Get your sh*t together!

Its easy to become convinced that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

We talk about the consequences of the coming global paradigm shift all the time. Yes, we may sound like full-time apocalyptics, but the reality is that it just makes a lot of sense to prepare your family as best you can for what we call the inevitable “reset.”

Yes, we believe things are challenging and about to get much more so. But, we also believe that post “reset”, the world will usher in a pretty amazing era of opportunity that will be de-coupled from centralized anything — banks, governments, corporations, etc.

Bottom line, we’re going through the death throes of an old centralized order at the moment, but we believe that what comes out on the other side is going to be pretty extraordinary.

In the meantime, we need to prepare as best we can… And really it is not that hard to take a few concrete steps to increase your resiliency:

• Open a foreign bank account
• Obtain foreign residency or a second passport
• Create your own food source (Incidentally, if you think this sounds wacky, check out this NYT piece)
• Reduce expenditures
• Create multiple streams of income
• Invest in foreign real estate
• Buy precious metals

Each of these is a hedge against global uncertainty, political, economic and country risk.

But the challenging part is often the HOW, not the WHAT or the WHY. As a father of two kids I know how hard it is to find the time and energy to do some of the things I know I should be doing.

Things like cleaning out the garage and hiring someone to pressure wash the house, or re-seal the driveway. Not to mention the things needed to prepare for an uncertain future.  I’m too busy taking the kids to soccer practice, gymnastics, music lessons, track club and Spanish club — in other words, doing all of the “status quo” things that could very well become luxuries for awhile when the SHTF.

I’ve written before about turning off the TV and I still stand by that as one of the best ways to create more time in your life.  But here is another tactic that might help you.

Batching

I’m essentially a lazy person.  So instead of just using willpower to push myself to do more I have always looked for tactics to allow myself to get more done with less effort.  ”Advanced Laziness” if you will.

One of the best things I have discovered in this regard is batching.  Grouping similar tasks together.  The amount of time we waste by switching between tasks is far greater than you can imagine.  Not just physically switching but mentally switching.   When you answer a phone call in the middle of a task you not only lose the time spent on the call but also the time it takes to mentally get back “into the game”.

Also when you do a task to completion with no distractions, you don’t think about it the rest of the week wondering if you forgot anything.  If somehow some little screw up you made because you were distracted is going to come back and bite you in the ass!

For example I do the accounting and bookkeeping for 3 companies as well as our household finances and I do all of it in two to three hours a week.  How? I do ALL of it on Monday morning.  I call it “Money Monday”.   I turn off the phone, and do not look at the emails until it is all done.  There are a million temptations to look at things at other times.  There are the contractors who want to get paid on Friday.

Tenants who want deposits, or who are late on rent that I should be tracking down.  But I ignore everything, unless it is Money Monday.  Screw them all.   I know that when I do take care of it that I do it completely so I do not have to think about it AT ALL the rest of the week.  I have the confidence to ignore everything related to finances until Monday.  Ahh, that feels good.

Before I started this I had a bookkeeper and accountant doing the work and I was paying on average $1200 per month for just two of the companies.  So now I save $1200 per month by spending two to three hours a week.  That’s over $100 and hour, plus I have a better handle on whats happening in the companies.

Another big time sucker is email.  Don’t check your email all day long!  You can spend an entire day responding to emails.  You can be staring at the computer waiting for the next email to come in.  I know,  I’ve done it.  Start your day by getting something important off your list BEFORE you even look at your emails.  Like this blog post for example.  I’ll get this out here in a few minutes and I have not yet opened my email.

Please do not just read this missive and do nothing about it!  What tasks do you do that you can batch?