Automating More Than Just Work

We all hear about automation in the workplace. It might be a macro for your spreadsheets, or a script to have your computer click buttons for you, or even something as simple as setting up rules for emails to be pre-checked before you even read them. But what about at home? Do you even know what you could automate at home?

Well let's cover some of the basics. Every month you pay bills. Are you logging into every site you owe money, and manually typing in credit card numbers? Almost every bill you have can be automated. Autopay for all your bills will probably take you about an hour or two, if you have a lot of bills, to set up the first time. Then after that, paying bills might take you about 10 minutes a month. And that's if you are going around to check that you're paid up. Trust me on this. Most companies have no problem waiting 90 to let you know that you've now missed three payments. So remember to check that your autopay has the right card, or account number tied to it still.

But that's just for bills. What else can we do? How about your retirement? Or saving money? Are you logging into your bank and moving money to each account? Why? Do you have direct deposit? If you don't, find out if your work offers it. Not having to drive to the bank to deposit a check saves so much time by itself. But why not have some of your money already being placed into a savings account before you even see it? This is simple with direct deposit. You just add another account, and say put money here with each paycheck. It's that easy. And now you've got a safety net building up. Same thing with retirement. If you have to move the money yourself, then you will forget, or won't do it.

If you need more help with this, check out Ramit over at I Will Teach You To Be Rich. He'll change your life.

http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/automate-your-personal-finances/

And to expand on saving money, https://www.simple.com/ will be your best friend. With Simple you can set goals. And they will "remove" the money from your account and put it in a temporary account. You say how much you need and when you need it. Simple will then pull money out of your account everyday and put it into that bucket. And as soon as you reach your goal, and spend that money, you just mark to pull from that bucket and Simple will do the rest. It makes saving money way too easy not too.

So get out there and automate all aspects of your life. And if you can do that, you'll find that automating things at work that much easier.

Just Pull The Trigger

I'm not going to take long here, because I want you to watch the video below. That alone is 5 minutes. If five minutes is too long, I'm sorry, you can go back to Candy Crush or whatever is the new time suck for people wanting to escape the "fun" of their 9-5 job. 

Everybody has ideas. Most suck. A few are good. Even less are great. None of that matters if you don't actually do anything. You could have the first Trillion dollar idea. But if you don't even try to act on it, well then that is a 0 dollar idea.  Good job. 

Just get to work on your idea, and stop saying you're gonna do something. Fuck Your Gonna.

It's Never Easy

If there is one phrase I hate hearing, it is this:

"This doesn't come easy for me, like it does you."

I know that people are wanting to say that you're smart, and that you're a fast learner. But a lot of times it comes off as an excuse for why they are struggling through things. And over time, you start to believe this lie. You believe that you're just a natural at whatever you're doing in life. But you forget about the days of work put into learning a new thing. The months of constant failure to get one thing right. And the years of perfection to get to where you'd consider yourself an expert.

Hours of notes were taken

The human brain is a weird thing. You can forget things that are important without even realizing. While at the same time, remembering every word to the new single from your favorite band. That seems backwards sometimes. But why does this happen? Well to start, we have to realize the most complicated thing in the world is the human brain...as decided by the human brain(let that sink in).

But why is it that we forget the hard times, and only remember when we got things right? Well for starters, we should be thrilled that we only remembered the right way to do things. Could you imagine if your brain remembered all the different ways to not do something, but always forgot the right way? Chaos would ensue.

Hard times suck, and boring times are worse. Our brains are real good about throwing out junk information. Don't believe me? What happened about 10 minutes into your morning commute 2 weeks ago? Too hard, how about this morning? Still can't remember? That's because your brain perceived this repetitive action as useless information. Much like all the hours you were Googling for an answer. Struggling to figure out what magic order of words would lead to the promise land of a Stack Overflow question with a verified answer that worked just for you. Your brain saw all that work leading to an answer as repetitive junk.

So why is this a big deal? Well over time you start to get confident. Your brain only remembers the answers, and not the work it took to get there. And when you reach a difficult spot, you panic. Now, one of two things happens here.

1. You freeze, decide that this is too hard for you and find something else to do.

or 

2. You do like you've done every time in the past. And push through the hard and learn something new.