Here’s a bootstrapper’s effort diet. Go through the list and decide whether or not it’s worth it. Or make up your own diet. Effort is a choice, at least make it on purpose:
- Delete 120 minutes a day of ‘spare time’ from your life. This can include TV, reading the newspaper, commuting, wasting time in social networks and meetings. Up to you.
- Spend the 120 minutes doing this instead:
- Exercise for thirty minutes.
- Read relevant non-fiction (trade magazines, journals, business books, blogs, etc.)
- Send three thank you notes.
- Learn new digital techniques (spreadsheet macros, Firefox shortcuts, productivity tools, graphic design, html coding)
- Volunteer.
- Blog for five minutes about something you learned.
- Give a speech once a month about something you don’t currently know a lot about.
- Spend at least one weekend day doing absolutely nothing but being with people you love.
- Only spend money, for one year, on things you absolutely need to get by. Save the rest, relentlessly.
If you somehow pulled this off, then six months from now, you would be the fittest, best rested, most intelligent, best funded and motivated person in your office or your field. You would know how to do things other people don’t, you’d have a wider network and you’d be more focused.
Alright, changing it up:
1. Delete 120 minutes of being at the computer.
2. Do this instead:
- (30 min) - Learn a new language.
- (15 min) - Write a postcard/letter to a friend back home or someone I’ve lost touch with.
- (30 min) - Study architecture and microeconomics, alternating. (Or any subject I wish I knew more about.) If brain is about to explode, read an article referenced on any intriguing course syllabus.
- (25 min) - Write in my journal - 3 things that were pretty frickin awesome about today, at a minimum; short story or design ideas. Whatever. Pen to paper.
- (20 min) - Read (a novel, a New Yorker article).
Some goals, while I’m at it:
- Exercise for 30 min. 5x/week (alternate yoga & “couch to 5k”).
- Go to bed by midnight 5x/week.
- Wake up at 7am 5x/week.
- Eat healthy 6 days/week. Go nuts on Sunday.
