4 Things I'll Do Differently in 2011

4 Things I’ll Do Differently in 2011

For those of you who celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a wonderful time with your family and friends! I most certainly did.

The girls are both out of school this week, so I’m not getting a whole lot accomplished business wise, but I have had time for reflection and planning for 2011. Over a month ago I wrote out my goals for next year and I’ve revised and updated them a couple times over the past few weeks.

Something else I’ve done is really reflect on the progress I made this year and consider what things I need to do differently in 2011 to really kick things up a notch. In typical Shae fashion, I thought I’d openly share it with all of you. At the end of the week, I’ll also share the results from my GoodFaithInvesting.com Reader & Subscriber survey and what I’ve decided to do with the blog next year.

So here goes…4 things I’ll do differently in 2011.

1. More laser focus.

If you’ve been following this blog for awhile, you know I manage to get a lot done with my time. However, when I was really honest with myself, I realized that there were multiple times during the year when I stretched myself too thin which led to slower results all the way around. Why was I doing that? It’s because I was concerned that if I left other things alone in order to truly focus, those other things would suffer.

Can you relate to this?

I was fooling myself.

The times that I was really laser focused…even if just for 30 days (or 45 days in the case of my completion of Financial Freedom GPS), the results were noticeably more spectacular. Did something else “suffer” in the process?

Well, it depends on how you look at it. Progress didn’t stall completely, but it did slow down. But (and it’s a big but), the accomplishment of successfully finishing something significant and getting results far outweighed the “slow down” that happened with everything else. If I kept going at an even pace with everything, little (or nothing) of any great significance would’ve taken place.

I am committed to not making that mistake in 2011. I’ve already released a number of activities and will continue to trim the fat as necessary.

2. Get back to our real estate investing basics.

For some strange reason, I’ve been holding onto this notion that the only way we’d become debt free investors is if we wholesaled properties to pay off our rental properties. The truth of the matter is that we don’t want to focus any energy on wholesaling properties….we simply want to find private money lenders and acquire rental properties. Our other income streams (which I actually do enjoy) will provide the means to pay off our properties within our aggressive timeline (10 free and clear properties by age 40). Focus, focus, focus.

3. Get smarter and keep more money in our pockets.

While I was working a full time job and doing my “side hustling”, I wasn’t nearly as vigilant as I should’ve been about how to minimize our taxes. I was getting refunds every year despite the fact that I claimed quite a few exemptions on my W-4 with my employer….so basically I was happy. Now it’s time to step it up. Thankfully, I have a master like my friend Bill Walston on my side to help me navigate through all of this and get our act together.

4. Challenge myself physically, but have fun doing it.

I’ve blogged a couple times about my desire to get back into shape since having my youngest daughter (who will be 3 in April). I’ve started a great routine of working out at the gym, but I’ve lost very little (if any) weight this year which was pretty disappointing. What I realized is that my goal to get back to size 8 really wasn’t very motivating or fun. So I decided to switch things up a little. I asked myself “What WOULD be fun?”

Here’s what I came up with.

Every year Disney has an adventure 5K race called the Expedition Everest Challenge. I want to compete with Phil in this race in May…not just finish the race, but actually compete. Mind you, I’ve only done two 5K events before (and I didn’t run in either of them) so I’m going to have to train in order to do this. I also called up one of my best friends and accountability partner Bolaji and he and his wife are going to compete with us. NOW this is sounding like fun. In the process of my training, I am sure to get in better shape, lose some inches and some pounds. This is a completely different way of looking at my goal which I’ve miserably failed at the past two years.

So that just about covers it. I know that 2011 is going to be one awesome year. At the same time, I believe it’s going to be a very tough year (tougher than 2010) for many economically speaking….so take your pick. I’m choosing a phenomenal year. Let’s get it.

Photo: askpang