Timothy Yordy

I recently wrote an article titled Seeing Your Goals Through to Completion. It was about sticking with something when the going gets tough. It was about not quitting part way through. Well today I was thinking about the flip side of that idea. And that is to quit what you’re doing and head the other direction. In politics this is often referred to as a flip flop whenever a candidate changes their position on something. But for real people like you and I (and by real I mean people in touch with reality), these u-turns often have nothing to do with flip flopping. Nope sometimes it’s just a change of heart or a change in priorities.

I firmly believe in striving to see something through to completion but sometimes that’s just not the right choice. It would be pretty devastating to pursue something for years only to look back and realize that it was a lot of wasted effort on an idea that was flawed from the start.

This same idea can apply to spiritual beliefs as well. I once heard someone say, “If what you believe isn’t true, would you want to know?” The idea here is that people often build their lives around religious structures and dogmas passed down to them by their parents but if the individual is one that is actually in pursuit of a relationship with God then eventually they will start to dig deeper to go beyond what they’ve always been taught to really make their beliefs there own. What they find on that journey can shatter their entire perception of what they thought the world was.

More at a personal level, I still often struggle with knowing when to turn and run and when to stay the course. If discerning what path to take ever gets easier it certainly hasn’t for me yet. Over the past several years I have erred on both sides of this issue: I’ve stuck with some things too long and killed other ideas that had true merit. It’s not often easy to be completely sure what path will lead you to success and which to failure. Trust your instincts, rely on trusted friends for advice, seek wisdom beyond your circle of friends and yourself, and hope for the best. Make u-turns with your life as necessary and enjoy the ride in spite of the occasional bumps and pot holes.

My regular readers know that I always post on a Monday – Wednesday – Friday schedule but unfortunately starting my new job yesterday kind of kept that from happening. So I apologize to anyone who came here yesterday looking for a new article. I don’t anticipate this to be a regular thing. Anyway, on with today’s article…

This past weekend I had to rediscover the old Biblical principle of a day of rest. I tend to plan so much to do on my days off that it feels like I never actually do have a day off. Well last week despite all of my to do list planning, I did absolutely nothing on Thursday. For most of the day it felt great to just relax and spend time with my family for once as opposed to constantly feeling like I had to be getting something done. Sure those thoughts tried to creep in a couple times but I didn’t let it happen. I found myself worrying that because of my day of rest that I wouldn’t get the things accomplished that I needed to in my remaining days off between jobs but something really cool happened. I got up on Friday ready to get work done. I felt refreshed and happy and I couldn’t remember waking up like that anytime recently.

In the end I actually didn’t get everything done that I wanted to during my 4 days off but that was more weather related than anything. I did get to spend a lot of time with family though. We played several games of Pirates, went to a carnival, and spent time with various family members. And then I started my new job yesterday. I have to say it was retail as usual but at the same time slightly overwhelming because I have never worked with pet products before and if you never have worked for a pet retailer you can’t truly appreciate the extensive variety of products that are available for every kind of pet. Once I actually know the job though, I anticipate that my stress level will be much less than at my previous two jobs.

So don’t be afraid of taking a day of rest. If you are like me and forgot the value of them, force yourself to relearn this ancient concept. I know it’s a struggle but put more home related tasks on to the days that you are already working a full day at your job. You’re tired anyway you might as well be more tired. Then when your day off comes you can just soak in all that relaxing goodness.

There you are at the office on Friday afternoon thinking to yourself that you’ve got your whole weekend ahead of you. (I’m speaking hypothetically of course. I neither work in an office or know what it’s like to have weekends off.) You know you’ve got a lot to do at home and so you begin to write out a to do list of everything you want to get accomplished. You say to yourself that this weekend will be the one where you get everything done and you can finally relax because you’re caught up on work around the house. But then the weekend comes and goes and you find that you only got a small portion of your list accomplished and your precious time away from your job was filled with fruitless hours of trying to accomplish work that ultimately didn’t get finished because real life happens and family needs or whatever have derailed your carefully planned to do list. Feeling disappointed and anything but rested you return to work on Monday and already begin to calculate next weekend’s to do list that this time will succeed!

I’ve been in this cycle far too many times. I’ve tried different methods of breaking the cycle to varying degrees of only partial success. Recently though I tried a whole new approach to to do lists. If I know that, by some miracle, I will have multiple days off in a row coming up I will try to make a big to do list several days in advance. If I don’t specifically write down everything that needs done around the house things will be forgotten, it just happens. Once I have made my list I try to get as many things accomplished on that list as possible before the days off even arrive. The goal here is to get my giant list down to just a few things before the weekend starts, so that when I do have time off from work I’m not spending all of that time working. Otherwise it kind of defeats the purpose of having time off doesn’t it?

Give it a shot and see what happens. I know that when I get off work each day the last thing I want to do is more work, but if it means a day or two without having anything that needs done to do, well then that is completely worth it.

Some people get writers block, I just get bored. I’m the type of person that can think of many different ideas for projects but then once I get the ball rolling I often lose interest and want to move on to something else. The problem with this approach for people who are working for themselves and not someone who has minions to carry out his wishes, is that there is no one left to carry on the project once the original idea maker has decided to move on.

If you are trying to get out of the rat race then you can’t afford this approach to your ideas. You either need to plan for and recognize in advance which ideas are not even feasible, and therefore not waste time pursuing them, or you need to see things through to completion. And completion of a project can mean many different things, including years of hard work depending on what you are attempting to do. You need to be able to honestly ask yourself if that level of dedication is something you want to commit to and if not you need to bale out before you even begin.

Getting more to the heart of what this article is about though, what if you are already committed to an idea? You’ve dedicated time, resources, and money to a concept and now the day to day drudgery of seeing the idea through to completion is starting to wear you down. Maybe you thought it would be a good idea to make money from a blog and now you’ve got to have high quality original articles written on time several times a week and let’s face it sometimes you just don’t feel like it. So do you throw in the towel when the going gets tough?

That would be the easy path to take. The path of least resistance that takes you right back where you started. Right back where you can briefly follow another tangent of an idea instead of really committing yourself to one excellent idea and pursuing it with all you have. I’m preaching to myself here as well, though I’ve seen others far worse at these things than I am. I’ve known a couple people that think of lots of ideas and start making investments into the ideas only to abandon them shortly afterwards and sometimes trying to get others to develop their ideas for them for a small cut before the final abandonment happens.

I’m not innocent of this approach to projects either but here’s the best advice I know how to give: Slow down, think on it, sleep on it, keep a file on your computer of your really big impossible to accomplish ideas, and then pursue what seems best and leave the rest. Seek advice from others when possible though be aware that anyone is capable of stealing your ideas. The theft of an idea isn’t so bad in and of itself, it’s the completion of an idea that matters. So don’t be so paranoid that you can’t lean on others for advice but don’t be so trusting that you are easily taken advantage of.

My recent employment issues once again has me contemplating where my life is headed. As should be pretty clear to regular readers of my articles I obviously have no love for being a part of corporate America. And the main reason is because I’ve got other things I want to be doing with my life. And I just keep realizing how time keeps going by without me being all that much closer to achieving my life goals. When I was away from home for a month earlier this year training for my wonderful new job that has turned into a nightmare, I was able to write half a dozen new songs while in my hotel room. I returned home excited by the possibilities that new musical productivity in 2008 would mean. Four months later though those songs haven’t been recorded and I’ve barely touched my new songs. Thanks largely to a job where I’m working 50 hrs a week instead of the 40 that I used to work.

So here I am on the verge of another possible job change and I have to question what this next move has in store for my creative pursuits. I’ve known people much more talented than myself that have quit any creative pursuits in favor of college or jobs. There’s obviously nothing wrong with any of these choices for people who don’t have creative aspirations for a dream. But for me it is a dream and I can’t just let it die because of a job. The question I find myself asking myself is, what if I continue down this path for ten more years? Those thoughts scare me like not much else can. I’ve worked in retail for more than 7 years and its been 7 years too long. The idea that ten years from now I could still be working retail and no closer to accomplishing much with music or writing is a depressing thought indeed.

But if am completely honest with myself, I need to acknowledge that I haven’t done everything I could to pursue my dreams. Far from it. Everyone needs time to relax and kick back after a hard days’ work but it is all too easy to become complacent and plop down in front of the television for hours or play video games or whatever. If I and anyone like me is truly serious about our creative pursuits then we need to live like we mean it. I did some serious editing to this article before I posted it and the main reason is that the original tone was one of frustration at my circumstances. But then today during my lunch break, I spent most of it playing games on my phone instead of using the time to write like I usually do. If I really do want to get somewhere I need to actually put in the effort even when I sometimes don’t feel like it. I’ve dealt with this idea in the past, but it seems like I need to keep reminding myself.

So what is my solution? What is my hope for the future of my dreams? I have to believe that I haven’t been given talent for no reason. I have to believe that I was meant to use my talents for something more than just entertaining myself. I have to continue to believe that one day I will actually be doing something more meaningful than helping customers buy office products. And at the same time not lose site of the possibility that there is a reason why the people I work with are in my life, that they might somehow need me in their lives and that I might somehow need them in mine. I must be resolute in my pursuit of my dreams, yet not take for granted what is around me in the here and now. I’m usually not this introspective on this blog but recent events have me being a bit introspective lately.

Some random trivia for you: The title for this article was taken from a line in a song I wrote a few years ago titled “You Remain.” It’s about someone reaching the end of their life and questioning whether any good had come from it. It’s sung from the perspective of someone affirming to the person that they had indeed impacted many lives.

I’ve never really been the pessimistic type and believe that some measure of good can be found in just about every situation. When it comes to personal growth, I’ve had a couple of good examples in my own life.

When I was a senior in high school I had the misfortune of getting sick with mononucleosis and subsequently missed six weeks of school. By the time that it was all over I was severely behind on some of my classwork and had missed out on a lot of what seniors have fun doing their senior year. But it wasn’t all bad news. I used some of that free time at home to improve on guitar and at web design. At the time I was really just starting out in both and the amount that I advanced during those six weeks has always amazed me.

At the time I had been dating a girl for a year and a half. It was a rotten relationship that was going nowhere, I just couldn’t see it at the time. She was a bit obsessive and seemed to even be angry at me for being sick and not being able to spend my every waking moment with her. And so having mono drove division between us and helped me to see things more clearly than I had before. We broke up a month later and then she went completely crazy which only affirmed to me that I had made the right decision.

And now here I sit on the couch with my broken ankle. I’ve been missing some work and my household chores have been piling up on me (though my wife has been doing a lot of them for me). Once again though I find myself able to draw some good out of this situation: I’ve been writing, a lot. The amount of work I’ve been able to get done on my novel is just fantastic.

When troubles come your way, it’s extremely easy to dwell on how it is negatively affecting you. I encourage you however to take some time to reflect on what good can come out of the bad situation you are in. Maybe your problem is finances, goodness knows I’ve been there too. Last year was probably one of the most stressful in my life simply due to how bad our financial situation was. But we made it through and learned lessons in frugality that others who haven’t faced similar situations can’t fully grasp. We still aren’t great financially but it continues to amaze me how we have no debt but people making two or three times what we make are thousands of dollars in debt.

It may sound cliché but try to look on the bright side of things when trouble comes your way. I believe there is a purpose to life and its not just a bunch of random events. Maybe the purpose of breaking my ankle was so that I would finally start writing fiction in a way that my dream of finishing a novel would actually come true some day. Or maybe I’m just not very coordinated.

Unless you are perfect in almost every way like Mary Poppins then odds are you fail from time to time. When it comes to trying to generate self-employed income there are plenty of ways to fail. Especially if you are trying to be innovative in any given area. Being innovative requires you to try new things that haven’t already been tested by others. This can mean that you will conquer a niche market or that you will fail miserably. When your financial future is riding on your success or failure it can be a bit intimidating to try and innovate but if fear of failure keeps you from ever trying then you will never taste the freedom that comes from success.

When I was growing up my mother was a bit protective and would never let me ride my bike very far from the house at all. So I simply didn’t ride that often since there was nowhere that I could really go anyway. I was able to ride my bike just fine but not do any of those things that more able riders could do like riding with one hand or no hands. In 7th grade I went riding with a friend and we rode past the house of a girl who was in our class at school. At that very moment we were in the process of riding out around some people who were taking up half the road walking their dogs. Me being the suave ladies man that I was decided to wave to the girl as we were passing by. I knew that I lacked the skill of riding one handed but that mattered little to my young teenage brain. I lost a bit of control on my bike and at the same time a pickup truck went speeding by around the outside of us. The front wheel of my bike skidded along the side of the truck as it passed and somehow I miraculously was not killed and didn’t even crash. We pulled off onto a side road to recollect our wits and a man on a motorcycle proceeded to curse at me as if I had intentionally almost become road pizza.

So there you have it. I tried to do something new that I was not skilled at and it almost got me killed. I nearly died for the sake of getting a couple seconds of attention from a girl that had no interest in me anyway. When it comes to business decisions it is pretty rare that the things you try might end up being a life or death situation for you, unless of course you’ve borrowed money from the mob.

Be willing to try new approaches to your entrepreneurial pursuits. Be aware of the potential consequences of your actions. Be ready to dive in with all you’ve got when it seems like the right decision but also be able to recognize when the potential risks just aren’t worth it and you need to change course completely. Free yourself to take chances and enjoy the rewards of your efforts

The entrepreneurial minded often have the problem of having many more ideas than they could possibly pursue. I have this problem myself. I am constantly thinking up ideas for new business ventures, songs, stories, and inventions. I would have to say that 95% of these ideas never come to fruition for a couple of reasons. One is that after sleeping on an idea for a couple days I start to see flaws that would prevent it from reaching completion. The other main reason is that many of my ideas are bigger than my wallet and I lack the time and resources to pursue them in a way that would make the ideas profitable. Sometimes trimming the fat of excess time commitments in order to achieve your goals can be quite painful.

A few years ago I was running a moderately successful music and movie review website. I had built a decent following and sank countless hours into managing the site. Then I moved out to the country and lost access to high speed Internet Suddenly the site was taking a ridiculous amount of time to manage thanks in part to a poor site design that at the time I wasn’t sure how to properly fix and port hundreds of reviews into a new site. At the same time I also had a lot of other stuff going on in my life and the site that I used to love doing was now a burden that I was quite tired of.

I had to come to a tough decision. There wasn’t much chance of having access to high speed Internet again in the foreseeable future and I started to question myself on how much time I was spending running a site reviewing other people’s music instead of working on my own music. I might have viewed things a bit differently if I had done a better job monetizing the site. I made a last ditch effort of creating an entirely new site on a new domain that used a content management system to save what I had spent years building. This only served to kill my baby further and soon I lacked all motivation to continue to keep the beast alive. It was now time to kill it. It was the right decision but every time I purchase a new cd I still find myself mentally writing a review of it.

Not too long after that I had to make an even tougher decision. The band that I had poured my soul into for the past two years just wasn’t going anywhere. We had so much potential and we could have real gotten somewhere if we had only replaced a couple band members, practiced a lot more, and threw out half the songs and wrote new ones. Because of intra-band politics though none of these things was likely to happen. At the time my wife was a couple months pregnant and I knew that free time to pursue music would be harder to come by after the baby came along so I agonized over deciding to leave the band that I had enjoyed being a part of more than any that I had been in up to that point. I finally made up my mind after we once again had not practiced enough before a show and it was the worst show we ever put on in my opinion. I needed to break away and pursue music through different avenues and quit losing time. Afterwards I kept questioning whether I had made the right decision or not. When the band split up a couple weeks later I knew that I had.

This is the part where I should be writing some wonderful success story about how these tough decisions have allowed me to become rich and famous in the music industry. Well that’s not the case. But I am certainly further along in my musical pursuits than I would have been if I hadn’t cut loose things that were holding me back from what I really needed to be spending my time on.

I have learned the value of sitting on ideas for a little while before jumping into them and I often bounce ideas off of others before pursuing them. My wife is great for this, she’s very quick to bring me back to reality when my ideas are a bit off the wall. Look at where your time is spent on your business pursuits. Are the things that you commit your time to really leading you closer to your personal, spiritual, or financial goals? Are the people you associate with lifting you up or bringing you down? Take some time to reevaluate where your life is headed with your current time commitments. Maybe it’s time to change course and seek more positive results.

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve had customers ask me to give them my employee discount. I find this request to be quite rude for a number of reasons. One being that it implies that there is some level of kinship between myself and the customer when in fact their request has pretty much ensured that there will be no such thing. The second reason is that for me to take my employee discount and give it to whomever I please would be completely unethical. It’s called an employee discount for a reason. At my previous job where I slaved away for more than five years they didn’t give us employee discounts so the response to this request was a simple one, “Sorry, I don’t get a discount.’” I guess there are a few good things about working for a company that doesn’t value their employees at all.

But there are times in life when simply asking to get something cheaper or for free can be quite beneficial and easy to obtain. Before I go any further I should quantify this by saying that I am not advocating haggling or berating business owners or employees to try and get something for nothing. People who do that are generally lowlifes and not to be associated with. But what is possible is to simply ask for something for free. Try it out and see what happens. You might very well get turned down but the results might also surprise you. Ninety percent of this blog is written on a bluetooth keyboard that is paired with my Motorola q9m phone from Verizon. Verizon wanted me to pay $200 for the phone even with a two year contract. I simply asked to get it for free because at the time Amazon.com was giving it away for free. They put me on hold for 15 minutes but in the end readily agreed to give it to me for free, no hassle at all. Recently my wife decided that she wanted to try and get into the business of breeding fish. The only really way to test the market is to actually have fish to sell and not wanting to spend a fortune on an untested business idea, we went on craigslist and simply asked for free aquariums and equipment. We said that that they could be dirty and not even hold water. Two days later we had everything we needed to start our little business (minus the fish) and it didn’t cost us anything.

I have no problem paying a fair price for things but I also have no problem getting things for free. Don’t be afraid to ask but don’t be rude to the people you are asking either. That won’t get you anywhere.

Something that I keep running into in financial books and self-help books and also on a few websites is the idea of limiting the amount of time you spend checking email each day. Specifically the book I’m reading at this moment suggests limiting time spent on email to twice a day and then cut back to once a day if possible. So this morning at work I decided I was going to give it a shot. I don’t know if I’ve ever specifically stated on here what industry I work in but I work as a logistics manager in retail. Lately I’ve been finding that the amount of work expected from me is piling up and I lose the first couple of hours each morning just dealing with the “have-to” items of each day.

So this morning when I went into work I didn’t even check the store email at all. Recently the district manager has been chastising store managers for spending too much time in the office reading emails (that she sends out) and my boss typically relays anything specifically pertinent to my job by printing out the emails and putting it in my inbox. So I decided that I won’t waste my time anymore. I also decided to eliminate some extra work I was putting on my self each morning. They were small programs that I had started running that I felt helped the store out but were ultimately not my responsibility to be tackling.

By eliminating just these two areas I was able to cut about 20 minutes out of my morning workload. Ultimately I want to be getting my work done as efficiently as possible so I can then devote more of my brain power to thinking about things that I actually care about. And no, retail is definitely not something I care about. It’s just a job, a way of providing for my family until I can find some other means. It doesn’t matter that I’m actually pretty good at what I do and at most aspects of retail, that’s just further evidence that I’m smart enough to be doing something more worthwhile with my life.

So today I’ve seen some early successes of this plan at work. Now the real trick will be applying these principals at home. It’s one thing to willingly ignore corporate emails but I actually care about the content of my personal emails. It’s going to require more discipline I’m sure but I’m hopeful for positive results.