Today was a bit a chaotic day and I had the feeling I didn’t do so much, especially as I was still distracted with my disk problem, even though I kind of planned what to do with that. But unlike before, before I started writing about these things and before I made my daily to-do list and before I started making the bed every day, I realize more and more what is going on and how I could improve my inefficient behavior on a day like today.

As during the day I realized that I was going back again and again to reorganizing the files on my hard disks, something not really needed right now, even though I don’t feel comfortable if I don’t have my backup systems in place and running, if my system is not running smoothly. But somehow today was the first time I realized what is really going on, which also is starting to make it possible to change my behavior, should I want to.

And yes, my main tool right now is my daily to-do list, that is slowly extending to some kind of a life planning with goals and activities and such on a daily or monthly or yearly basis. And I never liked such a thing as it didn’t feel good, it didn’t suit me before. But somehow I have found a way that is starting to suit me, a way to plan my life, plan how I want to live my life, which probably will also give ways to achieve goals, small and big goals, unimaginable goals.

And what I am doing right now might not suit you, as I guess everybody needs to find a way to do things in a way that suit him or her, but I can tell you where I stand now and how I got there.

So where I stand now is that I have a folder with a pile of scratch papers (blank side up) where each of those papers has a date on the top. And the papers now extend to a few weeks ahead plus the ‘end of month’ dates up to the end of 2014. Next to that I have one or a few pages with dates far in the future, where the farthest date is somewhere in 2024 or so.

And how I go there is very simple:

1. I started making the bed every day, as a daily routine, as something I wanted to finish every day. Next to this I first wrote a daily post in my Dutch blog, something I extended with writing a daily post in this site and with sending a daily quote and keeping a daily gratitude list in the Dutch site.
2. And I forgot when I started it, but then I started to make a daily to-do list for the current or the next day, just a scratch paper upside down with a date on the top of the blank side, together with one or more items I wanted to finish that day. And the main thing with that daily list, that one paper for one day was that I finished the item on it, no matter what. And it was hard at the time, as at the time I started I was emotionally virtually completely paralyzed, so mostly there was only one or a few very, very simple items.
3. The somehow I started adding pages a few days ahead, pages I kept together with a paperclip. First just a few days ahead, later one or two weeks ahead. And the hardest part was that I was catching up with the planning sometimes, like I only had one or two days left with to-do items.
4. So I started planning the item ‘add days to the planning’, where I kind of forced myself to extend my planning. But it was an easy thing to do, as I just fetched some additional scratch papers, added dates on the top of the empty side of the paper and added them together.
5. Then quite recently I started adding items far in the future, mostly on things other people agreed to do, not my own things. That’s also where my planning page of 2014 comes from. But I’m quite sure I will add the stuff from my desire document, as it has also an item in 2022.
6. And from this adding items in the future somehow I decided to add pages for one or two months ahead. This also came kind of naturally as I had some pages one or two months ahead and I wanted to have the sequence complete in order not to be confused and mix the whole thing up with duplicate pages.
7. Then also I started to realize that I could put goals in the pages, goals that I didn’t achieve at first, but as per instruction of Napoleon Hill it gave me opportunity to analyze what was going on and what I could do different if I wanted to.
8. Then finally I realized my paper clip was not enough to hold the whole bunch of papers together, so I found myself an old hard cover folder where I put my planning a few weeks ago.
9. So right now I am starting to learn and see what a real planning is, something I never knew how to deal with before, as it felt kind of useless. But that again, that feeling of a planning being useless, probably goes back that I didn’t have a real goal in life, a real definite purpose.

So yes, everything seems to come together. And indeed, the Principles of Success as described in the book Think and Grow Rich seem to make more and more sense to me know and are really helping me living my life, achieving my goals, and maybe more important, making me feel more relaxed with everything, where the last may amaze you.

So what would be my main recommendation if you want to take charge of your life or take better charge of your life?

I think the main keyword is patience as it took me a while to get it all together. And second and third keywords would probably be do and analyze.

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