lists | Bigg Success

Tag Archive: lists

Think Want, Need, Must About Your Time

Written on December 16, 2008 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Time Management

pyramids We can place our spending into three categories – wants, needs, and musts. Last time, we applied these categories to money. Today we want to apply them to spending our time.

There’s a trap that’s easy to fall into when it comes to spending our time. We spend time how we want to, instead of how we need to. Then we end up with a must do.

___

Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's topic on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

___

If you think of a pyramid, with wants at the base, needs in the middle, and musts at the top, we tend to focus too much energy at the bottom of the pyramid at the expense of the top.

___

marylynn I may have a lot of things on my “must list” but I’ll zip over to Facebook to see what my friends are up to!

___

george While we need to do quite a bit of research for Bigg Success, I can just get lost in it. I’ve already learned what I need to know, but I’m still interested so I just keep going.

___

Why do we work on wants? Without a doubt, there are many reasons. The task at hand is difficult. It’s easier to work on something else. We may prefer to work on something else. It may be more fun to do something else. These are just a few of the reasons.

Start by defining

With our money, our musts are easy to determine – food, clothing, shelter and transportation. They’re a constant. With our time, our musts are much more flexible. They are things that are deadline-driven or crisis-related.

Our needs involve personal growth and interpersonal relations as well as activities that get us ahead of that deadline or prevent the crisis. Our wants then are everything else – generally activities that we like to do.

The time paradox

So why does this happen …

on those days when we have a full schedule, we get a lot done, but …

on days when we don’t have so much to do, we don’t seem to accomplish much?

When we’re required to really focus, we can get it done. When the pressure is off, we’re more likely to drift. We do what we want. If we’re not careful, if we don’t do the things we need to do, the needs move up to musts in the form of a pressing deadline or a crisis that could have been prevented.

Daily starter

So start each day with a blank piece of paper. Write “Musts” at the top, “Needs” in the middle, and “Wants” toward the bottom. Then, map out your day by making your list under each item. When you get done with your “Musts”, you can work on “Needs” and once they’re complete, you get to work on your “Wants”. It’s like a reward!

Musts, Wants, Needs – keeping these three categories in mind helps you best allocate your time!

___

Get the tips and tools you need to be a BIGG success! Subscribe to the Bigg Success Weekly – it’s FREE!

___

We really appreciate you reading our post today. You’ve heard of stepping stones … join us next time when we’ll discuss overstepping stones. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes.

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00287-121608.mp3

Related posts

Future Shock! Why You Over-commit

Is Your Schedule Overloaded Like A Dishwasher?

(Image by Ahmed Rabea, CC 2.0)

0 Comments

Don’t Show Me the Money

Written on December 8, 2008 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Money

wallet The List Universe recently published their list of ten lost rules of etiquette. The one that really got our attention was their #1 reason – talking about money and possessions.

___

Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's topic on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

___

When it comes to money, the author says that a gentleman would never:

Borrow from a lady

Borrow from a man without collateral and a plan to pay it back quickly

Discuss money

Discuss his possessions or their cost

Name drop about his rich friends

___

marylynn I think the idea that a gentleman never borrowed money from a lady shows that we are living in different times. Many women are financially independent today and willing to be angel investors. It’s when you don’t pay someone back, male or female, that it becomes rude.

___

Money talks. Should you listen?

Why do we feel the need to talk about, or show off, what we have? We all know people – be it co-workers, family members or friends – who like to talk about how much they make or how much something cost. We really liked the author’s final quote: “There was once a day that we did not try to keep up with the Joneses – because we didn’t know what the Joneses had and no one knew what we had.”

Materially possessed

___

george I recently saw a picture of people standing line. It made me think of the pictures we saw from the Great Depression. Back then, people stood in line to get a little soup or bread. The picture I saw recently showed people waiting in line to buy a Blackberry Storm!

___

Why is it so important to have the newest phone? Because we get our identity from our possessions.

We’re not saying that it’s bad to be an early adopter; we need them. The question is, and only you can answer it, “Is it best for you to be an early adopter?”

It may be. Your career may require you to have the newest phone. That’s a good reason. However, buying one just to be able to show it off to our friends … not such a good reason.

Just say “No”

It’s not a good reason because it leads to an ongoing problem. If that’s really the reason we’re doing it, we’re going to have to keep buying over and over again.

It becomes like a drug and we need our fix.

“I want it. I want it now. I want people to know I have it.”

A void check

After we admit that we’re doing this, we have to ask ourselves why – what’s the underlying reason? You see, we buy because of how we feel about ourselves.

We’re spending money to fill an emotional void.

We’re showing off our latest acquisition to cover up our real feelings. When we do this, we just create a bigger problem.

Getting it in balance

That problem is – we end up with a weak balance sheet. We want a lot of assets and few liabilities. The result of our spending is few real assets and a lot of liabilities.

Millionaires do the opposite. They focus on building up their balance sheets by buying assets with real value and keeping their debt relatively low. That’s not determined by how much we make or what we buy. It’s based on how much we save and invest intentionally.

Shhh … be very, very quiet!

We do that quietly. Perhaps nobody knows but us! But that’s the beautiful thing about it – we know!

In the last few months, we’ve relearned how incredibly important it is to have a financial safety net. We have to build up an emergency reserve. It’s not a sexy thing like a Blackberry Storm or a new car. It won’t get your friends excited. In fact, you probably won’t even talk about it because it’s so boring. But it sure will come in handy in the future.

You can also quietly get out of debt. We like to show off what we just bought, but we don’t talk about how we maxed out our credit card to buy it. So we put out a false identity, which doesn’t help us feel better about ourselves, because down deep we know the truth. And that truth does not set us free!

Don’t worry about what your friends and neighbors think you have. Take solace by knowing what you’re doing to have all you need and then some!

___