Money & Lists

This one is for my sister who initially got me writing about my thoughts on how to navigate life recently. This is pretty much what I gave her and am now disseminating to the three of you who read this blog.

Well being isn't all about a happy healthy body. It's also about having a Logic Brain you trust to get things taken care of. Now I'm going to share my nerdy secrets for organization and sanity and maintenance of said Logic Brain.

I really like Leo Babauta's Zen Habits, so you’re going to see a lot of links back to his writing. And he has a lot of writing, so hopefully I’ve cherry picked for you. Lesson the first, change your mind-set about goals.

But still, it feels good to get things done and introduce new projects you feel excited about so here are some good starting places.

Getting Organized:


I love, as in ardently, David Allen's Getting Things Done for my work but not for my personal life. This Leo has put his own spin on it and a fair bit of it works for me. Yes I'm making you click all these links and do your own reading and your own thinking. Mostly because I don't even want to begin to pretend I thought of any of this on my own.

I do have a moleskine as suggested and I like it.  

I also like using Google Cal which is synced it to my iphone and laptop as well as Google Drive for managing bigger projects both online and on my phone. This is not difficult I promise.

I tend to set MITs for the week rather than the day. Actually, sometimes I don't even do that. Sometimes I just pick the tasks that I think I'd feel best about getting done this week, regardless of whether or not it results in a particular outcome being achieved. But then other times I really go after and outcome or three.

My thinking here is once there’s an organizational system for your ideas, your stuff & your projects that you feel good about being in daily & weekly habits with then you’ll actually develop some faith that you can achieve the bigger stuff. Because bigger stuff is just a bunch of small things are squished together :)

As far as “lists” go, I like Projects (defined by David Allen as anything that requires more than one basic step) and Tasks (or Action Steps). For work my personal life I use ToDoist (yay FREE!)

My work responsabilities are very complex and I can’t have 400 projects (not exagerating) staring me in the face or I’ll melt down so I use Things. This application is a little too complex for my day to day. I have some very strong and clear opinions about an effective use of the application as I have watched two employees misuse it and had to sit them down and help them simplify it. If anyone wants follow up, I'm game. But for the purposes of this post it might be a bit of an obscure tangent. Which is all to say it works very well if you have a lot of different responsabilities and hundreds of open loops to keep track of.

Money!:

Money is usually a key part of bigger projects (or, you know... goals...) and I feel like I spent a lot of time with Quicken, since I was 21 actually, just tracking my money and not really planning or strategizing with it. And if you aren't rolling in dough and are walking around with student loans, credit card debt, a lein or a mortgage like most of the nation you too need to get a handle on your relationship with debt and spending money.

I currently use this simple spreadsheet and it’s really helping me manage my budget (which I’ve had to reign in big time recently).

Again, our Zen fellow has some helpful pointers. 

I do currently use the envelope system which I have avoided because it seemed cumbersome, but money is such an issue for me right now I sucked it up and tried it. I’m finding it feels like a game. A game I'm almost winning.

ING used to have my online savings but they got bought out my CapitalOne who I really distrust based on negative experiences in the past, but I'm not here to complain about that. I’ve done my research and Ally has a strong rate and a great reputation. So I just opened up with them, it was a very simple process and no minimum was required.



Tracking the BIG STUFF (also known as goals)

A lot of this is already covered in all the links but if I had to break it all down I’d say it comes down to this:

1. Pick a BIG THING you want (ex: buy land, have baby, go to Timbuktu, etc.), define the project by it’s outcome.

2. Choose the very next task you need to do from where you are sitting in your chair right now in order to start moving in that direction (ex: brainstorm perfect land to buy). And once it’s done, check it off and put the next task in place (ex: research how much land costs in this particular area at this particular size). Just because a next task is there doesn’t mean you want to or are ready to do it but it’s holding it’s place.

3. Eventually you’re going to get to a task involving money and that’s why it’s nice to have all that other stuff in place.

4. Sometimes all we can do is wait while money grows and focus on other projects in the meantime. It’s ok to wait.

All right, those were my big broad strokes on how I manage details and money. It seems to be keeping me sane. I hope something in there added a new tool to your tool box. Maybe another time I'll do a piece on more money fun like savings and credit scores or IRA Roth accounts. Or Taxes. Because all of that sounds like great fun to read... or, no maybe I won't.