Your Daily Routine

You’ll never change your life

until you change something you do daily.

The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.

John C. Maxwell

Shortcut on iPhone Home Screen

I use EZchecklist™ on my laptop most of the time, but it sure comes in handy on my iPhone too.  However, it's a lot of poking around to open the Drive app, then go looking for my EZchecklist™ file and then open it. 

So I finally got around to adding a "shortcut" to it on my home screen.

It's much easier now! And it's easier, then I'll use it more, and if I use it more then I'll build good habits faster.

Your Daily Agenda

The secret of your success is 

determined by your daily agenda

John C. Maxwell

Import Bitcoin price into EZchecklist™

The formula for any cell where you want to store the current Bitcoin price. 

=GOOGLEFINANCE("CURRENCY:BTCUSD")

To capture the current price of the Standard and Poor 500 Index:

=GOOGLEFINANCE("SPY")

The Most Important Habit

"The most important habit is choosing the right habit to work on."

James Clear

It sounds good, but it falls short. 

In my estimation, the most important habit is to begin every day with the resolve to work on your habits, and to do that, you open your EZchecklist™ and start checking off the habits as you do them.

EZchecklist™ is "the mother of all good habits". If you start your day this way, and check in on your EZchecklist™ a couple of times during the day, and one last time before bed, you will surely build bulletproof habits quickly. 

The Wisdom of Habits

You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you want to become!

Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one.

Imagine changing just one word: You don't "have" to. You get to.

Never miss twice. If I miss one day, I try to get back into it as quickly as possible.

Until you work as hard as those you admire, don't explain away their success as luck.

source: Atomic Habits, via Michael McGill @mcgillmd921

The EZchecklist™ Update, March 2021

    

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The EZchecklist™ Update, March 2021

"all the news that's worth checking"

Here's what happened in the past month: 

1. Smile!

The most powerful thing you can do. Costs nothing; makes everything easier. There was a time when I had to consciously practice smiling and even tracked it in my EZchecklist™ but now it is a true, unthinking, life changing habit. A highly recommended read.

2. Sleep Like Tom Brady

We can't be super athletes like 7-time Super Bowl winning quarterback Tom Brady, but we can learn a thing or two from him. Sleep, for instance. It's the foundation of having a great day.

3. Integrated To Do List

EZchecklist™ is not a common To Do List, but it seems to want to have an integrated To Do list. See how this can work for you to simplify your life and get more "stuff" done.

4. Chatter

That voice in your head is normal, until it isn't, and then it gets in the way of moving on with your life. That's what this book is about. Read my take, and my experiences, with the chatter going on upstairs.

5. Subscribe!

Why wait? Get all the yummy goodness fro the EZchecklist™ blog as it happens. Check out the Subscribe box in the top right hand column of the site. Free. No spam. Private. Easy.

Chatter: that voice in your head

 

You're not alone...

You know that voice in your head, the one that keeps asking what if questions and doesn't give you a moment's peace, especially when you're trying to get some sleep or do some real work or just trying to relax... you know, like all the time!

This book is about that voice, and some real research that has been done and what it tells us that we can do about it, and even make it work for you instead of holding you back, causing anxiety, lack of confidence, etc.

I found this book by accident; it's not something I would normally read. But I was drawn in by the writer's conversational style.

There was a time in my life when the voice in my head was just as described, and I was spiraling downward, finally ending in divorce, bankruptcy, and cancer. That was a time of some serious chatter going on.

I knew that my survival depended on ending the habitual negative thinking. I escaped that negative voice in my head and started back on the road to success. Some of the things I did are mentioned in the book, so I can validate a lot of it. Additional techniques are mentioned, based on new research.

If you have been wishing that voice in your head would just shut up and play something more productive, then this book is for you.

Integrated To Do List

EZchecklist™ was intended to be much more than a simple To Do List. It was intended to be more of a To Be checklist. That is, if we simply listed the behaviors of the person we want to be, and then we focused on doing those things, we would succeed wildly.

However, there's still the real world of stuff we have To Do, and they never really found a way to be included in EZchecklist™.  

So, in the latest experiment to recognize the need for a To Do list, check out how it's integrated at the end of the Take Action section. Notice that To Do items are not scored, just listed as the background noise of real life. There is no reward for doing the mundane stuff of life.

You can add this feature yourself by inserting a row below the last activity in your Take Action section. You can list all the To Do items in the one cell and double click to open the list, or create separate rows for each To Do item and make all of them a Group. The second approach will work better when using EZchecklist™ on your phone.

How are you keeping your To Do List now?

Money shot

EZchecklist™ your Perfect Day superpower

 image source: https://www.screenstab.com/editor/?ref=producthunt

The Science of Smiling

 

What's better than a facelift, is contagious, free, and makes you feel better?

The answer, of course, is a smile.

There’s great power in our smiles. Even though they’re often hidden by a mask right now, we might want to consider smiling anyway.

Smiles not only lift others’ spirits, they have overall benefits for our brain and body health. Science reveals why.

With each grin, a little party happens in our heads, caused by the release of both neurotransmitters and neuropeptides in our brains.

Neurotransmitters such as dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin are released each time a smile flashes across our faces. These brain chemicals aid in calming our nervous systems by lowering heart rate and blood pressure, and this is a very good thing.

Dopamine gives the brain energy, motivation, a rush, and is necessary for habit change.

The endorphins secreted in response to a smile reduce our perception of pain and trigger a positive, euphoric feeling in our bodies.

Serotonin plays many different roles and controls our over-all moods. It can be thought of as a confidence molecule and flows when we feel significant.

The discovery of neuropeptides was important as it allowed science to connect the workings of the mind with the processes of the body.

Among other things, neuropeptides tell our bodies whether we are happy, sad, angry, depressed, or excited. When we smile, the neuropeptides tell the body we are happy.

Smiling improves our immune function by reducing stress and cortisol levels in our bodies.

Cortisol is the hormone secreted in response to stress, and high levels of cortisol are hard on our bodies and inhibit our immune systems. One study found that smiling helps the body produce more white blood cells, which fight illness.

One experiment showed that participants with elevated heart rates had their rate return to normal more quickly when they smiled.

Smiling involving the eyes activates the orbitofrontal cortex, the region of your brain that processes sensory rewards. This suggests that your brain feels rewarded when you smile or see a smile; it could be a great diet strategy.

When we are smiling, we even perceive other people’s faces differently, and will tend to see a smile on even seemingly neutral faces.

When we are smiling others tend to perceive us differently. Smiling faces are deemed to be more attractive. 

People with smiling faces are judged by others to be, not only more attractive, but more confident, reliable, relaxed and sincere.

If you’ve nothing to smile about, smile anyway. The adage of fake it until you make it is true here, because even fake smiles have benefits.

The feedback from the skeletal muscles involved in making a smile tells your body to release hormones and neuropeptides. Research showed that even fake smiles lower our heart rates and ease stress.

People who frequently smile genuinely tend to live longer. They tend to stay married longer, live healthier, and have higher levels of physical and emotional well being.

Smiles are contagious, as most people can’t help but smile back at a smiling face. When we look at a smiling face, our brain coaxes us to return the favor.

This creates a symbiotic relationship allowing both people to release feel-good chemicals in the brain, activating our reward centers, making us more attractive, healthier, and more resilient.

Research found that when people were asked to frown while looking at the picture of the smiling face, they could not as they mimicked the smile unless they really focused.

The simple act of a smile can transform you and the world around you.

According to Thich Nhat Hahn, “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”

Smile! Let the party begin.

source: https://www.castanet.net/news/New-Thought/324572/The-science-behind-a-smile

The Gesture of Maximum Leverage - this is the story of how I discovered the magic of smiling, way back in 2003, before science figured it out.

Smiling also builds trust.

Sleep Like Tom Brady

 If you can't Be Tom Brady, at least You can sleep like him...

There’s no doubt that Tom Brady is doing something right.

At 43, Brady won his seventh Super Bowl and earned his fifth Super Bowl MVP title (a league record for both) after his Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.

Brady credits his longevity and success to his strict health and wellness regimen, the TB12 Method, which he co-created with his longtime trainer Alex Guerrero.

One of the key components in Brady’s plan is his sleep routine.

Brady said in his 2017 book, “The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance” that he sticks to a 9 p.m. bedtime and he wakes up at 6 a.m. (for nine hours of sleep).

Here’s what else is in Brady’s sleep routine, according to his book.

No eating too close to bedtime

Brady makes sure he doesn’t eat anything too late in order to give his food time digest before he goes to sleep. He also avoids alcohol and caffeine, which research has linked to sleep disruption.

“The last thing I eat at night is dinner—and if I ever eat dessert, I try to do it after lunch, so the excess sugar won’t keep me up at night,” Brady said in his book.

No exercise before bed either

Brady likes to get his workouts in early.

“If you exercise at night, make sure it’s two to three hours before you go to sleep, since you don’t want to overstimulate your body and brain,” he wrote.

No distractions

Brady said he turns off all his electronic devices a half hour before bedtime to avoid distractions. His wife, supermodel Gisele Bündchen, doesn’t even allow cell phones near the bed when they sleep, according to the book, and their bedroom has no TV.

A cool bedroom

For Brady, the ideal sleeping temperature is around 65 degrees Fahrenheit. “I like my room cool, dark, and as quiet as possible to make sure I get a great night’s sleep,” he said in the book.

Additionally, though he did not say whether he uses it himself, Brady said in his book that ”contaminants like animal dander and dust can interfere with proper breathing and sleep,” and suggested putting a plant in the bedroom to filter out carbon monoxide and pump more oxygen into the room.

A negative ion generator (on Amazon for about $30), is another option, according to Brady, who wrote that it can enhance respiratory function, filter out indoor air pollutants and guard against mold and bacteria. However, while some studies have shown that negative ions can clean indoor air, the heath benefits relating to humans need to be further verified.

source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/06/-inside-tom-bradys-sleep-routine.html

The EZchecklist™ Update, February 2021

   

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The EZchecklist™ Update, February 2021

"all the news that's worth checking"

Here's what's happened in the past month: 

1. Powerful Morning Soundtrack

I always thought that a wake-up motivational soundtrack would be a good thing, but I had no idea how good until I actually took action and created one! Check out what I've come up with so far, and make your own.

2. ❤️ Love the love ❤️

Valentine's Day is coming, and thoughts turn to love, and what could be better than loving your new found superpower for creating the person you want to be! Click the link and check out what EZchecklist™ love looks like.

3. Groups feature eliminates visual noise

One of the more important fundamentals of building an effective checklist is to keep the list short and simple. When it starts to get long, say around 10 items, it's time to break it up into shorter groups. Check out this new feature that lets you do just that. And it's fun! This feature can be retro-fitted to you version. Let me know if you want help... I'm here for you!

4. Refreshed User Guide

If you haven't checked it out lately, click the link and get up to date on all the good stuff.  

My Powerful Morning Playlist

My morning playlist keeps getting better, of course, because that's the way things go when you are using your EZchecklist™.  It's the concept of Kaizen (continuous improvement). 

I've been thoroughly enjoying waking up to some excellent inspirational videos. Don't tell YouTube, but I don't watch the videos, I'm too busy doing things to get ready for my day (making the bed, coffee, breakfast, getting dressed, etc). I just listen to the audio track, and all that good brain food sinks into my being.

This is an ongoing experiment, so the playlist as I have it now will continue to change and improve. Check it out, and make up your own playlist, and let me know some good stuff you've found inspirational. 

Hint: I subscribe to YouTube Premium so there are NO ADS! Best 12 buck you can spend. I have cancelled all the other stuff like Netflix, Hulu, blah, blah, blah. Those apps are there for only one purpose: to get you addicted to passively watching your life go by. Surely there is something more important you can be doing, right? Like being addicted to creating the life you want, the person you want to be?

❤️ Love the love ❤️

 "Love makes the world go 'round" as the saying goes. Well, I'm pretty sure it was going around before love was invented by Madison Avenue advertising executives, but it's powerful stuff, love is. And sitting here all alone in Covid enforced isolation, the only real love we get is from happy users, like you.

So recently I thought I'd load all the user reviews into a word cloud generator and see what the love looks like, and here it is:

Just in time for Valentine's day, right? If you have been using EZchecklist™ for a while since your user review and have found even more stuff to love about it, and you would like to update your review with even more love, go for it... send me an email at mm@DBLM.com.

You guys are the best.

PS: Read some user reviews... Here!

❤️

Groups feature helps reduce visual noise

In its simplest form, EZchecklist™ is a 3-step process that delivers the life you want. 

1. Prepare Well, 

2. Take Action, and 

3. Celebrate your Results. 

Simple as that. 

It's also important to know where you are in your progress, so there are some helpful numbers to learn from in the Progress Reports section.

Each step can be opened and closed separately to reveal and hide the activities involved. 

Let's take a look at the Prepare Well step. Click on the plus sign + to the far left of the Prepare Well button, and we get the details of what this user has decided are the activities that will prepare them for the best day possible:

That looks easy enough, so let's add a place to check each activity off as we do them, and then we've got a real classical checklist. To do this, click on the top level menu and choose Show Today Only and we get this:

You can see that some activities are already checked off. It would be nice if we had some way to keep a running score for how our day is progressing, so if we reveal row 3... Bingo:

The EZscore shows we have 80 points so far. Nice!  The score is calculated based on the activities we check off and the amount of time we spend doing the things that will deliver the results we want. You get 10 points for each checkbox completed and 10 points for each hour you spend Taking Action (step 2).

Let's close up Step 1 and open section 2.  Click on the minus sign - to the left of Step 1, and click on the plus sign + to the left of Step 2. In this section we record the amount of time, in minutes, for each activity. These activities are the ones that you determine that are the most important things you can do to deliver the life you want. 

Now close up the Take Action group... click on the minus sign to the left, and open the Celebrate group... click on the plus sign to the left.

The celebrate step ends the day by entering the time you went to bed.

You know how it works now, so close the Celebrate group and open the Progress Reports group. Here's where you can record various important measurements as they might happen during your day, such as your weight, steps taken (from your phone app at the end of your day), etc.  Some of these numbers can add to your score, such as your weight if it is in your target range (set in your Profile... we'll get to that later). 

Note the items in red. These are things we want to avoid as much as possible. They don't subtract from your score, but we want to keep track of these things because then we can improve. ("Measure it to Manage it")

Here's the basic structure again, with a very important place to answer the question Why.  That is, Why are you doing this? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? What is your Mission in Life. Weighty questions for sure, and for those of you who answer it, all things are possible.

The new Groups feature allows a minimalist look at the overall structure of the app. To reveal and hide the contents of each element, it's just a single click on the +/- symbol in the far left margin.

Use the Groups feature to reduce the "noise" in your checklist, the less distracted your focus becomes and the more productive you will become.

The Absolute Importance of Sleep

Matthew Walker is Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Founder and Director of the Center for Human Sleep Science.

Sleep helps us in so many ways, even in building effective habits.

Many suggestions on how to get the best sleep, all based on good science. Check this video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig&ab_channel=PowerfulJRE

Powerful Morning Soundtrack

I've been experimenting with a YouTube playlist to be started when I wake up. Highly motivational content, music, etc. 

Click the image to see what I'm currently using.

While these are YouTube videos, it's not about the visuals, just the soundtrack, so I can be listening while going about my other morning rituals like making coffee, getting dressed, etc.

This is good stuff. Self hypnosis, self programming. Way better than random junk on facebook, instagram, etc.

What is the playlist of your mornings, if any?

It's your life, you get to choose your soundtrack instead of that monkey mind going on in your head.

EZchecklist™ Update, January 2021

   

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The EZchecklist™ Update, January 2021

"all the news that's worth checking"

Welcome to the first day of the first month of the first year of rest of your life!  It's a time for New Year's resolutions for many, and if they are like most people, the resolutions will be broken and forgotten within days. But not for users of EZchecklist™ because we have a system for making reality happen the way we want.

Here's what's happened in the past month: 

1. Video Meeting Checklist

Nobody meets face to face anymore, so Zoom meetings are the norm. But have you noticed how some people do it right while many others seem like a train wreck? You can bet the ones who do it right have prepared well. We gave this some thought and came up with this Video Meeting Checklist. Show how professional you can be. Use the checklist.

2. Your Words Create Your Reality

Rethinking the words we use for the activities in the checklist can make all the difference in the world to be more motivational and inspirational. Check out this post, for sure.

3. Visual storytelling: a new logo for EZchecklist™

After 5+ years of focusing on building the EZchecklist™ product, we're finally getting around to thinking about a logo. If you're reading this, you have already seen it, but you might want to read more about this. Click the link.

4. Integrating ToBeWise™ with EZchecklist™

EZchecklist was built before ToBeWise, which came 2 years later, but they are both under continuous development. ToBeWise™ is all about how you think and the fast track way to get the wisdom of the ages. EZchecklist™ is all about applying what you know into consistent, powerful Action. Read more at the link.

5. Powerful Morning Soundtrack

What are your thoughts first thing in the morning, as you go about your morning rituals. Are they all over the place, like monkey mind, or are they powerful and prepare you for a powerful, perfect day?  Check the link and start on this excellent method for getting the best from life and business.

6. Lots of other improvements too numerous to mention.

Formulas were made simpler, faster, and redundancies were eliminated. Cosmetic fixes galore. If you find something you want improved, just email, text, or set an appointment.

Make this your best year ever. Use EZchecklist™ as your superpower for success in Life and Business. We are here to help you!

Integrating ToBeWise™ into EZchecklist™

 

EZchecklist™ is all about taking Action, of course. However action without right Thinking is chaos. That's why you have the app ToBeWise™.

This is how I integrate ToBeWise™ into my EZchecklist™ every day...

When I am into one of my first activities of the day, in the past called "Meditate" and now called "Build a Beautiful Mind" I reserve a section of that time to select a subject of interest, and let the quotes scroll on by at a leisurely pace. When I see a quote that grabs me, I'll tap it and Favorite it, and continue to scroll. I reserve about 5 minutes for this. Here's the note for this activity:

I'll do this same process as part of my Unwind Rituals in the evening before sleep. Again, for about 5 minutes. 

I've been using this app for about 4 years, and I'm still amazed at some of the things I'm still learning! There are 177 different subjects that you can choose so you will always find something worthwhile and timely.

Visual storytelling: with a logo

Have you noticed that there was no visual at the top of this site? That's just wrong, of course, and it is way past time to have one that tells the story at a glance. The only excuse I can offer for why this has been the case is that I am completely without talent when it comes to anything artistic. I know what I like when I see it, but am powerless to create compelling visuals.

I mentioned this to one of my clients, Alyssa, who happens to be an artist/illustrator and she leaped at the chance to give it a try. So this, above, was her first shot at it, knowing full well that there will be many improvements to come, as with everything in life.

Thank you Alyssa! 

Your words create your reality

In tune with the New Year, and thinking of resolutions, I was taking some time to improve my EZchecklist™ and got to thinking about the third item in my list: Meditate. It struck me as something that was flat, without a good motivating visual.  

Do I really want to just meditate, or do I want something more. Actually what I want is the result of meditation. Just meditating is not very motivational. Meditating is the what. I need the why.

I'm assuming we are all familiar with Simon Sinek's classic TED talk "Start with Why". It is almost a cliché among product development startup founders who are so obsessed with what they are building that the have a difficult time expressing why are doing it. The communicate very clearly how the thing works, but not at all clearly why someone would want to use it.

A very good friend of mine, George Walther, wrote a book about 20 years ago called "What you say is what you get"  that clearly explains that the words we use create our reality. Many books have followed his in this same vein. 

So, putting the why into my meditate action item on my checklist, and coupling it with words chosen to create what I'm really trying to achieve with meditating, I came up with "Build a Beautiful Mind" which, to me, is so much more motivational than simply "Meditate".  

Now, when I get to that time in my morning, I look forward to Building a Beautiful Mind. What could be better than that?

This was a great start at improving my EZchecklist™ and I'm looking forward to going through the rest of the list to make similar improvements. 

Let me know how you are making continuous improvements to your list.