The Power of Direction aka Getting More Done In Less Time

With the right direction you can get a lot more done in a lot less time.  At least that is what I have been saying and writing about for many years.  So yesterday as I was running off to one of my four "jobs", and a neighbor stopped me.  I could see the question before he asked it.  "Isn't it a little hypocritical that you have four jobs and call yourself a focus coach?"

Without question on the surface it looks a little odd, but I have a couple of secrets that I will share from my current book project, and a little perspective to boot.

My four jobs aren't the only things that I do. I also have written books, edit websites and write articles outside of my blog.  Also, my house is a giant toy store for big boys.  Classic rag top car, surfboard, paddle board, four beach bikes (everyone that visits likes to ride the beach path), skateboards and a radio controlled helicopter.  I like toys, and yes they are for many people a distraction to getting focused.  That is because they use them wrong.

Focused Doesn't Mean No Life.

Being focused simply means that you can see where you are going, you have a "destination" as I like to call it, and you are making progress.  It doesn't mean you are stuck in front of a computer for thirty hours at a time.  Writers block is famously cured by leaving the writing office.  

As a former military competitive marksman, I used to say you could see your target clearly.   When I moved back to the west coast, I realized two problems with that metaphor.  First, any competitive shooter knows that you don't focus on your target.  The front site right in front of you is the focus.  Second, not enough people on the west coast have guns, and if they do, not enough are technically proficient at shooting to understand the metaphor.

The truth is, shooting is still a great metaphor for life.  Looking at the front site is like looking at what you have right in front of you.  The tools you have today, here and now are what you have, nothing more.  Seeing a blurry target is also a great metaphor, because life is a little blurry.  Those who get things done know exactly what they want to do, just like a shooter knows exactly what he is shooting at.  At least that is true for a successful shooter, just ask Dick Cheney about now knowing what you are shooting at.  

So now I use my second life to teach focus.  As a military and airline pilot, we never start the jet without a mission or a destination.  Hopefully in the military you accomplish both.  Starting out, I don't always know what the place I am going to looks like.  Every place I have ever been is new at least once.  Some change making them new again.  I know enough to get there, and have a plan.  I also have a backup plan in case there are obstacles that are too big for my current plan.

The first time a pilot goes to an airport, he has no idea what it looks like, yet thousands of times every day pilots land safely at new airports hundreds or thousands of miles from where they started.

So how does all of this relate to the power of direction and getting more done in less time?

When you have a direction, or a destination, you have a reason, a purpose, an intention or a burning desire to get there.  If you want to get there bad enough you will.  

The problem for most people is distraction.  Those little daily fires that pop up.   My two dogs are sitting here staring at me waiting for a morning walk.  Because of my burning desire to move my business forward and help more people, the dogs have to wait, and I keep typing.

See if this sounds familiar in any way.  

Saturday morning you are going to sit down and re-write your resume so you can get a big promotion or move to another company.  You get up, and the kids want to have breakfast.  You tell yourself, just after breakfast, you'll sit down and fix your resume.

After breakfast, your spouse reminds you that Jonny has baseball and Janie has ballet and you promised Janie you would take her.  Not wanting to let your child down, you take her to ballet.  You can do the Resume when you get back.  After all it is just a couple of pages and the old one isn't that bad is it?

After ballet the other parents are going to have lunch at that new girls store across town, and Janie is screaming to go.  So you do.

At 3 pm you finally walk in the door dog tired of running all over town when you are told, the Jones want to get together for dinner, the sitter arrives at 5 and the dog needs a walk and the dishes need to get done, which would you like?

At 9:30 you get home from dinner, tuck the kids in, sit down and realize it is 10:30.  Tomorrow you'll get to your resume.

Sound Familiar?  Even without kids this has happened to me more than once.  

Building a business isn't any different, you can map out a business and plan it down to the exact color blue on your business cards, and wake up a month later with a great plan and no business, or a business with no income.

The Secrets

My first secret to keeping sane with four jobs is that I don't have children.  Just two dogs.  It isn't by choice, it just is my life.  Any parent will tell you that having kids is a job on it's own.  Many parents are overwhelmed by the kids and make excuses to get out of the house that make things worse not better.  This isn't really a secret, but it is something you need to understand as you set out on your journey if you want to stay sane.

My second secret comes from the ability to harness that internal desire.  It takes a lot of practice, and a litte discipline.  Each of my four jobs only gets one major item for the day.  The reality is, if I focused on just one job*, I would make a lot more money at it.  I have made the decision based on my white board to create dozens of small streams of income rather than one large one.  You have to make that decision based on your own "wants" and "don't wants"

The flying job at the airline often gets none.  The advantage of that job, for the most part is when I am not flying I don't have to think about it.  With over 25 years of flying in the military and the airline, flying is now second nature.  All jets are basically the same after a while.

Even if you have kids and a day job, you can pick one major goal and make a destination out of it.  If your family understands where you are going, why it is important to you and how it helps them, they will understand the next part.  I suggest the white board method for this.  

The next part is setting priorities every day.  Each day at the end of the day I look at the small white board in my office.  Not the big one in the garage that has my "Wants" and "Don't Wants" on it.  Here too are three columns.  The first is the daily task list.  One major item for each of my four main "jobs".  The second is my Open or Follow up list.  Sort of my brainstorm of things that should become something on the daily task list.  These are things I haven't done, and haven't put a deadline on but are important enough not to "dump".  Some will get delegated when I find the right person.

The third column is my notes and big picture items to work on when I have completed my daily tasks or hit a road block and need to let my subconscious do some work.

Here is the big secret that takes a little practice.  When I get stuck on a task in column one like "Write a New Chapter for Book Project", I focus on it for just 5 or 10 minutes.  If I don't see a solution, I tell my subconscious to work on it, and then I either go to the far right column and work on something like "Solar Panels for the roof" or I go grab a toy and play or exercise for 45 minutes.  I find that almost every time I do this,  a solution will just "pop in my head".  Oddly solutions for the other three items on the list show up as well.  

Using this method, I work three to four hours a day on three of my four jobs.  I believe if you use this method, you can easily start a profitable second career or business in just a few hours each week.

*Because the airline job is union and a straight trade of time for money, none of these rules apply.  I can't work any smarter to get paid more and work less than the contract will allow.  As much fun as flying is, I do plan to leave commercial flying and purchase a private aircraft in the next 24 months.  I will be too young to retire just in case you are thinking that is the reason for 24 months.

Living the Up Life, Jawbone Up That Is.

The Jawbone Up is the nerds jewelry.  It doesn’t tell time, and it doesn’t even have a display like a Nike Fuel.  Techies like me spot them across the room, and non-techies stop me to ask regularly.

I received a Nike Fuel as a birthday gift, and as cool as it was, the privacy policy was totally unacceptable to me.  I clicked “do not accept” and a window popped up to return the Nike Fuel.

After reading the Jawbone privacy policy, I decided to get the Jawbone Up instead.  The idea of tracking activity smarter just makes sense when you are trying to get in better shape or lose weight.  

The Nike Fuel is a more comfortable design and is less bulky, but after living with a Jawbone Up on my wrist nearly 24x7 for a week, I guess I am getting used to it.  I have also learned a lot of cool tricks and found a few annoyances.

On the annoyance side, you have to tell it what you are doing all the time.  Nike Fuel owners feel free to chime in here if it is the same or smarter.  For instance, I really like the idea that the Jawbone Up monitors my sleep patterns and makes sure I wake from a light sleep rather than a deep sleep.  The problem is I forgot to tell it I went to sleep last night, somehow it should know.

I also have been watching how activities are logged.  If I ride my bike for an hour and forget to set it into “stopwatch” mode, I’ll get some crazy number of steps added to my day which I haven’t figured out how to edit and change into bike riding.  Even flying airplanes, I get credit for some steps.  I plugged in the Up to sync before the flight moved and again when we landed.  I did 456 steps according to the Jawbone Up.  The reality was I didn't move my butt out of the seat at all for over three hours.  I expected the "idle" alert to go off.

If I put the Jawbone Up in stopwatch mode by pushing the button once and then holding it in on a second push until it buzzes allows me to log all kinds of land based activity.  It would be nice if I could swim with it.

My favorite feature on the Jawbone Up is “power nap”.  I had about a  two hour break today, and only slept four hours last night due to my crazy life.  I found a nice reclining chair, put in earplugs, and 23 minutes later my power nap was over.  I didn’t feel like I got all of my sleep but I did feel notably better.  Normally I would have been afraid to wear earplugs because I have been known to crash so hard that I don’t hear dogs barking or the alarm going off and have missed important appointments due to it.

Fully reclined and totally unaware of the world around me, I felt a gentle buzz on my arm and just woke up nice and easy.  The power nap feature is reason enough to own a Jawbone Up for me with my crazy life.

The only other real annoyance, and it could be that I have a bad one, is the battery life.  My Jawbone Up, never turns green after charging for well over two hours.  The manual online says a full charge should take about 80 minutes.  My wife’s Jawbone Up turned green after just 60 minutes on the initial charge and 70 minutes the second time and her battery has also lasted the advertised 10 days.  My Jawbone Up is only going about five days between charges.  Maybe I’ll call Jawbone about a replacement, but not until after I take another little power nap.

Life Mapping With a White Board aka White Board a Great Life

I can year you now, "Life Mapping With a White Board, Yeah Right!".  I know this because I get the same response just about every time I bring it up.  People ask me for advice all the time, and they ask the wrong questions.  I hear things like, "You race cars,  I want to do it too." or "Hey your website is making money, I want to build a website that makes money too." or "I want to write a book, you wrote a book, will you help me do it?"

My answer is always the same "You can't be me".  How boring would that be anyway?

So how can a White Board help you map out a great life?  To start with, the human mind is a funny thing. This little three part computer we carry around in our heads needs a little guidance from time to time.  I say three parts because we have the instinctive part that is our Freeze-Fly-Fight computer whenever we encounter things we don't know or understand.  Then we have the big part we use to think about problems.  That big part has a conscious part and a subconscious part.

All together I count this as three parts, the amygdala or the little primitive brain, the subconscious mind and the conscious mind.

When you read books about becoming an "expert" at something, and getting those five or ten thousand hours of experience, what you are really doing is training your big brain or your mind as I like to call it to overpower your instinctive little amygdala, your little brain.  The Mind fails us when it encounters something it hasn't seen or thought about and then defers to the little brain which knows to Freeze like a possum and hope nothing happens.  If that doesn't work, then it moves to Fly, like a scared cat being followed by a German Shepherd, and finally as a last resort it turns to Fight, like a deer in the corner.

So how does a white board help the Mind?

My technique of Life Mapping with a White Board gives the big brain another perspective on what you really want.  It is one more step to keeping the big brain in control of your life.  The key is to replace fear with knowledge.

What is the white board technique?

The white board technique is a way of finding a destination if you don't have one.  Even if you have what you think is a clear destination, the Life Mapping on a White Board method can help you see problems with your destination and help get your family on board if needed.  It brings it all together for everyone.

Originally I used just two columns.  "I Want" and "I Don't Want", and drew a line down the middle.

The first time I did this, I did it by myself.   Doing it by yourself isn't a great plan because we'll say things like "I want a Ferrari", and the truth is, we don't.  The Ferrari is just a status thing representing something we really want.  You still might get a Ferrari but it isn't necessarily a destination of itself and your friends and family will help bring clarity here.  Just keep it to direct family and very close friends.

You can do this with your business partner too.

When you involve others, be prepared to sell it a little.  If you put "one million in cash by the end of the year" on the "I Want" side, you might get laughed out of your own house if the most you have made is $50,000 a year and your savings is empty.  Involving others takes more internal strength too.  It helps you to say out loud those things you really want and might be embarrassed or ashamed to say.  By writing them down it helps you overcome that fear.

Our culture has grown to believe that "I Want" is selfish and is looked down upon.  It is a big reason we are in the trouble we are in.  Go back to Ben Franklin and the Founding Fathers.  The Declaration of Independence is an entire list of "I Want".

You Must "Want" on the "I Want" Side

Think back to being a kid, you wanted everything.  Today when you want something, you feel guilty.  When I wanted a new car and put my truck up for sale I believed my dogs gave me the evil eye.  I could hear them saying "NOT OUR TRUCK, DON'T SELL OUR TRUCK".  Our brains are trained to avoid pain, not seek gain.  We aren't taught to try and get A+'s in school, we are taught not to get F's.

My parents didn't reward me for getting A's, they rewarded me for not getting C's.  A B was my standard.  When I tried college for the first time, and there wasn't a carrot for the B's, I quickly got to the mental state of avoiding D's, C's were good enough.

The difference between me and the valedictorian was simple.  She had a destination going into college of being number one when she got out.  I didn't.  My destination was to fly jets, nobody told me that jet pilots needed good grades.  Lucky for me persistence beats grades once in a while.

It was the process of becoming a pilot after being told I didn't have the grades to become one that I started thinking about the Life Mapping process.  It was dominated by "I Want To Fly Jets".

You Must Know What You "Don't Want" Too.

The "I Don't Want" Side is important too.  If your "I Don't Want" side includes "I don't want to be at any Disney Park on a weekend or Holiday ever again" and you build a business that requires you to be there Monday through Friday for life, what happens?  You have a conflict.  It is these little conflicts that cause problems.

When you list out all of your "I Want" and "I Don't Want" items and life style choices, you start to see problems and conflicts.  Dreaming up the Wants and Don't Wants is fun, now comes the work.

The work is to look at the conflicts and set priorities.  In the example above, which is more important, the business, or time at Disney on a weekday.  Which one gives and how?  For me and my wife it was easy, we chose to work weekends and play on weekdays.  Easier to do when you don't have kids, and it can be a hassle when family wants to visit.

The New Third Column - The Mission

Recently I added a third column to my board, and it is my "mission" listed in three major goals.  I look at them two and three times a day.  They are also in a card in my wallet.  My goal sheet used to have ten different things on it, and I realized that ten was too many.  I wasn't doing any of them.

Gary Keller in his book "The One Thing" suggests that you only have one goal at a time.  I think we have more power than that, but this book is a great starting point.

The way I see it, we should have the primary goal and two on the bench.  When we hit an obstacle with the first goal, we have something to take our minds off it, and let the subconscious mind work on it.  While we are focused on the primary goal, the back of the brain is working on the other two in its off time.

When I reach a primary goal, it gets removed, the other two move up, and I start looking for a new one.

The big white board with the "I Want" - "I Don't Want" - "Goal Column" is revisited every time a major goal is achieved.  I make sure the major goal fit my "wants" and "don't wants" and then use those two columns to work on a new third goal.

When I come up with a new third, I let it sit at least a week and look at it again to make sure it fits.  It it does, I change it from black to blue, indicating a change from a "penciled in goal" changing to a "real goal" and the process starts over.

Just like flying jets, things change in life constantly.  Weather changes just like life changes, so you can never put away your white board and forget about it.  Every month or two my wife and I sit down with a nice glass of wine and a cheese plate and look at the white board, we review our "wants" and "don't wants" and talk about progress towards the primary goal, and if the other two still should be on the bench.

We don't change or mission or goals often, in fact it only happened once.  If you keep changing your goals, you are changing direction, meaning you never get anywhere.  You don't need to Life Map on a White Board to go nowhere, you can do that quite easily without trying.  People do it every day.  The reason you are reading this is so you don't become one of those people.

We do change "Wants" and "Don't Wants" from time to time.  Why? Simply put, life changes.  We learn.  Something that sounded good at first ends up being wrong.  For instance we wanted to be more "water conservative".  Following that we bought a very nice low flow toilet for our bathroom downstairs.  Quickly we found out that it didn't always flush everything and at a party our guests were embarrassed.  Not embarrassing guests, outweighed water conservation, so the toilet hit the curb.  Funny little things can tweak your list.  The trick is to make sure those little things don't guide you away from your destination.

Setting Priorities.

When you get the white board filled up with wants, don't wants and goals, now is the hard part, setting priorities.  You have to remove all of the conflicts first.  All of the wants, don't wants and goals that aren't consistent with the overall scheme.

Next is to list the "Wants" from most important to least, then do the same with "Don't Wants" and "Goals".

With that done, sit back and ask yourself "Where is this taking me?  Is this really where I want to go?"  If you did it right, what you have is a clear picture of where you are and the tools you have, and a pretty solid description of the place you want to go.

Just like flying a jet, every time someone asks you about doing something, you look at your list and ask a very simple question, "Does what they want me to do help me follow my list, or does it conflict with my list?"  When it conflicts you simply say "No Thank You" and move on.  This takes practice, and as you see results don't stop.

What you have just created is your own magic compass that points at what you really want.  When you get knocked off course or a storm is in the way, look at the compass on your white board, go around or over the obstacle and keep going to your destination.

Chevy, We Have a Problem - Retail Electricity is EXPENSIVE

Yesterday I wrote about my experience to date with my new Chevy Volt.  One of the reasons we selected a Volt was the ability to use gas when a charger wasn't around or we didn't have time to charge the car.  I argued that a Leaf could make 90% of our trips in one charge.  The Tesla is just a smidge out of our budget now since we need a new roof and want to add solar at the same time.

My wife won the argument with this simple rebuttal, she said "Ok, so I get finished at 11 pm at Fox Studios and then have to go find a charger because for some reason I am four miles short of the battery needed to make it home.  Do you want me to find a charger at midnight and stand next to the car for 45 minutes?"

We got a Volt.

In my post yesterday, I didn't really explain to much about the three gallons of gas I used so far.  The reality is I only needed to use one of them.  I could have charged up at Blink or chargepoint quite easily instead of using the other two gallons.  So why didn't I just plug in?

The answer is in my wallet and is simple economics.  At my house I pay .13 or .16 per kWh.  At A chargepoint station after paying $25 per year membership, I can charge for Free, $1.00 per hour or .25 kWh.  Each station is different and you have to look at an app to see which each station does.  Some chargepoint stations are only 120V 12A also.

The Blink stations I have seen are all $2.00 per hour for non members and $1.00 for members.

Since I used dollars per mile yesterday, I will use that method today.  Using gas, I am getting 10 miles per dollar and electricity at home I get 13.8 miles per dollar.  If I hit tier 4 at .32 per kWh, I might be at exactly break even.  For now the savings is well worth plugging in.  When I go solar my savings should be greater.

At a public Blink or Chargepoint station using the better 220V 30A plug, the Volt is limited in its charging capacity.  I got 8 Miles added after an hour, so how does that work out in miles per dollar?

8 miles for $2.00 for non members is only 4 miles per dollar, making gas 60% more cost effective.
8 miles for $1.00 for members is 8 miles per dollar, making gas 20% more cost effective
4 miles for $1.00 for members on a 120V 12A station makes gas 60% more cost effective.
4 kWh for $1.00 for members at Chargepoint was nearly 14 miles on my range meter,  making electricity almost 30% more cost effective than gas.  This is very close to the dollars spent at home. and the .25 per kWh chargers are the ones I look for.

So as a member for $1.00 you might get 4 miles, you might get 8 miles or you might get 14 miles with a Volt.  For the $30 per year at Blink and $25 per year for Chargepoint, it is more cost effective to drive on gas then it is to pay for electricity.

Now, that said, I did find several FREE Chargepoint Chargers for members and even a few at civic locations for anyone. WallyPark at LAX is offering FREE charging if you valet park. That is just enough to get me to Valet.  If WallyPark LAX starts charging for plugging in, then I'll go back to self park and use gasoline to get home.

Unless I find free Blink chargers anywhere, I am not sure I will pay the $30.00 for Blink next year.

Thankfully several studios my wife and I work at allow free charging as well.  For now Disneyland is looking the other way if you find a wall plug in the Mickey and Friends garage and plug in.  I only live 10 miles away so if I stay at least two hours, I can top off.  Looking at my credit card bill this arrangement is definitely in Disney's favor.

Like most electric car owners I have already met and talked too, I don't think I should get a free ride or free electricity.  Plugging in and charging up just needs to be cost effective to keep the trend growing.  Since a Leaf and a Tesla have faster charging capability, hourly rates might be more effective for them.  Volts tend to charge a little slower, making the free or .25 per kWh stations the only way to save money.

Popular Mechanics magazine stated that a Leaf at .38 per kWh was only .026 per mile in energy costs.  I don't know how that works out, but they claim it does.  This means a Leaf charges at a rate to get 38 miles of range added in an hour while the Volt is only getting 8?  Is the Volt charger that slow, or did I get bad charging stations?

Any Leaf or Tesla Owners want to pipe in on how much range you get with a 1 hour charge at a level 2 station.  For that matter any Volt drivers getting more than 8 miles per hour when plugged in at a public station?

Week Three Driving a Chevy Volt In The Real World

If you follow my blogs, you know that about three weeks ago I picked up a Chevy Volt.  Randy Jackson at SunPoweredEVs has been trying to convince me to go all electric for nearly a year.  On paper, the economics of buying a Volt looked too good to be true so I stopped in at Simpson Chevrolet in Garden Grove where I met Jason and Thomas.  On paper the numbers were just too good to pass up.  Keep in mind I have been driving a 2003 Ford F-150 Supercrew Lariat 4x4 that gets 14 MPG highway, city, off road, or in the snow, it doesn't care, it just gets 14 MPG period.  It is the best truck I have ever owned, and still in perfect condition so I wasn't in the market for a new car.

Looking at any small car looks great economically when you spend $600 a month on gas at 14 MPG.  Electric cars have been pushing the envelope of economics to the point that some people made fun of Elon Musk for "Teslanomics".   Mr. Musk included time at the gas pump.  Personally spending  time to pump $600 worth of gas each month at the pumps, I can't agree more, Musk nailed it my time is worth money.

Plugging in at home is so easy.  If Jerry Brown didn't already have a $4.5 Billion surplus to hide from the taxpayers, I am sure he would be coming after my electrical connection to tax it.  It really is oddly cool to pull up to my house, plug in and walk inside knowing I'll have a full charge in the morning.

Needless to say after meeting Jason and Thomas, I drove a Topaz Blue Volt home.

There are now at least four Volts, three Tesla Model Ss and six Leafs in my neighborhood that I know of.  Two houses with Volts have solar that I can see.  Clearly I am not the only one who likes skipping the pump.

I get the same three questions from everyone I meet when driving the car or when they find out I have it.  They always ask "Is the Volt all that?"  The simple answer is a resounding "YES".  Would I buy another one?  Maybe.  If you have one Volt, clearly the second car should be a Leaf or a Tesla, but that is just my opinion, and that is also my plan after the solar panels go on the roof.  With any luck Nissan or Tesla will send me one to test and write about.

The next question they ask is simply  "Why?".   The answer is very simple.  The Volt fully charges itself every night.   Even though it can't go as far as the Leaf or Tesla on a charge, three days a week I can go all day on the 42 miles I get out of each charge.  One day a week I plug in at my destination and get enough of a charge to make it back.  Once a week or every other week I am not near a charger and need to use a little gas.  That will explain the three gallons listed below.

When I do use gasoline, Chevy says the Volt gets 38MPG when your batteries run out.  The Volt is very well built, has nice seats and has a great technology package.  The voice control in the Volt isn't quite as easy to talk to as the Ford, but it has OnStar if you really get stuck.  The XM radio smokes the system in my wife's Mercedes ML CDI which was very surprising.

I don't know how Bose did it, but the XM is tolerable.  FM still sounds better than XM, but I might actually pay for the XM in the Volt.  I wouldn't pay for it in the Benz because the sound is quality is so bad.  When listening to FM or iPod music the Harmon in the Benz Rocks, and the Bose is 95% as good in the Chevy at half the price.  Overall the car is very well built, quiet and very comfortable to drive.

The final question is, "Ok how much gas and electricity do you really use?"  Until today I didn't have a good answer.  I hadn't seen an electric bill, and how do you describe using one gallon of gas in a week, two gallons in two weeks or three gallons in three weeks instead of $150 of gas each week?

Today I have an answer that is accurate enough to share.  I must say though that we are on "Tier One" electric rates because I have an all LED house with the latest low energy use appliances, gas water heater, gas furnace, gas dryer.  If you are a "Tier 4" or "Tier 5" electric customer, your numbers will be closer to break even on electric v. gasoline costs.  If you are "Tier 4" or higher now,  you should have solar, so get to it.

In my case moving from 14 MPG to 38 MPG would be justification enough to get a new car.  That reduces my driving costs 73% in gas alone.  Learning from the training at the Chevy dealer to use the "hold mode" when cruising the freeways when I don't expect to be able to use battery only for the day and "L" mode when on city streets, I am running "100% efficiency" according the the little video game built into the Volt.

Here is the scoop as of tonight:

589 miles driven, about an equal mix of highway cruising at 65-70, stop and go highway in LA traffic and surface streets aka "city" driving.
3.0 Gallons used for 120 miles, $12.00 for 120 miles = 10 miles per dollar or 40 MPG, beating the EPA estimated 38 MPG by the way.
$34 in electricity for 469 miles = 13.8 miles per dollar (I don't have a way to calculate MPGe so I won't fake it.)

If electricity is compared to gas on a straight cost basis, not energy content basis, I am getting 55.2 MPG with electricity on a dollar for dollar basis.  This is about 28% more cost effective than gasoline.  Saving 28% and plugging in at home is a deal and a time saver if you ask me.

My wife and I are very happy with the new Chevy Volt and are now in the process of getting bids on a new roof to go solar and reduce our cost per charge even further, and get ready for a pure electric car.

Got a Volt?  What are your REAL numbers?  Got a TESLA or LEAF?  Let me know how much you spend to charge them and how far you really go.

Even without "Teslanomics" accounting for my time at the pump, the Volt is still basically free when compared to driving my old F-150.  Think about what you are driving, is now the time to switch to electric?

The Price Of Instant Gratification - Letting Your Goals Slip Away

As a business owner and coach, I have heard one saying over and over.  "Anything that doesn't move your towards your goals moves you away from them."

This week I spent some time thinking about that exact phrase and how to use it for my customers.  How can I illustrate this point.  At the end of the day I can't.  The saying over simplifies the truth, and ignores another truth.

Success is simple, doing it is hard.

The saying "Anything that doesn't move your towards your goals moves you away from them" is on the "doing" side of the success formula, not the simple side.

Why am I saying this?  What is the bigger truth?  I am glad you asked.

To expand the thought, I posted this on Facebook:

We spent last night grilling on the beach at Lake Tahoe talking about goals and achievements. I realized that the saying "Anything that doesn't move your towards your goals moves you away from them" isn't quite right.

I think that anything that doesn't move you towards your goals allows one of several things to happen:

1. You lose focus on the goals and lose sight of them, you might forget they ever existed- what happened to your childhood dreams.
2. Another obstacle is placed in the way - you might be trying to get a license and the government adds new rules.
3. Your action really does do something that moves you farther from your goal - You buy a new car when you are trying to buy a house and now you can't get the home loan.

The next day off you have, look at your goals, and how you are achieving them, and then take a real break. Things become more clear when you take a break and let your mind do the heavy lifting.

After posting this on Facebook, I realized that the cost of instant gratification was built right into number three.  When you buy or do something now, you give up or delay the ability to do something bigger later.  Buying that car now might prevent you from getting the house.  If home prices rise faster than your income, the car might be the reason you never get a house.

A Big Secret Of Success

One of the biggest secrets of success I have learned from personal experience and working with a host of very successful people is keeping the big goals in your sights.  That means that you 

Again Success is Simple, Doing It is Hard.

If you want a book to read about the high cost of success, I recommend the book BOYD.  Not because I am a retired military pilot, but because John Boyd chose success, and the book is a well written story of both his success and the cost of it.  For Col John Boyd, doing "it" was just what he did, it was hard on him because of the price he paid.

It is far easier to do the things that "pop up" or "need to get done" than it is to do what is really needed to move towards your goals.  Gary Keller in his new book The ONE Thing,  illustrated the difficulty of achieving team goals, and his trials of success.  At the end he figured out if you just set one goal, it was far easier for the team to achieve the one goal than it was to achieve two or more.

The same is true for you, especially in the beginning.  Set ONE goal for the day, get it done, then do the little things and the pop ups.  Over time you will learn to set a much bigger goal and then do ONE thing for the day that moves you towards the goal.  

Success doesn't require that you are always focused on the goal and doing nothing but moving towards the goal.  While that might help, the price might be too high for most mortals. I agree with Gary Keller if you could just do one big thing every day that moves you towards your one big goal, you will move ahead far faster than you ever imagined.

Doing it is Hard because it means you have to say "no" to a lot of other little things that you might not want to say no too.  That trip to the ice cream shop with your kids, a night at the ball park, the list of things you learn to say no too is never ending.

When you make a decision to reach a goal, look at other people who got there before your, or did something similar.  You will find they are great at saying "no".  When other people describe their early years you will read things like "he was driven" or "she was always working".  

When you are doing your one thing in life, nothing else matters simply because you know what you are doing matters more.  If not, maybe you aren't doing the right thing to begin with.

Find something worth doing and it will be easier to say "no" more often.  Find something worth doing that solves a problem for the world and they will eagerly wait with money in hand.

Sketchers Go Run 2 - A Non Runners Review

I have to start out by saying I hate running, but like everything in life, I run as a trade off.  I do like food, desserts and occasionally good beer, and all of those calories have to go somewhere.   For anyone that understands my "whiteboard sessions", running never made the white board, but I do it every day.  3 miles on the road at home, and 5 miles on a treadmill when I travel.

So Why Do I Run?

At the beginning of 2012, some readers might recall that I was planning to have knee surgery.  After preparing for the surgery and planning to be out of work for several weeks, the last doctor to look at my knee looks at me and simply says "Your knee doesn't need surgery, it sounds like rice crispies because you are too fat".

With that little slam, he sent me out of the office to go exercise and lose about 30 pounds.  I have since lost the 30 pounds and feel great, and part of the path was walking a lot and then running.

New Balance at the Start

When I started running, I had New Balance because they were the only US made shoes I could find.   As I worked my way up to running two miles, I learned from another Doctor that I was running wrong.   He gave me some pointers on a better technique for my back and knees.  Within days I moved from two miles to three miles with little additional effort, and I shaved a minute off of each mile.

At this point the New Balance shoes weren't cutting it, so I tried a couple of other brands.  The New Balance have since worn out and the new pair are relegated to long walks, biking and skateboarding.  My wife won't let me buy Vans but my niece is working on it.

Sketchers Go Run 2

Shoe shopping with my wife is a regular event for me, and occasionally the mens shoes are close enough I can wander off without the leash choking me to badly.

I came across the Sketchers Go Run 2 and read the box, mostly since it was there.  The Go Run 2 is designed to encourage a mid foot strike and to keep you off of your heels.

Since changing my running style so that I land on the balls of my foot, my shoes had been tearing up my feet.   The light weight and stretch upper material of the Go Run 2 made them quite comfortable when I tried them on.  I didn't walk in them though.

My first outing on the Go Run 2 shoes was a success.  Right away I felt better running in the new style shoes.  I don't know how you run, but I have an iPod with music and the voice of Nike Fit telling me how I am doing.  With the Nike Fit ap set up for 60 minutes, I head off running.

Five minutes into my first run, I was four houses farther towards the beach than I normally would be. I figured the light weight of the shoes was fooling me so I slowed down a bit.  By 10 minutes I was quite a bit farther down the beach than I normally would be and I felt great.  I had found the winning running shoes for me.

My run normally ends as I leave the beach and enter back into my little neighborhood.  From there I walk home to cool down.  Here is the only thing I don't like about the Go Run 2.  You can't "heel walk" at all.  There is a hard section just forward of the heel that makes your feet do funny things when you try and walk using a heel stride.  After 20 years in the military, breaking the heel stride is hard to do.

If you have Sketchers Go Run 2, tell me what you think....

Can A Car Change Your Life?

Many of us need a car to get to work or school, and to get places on the weekends to go play, but is a car really that important to our lives and more importantly to our success?  Isn't a new car just a status symbol to tell other people that you got it because you can?  

After reading The Millionaire Next Door, I have been quite content to drive an F-150.  I am on my second one and have logged over 200,000 worry free miles between the two of them.

The human mind is a funny thing.  Henry Ford is reported to have said "It doesn't matter if you think you can or you can't, either way you are right."  

One of the training methods employed by the military is to take everything from you as a civilian, dress you in clothes that don't fit and tell you that you are garbage.  After a couple of days of this and seeing yourself in the mirror, you start to believe that you are garbage.  It worked very well with me since I didn't even have a high school diploma.

Over time you get in better shape, get your uniforms tailored to fit, and you begin to make it through challenges you were failing just weeks before.  Your self image improves quickly, building your self esteem.  The more you succeed, the more you feel like you can do.  The military depends on this phenomenon to take regular people and create heroes every day.  

When I was going to college, I worked at Macy's in mens suits.  As a broke college kid and enlisted military member, $300 for a sport coat was crazy big money.  Because I felt it was too expensive, I couldn't sell the coats either.  I was wearing a Montgomery Wards polyester coat that I paid $19 for on sale.  Finally my boss set aside a very nice sport coat, and waited until it hit the clearance rack and then he made me buy it.  I felt different.  My sales jumped off the charts. 

That was then, this is now, I know how all of this mind stuff works so it won't work on me.

Last week I picked up a 2013 Chevy Volt.  Initially I got the car because it made great economic sense given my work life and travel requirements.  Chevy was offering a lease deal that was about half of what I was spending in fuel for my F-150.  In a pure monthly cash flow sense the Volt wouldn't cost me a penny.  In fact it might save me money by cutting my overall monthly expenses.  

I did get a little specific with the color and options since I do spend a lot of time in my car.  If you think about it, a 3 year 36000 mile lease says I will be in that car for 36000 miles if I use every mile they give me, and you can bet I plan on it.  Even on a good day in SoCal, if I average 60 miles per hour, that is 600 hours in that seat and I bet the reality will be closer to 1800 or maybe 2400 hours with LA traffic.

I started thinking about the car like a mattress.  Realizing how much time I would be in it, I decided I wouldn't go for the cheap seats.  I ended up getting the fully loaded Chevy Volt to get the good seats.  Lucky for me, it was the last day of the month so the dealer made a great offer, giving me a discount that covered all the extras.  I got the newspaper deal and the loaded car. 

Anyone who has ever bought a new car knows that it isn't as easy as sign here, and go away with your new car.  It took several hours for the bank approvals and all the paperwork to get finished.  Driving home, I was glad the leasing process was over, it was nearly 10 at night and I had to been up since 4 am and yet I felt good driving home.  

My wife pointed out that the Volt is the first new car I have brought home for myself since 2003.  Hers is a 2008 and much nicer than my truck.  My truck was looking good for it's age but it has seen better days.   

From the time that I was 16, I got a different car almost every year.  Sometimes it was because I made a bad purchase decision and the car fell apart, other times because I found something I liked better.  In two cases, I totaled my cars and in one case somebody wanted my car more than me.  Some 30 cars had passed through my garage until 2003, and then for some reason I stopped buying cars.  I don't have kids, I don't know why, I just stopped getting new cars.

I have been driving the same F-150 with an occasional weekend outing in my old Mercedes SL since 2003.  Given the economy, I would think this is normal to keep cars this long, but kbb.com says the average ownership of a new car is at an all time high of 71 months.  I am clearly past that at 123 months for the F-150, so I guess it was time.

Is It OK To Enjoy an Economy Car?

After driving a four door F-150 for over 10 years, the Volt is a funny little electric car with a range extending gasoline engine.  I don't know why it makes me smile.  It just does.  It isn't sexy like my 1966 Mercedes SL is, it won't carry my dogs or paddle board like my truck does, and so far I can only go 48 miles on a full charge of electricity and charging is painfully slow if I don't want to use gas, which I don't.  That is part of the challenge and maybe a little of the fun.  

The smile I had every time I drove my big F-150 in 2003 was now back as I unplugged the Volt in the morning and headed to work.  It was still there when I logged 46 miles on battery when the car started the morning with 38 miles on the range estimator.  The smile was still there when I got home and burned 1.1 gallons of gas driving the 48 miles back home.  Yes I know the Volt only gets 38mpg on gas, but I am just telling you what the car is telling me.

I bought the car for purely practical purposes, and yet I am enjoying it.  According to the other Volt owners I have already talked to, this part is normal.  One traded in a Mercedes C class, another a Chrysler 300, and another a Prius.  

In five days my Volt tells me I have driven 204 miles, and used just 1.4 gallons of gas.  Actually the ap on my iPhone that is talking to the car right now is giving me the information.  The car is in California and I am in Washington D.C.  It also says I still have enough battery to make it back home from the airport without plugging in.

There is something that makes me feel good about it.  I can't put my finger on it, I just know it is there.  Maybe just driving something new and shiny is improving my self image and bolstering my self esteem.    I sure hope my mind isn't that easy, but it really does look that way.

Much like my experience joining the military, already one good thing has lead to another.  My wife pointed out my wardrobe was about the same age as my truck and maybe it was time to upgrade from the three button suits since I have a new car, so I did.  We took the Chevy Volt to the local mens store and she found a salesman to gang up on me and bring my wardrobe up to date.  

One new Chevy Volt, four new suits, and in five days, already I have new work I didn't expect and have met some cool people I might not have met.  This is the kind of change I like - Positive Change.

Picking Up The Chevy Volt At Simpson Chevrolet