If you’re unfamiliar with the term “Snowball Effect” it basically means something that starts off small and insignificant snowballs into the next thing until eventually you’ve got an avalanche of momentum. The snowball effect of life optimization is just that. It starts off with small changes that snowball into a better life.
It can be overwhelming to know where to start on the path to living a better, more purposeful, life. You know there are countless changes you should be making. Eat healthier, exercise more, save more money, learn to invest, drink less alcohol, stop poking baristas in the eye that pronounce your name wrong, the list can seem endless.
Don’t stress about it. Just start improving one area at a time. Bite off manageable chunks so you’re not overwhelmed. If you haven’t exercised in 15 years don’t set a goal of running a 100-mile race. Set a goal of walking around your block at least one time, every day. Go after the low-hanging fruit first. Don’t jump head first into how to optimize your taxes while you’re hemorrhaging money by buying new expensive designer fanny packs every chance you get.
How to Start the Snowball
Every weekday pick one category and spend 5 minutes thinking about how you can improve your life in that category. Do this exercise while you’re drinking coffee or showering or driving to work. It’s a thought experiment so you can multi-task. Once you finish, spend a minute and write down your conclusions.
Maybe one day you’re showering and thinking about how you can eat healthier. You think about how you never pack a lunch and end up going to a fast-food place every day. You set a goal of packing your lunch at least twice per week. When you get out of the shower write that goal down. For those in the back, WRITE YOUR GOAL DOWN!
Writing your goal down will help you actually achieve it. It sends your brain the signal that this is important. Having a goal written down will be a reminder for you throughout the day. Not only will you see the note but you’ll remember the activity of writing it.
Keep a record of your goals so you can go back and revisit them. See what goals you’ve reached and what goals you haven’t. If you didn’t reach a goal think about why. Was it not a realistic goal or was it just not something you care to achieve? If it’s an important goal think about how you can modify it so you’ll be successful.
Modify Your Goals so They Become Reachable
Maybe your goal was to workout each morning for 10-minutes but you found you never had time. Fitness is important to you so you feel badly that you failed at this goal. Don’t beat yourself up. Maybe change the time of day. Set a new goal of working out at least 10-minutes when you get home from work or after dinner.
Here’s a blueprint that you can use to help you narrow down what goals to focus on. If any of these aren’t important to you or you feel you don’t need to improve in that area feel free to modify it to fit your needs.
Monday: How can you eat healthier?
Think about what temptations you fall victim to. None of us are superheroes, we all get tempted. Maybe you are able to avoid eating an unhealthy lunch, but in the morning you can’t help but getting a pastry with your coffee. For you, setting up the process of making coffee at home will help you not to have to combat that temptation everyday.
Plus, it’s way more cost effective to make coffee at home. How many millions of dollars do all these people who get their daily coffee from a coffee shop have anyway?!
Tuesday: How can you Improve your physical health?
Think about what physical goals you want to set for yourself and how you can achieve them. Are you wanting to build muscle or slim down? Do you enjoy working out but don’t know what to do for an in-home workout or once you’re at the gym?
Related Posts:
5 Easy Ways to Get Back (and Stay) in Shape – The 5-Minute Workout
Do you want to drink less beer but keep accidentally buying beer that you enjoy? In my article How I Lost 11 Pounds Drinking Kirkland Light I detail how I was able to kick my daily beer drinking habit by purchasing terrible beer that I didn’t want to drink.
Wednesday: How can you cut or reduce a recurring expense and save money?
What recurring expense in your life isn’t adding happiness? Can you cut it out or at least limit it? Don’t try to solve all your financial problems at once. Spend 5 minutes and make a list of ways you want to improve your finances. Each Wednesday take one of those items and tackle it. Don’t try to do all the items at once, just focus on one at a time.
Maybe you’re paying for Netflix and cable and Hulu. Decide which one(s) you want to keep and cancel the rest. We have Netflix and Amazon Prime. We don’t have cable. I spent $40 dollars and bought an antennae similar to this one. Now we get any basic channels for free.
Maybe an item on your list is your grocery bill. Spend a few minutes reading 11 Smart Ways to Lower Your Grocery Bill and Eat Healthier. This article focuses on tangible ways you can lower your grocery bill and still eat healthy. Put the tips in this article into practice next time you go shopping.
Thursday: How can you learn to make your money better work for you?
Do you want to learn more about investing? Do you want to find a podcast that can teach you all about your money and how to best reach your goals? Spend some time thinking about what it is that you want out of your money and what areas you want more knowledge in. The more knowledge you can absorb the better prepared and more confident you’ll be making financial decisions.
Related Posts:
Investing 101- How to Invest Your Money When You Don’t Know Where to Start
5 Great Ways to Teach Your Kids About Money
Here’s a few resources I use to help me learn more about investing.
Jim Collins has a great stock series you should read at some point in your life. The TL/DR version is you should buy index funds and you should be prepared for the market to have huge downturns several times in your life. Once the market crashes you should be prepared to hold. Do not panic and sell. It will be harder than it sounds. I hope we don’t panic and sell when the inevitable market downturn happens.
Mr. Money Mustache is sort of the godfather of the financial independent movement. His blog is really funny. He will slap you for owning a truck or even driving to work. He doesn’t care that it’s winter. Ride your bike.
If you prefer to listen to audio: ChooseFi is my favorite financial independence podcast. Jonathan and Brad do a great job at hosting and the topics are always pretty interesting.
Start with Episode 038- The Why of FI and work your way through the essential listening guide. You won’t be disappointed. Unless you have financial podcasts. In that case you’ll probably be a little disappointed.
Friday: What are three goals you want to see yourself achieve over the weekend?
Physically write them down and make it a priority to do them. They don’t have to be big goals. What are three goals you can set for yourself.
An example of this would be:
- Spend at least 10-minutes exercising each day this weekend
- Write at least one blog article
- Don’t call anyone in traffic a “bag of dicks” for at least one of the days this weekend.
They don’t have to be large goals or take up a lot of time. When you write them down you’ll be thinking about them throughout your day. Achieving these goals will help you start to build momentum and you’ll feel better about yourself.
Think about one semi-longterm goal you’d like to accomplish. For me I want to get better at singing harmony. It won’t happen overnight but I can slowly tackle that goal by spending a few minutes everyday working on it.
Conclusion:
Spend just 5 minutes contemplating and learning in each of these categories. Over time you’ll start to notice a big difference in your overall life. It’s important to start with small, manageable chunks. Don’t set a goal of spending 3 hours researching the best diet plans. Spend 5 minutes and read an article. Make it a manageable goal and then put what you learned into practice.
Over time these small incremental improvements will make a drastic change in your life. You’ll start making better choices because you’re on a roll.
It all adds up. Once you start an exercise program you’ll be more motivated to eat healthier. Once you’re eating a little healthier you’ll feel better about yourself and will have more patience with others around you. The benefits of getting your health, finances, or relationships on track spill over into other areas of your life.
Don’t be a bag of dicks, start the snowball effect today.
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