How I’m Implementing My New Year’s Resolutions

Hi folks,

It’s been a while.

August to be exact. Just before I took off on my vacation.

I came back, got real busy with my pending launch of ClickBank University (which finally got off to a soft launch on November 1 and will have it’s major launch January 15th) and really didn’t devote any time to blogging.

My bad (as my teenage children are wont to say).

One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to blog at least every business day. Well, I’ve already failed on that count, but I realized today that I had some good habits that I developed over the past year that I HAVE successfully implemented on a daily basis, and have no problem keeping them going.

It all started when my Heart Failure Nurse Practitioner, Nancy Todd of Lahey Clinic, handed me a calendar a few years back and told me to weigh myself every single day and write down my weight… and notify her should my weight ever fluctuate more than a few pounds on a daily basis.

So every morning, I stepped on that scale, weighed myself, grabbed the pen attached to my calendar and dutifully wrote down my weight for that particular day. I never let myself eat breakfast or get going on anything else for the day unless that was done.

And that habit has persisted over the past several years.

Last fall, there were a couple of other things I needed to start tracking. Like whether or not I took a particular medication that day (as I sometimes forgot). So, as part of my daily regimen (which is a joke, because I’ve never really managed to develop much of one) I started writing down the first letter of the medication on that very date that I weighed myself, to make sure that I took the medication as well.

Then there was another medication another doctor prescribed that I was constantly forgetting. I added IT to my calendar, and soon, I had my weight, and the initials of two medications I was tracking on each day of the calendar.

Then Nancy said I need to be more diligent about my walking. I have a treadmill, but am so damned lazy that I often forego walking on my treadmill that day.

So, I added the W (for walking) on to my calendar, plus the number of minutes that I walked.

And over the past month, there were a couple of other habits that I wanted to keep, so I added the first initials for those on to that calendar on my bathroom door, and before you knew it, I was consistently doing all the things that I need to do in a day, and my day didn’t seem right if I missed even one of them.

Which brings me to the business side of the equation.

I have to admit that I’m horribly undisciplined.

I bounce from email to managing my accounts to working on my sales letter to building a sales page then back to email and on and on, I bounce throughout the day, and very often, the things that I most want to accomplish during the day — like blogging to Bourland.com or my ClickBank University blog — are never done. I’ve also managed to ignore my ClickBank University Forum, which is something I should do more than once a day.

So today it occurred to me.

I could apply the same principle of tracking the accomplishment of the most important things I need to get done — every day — on a separate business calendar.

With great relish, I could add a V for every video I create (very important activity for me), a BB for every post to my Bourland.com blog, a CB for every post to my ClickBank blog, a CBF for every post to my ClickBank University Forum, and so on.

I know this sounds weird, but I get a real rush out of jotting down those initials signifying that I got the job done. It somehow satisfies my inner 7 year old.

So today I went out and got a blotter calendar for my desktop at Staples. Set me back a whole $4.29.

And now, I can’t wait to go put a “BB” on my calendar.

One task down, many more to go!

See you a little more often than I have….

Take care,

Andy