This is the eleventh entry in a twenty part series discussing the wonderful time and priority management book Making It All Work by David Allen. New entries in this series will appear on Tuesday mornings and Friday mornings through December 10.

Starting with this chapter, Making It All Work spends some time focusing on how to determine what’s actually important (and unimportant) and how to prioritize things at each level of focus in one’s life, moving from your to-do list all the way up to your overall life goals. For me, these chapters were the real value of the book, because they gave me a framework to step back and really re-evaluate what my priorities were in each area.

The first chapter focuses on your “next actions” – in other words, your immediate to-do list of stuff you need to get done in the next few days. Allen, on page 210:

Wash the car, call your mom, draft a proposal, talk to your boss about a new idea, surf the Web for a gift for your brother, buy nails at the hardware store, check your voice mail.

This category refers to all the physical, visible actions that you can take. They could be the next things to do on your projects or larger outcomes, or simply single-step eventsthat you pursue because of some area of interest or responsibility.

To put it simply, this is the kind of stuff that your to-do list should be composed of each day: specific tasks broken down so that you don’t have to think about what to do in the heat of the moment. Your only decision should revolve around which one to do next.

How can you make that decision easier? Interestingly, Allen points to having a complete to-do list on page 211:

You will automatically feel better about what you’re doing if the invesntory of defined actions available to you is as complete as possible. At the risk of stating the overly obvious, the more aware you are of what you’ve told yourself you need to get done, and the more accessible the options are for you to consider, the more you will trust your plan of attack and your choices about the actions you’re not taking.

Think about it this way. Imagine you’re looking at your to-do list and it’s as complete as you can possibly make it. You know everything you need to do is on that list, so you can just look through the items, pick the one that feels the most important or relevant to the moment, and run with it.

On the other hand, imagine you’re looking through your to-do list, but as you’re looking, your mind is constantly coming up with things that you need to be doing that aren’t on your list. Should you do something on your list … or one of those ideas that popped up in your head?

This is why the list preparation process is so important and why it’s well worth investing the time in getting a system rolling that can create this kind of thorough list for you. By doing it, you no longer have to think in the heat of the moment. You can just glance at your options and move forward with great confidence.

That sounds great, but it feels unapproachable. How can a person be that organized? Allen touches on this question on page 213:

In our two-day intesnive coaching with individuals, usually 90 percent of the program is focused on this horizon, simply because its approach is so unfamiliar and the volume of material to deal with is so sizable.

Trust me, it can be done, but it takes a lot of upfront work. In fact, it takes so much upfront work that for a long time, I didn’t believe that the work would ever be worth it. Yet, in the end, I find that every single day, my day is made smoother by having this list of genuinely important specific tasks. I am able to move from item to item much, much faster than before and I can focus on the item while I’m doing it with a depth that didn’t happen before.

The startup time was immense, but the rewards I get from all of that effort – turning all of the stuff in my life into a to-do list – is something that rewards me greatly every single day.

The other day, I had a really interesting discussion with a former reader.

He told me that he had stopped reading The Simple Dollar because the articles made him feel guilty about being a spendthrift and an occasionally poor manager of his money. After some discussion, I found that he often also feels guilty about other interactions he has and observations he makes, like when he sees adult children having a good relationship with their parents or when he reads a website about parenting (he’s married and wants to have children, while his wife is adamantly against it).

Guilt. Guilt derived not from something in his own life, but derived from the actions of others, completely independent of him.

To me, guilt that seems to come from others has nothing to do with that other person. It has to do with you. It has to do with a sense that you’re not doing something quite right, that you’re not living up to some standard that you have set in your own mind. The person you see is (on the surface, anyway) living up to that standard, which shows you that it can be done and triggers bad feelings.

Guilt. Inadequacy. Resentment. Jealousy.

Here’s the big secret about guilt and inadequacy and resentment and jealousy. It’s incredibly strong fuel to get you started on changing your life.

First, thinking about those feelings will often lead you directly to where the problem is in your life. If you feel guilty about someone’s relationship with their parents, that might be an indication that you need to work on your own. If you feel guilty about someone else’s spending habits, that might be a sign that you need to re-evaluate how you spend money.

Second, emotion is a powerful fuel for change. I often use such emotional cues to help me stay in line with the behaviors I want to achieve. For example, the best fuel I have for controlling my diet is a picture of my children sitting on my lap where I don’t look like I feel very well. I look sort of bloated and exhausted in the picture.

That picture makes me feel really guilty and I don’t like looking at it. But looking at it resolves me towards knowing that I need to make changes in my life. A month ago, I stuck that picture in a place where I see it every day. In a month, I’ve lost ten pounds.

Third, evaluating what kind of life you really want can really quell the jealousy and other negative feelings. What kind of life do you want to lead? What are your core values? What are your long term goals?

That decision process is often hard and it can mean putting aside some things that previously seemed very important to you. The end result of that process is incredibly valuable, though. You know what you’re working for in life and why. You’ve already thought through your choices and you’ve chosen a small set of things that you know are important to you – and you’ve come up with a plan to work towards them.

At that point, the choices of others become just that – their choices. They’re not your choices. They’re on a different path than you, with different goals and dreams for the future.

I’ll give you an example. My neighbor runs several miles almost every day. I have never been able to do that – for one, I don’t think my knees could have sustained it, even in high school. She’s in great shape and on some level, I could be jealous of that. But I also know that she’s chosen a different goal in life than I have and I see that she’s working very hard to achieve that goal.

Realizing that changes my views on what she’s doing from guilt about what I’m doing (or not doing) to a sense of being impressed with her and almost wanting to encourage her. When I see her running, I almost want to applaud. She’s got a goal and she’s working her rear end off to achieve it – and that’s awesome, no matter who’s doing it.

In fact, sometimes I take that as motivation for me to do the same thing towards my goals. If my neighbor can work that hard towards a goal, then I can work that hard towards my goal and sacrifice a little fun along the way.

But.. but… that other person had some unfair advantages! Everybody has some advantages. The dirt-poor kid has access to scholarships and grants that the middle class kid can’t touch. The new immigrant has access to subcultural groups that the longtime resident can never be involved with. The person with a lot of ground to make up often ends up with a story to tell – one that they can sell – when they do break through with success. The person with a low income has access to food pantries, WIC, welfare, Medicaid, and charities that are unavailable to the middle class and above.

The best you can do is look at where you’re at, look at all of the resources available to you in that position, and come up with the best plan you can to get to where you want to go. Set a goal, build a plan, and start executing. It doesn’t really matter what other people have or don’t have – it matters what you have.

Former reader, if our conversation somehow convinced you to peek in here again, take this to heart: if you’re feeling guilty about something, you’re in the perfect situation to sit down and take stock of your life. Why do you feel guilty? What could you be doing different? What are your goals in life? Figure them out, state them, and start working towards them.

It’ll make the guilt melt away like ice cream on a warm summer afternoon.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Secured credit card?
2. Contacting credit card companies
3. Concerned about Mom
4. Time to switch cars?
5. Mint or Thrive?
6. Consolidate now or later?
7. Re-fi with PMI
8. Building credit (or not)
9. Using a Roth for savings
10. Consolidating public loans

If you want to say something but don’t think you have the words to say it right, just push through anyway. You’re far better off stumbling over a few words with the sincerity shining through than just choosing to keep your mouth shut and not letting the other person know.

The above was written for someone specific. Hopefully, it’ll help you, too.

Q1: Secured credit card?
Last year my husband’s credit card was cancelled for late payments. It had been at least 6 months since we were late on a payment, and that was because he was injured and couldn’t work for 3 months. He had had that card for several years with an excellent payment record but it transferred ownership (e.g., from Paypal to Washington Mutual to Chase) and we think Chase just dumped him because he had a low limit ($1,000).

Anyway, his credit is now in the toilet. We will want to sell our current home in the next few years and buy a better place. Would it be worth it to get him one of those secured credit cards in order to improve his credit? And are there any that won’t penalize us for paying the balance in full each month? I’d appreciate it if you’d steer us in the right direction.
- Lisa

Most secured credit cards I’m familiar with allow you to pay the full balance each month penalty-free.

A secured credit card works just like a regular credit card except that you have to pay a security deposit when you open the card. This is to protect the bank, because as a person with low credit, you’re a pretty high risk of just not paying your bills at all.

As for which specific card to choose, that’s really hard to say without more information about your specific situation. My suggestion would be to search for one yourself, perhaps starting with the financial institution you trust the most.

Q2: Contacting credit card companies
My husband lost his job at the beginning of 2010. With not much of an income coming in and struggling to keep food on the table and electricity on etc, we stopped paying on our credit cards in an effort to help have a little more to work with through the months. Looking at things now, I’m sure stopping payments altogether was probably NOT the best solution but they seemed like the least of our worries. When they called, we did not answer. That too I know is not a wise decision, but without an answer on how they could have payment, I just didn’t know what to say. My husband will be going back to work very soon and will be making a significant amount more than what we are bringing in now. I want to make things right and pay the credit card companies but I don’t know where to begin! We have 4 cards. One through Chase, one through Capital One, and two store cards who go through HSBC and GEMoney Bank. Over the few months we have received letters saying if we pay now they’ll let us pay only XX amount or call to set up a payment arrangement and we’ll work with you…but we didn’t call because we didn’t have anything to give. All of these had expiration dates. The latest letter we got from one company says to pay the entire outstanding balance to avoid additional collection efforts. If we don’t they will charge off the account and the debt may be sold to a collection agency. Are we past the point of them working with us?
- Shelby

Not necessarily. The best thing you can do is simply contact these companies as soon as you possibly can to work out a payment arrangement that works for both of you.

For the most part, those letters were an attempt to get your attention and get some sort of payment plan worked out, which is the resolution they would prefer in comparison to selling your debt for pennies to a collection agency. They’d rather collect 50% of the debt from you than 2% of it from a collection agency.

The sooner you deal with this, though, the better in terms of your credit history. The longer you wait, the greater the negative impact on your credit report and the worse your credit rating will be.

Q3: Concerned about Mom
I’m a college graduate with a fairly secure job living in a reasonably priced city and although I do have significant credit and student loan debt as well as a car loan, my combined income is enough to allow me to live comfortably, contribute to a retirement fund, 403b, and make major payments toward this debt each month. My husband and I also have a comfortable emergency savings, and home savings fund we contribute to monthly. While I know there is more I could personally do to get my debt paid off faster, I’m more concerned with my mother’s finances.

For most of her life, she’s worked sporadically at odd part time jobs in between pursuing a freelance art career and raising a family. She was largely financially dependent on a long term boyfriend until three years ago when they separated. Since then, I’ve taken on bailing her out of financial situations from minor–the phone is being turned off–to major–the furnace needs to be replaced. Needless to say, bailing her out has not been added to my long term financial plan, or my monthly budget, so often these bailouts come at my expense. She’s approaching sixty, and with her work history I’m sure that she won’t receive much in the way of retirement or social security funds, and I worry about her financial outlook in the future. As it stands, my husband and I would more than likely have to foot the bill if there were serious medical or hospice care needs in the future. While I know I should start saving for this inevitability is there anything now that I can do to help mitigate these costs? I had considered buying her a savings bond for Christmas, but I’m not sure if that would be the most cost effective way to invest money towards her future.
- Angel

Right now, you and your husband need to sit down and decide whether you’re going to be supporting her for the rest of her life. That’s an intensely personal decision – taking care of her will hurt your long-term financial future, but not taking care of her means pushing your mom into a scary financial future.

I think there are valid reasons to do both and I don’t think either one is morally superior to the other, mostly because of the idea that if you spend the next ten years getting your own financial house as strong as possible without concern for your mom, you can then step in to make her final years go quite well.

The key here is that you’re honest with your husband and that you’re both committed to doing things together in this regard. I don’t get the impression that your mother will choose to take care of her own finances by herself, so it’s going to be up to you to make this decision.

Q4: Time to switch cars?
My husband and I just moved from DC to Maryland and need to change our vehicle registration. I have a 1995 Acura Integra in pretty poor condition with 200,000 miles that I own outright. It runs great, but it is likely to not pass MD inspection and needs $1000-$2000 in repairs. We only drive it once a week and average about 4000 miles per year. We have about $3000 saved up for a down payment on a car and could supplement with savings if needed. Is it time to donate and get a new car?
- Laura

Considering that you could get a better car that would pass Maryland inspection for that $3,000, it’s probably a good move to upgrade your car at this point.

You may want to consider donating the car to an organization in an area where the car will be drivable – in other words, donate it to a charitable group that can use it outside of Maryland.

Of course, I’m assuming you’ve considered living without the car and judged it to not be a good idea. If you only drive it once a week, I’d strongly consider the carless option before discarding it.

Q5: Mint or Thrive?
Just wondering if you could compare these two sites . . . benefits, downfalls, who can benefit from each one, etc.?
- Amy

I do not use Mint or Thrive for one simple reason: the aggregation of all of my personal finance information in the hands of a single company, even one with a stellar record for security, isn’t worth the risk to me.

I’m not worried about computer error. What worries me is human error and/or poor ethics. All it takes is one individual human slipup or one person with bent ethics and access to Mint or Thrive servers to cause your information to be routed elsewhere. That makes me nervous.

I’m okay with online banking because the bank already has my information. I was okay using Wesabe before they went defunct because they didn’t request my account information. Mint and Thrive? I just can’t see how using them is worth that risk.

Q6: Consolidate now or later?
I’ve got two semesters left in my Masters degree in Music, and I’m pretty certain I’m coming up close to 100k (if I did my debt snowball correctly). Some are from private lenders, but most are government loans. My main question is this: does it make sense to consolidate loans while I’m still in school (i.e. – still taking out more loans), or should I just wait until I’m done with school? Another option would be to consolidate the non-government loans since I should not have to take out any more private loans, what do you think?

After that I’d like to start paying off some of my smaller private loans, which is another thing I’m not sure about how to do. Here’s an example: I have a private loan for $500 at 12.523% interest (this is the highest rate on my student loans, most are 6-9%). It’s accruing interest now, but payments are deferred. Would it be kosher for me to call the loan company and offer to pay the principal (and accrued interest?) outright to get rid of the loan? I would think that they would rather me pay them what I currently owe them now than for them to get a little at a time over the next 10-20 years, but then again I don’t know if they’d go for that.
- Phil

First of all, generally you cannot consolidate private loans that aren’t backed by the government with loans that are backed by the government. Thus, you’re going to have to deal with the private loans separately from any consolidation.

Your first step would be to make a list of all of your private loans, then a separate list of all of your public loans that are eligible for consolidation – check this list. I would then see if I could find a consolidation package that would reduce the interest rate of all of your public loans – if you can’t, then just consolidate the ones that result in a lowered rate.

After that, start knocking off the private loans, starting with the highest interest rate loans. Don’t be afraid to knock off the loans early and don’t be afraid to completely eliminate them if you have the resources to do so.

Q7: Re-fi with PMI
We currently have a 30-year fixed mortgage with a rate of 5.25% through our credit union. Our original loan amout for this mortgage was $232,800 with an original loan date of 2/3/2009. At the time of this loan, our home appraised for $275,000. We currently pay $1285.53 in principal and intrest and $53.62 in PMI every month.

I have tried to do some calculations using amortization tables and such and while I realize that my payment will drop by approximately $50 per month, I am wondering if it is really worth it (over the long haul) to refinance at this time given that we will be paying more for PMI? Can you help me get my hands around this? Any advice?
- Christine

The important thing to remember is that your PMI will only exist for a limited time – until your mortgage balance is 80% or less than the appraised value of your home. Once you reach that point, the PMI vanishes.

I would absolutely take the lower-interest loan with the higher PMI. Channel the monthly savings into extra loan payments and get to that 80% mark as quickly as possible, at which point you’ll be in far better shape than you were before.

PMI is a temporary thing. Your interest rate lasts for the lifetime of the loan.

Q8: Building credit (or not)
My son will be 17 years old in a few weeks. He will be buying a truck for cash from his Grandpa. It will cost $1,500. I am wondering if it would build his credit to give him three different $500 checks over several weeks?
- Chris

If this is just a cash transaction between two individuals, it will have no bearing on his credit rating.

The only way this can impact his credit rating is if a bank is involved. A bank would have to issue a formal loan to your son for the truck, which would then be reported to the credit agencies. Then, your son could pay off that loan, resulting in a fully paid loan appearing on his credit report.

It might be worth it to stop at your local bank and talk to the lender about this, purely for the reason of establishing good credit for your son.

Q9: Using a Roth for savings
I am a stay-at-home mom fully funding my roth. Husband puts 10% of pre-tax into his company 403B getting the full company match. We have our emergency fund fully funded and sitting in an online savings account (earing 1.15%). We are committed to not touching it unless it is absolutely needed. Now that we have fully funded the e. fund we want to start saving of other goals (redo laundry room, big screen tv, Disneyland vacation, etc). These goals are between two and five years out. I’m wonderind where we should save money for our other goals. One thought was group it with the e. fund knowing that we never let it go below a certain point, however this concerns us because in the past we’ve dipped into our e.fund for things that were no emergencies. Our financial advisor suggested that we open a Roth for my husband with the intention of using it for these goals, not strictly for retirement. His arguement was that we’d be building up the interest earnings over the years so it would be a nice bonus for us during retirement, while also allowing us to build up our savings for those shorter term goals. Retirement isn’t too much of a concern because we are on track right now to have over $4 million in husband’s account and around $700,000 in my roth at 65. What do you think we should do for those 2-to-5 year goals?
- Jennifer

That plan makes reasonable sense to me. You’re essentially just foregoing the small amount of interest you’d earn in a regular savings account in order to bolster your retirement savings a bit more.

There are only a couple of small drawbacks. One, your annual cap on the Roth is $5,000. I don’t know how much you’re saving, but if it’s more than that, you’ll have to use other methods to supplement it.

Two, you won’t earn any return immediately on that money – the returns will be untouchable. At the same time, your money is at risk in the account unless you invest very, very conservatively.

I would still follow this plan in your shoes, however.

Q10: Consolidating public loans
I have a whole bunch of student loans for grad school. The interest rate is a relatively high 6.5 and 8.5%. I called the lender but was told that grad loans (stafford subsidized and unsubsidized loans) cannot be refinanced. Do you know if this is true? Any options you can see?
- Gal

They cannot be refinanced, but they can be consolidated if you’ve not already consolidated them, which it sounds like you did not.

If I were you, I’d start at http://loanconsolidation.ed.gov and look into consolidation. Those interest rates aren’t horrible, but you certainly should be able to lower them a bit, especially the 8.5% loans.

Good luck!

Got any questions? Email them to me or leave them in the comments and I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag. However, I do receive hundreds of questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.

Mindy writes in:

How do you deal with stress? I know that with three kids and managing The Simple Dollar and all the other stuff you have going on, you have to feel some serious stress at times. What do you do to manage it? I have twin babies at home and I also work from home as a freelance graphic designer. Some evenings I get so stressed out that I start crying.

I absolutely deal with serious stress at times. In the past, I would often attempt to de-stress by buying things and, on occasion, drinking. Today, I really don’t do either of these things. Instead, I have a repertoire of techniques that really help me with de-stressing.

Meditating and praying I spend twenty minutes a day meditating. I find this practice extremely helpful in minimizing stress in my life. It’s an opportunity for me to clear away all of the things in my mind that are stressing me out and just let go for a while. I find that after I’m done meditating, it is much easier for me to deal with the challenges in my day.

I wrote about meditation at length a couple of months ago on the site.

Taking time for stuff I truly enjoy I set aside specific periods of time to engage in the hobbies and activities that I personally find deeply enjoying. For example, Wednesday nights at our house are an ongoing gaming night which I set aside to just unwind and play board games with a few close friends. I set aside an hour each evening for reading for pleasure. I usually set aside a large chunk of my Saturday for some specific activity or another.

Sometimes, I share these activities with my children – sometimes, I don’t. A mix of the two also helps me to de-stress.

Exercising, particularly walking I strive to take an hourlong walk three days a week, during which I usually listen to a podcast and just let my feet guide me wherever. My mind usually wanders a bit during this, dancing over the words of the podcast or just drifting off into nothingness.

When I get back home, with some sweat on my shirt and a smile on my face, everything just feels much easier to deal with than before I left.

Eating asparagus, blueberries, and citrus fruits As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been on a plant-based diet for more than a month now. That diet has actually helped quite a bit. In the course of eating this diet, I’ve focused a lot on the impact different foods have on how I feel.

In terms of feeling calm and not stressed out, few things beat asparagus, blueberries, and especially citrus fruits, like oranges and grapefruits. I usually have a very low-stress day if I start off the day with a couple of oranges.

Making it easy to pick up abandoned tasks One big element of stress in my life is all of the projects left undone because I ran out of time or energy. The best method I’ve found for mitigating that stress factor is to make the project as easy as possible for me to pick up again at a later date – in effect, “finishing” it to a small extent.

For example, if I’m in the middle of writing an article or an email, I jot down quick notes on what I want to include in the rest of that article or email. If I’m making a meal, I leave out the ingredients for the rest of the meal along with a mark on the recipe indicating where I’m at.

Spending time with people who care about me The ongoing process of eliminating negative people from my life and keeping positive people in place has been a major positive influence in reducing stress.

I simply ask myself regularly if there are people in my life that are causing me to stress out because of their behavior (not because of my own worries reflected on them). If they are, then I strive to reduce the role that they have in my life, plain and simple.

Saying “no” sometimes When someone straight-up asks you for something, it’s much, much easier to say “yes” than say “no.” Yet, it’s those “yes”es that end up haunting you later on when you’re overwhelmed with things that need to be accomplished and you’re stressed in choosing between them and allocating your time and energy.

The best solution is to simply say, “No, I’m sorry, I just don’t have time to take that on properly.” Most people will respect that statement and move on from there. Careful use of that type of response can help you filter things that are really important to you away from the things that aren’t so important, leaving you with more efficient use of your time and energy, and less stress to boot.

Eliminating irritants For me, messy rooms are a big irritant. If I find that my office is messy, I usually become less productive than before. Thus, one effective way for me to de-stress and get more done is to simply take on that irritant and clean up my office (something which I need to do now, incidentally).

Seek out the irritants in your own life and do what you can to rub down those burrs so that they’re no longer bugging you. It’ll help you subtly with every moment that passes.

In the end, stress can be quite an obstacle for successful personal and financial living. Finding ways to minimize that stress can make all the difference in the world, and there are many effective ways of managing stress that don’t involve shelling out cash.

On November 2, I wrote about 10,000 words of my novel I’m writing this month. I was about to upload it, except we had some internet issues, so I decided to upload it the next morning.

I woke up the next morning, read some of what I had written, and hated all of it. So I started from scratch, re-drafting my plot outline and my character descriptions before starting over. My first upload of this revised novel finally happened last night at my Posterous site for the novel.

Whew.

Deal or No Deal? Comparing Dollar Stores to Walmart & Others This post just goes to show that no store has the lowest prices on everything and no matter how much you shop around, some other place will have a lower price on the item you’re looking at. (@ len penzo)

The Graduated Tithe – A Good Alternative to Tithing? I think there’s a nugget of a good idea here, in that people with large incomes may be able to tithe a larger percentage than people with lower incomes, but the idea as presented goes a little far, I think. (@ provident plan)

Never Work Again This is all about the perception of work when it comes to teaching children about it. The challenge I have is that if I don’t make clear at least some of the things I need to do, my children will just assume that I am always free to play with them. Why fix dinner when I can play Hey, That’s My Fish? Why do any writing when I can go to the park? (@ man vs. debt)

Budgeting for Mistakes I usually handle this by having an “overrun” in each month’s budget. I basically add on about 20% on top of what I estimate I’ll spend in a given month, to account for mistakes and unexpected events. (@ get rich slowly)

Charities. Our family commitments. Our work commitments. Our political beliefs. Our spending choices. Our savings and investing choices.

So often, we give lip service to these things, saying that we find them important and even, on some level, believing that they’re important, but when push comes to shove, they’re not really important in our lives.

A good way to explain this is to use the example of why I decided to leave my last job before taking up The Simple Dollar full time.

When my wife and I found out that we were pregnant with our first child in 2005, it was a life-changing moment. I decided, on a very deep level, that I would never allow myself to be the kind of father who wasn’t there for his children, no matter what. I told other people about this, too – my children were, flat out, going to be the center of my life.

My son was born, and what did I find myself doing? I found myself, if anything, focusing more intensely on my job than before. I was traveling constantly (at least it seemed like it) and when I wasn’t traveling, I was often spending weekends fixing problems that had cropped up at work. Even on the day he was born, I was engaged with conflicts about my job.

It finally came to a head when I was traveling for work in 2007. My wife called me to tell me that my son had taken his first steps in our living room. I was excited, but as I sat there alone in my hotel room after hanging up the phone, I realized that I had just been paying lip service to the idea of being dedicated to my family.

It was what I wanted on some level and it was what I told others about, but when it came down to the choices I was actually making, my family wasn’t my top priority.

I had a choice to make. Was I going to live up to my words and promises, both to myself and others, or was I going to allow all of my pledges to my family be mere lip service?

In 2008, I walked away from a job I loved very much into a very scary unknown path, with uncertain income and an uncertain future. I had as many bases covered as I possibly could, with writing opportunities and other freelance work lined up, but leaving behind a secure job I loved very much was scary to say the least.

Today, I know it was the right choice. The stress and personal conflict of my previous job was immense and I’ve found that, over the past two years, I’ve ben able to be the person I wanted to believe that I was. I am a father and a husband that is there for his children when they need him. I am the kind of father who can spend an afternoon at the park with his kids and is always right there when they need help or advice or a hug.

Reflecting on this has made me ask myself what I pay lip service to in other areas of my life. Charities? Financial obligations? Spending promises? Statements to family and friends and loved ones?

In what areas of my life do I talk big but fail to really follow through?

I don’t feel that I give enough to charities, but I usually keep my charitable giving quiet. Sometimes, I don’t feel that I hold as strongly as I should to my spending pledges – I give in sometimes and spend more than I should, particularly on items like board games that I can easily share with friends and loved ones.

What areas of your life do you talk about and think of as important to you, but you fail to follow through on?

This is more important than you think. A person who pays a lot of lip service without a lot of action can easily develop a negative and unreliable reputation among the people around them. On the flip side, people who actually live up to what they say are viewed as reliable and are given a positive reputation among the people around them.

Reputation is valuable. Your reputation precedes you and helps (or hinders) in building future relationships. It helps you when you need help the most: with projects, with job hunts, and so on.

More importantly, to me at least, when you’re actually living up to what you’ve promised to yourself, you feel far more empowered on a day-to-day basis.

My life has drastically improved since I stepped back and chose to become the person I always told others that I was. At times, I miss my previous work greatly, but when I hear my children chattering away (as I do right now, since they’ve just woken from their nap), I know with every ounce of my being that I made the right choice.

This is the eleventh entry in a twenty part series discussing the wonderful time and priority management book Making It All Work by David Allen. New entries in this series will appear on Tuesday mornings and Friday mornings through December 10.

For me, this is the exact point at which the book moved from an interesting rearrangement of the ideas in Getting Things Done to something on an entirely different level: a deep, critical look at life priorities and how they affect what you do on many different levels.

Why spend half of the book on effectively remaking Getting Things Done, then? Simply put, it’s foundational material for the rest. Without some sort of sensible system for keeping track of all of the things you have to do, you’re going to be spending most of your long-term focus on simply keeping tab on things without the space to really think deeply and figure out the larger directions in your life and how they connect with the day-to-day elements of your life.

In other words, Getting Things Done is akin to forming a strong foundation upon which you can conceive and build some of the great things in your life. Without it, you’re building on top of sand – all of it is inherently weakened because you don’t have control of the day-to-day in your life.

Allen looks at it from a somewhat different angle on page 200:

Let’s assume that, having read or listened to the first part of the book, you’ve gotten things under control. Now the question is: Where do you put your focus? The purpose of getting control in the first place is to be able to be clear of distraction. But why? And distraction from what?

In other words, when you’ve got a good grip on what needs to be done, the next step is to back off a bit and figure out, in a broader way, what actually needs to be done. That requires perspective and consistent reflection.

Allen spends a lot of this chapter looking at this issue through a very specific example: reading materials. We all have a lot of reading materials that we’d like to get to someday (I know I certainly do).

That accumulation of material in itself is a problem. It’s just a pile with no real priority within it. Which of these is actually the most important to read? Page 101:

What, of all the things you’ve captured that you think you ought to read, should you really be reading? Here comes the perspective part. Is there material in that stack that was interesting a while ago but has since lost its luster for you? Which of the reading is truly important for you?

When I consistently asked these questions of myself and of the books I had on my shelves, I came to some very fundamental conclusions about what I was doing wrong.

First, having a big shelf full of books that I’m not going to read anytime soon is a waste. Why have them? They’re sitting around taking up space and often distracting me from what I might actually want to read. If I want to have a big list of “someday” books, why not just have a big list of “someday” books instead of a big waste of space?

Second, the decision on what book to read next is often best made when I’ve finished a book and am selecting another one. Having a strict “queue” often resulted in frustration. I’d come to the next book that I had decided long ago would be the next one and I’d realize that my interest in that book had passed. I’d try to force myself through it, but then I’d burn completely out on it and get nothing out of the hours I’d invested in the book.

Because I stepped back and really thought about my accumulated books and reading habits, I came to some very different conclusions than I had held before and it’s made my reading habits much more efficient. Rather than spending my time accumulating books for a bookshelf, books that I might get around to reading someday, I’m just reading the book that looks the most interesting to me, deciding whether to keep or trade it when I’m finished, and moving on to the next one. If I know of a book I want to read now, I reserve it at the library – if I finally get that reserved book and it’s no longer of interest to me, I just return it immediately.

Why did this happen? I used to think about reading from a longer term perspective quite a lot, but I began to find that although my interest in reading is a higher level life value, my specific choice of reading material was actually often a day-to-day thing. I’m far better off choosing my books on a whim (or from an accumulated list of “to be read” books) than I am trying to decide a queue far in advance.

Thus, I spend much less of my time thinking about books in a “meta” sense and much more time doing the actual, enjoyable reading, which is what I really enjoyed spending my time on to begin with.

That kind of thought process can be used in almost every aspect of our lives, from how we manage our money to how we choose to spend our lazy afternoons. Our day-to-day actions are often tied to larger goals and ideas that we rarely think about consciously, but if we step back and think about them for a while, we often easily find better ways of doing things in our day-to-day lives.

The next several chapters focus on these types of perspective shifts.

Recently, the credit union that handles our home mortgage had a bit of an issue. They called us up to inform us that our homeowners insurance had been cancelled, which was incredibly awkward considering we pay into an escrow account for our insurance and our insurance payments are taken straight from that account. What happened? The credit union claimed that the insurance company never billed them (they require paper bills). The insurance company claimed that they billed the bank. And I’m the one caught in the crossfire with a lapse in my homeowners insurance.

Here’s the disturbing part – this exact thing happened once before.

(To say I was upset is an understatement.)

Clearly, there was a problem somewhere in this system. Was it the credit union’s fault due to some mishandling of the bill from the insurance company? Was it the insurance company’s fault due to a bill that was never sent?

It’s impossible for me to know which group was at fault. If the insurance company did bill, then it’s the credit union’s fault. If they didn’t bill, then it’s their fault. (I have received copies of the bill along the way, which instructs me that the lender is also being billed and that my insurance payment will be made from my escrow account.)

Whenever something like this happens in your life – and it will eventually happen with something – I recommend following a series of steps to resolve the situation.

Attempt to figure out where the problem occurred. In the situation above, the closest I can come to figuring out where the problem actually occurred was in that billing cycle. If nothing else, I can say that the credit union wasn’t proactive with regards to the escrow account – there should have been some sort of earlier flag that indicated that an insurance payment hadn’t been made before the point of cancellation was reached.

If a problem like this occurs with you, spend the time to figure out what caused the problem to happen in the first place. Contact all involved parties and determine, to the best of your ability, the specific thing that went wrong in the transaction.

Minimize the number of players. Once you’ve figured out what went wrong in that transaction, you should seek to minimize the number of players involved in the transaction if at all possible – and if you cannot, look for a way to change the players involved in this transaction.

In my own situation, I sought to eliminate a player from this transaction – namely, the holder of my mortgage. I requested permission to pay for the homeowners insurance directly without using their escrow account and, given the situation, the credit union quickly approved this request. This made the transaction for my insurance occur between just myself and my insurer.

Minimize the potential avenues of failure. Another potential avenue for failure in this equation is human error. Assuming that the credit union was receiving the bills, human error was causing the bill to remain unpaid. One way to minimize future potential problems is to simply minimize the number of ways in which human error can fail.

One method of doing this is to simply have direct deposit billing, in which the correct amount is withdrawn directly from your checking account. Once I had control over the payments for my homeowners insurance, I signed up for this form of billing so that human error – a lost piece of mail, etc. – wouldn’t result in a lapse in my homeowners insurance in the future.

These tactics go beyond resolving problems. They’re good tactics for every significant financial transaction in your life. Minimize the number of players. Minimize the potential avenues for problems. Taking those simple steps can reduce the amount of regular effort you need to put forth while also minimizing the chances of such a mistake.