My last office

I have spent a lot of time over the years writing my goals down, revising them, and so on.

On this page I want to share with you what I do with some of those goals. Below are some photos from my last office (though I now work from home).

You may see some ideas here which you could implement yourself.

I arranged that shot above a bit: my desk isn’t always as tidy as that!

On the wall you’ll see…

• a sheet of affirmations (Be grateful for everything, See the balance everywhere, Visualise clearly, etc) plus a photo of me with Mark Victor Hansen (co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul: we had been talking about my business flying him into the UK to run a weekend seminar for my customers), and a photo of me back to back with Dr John Demartini (who I consider to be at the forefront of personal development in the world)
• below that, another sheet of affirmations (Embrace ‘failure’, Put yourself in others’ shoes, Refine constantly, etc) plus photos on me with Gary Bencivenga (a brilliant copywriter and a genius on using the unconscious to come up with ideas), and another, hidden behind my laptop, of me with Ted Nicholas (another brilliant copywriter who shared with me some fascinating insights into the minds of potential buyers in a quiet moment at an event in the UK where we were both presenting in front of 2,200 people)
• photos of me and my sons
• a photocopy of both sides of a million dollar bill with the affirmation “Money arrives in increasing amounts”
• a sheet saying: ‘Ask yourself the miracle question’ (which comes from Solution Focused Brief Therapy which I sometimes use with clients)
• a sheet saying ‘What is the smartest thing you can do right now?’ and ‘How can you ensure you have an inspiring day, feeling deep love in your heart?’
• a sheet saying ‘Read your goals. Do ROBERTA (a 3-minute, 7-question process I teach on my CD set called The Effort-Free Life System which sets me up for the day). Do the People Process (again from my CDs, which is a quick way to reduce any emotional charge I feel towards someone). Send out love to all (this may sound a bit namby pamby to some people! – but it works for me!). Plan today, and the next.’
• the sleeve for my CD set with reminders to me of what I’d accomplished with it: ‘Rave testimonials. Thousands sold.’

On the desk, along with the organic Cola, are a digital recorder, which I use to record my ideas, mostly while driving. There’s also a timer: I time my 3-minute ROBERTA process, and many of my tasks: so I might give myself 30 minutes to create the structure for a 15-minute mini lecture at the start of the 90-minute teleconference calls I used to run. Or I’d give myself 30 minutes to write the blurb for the interview CD I would record with an expert author or entrepreneur etc which we’d include with the newsletters we’d send around the world: “On this month’s recording you’ll hear my interview Richard Koch, author of The 80/20 Principle. You’ll hear Richard share the 3 most important lessons…” – that sort of thing!

My 17-inch MacBook Pro is on a stand with a separate keyboard and mouse as I started to get aches in my wrists from typing directly onto my laptop: when I was doing the newsletter I was writing/editing 10,000 words in 3 days each month which meant solid typing and mouse work.

On the screen I show the cover of one of the 45 issues of the Effort-Free Life Newsletter: 12 pages plus a CD which we sent out monthly. We printed and distributed several thousand copies of some issues. People paid US$29 a month for each issue, and we had many many people subscribe to all 45 issues.

Right. On to the next photo, which, as you can see, shows the wall to the right of the photo above…

The seven sheets above show goals in different areas of my life using mindmaps.

Top row: Personal Growth goals and Friends and Family goals

Middle row: Health and Fun goals

Bottom row: Money and Physical Space (house, my environment) goals.

The sheet next to the door has 3 photos of me with my wife on it.

This next shot is of 3 sheets on the door: these contain more private goals, so if someone popped into my office, I could leave the door open and they wouldn’t see what was written there!…

Top: short-term career goals

Middle: long-term career goals

Bottom: New Product ideas.

Finally, I thought I’d add this next sheet by way of completeness. It shows my tasks lists for the day as a mindmap…

…and you can see that I added little icons such as a surf wave for 2 things I needed to surf to online; a phone for the calls I planned to do that day; a post box for things I was going to put in the mail, a house to denote what I needed to do when I got home (my wife was away with our sons in Scotland for a few days at the time, so I wanted reminders to ensure the place was spick and span before they got back the next morning); etc

You’ll see that there is generally only one word on each branch.

For example, Mac>21>injunct>Susan is very brief, but it’s all I need to remind me to search out the article I had written on the 12 Injunctions (12 things we have learned from our parents/teachers etc which can hold us back in life) and send it to a client called Susan

You’ll see 2 holes at the top of the sheet as this page was in a binder which contains all my goals and plans: some handwritten, and some typed up then printed out and inserted into the binder.

All the above images come from a product I created called Dream Sculptor which consisted of 4 CDs and 2 binders: the first binder explained how to create your own goals binder and included lots of headings with examples. The second binder contained sheets with the headings and questions only, so you just had to fill in the blanks to create an amazing plan for the days, weeks, months and years ahead, with simple, short, daily exercises you can do to keep you on track, thinking big, and taking tiny steps forward each day.

Regarding the CDs: 3 of them explained how to create your own Dream Sculptor binder so you could sculpt the life of your dreams, and the fourth CD was a CD-ROM contained photos, spreadsheets you could use, etc.

I gave this product away to attendees at my Effort-Free Life seminars in the UK, the USA and Australia, and they started filling their binder in during the last afternoon on the third day. I got terrific feedback from it. It looked like this…

…and inside, it looked like this…

I plan to release this product again over the coming months. If you’re interested in getting hold of the current ‘beta version’, which I currently use for my own life planning, then drop me a line.