As I’m sure you’re aware, I don’t do much without a plan. I like to plan out my year after a good, solid review of the previous one. I developed a tool to help out with that, and I’ve tuned it up and shared it with you (for free) here: Annual Review & Planning Spreadsheet.

From a business perspective, 2011 was turbulent to say the least. For me, but also for many of my friends and family, so I’m sure you can acknowledge that for yourself as well. My own work brought me into the headquarters of one of the most well-known Fortune 500 food companies in the world, traveling across the country twice in a matter of two months, working way too many 18+ hour days, and sometimes, feeling like I needed to make some changes to my own expectations and efforts.

On a personal level, the year was full of ups and downs. Finances ebbed and flowed as they often do when one is self-employed. Friendships began and ended, babies were born and people passed away. Notably, one of my oldest and dearest friends, Howie, lost his battle with life at way too young an age over the summer. And just days ago, my paternal grandmother, the only grandparent I really ever had for more than 95% of my life, passed away at a young 86 after a brief battle with a bacterial infection that spread to her bloodstream. I spent what felt like weeks (but only amounted to two days) in the hospital with her and my father. Just before they sedated her so she could get some rest, we were fortunate enough to exchange “I love you” with her. We will be honoring her life with friends and family for the next two days, and forever beyond that.

So… as you can see, I’m already tripping up on starting this new year, this new chapter in life. But I vow to continue to make her proud, care for her only son, and live in the home she made with my grandfather with love and respect for them both.

Plans For 2012

I’ve got my categories from my spreadsheet, and have been working on my action items and deadlines. Keeping in mind that all aspects of my “plan” are changeable and updates will be made on the regular, I’ve plans to fix things I’ve been unhappy with such as spending more time with friends and family, taking better care of my (and Erick’s) health, keeping my home free of clutter and chaos, and getting even more obsessive over my finances. We’ll be working towards building a family, growing our businesses, and having the life we dream of.

I also plan on focusing my efforts on things I love in both my career and personal time. I’ll be developing my coaching programs, working more consulting projects and speaking engagements, and writing a book or two. I’ll be working on my websites more, blogging more, and diversifying my income in many ways. I’ll be painting more and making more jewelry, and have plans in the works for teaching some art classes. Since I’m moving back to my hometown, I’ll be spending more time at the firehouse again, which is something I’ve been missing a lot since moving away two years ago. I’ll be closer to my retired racing greyhounds again (they live with my dad), and I’ll be taking more time to work with the rescue group.

I’ve always been one of those people who had a long list of interests, projects, accomplishments and failures. I’m passionate about whatever I’m doing at any given moment, and it’s time for me to focus my efforts on just a few things that make me most happy.I just know that I have this need to always be “busy”, and I sure have that part of the plan covered! However I’m also going to be working on relaxing, not stressing so much over things, and really taking the time to enjoy life as much as possible.

My Advice…

Make 2012 a year for growth, both on a career level and a personal one. Find two or three main things you want to focus on for your work (33% of your time), and five or six you want to work on for the self-preserving, personal 33% of your time. Relax and sleep for the last 33%. You deserve it, and your mind, body, and soul require it to be healthy.

Get control of the things you feel you’ve lost control of. Money, health, organization, business management, whatever it is, wherever you’ve felt you were “slacking”, get control. Have a plan.

Share your love, approach everyone with kindness and respect, assume the best of people. Don’t ever forget to tell people how you feel, and never miss a chance to celebrate life with those who love you in return. Eliminate toxic people from your life – it’s gonna hurt, but in the end you’re going to feel better, I promise. When that negativity bug bites you, suffocate it with hope, dedication, inspiration, and passion. Work hard for what you need, and what you want will come to you.

Give what you can, even if it’s only your time, as that’s often much more valuable to an organization or cause than your money is. But find something you can do and even if it’s only for one day a month, do it. Help people, even if it’s rooted in your career (ie. “for profit”) because I can’t even begin to tell you how good it feels to know you’ve done so.

And last, but farthest from least, love yourself, know that you’re being the best you that you can be, and have faith that things will be great. A positive outlook goes a long way for making good things happen for you, and it’s also contagious! Don’t sweat the small stuff, ask yourself if someone or some thing is going to matter to you a year or five from now before you start to panic or get upset.

I wish you a fabulous, prosperous, happy 2012 – Let’s kick ass!

That being said, I’m not trying to say that my home was dirty, but more like messy. I was always searching for something for an hour, or doing an arm sweep across the counter to clear off a space to do homework or some other project.

I read things like Adam’s page where he posts a photographic inventory of everything he and his wife own, and it amazes me. Leo has trimmed down his personal possessions to just 50 things that are his own, not including family items or things that belong to others in his home. I’m floored.

Maybe it’s a guy thing? Maybe it’s easier for men than it is women?

Nope. Lynnae has a deep-seated desire to be more of a minimalist. Jules minimizes her cooking, by doing it with only 5 ingredients per meal, and gets in and out of the kitchen in 10 minutes. I’m sure there are plenty more.

Okay, so maybe I’m just totally not cut out for this.

I currently live with my boyfriend who owns a computer repair business, so we’ve got computer parts everywhere. While you might think that I could easily work from anywhere with just my laptop and a wi-fi connection, I’ve got an entire room filled to the brim with my art and jewelry supplies. Yes, “stuff” that’s actually intended to serve two purposes: To give me that physical, creative outlet I crave, and to make some extra money.

And I don’t even have all of my “stuff” here. I left about 90% of it back at my father’s house when I moved. Seriously, 90% of my possessions aren’t even anything I’ve looked at in over a year, much less actually needed to keep.

Some of the thoughts and feelings behind the minimalist lifestyle that are appealing to me:

• Less stuff means less cleaning. Less laundry to do when you have fewer clothes, less dishes to do, less dusting, less cleaning in general.
• Maintaining means constantly paring down. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying something for a while and then selling it to make back some of your money.
• Money! Less buying of “stuff” you don’t need means you have more money to buy things you do. Selling off gently used clothing, older appliances, books… all of that money adds up in your coffee can labeled “Vacation Fund” or in our case, “House Fund”.
• Money #2, you can pay off your debt faster and stop creating more debt. How many times have YOU bought groceries or gasoline on a credit card because you didn’t have the cash?
• Less clutter means feeling less cluttered. It’s easier to find things you need, when you need them, because you know right where they are. Living in a chaotic environment forces your brain to feel chaos.
• More time. If you add up all the minutes in a day you spend looking for something, cleaning or doing laundry, or moving things around to create a space for a task, I’m willing to bet you could reclaim at least an hour a day, more like two or three, if you lived more like a minimalist.

I also think that applying the core beliefs above can be helpful in regards to work just as much as it applies to day-to-day living and home life.

I’m not sure I can do it and give it my all, but looking around the apartment I definitely see things that we don’t need, that we could find major purpose for with the money that could be made by selling it. I’m thinking that lots of craigslist, eBay, and garage sales are in our near future.

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In conversations with my other blogging friends, I’ve learned that this is by no means something that just happens to me. I am NOT alone and neither are you, dear reader, if you often find yourself feeling this way. So what do you do to fix it? How do you stop wasting your time on Facebook games, Skype chats, or discovering that you have 30 tabs open in your browser?

The answer is so simple, so easy, I think you’re not going to believe me when I tell you what it is.

Are you ready?

Pick one thing, and do only that one thing.

Set yourself a pre-determined amount of time to spend on that one thing, and shut down any and all distractions. You cannot “take a break to check your email”. You may not use your smart phone to respond to a tweet or check your blog stats. Just. Do. One. Thing.

Let’s pick some scenarios here. Not all of these are related to blogging or community management, but they’re all related. Put yourself in one of these situations for a moment (because I know you’ve actually been in them at least once before):

Look around. Your house is a disaster area and it seems that you’re the only one who “sees” the mess. Laundry is so “everywhere” you can’t tell what’s clean and what isn’t, and there’s a gigantic dust bunny in the corner of the kitchen that you think just might be getting ready to grow legs and very sharp teeth.

Stop what you’re doing, it’s perfectly okay to get off the computer for a while. (Seriously, it is!) Go work a room or two from the ceiling to the floor. The benefit to this? Well, besides having a clear, clean room or two, you won’t have it weighing on your mind any more when you’re trying to work. I firmly believe that once you get a room done, you’re GOING to want to do another. And another. Just force yourself to get through that first room without constantly thinking, “Gah! I need to be blogging/tweeting/facebooking! I don’t have TIME for this!” Whenever that thought pops into your head, crush it by saying to yourself, “No! I can’t sit in front of that machine knowing that this room is such a wreck! I owe it to myself to get this done, and done FIRST.”

I bet you’ll wind up cleaning the whole house top to bottom, will end your day with a shower, grab a beverage of your choosing and tweet away for a while, but will wake tomorrow feeling like you can finally get done the next day-long task you pick.

You’ve spent the past three days tweaking the width and color of the vertical line between your content area and your sidebar on your blog, and haven’t written a blog post in a week because it took you that long to figure out how.

So you find yourself taking a week reading blog posts and surfing the WordPress.org forums looking for answers to your questions, tweaking the width and color of the vertical line between your content area and your sidebar a hundred times to get it “just right”. Between that, you’re checking out the blogs of your competition (or others in your niche) and you’re stressing that their blog looks so much more professional, or that they have six ads and you only have one so that means they’re making way more money than you, or that they have 4,007 blog posts and you only have 17, or… wait!

You only have 17? They have 4,007? This means that you’re avoiding writing for some reason. Dig deeper. Figure this part out. As a blogger, your main focus should be building content. Sure, you might have other things you do for work, like many of us do. Some of us are consultants, some have “day jobs”, some have families and children to distract them from writing. But the bottom line is that you’re NOT going to have a successful blog if there’s no damn content on it. Period.

For one day, do nothing but write. I don’t care if what you churn out winds up being complete crap. Just turn off your internet if you have to, and open up a Word doc, and write. Keep writing. Go to the bathroom, refill your coffee, and write some more. Don’t answer the phone unless you know it’s an emergency (they’ll call back after getting your voicemail if it is, trust me), and freaking write!

Once you get a few good posts together, turn back on your internet, but just to go to your blog and schedule out those posts for throughout the week. If you only have three, that’s okay, hit it up for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Then go clean your bathroom or do some laundry, you slob!

You haven’t looked at your Facebook fan page community in weeks. Your last tweet was an instagram pic of the dessert you had three days ago. So was the tweet before it. The one before that was about the bitch at the grocery store who took the last jar of peanut butter right out of your hands. Your inbox has 237 unread messages in it. What the hell have you been DOING online?

I bet you’re one of those people who reads and comments on 30 blogs a day. Or you’ve spent hundreds on ebooks and coaching programs and you’re reading to death. Or, what’s worse than even those things, is that you finally reached level 50 in Farmville!

It’s time you set yourself up with a plan. Go sign up at HootSuite (the free version is fine) and bookmark the link. Use it to manage your Facebook pages and Twitter account from one place.

Now, the hard part… Give yourself 20 minutes at a time, 3 times a day. This is difficult for just about everyone, because sometimes they get wrapped up in stuff that will keep them longer than 20 minutes, and others will struggle with what to talk about for 18 minutes, and then find themselves bailing out on what could’ve been a decent conversation.

But this is important. You need to be super strict here, so use an egg timer or your computer/phone alarm system. Sure, if you’re involved in some kind of #chat or are really enthralled in a conversation with someone, that’s one thing, once in a while. But really, there’s nothing that needs to be done on Twitter or Facebook on a daily basis that should take longer than that. If you’re already a super productive person who’s well organized, fine, but for now, let’s stick with the plan.

One Last, Extreme Trick To Increase Productivity and Organization

I know you’re an adult, but remember back in grade school, when you had to have a routine? You woke up around 6am, showered, had breakfast, grabbed the bus, and then moved around every time a bell rang? Then you came home, and either banged out homework right away, or took a two-hour break to relax, had dinner, then watched your favorite television shows, and were in bed by an exact time?

When I was in high school, the first bell rang at 8:10am and the last rang at 2:25pm. Including lunch, we were “working” for 6 hours and 15 minutes. Homework usually took less than 2 hours unless a big paper was due or we were cramming for a test. That’s less than 8 hours of actual working. Think about that.

As adults, we have more responsibility than we did as kids. Less room for fun. When you’re working 9-5, you live for the weekends. When you’re working for yourself, it’s WAY too easy to get up at 6am, grab coffee, and “work” until midnight, 7 days a week. Just STOP.

I’m personally trying something new…

Waking up at 630am, grabbing coffee and sitting down to work. Making myself some breakfast around 8, and actually STOPPING my work day by 1pm. What this does is gives me a definitive time where I can close the laptop and go clean something, go grocery shopping, do laundry, or work on my creative offline projects like my art and jewelry. It also forces me to be more productive during my day because I’ve promised myself (and my boyfriend and friends and family) that I’ll be offline by a specific time.

Plus, I’ll feel like I’ve reclaimed daylight.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure there will be plenty of times when I have one of my online coaching sessions set up for 3pm, or a deadline on a website to finish, or something going on in a community that happens during any time outside my 630am – 1pm window. That’s fine. It’s realistic. But what I’ll do is get offline earlier, and come back to it at whatever scheduled time I have to, or take hours off the next day to make up for it.

So there you have it, the ultimate truth. Now stop multitasking and go get something done!

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