Getting Rid of Distractions for Self Improvement Part 2/4

So I am a couple weeks behind on this post. It is all with good reason though. Firstly, I wanted to start our new series that fit better into our blogging schedule earlier in the month. The new series highlights other financial bloggers and their income reports, Income Report Roundup (new title is in the works). This is a great opportunity for you and I to see what others are doing to accomplish financial freedom.

Secondly, I failed pretty hard with a lot of my goals in this first month. So I needed to take a step back, be honest with myself, and reset. We will go over more about this next. Since resetting two weeks ago, I have been able to accomplish every goal in the shorter time frame. Pretty awesome!

There is Nothing Wrong With Failure

Failure is not what I am scared of. There is nothing wrong with not figuring something out the first time around, or the second, or the third, or…well you get the picture. What I am really scared of is not learning anything from those failures, getting stuck in a loop trying the same thing over and over.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison

See we can read every self improvement article on the internet but never know what really works for us as individuals. Those articles, like this one give, can give us a starting point. From there it is how we handle the failure because there likely will be. Either we can get frustrated, giving up on the first try saying, “Working out to get healthy just is not for me.” Or we can keep pushing, analyze what went wrong, and make adjustments for the next time around.

For me, there have been many things in my life I have kept trying to fit into my life as a habit. This includes working out. I have tried everything in the book but nothing ever stuck. Over the years I have tried different routines, exercises, times of day, and so on to keep that motivation going. Finally, I have found the routine and motivation to get up every morning (continue reading for the answer).

What habit have you been trying to make stick? Have you found the solution or are you still searching for what works for you?

Last Month’s Goals

So let’s go over the goals I had for last month. These goals were meant to help me get rid of materialistic distractions, technological distractions such as Facebook, and getting in better habits such as working out in the morning. I am not going to explain each goal in detail again. If you are curious about the details of every goal you can read about them in Part One of this series.

Sell extra items that can be a distractions – This one is going A LOT slower than I thought it would go. I have put everything on the market but I have only sold one item. I will continue to post these items, probably cutting the prices a bit to make the items more enticing.

Finish our backyard renovation – Major Success! By the middle of May we had the backyard completed. For more details check out my article about How to Save Big Money on a Home Remodel. I wouldn’t have been able to complete this task without friends and family. Especially my wife who watched our little one every night so I could work on the yard.

Start waking up earlier, 5:00 AM, to work out – This was a major fail in the first four weeks. I partially blame it on how intense the backyard project was. With how much material I had to move around, remove, and move in I was just wiped for the day. But excuses are excuses. I still did not work out for two weeks after that until I did my reset a couple weeks ago. So what changed? Well…

As mentioned already, in the last two weeks, I have woke up every morning at 4:45 AM to work out for 30 to 45 minutes. What really worked for me to wake up so early was prepping everything I need in the morning, the night before. This was the last goal of mine for this month. Turns out it had a cascading affect on other goals.

Stay focused on achieving my goals one percent at a time – I am not sure if I know how to quantify this one but I believe this was a success. I was able to work on Wallet Squirrel and other goals for at least an hour every day after my little one went to sleep for the night.

Set up my next day the day before. Each night before bed – Pass! I spend about 15 to 20 min a night getting ready for the next day. This really sets me up nicely for getting up at 4:45 in the morning to workout. I found a time during the evening that is consistent for me to get everything ready. The trick is remembering to stick with this which enforces the habit. To help you remember, set an alarm or a reminder on your to-do list.

Next Month’s Goals

This coming month I want to continue to build on top of what I started. This makes for an easy first goal…

Continue to build on with what I started last month – Though most of what I set out to accomplish last month was a success, they are still new habits that can be lost very easily. These first month’s goals were supposed to be a foundation for the next goals. To lose them might make it harder to continue in the coming months.

Improve the marketing for Wallet Squirrel – Now that I have completed my initial goals for Wallet Squirrel (SEO, web performance, and content) it is time to reach a wider audience. Even though we have tripled our views in the last three months we still need to increase our viewership. Andrew and I met this past weekend, dividing out our tasks so I know what needs to be done.

Less social media – I talked about this a lot in the first article but I really did not do anything about. This month, I want to get rid of all distracting social media that is not beneficial for my goals. This means that the only reason I should be on Facebook, Twitter, and so on should be to promote Wallet Squirrel. Other than that, who cares.

Close lose ends – There are a couple of tasks that I need to wrap up. They are 95% done but there is only one more item to cross off before the overall task is at 100% complete. One example of an almost complete task is with our web performance. We have done everything to boost it even including the move to Bluehost. The last piece of the puzzle will be to setup a new caching plugin. Should be an easy one, hopefully.

Review

Remember, failure is okay, as long as you learn from that failure. Do not let that failure get you down and quit. Use it to prop yourself up to get back at it with a new strategy.

Like last month. I challenge you make your own goals for this upcoming month. Let’s check in next month at the third week of July to see how we all did.

If you are looking for ideas on what you could do, check out our Ways to Earn More Money page. Here you might find something that catches your eye.