Archive – Becoming Better.

[BB Archive] Curing Excusitis with a Batting Average

How embarrassing. Nearly two months without a blog post, after setting an initial goal of two per week! Truthfully, I’ve been suffering from a case of excusitis (prounced excuse-itis) with respect to my blog. Excusitis is a wonderful anchor first coined by David J. Schwartz in his pivotal book, The Magic of Thinking Big – in short, it is a ‘mental disease’ where one constantly creates excuses for not taking time to complete a task or goal.

EXCUSITIS OCCURS NATURALLY – AND OFTEN!

The devious aspect of excusitis is that it can manifest in any task or goal over any period of time. The challenges of time management, energy management, momentum, and motivation stretch across each action in our daily lives. When we choose to prioritize our efforts according to these criteria, certain tasks will naturally fall to the bottom of the list (often for ‘good reasons’). This is where excusitis rears its ugly head!

[BB Archive] Becoming Better at Money: High-Value Activities

When it comes to learning, “becoming better at money” is not something you find at the top of people’s list of interests. In being asked to investigate this skill, you may find yourself thinking: how can I become better with money when I don’t even have enough of it to make ends meet? For those who are living paycheck-to-paycheck or without significant savings, becoming better at money feels like a low-priority item; there’s no motivation to improve our knowledge of it (at least until we have more of it).

This blog is our chance to turn that mindset around; and let this post be the start of it. In our time together, I will be introducing simple and straightforward ideas to increase our income through becoming better at money. The first idea is deceptively easy, and can have you earning upwards of $720/hour on your first go-around! Sound ridiculous? Let’s look at a real-world example to see how it works:

[BB Archive] You don’t suck at anything.

from https://open.buffer.com/keep-going/

As we continue our journey at becoming better, we’re going to discover many new options for how we can approach life. Mastering these skills requires persistence, specifically in remembering to practice them. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to forget to practice when we feel like we’re not making progress. We experience this emotion frequently throughout our lives, and it doesn’t feel great. In fact, it often frustrates us to the point where we stop practicing completely.

In our frustration, we will think to ourselves (and sometimes even tell others!) “I suck at this” or “I’m bad at this.” If you can catch yourself falling into this trap, there is a very simple tactic we can use to feel better about sucking at something (side note: this tactic is part of an overall strategy of reframing, which we’ll discuss later on). Practicing this tactic is as simple as being aware of whether you’re feeling good or bad towards spending your time practicing a skill.

[BB Archive] Becoming Better through Directed Action

Take a moment to recall the first time you drove your car to a party at your friend’s new apartment. You were probably relying heavily on your smartphone’s GPS navigation, furiously concentrating on turn-by-turn directions to guide you to the right location. The second and third time you traveled there, though, maybe the drive was a little easier. Before long, you could navigate without directions. Now, you can split your drive time between texting & driving and thinking about what you’re going to have for lunch tomorrow, and Hey, you’re there before you know it!

Without even realizing it, you were becoming better. In this case, you are becoming better at the skill of traveling to your friend’s house. A skill can be any particular ability: driving to your friend’s house, learning to tie your shoe or to ride a bike, playing a musical instrument, or even watching your favorite show on Netflix! Becoming better, then, can be defined as increasing (either consciously or unconsciously) your expertise of a particular skill.

WAIT, HOW AM I BECOMING BETTER BY WATCHING NETFLIX?