Make More Money and Live Your Passion: Become a Cre8tor

21Jan

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[Editors Note: This is a guest post by Robert Pagliarini, prolific user of MindMeister and author of The Other 8 Hours, the U.S. #1 national bestselling personal finance book. Robert has made numerous national television appearances including 20/20, Good Morning America, Dr. Phil, and ABC Morning News. He's also been featured in print with articles published in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, and Money Magazine.]

Your financial life has a certain trajectory—similar to a train on a track. There will be twists and turns, but you can easily determine where you will end up if you stay on the financial track you’re currently on. What if the traditional methods of working hard, cutting expenses, and saving don’t work for you? Brown bagging it every day won’t cause you to jump tracks and end up somewhere completely different. The guy living in the mansion overlooking the ocean didn’t buy that house by clipping coupons, and the chick passing you in a $400,000 Maybach didn’t get that way by eliminating her morning latte. For most of us, the gap between where we are and where want to be is so wide that we’ll never be able to close it by following traditional financial advice.

What’s the solution? If you’re tired of scraping by you’ve got to create. If you want to move out of your apartment or make more than minimum wage, you’ve got to create. If you want a big house overlooking the ocean, to travel first class, to quit your job, or to drive your dream car, guess what? The answer is in the other 8 hours. The answer is to shift from being a full-time consumer to being a part-time Cre8tor.

A what? A Cre8tor is a creative entrepreneur who has a day job but wants more. He isn’t content with the status quo, and is less than thrilled with the thought of working another 40+ years. He knows that the only way to “jump the tracks” to get to a new financial level is to do something different during the other 8 hours. A Cre8tor utilizes his strengths, passions, and/or expertise to create something unique and valuable—maybe he’ll start a blog, work on an invention, write a screenplay, or start a business. If you settle for a paycheck, you’ll only be worth what your employer pays you. But if you create something valuable, there’s virtually no limit to your worth.

A long commute, brainless boss, and an empty bank account can wreak havoc on your outlook, hope, and purpose, but a side project or venture can bring inspiration to your life. When you’re passionate about what you’re creating during the other 8 hours, you can endure even the worst day. It will change your whole morning routine.

Creating provides purpose and it provides a reason to get out of bed in the morning. It provides the hope that life can improve. When you create, it engages your mind and your soul.

Should you really spend some of your precious other 8 hours creating, or would we be better off having fun and enjoying ourselves? Studies show that most of us are not fulfilled mentally or emotionally in our day jobs. We work, not because we are passionate about what we’re doing, but for a paycheck. Even though you might be stuck at your day job doing something that doesn’t fully capture your mind and heart, that doesn’t mean what you create during the other 8 hours has to feel like work. In fact, it shouldn’t feel like work at all. I want you to be excited and passionate about what you create and about the potential results you can achieve.

With very few exceptions, anybody who has attained any level of financial success has created something. It might be a book, a CD, an invention, a website, or whatever. Look around you. Everything you see was originally just an idea in someone’s head.

You are living in the most exciting and mind blowing time we have ever experienced. It is rich with opportunities that literally didn’t exist just a few years ago. Unless your last name was Rockefeller or Carnegie, it used to be incredibly difficult to become rich. Becoming a millionaire wasn’t even a dream or an ambition. It was such an impossibility that it wasn’t worth a moment’s thought.

Because of fantastic collaborative tools such as MindMeister, efficiencies, and a global economy, it’s much easier to become wealthy with much less effort than at any other time in history. As a Cre8tor, you’ll add more excitement and purpose into your life. You will live your passion and make more money.

The benefits to becoming a Cre8tor are clear. Now let me show you step-by-step how to become a Cre8tor. Go to other8hours.com to discover how you can become a Cre8tor and experience new wealth and purpose in your life.

P.S. – As an exclusive bonus, get four free critical resources that will help you live your richest life. Go to other8hours.com to get an Other 8 Hours assessment, poster, video, and audio now!

MeisterTip #3 – Adding Tasks

12Jan

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One of the primary benefits of using mind maps in collaborative mode is to, quite literally, have everyone on the same page. And while this is a great way to get projects moving, if no one is taking ownership of these items, the map serves only as a data collection point, not a plan of action. Assigning tasks is the perfect solution for making your mind map a road to project success.

There are two unique ways to assign tasks within a MindMeister mind map, either manually or through our WunderTask feature. Manually assigning tasks can be used when you have only one or two action items to tackle. Conversely, if you’re dealing with multiple action items, or a large number of collaborators, WunderTask can be quite a time saver.

Manually Assigning Tasks

The option to assign tasks can be found under the Extras panel in the sidebar. Similar to Notes, Links, and Attachments, the tasks panel contains a number of customizable options.

To assign a task, first select the node that you’d like to assign a task to. Once highlighted, you may then assign a priority to this task. If you or your collaborators want to keep track of task completion, you can also select this option from the dropdown. In the date due field, you may either enter the date in mm/dd/yy format, or by clicking on the dropdown arrow, you can select the due date from a calendar interface.

Finally, in the ‘Assigned To’ field, you can start delegating who’s doing what. Those that you’ve already shared the map with will automatically be propagated in this list. Choose a name from your collaborators in the dropdown list, and they will then be assigned this task. If you’d like to assign a task to someone you’ve not yet shared the mind map with, you can manually enter his or her name in this field.

Using WunderTask

Similar to our WunderLink and WunderBild features, WunderTask can handle some of the heavy lifting for you. This can be particularly helpful when assigning a large number of tasks to numerous collaborators over a multitude of nodes.

To get started with WunderTask, select the node that you’d like to assign a task to. By clicking on the gear icon just below the ‘Assign To:’ field, WunderTask will automatically insert Priority, Completion, Due Date, and Assigned To options for you. By default, each WunderTask insertion will assign each task as priority 1. To change this you can either select priority levels from the dropdown menu in the sidebar, or simply click on the number icon. MindMeister will then automatically scroll through priority numbers for you. Likewise, the default Completion icon will be set to ‘not started’, and the Due Date is set to one week after the current date. Similar to manually adding tasks, all of these options may be altered in the sidebar options.

Advanced Options

If you want to delve even further into assigning tasks, the ‘Advanced’ link just below the ‘assigned to’ field is for you. In the advanced options panel you can set start date, due date, and duration of a specific task. Naturally, Priority, Completion, and Assigned To options can also be edited here.

In the Advanced Options dialogue, you’ll also be able to customize the email reminders feature. If your global settings are set to receive task notification emails (recommended), but you want to customize when you’ll receive reminders, this is where you can change them. From the dropdown, you can select any number of days before the assigned due date, up to one week.

By adding tasks to your collaborative brain storming sessions with MindMeister, you’ll be taking that brain storm and making an active plan of action out of it; one that all parties involved can follow and know what their exact part of the project is.