Chris’ Blog

The morning routine worked great today! I got up, got out of my room, and got things done before I even met with my project group at 9. I had things done before 9:00 on a Saturday morning! Wow did that feel good. I AM tired now and its getting close to 10 so that’s great! Just finishing a few things up and I’ll head to bed! The system isn’t perfect yet, but I’ll report on progress and what is working in the next couple of days! Oh, by the way, I’ve been doing pretty good with my goals from New Years - I haven’t given up. I’ve probably only gotten them 2/3 or 3/4 of the time (all of them that is…) but I think that is really good. One thing Leo wrote about once was never letting yourself miss a goal two days in a row. I’m trying to do that. Oh, and when I think of something I need to do, doing it right then. Maybe this all needs to be put in a coherent post that could be followed… That would be a good idea I guess…

I think I am only beginning to understand systems and how they can help in getting things done. I’ve tried lots of thing thus far in becoming organized and I’ve made some great improvements. I do however still feel that I am lacking immensely in where I could be. I have decided that I am going to try and develop systems for being organized. I have setup times that I am trying to go to bed and to get up, and I’m trying to be more organized on that front. My main problem right now is how to stay focused. Great, I get up an hour earlier, but then I waste the time and I’m still running out the door at the last minute to make it where I want to be on time. This weekend one of my goals is to develop some systems for things that will help me to keep things in their places, and know more easily what is going on. If I am able to do this, I’ll see if I can put together a post on my thoughts and actions that put these systems together. Maybe I’ll just focus on one at a time, but they are all intertwined.

Ok, well I had a fun experience today that is spawning this post. I’ll start with the moral of the story so that you can all get the idea if you don’t want to continue reading.

If you are going to keep a todo list, you need to actually use it.

Ok, now here is the story. We got new locks on our church building a few months back. At the same time I was given a spreadsheet that was to be used to keep track of which keys were given out, and to whom. I had been keeping track of them by writing each person on the sheet as I gave them keys. I decided that it would be so much easier, and safer, if the sheet was typed into the computer, so I put it on my list of things to do.
Well this morning I decided I would get up early so that I could get some things done from my list. (It has been growing for a while now…) I went in got a few things done, and got down to the item to type the list in. I quickly set to work and in less than 15 minutes I had the document formatted and ready to save. I clicked “File -> Save as” and the box pops up asking for the name of the file. In the box I see files of the same type, and low and behold what do I see but the Keys Spreadsheet already typed in and saved…
Apparently last time I went in early I typed it in and neglected to cross it off. You know what the worst thing is though? I hardly remember even having done it. In fact, if it hadn’t been in that folder I don’t think I ever would have even known I had done the work twice… Am I getting old? Or do I just need more sleep…

Well, I have a lesson to share with all of you. No matter what you are doing, there is something I learned today that I think anyone can benefit from, ALWAYS READ THE INSTRUCTIONS!!
I have always been real good at this rule. Since my wife and I got married a year and a half ago, we have put together a ton of things. Desks, cribs, bookshelves, tv stands… you get the picture. Well today we bought a highchair for Jayden. I expected it to come in parts but when we got the box open it was in way more parts than expected. For some reason that made me a little irritated and I decided I was going to show them! I was going to put the whole thing together without looking at the instructions! (This is not my normal behavior as my wife would attest to.) To make a long story short, I had the thing almost all the way together when I realized I missed on part in the middle of the process and had to take the thing half way apart again to finish it. This involved more work than putting it together in the first place, and I’m sure I would have been done way sooner had I looked at the steps even briefly. Needless to say I ended up using the instructions in the end anyway to make sure I didn’t make another mistake. Lesson learned… just start with the instructions the first time through.

I have finally uploaded my Ajax Todo list so that others who want to can use it. There are a bunch of files so I zipped them all together into a zip file which can be downloaded from the page. It requires PHP and MySQL to work. A working example can be seen here: http://hesswebservices.com/download_scripts/TodoV1

This script is an extension to one found here.

More information (and eventually more scripts) can be found here.

Well I’m attempting to get things going to make a bit of money on the side of my day job. I’ve created some scripts for other things and I decided - Hey, while I’ve already created this content I might as well make it useful for others! So I’m putting it up on Hess Web Services so that others can get to it. I also figure that I can put up a donation button if people like the scripts, and I could offer to help people customize them and get them setup for their own sites for a fee. I figure this is a great opportunity to make a bit of extra money. Who knows, maybe some day I won’t need a day job to pay the bills!

Well today Leo Babauta at Zen Habits announced that he has quit his day job to be a full time blogger. I’m so jealous! Just a couple of months ago J.D. Roth at Get Rich slowly announced similar plans of slowing work until he quits completely. Although I don’t think that I want to be a full time blogger, I don’t want to work for someone else forever. As I’m graduating in April, I know that I probably can’t really just start with my own stuff full-time, but I really really wish I could. I’ve been feeling more and more like that over the past 6 months. I’ve got loads of ideas, but no time to do them. The problem is they are all gambles as to whether they will actually produce any income, and I’m not about to gamble with having enough money for my family. I’m going to keep my head up, and keep working toward the goals I set at the beginning of the year. Who knows, maybe 4 months is enough time to get some things figured out…

So I did something today that I don’t often do. I watched hours of tv. It started this afternoon when I was holding Jayden. He didn’t want to be put down so I put the tv on. Then I got into Psych, which was 2 episodes, and then 2 episodes of Monk. Both of those are an hour long. Then later tonight I sorta watched 2 half-hour episodes of scrubs, then Numbers, Monk, and Psych. That’s 8 hours of tv in less than half a day… And that’s not counting the shows that were on while Mindy was here playing with Jayden and we talked… Its like this evil time sucker and the more I watched, the less motivated I became to get anything done… But the only shows I really wanted to see were the last 2 (the new Monk and Psych episodes…) Well, tomorrow is a new day. I think it calls for less TV.

I was watching the TV this afternoon, and I had this great idea - I should start a website for only positive news. I promptly pulled up my laptop and decided that I would see if positivenews.com was taken. Sure enough it was, and it forwarded me to http://www.positivenews.net. The site is visually in need of some work, but I decided that since Dave already has something going maybe it would just be better if I assisted with his efforts. I spent a few mins. doing some research for positive news. I found a few articles. I picked a few to stick in here, and if you get a moment and want to read about something good - click away!

Charity Dinner

Sir Edmond Hillary, Still a hero

Boy Scout ‘Hero’ in Saving Maldives President

Police officer praised for saving lives while putting his in danger

Firefighter Hero for saving colleagues

Maybe if this thing doesn’t pan out I’ll start posting these every once in a while… Maybe I should do like Zen Habits and do a specific kind of post a day - I’ll have to bounce that Idea around…

Well I found something that I can’t start doing at 11 at night… Looking at money stuff. I started looking at Mint.com and categorizing and labeling all of our spending from Christmas and our trip. We spent more than we should have, and its fun to see where it all went. Mint now has a “split” option which allows you to separate a charge or check into its parts so that if you bought groceries and clothes at walmart, you can specify how much was in each category so that your trends look correct. Its so interesting as long as I don’t have to enter the data in. Thanks Mint!