Goal setting and planning… We have all done it in some stage of our lives. Effective? Maybe. Room for improvement? Most definitely.

It is almost the start of a fresh new year, 2012. The world is going to end according to prophets! What’s a better time than NOW, when you know you will die anyway than to be outrageous and set amazing empowering goals!

In my opinion there are 4 ways to effective time management.

1. What?
The ‘WHAT’ part relates to what it is you want to achieve! I usually set my yearly goals in terms of finances, body, relationships, work, travel and contribution. These goals are all empowering and not just some ‘fluffy standard goals’. What is it that you want to achieve?

2. Why?
The ‘WHY’ actually makes up 80% of the equation. Have a clear enough why and you will reach your goals so much faster! So many people make ‘to do lists’. Tasks on this list include: answering emails or even reading the news. When we have an to do list in front of us, often we do the easiest one first and postpone the difficult one. In my career I found that this is often because the ‘why’ is not strong enough. Without the why you think by yourself: why should I do this? It doesn’t make sense? That’s also why so many people fail subjects at high school. They don’t have a strong enough ‘why’ they should study as they will never use the material anyway!

3. How?
The ‘How’ is your individualized plan to success. How are you going to accomplish your goals? I mentioned that I said my goals for the year. Now I break them up into 4 weekly goals. Each of these 4 weekly goals are outcome orientated and will bring me closer to my yearly goals. Examples for weekly goals are: getting 2 new clients, finishing new e-book, planning my holiday to UAE, etc. This part is really up to you and is fun! Maybe you want 6 weekly or 2. How long will you spend on each goal? That leads to the last and final step.

4. When?
So you know the ‘what’, the ‘why’ and the ‘how’. Now it is simply a task of planning it in! When are you going to plan your time to achieve your weekly goals? Block out the time you think you need for it in your weekly default diary template and stick to it!

Some overall tips for efficient time management:
1. Always have a default diary
A default diary is basically a template which shows the times you are available and already has some of the standard tasks that you do every week planned in, so you don’t need to find time to do them, it is already there! I strongly recommend you to block out 3 hours to work ON your business proactively.

2. Have a leave time
If you know what time you have to leave, your brain will find a more efficient way to complete your task. Not with lower quality, but with more efficiency

3. Never have ‘Got a minute’ Meetings
I’m sure we are all guilty of having ‘got a minute’ meetings. A short disruption by one of your colleagues who needs something that is not really urgent. After those meetings we often need 5 to 10 minutes to get back into what we were doing. Block half an hour at the beginning of the day and end of the day to accept got a minute meetings and you will be much more efficient!

If you found this article useful, please share it with your friends!

To your success,
Bart

The right environment

When you set your goals and dreams it is very important to have the right environment that accommodates your energy to make it happen.

Social environment
Make sure that you surround yourself with a network of positive friends who support what you do and who want to see you succeed. You don’t want negative people who say you can’t do it or who have a lot of limiting beliefs. You can still care for them and hang out, but talk about something else with them.

Location
The right location is very important and this depends on you! Where do you feel most happy and feel that you can achieve anything? Is it the beach, on a mountain or in the city… In Europe, Asia… Make the decision and move there. It will greatly help you to get closer to your goals in the right location.

Think also in terms of accomadation. Many people look for the cheapest, but is it really the cheapest? Let’s take an example. When I was looking for an apartment there were many cheap apartments for $100 a month. A little bit old, slow internet. I could have taken that and saved $400 compared to a $500 apartment.

But I chose the $500 apartment. Why? If the apartment accomodates your energy so you can work more, you can get more income that far exceeds the $400 in price difference.

You can use this principle for pretty much everything. Think in terms of: Is it worth it? Will it accomodate my dreams and goals? Rather than ‘I dont have the money’ b/s.

I was researching successful brands to find out what makes them successful, in particular in their logo design and slogan. I stumbled on the website of Sony, who is currently launching a new product: The Personal 3D viewer.

This Sony product is very innovative and will start a revolution in the tv and movie-industry. Why buy a television that costs you thousands of dollars, a home cinema set that costs you another thousand when you can only use these devices from home?

Sony came up with this unique 3D viewer that will give you an amazing experience right in front of your eyes, but it will feel like you are watching a 150″ screen (if we believe Sony). It are basically huge 3D glasses that you put on your head that projects the movie in 3D within the headset itself, accompanies by the sounds and special effects.

I can’t wait till it comes out to purchase this product and to try it out myself. More info on www.sony.com

This product alligns with my vision that less and smaller is more. Why buy big products like televisions that are hard to transport, when you can buy this 3D viewer and watch movie anywhere you go?

I really like this idea of less + smaller = more. I use this everyday in my life. for example, all my belongings can fit in one suitcase. You are probably thinking: HOW???? Let me tell you a few of my rules:

• When buying new clothes, I have to donate or throw away the same amount of clothes as I buy
• When buying something, can I travel with it, or is it too big or inconvenient to take with me?
• Will the item still serve a purpose in one year?
• Before buying, think about the item for 2 days. If I still want it, I can get it!

In my personal opinion, that’s the real freedom!

PS: A personal note to Sony: Do you want to be a step upfront your competition and make your product even better?

• Allow the personal 3D player to tap into a wireless database of movies, so you don’t need to take your dvd-player anywhere.
• Incorporate a telephone headset into the viewer, so when friends are watching the same movies, they can still communicate!
• Incorporate Bluetooth so people can watch movies from their laptop or telephone
• Make sure friends can synchronize and watch the same movie at the same time
• Make sure it’s shockproof
• Make sure people can share this unique product on Facebook, now it’s hard to share
• Start a partnership with Youtube so people can rent movies on Youtube to steal marketshare from Apple’s crappy I-Tunes

Many people are of the understanding and illusion that living standards in Asia are lower than in Western countries. Let me tell you that that’s total b/s! I would even say that living standards are much higher compared to Western countries, especially if you take the price/quality ratio into account.

Food:

• There is food available 24/7, compared to 9am – 6pm in most Western Countries
• There is more variety of food available than in most Western countries.
• You can make it as cheap or as expensive as you want.

Cross Referencing is one of the most powerful forces you can have while learning. It is the ability to link something you learned before with something new. You look at similarities between the different learnings or languages and see how they are the same. Sometimes consciously, but most of the time this happens unconsciously.

Some examples:
* It is easier for people that speak French to learn Spanish, because there are many similarities between the languages
* Once you learned more than 2 languages, the 3rd and 4rd languages are so much easier to take in
* My belief is that people study at university so later in their life they can cross reference their learnings with something they have to know in the workplace, rather than start from scratch. The degree, marks or paper don’t matter. It is about teaching yourself cross referencing and being able to learn easier!
* People who read a lot of books can relate stories of their friends with stories in the books they read and help their friends more with problem solving.

Personally I am very open minded and love to learn new things. This week I have learned Thai Sign Language, basically as a 90% result of cross referencing! Let me tell you how.

To learn Thai Sign Language I took the approach of watching video’s on Youtube where they teach you the signs. Most words are based on the first letter of the word and then a move or gesture is made with that specific letter. I was awake all night to learn the basics, the alphabet, greetings, colors, etc, which seems very easy to learn. The sign language was American Sign Language, which I thought was the same as Thai Sign Language.

Then I went to see my deaf friends to show them my learnings and communicate with them. They had no idea what I was saying!

When I was learning, I didn’t realise there are ‘different’ languages within sign languages as well! Because the countries’ language is different, words start with different letters as well.

For example, if you want to express ‘speak’ in American Sign Language, you point your right hand forwards, like something comes out of your mouth. Thailand is different. You make the letter B for ‘Bawk’, which means speaking in Thai and make the gesture like it is coming out of your mouth.

As I already knew that ‘bawk’ means speaking, I immediately associated that with the sign and remembered it instantly. I can show you so many more examples, such as stupid, cute, delicious, where, and many more!

You are probably thinking, how does this apply to me? If you don’t see the value of this, you probably won’t get it yet. Actions you can take are:

1. Be open minded and less judgmental! When you hear something new, think about it. Does it relate to something you already know? How can you make sense out of it?

2. Learn something new! You can study a new language, read a new book, talk with people that you previously looked up to, travel, do something unique, change your furniture, re-decorate your home, go on a different type of date. Enjoy it!

Have a great week ahead full of passion and new learnings!
Bart

Dear readers,

a few days ago I received a message from a highschool friend back in The Netherlands. We haven’t talked for a few years and now we are getting in touch again through Facebook. He said that he never expected that I:

1. Am gay

2. Sell e-books

3. Travel around the world, living in  many countries and blog about my adventures!

He asked me what my big secret is. Why can I travel around the world and why he has to work 60 to 80 hours a week with just 20 holiday-days a year that are gone in no time? In this article I will answer that question.

Apart from choice there are a few obstacles you have to overcome.

So many people are conditioned by their friends and family to go to university, find a job, work the rest of their life, buy a house with a big mortgage because that’s a ‘good investment’, get married, have children and work the whole year to pay for a two week holiday… Isn’t that insane? They work everyday, go home and cook, fall asleep and the next day it all starts again. In the weekend they go out with their friends, piss their wages down the drain and complain how bad their life is. Monday the whole story starts again. The next few simple steps will help you as a start to get out of this circle:

1. Have a very open mind! 

Get rid of your old stories and beliefs that you have to follow certain patterns in your life like everyone else in order to be successful. You don’t need university to succeed, you don’t need to buy a house to be successful, you don’t need so many things in your life. They are all wants! You can rent, you can have your own business, you can travel the world. Without an open mind and hunger for more, you will be stuck forever.

2. Lower your fixed expenses as much as possible. 

The second step to freedom is to lower your fixed expenses. From the last month, look at what expenses you had to incur and without them would make your life a lot more easier.  Get rid of these expenses as much as possible! If you pay a mortgage that eats up 90% of your income, sell your home and get rid of it. Why on earth would you do that? If you have a creditcard and pay a lot of interest, pay it off! You can borrow money from your family interest-free and start paying it off to save 20% interest instantly. Use the money that you save and put it in a high-interest savings account. You will need about 12 to 18 months of living expenses in this account to be able to go overseas and not having to work. I personally prefer to have roughly $40,000 in this account. In this period enough opportunities will come to mind to find some income.

3. Get rid of (emotional) clutter. 

Have a look in your room/house and clean it out. If you would travel the world, what is it that you don’t need? Donate it to charity, sell it off on ebay or throw it away. All those boxes full of ‘stuff’, do you really need it in the future? If not, get rid of it. All this clutter drains the energy out of you to be open for new opportunities and adventures. I highly recommend this e-book on Feng Shui as a start: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005DRWNK0

4. Use arbitrage opportunities to pay for your living (become a global citizen).

Arbitrage means that you use opportunities to your advantage. You use difference in prices around the world to your advantage. For example: I write and sell e-books. They might not sell as expensive (usually between $2.99 and $9.99), but even if I would just sell 1 or 2 e-books a day, that would cover at least a day of food in Thailand or other Asian countries, as the currency here is worth much more in US dollars. It depends on the country you have in mind, but there are always some opportunities available. You can let Asian programmers develop websites, software, e-books and systems for companies in Europe or America and use the currency difference (gain) to your advantage.

5. Create enough passive income to survive

Look at the absolute minimum that you need and make it your first goal to achieve this. Once you have this income stream, you can find ways to earn more and more to build the future of your dreams.

6. Have fun and enjoy your life

Stop complaining and be grateful for your life. Your life is better than most people in this world who life in less than $1 a day. Enjoy it, life is supposed to be fun! Be playful, play full out, smile, sing, dance, enjoy, travel, explore new things, go for an adventure, anything that makes you happy! Once you had a taste of your new life, you don’t want to go back, I promise!

More articles and a new e-book on lifestyle design for teenagers will come soon!