Liz Strauss at Successful Blog

Thinking, writing, business ideas … You’re only a stranger once.

The Big Challenge is OVER, Keep that Energy Going ON

Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Productivity, Successful Blog | 6 Comments

Sometimes Timing Is Everything

This week’s challenge in the the b5media Business Apprentice Team Challenge . . . Kay’s finally settling into her role as entrepreneur. Kay hardly has time to read the whole web. What one blog post or article might I recommend that will help her move forward at this point?

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In the apprentice story, Kay has made it through her first, and hugely successful, Christmas rush. Now Christmas is over and I’m guessing that Kay is only human. Sometime, win or lose, a big push in business can cause a dip in enthusiasm about the business we love.

The sheer investment of energy can leave feeling like we need a rest. Moving forward to face the next challenge can seem like something we have a right to put off. Unfortunately, a business won’t stand still while we’re resting and refueling. If we stop to do that we can find ourselves in crisis mode again when the new challenge rolls around.

The best business advice for a time like that is to have great habits to fall back on. An article over at LifeDev is just what this situation needs. It’s a simple method for time management. Simple is the key because, at a moment of regrouping, the way to entice ourselves back into involvement is by accomplishing little things that mean a lot.

Time Management, Simplified: How to Be Productive With No Worries simplifies the system and streamlines David Allen’s Getting Things Done for folks who want to reduce the time spent learning and maintaining Mr. Allen’s system. Leo Babauta who wrote the post says:

The fewer tasks you have, the less you have to do to organize them. Focus only on those tasks that give you the absolute most return on your time investment, and you will become more productive and have less to do. You will need only the simplest tools and system, and you will be much less stressed.

Boy do I agree.

In fact, that’s just what I’m going to start in today.

How do you keep your momentum going? Has a blog post ever made it easier for you?

Only 8 blogs are left in the Apprentice Challenge if you like my choice and this post, would you give Successful-Blog a vote in the poll in the sidebar at TAXGIRL?

The Blogs remaining in the challenge are:

Accounting Solver . . . Biz Chicks Rule . . . Greener Assets . . . Home Biz Notes
Leadership Turn . . . Small Business Boomers . . . Successful Blog . . . Yielding Wealth



–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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Success Can Come Right Out of Nowhere
Six Steps to a Remarkably Powerful, Personal Network
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How to Think Like a Millionaire and Be What You Want to Be

Myers-Briggs: Vacation and Work with your PJs

Filed Under Productivity, Successful Blog | 10 Comments

Last in the Series:

Two Groups — Two Vacations

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Armed with our individual Myers-Briggs Type Indicator results, the seminar leader divided the 25 of us into two groups, one group on each side of the room. We didn’t know how the groups were decided. We only knew that we were assigned a task.

“Plan a vacation together,” she said. Then she allowed us a block of time to do so.

The two groups jumped on the task with enthusiasm. This was much more fun than a day at the office. At the office, we worked together as a department, so a group vacation was easy to imagine. I remember looking around at my group that day, thinking This is the group I would want to vacation with. How did she know that?

When the time was up, two vacations had been planned. They sounded something like this.

Both groups were delighted with our plans.

Vacation and Work with your PJs (and other letters)

All of my work life, I’ve run into people who believed that everyone thinks the same way, should do things the same way — the industrial revolution was run on that exact premise.

I use the vacation planning story above to bring home the point that we don’t think alike. Want more proof?

Think about when your vacation starts. Does it start when you leave work on the last day before? . . . or when you leave for the airport or when you get in the car? . . . or does it not start until you’ve arrived and settled in? If your answer is different from that of your vacation companion, there could be conflict without understanding.

If my companions’ vacation starts before mine does, it’s irritating. He’s playing. I’m still trying to get to where my vacation begins.

If we care about how others think when we plan, we can get the best effect with the least stress and conflict. Hey, who doesn’t prefer a smile to getting yelled at? Though everyone is able to work in all eight modes, we have more fuel when we can go with our natural preferences.

Here are some ways to manage a team to their strengths and preferences.

We work counter to our preferences every day, and we do well. But it wears us out. It makes us tired and cranky, and strains relationships. When we do what we’re good at, work is fun; we’re enthusiastic; and we’re exponentially more passionate and productive. Which do you think is better for us, for the customers, and for the work?

On that Myers-Briggs day, the Ps “went to Taos.” The Js “went to Europe.” We all had fun planning in our homogenous groups.

How would you get a team of both Ps and Js to plan a vacation that worked?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you think I can help with your business, your brand or your blog, check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related articles
Using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as a Personal Productivity Tool
Who’s Talking about the Myers Briggs Tonight?

Other resources
Keirsey.com They carried on the research.
Google Directory for Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Type Logic Resources and software

Using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as a Personal Productivity Tool

Filed Under Productivity, Successful Blog | 24 Comments

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

A conversation started this weekend about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I promised to continue it, but before I do, some background might help. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator outlines our preferences for four categories of focus:

  1. Favorite World: Introvert or Extrovert — Do you prefer to focus on your inner world, or do you prefer to focus on the outer world?

  2. Information: Sensing or Intuitiion — Do you prefer to focus on basic information, or do you prefer to focus on adding value and interpretation?

  3. Decisions: Thinking or Feeling — Do you prefer to focus on logic and consistency first, or do you prefer to focus first on people and circumstances?

  4. Structure: Judging or Perceiving — Do you prefer to get things decided and to closure, or do you prefer to keep room for new information and possibilities?

All of us can do all eight. The indicator only points to our preferences — where we go first and where we would rather focus.

Finding our preferences adds to our self-awareness. It’s one more way to help manage our life and our business. If we know our preferences, we can keep our energy up and our stress level down — making opportunities for things we prefer does just that.

An introvert, who has a day of meetings, can schedule private time to regroup. An extrovert, who has a day of paperwork to get through, can schedule in a break to touch base with clients or colleagues.

More energy and less stress just by using what we know about ourselves. That makes the Myers-Briggs a personal productivity tool.

How might you change your work day based only on what you know about you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Related articles
Who’s Talking about the Myers Briggs Tonight?

Other resources
If you want to seriously take the MBTI, the Myers & Briggs Foundation recommends Capt.org. It’s US$150 via email. If you want a taste of what the test measures, you might go to Humanmetrics. com
Keirsey.com They carried on the research.
Google Directory for Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Type Logic Resources and software

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

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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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