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A Rapid Development Framework for Microsoft Access

When I began my business doing consulting, the freedom was great. I could do anything I wanted whenever I wanted. No one was there to look over my shoulder to tell me what to do. I knew I had to deliver things, but it seemed that was always a job for “Future Jon”. Until the first month went by and I created my invoice (at that time everything I did was hourly based) and dropped my hours onto the detail log and summed up my fee based on the hours and rate.

Uh… oops. I guess “Future Jon” was on vacation.

I learned an important lesson that month that I needed to work hours to write invoices.

Even though I really dislike hourly billing for customer facing payments, I don’t think I’ll ever get away from keeping track of my productive client hours. Why? Because of that first month I worked. I know I need those hours for myself to work in order to make progress on whatever I’ve promised to deliver.

So I had motivation. If you find you aren’t doing something (eating right, exercise, etc.) I look for motivation for myself. Why do I want to do it? I am particularly motivated by knowing the likelihood of future benefits. But there’s more. Consider these three things as stages to discipline (continuing to do things)

  1. Motivation
  2. Goals
  3. Revitalization

Once I’m motivated to do something, I’ll set goals. Goals should be concrete things you can say were definitely accomplished or not. I want to hit 170lbs on the scale. Ok. That’s a goal. If I weight 300lbs, I might want to smart smaller so I can build on accomplishments.

Once you either reach a goal or have miserably failed to reach a goal in the desired timeframe, you will need to revitalize your efforts. For me this might be re-reading the book Eat To Live by Joel Fuhrman. This will remind me of all the positive consequences of eating healthy and re-spark my desire, then I can set a new goal. If I just failed, maybe it will be a less aggressive goal, or something I think I just can’t fail at.

So anyway, this is the process I find myself using to be disciplined and continue to do things that need to be done when I have no one looking over my shoulder to tell me. I’ve lived this way in business for about 25 years and I like it.

What are your experiences with being disciplined and following through on things?

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