Wagon. Off.

So, been a while.

I'ved really fallen off the wagon recently, re productivity. Not in any gross way - weeky review, up to date lists, empty inbox - check. But nonetheless, I still feel leaden at work, like being at work is a chore.

Its at times like this that I really appreciate having my journal. A quick scan through the last few months reminded me that Iv lost track of my meditation a great deal. I think this in turn has led me to lost a little of the enjoyment that you can find in doing any task. Its also hindered my attention span, which means harder tasks are becoming less fun sooner, if you get my meaning.

My aim therefore is to really go at my meditation again - to simplify my evenings to include yoga, exercise and meditation as my main hobbies (alongside, of course, spending time with freinds and family, eating etc - im no monk). Computers, books and so on - they can go to the side for now.

Hope this helps.

Living off cash

Since the New Year my wife and I have a new plan for saving money – CASH. We got married at the backend of last year so invariably that cost a lot of money. Came straight back from our two week honeymoon to Xmas and NY, so again, money spent. We have plans to get a house, maybe a family and so on, so a thorough look at the budget was important our plan this year was to save at least £5k – that’s 10% of our income, more or less.

My income is pretty straight-forward – monthly pay, £2200 after tax. My wife’s is more complicated though - £650 monthly from one job as an employee, £180 weekly from another job self-employed.

This always made budgeting difficult when we lived off credit cards. You get one persons pay, pay off the credit card (or most of it anyway), then each week have to remember to move some of that weekly pay into the relevant account to cover whatever bills are coming out.

When we sat down and looked at our budget we noticed an interesting coincidence. My monthly pay and her monthly pay were almost exactly the same as our monthly outgoings. Her weekly pay was the same was our weekly outgoings.

Monthly? Rent, utilities, phones, internet, savings, tax (for self-employment), travel cards (Zone 1-2 London), insurance etc.

Weekly? Human food, cat food, lunch at work, going out money, booze, meals with friends, expensive cheese, snobbish coffee, etc.

Since we had this weekly amount in cash we thought we’d try an interesting experiment – live off cash. Every Sunday evening we draw out £170 in cash (leaving a tenner in for good measure) and put it in a tin, then just take out of the tin as we go along.

The impact has been amazing.

I never realised how detached I had become from budgeting, self-control and the reality of money  when I was living off credit cards. We used credit cards for nearly everything – deliberately. Neither of us had a great credit history – no problems, just not much credit used. So we thought we would start using it to build up a history. Trouble is it bears no reality to any budget you set.

Picture this – Tuesday morning, hard day at the office, you’re walking to another meeting and you pass a coffee shop. Your “treats” budget is £50pm. You remember a few coffees here and there, the odd drink after work perhaps, but have no idea really. How do you know whether you can stay within budget by having that coffee?

What rules about living off cash is that budgeting is immediate. You look in your wallet, you have a tenner. You know that‘s all you’ve got for the week at work. You can have the coffee if you want, but you a) have to have a cheap lunch b) have no other coffees all week c) take food in from home d) spend less money over the weekend.

Trying to decide if you can afford a coffee when you have access to £3000 on a credit card is basically impossible. Trying to decide if you can afford a coffee when you have a tenner in your wallet to last you three days is easy.

Other breakthroughs my wife and I have had – 

Sitting at home with the wife before we went out shopping, deciding that as we were going out that Friday night, we would only buy food that would allow us to eat food we already had in the cupboard or freezer; deciding a few weeks later that we would stay in this weekend to allow us to restock the freezer.

Getting a kick of managing to eat at work every day all week for a tenner.

The joy of avoiding spending any cash all day for two consecutive days.

Realising that we could cook twice as much food for basically pennies more, then take it for lunch, and the money we save would buy us a couple more drinks on Friday night, pay for a new book, or if we did it all month, buy a new top or pair of pants.

Blowing money on a take away at the beginning of the week and regretting it all week when we had no money to go out.

In all the cases above, with a credit card it would have been so easy to just think “oh we’ll stick it on the card, we’ll stick it on the card, we’ll stick it on the card”. That’s how the bills rack up.

There’s also a reverse psychology in play. Twice since New Year (7 weeks) we had to draw out an extra £20 to get by – and boy it sucked. I felt like a failure; I’d set a standard and failed to stick to it. The following week I tried extra hard to stick to the budget.

It becomes like a game – how little can you live off. And unlike living off a CC, the success is immediate – making it to Friday with half you cash left and knowing you can blow it all and stick to your budget – amazing feeling.

Choices

Hardly seems fair, but sometimes you have to choose between two goals.


One of my goals at the moment is to avoid spending those little bits of cash that make the money float out of your pocket. Drinks, snacks, etc. So drinking tea in the office instead of going out for coffee, taking the remains of last nights dinner into work to save on lunch. Great.


Another goal is to eat more healthily. Im generally pretty healthy, but I have a definite sweet tooth, and I find the best way to minimise the amount of sweet stuff I eat is to avoid starting. Once I get the taste...


So, its Wednesday afternoon and I'm hungry. I have no food with me, but there's a fruit stall 'round the corner. Alternatively, there are biscuits in the office. What to choose?


Its deeper than it looks. The key to successfully sticking to your goal is to make them habitual. Habitually keeping your money vs habitually eating healthily. Which habit are you going to break first. 


It seems to me that it will come down to one of two things


1) Which goal is clearer or stronger for you - if you would like to save money, but your major focus is staying fit, fine, simple.


2) Where your weaknesses lie - If you compulsively spend money, you'll nip out and buy fruit and justify it by saying you're staying healthy. If you compulsively eat sweets, you'll eat the biscuit and say that you're saving money.

Same outcome, different reason. So if the outcome is the same, does it matter?


Abso-friggin-lutely. 


Habits remind me of entropy. If you dont keep putting energy into the habit, it eventually falls away. 


Life gives you tough decisions, but if you consistently see that there are choices, and try and navigate the best you can between the difficult options, then in the long term you're going to be headed the right way. the decision will stick with you and remind you that "I really need to take some healthy snacks to work with me"


If you allow the good habits to be a tool to reinforce the bad habits, you're gonna have one hell of a job shifting em in the future. You're gonna deliberately ignore the ways to get round both problems, using one of them to justify your decisions.


So, fancy a biscuit.

Honesty

Wow, forever since I did a post. The small matter of getting married, going on honeymoon, Christmas and employing three new staff at work, amongst other feeble excuses.


Nonetheless yesterday I had a fascinating conversation with the Chief Officer of our charity. We were planning our business for the coming 5 years or so, and were thinking about the words we wanted to associate with our business. Everyone wants to be efficient and fun and innovative. However I had suggested honesty as something that we should have as core value.


I have previously worked in a organisation where honesty was seen as a key part of the way everything worked. Its incredibly powerful, and far more difficult and effective than you might imagine.


An example of the power of honesty


Scenario A -  you ask a staff member if they have done something, something that's important and has consequences if they forget. They forgot. If honesty is valued, they will tell you, knowing that lying is so serious. The result? A problem is out in the open and the people affected can deal with it. Are they happy with the person that forgot? No. But at least they can deal with that problem.


Scenario B - you ask a staff member if they have done something, something that's important and has consequences if they forget. They forgot. If honesty is not valued, they say "oh I emailed so and so and they never got back to me". The result? The problem is still there, only now its on the back of one person to sort out, if they can at all.


In both these situation the problem already exists, whether its out in the open or not. The difference is that the problem is solved with the power of the team rather than the individual.


Another example of the power of honesty


Scenario A -  a department in an organisation is measured once a year on how well its doing, whether by financial targets, output, quality of service, whatever. If honesty is valued in an organisation, the penalty for lying about your performance is greater than poor performance itself. The result? The poor performance comes to light and the organisation can take whatever action is needed to increase the performance in that department.


Scenario B - in an organisation where lying or "exaggerating" results is the norm, the department would find a way to show its output as being better than it really is - double counting, false disasters, creative accounting, etc. The result? that organisation continues to perform poorly.


In both these situation the problem already exists, whether its out in the open or not. The difference is that the performance problem is never addressed, and either the truth comes out further down the line when its two years deeper, or the organisation's overall performance continues to suffer.


Honesty is hard - there is some part of it that's about taking your medicine, taking responsibility for what you have or haven't done and accepting that ultimately we all make mistakes. It means risking losing face, it means being honest with yourself as well as others, and knowing when you've let yourself down.


Alternatively honesty is easy - I work hard enough in a complicated environment without having an overarching complexity about who I told what, when and to what aim? I want all my efforts to go on work, not lying about it. I work hard so I make mistakes, not because I'm sloppy but because I'm pushing myself. I want to be able to come in in the morning and work hard on my job, not on creating a network of fine threads to cover those innocent mistakes, or to feel that if I dont create the network of lies I'll be punished, because everyone else is.


Honesty has to be a culture. And all organisational cultures take their cues from the top. The examples set by your senior management, directors and CE all drip-drip through everyone else that works there. if they bluff and blagg about what they do, how great the business is going, then everyone else will too. The day your CE comes to you and says "this is our problem, this is the reality if our situation, its time to roll up our sleeves" is the day your workforce rolls their sleeves up to.


How honest are you about your financial situation? How honest are you about the impact of the recession on your team? How honest are you about whether your staff members feel fulfilled and are looking for work elsewhere? How honest are your best staff members when they're being poached by someone else?


I began to wonder about Nick Leeson - how many people's lived were affected by the fact that he worked in a culture where lying about your mistakes was accepted, and raising it honestly to be dealt with was not? Extreme example perhaps, but easily understood nonetheless.


So honesty it is for our business - honesty with our funders, with our Directors, with our stakeholders, with each other. Because the alternative is so destructive, so backward and so futile, that it barely seems a choice at all.