You know how sometimes, you have an idea, and you want to work on it, but you just…can’t…seem…to?

It’s like when you’re trying to crochet, and your yarn is a nasty, tangled mess. The yarn is your raw idea – you can’t start using a ball of yarn that’s all tangled. If you try to create something with tangled yarn, you’ll constantly be stopping in the middle of your work to untangle, clean, straighten, and fix things, instead of just being able to flow through the stitches and do what needs to be done.

So…how do you start untangling it?

First off, you need to figure out where exactly the tangle is and what it looks like. A lot of times we have this sort of “I don’t waaanna” vague stuckness that we can’t seem to work through, and then once you actually sit down with the problem for a few minutes, it becomes clear what it is.

I recently worked with a client who was having a really hard time putting out into the world an ebook that was, for all intents and purposes, finished. She just couldn’t bring herself to do it. After sitting with it for a while, and re-reading the ebook, she realized that all she really needed to do was rewrite the introduction – her writing style had changed since she first wrote it, and she didn’t want to put something out that didn’t sound like her. That was the source of the resistance.

Much like a knot, you probably won’t get anywhere by randomly pulling on strings. If you need to do that to figure out what’s wrong, that’s one thing; but doing it as a problem-solving strategy in & of itself is not very useful.

Once you figure out what your tangleproblem is, you can start figuring out how to solve it. I really like Havi‘s approach with this of “ways this could work” lists – for some reason, thinking of the lists that way really takes the pressure off, instead of starting the brainstorming with “possible solutions”.

And then, when you have your list of ways this could work, ways this tangle could be untangled…find the very first thing you need to do, and do it. Sounds simple, but it’s deceptively so.

One of those problems-that’s-kinda-good-to-have is the problem of too many ideas. On the one hand, it’s something of a blessing to have all of these ideas zipping around your head like hyperactive kittens with a ball of string. On the other hand, it can also be headache inducing and give you the paralyzing fear of not knowing which idea to start on next. If you’re paralyzed, you’re not taking action; and if you’re not taking action, those ideas don’t end up doing any good.

How do you pick one idea to start on next? For those of us who have this problem, it can be incredibly difficult to put one on the backburner. We want to work on everything at the same time and create amazing things, but that’s not always possible (and can often just lead to not finishing any of the ideas you’re working on – especially if you’re not a meticulous planner).

The secret is to look to your priorities to show you which idea to work on next. This might be fairly obvious and sound like a great idea, but can be hard to carry out in practice. So instead of just telling you that and leaving you hanging, I’m going to show you a process for figuring out what, exactly, your priorities are right now, and how that fits in with the ideas running around in your head.

Go ahead and download this worksheet to help you with the process, and grab a pen & paper. (Alternately, you can just write through this without the worksheet. Whatever floats your boat!)

Write down all of your current ideas that you’re having trouble choosing between. You don’t have to write down the idea in intricate detail, but enough so that upon referring back to this, you’ll know exactly which idea you were speaking of. After you write down all of your ideas, go back through, and for each idea write down two things:

• What you’ll get from working on the idea and bringing it to fruition. Money? Pride? Fun? Respect? Two or three of these? Whatever it is, write it down.
• An approximate estimate for how long it will take you to complete this idea. Be realistic, but try not to give yourself too much wiggle room. Think about your current and upcoming commitments, how much free time and energy they’ll leave you, and how flexible all of these things are.

After you finish that, set it aside.

We’re going to zoom out now. Think about what you want to be doing, how you want to feel, and what you want to have in the next one, three, and six months. (Otherwise known as your goals – but thinking of it in these terms can bring things into super-clear focus.) Write this down, in detail.

Look at what you wrote down, and pick out the common threads – usually there will be two or three. These are your top priorities for the next several months. Now, keeping these priorities in mind, skim back over your answers for what you’ll get from working on each idea. And then figure out which idea matches best with your current priorities – and can be completed within the next 1-6 months. If there’s more than one idea that suits the requirements, choose the one that you’re most excited about, or that you can finish first – this’ll build momentum that can transfer over into working on your other ideas.

(Of course, it is possible to be working on more than one thing at once! And many people do it incredibly well. If you’re one of these people, you can use this advice to help choose which idea to make your top priority, letting the others take more of a “back burner” status – working on them when you have the time, energy, & inclination to do so.) 

In the meantime, you need to do something with the ideas that you aren’t working on at the moment. Part of the reason we can have such an inordinately hard time choosing one idea to work on is that we feel that by doing so, we’re abandoning the other ideas. If you do something that ensures you can come back to those other ideas later, you’re a lot more likely to be able to commit to working on this one idea for now. The best way to do this is to just take your descriptions of the ideas that you’ve already written and store them somewhere – whether online or off. They can be the start of your idea garden, and you can add new ideas as you come up with them.

In case you missed the link above, you can download your worksheet to help you out with this here.

One of the worst things about having multiple projects going on at any given time is knowing where you’re at on all of them. I do use Springpad to organize my projects, but it’s mostly a note-taking/resource-saving tool for me, not necessarily organizing tasks. Enter Trello – a free online project management tool that’s super versatile in its design, letting it be useful for organizing solo projects, team efforts, and of course, keeping track of all of your projects at once! In the short & sweet (under five minutes) video below I share how I use it to do that.

Let me know if you have any questions about getting started using Trello – I’d love to help. How do you keep track of all of your projects?

PS: Like I said – the Productivity for Multipotentialites course is now open for registration (registration closes on Friday night at midnight PST). If you want to stop spinning your wheels & start making more progress on + time for all of your projects, come join us!

We have hilariously bad luck with our choice of rental places. Here’s a short list of our experiences from the last three years:

• The house that got foreclosed on while we were renting there, because the landlord was using the rent money for drugs. (PS: He was also a youth minister. Can you say irony?)
• The house where they landlady was frequently drunk when she collected rent, that also had a dormant flea infestation and $300 monthly electric bills because the A/C was so old
• The apartment where the maintenance guy who was supposed to be fixing our tub fell over in it and then loudly proclaimed that he was incredibly stoned (and whose management attempted to send a collections agency after us to the tune of $600 for “unpaid rent”, without any proof)

I promise, we don’t seek these places out. And we’ve experienced another addition to the list lately. We moved again in August, and things seemed okay at first. Older building, but nice interior. And then the leak started in October. It didn’t get fixed until December (despite being a major health/safety hazard), and in the meantime, our ceiling literally started caving in. (For reals. I have pictures.)

The whole experience was infuriating and was definitely lease-breaking material, but it came at an extremely inconvenient time to do so – we would have had to change our Christmas travel arrangements, among other things. Another serious issue we’ve had here is noise from construction work that’s frequently interrupted my work and calls, that started around the same time as the leak and has continued to the present day. After the experience we’ve had here, I wanted out. I had firmly made up my mind that we were going to move out at the end of February and that was that, thank you very much.

I called the head of the management company and calmly explained to her that the construction has been and continues to interrupt my work & life to a really obnoxious degree. The community manager had mentioned to me that someone else had problems with the noise and they offered to let her out of her lease, so I didn’t foresee it being a huge issue – I thought that we would work out some negligible fee and that would be that.

Nope. The woman was unbelievably rude, snotty, and patronizing to me, including telling me that she didn’t see why I was complaining since they gave us a generous (read: less than half off) rent credit in December because of the leak. Um, okay.

The two choices she gave us were these:

1. Find a new tenant for the apartment, arrange for them to pay us whatever we can get as far as security deposits/last month’s rent, and probably lose out on a significant chunk of the $1,300 of that that we’ve already paid. Also, they wanted us to pay (possibly illegal) administrative fees on top of that. (And, for me, feel incredibly guilty about getting someone else to live here when we’ve had such a horrid experience and I know that this management doesn’t give a rip about their tenants.)
2. Pay a $600 reletting fee, get our last month’s rent/etc. back, and still be liable for rent here until they find a new tenant. (Can you say digging a financial hole? Paying rent in two places? Nothankyou.)

I spent a solid two days seething in anger and rolling in self-pity as a result. We searched for any kind of legal loophole that could let us out. According to Texas law, no matter how badly they’ve treated us in the past, if they aren’t actively screwing us over at the moment, we can’t do anything; and since the construction is “necessary”, it doesn’t matter if it’s interrupting our lives & work. I literally had trouble sleeping two nights in a row because I was so angry.

Here’s what I realized (the teachable moment):

I was very much giving up my power in this situation. I was looking at the two choices above and seeing them as “screw someone else over willingly” and “screw ourselves over financially”. I was very “woe is me and these people are assholes”. (Which they still are. But that’s not the point.)

Instead of looking at the lose-lose choices and trying to pick between them, I created a third choice: 

We would stay here until our lease is up at the end of August, saving up money in the meantime for the deposits/fees on a new apartment (or, possibly, fees for buying; we haven’t decided yet) and in the meantime, making the apartment our haven. We’ll do everything in our power to make this an amazing place to live, until we can move elsewhere.

Am I happy about this choice? Not really. But it feels like a choice, not something I’m being forced into. And it’s the only option that’s aligned with all of my values (and thus, the only real option for me).

This experience has opened my eyes about choices & power – and looking back, I can see other examples of instances where I was giving up my power and didn’t even realize it. Almost every situation that seems lose-lose on its face has another option hidden somewhere, that might not be a “fun” option but is a real option (in the sense mentioned above).

So – have you been giving up your power anywhere right now, & didn’t realize it until recently? Is there a frustrating situation that, perhaps, has a hidden option? Let me know what you think in the comments! 

PS: I’m still leaving scathing reviews on Yelp & other rating sites, though. Snarking on douchebaggery in public is part of my power, too. 😉

I am hereby declaring January a month that is a No Man’s Land and is not 2012 yet, and is really just an extra planning month. (Yes, you can do that over halfway through the month. I checked.)

See, I got back from the holidays at the end of December, and in between the physical and emotional fallout from the holidays (travel sure takes it out of you!), I wasn’t really back on my feet until the end of the first week in January…immediately after which, I co-lead the Day of Genius with Melissa, and hoo boy, if I thought travel was exhausting, I should have waited until after I had the experience of leading an 8-ish hour retreat. I mean, fun and exhilarating, but also exhausting. I was tired and feeling funky all the week after, which I thought was probably just energetic fallout, but no, it was in actuality the start of a hellacious cold/flu-thing that had me waking up on Sunday night convinced my teeth were going to fall out because my head hurt so bad.

POINT BEING:

I am only just now getting to the point where I have the physical, mental, & emotional energy & wherewithal to look back at 2011 and forward at 2012 and plan and dream. I did some planning for 2012 at the beginning of December, but I’ve already changed some of those plans. And I thought, “surely I can’t be the only one who wasn’t prepared to go straight from the holidays into planning the new year and doing it well and then jump right back in to things.”

Hence, this post – a resource for everyone else who feels the same way! It’s meant to be a comprehensive guide that’s whole-life-encompassing, so grab a mug of tea and settle in, my friend.

Goals vs. Resolutions

Kathryn recently wrote a post about goals & resolutions that I think has some good points. I used to be surprised that people made a big difference between goals & resolutions, but I think that’s because my resolutions usually turned out to be goals (just ’cause that’s how I think & all). After seeing the way most people do resolutions, I don’t necessarily think they’re evil, but they should be handled very carefully.

Here’s the thing: resolutions are usually the start of a goal. They’re expressing a wish or a hope or a dream. This is good and is part of the process. But you cannot stop there, because a wish is not the same as action, and a wish doesn’t usually give you a place to start.

For example, when Gretchen Rubin set out on her happiness project, she started with “I want to be happier”. But that’s not where she stopped. After she decided that that was really something she wanted to take action on, she did research into what makes people happier. She came up with a plan – areas she was going to focus on each month, and specific steps she was going to take in each of those areas – and a way of tracking her progress, and kept herself accountable with a public blog.

It’s a good idea to dream and think really big about what you want to do, be, feel, have this year – those are your resolutions. But after you’ve dreamt big, it’s time to come back down to earth & fill in the details so that you can actually start on things. This means taking a resolution that’s vague as mist, and translating it into a measurable, actionable goal, with a plan to back it up.

Making Good Goals

But how do you do that? Let’s use another example. Say you have a resolution of, “I want to feel better physically.” Where you could go with that is figuring out what areas that would involve taking action in – the food you eat and the physical activity that you do throughout your day are two big ones.

From there, you could go further into the food you eat, and decide to do a series of 30 day trials eliminating specific things from your diet, and seeing how you feel without them. (I’m a big believer that there is no “one size fits all” diet and that we all just have to experiment & see what works, so that’s the course I’d recommend, anyways.) Or you could decide to eliminate soda from your diet, or another kind of junk food.

Or you could go further into the physical movement side of things, and decide that you’re going to do 15 minutes of yoga every day while at your desk (if so? I’ve got you covered). Decide that you’re going to walk at least five miles a week. And so on.

We’ve all read that SMART acronym at one point or another but to be honest I can’t tell you what all of the letters stand for (specific, measurable, possibly actionable, and after that I’m lost). As far as I’m concerned, here’s the three most important things to start with:

• Specificity. You need to know what you’re doing, how much you’re going to do, and how often you’re going to do it, and if you have a deadline, what that deadline is.
• Measurable. Again, you need to know how much. Something I am always & forever saying that holds true here too, is that if you don’t know what “done” is, you have no idea when you’ll reach it. Or if you’re halfway there. Or at 75%. That feeling of having no idea where you’re at on the progress bar is incredibly demotivating.
• Actionable. You need to know where to start. This is one of the places where stopping at a resolution can bite us in the ass – something like “I’m going to feel better this year” is great, but where are you going to start?

Resources for creating resolutions + goals:

• How to Map Out Your Product from Inception to Completion, a guest post I did at ByBloggers that talks about breaking things down into actionable steps – could be useful with larger goals
• Resolute Resolutions, a post about getting the proper context for your resolutions so that you can create sustainable ones
• New Year’s Resolutions: A Few Tips From Your Brain
• Play it Forward, figuring out what to do now by figuring out what you want to happen in the future & working backwards
• Setting Yourself Up for Success in 2012 in Seven Easy Steps (And Ginsu Knives)

Useful workbooks: 

Create Your Magical Year ($20 – not an aff link since I haven’t used it, though Molly makes great things)

2012 Creating Your Goddess Year workbook ($10 – aff link since I have used it and it’s amazing)

The Plan Your Year Kit ($15 – my product, so I can vouch for its quality 😉 )

Breaking It Down Into Areas

If you’re having trouble even knowing where to start with your reviewing/resolutioning/goal process, here’s my suggestion: break your life down into areas. I’m not a huge fan of compartmentalization (read: I believe it’s pretty much impossible and is a silly idea), and I’m sure you’ll notice that there’s significant overlap between these areas, but this is a place for you to start – with sample review questions to get you started and resources + tools to help you out with any changes you want to make.

Work/Livelihood

We spend a lot of time working. Whatever your philosophy on work is (it should be easy, it should be hard, forty hour work week vs. four, and so on), you’ve got to agree: it shouldn’t suck. Ideally, you feel good about the work that you do and enjoy doing it.

Things to consider: 

• Is my work fulfilling? Do I feel like I’m having the kind of impact that I want to have on the world?
• “Fulfilling” means not only satisfying, but developing the full potential of. Am I using all of my potential at work?
• How do I feel when I get done with an average workday? (Tired but happy = good. Exhausted, drained, and upset = no bueno.)
• What kinds of activities could I incorporate into my work day to make it more fulfilling for me? If I’m in a position that I can’t immediately change, how can I make things better in the meantime?

Resources + tools:

• The Morning Whip – Erika has created something truly amazing with the Morning Whip, and if you’re finding yourself utterly dissatisfied with your work but not knowing where to go, or knowing where to go and not knowing here to start, I would highly highly highly recommend investing in a round. February is already full up, but it runs on a regular basis, so you can get whipped in April.
• Managing Yourself: What Brain Science Tells Us About How to Excel

For figuring out what sort of work you might be best suited for:

• Strengthsfinder
• What’s Your Type of Career?

Body

If you’re having trouble with your body, it can (& often will) permeate every other area of your life and make you generally miserable. And for many of us, our lifestyle doesn’t necessarily lead to being connected and present within our bodies, and can instead lead to a pretty disharmonious relationship with it. Obviously there’s a lot of aspects to your body & your relationship with it that I can’t fully cover here – I welcome more suggestions in the comments.

(Note: I’m aware the perspective here doesn’t fully encompass individuals with disabilities, who can, depending on the disability, have to deal with a debilitating level of pain on a regular basis. I can’t speak from or for that perspective; if you have any recommended resources, please do throw them in the comments so I can add them to the post. Thanks!)

Things to consider:

• Stop and really take stock of your body for a few minutes. Breathe deep and notice. Ask yourself: are there any aches and pains that I’ve just got used to, that didn’t used to be there?
• Keep track of your body for a few days and see what you notice. Recurring headaches? Bad posture when you sit?
• How do you feel after you eat?
• Do you eat when you’re hungry & stop when you’re full?
• Are you mindful of what you’re eating? Do you know what the bulk of your diet consists of?

Resources + tools:

I just got an iPhone, and can I say – holy crap, there’s so many apps that are useful for this. There’s Nexercise, which gives you “points” for exercising and tracks your exercise, with the incentive of possible free prizes, medals you can earn for specific things, and I think there’s even more it can do (I just downloaded it the other day & started playing around with it, so I haven’t tested its full capabilities). Basically, they “gameified” exercise – totally brilliant.

Other apps:

• Runkeeper, which is not just for running but walking, cycling, etc. – it tracks all of your data so that you can see how many miles you’ve gone in a week or a month, what your best times are, and so on
• Nike Training Club
• Daily Yoga
• This Lifehacker article mentions a few food based apps – unfortunately, from what I’ve found, a lot of the food tracking and diet oriented apps aren’t going to work for everyone, depending on how you eat/your personal diet doctrine, etc. (For example, tracking calories doesn’t do any good if you’re still eating crappy food.)

Non-app resources & tools:

• Gini Martinez is a body genius. Period, full stop.
• Dealing with this side of things can bring up a lot of emotional issues. Mara is a genius when it comes to talking about body-related things and about how we can maintain self-love in our daily lives. I highly recommend her blog.
• In case you missed it earlier, Carrie, one of the guest presenters at the Day of Genius, did a presentation on yoga at your desk, which was totally brilliant – and then she recorded & re-posted some of the poses she went through, for everyone. Personally, I’m going to try & start incorporating that into my life on a daily basis!
• Meg Worden & her book Salad Alchemy (which I’ve heard great things about)
• If you’re wanting to further your relationship with your body in other ways, Ev’Yan has got ya covered at Sex, Love, & Liberation.

Spirit

When I say “spirit”, I don’t just mean things like religion or spirituality, I mean a more general sense of your well-being in a way that isn’t quite covered by the labels “body” or “mind”. Things like your happiness levels, how satisfied you are, and so on. Of course, “spirit” also does apply to religion & spirituality, as well

Things to consider:

• Do I feel satisfied spiritually?
• If I go to a church, temple, or other religious group, is it a plus in my life – or is it just a neutral? Do I leave services/rituals/ceremonies feeling happy or feeling blah?
• Does my work affect others in a positive way?
• Do I feel happy on a regular basis? Am I excited about my life and about things in the future?

Resources + tools:

• Consider finding a charity to volunteer at – you can use Network for Good to search for one, and you can also check out VolunteerMatch. If you honestly don’t have the time to volunteer, consider donating on a regular basis.
• If you want to look at different religious and spiritual beliefs, and see what calls to you, do some research on world religions. If you’re living in a bigger city, you can find meetups organized around most any religious or spiritual group, so that you can check them out in person; and if it’s a more organized religion, you can head out to the local temple/church/place of worship and see what goes on there.
• If you want to work on being happier, check out the Happiness Project (which I loved) for a lot of ideas on where to start.

Mind

Boredom: a big fun sucker. (Not very surprising, that.) If you aren’t intellectually stimulated on a regular basis, it can be hard to get interested in anything else.

Things to consider:

• How often do I find myself bored out of my skull?
• Is the work that I’m doing engaging me on a mental level?
• When was the last time I read a truly thought-provoking book or had an incredibly interesting conversation?
• Do I find it hard to focus at work because it’s too easy for me?
• When was the last time I learned something new?

Resources + tools: 

• Check out your local community colleges – they often have continuing education classes at a very reasonable price on a variety of subjects. (Austin Community College has everything from German to physics to Aikido!)
• I’m currently reading Moonwalking with Einstein, and it’s a pretty amazing book – covers a lot of science about memory and hasn’t bored me yet.
• Get a library membership! You’d be amazed what you can find at the library or get through ILL, and the you can’t beat the price.
• ReadItFor.me is a new thing that looks pretty awesome – I signed up although I haven’t got to fully test it out yet, and Shenee has raved about it to me. Great for people who want to read more but lead busy lives.

Relationships

Humans are social creatures for the most part. Whether you’re introverted or extroverted, there are very likely relationships in your life that are important to you, and the quality of those relationships is important to your quality of life.

Things to consider: 

• Am I honest in the relationships in my life?
• Is there anyone that I spend time with more out of obligation than anything else, and is there a way to do less of that?
• Am I excited about having (person) in my life in the future?
• Do I practice compassion in my relationships, towards myself & towards the other person?

Resources + tools: 

• Danielle Dowling is a professional soul sister + relationship remixer, who regularly writes smart Q&A articles on the topics of relationship & dating on her blog
• Mentioned before under “Body”, Ev’Yan’s website Sex, Love, & Liberation is a great resource for here, too
• Loving With Power
• Communication is vital to any relationship, and one of my favorite books on the topic is Fierce Conversations

Money

Ah, money. Very few things (except sex, I suppose) bring up as many conflicted feelings in our society as money. We’re afraid of feeling greedy, we’re worried about never having enough, we have hoarding tendencies, and so on.

Things to consider:

•  How does money make me feel? Am I always stressed and fearful of it, no matter how much or how little I have?
• What’s my definition of “enough” when it comes to money?
• Do I know how much money I need to pay my bills, groceries, and other necessities every month?
• Do I know how much money I spend every month – and on what?

Resources + tools: 

• Christyna Lewis is a financial coach – this is her area of specialty. I’m going to  be working with her soon & I am SO EXCITED about it, let me tell you. If you aren’t quite ready for one on one work, there’s still her blog.
• Tara Gentile has actually written a whole book about this subject (which, full disclosure, I bought but haven’t read in full yet) and regularly writes about it on her blog. She’s even holding a live event in February (you can enter to win free tickets here).
• The Daily Worth, great for its frank money talk
• Suggestion from Steven in the comments – not sure how this one slipped my mind – but Adam Baker at Man vs. Debt has a lot of resources, paid and free, on eliminating debt
• Apps again: Lemon is a great and easy to use app to track your spending; PageOnce keeps track of all of your bills & when they’re due as well.

Creating a Timeline

After that review process, you’ve probably got a good view of where you’re feeling satisfied, where you’re not, and where you can start changing things. The next step is to come up with a timeline.

This doesn’t have to be dry & boring – in fact, during the Day of Genius, one of the attendees (Steven, who is a big smartypants) showed off his timeline and it was gorgeous, complete with visual depictions of what would be going on during any given month and milestones depicted as well. It’s very helpful to have an at-a-glance representation of not only what your goals are for each month, but what else will be going on that month (some things on my timeline: SXSW, WDS, my birthday & Matt’s, our anniversary).

Once you’ve blocked out the events that are going on each month, try and figure out how your goals relate to those events and the rest of the year. It’s probably not a good idea to attempt to move several thousand miles in the same month that you get married if you want to stay anywhere in the realm of level-headed (ask me how I know this).

If you’ve created measurable goals, you’ll be able to “stair-step” them – break them down into smaller chunks that you can focus on, one at a time. For example, if your goal is to run a marathon in October, you can use a regular running habit to reach that goal; starting with running five miles a week, moving up to ten, and then fifteen, and so on. Figure out where each stair-step goes time-wise, and put that on your timeline too.

Staying Motivated & Making It Stick

Okay, so you’ve got your goals all planned out, your 30 day trials are in your timeline…what next? Maintaining the motivation & actually making your new goals and habits stick.

To stay motivated, it’s really useful to know your “reason why” for a specific goal or project. What drives you to do it? Is it curiosity or something deeper? Sometimes our motivations are external (my parents want me to), sometimes they’re internal; external motivations are not always bad but can be more difficult to keep up, and it’s important to be aware of & recognize where the motivation is coming from.

Another handy thing is to know what excites you about each goal. We often start on something with all of the enthusiasm of a five year old at a birthday party, only for it to fizzle out later. If you’re consciously aware of what excites you about a particular goal or project, you can remember it and come back to it later to rekindle the fire.

When you’re working on making your habits stick, you need to remember that willpower is a very finite resource, and relying on nothing but willpower is why many attempts to add new habits or stick to a resolution fail. My philosophy is that we can & should use other things to support our habits so that our willpower is a last resort instead of a first defense.  For example, you can get an accountability buddy, who has a similar goal to your’s, that you check in with on a regular basis. Or you can modify your environment to support your goals – adding reminders of your new routine and your motivation to it, and removing temptation (if you don’t want to eat gluten? throw out the flour!).

This is where it’s a good idea to put most of your effort – on planning how, exactly, you’re going to make your lifestyle changes sustainable. An unsustainable change won’t stick around, in which case, all of the tools in the world can’t help you.

Resources for staying motivated & making it stick: 

• The easiest tactic to actually make that habit stick in 2012 – a post on how you can use habits you already have to add new habits into your day
• How to Spam Yourself to Success (Okay, so it’s an odd-sounding headline, but really, check the post out! Some great ideas.)
•  Get Off Your Butt: 16 Ways to Get Motivated When You’re in a Slump
• How to Stay Motivated
• My Secret Productivity Tool: 7 Accountability Tips, a guest post by Melissa Dinwiddie
• The Transformation Journey – a resource by my friend Loran focused on creating sustainable change

And that, my friends, is how you plan an amazing year.

What’s your planning process look like?

This year was arguably the hardest year of my life, and in some ways also the best year yet. In 2011, I (in roughly chronological order):

• buried my grandpa
• met new friends (and some old ones I hadn’t seen in person yet) and caught up with old ones at SXSW 2011
• worked myself into the ground and nearly had a nervous breakdown
• got even closer to that nervous breakdown when our marriage came thisclose to falling apart
• took a month off
• came back from the month off to immerse myself in an intense business incubation experience
• saw my hometown get destroyed
• went to WDS, and saw even more new & old friends (and even a few of my heroes)
• came back and said good-bye to an old online home and hello to my new business
• moved in our second-biggest-disaster-move ever (think moving things until 5 AM in the morning)
• broke my foot
• spent a lot of time on the recliner recovering from said broken foot, went a little stir-crazy
• went far, far too long without seeing my family (before the 19th, the last time I saw them was January at the funeral)
• made some incredible mindset shifts
• cried a lot
• laughed a lot
• and grew to really appreciate the friends, support, and community that I am so lucky to have.

I’m not necessarily thankful for the hard times ((I think that whole philosophy that either we wouldn’t recognize good things without the bad, or that we have to go through extreme pain to, like, toughen up and get strong and stuff, is crap.)) but I’m thankful for what I learned about myself through them. If I had any doubts before this year, I now know that I’m strong, capable, intelligent, and that I am in control. If I want to make something happen, I can do it. I am holding the key at all times, even though sometimes I forget it. I choose how, why, where, and when I react to things and take action, I get to choose the effect that people, words, and events have on me.

Way, way too often I’ve found myself sitting in a box, beating myself against the door trying to get out, only to later realize that the key was in my hand the whole damn time. (I’m sure you know the feeling.)

Realizing that in such a visceral way is incredibly empowering. It’s also kind of scary.

I’m not sure what I want my word for 2012 to be. I kind of want to say ease, but I think that that was actually my word for 2011 (which is a little hilarious). I want 2012 to be easy – not cheap easy, but challenge without struggle. Being in a state of flow. That kind of easy. I have big plans in store for 2012 (as you may have guessed from the intro post here), and I don’t want to be bored, but I don’t want to find myself endlessly frustrated either.

Goodbye, 2011. Thanks for what you taught me. Thanks for the good things you gave me. You were certainly not forgettable.

Hello, 2012. Let’s be friends and do awesome things together. ‘Kay?

What did you learn from 2011? What are you keeping in mind going in to 2012?

With habit building, as with most areas of life, there’s one place where your efforts will pay off disproportionately. That place is finding & defining your anchor habits.

What are anchor habits?

Anchor habits are habits, preferably positive (or at least neutral) habits, that you naturally gravitate towards doing on a regular basis. They can be used as a trigger to remind you to do something else, or as a reward for doing something else.

For example, tea is one of my anchor habits. Tea is good for you, it relaxes me, and it’s a pleasant sensual experience (the taste, the smell, the warmth), so it’s a positive habit on all levels. Without trying to force myself to do it, or having to remember to do so, I drink tea at least once a day – always in the mornings, sometimes later in the day as well. Without tea, my day would feel off, because it’s one of the foundations of a good day for me.

An example of a more neutral anchor habit might be taking public transportation – it’s something that happens on a regular basis, but not necessarily something you enjoy or look forward to. However, you can still use more neutral anchor habits like these by incorporating something else during that time – reading books or listening to podcasts on subjects that you want to learn more about, or writing, or drawing, and so on.

I’m focusing on more positive anchor habits in this post because they’re easier to build around, but once you’ve improved your habit-sticking skills, it would probably do you good to search for more neutral anchor habits and ask yourself how you can turn them into a force for positive in your day.

How to find anchor habits you already have

Look for things that you do every day, or almost every day, without trying to. If possible, keep a time log for a few days – it doesn’t have to be anything intense or complicated, it can just be notes like “7 PM read for an hour” or “8 AM ate breakfast, did crossword”.

Here’s some other examples of anchor habits to get your wheels turning:

• Doing yoga
• Exercise in pretty much any form
• Going on a walk
• Riding your bike
• Making a smoothie for lunch or breakfast
• Reading in the evenings

After keeping a time log for a week or so, you should be able to spot some definite patterns in things that you do every day or even 3-5 times a week – these are your anchor habits or potential anchor habits.

How to strengthen your anchor habits

Before you start trying to add other habits to your day using your anchor habits, you need to make sure that your anchor habits are as strong as possible. Even though you’re itching to start on that new habit, I would seriously recommend spending between a week and three weeks (depending on how strong your potential anchor habits already are) making sure that your anchor habits are firmly in place.

The great thing about this is that your anchor habits are things you already enjoy, so you won’t have to exercise a lot of willpower to get to the point where you’re doing them every day. The easiest way to make them stick is to start reminding yourself of them so that you can be conscious about it – set alarms to go off at specific times on your phone with a reminder, put post-it notes in places where you’re likely to be at that time, or even just tell people that you live or work with that you’re trying it.

The two factors to focus on are:

1. Doing the anchor habit every day
2. Doing the anchor habit at approximately the same time – or at least in the same order – every day

Keep track of your progress – when you’ve got 10-15 days straight without missing an anchor habit, you’re ready to move on to the next step.

How to add new habits using your anchor habits

You can add new habits using your anchor habits by putting something before, during, or after your anchor habits. For example, my morning routine looks like this:

1. Get up, do yoga, crunches, push-ups
2. Meditate for 10-15 minutes
3. Shower
4. Start making tea
5. Either while making tea or while drinking the tea, transfer to-do list items and go over my plan for the day
6. Open laptop, start work

Of course, I didn’t go from having no morning routine at all to having one that elaborate – it’d never stick. Instead, I started with my anchor habit of drinking tea every morning. I thought to myself: “I already do this every day, what can I do at the same time that will get my day started off on the right foot? Planning my day!” After a week or two of doing the planning while making or drinking my tea, I added doing yoga before that. And a few weeks later, I added meditating in between. (It helps that I enjoy all of these things & their impact on my day, of course!)

When you get started adding new habits, it’s probably best to add them either before or during your anchor habit – so that your anchor habit functions as a positive reward for your other, new habit. If you’re adding habits after your anchor habit, it helps to keep a reminder somewhere – the phone alarm and post-it notes work just as well here as in strengthening your anchor habit. By working with something that you already do every day, you can create a space for a new habit, that feels natural instead of forced, and it becomes a part of your routine much quicker.

Your mileage will likely vary, but by using anchor habits in this way to bring in other, new habits, I find that it usually only takes me 2-3 weeks to cement a habit to the point where I can start working on the next one, instead of the 30-90 days that most research suggests.

Ways you can use this:

• Systems are nothing but sets of habits put together. Want to build a system that supports you & your work? Break it down into the teeniest habits, and then start working on those one at a time.
• Goals are made up of two things: one-time actions and habits. And most of the time, the habits are more important than the one-time actions, because they lay the foundation. If you have a particular goal, break it down into one-time actions and habits, assign a specific day to do the one-time actions, and start working on the habits one at a time.
• Systems and goals aside, anchor habits can simply help you incorporate more positive habits into your day.

Any questions? Anything that you were left wondering? I’m working on a guide to incorporating new habits into your work & life, so let me know!

 

The day started like any other. I remember that I was feeling a little off, and still wearing my PJs even though it was early afternoon. Someone knocked on our front door, which surprised me – I wasn’t expecting anyone. I threw on my London Calling t-shirt over my PJ top, peeked through the blinds to make sure it wasn’t our (highly unethical and usually drunk) landlady, and opened the door.

It was a man from the electric company. He, not unkindly, explained to me that he was there to shut off my electricity, and told me that if I could write him a check for $X (I don’t remember how much it was, but it was more than we had), he could leave without shutting the electricity off, and it would be several days before the check went through, giving us more time.

I nodded, trying to maintain composure, and told him I’d go get my checkbook. Closed the door & breathed deeply. I came back after digging the checkbook up, wrote him the check, thanked him and told him to have a nice day. I stood in the doorway and watched him get back in the truck and drive off, and then I shut the door and sat down on the couch.

And I cried. Big, deep, heaving, breathless sobs, because I did not know what the fuck to do.

I felt helpless, and frustrated, and I wanted nothing more than to have someone else sweep in and fix everything – fix the electric bill, fix my car that had broke down (with a $1,500 repair price tag) literally the day we moved in, fix the lying landlady, fix the job that Matt hated that paid peanuts, fix my attempts to make money (from home, since I couldn’t drive anywhere because of my car and we had moved into a suburb with no public transportation) that were only unevenly successful so far.

I wanted to go to sleep and have a fairy godmother flit in and solve it all with a wave of her magic wand. I wanted to wake up in a shiny new life with all of my problems gone.

Life, as we all know, does not work that way.

That incident was in 2009 and there were others. I remember Matt and I having the discussion last year that we needed to get a roommate, because we couldn’t handle the rent on our own. I remember, as recently as August, pleading with the lady at the bank on the phone about removing a series of overdraft charges ((That had been caused by a deposit being run through literally 30 minutes too late by the bank’s standards. I really hate banks. (We don’t use one now.) )), my voice cracking (and my pride hating me for it), as I explained that I had just broke my foot and we don’t have insurance so it was expensive and the pain was affecting my ability to work and we really needed that money for food. ((She did take the charges off and was very compassionate about it, for which I was wildly grateful.))

The only thing that kept me from tucking tail, moving back to Missouri, and getting a “real” job was my sheer stubborn tenacity. I told myself, and everyone else, that I could do this, and fuckitall, I have.

Now, over two years after the fact, I can see that my tenacity has paid off. It’s taught me invaluable things about myself and got me to where I am now. I no longer doubt my decision to stick it out on a daily basis. (And? We paid rent this month entirely with money I earned. Big progress!)

However, back in 2009, sitting on that couch and sobbing? I had NO CLUE if things were going to work out or not. None. At all.

This is the point:

Somewhere in your life right now, you’re contemplating giving up. The gurus & experts (in business & in self-help) often pontificate on the value of sticking it out, even when you aren’t sure if you’ll succeed. But in the examples & stories they share, there’s not often much at stake – losing face in front of your boss, for instance. It’s easy to read those stories, compare them to your own life, and ask yourself, “Is this worth it? Am I stupid? Am I crazy? Am I going to end up totally destitute with everyone in my life hating me?”

I’m here to say: it’s worth it. You’re not stupid or crazy for hanging in there this long. You’re an amazing person with a hope, a wish, a dream, and you can make it happen. I promise. I believe in you. 

(If I could tell this to the sobbing-on-the-couch me, I would; but I can’t, so I’m telling it to you.)

Keep your chin up, sweetheart. I know you can do it, and deep down, you do too – that’s why you’re still hanging in there, clawing your way up the mountain. One day, you’ll be standing on the top, and you’ll know it was all worth it.

Until then, the only way out is through – so keep climbing. We’re rooting for you.

If you’re going through hell, keep going. – Winston Churchill

You know that barely-discernible-but-definitely-there feeling you get in the back of your head sometimes? Sort of like a high-pitched squeal? Yeah, that’s the sound of your email inbox eating your brain. All of us use email to some extent, and many of us are overwhelmed by it. However, you might not have any idea where to start fixing the problem – but that’s okay. I’ve got you covered. Check out the solutions below and enjoy your newfound peace of mind that comes from not opening your inbox to 34585 emails every single day.

Using Gmail Filters

This is my favorite tool and the one that helps me out the most. In the video above, I show you exactly how you can use Gmail to automate filtering and flagging of certain emails so that your actual inbox only has your important emails – you know, ones from real people – in it.

This is a great solution for:

• Email subscriptions. I subscribe to my very favorite blogs that I don’t want to miss an update for, knowing that they’re all stockpiled in a place that I won’t miss and that won’t stress me out. Since I check my Google Reader even less than I check my Newsletter folder (and everything regularly gets marked as read), it’s nice to know I have a place to go for my favorite content.
• Flagging emails from a particular client or person. Want to make sure you don’t miss an email from that special someone? Set it so that it stars, labels (recommendation: name of the project you’re working on together), and marks as important emails that come from a specific email address.
• Categories. For example, all emails from my bank or from budgeting sites (Outright, etc.) get sent to the “Financial” folder automatically. That way, I don’t miss anything important!

OtherInbox

OtherInbox is incredibly helpful – if you’re less hardcore about decluttering your inbox, it can probably handle most things automatically without you having to create a bunch of separate folders by yourself (like I did, haha). For example, it automatically sets up a shopping folder, a newsletter folder, etc. But it’s not quite as good as catching automated newsletters as my Gmail filter, so I use both.

Have a System

Some people have a super-advanced system that works for them. I don’t think of my system as advanced, but here’s the approximate framework of mine:

1. Check email in morning – reply to important emails.
2. Ignore inbox as much as possible until after finished with day’s work.
3. Go through and reply to anything that was less urgent or take action on anything that needs action that I can do today. If I can’t do it today, put it on the list for tomorrow.
4. Skim through Newsletters folder & other folders to see if anything catches my eye, read emails.
5. Once every few days, go through and do a clean-out of folders – deleting or unsubscribing. (I don’t actually keep track, but I have a rule of thumb that if I delete a newsletter without reading it 3 or more times in a row then I just unsubscribe.)
6. Friday evenings and/or Saturdays are my catch-up times – I reply to any emails I haven’t already, empty out folders whenever possible, and do general maintenance.

Other Tips

I asked y’all on Twitter what your favorite tips were, and this is what I got:

“Filters, folders and answering most e-mails within 24 hours (practice I picked up in my years as a paralegal).” – Jo Crawford

“Evernote and Google Priority inbox. I send everything important to Evernote except items I need to act on right away.” – Courtney Ramirez

“Folders and labels, they don’t always work but I know where to look for things.” – Katie K.F.

“Lots and lots of folders! Even folders within folders.” – Ashe

“I unsubscribe from stuff that is no longer relevant & report spam A LOT!!! I  also star stuff that I need to reply to and archive it if I might need it in future but it’s not immediately classifiable.” – Jeanie Witcraft

“folders! 1 for friends 1 for my mum (she sends loads of stuff) 1 for mails with images work related folder etc. I <3 folders!” – Vera Lothian

(As you can see, I’m not the only folder junkie out there!)

Any favorite tips of your’s that I missed? Let me know in the comments!

PS: Have you checked out the Radiate in 2012 kit yet? The reviews are in, and they’re pretty fabulous if I do say so myself! Check it out, and get the tools you need to get clear on your dreams + start moving towards them for only $15. 

One of the ways that I express my introversion (INFJ, represent!) strongest is my habit of keeping everything inside my head. I forget that other people are not privy to my thoughts, and I also forget I haven’t said something out loud yet. This leads to me assuming that people know what’s going on with me & my thoughts, when of course, there is no way they actually could. (Conversations with my husband often start out with me saying, “So, did I say this out loud yet or have I just been thinking about it?”)

I want to talk about some of that recent inner dialogue with you, because the thought occurred to me that I’ve been working on changes without explaining where these changes are coming from or why. I’ve been holed up in the creativity cave, working furiously with a step back now & then to look things over. Which led, of course, to some changes, as I mentioned. (Does that process ever stop? …no? Darn.)

I’ve often struggled describing what it is I do here, which is pretty intensely frustrating for me (as you can probably imagine). If I could do a Vulcan mind-meld with everyone who was curious about it, it would make things a lot easier. I get what I do & know how I help people, on a deep-gut intuitive level, but I often feel like I literally do not have the words to express it to others and make them understand. After working one on one with people, they usually say, “Wow, this is different than I thought it would be!”

Part of it is that I was leading with the wrong thing – organization and systems and productivity. While those are usually involved, my work is not actually about any of them at the heart of it. It’s about supporting, enabling, and creating a space for you to do your great work in. From what I understand, it’s actually very similar in nature to what a doula does. Just, you know, for a business vision instead of a birth.

I was also getting tangled up in the idea that I had to be teaching others how to do something, and that that was 110% necessary in any services I wanted to offer. I’m not sure exactly where I picked that idea up, but there you have it. The fact is, it’s much easier and more fulfilling for me to use my strengths to serve others instead of trying to teach someone else to think the way I do. (I’m sure it probably is for them, too.) Which isn’t to say that I can’t teach you some things, or show you useful tools or techniques. But I cannot teach someone else how to do something that comes as naturally as breathing to me. And that’s okay.

Given all of these internal shifts over the last few weeks, I’ve shelved my current services for the time being. I’m doing a lot of behind the scenes work right now (like the Morning Whip program that I mentioned on Monday), and I’m also working with a few select amazing world-changers. My current plan is to continue to hone & refine my description of what, exactly, it is that I do, and re-debut it as my main offering after the holidays, sometime in January.

In the meantime, there will be a few new & different ways for us to play together – keep your eyes peeled. One will be announced next week. Another is a co-creative project I’m working on with Melissa, that I’m very excited about. If the idea of setting the tone for 2012 with a day of genius sounds amazing to you, get in on the dispatch now so you don’t miss out on an exclusive deal.

And that’s it for today! Hopefully you enjoyed this peek inside my brain (it can be a scary place, believe you me). Any questions? And here’s a question for you: how do you deal with change? Welcome it? Hide from it under the blankets? Inquiring minds want to know – this is something I’ve found myself powerfully curious about since recognizing some of my own hang-ups in the area!