Chicken trying to take flight

[Chicken Smitzel]

This is a self-improvement attempt that I am posting here as I think some of you may be interested in self-improvement.

So after a day of mostly doing nothing but pointless existential thoughts, social media and YouTube indulgence I have decided to take action to try to make things a bit better for myself by the end of each day.

Tomorrow at 9pm I am going to create my schedule for the next day and give a rating with how satisfied I am with my day and write about any realisations I have had, how successful I was in following the schedule and what I should consider for my future schedules.

Satisfaction level today: 4/10
How well I think I followed the schedule: N/A

Inspired by: 12 Rules for Life ~ Jordan Peterson
Let the journey begin

13/04/2019	Day one of being more productive
9:00:00 AM​	Make breakfast and finish uni assessment
10:00:00 AM​	https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/m365-fundamentals/
11:00:00 AM​	https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/m365-fundamentals/
12:00:00 PM​	Go shopping at coles and warn group about deadline for scope report
1:00:00 PM​	Make lunch and go to laundromat
2:00:00 PM​	Read a little Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory while at laundromat
3:00:00 PM​	https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/wwl-mba/deploy-and-manage-windows-10-and-office-365-proplus/
4:00:00 PM​	Begin collating groups work into scope report
5:00:00 PM​	Begin power point
6:00:00 PM​	Dinner
7:00:00 PM​	Finish off Scope report
8:00:00 PM​	Finish off power point
9:00:00 PM​	Create schedule for the the next day and post update on Lynk Former Forum
10:00:00 PM​	Read a little Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory
11:00:00 PM​	shower, brush teeth, shave, bed

 

[Lynk Former]

I've done something similar, but in terms of my finances.

I've got a spreadsheet set up that tracks my regular bills, food, shopping, etc, that I buy on a fortnightly basis since that's the length of each pay cycle.

I keep track of every kind of bill, not just the regular monthly ones, but the yearly ones and more, what date they're meant to be paid, etc. That way, it's easier to keep track of how much money I have to work with at any given moment and I don't end up spending more than I should.

It also helps when I want to spend a lot of money on something big, there is no guess work to it, the money available to me is all laid out in front of me down to the cent.

As for other things I do to organise myself... I use to make tables for various things I did similarly to you @Chicken Smitzel, but after a while, the routine became so natural that I didn't need to do that any more. Once you get it all down, it ends up becoming second nature and you get more organised.

The only reason why I still do the financial spreadsheet is because the variables tend to shift more when you you have different goals of what you want to save up for and when you can do the saving.

 

[Chicken Smitzel]

So for the good part of the day I was ahead of my schedule as I woke up around about 8:30am.
I ended up going to Kmart to get more socks and got a vr box which made me get a little off track as I played around with it. For the most part I did do most of what I had planned to do today but my group failed to hand in their work to me today so I can collate it into the final scope report as I am the voluntary leader of the project. This annoyed me but I had expected this as they don't seem very engaged in class or seem to care about their education too much which is weird since they are paying for it. Next time I will be sure to try to pick people that come across as more screwed on for future group projects.

My friends from home ended up messaging me asking if I want to go out tonight. I didn't want to at first but ended up deciding that I am going as I can't work on the scope report/powerpoint anyway. I gave into my impulsive/irrational side.

Satisfaction level today: 5.5/10
How well I think I followed the schedule: 6/10

14/04/2019	Day two of being more productive
9:00 AM​	Recover
10:00 AM​	Breakfast
11:00 AM​	Scope report
12:00 PM​	Power Point
1:00 PM​	https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/paths/m365-fundamentals/
2:00 PM​	Read Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory
3:00 PM​	Eat
4:00 PM​	Play GTA
5:00 PM​	Message my mum about life
6:00 PM​	Polish scope report
7:00 PM​	Polish power point
8:00 PM​	Go to chemist warehouse a get melatonin
9:00 PM​	Sleep
10:00 PM​	Sleep
11:00 PM​	Sleep

 

[Chicken Smitzel]

I've done something similar, but in terms of my finances.

I've got a spreadsheet set up that tracks my regular bills, food, shopping, etc, that I buy on a fortnightly basis since that's the length of each pay cycle.

I keep track of every kind of bill, not just the regular monthly ones, but the yearly ones and more, what date they're meant to be paid, etc. That way, it's easier to keep track of how much money I have to work with at any given moment and I don't end up spending more than I should.

It also helps when I want to spend a lot of money on something big, there is no guess work to it, the money available to me is all laid out in front of me down to the cent.

As for other things I do to organise myself... I use to make tables for various things I did similarly to you @Chicken Smitzel, but after a while, the routine became so natural that I didn't need to do that any more. Once you get it all down, it ends up becoming second nature and you get more organised.

The only reason why I still do the financial spreadsheet is because the variables tend to shift more when you you have different goals of what you want to save up for and when you can do the saving.

I think I am going to start doing tables to limit my spending as this would probably help tame my spontaneous nature. I would still be impulsive but be operating within spending brackets which would be better than nothing.

 

[Lynk Former]

That's one of the big things you need to overcome at this point. Impulsive spending and the things that end up going through your head to justify that spending.

While I did end up saving quite a lot of money during those early years after I finished school, I did end up spending money on a lot of stuff I didn't need or things that didn't last for very long.

This can be a big problem once you start to get on top of your finances because you start to realise you have more room to manoeuvre which means you have more room to make excuses to yourself to spend more.

The thing to do at this point is to horde as much money as possible, every scrap if need be. While you can get limited use out of it now for a short period of time to make yourself feel better, it's better spent once you have enough to make actual good use of that money.

For example, after years of saving scraps of money, I found that I had saved enough to put into a car... and I didn't buy the car because I had reached a milestone where I could afford one. I bought a car because I absolutely 100% needed a car and could not progress forward without one.

So when the day came that I bought a car, I had enough to get a car that was cheap (but not the cheapest), but had all the features that I needed in a car.

And because I had enough for a car, I didn't need to scrape money together or go into debt to acquire one. No debt meant that I was already looking toward my next target, which was saving enough for a house.