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Cutting Through Twitter Spam

July 16, 2011 in Business, Productivity, Tech Tip with 0 Comments

Twitter gives you access to people who are seeking answers related to your expertise. Unfortunately, Twitter also gives you access to a lot of junk, or spam. How do you avoid the spam and find real people asking real questions?

I recently came across a tool called InboxQ. The service uses its pixie dust to deliver you high quality questions based on keywords you specify using either their Configurator or the browser extension.

If you’re looking for a way to spend more time answering questions on Twitter and providing real value, watch the video and give InboxQ a try. Let me know what you think.

Sick and Motivated

May 19, 2011 in Productivity with 0 Comments

Cold MedicinesI’ve been sick for the past week and have had a lot of time to think about my business. Thinking is about all I’ve had the energy to do, however. I’m motivated to work on my ideas, but my body isn’t cooperating. I have to remind myself that I will eventually feel better and can start acting on my inspiration and motivation.

How do you stay motivated to take action when you’re feeling down, sick or physically wiped out? When you’re physically ready to take action, what’s your best tactic for summoning the inspiration you had earlier?

Photo credit DonnaGrayson

M3 Summit Made Me Lazy

September 13, 2010 in Productivity, SAHD with 14 Comments

I attended the Modern Media Man Summit in Atlanta last week and met some incredible people.  The speakers were awesome and covered a variety of topics, not just the technology or money side of blogging and social media.  Often we go to conferences and don’t put what we learn into action when we return to our normal, busy lives.  We were asked in a keynote to think of one take-away that we could put to use. For me there were two closely related points made in separate sessions I attended:

  1. Business around a lifestyle, not the other way around.  This was from a session on Friday by Jim Kukral.  Jim is the author of Attention! This Book Will Make You Money.  Great book that I highly recommend if you are looking for ways to increase exposure, and profits, for you or your products.
  2. Be lazy.  Dave Taylor suggested this little nugget on Saturday.  And as we all know, lazy people are really just people that work smarter, not harder, right?

Both points align with the approach of planning my life and then deciding what and where work fits.  As a stay-at-home dad I’ve had to work in a way that fits around the top priority of taking care of the kids.  With both kids in school, however, I find myself with 30 hours a week I can work!  But do I want to work all of those hours?  What if I can be lazy and work smarter, say 15 hours a week generating the same or greater revenue?  What if I add some new activities (or pickup old ones I let slide while the kids were home) to create a great lifestyle and work in the time that’s left?   Who wouldn’t want that?

It serves as a great reminder to put some constraints on the amount of time I work while the kids are in school.  I had been so excited this past month that I did work pretty much from the time I dropped them off until I left to pick them up 6 hours later.  Constraints force us to work with what we have.  If I only give myself 15 hours a week to get things done, I better be lazy and find a more efficient way to meet my commitments and goals.

Do you plan your work around your lifestyle?  Are you lazy, in a lean, efficient and smart way?

What are your best tips for being lazy?

Are you growing?

May 25, 2010 in Personal Growth, Productivity with 0 Comments

My personal goal has always been to keep growing, to learn as much as possible and then apply what I learn to my life.  Sometimes the application of what I learn starts to falter and I find myself reading book after book and attending class after class without stopping to digest what I’ve learned and find practical life applications.

This usually happens when I see the change I need to implement as one huge effort or event.  Does this ever happen to you?  You go to a seminar and learn a cool new time management strategy or a way to run a meeting that is completely counter to what your company currently practices.  You try to make the change, but the inertia of existing systems is just too great to make any effort stick.  So we give up and settle for the status quo.

What would happen though if we went to a class and asked “What’s the smallest thing I could take away from these sessions that would have a positive impact on my work or life?”  And if we ask our brain the question, it’ll look for the answer.  And when it finds the answer, it’s up to us to recognize the answer and then take that small action.  Luckily small action isn’t as scary as big action.  Jumping off a chair doesn’t have the same repercussions as jumping off a cliff.  So if we look for small actions to take and then act on the lessons learned we’ll put our lives in the upward trend for growth

So the goal is to keep growing.  There may be seasons of rapid growth, but the general trend should be consistent, upward progress.  Your mind, body and spirit will work together to pull every aspect of your life to a higher level.

What small actions are you taking today to improve your life?  Just jump.

Do Small Things

May 18, 2010 in Personal Growth, Productivity with 0 Comments

Planning is important, but action is better. If you take consistent, small actions the repercussions are smaller if one backfires. You are able to recover more quickly and move ahead with a more informed action the next time.  If you write a short blog article and no one responds, isn’t that better than writing a 200 page book and no one responding?  If you create a five minute Youtube video to express your creativity, will that give you a sense of accomplishment that the feature length film in the back of your head hasn’t (yet)?  And what if you then do a 10 minute video?  And then a 15 minute video?  Pretty soon you are in a groove and the feature length film is growing legs and taking on a form of its own.  And that form will most likely be different than the seed in your head.  But that’s okay because it’s been transformed by your experiences.  It is now real.  So get a general idea of what you want to do and then get started.  See what’s working and what isn’t.  Revise your plan and take the next step.

What have you been putting off because it seems so big it’s overwhelming?  How could you break it down? Take that piece and break it down even more.  How one thing could you do to make this smaller piece tangible?

Go make small things!

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