There is plenty in the media recently about multitasking and our inability to do it effectively.  I’ve always considered myself a great multitasker and prided myself on being able to remember many things while working on multiple projects on and off throughout the day.  Now I’m a mom tracking 4 calendars besides my own, or maybe because I tend to store trivial information about people I meet.

The information isn’t trivial to the person it is in regards to…but it would seem trivial to everyone else.  For example early last week through an inquiry posted on Twitter I discovered someone I follow was going to be in a wedding soon and she was asking some fashion advice.  Friday I still remembered that conversation and wished her will in her isle performance.  She was absolutely flattered I remembered. To me it was just run of the mill politeness plus a random memory.

Anyway, I find myself remembering less lately. Specifically less of the important stuff.

So, I’ve started making more lists. (You’re thinking, “Did she just say more?”) Scary, I know. I’ve also started a scratch list at the bottom of my major to do list.  In a sense I use this as my parking lot so I don’t have to pressure myself to remember it later.

If it doesn’t get on the list, it doesn’t get done.

Besides my rabid listing I’ve started doing something else. I don’t multitask anymore.

If I’m on twitter I’m reading, browsing or tweeting.

If I’m writing a blog post I hammer the keyboard until the post is finished.

If I’m browsing through my reader I stick with it until my research itch is sated or I’m simply tired of reading.

Before I would be doing all three at the same time and maybe even have email up plus a client project I was working on open too.

Want to try it?

1. Pick a thing. Any ONE thing. If this is new to you pick an easy one for the early win!
2. Decide if you are going to work until completion (short tasks) or for a set amount of time (major projects).
3. Keep your parking lot handy and get to work.
4. Write down thoughts that distract you from the main task at hand.
5. Celebrate when you’re time is up or your task is finished. Celebrate doesn’t mean go shopping! It means take a mental break by eating a piece of chocolate.

Try it and let me know how it goes!

Nibbling away -

Sundi

Photo Credits: Mike Oliveri

If you haven’t read about my Goolge revolt on Patriot Day you can see it here.

My cold-turkey Goolge stoppage has gone pretty well.

Thanks to Rachael (@caffeinatedelf) I found Inbox.  Not only has Inbox replaced my GoogleMail service but also my Toodledo and GoogleCalendar.  Inbox has addressed another problem I had and that was file storage.  So, now I have 30 GB of online storage for files and photos (Inbox provides a photo album too) plus my webmail and it costs me about $30 a year.  A small price to pay in order to leave Google.

For my search engine I’m currently using Bing.  I don’t have any complaints, nor am I overly impressed with it.  I’d be open to suggestions if anyone wants to throw some my way.

I’m back at Bloglines as a replacement for GReader.  Well, actually I’m not really back because no matter where I load my opml export from GReader it truncates about a quarter of the way through.  I’ve tried it on three different readers with the same result.  Nice! 

Something I didn’t think about when I decided to Google exit was dropping the verb “google” from my vocabulary.  Honestly the transition has been seamless which surprises me.

The ONLY thing I miss about GMail is being able to chat in the same screen.  That has brought serious withdrawal.  I was a Meebo fan before because of the purely web-based ability to use multiple services in one location.  I haven’t dropped GChat all together for the simple fact some people I chat with only use GChat.  So, I’ve now added that to my Meebo service.  I guess they’ve got me there!

All in all, I feel like I’m fighting the good fight.  Never forget!

Nibbling away -

Sundi

graphic by nooegoch on Flickr

No, Punctuation isn’t one of my strongest suits so I went looking for some good resources today.  Here are some of the things I found:

Tidewater Community College

Library Online

WikiHow

The next time I hear a soccer coach yell, “Mark up!” during a game I just know I’m going to giggle!

Nibbling away –

Sundi

Can you live without the average pointless corporate meetings?
Do you embrace technology?
Can you make sure home is still home?
Do you like to work completely independently?

Before you go out and purchase your URL…

Almost everyone can live without the average pointless corporate meetings.  That was actually a gimme.  (The the fact the meetings are average and pointless is a direct reflection on how the meetings are run.  Not the actual content discussed.)

If technology makes you want to run the other way you may have trouble finding a job.  Owning your own business is exactly the opposite extreme.

Using social media and technology to market your business is the quickest way to consistently and successfully promote your business.  There are plenty of ways to do it that are expensive and inconsistent so figure out what they are and stay away from them.  Trust me on this.  Technology must be your friend.

Home is where you live.  Chances are pretty good someone else lives there with you.  Even if your home becomes your office they probably still leave for work every day.  If you are a two business household then you are up for even more challenges.  Come to an agreement about what hours are work hours and what areas are work areas.  Stick to them.

Now, be flexible.  Home is where you go to recharge, reinvent and reinvest in yourself.  Make sure you set time aside to do those things regularly – which means you have to shut the office door or the laptop!

“Completely independently” means you are giving up regular face-to-face interactions with peers.  If you work better in a room full of people motivated by the same project then maybe you could do it but you’ll need to find ways to meet that need for interaction. 

Look for work hubs in your area.  These pop up frequently at coffee shops, book stores and libraries.  You’ll be set where ever two or more people gather who want to use each other for a sounding board.  Sometimes it doesn’t even matter if they do what you do.  What matters most is that they are logical thinkers and/or want to play the devil’s advocate when it comes to problem solving with you.  If you get the technology bit you’ll know I use the word “gather” pretty darn loosely!

I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of things to consider.  I remember many sleepless nights when I was deciding to launch my Virtual Assistant business.  I think it is normal and health so keep a notebook and pen by your bed for these soon-to-begin late-night jam sessions.

Nibbling away -

Sundi

Today is Patriot Day.

Yesterday was my birthday.

As a gift to myself I’m going to use my blog as a personal soapbox just this once.  Or, maybe this will become an annual tradition…my official complaint about Google, posted every year on September 11th.

Does anyone think it was important that UFO trended on Google last week?  Google certainly did.  They thought it was cool enough to change their home page anyway.

If you were given a list of the top ten events in the history of your generation do you think any of these would be on it:

Birthday of Beatrix Potter
World Cup of 2006
Persian New Year
Death of Michael Jackson
Nobel Prize Centennial Award Ceremony

Alright, I’ll give you MJ but I’m certainly not moved by it so it wouldn’t be on my personal list.  I was more moved by the death of Chris Ledoux in 2005.  Now that would be on my list!

It would seem that Google likes to celebrate our native holidays consistantly through the years:

Mother’s Day
Father’s Day
Halloween
Thanksgiving
Earth Day
St. Patrick’s Day
Valentine’s Day
New Year’s
Independence Day
Martin Luther King Day

This yearly list seems fairly extensive and specific to the US but then sometimes you’ll see:

Chinese New Year
Persian New Year
Summer Games in Athens
World Water Day
International Women’s Day
Lunar New Year
Large Hadron Collider
Bastille Day
La Fete de la Musique
Dragon Boat Festival
Children’s Day – Japan
St. George’s Day
Korean Liberation Day
Swiss National Day
Canada Day
Shichi-go-san – Japan

So maybe they like global stuff and maybe they don’t want to do something for a specific locale in the US.  But then comes Bloomsday.

How about a quick rundown of the random birthdays or individual accomplishments they’ve celebrated since 1999?

Rene Magritte
Marc Chagall
Diego Velazquez
Walter Gropius
Alexander Graham Bell
Luciano Pavarotti
Yuri Gagarin
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Louis Braille
Frank Lloyd Wright
Leonardo de Vinci
Vincent van Gogh
Ray Charles
Gaston Julia
Alfred Hitchcock
MC Escher
Albert Einstein
Michelangelo
Picasso
Andy Warhol
Piet Mondrian
Monet

I think this list is short-sided because good ol’ Beatrix isn’t on it; however, I distinctly recall the Google logo with Farmer Brown and Peter in it.  Oh, and let’s not forget that Google celebrates their own birthday every year.

Please tell me, after seeing the variety of only the ones I’ve listed here which of these dates is in our hearts as a nation more than September 11, which has come to be known as Patriot Day.  I can’t think of a single one.  Notice I said of the ones listed.  I can think of only one holiday that means more to me than Patriot Day and that is known to Google as “Season’s Greetings.”  In their ten year history Easter hit Google’s logo only twice.  For me, Easter ranks right up there with Christmas and Patriot Day.

If Google doesn’t want to go a religious route that is fine with me.  Leave out Christmas and Easter.  If Google doesn’t want to go heavily into holidays celebrated by the US that is fine with me too.  Neither of those is the point of me standing here on this soapbox.

September 11, 2001 directly impacted two-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-three lives from ninety countries.  (Yes, I figure that is a violation of AP style.  I did it for emphasis while on my soapbox.)  Please notice I said d.i.r.e.c.t.l.y.  Indirectly the event impacted a nation of people and brought many nations around the world to tears.

I can guess what some of you are saying, “Oh, Sundi. It isn’t that big of a deal. They get to choose their celebrations and what they do to their logo.”  True, and I get to choose my search engine.  From now on, it is no longer Google.  “Hello new search engine. My name is Sundi and I’m a Virtual Assistant.”

If people in our country can walk around like this for a day, then I think Google can change their logo for a day.

Nibbling away -

Sundi

While flipping through an industry magazine I found an article by David C. Miller titled, Are You in a Slump?

He outlined five fundamentals to get out of your slump:

1)  Take a break.  Sometimes we need to get away from our game and focus on other aspects of life.

2)  Take care of yourself physically.  If you’re not taking time to take care of yourself, you will find yourself in slumps more often.  Give yourself permission to exercise, eat right and get enough sleep.

3)  Master your mindset.  Our thoughts and beliefs directly impact how we feel and, ultimately, what we do.  Slumps effect our confidence. We must be vigilant to combat the beliefs that dis-empower us.

4) Do the “little things” every day.  Practice the fundamentals of your business or career.  This means doing the little things that have worked in the past.  Things like picking up the phone and following up on leads, writing an article or setting up a speaking engagement.  Identify three to five daily fundamentals that you know work and do them each day.

5) Get support.  Get the support of a friend, partner or coach to help you stay with the first four fundamentals.  No one gets successful alone.

A great list, surely!  May I add one small thing David?

This little trick I learned from Michelle at Here’s to You!  She was kind enough to let us use her location for a networking group I’m a member of and she even shared with us one of her favorite talks.  (By the way, Michelle gets it too!)

Along with self talk Michelle also discussed catching yourself when you are in a *powerful* frame of mind.  Cashing in on a powerful frame of mind means positioning yourself to succeed when you have the most positive energy to achieve success.

When do you think your most powerful juices are flowing?

Directly after a workout?

When you listen to certain types of music or specific songs?

While you are wearing a certain tie?

Make a list of times you feel powerful and start using these times to your personal and professional advantage.  If you all share so will I!  Some of them are pretty personal.  :)

Nibbling away -

Sundi

Disclaimer:  There are as many definitions of what a group is as there are twitter users!  I think my definition of a group is pretty clear here.  I’m not talking about people attending a conference who might want to meet up for the first time and have drinks.  I’m talking about people who already have some type of a relationship or connection developed and need to communicate about a common topic amongst themselves.  That being said, roll with me…

I’m in a group of Virtual Assistants who met and found common ground in the desire to build our business by reading Get Clients Now.  While working through the book we utilized Skype to talk real time and Twitter to send out reminders or mini-celebrations when we hit daily goals.

Skype worked great!

Twitter, not so much.

With a group of 6 any message I sent through Tweetdeck to all the members ate up 83 characters of my message.  I thought it was hard to express my extroverted self in 140 characters.  Fifty-seven characters was horrible!  We switched to a hash tag but not everyone was using Tweetdeck and not all of us ran a column for it consistently.  Messages were getting missed and some of the luster was fading.

Then I discovered how to set up groups on Twitter.  If you open an account, lock the updates, follow all the members and they reciprocate, you have a group.  The system seemed pretty slick initially.

To send a confirmation for the next call a member sends a direct message to the group account.  The original message is reworked into a message from the sender and flows into the main Twitter stream to be viewed by only members of the group (since the updates are private).

Here is an example of the message I’d send from Tweetdeck: 

d GCN0509 Can we move the call later by 1/2 hour tonight?

Private message appearing in the Twitter stream:

Sundi_MOZ: Can we move the call later by 1/2 hour tonight?

It works pretty sweet!  In theory.

With about a thousand folks in my Twitter stream the probability that I’ll see any one message is pretty small – even if the message was intended for me.  Almost like an @ message where the sender left off the intended recipient after the @.  After a couple of weeks the members stopped using the group account entirely because the response rate was so low.

What we really need is for Twitter to fix the group thing!  All over the net you’ll find conversations about what people think Twitter groups should be.  Represented opinions are as diverse as the colors in the rainbow.   People want geography built in.  People want levels of privacy.  People want no levels of privacy and for Twitter to “learn” what groups apply when.  Seriously?  Won’t this almost kill the reason why MOST people love Twitter?  Here I thought simple was the rule and if you wanted to make it complicated, or even hyper-complicated, there was a Twitter app out there to help you do that.

How can Twitter fix groups as they are currently known?  The most simple way possible!

When I send a message to my group I want to know that everyone is going to get an equal opportunity to see it and respond.  That means the message needs to go out from the group account as an @ or a DM to every member.  Simple.

Do you have a suggestion for how Twitter can fix groups?

Nibbling away -

Sundi

The following is about someone very near and dear to my heart.  Join me.  I think you’ll like it and be able to relate!

She feels like she could take on the world today or any day for that matter.  A fluff of her hair, a good suit and a single coat of lipstick can take her very far.  She has worked hard to arrive at where she is professionally and you better take her seriously because she knows her stuff.  The executive coaching/organizational development world to a hot blond female in it is no joking matter.  The PhD, late nights, fights to prove she is smarter than her hair color would lead anyone to believe, years of OJT and unsolicited advances from clients or co-workers have brought her to where she is now.  Struggling to make a name for herself – just slightly short of ,and much more serious than, a very well known Dr. Phil!  (It doesn’t hurt to dream, right?)

She is a talented seller-got that from her dad.  It isn’t what she considers selling.  It simply comes naturally and she doesn’t even think about it or consider it a skill.  She sees herself as a problem solver and her clients appreciate that.  They don’t feel like they’ve been sold to or even pitched.  She is simply the solution to their problem and they simply thank her for it-sometimes handsomely!

Her client list is extensive and recognizable: Clif Bar, Microsoft, Kaiser Permanente, Colgate Palmolive, Fuji Hunt, Loves Travel Stops, Oklahoma State University, Aggreko, Eisai, Interwoven, Wrigley, just to name a few.  Problems from long-term executive coaching assignments to succession planning fall under her expertise.  She was never one to shy away from the usual team building or life coaching, and can even list a staff position at a nationally recognized nursing college to her list of “at a girls.”

Her days are filled with the meat of her operations: coaching calls, content development, research, meetings with clients, and local events.  But then there are the other things.  The messy ones.  Not that she isn’t good at them, if she applies herself.  The travel plans, email interactions for numerous things (participant lists, reminders, booking confirmations, assessment instructions, and the like), organizing the research, editing materials for workshops, rescheduling appointments for no-show client phone calls-none of which she minds doing.

Then there is the list of things she does in the wee hours of the morning at the absolutely last possible second she can get it done: compiling materials, boxing for shipping, updating her social networks, typing a blog post, sending thank you notes to clients, organizing expense reports from workshop trips, RFP research and submissions, proofing quotes and getting them to clients and, basically, ordering more pens for God’s sake!

It isn’t unusual for her clients to get emails from her at 3 in the morning, a most likely time for her to be up and working, and the least likely time for her phone to be ringing.  If she could only figure out how to download and print assessment results, while she packed boxes and her suite case and slept at the same time life would be so much easier!  Just last week she found herself sitting in a taxi in New York traffic headed for her next keynote speaker event while doing a coaching call she inadvertently forgot to move the following week’s call because of her trip to Dallas.  Details, details, details.  The client never knew she wasn’t at her desk but she had yet to realize she wouldn’t have time to type her notes up for the clients boss before their debrief the following week.

This week, today, right now, she is standing in line for an overbooked flight from Chicago with limited cell reception and her flight confirmation no where to be found-if she even remembered to pack the darn thing.  The last time she checked the big picture wasn’t the problem!  It was the crease in the napkin on the linen tablecloth of the buffet in the dinning room of the big picture that was driving her crazy.  The details of her consulting career hadn’t cost her a client yet and hopefully they wouldn’t, but she did know the details were costing her new ones.  She just didn’t have the time or energy to return half the phone calls she was receiving or follow up on any of the referrals piling up in her inbox.

Can you identify with this?

Did any of that mirror yourself?

If you answered yes to either question please click and fill out the swank form at the bottom of my About page.  That is all you need to do!

Nibbling away -

Sundi

PS – oh my goodness! If you need more encouragement then read this.

I came across Nicholas Carr’s Is Google Making Us Stupid?  last spring.  Since then I’ve been paying close attention to the reading behavior of my 11-year-old.

I’m an avid reader.  It started when I was in elementary school.  Into adulthood I’ve continued to read several authors over the decades and can go through books at an almost alarming rate - which actually makes me prefer a series to a single book.

Although I know there are several places you can read books online I tend to not like sitting in one spot, especially a desk chair or even up-right period, and scrolling while I read.  Although I typically get books from the library a UPS delivery of an Amazon box at our house is just this side of Christmas morning.  The only thing better than the crack of a new spine and the smell of a new book is the sweetness of a newborn baby.

My oldest son seems to have picked up this love.  He has read some of my old favorites and shared some of his favorites with me.  Even the second of my 7-year-old twins seems to be following in our path.  The first-born twin, not so much.

The concerns which Carr outlines have not come to pass in my family yet; however, it won’t surprise me if they do.  The best I can do is pass my love of reading on to my children.  Honestly, shouldn’t every parent be doing that anyway?  And if they aren’t maybe we digressed way before the internet became the norm.  Shall we face it…some people just don’t have a love for reading.

With that I say, Thank you Mr. Internet.  I think we should rejoice for every vehicle we use to get any generation to consume information.  Fortunately, I realize my children will do it differently.  “It” being almost everything I’ve ever done in my past!

Actually, I wonder if history is only repeating itself.  When remote controls for televisions came out did someone say we would never view television the same again?  Did they say the networks were doomed because viewers would never stay on a station through the commercials?  Just to make it clear – I am old enough to remember NOT having remote controls but NOT old enough to remember what the “experts” thought about them.

Even if the book industry is doomed I have some books on hold for me at the library so I need go.

Nibbling away -

Sundi

Being a farmers wife, she put substantial meals on the table three times a day, the first one being before sane people rollover in the morning, let alone actually get out of bed.  She kept a garden, did the laundry – which was line-dried, performed typical farm chores like milking the cows, raised two kids, had a strawberry patch bigger than her house and was one of the craftiest people I knew (as in made cool things by hand).

I’m sure some of that seems standard to a house wife today – except in my memories it was 35 years ago!

Without a lawn service she tended multiple flower beds around the house and mowed the yard…most likely because her husband was tending the fields and didn’t care how tall the grass was.

The garden was in a pasture far from the house and she didn’t have a sprinkler system.  In fact, I recall filling buckets and barrels full of water and trucking them to the garden.

By the way, the line dried clothes were by choice.  She actually did own a dryer.

Not one stitch of food on her table came from the freezer, save the meat, which was most likely a product of the farm and kept in a deep freeze in a building detached from the farm house.

The can goods were kept in the cellar along with bushels of potatoes.  I can’t think of a single canned fruit or vegetable she didn’t have down there.  When I say canned I don’t mean off the shelf of the grocery store.  I’m actually talking about jars which is called canned when you do it yourself.

The meals she created weren’t just for her family of four – especially during planting and harvesting.  I remember spending almost as long packing up the food as we did cooking it.  We’d truck it out to the fields too.  I remember the fresh baked Monster Cookies – chunky peanut butter, oatmeal, M&Ms, raisins AND chocolate chips.  I still have that recipe somewhere…

Over the years she accumulated eight grandchildren.  One of them was me.

All that just to tell you my mother was born and raised on a farm.  She named me Sundi (pronounced sun, like our star, plus de as in details) because Sunday was her favorite day of the week.  It was her favorite because she got to spend it with her dad.  Go figure.

Sometimes I wonder if I could have pulled off a Carol or Maxine – after my grandmother.

Nibbling away -

Sundi