That was five hours ago. I’m still standing, and I’ve gone to get my AC adapter for my laptop! I’ve only sat down today to eat lunch. I have to say I feel like my energy levels are much higher while standing, and it’s much easier to not let myself be distracted by sitting back and reading blogs and catching up on the news.

One thing I have noticed is that my back feel fine - there was some tightness in my lower back initially - but my feet don’t like standing on the hard floor. My office has thin carpet over concrete floors, so I need to go track down a rug or something with a little padding on which to stand.

So imagine my happiness when over Memorial Day weekend I happened into an Ikea store and found their Vika desk legs and tops which allowed me to build a small standing desk cheaply to test it out.

I purchased 4 Vika Byske legs for $30 each (adjustable from 27.5″ to 42.125″) and a Vika Amon tabletop for $19.99.

Here’s what it looks like (click to enlarge).

I’ve been standing at it for a little over an hour and a half now. Here are some of my observations:

1) My feet are starting to get sore, and I can feel a little tightness in my lower back. I’ve read online that there is an adjustment period when switching to a standing workspace, so hopefully this will be a temporary problem.

2) My hands and wrists feel pretty good. When I’m sitting I’m frequently guilty of resting my wrists on my desk and just being generally un-ergonomic. My hands and lower arms will get a little numb and tingly after a while when I’m sitting. So far I’ve noticed that the change in my posture seems to be making my hands feel much better.

3 I’ve gotten a lot of weird looks, and plenty of comments like, “What’s that?” and “Why would you want to stand?” Looks like I’m going to have to be prepared to be the office “kook” for awhile. On a positive note several people have come up and commented on how cool my idea is. I’ll slowly convert them all!

4) Being on my feet makes me feel more energetic! I’ve run back and forth a few times to the copy room this afternoon with nary a thought about it. Before I would plan out trips because I was comfortable - and lazy - sitting on my duff. Now I just grab papers and go - I very much like the freedom it gives.

5) Right now the desktop is 43.25″ high and it feels pretty good. The Ikea system looks like it’s actually designed to be attached to the wall on one edge with just two legs under it (not four) so it’s a little wobbly. It’s perfectly workable, but for a long, long term solution I would want a “real” standing desk.

I’ll post periodic updates on my experiment with standing while I work. I think that a good mix of standing and sitting will be best as it’s awful easy to flit from task to task while standing. I don’t feel like I can concentrate and focus as much as I’m just full of energy. So combining standing when I need a burst of productivity with sitting when I really need to roll up my sleeves and crunch numbers should prove to be a great system.

More to come!

I’ve written in the past about building passive income streams, so I was interested to learn if the products or services this person wanted to promote would align with my own values for this site. I replied back and asked what they were selling.

The reply that came back was…payday loans.

They even prefaced their reply with, “I appreciate that your stance on our industry may be negative, but assure you that we are not out to editorialize or sway you in any way.”

Fair enough, we can agree to disagree on the “benefits” of payday loans, but what really made me stop and consider the state of paid-for-post blogging was this next sentence:

“To be frank, even a post about reasons to avoid payday loans would probably prove beneficial, while of course not vilifying our company in any way.”

Wow. They were offering me the perfect out, I could write a don’t-use-payday-loans post and still get paid - how could I say no?

Payday loans are a blight on the communities they’re in, and the fact they’re not illegal puzzles me (I know why, they spend a lot of cash lobbying for exclusions from usury laws). They put the people they purport to help into a cycle of near eternal-debt and the rates they charge are more than usurious. I don’t think it’s possible to over-vilify these companies!

I’m not naming companies or providing links, but their web site lists the APR on the loans at between 507% and 1304%. And that’s if you pay the loan in full when it’s due! If a “borrower” doesn’t pay the loan in full and makes minimum payments, the effective APR is even higher!

I certainly want to monetize my site and produce supplemental income, but I won’t do it at the expense of my beliefs and principals. What’s scary is that they would have been fine with a “negative” post, and I could have written this post and gotten paid for it. That seems to me a bit dishonest on everyone’s part; mine, the “advertiser’s”, and yours.

How about you? Is your conscience worth a little cash; even if you could “get away” with it?

It’s so easy to see that easy, low monthly payment and “only” yourself. And when you have a lot of “only” payments, pretty soon you’re looking at your bank account and wondering where all your money went.

I did a quick inventory of my current “only-ies” and calculated I’m spending $316 a month! That’s $3,792 a year that’s going out the door…a few bucks at a time. Yikes! Where’s that money going and how can I get it under control?

To clarify what an “only” is; it’s a payment for something that’s really nice to have, but is ultimately non-essential at the end of the day. We gotta’ pay our electric bill. The satellite TV bill isn’t necessary to living, it’s just nice. It’s an “only” expense (ditto for items on store-credit, or credit cards. I’m looking at you new room-full-of-furniture!).

Here are some of my “only-ies”:

Cell phone bill? Yep, going to keep it. True, I could live a completely fulfilling life without a cell phone, but it’s just so darn convenient (We have decided to look into pay-as-you-go options when our contract is up because frankly the wife and I just don’t need thousands-of-minutes a month).

Virtual fax line? Yep, I’m keeping that too. I don’t get personal faxes every day, but when I do it’s a pain to coordinate getting them at work or hooking up a fax machine at home for a few hours to receive one. Plus it’s less per month than a separate phone line at home for a dedicated fax machine.

HBO & Showtime premium channels? Nope! There are a few shows on HBO that my wife and I watch, and they’re all off until next season so….canceled! (We’ll decide if we’re going to resubscribe when our shows come back)

Super-duper-all-the-channels package on satellite? Nope! We sat down and scrolled through the channel guide and found out that we regularly watch ten channels; our 4 major locals plus TLC, Discovery, Food Network, Comedy Central, HGN, and A&E. To our pleasant surprise all of those channels are in the very lowest-level package our provider offers. Move over $90-a-month TV, here comes $40-a-month TV! Sure, we could probably cut paid TV out entirely, but we both like it so it stays - for now - at a much lower monthly cost (plus there is never anything good on these days anyway!).

Netflix subscription? Tough call - I’ll need to do some number crunching on this. When I first subscribed, I was a movie-watching-fool. I would get a movie on Monday, watch it, mail it back Tuesday, get a new move on Thursday and do it all over again. I calculated my first month I paid about $0.80 per movie. However as I moved through my list of to-watch flicks, I’ve slowed down a lot in my movie watching habits. For the last two months it’s cost me $6 per movie to be a subscriber! Sorry Netflix - I love you - but you’ve got to go.

Some quick Excel work tells me that by cutting out and cutting back we dropped our “only-ies” from $316 per month to $191 per month (and a lot of that is cell phone). That’s a 39% monthly savings or $1,500 a year back in our pocket.

We’re fortunate that we’ve kept a lot of our “only-ies” under control, but I know a lot of people who use credit, same-as-cash deals, and store financing to get new appliances, electronics, furniture, and more - all for “only” a few bucks a month - and it’s killing them!

I encourage you to sit down and take a long hard look at your “only-ies”. You might be surprised at how much your “little monthly obligations” really cut into your bottom line when you add them all up!

For example, I got the wild urge to learn how to make a really good cup of coffee. I start researching everything that’s been say on the subject, and decided I needed to buy a bean roaster, a super-duper 18-bar coffee maker, and a special grinder for the fresh coffee beans I would have to purchase online. Cha-ching! Making a cuppa-joe just got expensive.

And not to long ago I would have had all that stuff in my shopping cart at Amazon or some other e-tailer and have been well on my way to checking out before I even paused to think about the money I was spending.

And because of that, I have spent a lot of money on a lot of dumb stuff. I had to come up with a way to temper temptation and stop spending money on things I didn’t really need.

So what works?

I’ve found that - for me - the single best thing that keeps me from making as many “not-thought-out” purchases is reviewing how I’m spending my money. And that means keeping track of every single penny I spend.

I’ve tried both at various times throughout my life, and taken individually they don’t work.

When I tracked my spending to the penny, but didn’t review where the money was going I still overspent on temptation items. When I keep reports, but didn’t track my spending to the penny I would eventually get behind updating my records and overspend. I needed both.

I know other people use different tactics like writing down the item that’s holding their infatuation and then reviewing it a week or a month longer and only buying if the temptation is still there. That doesn’t work for me. I would write down what it was I wanted, and I would wait a few days, and invariably I would end up somewhere - item and credit card in hand - breaking my vow to wait for the purchase. The thrill of giving in to temptation would overwhelm me and lead to yet another dumb and unnecessary purchase.

For me accurate records AND regular review are necessary to avoid temptation, financially speaking.

I use Quicken for both the record keeping and the reporting, but the software alone won’t be your salvation. You have to work the system and make it a habit, that’s hard. There’s no easy way to do this other than doing it. I was lucky enough that my bank worked out-of-the-box and was able to get started by loading some data.

Trick 1:

To keep on top of it I make sure to put all my receipts in my wallet and key them into the software each and every day. That’s important because you can make a lot of dumb mistakes in a week’s time. If you’re entering and reviewing your spending once a week you’re probably not doing it often enough.

I know what you’re thinking; that you don’t have time to enter your receipts daily; just trust me and do it. It won’t take nearly as long as you think. I found I was spending literally three minutes a day entering my receipts.

Trick 2:

Run reports every day when you first start to get a really good idea where your money is going. It’s really nice if your bank lets you download the last few month’s transactions; you’ll be way ahead of the curve. Having a few months of transactions lets you immediately get an idea of how and where you’re spending your money.

But even if you have to start by entering the receipts you have, run spending reports every day. I like the fact that Quicken shows me a pie-chart of my spending and I can drill into the details. Regardless of what software you use, watch your spending daily!

When you start to see your “hobbies & leisure” spending heading toward the stratosphere, and you’re looking at it each and every day, it makes it a lot harder to rationalize spending you’d rather avoid.

Trick 3:

Be brutally honest with yourself. You’re not keeping all this detail and reviewing it daily for anyone else’s benefit. If you make a stupid purchase make a note of it. Put it in the memo field, make it a category, whatever it takes. Quicken lets you create category tags which are separate from spending categories. If I buy a video game, I can categorize it “hobbies & leisure” but I can tag it as “stupid”.

The category tags I use are: Essential, Non-essential, Unnecessary, and Stupid.

Paying my mortgage is essential, dining out is non-essential, buying a used video game is unnecessary, and buying a coffee bean roaster is stupid!

You’re only fooling (and hurting) yourself if you’re not honest in how you tag and categorize your expenses, so tell the truth!

So, does it work?

For me the answer is, yes, this works. I’ve been tracking and reporting my spending (every penny) for seven months now and - while my wife might disagree - my “foolish” spending is down a lot.

Sure, I still review my reports and have moments where I wonder what the heck I was thinking, but those moments are much fewer and farther apart these days.

To share an example, I’ve become hooked on Guitar Hero III and want to get the other Guitar Hero games. Since we’re just now out of the holidays, and our non-essential spending was already higher than normal, I’ve been able to keep myself from running out and buying the games. The old me would have looked at his checking account, seen plenty of “extra” money, and run off to the store without a second thought.

I still want the games, and I’ll buy them once my budget has room for it. For once I’m controlling my money rather than the other way around.

Getting started:

If you’re not using some kind of personal financial management software today, it’s time to start! There are so many choices available there’s no excuse to not be using something.

You can use Wesabe, Mint, Microsoft Money, Yodlee, or Quicken to name a few.

I’m partial to Quicken because it runs locally on my computer and I like the bill-pay features.

With the specials on tax software this time of year you can usually get Quicken or MS Money free. Since it’s likely you have to file taxes anyway, it’s a great way to get started using personal finance software if you’re not currently.

The most important thing is to just get started. Keep at it and you’ll find it easier and easier to put off those spending temptations. Your bank account will thank you!

Over the last few months I’ve been working hard to improve my frugality. I’ve never before been described as frugal or any other word approaching frugality. But back in the fall I just decided that too much of my money was going out the door on dumb things, and that I worked too hard to be stupid with my money.

So I’ve been evaluating how and where I spend money, and one of the things I decided to do was scale back the programming package I have with Dish Networks. With the writers on strike (and the sad state of TV in general) my wife and I haven’t been watching nearly as much TV, but we’ve been paying through the nose to have it!

So I logged on to my Dish Network account online to downgrade my programming. Simple.

At least I thought it would be simple until I couldn’t find a way to actually downgrade my programming, only ways to upgrade my programming (and spend more money)!

I called Dish Network’s customer service number and navigated through their automated system. I punched in #2 to “change my programming” and listened as it asked me to dial various numbers to upgrade to “Americas’ everything-pack” or “Dish Latino”. Upgrade, upgrade, upgrade - not an option anywhere to downgrade. I was aggravated. So I dialed zero to see if it would connect me to an operator, but it told me it wasn’t a valid option!

Not only could I not downgrade my package, I couldn’t even get to an operator for help! I hung up and called back (and was again greeted and told I was “one of Dish Network’s most valuable customers“) and started hammering the zero key; eventually I was connected to a service rep.

She was in an Indian call center (or a call center that only employed Indians) and told me her name was “Sally”, and asked how she could assist me. I told her I was trying to downgrade my service to save a little money each month, and I couldn’t figure out how to do it either online or on their automated call center. She told me it was only possible to downgrade service with a live customer service agent, so I asked her to please downgrade my package.

She said she was happy to help, and notified me there would be a $5 fee to downgrade my service!

I asked her if there was a $5 fee to UPGRADE my service and she assured me there wasn’t. So I said, “I don’t want to pay the $5 fee to downgrade, I’m trying to save so money each month, but I want to keep some of my satellite services.”

She then told me that there was no exception to the $5 fee on downgrading services.

So I asked to “please” speak to a manager or supervisor. She re-iterated the $5 fee was non-negotiable.

I demanded to speak to a supervisor and she folded and told me she would make a one-time-only-never-ask-again exception and waive the $5 fee.

So at the end of it all I accomplished what I set out to accomplish, but Dish Network why are you making it so difficult for customers really manage their account? See - the thing is I really like the service I get and I recommend Dish Network to a lot of my colleagues, co-workers, and friends. But when trying to do something simple like downgrading my service - and it being such a pain in the heiny - I really question if I should even keep the service at all!

Shame on you Dish for not really taking care of your customers. You were inches away from losing a customer entirely. And the next time I have to argue with a CSR to make a change to my account you probably will lose a customer.

Corporate America - why are you letting customer service just go down the toilet? Sure - there are a lot of sub-par companies out there who don’t care about service, but why are even the “good ones” starting to suck now? Please re-evaluate your policies and views and attitudes towards customers and customer service because if you don’t, one of these days (and I believe it’s coming sooner rather than later) you’ll see a major backlash by your customers.

This one I stumbled on by accident, and it’s my favorite so far - one of the simplest too.

The idea? Put you important to-dos and memos where you’ll see them when it counts most; first-thing when you wake up and last-thing before bed.

Where? Your bathroom mirror.

How? Dry-erase markers! (a buck, or less)

Yep, you read that right. Write on your bathroom mirror with a dry-erase marker. It’s likely the first thing you see in the morning and the last thing you see before bed.

Did you tell a co-worker you would bring a them book? Write it on the mirror before bed and you won’t forget in the morning. Were you supposed to pickup something on your way to work? Write it on the mirror and you won’t have to worry about remembering.

It helps you have - like David Allen advocates - “a mind like water.”

There are two caveats to be aware of with this tip - so take note:

1) Writing all over the bathroom mirror has a low WAF (wife acceptance factor). Some will yell; most will look at you like you’ve gone insane, roll their eyes, sigh heavily, and tell you to “clean that up.” It helps if you have your own bathroom.

2) The marker wipes off with a little bath tissue, but doing so will leave some streaks. You’ll have to clean your mirror more often than you otherwise would (I believe this contributes to the low WAF), but it’s worth it.

I have a nearly foolproof method to overcome the low WAF problem. Before you start note-taking, go into the bathroom, stand where they would, and look in the mirror. Now draw a big heart framing your head and shoulders and write something suitably sweet underneath (”I ‘wuv’ you” works well).

Most importantly, don’t say anything about it. Don’t say, “Honey come check this out!”. Leave it alone and let them find it. They will by the end of the day, and you’ll get major brownie points for being such a big sweetie. Now you can start to make notes out to the edge of the mirror and work your way to the middle. After that, your imagination is the limit.

I use an Expo marker. They don’t have fumes that make you feel stoned, and in a small bathroom that’s a good thing. You can probably liberate a spare marker from your office, I have 10 different colors in the tray of my white board - I’ve only ever used red, black, and blue. One bit of advice: get a black marker; the dark color will show up a lot better on the mirror.

So there’s my $1.00 idea. It makes me happy inside every time I erase a to-do I’ve added to my mirror, and I’ve been able to stop worrying about those loose tasks that need attention, but that I don’t always stop to add to a paper list!

When working on reaching your goals (you do set SMART goals right?) you have to monitor and measure your progress so you know when you’ve achieved your goal, but you need to do more than just measuring to truly manage your goals.

I can use myself as a perfect example. In February I set a very aggressive weight loss goal for myself. I really launched in and tackled changing my eating and exercise habits to support my weight loss goal. And for 4 months I really rocked my goal. I was trending ahead of my weekly estimates and was getting much healthier.

I was not only measuring everything, but I was really incorporating those measurements into my entire being. I tracked calories, what I ate, how much I weighed, the amount I drank, how much exercise I finished. I measured everything to the N^th degree and really thought and reflected on it every day. I held my goal in mind and kept it very “bright”.

But as happens to so many of us, when things got really busy at work and at home, I slipped. I had a small accident that prevented me from working out for a few weeks. I stopped really focusing on my goal and just set myself on auto-pilot, keeping track of things, but not doing anything with the data.

The first thing to go was tracking all of my calories, fats, carbs, and protein, I was just tracking the food - barely. I still weighted myself every morning and wrote the results down, but I wasn’t plugging the numbers in my Excel spreadsheet and really watching how my weight was trending.

I knew at a glance I wasn’t really gaining any weight, but I wasn’t losing any either. That would be great - being stable - but I hadn’t reached my goal weight yet.

So I just sort of floated along on auto-pilot for a few months. I was still measuring a lot of variables, but because I wasn’t holding my goal right at the top of my conscious thoughts like I had been when I first started, I wasn’t making any solid progress.

Once I brought my goal back to the front of my thoughts - and kept it there - I started to make new progress towards it.

This is true for any goal. If you’re not pursuing the outcome, measuring your actions along the way, and focusing on the goal and keeping it big and bright in your mind you’ll eventually lose your forward progress to reaching the goal.

At best you’ll float along - making some progress in places, losing it in others - until one of three things happens:

1. you give up on your goal
2. you achieve some of your goal, but not to the level you really want
3. you redefine your goal and re-energize yourself to really achieve it!

Reaching your goals isn’t just a matter of setting them. You have to measure your progress towards them and keep the outcome held firmly in mind.

Failing to measure your progress means you have to rely on luck to reach your desired outcome. Failing to keep your goal in mind means you’re just going through the motions when you measure your progress.

The two go hand-in-hand in reaching your goals to the full extent you’ve set for them!

I came into the office this morning and checked through my tickler file and sitting there in the folder labeled “29″ was the index card from last month.

Scrawled on the front in my chicken-scratch writing - “Something is coming - probably within a few days - that’s going to change your world. You don’t see it yet. You don’t know what it’s about. But it’s there, rolling inexorably forward, destined to throw you a curve that you do not expect. It could show up sooner or later - but it will show up. Trust me.”

A week and a half after putting that card back into my tickler file to re-check in a month I found myself on an operating room table with a surgeon poised to take my gallbladder out. It was 4 days from the time I found out I had a bad gallbladder to the time the surgeon was digging around in my innards. I certainly didn’t see that coming. I’m ordinarily in fairly good health, and had never otherwise had any problems with my gallbladder.

Today I was reflecting back on how timely and appropriate that quote is. But even more, it got me to thinking that it doesn’t really matter when you review that quote because something is always going to be coming. Life doesn’t stop sending curve balls and trying to generally mix things up for you.

I think what’s more important is knowing that you’ll always be in between these “surprises” and really appreciating the time that life is treating you well.

This isn’t to say that life is about luck; or that cosmic forces are scheming to “keep you down.” It’s to say that life’s obstacles come at you like waves in the ocean. You have to learn to appreciate the calm between the crashing swells, to anticipate when the next wave is coming, to become one with the waves. If you let every wave completely crash over you, you’ll eventually tire and wear out and you’ll just be consumed by all of the hard times in life.

In that situation it’s easy to play the victim to life’s hardships. You can cry, “I’m not in charge in more, life is just busy beating me down and there’s nothing I can do about it.” You’re no more than a piece of junk in the ocean, being pushed around and batted about by the waves.

But you have the choice. You can realize that life is always going to throw obstacles your way. You’re always going to be able to look back over a month or a quarter or a year and say to yourself, “Gosh, I really didn’t see that coming!”. If you can “swim” with the waves, and learn to navigate the bad times and the hard times, you can stay in control.

And while life will never quite throwing you curves, tossing wave after wave at you, you’ll be in much better shape to avoid the worst of it.

I said I didn’t, so we logged into my account to see what options were available. It was then when I noticed the “Community” button where I was able to invite my friend, and we could see each others’ queues. Very cool.

So if you’re curious what I’ve watched, or am getting ready to watch click over and become my Netflix friend.

I’m always into seeing new movies, and would love to see what you’re watching too. Sure, it’s not a tip that will boost your productivity into the stratosphere, but taking a break every now and then to watch a movie is sure good for your creativity. At least that’s what I keep telling myself!

He is one of three share holders of Calderon Textiles in Indianapolis, Indiana and has been - by any measure - very successful in both his personal and professional roles. Azher is a native of Karachi, Pakistan and credited with the original concept of importing quality linens and distributing them to the U.S. market. He holds a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the American University. He also has been a key figure in Indiana providing relief to Pakistan in the wake of the 2005 earthquake that killed 75,000 people.

JC: People seem to be drawn to success individuals and want to know their “secret” or get some “quick-fix” advice that will make them successful too. What advice do you give to people who ask you how to achieve success similar to yours?

AK: I don’t know if you would like a word to describe what I feel is needed to be successful, but in my mind several people have talked to me, including a young person who is going through college and wanting that light bulb to come on, and I say two things are needed: Logic and Action.

Now there may be better words to describe what I am about to explain, but maybe my most favorite word or concept to tie them together is balance. You have these two things that are needed, and then you create a balance in everything you do. There is nothing that one can say they do where they don’t need balance. So these two things I feel are needed.

When I say Logic, I mean you have to be able to think through to make a plan – there is no “quick fix”. The best analogy I can share is to say I need to get to Chicago for business; I start putting a plan together. In order to be there at a certain time, I need to leave at a certain time. I need to get on I-465 and take the exit to I-65 and then get on IN-294 and so on and so forth. I’ve got to take money with me, etc. There is such importance in logical thinking and planning, and you know, understanding even why you’re going there or doing something – what your objective is – all of that. So to think through everything critically and be able to put together a plan is a great ability you have to develop.

Then the second ability is action. If you don’t put your plan into action, you’ll never get there. So if you take action, it needs to be consistent with the plan. So you say, “Okay, I’ve got to go to Chicago, it’s very important.” But if you never get going, then what good is all the logic and planning and thinking through?

And if you do get out but don’t execute the plan in a timely way, then it won’t work. So you get on I-465, but never look that you need to get onto I-65…and you end up going in circles. (laughs)

You would be surprised at how many people have one or the other.

They will either dream about something, but never take the time to think through and plan their lives and goals and priorities. Or they’ll have all these grandiose plans, but don’t have the will to get going. And unfortunately a young person I know is a great example of a guy who wants to do well; he thinks all of these things, but unfortunately he doesn’t take action. I’ve told him that. What happened is he wanted to go into law, and I was very supportive of his decision. Twice now he’s not made the time to take the LSAT. So he had a plan, but no action.

In those regards, and in everything else, you’ve got to have balance.

JC: A lot of people don’t look forward to going to work each day because their major motivator isn’t congruent with what they’re doing (i.e. they work for the money, not for their enjoyment of the work). What is your major motivator? What makes you jump out of bed in the morning, ready to tackle the day?

AK: The key is people. The key is people and a sense of committment to them. There is almost nothing I wouldn’t do for them. Once I had an employee with two small children who was thrown out by her husband. She was faced with moving to Southern Indiana where she had family, but instead called me. Do you know she stayed with my for two weeks - with two small children! It wasn’t two years or two months, but I believe it says a lot that she felt comfortable enough to come to me for help. It’s the relationships I have with some people - I feel like I can’t let them down.

I think that - going back to what I was saying about man being an animal - is that we’re a social animal. And understanding people is the key part of being a leader and a successful person.

I don’t…you can’t do major things without people. Even the best-of-the-best had people to help them - look at the prophets; did Jesus spread his message by himself? (pauses) He had disciples, exactly! And look at how young He was when He died and the power of His message.

And Moses - he had a stuttering problem - and he had to convince the Pharoh - and he was from the Pharoh’s house which shows that good can come from evil. And he prayed, ‘God open my tounge’ when we was going to meet the Pharoh and tell him to release the Israleites.

Last year I had to appeal to the Customs and Border about a large fine they wanted to levey against the company and I prayed to open my tounge and share the truth. The employees at Calderon, they rely on and counted on me to win the case and we did!”

Moses’ brother - I don’t know his name, in the Qur’an we call him ‘Haroon’ - was his ’spokes person’ and even the Prophet Mohammad had people around him he relied on.

I believe there is goodness in everyone - something good - in everyone and you have to “tap” it out. You get it not by being evil and fighting but with love and kindness.”

I respect everyone and expect respect…I will not comprimise on that.

You have to let the process prevale to find the goodness in people. You try your level best to find it, don’t give up on tapping the goodness. When you do find it the reward will be sweet and you will have a permanent victory by reaching out. You build a friend for life.

Now I don’t quite believe in ‘turning the other cheek’ - if you hit me I’m going to…to hit you back, hopefully harder (laughs) but you have to go a long way before I’ll write off a relationship.

JC: How do you balance between when it’s time to stop making the plan and when it’s time to start taking action? You can plan yourself to death, and you can take all the action in the world and not have a good plan. So what do you use as a barometer to balance the two, how do you know when it’s time to stop planning and start taking action?

AK: I think it is experience and intuition that helps you create that balance. You continue to stay focused on that balance and it helps you to continue to keep planning and thinking and vice-versa. Focusing on balance doesn’t allow you to just jump to action without thinking too.

So those two, logic and action, are important – the two ends of the scale – and in the middle is balance which helps you to not tip to far toward either end.

JC: Successful people are generally well read and enjoy learning new and interesting material. What great books are you reading right now?

AK: I would say there are several; it’s hard to pick one or two. However the book I would have to say is the most important and influential book to me would have to be Tuesdays with Morrie.

I also like books about people who have been in business and biographies because the whole point is to try to get as much experience as soon as you can! (laughs)

I would say that I wish we could go through life twice, but knowing what we knew when we were here before, because you learn the first time through (laughs). So what better way is there to learn than to read biographies of people and try to learn from their experiences? You know? Jack Welsh is a good example of this and probably someone you’ve heard of.

Another good book that I really enjoyed is Good to Great by Phil Collins or Jim Collins…something Collins.

A point I want to mention is that in my mind you can never read a book without a pencil. I always say you can’t read without a pen and pencil…and highlighter!

JC: Can you finish this sentence: “A man’s destiny is…….”

AK: …is to leave to his family, community, and country a better world.

If you’ve affected the home, you’ve affected – in some way – all of those. Then your children can affect the world, their children will effect the world – so you try to impact as much as you can, but the minimum is your obligation to your family, then to your community, then to your country, and then your obligation to this world.

JC: One thing that has always impressed me is the amount of consideration that you give to other people when you talk about being with their family. When you told me to, “Go home and be with Michelle” when she was ill, that’s rare – you don’t see that much today. How do you maintain the balance between family and home with business?

AK: You know it’s a tough one because of course there is so much to do at work, with travel, and all that. The best way – I feel – is two ways:

Number one is you always look at quality rather than quantity. You give your complete devotion. When I took three or four days out of the office, my daughter and I flew to Los Angeles, rented a car, and drove on Highway 1 to San Francisco. So you try to give the best you can during that time and just focus on that person.

The second is just the fact that they know you’re available, so trust is created.

I can use the example – a short story to share this with you – It’s about my other daugher when she got her first car. I was going out of town and I needed to borrow her car to take to the airport for an early morning flight. I left home at 4:30 in the morning. She came downstairs at 8 o’clock to go to school and said, “Mom, I need my purse and it’s in my car!” and my wife said, “Did you tell your father to bring it in last night?” She said, “No, but I know him, and I’m sure he did.”

My wife said, “No, I don’t think so, I saw him leave this morning and he didn’t come back in.”

She said, “No, I’m sure he did.”

And she went out into the garage and her purse and her friend’s water bottle were sitting on the steps, and she said, “See, mom?”

The point is that she was so convinced that she could always count on her father to look after her – to be concerned about her – even as he is leaving or is busy with something. The most import thing…trust. And by leaving her purse for her, it created and reinforced that confidence.

JC: The saying goes, “hindsight is 20/20” and we’ve all made mistakes that years later we realized had a bigger impact than we thought at the time. Are there any mistakes that – if you could go back and correct – would have led you to even greater success?

AK: Yeah, yeah…there are plenty of mistakes and if I think back I would say that there were many times I’ve acted contradictory to what I’ve been saying.

My brother moved from Pakistan to America. I was going to college at the time, but I really wanted to do my duty to him. I was consumed by my obligation to family and I was not able to complete my law degree and education. So some of that compromise now I feel did not create balance, it was too much towards his needs and not as much towards mine.

And I feel that the focus has to be in the right place – I talk about family and all – but you have to break it down to your obligations and priorities and understand your priorities.

Your first obligation is to yourself and your family, and then it needs to be your extended family, and then to your bigger family, and then the community. At that time I was so concerned and focused on my extended family that I was out of balance with everything else.

JC: Most of us plateau with our quest for personal growth if we don’t have a relationship with someone who strives to keep us raising our bar and building us up. Do you have a “coach” or mentor? How did you find that person and form the relationship? Is there any invaluable piece of information they’ve given you that’s stuck out more than others?

AK: I would have to give you three names of people who’ve had a great impact on me. Not in any particular order, but all three are important:

Bob (a management consultant) would be one of them. He’s just an incredible person, his motivation…I don’t understand it…he has so many clients, but he acts like each client is his only client. You can be calling at ten o’clock at night or five o’clock in the morning and he’s patient and thinking about the company. What I’ve learned from him is very incredible; so he would be one.

The other is a person by the name of Hamid; he is a vice president at Sallie Mae and head of their I.T. department. And he’s a friend, a very nice guy; it’s been a pleasure to have him as a friend.

The third would be my religious teacher – I don’t know if you want his name or not – his title is “Sheik”. He brings a sense of balance to his teachings. If you look at all of these other people, there are a lot of extremes with religious beliefs and I don’t feel like they have the right balance you know?

One thing I can think of that I’ve learned is that – Hamid made a statement – that I rely so much on relationships. I believe in people so much, and he said, “You can rely on relationships up to a point, after that you have to have the know-how, the knowledge, and all of the other tools necessary to get the job done.”

So you’ve got to continue to have your pursuit of knowledge instead of just relying completely on relationships.

JC: In our world of ever increasing appointments, and twenty-four hour-a-day lifestyle, how do you allocate your day so you don’t get overwhelmed with commitments? How do you block-out time to spend on your own growth and development?

AK: Yes, yes, that I struggle with all the time. I’m struggling with this now actually. And I don’t know if I’ve got the answer myself! (laughs)

JC: What do you do to relax, unwind, and de-stress yourself? How do you unwind from the pressure and stress of all your commitments?

AK: Several things, but most important is the kids. I can get one hug from Soha, one phone call from Ammar or Rima; that does a tremendous amount to relax me. Just yesterday Soha saw me and said, “Dad, what’s wrong? Let’s talk.” And it was just two or three minutes with her, but it meant a lot.

And I am trying to do – but not enough – walking. And using that time to think and reflect.

I love to be able to go and spend an hour just gardening. That’s one of the most enjoyable things I do; to do physical work and gardening, to put the flowers in and take the weeds out.

JC: Goal setting is usually cited as the number-one vehicle to achieving success, but most people never go further than to “day-dream” about how they would like their life to be or what possessions they want. How do you approach goal setting? Do you write your goals down? How often do you review them?

AK: I do, and most people do it the first of January and then don’t look at it! What I do is I have it [my goals] on my desktop, and than I try to look at it periodically.

And it’s okay to re-write them, you have to constantly go back to them as things change. It’s better to change the goal than to just give it up.

I don’t know if I have a set schedule to review them, it’s not every week, but whenever I know that I’m struggling a lot, I go back to them. When you struggle you’ve got to go back and review them, and if you need to, go back to the drawing board.

JC: Getting clear on what outcome you want to achieve is crucial to goal-setting, personal growth and achieving success. How do you define – to you – what you really want out of life so you can craft a plan to achieve it? How do you get yourself crystal-clear on your goals and ambitions?

AK: I think perhaps the biggest understanding that I believe in that helps me is the capacity and understanding of what greed is. I think that my relationship, especially with my business partners would be very difficult to have sustained for years if we didn’t keep greed in check. So we don’t start thinking, “Gosh, every effort that I make, the best I can ever do is one third. So how do I get the other two thirds – the whole?” So it’s very important to keep focused.

I think that the biggest thing would be…for me it comes down to family. It comes down to what I see I want to leave behind, and there is nothing more important than that to me and it is what helps drive me and create the energy to be able to get up in the morning and come to work.

The mistake people make is they look at the means as being the end. Their financial success is for what purpose? So giving to your family, giving to your community, giving to your country is important.

If you just completely focus on the financial and the material and the greed then you’ve lost focus on what the purpose was to be to begin with! So I think that understanding that – it’s my understanding – someone else may come along and tell you its wrong, that’s okay (chuckles), but I think it’s something else…

For example, currently I don’t have a car. I had to turn in my last car when it came off lease. Then in May, my wife had to turn in her car when the lease ended. So we both were without a car! Now I think it would be unbelievable for most people to think that of running a $70 million company and not having a car!

But my son had a car – you know – a G35 Infinity. And it was such a pleasure to see that as opposed to me having a car. I don’t say we can not have a car; the truth is you cannot get by without a car, but I’m saying that’s not the focus. It was so nice for him to get into the IU Kelly School of Business, that same day I got him a car and it has taken me – what – four months to decide for myself! (laughs)

JC: Do you have a formula for personal growth and development? How do you keep your mind nourished with positive and encouraging information to promote personal development?

AK: I think it’s a combination of all that we’ve discussed. So it is a combination of all of those things; family, a sense of commitment, religious experience, and the expectation I have placed on myself for, and to, others.

I now I cannot let these people down just because it is easy to get distracted.

Do I not look at a nice car and think, “Man, would I like to have that?” Yes, but it all gets checked by the beliefs that I mentioned, so you work on these things to create a situation – a point – where it’s very difficult to go backwards.

Let me end by saying this; it is possible to go from being a person to being a saint, but you cannot go from being a saint…down. We all develop up, and climb the stairs, but you cannot climb those stairs downwards – you know, going to steal, and do something wrong – because you’ve achieved a higher status.

Your own values and, peoples’ expectation shouldn’t allow you to go from being what you are to being any less than that. Now that you’ve climbed up, there is no down button on the elevator (chuckles).

I hope this captures the essence of what I’m saying. I mean, you can go from being Satan to being a saint, but how do you go from being a saint to being Satan?

You should always try to work hard to ascend yourself to the point even where God says, “What do you want?”

That’s what we have to do…just ascend, ascend, ascend. So for personal growth, to create that love and commitment, to continue…you just have to ascend!

“Something is coming - probably within a few days - that’s going to change your world. You don’t see it yet. You don’t know what it’s about. But it’s there, rolling inexorably forward, destined to throw you a curve that you do not expect. It could show up sooner or later - but it will show up. Trust me.”

He goes on and encourages readers to write in their calendar: “David Allen said a month ago that something was coming I couldn’t foresee that would affect me significantly.”

That’s a pretty powerful statement - it really resonated with me. So on June 28th I wrote it down on a 3×5 index card and stuck it in a file to review on July 28th.

And I promptly lost the folder!

Today I found it. It’s ironic - and a bit spooky - that I found the lost folder exactly on the day I filed the note away three months ago. So what happened to me that I didn’t see coming, and that changed my life significantly?

I’ve been reflecting on that question all afternoon since I found the card. Honestly, nothing has completely blindsided me, but there have been significant positive changes in my life in the last three month.

I’ve settled some debt which has been great. My wife finally had a medical procedure which will greatly improve her quality of life - and she came through with flying colors and is doing great. Things are going great all around, I’ve not had any conflicts in my personal or professional life, my friends and family are all healthy and happy.

But at the same time I feel like there was a reason I misplaced that card for the last three months (to the day too!) and when I reflect back and see the positive changes I’ve experienced in the last 90 days it makes me feel that much better about how things are going. It really gave me a “psychic boost”.

So I made a quick note on the back of the card - the date and major changes -and I filed it back into my tickler file, where I won’t lose it, to check back in on it next month.

I think this is a powerful tool you can add to your arsenal to build and shape your life. How many of us spent scheduled time reflecting back on what’s happened in the last month? I know I don’t. I try to do it quarterly, and it always happens at the end of the year when every media outlet around is hammering you about New Year Resolutions. But how powerful would it be if you were setting a reminder for yourself each month and really looking back?

I think it would be pretty darn powerful. It’s easy to spent a lot of time looking forward and planning, but if we never look back to see how our plans are actually playing out in our lives what good is all the planning in the first place?

I know my priorities and concerns change over time. What is important to me today may not be in a month, or two, or three. But when I don’t look back to see the progress I’ve made I may keep going towards a goal or working to solve a pain that’s not important to me anymore.

So I’ve resolved to look back each month. I’ve added the card to my tickler file to remind me, and for added security I’ve set a calendar reminder to boot. I challenge you to do the same, and see if you don’t discover something interesting about yourself - even if that “something interesting” is that nothing particularly interesting happened!

After a fairly long wait - so long I had honestly forgotten about Sandy - I received a very polite email from her welcoming me as a member, and giving me some suggestions on how to start working with “her.”

I’ve “asked” her to remember a few things for me - nothing critical. But I have yet to really discover how to really take advantage of Sandy. The idea is such a good one - and it’s really well implemented, but I have been struggling to figure out how to work her into my regular productivity toolkit.

So I’m reaching out to see how my readers have been using Sandy. If you’re an IWantSandy.com user, please leave a comment letting me know how you use her, and what you think of the service.

If you’re not an IWantSandy.com user - go check out the service. It’s free for now (though I can’t imagine it will always be free) and the concept behind the service is excellent.

Maybe I just have too many productivity tools I’m trying to cram into my life, but I’m a sucker for a slick technology implementation.

You might be surprised that the saying, “if you don’t use it, you lose it” is actually true. I had an eye-opening experience this past weekend that has really caused me to pause and reevaluate myself - and you should too!

The short version
I have a good friend and colleague who runs a small web design and hosting company. He asked me to help him upgrade the software on his primary router (if all of this is Greek, just ignore the jargon, I’ll try to keep it light so you can follow along!).

We setup a time to do the upgrade, and he informed me that he had all of the software necessary to complete the project. I put the appointment on my calendar and turned my attention back to my day-to-day activities, safe in the knowledge that my calendar would alert me at the proper time.

Friday night around 11:30pm, I met him at him at his network center and we proceeded to begin the upgrade. This should have been a five or ten minute process.

For us it took almost two hours - and during that time a large chunk of his network was offline! After much digging and poking and prodding (and, I admit, some swearing) we were able to bring things back up and get everything working.

I was shocked at myself and how badly I had performed!

My backstory
I’ve always thought of myself as a “networking guy”. That had always been my strength, and among my peer group and clients I was the go-to guy for fixing their networking hardware and software problems…six years ago!

In the late 90s and into 2000 I spent almost all of my time working in or on network equipment. I was comfortable setting up the hardware and software that drove the Internet. It was what I did, and I took pride in the fact that everyone asked me to handle their routers, networks, and connectivity issues.

However in the intervening years I’ve moved steadily away from a day-to-day relationship with network hardware and software. As I assumed more and more management tasks and moved into application support and ERP systems I found myself touching the network less and less.

And I never realized how badly my skills had atrophied.

So when I was asked to upgrade the software I knew it would be a quick project - and it would have been had I been “in shape” so to speak. And my failure to realize I didn’t have that sharp edge caused my friend’s business to experience an unacceptable level of downtime.

Lessons learned
Going from hero to goat is an eye opening experience. And it really got me to thinking about what other skills I used to take for granted that I may have let languish. I kept thinking to myself, “What else haven’t you done, that you would be bad at now?”

As I came up with a list of things that I would probably screw up these days, I found my brain kept adding in comments like, “Yes, but you’ve learned how to…” and “Four years ago you didn’t know anything about…”

I started compiling my list of skills - whether I perceived myself at being good at them or not - and reviewing it.

As I wrote about in Is your “success resume” up to date? it’s important to keep your list of accomplishments updated while they’re fresh in you mind, I now know it’s also important to keep a tally of your skills, and your familiarity with them, too.

Taking inventory
There are two phases to completing a skills assessment: 1) Building a list of your core skills 2) Evaluating yourself on those skills.

It’s important to not mix up these steps because you’ll get bogged down in the minutia if you try. Get your skill list out of your head and on paper and then process it (you GTDers out there will click with this methodology!).

How do you know what skills you should list? That’s a bit up to your own personal preference, but I listed skills that I would expect to get paid for, or that someday I would like to get paid for. The reason I limited it is because if I sell myself as having XYZ skill and take money for that, but fail to perform, I’m hurting my client and myself.

For example; I’m terrible at painting, but it seems like it should be easy and over and over I get myself into situations where I’m painting a room and saying to myself, “I forgot how bad I am at this, and how much I dislike doing it.” But I didn’t add it to my list because I will never solicit money for painting!

Anyway, get your list down and don’t try to categorize it yet. Put current skills with past skills, mix in skills you’re just starting to pick up, but get them all out of your head and onto a piece of paper.

Once you’ve built your list it’s time to review it. Ask yourself questions like, “Am I good enough at this to get paid for doing it?” and “Would I talk about my abilities with that in a job interview?”

It’s time to be brutally honest with yourself - you’re the only person who will see this list. Some of the skills on your list you may have not used in years, maybe decades, but they will be so deeply ingrained that you would feel comfortable marking yourself as highly proficient with them.

Other skills may be just a few years old, but you have to mark down that you’re probably out of practice, rusty, or not up to speed anymore.

What now?
If you’ve been honest with yourself, once you’re finished you’ll have a concrete list of your core skills and your level of proficiency at each of them. If you’re anything like me you’ll find that about 1/3 of your list will be things that in your mind you were very proficient at, but are not as much anymore, about 1/3 will be new skills that you’ve developed and are very proficient with, and about 1/3 will be skills that your developing and which your proficiency will range from “not very” to “pretty good”.

You may find that your internal perception of yourself changes. Like I mentioned, I used to think of myself as “the network guy”. My perception of myself didn’t match my reality; I was reckless and it bit me.

Now my self image is more in line with reality. I still know a lot about network hardware and software, but I’m rusty and out of practice. Going forward I will need to invest some time refreshing my skills and even brushing up on new technologies and tools that have become standard since the late 90s.

Once you have a real assessment of your skills, you can make sure your self image and reality are in sync. You may even find that there are skills you don’t consider being great at in your self perception, but you are in reality!

Oh sure, I’ve been known to try to scribble a note to myself - holding the wheel with my knee, trying to pay attention to oncoming traffic. I’m sure it’s not the safest way to take a note on-the-go, but when inspiration hits you’ve got to be ready.

I knew there had to be a better way to capture my thoughts while I was in the car or in a place where writing a note was just impracticable. I thought that getting a voice recorder might be just the thing I was looking for. So I did a little research online and settled on an Olympus VN-2100 digital voice recorder. It was small, cheap, and held about 6 hours of recordings in “high” quality mode. It also was stylish in a sleek-white-iPodesque kind of way.

I was happy with my new toy…er, tool…and over the next few weeks proceeded to record a ton of ideas, thoughts, next actions, and musings.

After using it for about a month I discovered that there is usually a downside for every upside.

The good:

• Easy to collect your thoughts at the end of the day on the drive home
• Easy to record next actions & follow up items
• Great for not killing yourself while driving

The not so good:

• Get strange looks from the uninitiated when you record a “note to self…”
• You have to play back the notes, one by one, and process them into your capture system
• You have to actually have the thing with you when you want to record a note, or process your thoughts

The biggest problem I had was keeping the thing with me. It’s just big enough that slipping it into a pocket - while doable - is a bit uncomfortable. I looked like I was carrying an oddly shaped lump everywhere I went. I also had a hard time developing the habit of bringing it in from the car and then back out from my desk as I came and went. It was very easy to forget it in the console of my car, and it’s tough to process your thoughts when you don’t have the recorder!

Or I would remember to take it in to my desk, I would play all of my recordings and process them, then I would promptly forget the recorder on my desk when I headed back out to the car.

I also didn’t like the fact that capturing my recoded thoughts into my workflow was a real-time process. If I recorded 15 minutes of notes, it would take at least 15 minutes to replay them and organize them on my action lists or calendar.

I loved the idea of recording my thoughts while I was out and about, but the method wasn’t really working for me.

And then I found a very cool tool called Jott (http://www.jott.com/). I would say it’s a web-based tool, but that’s not entirely correct. It’s a piece of technology that makes capturing your thoughts and ideas very easy, and takes a lot of the work out of adding the items to your action lists, calendars, etc.

For me the biggest benefit is in “Jotting” myself. I signed up and listed my cell phone as my primary “Jott” device. When I call the main number (877-568-8486) it recognizes me by my cell phone’s caller ID. It asks “Who do you want to Jott?” and I respond by saying “Me” or “Myself.” Then it beeps and I can record my thoughts, when finished I hang up.

After you’ve hung up, serious voodoo magic happens. Jott’s servers transcribe your message and email it to you. A few minutes later I get an email with a transcription of my message. I can push it right into my GTD system with minimal effort, and I don’t have to replay the message and transcribe it myself.

After using the system for a while, I’ve been very impressed at how well it works with my notes. I would say the overall transcription accuracy is 80% to 85%. The times it’s not right, I’m usually using some slang or tech jargon or I’m calling from a pretty noisy environment. The nice thing is that when it can’t understand you it will say so in the message, and you can click the little speaker icon to hear the original.

Every morning I get an overview message of all the “Jotts” I left myself from the day before.

It also lets me setup individual contacts, and group them into lists. So I can record a note and have it emailed to a co-worker, or I can record a note and have it emailed to my entire department. If I think of something in the middle of the night that my teams to tackle the next morning; I roll over, grab my cellphone and when Jott asks me who I want to send the note to I say, “team.” How slick and simple is that?

What I don’t understand though (and have had a couple of converts ask me too) is how is this free? I can’t imagine this will stay free forever -and that makes me sad because it’s such a great tool. I think if they charge for it, a lot of people will be turned off of it and not try it out. For now though, there is no fee, and the only ads I’ve seen are in the daily overview I get each morning.

Jott also works much better for me than the digital recorder because while I had a hard time keeping the Olympus with me when I needed it, I always seem to have my RAZR in it’s trusty belt pouch. So it’s not been an issue at all to call and make the note (I keep Jott’s phone number on speed-dial #9 - to call I just hold the key for 2 seconds).

When I get back to my desk, I just copy and paste my transcribed notes into Tracks for my projects and next actions, or into 30Boxes for my calendar items. It doesn’t get much easier than that.

If you already use some type of voice capture while you’re driving or away from pen and paper you know how powerful the technique can be, I encourage you to check out Jott to take the power to the next level.

If you’re not doing any voice capture you’re really missing out. When you know that you can capture your thoughts and ideas (no matter how silly they later turn out to be) they just seem to flow out. Go and get a small voice recorder or sign up for Jott. You won’t regret either decision.

And for my standard disclaimer; I’m not affiliated with Jott in any way other than being a user who stumbled across the site out on the great big “Interweb”. They simply have a wicked cool tool, that really shows how amazing technology and a good idea can produce a killer online/offline application. I’ve not been given any consideration for this review of their service. I’m just trying to find great tools for myself, and share what I find with you.