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Looks like we made it, 2020 is behind us and 2021 is going to be the better year! I’m Marty with Warehouse and Operations as a Career. I, like everyone else was blindsided last March. I had, shoot I think our industry had, gotten a bit comfortable in our lives. We had access to everything we wanted. If we didn’t like our boss, even if we just got mad at the company for a day, not a problem. We’d go get another job. I think a lot of us thought our finances were in order. We may have figured we were doing good by having a rainy-day fund with 2 weeks’ worth of expenses in it. We had savings! We could go out anytime we wanted too, see a movie, go to dinner, catch up with old friends. And it all stopped. For most of us light industrial workers it stopped for at least 2 weeks. Many of us had to deal with reduced hours and maybe even pay cuts. If we didn’t have a plan in place, and who really would, did you ever think a virus would show up and shut us down! I forgot where I was going with that, but really, could we of even had a plan for such a thing. I guess we could have had more money saved or cash on hand but, I don’t know what else!
We’ll I for one do have plans for 2021. Of course, financially I’m going to plan a little better, and I think we all should, but don’t limit yourself to just thinking about money. Or saving money I should say. Our plans should consist of how to make more money too. In today’s world investing has been made simple. Well, simple to make a stock trade. But of course, you do have to put in the work to know what and how. And crypto currency! I have several friends that play around there, not just buying and selling but mining their own too. But and this is a big but. It needs to be understood all that is risky and there’s absolutely no guarantees that you will not lose your entire investment! Oh, and, anything you see about investing on social media, or someone telling you to invest with me and you only pay me something when we make something. Run away. Social media is not the avenue to seek investing help. There is a lot of help out there though. We here at WAOC aren’t financial specialist though so I’ll quit talking about investing! If you do have interest in such, send us an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com and we’ll point you in the direction of google for companies that may be able to help you!
But we do know a bit about targeting employers and getting those interviews, even keeping our light industrial positions once we’ve landed them! And here in 2021 we’ll be speaking with others, the professionals, regarding getting hired, keeping our jobs and advancing those careers.
2021 is going to be a year chopped full of Op’s, the positions, more on front line management, and all the advancement and earning potential our light industrial fields can offer us.
So, moving forward. Let me find my bullet points here, ok, goals. Everybody got’em? What about our plan, have you written it down, is it somewhere that we’ll see it every day or where we can pull it out and look at it as often as we need to? If it’s not, or you haven’t done anything with your goals or plans yet I guess you’re saying you are alright earning the same amount of money, or maybe a bit less, next year! Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Oh, that reminds me. We had a listener ask about a savings strategy we talked about in December 2017. It’s called the 52-week money challenge. This is a great way, with just a little discipline, that you can save $1378.00. It’s simple, move $1 to our savings week 1 of the year, then $2 on week 2, then $3 dollars on week 3. All were doing is adding a dollar each week of the year all the way to 52 dollars on week 52. That’s $1378.00. Now what some people do is start out with the $52 on week 1, $51 dollars on week 2, all the way down to week 52, it’d be $1. Going backwards might make the holidays a bit easier! either way, it you do not touch it, it’s a fun and challenging way to save some money. Some people like to just pick an amount to throw towards savings each week. Generally, I hear something like $25 a week. That’d give us $1300 at the end of the year. $30 a week is a nice round number and that’d give us $1560! I know one guy that for, gosh, probably 10 years he has set aside $80 dollars a week. He had gotten a pretty nice raise when he went from a forklift driver to a receiver and decided to put all his raise in savings at the time. We talk about it every once and a while and still laugh about his situation way back then. Know of course he has taken advantage of his companies 401k plan and I’m sure he has a few other investments but just that one savings plan, $80 a week would be $4160 a year, and let’s say it has been 10 years, that’d be $41,600. Not a bad savings plan right? He socked away just 1 of his raises. He feels like he never missed that cash because he had it go straight to savings!
I strayed again. So, I was talking about having a goal, a financial goal for this year. Last year WAOC threw out a challenge to all of us to earn $5000.00 more dollars than we did in 2019. For any new listener’s, our goal was to increase our hourly wage by $2.40 cents. Now of course, working any o/t or extra shifts could have helped us out too. The goal was to earn 5k more on our w2’s. Well. It was a tough year for a lot of us, some had to kick that goal on into this year and that’s perfectly fine. Remember, just as we decide what our goals are, we get to set the rules as well! The important thing is to write it down again and give it a go!
So, goals. I had a supervisor tell me last week she had set down to write out her plans for 2021 and she got stuck after make sure my children learn right from wrong. Quite a hefty goal there, I can see how she got stuck! No, seriously. Our children learn first from us and then from the ones we put them in front of, right? If we talk, see how I slid in the word communicate there! If we talk with our children, our significant others, our peers and our managers. Well, we’ll all know the difference from right and wrong!
A goal or goals, there not hard to come up with once we determine what we want! I like to do something like this. Draw a line down the middle of a piece of paper. Now draw a line across the middle of the page. We now have 4 sections. In the top left box write Want & Have. In the top right box write Don’t want & Have. Now in the bottom left square write Want and Don’t Have. The finish up by writing Don’t want and don’t have in the bottom right square. I’m always surprised when I complete this exercise. I try and do it about once a quarter. I’m shocked every time. So, take some time in a quiet place. Think about it.
Our Wants and Haves are pretty easy. I tend to list more personal stuff here, and that’s ok. Of course, we’re working on our careers so let’s list a few of them as well. They’ll be like our blessings and achievements! Now move on over to the top right. We’ll want to list our Don’t want and Haves. Now, this list is going to surprise you. You’ll learn that we accumulate things and that our wants will change from time to time. Now let’s go down to the bottom left square and list our Want and Don’t Haves. Some consider this our true goal box. I’ve found, once I write about half of my wants but don’t haves, I’ve changed my mind regarding about half of them. I mean, we’re going to write about things we may have wanted for a long time. But when we write them, and start thinking about achieving them, or I at least, realize, I’ve changed. And may not want to put in the time to see them to come to life now! This brings us to our last square, the don’t want and don’t have square at the bottom right of our page. Some call this the keeping up with the jones box. I myself always fill this box up. When I’m looking at my other 3 squares, well this becomes my trash can!
Know we have a better idea of what we want our goals to be.
I have another quick sheet I like to apply against my goals. I’ll get both of these sheets put up on our website at warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com as quick as I can so you can look at them and down load’em for free too. Anyway, so SMART GOALS are: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Framed. Ha, see smart! So, you’d say my goal:
___________Specific: Is my goal specific enough? Does it specify in what way? How? How much? Where? With who? I include all the details.
Measurable: Is my goal measurable? How will I know when I’ve achieved it? For example, if I want to improve my productivity by 30%, what would that number be? Or if I wanted to earn $5k more this year what would that hourly rate be? Things like that.
Achievable: Is my goal achievable the way I have it phrased now? Literally, COULD I achieve this goal? For example, is it possible to reach my new productivity rate safely?
Realistic: Considering my current capabilities, is my goal realistic? Am I doing what needs to be done? Do I have the tools? Do I know how to take the steps necessary to reach the goal? Do I have the grit or resolve?
Time Framed: How long do I believe this goal will take? Is there a deadline? What are my sub goals and what deadlines do I need to set for those?
We need to answer these questions, write them down. This piece of paper is our commitment to ourselves. Our achievements. I find these exercises more fruitful when I include an accountability partner! Some one that pushes me along and I push them along too. We can encourage each other each week! And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with keeping our plans and goals to ourselves either. I do believe we’ll have better success if we share them but do what makes you comfortable. And don’t get too hung up on them, we reserve the right to make adjustments along the way. Life can hit us head on sometimes. A bad week doesn’t mean a flawed plan!
Let’s all welcome in 2021. We’re going to rock it! Remember WAOC is just an email away if we can help you with any goal planning! Next week is Week 1. We get to reset everything! Good luck this year, may it be prosperous, productive and safe for all of us!