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!!!)

Once upon a time there was an entrepreneur. He was fairly successful, by most measures. He was living comfortably, and made enough to hire an assistant. Part of his assistant’s duties was to screen his incoming e-mail and only send him the most important messages. All others were handled with a canned reply or a quick trip to deletion.

One day, the entrepreneur got a message from Groupon. They wanted to feature his business. His assistant sent on the message, only to have the entrepreneur respond that Groupon was horrible for small businesses and that if any other offers like this came through, to reply with an automated, ‘Thank you, not ingested.’

A few weeks later, the assistant got a call from a journalist at a national news outlet. They were running a series on the intricacies in the entrepreneur’s field and wanted to feature his business. The entrepreneur wasn’t there at the time, so the assistant replied with the closest training to the situation that she had received. ‘Thank you, not interested.’

The entrepreneur never realized what an opportunity he had missed.

Many creative entrepreneurs, especially Fantasticals, view systems and routines as anathema to their creativity. “I can’t be boxed in like that!’ they’ll proclaim.

I agree – to an extent. A poorly formed routine is stifling. But a well thought out routine, now, that can set you free.

So how do you identify good routines from bad?

We all have some routines, regardless of our personality type. We all (hopefully) brush our teeth and bathe on a regular basis, and chances are that you eat fairly regularly as well. These routines are beneficial to your health and well being. And while you do eat regularly, it’s unlikely that you eat at exactly the same time every single day unless you have a medical reason to do so. The routine has flexibility, and that’s what differentiates a bad routine from a good one.

Consider your routines and whether they allow for flexibility. Can you rearrange them on days when you need to? Do they prevent you from experiencing the world first hand and making decisions with critical pieces of information in front of you? A good routine supports your work, whereas a bad routine will get in your way.

Some bad routines are insidious, disguising themselves as good routines until unexpected situations come up. Then, like in the story of the entrepreneur and his assistant, they show their true colors and prevent you from taking full advantage of the opportunities that come your way.

Routines and employees is a whole different post (or series of posts), but for today think about your own routines. Do they support you? If they don’t, what can you change to make sure that they do?

Leave a comment below with your thoughts!

Ever since I got my iPad, I’ve been playing around with various apps to figure out the most efficient way to get my articles from my head to the page.  One of my friends recommended the Byword writing app, so it was first on my list to test out.

Byword has a lot of nice features, and one very serious con.  First, the good.

Byword lets you write in markup and export directly to e-mail, iCloud, iTunes, or HTML.  This means that your posts can go straight from Byword to your website with very little editing needed, which is a definite plus.  So many broken links come from the practice of writing in Word, or even in Text Edit, and trying to copy and paste your links straight into the WordPress post window.  Byword eliminates that hazard.

In addition, Byword lets you write on a blank screen.  There are no annoying icons or rulers or anything other than a simple word count on the bottom to distract you from your work.

That blank screen is both a blessing and a curse, though.  If you’re like me (ie: Fantastical and tending to jump in without reading the instructions), you can go through a lot of grief trying to figure out how to get back to the menu when you’re done with a post.  Eventually I broke down and googled it and discovered that I needed to tap the upper left corner of the screen with three fingers.  Except… I’m not sure what their definition of upper left corner is, but it seems to be different from mine.  Every time I finish a post and want to go back, I seem to spend at least 30 seconds tapping and cancelling the select/copy/paste bubble and tapping again, etc, before I finally manage to get the menu back!  Serious annoyance, and I’m not sure if it’s because the app is over or under sensitive, or my iPad is over or under sensitive.  Or maybe I just don’t know how to tap yet.

But whatever the cause, this simple thing is going to push me to trying another writing app over the next couple of weeks.  And it also means that I can’t really recommend Byword for my audience. Without this flaw, it would be a great app for Analyticals and Fantasticals.  But with it?  It’s just aggravating, and all the more so because everything else is so perfect.

This is part of the series where I explore apps and accessories for my recently purchased iPad.

Last week I spent a day out on the patio of one of the local indie coffee shops, writing with my puppies and one of my best friends.  It was amazingly productive time – at the end of several hours I’d written five blog posts and discovered several new apps for my iPad.  But I was writing on the iPad screen keyboard, and it soon became clear that it wasn’t going to be much better for me than a laptop, at least in terms of dealing with dizziness and tinnitus after using it for more than an hour or so.

I played around with some of the dictation apps (more on those to come in subsequent weeks), and then started thinking along the lines of a bluetooth keyboard.  Luckily for me, the friend I was writing with is a technophile who seems to have extras of everything, and she had an old Apple bluetooth lying around.  One new battery cover and two AAs later, and I was off to the races.

The external keyboard makes a huge difference in my ability to be productive with the iPad.  I can touch type, so I don’t have to be looking at the screen to see what’s going on.  In fact, I’m typing this now in my bedroom with the windows open, staring out at the trees and watching the dogs sleep in the sun.  (Except they just woke up and are now barking at something three stories below.  Damn.)  The iPad is sitting with the cover propping it into display mode off to my side on the bed, meaning that I can glance down at it every so often, but I can move my head briefly through the problematic positions rather than keeping it there while I work.

Setting up the keyboard was a breeze – I just put in the batteries, hit the power button and it popped up in the found devices on the bluetooth settings. I hit connect, entered in the code when prompted, and away I went.

I’ll definitely be using this extensively for any sort of writing that requires more than a few minutes of time – it’s quick, easy, and best of all, doesn’t leave me with tinnitus and vertigo.  (I know those aren’t considerations for most of you, but they are for me!)

As to who should be using this tool – I’d venture that any of the personality types could benefit from it.  Some may not want this one specifically – I can see the Structurals and Analyticals, especially wanting some of the keyboards that integrate with iPad cases for convenience and storage.  I may go that way at some point myself, just to test out the idea and see how they work.  But for now, I’ll be happily typing along on this basic external bluetooth.

It’s a luxury to have a large office – a luxury many of us don’t have!  What’s the best way to get the most out of a small office space?  This problem is especially tricky for Fantasticals, since it’s better for them to keep their goals, lists and whatever they’re working on visible and handy.    That can be hard to do in a cramped space.

There are some creative ways around this obstacle.  Many people think of their desk and their walls, but there’s another space – the ceiling.  If you need more room or can’t fit a shelf on the wall, you could hang a shelf from the ceiling and use it for project piles.

And what about white boards or giant sticky notes?  These are the staples of Fantastical task management, but they require wall space too.

How about making the shelving you do have play double duty?  If you have a bookshelf, try to organize your books so that you have a shelf or two that you don’t need to refer to as often.  Then you can use a pair of hinges on the top shelf and rig up a whiteboard to hang on the front of the bookshelf.

What are some of the ways you’ve solved the problem of too little space?

After working together for about a month, Kirsten and Steph want to share some of the lessons learned in their experiences so far, and how we aim to improve in the future.

The First Month of Working With Steph

I went into this acutely aware of how many people I’d failed to work with in the past.  Bad instructions, disappearing for days on end while I dealt with other stuff, not being sure what I wanted, not being able to articulate what I wanted, not being comfortable with correcting things that are wrong… I’ve done it all.  And so I resolved to go into this with my eyes wide open and make every attempt to make it work, because the consequences of failing would mean that my sites would go silent.

I’ve had to let go of my expectations that things would be done exactly the way I’d been doing them.  If a post goes up at 11pm Pacific instead of 8am Eastern, it’s hardly the end of the world.  If the titles aren’t what I would have chosen, maybe that’s because I didn’t specify a particular headline to include.  Rather than focusing on what hasn’t been right, I’ve had to refocus on how I can help make it right in the future.

For someone that you want to work with long term, I think that’s the most important thing you can possibly do.  Yes, you want to give instructions that are as clear as possible so that they have a chance of getting it right the first time.  But once the mistake is made, don’t obsess over it.  Figure out what went wrong and how you can fix it next time.  And 95% of the time, the error lies with you, not the person you’re working with.  That realization has been one of the most eye-opening ones of the month.

The First Month of Working with Kirsten

The first month was much more difficult than I expected, even though it was extremely fun and rewarding.  After spending eight hours or more a day working a boring office job, it’s great to have an outlet doing work requires more creative input, even at the moment if it’s mostly logistical.  Some things I’ve learned are to be open about my own limitations and what my work schedule allows.  If I have questions, I’ve learned to ask them, regardless of my fear of appearing stupid.  I’m also learning that if I have input, if it’s an opportune time, I mention some of my ideas.

In the coming months, I would like to become more involved with helping to manage Kirsten’s businesses, and helping provide creative solutions to Kirsten’s own adventures in productivity and multiple passions.

10 Ways to Stop Forgetting Things & Get More Done

A great list of steps to remind yourself to do those pesky, often-forgotten tasks, or how to balance everything when you’re overwhelmed.

Allow Your Ideas to Have Sex with Other Ideas to Create New Ideas

Creative ways to formulate new ideas based on things or ideas you already have.

Flexible working practices key to productivity

Flexibility has shown to improve productivity, research says.  There are many ways to be productive, contrary to popular productivity how-tos.  Routines are not for everyone.

Thinkering

Thinking with the hands can be a necessary stage on the road to learning and creative breakthrough.

The ABC’s of Self-Love: N is for Natural

Fear and excitement are natural.

Don’t miss your chance to win a copy of Nicole Fende’s new book How to be a Finance Rock Star! All you have to do is help Nicole find Fluffy the Finance Feline, who is currently MIA, gallivanting around the globe.  Check out the hints below and submit your answer for Fluffy’ s current whereabouts before today’s midnight deadline -

Hint #1: Located on the border of the US and Canada

Hint #2: Second largest falls in the world

Go to http://financerockstar.com/ to submit your guess on Fluffy’ s location in this picture for a chance to win a copy of How to be a Finance Rock Star and a VIP Pass to the virtual book launch cocktail party on February 23rd . To be eligible, your entries for this #FluffySighting must be submitted no later than midnight February 22nd Central Standard Time.

No Purchase Required. Void Where Prohibited. Read Official Rules Here.