I think Merlin Mann said it best on one of the Back To Work episodes. I couldn’t find the exact quote even after listen to hours and hours of past shows, but he said something to the effect of…

“In order to do great things, I have to say no to everything else.”
- Merlin Mann

I’m assuming some people have a hard time saying no to other people when they ask them to do things, because they want t o please people. However, what about saying no to yourself? I’ve recently had to tell myself no.

I took up tae kwon do recently and really liked it. I liked going, I liked the teacher, I liked the other guys that were in the class. It was really a lot of fun. However, when I took all things into perspective there were several things that counted against it…

• Tae Kwon Do was during prime time evening hours where I either need to be home with my kids or running them to their own activities.
• I recently decided to start contest prep for a natural bodybuilding contest in November, I need to focus on that.
• I could probably squeeze the money into the budget, but it would probably be better going to other outstanding bills.

At the end of the day, I had to tell myself no. Even though it was a fun thing that I really enjoyed, I need to say no to it in order to focus and do better at the other things that are more important to me – being a dad, bodybuilding, and a balanced budget.

This is a fact of life. There is only so much time – only 24 hours in a day. Six to eight hours are dedicated to sleep and eight to ten are dedicated to working (during a workday). Add in a commute, time getting dressed, packing a lunch, etc. what time is left?

The time that’s left is the time you have to be a good father and a good husband. The time you have left is the time for you to clean the house, play with the dog, take out the trash. The time that’s left is the time for you to lift weights, practice tae kwon do, and have fun with friends. The time you have left is the time to watch movies, read blogs, and help with homework. The time you have left is the time you have to do extra work to get ahead, plan a vacation with your wife, make dinner for the family, and call your mom and dad.

What I’m struggling with is – I want to do all of these things. But the time that’s left just doesn’t allow that. The time that’s left is limited and runs out quickly each day. How do I pick the things that I should do when they all seem worthwhile?

I heard someone say once, “you can anything you want, but you can’t do everything you want”. I wish that wasn’t the truth, but it is.

For me, there are four main aspects of my life – work, family, money, and lifting. My worry is that, although I may be doing well in each of those categories, I’m still just doing them – without a real goal, without a real purpose.

I’ve been trying to follow David Allen’s Getting Things Done off and on for maybe more than a year – but I’m re-reading the book now. I’ve realized I’ve been doing some things right – the collection and the doing. However, I feel like I’m ready to graduate to the next level. Taking a step back and planning.

Time to plan

So, naturally at this time of year, I’ve been thinking a lot about next year and thinking about what my goals might be. I have a lot of thoughts in my head – and I suppose I could make any one of them or all of them my New Years Resolution, but I’m not going to make any of those goals a resolution.

Instead of making each of those individual goals a resolution, I’m going to make one New Years Resolution – and that resolution is to take time to plan. And I want to be very specific about it.

David Allen says

You have to think about your stuff more than you realize but not as much as your afraid you might.

So, with that in mind – my goal is to take an intense, focused 10 minutes each weekday morning to plan, think, and review. Then once a week on Sunday evenings, I want to take 30 minutes just to think and plan.

That is my New Years Resolution… it’s not my goal – I’ve resolved to do it. And by taking that time, it should help me, or at least constantly remind me of my other goals in each of my categories – work, family, money, lifting. Since I’ll have that purpose in my head each day, I’ll be more motivated to stay on top of everything and continue to progress in each of those areas.

Some people are about Apple products. Some people are all about fitness. Other people are into watching and following college football. What are you about? What am I about?

Most people, if they look at how they’re living their life today – it’s based on a set of standards, set of beliefs that they made choices about 10, 20, 30 or more years ago. Very often we made decisions in our youth or very young about what to believe, about what we were capable of, about who we are as a person and that becomes the glass ceiling that controls us.
– Tony Robbins (YouTube: New Year – New Life)

I don’t think that quote necessarily falls exactly in line with this topic – but I think it’s true, most of us defined ourselves in our youth. It’s OK to take a step back and say to yourself, that isn’t who I am anymore. Yes, I did do that when I was younger, I loved it – but I don’t want to do that anymore. I think sometimes it feels like we’re quitting, but I don’t believe it is. I believe it’s realizing that, that phase in your life is done and it’s time to go on and do other things. It’s also OK for you to take control of yourself – to really define who you are and what you want to do.

I’m trying to come up with what I’m about and frankly, who I am. Most things to me just seem too trivial to become obsessed over though. I do like my iPhone, but I don’t want to have more of my life dedicated to piece of electronic equipment – metal and plastic. Sports are OK, but I don’t want my satisfaction to be dependent on if the Huskers win or lose on Saturday.

So, I still have an open question – who am I and what am I going to do with my life? The clock is ticking.

Find light in the beautiful sea
I choose to be happy
- Rihanna, Diamonds

The 2 lines above are from Rihanna’s latest single. I don’t know how deep the meaning of the lyrics are or are supposed to be, but that second line gets me every single time I listen to the song – I choose to be happy.

Every once in a while, I get a little sad or down or blue, like I think we all do from time to time. That happened to me earlier this week – for no apparent reason I was a little mad at the world, a little sad. I got over it after a day or 2 but I started to think about it.

Decisions rule our lives. When we decide we’re going to do something – it gets done. When I made the decision to diet down for a bodybuilding contest, that decision was made and I cut out all junk, fast food, alcohol, etc. Why did I cut that all out? Because I decided.

We all know that money doesn’t buy happiness – so what does make us happy? It sounds dumb and corny at first, but I think we really do decide to be happy. I’m not usually a mad person or a sad person… but I think we all sometimes get into a funk. Why? Because we didn’t make the choice in that moment to be happy and take full advantage of that moment and live that moment to it’s fullest.

I think it’s ourselves… making the choice. And it’s not a big choice we make… it’s several small choices. It’s making the choice every moment to be happy.

I choose to be happy.

For Christmas a few years ago, I bought the family new computers – my wife and I got Dell laptops and the kids got a big Dell All-In-One touchscreen. Fast forward to Fall 2012 and the motherboard on the Dell All-In-One got fried. The kids went without a computer for a while, but then slowly they started borrowing our laptops.

I was running through some scenarios in my head – should I buy the kids a new computer? Give them my laptop and get myself a Mac mini? But the more I thought about it, I wondered if I even needed a computer at all.

I think there are 2 ways you use a computer – business and personal. And I think those 2 activities are very different. My computer at work I use for business. My computer at home I use for personal… or do I? After evaluating my own computer use, I realized that 9 times out of 10 I went for my phone for personal computer activities – Facebook, Twitter, Email, eBay, etc. So do I need a full blown computer for personal activities? There were only 2 scenarios I could come up with where I needed a computer – making family videos and remoting into my work computer.

Since our house will still have 2 computers it will be easy for me to take this challenge, but I’m going to see if I can go computerless except for those few cases.

There are pros and cons of doing everything on your phone. First, I feel a great sense of freedom… I’m pretty much carrying around my personal computer with me everywhere I go. I no longer have to wait for my computer to start up and then I have to login – I’ve got my computer in my hand. Obviously some big down falls are a small screen and hard typing. The first I can’t do much about but the second maybe I can.

Just how fast can you type on an iPhone? I went over to iPhoneTypingTest.com and found out I could reasonably get 50-60 words per minute. I think I do about 90-100 on a computer.

I also ordered a bluetooth keyboard off Amazon for longer typing sessions – blog posts, email.

I’m using my phone the majority of the time anyways, why not try to use it all the time? And again, I think there’s a big difference between personal computer activities and business – I could never get any real work done an iPhone efficiently. I also would probably much prefer an iPad for the bigger screen – which is interesting because this is the first time I really had found a real use for having an iPad. Since money is a factor, I probably won’t buy an iPad right now. But I do think its interesting and liberating – going computerless.

The guy overcame cancer. How bad can the performance enhancing drugs be? For all we know, if he took them, they helped him overcome the cancer.

On the other hand, I know there are bodybuilders that die in their 40s most likely because of the same performance enhancing drugs.

This reminds me of two people who were married and got divorced after some time – and then one wants to think that the marriage never happened. Well, it did. The wedding day, the honeymoon, the children, the house, the life – it all happened. You can’t take it back – no matter what.

The NCAA voiding 13 years of wins for the Penn State football team doesn’t void that the football players on the roster back in 1998 outscored 9 teams that year. The feelings the players had, the injuries they felt, the experience – it was real… and it can’t be taken back.

Same with Lance Armstrong. They can take the wins back on paper, but it doesn’t change what really happened. And whoever got 2nd place on those seven days, I’m pretty sure, still feel like they got second – because they did. Whether Lance took performance enhancing drugs or not – whatever happened – did.

It can also be taken to the extreme. I’m convinced that my daughter thinks she is constantly paying too high of an opportunity cost – she always thinks there is something better that she could be doing. When we’re at home she wants to be out doing something. If we go out to do something she wants to do something else or be back home. She’s never able to enjoy the moment and what’s happening in the present. If we’re out having fun, she still doesn’t have fun because she’s too worried about what else she could be doing.

I have a similar problem. There are, probably literally, over a thousand to do/task management apps. I use one for a week and then think that there has to be a better one out there. So I start searching for a better one – I try them out and see if they fit my needs. They do of course because I’m just tracking tasks, but 99% of the time the method/app I’m already using is better. But, I’m constantly searching, never happy and able to use – over a long period – the same app.

My point here is that you need to think of opportunity cost before you make a decision, but once decided live in the moment and quit thinking about what you might be missing out on. Honestly, your probably putting a higher price on the opportunity cost than what it’s really worth anyways.

I’ve been at the point though that I’m just tired of it… tired of looking at it and tired of updating my own profiles. Tired of trying to come up with a clever Facebook status and updating my location on Foursquare. Social media always seemed like it could be much more than what it is – less stupid pictures and more thought provoking discussion.

Enter Google+ – I joined as soon as I could and tried to be active, but it just wasn’t working for me. But I recently gave it my best shot because that was supposed to be the social network of ideas and discussion… but what I’ve found is that it’s the worst. It’s just constant stupid photos, constant animated gifs, contstant nothing… it’s extremely annoying.

I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t have time for everything and social media is taking a back seat, these days. I won’t delete my profiles or anything like that… but, you won’t find me very active on any of them in the future… unless something changes.