Here we are, in full swing of the holiday season. You may be in panic mode because you realize you have a little over a week left for shopping. Or you may be chill because everyone is covered. Regardless, our North American culture sees this time of year as one of closure as we ramp up for 2010.  As self-employed entrepreneurs, it can be more difficult to request time off and then to take it. We feel like we are letting clients down or that we look less than committed to our businesses.

Nothing could be further from the truth! Some business experts suggest we build in 150 days off PLUS weekends and holidays when we work for ourselves and clients (of course, on those work days we have to be laser focused!). Danielle LaPorte talks about that in this video. I’m not taking 150 days off per year…are you?

We rely heavily on our support systems and need to spend time with our friends and families without checking our Blackberries and laptops or taking client calls. We have to let our brains rest like everyone else. In fact, I think entrepreneurs and virtual professionals need to rest them far more because our wheels are always spinning with new ideas!

Be up front with clients, but do let them know what they can expect while you are gone, give them notice and do some work up front for them if possible. Many of them are self-employed as well so they are more likely to “get it”. Rest your brain, your heart, your soul and spend some needed time with friends and family. You are more likely to come back with both barrels blazing!

One of the most popular of all productivity systems, David Allen’s Getting Things Done has a nearly cult-like following. The original book was published in 2001 but Allen has been teaching productivity since 1983. The system has spun off various hack sites like DIY Planner, the GTD flickr group and the Lifehacker GTD area. There is, of course, an iPhone app for it. People have created a whole variety of tools to implement the system.

Most of us are always in need of improving our focus and productivity and you may have stumbled across the letters GTD and wondered what the system was. Here it is in a nutshell:

Every worry or concern on your mind of every nature needs to be captured somewhere in writing.

Things that require an action should be broken down into “next steps” (now you know where that corporate-y phrase “next steps” comes from).

Keep information organized and streamlined.

Routine reviews of your “six horizons of your commitments”: purpose, vision, goals, area of focus, projects and actions.

That’s it. Allen’s site says: “The only “right” way to do GTD is getting meaningful things done with truly the least amount of invested attention and energy.” Hence, the whole “touch each paper once” idea. Regardless, like all productivity systems there are some great ideas in GTD. The secret is constant implementation, often easier said than done!

Michael Neill is a “super coach”, author and advisor to top-level executives and folks like you and me (who can afford him). He puts out one of the best newsletters on improving performance and happiness. His book, Feel Happy Now, is a smart add to your bookshelf. He also has a podcast on Hayhouse Radio. This post, coupled with Marcus Buckingham’s Go Put Your Strengths to Work, remind us that trying to negate our weaknesses versus building on our strenghts, is not the smartest way to improve our lives. Focus on what you do WELL instead of overcompensating for what you don’t. Follow Michael at Genius Catalyst and Marcus at TMBC.

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A client complained to me recently that he needed to become more disciplined, as he was failing to hit his targets in several key areas of his business. Years ago when I was first starting out as a coach I might have taken his complaint seriously and worked with him on becoming “a more disciplined person”, even taking the time to explore his patterns of self-sabotage and encouraging him to ‘just try harder’ and ‘focus more’ on what he really wanted. Who Loves the Sun release Hellboy II: The Golden Army dvd

But it’s become more and more clear to me over the years that success is less a matter of becoming a different kind of person than of finding what already works well for us and doing more of it. In other words, what holds us back is not some flaw in our character, but rather a blind spot in our understanding. I call this “the Goldilocks principle” – the idea that there is always a way of doing anything that fits just right for you.

Do you think you’re too lazy to succeed? Consider the story of Marc Allen, the millionaire publisher behind such personal development classics as Creative Visualization Daddy Day Camp ipod Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence film

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and The Power of Now . I had to get special permission to interview him for my radio show at 11am one week as he normally won’t do anything remotely business related until after lunch, a habit he engendered long before he achieved his financial success.

Are you not tough enough to make it in the dog-eat-dog world of business? Then you might find it difficult to account for the multi-million dollar financial and socially conscious success of hippie-ice cream entrepreneurs Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who balance the demands of their conscience with the demands of running a successful company by creating an imaginary entity they call “the monster” that makes their difficult business decisions for them. As Ben reputedly told Jerry when economic realities made it necessary to let employees go, “the monster is hungry – the monster must eat!”

I told my client the story of a man who designed new buildings for college campuses. In his original designs, the man used to draw in not only the new building but also the routes of access – all the sidewalks to and from the parking lots and other buildings. But to his dismay, when he would visit the campuses months later, he could see that students (and even some teachers) were often ignoring the sidewalks and making their own pathways to the new buildings, ruining the grass and making for some awkward patterns of foot traffic.

Rather than complain about the disrespectful students and irresponsible teachers, the designer came up with an innovative idea. Instead of trying to create a pre-determined path for people to follow, he began designing and placing the buildings without putting in any sidewalks at all. Then, after the building has been in use for a while, his team comes in and builds the sidewalks where the footpaths have naturally evolved.

The point is, you can either try to adapt yourself to fit in to what you think of as the “right way to succeed”, or you can employ the Goldilocks principle and find a way to succeed that fits “just right” for you.

And as George Bernard Shaw famously said:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.“

Many of us left corporate jobs, self included, because we wanted to be our own boss. No more requesting off for dental appointments, feeling guilty over missing soccer games, wearing panty hose. There are lots of great benefits for working for and managing just you. But you and I both know that there are downsides as well. So how can you manage yourself well?

Know your rhythms. If you have the flexibility to work any hour of the day, schedule the toughest tasks for when you are at your sharpest, even if that is 3am. If 230pm brings a slump, take a 30 minute nap to recharge.

Stick to a schedule as much as possible. Define “work time” clearly to yourself, either by the spaces you work in or the times.

Be aware of your procrastination triggers. Time-boxing is a great way to stay on task. Pick one thing and a specific amount of time (blog post: 1 hour) and do not let yourself move from your chair or toggle to a news site no matter what.

Get out and work with people. Even if you love working for yourself, you still need the companionship and energy of other people.

Keep your business finances in order. If you are like most solo practitioners, you file quarterly taxes. Keep receipts in a specific place and, if possible, work with a qualified CPA to help you find as many home office deductions as possible.

Build in rewards. Bosses reward employees, right? When you complete a large project, make sure you’ve built in a reward for you. Occasionally schedule an afternoon off, unplug completely, see something new. This revs your creative juices which can make you more productive.

Set boundaries. Set them with clients (do you really need to be available 24/7?), set them with friends and families. It can be hard for others to respect our schedules when we work for ourselves and at home. It is up to you to protect your work time.

It can be more challenging than many will tell you when you are your own boss. If you live alone, it can be even more tricky. Take good care of you!Ice Bound dvd

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Anyone who is responsible for directing their own time or who works for themselves understands what I mean when I say it is a daunting task to stay on task at times. With so many temptations to lure us away like family, phone calls, television, the Internet, Internet television, email, it can be difficult to stick with one project and see it to completion. It is clearly not impossible. I’ve learned some ways to make this much easier!

Before your week begins, develop an overall plan. This can be Friday afternoon, Sunday evening or early Monday morning. What are the key things that must be accomplished the following week? Check your calendar for appointments, items with deadlines and create a simple list of those things that MUST be done. Nothing else goes on the list (if the world falls apart, you’ll know what you have to finish first).

Get to know yourself well. If you have a pretty flexible schedule, plan on working on the hardest stuff when you are your freshest. For some of us that’s late at night and for others, the wee hours of the morning. 

Don’t get tangled up in email. You can sit down with a task and a deadline, open email and find 50 reasons to not do what you sat down to do. Work on the task first for an hour, then check email. Try to limit the number of times you open it. Put an auto-responder up letting people know if something is urgent, they’ll need to call. Most things are not urgent.

Turn your phone off and step away from the Internet. Use paper and pen if you have to. Schedule phone calls like you do appointments.

Break down larger projects into smaller chunks. If something is daunting (a proposal, a white paper) draw up a really rough outline first, flesh it out with some research links second, write some crummy sentences third and before you know it you will have a rough draft to edit.

Outsource what you can! If your bill rate is $100 an hour or more, it makes no sense for you to struggle with tasks that you can pay an expert half of that, or less, to do. Why hassle with designing your own web site when you can pay an affordable rate for a Web designer? Why review hundreds of resumes and phone screen even 20% of them when a professional recruiter can present you with the 5 best candidates to interview? Why do all of that tedious Internet research when a VA can do it more quickly and allow you to get back serving your clients or selling your service?

Work smarter, not harder. Give TVLAI

a call and we’ll do a needs assessment and provide you with an affordable package to allow you to get back to doing what you do best!

Photo via Creative Commons license from DJBrady

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Is this photo you? Trying to work in a (lovely) living room on your laptop? It can make it hard to work when you have kids or pets roaming around. If you are like me and your office is at home, you get to be the planner and organizer of that space that is sometimes used at 6am, sometimes at 3am. No gray cube! Thank heavens. That’s the plus. But if you are setting up a new office from scratch or you are redoing your existing office, what can you do to help you function and be more happy in this often used space.

Do try to get a space that has some privacy. If you can’t have a whole room, try to pick a less traveled area of the house, preferably with some natural light. Define it in some way. An area rug, a bookcase that can act as a divider and add some invigorating colors to that space. Obviously if you can paint the whole room, so much the better.

If you only invest in one great piece of furniture, make it your desk chair. You’ll be doing a lot of sitting which is horrible on the lower back. Do yourself a favor (especially if you are 35 or over) – buy the best one you can afford.

Try not to skimp on lighting either. As sad, as much natural light as possible will help the home office be a place that is more inviting and easier to stay focused. If that is limited, try to have some overhead lighting as well as a desk lamp and use full spectrum bulbs Imagine Me & You hd .

No one wants to go in an office that’s a mess, let alone work. We might deny it but we all perform better with a clear space to think. Get computer cords under control Madea Goes to Jail buy Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy trailer , make sure you have adequate storage and a designated place for everything. Everyone has a different style of organizing. Do some reading Skeleton Crew dvd Class of Nuke ‘Em High Part II: Subhumanoid Meltdown trailer Two-Faced Woman release

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The Assassination of Richard Nixon psp to discover yours. If you are a visual organizer, have different colored folders for different subjects, with matching post-it notes, tabbed dividers for notebooks and planners and so on.

Take these tips from feng shui

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to increase your feelings of harmony and focus: position your desk in a corner facing the door if possible, add an aquarium or tabletop fountain in the east, north or southeast area of your office, mirrors are considered to reflect negative energy and should not be used, and balance hard with soft, light with dark, smooth textures with rough when designing. (Hey! It can’t hurt!)

If you need help, consider working briefly with a designer or a professional organizer. Redoing your home office can increase productivity and focus and your overall sense of well-being. Afterall, sometimes it feels like we are in their 24/7!Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God download

So many gadgets. So little time. Some are time and money wasters, but for entrepreneurs, small business owners and freelancers on the go, there are some that seem like they might actually be worth it. Keep in mind that each one has a learning curve so be patient with yourself (and the gadget!).

Voice recorder. Maybe your cell phone has one of these built in for short memos? But for people who have lots of writing to do (memos, reports, blog posts, newsletters, ebooks anyone?), a voice recorder can be a life saver.  Prices range from $15 to over $650, based on storage and quality. According to PC World, one of the best is Sony’s ICD-MX series The Milagro Beanfield War trailer Tears of the Sun Edison download Warlock film

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which runs about $200. But for your own notes and reminders, Sony also makes one for under $60.

Voice recognition software. Your voice recorder becomes a REAL productivity tool if it can convert your voice into text in a word processor. If you’ve used voice recognition software before, prepare to find that they have improved dramatically in their ability to recognize and learn your voice patterns.  Dragon seems to be the preferred vendor. 

iPhone.  In April there were over 25,000 iPhone applications (and more than 1 billion downloads). Some are just fun and many are timewasters, but there are true productivity applications. We’ve listed apps that vary in price from free to $25, but all offer some really unique features. Oh yeah. It’s a phone, a camera and an mp3 player as well! iTerminal allows you to accept credit card payments from your phone (I KNOW!), Basecamp for project management and mbPointer which turns your iPhone into a PowerPoint presentation pointer (for $2.99). Check out this article

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Netbook. We discussed Netbooks thoroughly here.

Pen scanner. If you need to do lots of research involving note taking, pen scanners can’t be beat. For about $125, the small handheld scanner (which you run across text like a pen) copies text and easily downloads it into a file for you on your computer.

Webcam/digital microphone. Doing video/podcasts is a big branding tool. You can easily make and upload video tutorials for clients with the right tools. Webcams and decent quality microphones are fairly inexpensive. Learn more here The Woodsman divx .

Please tell us what productivity tools you can’t live without.

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When you are a virtual assistant, a solo practitioner, or a freelancer of any type, you’ve got to sit down and get to work many times per day on various projects or assignments. Wow! How hard is this? I did some reading to see if there were any good tips for maintaining my focus and I found some really good ones. Here are five to get you started:

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1. Don’t check email before you start. You’ll find yourself solving a new problem versus working on what you sat down to do. Vow to check it after you are done.

2. Get away from the Internet! If this means taking your laptop to a spot without WiFi, so be it. If it means pulling the cable cord out, do that. But make it impossible to hop on.

3. Turn your phone and television off.

4. Set a timer (your microwave has one) for 15 minutes. Learning to maintain focus is a muscle you have to build. It can be incredibly hard to stay on task for 30 minutes. Do 15 minutes and then get up and stretch and then reset to 15 minutes.

5. Get out of the house. If you work from home, take yourself to that WiFi-free spot so you don’t find yourself cleaning your desk off instead of working.

Multi-tasking as a productivity mindset is dead

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. Leo Babauta of Zen Habits encourages us to start single-tasking and kick the multi-tasking habit to the curb. What do you do when you’re struggling to get to work? Share it with us!Men at Work movie download

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Even if you have escaped cubicle nation Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 ipod Thirteen Days full movie , you are probably still leading meetings of some sort-whether they are by phone, Webcam or in-person. We all know everyone hates meetings so what can you do to make them more bearable for yourself and the others in attendance. This is all assuming you have requested the meeting yourself.

Ask yourself what you hope to accomplish during the time you spend with attendees. Do you need input on an idea or do you have a problem that needs to be addressed? If you just need to “touch base”, what exactly does that mean?

Set an agenda. Not just in your mind-write it down! Estimate how long the meeting will take.

Send the agenda out in advance, even if it is just a phone call with a client. This lets them know you are prepared and you appreciate their time. Ask them if they have any additional agenda items to add.

Start on time! This is called polite behavior and to not do so is disrespectful.

When you start, remind attendees why you called the meeting and how long you expect it to last.

If, God forbid, you are using a PowerPoint presentation, be sure to follow this rule. And DO NOT read off the slides. Know your material.

Stay “on point”. Do not stray from the agenda yourself. You’ll probably have to reign in attendees as it is, so at least keep yourself on track.

DO allow enough time for questions and input. BUT also try to wrap up when you said you would. A helpful way to do this is to “time box” up front. “Hi Steve. I’m calling about xyz. I have another meeting after this at 10am, so I promise not to keep you”. This isn’t for Steve. It’s for you!

Send out a follow-up summary of the meeting, again even if it was just a client call. This clears up miscommunication before action steps are taken and let’s attendees know you are paying attention.

Dilbert would have never had enough juice to be a hit comic if it weren’t for meetings.

If you’ve ever suffered a computer crash (either the hard drive or dropping your laptop!), you know the sheer panic of trying to recover all of those files. Additionally, many companies like Quicken and Norton’s want you to renew your software fees annually. Increasingly your personal and small business computing can be done without the expense of purchasing software or an additional external hard drive to safely store your documents and other files.  Chatter on the internet says that, soon, your PC or MAC will simply be a connection device and everything you need will be on the Web…including your own files. Here are some sites to start you off on your way to hard drive freedom!

Open Office

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has finally become fully respectable. With few glitches when being read by MS Office products, Open Office is a free Office Suite with the equivalent to Word (Writer), Excel (Calc), PowerPoint (Impress), Paint (Draw), and Access (Base). The download is free and you can edit MS Office documents in Open Office with relative ease. Never pay hundreds of dollars on upgrades or new MS products again!

Mint: Mint

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is a powerful personal finance software that is beating up on Quicken. Here is a great article on Mint vs. Quicken.  

Quickbooks: For those of you needing a heavier hitting accounting/finance software, Quickbooks now has an online version that backs up all of your files to the Internet. This article

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gives you the rundown on how it compares to the disk version.

File storage: There are so many online file storage sites, it would be impossible to list them all. You can use Google Docs for many of your MS based documents. Many people like Box.net and now HP has introduced Upline Kung Fu Panda The Great Debaters film Cactus video Snake Eyes film

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which can do an automatic backup and sharing of all your computer files, including all of your music. Read this article

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to learn more.

Photo storage and manipulation: Flickr

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now offers picknik, a wonderful built in photo manipulation tool. The basics are free but for $24.95 per month you get a variety of tools that allow you to do things like convert a photo to a Polaroid or tint photos. It isn’t Photoshop but for your average home user, it is a nice add. Flickr has built in photo storage (100MB for free with monthly limits or $24.95 for unlimited storage…other sites are less expensive).

Photoshop…for free. GIMP

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These are just a few of the current crop of low cost or free Web resources. Check out Go2Web2.0 to check out the rapidly expanding list of new options or Wikipedia’s list of open source software

. Please let me know the tools you are using that I might be missing out on!