Archive for October, 2010

Do you find yourself easily distracted?

I’ve been tweeting tips for writers this week in the run up to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) to support them in my role as a virtual coach. It struck me that many tips that are useful for writers could also be useful for self-employed business people or solo professionals, especially if you work from home. Take for example, finding a creative and productive space to write - a number of my solo professional clients don’t have a home office and find themselves working at the dining table or in an improvised space somewhere at home. They face the same issues as writers: being distracted or imposed upon by others or just not being able to concentrate and get on with what they need to do.

Boost your productivity

So, what can you do - as a writer and/ or professional working from home - to boost your productivity and creativity when you sit down to get on with that novel/ piece of work?

I’ll share some ideas** below - and I’d also love to hear from you if you have any tips to share. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll use the term “project” to refer to your novel (writers) and to your business related work (other professionals).

* If you have a desk and computer that you normally work at eg for household admin, for gaming, for fun or other activity and you plan to use that for your project as and when the need arises: clear the desk surface of everything that has nothing to do with your project. Start afresh with no distractions even before you sit down to work on your project.

* If you work at the dining table or some other area at home, do the same - clear the immediate area of everything that is going to be a distraction or that makes you think of anything else other than your project.

* Now, place some items on your cleared desk or dining table that may inspire you around your project eg flowers, tools related to your business, inspiring photos. These can keep you focused and surrounded in a special “project space”. Only bring them out to decorate this space when you are in project-mode and put them away when you are done. This way, these items can create a special productivity space for you whenever you are working on your project.

* Close down all other applications in your computer apart from the project related folders. In particular, log out of Skype, Facebook, Twitter and anything else that can pop up and distract you!

* Switch off your mobile phone and landline. This is not as drastic as it sounds. Most calls are not urgent and so long as you have a client friendly outgoing voicemail message and you also call your clients back promptly, this should not cause a problem. In any event, if you were in a meeting you similarly would not be able to take calls so if it helps, view this productivity time as time when you are having a meeting with yourself and your project.

* Before you sit down to work on your project, focus for a moment on who you are (a writer, a complementary therapist, a web designer) and what your long term business/ career means to you (to be published, to have a thriving practice, to create great websites for high value clients). Then reflect on what part this next little while working on your project is going to contribute to that bigger vision.

* And go for it!

Share your productivity tips

If you have some other habits that help - or hinder - your focus when you are trying to work on your novel or your business, I hope you’ll share them with me as well.

Next week: Other People - Productivity Drain or Boost?

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Related info:

Stop Procrastinating and Write that Novel
What is Coaching?

Photo: thanks to Pulpolux from flickr.com (CCL)

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(**NB. Each person and his/ her situation is different and the ideas here may not be suitable for everyone. They are general ideas to prompt reflection and discussion only.)

The contents of this blog, including this post, comments and links, are subject to this Disclaimer - please read it by clicking here

nnwm

If you’re going to take part in NaNoWriMo this year, I am going to be your virtual coach via this blog and Twitter. Read on…

The Challenge

Whenever you face a big or important project - whether it’s starting your own business, improving your career or changing something in your life for the better - it can feel at times daunting, scarily difficult and risky. What if the venture fails? What if you put in all that effort only to be disappointed? What if it all goes horribly wrong? Those anxieties and worries dog anyone who has ever tried anything worthwhile. The difference between those who see it through to the end goal and those who give up - or even fail to get started - is that those who make it to the end manage to overcome their “saboteur”, that highly critical, pessimistic and cynical voice inside their heads.

The Pay-Off

And you’ll find that most of those people who have made a go of starting a business, getting a better job or changing their live will say that yes, the journey was tough and challenging and scary but that it was worth it. Anything that is worth doing is going to be a challenge - and that’s why it’s worth doing.

Writing

So it is with writing a novel. The same anxieties are there. The same critical internal voice. And as fiction writers tend to be more sensitive and internally focused anyway by the nature of their passion for writing, they are probably even more highly attuned to these factors! But then, there will also be a sense of achievement and sense of value for having the courage and persistence to do something hard, whatever the outcome.

National Novel Writing Month

National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) takes place every year in November and has become an international movement to get people writing that novel they’ve always wanted to. Its website explains that:

“NaNoWriMo is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.”

That’s definitely one way to shut that internal saboteur up!

If you’re thinking about taking part in this marathon for writers, add a comment below and let me know. I would love to support you along your journey!

Your Writing Coach

I won’t be taking part in NaNoWriMo but I am keen to support all the writers who are going to be taking part. (I’ve already published two novels and I’ve had my share of blood, sweat and tears on that front - so no NaNoWriMo for me this year! I know how hard it can be sitting there all alone in front of that blank screen/ sheet of paper. I know what it’s like to struggle with the saboteur. But I also know that feeling of amazing emotion when I got to the end of my first novel and tapped out “The End”. I know what it was like to hold that bulky manuscript in my hands, read it through and know that I had done it. And the wonder and astonishment of seeing my book for the first time in the bookshops!)

If you’re going to take part in NaNoWriMo this year, I am going to be your virtual coach via this blog and Twitter. I’ll champion and support you with motivational tips and practical ideas for making the most of this terrific opportunity to write that novel you’ve always said you would. Follow my daily tweets on Twitter (@zenguide) for powerful questions and thought-provoking suggestions that may help keep you “in the zone”. Check back here on the ZenGuide blog to read longer, more reflective pieces like this one, which I hope may deepen your experience around taking on this challenge and seeing it through to the end.

And here’s your first powerful question: Who do you need to be to keep writing for the whole of November - and, if you’re serious about becoming a writer, beyond the end of NaNoWriMo?

My Twitter feed: www.twitter.com/zenguide

Also, check out the Twitter hashtag #nanowrimo for others who are tweeting about this writing marathon.

Related information:

Photo: thanks to JohnONolan from flickr.com (CCL)
The contents of this blog, including this post, comments and links, are subject to this Disclaimer - please read it by clicking here

nnwm

Being originally from Malaysia, I was chuffed to see a recent survey that shows Malaysians have the most friends online on social networking sites - with an average of 233 friends. I’m not surprised as most of us Malaysians are friendly, affable and make connections very easily. If you’ve ever known a Malaysian, whether abroad or in their home country, you’ll find that we’re usually welcoming and pleased to get to know you - and if you’re a visitor to Malaysia, we’re always ready to show you around and in particular, to take you out to eat!

Malaysians are also pretty good and helping you out with recommendations and referrals. If you need a new mobile phone, one of us is bound to know someone who can give you a great deal on the latest models. If you’re about to visit a place where we know someone, we’ll offer to put you in touch with our friend. If you need a travel agent, we’ve got our go-to guy or gal that we’d be happy to share with you. And if we meet you at a party and we have a good time together, we’ll be asking you to be our friend on Facebook before the evening is over.

Reading the news reports about this finding, I was reminded of two things. First was a party of an English friend of mine where I met and got on with one of her flat mates. I suggested to the flat mate that we keep in touch and meet up for coffee as we both had a common interest in books and writing. When our host learnt of this, she confronted me a few weeks later and told me how she didn’t like me poaching her friends and seeing them behind her back. I was quite stunned as I hadn’t meant to offend or upset my host friend. I explained that if the reverse had happened, I would have been delighted that she had made a new friend at my party. We were able to smooth things over, fortunately, and we are all three of us friends still.

It’s not that this example of my proprietorial English friend reflects on all English people’s attitudes to their friends in general (in the same way that not all Malaysians are friendly nor are the friendly ones friendly all the time). It’s just that my host friend had a different value around friendship compared to my value for the people around me. For her, she values close, intimate, private circles of relationships and she was prepared to take issue with anyone who seemed to disrespect that, whereas I also value wider networks and opportunities to help people around me widen their circles of friendship.

The second thought that came to mind was about how having lots of friends can bring you luck. Psychologist Richard Wiseman writes in his book The Luck Factor, that lucky people who are “lucky” in life, love, work and just about anything else actually make their own luck. Luck doesn’t just happen. One of the factors that help lucky people be lucky is a wide network of friends, acquaintances, colleagues, associates and, well, people they know. So the person who knows 100 people is ten times more likely to know someone who can help them out in a crisis, whether it’s dog sitting while they are on holiday or finding a new job, than the person who only knows 10 people.

Applying this principle, I can trace back many of my “lucky” breaks to people I’ve known - eg friends who first encouraged / inspired me to follow an interest, acquaintances who put me in touch with someone because they thought we’d get on, associates who invited me to join new activities or gave me new opportunities. I’m sure you can think of lucky breaks in your own life that have come because of people in your life who have helped you out in one way or another.

I enjoy getting to know all kinds of different people because they make life interesting. Often, making a positive human connection, whether deep and meaningful or just enjoyable at a brief superficial level, makes me feel good about life and myself. It’s not about appearing to make friends with people just in order to get something out of them - that’s using people and it’s icky. I value mutual, genuine friendliness and if good fortune or luck comes out of it: great! - and if not: luck not ever being the priority anyway, I just enjoy having great friends. I guess you don’t have to be Malaysian to appreciate the joy of that!

Which style of friendship do you practice - a close, intimate one like my host friend or a more diffuse Malaysian-style one? How have your friends helped you be “lucky”? And how have you helped them make their “luck”?

And here’s something for you to think about. What one thing can you do this week to help someone be more “lucky” and widen their circle of friends?

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ZenGuide is evolving - I now offer business and career development coaching, of which social media consulting forms a small part.

More information:

Business Development
What is Coaching?

Photo: thanks to adrian_lms on flickr.com (CCL)

The contents of this blog, including this post, comments and links, are subject to this Disclaimer - please read it by clicking here

To the untutored eye, the beach we were standing on in Dorset is just shingle and the make up of shingle is just stones. Those cliffs with a few landslips here and there scatter more rubble across the beach. Who would spend hours slowly, painstakingly, sifting through these tons of dead dull rocks?

But that was what all these people were doing on the beach at Charmouth, their eyes meditatively downcast as they stroledl along, scouring the shingle - the miles upon miles of pebbles and rocks. They were not dull, awkward, nerdy types. There were young couples, families, young women on their own, older people on an outing, business people on holiday. If you did not know what they were really doing, it would be a bizarre sight indeed.

Charmouth is on the Jurrassic Coast, designated a World Heritage Site for its treasure of ancient fossils, going back hundreds of millions of years. The Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre right on the beach. It is a museum and information centre but it is tiny by world class museum standards, barely two large rooms with some display cases, information panels and a variety of different rock samples. It’s staffed by a couple of retired folks on a volunteer basis and a geology/ fossil specialist and that’s about it. But what they do there is amazingly powerful.

This tiny centre opens up our eyes to what lies on this seemingly unremarkable beach. Through the artefacts in the few display cabinets and the storyboards on the wall, the past of the Triassic (250-200 million years ago), Jurassic (200-140 million years ago) and Cretaceous (140-65 million years ago) periods become real and alive again - and part of an unbroken timeline from prehistory to our present moment. The volunteers take time with the visitors to show us what to look for in the rocks and tell us in stories how the different shapes and textures are formed. Here is a piece of wood on the ocean floor as little sea creatures are washed up against it by the waves. Here is some dinosaur vomit (I kid you not) and some dinosaur poo (yup, fossilised and hard as stone!). Their enthusiasm is infectious and when they say, as you head out to the beach, “If you find anything, come back and show us!”, you’re buoyed up and excited and ready to pick your way through those rocks and stones with a fine tooth comb!

Once on the beach, it’s not their enthusiasm that propels you on your meditative journey along the bay - you realise that it is in fact your own previously untapped curiosity that makes your eyes search these seemingly inert rocks. Here you are walking where dinosaurs walked. You see the arid desert that was here millions of years ago, swarming with flying reptiles. You’re walking where a prehistoric sea swelled and ebbed, depositing ammonites and other now-extinct creatures all along the shore.

I don’t think we were all necessarily walking here with these thoughts consciously in our minds. But I could sense an undercurrent of purpose and a curiosity in all those people on the beach. Even if this was for most of us a bit of fun and a way to enjoy being down by the sea on a lovely sunny day, the act of fossil hunting connected us to something grander than ourselves - a sense of deep time and our own humble place in the vastness of eternity. And when one of us held in our hands a fossilised ammonite or a trace of prehistoric worm burrowings in hard stone, we beamed and showed our friends excitedly the treasure we had found. And, yes, treasure is the right word - for these fossils are more than just a bit of dull rock, they are artefacts that connect the past of deep time to us here and now, and allow us to be touched by a sense of infinity.

I found the perfect imprint of of two tiny ammonites on a slab of slate, and on its reverse a larger, more distinct shape, almost perfectly centred on the plate-sized sheet. I couldn’t believe how it had just been lying on the shingle, overlooked by many people who had already passed by. It seemed so amazing to hold in my hands the work of preservation of hundreds of millions of years that had waited there for me to pick it up. I donated the slab to the heritage centre and it now sits among the other fossils found by tourists and experts alike, ready to educate future visitors to that beach.

So, what does all this have to do with business and career development coaching, which is the theme of this blog?

Well, what is the equivalant of scouring the shingle for fossils in your life or work - something seemingly dull and could surely only be enjoyed by a nerdy type (if at all!)? As individuals and also business people, what could inspire us and give us a sense of wonder and purpose so that even that seemingly dull task becomes imbued with inner meaning?

And what about our clients and customers? How could we offer them, through the services and products we may deliver, a connection to such a sense of curiosity and wonder for their own lives and business? How can we help them touch infinity?

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ZenGuide is evolving - I now offer business and career development coaching, of which social media consulting forms a small part.

The contents of this blog, including this post, comments and links, are subject to this Disclaimer - please read it by clicking here

Not being a hip hop fan, I had never heard of Chamillionaire. But something he said really stuck in my mind.

I heard him giving a talk at Stanford University as part of their Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series. The series is recorded in a set of podcasts which is available to the public via iTunes and focuses on technology leaders and strategies for starting up and running technology driven companies.

He was an early adopter of social media and internet technology, creating a following for his music outside of the record industry by engaging with fans online and making his songs available for download online long before other musicians caught on. This gave him the fan base to then move into the big time.

What stuck in my mind though was not so much his story of how he used social media - it’s not so unusual for outsiders to build a name for themselves using blogging, Twitter and MySpace etc which then enables them to break into the mainstream, as I’ve blogged and written about elsewhere.

What stuck in my mind was this:

He always knew he would be successful. When people asked him how he could be so sure, he said that it didn’t matter what he did, he was going keep on doing whatever it took until he found the thing that he was a success at. He started out trying to make it in basketball but found that he was not getting as far as he wanted to as a basketball star so he tried something else. Eventually, he came to hip hop and made a huge success of that.

What interests me about this is that he was not attached to the specific outcome eg becoming a superstar basketball player but rather a general outcome of being successful at what he did. He might have thought of himself as a failed basketball player but that did not even seem to enter the equation. For him, it was just something that was not the right fit for his talents - so he moved on and in so doing, found something that was a perfect fit for making him successful.

So, what might be the take away from Chamillionaire for the rest of us?

There is a time for specifics of course but a looser approach can sometimes allow us to explore possibilities and options that we would never otherwise consider.

Looking at the success that you want in your life or business, what would it look like if you were less specific in your definition and envisioned a more general picture of success? (For example, thinking less in terms of “I want to be a lawyer” or “I want to expand my business to that specific locality or district” and more in terms of “I want a job where I am respected as an expert and rewarded well for my skills” or “I want my business to reach those clients who would most benefit from my services”.) What does that open up for you or your business?

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By the way, the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders podcast series, available free from iTunes, are a terrific series of lectures and interviews with many of the world leaders in technology and business. Even if you’re not a techno-geek, the insights are relevant for anyone considering starting up a business or who is interested in what it takes to drive a company forward, including personal stories and also, fascinating perspectives on how to pick yourself up from business failure.

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ZenGuide is evolving - I now offer business and career development coaching, of which social media consulting forms a small part.

Photo: from Stanford’s ecorner website, with thanks

The contents of this blog, including this post, comments and links, are subject to this Disclaimer - please read it by clicking here