Every morning, I have gotten into a solid routine of “doing my numbers.” In my recovery program, they say “God is in the numbers” and I wholeheartedly agree with that and believe it. I get asked all the time, what steps to you take during your morning routine with your numbers. Recently, I also walked through this in a podcast, but I wanted to give you a visual to follow as well.
So, here we go! Understand that EVERY day gets a new page. By a ‘new page’, I mean both left and right sides of the page.
- Step 1: DATE – I always start by putting the date of today in the top right corner of the page.
- Step 2: NET-WORTH – Under that, I put a dollar sign as a place holder (for now). This is where I will fill in our family’s net-worth, once I formulate the cells in my excel spreadsheet. I have a formula that adds up the account balances in the Asset category. These balances of accounts adds up ultimately into a net-worth number. (Remember, Assets – Liabilities = Net-worth) Net-worth is a snapshot of where I am today. So, I figured if I start tracking and charting that key number daily.
- Step 3: DAILY INCOME TRACKING- Four lines down from where the net-worth will end up, I go ahead and fill in $169. This number is my daily income from my salary job. That is my $73,000 annual salary broken down to a daily figure of take home pay. We get paid twice a month. So, if my paycheck is $2535 every two weeks equals $2535 every 15 days. $2535/15 days = $169 per day income. This is my take home pay per day and it is important to be conscious of this number and track it.
- Step 4: TIME TRACKING- I like to write down the exact time that my alarm goes off each morning. I put it into my time tracking section of my spreadsheet. The weekly average of my ‘get up’ time is automatically calculated so that I can see an average for the week, then see an average for the month.
- Step 5: MORNING ROUTINE ACCOUNTABILITY- Being able to ‘get credit’ in my head for things that are accomplished when no one else is watching is easy with my journal. I like to give myself credit for the ~2 hours of morning routine activities that I get done each day. The mornings where I attend a 6am Body Pump class at the gym, I will write directly under the 3:45 – 6:00am number “6:00-7:00am Body Pump Class.” Note, I do not track much more in my journal as it relates to keeping track of my time. The rest of the day from the time I get to work until the next day when I wake up is all kept in the excel spreadsheet.
- Step 6: GOALS- Every morning, it is crucial to write down the hand full of projects and activities that I need to do for today on my goals list. This list is very different from my Master Project List. This is only where I put items for today.
- Step 7: STEP 10 DAILY INVENTORY- On the left hand page of my daily journal entries, I make a small rectangle where I can write down three “good” things that happened to me or that I did in the last 24 hours. Then I write down three “bad” things that happened or things that I need to do better or not do again on the right hand side of that left page under the “bad” section. Just making a list of three good and three bad things is such a great way for me to continue to take personal inventory, Step 10.
