How I Improved My Life by 85%
Quick question; how many of us would like to improve our lives?
Everyone.
To increase our quality of life there are things we need to eliminate or improve. I addressed this in the article Winners Quit. In that article, I gave a simple method on how to cease certain activities completely, be a winner, and just… quit. That was life improvement 101. The method I’m going to break down today is life improvement 202. With this method, I was able to improve my life by 85% and I will show you how to do the same thing. For example:
- Are you still spending money the way you “used to” without a real budget leaving you stuck with more month at the end of the money?
- Yesterday, did you still try to memorize your agenda and to-do list and end up forgetting everything you had to do?
- Fill in the blank. Is there some other money, time, or energy waster that needs to be solved?
I understand how it feels to do all of these things. They become sources of frustration, time-wasters, and create undone to-dos that do not improve our quality of life. They only add to the pile of things to get pissed off about. When this happened to me, I knew…
I had to find a way to solve the problem.
I had to find a solution. While in my office, I contemplated how to improve my life. My schedule was getting busy and I was working fool time. I could see Mr. Tee waving his finger at me all over again! I came up with 3 simple steps that helped me improve my quality of life by 85 percent. I will detail the math after I show you the method I used to achieve it.
And a word of caution; this exercise is not for the weary. It is for those of us that are serious about getting to the Promised Land of more time, more sanity, and more fun.
Step # 1 – Write down what you do
Make a list of everything you normally do. Grab a pen and a piece of paper, start listing them line by line. A week’s worth of activity should suffice for this evaluation but feel free to expand the time window if you need.
Detail is your friend here so the more information the better. If you travel to an office every day write down your times, activities, and means of travel. A weekly planner will help you in this exercise and will be a great reference in this step. You want to get a complete picture of what you do.
Step # 2 – Understand what you do
This is big! If you don’t have an understanding of your objectives you’ll have no clue as to why you’re eliminating, modifying, or keeping an activity. Confusion is antithetical to this activity. With each activity you need to know what the objective of that activity is.
Step # 3 – Categorize and Organize
You will use the following matrix to organize your activity. But before you do that, let’s first categorize your activity so you know to which quadrant it belongs.
Take a look at each activity you have listed. Line by line, look at each one and ask:
- Effective or ineffective?
- Efficient or inefficient?
Effectiveness is gauged by how well the activity helps you achieve your goals or objectives; efficiency is gauged by how much of your resources – time, money, energy – is required to get it done. For example, if you check your email one thousand times a day this may be an effective way for you to respond to a message but it is an inefficient use of your time. This would be categorized in quadrant 2 (effective – inefficient). Judge each activity using this same method.
Each of the four quadrants is explained as follows:
Quadrant 1 – Efficient and Effective: All of these activities are keepers and you don’t need to change anything about them. Just keep on doing them! Focus on these activities as much as possible.
Quadrant 2 – Inefficient and Effective: These are great because they are effective but their inefficiency means they waste resources – time, money, energy. That means you have the right focus, you just need to change your method. This category is where you will find the activities that need modification.
Quadrant 3 – Efficient and Ineffective: These look appealing because they are efficient. Unfortunately, they are ineffective in helping you achieve your goals and objectives. That means you don’t need to concern yourself with doing them anymore. Wave bye to these activities!
Quadrant 4 – Inefficient and Ineffective: This is your list of actions to eliminate. Somehow, someway, these need to be removed from your life… fast..
Now, take a look at your matrix with your categorized activities. Everything in the left quadrants (effective) can be kept as is or modified; everything in the right quadrants (ineffective) can be discarded.
Step # 4 – Improve
Next to each action that you have listed in quadrant 2 (effective – inefficient) write an idea for how you will get it into quadrant 1 (effective – efficient) and mark it with an asterisk. Each one of the asterisked ideas you wrote should make the activity efficient. Here’s an example from the matrix I made for myself:
Does it work?
Like a charm. I did this exercise a few months ago and implemented it immediately after completing it. I figured I would use myself as the lab rat to see if this experiment would be beneficial. I proved that it works now I’m sharing it with you! I couldn’t tell you how much time and frustration I saved by implementing it. Not to mention, my to-do list is actually getting done for a change.
How I got to 85 percent – the math
Here are the numerical results from my efforts. Here, you will see how I improved my life by 85 percent. I followed the exact same steps outlined above and here’s what I was able to accomplish in a short amount of time:
Here’s an explanation of the numbers you see:
- 67% of quadrant 2 activities have been modified and made efficient
- 100% of quadrant 3 activities are eliminated
- 86% of quadrant 4 activities were eliminated. There’s still one germ remaining.
- 11 out of my 13 regular activities have been eliminated or modified to become efficient and effective (quadrant 1). This is approximately 85%.
That’s amazing! That means I’ve improved nearly 85% of my daily activities over the last 90 days just by utilizing this method. Wouldn’t you agree that your life would be a little bit better if you eliminated or improved 85% of your regular activities? Let’s imagine that my results were extreme and instead of 85% you were able to improve your daily activities by 50% in the next 90 days, would you be upset about that?
Nope.
Action Steps – Welcome to the Matrix
Do exactly what you’ve just read. Create a matrix or list of your regular activities. List anything you want to analyze: relationships, employers, social activities, finances, deodorant, you name it.
You may come to a stumbling block on some activities and be unsure as to what category they belong. I understand how you feel because I ran into the same exact thing while I was working on my matrix. No worries, here’s a simple solution. I’ve found that a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer to the following questions suffices:
- If you are uncertain about an activity’s efficiency ask: can I satisfy this activity’s objective with fewer resources? If yes, inefficient; if no, efficient.
- If you are uncertain about an activity’s effectiveness ask: is this activity effective at accomplishing my objectives, goals, and aspirations? If yes, effective; if no, ineffective.
Take action and stick to it for the next 90 days. Can you report back in 90 days and let us know how you did? We’d love to hear about how your life improved by 85%.
