There comes a day in the life of many 9-5 workers, when you realise that staying static, doing the same job, traveling the same stretch of tarmac to work every day only to be delegated meaningless tasks and earn money for someone else, is not enough. We are conditioned from an early age, throughout our education and into the working and tax life, to strive for success and to follow a culturally acceptable path.

Realisation
This is not how life has to be. The greatest thing about living in the free world is the opportunity it affords us, and if we don’t stop dreaming and grab on to the life it is possible to have, we are destined to look back in five, ten or twenty years time and wish that we had made the most of the opportunities we have today.

The Questions Start
So you’ve decided that the 9-5 is not for you, and then the questions creep into your conscious thought. Some of these will be from friends and family in whom you have confided your plans, others will be pondered sub-consciously.

Money
For most individuals, the primary concern is likely to be financial security. Can I afford to quit the comfortable lifestyle I have now and risk not being able to earn in order to do this? The question should be, can your life afford to not to do this? Start saving now. If you are planning to run your own business to finance your lifestyle, you need a certain level of intelligence, and I’m sure that as a by-product of this requirement you will be able to set yourself a budget and start to understand what it is going to take to be free. Of course you may have to quit your job, if you are not in a profession where you can negotiate a remote working agreement, but you’ve held a job before and reached where you are today so there is no reason why you couldn’t do it again.

Family & Friends
No doubt you will have concerns about missing family and friends, and absolutely you should take into consideration your feelings for these people. A head-strong, independent person will be the kind of person who can fend for him- or herself. Technology is advancing all the time and staying in touch is easier than ever before. If you think about it, a lot of the communication you have with friends and family will not change from the phone calls, email, twits, IMs etc. that you do now – it’s just that you have more exciting stories to tell of your new lifestyle.

Life out of the office
So you’re accustomed to your big screen TV, your dishwasher and all the mod cons you currently have. You like your comfy bed and the fact that your local take-away knows your usual order when you call. Although there is comfort in routine and familiarity, this is exactly the lifestyle rut you have already identified that you don’t want to be stuck in (not that there is anything wrong with that if it is what suits you) and you are ready to make a change. Ask yourself if you can pack your life up into a single suitcase and say goodbye to your home comforts. I feel that you should look on this as an opportunity to simplify and refine your life – a lot of people find that this provides them with mental clarity and self-exploration like they have never found before.

Can I Make Money?
Can you work for yourself and run your own business? I’m tempted to go with a cliché and say that you don’t know unless you try. The fact is that you know your own strengths and weaknesses; you just have to admit them to yourself. Although, for cost reasons, often you will need to do a lot of tasks outside your skill set, there are support options out there. You can hire remote workers to take care of specific aspects of your business. Make sure that you network with people who already run their own businesses, or are in a similar market and who could therefore offer advice and support. Like many things, you really need to believe in yourself and trust your instincts. Make sure that you can work independently and put in the effort required to make it work.

Taking the Leap & The Bigger Picture
If and when you take the leap it will be scary, yet it is likely to be like ripping off a plaster. The anticipation is worse than the action and once it’s over you will wonder what you were worrying about (even if it hurt like hell for a few seconds). Try not to get bogged down in the details, but focus on the bigger picture of what you want for your life now and in the future. Don’t live in regret; grasp the life you want now.

What concerns have you had on the road to independence?

Image by Jef Safi on Flickr via Creative Commons

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• Yep, I know my posting and Twittering has dwindled slightly recently. I’m still here, I’m just slowing things down, really. Interesting stuff coming!
  

Image by Light Knight on Flickr via Creative Commons

“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.” Lawrence J. Peter

How clearly defined are your goals? In order to be as effective as possible in getting what you want out of life, you really need to make sure your goals are clearly defined. This is not as easy as it may sound. Often people have many little goals they want to achieve, but are not sure which objectives to concentrate on in order to achieve their ultimate goals. If you are not clear on the objectives you have for yourself you will not be able to define the required actions you need to turn your dreams in to reality.

How to clearly define your goals

1. Make a list of all the things you want to achieve.
Think long and hard about this. Start by brain-storming ideas then leave the list for a day or two before revisiting it to finish off. Initially, list everything big and small.

Here are some suggestions to get you started:

• What do you want to do, be, or have?
• What Lifestyle do you want to lead? How you see yourself in a few years time? (or how you want to see yourself?).

2. Think big.
At this point don’t think about what you could or couldn’t achieve, just think about what you want. If you could have, be or do anything what would that be?

3. Review the list.
Hopefully you now have a list of goals, projects and items you want to achieve. These will probably vary in size from big lifetime goals, to small things or projects that you want to do. Review the list and check that it captures everything important to you.

4. Eliminate.
Here is where it starts to get difficult, but there is a method to follow here. Think ten years ahead  in the future, these are the big goals. Tidying your loft or redoing the patio is probably not on the critical path to the place you want to be in ten years time. Sure they are important to you now in the short term, but you really want to be taking actions that will have the most effect towards achieving your future goals. You’ll probably find  some points you have written down are not that important. Other targets may seem important, but ask yourself “If I didn’t do this, would it mean I couldn’t reach where I want to be?”

5. Simplify
You can’t work effectively on ten goals at a time, probably not even half that amount. If your goals are important to you and you really want to achieve them, they should be something you care about more than anything. Again, this is not easy, but if you find your passion you will understand what is most important to you.Look at your edited goals list. What is the most important goal to you now? I would suggest you pick three large goals, maximum maybe five, and focus on these as your only priorities.

How your goals tie in with your Lifestyle Project
Your Lifestyle Project is the sum of the actions you take to achieve those goals. By definition, a project encompasses all the required activities to achieve defined objectives. The skill to managing your project is maximising the resources available to you to achieve the objectives. Therefore the key is to clearly define for yourself what your goals are. Be in a position where you are able to state what your goals are in life at the moment and to easily say 3-5 sentences stating your objectives.

Stop putting off the important
Some of the items on your list will probably be action points. This means they are probably things that you need to achieve or do in order to take the steps to reach your ultimate goals. DO NOT keep procrastinating activities on this list. Don’t hold up pursuing your dreams by ‘achieving’ mediocre or unimportant tasks or waiting for the right time before starting on the path towards your desired goals. There is never a right time. I very much doubt anyone finds a point in their lives where all conditions are perfect to start a new venture or pursue a new project.

Clarifying your goals for yourself is the first thing to do in your Lifestyle project. I suspect some people will find this very easy, whilst others will find this very difficult to do. However, the main thing to realise that once you understand yourself and what you want to achieve, you will be able to, or at least attempt to, control your own actions so that you are always working towards getting where you want to be.

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Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. Benjamin Disraeli

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about taking action. I have to admit I’m the kind of person who spends hours and hours thinking about, researching, talking about and thinking about again lots and lots of ideas. What truly makes a difference however is taking action. There is only so much you can look in to any given thing, such as how to be the best blogger or how to get fit, before you become saturated with information and just have to take action. I have written before about how you should ‘Just Do It’ and that is really what makes the difference.
Too many people just sit around and do nothing. You’ll probably find these are exactly the kind of people who complain about their job, their circumstances, their weight or whatever it is that they are complaining about. Stop complaining and start doing. My mum always used to say to me “If you put as much energy in to doing something as you did in to complaining about it you would have done it by now!”.

I like to try and turn short / medium term goals in to habits. So I currently have the short term goal of making taking action my number one habit.

Stop thinking. Start doing.

Take a lot at your goals, aspirations and Lifestyle Projects. Do you have the actions in place to achieve them? Yes? Well watch are you waiting for, take action now!

There is never a “right time”
There is a lot going on in the world (mainly in the media) which would suggest that now is not the right time to do a lot of things. You know what? There is never a “right time”. There is never a time when all the conditions are perfect, everything you need is available and all the planets are aligned in some sort of amazing cosmic symmetry which will enable you to move through life seamlessly. Whilst some may argue that there is the wrong time to do things, the fact is that the right time to do what you want, achieve what you want and go for what you want is NOW!

What have you been putting off? Let me know in the comments below the actions you will take now.

I’m on Holiday at the moment so I have for you an article by Lifestyle Project contributor Tom Church. Please bear with me for comment approval whilst I’m away. Enjoy!

Image by Oude School on Flickr via Creative Commons

“Learn the past, watch the present, and create the future.”

Looking out my bedroom window this morning, through the crisp sunlight, I noticed that the first of my garden trees had begun to shed its’ leaves. ‘Already?’ I thought. Recalling in my half-asleep brain the month, I gasped silently. 2008 was nearly over. It seems only yesterday that I was laughing uncontrollably at the dinner table with my family at Christmas. Surely it hadn’t already been 4 months since I finished school for good?

I began rattling my brains for a solution. There had to be some sort of time delusion going on, what had I done with all this time? Bit by bit, I began piecing together my year: the parties, the exams, the girl friend, the holidays, the jobs, the random events, the ups and the downs. And where did all this leave me standing? In the same room I woke up to in January.

After this mind boggling brain storm, I went downstairs to recover with a hearty breakfast. Whilst eating, I thought about how this year measured up in comparison with previous years. Surprisingly, I could not accurately conclude whether this year was better or worse than the years before, simply because they all seemed exactly the same.

This provoked some panic within me, especially as I began working out the percentage of my expected life I had already lived. It had gone too quickly for my liking, and I was shocked. I looked around me at the interior of my parent’s house where I live. All of this stuff was theirs. How on earth did they manage to acquire so much (rubbish) in the small difference between our ages?

Until today, I had always assumed that these sort of things just happen. You study, you get a job, you earn, you get married, you buy a house, you have kids, you die. Yet, as I have just discovered, this isn’t quite the case. With the economic crisis, I have found it incredibly difficult to find a job recently (well, it took me 2 weeks), and now I have one, I don’t really want it. By gaining a job, I am simply ticking off the next thing in my life check list. Next, get married. With every tick, I am becoming closer to death.

What would happen if I did the opposite? Un-learn, leave my job, spend money, become single, travel around, use protection, live. It sounds extremely appealing. At least it did to me at first.

Whilst in the gym today, I picked up a magazine for the first time entitled Psychology. I’d never read in the gym before, but this took my fancy after having read a blog post, Simple Ways To Increase Your Attractiveness which explains that learning the basics of Psychology will increase your attractiveness.

Within this magazine, there was an article about being honest with yourself and living in the present. There was a golden line (not literally) which initiated a huge thought explosion inside my head, it read, “Imagine that you’re fifty. What have you achieved with your life? Compare this to your present.”

And that’s exactly what I did. It was then that I realised material possessions were not the greatest component of my future happiness (although my vision did include myself looking out through the window of a penthouse apartment). I had a wife, a kid, a fire, a comfortable home, a view of the city and a sunset.

Comparing this to my present life, I sighed, concluding that I had none of these things. It seems that my ‘opposite-life-list’ of being single and spending money won’t lead me to my desired dream of when I am 50 years of age.

My vision showed that I wanted comfort when I was older, secure surroundings for myself and my family. It included a nice place with a view over the city, accurately representing my love of city life and the buzz of people. This means that I have to begin to invest in my life. I hate to think of living and dying alone, it scares me. Online dating sites show that the life check of ‘get married’, just doesn’t happen automatically. You have to work hard to find someone you can share love with.

Now that I have realised this (and hopefully you have too), I can start taking an active role in investing for my future life. This doesn’t mean putting huge amounts of cash into a high-interest bank account, although I would love to if I could. I am starting simple by developing an ‘investment attribute’ within my characteristics. Investing into projects that have long term benefits, for example, exercising every day or eating healthily, will develop a greater level of wisdom and foresight.

These returns should aid me in turning my dream into reality. For now, despite no sleep in the last 38 hours, I am going out to show my appreciation to my friends one last time before they go to University. Who knows, maybe one day, one of them will return this appreciation and save my life.

This article was written by Lifestyle Project contributor Tom Church of The Life of Change blog. Click here to subscribe to his blog. You can also find Tom on Twitter.

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Thanks for reading.

I hope you enjoyed my post. I’d love to hear your comments below or get a Digg or Stumble!

Also be sure to check out my other blog Lists for Life.

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“Our inner strengths, experiences, and truths cannot be lost, destroyed, or taken away. Every person has an inborn worth and can contribute to the human community. We all can treat one another with dignity and respect, provide opportunities to grow toward our fullest lives and help one another discover and develop our unique gifts. We each deserve this and we all can extend it to others.”

You may or may not have heard of S.W.O.T. analysis. If you haven’t heard of it then I hope this post will explain what it is, how to do it and when you should use it. For those of you who do know what it is, I hope it provides a useful refresher and encourages you to use it and add it to your arsenal of techniques for personal effectiveness. For those of you who do use it regularly, well done, make yourself a cup of tea and go and watch family guy.

S.W.O.T. analysis is a technique which gets you to look at the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of any given situation. I think that you can use it in any scenario, but especially in ones that leave you wondering which way to go on a decision, deciding whether to spend more time (your most precious resource) on something or in goal setting. SWOT is simple and easy to remember.

You can apply SWOT analysis to any number of situations. Sometimes it will be a quick exercise to aid decisions, other times it can be a more in depth look in to a major life decision.

How to use the SWOT Analysis Technique

I think that in order to be effective you should know your own S.W.O.T.  You already know this subconsciously, but spending time focusing on thinking about it and committing it to paper gives deeper thoughts and understanding to your life (and you’re Lifestyle Project).

Starting by taking a piece of A4 paper (I find paper is best for this type of thing as it is free flowing and non-liner. You can always type it up later or put it in to some fancy mind mapping software if you want to.) Spilt the paper in to quadrants and title each one with Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats respectively. Now enter under each heading those items that come to mind in that area for your life. List your strengths; maybe you have good interpersonal skills and are great at presenting for example. Weaknesses; maybe you lack authority or are unskilled in a certain area. What personal opportunities does your life present you with? perhaps you have a friend going on a trek on the Inca Trail and they want you to come with them? That’s a great opportunity that you have which others may not. What about Threats? Maybe you have an overstretched mortgage or a massive credit card debt.

Using your SWOT

Here’s where the SWOT analysis technique comes into its own. It is what you do with your SWOT that is the differentiator between the normal person and the motivated, effective person who wants to improve. Most people will be able to do a SWOT analysis in most situations at a high level. Make yours deeper. Make it is as open, honest and deep as possible you are doing it for yourself and your own development. As will is done subjectively by you it is important to be as honest with yourself as possible to get the most benefit out of the situation. It is often beneficial to discuss your situation with other people that can offer you constructive views.

Acting on your SWOT

So now you’ve done your SWOT, you need to look at each area in turn. This is where you think about the results of the SWOT and what actions you need to give yourself for personal development.

Here’s a checklist to help with this bit:

Strengths

• Are they positive?
• Are you using these to their full potential?
• As they are strengths, can and are they being used to overcome your weaknesses?
• How can you use this strength to its full potential

Weaknesses

• Why is this weakness for you?
• What are/could/should you be doing to overcome this?
• What can you do to minimise the impact of this weakness?

Opportunities

• Are you making the most of these?
• If not making the most of these, why not?
• How can you maximise the benefit of these?

Threats

• What can you do to minimise the impact of these?
• Can you eliminate them?
• What strengths or opportunities can you use to overcome these?
• Is a weakness creating these?

It is how you act on your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats that will help you to achieve your goals.

I would recommend you do a personal SWOT and spend the time to review, and improve on it. Write down key actions you can do to improve your personal SWOT and stick a date in the diary to review it and your progress against the actions you set out for yourself. Review the actions in 1, 3 and 6 months time.

Other (external links):

Think about your Life Goals | Zen Habits

Benjamin Franklin’s Goals

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Thanks for reading.

I hope you enjoyed my post. I’d love to hear your comments below or get a Digg or Stumble!

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Life is rather like a tin of sardines – we’re all of us looking for the key. Alan Bennett

In the interests of open disclosure (and practicing what I preach), I thought I’d do a monthly review of my personal goals and where I am up to with them. I usually about once a week do a personal review of my goals and thoughts in a nice leather bound journal that I have. I thought it would be good to post my progress on the blog, as as (slowly but surely) more people visit get some reaction.

I think that doing personal reviews, much like GTDs weekly review, is great for making progress towards your goals. Even though you know what progress you are making generally, when you sit and write it down and make yourself accoutable you really bring to the front of your mind the actual progress you are making. For example, doing this now really reminded me that I am making no progress against goal no. 2!

Goal No.1 – Generate Income without a 9-5

I’ve got lots of ideas bubbling over a the moment. I have put a lot of work in to this blog to learn about social networking, blog writing and internet oppurtunities in general. The idea is not really to monetize this blog, but build on what I learn and track my progress here.

I re-reassured myself that moving from a 9-5 to an income stream that I control myself if the way to go, and I continue to work actively towards that goal.

Projects that I can update on: I am putting together a Lifestyle Project eBook. It’s in the researching phase at the moment but I hope that it will improve my writing ability and add some real value to this site.

Goal No. 2 – Be in a Band

I’m sad to report that I have made no progress towards this goal, other than sending a guitar playing friend a message via Facebook saying that we should meet up for a Jam session. I think that I have been making good progress on the other goals and this has just had to take a back seat. I plan to bring this goal more in to focus in the coming months as I really want to have something together to play at my Dad’s 60th birthday party next year.

Goal No. 3 – Maintain Fitness

I chose the word ’Maintain’ as this is something that I have struggled with in the past. I am pleased to report tha I have made excellent progress towards this goal. My weight loss has been excellent and my strength and endurance increase every time I train. I am very pleased and I am managing to fit the training sessions around my other commitments. This is staying as a goal as I need to maintain it. I have also signed up to a Triathlon at the end of next month (Sprint), but realise that I need to put in place further targets beyond that to keep the maintenance of my training going.

I plan to do this review on here about once per month and would love some comments below! I do have a post coming up about goal setting, but for the moment here is a link so some information about turning Goals in to Habits from Leo over at ZenHabits.

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Thanks for reading.

I hope you enjoyed my post. I’d love to hear your comments below or get a Digg or Stumble!

Photo by Scott Will on Flickr via Creative Commons

If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up. J.M.Power

I have some content to Post on Goal setting. However, I just wanted to put a post up about my own personal goals (accountability is a great motivator). I expect that my goals with ultimately drive a lot of the content on my blog.

I have spend time eliminating, simplifying and deliberating over what my goals are in my life. I will talk about this separately, but for now I just want to get my current goals posted (I’ve limited it to three, with explanations).

1) Generate Income Without a 9-5 Job

Why is this goal important? Well, for me there are a number of reasons. Firstly, I don’t like working for other people. I am good at my job, and I do work hard but it I don’t want to be the employee, I want to be the employer. Ever since a young age I wanted to be an Entrepreneur. I used to experiment with business ideas, but as I grow older I put too many negative thoughts in to starting any ventures. THIS WILL CHANGE. You have to be in it to win it! Watch this space.

This goal will allow me to achieve my ambition to move abroad etc.

2) Be in a Band

I’m not talking about the next big thing here. Just a covers band to have fun. I’ve played the guitar for over ten years now. I think I am good, but I’ve always wanted to be in a band. It’s just ‘finding the time’ or ‘finding the right people’. I need to eliminate my personal obstacles and Just Do It!

3) Maintain Fitness

I’m quite fit, but my exercise routines vary greatly. I took up triathlon’s once and way very dedicated for a season. It was a time where I had a job that allowed me to finish on time and get my training done. Then it just fizzled out! I did the 62 mile charity bike ride this weekend. I’ve always enjoyed keeping fit, and feel better for it. So my goal here is to maintain it constantly, rather than having short peaks, and long troughs in my training.

So there are my BIG goals. I do have short term goals, but I find that I can’t do everything and need to just do the ones that if I was sat on my death bed I would regret not doing.

More to come…