Hack your life

Hack Your Life Project: Random acts of kindness

by Fabrice Calando on May 14, 2012

Last week was all about…Hacking your finances

On the surface it might not appear to be the sexiest #HYLP Challenge, but personal finances are one of the building blocks of hacking your life’s system. The less you control your money, the less you’re able to make your own choices and decide your own path. I’ve learnt that over the years.

Ramit Sethi recommends splitting up your finances into four buckets:

Fixed expenses (for all the regular bills and expenses)
Investments (the money you put into your 401(k) and Roth IRA or RRSPs and TSFAs if you’re Canadian)
Savings (the money you put aside for vacations, cars, weddings, etc.)
Spending money (the cash you can spend on anything you desire once all the important stuff has been taken care of)

Once that’s taken care of, you can start controlling your money and start calling the shots. In other words, the richer you are, the more choices you have and that’s what the Hack Your Life Project is about.

If you want to know more about personal finance (and you should), I recommend reading Ramit’s book I Will Teach You to be Rich (Affiliate link). It’s well worth it.

#HYLP Challenge #19: RAK

How much does it cost you to be kind to others? The more you give, the more you receive, right? This week I’ll be practicing random acts of kindness. It doesn’t have to be much, as long as it’s selfless and you don’t expect anything in return. Some ideas include:

Open the door for others
Donate unread books or clothes
Offer a couple hours of free babysitting
Clean-up your neighbourhood
Complain less

If ideas is what you want, you can find some here.

Why?

I’m not sure how much explanation this really need. The #HYLP is about hacking the programmable system that is your life. We’re often so self-involved, that we forget about others.

Open yourself to them and you’ll open yourself.

Past challenges

If you’re new here, on the first week of January I started the Hack Your Life Project. Each week I challenge myself to explore the details of the programmable system that is my life and stretch its capabilities, as opposed to most of us, who only prefer to learn the minimum necessary. I no longer want to breeze through my life, but take control of it.

These are the past challenges:

Tagged as: #hylp, building blocks, choices, control, finances, give, i will teach you to be rich, money, personal finances, ram, ramit sethi, random acts of kindness, receive, selfless

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Hack Your Life Project: Hack Your Finances

by Fabrice Calando on May 9, 2012

Last week was all about…Writing a life mission

Writing a mission statement

changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully, and to align your behaviour with your beliefs.
– Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Affiliate link)

I spent most of last week thinking mine through and wrote it out over the weekend. Thinking through your priorities forces you to think through your what’s important to you and what isn’t. I followed this basic outline:

What do I want to do?
Who do I want to help?
What is the result? What value will I create?

I then filed it for easy access. The way I see it, it’s a guide for each big decision (and some small ones).

Do you have a life mission?

#HYLP Challenge #18: Design your finances

This week (or what’s left of it), I will redesign my personal finances. If you’ve read Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich: No Guilt. No Excuses. No B.S. Just a 6-Week Program that Works (Affiliate link), you’ve done this before. You can skip this week’s challenge. I’m about half way through the book and one concept really stands out. Your personal financial structure. Personal finances should be made up of different buckets. Something like this:

Fixed costs
Investments
Savings
Do-whatever-you-want money

There are recommended percentages for each bucket and each one will allow you to live, save and enjoy life by letting you focus on what’s important without having to think about dollars and cents too much. If you want more details I recommend the book (Affiliate link).

Why?

Why am I doing this? Because personal finances are probably the #1 reason people don’t push the limits of their lives and let things happen. And that usually involves your job. I meet a lot of people that hate their jobs, but stay there because “it pays the bills.” If you haven’t heard the expression before, you’ve probably said it. Bills include paying the credit card’s minimum payments, internet bills, mortgages, car payments, cable, subscriptions, etc.

The reality is your job should provide freedom, not restrain you. And the only way to gain control is to dominate your personal finances. So this week…is all about hacking your finances.

Past challenges

These are the past challenges:

Tagged as: 7 habits of highly effective people, align, behaviour, beliefs, design, finances, fixed costs, hate, i will teach you to be rich, investments, job, Life, life mission, mission statement, personal finances, priorities, programmable system, ramit sethi, savings, spending, stephen covey, system, Work

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Hack Your Life Project: Life with a mission

by Fabrice Calando on April 30, 2012

Last week was all about…breaking a routine

By definition, doing the same thing, the same way, over and over is striving to achieve inertia. Sure, you become better and more efficient. In fact, there’s nothing bad with that in and of itself. The issue arrises when, how you deal with a client, how you approach a problem at work, how you market your product is done routinely. You’ll become better at it, but it won’t be remarkable. Breaking a routine is the only way to escape inertia and be remarkable.

I decided to break my morning routine. I usually wake up at 6:30. Instead of waking up like clockwork at the exact same time, I decided to use the Sleep Cycle App. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s an alarm clock that wakes you up within 30 minutes of your scheduled wake-up time (in my case any time between 6:00 and 6:30) at the time where you’re in the lightest sleep phase. It measure your movements in bed and determines whether you’re awake, asleep or in a deep sleep and determines when the best time to wake you is.

Each day is different, sometimes it’ll wake me at 6:30, other times at 6:08 and today at 6:17. It doesn’t make it easy to plan when I’ll write my posts, but that’s exactly the idea.

#HYLP Challenge #17: Write a life mission

This week, I’ll write out a life mission. Something to remind myself of my core values and guide my decisions and actions. Much like the company mission your a organization has.

Why?

Our lives are guided by the stories we tell ourselves. “I’m not good at sales,” “I don’t get this social media thing,” “I couldn’t deal with the stress of being a boss” are all types of stories we tell ourselves. Some are quite simple, others more complex and they shape the perception you have of yourself. If you tell yourself you’re not good in sales, you’ll never be good in sales. You’re starting at a disadvantage.

What if we rewrote our most basic story? The one that guides most other stories.

That’s what the Write a life mission challenge is. It’s about telling yourself, what you want, what guides you and what you aspire to — again, much like a company mission. Once you write it, reread it, adjust it and live by it:

It’s not whether you’re bad at sales, it’s if you want to build your business.
It’s not about getting the social media thing, it’s whether you want to build relationships.
It’s not whether you can’t deal with the stress of being a boss, it’s they type of career you really want.

What stories are you telling yourself?

Past challenges

These are the past challenges:

Tagged as: #hylp, actions, break, challenge, company mission, core values, decisions, guide, hack your life project, inertia, life by, life mission, morning routine, routine, sleep cycle, story, tell stories, tell yourself

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Hack Your Life Project: Break a routine

April 24, 2012

Last week was all about…working out every day Working out every day is the other side of the Healthy mind, healthy body challenges we’ve been working on for the past few weeks. We worked on the process and we worked on our mind. Now we worked our bodies. I found it was hard to get started, [...]

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Hack Your Life Project: Workout daily

April 16, 2012

Last week was about…Letting things be How did your challenge go last week? Did you catch yourself criticizing or did you let it be? Let me tell you, the best way to challenge yourself when you just want to let things be is to find the busiest, most crowded room you can find and patiently [...]

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Hack Your Life Project: It is what it is

April 9, 2012

I’m not exactly sure how many pages I read last week — I lost count — but it was definitely more than 20 pages per day. I’m happy with how last week’s challenge turned out. I have to admit, reading 20 pages each day was harder than I though it would be and I didn’t [...]

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Hack Your Life Project: Back to basics

April 2, 2012

After a week off from the Hack Your Life Project it’s time to get back to business so to speak. It’s supposed to be a challenge a week, I know. But what good is a Hack Your Life Project, if you aren’t able to hack the system you’ve created? So onward! The Healthy mind, healthy [...]

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Hack Your Life Project: Healthy mind, healthy body

March 19, 2012

I’ve been wanting to wake up earlier. This past week was dedicated to testing out options that should make it happen and make it stick. The process isn’t quite over, but it’s on it’s way. Testing options allows you to find the best way to change a behaviour. Going “cold turkey” rarely works. When was [...]

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Hack Your Life Project: Test your life

March 12, 2012

I spent this past week looking for a charity. Not a charity to simply donate to, but something to support when and where I can. I think apathy is one of the biggest roadblocks to hacking your life. To put it simply, when you stop caring, you give up and that’s when you get in [...]

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Hack Your Life Project | Give a fuck

March 5, 2012

Sometimes “no” is simply the best answer. It frees up time to do your best work and, in the long-run, that’s when you’re the most helpful. What I like about last week’s “just say no” project is just how much it brought to my attention those situations where “no” is the way to go. What [...]

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← Previous Entries

Hack your life

Hack Your Life Project: Random acts of kindness

Last week was all about…Hacking your finances

#HYLP Challenge #19: RAK

Why?

Past challenges

These are the past challenges:

Related Posts:

Hack Your Life Project: Hack Your Finances

Last week was all about…Writing a life mission

#HYLP Challenge #18: Design your finances

Why?

Past challenges

These are the past challenges:

Related Posts:

Hack Your Life Project: Life with a mission

Last week was all about…breaking a routine

#HYLP Challenge #17: Write a life mission

Why?

Past challenges

These are the past challenges:

Related Posts:

Hack Your Life Project: Break a routine

Hack Your Life Project: Workout daily

Hack Your Life Project: Back to basics

Hack Your Life Project: Healthy mind, healthy body

Hack Your Life Project: Test your life

Hack Your Life Project | Give a fuck

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