About Kirsten

Author Archive | Kirsten

Massive Microsoft Fail

By on April 30, 2013 in News

I was all prepared to write a glowing review of Microsoft Web Apps. I was going to tell you all about how awesome the group collaboration features were, how you could track changes and see comments and preserve formatting.

And then it stopped letting me save. I could literally make a change, hit save and watch it revert. Out of three of us, only one could save their work.

Do me a favor, ok? The next time I depend on a new Microsoft product for anything, please whap me upside the head.

Despite all this, the book still has a semi-decent chance of being released on May 1st as planned. If by released we mean, ‘ePub conversion is flawless and I upload it to Amazon for approval before collapsing into bed in the wee hours of the morning.’ Because we all know, of course, that the day doesn’t change over until I go to bed. :D

Stay tuned…

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Want to influence my new book?

By on April 16, 2013 in News

The folks on the newsletter know all about this project – they’ve been getting a blow by blow account of its development, along with the occasional excerpt. But I’m *finally* reaching the homestretch, and with a bunch of hard work and a bit of luck, The Productivity Ecosystem should be ready for you to dive into by May 1st. (Hear that, universe? Please do not send any more antibiotic resistant sinus infections, emotional sucker punches or pharmaceutical fuck ups until this is done, ok?)

I’m currently finalizing the chapters and exercises, and I wanted to take this opportunity to ask the wider world for some feedback. Today, I’m releasing the introduction and humbly asking for your reactions. Based on the introduction, what do you think? Do you want to read the rest? Am I missing anything you’d like to see? Could the information be presented in a more digestible format?

Please click here to download the introduction to The Productivity Ecosystem!

If you could take a few moments to read and offer me your thoughts, I will love you forever. Everyone who leaves a comment on this page will get recognition in the final manuscript and the opportunity to buy the book at 80% off retail price when it comes out in a few weeks. And if you want to make 100% sure that you’ll know when the book comes out, sign up for my email list!

Thank you!

Kirsten

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Welcome to Rethink Productivity!

By on August 14, 2012 in Uncategorized

Personalized Productivity has now become Rethink Productivity!!

So, what’s the difference between the two?

Personalized Productivity was about building the perfect productivity system using your personality.

Rethink Productivity is about using your personal strengths to make it easy to reach your goals.

Do you have a dream that you want to turn into reality? Have you tried setting out steps and gotten frustrated when the situation changes and they no longer match? Or have your plans withered under the onslaught of day to day life?

Rethink Productivity uses your personality type, your philosophy and your current reality to ensure that you realize your dreams. If you’re having trouble with productivity, I’ll help you sort through the chaos and identify the most important tasks. If you’re having trouble charting a path from here to your dream, I’ll help you discern the way forward. If you’re struggling with limiting beliefs, I’ll help you identify and eliminate them.

Rethink Productivity is all about moving you forward, toward whatever your goal may be.

You’ll still have to put in the work. But my goal is to make the road to your goals as smooth and simple as possible.

Sound like a plan? Leave a comment below and tell us a goal that you’re shooting for in the next 8 weeks, and what, if anything, is standing in your way.

Thanks so much for coming by the new Rethink Productivity! (Oh, and for anyone who’s wondering… I turned in my thesis last week, and I officially have my MPH!!!)

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Almost There!

By on June 28, 2012 in Uncategorized

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Sorry that it’s been a bit quiet around here lately – I’ve been putting most of my time towards the final thesis sprint. The full draft is done, and I’m about halfway through the first round of edits (on sections that have already been edited several times). Soooo close!

When I’m not working on my thesis, I’ve been doing some thinking about Personalized Productivity. I know where I want it to go in the post-MPH era, but my opinion is not the only one at play here. What would you like to see from Personalized Productivity? If I could solve one problem for you, what would it be? If I could create one piece of awesomeness, what would that awesomeness look like?

Please, come save me from edits, erm, talk to me! Leave a comment on this post. Send me an e-mail. Hit me up on Skype at kasimmon or call my shiny new business number – 678-561-3948

Talk soon!

Kirsten

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Three Outsourcing Horror Stories – A Tale of Betrayal and Thievery

By on June 6, 2012 in Outsourcing

Once Upon a Time there was a gentle souled entrepreneur, a sweet lady who trusted all around her and left calm and confidence in her wake. She quickly grew her business, for people loved to be around her, but she soon ran into a snag.

“The financial management aspect just doesn’t fuel me,” she mentioned to a client (as explanation for why her invoice was 3 months late). “It drains me of energy and keeps me from my people, the part of my business that matters to me the most.”

“Why not just hire it out?” the client replied. “I have a friend who does that sort of thing for quite a reasonable rate.”

And so the gentle-souled entrepreneur got the contact info for this friend, reached out, and soon had happily handed over the passwords and control of her finances. All went well for several months, until the gentle-souled entrepreneur decided to purchase a copy of Lemise, the landing page plug-in by BloppyCogger. To her astonishment, the business account that she’d assumed was bursting with revenue was completely empty!

“Where are all my earnings?” she asked the accountant. “I haven’t been working any less, and the expenses haven’t increased!”

“You’ve been running a deficit for months now,” the unscrupulous villain replied, and slammed the phone down in the gentle-souled entrepreneur’s ear.

Now, the gentle-souled entrepreneur knew this wasn’t true, so she decided to unearth her passwords to her financial accounts to check on everything herself. To her astonishment, she found that the passwords had been changed and she had no access!

The gentle-souled entrepreneur found herself ensnared in a police investigation, a felony theft case and a huge hassle to regain her money and her credit rating. Distressed, she asked one of the nice police sergeants how she could keep this from happening again, and learned never to give up full control of her accounts. She has followed his advice, and ever since then she creates separate accounts with limited accessibility for anyone she hires to manage her finances.

Are you interested in outsourcing, but afraid of becoming a horror story? Learn how to outsource safely in Kirsten’s upcoming class, 5 1/2 Tasks You Can Outsource For Under $100 That Will Save You At Least 10 Hours/Month

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The Three Outsourcing Horror Stories – A Tale of Babysitting and Woe

By on June 4, 2012 in Outsourcing

Once Upon A Time there was another young entrepreneur – this one slightly wiser in years and experience than our first, but still with much to learn in the ways of the Outsource.

Said this young entrepreneur, “My inbox has topped 80,000 unread messages! My Facebook page is out of hand! I need help, and quickly, to remain afloat in this wave of work!”

So she paid an agency a pretty penny to screen and interview VAs for her, thus avoiding the trap in which our first young entrepreneur became entangled. And she was quite pleased with the VA they found. “She’s experienced, she’s cheap, and she worked for Dora Toader,” the young entrepreneur thought. “What could possibly go wrong?”

Our intrepid duo charged forward, with the young entrepreneur attempting to explain the intricacies of an inbox receiving everything from client communiques to Mary Jay makeup newsletters. What should be deleted? What needed unsubscribing? What needed immediate attention? The questions were endless, and both the young entrepreneur and the VA soon became frustrated.

There must be a better way, the young entrepreneur thought, and she switched the VA to working on backlinks and article rewrites. But the VA was industrious and soon blew through the work in, and the young VA was at a loss to come up with enough to keep going. Finally, with a heavy heart and a lamentation at the waste of money, she let the VA go and corralled her mother into helping her weedwhack her inbox down to something more manageable.

Now older and wiser for her experience, the young entrepreneur swore to prepare extensively before she hired another VA – and to wait until she had at least 80 hours of outsorceable work per week to do so.

Interested in outsourcing but afraid of becoming a horror story? Learn the path to the land of outsourcing next Friday in Kirsten’s class 5 1/2 Tasks You Can Outsource For Under $100 That Will Save You At Least 10 Hours/Month.

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Three Outsourcing Horror Stories: A Tale of Incompetence All Around

By on June 1, 2012 in Outsourcing

There aren’t many ideas that are universal to all types.  95% of the time I’m advocating for different techniques, systems and methods for the four types.  But outsourcing is different.

I advocate outsourcing for every small business owner, because it has a huge potential for time savings, but it also forces you to take a thorough look at your business, your customers and how you’re moving through the routine tasks in your day.

Most small business owners I work with have heard all the horror stories and are hesitant to outsource. This series, written in fairy tale style, will explore those horror stories and how you can avoid them in your business.

Once Upon A Time there was a young entrepreneur. She was a comely lass with a head full of ideas and a heart full of enthusiasm. Like most young entrepreneurs, she also had a bank account full of nothing, and she was pulled in several directions trying to work out her business and get everything done.

One day, after having had a long talk with her mentor (who was, himself, a bit on the shady side, though the young entrepreneur didn’t know it at the time), the young lass sat down and directed her browser to oDesk.com.

“I must hire someone to move my WordPress Installation!” said she, for this is what her mentor had advised her to do. She looked at her technical knowledge and at her dwindling bank account, and wrote the following ad:

Wanted: Someone who can move the WordPress Database from one domain to another. Payment: $15

Soon, offers were pouring in from all over the world. The young entrepreneur chose the first one who met the price and could write in decent English, sent him her passwords, and woke up the next morning to find her site appeared to have been moved intact.

But alas, such was not the case, for when, several weeks later, she decided to move ahead with her plans to rebuild the old site, she deleted the old WordPress Installation and found, to her horror, that both sites were now gone! She contacted the VA, only to have him give strangely generic and unhelpful responses. She contacted her tech-savvy friends, only to have them tell her, “Umm, sorry, that sucks.” She contacted her hosting company, only to get a more formal version of the same response.

So she was left to try to reconstruct her site, with over 50 posts, from her archives – a process which took much longer than it would have taken to simply screen the fellow more thoroughly in the first place. The young entrepreneur decided that from then on, she would hire out tech work to her tech savvy friends (or at least have them help her to prepare applications and screen candidates in the furure.)

Have horror stories like these kept you from outsourcing? Check out my class on June 8th – 5 1/2 Tasks You Can Outsource for Under $100 That Will Save You At Least 10 Hours/Month.

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Introducing an Intermittant Product Review Series

By on March 19, 2012 in Product Reviews

Last week it happened. I caved. The shiny was just too overpowering. Or maybe it has something to do with the giant lit review I’m tackling for my thesis, and the inability, post-concussion, to work on a laptop for any length of time.

But, at any rate, I did it.

I bought an iPad.

And, of course, proceeded to fill it up with as many fun productivity apps as I could find. In just a week, I’ve got great things to say about Byword, not so great things about Dragon Dictation, and some squeeing to do over iAnnotate. But, first things first, let’s review the hardware itself.

I didn’t buy the newest version of the iPad; instead I went for an iPad 2. Not made of money just yet!

I love that I can hold the iPad up in one hand and read with it in front of my face, so I don’t have to tilt my head downward. That’s the motion that seems to bring on vertigo and tinnitus, so I’m doing everything I can to avoid it.

The screen is responsive, and typing with the on screen keyboard isn’t bad, though I will probably invest in a bluetooth keyboard. I love the cover they sell with it, since it gives me something to hold on to while I’m holding it up in front of me. Most of the reading I’ve done with it has been scientific studies, but I haven’t noticed any major eye strain or headaches related to reading for hours.

My calendar and mail set up easily (once I figured out double authentication on gmail) and I’m testing out a few new productivity apps to report back on for you. I’ll be interspersing those along with my other product and service reviews over the next several weeks, and as I run across them. Thus far, though, the iPad gets a good report.

Do you have an iPad? What are some of your favorite apps?

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Product Review: Sprout Social

By on March 12, 2012 in Product Reviews

Interested in trying Sprout Social? They have a 30 day free trial, and after that a Pro account is only $9 a month. Click here to sign up. (That’s an affiliate link, btw. If you sign up for a paid account, I get 100% of your first month. Which, unless you sign up for one of the high end accounts, really doesn’t amount to much…)

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Umm… ouch

By on January 18, 2012 in Uncategorized

Hey everyone – just a quick note to let you know that I’m having to take an unexpected hiatus for a few days. Last week my head collided with the inside of a bus, and the bus won. It appears that there’s no permanent damage, but I’ve been told in no uncertain terms to limit computer time this week. And since I don’t like the current ringing in my ears, I’m going to listen to the doctors on this one… after all, the only time I’ve ever gotten a faster response from my neurologist was when I took one dose of a new med last year and walked into a wall!

So… hopefully I’ll return to posting next week! And to everyone that I owe e-mails to, please forgive the delay.

~Kirsten

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