This Blog Has Moved

Come on over the http://www.RichardLee.com to continue following the blog as I won’t be posting here anymore.

Thanks

-Richard Lee

Back From Vacation and Changes Coming Soon.

I spent the last 4 days in Mexico on vacation.

I rented a house right on the beach in Los Conchas. It’s near Puerto Penasco aka Rocky Point in the state of Sonora a mere 4.5 hours from Phoenix.

I rented the house myself and invited 4 friends who joined me for a VERY relaxing time.

I ate way too much food and spent the majority of my time there sleeping, reading, soaking up the sun and enjoying the sounds of the Sea of Cortez only 50 feet from the porch.

At night I was lulled to sleep by the waves and the cool night air.

I decided to treat myself to this vacation as a way of stimulating my brain in a different way.

The trip was inspired by the story that James Brausch tells about how a cruise helped him with his success. He’s recently posted an update from his last cruise here: http://www.jamesbrausch.com/?p=622

I had my breakthrough driving from Arizona to Los Conchas. I wasn’t even there when I had a big idea hit me and become clear.

Here’s the break though I had: I need to FOCUS on a SINGLE, CLEAR and SPECIFIC goal.

Wow! How simple that statement seems and no doubt will be dismissed by most. But I challenge and encourage you to apply this idea to yourself and you current situation.

Might it be that the tiny tweak of focusing your efforts is the key to you rapidly increasing your forward progress toward your goal.

I’ll bet that this is indeed a key contributor to your frustration.

Focus on a single goal that you can physically achieve in the next 5-10 days and finish it… no matter what.

As for this blog, it will change in the following manner. I will migrate it to a permanent domain instead of the place holder it currently uses. I’ll most likely move it to RichardLee.com and restructure it in the style of JamesBrausch.com, AaronBrandon.com and EdRivis.com.

And to answer the inquiries and comments… Yes I will add a sign up box so you’ll know when a new blog post appears and Yes I’ll include an RSS feed of some sort as well. I’ll be using http://www.blogcastcourse.com/ which I purchased today as well as http://kunaki.com/Sales.asp?PID=PX00ZMKDSK which I bought last week and it arrived while I was on vacation.

Richard Lee

p.s. I took no pictures while in Mexico but my friends took several including a pair of very playful dolphins that were gallivanting just a little way off shore from the front porch of our house. I’ll try and post them here soon.

This Months Automation Payoff

I just sat down and payed the only bills I havn’t automated yet. There’s three of them and even though I had some issues with the Web site for one of them, the timer I started when I launched my browser said 4 minutes and 53 seconds when I finished.

That’s the total time I though about my bills this month.

For previous comentary on this see http://bonusdays.wordpress.com/2007/03/25/automate/

How much time are spending paying your bills?

How much time do you spend thinking about your bills?

What negative affects might this have on you?

Richard Lee

My Shocking Experience With A TV Yesterday

Over 2 months ago, I removed the sole TV from my house permanently. I haven’t had cable or any other means of adding channels since 1997 and I was watching an average of only 45 minutes a day so the transition to no TV wasn’t that hard for me.

The one strong connection I did notice was when I sat down to eat. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself since I was eating almost all meals in front of the TV.

I substituted a nice view of my back yard through a window that gets a lot of sun and have eaten all my meals there since. I no longer think of the TV when I eat and enjoy watching the birds out the back window.

I have been surprised by how I still reference things I saw on TV in conversations. I thought that TV would quickly fall from my mind and me speech but It hasn’t. I still reference TV in my conversations and believe that this may continue for some time.

Which brings me to my shocking experience with TV at a friends house yesterday.

I arrived at his house to pick him up. I was buying him lunch for his birthday. I enter his house and gazed upon his giant flat panel TV only to be taken aback as I see graphic scenes of a large scale shooting spree at a college in Virginia. It was quite unnerving to see but even worse to here.

I noticed two things right away. The first was how the news reporters were hyping up what was already a very shocking incident that needed absolutely no hype whatsoever. The second what the continuous loop effect created by the reporters repeating the same statements and observations. It seemed like I was watching a loop. When there was a tiny bit of new information, it was injected into the loop and the loop was restarted.

I was honestly shocked by the whole thing. The event itself struck me as very unfortunate but the news reporting was what turned my off the most.

Think about that for a moment. There was an event in which a large number of youth were killed. I was saddened by that event. I thought what a shame and utter waste it was. Then… I moved on. However, I was shocked by the actions of the news reporters. I wondered why they wanted to make me relive this event over and over and over. That sickened me more than the event itself.

My total time of watching that TV was less than 5 minutes and look at the effect it had on me.

What is your 1, 2, 4, or 8 hours of daily TV watching having on you?

Richard Lee

Why I Only Spend 3 Minutes Total On Mopping My Kitchen.

As promised, here’s the update on Automation part 2.

I am the proud owner of an iRobot Scooba. This little robot has cleaned my 200 square foot kitchen 4 times since Saturday. Admittedly, I watched it quite a bit the first three times to see how it worked. But, the fourth times it ran I wasn’t even there. I turned it on, pressed the clean button and left the house to go enjoy a nice breakfast at a local cafe. After breakfast, I enjoyed a nice scenic drive and returned home to find the Scooba sitting in the corner of a spotless kitchen floor.

It took about 3 minutes to empty and clean the parts that have to be cleaned every time it’s used. Additionally, I plugged it in to charge for the next time I use it.

How long does it take you to mop your kitchen?

Don’t forget to include prep time and the clean up afterwards!

I have to say that the Scooba is an amazing piece of electronics because of the battery of sensors contained on and in this little thing.

Now that I’ve seen exactly how well iRobots are engineered, designed and made, I’m going to get one for my living room this Summer.

So… why am I doing this. Am I showing off that I have some extra cash to by high-tech toys?

No.

I am seeking out ways to free up more and more of my time.

Any time I read about a way that someone else has freed up there time, I try it out. If it works for me and I like it, I implement it. It’s just that simple.

I don’t enjoy mopping and it’s a huge waste of time but it has to be done.

Would you be smart enough to invest in a system that reduces your mopping time to 3 minutes maximum? You should be.

Free up your time to work on your Internet business.

Free up your time to do the things you want to do.

Richard Lee

Automation Part 2

I have another task that I am very close to automating. This one is way more fun and interesting than the bill automation. I won’t give any clues but it should be ready Saturday or maybe Monday. Check back then for a very cool piece of automation. Who knows… I may even get a picture or two of it up on the blog.

Richard Lee

Automate!

In response to Aaron Brandon’s weekend task, I set about to automate my billpaying. I was largley successful.

I was able to automate all but three of my regular bills. With the exception of those three, I’ll never have to spend a single second paying bills again.

How did I improve the remaining three?

The last ones were bills that I would take the time to write out a check or go buy a money order for. I’d then fill out the pay stub, rummage around for the correct postage and affix a return label. Next I’d drive to the post office to mail them personally as I wanted to be 100% sure the task was completed.

I rarely paid them all at the same time and would usually make two trips a month to mail the three.

Well, I took the time to set up accounts and fill in my banking info on the Web-sites of these three bills so that I could pay them in seconds using the Web. I then bookmarked the log-in pages and put them in their own bookmark folder.

Now to test things out…

I open the three Web pages and one at a time, I log in and pay all three bills. I punched my Polder digital timer when I started and again when all three had been paid. Total time: 2 minutes 32 seconds.

I estimate that the old way of doing this took 90 minutes/month.

Here’s what I’ve gained by investing a little time today.

I have freed up almost an hour and a half per month. Also, I would periodically think about those bills all month reminding myself to pay them. I have set up a series of e-mail and physical reminders that allow me to never think about them and know that I won’t forget to pay them… ever.

I’ve removed that negative “bill” thinking so I can now replace it with “income” thinking instead. That’s the reall gain here.

So did I fully automate my bills? No, they’re about 97% automated based on time. However, I can and will fully automate these last three bills in the coming months as I figure out how to do that.

Go look at Aaaron’s task challenge, pick one and get it done today: http://www.aaronbrandon.com/?p=43

Richard Lee

What I’ve Learned From James Brausch So Far

If you know the causes for failure, you can engineer a formula for success.

Causes of failure:

1. Not taking any action – stuck in the learn, learn, learn mode. Sadly, where I was for four years.
2. Not taking focused action ie. doing only a little and expecting a lot.
3. Not following a proven plan (kind of self-explanatory.)

What I’m doing with what I’ve learned:

I shined a light on failure cause #1 and scared it away. I’m positive I have #3 down pat. I’m working hard on #2. My first product and Web site are fully functional. Everything is set-up. I have a few articles submitted and traffic is starting to come in. I want to pump out an article a day as well as take time to build my ezine publishers list.

The only thing between success and me is… well, me.

I obtained a much better handle on things by scraping my change together and buying into James’ mentoring program. I got to e-mail a multi-millionaire who made his money the same way I’m working at making mine. I strongly urge you to do the same as I was able to glean a lot in just a few e-mail exchanges. I paid $600 for the month but all those spots are gone and it’s now $700/month. It will only increase. If it is physically possible for you to join, I implore you to do it today. Go here now: http://www.jamesbrausch.com/magic.html

Richard Lee

Slowly But Surely

Another one of my articles was picked up by a Web-site with an Alexa rank of less than 26,000. It apprears that they really like my articles. I’ll mark them as a site to always submit to.

Richard Lee

Automating Blog Announcements

I’ve been meaning to figure how to incorporate blog posts with a simple announcement system to subscribers but hadn’t set aside time for it. Today, I stumbled across just such a thing on Aaron Brandon’s blog: http://www.aaronbrandon.com.

He explains in a very clear way how to do just that using aweber.com

Go check it out at: http://www.aaronbrandon.com/?p=31

Richard Lee