Plus I continued in the practice of doing my morning pages, and my typing speed seems to be coming up.  I’m starting to experience some of the things that people have told me over the years about creativity.  The way to be creative is to sit down and do creative work, especially when you don’t feel it.  Sooner or later, the urge will hit you at the same time that you are doing your creative practices and poof, people will ask you, “how are you able to be creative on demand like that?”

When I do my writing, I’m finding that the first few minutes (the time is getting shorter) is a hard grind.  I find myself writing to words, “keep writing” over and over again.

But then, after a while, it just starts to flow.  The thing I really find interesting is that the level of crud running around the back of my brain is getting cleared out and I’m finding it more and more easy to stay focused on what I need to accomplish.

I’m still frustrated by my lack of “business activity” but I’m ecstatic about the direction and speed of this 90 day process is moving.

Lots of toys, lots of games (did I mention my 3 year old and my 8 year old?)

Last night (Christmas Eve) we got done wrapping all presents and got into bed about 12:30.  It was later than we were intending, but the kids knew that 7:00 am was wake up time.

Fast forward 5.5 hours at just before 6 am when Miss Adventure Monkey comes in and quietly(?) asks us if we know that it’s Christmas morning.

It’s been a  non-stop roller coaster ride for the rest of the day.

Our 3 year old had a great time throughout the day.

Miss Adventure Monkey told us a couple of times that “Today is the best Christmas EVER.”  She also told us a couple of times, “Today was the worst Christmas EVER.”  It was pretty even and with her not getting more than maybe 7 hours of sleep, it went really really well.

I did get a little bit of work in over the last two days, but nothing I’d really count.  I’m good with that.

Every day keeps bringing more focus.

I’ve got between 8 and 15 measures that I’m tracking on a daily basis.

These measures provide visibility into what is actually happening.  They are provide leverage over habits.

Habits drive results.

Here’s a question for you, what 90 day project are you going to take on?

What is your goal for that project?

What measures will you track for this project?

What habits do you have?

What habits are you going to create?

If you want to take more control of your life, add a comment.

If you are someone who is highly paid, but you are not running your own business, you definitely need to write.

You know how little security you have as a highly paid employee.

I may not have any answers, but I’ve got some good questions.

You’ll be glad you took the time to write now.

Not exactly the truth, but it’s close enough.  Miss Adventure Monkey, and Precarious This, are both getting good sleep.  We only recently decided to stagger their bed times and that’s been helping a lot.  (little things that in hind sight make you say, “That was obvious, why weren’t we doing it?”

So the kids are getting sleep, but neither my wife or I have been.  Having experience the difference between 85% awake and 99% awake is huge, and it confuses me as to why I would let myself get into a sleep debited state again, but I have.

It’s time for me to go to bed, and I may start crafting these posts the first thing the next morning, rather than the last thing at night.

Stay On Mission

What I got done today was to clear off another level of crud from my thought processes.  I also did some home schooling with Miss Adventure Monkey, and had date night with my wife [We went to go see "The Hobbit" at the theater.]

If you’re counting, you can see that there are no “business productivity” measures on that list.  Just another day of zero productivity.

But it wasn’t a “day of zero productivity”.  I did one thing today for my business.  I wrote this blog entry.

Understand that this blog series is a part of my business plan.  I’m counting on the fact that the outcome of these 90 days is going to be unbelievable and that what I’m doing is going to provide value to you, my readers.  By documenting my “Days of Failure” I’m increasing the likelihood that you will become a paying client.

I’ve got to provide a lot of value to you, my words must resonate with you, causing you to really start feeling, “This Malcolm guy ‘gets’ me.

Stay On Mission

PS

Apply for your chance to be interviewed for NonTraditional Success by sending an e-mail with your name, phone number, and a brief description of how plowing forward is it’s own success principle.

Hurry and apply today at malcolm@NonTraditionalSuccess.com

Had my call with my one current marketing customer this morning, that went fantastic.  We went over some of their current staffing challenges and some business numbers to focus on that most companies can’t answer, but are the key to having a profitable business.

Took a “break,” wrote for an hour, and then worked with my oldest daughter on her homeschooling.

After lunch, I had a second interview on that consulting gig I was talking about yesterday.  This opportunity is moving along quickly and the nice thing is, its got a high probability of success.  I’ll end up being the lead coach on the project.

Then more homeschooling followed by dinner and putting the kids to bed.

After that, I was reading a book and came across the idea of putting your mission statement for your business into a twitter sized message.

Came up with “At Non-Traditional Success, we help generalists prosper in a specialized world”

This comes out to about an hour and a half on my marketing business, (maybe 3 hours when all was said and done.)

Not what I intended for the day, but still had forward momentum going.

If anyone wants to chime in, I’m interested in spot lighting some of my reader’s experiences with setting out to do one thing, getting derailed, and yet still successfully doing something one or two little things that moved them forward towards their goals.

Day 6, was a family day, went to my niece’s holiday show.  She’s 5, it was wonderful.  This was also Miss Adventure Monkey’s 8th birthday, so we went to a local water park and just had fun.

Day 7, Kind of an organization and a focusing day.  Taking a few irons out of the fire in order to focus on my marketing business and getting paying customers for said marketing business.

Day 8, not tracked at all, zero productivity.

Day 9, Got a call for a possible multi-month fortune 1000 consulting gig down in the Arizona.  Could be lucrative and fun.  My wife and I worked on our Christmas card letter and got them all addressed and mailed.  Let me be more clear, I wrote some of the letter, and with Miss Adventure Monkey, put on stamps.  Decided that they could go to the post office the next day.  Got in touch with Google and set up my Adwords account on the correct email address and got an hour and a half intro course on line.  Learned about an amazing cool tool at marketing.grader.com.  Kind of got my mind blown with the Google work.

Day 10, Dropped off Precarious This at day care.  Stood in line at the post office to mail Christmas cards.  Packaged up our old dish network box and took it to UPS to return.  Paid January’s rent.  Had lunch with my wife, and Miss Adventure Monkey.  Came home and watched the 3rd part of “The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization” (Love Netflix’s contribution to teaching history as a homeschooler) at which point it was 4:25, and I did an hour of organization on my desk and my gmail account, and wrote this post.

Started the day with a coaching call to my manufacturing client.

I got through all my voice files and dumped everything into a couple of mind maps.

Took a break at one point to watch some training, and spent about an hour bouncing on the mini-trampoline while doing so, accomplishing two things at the same time. (Victory)

Today I’ll be sitting down with a friend of mine to map out a coaching seminar that we’ll be offering in a couple of weeks.

It’s tentatively being called, “How to make 2013 your best year ever.”

You’ll want to attend this seminar if you have a business, no matter how big or how small.

Write a comment if you would like to attend.

Stay On Mission

A lot of time spent home schooling our oldest daughter (Miss Adventure Monkey.)  It was productive in a home schooling way, but not in a business way.  Call it a victory.

At the same time, when I took our youngest daughter (Precarious This) the place was on lock down because someone at the local high school had brought a gun to school.  This is not intended as my outlet for thoughts on schooling and home schooling, but it reinforces my idea that we’re on the right track.  (Victory?)

Anyway, today I got my voice recorder dumped onto my desktop where I can do something with the files.  I got my training videos uploaded onto our media server so that I can watch them on TV, while reducing the amount of clutter in that area of our lives.  Plus we got our tree on the stand and inside.  The general order level in the house in on the upswing, but I fear that this is more “executive procrastination” rather than real work.

Another victory for today, was 8 hours of sleep.

Tomorrow I have a call with my pro bono client.  I have a couple of ideas for their business that I need to run by them.  The fact that they exist is in itself a victory.  I need to do another consulting day with them.

Mostly spent it taking care of the kids.

A bit more time getting things organized, but it really didn’t help that I got 5 hours of sleep last night.

Let’s see how day three goes.