch the guy that pisses on the toilet seat and then piss on his chair at work when no one is around.
Summary
Set monthly goals
Don't quit
Control anger
Learn/use Excel to save time
Please leave feedback if you liked or didn't like this post. Thanks for reading. I hope this helped you. Connect with me on twitter at @Alecberg
My Excel Diet isn't going well. I'm still not doing the things I'm supposed to do. Last night I had pizza which is not allowed if I'm behind my goal and I'm behind my goal. I weighed 165 this morning but I have a new wrinkle that is weight lifting. I might not be losing weight but I might be losing fat.
Planet Fitness
Gym going good. I joined Feb. 10, 2016 and have consistently gone 3 days a week for almost a month. I made it my goal to just go without any pressure to workout and to not hurt myself.
One of the rules appears to be to wipe down the equipment after you work out, but the rule should be wipe down equipment before you work out. This way if you don't mind laying in someone else's sweat you can but just not wiping down the equipment.
I hurt myself doing shrugs with 185 lbs. which is too much and now I have a pain in the neck.
I'm a little bored with the gym as they don't have a track, basketball court, classes or pool. Free weights are lacking and people are very unfriendly. I was thinking about a system where each equipment was a computer and you pass your bar code to it and it tracks and records the workout helping you to reach your goals. I'm sure they have this already. The machine would help prevent you from getting hurt and optimize your time.
Four Hour Body
I'm reading the Four Hour Body by +Tim Ferriss and liking it a lot. One problem is that it's such a big and heavy book I don't what to take it with me. I've been trying his suggested take 30 gms of protein within 30 minutes of awakening since Feb. 8th and today is day 26. I'm down about 3 lbs. but I don't know if this technique has anything to do with it. It does contradict the intermittent fasting idea which is to fast for 16 - 18 hours per day that is eat from 12 pm - 6 pm. This is hard. Eating 30 gms of protein isn't that easy either. Today I had a bag of quest potato chips (25gms) and cheese (8 gms).
Economy
I'm a little worried about the economy as I noticed 59 empty stores in New York City one day and 77 the next day. This reminds me of the Great Recession when I also noticed this.
I'm a little concerned about my job as there are constantly changes, we don't seem to have a budget. A co-worker keeps sending me news stories about layoffs. Worry isn't an option but being prepared is. I need to spend time preparing by updating my resume, website, interviewing skills and knowledge.
Diabetes
I don't like my endocrinologist. She was supposed to refill my prescription but hasn't. I'm thinking about seeing Dr. Berstein that's 2 hours away by round trip and would have to take a day off unless he's available on weekends.
Dog Fight
I had a fight with my dog the other day because she growled at me when I went near her bone. I got very angry and took the bone from here. It seems she knows she made a mistake. She recently stopped coming into bed at night.
My dog has us trained two ways. We put up a bell on the door so she could ring it to tell us she wants to go outside, but she changed it to mean give me a treat. She also tells me she wants to play outside by knocking on the door, and waiting until I open it, she runs away to her toy and wants me to play tug-of-war or chase.
Recently I've been very annoyed with her constantly interrupting me to go in and out and in and out. So many interruptions.
Overdue books
I've been trying to not be late with paying bills and renewing books from the library but I've been unsuccessful at this. I even set up some Excel code that goes to the library's webpage and looks up how many days until next book is due. I need to improve the code to check everyday and send me an email or automatically renew the book before it's due.
Job
I'm liking my job a little better these days. I've been interviewing people which I like to do. I've been getting more responsibility in terms of running meetings and interviewing people. I spoke with 3 candidates on the phone for 30 minutes. I'd like to better work out the technical questions I ask. I've identified 2 questions that can tell how curious someone is.
What is the number that comes after million, billion, trillion?
How does a car work?
I also like to have people self-rate themselves on a scale of 1 - 10 on a technology then see if they are the number they say to show honesty.
I judge resumes as attention to detail by looking for typos. Communication skills, and other things which I'll update in a future post.
One of my goals has been to find one question which will allow you to determine if a person should be hired or not. I'd have to ask candidates a number of questions and find a correlation between the success of the people and the questions they answered.
In terms of running meetings or interviewing people one key is to be prepared. My meeting is on Tuesday mornings so on Monday I made time to go to the conference room and set everything up. During this process I got the Blue Screen of Death. I'm glad this happened while preparing and not in the actual meeting.
We have meetings 3 times a week to say what we worked what we'll be working on and any obstacles. On Friday we give a demo on what we worked on and I need to prepare better for this.
I'm liking the new things at work that I'm learning:
Tableau
Hadoop
Unix
Avro format
Parquet format
Python coding
Drill
MapR
I'm not liking that my boss is taking a co-worker to meetings that I'm not invited to. Whenever we do our scrum she always says she has nothing to report.
Monthly Goal
March is here and I don't have a goal for the month. I'm not sure what my February goal was either. But some possibilities are:
Work 60 or more hours per week
Develop Excel class
Figure what I like or don't like to do from a list of tasks and trying to write on it
Excel Class
I've been working on an Excel class or training and am finding this very difficult to complete. I think a method to help create training would be a fun but difficult project to complete. One technique that appears to be helping is 7+/-2. This means that the class or training should be broken into 5 - 9 chapters, lessons, etc. So my first top level is:
How to learn
Problem solving
Excel beginner
Excel intermediate
Excel advanced
VBA
Advanced VBA
VBA by project
Reference
Time Tracking
One long time goal of mine has been time tracking without effort. I have x ways to track time:
Logger
Time-creator.com
hourly track what you worked on (timers.xlsm)
Caption monitoring
Idle time monitoring
Listi
My Listi.net website has some limitations when it comes to included data from Microsoft Word. There are special characters that don't show well:
single quote
double quote
dash
bullets
bullets within bullets
Extracting knowledge from sheets
I've been spending time extracting ideas, notes and other concepts from projects I previously worked on. There is knowledge in the books I've bought, read, didn't read. I'd like a prioritized list of topics to write about to help prioritize my likes and dislikes.
Marcus Lemonis on James Altucher's podcast
This is an interesting interview with Marcus Lemonis who is star of the TV show The Profit on CNBC. James interrupts his guest too much and his wife Claudia is pretty annoying at the beginning of the show. I like +Marcus Lemonis, he should write a book of his wisdom. Some of the take-aways I got are:
People
Passion for business not $
People are the most important thing as they control the process and product.
Process
Buy productive equipment
Make little changes
High overhead is bad
Product
Change name so it's scalable
One dimensional products are bad
If you don't want cupcakes you can't go to Crumbs
If you want a spin class you can't go to Pro-fit
Questions to ask
Product
Can I use better/fresher/healthier ingredients?
Use fresh instead of factory made
Is the product too focused?
Do I get hi frequency of visits?
Do I get repetitive business?
What new products can I sell?
Is product authentic to the business?
Did I get feedback?
How does the customer see the product?
Is the product of high quality?
Can we think outside the box?
What does consumer think?
When they walk in the store?
When they taste the product?
Process
Do I know my numbers?
Costs to make
Profit margins
Is space being used efficiently
Can I increase the profit margins?
People
Do I want to work with these people?
Can they be trusted?
Will there egos get in the way of making changes?
Is person scared to take a risk?
Do I love the story?
What to look for in a business
Are these people I want to work with?
Do they have a great story?
Can this business enhance an existing business I have?
Crumbs and Mr. Green Tea
Eco Me and Camping World
Does this business scale?
Negative rules
I keep a list of Key Principles that I believe can contribute to success. Recently a friend of mine helped me come up with negative rules. These are things to avoid doing or doing the opposite of something you don't like. For example if you look at bad customer service, doing the opposite can result in great customer service.
Build people up
Don't tell people "they can't succeed" after they tell you something
Don’t call people old
Don't say "you" when you mean "people"
Build People Up
I recently started going to the gym and asked a friend if he could see a difference because I could and he said "No.". I think a white lie here would be more appropriate than honesty. I would have felt better for free. If someone asks me about themselves I will always agree with them if it helps them and doesn't hinder them.
You Can't
I also told this friend that I'm going 3x per week to the gym and it's already a habit after only going a few times. My friend challenged me and said it's too short to call it a habit. He could have said "Wow, congratulations on that success," instead of telling me "You can't." My wife did the same recently. I don't remember the exact situation but it was very similar. I proposed some future positive state and she crushed it.
You're Old
I'm not sure why someone would say this. I do feel old and not happy with the way I'm aging. Then this same friend sames that I'm old. This made me feel bad. Basically don't put down people, build them up.
You
I use the term "you" when I mean "people", "others" or "someone." I could see how you, I mean people or someone might be offended by this.
Excel Class creation method
I'm in the process of trying to create an Excel class but I'm finding it very difficult. This could be a very valuable tool to help take someone's knowledge and convert it to a:
Class
Book
PowerPoint presentation
One page guide
Computer based training
Webpage
and being to easily modify, add, version, sell the content.
Chest pain
Last night I had some chest pains and not sure what it was. I did have spicy buffalo chicken pizza and it could have been from that or from something much worse.
Blizzard of 2016 and about 6 inches of snow at noon.
Woke up with wt. of 165 and blood sugar of 105. This brings me to one of my favorite quotes "If you do what you've done you get what you got."
Oldest son has went back to college and I'm happy I didn't have to take him.
January is coming to a close and for the 3rd straight month I didn't reach my goal.
Nov. 2015 - Declutter
Dec. 2015 - Lower Blood Sugar
Jan. 2016 - W < 160
Feb. 2016 - Learn more and take action on osteoporosis
Mar. 2016 - Finish Wisdom of a Dad
My monthly goal idea hasn't been working.
Why?
Maybe the lack of a plan. It was my goal but not in an all out attempt.
In terms of deculttering, I did throw out some stuff but not enough. Lowering Blood Sugar, I've started on Metformin but haven't seen a real lowering of blood sugar or measured it clearly. My weight has stabilized and seems to be trending. between 161 and 170.
One thing I've learned is that deadlines help. If you wait until the last minute and don't have a deadline, you'll never finish.
I've been enjoying work more lately as I've been put in charge of the Tuesday meetings and it takes time to run them. I spent a lot of time getting the Snapshots software which is a screen recorder to work but it's not working on my laptop.
Things are changing fast at work. I've started working with a new guy in a different dept. who was late for a meeting I set up. He had very long hair, rather young and had a weird bag with him. He also told be he managed $3 mm and was let go because his quota was $6mm. I gave him a presentation and he was yawning through it. He made a comment about the code (Python) didn't have enough "Try" statements. He also complained that (me60) chart on Excel didn't have units or a label.
New Rule: When meeting someone new never complain about their work even if it's bad especially if unsolicited.
I find out through a co-worker that there will be a presentation on Tableau at a weekly meeting that I probably wouldn't have attended. I need an easy way to put something on my calendar at work. I currently use email to send tasks to work when not at work and home tasks when not at home. I wish the email system could automatically add the tasks to my to do lists.
Recently heard 3 podcasts from +Tim Ferriss. One was with @EricRWeinstein which was very interesting one with @PeterTheil and one with +Daymond John. It's always the same issue though whether it's from a book, podcast or comment; how do you do what someone says when it's good advice. I call this B2A or Book to Action. I have read many self-help books, marketing, sales books but have I done one thing in them. Even the Four Hour Work Week has so much highlighting but little action.
The books you have tells you about your goals. You could use the books to give yourself a good idea of what you want.
Annoyed that on twitter mobile I couldn't add someone to a list.
The idea is that we humans are prisoners of our habits which are extremely hard to change. If someone or something told you exactly what to do and when, could they increase their success?
Would they follow the instructions? How would this program or recipe work?
I recently shared my idea of Smart Task Selection with a co-worker and he liked the idea. He thought it should be calendar based where I've always had it task based. I have thought about calendar based and maybe I should try this.
Presentations
I've been working on a presentation with a co-worker and have a few pet peeves that are done
Define all acronyms in PPT
Clarify terms with whole slides
10/20/30 - Ten slides, twenty minutes, thirty point font - +Guy Kawasaki
New phone
New phone, Droid Turbo came in. It's my 3rd one. First one headphone jack failed. The second one would reboot all the time, mostly when walking in cold weather. I was able to figure out how to remove the Simm (me10) card, by using my finger nail and pulling it out, then replacing it in my new phone.
Twitter
Still like twitter as I have a lot of followers and enjoy getting likes and retweets. Would like to find a way to make some friends out of it.
Health
Neck pain is waning, which is from sleeping on a couch and twisting my head. Having pain in left knee when walking up/down stairs.
sin
Dog Training
This week I tried to train my dog to bark and identify objects that we can't find like her collar and the remote. I did the training using a clicker. At some point she got it. When I asked my wife to come watch her do it she couldn't. She was picking stuff at random and getting a treat. Next time I have to only reward her if she picks out the item the first time and not after trying all the items
HOW TO GET MORE COQ10 AND UBIQUINONE IN YOUR DIET
