On the Ball

I want to talk about my first exercise in prioritizing relentlessly.

In one of my previous entries, I had listed a bunch of do's and don'ts for building a business. One of the do's on that list was to prioritize relentlessly.

Amid all the time management fiascoes, dawdling, timeouts, breaks, sleep-ins, hiding from the office, "working at home", and a litany of other pretend-work activities (you can even throw in a last-minute trip to Tahoe in there), I spent the first four or five weeks networking with my coworkers. In the sales world, the word is "schmoozing", i.e. talking personal stuff on the business dime. One day I remembered something.

The Series 7 exam. My top priority.

I had attended (and ignored) meetings, snoozed on conference calls, networked with coworkers, even bullied a couple of poor souls into giving me their money after I got registered, but I hadn't been studying for my 7. Without (passing) the 7 (and, shortly thereafter, the 66), I'm a dodo in front of potential clients, with nothing but my good looks, crooked toothless grin and fancy tie to win them over. After all is said and done, showtime ain't gonna do the job.

So I decided to start studying and stop circulating; I figured that the latter could always be picked up when the time was more appropriate, but I needed to get my registrations out of the way in order to truly get moving on things. In the past two weeks, I have been studying quite a bit. Absorbing the knowledge has never been a problem for me, but my time management is truly catastrophic. I still spend too much time frozen in one place mentally and physically. I study one module, get a 99.9% on the quiz, and then spend the rest of the day in my underwear, surfing smut. Anyone else think there's something wrong with this picture?

It feels good to recognize a priority and...uh..give it priority. Even the studying started to become a little dull and boring and I started to lose direction. To keep me on the ball, I decided to schedule a test date so I have something to work toward. My test is on July 24.

I will have to continually set new milestones as my career progresses, and make it a habit to periodically remind myself of my place in the grand scheme of things. I tend to lose direction if things remain the same for too long. Sure, we're all going to die one day, but I don't mind making a little bit of money in the meantime.

That's it for now. I'll see you next time.