5 Steps for Using an Egg Timer to Improve your Financial Health

If you find yourself feeling totally overwhelmed when it comes to the thought of organizing your personal finances, then fear no more because this post is being written just for you.

Let's start with a given: if you're focused on taking control of your personal finances in order to be able to actually assess and improve your financial health, there is really no way for you to start analyzing what you have until you know exactly what you're working with. Regardless of whether your intention is to build a personal budget or to create a plan for increasing savings, etc., the very first step is to get organized.

I encounter individuals all the time who are extremely well-intentioned about re-engineering their financial lives and recognize the need to get organized. More often than not these same individuals quit before they can even get started because the very thought of trying to figure out where to begin creates so much fear that it results in a great deal of anxiety and eventually paralysis...so much so that they never end up taking the much-needed first step.

If this sounds familiar to you, I'm going to share a tip with you that has proven incredibly useful with my firm's financial literacy coaching and bookkeeping clients: get yourself an egg-timer. I know, you probably think that was a typo but it wasn't. In fact an egg timer can be the simplest, most readily available, most economical and powerful tool available as you set out on your journey, first toward organization and ultimately toward financial empowerment.

1. Pick an increment of time that you can easily commit to spending on organizing your finances on a consistent basis: There is no cookie cutter approach here since everyone has a different threshold as to what is tolerable for them. I usually recommend 30 minutes but if that is still too overwhelming, start with 15 minutes, 10 minutes (at least 5 minutes).
   
2. Schedule the increment of time on your calendar and block it out as a commitment toward getting organized: Block the time out on your calendar and stick to it as you would any other commitment. When creating the appointment in your calendar, use positive terms that will motivate you to keep the commitment such as "empowerment", "financial health", etc. It's important to create positive associations with the appointment since this will further ensure that you stick to the scheduled task.
3. Set the egg timer for the unit of time (committed to in step 1) and do as much as you can in the time allotted: If you've set aside 15 minutes for your appointment, then set the egg timer for 15 minutes and be as productive (and positive) as possible during that time period. The main focus here is to break a seemingly insurmountable task into bite-sized pieces and tackle it little by little.
   
4. Once the egg timer goes off, assess how you feel-can you keep going or not? Have you managed to be pretty productive during the last 15 minutes? Do you think you have it in you to continue for another 15 minutes? If so, set the egg timer for a new 15 minute period and keep working. If, however, you feel like 15 minutes that day was pretty much all you could handle, that's fine too. You have to know what your limits are so it's okay to stop. Before you call it quits for the day, make another appointment with yourself and start fresh again soon.
5. Consistency is key: This is true with anything - It's not so important at first how much time you spend on the activity per se as it is to commit to doing it with consistency. If you've allowed yourself to neglect your own finances for a long period of time (weeks, months, perhaps years), it's not plausible that you'll get a handle on things in just 15 minutes. But if you give yourself 15 minutes (or more) every day (or as often as you can handle) and you do so regularly, then you will quickly notice that you'll be able to set the egg timer for incrementally greater units of time. Perhaps at one point you will no longer even need the egg timer!
   

Getting organized is just the first step in the journey towards improving your financial health. Much like any other positive and healthy habit, you must make a commitment, follow through on that commitment, and do so with consistency.

As you embark upon your journey toward organizing your finances, I'll leave you with some inspiration from one of my favorite quotes: "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."