An illness let me see my schedule and priorities with fresh eyes.

In the midst of my normal end-of-the-year crunch, I found myself with the flu. Nothing as dramatic as the swine flu. Just the regular, everyday, common flu.

When I realized I was getting sick, I did everything I could to prepare. I made a grocery run to make sure I had enough juice, soup, fruit, and easy to fix meals to get through a few days of not feeling well. I fortified the house in anticipation of shifting priorities, and stocked up on things that could make my life easier for a few days.

A few days. Those turned out to be famous last words because my flu is still with me more than a week later. In spite of my best management skills, my best efforts to work with the healing process, I found myself ticking off days of greatly reduce productivity beyond my expectations.

Reduced Expectations

I started by reducing my expectations for those first few days. I didn’t push myself, but allowed myself to nap and rest each time I felt tired. I triaged my unfinished holiday presents, and started calling the family members at the end of the list to apologize in advance for not being able to complete their presents before the new year. Of course, they took this news well. I was proud of myself for adjusting to the new situation and shifting my own expectations accordingly.

But as the flu lingered, I found myself having to repeat this process a couple more time.  I realized I had just started operating under a radical triage. I postponed what I could postpone, but I also found myself cancelling things. I cleared my social and professional calendars. I canceled projects I had planned to complete. Blog posts were eliminated as well. In fact, I soon realized I was living under a skeleton of my normal workload and expectations.

Radical Triage

The weirdest thing happened next. I realized I was okay with this reduced workload. I was okay with postponing some things and canceling others. That realization led me to take a fresh look at what I’ve assumed as routine and normal tasks. What does it mean that I’m completely comfortable letting go of these things? Were they just perfunctory items in my schedule, items without any connection to my passions? Or was this just my complete acceptance of my situation and my adjustment to it?

These turned out to be great questions. Here I was, adjusting my expectations of myself in a radical way from what I had scheduled, and I was totally at peace. What was the lesson I could learn from this radical triage?

New Vision

I’m still examining this situation, and I don’t have the final answers. But I do have some new guidelines I’ve created for myself. I have fresher eyes now to look at my routines and habits, and I’m using them to give everything on my schedule the once over. I’m no longer assuming that standing events and appointments are essential. In fact, a new acid test I’m implementing is this: What if I cancel this? How do I feel about that? Would I really miss it?

In fact, I suspect that much of my day is actually filled with habits instead of the things I really feel are important. Things connected to my future vision and plans. Things connected to my passions. I really want my life, every day of it, every hour of it, to be inching me closer to being the person I want to be. To living out my dreams and visions for the future. Anything less is, well, less.

I’m grateful that my life has given me the opportunity to see myself through a new lens. What I’ve seen is that what I thought was essential was really just a nice to have. Which means that I have plenty of time and energy freed up to fulfill my new dreams and passions. What an exciting way to start a new year.

So what about you? Are you filling out your 2010 calendar with events that are connected to your own passions or are you filling your days with routine events tied to you only by habit? I challenge you to apply a radical triage to your own calendar and see what you learn about yourself.

Related posts:

•  Rethinking Everything
• A Few of My Favorite (Little) Things
• Where’s Your Tribe?

Money and abundance are very different things.

I have a secret weapon. It’s not the kind of secret weapon that I conceal in my clothing and pull out when I need it. It’s the kind of secret weapon that I use in my personal development when I think it will help me develop new superhero powers.

It’s the abundance game.

Before I tell you any more about it, let me ask you a question: What would you do if you won the lottery today and had $1,000,000 to spend? Or more?

I’ve asked many people this question, and most responses fall into two categories. Some people start rattling off the things they would buy and do with the money. They’d pay off their mortgage, cars, credit cards, travel, and help out family. But the things they rattle off don’t add up to much. Other people get excited and start talking about buying a house here, a vacation home in several exotic locations, expensive sports cars and more. And these items add up to much more than one million dollars.

So I ask you: What would you do if you won the lottery today and had $1,000,000 to spend? Or more?

Spending Money

Everyone has a unique relationship with money. No two people use it in the same way. Your relationship with money is a complicated issue that is influenced by many factors, including:

• Your parent’s relationship with money and the budget of your childhood home.
• Your earning power and the sense of entitlement that comes with your budget and work choice.
• Your sense of happiness and contentment in your life.
• Your priorities and what you want to accomplish now in your life.
• Your values and the importance you place on things that money can buy.
• Your dreams and aspirations, including your life list or bucket list items.
• Your spiritual orientation and what you believe you deserve in this life.
• Your financial history, especially if you have been through either a financial hardship or a time of an unexpected financial windfall.

In our society, we categorize people as either spenders or savers, but this system really oversimplifies how people relate to money. And it has nothing to do with the how a person experiences abundance.

Money vs. Abundance

Many people don’t separate money from abundance, but they are actually very separate and distinct things.

• Money is currency, a way to exchange goods and services between people based on perceived value. Money can be counted and measured, which also means it can be gained and lost. Money requires management and protection.
• Abundance is a sense of well being, a feeling of appreciation for the things in our lives. Abundance is an outlook, a way of looking at life, that anyone can have no matter their financial situation. Abundance creates a real freedom to enjoy and participate in life.

Money can't buy happiness no matter where you shop.

Money and abundance don’t always go together. A person with a lovely home, a new luxury vehicle, fashionable clothes, and a large bank balance can look at the world and feel a sense of abundance because of these things. But having money doesn’t automatically give you a sense of abundance. That same person with all of these things could feel a sense of lack because a friend just moved into a nicer neighborhood, or a neighbor has a new sports car in the garage, or their wardrobe is one season out of fashion. They may have the sense that they are never rich enough to afford what they really want.

In the same way, a person of very modest means who gets by without many of their desires and some of life’s conveniences can look at their life and feel angry that they didn’t get enough from life. They can feel that life owes them something, and get angry when they see people who have more and do more. Or, that same person can have a sense of abundance that allows them to appreciate the things they do have, and find a deep sense of joy in them, even though the facts have not changed. A person with a sense of abundance can see the wealth of others and feel joy without having to possess the same things.

The Abundance Advantage

Whatever your financial situation, you can develop a sense of abundance right where you are. You can have a way of looking at the world that gives you joy and allows you to appreciate the richness of your world without gaining a single dollar of income or savings. The formula is simple, but not always easy. A sense of abundance comes from focusing on the benefits you already have, appreciating the good things already around you. Many of them are things that money can’t buy. It’s about seeing the wonder in life, the miracles that happen every day around you. It’s about taking your eyes off the things that you don’t like and letting go of ideas that make you sad or angry, and shifting your focus to things you appreciate. It’s about changing from looking at the glass half empty to seeing the glass half full.

Gaining an abundance outlook isn’t something you do once and you have forever like a college degree. It’s something that you must constantly adjust to stay on track. It’s about taking a series of steps toward that goal each day, or each time you realize that you don’t feel abundant in the moment. It’s a lifestyle. It’s about choosing the person you want to be and then being that person every hour of every day. The best part is, it doesn’t cost anything to develop an abundance outlook. It’s available to everyone who wants it and who invests the effort to seek it.

Maintaining My Own Abundance

Like many people, I have a long and interesting relationship with money and abundance. I’ve had lots of money (relatively speaking). I’ve been broke. I’ve had a sense of abundance when my bank account is empty, and when it is full. I’ve had a sense of desperation (a lack of abundance) with money and without money. Through these experiences, and through my choice to be a glass half full gal, I’ve found my path to abundance. Sure, it needs adjusting occasionally, and I get some surprises that show me the chinks in my abundance armor, but these are part of the abundance lifestyle. I get that. And the benefits of feeling abundant most of the time are worth so much more than any of the petty costs along the way.

One tool I use to build and enhance my sense of abundance is the abundance game I learned from a teacher many years ago. This game challenges me to feel more abundant without changing my income. I’m playing it right now, and I’ve been talking about some of my experiences on Twitter. Some of you have asked me about the abundance game. So I’m sharing it with you here.

The Abundance Game

The abundance game is something you play by yourself using paper. It challenges you to spend increasing amounts of money each day. The abundance game is really easy to play. There are only a few simple rules.

1. The first day, you spend $1,000. Every day, you must spend one thousand dollars more than you spent the day before. So day 1 is $1,000, day 2 is $2,000, day 15 is $15,000, etc.
2. What you don’t spend carries over to the next day.
3. You can’t spend more than you have any day. But you can save up money over a few days to have enough to purchase something.

To make playing easier, I’ve created an Excel spreadsheet that keeps track of the daily income, what I spend, any money carried over, and a running total of what I’ve spent. You can download my spreadsheet, or you can keep track in your own spreadsheet or on a notepad. There are no special tools required. I’ve filled in a couple of examples for you in the spreadsheet. Just delete my entries and start filling in your own.

Spend the money in any way you want. Indulge your every craving. Be generous with others. Do whatever you feel inspired to do. There are no right or wrong ways to spend this money. You will not incur any karma or anger any of the people in your life. Go for it!

Game Strategies

Your strategy makes all the difference in how you succeed.

I’m going to be totally honest here: Until now, I’ve never gotten past 15 days of playing the abundance game. I’m currently on day 49 as I write this which means I’ve spent over $1,200,000. In other words, I’ve had a huge breakthrough in my own sense of abundance. Here is some of what I’ve learned in this round of the abundance game.

1. Make it fun from the start. In the past, I always was practical. I paid off my bills first, and that took many days, even weeks. While I was waiting around to accumulate enough money to pay them off, I got bored with the game. It lost it’s thrill. I don’t recommend this strategy.
2. Don’t be too practical. This time, I decided that I would splurge first and be practical later. I figured out the bills I wanted to pay off, and scheduled them so they would be covered in the first month. But that first month also allowed me to buy lots of items and experiences that I’ve always wanted. That made it fun and kept it juicy for me.
3. Break out of your small expectations. Very quickly, I realized that my real world budget had trained me to only want so much. I realized that I had a hard time remembering the things I had wanted over the years. It took some effort to start remembering things. But once I found that groove, more and more things came rushing back to me. So don’t give up! Keep a running list of the things you have wanted in your life. In real life, you have to be practical. But in the abundance game, the sky really is the limit. Go for it!
4. Create a wish list of items separate from the game. I started using the side columns of the spreadsheet to figure out things I wanted to buy in the game. When I was in the mood, I’d go out online and research the cost of the items or experiences. I’d record these in a column (cost and description) and sort them in cost order. Then, each day playing the game, I’d start with my wish list and buy the items that fit the day’s abundance budget and seemed the most exciting. Separating the cost research from the game really improved my experience.
5. The sky is the limit! In real life, you have practical budget concerns, but in the game, you can splurge. For example, I decided to fly my entire family to Phoenix for the holidays. But I didn’t research coach seats for the flight–I got them all first class seats. I also booked each family a suite at a local resort. I included money so they could ship their presents here, and gave them spending money. I also rented each licensed driver a car they would love for the week. Think big! Don’t skimp!
6. When you find something fun, buy more of them. My purchases run in themes. A few times, I’ve stared at the spreadsheet and wondered what in the world I could buy next. Once I got a single idea, I used variations of that to keep me running for a while. There are definitely times when new ideas are easier than others. I just refused to give up when it got hard to spend more money.
7. Think of things to give other than just cash. I’ve given away a lot of money. Apart from a few favorite charities, I haven’t just given cash. Instead, I’ve found creative ways to give money. I purchased Visa gift cards with $250 credit and handed out 50 of them to students in the ASU bookstore each semester for a year. I figured out the cost for a family of 4 to attend a Diamondbacks game, buy hot dogs and drinks, and a shirt for each person, and put the cost on a Diamondbacks gift certificate and handed out 50 of them at the Arizona Mills mall. Don’t just give money, do things that enrich the lives of others and lets you interact with them. I felt the joy of handing out those gifts to people (even in my imagination), and without spending a dollar, I felt amazing.
8. Help fund great causes in your own backyard. Look for people and organizations in your community who are doing good work and fund them. In the game, I funded an Ignite Phoenix event, a TEDxPhoenix event, and sponsored the next PodCampAZ afterparty. I funded St. Mary’s food bank and ran the St. Vincent de Paul dining room for a month. I contributed to organizations working to make downtown Phoenix a better place.

Keep it fun! I’ve set a goal for the number of days I want to play the game. When I reach that number, I can stop or I can decide if I want to keep playing. If it isn’t fun, shake it up a bit before you quit. And when you quit, think about what you learned and prepare to dive back into it in the future.

I’m really excited to hear what you do with the game! Please share your experiences and the kinds of things you buy here with this community.

Later, I’ll blog about the life lessons I’ve learned from this round of the abundance game. Stay tuned!

Related posts:

• The Hidden Value of Irritation
• A Few of My Favorite (Little) Things
• Stoking Your Creative Fire

I'm enjoying the journey as I redefine my business, priorities, projects, relationships and goals.

Over the last few months, I’ve had a slow time in my business. Rather than think of this as a shortage of income, I’ve seen this as a rare opportunity–a surplus of time. I’ve been investing this precious time in projects that normally never make the jump from my “good idea” list to the “to-do” list. It’s been an amazing time, a productive time, and one that has changed the way I look at, well, everything.

Rethinking Goals

It’s been so nice to be able to block out an afternoon to just think about things. To set aside a portion of a day without interruptions where I can focus on one thing and see it through to the end. Normally, I’m in the midst of producing deliverables for one set of client deadlines while I’m preparing for the next wave of deadlines about to hit. The goals for my business have been related to the work at hand: to produce quality products while reducing costs when possible, and to work as efficiently as possible.

With a little time, I’ve been able to take a step back from the daily business activities to ask myself bigger questions. Like what do I want to do now, which services do I want to promote going forward, and how do I want to leverage my current business to create the business I really want to run. It’s been a huge exercise is breaking out of the box of current thinking, to dream big dreams, and to set new expectations for the future.

I don’t want to make this sound like it was a simple process, that I simply blocked out an afternoon and suddenly had a new vision and goals for my business. Oh no. It’s been a process of looking back at history, sorting through the parts I have loved, identifying the parts that have taught me the most, and piecing together the lessons learned. It’s been a real process of discovery that continues today. But through this process, I’m considering new things: new services, new directions, new types of clients, new products to produce. Each baby step in a new direction gives me a new vision of the future, and I’m loving the process of seeing a new future for my business.

Rethinking Priorities

I have been self-employed for 15 years. During that time, I’ve been a pretty good employer to myself. I’ve constantly improved my own working conditions, and found myself more and more interesting work to engage me and develop my skills. But with some time to reflect, to look back on my history, I can see some glaring gaps.

For me, the perpetual challenge has been to find the work/life balance. Like most self-employed people, I seem to always be working. I’m not sure if working from home makes it better (no time spent in commutes) or worse (no barriers to working all hours). I mean, I’m writing this blog post at 3 am because I woke up in the middle of the night! Work is the first thing on my mind almost every hour I’m awake.

As I’m thinking about my priorities, I realize that I’m grateful that I love my work and I know it needs a high priority in my life. However, I’m ready to make a radical change in how to manage my daily living. I’m ready to set new priorities for my personal life so work isn’t taking up so much of my time and energy. I’m eager to embrace new priorities that give me more time to explore the world around me, to enjoy my friends, and to bring more people into my life.

Rethinking Projects

In the last 18 months, I’ve been volunteering on various community projects including Ignite Phoenix. I’ve been speaking at conferences and to community groups. I’ve spent time developing personal projects, things that are for me and my business instead of just doing client projects. It’s been invigorating to try new things, to learn new skills, and be a beginner in new disciplines. It has brought a spark back to my life that I hadn’t realized was missing.

Now, I want to make these non-client projects a permanent part of my weekly life. I have created a new way to keep track of things I want to try, and I want to have a block of time each week where I can work on them without any pressure from other projects on my plate.

I’ve also decided to drop a few projects from my life. There have been things I’ve taken on because I felt obligated, or because no one else had the skills to take them on, or because I had failed to say “no” when I was asked.

Rethinking Relationships

This has been a rich year for me to explore issues related to work and personal relationships. Some of you reading this, people who know me well, probably snorted at that last sentence because it was understated. I’ve had the grand opportunity to meet and engage with people who have pushed buttons that I didn’t know I had, people who have challenged me to the core to really put into practice the things I believe, and to take some big steps in how I manage myself and how I set boundaries with others.

It’s funny, because the outcome of this education process, this trial and error learning, has been unexpected. In some ways, I’ve learned to really be more open and more accepting of the differences in people. I’ve really grown in my ability to embrace diversity in the people around me. At the same time, I’m more clear than ever about the qualities I look for in the people who I choose to have in my life in my inner circles. So while my outer circles are expanding, my inner circles are tougher to join.

The greatest thing I’ve learned from this is how to keep my heart open even wider and keep it open with people who I had trouble embracing in the past. This has been the most gratifying part of my recent journey, because that is exactly the kind of person I want to be. And I see real growth towards that goal. It makes me feel grateful every single day for being a person who wants to have an open heart, and for choosing to experience my life in a way that teaches me how to open it even further. Everyone in my life helps me learn this lesson, which also makes me grateful for each one of you.

Rethinking My Business

As I process each of these things I’m learning, it is sending me off in a new direction. I’m definitely in the midst of a course correction. I am facing a different direction than I was a year ago, I’m thinking new thoughts, and I’m pondering new dreams. I have some ideas for how this is changing my business, but I won’t know the real impact until I have more time to travel down these new roads for a while.

In the meantime, I look at my website and I realize it doesn’t reflect where I am and where I’m headed, but I’m not sure how to bring it into focus. I look through my blog posts, and I don’t know yet how to articulate the changes I am making and what they mean for my business. But I’m patient. I know that with some time, with some new thoughts, with a handful of new projects, the vision for my business will unfold. Everything happens in its own time. I’ve been so amazed by the journey so far. I trust that when the future starts to become clear, I’ll be so happy that I’ve invested my time this way.

So, what are you doing to rethink your own life?

Related Posts:

• Where’s Your Tribe?
• Talking About Yourself
• Why I’m Optimistic In This Economy (Or What I Learned From The Dot Com Bust)

Understanding your follower style explains your leadership style.

I spoke last weekend at PodCampAZ, and after the session, someone asked me a very interesting question. During my session, I pointed out what was my opinion and where others would disagree with me. And during my session, someone in the audience took issue with one of my positions and talked about why I was wrong in my position.

Dealing With Hecklers

The person who approached me asked me how I kept my cool with this audience heckler. The truth is, I didn’t see that person as  heckler at all. I walked into the presentation the same way I walk into all of my work. Much of what I do, what I choose to do, is based on my experience and my philosophies about the work. I welcome divergent view points. In fact, I could have made the same argument against my opinion as my alleged heckler audience member.

I found my peace with my personal experience very early in my professional career. I keep an open mind about ideas and competing theories about things because I test everything in the crucible of personal experience. I try things out. I see what happens. I might have a preference going into a situation, but I don’t take a position until I have experience that shows me the truth for me. I am willing to do several tests, and repeat tests over time, but it is the outcome that determines my position, not my hoping or wishing for an outcome.

Leadership Experience

I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to become a leader early in my career. I found myself leading a team of seasoned professionals who were older and had more years of experience. Talk about jumping into the deep end! From the start, I had to be open to other ideas and be willing to try things that perhaps were not my first idea of a good strategy. I learned much about the process of leading and how to earn the respect of my team. Those lessons formed my leadership style.

Being A Follower

The challenge that I have now in the middle of my career is that I expect the people who lead me to be the same kind of leader I am. I expect them to appreciate my suggestions for improvement. I expect them to recognize my dedication to the project and that my effort earns me their respect. But that isn’t always the way it works out. I often find myself counting the days until a project ends because the project manager’s leadership skills exhaust me or provide me with a constant stream of minor irritations. I sometimes joke that I should offer a basic leadership course as a way to fix my leadership issues, but I know that would not really solve anything.

Instead, I try to adjust my follower style so I don’t crash into the rigid leadership walls put around me. If I know my suggestions are not welcome, I do my best to keep my mouth shut. I also take the risk of doing what I feel is best under the guideline that asking forgiveness is sometimes more effective than asking permission. That’s not my favorite follower mode, as you might guess. If I feel I must resort to that strategy, my days on a project are numbered.

The truth is that I don’t want to run everything I participate in. I am very happy having a slice of a project, of limiting my personal responsibility to something I feel I can manage and keep the balance of the rest of my life. I’m happy being a follower. But I’m most happy when I support  a leader who appreciates an assertive, self-determined follower.

Leadership vs. Follower Styles

Today, I ran across a video blog that suddenly shed new light on my challenge. Bret Simmons believes that our experiences as followers determines if we will be likely to get a chance to lead, and forms our leadership style long before we actually do lead. The good news of this is that we can make choices to change our follower style that will make us better leaders.

In my community, I see people who want to contribute to the community and are frustrated because they are in follower positions. I see some of them lash out against leaders in what I see as unproductive ways: criticism, backstabbing, and negative comments. After watching this video, I have a new framework for processing this behavior and understanding its importance. I now understand that their follower style isn’t likely to develop a productive leadership style. Now, I’m wondering if there is a market for a course to teach people how to become independent or partner followers like Simmons describes.

See for yourself the brilliance of his observations.

Simmons points out the differences between dependent vs. independent leaders and followers. I encourage you to take his observations to heart, and decide which kind of leader you want to be. Then set out to be that kind of a follower.

P.S. To any leaders out there who find me volunteering for your project or working on your team for a while, you are forewarned. I’m an independent follower. Embrace it, or expect that we will have a rocky road while we figure things out.

David Billings, Mr. Sparky Firepants came to Phoenix to conduct a client management workshop.

Last week, I had the opportunity to take the Rock Your Clients workshop with Dave Billings, the genius behind Sparky Firepants Images. This half-day workshop covered the important client management issues for people in creative businesses.

I met David through email when I heard about the course. He immediately struck me as a white hat cowboy, one of the good guys. After spending most of a day with him, I can confirm that my first impressions were dead on. David is practical and all about doing smart business, but he comes from his heart. That’s a high recommendation from me.

Workshop Details

The workshop covered some unexpected and interesting ground. David didn’t just give us a list of things to do and things to never do. He explained a strategy for understanding your client’s real needs and how to fit that into your business relationship. He covered lots of practical things, too, like guidelines for making yourself accessible to your clients by phone and email. He covered thorny topics like project scope creep, and what to do when your project slips into limbo.

Not only did David share from his own client experiences, but he engaged the class to share their challenges and solutions. It was great to hear people from a wide range of creative businesses talking about the business challenges that we normally don’t discuss in polite company. In other words, it was real and honest and quite helpful.

Workshop Lessons

I was excited by some of the new ideas I heard in the workshop for handling specific client management issues like scope creep. I’m a small business owner, and many of my clients are small business owners. When there is a gap between what was contracted and the reality of what needs to happen, of course I’m going to collaborate with them to create the solution. But some of the tips I learned will help me make smarter negotiations with my clients, which can only improve my business bottom line while I’m keeping my clients happy.

If you ever get the chance to take this workshop or any workshop with David Billings, I highly recommend it. In fact, if you ever get the chance to just hang with him at a tweetup or creative meetup, do it. He’s a great guy, and you’ll be happy to add him to your business network. I only wish that he spent more time in Phoenix so I could spend more face time with him. But who knows. Maybe I’ll get to spend more time in Portland in the future.

iPhone image by William Hook. Used under Creative Commons license.

I’m not a big gadget person, but I do like an elegant solution to information challenges. A lot of people in my Phoenix tech community have iPhones while I have a regular cell phone with a QWERTY keyboard for texting. Almost a year ago, I bought an iPod Touch, which is basically the iPhone without the phone and camera. With it, I have access to the same great pool of applications. And I love it.

Over the last few months, I’ve been reconsidering all of my communication strategies. I’ve considered dropping my cable internet for a cell phone hot spot. I’ve considered cutting my land line. I’ve even considered switching to a smart phone. While I haven’t sorted out the details for my communications strategy, have done some of the hard research.

Recently, I tweeted about my findings on the cost of an iPhone and it’s 2-year contract because I was shocked about the total price. I received a few comments and inquiries from people, so I’m writing this blog post to map out my calculations and give you all a basis for comparison.

What Does The iPhone Cost?

In the following chart, I’m comparing the cost of the iPhone with a new carrier against upgrading my phone but staying with my existing plan. It’s an apple to oranges comparison (yes, I meant to say that) because it is the real life budget choice I face.

    Cost Component               iPhone 3G      LG EnV Touch
    Carrier:                     ATT            Verizon
    Phone purchase               $199           $49
    Apple Care                     99             0
    Monthly:
    Talk plan                      99 (unlim)    39 (450 mins)
    Data plan                      30             0
    Text messaging                 20 (unlim)    20 (5,000)
    Extended warranty               0             2

    Total initial purchase:      $298          $ 49
    Monthly fees (-taxes, etc)    149            61
    Total 24 months service:  $3,8874        $1,513 

    Savings: $2,361 over 2 years

I got my numbers on Sunday, October 18 at 8 pm from Verizon and ATT/Apple.

I realize that comparing my non-smart phone purchase with an iPhone doesn’t really show the value of the iPhone against a comparable phone with a different provider. Based on the information I’ve provided here, you can do your own phone comparison.

My Cell Phone Decision

I think the iPhone would be a fun gadget to own, and I do see how it could change the communication strategy for my business, especially when I’m mobile. However, I’m staying with my current phone configuration for a while longer based on these facts.

• I spent most of my working day in my home office, so while the mobile aspect would be nice, it isn’t essential.
• I can have mobile internet access using my laptop in a wifi hotspot. Even if I occasionally paid for the hotpot use, I would still have money in the bank.
• I can use my iPod Touch at wifi hotspots to have access to all of the same great iPhone apps.

I do believe that owning an iPhone would be fun and useful. I’m sure that once I got used to having that sort of access with those apps, I would soon become hooked on it. I tend to be frugal with my business expenses, basing my decisions on facts and strategies, not on fun. Based on these facts, there will not be an iPhone in my immediate future, even if it comes to Verizon.

Download your copy of the free ebook 5 Truths About Working From Home.

Several months ago, I wrote a blog post on the five truths I’ve discovered about working from home. It was a great hit with my blog readers, so I decided I would turn it into an ebook. In the meantime, I was invited to speak at Laid Off Camp Phoenix, and spoke about this topic last week. Working from home has become such a popular topic these days. Many people are looking for non-traditional employment which often means working from a home office.

5 Truths About Working From Home Ebook

My latest ebook, 5 Truths About Working From Home, is ready for you! It covers these points:

• How to create a healthy and effective workspace.
• Building a success team to support you.
• Health tips for using a laptop computer.
• Overcoming the isolation of working from home.
• How social media helps you to stay visible professionally.
• Finding people to help you with challenging tasks.
• Why your daily schedule and routine are important.
• Coping with the downside of a zero commute.

In addition, I’ve interviewed four successful home-office workers who share their stories, their challenges, their tips, and their insights into making your home office situation work for you.

I’m happy to share this ebook with you. As always, let me know how you use this resource. I’m really interested to hear what information was the most helpful to you.

I hold the copyright to this ebook, but I’m publishing it under a Creative Commons license that allows you to print, copy, share, and publish it as long as you don’t change the ebook. For more information about the Creative Commons license, use the link to learn what you can and cannot do.

View and download your copy of the ebook: 5 Truths About Working From Home.

Looking back on the journey of my blog's first 100 posts.

Today, I’m posting the 100th blog post here. It’s a big milestone for a new blog, and I want to take a few minutes to reflect on the journey and thank those of you who make blogging a joy.

Blog Statistics & Observations

The “From The Crow’s Nest” blog officially launched on December 1, 2008, but I started writing posts back in September. Here are a few blog statistics and observations:

• I use WordPress and I’m still using the same theme (blog.txt by Scott Allan Wallick) which I love.
• When my blog launched, you could subscribe by email and RSS. I added a Kindle subscription option recently.
• Posts are grouped into 25 categories with over 300 tags.
• The most popular category is “Twitter” with 32 posts.
• The next most popular categories are “Reflection” with 24 and “Freelance” with 19.
• There are nearly 300 comments from great readers like you.
• I use Networked Blogs to post on my business Facebook page (which didn’t exist when I started).
• My blog distributes my 4 ebooks, with a 5th ebook currently in the works.
• My blog includes Twitter landing pages for my personal (Kinchie) and business (CrowInfoDesign) accounts.
• On average, 20 people each day read my blog.
• The most popular entry page (after the main page) is The Twitter School.
• My initial writing goal was 500 word posts 3-4 times a week.
• My recent average blog post length has increased to 900 words (with many over 1,200 words), and I’m still striving to write 3-4 times a week.

I debated for a long time about starting a business blog because I wanted to make sure that I was prepared to follow through for the long term.  When I’m doing a lot of writing on client projects, I lose some of the steam for my more personal writing projects like this blog. I’ve tried keeping a backlog of written posts, but that strategy hasn’t worked for me. Instead, I have about a half dozen partially written posts that I either complete or delete over time.

Finding My Voice

In the first months, I struggled to find my voice and I even wrote about that. I would reach the end of a blog post and feel like there were things left unsaid, but I couldn’t find my way to take that next step with posts. Over time, that feeling has faded, but there are still times when I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface. Thankfully, I have this blog ready to go when I’m ready to write things at the next level.

I find that my blog is the testing ground for my new ideas, and the place where I can explain things in more detail. As I interact with my clients and my community, I hear things or people ask questions or I observe ineffective behaviors that can be fixed so easily! I use my blog to address these topics.

Writing About Social Media

If you had asked me six months ago if I thought most of my posts would be about Twitter, I would never have guess that would be true. I started writing about Twitter because I was researching Twitter and thinking about the business use for Twitter to prepare to speak about Twitter at the WritersUA conference. I wrote an ebook, Twitter for Beginners, for that audience that now has been downloaded thousands of time and even translated into Chinese. That ebook also landed me a recurring spot on the Twooting podcast.

I’m still writing about Twitter, but I’m also writing about other social media outlets. I’m doing social media webinars for clients now, and consulting with small businesses to help them develop smart social media strategies.   These are fun and rewarding challenges. I’ve also lined up several speaking engagements over the next months, and I have a topic in the selection process for South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference next March.

Business Focus

When I started my blog, I expected to write more about software user assistance. My business helps companies integrate software into the workplace and my clients range from software developers, to companies purchasing custom software, to consulting companies looking to outsource part of the integration tasks. I spent a good deal of my time educating clients about user assistance options, and I thought my blog would be a perfect outlet for that information. However, I’ve yet to write a user assistance blog post. Perhaps those will appear in the next 100 posts. Of perhaps I missed the mark when I started my topic planning.

With every post, I strive to share practical information that helps businesses do something new, rework something to make it more effective, or rethink their strategy to better reach a business goal. I’ve been running my company for 15 years, and I understand the challenges, the joys, and the pains of being a small business owner.  I appreciate when someone can give me a succinct overview of a new topic, and when they provide practical information that helps me solve my current challenges.

That’s what I work to provide here: a quick map of the territory from the crow’s nest perspective followed by practical guidance for taking the steps of a journey. I love hearing from readers who appreciate a blog post. And I love when people share collaborative information in the comments, sharing either their experience, a different point of view, or links to resources that are new to me. This is why I started this blog.

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who has read my blog, tweeted about blog posts, commented, or emailed me with your reactions. I don’t do this in a vacuum. My interactions with you form new blog posts and help me to think about business challenges in a new way.

I can’t wait to see what our collaboration will produce in my blog over the next 100 posts!

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A strong password is the foundation of good online security.

Many of you know that my website was hacked last week. My webhost suggested that I change all of my passwords as a precaution against further hacks. This pushed me to take a step that I’ve been considering for some time. I’ve been thinking about a way I could create a custom password for each site I use that is also easy to remember.

I’ve had this idea for a while and yet I didn’t think it was urgent, so I never invested the time to flesh out my plan. Now I have my plan and I’m updating my passwords as I use sites. I thought you might want to know the strategy behind my custom yet easy to remember password strategy.

Strong Password Components

There are several things you should include to make a strong password.

• Use a combination of upper and lower case letters.
• Including letters and numbers.
• Don’t use your name, family member names, or pet names.
• Don’t use your birthday, family member birthdays, anniversaries, or other dates people can link to you.
• Don’t use words that are found in the dictionary or or the word “password.”

Some computer security resources encourage you to include symbols, but some sites don’t allow symbols in a password. Also, there is no standard password length generally accepted.

My Password Components

I set out to create 12 character passwords that were unique to each login and yet easy to remember. I do this by stringing together components and developing a few standard descriptions.

In general, my password strategy works like this:

P P P P U U U T D D D D

• PPPP = a quote or phrase. For example: “Be the Change You want to see in the world.”
• UUU = a use code that tells whether I use the site/account for personal (PER=737) or for my company (COM=266). I created these three character codes and converted them to numbers using the telephone keypad.
• T = a site/account type (E=email, S=site (general), F=financial, C=client, B=blog, etc). I came up with a short list of these site/account types.
• DDDD = account description is the name of the site (unique for each site).

Example Passwords

Using this strategy, I would create the following passwords:

• For my Paypal account: BtCY266fPAYP
• For my personal Yahoo email account: BtCY737eYAHO
• For my business Yahoo email account: BtCY266eYAHO
• For my personal Gmail email account: BtCY737eGMAI
• For my business Gmail email account: BtCY266eGMAI
• For my webhost account for my art blog: BtCY737bLAUG

I call these my Gandhi series passwords (the author of the quote). At some point in the future, I may change my passwords and I will use a different quote, perhaps one by Rumi, and I’ll call those my Rumi series passwords.

Obviously, these are not the exact passwords I use for my accounts. I’ve given you these examples to see how I pieced together the components to create unique passwords.

Password Updates

If you have a situation where you are required to change your passwords regularly, you can add a password component to include the month.

• Add a single letter to identify the month (taking into account months that start with the same letter).
• Add two numbers to identify the month (01-12)

Insert this password component at any point in your password strategy.

Other Suggestions

Before you jump in, think about these additional ideas.

• Don’t use my strategy exactly. Create your own components, mix up the order of the components, and come up with your own use codes and account types. Use my strategy to inspire you. The little bit of time you invest to develop your own strategy can save you days of work and much heartache in the future because of a hacked account.
• Use a different password series for home and work. Even though you have a custom password for each site, it is a good idea to create a different password series for your personal accounts and the ones you use at work. I also have a different series for each client that I use to access their networks and software.
• Don’t write down your password strategy (component breakout). Commit your password components and the order you use them to memory. Don’t share your strategy with anyone, and don’t write it down where someone could find it and use it against you.

Your turn: Do you have a smart password system that you want to share with us (in general terms)? Here’s your chance to help others.

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Most of the people in my life today were not born on July 20, 1969, the day the world watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon. For me, it was a huge event because it was a huge event for my dad. So it’s with fond memories that I look back now to those events 40 years ago and 5 years after Dad’s death.

Becoming A Physicist

Lt. Kingston at his first on-base home in 1955.

My dad was a research physicist who worked in solid state physics for the government his entire career. Regular people don’t have a clue what that means, and I only have a vague idea. In fact, I once told the nosy neighbors that my dad was a physicist, and that was a fancy name for a janitor. I had been baited by my parents to repeat that story, and it turned out to have a very personal meaning that I only understood much later in life.

David Kingston studied physics at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, the college just outside his home town of Haslett. He was working on his master’s degree when he was drafted for the Korean War. Being a student, he was able to delay his service temporarily, but ended up with a 4-year Air Force commitment. He married my mom, his childhood sweetheart, in 1954, and the Air Force sent them to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.

Obsession With Space

Everything Dad worked on was top secret. In the early 60’s, he was part of a team that published significant work on growing crystals. His team received the first computer on WFAFB that was used to monitor their experiments growing crystals. He went to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena to learn how to run the computer. I remember him taking me inside the lab on the weekends when he had to check on the progress. A real science lab! I was young enough to be totally impressed with this experience, and vowed that I would become a scientist one day. I also thought it was very cool that he had research published in the boring green physics journal he received every month, and that he traveled to present papers at the annual American Physical Society meetings.

I was always eager to see the stars through the telescope.

It turns out, most of what Dad worked on was for the space program, and specifically for NASA. Their computer ran experiments that were the basic science research behind the development of cadmium batteries for capturing solar energy in space.

Some of my earliest memories of time with Dad were spent outside staring through his telescope. He instilled in me a love the stars that I carry with me today. One Saturday morning, he proved to me that there was no dark side of the moon (sorry, Pink Floyd) using cereal bowls for the sun, earth, and moon around the kitchen table. In those minutes, he taught me the basic orbital mechanics of these bodies. I was about 7 years old, and suddenly the mysteries of the night sky were reduced to things I could understand.

Heathkit Color TV

In the countdown to the Apollo 11 mission, Dad decided that we needed a color TV to watch this momentous event. But typical of his style and frugality, he didn’t rush out to buy one. Instead, he used the last days of his G.I. Bill benefits to take a television repair course through the mail. In the course, they built a Heathkit color TV. He was obsessed with building that TV. And months before the moon landing, it was finished.

My parents invited the entire neighborhood over to watch the mission on TV. The night of the moon landing and the first walk were the busiest in our house. I was the oldest of three, just 10 and ready to start 5th grade. The neighborhood was an interesting mix of people, a cement company chemist, a police officer, a psychologist, a truck driver, a golf course greens keeper, an electrician, a retired couple, and a beautician were all there in our living room watching history on our new Heathkit color TV. It was all of the adults and kids watching history being made.

That’s One Small Step For Man…

I will never forget the oldest man in the room, Gene, couldn’t believe it was real. He insisted that it was a trick, that there was no way a man was walking on the moon. He seemed ancient to my young eyes, and he was probably 70 years old. Looking back, he was alive for the first flight of Dayton natives, Wilber and Orville Wright. He watched the demise of the trains, and the spread of car culture and the interstate highway system. At the time, I thought he was an idiot, but now, I can see his incredulity with a bit more compassion.

Dad’s obsession with space flight didn’t end with this. When the Neil Armstrong Air and Space Museum opened in Armstrong’s home town of Wakaponeta, just an hour away, the entire family made the pilgrimage. I was the only girl in my junior high and high school to have a charm of the lunar landing module on her charm bracelet I purchased at that museum. I also built a model of it in junior high. My geek came out very early in life.

I just found my old charm bracelet in a jewelry box. I’ll post a picture of the lunar landing module and a commemorative charm for Apollo 11 later this afternoon. (Camera recharging)

What This Taught Me

David Kingston at Michigan State in 1954.

As a child, it seemed totally magical that men were walking on the moon, but Dad made it seem real. I remember watching the famous Kennedy speech where he challenged us to reach for the moon, and I was amazed to see that it happened within his time frame. The greater view of humanity expanding our boundaries to include the moon was a huge formative event in my life. The fact that it happend at the time when I was looking around to see how the world worked made it even more significant to me. It left me with the sense that humanity can accomplish anything we set our minds to, individually and collectively.

I also learned that some people will never believe the things right in front of their eyes, and not to waste a single minute of my time trying to convince them otherwise.

Dad could have made more money in the public sector, but money wasn’t as important to him as the immense pride he felt being in service to his country. His life taught me that a life spent in pursuit of passion was a better life than one spent in pursuit of money.

Back to that janitor story. It turns out, my grandfather was a mechanic for the physics department at MSU and worked on the first cyclotron built there (replaced in 1963 with the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory) . When Dad started college, his dad got him a job as a janitor in the physics building. He kept that job until the day he started teaching physics classes as a graduate assistant. He started as a janitor and ended up teaching classes in the same building.

You can do anything you set your mind to do.

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