Successful Blog

Be More Productive By Doing Less

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By Robyn Tippins

If you are a small to medium sized business owner, I’m here to tell you today that your time is limited. I know this will come as an enormous surprise, but there are a finite number of your hours to go around.

You can’t do it all, and I’m guessing you probably don’t want to anyway…

time lost cannot be regained

Information Overload

Your company has to be on the cutting edge, so you must read often.

You spend at least 15% of every day (and probably more like 30%+) consuming information — Tweets, Facebook statuses, Pins, Medium posts and longform blog posts.

Your company has to be a thought leader, and that means churning out clever sayings and deep thoughts, and lots of them, including social updates, blog posts, white papers, videos and case studies.

You are well-read, from strategy to productivity, fascinating and much loved, and none of this is getting the work done.

Your company requires work to be done, the financials to be straight, payroll to be paid and sales to be made, so between administration, billable hours, garnering new business and information consumption/creation, you are doing too much.

Something has got to give.

Choose Whom You Will Serve

Choose a few hours, each day, to get work done.

I go radio silent every day from 2-4pm EST. During that time, I don’t check email, I don’t check Facebook and I don’t answer my phone. I don’t read HackerNews, TechMeme, Reddit or Cracked (my guilty secret). I just flat-out work. I get more done in those 2 hours, than I do in the entire rest of the day.

I’ve become so committed to this schedule that I have been able to cut out work, completely, on some Fridays, just by working ahead during those hyper-productive hours the rest of the week.

I have literally found an extra 8 hours per week, just hiding from my distractions.

Have you established any “heads-down” working hours?

Author’s Bio:Robyn Tippins is Co-Founder and CEO of Mariposa Interactive. She has been managing online communities for 17 years, and her book, Community 101, is a primer on online community management. You can follow Robyn on Twitter via @duzins.

Photo Credit: gothick_matt via Compfight cc

How To Finish What You Start

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By Gary Dek

How many times have you started writing a story or article only to stop halfway through and not finish it? If your answer is at least one, then you are like a lot of writers out there who spend their time beginning a piece of work, only to lose motivation and not finish what was started. I know I have at least a dozen half-written posts saved in the “Draft” folder of WordPress.

Creative inspiration is not the problem; staying productive and finishing what you start is. Fortunately, that can be fixed with a few strategies and conscious steps. The following steps will give you some tools to help you learn how to accomplish the task and make a habit of finishing projects before moving on to new ones.

finishing

Resist Embarking On New Endeavors

One reason why writers never finish anything is because they are constantly starting new projects before they have completed the previous ones. I like to call this “Work ADD” because I enjoy the adventure and challenge of working on new projects.

A couple years ago, I would start a new website every couple of months. I would literally design and develop a website then write and edit unique content over the course of one weekend. While you may think I “finished” the project, the most crucial part of starting any blog/site is promotion. I just didn’t do any of that, and that rendered my efforts a waste of time.

Restrain yourself from this compulsion and stay focused. When you come up with a fresh idea, jot down a few notes for reference and come back to it when you are ready to fully explore the opportunity. A few bullet points should help to jog your memory when the time comes.

Take Stock of Your Current Projects

It is time to review what on-going projects you have and determine if any of them are actually worth finishing. Maybe that editorial you started a year ago isn’t relevant anymore. Make a list of the ones you really want to keep, prioritize them in order of importance and work on them one at a time, checking off each as you go.

Don’t worry about how long it takes; after all, you’ve already invested the time to start and that’s a sunk cost. You might as well finish the project and recoup a portion of your invested time, assuming there is still value in its completion.

No matter how important that memoir seemed ten years ago, it might not have the same importance today. It may be time to let it go.

How To Assess Incomplete Projects

Divide your projects into three folders:

  • Projects that evoke enthusiasm and fit with your current goals.
  • Projects that you need to move on from, even if you are unsure.
  • Projects that you are not actively inspired to finish now, but that you might want to revisit another time.

This doesn’t mean pile everything into categories 1 and 3. Be objective and honest with yourself. It will definitely help unclutter your mind, goals, and work area.

Pick A Project and Stick With It

Take a look at the folder containing the projects you are excited about right now. Pick one of them and do not look at another until it is done. Whether it’s a blog, freelance gig, eBook, or another obligation, this project is going to be your primary focus.

So, how do you choose which item on your to-do list deserves all your energy?

Do you start with the:

  • simplest project: If you have a short story you are working on, you might want to finish it before you work on that novel.
  • longest-running project: If you’ve been working on a blog for 5 years and it has the most loyal following, do you keep up the momentum?
  • project you’re most invested in: If you are already a professional writer and the work you have left unfinished is guaranteed to bring in some much needed cash, it provides a better return on investment to satisfy your existing client obligations.

Have A Clear Vision of What The Finished Product Should Look Like

This may seem like a no-brainer, but you would be surprised how many writers or online entrepreneurs dive into a project without any idea of where they are going with it. We are all guilty of this kind of “we’ll see what happens” kind of thinking, but ultimately, without a destination, your journey will take you nowhere.

Instead, make a list of what you think constitutes a finished product. For example, if you are writing a blog post, there are specific points you need to hit before you can say it is complete. This might mean:

  • your article has a start, middle and end.
  • your article is at least 1,000 words and proofread.
  • you’ve gotten feedback from your editor, revised the post, and it is now ready for publication.

In your personal or professional life, pinpointing clear goals can ensure every little step you take brings you closer to achieving them.

Set Your Goals

You know how some people keep a “bucket list” of things they would like to do before they die? Well, you should keep a similar kind of list that consists of your business goals. For example, starting a blog could be one small goal because it’s easy – it can be achieved in an afternoon. The real goal should be to attract 10,000 visitors a month to that blog within the first year.

However, don’t set yourself up for defeat by outlining impossible goals. Deciding that you want to sell your first blog for a million dollars after a year is not realistic, especially if you are a new blogger.

Create a list of milestones with deadlines to keep yourself accountable, such as:

  • writing a page a day for a month
  • completing a detailed outline for your short story
  • writing a short screenplay
  • getting 10 posts completed before launching your blog

Pick 5 to 10 goals and put them on your calendar. Keep the list somewhere you will see it daily for inspiration.

Stay Motivated

Regardless of whether you use a free blogging site to write for therapeutic reasons, with the hopes of becoming a published author, or simply because freelance writing pays the bills and offers the flexibility to be with your kids during the day, you need to learn how to keep the momentum going and stay motivated long enough to actually bring your great ideas to fruition. Hopefully these steps will help you learn how to finish what you start.

What’s your top priority right now?

Author’s Bio: Author Bio: Gary Dek is the blogger behind StartABlog123.com and Gajizmo.com. He offers small businesses and entrepreneurs SEO advice ranging from keyword density research to recovering from Panda/Penguin updates to promoting their blogs and growing traffic.

Photo Credit: JefferyTurner via Compfight cc

The Secret of My Success

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Moving into a new home is a major undertaking.

Once the boxes are cleared and the new neighbors start bringing over key lime pie, you invariably have to start calling contractors of various stripes.

moving is hard

Lawn guy, handyman to fix the screen door handle, pest control, air conditioning repair, you get the picture. Making all of these calls over a compressed period of time gave me a true education in “who gets the business.”

You know who gets the business?

The person who answers the phone. If everyone fails that test, then it’s the one who returns the call the fastest.

Woody Allen has been often quoted as saying “showing up is 80 percent of life.”

When asked later about the quote by William Safire in the New York Times, he elaborated:

“My observation was that once a person actually completed a play or a novel, he was well on his way to getting it produced or published, as opposed to a vast majority of people who tell me their ambition is to write, but who strike out on the very first level and indeed never write the play or book. In the midst of the conversation, as I’m now trying to recall, I did say that 80 percent of success is showing up.”

Do you have an ambition to start a business, or are you actually doing it? Doing it means answering the phone when it rings.

Businesses hanging out a shingle, getting that Google places listing, polishing up their SEO to get a good search engine rank, and hoping for good word of mouth are truly only 10 percent of the way to the sale.

If all of those things happen and you don’t answer the phone, you’re dead in the water.

Yes, this same imperative applies to online businesses, consultants, writers, and everyone else.

Three Keys to Answering the Phone

  1. Manage your time effectively. Make answering the phone a priority. Yes, it’s probably more important than posting on your Facebook page.
  2. Create a system so that nothing slips through the cracks. Whether you’re using a notepad or a sophisticated contact management system like Salesforce or Nimble, put a mechanism in place that will remind you to follow up.
  3. Practice active listening when you do answer. Don’t launch into a pitch; wait and let the person on the other side tell you what they are contacting you for.

If you show up and answer the phone, you’ll come out ahead every time. (But let’s keep it our little secret, ok?)

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Can Logging In Be Fun? Clef Says Yes.

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It was all fun and games until my purse got stolen.

We were on a great vacation, and visiting the Arizona Memorial on Oahu. In the parking lot, there was a sign that warned “High theft area, do not leave valuables in car.” So what did I do? Put my purse in the trunk of the rental car and went in to see the museum. A couple of hours later, you can guess what happened. Vacation ruined, checkbook and credit cards gone. Prescription glasses gone. Plane tickets home, gone.

It was a supremely painful lesson, but I took heed. Being smart about my personal security moved up several notches in my priority list.

Do you see the daily warnings about changing your online passwords frequently, not using your pet’s name, remembering to change the default? Are you taking heed?

The proliferation of sites that require a login has forced us all to find ways of remembering a tornado of passwords.

And it’s not fun.

Yes, there are good services like LastPass and 1Password that will help you generate random passwords and retain newly created logins. But still, not fun.

Enter a new service called Clef.

For now, it’s primarily a free WordPress add-on. Once you download the app to your smartphone, it allows you to log in to your WordPress site by waving your phone in front of your computer screen.

Clef password app

When you click “sync” on your normal login page, Clef generates a cool animated signal wave. Open Clef on your phone (there’s a PIN) and it generates a similar animated wave. Hold it up for a second, and it syncs, giving a haptic buzz when it succeeds. You can choose to stay logged in permanently, or set a time frame. Clef will log you out automatically when the time runs out.

What if you lose your phone? Clef has a remote “lockdown” key. Just let them know the phone isn’t in your possession, and they will disable Clef on the phone.

Looks like the team at Clef is expanding into payment systems and additional platforms (it works with Hootsuite and a few others right now).

The only drawback I see is that you currently have to manually open the Clef app on your phone. It would be super cool if the mobile app automatically launched when you clicked login on the desktop screen.

Give it a spin and tell me what you think! What are you currently using to help you deal with your tornado of passwords?

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Disclosure: I have no affiliation with Clef, and received no consideration for this post. It represents my unvarnished opinion.

How to Streamline Your Business Routine in 2014

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By Ryan Harrison

Running a business requires certain skills and expertise that customers need and are willing to pay for. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough to succeed. There are always routine tasks related to business operations that can be frustrating for business owners. For this reason, many small business owners turn to outside help to handle everything from payroll to office services.

Use Tools That Support and Improve Your Overhead

If you’ve been outsourcing routine work for a few years, you should have picked up some basic skills by now that will enable to handle some of these tasks. Don’t underestimate what you’ve learned in all those meetings with your accountant. Before you spend your entire outsourcing budget for 2014, investigate the potential of using business automation tools.

Online Accounting Tools Integrate Your Current Project Data

You probably already handle some aspects of your company’s financial tasks, such as invoicing and tracking projects. And these are probably handled in entirely separate programs on your desktop, with no way to easily access and integrate both functions. Programs like Quickbook’s online accounting keep everything in one place that has to do with operating your business. A basic package gives you wizards and tools to help with these functions:

  • Payroll, including tax withholding
  • Project estimates
  • Project time and expense tracking
  • Invoicing
  • Bank transactions

Many online accounting programs also provide automatic data backups and integrate data you’ve stored in programs like Outlook, Gmail, and Excel. Quickbooks online accounting is one of the cloud-based services that also automate tasks like system updates, which can save a lot of your time. Cloud-based accounts can be accessed from virtually anywhere with a secure Internet connection to your desktop, smartphone, or tablet.

Stop Struggling with Paper!

If you’re like a lot of entrepreneurs, you’re inquisitive and acquire a lot of paper that ends up in disorganized piles around your office. Put an end to this and start scanning everything you bring to the office. Scan your important documents and save the files digitally; encourage employees to do so as well. If you have a lot of paper you want to access electronically, there are services that will handle the document conversion for you. Or you can invest in a sheet-feed or portable scanner that scans more quickly than printer-scanners. Some scanners integrate with other documentation systems, including Quickbooks.

Take Advantage of Free Trial Offers

Many vendors offer free product trials, some for as long as 60 days with money-back guarantees. Try out a few to see how many functions you can take over yourself. If you decide to take the plunge, keep in mind that the costs are likely to be much lower than outsourcing. Best of all, these tools can help you gain a deeper understanding of your business’s operations and identify more opportunities to save time and money.

Author’s Bio:Ryan Harrison writes about business, marketing, operations, and more at www.producersweb.com. He also finds time to write at yfsmagazine.com. You can find him on Twitter as @RyanHar13790076.

10 Tips: How to Stay Focused through the Coming Year

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By Robert Morris

We are already almost one month into the new year, so it’s time to really buckle down and make sure we can stay focused in 2014. Many people make resolutions and they promise to realize them every New Year, but somehow those aspirations tend to fade away after the first few months.

Don’t you wish to do things differently this time? The following practical tips will help you work on your habits that will help you stay focused on the aims you set.

1. You need daily rituals

No matter how spontaneous you want your life to be, sticking to daily routines is what will get those things of the list realized. You cannot have high levels of focus if you don’t follow a routine that will keep you within the boundaries of productiveness. Pay attention to your sleeping and eating patterns, plan some time for personal satisfaction and make sure to plan breaks that will give you more energy to tackle all daily challenges.

2. Visualize your goals

Creating a vision board will give you a great presentation of your dreams and goals, making them more real. You can add images, as well as souvenirs, articles, or quotes related to your great yearly goals. When you visualize your aims clearly, you will work harder towards their achievement.

3. Don’t set too many BIG goals

Your list has to contain one or two big goals that you plan to accomplish. Don’t set too many of these big goals, because you will overwhelm yourself and then end up disappointed, but don’t leave your list without any great expectations either. Check in on those goals every month and think about what you have done up to that point.

4. Don’t leave things uncompleted

The only way to stay focused on your goals is to complete everything you start. Don’t give up on a task you have started, because that will weaken your mental strength and leave you with diminished self-confidence. Stay determined and always do your best to complete every single task you start. Success in life is guided by a simple rule – without doing your best, you won’t achieve the best possible outcome.

5. Give yourself some daily time alone

No matter how active your life is, you won’t get anywhere without spending some time with yourself and your thoughts. Constant involvement in social life depletes you and results in an inevitable burnout. If you are overly active, it’s only a matter of time when your body and/or mind will give up. Spend some time doing things you love – take long walks, listen to good music, read great books, meditate, do yoga, or whatever else that pleases and relaxes you.

6. Multitasking is good, but do it less!

Multitasking is sometimes a beneficial skill to master, but the truth is that you cannot accomplish your best at everything when doing too many things at once. When you focus your brain on a single task, you will devote yourself fully to it and the outcome will be much better.

7. Make daily to-do lists

Making daily to-do lists is a great strategy to train your brain to stay focused. When you end the day with all tasks crossed out on the list, you will have a feeling of accomplishment and you will be happy to repeat that every single day. Plan your goals by organizing your tasks into a few categories and separating the things you need to do today, tomorrow, this week, and this month. Making to-do lists is also a great way to make priorities and keep your energy focused on the most important tasks.

8. Have goal buddies

When you have people with similar goals, you will support and motivate each other to stay focused on their achievement. Your “goal buddies” will remind you about the things you promised to achieve, and their success will push you to keep up.

9. Learn how to avoid distractions

You convince yourself that checking your e-mail, Facebook and Twitter every few minutes relaxes you, but the truth is that this bad habit is a huge distraction from the really important things. Make sure to complete every important task you have for the day before you allow yourself the luxury of spending time on Facebook. When you finish everything faster and more efficiently, you can reward yourself with virtual socializing.

10. Learn how to be focused on staying focused

Staying focused is a skill that’s really simple to explain: you concentrate your mind on a single thing and don’t allow it to be disturbed by anything else. It’s not impossible; it just requires a lot of practice, commitment, and dedication. Your daily relaxation or meditation will help you free your mind of all distracting thoughts, and you will soon notice how you are getting better in controlling your habits and emotions and staying focused on your goals.

Be prepared for the fact that the upcoming year won’t be free of distractions and problems no matter how hard you work on your goals, but the most important thing is to stay within the routine you establish and don’t attach yourself to the results.

Author’s Bio: Robert Morris is a freelance writer from essay writing service NinjaEssays. He loves writing tips and tricks for students. He is interested in improving his writing and learning through technology. Follow @Ninjaessays on Twitter!