Creating a Work Life Balance

48 Days To The Work You Love: Day 9

First, let me give you an update on days 7 & 8 since I didn’t write blog posts for them.  Day 7 I was supposed to identify 3-4 people who have been positive mentors for me and contact them for advice.  I reached out by email to Shay Carl and Adam Baker but have not heard back from either of them yet.  I will continue to consider other mentors.  I did just read Pat Flynn’s book Let Go.  It is his story of getting news about getting laid off from his architect job.  He then discovered his blog had substantial traffic and learned how to turn that traffic into a passive income.  By the time his job ended he had replaced his income and his first year on his own he made over $200K with a site and ebook that helps architects prepare for a special certification test.

On Day 8 I read chapter 4 of the 48 days book and evaluated my current life balance. Dan Miller explains that financial or career success isn’t enough to be happy.  You need to make deposits of success in all 7 aspects of life which are: Financial, Physical, Personal Development, Family, Spiritual, Social and Career.   My financial and family buckets the fullest.  I need to make a lot of deposits in the other buckets to get balanced.  Unfortunately, I feel like I’m going to be emptying the financial bucket soon.  Let’s hope that means I’ll be able to fill the other buckets and use that success to get momentum in all aspects of life.

Day 9 Questions

1. Are you a goal setter? Do you  typically set goals at the first of the year? If not, why not?

I do tend to set goals.  I’m not always the best at following through and staying accountable.

2. How would you describe your current focus on work?

Non-existant.  I am all over the place.  I have a full-time job plus a few clients I do work for, a golf website I’ve been dedicating a lot of time to.  My youtube videos that require a good chunk of time and a few other projects like thintopia that I answer emails and do customer service for but haven’t had time to make important improvements and fixes to the site.  So in any given day I am programming in PHP, doing AdWords and SEO work, updating wordpress sites, editing videos, promoting videos on facebook and twitter.  Plus plenty of market research (ie watching videos).

3. What hobbies do you have? What other skills and interest do you have?

I make a little bit of money doing the youtube videos but honestly it is more of a hobby.  I get a kick out of creating videos, reading comments on the videos and figuring out ways to get my videos in front of more people and grow subscribers.  Photography is a hobby for me.  I know very little but have a deep appreciation for good photography and love to toy with my equipment to figure out how to take good professional looking pictures.  I can see myself doing nature or sports photography.  I also enjoy coaching sports.  I enjoy the challenge of figuring out my player strengths and weaknesses and strategizing to put people in the right places and coach them to succeed.  I have now coached soccer, football and baseball for my son who is now 7.  I don’t know that I see myself coaching beyond regular youth sports.  My biggest interest is in learning “cool” skills.  Cool is a relative term.  It can be anything from solving a rubik’s cube to developing a mobile app or creating and editing a music video parody.

4. How are you involved in your community?

At the moment, I’m not very involved (besides coaching youth sports).  In the past I have been a Boy Scout leader.  I also participate in a few service projects each year with my church.  I also developed and maintain the website for a local non-profit that helps feed hungry school children on the weekend.

5. What was your father’s or mother’s attitude toward work and how has that affected you?

My dad is a hard worker and enjoys his work.  He changed careers after he had a family which seems to have been a good choice as it afforded him the opportunity to be very involved with our family.  Being a self-employed Chiropractor, he had a flexible schedule and pretty good income.  He always pushed me to find work.  I distinctly remember being asked daily to keep looking for work so I wouldn’t be sitting around the house wasting my Summer.  My mom is also a hard worker she stayed at home caring for our house and 6 kids and served in several big roles at church.  She has tried a few different jobs after her kids started moving out but hasn’t really found anything she enjoys more than being an awesome Grandma and fulfilling her church callings.  I like to think I have my dad’s work ethic but I have more of my mom’s attitude toward work.  I want to be doing something meaningful and important and money isn’t enough of a motivation to work a job.  I really appreciate that they both helped me learn to value work.  I did plenty of yard and housework and worked through college to pay for almost all my expenses for 3 of the 4 1/2 years.

Indecision

I am facing some choices right now that can impact mine and my family’s lives dramatically.  Miller gives a guide to making a quick decision.  In fact, he recommends deciding quickly.  I’ve heard it told before that no decision is, in fact, a decision.  Seth Godin talks about how successful people fail quickly.  Failure becomes not so big a deal if we learn to decide quickly and fail quickly.  In this case, I need to make a decision about the direction I think will be best now so that I can get on the path because  if it is the right path I don’t want to lose time an if it isn’t the right path then the sooner I can learn that, the better.  There really is no positive to waiting until you are 100% certain because, guess what,  that will NEVER happen.  You have to ACT FIRST!

1. State the problem

2. Get the advice and opinions of others

3. List the alternatives

4. Choose the best alternative

5. ACT

Problem:  I need to choose or create a career that will pay our bills and provide for a family of six.  I want to find something I can do for the rest of my life.  I want to do something that will make a difference to the world and impact people’s lives directly for good.

Options:

1.  Build my freelance website, marketing and video business

2. A golf deal site

3. Build a massive youtube audience with funny skits, music video parodies and vlogs.

2. Grow and improve thintopia.com to be the best weight loss challenge website.

3. Start something completely new which would be what I once called Micah 3.o   It is my idea to focus heavily on personal development.  I would do a 90-day makeover and focus on achieving big goals in all the 7 areas of life while I create guides that help people achieve their goals and overcome roadblocks such as Facebook addiction and lack of focus.  The end goal would be to create an ebook and have readers similar in nature to Tim Ferris but with my own angle as a family man.  I would work to publish a book and begin taking speaking engagements and traveling with the family doing workshops for companies and individuals.

I could also do any combination of these options.  I feel like what I will do is some combination of all of them or at least focus on a couple while keeping the others on a back burner.  The real decision is should I quit or not start any of these projects?

How many new projects will I come up with before I make a decision?  On YouTube I seem to come up with new ideas for that every week.

…

I just reviewed a couple posts from 2 years ago when I first read the book and I see a pattern and I can’t help but see that as a sign.  I think my decision is clear but there will still be a process of elimination.  The idea is that life is one big school and I will be designing my own PhD but you can’t take every class in one semester.  You have to start with the basics and build from there.  Stay tuned for the next post where I will begin to reveal the plan which is simply an evolved version of what I called Micah 3.0.