I’m a big fan of the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss.

He’s got a great blog with lots of useful resources and today I want to share one of my favourite parts with you.

Consider the question: What would you do, day-to-day, if you had $100 million in the bank? If still blocked, fill in the five “doing” spots with the following:

1 place to visit
1 thing to do before you die (a memory of a lifetime)
1 thing to do daily
1 thing to do weekly
1 thing you’ve always wanted to learn

Excerpted from: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/lifestyle-costing/

Until I read this, I rarely thought about my wild-dream-style goals in terms of what I’d love to be doing daily or weekly. Most of my daily goals revolve around actions I believe I have to take that perhaps aren’t always the most fun stuff in the world (exercise, learning, eating correctly).

But if I had $100 million in the bank, what would I like to do daily? Thanks Tim, this put a whole new spin on my thinking.

And if you haven’t read the book I couldn’t recommend it more.

Kirsty Dunphey is one of Australia’s most publicised young entrepreneurs and is the founder of http://www.reallysold.com - the ultimate tool to help real estate agents write amazing advertisements. The youngest ever winner of the Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year award, Kirsty started her first business at 15, her own real estate agency at 21, was a self-made millionaire at 23 and a self-made multi-millionaire at 25. For more information on Kirsty or either of her books – Advance to Go, Collect $1 Million and Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can, or to sign up to her weekly newsletter head to: http://www.kirstydunphey.com

After the tragically early passing of a friend last year at the very young age of 42, I wrote the number 42 on my hand and kept rewriting it there for days afterwards. I was stunned that someone so vital could have their life cut short at such a young age.

Right now, I have the number 42 on the side of my laptop, always in sight.  It’s not there to be macabre, it’s not even just there to remind me of this fabulous man I knew.

42 reminds me that:

1. I probably won’t have much of a say in when my last day on earth will come (difficult for a control freak). 
   

2. That day could come when I’m in my 80’s (http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Free-Articles/Trends/20080707-Women-live-longer-by-the-beach-men-in-the-cold.html?source=cmailer) or it may come sooner or later, either way, see point 1.
   

3. When that day comes, I do not want to look back and say “I wish I’d done…” or “if only…” or “why didn’t I make time to…”.
   

So often people ask me about how to set goals for themselves. When it comes to life’s larger goals, I use 42 and ask myself the question: “If I could transport myself forward in time to my last day on earth, what are the things I would have liked to accomplish during that time?”

When you ask yourself that question, often you’ll find a list of life goals will simply flow.

To check out one man’s adventurous search for goal achievement in his life head to: http://johngoddard.info/

To listen to a truly inspiring speech entitled “the last lecture” by Dr. Randy Pausch often spoken of as “the dying man who is teaching people to live” head here http://kirstydunphey.blogspot.com/2008/06/wow-last-lecture.html

To see what short term goal I just achieved, check out http://kirstydunphey.blogspot.com/2008/06/goal-achieved.html

If your goals includes travel, you might enjoy: http://kirstydunphey.blogspot.com/2008/06/goals-need-update.html

To see how I keep track of my goals: http://kirstydunphey.blogspot.com/2008/02/secret-weapons-to-success-could-be.html

http://www.allaboutolive.com.au/ and check out the final blog of “the world’s” oldest blogger, who lived and blogged into her 106^th year before her passing on the 12^th of July 2008.

Postscript: I wrote this blog last week, and then this week I was sadly informed of a distant friend, a father of two young boys, who passed of cancer at age 33. I’ve held the blog back, not even sure that I wanted to print it given the recent news. But then a conversation with this man’s close friend showed me that I needed to print this. In his last months, knowing that his last day might be very soon, this father of two took his family away and they enjoyed the trip of life time. They really lived, loved and enjoyed his last few months. My wish for each of you reading this is that you can look back and say that you truly lived as many of the months in your life as possible. Don’t wait until an illness makes you realise your mortality, 42 and now 33 remind me of that each day.

Kirsty Dunphey is one of Australia’s most publicised young entrepreneurs and is the founder of http://www.reallysold.com - the ultimate tool to help real estate agents write amazing advertisements. The youngest ever winner of the Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year award, Kirsty started her first business at 15, her own real estate agency at 21, was a self-made millionaire at 23 and a self-made multi-millionaire at 25. For more information on Kirsty or either of her books – Advance to Go, Collect $1 Million and Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can, or to sign up to her weekly newsletter head to: http://www.kirstydunphey.com

Want to be an entrepreneur? So do a lot of people! And a lot of people go to their grave saying “I wish I’d…” and “If only I’d…”. If you’re determined not to be one of them, run through the A-Z and see if you’re on track.

Action – nothing starts without it. What are you doing today, right now (not tomorrow) to get you closer to your goals?

Bare yourself… (to yourself). Ask what it is you really want, what are you passionate about and what are you prepared to do to get there. More importantly, what are you not prepared to do to get there.

Care – Any entrepreneurial endeavour that has clients who care about the company has one leg up. Who are your raving fans? Who cares about what you do? What can you do to further cultivate that?

Dare – Risk doesn’t necessarily have to mean risky, but any entrepreneur dares where others don’t. Are you ready to be daring?

Eat up knowledge – anywhere you can and do it daily.

Friends – know who your real ones are and keep them close to you as you rise to the top.

Get up and go. No-one can train this into you. If you get up in the morning and want to go back to bed rather than off to pursue your entrepreneurial visions – get new visions that inspire you to get up and going.

Hug it out. Thank often and sincerely. Clients, staff, mentors, friends, parents and even your garbage person if they’ve helped you.

Individuality – what makes you special, unique and individual? How can you harness your special talents

Joke – keep laughing and smiling, you’ll need it for those less than perfect days.

Kill them with kindness. There is only one type of revenge you should ever enact on people who’ve slighted you in the business world, or said you couldn’t make it. Become amazingly successful! Nothing else you can do would make their stomachs turn even half as much.

Leverage – get the most talented people you can around you (people who are a heck of a lot smarter than you in their field). If you want to be all and do all yourself you’ll never have a saleable scaleable business.

Motion. Stay active in your mind and in your body. You’re no good to anyone if you’re not fit and healthy.

No. Learn how to say it. You can’t get to the top being everything to everyone.

Off switch. Find yours. Whether it’s yoga, gazing into your partner’s eyes or a marathon xbox-ing session, learn how to turn it off when you need to.

Passion! Even if your business is cleaning toilets, find something you can be passionate about within it. Whether it’s the systems, the service, the clients or even the relaxing sound of toilets flushing!

Questions – ask heaps! Find people who have done what you want to do, who drive the car you want to drive, whose staff think of them the way you want to be thought of and ask them questions.

Rough, tough and ready for critics. Got your tough outer shell on? The ride won’t always be easy and the comments about you won’t always be pretty.

Systems. Put them in place early and assess often. If your business can’t work without you – it’s not a business, it’s just a job for you.

Toxic people – get them out of your life! If you work with them, are friends with them or even have them in your family – stop hanging around them all the time. Strive for associations with positive, fabulous people who make you a better person.

Ubercool. Can you and your business be übercool? Are you setting in place the things that will make people one day say “I want my business to be just like ”

Voice. Find yours and make it heard. Publicity, press releases, media schmoozing – it’s all out there for free if you can make your voice heard.

Want a lot of stuff (success, things, travel, lifestyle, to be able to be philanthropic). Want it badly. And then get out there and get it.

X-ray like vision – use yours to stay on top of the latest trends, movements and shifts in your industry and in others. Challenge the status quo at every opportunity!

You are the CEO of your own life. What are you going to do with it?

Zorbing – do it or something you think is as much fun (skydiving, ride a roller coaster, travel to the pyramids, join the mile high club) as often as you can – why do you want to be an entrepreneur if not to do amazing things with your personal life as well.

Kirsty Dunphey is one of Australia’s most publicised young entrepreneurs and is the founder of http://www.reallysold.com - the ultimate tool to help real estate agents write amazing advertisements. The youngest ever winner of the Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year award, Kirsty started her first business at 15, her own real estate agency at 21, was a self-made millionaire at 23 and a self-made multi-millionaire at 25. For more information on Kirsty or either of her books – Advance to Go, Collect $1 Million and Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can, or to sign up to her weekly newsletter head to: http://www.kirstydunphey.com

My desk is a veritable treasure trove of weaponry… weapons of success that is. Having spent much of my working life at a desk in front of a computer I decided a few years ago that what I had with me at my desk was going to be vital in assisting me towards achieving my definition of success.

See weapon 1 in previous blog.

Weapon 2.  The Low-Tech Goal Box

I’ve always been pretty goal oriented even from as early as age 7 or 8 when I decided the best way to make my first million (one of my first goals) was in peddling pirated video tapes to my school mates (see my first book Advance to Go for some of my other childhood escapades)!

Obviously I’ve progressed into more legitimate means of achieving my goals these days. I used to keep lists upon lists of goals taking my cues from my mentors like John McGrath who laminates his list and has it in the shower and then mine was in my car under the sun visor (until I realised that I live in Tasmania and don’t need to use my sun visor all that often!) I’ve had lists taped up at my desk, lists in my wallet, lists by my bed, lists in my head. Until I realised that I didn’t love the idea of having a list at all for two main reasons:

1. Because I’m a pretty visual person – so I wanted to be able to incorporate pictures to really make my goals seem real
2. Because each time I updated my goal list and got rid of those things that I achieved, I lost that information. My “done” goals were done but also gone which meant I had no way of looking back and seeing what I’d achieved.

And then one day it came to me. I was sitting with a very special sales consultant, Jeff, from our real estate company and we were discussing the fact that although we had all this amazing technology and software for databasing his clients, if the best system for him was a file box with each client on a card then that’s what he should use.

It hit me that I could use an online goal program like www.joesgoals.com (which is very cool and I highly recommend it) – but maybe I just needed to get very low tech and invest in some file cards and a box myself.

These days in my funky little low tech box of goals I have everything categorised:

P             for those goals already Planned and waiting to happen (like my trip to             Cambodia in January)

G            for Goals that don’t fit into any other category (my dream wardrobe, the         world’s largest shoe collection, a Bugatti Veyron for my husband)

B              for Business goals (subscribers to my weekly email, income goals etc)

T              my favourite, Travel goals (this category has by far the most cards)

E            Experiences I want to have (seeing a volcano erupt, going zorbing)

L               Things I want to learn (waterskiing, dancing, piano, sign language, reading     52 books this financial year)

A            Affirmations, these aren’t so much goals as just things I like to remind             myself of – seeing as I check through my goal box at least weekly I thought     this would be a good place to put them!

D           DONE! The best section! (includes completed goals like indoor skydiving,          speaking in Las Vegas, launching my new book Retired at 27)

U            this is my Undone section. Goals I thought I once wanted but have now         decided aren’t a priority for me (being flexible is good – I just kept them         here as a reminder in case I change my mind again!)

This system works really well for me because I’ve got room to write in detail where I need to, I can add pictures (which gets me much more excited than words) and I also have room to write when and how I achieved the goal.

Checking back through my Done section gives me reasons to celebrate, moments to remember and a great record of what I’ve achieved for the past year.

Now of course, good things don’t come cheap! I think you can pick up your very own goal box in any office supplies store for the princely sum of less than $10. And if the low-tech goal box isn’t for you, write a list, paint your goals on a wall, tattoo them on your leg – do whatever you need to do to make it work for you!