How Make Better Decisions That Lead To Action

I follow a handful of bloggers that cover personal finance on one end of my interest scale to leadership on the other end.  In resources, I list a few of the FIRE bloggers that I follow and at times, I occasionally make a few comments on the posts that they write.  Most times, I read the piece, and pull out one or two helpful nuggets of their perspective think about them for a while, and figure out how I can utilize the information.  Sometimes I even save a couple of the sites or tools that are referenced and refer to them later where I retrieve them from my Favorites folder.  I don’t take too much action unless it grabs my attention and imagination.  I’ll leave my option open to re-read the blog later on.  Guess what? Later never seems to materialize as the sense of urgency has peaked and it’s never the same stimuli later on. It’s a component of the “decay rate.” We get caught up in other interests or follow other sources of information and the cycle of spending time on social media begins to suck hours out of our day.  The web is an amazing tool where we can lose our focus pretty quickly while we follow funny and entertaining things. Time passes.
If you ever watched a flowing river, the water is never the same where you are standing.  The view may be the same, but the moving water is not. The water is constantly changing and one will never know how it affects you until you touch it and interact with it.  Information on the web and Opportunities are very similar to the moving water of a river. It can pass right by you if you are not paying attention to its value.

In a previous post, I covered the secret of success and after re-reading and doing some editing, I realized that I left out a significant point.  Did anyone catch it?  The achievement of goals will never take place without Action.  Good intentions are not triggers for Action.  It starts with a decision.  Many authors and motivational speakers cover this topic in entertaining detail.  I remember first being exposed to it in one of  Anthony Robbins’ early books where he covered the concept that decisions happen in an instant.  Decisions for me lead to action.   If you click on some of the links in this blog you might discover that decisions and action go together like peanut butter and Nutella. When you’re making one of these sandwiches, they usually get messy when you first start out, but the result is quite tasty.  Like the sandwich, pushing procrastination aside can get messy. Once a decision is made to pursue a goal, taking action starts the process of working toward achieving goals.

What triggers the decision process? My opinion is that one must have a clear picture of what one wants. So what do you want?  Since you’ve landed on this blog page, what do you want out of this blog? Something brought you here and many of you continue to come back and support my campaign of paying it forward.  I’ve been posting what I think is interesting content that can help with job interviewing or learning how to begin to manage your finances. None of this will matter if you don’t set your own goals and begin to take action. The tools contained in this blog are designed for you to take some kind of action to achieve results that are important to you.
How many of you have decided to start tracking your spending?  If you know where you are spending your money, then you learn what is important to you. For example, if you are spending $40.00 a week on lunch, you have the chance to evaluate if that is important to you. Anyway, you get the idea.

One final thought on decisions. They are never final and there is built-in flexibility because we have intellect and experience to draw from or tap into resources for guidance.  We can make adjustments once we begin to move.
For example, one cannot steer a car or boat unless there is some forward movement. This momentum allows us to make small adjustments to move in a chosen direction, usually going forward gets you someplace, unless you need to back out of a parking spot.  The best environment is to be in a position to decide for yourself.  In some cases, if you don’t someone else will make the decision for you, and you may not like the direction or result.  Either way, a decision is going to be made with or without you.

Bottom line: Decisions/Goals/Action/Result.
This week I’m going to give a homework assignment.
1. Decide to track your spending. (every transaction, check, cash, credit card). Every single one.
Start off easy and track just three categories for the week.
a. Food
b. Transportation
c. Entertainment
2. The goal is to track your spending for 7 days.
3. Action: Ask for a receipt for every transaction. If you forget to get one, write it down, ASAP.
4. Add up what you spent. Add up each day separately to simplify or use a tool.
5. How much did you spend?

How did you react to the total?
Did you get enjoyment or value out of each one of those purchases?
Which ones would you cut back on?

If you’re brave enough, put the weekly total spent for just food in the comments sections.
When I receive 5 comments, I’ll post my June 2017 Total for my food category.

If you need just a little bit more encouragement of the benefits check out:

Where Personal Breakthroughs Really Come From

Carry on and follow-through.

Author: Francis

Started out in science and somehow ended up in sales & marketing. Grew into a results oriented sales professional with extensive experience selling and positioning scientific solutions in the pharma/biotech, life sciences and medical diagnostics markets. In 1998 I created an excel sheet to track spending and cash flow to learn personal finance on my own. They don't teach this in school and by the time one figures it out, most of let all these resources slip through our fingers. It's time to pay it forward to this next gen so that they can shave 15-20 years off for working for "the man" with insights, a library of tools, and motivation from me and plenty of other FI bloggers that I follow.