January 15, 2013

How to be Fresh Online (part 2)

Wurlitzer jukebox 8×12 by Beth Berg  Click image for details

In the first part of this feature, Joy asked for some more help with syncing our online time with our offline lives. So without further ado, and in the words of the Jukebox DJ, “Joy, this one is for you.” Here are some pointers to help you craft your own “fresh” plan.

It’s perfectly natural to sometimes feel things are getting a little bit out of control in our digital lives. When we feel we don’t have room to breathe in our online jaunts, then it’s time for a little re-jig. Let’s move from rushed, resistance, and remorse to rhythm, relief, and results.

How to be fresh online

  • Be clear about what you want to do online each day. Consider activities that will move things forward whether in work or in life. For me tody that was to finish this post; list an item on ebay; email my list; scan a document; and then schedule some tweets (not happening). And check in with my in box.
  • Choose the tools that support your creative ventures. Support, not overwhelm, is the aim. Know yourself, know your needs and know how you like to work. I use Evernote to hold draft blog posts. I use Dropbox to store digital courses and books. I use TeuxDeux as an electronic daily to do list. And sometimes I use Buffer to schedule tweets.
  • Decide how you want to handle your inbox. The best approach is to find a system that works for you. Or make up your own. Your inbox is there to serve you. You get to choose how you engage with it.
  • Set aside money and time  for online courses and products. Gather the intelligence you need to plan ahead, e.g. launch dates and seasonal savings. And then when other fabulous offers come through — and they will — you can pass. I say this with love: You cannot do them all, and you do not need them all, even if you want them all.
  • Indulge in digital binges. This includes creative research, video teaching treats, and audio downloads. Some can be enjoyed while cooking, having your hair done, driving, or having a lie in. Or you can just put time in the calendar.
  • Develop a strong offline life. Fill your world with activities and people that make you feel alive. Enjoy slow food, the slow lane, and the scenic route now and again. Develop daily practices that nourish your inner life and that keep you aware of how you are feeling in your body.

Oh, and you can go slow online, too.

What will your “fresh” plan look like?

Okay this tune is over. Happy New Year!

Filed Under: Buy You, For You Tagged With: , , 8 Comments
January 2, 2013

Make 2013 your best year yet

SG Tooling Around - Make 2013 your best year yet

As you’ve probably worked out by now, I could talk all day about productivity tips.

You can make all the productivity hacks in the world, but if you’re using your freed-up time on yet more useless busywork, you’re not going to get anywhere.

Are you ready to step up your game and make 2013 your best year in business? I know I am! Let’s get started.

Define your goals

The new year is a great time to sit down and figure out your goals. What do you want your day to look like twelve months from now? Think about your life goals not just your business goals, as one will impact the other. Maybe you want to:

  • Launch a wholesale line by August and be carried by at least five local and national boutiques.
  • Create a tutorial using your hand-dyed yarns featured in Mollie Makes this year.
  • Maintain a consistent blogging schedule three times a week.
  • Take a three-week holiday every summer.
  • Reduce your crazy hours to school hours by the start of the next school year.
  • Open a retail store within three years.

You’ll notice that they’re a mixture of short-term and long-term goals and that they are specific and have deadlines.

If you’re struggling to see the big picture because you’re down in the trenches, ask yourself these questions:

  • What did I enjoy last year and want to do more of? What did I not have time for and missed doing?
  • What did I not enjoy and want to do less of? What wasn’t working?
  • What was I always complaining about to my spouse/cat?
  • What are some things I was dreaming of ‘if only’ I had the time or money?

>Write down all of these goals and when you want to achieve them by. Now it’s time to turn each of these goals into projects.

Create projects

Do you think Napoleon put ‘Invade Russia’ on his to-do list for Thursday? Of course not, so why do you have the mammoth task of ‘Open online shop’ on yours?

I know you don’t have a whole army at your disposal, but the principle is the same. Break it down into single, actionable steps. Suddenly the step of ‘Research web developers’ is much more manageable and you’ve taken your first step in opening your virtual doors.

If you have spending goals, such as investing in a new sewing machine or taking that three weeks off, the first step might be to set up an automatic debit every week into a savings fund. You can thank me later.

Longer-term goals will require a bit more thought and may involve several projects. For example, if you’re planning to go on maternity leave, you might want to hire and train an employee now, create a wholesale line so you don’t have to do craft fairs with a newborn, and set up a fulfillment house so orders can be shipped without you.

Next, enter your projects and tasks into a program such as Zendone or OmniFocus and assign a date for each step, working backwards from your deadline. You’ll then be able to track everything from single little to-dos to your large-scale projects and view according to context, date, project, person, or ‘next actions.’

Plan it well and things should turn out better than they did for ol’ Bonaparte.

Find the time to do it

“That’s all well and good,” I hear you grumble, “but where am I supposed to find time to work on my three-year goals when I’ve got work to do now?”

While we all have times in business (and life) where we have to go into survival mode and just focus on the urgent stuff (like getting your orders out for Christmas), this shouldn’t be the norm.

You need to make time for the important tasks, not just the urgent ones. Don’t be afraid to…

  • Shut down your email and turn off notifications.
  • Get up early so you can work uninterrupted by calls, emails and family/co-workers.
  • Use a weekly schedule to make sure you’re creating time for everything you need to do.
  • Batch your tasks such as email, bookkeeping and social media.
  • Use a timer to focus your work – try the Pomodoro Technique.
  • Treat it like a real business - if friends call you up during the day to go out shopping what do you say?
  • Jot your ideas down using Evernote so you don’t forget them, then get back to whatever you were doing.
  • Switch off your phone if you really need to finish something (that’s what voicemail is for).
  • Make an appointment with your work – if something come up, say you’re busy.

What are your business goals for this year?

I hope some of them are now looking a bit less scary and more achievable!

(P.S. I’m off travelling for a few weeks, but please chat amongst yourselves and I will chime in when I return at the end of the month.)

Filed Under: Buy You, For You Tagged With: , , 2 Comments
December 20, 2012

On Waiting

Art print , girl, portrait ANYA, figurative 8.5" x 11" paper

Art print , girl, portrait ANYA: by Marina (marina826) – Click for info

We are all waiting. We are watching and wondering what will come around the next bend. Aren’t we? Our whole lives we are living in the now but looking forward to something that is coming. Sometimes the waiting is hard; sometimes it is exciting.

What do we do in the waiting?

I am not an expert on waiting. I’m actually quite terrible at it. But lately I feel I’ve been waiting for so much related to my personal and professional life, and it brings up a lot of anxiety. But I want to combat that. I want to wait well. So I’ve been listening, searching, and trying to find ways to wait that are not about what is to come, but rather to use the experience of waiting as a moving forward

Here are four practices or experiences I’ve tried lately:

Create “littler” waits.
Or maybe I should call this: create little satisfying bits of life that fill up the waiting. I was given a really good suggestions when I was speaking with a counselor about my waiting. I may be burdened or frustrated by waiting, and in some ways I have no control over how long the waiting will be, but I can create little things in between that I can choose. I can actively find joys, moments of fun, and satisfaction in the smaller things. Some may find this easy to do, but it was an “ah-ha” moment for me. So maybe each week I plan one night where I will go out to a new restaurant and try something I’ve never had before. It’s a way of exploring, learning, using my senses, and enjoying an experience in the midst of waiting. (I still haven’t started this yet, but I plan to now that I’ve written it down.)

Check my expectations.
We all have expectations of what will happen once our waiting is over and our goal comes to fruition. But sometimes we have to check our expectations. So I  may say to myself: “When this waiting is over I will no longer have to worry about (fill in the blank).” But am I certain there will not be other worries? I may say to myself: “When the waiting is over it will get so much easier.” But is that true? Sometimes our expectations are false, which can negatively impact us when the wait is over. It seems best to make sure our expectations are realistic. Maybe I could make a list of the good things I will have when the wait is over, but also the challenges I might face. It may put it all into better perspective.

Invite people to wait with me.
This seems to be the biggest helper. Sharing something big and heavy with a few family members, friends, or colleagues or writing about it on a blog just helps.  Often I find sharing my experience helps other people as well as myself, and people also help me keep my expectations in check (see above).

Wait in silence.
Ugh, right? Silence. A lot of times I give my anxieties, my frustrations, and my fears voices, and usually they are negative. They sound like little whiny mice moaning and groaning in my head. A lot of times those voices are my self-pity, which gets me nowhere.  Sometimes it’s hard to be positive in the midst of waiting for something hard, so lately I’ve been trying to just be silent. Sometimes I pray, sometimes I cry, and sometimes my thoughts drift, but being silent and taking in the understanding that I am waiting gives the experience meaning. Just a couple times of silence in the waiting has also helped me feel rested instead of anxious, hopeful instead of nervous, or grounded instead of unsteady.

How do you wait well? What helps you live your life in the now in anticipation of what is ahead?

I’m still learning how to do this — I believe we all are at times — and would love to hear other ideas.

Filed Under: Plot Notes Tagged With: , , 7 Comments
December 19, 2012

Those Monsters in the Mirror

As the year comes to an end it is time to set new goals for the new year, but I also start looking at what I have achieved this year. You know all those goals I set this time last year? The ones I mostly didn’t reach?

I didn’t get the library of patterns written, I didn’t develop a big wholesale business, and I didn’t even run a half marathon in under two hours.

I am a failure. 

But what happens when I look at it without all the drama? What can my failures tell me?

My biggest fail was time. I simply imagined I would have a lot more of it than I did. I had a newborn, a 2 year-old, and a kindergartener, and the combination was a huge time sink. I also didn’t manage my time very well. I procrastinated. I generally think that procrastination is a symptom, not the disease itself, so I ask what would have happened if I was very successful this year? I probably would have killed myself with work. I procrastinated instead of admitting to myself that I was not able to handle that kind of commitment. Wholesale is still a goal, and I did get a few accounts, I just need to be realistic about what I can really handle.

Why didn’t I get a fat catalog of patterns written? It was because writing patterns is hard. It twists my brain around in knots and leaves me mentally exhausted. I cannot write a pattern each week and take care of everything else. So instead I am making a more modest goal of releasing a new pattern every month, and promoting it better. Volume is not the goal, quality work and sales are.

And why didn’t I break two hours in the half marathon? All of the above.

I exhausted myself with all my faux working and didn’t take enough time to train.

Realising all of this — that I did not fail because I am a failure, but rather it was a combination of over ambitious goals and bad management — helps me see clearly what I can achieve, and start the new year with better goals and without those monsters in the rearview mirror.

Filed Under: Plot Notes Tagged With: , , 2 Comments
December 18, 2012

Saving Sanity: Five Things I Can’t Live Without

Lifesaver by emdot

Lifesaver by emdot

I’ve come to realize that chaos is not such a bad thing.

I used to be the type of person who had to have a plan for everything. And I do mean everything. I had contingency plans for my contingency plans. I was a bit of a worrier and filled with anxiety about every little thing.

My desire to micromanage my life was rooted in the fact that I wasn’t happy with my life.

If I kept myself busy with lists and goals and projects I wouldn’t realize that I was not, in fact, living. I was existing.

Sometimes when crap hits the fan, that’s when shift happens.

My internal shift began several years ago. I can’t pinpoint it exactly, but sometime in 2007 I began slowly waking up from the coma of externally imposed expectations.

I reverted, I doubted, I ran from progress during the next few years. But sometimes, in those glorious moments of clarity, I kicked butt.

Fast forward to today: I’m a better person, not because I gave up my list-making and goal-setting, but because I no longer distract myself from life with these things.

Do I still love a good goal-setting session? Heck, yeah, but I no longer define my self-worth by the projects I take on or how many items I can mark of my to-do list. Although I still enjoy the feeling of crossing things off.

I wish I could remember every puzzle piece along the way that has gotten me to the point, but, sadly, I can’t.

I would like to share five awesome sanity savers that help me both savor life and make more things happen.

1. Mavenlink
Mavenlink rocks my world. Seriously. I use it as my project management, time tracking, and invoicing system. I recently added a project called Tivi Jones Personal, which helps me keep track of important personal stuff like when I need to give my dog a bath in case I can’t tell by his smell.

2. Evernote/Dropbox
I cheated on this one, but I’m an Evernote and Dropbox groupie.

My laptop has been acting up a lot lately, so I turned it off for a few days in favor of using my super ancient eMac. Not a typo, I did say “e.” That’s how old it is, but it works fine and I was able to access all of business documents via Evernote’s web interface and Dropbox’s server. Because Evernote and Dropbox sync with my laptop, iPhone, and online, my data is available anywhere.

3. BookBook
I love my BookBook wallet/iPhone case mostly because it’s cute, clever, and looks like a little book. I also love it because it forces me to keep only the essentials in my wallet.

I used to have a huge wallet that, at any given time, contained at least 20 receipts, 15 cards, six post-it notes, $2 in change, and three fortune cookie fortunes. With BookBook, I’m down to four cards, $1 in cash and one fortune cookie fortune (trust me, it’s one of those really good “…in bed” ones). Plus it holds my iPhone.

I never thought I’d be able to make a quick run to the store without carrying an arsenal in my over-sized bag, and now sometimes I just carry my keys and my wallet. BookBook has helped me de-freaking-clutter.

4. Instagram
Because life should be documented with tons of pictures. Period. Plus it’s a nice reminder that there is SO much beauty around us and we should take note of it as often as possible.

5. My dog, Grumpy
Grumpy is my adorable 10-year-old Miniature Schnauzer who I adopted June 16, 2012. I love him.

He’s jealous, needy, doesn’t play nicely with other dogs or men (uh, love life, much?!). He has a tendency to eat extra dark chocolate and do his creepy stalker stare when I’m eating or entertaining friends. But I love the little guy.

He reminds me to take breaks, roll around on the carpet, play, go outside, drink lots of water, and enjoy naps in the living room during the middle of the day.

And believe it or not he reminds me to ask for what I want, because in his adorable little way he does just that every time he needs to go out, is hungry, or just wants to cuddle with mom.

What are the sanity savers that you can’t live without?

Filed Under: Buy You, For You, Plot Notes Tagged With: , , 5 Comments