Self Improvement Toolbox

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AGF
Posts: 171 | Thanks: 133
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2020 7:37 am
Goal: $1,000,000 until 2025
Age: 28

Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:35 am

I am currently trying to build a habit of writing. I try to write every day, so I thought I'd start a new thread on here, whenever I feel like writing about something that can contribute to this forum. Over the last couple years of reading and applying self-improvement, I have realized that I used certain tools and methods that helped me tremendously.

I thought it would be cool to have a collection of different tools the members of KYIL Forum use to come closer to their coals. Here's a list of the most powerful tools I use:

Habit Tracking sheet
This is a simple Excel sheet with 32 columns. The first column includes the habits you would like to establish. The other 31 columns represent the days of the month. The idea is to color each cell in either green or red, depending on whether you have done the habit that day or not. At the end of the month you can see exactly how well you've done. I open the habit tracking sheet every morning and fill it out every evening.
Here's how the sheet might look like:

Image

How it helps: it reminds you to do your habits and keep track of how well you execute the habits. Also helps with developing discipline.

Morning Routine
A lot of people talk about the importance of a morning routine. That's because it's true. I have been sticking to a morning routine on and off for the last 3 years and I noticed one thing: every time I neglected my morning routine for a few weeks, two things happened:

1) my productivity went to shit
2) my happiness went to shit because I spent too much time doing nothing

If procrastination or lack of discipline is a problem for you, try to develop a morning routine that makes it easy for you to start a productive day. Morning routine in combination with the habit tracking sheet is also the best way to establish new habits. I make use of something called habit stacking, where doing one habit acts as the trigger for the next habit. After I am done with my morning routine, I automatically ticked off 3-4 of the habits I want to do everyday. Here's my morning routine:

- wake up before 8am
- drink 500ml of water, brush teeth, wash face
- stretch or do Yoga for 15min
- get a cup of hot coffee
- read for 30min
- start reading my yearly goals, monthly goals and my to-do list for today (this gets me pumped for work)
- do the first three sets of Pomodoro working on the most important task of the day

By the end of this, it is impossible for me to not have a good day. By 11am, I am already certain that it wasn't a wasted day and that I did things that get me closer to my goals.

How it helps: more productivity, makes it easier to establish habits, more happiness

Finance Tracking
This is a habit I established as student when I was broke as fuck but I am still doing it to this day because it became a habit. The idea is pretty simple: every time you spend money on something, you write it down in an Evernote file. At the end of the day, you look at your Evernote and write down your expenses in an Excel Sheet. Add to your sheet your fixed monthly costs (rent, phone bills, etc.) and then every day the money you spend on food, transportation, shopping, etc. (my financial tracking file basically looks like a calendar). At the end of the month you will have a clear overview of your finances. This sounds like a lot of work but effectively takes less than 5 minutes every day.

How it helps: keep your finances in check, learn how to create a budget, be mindful about what you spend your money on


Time Log
This is a productivity hack I use whenever I want to be ultra-productive for longer periods of time (e.g. when I want to have an ultra-productive week). Keeping a time log is more inconvenient than the other tools I talked about so far, but it's also more powerful. I don't recommend doing this all the time but I do recommend anyone to try it for at least a week. It's the ultimate accountability sheet. You simply create an Excel sheet where each cell represents a 30min time block. Then you fill out each cell with the activity you spent doing during that time and fill it with green or red background color. Green is for a productive activity, red is for unproductive activity. If you want, you can also count the number of productive hours per day or week. In order to know exactly at what time you have done what activity, you need to have your sheet open for the whole day.

Here's how my sheets looks like:

Image

Important: this is not a calendar to plan activities. it is to track what you have done. You must be brutally honest with yourself, otherwise it doesn't work

How it helps: higher productivity because you'll get a bad conscience every time you have to color a cell red. You'll know how productive you actually are


Anti-Comfort Zone List
The fastest way to grow as a man is to leave your comfort zones from time to time. What I do is this:

1) write out all the things you feel uncomfortable doing. Those are basically your anti-comfort zones, the opposite of your comfort zones. This list can easily have 20-50 items for everyone. It doesn't even have to do anything with your goals,
2) find the underlying fear for each of those things
3) decide that you will leave at least 6 comfort zones per year (I make it a yearly goal to leave at least 6 comfort zones and I read those yearly goals every day)

Here's an example for one of my anti-comfort zones that I am going to enter next week:

1) I feel uncomfortable doing an extensive health check. My comfort zone in this regard is to just ignore that topic as long as I feel healthy.
2) the reason I feel that is that I am afraid of dying or health problems messing with my future
3) I scheduled a health check for next week to leave that comfort zone and face my fear

How it helps: you become less fearful and more comfortable doing new things. It also helps a lot with your confidence if you keep doing things you feel uncomfortable with.

Goal setting
This should be a no-brainer and I believe everyone here is doing that already. I still consider it a tool though, because most people do not set goals.

I set yearly and monthly goals. I don't set quarterly, weekly or daily goals, but I do have a list of daily tasks I want to complete.

The key is to set high goals with a strong "Why", read them every day and visualize how your life will look like after you achieved those goals.

War map calendar
This is a tool I learned from Sam Ovens. It's like any other calendar, but you keep it in Excel (more flexible). But here's the difference: you don't write down any appointments but rather things that you know you need to do in order to grow. And you do that months in advance. If you plan out every important task that you need to do for the next 3 months and then execute on it, you can be 100% certain that you will be successful. Most people just write to-do lists on the fly, maybe a few days in advance. That's a mistake because you then you won't plan your days with the big picture in mind.

I recommend writing no more than 3 tasks for each day. That way you have enough space for tasks and appointments that come up after planning your war map. Also black out all the days you know you can't do anything because you already got other things planned. Here's how it looks like:



You can also watch this video to see how Sam is using the War Map:



And here you can download a template for the War Map.

How it helps: every morning when you open your War map calendar, you'll know exactly the 3 tasks that you must do to grow as a person or grow your business. You know exactly that as long as you keep doing these tasks, you will succeed.

---

Feel free to share your tools. I believe @GravyTrain once mentioned a tool or exercise that involves a whiteboard or something. Would be cool if you can post that here again.
User avatar
SIGMA_1234
Posts: 951 | Thanks: 328
Joined: Tue Jun 02, 2020 9:13 am
Goal: Digital Nomad Income
Age: 26
Motto: Action > Perfection

Tue Jun 30, 2020 12:46 am

Good lord I am so happy people like @AGF and @GravyTrain exist in this forum.

You both inspire me to strive to be better while pussy is off the table for the next few months for me.
Aspiring Digital Nomad

Follow my lifestyle journey log

Fitness:
-) Cut to 56 kg, then bulk after

Sex Enhancement:
-) Bathmate & Kegels

Learning goals:
-) 10 books
-) more note-taking & reviewing of past materials

^^Lifestyle habit tracker can be monitored here.

Learning Chinese Mandarin:
-) Mandarin 365 Project, monitor here.

Follow my business journey log

$ Goals:
-) US$3k/ mo nomad income
-) US$10k/ mo nomad income
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SIGMA_1234
Posts: 951 | Thanks: 328
Joined: Tue Jun 02, 2020 9:13 am
Goal: Digital Nomad Income
Age: 26
Motto: Action > Perfection

Tue Jun 30, 2020 12:58 am

AGF wrote:
Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:35 am
Finance Tracking
This is a habit I established as student when I was broke as fuck but I am still doing it to this day because it became a habit. The idea is pretty simple: every time you spend money on something, you write it down in an Evernote file. At the end of the day, you look at your Evernote and write down your expenses in an Excel Sheet. Add to your sheet your fixed monthly costs (rent, phone bills, etc.) and then every day the money you spend on food, transportation, shopping, etc. (my financial tracking file basically looks like a calendar). At the end of the month you will have a clear overview of your finances. This sounds like a lot of work but effectively takes less than 5 minutes every day.
I'd like to add to the toolbox, too. You do know there's an app that makes doing this simpler, right?

I use this one personally: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... nsemanager

This app lets you input and track your positive cash flow (income, investments) and your expenses (rent, utility, bills). Every week or month, you can also see a visual representation (graph/ chart) of your income and expenses (this can be broken up to how many % you spent your money on).

If you're worried that you'll lose all your progress changing apps, you can export your data in a .csv file. And import it in the same app in your new device.

Also, you can back it up in Google Drive, so you will never lose your income/ expense data.

I stopped using this for the past year (had the habit ever since high school to track everything), but now I am reinstalling it to finally do it again.
Aspiring Digital Nomad

Follow my lifestyle journey log

Fitness:
-) Cut to 56 kg, then bulk after

Sex Enhancement:
-) Bathmate & Kegels

Learning goals:
-) 10 books
-) more note-taking & reviewing of past materials

^^Lifestyle habit tracker can be monitored here.

Learning Chinese Mandarin:
-) Mandarin 365 Project, monitor here.

Follow my business journey log

$ Goals:
-) US$3k/ mo nomad income
-) US$10k/ mo nomad income
User avatar
AGF
Posts: 171 | Thanks: 133
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2020 7:37 am
Goal: $1,000,000 until 2025
Age: 28

Tue Jun 30, 2020 6:52 am

SIGMA_1234 wrote:
Tue Jun 30, 2020 12:58 am
AGF wrote:
Mon Jun 29, 2020 10:35 am
Finance Tracking
This is a habit I established as student when I was broke as fuck but I am still doing it to this day because it became a habit. The idea is pretty simple: every time you spend money on something, you write it down in an Evernote file. At the end of the day, you look at your Evernote and write down your expenses in an Excel Sheet. Add to your sheet your fixed monthly costs (rent, phone bills, etc.) and then every day the money you spend on food, transportation, shopping, etc. (my financial tracking file basically looks like a calendar). At the end of the month you will have a clear overview of your finances. This sounds like a lot of work but effectively takes less than 5 minutes every day.
I'd like to add to the toolbox, too. You do know there's an app that makes doing this simpler, right?

I use this one personally: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... nsemanager

This app lets you input and track your positive cash flow (income, investments) and your expenses (rent, utility, bills). Every week or month, you can also see a visual representation (graph/ chart) of your income and expenses (this can be broken up to how many % you spent your money on).

If you're worried that you'll lose all your progress changing apps, you can export your data in a .csv file. And import it in the same app in your new device.

Also, you can back it up in Google Drive, so you will never lose your income/ expense data.

I stopped using this for the past year (had the habit ever since high school to track everything), but now I am reinstalling it to finally do it again.
I am aware of those apps but I like to track everything with Evernote + Excel because it gives me much more flexibility in the way I track and a better overview.

@GravyTrain I was actually referring to that Identity Board (not sure if that's how you called it) where you write down everything you stand for.
User avatar
AGF
Posts: 171 | Thanks: 133
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2020 7:37 am
Goal: $1,000,000 until 2025
Age: 28

Wed Jul 01, 2020 8:09 am

KillYourInnerLoser wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 3:05 am
Just published my entire method of setting and achieving goals here:

The Slight Edge – How to Achieve Anything (How I’ve Achieved All My Goals)

Image
I read the book "The Compound Effect" in one sitting last weekend and he mentioned the Slight Edge as well.

The Compound Effect was pretty good and I was surprised how many things of my "10 lessons" post were in there. The author talks about responsibility mindset, habits, goal-setting, media, mentors, etc. Probably the best general self-improvement book I have read. Only problem is that it is a bit too basic and thus only valuable to absolute newbies.
User avatar
SIGMA_1234
Posts: 951 | Thanks: 328
Joined: Tue Jun 02, 2020 9:13 am
Goal: Digital Nomad Income
Age: 26
Motto: Action > Perfection

Tue Mar 02, 2021 3:34 am

Resurrecting this thread because I'm rereading this and thinking of implementing some of it in my life now lmao

I have had the habit of tracking my financial spending (very diligently, mind you, to the point of OCD) with every purchase, but it fell off when I bummed for a year. Because of this, I learned that good habits can die without consistency. Even though I started to log expenses again a bit, time to seriously put this habit back on track.

The Time Log sheet is the one that seems to be the most helpful in keeping myself accountable in doing the work, now that I make websites. The boredom method doesn't seem to be working for me these past few weeks because I don't have the discipline to stay still and do nothing.

The Anti-Comfort Zone list seems to be a good addition, because I am slowly realizing I have the fear of:
-) moving out of home. How can I manage expenses by myself?
-) getting a job offer, which leads to getting a job, which registers to my mind that my fate is sealed if I choose a wrong career
-) Looking stupid. Even if I pride myself in asking a lot of stupid questions with a thick face to learn more about something, I notice that I tend to become more and more silent when I don't know something these days.
-) the fear of pursuing the digital nomad lifestyle. But I think this is more the fear of failure because I fear wasting time on something that won't bear fruit (despite me wasting a year doing NOTHING)
-) fear of never becoming independent and just relying on daddy's & mommy's money. Which ties into the despair I feel when I work in my family business. I will have less of an issue being in the family business when I know I can make money without them and it suits my lifestyle.

These fears are what came at the top of my mind. If I do more myself, I believe I can list much more here.
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Spazdig
Posts: 151 | Thanks: 35
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2020 9:01 pm
Goal: Get Laid
Age: 27

Tue Mar 02, 2021 11:29 am

If anyone is looking for a good way to track expenses,I can't recommend this spreadsheet enough.

Didn't take me too long to set up, make it nice and fancy with my own options using the tutorials, and I've low attention span. I haven't set up income tracking but you can do that too. Very easy to input expenses with a google form, which can be shortcut to your phone home screen.
Screenshot 2021-03-02 112533.png
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MakingAComeback
Posts: 4130 | Thanks: 4864
Joined: Tue Jan 19, 2021 1:17 pm
Goal: 3k Per Month Post Tax
Age: 32
Motto: POSITIVE SELF TALK

Sat Mar 27, 2021 7:09 am

Bunch of gold in this thread
-Your friend, Ravi

Consistent Performance Coach, Admin of WinnerWithin, and Seeker of Human Potential

My FB Group for Consistent Performance & Goal Achievement
https://www.facebook.com/groups/ironwilltribe
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