The Propeller – There is no 🔥 BREAKING NEWS 🔥 in this email, but you should still open it. – 4-21-2024

What is the balance of your bank account?

It’s a personal question, but I’m willing to bet you know the answer.

We all know roughly how much we have in the bank.

Because it’s important to know. 

It’s impossible to budget, or save, or make big purchases without knowing how much money is in our banks.

It’s a prerequisite to good financial management. And it’s something that we all keep track of without even thinking about it. 

Because before you go about understanding or improving something, you need to have a baseline measurement of where you’re currently at.

This is something that most people understands with money.

But that far fewer people seem to understand in other areas of life.

I started using a spreadsheet to track different parts of my life, similar to the way many track their financials.

The spreadsheet contains habits around tracking my work, exercise, sleep, diet, and water intake. 

A couple of people have asked about the spreadsheet and suggested that it might be overkill to track my life in such granular detail. I’m a data guy, though.  Without compiling this data, I can’t get an accurate picture of progress and changes and how they are benefitting my life.

I think it’s necessary and hugely beneficial. Here’s why: 

If you don’t track your sleep, it’s next to impossible to know how much actual sleep you’re getting each night. And without knowing that, you can’t make lifestyle changes to improve your sleep quality and quantity.  There are many ways you can accurately track your sleep.  Most smart watches will track it for you.

If you don’t track the food you put into your body, any weight-loss or weight-gain goal is reduced to pure guesswork. You’re also unable to keep track of what foods affect your energy levels, and whether or not you’re eating a healthy balance of foods over a prolonged period.

If you’re a knowledge worker, self-employed, or somebody responsible for planning your own day, the benefits of tracking the time you spend working are hard to overstate. As well as understanding which tasks take the most time within your working day (and finding efficiencies accordingly), you can also work out at what point in the day your willpower falls over, and plan your schedule to match.

My smart watch is used for recording how much water I drink.

Here’s the thing: 

You might already be getting lots of high-quality sleep, eating the right amounts of nutritious foods, drinking enough water, and getting the optimal amount of work done each day.

But you might not be.

Without generating some sort of data, you will literally never know. 

Hold yourself accountable to objective measures. 

It makes doing the right thing far easier to track and manage. And stops you falling into the overdraft of your health, productivity and wellness.  

In today’s tech-driven world, navigating through the digital landscape has become a daily necessity for many of us. From smartphones to laptops, smart home devices to wearables, technology is deeply ingrained in our lives. But fear not, for with a few handy tips, you can effortlessly streamline your tech experience and sail smoothly through the digital waves. Here are my top five tech tips for everyday tech users:

Stay Updated: One of the cardinal rules of tech usage is to keep your devices and software up to date. Whether it’s your smartphone’s operating system, your laptop’s software, or your smart home gadgets, regular updates ensure not only improved performance but also patch up security vulnerabilities. Set your devices to update automatically if possible, or make it a habit to check for updates regularly.

Backup, Backup, Backup: Don’t wait until disaster strikes to realize the importance of backups. Whether it’s your cherished photos, important documents, or vital emails, ensure you have a backup plan in place. Utilize cloud storage services like Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud for seamless, automatic backups. Additionally, consider investing in an external hard drive for local backups for an added layer of security.

Practice Digital Hygiene: Just like personal hygiene, digital hygiene is crucial for maintaining the health and security of your devices. This includes habits like using strong, unique passwords for each account, being wary of suspicious emails and links, and regularly running antivirus scans on your devices. Remember, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure when it comes to cyber threats.

Organize Your Digital Space: With the deluge of digital content we encounter daily, it’s easy for our digital spaces to become cluttered and disorganized. Take the time to declutter your devices regularly by deleting unnecessary files, organizing your folders and apps, and utilizing tools like email filters and digital calendars to stay organized and on top of your tasks.

Learn to Troubleshoot: No matter how advanced technology becomes, glitches and hiccups are inevitable. Instead of panicking when something goes awry, equip yourself with basic troubleshooting skills. Learn how to restart your devices, clear cache and cookies, and utilize online resources like forums and FAQs to troubleshoot common issues. You’ll be amazed at how many problems you can solve on your own with just a little know-how.

By incorporating these five tech tips into your daily routine, you can navigate the digital realm with confidence and ease. Remember, technology is meant to enhance our lives, not complicate them. So embrace these tips, and let technology work for you, not against you. Happy tech-ing!

If all else fails, give me a call!