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Good morning, Path to Warren podcast. This is episode 16. I hope you’re having a great morning so far. It is Friday morning, July 17, and it is 6:10 in in the morning. Walking in this beautiful morning as the Sun’s coming up, just wanted to talk a minute. I caught myself doing something that I had not done in a long time and I just thought I’d share because it’s showing like it’s a perfect telltale sign of getting away from the vagueness in numbers. So yesterday I had about an hour in the office before I needed to head out to Charleston for a couple of meetings and we’re still in the quarantine and I only had an hour. But the first 15 minutes I spent that 15 minutes doing my numbers. And in the past, if I only had an hour in the office, I would have got caught up in email, started a project or something else other than do my numbers. But today in recovery and being an actively working on getting straight with my numbers and trying to get out of debt and increase my net worth, I find God in the numbers. And that’s something that I needed to share. I enjoyed today, doing my daily spending in my Journal. Every morning I have this routine where every day gets a new page in the Journal. I don’t care if the day before, if I only wrote one or two things on that page, every day gets a new page. The daily process of working these numbers is so satisfying, it’s like I’m sick to my stomach if I don’t do the numbers today. So every day when I start my Journal, I put at the top right hand corner the date, and I write underneath that dollar sign because I’m going to put in there my net worth number that I calculate at the end that’s like the very last thing I do is I find that net worth number of the spreadsheet and that’s calculated from formulas that auto populate, which I’ll go into in a minute under that I put about an inch below on the top right hand corner, about an inch below where I’ve got the net worth going to be. I put another dollar sign and put 169. So $169 is my take home salary pay. That’s like the equivalent of revenue per day. It’s not revenue, it’s income per day. So I took my normal every other week paycheck, divided it by 15 days, and it came out to $169. I’m on a salary of $73,000 roughly today. So after taxes and after health insurance for my family, dental insurance and all the taxes that get taken out, I’m left with basically $169 a day. But that’s every day. So it’s really great to be able to show myself every day that I’m making $169. And it also has a little effect of it has a little subconscious effect on the mind because if I see that I’m spending more than $169 in expenses. When I list my daily expenses, that has a controlling effect on my mind that, hey, I only made $169 and I spent $269. I over spent by $100 that day. Of course, there’s days when I spend more than I make and there’s a lot of days that I don’t spend. Hardly anything compared to what I make. It’s a daily practice that I learned in Debtors Anonymous and the daily practice is titled or the tool there is: “record daily income and expenses.” How simple it sounds. So simple, right? But when you’re on a I would say that it’s more simple. If you are, say selfemployed where you’re selling things one day you might make a lot of money. One day you might not make a lot, but you can track that very easily on your Journal. So I had to come up with this way of taking my salary check. After every 15 days I get paid on the 20th and the 5th of each month. So I just took that amount and like I said, divided it by 15 days. And that was the amount that I write on my daily income part before I even open up my computer. This is what I try to do. I try to lay all this out in my Journal before I open up my computer. Because once I get my computer up, I want to go straight into the bank account and fill in the blanks basically. And I’ll get into more of that. So once I have the date, I have the spot for the net worth. I have my daily income constant amount of $169. I then go over and you can see photos of this in my blog at the Path to Warren website. I’ve got a blog that talks about this routine, but I’ll write the day of the week. So I’ll write out Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, whatever day it is. I’ll write the day and then I’ll put a dash and I’ll put. 3:45 AM for today. So today’s Friday I’ll put Friday – 3:45AM. That’s the time that I got up under that directly. I’ll skip a line because it looks better. I’ll skip one line and I’ll put 3:45 – 06:00 AM.. I always put pray, meditate and read. Those are the three things that I always do every morning. So I put pray, meditate and read. Got to let the moped go by. There’s a moped that just passed me. Sorry about that. So I just like to log and basically give myself credit for what I did during those crucial hours of the morning. But it’s always a track. It’s normally about either an hour and a half, anywhere from an hour and a half to 2 hours, sometimes 2 hours and 15 minutes of pray, meditate, and then reading. And then I’ve now added to my morning routine. Five minutes of crunches. I’ll write crunches outside that. So pray, meditate, read, and then crunches and the thought process there is really trying to improve my ABS. And if I don’t do the crunches right after I read for five minutes and just tell myself I’m going to do it for five minutes, if I don’t do it first thing in the morning, it won’t happen. There’ll be all kinds of excuses and things that happen that I never get around to it. So whatever time I finish that normally if it’s 06:00 AM. On a Tuesday or Thursday, I go to my body pump class with Les Mills. It’s a Les Mills training over at Stronghold Gym. I really enjoy having the accountability of that class. So my Journal on those Tuesdays and Thursday mornings, I’ll write right under where I had 3:45 AM. To 05:45 AM.. I have 06:00 AM – 07-00. And I’ll put potty pump. So then from 07:00 or 7:15, by the time I get home, I shower, cook a nice omelet, a healthy whole 30 vegetable omelet. I then will get in the shower, shave, get dressed, I’m out the door around 7:45 or so, get to work around 8 or 8:15 in the morning. That’s my routine. So I’m logging those things that are very significant. And in my head, I’m subconsciously giving myself credit. And it really has a huge effect on my self esteem and my ability to have confidence for the day because I mean, normally by the time the average person is waking up, I’ve already been praying, meditating, reading, I’ve done crunches. I’ve gone to the gym or on Wednesday mornings and Saturday mornings. At 06:00 AM., I meet with my accountability partner and we have an hour long meeting from six to seven on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. So I’m logging that as well. Tracking that activity on the left hand side of my page. So I mentioned that each day gets a new page in the Journal. I’m not talking about a specific left side, right side. I’m talking about each day gets both sides of the page or both sides of the Journal. So Friday, when I open up the Journal, today Friday, you’ll have on the right hand side certain things. And on the left hand side of the Journal, at the top left hand corner, I have what we call my step Ten. So Step ten is a daily inventory and the twelve steps of recovery. There’s a spiritual process there of taking a daily inventory. And what I found that works for me is I like to track just three things that I did really good and three things that I did that were bad. So I’ve got the way these moleskin journals, there’s a blog on that. Check out the blog that I wrote it’s on the Path to Warren website as well. It talks about the specific moleskin Journal that I like to use. But I like to use it because on that left hand side of the Journal, it’s got three lines where I can use a pencil and block out those three lines. And I’ll draw a line right through the middle of them. So it creates basically two big rectangles. One of the rectangles at the top right good, the other right, the other right hand side rectangle, I put bad and so and those two small rectangles, I’ll write three good things on the left and three bad things on the right. So it could be everything from one good thing could be I read a book to Maddie last night. One good thing could be I did a great job with a sales presentation. Another great thing would be I had a really good share in the meeting yesterday. Or I ate healthy or had a really good, hard workout. Whatever. Three good things that happened from the time that I’m writing the Journal to the time that I wrote the last Journal. So normally I’m filling out my Journal around 08:00 AM.. At 08:30 AM. Somewhere between there. Whenever I first get to work, I’m setting up my day laying out my Journal, laying out what I’m going to do for the day. I’m actively tracking the three good things that were good things and three things that were bad. I’m logging that. It’s like, okay, what did I do the last 24 hours since I filled out the Journal the last time? So a couple of those things and the reason why I go there and the reason why I explained that is that some of those things could have just happened. Like if I had a really good workout 30 minutes ago, I might put it. I might put it there. That’s just what works for me. Some bad things that I’ve logged recently, trying to track some things that are bad or it’s not that I’m a bad person kind of thing. It’s more like, what do I need to work on? Maybe I lost my temper too quickly with my daughter. Maybe I started to look at things on the Internet that I shouldn’t look at and I caught myself. I’m going to write that down. Maybe I didn’t do my numbers yesterday. Sometimes on a Saturday or Sunday, or sometimes if I got a lot going on and I missed it, I’ll write that the next day in my bad section. It’s a way of getting it out of my head. It’s a way of holding myself accountable. But they call that the 10th step inventory. And that’s where I do it, right there in the Journal. A lot of people, in fact, in our literature, it says to do it in the evenings. It says in the evenings we take inventory of our day. And when we were wrong, we promptly admitted it. So it says that the reason why we do these daily inventory items and daily inventory check in with ourselves is because if I realize I snapped at my daughter, or I realized I said something to my wife, or I started to be dishonest with somebody, I can correct it immediately, coming back within 24 hours or a little after 24 hours. The next time I see that person, if I’m coming back and correcting something that I did and say, hey, you know, yesterday I said this comment. I really didn’t mean that. What I meant was this or, hey, Maddie, I really shouldn’t have said what I said. I’m sorry. Please accept my apology. I sincerely apologize. And if I’m able to say that and stop it early, that’s what we want. Because if I don’t do that, it is going to make me spend and it’s just going to bound up and build. The purpose of that ten step is to fix those issues early and nip it in the bud. And the last piece of my Journal in the middle area, where the spine is in the middle of the two pages, if you’re looking from the top right hand page down the spine of the book, it’s going to say Friday. And then it’s going to say those couple of things that I did that morning and then it’s going to have goals. So I’ll put G-O-A-L-S in all capital letters and I’ll put a square around it. And the next section is where I list my goals for the day. These are things that when I get to work and I’m writing my Journal and I’m like, oh, man, I’ve really got to do a LinkedIn post for our company today. I really need to do XYZ as I’m doing my Journal, a lot of times things will come to me that like, hey, I’ve got to do this today. I’ve got to finish this report. I’ve got to proof this blog, whatever it is, I’ll go ahead and write those things on the goals right there as I’m thinking about them so I can get them out of my head while they’re fresh. What I also like to do is I will go to the day before if anything is not finished. Like if I had on my Journal yesterday, ten items and I only completed six of them. If they’re completed, I’ll put a check right beside them. On the left hand side, I’ll put a check. If I don’t get two of them and I move them forward, I put a right facing arrow. Like I’m pushing it forward. So say I didn’t finish wash my truck or wash the tile. I didn’t get to that yesterday, but I’m going to get to it today. On yesterday’s to do list, I’ll write an arrow that says that kind of pushes it forward. I’ll go to today’s Journal if I’m planning on doing it today. Under those goals, I’ll write Wash Tahoe. That’s a way that I can look back and say, I said I was going to do these things, but I didn’t get to these, but I can see where I moved them forward. This is my system this is my beloved system that allows me to not let things fall through the cracks or at least minimize, shall I say, minimize the things that fall through the cracks. I either have next to something, a check Mark, or I have a moved it forward Mark under that list of things that I needed to do once that page is completed, meaning everything’s moved forward or the projects are done for that day, I’ll put a check Mark at the top left hand corner of the page. So right above this little rectangle that’s got good things that I did yesterday, it’s got good. Right above that, I’ll put a big check Mark. And that tells me that everything on this page is either completed, moved forward, or logged into our CRM software. So let me talk about that little piece for a second. The reason why I give each day so much space is because there’s nothing like 03:00 in the afternoon, for example, I had an attorney call and he wanted to talk about a case. Where do you start taking notes? The call comes in, you got a split second to grab something to write down on. He just starts rattling off the case, right? You have a split second to take notes. Do you write it on the back of an envelope? Do you grab the closest legal pad? Do you grab an engineering pad of paper that’s got the logo on it? Right. Fancy. Where do you put all that? So what I do and what I found works for me is that area on the left hand side. Because on the right hand side, I’ve got my goals for the day. The area on the left hand side. Under my 10th step, I got a whole page there. There’s an entire page. That is where I take notes. That is where if a call comes in from a customer or we’re talking about something in a meeting, or I need to track the minutes from a meeting where we have our marketing meetings or we have our business development meetings, I’ll use that page to write business development. And I’ll put a big business development meeting, and I’ll put a big block around that to make it stand out as the title or as the heading. And then I’ll put all my notes from that meeting right there. But all my notes from the marketing meeting that we have on Wednesday every week, I’ll put those meeting notes right there. There’s nothing like being able to flip back a week and say, look, we talked about it right here. If those notes are written on a legal pad, if those notes are scattered on loose envelopes, on the back of an envelope, as my old boss used to say, if those notes are scattered on certain legal pads and stuffed into files somewhere, you can’t recall it. I mean, how are you going to go and get it? So I found the best way that works for me is to just write everything that happens in that day. On those two pages of the Journal, you got a left hand side and the right hand side. Everything under those goals that you listed out in the morning, you have a lot of open space there on the right and a lot of open space on the left. But put everything that happens from that 09:00 AM. In the morning, when you start to call people and start to have meetings, everything that happens from 09:00 AM. Until 05:00, when you go home, all those notes for that day go on one area. They all go in one area. That’s what keeps me organized. That’s what keeps me saying. So before I put a checkmark in the top left hand corner to say that that page is done, what happens is when I’m doing my weekly review or I’m doing my daily review to try to move things forward, I’ll make sure that all my notes that I need to put in to the software from that guy that called in or that customer that called in, everything that he told me that I need to write down, I’ve got it. And I transpose it onto a new case intake sheet, a new work order. I transpose it into an activity, into Clarity Soft, which is our software. But the point is, I’ve taken action on any of those notes that I need that I told him I would do. I told him I would follow up on Wednesday if I told him I would do that. And today’s, Friday, I’ll go to Wednesday, put it in there as a calendar appointment to remind me to do that on Wednesday. But all activities, all loose ends, all important notes. Maybe he told me his brother passed away from Covet. Maybe he told me his mom has been sick. Whatever he told me, I wrote it down during the call on the Journal with a pencil. But once the call is over and I’m doing my review of everything, I’ll take those and put it where it needs to be. So all that to say it seems massive, but it’s a very simple process. So when I get to work and I mentioned that I have this income area, $169 number directly under that, I have a cool system for listing the expenses for the day. So let me just tell you an example of what will happen today. So today I will log into my bank account on the computer log in. I’ll have pulled up my Excel spreadsheet. It’s called the Warren Family Personal Financial Statement. I’ll pull up that spreadsheet of my spending plan for July. Under July, I’ll have a column for each day. And so for yesterday, which will be the 16th for yesterday’s expenses, I don’t think I spent anything personally, but my wife might have because she’s traveling. I will see it there. I’ll see it on the bank account under activities of the bank account. I’ll see. Okay, 554 at the gas station for coffee and water and a snack. I will go on to the spreadsheet and I will type that in to the cell under Meals eating out, food Eating Out. She got it at a gas station. And I’ll put the number in there and I will right click on that cell and it will say add a comment or like adding a note. What it looks like is when you Hover over this cell, you’re going to be able to see the number which is $5.45 or whatever the amount was. But it gives you the option of viewing the notes, the notes parts. It’s like a comment box. It’ll pop up there. The neat thing about this is this is where I put three things. Every expense has three things. It has the date. So I’ll put 7/16 and then I’ll put the amount to the penny. So I’ll put $5.45 and then I’ll put BP gas station or wherever the store was. So those three things are logged with each expense because I’m doing it daily, there’s only going to be a couple of things that we unless we had a crazy day of spending a bunch of things in a bunch of different places, which is rare. It’s only a few items. Normally it’s like three or so expenses for the day, but I’m writing it on yesterday’s Journal. So under the $169, on yesterday’s Journal I write -$5.45 Because it’s taking money out of the account where the $169 is a positive number. This is going to be a negative number in my Journal. And I listed right under the $169. I’ll have $5.45 and I’ll put BP snack and I’ll list whatever other items we have for that day right under that. But that is my way of satisfying the Debtors Anonymous activity or Debtors Anonymous daily suggestion or tools of tracking income and expenses for the day. I can’t tell you how much has helped me. It’s changed my world. So above all of these rows of expenses in the spreadsheet, I have a time tracking area that the time tracking for that day must equal more than 24 hours. And I’ve talked a little bit about this in other podcasts, so I won’t go into it too deep. But I guess the main point is every morning when I’m doing my numbers, the numbers also include time tracking. Time tracking is a huge tool that has changed my world that I learned directly from Debtors Anonymous. I’d always wanted to do this, but I didn’t know the specifics and I didn’t have the discipline in place to actually make it happen. But because I do it every day, it’s easy. It takes like 45 seconds. I mean, seriously, I’ve got maybe seven rows of different categories, like family time, work time. How many hours do I spend at work and I’m going to go into that in the next podcast but I might go into that but I think I’ve already talked about it in the previous podcast but tracking time and tracking daily income and expenses is a major start to this whole debtors anonymous and getting out of debt because what you find is if you’re working 12 hours a day and your family is only getting 30 minutes a day which is easy to do I’ve been there, done that. You can just see what’s going on in a picture. I’ve got enough data now. I’ve got probably 18 months at least of data that if I wanted to chart this and look at a pie chart the whole work life balance wheel I could do that with the amount of data that I have today but I try not to think like that. I just want to look at what’s happening right now and stay in the present but if I find myself playing Legos with my daughter or watching a movie with my wife If I find myself doing that I’ll track my time and get credit for it so it just helps me again subconsciously sit there and be present knowing that this is part of it, this part of my work life balance. Part of if I’m doing something for fun for example because I believe I’m a workaholic If I find myself working until 632 nights in a row, for example I quickly can add it up in my head oh man I’m going to be over on my work hours I’m going to be over on my work hours and be dead in my family. I had no concept of that. I had no idea that if I am overworking which I did when I had my solar business I remember adding up one week I was working 90 hours in a week. I am debting I’m stealing from my family because I should be spending that time with them so I hope everybody has a wonderful day. I hope this was helpful. If it was helpful please hit subscribe or forward this to someone someone that could use it and I hope you have a wonderful day. Make your contribution. Thanks so much. Stay tuned. Have a wonderful Friday.