Above Yourself

Our friend Brian recently built an emergency rope ladder for to keep on the second story of their house in case of a fire. It looks great, isn’t too expensive, and was fairly quick to make. He describes a few steps of how it was made:

It cost me $20 in supplies. I got two 8 foot 2×4’s and cut them into 16 inch steps. Then I threaded the two 25 foot lengths of rope through holes drilled through each end of the steps and tied knots at 16 inch intervals for the steps to rest on. I’d be happy to give more detailed instructions if you wish to make one for your house. The major tricky part is tying knots as you thread the rope, while also tying the knots at even intervals.

It looks great! We could definitely use one of these around in case of an emergency.

Turning a goal into a habit is all about consistency. When we start to do something as part of our routine, it becomes a habit, but the hard part is to incorporate it into our routine. This can apply to our own personal daily goals or anything we want to start doing on a regular basis. Lifehacker.com explains Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret, which is as simple as a calendar and a marker. For example, if I my goal is to read the scriptures every day, I make a big red X in the box for today when I’ve accomplished that goal.

“After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”

When I started this blog, I made it my own personal goal to have one post every weekday. As you can see, once that chain got interrupted it became a whole lot easier to skip writing. I’ve now got a calendar and a marker near my desk so that I can more easily highlight my accomplishments. I’ve renewed this effort, because I want to see that chain grow.

I personally recommend using a paper calendar, but others may prefer a web calendar. Whichever you choose, make sure that your calendar is in a place where you can refer back to it easily.

Update:
A quick, easy-to-use task manager Joe’s Goals has added this functionality into its system. Read more about how they use Productivity chains.

Part of our family budget that really “sells” it in our minds is our personal fun money. When my wife and I were about to get married, her bishop gave us some advice that we always keep a budget, and to set aside part of that monthly money for our own personal money that we wouldn’t have to account to our spouse for. We decided to call it our “fun money” because we’re supposed to use it for things that are fun rather than on day-to-day things. For some reason my wife likes to use this money to save up for “fun furniture”, and I’ve finally learned to accept that because that’s fun for her. In the meantime, I spend most of mine on video games and computer stuff, and it really helps me to budget my fun expenses. Without it, our family budget seems more like a chore, but when we make a game out of saving for our fun items, it becomes much more enjoyable.

Our family recently experienced a setback in our take-home pay. Although this may sound like a big concern, we’re actually pretty excited because it means we’re investing in our long term future.

My employer has promised to match our contributions to our 401(k), but even after working here a year I never got around to doing it. I always figured that since I’m still in school that it didn’t make any sense to put money into a retirement account. I read over personal finance articles that prompted me to take advantage of this free money, and I even heard the same thing from my parents and in-laws. Why didn’t we do it earlier? Laziness, pride, fear: take your pick. I guess I figured I really needed this money now, but when I look at our family budget, it would be easy to make a few sacrifices here and there in order for us to invest in a retirement account. I told the greedy part of me that this meant I would be doubling that money since it was matched by my employer. When I finally made the change it took less than ten minutes to do, but I can never get back the free money I could have had by doing it earlier.

What little things can you sacrifice to make big changes in your future? Do you have a family budget? That’s a sacrifice of just a few 15-minute periods a week to keep it updated after you create it. Do you have any food storage for emergencies? Buying an extra can or two of your most-used food items each time you’re at the store can help you start your food storage by spreading out the cost.

Reaching our goals in life often takes baby steps. Goals should be worked on as part of a series of events, and they shouldn’t be dependent on just one major event happening.

Think of it this way: If your goal is to retire with a million dollars, there are two types of ways you can do it. One way to get a million dollars all at once at the last minute, by winning the lottery or having a really great idea come to you out of nowhere. Winning the lottery is something like trying to hit a home run in baseball with every swing. This strategy might win one or two games through the whole season with a lot of fanfare, but Major league coaches know that consistent winning comes through stringing together a few hits and good strategy rather than trying to have every player hit a home run every time up. This is the equivalent of saving up smaller amounts all throughout life in order to reach the million dollars. It suggests that we should leverage the power of interest and savings in our investment plans.

As Seth Godin has said, “the home runs you almost hit don’t count“. Each time we swing for the fence, we don’t have anything to build on when we miss.

Success in spirituality is achieved through the same means that it is achieved in our daily life, through regular and consistent achievement of smaller goals. No one act can get us into heaven. Achieving our goals through baby steps lets us build on our previous successes, and we can start to achieve forward momentum in a world that is constantly pushing back on us.