When I started my first real job a month or two ago, I had to do the whole benefits election thing – if youre not familiar with it, its where you go in and pick your different insurance options and all that good stuff – if your company offers it of course. Well, the way these things work is that you make your choice 1 time each year – so whatever selections you make is what you�re stuck with until the next enrollment period. I rarely get sick, at least sick enough to go to the doctor, so I chose to go with the catastrophic insurance plan. That means I have a huge deductible ($1500) and then they pay 80% of the reasonable fee from medical services after that. Each year, its capped with a $3000 out of pocket maximum. Even though I didnt think I would need it, I decided to open a savings account to put $3000 in – just in case I had anything come up. This way, I earn a little interest on the money and as long as I keep the account balance at $3000, I shouldnt have any money issues related to medical expenses.
Well, this weekend I ended up tripping on my garage and breaking my foot. It broke bad enough that I had to have surgery today to go in and put it back together. Since everything happened so recently, I dont have any bills just yet for any of the services, but you can bet Ive maxed out my deductible at the very least. This was the last thing I was expecting to happen when I setup my insurance plan, but since I planned ahead and stored money away as soon as I started getting my paychecks, everything is going to work out ok. If I hadnt, I would probably have to put all of this on my credit cards and let the interest build up as I paid it down slowly – so in the end it would cost quite a bit more than the actual medical service cost.
The point of all of this is that you should make sure you always understand the implications of the choices youre making. Whether its an insurance plan, the type of home financing youre getting, or whatever else you might have to do, you should always understand the worst case scenario. (E.g. I also have a saving account for my other deductibles for my home insurance and such so those are covered too.) Its nice knowing that things are taken care of in a time like this – and the whole ordeal was something would have never guessed would happenso you just never know what tomorrow holds for you.
Personal
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What Makes a Good Goal?
So what does make a good goal? My employer requires everyone to go through a performance management process where everyone defines goals at the start of the year and then each person is held accountable against those goals at the end of the year. Since its time to create my goals (I just started a month ago), I started doing a bit of reseach on defining goals and here are the 4 common components of a good goal:
Measurable Outcome
Specific Actions to Reach Said Outcome
Why the Outcome is Important / Purpose
Timeframe
Granted, these 4 items are a bit slanted towards performance management, but I thought they might be good to share since they can still apply to personal goals. Even if you dont state each of those items in your personal / life goals, youll still need to think about them. If you cant measure your progress against a goal, then how will you know what to change (or even if you need to change) in order to hit the goal? Perhaps you dont know what actions you should takebut if thats the case, you should figure them out (perhaps thats another goal right there) because if you dont know the next steps, how will you ever take them? If you cant say why the goal is important to you, then youre probably not going to be motivated to follow through with it. Finally, if you cant put a timeframe on it, then youre probably not serious about doing it. I used to think that I never had time for anything – then I realized I had to make time for the things that were important to me. Having a timeframe helps you commit to making that time and using it to work towards your goal.
The digital voice recorder – an underutilized productivity tool
About a year ago, I purchased a little digital voice recorder at the suggestion of one of my professors during the MBA program at Alabama.� He originally suggested it as a tool I could use to improve my public speaking abilities (I dont enunciate as clearly as I shouldanyway).� When I purchased the device, I decided I would get a decent one that had digital storage (yes, tape ones still exist) and had a way to export to a PC (in this case, via USB).� Now devices with these specs will run $40-$80 usually (at least they did about a year ago) – mine was somewhere in the $50-$60 range.� Seeing as how I spent a nice chunk of change on the thing, I decided I would try to make as much use out of it as possibleand its been great.
The two main things I use it for that are really helpful are listing off TODOs and keeping track of ideas (usually new business ideas).� I realized these types of thoughts seem to pop into my head at completely random times – usually when Im not even thinking of anything related to them.� But if I didnt write them down, Id either forget them or worse – keep thinking about them over and over so I wouldnt forget them.� If youre a David Allen follower (the author of Getting Things Doneif you havent heard of it, look it up on Amazon – great book), you know that the main thing he advocates is getting this type of stuff out of your head and into a place you can trust which frees you to move on to other, more productive, things.� Well, this little voice recorder has been the perfect solution for me.� Im not a big fan of paperI just dont like re-reading notes for some reason, and Im usually not near a computer when I need to write this stuff down, so the voice recorder has proven itself to be quite a handy little tool.
Ive recently been trying to use it to help get to sleep.� If youre like me, you have tons of ideas and random thoughts going 1000 miles an hour through your head when youre trying to go to sleep – for whatever reason my brain just doesnt like chilling out if there is something else to think about.� When I get some idea stuck in my head and have this problem, Ill just use the voice recorder to capture it and any other thoughts Id like to continue with the next day – after that, its much easier to fall asleep.� Its quite strange, but it works.
So – the next time you have too much on your mind, you might want to think about picking a digital voice recorder up.� Even if you dont buy a dedicated device, many cellphones and most PDAs have a similar feature built-in so why not give that a try?� It might be just the thing youre looking for to make you that much more productive.
Oh, and by the way, most of this post came from my recorder – so they even help with blogs!