Four Days Make a Long First Week . . .

Filed Under Productivity, Successful Blog | 26 Comments

I've been thinking . . .
It’s a priniciple of the work universe. Four-day work weeks alter the time-space continuum. How does a week seem so long and confusing when there is one day less to do that it? This week, I thought Monday was Tuesday. . . .

It’s Friday and I wish I was on a tropical beach . . . or taking a nap.

Still I usually do better at adjusting to changes than I have to this particular four-day week. It took me until Thursday to lose that “I’ve been on holiday” feeling.

Wait a minute, that’s the problem.

This wasn’t my usual four-day work week thing. The stakes were raised exponentially by the fact that it’s the VERY FIRST week back to work of 2007. No wonder, I don’t know where I am. I’m back to normal working days again. Normal isn’t my usual state. Even when things are normal, I’m a little off balance — hmmph not that anyone, who never met me, might notice.

The hardest week of the year — the week after the holidays — is over!

That changes everything and I’m changing everything too! I’ll make space this afternoon to put some “new” into my new year. I know exactly what I will do.

I’ll say good-bye to 2006 officially. Toss my old calendar. So long to cards and things left from the holidays sitting around my computer gathering dust.

I’ll get control of 2007. Lay out things that still need to be done. Plan what I’ll do first on Monday and what three most important I pick for my focus.

I’ll set up my command center. Put the things I use most where I use them.

I’ll make a plan for the weekend that gives my brain a break. I’ll walk out the door feeling in control again.

I made it to Friday of the first week of 2007! There’s no stopping me now. I’m ready to change the world again. A celebration is in order. I’ll meet a friend for some coffee, buy a book, and a CD.

Okay so I won’t go to that tropical beach, but a nap or even two just might be in order.

Liz's Signature

New Year’s Resolutions, No! How to Make Positive Changes that Have Meaning and Stick

Filed Under Business Life, Productivity, Successful Blog | 11 Comments

Never Made One Yet

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box logo 2

The first time I encountered the term, New Year’s Resolution, was in the comic strip, Peanuts, by Charles M. Shultz. I was 8, maybe 9, years old, and Peanuts was the top comic in the Chicago Tribune. As I went through the comic strips that day, making resolutions was a recurring theme in them.

I found the idea of New Year’s Resolutions curious, and I wondered why I’d never heard of them. I sought out the only available expert I knew. I asked my mom.

My mom answered, “Because most folks make resolutions and forget them the very next day. That’s just not how most people change.”

I can still tap into the relief I felt when she said that. My imagination had made this ferocious picture of what a resolution was. I had seen myself climbing into a splintery, wooden shipping crate labeled “FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE WITH NO HOPE OF EVER GETTING OUT.”

Thanks to that conversation about New Year’s Resolutions, I’ve never made made one yet.

New Year’s Resolutions a New Approach

On Open Comment Night December 5th, the subject of New Year’s Resolutions came up. We agreed that they don’t work as a list. Christine Kane explained her approach was to choose a word. Ben took that idea back as the Absolute Best Way and described it on his Instigator Blog.

Boy, I sure like their ideas a lot!

But I need more than that to execute — if I want to make a positive change that will stay with me. So if Ben and Christine don’t mind, I’m going to expand on the spirit of their ideas, knowing they already “get” it.

How to Make Positive Changes that Have Meaning and Stick

Changing habits is hard to do. The hard part is getting the new ones to stick. It’s easier when we approach our habits the way we approach our tasks and our skills — knowing our goal, not taking on too much, and making use of the “do over” rule when we need it.

Here’s how to make your positive changes stick.

  1. Choose one thing to change. One thing done is always better than 12 things started. If you’re working on gratitude, you might narrow it to saying thank you and meaning it. If you’re working on snacking you might replace one snack food with a healthful one or one time that you snack with another activity.


  2. Write your choice down and define it as an objective. I will say thank you out loud and give a brief reason for my gratitude when folks do things simple for me, such as listen to my ideas, and I’ll note their response. Now you know it is that you’re going for and you’ve got a clear objective.


  3. Make it measurable and make a measurement goal that increases. The measure can be simple. It might be how many smiles a day you get. Without a measure though, a goal is easy to lose track of or forget. How will you know if you’re getting better without a measurement?


  4. Check in at the end of the day to see how you did. Record your measurement and compare it to yesterday. Plan for tomorrow, but don’t think about next year — that’s a lifetime away.


    Forgive yourself when you slip or have a bad day. Everyone does that. Don’t give up — with that response no one ever would learn to bicycle, skate, or be a leader in any sense. Pick up where you left off, knowing the practice you already have will make the forward momentum that much easier.

    Celebrate your successes when you have a great day. When you live up to the change you are going for, let yourself know that by doing something really cool with a friend, taking in a great movie, CD, or book, or whatever else feels like a reward.


  5. When the change is fully a part of you, go on back to choose another positive to add to what you do.

Changing habits is like taking on new skills. We need to make room to learn, see progress, dust off our mistakes, and celebrate our successes. We’ve been doing that since we went to school. It’s what learning is.

Take a word from Christine and Ben, don’t make a resolution. Make a change that is meaningful.

When you make a positive change that sticks, other positive things will happen too. You’ll also be changing the world just a bit.

New Year’s Resolutions. Positive changes in the world. Have you thought about this? The quickest way to change other folks’ behavior is to change our own?

Thank you for that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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The Mic Is On: Do you Remember the Time When. . .? What’s Your Favorite Family Story?

Filed Under Content, Customer Think, Motivation/Inspiration, One Way to CC It, Productivity, Successful Blog | 96 Comments

It’s Like Open Mic Only Different

Here’s how it works.

open mike night

It’s like any rambling conversation. Don’t try to read it all. Jump in whenever you get here. Just go to the end and start talking. EVERYONE is WELCOME
The rules are simple — be nice.

There are always first timers and new things to talk about. It’s sort of half “Cheers” part “Friends” and part video game. You don’t know how much fun it is until you try it.

What’s your favorite family story? You have several, don’t you? They are each as different as a snowflake.

We might also talk about

  • what happened this holiday season that will become a repeated story
  • our most embarrassing story
  • stories that make us roll on the floor laughing
  • how our memories differ from those of our family members

AND THE EVER POPULAR,
Basil the code-writing donkey, and Milton the Skinny Moose.

Snowflake


–ME “Liz” Strauss

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Time for Everything: Letting Go to Find Flow

Filed Under Analysis, Perfect Virtual Manager, Productivity, Successful Blog, Trends | 26 Comments

A Time for Everything

To everything there is a season,
A time to drive, a time to eat,
A time to type, a time to hear,
A time to connect, a time to reflect,
A time for phones, a time for elevators.
To everything, there is a season — paraphrased from Ecclesiastes 3

A few days ago, Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users wrote about a product called Twitter.

For those of you who don’t know about Twitter, it has one purpose in life–to be (in its own words)–A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? And people answer it. And answer it. And answer it. Over and over and over again, every moment of every hour, people type in a word, fragment, or sentence about what they’re doing right then. (Let’s overlook the fact that there can be only one true answer to the question: “I’m typing to tell twitter what I’m doing right now… which is typing to tell twitter what I’m doing right now.” Or something else that makes my head hurt.)

Click the title to see the product page

twitter

Why would anyone want to do that?

Twitter also a tool for

  • Social Networking System
  • Chatroom
  • Microblogging
  • Multiplexer
  • Group Communicator
  • RSS Feed
  • Salon
  • Meme
  • MLM

For me, that makes it worse. I had seen Twitter, and frankly I hoped that it would just go away. I see it as one of the weird worm holes of an overly plugged-in culture that I’m trying fiercely to avoid.

Kathy Sierra makes fun of twitter for the same reason that I avoided it. We both see it as one more way to fragment our attention in a world that already does a great job of doing so.

Finding focus is impossible when we live in a state of constant interruption. Call me cold and unfeeling, but I don’t care about some stranger’s cat named Fluffy — and it irritates me when that stranger makes a call in an elevator to find out about Fluffy, invading my space, my thoughts, making me virtually invisible — practically screaming that I don’t exist. Exactly how rude is that?

I’m all about finding Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience“>Flow.
Read more

Sunday Link Love: 15 Great Finds on Promotion, Working at Home and Productivity

Filed Under Great Finds, Marketing, Productivity, SEO, Successful Blog | 4 Comments

Can’t Have You Sitting Home with Left-Overs

I’ve collected 15 more links for you to read or add to your tool kit over the weekend — more help and treasures.

Blog Promotion and Traffic

  1. How to Rank Well in Google with Your Blog Matt Cutts Style


  2. Blog SEO: Link bait option Simply put, if no one finds your posts of value, no one is going to link to them.


  3. Quick Blog Traffic Tip - Link To Another Blogger Spend some time continuing the discussion they started or recommend an article they posted to your readers. In other words, send some link love. :


  4. Building “Word Of Mouth” Capabilities Into Online Apps “Put a tell-a-friend form on every page of your website.”


  5. How to Rank on Google Base



  6. Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization Guide

    7. Working at Home

  7. What the Heck is a “Real Job”? How I Learned a Business Doesn’t Count


  8. Working from Home - What to Do When the Kids Are on Holiday from School


  9. Paying Fixed Bills With a See-Saw Salary

  10. Top 30 Free Windows Software Apps

    11. Productivity

  11. Self-Destructing Distractions


  12. Take a Break and Refresh Your Productivity


  13. How to manage your blogging schedule


  14. Neat Living “Do-it-Yourself” Organizing Library - Our FREE Gift to You!


  15. Procrastination hack: “(10+2)*5”

Have a great Sunday!. :)

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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