Tips for procrastinators: How to be punctual for work or school

Are you always late for work or school? Are you always set your alarm 30 minutes earlier for yourself to have time to clean up yourself, but you hit the snooze button so that you continue sleep another 15 minutes. Next,it turns out that you have to rush to clean up yourself and late for work/school. I bet you come to the right place. I rarely late for work/school as a result of a thing that I do to make myself punctual - "Set all my clocks to be running on a future time"

I have this weird habit since high school to make myself to be punctual for any events. The time of my clock and watch during high school was 30 minutes ahead of the actual time. About 2 years back when I was still in University, I set the time of my clock and watch an hour faster. So, I always be the first one who arrived at the lecture hall. Sometime when I reached the lecture hall and I saw no body was inside, I would have confused myself that I saw the wrong time table. After I called my friends for time table, then only I realized that the time of my watch was an hour faster. Usually, I used the EXTRA time to do self study inside the empty lecture hall.

However, this technique will only be useful if you are able to make yourself forget that you set your time ahead of the actual time. It will not be useful if you set time of your clock 30 minutes faster but you hit the snooze button and continue to sleep for another 45 minutes. This is normal and it happened to me during university when I got used to the time I set and my mind would auto-deduct an hour from the current time and I became late for my classes. But after a short while, I found a remedy for this problem - "Make myself not to get used to the time that I set". Once a while, I will set my clocks back to normal time and then I will set the time ahead after one or two weeks. With this way, I will not get used with the advance time that I set on my clock or watch.

Steps of this technique:-
1. Set all your clocks time to a future time (all depends on how much time you need to continue procrastinate, FYI, now I am 20 minutes ahead of the actual time)
2. Set all your clocks time back to normal time after about a month
2. Set all your clocks time to a future time again.

I have been practicing this for years and it works well for me. Try it out yourself and let me know if this works for you.

What does weekend mean to you?

How do you spend your weekend? Weekend is a time for most people to rest, relax and have more time with family members. This weekend, I have wasted my time on computer games and movies. In this world, there are only 3% of people who are very successful. They use their weekend differently. They work harder in weekend compare with weekdays, so that they can plan well for the week to come. The only time they rest/relax is the time they close their eyes to sleep. They are so motivated that they can't wait to wake up on the next day so that they can continue what they were doing yesterday, even it is on weekend.

I tell myself, if I want to join the top 3% most successful people of the world, I must follow what they are doing. The followings are the things that I MUST do for the next weekend.

I MUST do the followings 5 things on the next weekends:-
Weekend is the time for me to review what I have done right and wrong for the passed week.
Weekend is the time for me to reward myself or punish myself.
Weekend is the time for me to plan for next week.
Weekend is the time for me to do more self study on investment, trading, charting, technical analysis to improve on my trades.
Weekend is the time for me to work out, so that I will always have a strong and healthy body.

Let me test out the things I need to do on the next weekend and I will slowly add more weekend tasks so that I will be on the right track to join the Top 3% Most Successful People Club.

3 things that I tell myself

I always tend to lack of self-discipline especially during weekend as I have so much free time. I do not follow the plans that I set for myself. I always waste time on playing computer games and watching movies. I tend to sleep more than I have to.

I do not think that successful people will spend their time on computer games and movies. I believe they always spend their every minutes and seconds on productive things. That's the reason they are able to earn 10x or may be 100x money than me. They may just have the same intelligence as I am, but the way they use their time make them the top 3% most successful people in the world.

I have a choice to make: Join the club of the top 3% most successful people in the world or the 97% crowd of not so successful people.

I choose to join the top 3% most successful people club, So I tell myself 3 things:-

I tell myself: "If you want to be succeed, Do productive things every minute, every second!"

I tell myself: "If you want to earn 10x or 100x of what you earn right now, Do productive things every minute, every second!"

I tell myself: "If you want to have a better life, Do productive things every minute, every second!"

I promised myself to use my time productively from now on and this is the promise of a life time.

How I come to this point of life?

Poor Family
I was born in a poor family. My parents were hawkers then and we were living in a rented house. The only transportation that we had at that time was a motorcycle. The life has not been easy and I remembered that my mother always had tears in her eyes due to uncertainty of future. Sometimes, during rainy session, there were less customers and our life became tougher. Still, my parents tried to give us( my 2 elder sisters, my elder brother and me) the best food they could provide but they themselves barely ate anything because they wanted to save some money.

Mathematic Lesson
I learned my first lesson of mathematic from my parents' fruits and juice stall. I was about 3/4 years old at that time and I was my parents' best helper. Sometime, I helped to take care of the stall alone and I could remember the prices of the food and knew how to count and to give the exact change back to the customers. Nothing could be better for a 3 years old kid to learn this real life "Practical Mathematics Lesson".

Things that I learned
Actually later in life, my experience going through a tough life gave me a lot of advantages comparing with my peers . My thinking has been more mature as I know the feeling for being in a poor family. Unnecessary spending is a no no to me. I possess the spirit of Working hard and determination from my parents. And of course, I also learned my first Mathematic Lesson. :-)

Some Small Achievements in the past
I have won a few Mathematic Awards(school level) during primary school and have been selected to compete in state level(never win any prize though). I was a straight A students for all Mathematics subjects during secondary school and University. I work my butt off when I was in university and I was placed into the Dean's list every semester. After graduated, I was offered to convert my university loan to scholarship. During my University's convocation, I was awarded a Gold Medal Award and a Book Award. These few small achievements helped me to give me some motivations to move on my life. Now, I am looking forward to achieve something in the Investment Industry.

To Wrap Up
My parents have gone through a tough life since they were young because their family were poor and they did not have chance to exposure to higher education. Therefore, they always advised us to study hard for a better future. I personally believe that education is very important to secure a good pay job. But education does not teach us how to earn and live a comfortable life (in other word: Financial Freedom). Many people might have very high IQ (Intelligence Quotient) or EQ (Emotional Quotient) but not FQ (Financial Quotient). [Blog about FQ is coming soon]

People who has high level of education(IQ) normally only live pay check to pay check. They only know how to work hard for money and do not know how to make money work for them. Most of the money they earn are used to pay debt, while they should have pay themselves first.

I believe that learning how to diversify your incomes, minimize your living cost and invest your money are some important skills that you would ever need to learn in your live if you want to become Financial Freedom. I hope that this blog will give some people a good starting point in learning how to become Financial Freedom. Please enjoy my blog and please feel free to give me comments so that I can further improve on my blog. Thanks.

Please click on Financial Freedom if you would like to to know more about it.