I went to my local UPS store where I have a mailbox. I stuck the key in the lock and it didn’t work. I asked the store employee what happened and they asked who I was. I gave them my name and they said I wasn’t in their system. They gave my mailbox to someone else and didn’t even tell me!!!!!!!
So I spoke to the manager and he apologized, said he’d get to the bottom of it. He asked me for documentation for the mailbox.
I whipped out my phone and, within 3 minutes, I had a copy of the mailbox agreement, my receipt for this year’s renewal, and a confirmation email from the store confirming that my registration was valid.
Thank God I am fairly organized. I had just restructured all my bookkeeping folders the week prior as part of a cleanup project for my estate planning book I am writing, and I took a lot of time structuring that folder in particular so that expenses would be very easy to find. That little bit of foresight paid off big time today.
Lo and behold, I got my box back, but imagine what a PITA it would have been if I had to spend hours looking for documentation (if any existed).
As I was in the store hammering out this problem, I came up with a little game that I am going to hold myself to moving forward.
The game is this: any time I am presented with the task of finding something, anything related to my writing business, I must find it in 3 minutes or less. If I do, then I know I am organized and on top of things. If not, then it’s a failure and I have to rework things so that I can find it in the future quickly.
I did some “drills” this afternoon to see how well I could pass my own rule. I passed most of the time.
Let me give you four simple (but not necessarily easy) challenges and see if YOU can pass them.
If you can pass all these challenges, you are on the right track. No need to share the answers, just do them for yourself.
Remember, you have to be able to find the answer in 3 minutes.
Challenge #1: Write all businesses expenses that you made on this day, two years ago. (12/18/2019) Bonus points if you can find the receipts for those expenses before time is up.
Challenge #2: Generate a list of all services that you currently pay a subscription for for your writing business (hint: domains, email marketing, etc.)
Challenge #3: Write down the total amount of your business expenses for 2021. No “going from memory”. It needs to be as exact as possible.
Challenge #4: Write down how much money you made on all book retailers in 2021. If you’re exclusive to Amazon, your challenge is to write down how much money you made per format (ebooks, paper, audio). No need to itemize this by book—just the amounts are what you need.
Can you find the answers to the questions above in 3 minutes or less?
I can. Sure, I cherry picked the examples, but the point stands.
Here’s why these challenges are important.
Challenge #1: Knowing your expenses is important. If you have a service like Quickbooks, then you can nail this one. Being able to find a single expense at any time, anywhere quickly is critically important. What happens if you get audited at tax time and get a bunch of questions about a particular expense? What if, you have to settle a dispute, as I did today with my mailbox?
Challenge #2: If you got hit by a bus tomorrow and your heirs needed to stop credit card payments for certain services, where would they even know where to start? For example, if I die, I don’t need Photoshop anymore. That subscription needs to be canceled on day one. Otherwise, my bank account will leak money that my heirs could be enjoying…
Challenge #3: Again, you can nail this one if you use Quickbooks or a similar service. Knowing your expenses is critical. It’s also critical for your heirs to know your expenses and income for at least three years prior as you can still be audited even when you’re dead.
Challenge #4: Man, knowing how much you make at each retailer in a given month is soooo nice…not easy to do, though. There are tools such as Scribecount that are making that easier, but I don’t believe in tying myself into a paid ecosystem to glean data that I should already know. But a service like this would be wonderful for heirs.
Anyhoo, the next level of thinking here is, could your heirs pass these challenges in 3 minutes or less? If so, wow, you’re killing it. If you can do that, you’re setting yourself and your heirs up for a lot of success in the future, and less hassle.
Think about it: every minute you spend trying to find something is a minute you can’t spend writing. That adds up. Not to mention stress from not being able to find something when you need it.
Every minute your heirs spend finding something is robbing them of their own passions and obligations, too. Getting organized is really being kind to them after you’re gone.
IN OTHER NEWS
I did a podcast interview this morning for a summit that is going on in March. I’ll share more about that closer to the date.
I wrote about 500 words today. The novel is inching along.
I also took the opportunity to clean up my hard drive today. I deleted old files, organized things, restructured a few things. I eliminated 50% of the space on my hard drive, so I have a lot more room now, and everything is running smoother and a little faster. That’s a win.
Have a good night.
